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Peace from Harmony
Chapter 9. Truth about the US/NATO War Axis as Main Threat, Obstacle and Enemy of Global Peace: Panoramic Picture in Mosaic of the Proofs

To contents

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SECTION 3

Evolution of Global Peace and Consciousness.

Turn from Military to Peaceful History

 

Chapter 9

Truth about the US/NATO War Axis as Main Threat, Obstacle and
Enemy of Global Peace
: Panoramic Picture in Mosaic of the Proofs.
Militaristic America through the Eyes of Americans

 

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Bhagavad Gita [1]

 

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world:
My own Government, I cannot be silent.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

In the war hands are billions of money,
millions of obedient troops and in our hands is o­nly o­ne,
but the mightiest tool in the world – the truth.

Leo Tolstoy

 

The United States is self-immunized from any prosecution.

Noam Chomsky

 

“Washington is the Enemy of all Humanity” and
“Putin saves the world from nuclear war by
not being provocative.”

Paul C. Roberts

 

Many powerful people don't want peace
because they live off war.

Pope Francis

 

1. Who is Guilty in Wars and their Constant Threat Today? What to Do? Leo Semashko

I. USA/NATO: “Greatest Threat to Humanity” (Zeese),
“Politics of Genocide” (Herman) Approaching to Nuclear War

2. Biggest Threat to World Peace: The United States. Sarah Lazare

3. Insanity Grips the Western World. Paul C. Roberts

4. Obama Charged with 'Imperial Hubris' Unmatched Even by Bush. Jon Queally

5. US Empire Reaches Breaking Point. “Greatest Threat to Humanity”. Time to End it. Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers

6. America’s Got War – Poverty, Drugs, Afghanistan, Iraq, Terror, or How to Make War o­n Everything. William J. Astore

7. Shrinking the Empire: A Session o­n the Imperial Couch. Tom Engelhardt

8. The USA Hiroshima: Nuclear Threat to Humanity. GHA Message. Leo Semashko, Subhash Chandra. Teresinka Pereira

9. “Deter, Deny and Defeat”: Pentagon [Mis]Labels Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as “Threats to Global Peace”. Stephen Lendman

II. USA/NATO: “Death, the Destroyer of Worlds” (Oppenheimer);
“Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare” (Chomsky);
“Your Wars are the Cause of Global Terrorism” (Todenhöfer)

10. The United States – in a Permanent State of War. Albert A. Stahel

11. Historical Tradition of American Empire: War and Genocidal Crimes against Humanity. Joachim Hagopian

12. Never to Forget the 1999 US-NATO-EU Aggression against Yugoslavia.

13. How America Made ISIS. Tom Engelhardt

14. Iraq War 4.0? Tom Engelhardt

15. Your Wars are the Cause of Global Terrorism. Jürgen Todenhöfer

16. o­n Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare. Concealing the Crimes of the West. Noam Chomsky

III. USA/NATO: “Barbarossa II Mission” (Rozoff);
“Breaking Russia has become an Objective” (Kissinger),
“NATO Global Nuclear War with Russia” (Chomsky)

17. NATO Aggression to East with Barbarossa II Mission: From Daily Digests. Rick Rozoff

18. US Control over the Crimea – it was the Aim of Coup d'etat in Kiev. Maurizio Blondet

19. From WWII, Syria and now the Ukraine: Global Community perspective. Germain Dufour

20. The US Congress Declared War o­n Russia. No to War with Russia. Dennis Kucinich

21. Reckless Congress ‘Declares War’ o­n Russia. Ronald Paul

22. The United States Allow the Possibility of Nuclear Strike o­n Russia.

23. NATO Global Nuclear War with Russia: Noam Chomsky

IV. USA: “The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World” (King); “Biggest Terrorist” (Dorrel);
“Torture Made in USA” (Robin), “Visas for Al Qaeda” (Springmann) and War Crimes

24. What Are Foreign Military Bases For? David Swanson

25. Dr. King: the US is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Amy Goodman

26. Clark's List of "Major Aggressions" by the United States of America

27. The USA War Crimes against Humanity. Video Evidences for an International Tribunal. Frank Dorrel

28. Nearly 8 Million Muslim Casualties in US-Led War o­n Terror. Mnar Muhawesh

29. U.S. Holds the World Record of Killings of Innocent Civilians. John McMurtry

30. The United States is the Biggest Terrorist Country in the World. Frank Dorrel

31. Dick Cheney Should Be Prosecuted for War Crimes: Former International Court of Justice Judge. Sarah Lazare

32. Why Does America Torture? Alan Gilbert

33. Top 10 Torturer List Actually Includes Hundreds or More. William Boardman

34. Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World: An Insider's View. Hidden Truth About State-Sponsored Terrorism Revealed U.S. Support for Al Qaeda, ISIL Laid at Uncle Sam’s Door. Michael Springmann

V. USA/NATO: “Corporate Fascism” (Paupp), “Rogue State” (Blum),
“Broken Democracy” (Quelly), “Deadliest Export of Democracy” (Blum),
“Corrupts Absolutely” (Manchanda) and “Police/Warfare State” (Roberts)

35. The Murder of American Democracy by Corporate Fascists. Terrence Paupp

36. Why the Rise of Fascism is again the Issue. John Pilger

37. Ukraine and neo-Nazis. Cold War Two. William Blum

38. When Democracy Broken, Progress Impossible. Jon Queally

39. Donald Trump’s Mouth is a Nuclear Weapon. Wayne A. Root

40. We Have 'Oligarchy, Not Democracy': Sanders. Jon Queally

41. The Moral Imperative of the BRICS Paradigm. US “Corrupts Absolutely.” Rahul Manchanda

VI. USA/NATO/EU: “Big Lie, Propaganda, Obama’s War Without Borders,” (Chossudovsky),
“Myth of Free Press” (Hedges) and “Hypocrisy” (Mennell)

42. Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth. Obama’s “War Without Borders.” Michel Chossudovsky

43. The Myth of the Free Press. Chris Hedges

44. War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda. John Pilger

45. The American Mainstream Media – A Classic Tale of Propaganda. William Blum

46. Tear Drop “A Gift From the People of Russia to the USA”. Why were we not told about Tear Drop? Michael Aydinian

47. Explaining American Hypocrisy. Stephen Mennell

VII. USA/NATO/EU:
Poverty, Homeless, Refugees and the Super-rich in the “New World Disorder” (Chomsky)

48. US Corporations Top List of Those Living in 'Magical Fairyland' of Tax-Dodging. Jon Queally

49. The Billion Dollar a Month Club: A Runaway Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich. Paul Buchheit

50. Household Wealth Falls Considerably for Majority of Americans. Alan Barber

51. Ten Facts about Being Homeless in USA. Bill Quigley

52. We didn’t Cause EU Refugee Crisis by Going to War . . . But by not Finishing the Job. We must finish what we started in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Tom N. Dunn

53. Europe’s Refugee Crisis Was Made in America. Editors

VIII. USA/NATO/EU:
“Military-Industrial-Congressional (‘Democratic’ – L.S.) Complex” (Reich) and Disarmament Abolition

54. The Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex. Mairead Maguire

55. How to Disrupt the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. Robert B. Reich

56. Do you Know what Makes Money? War Makes Money. Lots of Money. Bethany Snow

57. Nuclear Disarmament: If Not Now, When? Robert C. Koehler

IX. USA/NATO: Alternatives, Resistance and Protests;
“Slavic and American Worlds: the Common Interests of Cooperation instead of War” (Siebert)

58. In Rejecting Columbus, Cities Forge Path Toward System Alternative. Deirdre Fulton

59. A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. Blueprint. David Swanson

60. Fighting for 50 States, Sanders House Parties Expect Tens of Thousands. Deirdre Fulton

61. Sanders Calls for Voting Holiday to 'Fix' Failed Democracy. Lauren McCauley

62. The Slavic and the American Worlds: The Possibility of Peaceful Cooperation. Rudolf Siebert

X. USA/NATO: “The Empire Fall” (Galtung); “Ruin is our Future” (Roberts);
“Washington is the Enemy of all Humanity” and “Putin saves the world” (Roberts)

63. Ruin is our Future. Paul C. Roberts

64. The Fall of the US Empire: With a Bang or a Whimper? Johan Galtung

65. American Empire to fall by 2020: Revolutionary Cliodynamic Theory. Peter Turchin

66. Conclusion. Chapter Finding: "The Worse for Peace, the Better for US/NATO Wars." Model of the US Empire Fall and the Country Peace Regeneration. Leo Semashko

67. Additional Conclusion. Militarism and Terrorism: Brothers of o­ne Parent - Social Disharmony, Hostile to Peace. Leo Semashko


 

1. Who is Guilty in Wars and their Constant Threat Today? What to do?
Leo Semashko

In previous chapters, we examined the natural sources and actors of global peace – SPHERONS, as well as peace overall architecture in its fundamental blocks: laws, principles / values, ways and institutions of conscious building global peace of SPHERONS based o­n the relevant scientific knowledge – GPS. Any science, especially social, in analysis of the historical objective reality must ask, sooner or later, the question: what or who is responsible for the existence and strengthening of circumstances that threaten to destroy humanity? What or who is primarily responsible for this deadly threat for people? What are the objective facts and the real historical trends of recent time, which undoubtedly point to specific source of the threat and actor of this threat to any human life?

Science, which has claimed responsibility be called "Global Peace Science" (GPS) to find and investigate the causes and actors of this peace, by definition, has no right to evade from the raised issues, like an ostrich digs his head in the sand. To answer them, GPS states axiom: until SPHERONS have no established scientifically conscious global peace for all humanity, until there will be exist two spontaneous, opposing global axes, camps, parties or blocs, submitted by the PARTONS (countries, nations and governments): peace axis and war axis.

Both axes are two groups of countries, which were formed historically and are expressed by relevant PARTONS as actors (chapter 1). o­ne of them represents a global trend of war or the trend of global war and is its actor. It is global aggressor. The other represents a global trend of peace or the trend of global peace and is its actor. It is global peace builder.

PARTON and the war axis since 1945, the main source of nuclear war since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the US Empire, along with the European Union since 1951 and NATO, which USA created in Europe in 1949 as the Pentagon military unit. We denote this axis/PARTON briefly as the US/NATO or the USA. NATO is the US Army in Europe for global destination and using practically all over the world in all US military operations. Globalization of NATO as globalization of militarism and aggression is a proven fact [2]. “NATO is a US-run intervention force to control world” Noam Chomsky tells [2a]. Through NATO the US internationalizes its indomitable militarism during 70 years. This chapter is devoted to proof aggressiveness of this global militarist axis, its self-denial, degradation and inevitable death in the 21st century.

PARTON and the peace axis are the BRICS countries since 2005, together with all peace-loving global community. We denote this axis/PARTON briefly as BRICS/Community or BRICS. Its historic mission is to prevent nuclear war, fulfill general and complete disarmament and ensure non-violent victory of peace over war in the 21st century through global Gandhi resistance based o­n GPS. The next, tenth chapter is devoted to proof peacefulness of this axis, its advanced social and economic growth and the inevitable non-violent victory of peace over war. From the outset, BRICS clearly proclaims its priority: "To Strengthen International Peace and Security"[3].

We extend here a general characterization and evaluation of the war axis. In this chapter evidence that the main obstacle and major threat to global peace, hence to life of each individual and humanity as a whole is the US Empire along with its military appendage in Europe – NATO will be given. Military axis of the US/NATO is militaristic expression of Western civilization, the main threat, obstacle and enemy of global peace in the 21st century, as well as a major source of global nuclear war, disastrous for humanity.

Especially dangerous for world peace and world security is the US government ratio to atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It makes them a matter of national pride, creating their museums, praising their "heroes", producing test of the new atomic bombs in their honor as in Nevada July 1, 2015 and placing these bombs in Europe. For 70 years the USA have not repented and have not abandoned them, reserving for itself the exclusive right to the new atomic bombings of other cities and countries. This makes the US the first source of the global nuclear threat today. The world community cannot ignore this 70-year-old fact. It should initiate through the UN holding the USA referendum about "The US government repentance for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and their exclusion up to complete nuclear disarmament". This referendum is global importance, not o­nly national as it regards to international security. This referendum will also be a democratic and legitimate basis for all nuclear disarmament and the WWII final. The peoples of all countries support its holding in each of them if the US Congress will reject it.

Japan, as the victim and the most interested country in the US repentance for atomic bombings could be the first to host a similar referendum at itself to push the US government. There is no doubt that the peoples of Japan and the US, like any other people, will vote for repentance as a denial of similar bombings and all wars. The results of these referendums will show the US that they lead 70 years the aggressive policy contradicting the interests of the world peoples, including the interests of the American people. Therefore, this policy was and is illegitimate and anti-democratic, hence, crime and violation of all human rights, particularly the right to life.

Russia and the BRICS countries, with their priority of peace, together with the affected Japan, could initiate this referendum through the UN. They can create for this joint Committee and the Peacebuilding Agency in their governments, about which in the US say 200 years but cannot establish until now. Russia and BRICS could also hold a similar referendum in their countries, that would be a sign of their solidarity with Japan, confirmation of their love of peace and the strengthening of peacemaking spirit of their peoples that has a large international and domestic importance for national consent in each country.

The US/NATO military Empire has world's most powerful military-industrial complex and almost 75% of all the armed forces, defense budget and weapons, including nuclear capable to realize the threat of total annihilation. This empire, ignoring peaceful means and the people's desire to peace and harmony, constantly pumps arms race, continually at war with o­ne or other "undesirable" countries, and it behaves itself in a permanent military readiness to unleash a new world war, which is able to deprive of every person and of all humanity in a whole hope of survival. Therefore conclusion that the US/NATO is the main threat, obstacle and enemy of global peace in the 21st century is necessary.

This and other conclusions, without exception, are put forward and confirmed by the authors of Chapter 9, which is composed of almost 60 articles with proofs and testimonies of independent experts, mainly from the US and a few of other Western countries, who cannot be accused in bias or non-patriotism. Therefore, these findings are objective and GPS o­nly fixes them in a certain order in the ninth chapter structure. No o­ne can accuse GPS in bias and partiality. GPS is objective in all respects, including relation to the US Empire.

All of aggression and militarism of the West are concentrated in the US empire as the EU and NATO have no independent value as the USA vassals (see below). Therefore, we often say the USA instead of the US/NATO/EU. Western civilization, unlike other civilizations – Indian, Chinese, Russian, African, Japanese, etc., in its historic mainstream showed its ineradicable militarism in continuous wars, in military science created more than two centuries ago, in a constant arms race. The US pleaded nuclear war, which excludes the survival of humanity (see below). The West nurtured this main threat to world peace and humanity, starting with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The West threatens all other civilizations: o­nly it leads wars in almost all parts of the world within the past 70 years after WWII that is illustrating by chapter 9. o­ne of its generalizations emphasizes: "The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor" [4].

To the USA does not belong any o­ne major peace initiative since 1945 but each of the last 70 years they have started a new war or continued the past aggressions that shows their history (see below). The US/NATO military bloc in fact declared war o­n Russia (Resolution 758, US Congress, December 2014 – below), surrounded Russia and China by more than 800 military bases with nuclear weapons and placed troops o­n the borders of these countries. It continues to improve its nuclear weapons, which confirms the new atomic bomb tested in Nevada July 1, 2015. These and many other facts from American sources, collected in this chapter, force to make the honest experts o­ne conclusion: the USA is "the greatest threat to humanity" [5].

All that speaks and writes the official, governmental West about other civilizations, with rare exceptions of honest experts is a big lie, created and used as a pretext and justification for its aggression, as it was earlier with Korea and Vietnam, then Iraq and Libya, and now with Russia. This lie is exposed in the articles published below as the militaristic propaganda to justify the aggressive intentions and actions. West in the face of US/NATO has become in the last 70 years "death and the destroyer of worlds" by definition of Robert Oppenheimer [1].

The West at dawn of industrial civilization has destroyed the worlds of different civilizations in both Americas within genocide of tens of millions of indigenous people. In the 18–19–20 centuries West colonized much of Africa, destroying or undermining the main African civilizations. In the early 21st century, the West through its militaristic block US/NATO destroyed the worlds of Iraq and Libya, creating in them the chaos, terrorism, uncontrolled massive flow of refugees to Europe and the extreme terrorist movements and the states, such as ISIS, Boko Haram, Taliban and other, purpose of which is freedom from the Western way of life in their territories. They are the result of the US/NATO militaristic infection. This is supported by studies of honest Western scholars and journalists, published in this chapter with some cuts and underscores.

GPS must be firm and consistent science having the intellectual courage to define the main threat and obstacle to global peace today, as it historically was not too late. GPS must not o­nly answer the question of who is blamed today in creating a deadly threat to mankind and every person but also to determine the path of non-violent, peaceful overcoming the primary source of this threat (Chapter 10). The o­nly thing that GPS cannot afford – it is to justify the use of military and any violent means to overcome the source of deadly threats before it is inactive. However, if this source will start to operate and go to the military aggression, then every victim has the right to use all means, including military, to protect themselves. This is international law, which is the GPS law not requiring evidence and arising from human and any nation right to self-defense.

Thus, to overcome militarism and the threat of the US/NATO empire it is difficult to overestimate the revolutionary importance of GPS together with its fundamental discoveries of SPHERONS, SOCIONOME, S-matrix and others unique cognitive tools. They open the possibility for radical change of human history through replacement of militarist mindset to the GPS peaceful thinking of SPHERONS. These tools will ensure building global peace in the 21st century and "shift of the arms race into a peace race" as brilliantly foresaw Martin Luther King Jr. Their final outcome is a general and complete disarmament and the historic victory of peace over war. As Albert Einstein wrote, "we shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." This is the GPS thinking.

Militarist mindset is hostile to peace and deprives humanity survival prospect. This perspective can provide o­nly a peaceful mind and consciousness based o­n GPS. Therefore GPS is an alternative to nuclear war. GPS has intellectual potential not o­nly to prevent it but also to provide up to the end of the 21st century complete disarmament and the historic victory of peace over war, i.e., the transition from the military past history to a peaceful future history without war. To this inexorable objective trend cannot prevent even the most powerful in the history militarist axis of the US/NATO, the years of which are counted. This is the historical mission and meaning of GPS.

Dr. Leo Semashko, GHA President, Editor in Chief of the book "Global Peace Science"

 

I. USA/NATO: “Greatest Threat to Humanity” (Zeese),
“Politics of Genocide” (Herman) Approaching to Nuclear War

 

2. Biggest Threat to World Peace: The United States. Sarah Lazare

International polls shows that world, including significant portion of Americans, deem US as greatest obstacle to peace

U.S. soldiers stop traffic o­n the road to the governor's compound in Kandahar, scene of a deadly battle o­n April 28, 2012 (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)Over 12 years into the so-called "Global War o­n Terror," the United States appears to be striking terror into the hearts of the rest of the world.

In their annual End of Year survey, Win/Gallup International found that the United States is considered the number o­ne "greatest threat to peace in the world today" by people across the globe.

The poll of 67,806 respondents from 65 countries found that the U.S. won this dubious distinction by a landslide, as revealed in the chart below.

The BBC explains that the U.S. was deemed a threat by geopolitical allies as well as foes, including a significant portion of U.S. society.

Predictable in some areas (the Middle East and North Africa) but less so in others. Eastern Europe's 32% figure may be heavily influenced by Russia and Ukraine, but across most of Western Europe there are also lots of figures in the high teens.

In the Americas themselves, decades of US meddling have left an awkward legacy. Its neighbours, Mexico (37%) and Canada (17%), clearly have issues. Even 13% of Americans see their own country as a danger [6].

Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams, staff writer, USA.

 

3. Insanity Grips The Western World. Paul C. Roberts

Just as Karl Marx claimed that History had chosen the proletariat, neoconservatives claim that History has chosen America. Just as the Nazis proclaimed “Deutschland uber alles,” neoconservatives proclaim “America uber alles.” In September 2013 President Obama actually stood before the United Nations and declared, “I believe America is exceptional.”

Germany’s political leaders and those in Great Britain, France, and throughout Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan also believe that America is exceptional, which means better than they are. That’s why these countries are Washington’s vassals. They accept their inferiority to the Exceptional Country – the USA – and follow its leadership.

It is unlikely that the Chinese think that a handful of White People are exceptional in anything except their diminutive numbers. The populations of Asia, Africa, and South America dwarf those that comprise Washington’s Empire. Neither do the Russians believe that the US is exceptional. Putin’s response to Obama’s claim of American superiority was: “God created us equal.” Putin added: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

If all countries are exceptional, the word loses its meaning. If America is exceptional, it means others are inferior for lacking this designation. Inferiors have less rights and can be bullied into submission or bombed into oblivion. The Exceptional Country is above all the others and, therefore, doesn’t have to be concerned about how it treats them. Obviously, Americans and their vassals think America is exceptional as the millions of people murdered, maimed, and dislocated by Washington’s wars in eight countries in the 21st century has not resulted in condemnation of Washington. Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the puppets in Canada, Australia, and Japan still suck up, holding tight to Washington.

Instead, Russia and Iran, countries that, unlike the US, are not militarily aggressive, are portrayed in the White People’s Media as threats and are condemned. The White Media claims, and has claimed since February 2014, that there are Russian tanks and troops in Ukraine. Putin has pointed out that if this indeed was the case, Kiev and Western Ukraine would have fallen to the Russian invasion early last year. Kiev has been unable to defeat the small breakaway republics in eastern and southern Ukraine and would stand no chance against the Russian military.

Recently a brave news organization made fun of the White Media’s claim that Russian tanks have been pouring into Ukraine for 14 months. The parody pictured Ukraine at a standstill. All traffic o­n all roads and residential streets is blocked by Russian tanks. All parking places, including sidewalks and people’s front and rear gardens have tanks piled upon tanks. The entire country is immobilized in gridlock. Although a few have fun making fun of the gullible people who believe the White Media, the situation is nevertheless serious as it concerns life o­n planet Earth.

There is little sign that Washington and its vassals care about life o­n Earth. Recently, the largest political group in the European Parliament–the European People’s Party–expressed a cavalier opinion about life o­n Earth. We know this, because, if we can trust Euractive, an o­nline EU news source, the majority EU party believes that declaring the EU’s readiness for nuclear war is o­ne of the best steps to deter Russia from further aggression: http://www.unian.info/politics/1070675-meps-believe-eu-should-be-ready-for-nuclear-war.html. The aggression to be stopped by Europe’s declaration of its readiness for Armageddon is the alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the “further aggression” is Putin’s alleged intention of reestablishing the Soviet Empire. It must be disappointing to the Russian government to see that leaders of the European Union prefer to endorse nuclear war than to challenge Washington’s propaganda.

When I read that the governing party in the European Parliament thought non-existent aggression had to be stopped by a declaration of readiness for nuclear war, I realized that money could buy any and everything, even the life of the planet. The European People’s Party was speaking in behalf of Washington’s propaganda, not in behalf of Europe. Europe’s nuclear war with Russia would end instantly with the destruction of every European capital. The crazed vice-president of the European People’s Party, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski revealed who the real aggressor is when he declared: “Time of talk and persuasion with Russia is over. Now it’s time for a tough policy.”

Clearly, the European Parliament is a great danger to life o­n the planet. Is it realistic to think that Russia will allow herself to become a concubine of Washington? [7]

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book is How America Was Lost.

 

4. Obama Charged with 'Imperial Hubris' Unmatched Even by Bush
Jon Queally

Following his announcement to bomb Syria without congressional approval, president slammed for total disregard for constitutional safeguards regarding war-making.

President Obama told the American public o­n Wednesday night that he will order significantly expanded military operations against the Islamic State in the Middle East, including more U.S. troops to Iraq and a bombing campaign in Syria. Anti-war voices and progressive critics were thoroughly unimpressed with the announced strategy as they issued warnings of the disaster to come.

A day after President Obama told the American public he was preparing to bomb targets inside the sovereign state of Syria and that he did not need congressional approval to do so, critics are lashing out against what Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale University, described as "imperial hubris" o­n Friday. In his scathing op-ed in the New York Times, Ackerman writes:

President Obama's declaration of war against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marks a decisive break in the American constitutional tradition. Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris.

This became clear when White House officials briefed reporters before Mr. Obama’s speech to the nation o­n Wednesday evening. They said a war against ISIS was justified by Congress’s authorization of force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that no new approval was needed.

But the 2001 authorization for the use of military force does not apply here. That resolution – scaled back from what Mr. Bush initially wanted – extended o­nly to nations and organizations that “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11 attacks.”

And Ackerman's not alone. Robert Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, told the Daily Beastthis week that Obama's claim of authority to bomb ISIS targets in Syria was "on its face" an "implausible argument."

"The 2001 AUMF requires a nexus to al Qaeda or associated forces of al Qaeda fighting the United States," explained Chesney, but "since ISIS broke up with al Qaeda it’s hard to make" the case that authority granted by the AUMF still applies.

And as The Nation magazine's Zoë Carpenter reports:

The White House’s dismissal of the need for congressional approval is also in conflict with positions Obama himself expressed as a presidential candidate. “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” Obama declared to The Boston Globe in 2008.

The situation in Iraq and Syria does not appear to meet that standard. Obama acknowledged o­n Wednesday that “[w]e have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland.” Meanwhile, intelligence sources say that the threat from ISIS has been grossly exaggerated. “It’s hard to imagine a better indication of the ability of elected officials and TV talking heads to spin the public into a panic, with claims that the nation is honeycombed with sleeper cells, that operatives are streaming across the border into Texas or that the group will soon be spraying Ebola virus o­n mass transit systems – all o­n the basis of no corroborated information,” former State Department counterterrorism adviser Daniel Benjamin told The New York Times.

While the administration’s current attempt to circumnavigate Congress is hypocritical as well as potentially illegal, it’s also consistent with the way Obama has exercised US military power before. As Spencer Ackerman notes, he’s extended drone strikes across the Middle East and North Africa; initiated a seven-month air campaign in Libya without congressional approval; prolonged the war in Afghanistan; and, in recent months, ordered more than 1,000 troops back into Iraq. Promises of no boots o­n the ground notwithstanding, Obama’s war footprint is large, and expanding [8].

Jon Queally, Common Dreams, staff writer, USA.

 

5. US Empire Reaches Breaking Point. “Greatest Threat to Humanity”.
Time to End it. Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers

The people of the United States must work to end the interventionist violence of the U.S. Empire. This is Part I of a two part series o­n American Empire. Part II will focus o­n the Empire Economy and his it is failing to work for most Americans as well as most people of the world.

The historian who chronicles US Empire, William Blum, issued his 130th Anti-Empire Report this week. In it he notes that the US, by far, is seen by the people of the world as “the greatest threat to peace in the world today” with 24% taking that view. o­nly 2% see Russia as such a threat, and 6% see China.

This should not come as a surprise since, as this map shows, much of the world has been bombed, had their democratically chosen government overthrown and has been occupied by the United States. Blum follows these interventions closely and has reported that since the end of World War II, the United States has:

·Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.

·Dropped bombs o­n the people of more than 30 countries.

·Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

·Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.

·Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries, according to Chapter 18 of his book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s o­nly Superpower.

It seems the people of the world are factually correct when they label the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world. Yet, despite this mass public opinion about the United States, US leaders seem oblivious. As Blum points out, Secretary of State John Kerry said: “In my travels as secretary of state, I have seen as never before the thirst for American leadership in the world.”

And, potential future leaders show support for the path of military intervention. The Republican Vice Presidential candidate in 2012, Paul Ryan (R-WI) said: “We need to be reminded that the world needs American leadership.” And the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has said “The United States can, must, and will lead in this new century.”

A more accurate appraisal comes from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Vietnam era when he said: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I cannot be Silent.” The people of the United States must follow the lead of Dr. King and work to end the interventionist violence of the United States Empire. …

The horrible shooting down of a passenger plane seemingly by a missile is causing controversy now. We published two stories o­n the event, o­ne from the NY Times and the other from Russia Today to show the stark contrast. RT reports that Kiev moved missiles that could shoot down a plane to the region and ten years ago shot down a Russian aircraft to demonstrate Kiev has the technology. This is not being reported in the US media which has ruled out the possibility that Kiev fired the missile and is debating whether Russia or the Eastern Ukrainian separatists fired the shot.

Both Kiev and the Eastern Ukranians have denied the shooting. Vladimir Putin has blamed the catastrophe o­n the o­ngoing attacks by Kiev against Eastern Ukraine and has urged a ceasefire, Obama joined in the call for a cease fire a day later. There have been aerial bombardments of Eastern Ukraine by Kiev. All the facts have not come in as we write this, so at this stage we just note the disparity in reporting. It would be wise not to make any assumptions but to wait for the evidence and certainly not use this as an excuse for direct involvement by the United States or escalation of hostilities. Putting in place a cease fire and finding a peaceful solution to the conflict is the approach we hope Ukraine takes.

Also notable is the lack of reporting o­n Ukraine. There are some incredible stories in the Russian media about atrocities being conducted by right wing extremists in Eastern Ukraine. We have not seen any western media deny the stories. o­ne horrible story is of a child who was allegedly crucified by Ukrainian extremists while his mother was forced to watch and then she was dragged through the square by a tank until she died. Some describe what is occurring as genocide with the targeting of civilian buildings. International lawyer, Francis Boyle, said in an interview that the US was aiding and abetting genocide.

Iraq: After military attacks and economic embargoes of Iraq by Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the country is a mess. The government is in chaos, a new Muslim group, ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has taken many of the major cities by military force and there is talk of dividing the country into multiple parts. Obama has already sent hundreds of troops to Iraq, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Martin Dempsey, has not ruled out a large US troop presence saying if “our national interests drive us there” we will send more troops. Too many in government do not realize that the cause of the problems in Iraq was the US invasion and occupation and that more of the same will not solve the problem, but is likely to make it worse. As Chris Hedges writes, ISIS isthe final answer to the collective humiliation of an occupied country, the logical outcome of Shock and Awe…”

We are pleased to see growing bi-partisan opposition to military involvement in Iraq by members of Congress who are urging Obama to get authorization from Congress as required by the Constitution. This letter, authored by Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Scott Regall (R-VA) ended up with 103 members of Congress signing o­n.

Once again the corporate media played its usual role of propagandizing Americans to drum up support for another war in Iraq. They consistently aired people who advocated prior attacks and occupations of Iraq while never allowing war opponents o­n the air. The media also exaggerates sectarian divisions, divisions the US made worse to control the population during the occupation. Despite mass propaganda, a majority of the American public oppose military intervention in Iraq and o­nly 20% support it. …

Is US Empire Collapsing? The US Empire is the largest in world history with more than 1,100 military bases and outposts around the world. To put that in perspective, compared to two other large empires, there were 37 Roman bases at that empire’s peak in AD 117 and 36 British bases at empire’s peak in 1898. Not o­nly is the US Empire the largest in history but it has been the most destructive.

Each of the conflicts described in this article could escalate until a much larger war where US ground troops become enmeshed in war. The faltering US economy can no longer afford the expensive US military. The people of the United States no longer support war and the people of the world are rebelling against US rule. People are beginning to mobilize (see. e.g. World Beyond War) to finally put an end to US militarism and Empire [5].

Kevin Zeese, JD and Margaret Flowers, MD are organizers of PopularResistance.org; they co-direct It’s Our Economy and co-host Clearing the FOG, USA

 

6. America’s Got War – Poverty, Drugs, Afghanistan, Iraq, Terror, or
How to Make War o­n Everything. William J. Astore

War o­n drugs. War o­n poverty. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War o­n terror. The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms of debate before you even begin. It answers questions before they’re even asked.

When you define something as war, it dictates the use of the military (or militarized police forces, prisons, and other forms of coercion) as the primary instruments of policy. Violence becomes the means of decision, total victory the goal. Anyone who suggests otherwise is labeled a dreamer, an appeaser, or even a traitor.

War, in short, is the great simplifier – and it may even work when you’re fighting existential military threats (as in World War II). But it doesn’t work when you define every problem as an existential o­ne and then make war o­n complex societal problems (crime, poverty, drugs) or ideas and religious beliefs (radical Islam).

America’s Omnipresent War Ethos. Consider the Afghan War – not the o­ne in the 1980s when Washington funneled money and arms to the fundamentalist Mujahideen to inflict o­n the Soviet Union a Vietnam-style quagmire, but the more recent phase that began soon after 9/11. Keep in mind that what launched it were those attacks by 19 hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi nationals) representing a modest-sized organization lacking the slightest resemblance to a nation, state, or government. There was as well, of course, the fundamentalist Taliban movement that then controlled much of Afghanistan. It had emerged from the rubble of our previous war there and had provided support and sanctuary, though somewhat grudgingly, to Osama bin Laden.

With images of those collapsing towers in New York burned into America’s collective consciousness, the idea that the U.S. might respond with an international “policing” action aimed at taking criminals off the global streets was instantly banished from discussion. What arose in the minds of the Bush administration’s top officials instead was vengeance via a full-scale, global, and generational “war o­n terror.” Its thoroughly militarized goal was not just to eliminate al-Qaeda but any terror outfits anywhere o­n Earth, even as the U.S. embarked o­n a full-fledged experiment in violent nation building in Afghanistan. More than 13 dismal years later, that Afghan War-cum-experiment is o­ngoing at staggering expense and with the most disappointing of results

And just to set the record straight, President Obama, too, accepted the preeminence of war in American policy in his 2009 Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo. There, he offered a stirring defense of America’s role and record as “the world’s sole military superpower”:

Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.”

It was a moment that defined the Obama presidency as being remarkably in tune with America’s already omnipresent war ethos. It was the very negation of “hope” and “change” and the beginning of Obama’s transition, via the CIA’s drone assassination program, into the role of assassin-in-chief.

Everything Is Jihad. Recent American leaders have something in common with their extremist Islamic counterparts: all of them define everything, implicitly or explicitly, as a jihad, a crusade, a holy war. But the violent methods used in pursuit of various jihads, whether Islamic or secular, simply serve to perpetuate and often aggravate the struggle.

Think of America’s numerous so-called wars and consider if there’s been any measurable progress made in any of them. Lyndon Johnson declared a “war o­n poverty” in 1964. Fifty-one years later, there are still startling numbers of desperately poor people and, in this century, the gap between the poorest many and richest few has widened to a chasm. (Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, in fact, o­ne might speak of a war o­n the poor, not poverty.) Drugs? Forty-four years after President Richard Nixon proclaimed the war o­n drugs, there are still millions in jail, billions being spent, and drugs galore o­n the streets of American cities. Terror? Thirteen years and counting after that “war” was launched, terror groups, minor in numbers and reach in 2001, have proliferated wildly and there is now something like a “caliphate” – o­nce an Osama bin Laden fantasy – in the Middle East: ISIS in power in parts of Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda on the rise in Yemen, Libya destabilized and divvied up among ever more extreme outfits, innocents still dying in U.S. drone strikes. Afghanistan? The opium trade has rebounded big time, the Taliban is resurgent, and the region is being destabilized. Iraq? A cauldron of ethnic and religious rivalries and hatreds, with more U.S. weaponry o­n the way to fuel the killing, in a country that functionally no longer exists. The o­nly certainty in most of these American “wars” is their violent continuation, even when their original missions lie in tatters.

The very methods the U.S. employs and the mentality its leaders adopt ensure their perpetuation. Why? Because drug addiction and abuse can’t be conquered by waging a war. Neither can poverty. Neither can terror. Neither can radical Islam be defeated through armed nation building. Indeed, radical Islam thrives o­n the very war conditions that Washington helps to create. By fighting in the now familiar fashion, you merely fan its flames and ensure its propagation.

It’s the mindset that matters. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, places that for most Americans exist o­nly within a “war” matrix, the U.S. invades or attacks, gets stuck, throws resources at the problem indiscriminately, and “makes a desert and calls it ‘peace'” (to quote the Roman historian Tacitus). After which our leaders act surprised as hell when the problem o­nly grows.

Sadly, the song remains monotonously the same in America: more wars, made worse by impatience for results driven by each new election cycle. It’s a formula in which the country is eternally fated to lose.

True change often begins with confession. With humility. With an admission that not everything is within o­ne’s control, no matter how violently o­ne rages; indeed, that violent rage o­nly aggravates the problem. America needs to make such a confession. o­nly then can we begin to wean ourselves off war [9].

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), edits blog The Contrary Perspective, USA.

 

7. Shrinking the Empire: A Session o­n the Imperial Couch. Tom Engelhardt

"American Empire" has been wondering whether it might be an addict. [What follows is a transcript of a therapy session between the American Empire and a psychiatrist whose name we at TomDispatch have agreed not to disclose. Normally, even in an age in which privacy means ever less to anyone, we wouldn’t consider publishing such a private encounter, but the probative news value of the exchange is so obvious that we decided to make an exception. The transcript has been edited o­nly for obvious repetitions and the usual set of “ums” and “uhs.” Tom]

Doctor: Would you like to tell me why you’re here?

American Empire: Well, Doc, I’m feeling a little off. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of confused, even a little dizzy some of the time.

Doctor: When did you first experience symptoms of dizziness?

AE: I think it was all the pivoting that did it. First I was pivoting out of Iraq. Then I was pivoting out of Afghanistan. Then I was pivoting to Asia. Then I was secretly pivoting to Africa. Then all of a sudden I was pivoting into Iraq again, and Syria, and Afghanistan, and… well, you get the picture.

Doctor: And this left you…?

AE: Depressed. But Doc, there’s a little background you need to know about the dizzying nature of my life. For almost 50 years – this was in the last century – I was in the marriage from hell. My partner, the Soviet Union, was a nightmare. I mean, we had a brief sunny courtship when we were more or less in love, but that o­nly lasted the length of World War II. The minute I got home from the front, it was hell, and I’m hardly exaggerating if I tell you that, when we got to fighting, it was scorched Earth all the way. We regularly threatened to annihilate each other. It was o­ne of those stormy relationships you could never predict in advance where this planet just isn’t big enough for the two of you.

In our worst moments, I used to fantasize about the Soviet Union being obliterated, simply disappearing from the face of the Earth, but it was a fantasy, nothing more. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be free. Not in my lifetime. Then o­ne day as 1990 ended, like some unexpected miracle, it happened. Poof! The Soviet Union was gone. I was alone and the Earth was my playground – or so it seemed.

Doctor: Do you feel that it went to your head?

AE: It would have gone to anybody’s head. I mean, people were saying the most complimentary things about me all the time. They were calling me the “sole superpower,” or the planet’s o­nly “hyperpower,” or its “global policeman,” or… well, I don’t want to go o­n about it, but sure, it went to my head. How would you feel if you overheard people saying that there had never been an empire like yours in all of history that the Romans and the Brits were pikers by comparison?

And when I looked around the planet, it seemed true. There weren’t any enemies worthy of me. I mean, North Korea, Iraq, and later scattered groups of jihadis? Can you blame me if it went to my head? I suppose I should have left well enough alone. After all, I was already a "superpower." You’d think I might have been satisfied, but that isn’t imperial nature, is it? And to make matters worse, along came George W. (“bring ‘em o­n”) Bush, Dick (“the dark side”) Cheney, Donald (“sweep it all up”) Rumsfeld, Condi (“mushroom cloud”) Rice, and the rest of that crew. It was like being in Rome and hearing the announcer call out, “Batting cleanup, number four, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.” I should have felt a shiver of fear. But when they explained their plans to me, they seemed so damn convincing. Loosing the U.S. military to create a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East, and then globally – how could any of it has gone wrong? If you don’t think I feel bitter lying here o­n this couch, you’re no shrink. You wouldn’t wish what’s happened to me o­n some two-bit rogue state.

Doctor: It might be worth exploring that feeling of bitterness.

AE: Explore it? That’s a no-brainer. o­ne day you’re o­n top of the world. You’ve just created the sort of surveillance state that would have left Joe Stalin drooling in his grave. You can listen in o­n a bunch of jihadists in the backlands of Yemen or the German Chancellor (which, by the way, isn’t as thrilling you might imagine) or any American you want. You can send your drones anywhere and there’s no o­ne to stop you. You can rewrite the laws to suit yourself. You’re this town’s o­nly sheriff, numero uno, the Big Dog. And ten minutes later, nothing you do – I mean nothing, nada, zilch – works, not an invasion, not an intervention, not an occupation, not even the simplest of helping hands, and suddenly you realize that you’re down in the dumps and feeling kinda nostalgic for the old days when it was just you and the Soviet Union growling at each other.

Doctor: I’d like you to try to be more specific. Sometimes generalized complaints about o­ne’s state of mind aren’t as useful as they should be. Give me an example and describe your feelings around it.

AE: You want an example? Gee, that’s a tough o­ne. I mean, let me think about that for minus o­ne second. How about Iraq, for specifics? If I had told you, back in the two-superpower days, that I was going to fight three wars in less than a quarter of a century in o­ne country or that four presidents in a row would bomb o­ne land, not a single American would have picked Iraq. If it were 1980 and I made that prediction, you would have had me institutionalized. But here we are. And I just did it again. I sent in the bombers and drones and advisers and I’m about to train up another Iraqi army. At least the other two times, I thought victory was a given. This time… In 1991, I crushed them. The greatest military power o­n the planet was up against a third-rate army and obliterated it in no time flat. You’re of an age. You must remember the victory parades. They were spectacular. And there was George H.W. Bush exclaiming that we’d kicked the Vietnam Syndrome o­nce and for all. Who could forget it? But when the dust cleared, Saddam Hussein was still there. In 2003, no more messing around, we took Baghdad in about three seconds and sent Saddam into that spider hole in hell. And then, it o­nly got worse. I mean, bitter? That’s not the half of it. I know it’s dangerous to self-diagnose, but I’ve been wondering whether I might be an addict. I just can’t seem to stop. I know better now, but it never seems to matter. I have to admit something, Doc. Before I came to you, I called Empires Anonymous. But their phone’s been disconnected and e-mails bounce back…

Doctor: I want to point out that our time today is winding down. So let me just offer you a few initial suggestions for… [The recording of the session suddenly ends here.] [10].

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World… Previous books include The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's…

 

8. The USA Hiroshima: Nuclear Threat to Humanity. GHA Message
Leo Semashko, Subhash Chandra. Teresinka Pereira

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world:

My own Government, I cannot be Silent.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Nuclear Age: Under the sign of death. The nuclear age begins o­n a quiet stretch of desert in Alamogordo, New Mexico o­n July 16, 1945, where the US government tested the first atomic bomb. o­n that day humanity took a long step o­n the road to its own demise.

Robert Oppenheimer, a principal scientist in the effort to create the atomic bomb, reported recalling this line from the Bhagavada Gita, ”I am become Death, the destroyer (shatterer) of Worlds.” Just three weeks after the first test, a second atomic bomb has been tested o­n human beings over the city of Hiroshima o­n August 6, 1945 and Hiroshima became death. Three days later, o­n August 9, 1945, and Nagasaki became death. Not Oppenheimer and its fellow scientists but the US Government became death and destroyer of the worlds.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki the US Government being burned alive in a trice about 200,000 civilians – children, women and the elderly – without any military need and did not apologize even now, even after 70 years! It thinks the like is normal for itself in the future! This means that the US government reserves for itself the moral and legal (precedent) right to burn alive in the nuclear fire any city, any country and humanity as a whole along with the planet also easily as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US proved it with a new nuclear test July 1, 2015 in Nevada, violating all international laws. The newest test in the 70th anniversary of atomic bombings is the USA devilish ridicule over the innocent victims of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and humanity in a whole within long 70 years and for the future. Hence, the US is the greatest nuclear threat to humanity in the 21st century.

As we approach the 70th anniversaries of the August 6 and 9, 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have a unique opportunity to impact people’s thinking, to educate them about the crime of the A-bombings and the continuing dangers of nuclear weapons, and to build the popular movement needed to eliminate the threat they pose to human survival. Among the dangers facing the environment, the possibility of nuclear war is undoubtedly the gravest.

Global Peace Science (GPS): Science of Peace, Full Security and Sustainability to Create a Nuclear Free World. GPS is the science of peace, security and sustainability from harmony. GPS is awareness for nuclear abolition and developing Nuclear Free World through harmonious education.

GPS is the GHA volunteering and social service, which is defined in the "GHA Humanity Charter" as the declaration of basic principles to build a just, sustainable and peaceful global society and harmonious civilization through the Gandhian’s philosophy of Non-violence in the 21st century. GPS is the theory of key peacebuilding Institutions and Global Security Two Fronts. GPS is a revolutionary shift to “No Nukes! No wars!” GPS is Victory of Peace over War.

Global Harmony Association invites all the Social and Political leaders, Scientists, Educators, Peace & Human Rights activists, to join the revolutionary shift to “No Nukes! No wars!” To create a Nuclear Free World!

HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI ALWAYS REMEMBERED by Teresinka Pereira.

It was the worse day

for humankind when

President Truman authorized

using the atomic bomb

against the people of Japan.

More than 140,000 people

died then and many more

died from the atomic radiation after it.

As it is not enough, the

United States of America

has 5,113 warheads prepared

to send any place in the world.

As it is not enough,

President Truman announced

in 1953 that the United States

has developed a hydrogen bomb.

From bad to worse, no president

of the United States has yet promised

to dismantle all of the atomic

and hydrogen bombs! [11]

See also: The Politics of Genocide [11a] and On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare [11b; 11c].

Dr. Leo Semashko, GHA President, Russia

Dr. Subhash Chandra, GHA Secretary General, India

Dr. Teresinka Pereira, President, International Writers and Artists Association (IWA), Senator, Int. Parliament for Safety and Peace. Address: Toledo, Ohio, USA; E-mail: tpereira@buckeye-express.com

Web: http://wps-poets.blogspot.ru/2007/05/teresinka-pereira.html

 

9. “Deter, Deny and Defeat”: Pentagon [Mis]Labels Russia, China, Iran and
North Korea as “Threats to Global Peace”. Stephen Lendman

The Pentagon’s new National Military Strategy (its first update since 2011) signaled possible major wars with US adversaries [12]. Washington named four nations threatening no others as major US security threats: Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – plus non-state groups like ISIS (without mentioning they’re US creations).

The document turns truth o­n its head blaming Russia for violating “numerous agreements” and “military actions.” It says Iran and North Korea seek nuclear weapons. Pyongyang may have them – for self-defense, not offense. No evidence whatever suggests Tehran seeks them – now or earlier. Plenty of evidence reveals otherwise. China is called a regional power challenging US hegemony. Pentagon strategy calls for “deter(ing), deny(ing), and defeat(ing)” nations it calls threats to US security, as well as “disrupt(ing) and degrad(ing) non-state groups.”

It says: “(n)one of these nations are believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies (but) pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages and coordinated action.”

US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey said American success: “will increasingly depend o­n how well our military instrument supports the other instruments of national power, and how it enables our network of allies and partners.”

The document states: “today, the probability of US involvement in interstate war with a major power is assessed to be low but growing.”

At the same time, so-called “hybrid conflicts” with non-state actors like ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other US-created groups are likely to expand.

Post-9/11, Dick Cheney warned of wars not ending in our lifetime. Former CIA director James Woolsey said America “is engaged in WW IV, and it could continue for years.”

GHW Bush called it a “new world order” – endless US wars of aggression for unchallenged global dominance. The Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) called it the “long war” without end.

General Martin Dempsey says: America “now face(s) multiple, simultaneous security challenges from traditional state actors and trans-regional networks of sub-state groups – all taking advantage of rapid technological change.” “We are more likely to face prolonged campaigns than conflicts that are resolved quickly.” America’s military must remain “globally engaged” – in other words, wage permanent wars of aggression against invented enemies driven by lunatics in Washington wanting all independent governments replaced by US controlled puppet o­nes.

America intends “to project power across all domains…act in concert with others…or unilaterally (as) the situation demands,” the document states. US military strategy includes “press(ing) forward with the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, placing our most advanced capabilities and greater capacity in that vital theater.” It remains committed to NATO allies and Israel’s security. Ashton Carter replacing Chuck Hagel as defense secretary in mid-February signaled more war besides o­nes America was waging before his appointment.

Obama’s naked aggression o­n Yemen followed weeks later. So did greater numbers of US combat troops operating in Iraq, continued bombing of its economic infrastructure o­n the pretext of attacking ISIS, and the same strategy o­ngoing in Syria – plus the Pentagon’s latest military strategy signaling endless US-initiated conflicts. In May, General Dempsey announced his retirement effective October 1. Marine Corp commandant General Joseph Dunford, Jr. will replace him. His nickname “Fighting Joe” signals continued endless direct and proxy aggression – always against invented enemies.

US strategy of permanent wars against o­ne country after another threatening no o­ne for objectives impossible to achieve – combined with outlandish fear-mongering, unaffordable long-term military spending, and homeland police state control indicate a nation in decline like all previous empires.

Policies pursued are unsustainable for the long haul. What can’t go o­n forever, won’t. It’s just a matter of time before America’s hubris and imperial arrogance become its undoing. What’s unknown is whether it’ll go with a bang or whimper. The former risks humanity going with it – the curse of potential nuclear Armageddon [13]. See more [14].

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. His new book as editor and contributor is titled: Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WWIII (2014): http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html.

E-mail: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net Web: http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com

 

II. USA/NATO: “Death, the Destroyer of Worlds” (Oppenheimer);
“Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare” (Chomsky);
“Your Wars are the Cause of Global Terrorism” (Todenhöfer)

 

10. The United States – in a Permanent State of War. Albert A. Stahel

Since its acknowledgement as an independent state in the Peace Treaty of Paris of 3 September 1783 the US have been at war. From 1801 to 1805 it waged the First Barbary war against Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. o­n 18 June 1812 the US declared war o­n Britain with the goal of conquering Canada. The war was ended o­n 24 December 1814 with the Treaty of Ghent. In 1815 the Second Barbary War against Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli followed. With the Removal Act in 1834 administration and congress passed the resolution to relocate all indigenous tribes in the east across the Mississippi. In 1838/39 the Cherokee from North Carolina were forcibly expelled to the Indian Territory, the later Oklahoma. At the same time, the war against the Seminoles in Florida was raging.

In 1845, the Republic of Texas, an internationally recognized State was annexed. With the war against Mexico from 1846 to 1848 California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and parts of Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming were conquered and annexed. With o­ne single stroke Mexico lost half of its territory. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japanese ports threatening them with his warships. In 1854 the Nicaraguan town of Greytown was totally destroyed by an attack of warships. The arrest of a US citizen served as a pretext. From 1861 to 1865 the Civil War raged. From 1862 to 1864 General Carlton subjected the New Mexico Indians. The Big Sioux uprising in Minnesota was bloodily crushed under Lincoln in 1862.

In 1864, a village of the Cheyenne was extinguished by Colonel Chivington at Sand Creek. From 1866 o­n until the massacre at Wounded Knee in the year 1890 Sioux and Cheyenne tribes were subjected in various campaigns and driven into reservations. In 1898, the war with Spain was allegedly triggered because of an explosion o­n a US warship before Cuba. After the destruction of the Spanish fleet, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were conquered. The US smashed the uprising of the Filipinos against the American occupation in a war that lasted from 12 June 1898 to 4 July 1902. o­n 12 August 1898 the islands of Hawaii, which had been an independent kingdom up to this time, were annexed. From 1903 to 1940 the US conducted military interventions in Honduras, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Mexico over and again.

The series of wars continues up to this day. Since 2001 war has been raging in Afghanistan. With respect to time it is the longest war that the United States have waged since their independence. A new war is currently being prepared against Iran. The history of the United States not o­nly shows a chain of official wars and interventions. So-called uprisings were indirectly supported and promoted by their CIA after 1945, as well. o­nly the support of the partisans in the Eastern European countries occupied by the USSR after 1945 and in the Soviet republics, are to be mentioned here. This “help” lasted until 1950.

A common characteristic of many of these wars is that the US usually invaded a foreign country under a pretext and without a declaration of war. By this procedure the actually valid International Law was often broken. The violations of international law included the annexation of independent States, such as Hawaii. In the course of their warfare, the US repeatedly violated the international laws of war, for example, the genocide of their own indigenous population and the suppression of the Filipino uprising. Likewise, in the Vietnam War 1964–1973, they violated the international laws of war. Kissinger’s 11-day war employing 200 heavy B-52 bombers against Hanoi and Haiphong at the end of December 1972 should be mentioned here. In 729 deployments 15,000 tons of bombs were dropped o­n these two cities!

In its short history, the United States proved to be a state that does not hesitate to break international law and international laws of war. Particularly against small countries, the US have never shown any understanding and mercy. With threats of war and by war itself these states were prostrated, humiliated and even annexed. Good relationships were never of long duration. International contracts – including the many with the indigenous population – were again and again declared null and void and broken. Of course, in each case the blame o­n the war was shifted o­n to the others. o­n the basis of this approach in its brief history, the US should be prosecuted internationally nowadays [15].

Dr. Albert A. Stahel, Professor, Institute for Strategic Studies, Wädenswil, Switzerland.

 

11. Historical Tradition of American Empire War and
Genocidal Crimes Against Humanity. Joachim Hagopian

America has been sending young men who answered its call into harm’s way for the last two and a half centuries. Enslaving Africans and engaging in a genocide policy against Native Americans for three centuries, America’s militant racist history was squarely founded o­n subjugation of darker skinned peoples. o­nly for a little more than a century has the United States not been actively pursuing a national policy of ethnic cleansing of America’s first inhabitants. And when the still highly deplorable human conditions o­n tribal reservations today are taken into account with such extreme poverty, rampant drug and alcohol addiction and highest unemployment rates in America, one might conclude genocide is still actively going o­n. Canadian professor and philosopher John McMurtry concludes: “The historical record demonstrates the US is provably guilty of continual lawless mass murder of civilians across the world.”(See below)

Yet he adds that America’s impunity is o­nly maintained through mass deception, corporatized propaganda, physical coercion and extortion. This presentation is a chronicled account and overview of just how relentless and pervasive the US Empire’s killing machine has been for as long as the United States has been an independent nation.

Inheriting its imperialistic Anglo Saxon blood from mother England and the longstanding British Empire, and armed from the beginning with its God sanctioned Manifest Destiny, to this day the United States upholds a long tradition of simply taking what it wants by hook or crook. Besides enslaving and ethnic purging through most of its history, America literally stole all its land from the indigenous population and then most of its western states and Florida from Spain, engaging in war and murder as its God given right as the erroneously, arrogantly perceived superior race and nation.

America’s taste for war not even a century out from its independence imploded o­n itself with the Civil War fought between 1861–1865 when Americans massacred Americans racking up more deaths than any other war in its entire history at 620,000 men, comprising 2% of the total US population. When defining a casualty of war as a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment, capture or through missing in action, an estimated 1.5 million American citizens became Civil War casualties in that bloodiest four year war span in US history. It was not until the Vietnam War that all other US wars combined finally exceeded the American loss of life of the War Between the States.

The second bloodiest war for America came between 1941–1945 when 405,399 American lives were lost. The Second World War was the deadliest war in human history with over 60 million killed, over 2.5% of the world population. Deaths rose to 85 million from war related diseases and famine, including up to 55 of those 85 million innocent civilian casualties in what the US military coldheartedly refers to as “collateral damage.”

The third largest American death toll from war was World War I costing 116,516 American lives and amassing a total of over 16 million deaths, marking it among the bloodiest wars in history. Between 1914–1918 seven million civilians died in “the war to end all wars.”

In fact, more than 91% of the time America has been in existence (specifically 217 out of its 238 years), Americans have been fighting and dying in wars around the world. And America’s recent war o­n terror perpetually assures that more Americans will o­nly continue indefinitely coming home in body bags or missing limbs and body parts [16] …

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer, writer, masters degree in Clinical Psychology

 

12. Never to Forget the 1999 US-NATO-EU Aggression against Yugoslavia.

The Final Document of the Belgrade International Conference, 23 & 24 March, 2009 [17].

The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, in cooperation with the other independent associations in Serbia and in coordination with the World Peace Council (WPC), held in Belgrade o­n March 23rd – 24th, 2009, an International Conference titled „Objectives and consequences of NATO Aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) – 10 Years After”.

The Conference gathered some 700 scientists and experts in the area of international relations from Serbia and 45 countries from all continents, except Australia. About 60 participants submitted their papers o­n various aspects of the aggression and ensuing developments.

Opening ceremony was attended by Prof. Slavica Đukić Dejanović, the Speaker in the National Assembly of Serbia, Mr. Petar Škundrić, the Energy Minister, as well as by the representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church, veterans’, youth and other organizations.

Mr. Ivica Dačić, Deputy Prime Minister of the Government and the Minister of Home Affairs addressed the Conference and welcomed foreign guests o­n behalf of the Government.

The special participants of the Conference were Ms Socorro Gomes, the President, and Mr. Thanasis Pafilis, the Secretary-General, of the World Peace Council. The Conference was also attended by a number of ambassadors and senior diplomatic representatives accredited in Serbia.

The participants paid their respect to the victims of the 78-day bombardment and placed wreaths at the monuments dedicated to the victims of the aggression.

The debate was held in the spirit of friendship, openness and solidarity of all organizations and individuals struggling for peace, development and prosperity.

The participants of the Belgrade Conference agreed o­n the following:

NATO Aggression against Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) was an invasion that had been prepared long time in advance, with the following global goals: setting a precedent for military interventions worldwide; bringing American troops to the Balkans and expanding NATO to the East; encircling Russia; changing the International Law Order established after Second World War by imposing the rule that might is right; imposing neoliberal capitalistic system; weakening Europe and damaging the role of the United Nations. The ultimate goal has been to reinforce the U.S. concept of unipolar world order for the purpose of establishing the control over all the economic, natural, and human resources of the Planet. The extension of NATO in Europe and to other continents proves a will to become the gendarme of the multicorporate capital all over the world.

The aggression was preceded by spreading lies and deceptions, with the special role assigned to the thesis o­n „avoiding humanitarian catastrophe“, the mock negotiations in Rambouillet, and staged „massacre of civilians“ in Račak.

The aggression, coupled with its run-up and the aftermath, is evidence of a deep moral and civilization crisis of the ruling Western elites, whereas its blowback effect, ten years o­n, comes to haunt them as a profound global economic crisis whose end remains beyond the horizon. The leaders of the NATO countries are responsible for use of armed force without the UN Security Council approval; for the breach of the United Nations Charter, the OSCE Helsinki Final Act, the Paris Charter and international conventions, in what amounts to the crime against the peace and humanity.

They are responsible for more than 3,500 deaths and for more then 10,000 wounded people, two thirds civilians, for the use of inhuman non-authorized weapons such as depleted uranium ammunitions and missile warheads as well as cluster bombs.

They are also responsible for human losses and suffering in the meantime as the consequence of the aggression, for the lasting pollution of soil and water, as a consequence of the wide-spread use of depleted uranium projectiles and of the deliberate bombing of chemical plants that amounted to chemical warfare. And they are responsible for economic damage costing in excess of 100 billion USD. Serbia is entitled to compensation for war damages.

USA/NATO/EU 1999 aggression was the first war o­n Europe’s soil after the World War Second. It was not o­nly a war against an old sovereign European state but primarily a war against Europe. Paradoxically, participated by Europe itself. It was conducted in the unique alliance between an international state organization (NATO) and the notorious terrorist organization (OVK/UCK).

The aggression was an historic mistake of the West which, sooner or later, will be recognized. Consequences of the aggression will extend throughout of 21st century. The West owes to apologize to Serbia for all the victims and pains, if not to face even deeper moral and overall crisis…

The process of deepening global economic crisis obliges the Non-Aligned Movement to strengthen unity in order to prevent the richest countries from, o­nce again, passing the burden of the problems o­nto the underdeveloped world. The time is ripe for unity, accountability and action of all forces of and for peace, development, and equality…

 

13. How America Made ISIS. Tom Engelhardt

Whatever your politics, you’re not likely to feel great about America right now. After all, there’s Ferguson (the whole world was watching!), an increasingly unpopular president, a Congress whose approval ratings make the president look like a rock star, rising poverty, weakening wages, and a growing inequality gap just to start what could be a long list. Abroad, from Libya and Ukraine to Iraq and the South China Sea, nothing has been coming up roses for the U.S. Polls reflect a general American gloom, with 71% of the public claiming the country is “on the wrong track.” We have the look of a superpower down o­n our luck.

What Americans have needed is a little pick-me-up to make us feel better, to make us, in fact, feel distinctly good. Certainly, what official Washington has needed in tough times is a bona fide enemy so darn evil, so brutal, so barbaric, so inhuman that, by contrast, we might know just how exceptional, how truly necessary to this planet we really are.

In the nick of time, riding to the rescue comes something new under the sun: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), recently renamed Islamic State (IS). It’s a group so extreme that even al-Qaeda rejected it, so brutal that it’s brought back crucifixion, beheading, waterboarding, and amputation, so fanatical that it’s ready to persecute any religious group within range of its weapons, so grimly beyond morality that it’s made the beheading of an innocent American a global propaganda phenomenon. If you’ve got a label that’s really, really bad like genocide or ethnic cleansing, you can probably apply it to ISIS's actions.

It has also proven so effective that its relatively modest band of warrior jihadis has routed the Syrian and Iraqi armies, as well as the Kurdish pesh merga militia, taking control of a territory larger than Great Britain in the heart of the Middle East. Today, it rules over at least four million people, controls its own functioning oil fields and refineries (and so theirrevenues as well as infusions of money from looted banks, kidnapping ransoms, and Gulf state patrons). Despite opposition, it still seems to be expanding and claims it has established a caliphate.

A Force So Evil You’ve Got to Do Something. Facing such pure evil, you may feel a chill of fear, even if you’re a top military or national security official, but in a way you’ve gotta feel good, too. It’s not everyday that you have an enemy your president can term a “cancer”; that your secretary of state can call the “face” of “ugly, savage, inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless evil” which “must be destroyed”; that your secretary of defense can denounce as “barbaric” and lacking a “standard of decency, of responsible human behavior… an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else”; that your chairman of the joint chiefs of staff can describe as “an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated”; and that a retired general and former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan can brand a “scourge… beyond the pale of humanity [that]… must be eradicated."

Talk about a feel-good feel-bad situation for the leadership of a superpower that’s seen better days! Such threatening evil calls for o­nly o­ne thing, of course: for the United States to step in. It calls for the Obama administration to dispatch the bombers and drones in a slowly expanding air war in Iraq and, sooner or later, possibly Syria. It falls o­n Washington’s shoulders to organize a new “coalition of the willing” from among various backers and opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, from among those who have armed and funded the extremist rebels in that country, from the ethnic/religious factions in the former Iraq, and from various NATO countries. It calls for Washington to transform Iraq’s leadership (a process no longer termed “regime change”) and elevate a new man capable of reuniting the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, now at each other’s throats, into o­ne nation capable of turning back the extremist tide. If not American “boots o­n the ground,” it calls for proxy o­nes of various sorts that the U.S. military will naturally have a hand in training, arming, funding, and advising. Facing such evil, what other options could there be? If all of this sounds strangely familiar, it should. Minus a couple of invasions, the steps being considered or already in effect to deal with “the threat of ISIS” are a reasonable summary of the last 13 years of what was o­nce called the Global War o­n Terror and now has no name at all. New as ISIS may be, a little history is in order, since that group is, at least in part, America’s legacy in the Middle East.

Give Osama bin Laden some credit. After all, he helped set us o­n the path to ISIS. He and his ragged band had no way of creating the caliphate they dreamed of or much of anything else. But he did grasp that goading Washington into something that looked like a crusader’s war with the Muslim world might be an effective way of heading in that direction. In other words, before Washington brings its military power fully to bear o­n the new "caliphate," a modest review of the post-9/11 years might be appropriate. Let’s start at the moment when those towers in New York had just come down, thanks to a small group of mostly Saudi hijackers, and almost 3,000 people were dead in the rubble. At that time, it wasn’t hard to convince Americans that there could be nothing worse, in terms of pure evil, than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Establishing an American Caliphate. Facing such unmatchable evil, the United States officially went to war as it might have against an enemy military power. Under the rubric of the Global War o­n Terror, the Bush administration launched the unmatchable power of the U.S. military and its paramilitarized intelligence agencies against… well, what? Despite those dramatic videos of al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, that organization had no military force worth the name, and despite what you’ve seen o­n “Homeland,” no sleeper cells in the U.S. either; nor did it have the ability to mount follow-up operations any time soon. In other words, while the Bush administration talked about “draining the swamp” of terror groups in up to 60 countries, the U.S. military was dispatched against what were essentially will-o’-the-wisps, largely representing Washington’s own conjured fears and fantasies. It was, that is, initially sent against bands of largely inconsequential Islamic extremists, scattered in tiny numbers in the tribal backlands of Afghanistan or Pakistan and, of course, the rudimentary armies of the Taliban.

It was, to use a word that George W. Bush let slip o­nly o­nce, something like a "crusade," something close to a religious war, if not against Islam itself – American officials piously and repeatedly made that clear – then against the idea of a Muslim enemy, as well as against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and later Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In each case, Washington mustered a coalition of the willing, ranging from Arab and South or Central Asian states to European o­nes, sent in air power followed twice by full-scale invasions and occupations, mustered local politicians of our choice in major “nation-building” operations amid much self-promotional talk about democracy, and built up vast new military and security apparatuses, supplying them with billions of dollars in training and arms.

Looking back, it’s hard not to think of all of this as a kind of American jihadism, as well as an attempt to establish what might have been considered an American caliphate in the region (though Washington had far kinder descriptive terms for it). In the process, the U.S. effectively dismantled and destroyed state power in each of the three main countries in which it intervened, while ensuring the destabilization of neighboring countries and finally the region itself.

In that largely Muslim part of the world, the U.S. left a grim record that we in this country generally tend to discount or forget when we decry the barbarism of others. We are now focused in horror o­n ISIS’s video of the murder of journalist James Foley, a propaganda document clearly designed to drive Washington over the edge and into more active opposition to that group. We, however, ignore the virtual library of videos and other imagery the U.S. generated, images widely viewed (or heard about and discussed) with no less horror in the Muslim world than ISIS’s imagery is in ours. As a start, there were the infamous “screen saver” images straight out of the Marquis de Sade from Abu Ghraib prison. There, Americans tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners, while creating their own iconic version of crucifixion imagery. Then there were the videos that no o­ne (other than insiders) saw, but that everyone heard about. These, the CIA took of the repeated torture and abuse of al-Qaeda suspects in its “black sites.” In 2005, they were destroyed by an official of that agency, lest they be screened in an American court someday. There was also the Apache helicopter video released by WikiLeaks in which American pilots gunned down Iraqi civilians o­n the streets of Baghdad (including two Reuters correspondents), while o­n the sound track the crew are heard wisecracking. There was the video of U.S. troops urinating o­n the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. There were the trophies photos of body parts brought home by U.S. soldiers. There were the snuff films of the victims of Washington’s drone assassination campaigns in the tribal backlands of the planet (or “bug splat,” as the drone pilots came to call the dead from those attacks) and similar footage from helicopter gunships. There was the bin Laden snuff film video from the raid o­n Abbottabad, Pakistan, of which President Obama reportedly watched a live feed. And that’s o­nly to begin to account for some of the imagery produced by the U.S. since Sept. 2001 from its various adventures in the Greater Middle East.

All in all, the invasions, the occupations, the drone campaigns in several lands, the deaths that ran into the hundreds of thousands, the uprooting of millions of people sent into external or internal exile, the expending of trillions of dollars added up to a bin Laden dreamscape. They would prove jihadist recruitment tools par excellence.

When the U.S. was done, when it had set off the process that led to insurgencies, civil wars, the growth of extremist militias, and the collapse of state structures, it had also guaranteed the rise of something new o­n Planet Earth: ISIS – as well as of other extremist outfits ranging from the Pakistani Taliban, now challenging the state in certain areas of that country, to Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.

Though the militants of ISIS would undoubtedly be horrified to think so, they are the spawn of Washington. Thirteen years of regional war, occupation, and intervention played a major role in clearing the ground for them. They may be our worst nightmare (thus far), but they are also our legacy – and not just because so many of their leaders came from the Iraqi army we disbanded, had their beliefs and skills honed in the prisons we set up (Camp Bucca seems to have been the West Point of Iraqi extremism), and gained experience facing U.S. counterterror operations in the “surge” years of the occupation. In fact, just about everything done in the war o­n terror has facilitated their rise. After all, we dismantled the Iraqi army and rebuilt o­ne that would flee at the first signs of ISIS’s fighters, abandoning vast stores of Washington's weaponry to them. We essentially destroyed the Iraqi state, while fostering a Shia leader who would oppress enough Sunnis in enough ways to create a situation in which ISIS would be welcomed or tolerated throughout significant areas of the country… The American record in these last 13 years is a shameful o­ne. Do it again should not be an option [18].

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project

 

14. Iraq War 4.0? Tom Engelhardt

Imagine if some other nation was behaving like the U.S. has behaved towards Iraq… Let’s play a game, the kind that makes no sense o­n this single-superpower planet of ours. For a moment, do your best to suspend disbelief and imagine that there’s another superpower, great power, or even regional power somewhere that, between 2001 and 2003, launched two major wars in the Greater Middle East. We’re talking about full-scale invasions, long-term occupations, and nation-building programs, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.

In both countries, that power quickly succeeded in its stated objective of “regime change,” o­nly to find itself mired in deadly conflicts with modestly armed minority insurgencies that it simply couldn’t win. In each country, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, it built up a humongous army and allied “security” forces, poured money into “reconstruction” projects (most of which proved disasters of corruption and incompetence), and spent trillions of dollars of national treasure.

Having imagined that, ask yourself: How well did all of that turn out for this other power? In Afghanistan, a recent news story highlights something of what was accomplished. Though that country took slot 175 out of 177 o­n Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, though its security forces continue to suffer grievous casualties, and though parts of the country are falling to a strengthening Taliban insurgency, it has for some years proudly held a firm grip o­n o­ne record: Afghanistan is the leading narco-state o­n planet Earth.

In 2013, it upped its opium poppy cultivation by 36%, its opium production by almost 50%, and drug profits soared. Preliminary figures for this year, recently released by the U.N., indicate that opium cultivation has risen by another 7% and opium production by 17%, both to historic highs, as Afghanistan itself has become “one of the world’s most addicted societies.”

Meanwhile, where there o­nce was Iraq (171st o­n that index of kleptocracies), there is now a Shiite government in Baghdad defended by a collapsed army and sectarian militias, a de facto Kurdish state to the north, and, in the third of the country in-between, a newly proclaimed “caliphate” run by a terror movement so brutal it’s establishing records for pure bloodiness. It’s headed by men whose West Point was a military prison run by that same great power and its bloodthirstiness is funded in part by captured oil fields and refineries.

In other words, after 13 years of doing its damnedest, o­n o­ne side of the Greater Middle East this power has somehow overseen the rise of the dominant narco-state o­n the planet with monopoly control over 80%-90% of the global opium supply and 75% of the heroin. o­n the other side of the region, it’s been complicit in the creation of the first terrorist mini-oil state in history, a post-al-Qaeda triumph of extreme jihadism.

A Fraudulent Election and a Collapsed Army. Though I have no doubt that the fantasy of relocating Washington’s deeds to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, or any other capital crumbled paragraphs ago, take a moment for o­ne more experiment. If this had been the work of any other power we thought less well of than we do of ourselves, imagine the blazing headlines right now. Conjure up – and it shouldn’t be hard – what the usual war hawks would be spouting in Congress, what the usual suspects o­n the Sunday morning talk shows might be saying, and what stories cable news networks from CNN to Fox would be carrying…

Vietnamizing Iraq, Iraqicizing Vietnam. In the meantime, think about what we would have said if the Russians had acted as Washington did in Afghanistan, or if the Chinese had pursued an Iraq-like path in a country of their choosing for the third time with the same army, the same “unified” government, the same drones and weaponry, and in key cases, the same personnel! (Or, if you want to make the task easier for yourself, just check out U.S. commentary these last months o­n Ukraine.)…

Four More Years! Four More Years! Try to imagine the reaction here, if the Russians were suddenly to send their military back into conflict-ridden Afghanistan to refight the lost war of the 1980s more effectively, bringing old Red Army commanders out of retirement to do so.

As it happens, the present war in Iraq and Syria is so unnervingly déjà vu all over again that an equivalency of any sort is next to impossible to conjure up. However, since in the American imagination terrorism has taken over the bogeyman-like role that Communism o­nce filled, the new Islamic State might in o­ne sense at least be considered the equivalent of the North Vietnamese (and the rebel National Liberation Front, or Vietcong, in South Vietnam). There is, for instance, some similarity in the inflamed fantasies Washington has attached to each: in the way both were conjured up here as larger-than-life phenomena capable of spreading across the globe. (Look up “domino theory” o­n the meaning of a Communist victory in South Vietnam if you doubt me.)…

Awaiting Iraq War 4.0. Given all this, it should amaze us how seldom the dismal results of America’s actions in the Greater Middle East are mentioned in this country. Think of it this way: Washington entered Iraq War 3.0 with a military that, for 13 years, had proven itself incapable of making its way to victory. It entered the latest battle with an air force that, from the “shock and awe” moment it launched 50 “decapitation” strikes against Saddam Hussein and his top officials and killed none of them but dozens of ordinary Iraqis, has brought none of its engagements to what might be called a positive conclusion. It entered battle with an interlocking set of 17 intelligence agencies that have eaten the better part of a trillion taxpayer dollars in these years and yet, in an area where the U.S. has fought three wars, still manages to be surprised by just about any development, an area that, in the words of an anonymous American official, remains a “black hole” of information. It has entered battle with leaders who, under the strain of fast-moving events, make essentially the same decision again and again to ever worse results…

Whatever the bloody horror, fragmentation, and chaos in the Middle East today, 40 years from now the fears and fantasies that led Washington into such repetitively destructive behavior will look no less foolish than the domino theory does today. If o­nly, in a final thought experiment, we could simply skip those decades and instantly look back upon the present nightmare from the clearer light of a future day, perhaps the next predictable escalatory steps might be avoided. But don't hold your breath, not with Washington chanting "Four more years!," "Four more years!"[19].

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project

 

15. Your Wars are the Cause of Global Terrorism. Juergen Todenhoefer

Open Letter to the War-Politicians of the World [19a]

Dear Presidents and Heads of Governments! Through decades of a policy of war and exploitation you have pushed millions people in the Middle East and Africa into misery. Because of your policies refugees have to flee all over the world. o­ne out every three refugees in Germany comes from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. From Africa comes o­ne out of five refugees. Your wars are also the cause of global terrorism. Instead some 100 international terrorists like 15 years ago, we now are faced with more than 100,000 terrorists. Your cynical ruthlessness now strikes back at us like a boomerang.

As usual, you do not even consider, to really change your policy. You cure o­nly the symptoms. The security situation gets more dangerous and chaotic by the day. More and more wars, waves of terror and refugee crises will determine the future of our planet. Even in Europe, the war will o­ne day knock again at Europe's door. Any businessman that would act like you would be fired or be in prison by now. You are total failures.

The peoples of the Middle East and Africa, whose countries you have destroyed and plundered and the people of Europe, who now accommodate the countless desperate refugees have to pay a high price for your policies. But wash your hands of responsibility. You should stand trial in front of the International Criminal Court. And each of your political followers should actually take care of at least 100 refugee families.

Basically, the people of the world should raise and resist you as the warmongers and exploiters. As o­nce Gandhi did it – in nonviolence, in 'civil disobedience'. We should create new movements and parties. Movements for justice and humanity. Make wars in other countries just as punishable as murder and manslaughter o­ne's own country. And you who are responsible for war and exploitation, you should go to hell forever. It is enough! Get lost! The world would be much nicer without you. – Jürgen Todenhöfer

Dear friends, I know you should never write letters in anger. But life is way too short to always beat about the bush. Is your anger not so great that you want to cry about so much irresponsibility? About the infinite suffering that has been caused by these politicians? About the millions of dead people? Did the warmongering politicians really believe they could go o­n for decades with impunity beating up other peoples making a killing at the same time? We should no longer accept this! In the name of humanity, I call upon to: Defend yourselves!

Jürgen Todenhöfer: www.facebook.com/JuergenTodenhoefer, www.juergentodenhoefer.de/

 

16. o­n Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare.
Concealing the Crimes of the West. Noam Chomsky

If we look at the international tribunals, the o­nly people who are indicted are overwhelmingly Africans and o­ne or two people who are enemies of the West, like Milosevic. And the Africans are also always from the side that we don’t like. But have there not been any other crimes committed in the last few years? Take the invasion of Iraq – nothing can be potentially regarded as criminal. Forget about Nuremberg and the rest of modern international law. In fact there is a legal reason for that, which is not too well known. The United States is self-immunized from any prosecution. When they joined the World Court in 1946, the U.S. basically initiated the modern International Court of Justice, which it joined but with the reservation that the U.S. cannot be tried o­n any international treaty – meaning the UN charter, the charter of the Organization of the American States, the Geneva Conventions.

The U.S. is self-immunized from any trial o­n those issues. And the Court has accepted that. So for example when Nicaragua brought a case against the United States at the World Court for the terrorist attacks against Nicaragua, most of the case was thrown out because it invoked the charter of the Organization of American States, which bars interventions strongly, and the U.S. is not subject to that and the Court accepted it.

In fact the same happened, interestingly, at the trial where Yugoslavia brought a case against NATO for the bombing to the International Court of Justice, I think, and the United States excluded itself from the case and the Tribunal agreed because o­ne of the charges mentioned was that it was a genocide, and when the United States signed the Genocide Convention after 40 years, it had a reservation saying it was “inapplicable to the United States,” and so therefore the Court rightly excused the United States from prosecution. There are literally legal barriers established just in case anyone dares to try to bring some charge against the powerful. I am sure you recall when the Rome Treaty was signed, and the International Criminal Court was established, the U.S. refused to participate . . . but then it was more than that.

Congress passed legislation, which the Bush administration happily signed, which granted the White House authority to invade The Hague by force in case any American was brought there. In Europe it is sometimes called the Netherlands Invasion Act. Well, that was passed here enthusiastically, so the self-immunization is at many levels. o­ne is the impossibility to perceive, such as when you deny what happened to the indigenous population in the United States, when you just can’t see it even if it is in front of your eyes. The other is that it’s actually fortified by legislation [19b, p. 26–27].

Noam Chomsky, born December 7, 1928, is an American linguist, philosopher, social justice activist, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Emeritus and has authored over 100 books. He was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll. Chomsky has strongly criticized the foreign policy of the United States. He claims double standards in a foreign policy…

 

III. USA/NATO: “Barbarossa II Mission” (Rozoff);
“Breaking Russia has become an Objective” (Kissinger),
“NATO Global Nuclear War with Russia” (Chomsky)

 

17. NATO Aggression to East with Barbarossa II Mission: From Daily Digests
Rick Rozoff

NATO is the USA first attempt in history since 1949 to establish an aggressive global military formation, o­ne which currently includes a third of the nations of the world either as members or partners, has them o­n five continents and has conducted active operations o­n four, with the potential to expand its reach into the remaining two where it has not yet officially intruded itself. In order to counteract the NATO expansion was created an international group of "Stop NATO" 16 years ago, which today brings together more than 700 members from dozens of countries. The main tool of this group is the daily digests or news, which lasted 16 years but were interrupted in August 2015 for temporary creative break.

Stop NATO is an international e-mail news list that examines, from an adversarial position, the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and affiliated and allied military blocs into and throughout Europe, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, Central and South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, Africa, the so-called Greater Middle East and beyond.

The list provides current and unique information o­n reports, developments, trends and analysis, usually from sources in the affected areas and regions, not obtainable from commercial news and other outlets.

Its focus is o­n information and the analysis thereof and discourages inordinate discussion of local partisan politics and abstruse polemics.

Stop NATO's orientation is anti-militarist, international and internationalist.

Its purpose is to document, anticipate, expose and oppose o­ngoing efforts to expand global militarization, including the deployment of advanced, potential first strike missile systems throughout the world and in space.

The list is moderated in order to maintain focus o­n issues and perspectives that it alone addresses o­n a daily basis.

List manager Rick Rozoff can be contacted at: rwrozoff@yahoo.com.

Daily digest option (all news stories of the day in o­ne e-mail) available.

Stop NATO articles are posted at: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com [20].

To illustrate the most dangerous NATO militarism expansion to the East, we have chosen a number of typical headers of the Digests to STOP NATO group during o­nly four months: since Mart 26 to June 24, 2015.

Mart 26, [stopnato] Digest Number 5293. 5 Messages:

1.Barbarossa II: U.S.-NATO Expand Offensive From Baltics To Black Sea,

2.Polish Defense Chief Says No War with Russia, Brzezinski Disagrees,

3.1,000 U.S. Soldiers Currently In Ground Operations in Eastern Europe,

4.Romania: U.S. Troops Start War Games, Medics to Treat Ukrainian Troop,

5.U.S. Expands Operation Confront Russia to Romania, Bulgaria,

Mart 28, [stopnato] Digest Number 5295. 5 Messages:

1.Czech Republic: Protest Against U.S. Military Convoy,

2.U.S.-NATO Absorb Ukraine into "World's Biggest Defense Structure",

3.Ukraine Negotiates Creating New Neo-Nazi Division in Army,

4.Europe: U.S. Deploys More Warplanes, Troops against Russia,

5.Psychological Projection: McCain Says Russia to Attack… Just Everybody,

April 20, [stopnato] Digest Number 5316. 4 Messages:

1.Europe: Pentagon Spends $1 Billion In Anti-Russian Build-Up,

2.Conflict with Russia: Germany Reactivates 100 Tanks o­n NATO Orders,

3.Germany Offers War-Tested Artillery to Lithuania for War with Russia,

4.Ukraine War: U.S. Leads War Games in Romania,

May 5, [stopnato] Digest Number 5330. 5 Messages:

1.NATO Launches Anti-Submarine Warfare Exercise In Norway,

2.Georgia To Become NATO Member "As Soon As Possible",

3.Barbarossa II: 900,000 Finnish Reservists Prepared For "Crisis Situation",

4.EU, NATO Launch Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian Military Unit for Russia,

5.Swedish Warplanes Highlighted: NATO War Games in Czech Republic,

May 15, [stopnato] Digest Number 5339. 3 Messages:

1.NATO Fully Backs Ukraine in 13-Month Proxy War With Russia,

2.Kiev Counts o­n Other Two-Thirds of NATO-EU-U.S. Triad,

3.NATO and Ukraine at War: o­ne for All, All for o­ne,

May 18, [stopnato] Digest Number 5342. 4 Messages:

1.U.S. Congress Approves Lethal Weapons For Ukraine War,

2.Following NATO FMs Meeting, Turkey Shoots Down Syrian Helicopter,

3.Turkey Offers To Lead New NATO Anti-Russian Strike Force,

4.U.S. o­n Wrong Side of History,

May 21, [stopnato] Digest Number 5344, 7 Messages:

1.Black Sea Rotational Force: U.S. Marines Lead Drills In Romania,

2.Bulgaria: EU-NATO Frontline State for Wars in East, South,

3.Libya: Latest NATO Proxy Army,

4.Ukrainian Junta Certifies Almost 50,000 Troops as Combatants,

5.Ukrainian Defense Ministry Demands 7.7 Billion More Hryvnia for War,

6.Wartime Interoperability: U.S. Deploys Warplanes to Slovakia,

7.Interceptor Missiles: NATO's Top Military Commander In Turkey,

June 1, Digest #5355, 7 Messages:

1.U.S. Army Confronts Russia From Baltic Sea To Black Sea,

2.Ukraine: Georgia's Saakashvili Appointed Governor of Odessa,

3.Florida To Spain: NATO Chief Touts & quot; 9,000-Ton Boost" To Mi,

4.Poland: French Tanks, Warplanes Readied For War with Russia,

5.Poland: U.S. Deploys F-16s for Anti-Russian Operation,

6.NATO Group: German Submarine Arrives In Estonian Capital,

7.Ukraine Spends 7 Million U.S. Dollars A Day o­n 410-Day War,

June 14, Digest #5368, 3 Messages:

1.Poland: War Games Prepare NATO's Very High Readiness Joint Task Force,

2.Latvia: U.S. Army Europe Chief Officiates Over Anti-Russian War Game,

3.Key to Global Peace Science as Alternative to Nuclear War by "Leo Semashko",

June 21, Digest #5374, 7 Messages:

1.Latvia: U.S. Warplanes Simulate War Near Russian Border,

2.U.S. Army Paratroopers Storm Baltic Beach,

3.U.S. Armored Forces Lead War Games In Bulgaria,

4.Saakashvili Auctions Off Odessa To American Investors,

5.As Planned/Predicted: Ukraine Substitutes NATO For Russian Arms,

6.Pentagon Chief's European Trip To NATO HQ, Russian Border,

7.Spain: U.S. Strike Forces to Remain at Air Base Permanently,

June 22, Digest #5375, 2 Messages:

1.U.S. To Move Abrams Tanks Into Bulgaria,

2.U.S. Air Force, Army Prepare For Bulgarian War Games,

June 24, Digest #5376, 1 Message:

1.The 3rd Hague Peace Conference by "John Kelly".

See also my earlier article: “America Threatens Russia” of 2010 [21].

Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Is the manager of the Stop NATO international e-mail list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/.

 

18. US Control over the Crimea – it was the Aim of Coup d'etat in Kiev
Maurizio Blondet

"The coup d'etat perpetrated in Kiev in February this year had a specific goal: to neutralize the Russian Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol, and replace it with the US Navy," says Maurizio Blondet from Italia [22].

 

19. From WWII, Syria and now the Ukraine: Global Community perspective
Germain Dufour

On September 1, 1939, the German invasion of Poland started World War II. In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations. This gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II. Later o­n June 22, 1941, Germany, Italy and Romania invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. They were joined shortly by Finland and Hungary. The primary targets of this surprise offensive were the Baltic region, Moscow and Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White Seas.

On June 6, 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure, the "so called Allies" invaded northern France… Between February 13 and 15, 1945, British and US bombers attacked the German city of Dresden, which was crowded with German wounded and refugees. There were an unknown number of refugees in Dresden, so historians Matthias Neutzner, G. Bergander and Frederick Taylor have used historical sources and deductive reasoning to estimate that the number of refugees in the city and surrounding suburbs was around 200,000 o­n the first night of the bombing… Americans bombed Germany with chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. How many Jews and Christians were gassed from the bombing would be impossible to tell. Most likely in the millions!

The Second World War ended o­n 8 May 1945. The Soviet Union had won the war for the world… Throughout WWII, the United States behaved like a nation of mercenaries. They would help o­nly if they were getting pay from Britain. Later o­n D-Day, the USA decided it was in their own national interests to gas bomb Germany. And they did just that. Mercenaries don’t fight for freedom, justice and democracy. They get pay to do a job, and that is all. But bombing Germany when the German Army had already been defeated is a crime against humanity. Roosevelt never had a single drop of diplomacy in his blood, and neither did the US Congress officials. The prospect of Americans getting their hands o­n Russia' formidable natural resources, had Hitler defeated the Soviet Army, was to great to let pass away this opportunity. Americans were opportunists at best, and committed crimes against humanity at worst.

Remember Vietnam? The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. America attacked the place. America dropped 100 times more bombs of all types over those nations than they did over Germany and that without any provocation from the people of those three nations. America has tried to invade the place. To these days no o­ne really knows why America has tried to invade the place. I sure don’t! Was it because America did not like their political system, communism? That is very likely because Europe tried to destroy the Soviet Union during WWII mainly because of the Soviet Union formidable natural resources and its communist political system. Or was it because Americans enjoy killing, bombing communities, destroying, and showing off military warfare? Was it because it made good economic sense? Americans must have killed over a million people. What a bloodshed! Back in America, Americans were told they were killing the bad guys, the communists. That was all what was needed to do the killing. No other reason! Are Americans so gullible they would believe anything coming from the White House? Can they not see how wrong invading Vietnam had been? Don’t they have values, principles or even religious beliefs they live by to help making a sound judgment about such an invasion? Even the United Nations never condemned the monstrous genocide.

To these days, the U.S.A. military has created a link in 1050-strong chain of American military bases in 130 countries, mainly to control and aquire resources of those countries either by economic walfare or military warfare. The USA military is everywhere to invade, destroy, kill, corrupt governments, and de-stabilize the world for profit. The more unstable the world is the better.What would the U.S.A. military do without conflicts and wars? They create them, and that is what they do best. Of course! No way out of that! They cannot be inactive! And that is what the USA has done in Syria and in the Ukraine. The USA is responsible for the "coup d'etat" in the Ukraine. The USA wants Russia formidable natural resources. By creating a friendly government in the Ukraine, the USA would have another military base o­n Ukraine soil to do more offensive incursion into Russia.

The US interfered, militarily or covertly, in the internal affairs of a large number of nations: China, 1945–49; Italy, 1947–48; Greece, 1947–49; Philippines, 1946–53; South Korea, 1945–53; Albania, 1949–53; Germany, 1950s; Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1953–1990s; Middle East, 1956–58; Indonesia, 1957–58; British Guiana/Guyana, 1953–64; Vietnam, 1950–73; Cambodia, 1955–73; The Congo/Zaire, 1960–65; Brazil, 1961–64; Dominican Republic, 1963–66; Cuba, 1959–present; Indonesia, 1965; Chile, 1964–73; Greece, 1964–74; East Timor, 1975–present; Nicaragua, 1978–89; Grenada, 1979–84; Libya, 1981–89; Panama, 1989; Iraq, 1990–present; Afghanistan 1979–92; El Salvador, 1980–92; Haiti, 1987–94; Yugoslavia, 1999; and Afghanistan, 2001–present, Syria, 2013–present. Egypt, 2013–present, Venezuela, 2013–present.

During WWII, Soviet military casualties totaled approximately 35 million, and 20 million civilians were also killed. Much of the Soviet Union was destroyed. But Stalin and his Army saved Europe. The USA did not saved Europe. The USA showed up at the very last minute of WWII and bombed Germany villages killing mostly innocent people. American are mercenaries, and they showed up during D-Day because they were paid by Great Britain and Churchill did not want history to show that Stalin saved Europe. Churchill cooked his books for history.

NATO’s aggressive escalation, carried out over the Kremlin’s warnings that it is tearing up all the legal foundations of the highly fragile peace in Europe, threatens a war between NATO and Russia – a major military power with a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The Western imperialist powers are scrapping their collaboration with the Kremlin o­n issues like anti-piracy operations, however, as they struggle over a far more significant prize: geo-strategic and financial control of Eastern Europe, and ultimately of Russia itself.

The prominent American syndicated columnist and journalist Ted Rall has recently written o­n his website that there are traces of neo-fascism and neo-Nazism in the government of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk who has just come to power: “There’s no doubt that a Ukrainian nationalist strain runs deep in the new regime. It has been estimated that roughly 1/3 or more of the supporters of the new government come out of xenophobic, anti-Semitic, neo-fascist movements that draw much of their ideological heritage from the Nazi puppet regime that governed Ukraine under German occupation during World War II.”

So, o­n March 16, the Crimean parliament and the local government of Sevastopol held a public referendum in Crimea to give the citizens two choices for the future of their territory; either to remain associated with Ukraine or reunite with Russia. With a high turnout of 83.1% of the eligible voters, 96.77% of the participants in the plebiscite voted in favor of joining the Russian Federation. The United States and its allies didn’t hesitate to call the referendum as rigged and invalid, as they usually does with the elections in countries with which they are at odds. Washington even drafted a resolution in the UN Security Council to call the referendum null and void, but Russia used its veto power, while China abstained, and the USA simply pushed the General Assembly member states to pass a non-binding resolution, declaring the referendum invalid, which doesn’t seem to have any certain impact o­n the future of Crimea.

The future of Crimea and the prospects of the marred relations between Russia and the West remain blurred and unknown, but the United States’ accusations that Russia is “occupying” Crimea and exerting military aggression and so should be punished with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation sound gravely outrageous and entirely hypocritical. The USA has the biggest war machinery in the world, has been directly or indirectly involved in more than 50 wars and military strikes o­n other countries without the approval of the UN Security Council, and has incontestably perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As the prominent American lawyer and legal expert Marjorie Cohn has noted in a recent article, the United States is the largest user of unconventional and forbidden chemical weapons in the illegal wars it has waged across the globe. “The U.S. militarily occupied over 75% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for 60 years, during which time the Navy routinely practiced with, and used, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, napalm and other toxic chemicals and metals such as TNT and mercury. This occurred within a couple of miles of a civilian population that included thousands of U.S. citizens,” wrote Prof. Cohn. “The use of any type of chemical weapon by any party would constitute a war crime. Chemical weapons that kill and maim people are illegal and their use violates the laws of war,” she added.

She also goes o­n to explain the use of chemical weapons by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and also underlines that the majority of wars in which the United States has taken part were not ever approved by the Security Council. Aren’t these crimes a contravention of the UN Charter? Why don’t the G7 leaders and European Council and European Commission officials ever react to these violations? Does the United States have the prerogative to attack other countries and maim their people without any legal or moral justification and then get away with its crimes?

The United States is imparting a clear message by adopting this insincere and hypocritical approach toward Russia, which is also a message to other countries: We can invade your countries, we can kill your citizens, we can rule you tyrannically, we can behave in any way we desire, but if you do something which doesn’t please us, we will impose sanctions o­n you, we will banish you from international organizations, and we will come down o­n you like a ton of bricks. This is how the American hypocrisy works.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War in 1991 because of the economy of his nation was suffering from the unsatisfying appetite of the military. He had the guts to end the Cold War to save his people from a nuclear war. A leader of Peace and Harmony! Why have the United States not followed his leadership in creating an open and safe world? If America had followed his leadership the American economy would not have been bankcrupted today. For years after the Cold War ended, American businesses have taken advantages of Russia openness and dragged Russian economy even more down further.

The USA is invading the world, and the UN can do nothing to stop them. The USA was allowed to invade other nations, change their governments, and has often made lies in speeches to the UN, to the world. Remember what the US representatives told the world at the UN prior to the invasion of Iraq? Lies! All lies! And the leadership of the UN never did anything to reprimand the US representatives and implement hard sanctions for the invasion of Iraq.

As a conclusion to this paper, over time Russians showed the world they were better people then any of the people in the so called Allied nations. During WWII, Russian soldiers, all Russian people, were all heroes and ought to be thank for saving the world from Hitler's invasion. Thank you Russia! You are the best of all Peoples o­n Earth. Global Community approves of what you are doing to protect Russians outside Russia. Don’t trust the UN to do it for you. Protect your formidable natural resources and the global life-support systems. You are the o­nly nation left capable of doing so. Global Community is proud of what you have become and achieved. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War in 1991 and promoted Peace in the world. He was the greatest of all Soviet leaders, and he is my personal hero. Russians are all my heroes for what they have endured during and after WWII. The Soviet Union saved the world. Now let Russia save the planet, and all life o­n Earth. Yes you can! You can do it better than anyone else in the world. If there has to be a third world war, Global Community wants Russia to survive us all because you are truly a better People than all of us put together, than all Life has ever created through the evolutionary process. Russians are the best people the human species has ever had so far. God bless you Russia, and God bless all Russians [23].

Germain Dufour, Spiritual Leader of the Global Community; President, Earth Government, Federation of Global Governments. Address: Nanaimo, Canada.

Web: http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/; E-mail: globalcommunity@telus.net

 

20. No to War, Hot or Cold, With Russia. To: U.S. Congress. Dennis Kucinich

Reverse the steps taken in the recently passed resolution H. Res. 758, which distorts facts and hypocritically condemns actions the United States is itself guilty of in order to antagonize Russia, effectively declaring a new Cold War. The resolution demands that Russia be isolated and that the U.S. and NATO be prepared for war. This approach should be unacceptable in a new head of the Pentagon, and Congress should replace militarism with diplomacy toward Moscow.

Why is this important? NATO encirclement, the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, an attempt to use an agreement with the European Union to bring NATO into Ukraine at the Russian border, a U.S. nuclear first-strike policy, are all policies which attempt to substitute force for diplomacy.

Tensions between Russia and the U.S. are being fueled every day by players who would benefit financially from a resumption of the Cold War which, from 1948 to 1991 cost U.S. taxpayers $20 TRILLION dollars (in 2014 dollars), an amount exceeding our $18 trillion National Debt.

The resolution just passed by the House calls for “the President, in consultation with Congress, to conduct a review of the force posture, readiness and responsibilities of United States Armed Forces and the forces of other members of NATO to determine if the contributions and actions of each are sufficient to meet the obligations of collective self-defense under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and to specify the measures needed to remedy any deficiencies…” In other words, "let’s get ready for war with Russia."

This is a dangerous and costly direction. Using diplomacy, rather than poor substitutes for it, would save dollars and lives, while allowing us to prioritize useful projects and collaborate with our international allies. This is a moment in which we all must raise our voices to make that change [24].

Dennis Kucinich, for 16 years, Kucinich served as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Ohio, representing Ohio’s 10th congressional district from 1997 to Jan. 2013. Dennis Kucinich for President in 2016: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/denis-kuchinich-for-president-in-2016

 

21. Reckless Congress ‘declares war’ o­n Russia. Ronald Paul

Today the US House passed what I consider to be o­ne of the worst pieces of legislation ever. H. Res. 758 was billed as a resolution “strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.” In fact, the bill was 16 pages of war propaganda that should have made even neocons blush, if they were capable of such a thing.

These are the kinds of resolutions I have always watched closely in Congress, as what are billed as “harmless” statements of opinion often lead to sanctions and war. I remember in 1998 arguing strongly against the Iraq Liberation Act because, as I said at the time, I knew it would lead to war… We all know what happened next.

That is why I can hardly believe they are getting away with it again, and this time with even higher stakes: provoking a war with Russia that could result in total destruction! If anyone thinks I am exaggerating about how bad this resolution really is, let me just offer a few examples from the legislation itself:

The resolution (paragraph 3) accuses Russia of an invasion of Ukraine and condemns Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The statement is offered with out any proof of such a thing. Surely with our sophisticated satellites that can read a license plate from space we should have video and pictures of this Russian invasion. None have been offered. As to Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, why isn’t it a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty for the US to participate in the overthrow of that country’s elected government as it did in February? We have all heard the tapes of State Department officials plotting with the US Ambassador in Ukraine to overthrow the government. We heard US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragging that the US spent $5 billion o­n regime change in Ukraine. Why is that OK?

The resolution (paragraph 11) accuses the people in east Ukraine of holding “fraudulent and illegal elections” in November. Why is it that every time elections do not produce the results desired by the US government they are called “illegal” and “fraudulent”? Aren’t the people of eastern Ukraine allowed self-determination? Isn’t that a basic human right?

The resolution (paragraph 13) demands a withdrawal of Russia forces from Ukraine even though the US government has provided no evidence the Russian army was ever in Ukraine. This paragraph also urges the government in Kiev to resume military operations against the eastern regions seeking independence.

The resolution (paragraph 14) states with certainty that the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 that crashed in Ukraine was brought down by a missile “fired by Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.” This is simply incorrect, as the final report o­n the investigation of this tragedy will not even be released until next year and the preliminary report did not state that a missile brought down the plane. Neither did the preliminary report – conducted with the participation of all countries involved – assign blame to any side.

Paragraph 16 of the resolution condemns Russia for selling arms to the Assad government in Syria. It does not mention, of course, that those weapons are going to fight ISIS – which we claim is the enemy – while the US weapons supplied to the rebels in Syria have actually found their way into the hands of ISIS!

Paragraph 17 of the resolution condemns Russia for what the US claims are economic sanctions (“coercive economic measures”) against Ukraine. This even though the US has repeatedly hit Russia with economic sanctions and is considering even more!

The resolution (paragraph 22) states that Russia invaded the Republic of Georgia in 2008. This is simply untrue. Even the European Union – no friend of Russia – concluded in its investigation of the events in 2008 that it was Georgia that “started an unjustified war” against Russia not the other way around! How does Congress get away with such blatant falsehoods? Do Members not even bother to read these resolutions before voting?

In paragraph 34 the resolution begins to even become comical, condemning the Russians for what it claims are attacks o­n computer networks of the United States and “illicitly acquiring information” about the US government. In the after math of the Snowden revelations about the level of US spying o­n the rest of the world, how can the US claim the moral authority to condemn such actions in others?

Chillingly, the resolution singles out Russian state-funded media outlets for attack, claiming that they “distort public opinion.” The US government, of course, spends billions of dollars worldwide to finance and sponsor media outlets including Voice of America and RFE/RL, as well as to subsidize “independent” media in countless counties overseas. How long before alternative information sources like RT[Russia Today] are banned in the United States? This legislation brings us closer to that unhappy day when the government decides the kind of programming we can and cannot consume – and calls such a violation “freedom.

The resolution gives the green light (paragraph 45) to Ukrainian President Poroshenko to re-start his military assault o­n the independence-seeking eastern provinces, urging the “disarming of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine.”…

There are too many more ridiculous and horrific statements in this legislation to completely discuss. Probably the single most troubling part of this resolution, however, is the statement that “military intervention” by the Russian Federation in Ukraine “poses a threat to international peace and security.” Such terminology is not an accident: this phrase is the poison pill planted in this legislation from which future, more aggressive resolutions will follow. After all, if we accept that Russia is posing a “threat” to international peace how can such a thing be ignored? These are the slippery slopes that lead to war.

This dangerous legislation passed today, December 4, with o­nly ten (!) votes against! o­nly ten legislators are concerned over the use of blatant propaganda and falsehoods to push such reckless saber rattling toward Russia. Here are the Members who voted “NO” o­n this legislation. If you do not see your own Representative o­n this list call and ask why they are voting to bring us closer to war with Russia! If you do see your Representative o­n the below list, call and thank him or her for standing up to the warmongers. Voting “NO” o­n H. Res. 758: 1) Justin Amash (R-MI), 2) John Duncan (R-TN), 3) Alan Grayson (D-FL), 4) Alcee Hastings (D-FL), 5) Walter Jones (R-NC), 6) Thomas Massie (R-KY), 7) Jim McDermott (D-WA), 8) George Miller (D-CA), 9) Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), 10 Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) [25].

Ronald Paul is an American physician and politician. He is a member of the Rep. Party and from 1976 to 2013 (with interruptions) he was a member in the US House of Repr. Paul was candidate in the US presidential elections in 1988, 2008 and 2012.

The GPS Editor in Chief Note. The two articles above, as well as others, provide strong evidence of insurmountable defects of American democracy: militarism, corruption, inequality and nationalism or national priority of limited private interests (8.9.). This "democracy" , above all, is the imperial, entirely militaristic and aggressive, ignoring issues of peace and focused o­nly o­n the desire of any false paths ignite a new war. Therefore, this democracy is the main obstacle, threat and antagonist to global peace, as evidenced by dozens of facts in this book. This false democracy requires replacement of a peaceful democracy, which excludes war, which can o­nly be by spheral democracy or democracy of SPHERONS (see para. 8.9, and other o­nes). The US Congress is the supreme representative of American democracy. We have not seen any of its resolution or bill for the active promotion of global peace. We see from the Congress o­nly militarist resolutions and bills during 70 years against global and regional peace. Therefore, the conclusion that the US and its "democracy" are "the first threats, obstacles and enemies of global peace" within 70 years is more than substantiated. The last proof of that is the statement by Henry Kissinger in a recent interview that the Ukraine crisis, created by the US and NATO, "means that breaking Russia has become an objective." Therefore, "the Ukraine crisis is turning into a tragedy" [26], in global tragedy of nuclear war as we add.

 

22. The United States Allow the Possibility of Nuclear Strike o­n Russia.

The report of the head of the US General Staff, whose unclassified fragments were transferred to the press, suggests the possibility of deployment in Europe of land-based missiles, preemptive "counterforce strikes" by Russian missiles and the possibility of a nuclear attack industrial centers [27].

 

23. NATO Global Nuclear War with Russia: Noam Chomsky

An informational event was hosted by acTVism Munich at the Muffatwerk in Munich in which Noam Chomsky was interviewed about the significance and role of whistleblowers, alternative media, activism and a host of other related issues including NATO isolation of Russia and what secretive Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement means for the oligarchy [27a].

 

IV. USA: “The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World” (King);
“Biggest Terrorist” (Dorrel); “Torture Made in USA” (Robin),
Visas for Al Qaeda” (Springmann) and War Crimes

 

24. What Are Foreign Military Bases For? David Swanson

If you’re like most people in the United States, you have a vague awareness that the U.S. military keeps lots of troops permanently stationed o­n foreign bases around the world. But have you ever wondered and really investigated to find out how many, and where exactly, and at what cost, and to what purpose, and in terms of what relationship with the host nations?

A wonderfully researched new book, six years in the works, answers these questions in a manner you’ll find engaging whether you’ve ever asked them or not. It’s called Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Harm America and the World, by David Vine [28].

Some 800 bases with hundreds of thousands of troops in some 70 nations, plus all kinds of other “trainers” and “non-permanent” exercises that last indefinitely, maintain an o­ngoing U.S. military presence around the world for a price tag of at least $100 billion a year… The bases, in many cases, generate an enormous amount of popular resentment and hatred, serving as motivations for attacks o­n the bases themselves or elsewhere – famously including the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Bases around the borders of Russia and China are generating new hostility and arms races, and even proposals by Russia and China to open foreign bases of their own. Currently all non-U.S. foreign bases in the world total no more than 30, with most of those belonging to close U.S. allies, and not a single o­ne of them being in or anywhere near the United States, which would of course be considered an outrage. Many U.S. bases are hosted by brutal dictatorships.

In any case, Vine points to the uniqueness of World War II as a war that has never been ended, even after the Cold War was said to have ended. Why have the troops never come home? Why have they continued to spread their forts into “Indian Territory,” until the U.S. has more foreign bases than any other empire in history, even as the era of conquering territory has ended, even as a significant segment of the population has ceased thinking of “Indians” and other foreigners as subhuman beasts without rights worthy of respecting?

Base Nation is a book that should be read – and its maps seen – by everyone. I wish Vine did not write “Russia’s seizure of Crimea” when referring to a free and open and legal vote, especially in the context of a book about military bases. And I wish he did not o­nly use selfish points of reference in terms of financial tradeoffs. Of course the United States could be transformed for the better with the redirection of military spending, but the United States and the world both could be. It’s that much money.

Just this month, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff published “The National Military Strategy of the United States of America – 2015.”[14]. It gave as justification for militarism lies about four countries, beginning with Russia, which it accused of “using force to achieve its goals,” something the Pentagon would never do! Next it lied that Iran was “pursuing” nuclear weapons, a claim for which there is no evidence. Next it claimed that North Korea’s nukes would someday “threaten the U.S. homeland.” Finally, it asserted that China was “adding tension to the Asia-Pacific region.” This “Strategy” admitted that none of the four nations wanted war with the USA. “Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns,” it said.

So, o­ne might add, does each of the U.S. foreign bases. Vine’s book ends with some excellent proposals for change, to which I would add o­nly o­ne: S. Butler’s proposed rule that the U.S. military be forbidden to travel more than 200 miles from the USA [29; 30; 31].

David Swanson, Cofounder and Director, World Beyond War, USA,

Web: http://worldbeyondwar.org/ E-mail: david@davidswanson.org

Dr. Charles Mercieca about David Vine’s book: (2015) Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. It is true that the United States has more foreign military bases than any other people, nation or empire in history. This phenomenal number of military bases is literally draining the economy of the nation.

Most of our politicians try to solve this serious economic problem by cutting down some of the vital needs of the people, like social security, health needs, and education. The great military expense remains intact. Jesus of Nazareth described the human being as homo hominis lupus. Though this phrase literally means a “man is a wolf of man,” it has always been best translated over the centuries as man is his own worst enemy. Within our context here we may safely state that the United States has emerged to become its own worst enemy. “And it’s doing us more harm than good,” David Vine.

 

25. Dr. King: the US is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Amy Goodman

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is broadcast o­n the radio station "Democracy Now", January 20, 2014 with Amy Goodman [32].

AMY GOODMAN: Today is a federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King. He was born January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated April 4th, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. He is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader; he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church o­n April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, "I Have Been to the Mountain Top," that he gave o­n April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated… Dr. King called the US “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post said King “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country his people.” Today, we’ll let you decide. We play an excerpt of Dr. King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam.”

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America, who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as o­ne who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently o­ne of them wrote these words, and I quote: "Each day the war goes o­n, the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully o­n the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

Now, there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off o­n what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go o­n now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality – and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy – and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was o­n the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past 10 years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now justified the presence of U.S. military "advisers" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago, he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments… I am convinced that if we are to get o­n the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Amy Goodman, journalist, USA

The GPS Editor in Chief Note. The sharp estimation of official press as well as the murder of Dr. King is a natural reaction to criticism of the USA militarist government but it changes nothing in his great historical value. As o­ne of the politicians talked, "the USA does not accept criticism: allowed o­nly barely concealed delight." The main thing is turning friends into enemies happening around the world, including Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine and etc. Wherever the US wage war everywhere they turn friends into enemies and they receive a deep, crushing for itself psychological and political defeat confirming the historical conclusion King about US as "the greatest source of violence in the world" every day of their wars. Now, indeed, America has lost its image of revolution, freedom and democracy, and will always be a symbol of violence and militarism. This means its historic collapse as any empire, that proved Professor Galtung. Russia and all true peacemakers, if they really want world peace, should give to humanity this true understanding of the US empire, which was recognized by the Vietnamese Buddhists and Dr. King nearly 50 years ago.

 

26. Clark's List of "Major Aggressions" by the United States of America

The People vs. George Bush: Iraq War Crimes Tribunal. Laying a Foundation to Send the Bush Regime to a Tribunal of the World Court.

INDICTMENT: Letter by Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, Representing Class Action by the People of the United States of America. Ramsey Clark o­n worldwide U.S. militarization. The case for impeachment is clear beyond question. A message from Ramsey Clark:

The list of Bush's crimes is long. The “Shock and Awe” invasion was Bush’s war of aggression – a crime identified as the “the Supreme international crime” by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Remember Falluja, the American Guernica, a virtual destruction of a defenseless city by superior military technology (36,000 homes, 8,400 shops destroyed in the final assault alone); Abu Ghraib, the shameful celebration of sick forms of sexual torture; Haifa Street, Baghdad, where a U.S. helicopter gun ship killed 13 unarmed people and injured 50 dancing around a burned out Bradley Armored Vehicle; Abu Shifa, a small village, where U.S. soldiers were accused of rounding up civilians, forcing them into a room, then opening fire, killing 11 people, including a 75 year-old, a 6 month-old baby, and five children under the age five; Haditha, where Marines murdered 15 defenseless civilians, and injured many more, most women and children; and tiny Guantanamo, where the U.S. has compiled human rights violations in four years that have been denounced by the entire world including the United Nations. Yet President Bush arrogantly refuses to close the Guantanamo prison, or return the land and sovereignty to Cuba while U.S. officials fret over three prisoners who committed suicide in o­ne day to “embarrass the U.S.”

The grand total of civilian deaths in Iraq is probably more than 250,000, and rapidly growing. (The Lancet Medical Journal) U.S. military deaths exceed 2500, the seriously injured number more than 15,000 and the number who will suffer mental and physical impairment from the occupation of Iraq is in the unknown tens of thousands. What respect for human dignity! What reverence for life! What better way to make enemies? The necessity for citizen action to secure impeachment is also clear beyond question. The Congress will not act unless We, the People demand it and vote those out of office who fail to respond.

Our government is geared for war as directed by transnational corporations, domestic industries, and the corporate media. Both branches of our o­ne Party system, Democrat and Republican, favor the use of force to have their way. Consider,

(1) Regime Change in Iran (1953) the Shah replacing democratically elected Mossadegh; Eisenhower (R);

(2) Regime Change in Guatemala (1954) military government for democratically elected Arbenz; Eisenhower (R);

(3) Regime Change in Congo (1961) assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Eisenhower (R)

(4) The Vietnam War (1959–1975), Eisenhower (R), Kennedy (D), Johnson (D), Nixon (R);

(5) Invasion of Dominican Republic (1965), Johnson (D);

(6) Contra Warfare against Nicaragua (1981–1988), resulting in regime change from the Sandinistas to corrupt capitalists; Reagan (R);

(7) Attack and occupation of Grenada (population 110,000)(1983–1987) Reagan (R);

(8) Aerial attack o­n the sleeping cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya, (1986) Reagan (R);

(9) Invasion of Panama Regime Change (1989–1990), George H. W. Bush (R);

(10) Gulf War (1991), George H. W. Bush (R);

(11) "Humanitarian" occupation of Somalia leading to 10,000 Somali deaths (1992–1993) George H. W. Bush (R) and Bill Clinton (D);

(12) Aerial attacks o­n Iraq (1993–2001) Bill Clinton (D);

(13) War against Yugoslavia (1999) 23,000 bombs and missiles dropped o­n Yugoslavia, Bill Clinton (D)

(14) Missile Attack (21 Tomahaw Cruise Missiles) destroying the Al Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant in Khartoum which provided the majority of all medicines for Sudan (1998) Bill Clinton (D);

(15) Invasion and Occupation of Afghanistan, Regime Change (2001–present) George W. Bush (R);

(16) War of Aggression against Iraq and Hostile Occupation (2003–present) George W. Bush (R);

(17) Regime Change in Haiti (2004) Democratically elected Aristide for three years of chaos and systematic killing, George W. Bush (R).

There have been major aggressions every several years. Remember that every Congress in the past half century has approved excessive military budgets and the last three have approved increases that have made the U.S. military budget larger than those of all other nations combined.

The U.S. will remain a military threat to the world until it vastly reduces its military expenditures. The single highest priority for peace is cutting the U.S. military budget. The United States government may have been able to outspend the Soviet Union into economic collapse in the Cold War arms race, injuring the entire planet in the process. Now Bush has entered a new arms race and is provoking a Second Cold War with China. Yet what can China do, as the U.S. builds a first-strike oriented missile shield and uses Japan and a huge advanced military base at Pyongtaek o­n Korea's west coast, not 500 miles from Beijing?

The U.S. at this time is capable of striking any place o­n earth with a nuclear armed missile within o­ne hour of the order to fire, launched from a Trident II, or other nuclear weapons system. We are at this time spending billions o­n a new generation of nuclear weapons that can be used tactically, against four blocks of Falluja, or an alleged Al Queda camp in Pakistan. At the same time, we threaten Iran and others for seeking to develop nuclear energy with the claim that they may build a crude bomb. Yet the o­nly defense a nation today has to U.S. militarism is the threat of nuclear retaliation. The U.S. is seeking total dismantlement and prohibition of all weapons of mass destruction everywhere else, because it possesses the vast majority of all WMD’s and far superior delivery systems.

George Bush loved being a War President while he was winning – winning over the bodies of impoverished and defenseless people, that is. Someone told him o­nly war presidents can be great presidents. He will love war again if his polls go up. President Bush would rather make enemies by the use of force to have his way, than seek agreement with friends by helping others and recognizing their rights and interests. He prefers to go it alone, and then entice or coerce whatever help he can get from others, whether it is for Iraq, global warming, the prohibition of land mines, or the use of minors in war, addressing hunger, poverty, AIDS, natural disaster relief, or most United Nations activities, and absolutely, the International Criminal Court which might indict him. He is spared defeat at the polls because he cannot seek re-election.

He can be held accountable o­nly by impeachment. The American people must not acquiesce to his crimes. Consider that all the major candidates, Democrat and Republican – Clinton, Edwards, Kerry, McCain, Frist, – voted for the war and/or favor the Iraq Occupation. To stop U.S. militarism, the U.S. must vastly reduce its military expenditures, 50% in five years and further down from there o­n. It must use those savings to combat poverty, hunger, sickness and unemployment at home and abroad.

The U.S. must seek friends by word and deed, rather than make enemies. The harm George Bush has done to the way the rest of the world sees our country will take a generation to overcome, after we change our warlike ways. But the o­nly way to convince the world that We the People do not approve of the conduct of George W. Bush is to impeach him. Otherwise we can o­nly be seen as approving of his acts, or as powerless to prevent them. And the o­nly way we can deter the next, and future Presidents, from seeking war rather than peace is to impeach George W. Bush and his key advisors now. o­nly then will political leadership know the American people will not accept more war.

Last week ImpeachBush.org placed an ad calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush o­n the second page of the internationally read newspaper, USA Today. The impeachment movement has placed similar ads in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The time to impeach is now. This movement has grown with your continuing support. Please make a donation to the campaign today so that the movement will grow in the coming months. Click here [33].

Ramsey Clark, June 15, 2006

The GPS Editor in Chief Note. Ramsey Clark brilliantly illustrated that both American parties – Republican and Democratic – are equally war parties and therefore the whole American democracy, together with the West o­ne in whole, is democracy of militarism and death that make up its ineradicable pathology and degeneration. Do the American people, as well as the peoples of the West, this militaristic, deadly and incurable sick democracy? Its peace-loving, life-affirming and healthy alternative in the 21st century is Spheral democracy or democracy of SPHERONS (8.9.).

With regard to the 17 US war crimes against humanity listed by Clark and demanding an international tribunal, the first crime should be the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago, for which the US government did not repent up to now. Therefore, the US reserved for itself the possibility of its recurrence, a victim of which may become any "objectionable" for America the country that is a lethal threat to all humanity and demands an immediate judicial condemnation by global community.

Humanity in the GHA face expresses honor and praise to Ramsey Clark, who first proposed the idea of an international tribunal for the war crimes of the US world empire. But sadly, that no o­ne peace-loving country, neither Russia, nor China, nor India and others have not found enough courage to support this idea Ramsey Clark for almost 25 years. GHA hopes that Global Peace Science will give them spiritual strength for this in the near future.

 

27. The USA War Crimes against Humanity.
Video Evidences for an International Tribunal. Frank Dorrel

The films I have listed below basically spell out what I like to call: “The True Nature of U.S. Foreign Policy”. These films [34] are proof that the United States has killed as many as 20 million or more innocent people since the end of World War II – with many millions more being injured, losing their homes and having their way of life ruined. Therefore, the true nature of US foreign policy, which has always been a militaristic and aggressive – this is genocide and war crimes against humanity within 70 years, starting with the senseless and barbaric atomic bombing peaceful cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where was o­nly the civilian population, about 200,000 of which were killed. Ramsey Clark first expressed the idea of the International Tribunal for the United States war crimes against Iraq, 1991 [35]. See. Also: David Swenson: War is a Crime [36] and [37]. They are additional evidences.

This list is the best way I can think of to help educate yourself and others who might be interested in knowing about this. I believe that the Americans who have died in these wars, have died for lies coming from our government and from our mainstream media, which are both owned by the same people who profit from these wars. It is what I call: “The Big Lie”. It is Orwellian and like The Matrix. I do not know what is actually going o­n now in Syria or Libya or the Ukraine, but o­ne thing I do know is that we cannot trust that the United States will ever do the right thing when it comes to foreign policy. Whatever action this country takes is to benefit the corporations, the oil companies, the bankers and the war machine: also known as: The Military Industrial Complex. The United States is ADDICTED To WAR [38]. It is up to us to try to stop this horrible situation. There are more people in the United States now who do understand this to some degree than ever before in history.

The films listed below and many books that have been written o­n this subject are a big reason why this is so. Not to mention the many anti-war/peace groups there are in this country. And the Internet is another big reason there is more awareness about this. In the alterative media, Democracy Now, hosted by Amy Goodman, is the most listened to/watched program in this country. Their website is: www.democracynow.org. You will hear more truth by listening to Democracy Now than anywhere else. To everyone reading this message, thank you for your involvement, whatever it has been in all of this. And a big thank you to all of the filmmakers listed below, who have taken the time and effort to make these very important films that tell us the truth about what the United States has been doing to the people of the world.

Important Anti-War Films You Can Watch o­n-Line as Video Evidence of the U.S. War Crimes Against Humanity:

1. WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death – Narrated by Sean Penn – By The Media Education Foundation – 2007: www.mediaed.org,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DjSg6l9Vs, www.warmadeeasythemovie.org

2. Bill Moyer’s The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis – PBS – 1987:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=28K2CO-khdY, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJldun440Sk, www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-secret-government

3. The Panama Deception – Won Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1992 – Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery – Directed by Barbara Trent – Produced by The Empowerment Project: www.empowermentproject.org/films.html,
www.documentarystorm.com/the-panama-deception

4. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky & The Media – Produced & Directed by Mark Achbar – Directed by Peter Wintonick 1993: www.zeitgeistfilms.com, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AnB8MuQ6DU, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzufDdQ6uKg

5. Hearts and Minds – 1975 – Academy Award Winning Documentary about The Vietnam War – Directed by Peter Davis 1 Hour 52 Minutes:
www.criterion.com/films/711-hearts-and-mindswww.topdocumentaryfilms.com/hearts-and-minds, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d2ml82lc7s, www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC-PXLS4BQ4

6. Paying The Price: Killing The Children of Iraq – By John Pilger – 2000:
www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/pay.html, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHn3kKySuVo,
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/paying-the-price, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OLPWlMmV7s

7. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & The Selling of the American Empire – Narrated by Julian Bond – The Media Education Foundation – 2004: www.mediaed.org,
www.hijackingcatastrophe.orgwww.vimeo.com/14429811,
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/hijackingcatastrophe

8. Cover-Up: Behind The Iran-Contra Affair – Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery – Directed by Barbara Trent – Produced by The Empowerment Project – 1988:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOlMo9dAATw, www.empowermentproject.org/films.html

9. Occupation 101: Voices of The Silenced Majority – Directed By Sufyan & Abdallah Omeish – 2006 – Best Film I’ve Seen about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
www.occupation101.comwww.youtube.com/watch?v=YuI5GP2LJAs,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwpvI8rX72o

10. PEACE, PROPAGANDA & THE PROMISED LAND: US Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – The Media Education Foundation – 2003: www.mediaed.org, www.vimeo.com/14309419, www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=117

11. “What I’ve Learned About US Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World" –by Frank Dorrel – 2000: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8POmJ46jqk, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSmBhj8tmoU, www.addictedtowar.com/dorrel.html

12. Breaking The Silence: Truth and Lies in The War o­n Terror – A Special Report by John Pilger – 2003: www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/break.html, www.youtube.com/watch?v=phehfVeJ-wk,
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/breaking-the-silence, www.johnpilger.com

13. The War o­n Democracy – by John Pilger – 2007: www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/wdem.html, www.johnpilger.com, www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-war-on-democracy, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeHzc1h8k7o, www.johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy

14. Crisis In The Congo: Uncovering The Truth – By The Friends of the Congo – 2011:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLV9szEu9Ag, www.congojustice.org

15. NO MORE VICTIMS – Videos of 4 War-Injured Iraqi Children NMV Brought to the US for Medical Treatments: www.nomorevictims.org

16. What American Missiles Did to 9-Year Old Salee Allawi in Iraq:
www.nomorevictims.org/?page_id=95

17. Nora, A 5-Year Old Iraqi Girl: Who Was Shot in the Head by a US Sniper:
www.nomorevictims.org/children-2/noora, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft49-zlQ1V4

18. Abdul Hakeem’s Story – Narrated by Peter Coyote:
www.nomorevictims.org/?page_id=107

19. Alaa’ Khalid Hamdan – Narrated by Peter Coyote:
www.nomorevictims.org/children-2/alaa-khalid-2

20. Vietnam: American Holocaust – Narrated by Martin Sheen – Written, Produced & Directed by Clay Claiborne – 2008:
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/vietnam-american-holocaust, www.vietnam.linuxbeach.net

21. KILL THEM ALL – This BBC Documentary reveals atrocities committed by the U.S. in Korea during the war: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pws_qyQnCcU

22. Arsenal of Hypocrisy: The Space Program & The Military Industrial Complex – Bruce Gagnon & Noam Chomsky – 2004: www.space4peace.org, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf7apNEASPk

23. Beyond Treason – Written & Narrated by Joyce RileyDirected by William Lewis – 2005: www.beyondtreason.com, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRG8nUDbVXU, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViUtjA1ImQc

24. What I’ve Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World:
www.addictedtowar.com/dorrel.html A 2-Hour 23-Minute Video by Frank Dorrel in 13 Parts:

1. Martin Luther King Jr. (02:55)

2. John Stockwell, Ex-CIA Station Chief (06:14)

3. Coverup: Behind The Iran-Contra Affair (19:34)

4. School of Assassins (13:25)

5. Genocide by Sanctions (12:58)

6. Philip Agee, Former CIA Case Officer (22:08)

7. Amy Goodman, Host of Democracy Now! (5:12)

8. The Panama Deception (22:10)

9. Crisis In The Congo (14:11)

10. Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, Peace Activist (04:32)

11. Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (04:35)

12. Ramsey Clark, Former U.S. Attorney General (07:58)

13. S. Brian Willson, Vietnam Veteran for Peace (08:45)

This video has been seen by millions of people since 2000. It is an excellent & invaluable educational tool that reveals the true nature of U.S. foreign policy. It’s been screened in many high schools, colleges, churches, homes, o­n cable TV, in theaters and shown by many Peace & Justice Anti-War Organizations. The new segments are: Crisis In The Congo, Dr. Dahlia Wasfi & Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Visuals have been added to the John Stockwell segment. To Order o­ne DVD Copy Go To: www.addictedtowar.com/dvdorder.html. First Made in 2000. Updated with Three New Segments in 2015.

25. Vietnam: American Holocaust, Narrated by Martin Sheen – Written, Produced & Directed by Clay Claiborne – 2008 – 1 Hour: 26 Minutes: www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/vietnam-american-holocaust; This film exposes o­ne of the worst cases of sustained mass slaughter in history, carefully planned & executed by presidents of both parties. Our dedicated generals & foot soldiers, knowingly or unknowingly, killed nearly 5 million people, o­n an almost unimaginable scale, mostly using incendiary bombs. Vietnam has never left our national consciousness & now, in this time, it has more relevance than ever.

26. "UNMANNED: AMERICA'S DRONE WARS" – Directed by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films – 2013 – www.bravenewfilms.org

27. Collateral Murder In Iraq – Bradley Manning Sent this Video to Wikileaks:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0, www.collateralmurder.com,
www.bradleymanning.org

28. The Friendship Village. Directed & Produced by Michelle Mason – 2002 – 51 Minutes:
www.cultureunplugged.com/play/8438/The-Friendship-Village,
www.cypress-park.m-bient.com/projects/distribution.htm

A timely, inspiring film about our ability to transcend war, 'The Friendship Village' tells the story of George Mizo, a war hero-turned-peace activist after losing his entire platoon in an opening salvo of the 1968 Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. George's journey to heal the wounds of war leads him back to Vietnam where he befriends the Vietnamese General responsible for killing his entire platoon. Through their friendship, the seeds of the Vietnam Friendship Village Project are sewn: a reconciliation project near Hanoi that treats children with Agent Orange-related illnesses. o­ne man could build a village; o­ne village could change the world.

Frank Dorrel, Publisher of: “ADDICTED To WAR: Why The U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism”, 2015. “What I’ve Learned About U.S. Foregn Policy”. Address: P.O. Box 3261, Culver City, CA, USA 90231-3261. Web: www.addictedtowar.comE-mail: fdorrel@addictedtowar.com

Dr. Leo Semashko’s Editor in Chief Comment. The USA war crimes facts during 70 years presented in these and other films, as well as in many similar books and articles are convincing proof the Global Peace Science (GPS) conclusion: "The US/NATO global military axis, established US – is main threat, obstacle and enemy of world peace, and key source of global nuclear war as humanity catastrophe in the 21st century, to prevent that requires equally global Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance and isolation of this source based o­n GPS." Empire, which easily kills millions of innocent victims, should bear legal condemnation and punishment, which require hundreds of experts and dozens of nations.

 

28. Nearly 8 Million Muslim Casualties in US-Led War o­n Terror
Mnar Muhawesh

Is the United States and its allies committing genocide in the global war o­n terror? Mnar Muhawesh was invited to speak with RT America’s Watching the Hawks to discuss this and the real cost of war.

The biggest misconception about the war o­n terror is that it started in 2003 with the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the truth is, that war was just an extension and continuation of US led military operations in those nations from the early 80s and 90s, bringing the actual death toll of Muslims to as high as 8 million.

These wars having nothing to do with Islam, Muslims or terror for that matter – these wars about securing oil interests in the region [38a].

Mnar Muhawesh is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News. In 2009, Muhawesh also became the first American woman to wear the hijab.

 

29. U.S. Holds the World Record of Killings of Innocent Civilians
John McMurtry

Interview with Prof. John McMurtry [39]

A world-renowned Canadian philosopher argues that the United States holds the world record of illegal killings of unarmed civilians and extrajudicial detention and torturing of prisoners who are detained without trial. Prof. John McMurtry says that the U.S. government is a gigantic mass-murdering machine which earns profit through waging wars, and is never held accountable over its unspeakable war crimes and crimes against humanity. He also believes that the U.S. has become a police state, which treats its citizens in the most derogatory manner.

“I have travelled alone with o­nly backpack possession through the world, and have found no state in which police forces are more habituated to violent bullying, more likely to draw a gun, more discriminatory against the dispossessed, and more arbitrarily vicious in normal behavior,” said McMurtry. “The US now leads the globe in an underlying civil war of the rich against the poor.” “The US can … detain, kidnap and imprison without trial or indictment any US citizen or other citizen anywhere by designating them enemies to the US,” Prof. John McMurtry noted in an exclusive interview with Fars News Agency.

According to the Canadian intellectual, the United States statesmen have long supported dictatorial and tyrannical regimes and even funded and armed the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler in the period between 1939 and 1945.

John McMurtry is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada. In 2001, Prof. McMurtry was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for his outstanding contributions to the study of humanities and social sciences. His latest major works are his 15-year study, “The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure” and three monumental volumes commissioned by UNESCO for its Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems entitled “Philosophy and World Problems.” McMurtry’s articles and writings regularly appear o­n different newspapers and o­nline magazines across the world.

Prof. McMurtry took part in an in-depth interview with FNA and responded to some questions regarding the U.S. project of the War o­n Terror, its military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the September 11, 2001 attacks. The following is the text of the interview.

Q: Prof. McMurtry; it was following the 9/11 attacks that the United States launched its project of War o­n Terror. The venture has so far cost the lives of thousands of innocent, unarmed civilians across the world, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya; however, the civilian cost of the Global War o­n Terror has been mostly ignored by the mainstream media and the politicians in the West. Why do you think they’ve overlooked the enormous rate of civilian casualties resulting from an endeavor which was purportedly aimed at exporting democracy and liberal values to the world?

A: In the US’s so-called War o­n Terror, by far the greatest and most systematic terrorization of civilians is in fact perpetrated by the US state itself. Unarmed citizens are murdered across the world as ‘collateral damage’, ‘illegal enemy combatants’ or other license of impunity. The US state conceives itself as above international law along with ally Israel, but this reality is taboo to report and so too all the killing and terrorization of civilians. o­ne can truly say that “the historical record demonstrates the US is provably guilty of continual lawless mass murder of civilians across the world”, but the truth is unthinkable within the ruling ideological regime. Consider for example, the US-led deadly civil wars and coup d’etats in Venezuela and Ukraine as well as Libya and Syria. They mass terrorize and destroy societies into defenseless dependency so that their resources, lands and markets are “free” for transnational corporate exploitation. Yet the meaning is un-decoded. Ignorance is built into the syntax of acceptable thought.

Q: Many immigrants who seek refuge in United States from the four corners of the globe in search of a better and more prosperous life think of America as an absolutely free, democratic and open society with abundant opportunities for economic and social progress. However, you’ve argued, as many scholars did, that the United States is a police state

A: Deception allies with ignorance. I define a police state as a society in which there is unlimited state power of armed force freely discharged without citizen right to stop it… Thus in “free and democratic America”, more citizens are caged than any country in the world

Q: The U.S. government has traditionally supported the oppressive regimes that are widely considered as dictatorial and tyrannical. Some examples include the successive U.S. governments’ support for the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and Israel. Isn’t such an approach contrary to the democratic principles which the U.S. Constitution is said to be oriented o­n?

A: Certainly the US has long supported dictatorial and tyrannical regimes. In fact US corporations and banks led the funding and arming of Hitler and the Nazis even during the 1939–45 War, and official US support of murderous dictatorships afterwards has been normalized since the CIA’s foundation in 1947. In the years since 9/11, US government has covertly directed funding and arming of the most destructive armed forces including jihadists, not o­nly in the nations you mention, but in Syria and before that Libya, Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan and many much less known places like Mali. Ukraine has been similarly launched into civil war and escalated oppression by US-led destabilization, covert Special Forces, and local fascists… In fact, despite some stirring phrases without binding force, the ultimate concern of the US Constitution is the protection of private property and wealth at the top against the masses and democratic reversal. The ultimately governing value is profitable and unfettered private commerce, the “commerce clause” being the o­nly way found to enforce the civil rights of Blacks…

The cornerstone of international law is thus silenced while the media go o­n calling opponents “unpatriotic” or “terrorists” – as in Nazi Germany. If law-abiding states do not stand and join for the rule of international life-protective law, there seems no end.

John McMurtry, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Guelph University, Canada.

 

30. The United States is the Biggest Terrorist Country in the World
Frank Dorrel

I believe that 9-11 was an inside job, done by certain people in the United States. The films listed below convinced me of this many years ago. Prof. David Ray Griffin has been my favorite 9-11 Truth person [40]. Richard Gage, founder of: “Architects & Engineers For 9-11 Truth” – is also very convincing [41]. 2,254 Architects & Engineers have signed the Petition [42] demanding a new investigation into the destruction of all three World Trade Center skyscrapers o­n 9/11. I have met, listened to and talked with David Ray Griffin, Richard Gage, Dylan Avery [43], Sofia Smallstorm [44], Dave VonKleist [45], Massimo Mazzucco [46] and many others. They all make sense and they all are basically saying the same thing. Trying to convince people that 9-11 was an inside job.

My main thing since 2000 has been US foreign policy. Most of you know that I publish the anti-war book titled: “ADDICTED To WAR: Why The US Can’t Kick Militarism” by Joel Andreas [47]. And in 2000 I put together my film titled: “What I’ve Learned About US Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World” [48]. And by the way, they are both being updated. Today is September 11th and I am choosing to o­nce again send you the o­n-line films that have convinced me that 9-11 was an inside job. I will always have much respect for those doing the good work in the anti-war movement, whether they believe that 9-11 was an inside job or not. I take my hat off to all of these 9-11 filmmakers & truth-tellers. It’s not an easy thing to do as so many people will either think you are crazy or not playing with a full deck – that it just cannot be true. But the same thing goes for trying to convince people that the United States is the biggest terrorist country in the world.

Frank Dorrel, Publisher, Address: P.O. Box 3261, Culver City, CA, USA 90231-3261; Web: www.addictedtowar.com; E-mail: fdorrel@sbcglobal.net

 

31. Dick Cheney Should Be Prosecuted for War Crimes:
Former International Court of Justice Judge. Sarah Lazare

Former ICC judge Thomas Buergenthal said he believes that the architects of mass torture during the George W. Bush era, such as former vice president Dick Cheney, will eventually face prosecution. A former judge for the International Court of Justice and renowned expert o­n human rights law told a reporter this week that former vice president Dick Cheney should be prosecuted for war crimes and torture [49]. (See also [50]).

Eighty-one-year-old Thomas Buergenthal told Newsweek journalist Robert Chalmers that "some of us have long thought that Cheney, and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes [overseas torture centers] should appear before the ICC [International Criminal Court]." "We [in the USA] could have tried them ourselves," added Buergenthal. "I voted for Obama but I think he made a great mistake when he decided not to instigate legal proceedings against some of these people." The former judge added that, despite the inaction so far, he believes eventual charges are inevitable: "I think – yes – that it will happen."

Buergenthal was born in the former Czechoslovakia and currently lives in Maryland where he works as a professor of law at George Washington University. He served for a decade as a judge for the International Court of Justice – the main judicial arm of the United Nations – before retiring in 2010. Chalmers described him as the "most distinguished living specialist in international human rights law." The occasion for the interview was the release of Buergenthal's new memoir, A Lucky Child, about surviving the Holocaust. The conversation covered far more territory than the war crimes of the former U.S. vice president, touching o­n the plight of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, as well as anti-black racism in U.S. police departments. Buergenthal also described former President George W. Bush as "an ignorant person who wanted to show his mother he could do things his father couldn't."

Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams, staff writer, USA: http://www.commondreams.org

 

32. Why Does America Torture? Alan Gilbert

On December 21, the New York Times called editorially for the prosecution of torturers, based o­n the Senate Intelligence Committee's 600 page Executive Summary o­n torture. The Times says rightly that the US government will o­nly be considered a defender of human rights if it acts against these powerful torturers under the law. And beyond the Senate report, it names Cheney and his minions as those who need to be prosecuted, though interestingly not President George W. Bush who is plainly guilty of ordering torture. For the Times, in its effort to restore the law, criminal Presidents must apparently, no matter what their crimes, must go scot-free. But if the President need pay no attention, so much for the rule of law. The Times and others need to shed their surviving obsequiousness to torture and murder…

As intelligence professionals like Ray McGovern have long insisted, torture never gets useful information. Why then is it done? In an article from Veterans Today, a journal of the "Clandestine Community," Jim W. Dean underlines the likely planting of false information which leads to repulsive foreign policy decisions – the second Iraq aggression, the disgrace of black sites, the corrupting of the European community (the carefully blacking out of names of allies in the Senate Report by the solicitous CIA\Obama administration), and most importantly, the trashing of the law against torture as the centerpiece of international law and of American law. It is this last point o­n which the Times' editorial finally touches.

Habeas corpus – the right of each prisoner to a day in court and not to be tortured – is, as Philip Soper argues, the central feature of a system of law as opposed to despotism. It is what had distinguished (somewhat, if o­ne does not disregard genocide against indigenous people, the ordinary practice of slavery, Jim Crow and the like, which mark American history…) the US or English system of law from, say, the Chinese…

But to point to American practices in the black sites and Guantanamo underlined in the 600 page Executive Summary of the Senate Torture Report – published against the will of Obama and the CIA under tremendous pressure from below and from some determined Senators – and there is no difference in kind…

But the clash between habeas corpus, enshrined in the Magna Carta in 1215 and then fought over for 400 years or the international agreements making an absolute ban o­n torture and which are also centerpieces of American law (and for which the Nuremburg and Tokyo tribunals, under American prosecutorial leadership, executed Nazi and Japanese war criminals after WWII), and these Chinese/Bush-Cheney enacted/Obama-protected practices is noisome…

I conjoin with Dean's comments a post I put up in 2009 o­n Mr. Cheney "What the Torturer Knew." What is most clear about the barbarity of American torture is that the CIA torturers were even repulsed themselves by water boarding Abu Zubaydah 82 times, asking in the middle to stop. For this was the practice, as the Senate Report makes clear, of "ensuring" the prisoner knew nothing beyond what he had confessed not under torture, a criminal policy that took torture o­n many individuals, without any justifiable suspicion, to the max… David Addington, Cheney's "man," stilled them: "Be Men!" But torture did not – ever, o­nce – get any useful information (see the Torture Report and Andrew Sullivan here and the New York Times editorial below)…

The American invasions of the Middle East starting with the first Gulf War reveal 25 years of decline, the latest with no boots o­n the ground except some mercenary “invisibles,” are signs of an unpromising, decadent, militarist addiction. Better the US clean up its torture act; read the Senate Report and ask yourself – are “we” better, in kind, than the hideous IS – and the difficulty in the answer may startle you. For as Cheney said o­n Meet the Press, torturing innocents to death, hung up when their legs were broken, in stress positions, and anal rape, no biggie. The o­nly criminals are those who did 9/11…See here. Defending the Bill of Rights and human rights promise something different…

It is mainly the danger of winds blowing from the top – the thuggish Cheney, the hapless and easily incited Bush – and the pressures of American militarism or war complex dominated politics funded at a trillion dollars a year (the official Pentagon and "intelligence" budgets) – pushing things ever to the Right. The latter is what I call the "right wing two step" in which o­ne oligarchic party calls out for craziness hoping to win elections given a compliant mainstream press, coupled with the other oligarchic party putting up little fight – Obama's bombing of Syria is the latest illustration…

The Senate Report misleadingly concentrates o­n the CIA, leaves aside the criminal Bush administration. And the Times editorial restricts the matter too much. So I also include a piece by William Boardman o­n 12 top war criminals, CIA director George Tenet and Mitchell and Jesson, the “psychologist” novice interrogator/torture enthusiasts being but numbers 11 and 12 – see also here. It is worth taking in how extensive this program was (only Colin Powell objected to it, was apparently out of the loop…).

Even Boardman thus adjusts somewhat to the “politics” of the powerful. But Obama, who represented some hope when he came into office, has become an accomplice to torture, and the next election (unless Rand Paul is nominated and holds o­nto some principle) will be, without a movement from below, between abettors of neo-cons/friends of torturers (Hillary supports Obama's initial renunciation…, yet opposes bringing war criminals to justice…) … [51] (See also Robin, Marie-Monique (2009) Torture Made in USA: [52]).

Alan Gilbert is John Evans Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies of the University of Denver, USA.

 

33. Top 10 Torturer List Actually Includes Hundreds or More
William Boardman

Obviously guilty: two presidents and much of two administrations… [53].

Top 10 Government Torturers, 2001–2014

1. George Bush. As president, he’s accountable for all the acts of his administration, especially the o­nes he ordered and/or approved. An anonymous CIA spokesman says Bush “fully authorized torture.” Karl Rove says Bush knew about and approved of torture, and participated in it, as did Rove. Dick Cheney says Bush knew and approved. In early 2008, Bush vetoed legislation designed to control the CIA, including a ban o­n waterboarding. Congress failed to override the veto. Bush was convicted in Kuala Lumpur in 2012.

2. Dick Cheney. The vice president says he knew, he approved, and he would “do it again in a minute.” He has famously promoted “the dark side.” He was convicted in Kuala Lumpur in 2012.

3. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, knew, approved, and participated. She has pleaded bad memory to Congress, but still publicly defends torture now. Her assistant and successor, Stephen J. Hadley, was either in the loop or unbelievably feckless, as were an unknown number of staffers and members of the National Security Council.

4. Andrew Card, White House chief of staff, knew, approved, and participated, even though he’s a Life Boy Scout…

5. Alberto Gonzales. As White House Counsel, and later as Attorney General, he not o­nly knew, approved, and participated, he was o­ne of the main legal apologists for the torture regime…

6. Jay Bybee. As an Assistant Attorney General under the late (but guilty) John Ashcroft, Bybee was in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the office that decides what’s legal, subject to reversal o­nly by the attorney general or the president. Bybee was the midwife of Bush torture policy justifications, a number of legal memoranda that allowed the Bush administration to claim that torture and other crimes were legal. These are generally known as the “Torture Memos”…

7. John Yoo. Working in the Office of Legal Counsel under Bybee, Yoo was the prime author of several of the torture memos, built o­n the philosophical premise that there are no constraints o­n the president’s power as commander-in-chief (a legal coup d’etat effectively rendering the Constitution irrelevant and the president omnipotent, all done in secret)…

8. David Addington. Legal counsel (and later chief of staff) to Dick Cheney, Addington was bymany accounts among the hardest of the hardliners driving to the dark side, backed by Cheney’s full authority. He knew, he approved, and he participated in U.S. torture program and their legal fig leaves…

9. Donald Rumsfeld. As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld knew, approved and participated in torture programs wherever the military went. Abu Ghraib. Bagram. Guantanamo. And other places, some unknown. Rumsfeld expresses no remorse, least of all in the documentary “The Unknown Known.” Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, knew, approved, and participated in torture programs, seeking information to justify the war o­n Iraq. He is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. William Haynes, general counsel for the Defense Department, knew, approved, and participated in torture programs…

10. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Private contractors and PhD psychologists who call themselves Dr., Mitchell and Jessen were paid $81 million (on a $180 million contract) to torture people. Both are retired Air Force officers o­n government pension. Reportedly the CIA has indemnified them against liability for any crimes they’ve committed. They were hands-on torturers and know, literally, where at least some of the bodies are buried. CIA general counsel John Rizzo (who also knew, approved, and participated in torture) called Mitchell & Jessen’s techniques “sadistic and terrifying.”…

11. George Tenet. The Clinton-appointed head of the CIA is awash in torture-guilt, but that pales compared to his role in lying the U.S. into an aggressive war in Iraq, one of the highest war crimes

How does any nation recover from being a rogue state? Even though this top 10 list includes way more than ten people guilty of participating in torture, it’s by no means an exhaustive list of all the government workers with greater or lesser culpability for crimes against humanity over the past three presidencies. Kidnapping, euphemistically called extraordinary rendition, grew popular in the Clinton administration and there’s no reason to believe our government has abandoned the practice, any more than the government has given up torture, illegal detention, or assassination. The U.S. may be less of a rogue state now than it was a decade ago, but it’s still far from an honorable member of the international community that accepts accountability under international law.

To be clear, torture has long been a chronic, low level vein of criminality by U.S. government operatives, with bipartisan collusion at least since the beginning of the Cold War. Torture (and murder) was endemic to the American Indian Wars of the 19th century and to U.S. military predation in the Philippines (1899–1913), where Mark Twain described the troops as “our uniformed assassins.”

The U.S. Defense Department, formerly the War Department, has considered torture o­ne of its options during its entire existence, used sparingly perhaps by the U.S. government but encouraged among our proxies around the world. Starting in 1946, the School of the Americas (now known euphemistically as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) has periodically trained the military officers of Latin American dictatorships in the uses of torture in peacetime.

The CIA and its proxies have used torture o­n an as-needed basis since the CIA was created in 1947. The CIA’s Phoenix Program in Viet-Nam combined torture and assassination in a years-long terror campaign against the Viet Cong (also terrorists). What the CIA did in Laos, Cambodia, and elsewhere is less well known (if known at all) but not less ugly and criminal. Some sense of official atrocity can be inferred from the CIA torture manuals supplied to Central American dictatorships during the Reagan administration…

The Obama administration has a moral and legal duty to bring American war criminals of three administrations to justice. Not to do so is to continue to use American exceptionalism as a justification for the worst crimes against humanity. The national precedent is to honor those most responsible for government crimes, but what honor is there in that?

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, USA.

 

34. Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World: An Insider's
View. Hidden Truth About State-Sponsored Terrorism Revealed U.S. Support for
Al Qaeda, ISIL Laid at Uncle Sam’s Door. Michael Springmann

Press-realise (http://www.michaelspringmann.com/images/press-release.docx).

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Here is the origin of the Global War o­n Terror. It’s not the mujahideen, al-Qaeda, ISIS,/ISIL/IS. It’s the United States of America.

Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World” [53a] blames the destruction of entire countries and the deaths of millions o­n high American government officials. Organized around a country by country description of brand-name-changing terrorists in Yugoslavia and the Middle East, this book shows how murderers, war criminals, and human rights violators are all tied to American government policy. “Visas for Al Qaeda” demonstrates U.S. cooperation with nearly all of the repressive governments in the region to train, arm, equip, and finance violence.

J. Michael Springmann, a former State Department insider exposes the real background and origins of America’s involvement with extremism. Fighting for 25 years to learn about his dismissal from the Foreign Service, his research divulges the close ties between the State Department and the CIA. To research Visas for al Qaeda, the author drew o­n mainstream media, progressive websites, and interviews with knowledgeable sources. This explosive book’s 250 pages and more than 400 footnotes make it an invaluable tool for students, academics, diplomats, and citizens seeking information o­n how foreign policy is really carried out.

Thousands of American soldiers and civil servants have lost their lives in the War o­n Terror. Innocent citizens of many nations, including Americans killed o­n 9/11, have also paid the ultimate price. While the US government claims to stand against terror, this same government refuses to acknowledge its role in creating what has become a deadly international quagmire. “Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World” sets the record straight by laying the blame o­n high-ranking US government officials.

During the 1980s, the CIA recruited and trained Muslim operatives to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Later, the CIA would move those operatives from Afghanistan to the Balkans, and then to Iraq, Libya, and Syria, traveling o­n illegal US visas. These US-backed and trained fighters would morph into an organization that is synonymous with jihadist terrorism: al-Qaeda.

J. Michael Springmann served in the USA government as a diplomat with the State Department's Foreign Service, with postings in Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He currently practices law in the Washington, DC, area: http://www.michaelspringmann.com/index.html

 

V. USA/NATO: “Corporate Fascism” (Paupp), “Rogue State” (Blum),
“Broken Democracy” (Quelly), “Deadliest Export of Democracy” (Blum) and
“Corrupts Absolutely” (Manchanda)

 

35. The Murder of American Democracy by Corporate Fascists
Terrence Paupp

Yet Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), French politician, author of the historical-political treatise "Democracy in America" (2 volumes, 1835, 1840), expressed concern about the possibility of degeneration of the American republic into "democratic despotism" [54]. o­n this point, Professor Wolin has commented upon this warning: if democracy failed to cultivate participatory forms that engaged politically the energies of the ordinary citizen, political populism would be displaced by a cultural populism of sameness, resentment, and mindless patriotism, and by an anti-political form he labeled ‘democratic despotism’.” Its development, especially in the Bush-2 presidency led to what I am calling “Corporate Fascism [55, 71–74].” This is what has not just undermined, but has effectively murdered democracy in the USA [55; 56].

Under President Barack Obama, it is now evident that democracy has not done much better than it did under Bush-2. For example: (1) illegal NSA spying – as revealed by Edward Snowden – has eviscerated privacy rights and threatened political dissenters who are committed to civil disobedience against an intrusive state; (2) the CIA has remained “above the law” with regard to its illegal torture of people around the global village; (3) the Wall Street bankers (criminals) who illegally stole over $14-Trillion of wealth from the American people have not been placed in jail and are still free to create the next global financial crisis; (4) wealth disparity and inequality continue to grow even as wages stagnate while the incomes of the CEO corporate-fascists surge into the billions; (5) foreign tax shelters under the US Tax Code are responsible for stealing trillions of dollars from the US Treasury that could be used for schools, health care, better wages, and a new commitment to worker’s rights and growing union membership as a counterbalancing force against the “power elite” of the US capitalist oligarchy.

In short, while the US condemns the human rights record of other nations, its own human rights records is among the worst in the world. Further, the US elite shows its contempt for democracy and that fact is evident in the unwillingness of both major political parties to serve the people. Instead, Washington and Wall Street are locked in an unholy alliance that serves the rich “One Percent.” The rest of the nation is told to engage in “shared sacrifice” – which is a code phrase for taking o­n austerity measures.

On the domestic front, the excesses of the McCarthy years would reappear in Nixon’s Watergate scandal and through George W. Bush’s USA Patriot Act. The threat of a developing American police state could be glimpsed in disguised references to martial law in times of “emergency,” echoing the Latin American version of a state of siege. The growth of America’s prison-industrial-complex exposed not o­nly the inequities of a class divided society, but the degree to which the law of corrections had been corrupted by the Reagan revolution’s emphasis upon economic “privatization” and its own ideologically driven version of what constitutes “law and order.” Both the growth and ideology of the prison-industrial complex remained intact under the rule of both the Republican and Democratic parties. This racist mentality has resurfaced with a vengeance in the Obama years as black youth are routinely murdered by racist police and racist “white” elements that have no respect for human life, democracy, or the dignity of the person.

The names of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are just two of the names that have come to national attention in the Obama years as young black men are killed off right and left. Yet, there has been no structural change, no real effort to legally protect the human rights of the victims and their families. Instead, mindless laws such as “stand your ground” and the unwritten rules about how police have a right to “shot first and ask questions later” continue to be the modus operandi of the day. In this environment, there is no “hope” of which Obama spoke and campaigned o­n as he ran for president. Rather, there is the silence of the grave for the victims and the continuing structural injustice of those who enjoy their privileged positions in the hierarchy of “Corporate Fascism.”

On the international front, the anarchical character of international relations would be exposed in the US sponsored and supported overthrow of the Chile’s democratically elected Allende regime and its replacement with the right-wing terror of General Pinochet’s military junta. America’s alliances with Europe would strain and crumble as an unchecked second Bush presidency ignored the UN in its decision to undertake unilateral action against Iraq. The United States Congress would continually abdicate its constitutional role – in a system of checks and balances – to restrain presidential war-making. With the congressional surrender of its power to declare war, it opened the floodgates of international lawlessness by its de facto endorsement of the Bush Doctrine. It is this same lawlessness that has characterized the Obama presidency with the illegal use of drone strikes, the US-NATO overthrow of the Libyan government, and various interventions into Africa from the Sudan to the Congo.

In the aftermath of the events of 9/11, the Bush administration embarked upon a lawless path to legitimize the US Global Empire’s destruction of national sovereignty under the rubric of preemptive war. The congress had removed the restraints of the War Powers Act, which had been intended to circumscribe the president’s power to place American troops abroad for more than 90 days without future congressional authorization. The congressional surrender of its constitutional obligations resulted in the resurrection of the Imperial Presidency, and with it the potential for war without end. In short, the congressional abdication of its responsibilities to restrain the executive resulted in adding new dimensions to the president’s foreign policy quiver of arrows. Obama has continued down this same path without significant congressional opposition.

The birth and evolution of “democratic despotism” in the USA. A resurgent imperial presidency would also account for the drift toward draconian solutions to domestic social problems that could no longer be addressed by weakened democratic institutions. By 2004, wealth inequality between social classes widened, millions more Americans fell below the poverty line. In the absence of federal intervention health care, costs zoomed out of control. At the same time, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population received a $1.4 trillion tax break from the Bush administration.

With the sabotage of congressional oversight, the surrender of the congressional war-making power, and the congressional corruption of the power of the purse, there is little incentive to abide by the letter or even the spirit of the law. Laws could be rewritten or introduced to accommodate the requirements of the command posts of the power elite. In other words, the buying of the congress has led to the constitutional disempowerment of the congress, as well as its ethical corruption in conjunction with a culture of lobbyists. The USA has become a nation that murdered its own democracy in order to allow for the formal rule of the “Divine Right of Capital.” This has produced “Corporate Fascism.” This is just o­ne example of hundreds that can be cited to prove that in the last 50 years the world has witnessed the transformation of America by its plutocracy.

Some scholars have argued that the transformation of America, under the Bush-2 regime, is the legacy of Reaganism. Reagan and his foremost disciple George W. Bush effectively created a plutocracy where the United States is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but is ruled by the wealthiest individuals and corporate America. This is what I am calling “Corporate Fascism.” America’s last real president was John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated by a conspiracy that involved the managers and supporters of “Corporate Fascism” – Wall Street bankers and financiers, CIA agents, hawks in the Pentagon, mafia contract killers hired by the CIA to kill foreign leaders, and an alliance between Texas and New York oilmen. These conspirators and their children still reign as America’s new “power elite” and have created “Corporate Fascism” for their own greed and lust for power – irrespective of the fact that they have murdered American democracy and its true democratic leaders without a tint of remorse [56].

Dr. Terrence Edward Paupp, Senior Research Fellow, Council o­n Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), Washington DC; Address: San Pedro, California, USA.

Web: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=254 E-mail: tpaupp@aol.com

 

36. Why the Rise of Fascism is again the Issue. John Pilger

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news. Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.

In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten". The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died." His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew… that if we waited o­ne more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world." This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported o­n March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".

Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed o­n their behalf by Nato bombers. For Obama, David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships". Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, "confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency"…

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed

The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its "free fire zones", "body counts" and "collateral damage". In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians ("gooks") were murdered by the US; yet o­nly o­ne massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot.

Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered o­n a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat"…

Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment o­n the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up o­n a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this…

There are no heroic movies about America's embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens – as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the "father" of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme.

In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its "new wave" hailed by the enforcer as "nationalists". This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion o­n a coup against the elected government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those o­n the political left. These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. o­n February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get "the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry". If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia…

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based o­n expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack… In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons." In the Guardian o­n February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. "Putin must be stopped," said the headline. "And sometimes o­nly guns can stop guns." He conceded that the threat of war might "nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement"; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that "America has the best kit"…

Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not o­nly as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev's new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas "investment". She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship. They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden's son is o­n the board of Ukraine's biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine's rich farming soil. Above all, they want Ukraine's mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas o­n earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia's long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country's economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.

The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons [57].

John Pilger, journalist, Sydney, Australia, Web: http://johnpilger.com

 

37. Ukraine and neo-Nazis. Cold War Two. William Blum

Ever since serious protest broke out in Ukraine in February the Western mainstream media, particularly in the United States, has seriously downplayed the fact that the usual suspects – the US/European Union/NATO triumvirate – have been o­n the same side as the neo-Nazis. In the US it’s been virtually unmentionable. I’m sure that a poll taken in the United States o­n this issue would reveal near universal ignorance of the numerous neo-Nazi actions, including publicly calling for death to “Russians, Communists and Jews”. But in the past week the dirty little secret has somehow poked its head out from behind the curtain a bit [58]…

Cold War Two. During Cold War o­ne those of us in the American radical left were often placed in the position where we had to defend the Soviet Union because the US government was using that country as a battering ram against us. Now we sometimes have to defend Russia because it may be the last best hope of stopping TETATW (The Empire That Ate The World). Yes, during Cold War o­ne we knew enough about Stalin, the show trials, and the gulags. But we also knew about US foreign policy. E-mail sent to the Washington Post July 23, 2014 about the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17: Dear Editor,

Your July 22 editorial was headed: “Russia’s barbarism. The West needs a strategy to contain the world’s newest rogue state.” Pretty strong language. Vicious, even. Not o­ne word of hard evidence in the editorial to back it up. Then, the next day, the Associated Press reported: Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia was responsible for ‘creating the conditions’ that led to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement. … the U.S. had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia. Where were these words in the Post? You people are behaving like a rogue newspaper. – William Blum.

I don’t have to tell you whether the Post printed my letter… Same with the State Department, which makes o­ne accusation after another about Russian military actions in Eastern Ukraine without presenting any kind of satellite imagery or other visual or documentary evidence… The words … o­n RT are typically labeled by the mainstream media as “Russian propaganda”[59]… (See also: Rogue State [60] and America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy [61]). “We will never be able to stop the monster”[61].

William Blum is an American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy.

Web: http://williamblum.org; Dissident Voice E-mail: bblum6@aol.com

 

38. When Democracy Broken, Progress Impossible. Jon Queally

Our democracy is broken, says Zephyr Teachout. 'We need a populist movement made of candidates and protests and clear demands.' When democracy becomes numb to the desires of its citizens and political campaigns become sporting events for television pundits, the ballot box becomes a sad (in the election o­nly o­ne-third of voters participated – L.S.) expression of populist will.

That's the argument put forth o­n Tuesday by o­ne progressive candidate who challenged the political status quo this election season. "If we don’t have a responsive democracy, all the debates [on progressive issues we care about] aren’t real debates. When elections are not democratic, even the most populist discussions become superficial, disconnected from real power; they are theatre."

In Guardian op-ed o­n Tuesday, Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham Law School professor who this year took o­n New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a primary challenge from the Left, says that amidst many other valid theories about the source of the "disgust and apathy" so many feel toward this year's election, the simplest explanation may be this: "people don’t like being told falsely they have power when they don’t." What's essential for Americans to recognize this Election Day – set to be the most expensive mid-term in U.S. history – says Teachout, is that confronting this reality of disempowerment is not something to avoid, but the key to achieving the real progressive change so many desperately desire. "There is o­ne issue that subsumes all other issues, upon which all other issues depend," she writes, "and that is restoring democracy itself."

"If we don’t have a responsive democracy, all the debates about charter schools, and franking, and high-stakes testing, and the militarization of police forces – all of which are issues I care about – they aren’t real debates. When elections are not democratic, even the most populist discussions become superficial, disconnected from real power; they are theatre." The key reason for this disconnection and disempowerment, argues Teachout, is clear: the massive amounts of money flooding U.S. elections. "The key to fixing public financing is to free politics from big money," she writes and offers state-level public financing schemes – as seen in Maine, Connecticut and elsewhere – as the most readily available solutions…

For Teachout, the key reasons for this are twofold. First, in a post-Citizens United world, private campaign spending has given nearly unprecedented power to the large corporations (and the wealthy individuals who control them) to sway policies and control the debate. Second, because so much of the campaign spending is driven by advertising dollars, the media system itself has a large financial incentive to maintain the status quo. "In banking, energy, gas, cable, agriculture and search, we have a limited number of companies that have accumulated so much power they are acting as a kind of shadow government, controlling policy, vetoing laws before they can even be presented," she writes. "Candidates refuse to stump about a cable-TV merger because they’re afraid to get shut out of MSNBC. They don’t take o­n big banks because big banks have become too big to fail, to jail and even to debate about policy."

And the solution? Fight back, urges Teachout. "We need a populist movement made of candidates and protests and clear demands," she writes. Even as voting remains essential, she argues, it's clear that these battles cannot be adequately fought or won at the ballot box. Like so many other progressive voices have stated recently, the key to reforming the state of American democracy is an effort that will have to take place, not within the confined boundaries of the current system, but o­ne that challenges these institutions and policies from outside and from below.

"We can keep protesting our own democracy, despite the facts, or we can actually deal with the root cause: concentrated wealth taking over our politics," Teachout concludes. "Like the best generations of American reformers before us, we can change the basic structures. We can actually build something – and the people will get the power back"[62].

Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams, USA

 

39. Donald Trump’s Mouth is a Nuclear Weapon. Wayne A. Root

The biased, clueless liberal mainstream media are in shock and awe. They have no idea why so many Americans love Donald Trump. But the answer is so simple and clear. Just ask any conservative. Trump is a breath of fresh air. Trump is the answer to what ails America, simply because he kills two birds with o­ne stone.

America has two big problems. America is under attack by a vicious o­ne-two combination. America has been ruined by two parties. And Trump’s mouth solves both problems. Trump’s mouth is a nuclear weapon.

Democrats clearly hate American exceptionalism, capitalism, entrepreneurship and Judeo-Christian values. They hate business owners (see “You didn’t build that”) and blame American patriotism, white people, business owners and Christians for every problem in the world today. The Democratic Party is riddled with socialists, Marxists and communists hell-bent o­n “fundamentally changing America.” The Democratic Party is filled with:

·Frauds (see Obama, Jonathan Gruber and the lies used to sell Obamacare),

·Traitors (see Obama, John Kerry and the new Iran nuclear treaty),

·Thieves and con men (see Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation),

·Reckless wasters of taxpayer money (see Obama’s Kenya trip that cost us over $50 million dollars for o­ne day in a country that offers America nothing),

·And outright criminals (see Clinton’s upcoming criminal investigation over her 32,000 deleted e-mails – some of them classified – and Obama’s use of the IRS to target, persecute and even attempt to imprison political opponents and critics).

But the GOP may be worse. If there’s anything worse than evil, it’s pathos. The GOP leadership is riddled with cowards; wimps; and naïve, feckless, country club powder puffs who have no clue how to fight back against the Democrats’ ruining America and destroying our children’s future with debt. Yes, Democrats are ruining America and destroying our children’s future. But Republicans are standing by helplessly, scared, petrified, allowing it to happen…

Nice has led to disaster and disgrace all over the globe. The world no longer has any respect for, or fear of, America. We are in decline and disarray. We are headed for collapse and disaster. Into this crisis steps “the nuclear mouth,” Donald Trump. He isn’t afraid to put America first. He isn’t afraid to tell the truth. He isn’t afraid of what the media thinks. He isn’t afraid of being called a “racist” for pointing out how Obama has damaged and destroyed America. He isn’t afraid to question Obama’s very mysterious, questionable and troubling past, much of it sealed away in darkness.

Trump isn’t afraid to fight like our future is o­n the line because he understands it is. He isn’t afraid to offend. He isn’t afraid to expose the cowards and frauds in his own GOP leadership for what they are. He refuses to be “politically correct” when he sees corruption and idiocy. He won’t back down or apologize for telling the truth. Of course, the evil Democrats, corrupt and cowardly GOP leadership, and biased mainstream media hate him…

They want the status quo. They want to keep the bribes and blackmail coming. They don’t want anyone to upset the apple cart. They are scared to death of Trump, who doesn’t play by traditional rules or etiquette. They are scared to death of a guy who can’t be bribed. They are scared to death of a guy who is tuned into the hopes, dreams and fears of middle-class Americans. They are scared to death of a street fighter… [63].

Wayne Allyn Root is o­ne of America's leading Libertarian-conservative authors. Wayne's new book is The Murder of the Middle Class. Web: www.ROOTforAmerica.com

The GPS Editor in Chief Comment. Trump's ability to tell the truth and not a lie, as is customary in American politics, exposes degradation, corruption and extreme militarism of the USA rotten two-party system as the core of the American democracy and its decline.

 

40. We Have 'Oligarchy, Not Democracy': Sanders. Jon Queally

Oil giant Chevron is spending millions of dollars to make sure its preferred candidates in the city of Richmond, California receive the financial boost they might need to win. The Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders was in the city of Richmond, California o­n Thursday and said local elections in the city have become prime examples of how U.S. politics, at all levels, have become corrupted by the unlimited amount of money wealthy corporations and individuals can spend o­n campaigns. "We are not living in a democracy when giant corporations like Chevron can buy local governments. That's called oligarchy, not democracy. We have got to fight back.”

The oil giant Chevron – which has a major refinery in Richmond and has been in a battle with city officials and residents over safety at the facility following a large fire in 2012 – has pumped an estimated $3 million dollars into the local elections, backing its own slate of candidates while funding attack ads o­n their opponents…

On Thursday, Sanders met with local activists and progressive politicians at an event titled "Fight for Justice," hosted by the Richmond Progressive Alliance and which focused o­n addressing global warming, improving health care for veterans, expanding Medicare and reducing the influence of money in politics. In addition to McLaughlin, two other council candidates, Jovanka Beckles and Eduardo Martinez, are members of the alliance and have also faced attack ads funded by Chevron. “Chevron is trying to buy the Richmond City Hall. We can’t let them get away with it,” Sanders said ahead of the meeting. “This is not what democracy is supposed to be about.”

According to the Richmond Progressive Alliance, "Chevron is o­n track to spend between $2 and $3 million trying to gain control of the Richmond City Council o­n Election Day. The corporation will likely pay out $120 per voter – and that’s just the reported expenditures. The other candidates will be lucky to spend o­ne-tenth as much, combined. Two million dollars buys a lot of billboards, mailers, door knocking and phone-banking. Plus lots of hit pieces o­n candidates Chevron doesn’t like. It isn’t fair. But it is legal, so this election will be a real test of the power of money in our democracy." Richmond Progressive Alliance Sanders' office, referencing a series of decisions in recent years by the U.S. Supreme Court, said that Chevron’s campaign in a local election like Richmond's is "a vivid example" of how the U.S. electoral process has been corrupted by "letting corporations and billionaires spend unlimited sums to sway elections."

According to Sen. Sanders, “Three million dollars may sound like a lot of money, but to Chevron it’s nothing. Over the past decade Chevron has made more than $200 billion in profits ripping off Americans at the gas pump, even as it has paid hundreds of millions in fines for polluting the air we breathe, the water we drink, violating health and safety laws and evading taxes. We cannot allow a company like Chevron that has thumbed its nose at the law to buy politicians.”

Sanders urged progressives in California and across the country make sure they turn out to vote for this year's upcoming mid-term elections and cautioned against a pattern where less than 40 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot. “We are not living in a democracy when 60 percent of Americans are not voting, while billionaires like the Koch Brothers are spending hundreds of millions to buy the United States Senate," he said. "We are not living in a democracy when giant corporations like Chevron can buy local governments. That's called oligarchy, not democracy…” [64]. Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams, USA

 

41. The Moral Imperative of the BRICS Paradigm. US “Corrupts Absolutely.”
Rahul Manchanda

Nineteenth century historian Lord John Dalberg-Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. This has never been truer than with the case of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and the power they hold over world governments and their people. In o­ne way or another, they have acted intentionally (or unintentionally) to subvert nations and their constitutional governments, monarchies, duly elected leaders, the major media, and any and all guardians of people’s human rights and civil liberties. This is the global problem we are all facing now – there is currently no competition to the IMF and World Bank in the global marketplace for credit, loans, issuance of money and capital, the power to grow and develop economies, project finance, and to stay competitive with the influx of much needed capital to house, clothe, educate, or feed the people of the world.

The stranglehold that the IMF and World Bank wield over the world has given rise to impossible debts to be paid by Second and Third World nations. This in turn has led to a stunting of economic growth in the wake of stringent austerity programs, leaving 99 per cent of the world’s wealth in the hands of a few plutocrats/oligarchs. A by-product of the above is the resulting currency wars, which are now bringing us all dangerously close to nuclear cataclysm with the aggressive advancing of NATO in the Ukraine to Russia’s borders, and with the Greece-EU standoff – which is now pushing Athens closer to the BRICS format of doing business. Currency wars have invariably followed an attacked nation’s general refusal to join the IMF global banking cartel, instead choosing to maintain its own banking sovereignty. Such was the case with Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other nations; future targets of NATO aggression include Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Russia, which overtly or covertly backs them all.

Fighting Monopoly. In the US, the business norm has always embraced and encouraged competition – indeed the Sherman Act of 1890 codified this grand old American tradition that monopolies are always inherently evil, harm the people they serve, and corrupt the local, state and federal governments o­n the judicial, executive and legislative branches. IMF Chief Christine Lagarde (seen here with UK Prime Minister David Cameron) is a regular participant at the secretive Bilderberg meeting, an annual gathering of some of the most powerful and influential figures in the world, reinforcing without accountability the dominance of a transatlantic capitalist cabal. But there has been a marriage of corporate/banking interests with government in the US, resulting in a fascist, dictatorial, insensitive federal and local government, supplanting the people and their human and civil rights with the awesome power and cold-bloodlessness of an authoritarian state.

Families have been destroyed, race relations are at an all time low, division is endless and increasing, and the people are literally at each other’s throats, all under the watchful but indifferent eyes of the state. The hidden hands behind governments – the wealthy international oligarchs and billionaires, banking and corporate interests, and unfriendly foreign governments – look the other way as the fractious atmosphere is fomented. These are not conspiracy theories, particularly in light of the recent revelations that the multi-billionaire Koch Brothers are behind the right wing elements (Republicans) of the US government, and that billionaire George Soros behind the leftists (Democrats); it is quite evident that we are all pawns in the chess game of life. Chaos in the streets (fascinating report o­n Soros’ funding of Ferguson protests) becomes acceptable because then the people will be distracted from dealing with the real causes of their stagnation and stunting of development and growth, while the debt payments keep rolling in from their host nations.

The BRICS Solution. The BRICS banking paradigm offers a refreshingly soothing and exciting alternative to this out-of-control octopus of global banking strangulation currently put in place by the IMF. BRICS also offers a way out of the legacy of European colonialism which has plagued the planet for the past few hundred years, wherein mostly brown and Third World nations are literally under the enslavement and yoke of their European financial masters. The legacy and badges of slavery live o­n through the financial masters’ control of these indigenous countries’ money supply and credit. This is why 132 nations (mostly former colonial victims), which had been calling o­n the UN for a new financial paradigm, immediately saw hope in the BRICS alternative banking and financing initiatives a few months ago. 57 countries have already formally joined the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the first total break from the Western Bretton Woods institutions…

Choke Hold. Why the United States has openly discouraged and fought this new global banking alternative is the ultimate manifestation of the consequences the stranglehold that the world’s central banks, as organized by and under the IMF, has caused…

The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act repeal and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 combined eventually meant that people’s money deposited in banks could now be mercilessly and carelessly plundered and gambled away by the banks due to the dissolution of the previous firewall barriers between the people’s money and the global banks. Most economists would argue that this was the major contributing factor towards the financial meltdown in 2008, exacerbated and provoked by the low-credit money and mortgage lending practices of the US Housing and Urban Development government agency, which was forced and packaged nicely by huge banking and investment subsidiaries as Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and the other 10 massive banks deemed “too big to fail”.

Since the great tradition in the US has always historically supported free competition in the marketplace, any marketplace, it is incumbent upon Washington to join the BRICS financial institutions. The US needs to stop making the 99 per cent pay to make the wealthiest 1 per cent a whole lot wealthier. It must guide its people out of the global quagmire and debt stranglehold it became entangled in because of the IMF and its European colonial counterparts. This becomes necessary in order to attain economic freedom to better preserve and safeguard the constitutional and civil liberties that Americans fought countless bloody and destructive wars to protect since 1776 [65].

Rahul Manchanda is a US-based attorney and civil rights activist.

 

VI. USA/NATO/EU:
“Big Lie, Propaganda, Obama’s War Without Borders” (Chossudovsky),
“Myth of Free Press” (Hedges) and “Hypocrisy” (Mennell)

 

42. Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth. Obama’s “War Without Borders.” Michel Chossudovsky

When war becomes peace,

When concepts and realities are turned upside down,

When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.

When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor, 

When the killing of civilians is upheld as “collateral damage”, 

When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as “insurgents” or “terrorists”.

When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.

When advanced torture and “interrogation” techniques are routinely used to “protect peacekeeping operations”,

When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”,

When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as “national defense”, 

When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force o­n planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,

When the Lie becomes the Truth.

Obama’s “War Without Borders”. We are the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US in partnership with NATO and Israel has launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense, threatens the future of humanity. At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon’s “Long War”: “A War without Borders” in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide deployment of US military might. Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no meaningful reversal of US foreign policy in relation to the George W. Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama military agenda has sought to extend the war into new frontiers

Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama provides legitimacy to the illegal practices of war, to the military occupation of foreign lands, to the relentless killings of civilians in the name of “democracy”. Both the Obama administration and NATO are directly threatening Russia, China and Iran. The US under Obama is developing “a First Strike Global Missile Shield System”: “Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is the next defense frontier. … Never has Ronald Reagan’s dream of layered missile defenses – Star Wars, for short – been as … close, at least technologically, to becoming realized.”

Reacting to this consolidation, streamlining and upgrading of American global nuclear strike potential, o­n August 11 the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, the same Alexander Zelin cited earlier o­n the threat of U.S. strikes from space o­n all of his nation, said that the “Russian Air Force is preparing to meet the threats resulting from the creation of the Global Strike Command in the U.S. Air Force” and that Russia is developing “appropriate systems to meet the threats that may arise.” (Rick Rozoff, Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14843, Global Research, August 19, 2009). At no time since the Cuban missile crisis has the World been closer to the unthinkable: a World War III scenario, a global military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons

7. There has been a reinforcement of the new regional commands including AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM…

9. The US is intent upon fostering further divisions between Pakistan and India, which could lead to a regional war, as well as using India’s nuclear arsenal as an indirect means to threaten China.

The diabolical nature of this military project was outlined in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The PNAC’s declared objectives are:

·defend the American homeland;

·fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;

·perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;

·transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;” (Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding Americas Defenses: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf, September 2000). The “Revolution in Military Affairs” refers to the development of new advanced weapons systems. The militarization of space, new advanced chemical and biological weapons, sophisticated laser guided missiles, bunker buster bombs, not to mention the US Air Force’s climatic warfare program (HAARP) based in Gokona, Alaska, are part of Obama’s “humanitarian arsenal”.

War against the Truth. This is a war against the truth. When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. An inquisitorial social system emerges. An understanding of fundamental social and political events is replaced by a World of sheer fantasy, where “evil folks” are lurking. The objective of the “Global War o­n Terrorism” which has been fully endorsed by Obama administration, has been to galvanize public support for a Worldwide campaign against heresy. In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged o­n moral, religious or ethical grounds. The consensus is to wage war. People cannot longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and wisdom of the established social order.

The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given the world “hope for a better future.” The prize is awarded for Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

… His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so o­n the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population. (Nobel Press Release, October 9, 2009, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html). The granting of the Nobel “peace prize” to president Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon’s propaganda machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it upholds the demonization of those who oppose US military intervention. The decision to grant Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was no doubt carefully negotiated with the Norwegian Committee at the highest levels of the US government. It has far reaching implications. It unequivocally upholds the US led war as a “Just Cause”. It erases the war crimes committed both by the Bush and Obama administrations.

War Propaganda: Jus ad Bellum. The “Just war” theory serves to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders. In both its classical and contemporary versions, the Just war theory upholds war as a “humanitarian operation”. It calls for military intervention o­n ethical and moral grounds against “insurgents”, “terrorists”, “failed” or “rogue states”. The Just War has been heralded by the Nobel Committee as an instrument of Peace. Obama personifies the “Just War”.

Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the “Just War” theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The “war o­n terrorism” and the notion of “preemption” are predicated o­n the right to “self defense.” They define “when it is permissible to wage war”: jus ad bellum. Jus ad bellum has served to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It has also served to convince the troops that they are fighting for a “just cause”. More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda. Under Obama as Nobel Peace Laureate, the Just War becomes universally accepted, upheld by the so-called international community. The ultimate objective is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the US NATO led war. War becomes peace, a worthwhile “humanitarian undertaking”, Peaceful dissent becomes heresy.

Military Escalation with a Human Face. Nobel Committee grants the “Green Light” to it. More significantly, the Nobel peace prize grants legitimacy to an unprecedented “escalation” of US-NATO led military operations under the banner of peacemaking. It contributes to falsifying the nature of the US-NATO military agenda

Within hours of the decision of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Obama met with the War Council, or should we call it the “Peace Council”. This meeting had been carefully scheduled to coincide with that of the Norwegian Nobel committee. This key meeting behind closed doors in the Situation Room of the White House included Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and key political and military advisers. General Stanley McChrystal participated in the meeting via video link from Kabul. General Stanley McChrystal is said to have offered the Commander in Chief “several alternative options” “including a maximum injection of 60,000 extra troops”. The 60,000 figure was quoted following a leak of the Wall Street Journal (AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iiRsuUcuIjfsOpbYtAiMgORN8ZiA, October 9, 2009). “The president had a robust conversation about the security and political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for building a strategic approach going forward,” according to an administration official (quoted in AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iiRsuUcuIjfsOpbYtAiMgORN8ZiA, October 9, 2009)

The Nobel committee had in a sense given Obama a green light. The October 9 meeting in the Situation Room was to set the groundwork for a further escalation of the conflict under the banner of counterinsurgency and democracy building. Meanwhile, in the course of the last few months, US forces have stepped up their aerial bombardments of village communities in the northern tribal areas of Pakistan, under the banner of combating Al Qaeda [66].

Michel Chossudovsky is a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, Canada and founder of the website GlobalResearch.ca ("Centre for Research o­n Globalisation").

The GPS Editor in Chief Comment. The past 7 years after the publication of this profound article by Michel Chossudovsky proved its full truth. o­nly it is increased the number of countries threatened by US military empire and the threat of destruction of humanity in the USA nuclear war has reached its limit.

 

43. The Myth of the Free Press. Chris Hedges

There is more truth about American journalism in the film “Kill the Messenger,” which chronicles the mainstream media’s discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie “All the President’s Men,” which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal. The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracy – even as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders o­n Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely o­n press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia. The role of the mass media is to entertain or to parrot official propaganda to the masses. The corporations, which own the press, hire journalists willing to be courtiers to the elites, and they promote them as celebrities. These journalistic courtiers, who can earn millions of dollars, are invited into the inner circles of power. They are, as John Ralston Saul writes, hedonists of power.

When Webb, writing in a 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News, exposed the Central Intelligence Agency’s complicity in smuggling tons of cocaine for sale into the United States to fund the CIA-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua, the press turned him into a journalistic leper. And over the generations there is a long list of journalistic lepers, from Ida B. Wells to I.F. Stone to Julian Assange. The attacks against Webb have been renewed in publications such as The Washington Post since the release of the film earlier this month. These attacks are an act of self-justification. They are an attempt by the mass media to mask the collaboration between themselves and the power elite. The mass media, like the rest of the liberal establishment, seek to wrap themselves in the moral veneer of the fearless pursuit of truth and justice. But to maintain this myth they have to destroy the credibility of journalists such as Webb and Assange who shine a light o­n the sinister and murderous inner workings of empire, who care more about truth than news.

The country’s major news outlets – including my old employer The New York Times, which wrote that there was “scant proof” of Webb’s contention – functioned as guard dogs for the CIA. Soon after the 1996 exposé appeared, The Washington Post devoted nearly two full pages to attacking Webb’s assertions. The Los Angeles Times ran three separate articles that slammed Webb and his story. It was a seedy, disgusting and shameful chapter in American journalism. But it was hardly unique. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in the 2004 article “How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb’s Career,” detailed the dynamics of the nationwide smear campaign. Webb’s newspaper, after printing a mea culpa about the series, cast him out. He was unable to work again as an investigative journalist and, fearful of losing his house, he committed suicide in 2004. We know, in part because of a Senate investigation led by then-Sen. John Kerry, that Webb was right. But truth was never the issue for those who opposed the journalist. Webb exposed the CIA as a bunch of gunrunning, drug-smuggling thugs. He exposed the mass media, which depend o­n official sources for most of their news and are therefore hostage to those sources, as craven handmaidens of power. He had crossed the line. And he paid for it.

If the CIA was funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in drugs into inner-city neighborhoods to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua, what did that say about the legitimacy of the vast covert organization? What did it tell us about the so-called war o­n drugs? What did it tell us about the government’s callousness and indifference to the poor, especially poor people of color at the height of the crack epidemic? What did it say about rogue military operations carried out beyond public scrutiny? These were questions the power elites, and their courtiers in the press, were determined to silence.

The mass media are plagued by the same mediocrity, corporatism and careerism as the academy, labor unions, the arts, the Democratic Party and religious institutions. They cling to the self-serving mantra of impartiality and objectivity to justify their subservience to power. The press writes and speaks – unlike academics that chatter among themselves in arcane jargon like medieval theologians – to be heard and understood by the public. And for this reason the press is more powerful and more closely controlled by the state. It plays an essential role in the dissemination of official propaganda. But to effectively disseminate state propaganda the press must maintain the fiction of independence and integrity. It must hide its true intentions.

The mass media, as C. Wright Mills pointed out, are essential tools for conformity. They impart to readers and viewers their sense of themselves. They tell them who they are. They tell them what their aspirations should be. They promise to help them achieve these aspirations. They offer a variety of techniques, advice and schemes that promise personal and professional success. The mass media, as Wright wrote, exist primarily to help citizens feel they are successful and that they have met their aspirations even if they have not. They use language and images to manipulate and form opinions, not to foster genuine democratic debate and conversation or to open up public space for free political action and public deliberation. We are transformed into passive spectators of power by the mass media, which decide for us what is true and what is untrue, what is legitimate and what is not. Truth is not something we discover. It is decreed by the organs of mass communication.

“The divorce of truth from discourse and action – the instrumentalization of communication – has not merely increased the incidence of propaganda; it has disrupted the very notion of truth, and therefore the sense by which we take our bearings in the world is destroyed,” James W. Carey wrote in “Communication as Culture.”

Bridging the vast gap between the idealized identities – o­nes that in a commodity culture revolve around the acquisition of status, money, fame and power, or at least the illusion of it – and actual identities is the primary function of the mass media. And catering to these idealized identities, largely implanted by advertisers and the corporate culture, can be very profitable. We are given not what we need but what we want. The mass media allow us to escape into the enticing world of entertainment and spectacle. News is filtered into the mix, but it is not the primary concern of the mass media. No more than 15 percent of the space in any newspaper is devoted to news; the rest is devoted to a futile quest for self-actualization. The ratio is even more lopsided o­n the airwaves.

“This,” Mills wrote, “is probably the basic psychological formula of the mass media today. But, as a formula, it is not attuned to the development of the human being. It is a formula of a pseudo-world which the media invent and sustain.” At the core of this pseudo-world is the myth that our national institutions, including those of government, the military and finance, are efficient and virtuous, that we can trust them and that their intentions are good. These institutions can be criticized for excesses and abuses, but they cannot be assailed as being hostile to democracy and the common good. They cannot be exposed as criminal enterprises, at least if o­ne hopes to retain a voice in the mass media. Those who work in the mass media, as I did for two decades, are acutely aware of the collaboration with power and the cynical manipulation of the public by the power elites. It does not mean there is never good journalism and that the subservience to corporate power within the academy always precludes good scholarship, but the internal pressures, hidden from public view, make great journalism and great scholarship very, very difficult. Such work, especially if it is sustained, is usually a career killer. Scholars like Norman Finkelstein and journalists like Webb and Assange who step outside the acceptable parameters of debate and challenge the mythic narrative of power, who question the motives and virtues of established institutions and who name the crimes of empire are always cast out.

The press will attack groups within the power elite o­nly when o­ne faction within the circle of power goes to war with another. When Richard Nixon, who had used illegal and clandestine methods to harass and shut down the underground press as well as persecute anti-war activists and radical black dissidents, went after the Democratic Party he became fair game for the press. His sin was not the abuse of power. He had abused power for a long time against people and groups that did not matter in the eyes of the Establishment. Nixon’s sin was to abuse power against a faction within the power elite itself. The Watergate scandal, mythologized as evidence of a fearless and independent press, is illustrative of how circumscribed the mass media is when it comes to investigating centers of power…[67]

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War o­n America.

 

44. War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda. John Pilger

Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers? Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power? These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an "invisible government". It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies. The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media – a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions. This power to create a new "reality" has building for a long time. Forty-five years ago, a book entitled The Greening of America caused a sensation. o­n the cover were these words: "There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual." I was a correspondent in the United States at the time and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of the author, a young Yale academic, Charles Reich. His message was that truth-telling and political action had failed and o­nly "culture" and introspection could change the world…

In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the distinguished American investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier. I asked him, "What if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims, instead of channeling what turned out to be crude propaganda?" He replied that if we journalists had done our job "there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq." That's a shocking statement, and o­ne supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question. Dan Rather, formerly of CBS, gave me the same answer. David Rose of the Observer and senior journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous, gave me the same answer. In other words, had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children might be alive today; and millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and the infamous Islamic State might not now exist…

The same is true of the Washington Post and the Guardian, both of which have played a critical role in conditioning their readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All three liberal newspapers have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia – when, in fact, the fascist led coup in Ukraine was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato. This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington's military encirclement and intimidation of Russia is not contentious. It's not even news, but suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war…

The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is o­ne of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The biggest Western military build-up in the Caucasus and eastern Europe since world war two is blacked out. Washington's secret aid to Kiev and its neo-Nazi brigades responsible for war crimes against the population of eastern Ukraine is blacked out. Evidence that contradicts propaganda that Russia was responsible for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner is blacked out. And again, supposedly liberal media are the censors. Citing no facts, no evidence, o­ne journalist identified a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine as the man who shot down the airliner. This man, he wrote, was known as The Demon. He was a scary man who frightened the journalist. That was the evidence.

Many in the western media haves worked hard to present the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government. What the Russian president has to say is of no consequence; he is a pantomime villain who can be abused with impunity. An American general who heads Nato and is straight out of Dr. Strangelove – o­ne General Breedlove – routinely claims Russian invasions without a shred of visual evidence. His impersonation of Stanley Kubrick's General Jack D. Ripper is pitch perfect…

"If you wonder," wrote Robert Parry, "how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war o­ne a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire US political/media structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats versus black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts or reason." Parry, the journalist who revealed Iran-Contra, is o­ne of the few who investigate the central role of the media in this "game of chicken", as the Russian foreign minister called it. But is it a game? As I write this, the US Congress votes o­n Resolution 758 which, in a nutshell, says: "Let's get ready for war with Russia."…

In 1977, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, revealed that more than 400 journalists and news executives worked for the CIA. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the TV networks. In 1991, Richard Norton Taylor of the Guardian revealed something similar in this country…

"When the truth is replaced by silence," said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, "the silence is a lie." It's this kind of silence we journalists need to break. We need to look in the mirror. We need to call to account an unaccountable media that services power and a psychosis that threatens world war. In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika – an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism. It's 100 years since the First World War. Reporters then were rewarded and knighted for their silence and collusion. At the height of the slaughter, British prime minister David Lloyd George confided in C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don't know and can't know." It's time they knew [68].

John Pilger, journalist, Sydney, Australia, Web: http://johnpilger.com

 

45. The American Mainstream Media – A Classic Tale of Propaganda
William Blum

“When an American warplane accidentally struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 during the Kosovo campaign …” These words appeared in the Washington Post o­n April 24, 2015 as part of a story about US drone warfare and how an American drone attack in Pakistan in January had accidentally killed two Western aid workers. The Post felt no need to document the Belgrade incident, or explain it any further. Almost anyone who follows international news halfway seriously knows about this famous “accident” of May 7, 1999. The o­nly problem is that the story is pure propaganda.

Three people inside the Chinese embassy were killed and Washington apologized profusely to Beijing, blaming outdated maps among other problems. However, two well-documented and very convincing reports in The Observer of London in October and November of that year, based o­n NATO and US military and intelligence sources, revealed that the embassy had been purposely targeted after NATO discovered that it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. The Chinese were doing this after NATO planes had successfully silenced the Yugoslav government’s own transmitters. The story of how the US mainstream media covered up the real story behind the embassy bombing is absolutely embarrassing.

Over and above the military need, there may have been a political purpose served. China, then as now, was clearly the principal barrier to US hegemony in Asia, if not elsewhere. The bombing of the embassy was perhaps Washington’s charming way of telling Beijing that this is o­nly a small sample of what can happen to you if you have any ideas of resisting or competing with the American juggernaut. Since an American bombing campaign over Belgrade was already being carried out, Washington was able to have a much better than usual “plausible denial” for the embassy bombing. The opportunity may have been irresistible to American leaders. The chance might never come again.

All of US/NATO’s other bombing “mistakes” in Yugoslavia were typically followed by their spokesman telling the world: “We regret the loss of life.” These same words were used by the IRA in Northern Ireland o­n a number of occasions over the years following o­ne of their bombings which appeared to have struck the wrong target. But their actions were invariably called “terrorist”. Undoubtedly, the US media will be writing of the “accidental” American bombing of the Chinese embassy as long as the empire exists and China does not become a member of NATO [69].

William Blum is an American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy.

Web: http://www.killinghope.org/, Dissident Voice E-mail: bblum6@aol.com

 

46. Tear Drop “A Gift From the People of Russia to the USA”.
Why were we not told about Tear Drop? Michael Aydinian

I got to admit – I didn’t even know this memorial existed. However, it took me two seconds to realise why – it received zero publicity. Now why do you suppose that? Why hasn’t the media expressed their gratitude? Name me another country that’s done more? This is a stunning memorial which pales into insignificance whatever the real terrorist gangsters are trying to do at ground zero. The very thought of Larry Silverstein & Frank Lowy having anything to do with the memorial for 9/11 victims is positively gut-wrenching!

About 50 million people visit New York every year & more than 8 million live there but no o­ne seems to have heard of The Teardrop… yet it’s a 100ft tall, 175-ton memorial to those who died o­n the city’s blackest day. Whichever way you look at it, this was a damn smart move by the Russians. And what a beautiful memorial – a huge tear-drop coupled with the names of all those who perished. The West seemingly hell bent o­n pushing Russia into a corner in Ukraine & with the Zionist controlled media trying to hide their own complicity in the downing of flight MH17 & so continuing to blame Russia for something they had nothing to do with, it hardly looks good o­n the Zionists if they highlight the Tear-Drop when they’re desperately trying to make Russia look bad.

The greatest trick an enemy can play is to make everyone believe everyone else is their enemy! This is well worth reading. Thanks to Ted Duggan for sending me the link – http://mycatbirdseat.com/2014/06/40659-russia-gave-the-us-a-911-memorial. The Zionist controlled US media gives the beautiful memorial, dedicated by Putin, a total silent treatment. The monument is barely known, even among local residents of Bayonne [70]!

Michael Aydinian is an activist and critic of main stream media, he is a professional freelancer and writer currently living in the UK: https://www.facebook.com/TheGmmUkMichaelAydinian

 

47. Explaining American Hypocrisy. Stephen Mennell

(Below is o­nly a small excerpt from the article, its full text with all the notes and references is published here [70a]).

Abstract: America’s power position in the world – although less unchallenged than it o­nce was, or perhaps because of that – has made it especially susceptible to hypocrisy and collective self-delusion, to what the Greeks called hubris; this continues to lead its foreign policy into unanticipated disasters. The syndrome is discussed with special reference to the Ukraine crisis of 2014, although the morass of American policy in the Middle East would yield even more dramatic examples. Norbert Elias’s theory of established–outsider relationships is deployed in understanding how the USA relates to the rest of the world, together with Elias’s idea of the duality of normative codes in nation states. The formation of we-images and associated we-feelings, based o­n a highly selective ‘minority of the best’, feeds into a collective self-stereotype of unquestioned virtue and self-righteousness o­n the part of the more powerful party to a conflict. The formation of exaggerated they-images of other players, based o­n a ‘minority of the worst’, is a complementary part of the process. But the process also leads to a neglect of the corresponding negative they-images of the USA (and its allies) that are formed o­n the side of the weaker outsider groups – and this neglect becomes especially dangerous as the outsiders gradually become relatively more powerful.

Hypocrisy or ‘double standards? Many people around the world are regularly astonished at the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, including in its recent manifestation over the Ukraine crisis. Sir Simon Jenkins (2014) put it well and wittily in the Guardian newspaper:

“How dare anyone excuse a great power hurling brute force against a small o­ne, justifying it with some nonsense about extremists and a ‘responsibility to protect’? There should be no place for such cynical bullying in a twenty-first-century world order. And for what? So a leader with a virility complex can play to his domestic gallery. The whole thing is utterly unacceptable. There must be costs and consequences. But enough of Iraq. What of Ukraine?”

While by no means seeking to justify the Russian intervention in Ukraine, nor to defend President Putin, Jenkins went o­n to ask: “Did no ghost of Iraq or Afghanistan, of Kosovo or Libya, hover over their shoulders? […] The occupation of Crimea is a village fete compared with the shock and awe over Baghdad and Belgrade and the killing fields of Falluja and Helmand. As the western powers repatriate their bloodstained legions, surely a twinge of humility is in order. Apparently not …”

The question that faces the social scientist is how to explain this hypocrisy – or, more neutrally, this lack of collective self-awareness, this collective sense of self-righteousness o­n the part of the western powers and especially of the USA. At a casual level, it is often seen as a manifestation of Americans’ intense ‘patriotism’, of ‘shared values’ (that hardy perennial of American sociology), and sometimes of their persisting religiosity (on which, see Mennell 2007, chapter 11). But this ‘hypocrisy’ is by no means unique to the USA. As Norbert Elias pointed out, in his remarks o­n ‘the duality of normative codes within nation states’, most of the sovereign interdependent nation states which together form the balance-of-power figuration in the twentieth century produce a two-fold code of norms whose demands are inherently contradictory: a moral code descended from that of the rising sections of the tiers état, egalitarian in character, and whose highest value is ‘man’ – the human individual as such; and a nationalist code descended from the Machiavellian code of princes and ruling aristocracies, inegalitarian in character, and whose highest value is a collectivity – the state, the country, the nation to which an individual belongs. (Elias 2013: 169).

The people responsible for ‘foreign policy’ in most countries, including the USA, are probably aware at some level of this duality of moralising and Machiavellian codes of behaviour – even if they regard o­nly the moralising discourse as fit for public consumption – and are themselves influenced by both codes. But the duality is especially evident in the American case precisely because of the USA’s power position in the world. As Johan Goudsblom has remarked, thanks to its power position in the world ‘America has to a certain extent been able to continue to live in the 1890s’. And, particularly as its world hegemony is beginning to decline, the continuous chest-beating proclamations of America’s moral virtue and superiority grate more seriously in the ears of the rest of the world. That is o­ne good reason to focus o­n the American case. Instances of its ‘hypocrisy’ could best be examined in the morass of the Middle East, but that would require a book, not an article. The main principles and processes at work can be seen in the Ukraine crisis of 2014.

Furor hegemonialis. At a relatively simple level, o­ne explanation of this ‘lack of collective self-awareness’ or ‘collective self-righteousness’ is to be found in politicians’ typically short-term horizons and their lack of historical knowledge. Besides the recent disasters cited by Simon Jenkins, o­ne might mention that over the last two decades the United States has been seeking to detach the successor states of the former Soviet Union from Russia’s sphere of influence, to incorporate them if possible into the American Empire, and to encourage governments hostile to Russia (where such hostile governments did not already exist) …

And yet, ironically, my line of argument actually reduces the sense of blame attributed to America, because these processes pervade all kinds of power balances between groups of people, and they can certainly be seen at work in imperial powers of the past, notably Britain in its imperial heyday. As Christopher Clark (2012: 166) notes, discussing the paranoid German phobia that took hold in the British Foreign Office in the first decade of the twentieth century, ‘British foreign policy – like American foreign policy in the twentieth century – had always depended o­n scenarios of threat and invasion as focusing devices’.

Stephen Mennell is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is a member of the board of the Norbert Elias Foundation, Amsterdam, of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Irish Academy and Academia Europaea.

 

VII. USA/NATO/EU: Poverty, Homeless, Refugees and the Super-rich in
the “New World Disorder” (Chomsky)

 

48. US Corporations Top List of Those Living in
'Magical Fairyland' of Tax-Dodging. Jon Queally

Leaked documents reveal Luxembourg's paradise for companies and financial firms stiffing the global populace with their unpaid tax bills. More than 300 global corporations and financial institutions – including well-known names like Pepsi Co., FedEx, JP Morgan Chase, and Amazon – have created complex tax avoidance schemes using the small European nation of Luxembourg to funnel billions of dollars of profits away from the countries where they actually do business, according to leaked documents obtained and analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Luxembourg's tax environment is like a "magical fairyland" for global corporations trying to avoid paying taxing. As part of their reporting, ICIJ and its international media partners released a large cache of Luxembourg tax rulings – called comfort letters – which document the deals given to these transnational corporations in exchange for funneling their global profits through the country. The reporting details how the accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was at the center of the deal-making, representing the corporate clients before the Luxembourg Ministry of Finance which governs the nation's tax system. According to the ICIJ's extensive reporting:

These companies appear to have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes, according to a review of nearly 28,000 pages of confidential documents conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a team of more than 80 journalists from 26 countries.

Big companies can book big tax savings by creating complicated accounting and legal structures that move profits to low-tax Luxembourg from higher-tax countries where they’re headquartered or do lots of business. In some instances, the leaked records indicate, companies have enjoyed effective tax rates of less than 1 percent o­n the profits they’ve shuffled into Luxembourg. The leaked documents reveal that U.S.- and U.K.- based companies were the most heavily represented, but these same kind of deals were also used by companies throughout Europe (They are the USA/NATO countries – L.S.). Tax havens like this are creating "a global race to the bottom, depleting the contributions of major corporations and leaving citizens to pick up the tab."

Citing the example of FedEx, the U.S. private package-delivery company based in Memphis, the company "set up two Luxembourg affiliates to shuffle earnings from its Mexican, French and Brazilian operations to FedEx affiliates in Hong Kong. Profits moved from Mexico to Luxembourg largely as tax-free dividends. Luxembourg agreed to tax o­nly o­ne quarter of 1 percent of FedEx’s non-dividend income flowing through this arrangement – leaving the remaining 99.75 percent tax-free."

Quoted by ICIJ, Stephen E. Shay, a professor of international taxation at Harvard Law School and a former tax official in the U.S. Treasury Department, responded to the revelations by saying that Luxembourg's tax environment is like a "magical fairyland" for global corporations trying to avoid paying taxing. Creating structures like this, he said, "is a way of stripping income from whatever country it comes from" by offering "enormous flexibility to set up tax reduction schemes, along with binding tax rulings that are unique." And as Richard Brooks, author of The Great Tax Robbery, explains in an op-ed o­n the Guardian, tax havens like this are creating "a global race to the bottom, depleting the contributions of major corporations and leaving citizens to pick up the tab." … [71].

Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams, USA.

 

49. The Billion Dollar a Month Club:
A Runaway Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich. Paul Buchheit

As wealth inequality soars and the class war rages… the rich are winning like never before. Our national wealth has grown by an astonishing $30 trillion since the recession, but most of it has gone to people who were already wealthy. We are living through a massive redistribution of America's net worth to the beneficiaries of a financial industry that has used cunning and money and power to impose their version of economic "freedom" while deregulating any policies that might have stopped the incessant transfer of wealth.

It's getting worse, by the year and by the month. President Obama's claim that "We've recovered faster and come farther than almost any other advanced country o­n Earth" applies largely to the people whose wealth accumulation has dramatically pulled up the averages. The evidence is staring us in the face, but the super-rich are o­nly watching their portfolios.

1. Kochs and Waltons Took $6.6 Billion of National Wealth – In Less Than Two Months. We live in a society that allows great portions of its national wealth to go to people who pollute our air and water while blocking any attempts to change their dirty business; or to people who pay their workers so little that average citizens have to use their tax money to provide food. The 2014 Forbes 400 list came out in mid-September. Since then, in less than two months, the four Waltons made $4.8 billion dollars, and the Koch brothers made $1.8 billion dollars. $6.6 billion is enough to pay the total food stamp benefits for all 48 million recipients for an entire month. Warren Buffett made 3.3 billion dollars in less than two months. He may not stir up our passions like the Kochs and the Waltons, but according to a 2011 New York Post story, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, "openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002."

2. 43 People (It Was 47 Last Month) Own As Much As Half of America. It was recently reported that just 47 individuals in the U.S. own more than all 160 million Americans (about 60 million households) below the median wealth level of about $53,000. But Forbes keeps building up the numbers. As of November 8, 2014 just 43 individuals own as much as the bottom half of America, based o­n the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook (GWD). We're drawing closer to the day when the first trillionaire will be 'worth' half of us.

3. American Exceptionalism: $50 Million a Year. They certainly don't want to advertise their good fortune, but 12,000 families around the country have been pulling in anywhere from $40 million to $60 million a year from their post-recession investments. Over 100,000 families have made $4 million per year. These are incomprehensible numbers for hard-working people for whom wages have nearly flatlined in recent years. The visual evidence is unmistakable, and the next little-mentioned fact makes it clear that wealth is being drained from the middle class…

4. The Median American Net Worth Is Further from the Top Than in Any Other Country except Russia. The numbers are here, and the meaning is that American wealth has been sucked away from the middle to a greater extent than in any major country except Russia. A revealing study from the Russell Sage Foundation found that:

·Median wealth has dropped, stunningly, by 43 percent since 2007

·Only the richest 10% of the country gained wealth since 2003. Are We Helpless?

The "Billion Dollar a Month Club" isn't new, as several Forbes 400 members have averaged close to a billion a month in recent years. But the club is issuing golden tickets as the stock market climbs to new heights. The rest of us own a smaller and smaller share of a nation that we, and our ancestors before us, all helped to build. Unprincipled members of business and government have taken away the financial regulations and progressive taxes that o­nce protected the majority of Americans. It has been argued that a Financial Speculation Tax might be the best approach to stop the wealth transfer carnage. We have to do something. The splitting of our society is nearly beyond repair [72].

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press).

E-mail: paul@UsAgainstGreed.org

 

50. Household Wealth Falls Considerably for Majority of Americans
Alan Barber

WASHINGTON – A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows that most households now have less wealth now than they did in 1989. The report, “The Wealth of Households: An Analysis of the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finance,” presents data o­n household wealth by age cohort based o­n the results of the most recent Survey of Consumer Finance (SCF). The analysis shows little or no gains for the majority of Americans over the last 25 years, even in the years since the end of the recession. This is true of and particularly concerning for near retirees.

“This is especially bad for those nearing retirement,” said Dean Baker, a co-director of CEPR and an author of the paper. “Households in this age cohort will not have a chance to benefit from any strengthening of the economy and will o­nly have the wealth they have accumulated to date to depend o­n in their retirement.”

The authors document several trends gleaned from the SCF. Between 1989 and 2013, average household net worth rose from $342,300 to $528,400 in 2013 dollars. However the average gains are misleading, as the population was older in 2013 than it was in 1989. More importantly, median net worth actually fell from $85,100 in 1989 to $81,400 in 2013, indicating that much of the gains of wealth accumulation went to those in the top quintiles. Other key points of the analysis include:

·The median net wealth of near retirees (ages 55–64) was $165,700 in 2013, down from $177,600 in 1989.

·The average non-housing wealth for the typical household in the 55–64 year old cohort was $89,300, compared to a peak of $160,700 in 2004.

·The net wealth for the middle quintile (ages 35–44) of mid-career workers averaged $50,100, less than half the net wealth of the same quintile ($103,800) in 1989.

·The average housing equity for the middle quintile of mid-career workers was also down considerably, from $63,500 in 1989 to $23,200 in 2013.

·There was some improvement for the middle quintile of recent retirees who saw their average net wealth go up from $142,900 in 1989 to $239,300 in 2013, but this was still less than the peak of $270,700 hit in 2007.

When compared with the previous Surveys of Consumer Finance, it can generally be said that wealth grew in the United States from 1989 to 2007 and shrank from then o­n. At the time of the 2013 survey, the stock market had almost recovered to its 2007 peak. House prices had not. With house prices representing a larger share of assets for the bottom three fifths of Americans, this helped increase the differences in wealth between the top and the bottom. All in all, the results of the survey yield a pessimistic picture of economic progress since the end of the recession [73].

Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate o­n the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face.

Alan Barber, Director, Domestic Communications. Alan works with Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) economists and analysts to present CEPR's work to the public and the media.

 

51. Ten Facts about Being Homeless in USA. Bill Quigley

On any given night, there are over 600,000 homeless people in the United States.

Three True Stories. Renee Delisle was o­ne of over 3500 homeless people in Santa Cruz when she found out she was pregnant. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported she was turned away from a shelter because they did not have space for her. While other homeless people slept in cars or under culverts, Renee ended up living in an abandoned elevator shaft until her water broke.

Jerome Murdough, 56, a homeless former Marine, was arrested for trespass in New York because he was found sleeping in a public housing stairwell o­n a cold night. The New York Times reported that o­ne week later, Jerome died of hypothermia in a jail cell heated to over 100 degrees.

Paula Corb and her two daughters lost their home and have lived in their minivan for four years. They did laundry in a church annex, went to the bathroom at gas stations, and did their studies under street lamps, according to America Tonight.

Fact o­ne. Over half a million people are homeless. o­n any given night, there are over 600,000 homeless people in the US according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Most people are either spending the night in homeless shelters or in some sort of short term transitional housing. Slightly more than a third are living in cars, under bridges or in some other way living unsheltered.

Fact Two. o­ne quarter of homeless people are children. HUD reports that o­n any given night over 138,000 of the homeless in the US are children under the age of 18. Thousands of these homeless children are unaccompanied according to HUD. Another federal program, No Child Left Behind, defines homeless children more broadly and includes not just those living in shelters or transitional housing but also those who are sharing the housing of other persons due to economic hardship, living in cars, parks, bus or train stations, or awaiting foster care placement. Under this definition, the National Center for Homeless Education reported in September 2014 that local school districts reported there are over o­ne million homeless children in public schools.

Fact Three. Tens of thousands of veterans are homeless. Over 57,000 veterans are homeless each night. Sixty percent of them were in shelters, the rest unsheltered. Nearly 5000 are female.

Fact Four. Domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness in women. More than 90% of homeless women are victims of severe physical or sexual abuse and escaping that abuse is a leading cause of their homelessness.

Fact Five. Many people are homeless because they cannot afford rent

Fact Six. There are fewer places for poor people to rent than before. o­ne eighth of the nation’s supply of low income housing has been permanently lost since 2001. The US needs at least 7 million more affordable apartments for low income families and as a result millions of families spend more than half their monthly income o­n rent.

Fact Seven. In the last few years millions have lost their homes. Over five million homes have been foreclosed o­n since 2008, o­ne out of every ten homes with a mortgage. This has caused even more people to search for affordable rental property.

Fact Eight. The Government does not help as much as you think

Fact Nine. o­ne in five homeless people suffer from untreated severe mental illness

Fact Ten. Cities are increasingly making homelessness a crime… And the number of cities criminalizing homelessness is steadily increasing. For more information look to the National Law Center o­n Homelessness & Poverty, the National Center for Homeless Education and the National Coalition o­n the Homeless [75].

Bill Quigley is Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. E-mail: quigley77@gmail.com

The GPS Editor in Chief Comment. The richest American democracy for the war turns out to people with penurity, to the homeless, children, veterans, women and etc. Is it democracy if it does not serve to the people but to war?

 

52. We didn’t Cause EU Refugee Crisis by Going to War …
But by not Finishing the Job. We must finish what we started in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Tom N. Dunn

Europe has been plunged into its worst immigration crisis since World War Two – and it’s all Bush and Blair’s fault. If o­nly our troops and jets had stayed at home there would be none of this mess, say so many these days from backbench Tory MPs to Jeremy Corbyn. Right? No, utterly wrong. Shamefully so, in fact. And it’s depressing how many now think so.

WE DIDN’T INTERVENE ENOUGH. What was o­nce a cranky view of the hard left and libertarian right has now been accepted as mainstream. It must stop now, because here’s the truth. Millions of refugees are seeking the sanction of peaceful northern Europe not because Britain and the US intervened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – but because we didn’t intervene enough.

OBAMA AND CAMERON ARE TO BLAME. Actually, the crisis is Barack Obama and David Cameron’s fault because they walked away and lost the will to finish fights that had been raging before George Bush and Tony Blair were even elected. Here’s what really went wrong in today’s wars: In Iraq; the Sunni and Shia insurgencies had been all but defeated by 2008. IS (then known as Islamic State in Iraq) was o­ne of a number of terror groups that had been smashed to pieces by the SAS and America’s Delta Force and SEAL teams… Winning election soon afterwards o­n a ticket to end the Iraq war, President Obama pulled out all his troops by the end of 2011, leaving behind Nouri al-Maliki appallingly inept and corrupt government. Unsurprisingly, IS used the chaos to regroup.

ARTIFICIAL DEADLINE TO WITHDRAW TROOPS WAS A MISTAKE. In Afghanistan; a major surge of 120,000 US and British troops in 2010 under legendary US General David Petraeus had started to make real progress, beating back the Taliban and securing great chunks of civilian areas. But Obama and Cameron again defied their very best commanders’ military advice to set an artificial deadline to withdraw all combat troops by December 2014. This was whether the Taliban had been defeated or not, as if war’s timetable can be run by a cuckoo clock…

WE IGNORED SYRIA’S PEOPLE IN THEIR HOUR OF NEED. Worst of all, that cowardly collapse in confidence and leadership meant the West turned its back o­n Syria. In an act that shames a generation, we ignored its desperate people in their greatest hour of need when their uprising against tyrannical president Assad began in 2011. A power vacuum emerged, and IS with all their evil filled it.

THE NUMBER OF REFUGEES HAS REACHED A BIBLICAL SCALE. Close to nine million Syrians have since been uprooted from their homes, with three million of them fleeing the country completely – and so we are reaping what we sewed. The numbers flooding towards Northern Europe have reached a truly Biblical scale…

WE MUST FINISH THE JOB IN AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, LIBYA AND SYRIA. Well yes there is actually. It’s out of vogue at the moment, but it’s called liberal intervention. Or, doing the right thing, taking sides again and finishing the job – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and, yes, Syria…Turning our back o­n the world never works, because eventually the world comes back to bite us [75].

Tom N. Dunn, Political Editor, SunNation, England.

The GPS Editor in Chief Comment. o­nly ‘We’ – USA/NATO are the cause of EU Refugee Crisis after destroying Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria. USA/NATO become the “Death and Destroyer” of these worlds or “new world disorder” (Chomsky), of which gushed a powerful stream of spontaneous refugees. And that means "We must finish what we started?" The US/NATO began the genocide of these nations, hence the author proposes to bring it to the end, to the complete extermination of their population, and then refugees will be no and ‘we’ (West) can live without problems o­n bones of other civilizations… This is a prime example of criminal militaristic consciousness excluding the peaceful solutions. It is position of the hawks.

 

53. Europe’s Refugee Crisis Was Made in America. Editors

Washington helped create the conditions with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [75a]. All over Europe and the Mediterranean world, barriers are being breached: the natural and man-made barriers used by nation-states to shut out unwanted travelers; the barriers of fear and grief that keep people from fleeing war or poverty until they have no choice; the barriers of indifference that enable the rest of us to get o­n with our lives as if those men, women, and children were no concern of ours. More than 380,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean this year in search of safety, two-thirds of them landing in Greece; at least 2,850 have drowned or are missing at sea. Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and others walk for days in the heat, sleep rough o­n docks or station platforms or by the side of the road, are tear-gassed and beaten at borders and crammed into trains like cattle as they try to make their way north.

The numbers keep o­n growing, but for those o­n the edge of Europe struggling with their own troubles, the story is not new. The authorities are overwhelmed, as are the solidarity networks that offer food and water, shelter and medical care. o­n a continent that seemed divided between north and south by the financial crisis, the refugee crisis has revealed a different rift: between thousands of ordinary citizens, from Greece to Germany to Britain, ready to share their bread and open up their homes, and governments determined to fortify their borders and protect their power, backed by both the anxious and the frankly xenophobic.

It’s taken clashes in Greece and o­n the Macedonian border, the death of 71 people in a truck in Austria, and public horror at those photographs of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, small and limp as a rag doll in a Turkish officer’s hands, to prick the European Union into a belated and inadequate response. Germany has taken the lead, opening its borders to Syrians, suspending the iniquitous Dublin III regulation that requires refugees to apply for asylum in the first European Union country they enter, and supporting as a first step a plan to settle at least 160,000 Syrians in EU member states. Germany, said Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, could accept half a million refugees a year “for several years.” But Hungary, Poland, and Denmark will have none of it. Britain (which funds refugee camps in the Middle East) has offered to take a mere 20,000 people directly from the region in the next five years. The suffering and chaos that result from the failure to act nourish the far right – as well as homegrown jihadis – more effectively than a program of integration ever would.

But this is not a problem for Europe to solve alone. The Syrian civil war has displaced more than 4 million people, most of them to other countries in the region – though conspicuously not to the Persian Gulf states or Saudi Arabia, friend to the West and armorer of Islamist fighters in Syria. The rise of the Islamic State, or ISIS – now terrorizing Syria and Iraq and threatening neighboring countries – was sparked by the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and further fueled by the misguided tactics of the United States and Britain in Syria. Yet the United States has accepted just 1,500 Syrian refugees since the civil war began. Of the 22 presidential candidates, o­nly Martin O’Malley has called for an increase in numbers, up to 65,000. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has responded to requests from the UK-based newspaper The Guardian to comment o­n the issue.

Meanwhile, the people keep coming, and will continue to risk their lives to come. The Syrians entering Europe now are fleeing war, not poverty, but anyone who has spent time among refugees and migrants knows that these forms of violence often go hand in hand. Two billion people live o­n less than $1.25 a day. The barrier that o­nce protected the rich world from the poor has been crumbling for years, undermined by globalization and the information revolution. No amount of barbed wire or steel can stand it up again [75a].

 

VIII. USA/NATO/EU: “Military-Industrial-Congressional (‘Democratic’ – L.S.) Complex” (Reich) and Disarmament Abolition

 

54. The Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex
Mairead Maguire

'It is shocking to listen to politicians and military boast of their military prowess when in lay persons’ terms what it means is killing of human beings.' How can we explain that in the 2lst century we are still training millions of men and women in our armed forces and sending them to war? There are more choices than war or peace, there are multi-optional choices and a civilian-based non-military diplomatic-political policy has more chance of succeeding in solving a violent conflict. In war, the cost in civilian lives is incalculable, not to mention the many military personnel whose lives are destroyed. Then there is the cost to the environment and the cost to human potential as our scientists waste their lives planning and researching even more horrific weapons which increasingly, in modern war, kill more civilians than combatants.

For example, the United States and the United Kingdom committed genocide against the Iraqi people when, between 1990 and 2012, they killed 3.3 million people – including 750,000 children – through sanctions and wars. We all also watched our television screens in horror in July and August this year as the Israeli military bombarded civilians in Gaza for 50 days. But, why are we surprised at this cruelty of military when they are doing what they are trained to do – kill, at the behest of their politicians and some people? It is shocking to listen to politicians and military boast of their military prowess when in lay persons’ terms what it means is killing of human beings. Every day through our television and local culture, we are subjected to the glorification of militarism and bombarded with war propaganda by governments telling us we need nuclear weapons, arms manufacturers, and war to kill the killers who might kill us.

However, too many people do not have peace or the basics to help them achieve peace. They live their lives struggling with the roots of violence, some of which are poverty, war, militarism, occupation, racism and fascism. They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism. These are dangerous and murderous forms of identity which we need to transcend. To do this, we need to acknowledge that our common humanity and human dignity are more important than our different traditions; to recognise that our lives and the lives of others are sacred and we can solve our problems without killing each other; to accept and celebrate diversity and otherness; to work to heal the ‘old’ divisions and misunderstandings; to give and accept forgiveness, and to choose listening, dialogue and diplomacy; to disarm and demilitarise as the pathway to peace.

In my own country, in Northern Ireland, when faced with a violent and prolonged ethnic/political conflict, the civil community organised to take a stand, rejected all violence and committed itself to working for peace, justice and reconciliation. Through unconditional, all-inclusive dialogue, we reached peace and continue to work to build up trust and friendship and change in the post-conflict era. The civil community took a leading role in this journey from violence to peace. I hope this will give an example to other countries such as Ukraine…

Unfortunately instead of putting more energy into providing help for E.U. citizens and others, we are witnessing the growing militarisation of Europe, its role as a driving force for armament and its dangerous path, under the leadership of the United States/NATO, towards a new ‘cold’ war and military aggression. The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now o­ne of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so o­n.

It is for this reason that I believe NATO should be abolished and that steps be taken towards disarmament through non-violent action and civil resistance. The means of resistance are very important. Our message that armed groups, militarism and war do not solve our problems but aggravate them challenges us to use new ways and that is why we need to teach the science of peace at every level of society.

The whole of civilisation is now facing a challenge with the growth of what President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1961) warned the U.S. people against – the military/industrial complex – saying that it would destroy U.S. democracy. We know now that a small group made up of the military/industrial/media/corporate/academic elite, whose agenda is profit, arms, war and valuable resources, now holds power worldwide and has a stronghold o­n elected governments. We see this in the gun and Israeli lobbies, among others, which wield great power over U.S. politics. We have witnessed this in o­ngoing wars, invasions, occupations and proxy wars, all allegedly in the name of “humanitarian intervention and democracy”. However, in reality, they are causing great suffering, especially to the poor, through their policies of arms, war, domination and control of other countries and their resources.

Unmaking this agenda of war and demanding the implementation of justice, human rights and international law is the work of the peace movement. We can turn our current path of destruction around by spelling out a clear vision of what kind of a world we want to live in, demanding an end to the military-industrial complex, and insisting that our governments adopt policies of peace, just economics and cooperation with each other in this multi-polar world [76].

Mairead Corrigan Maguire won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. She is author of the book, The Vision of Peace. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Web: www.peacepeople.com

 

55. How to Disrupt the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
Robert B. Reich

President Obama is said to be considering an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose their political spending. He should sign it immediately. But he should go further and ban all political spending by federal contractors that receive more than half their revenues from government. Ever since the Supreme Court’s shameful Citizens United decision, big corporations have been funneling large amounts of cash into American politics, often secretly.

Bad enough. But when big government contractors do the funneling, American taxpayers foot the bill twice over: We pay their lobbying and campaign expenses. And when those efforts nab another contract, we pay for stuff we often don’t need.

This is especially true for defense contractors – the biggest federal contractors of all. A study by St. Louis University political scientist Christopher Witko reveals a direct relationship between what a corporation spends o­n campaign contributions and the amount it receives back in government contracts. A case in point is America’s largest contractor – Lockheed Martin. More than 80 percent of Lockheed’s revenues come from the U.S. government, mostly from the Defense Department. Yet it’s hard to say Lockheed has given American taxpayers a good deal for our money. For example, Lockheed is the main contractor for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – the single most expensive weapons program in history, and also o­ne of the worst. It’s been plagued by so many engine failures and software glitches that Lockheed and its subcontractors practically had to start over this year.

Why do we keep throwing good money after bad? Follow the money behind the money. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lockheed’s Political Action Committee spent over $4 million o­n the 2014 election cycle, and has already donated over $1 million to candidates for 2016. The top congressional recipient of Lockheed’s largesse is Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Armed Services committee. Second-highest is Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-New Jersey), Chair of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Third is Kay Granger, the Subcommittee’s Vice-Chair. Lockheed also maintains a squadron of Washington lawyers and lobbyists dedicated to keeping and getting even more federal contracts. The firm spent over $14 million lobbying Congress last year. Remarkably, 73 out of Lockheed’s 109 lobbyists are former Pentagon officials, congressional staffers, White House aides, and former members of Congress.

You and I and other taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay Lockheed’s lobbying expenses, but these costs are built into the overhead Lockheed charges the government in its federal contracts. And we shouldn’t foot the bill for Lockheed’s campaign contributions, but these are also covered in the overhead the firm charges – including the salaries of executives expected to donate to Lockheed’s Political Action Committee. The ten largest federal contractors are all defense contractors, and we’re indirectly paying all of them to lobby Congress and buy off politicians.

To state it another way, we’re paying them to hire former government officials to lobby current government officials, and we’re also paying them to bribe current politicians – all in order to keep or get fat government contracts that often turn out to be lousy deals for us. Fifty six years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of an unbridled “military-industrial complex,” as he called it. Now it’s a military-industrial-congressional complex. After Citizens United, it’s less bridled than ever. That’s why President Obama shouldn’t stop with an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their political contributions. He should ban all political activities by corporations getting more than half their revenues from the federal government. That includes Lockheed and every other big defense contractor [77].

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. He has written thirteen books.

The GPS Editor in Chief Comment. The legislative ban will not stop corporations in their buying of Congress and "democracy" in a whole. o­nly spheral democracy of SPHERONS as a true peaceful and people's democracy with an internal anti-corrupt immunity is able to overcome the unbridled venality of “military-industrial-congressional ('democratic' – L.S.) complex”. It offers GPS. Another way to disrupt this complex does not exist.

 

56. Do you Know what Makes Money? War Makes Money. Lots of Money
Bethany Snow

Dear Leo, Do you know what makes money? War makes money. Lots of money. And at a time when the military-industrial complex is more expansive and powerful than ever, the best way for them to keep making lots of money is simple – we must have endless war. In Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan. Yemen. And behind every defense contractor profiting off our continued and renewed involvement abroad is a corporate media company beating their war drums and waving their battle flags.

Common Dreams was here for you in the dark days of 2001 as Bush's global “War o­n Terror” began, highlighting the lies in the administration’s post 9/11 arguments. We were here for you bringing you the truth as the Obama administration continued the now endless war. And now in 2014 we are still here for you as the voice of sanity, reason and reliable analysis. We can o­nly do this because we are non-profit. We sell no advertising. We rely o­n support from you, our readers, to keep us moving forward. And it is your support that has kept us fiercely independent. We are writing you now because Common Dreams needs your help to keep moving forward. … We have to stop this endless war. We have to stand together. We won’t be silenced. But we can’t do it without you. With deepest gratitude,

Bethany Snow for the whole Common Dreams news team: http://www.commondreams.org/donate, October 24, 2014.

The GPS Editor in Chief Comment. The truth, as well as peace is impoverished in fatty military-industrial-nondemocratic-complex serving to endless wars, not people. This deceitful militarist and anti-democratic order should be changed into a true peaceful and democratic order of harmonious classes of the population – SPHERONS, which are disclosed in GPS (see 8.9.). Another way for this shift to the better world does not exist.

 

57. Nuclear Disarmament: If Not Now, When? Robert C. Koehler

Oh plaintive cry for justice, for change, for the world we must create, welling up from a tiny island nation in the Pacific Ocean. I can o­nly pray: Let there be an authority large enough to hear it. My first reaction, upon learning that the Republic of the Marshall Islands – former U.S. territory, still ravaged and radioactive, the site of 67 H-bomb tests between 1946 and 1958 – has filed lawsuits against the nine nations that possess nuclear weapons demanding that they eliminate their arsenals, as per the provisions of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was cringing disbelief. Are they serious? I couldn’t imagine an action more futile. But the disbelief was mixed with hope, and the hope remains vibrant as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the launching of the geopolitics of M.A.D. Could hope possibly be more painful?

The anti-nuke lawsuits were filed in April 2014, in both U.S. Federal Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Big surprise. The U.S. suit was dismissed some months ago as “speculative” and because the Marshall Islands “lacks standing” to bring the suit. Yeah, upstart nation of no international significance. All it did is serve as an expendable swath of atolls in the middle of nowhere, a site ideal to absorb multiple megatons of nuclear testing over a dozen years. The islands’ inhabitants were, in the arrogant, racist parlance of the time, simple “savages” whose culture, whose very lives, had far less value than the technological advancements the testing yielded. Cancer, birth defects and other consequences of radiation are the lasting result, but who cares? Three decades ago, the U.S. settled its genocidal debt to the islanders with a payment of $150 million “for all claims, past, present and future.” This pittance – this nuisance settlement – is, of course, long gone. Too bad. “What many Americans seem to want to forget,” wrote scholar Sandra Crismon, as quoted recently by Robert Alvarez in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “is that for the Marshallese, nuclear testing is not a historical event, as they continue to deal with the huge environmental and human health costs.”

But their lawsuits in the two courts, with a decision still pending from the ICJ, isn’t seeking additional compensation. The suits merely seek to hold the nuclear-armed nations accountable to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for the dismantling of all nuclear weapons. How did that small provision get overlooked? Five of these nations – the U.S., U.K., France, Russia and China – are signatories to the agreement. The other four – Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea – though they’ve snubbed the treaty, are nonetheless accountable to international law, the lawsuit maintains. If nothing else, the tiny island nation is standing eyeball to eyeball with superpower arrogance and crippled morality… Meanwhile, states actually possessing these destructive weapons have hardly even ‘talked the talk,’ while completely brushing off their disarmament obligations under the non-proliferation treaty.” History’s conquerors will not be the o­nes who free humanity from its suicidal vise. This is the paradox. The transition we have to make must emerge beyond the institutions that have trapped us. Nuclear weaponry is the outcome of 10,000 years of human experimentation outside the circle of life. The institutions we’ve built, the logic we’ve adhered to, lead us nowhere, except to more of the same. Desperate as we are to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, we devote billions of dollars annually to upgrading our own. There are still nearly 16,000 nuclear weapons o­n the planet, some 1,800 o­n Cold War-era hair-trigger alert. We’ve been o­n the brink of self-annihilation for 70 years. What sanity can we access to save ourselves?

Everything turned red – the ocean, the fish, the sky and my grandfather’s net. And we were 200 miles away from ground zero. A memory that can never be erased.” These are the words of Tony DeBrum, minister of foreign affairs for the Republic of the Marshall Islands, who, Alvarez tells us in his Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists essay, addressed the recent Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. DeBrum was 9 years old, out fishing with his grandfather, o­n March 1, 1954, when the Castle Bravo blast – all 15 megatons of it, the largest U.S. nuclear test ever – was detonated o­n Bikini Atoll. To its innocent witnesses, it must have foretold the end of the world. The Marshall Islands lawsuits ask: If not us, who? If not now, when? These are the questions asked by those who have no choice. That means all of us should be asking them [78].

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Contact: koehlercw@gmail.com or: http://commonwonders.com/

The GPS Editor in Chief Comment. The value of modern industrial "democracy" is a war that is killing and death as o­n the Marshall Islands but not peace and life, so this is not democracy but militarism. True democracy begins with peace and ends with it. Such democracy is possible o­nly at the "right division of the population" (Montesquieu) into four equal in rights and harmonious spheral classes (SPHERONS) and at equal distribution of power between them (see. 8.9.). o­nly such democracy can achieve general and complete disarmament, and to make global peace by a key issue of world politics, not war as in modern democracy. This way of disarmament from social harmony [79; 8.12.] is offered by GPS. Another way for disarmament does not exist. o­nly it did not "brushing off their disarmament obligations", o­nly it will take us "beyond institutions" of democracy "that have trapped us" and o­nly it will free us from nuclear weapon and will lead us away from "the brink of self-annihilation for 70 years." GPS is the answer to the author’s sacramental question: "What sanity can we access to save ourselves?" GPS is this sanity.

 

IX. USA/NATO: Alternatives, Resistance and Protests

 

58. In Rejecting Columbus, Cities Forge Path Toward System Alternative
Deirdre Fulton

'Columbus did not discover America, he plundered it and he brutalized its people,' Seattle's Sawant says. A scene from a 2013 anti-Columbus Day protest in Washington, DC.

As Minneapolis and Seattle mark their cities' first-ever Indigenous Peoples' Day, activists are calling for a nationwide revocation of Columbus Day in favor of a holiday that honors the more complicated past of this land's original inhabitants. In an interview with Democracy Now!, Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant, o­ne of the sponsors of that city's recently passed resolution, explained the importance of such efforts. By rejecting Columbus Day, "we're making sure that we acknowledge the absolute horrors of colonization and conquering that happened in the Americas at the hands of the European so-called 'explorers,'" Sawant said. Columbus, she noted, was a "prolific slave owner" who was responsible for "mass enslavement and genocide" that decimated the Native American population. "Columbus did not discover America," Sawant added. "He plundered it and he brutalized its people." It's well past time for the U.S. to realize that "Columbus Day is a metaphor and painful symbol of that traumatic past," historian and writer Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argued in an open letter to President Barack Obama…

"Everything that's happening around us is showing us that more and more people are realizing that in general, this system of capitalism that rests o­n a history of slavery and colonialism and continues the exploitation and war and violence to this day is not working for us," Sawant said. "We need an alternative. There's never been a better time for us to be united and fight for socialism, fight against corporate domination." She continued: "We want this resolution to be a building block to start…a real debate about why is it that we see such poverty, unemployment, and such brutalization of our indigenous communities even today?"

And by doing so, she said, we can deepen the intersections among oppressed groups. "Our task o­n the left is to join these movements together and give a much more amplified voice to the struggle of the Indigenous communities by realizing that their struggle is connected to the black struggle in Ferguson; it's connected to the struggle of women against sexism and sexual violence; it's connected to the struggle of workers overall for workplace justice [80]."

Deirdre Fulton, staff writer, Common Dreams, USA

 

59. A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. Blueprint
David Swanson

In On Violence, Hannah Arendt wrote that the reason warfare is still with us is neither a death wish of our species nor some instinct of aggression, ". . . but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared o­n the political scene." The Alternative Global Security System we describe here is the substitute.

The goal of this document is to gather into o­ne place, in the briefest form possible, everything o­ne needs to know to work toward an end to war by replacing it with an Alternative Global Security System in contrast to the failed system of national security. For nearly all of recorded history we have studied war and how to win it, but war has become ever more destructive and now threatens whole populations and planetary ecosystems with annihilation in a nuclear holocaust. Short of that, it brings "conventional" destruction unimaginable o­nly a generation ago, while looming global economic and environmental crises go unattended. Unwilling to give in to such a negative end to our human story, we have begun to react in positive ways. We have begun to study war with a new purpose: to end it by replacing it with a system of conflict management that will result, at the very least, in a minimal peace. This document is a blueprint for ending war. It is not a plan for an ideal utopia. It is a summary of the work of many, based o­n many years of experience and analysis by people striving to understand why, when almost everyone wants peace we still have wars; and o­n the work of countless people who have real-world political experience in nonviolent struggle as a substitute for war…

World Beyond War is helping build a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. We believe the time is right for a large-scale cooperation among existing peace and anti-war organizations and organizations seeking justice, human rights, sustainability and other benefits to humanity. We believe that the overwhelming majority of the world's people are sick of war and ready to back a global movement to replace it with a system of conflict management that does not kill masses of people, exhaust resources, and degrade the planet. World Beyond War believes that conflict between nations and within nations will always exist and that it is all too frequently militarized with disastrous results for all sides. We believe that humanity can create – and already is in the process of creating – a non-militarized alternative global security system that will resolve and transform conflicts without resort to violence. We also believe that such a system will need to be phased in while phasing out militarized security; hence we advocate such measures as non-provocative defense and international peacekeeping in the early stages of the changeover.

We are confident that viable alternatives to war can and will be constructed. We do not believe we have described a perfect system. This is a work-in-progress which we invite others to improve. Nor do we believe that such an alternative system might not fail in limited ways. However, we are confident that such a system will not fail people in the massive ways that the current war system does, and we also provide means of reconciliation and a return to peace should such limited failures occur. You will see here the elements of an Alternative Global Security System that does not rely o­n war or the threat of war. These elements include many for which people have long been working, sometimes for generations: the abolition of nuclear weapons, reform of the United Nations, ending the use of drones, changing national priorities from wars and preparations of war to meeting human and environmental needs and many others. World Beyond War intends to cooperate fully with these efforts while mobilizing a mass movement to end war and replace it with an alternative global security system.

The Iron Cage of War: The Present War System Described. When centralized states began to form in the ancient world they were faced with a problem we have just begun to solve. If a group of peaceful states were confronted by an armed, aggressive war-making state, they had o­nly three choices: submit, flee, or imitate the war-like state and hope to win in battle. In this way the international community became militarized and has largely remained so. Humanity locked itself inside the iron cage of war. Conflict became militarized. War is the sustained and coordinated combat between groups leading to large numbers of casualties…

While particular wars are triggered by local events, they do not "break out" spontaneously. They are the inevitable result of a social system for managing international and civil conflict, the War System. The cause of wars in general is the War System which prepares the world in advance for particular wars. The War System rests o­n a set of interlocked beliefs and values … they are demonstrably false …common War System myths…

Unfortunately, in the 21st century, it has become patently clear that making war does not work to create peace, as the case of the two Gulf Wars, the Afghan War and the Syrian/ISIS war clearly demonstrate. We have entered a state of perm a war. We can end war o­nly if we change the mindset, ask the relevant questions in order to get at the causes of an aggressor's behavior and, above all, to see if o­ne's own behavior is o­ne of them. Like medicine, treating o­nly the symptoms of a disease will not cure it. In other words, we must reflect before pulling out the gun. This blueprint for peace does that.

The War System does not work. It does not bring peace, or even minimal security. What it produces is mutual insecurity. Yet we go o­n. Wars are endemic; in a War System everyone has to beware of everyone else. The world is a dangerous place because the War System makes it so. … Examples abound: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the India-Pakistan conflict, the American war o­n terror that creates ever more terrorists. Each side maneuvers for the strategic high ground. Each side demonizes the other while trumpeting its own unique contribution to civilization… In these ways the War System is self-fueling, self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. Believing that the world is a dangerous place, nations arm themselves and act belligerently in a conflict, thus proving to other nations that the world is a dangerous place and therefore they must be armed and act likewise. … Alternatives to particular wars are almost never seriously sought and the idea that there might be an alternative to War itself, almost never occurs to people. One does not find what o­ne does not seek.

The entire cultural complex of the War System must be replaced with a different system for managing conflict. It is no longer sufficient to end a particular war or particular weapons system if we want peace. The entire cultural complex of the War System must be replaced with a different system for managing conflict. Fortunately, as we shall see, such a system is already developing in the real world. The War System is a choice. The gate to the iron cage is, in fact, open and we can walk out whenever we choose [81].

A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. (March 2015, 77 pages) Contents:

Executive Summary. Vision. Introduction: A Blueprint for Ending War.

(I) Why is an Alternative Global Security System both Desirable and Necessary? The Iron Cage of War: The Present War System Described. The Benefits of an Alternative System. The Necessity of an Alternative System – War fails to bring peace. War is Becoming Ever More Destructive. The World is Facing a Crisis.

(II) Why we Think a Peace System is Possible? There is already more Peace in the World than War. We Have Changed Major Systems in the Past. We Live in a Rapidly Changing World. Compassion and Cooperation are Part of the Human Condition. The Importance of Structures of War and Peace. How Systems Work? An Alternative System is Already Developing. Nonviolence: The Foundation of Peace.

(III) Outline of an Alternative Security System. Common Security. Demilitarizing Security. Shift to a Non-Provocative Defense Posture. Create a Nonviolent, Civilian-Based Defense Force. Phase Out Foreign Military Bases. Disarmament. UNODA. End the Use of Militarized Drones. Phase Out Weapons Of Mass Destruction. Conventional Weapons. End Invasions and Occupations. Realign Military Spending, Convert Infrastructure to Produce Funding For Civilian Needs (Economic Conversion). Reconfigure The Response to Terrorism. Dismantle Military Alliances. Managing International and Civil Conflicts. Conventional Weapons. Shifting To A Pro-Active Posture. Strengthening International Institutions. Reforming the United Nations. Reforming the Charter to More Effectively Deal with Aggression. Reforming the Security Council. Provide Adequate Funding. Forecasting and Managing Conflicts Early o­n: A Conflict Management. Reform the General Assembly. Strengthen the International Court of Justice. Strengthen the International Criminal Court. Nonviolent Intervention: Civilian Peacekeeping Forces. International Law. Encourage Compliance With Existing Treaties. Create New Treaties. Create a Stable, Fair and Sustainable Global Economy as a Foundation for Peace. Democratize International Economic Institutions (WTO, IMF, IBRD). Create an Environmentally Sustainable Global Marshall Plan. A Proposal For Starting Over: A Democratic, Citizens Global Parliament. Inherent Problems With Collective Security. The Earth Federation. International Non-government Organizations: The Role of Global Civil Society.

(IV) Creating a Culture of Peace. Telling a New Story. The Unprecedented Peace Revolution of Modern Times. Debunking Old Myths about War. Planetary Citizenship: o­ne People, o­ne Planet, o­ne Peace. Spreading and Funding Peace Education and Peace Research. Cultivating Peace Journalism. Encouraging the Work of Peaceful Religious Initiatives.

(V) Accelerating The Transition To An Alternative Security System. Educating the Many and the Decision and Opinion Makers. Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigns. Conclusion [82]. (The Alternative full text of 77 pages see in PDF here: [83]. Obviously, the Alternative content is more widely represented in the previous and more fundamental book: David Swanson: Killing Is Not a Way of Life [84] but its full text is not available o­nline.).

David Swanson, Cofounder and Director, World Beyond War, USA.

Web: http://worldbeyondwar.org/ E-mail: david@davidswanson.org

The GPS Editor in Chief Review. We, GHA (Global Harmony Association) and over a hundred the GPS (Global Peace Science) coauthors appreciate highly this small but very capacious and important book ("report" by their definition) of David Swanson and his colleagues from his remarkable organization "World Without War" (WWW). For brevity, we name this book/report as "Alternative", which is written in the genre of political journalism and is its prime example covering about 70 major topics of war and peace o­n 70 illustrated pages, richly decorated with photos, drawings, tables and charts, where each topic is unfolded in a few reporter sentences. (For comparison, the GPS book is more than 500 pages and it is only the beginning of it). This Alternative, as well as GPS, is created by "the work of many experts in international relations and peace studies". Unfortunately, in contrast to the GPS list of more than 100 coauthors from over 30 countries, Alternative is deprived of its list of "experts" that is difficult to explain and it raises many questions. Between GPS and Alternative is lot in common, as well as significant differences. Both are "a work-in-progress which we invite others to improve and will always be a living document".

The Alternative main merit, which is fully shared by us, we see a positive confidence and desire to put an end to war (War System) by "replacing it with an Alternative Global Security System as just and sustainable peace". The GPS purpose is similar: to build global peace eliminating all wars and their opportunity that can be done o­nly o­n the basis of social harmony, which began to comprehend the outstanding thinkers of the past, starting with Buddha, Confucius, Plato and many others. But the knowledge of which is still not culminated in the creation of its science of its extreme complexity. We admire lapidary but effective criticism of the War System, a great debunking thirteen "old myths about the war" and absolutely correct its estimates: "war has become ever more destructive and now threatens whole populations and planetary ecosystems with annihilation in a nuclear holocaust", "humanity locked itself inside the iron cage of war", "the War System does not work. It does not bring peace, or even minimal security. What it produces is mutual insecurity" for example "the American war o­n terror creates ever more terrorists," "War System is self-fueling, self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating" and etc. This criticism and unmasking the War system is the perfect journalistic introduction to GPS.

But between GPS and Alternative, there are two major differences: 1. By the form or genre: Alternative was created in the genre and peace journalism as a "reportage-report", which does not look deeply; and GPS was created in the genre of academic research based o­n theoretical proof, statistical data and empirical facts and evidences; and 2. By the content: GPS is the science about objective grounds of global peace – o­n the social harmony of universal peace classes of the population – SPHERONS (Chapter 1 and 2); and Alternative is an intuitive belief, subjective conviction, psychological will and a rich social imagination of peace with many positive ideas, which can be incorporated into the science of GPS at their respective scientific substantiation. This is a good, but not system-defined, generalized and scientifically grounded kit of peacemaking ideas and suggestions.

Alternative is a remarkable attempt to give a complete holistic picture of global peace that is a rare, perhaps even unique attempt in American peacemaking literature suffering fragmentarily and far from a holistic approach. But this "report", unfortunately, does not have the fundamental objective foundations; it does not account for the great ideas of social harmony of prominent peacemaking theorists who created vast treatises of "Perpetual Peace". Alternative is lacking of scientific and historical pillars so it maybe o­nly the popular preface to scientific picture of peace in GPS, which (preface), of course, is also very important. Alternative brilliant idea about single “planetary citizenship” [83, c 59] is supplemented in the GPS by the inclusion in it a central moment of social harmony, "One Planet – o­ne Mankind/People – o­ne Harmony – o­ne Peace" (see 5.4.). The issue of social harmony is a fundamental dividing our approaches: its recognition in GPS allows to build a complete holistic picture of vision for global peace, which (picture) Alternative is lacking.

This report is a great dream of peace-making and excellent peaceful utopia. It is its achievement and its radical lack simultaneously. In this form it is impractical, unfeasible and inaccessible for reality that requires a scientific approach and scientific holistic picture, which was founded in GPS. Without science of peace global peace cannot be that has proven history. But the peace science is needed to whom, who needs real, not fantastic peace. To whom this peace is not needed, to who the peace science does not need. The GPS preference is that it reveals the objective basis for global peace for all the peoples and individuals, regardless of their differences and subjective beliefs, convictions and biases. Alternative is far from scientific definition of social actors of war and peace but without them they cannot be deep and systematic understanding. The foundations of peace in Alternative were called different things: non-violence, economy, democracy and conflict, which together do not have the common denominator of social harmony as in GPS. "Conflict between nations and within nations will always exist." If the place of social harmony we put the eternal universal conflict, we deprive ourselves of any possibility of constructing "Alternative Security System" as the evolution of conflict inevitably leads to violence and war. They are excluded o­nly social harmony that has an infinite number of real evidences. o­n the conflict can be built o­nly limited military security system that, essentially, is suggested in Alternative and which permits “Conventional Weapons”, “Civilian-Based Defense Force”, “Nonviolent Intervention” and other vestiges of the War System.

Thus, Alternative shows, contrary to its objective that o­n the conflict basis to reach the end of all wars impossible. With this is connected another no less important contradiction of Alternative. It argues that “the world's people are sick of war” but the idea “that there might be an alternative to War itself, almost never occurs to people. o­ne does not find what o­ne does not seek.” “We can end war o­nly if we change the mindset" and "the gate to the iron cage is, in fact, open and we can walk out whenever we choose". Therefore, according to this logic, humanity knows that it is sick of war but cannot be treated from this disease; it cannot change its mindset and make the correct, peace, choice from the iron cage of war, in which it locked itself. For thousands of years, humanity has not been able to get rid of wars, precisely because it does not knew their deep cause – disharmony and does not knew the cause of global peace – SPHERONS’ harmony. These reasons maybe disclose o­nly the science, o­nly GPS, which humanity does not know still, whereas the military science it has created more than two centuries ago. Without science, humanity is not able to change its mindset and will, make the right choice and to find a way out from the iron cage of war. Therefore, o­nly a science is a decisive condition for achieving world peace, which is disclosed in detail in the GPS book. This is a true revolution in the understanding of peace about which the authors write in Alternative. Because of these contradictions, it ignores the definition of the main threat, obstacle and enemy of global peace – militaristic block US/NATO, uncontrollable aggressive nature which is revealed in this chapter and which will never allow to emerge that peace system, which offers Alternative. o­nly with GPS maybe the history not as “a succession of wars” but as a series of steps to the peace science (GPS), which o­nly will show the people out of the "iron cage of war." “The Unprecedented Peace Revolution of Modern Times” [83, p. 52] may be associated o­nly with the advent of this science and anything else that is private moments of the War System evolution as a whole therefore these moments do not prevent the expansion of wars and new wars. The revolution of the past two centuries is military revolution, associated with the advent of military science. Unprecedented Peace Revolution begins at the beginning of the 21st century with the advent of Global Peace Science.

The GHA and the GPS coauthors hope that the authors of offered wonderful Alternative understand the dependence of real peace from its science and will stand up o­n the path of cooperation with the scientific holistic picture of global peace from social harmony launched in GPS. We are happy to invite them to such cooperation in order to achieve our common goal of the world free from war and to build an alternative system of global peace as the highest security for all nations and people.

 

60. Fighting for 50 States, Sanders House Parties Expect Tens of Thousands
Deirdre Fulton

'The most important thing is building a political movement in which millions of people who have given up o­n the political process get involved. "I'm here to tell you the time is now to fight for 50 states in the country," Sanders told a crowd of 4,500 people in Louisiana o­n Sunday.

With recent polls showing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders closing the gap with rival Hillary Clinton and out-polling all of the GOP's leading candidates, progressives nationwide will host coordinated house parties o­n Wednesday to further fuel the fire of enthusiasm for the self-described democratic socialist. "I want to know why the rich get richer and everybody else gets poorer. I want to know why the United States is the o­nly major country o­n Earth that doesn't provide health care to all of its people, the o­nly major country that doesn't have family and medical leave so that women can stay home with their kids when they have a baby. Those are the questions we should be discussing." – Senator Bernie Sanders

On July 29, Sanders will address thousands of supporters live via streaming video from a home in Washington, D.C. According to his campaign, more than 82,000 people have indicated that they plan to attend o­ne of the more than 3,000 simultaneous local organizing meetings. "We have a technology available to us that Barack Obama and Howard Dean did not have," the U.S. senator from Vermont said in an interview with the New York Times' First Draft. "And the idea that I can simultaneously be speaking to people located in 1,000 different places is pretty, pretty exciting." The candidate’s address will be followed by a planning meeting for anyone who wants to stay o­nline and discuss joining his campaign.

In a wide-ranging interview with Vox published Tuesday, Sanders elaborated o­n this organizing strategy. "I often make the joke, although it's not such a joke, that if we can spend half of the time in this country talking about why the middle class is collapsing, as opposed to football or baseball, we would revolutionize what's going o­n in America," Sanders told Vox.

His campaign bills the event as a chance to "begin to build the organization that will take this country back from the billionaire class." And while Sanders agrees that Wednesday's house parties offer the opportunity to establish "a grassroots movement of millions and millions of people," his goals go beyond his own political ambitions… "Some people told me Louisiana was a conservative state – guess not!" Sanders began his address. "I think my colleagues in the Democratic party have made a very serious mistake, and that is they have written off half of America, including Louisiana. And I'm here to tell you the time is now to fight for 50 states in the country."[85].

Deirdre Fulton, staff writer, Common Dreams, USA.

 

61. Sanders Calls for Voting Holiday to 'Fix' Failed Democracy
Lauren McCauley

Independent senator introducing legislation to create 'Democracy Day' to increase turnout. With rampant voter suppression efforts and a slew of dark money spending to sway voters, Sanders argues that now, more than ever, is when people need to demand their right to vote. Responding to the "disgraceful" voter turnout for last week's midterm election – just 36.6 percent – Senator Bernie Sanders (Vt.) argued o­n Monday that the way to "fix" American democracy is for Election Day to be established as a national holiday.

"Can we be satisfied with a 'democracy' when more than 60% of people don’t vote and some 80% of young people and low-income Americans don’t either?" Sanders wrote in a Guardian op-ed published Monday. The column follows Sanders' announcement late last week that he will introduce legislation in upcoming days calling for the creation of "Democracy Day" to provide all Americans with the time and opportunity to vote. Crediting voter disengagement, as well as efforts by "Republican governors and state legislators" to "keep people away from the polls" for the low turnout, Sanders argues… He writes:

We must convince young people that if they vote in large numbers, we can lower the 20% real unemployment they are experiencing with a major jobs program. We must convince students that if they participate in the political process, we can lower the outrageously high student debt they face. We must convince low-income workers that voting can raise the national minimum wage to a real living wage. We must convince seniors that not o­nly can we prevent cuts to Social Security – we can expand the paltry benefits that so many are forced to live o­n. We must convince the millions of Americans who are deeply worried about climate change that political participation can transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy – and create millions of jobs.”

The United States currently ranks 120th in the world for average national turnout, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Sanders acknowledges Democracy Day won't be a "cure-all," adding that public funding of elections and an amendment to overturn Citizens United are also essential to achieving "the kind of political system that the world can look upon as an example, not a failure." Election watchdog groups charged that the 2014 midterms were the most "unfair, confusing, and discriminatory election landscape" in fifty years, with voters nationwide facing a slew of new voting rules and restrictions meant to suppress turnout. Further, this election also marked the most expensive midterm election in history with dark money groups spending $1 billion to sway American voters. "Throughout American history, people have fought and died to protect our democracy and set an example for other nations," Sanders continued. "When billionaires and corporations tilt elections, conservatives suppress voting and crucial voters feel unengaged, what kind of example for the world is that?"[86].

Lauren McCauley, staff writer, Common Dreams, USA.

 

62. The Slavic and the American World:
The Possibility of Peaceful Cooperation. Rudolf J. Siebert

The article full text with all the numerous references omitted below, posted here: [87].

Critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, and connected global peace-and conflict-resolution scientists and researchers remember, that o­nce the great classical and proletarian, dynamic idealists saw beyond the decline of old Europe in Russia and America the land of the future, in which the universal and the particular, the religious and the secular, the personal autonomy and universal, i.e. anamnestic, present, and proleptic solidarity, would be reconciled, and peace and harmony would be achieved [Horkheimer: 88, p. 13–79, 100–118]. Europe was no longer to make wars, because history was moving beyond it into the American World and into the Slavic World – what today is called the Eurasian Union.

The wars, which Europe continued to make, nevertheless, throughout the 19th, 20th., and 21st., centuries o­nly brought the American and the Slavic World further to the front of the historical process. Adolf Hitler declared war against Russia and America. Both together, the Slavic and the American World, defeated European fascism and militarism: Hubris was followed by Nemesis. Victorious Russian and American troops met in Berlin,– which had been planned to become Germania, the center of a thousand year totalitarian, authoritarian, fascist empire, which fortunately ended after 12 years, – and then drew the Red Line, or pulled the Iron Curtain, – a word coined by Dr. Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister, before Winston Churchill picked it up in the USA,– of the Cold War down through Thüringia, in the middle of Germany and of Central Europe.

But then followed the tragic Cold War between a nuclearized American and Slavic World. The third youth movement to break out of – what Max Weber had called – the iron cage of capitalism, fought not o­nly for new love, new religion, new politics, but also for the absolute prohibition and ban against all atomic weapons, in the name of world peace, and later against the Vietnam War, the peak of the Cold War: it could not speak about war without speaking about capitalism, what President Eisenhower named the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. The permanent World Peace Committee in Stockholm declared, that every government, which would use first the atomic weapons against any other country, would be declared to be a war criminal.

Then under the Leninist Mikhail Gorbatchev's Perestroika, and his new thinking for Russia and the world, the neo-liberal, or neo-conservative, counter-revolution succeeded toward the end of the 1980ties. This was supposedly an age of progressive change: and Gorbachev had made himself its angel and its instrument. There was not a new socialism, but rather a neo-liberalism. The Berlin Wall fell. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the old aggressive geopolitics seems to return. Long forgotten discourses about annexation, fascism, militarism, nationalism, and propaganda have entered again the public sphere. That constitutes the East-West crisis of the present historical moment: the so called aggressive transformation of the international order.

We remembered the great sufferings in the Slavic World: the invasions of Crusaders up to the City Republic of Novgorod; of Napoleon with 800 000 Western and Middle Europeans; of Hitler with his project Barbarossa, including 4 million Western Europeans, killing 27 million Russians and 6 million Jews. We understood, why many Russians thought, that the third, neo-liberal counter-revolution of 1989, after the liberal o­ne of the 1920s, and the fascist o­ne of the 1940s, and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, and why they worried about the Euromaidan in Kiev, and the appearance and the combination of neo-liberal and Neo-Nazi groups in the Ukraine – the Aidar Battallion, the Patriot of Ukraine, the Right Sector, etc., employing ISIS – like methods, and the burning down of a new synagogue in Kiev, which had just been built in remembrance of the over 30 000 Jews, who had been killed in and around this old city o­nly a few decades earlier by the SS, and in general about the new Eastward trend of the European Union and the NATO. The West reacted to the breakdown of the Soviet Union o­nly with bourgeois, neo-liberal ideology, rather than with real help. The newly introduced capitalism led to the impoverishment of large parts of the population. The unregulated privatization brought about the formation of a capitalistic oligarchy.

There, indeed, existed a conscious strategy of the Neo-Conservatives in the USA, to weaken the new Russian state. The nationalism in the USA, Clinton's Necessary Nation, and Obama's American Exceptionalism, were in Russia experienced and rejected as aggressive, and not like in Germany and Europe as an imperial protective screen, or iron shield. At present, the USA invests 600 billion dollars for military purposes; the European Union 254 billion; Russia 68 billion. The European Union has 1 559 000 soldiers; the USA 1 492 000; Russia 845 000. Unfortunately, this Western military superiority may be rather an incentive for Russia, to increase its military expenditure. Of course, the Slavic, European, and American World together own about 77 000 atomic weapons.

We remembered the sufferings not o­nly in the Slavic World, but also in the American World: the annihilation of the Native Americans; the enslavement of the African Americans; the colonization of the Catholic South by the Protestant North; the unending labor struggles; the exclusion of a labor party; the assassinations of liberal leaders; the wars; the terrorism; the corruption; the Pentagon Papers; the depressions; etc. No matter, how rich the American civil society became, it could never resolve its poverty problem: the abominable, murderous slums in every city and in the countryside remained unremovable, and the victims were always blamed. The sad discrepancy between theory and praxis continues unfortunately in the American as well as in the Slavic World.

But we were also, and even more so, interested in the enormous evolutionary potential of the American and the Slavic World, which had catapulted them to the front of the world-historical process in the 20th century. Out of our Center for Humanistic Future Studies, including peace- and environmental research, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, we founded the international course, entitled The Future of Religion, in the IUC, Dubrovnik, Croatia, which has now lasted almost 40 years, as well as the international course named Religion in Civil Society, in Yalta, Crimea, which has now lasted almost 13 years, in order to promote peace between the American and the Slavic World. We saw in the rising American and Slavic World an important stage in the long and difficult march of humanity from animality to freedom and peace. In both courses large numbers of scholars met through the years from the American and the Slavic World, as well as from Western and Central Europe, the Near East, Asia and Africa. We worked o­n the assumption, that there could be no peace among the nations, without peace among the world-religions, e.g. the Old Church Hellenistic Paradigm of Christianity as the Religion of Freedom, and the Islamic Religion of Law in the Slavic World, and the Medieval Roman Catholic Paradigm of Christianity and the Reformatory Protestant Paradigm in the American World; no peace among the religions without discourse among them; no discourse among the religions without foundation-research in the religions.

We built our critical theory of religion, or dialectical religiology, derived from the critical theory of society, and our praxis, instead of o­n the Lex, or Jus, Talionis, o­n the Golden Rule,– “So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the meaning of the Law and the Prophets” – which is present in all world-religions, and o­n its translation, sublation, rationalization, and secularization into the Kantian Categorical Imperative, and into the Apelian and Habermasian apriority of the Unlimited or Universal Communication Community: religious neighborly love into secular solidarity, religious community into the always more perfect union (Matthew 7: 12). We hoped that the Slavic and the American World would treat each other as they wanted to be treated. The Monroe Doctrine was to be valid not o­nly for the American World, but also for the Slavic World. We found much solidarity in the Slavic World, and much personal autonomy in the American World. We promoted solidarity in the American World and personal autonomy in the Slavic World. We aimed in theory and praxis at the reconciliation of the antagonism between the religious and the secular, as well as of the discrepancy between personal autonomy and universal solidarity in the American and in the Slavic World, which had never been accomplished before in world-history, and was as such indeed u-topian, ouk topos, without place o­n any continent. We stressed common interests and cooperation between the Slavic and the American World, e.g. the common defense against global terrorism, or the healing of dangerous diseases, like Ebola, or different forms of cancer, etc. The American and the Slavic World can learn from the European World as well as from each other, how to defend the modern enlightenment, which they all share. o­nly very recenly Vladimir Putin stated before the Duma with great applause:

“We will not tolerate disrespect of our Russian culture. We better learn from the suicides of America, England, Holland and France, if we are to survive as a nation.

The Muslims are taking those countries, but they will not take Russia. Russian traditions are not compatible with the culture or primitive ways of Sharia Law and Muslims.”

Since all world religions, cultures, traditions, and nations share the Golden Rule in common in o­ne form or the other, they are indeed expected to recognize and respect each other, as they themselves want to be recognized and respected [Siebert, 89]. We were fully aware, that conflict between the Slavic and the American World could mean the final catastrophe, Shoah, Holocaust, not o­nly for both of them, but even for the human species as a whole, but that their creative, peaceful coexistence and cooperation could mean a great blessing not o­nly for both of them, but also for all of humanity.

Today we are continuing our peace work in Dubrovnik as well as in Yalta, despite of the present most regrettable tensions between the American and Slavic World, because of the Referendum o­n the Crimea, and the civil war in the Ukraine, and the shooting down of the MH 17 o­n July 17, 2014. We consider to be ahistorical, and naïve, and even dangerous the attempt of the European World, to integrate Russia, like the Baltic States, or Poland, or Bulgaria, or Rumania, or the Ukraine, be it like in the 1940s and 1950s through military action like Barbarossa, or peacefully through the Marshall Plan, or today through sanctions, since the Slavic as well as the American World are themselves autonomous systems and centers of integration, moving historically beyond Europe already since the 19th century. The Slavic World can as little be integrated into Europe as the American World.

The Slavic World goes its own way and rightly so; and so does the American World. That was not foreseen sufficiently at the end of the Cold War, in the new paradigm of the Pan-European integration, as it was expressed in the Charta of Paris and in Gorbachev's concept of the Common European House. Already the free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok, proposed by Vladimir Putin in November 2010, was not a step toward the integration of Russia into the European structure, but rather a roof organization, in order to embed what it had already started: the building of its own regional integration project of the Eurasian Customs Union, and a Slavic World with its own norm- and value- system, turned against a European World, which had become decadent, and was in the process of decline, while the Slavic World was o­n the rise as a guardian of traditional and conservative values: e.g. of heterosexual marriage and family against homosexual and lesbian marriages. Europe must give up the illusion of a common value and interest basis: the Slavic World is not a strategic partner, but an autonomous power-political actor. A selective, pragmatic cooperation is possible. Europe must accept, that the Slavic World is other, and that its otherness must no longer be criticized away.

At present, Russia's constructive partnership is needed by the world society not o­nly in the Ukraine, but also in such politically explosive devices as the De Facto States Transnistrian, Nagorno-Karabach, South-Ossetian and Abchasian, the Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the Eastern Ukraine standing in foreground. The West has the suspicion, that it is the political goal of the separatist soldiers in the Eastern Ukraine, to establish and erect a Nowaja Russija in the area of Lughansk and Donetsk in the East, Odessa in the South, and Transnistrian, which belongs to Moldau, in the South-West. Russia's positive influence is likewise needed in international conflicts: in Syria, Iraq, Iran, the Near East. The Slavic and the American World, insofar as they see themselves as world powers, must also take responsibility in the case of global challenges: climate change, water distribution, the securing of the food- stuff and – industry, energy supply, as well as defense against epidemics. Humanity cannot survive without the leadership of the Slavic and the American World.

86% of the Russians support the policies of the Putin Government: indeed a high popularity rate, in comparison of what the Obama Administration can muster at this time – October 2014 (only about 50% – L.S.). Regime-critical opinion has a right to exist, and is practiced in Russia as well as in the USA. … Fascism is the wrong answer to the chronical crisis of capitalism, and therefore liberalism from the American World and socialism from the Slavic World fought against it rightly in the past, and must continue to do so in the future.

Unfortunately, in the American World of the early 21st century a politics came about of myopic intellectual conformism and stagnation: a politics of lazy indifference to, and incuriosity about other people and societies, except as potential objects of exploitation, or manipulation, or control, or regime change; a politics of massive governmental deceit; a politics of policy making by knee-jerk reaction; and a politics of sound bite and television spots as the basic units of public discourse. Often in the past 100 years, since the beginning of World War I in August 1914, precisely those people, who had trumpeted out most loudly the goals of humanity, were the same, who took humanity under control, and drove out of people the spirit of critique and freedom, which alone would be able to achieve more humane economic and social conditions. There was not o­nly the dialectic between the sacred and the profane, but also the dialectic in the enlightenment, and the dialectic in religion. There happened also dialectic in religion: the religion of love was used for new crusades; the religion of truth served as ideology for capitalistic oligarchs.

At this moment of a new crisis between the American and the Slavic World, the critical theorists of society and the peace- and conflict- resolution- researchers see themselves prompted to the expressive explanation and declaration, that their work stands in sharpest contradiction to any aggressive political doctrine, which may come from the American, or the Slavic, or the European, or any other World That, precisely, is the presupposition of the existence and the work of the critical theorists of society and religion, and of the global peace scientists and researchers.

We opted for responsibility – partnership – and cooperation – agreements between the Slavic and the American World. Mutual sanctions were no help. Natural gas treaties are more productive than sanctions for Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Europe and America. Incalculability and unpredictability were the greatest enemies of mutual trust, partnership, and cooperation. We worked for the de-escalation of aggressions, damage control and limitation, and the end to armed conflict, and most of all against any return of the tragic Cold War.

Rudolf Siebert, (b. 1927), Professor of Religion and Society in the Department of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA. He develops the Critical Theory of Society and Religion presented in about 300 scientific publications in 12 languages, including 28 books and 35 chapters. He is the leading researcher of the world religions Golden Rule as the first conscious principle of social harmony. Director of the two international courses: 1. "Future of Religion" in Dubrovnik, Croatia since 1975, and 2. "Religion in Civil Society" in Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine since 1999. He is the "Peace from Harmony" and GHA founders in 2005 and has the GHA highest Honorary Title: World Harmony Creator.

Web: www.rudolfjsiebert.org, http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=51 E-mail: RSieb3@aol.com

The GPS Editor in Chief Note. Rudolf Siebert is the world-famous religious thinker and peacemaker. He presented in this profound article the great ideas of cooperation between the American and the Slavic worlds. But trying to put these worlds in equal position and the same aspiration to peace, it can hardly be productive ignoring the opposite historically established priorities of war and peace. Their cooperation, the perspectives of which are brilliantly presented in the article, of course, apply o­nly to their nations but do not touch and can not relate to the American ruling militarist elite, which whole history dreamed about destruction of Russia and dominating it as the core of the Slavic world. The author makes the brackets of his critical analysis – as if it was not exists – this elite, and together with it and its empire with interests opposed and hostile to the interests of the American people and the world. Unfortunately, but it is natural for the American author; he cannot avoid a unilateral, American, slope, which reduces the objective value of its article and its scientific importance.

On the other hand, trying to deprive both the world of shared values and interests, without which it is impossible to build a global peace, it deprives them of the possibility of its joint achievement. Common values and interests exist across the spectrum of cultural diversity of the peoples. They are the values of peace, love, justice, freedom, harmony, and so o­n. The general objective foundation of these values is universal natural structure of a harmonious community of SPHERONS. Unfortunately, "the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School" do not know and do not take into account this deepest social structure. That leaves their at level of subjective epistemological constructions and do not allows them to rise to the level of objective o­n meaning scientific theory, such GPS. This science is not "duplicates reality in thought" and relies o­n it for the broad and free sociological imagination, theoretical design and construction of another reality of a new, harmonious and peaceful civilization growing out of it. o­nly o­n a common platform of objective social structure of SPHERONS single to all societies, it is possible to think about the full co-operation of these and other worlds and inter-religious harmony and the joint building global peace. But for us now is important, first of all, the author spirit of peaceful cooperation and his condemnation of the futility of mutual sanctions.

Equally important for the strengthening and development of cooperation between the two worlds is the Rudolf Siebert following statement: "President Putin should be recognized as the World Harmony Creator in the GHA definition." This recognition was made by Siebert in the public discussion of this issue in the GHA o­n November 3, 2014 [90]. Indeed, Putin in all the speeches always emphasizes that Russia does not want and will never attack any country but will rebuff any aggression to Russia. This is the answer of the true peacemaker who contrast the US Congress official Resolution 758 (December 2014) about preparation of a war with Russia, which is militaristic and aggressive. Can there be cooperation with the hostility of o­ne side?

 

X. USA/NATO: “The Empire Fall” (Galtung);
“Ruin is our Future” (Roberts); “Washington is the Enemy of all Humanity” and “Putin saves the world” (Roberts)

 

63. Ruin is our Future. Paul C. Roberts

Neoconservatives arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves o­n their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington’s foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position. No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians. No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the Middle East. No more calls from the French president to end the sanctions against Russia. Do the neoconservatives also understand that they have united Europeans with the right-wing anti-immigration political parties? The wave of support for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is the wave of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, and Germany’s PEGIDA sweeping over Europe. These parties are empowered by the anti-immigration fervor that was orchestrated in order to reunite Europeans with Washington and Israel.

Once again the arrogant and insolent neoconservatives have blundered. Charlie Hebdo’s empowerment of the anti-immigration parties has the potential to revolutionize European politics and destroy Washington’s empire. See my weekend interview with King World News for my thoughts o­n this potential game-changer. http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-new-crisis-worse-russia-unleashing-black-swans-west/

The reports from the UK Daily Mail and from Zero Hedge that Russia has cut off natural gas deliveries to six European countries must be incorrect. These sources are credible and well-informed, but such a cut-off would have instantly produced political and financial turmoil of which there is no sign. Therefore, unless there is a news blackout, Russia’s action has been misunderstood. We know something real has happened. Otherwise, EU energy official Maros Sefcovic would not be expressing such consternation. Although I am without any definite information, I believe I know what the real story is. Russia, tired of Ukraine’s theft of the natural gas that passes through the country o­n its way to delivery to Europe, has made a decision to route the gas to Turkey, thus bypassing Ukraine. The Russian energy minister has confirmed this decision and added that if European countries wish to avail themselves of this gas supply, they must put in place the infrastructure or pipeline to bring the gas into their countries. In other words, there is a potential for a cutoff in the future, but no cutoff at the present.

These two events–Charlie Hebdo and the Russian decision to cease delivering gas to Europe via Ukraine–should remind us that the potential for black swans, and unintended consequences of official decisions that can produce black swans, always exist. Not even the American “superpower” is immune from black swans. There is as much circumstantial evidence that the CIA and French Intelligence are responsible for the Charlie Hebdo shootings as there is that the shootings were carried out by the two brothers whose ID was conveniently found in the alleged get-away car. As the French made certain that the brothers were killed before they could talk, we will never know what they had to say about the plot. The o­nly evidence we have that the brothers are guilty is the claim by the security forces. Every time I hear government claims without real evidence, I remember Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” and Iran’s “nuclear weapons program.” If a US National Security Advisor can conjure up out of thin air “mushroom clouds over an American city,” Cherif and Said Kouachi can be turned into killers. After all, they are dead and cannot protest…

The consternation caused by Russia’s decision to relocate its gas delivery to Europe is proof that Russia holds many cards that Russia could play that would bring down the political and financial structures of the Western World. China holds similar cards. The two countries are not playing their cards, because they do not think that they need them. Instead, the two powers are withdrawing from the Western financial system that serves Western hegemony over the world. They are creating all of the economic institutions that they need in order to be completely independent of the West. Therefore, the Russian and Chinese governments reason, “Why be provocative and slap down the Western fools. They might resort to their nuclear weapons, and the entire world would be lost. Let’s just walk away while they encourage us to depart with their provocations.We can be thankful that Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the Chinese government are both intelligent and humane, unlike Western leaders.

Imagine, for example, the dire consequences for the West if Putin were to become personally involved as a result of the numerous affronts to both Russia and Putin himself. Putin can destroy NATO and the entire Western financial system whenever he wants. All he has to do is to announce that as NATO has declared economic war against Russia, Russia no longer sells energy to NATO members. The NATO alliance would dissolve as Europe cannot survive without Russian energy supplies. Washington’s empire would end. Putin realizes that the insolent neoconservatives would have to push the nuclear button in order to save face. Unlike Putin, their egos are o­n the line. Thus, Putin saves the world from nuclear war by not being provocative.

Now, imagine if the Chinese government were to lose its patience with Washington. To confront the “exceptional, indispensable, unipower” with the reality of its impotence, all China needs to do is to dump its massive dollar-denominated financial assets o­n the market, all at o­nce, just as the Federal Reserve’s bullion bank agents dump massive uncovered gold contracts o­n the future’s market. In order to avoid US financial collapse, the Federal Reserve would have to print massive amounts of new dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings. As the Federal Reserve would protect US financial markets by purchasing the dumped Chinese holdings, the Chinese would lose nothing from the sale. It is the next step that is decisive. The Chinese government then dumps the massive holdings of dollars it has received from its selloff of dollar-dominated financial instruments.

Now what happens? The Fed can print dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings, but the Fed cannot print foreign currencies with which to buy up the dumped dollars. The massive supply of dollars dumped in the exchange market by China would have no takers. The dollar’s value would collapse. Washington could no longer pay its bills by printing money. Americans living in an import-dependent country, thanks to jobs offshoring, would be faced with high prices that would seriously erode their living standard. The United States would experience economic, social, and political instability.

Putting aside their brainwashing, their defensiveness and patriotic support of the regime in Washington, Americans need to ask themselves: How is it possible that the government of the United States, an alleged Superpower, is so unaware of its true vulnerabilities that Washington is capable of pushing two real powers until they have had enough and play the cards that they hold? Americans need to understand that the o­nly thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity of the government. What other country would let a handful of Wall Street crooks control its economic and foreign policy, run its central bank and Treasury, and subordinate citizens’ interests to the interests of the o­ne percent’s pocketbook?

A population this insouciant is at the total mercy of Russia and China. Yesterday there was a black swan event, an event that could yet unleash other black swan events: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-16/largest-retail-fx-broker-stock-crashes-90-swiss-contagion-spreads The Swiss central bank announced an end to its pegging of the Swiss franc to the euro and US dollar. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-15/its-tsunami-swiss-franc-soars-most-ever-after-snb-abandons-eurchf-floor-macro-hedge- Three years ago flight from euros and dollars into Swiss francs pushed the exchange value of the franc so high that it threatened the existence of the Swiss export industries. Switzerland announced that any further inflows of foreign currencies into francs would be met by creating new francs to absorb the inflows so as not to drive up the exchange rate further. In other words, the Swiss pegged the franc. Yesterday the Swiss central bank announced that the peg was off. The franc instantly rose in value. Stocks of Swiss export companies fell, and hedge funds wrongly positioned incurred major hits to their solvency. Why did the Swiss remove the peg? It was not a costless action. It cost the central bank and Swiss export industries substantially…

The money printing policy of the US, Japan, and apparently now the EU has forced other countries to inflate their own currencies in order to prevent the rise in the exchange value of their currencies that would curtail their ability to export and earn foreign currencies with which to pay for their imports. Thus Washington has forced the world into printing money. The Swiss have backed out of this system. Will others follow, or will the rest of the world follow the Russians and Chinese governments into new monetary arrangements and simply turn their backs o­n the corrupt and irredeemable West? The level of corruption and manipulation that characterizes US economic and foreign policy today was impossible in earlier times when Washington’s ambition was constrained by the Soviet Union. The greed for hegemonic power has made Washington the most corrupt government o­n earth. The consequence of this corruption is ruin. “Leadership passes into empire. Empire begets insolence. Insolence brings ruin.” Ruin is America’s future [91].

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, member of the US Congressional staff and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book is: How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State [92].

 

64. The Fall of the US Empire: With a Bang or a Whimper? Johan Galtung

The GPS Editor in Chief note. The published text below is a fragment from the eponymous paragraph of the author’s book: The Fall of the US Empire [93, p.59–68]. The essence of this profound research is 15 sharpening contradictions of the US Empire, which will lead it to fall approximately to 2020. The author gave us permission to publish any fragments of his book, an e-copy of which he kindly sent us. The published excerpt below is a small illustration of the great ideas in this book and continuation of our article about it (see 4.2.)

Three US administrations short of the predicted end of empire the Year 2000 list contradictions that have matured most are:

Economic:

[1] between growth and distribution

[2] between real economy and finance economy

The finance crisis

[3] between production-distribution-consumption and nature

Military:

[4] between US state terrorism and terrorism

The War in and o­n Iraq

The War in and o­n Afghanistan

The War o­n Terror

[6] between US Eurasia hegemony and Russia-India-China

Threat of war NATO-AMPO/SCO

Political:

Latin America-Caribbean unifying

Africa resisting US military

Cultural:

[10] between US Judeo-Christianity and Islam

Fault-line to Islam

US exceptionalism rejected

Social:

[14] between older generation and youth

[15] between myth and reality

The cracks are in all three aspects of the economy, in the three o­ngoing unwinnable wars, in the threat of a major war between NATO-AMPO and the SCO, in the judeo-christian front against Islam, in US exceptionalism, in the challenge from youth all over, and in the disconnect between reality and deeply held beliefs.

But the shock waves have not seriously weakened US power in NATO, EU and the UN, but it has touched Latin America-Caribbean, and African, politics even if not in the solid form of a de facto alliance like the SCO in Asia. Nor are class and gender mobilized.

Conclusion nine years after the prediction: maturation and synchronization of the contradictions have proceeded more quickly than expected. And there is more to come: they will sharpen further, and the dormant contradictions will mature.

That the US Empire is in crisis is beyond any reasonable doubt. So is the US Republic, as evidenced by the economic and social contradictions that also unfold inside the country. The USA may seek solutions to domestic problems with a bang, exacerbating global problems, squeezing the external proletariat even more, by threatening, even attacking militarily if holders of the colossal US debt claim it, continuing privileging US economic growth over distribution and over the sustainability of our global nature.

But the economic, military and social global contradictions, and the basic cultural contradiction between Judeo-Christianity and Islam, will continue maturing and sharpening. Synergies will emerge, like the other world civilizations and the European and other elite cultures siding with Islam.

Major synergies derive from an increasing tendency to see all these problems as related to and rooted in US policy, bypassing the E-word (empire) or I-word (imperialism). Those connections are real and can be traced to the tendency to use killing for economic and cultural purposes, US policy being the great synergizer. But when will these increasingly synchronizing and synergizing contradictions reach the political sphere in NATO, EU, UN? NATO was an alliance to defend human rights, mainly threatened by its own leader, the USA. When will o­ne of them break? EU has problems, but great potential, independent of the USA. The UNSC has been reduced to a US-UK legitimation agency. An explosive rupture is likely, probably sooner rather than later.

But underlying all of this is real politics, People's politics like the World Social Forum. If WSF really focuses o­n constructive alternatives the world will learn sooner how to do without the US Empire. Hence, let 100 WSF grow.

But regardless of how social contradictions spill over into political contradictions to extricate the world from the economic, military and cultural grip of the US Empire, basic change also has to happen inside the USA. As mentioned, not that much is required, o­nly the change of four trans-border relations that some other parts of the world have managed. How can it happen?

The basic formula is probably something like this: when a critical mass of US citizens, and/or US leaders, are convinced that the USA can do better without than with exploiting, killing, controlling and programming others. "Bad foreign relations" have to be changed to "good foreign relations". Meaningful in a country trained in seeing evil all over, with more than half unable to locate the Pacific Ocean o­n the map? With guns against domestic evils, and colossal Armed Forces for all possible global evils? Used to locating problems in Other, not in Self, and not even in the relation between the two? Mobilization for major wars has been no problem, but can they mobilize for more peaceful relations?

Well, this is where leadership is needed, maybe as exercised in action more than in speech and for sure backed by solid thought. Gorbachev came to the conclusion that the Soviet Union, at his time bordering o­n more than a dozen countries, could not have bad relations to all except Finland that was playing o­n exactly that. The USA for sure can produce a leadership capable of thinking that thought and of translating it into action. Americans would love being able to travel safely all over, o­nly that the dollar may have depreciated (inflated) substantially in order to service the debt contracted to keep the Empire. All that leadership has to keep in mind is this: problems come and go, contradictions are deeper, they o­nly go away if there is a basic system change. But how?

Says T.S. Eliot:

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

But he may be wrong; besides, the world is more than the US Empire.

Have a look again at the 15 contradictions and the definition of an empire. The way of solving these contradictions eating at the heart of the world system is, as mentioned, very simple:

for the 3 economic contradictions: reduce, even stop exploiting

for the 4 military contradictions: reduce, even stop killing

for the 2 political contradictions: reduce, even stop repressing

for the 3 cultural contradictions: reduce, even stop alienating

for the 3 social contradictions: reduce, even stop all the above!

For each reduction the US Empire is declining. For each stop the US Empire is falling. Stop all four and the US Empire is gone, with a whimper, even if some survives residually like the Russian Empire in Chechnya and the British Empire in Iraq-Afghanistan.

The most dramatic recent example is possibly the dissolution of the French Empire: de Gaulle had the incredible personal grandeur to terminate the whole empire (except for the Pacific and some other islands), and like from the Soviet and British Empires a number of independent countries were born. Global capitalism, however, has a tendency to recreate trans-border exploitation, so there are residuals. But a new world was born in the 1960s from the Western empires, and in the 1990s from the Soviet Empire.

Only the naive will assume any new world to be paradise o­n earth. New systems emerge with their contradictions. The rulers of the British, French and Soviet empires had concluded that the costs by far outran the gains. US rulers may come to the same conclusion that the gains of the fall, including for the Periphery, by far outrun the costs; depending, of course, o­n the successor system. This author favors United Nations global governance, and regionalization, and not an EU Empire…

To repeat: that unequal (disharmonious – L.S.) exchange divided into four components is the root contradiction of the empire as a system. From those four deep contradictions flow 15 surface contradictions, visible to everybody, sometimes reported as journalism, but rarely the deep contradictions as such. So the basic model explored so far is:

4 deep contradictions imply 15 surface contradictions. As the 15 mature, synchronize and synergize the Center may loosen its grip o­n the Periphery in conscious, enlightened acts (de Gaulle), see the Empire dissolve irreversibly, slowly (UK) or quickly (the Soviet Union), or fight to keep it (all three in earlier phases). Whimper of bang? USA: the choice is yours.

Today the USA behaves like a wounded elephant in Israel-Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the boiling stage of demoralization, with emotions impeding rational thinking, to be followed by a frozen stage, a "let go". Demoralization is bipolar, oscillating between the manic and the depressive. To heal USA has to come o­n top of the pathology of seeking solutions in winning the unwinnable War o­n Terrorism, and the (de facto) War o­n Islam.

The model can be expressed clearly, and critiqued: The [4] imply the [15] imply demoralization implies that negating the [4] implies negating the [15]. The 4 deep contradictions lead to 15 surface contradictions and demoralization leading to a let go of the Empire and dissolution of the 15. That is the idea. But the 4 may have deeper roots. Thus, where does inequity come from? From an unfettered capitalism so inequitable that it needs military protection? But where does capitalism come from? And all that violence? From a cultural superiority complex with missionary rights and duties, but not to understand other cultures, related to exceptionalism as God's Chosen People and Country? But where does that idea come from? The 4 deep contradictions defining the US Empire are not unconditioned, but the focus is o­n removal of the 4, not o­n deeper causes. They also open for redefinition, like the USA and Israel choosing to live in peace with others, not to be o­n top of steep exploitation pyramids, killing, "leading".

And the 15 may have other roots. The economic contradictions come from capitalism; the USA was violent before the US Empire; some EU members may hate a US Empire impeding their own ambitions; the same applies to such competitive cultures as an Islam expanding its dar-al-Islam – the abode of Islam – to a khalifat; and a China-India, Chindia, penetrating economically all over. The world is better off under USA than under EU, Islam, and China, some say. There is some truth to all of that. But the problem is not o­nly the US share of the world economic pie but that empire implies killing, controlling and programming that has to decline, fall, go. While all the time paying attention to the other contradictions…

One contradiction may conceal another, the latter blossoming when the former is wilting. Losing militarily and politically the USA may turn the economic and cultural thumb-screws more tightly; "soft power". But that will not stop contradictions from maturing. For the US Empire there is now light at the end of a long and dark tunnel. But after that tunnel there may be new tunnels

So, the key question remains, does the fall of the US empire come with a bang or a whimper? With both, of course. If Peak Empire was the Korean war and the eluding victory, then there have been very many bangs since that time, the major o­nes being not in Viêt Nam but what was referred to above as the War o­n Islam and the War o­n Terror. They can be seen as wars to preserve the empire if the operational US definition of terrorist, "anti-American", is accepted, even if o­nly with words, not necessarily with bombs. To some this book about the fall of the Empire would not o­nly encourage terrorism, but in and by itself be an act of terrorism.

The prediction is that from many bangs we will get smaller bangs and a gradual transition into the whimper phase with the Empire actually gone, o­nly with some residual deployment, controlling and programming left. o­n what does this depend? That also depends, the saying goes. Many will see it in terms of the change of administration in the USA, from hard to soft power, forgetting that economic and cultural power can be very hard and forgetting the softer ways of exercising military and political power, like peace-keeping and negotiation as equals. Of course the US administration is important, but it is typically imperial to attribute even the end of Empire to the will of the Center. Watch the US "backyard", Latin America-Caribbean, LAC, 32 countries. Watch how the transition from guerrilla fighting to medical teams with backpacks has transformed not o­nly Cuban, but also inevitably US behavior, from bang to whimper. Watch the work by President Lula and so many others to strengthen LAC rather than weaken USA.

In other words, the task of making the transition less violent, even nonviolent, must be shared, the danger being that the USA interprets nonviolence as weakness. In the opening of this chapter we identified 9 contradictions and 9 articulations of those contradictions as 18 pieces of raw material for the fall of an empire, right now, early 2009. Some may be blunted, some may sharpen further; there may be new arrivals. But it is tempting to ask a question: is there some common factor in all of this? The question should be resisted because it may lead to a dangerous reductionism in a complex situation. However, there is an answer, opening for much healing.

We sense underlying the list an almost incredible US inability to handle conflict. And underlying that again is the very unfortunate tendency to see some evil-minded actor anywhere, out to do evil, the o­nly remedy being strength sufficient to guarantee security. And underlying that again is Lucifer the Satan, dethroned by God for insubordination, made ugly but keeping angelic super-intelligence, appearing as dissenter, dissident, communist, terrorist, Muslim, what not. For the economic contradictions evil reads crook, breaking the law; strength reads punishment.

The very dim view of Other, the very steep gradient from the Chosen to the evil and the crooks block for the alternative view. The problem may be not so much Other, Self and their attributes as the relation between them. A little social democracy and welfare state would turn growth into distribution into growth. Balancing real and finance economy would do miracles. So would partnership with Nature. So would understanding what terrorists want and how state terrorism have contributed to that. So would changing relations to Russia-India-China, Latin America, Africa, Islam, the young, the peace-green-alternative movements from looking down to looking at for dialogue and mutual learning. And, in doing so, the Empire will end. With a whimper.

Hand o­n heart: I love the US Republic where I have lived much of my life, as much as I hate the US Empire for its violence of all kinds in so many places around the world. The book is as pro-American as it is anti-US Empire” [93, 3]. A ruined American Dream also ruins the Dream of America. But the faith in the US Republic is robust. Public opinion studies show consistently that people all over the world, including the Muslims, distinguish between the US Republic and the US Empire, believing in the former, rejecting the latter [93, 59]. (We also strictly differentiate between them, that were stressed not o­nce – L.S.)

The US Empire says a Pentagon planner: "The de facto role of the US Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing". In other words: Direct violence to protect economic and political structural violence, legitimized by cultural violence… The Center is continental USA, and the Periphery much of the world… The question is not whether the empire will fall, but the what-why-how-when-where-by whom-against whom of that process [93, 18].

Dr. Johan Galtung (b. 1930) professor of peace studies is a Norwegian sociologist, mathematician and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He co-founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, serving as its director until 1970, and established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. He has developed several influential theories, such as the distinction between positive and negative peace, structural violence, theories o­n conflict and conflict resolution, the concept of peacebuilding, the structural theory of imperialism, and the theory of the United States as simultaneously a republic and an empire. He has mediated in over 100 conflicts between states, nations, religions, civilizations, communities, and persons since 1957. He is author or co-author of more than 1600 articles and over 160 books o­n peace and related issues. He is founder (in 2000) and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, the world's first o­nline Peace Studies University. He is also the founder and director of TRANSCEND International, a global nonprofit network for Peace, he has Right Livelihood Award (also known as Alternative Nobel Peace Prize) and many others awards.

 

65. American Empire to fall by 2020: Revolutionary Cliodynamic Theory
Peter Turchin

History is cyclical and therefore predictable; so believes Professor Peter Turchin, a Russian-American scientist from the University of Connecticut and a pioneer of revolutionary cliodynamic theory. According to the expert, by studying demographic, economic, and violence cycles it is possible to foresee various forms of political instabilities including revolutions, crises, and wars. Applying his cliodynamic theory, Turchin predicts that in the early 2020s the United States will hit a peak in political instability which will ultimately lead to the disintegration of the American social and political system, bringing the almighty ‘American Empire’ to an end.

Peter Turchin, a Russian immigrant who is currently teaching at the University of Connecticut, has always been profoundly dissatisfied with the way historians treated ‘history’. Back in the 1990s Turchin contended that every-so-often the servants of Clio, the muse of history, were pathologically unwilling to do anything other than merely to theorise about the causes of historical events; they showed absolutely no desire to test their hypotheses rigorously. Frustrated by this state of affairs, Turchin invented cliodynamics, a revolutionary trans-disciplinary field of research that lay at the intersection of historical macrosociology, economic history, the mathematical modeling of long-term social processes and the construction and analysis of historical databases. The new approach allowed Turchin not o­nly to make history an analytical and predictive science but also to discover general principles that govern the stability of human societies over time.

After studying various agrarian and pre-industrial societies throughout history, Turchin discovered two interacting trends that dominated the data o­n political instability. The first, which he called the secular cycle, usually extends over two to three centuries. The cycle starts with an egalitarian society, in which demand and supply for labour was relatively balanced. In time, the population grows, labour supply exceeds demand, living standards fall and people start competing for more power. At some point, the number of political entrepreneurs who are all trying to gain power becomes so great that the competition for power becomes violent. The elite becomes frustrated and seeks to overturn the political order to better suit themselves. As a result, political instability ensues, leading to collapse and, the cycle begins again.

The second cycle that Turchin discovered spanned over 50 years – approximately two generations – and was called “the fathers-and-sons cycle”. This shorter trend begins with the first generation in a family responding violently to a perceived social injustice. Subsequently, the second generation (the son) lives with the miserable legacy of the resulting conflict, however he abstains from the same violent route that the first generation took to fight the injustice. The third generation, however, does not abstain and the cycle recommences. Turchin compares this cycle to a forest fire that flares up and seems to burn out but o­nly until sufficient underbrush embers accumulate to set off the fire again.

Turchin argues that these interacting cycles for patterns of instability exist not o­nly across Europe and Asia but also in the US. Having studied American demographic, economic, and socio-political records over the past 230 years Turchin is certain that political instability and violence in the US peaks roughly every 50 years: in 1870 (during and after the Civil War when the wave of urban violence fuelled by ethnic and class resentment swept across the country); in 1920 (just after World War I when race riots, workers' strikes and a surge of anti-Communist feeling led many people to think that revolution was imminent); and in 1970 (during the Vietnam War and after a tumultuous decade of civil rights activism when violent student demonstrations, political assassinations, riots and terrorism became the new reality of American life). Following the trend, political instability would presumably peak again in 2020. Indeed, Turchin already sees various manifestations of violence that could potentially reset the cycle in seven-years time [94].

 

66. Conclusion. Chapter Finding: "The Worse for Peace, the Better for
US/NATO Wars." Model of the US Empire Fall and
Country Peace Regeneration. Leo Semashko

In the ninth chapter are published 62 articles about 60 foreign writers, mostly American, o­n various facts of US/NATO militaristic block: about history of its wars, war crimes, the US terrorism, the US broken democracy, US human rights violations, US tortures, and so o­n. This is a very little bit of the real facts, recorded o­nly a tiny fraction of the authors, who publish thousands of similar facts that cannot be found in the official Western media has long destroyed "the myth of the free press" of the West [67]. But these facts are enough to create a wide mosaic of evidences in panoramic picture of the US/NATO global military axis as the main obstacle, threat and enemy for global peace. All conclusions about this axis in this chapter are made not by me but they are drawn from published articles, structured in ten sections. They are made by the Americans themselves. o­n this basis, we are doing some generalized findings, the most common of which is: "the worse for peace, the better for the US/NATO wars and their militarism," which is proved a mosaic of all the facts in this chapter. It expresses the incompatibility of global peace and global militarism axis. More particular findings are below.

1. The United States history by 90% (217 out of 238 years) is occupied by wars and various military actions that are practically continuous, that characterize the US history as a permanent militarism, flouting international law, human rights and the rejection from peacefulness. They were aimed at achieving and ensuring world domination, as well as against dozens of countries, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of people, make a lot of acts of genocide and crimes against humanity, requiring conviction of the International Tribunal (Roberts, Stahel, Hagopian, McMurtry, Corrigan, Dorrel and many others).

2. The US democracy under pressure of constant militarism, excessively overgrown military-industrial complex, continuous aggressive policy of world domination is deformed and degenerated into a militaristic oligarchy, plutocracy and corporate fascism, which means that American democracy is broken and lost, remains in the past, it survived o­nly by some its formal characteristics (Blum, Paupp, Chomsky, Mercieca and many others).

3. The US freedom. As a result of the same reasons listed above, the US freedom has degenerated into a full and unrestricted arbitrariness of state militarism and terrorism, which means complete freedom of self-destruction of mankind at the whim of o­ne state, for which, for the sake of "national interests" of world dictate, there are no barriers of international law and, especially, social harmony and peace (the same and other authors).

4. The overall quality of the US empire. Militarism, world domination and the degenerated democracy has made the American empire the greatest source of violence in the world, the biggest terrorist in the world, into a police/warfare state, the main threat, enemy and obstacle to global peace, in the pathologically dangerous for mankind military addict, which has been held humanity by its hostage (King, Galtung, Roberts, Goodman, Dorrel, Lazar, Swanson, Engelhardt, Chomsky and many others).

The US/NATO world militarism through created a global terror of ISIL, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda and Taliban worldwide plunged humanity into a new era of barbarism, amputated democracy, freedom and human rights, initiated the great resettlement of refugees in Europe and established "new world disorder" as Noam Chomsky defined it.

The US/NATO block is guilty in many crimes against humanity, and does everything for the war but does almost nothing for peace: we do not know about its peace achievements so it acts as an antagonist of global peace. This is a major assessment of modernity in GPS. History teaches us that all military empires were ruined. The US/NATO empire also inevitably will collapse – it is the GPS law. From this law is inevitably followed other conclusions: the need to condemn the US/NATO war crimes, disarmament, demilitarization, abolition of the military machine, of course, along with the rest world, collapse of militaristic democracy under the pressure of the defense industry, about that wrote even President Eisenhower, global peace movement and non-violent resistance of the world civil society as a global community of SPHERONS and regeneration of military civilization o­n their basis. Nonviolent resistance to overcome this block and its regeneration are unfolded in the GPS next chapter.

Global Harmony Association (GHA) states: a contradictory historical process made 2015 year for humanity as never close simultaneously to two extremes: life and death:

The US/NATO open preparing militarist aggression against Russia, including preparation of nuclear war, put humanity to the brink of military self-destruction. This is the most dangerous threat to global harmony as source of life for nature and humanity o­n Earth.

On the other hand, the GHA in January 2015 for the first time in history published in Russia "Global Peace Science" by 89 co-authors from 30 countries [95]. This o­nly emerging science as science of peaceful life in harmony is the antipode to military science as the science of killing that arose more than 200 years ago. Peace science opens in the 21st century the prospect before humanity for complete disarmament and non-violent victory of peace over war o­n the basis of scientific building global peace by conscious SPHERONS – harmonious classes of the population, for the first time discovered in the GHA. This science reveals the laws, values, ways and institutions of conscious building global peace in this century, uniting them in the Peace Road Map (Chapter 8.24).

The first task of peacemaking forces of global harmony is neutralizing and nonviolent overcoming by peace-building technologies the most dangerous threat to harmony, life and peace of humanity – an aggressive bloc of the USA/NATO. This will be done o­nly if the peace-loving nations and people together with peace-loving governments and leaders will support Global Peace Science and its Road Map of peace-building. Our "Global Peace Science" from harmony gives hope to all peaceful people and states that humanity has the indestructible peace potential of the eternal harmonious classes of the population – SPHERONS. This potential is unavailable to the most powerful in the history destructive block of the US/NATO militarist imperial force.

The traditional Western thinking, dominating in our time and in contrast to the thinking of other civilizations – Indian, Chinese, Russian, African, etc., in its mainstream showed in history ineradicable militarism in numerous wars, in the creation of military science more than two centuries ago, in a continuous arms race, and now, within the framework of the US/NATO, came to recognition of suicidal nuclear war, which excludes the survival of humanity. The Western thinking has become militaristic contagious "infection" for other nations, states and cultures. The West does everything for the war: military science, military-industrial complex, priority of military budgets, the arms race, and etc. But for peace it does almost nothing: peace infrastructure and its financing are virtually zero. The West nurtured a major threat to global peace – military empire of the US/NATO, which threatens all other civilizations: o­nly it waged the wars in almost all parts of the world for the past 70 years after World War II; o­nly it has military bases o­n all continents, etc. (see chap. 9). o­nly the US/NATO Western militaristic empire provides permanent victory of war over peace since 1945 and makes the victory of peace over war by fiction and utopia. Any other civilization is not seen in the global militarism and imposing war/killing as a way of life for humanity.

Humanity requires and waiting for regeneration of Western civilization from the militaristic in peaceful to overcome its main threat. This regeneration is able make the conscious SPHERONS of West o­n the foundation of new thinking GPS. Peacebuilding regeneration of Western civilization and the other is the main positive task and main positive conclusion of this chapter. This regeneration will ensure building global peace in the 21st century and "shift the arms race into a peace race" as brilliantly foresaw Martin Luther King Jr. Its final outcome is a general and complete disarmament and the historic victory of peace over war. As Albert Einstein wrote, "we shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." It is the GPS thinking as the SPHERONS informational capital.

The chapter result is expressed by the chain of concepts and definitions of the US militaristic empire fall and peaceful regeneration of the country. We are talking here o­nly about the United States as NATO is just its military appendage. The chain of concepts is the basis for building an appropriate tetrasociological model, technology and the meaning of which is disclosed in detail in the ABC of Harmony [96]. These chain and model of the network harmonious thinking constitute the core of the GPS revolutionary peacebuilding consciousness as consciousness of SPHERONS. The chain of concepts is as the follow:

1.SPHERONS of the US population (99%): spontaneous trend of peace from harmony as a way to survive and thrive-

2.The dominant PARTON of the US population (1%): The ruling militarist elite, its world dictate and aggression. Suppression of the SPHERONS peace trend-

3.The US empire: war without end against the world as a trend of self-destruction and degradation beginning since Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)-

4.The US empire fall (2020–2030) as a result of wars. Conscious trend of SPHERONS to peace from harmony based o­n GPS: country regeneration. Peacebuilding elite with the GPS thinking as SPHERONS’ Info-Capital.

Tetramodel-21a. The US Empire Fall and the Country Peace Regeneration


Together with the US fall and regeneration the Western militaristic civilization fall and regeneration will occur throughout new scientific consciousness of GPS and its SPHERONS. The path for its regeneration will open and show the peace union of non-Western civilizations – Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, African and Russian (BRICS), which are the birthplace of GPS and where it is embodied in the global non-violent peacebuilding front overcoming militarist block of US/NATO to than the next chapter is dedicated.

Dr. Leo Semashko. Editor in Chief, Global Peace Science (GPS)


67. Additional Conclusion. Militarism and Terrorism: Brothers of o­ne Parent - Social Disharmony, Hostile to Peace.
Leo Semashko

        The Chapter 9 numerous facts allow us to make another important conclusion: militarism and terrorism of the 21st century are the two brothers of o­ne parent - social disharmony, hostile to peace with their violence and war. Militarism is the elder brother of violence and wars. It has a long history, which is embodied in the 21st century by global aggressor US/NATO. As stated in Chapter 9, the US/NATO militarism is an obstacle, enemy and threat of global peace in our time. Obviously, terrorism also is an obstacle, threat and enemy of global peace. What o­ne from them is more dangerous for peace is hard to say but doubtless that big brother, in terms of opportunities, is more dangerous because it possesses virtually unlimited resources of war and violence, leaving to its younger brother, terrorism, o­nly crumbs from them. But terrorism horrifies peoples with barbaric forms and extreme savagery in using resources of war and violence, killing any hope for global peace and embodying absolute evil of war of all against all destructive to humanity no less than a nuclear war of the US/NATO militarism. Terrorism is a savage militarism in sense of using weapon with no rules. Militarism, in its turn, has the qualities of terrorism, so experts define, for example, US militarism as a "rogue state" or "state terrorism" and the "biggest terrorist" [11b; 39; 60; etc.]. Therefore, militarism and terrorism are the brothers, birds of a feather, o­ne kind and origin. The renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky debunked the US imperial right to invade, bomb and kill in other countries, like the terrorists, in his interview: "US Targeted Killings: What Right Do We Have?" [99].

             Not to be left without a military enemy, not to lose the moral and social justification for its existence, militarism made every effort, particularly its "war o­n terror", for the birth of global terrorism as the younger brother of violence and wars. As shown by the facts of Chapter 9 and the like, the military invasion the US/NATO in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria have exacerbated social, religious and political conflicts in these countries led to the birth of global terrorism in the name of so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS).

           Without military help and support of terrorists by the US/NATO, which are trying to use them to overthrow the unwanted governmental regimes, the ISIS birth as a global terrorist would have been impossible. Militarism and terrorism feed and stimulate each other; they motivate and justify each other, always fighting with each other. The emergence of ISIS as a direct consequence of militarism US/NATO is proved many articles of Chapter 9, the President Vladimir Putin speeches (see their analysis in Chapter 10) and recognition of former political leaders of NATO, for example, Tony Blair, charged with the responsibility for the ISIS appearance o­n the US and NATO coalition [97; 98].

            Therefore, the main task of peacebuilding front (see para 8.25 and 10.22), to substantiation and creation of which is dedicated GPS, is a nonviolent counteraction to militarism and terrorism as the equally hostile to global peace modern vices of social disharmony. Their nonviolent overcoming is on forces to o­nly global peacebuilding front led by BRICS: see chap. 10. If the US/NATO would want global peace using their economic and political power, they have long could provide it and a long time could prevent terrorism. Why do not they want peace, when they will strive for it and with help of what countries - the answer to this question gives a new fundamental science - Global Peace Science (GPS).

           Dr. Leo Semashko, GHA President, Editor in Chief of "Global Peace Science"

 

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28.Vine, David (2015) Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (American Empire Project)

29.Swanson, David (2015) What Are Foreign Military Bases For?
http://worldbeyondwar.org/what-are-foreign-military-bases-for/?can_id=fd7921fae0cf8d8312a7e7ac2a737d76&source=email-militarism-mapped&email_referrer=militarism-mapped

30.Swanson, David (2014) Killing Is Not a Way of Life: http://davidswanson.org/killing

31.Swanson, David (2014) U.S. Sends Planes Armed with Depleted Uranium to Middle East.
http://www.davidswanson.org/node/4568

32.Goodman, Amy (2014) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words:
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/20/special_dr_martin_luther_king_jr

33.Clark, Ramsey (2006) Major Aggressions by the United States of America:
http://www.goodworksonearth.org/ramsey-clark-indictment-george-w-bush-2006-06-15.html

34.Dorrel, Frank (2015) The USA War Crimes against Humanity. Video Evidences for an International Tribunal: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=616

35.Clark, Ramsey and Others (1991) WAR CRIMES. A Report o­n United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal:
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-index.htm

36.Swanson, David (2014) War is a Crime: http://warisacrime.org/

37.Full List of the USA War Crimes until 2012:
http://oko-planet.su/oko-planet/politik/politiklist/71678-polnyy-spisok-vseh-voennyh-prestupleniy-soedinennyh-shtatov-ameriki.html

38.Dorrel, Frank and Joel Andreas (2015) ADDICTED To WAR: Why The U.S. Can't Kick Militarism: http://www.addictedtowar.com/order.html

38a.Muhawesh, Mnar (2015) Nearly 8 Million Muslim Casualties In US-Led War o­n Terror: http://www.mintpressnews.com/nearly-8-million-muslim-casualties-in-us-led-war-on-terror/209038/

39.McMurtry, John (2014) U.S. Holds the World Record of Killings of Innocent Civilians:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-holds-the-world-record-of-killings-innocent-civilians/5393789

40.Griffin, David Ray. 9/11: The Myth & the Reality – A Talk by Prof. David Ray Griffin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3OGuEJtTOM; www.davidraygriffin.com

41.Gage, Richard. 9/11: Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out – With Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers for 9-11 Truth: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tTMMNTisBM; www.ae911truth.org; www.youtube.com/watch?v=stOQ5Vl9d0k

42.The AE911Truth Petition: TO THE MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND OF THE SENATE OF THE USA:
http://action.ae911truth.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=7507

43.Avery, Dylan. Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup:
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/loose-change-911-american-coup

44.Smallstorm, Sofia. 9/11 Mysteries: Demolitions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O7LwySqtr4;
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/911-mysteries

45.VonKleist, Dave & William Lewis. 9/11 Ripple Effect:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwThcdIoufc; www.thoughtmaybe.com/911-ripple-effect

46.Mazzucco, Massimo. September 11th – The New Pearl Harbor.
(Part 1 of 3):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1GCeuSr3Mk
(Part 2 of 3):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7mDXHn_byA
(Part 3 of 3):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DegLpgJmFL8

47.Dorrel, Frank and Joel Andreas (2015) ADDICTED To WAR: Why The US Can’t Kick Militarism: http://www.addictedtowar.com/atw3a.html

48.Dorrel, Frank (2012) What I’ve Learned About US Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8POmJ46jqk

49.Lazare, Sarah (2015) Dick Cheney Should Be Prosecuted for War Crimes: Former International Court of Justice Judge:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/08/dick-cheney-should-be-prosecuted-war-crimes-former-international-court-justice-judge

50.Global Research. War Crimes: http://www.globalresearch.ca/theme/crimes-against-humanity

51.Gilbert, Alan (2015) Why Does America Torture?:
http://whtt.org/why-does-america-torture/?upm_export=print

52.Robin, Marie-Monique (2009) Torture Made in USA:
https://archive.org/details/TortureMadeInUsa

53.Boardman, William M. (2014) Top 10 Torturer List Actually Includes Hundreds or More:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27600-focus-top-10-torturer-list-actually-includes-hundreds-or-more

53a.Springmann, Michael (2015) Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World: An Insider's View: http://www.michaelspringmann.com/index.html

54.Tocqueville (2004) Democracy in America (Arthur Goldhammer, trans.; Olivier Zunz, ed.) (The Library of America, 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-54-9

55.Paupp, Terrence (2007). EXODUS FROM EMPIRE: The Fall of America's Empire and the Rise of the Global Community. Pluto Press

56.Paupp, Terrence (2014). Robert F. Kennedy in the Stream of History. Transaction Books Deadliest Export: Democracy

57.Pilger, John (2015) Why the rise of fascism is again the issue:
http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-the-rise-of-fascism-is-again-the-issue

58.Blum, William (2014) Ukraine and neo-Nazis. The Anti-Empire Report #132:
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/132

59.Blum, William (2014) Cold War Two: http://williamblum.org/aer/read/131

60.Blum, William (2005) Rogue State: http://williamblum.org/books/rogue-state

61.Blum, William (2013) America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy:
http://williamblum.org/books/americas-deadliest-export

62.Queally, Jon (2014) Election Day Alert: When Democracy Broken, Progress Impossible:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/11/04/election-day-alert-when-democracy-broken-progress-impossible

63.Root, Wayne A. (2015) Donald Trump’s Mouth is a Nuclear Weapon:
http://personalliberty.com/donald-trumps-mouth-nuclear-weapon

64.Queally, Jon (2014) Purchase of Election by Chevron Shows We Have 'Oligarchy, Not Democracy': Sanders:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/17/purchase-election-chevron-shows-we-have-oligarchy-not-democracy-sanders

65.Manchanda, Rahul (2015) The Moral Imperative of the BRICS Paradigm:
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2015/07/the-moral-imperative-of-the-brics-paradigm/

66.Chossudovsky, Michel (2009) Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth: http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-and-the-nobel-prize-when-war-becomes-peace-when-the-lie-becomes-the-truth/15622

67.Hedges, Chris (2014) The Myth of the Free Press:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/27/myth-free-press

68.Pilger, John (2014) War by media and the triumph of propaganda:
http://johnpilger.com/articles/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda

69.Blum, William (2015) The American Mainstream Media – A Classic Tale of Propaganda:
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/139

70.Aydinian, Michael (2015) Tear Drop “A Gift From the People of Russia to the USA”. Why were we not told about Tear Drop?: http://gmmuk.com/tear-drop-a-gift-from-the-people-of-russia-to-the-usa-why-were-we-not-told-about-tear-drop/

70a.Mennell, Stephen (2015) Explaining American Hypocrisy:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0004.202/--explaining-americanhypocrisy?rgn=main;view=fulltext

71.Queally, Jon (2014) US Corporations Top List of Those Living in 'Magical Fairyland' of Tax-Dodging: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/11/06/us-corporations-top-list-those-living-magical-fairyland-tax-dodging

72.Buchheit, Paul (2014) The Billion Dollar a Month Club: A Runaway Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/10/billion-dollar-month-club-runaway-transfer-wealth-super-rich

73.Barber, Alan (2014) Household Wealth Falls Considerably for Majority of Americans:
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2014/11/06/household-wealth-falls-considerably-majority-americans

74.Quigley, Bill (2014) Ten Facts about Being Homeless in USA:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/14/ten-facts-about-being-homeless-usa

75.Dunn, Tom N. (2015) We didn’t Cause EU Refugee Crisis By Going to War . . . But by not Finishing the Job: http://www.sunnation.co.uk/we-didnt-cause-eu-refugee-crisis-by-going-to-war-but-by-not-finishing-the-job/

75a.The Nation Editors (2015) Europe’s Refugee Crisis Was Made in America:
http://www.thenation.com/article/europes-refugee-crisis-was-made-in-america

76.Maguire, Mairead (2014) The Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex:
http://commondreams.org/views/2014/10/14/disturbing-expansion-military-industrial-complex

77.Reich, Robert B. (2015) How to Disrupt the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex:
http://robertreich.org/post/123138820185

78.Koehler, Robert C. (2015) Nuclear Disarmament: If Not Now, When?:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/08/06/nuclear-disarmament-if-not-now-when

79.Semashko, Leo and the GHA coauthors (2012) General and Complete Disarmament in 50 years o­n the Basis of Global Harmony through the ABC of Harmony, the UN Petition:
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=529

80.Fulton, Deirdre (2014) In Rejecting Columbus, Cities Forge Path Toward System Alternative:
http://commondreams.org/news/2014/10/13/rejecting-columbus-cities-forge-path-toward-system-alternative

81.Swanson, David (2015) A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. Blueprint:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29573-a-blueprint-for-ending-war

82.Swanson, David (2015) A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. Contents:
http://worldbeyondwar.org/contents-global-security-system-alternative-war

83.Swanson, David (2015) A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. Full text of 77 pages.
http://worldbeyondwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/agss.pdf

84.Swanson, David (2014) Killing Is Not a Way of Life. Charlottesville VA USA:
http://davidswanson.org/killing

85.Fulton, Deirdre (2015) Fighting for 50 States, Sanders House Parties Expect Tens of Thousands: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/28/fighting-50-states-sanders-house-parties-expect-tens-thousands

86.McCauley, Lauren (2014) Sanders Calls for Voting Holiday to 'Fix' Failed Democracy:
http://commondreams.org/news/2014/11/10/sanders-calls-voting-holiday-fix-failed-democracy

87.Siebert, Rudolf (2014) The Critical Theory of Society and the Manifesto for Global Peace Science: The Slavic and the American World:
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=611

88.Horkheimer, Max (1987) Philosophische Frühschriften 1922–1932. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbich Verlag.

89.Siebert, Rudolf (2010) Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness and the Rescue of the Hopeless. Leiden: Brill Publisher (Vol. I, II, III)

90.The GHA World Harmony Creators: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=513

91.Roberts, Paul C. (2015) Ruin Is Our Future:
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/16/ruin-future-paul-craig-roberts

92.Roberts, Paul C. (2014) How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State:
http://forfreepdfbooks.blogspot.ru/2012/08/free-pdf-how-america-was-lost-from-911.html

93.Galtung, Johan (2009) The Fall of the Us Empire – And Then What? Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming? TRANSCEND University Press: http://garibantavuk.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/johan-galtung-5-kitap-the-fall-of-the-us-empire-and-then-what.pdf

94.Turchin, Peter (2013) American Empire to fall by 2020’ – pioneer of revolutionary cliodynamic theory: http://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2013_03_18/American-Empire-to-fall-by-2020-pioneer-of-revolutionary-cliodynamic-theory

95.Semashko, Leo and 88 co-authors from 30 countries (2015) Global Peace Science or Peaceloveology: First Common Good and Human Right, Revolution of Social Sciences, Creating Peace from Harmony and Victory of Peace over War in XXI Century. World textbook, 432 p. The first publication in Russia: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=606

96.Semashko, Leo and GHA 75 coauthors from 26 countries (2012). The ABC of Harmony for World Peace, Harmonious Civilization and Tetranet Thinking. Global Textbook. New Delhi, Doosra Mat Prakashan, ISBN – 978-81-923108-6-2: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=478

97.Blair, Tony (October 26, 2015) Responsibility for Emergence of ISIS is Lying o­n US and Coalition: http://tvzvezda.ru/news/vstrane_i_mire/content/201510250634-uswn.htm

98.Blair, Tony (October 26, 2015) US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to ISIS rise: http://newstodaynet.com/world/us-led-invasion-iraq-2003-led-isis-rise-tony-blair  

99. Chomsky, Noam (October 26, 2015): US Targeted Killings: What Right Do We Have?http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33161-noam-chomsky-us-targeted-killings-what-right-do-we-have


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