Provocations In The East, False Flags In The West

A roundup of war news, spreading rapidly as the U.S. empire thrashes about in its death throes. History suggests that 800+ military bases around the planet might look like they offer a solution to losing the consent of the governed: the president currently has 31% approval (Quinnipiac) and 75% of registered voters in his own party don't want him to run again in 2024 (CNN).

House Speaker Pelosi in Taiwan

Despite being warned that her visit to Taiwan violates previous U.S. agreements to respect China's sovereignty, she persists.

Meanwhile on the streets of Taipei pic.twitter.com/j2eTCqOETK

— Meiguolao Watcher ☭ (@Dragondescendan) August 2, 2022

In a likely too little, too late move, the Biden administration announces a feeble competitor for infrastructure projects where China's Belt and Road Initiative is already well underway in Africa.

Drone bombing Afghanistan 

Despite "withdrawing" from Afghanistan and stealing their funds abroad to prevent the Taliban government from feeding the hungry, plus funding Al Qaeda in Syria for years as "moderate rebels", the U.S. announced it had assassinated a top Al Qaeda leader in Kabul. 

"Justice has been delivered," claimed the U.S. president despite the fact that extrajudicial murder is about as far from justice as you can get. The president claimed that assassinating Ayman al-Zawahiri is a sign of America's resolve. (To do the bidding of Israel's government, I think he forgot to add.)

U.S. troops in Yemen

The long humanitarian disaster of Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen has only been possible with logistical support from its U.S. ally. Now the president of the U.S. has confimed to Congress -- you know, the legislative branch of government that used to have the sole authority to wage war -- that the U.S. has troops in Yemen as well. (Proxy war with Iran in Yemen is an element of the U.S. close alliance with colonial occupier Israel in Palestine, and despite Biden campaigning on a promise to end U.S. support for the Saudi's war there.)

Neither Twitter nor Facebook would permit me to share a link to this article.

Spreading the false flag news that Russian, not Ukrainian, forces bombed a Russian POW camp filled with captured fighters of the Azov battalion. Why would Ukraine do that? Because dead men tell no tales of forced conscription and botched operations.

Source: SanctionsKill.org

Sanctions on Venezuela and numerous other non-compliant nations. The U.S. president recently called the regions south of the U.S. border "America's front yard" perhaps indicating we are no longer a bad neighbor but now think we own the continent.

Ben Norton, "The End of U.S. Hegemony and the Rise of BRICS", Mintpress News:

In the past two decades, the U.S. grip on global power has been slipping, and new nations and organizations have begun to emerge that challenge American dominance. One of these is the BRICS, an economic and increasingly political bloc of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Argentina, Iran and others have expressed an interest in joining this alliance, which has now laid out plans for its own bank and international currency, two moves strike at the heart of American economic hegemony.

“Now that the U.S. has sanctioned one-quarter of the global population, and especially now with the economic war on Russia, BRICS has emerged as this new economic infrastructure bringing countries together that want to get around Western sanctions,”

 

War at home: Russiaphobia used as pretext for violent attacks on Black organization, the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).

From August 1, 2022 Black Alliance for Peace press release:

On Friday, July 29, 2022, the FBI executed multiple raids against APSP’s Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida and their Uhuru Solidarity Center in St. Louis, Missouri and the private residence of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela also in St. Louis. The FBI employed flashbang grenades and handcuffed Yeshitela and his wife while their house was raided.  

The FBI claims that the raids are connected to the federal indictment of a Russian national, Aleksandr Ionov, alleging that he has been working to spread "Russian propaganda" in the United States.

Source: Trzmiel/Shutterstock

 

Nuclear war looming?

From In-Depth News "Caring About Nuclear Sharing: A Setback for Nuclear Arms Control": 

It is estimated that between 100 and 150 American B61 nuclear weapons are stationed in five countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. NATO has now announced its desire to modernise its nuclear deterrence..

NATO officials were enthusiastic about the widely shared willingness to modernise the nuclear sharing concept. Jessica Cox, Chief of NATO’s nuclear policy directorate said: “We’re moving fast and furiously towards F-35 modernization and incorporating those into our planning and exercising…” And she added that “the aircraft’s advanced features also will boost the capabilities of alliance members and F-35 customers like Poland, Denmark or Norway who might be tasked with supporting actual nuclear sharing missions.”

Cox is the bland bureaucratic face of discussions preparing for total annihilation. But don't let her tone fool you. 

Educate yourself, and speak out against the WW3 madness.

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10 Reasons The U.S. Should NOT Go To War In Ukraine

10. The U.S. does a piss poor job of caring for military veterans once they are injured, either physically, psychologically, or morally. 

 9. Ukraine is ruled by literal Nazis installed in a 2014 coup promoted by Joe Biden. They oppress Jewish people in Ukraine and bomb areas with majority Russian-speaking population.

 

 8. The only winners of U.S. wars are corporations who build weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. hasn't "won" a war since 1947. 

7. Wars are expensive for taxpayers and the U.S. still does not have universal health care despite a pandemic that has killed 800,000+ people.

 6. The same corporate press outlets that promoted lies leading to war on Iraq, Libya, and Syria are promoting the lie that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. 

 5. Russia has nuclear weapons which it has never used offensively but presumably would be willing to use defensively. A nuclear exchange is game over for humanity because modern weapons make the bombs the U.S. used on Japan look puny by comparison. 

 4. Millions of people, including children and veterans, are unhoused and camping on the streets of the U.S. during the coldest month of winter. 

 3. Millions of children in the U.S. live in chronic poverty that includes hunger and this permanently affects their health and future happiness. 

 2. Thousands of young people have already had their health and future prospects ruined by enlisting in U.S. wars for empire, and we don't need to create more victims.

 1. Wars and the preparation for them drive climate chaos which is the biggest security threat facing humans collectively.

The Corporate Government War On Life Itself: Mni Woconi (Water Is Life)

Collage by James Fangboner

A new Facebook friend, Danica Niketic, shared this gem yesterday with the comment "Think about where you can apply this definition..."

Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes has observed that Genocide is a continuum that runs for years, decades or centuries. It begins with marginalization and dehumanization of an identifiable minority, the theft of their lands and property, their slaughter and decimation, and the gradual squeezing of remnant populations. The central organizing principle of the continuum is a narrative that turns "others into non-persons or monsters," that normalizes atrocities and rationalizes the "every day practice of violence."

Who could read this without thinking of Standing Rock? The extreme violence against Native water protectors and their supporters has normalized atrocities reminiscent of Nazi atrocities against Jews, especially spraying them with sustained blasts of water at freezing temperatures. The irony of turning water into a weapon against water protectors is apparent.

Of course Israel has long been guilty of using water as a weapon against its indigenous population, the Palestinian people it attempted to displace very much as European settlers attempted to displace North America's Native peoples. In an arid agricultural region withholding water from farmers is one way of driving people out, while spraying them with sewer water is a tactic for attacking those who aren't working the land. 


"Turning others into non-persons or monsters" is the weak link in the genocidal chain. 

In the case of Standing Rock, despite the corporate media's virtual news blackout, respect for Native leadership in protecting the watershed for millions is enormous.

"Police turn water cannons on Dakota Access Pipeline protesters." from Workers.org

Thousands of veterans are traveling to North Dakota to form a human shield between the Native water protector front lines and the heavily militarized police and National Guard troops attacking them. 
Millions have donated supplies, showed up ready to help, and shared the news of Standing Rock atrocities acting as citizen journalists. The whole world is watching to see what will happen on December 5 when state agents have announced the final eviction of the camp now surrounded by pipeline construction equipment. 

Veterans For Peace chapter 001 presenting a check to Chief Francis of the Penobscot Indian Nation
to support the DAPL resistance. Photo courtesy of Richard Clement, VFP.

The long international campaign to turn Muslims into monsters has been far more effective, thanks to the collusion of propaganda outlets and the regular, suspiciously convenient "terror" events alleged to have been orchestrated by Muslim extremists. The chief crime of Muslim people in the eyes of corporate government is that their faith predominates among the indigenous population in parts of Asia and Africa where fossil fuel reserves are found and/or transported. 

The war on Muslims has been underway since the Ottoman Empire began shedding colonies in the run up to WWI, as the history of Afghanistan's occupation by one super power after another demonstrates. (Not much oil there, but it is a key transport region due to geographical location.)

The attempted genocide against the Native people of the Americas has been going on even longer, essentially since 1492. Here in the 21st century, corporate greed for control of fossil fuels and control of water have crossed paths in the many pipeline projects being actively resisted in North America. Just yesterday the Prime Minister of Canada announced with a winsome smile that he had approved the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline over the objections of First Nations people. 

Corporate government has two faces which it alternates: the pretty ones like Trudeau and Obama who lull liberals to sleep while stealing the commons, and the baldly ugly ones like Trump who wake liberals up to demand narrowly defined civil rights for certain identity groups.

But it doesn't matter to the groups targeted for genocide whether the faces under the riot gear helmets are attractive or not. Black Lives Matter activists have repeatedly said that having a Black man in the White House has done nothing to stem the tide of state-sanctioned violence and prison enslavement of Black citizens. What it mostly appears to have done is piss off millions of racist voters whose economic prospects are dim and whose grasp of the reality behind the facade is even dimmer. 

The lumpen proletariat vote against their own interests because propaganda confuses them into thinking a billionaire kleptocracy will protect them and others with white privilege; it will do nothing of the kind. Instead it will continue using genocidal tactics to steal the commons upon which all life depends. For profit.

Our best defense is to refuse to marginalize or dehumanize any groups, and to always follow the money.

The handful of people still confused by why the U.S.-led coalition attacked and occupied (and continues to attack and occupy) Iraq may want to listen in to the ongoing Iraq War Tribunal as it examines the lies told about the monsters sitting on those oil fields. Of course today there is a new lie: ISIS makes them do it. Or in other words, the presence of ISIS "rationalizes the everyday practice of violence." But who made ISIS? Few in the U.S. care to pursue that question.

Just as few noticed that Obama spent his final few days in office this week adding Al Shabab in Somalia to the list of targets authorized for attack after 9/11, even though Al Shabab did not exist in 2001. And also authorized deployment of U.S. Special Forces anywhere on the planet to conduct secret assassinations outside of recognized war zones.

Under Trump even liberals are likely to wake up and realize what indigenous people have known for a long time: the whole planet is a war zone. 

Barack Obama, Suzanne Nossel, and the Janissaries

Source: Wikipedia, U.S. Military bases in 2007

Empires come and empires go, and history shows that, while they try to stay, they will use a variety of methods to maintain their grip on power. Soft power, hard power or so-called “smart" power -- whatever it takes to keep tribute flowing in from the subjugated people and colonies, and to keep the populace at the heart of the empire placid.

The Ottoman empire ruled for five hundred years in the part of the world that the U.S empire has been focused on mastering for the last several decades. Southwest Asia with its fossil fuel reserves, Northern Africa with its access to that rich continent plus proximity to all that oil, and Europe on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, a central waterway. The Ottomans losing their grip at the end of the 1800's was the catalyst for a scramble by European nations and the U.S. for the prize of the fading empire's colonies -- leading to WWI, which led to WWII, which led to the Cold War, which led to the long, long war on terror. The Ottoman decline is hardly ancient history, and I think of it from time to time as I watch the U.S. play clumsily at empire building.

To catalog the brutality and intrigue the sultans used to stay in power for so long would require a volume, if not several. For now, let's focus attention on their immensely successful scheme of co-optation. As a method of heading off the growth of viable resistance movements in the hinterlands, the Ottomans had a brilliant idea: have their provincial administrators identify promising young males in the colonies at an early age. These gifted youth would be taken from their families and communities and whisked away to the capital at Constantinople to be trained as janissaries. These were the elite palace gurads and government administrators who served at the seat of empire. They enjoyed prestige, privilege, an elegant life, and no doubt the sense of being on the inside of the most powerful empire on earth. They were playing on the A-team, as it were.

Barack Obama as the handpicked celebrity spokesman for the U.S/NATO empire would have made a fine janissary. With one African parent, he offers visible diversity. Brought up by a single mom on the white side of his family, he talks a good working class perspective. Scholarship-educated at elite private schools, he can talk that talk, too; as a tall, slim athlete, on television he looks like a star. Ditto the beautiful, brainy wife and darling children.

Elevating Obama to the highest office in the land represented a brilliant strategy on the part of the 1% doing business as the military-industrial-media complex. His position as figurehead of the Democratic Party provided unprecedented leverage to neutralize liberals and progressives while continuing to wage wars of domination across the globe. When Obama got elected, the millions who filled the streets during the Bush W. administration opposing the wars just went home. 

Relying on their sanitized information streams – NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post – they know little of drones or of Bradly Manning, nor could they care less about what he represents. The passage of the NDAA 2012, and its signing by Obama, granting the executive branch the power to indefinitely detain anyone, U.S. citizen or otherwise, indefinitely without due process or right of habeus corpus, is not even a blip on most liberal screens these day.

Many of the pacified liberal class rely on human right organizations, to which they contribute regularly to be the watchdogs. Organizations like Amnesty International rely on their robust branding as watchdogs to solicit that trust and those donations.

If you were the Ottomans and it was 2012, which threats might you be focused on neutralizing? Possibly you would be looking over your shoulder at any sector of society likely to mount a credible resistance to your legitimacy as the self-proclaimed champion of democracy, with a special emphasis on women's rights, around the globe.

Enter Suzanne Nossel. The new executive director of Amnesty- USA worked at the U.S. State department (think Hillary Clinton, Suzanne Rice, and Madeleine Albrigh)t. Before coming to AI-USA Nossel published in journals such as Foreign Affairs and Dissent, articles defending, among other things, “RECLAIMING LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM,” “smart power,” sanctions, and the cover of diplomatic engagement prior to attacking Iran. She also gave an interview, which you can see here on Mondoweiss, debunking the Goldstone report which found human rights violations during Israel's Operation Cast Lead intensive bombing of Gaza.

Operation Cast Lead victims. Source: http://www.socialistunity.com/operation-cast-lead-was-a-war-crime/

Nossel's advertising campaign “NATO: keep the progress going!” ran in Chicago during the NATO summit last May, supporting a shadow summit on maintaining the alleged progress there for women, with panelists such as Albright and current State Department staff, and an open letter on the subject to presidents Obama and Karzai, signed by Albright and various other celebrity liberals.

This dovetailed nicely with NATO's official proclamation signed by heads of state in Chicago, claiming “In the ten years of our partnership the lives of Afghan men, women and children, have improved significantly in terms of security, education, health care, economic opportunity and the assurance of rights and freedoms. There is more to be done, but we are resolved to work together to preserve the substantial progress we have made during the past decade.” 

Nothing subtle about NATO's propaganda approach: tell a big lie, loudly and often. Even better, get others to tell it for you.

Nossel's role in getting Amnesty-USA to play a more subtle game providing a pretext for military force on behalf of women's rights requires a bit more investigation to be discovered. The 21st century version of janissary recruitment may very well consist of luring young, talented players like Nossel into the fold under cover of do-good, feel-good, non-profit organizations. This provides good cover and keeps lots of well-meaning people busy writing checks and feeling useful while the real powers meet discreetly in Tokyo in July to hash out who is splitting the bills for continued “development" in Afghanistan.

Development as in 300,000 Afghan troops and national police, consuming 90% of the funds flowing towards continuing to secure the graveyard of empires.

There will be many Nossels and Obamas in the years to come. Until the end of an empire there is never any shortage of fat checks for serving empire, never any shortage of ambitious young people, whether willingly or reluctantly, to play the only well-funded game in town.

A strong effort by several national organizations, including CODEPINK (of which I am a member) to pressure Amnesty-USA to re-examine their policies and Nossel's leadership, may or may not succeed. She has already made a lot of enemies recently by removing 20% of Amnesty-USA's staff, including all the regional directors, and the staff who headed up work on Guantanamo. (Word is that new hires will be working more on "women's issues.") 

Even if it does work, Nossel will find another job, and Amnesty will find another executive director, and that person may also enjoy close ties to the US government or other branches of the empire.

Why write and talk about the whitewash of U.S. global ambitions by Amnesty-USA? So a few more liberals may wake up, smell the oil burning, and turn off the propaganda feed. They would do well at that point to consider joining those who Occupy public spaces to witness for the power of non-cooperation, civil disobedience, and solidarity over prestige, creature comforts and a shiny resumé

Is the U.S. doing the right thing fighting in Afghanistan? 69% Say NO

Qais Usyan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It's not too surprising that the recent cascade of bad news from the graveyard of empires has resulted in even mainstream media reporting that the people are fed up with war in Afghanistan. Of course Afghan people have been fed up for a long time. But who in the Obama administration listens to them?

Source: RAWA

The 99% in the U.S. are another matter. They are the ones being taxed to buy the drones and pay the salaries of the soldiers pressed into service for their third or fourth tours. Now a whopping 69% of the 99% responded NO when asked "Is the U.S. doing the right thing fighting in Afghanistan?" by a CBS News/New York Times poll. Add in the 8% who responded that they weren't sure and you've got a mere 23% still in favor of continuing the longest war this country has ever paid for. Taxation without representation?

Rep. Barbara Lee and colleagues, including both Maine's reps Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, have sponsored a resolution calling to limit funding to the rapid, safe and responsible return of all U.S. troops and "Defense" Department contractors. What, just as constructing an even bigger, maximum security prison at Bagram Air Base was getting underway? I applaud the effort that HR 780 represents, but I'm betting those who profit from building the infrastructure of occupation have a lot more influence in Congress than 69% of my fellow citizens. (Let's call Congress anyway: 202-224-3121.)

The alleged lone gunman of Kandahar got a lot of press -- once they had whisked his wife and kids on base, shut down public access to her blog about life as a military spouse, and tried to erase Robert Bales from the Internet. That may have soured some hearts and minds here at home, along with the creeping suspicion that he wasn't acting alone, and that the government is lying to us about it.

It's also hard not to notice the increasingly frequent attacks on NATO soldiers by men wearing the uniforms of our supposed partner the Afghan army. Or maybe "Green on Blue" violence is just being reported more in the mainstream press these days?

The narrative of the lone gunman who has had enough and snaps and goes on a killing rampage was eloquently questioned by Chris Hedges in a recent AlterNet piece "Murder Is Not An Anomoly in War". It is an essay update to the thesis of his book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, as applied to both soldiers and the journalists who cover their stories. When does killing stop being seen as an anomoly, and start being seen as business as usual?

General John Allen, commander of both U.S. and NATO forces as quoted by CBS reporting on the results of their poll:

"I worry that the complications from these recent events can distract us from the larger strategic imperative of this campaign," Allen said.

Or maybe that should read the larger $trategic imperative.

Guantanamo And Bagram Are Torture Prisons Funded By U.S. Taxpayers

Sign Close Guantanamo With Justice here, and learn more. Source: Center for Constitutional Rights.

It has now been ten years since the indefinite detention center at Guantanamo was established, ostensibly to conduct the "war on terror." Failing to close the notorious torture prison (see guard Chris Arendt's testimony above for details) is a broken promise made by candidate Obama, at the rotten center of denial employed by the complicit, who cover their eyes and ears in order to keep supporting him.

Last month our corrupted Congress passed and our corrupted president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, re-funding the military machine for another year AND making it illegal to release detainees who cannot be convicted of acts of terror due to lack of evidence. Your taxes will continue to feed them -- except that right now they are on hunger strike to mark the 10th anniversary of this particular island in the gulag archipelago -- as they will not be returning to their families, or to residence in a host country. Ever, apparently. It is gruesomely fitting that the legislation refusing to allow these men to be released was packaged with a law enabling the U.S. government to indefinitely detain anyone, anywhere, if deemed a threat by whichever warlord happens to be in the White House at the time. RIP, habeas corpus.

When the purpose is justice, wrongfully imprisoning a children's humanitarian relief worker is a tragedy. When the purpose is intimidation and the display of brute force, locking up Lakhdar Boumediene works as well as does keeping alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for months before a day in court. The message your government is sending you: Be frightened, be very frightened -- you could be next.

Obama may have inherited Guantanamo, but Manning and the torture prison at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan are all his. In recent days U.S. mainstream media have largely ignored an investigative report of torture and indefinite detention at Bagram -- funded by you and by me, unless you've figured out how to resist paying war taxes.

Source BBC: "Afghan investigators have accused the US Army of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country, saying inmates had reported being tortured and held without evidence.

Today I wish I were in Washington DC to join my CODEPINK sisters, Amnesty International and others who are paying attention, to form a human chain around the White House, dressed in the iconic orange jumpsuits of Guantanamo.

A decade of torture in the beautiful setting of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thus commemorated. Since I cannot be there, I will instead offer this beautiful rendering of the Cuban song Guantanamera, meaning "woman of Guantanamo," superbly performed by Celia Cruz. My mother used to sing this song when I was a child. To the lost innocence of a girl who once believed in the words of the U.S. Constitution -- and to my fellow citizens who still hold to their belief that all human beings are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, innocent until proven guilty -- I offer an additional verse?

You broke my heart when you tortured
The beautiful ones, and the bad ones.
You broke my heart when the young soldiers
Had to watch all this being done.
How could our Constitution
ever stand for something like this?
If there is such a thing as a court,
I hope all you torturers stand before it.

Guantanamera...oh women of Guantánamo
And may the indigenous
grandmothers save us.

Bring our war $$ home from Bagram, and Guantanamo, and the rest of the torture archipelago.

So Many War Crimes, Plenty of Time to Report Them -- If You Care To Know

source: @OccupyDenver slideshow on Twitter

I loved this photo, but the rest of the world will perhaps be forgiven their cynicism when they see the neo-classical domes of United States' capitol buildings and quake in fear rather than mist up over lofty ideals of government of, by, and for the people.

There's never enough time -- for me at least -- to get caught up on reading accounts of how the U.S. dba as NATO some of the time, using proxy armies and militia in other cases, projects force onto civilians in Afghanistan, and all around the globe.

This detailed account in Counterpunch, for instance, "Return to Sorman: Anatomy of a NATO War Crime" by Franklin Lamb, of just one of the 11,781 bombs or rockets that fell on people in Libya during "Operation Unified Protector" (who writes these crap names for our campaigns of death?).

The testimony of people who survived the occupation of Iraq  have mostly gone beyond sadness to bitter condemnation. Democracy Now! had Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, on the show to explain how much worse things are, especially for women, since the U.S. invaded and occupied her country.

source: Democracy Now! Activist rebuffs U.S. claims of a freer Iraq,"This is not a democratic country."

A theme that emerges from each of the accounts I've read of actual people in Iraq assessing the war's effects: division along ethnic and religious lines that did not exist before Shock and Awe. What a shameful legacy, indeed. What U.S. foreign policy seems to excel at in the 21st century is fomenting civil war wherever it goes. Hey, wasn't that what Osama bin Laden stated was al Qaeda's primary goal back in '01? Oh, actually, make that regime change in the countries of the Muslim world.

And let's not forget the U.S. sending millions each year in aid to the Egyptian military government so they can mow down pro-democracy protesters in their streets. Egypt is second only to the state of Israel in receiving -- let's call it what it is -- credits to purchase tear gas, bombs for Gaza and other places. Killing and maiming funded by your taxes and mine.

What's a person to do?

Source: Stefan Klenke, itchii.com

These folks gathered in London to honor truth teller Bradley Manning, jailed for 500+ days for exposing some of the horrors the U.S. military visited on people living in oil-rich countries. As many have observed, Manning did not shoot anybody, rape anybody, or bomb their house; he simply exposed some inconvenient facts.

The military-industrial complex counts on their propaganda machine humming 24/7 with the most glittering entertainment and distraction money can buy. Fight it by sharing some of the truth! Even a little leaking through could prove to be an existential threat.

Source: Mondoweiss The Aftermath of a Bombed Home in Gaza

And that's why you'll never see this photo on the evening "news" in the U.S.A.

Go to your town, your congressional office, your board of supervisors, your state house, and demand -- bring our war $$ home!