The Misrepresentation Of Israeli Aggression As Self-Defense

Matt Peppe

Last July, shortly after the outbreak of war in Gaza, President Barack Obama declared that "Israel has the right to defend itself against what I consider to be inexcusable attacks from Hamas." To demonstrate the general moral applicability of this position, he said that "no country can accept rocket [sic] fired indiscriminately at citizens." Obama's claims provided ideological cover for Israel to carry out wholesale slaughter over the next six weeks in which nearly 2,200 Palestinians were killed.

Obama also conveniently turned reality on its head by ignoring the fact that it was Israel that was responsible for nearly three times as many cease fire violations as Hamas since December 2012. Israel's violations of the 2012 cease fire caused the deaths of 18 people, while Palestinian violations caused none. Since the end of the 51-day war in August 2014, Israel predictably has gone on violating the most recent cease fire even more brazenly and with complete impunity.

The latest cease fire agreement stipulated that Hamas and other groups in Gaza would stop rocket attacks, while Israel would stop all military action. As with past truces, Hamas has observed the conditions. On the rare occasions that individuals or groups have fired rockets from Gaza, Hamas has arrested them. (See also here and here.)

Israel, on the other hand, has failed to live up to its end of the bargain. This is consistent with past practice. Israel has continued its illegal siege on the Gaza strip, while indiscriminately harassing and shooting at the local population. Fishermen and farmers, who are trying to subsist amid dire economic conditions, have born the brunt of the aggression.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights documented 18 instances of Israeli soldiers firing on Palestinian fishermen operating within internationally recognized Palestinian waters in September 2014 alone.

By December, Humanity for Palestine reported 94 total cease fire violations since the August truce. In addition to the many attacks on fishermen, Israeli border guards targeted "protesters;" "fired sporadically at Palestinian homes and agricultural property with machine guns and 'flashbang' grenades;" and "seriously injured" a teenager who was shot near the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The first months of 2015 have seen more of the same. According to International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC):

• On February 25, "Israeli forces opened fire at farmers in the central Gaza Strip." The previous day, farmers near Khan Younis had been fired on. Two days prior farmers near Rafah were fired on.
• On February 27, Israeli forces "opened gunfire on Palestinian houses in the Central Gaza strip." 
• On March 2, "Israeli gunboats again opened fire ... towards fishermen's boats in the Gaza strip." The Israeli forces reportedly "chased some fishing boats off the coast." 
• On March 7, fisherman Tawfiq Abu Ryala, 34, was killed when he was shot in the abdomen by Israeli navy ships. Several attacks in previous days were reported in which Palestinian fishermen were injured. "All took place while the boats were in Palestinian territorial waters." 
• On March 11, "several armored military vehicles and bulldozers carried out ... a limited invasion into an area east of the al-Maghazi refugee camp, in central Gaza, and bulldozed farmlands."

On March 13, Palestine News Network reported that "Israeli Soldiers Open Fire on Palestinian Lands and Farmers East of Khan Younis Again." The articles states that "witnesses reported that the Israeli soldiers in the borders towers opened their guns [sic] fire on the the [sic] shepherds and farmers near the security line east of Al Tuffah neighborhood east of Khan Younis." 

The vast majority of the rampant Israeli cease fire violations are not reported by the American and the Western press. When they are, the Israeli military is given the opportunity to provide self-serving rationalizations which serve as the authoritative account of what transpired.

When a fisherman was killed on March 7, a Reuters article cites an Israeli military spokesperson claiming that "four vessels had strayed from the fishing zone and that the Israeli army opened fire after the boats did not heed calls to halt." Of course, the fishermen is not able to tell his side of the story because the organization Reutersquotes killed him. 

There is no mention in the article of any of the multiple attacks on Palestinian fishermen that happen routinely in Gaza. In many similar shootings, surviving victims and witnesses can attest that fishermen are within the agreed-upon six-mile nautical limit, and certainly well within the 20-mile limit guaranteed by the Oslo accords. 

In a December article in the New York Times, Isabel Kershner writes that "Retaliating for a rocket fired into Israel on Friday, the Israeli military said it carried out an airstrike on a Hamas site in southern Gaza." She begins the sentence by stating it is Israel retaliating against Palestinian actions. Whoever fired the rocket presumably was not "retaliating" for the dozens of Israeli military cease fire violations over the previous months, but was implicitly initiating aggression.  

More importantly than this biased framing of the narrative, Kershner buries the lead at the bottom of the story: "Also on Friday, six Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire near the border fence in northern Gaza." She obsequiously follows this statement with Israeli military rationalizations that "soldiers first fired into the air to try to disperse protesters approaching the fence then fired at the legs of some of them."

Someone who commits a violent action is obviously not a partial source for an honest account of the facts. Would a journalist report on a shooting by only repeating the side of the suspect who claims self-defense? 

Six months after repeated, documented Israeli breaches of the cease fire agreement - without any by Hamas - New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof claimed in an Op-Ed that "Hamas provokes Israel." He provides no evidence for this assertion. As the record clearly shows, Kristof has it backwards. 

If no country can accept rockets fired at its population, then surely neither can they accept M16s fired at them. Or tanks and bulldozers invading their land. But perhaps Obama was deliberate in choosing his words. He stated that no country can accept rockets "fired indiscriminately at citizens (italics mine)." 

Since Palestinians live under Israeli sovereignty but are denied citizenship, they are not technically covered by Obama's moral truism. But assuming what he says should apply to all people - even those who are politically subjugated by racist regimes - Obama's words would apply equally to Palestinians.

But when asked by a reporter whether Palestinians in Gaza have the right to defend themselves, an Obama administration spokesperson denied Palestinians this right. She did not explicitly say so, but by evading and refusing to respond to a simple yes or no question, she gave the equivalent of a direct denial. "I think - I'm not sure what you're getting at," she said. After the reporter restated his crystal-clear question, she replied "What are you specifically referring to? Is there a specific even or a specific occurrence?"

In the same way that omission of material facts may constitute fraud, refusing to answer a question about whether a person enjoys a right constitutes a direct refusal to recognize that right. 

Obama did not only pervert the issue of the right to self-defense by falsely pretending it was a moral truism that he clearly and demonstrably does not extend to Palestinians, he also misrepresents the applicability of self-defense to Israel in the first place. 

As Noura Erakat explained in her July 2014 article "No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense in International Law Against Occupied Palestinian Territory," Israel is "distorting/reinterpreting international law to justify its use of militarized force in order to protect its colonial authority." Obama willingly enables Israel's lawless actions by accepting their rewriting of international law to justify their aggression. 

What Obama is really saying when he talks about self-defense is that as the leader of one rogue nation, he supports the right of his rogue client state to violate the rule of law and make fraudulent claims that are neither morally nor legally justified. 

As John Quigley explains in The Six-Day War and Israeli Self-Defense, failing to challenge Israel's bogus claims of self-defense in the 1967 war - as the United States has done by providing a diplomatic shield, vetoing more than 40 U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Israel - has had disastrous consequences for Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the system of international law in general.

"The flawed perception of the June 1967 war serves to perpetuate conflict in the Middle East. It also serves to promote the expansion of the concept of self-defense and thereby to erode the prohibition against the use of force," Quigley writes.

The United States government under the Obama administration continues to carry this even further. Undoubtedly the situation will only get worse in the future. Last month in Haaretz, Gideon Levy wrote that there will inevitably be another war in Gaza.

"Israel knows this war will break out, it also knows why - and it's galloping toward it blindfolded, as though it were a cyclical ritual, a periodical ceremony or a natural disaster that cannot be avoided. Here and there one even perceives enthusiasm," Levy writes. 

This will mean more death, more destruction, and more Palestinian lives destroyed as the world looks on and does nothing. Sadly Levy is right. When the next war comes and Israel succeeds in baiting Hamas to start firing rockets into Israel, all the talk will be about Israel's right to defend itself. Obama (or the next American President) will repeat the same charade. He will frame the narrative in terms of Israel's victimization and Israel's rights, while denying this treatment to the Palestinians. 

The media and the public will uncritically support the position of American and Israeli power. Thousands of Palestinians will be indiscriminately killed, but not because Israel is defending itself. Palestinians will be killed because the U.S. government refuses to protect them from a belligerent and aggressive regime, and refuses even to recognize their right to protect themselves. 

The American Government's Biggest Lie Now Is About Ukraine

 Eric Zuesse

The American Government's biggest lie in 2002-2003 was about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. We've already seen what that lie produced. It cost the U.S. more than $3 trillion, produced ISIS, and caused death and destruction in Iraq that make Saddam Hussein's dictatorship look benign by comparison. Are Americans still fooling themselves about that? (Some are; but most are not.)

The American Government's biggest lie in 2014-2015 is instead about Vladimir Putin and Ukraine — and it's even worse, and far more dangerous, because this one can very possibly lead to a nuclear war, one with Russia that's totally unnecessary for America's national-security, and that actually places all of our nation's security at risk, for the shameful reasons of aristocrats (“oligarchs”) in both the U.S. and Ukraine — not for any real reasons of the American people, at all. 

But, that's where we are heading, nonetheless, because America's aristocrats overwhelmingly want it (as will be shown here).

Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, is a U.S. government broadcaster which, like NATO, was necessary when communism threatened the United States from the Soviet Union, and which, also like NATO, should have been disbanded when the U.S.S.R. and its communist ideology effectively ended. It, like NATO, is now really just a vile vestige of our war against communism, a war that's gone but which America's aristocrats want to continue fighting, because America's aristocracy want to conquer the entire world and want U.S. taxpayers to fund the effort. The ideological excuse is gone, and they want us not to notice that. 

A good example of RFE/RL's current vileness was a story they ran on March 12th, "A Bipartisan Cause In Washington: Arming Ukraine Against Russia,” and it reported that, “Consensus appears to be snowballing among Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the U.S. capital on at least one issue: arming Ukraine. One exception, however, is the figure who matters most: President Barack Obama.” 

The implicit thrust of this news article is that, as their propaganda-writer put it, "Obama has resisted providing such assistance despite the pressure from lawmakers and public statements by top military brass, including U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, supporting lethal aid to Kyiv. 'The president has all the authority he needs to do it. He just needs to have the will to do it,' [Eliot] Engel [a House Democrat] told RFE/RL.” In other words: the article presents Obama as being obstructionist against something that supposedly needs to be done, and should be done.

Earlier, RFE/RL had brazenly reveled in the international success of its campaign to vilify Russia's President, Vladimir Putin.

And, unfortunately, that entire propaganda campaign is based on blatant lies, just like the propaganda to invade Iraq in 2003 was. But this one is far more dangerous.

Furthermore, this propaganda campaign (including that article) ignores that the top leaders in Ukraine who are pressing for the U.S. and other Western nations to supply arms to the Ukrainian Government are Ukraine's ultra-nationalist outright nazis, especially the leaders of Ukraine's two nazi parties, both of which were created as local copies of Hitler's Nazi Party, and one of which even called itself the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, in order to signal to Ukrainians that it's in the tradition of Adolf Hitler but just the local, Ukrainian nationalist, version of it. That party's leader (Andrei Parubiy) was the chief organizer of the Maidan demonstrations that were used by the Obama Administration as cover for the coup that the Obama Administration planned and carried out, which installed the current, rabidly Russia-hating, racist-fascist, Government in Ukraine.

It also ignores that the leader (Dmitriy Yarosh) of the other Ukrainian nazi party (also calling for America to send weapons), which party is called Right Sector, was the organizer of the gunmen whose shooting into the crowd of anti-corruption demonstrators actually brought down the democratically elected President of Ukraine, and thus enabled the Obama Administration to choose the new leader of Ukraine (which Obama's operative, Victoria Nuland, chose on 4 February 2014, 18 days before the coup).

It also ignores that the leader of Ukraine's most effective fighting force, the Azov Battalion (Andrei Beletsky), authored the official statement of “Ukrainian Social Nationalism,” including: "The historic mission of our Nation, a watershed in this century, is thus to lead the White peoples of the world in the final crusade for their survival. It is to lead the war against Semites and the sub-humans they use.” 

It also ignores that Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who on 4 February 2014 was selected for his post by Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department, was quoted by Ukrainian media on Thursday March 12th of 2015 as saying that, “Ukraine is in a state of war with a nuclear state, which is the Russian Federation.” He blamed all of Ukraine's current problems on Russia, and urged “our Western partners” to send weapons. 

Clearly, these people are eager to serve as the proxy-state for Washington's war against Russia.

It also ignores that, as German Economic News headlined on March 15th, “Ukraine: Right-wing extremists boycott peace plans with Russia,” reporting that several of the leading nazis in the Ukrainian Government (which America's coup installed and which still is enthusiastically supported by both President Obama and the U.S. Congress) employed such phrases as: “Russia is the 'eternal enemy' of ‘civilization'.” This is what America's Government wants to send yet more American weapons (we've already sent lots, some of which have already turned up destroyed on the battlefield when the Ukrainian forces have surrendered). 

While it's true that there is virtual unity (more than 98% among members of Congress) in Washington to supply arms to Ukraine, the U.S. public, when polled about this matter, are more than 2 to 1 opposed to doing so.

In this regard, the U.S. public are far more in line with the leaders of the EU than they are with the leaders of the United States.

The RFE/RL propaganda-article ignored, of course, the overwhelming opposition of Europeans, and even of their leaders, to supplying weapons to Ukraine. It also ignored the overwhelming opposition of the American public to doing so.

Whereas the central focus of Obama's foreign policy is to weaken if not destroy Russia, some in Washington are not satisfied with the intensity of that campaign, and want it to be even more, but Obama is trying to avoid pushing European leaders so hard on this that he loses them altogether. The difference between Obama and the Republicans on this is merely tactical. Both want to destroy Russia; the debate is over how to get the job done.

Insane and globally suicidal isn't bad enough for some of the rotten people whom we in America elect into public office. But we, the public, are not to blame for it — the aristocrats who fund politics determine what the field of candidates will be from which we get to select our leaders. And, for example, only too late are the American public starting to recognize that the choice between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012 was really a choice between, as Ralph Nader lied in 2000 but which was true in 2008 and 2012, “Tweedledum versus Tweedledee.” Obama turns out to be a dark-skinned Romney with prettier rhetoric.

The aristocrats determine the political choices that we have; and, now (in this century) in America, they're all bad. 

As Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page found in their massive study published by the American Political Science Association during the Fall of 2014, today's United States is an aristocracy (or as they call their findings, an “oligarchy”), and the will of the public no longer counts for anything in determining the federal government's policies and laws: the aristocrats control the media so that they control the political personnel and outcomes that matter the most to politicians' sponsors.

And, now, they're even pushing the envelope of revolution, because nuclear war would harm everybody. Aristocrats' chief motive is dominance; the public aren't like that: mere survival is more important to the bottom 99% of the population. Nuclear war is too much of a risk to take for our aristocracy's global dominance, and we're heading now straight into that risk. They want us to do like Ukraine's nazis are doing, and play along with it. But we're not like Ukraine's nazis — nor like any. Nazis have the dominance-culture, just as aristocrats do; but we don't. So: the lies are coming, thick and fast, to make us go along, purely on the basis of deception.

If the public is deceived, then democracy is impossible. All choices become bad. And that's where we now are. Things like this just can't be explained any other way.

Radiation in Green Tea

Harvey Wasserman

Four years after the multiple explosions and melt-downs at Fukushima, it seems the scary stories have only just begun to surface.

Given that Japan’s authoritarian regime of Shinzo Abe has cracked down on the information flow from Fukushima with a repressive state secrets act, we cannot know for certain what’s happening at the site.

According to the New York Times, a sample of powdered tea imported from the Japanese prefecture of Chiba, just southeast of Tokyo, contained traces of radioactive cesium 137. Photo credit: Shutterstock

We do know that 300 tons of radioactive water have been pouring into the Pacific every day. And that spent fuel rods are littered around the site. Tokyo Electric power may or may not have brought down all the fuel rods from Unit Four, but many hundreds almost certainly remain suspended in the air over Units One, Two and Three.

We also know that Abe is pushing refugees to move back into the Fukushima region. Thyroid damage rates—including cancer—have skyrocketed among children in the region. Radiation “hot spots” have been found as far away as Tokyo. According to scientific sources, more than 30 times as much radioactive Cesium was released at Fukushima as was created at the bombing of Hiroshima.

Some of those isotopes turned up in at least 15 tuna caught off the coast of California. But soon after Fukushima, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration stopped testing Pacific fish for radiation. The FDA has never fully explained why.

But now a small amount of Fukushima’s radiation has turned up in green tea shipped from Japan to Hong Kong. This is a terrifying development, casting doubt on all food being exported from the region.

According to the New York Times:

“A sample of powdered tea imported from the Japanese prefecture of Chiba, just southeast of Tokyo, contained traces of radioactive cesium 137, the Hong Kong government announced late Thursday evening, but they were far below the legal maximum level.

The discovery was not the first of its kind. The government’s Center for Food Safety found three samples of vegetables from Japan with “unsatisfactory” levels of radioactive contaminants in March 2011, the month that nuclear reactors in Fukushima, northeast of Tokyo, suffered partial meltdowns following a powerful earthquake and tsunami.”

Should every meal you are served now be accompanied with a radiation monitor?

Truth is Our Country

Paul Craig Roberts

PCR was given the International Award for Excellence in Journalism. Here is a transcript of his acceptance speech at the Club De Periodistas De Mexico, March 12, 2015.

Colleagues,

Thank you for this recognition, for this honor.  As Jesus told the people of Nazareth, a prophet is without honor in his own country.  In the United States, this is also true of journalists.

In the United States journalists receive awards for lying for the government and for the corporations.  Anyone who tells the truth, whether journalist or whistleblower, is fired or prosecuted or has to hide out in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, like Julian Assange, or in Moscow, like Edward Snowden, or is tortured and imprisoned, like Bradley Manning.

Mexican journalists pay an even higher price. Those who report on government corruption and on the drug cartels pay with their lives.

The Internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has as an entry a list by name of journalists murdered in Mexico. This is the List of Honor. Wikipedia reports than more than 100 Mexican journalists have been killed or disappeared in the 21st century.

Despite intimidation the Mexican press has not abandoned its job. Because of your courage, I regard this award bestowed on me as the greatest of honors.

In the United States real journalists are scarce and are becoming more scarce.  Journalists have morphed into a new creature.  Gerald Celente calls US journalists “presstitutes,” a word formed from press prostitute.  In other words, journalists in the United States are whores for the government and for the corporations.

The few real journalists that remain are resigning. Last year Sharyl Attkisson, a 21-year veteran reporter with CBS resigned on the grounds that it had become too much of a fight to get truth reported. She was frustrated that CBS saw its purpose to be a protector of the powerful, not a critic.

Recently Peter Oborne, the UK Telegraph’s chief political commentator, explained why he resigned. His stories about the wrongdoings of the banking giant, HSBC, were spiked, because HSBC is an important advertiser for the Telegraph. Osborne says: “The coverage of HSBC in Britain’s Telegraph is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril.”

Last summer former New York Times editor Jill Abramson in a speech at the Chautauqua Institution said that the New York Times withheld information at the request of the White House.  She said that for a number of years the press in general did not publish any stories that upset the White House. She justified this complete failure of journalism on the grounds that “journalists are Americans, too. I consider myself to be a patriot.”

So in the United States journalists lie for the government because they are patriotic, and their readers and listeners believe the lies because they are patriotic.

Our view differs from the view of the New York Times editor.  The view of those of us here today is that our country is not the United States, it is not Mexico, our country is Truth.  Once a journalist sacrifices Truth to loyalty to a government, he ceases to be a journalist and becomes a propagandist.

Recently, Brian Williams, the television news anchor at NBC, destroyed his career because he mis-remembered an episode of more than a decade ago when he was covering the Iraq War. He told his audience that a helicopter in which he was with troops in a war zone as a war correspondent was hit by ground fire and had to land.

But the helicopter had not been hit by ground fire.  His fellow journalists turned on him, accusing him of lying in order to enhance his status as a war correspondent.

On February 10, NBC suspended Brian Williams for 6 months from his job as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News.

Think about this for a moment.  It makes no difference whatsoever whether the helicopter had to land because it had been hit by gun fire or for some other reason or whether it had to land at all. If it was an intentional lie, it was one of no consequence. If it was a mistake, an episode of “false memory,” why the excessive reaction? Psychologists say that false memories are common.

The same NBC that suspended Brian Williams and the journalists who accused him of lying are all guilty of telling massive lies for the entirety of the 21st century that have had vast consequences.  The United States government has been, and still is, invading, bombing, and droning  seven or eight countries on the basis of lies told by Washington and endlessly repeated by the media. Millions of people have been killed, maimed, and displaced by violence based entirely on lies spewing out of the mouths of Washington and its presstitutes.

We know what these lies are:  Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.  Assad of Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Iranian nukes.

Pakistani and Yemeni terrorists. Terrorists in Somalia.  The endless lies about Gaddafi in Libya, about the Taliban in Afghanistan.  And now the alleged Russian invasion and annexation of Ukraine.

All of these transparent lies are repeated endlessly, and no one is held accountable.  But one journalist mis-remembers one insignificant detail about a helicopter ride and his career is destroyed.

We can safely conclude that the only honest journalism that exists in the United States is provided by alternative media on the Internet.

Consequently, the Internet is now under US government attack.  “Truth is the enemy of the state,” and Washington intends to shut down truth everywhere.

Washington has appointed Andrew Lack, the former president of NBC News, to be the chief executive of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. His first official statement compared RT, Russia Today, the Russian-based news agency,  with the Islamic State and Boko Haram. In other words, Mr. Lack brands RT as a terrorist organization.

The purpose of Andrew Lack’s absurd comparison is to strike fear at RT that the news organization will be expelled from US media markets. Andrew Lack’s message to RT is: “lie for us or we are going to expel you from our air waves.”

The British already did this to Iran’s Press TV.

In the United States the attack on Internet independent media is proceeding on several fronts.  One is known as the issue of “net neutrality.”

There is an effort by Washington, joined by Internet providers, to charge sites for speedy access. Bandwidth would be sold for fees. Large media corporations, such as CNN and the New York Times, would be able to pay the prices for a quickly opening website.  Smaller independent sites such as mine would be hampered with the slowness of the old “dial-up” type bandwidth.  Click on CNN and the site immediately opens.  Click on paulcraigroberts.org and wait five minutes.

You get the picture.  This is Washington’s plan and the corporations’ plan for the Internet.

But it gets worse. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which attempts to defend our digital rights, reports that so-called “free trade agreements,” such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (and the Trans Atlantic Partnership)

impose prison sentences, massive fines, and property seizures on Internet users who innocently violate vague language in the so-called trade agreements.

Recently, a young American, Barrett Brown, was sentenced to 5 years in prison and a fine of $890,000 for linking to allegedly hacked documents posted on the Internet.  Barrett Brown did not hack the documents.  He merely linked to an Internet posting, and he has no prospect of earning $890,000 over the course of his life.

The purpose of the US government’s prosecution, indeed, persecution, of this young person is to establish the precedent that anyone who uses Internet information in ways that Washington disapproves, or for purposes that Washington disapproves, is a criminal whose life will be ruined.  The purpose of Barrett Brown’s show trial is to intimidate.  It is Washington’s equivalent to the murder of Mexican journalists.

But this is prologue.  Now we turn to the challenge that Washington presents to the entire world.

It is the nature of government and of technology to establish control. People everywhere face the threat of control by government and technology.  But the threat from Washington is much greater.  Washington is not content with only controlling the citizens of the United States.  Washington intends to control the world.

Michael Gorbachev is correct when he says that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that has happened to humanity, because the Soviet collapse removed the only constraint on Washington’s power.

The Soviet collapse released a terrible evil upon the world. The neoconservatives in Washington concluded that the failure of communism meant that History has chosen American “democratic capitalism,” which is neither democratic nor capitalist, to rule the world.  The Soviet collapse signaled “the End of History,” by which is meant the end of competition between social, political and economic systems.

The choice made by History elevated the United States to the pre-eminent position of being the “indispensable and exceptional” country, a claim of superiority.  If the United States is “indispensable,” then others are dispensable.  If the United States is exceptional, then others are unexceptional.  We have seen the consequences of Washington’s ideology in Washington’s destruction of life and stability in the Middle East.

Washington’s drive for World Hegemony, based as it is on a lie, makes necessary the obliteration of Truth.  As Washington’s agenda of supremacy is all encompassing, Washington regards truth as a greater enemy than Russians, Muslim terrorists, and the Islamic State.

As truth is Washington’s worst enemy, everyone associated with the truth is Washington’s enemy.

Latin America can have no illusions about Washington. The first act of the Obama Regime was to overthrow the democratic reformist government of Honduras. Currently, the Obama Regime is trying to overthrow the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina.

As Mexicans know, in the 19th century Washington stole half of Mexico.  Today Washington is stealing the rest of Mexico.  The United States is stealing Mexico via financial imperialism, by subordinating Mexican agriculture and self-sustaining peasant agricultural communities to foreign-owned monoculture, by infecting Mexico with Monsanto’s GMO’s, genetically modified organisms, seeds that do not reproduce, chemicals that destroy the soil and nature’s nutrients, seeds that leave Mexico dependent on Monsanto for food crops with reduced nutritional value.

It is easy for governments to sell out their countries to Washington and the North American corporations. Washington and US corporations pay high prices for subservience to their control.  It is difficult for countries, small in economic and political influence, to stand against such power.  All sorts of masks are used behind which Washington hides US exploitation–globalism, free trade treaties . . .

But the world is changing. Putin has revived Russia, and Russia has proved its ability to stand up to Washington.

On a purchasing power basis, China now has the largest economy in the world.

As China and Russia are now strategic allies, Washington cannot act against one without acting against the other.  The two combined exceed Washington’s capabilities.

The United States government has proven to the entire world that it is lawless.   A country that flaunts its disrespect of law cannot provide trusted leadership.

My conclusion is that Washington’s power has peaked.

Another reason Washington’s power has peaked is that Washington has used its power to serve only itself and US corporations.  The Rest of the World is dispensable and has been left out.

Washington’s power grew out of World War 2.  All other economies and currencies were devastated.  This allowed Washington to seize the world reserve currency role from Great Britain.

The advantage of being the world reserve currency is that you can pay your bills by printing money.  In other words, you can’t go broke as long as other countries are willing to hold your fiat currency as their reserves.

But if other countries were to decide not to hold US currency as reserves, the US could go broke suddenly.

Since 2008 the supply of US dollars has increased dramatically in relation to the ability of the real economy to produce goods and services.  Whenever the growth of money outpaces the growth of real output, trouble lies ahead. Moreover, Washington’s policy of imposing sanctions in an effort to force other countries to do its will is causing a large part of the world known as the BRICS to develop an alternative international payments system.

Washington’s arrogance and hubris have caused Washington to ignore the interests of other countries, including those of its allies. Even Washington’s European vassal states show signs of developing an independent foreign policy in their approach to Russia and Ukraine.  Opportunities will arise for governments to escape from Washington’s control and to pursue the interests of their own peoples.

The US media has never performed the function assigned to it by the Founding Fathers. The media is supposed to be diverse and independent. It is supposed to confront both government and private interest groups with the facts and the truth.  At times the US media partially fulfilled this role, but not since the final years of the Clinton Regime when the government allowed six mega-media companies to consolidate 90% of the media in their hands.

The mega-media companies that control the US media are GE, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.  (GE owns NBC, formerly an independent network.  News Corp owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and British newspapers. Disney owns ABC. Time Warner owns CNN.)

The US media is no longer run by journalists.  It is run by former government officials and corporate advertising executives. The values of the mega-media companies depend on their federal broadcast licenses.  If the companies go against the government, the companies take a risk that their licenses will not be renewed and, thus, the multi-billion dollar values of the companies fall to zero. If media organizations investigate wrongful activities by corporations, they risk the loss of advertising revenues and become less viable.

Ninety percent control of the media gives government a Ministry of Propaganda, and that is what exists in the United States.  Nothing reported in the print or TV media can be trusted.

Today there is a massive propaganda campaign against the Russian government.  The incessant flow of disinformation from Washington and the media has destroyed the trust between nuclear powers that President Reagan and President Gorbachev worked so hard to create. According to polls, 62% of the US population now regards Russia as the main threat.

I conclude my remarks with the observation that there can be no greater media failure than to bring back the specter of nuclear war.  And that is what the US media has achieved.

The Bush-Clinton Mafia

Gilbert Mercier

If a space or a time traveler would set his time ship’s dial to 2015, with the United States as its destination, one could think that a mandatory preparation for the journey to understand the US’ political system would be an attentive study of the Constitution. After all, the document, drafted in 1787 by the so-called founding fathers and finally ratified three later in 1790 in its original form, is supposed to be the foundation of the US’ political edifice. Two hundred and twenty-five years later, the document has been so thoroughly gutted of its substantial original merits, at least in its spirit if not its letter, that the foundation of the building has become a superfluous architectural ornament. While the US Constitution was far from being revolutionary and granted equal rights only to white male landowners, it marked, in conjunction with the French revolution of 1789, a resolute break from the European kingdoms. No king or queen could ever claim this land again, under any circumstance. A republic, ruled by a meritocracy of well-educated Anglo-Saxon patrician men, was born. Since 190 years after the US Constitution’s ratification, however, which is exactly since 1980, the country has been ruled by two dynasties or their surrogates: the Bushes and the Clintons.

American royal mafia and co: organized crime as political model 

To understand the undemocratic and extremely seedy side of  US modern-day politics, it would be imperative for our time traveler, de Tocqueville in training, to watch two classics of American cinema: “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II”. Director Francis Ford Coppola, in his fictional, yet extremely well-researched and documented films, invited us inside the US’ underbelly. During the 19th century and up to the early 20th century, massive numbers of poor immigrants, mainly Italians, Irish and Jews from eastern Europe, were lured to the Americas largely to escape economic hardship. Those who landed in the US quickly understood that they were excluded from or at best marginalized in this promised land run by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The more ambitious ones, unencumbered by moral boundaries, developed their own form of government and social code of conduct in the form of a tightly knit family-like structure that usually strictly followed ethnic lines. The birth of organized crime in the US, either Italian, Jewish or Irish, was a direct consequence of the fight for survival of communities that were deliberately excluded from power or even any political discourse.

Mafia families had a strictly enforced code of conduct and precise hierarchy, with a don (boss) at the top; a consiglierie (adviser to the head of the family) directly picked by the don; an under boss who was usually groomed to be the don’s successor; capos (the lieutenants), and “soldiers”. In the 1930s, under the supervision of Lucky Luciano, the don of all dons, not only the five Italian mafia families worked together, but they also collaborated on many occasions with the Jewish and Irish mafia. In this parallel brand of power and economy, mafia families extracted contributions (a primitive form of taxation of usually 10 percent of income) from businesses, ironically to protect them from random criminal activity. By the mid-1930s mafia families controlled large sections of the US economy. The prohibition of alcoholic beverages, which spanned from 1920 to 1933, marked the apogee of the mafia families, either Italian, Jewish or Irish. The mob controlled the flow of  liquor, and Americans were thirsty.

During the prohibition era, Joe Kennedy (father of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy), the patriarch of a family that passed for being true US aristocracy although he had been the grandson of a dirt-poor potato-famine Irish immigrant, substantially increased his vast fortune by importing, from the UK and Canada, and selling illicit liquor in association with Italian-American don Frank Costello and Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky. Joe Kennedy had an edge on the competition: he went into the prohibition era in 1920 with large stocks of booze from his father’s own stores. In what cannot be a coincidence, on the day prohibition ended 13 years later, Joe Kennedy had three exclusive deals to import British whiskey and gin, as well as an extensive network of retailers already in place. Kennedy understood that his political ambitions for his sons would require vast amounts of money. Like any mafia bosses, don Joe Kennedy wanted to start a dynasty at any cost and regardless of moral or even legal considerations. In the US, money meant power, and this notion was the motto for both supposed blue-blood patriarch Kennedy and don Lucky Luciano.

Bush mafia vs Clinton mafia: Defining US politics from 1980 to 2016

Arguably, the first term of George H. Bush, founder of the Bush dynasty, started in 1980 when he officially became Vice President or, to use the mafia term, super under boss to Ronald Reagan, an aging actor, perhaps already senile, hired to perform the role of  global don: “Leader of the free world” and most powerful man on earth, according to US mainstream media propaganda. Bush Sr. had previously run the Central Intelligence Agency. During the two terms of the Reagan administration (1980 to 1988), it was common knowledge that Bush Sr was the boss who led US policy. He officially became the don in 1988, and ran his own operation with pretty much the same crew until 1992. James Baker was the key consigliere to don Bush Sr, but he also listened closely to the Talleyrand of US politics, consigliere extraordinaire Henry Kissinger. Bush Sr’s under boss was Donald Rumsfeld who picked his capo in the person of Dick Cheney. George W. Bush or Bush Jr, when his turn came, kept most of the old don’s crew with some minor changes and additions. Cheney became the under boss, while Rumsfeld took the vital Pentagon portfolio.

Before George W. Bush’s turn, the Clinton dynasty came along in 1992, courtesy of WallMart, and with the firm intention, as an obligation to their sponsors, to facilitate a global corporate imperialist agenda. With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), don Bill Clinton went the extra mile for the benefit of his friends in transnational corporations. Bill Clinton became a favorite of Wall Street’s investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, by being instrumental in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which was voted in 1933 during the Great Depression in the aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street crash. The Glass-Steagall Act limited commercial banks securities activities, and it clearly separated commercial banking from investment banking, to curtail speculation. The repeal of this Act allowed Wall Street investment banks to gamble money that was held in commercial banks, and this was arguably one of the lead systemic factors in the 2008 global financial-market crash.

Don Clinton’s consigliere was mainly first-lady Hillary, but he also took the advice of the other super-consigliere besides Kissinger: Polish-born Zbigniew Brzezinski. Consigliere Brzezinski started his career in 1966 when he advised Lyndon B. Johnson. He returned in the late 1970s to advise Jimmy Carter. When he was Carter’s consigliere, Brzezinski came up with the idea to finance and arm the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. Don Clinton’s under boss was Leon Panetta, and the lead capo was Rahm Emanuel. When dona Hillary Clinton lost what she viewed as being her turn in the driver’s seat, both the Clinton and Bush mafias made sure that young capo Barack Obama, who had not patiently waited for his turn in the limelight, was surrounded by trusted hands. One can imagine the deal imposed on Obama by Bill and Dick. The Bush mafia would keep the Pentagon for the time being; Hillary would run US foreign policy from the State Department; don Bill’s under boss Leon Panetta would become Obama’s CIA director (2009 to 2011) and boss of the Pentagon (2011 to 2013). Clinton’s trusted lead capo Rahm Emanuel became Obama’s under boss. Don Bill did not stay idle after the 2008 election; he became Obama’s lead consigliere, with the occasional help on geopolitical dossiers such as Ukraine from… Brzezinski, of course. The 88-year-old anti-Russian Democrat uber-consigliere’s latest contribution has been to bring back the Cold War into international affairs. Bill Clinton’s main task was to replenish the family coffers through the Clinton Global Initiative, a fund raising operation disguised as being humanitarian. After the 2010 earthquake, Haiti became don Bill’s pet project and personal fiefdom.

Is there anyway off this sinister merry go round?

By now, our time-traveler hero realizes that the premise of the upcoming 2016 US presidential  election “fight” is already set. It will be a rematch of an old time classic: Bush against Clinton, dona Hillary versus don Jeb. For good measure, and to give American consumers of elections a sense that their democracy is not an illusion, there will be unelectable challengers in the fake primaries. This will be strictly for entertainment purposes and to indulge the so-called American left. On a short list of likely seat warmers for Hillary are Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, perhaps even Joe Biden. On the Bush side of the ring, the supposed primary challengers will be harder to find: perhaps Mitt Romney again or phony Libertarian Rand Paul. But let us listen to what consigliere extraordinaire Henry Kissinger recently said on the issue; after all, he has advised more US presidents than anyone else alive. In a September 6, 2014 interview with NPR‘s Scott Simon, when asked if Hillary Clinton would make a good president, Kissinger said: “I know Hillary as a person, and as a personal friend. I would say, yes she would be a good president. But that would put me under a great conflict of interest if she were a candidate, because I intend to support the Republicans…. Yes I would be comfortable with her as a president.” Our time traveler, de Tocqueville in training, is dazed, confused and disgusted by what the US has grown into: the sort of charade that notions like democracy, the common good and morality have become in this display of vile and raw power for power’s sake.

“Ground Zero” Moves to Antarctica

Robert Hunziker

Peru’s Quelccaya Ice Cap (alt. 17,950 ft.), the world’s largest tropical ice cap, will likely lose another 400-600 feet of ice before the final presidential nominating debates in March/April 2016. All of which brings to mind, wouldn’t it be interesting to ask the prospective presidential nominees this question: What are the implications of Antarctica suddenly becoming “ground zero” for global warming?

Apart from dumbfounded stares, their boilerplate answer will likely be: “I am not a scientists, the climate always changes, blah, blah, blah.” Rumor has it Republican operatives came up with these clever rejoinders at one of their confabs in ultra-secretive preparation for capturing or cratering the presidency, depending. Some Democrats may fall back on the same rote answer, but probably not.

Furthermore, there is good reason for the Arctic to be conjoined with Antarctica for “ground zero status.” According to NSIDC, Arctic sea ice during the winter of 2014-2015 in March has ominously hit such low levels that it could set a seasonal low record, if it persists. Hopefully, excessive loss of ice this upcoming summer does not turn lose too much methane (CH4), a potential lights-out scenario within current lifetimes.

Beyond the twin biggies of Antarctica and the Arctic, glaciers spoil most of the world’s population rotten. After all, billions of people simply turn on faucets, ship goods on rivers, generate electricity, and irrigate crops at no expense because of free water. That’s right, it is free because of nature’s bountiful glacial water towers. It’s the deal of a lifetime!

But, in time, it may be too good to be true. Glaciers are suffering devastating blows because of global warming! However, it’s doubtful that any of the presidential office-seekers are aware of this upcoming calamity. After all, they’re way too busy raising money to think about melting glaciers, honestly!

Anyway, the candidates should bone up on the issue, just to sound smart, because glaciers store 75% of the world’s freshwater.

Still, whenever grilled about the issue, the candidates will likely opt out by saying “I am not a scientist, blah, blah, blah”. So, maybe the question should be framed this way: “Does heat melt ice?”

Answer: Yes.

Massive Threat

“The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia. China and India are the world’s leading producers of both wheat and rice—humanity’s food staples… [Furthermore] according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], the Himalayan glaciers are receding rapidly and many could melt entirely by 2035,” Lester R. Brown, Melting Mountain Glaciers Will Shrink Grain Harvests in China and India,” Earth Policy Institute.

According to Yao Tandong, a leading glaciologist in China, “If this melting of glaciers continues… [It] will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe.”

In 2014, the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the Tibetan glaciers experienced the most intense heat in 2,000 years. Indeed, seventy percent (70%) of the glaciers at the headwaters of the commercially active Lancang River, the “Danube of the East,” are gone, melted away, Glaciers on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Melting Fast, China.org.cn, Oct. 21, 2011.

In certain regions of Peru’s Quelccaya Ice Cap the melt rate is 600 feet per year or 40 times faster than a few decades ago, threatening loss of electricity (Peru is 76% hydropower), irrigation, and drinking water.

“Melting glaciers are an icon of anthropogenic climate change,” according to Ben Marzeion, Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Innsbruck, et al, Attribution of Global Glacier Mass Loss to Anthropogenic and Natural Causes, in Science 22, Vol. 345, no. 6199, August 2014.

Marzeion’s study found unambiguous evidence of very sharp increases in anthropogenic ice loss over just the past few decades. His evidence runs in parallel with cumulative buildup of CO2 emissions now at 400 ppm, the February 2015 monthly average at Mauna Loa.

Beware, according to very recent “preliminary data” from Earth System Research Laboratory at Mauna Loa, as of March 14th, CO2 registered 402.28 ppm, this is +2.28 ppm in just a couple of weeks versus an average annual rate of change of +2.11 ppm ever since 2005-2014. Is it a troublesome trend spiking up? Nobody wants to see that happen! Nobody!

Ground Zero 85% of World’s Ice

Still, the really, really big news is this: “Parts of Antarctica are melting so rapidly it has become “ground zero of global climate change without a doubt,” says Harvard geophysicists Jerry X. Mitrovica, et al, The Big Melt: Antarctica’s Retreating Ice May Re-Shape Earth, Associated Press, Feb. 27, 20 15.

Antarctica has been the subject of controversial statements by “certain parties,” claiming the ice is expanding. Evidently, “certain parties” rely upon “surface evidence” and only “look east,” thus ignoring the western region and ignoring: Down below, where the ice meets the water, Harvard geophysicist Dr. Mitrovica discovered an altogether different story. “Water is eating away at the Antarctic ice, melting it where it hits the oceans… 130 billion tons of ice per year for the past decade, according to NASA satellite calculations.”

Not only that: “’Temperatures [in Antarctica] rose 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in the last half century, much faster than Earth’s average,” says Ricardo Jana, a glaciologist for the Chilean Antarctic Institute, evidence various latitudes are seriously heating up!

“A few years back, scientists figured Antarctica as a whole was in balance, neither gaining nor losing ice. Experts worried more about Greenland; it was easier to get to and more noticeable, but once they got a better look at the bottom of the world, the focus of their fears shifted. Now scientists in two different studies use the words ‘irreversible’ and ‘unstoppable’ to talk about the melting in West Antarctica. Ice is gaining in East Antarctica, where the air and water are cooler, but not nearly as much as it is melting to the west,” Ibid.

Accordingly, ice scientist Ian Joughin, University of Washington states: “Now I would say it’s less of a wild card and more scary than we thought before.”

NASA ice scientist Eric Rignot says the melting “Is going way faster than anyone had thought. It’s kind of a red flag. What’s happening is simple physics. Warm water eats away at the ice from underneath…The world’s fate hangs on the question of how fast the ice melts,” Ibid.

Argo floats, 3,300+ worldwide, measure heat content in the oceans, accordingly, the Journal of Geophysical Research says the oceans carry a considerable load of the planet’s heat. Antarctica is proving it.

Catastrophe Hinges on Antarctica (altogether with the Arctic)

Worldwide ice melt is setting records, left and right, surprising scientists year-over-year, for example, the recent research in Antarctica surprised scientists. In fact, science cannot keep up with the speed of melt. Ipso facto, what does this say about the prospects for Antarctica? Ask the presidential candidates… no, no, no scratch that. Again, what does the tantalizing speed of worldwide melt say about Antarctica’s prospects?

“Scientists have long worried that the West Antarctic ice sheet is a place where climate change might tip toward catastrophe,” Warren Cornwall for National Geographic, Warming Seas Drive Rapid Acceleration of Melting Antarctica Ice, National Geographic News, Dec. 4, 2014.

“Melting Antarctic glaciers that are large enough to raise worldwide sea level by more than a meter are dropping a Mount Everest’s worth of ice into the sea every two years,” according to a new study: Tyler C. Sutterley, et al, West Antarctic Melt Rate Has Tripled, American Geophysical Union, Dec. 2, 2014. Remarkably, cascading ice tripled!

A second recent study, Sunke Schmidtko, et at, Multidecadal Warming of Antarctic Waters, Science 5, Vol. 346 no. 6214, Dec. 5, 2014 explains the accelerating ice melt. Warm ocean water is melting the floating ice shelves that hold back the glaciers, further confirmation the oceans have been absorbing much of Earth’s heat.

Those two pieces of new research were issued just before officials of the World Meteorological Organization announced 2014 as the “warmest”/hottest year on record.

Current predictions of sea level rise may understate the risk because they don’t accurately take into account shoaling of warm water in the Antarctic, says Sarah Gille, an oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego.

According to glaciologist Richard Alley, Pennsylvania State University, historical studies have shown that ice sheets can remain stable for centuries or millennia and then switch to a different configuration, suddenly. “If another sudden switch happens in West Antarctica, sea level could rise a lot, so understanding what is going on at the grounding lines is essential,” Ker Than, Friction Means Antarctic Glaciers More Sensitive to Climate Change Than We Thought, Caltech, March 10, 2015.

Congress turns its back on Global Warming

Considering the widely held belief in the halls of Congress that humans are not behind climate change, if it’s not anthropogenic global warming, then, what is it?

Inasmuch as Congress does not have a serious interest in understanding or investigating the global warming issue, it’s difficult to gain much intelligence from America’s most prominent class of leadership, ahem. Congressional disinterest is unambiguous, evidenced by no renewable energy plan, none whatsoever, not even a “trial balloon.”

Since Congress is totally clueless in the face of the biggest worldwide melt down in modern history, hopefully America’s presidential aspirants will provide some fresh ideas at their upcoming debates. For sure, they must have strong leadership qualities if they are running for president.

After all, sooner or later anthropogenic glacial loss will become the hottest political issue the world has ever witnessed, and then some. Somebody’s gotta start prepping!

Speaking of which, according to The Washington Post, January 21, 2015, Republicans are now in control of both houses: “Climate-Change Skeptics Cruz and Rubio Now Help Oversee Nation’s Climate Science.”

Hmm, those two will be in the debates.