How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Welfare State Page 24
Belief in Washington’s trustworthiness even pervades the Russian government, which apparently, according to Medvedev’s statement, would be reassured by a “legally binding guarantee” from Washington. After the massive lies told by Washington in the 21st century—”weapons of mass destruction,” “Al Qaeda connections,” “Iranian nukes”—why would anyone put any credence in “a legally binding guarantee” from Washington? The guarantee would mean nothing. How could it be enforced? Such a guarantee would simply be another deceit in Washington’s pursuit of world hegemony. The day prior to Thanksgiving also brought another extraordinary development—the failure of a German government bond auction, an unparalleled event.
Why would Germany, the only member of the EU with financial rectitude, not be able to sell 35 per cent of its offerings of 10-year bonds? Germany has no debt problems, and its economy is expected by EU and US authorities to bear the lion’s share of the bailout of the EU member countries that do lack financial rectitude.
I suspect that the answer to this question is that the failure of the German government’s bond auction was orchestrated by the US, by EU authorities, especially the European Central Bank, and private banks in order to punish Germany for obstructing the purchase of EU member countries’ sovereign debt by the European Central Bank.
The German government has been trying to defend the terms on which Germany gave up control over its own currency and joined the EU. By insisting on the legality of the agreements, Germany has been standing in the way of the ECB behaving like the US Federal Reserve and monetizing the debt of member governments.
From the beginning the EU was a conspiracy against Germany. If Germany remains in the EU, Germany will be destroyed. It will lose its political and economic sovereignty, and its economy will be bled on behalf of the fiscally irresponsible members of the EU.
If Germany had political leaders committed to Germany instead of to “Europe,” Germany would exit the EU and NATO, bring back the Deutschmark, and form an economic partnership with Russia.
MISREADING THE FIGHT OVER
MILITARY DETENTION
December 4, 2011
During an interview with RT on December 1, I said that the US Constitution had been shredded by the failure of the US Senate to protect American citizens from the detainee amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill sponsored by Republican John McCain and Democrat Carl Levin.
The amendment permits indefinite detention of US citizens by the US military. I also gave my opinion that the fact that all but two Republican members of the Senate had voted to strip American citizens of their constitutional protections and of the protection of the Posse Comitatus Act indicated that the Republican Party had degenerated into a Gestapo Party.
These conclusions are self-evident, and I stand by them.
However, I jumped to conclusions when I implied that the Obama regime opposes military detention on constitutional grounds.
Ray McGovern and Glenn Greenwald might have jumped to the same conclusions.
An article by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate reported that the entire Obama regime opposed the military detention provision in the McCain/ Levin amendment. Lithwick wrote: “The secretary of defense, the director of national intelligence, the director of the FBI, the CIA director, and the head of the Justice Department’s national security division have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the bill are a bad idea. And the White House continues to say that the president will veto the bill if the detainee provisions are not removed.”
I checked the URLs that Lithwick supplied. It is clear that the Obama regime objects to military detention, but Lithwick mistook this objection for constitutional scruples.
On further reflection I conclude that the Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it: Should somebody determined “to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes.”
Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.” The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.
Requiring military detention of those captured would undo the accomplishment of the two regimes of removing POW status from detainees. A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion.
The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. “After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country.”
In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability.
Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples.
WASHINGTON MOVES THE WORLD CLOSER TO WAR
January 16, 2012
Since my January 11 column and the news alert posted on January 14, more confirmation that Washington is moving the world toward a dangerous war has appeared. The Obama regime is using its Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a., the American media, to spread the story that President Obama, Pentagon chief Panetta, and other high US officials are delivering strong warnings to Israel not to attack Iran.
For someone as familiar with Washington as I am, I recognize these reports for what they are. They are Br’er Rabbit telling Br’er Fox “please don’t throw me in the briar patch.”
If you don’t know the Uncle Remus stories, you have missed a lot.
Br’er Rabbit was born and raised in the briar patch.
What these “leaked” stories of Washington’s warnings and protests to Israel are all about is to avoid Washington’s responsibility for the war Washington has prepared. If the war gets out of hand, and if Russia and China intervene or nukes start flying, Washington wants the blame to rest on Israel, and Israel seems willing to accept the blame. Nikolai Patrushev, who heads Russia’s Security Council, has apparently been deceived by Washington’s manipulation of the media. According to the Interfax news agency, Patrushev condemned Israel for pushing the US towards war with Iran.
You get the picture. The helpless Americans. They are being bullied by Israel into acquiescing to a dangerous war. Otherwise, no more campaign contributions.
The facts are different. If Washington did not want war with Iran it would not have provided the necessary weapons to Israel. It would not have deployed thousands of US troops to Israel, with a view to putting American soldiers in the line of fire in an Iranian response to Israel’s attack, thus “forcing” the US to enter the war. Washington would not have built a missile defense system for Israel and would not be conducting joint exercises with the Israeli military to make sure it works.
If Washington did not want war with Iran, Washington would not have prepared for war by surrounding Iran with fleets and military bases, and Washington would not have prepared the public for war by demonizing Iran. Washington’s NATO puppets would not be an obstacle. “Great”
Britain does as it is told, subservient and occupied Germany, bankrupt France, Italy occupied with US air bases with a government infiltrated by the CIA, bankrupt Spain and Greece will all, in hopes of an outpouring of US dollars and devoid of any dignity or honor, support the war that could end life on earth.
Only Russia and China can prevent the war.
Russia took the first step when the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister for military affairs, Dmitry Rogozin told a press conference in Brussels that Russia would regard an attack on Iran as “a direct threat to our security.”
Washington is counting on subverting Russia’s opposition to Washington’s next war. Washington can time the attack on Iran after the March elections in Russia. When Putin wins again as he will [and did], the treasonous Russian opposition parties, financed by the CIA, will unleash protests in the streets [as they did]. The subservient and corrupt Western media will denounce Putin for stealing the election [as they did]. The orchestrated protests in Russia could turn violent and discredit, if not prevent, any Russian response to the naked aggression against Iran.
For Rogozin’s warning to be effective in preventing war, China needs to enter the fray. Washington is banking on China’s caution. China deliberates and never rushes into anything. China’s deliberation would serve Washington’s war.
It is possible that the crazed neocon Washington government will have one more “victory” before Russia and China comprehend that they are next on the extermination list. As this date cannot be far off, life on earth might expire before the unpayable debts of the US and EU countries come due.
[Despite the late 2013 diplomatic initiative with Iran, US Representative Duncan Hunter, Jr. (R.CA) told C-SPAN on December 4, 2013, that it could still be necessary to set Iran “back a decade or two or three” by bombarding Iran “with tactical nuclear devices.”]
DROWNING IN HYPOCRISY
January 24, 2012
The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman whom Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”
If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?
Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars. The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment by equating free speech with terrorism and spying. Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in the City of Chicago. The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.
Washington’s grotesque hypocrisy goes unremarked by the American “media” and in the debates for the Republican presidential nomination. The corrupt Obama “Justice” Department turns a blind eye while goon cop thugs commit gratuitous violence against the citizens who pay the goon cop thugs’ undeserved salaries.
But it is in the War Crimes Arena where Washington shows the greatest hypocrisy. The self-righteous bigots in Washington are forever rounding up heads of weak states whose countries were afflicted by civil wars and sending them off to be tried as war criminals. All the while Washington indiscriminately kills large numbers of civilians in six or more countries, dismissing its own war crimes as “collateral damage.” Washington violates its own law and international law by torturing people.
On January 13, 2012, Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers reported that Spanish judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez re-launched an investigation into Washington’s torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Prison. The previous day British authorities opened an investigation into CIA renditions of kidnapped persons to Libya for torture.
Rosenberg reports that although the Obama regime has refused to investigate the obvious crimes of the Bush regime, and one might add its own obvious crimes, “other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.”
There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law. But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.
International criminal tribunals are reserved for Washington’s show trials. No foreign government is going to pay Washington several hundred millions of dollars to turn Bush, Cheney, Obama and their minions over to a tribunal in the way the US bought Milosevic from Serbia in order to create the necessary spectacle to justify Washington’s naked aggression against Serbia.
No government can be perfect, because all governments are composed of humans, especially those humans most attracted by power and profit. Nevertheless, in my lifetime I have witnessed an extraordinary deterioration in the integrity of government in the United States. We have reached the point where nothing that our government says is believable. Not even the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, the GDP growth rate, much less Washington’s reasons for its wars, its police state, and its foreign and domestic policies.
Washington has kept America at war for ten years while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. War and a faltering economy have exploded the national debt, and a looming bankruptcy is being blamed on Social Security and Medicare.
The pursuit of war continues. On January 23 Washington’s servile puppets—the EU member states—did Washington’s bidding and imposed an oil embargo on Iran, despite the pleas of Greece, a member of the EU.
Greece’s final ruin will come from the higher oil prices from the embargo, as the Greek government realizes.
The embargo is a reckless act. If the US navy tries to intercept oil tankers carrying Iranian oil, large scale war could break out. This, many believe, is Washington’s aim.
It is easy for an embargo to become a blockade, which is an act of war. Remember how easily the UN Security Council’s “no-fly zone” over Libya was turned by the US and its NATO puppets into a military attack on Libya’s armed forces and population centers supportive of Gaddafi.
As the we
stern “democracies” become increasingly lawless, the mask of law that imperialism wears is stripped away and with it the sheen of morality that has been used to cloak hegemonic ambitions. With Iran surrounded and with two of Washington’s fleets in the Persian Gulf, another war of aggression seems inevitable.
Experts say that an attack on Iran by the US and NATO will disrupt the flow of oil that the world needs. The crazed drive for hegemony is so compelling that Washington and its EU puppets show no hesitation in putting their own struggling economies at risk of sharply rising energy costs.
War abroad and austerity at home is the policy that is being imposed on the western “democracies.”
IS WESTERN DEMOCRACY REAL OR A FACADE?
February 14, 2012
The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a democracy?
Skeptics point out that President George W. Bush was put in office by the Supreme Court and that a number of other elections have been decided by electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail. Others note that elected officials represent the special interests that fund their campaigns and not the voters. The bailout of the banks arranged by Bush’s Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson, and Washington’s failure to indict any banksters for the fraud that contributed to the financial crisis, are evidence in support of the view that the US government represents money and not the voters.
Recent events in Greece and Italy have created more skepticism of the West’s claim to be democratic. Two elected European prime ministers, George Papandreou of Greece and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, were forced to resign over the sovereign debt issue. Not even Berlusconi, a billionaire who continues to lead the largest Italian political party, could stand up to the pressure brought by private bankers and unelected European Union officials. Papandreou lasted only 10 days after announcing, on October 31,