Sunday, July 17, 2016

Laurie calls for the Democratic Party to rise from its own ashes

[Please excuse the poor sound quality — the motor started just as I was beginning to record]

Hi — my name is Laurie Dobson, and — my head's cut off here. Sorry. There.


I'm on a boat, on the Eagle Aye, right now in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. I am a boat captain, and I help run a Scout program, Boy Scout program, for Scouts going around St. John this summer, 2016. I ran for office with Bernie, alongside Bernie, to support his campaign, and I wrote a letter to one of his political directors, Joe Caiazzo, and I've sent it to him, and I wanted to read it here, just to keep everybody I know on the same page with what I'm thinking right now. And hopefully there's some solidarity with that, so I'll read you what I wrote him.


To Joe Caiazzo, Political Director Bernie Campaign
(I just sent this this morning. Today's the sixt — July 16th.)

Dear Joe [and others reading and listening here]:
I got your email from Matt Amato who wrote a support letter for my campaign for State Rep in Maine. For an introduction, I'm an experienced political organizer, and a former Congressional candidate for the US Senate in Maine in 2008 as an Independent [in which Ralph Nader came up to KPort to campaign for her — JSC]. I worked for Bernie as a volunteer organizer in Maine, and then as a Bernie campaign caucus captain in Maine, a national delegate candidate, and a Maine convention attendee, when I endorsed Diane Russell's anti-superdelegate resolution on the floor of the convention. That is on my website, Laurie2016.com.

And during these occasions, and in my own race and races, I have witnessed many instances of voter disenfranchisement by party elites, which directly affected the outcome of my race, and races, as well as, I believe, the selection of the Bernie national convention delegates this year from Maine. The recent experience during my race against a so-so Bernie supporter who had said, though a person that heard her say it whom I know, that she was uncertain whether she would support Bernie or not when she got to Philly.
This was detailed in an article by Kevin Gosztola, a well-known writer and author and blogger, formerly of Fire Dog Lake, covered Chelsea Manning's efforts there. He was in the courtroom that entire time. And he is now at his own blog at ShadowProof.com

You'll see that on my website, and also my lengthy audio discourse and transcript there that's — it's in my blog that I've got with John Carpenter, uh, Steve Carpenter, at TellingOfTheTruth.blogspot.com.

I'm writing to you, Joe, to go forward to the Bernie campaign with this idea which follows. Please forward it to the relevant parties, who are even now in discussion in Burlington VT., deliberating on our party's future. So here's my concept:


I wish to energize my supporters and others to get behind the idea of a movement to create a new third party name and new progressive organization for the Greens, that reorganizes them under a unity standard with Bernie, Jill, Occupy, and the Anti-War Movement. Also Progressive Democrats (PDA members who are willing to reform the Party from the outside).


And I propose calling this, for the time being, the Millennial Movement, for the purpose of forming a new 'Millennial Party', formerly the Green Party, that incorporates Occupy/Green/Bernie's supporters into one party.


I believe it is necessary to break with Hillary supporters, with Blue Dog, and Boomer Democrats, who are mired into the Centrist policies for our Democratic Party.


And I believe that many of them are not open to the necessity for change understood by those who will be living though these changes that are now coming to bear, and through TPP policies, as well as economic devastation brought on, in goodly part, by the Clinton Centrist policies, which moved our party from its New Deal FDR roots. I believe you cannot have — as the standard bearer of change — the very family that was the agent for creating the shift against the people's party in the first place.


To honor the Black Lives Matter movement's focus on humane laws and lawmakers and law enforcement, you cannot also have these early pushers of the crime bill, and "super-predatory" characterization and demonization of people of color, to be the leaders of the political revolution galvanized by Bernie Sanders and embraced by Jill Stein. The old must make way for the new. And the attempt begun under Obama to do this MUST be made to be successful under a new order of organization, since it has proven to be hopelessly corrupted within the current mold made by the fabric of the party — within this party's fabric — which is, as I can attest, infested down to the grass roots level and unable to self — correct itself from within. All new efforts to run for office inside the current Democratic Party are doomed to the same failures which I and others have repeatedly experienced. There is no more time for exercises in futility. Now is the time to break with the old order and Bernie has shown us beyond the shadow of a doubt that if anybody could have prevailed, he would have.


So I urge anyone aligned with me in this understanding to help undertake the establishment of a newly reformed party, and to communicate this idea in your own voice.


It is simply this: it will not be the 'new third party', it will be the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, which is breaking away from the Centrist, aka, "Republican-Lite" Party. It can go back to where it came, by which we will, in so doing, create true opposition, loyally opposed to corporate takeover control, back to the original concept of 'this land, made for you and me'.


Please seriously consider and promote this idea. 


Thank you very much.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

AMBASSADORS OF TERROR — the Preface to ISIS IS US

"Freedom Lies in the Telling of the Truth:AMBASSADORS OF TERROR — the Preface to ISIS IS US"

The following is the preface to the book, ISIS IS US.

I strongly urge the reader to purchase and read the complete book:  I especially recommend the Kindle version ($9.99) which can be read, searched, notated, sampled, and carried on any smart phone, as well as sharing quotes on social media.

https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-US-Shocking-Behind-Terror-ebook/dp/B019RXBP7M

 

Ambassadors of Terror

by John-Paul Leonard

The world has never seen anything quite like ISIS[4] before. Where in the world did it come from? Many pundits say this unique terrorist army would not exist if we had not crushed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Bush’s war on Iraq. Politicians like Donald Trump or Rand Paul are saying that Iraq, Libya and Syria were better off under Saddam, Qaddafi and Assad than they are now.

Americans had supported the war on Iraq “ to make the world safe for democracy” –to stop a dangerous dictator from oppressing his people and using weapons of mass destruction –not to plunge the Middle East into the hands of savage extremists who seem set on demolishing modern civilization.

The world was shocked by the ISIS blitz of June 2014 that captured huge areas of Iraq, oil fields and the second largest city, Mosul, nearly bringing the government in Baghdad to collapse. NBC News headlined, “ Huge Majority Regret Iraq War.” [5] A poll showed that only 22% of Americans still thought the Iraq war had been a good idea. This was a new low, down from 32% in 2013 and 62% in March 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell told the big lie at the UN about Saddam Hussein’s “ threat” to our security.

Apparently, many Americans make the link between the war on Iraq, and the rise of terrorism in the region.

Few critics, however, have gone so far as to accuse the US or its allies of the unthinkable madness of intentionally creating ISIS.[6] For us in the US this would be difficult to accept. We cherish the faith that our nation is a force for good in the world; we want to share the good things about America with the rest of the world when we can. Yet we have also heard of a dark side, that sometimes bubbles up to the surface –as, for example, during the Iran-Contra scandal. And therein lies a tale, a biography of deeds you won’t read on Wikipedia for a very long time, at the end of this preface.

A Lot of Blackwater Under the Bridge

It’s a basic historical fact that the US has shored up many Latin American dictatorships, but few details are generally known about how they do it. One practitioner who knows is Ambassador John Dimitri Negroponte, a veteran counter-insurgency expert going back to Operation Phoenix in the Vietnam War. He has held many high posts. Including Ambassador to Honduras 1981-1985, and US Ambassador to Iraq, 2004-2005...

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research reveals how Negroponte fulfilled his assignment to defeat the Iraqi insurgency –and nearly managed to destroy Iraq as a nation as well. The recruitment of death squads is part of a well-established US military-intelligence agenda. There is a long and gruesome US history of covert funding and support of terror brigades and targeted assassinations going back to the Vietnam war...

The recruitment and training of terror brigades in both Iraq and Syria was modeled on the “ Salvador Option”, a “ terrorist model” of mass killings by US-sponsored death squads in Central America. It was first applied in El Salvador, in the heyday of resistance against the military dictatorship, resulting in an estimated 75,000 deaths.[7]

As Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980’s, Negroponte was the lynch pin between Washington and the US-sponsored death squads in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

In April 2004, G.W. Bush hired him as “ the man for the job” to bring the “ Salvador Option” to Iraq and Syria. In the same month, Al-Qaida in Iraq, the precursor to ISIS, was formed.[8]

Chossudovsky cites a report in The Times Online, in Jan. 2005, that the Pentagon was looking at

forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency [Resistance] in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.

Under the so-called “ El Salvador option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter.

Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret...

The Reagan Administration funded and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise Salvadorean rebel leaders and sympathisers. …

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85. In the early 1980s, President Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras, with the aim of ousting Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime.

The Contras were equipped using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal that could have toppled Mr. Reagan.

The thrust of the Pentagon proposal in Iraq …is to follow that model …[9]

But it gets worse. A lot worse. Chossudovsky notes:

While the stated objective of the “ Iraq Salvador Option” was to “ take out the insurgency,” in practice the US-sponsored terror brigades were involved in routine killings of civilians, with a view to fomenting sectarian violence. In turn, the CIA and MI6 were overseeing “ Al Qaeda in Iraq” units involved in targeted assassinations directed against the Shiite population... advised by undercover US Special Forces.

Robert Stephen Ford –subsequently appointed US Ambassador to Syria –was part of Negroponte’s team in Baghdad in 2004-2005. In January 2004, he was dispatched as U.S. representative to the Shiite city of Najaf, which was the stronghold of the Mahdi army [an important volunteer force loyal to the charismatic Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr], with which he made preliminary contacts.[10]

So they were stoking violence from both sides of the street. The Salvador Option is El Salvador squared,  El Salvador on steroids. The primary objective is not just quelling the insurgency to seal a US victory; it is to take that violence and ramp it up into internecine warfare that will rip the country into three parts. This is divide and conquer with a vengeance, following a plan to subjugate Iraq that the Israeli strategist Oded Yinon laid out in the 1980’s, of which more later.

Supposedly the war on Iraq was part of the US “ war on terror.” Bush even made a lame attempt to link Saddam and Al Qaida to justify his war on Iraq (of course, Saddam’s regime was naturally trying to eradicate fundamentalist terrorism). Yet now the US was going to put Al Qaida into mass production.

The policy design was devastatingly simple. The Sunnis were to be punished because Saddam and much of his administration had been Sunni. This decapitated the country and gutted its military. A Shiite-leaning government was set up. The Sunni insurgency would direct its ire against this weak center, while the “ Sunni” terrorists of Al Qaida were unleashed against Shiite civilians. Ethnic cleansing would result,  beginning the dissolution into three separate territories, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish.

John Negroponte and Robert Stephen Ford were put in charge of recruiting the Iraqi death squads. While Negroponte coordinated the operation from his office at the US Embassy, Robert S. Ford, who was fluent in both Arabic and Turkish, was entrusted with the task of establishing strategic contacts with Shiite and Kurdish militia groups outside the “ Green Zone” .[11]

Chossudovsky quotes Dahr Jamail, the courageous, award-winning American journalist cited by Wikipedia as “ one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq invasion:”

Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980’s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces, supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization [Badr Brigade] and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi’ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance. Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the   streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today.[12]

Demographic warfare. This was the era when Shiite and Sunni mosques and neighborhoods were rocked by terror bombings, until the residents were forced to flee to areas where their sect was in the majority. This was when the famous incident occurred with the two British SAS special forces mercenaries, dressed in mufti and driving around Basra with detonators in their car, apparently planning to bomb a mosque or a market.[13] They were arrested by the Iraqi police. The British liberated them by driving an assault group of tanks through the walls of the jail. Interesting parallel: during “ the troubles” in Northern Ireland, the SAS was caught carrying out terror bombing provocations to stoke the sectarian civil war there. “

On May 4, 2006, Congressman Dennis Kucinich gave a speech on the floor of the House which linked the Bush administration to the death squads in Iraq.” Kucinich had written to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, citing copious references to newspaper articles. “ News reports over the past 10 months,” Kucinich told Congress, “ strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supported highly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis.” [14]

Here are a few of the congressman’s news highlights:

July 28, 2005 –Los Angeles Times reports that members of a California Army National Guard company, the Alpha Company, who were implicated in a detainee abuse scandal, trained and conducted joint operations with the Wolf Brigade, a commando unit criticized for human rights abuses. In an online Alpha Company newsletter, Captain Haviland wrote, “ We have assigned 2nd Platoon to help them transition, and install some of our ‘Killer Company’aggressive tactical spirit in them.’The article further states that despite the Wolf Brigade’s controversial reputation for human rights violations, it is regarded as the gold standard for Iraqi security forces by U.S. military officials.”

August 31, 2005 –BBC reports that on the night of August 24, a large force of the Volcano Brigade raided homes in Al-Hurriyah city in the Baghdad, kidnapping and then executing 76 citizens. The victims were all shot in the head after their hands and feet had been tied up. They suffered the harshest forms of torture, deformation and burning.

November 17, 2005 –Newsday reports that in the past year, the U.S. military has helped build up Iraqi commandos under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces officer who led U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. The brigades built up over the past year include     the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and Volcano Brigade [the death squad cited in the previous article].

February 26, 2006 –The Independent reports that outgoing United Nations’human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, revealed that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by the death squads working from the Ministry of Interior. He said that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the Baghdad mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes.

March 9, 2006 –Los Angeles Times reports that ... U.S. trainers have also given extensive support to 27 brigades of heavily armed commandos accused of a series of abuses, including the death of 14 Sunni Arabs who were locked in an airtight van last summer.

March 10, 2006 –Sidney Morning Herald reports that men wearing the uniforms of U.S.-trained security forces, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, abducted 50 people in a daylight raid on a security agency. Masked men who are driving what appear to be new government-owned vehicles are carrying out many of the raids.

March 27, 2006 –The Independent reports that while U.S. authorities have begun criticizing the Iraqi government over the “ death squads,” many of the paramilitary groups accused of the abuse, such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade and the Special Police Commandos were set up with the help of the American military. Furthermore, the militiamen were provided with U.S. advisers some of whom were veterans of Latin American counter-insurgency which also had led to allegations of death squads at the time.[15]

Author Mike Whitney notes that “ the appearance of Colonel James Steele, as counselor for the Iraqi Security Forces, should remove any doubt about the real nature of America’s involvement... Steele’s ‘stock in trade’ is ‘spreading terror through the application of extreme violence’–Max Fuller’s apt description of US counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin America.”

About 160,000 US troops occupied Iraq, and the cost to Iraq so far, has been about 160,000 civilian lives. The troops were gradually replaced with mercenaries from Blackwater and other “ private security firms.” By the end of 2011, the US Army withdrew. It lost 4,400 men, cost $ 1 trillion,[16] and released thousands of veterans disabled by trauma into US society. They leave behind them a fractured, instable and radioactive Iraq. By 2013, civilian casualties were already on the rise again.[17]

Negroponte understudy Robert S. Ford, the No. 2 “ genius of genocide” who helped set up the Iraqi death squads, stayed in Baghdad until 2006. He was then assigned as ambassador to Algeria (another target for regime change) until 2008, when he returned to the Baghdad embassy as Deputy Head of Mission.[18] Ford was by then well prepared for his appointment as US Ambassador to Syria in January 2011, coinciding with the “ Arab Spring” disturbances by the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. In a scarce two months thereafter, the armed insurgency started in Syria. The “ military-industrial-media complex” was all geared up to present it as a spree of insane violence by President Assad against his own people.

From the very start, fighters, weapons and supplies were funneled over the border from Iraq and Turkey into Syria –including the vicious and extremist death squads of the LIFG, or Libyan Islamic Fighting group: fresh veterans of the Libya campaign, mercenaries of an Empire of Terror.[19] The US-trained veteran terrorist brigades began to commit atrocities against civilians, then post footage of the carnage on Youtube, and fix the blame on imaginary pro-government gangs –as if Assad himself had learned the tactics of counter-insurgency terror at the School of the Americas. Each time, the mass media would then join in a chorus of hysteria about the US “ responsibility to protect” civilians (so-called R2P) –the trick that had just worked to mobilize the extreme violence of NATO firepower to bring down Qaddafi and smash Libya. Russia and China learned their lesson, and vetoed NATO intervention in Syria at the UN.

Our lying, embedded media are acting as the purveyors of fakery, and the enablers of genocide. They are just as guilty as those who do the actual killing, because these war crimes could never happen without their protection. ***

Damascus holds a place of honor as the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city, and the third holiest city in Islam. Religious tolerance has deep roots in Syria. When the city surrendered peacefully to the Muslim siege in 634, the Orthodox Christians were treated benevolently by the new masters. The Koran considers Islam to be a continuation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and ordains respect towards Christians and Jews as peoples with a holy scripture.[20]

When the Allies parceled out the Turkish empire after World War I, and the French got their mandate over Syria, they tried to divide and conquer the land by splitting it up into six ethno-religious enclaves. The Syrians, who are three-quarters Sunni, would have none of it. They have an ingrained suspicion of foreign conspiracies attempting to divide them along religious lines.[21] Some critics believe the imperialist aim is not regime change or balkanization, but “ merely” the destruction of a non-compliant nation. However, the Kurds, who are Sunni but not Arab, do have aspirations for more autonomy, and it was easy enough to use them to occupy Syria’s oil fields. So as we will see, the “ French option” is not off the table.

Terror attacks have been concentrated against Syria’s minorities, especially the Christians and the Alawites, Assad’s sect. The effect is to force them to flee as refugees, leaving a Sunni state that will be more susceptible to takeover by extremists, and to join the Sunni bloc of Gulf states allied with the US. In Iraq, the Christian population has now decreased by 80% or 90% from a figure of about 1.5 million in 2003.[22] As to who benefits, well, “ three’s a crowd.” Friendship between Muslims and Christians is the nemesis of Zionism (just as the world alliance between Christendom and Zionism is so fatal to the Muslim peoples.)

According to Chossudovsky in The Globalization of War,[23] the thesis of a “ Sunni belt” or bloc was spawned by Condoleeza Rice in 2006, ostensibly as a strategy to contain Iran. It was implemented by Prince Bandar “ Bush,” the Saudi spymaster, who went right to work creating the Jabhat al Nusra and ISIL / ISIS terror brigades. Saudi Arabia bankrolled the early years of the death squad campaign against Syria, providing financing and plausible deniability for the US effort.

Within days after Bandar organized a terror bombing against the high command of the Syrian military, in July 2012, he too was nearly killed by a bomb; many believe this was a revenge blow by Syrian military intelligence. That is one reason PM Erdogan of Turkey took the lead role in supporting the insurgency, but there is also the important logistical advantage: Turkey’s long border with Syria and Iraq. The bandits financed themselves and made Erdogan’s family rich by stealing Syria’s oil, which the Turks then sold to Israel. It is widely believed ISIS was able to loot $ 400 million from the central bank of Mosul, but Iraq has denied it. The UK Daily Mail reported on Iraq’s claim that ISIS is selling organs harvested from its victims to supplement its $ 2 million-a-day income from oil, ransom payments, and smuggled antiques.[24]

Takeaways

•Terrorist death squads in Iraq were created using the “ El Salvador Option” under cover of US Army counter-insurgency operations in the Iraq War. Ambassador Negroponte and Col. Steele, veterans of the Central American “ Contras” project, set up secret police death squads and freelance terror brigades on both sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide. The aim was to instigate a civil war along sectarian lines, as a divide-and-conquer strategy. ISIS (the “ Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” ) grew out of the “ Al Qaida” or “ Sunni” terror units they set up. In 2014, ISIS captured huge areas of Iraq, thanks to a stand-down by Iraqi army officers.

•In the “ Arab Spring” of March 2011, US “ human rights” NGO’s organized protests against the Syrian government, which worked as a screen for the death squad operations organized by Ambassador Ford. Terror brigades brought in from Iraq and Libya committed atrocities which were blamed on the government. Western nations supported them, claiming they were “ moderate” pro-democracy rebels. A huge army of mercenaries and extremists was recruited to fight the Syrian Army, paid for by Saudi money and the theft of Syrian oil. While the US and its allies pretended to fight their own terrorists, ISIS and its ilk grew stronger in Syria. On Sept. 30, 2015, Vladimir Putin changed the game by calling their bluff and carrying out massive airstrikes on ISIS, in coordination with the Syrian Army.

Eric King: Russia is dominating in Syria... and there’s really nothing Washington can do.

Paul Craig Roberts: No, except make a fool of itself by supporting ISIS. We brought ISIS in there —everybody knows that. Just the other day the former head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said on television that ‘Yes, we created ISIS and we used them as henchmen to overthrow governments.’(Laughter).[25] ***

It’s no fun for anyone to have to admit, “ My country: wrong and wrong!” However, the flip side of the freedoms we enjoy, is that burden of responsibility.

This short preface can’t tell very much of the story. It can only hope to help the sincere reader set aside natural skepticism, long enough to consider the unfamiliar evidence in the book. It is a strange tale indeed, and unfortunately, there is no way to expose monstrous deceptions without risking being thought a liar oneself.

I have tried here to open one fairly clear window, one reasonably straightforward thread of the narrative, leading from known points in our history (“ our” Central American death squad “ rebels” or “ Contras” ), to the unfamiliar and frightening territory of today’s terror bloodbath in the Middle East, in Paris, and beyond.

In this book are contributions from an array of authors, each with a unique perspective, yet arriving at similar conclusions: that ISIS was created intentionally, not by accidental “ blowback” [26] from misguided policies. Whether or not we convince you, I hope you will find our selections in some measure thought-provoking, stimulating and enlightening.

It’s a minority viewpoint, but we should remember –One good reason we have freedom of speech, is that Truth always starts from a minority viewpoint.

–John-Paul Leonard,

San Diego, Calif.,

December 2015

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Who were The Contras?

Who were "The Contras"?
Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers".  But Oliver North's aide in the field, Robert Owen, sent him a memo in March of 1986, reminding the brash Lt. Colonel that their leader, Adolfo Calero, is "a creation of the United States government", and he warned North that those around Calero,
"Unfortunately, they are not first rate people; in fact they are liars and greed and power motivated. They are not the people to rebuild a new Nicaragua. In fact, the FDN has done a good job of keeping competent people out of the organization. If it hasn't, then Nicaragua is lost forever with the type of leadership that has emerged ..."
 

Remember, this is the assessment of a young American know-it-all, member of the clique that rejected all forms of Latin American government that dared to put the welfare of its people before the demands of Wall Street.  To give a voice to the alternative view, let me quote the consummate playwright of his day, the heir of Samuel Beckett, himself the heir of James Joyce, I speak of Harold Pinter, who was also an activist of considerable note.  In his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech, he said: 
" I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'
The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.
The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.
The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador."

I strongly urge truth seekers to watch the entire Nobel speech:



The point Pinter is making here is, Wall Street does not intend to allow any Latin American country to increase the cost of labor in any way.  The reason Jean-Bertrand Aristide, President of Haiti, was carried off bodily by US Marines to the Central African Republic is the same reason as Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State presided over the deposing of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya — both of these leaders raised the minimum wage for their starving people.
Wall Street knows full well that any such rise in the cost of labor will spread to every other country in the region.  And Wall Street tells the Marines what to do, don't think they don't.  And they tell Hillary and Obama what to do.  And they get precious little resistence from either one.
This might be an appropriate time to mention where the US policy of treating Latin America like slave colonies began.  The Reagan team sprang from the Eisenhower team, which was dominated by Sec'y of State John Foster Dulles and brother Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence.
Here you see the painting "Glorious Victory" by the great Mexican artist Diego Rivera, depicting Foster shaking the hand of the fawning new Guatemalan dictator, Col. Carlos Castillo Armas, shortly after the overthrow of the populist hero Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.  Arbenz had the temerity to nationalize vast tracts of unused land belonging to United Fruit Co., now Chiquita, to provide subsistence farmland for his people.  United Fruit was a client of Sullivan and Cromwell, still the biggest law firm on Wall Street, of which Foster was a partner, and Allen a working lawyer.
You can see also the face of Ike on the bomb, Allen resting his chin on Foster's shoulder, the bananas which represented the only value in the land to them, the sellout bishops and clergy, the sellout military, the poor crushed by the labor and killed by the Secret Armies sent in even then.

Anyone wishing to be familiar with this subject should watch Bill Moyers's masterpiece from 1987, The Secret Government - the Constitution in Crisis.


Better yet, watch it four times.


Monday, July 4, 2016

The Poisonous Profit Motive

This is a piece I wrote years ago for another blog I had, the only remnant worth saving.  But I believe it is so, and a valid point.

In the late 1970's, a friend of mine got a job as a pattern-maker at the time-honored Portland Stove Foundry here in Maine, a company that had stood at the top of its craft for a hundred years. They made cast-iron wood stoves for heating and cooking. A number of his other friends were working there too, in various tasks — hard, hot, heavy, dangerous, but honest work, and producing a high quality product. During his tenure, the company was acquired by, as he told me, a bunch of young bankers, who soon fired the long-time foreman because the man didn't agree with their cut-corner methods. Then they began to make the low level decisions themselves. And their decisions, my friend told me, were not sound, in the light of any level of practical expertise.

Ultimately, there came the day when they put a load of scrap iron from the yard into the #1 furnace — covered with snow and ice — and the steam in the melt exploded and ruined the fine old furnace. Before long they decided to strip out any assets and equipment they could sell, and make a run for it, leaving only a shell and a memory of the grand old company. As we have seen, this was the beginning of a trend in the USA.

During the W decade, 50,000 factories — not jobs, factories — were lost in this country, closed down or moved piece by piece overseas. If it had been my son whose friend lost his pattern-maker job back then, and I were asked my opinion, what would I answer? My question back then had been, "what do bankers know about casting iron"? My reply now would be to ask a different question, "what made those young men want to become bankers?" And my answer would be, "It seems there is a growing epidemic of avarice in this country, that raises profit to the pinnacle of human ambition, replacing quality, community, permanence, and all the foundations of the society that spawned us." We now can look back on the "Greed is Good" decade that followed in the 1980's, also known as the Reagan Revolution, and see just how it played out.

It is plain now to me that the profit motive is an improper motive. It is a motive which is destined inexorably to lead to disease and decline in society, just as addictions do in personal life. Putting profit first is a definition of addictive behavior. Eating only dessert is a recipe for illness.

ISIS IS US!

Freedom Lies in the Telling of the Truth:ISIS IS US!
CLICK ON ANY SECTION OF THE PLACARD TO JUMP TO THE RELEVANT MATERIAL
ISIS Brzez Gladio Contras Clark Cohen Libya

Wolfowitz Doctrine: Destroy all former Soviet client states


Wolfowitz Doctrine:
Destroy all former Soviet client states
 —"We're gonna take down seven countries in five years" Gen. Wesley Clark —

General Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO, was astonished to hear, immediately after 9/11, from one of his former subordinates, that the Bush administration was going to invade Iraq.  "Why??" he asked, but the other general did not know.  A few weeks later, the full story came through — "We're gonna take down seven countries in five years".

All our wars are phony wars, all our excuses for wars are phony excuses.

That is lesson #1.  We are predators, not saviors.
Watch the brief version of his statement here, recorded in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, before a live audience at the 92nd St. Y in New York City.


Watch the brief version of his statement here, recorded in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, before a live audience at the 92nd St. Y in New York City.


Watch the brief version of his statement here, recorded in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, before a live audience at the 92nd St. Y in New York City.






On a different occasion, before the Commonwealth Club of California, Gen. Clark explains the significance of the Wolfowitz Doctrine.  It was, he tells us, "a coup - a policy coup".

It must be noted here that Paul Wolfowitz is one of the foremost disciples of Leo Strauss, the University of Chicago "philosopher" and father of Neo-Conservatism.  Listen to the general's account of his early meeting with the Defense Department official.  Very important information that every American needs to understand, and far too few have even heard of.




You can also view the full hour-long 2007 interview
 from which the first clip was taken at Democracy Now! below.

Staged Coup in Ukraine


DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE.  THINK FOR YOURSELVES!

Watch my seven minute excerpt below.  Full transcript included at my YouTube site.

There is also a link there to the full video from RT.


STEPHEN COHEN: In November 2013 the EU told Yanukovich, then the President of Ukraine: “sign an agreement with us or go to Russia”, and Putin said “why do they have to choose, let’s have a three-way agreement of trade and financial aid to Kiev” - you remember that, it was very clear. Lavrov, Russian foreign office and everybody… and Europe said “No” and Washington said “No, we can’t do that”. Now, what’s happened: near a year later, they ask Putin “please come to Minsk and discuss with Poroshenko. Russia, Ukraine and Europe, the three-way deal.” Four thousand people have died, one million people have been turned into refugees, the Donbas has been destroyed for the agreement that could have happened without one shot fired in November one year ago.
. . .
Why did the West exclude Russia from the negotiations in November, that’s the question. Do you know the reason why? What would you think?
SOPHIE SHEVARDNADZE: What?  Well, you tell me.
STEPHEN COHEN: I think it was about NATO expansion, that trade agreement.

Secret armies in Europe Operation Gladio, the Strategy of Tension

Secret armies in Europe

Operation Gladio:
The Strategy of Tension

"These authoritarian plans were part of a sweeping covert strategy developed in the earliest days of the Cold War by U.S. intelligence officials, including [CIA Chief Allen] Dulles, to counter a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe by creating a “stay-behind network” of armed resisters to fight the Red Army. Code-named Operation Gladio, these secret CIA-funded networks attracted fascist and criminal elements, some of which later played subversive roles in West Germany, France, and Italy, disrupting democratic rule in those countries by staging terrorist acts and plotting coups and assassinations."

The Devil's Chessboard — Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
by David Talbot, Kindle Version, location 4968

For a taste of the TRUTH about Gladio, watch this brief clip from the 3-hour BBC documentary, interviewing Vincenzo Vinciguerra in his life-in-prison cell, regarding the bombing in Peteano of which he was the perpetrator.  He explains the motive behind all the bombings carried out during the decades of Operation Gladio:
"When you were on the Right, you were not supposed to attack the State or its representatives.  You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people outside the political arena. For one simple reason: To force the Italian public to turn to the State, to turn to the regime and ask for greater security.  This was the precisely the role of the Right in Italy.  It placed itself at the service of the State which created a strategy, aptly called the "Strategy of Tension", in so far as they had to get people to accept that at any moment, over a period of thirty years, from 1960 to the mid-eighties, a State of Emergency could be declared.  So, people would willingly trade part of their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains, or enter a bank.  This is the political logic behind all the bombings."


I would urge anyone who wants to be knowledgeable about the world they live in to watch the entire 3 hours.
It should be noted that, whereas the European version of Operation Gladio faded out in the '80s, it continues in Turkey and Central Asia — Chechnya, Ingushetia, Ukraine, and the like; the actual target being stalked is, of course, Russia, the ultimate prize.


For more information, I recommend the Swiss researcher Dr. Daniele Ganser, who is the recognized expert on the subject.  Here is an audio interview in English, which will bring you up to speed on the subject in large measure.


Brzezinski Created Al-Qaeda out of Available Mercenaries and Crazies

Brzezinski Created Al-Qaeda out of Available Mercenaries and Crazies
 — He lured the Soviets into Afghanistan —

In 1998, former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was interviewed by Le Nouvel Observateur:
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From The Shadows] that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period, you were the national security advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?
B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?               
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: “Some agitated Moslems”? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today...
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West has a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid: There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner, without demagoguery or emotionalism. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, moderate Morocco, militarist Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt, or secularist Central Asia? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries...