(Obnoxious) Opening remarks of Chairman Devin Nunes

(Obnoxious) Opening remarks of Chairman Devin Nunes

House Select Intelligence Committee hearing

on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

CHAIRMAN NUNES: The Putin regime has a long history of aggressive actions against other countries, including the outright invasion of two of its neighbors in recent years

This can only refer to Ukraine and Georgia, or taken separately, Ukraine and Crimea.  ALL THREE EXAMPLES ARE FALSE.  Russia did not invade Ukraine OR Georgia.  Crimea had the right to secede from Ukraine when it was overthrown by rogue elements fostered by NATO, and did so with 95% concurrence.

Georgia invaded Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia in 2008, with much destruction and loss of life.  The people of that province appealed to Russia for help and received it.

"In recent days, there has been a remarkable change in Western opinion about the August war between Georgia and Russia over my homeland of South Ossetia. The New York Times, the BBC and Human Rights Watch have reported extensive evidence of U.S.-armed and trained Georgian troops attacking innocent civilians using cluster bombs and other banned weapons. The U.S. State Department, which initially backed Georgia strongly, now concedes that Georgia erred in launching its attack, while British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has condemned the Georgian government for its "reckless" attack."— wrote Lira Tskhovrebova in the LA Times, Nov. 17, 2008 (Georgia's shameful attack on South Ossetia)

The principle that these two provinces have the right to secede can be laid also at the feet of NATO, who demanded that right for Kosovo, which had become majority Albanian in the last century or two due to immigration, although it was long the heart of Serbian culture, the site of the tragic battle of Kosovo Polja, the "Field of Crows", when Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was defeated by the Turks in 1389.  The chief treasure of the region, and really of all Serbian history, is the Gračanica Monastery, rebuilt by the Serbian king Stefan Milutin in 1321 on the ruins of a 6th-century early Christian three-naved basilica.

The Southern Slavs, a group of peoples and languages stretching from Slovenia on the Adriatic to Bulgaria on the Black Sea, were the earliest members of that ethnic/linguistic family to become Christianized, from the 7th to the 9th centuries, primarily through the efforts of the emissaries of the Orthodox Church at Byzantium, the two monks Cyril and Methodius, who also created the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia.  [at left, a postcard honoring the two missionaries.]

(As a side note, Cyrillic characters — Unicode #1025 to #1273 — were part of the "evidence" in malware found, blamed on Russian hacking until the Wikileaks release of the first tranche of the Vault 7 leak, which showed conclusively that the CIA held (or failed to hold!  They flagrantly lost control of them months ago: expect them on your equipment anytime after "zero days"!) a vast horde of hacking tools from around the world, which leave the "fingerprints" of the original creators.

Such clever chaps, these Americans.

After the Kosovo war of 1999 Bishop of Raška and Prizren Artemije Radosavljević transferred his official seat to this Monastery from Prizren and since then the monastery has become not only the most important spiritual but also the national and political center of the Serbian people in Kosovo.

When the Greeks and Serbs finally fought their way to freedom from the Turkish tyrants, it was a cause celebre in the West, with leading lights like the principle English lyric poet, George Gordon Lord Byron, fighting and dying at Missoulonghi, in a role similar to that played by novelists, Briton George Orwell and American Earnest Hemingway along with his future wife and fellow war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, in the Spanish Civil War against Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his German Nazi backers.

The Kosovo War was fought to protect the right of the Albanian Muslims, recent immigrants in a historical sense, to remove the Kosovo province from the nation it had always been a part of.  Russia bowed its head and offered no contest to NATO (read: Wall Street, Wall Street's offspring the CIA, and the American Deep State).  Serbia never accepted the tearing out of its heart, but could do nothing about it, with its historic Danube bridges blown and infrastructure blown out, its president mysteriously dying in custody during a trial at the Hague.

So, the rule is, a majority of citizens of a province have an undeniable right to secede, is that it?  Apparently not.  When NATO elements, the US State Department, and Neo-Nazi gangs organized by same overthrew the legal government of Victor Yanukovich, burned to death some 50 protestors in the Labor Building in Odessa, and began hunting down Russian speaking Ukranians in the east of the country who refused to go along with the coup, the citizens of Crimea held a referendum, voting to return to Russia, after 63 years of separation since Nikita Khrushchev gave the province to his home state of Ukraine in 1954.

On April 27, 2010, Russia and Ukraine ratified the Russian Ukrainian Naval Base for Gas treaty, extending the Russian Navy's lease of Crimean facilities for 25 years after 2017 (through 2042) with an option to prolong the lease in 5-year extensions.  So, invade?  No, the Russian Navy was in Sevastopol before, during, and after the split.  Details, details.

But in spite of its high-handed demand that Kosovo, forever Serbian, but recently majority-populated with Albanian Muslim immigrants, must be allowed to secede and be a new country, the United States of America refuses to acknowledge the clear mandate of the people of Crimea to RETURN to their ancient homeland, Russia, of which they have been a part for at least 200 years, by the least of standards.  For that matter, Ukraine itself was Russian in the beginning.  In 985, Russia converted to Christianity, in the person of Grand Duke (St.) Vladimir, in his capital, Kiev.  They were called the Kievan Rus'.

The modern peoples of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia all claim Kievan Rus' as their cultural ancestors.

CHAIRMAN NUNES: . . . as well as its brutal military action in Syria to defend the Assad regime.

The US propaganda recited above in this fragment from Mr. Nunes ignores the fact that the Assad "regime" is the legal authority in Syria.  No one even disputes that.  But it has been quite a while since the US "regime" showed a lot of respect for international law.  Remember Alberto "Speedy" Gonzales telling us, the Geneva Conventions are 'quaint'?  That's the legal equivalent of deciding not to pay one's bills.

 The same is true for the flouting of treaty obligations that require us to GET PERMISSION to bring our military within the borders of a sovereign country.  By the way, Russia is the invited guest/ally of the legal government of Syria.  And who are they helping Assad defend his country from?????

Our MERCENARIES.  Sure, there may be some volunteers, originally unhappy with conditions in that country.  There was considerably distress in 2011 because of a severe and long-lasting drought, largely the result of GLOBAL WARMING.  Who is the biggest producer of greenhouse gas on the planet?  Well, China passed us in 2005, BECAUSE WE DO ALL OUR MANUFACTURING THERE NOWADAYS.  That's why you can't find a job.  But what fraction of US greenhouse gases does the US MILITARY produce?

" The US Air Force (USAF) is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world. Fathom, if you can, the astronomical fuel usage of USAF fighter planes: the F-4 Phantom Fighter burns more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel per hour and peaks at 14,400 gallons per hour at supersonic speeds. The B-52 Stratocruiser, with eight jet engines, guzzles 55 gallons per minute; ten minutes of flight uses as much fuel as the average driver does in one year of driving! A quarter of the world's jet fuel feeds the USAF fleet of flying killing machines; in 2006, they consumed as much fuel as US planes did during the Second World War (1941-1945) - an astounding 2.6 billion gallons.(3)" — The Military Assault on Global Climate

But the firepower that is destroying the oldest cities on earth, continuously inhabited, Damascus, still largely spared, being the oldest?  That is al Nusra, and ISIS, a.k.a. al Qaeda 2.0 and 3.0.  Remember, Zbigniew Brzrezinski created al Qaeda in the summer of 1979 to bring down the USSR.  And, yes, it worked.  And it's still working.  We can blame stuff on them, like 9/11, or we can sic them on our next targets.  We did, in Libya and Syria.  Check out my detailed summation of these matters here, the online clickable version of the placard at left.

 

The gratuitous vilification "brutal attack" is really the expression of rage at Russia actually defending the man we're trying to destroy.  And why are we trying to destroy him?  He refuses to allow the Qatar pipeline to pass through his borders.  Why? Because it is the Sunni pipeline, with the hope of cutting the Shia nation, Iran, out of the natural gas market.  Assad's family are Alowites, a branch of Shiism.  The gas field that Qatar is pumping out of is the largest in the world, and bridges the Persian Gulf — both Qatar and Iran are drawing from it.

Furthermore, the Saudis and Qatar desperately want to crush the economy of Russia, which is largely dependent on oil and gas.  If they can get their pipeline to Bulgaria, they can seriously cut into Russia's economy, already damaged by US sanctions (all unjustified, along the lines of the earlier paragraphs above.  Shameless lying attacks of greed for power, couched as moral opprobrium, wherein American citizens should partake, or be in danger of this new McCarthyism coming down on their heads.) 

Here is a great summary of the ACTUAL motive for attacking Mr. Assad, a great article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., entitled "Why the Arabs don't want us in Syria."

 

As is clear from his lead image, he sees the US Deep State, personified entirely by the brothers Dulles.

" For Americans to really understand what’s going on, it’s important to review some details about this sordid but little-remembered history. During the 1950s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers — CIA Director Allen Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles — rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a neutral zone in the Cold War and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab nationalism — which Allen Dulles equated with communism — particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies that they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA’s director of plans, Frank Wisner, and John Foster Dulles, in September 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect,” according to a memo recorded by his staff secretary, Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster." 

Here is a map that explains the same story, from another page that corroborates Kennedy's piece:

Is the Qatar gas behind the continuous war in Libya and Syria?

CHAIRMAN NUNES: For example, the Kremlin has a disinformation campaign through the RT propaganda network, which traffics in Anti-American conspiracy theories.

No evidence offered.  The US government, with the assistance of the US mainstream media, pumps out so many lies, that any truth is an "Anti-American conspiracy theory."  This is nothing but a concerted Hetzjagd, hot pursuit of the prospective victims, Syria, Iran, and ultimately Russia and China, to bring them under our power while we still have power other than the nukes.

The American people are unwilling and/or unable to evaluate the validity of the claims of the US government.  They are so content to be members of the peanut gallery, the pep club, cheering on our brave military, when if they had a shred of integrity would already have long known that no war we've been engaged in, certainly since WWII, has been justifiable, helpful to anyone except power-mad and money-mad billionaires.

If any military member has a conscience they should read a little book by the highest decorated Marine of all time, MG Smedley Darlington Butler (d. 1940).

The book is called War Is A Racket, read for free here at Ratical.

 

Here's a short speech he gave at a public gathering that explains his late position:

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.