Ilhan Omar Responds To Anti-War Internet Disinformation

counterpunch  |   And even though they may lack the finely tuned mental framework to fit it all together, thanks to their news consumption habits, lots of people have begun to glimpse that Washington’s idiocy could get them blown up tout de suite and meanwhile is bleeding them dry and will very soon be bleeding them drier. Hence the public’s growing reluctance to keep handing Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, blank checks. The GOP even climbed onto the bandwagon and announced it won’t fund this misbegotten war if it regains congress. I, for one, will be astonished if Republicans have the backbone to keep that promise. Anyway, Biden plans to preempt this oath by forking over more billions to Kiev now. This will not, ahem, help the Dems, which is probably what Republicans count on. But then Biden gets to look like he’s a man of principle (the show must go on), while the rest of us go broke and calculate our distance from atomic ground zero. Americans struggle with utility bills, grocery and gas prices, medical and educational debt. They don’t need to fund defense contractors to the tune of billions of dollars so Ukrainians and Russians can kill each other halfway around the world. And they certainly don’t need a war that has humanity teetering on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

I am sorry, you all aren’t “anti war protesters”, you are dangerous propagandists who are literally making a mockery of the anti war movement.

I have never had the pleasure of responding to 🇷🇺 ridiculous internet disinformation in person before. Thank you for the opportunity ✌🏽 https://t.co/xzTLQCymgO

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) October 28, 2022

In an unexpected dribble of good news, on October 24 the Washington Post reported that some 30 members of the progressive caucus urged Biden to get diplomacy to end the war rolling. The next day, they sniveled and recanted. This was the first time any Dems had the guts not to cheerlead for more bloodshed and more war on Moscow. What caused this initial sea change, I don’t know. But it was good news. Better late than never, it seemed. It appeared to mean some on the so-called left in Washington had finally come to their senses and just might not behave as disgracefully as so many European socialists did once World War I started, when they abandoned their erstwhile pacifism. For a long time, honestly, it has looked like that was the inheritance Dem progressives wanted to claim, an inheritance not just of shame and mass murder, but, were the Ukraine war to morph into World War III, human extinction.

For less than a day the sun of reason and goodness shone down. Briefly, the people who consider themselves of the left decided this danger of humanity’s mass execution was worth speaking out about and that diplomacy for peace is the only sane route out of the fiasco. But then, the next day they chickened out of bucking their party’s bloodlust. Even their timid gesture was too much to ask. These people are not leftists. They are cowards. They are a disgrace to the left. If anyone in the progressive caucus ever speaks out for diplomacy again, I’ll be very impressed.

Speaking of being impressed, how about that Washington Post actually playing this story big, about progressives calling for diplomacy, instead of burying it? That was unexpected, to say the least. Because it’s long been sickeningly obvious that our mainstream media show one side of the story: the NATO, Washington, imperial, war-mongering side. And it’s been doing that, shamelessly, for a generation. (It did that earlier too, but with a bit of actual embarrassment, whenever it got called out.) Remember Iraq’s infamous weapons of mass destruction? The editors who hyped that lie for months on end went on to bigger and better things, and so did the politicians – Biden even became president! – while an entire country, Iraq, was bombed to smithereens, based largely on mendacious reporting and political chicanery and now, decades later, has simply swirled down the drain.

nobel laureate can't bust a grape didn't sign on for this world war isht!

tomdispatch |  World War IV would require at least a five-fold increase in the current size of the U.S. Army -- and not as an emergency measure but a permanent one. Such numbers may appear large, but as Cohen would be the first to point out, they are actually modest when compared to previous world wars. In 1968, in the middle of World War III, the Army had more than 1.5 million active duty soldiers on its rolls -- this at a time when the total American population was less than two-thirds what it is today and when gender discrimination largely excluded women from military service. If it chose to do so, the United States today could easily field an army of two million or more soldiers.

Whether it could also retain the current model of an all-volunteer force is another matter. Recruiters would certainly face considerable challenges, even if Congress enhanced the material inducements for service, which since 9/11 have already included a succession of generous increases in military pay. A loosening of immigration policy, granting a few hundred thousand foreigners citizenship in return for successfully completing a term of enlistment might help. In all likelihood, however, as with all three previous world wars, waging World War IV would oblige the United States to revive the draft, a prospect as likely to be well-received as a flood of brown and black immigrant enlistees. In short, going all out to create the forces needed to win World War IV would confront Americans with uncomfortable choices.

The budgetary implications of expanding U.S. forces while conducting a perpetual round of what the Pentagon calls “overseas contingency operations” would also loom large. Precisely how much money an essentially global conflict projected to extend well into the latter half of the century would require is difficult to gauge. As a starting point, given the increased number of active duty forces, tripling the present Defense Department budget of more than $600 billion might serve as a reasonable guess.

At first glance, $1.8 trillion annually is a stupefyingly large figure. To make it somewhat more palatable, a proponent of World War IV might put that number in historical perspective. During the first phases of World War III, for example, the United States routinely allocated 10% or more of total gross domestic product (GDP) for national security. With that GDP today exceeding $17 trillion, apportioning 10% to the Pentagon would give those charged with managing World War IV a nice sum to work with and no doubt to build upon.

Of course, that money would have to come from somewhere. For several years during the last decade, sustaining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed the federal deficit above a trillion dollars. As one consequence, the total national debt now exceeds annual GDP, having tripled since 9/11. How much additional debt the United States can accrue without doing permanent damage to the economy is a question of more than academic interest.

To avoid having World War IV produce an endless string of unacceptably large deficits, ratcheting up military spending would undoubtedly require either substantial tax increases or significant cuts in non-military spending, including big-ticket programs like Medicare and social security -- precisely those, that is, which members of the middle class hold most dear.

In other words, funding World War IV while maintaining a semblance of fiscal responsibility would entail the kind of trade-offs that political leaders are loathe to make. Today, neither party appears up to taking on such challenges. That the demands of waging protracted war will persuade them to rise above their partisan differences seems unlikely. It sure hasn’t so far.

the war on iran..,

globalresearch | The Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatened with military action by the US and its allies for the last eight years.

Iran has been involved in war games in the Persian Gulf. The US Navy is deployed. Iran's naval exercises which commenced on December 24th were conducted in an area which is patrolled by the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.

Meanwhile, a new round of economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran has been unleashed, largely targeting Iran's Central Bank, leading to a dramatic plunge of Iran's currency.

Reacting to US threats, Iran declared that it would consider blocking the shipment of oil through the Strait of Hormuz:

"Roughly 40 percent of the world's oil tanker shipments transit the strait daily, carrying 15.5 million barrels of Saudi, Iraqi, Iranian, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Qatari and United Arab Emirates crude oil, leading the United States Energy Information Administration to label the Strait of Hormuz "the world's most important oil chokepoint." (John C.K. Daly, War Imminent in Strait of Hormuz? $200 a Barrel Oil? Global Research, January 3, 2012)

The Globalization of War and the Demise of the American Republic

There is a symbiotic relationship between War and the Economic Crisis.

The planning of the Iran war is being carried out at the crossroads of a worldwide economic depression, which is conducive to widening social inequalities, mass unemployment and the impoverishment of large sectors of the world population.

Crushing social movements on the domestic front --including all forms of resistance to America's military agenda and its neoliberal economic policies-- is an integral part of the United States' hegemonic role Worldwide.

Does Constitutional Government in the eyes of the Obama Administration constitute an encroachment to "The Globalization of War"?

History tells us that an Empire cannot be built on the political foundations of a Republic.

In this regard, it should come as no surprise that the new Iran sanctions regime adopted by the US Congress became law on New Year's Eve, December 31st, on the same day Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012), which suspends civil liberties and allows for the "Indefinite Detention of Americans". (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Inauguration of Police State USA 2012. Obama Signs the “National Defense Authorization Act ", Global Research, January 1, 2012)

The Obama administration is intent upon crushing both social dissent as well as antiwar protest. The American Republic is incompatible with America's "long war". What is required is the instatement of a "democratic dictatorship", a de facto military rule in civilian cloths.

Thousands of Troops to Israel

Advanced war preparations are ongoing. Barely mentioned by the Western media, although confirmed by Israeli press reports, the Pentagon is preparing to send several thousand US troops to Israel.

In the context of ongoing war preparations, these troops are slated to participate in joint US-Israeli military maneuvers in Spring 2012, described by the Jerusalem Post as "the largest-ever missile defense exercise in [Israel's] history." (emphasis added)

Last week [11-18 December], Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US’s Third Air Force based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming drill, expected to see the deployment of several thousand American soldiers in Israel. (US commander visits Israel to finalize missile... Jerusalem Post December 21, 2011 emphasis added)

These war games involve the testing of Israel's air defense system, which is now fully integrated into the US global missile detection system, following the installation (December 2008) of a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system. (See www.defense.gov/news/, December 30, 2011, .See also Sen. Joseph Azzolina, Protecting Israel from Iran's missiles, Bayshore News, December 26, 2008).

The US global missile detection system includes satellites, Aegis ships in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea as well as land-based Patriot radars and interceptors. In the context of planning the US-Israel Spring war games:

"The US will also bring its THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and shipbased Aegis ballistic missile defense systems to Israel to simulate the interception of missile salvos against Israel.

The American systems will work in conjunction with Israel’s missile defense systems – the Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome.

Gorenc came to Israel for talks with Brig.-Gen. Doron Gavish, commander of the Air Force’s Air Defense Division.

He toured one of the Iron Dome batteries in the South and the Israel Test Bed lab in Holon where the IAF holds its interception simulation exercises.

The IAF is planning to deploy a fourth battery of the Iron Dome counter-rocket system in the coming months and is mulling the possibility of stationing it in Haifa to protect oil refineries located there.

The Defense Ministry has allocated a budget to manufacture an additional three Iron Dome batteries by the end of 2012. IAF operational requirements call for the deployment of about a dozen batteries along Israel’s northern and southern borders.

The IAF is also moving forward with plans to deploy Rafael’s David’s Sling missile defense system, which is designed to defend against medium-range rockets and cruise missiles. Rafael recently completed a series of successful navigation and flight tests of the David’s Sling’s interceptor and plans to hold the first interception test by mid-2012. US commander visits Israel to finalize missile... Jerusalem Post December 21, 2011)

World War III Is A Conflict Of Anthropological Values

twitter |  Emmanuel Todd, one of the greatest French intellectuals today, claims that the "Third World War has started."

Small 🧵 translating the most important points in this fascinating interview.

Emmanuel Todd: «La Troisième Guerre mondiale a commencé» GRAND ENTRETIEN - Au-delà de l’affrontement militaire entre la Russie et l’Ukraine, l’anthropologue insiste sur la dimension idéologique et culturelle de cette guerre et sur l’opposition entre l’Occid… https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/emmanuel-todd-la-troisieme-guerre-mondiale-a-commence-20230112#Echobox=1673601494-1

 

He says "it's obvious that the conflict, started as a limited territorial war and escalating to a global economic confrontation, between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand, has become a world war." 

 

He believes that "Putin made a big mistake early on, which is [that] on the eve of the war [everyone saw Ukraine] not as a fledgling democracy, but as a society in decay and a “failed state” in the making. [...] I think the Kremlin's calculation was that this decaying society... 

 

... would crumble at the first shock. But what we have discovered, on the contrary, is that a society in decomposition, if it is fed by external financial and military resources, can find in war a new type of balance, and even a horizon, a hope." 

 

He says he agrees with Mearsheimer's analysis of the conflict: "Mearsheimer tells us that Ukraine, whose army had been overtaken by NATO soldiers (American, British and Polish) since at least 2014, was therefore a de facto member of the NATO, and that the Russians had... 

 

... announced that they would never tolerate Ukraine in NATO. From their point of view, the Russians are therefore in a war that is defensive and preventive. Mearsheimer added that we would have no reason to rejoice in the eventual difficulties of the Russians because... 

 

...since this is an existential question for them, the harder it would be, the harder they would strike. The analysis seems to hold true." 

 

He however has some criticism for Mearsheimer:

"Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is basically only one 'game' of power among others. After Vietnam... 

 

...Iraq and Afghanistan, what's one more debacle? The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: 'We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us'. Nothing would be existential for America. 

 

Insufficient analysis which today leads Biden to proceed mindlessly. America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system towards the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the 'economic power'...

...of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.

If the Russian economy resisted the sanctions indefinitely and managed to exhaust the European economy, while it itself remained, backed by China, American monetary and financial controls of the world......would collapse, and with them the possibility for United States to fund their huge trade deficit for nothing. This war has therefore become existential for the United States. No more than Russia, they cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go. 

 

This is why we...... are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other." 

 

He firmly believes the US is in decline but sees it as bad news for the autonomy of vassal states:

"I have just read a book by S. Jaishankar, Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs (The India Way), published just before the war, who sees American weakness, who knows that the......confrontation between China and the US will have no winner but will give space to a country like India, and to many others. I add: but not to Europeans. Everywhere we see the weakening of the US, but not in Europe and Japan because one of the effects of the retraction of......the imperial system is that the United States strengthens its hold on its initial protectorates. As the American system shrinks, it weighs ever more heavily on the local elites of the protectorates (and I include all of Europe here). 

 

The first to lose all national autonomy...... will be (or already are) the English and the Australians. The Internet has produced human interaction with the US in the Anglosphere of such intensity that its academic, media and artistic elites are, so to speak, annexed. On the European continent we are somewhat...... protected by our national languages, but the fall in our autonomy is considerable, and rapid. Let's remember the Iraq war, when Chirac, Schröder and Putin held joint anti-war press conferences." 

 

He underlines the importance of skills and education: "The US is now twice as populated as Russia (2.2 times in student age groups). But in the US only 7% are studying engineering, while in Russia it is 25%. Which means that with 2.2 times fewer people studying, Russia trains......30% more engineers. The US fills the gap with foreign students, but they're mainly Indians and even more Chinese. This is not safe and is already decreasing. It is a dilemma of the American economy: it can only face competition from China by importing skilled Chinese labor." 

 

On the ideological and cultural aspects of the war: "When we see the Russian Duma pass even more repressive legislation on 'LGBT propaganda', we feel superior. I can feel that as an ordinary Westerner. But from a geopolitical point of view, if we think in terms of...... soft power, it is a mistake. On 75% of the planet, the kinship organization was patrilineal and one can sense a strong understanding of Russian attitudes. For the collective non-West, Russia affirms a reassuring moral conservatism." 

 

He continues: "The USSR had a certain form of soft power [but] communism basically horrified the whole Muslim world by its atheism and inspired nothing particular in India, outside of West Bengal and Kerala. However, today, Russia which repositioned itself as the archetype......of the great power, not only anti-colonialist, but also patrilineal and conservative of traditional mores, can seduce much further. [For instance] it's obvious that Putin's Russia, having become morally conservative, has become sympathetic to the Saudis who I'm sure have a......bit of a hard time with American debates over access for transgender women in the ladies' room.

Western media are tragically funny, they keep saying, 'Russia is isolated, Russia is isolated'. But when we look at the votes at the UN, we see that 75% of the world does not......follow the West, which then seems very small.

With an anthropologist reading of this [divide between the West and the rest] we find that countries in the West often have a nuclear family structure with bilateral kinship systems, that is to say where male and female kinship......are equivalent in the definition of the social status of the child. [Within the rest], with the bulk of the Afro-Euro-Asian mass, we find community and patrilineal family organizations. We then see that this conflict, described by our media as a conflict of political......values, is at a deeper level a conflict of anthropological values. It is this unconscious aspect of the divide and this depth that make the confrontation dangerous."

There Was A Time When I Believed RAND's Value Was As An Objective "Source Of Truth"

Rand  |  This week marks one year since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, igniting the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.

RAND researchers have been analyzing the war from countless angles, providing insights on Russian and Ukrainian capabilities, the potential for diplomacy, refugee assistance, and much more.

What have we learned? And what might lie ahead?

We asked nearly 30 RAND experts to reflect on this grim anniversary by highlighting notable takeaways from the first year of Russia's all-out war—and sharing what they're watching as the conflict in Ukraine grinds on. Here's what they said.

What stood out in Year One

“The Russian military undermined its prewar advantages and amplified its disadvantages through a faulty invasion plan and withholding war plans from its force until the last minute. These mistakes collided with Ukrainian resolve and Western support.”

What to watch in Year Two

“Russia seems poised to resume limited offensives. Ukraine also seeks another successful counteroffensive. Yet both sides' capabilities are being worn down. Ukraine will need continued and predictable support as Russia digs deep into its reserves.”

Dara Massicot

Senior Policy Researcher

What stood out in Year One

“The trajectory of Russia-Ukraine negotiations seems odd in retrospect. The sides came closest to outlining the contours of a settlement in the first six weeks of the conflict. What was nearly agreed to then would be inconceivable now.”

What to watch in Year Two

“I will be watching closely to see if Russia is learning from its mistakes or just perpetuating them.”

Samuel Charap

Senior Political Scientist

What stood out in Year One

“Of the war's many takeaways, perhaps the most fundamental is that large, conventional wars are not just confined to history books. It's a lesson that many only half-believed until February 24, and one that the world must never forget going forward.”

What to watch in Year Two

“The big strategic question is whether the front lines will stagnate and eventually turn the war into a frozen conflict. The answer will ultimately come down to whether Western military aid or the ongoing Russian mobilization gains the upper hand.”

Raphael S. Cohen

Director, Strategy and Doctrine Program, RAND Project AIR FORCE; Senior Political Scientist

What stood out in Year One

“The strategic failure of the Russian leadership and the incompetence of the Russian military.”

What to watch in Year Two

“The evolving views of the Russian elite and the Russian populace toward Putin and the war.”

John Tefft

Adjunct Senior Fellow

The Nazi Past Shaped Our Dystopian Present

Annie Jacobsen's Operation Paperclip Focused On Chemical, Biological, and Medical Weaponeers

historynewsnetwork |   The journalist Annie Jacobsen recently published Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (Little Brown, 2014). Scouring the archives and unearthing previously undisclosed records as well as drawing on earlier work, Jacobsen recounts in chilling detail a very peculiar effort on the part of the U.S. military to utlize the very scientists who had been essential to Hitler’s war effort. 

As I read your book I started thinking about the various Nazi genre films such as; The Boys from Brazil, The Odessa File, and Marathon Man — they all hold to a similar premise, key Nazi’s escape Germany after the war and plot in various ways to do bad things. Apparently truth is stranger than fiction. What was Operation Paperclip?

Operation Paperclip was a classified program to bring Nazi scientists to America right after World War II. It had, however, a benign public face. The war department had issued a press release saying that good German scientists would be coming to America to help out in our scientific endeavors.

But it was not benign at all, as seen in the character of Otto Ambros, a man, as you explain, was keen on helping U.S. soldiers in matters of hygiene by offering them soap, this soon after they had conquered Germany. Who was Ambros?

Otto Ambros I must say was one of the most dark-hearted characters that I wrote about in this book. He was Hitler’s favorite chemist, and I don’t say that lightly. I found a document in the National Archives, I don’t believe it had ever been revealed before, that showed that during the war Hitler gave Ambros a one million Reichsmark bonus for his scientific acumen. The reason was two-fold. Ambros worked on the Reich’s secret nerve agent program, but he also invented synthetic rubber, that was called buna. The reason rubber was so important — if you think about the Reich’s war-machine and how tanks need treads, aircraft need wheels — the Reich needed rubber. By inventing synthetic rubber, Ambros became Hitler’s favorite chemist.

Not only that when the Reich decided to develop a factory at Auschwitz, — the death camp had a third territory, there was Auschwitz, there was Birkenau — they did it in a third territory called Auschwitz III also known as Monowitvz-Buna. This was where synthetic rubber was going to be manufactured using prisoners who would be spared the gas chamber as they were put to work, and most often worked to death by the Reich war machine. The person, the general manager there at Auschwitz III, was Otto Ambros. Ambros was one of the last individuals to leave Auschwitz, this is in the last days of January 1945 as the Russians are about to liberate the death camp. Ambros is there according to these documents I have located in Germany, destroying evidence right up until the very end.

After the war, Ambros was sought by the Allies and later found, interrogated and put on trial at Nuremberg, where he was convicted of mass-murder and slavery. He was sentenced to prison, but in the early 1950s as the Cold War became elevated he was given clemency by the U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy and released from prison. When he was sentenced, the Nuremberg judges took away all his finances, including that one million Reichsmark bonus from Hitler. When McCloy gave him clemency he also restored Otto Ambros’ finances, so he got back what was left of that money. He was then given a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.

He actually came to work in the United States?

Otto Ambros remains one of the most difficult cases to crack in terms of Paperclip. While I was able to unearth some new and horrifying information about his postwar life, most of it remains, “lost or missing,” which I take to mean classified. We do know for a fact that Ambros came to the United States two, possibly three times. As a convicted war criminal traveling to the United States he would have needed special papers from the U.S. State Department. The State Department, however, informed me through the Freedom of Information Act that those documents are lost or missing.

Germany Plots With The Kremlin: The Madrid Circular

spitfirelist | by T. H. Tetens
1953, Henry Schuman, 294 pages
Download Pt. 1 | Download Pt. 2

T.H. Tetens’ Germany Plots with the Kremlin (1953) treats the pivotally important German “Ostpolitik,” which German power structure has traditionally exploited in order expand and develop its influence. The German threat to either remain neutral during the Cold War, or to ally with the USSR, was a significant factor in persuading conservative American power brokers to go along with the reinstatement in Germany of the Nazi elements that prosecuted World War II. Under the circumstances, some of these conservatives felt that permitting Nazi elements to return to power behind a democratic façade was the lesser of two evils, although many would have preferred a more traditionally conservative German political establishment. This German “Ostpolitik,” in turn, is characteristic of the geopolitical foresight and cynicism with which pan-Germanists have successfully pursued their goal of world domination through the centuries.

An authority on pan-Germanism employed by the U.S. government during World War II, Tetens analyzes German Ostpolitik in the aftermath of the war in the context of centuries of German policy toward Russia and the former Soviet Union. Tracing the roots of Ostpolitik, Tetens begins with Frederick the Great’s secret pact of 1762 with Czar Peter III, which disrupted the European coalition that almost crushed Prussia in the Seven Years War. This pact saved Prussia from total defeat and led to the first partition of Poland. In 1867, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck made a secret pact (called a “re-insurance treaty”) with Russia, which secured Germany’s Eastern frontier, helping to make Germany the strongest military power on the continent. Following in the footsteps of their predecessors, General Hans von Seeckt (head of the German general staff) created a new army after the German defeat in World War I. That army trained and armed in Soviet Russia after the Rapallo Treaty between Germany and the USSR in 1922. While German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann feigned neutrality, von Seeckt contemplated “war against the West in alliance with the East.” Perhaps the best-known example of Ostpolitik was the Hitler Stalin pact of 1939, which secured Germany’s Eastern border on the eve of World War II.

After World War II, the German geopoliticians (acting at the direction of the leaders of the Underground Reich under Martin Bormann) pursued a similar tack. Threatening neutrality, or even an alliance with the Soviets, the Germans were able to manipulate the U.S. into wooing Germany as an ally- –granting it renewed economic and military power and re-installing Nazis in positions of great influence. Kevin Coogan’s remarkable text Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker and the Postwar Fascist International contains an excellent contemporary account of this phenomenon. Listeners are emphatically encouraged to read the Coogan text as a supplement to the Tetens book (which was published in 1953.)

In 1950, the Madrid Geo-political Center (a Nazi think tank operating in exile under the friendly auspices of fascist dictator Franco) discussed the successful realization of the Reich’s plan to go underground. (These plans were described by Curt Reiss in The Nazis Go Underground. The Nazi grooming and installation of Franco, whose country was an important base for the postwar Reich activities, is discussed in Falange by Alan Chase.) The following passage appears on page 73 of the Tetens text: “According to the Madrid Circular Letter, referred to above, the German planners have never ceased their political warfare against the Allies. They admit that they had ‘blueprinted the bold plan and created a flexible and smoothly working organization,’ in order to safeguard Germany from defeat and to bring Allied post-war planning to nought. They boast that they were able to create total confusion in Washington, and that they saved German heavy industry from destruction: ‘By no means did the political and military leadership of the Third Reich skid into the catastrophe in an irrational manner as so many blockheads and ignoramuses often tell us. The various phases and consequences of the so-called ‘collapse’ . . . were thoroughly studied and planned by the most capable experts . . . Nothing occurred by chance; everything was carefully planned. The result of this planning was that, already a few months after Potsdam, the coalition of the victors went on the rocks.’. . .”

The Madrid Circular Letter goes on to set forth the course to be pursued by Germany, more startlingly relevant from the vantage point of early 2006 than in it was in 1950. The following is from page 52 of Tetens’ book:

“ ‘In view of the present political situation . . . the policy of orientation towards the West has lost all meaning or sense. . . . We must not forget that Germany has always considered orientation towards the West as a policy of expedience, or one to be pursued only under pressure of circumstances. Such was the case in Napoleon’s time, after 1918, and also after 1945. All of our great national leaders have constantly counseled the long-range policy of close cooperation with the East . . . .’” Fear of this dynamic drove the U.S. to accede to all of Germany’s demands for renewed power. “Anti-Communism Uber Alles!”

A stunning measure of the success of the Underground Reich and German Ostpolitik can be obtained by reading Dorothy Thompson’s analysis of Germany’s plans for world dominance by a centralized European economic union. (In this, we can see the plans of pan-German theoretician Friedrich List, as realized by the European Monetary Union.) Ms. Thompson was writing in The New York Herald Tribune on May 31, 1940! Her comments are reproduced by Tetens on page 92.

“The Germans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of victory. I believe that I know the essential details of that plan. I have heard it from a sufficient number of important Germans to credit its authenticity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a customs union of Europe, with complete financial and economic control centered in Berlin. This will create at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned economy in the world. In Western Europe alone . . . there will be an economic unity of 400 million persons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Belgian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Germanica . . .”

“The Germans count upon political power following economic power, and not vice versa. Territorial changes do not concern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘England,’ except as language groups. Little immediate concern is felt regarding political organizations . . . . No nation will have the control of its own financial or economic system or of its customs. The Nazification of all countries will be accomplished by economic pressure. In all countries, contacts have been established long ago with sympathetic businessmen and industrialists . . . . As far as the United States is concerned, the planners of the World Germanica laugh off the idea of any armed invasion. They say that it will be completely unnecessary to take military action against the United States to force it to play ball with this system. . . . Here, as in every other country, they have established relations with numerous industries and commercial organizations, to whom they will offer advantages in co-operation with Germany. . . .”

Again, check out the current European Monetary Union and the “borderless” EU against the background of what Ms. Thompson forecast in 1940 and Mr. Tetens reproduced in 1953.

The Coming War On China

Counterpunch  |  I have spent two years making a documentary film, The Coming War on China, in which the evidence and witnesses warn that nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency.  The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well under way. They are in the northern hemisphere, on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China.

The great danger this beckons is not news, or it is buried and distorted: a drumbeat of mainstream fake news that echoes the psychopathic fear embedded in public consciousness during much of the 20^th century.

Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an “existential threat” to the divine right of the United States to rule and dominate human affairs.

To counter this, in 2011 President Obama announced a “pivot to Asia”, which meant that almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020. Today, more than 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, says one US strategist, “the perfect noose”.

A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.  Commissioned by the US Army, the authors evoke the cold war when RAND made notorious the catch cry of its chief strategist, Herman Kahn — “thinking the unthinkable”. Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a “winnable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

Today, his apocalyptic view is shared by those holding real power in the United States: the militarists and neo-conservatives in the executive, the Pentagon, the intelligence and “national security” establishment and Congress.

The current Secretary of Defense, Ashley Carter, a verbose provocateur, says US policy is to confront those “who see America’s dominance and want to take that away from us”.

For all the attempts to detect a departure in foreign policy, this is almost certainly the view of Donald Trump, whose abuse of China during the election campaign included that of “rapist” of the American economy. On 2 December, in a direct provocation of China, President-elect Trump spoke to the President of Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province of the mainland. Armed with American missiles, Taiwan is an enduring flashpoint between Washington and Beijing.

“The United States,” wrote Amitai Etzioni, professor of international Affairs at George Washington University, “is preparing for a war with China, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress.”  This war would begin with a “blinding attack against Chinese anti-access facilities, including land and sea-based missile launchers … satellite and anti-satellite weapons”.

Obamamandius

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

As the ultimate rorschachian figuration, Obama has been claimed and disclaimed by elements from all across the spectrum desperate to be seen as relevant or percipient. Few, however, comprehend his actual signification. Last year at Cobb, I spelled out precisely what would be required of the presidential heir apparent.

Last night, I happened to catch some of Real Time on my way to shuteye and saw Andrew Sullivan venture about as close as anyone has here-to-date in grasping the signification of an Obama presidency. Baraka is an idealized construct of elite governance. This is why he has garnered the support of U.S. elites and elements from throughout the establishment. quoth Sullivan;

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can......Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a mo­mentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

Remember, when everything is said and done, and all the rorschachian self-affirmations are complete, all that will remain, and all that has ever mattered from the outset with this perfectly honed candidacy - has been the imperative to maintain the global rule of dopamine hegemony.

Insurgents Deviate From The Official Ideology And Must Be Liquidated

Update bill gates predicts food shortages while buying up all the farmland he can. Kinda makes you wonder. He gets a hold of microsoft now you have to live with computer virus threat, he gets a hold of vaxx companies now you have to live with pandemics. Stevie wonder can see the this coming from a mile away.

consentfactory |   It’s time for Globocap to take the gloves off again, root the “terrorists” out of their hidey holes, and roll out a new official narrative.

Actually, there’s not much new about it. When you strip away all the silly new acronyms, the (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror is basically just a combination of the “War on Terror” narrative and the “New Normal” narrative, i.e., a militarization of the so-called “New Normal” and a pathologization of the “War on Terror.” Why would GloboCap want to do that, you ask?

I think you know, but I’ll go ahead and tell you.

See, the problem with the original “Global War on Terror” was that it wasn’t actually all that global. It was basically just a war on Islamic “terrorism” (i.e., resistance to global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology), which was fine as long as GloboCap was just destabilizing and restructuring the Greater Middle East. It was put on hold in 2016, so that GloboCap could focus on defeating “populism” (i.e., resistance to global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology), make an example of Donald Trump, and demonize everyone who voted for him (or just refused to take part in their free and fair elections), which they have just finished doing, in spectacular fashion. So, now it’s back to “War on Terror” business, except with a whole new cast of “terrorists,” or, technically, an expanded cast of “terrorists.” (I rattled off a list in my previous column.)

In short, GloboCap has simply expanded, recontextualized, and pathologized the “War on Terror” (i.e., the war on resistance to global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology). This was always inevitable, of course. A globally-hegemonic system (e.g., global capitalism) has no external enemies, as there is no territory “outside” the system. Its only enemies are within the system, and thus, by definition, are insurgents, also known as “terrorists” and “extremists.” These terms are utterly meaningless, obviously. They are purely strategic, deployed against anyone who deviates from GloboCap’s official ideology … which, in case you were wondering, is called “normality” (or, in our case, currently, “New Normality”). 

In earlier times, these “terrorists” and “extremists” were known as “heretics,” “apostates,” and “blasphemers.” Today, they are also known as “deniers,” e.g., “science deniers,” “Covid deniers,” and recently, more disturbingly, “reality deniers.” This is an essential part of the pathologization of the “War on Terror” narrative. The new breed of “terrorists” do not just hate us for our freedom … they hate us because they hate “reality.” They are no longer our political or ideological opponents … they are suffering from a psychiatric disorder. They no longer need to be argued with or listened to … they need to be “treated,” “reeducated,” and “deprogrammed,” until they accept “Reality.” If you think I’m exaggerating the totalitarian nature of the “New Normal/War on Terror” narrative, read this op-ed in The New York Times exploring the concept of a “Reality Czar” to deal with our “Reality Crisis.”

selling war from 1917 to 2012...,

aljazeera | One day in 1917, US President Woodrow Wilson sat in his office scratching his head. He faced a dilemma. The war in Europe was very good for American business, but he needed to persuade the American public that entering the war was good for democracy.

The problem was that Americans were deeply sceptical of capitalism, far more than today. As John Reed wrote in "Whose War?", an essay that ran in the socialist magazine The Masses: "The rich has [sic] steadily become richer, and the cost of living higher, and the workers proportionally poorer. These toilers don't want war... But the speculators, the employers, the plutocracy - they want it... With lies and sophistries, they will whip up our blood until we are savage - and then we'll fight and die for them."

Reed wasn't on the fringe. Six weeks after Congress officially declared war, enlistment totalled over 70,000 recruits. The military needed a million men. Something needed to be done, but initiating a draft alone would only incite rioting in the streets.

So Wilson launched an enormous propaganda campaign to turn public opinion around. He sent 75,000 speakers into communities around the country to deliver 750,000 speeches in favour of war. For the unmoved, Congress passed the Espionage Act, which criminalised criticising the government during wartime.

Americans often ascribe to economcis effects that are in fact caused by politics. Before the Espionage Act, for instance, there were hundreds of radical newspapers, many of them socialist or communist - or just sympathetic to the plight of workers. After the war, most disappeared. That wasn't the result of market forces. The US government went to great pains at great expense to persuade Americans to embrace an approved ideology while it silenced dissidents with old-fashioned censorship. The Masses, along with 70 other radical publications, went out of business, because the US Post Office wouldn't deliver it.

Yet they were the lucky ones.

'A turnkey totalitarian state'

The Wilson era saw 2,000 prosecutions under the Espionage Act. One was Eugene V Debs, the union organiser. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving a speech, lambasting the draft for World War I. Today, the Obama administration hopes to convict Bradley Manning for allegedly leaking documents to WikiLeaks, including a video of an American helicopter gunning down Iraqi children.

The War on Terror has inspired new laws and new ways to decimate civil liberties. The US Department of Justice recently rationalised the killing of Americans abroad. Attorney General Eric Holder twisted himself into knots trying to separate due process from judicial process. The difference apparently means that it was okay to murder an American working for al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Worse is our spying on everyone, including Americans. The National Security Agency (NSA) is building a huge complex in Utah to house server farms that can handle yottabytes of data (a yottabyte equals one septillion bytes, or one quadrillion gigabytes). According to James Bamford, the NSA wants to eavesdrop without needing court orders. As one source said, we are becoming "a turnkey totalitarian state".

If the NSA is collecting information on everybody, who does it consider an enemy of the state? "Terrorists" is one answer, but how do you define "terrorist"? Are terrorists also political extremists? Fist tap Arnach.

straight piracy...,

wikipedia | The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War or the U.S.–Mexican War, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution.

Combat operations lasted a year and a half, from spring 1846 to fall 1847. American forces quickly occupied New Mexico and California, then invaded parts of Northeastern Mexico and Northwest Mexico; meanwhile, the Pacific Squadron conducted a blockade, and took control of several garrisons on the Pacific coast further south in Baja California. Another American army captured Mexico City, and the war ended in victory of the U.S.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo specified the major consequence of the war: the forced Mexican Cession of the territories of Alta California and New Mexico to the U.S. in exchange for $15 million. In addition, the United States forgave $3.5 million of debt owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens. Mexico accepted the loss of Texas and thereafter cited the Rio Grande as its national border.

American territorial expansion to the Pacific coast had been the goal of President James K. Polk, the leader of the Democratic Party.^[4] However, the war was highly controversial in the U.S., with the Whig Party and anti-slavery elements strongly opposed. Heavy American casualties and high monetary cost were also criticized. The political aftermath of the war raised the slavery issue in the U.S., leading to intense debates that pointed to civil war; the Compromise of 1850 provided a brief respite.

In Mexico, terminology for the war include (primera) intervención estadounidense en México (United States' (First) Intervention in Mexico), invasión estadounidense a México (The United States' Invasion of Mexico), and guerra del 47 (The War of 1847).

U.N. General Secretary Tried To Help The Azovstal Nazi's And Foreign Mercenaries Commit War Crimes

johnhelmer  |  Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, is refusing this week to answer questions on the role he played in the recent attempt by US, British, Canadian and other foreign combatants to escape the bunkers under the Azovstal plant, using the human shield of civilians trying to evacuate.

In Guterres’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on April 26 (lead image), Putin warned Guterres he had been “misled” in his efforts. “The simplest thing”, Putin told Guterres in the recorded part of their meeting, “for military personnel or members of the nationalist battalions is to release the civilians. It is a crime to keep civilians, if there are any there, as human shields.”

This war crime has been recognized since 1977 by the UN in Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention.  In US law for US soldiers and state officials, planning to employ or actually using human shields is a war crime to be prosecuted under 10 US Code Section 950t.

Instead, Guterres ignored the Kremlin warning and the war crime law, and authorized UN officials, together with Red Cross officials,  to conceal what Guterres himself knew of the foreign military group trying to escape. Overnight from New York, Guterres has refused to say what he knew of the military escape operation, and what he had done to distinguish, or conceal the differences between the civilians and combatants in the evacuation plan over the weekend of April 30-May 1.May.

Russian officials have remained publicly polite towards Guterres, despite what Moscow regards as his taking sides with the US, the NATO alliance, and the Kiev government from the beginning of the military operation on February 24. “We are dealing”, the Secretary-General declared on April 5, “with the full-fledged invasion, on several fronts, of one Member State of the United Nations, Ukraine, by another, the Russian Federation — a permanent member of the Security Council — in violation of the United Nations Charter, and with several aims, including redrawing the internationally recognized borders between the two countries.”*

Putin told Guterres his interpretation of the military operation and of the UN Charter was wrong and biased.

To Guterres,  Putin also made a clear distinction between civilians and combatants using the civilians as hostages or human shields. Putin identified this as a war crime. “The Azovstal plant has been fully isolated. I have issued instructions, an order to stop the assault. There is no direct fighting there now. Yes, the Ukrainian authorities say that there are civilians at the plant. In this case, the Ukrainian military must release them, or otherwise they will be doing what terrorists in many countries have done, what ISIS did in Syria when they used civilians as human shields. The simplest thing they can do is release these people; it is as simple as that. You say that Russia’s humanitarian corridors are ineffective. Mr Secretary-General, you have been misled: these corridors are effective. Over 100,000 people, 130,000–140,000, if I remember correctly, have left Mariupol with our assistance, and they are free to go where they want, to Russia or Ukraine. They can go anywhere they want; we are not detaining them, but we are providing assistance and support to them.”

“The civilians in Azovstal, if there are any, can do this as well. They can come out, just like that. This is an example of a civilised attitude to people, an obvious example. And anyone can see this; you only need to talk with the people who have left the city. The simplest thing for military personnel or members of the nationalist battalions is to release the civilians. It is a crime to keep civilians, if there are any there, as human shields.”

In his many public statements before the Kremlin meeting, and in his remarks at the Russian Foreign Ministry the same day,  , Guterres has not mentioned war crimes except to repeat the US and Ukrainian allegations about the Russian side. “The war has led to senseless loss of life, massive devastation in urban centres and the destruction of civilian infrastructure,” he said on April 5. “I will never forget the horrifying images of civilians killed in Bucha.  I immediately called for an independent investigation to guarantee effective accountability. I am also deeply shocked by the personal testimony of rapes and sexual violence that are now emerging.  The High Commissioner for Human Rights has spoken of possible war crimes, grave breaches of international humanitarian law and serious violations of international human rights law.  The war has displaced more than 10 million people in just one month — the fastest forced population movement since the Second World War.”

 

Wizards at War - V

quoth True Character;

We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment. ~ Norbert Wiener Environment Quotes

It’s the Oil, Stupid! (Hubbert’s Curve and World War III) - 2003 Joseph George Caldwell

Ever since the Immigration Act of 1965, the US has been allowing many more immigrants into the country than ever before. As long as oil was abundant and free (in fact, more than free, since each barrel of oil pumped out of the ground could be used to pump many more barrels out of the ground), there was no economic incentive to restrict immigration. In fact, there was an economic incentive to increase immigration – for every new immigrant, the gross national product increased by an amount approximately equal to the gross national product per capita. Getting the energy to “fund” these new immigrants was not a problem, since global oil production was increasing every year. Because America was addicted to growth, immigration soared to very high levels, to the point where its population was growing by about one percent a year (three million people per year), almost solely because of immigration. (US population in 1950 was 152 million; today it is almost double that.)

But all of a sudden, once global production starts to decline, the situation changes dramatically. As long as America can keep its consumption up by taking oil away from other countries, nothing really changes “at home.” But this can go on for only so long, and it cannot continue without a fight. Finally, the point is reached where, short of war, there is no more production to take away from other countries, and America’s oil supply begins to fall. With no oil to fuel the economy, however, all of these immigrants – and the “natives,” as well – represent a cost, not a benefit – they have no energy with which to produce, all they do is consume. At this point, it is very much in America’s interest to send its bloated population – its immigrants as well as its natives – to war. And the more casualties, the better. Each person killed represents a saving of about 8,000 kilograms of oil equivalent (kgoe) per year. If the war effort brings in more oil than would be consumed by the soldier and the war, then fine, the soldier is “paying his way.” But finally, the point is reached where there is simply not enough oil in the world to support America’s thirst for oil. At this point, the only way to reduce US demand for oil is by global war involving massive US casualties, and the only way to reduce global demand for oil is by global war involving massive casualties in the world’s industrial nations.

But the President cannot say that he is sending citizens to war simply to eliminate them, any more than he could say that he was invading Iraq for its oil. Once again, an excuse will be sought. The President will seek excuses to engage in wars with massive casualties. At the present time, the US has only 140,000 soldiers in Iraq, and about one soldier a day is being killed. Eventually, the US will maintain millions of soldiers around the world, guarding its precious oil supply (both from use by other competing users and from destruction from politics-of-envy terrorists). And the casualty count will not be a cost, it will be a benefit. Eventually, the casualty count will be in the millions every year for the US, and on the order of a hundred million per year worldwide. This is easy to see: Hubbert’s curve falls from its current production level to near zero in about forty years. This means that global population will fall from 6.2 billion to about 200 million in forty years. (See Can America Survive? for discussion of this point, viz., that global population is proportional to global energy availability.) This means that, on the average, about (6 billion / 40 years) = 150 million people per year will die every year, worldwide. In the US, the population will fall from about 300 million to about 100 thousand, so that about (300 million / 40 years) = 7.5 million per year. And they will not die of starvation – they will die by war. (Furthermore, it is not likely that the population will decline gracefully, like Hubbert’s curve; as I have discussed elsewhere, the decline is likely to be catastrophic, for a number of reasons (catastrophe theory, systems dynamics, degradation of our environment, overshoot and collapse)).

Watch closely. These dramatic changes are just around the corner. The first clue that things are changing will be when the President will press for sending more troops to Iraq, despite mounting casualties. And then, he will press to send US troops to any large-oil-producing state, to protect the oil assets from destruction by terrorists. And then, he will send troops simply to divert the oil to the US. And perhaps then, the American and British people will begin to realize that their leaders are doing it for them, and doing it for the oil. Their high standard of living cannot continue without access to much – and soon most, and eventually all – of the world’s oil. From the viewpoint of continuing our industrial society, America and Britain must have access to a greater and greater portion of the world’s diminishing oil supply. All countries will soon move aggressively to acquire and or maintain access to the diminishing supply. Soon, American and British leaders will no longer be able to – and no longer have to – make excuses for American and British actions to acquire oil to maintain their industrial societies and the lavish lifestyles of their populations. For a little while longer, however, Americans and Brits may continue to live the illusion that we are taking these actions for humanitarian and altruistic and defensive reasons. Soon, the only reason will be “defensive.” And then, there will be no need for reasons at all. As General George S. Patton once remarked, “You will know what to do.”

From an astrological viewpoint, it is interesting to note that today, August 27, 2003, the planet Mars, God of War, is closer to Earth than at any time in the past 60,000 years.