Liberals Are Almost Supporting Ukraine More than Conservatives

CLAVDIVS AMERICANVS: I’m surprised I don’t see liberals virtue-signaling with Ukraine-themed face coverings.

Liberals are some of the worst pro-Ukie Russia-hating maniacs out there. A lot of them are calling for no-fly zones and direct attacks on Russia and Moscow. This makes sense because liberals and Democrats are the ones who went crazy with the McCarthyite BS about “Russia interfered with our election” and “Russia stole the election for Trump” (LOL), “Trump and the Republicans are with Russia”, on and on. The worst insult any liberal dishes out is “You are a Russian”, “You are Putin’s mouthpiece,” “How much does Russia pay you?”

Keep in mind that anything that goes against the Democrats in any way is “Russian propaganda.” It’s totally embarrassing that liberals would do this, but liberals were always some of the worst Cold Warriors of all because Republicans were always calling them Communists and fellow travelers so the Democrats were always in a dick-measuring contest with the Republicans about who could be more anti-Communist. Chris Dodd and Alan Cranston, two of the most liberal members of Congress, were the strongest supporters of the Death Squad Government in El Salvador.

My liberal Democrat father supported every US foreign policy objective ever. He supported every rightwing fascist CIA coup we ever indulged in. He supported all of the death squad democracies we supported. His saving grace was opposition to the Vietnam War, but that war was the last time that liberal Democrats took a principled antiwar position.

And he only changed on this after the Tet Offensive in 1968, but at least he changed. Tet was the signal for opinion change in the US on the war. Believe it or not, before Tet, a majority of Americans supported the war in Vietnam! After Tet for the first time, Americans turned on the war. Walter Cronkite, a great journalist and one of the last real journalists in the US where most are now glorified stenographers, famously turned against the war on national TV! He was a hero to many Americans and I watched him on the news many times.

As I recall it, General Westmoreland kept lying and saying we were winning the war from 1964-68. We were always just turning the corner and the light was always appearing at the end of the tunnel.  Like the suckers they are today, the majority of Americans fell for it.

With the Tet Offensive, it become obvious that he had been lying all along. The enemy was not defeated; instead it was stronger than ever. I remember my mother’s frustration at being lied to. People had had enough. They’d been told for four years and they were steadily winning and victory was coming any day now, but then Tet came and it showed that the enemy was stronger than ever.

This split extended after the war and led to investigations into the CIA, CIA/FBI assassinations, etc. This lasted for a few years and led to a reluctance to get involved in any foreign adventures involving blood and treasure as most of them do. This was called “The Vietnam War Syndrome” and a major goal of hawk monsters like Donald Rumsfeld (the murderer of Patrice Lumumba) and Dick Cheney declared war on the Vietnam War Syndrome.

Rumsfeld is the murderer of Patrice Lumumba when he was a DIA officer in the Congo and Cheney personally had Minnesota progressive Paul Wellstone killed in a plane crash and deliberately failed to stop the 911 attack when he could have. One of the stated purposes of the fake Iraq War was to get rid of the Vietnam Syndrome. So it appears we did get rid of it for a while. Trump then threatened to bring back the Vietnam War Syndrome with his neo-isolationism and skepticism about what he called “the forever wars” (and I thank him very much for using that term).

This infuriated the Deep State, the National Security Establishment (same thing), and the neoconservatives. These factions jumped right back into power as soon as Biden came aboard. It was directly to their escalations that this war in Ukraine ever happened at all. Under Trump it might not have happened.

Alt Left: The US Framed Libya in the Shootdown of the Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie

transformer: I know it is off topic but many people are often led to believe that the Jonestown tragedy was a mass suicide however; with a closer examination of the evidence and facts reveals a sinister mind control operation and forced murder by the US military and CIA.

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/Jonestown.html

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/index.html

That’s pretty extreme. And I regard a lot of conspiracy theory as fact.

Did you know that it’s a fact that the US government framed Qaddafi for shooting down that jetliner. Witnesses were bribed to testify falsely in Scottish courts. The government of Malta was bribed and told the US would not go along with their admission to the EU unless they went in on the frame, of which Malta was an essential part. The FBI literally altered evidence to frame the Libyan government. The rest was all just Deep State, which includes FBI feds anyway. The whole plot was cooked up by President Bush.

Actually Iran and a pro-Syrian Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC, blew up the airliner. The PFLP-GC guys were out of Germany and a number of them were arrested for this very crime and are still in prison. The PFLP-GC were paid $10 billion by Iran to blow up the plane. The attack was revenge for the US downing of that Iranian airliner in the Gulf earlier. That was not intentional, but that ship’s captain was almost criminally stupid. His gunners kept telling him it was a civilian airliner but he had his mind made up that it was Iranian military and refused to change his mind due to defense mechanisms.

President Bush actually had a halfway decent US foreign policy. Sleazy as Hell but realpolitik all the way, and not particularly ideological. Syria was not our friend but he befriended them enough to get their support for the Iraq War as it was needed for the war. The fact that Bush was not ideological shows in his refusal to rescue the Shia and Kurds who rose up after Saddam.

This was related to his refusal to overthrow Saddam because he figured that what would follow was what exactly has followed since 2003 when ideologues invaded and conquered Iraq – 1.4 million Iraqis dead and related instability tearing apart the entire region and leaving hundreds of thousands dead in Syria alone. The Iraq War also birthed ISIS, by the way. They were literally created by our moronic conquest of Iraq.

That Libyan intelligence guy that got fingered was innocent. Qaddafi paid the $4 billion fine for downing the airliner though he was innocent to get us off his back. Then we overthrew him and murdered him a few years later. By the way, about Benghazi, that ambassador was CIA and he got what he deserved, all the way to the bayonet up his faggot ass. Fuck him. He was involved in running guns from the US Al Qaeda Army in Libya to the US Al Qaeda Army in Syria.

Alt Left: Who Kills More – US Liberal Interventionists or US Alt Right Nazis and White Supremacists?

Rambo: Your friend there is wrong, Highbrow. Fascism is NOT dead. Just look around the world. Trying my best not to spout clichés, it’s very much alive and well. Maybe that’s what Highbrow has been trying to remind people of.

Right. I banned him. He’s an Alt Right guy. They’re not with us. He hates the Left, so he’s not welcome here. Though I appreciate his anti-military, anti-corporate and especially anti-imperialist notions. I’d like to see more of the Alt Right take this up. I’m willing to make alliances with these guys. Yeah, they’re racists, but so what? How many people do these Alt Right guys kill and hurt every year? Almost zero.

How about liberal Democratic Party interventionists (imperialists)? US sanctions on Venezuela alone have already killed 100,000 people. We started a war in Iraq that killed 1.4 million people. We started another war in Afghanistan that killed 1.1 million people. And we are up to our necks with our ISIS and Al Qaeda allies in Syria, where we started a war that has killed 500,000 people.

Numbers of dead:

IS Liberal interventionists: 3 million over 20 years.

US Alt Right Nazis and racists: 30? over the same period.

Whose worse? Nazis and racists suck but I will ally with anti-military, anti-corporate, and especially anti-imperialist Alt Right White Supremacists over these liberal interventionist woketards any day of the week. Anyway the woke liberal interventionists literally kill 100,000 times as many people as Alt Right racists and Nazis.

Alt Left: More on the Israeli Nuclear Bombing of Beirut Harbor

Observer: When was this tactical strike supposed to have happened?

This is in reference to the so-called fertilizer accident at the Beirut harbor a year ago. There was no explosion of fertilizer at the Beirut Harbor.

There wasn’t even any fertilizer in the warehouse. There was 2,300 pounds of dirt and rocks pretending to be fertilizer. And it won’t go off unless you mix it with fuel oil in proper proportions and even then, you need to throw a charge into it. There are videos of people trying to make AN fertilizer explode, and they can’t do it. They even use blowtorches. That’s why they changed the story later to add that there was somehow tons of fuel oil stored next to the fertilizer. The constantly changing story to fill in holes is indicative of fake attacks. Also even 100X that amount of AN, even mixed with fuel oil, won’t blow a hole that big.

Now that we have established that there was no fertilizer, we move on. Sources in Israel and in Saudi and UAE said that Israel had bombed a Hezbollah weapons depot at the harbor. The “Hezbollah weapons depot” was a fallback story to be used to attack Hezbollah and blame them for the attack. But no amount of missiles could blow a hole that deep in solid rock.

Netanyahu had pinpointed ground zero in a presentation eariler where he pointed to it on a map saying it was a Hezbollah weapons depot and it was going to be attacked. But that can’t be true either because Hezbollah doesn’t store missiles at the harbor and even if they did, they would not store them in that part of the harbor that is controlled by their worst enemies, the Lebanese Forces. Also two weeks before, Israel said that the next time Hezbollah attacked it, they would destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure. This was followed a week later by a “Hezbollah attack” on the border with a “bomb team” trying to plant a bomb. The entire team was killed.

Problem? There was no bomb team. Hezbollah said they knew nothing of the attack and there were no death announcements of their cadre. Apparently this attack never even happened. After this fake attack, Israel said there would now be Hell to pay for Lebanon.

So what happened. Hundreds to thousands of Lebanese eyewitnesses say they saw or heard jets coming in shortly before the attack.

There are photos of these jets, but I am not sure how accurate they are. Detractors are saying they are birds. They do look like birds but warplanes at high altitudes look like birds.

There is a video in the Armenian Quarter of men pointing up in the sky, apparently at the oncoming jets. Soon afterwards, a massive explosion hits and the men are thrown aside.

There have been over 1,000 reports of people hearing jets come in. There is a video showing a man and his wife videotaping the scene after the first bombing (there were two bomb attacks) and talking. A minute and a half in, you hear a steadily increasing roar. The woman asks in Arabic, “What’s that!?” Then there is a huge blast that knocks them away from the window. I heard the steadily increasing roar for 10-15 seconds and to me it sounded like a military jet. I’ve only ever heard that sound at Blue Angels plane displays. People said it sounded like an F-16.

Also a few hours before the attack, 3-4 US spy planes or drones appeared on the Lebanese border with Syria. They lingered there for an hour afterwards. US spy planes are almost never over Lebanon. Why did they suddenly show up right before the fertilizer explosion? Does the US have precognition?

The attack destroyed all of Lebanon’s grain supply for a month. Remember the warning about attacking civilian infrastructure? The attack was followed the next day by three US bombings of Syrian grain warehouses in Eastern Syria. Why did we bomb three Syrian grain storage silos a day after Lebanon’s largest grain silo was destroyed? An attack on food warehouses in Southern Iraq occurred soon after. Notice an attack on a food supply? Southern Iraq is where the pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia live. Next an Iranian mall in Dubai caught fire. Mossad or the CIA is suspected in the attacks in Dubai and Southern Iraq. I’d put money on Mossad. They are unbelievably good, probably better than the CIA.

Nations attacked:

  • Lebanon – site of pro-Iranian Hezbollah.
  • Syria – Shia government, ally of Hezbollah and Iran.
  • Southern Iraq – Shia population allied with Iran and Hezbollah.
  • DubaiIranian mall.

Notice the common feature here is Iran followed by Hezbollah. All Iranian assets and allies were attacked in the port attack and the attacks that followed. Why? Because it wasn’t a fertilizer explosion the Gulf! It was a bombing.

Now that we have established that Israel dropped two bombs on the harbor, we need to determine what sort of weapons they were. The article sets about to make the case that Israel used a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon in the attack.

Keep in mind that tactical nukes are low yield and give off very low levels of radiation. Also the blast is much reduced so not nearly as many people die. 1,000 were killed in Beirut. A Hiroshima type weapon would have killed 100-200,000 people, mostly from radiation.

Evidence of recent use of tactical nukes by the US and Israel in the last 30 years.

Four attacks:

  • Israel: There is evidence Israel has used these before. The explosion in Syria that Syrian intelligence said reminded them of the Beirut attack was done by an Israeli bomb in Homs Province. The explosion does indeed look like the Port explosion and it doesn’t look normal at all. It looks like a nuclear bomb test photograph! A Russian team went to the site right afterwards and verified that a nuclear bomb had been used.
  • Israel: During the Lebanon war of 2006, Israel was reported to have used a tactical nuke against dug-in Hezbollah troops. A Russian team came to the site afterwards with equipment and said a nuclear bomb was used.
  • US: There are reports that the US used tactical nukes in the attack on the tunnels in Tora Bora in Afghanistan.
  • US: There is a report of a US tactical nuke attack on Iraq in 1991 13 miles west of Basra. This is the first reported use of one in the modern era.

Alt Left: In the Desert, It’s Fight Dirty or Die

How else do you fight in the damned desert? You fight dirty and sneaky and dishonestly or you’re dead. Real simple. The terrain itself doesn’t allow for honest fighting or even a lot of honest dealing really.

The desert’s a funny place. You think it’s empty til you go try to fight a war there. Good luck.

Are the Houthis beaten yet?

Did we ever beat the Iraqis?

How about the Taliban?

Iran?

The Syrians?

How did Israel do against Hezbollah?

How are they doing against the Palestinians?

And no one can seem to get rid of Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, the Sinai, the Maghreb, Northern Nigeria, Tunisia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Sometimes I wonder how anyone wins any war in the desert. Hard environments breed the hardest of men, perhaps by necessity, as all the weak men just die in the heat chasing mirages that never show up.

Alt Left: It’s a Shithole, but It’s Their Shithole

Polar Bear: I have some respect for Haitian independence.

I have a lot of respect for Haitian independence. Good for them! A free man is a happy man, or if not, at least a great man.

A shithole but it’s their shithole. There’s beauty in a person being independent and into their own culture.

Exactly! It’s a shithole but it’s their shithole! Perfect. The ghost of Desallines lives!

There’s a famous quote from an Iraqi nationalist.

Outside of the homeland, there is nothing.

That’s so perfect. You have to love anyone who loves their land so much they will give their own life for it.

Americans lost all respect for this so long ago. All we’ve been doing is killing nationalists for defending their homelands for over a century now. Pathetic, especially considering our nationalist origins. We started out as an anti-colonial rebellion and then we turned into the worst neocolonial shits. Look what empire does to a land.

Fidel said something along those lines but it was more in terms of the Revolution. In terms of free speech, he said:

Inside the revolution, everything. Outside the revolution, nothing.

And that’s pretty much their philosophy. I’m on a Cuban mailing list and I get online publications that have Cuban writers and many Cuban citizens commenting. Pretty interesting stuff. The most interesting one is run by an exile. And they criticize, Hell, they slam, the Hell out of the system. But they still want to keep the system. They just want to make it work better is all. Anyone who says you can’t criticize the state in Cuba is insane. There are even out and out Contras in Cuba.

Some were in the press recently. The state pretty much left them alone and just attacked them in the media. But the comments from the citizens were amazing. Most of them were mad at the government for not putting them in jail! And there were a lot of spontaneous demonstrations organized against these people. Most people were calling them traitors.

I even love Saddam in a way, although he was a shit. There was a huge battle at the airport. A lot of Iraqis lost their lives because we used fuel-air explosives, which should be banned. An Iraqi man was there and he turned around and there was Saddam Hussein, standing right next to him. Saddam gave the man his automatic weapon. He told the man to use it and fight for his country if he wanted to. Saddam said:

Don’t do it for me. I’m nothing. I’m not important. Forget about me. Do it for the country. Do it for Iraq.

And then he disappeared. This guy didn’t even like Saddam but he was absolutely in awe of him after that. I liked how a farmer shot down a US helicopter with an automatic weapon. Saddam himself later went out to his field and congratulated him in person.

I also liked how a huge squadron of US helicopters, 25-50, took off towards Baghdad at night. They were halfway there when the dark land below them completely opened up on them. It was the Republican Guard. No one even knew they were there. All of the helicopters turned around. When they got back to the base, they were shot full of holes. I also liked how in the early days of the invasion, US convoys in the South were hit with horrible sandstorms. You could barely see in front of you.

Wave upon wave of Saddam Fedayeen swarmed across the desert in zero visibility to attack the convoys. And in the Southern cities where the Jews told us we would be welcomed with flowers, American convoys moved through silent streets at mid-day. Too silent. Keep in mind that these were Shia cities, repressed by Saddam. They got halfway through the city when every single rooftop in town opened up on the convoys. They were full of mostly ordinary citizens with automatic weapons. Some were Baath Party members, but a lot were just the local Shia. No bad how Saddam had treated them, they were still ready to fight the invaders. I guess they hate the Americans worse than Saddam.

I liked how eight days after the invasion, Saddam suddenly showed up on TV, supposedly 100 feet underground. No one knew where he was. He urged Iraqis to fight for the homeland. He also used an obscure word, hulagu, which sent Arabic speakers racing for their dictionaries. Arabic has a lot of old words that no one uses much anymore but educated speakers throw them out now and again and it sends speakers scurrying for their dictionaries. Hulagu is a reference to the Mongols who sacked Iraq centuries ago.

I especially liked how 12 days after the invasion, with the US supposedly in control of the capital, Saddam suddenly showed  up out of nowhere in the Adhamiyah Sunni neighborhood. A large crowd materialized and hoisted him on their shoulders cheering. It was all videotaped. Then he vanished again. The Americans had no idea where he was and they had no idea he was in that neighborhood. And they never knew until the video was released that he had been there. Arabs are sneaky fuckers. I wonder if that’s how the Jews got that way – living around those sneaky Arab fucks their whole lives.

Maybe it’s just a damned sneaky part of the world if you think about.

Alt Left: Evidence That Israel Attacked Syria and Lebanon With Nuclear Weapons

RL: The fertilizer only blows up if you mix it with fuel oil.”

Sun Tzu: And this fact free and science free statement takes the gold medal for complete ignorance about Ammonium Nitrate properties.

RL: [The August 2020 Beirut explosion]… was when Israel dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on Lebanon’s wheat supply in silo in the Beirut port. And Hezbollah was blamed…You also fail to notice Robert Lindsay belief in the Israeli Nuke theory @Feb28 6:14 #212. That bit of misdirection was proven false soon after the incident.

Jackrabbit: The nuke theory is known to be false without a doubt. The characteristics of the fireball match that of an Ammonium Nitrate explosion and no radiation was reported.

Sun Tzu: There was no mysterious explosion in Beirut in August 2020. There was a predictable “waiting to happen” detonation of an Ammonium Nitrate Nitrate load unprofessionally stored for years in a port facility near a highly dense population center. There is wilful or criminal neglect of legal and well established international norms and regulations for the storage of dangerous goods UN placards 1942 / UN 2067. What exactly set it off, among the plurality of anecdotal and hearsay versions, is for forensic investigators to determine.

No Ammonium Nitrate Fertilizer Explosion

There was no fireworks factory in the area. The explosion looks nothing at all like a fertilizer explosion. Ammonium nitrate sends up a yellow cloud and this cloud was reddish brown, which makes sense as according to Lebanese intelligence, the warehouse it hit was full of bags of rocks and dirt masquerading as fertilizer. Lebanese intelligence, as noted, said there was no fertilizer.

Anyway, the crater that was blown was so wide it probably could not even have been blown with 280 tons of fertilizer instead of the 2.8 tons that was said to be in there. In other words, the amount of fertilizer said to be in that warehouse was not large enough to blow a crater that size. In addition, the characteristic mushroom cloud seen afterwards is only seen after nuclear blasts. No other weapon can produce such a cloud.

RL: The fertilizer only blows up if you mix it with fuel oil.”

Sun Tzu: And this fact free and science free statement takes the gold medal for complete ignorance about Ammonium Nitrate properties.

Everything I have ever heard says it has to be mixed with fuel oil and then a flame or spark has to be thrown onto it. Otherwise nothing happens. If you drop a bomb on it, it’s like dropping a bomb on a pile of sand. Also notice that the liars who made up this story changed the story after a couple of weeks after this fact came out. The new story said that fuel oil had been absolutely mixed in with the fertilizer mix a couple of years before.

Furthermore, neither ammonium nitrate nor any other explosive device can blow a hole that deep in solid rock.

Evidence for an Israeli Attack with a Tactical Nuclear Weapon

A mining engineer wrote a column saying that no known explosive could blow a crater that deep in solid rock. In fact, all known explosives blow upwards when they hit solid rock. The engineer said that because explosives can’t penetrate down into solid rock, holes must be bored deep into the rock. The explosive is placed deep inside the rock and detonated, as they can blow upwards into rock. The only known explosive that can blow a huge crater in solid rock is a tactical nuclear weapon. This includes bunker busters, which are actually small tactical nukes.

Syrian intelligence told another journalist team that the Beirut blast was caused by Israel bombing Beirut with a “new and experimental weapon.”

They also said that the explosion looked a lot like the one in Syria prior. I have seen photographs of that blast. The two explosion clouds look very similar. It is thought that Israel dropped a tactical nuke on Syria in that attack. I do not know what the target was.

The Russians were suspicious so they sent a team to the site. At the bomb site, the team did find low levels of radiation that could only have come there from a nuclear weapon. Based on video of the blast and the radiation found at the blast site, the Russian team concluded that Israel had bombed Syria with a tactical nuclear weapon. However, the Syrian government has never officially reported this.

No radiation was found in Beirut, sure, but also none was not found, as nobody even looked for any!

Anyway, with tactical nukes, you will only have small amounts of radiation in and around the crater after a day or two. They will linger for a week or so and then disappear. I am aware of a team from the US that arrived in Beirut by plane a day or two after the explosion. They had a lot of equipment with them, including radiation counters. The Lebanese military denied them entry to the country.

The nuclear arms control branch of the UN reported a large wave of radiation at their station in Sicily right around the time of the blast. I saw a printout from their data. The amount of radiation was consistent with either a nuclear explosion or a nuclear reactor failure.

An arms inspector for this UN agency, a Berkeley professor of Physics, reported told a team of journalists that Israel had dropped a tactical nuke on Beirut. The Italian government told a team of journalists that Israel had dropped a tactical nuke on Beirut. An addition, both Lebanese intelligence and the Lebanese military told a team of journalists that Israel had dropped a tactical nuke on Beirut.

Evidence for an Israeli Attack with No Mention of Tactical Nukes

Richard Silverstein reported that his source deep inside the Israeli government reported told him that Israel bombed Beirut and that the target was a Hezbollah missile depot. Israel was basically saying that the fertilizer report was a lie and what really happened was a missile depot was blown up.

Another team of journalists was told by Saudi and UAE intelligence that Israel attacked Beirut and blew up a Hezbollah missile depot. So these two intelligence agencies are also saying there was no fertilizer blast.

The Hezbollah missile depot story was put out by Israel in case the fake fertilizer story washed out. It did wash out, but fools keep repeating it anyway. The purpose was to blame Hezbollah for the blast and casualties by endangering the Lebanese people by carelessly storing missiles at the harbor, thereby leading to a loss of popularity for Hezbollah. This does not seem to have worked. All the usual idiots are sticking with the insipid fertilizer story.

A team of journalists was told by the Pentagon that Israel had attacked Beirut. No mention was made of a nuclear weapon. A group of generals then relayed this information to President Trump. Very soon afterwards, Trump said that the Beirut explosion was the result of a military attack.

Seven Different Countries and the UN Tell Five Different Teams of Journalists That the Blast Was Due to An Attack, with Most Saying It Was an Israeli Attack

We now have people from seven different governments telling five different journalist outfits that the blast was a result of an attack on Beirut.

UN: UN nuclear weapons control agency released a graph showing a large radiation release in the area at their station in Sicily. A US arms inspector for this agency reported that Israel dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on Beirut. (Journalist 1 – Veterans Today)

US: Generals report blast caused by attack on Beirut. Perpetrator and weapon used not named. (Journalist 1 – Veterans Today)

Italy: Government reported that Israel attacked Beirut with a tactical nuclear weapon. (Journalist 1- Veterans Today)

Lebanon: Government, military, and intelligence reported that Israel dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on Beirut harbor. Intelligence said there was no ammonium nitrate in the sacks. There were only sacks filled with rocks and dirt, a result of a six year long Mossad plot the culmination of which was the nuclear bombing of the harbor.

Israel: Source deep inside government said that Israel bombed a Hezbollah missile depot. (Journalist 2 – Richard Silverstein) An Israeli newspaper quoted a rightwing Israel Congressman as saying that Israel attacked Beirut. I am not sure if he mentioned a missile depot. He also said, “That blast was huge. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think we attacked them with a nuclear bomb.” He was laughing and dancing a victory dance when he said that. That is a very suspicious statement. (Journalist 3)

UAE: UAE intelligence reported that Israel bombed a Hezbollah missile depot. (Journalist 4 – Asia Times)

Saudi Arabia: Saudi intelligence reported that Israel bombed a Hezbollah missile depot. (Journalist 4- Asia Times)

Syria: Syrian intelligence reported that Israel attacked Beirut with an unknown experimental weapon and that it resembled the blast from an attack on Syria a year ago. That blast was later proven by a Russian team of having been a tactical nuclear weapon. The two mushroom clouds look almost identical (Journalist 5 – Voltaire Network)

To reiterate:

Five different teams of journalists were told by seven different governments and the UN that there was at an attack on Beirut.

The same teams were told by five governments and the UN that the attack was the result of Israel bombing the harbor.

Two teams were told by three different governments that Israel either attacked Beirut with a tactical nuclear weapon or with a new and experimental weapon.

One team was told by two different governments that the attack was conducted by Israel with a tactical nuclear weapon.

The “No Bombing Attack” Theory

Wow, talk about complete nonsense! Jets were both heard and seen by hundreds and possibly thousands of Beirutis.

There is video of the Armenian Quarter where men are pointing up in the sky – presumably at jets – and soon afterwards, a terrible blast is heard and debris is flying in the street.

There is a video where you can hear with your very own ears the sound of a fighter jet – it sounded like an F-16 to my ears – roaring in for about 10 seconds, followed by the huge blast. The people making the video can be heard asking, “What’s that?”

How is that hundreds to thousands of Beirutis reporting hearing or seeing jets prior to the blast? Are they all hallucinating?

Why are men in Beirut pointing up to the sky at unknown objects, followed by a huge blast that sends objects flying. Did all of these people hallucinate?

Did I hallucinate when I heard the clear sound a fighter jet for 10 seconds on a video followed by an explosion?

Did the UN fake a graph showing a radiation spike at its Sicily station?

None of this makes sense.

Furthermore we have statements from sources in six different governments telling five separate teams of journalists that the explosion was due to an attack on the harbor, with most of them adding that the attack was done by Israel. Are five different teams of journalists making this up? Were five separate teams of journalists fed false information that Israel attacked Beirut? How likely is any of that?

There were 3-4 US spy planes over Lebanon at the time. They showed up several hours before the attack and left several hours afterwards. US spy planes do not commonly fly over Lebanon. What were they doing there?

The Backstory

A few weeks prior, Israel said that if Hezbollah attacks Israel again, Israel will attack Lebanese economic targets.

Two weeks later and a week before the attack, Israel staged a fake Hezbollah attack on the border. They said a Hezbollah team had tried to plant a bomb on the border but they were eliminated by Israel. Hezbollah said there was no team. This attack was apparently completely made up.

Three days later, Netanyahu issued a speech in which he threatened Hezbollah in some of the strongest language ever used.

Four days later, Israel drops a tactical nuclear weapon on the Beirut harbor, blowing up the grain silo that contains all of Lebanon’s wheat supply for the next month. Notice that this is an attack on the economy.

1. Israel threatens to attack the Lebanese economy if Hezbollah attacks again.

2. Israel stages a fake Hezbollah attack on the border, which can now be followed via the threat by an attack on the Lebanese economy.

3. Israeli leader threatens Hezbollah in a speech containing some of the strongest language ever used.

4. Israel bombs a grain silo in Beirut harbor that contains the next month’s grain supply = attack on Lebanese economy.

Jackrabbit: You also fail to notice Robert Lindsay belief in the Israeli Nuke theory @Feb28 6:14 #212. That bit of misdirection was proven false soon after the incident.

It is most certainly was not proven false.

In fact, seven different states and the UN told five different teams of journalists that the blast was due to a military attack on the harbor, with most saying it was an Israeli attack.

Three different states and the UN said or implied to two teams of journalists that Israel bombed Beirut with a tactical nuclear weapon.

It’s imperative upon the doubters to prove that multiple governments lied and/or that multiple teams of journalists lied or were all fed the same false information. Most of these teams have a good record for advocacy, and half of the governments put out quite reliable information.

The Mossad Plot That Started It All

A team of journalists was informed by Lebanese intelligence that this whole episode was a Mossad plot dating back several years. They discovered that nothing about this ship made any sort of sense. All of the documentation about it was fraudulent, forged, or dishonest. Nothing added up. Mossad purchased a ship in Cyprus. Then they went on a rendezvous of three different countries, supposedly buying fertilizer. The last stop was in Georgia, where the ship purchased 2,800 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. This is the ultimate source of the “fertilizer” on the ship.

There is a problem with this: Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is not manufactured anywhere in Georgia, so the ship literally could not have bought this cargo there.

According to intelligence, there never was any fertilizer. Instead, the sacks were filled with rocks and dirt. The rocks and dirt labeled ammonium nitrate fertilizer were placed in the warehouse at the dock. They reportedly sat there for a number of years as buyers for the fertilizer supposedly fell through. Obviously there were no fertilizer buyers because there was never any fertilizer in the first place.

In addition, the ship’s owner, a Russian, went bankrupt and lost possession of the ship. This Russian ship owner may have been in on the plot. The fertilizer then had no owner.

Lebanese courts thought that the fertilizer was a hazard and issued a number of orders to remove it from the warehouse. None of these orders were followed. It is hard to explain this part of the story.

That part of the port of Beirut is owned by Lebanese Maronite Falangists, hardcore opponents of Hezbollah who formed the pro-Israel Southern Lebanese Army that enforced the Israeli conquest and annexation of Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah forced the Israelis to leave via continuous deadly or injurious attacks and the SLA had to flee for their lives. Most of them were quickly taken in by Israel but a few went to the US. One was arrested and imprisoned a few years ago when he came back to Lebanon. He was the head of a notorious prison in Southern Lebanon where resistance fighters were imprisoned and tortured.

It is certainly possible that these Falange worked with Israel on this plot. They may have been involved in the refusal to remove the “fertilizer.” We must also note that since the Falange control that part of the port, there is no way that Hezbollah could have stashed missiles there. So the “Hezbollah missile depot” story cannot possibly be true.

The figure of 2,800 tons is important. As noted, the crater of the blast was so large that it is dubious whether even 280,000 tons or 100 times that amount of ammonium nitrate could have blown a hole that big. And no amount of ammonium nitrate could have blown that deep crater in the solid rock below.  As noted, only a nuclear bomb, tactical or otherwise can blow a hole in solid rock. This is why all known bunker buster bombs are actually small tactical nuclear weapons. They have to be.

That the fertilizer was ammonium nitrate is also important. An Italian chemist noted that ammonium nitrate leaves a large yellow cloud when it blows up. The cloud in the explosion was red-brown. The chemist thought that may have been due to the Hezbollah missiles blowing up. But as we now know, there were no Hezbollah missiles. Lebanese President Auon himself said there was no missile depot at the port.

The Aims of the Attack

Also, note that the “fertilizer explosion” or “Hezbollah missile depot blast” occurred only a week before a corrupt UN investigation team was due to convict Hezbollah for killing former President Hariri. However, Hezbollah was framed for this crime as Hariri was actually killed by an Israeli drone overhead. This would be a one-two blow for Hezbollah. Hezbollah would be blamed twice in a week for serious catastrophes that befell the land. The idea was to make Hezbollah lose all its support.

In the event of the fertilizer explosion story, the intent there was to blame the Lebanese government. “The Lebanese government killed 1,000 Lebanese people!” This was then very suspiciously followed by a US-led color revolution supposedly outraged over the government ineptitude that caused the explosion in which a mere 3,000 paid demonstrators managed to overthrow the government. US government regime change specialists were spotted at these demonstrations with huge grins on their faces.

As soon as the government of Lebanon was overthrown, the (((Rothschild-controlled))) President Macron of France flew in and immediately began strongarming the Lebanese government into setting up a new government without any Hezbollah supporters. Lebanon was specifically threatened with consequences if they did not set this government up.

The US then put crushing sanctions of Lebanon that wrecked its economy. With the addition of a banking crisis that also collapsed the economy, the idea was to wreck the economy to make people so angry they would throw out the pro-Hezbollah government. It hasn’t worked yet.

In other words, the entire aim of the attack was to get Hezbollah out of the Lebanese government and marginalized in Lebanese society.

Very Suspicious Concurrent Attacks

The very next day after the attacks, US forces blew up several grain silos in Syria. Note that Israel’s attack blew up Lebanon’s entire supply of grain. So the US attack on Syria’s grain is concurrent with an Israeli attack on Lebanese grain. The US blowing up Syrian grain silos does not fit with an accidental fertilizer explosion. Why would we bomb grain silos because some fertilizer blew up?

In the next couple of days, a series of fires broke out at food warehouses in the southern Shia part of Iraq. Israel or the US is suspected. So the connection? In all three cases, food supplies for pro-Iranian populations were destroyed. The Lebanese people support Hezbollah by 6

Lebanon: Attack on Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon for supporting Hezbollah and Iran by blowing up the country’s supply of bread.

Syria: Attack on Syria, a pro-Iranian government, by blowing up the country’s supply of bread.

Iraq: Attack on the Iran-supporting Shia of Iraqi South by destroying their food supply.

UAE: Attack on Iran by setting an Iranian-owned shopping mall on fire, destroying it.

Why would an accidental fertilizer explosion just happen to destroy a country’s food supply. Why would it be followed by attacks on the food supply of two other populations which just happen to support Iran? Why would it also be followed by the destruction by fire of a shopping mall in the UAE that just happens to be owned by Iran?

All four of these attacks were obviously coordinated. Accidents are not followed by coordinated attacks destroying similar things that got destroyed in the accident. All attacks were against either Iran, or pro-Iranian armed groups, governments and populations.

Starting to get the picture?

The Coverup

A team of journalists was told by the Lebanese military and intelligence that all parties had agreed to cover up this incident and go with the fake fertilizer story. The Lebanese government wanted to cover it up so as not to spread panic in the population. Also it made the government look very weak in the face of Israeli aggression. Hezbollah wanted it covered up too because they have no effective response or deterrent now that the Israelis are using nuclear weapons against their adversaries.

They felt it would lead to disillusionment and defeatist thinking on the part of the Lebanese people with a resulting loss of support for Hezbollah: “Hezbollah is impotent to defend us against Israeli nuclear weapons, so why support them? Let’s just surrender. The war’s over.” In addition, Iran also wished to cover it up because they have no effective response to Israeli nuclear weapons either and admitting this might lead to similar disillusionment and defeatism on the part of the population. “Just surrender to the US and Israel already. We can’t win.”

As noted above, there is excellent evidence that Israeli dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on Syria about a year before the Beirut blast. The Syrian government has not admitted this for the same reasons as the Lebanese, Hezbollah, and Iran above.

Israel will of course never admit to using tactical nuclear weapons for fear it would set off an increase in anti-Israel sentiments in the world. However, considering how Israel-cucked the US and increasingly the EU is, not to mention the Arab sellouts and traitors, I think a lot of the world would probably cheer that Israel was nuking the Arabs.s

The US will also not admit to using tactical nuclear weapons. Any mention of this will be relegated to the usual conspiracy theory tinfoil hat territory. We reasonably fear an increase in anti-US sentiment after such a revelation. But considering how US-cucked the Europeans are, I’m wondering if they wouldn’t cheer that America is dropping nukes on those dirty Muslims.

Israel started using tactical nukes as early as 2008 when they used them against the Hezbollah resistance. A very suspicious blast was investigated soon afterwards by a Russian team and they indeed found abnormal levels of radiation at the site. The Russians concluded that Israel had used a tactical nuclear weapon against Hezbollah.

There is now excellent evidence that the US used a few to several tactical nuclear weapons (bunker busters) against Al Qaeda’s cave fortifications at Tora Bora. In addition, we now know that the first US use of tactical nuclear weapons was in the first Iraq War in 1991, when we dropped a tactical nuclear weapon 13 miles east of Basra. This marked the first use of a tactical nuclear weapon by a military in the modern era.

Proof That ISIS and Al Qaeda are US Assets Being Assisted by the US Military

Both of those groups are US proxies in a way. We are using them at the moment to attack the Iraqi, Syrian, and Afghan governments.

In recent years, US the shipped many ISIS fighters into Iraq after the Iraqi government voted to throw our asses out of that  country.

We use both Al Qaeda and ISIS to attack Assad in Syria.

We also help the Saudis and UAE use Al Qaeda and ISIS to attack the Houthis in Yemen.

While the Iraqi government was fighting ISIS a few years back, the US and the UK were doing daily airdrops of weapons to ISIS, mostly in Anbar Province. Local tribal leaders said these were happening every day. They even took their complaints to the Iraqi Parliament. In one case, the British were caught red-handed in a weapons drop to ISIS. The British admitted that they did it, but they said it was an “accident.” So the wonderful Brits are supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS too. Wonderful people.

I am not sure why we were backing ISIS. Keep in mind that at the same time, we were helping the Kurds fight ISIS. So we were attacking and supplying ISIS at the same time. This sort of double-dealing nonsense is classic US Deep State foreign policy. We do this sleazy stuff all the time.

I believe we were backing ISIS because we were angry at the Iraqi government for various reasons. One of the main ones was  that they have strong ties to Iran. Israel and sometimes the US have attacked the Iraqi military many times at the border crossing with Syria. In one case, we left 75 casualties. So the US is literally carrying out attacks against the Iraqi Army!

We said the attack was against an “Iranian militia” but there’s no such thing in Iraq. There are pro-Iran Shia militias, sure. But they are made up of Iraqi Shia, not Iranians. And all of those “Iranian militias” are simply battalions in the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi government is pro-Iran. The Iraqi Army in its entirety is pro-Iran.

As the anti-ISIS wars in Iraq and Syria wound down, Afghans started complaining the US helicopters (black helicopters at that) were flying in ISIS fighters and dropping them in Nuristan in Afghanistan. Black helicopters are absolutely real as are “men in black,” often heavily armed in military fatigues. There’s no mystery about these forces. Both the black helicopters and the men in black are US military intelligence. In the US at least, they dress in black.

I have no idea why were dropping ISIS fighters in Afghanistan. It’s a mystery to me. Perhaps we just want all of these wars to go on forever and we wish to keep the region destabilized for as long as possible.

Alt Left: A Bit on the North American Terrorist Organization (NATO) and Its Fascist Gladio Stay Behind Network

The North American Terrorist Association, otherwise known as NATO, is the Western alliance in Europe set up to oppose the Soviet threat. Speaking of which, the Soviet threat is gone.

Time to smash this fascist monstrosity once and for all. And yes, NATO is very much a fascist organization. Research “the Gladio stay-behind network” for more. This was an organization of actual out and out fascists, mostly supporters of the Axis from World War 2, who were to run a stay-behind guerrilla network in the event of a Soviet invasion and conquest of Western Europe. Gladio was notorious for doing all sorts of nasty things. After the USSR fell, Gladio was not dismantled.

The NATO/Gladio Network Role in the Ukraine Nazi Maiden Coup

Most recently, they participated in the Ukraine Nazi Maidan coup. Gladio sharpshooters were trained in Poland, now effectively a Nazi country. Then when the Maiden coup got underway, a group of Gladio snipers from Lithuania (effectively a fascist country along with the other two Baltic states) and Georgia (presently in the throes of a nationbuilding ethnic nationalist ultranationalist or fascist project) were sent to Kiev as a classical musician group. Except that in their instrument cases were sniper rifles. They took up position in a building in the square and commenced shooting both the Berkut police and the demonstrators.

Multiple investigations by the Ukrainian Parliament found that the bullets used to shoot people during the riots did not come from the Berkut because the Berkut had no bullets.

Then we got a tapped phone conversation from an EU bureaucrat in Lithuania who was recorded as saying that the snipers had been sent by NATO to shoot at both sides.

Last we had videos released out of Georgia by men by some of the snipers, admitting what they had done. They hadn’t realized exactly what they were doing in the operation and now they felt bad about it.

NATO Fascist Snipers in the Egypt and Thailand Color Revolutions

NATO snipers have done this very thing of shooting at both sides in a number of color revolutions since, especially in Egypt and Thailand.

Venezuelan Rightwing Fascist Snipers in the 2002 Venezuelan Coup

It’s a well-known fascist tactic, and it was also used by the Venezuelan fascists in their brief coup of 2002.

A Similar Fascist Sniper Operation Run by the Pentagon During the Recent Iraqi Color Revolution

This fascist tactic was most recently used in Baghdad during the wild riots recently when many people were shot. Donald Trump was pressuring the President of Iraq to do what he wanted, which was to rescind the Iraqi Parliament order (still in effect by the way) ordering all US troops to leave the country.

When the Iraqi leader refused, Trump said he would set off riots all across Iraq. Remember those wild riots that killed 600 people that raged across Iraq recently? Apparently they were initially set up by the US military and the CIA. After that, they took on a life of their own.

After the President refused to budge, Trump said he would start shooting at demonstrators. Soon snipers were shooting both riot police and demonstrators both. The President of Iraq said Iraqi intelligence determined that the snipers shooting both sides were US Marines firing from rooftops and the US Embassy. Later other people started shooting, including possibly the Iraqi police of the Iraqi military. Once again the President refused to cave in.

Next Trump said if he didn’t say uncle, Trump would have the leader killed. The leader refused again. The attempt on his life was never made. See how US foreign policy works? We literally shoot dead leaders of countries we don’t like. How do we know all of this? Because the President of Iraq revealed all these threats by Trump and resulting CIA/Pentagon machinations in an interview. Patriotards say he’s lying. What are the odds that the President of Iraq made this stuff up in an interview?

The Role of NATO Intelligence and the Gladio Network in the “Strategy of Tension” in Italy in the 1970’s

Remember “Strategy of Tension” in Italy in the 1970’s? Supposedly, left and right wing terrorist groups were setting off bombs in places like railway stations, sometimes killing up to 80 people. Well there were no left and right wing terrorist organizations setting off bombs.

It was all NATO intelligence using the Gladio Network fascists posing as either right or left wing terrorists. Most of those groups setting off those bombs didn’t even exist. Many of the rest were probably infiltrated.

Nevertheless, I will always have a warm place in my heart for the Red Brigades of Italy. I had a friend who lived in Trieste, Italy. Trieste has long been more of an “Austro-Hungarian Empire” city that what we think of as an “Italian” city. James Joyce and Ezra Pound spent some time there in the early 20’s. Joyce was working on Ulysses at the time.

My friend was on the left politically as was his sister. He told me that in that part of Italy, the Red Brigades had massive support even among regular middle class people. His sister in particular was a strong Red Brigades supporter. They did kill Aldo Moro though…

Alt Left: The Nature and Murderous/Genocidal Impulses of the US Deep State

The Deep State is nothing more than “the foreign policy establishment of the United States.” These people run this damned country.

They killed JFK.

They probably killed RFK.

They killed MLK.

They probably killed Paul Wellstone.

And the behavior of the American Deep State is unspeakably wicked, depraved, and sociopathic. You could support it if you were a vicious psychopath who liked to tell lies and hurt or even kill people you see as your enemies. And that’s the problem. The US treats the citizens of enemy states as if they were our personal enemies. That’s how we can harm and even  kill them. Easily.

For instance, we have already killed 100,000 Venezuelans with these new sanctions we put in. We killed 500,000 Iraqi kids before the Gulf War and the psychopath (((Madeline Albright))) said it was worth it.  We recently started a  Nazi-like war of aggression against the Iraqi People (the Iraq War – I call it The War Against the Iraqi People) that has killed 1.4 million Iraqis.  We invaded and conquered Afghanistan and started a war there that has killed 1.1 million Afghans. All of that blood is on our hands.

America is basically a genocidal country at its core. That’s one way we’ve never changed from our basic core values and impulses. We’ve been pretty genocidal from the start, with some brief interludes where severe repression was substituted for genocide (Jim Crow). In the 20th Century, we’ve perpetrated or caused massacres and genocides all over the globe for a variety of excuses that all come down to US imperialism, which is making the world safe for super-exploitation by US corporations and the US rich.

Alt Left: Beirut Attack Was Done a Tactical Nuclear Missile Attack by Israel against a Hezbollah Missile Depot – All Other Stories Are Lies

The stories about the “preventable accident” at the port of Beirut involving fireworks or ammonium nitrate fertilizer or whatever lie they are pushing now are all lies. The truth is that the warehouse that blew up was a Hezbollah missile depot. Israel fired two missiles from jets at the warehouse area. The first was an anti-ship missile and caused the first explosion in warehouse six. The second caused by a missile, probably a tactical nuclear weapon, fired from an Israeli jet at the Hezbollah depot in warehouse 12.

Via Syrian intelligence.

Syrian intelligence says an unknown new weapon, probably a tactical nuclear weapon, was used in this attack. Israel apparently tested this weapon earlier on a plain in Syria. A video of that explosion is available and it looks exactly like this explosion. Russian experts went to the site afterwards and confirmed radiation.

Modern tactical nukes hardly have any fallout and radiation returns to normal levels in a few days.

That is why the US and Israel are using them. These are “safe” nukes. Only Veterans Today and Global Research are publicizing the use of these tactical nukes, which date back to the first Iraq War, when the US military dropped its first nuclear weapon since Hiroshimi in the desert 13 miles west of Basra, possibly as an experiment.

Lebanon is made of solid rock. All explosives will blow upwards on solid rock. Miners would very much like an explosive that blows downwards. It would make their jobs a lot easier. That way they would not have to drill holes into the ground to put their explosives in. Only a nuclear weapon can blow downwards into solid rock.

And that is why all of the American and Israeli bunker buster weapons such as the BMU series are essentially nuclear weapons. The MOAB recently used in Kunar, Afghanistan, also seems to be some sort of a nuclear weapon. At some point you run into the upper limits of conventional explosives due to size considerations if nothing else. At that point you need to go nuclear or chemical, and the US has done both.

Chemical or nuclear weapons were used three times against the Taliban in the initial phase of the Afghan. The US warned Afghanistan that they were going to use fuel-air weapons, which ought to be made illegal anyway as a weapon of mass destruction, but they never used them. Instead we used nuclear or chemical weapons on three separate occasions. More on that later. It’s proven too. The Afghan source is immaculate.

Israel has been itching to blow up the Beirut port forever. Lebanon is an enemy state and Israel sees Beirut as a competitor that it needs to destroy. Lebanon tried to build a rapid highway from the mountains down to the port. This would have massively expanded the port’s capability and the Lebanese economy.

The US ambassador shot it down and said the US would not allow it as long as Israel’s enemies Iraq and Syria existed. Also the US would not approve it until Lebanon signed a peace treaty with Israel. Lebanon and Israel are still officially at war. An armistice was never signed and every Lebanese government has said that they will never sign a peace treaty with Israel.

There is a video presentation from a couple of years ago with Netanyahu circling the warehouse that was hit in red and describing it as a Hezbollah missile depot. So Israel thought it was a Hezbollah missile depot even two years ago.

It’s worth considering that the only enemy of Lebanon promised to attack Lebanese civilian infrastructure just prior to the explosion, and lo and behold that’s what happened.

Exactly. One week prior, Israel said that if Hezbollah ever attacks us again, we will attack Lebanese civilian infrastructure. For years now, Israel has been warning that if there is another war, Lebanon is going to be about wiped off the map. All civilian infrastructure will be targeted.

On the very date of the attack, Netanyahu tweeted that Hezbollah better watch it, if they make one move, Israel will destroy them. Immediately after the attack, Netanyahu tweeted that we got the bombers, now we got the people who sent them.

A top Israeli politician cheered on the attack, calling it a mitzva. He also said it was no accident and he alluded that Israel had done it. He also implied that it had been a nuclear blast, which he said was a good thing. So he was saying the quiet part out loud.

Gideon Levy, one of the bravest journalists in the press-censored Israeli state, wrote an article after the blast appearing to dance as close as possible to admitting that Israel did the attack without running afoul of military censors. An Israeli general reportedly tweeted that Israel had attacked Beirut, but I have been unable to find the tweet. Additionally, one Israeli paper after another has been running articles threatening Hezbollah and the Lebanese people, saying, “Look, now you really better watch it, ok?”

Multiple sources inside the Lebanese military and intelligence are saying that Israel fired a missile at a Hezbollah missile depot.

A Saudi source, using cautious words, said that Israel had attacked a Hezbollah missile depot, but something had gone wrong and the explosion was much larger than they had predicted. He said that Israel felt chagrined and felt that they had made a severe error.

Al Arabiya, a Saudi newspaper, said that the site that blew up was a Hezbollah missile depot.

A UAE source said that Israel had attacked a Hezbollah missile depot, but that something had gone seriously wrong.

Three separate Pentagon sources all stated that they thought the explosion was due to an attack.

A separate Pentagon source said the explosion was caused by “the sabotage of an arms depot.”

An Italian weapons expert disagreed with the analysis that ammonium nitrate had caused the explosion. No one even knows if there was any ammonium nitrate in that warehouse. There were no fireworks anywhere. Also AN needs to have fuel oil added to it in exact measurements otherwise it will not explode. Whether shooting a missile at a pile of AN is enough to set it off is not known.

Anyway, there were much less than 2,700 tons of AN in that warehouse, as people had been stealing from that supply for many years. Also the weapons expert said that an AN explosion causes a huge yellow cloud. See any yellow cloud in that blast? Of course not. Instead we see a brick red blast followed by a bright red column. This is typical of lithium. Lithium is a component used in rocket fuel and a lithium explosion would be typical if a missile warehouse was blown up.

In addition, the type of AN was heavy AN because that is what was marked on the crates. Heavy AN is not used for explosives. It is used only for fertilizers. It is light AN that is used for explosives and even then, it has to be mixed with fuel oil in precise proportions or it won’t blow up.

Further, the AN was stored in a warehouse marked for typical materials, not for hazardous material. There are now many theories that the AN was on top of the missiles or was being used to hide the missiles. There are also different stories about the missiles. Some say it was a Hezbollah missile depot. Others say it was a stash of missiles that had been seized for some reason by port authorities.

The essentials of this attack are beyond dispute. The only controversial question is now is whether it was a nuclear missile or not, but it may well have been. These are the legendary artillery or suitcase nukes that everyone said didn’t exist. Well they did. And they do. They’re the also legendary tactical nukes or mini nukes.

They hardly cause any fallout now, and the radiation goes down to normal levels in a few days. So the US and Israel think they are real groovy! Usable nuclear weapons that don’t kill too many people or cause radiation sickness! Cool! I always wanted a usable nuke! How bout you all, readers? Didn’t you always want to get a real safe, not too deadly nuclear weapon for your birthday or for Christmas? Could of come in handy, huh?

Richard Silverstein, a very righteous Jew, is the great source for this. Interested readers should head to his site, Tikkun Olam. He’s one Hell of a mensch.

Although I hate Veterans Today because they are kooks and fools, they appear to have hit this one on the head, with a few errors here and there. Go there. They have everything you need to make the nuke case. But they say nukes have been used lots of other times though, so be careful. But this time they hit it. They also have incredible infrared videos from Lebanon, shot by regular folks, that show the precise missile coming in.

There are two separate videos shot by regular folks who did not know each other from different cameras in different places at different angles. The MSM is saying the videos are faked, but I don’t think so. For one there are two videos from two people. The people have names and you can go talk to them. All their friends are vouching for them and saying they didn’t fake anything. They are saying they wouldn’t know how to fake it anyway.

Also both videos show the exact outline of an Israeli Delilah tactical nuclear missile down to the last detail. How would they know what one would look like? No one knows what that weapon looks like. Most don’t even know it exists. Also both videos show a white hot glow on the warhead. This is very important. The Delilah has a nuclear tipped warhead and yes it would glow white hot. How would they know to both put that detail in their videos? Nobody knows that. No one even knows what the weapon even is. Deliliah is a guess. Syrian intel doesn’t even know what a Delilah is and they call it an “unknown weapon.”

The first strike was from an anti-ship missile, the second was the nuke, probably by air.

Additional evidence in favor a nuclear missile comes from the UN itself, the International Atomic Energy Association of which recorded a massive radiation event in the Eastern Mediterranean at the exact time as the missile strike.

After this missile strike, many people reported a “melting” feeling on their face. This is characteristic of a nuclear attack. Also most cellphones stopped working. This is probably due to the EMF pulse radiating from the nuclear blast.

Most particularly, look at that characteristic mushroom cloud. I’ve never in my life seen an explosion that looked anything like that, with that white-hot heat and circular rings. That was in photos of the Hiroshima and Bikini Atoll nuclear blasts and of tests in Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert. The Veteran’s Today people say that only a nuclear weapon gives off that characteristic blast cloud.

Trump was told that it was an Israeli attack and he blabbed that it was an attack. Israel got very mad at him afterwards, and pro-Israel media has been blasting him ever since he said that.

Immediately Hezbollah was blamed for the explosion by the usual suspects, the Saudis, the Saudi-controlled Hariris, the Breitbart American Alt Lite Right, Fox News, (((Kenneth Roth))) at the execrable Human Rights Watch.

Note also that Israel is promising aid to the victims. Israel has never offered aid to any Arab victims of anything ever. They say they are shipping aid to Lebanon but they are leaving Hebrew markings on the aid packages. Not only is that almost demanding that Lebanon reject the aid, but it also seems like they are really rubbing it in to the Lebanese.

That’s a giveaway too. This is the first time Israel’s ever offered aid? Why is that now?

The Lebanese government is in on the fake fertilizer story. Problems with this story are that no one would ever allow fertilizer to be stored in any port for any period of time, certainly not six years. The storage costs alone would prevent that.

The Moldovan flagged ship was barely seaworthy and did not seem capable of carrying its load. The customer in Mozambique where the fertilizer was said to be shipped does not exist. The mysterious Russian captain of the ship, supposedly living in Lebanon, cannot be found. The more you look at the fertilizer ship story, the less sense any of it makes. Some say that the only proof of the existence of the fertilizer is entries in an accounting ledger. Other than that, it may not have existed.

Iran, Lebanon and Hezbollah are not publicizing this, probably for fear of rendering the Lebanese people powerless and terrified of Israel’s capabilities. Also both Hezbollah and Lebanon fear that this revelation will force Hezbollah to retaliate, which could cause a larger war that neither wants. Also Hezbollah does not want it to get out that they were using the port to store explosives. Israel has their own reasons for covering this attack up, obviously.

There is also a report that Israel used this same nuclear weapon on an Iranian ship in the Gulf recently, though I have no info on that.

Michel Chussodovsky of Global Research has written articles about the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the US and Israel in recent years. Much of this reporting was reprinted by Veterans Today.

He wrote an article noting US use of these tactical nukes at Tora Bora. The MOAB dropped on Kunar is for all intents and purposes a nuclear weapon. It needs to be outlawed. He also wrote that Israel used a tactical nuke in the war against Hezbollah om 2006. I agree.

Israel Assassinated Hariri in a False Flag to Frame Hezbollah

I also now believe that Israel absolutely killed Hariri, and it looks like some sort of a tactical nuclear weapon was used in that attack too, fired from an Israeli drone known to be overhead. The US and Israel had footage of the drone that fired the weapon, but they refused to release it. The explosives that were said to have been used do not have the effect seen in the explosion and could not possibly have caused the effects seen.

Also no attack could have taken place with a car bomb without disabling the very sophisticated anti-attack technology in Hariri’s car. That technology was made in Israel and only the Israelis knew how to dismantle it. So if there was a car bomb, the Israeli anti-car bomb tech had to have been dismantled and only Israel could have done that. So Israel ends up guilty either way.

Israeli drones had been following Hariri’s every movement for months and on the day of his assassination, all converged on the exact site of the attack several hours before, and they took pictures of the attack. The drones’ footage was hacked by Hezbollah, and this information was released to the public to no avail.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese military officials were framed by the German investigator, who is long-time CIA and German intel. The weapon itself was an experimental weapon invented in Germany and given to Israel by Israel after Germany adopted the posture that “Germany’s army will now fight to defend Israel.” This prompted a wave of angry letters and resignations from German officers.

The German investigator was very sleazy, ignored most evidence, faked evidence, and used very dirty techniques in interviews, including trying to set family members against each other with lies about infidelity. All of the four Lebanese generals imprisoned were framed and were innocent. The people who subsequently were said to have named Assad and other Syrians as responsible recanted via their lawyers and said they had never made such allegations.

The purpose of framing Hezbollah and Syria for the Hariri assassination was to start a new civil war in Lebanon and also to drive a stake into the heart of Hezbollah once and for all by framing them for this crime (16 of Hezbollah’s top officers were named in the indictment). This was supposed to be the end of Hezbollah, but it did not work. Note that this nuke attack comes just four days before the major judicial finding on the Hariri attack which is expected to completely condemn Hezbollah as the actors of the attack.

Since the Hariri false flag did not work, this false flag was intended to be the coup de grace for Hezbollah. It’s also intended to start a civil war in Lebanon, which Israel has been trying to do for 15 years now.

Alt Left: The Iranian PMU “Militias” Have Not Done Any of the Rocket Attacks on our Bases Tht We Have Accused Them And Iran of Doing

There was a rocket attack on the US base in Taji, Iraq the other day. 30 Katyusha rockets were fired at the base from a rocket launcher positioned in an abandoned pickup truck. 3 troops were killed,  2 Americans and 1 British, and 10 more were wounded, some badly. The US immediately blamed the PMU Division and Iran, specifically accusing the Kataib Hezbollah Battalion of the Iraqi Army for some reason, whom they have blamed before.

The Kataib Hezbollah Battalion is part of group of militias of the Iraqi Army called the PMU Division. These militias are now actual battalions and divisions of the Iraqi Army. The US stated “all intelligence points to Iran as being the source of the attack.” They also said that the attack was “beyond the capabilities of ISIS” and that only the PMU Division among the country’s armed insurgents and militias have the ability to carry out such an attack.

We will examine all of these claims below.

First of all, the PMU Division (Iraqi Army) didn’t do it. They already said they didn’t do it. They also said when we start attacking, we will announce it. This makes sense as the PMU Division generally claims all of its attacks. However, the Kataib Hezbollah Battalion of the Iraqi Army congratulated whoever did it. So what?

The previous attack on Kirkuk which Trump used to murder 30 members of the Iraqi Army and later Soleimani and Muhandis was proven to have been done by ISIS. The US lied and said Iran and the PMU Division did it. The Iraqi Army investigated and said it was an ISIS attack. The (((New York Times))) investigated and said the same thing. The (((Jew York Times))) has zero motivation to lie about this and they would love to blame Iran and the Shia militia Division.

Despite my name-calling here, I would like to commend the New York Times for not giving in to  (((ethnic chauvinism and lying))) and for telling the truth for once, even if the truth isn’t good for the Jews. Thank you, (((Mr. Shulzberger)))!

Journalistic integrity ought to come first and (((ethnic solidarity))) ideally ought to come last, but humans are emotional and that is why humans will always be a frequently irrational species – because emotions and facts go together like oil and water, and many truth-statements that people arrive at are derived by emotions, and  hence they are false.

This is very important to understand because most of us have views of the world that depend on seeing ourselves and fellow humans as rational beings, while the truth is that people are not very rational at all, and they are often quite irrational. The more emotional the subject is, the more irrational people will tend to act about it, and this includes determining what’s true and what’s false.

After we killed 30 of their men, the PMU Division then stormed embassy because…well…the US just murdered 30 of its men? Is that hard to understand? Of course they were mad.

I have a good source, a journalist, who is close to the Iranian and Iraqi governments as well as the IRGC, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Shia militias in Syria and Iraq. He stated that Iran had nothing to do with the embassy storming. It was a PMU Division decision to storm the embassy. Nevertheless Trump murdered Soleimani who had nothing to do with it and Muhandis, head of the PMU Division, who was only protesting the murder of 30 of his men. US lied and blamed Iran.

Next came many rocket attacks on US embassy, My source told me that the Shia militias didn’t do any of them as they wanted to give the US time to leave. The US nevertheless blamed the Shia militia division and Iran for all of these embassy attacks and other attacks on US bases. Neither the PMU Division nor Iran had anything  to do with any of them.

And note that the the rockets fired at embassy always came from Sunni parts of Baghdad. Why would the Shia PMU Division fire rockets from Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad who are utterly hostile to the PMU?

Now we have this latest attack on the base in Taji. The Kataib Hezbollah Battalion said they didn’t do it and asked whoever did it to take credit for it so the US would quit falsely blaming them. The PMU Division denied doing the Taji attack, and they claim all attacks. The US once again lied and blamed Iran and the PMU Division for the rockets and death of the US soldiers.

Keep in mind that the PMU Division is nothing but the Iraqi Army, a division of the army. They answer to Central Command in Baghdad, not to Iran. Iran doesn’t give orders to any of its allied militias. They get to do what they want within limits.

These rockets were launched from an area east of Taji called Rashidiyah. Tarmiyah is to the north. The entire area is made up of Sunni tribes who practice Sufism and were strong supporters and members of the former ruling Baath Party. The Sunni resistance against the US was here for years, and the US and Iraqi government never could clean them out. The original armed factions were made up of Sunni tribes with a strong adherence to the  Naqashbandi Sufi Order, the main Sufi order in Iraq.

After resistance died down, this area became an ISIS hotbed. In fact, ISIS weapons caches were found at the precise location that these rockets in this Taji attack were fired from. I have a hard time believing that Shia militias went to an utterly hostile pro-Baath Party Sunni neighborhood of former Sunni guerrillas and ISIS supporters and shot some rockets.

Nevertheless, we still no idea who did this attack. I would bet once again on Sunnis and/or ISIS. The US presented zero evidence for Iranian and PMU Division involvement. The Pentagon said the attack was beyond ISIS capabilities.

This is a complete lie because this was the exact same setup ISIS used in the earlier Kirkuk attack. ISIS also did an attack in Afghanistan three days using this setup, and ISIS used this setup endless times during the heavy fighting in Iraq several years ago. The US is lying that ISIS does not have this capability. Of course it does.

There is a good argument that Sunni groups and/or ISIS are doing all these rocket attacks. These Sunni folks utterly despise Iran and the Shia PMU Division.

They know that the US automatically blames Shia militias and Iran with every rocket attack no matter who shot the rockets. So they may shoot rockets at the US taking no credit for them (as that would spoil the trick) to frame the PMU Division and Iran for the attacks. If this is what is going on, it’s working great. Muhandis, Soleimani, and scores of Shia soldiers in the PMU have been killed by the US in retaliatory strikes for something  they didn’t even do.

Alt Left: The U.S. Is Recycling Its Big Lie about Iraq to Target Iran

A superb article. People need to get this through their damned heads: Iran does not have a Goddamned nuclear weapons program! The CIA even said so itself in its last word in the subject in 2007. Yet this evil government of ours keeps insisting that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

This is literally the reason for the entire sanctions regime, the targeting and war threats against Iran, the bombing of pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia militias in Iraq, and the assassination of Hajj Qassem Soleimani.

How many Moronicans believe these big fat lie? How many Eurotrash believe this lie. It must be a large majority of both of them.

After all, the entire MSM in the West – every single newspaper, magazine, and TV and radio news show, along with all Western governments insists that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Not even one media outlet anywhere in the West will admit the obvious truth that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons and hasn’t had one for a minimum of 30 lies.

Guess (((who))) cooked up this big, fat lie in the (((US media))). Guess (((why))) the entire media and every state in the West keeps repeating this lie? I’ll tell you why. (((This))) is the reason why. (((These people))) want Iran invaded and destroyed because it is the only country left other than Syria which is a sworn enemy of (((their state))).

Guess who the US, UK, France, and Germany take orders from. (((This)) is who they take orders from.

Granted the US is also out to destroy Iran because the Shia-haters in Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, and Turkey all hate Iran simply because they are profoundly bigoted Sunnis with a homicidal hatred and paranoia of Shia Muslims.

In addition, US imperialism has had a hard-on for Iran ever since the Embassy Takeover in 1979. We never got over it. And the rule of US imperialism is simply “never forgive, never forget.” Exactly the same motto as (((some people))). Coincidence? For the crime of standing up to the US and shouting “Death to America! Death to Israel!” for 40 years, US imperialism wants Iran gone.

In addition, Iran has no central bank. US imperialism demands that all countries have central banks.

In addition, Iran is selling its oil in currencies other than dollars. This threatens the “petrodollar,” one of the essential pillars of US imperialism. The use of the dollar in international trade has indeed been declining in the past 10 years. It’s down to 6

As long as most international trade is conducted in dollars, US imperialism can charge full steam ahead. But when that number goes down below 5

And this World Dictator and Most Powerful Nation on Earth nonsense is one thing that America wants to keep perhaps more than anything else. The US will do most anything, start wars, kill millions of people – it matters not- to retain those positions.

As Lenin said, power does not give up without a fight which was one reason that he said the electoral road to socialism could never happen and why he called people who supported it “parliamentary cretins.” It’s not so much that he opposed it, as he simply thought it would not work.

It is instructive to note that every single country that has gone off the dollar has been either attacked, subjected to heavy sanctions, had coups, color revolutions, or armed insurgencies unleashed upon. Sometimes more than one or all of the above.

  • Iraq went off the petrodollar. It was invaded soon after.
  • Libya went off the petrodollar. It was quickly attacked.
  • Syria went off the petrodollar. It had an insurgency unleashed upon it.
  • Iran is going off the petrodollar. It’s been subject to many threats and vicious sanctions.
  • North Korea went off the dollar. Result was totally brutal sanctions, many deaths, and endless military threats.
  • Venezuela is going off the petrodollar. Result: sanctions, economic warfare, and coup attempts with lockout strikes, use of armed forces, violent street demonstrations and now with an entire fake alternate facts government set up led by a man who was never elected President even one time.
  • Russia and China are going off the dollar. Result: sanctions, tariffs, and hybrid warfare was launched on both countries and both have been designated as top US enemies. A color revolution is being attempted in Hong Kong.

See how this works?

The U.S. Is Recycling Its Big Lie About Iraq to Target Iran

Sixteen years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, most Americans understand that it was an illegal war based on lies about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” But our government is now threatening to drag us into a war on Iran with a nearly identical “big lie” about a non-existent nuclear weapons program, based on politicized intelligence from the same CIA teams that wove a web of lies to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In 2002-3, U.S. officials and corporate media pundits repeated again and again that Iraq had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that posed a dire threat to the world. The CIA produced reams of false intelligence to support the march to war and cherry-picked the most deceptively persuasive narratives for Secretary of State Colin Powell to present to the UN Security Council on February 5th 2003.

In December 2002, Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) told his staff,

If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so.

Paul Pillar, a CIA officer who was the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, helped to prepare a 25-page document that was passed off to Members of Congress as a “summary” of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq.

But the document was written months before the NIE it claimed to summarize and contained fantastic claims that were nowhere to be found in the NIE, such as that the CIA knew of 550 specific sites in Iraq where chemical and biological weapons were stored. Most members read only this fake summary, not the real NIE, and blindly voted for war. As Pillar later confessed to PBS’s Frontline:

The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American public. Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don’t think so and I regret having had a role in it.

WINPAC was set up in 2001 to replace the CIA’s Nonproliferation Center or NPC (1991-2001), where a staff of 100 CIA analysts collected possible evidence of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons development to support U.S. information warfare, sanctions, and ultimately regime change policies against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and other U.S. enemies.

WINPAC uses the U.S.’s satellite, electronic surveillance, and international spy networks to generate material to feed to UN agencies like UNSCOM, UNMOVIC, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which are charged with overseeing the non-proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

The CIA’s material has kept these agencies’ inspectors and analysts busy with an endless stream of documents, satellite imagery, and claims by exiles for almost 30 years. But since Iraq destroyed all its banned weapons in 1991, they have found no confirming evidence that either Iraq or Iran has taken steps to acquire nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

UNMOVIC and the IAEA told the UN Security Council in 2002-3 they could find no evidence to support U.S. allegations of illegal weapons development in Iraq.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei exposed the CIA’s Niger yellowcake document as a forgery in a matter of hours. ElBaradei’s commitment to the independence and impartiality of his agency won the respect of the world, and he and his agency were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Apart from outright forgeries and deliberately fabricated evidence from exile groups like Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), most of the material the CIA and its allies have provided to UN agencies has involved dual-use technology which could be used in banned weapons programs but also as alternative legitimate uses.

A great deal of the IAEA’s work in Iran has been to verify that each of these items has in fact been used for peaceful purposes or conventional weapons development rather than in a nuclear weapons program.

But as in Iraq, the accumulation of inconclusive, unsubstantiated evidence of a possible nuclear weapons program has served as a valuable political weapon to convince the media and the public that there must be something solid behind all the smoke and mirrors.

For instance, in 1990, the CIA began intercepting  Telex messages from Sharif University in Tehran and Iran’s Physics Research Centre about orders for ring magnets, fluoride, and fluoride-handling equipment, a balancing machine, a mass spectrometer, and vacuum equipment, all of which can be used in uranium enrichment.

For the next 17 years, the CIA’s NPC and WINPAC regarded these telexes as some of their strongest evidence of a secret nuclear weapons program in Iran, and they were cited as such by senior U.S. officials. It was not until 2007-8 that the Iranian government finally tracked down all these items at Sharif University, and the IAEA inspectors were able to visit the university and confirm that they were being used for academic research and teaching as Iran had told them.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the IAEA’s work in Iran continued, but every lead provided by the CIA and its allies proved to be either fabricated, innocent, or inconclusive. In 2007, U.S. intelligence agencies published a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran in which they acknowledged that Iran had no active nuclear weapons program. The publication of the As George W. Bush wrote in his memoirs, “…after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

But despite the lack of confirming evidence, the CIA refused to alter the “assessment” from its 2001 and 2005 NIE’s that Iran probably did have a nuclear weapons program prior to 2003. This left the door open for the continued use of WMD allegations, inspections, and sanctions as potent political weapons in the U.S.’s regime change policy toward Iran.

In 2007, UNMOVIC published a Compendium or final report on the lessons learned from the debacle in Iraq. One key lesson was that “complete independence is a prerequisite for a UN inspection agency” so that the inspection process would not be used “either to support other agendas or to keep the inspected party in a permanent state of weakness.”

Another key lesson was that “proving the negative is a recipe for enduring difficulties and unending inspections.” The 2005 Robb-Silberman Commission on the U.S. intelligence failure in Iraq reached very similar conclusions, such as that“…analysts effectively shifted the burden of proof, requiring proof that Iraq did not have active WMD programs rather than requiring affirmative proof of their existence.

“While the U.S. policy position was that Iraq bore the responsibility to prove that it did not have banned weapons programs, the Intelligence Community’s burden of proof should have been more objective…

“By raising the evidentiary burden so high, analysts artificially skewed the analytical process toward confirmation of their original hypothesis – that Iraq had active WMD programs.”

In its work on Iran, the CIA has carried on the flawed analysis and processes identified by the UNMOVIC Compendium and the Robb-Silberman report on Iraq.

The pressure to produce politicized intelligence that supports U.S. policy positions persists because that is the corrupt role that U.S. intelligence agencies play in U.S. policy, spying on other governments, staging coups, destabilizing countries, and producing politicized and fabricated intelligence to create pretexts for war.

A legitimate national intelligence agency would provide objective intelligence analysis that policymakers could use as a basis for rational policy decisions. But as the UNMOVIC Compendium implied, the U.S. government is unscrupulous in abusing the concept of intelligence and the authority of international institutions like the IAEA to “support other agendas,” notably its desire for regime change in countries around the world.

The U.S.’s “other agenda” on Iran gained a valuable ally when Mohamed ElBaradei retired from the IAEA in 2009 and was replaced by Yukiya Amano from Japan. A State Department cable from July 10th, 2009 released by Wikileaks described Mr. Amano as a “strong partner” to the U.S. based on “the very high degree of convergence between his priorities and our own agenda at the IAEA.”

The memo suggested that the U.S. should try to “shape Amano’s thinking before his agenda collides with the IAEA Secretariat bureaucracy.”  The memo’s author was Geoffrey Pyatt, who later achieved international notoriety as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine who was exposed on a leaked audio recording plotting the 2014 coup in Ukraine with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

The Obama administration spent its first term pursuing a failed “dual-track” approach to Iran in which its diplomacy was undermined by the greater priority it gave to its parallel track of escalating UN sanctions. When Brazil and Turkey presented Iran with the framework of a nuclear deal that the U.S. had proposed, Iran readily agreed to it.

But the U.S. rejected what had begun as a U.S. proposal because by that point, it would have undercut its efforts to persuade the UN Security Council to impose harsher sanctions on Iran. As a senior State Department official told author Trita Parsi, the real problem was that the U.S. wouldn’t take “yes” for an answer.

It was only in Obama’s second term after John Kerry replaced Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, that the U.S. finally did take “yes” for an answer, leading to the JCPOA between Iran, the U.S., and other major powers in 2015. So it was not U.S.-backed sanctions that brought Iran to the table but the failure of sanctions that brought the U.S. to the table.

Also in 2015, the IAEA completed its work on “Outstanding Issues” regarding Iran’s past nuclear-related activities. On each specific case of dual-use research or technology imports, the IAEA found no proof that they were related to nuclear weapons rather than conventional military or civilian uses.

Under Amano’s leadership and U.S. pressure, the IAEA “assessed” that “a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003,” but that “these activities did not advance beyond feasibility studies and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities.”

The JCPOA has broad support in Washington. But the U.S. political debate over the JCPOA has essentially ignored the actual results of the IAEA’s work in Iran, the CIA’s distorting role in it, and the extent to which the CIA has replicated the institutional biases, reinforcing of preconceptions, forgeries, politicization and corruption by “other agendas” that were supposed to be corrected to prevent any repetition of the WMD fiasco in Iraq.

Politicians who support the JCPOA now claim that it stopped Iran getting nuclear weapons, while those who oppose the JCPOA claim that it would allow Iran to acquire them.

They are both wrong because as the IAEA has concluded and even President Bush acknowledged, Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program. The worst that the IAEA can objectively say is that Iran may have done some basic nuclear weapons-related research some time before 2003, but then again, maybe it didn’t.

Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in his memoir, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times that if Iran ever conducted even rudimentary nuclear weapons research, he was sure it was only during the Iran-Iraq War which ended in 1988, when the U.S. and its allies helped Iraq kill up to 100,000 Iranians with chemical weapons.

If ElBaradei’s suspicions were correct, Iran’s dilemma since that time would have been that it could not admit to that work in the 1980s without facing even greater mistrust and hostility from the U.S. and its allies and risking a similar fate to Iraq.

Regardless of uncertainties regarding Iran’s actions in the 1980s, the U.S.’s campaign against Iran has violated the most critical lessons U.S. and UN officials claimed to have learned from the debacle in Iraq.

The CIA has used its almost entirely baseless suspicions about nuclear weapons in Iran as pretexts to “support other agendas” and “keep the inspected party in a permanent state of weakness,” exactly as the UNMOVIC Compendium warned against ever again doing to another country.

In Iran as in Iraq, this has led to an illegal regime of brutal sanctions under which thousands of children are dying from preventable diseases and malnutrition and to threats of another illegal U.S. war that would engulf the Middle East and the world in even greater chaos than the one the CIA engineered against Iraq.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is a freelance writer, researcher for CODEPINK and author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Alt Left: The US Murder of Qassem Soleimani – What Was It All About?

The murder of Hajj Qassem Soleimani, a great fighter against the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS, for the oppressed and downtrodden and against the oppressors all over the Near East and Southwest Asia for the last two decades, was obviously an international war crime. You don’t just get to go around murdering generals of other countries that you aren’t even at war with.

All of the justifications for his killing were fake. He was not planning any attacks against US interests, much less against four of our embassies. Those are just lies made up by the Americans with a little help from some (((friends))).

Soleimani is absolutely not responsible for the deaths of 600 US troops in Iraq. Not that I would care if he was. Those soldiers deserved to die. They waged an illegal, Nazi-like war of aggression on Iraq and then they occupied the land that they conquered and installed their puppet government in while they set about exploiting the resources, especially oil, and out and out stealing $8 million cash.

The reconstruction work was a boondoggle that had huge cost overruns and generally didn’t produce much of anything good. Much of what was produced was shoddy and fell apart. Graft and corruption were huge factors in reconstruction with both US and Iraqi contractors.

The UN itself has stated that the Iraqi resistance does not violate the rules of war and that the Iraqi people have a 10

The 600 US dead is based on some figure for how many Americans were killed by so-called shaped explosive IED’s designed to penetrate the thickest armored vehicles. The technology supposedly came from Iran and it is from this theory that the claim that Iran and Soleimani killed 600 Americans comes. However, the tech did not come from Iran.

Initially, it came from the Lebanese Hezbollah, who were active in the Iraqi resistance also for some time. They taught the Iraqi guerrillas how the technology. From then on it was mostly manufactured inside Iraq by the guerrillas themselves. Yes, one Iranian said to be a spy was captured with shaped explosives in Iraq in 2006. Big deal. The Iraqis already had their own.

For most of the early stage of the war, Iran had no involvement. The British had control of the Shia South and then said that in the early years, they never found any evidence of Iran supplying guerrillas with arms.

Later in the war, Shia militias such as Moqtada Sadr’s army got involved in the war against the US. They got beaten pretty badly for a variety of reasons but they definitely inflicted some casualties on US troops. It is definitely possible that Iran and Soleimani may have helped supply the Mahdi Army with weaponry. But so what? They had a right to fight us anyway.

However, there was a revenge attack against a US base in Najaf. The US had arrested several Iranians and accused them of being spies. They were apparently members of the Qods Force. The US refused to release them.

An Iraqi Shia group launched a very sophisticated attack in which they dressed up in US uniforms and gained access to the base. When there, they took five US soldiers prisoner. Then then escaped with them. The troops were taken somewhere and executed. The Shia militia that carried out that attack definitely had help from Iran and Soleimani. After the attack, the Iranians were released by the US.  So you can definitely credit Soleimani with five US deaths.

Earlier, the British had arrested a number of Iranians who they accused of being spies. These may as well have been Qods Force members. In return, mysterious forces captured four British troops and executed them. The Qods Force may well have carried out this operation. The Qods Force members in British custody were then released.

The overwhelming majority of casualties inflicted on US forces in Iraq were via Sunni guerrillas, often hardline Islamists who hate the Shia and Iran. There is little good evidence that Iran was arming their worst enemies, these forces.

So we so far have a whole nine Western casualties, five Americans and four British, we can credit directly to Soleimani, the Qods Force, and Iran.

For a period of 2001-2019 during which Iran and the US have faced off on the opposite sites in various warzones, that’s not a large number.

You can probably credit more casualties to Soleimani if you include those inflicted by the Mahdi Army, but I’m not sure what that figure is.

There are also complaints that Soleimani helped Hezbollah. He sure did. That resulted in 200 dead (((Israelis))) in 2006. Excuse me, but I didn’t realize that (((“Israelis”))) were the same thing as Americans. But hey, now that Current Year America is more like (((America))), maybe that’s the case.

There is a complaint that Soleimani and Iran massacred hundreds of thousands of Sunni civilians in Syria. Not so. The Qods Force had a small group of advisors embedded in the Syrian Army. They helped the Syrian Army fight and defeat ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other radical Sunni Islamists in many battles. They didn’t fly planes or bomb cities. They didn’t do much of anything.

Yes, Shia militias from Iraq, Afghanistan and Hezbollah from Lebanon participated in the war against the Sunni Islamists, but there are not a lot of reports of atrocities committed by them. Much of the civilian casualties have come from bombing of rebel-held cities by Syrian and Russian jets.

Reports of massacres and chemical weapons attacks that killed large numbers of civilians are all made up. The massacres were all done by the rebels of villages that supported Assad. After they chopped the people up, the rebels turned around and accused Assad of doing it. The Western media lapped it up like chumps.

None of the chemical weapons attacks occurred. I’ve studied every single one of them. None of them even happened. None of the chlorine attacks even happened. Assad doesn’t use chlorine gas.

I’m not saying Assad is a nice guy. He’s probably executed 50,000 people in his prison and a lot of others died of maltreatment. But he doesn’t do civilian massacres or chemical weapons attacks. He kills people, sure, but only has certain ways of doing it and he avoids other ways of doing it.

Soleimani helped the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This is supposedly a big crime. Well, good for him! The righteous cause in Yemen is the Houthis. The bad guys are the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Soleimani fought a number of big battles against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Conveniently, the media left this part of the narrative because it made him look like a good guy.

Soleimani also formed Iraqi Shia militias to fight ISIS. The truth is that if not for Iran and Soleimani, ISIS would have conquered Iraq. That’s simply the dirty truth. You can accept it or not, but it’s still true. There are claims that some of these militias committed atrocities against Sunni civilians. That may well be true. But I understand that Soleimani and Iran were trying to put a stop to this.

The new claims are that Soleimani and Iran were behind a number of rocket attacks on US bases in recent days. No one really knows who did those attacks, though Shia militias are widely suspected. No one has ever claimed responsibility for any of these attacks.

Some of these militias like Kataib Hezbollah have a close relationship with Iran. But I know for a fact that not only do these militias not take orders from Iran (no Iranian “proxies” take orders from Iran), but that Soleimani and Iran had nothing at all to do with these rocket attacks.

The US had been allowing Israel to bomb the bases of these militia on the Syrian border for some time, so the militias that were getting bombed probably decided to start shooting some rockets at US bases in revenge. Why not? Anyway, we started it. The militias were just fighting back.

One attack on a base in Kirkuk killed one American and wounded four more. Trump went ballistic after this attack.

This was followed by a US bombing raid on a Shia militia on the border of Syria and Iran that killed ~27 troops and wounded ~75 others. However the militia that was attacked was part of the Iraqi military. In fact all of the “Iranian proxy” Shia militias are actually part of the Iraqi military. They take orders from the Iraqi Central Command.

Most of the dead and wounded were actually members of the Iraqi military who were not members of that militia. That is because the bases of these militias are full of Iraqi military people who are not members of those militias. It’s all mixed together.

After that, outraged members of the militia that got bombed swarmed the US Embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad. They destroyed some stuff but no Americans got hurt. The US blamed “Iran” for the embassy mobbing, although I know for a fact that Iran had nothing to do with it. This militia just got bombed by the US and had its members killed and wounded. You think they need to get orders from Iran to angrily swarm an embassy after that?

We then murdered both Soleimani and Mohandes at the Baghdad Airport, the leader of the PMU Shia militias, which as I said are now part of the Iraqi military. It was the PMU that basically defeated ISIS in Iraq.

Soleimani had been lured to Baghdad to meet with the Prime Minister as part of a Saudi proposal to ease tensions with Iran. So he was there as a diplomat to try to negotiate a peace treaty. It now looks like the US and Saudi Arabia set him up for this by using a fake peace treaty.

The Iraqi government was very mad about this. There is a video of the Iraqi Parliament standing in their seats and chanting, “Death to America.” This is the Iraqi Parliament. The government then voted to order all US forces and forces allied with them to leave Iraq.

The US incredibly thumbed its nose at Iraq and refused to leave. That means that we are now officially occupiers as we are there against the will of the government. Trump threatened Iraq with devastating sanctions if they went through with this.

Later he threatened to seize Iraq’s account at the New York Central Bank that they use for oil sales. We were going steal all of the money that they had in the account (How the Hell is that legal?) and then cut them off from it. Most world trade in dollars goes through the New York Central Bank. See all those rich people in New York? Well, a lot of the are involved in one way or another with the New York Central Bank.

This goes back to the petrodollar, which the US uses to enforce its dictatorship on the rest of the world. US hegemony rests on many things, but the petrodollar is one of them. Most oil and other commodities for that matter are traded in dollars and no in other currencies.

This has many advantages for the US in economic terms which I don’t quite understand. For one thing it allows us to borrow until the cows come home with few to no consequences.

Most of the recent wars and threats of wars we have waged have been to support the petrodollar. Basically, you go off the petrodollar, you get regime-changed or attacked and overthrown.

For example, Saddam went off the petrodollar. Soon after he got invaded. Oh and one of the first things we did after we conquered Iraq was to put Iraq back on the dollar.

Ghaddafi went off the petrodollar. Look what happened to him.

Syria went off the petrodollar. Look at Syria.

Iran is going off the petrodollar. What’s happening to Iran?

Venezuela is going off the petrodollar. What’s up with Venezuela?

Alt Left: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Is Just an American Lap Dog, by Scott Ritter

The piece should be self-explanatory. As I probably noted earlier, there was neither a sarin nor a chlorine attack on Douma by the Syrian Army. It simply never happened. No sarin was found, and chlorine was only found at trace levels below what you normally find in a household kitchen.

None of the victims had symptoms of chlorine poisoning. The OPCW team declined to dig up the bodies because the lack of chlorine poisoning symptoms rendered body examination moot. The victims shown had soot on their faces and bodies. There were said to have been killed by a Syrian Army bomb that penetrated a house and set it on fire. The people sheltering in the basement were killed by smoke inhalation.

Further, chlorine is not particularly toxic. There were said to be 20-40 dead in this attack, but in a chlorine attack, you will have ~100 wounded for every death. In a typical huge attack, you might have ~five deaths and ~500 wounded. It’s just not that toxic.

The chlorine cylinders said to have been dropped by the Syrian Army were instead placed there by the rebels. The engineering team was able to determine this by analysis of the weapons.

Anyway, chlorine is not dropped from bombs. Neither is sarin. That’s why all the reports of Assad dropping chemical weapons from planes are fake. No one does that. Poison gas comes in shells that are fired by an artillery gun. There’s no such thing as a chemical weapons bomb, and no one drops artillery shells from an airplane.

After reporters went into Douma after the attack, they found many residents testifying that the rebels had told them two days before that they were going to do a fake chemical weapons attack.

The scene at the hospital where the rebels burst in with hoses and hosed down everyone in the hospital was said to have been rehearsed and faked by those at the scene. Physicians at the government-run hospital in the rebel area said that no patients appeared with symptoms of chlorine poisoning.

The media of course refused to report any of this.

Now we have a scandal whereby the OPCW edited and faked their own report which showed there was no chlorine attack at Douma to show that there had in fact been a chlorine attack at Douma.

They did this by hiding the technical report that said that there was no attack and that the attack was apparently faked by the rebels. The technical report was later leaked, and some of the OPCW inspectors who went to the site met with a team of international lawyers and another team of investigative journalists.

A former top editor of the Guardian named Johnathon Steele interviewed one of the whisteblowers in Switzerland. So far, two or three whistleblowers have come forward saying that the attack was faked. The Fake News MSM  has refused to cover the story. It was only covered by the Daily Mirror in the UK and La Republica in Italy.

It was blacked out of all of the rest of the “free press” in the West.

Eventually they could contain the controversy no longer and the Western Fake News MSM ran a few articles quoting the head of the OPCW standing by his fake lying report saying that there had been a chlorine gas attack at Douma.

Trump heard about this attack and he and the French poodles who suck up to the US launched a number of cruise missiles at Syria. Most were shot down by the Syrians. The weapons they used to shoot them down were rather old school, but the Russians helped the Syrians with electronic warfare directed at the cruise missiles which enabled the Syrians to shoot most of them down.

The US currently has no defenses whatsover against Russian electronic warfare, which is far more advanced than ours. We don’t even know what it is or how it works. Even if we start trying to catch up to the Russians in electronic warfare tomorrow, we will not catch up for 5-10 years because we sat on our haunches too long and got too far behind.

Chemical Weapons Watchdog Is Just an American Lap Dog

A spate of leaks from within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international inspectorate created for the purpose of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention, has raised serious questions about the institution’s integrity, objectivity and credibility.

The leaks address issues pertaining to the OPCW investigation into allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack civilians in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7, 2018.

These allegations, which originated from such anti-Assad organizations as the Syrian Civil Defense (the so-called White Helmets) and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), were immediately embraced as credible by the OPCW and were used by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom to justify punitive military strikes against facilities inside Syria assessed by these nations as having been involved in chemical weapons-related activities before the OPCW initiated any on-site investigation.

The Douma incident was initially described by the White Helmets, SAMS and the U.S., U.K., and French governments as involving both sarin nerve agent and chlorine gas. However, this narrative was altered when OPCW inspectors released, on July 6, 2018, interim findings of their investigation that found no evidence of the use of sarin.

The focus of the investigation quickly shifted to a pair of chlorine cylinders claimed by the White Helmets to have been dropped onto apartment buildings in Douma by the Syrian Air Force, resulting in the release of a cloud of chlorine gas that killed dozens of Syrian civilians.

In March, the OPCW released its Much has been written about the OPCW inspection process in Syria, and particularly the methodology used by the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), an inspection body created by the OPCW in 2014 “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.”

The FFM was created under the direction of Ahmet Üzümcü, a career Turkish diplomat with extensive experience in multinational organizations, including service as Turkey’s ambassador to NATO.

Üzümcü was the OPCW’s third director general, having been selected from a field of seven candidates by its executive council to replace Argentine diplomat Rogelio Pfirter. Pfirter had held the position since being nominated to replace the OPCW’s first director general, José Maurício Bustani.

Bustani’s tenure was marred by controversy that saw the OPCW transition away from its intended role as an independent implementer of the Chemical Weapons Convention to that of a tool of unilateral U.S. policy, a role that continues to mar the OPCW’s work in Syria today, especially when it comes to its investigation of the alleged use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians in Douma in April 2018.

Bustani was removed from his position in 2002, following an unprecedented campaign led by John Bolton, who at the time was serving as the undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs in the U.S. State Department.

What was Bustani’s crime? In 2001, he had dared to enter negotiations with the government of Iraq to secure that nation’s entry into the OPCW, thereby setting the stage for OPCW inspectors to visit Iraq and bring its chemical weapons capability under OPCW control. As director general, there was nothing untoward about Bustani’s action.

But Iraq circa 2001 was not a typical recruitment target. In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, the U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution under Chapter VII requiring Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including its chemical weapons capability, to be “removed, destroyed or rendered harmless” under the supervision of inspectors working on behalf of the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM.

The pursuit of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction led to a series of confrontations with Iraq that culminated in inspectors being ordered out of the country by the U.S. in 1998, prior to a 72-hour aerial attack—Operation Desert Fox.

Iraq refused to allow UNSCOM inspectors to return, rightfully claiming that the U.S. had infiltrated the ranks of the inspectors and was using the inspection process to spy on Iraqi leadership for the purposes of facilitating regime change. The lack of inspectors in Iraq allowed the U.S. and others to engage in wild speculation regarding Iraqi rearmament activities, including in the field of chemical weapons.

This speculation was used to fuel a call for military action against Iraq citing the threat of a reconstituted WMD capability as the justification. Bustani sought to defuse this situation by bringing Iraq into the OPCW, an act that, if completed, would have derailed the U.S. case for military intervention in Iraq.

Bolton’s intervention included threats to Bustani and his family, as well as threats to withhold U.S. dues to the OPCW accounting for some 2

Bustani’s departure marked the end of the OPCW as an independent organization. Pfirter, Bolton’s hand-picked replacement, vowed to keep the OPCW out of Iraq.

In an interview with U.S. media shortly after his appointment, Pfirter noted that while all nations should be encouraged to join the OPCW, “We should be very aware that there are United Nations resolutions in effect” that precluded Iraqi membership “at the expense” of its obligations to the Security Council.

Under the threat of military action, Iraq allowed UNMOVIC inspectors to return in 2002; by February 2003, no WMD had been found, a result that did not meet with U.S. satisfaction. In March 2003, UNMOVIC inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq under orders of the U.S., paving the way for the subsequent invasion and occupation of that nation that same month (the CIA later concluded that Iraq had been disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction by the summer of 1991).

Under Pfirter’s leadership, the OPCW became a compliant tool of U.S. foreign policy objectives. By completely subordinating OPCW operations through the constant threat of fiscal ruin, the U.S. engaged in a continuous quid pro quo arrangement, trading the financial solvency of an ostensible multilateral organization for complicity in operating as a de facto extension of American unilateral policy.

Bolton’s actions in 2002 put the OPCW and its employees on notice: Cross the U.S., and you will pay a terminal price.

When Üzümcü took over the OPCW’s reins in 2010, the organization was very much the model of multinational consensus; which, in the case of any multilateral organization in which the U.S. plays a critical role, meant that nothing transpired without the express approval of the U.S. and its European NATO allies, in particular the United Kingdom and France.

Shortly after he took office, Üzümcü was joined by Robert Fairweather, a career British diplomat who served as Üzümcü’s chief of Cabinet. While Üzümcü was the ostensible head of the OPCW, the daily task of managing the functioning of the OPCW was that of the chief of Cabinet. In short, nothing transpired within the OPCW without Fairweather’s knowledge and concurrence.

Üzümcü and Fairweather’s tenure at the OPCW was dominated by Syria where, since 2011, the government of President Bashar Assad had been engaged in a full-scale conflict with a foreign-funded and -equipped insurgency whose purpose was regime change.

By 2013, allegations emerged from both the Syrian government and rebel forces concerning the use of chemical weapons by the other side.

In August 2013, the OPCW dispatched an inspection team into Syria as part of a U.N.-led effort, which included specialists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N. itself, to investigate allegations that sarin had been used in attack on civilians in the town of Ghouta.

While the mission found conclusive evidence that sarin nerve agent had been used, it did not assign blame for the attack. Despite the lack of causality, the U.S. and its NATO allies quickly assigned blame for the sarin attacks on the Syrian government.

To forestall U.S. military action against Syria, the Russian government helped broker a deal whereby the U.S. agreed to refrain from undertaking military action if the Syrian government joined the OPCW and subjected the totality of its chemical weapons stockpile to elimination.

In October 2013, the OPCW-U.N. Joint Mission, created under the authority of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2118 (2103), began the process of identifying, cataloging, removing, and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. This process was completed in September 2014 (in December 2013, the OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work in Syria).

If the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons was an example of the OPCW at its best, what followed was a case study of just the opposite. In May 2014, the OPCW created the Fact-Finding Mission, or FFM, charged with establishing “facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.”

The FFM was headed by Malik Ellahi, who served as head of the OPCW’s government relations and political affairs branch. The appointment of someone lacking both technical and operational experience suggests that Ellahi’s primary role was political. Under his leadership, the FFM established a close working relationship with the anti-Assad Syrian opposition, including the White Helmets and SAMS.

In 2015, responsibility for coordinating the work of the FFM with the anti-Assad opposition was transferred to a British inspector named Len Phillips (another element of the FFM, led by a different inspector, was responsible for coordinating with the Syrian government). Phillips developed a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS and played a key role in OPCW’s investigation of the April 2017 chemical incident in Khan Shaykhun.

By April 2018, the FFM had undergone a leadership transition, with Phillips replaced by a Tunisian inspector named Sami Barrek. It was Barrek who led the FFM into Syria in April 2018 to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use at Douma. Like Phillips, Barrek maintained a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS.

Once the FFM wrapped up its investigation in Douma however, it became apparent to Fairweather that it had a problem. There were serious questions about whether sarin had, in fact, been used as a weapon. The solution, brokered by Fairweather, was to release an interim report that ruled out sarin altogether, but left the door open regarding chlorine.

This report was released on July 6, 2018. Later that month, both Üzümcü and Fairweather were gone, replaced by a Spaniard named Fernando Arias and a French diplomat named According to an unnamed OPCW official who spoke with the media after the fact, two days prior to the publication of the interim report, on July 4, 2018, Fairweather had been paid a visit by a trio of U.S. officials, who indicated to Fairweather and the members of the FFM responsible for writing the report that it was the U.S. position that the chlorine canisters in question had been used to dispense chlorine gas at Douma, an assertion that could not be backed up by the evidence.

Despite this, the message that Fairweather left with the OPCW personnel was that there had to be a “smoking gun.” It was now Braha’s job to manufacture one.

Braha did this by dispatching OPCW inspectors to Turkey in September 2018 to interview new witnesses identified by the White Helmets and by commissioning new engineering studies that better explained the presence of the two chlorine canisters found in Douma. By March, Braha had assembled enough information to enable the technical directorate to issue its final report.

Almost immediately, dissent appeared in the ranks of the OPCW. An engineering report that contradicted the findings published by Braha was leaked, setting off a firestorm of controversy derived from its conclusion that the chlorine canisters found in Douma had most likely been staged by the White Helmets.

The OPCW, while eventually acknowledging that the leaked report was genuine, explained its exclusion from the final report on the grounds that it attributed blame, something the FFM was not mandated to do. According to the OPCW, the engineering report in question had been submitted to the investigation and identification team, a newly created body within the OPCW mandated to make such determinations.

Moreover, Director General Arias stood by the report’s conclusion that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018.”

Arias’ explanation came under attack in November, when WikiLeaks published an email sent by a member of the FFM team that had participated in the Douma investigation. In this email, which was sent on June 22, 2018, and addressed to Robert Fairweather, the author noted that, when it came to the Douma incident, “[p]urposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous.”

The author of the email, who had participated in drafting the original interim report, noted that the original text had emphasized that there was insufficient evidence to support this conclusion and that the new text represented “a major deviation from the original report.” Moreover, the author took umbrage at the new report’s conclusions, which claimed to be “based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives detected in environmental samples.”

According to email’s author “They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.” In short, the OPCW had cooked the books, manufacturing evidence from thin air that it then used to draw conclusions that sustained the U.S. position that chlorine gas had been used by the Syrian government at Douma.

Arias, while not addressing the specifics of the allegations set forth in the leaked email, recently declared that it is “the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to express subjective views,” noting that “I stand by the independent, professional conclusion” presented by the OPCW about the Douma incident. This explanation, however, does not fly in the face of the evidence.

The OPCW’s credibility as an investigative body has been brought into question through these leaks, as has its independent character. If an organization like the OPCW can be used at will by the U.S., the United Kingdom, and France to trigger military attacks intended to support regime-change activities in member states, then it no longer serves a useful purpose to the international community it ostensibly serves.

To survive as a credible entity, the OPCW must open itself to a full-scale audit of its activities in Syria by an independent authority with inspector general-like investigatory powers. Anything short of this leaves the OPCW, an organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to world peace, permanently stained by the reality that it is little more than a lap dog of the United States, used to promote the very conflicts it was designed to prevent.

Scott Ritter spent more than a dozen years in the intelligence field, beginning in 1985 as a ground intelligence officer with the US Marine Corps, where he served with the Marine Corps component of the Rapid Deployment Force at the Brigade and Battalion level.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Differential Treatment of Captured Enemy Fighters by States and Guerrillas in Recent Wars

Jason: Don’t rightwing governments in Latin America do the same to rebels?

RL: They often execute them after they capture them, correct. Not always but there have been quite a few cases. El Salvador and Guatemala were two of the worst.

Jason: Honestly, both sides do. That’s just the way Civil War is done.

The rebels in Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, and Guatemala did not execute enemy soldiers that they captured. Neither does Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the PKK or the NPA in the Philippines. It’s mostly states that do that.

The rebels are usually very kind to captured soldiers, even allowing them to go over to their side. Or they release them to the Red Cross. They usually do this as a PR tactic as in look at how brutal this evil government army is, they run death squads and execute captured soldiers. We on the other hand, are complete humanitarians.

However, if the Salvadoran guerrillas captured notorious human rights violators or members of death squads, they would put them on trial and then shoot them.

Well, not always.

In Colombia, the FARC kept them as POW’s. The media called them hostages, but they were really just POW’s. They weren’t treated real great, but they didn’t kill them. Hezbollah and Hamas take them prisoner too, to use in exchanges for imprisoned rebels. The Colombian rebels used their POW’s for the same thing.

Capturing them live and keeping them alive, they are often worth their weight in gold because you can trade one captive Israeli for 1,000 Palestinians in prison. But with Hamas and the FARC, if the government tries to rescue the POW’s, the rebels shoot them.

The Syrian rebels tend to shoot their captives. The Iraqi guerrillas did too. The Iraqis also shot a few captured US soldiers. The Taliban shoot captured government soldiers too. ISIS always shoots their captured soldiers.

In Colombia and Peru, the governments tended to arrest and imprison captured rebels.

Saudi Arabia tended to capture guerrillas, arrest them, re-educate them, and release them. The Syrian government often arrests captured rebels, but it sometimes shoots them too. And the Syrians often kill them after they arrest them. Kurds in Syria and Iran tended to take rebels prisoner, even ISIS guerrillas!

During their civil war last decade, Egypt captured 1,500 guerrillas. They would take them out to the Egyptian desert and tie them to a chair with no food or water. As you can guess, that’s a quick death sentence. Jordan captures guerrillas alive but often badly tortures them.

Iran executes any rebels that it captures. I think Turkey arrests and jails captured PKK people. Early in the Chechen War, the guerrillas used to take Russian soldiers captive. Both sides captured fighters alive in the war in the Donbass in Ukraine. However there were some executions of prisoners by one Ukrainian formation. The rebels then executed any officers they captured from that group of soldiers.

The Indian government tends to shoot any rebels they capture. The Pakistani government sometimes shoots captured guerrillas. I saw a video where they shot dead about 20 of them. It was pretty sickening.

US forces in Iraq and Syria almost always took prisoners, but there were a few cases of execution of captured guerrillas, particularly ISIS captives. Trump just pardoned a Special Forces soldier accused of that, and that guy wasn’t the only one. Special Forces troops are bad when it comes to that, the worst in the US military.

They set up these things called “encounters.” They arrest the rebel, and then they shoot him and put a gun in his hand and say it was a shootout.

I don’t have any information on how governments treat captured guerrillas in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Somalia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Congo, Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tunisia, Libya, or Lebanon.

Alt Left: Container Theory: The Intersection of Nation-State Culture and Propaganda

I think I will just leave this beautiful comment as it is. That’s how perfect it is.

Found on the Net:

It needs to be understood what happens when a human is trapped inside one of the Nation-state Containers.

Why? Because understanding Container Theory is necessary in order to attempt to transcend the Nation-state Containers worldwide. The victim of propaganda lives in a nation- state controlled-information environment – a controlled reward environment not much different from a rat in a cage.

To illustrate my point, consider the children exchanged at birth scenario.

A child born to a NYC Jewish parent is exchanged with a child born in Iran to Shia Muslin parents and both children grow up in their adopted nation-states ignorant of where they were born or their parentage. So the biological parents do not raise their own child, and the children do not visit either the other child or their true biological parents – in fact, they do not even know they exist.

The child is not told they are adopted, and 24 years later, the two children exchanged at birth don’t know each other and cannot speak each other’s language, and in short, the children consider each other to be enemies. This is the result of Container programming, and Container Theory suggests that when done properly, it can keep the wars going for ever.

It seems to me the media is the one factor that allows leaders of nation-states to engage in personally-enhancing crimes and to inflict human rights damage on the people in foreign nations.

How can the problem of media support for lies, propaganda, and so on be framed into a proper thesis?

Via Container Theory, that’s how.

Few inside of the containers know the media-fed propaganda is not only false or misleading but is also psychologically engineered to insure that the propaganda victim does not discover the malicious nature of the psycho-engineered contents they see on available media.

Nothing comes to the victim’s attention that suggests the media is telling a fib or supporting a crime. In short only a few ever get a chance to look outside the Container walls to see or even look for the truth.

Most of those who do seek out the truth discover the same thing in every country – non-truthful propaganda is media-controlled and protected by law in every nation-state Container that the truth seeker peers into.

Those few humans who do understand the predicament of 24/7 information content control as delivered on media are blacklisted, treated as spies or traitors, shunned from workplaces, or denied access to jobs, etc. That’s not when they are simply out and out murdered by their own nation-state.

The two objects above in NYC, one born of Jewish race and religion vs. the other born of Iranian race and Shia Muslim religion, are presently opposite polar objects in our global society. The point being that opposite mindsets are man-made, not inborn. Human behavior (mindset-driven) is a result of information available in the cage (propaganda).

Teaching, a reward system, and propaganda in the caged environment allows the human rat to be made into whatever the those in charge of the the nation-state desire. When criminals are in charge of the information, teaching, and reward system, they can use those systems to mold the innocent minds of those contained.

Establishing control over the thought processes via directed learning (education), and a reward system allows propaganda to establish for the masses a belief system. The rule of law, award system, and directed learning are control systems which can be varied and modified by properly engineered propaganda.

If criminals gain control of the nation-state system (a Container full of humans), they can use propaganda to polarize the people in one Container against the people in another Container, getting the people of one nation-state to hate the people or ways of a targeted nation-state.

It is this Container Effect that allows criminals or crazies in charge to use the national resources and the people of a Container (nation-state) to conduct their wars for profit, power, and prestige.

Some suggest bombing several cities in America to stop the USA from its behaviors. But Pearl Harbor and 9/11 both prove propaganda can use these events to activate the masses against those that the containerized populations have been polarized to hate.

The invasion of Iraq is a prime case in point – no facts showed that Iraq did the 9/11 event, but private media (9

After 9/11, millions joined the government military to help avenge the atrocity. But what these avengers actually did was put billions of dollars of profits into the pockets of the privateers who used it to organize the invasion of Iraq.

When it comes to foreign policy, most Americans believe the official story because it can be quite painful not too. In addition, Americans are so media-encapsulated that they believe anything the MS media distributes to be the truth. American’s have no history of questioning their media, and the government usually ends up taking the blame for the media’s mistakes, while media in most Western nations is privately owned.

Propaganda + reward system + education + social conditioning + directed creation of mindsets by positions of power = The Container Effect.

Basically humans are information sponges, absorbing from the societies in which they reside or are raised:

1) information and knowledge

2) how to engage only in normative and acceptable behaviors

The biology of the parents matters not, as the biology is merely a system of construction and maintenance that maintains a physical structure (the body) able to support the molding of one’s mind to maximize accommodation to the system.

It’s only the mindset that the psycho-engineers designs into the propaganda that counts. Container-trapped humans adopt by osmosis the psycho-engineered propaganda taught to the newborn. In that case, the physical structure of any human is not important; it’s the mind that creates the mindset controlled behavior that counts.

The most pressing need of humanity worldwide is to break out of these Containers and gain access to truthful media everyday in every place.

I say again to stop the wars, it is first necessary first so overcome the Container Effect.

Alt Left: The Truth Is a Conspiracy Theory

Just to show you how crazy the media, state, and ruling class (call it the Establishment) are about what they believe in, see this survey here.

Among seven nutty, just plain wrong, or probably wrong ideas that are pretty much conspiracy theories, we have a doozy:

The US invasion of Iraq was not part of a campaign to fight terrorism but was driven by oil companies and the Jews in the US and Israel.

At first I thought this was some kind of a joke or that the authors of the survey had gotten mixed up because clearly in this case it was the conspiracy that was true and the official “non-conspiracy theory” line was an utter lie made up out of whole cloth by the Bush Administration. So here the Truth is actually a Lie and Conspiracy Theory is True. This brings me to something else.

With all of the incessant lying we have to deal with in this stupid country day in and day out, obviously the only solution to some many questions about US government conduct is a conspiracy theory. Because on foreign policy, just about every American will tell you that what the government and media say is true and that any stories saying the government is lying and really another hidden version of what happened is the truth.

In that case it is obvious that this late date in our besieged republic, the Truth is Conspiracy Theory. Even worse, the lying is getting so extreme that I am starting to think along the lines of Life is a Conspiracy Theory.

Alt Left: The War on Terrorism – Stupidest War Ever?

The whole idea of a War on Terrorism was stupid and insane from the very start. It’s hard to believe how many tens of millions of retards fell for this bull.

How on Earth was the Iraq Invasion party of a campaign to fight terrorism? There were no terrorists there, no Al Qaeda anyway, and Saddam was supporting any terrorist groups of note that mattered to the US.

I actually encountered quite a few people who told me that Bush and the Great US Military was going to end terrorism for all time on this planet. Yeah. Americans actually believed that crap. Anyway, here we are, 16 years later and are we any closer to wiping out terrorism than we were when this inane war started?

how can you wage war against a behavior that’s not even an entity? It’s like a War on Murder or something. Sure, it’s a great idea, but you know it’s going to fail because humans will always kill each other. And humans have always committed terrorism and will probably commit terrorism into the forseeable future. So it’s a war you are doomed to lose. So why fight it?

Alt Left: 53 Admitted False Flag Attacks

It’s disgusting how the minute you say the phrase false flag, people grab their foreheads and start groaning. All false flags are automatically conspiracy theories and they’re all pathetic nonsense made up by the tinfoil hat crowd. Granted a lot of so-called false flags never happened and instead were actual attacks carried out by whoever claimed responsibility for them. This is particularly true with Islamist terrorist groups.

Their attacks often terribly brutal and aimed directly at civilians. Many of their attacks in the West have been called false flags, but none of them were. It has also been common for a long time to ascribe most of the worst Palestinian terrorist attacks to Israeli false flags.

The truth is that the Palestinians, like the Islamists, are quite depraved enough to do their own horrific terrorist attacks. Their attacks are depraved enough that Israel has no need to fake depraved attacks to frame the Palestinians.

But as you can see, false flags definitely occur. I never thought that the US government did these attacks very much, but we and the rest of the West (NATO) have been going on a wild false flag spree ever since NATO’s war on Russia started heating up.

It’s been one false flag after another and one attempt to blame Russia and pro-Russians for atrocities willfully committed by the other side. This is different from a false flag. In this case, Party A attacks the enemy, typically enemy civilians, or a shell goes astray and there’s an atrocity. 

Instead of admitting that they did it, they blame the enemy who they are fighting, usually for committing an atrocity against their own supporters, which of course makes no sense.

There were many such attacks like this in the Syrian Civil War when the Free Syrian Army committed massacre after massacre of villagers who supported Assad and then turned around and blamed Assad for each and every one of these crimes. 

As it turns out, Assad did not commit any of these civilian massacres because that’s just not his style. His forces don’t rampage into villages, even of rebel supporters, and slaughter civilians in brutal fashion one by one.

If they think a civilian needs to be dealt with, Assad’s forces simply arrest them and may well put them in a military prison, where they could well be tortured and mistreated until death or executed. I’m not saying Assad is a nice guy; it’s more that his style simply does not include savage massacres of entire villages or chemical weapons attacks for that matter.  When it comes to depravity, Assad has his own style.

I can’t believe that number of attacks falsely blamed on the enemy and out and out false flag and fake attacks that the US did in Ukraine and Syria. We seem to be entering into a new era of warfare where false flags are the normal ways to fight wars.

It’s appalling and terrifying because foolish Americans insist that these attacks never happen. By believing that they give their own government carte blanche to do as many false flags and false blaming of the enemy of allied attacks as they wish. And the government knows that in any fake blames or false flags the US or its allies pull off, they know that they can count on the support of every corporate media outlet in the US to go right along.

In fact, every mainstream media outlet in the West period is on board with any false blaming or false flags the West wishes to pull off. In that sense the entire media of the West is completely controlled by the states of the West, their militaries, state departments and intelligence services. It’s downright terrifying.

53 Admitted False Flag Attacks

Relevant article selected from the GR archive, first published in February 2015.

Not Theory … Admitted Fact

There are many documented false flag attacks where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.

In the following 53 instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admitted to it, either orally or in writing:

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931 and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident.”

The Tokyo International Military Tribunal (2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that under orders from the chief of the Gestapo, he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles to justify the invasion of Poland.

(3) Nazi General Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering (4) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 while blaming the attack on Finland as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(5) The Russian Parliament, current Russian President Putin, and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940 and falsely blame it on the Nazis.

(6) The British government admits that between 1946 and 1948 it bombed five ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the pseudo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see thisthis and this).

(7) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).

(8) The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.

(9) The Turkish Prime Minister (10) The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.

(11-21) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO with the help of the Pentagon and CIA carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this).

Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred. And watch this BBC special. They also allegedly carried out terror attacks in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and other countries.

False flag attacks carried out pursuant to this program include by way of example only the murder of the Turkish Prime Minister (1960), bombings in Portugal (1966), the Piazza Fontana massacre in Italy (1969), terror attacks in Turkey (1971), the Peteano bombing in Italy (1972), shootings in Brescia, Italy and a bombing on an Italian train (1974), shootings in Istanbul, Turkey (1977), the Atocha massacre in Madrid, Spain (1977), the abduction and murder of the Italian Prime Minister (1978), the bombing of the Bologna railway station in Italy (1980), and shooting and killing 28 shoppers in Brabant county, Belgium (1985).

(22) In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro].”

(23) Official State Department documents show that in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.

(24) As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes) and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba.

See the following ABC news reportthe official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

(25) In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.

(26) The U.S. Department of Defense even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo.”

(27) The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964… manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war.

(28) A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that as part of its “Cointelpro” campaign, the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.

(29) A (30) The German government admitted (and (31) A Mossad agent admits that in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi’s compound in Tripoli, Libya, which broadcast fake terrorist trasmissions recorded by Mossad in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.

(32) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council (33) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, “French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit against Author”).

(34)    The United States Army’s 1994 publication Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces  updated in 2004 recommends employing terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist regimes in Latin America. False flag terrorist attacks were carried out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIA’s “(35) An Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998 and determined that “elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked.”

(36) Senior Russian military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

(37) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

(38) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

(39) As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered seven innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police in order to join the “War on Terror.”

(40) Senior police officials in Genoa, Italy admitted that in July 2001 at the G8 summit in Genoa they planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

(41) The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks as shown by a memo from the defense secretary as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq War.

Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties.

Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq War was really launched for oil…not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction. Despite previous “lone wolf” claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers. Many U.S. officials have alleged that 9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S. government.  

(42) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the White House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country.

(43) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”

(44) United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers.

Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

(45) Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians.

(46) Quebec police admitted that in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this).

(47) At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plainclothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.

(48) Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts in 2011 to try to discredit the protesters.

(49) A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat.

(50) The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, says that the head of Saudi intelligence Prince Bandar recently admitted that the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists.

(51) High-level American sources admitted that the Turkish government – a fellow NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government, and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government.

(52) The former Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others.

(53) Britain’s spy agency has admitted (and see this) that it carries out “digital false flag” attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target.

So Common…There’s a Name for It

“False flag terrorism” is defined as a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames. Or as Wikipedia defines it:

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities.

The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy’s Strategy of Tension.

The use of the bully’s trick is so common that it was given a name hundreds of years ago. The term comes from the old days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy before attacking another ship. Because the enemy’s flag, instead of the flag of the real country of the attacking ship, was hung, it was called a “false flag” attack.

Indeed, this concept is so well-accepted that rules of engagement for navalair and land warfare all prohibit false flag attacks.

Leaders Throughout History Have Acknowledged False Flags

Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the danger of false flags:

“A history of false flag attacks used to manipulate the minds of the people! In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.”
– Adolph Hitler

“Why of course the people don’t want war… But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened.”
– Josef Stalin


Alt Left: Labour Isn’t Working: A Radical Program for the Party to Reacquaint Itself with Victory

A most interesting text out of the UK but a group calling itself Alt Left. Though I don’t agree with them on everything, in a broad sense what they are arguing for is more or less within the broad scope of what I had in mind when I founded the Alt Left. This group calls itself Alt Left Publishing.

I had to cringe at some of the more rightwing things this group wants Labour to do, but the fact is that Labour needs to win elections, and if they have to be a bit more conservative to do that, well so be it. As long as we are not electing Blairites, Labour will always be much better than the Conservatives, and UKIP doesn’t look very good either (sort of neoliberal Trump Republicans-lite).

As usual with the Democratic Party here, the Left is shooting itself in the foot with massive overreach by being wildly SJW in ways that the majority of people do not support, and by being fantatically anti-immigration when 7

Labour is getting massacred on this issue, as many working class folks are anti-immigrant and feel that immigrants are taking their jobs and in addition, these people feel that they are losing a sense of their country.

Working class Labour voters are left on economics while being rather socially conservative, and that’s the Alt Left right there. What’s the point of alienating working class voters, screaming racist at them, shoving hundreds of thousands of unwanted immigrants down their throat, and bombarding them with SJW extremism that most of them reject as too radical?

As the piece points out all this is doing is making more and more of these socially conservative working class Labour voters defect to UKIP, mostly over the immigration issue.

Labour is also alienating people by being openly unpatriotic. I’m not a patriotard myself, but I do want the best for my country, so I suppose I love my country more than a corporate types who deliberately harm our country. I certainly don’t want to do my country any harm! I may disagree with domestic and especially foreign policy, but I’m not so angry about it that I want to screw the country over. I mean I have to live here too you know.

At any rate, the people around Corbyn are openly unpatriotic and do not pay proper deference to national symbols and institutions. Most British people are patriots, particularly socially conservative working class folks.

While I love Hezbollah myself and even have a soft spot for Irish Republicans, most British people despise both Hezbollah and in particular the IRA. The latter is heavily due to anti-Catholic sentiment in mostly Protestant UK, a tendency that goes back to at least the 19th Century to “anti-papist” and “anti-Romist” sentiment at that time. At any rate it does no good when Corbyn lauds these groups. All it does is create more UKIP voters.

What’s the point? Politics is after all the art of the possible.

While I love Jeremy Corbyn of course, most British people dislike him, and Labour has been shedding votes since he took over. It doesn’t matter whether I love Corbyn or not. What matters is that most British people hate him. And a leader hated by most of the population should definitely go in favor of someone more popular.

There are other good suggestions here about being tough on crime and the causes of crime. This is an issue near and dear to socially conservative working class voters, and Labour, like the Democratic Party, suffers from a soft on crime problem. That’s not necessary and anyway, crime hurts the working class.

This is a very long document, 12,000 words and 25 pages. I edited it quite heavily. The Alt Left Publishing website can be reached by clicking on the title below.

Happy reading!

Labour Isn’t Working: A Radical Program for the Party to Reacquaint Itself with Victory

Labour Isn’t Working in many ways lays the foundations for the Alt-Left. It establishes fundamental principles like the importance of group identity, the need to restrain the free market, and rejection of radical social justice.

It’s my view that whether your interest in politics is keen or fair-weather, you’ll be intrigued by the book, though I do recommend it particularly strongly to Labour party members and to those interested in the Alt Left and what it stands for.

The transcript can be read in full below, or alternatively downloaded for free here.

If you’d like to purchase the text in E-book format you can do so here.

T. James

Cover JPEG

Preface

The modern Labour party is out of touch with the working class whom it exists to represent, and many of whom turn increasingly to the Tories and UKIP for answers. Labour has been too scared to address immigration, too complacent to address jobs and too divided to address Europe.

The working class is dead. Long gone are the days of the Welsh miners’ choir and the workplace union meetings. The flat cap is worn now by avant-garde members of the rural middle class, men too old to shake a habit, and metropolitan hipsters.

Blackface isn’t the inevitable consequence of a day spent hewing coal from the center of the earth, but is now a racial faux pas. Where once a hard day’s work involved forging world-class steel, for many it’s now manning a call center in order to best resolve Mrs Smith’s broadband issues.

The modern economy necessitates that even the bricklayer has his own local advertising, Facebook page, and website. He doesn’t consider himself part of a homogeneous working class, but instead an entrepreneur, and rightly so.

The production and harvesting of real resources has been shamelessly outsourced to third-world countries. We allow the rest of the world to grow our food, forge our steel, and sew our shirts, and in doing so, we not only deprive our own people of work, but we impose it on others without the benefit of health and safety, a minimum wage, regulations, or any semblance of automation.

Britain’s economy is overly reliant on the financial sector, leaving us vulnerable to the next U.S.-born crash. Where people once took pride in their work as builders, now they are resigned to employment in this coffee chain or that.

Nationalism now rises in tandem with uncontrolled migration leading to names like Le Pen, Wilders, and Farage taking the establishment by storm. What appeared to be a consistently declining level of global violence has begun to reverse itself in recent years, as the wildfire of extremism continues to ravage the Middle East, prompting the worst migrant crisis yet seen in human history.

Humanity is on the precipice of upheaval, there are new questions, and few answers. Left-wing parties across the West are struggling to rally support, caught between the relentless march of globalization and the toll it takes on workers the world over.

The British Labour party is no exception to this trend, and its inability to mount a competent opposition to the government is enabling a period of unchecked Conservative rule. Exerting scrutiny on the executive is essential to ensure that its policies reflect national needs and not self-serving ends. Thus it is in the interests of both Conservative and Labour supporters that the Labour party resurface as a government in waiting and not persist as a party of protest.

In the wake of the 2015 shock general election defeat, long-time backbencher and maverick Jeremy Corbyn, assumed power in the Labour party. Propelled by an anti-establishment appeal and left-wing policies thought to have been consigned to history, he easily defeated his three opponents.

His unprecedented victory prompted a surge in party membership, from some 200,000 to over 500,000, making it notable for being the largest left-wing party in Europe. It appeared that the man to reverse Labour’s fortune had made himself known.

Yet at the time of writing, far from arresting the party’s decline, the Corbyn administration has only exacerbated it. Polling shows Labour now trail the Conservatives by as much as 1

Owing to resignations, the shadow cabinet is more of a skeleton crew, much of it manned by newly elected and inexperienced MPs.  The vast membership, which was seen as the formation of a campaigning vanguard, has since been shown to be in large part idle, indicative of a niche opinion in the country, and a thorn in the side of the parliamentary party.

That’s not to say that Jeremy Corbyn killed the Labour party. He merely sits atop its coffin. The party has been in a state of managed decline since de-industrialization stripped it of a clear reason to exist. The program detailed herein will therefore not lay blame exclusively at Corbyn’s door, though it will do so where appropriate, but instead will lay blame where deserved, and offer remedies where needed.

It’s not enough to insist that the electorate are deficient or suffering from a false consciousness when they reject you time after time. Nor is it good enough to abandon the values upon which the party was founded in order to pursue public opinion at the expense of all else.

Instead the party must align its core principles with the will of the people, conceding ground on either side where necessary. It’s essential that in order to recover, the party enter a period of reflection, and in doing so it must produce a meaningful answer to the question so many are asking: “Just what is the Labour party for?”.

If it’s to defend the NHS, then that’s an insufficient reason for the electorate to eject a sitting government. No doubt the creation of the NHS was Labour’s finest hour, but to relentlessly invoke its name at every public rally like a war cry is to cement in the mind of the public the idea of Labour as a one-trick pony.

If it’s to be a nicer version of the Tories, this too is inadequate. Aside from the fact that the Liberal Democrats already occupy that ground, the public at large will always opt for competency over compassion.

It’s vital that should Labour ever seek to win again, it must first rediscover its identity. It should reforge its raison d’être from an anti-Tory think tank to a government in waiting, able to steady the nation through what promises to be a turbulent future. Drawing from various tendencies within the party, significant research, personal experience, and observable reality, what follows is a detailed roadmap for Labour’s return to government.

Chapter I – The New Working Class

Labour once had a core demographic on which they could rely: the working class – a monolithic block who worked almost entirely in heavy industry. Commonly united in tight-knit communities centered on a factory or pit, they were class conscious and proudly so.

To inherit one’s father’s job was not just an expectation but a de facto right. The membership of the Labour party and consequently its leadership still holds to these antiquated views of what it means to be a worker. So long as they fail to recognize the nature and needs of modern workers, they will fail to produce policies that appeal to them.

This isn’t a failure exclusive to the left of the party. After all, Blair did once assert that, “We’re all middle class now”, a view still manifest among those of his ilk who exist in substantial number within the parliamentary party.

It’s not so much that this view denies the existence of the poverty-stricken or the manual worker but that it sidelines them. It relies on those people to vote for Labour consistently and is unconcerned when they stay at home, since most such people live within Labour safe seats won on a minimal turnout.

This leads us to a divergence in approach: one that caters to a romanticized and now largely deceased working class and the other which overlooks it entirely. To portray the party as these two schools of thought and nothing but would be disingenuous, but they do have the most to say on the subject. The so-called ‘soft left’ offers little thought on the matter, and the Kendallites have been too preoccupied with plots in recent times to set out any clear views at all.

In order to identify those whom Labour must bring into the fold, we must first establish those who vote for it currently:

Old Labourites. Blue-collar chaps for whom the memories of Thatcherism are still all too vivid. Formerly miners and manufacturers, many now live in the deprived post-industrial communities of Wales, the Midlands, the North, and Scotland. Increasingly, their inherent social conservatism and skepticism regarding immigration has led them to vote Conservative and UKIP in increasing numbers.

Londoners. Labour enjoys ever-growing support within London, a crowd often misidentified as being part of the ‘metropolitan elite’. While much of this demographic could be characterized by the sort of person who hangs a picture of Marx in their parents’ Kensington 4-bed, such people are a minority. Labour’s London support base can be differentiated by its social liberalism, particularly in its concern for LGBT rights, feminism, and police practices.

Public sector workers. Over 56.

Ethnic minorities. This demographic can be more or less divided between those of African and Asian descent. The black British demographic is concentrated predominantly in London and Birmingham, the product of a generation who were invited to the UK to rebuild in the wake of the Second World War.

Now living in overwhelmingly deprived communities, over 7

As these groups continue to move out into the suburbs and expand their businesses, it’s likely their transition from being staunch Labourites to reliably Conservative will only accelerate.

Entryists. Often hailing from Trotskyist outfits, their influence is at a peak within the Labour party since the days of militant expulsions. Such people are self-professed associates of groups such as the Alliance for Workers Liberty and the Socialist Workers Party. Though not great in number, it seems Tom Watson had it right when he suggested there are some “old hands twisting young wrists”.

This coalition cannot win elections; it lost in 2010, 2015, and it will do so again in 2020, if not before. Where previously Labour had a clear platform that spoke directly to workers the country over, they have so far failed to adapt to the new nature of work in the 21st century.

Talk of workers’ rights to the 4.6 million self-employed[ii] means precisely nothing. When Jeremy Corbyn gives speeches about Keir Hardy, he might as well be reading from Istanbul’s phonebook for all the relevance it has to the voters he’s attempting to reach.

This sort of rhetoric would suggest that Labour now stands on a platform of reviving heavy industry when in fact no such plans exist. It’s evident that such populist polices are not incompatible with electoral success in modern times.

We can look to Donald Trump’s rise to power as evidence of this. A campaign punctuated with the cry – “We’re gonna put the miners back to work!” – roars which carried the rust belt states and Trump himself to an electoral college victory.

While such an agenda should never constitute the headline of a Labour campaign, there is room for it to form a fractional element of a wider economic plan. With the benefits of automation and clean coal, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t create new jobs in coal, steel and manufacturing: industries whose revival would be predicated on a new regime of tariffs and public infrastructure spending.

Though Labour are often happy to ingratiate themselves with the attendees of events like the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the Durham Miners’ Gala, they have nothing substantial to offer on the issue of heavy industry yet are content to bask in the romanticism of it.

While the decline of the British steel industry predates recent governments, it now faces a crisis that threatens to end its very existence. The proximate cause of this crisis is China dumping its own steel at below cost price on the world market. This is comparable to a supermarket opening next to a corner shop and offering loaves of bread for 10p.

Inevitably, the former will put the latter out of business, and then, when it’s free of competition, it is able to raise its prices with impunity. Similarly, if we surrender ourselves to a reliance on Chinese steel, we’ll face higher prices in the long run. Failing to protect them would deliver a coup de grâce to the last bastions of our national manufacturing industries, prompting the decline of communities and our capacity for self-sufficiency.

It’s for these reasons Labour would do well to adopt policies to the effect of the following:

  • Introduce tariffs on Chinese steel to such a point that it becomes unaffordable in the UK.
  • Lobby other European nations to form a steel block, not dissimilar from the Common Agricultural Policy, which will allow for free trade in steel amongst nations with comparable wage levels and health and safety standards.
  • Legislate that all public works must use British steel with appropriate caveats (e.g. certain types of steel are not produced in the UK).
  • Cut the disproportionately large foreign aid budget from 0.

As the supply of steel drops, the free market will necessitate investment leading to the construction of new steel plants, not only in the UK but across Europe. It’s an excellent example of triangulating socialism with capitalism and reaping the rewards of the free market in the 21st century.

Now, I don’t suggest that such policies should be the focal point of a Labour manifesto by any means, on the contrary, they should be towards the bottom of the list, but they most certainly should be on that list.

Such a policy, though necessary, is not an election winner, and speaks only to a specific group of people. It should be brought about in tandem with policies that resonate with the 4.6 million self-employed individuals who are in dire need of strong representation.

These people are more inclined to identify as entrepreneurs than as part of the working class. Mechanics and carpenters are now business people not proles. They don’t care about the history of struggle, or talk of how the EU is essential because it ‘protects workers’ rights’ which is nonsense in its own right, but they do want to have constant work with good pay and little else.

Indeed, until pressure from the Tory-supporting press prompted a u-turn, the Chancellor meant to levy upon self-employed people an even higher tax rate. In the wake of such a clear display of contempt towards the self-employed by the Conservatives, no better opportunity exists for Labour to launch an appeal to white van men the country over.

So, what problems do self-employed people face, and what policy platforms can appeal to them?

By definition they don’t have an employer from whom they can claim sick, maternity, or paternity pay, their work can be inconsistent, and they must continually reinvest their earnings to facilitate the survival of their trade or business.

Such policies should include:

  • Cutting taxes for the self-employed, allowing them to free up income they can use to cover the cost of sick pay and other work-related benefits (alternatively, introduce self-employment working tax credits where feasible).
  • Lowering VAT so that consumer spending increases, thus pushing up demand for new wardrobes, landscaped gardens, vehicle modifications, and so on.
  • Forcing the banks that we taxpayers bailed out to provide loans where feasible to self-employed individuals at a special low interest rate for the purpose of buying tools, refurbishing workshops, or taking on trainees.
  • Sending apprentices to work with the self-employed rather than with huge multinational chains, where they exist as little more than wage slaves.

Again, such policies won’t provoke a landslide electoral victory, but they are essential to attract to the Labour cause the sort of voters who are not only needed to win an election but whose interests lie in the Labour camp; the clue is in the name, after all.

But policy isn’t enough. We can’t expect people who work two jobs and maintain other responsibilities besides to read complex manifestos and pay attention to policy documents – to do so would be an unreasonable burden. Instead we need to talk in a language that ordinary people understand. That is to say: we should speak like normal people.

In 1917 the Bolsheviks condensed a complex economic program into three simple words: ‘PEACE, LAND, BREAD’. It was a message that was understood by every echelon of Russian society without exception. This is no means to advocate Bolshevism, but it serves to demonstrate that exactly 100 years ago, without the benefit of social media, YouTube, spin doctors, and hashtags, it was possible to create easily digestible slogans that summarize a policy platform.

Yet somehow the modern Labour party is entirely incapable of developing a slogan, sentence, paragraph, or message of any length or format that appeals even remotely to its core vote or to those it needs to incorporate into it.

In 2015 Labour produced “A Better Plan for a Better Future” as its campaign slogan. This inspired precisely nobody and means exactly nothing. Given that unemployment in 2015 was 1.9 million[iii], how about this: “Labour Will Give You a High-paying Job”. Or with a little more finesse “Higher Pay, More Jobs”.

At the end of the day, despite the Twitterati’s various obsessions, jobs are the primary concern of most voters, and they have been and should continue to be at the forefront of any Labour campaign. Moreover, nobody speaks the language of the 60’s union bosses or the Marxist Politburo; talk of ‘comrades’ and ‘struggle’ should be consigned to the dustbin of history unless in the context of a historical discussion.

This chapter has thus far dealt with the need for and the avenue by which the traditional northern post-industrial vote can be shored up, and how best the 4.6 million self-employed can begin to be brought across to Labour in greater numbers, as well as a brief mention of language and communication which will be dealt with in greater depth in a subsequent chapter.

With all that said, there remains one ever-growing and crucial voting block who cannot bring themselves to vote Labour for reasons easily condensed into one word.: Immigration.

Blue-collar blokes are sick of being called racists for daring to criticize immigration. There is nothing left wing or liberal about the free movement of people; to the contrary it’s a right–wing, neoliberal idea that disproportionately favors employers.

The Labour party has no need to become radically nationalist, but by God it should be patriotic. It should fly the Union Flag and St. George’s Cross at every speech and every office, and the same for the Welsh and Scottish flags. But above all, Labour should call for a points-based immigration system that guarantees people the world over get a fair shake at entering the country on the basis of having the skills we need in the economy.

Let’s take India’s best scientists and China’s best students and do so on the understanding that they will commit themselves to the country for a specific amount of time. Let’s not feel obliged to take unskilled workers, of which we already have a surplus, in order to further drive down the wages of construction site laborers, baristas, and private hire drivers.

So, here’s a ‘radical’ suggestion for a slogan “British Jobs for British Workers” the words of one Gordon Brown as recently as 2007. This is the sort of slogan that should be plastered so thickly on the walls that they begin to be structurally integral to the building they occupy. Like communication, immigration will be dealt with in detail in a subsequent chapter, but in relation to appealing to the forgotten working class, it must be a cornerstone.

Over 900,000 people are apprentices[iv], mostly young women – an  ideal demographic for Labour voters. Since an apprentice in their first year is entitled to a below-subsistence wage of £3.40 an hour, and those most likely to enroll in an apprenticeship are poorer to begin with, it’s a total no-brainer: Labour should be promising every apprentice in the country a pay rise.

To those who suggest this would be irresponsible spending, we’ll be enjoying the benefit within two years of not having to send the EU hundreds of millions of pounds a year, of which a fraction could be spent on improving apprentices’ pay.

Here’s another groundbreaking slogan “A Pay Rise for Apprentices”. It’s time the unions with their multi-million bound budgets and 6-figure wage packets stopped resting on their laurels and actively began unionizing young apprentices the nation over. An offer of free membership for a year would be hard to refuse.

Others talk of an ‘anti-boss’ brand of populism, but as well as being counterproductive, since we absolutely want bosses to vote for Labour, time has rendered it irrelevant. We now live in an age where peoples’ bosses are oftentimes a relative or a friend, where this isn’t the case, it’s rare that employees don’t know their manager or supervisor outside of the workplace on a casual basis, at the very least as acquaintances.

Any anti-business or anti-boss talk cannot be part of a modern Labour party’s rhetoric or policy. Where there is room for populism, it’s anti-corporate populism.

Let’s make sure Google, Starbucks, and Facebook pay the taxes they’re duty bound to, given that without a taxpayer-funded education system they would have no employees, without the NHS they would have to provide insurance, without public roads they would have no means of haulage, and without internet and phone-line infrastructure they would have no means to even exist.

From the gains made by appropriating the correct levels of tax owed by such corporations, let’s move these profits into delivering tax cuts for small business owners, incentivize them to take on new employees, and expand their trades. It’s by means such as these that Labour can successfully convert traditional Conservative voters simply by offering them a better deal.

We can also reach the middle classes. For the first time in their history, junior doctors went out on strike, and did so on several occasions in the wake of Jeremy Hunt’s punishing reform proposals. Legal professionals are in the process of a mass exodus from the legal aid program, with Scottish wages having dropped over 2

While an opportunity clearly presents itself to launch an appeal to traditional middle class Conservative voters, the Labour party is too embroiled with internal affairs to mount any effective effort.

On this point of traditional Conservative voters, it’s time to speak to farmers once again. We will soon have control over farming subsidies, let’s outbid the Tories on this issue and in addition offer an innovative rural apprenticeship program in order to train future generations in the ways of agriculture, while also aiding overworked and beleaguered farmers.

Furthermore, let’s force supermarkets to pay a fair price for dairy, meat, and vegetables, while subsidizing the cost to the consumer, paid for by an equivalent tax on sugary foods in order to ensure farms thrive while still protecting consumers and simultaneously improving the health of the nation.

Once free from the Common Fisheries Policy, let’s put our fisherman back to work and become the fishing capital of Europe. It makes no sense to subsidize corporations through working tax credits. Labour should promise an increase in the minimum wage and use the welfare savings to fund new infrastructure in our now-decrepit seaside towns.

Through this dual approach, we can not only increase the quality of life of those left behind by globalism while once again making British seaside towns worthy tourist attractions, but also bring back into the fold voters who have long since deserted Labour for UKIP.

Through these methods, we can expand our ever-shrinking coalition to include people from all walks of life, while still staying true to Labour values in a modern and relevant way. Let’s go forward in lockstep with farmers, fishermen, carpenters, shopkeepers, laborers, dockers, lorry drivers, and lawyers.

Some may ponder, then, might this not alienate the metropolitan middle classes, who as of this moment form the last bastion of the Labour bloc vote? Well, the biggest genuine issue for such people is the absurdly high house prices which keep people off the property ladder to middle age, and some of the highest rents in the world.

All the while we spend £25 billion every single year on housing benefit[vi], money which goes straight into landlords’ pockets, (not that we don’t want landlords to prosper).

It’s time to announce a national house building program that takes the money straight out of the housing benefit budget and puts it into building 250,000 homes a year until the housing shortage becomes a surplus, at which point the free market will dictate rents, house prices will return to affordable levels, and the UK will once again become a home-owning democracy.

This is how we can offer concrete solutions to clear issues that will resonate with the 8 million people who live in London. Such a program would also lead to the employment of hundreds of thousands of people, prompting a higher tax revenue and increased spending in local economies throughout the country.

In summary, in order for Labour to properly construct policy that appeals to the working class, it must first understand how the working class has evolved over the past century. It should adopt a dual approach that halts the decline of traditional manufacturing and shores up our export market, while simultaneously engendering job growth in emerging markets, with an eye to appealing to those whose new nature of work leaves them without a natural party to vote for.

This program should incorporate the good work done by Ed Miliband in formulating policies to re-introduce security into the workplace, particularly in dealing with ‘zero-hour’ contracts, while also acknowledging that such policies do not have a broad enough appeal amongst swing voters. Labour must push for full, proud, and secure employment. By these means, Labour will rally all elements of the modern working class to their cause. 

Chapter II Foreign Policy and the Military

Foreign policy is not an election winner. Even when Blair’s hated decision to invade Iraq prompted the largest marches ever seen in the UK, the Labour government comfortably held on to power in the 2005 elections.

However, it’s important to remain principled and strive always to do what is right and best, both for the people of our nation and for those abroad but never at the expense of either. Moreover, Labour faces challenges from the left, notably the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, whenever it assumes an overtly pro-war posture.

There is scarcely a sentient being on earth who still believes Iraq, Libya, or Afghanistan were successful interventions, and for all the times it’s been said, it’s clear we haven’t learnt the lessons of the past. The Labour party should make it clear that they will not involve themselves in foreign military entanglements that do not directly concern the security of the United Kingdom and its allies.

British blood should not be expended to remove a foreign dictator only for that nation’s people to find liberation give way to an unimaginably worse kind of tyranny as has happened when ISIS filled the vacuum that Western bombs created.

Having said that, it is crucial that Labour demonstrate that it does not take security lightly, and its commitment to having first-class armed forces should be clear to everyone.

We have a Conservative government that has sacked soldiers before they could claim their full pensions, moved hundreds of thousands of positions into the reserve army, has aircraft carriers that we can’t land aircraft on, and now, most bizarrely, is offering troops the option of not serving in combat zones in return for a pay cut.

In uncertain global times, Labour should put itself forward as a patriotic party committed to the primary duty of the state: the protection of its own people. It’s essential that a commitment to at least

The latter is contentious, particularly within Labour circles, but there are some universal truths on this matter. Firstly, Trident has been commissioned, and should Labour win power, they will inherit the system no matter what their policy is. Secondly, the majority of the population are in favor of nuclear weapons, and confusion on the issue only allows the Tories to portray Labour as a threat to national security, philosophical arguments about MAD aside.

It’s also right that we reverse the horrible mistreatment suffered by our veterans. No individual who has laid their life on the line for the nation should be allowed to sleep on the streets, and as part of the aforementioned house building program, there should be guaranteed homes for veterans with subsidized mortgages, a cost to be taken from the

There should also be jobs in the public sector reserved for them, particularly in the police and border forces. It’s my view that the treatment of veterans is a legitimate use of the term ‘military spending’.

Our foreign aid spending is disproportionate, badly allocated, and unsustainable. We are running a budget deficit of £40 billion, and continue to borrow more money to spend abroad, often sponsoring foreign militaries in proxy wars, or putting money into the pocket of despots to secure exploitative trade deals.

After the United States of America, we are the second biggest foreign aid donor on the planet in real terms. We spend $18 billion compared to the U.S. spending of $31 billion[vii]. That is over half of their expenditure despite being significantly less than half the size of their economy.

There are many cases in which it is not only right but morally incumbent upon us as a nation to send funds and resources abroad, to combat Ebola as a recent example.

But setting an annual target of 0.

Foreign aid does a lot of good, and where it does so it should continue to do so, but where reasonable savings can be made, this is exactly the course of action that should be pursued. The liberal, Guardian–reading, mocha-sipping elites will tweet furiously in response to such a suggestion, as if there’s something essential about the budget being set at 0.

It’s important to ignore these people, whose numbers appear  more significant online, as they represent a minority as has been shown time and time again, with only 1 in 4 supporting the current foreign aid policy[viii].

For those who suggest that giving money to space-program-pushing India will somehow engender good relations with developing countries, I’d suggest we could better build relations by ceasing to hinder their economic growth through climate regulation (with caveats) and ending the practice of Western and Chinese companies exploiting the developing countries’ natural resources.

We currently face the worst refugee crisis the world has yet known, and as a party, people, and species, we have a duty to help those in need. In the immediate future, we should accept lone child refugees and house them with willing volunteers in the UK.

Subsequent to this, we should quiz every local council in the country and see what facilities they can spare to house other refugees, prioritizing families. However, there are 60 million displaced people globally and counting. The UK cannot effectively double its population by accepting every single individual – even

Thus, longer-term solutions must be found, and they begin with rich Middle Eastern countries which have so far allowed the burden to be shouldered by their neighbors like Lebanon as well as Western nations, namely Germany.

It is time we lobbied Saudi Arabia, to whom we sell jets and whose pilots we train in order to better fly them, we gave a free ride when they invaded Bahrain, and continue to do so as they fight in Yemen killing civilians with British bombs, and whose disgusting head-chopping record gives ISIS a run for their money.

This is not a suggestion to cut ties with the Saudis or the UAE, but given the support both militarily and diplomatically that we provide for them, it’s reasonable to assume we can make demands of them: and if ever there was a need to, it is now. These countries should be taking in great numbers of refugees. They have the infrastructure; they just lack the will.

Further to this, the foreign aid budget should be used to contribute to a wider transnational program to build U.N.-protected safe zones across the Middle East, to prevent refugees making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean, which in itself will save thousands of lives but also to keep them safe from terrorism and keep them fed, watered, and sheltered until such time that they can return to their country or region of origin.

The geopolitical landscape has suffered a seismic shift in the past year alone, and upcoming European elections look to continue that trend. The long and short of the matter is that we have distanced ourselves from our European neighbors so long as their current rulers last anyway, and thus we must move closer to our historic allies in the U.S.

However, Jeremy Corbyn (perhaps out of some need for the adoration of the echo chamber of his cult of no personality) is making a frequent habit of attacking President Trump vocally, viciously and publicly. He’s joined in such attacks by other high-profile liberals, notably the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.

When the Cameron government shamelessly courted the Chinese into buying out our public infrastructure, John Bercow was front and center in welcoming Xi Jinping to address both houses of Parliament.

Yet in a stunningly hypocritical fashion which must require Olympic levels of mental gymnastics to justify, Bercow has come out against Trump addressing Parliament and intends to block him from doing so, all the while being supported in these efforts by the leader of the Labour party. Part of the problem is the disingenuous hysteria around Trump that you’ll find in the Guardian, Mirror or indy100.

But putting that aside, even a blind man can see that it’s absolutely within British interests to foster closer cooperation and trade with the U.S.A., the biggest economy in the world, which also has in common with us in language, culture, and history.  In fact, for anybody who considers themselves on the left, a closer relationship with Trump can only be a good thing for world peace, given his thus-far successful moves towards détente with Russia.

On this point, there’s no need to paint Putin as the eternal bogeyman. There are elements of his governance which we can all criticize from one angle or another, but to invoke the words of a separate J. C. for a moment, “Those without sin should cast the first stone”.

The domestic policies of Russia are entirely an issue for the Russian people, and continuing to burden Russia with ever worsening sanctions not only destroys diplomatic relations but is mutually harmful for both our economies. Let’s work with Trump and Putin to defeat ISIS, and in doing so we will position ourselves closer to their ears to best influence them on any human rights issues we find significant.

We claim ownership of an island over 7,000 miles away from our shores on the basis that its citizens voted in a referendum to remain British. This is no bad thing and we should continue to respect the right to self-determination.

However, when those in Crimea, who are 6

This is made even more bizarre by the fact Crimea was part of Russia as recently as 1954, when Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine, and now over 60 years on, it’s reasonable that its inhabitants would rather unite themselves to a superpower rather than a failed state.

Some will surely cry ‘appeasement’ to the idea that we should improve relations with Russia. To those people, I say: compromise is essential in international relations, we can’t preach to the world how they should live and operate, and it’s arrogant and pseudo-supremacist to try and push our liberal democratic model on every culture and people of the earth.

That’s not to mention that Putin did little when we invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, supported French action in Mali, and imposed sanctions against their Iranian allies, yet liberals appear indignant at any suggestion that the Russians be allowed the same freedom in their international actions.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t assume a strong posture – we absolutely should – which is one of the reasons this text has hitherto advocated the maintenance of Trident and spending of

Working closely with our American allies, we should aim to maintain peace through strength, but this is by no means mutually exclusive with closer cooperation with Russia, with whom we should be seeking to strike trade deals, closer ties, and better relations. In short, we should make allies, not enemies, wherever possible.

Most people aren’t concerned with international relations. They want food on their table, a roof over their heads, and enough disposable income to live a good life. However, it will never be the case that Jeremy Corbyn could be elected Prime Minister on an anti-American ticket.

It’s a simple truism that the U.S. is a crucial ally, and to worsen our relations in the context of Brexit would leave the UK essentially isolated. Trump’s lewd comments about women are not a hill Labour should be dying on, nor a hill they should have even assumed a position atop in the first instance.

Instead Labour should have a foreign policy that doesn’t indulge in 3-dimensional chess and virtue signalling but instead sends a very clear message. Labour will be second to none in defense of the nation, second to none in rebuilding relations, and unwilling to expend British blood or treasure in foreign wars that do not concern us.

In Europe, let’s form bilateral trade agreements and maintain the same standard of intelligence sharing as exists today, both of which are perfectly possible without power sharing in a technocratic bureaucracy.

The upshot of this in messaging terms is that Labour should state loud and clear that Labour will keep you safe, prioritize our own citizens, and maintain a humanitarian outlook on global affairs. Little else is necessary, and Corbyn’s famous hand-holding with the IRA and Hamas are enough to set him up for a decisive defeat in any British election.

Chapter III – Immigration

Immigration became a taboo subject in the realm of political discourse with the dawn of the Blair Age. Conversation on the matter was shut down, and dissidents were branded racists, outcasts, and forced into silence. A mixture of concern and outrage boiled up amongst those left behind by New Labour, leading to the return of two British National Party candidates in the European Elections of 2009.

Fortunately, both of those vile individuals have since lost their seats and faded into obscurity, with those voters now opting to side with the far more moderate UKIP. Nigel Farage single-handedly put immigration at the center of British politics, and his influence led to a vote to leave the European Union, within which the primary concern amongst Out voters was immigration.

This had been a sleeping giant for some time, and Farage was able to awaken it. However, even now in a post-Brexit world, the issue of immigration is still taboo for many, particularly in the mainstream media. It’s rare that anyone advocating a merit-based immigration system as opposed to no controls at all isn’t branded a racist by a ‘Question Time’ panelist or political opponent.

It’s an issue that’s particularly pernicious on university campuses and in inner cities. In the former, anyone to the right of Chairman Mao on the issue is considered Hitler’s earthly avatar, and in the latter, it’s a common occurrence to find your trip through Central London punctuated with stalls of the Socialist Workers Party distributing leaflets that read along of the lines of ‘Let all refugees in now! Stop racism!’.

Speaking of the SWP, whilst Labour seems curious about its own credibility gap, meanwhile its own shadow chancellor is giving interviews to the SWP[x], so whoever is running the Labour PR machine should enjoy the ‘benefit’ of instant dismissal.

The fact that the views of a tiny vocal minority are over-represented on television and online media makes people scared to air their true opinions, only taking action within the security and anonymity of the ballot box. Over 7

Overwhelmingly, the country is dissatisfied with current levels of immigration. This includes Black and minority ethnic voters of all stripes who believe the number of immigrants should be reduced, and they do so by sizeable majorities[xii].

It’s pertinent to mention that immigration is disproportionately a concern for the working classes, and many of them have fled Labour, leading UKIP to be the main challenger to Labour in a great many constituencies in the 2015 election. Although it’s proven difficult for UKIP to directly take seats from Labour, there are two problems that this bleeding of voters poses.

The first is that it will lead the Labour vote in northern communities to be split with UKIP, thus allowing a Tory candidate to take a seat with as little as 3

We are in the process of leaving the European Union, and thus we will no longer be shackled to the free movement of labor which has given every citizen of the EU the right to live and work in the UK. However, neither the Conservatives nor Labour have made clear the path ahead.

What better opportunity then for Labour to appeal to its forgotten voters, take back the defectors, and win over Conservatives by proposing a strict points–based,Australian-style immigration system. Let’s legislate in order to ensure that only immigrants who possess the skills and resources we need have the ability to settle and work in this country.

Let’s mandate that immigrants should have an excellent grasp of the English language, not just because such a skill is essential (particularly in the medical profession) but also because it will ensure universally beneficial integration.

At the same time, we should make it clear that this country already has enough unskilled workers, unemployed, and disabled people who are struggling to cope as it is, and it should not be incumbent on the country to take more such people in.

It’s here the points-based system comes into its own: for example, if there is a shortage of unskilled labor, we can adjust the requisite points for entry and mandate that people who enter under such circumstances have jobs waiting for them.

Some suggest a migration system based on merit is xenophobic, and to those people it’s worth mentioning that we’ve applied a points-based system to non-EU citizens for years, and as members of the EU, we were giving preference to European migrants who were predominantly White over Indian and African migrants.

A points-based system is totally equitable and accepts people based on ability, irrespective of skin color, creed, or nationality. This is entirely in keeping with the sort of values that led to Labour’s foundation and should remain at the forefront of any respectable leftwing movement.

There is a myth that there is something ‘left wing’ or ‘progressive’ about uncontrolled migration, or that it would be desirable to have an unlimited number of unknown individuals entering the country every year.

Let’s be clear: the free movement of labor is a rightwing, neoliberal, capitalist policy, not dissimilar to the free movement of capital. It’s a symptom of an anarchic free market system that serves the elites extremely well; it drives down the price of labor for corporations, affords the middle classes cheap gardeners and nannies, and perpetually rigs the job market in the employers’ favor.

It’s a fundamental leftist belief that the free market is not infallible, requires regulation, and this regulation should pertain not just to levels of taxation and regulation but also to the distribution of workers.

This is not advocacy of immigration control on the basis of electoral populism, or economic philosophy, though it would indeed be popular, and it does follow philosophically; instead it’s an advocacy on the grounds of basic math.

Plainly, the UK cannot sustain the number of immigrants coming into the country every year. 300,000 is the rough annual net migration figure to the UK per annum. Many point out rightly that a large number of these people are students, and they’re right to do so.

However, whether student or worker, they still take the same toll on transport, health, and social infrastructure.  As a nation, we are building around half the number of houses we need every single year, at around 135,000[xiii], creating a clear deficit in housing availability. That’s not to mention that our own domestic birth rate is over 800,000 per year[xiv].

We already have a dangerous housing bubble which threatens to collapse at any moment, pulling our entire economy down with it, and it’s only exacerbated by such migrant numbers. Of course, part of this problem is that we don’t build enough houses, and issues pertaining to that were detailed in the first chapter.

However, the costs of building such enormous numbers of houses and providing the associated infrastructure would be to say the least prohibitive, and even if it were feasible, it would not be desirable.

Aside from housing there are huge costs associated with the NHS, when people who have never contributed arrive able to take full advantage of it without question. This is one of the factors that has led to a record NHS deficit of £1.85 billion[xv]; although of course underfunding remains the direct cause of this crisis, immigration serves to aggravate it.

You’ll hear from Labour politicians and often to the thunderous applause of their echo chambers, the following platitude: “You’re more likely to see an immigrant working in the NHS than using it”.

Aside from being disingenuous, since it’s entirely determined by happenstance and geography, the point they are trying to make is that because immigrants work in the NHS, we should allow an unlimited number of immigrants to enter the country, as if the former warrants the latter, which is a total non-sequitur.

Yes, we have a large number of migrants working in the NHS, and that’s a good thing to. Let’s keep them there and continue to allow medical professionals into the country in line with demand. Having controlled immigration and having Indian doctors are not mutually exclusive; in actuality an equitable points-based system will incentivize and drive up the number of highly qualified migrant workers relative to unskilled workers.

The people are crying out for a credible party to come out strongly on immigration, and if Labour did so, they would take the country by storm.

Chapter IV – And the Rest

Regarding inertia

As of this writing the most commonly seen Labour slogan is “Working together for real change”. The problem is the party is not working together, and presents no change. The conflict within and between the constituency and parliamentary Labour parties is wreaking havoc on Labour’s public image, and as the well-known adage tells us, voters don’t vote for divided parties.

However, this text will not attempt to dissect the intricacies that have led to this point; instead suffice it to mention a couple of key issues.

Jeremy Corbyn will never receive the support of the current MPs and therefore must go. The only alternative would be to begin a process of deselection across the country –  a sort of Trotskyist Night of the Long Knives, which would only leave the party’s reputation in tatters and replace experienced MPs with amateurs.

There is a divide within the parliamentary party between those representing constituents who are socially conservative working class and middle class social liberals. While Labour has always been a broad church that has incorporated numerous factions, the divisions now seem to be intensifying like never before.

Party loyalty is at record low rates, and people are now more likely than ever to throw out of office the candidate of their forefather’s choice and often on the basis of a single issue. This is more contentious than ever post-Brexit, given that some Labour MPs represent constituencies that voted overwhelmingly to Remain and others the reverse. Inevitably MPs jostle with one another to represent their diverse constituents.

The remedies are imperfect for both issues. For the first, Corbyn must go, which is easier said than done; and secondly the Labour party must support the will of the people and push for a real Brexit that rejects freedom of movement. Neither solution is ideal, but both are necessary, not least because the majority of the country hate Corbyn, and the majority of the country voted for Brexit.

On to the second, and more important, element of the slogan: “Real Change.” The most obvious change that has taken place in the last couple of years is the transformation of the Labour party from a party of government to one that wallows in political oblivion. Change is an important message to transmit, but the kind of change needs to be clear, and Corbyn’s Labour has thus far advocated very few changes indeed.

In fact, in my research for this work, I wanted to see exactly what policies Jeremy Corbyn had promoted in order to deal with them individually. However, when I tried to access Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘priorities’ on his website, it returned an error page reading “Unfortunately the page you were looking for was not found”, which is so patently ironic that no explanation is needed.

Further hunting will lead you to an article in the Mirror listing several flagship policies, which range from unpopular and bizarre like abolishing the monarchy to leftist clichés like ‘tax the rich’, and standard Labour talking points like re-nationalizing rail.

An eager hunter will find a more exhaustive list in a Telegraph article, which is pretty damming for the Labour party PR machine when the right-wing pro-Tory paper gives more policy detail than Labour themselves do. Eventually, one will stumble upon the ‘Jeremy for Labour’ page detailing ten broad policy positions. A brief glance is enough to know it’s a slight rewording of Ed Miliband’s 2015 manifesto combined with some broad meaningless jargon.

“We will build a progressive tax system so that wealth and the highest earners are fairly taxed, act against executive pay excess, and shrink the gap between the highest and lowest paid – FTSE 100 CEOs are now paid 183 times the wage of the average UK worker, and Britain’s wages are the most unequal in Europe. We will act to create a more equal society, boost the incomes of the poorest, and close the gender pay gap.”[xvi]

Do we not already have a progressive tax system? What rate should the highest earners pay? Will you cap executive bonuses? How will you boost the incomes of the poorest? How will you close the gender pay gap?

Such questions could be the only reasonable response to reading such general non-offensive meaningless milk-and-honey talking points. Anyone who feels the media hasn’t given Corbyn’s Labour a fair shake and has undertaken to do their own research will only be doubly disappointed when they discover that in the two years of his leadership, there’s scarcely a new policy to speak of.

For those who seek out concrete information, they should be rewarded with definitive and detailed policy proposals signed off by renowned economists, think tanks, and financial organizations.

Such policies should include pledges to build huge tidal power stations taking advantage of the fact that our nation is surrounded by water, to build offshore wind farms (including specifications on how many of them, at what cost and where the money is coming from), and to build new motorways, detailing how many people such a project would employ and projecting the economic benefits it would bring to this city or that. Alas, nothing of the sort exists.

Not to harp on about political antiquity, but Harold Wilson talked of the ‘white heat of the technological revolution.’ It’s not something that was ever truly delivered on, but it’s a phrase that stuck. What better time than now is there to renew the scientific and technological revolution? In the age of drones, self-driving cars, nanotechnology, and interstellar rovers, the modern Labour party has very little or nothing to say about it.

As a people we have the potential and as a country we have the need to host research and development facilities for the world’s leading technology firms and to have factories producing technology for the modern age. Labour Shadow Ministers should be meeting with Tesla and Microsoft, putting out press releases and winning support amongst the firms of the future, letting them know Britain is open for business.

In tandem with this we need new and forward-looking training schemes. The youth vote is overwhelmingly Labour but also the least likely to turn out.

Labour councilors, MPs and its half million members (Where are they?) should be knocking on every door of every council estate, meeting the unemployed, disenfranchised youth, and giving them a clear, concise piece of paper offering them a world-class training program that Labour guarantees to introduce if it wins the election.

Give these people something to aspire to and something to vote for outside of the Blue and Red tribal dichotomy which means very little to most people.

AddendumI have returned to this section to note that shortly after the time of writing, the Conservative government has unveiled so called ‘T-levels’, which promise to train youngsters in the practical and technical fields of the future. Once again, Labour has been too slow on the draw and attempts to do so now would appear to be a derivative imitation.

Put before people a plan that they can understand and offer them a future: through training programs, scientific advancement, industrialization, automation, pay rises, and tax breaks. Talking points must give way to the tangible.

What matters to most people when all is said and done is the food on their table, the money in their pockets and the roof over their head. Naturally, a sense of community drives many voters, but elections cannot be won through street marches in aid of the NHS. It’s an established truism that Labour will best serve the NHS, and people understand that all too well, but it cannot rely on this one-trick pony to carry it through to government.

Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime

Possibly the best thing to come out of the Blair era was the acknowledgment that the great mass of Labour voters were not ultra-liberal, as the Westminster establishment would have you believe but are in fact deeply socially conservative. As such, it’s crucial not only for the execution of justice, but for the electability of the party that Labour are seen to come down hard on criminals and serve justice to victims.

This should come in tandem with core Labour values about alleviating poverty, which we know to be the leading cause of crime since the devil will find work for idle hands to do. Any attempt to crack down on crime must do so heavily and stringently on perpetrators, while simultaneously delivering a revolutionary jobs program to put those idle hands to work.

As a consequence, such people will be able to sustain a family and home, thus giving people a stake in society they would be unwilling to discard with wanton criminality. The Tories have shamelessly cut back the numbers of police to levels last seen in 2003[xvii]. Prisons are being sold to private companies and the conditions that occur within them as a result is nothing short of disgraceful.

Prison guards are striking, and criminals are forcibly taking control of their own prisons, if such a thing could be believed to be true in 21st century Britain. Not only is this a national crisis that warrants an urgent response, but it’s a political opportunity Labour has thus far made no move to exploit.

It should call for and develop credible plans to introduce an increase in police numbers, prison reform, and higher wages for those on the frontline keeping our streets safe. Labour should be tough on crime because it’s the working class who suffer disproportionately at the hands of criminals without the benefits of gated drives and suburbia to protect them.

The Labour party has thus far failed to make political capital from any of these issues. It should go forth hand in hand with the police unions and declare that Labour will be second to none in its commitment and strength of purpose to cut down crime and clean up our prisons. Labour will serve the interests of victims and not criminals once again.

Corbyn’s irreparably damaging comments that he was ‘unhappy’ with the shoot-to-kill policy have done nothing to reduce the idea that Labour are soft on crime. The party needs to push the message night and day until it’s accepted as a truism that under Labour the streets will be safe again. 

Speaking to the People

Many in the Labour party have become totally removed from the voters they serve. Famously, Emily Thornberry poured scorn on a white van man for daring to hang the English flag on his own home. She was roundly attacked by people living outside the ultra-liberal Westminster bubble and was forced to resign from her then position as Shadow Attorney General, though since then Corbyn has secured her promotion to even greater heights.

It’s no surprise that working-class people continue to turn to UKIP in such numbers, when Labour’s North London elite mocks anyone patriotic or traditional in outlook. The voters of Rochester and Strood where the comments were made had nothing in common with Emily Thornberry and the beliefs she manifests, yet she felt perfectly entitled to go there and belittle the very people whose support she should have been trying to secure.

Unsurprisingly, Labour came 3rd in the constituency, losing over 1

Such events are symptomatic of a wider problem, which at the moment is embodied within the Labour leadership. The public watched in outrage as Jeremy Corbyn failed to sing the national anthem during a Battle of Britain commemoration. The papers made hay when Corbyn made a half-hearted bow at the Cenotaph, and did so, by the way, in a tatty suit. When the Red Flag is sung, it brings a smile to activists’ faces but confusion to the country at large.

Corbyn is known to be a republican. There is no problem with that. But he must understand that the vast majority of the country are in favor of the British monarchy because it speaks to their patriotism, is synonymous with their British identity, and is associated with the wars from times gone by and those lost in them.

Any leader of any party should sing the national anthem with gusto, and do so in the finest black suit with the boldest red tie. A refusal or failure to engage in the traditions that venerate the nation and honor our war dead sends a clear signal to the working class of this country that Labour is not the party for them. Indeed, many in the country view Corbyn as directly ‘anti-British’ given his close ties to IRA figures and his now infamous comments calling Hezbollah his ‘friends’.

Some will suggest that the aforementioned are merely superficial issues. In many ways, they are an issue of presentation, but the image the Labour party and its present leadership is not a secondary or tertiary concern, it should be the primary concern for any party seeking to win power.

It’s all well and good having an excellent manifesto, but if no one reads it or gives it credence because they believe its authors are intrinsically unpatriotic, then the manifesto is entirely useless.

Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader is essentially a job interview with the British people at large. He must win their approval in order for them to grant him power. Yet he can’t be bothered to wear a decent suit, which in the opening days of his leadership campaign was endearing and charming, but at this point marks him as an unprepared amateur.

The Labour party has a war coffer of funds at its disposal, including membership subscriptions of over 500,000 individuals, a long list of big private donors, and a great deal more cash donated by trade unions. Yet for all these resources, there isn’t a single advisor who can tell Corbyn not to wear black suit trousers with a blue suit jacket during Prime Minister’s question time. When members of the public go for a job interview, they dress to impress, and they expect their leaders to do the same.

We need a leader of the Labour party flanked by the Union Flag, bellowing the national anthem, and embracing patriotism the same way the people do. Sadly, it appears the liberal elite feels shame and embarrassment at any suggestion of national pride.

There are people who understand this. Andy Burnham makes a particularly good example. A working-class lad who graduated from Cambridge, he returned to his home town to represent Leigh as a member of parliament, where he notably worked to secure justice for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster cover-up.

From a cold reception in a speech at the Anfield Football Grounds in 2009, he returned after five tireless years of fighting for justice to a well-earned hero’s reception. He wasn’t afraid to speak about that which for so long Labour had considered taboo, namely immigration, and during his bid for the leadership in 2015, he did just that.

Burnham rightly acknowledged all the good that immigration brings, from economic growth to cultural enrichment, while at the same time talking about those left behind by uncontrolled immigration. He talked of a factory worker in his constituency who sat alone during lunch times as he was the only English-speaking worker.

He rightly identified that immigration had disproportionately taken a toll on Labour’s industrial and post-industrial heartlands, and since his failed campaign, he has become even more vocal on this issue.

Alas, for some reason he lacked a certain spark during the campaign, though that aside, he spoke directly to the country, but yet it was the niche Labour party membership who had for the first time the total say on the new leader. Consequently Corbyn won. Burnham has moved out of the front line of national politics towards a campaign to be the mayor of Manchester. Let’s hope that he and his fellows plan a return in the near future.

Chapter V – Conclusions

There absolutely is a place for social liberals within the modern Labour party. The Labour party has a history of pushing through excellent liberal reforms from Barbra Castle legislating equal pay for equal work between the genders to the introduction of civil partnerships under Blair.

Throughout its history, Labour has been at the forefront of liberal reforms that have liberated people of all stripes, and it’s a good thing too. It’s also right that the Labour party platform deals with discrimination against transgender, gay, and black and minority ethnic individuals, but it should not do so at the expense of all else.

Too often, Labour party circles have discussion dominated by issues that (while important) effect .0

How can it be that lifelong gay activist Peter Tatchell, feminist icon Germaine Greer, and the left-of-Labour George Galloway have all been no-platformed or attacked on our university campuses. The attitudes that lead to such absurd action are rife among Labour party members and less often to be seen amongst the general populace, for whom these individuals would be considered far left, not something-or-other-ophobic.

There’s a false equivalence between parties like UKIP, a liberal isolationist organization, on the one hand, and fascism or racism on the other, and the comparison between them is consistently pushed by groups like Momentum, the Alliance for Workers Liberty and the Socialist Workers Party, all of which are groups operating with or within the Labour party.

Here’s an excerpt from the SWP publication the Socialist Worker, which I have seen distributed by Labour party members outside meetings and talks:

“And in Stoke Central the racist UKIP party, which came second there at the last general election, wants to whip up racism to take the seat from Labour. Socialist Worker is calling for a vote for Labour in both elections. They will be seen as referendums on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour—and Corbyn could be forced to resign as leader if Labour does badly.

The racist right will feel ecstatic if UKIP leader Paul Nuttall wins in Stoke. Labour has rightly attacked Nuttall for his previous statements supporting privatization of the NHS. But Labour’s official campaign has not challenged UKIP over its racism. Labour will be most effective if it both attacks the cuts and also confronts UKIP divisive racism.”[xviii]

It’s simply not enough to shout ‘racist’ and expect to win an argument. In fact, at this point it’s no longer even a case of diminishing returns, but it’s actually backfiring, making people more inclined to vote for UKIP when their concerns about migration are met with insult by leftists. We on the left should be trying to win debates, not shut them down.

This isn’t an appeal to the SWP to change their tactics. They are free agents and can do as they please. But the fact that the Labour party leadership meets with them, gives them interviews and is commonly seen marching alongside them is indicative of the sort of attitudes that fester in Labour and also appears to be a soft endorsement of such views.

It’s part of a wider problem where certain social liberals are going so far in their anti-racism campaigns that they shut down free speech within the media, on university campuses, and on the streets, more often than not targeting people who were never racist in the first place.

In short, these liberals have become the very illiberal people they believe they’re fighting against. Such people are fooled into believing the rest of the country is on their wavelength, buoyed up by thousands of retweets and Facebook likes, yet they do not appear to understand that their online presence is an echo chamber. The more their preaching is welcomed by the converted, the more steadfast they become in their initial beliefs.

Most people in the country are not anything close to this level of ultra-liberal, and such attitudes do not resonate with them. The great mass of people are patriotic and socially conservative, and their concern with politics extends to ensuring the system provides them with a safety net and the opportunity for employment.

That doesn’t mean the country at large doesn’t have a sense of and desire for social justice. Of course it does. But the best way to ensure it is to first establish economic justice. When Labour party figures engage in extended diatribes about intersectional feminism, which to most people of both genders means nothing, it turns the public off.

Liberalism is a welcome element of the Labour coalition, but it cannot continue in such an extreme form, nor can it override concern for the economy and for jobs. Labour need to talk less about rules surrounding transgender usage of bathrooms in North Carolina, and more, much more, about jobs.

Corbyn’s position is untenable. He has had second chance upon second chance and failed to rehabilitate his image or reform his party. His name is toxic and his leadership destructive, and for these reasons, he must go.

In his place, we need a strong man or woman who understands the patriotism that stirs within Labour’s core vote, who understands the nation’s deep social conservatism, and who is prepared to meet the electorate’s demands for homes and jobs. Perhaps an Andy Burnham, a Gisela Stewart, a Dan Jarvis, a Richard Burgeon, or someone else entirely.

Labour must overcome its misconceptions about the people’s wants by breaking free of both Westminster and its online echo chambers.

The public are not shocked or angered about cuts to the benefits bill, in fact it’s a popular position[xix]. On this, let’s deliver the biggest benefits cut yet seen, and let them fall on the corporate welfare that now costs over £50 billion a year between working tax credits and housing benefit alone.

Let’s force corporations to pay a living wage, and put the working tax credit savings into a jobs program that will mop up any collateral unemployment. Let’s build houses until prices fall and housing benefit drops to record lows. Let’s cut old-age benefits for the very richest pensioners who have no need of them, and distribute that money to the needy elderly according to their ability and means.

Over a million food parcels were distributed by food banks to hungry citizens throughout the country in 2015[xx], evidence if any more were needed that our infrastructure, welfare, and employment programs are totally failing the British people.

Unfortunately, the people accessing these food banks are the least likely to turn out in a general election. Let’s take Labour’s mass membership and send it to deprived communities to knock on doors and win support from those who have never voted before. Such an effort should be supported by its hundreds of MPs, thousands of councilors, and hundreds of thousands of trade union affiliated members.

Labour’s war coffers are full enough to help out its members when they sacrifice their time for the party. Travel and other associated costs should be subsidized in such campaigns.

Let’s take a strong message into the heart of the country, into Scotland, Wales, the Midlands and the North, that Labour will deliver British jobs for British workers.  It will carry through to the agricultural areas which the Tories presume to sit upon since time immemorial and deliver a program to get British farms working again.

Let’s go into London and make clear that Labour is the party for social justice, and that begins with housing. Guarantee the construction of at least 250,000 homes every year and provide credible plans on how it will be done because whether you’re Black, White, trans, gay, straight, male or female, your primary concern is shelter, of which there is currently a dire shortage.

Let’s spark off a renaissance in 21st century manufacturing, now with the benefits of automation and renewable energy. Take to the public a message that cuts in the foreign aid budget will deliver a program of nuclear, tidal, wind, and solar energy expansion that will not just create innumerable high-paying jobs but will have the added advantage of saving the climate.

Let’s wade into the realm of the intelligentsia and say loud and clear that Labour is the party for true liberals, those who believe in rationalism, freedom of speech, and tolerance. Let’s talk to those who face the prospect of a life behind bars and deliver to them a place behind a college desk, a workbench or the wheel of a JCB.

Let us go to the people and promise them; Jobs, Homes and Health.

[i] Khan, O. (2015 May 15) Race and the 2015 General Election Part 1: Black and Minority Ethnic Voters. Retrieved from http://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/race-and-the-2015-general-election-black-and-minority-ethnic-voters

[ii] Monegan, A. (2014 August 20) Self-employment in UK at Highest Level Since Records Began. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/20/self-employment-uk-highest-level

[iii] BBC Business. (2015 March 18) Economy Tracker: Unemployment. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10604117

[iv] Mirza-Davies J. (2016 November 21) Apprenticeship Statistics: England. Retrieved from http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06113/SN06113.pdf

[v] Blacking, D. (2014 July) So You Want to Be a Legal Aid Lawyer? Retrieved from http://lacuna.org.uk/justice/so-you-want-to-be-a-legal-aid-lawyer/

[vi] BBC Business (2015 September 21) Why Is the UK’s Housing Benefit Bill so High? Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34290727

[vii] OECD. (2016 April 13) Development Aid in 2015 Continues to Grow despite Costs for In-donor Refugees. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/ODA-2015-detailed-summary.pdf

[viii] Leach, B. (2012 December 19) One in Four Support Britain’s Foreign Aid Policies. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/9770644/One-in-four-support-Britains-foreign-aid-policies.html

[ix] Lubin, G. (2014 March 16) How Russians Became Crimea’s Largest Ethnic Group, in One Haunting Chart. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/crimea-demographics-chart-2014-3?IR=T

[x] Socialist Worker (2017 February 28) Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell Spoke to Socialist Worker on the Recent By-election Results. Retrieved from https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/44161/Shadow+chancellor+John+McDonnell+spoke+to+Socialist+Worker+on+the+recent+by+election+results

[xi] Migration Watch UK (2014 November 18) Opinion Poll Results on Immigration. Retrieved from https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPaper/document/249

[xii] Migration Watch UK (2015 March 25) Immigration Policy and Black and Minority Ethnic Voters. Retrieved from https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/11.37

[xiii] Castella, T. (2015 January 13) Why Can’t the UK Build 240,000 Houses a Year? Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30776306

[xiv] BBC News (2013 August 8) More UK births Than any Year Since 1972, Says ONS. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23618487

[xv] Dunne, P. Mckenna, H. and Murray, R. (2016 July) Deficits in the NHS 2016. Retrieved from https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/field/field_publication_file/Deficits_in_the_NHS_Kings_Fund_July_2016_1.pdf

[xvi] Our Ten Pledges to Rebuild and Transform Britain. Retrieved from http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/pledges

[xvii] Newburn, T. (2015 November 24) What’s Happening to Police Numbers? Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34899060

[xviii] Clark, N. (2017 February 14) Clive Lewis Backs off, but the Labour Right is out for Corbyn’s Blood. Retrieved from [xix] Wells, A. (2011 May 16) Strong Public Support for Benefit Cuts. Retrieved from https://yougov.co.uk/news/2011/05/16/strong-public-support-benefit-cuts/

[xx] BBC News. (2015 April 22) Record Numbers Use Food Banks – Trussell Trust. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32406120

Alt Left: Some of My Positions on Conservative and Liberal US Foreign Policy

Is it ok for me to believe in Leftist economics yet still agree on many points with the neocons when it comes (rhyme, hah) to foreign policy? Conservative opinions I like:

  • Occupation of Palestine.
  • bombing of Yemen.
  • Invasion of Iraq.
  • Invasion of Lybia.
  • Anti Hamas and Hezbollah sentiment.
  • Pre-coup Erdogan (he has one of the rails now).
  • France´s colonization of Algeria.

Now these things aren’t perfect, but optimal compared to the other alternatives.

  • Aggression against Russia regarding Ukraine, I’d prefer to have an referendum in Ukraine about EU membership, to give NATO aggression legitimacy. The issue with this is that the European Commission isn’t clear on whether it wants Ukraine in the EU. I want to replace all of the non-White subsidies/investing (welfare for children, loans for adults) with EU subsidies and troops in Eastern Europe, LEBENSRAUM!!!. https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/more-than-half-of-ukrainians-want-to-join-eu-poll-shows-32735

The liberal foreign policies I agree with are: -Legalization of drugs (affecting Latin america). -Diplomacy with Iran (I’m a big fan of Obama s negotiations about the nuke thing.). -Ok with leaving Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine to Russia (Ukraine would already be losing an shit ton of people to Russia anyway through emigration) as long as it leads to EU membership of Ukraine,

Sure, the fact you like my economics is amazing enough to keep you around. My positions: Conservative opinions I like: – Occupation of Palestine. NOPE – Bombing of Yemen. NOPE – Invasion of Iraq. NOPE – Invasion of Libya. NOPE – Anti-Hamas and Hezbollah sentiment. NO on Hezbollah because I love Hezbollah. I don’t like Hamas too much, but the Hamas-haters are worse, and anyway they are pragmatic for Islamists. – Pre-coup Erdogan (he has one of the rails now). NOPE. Rails? – France´s colonization of Algeria. NOPE. Aggression against Russia regarding Ukraine, id prefer to have an referendum in Ukraine about EU membership, to give NATO aggression legitimacy. The issue with this is that the European commission isn’t clear on whether it wants Ukraine in the EU. I want to replace all of the non-white subsidies/investing (welfare for children, loans for adults) with EU subsidies and troops in Eastern Europe, LEBENSRAUM!!! NOPE. Not sure if I want Ukraine in the EU. Anyway, I hate the EU. Mostly I don’t want them in NATO, Hell no. Also I do not want more North American Terrorist Organization troops in Eastern Europe. Not sure about cutting the safety net either, especially racially like that. See? Look above. Conservatives are always wrong on foreign policy. Period. The liberal foreign policies I agree with are: – Legalization of drugs (affecting Latin America). OF COURSE. – Diplomacy with Iran (I’m a big fan of Obama’s negotiations about the nuke thing.). SURE. – Ok with leaving Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine to Russia (Ukraine would already be losing an shit ton of people to Russia anyway through emigration) as long as it leads to membership of Ukraine. ABSOLUTELY, I support the annexation of Crimea and I support the Donbass fighters. I wish Russia would just annex the Donbass. It would solve so many problems. Not sure about Ukraine and EU membershit. Anyway, I hate the EU too. EU is the economic arm of the North American Terrorist Organization. See? Liberal foreign policy is always right.

Everything You Need to Know about the Recent Allied Missile Attacks on Syria

The US and France are both confirming that all of Assad’s chemical weapons have been destroyed in these attacks. Of course that’s nonsense as the attacks would have caused poisonous smoke clouds and Assad doesn’t have any chemical weapons, but never mind. Keep this mind the next time they try this bullshit, and there will be a next time. Please recall that Secretary of State John Kerry, President Barack Obama and other top Administration officials certified that Syria had gotten rid of its chemical weapons. I guess they were all lying? Also the OPCW certified that they had all been destroyed too. Yet a few years later, the OPCW is saying Assad used sarin at Khan Sheikhoun. Did they lie the first time? Did Assad start making them again? This makes no sense.

Syrians are rallying around Assad. His popularity has never been greater. Good job America! You just boosted Assad’s ratings!

Trump’s hardcore base, Alex Jones of Infowars, is livid over these attacks. He may lose some of his base for this folly. However, Twitter is full of yahoos cheering on the attacks. Looking at them, almost all are Trumpist Republicans. There are a few Dems too, even progressives?!

Also Russian planes flooded the skies over Damascus and areas that were hit two hours into the barrage. Apparently a serious warning against future attacks. As soon as that happened, the allies stopped their attacks.

American yahoos, mostly conservatives, think that the US military has no equals. They are outraged at reports that many of the missiles were shot down, and they say it’s lies. This is part of the war psychosis that our society cultivates. See recent Glen Greenwald’s tweets and articles analyzing the American elites and public’s love of war.

An ISIS attack was coordinated with the allied strikes. This has happened a lot. US special forces and ISIS are working together in the east right now. ISIS is all over over there, but we are refusing to attack them. Also, many ISIS changed uniforms and went to the Al-Tanf base in Eastern Syria where the US and allies are training more rebels. We just trained 5-10,000 rebranded ISIS over there. We are using ISIS to keep Assad out of Eastern Syria, which we have essentially colonized. 103 cruise missiles were fired and 71 were shot down. That’s a ~7 What happened was this: Russian electronic warfare. Russian EW capabilities are among the best in the world. The US knows little about them as they are mostly secret. Even most Russian people don’t know much about them. This equipment was used to help down those missiles and that is how the kill rate went from 1 Here is what happened. Russian EW jams the cruise missile as it is incoming. This causes it to lose its connection to the place it was fired from which is guiding it. It then reverts to its own auto-guide system, which is not nearly as good. As a result of the jamming and the switch to auto-guide, the missile often goes off-course but most importantly, it slows down a lot. The slowing down of the missiles is what made them so much easier for Syrian AA (which is early 70’s tech – let’s face it) to shoot down so many missiles. The same must have happened to the Israeli missiles, of which six out of nine were shot down by Syria. The Russians had to have jammed those missiles as they were coming in, otherwise the Syrians would have only shot down one or two of them.

Note that these strikes took place right before the OPCW team was to head to Douma to investigate the attacks. Remember in the Iraq War when the war started just before the UN was getting ready to confirm that Saddam had no WMD’s? We start these wars based on lies because we don’t the investigators to come in and find out it’s bullshit! Notice that the UK, France and the US just attacked Syria after Mohammad bin Sultan, the horrible new Saudi leader, visited those three exact countries? See how this works? By the way, the three places were bombed were part of Assad’s dismantled chemical weapons program – a research center, an ammo dump and a command and control facility. All of these were inspected by the OPCW which confirmed that all chemical weapons and apparatus in those places had been destroyed. The OPCW were due to inspect those places again because the allies said that Assad had revamped them in a new chemical weapons program, but we bombed all three of those places so now the OPCW can’t go there to confirm our chemical weapons fairy tales? See how this works?  

Something Wrong with America? or Why Is America Hated? By A. J. Harvey-Hall

An interesting piece from a reader and financial supporter (thank you!) of this website. Hope you enjoy it.

Something Wrong With America? or Why is America hated?

By A. J. Harvey-Hall, Australia

Where do I start? I originally wrote this in 2013 when I was mad as hell, and here we are in 2015, and I am still mad as hell at you guys. Most of what I have written has come true. Don’t believe me – ask your Remote Viewing (Project Stargate) people to drop in and check me out. It works both ways in case you are unaware. Coming from Australia I can tell you a hell of a lot of where America “went wrong”. I am not saying Australia is/was perfect – it’s just a fact we were the last large island/continent settled by the so-called enlightened Westerners – due to distance we saw where everyone else stuffed up and decided as a whole not to do that (Commonwealth knowledge?). Canada is very similar to Australia, so look to them as well. One thing’s for certain – everyone gets a fair go in this country. We are multicultural and tolerant. Early Western settlers did not treat the Aboriginals appropriately, but in summary, it was probably no different to any superior culture that overtook another at some time in history. It’s easy to look back and say what the Westerners did to Aboriginals was disgraceful. I have a right to tell you how it is because Australia is the only country that has fought every war alongside America all through WW1 and WW2 and several “police” actions. Let’s revisit some words spoken by one of your greatest presidents in the course of the America’s Cup back in 1962 when Australia was still a country of 10 million: Quoting Kennedy –

Ambassador, Lady Beale, Ambassador and Mrs. Berckmeyer, Ambassador and Lady Ormsby Gore, the Ambassador from Portugal, our distinguished Ministers from Australia, Ladies and Gentlemen: I know that all of us take the greatest pleasure in being here, first of all because whether we are Australian or American, we are all joined by a common interest, a common devotion and love for the sea. And I am particularly glad to be here because this Cup is being challenged by our friends from Australia, this extraordinary group of men and women numbering some 10 million, who have demonstrated on many occasions, on many fields, in many countries, that they are the most extraordinarily athletic group in the world today, and that this extraordinary demonstration of physical vigor and skill has come not by the dictates of the state because the Australians are among the freest citizens in the world, but because of their choice… Australia became committed to physical fitness, and it has been disastrous for the rest of us. We have the highest regard for Australia, Ambassador. As you said, we regard them as very satisfactory friends in peace and the best of friends in war. And I know there are a good many Americans of my generation who have the greatest possible reason to be grateful to the Australians who wrote a most distinguished record all the way from the desert of North Africa, and most particularly in the islands of the South Pacific, where their particular courage and gallantry I think met the strongest response in all of us in this country. But I really don’t look to the past. I look to the present. The United States and Australia are most intimately bound together today, and I think that — and I speak as one who has had some experience in friendship and some experience in those who are not our friends — we value very much the fact that on the other side of the Pacific, the Australians inhabit a very key and crucial area and that the United States is most intimately associated with them. So beyond this race, beyond the result, rests this happy relationship between two great people. – President John F. Kennedy, Newport, Rhode Island, September 14, 1962

Let’s go back to the (your) War of Independence: The English were wrong in what they were doing – hence independence – not a problem. In gaining independence however you put in place the building blocks that as of today are not crumbling – they have already crumbled. Every builder in the world knows that unless your foundations are spot on and repaired when cracks appear, a structure cannot live for hundreds of years. You must update and repair as you go to ensure the building is viable for hundreds of years ongoing – not just paper over it. The building I am referring to is the “United States of America”. It has now crumbled as a result of a demarcation dispute between your two political parties that act worse than our Australian Parliament. Each party is only out to make a name for itself and has lost the understanding of “serving the people”. Let’s talk about your constitution – ohhh – am I upsetting you already? Remember I am an outsider who is looking in giving you an unbiased opinion. When your Constitution was framed it was OK, for the day! It is now the oldest ‘out of date’ Constitution in the world. Don’t stand behind your outdated constitution. Start again. Be bold. Yes – you have made amendments, but those amendments are just papering over extensions – you need to go back and look at the foundations and do the work there. Take one example – a right to bear arms. It was OK 200 years ago when things were a bit rough – it is not acceptable in the 20th or 21st Centuries, but you will not remove that right. How many people have died in your country as a result of that one so called right? Your gun culture is one of the bases (not basis) that has crumbled. This is ultimately why you have numerous police forces that are happy to shoot first and ask questions later. Your children and work colleagues will continue to die in massacres as a result of this “right“. They will continue to die in soft target areas such as schools, mass transport, malls, parades (early days – wait for it). Hang on – maybe the British, Russians or Communists are still coming to invade. Pity you don’t update your Constitution the same way you enforce updates to laws you force upon people who want to trade with you. You allow gun lobbyists to “set the course” with government officials, senators and the public. Since when did lobbyists of any ilk run the government? Since when did they represent “the people”? You continue to think of arms as a gun – they are no longer guns – instead are bombs, viruses or maybe even the Internet itself. But it’s OK because you have a right” to bear arms. Let’s talk about your medical care. Actually let’s save time and refer to Michael Moore. He is spot on. How can you allow your own citizens suffer and even die on the streets because they don’t have medical insurance? And some of your citizens applaud this stance. How about your returned veterans – even wounded veterans have to fight to get medical assistance upon return – why – because you outsourced the process and someone applied expiry dates that wounded veterans were not aware of. It then requires an act of Congress or a law to be passed to allowed them back into the system. More veterans have committed suicide upon return that you lost in actual combat. That is an absolute disgrace. Even that poor, small country across from Florida – Cuba – does it better than you. A pissant island makes you look like a disgrace. Ohhh that’s right…you won’t interact with them because they put one over you in the Cuban Missile crisis. Get over it – you eventually did with Vietnam. And that leads me to another chapter – Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia…or shouldn’t I mention all the “minor” illegal wars you waged? You lost LOST the Vietnam War – admit it. You will also lose the Afghanistan and Iraqi Wars. The Middle Eastern wars are also bankrupting your country – why can’t day to day Americans see this? No one (starting with Alexander the Great) has ever conquered Afghanistan – get real or get out. If you think those wars are over, and as G. W. Bush said, “Mission completed”…think again. You have effectively put people in charge who are far worse than the dictators that were already there in Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Afghanistan etc. and now you are trying to do the same in Crimea via the Ukraine. You are responsible for the extremists that are now running around the Middle East, and I don’t mean Al Qaeda. You are responsible for the creation of ISIS. Let’s look at all those African refugees (including Syrians, Lebanese etc.) who are risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe. The USA is totally responsible for all these simply because of WMD lies that resulted in the invasion of Iraq. All Middle East actions from thereon are his fault. He is a war criminal – oopps did I break one of your laws saying he is a war criminal in the land of the free and home of the brave? The land of free speech? Fact – history is written by the victors. The USA is trying to run the Middle East like a corporation – all the top executives from the G. W. Bush era on are criminals lining their own pockets. Starting wars in the 21st century will no longer get a country out of a recession. It’s simply profit-making. Why don’t you take Saudi Arabia to task for 9/11? Ohhh that’s right, they control the oil flow. Don’t upset them – why don’t you find an alternative to Middle East oil? Are you getting a message here? The entire world dislikes and even hates you. You have acted the bully for many years after The Korean War, effectively destroying the good will you established in the early 20th century. You are hated across all lines – economic, religious, social, political and otherwise. What is your obsession with Israel? Fact – Israel was founded by Jewish terrorists. They set off bombs, killed people and destroyed property to achieve their aims. Because the world had ‘sympathy’ for Jews after WW2, it happened and a blind eye was turned. Today Middle America strongly believes in the Bible literally and as such wants to see Israel succeed in order the “Second Coming” results. People – the Bible is a guide. It is not Gospel. Why? In the early centuries, the Roman Catholic Church held conferences and decided which books, writings and teachings ended up in “The Bible”. God did not decide which early Christian books ended up in The Bible – so it is absolute rubbish for someone to state that the Bible guides what the United States should do. Too many real accounts of Jesus’ workings were excluded. The Roman Catholic Church is responsible for closing our eyes to the real Christ. Hopefully Pope Francis can arrest this BS. There are numerous United Nations resolutions that Israel has refused to comply with. By the way – are you (USA) financially paid up with the UN, or do you still refuse to pay in a timely manner in order to attempt to remind them that you rule over them? How about the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq that lead to invasion? Colin Powell held up a drawing and said – here is the proof. You never found proof and never admitted you were wrong. Yes – Saddam Hussein was a bastard but he had the warring clans under control. It was all ALL about oil and nothing else. When the mud got too deep, you changed tact and said it was all about democracy. How far is Greece from Iraq? – damn closer that the USA. If the Greeks could not influence them – you sure in Hell can’t. You can resolve the Palestinian problem in a matter of weeks, but you won’t due to that “minority” in the Middle East. This bullshit has been going on for 60 years. Everyone knows (sorry – obviously you don’t) – the longer a problem festers, the harder and more costly it is to resolve. I worked in the finance industry for many years and can only say that the number of times “we” (non-Americans) had to change our processes and rules etc. because the USA had set ‘”new standards” makes me sick. The standards set were not improvements – they were changed to line your pockets. Look at Sarbanes Oxley for example – the world spent hundreds of billions of $’s attempting to comply because the USA would not do business with another country unless they did so only to see the USA itself found it too costly to implement itself! What a joke! We now have many European countries in dire straits as a direct result of the exporting of American ways. You destroyed the financial industry with your Subprime rubbish. What about changes to financial models and makes etc. of any product or service that demand that people buy the “updated” version to reline your pockets. This is simply to keep the money wheel turning. You are desperately trying to ensure it keeps turning long enough for your problems to be passed to some other country or the next generation. Ever thought about how much you spend on items such as defense, spying, war, inventing, manufacturing and using machines of war? Just imagine if only half of that was diverted to your health programs, science or to the benefit of other countries less fortunate? What about converting the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines into an international force for peace and relief of local and international disasters? How can you allow a company to have a patent on the human breast cancer gene? You have to be kidding the world – but then again that’s your Constitution at work. No one owns human genes! What happened to the “United States” that I remember as a child? That far-off country whose technology was so far advanced we could never dream of equaling. What happened to that country that every county – even Russia in the old days – feared  -a form of respect? Oh – and how long before I get the FBI, CIA, and all your other bullshit muscle agencies to frame me for some rubbish and shut me down… A parting true story: In late 1978/early 1979 my family traveled to Washington state where my father was working on behalf of a company in Australia. Unfortunately, departing Auckland NZ they had an emergency which meant we had to go back, dumping fuel on the way. 24 hours later we took off again after repairs and finally landed in Honolulu. My mother was pretty savvy and said get to the front of the Customs line so we can get to the connecting flight to LA. Well – I was at the front of the queue, 18 years old, looking at an overweight female Customs officer wearing a gun strutting back and forwards. Her welcoming words to the Australians and New Zealanders were, “If you step over that yellow line, I will shoot you!” What a fucking joke – in 1978! No wonder you have a gun problem. Welcome to America! Congratulations to the NRA who lobby the most congressman/women on both sides. Fact – I was born in July 1960, and in November 1963 I still vividly recall my parents being very upset when they heard of the news of Kennedy’s death despite my being three years old. All the more remarkable is the fact that we lived in Papua New Guinea – a protectorate of Australia at the time – literally a colonial backwater. I was too young to understand but remembered the words Kennedy and death and vaguely remembered the Cuba Crisis. We cried in the backwaters of the Pacific! I fully understand that the Kennedys had their dalliances. Small beer in the scheme of things. He and his brother are the standard you must return to. Did Kennedy not say “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country?” And in closing, written on the base of the Statue of Liberty…

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Emma Lazurus

My country totally lacks world-shaking oratory ,but I think we more than make up with it in our actions.

The Hell with the Pentagon

As the agency which enforces US foreign policy at gunpoint, the Pentagon has always blown. First of all, there is no such thing as the Defense Department. When has the Pentagon ever defended the country? Pearl Harbor? They did a fine job there, huh? Obviously the task of the Pentagon is not to defend the US mainland, which is all it ever ought to do anyway. Its task is to running around the world starting wars and killing people in other countries. Leaving aside whether that is sometimes a good idea (and I think it is,) what’s so defensive about that? The real name of the Pentagon is the War Department.That’s what it was always called until World War 2, which the War Department won. After that in a spate of Orwellian frenzy, we named an army of aggression an army of self-defense and comically renamed its branch the Defense Department. It’s like calling cops peace officers. You see anything peaceful about what a cop does in a typical day? Neither do I? There was a brief glimmer of hope there in WW2 when we finally starting killing fascists and rightwingers instead of sleeping with them, but the ink was barely dry on the agreements before we were setting up the Gladio fascists, overthrowing Greek elections and slaughtering Greek peasants like ants. Meanwhile it was scarcely a year after 1945 when the US once again started a torrid love affair with fascism and rightwing dictators like we have always done. We were smooching it up right quick with Europe’s fascists, in this case the former Nazis of Germany (who became the West German elite), Greek killer colonels, Mussolini’s heirs, actual Nazis in Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, Jew-Nazis in Palestine, Franco (who we never stopped sleeping with anyway), Salazar, the malign Mr. Churchill, the true repulsive Dutch royalty and disgusting European colonists the world over, who we showered with guns and bombs to massacre the colonized. In 1945, a war against fascism, reaction, Nazism and malign colonialism had ended, and for some reason America had fought against these things instead of supporting them as usual. 1946, and we were back in old style again, hiring Nazis by the busload for the CIA, overthrowing democratic governments and putting in genocidal dictatorships, becoming butt buddies with fascist swine everywhere. So you see we have always pretty much sucked. World War 1 was fought amidst one of the most dishonest propaganda campaigns the world had ever seen, the Korean War was a Godawful mess where we turned North Korea to flaming rubble with the population cowering in caves while slaughtering 3 million North Koreans. The horrific catastrophe called the Indochinese Wars, such as the Vietnam War, the Secret War in Laos and the Cambodian Massacre, where we genocided 500,000 Cambodians with bombs, driving the whole place crazy and creating the Khmer Rogue. Panama and Grenada were pitiful jokes, malign, raw, naked imperialism at its worst. The Gulf War was a brief return to sanity but turkey shoots are sickening. Of course that followed on with the most evil war in US history, the Nazi-like war on aggression called The War on the Iraqi People (usually called the Iraq War), the Afghan rabbit hole which started out sensibly enough but turned into another Vietnam style Great Big Mess. I suppose it is ok that we are killing Al Qaeda guys and I give a shout out to our boys over there fighting ISIS or the Taliban and Al Qaeda in South-Central Asia, Somalia and Yemen. Some people need killing. But I sure don’t feel that way about their superiors, the US officers who fund and direct ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc. out of an Operations Center in Jordan with Jordanian, Israeli (!), Saudi, UAE, and Qatari officers. And it was very thoughtful of the Pentagon to cover up the Ukrainian Air Force shootdown of the jetliner which we saw on the radar of our ships in Black Sea. And it was nice of the US to relay the flight path of the Russian jet to the Turks 24 hours in advance so they could shoot down that Russian jet and kill that pilot. One hand giveth and the other taketh away. For every good thing we do in Syria and Iraq, we do 10 or 20 bad things. Pretty much the story of the Pentagon. Sure if you fought in WW2 or one of the few other decent wars, you have something to be proud of, and I can even say, “Thank you for your service,” but the main thing is that you signed up for the rightwing army of the rich that is dead set against the people and popular rule everywhere on Earth. Sure, it’s a great army, professional, super-competent and deadly, but it’s generally tasked with doing lousy things. Why anyone would sign up for that reactionary nightmare of an institution is beyond me. America needs to level the Pentagon and put in a true People’s Army instead. Like that would ever happen.

Syrian Government Sued for Killing US Journalist

Here. I am sure that they did it. That’s a nasty little regime they have over there in Syria. On the other hand, Assad seems to be better than any of the alternatives, which isn’t saying much. I never agree with targeting journalists during war, but increasingly just about everyone does it. We definitely targeted journalists and even whole media outfits in the first weeks of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. We bombed the Al Jazeera building in Kabul, and we attacked Al Jazeera reporters in a Baghdad hotel. There were fatalities in both cases. In both Iraq wars, the US bombed all major Iraqi news outlets and newspapers, but most of them kept reporting anyway. The Pentagon said they were targeted for “disseminating enemy propaganda in wartime.” Recent Pentagon documents discuss the need to “control the narrative” during wartime and speak of another need to silence enemy critics and journalists who are seen as combatants in an information war. The language used to describe propaganda, controlling the narrative and targeting journalists sympathetic to the enemy is genuinely creepy. Lousy countries always do this sort of thing in wartime, but I thought we were above this. Putin has had reporters beaten up for reporting on Russian soldiers who were killed fighting in Ukraine when there supposed to be no Russians there. He is also implicated in the killing of journalists, including a woman who was famous for reporting on Russian atrocities in Chechnya. Turkey routinely targets journalists, especially Kurdish reporters. A number of them have been killed. Israel is notorious for targeting journalists. Palestinian journalists are arrested regularly, and a number have been shot by soldiers. A fair number of them have been killed. Some American journalists have also been killed by the IDF, and at least one was killed. The US would not defend this journalist at all, and instead seemed to take Israel’s side. So here we have a government that supports a foreign state over its own people. Our country should be called “USrael” to symbolize the extent to which we dutifully support this foreign country against all common sense. An interview with a representative of the Israeli government regarding this case was tense and combative, and the Israeli seemed to be arguing that journalists were legitimate targets as some sort of “terrorist supporters” or “terror propagandists.” I was always taught that my country was the good guy. I was taught how we generally fought fair and square in World War 2. This made me so proud to be an American. I learned quite a few things since then that made me question that line. But this recent behavior of the Pentagon’s has made me lose all hope. I had thought we were above this sort of crap and that we believed in fighting fair at least out of a gentlemanly honor. Turns out I was wrong. While we do fight quite a bit more fairly than most other countries (and so do the Israelis), a lot of our behavior is scumbucket low down there with the worst Turd World shitholes. Color me disenchanted. I am not so much an America-hater as a disappointed patriot gone sour.

The Fallujah ISIS Convoy Bombing That Never Happened

Here. I normally can’t stand this guy, and a lot of his stuff is just flat out wrong, but this time I think he is right on it. Remember when the media cheered about the bombing of an ISIS convoy heading out of Fallujah that killed 250 ISIS fighters? Well, it never happened. As with so many things about those wars over there, the whole thing is pretty much made up. First of all, yes, there was a vehicle convoy heading out of Fallujah at the end of the battle. Yes, it was bombed by Iraqi and apparently also US planes. Yes, many of the vehicles were destroyed, and it looks like quite a few people were killed and injured, though a journey to the site soon after the attack found few bodies. The problem is that it wasn’t a convoy of ISIS fighters heading out of Fallujah. It wasn’t even a convoy of military vehicles heading out of Fallujah. Instead it was a convoy of civilian vehicles heading out of the city. And it was filled with civilians, not with ISIS fighters. There are a few clues that this is indeed the case.

  1. Soon after the bombing of the convoy, a call went out to Baghdad of many dead and wounded civilians in the Fallujah area. Multiple plane and helicopter trips were flown to the area and, many of the wounded were medevacced out. The medevac process took several hours. The area where the civilians were killed and wounded was in the same general area as the convoy bombing.
  2. The reason that a trip to the scene of the attack showed few dead bodies was because the dead and wounded had been for the most part medevacced out or were flown out in body bags.
  3. ISIS seldom if ever travels in such huge convoys. There have been only two or three reports of ISIS convoys this long in the region since ISIS started fighting. They tend to travel in convoys that are much shorter and harder to detect. There is no way that ISIS would lead a huge convoy that size out of that city at the last minute. They are not that stupid.
  4. When the US first heard about the convoy they were asked whether to attack it, and Air Command decided not to attack the convoy because they felt that there were civilians present. Later they bombed it anyway after the Iraqis bombed it.
  5. A trip to the scene of the attack revealed many burned out vehicles. However almost all of them seemed to be civilian vehicles like sedans and minivans. ISIS doesn’t use vehicles like that on the battlefield.

Sorting it all out, it appears that this civilian convoy was not as innocent as it seemed. The best analysis of what happened is that this was a convoy of the families of the ISIS fighters who stayed in the city for most of the battle but finally left after the city fell. You could argue that the families of the fighters should be killed too, but I would not agree with you on that one.

Watching ISIS Videos

That’s what I have been doing a lot of these days. I do not like the execution videos, and I have seen enough executions anyway. But there are a lot of really cool combat videos, and those are really cool to look at. Basically firefights with automatic weapons, RPG’s, machine guns, technical vehicles with guns, various types of mortars, rockets, and antiaircraft guns. There is a fair amount of night fighting, which is a trip. It’s just guys shooting at each other and blowing stuff up, so you hardly see any gore in the battle videos. However, at the end, sometimes they go to the position that they overran, and among all of the other things present at the camp there are typically the dead bodies of some of the folks that ISIS is fighting. They also have really cool music in the background. There are interviews with ISIS fighters, but I have no idea what they are saying. The worst ISIS of all seem to be in Iraq. They look like a bunch of very, very pissed off guys. Boy are they mad! The one thing that shines right through their rage and hatred is one word…revenge. ISIS in Iraq seems to be out for revenge. For what I am not sure, but 3 I have heard that the many of the people in back of ISIS at the very top are Baath Party people and former Iraqi military. Obviously they are out for revenge for the last 13 years. They want paybacks, and paybacks are a bitch. The ISIS in Syria and Afghanistan don’t seem to be as pissed off, but I have not watched a lot of their videos out of Syria. There’s nothing to be worried about watching these videos. I am sure that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people watch at least some of those videos. I know that the site I found the videos on is a US site, and almost all of the commenters have a savage hatred of ISIS. So the idea that watching ISIS videos means you’re a terrorist is crap. I would say far more ISIS haters watch their videos than ISIS supporters. Just for the record, I utterly hate these scumbuckets, and if it ever comes down to it, I will grab an automatic weapon myself and try to kill them.  I am very much afraid of death, but dying fighting for your homeland and lifestyle against these hellions would actually be worth it. I would rather die fighting them than live under their rule, let’s put it that way, ok?

Blowback in Turkey

Here. It is such a terrible thing to say, but they really did ask for that airport attack. If you play with matches, you might just get burned. Turkey was playing with fire, and it got burned. One might wonder why ISIS would even attack Turkey in the first place. Although of course ISIS networks are still huge all across Turkey, the state has been carrying out some raids recently. Quite a few jihadis have arrested, some have been tried and a few have been convicted and sentenced. A number of others have been thrown out of the country. The MSM says that Turkey has been fighting ISIS in Syria since last year, but that is not really true, and Turkish jets surely do not attack ISIS in Syria. However, Turkey does allow its airbases to be used by the US and especially the West to bomb ISIS in Syria. And perhaps most importantly of all, Turkey just completed a major security cooperation deal with Israel. No sooner had the ink dried on that document, a mere eight hours later, ISIS unleashed its attackers, one from Chechnya, another from Kyrgyzstan and another from Uzbekistan. They had probably been in a safe house in Turkey for some time, waiting for instructions to set off the hit. With the Israeli peace deal, the order came down from ISIS headquarters in Raqqa to unleash to jihadis to punish Turkey for cooperating with the Israelis. The area is swarming with US intelligence and Turkish intelligence is also good and pervasive. But neither US, Turkish nor Israeli intel nor were able to intercept the go- ahead. These ISIS guys are pretty evil, but they’re damn good. Give em some credit. ISIS has possibly become one of the most skilled and deadly terrorist groups in recent history. A US intelligence official said about Turkey,

“The summer of our discontent has begun.”

Before the US idiotically invaded Iraq in its Nazi-like war of aggression and conquest, the Arab League presciently warned,

You are about to unleash the gates of Hell.

Arabs are not stupid. They know their people better than we do. After the US conquered Baghdad, Robert Fisk said, A modern Western Christian country has just conquered one of the most famous and powerful cities in the Arab Islamic World. This is a breathtaking event, stunning on a world scale. This will set into motion some very powerful forces. We will not see the end of this in my lifetime. Fisk knows the region as well as the Arab League does. Fisk is still alive, but so far he is right. First the US played with matches by invading and conquering one of the most powerful and legendary cities in the Arab Islamic world. The US played with fire and it got burned. Then Turkey played with matches by letting the Hellspawn created by that insane invasion set up camp in its country. Turkey played with fire too,. They not only got burned, but they set off a nasty brush fire that will be very hard to put out. If you don’t want to get burned, don’t play with fire!

You are about to unleash the gates of Hell… We will not see the end of this in my lifetime… The summer of our discontent has begun…

“France’s Response to Paris Attacks Encourages ISIS’s Caliphate Fantasy,” by Eric Walberg

Eric is a personal friend of mine and he published this on Academia.edu so that usually means anyone can grab it as long as you credit them. Lately, Eric writes for the Iranian media, presumably for money. I believe Kieth Preston is also writing for the Iranians these days.

I am putting this up mostly to provoke discussion.

France’s Response to Paris Attacks Encourages ISIS’s Caliphate Fantasy

Eric Walberg

France’s emotional response to the recent tragedy, devoid of reason and ignoring history, just makes matters worse.

 

The death toll in the November 13 attacks in Paris stands at 127. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sent a message to his French counterpart Francois Hollande condemning the attacks. “In the name of the Iranian nation, itself a victim of the evil scourge of terrorism, I strongly condemn these inhumane crimes and condole with the bereaved French nation and government.”

In contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opened his weekly Cabinet meeting by calling on world leaders to condemn terror against … Israel. He began by addressing the killing of two Israelis, ignoring the 81 Palestinians who have died in protests this month. “The time has come for the nations of the world to condemn terrorism against us as much as they condemn terrorism anywhere else in the world.” He pledged Israeli intelligence assistance to France, adding “An attack on any of us needs to be seen as an attack on all of us.”

Translate: France’s tragedy is a wake-up call for solidarity with … Israel.

France’s Colonial Legacy

Until 2012, France was spared serious terrorist attacks, but its enduring colonial mentality continues to stoke anger. Most evident recently was the official defense of anti-Muslim hate literature published by the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Rather than persecuting the Islamophobes, which would have prevented blowback by enraged Muslims, the French insistence on freedom led to an attack in January on the Paris offices of the magazine, killing 12 people and wounding 11 others.

Worse yet, the new Socialist President Hollande pushed ahead with a return to outright colonial invasion, with air strikes and arms to Syrian rebels in opposition to both the Syrian government and ISIS supporters. This confused policy only makes sense if the intent is to dismantle the Syrian state and refashion a Syrian puppet government, harking back to France’s invasion of Syria-Lebanon following WWI in collusion with Britain, when they destroyed the Ottoman state and set up puppet regimes across the Middle East.

France was slow to adjust to post-WWII decolonization, and stubbornly maintained its military presence not only in Vietnam but in the Middle East. Along with Britain, now both humiliated bankrupt powers, it was in no position to enforce its will, and it handed over its colonial possessions to the US either directly or via the new world order institutions. Plus, of course, intrigue where a glimmer of independence appeared, as in Iran in 1953 or Egypt 1956.

Worst of all was the horror France inflicted for more than a century in Algeria. Algeria had to suffer a long, brutal war of liberation in which a million Algerians died before France finally left in 1962. French meddling in Algeria since has only compounded the animosity, especially the support given the military coup in 1992 in which 200,000 Algerians died.

France’s current return to openly colonial policies, first in Afghanistan, then Libya, Mali and now Syria, are guaranteed to have dire consequences. To its credit, France did not support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but there are now 3,200 French troops there.

France and US Support the Terrorists

France and the US have played a dangerous and foolish hand in their great games of asserting world power, at times using jihadists (1980s in Afghanistan) and at other times attacking them (1990s+ in Afghanistan), sometimes both at the same time (2011+ in Syria).

“Thank God for the Saudis and Prince Bandar,” John McCain told CNN in January 2014. Is McCain not aware that two of the most successful factions fighting Syrian President Assad’s forces are Islamist extremist groups Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, and that their success is due to the support they have received from Qatar and Saudi Arabia? A senior Qatari official told The Atlantic journalist Steve Clemons that “he can identify al-Nusra commanders by the blocks they control in various Syrian cities. But ISIS is another matter. As one senior Qatari official stated, ‘ISIS has been a Saudi project.’”

France doesn’t have a wild card like McCain, but, like the US, supports Islamic fundamentalists in Syria and elsewhere through its ties with the Saudi and Qatari regimes and its actions in Syria. Even after it became obvious to everyone that the regime change project in Syria has led to an expansion of terrorism, Hollande was still pursuing it.

But then this hypocrisy goes for all the western nations, in the first place Canada, which has been bombing Syrian rebels and, at the same time, just signed a $14.8b arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The largest arms exports contract in Canadian history will be remembered as going to one of the worst human rights violators in the world and a funder of ISIS-related groups in Syria and Iraq.

In fact, Canada’s record on bombing Muslims in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, on restricting burqas and promoting ‘free speech’ defaming Islam, mirrors France, and led to a shooting last year that penetrated the parliament buildings in Ottawa and had Prime Minister Harper cowering in his closet.

Harper’s answer, when he had stopped shaking, was the same as Hollande’s: he insisted that “Canada will not be intimidated” by acts of violence and remained committed to Canada’s efforts “to work with our allies around the world and fight against the terrorist organizations … who bring their savagery to our shores.” He did admit that “we’re all aware and deeply troubled that both attacks were carried out by Canadian citizens, by young men born and raised in this peaceful country,” but, like Hollande today, failed to draw the logical conclusion.

Powder Keg

France has the largest Muslim population in Europe at 4m. Despite its claims of “liberty, equality and brotherhood”, it is considered the most racist country in Europe. French-Algerian communities still live on impoverished housing estates, go to bad schools, and have few opportunities for social advancement.

Discrimination in everything from jobs to housing is routine. There are few French-Algerians in politics, the law, the media or any other profession, though the prisons are full. Hollande refuses to reverse measures like the burqa ban and has highlighted his opposition to halal meat and praying in the street because of a lack of mosques.

Populist rightwing politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen routinely portray alienated migrant communities as France’s enemy within. Le Pen garnered 2

In their communique, the perpetrators of the recent attacks listed France’s crimes as leading a “new crusade” in Syria, as well as defending Charlie Hebdo magazine, and just because of general French decadence and racism. They claimed their targets were well chose ― a football match between ‘crusaders’ France and Germany attended by Hollande, and the Bataclan exhibition where “hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice” (the California group Eagles of Death Metal).

“This is for Syria,” were the last words of one of the Paris attackers. But he could have said it was for Mali, or Libya, or Iraq. France is very proactive against Islamists worldwide, especially in the face of what is frequently seen as British and American retreat. Over 10,000 French troops are currently deployed abroad. In addition to Iraq, there are over 5,000 troops in western and central Africa. Last week Hollande announced that France will deploy an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to assist the fight against ISIS.

As with Osama Bin Laden’s strategy of promoting dramatic terrorist attacks in the West to provoke a crackdown and to radicalize Muslims, the strategy behind the current attacks is to generate a French crackdown to encourage Muslims to follow ISIS’s caliphate fantasy. It has worked all too well so far, and Hollande’s vow to be “ruthless” in his response leads him and France in the wrong direction.

In his address on recent events, Iran’s Leader Imam Khameini acknowledged that “there are voices of criticism in the West about its colonial past. But they only criticize the distant past. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems?”

Originally published here.

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