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Ever more official lies from the US government

Ever more official lies from the US government

The false reality constructed for Americans parallels perfectly the false reality constructed by Big Brother in George Orwells’ dystopian novel 1984.

Consider the constant morphing of “the Muslim threat” from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, to al-Nusra, to ISIS to ISIL, to Daesh with a jump to Russia. All of a sudden 16 years of Middle East wars against “terrorists” and “dictators” have become a matter of standing up to Russia, the country most threatened by Muslim terrorism, and the country most capable of wiping the United States and its vassal empire off of the face of the earth.

Domestically, Americans are assured that, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing, that is, flooding the financial markets with newly printed money that has driven up the prices of stocks and bonds, America has enjoyed an economic recovery since June of 2009, which must be one of the longest recoveries in history despite the absence of growth in median real family incomes, despite the growth in real retail sales, despite the falling labor force participation rate, despite the lack of high value-added, high productivity, high wage jobs.

The “recovery” is more than a mystery. It is a miracle. It exists only on fake news paper.

According to CNN, an unreliable source for sure, Jennifer Tescher, president and CEO of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, reports that about half of Americans report that their living expenses are equal to or exceed their incomes. Among those aged 18 to 25 burdened by student loans, 54% say their debts are equal to or exceed their incomes. This means that half of the US population has ZERO discretionary income. So what is driving the recovery?

Nothing. For half or more of the US population there is no discretionary income there with which to drive the economy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NATO as a War-Racket

NATO as a War-Racket

NATO is the anti-Russia military club of nations, even after the communist Soviet Union and its military club against the U.S., the Warsaw Pact, ended in 1991 — NATO didn’t reciprocate that by ending itself, as it should have done (and would have done if the U.S. President at the time, George Herbert Walker Bush, had had any basic decency; instead, he said in private, “To hell with that; we won, they didn’t!” but he continued telling Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t move “one inch to the east” — which promise he was planning to violate, and which his successors have been violating). 

With the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact gone, NATO’s claimed raison d’etre was also gone, but NATO shamelessly continued on, and it even has expanded right up to Russia’s borders (just try to imagine what John Fitzgerald Kennedy would have thought if it hadn’t been Soviet nuclear missiles merely in Cuba in 1962, but all surrounding the U.S. — and that’s the situation today but reversed: today’s Russia is in the situation of 1962’s U.S., but even more so, though NATO has the audacity to accuse Russia of ‘aggression’ for, essentially, defending itself from NATO — from the enemies that are increasingly surrounding it!). (Yes, what America has been doing, really, is that bad.)

On April 6th, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (son of Norway’s Defense Minister) said that NATO must now expand outside Europe and North America:

Millions fleeing the region in a humanitarian crisis of a magnitude not seen since World War Two.Terrorist groups like ISIL taking hold of ungoverned spaces. And spreading violence across the region and beyond. Inciting attacks on our streets. From Brussels to Istanbul, Paris to San Bernardino. These are attacks on our open societies. On the values we share. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Anonymous claim Twitter is shutting down their accounts for harassing ISIS

Anonymous claim Twitter is shutting down their accounts for harassing ISIS

© Stefan Wermuth
Online activists involved in the #OpISIS campaign to rid social media of an Islamic extremist presence say Twitter has been suspending their accounts for online harassment against the terrorist group.

An Anonymous hacker made the claims after Twitter said it suspended 125,000 accounts for “threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS” since mid-2015.


“You do realize if we all stopped reporting terrorist accounts and graphic images, Twitter would be flooded with terrorists,” WauchulaGhost, an anti-terrorist hacker with Anonymous told The Epoch Times.

Hackers from groups such as Anonymous, GhostSec,and Ctrl Sec regularly publish lists of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) supporters and recruiters, and call on the wider online community to report the related social media accounts for suspension.

However, the hacktivists say they are now the ones being targeted by Twitter, which recently strengthened its rules regarding online harassment.

A number of the hackers’ accounts have been suspended, including some of the main #OpISIS accounts, with the handles being taken down one-by-one or in groups.

Twitter has tended to reinstate the accounts within hours after it is bombarded with requests to do so by other hackers and supporters.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Erdogan calls MP ‘traitor’ for telling RT that ISIS got chemical weapons via Turkey

Erdogan calls MP ‘traitor’ for telling RT that ISIS got chemical weapons via Turkey

 

© Kayhan Ozer / Reuters; Eren Erdem / Facebook
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused opposition MP Eren Erdem of “betrayal.” Erdem told RT that Islamic State terrorists had obtained sarin gas supplies through Turkish territory – and that Ankara did nothing despite having all the evidence.

READ MORE: Turkish MP faces treason charges after telling RT ISIS used Turkey for transiting sarin

“There is a deputy in this country, buried so deep in a pit of betrayal, and to a party that claims to be as old as the republic saying during an interview to a foreign television channel that Turkey is selling chemical weapons to terrorists,” Erdogan told a crowd in the city of Konya.

The Turkish President also called the silence of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) concerning Erdem’s revelations“treason.”


EXCLUSIVE: Sarin materials brought via Turkey & mixed in Syrian ISIS camps– Turkish MP to RT http://on.rt.com/6zep 

War is Likely After Turkey Shoots Down Russian Jet, Ignores Putin’s Warning

War is Likely After Turkey Shoots Down Russian Jet, Ignores Putin’s Warning

russianplaneturkey

It seems like full-blown war is only two seconds away with the wicked brew boiling in the Middle East. The latest?

Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border yesterday, claiming it did so after the plane violated Turkish airspace and was given ten warnings to leave which were ignored. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they decided to shoot it down because the plane “did not answer our warning”.

Both pilots bailed out. Russian media later reported that one of the pilots was killed by fire ISIS shot at them from the ground. Turkmen forces in Syria said both pilots were shot dead as they parachuted from the plane.

The US Ambassador to Turkey then Tweeted “Understand this: Turkey is a country whose warnings should be taken seriously and listened to. Don’t test Turkey’s patience. Try to win its friendship.”


Anlayın artık.Türkiye sözü de, uyarıları da dikkate alınması gereken bir ülkedir. Sabrını test etmeyin, dostluğunu kazanmaya çalışın.

Guile Replaces The Stick: Washington’s New Approach To Russia

Guile Replaces The Stick: Washington’s New Approach To Russia

Washington has learned that threats and coercion do not work against Russia. All the threats have done is to build Putin’s public support to astronomical levels and to unify Russia against the West’s assault. This is a failed policy that Washington is abandoning as Washington sees a new opportunity in Russia’s desire for Western cooperation, not only against ISIL but also on a wide range of other issues.

Realizing that guile can be more effective than the stick, the West is moving toward drawing Russia into the Western system by offering a coalition against ISIL. Once Russia is in a coalition against ISIL, Russia will lose control. This is Washington’s strategy for counteracting the initiative that Russia seized in Syria.

Once Russia is in a coalition against ISIL, Russia will have to make compromises. Putin will be told that Russia can have ISIL, but Russia has to turn Assad’s fate over to the West. If Putin balks, the Western media will blame Putin for topedoing the war against ISIL.

Getting rid of ISIL is more important to the Russian government than saving Assad. If a jihadist Islamic State is established, there will be a base for exporting turmoil into the Muslim regions of the Russian Federation.

Once Russia accepts “cooperation” with the West against ISIL, more “cooperation” will be used to gradually erode bit by bit Russia’s independence and to bring Russian policy in alignment with Washington’s.

Many in Russia believe that the Paris attack proves that Putin was right and that the West now realizes this and will accept Russian leadership in the fight against ISIL. This belief is delusional. Washington will take advantage of Russian desire for Western cooperation and will use this desire in order to bring Russia under Western influence, thus reestablishing Washington’s hegemony.

War on Islamic State: A New Cold War fiction

War on Islamic State: A New Cold War fiction

The Islamic State group is little more than the proxy bastard child of a New Cold War that looks set to escalate

Russia is bombing “terrorists” in Syria, and the US is understandably peeved.

A day after the bombing began, Obama’s Defence Secretary Ashton Carter complained that most Russian strikes “were in areas where there were probably not ISIL (IS) forces”.

Anonymously, US officials accused Russia of deliberately targeting CIA-sponsored “moderate” rebels to shore-up the regime of Bashir al-Assad.

Only two of Russia’s 57 airstrikes have hit ISIS, opined Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in similar fashion. The rest have hit “the moderate opposition, the only forces fighting ISIS in Syria,” he said.

Such claims have been dutifully parroted across the Western press with little scrutiny, bar the odd US media watchdog.

But who are these moderate rebels, really?

Moderate al-Qaeda

The first Russian airstrikes hit the rebel-held town of Talbisah north of Homs City, home to al-Qaeda’s official Syrian arm, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the pro-al-Qaeda Ahrar al-Sham, among other local rebel groups. Both al-Nusra and the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs) in Homs City, which is 12 kilometers south of Talbisah.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports that as part of “US and Turkish efforts to establish an ISIS ‘free zone’ in the northern Aleppo countryside,” al-Nusra “withdrew from the border and reportedly reinforced positions in this rebel-held pocket north of Homs city”.

In other words, the US and Turkey are actively sponsoring “moderate” Syrian rebels in the form of al-Qaeda, which Washington DC-based risk analysis firm Valen Globals forecasts will be “a bigger threat to global security” than IS in coming years.

– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/war-islamic-state-new-cold-war-fiction-1608242142#sthash.mAgLlnu2.dpuf

 

The Six Most Disastrous Interventions of the 21st Century

The Six Most Disastrous Interventions of the 21st  Century

hillary-libya

On October 2 President Barack Obama, alluding to Russia’s decision to launch air strikes in Syria, told reporters at the White House that for Russia to view the forces targeted “from the perspective they’re all terrorists [is] a recipe for disaster, and it’s one that I reject.”

In other words, he was saying that Moscow is not (as it claims) really focusing on ISIL and the al-Nusra Front but on the anti-regime opposition in general, which supposedly includes “moderates.”

Never mind that Obama himself as well as Joseph Biden have on occasion pooh-poohed the existence of a moderate armed opposition that controls territory in Syria. Didn’t Biden say last year at Harvard that “there was no moderate middle [in Syria] because the moderate middle are made up of shop-keepers, not soldiers”?

And hasn’t it been shown that maps showing territory in the hands of the “Free Syrian Army” are the figments of propagandists’ imagination? The FSA has no coordinated command structure and its networks overlap those of groups that Washington would not normally define as “moderate” (unless it wanted to rehabilitate al-Qaeda, which having attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and supposedly the cause of all the—disastrous—post-9/11 U.S. military actions in the Middle East), has gradually become my-enemy-against-my-enemy and hence a new found friend.

Seriously. Gen. David Petraeus, architect of the “surge” in Iraq in 2007 and former head of the CIA (until brought down in a sex/email-misuse scandal), has actually suggested that the U.S. support al-Qaeda—the al-Nusra Front—in Syria to defeat the bigger foe that is ISIL. (It does seem one man’s extremist is another man’s “moderate,” especially under confusing crisis circumstances. And that every cable news anchorperson will call “moderate” whatever the State Department demands—without knowing jack-shit about the facts, this not being required by that profession.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

HBO and Snapchat are Actively Working with the U.S. Government to Create Propaganda

HBO and Snapchat are Actively Working with the U.S. Government to Create Propaganda

Screen Shot 2015-10-01 at 10.35.58 AM

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception.

– From Carl Bernstein’s 1977 article: The CIA and the Media

What is art, when the artist is working with the host government to promote a particular message?

It is propaganda, and just because it’s your government doing it with the help of your friends and neighbors, doesn’t make it any less so. Even if you agree with the message, it is still propaganda. No wonder so many movies suck.

Today, we learn that both HBO and Snapchat are actively working with the U.S. State Department to push an anti-ISIS message. Again, even if the message is a good one, make no mistake about it, it is still propaganda. This is a very slippery slope, and something that Americans shouldn’t tolerate.

The National Journal reports:

The State De­part­ment is seek­ing a counter-nar­rat­ive to the pro­pa­ganda be­ing spread by IS­IS, and it is re­portedly turn­ing to some of Amer­ica’s pree­m­in­ent storytellers for help. Ac­cord­ing to The Daily Beast, ex­ec­ut­ives from both HBO and Snapchat are part of a team of film­makers and so­cial me­dia spe­cial­ists that’s brain­storm­ing how to hamper the ef­fect­ive­ness of ISIL’s mes­saging.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

14 Years after 9/11, US, Israel Tempted to ally with Al-Qaeda in Syria

14 Years after 9/11, US, Israel Tempted to ally with Al-Qaeda in Syria

The Jabhat al-Nusra or Support Front is one of the major rebel groups in Syria, holding extensive territory in the hinterland of cities like Homs and Aleppo and in the province of Idlib. The Support Front is just al-Qaeda. It has announced allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of . . . al-Qaeda and one of the figures who planned out and helped implement 9/11 (al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician from an elite family in Ma’adi, Cairo, was Bin Laden’s number 2 and is now number 1.)

The terrible thing is that the Support Front, unlike core al-Qaeda, has actually managed to take territory and is ruling parts of Syria as a mini-state.

So the Support Front of Syria would be America’s worst enemy, right? The US military and the CIA would be plotting its demise? Staunch American allies like Israel are joining in the effort to destroy it, correct?

Not so much.

The US is heavily and regularly bombing Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), itself an offshoot of al-Qaeda. But strikes against al-Qaeda in Syria are rare.

Israel appears to be de facto allied with the Support Front in the Golan Heights against Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbullah and against the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad. Israel has been bringing wounded al-Qaeda warriors over to Israeli hospitals for treatment, a policy that provoked a riot by Israeli Druze in the Occupied Golan (al-Qaeda has targeted Druze populations, which it considers heretics.)

In Idlib Province and around Aleppo, the far right but less radical Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of Syria) rebel militia has made some advances against al-Assad’s troops. Its representative argued in an NYT op-ed that the US should support the Free Men of Syria. But they don’t believe in democracy and would like to erect a Taliban-style state in Syria.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

So you say you don’t want a revolution?

So you say you don’t want a revolution?

Over the past few months we have been forced to bear witness to a humiliating farce unfolding in Europe. Greece, which was first accepted into the European Monetary Union under false pretenses, then saddled with excessive levels of debt, then crippled through the imposition of austerity, finally did something: the Greeks elected a government that promised to shake things up. The Syriza party platform had the following planks, which were quite revolutionary in spirit.

  • Put an end to austerity and put the Greek economy on a path toward recovery
  • Raise the income tax to 75% for all incomes over 500,000 euros, adopt a tax on financial transactions and a special tax on luxury goods.
  • Drastically cut military expenditures, close all foreign military bases on Greek soil and withdraw from NATO. End military cooperation with Israel and support the creation of a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders.
  • Nationalize the banks.
  • Enact constitutional reforms to guarantee the right to education, health care and the environment.
  • Hold referendums on treaties and other accords with the European Union.

Of these, only the last bullet point was acted on: there was a lot made of the referendum which returned a resounding “No!” to EU demands for more austerity and the dismantling and selling off of Greek public assets. But a lot less was made of the fact that the results of this referendum were then ignored.

But the trouble started before then. After being elected, Syriza representatives went to Brussels to negotiate. The negotiations generally went like this: Syriza would make an offer; the EU officials would reject it, and advance their own demands for more austerity; Syriza would make another offer, and the EU officials would reject it too and advance their own demands for even more austerity than in the last round; and so on, all the way until Greek capitulation. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

 

Rob Nicholson Says Canada’s Commitment To Iraq Will Be Similar To Afghanistan

Rob Nicholson Says Canada’s Commitment To Iraq Will Be Similar To Afghanistan

OTTAWA — Canada could be active in Iraq for the next decade as the war against ISIL continues and the region needs rebuilding, Canada’s foreign affairs minister suggested Thursday.

“We’re in this for the longer term to make sure that we do what we can to help,” Rob Nicholson told reporters during a phone call from Amman, Jordan, after completing a secret trip to the region.

“It’s similar to what we did in Afghanistan for instance,” he elaborated when asked by The Huffington Post Canada. “We were in Afghanistan, but we indicated that we would continue our assistance, and we have in Afghanistan.”

Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan lasted 12 years butdevelopment assistance has continuedpast the Canadian Forces’ pullout in 2014.

“It’s not just the military, it has to be a bigger picture in terms of what the solutions are,” Nicholson said, referring to continued humanitarian assistance. Canada has so far pledged$100 million to Iraq in humanitarian stabilization and security programming, he said.

“And this is going to continue. We’ve made that very clear.”

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Welcome to World War Three

Welcome to World War Three

In case anyone didn’t get ISIL’s message from their latest video in which 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians have their heads sawn off, here it is: “We’re executioners, not warriors.” Those gouts of blood spilled on a Libyan beach amount to ISIL’s welcome mat to the mass execution of the Euro-American west. The dignity of a funeral is not even on the program.

What we’ve got now with apocalyptic Jihadism spreading clear across the region from Pakistan to Morocco, and Europe blandly ignoring it across the Mediterranean, is an epochal face-off that will change the world. It comes at an odd moment in history, namely as the massive oil wealth of the Middle East and North Africa enters decline. It was that oil wealth that provoked a population spike in a desolate corner of the planet the past century. Now there is a huge over-supply of young men there with nothing to do but act out their angry psychodrama over having no future. When a whole peoples’ prospects for a decent life on Earth dwindle to zero, is it any wonder that they become preoccupied with end-times visions of feasts and virgins awaiting in an after-life?

Partly what you’re seeing over there is an internal fight to control what’s left of the treasure. That battle has already had the strange consequence of disabling the oil production capacity in places like Iraq and Libya, where there is still a lot of oil, but not enough political stability to allow the complicated business of extraction and transport to take place. What’s more there has also been tremendous damage to the oil infrastructure in these places, some from deliberate sabotage, some from shelling and bombing, and a lot from sheer neglect and deferred maintenance. Oil refineries and transport terminals are very delicate machines that require constant loving care.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

US invasion of Iraq helped create ISIS – former UN chief

US invasion of Iraq helped create ISIS – former UN chief

Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, said the US-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake and helped to create the Islamist State militant group. He also blamed regional powers for making the conflict worse.

“I was against this invasion and my fears have been founded. The break-up of the Iraqi forces poured hundreds if not thousands of disgruntled soldiers and police officers onto the streets,” Kofi Annan told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday. He added that some of these former security force members went on to join the Islamic State.

“The aim of creating democracy without the existing institutions ushered in corrupt sectarian governments,” Annan said. He added that the country has been unstable ever since and this has proved the perfect breeding ground for Sunni radical Muslims, who have become affiliated with the Islamic State.

 

The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) stunned the world last summer by capturing large swaths of Iraq and Syria, including the city of Mosul in mid-June. The group has created what it calls an Islamic caliphate that straddles the Iraq-Syria border.

READ MORE: ISIS executed nearly 2,000 people in Syria, mostly civilians, in 6 months – monitor

The militant group has attracted a number of foreign jihadist fighters and has become infamous for the brutal way it kills hostages. A number of Western captives have been beheaded, with the videos of the executions being posted on line. On February 3, Moath al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot captured in December, was burnt alive, a move which was condemned by large sections of the Muslim world.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Japan seizes passport of journalist planning Syria trip

Japan seizes passport of journalist planning Syria trip

Move follows brutal killing of Japanese by ISIL and comes amid soaring ratings for PM over handling of hostage crisis.

Japan has seized the passport of a journalist planning to travel to Syria following the brutal killing of two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group there, according to local media.

It was the first time Tokyo had taken such a measure on the grounds it was needed to protect the passport-holder’s life, the Asahi Shimbunand other news reports said on Sunday.

They said the foreign ministry on Saturday confiscated the passport of Yuichi Sugimoto, a freelance photographer who had planned to enter Syria on February 27 to cover refugee camps among other places.

But the 58-year-old, who has covered conflict zones in Iraq and Syria over the years, said he had no plans to enter areas controlled by ISIL, Kyodo News reported.

“Tonight, an official with the foreign ministry’s passport division came and took my passport,” Sugimoto told the Asahi.

“What happens to my freedom to travel and freedom of the press?”

The passport confiscation came in the wake of the beheadings of journalist Kenji Goto and self-styled security consultant Haruna Yukawa by ISIL.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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