Tuesday, August 23, 2016

COLLAPSE | 10 DAYS READINESS | ROTHSCHILD | WESTERN CENTRAL BANKERS CONDUCING GREATEST EXPERIMENT IN MONETARY POLICY | CONSEQUENCES IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT


money-deficit


Brewing Collapse of the Western Monetary System? German Government Warns of an Upcoming Catastrophe, Tags Russia as an “Enemy Nation”

Germany has just warned its citizens of an upcoming catastrophe and urged them to stockpile food, water and money for at least 10 days, to be autonomous and independent until the government has caught up putting the necessary public safety systems in place – in case of a ‘catastrophe’. There was no mention on the type of disaster awaiting them. A war, an economic and or monetary collapse, or both? – The warning was later downplayed as part of a ‘routine exercise’ in Germany’s new defense strategy.

On a related note, against many Members of Parliament and several ministers, the German Bundeswehr (army) has declared Russia as an enemy nation. This is akin to a declaration of war. The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, Alexei Puschkow, has posted the Twitter message:
‘The decision of the German government declaring Russia to be an enemy shows Merkel’s subservience to the Obama administration.’
The idea of the German warning is to scare people. People who are afraid can be easily manipulated. While buying supermarkets’ shelves empty, they will ask for more police and military protection. That’s precisely what Washington and the EU want – a militarization of Europe. Germany, being Obama’s chief vassal, is the mouthpiece for the rest of Europe. At the same time, this scare tactic is an indirect warning of a threat of aggression from Russia. The past weeks of western lie-propaganda have shown Russia’s protection of Crimea with heavy maneuvers in the Black Sea, depicting them as a preparation of war towards the west. Never mind that Ukraine’s self-styled lord Poroshenko has threatened to take Crimea back, amassing troops and tanks at the border of this historic and strategic Russian peninsula.

Of course, things do not look good for the US-NATO led West with its EU stooges. Turkey’s President Erdogan has turned away from the notorious west to Mr. Putin and may be abandoning his alliance with Washington, Brussels – and NATO. Russia has asked Ankara to use its Incirlik airbase in the south, close to the Syrian border, currently mainly occupied by NATO, storing some 50 US nuclear warheads and uncountable US fighter jets and helicopters, plus housing at least 5,000 US-NATO troops. Turkey’s Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said last Saturday, that Russia could use the base, but denied that any such request has been made by Russia. In fact, according to EurActiv.com, “the Pentagon has initiated the transfer of 20 B61-type aviation bombs with nuclear warheads from the Turkish Incirlik air base to the Deveselu base in Romania currently hosting the US missile shield.” Although the Romanian Foreign Ministry has denied this news, it is nonetheless largely credible, says Valentin Vasilescu of Russia’s katehon.com.

Incidentally, Incirlik is the base from which the two Turkish fighters took off to shoot down the Russian fighter jet Su24 patrolling the Turkish-Syrian border last November. The two pilots, one of whom was the killer, were either CIA agents, or were acting on CIA orders. It is known that Incirlik is infested with dozens of CIA agents.

President Erdogan’s new alliance with Russia, his recently re-established relation with his old friend Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s supposed closing of her borders to the Islamic State (IS-ISIS-Daesh) at the request of Russia, plus Iran putting her Hamadan base at Russia’s disposal, making Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and (perhaps) Turkey the new axis of stability and maybe peace in the Middle East, is not boding well for the West. It is more than a loss of prestige. The area contains an enormous wealth of hydrocarbons and other natural resources – and the new axis threatens to block the Zionist expansion towards a Greater Israel that would cover about a third of the current area called Middle East, including all of Palestine, Jordan, Syria, parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. This, and for achieving world hegemony, Full Spectrum Dominance, the overall objective of the ever ongoing PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), is what Washington is fighting for. No small matter. And not easy to let go.
——

It would not be surprising if some bold aggression – militarily, monetarily or both – by the West would rock the world. Indications to this effect are plentiful, other than the German appeal to her citizens to hoard food and money.

Could a fabricated incident, like a false flag event, in the Middle East trigger a Russia – US-NATO confrontation? For example, Syrian Government war planes a few days ago were bombing for the first time in the five-year Syrian ‘civil war’ Hasaka, a stronghold of the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units), basically a group of mercenaries, supported and funded by the US and NATO. The leader of YPG is allegedly affiliated with Mossad. Syria’s attack was in response to the YPG’s killing of civilians and Syrian Army soldiers. Was this Syrian attack provoked by YPG? Syria has repeatedly said that any foreign and uninvited foreign intervention on her territory would not be tolerated and immediately fought back. The US instantly sent a warning to Syria that US-NATO war planes may retaliate against President Assad’s forces – which in turn are backed by Russia. Could that be an orchestrated reason for an imminent US-Russia clash? – Such a confrontation would have ramifications way beyond the Middle East and could escalate to WWIII.

It is hard to believe that Washington would risk a war with Russia, being well aware of Russia’s superiority in the air, as well as on and under the sea with latest generation technology and nuclear war heads. But the exceptional nation on a declining course, knows no scruples pulling the entire humanity into her self-made abyss.

Another scenario of a world-shaking catastrophe may be financial. Lord Jacob Rothschild of the ultra-rich Rothschild family, recently proclaimed that “the western central bankers are conducting the greatest experiment in monetary policy history with consequences impossible to predict.” He added that the world is in ‘uncharted waters’. Although he doesn’t precisely explain what he means, he refers to ‘unintended’ low interest rates with ‘30% of global government debt at negative yields’. He also talks about the almost unlimited ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE – indiscriminate production of money) of western central banks. As a consequence, he says, the Rothschilds are shifting their money gradually away from the dollar into gold and other, presumably western ‘aligned’ currencies. He didn’t specify.

Why would a member of one of the most secretive and the globe’s richest families, the Rothschilds, come out in the open telling the world what he is doing with his investments? – Is there a purpose behind it? – Almost for sure. But how does it fit into what the FED-ECB-Wall Street may have concocted to happen next? – Is it a hint that the gold standard in one form or another may return?

After all, maybe envisioning such an advent, Russia and China in the past 20 to 25 years, since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, have filled their coffers with gold. According to Sergey Glazyev, one of Russia’s top economists, Russia’s currency is covered twice with the value of gold. China’s Yuan is also fully gold-backed. Russia is the world’s second largest producer of gold. The US too has been amassing gold. Nobody knows exactly how much Russia, China and the US have accumulated.
——

A few months ago, talking about the disintegration of the EU and its currency, the euro, was taboo. Since BREXIT, the topic is increasingly on the agenda of most economic fora in Europe. It’s become ‘mainstream’, so to speak. When before the BREXIT vote people were afraid to touch the subject, today they dare happily voicing their anger and disagreements about the sick, inhuman European Union and its equally sick currency – and how it best would disappear. That’s good. Daring to talk and seeing the reality is healthy.

Washington is of course aware of this. US money circles know that BREXIT may have inspired a mass movement that cannot be stopped. Rather than letting the Europeans take the reins of dissolving their pathetic EU-Euro tandem, Washington, as usual, wants to call the shots – so that the dice fall in its favor. There are several plausible scenarios, all of which are sheer speculation at this point.

Returning to the gold standard – may involve a massive devaluation of the US dollar. It would bring down the economy of most countries dependent on the dollar and with large dollar reserves- which would partially go up in smoke. Also, dollar holdings, means holding US debt. At home in the United States it would mean debt would be eviscerated, while abroad assets held un US-dollar denominated securities would lose their value. This would apply to most developing countries still almost unconditionally tied to the dollar – especially Africa which holds by most accounts close to two thirds of the world’s remaining natural resources. Guess, who may appropriate these resources as payment against fake and fabricated debt? There is not much speculation about what would happen with those in-and-on-the-ground riches.

Worldwide dollar denominated reserves have dropped in the last 20 years from about 80% of all reserves to below 60% today and declining. Most European countries may still have dollar reserves, but also gold. Rather than speculating over the value of gold – which is almost entirely in the hands of the BIS (Bank for International Settlement – Basel, Switzerland), itself controlled by the Rothschilds, Rockefellers and a few other Wall Street magnates, they may decide to take back their sovereignty and return to their own currency, devalued or revalued as they see fit, also eviscerating their debt, ‘resetting’ their system, so to speak.

Brussels, the ECB (European Central Bank) and the IMF, would be mere onlookers – and later trying to become the arbiters on how these countries’ debt maybe converted into gold. We can just hope that ‘sovereignty’ would indeed mean ‘sovereignty’, and that listening to stooges such as the ECB and IMF would be a thing of the past.

Germany, the Obama vassal numero uno that calls out the warning to its people – and by extension to the rest of Europe – may have made a deal under which they would not lose. – In any case for a local or new currency to be launched, it may take half a year. Germany may have prepared for such a move and hopes in ten days after the disaster hits, it may be up to speed putting the new system with electronic tellers and all on stream.

Another scenario may be that some of the TBTF (too-big-to-fail) banks, in connivance with the FED, would call in their outstanding derivatives. Estimates on worldwide outstanding derivatives range from about 700 trillion dollars to more than a quadrillion. This is money not even made of thin air, it’s just invented. But it could break the necks of smaller banks, à la Lehman Brothers – remember September 2008? – That would bring down the western world’s financial system, all the while maintaining the dollar hegemony. All or most derivative denominations are in US dollars.

Whatever may emerge, it is not a pretty picture for the west. In July 2016, on the occasion of the 95th Anniversary of China’s Communist Party, President Xi Jinping declared “The New World Order is Finished.” He also evoked the collapse of the US economy and the disintegration of the European Union. No western mainstream media covered the event.

What the West wants to ignore is that there is an alternative to the fraudulent western monetary system – a Russia-China based monetary scheme, totally delinked from the dollar-euro and the western privately owned FED-BIS-Wall Street manipulated system; a monetary structure built according to the value and strength of the member countries’ economies. Instead of illegal sanctions, blackmail, threats and outright financial wars for those ‘unwilling’ to submit to Washington, the eastern perspective offers a potential of equitable economic development, fairness in trade to a federation of sovereign nations.

It is high time for the freedom loving world to move out from under the boots of the empire; that we return to a multi-polar world of equals, that the international agencies we created to serve humanity are freed from the claws of their hijackers in Washington and those who command Washington, that the UN and its specialized agencies, as well as the International Criminal Court – even the Olympic Committee – may operate according to their peoples’ given mandates, that they may operate without the oppressive fist of Washington dictating them their terms. ‘Economics of Peace’ under a new egalitarian monetary system may lead humanity to freedom and prosperity for all.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.   Copyright © Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2016

Monday, August 22, 2016

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES RETIRMENT PORTFOLIOS ~ PERS | JUDICIAL AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GROUPS IN A RACKET OF MASS MURDERING OUR OWN SPECIES CALLING THE ACT WAR

War-Waging in Jeopardy? The Desperation of the US Elite and the Return of Henry Kissinger  |  The Anglo-American Elite Tries to Stop the Turkish March. In Vain!

Hillary_Clinton_(24338774540)
The top Anglo-American elite appears very, very worried that the Neocons (Bush/Clinton) will fail again in stopping, or even slowing down, Russia. They are more and more weary of the impotent Rambo war-cries of the left and right Neocons who are hysterically perched around Hillary Clinton. The Anglo-American elite is trying to find a way out and, oblivious of showing their desperation, is trying to resurrect their loyal lackey Henry Kissinger. Instead of the ineffective threats of the Clintonites  (see Ashton Carter, John Allen, Leon Panetta, Michael Morell, etc. ), this elites try to go back to the soft spider poison strategy used by Kissinger in the 70s. Kissinger, in their eyes, have achieved three great successes with his “friendly” detente method:
1) weakening and undermining, progressively but surely, Russia,
2) splitting Russia and China
3) neutralizing the influence of Russia in the Middle East
>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T-62uxbMBM<<
HEINZ KISSINGER & "ON EXCELLENCE" AUTHOR FRITZ KRAMER WHO RAN THE PENTAGON FOR FORTY-FIVE (45) YEARS, TIME FOR CHANGE ALRIGHT

The Neocons’ ferocious and deranged aggressive policy managed to nullify all three Kissingerian geostrategic achievements. In a sense, it has been a fortune for humanity, a proof of the diplomatic ability of Vladimir Putin and a clear indication of the rapacious stupidity of the Clinton/Bush establishment. For a profit, they did sell to Russia the rope to be used to hang them.   But now the Anglo-American elite realizes that the group, the mafia, the establishment  to whom they gave the car keys, have created a situation of existential danger for their domination. The real economy of the US has been thoroughly weakened by the escalating financial looting, to the point that also their war-waging ability has been jeopardized. And the Elite realizes that Russia and its allies are not going to surrender to the ferocious but hysterical and ineffective assault conceived by the moronic Neocon war criminals. This time will not be a fake coward war like the one against Iraq, or Libya. This time will be a real, nuclear, war. And the Anglo-American elite is ready to start any war against an enemy unable to defend itself, while they are scared to death of a real war in which they could LOOSE.

They realize also that, despite the military adventures and the present expenses allocated for the military, the US is being progressively isolated. They realize that, despite the investments in goebbelsian propaganda, NATO is not the magic bullet they dreamed of. While the real economy of the host country is being bled, The NATO structure is not able any more to fulfill its mission. Its mission being: “Keep the Russian out, the Americans in, and the Europeans down”.

The recent developments in Turkey has shown, for the first time,  that a NATO/US sponsored coup d’état did NOT succeed.  Now, Turkey is entering  a new political trajectory and a new geostrategic realm. Though it’s difficult to foresee with perfect accuracy what is going to happen, it is clear that a process of progressive disintegration of the anglaomerican control and domination apparatus has started. It could progress very fast and very dramatically. The possibility of Turkey leaving NATO, de jure or simply de facto, is being contemplated by many of the most competent observers. An informal military relation with Russia, China (and Iran!) is already a fact. The notorious US  network of influence nominally run by Fetullah Gulen is being dismantled not only in Turkey, but in Azerbaijan  and, it is expected to be weakened and neutralized in all the Turkic areas, i.e. the Southern Flank of the ex Soviet Union. These areas were supposed to be the bastion of the “West” against Russia. They are rapidly becoming the opposite.

The Turkish lesson is being studied very carefully by a large number of countries. Starting with the Bulgaria leadership who cowardly preferred an economic suicide when was told by Hillary Clinton’s darling, Victoria Nuland to cancel the gigantic Southern Stream pipeline from Russia.  The Turkish lesson is being studied all over the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, and of course, Continental Europe. The British Brexit decision, though clearly dictated by clever, realpolitik considerations of surviving “to fight another day,” is part of these lessons learned and probably, was an incentive to the Turkish military and elite to make the Gulen coup fail.

And so the decrepit Kissinger is again presented on the public scene by the elite who hope he can do the “detente” trick again. We seriously doubt that Russia will fall for that for even a second. Despite the many “friends” of Russia who are vociferously telling Putin: Look, look how good is Kissinger. He represents the good faction in the West. Sign a deal with him and everything will be good and fine. Most likely Russia will treat the “messenger boy” with extreme formal respect, will even  go to the motion of discussing and negotiating in some form. BUT it will never let its strategy be conditioned by the promise and the good word of the Detente man. There will not be another Gorbachev, there will not a be an Yeltsin. Quite the contrary. Maybe there will not even be a Medvedev in the future of Russia.

Last February 4, Kissinger was in Moscow giving a speech at the Gorchakov Fund explaining why he represented  the alternative to a confrontation and presenting his plan to go back to the good old days  i.e. when Russia was… royally undermined. See the complete speech to believe (see transcript of speech below).

<http://gorchakovfund.ru/en/news/18352/ >

On Aug 19, The Doctor comes back with the same music in an interview  to Jacob Heilbrunn for the National Interest magazine. It is very telling of the  uneasy situation the Masters of Kissinger are at this point. <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-interview-henry-kissinger-13615 >

On one side, the old factotum of Wall Street has to say words that, he believes, will be well received in Moscow (criticism of the  anti Russia attitude of the Neocons), on the other he cannot by explain frankly that his Detente strategy in the 1970s, and his “nice words” in 2016 have the same purpose: Smash Russia!  He is asked: “détente played a critical role in bringing down the Soviet Union, didn’t it?” Kissinger’s answer: “That is my view. We viewed détente as a strategy for conducting the conflict with the Soviet Union.”

See the following exchange:

Heilbrunn: I’d forgotten that he’d managed that feat. In the end, though, détente played a critical role in bringing down the Soviet Union, didn’t it?
Kissinger: That is my view. We viewed détente as a strategy for conducting the conflict with the Soviet Union.
Heilbrunn: I’m amazed that this doesn’t get more attention—in Europe, this is the common view, that détente was essential toward softening up Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and getting over the memory of World War II, whereas in the United States we have a triumphalist view.
Kissinger: Well, you have the view that Reagan started the process with his Evil Empire speech, which, in my opinion, occurred at the point when the Soviet Union was already well on the way to defeat. We were engaged in a long-term struggle, generating many competing analyses. I was on the hard-line side of the analysis. But I stressed also the diplomatic and psychological dimensions. We needed to wage the Cold War from a posture in which we would not be isolated, and in which we would have the best possible basis for conducting unavoidable conflicts. Finally, we had a special obligation to find a way to avoid nuclear conflict, since that risked civilization. We sought a position to be ready to use force when necessary but always in the context of making it clearly demonstrable as a last resort. The neoconservatives took a more absolutist view. Reagan used the span of time that was available to him with considerable tactical skill, although I’m not sure that all of it was preconceived. But its effect was extremely impressive. I think the détente period was an indispensable prelude.
Heilbrunn: The other monumental accomplishment was obviously the opening to China. Do you feel today that—
Kissinger: —Reducing the Soviet role in the Middle East. That was not minor.
Heilbrunn: That’s correct, and saving Israel in the ’73 war with the arms supply.
Kissinger: The two were related.
Heilbrunn: Is China the new Wilhelmine Germany today? Richard Nixon, shortly before he died, told William Safire that it was necessary to create the opening to China, but we may have created a Frankenstein.
Kissinger: A country that has had three thousand years of dominating its region can be said to have an inherent reality. The alternative would have been to keep China permanently subdued in collusion with the Soviet Union, and therefore making the Soviet Union—already an advanced nuclear country—the dominant country of Eurasia with American connivance. But China inherently presents a fundamental challenge to American strategy.

See:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-interview-henry-kissinger-13615
The Interview: Henry Kissinger
See:
http://www.fort-russ.com/2015/08/kissinger-goal-of-us-is-break-up-of.html
Kissinger: The goal of the US is a break up of Russia
See:
http://gorchakovfund.ru/en/news/18352/
Primakov Lecture by Henry A. Kissinger at the Gorchakov Fund in Moscow

ANNEX
Primakov Lecture by Henry A. Kissinger at the Gorchakov Fund in Moscow
February 4, 2016
From 2007 into 2009, Evgeny Primakov and I chaired a group composed of retired senior ministers, high officials, and military leaders from Russia and the United States, including some of you present here today. Its purpose was to ease the adversarial aspects of the U.S.-Russian relationship and to consider opportunities for cooperative approaches. In America, it was described as a Track II group, which meant it was bipartisan and encouraged by the White House to explore but not negotiate on its behalf. We alternated meetings in each other’s country. President Putin received the group in Moscow in 2007, and President Medvedev in 2009. In 2008, President George W. Bush assembled most of his National Security team in the Cabinet Room for a dialogue with our guests.
All the participants had held responsible positions during the Cold War. During periods of tension, they had asserted the national interest of their country as they understood it. But they had also learned through experience the perils of a technology threatening civilized life and evolving in a direction which, in crisis, might disrupt any organized human activity. Upheavals were looming around the globe, magnified in part by different cultural identities and clashing ideologies. The goal of the Track II effort was to overcome crises and explore common principles of world order.
Evgeny Primakov was an indispensable partner in this effort. His sharp analytical mind combined with a wide grasp of global trends acquired in years close to and ultimately at the center of power, and his great devotion to his country refined our thinking and helped in the quest for a common vision. We did not always agree, but we always respected each other. He is missed by all of us and by me personally as a colleague and a friend.
I do not need to tell you that our relations today are much worse than they were a decade ago. Indeed, they are probably the worst they have been since before the end of the Cold War. Mutual trust has been dissipated on both sides. Confrontation has replaced cooperation. I know that in his last months, Evgeny Primakov looked for ways to overcome this disturbing state of affairs. We would honor his memory by making that effort our own.
At the end of the Cold War, both Russians and Americans had a vision of strategic partnership shaped by their recent experiences. Americans were expecting that a period of reduced tensions would lead to productive cooperation on global issues. Russian pride in their role in modernizing their society was tempered by discomfort at the transformation of their borders and recognition of the monumental tasks ahead in reconstruction and redefinition. Many on both sides understood that the fates of Russia and the U.S. remained tightly intertwined. Maintaining strategic stability and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction became a growing necessity, as did the building of a security system for Eurasia, especially along Russia’s long periphery. New vistas opened up in trade and investment; cooperation in the field of energy topped the list.
Regrettably, the momentum of global upheaval has outstripped the capacities of statesmanship. Evgeny Primakov’s decision as Prime Minister, on a flight over the Atlantic to Washington, to order his plane to turn around and return to Moscow to protest the start of NATO military operations in Yugoslavia was symbolic. The initial hopes that the close cooperation in the early phases of the campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan might lead to partnership on a broader range of issues weakened in the vortex of disputes over Middle East policy, and then collapsed with the Russian military moves in the Caucasus in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The more recent efforts to find common ground in the Syria conflict and to defuse the tension over Ukraine have done little to change the mounting sense of estrangement.
The prevailing narrative in each country places full blame on the other side, and in each country there is a tendency to demonize, if not the other country, then its leaders. As national security issues dominate the dialogue, some of the mistrust and suspicions from the bitter Cold-War struggle have reemerged. These feelings have been exacerbated in Russia by the memory of the first post-Soviet decade when Russia suffered a staggering socio-economic and political crisis, while the United States enjoyed its longest period of uninterrupted economic expansion. All this caused policy differences over the Balkans, the former Soviet territory, the Middle East, NATO expansion, missile defense, and arms sales to overwhelm prospects for cooperation.
Perhaps most important has been a fundamental gap in historical conception. For the United States, the end of the Cold War seemed like a vindication of its traditional faith in inevitable democratic revolution. It visualized the expansion of an international system governed by essentially legal rules. But Russia’s historical experience is more complicated. To a country across which foreign armies have marched for centuries from both East and West, security will always need to have a geopolitical, as well as a legal, foundation. When its security border moves from the Elbe 1,000 miles east towards Moscow, Russia’s perception of world order will contain an inevitable strategic component. The challenge of our period is to merge the two perspectives—the legal and the geopolitical—in a coherent concept.
In this way, paradoxically, we find ourselves confronting anew an essentially philosophical problem. How does the United States work together with Russia, a country which does not share all its values but is an indispensable component of the international order? How does Russia exercise its security interests without raising alarms around its periphery and accumulating adversaries? Can Russia gain a respected place in global affairs with which the United States is comfortable? Can the United States pursue its values without being perceived as threatening to impose them? I will not attempt to propose answers to all these questions. My purpose is to encourage an effort to explore them.
Many commentators, both Russian and American, have rejected the possibility of the U.S. and Russia working cooperatively on a new international order. In their view, the United States and Russia have entered a new Cold War.
The danger today is less a return to military confrontation than the consolidation of a self-fulfilling prophecy in both countries. The long-term interests of both countries call for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence and flux into a new equilibrium which is increasingly multipolar and globalized.
The nature of the turmoil is in itself unprecedented. Until quite recently, global international threats were identified with the accumulation of power by a dominating state. Today threats more frequently arise from the disintegration of state power and the growing number of ungoverned territories. This spreading power vacuum cannot be dealt with by any state, no matter how powerful on an exclusively national basis. It requires sustained cooperation between the United States and Russia, and other major powers. Therefore the elements of competition, in dealing with the traditional conflicts in the interstate system, must be constrained so that the competition remains within bounds and creates conditions which prevent a recurrence.
There are, as we know, a number of divisive issues before us, Ukraine or Syria as the most immediate. For the past few years, our countries have engaged in episodic discussions of such matters without much notable progress. This is not surprising, because the discussions have taken place outside an agreed strategic framework. Each of the specific issues is an expression of a larger strategic one. Ukraine needs to be embedded in the structure of European and international security architecture in such a way that it serves as a bridge between Russia and the West, rather than as an outpost of either side. Regarding Syria, it is clear that the local and regional factions cannot find a solution on their own. Compatible U.S.-Russian efforts coordinated with other major powers could create a pattern for peaceful solutions in the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere.
Any effort to improve relations must include a dialogue about the emerging world order. What are the trends that are eroding the old order and shaping the new one? What challenges do the changes pose to both Russian and American national interests? What role does each country want to play in shaping that order, and what position can it reasonably and ultimately hope to occupy in that new order? How do we reconcile the very different concepts of world order that have evolved in Russia and the United States—and in other major powers—on the basis of historical experience? The goal should be to develop a strategic concept for U.S.-Russian relations within which the points of contention may be managed.
In the 1960′s and 1970′s, I perceived international relations as an essentially adversarial relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the evolution of technology, a conception of strategic stability developed that the two countries could implement, even as their rivalry continued in other areas. The world has changed dramatically since then. In particular, in the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.
I have spent the greater part of the past seventy years engaged in one way or another in U.S.-Russian relations. I have been at decision centers when alert levels have been raised, and at joint celebrations of diplomatic achievement. Our countries and the peoples of the world need a more durable prospect.
I am here to argue for the possibility of a dialogue that seeks to merge our futures rather than elaborate our conflicts. This requires respect by both sides of the vital values and interest of the other. These goals cannot be completed in what remains of the current administration. But neither should their pursuits be postponed for American domestic politics. It will only come with a willingness in both Washington and Moscow, in the White House and the Kremlin, to move beyond the grievances and sense of victimization to confront the larger challenges that face both of our countries in the years ahead.

COMMISSION ON JUDICIAL CONDUCT STATE OF WASHINGTON | TERESA HEINZ ENDOWMENT/S | ET AL


Friday, August 19, 2016

CIR versus CIA?! | Syria: China and Iran Join Russia in Larger Role | SIRC ~ SRIC ~ SCIR ~ WOW THE WORLD HAS DEFINITELY A NEW ORDER!

russia china iran

Several developments this week mark an increase of activity from Syria’s allies, Russia, Iran and now China.

These include a Russian-Iranian agreement to use Iranian territory to position Russian Tupolev Tu-22M strategic bombers as well as Iranian and Iraqi airspace for both the bombers and Russian cruise missiles to pass through on their way to militant targets in Syria.

It also includes China’s recent pledge to provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people as well as military support for Syrian government troops in their fight to restore order nationwide.

The Details

The BBC would report in its article, “Syrian conflict: Russian bombers use Iran base for air strikes,” that:
Russia’s defence ministry says it has used a base in western Iran to carry out air strikes in Syria.
Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 strike fighters took off from Hamedan on Tuesday, a statement said.
Targets were hit in Aleppo, Idlib and Deir al-Zour provinces, it added.
The BBC would also report:
Last week, Russia asked Iran and Iraq to allow Russian cruise missiles to fly through their airspace for attacks on terrorist targets in Syria.
It should be noted that Russian Tu-22Ms have already been used during Russia’s operations in Syria, however they have been based in southern Russia. Moving them forward west of Tehran, allows for shorter and more frequent missions, saving fuel and time. This further strengthening of Russian-Iranian ties come amid the delivery of Russian S-300 anti-air defense systems to Iran as part of an $800 million contract signed in 2007.

In addition to this, Reuters would report in its article, “China says seeks closer military ties with Syria,” that:
“China and Syria’s militaries have a traditionally friendly relationship, and China’s military is willing to keep strengthening exchanges and cooperation with Syria’s military,” the news agency paraphrased Guan [Guan Youfei, director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of China’s Central Military Commission] as saying.
Both also talked about personnel training and “reached a consensus” on the Chinese military providing humanitarian aid, Xinhua added, without elaborating.
Reuters would also make mention of Uyghur militants operating in Syria alongside other Western-backed militant groups, suggesting this as a possible motive for China’s interest in the conflict.

The Implications

The presence of Uyghur militants operating in Syria helps illustrate the wider implications of the Syrian conflict. While characterised as a “civil war” by the Western media, it is in fact a proxy war waged against Syria and its allies by a US-led multinational coalition.

Should this coalition succeed in replicating the scenario that unfolded in Libya in 2011, Western-backed militants would have a staging ground significantly closer to Iran, southern Russia and western China. The presence of large, well-funded and armed militant groups in Syria has already helped bolster peripheral networks in North Africa and Central Asia.

Should this coalition fail in the face of joint Syrian-Russian-Iranian-Chinese efforts, these militant groups can be exposed and liquidated and joint efforts in turn shifted to eliminate peripheral networks beyond Syria’s battlefields.

China and Iran’s increased involvement in the Syrian conflict raise pressure on the US-led coalition and its ongoing proxy war, making it increasingly unlikely that Western ambitions will be realized. The growing concentration of forces in and around Syria may eventually pose a danger to many of the coalition members working with the US in the region.

With Russian forces staged in Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states are now at a greater disadvantage vis-a-vis Tehran. Should China be forced deeper into the conflict, this may compound the already tenuous position of US allies in the region even further.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.   Global Research, August 19, 2016,  New Eastern Outlook 18 August 2016

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

AMERICA'S MANIFEST DESTINY NEEDS TO REBOOT THE IMAGINATION | RYAN A. WILSON | GREATER CIRCLE DRAWINGS TO BE PUBLISHED, SOON!

The story of the GREATER CIRCLE and SEEDS OF FIRE, to be soon revealed in the blog here, via Ryan A. Wilson and Roberta Kelly

IN WHAT GOD DOES AMERICA TRUST, EXACTLY? | NED, the Legal Window of the CIA

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In 2006, Kremlin denounced the proliferation of foreign associations in Russia, some of which would have participated in a secret plan, orchestrated by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to destabilise the country. To prevent a “colour revolution”, Vladislav Surkov drew up strict regulation over these non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In the West, this administrative framework was described as a “fresh assault on freedom of association by Putin the “Dictator” and his adviser”.

This policy has been followed by other States who in their turn, have been labelled by the international press as “dictators”.

The US government guarantees that it is working towards “promoting democracy all over the world”. It claims that the US Congress can subsidize NED and that NED can, in turn and wholly independently, help directly or indirectly, associations, political parties or trade unions, working in this sense anywhere in the world. The NGOs being, as their name suggests, “non-governmental” can take political initiatives that ambassadors could not assume without violating the sovereignty of the States that receive them. The crux of the matter lies here: NED and the network of NGOs that it finances: are they initiatives of civil society unjustly repressed by the Kremlin or covers of the US Secret Services caught red-handed in interference?

In order to respond to this question, we are going to return to the origins and function of NED. But our first step must be to analyze the meaning of this official US project: “exporting democracy”.
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The puritans that founded the United States wanted to create a “radiant city” whose light would illuminate the whole world. They considered themselves the missionaries of a political model.

What Democracy?

The US, as a people, subscribes to the ideology of their founding fathers. They think of themselves as a colony that has come from Europe to establish a city obeying God. They see their country as “a light on the mountain” in the words of Saint Mathew, adopted for two centuries by most of their presidents in their political speeches. The US would be a model nation, shining on top of a hill, illuminating the entire world. And all other people in the world would hope to emulate this model to reach their well-being.

For the people of United States, this very naïve belief implies without more that their country is an exemplary democracy and that they have a messianic duty to superimpose it on the rest of the world. While Saint Mathew envisaged propagating faith exclusively through the example of a righteous life, the founding fathers of the United States thought of illumination and propagating their faith in terms of regime change. The English puritans beheaded Charles I before fleeing to the Netherlands and the Americas, then the patriots of the New World rejected the authority of King George III of England, proclaiming the independence of the United States.

Impregnated by this national mythology, the people of the United States do not perceive their government’s foreign policy as a form of imperialism. In their eyes, it is all the more legitimate to topple a government that has the ambition to take the form of a model which is different from theirs and thus evil. In the same way, they are persuaded that due to the messianic mission that has been thrust upon them, they have arrived to impose democracy by force in the countries that they have occupied. For example, at school they learn that GIs brought democracy to Germany. They do not know that history indicates quite the opposite: their government helped Hitler to topple the Republic of Weimar and set up a military regime to fight the Soviets. This irrational ideology prevents them from challenging the nature of their institutions and the absurd concept of a “forced democracy”.
Now, according to President Abraham Lincoln’s formula, “democracy is the government of the people, by the people for the people”.

From this point of view, the United States is not a democracy but a hybrid system where executive power is returned to the oligarchy, while the people limit its arbitrary exercise through legislative and judicial powers that can check it. Indeed, while the people elect Congress and some judges, it is the states of the federation that elect executive power and the latter appoints the high judges. Although citizens have been called to determine their choice of president, their vote on this matter only operates as a ratification, as the Supreme Court pointed out in 2000, in Gore v. Bush. The US Constitution does not recognize that the people are sovereign, because power is divided between them and a federation of states, in other words, between the leaders of the community.

As an aside, we observe that in contrast, the Russian Federation’s Constitution is democratic – on paper at least. It declares: “the holder of sovereignty and the sole source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people.” (Title I, Ch. 1, art.3).

This intellectual context explains that the US supports its government when it announces that it wants “to export democracy”, even if, its own constitution signals that it is not one. But it is difficult to see how it could export something it does not possess and does not wish to have at home.

For the last thirty years, this contradiction has been supported by NED and given specific form through destabilizing a number of States. With a smile that a clean conscience blesses upon them, thousands of activists and gullible NGOs have violated the people’s sovereignty.
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A Pluralist and Independent Foundation

In his famous speech on 8 June 1982 before the British Parliament, President Reagan denounces the USSR as “the empire of evil” and proposes to come to the aid of dissidents over there and elsewhere. He declared: “We need to create the necessary infrastructure for democracy: freedom of the press, trade unions, political parties and universities. This will allow people the freedom to choose the best path for them to develop their culture and to resolve their disputes peacefully”.

On this consensual basis of the struggle against tyranny, a commission of bipartisan reflection sponsored the establishment of NED at Washington. This was established by Congress in November 1983 and immediately financed.

The Foundation subsidizes four independent structures that redistribute money abroad, making it available to associations, trade unions and members of the ruling class, and parties on the right and left. They are:

- Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), today renamed American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (ACILS), managed by the trade union AFL-CIO;
- Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), managed by the US Chamber of Commerce;
- International Republican Institute (IRI), run by the Republican Party;
- National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), run by the Democratic Party.

Presented in this manner, NED and its four tentacles appear to be anchored in civil society, reflecting social diversity and political pluralism. Funded by the US people, through Congress, they would have worked to a universal ideal. They would be completely independent of the Presidential Administration. And their transparent action could not be a mask for secret operations serving undeclared national interests.

The reality is completely different.
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In 1982, Ronald Reagan established NED in partnership with the United Kingdom and Australia to topple the “Empire of Evil”.

A Drama produced by the CIA, MI6 and ASIS

Ronald Reagan’s speech in London took place in the aftermath of scandals surrounding revelations by Congressional Committees enquiring into the CIA’s dirty-trick coups. Congress then forbids the Agency to organize further coups d’etat to win markets. Meanwhile, in the White House, the National Security Council (NSC) looks to put in place other tools to circumvent this prohibition.

The Commission of Bipartisan Reflection was established prior to Ronald Reagan’s speech, although it only officially received a mandate from the White House afterwards. This means it is not responding to grandiloquent presidential ambitions but precedes them. Therefore, Reagan’s speech is only rhetorical dressing of decisions already taken in principle, and meant to be implemented by the Bipartisan Commission.

The Chair of the Bipartisan Commission was the US Special Representative for Trade, who indicates that she did not envisage promoting democracy but, according to current terminology, “market democracy”. This strange concept is in keeping with the US model: an economic and financial oligarchy imposes its political choices through the markets and a federal state, while parliamentarians and judges elected by the people protect individuals from arbitrary government.

Three of NED’s four peripheral organizations were formed for the occasion. However, there was no need to establish the fourth, a trade union (ACILS). This was set up at the end of the Second World War even though it changed its name in 1978 when its subordination to the CIA was unmasked. From this we can extract the conclusion that the CIPE, IRI and NDI were not born spontaneously but were engineered into being by the CIA.

Furthermore, although NED is an association under US law, it is not a tool of the CIA alone, but an instrument shared with British services (which is why Reagan announced its creation in London) and the Australian services. This key point is often glossed over without comment. However, it is validated by messages of congratulations by Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Howard during the 20th anniversary of the so-called “NGO”. NED and its tentacles are organs of an Anglo-Saxon military pact linking London, Washington and Canberra; the same goes for Echelon, the electronic interception network. This provision can be required not only by the CIA but also by the British MI6 and the Australian ASIS.

To conceal this reality, NED has stimulated among its allies the creation of similar organizations that work with it. In 1988, Canada is fitted out with a centre Droits & Démocratie, which has a special focus first on Haiti, then Afghanistan. In 1991, the United Kingdom established the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). The functioning of this public body is modelled on NED: its administration is entrusted to political parties (eight delegates: three for the Conservative Party; three for the Labour Party; and one for the Liberal Party and one for the other parties represented in Parliament). WFD has done a lot of work in Eastern Europe. Indeed in 2001, the European Union is equipped with a European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), which arouses less suspicion than its counterparts. This office is EuropAid, led by a high official as powerful as he is unknown: the Dutchman, Jacobus Richelle.

Presidential Directive 77

When US parliamentarians voted for the establishment of NED on 22 November 1983, they did not know that it already existed in secret pursuant to a Presidential Directive dated 14 January.
This document, only declassified two decades later, organizes “public diplomacy” a politically correct expression to designate propaganda. It establishes at the White House working groups within the National Security Council. One of these is tasked with leading NED.

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Henry Kissinger, administrator of the NED. A “representative of civil society”?
Consequently, the Board of Directors of the Foundation is only a transmission belt of the NSC. To maintain appearances, it has been agreed that, as a general rule, CIA agents and former agents could not be appointed to the board of directors.

Things are nonetheless no more transparent. Most high officials that have played a central role in the National Security Council have been NED directors. Such are the examples of Henry Kissinger, Franck Carlucci, Zbigniew Brzezinski, or even Paul Wolfowitz; personalities that will not remain in history as idealists of democracy, but as cynical strategists of violence.

The Foundation’s budget cannot be interpreted in isolation because it receives instructions from the NSC to lead action as part of vast inter-agency operations. It merits mention that funds are released from the International Aid Agency (USAID), without being recorded in NED’s balance sheet, simply for “non-governmentalizing”. Furthermore, the Foundation receives money indirectly money the CIA, after it has been laundered by private intermediaries such as the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation or even the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

To evaluate the extent of this programme, we would need to combine the NED’s budget with the corresponding sub-budgets of the Department of State, USAID, the CIA and the Department of Defense. Today, such an estimation is impossible.

Nonetheless, certain elements we know give us an idea of its importance. During the last five years, the United States has spent more than one billion dollars on associations and parties in Libya, a small state of 4 million inhabitants. Overall, half of this manna was released publicly by the State Department, USAID and NED; the other half had been secretly paid by the CIA and the Department of Defence. This example allows us to extrapolate the US’s general budget for institutional corruption that amounts to tens of billions of dollars annually. Furthermore, the equivalent programme of the European Union that is entirely public and provides for the integration of US actions, is 7 billion euro per year.

Ultimately, NED’s legal structure and volume of its official budget are only baits. In essence, it is not an independent organization for legal actions previously entrusted to the CIA, but it is a window through which the NSC gives the orders to carry out legal elements of illegal operations.

The Trotskyite Strategy

When it was being set up (1984), NED was chaired by Allen Weinstein, then by John Richardson for four years (1984-88), finally by Carl Gershman (from 1998).

These three men have three things in common:

- They are Jewish;
- They were active in the Trotsky party, Social Democrats USA; and
- They have worked at Freedom House.

There is a logic in this: hatred of Stalinism led some Trotskyites to join the CIA to fight the Soviets. They brought with them the theory of global power, by transposing it to the “colour revolutions” and to “democratisation”. They have simply displaced the Trotsky vulgate by applying it to the cultural battle analysed by Antonio Gramsci: power is exercised psychologically rather than by force. To govern the masses, the elite has to first inculcate an ideology that programmes their acceptance of the power that dominates it.

The American Centre for the Solidarity of Workers (ACILS)

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Known also as Solidarity Centre, ACILS, a trade union branch of NED, is easily its principal channel. It distributes more than half the Foundation’s donations. It has replaced the previous organizations that served during the Cold War to organize non-communist trade unions in the world, from Vietnam to Angola, by-passing France and Chile.

The fact trade unions were chosen to cover this CIA programme is a rare perversity. Far from the Marxist slogan, “Proletariats from all countries – unite”, ACILS brings together US working class trade unions in an imperialism that crushes workers in other countries.

This subsidiary was led by Irving Brown, a flamboyant personality, from 1948 until his death in 1989.

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In 1981, Irving Brown places Jean-Claude Mailly as an assistant to André Bergeron, the Secretary General of the Force Ouvrière (FO). The latter will acknowledge financing its activities thanks to the CIA. In 2004, Mailly becomes the Secretary General of the FO.
Some authors swear that Brown was the son of a white Russian, a companion of Alexander Kerensky. What we know for sure, is that he was an OSS agent, (i.e. an agent of the US intelligence service during the Second World War); and he participated in establishing the CIA and NATO’s Gladio network. However, he refused to lead it, preferring to focus on his area of expertise, trade unions. He was based at Rome, then Paris and never at Washington. So he had a significant impact on Italian and French public life. At the end of his life, he also boasts that he did not stop directing the French trade union, Force Ouvrière behind the scenes, and that he pulled the strings of the Student trade union UNI (where the following are active: Nicolas Sarkozy and his ministers François Fillon, Xavier Darcos, Hervé Morin and Michèle Alliot-Marie, as well as the President of the National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer and the President of the majoritarian parliamentary group, Jean-François Copé), and to have personally formed on the left, members of a Trotsky-ite break away group which included Jean-Christophe Cambadelis and the future Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

At the end of the nineties, members of the confederation AFL-CIO requested accounts of ACILS’s actual activity, while its criminal character had been fully documented in a number of countries. One could have thought that things would have changed after this great outpouring. Nothing of the sort occurs. In 2002 and 2004, ACILS has participated actively in a failed coup d’Etat in Venezuela to oust President Hugo Chavez and in a successful one in Haiti in toppling Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Today, ACILS is directed by John Sweeney, the former president of the confederation AFL-CIO, which itself also originates from the Trotskyite Party - Social Democrats USA.

The Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE)

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CIPE focuses on the dissemination of liberal capitalist ideology and the struggle against corruption.

The first success of CIPE: transforming in 1987 the European Management Forum (a club of CEOs of big European companies) into the World Economic Forum (the club of transnational ruling class). The big annual meeting of the world’s economic and political who’s who in the Davos Swiss ski resort contributed to creating a class membership that transcended national identity. CIPE makes sure that it does not have any structural ties with the Davos Forum, and it is not possible – for the moment - to prove that the World Economic Forum is an instrument of the CIA. On the contrary, the heads of Davos would have much difficulty explaining why certain political leaders have chosen their Economic Forum as the locus for acts of the highest importance if there were not operations planned by the US NSC. For example:

- 1988: it is at Davos – not the UN - that Greece and Turkey made peace.
- 1989: it is at Davos that the two Koreas on the one hand held their first summit at the ministerial level and the two Germany’s on the other hand held their first summit on the reunification.
- 1992: it is again at Davos that Frederik de Klerk and the freed Nelson Mandela come together to present their common project for South Africa for the first time abroad.
- 1994: still more improbable, it is at Davos, after the Oslo Accord, that Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat come to negotiate and sign its application to Gaza and Jericho.

The connection between Washington and the Forum is notoriously through Susan K. Reardon, former director of the Association of Professional Employees of the Department of State, having become director of the Foundation of the US Chamber of Commerce which manages CIPE.

The other success of the Centre for International Private Business is Transparency International. This “NGO” was officially established by Michael J. Hershman, an officer of US military intelligence. He is furthermore, a CIPE director and today Head of Recruitment of FBI informants as well as Managing Director of the private intelligence service Fairfax Group.

Transparency International is first and foremost a cover for economic intelligence activities by the CIA. It is also a media tool to compel states to change their legislation to guarantee open markets.

To mask the origin of Transparency International, the CIPE makes and appeal to the savoir-faire of the former press officer of the World Bank, the neo-conservative Frank Vogl. The latter had put in place a Committee of individuals that have contributed to creating the impression that it is an association born of civil society. This window-dressing committee is led by Peter Eigen, former World Bank Director in East Africa. In 2004 and 2009, his wife was the SPD candidate for the Presidency of the German Federal Republic.

Transparency International’s work serves US interests and cannot be relied upon. Thus in 2008, this pseudo NGO denounced that PDVSA, Venezuela’s public oil company, was corrupt; and on the basis of false information, placed it last in its global rankings of public companies. The goal was evidently to sabotage the reputation of a company that constitutes the economic foundation of the anti – imperialist policy of President Hugo Chavez. Caught in the act of poisoning, Transparency International refused to respond to questions from the Latin American press and to correct its report. Furthermore, it is astonishing when we recall that Pedro Carmona, the CIPE correspondent at Venezuela, had been briefly put in power by the USA, during a failed coup d’Etat in 2002 to oust Hugo Chavez.

To some extent, focussing attention on economic corruption enables Transparency International to mask NED’s activities: corrupting the ruling elite for Anglo-Saxon advantage.

The International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI)

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The goal of IRI is to corrupt the parties of the Right, while the NDI deals with left wing parties. The first is chaired by John McCain, the second by Madeleine Albright. So these two personalities should not be considered ordinary politicians, a leader of the opposition and a retired dean. Rather, as active leaders of the NSC programmes.

To contextualize the principal political parties in the world, IRI and NDI have renounced their control over l’Internationale libérale and l’Internationale socialiste. They have thus created rival organizations: the International Democratic Union (IDU) and the Alliance for Democrats (AD). The first is chaired by the Australian, John Howard. The Russian, Leonid Gozman of Just cause (Правое дело) is its vice-president. The second is led by the Italian Gianni Vernetti and co-chaired by the Frenchman, François Bayrou.
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IRI and NDI are also supported also by political foundations linking them to big political parties in Europe (six in Germany, two in France, one in the Netherlands and another one in Sweden).
Furthermore, some operations have been sub-contracted to mysterious private companies such as Democracy International Inc which has organized the recent rigged elections in Afghanistan.
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Tom McMahon: former vice head of Rahm Emanuel and currently head of NDI. He came to France to organise the primaries of the Socialist Party.
All this leaves a bitter taste. The US has corrupted most of the big political parties and trade unions all over the world. For sure, the “democracy” that they promote consists in discussing local questions in each country – hardly ever societal questions such as women’s rights or gay rights – and it is aligned with Washington on all international issues. The electoral campaigns have become shows where NED picks the cast by providing the necessary financial means to some and not to others. Even the notion of variation has lost meaning since NED promotes alternatively one camp or another provided it follows the same foreign and defense policy.

Today, in the European Union and elsewhere, one laments the crisis of democracy. Those responsible for this are clearly NED and the US. And how do we classify a regime such as the US regime where the Leader of the Opposition, John McCain, is in fact a leader of the National Security Council? Surely not as a democracy.

The Balance of the System

Over time, USAID, NED, their satellite institutions and their intermediary foundations have produced an unwieldy and greedy bureaucracy. Each year, when Congress votes on the NED’s budget, animated debates arise on the inefficiency of this tentacular system and rumours that funds have been appropriated to benefit US politicians in charge of administering them.

To achieve sound management, a number of studies have been commissioned to quantify the impact of these financial flows. Experts have compared the sums allocated in each state and the democratic ranking of these states by Freedom House. Then they calculated how much they needed to spend (in dollars) per inhabitant to improve the democratic ranking of a State by a point.

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Tomicah Tillemann, adviser to Hillary Clinton for civil society and emerging democracies, supervises NED’s apparatus in the State Department.
Of course, all this is only an attempt at self-justification. The idea of establishing a democratic mark is not scientific. In some ways, it is totalitarian, for it assumes that there is only one form of democratic institutions. In other ways, it is infantile for it established a list of disparate criteria which it will measure with fictional coefficients to transform a social complexity into a single figure.

Furthermore, the vast majority of these studies conclude that it is a failure: although the number of democracies in the world has increased, there would be no link between democratic progress and regression on the one hand and the sums spent by the NSC on the other. On the contrary, it confirms that the real objectives have nothing to do with those indicated. However, those running USAID cite a study by Vanderbilt University, according to which only the NED operations co-financed by USAID have been effective because USAID manages its budget rigorously. Thus it is not surprising that this individual study has been financed by …. USAID.

Be that as it may, in 2003, on its twentieth anniversary, NED drew up a political account of its action, evidencing that it has financed more than 6,000 political and social organizations in the world, a figure that has not stopped increasing from that time. NED claims to have single-handedly set up the trade union Solidarnoc in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Otpor in Serbia. It was pleased that it had created from scratch Radio B92 or the daily Oslobodjenje in the former Yugoslavia and a series of new independent media in the “liberated” Iraq.
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In December 2011, Egyptian authorities search the offices of the NDI and IRI in Cairo. The documents that were seized are most important to understand US interference since the "nest of spies" was removed from Teheran in 1979. Charged with spying, the NED leaders are tried. Here: Robert Becker (Director of NDI, Cairo) at the opening of the trial. The documents prove that NED is wholly responsible for and manipulated the pseudo revolution that took place in Tahrir Square. This resulted in more than 4,000 deaths to hoist the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

Changing Cover

After experiencing global success, the rhetoric of democratization no longer convinces. By using it in all circumstances, President George W. Bush has depleted it of meaning. Noone can seriously claim that the subsidies paid by NED will make international terrorism go away. The claim that the US troops have toppled Saddam Hussein to offer democracy to Iraqis, cannot be asserted more persuasively.

Furthermore, citizens all over the world that fight for democracy have become distrustful. They now understand that the aid offered by NED and its tentacles is in fact aimed at manipulating and snaring their country. This is why they are increasingly refusing the contributions “with no strings or sticks attached” offered to them.

Also, US heads from different channels of corruption have tried to silence the system once again. After the CIA dirty tricks and the transparency of NED, they envisage creating a new structure that would replace a discredited package. It would not be managed by trade unions, management and the two big parties, but by multinationals on the model of the Asia Foundation.

In the eighties, the press revealed that this organization was a CIA cover to fight communism in Asia. It was then reformed and its management was entrusted to multinationals. (Boeing, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Levis Strauss etc…). This re-styling was enough to give the impression that it was non- governmental and respectable – a structure that never stopped serving the CIA. After the dissolution of Russia, it was replicated: the Eurasia Foundation, whose mandate extends covert action to the New Asian states.

Another issue that sparks debate is if the contributions for “promoting democracy” would have to take the exclusive form of contracts to carry out specific projects or subsidies with no duty to reach targets. The first option offers better legal cover but the second is a much more efficient tool of corruption.

Given this panorama, the requirement laid down by Vladimir Putin and Vladisl Surkov to regulate the funding of NGOs in Russia is legitimate even if the bureaucracy they have set up for doing so is outrageous and difficult to satisfy. The instrument of NED, put in place under the authority of the US NSC not only fails to support attempts at democracy all over the world but poisons them.
Translation Anoosha Boralessa | Source Оdnako (Russia)

Sunday, August 14, 2016

The Catastrophe Al Nakba How Palestine Became Israel



Cover of trifold brochure: How Palestine Became Israel


If Americans Knew
 
Last Updated April 2013
In the late 1800s a small, fanatic movement called “political Zionism” began in Europe. Its goal was to create a Jewish state somewhere in the world. Its leaders settled on the ancient and long-inhabited land of Palestine for the location of this state.1
Palestine's population at this time was approximately ninety-six percent non-Jewish (primarily Muslim and Christian).2
Over the coming decades Zionist leaders used various strategies to accomplish their goal of taking over Palestine:
  1. Encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine, partly through the invention of such deceptive slogans as "a land without a people for a people without a land," when, in fact, the land was already inhabited. Since the majority of Jews were not Zionists until after WWII, Zionists used an array of misleading strategies, including secret collaboration with the Nazis, to push immigration.3
  2. Convincing a “Great Power” to back this process. By turn, Zionists approached the Ottomans, the British, and the U.S. to further their cause. While the Ottomans turned them down, the British (being promised that American Zionists would push the U.S. to enter World War I on the side of England) eventually acceded, as did the U.S. (due to concerns of politicians like Harry Truman that they would lose elections otherwise).4
  3. Buying up the land (sometimes through subterfuges), proclaiming it Jewish for all eternity, and refusing to allow non-Jews to live or work on the purchased land. This was called "redeeming" the land and was financed by a variety of means, including by such wealthy banking families as the Rothschilds.5
  4. Historic Palestine, the land now occupied by the state of Israel, was a multicultural society. During the 1947-49 War, Israel committed at least 33 massacres and expelled over 750,000 Palestinians.
    Historic Palestine, the land now occupied by the state of Israel, was a multicultural society. During the 1947-49 War, Israel committed at least 33 massacres and expelled over 750,000 Palestinians. (Click graph for large version.)
  5. Violence, if such financial dispossession should fail or prove too slow – as it did.6
In the 1930s, Jewish land ownership had increased from approximately 1% to just over 6% of the land, and violence had increased as well. With the emergence of several Zionist terrorist gangs (whose ranks included a number of future Prime Ministers of Israel), there was violent conflict. Numerous people of all ethnicities were killed – then, as now, the large majority of them Christian and Muslim Palestinians.7

The Catastrophe

This growing violence culminated in Israel's ruthless 1947-49 "War of Independence,"in which at least 750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were expelled from their homes by numerically superior Israeli forces – half before any Arab armies joined the war. This massive humanitarian disaster is known as ‘The Catastrophe,’ al Nakba in Arabic.8
Palestinian refugees
Zionist forces committed 33 massacres and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns. Author Norman Finkelstein states: “According to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War... acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’”9
Count Folke Bernadotte, a former official of the Swedish Red Cross who saved thousands of Jews during World War II and was appointed U.N. mediator in Palestine, said of the refugees: "It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes.”10 Bernadotte was assassinated by a Zionist organization led by future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.11

Injustice Continues

Over the 60 years since Israel’s founding on May 14, 1948, this profound injustice has continued. Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world.
Palestinian child refugees.
1.3 million Palestinians live in Israel as “Israeli citizens,” but despite their status as citizens, they are subject to systematic discrimination. Many are prohibited from living in the villages and homes from which they were violently expelled, and their property has been confiscated for Jewish-only uses. In Orwellian terminology, Israeli law designates these internal refugees as “present absentees.”12
In 1967 Israel launched its third war and seized still more Palestinian (and other Arab) land. Israel also attacked a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing and injuring over 200 Americans, an event that remains largely covered-up today, despite efforts by an extraordinary array of high-level military officers and civilian officials to expose it.13
Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip – the final 22% of mandatory Palestine – and began building settlements for Jewish Israelis on land confiscated from Palestinian Muslims and Christians. It has demolished more than 24,145 Palestinian homes since 1967. In 2005 Israel returned Gazan land to its owners, but continues to control its borders, ports, and air space, turning Gaza into a large prison, where 1.5 million people are held under what a UN Human Rights Commissioner described as “catastrophic” conditions.
Over 7,000 Palestinian men, women, and children are imprisoned in Israeli jails under physically abusive conditions (many have not even been charged with a crime) and the basic human rights of all Palestinians under Israeli rule are routinely violated. Some prisoners tortured by Israel have been American citizens. In the violence that began in fall, 2000 through Feb. 5, 2009, Israeli forces killed 6,348 Palestinians; Palestinian resistance groups killed 1,072 Israelis. Israel’s military, the fourth most powerful on earth possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons.14

American Involvement

American taxpayers give Israel more than $8 million per day, even though surveys reveal that 73% of Americans oppose taking sides on Israel-Palestine. Because of Israel’s powerful US lobby, Congress gives far more money to Israel than to all of sub-Saharan Africa put together.15 In its 60 years of existence, Israel, the size of New Jersey, has received more U.S. tax money than any other nation. While most Americans are unaware of these facts (studies have shown that media report on Israeli deaths at rates up to 13 times greater than they report on Palestinian deaths) governmental actions are making Americans responsible for a continuing catastrophe of historic proportions – and which is, in addition, creating extremely damaging enmity to the US itself. Israel partisans have played a significant role in promoting U.S. attacks on Iraq and Iran.16
As more Americans learn the facts, there is a growing bipartisan, multi-ethnic movement to counter Israel’s US lobby, which has long held a vicegrip on American Mideast policies.

Palestinian Loss of Land 1946-2005

four maps of shrinking Palestine
“Confusion about the origins of the conflict all too often has obscured Americans’ understanding of its true dimension. It began as a conflict resulting from immigrants struggling to displace the local majority population. All else is derivative from this basic reality.”
– Donald Neff, former Senior Editor, Time Magazine, Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945
“[T]he story of 1948... is the simple but horrific story of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine... Retrieving it from oblivion is incumbent upon us, not just as a greatly overdue act of historiographical reconstruction or professional duty; it is... the very first step we must take if we ever want reconciliation to have a chance, and peace to take root, in the torn lands of Palestine and Israel.”
– Ilan Pappe, Israeli Historian, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
“The Palestinian Holocaust is unsurpassed in history. For a country to be occupied, emptied of its people, its physical and cultural landmarks obliterated, its destruction hailed as a miraculous act of God, all done according to a premeditated plan, meticulously executed, internationally supported, and still maintained today...”
– Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta, Palestine Right Of Return, Sacred, Legal, and Possible

Recommended Books:

  • George W, Ball & Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment
  • Mazin Qumsiyeh, Sharing the Land of Canaan
  • Greg Philo and Mike Berry, Israel and Palestine: Competing Histories
  • Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out
  • Ali Abunimah, One Country
  • Jonathon Cook, Blood and Religion
  • Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
  • Israel Shahak, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
  • Donald Neff, Fallen Pillars
  • Salman Abu-Sitta, Palestine Right of Return, Sacred, Legal, and Possible
  • Robert John & Sami Hadawi, Palestine Diary 1914-1945
  • Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine
  • John W. Mulhall, CSP, America and the founding of Israel
  • Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
  • Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians
  • Stephen Green, Taking Sides
  • Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle
  • Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest
  • Virginia Tilley, The One State Solution
  • Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah
  • John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby

Selected Websites

IfAmericansKnew.org
PalestineRemembered.com

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-nakba.html