MONSATAN BE GONE | GMO Chickens Coming Home to Roost

The seven hundred years-old expression, “curses are like chickens; they always come home to roost,” rarely has been more appropriate than to describe what is happening to the world’s largest purveyor of gene-manipulated or GMO seeds and paired chemical toxins. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of genocidal eugenicists. Monsanto Corporation of St Louis is apparently in a deep decline. 

Ever since 1992 when that nasty US President George H. W. Bush conspired–yes, Virginia, conspiracies exist– with the leadership of Monsanto to unleash GMOs on an unwitting American population, Monsanto seemed unstoppable.

With the help of Bush, who made a decree that no US Government agency be allowed to independently test GMO seeds or their chemicals for health and safety–the fraudulent and totally unscientific Doctrine of Substantial Equivalence–Monsanto could make its own fraudulent doctored tests and give them to US or EU agencies as valid. As a result, GMO seeds took over American agriculture, based on a pack of lies to farmers that they would raise yields and decrease chemical use. Monsanto spread its GMO far around the world, through bribery as in Indonesia, and through the unusual machinations of the Government of the United States. Monsanto paid scientists to lie about its products safety.

It used the corrupt Brussels European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to back its position, even when alarming studies such as the famous September 2012 Food and Chemical Toxicology peer-reviewed study by Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini created shock waves around the world. The Seralini study, the first ever long term, two year study of GMO diet with a group of 200 rats found shocking effects. Among them that,”female rats fed Monsanto GMO maize died 2–3 times more than controls, and more rapidly… Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than, and before, controls; the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments.”

Monsanto then set about to kill the messenger by pressuring the Food & Chemical Toxicology journal to hire a former Monsanto employee, Richard E. Goodman, who promptly declared Seralini’s study “unscientific” and deleted it, an act almost without precedent in science journals. A year later both Goodman and the journal’s editor-in-chief were forced to step down and Seralini’s article was republished in another scientific journal. But the scientific character assassination against Seralini had a chilling effect as Monsanto wanted.

Annus Horribilis

The list of Monsanto abuses and criminal activities is long. Now, however, it seems her chickens are coming home to roost and maybe to do more.

The year 2015 is turning into what Britain’s Queen Elisabeth would call an Annus Horribilis, a very, very bad one. On March 20, 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, assessed the carcinogenicity of glyphosate, the prime ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide, Roundup. They found “evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. Glyphosate also caused DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells…One study in community residents reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) after glyphosate was sprayed nearby.” Monsanto was hardly thrilled at that we can be sure.

The WHO report was followed by a total ban on commercial planting of GMO seeds in the Russian Federation. There followed as well a decision to ban all GMO by 19 of 28 EU countries, including France and Germany, a further devastating blow to Monsanto and the GMO lobby. Then in September, a Monsanto herbicide again got hit bad when a French appeals court confirmed that Monsanto was guilty of chemical poisoning, upholding a 2012 ruling in favor of Paul Francois, whose lawyers claimed the company’s Lasso weed-killer gave the grain farmer neurological problems, including memory loss and headaches. To add to Monsanto woes, the State of California issued a notice of intent to list glyphosate as a carcinogen, the first regulatory agency in the US to determine that glyphosate is a carcinogen, according to Dr. Nathan Donley, scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

These major setbacks have had a serious impact on the GMO and chemicals company. The price of Monsanto stock has fallen from a recent February high of $125 a share by 29%. With sales falling, Monsanto has announced it will slash 2,600 jobs, 12 percent of its workforce, and spend $3 billion to buy back stock shares, a form of financial (as opposed to genetic) engineering—they magically boost a company’s earnings-per-share ratio simply by removing shares from the market.

To make matters even worse, the Monsanto strategic takeover of the Swiss GMO and agrichemical giant, Syngenta, has collapsed. Since 2011 Monsanto’s strategy has been to pair with Syngenta. Syngenta is the world’s largest chemical herbicide and pesticide maker, with a far smaller part of revenue from its patented GMO seeds. Monsanto by contrast is the world’s largest GMO seeds purveyor and seed-owner, but has a relatively small share of profit from sale of its agrichemicals. In late August Monsanto offered Syngenta– infamous for its controversial atrazine herbicide and neonicotinoid pesticides—$47 billion. The Swiss company refused the bid, and Monsanto was forced to withdraw. The reason for the Syngenta takeover attempt was Monsanto’s determination to lessen dependency on sale of its GMO seeds, where problems are obviously mounting, and focus more on profits from weed-killing chemicals. That signals that it is not the “miracle” character of GMO seeds that interest Monsanto. Now they want to focus on toxic chemicals to raise the levels of toxins in animals, crops and the human population.

In a desperate move to hold ground and prevent GMO food labeling in the United States, Monsanto has been doing heavy lobbying of the US Congress to pass a national law prohibiting any labeling of food that contains GMO. Although 80 percent of all packaged food sold in America contain GMOs, consumers are kept in the dark because the US is one of the few places in the developed world that doesn’t require food producers to disclose if their products contain GMO as is required by law in the EU.

A new US law backed by Monsanto and the GMO lobby has passed the House of Representatives and is now being debated in the Senate. The bill, H.R. 1599, misleadingly named “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling (SAFE) Act,” would make federal GMO labeling voluntary, while prohibiting states from labeling GMOs. The aim is to overturn a move by individual states, in absence from national labeling, to force state labeling. A recent New York Times poll showed that 93 percent of Americans want GMO foods to labeled as such, with three-quarters of survey respondents expressing concern about GMOs in food.

Monsanto money may buy the passage of H.R. 1599, which anti-GMO activists label the “DARK act,” intended to keep Americans in the dark about the food they eat. But the future of GMO is clearly looking worse for Monsanto and her Rockefeller Foundation backers than at any time since Monsanto’s fateful 1992 White House meeting with Papa Bush.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/19/gmo-chickens-coming-home-to-roost/

French Government Knew Extremists BEFORE Paris Terrorist Attack ~ CONFIRMED

By Tony Cartalucci

Global Research, November 14, 2015

Land Destroyer Report

Region: Europe, Middle East & North Africa

Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism'

In-depth Report: SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT WAR?

 As predicted and previously reported, terrorists who took part in an unprecedented attack in the center of Paris killing over a 100 and injuring hundreds more, were well-known to French security agencies before the attack took place.

The UK Daily Mail reported in its article, “Hunt for the Isis killers: One terrorist identified as ‘young Frenchman known to authorities’ – another two found with Syrian and Egyptian passports,” that:

One of the terrorists involved in last night’s attacks in Paris has been officially identified as a Parisian, according to local media reports.
The man, who was killed at the Bataclan, was identified using his fingerprints and was from the southern Parisian neighbourhood of Courcouronnes.
French reports say that the man, who was around 30 years old, was already known to French anti-terrorist authorities prior to last night’s attacks. (emphasis added)

Similarly in January 2015 in the wake of the “Charlie Hebo attack” which left 12 dead, it was revealed that French security agencies tracked the perpetrators for nearly a decade beforehand, having arrested at least one terrorist a total of two times, incarcerating him at least once, tracked two of them overseas where they had trained with known terrorist organizations and possibly fought alongside them in Syria, before tracking them back to French territory.Astoundingly, French security agencies never moved in on the terrorists, claiming that after a decade of tracking them, they had finally decided to close their case for precisely the amount of time needed for them to plan and execute their grand finale.More Wars and More Surveillance Can’t Help  

With a similar scenario now emerging, particularly in the wake of the “Charlie Hebo attack,” where French security agencies knew about extremists but failed to stop them before carrying out yet another high-profile attack, even with enhanced surveillance powers granted to them by recent legislation, it appears that no amount of intrusive surveillance or foreign wars will stem a terrorist problem the French government itself seems intent on doing nothing to stop.The problem is not France’s immigration laws. Dangerous people are in France, but they are being tracked by French security agencies. The problem is not Syria. Terrorists have left to fight there, acquired deadly skills and affiliations before returning to France, but have likewise been tracked by French security agencies. Instead, the problem is that French security agencies are doing nothing about these dangerous individuals knowingly living, working, and apparently plotting in the midst of French society.In the coming hours and days, the French government and its various co-conspirators in their proxy war against Syria will propose a plan of action they claim will stem the terrorist threat France and the rest of Europe faces. But the reality is, the problem is not something the French government can solve, because the problem is clearly the French government itself.ISIS is Behind the Paris Attacks, But Who is Behind ISIS?  With the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) emerging as being behind the attack, the question that remains is, who is behind ISIS itself? While the West has attempted to maintain the terrorist organization possesses almost mythological abilities, capable of sustaining combat operations against Syria, Iraq, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, support from Iran, and now the Russian military – all while carrying out large-scale, high-profile terrorist attacks across the globe – it is clear that ISIS is the recipient of immense multinational state-sponsorship.
The rise of ISIS was revealed as early as 2007 in interviews conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 9-page report “The Redirection.” The interviews revealed a plan to destabilize and overthrow the government of Syria through the use of sectarian extremists – more specifically, Al Qaeda – with arms and funds laundered through America’s oldest and stanchest regional ally, Saudi Arabia.
A more recent Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) report drafted in 2012 (.pdf) admitted:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

The DIA report enumerates precisely who these “supporting powers” are:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

And to this day, by simply looking at any number of maps detailing territory held by various factions amid the Syrian conflict, it is clear that ISIS is not a “state” of any kind, but an ongoing invasion emanating from NATO-member Turkey’s territory, with its primary supply corridor crossing the Turkish-Syrian borderbetween the Syrian town of Ad Dana and the western bank of the Euphrates River, a supply corridor now increasingly shrinking.

Image: ISIS-held territory seen in dark grey forms a corridor directly up to the Syrian-Turkish border – or more accurately, begins at the Turkish-Syrian border. In recent days, this corridor has faced being completely cut off by joint Syrian-Russian gains in and around Aleppo and toward the western bank of the Euphrates River. East of the Euphrates is already held by Kurds and Syrian forces. NATO is clearly providing ISIS’ primary support, and yet ISIS is alleged to have been behind an attack on a NATO member.

In fact, the desperation exhibited by the West and its efforts to oust the Syrian government and salvage its proxy force now being decimated by joint Syrian-Russian military operations, is directly proportional to the diminishing size and stability of this corridor.
Just last week, Syrian forces reestablished firm control over the Kweyris military airport, which was under siege for years. The airport is just 20 miles from the Euphrates, and, as Syrian forces backed by Russian airpower work their way up toward the Turkish border along the Syrian coast, constitutes a unified front that will essentially cut off ISIS deeper inside Syria for good.
Should ISIS’ supply lines be cut in the north, the organization’s otherwise inexplicable fighting capacity will atrophy. The window for the West’s “regime change” opportunity is quickly closing, and perhaps in a last ditch effort, France has jammed the spilled blood and broken bodies of its own citizens beneath the window to prevent it from closing for good.
The reality is that France knew the “Charlie Hebo” attackers, they knew beforehand those involved in the most recent Paris attack, and they likely know of more waiting for their own opportunity to strike. With this knowledge, they stood by and did nothing. What’s more, it appears that instead of keeping France safe, the French government has chosen to use this knowledge as a weapon in and of itself against the perception of its own people, to advance its geopolitical agenda abroad.
If the people of France want to strike hard at those responsible for repeated terrorist attacks within their borders, they can start with those who knew of the attacks and did nothing to stop them, who are also, coincidentally, the same people who helped give rise to ISIS and help perpetuate it to this very day.

The original source of this article is Land Destroyer Report

Copyright © Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer Report, 2015

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/confirmed-french-government-knew-extremists-before-paris-terrorist-attack/5489043

Time Is Running Out For Pax Americana’s Apologists ~ Zionists' Thirty (30) Families Strike Out 2016 ~ Hallelujah!!!!

by Rostislav Ischenko ~ Voltaire Network | Moscow (Russia) | 11 November 2015

While the war in Syria has demonstrated the inferiority of US armament compared to that of Russia, the question of the end of American hegemony should be reviewed. According to Rostislav Ischenko, Washington must quickly make the right decisions. If Washington fails to overcome its own divisions immediately, he will lose control of events.

The paradox of the current global crisis is that for the last five years, all relatively responsible and independent nations have made tremendous efforts to save the United States from the financial, economic, military, and political disaster that looms ahead. And this is all despite Washington’s equally systematic moves to destabilize the world order, rightly known as the Pax Americana (“American peace”).

Since policy is not a zero-sum game, i.e., one participant’s loss does not necessarily entail a gain for another, this paradox has a logical explanation. A crisis erupts within any system when there is a discrepancy between its internal structure and the sum total of available resources (that is, those resources will eventually prove inadequate for the system to function normally and in the usual way).
There are at least three basic options for addressing this situation:
 Through reform, in which the system’s internal structure evolves in such a way as to better correspond to the available resources.
 Through the system’s collapse, in which the same result is achieved via revolution.
 Through preservation, in which the inputs threatening the system are eliminated by force, and the relationships within the system are carefully preserved on an inequitable relationship basis (whether between classes, social strata, castes, or nations).
The preservation method was attempted by the Ming and Qing dynasties in China, as well as the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. It was utilized successfully (in the 19th century) prior to the era of capitalist globalization. But neither of those Eastern civilizations (although fairly robust internally) survived their collision with the technologically more advanced (and hence more militarily and politically powerful) European civilization. Japan found its answer on the path of modernization (reform) back in the second half of the 19th century, China spent a century immersed in the quagmire of semi-colonial dependence and bloody civil wars, until the new leadership of Deng Xiaoping was able to articulate its own vision of modernizing reforms.
This point leads us to the conclusion that a system can be preserved only if it is safeguarded from any unwanted external influences, i.e., if it controls the globalized world.
The contradiction between the concept of escaping the crisis, which has been adopted the US elite, and the alternative concept —proposed by Russia and backed by China, then by the BRICS nations and now a large part of the world— lay in the fact that the politicians in Washington were working from the premise that they are able to fully control the globalized world and guide its development in the direction they wish. Therefore, faced with dwindling resources to sustain the mechanisms that perpetuate their global hegemony, they tried to resolve the problem by forcefully suppressing potential opponents in order to reallocate global resources in their favor.
If successful, the United States would be able to reenact the events of the late 1980s-early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global socialist system under its control allowed the West to escape its crisis. At this new stage, it has become a question of no longer simply reallocating resources in favor of the West as a collective whole, but solely in favor of the United States. This move offered the system a respite that could be used to create a regime for preserving inequitable relationships, during which the American elite’s definitive control over the resources of power, raw materials, finance, and industrial resources safeguarded them from the danger of the system’s internal implosion, while the elimination of alternative power centers shielded the system from external breaches, rendering it eternal (at least for a historically foreseeable period of time).
The alternative approach postulated that the system’s total resources might be depleted before the United States can manage to generate the mechanisms to perpetuate its global hegemony. In turn, this will lead to strain (and overstrain) on the forces that ensure the imperial suppression of those nations existing on the global periphery, all in the interests of the Washington-based center, which will later bring about the inevitable collapse of the system.
Two hundred, or even one hundred years ago, politicians would have acted on the principle of “what is falling, that one should also push” and prepared to divvy up the legacy of yet another crumbling empire. However, the globalization of not only the world’s industry and trade (that was achieved by the end of the 19th century), but also global finance, caused the collapse of the American empire through a policy that was extremely dangerous and costly for the whole world. To put it bluntly, the United States could bury civilization under its own wreckage.
Consequently, the Russian-Chinese approach has made a point of offering Washington a compromise option that endorses the gradual, evolutionary erosion of American hegemony, plus the incremental reform of international financial, economic, military, and political relations on the basis of the existing system of international law.
America’s elite have been offered a “soft landing” [1] that would preserve much of their influence and assets, while gradually adapting the system to better correspond to the present facts of life (bringing it into line with the available reserve of resources), taking into account the interests of humanity, and not only of its “top echelon” as exemplified by the “300 families” who are actually dwindling to no more than thirty.
In the end, it is always better to negotiate than to build a new world upon the ashes of the old. Especially since there has been a global precedent for similar agreements.
Up until 2015, America’s elite (or at least the ones who determine US policy) had been assured that they possessed sufficient financial, economic, military, and political strength to cripple the rest of the world, while still preserving Washington’s hegemony by depriving everyone, including (at the final stage) even the American people of any real political sovereignty or economic rights. European bureaucrats were important allies for that elite – i.e., the cosmopolitan, comprador-bourgeoisie sector of the EU elite, whose welfare hinged on the further integration of transatlantic (i.e., under US control) EU entities (in which the premise of Atlantic solidarity has become geopolitical dogma) and NATO, although this is in conflict with the interests of the EU member states.
However, the crisis in Ukraine, which has dragged on much longer than originally planned, Russia’s impressive surge of military and political energy as it moved to resolve the Syrian crisis [2] (something for which the US did not have an appropriate response) and, most important, the progressive creation of alternative financial and economic entities that call into question the dollar’s position as the de facto world currency [3], have forced a sector of America’s elite that is amenable to compromise to rouse itself (over the last 15 years that elite has been effectively excluded from participation in any strategic decisions).
The latest statements by Kerry [4] and Obama [5] which seesaw from a willingness to consider a mutually acceptable compromise on all contentious issues (even Kiev was given instructions “to implement Minsk “) to a determination to continue the policy of confrontation – are evidence of the escalating battle being fought within the Washington establishment.
It is impossible to predict the outcome of this struggle — too many high-status politicians and influential families have tied their futures to an agenda that preserves imperial domination for that to be renounced painlessly. In reality, multibillion-dollar positions and entire political dynasties are at stake.
However, we can say with absolute certainty that there is a certain window of opportunity during which any decision can be made. And a window of opportunity is closing that would allow the US to make a soft landing with a few trade-offs. The Washington elite cannot escape the fact that they are up against far more serious problems than those of 10-15 years ago. Right now the big question is about how they are going to land, and although that landing will already be harder than it would have been and will come with costs, the situation is not yet a disaster.
But the US needs to think fast. Their resources are shrinking much faster than the authors of the plan for imperial preservation had expected. To their loss of control over the BRICS countries can be added the incipient, but still fairly rapid loss of control over EU policy as well as the onset of geopolitical maneuvering among the monarchies of the Middle East. The financial and economic entities created and set in motion by the BRICS nations are developing in accordance with their own logic, and Moscow and Beijing are not able to delay their development overlong while waiting for the US to suddenly discover a capacity to negotiate.
The point of no return will pass once and for all sometime in 2016, and America’s elite will no longer be able to choose between the provisions of compromise and collapse. The only thing that they will then be able to do is to slam the door loudly, trying to drag the rest of the world after them into the abyss.

Rostislav Ischenko Source Oriental Review (Russia)

Ron Paul 12-Term Congressman Ron Paul's Warning to Americans about the Coming Currency Crisis | World yuan-ization thanks to the City of London

https://artdailyprayer.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/world-yuan-ization-thanks-to-the-city-of-london/

• ‘Bubbles are all over the place’: Ron Paul speaks to RT on US economy & presidential race

  

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA EXCEPTIONALISM DEFINED VIA WILLIAM BLUM

William Blum Official website of the author, historian, and U.S. foreign policy critic.

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For over 65 years, the United States war machine has been on auto pilot.  Since World War II, the world has believed that US foreign policy means well, and that America’s motives in spreading democracy are honorable, even noble.  In this startling and provocative book from William Blum, one of the United States’ leading non-mainstream chroniclers of American foreign policy and author of the popular online newsletter, The Anti-Empire Report, demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth.  Moreover, unless this fallacy is unlearned, and until people understand fully the worldwide suffering American policy has caused, we will never be able to stop the monster.

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The Anti-Empire Report

Issue #140 — November 3rd, 2015

Are you confused by the Middle East?  Here are some things you should know.  (But you’ll probably still be confused.)

William Blum Official website of the author, historian, and U.S. foreign policy critic.

>The Anti-Empire Report #140<

By William Blum – Published November 3rd, 2015

Are you confused by the Middle East? Here are some things you should know. (But you’ll probably still be confused.)

• The US, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the Gulf monarchies have all in the recent past supported al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State (ISIS) with arms, money, and/or manpower.
• The first example of this was in 1979 when the United States began covert operations in Afghanistan, six months before the Russians arrived, promoting Islamic fundamentalism across the southern tier of the Soviet Union against “godless communism”. All the al-Qaeda/Taliban shit then followed.
• In addition to Afghanistan, the United States has provided support to Islamic militants in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, the Caucasus, and Syria.
• The United States overthrew the secular governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and is trying to do the same with Syria, thus giving great impetus to the rise of ISIS. Said Barack Obama in March of this year: “ISIS is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”
• More than a million refugees from these wars of Washington are currently over-running Europe and North Africa. God Bless American exceptionalism.
• The Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish Kurds have all fought against ISIS, but Turkey – close US ally and member of NATO – has fought against each of them.
• Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanese factions have each supported the Syrian government in various ways in Damascus’s struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups, including the (much celebrated but seldom seen) “moderate” ones. For this all four countries have been sharply criticized by Washington.
• The United States has bombed ISIS in Syria, but has used the same occasions to damage Syria’s infrastructure and oil-producing capacity.
• Russia has bombed ISIS in Syria, but has used the same occasions to attack Syria’s other enemies.
• The mainstream media almost never mentions the proposed Qatar natural-gas pipelines – whose path to Europe Syria has stood in the way of for years – as a reason for much of the hostility toward Syria. The pipelines could dethrone Russia as Europe’s dominant source of energy.
• In Libya, during the beginning of the 2011 civil war, anti-Gaddafi rebels, many of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO in “no-fly zones”.
• US policy in Syria in the years leading up to the 2011 uprising against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, which began the whole current mess, was designed to promote sectarianism, which in turn led to civil war with the goal of regime change.
• US Secretary of State John Kerry declared on October 22 that in resolving Syria’s civil war the country “should not be broken up, that it must remain secular, and that Syrians should choose their future leader.” (All of which actually describes Syria under Assad.) Then Kerry said: “One thing stands in the way of being able to rapidly move to implement that, and it’s a person called Assad, Bashar Assad.”

Why does the government of the United States hate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with such passion?

Is it because, as we’re told, he’s a brutal dictator? But how can that be the reason for the hatred? It would be difficult indeed to name a brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century or of the 21st century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population; at present the list would include Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.
The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.
What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.

Democratic Socialism

The candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a “democratic socialist”, for the US presidency has produced an unprecedented barrage of discussion in the American media about just what is this thing called “socialism”. Most of the discussion centers around the question of government ownership and control of the economy versus private ownership and control. This is, of course, a very old question; the meat and potatoes of the Cold War ideological competition.
What’s markedly different now is that a few centuries of uninhibited free enterprise have finally laid painfully bare the basic anti-social nature of capitalism, forcing many of even the most committed true believers to concede the inherent harm the system brings to the lives of all but the richest.
But regardless of what the intellects of these true believers tell them, they still find it very difficult emotionally to completely cut the umbilical cord to the system they were carefully raised to place the greatest of faith in. Thus, they may finally concede that we have to eliminate, or at least strictly minimize, the role of the profit motive in health care and education and maybe one or two other indispensable social needs, but they insist that the government should should keep its bureaucratic hands off everything else; they favor as much decentralization as possible.
The most commonly proposed alternative to both government or private control is worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Sanders has expressed his support for worker-owned cooperatives.
There is much to be said about such systems, but the problem I find is that they will still operate within a capitalist society, which means competition, survival of the fittest; which means that if you can’t sell more than your competitors, if you can’t make a sufficient net profit on your sales, you will likely be forced to go out of business; and to prevent such a fate, at some point you may very well be forced to do illegal or immoral things against the public; which means back to the present.
You cannot follow the mass media without being confronted every day with story after story of one corporation or another trying to swindle the public in one way or another; the latest egregious case being that of the much revered Volkswagen, recently revealed to have manipulated the measurement of the car’s pollution emission. The fact that half of the company’s Supervisory Board – responsible for monitoring the Management and approving important corporate decisions – consists of employee representatives elected by the employees did not prevent this egregious fraud; the company is still obliged to strive to maximize profit and the firm’s stock-market value. It’s the nature of the corporate beast within a capitalist jungle.
Only removal of the profit motive will correct such behavior, and also keep us from drowning in a sea of advertising and my phone ringing several times each day to sell me something I don’t need and which may not even exist.
The market. How can we determine the proper value, the proper price, of goods and services without “the magic of the marketplace”? Let’s look at something most people have to pay for – rent. Who or what designed this system where in 2015 11.8 million households in the US are paying more than 50 percent of their income to keep a roof over their head, while rent is considered “affordable” if it totals some 30 percent or less of one’s income. What is the sense of this? It causes more hardship than any other expense people are confronted with; all kinds of important needs go unmet because of the obligation to pay a huge amount for rent each month; it is the main cause of homelessness. Who benefits from it other than the landlords? What is magical about that?
Above and beyond any other consideration, there is climate change; i.e., survival of the planet, the quality of our lives. What keeps corporations from modifying their behavior so as to be kinder to our environment? It is of course the good old “bottom line” again. What can we do to convince the corporations to consistently behave like good citizens? Nothing that hasn’t already been tried and failed. Except one thing. Unmentionable in a capitalist society. Nationalization. There, I said it. Now I’ll be getting letters damning me as an “Old Stalinist”.
But nationalization is not a panacea either, at least for the environment. There’s the greatest single source of environmental damage in the world – The United States military. And it’s already been nationalized. But doing away with private corporations will reduce the drive toward imperialism sufficiently that before long the need for a military will fade away and we can live like Costa Rica. If you think that would put the United States in danger of attack, please tell me who would attack, and why.
Most Americans, like other developed peoples, worship the capitalism they were raised with. But do they? See the chapter in my book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower: “The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?” Written in 2000/2005, the examples given in the chapter may need some updating, but the ideas expressed are as valid as ever.
Nationalization, hand-in-hand with a planned society, would of course not preclude elections. On the contrary, we’d have elections not ruled by money. What a breath of fresh air. Professor Cornel West has suggested that it’s become difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic society, without great concentrations of corporate power, would look like, or how it would operate.

Who are you going to believe? Me or Dick Cheney?

I’ve spent about 30 years compiling the details of the criminal record of US foreign policy into concise lists, and I’m always looking for suitable occasions to present the information to new readers. The new book by Dick Cheney and his adoring daughter is just such an occasion.

“We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. … security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political, and diplomatic might.” – Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, “Why the world needs a powerful America”

Well … nothing short of a brain and soul transplant would change the welt anschauung of Dr. Strangelove and his carefully-conditioned offspring, but for all of you out there who still live in a world of facts, logic, human rights, and human empathy, here’s the ammunition to use if you should happen to find yourself ensnared in the embrace of the likes of the Cheney reptiles (including mother Lynne who once set up a website solely to attack me and seven others for holding a teach-in on September 18, 2001 in which we spoke of US foreign policy as the main provocation of what had happened exactly a week earlier.)
These are the lists:
Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

• Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
• Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
• Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
• Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
• Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
• Plus … although not easily quantified … more involved in the practice of torture than any other country in the world … for over a century … not just performing the actual torture, but teaching it, providing the manuals, and furnishing the equipment.

Open Letter to the War Politicians of the World

Jürgen Todenhöfer is a German journalist and former media manager; from 1972 to 1990 he was a member of parliament for the Christian Democrats (CDU). He was one of Germany’s most ardent supporters of the US-sponsored Mujahideen and their guerrilla war against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Several times he traveled to combat zones with Afghan Mujahideen groups. After 2001 Todenhöfer became an outspoken critic of the US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has published several books about visits he made to war zones. In recent years he twice interviewed Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and in 2015 he was the first German journalist to visit the ‘Islamic State’.

Dear Presidents and Heads of Governments!
Through decades of a policy of war and exploitation you have pushed millions people in the Middle East and Africa into misery. Because of your policies refugees have to flee all over the world. One out every three refugees in Germany comes from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. From Africa comes one out of five refugees.
Your wars are also the cause of global terrorism. Instead of some 100 international terrorists like 15 years ago, we now are faced with more than 100,000 terrorists. Your cynical ruthlessness now strikes back at us like a boomerang.
As usual, you do not even consider to really change your policy. You care only about the symptoms. The security situation gets more dangerous and chaotic by the day. More and more wars, waves of terror and refugee crises will determine the future of our planet.
Even in Europe, the war will one day knock again at Europe’s door. Any businessman that would act like you would be fired or be in prison by now. You are total failures.
The peoples of the Middle East and Africa, whose countries you have destroyed and plundered and the people of Europe, who now accommodate the countless desperate refugees, have to pay a high price for your policies. But you wash your hands of responsibility. You should stand trial in front of the International Criminal Court. And each of your political followers should actually take care of at least 100 refugee families.
Basically, the people of the world should rise up and resist you as the warmongers and exploiters you are. As once Gandhi did it - in nonviolence, in ‘civil disobedience’. We should create new movements and parties. Movements for justice and humanity. Make wars in other countries just as punishable as murder and manslaughter in one’s own country. And you who are responsible for war and exploitation, you should go to hell forever. It is enough! Get lost! The world would be much nicer without you.
– Jürgen Todenhöfer

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” was just held. This year set a new record for “yes” votes, with the addition of the Marshall Islands and Palau (heretofore each voting “no” or abstaining) and Micronesia (heretofore abstaining). All three countries had established diplomatic relations with Cuba earlier this year, which of course the United States had also done, but without any change in Washington’s vote. Here is how the vote has gone in the past (not including abstentions):

Year	Votes (Yes-No)	No Votes
1992	59-2	US, Israel
1993	88-4	US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994	101-2	US, Israel
1995	117-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996	138-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997	143-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1998	157-2	US, Israel
1999	155-2	US, Israel
2000	167-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001	167-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002	173-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003	179-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2004	179-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005	182-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006	183-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007	184-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008	185-3	US, Israel, Palau
2009	187-3	US, Israel, Palau
2010	187-2	US, Israel
2011	186-2	US, Israel
2012	188-3	US, Israel, Palau
2013	188-2	US, Israel
2014	188-2	US, Israel
2015	191-2	US, Israel

Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of all other governments. The real reason for Washington’s eternal hostility toward Cuba has not changed since the revolution in 1959 – The fear of a good example; the fear of an alternative to the capitalist model; a fear that has been validated repeatedly over the years as many Third World countries have expressed their admiration and gratitude toward Cuba.
How the embargo began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Mallory proposed “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted its suffocating embargo against its everlasting enemy.
Nothing of any real importance has changed recently. Guantánamo Prison still exists in all its imperialist beauty and torture. The US has not renounced its “regime-change” policies toward Cuba. Not a penny of Cuba’s near-trillion-dollar lawsuit for compensation has been paid. Washington has recently threatened to revoke the tax exempt status of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, one of the most respected and experienced Cuba advocacy groups. I still can’t go to Cuba as a tourist, or to present a book of mine at a Cuban Book Fair (for which I’ve been blocked in the past). And the United States still does not relax its death grip on the embargo, including continuing to prohibit the sale of medicines to Cuba.

A note to readers

A number of you have remarked to me about Killing Hope being unavailable in stores and, usually, from Amazon, and often from myself. This is because one of the book’s publishers, Common Courage (Maine), and its editor Greg Bates, have blocked publication and distribution of the book by a new US publisher. Common Courage is essentially out of business but refuses to face up to the fact. Bates stole a royalty payment sent to me by my British publisher via Common Courage. This theft, among other things, nullified my contract with Common Courage. It’s complicated, but I feel obliged to offer some explanation to those of you who have been unable to find a copy of the book ...

Notes

1. The Independent (London), March 18, 2015
2. The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire (2015), Introduction by Julian Assange, chapter 10
3. Newsweek, September 21, 2015
4. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2005), Chapter 18
5. See Jürgen Todenhöfer’s Facebook and website. Some minor corrections to spelling and grammar have been made.
6. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba (1991), p.885

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.

← Issue #139

 

William Blum is an author, historian, and U.S. foreign policy critic. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, among others. Read more →

To rescue an old man from the clutches of the capitalist imperialist meanies …

Books by William Blum

America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy

The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

Rogue State

A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower

Killing Hope

U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

Freeing the World to Death

Essays on the American Empire

West-Bloc Dissident

A Cold War Memoir

Send comments, typos found, money, love notes, hate mail, death threats, letter bombs, and anthrax to bblum6@aol.com