Elizabeth Murray

Consortiumn News Exclusive: As Israel threatens to bomb Iran, U.S. pundits are again pontificating about the necessity of war and opining about military tactics. Left out of their frame is the certainty of mass human suffering, a reality forgotten since the days of the Vietnam War, says former U.S. intelligence analyst Elizabeth Murray.

Iran - Iraq War (1980-1988): Refugees on the way to nowhere...

In late 2002, just prior to the launch of the U.S. “shock and awe” campaign against Iraq, I was invited to join a gathering of intelligence analysts at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to participate in an Iraq “war games” exercise. We were assigned specific roles and asked to “play out” various political and diplomatic scenarios that might unfold in the wake of a U.S. attack on Iraq.

A tall, heavy-set Iraqi-American, who was present as an observer and seated beside me on the final day, remarked quietly: “All these people are talking about strategic, political and military issues; no one here is talking about the hundreds of thousands of people — my people — that are going to die.”

His words struck me as profoundly tragic, and the tears welling up behind his dark glasses made me feel suddenly ashamed to be there, aware of the complete absence of consideration for Iraqis. I struggled to find something to say that would console the man, but found myself at a loss.

All these years later, that incident has come back to haunt me as we approach the precipice of yet another deadly war. Will we allow ourselves to be blinded again?

As Israeli leaders engage in frenzied posturing over a possible military strike on Iran, we again have pundits, experts and commentators speculating how an Israeli offensive would play out. They search for the meaning behind the inflammatory rhetoric of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and ponder the impact of a war on Western political, strategic and economic interests.

As with the war games I attended at the War College 10 years ago, their narrow focus on strategic and tactical aspects of a potentially serious conflict conveniently avoids the fact that we are talking about the mass murder and maiming of Iranian civilians, as well as many others in the region.

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Jordan Shilton

The desire to absolve the political elite in Norway and Europe of any responsibility for the systematic promotion of far-right ideas was the main driving force of the official cover-up.

The Oslo District Court yesterday ruled that fascist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik was sane and handed down the maximum sentence of 21 years imprisonment for his twin terrorist attacks on July 22, 2011. A mass shooting of social democratic youth on the island of Utøya and an earlier car bomb led to the deaths of 77.

Announcing the decision, Judge Elisabeth Arntzen sentenced Breivik to “preventive detention”, which means the period of his jail term can be extended as long as he is deemed a danger to society.

The ruling does not alter the fact that Breivik’s trial was the culmination of an official cover-up set in motion the day of his arrest. The question of his sanity, which dominated the trial, was a diversion introduced to prevent an honest examination of what was clearly a politically motivated crime. There is every possibility that the killings were carried out with the aid of far-right sympathisers across Europe.

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Ellen Brown

Two landmark developments on August 16th give momentum to the growing interest of cities and counties in addressing the mortgage crisis using eminent domain:

(1) The Washington State Supreme Court held in Bain v. MERS, et al., that an electronic database called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) is not a “beneficiary” entitled to foreclose under a deed of trust; and
(2) San Bernardino County, California, passed a resolution to consider plans to use eminent domain to address the glut of underwater borrowers by purchasing and refinancing their loans.

MERS is the electronic smokescreen that allowed banks to build their securitization Ponzi scheme without worrying about details like ownership and chain of title. According to trial attorney Neil Garfield, properties were sold to multiple investors or conveyed to empty trusts, subprime securities were endorsed as triple A, and banks earned up to 40 times what they could earn on a paying loan, using credit default swaps in which they bet the loan would go into default. As the dust settles from collapse of the scheme, homeowners are left with underwater mortgages with no legitimate owners to negotiate with. The solution now being considered is for municipalities to simply take ownership of the mortgages through eminent domain. This would allow them to clear title and start fresh, along with some other lucrative dividends.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, I will deal with other aspects of American collapse.

Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, “Low-wage work is pandemic.” Today in “freedom and democracy” America, “the world’s only superpower,” one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.

Others might be Ph.D.s teaching at universities as adjunct professors for $10,000 per year or less. Education is still touted as the way out of poverty, but increasingly is a path into poverty or into enlistments into the military services.

Edelman, who studies these issues, reports that 20.5 million Americans have incomes less than $9,500 per year, which is half of the poverty definition for a family of three.

There are six million Americans whose only income is food stamps. That means that there are six million Americans who live on the streets or under bridges or in the homes of relatives or friends. Hard-hearted Republicans continue to rail at welfare, but Edelman says, “basically welfare is gone.”

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Antoine Lerougetel

François Hollande rencontre le président du Conseil national
syrien, Abdel Basset Sayda, le 6 juillet 2012 à Paris.

French Socialist Party (PS) President François Hollande met with the new UN mediator for Syria, Kofi Annan's replacement, Lakhdar Brahimi, on Monday, before discussions Tuesday with officials of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the political wing of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

After his interview with Lakhdar Brahimi, Hollande said that there could not be “any political solution [in Syria] without the removal from power of Bashar al-Assad.”

Hollande also met with the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad ben Khalifa al-Thani, to discuss Syria. The emir provided vast funding and arms for the anti-Gaddafi forces in the NATO war to topple the Libyan government last year, and Qatar is again providing funding and weapons for US-backed Syrian forces aiming to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Criticised by the French right-wing parties for being insufficiently active in support of anti-Assad forces, Hollande is anxious to show that he is energetically backing the US policy of regime change in Damascus, continuing in the footsteps of his conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. The aim of French and Western imperialism is to install a puppet regime in Syria, as a step to forcing regime change in Iran. This aims to break any barrier to Washington’s neo-colonial remodelling of the oil-rich region in the interests of the US and its European allies.

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Chris Floyd

Although Britain is acting as the beard[*] in this case, the government of the Nobel Peace Laureate is clearly driving the action.

[Updated below] It is apparent that the nation of Ecuador will now be in the frame for what American foreign policy elites like to call, in their dainty and delicate language, "the path of action." Ecuador granted political asylum to Julian Assange [last week] for one reason only: the very real possibility that he would be "rendered" to the United States for condign punishment, including the possibility of execution.

None of the freedom-loving democracies involved in the negotiations over his fate -- Britain, Sweden, and the United States -- could guarantee that this would not happen … even though Assange has not been charged with any crime under U.S. law. [And even though the sexual misconduct allegations he faces in Sweden would not be crimes under U.S. or UK law.] Under these circumstances -- and after a sudden, blustering threat from Britain to violate the Ecuadorean embassy and seize Assange anyway -- the government of Ecuador felt it had no choice but to grant his asylum request.

As we all know, some of America's top political figures have openly called for Assange to be put to death for the crime of -- well, what was his crime, exactly, in American eyes?

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Stephen Lendman

March 5, 2012: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

AIPAC is a destructive, malevolent, evil force. It's heading Washington for war.

AIPAC is an unregistered foreign agent. It calls itself "America's Pro-Israeli Lobby." It's represented Israeli interests since 1953. Virtually no one in Congress confronts it. Doing so is a career-ender. It has enormous influence over US Middle East policies affecting Israel, including war and peace. It disseminates disinformation, lies and hate. It viciously attacks opponents. It calls Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and is racing toward a nuclear weapons capability." It manufactures threats to promote fear. It wants the Islamic Republic destroyed. It targets other regional states. It wants unchallenged Israeli regional dominance. James Petras says AIPAC's sole purpose "is to ensure Israel’s unchallenged military and political power over a huge region from North Africa to the Persian Gulf."

Its annual meeting "is the most outrageous public display of Zionist-Jewish power as it shapes US foreign policy." It threatens "to drag the US into another major war in the Middle East - this time against Iran." Doing so is lawless, madness, and self-destructive.

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Philip Giraldi

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, poses for a picture with
the national synchronized swimming team during an awards cere-
mony for Russia's Olympians in Moscow's Kremlin. (08/15/12)

That 120,000 Russians can gather in the streets to protest an election speaks well of them and they should be left alone to find their own way. Would that half that many Americans could come together to actively protest the political process in the United States. That would be something worth seeing.

I confess that I cannot quite understand the campaign by the neoconservatives and also a number of leading Democrats to vilify Russia and confront it at every opportunity. The Cold War has been over for more than 20 years, but some appear to want to revive it. Russia has evolved into a developing democracy, has a relatively free press, has a judiciary that functions at least some of the time, is natural-resource rich, and has an economy that is now linked to the rest of the world and is doing reasonably well. On the negative side, it is plagued by corruption and cronyism as well as increasing authoritarianism, but the average Russian enjoys freedoms never experienced in Soviet days and can also see steady improvement in the standard of living. The country’s president, Vladimir Putin, continues to be supported by most Russians, though dissent is admittedly growing over his clear reluctance to give up power.

Russia has a lot to offer the West. It has good ties with its traditional friends in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, and it still is seen by many foreign governments as an anti-colonial power. This means it is well placed to help mediate crisis situations with countries like Syria and Iran, which no longer trust Washington or the Western Europeans. Instead, however, the U.S. and some of its allies have seen Russia as an obstruction precisely because it refuses to endorse “humanitarian intervention” and regime change. Regime change has not exactly worked out very well in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and we shall soon see what will happen in Syria. Moscow’s cautious approach is almost certainly the better option.

And Russia is still a major military power. It is the only country in the world that has the ability to destroy the United States, which one might think would be sufficient reason to establish a friendly relationship. Russia has also indicated its willingness to reduce its own nuclear and chemical arsenals and to work with Washington to safeguard existing nuclear stockpiles through the bilateral Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.

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Stephen Lendman

Never bet against Washington's imperial plans. New tactics follow failed ones. Efforts to oust Assad continue. Proxy killers can't do it alone. They're no match against Syria's superior military strength. It's committed to rout them. Expect NATO intervention anytime or perhaps post-US November elections. Libya 2.0 looks increasingly likely. What better way to finesse it than by staging a false flag attack blamed on Assad. America's false flag history suggests it.

■ In 1898, Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba harbor. The Spanish-American war followed.
■ Roosevelt manipulated Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. South Korea was used to instigate war on the North. Lyndon Johnson wanted war on Vietnam and got it.
■ Fake threats sent US marines to Grenada. Manufactured incidents precipitated America's Panama invasion.
■ Saddam was head-faked into invading Kuwait. The Gulf War, two decades of sanctions, another war, and occupation followed.
■ September 11, 2001 was the mother of all false flags. It's the big lie of our time. Eleven years of imperial wars followed. One segues to another without end. Syria is Washington's latest. Iran is next. Proxy wars always rage. Media silence makes pretexts unnecessary.

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Johannes Stern

Israeli-US script: Divide Syria, divide the rest. (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya)

The cynicism with which Obama is seeking to justify the next US aggression in the Middle East is staggering.

Yesterday US and NATO officials discussed plans for a US military invasion of Syria to bring down Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, after US President Barack Obama announced that the US was contemplating a direct attack on Syria at a press conference Monday night.

A delegation led by Assistant Secretary for State for near East Affairs Beth Jones discussed US military plans with Turkey. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Defense Department and US intelligence officials met their Turkish counterparts “to share operational pictures, to talk about the effectiveness of what we’re doing now, and about what more we can do.”

Senior US officials said that contingency plans for US intervention in Syria include scenarios requiring tens of thousands of American troops.

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Julie Hyland

The British media has played a venal role throughout the ongoing efforts to witch-hunt and silence WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. But it has plumbed new depths following the decision by Ecuador to grant his request for political asylum.

The WikiLeaks founder sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 12, when it became apparent that UK authorities intended to extradite him to Sweden.

In his statement delivered from a window at the embassy on Sunday, Assange gave fresh evidence of Britain’s efforts to flout international law with its threat to derecognise the embassy and send police to arrest him. He described how he had heard police “storming” through internal fire escapes earlier in the week. He [also] denounced the incarceration and torture of alleged whistleblower, US Army private Bradley Manning, called for an end to the US-led persecution of WikiLeaks, the defence of free speech and resistance to state repression.

Like the British government, which has refused to comment on Assange’s statement, the media had nothing to say on the substance of his remarks. The well-paid hacks of Fleet Street are just as contemptuous towards democratic rights as their political masters. This applies with equal measure to those employed by newspapers that are overtly right-wing, such as the Daily Mail, or nominally liberal outlets like the Guardian.

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Paul Craig Roberts

My heart goes out to the three Russian women who comprise the Russian rock band, Pussy Riot. They were brutally deceived and used by the Washington-financed NGOs that have infiltrated Russia. Pussy Riot was sent on a mission that was clearly illegal under statutory law.

You have to admire and to appreciate the spunk of the young women. But you have to bemoan their gullibility. Washington needed a popular issue with which to demonize the Russian government for standing up to Washington’s intention to destroy Syria, just as Washington destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and as Washington intends to destroy Lebanon and Iran.

By intentionally offending religious worshipers--which would be a hate crime in the US and its European and British puppet states--the talented young women violated a statutory Russian law.

Prior to the women’s trial, Russian President Putin expressed his opinion that the women should not be harshly punished. Taking the cue from Putin, the judge gave the women, deceived and betrayed by the amerikan-financed NGOs, two years instead of seven years.

I am advised that after six months, Putin will see that the women are released. But, of course, that would not serve the propaganda of the Amerikan Empire. The instructions to the Washington-financed fifth column in Russia will be to make any government leniency for Pussy Riot impossible.

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Julian Assange

I am here today because I cannot be there with you today. But thank you for coming. Thank you for your resolve and your generosity of spirit.

On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and the police descended on this building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it, and you brought the world’s eyes with you.

Inside this embassy, after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through its internal fire escape. But I knew there would be witnesses. And that is because of you.

If the U.K. did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.

So, the next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the embassy of Ecuador.

Remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world and a courageous Latin America nation took a stand for justice.

And so, to those brave people: I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and in granting me political asylum.

And I also thank the government, and in particular Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, who upheld the Ecuadorian constitution and its notion of universal rights in their consideration of my asylum. And to the Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this constitution.

And I also have a debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy, whose families live in London and who have shown me hospitality and kindness despite the threats we all received.

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Brandon Smith

Tyranny is nothing but an opportunity for the best in all of us to rise.

It is inevitable. There comes a point in the development of every crisis, every catastrophe, every impending disaster, every act of methodical dictatorship, in which the generations selected by fate or destiny to endure the trial must attempt to look beyond the intellectual and the psychological, to deeply consider the greater philosophical or spiritual questions of their epoch.

Certain moments in history demand that truly free individuals relinquish their cynicism, and embrace that inherent world of form and conscience that exists in each of us but remains largely unexplained. Without this act of “faith”, or intuitive knowing, good cannot exist, inspire, or prevail.

To understand what we face in our age of encroaching technocracy draped like glistening silicon across the face of a third world American cesspool, we must accept certain realities; the first and foremost being the existence of “evil”. Not the evil of ignorance, that is easy to recognize. Not the evil of apathy and moral relativism, though the stench of both sharply permeates the sour underside of our culture.

No, I am talking about pure, unbiased, unflinching, perfectly conscious and fully absorbed evil. The kind that they tell stories about. The kind that history books speak of almost in awe, as if it is miraculous in nature. A dark tide. A prehistoric leviathan. An unbelievable and seemingly inhuman myth made manifest by astonishingly vile despots.

This evil is so overwhelming that many people today scarcely imagine it possible. It is our society’s greatest weakness; the denial of ultimate malice.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The day we see truth and do not speak is the day we begin to die.” ~ Martin Luther King

Conspiracy theories have now blossomed into what the smug presstitute media calls a “conspiracy culture.” According to the presstitutes, Americans have to find some explanation for their frustrations and failings, so Americans shift the blame to the Bilderbergers, the Rothschilds, the New World Order and so forth and so on.

Readers will not be surprised that I disagree with the presstitutes. Indeed, the conspiracy culture is the product of the presstitute media’s failure to investigate and to report truthfully. I am certain that the Western media is worse than the Soviet media was. The Soviet media devised ways for helping the public to read between the lines, whereas the Western media is so proud to be confidants of the government that they deliver the propaganda without any clues to the readers that it is propaganda.

Americans have been fed lies by “their” government and the government’s presstitute media for so long that it is not surprising that Americans increasingly believe that there is a conspiracy operating against them. Millions of Americans have been evicted from their jobs, careers, and homes while the crooks who stole from them run free and bankroll the presidential candidates. The world as millions of Americans knew it has come to an end, and no one has been held accountable. The explanation that Americans get from the media is that it is their own fault. They bought houses they shouldn’t have bought, and they didn’t train for the right jobs. It is not unreasonable for Americans to conclude that a conspiracy is operating against them.

Americans are told that “their” government cannot afford to help them because of the budget deficit and the burden on our grandchildren. But Americans see the trillions of dollars that are lavished on banksters, on wars, and on Homeland Security. Why is a police state and another attack on another Muslim country more important than keeping Americans in their jobs and in their homes?

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