Wayne Madsen

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has assembled as the core of his national security and foreign policy advisory team some of the most right-wing and militaristic members of the Bush-Cheney administration. In many ways, the hawkish Romney advisers represent a virtual Sturmabteiling (SS), or Nazi-like “Storm detachment” of the Republican Party, a vanguard that ensures neo-conservative doctrinal discipline throughout Republican ranks.

In a case of regressive amnesia, a number of Romney’s foreign policy advisers are stuck in the past and continue to speak of the danger posed by the “Soviet Union,” which has not existed for over twenty years. A case in point is Romney foreign policy adviser Richard Williamson, a longtime neo-conservative fixture in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations, including being named special envoy to Sudan in 2008.

Williamson is also a member of the board of the International Republican Institute (IRI), an adjunct of the Republican Party that is partly funded by Central Intelligence Agency funds laundered through the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Williamson is also connected to “democracy” projects funded by hedge fund tycoon George Soros, particularly through Williamson’s affiliation as a trustee with the Soros-funded Freedom House. Williamson, in recent criticism of the Obama administration's policy regarding Syria, stated that Syria is "strategically important to the Soviet Union."

Williamson’s stasis in a historical time warp becomes clearer when his participation in the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) examined. The original Committee was a Cold War era contrivance designed to propagandize the Soviet and communist “threat” to the United States. In 2004, the committee was re-launched after a hiatus of over a decade, but, instead of focusing on communism, the new committee targeted international terrorism. However, the new CPD could not leave its anti-communist baggage in the closet. One of the architects of the new CPD, Peter Hannaford, a former Reagan adviser, said

the reason for restoring the CPD was renewed was that he and other leading neo-cons and pro-Israeli policymakers, including former CIA director James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Kenneth Adelman, Rabbi Dov Zakheim, Michael Rubin, Joseph Lieberman, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Clifford May, John McCain’s 2008 campaign foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann (who also works closely with Soros themed revolution projects), and Newt Gingrich, saw a “parallel between the Soviet threat and the threat from terrorism.”

More »

Paul Craig Roberts

The State Department has an office that hunts German war criminals. Bureaucracies being what they are, the office will exist into next century when any surviving German prison guards will be 200 years old. From time to time the State Department claims to have found a lowly German soldier who was assigned as a prison camp guard. The ancient personage, who had lived in the US for the past 50 or 60 years without doing harm to anyone, is then merciless persecuted, usually on the basis of hearsay. I have never understood what the State Department thinks the alleged prison guard was supposed to have done–freed the prisoners, resign his position?–when Prussian aristocrats, high-ranking German Army generals and Field Marshall and national hero Erwin Rommel were murdered for trying to overthrow Hitler.

What the State Department needs is an office that rounds up American war criminals.

They are in abundance and not hard to find. Indeed, recently 56 of them made themselves public by signing a letter to President Obama demanding that he send in the US Army to complete the destruction of Syria and its people that Washington has begun.

At the Nuremberg Trials of the defeated Germans after World War II, the US government established the principle that naked aggression–the American way in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen–is a war crime. Therefore, there is a very strong precedent for the State Department to round up those neoconservatives who are fomenting more war crimes.

But don’t expect it to happen. Today, war criminals run the State Department and the entire US Government. They are elected to the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and appointed to the federal courts as judges. American soldiers, such as Bradley Manning, who behave as the State Department expects German soldiers to have behaved, are not honored, but are thrown into dungeons and tortured while a court martial case is concocted against them.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Since 2008, Western nations have force-fed their people austerity poison. Decline replaces prosperity. Millions suffer. Living standards deteriorate. Societies become no longer fit to live in. Neoliberal and imperial priorities let essential public needs go begging. How much more people will take before erupting remains to be seen. The longer fiscal pain continues, the closer an ultimate day of reckoning approaches. It'll arrive disruptively. Perhaps people will recognize that throwing out bums for new ones accomplishes nothing.

America is Exhibit A. Political Washington is corrupt, immoral, degenerate, and unprincipled. Instead of helping people, they destroy them. They benefit from imposing misery. Allied with criminal bankers an other corporate predators, their policies made conditions for growing millions intolerable.

Imperial wars destroy nations. Austerity leaves "nothing to drive the economy," says Paul Craig Roberts. Washington's solution is increase it. Doing it is economically destructive. Only bankers, other corporate favorites, and war profiteers benefit.

Michael Hudson says austerity sacrifices the "production economy, the consumption economy, (and) the real economy...." Viable alternatives are ignored to benefit privileged elites at the expense of most others. Hudson calls it

"financial warfare against the entire society, not only against labor, but against industry and, most of all, against government." Productive "industrial capitalism" became predatory "finance capitalism." It's not financing industry. It's furthering "economic parasitism and overhead."

Politicians in Washington support it. Obama exceeds the worst of Bush. Europe is corrupted the same way.

More »

Wayne Madsen

Using the former Soviet republic of Georgia as a base of operation, NATO, the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and the Zionist regime of Israel have a plan to carve up southern Russia, including the Caucasus region, into a group of vassal states that will either be under the influence of Georgia, pan-Turkic nationalists, or radical Sunni regimes owing fealty to Riyadh and Doha. Moreover, the plans for southern Russia are a carbon copy of Nazi Germany’s failed plans for the region.

Current neo-conservative doctrine foresees the fall of the governments of Iran, Belarus, and, ultimately Russia and China, after the fall of Damascus, to the combined forces of NATO and the Saudi- and Qatari-backed Salafist Wahhabis, who make up a large portion of the Syrian rebel movement. Russia has clearly drawn a line in the sand in Syria and does not want to see yet another Arab nation fall into the clutches of neo-con globalists and radical Muslims. Libya constituted proof of the alliance between the neo-con uber-capitalists, Zionists, and Wahhabists. Even if Russia concedes Damascus and the rest of inland Syria to the rebels, it is prepared, through the use of its Navy and naval base at Tartus in the predominantly-Alavi coastal region of Syria, to offer military protection for Bashar al-Assad, his fellow Alavis, and Syrian Christians who have been protected by the Alavis in an independent salient that includes Tartus and Latakia. The complete fall of Syria to Wahhabists and NATO will move the instability of the Middle East closer to the Russian southern frontier.

The stakes for Russia are immense. One only needs to examine Nazi Germany’s “New Order” (Neuordnung) plans for the occupation of the Soviet Union and Persia to understand what the neo-cons and their Israeli and Wahhabist colleagues have in store for southern Russia and Iran.

More »

Philip Giraldi

So the upshot is that we will likely have a war in the Middle East only because Mitt Romney wants to become president and is willing to sell out every U.S. vital interest to succeed in that goal. Obama has already walked down that road, leaving little hope for the rest of us to cling to.

The shameful spectacle of American politicians trying to outdo each other in demonstrating their love for Israel played out again last week. The sparring began before the Olympic Games in London. Israel asked for a moment of silence at the opening ceremony to commemorate the 11 Israeli athletes who were murdered in Munich 40 years ago. President Obama obligingly endorsed the proposal and Romney followed, even though it was none of their business, but the British organizers turned it down. They also refused to provide special protection for Israeli athletes, arguing that the security was adequate for everyone involved in the games, which it was.

Preparing to leave for London, Mitt Romney then upped the ante at the Veterans of Foreign War convention in Reno Nevada on July 24, stating to tepid applause that “President Obama is fond of lecturing Israel’s leaders. He was even caught by a microphone deriding them. He has undermined their position, which was tough enough as it was. And even at the United Nations, to the enthusiastic applause of Israel’s enemies, he spoke as if our closest ally in the Middle East was the problem. The people of Israel deserve better than what they have received from the leader of the free world. And the chorus of accusations, threats, and insults at the United Nations should never again include the voice of the president of the United States.” Mitt also castigated Russia before going on to his real target, “There is no greater danger in the world today than the prospect of the ayatollahs in Tehran possessing nuclear weapons capability.”

Note that Romney was adopting the neocon and Israeli demand that Iran should not even have the capability to create a nuclear weapon even though it already is able to do so, as are a number of other countries. That means that going to war is already on the table. Mitt then continued “The same ayatollahs who each year mark a holiday by leading chants of ‘Death to America’ are not going to be talked out of their pursuit of nuclear weapons. … A clear line must be drawn: There must be a full suspension of any enrichment, period.”

More »

Paul Craig Roberts

This monster jobs report comes at a good time for Mr. Obama

In his report on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs and unemployment report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) writes:

“The July employment and unemployment numbers published today, August 3rd, were worthless and likely misleading. . . . Suspecting at one time that the jobs numbers were being rigged against him by his own Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), President Richard M. Nixon proposed a new approach to reporting the numbers. Although the proposed changes never were implemented, several decades later the BLS adopted reporting methods that were somewhat parallel to the late president’s thinking.”

I will spare the readers an explanation of Williams’ account of the manipulation that is occurring as it is too arcane for the general reader. Instead, Let’s just apply common sense. According to the BLS, there were 163,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs created in July. This figure is about 13,000 more jobs than is needed to keep pace with population growth. Therefore, the unemployment rate should have declined fractionally. Instead, the unemployment rate (U3) rose from 8.2% to 8.3%.

In case you missed the point, new jobs, a net figure, rose and so did the unemployment rate! Moreover, the alternative, but much less reported, jobs report from the Household Survey found that the economy lost 195,000 jobs in July.

More »

Adnan Al-Daini

Would Einstein and Newton have made good teachers of physics and mathematics in a school? I very much doubt it.  Being an expert in a particular subject does not necessarily mean you are able to teach it to a class of teenagers; obvious really, but not to Britain’s Education Secretary apparently.

The decision by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, that Academies - semi-independent state schools that receive funding directly from the government rather than through a local authority - can appoint teachers without formal teaching qualifications - “qualified teacher status” (QTS) - was characterized by the Department of Education as no big deal, and that most teachers will continue to have QTS qualifications.  

But how long will this remain the case?  Presumably, the Education Secretary believes that formal teaching qualifications make no difference to the quality of teaching in the classroom. That being the case why, then, should anyone bother with it in the future?

Academies currently form the majority of secondary schools in England, and with this change the number of qualified teachers will surely dwindle, and before long the majority will be unqualified.  School governing bodies and heads will come under increasing pressure to appoint unqualified teachers to save money.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Washington considers conflict resolutions unacceptable. Regime change alone matters. War all along was planned. So is subjugating the entire region.

On August 3, The General Assembly ignored rule of law principles. Member states are sworn to uphold them. It passed a non-binding Syrian resolution 133 - 12. Thirty-one nations abstained. Cowardice defines their failure to do the right thing. Saudi Arabia drafted the measure. It partnered with Qatar and perhaps Bahrain doing so. They're regional axis of evil co-conspirators. Compared to them, Assad is saintly.

Russia called the measure "biased and unbalanced." It was that and much more. It ignored reality on the ground. It ran cover for Washington's proxy war. It endorsed daily slaughter and destruction. It ignored Western/Arab League/Israeli responsibility for ravaging another nonbelligerent country. It spurned millions of Syrians. In UN history, August 3, 2012 will live in infamy.

Honest observers won't forget how irresponsible nations acted. At the same time, 12 courageous ones did the right thing. They include Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Belarus, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe.

Syria's UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari condemned the resolution. He called it a hysterical anti-Syrian campaign. Fundamental UN Charter and other rule of law principles were violated. National sovereignty was ignored. Imperial interests alone were served. Syrians were betrayed. Western-sponsored terrorism was endorsed. Doing so ensures greater violence, mass killing and human misery.

"Some countries which waged war under the pretext of fighting terrorism are supporting, directly and indirectly, the acts of these armed terrorist groups, of which is al-Qaeda," al Jaafari said.

He added that resolution sponsors Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain are "despotic oligarchies." They're imperial partners. They're attack dogs for Washington's regional wars. They're lawless rogue states. They persecute, arrest, imprison, torture, and brutalize their own people. They're ruthless against anyone publicly supporting political, economic and social justice. Their regimes have no legitimacy.

More »

Makram Khoury-Machool

Stephen Lendman, Israel's Longstanding Middle East Plan
Oded Yinon, "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" /
Israel Shahak, "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East"[*]

The behaviour of the NATO-aligned, anti-Syrian bloc is now blatant enough for us to better understand what is happening in Syria. On the one hand, we find political operators such the ad-hoc group ‘Friends of Syria’, and on the other, two Arab personalities, both ministers of two Gulf sheikhdoms.

The first group includes NATO-led heads of states, with a barely disguised Israeli master-plan conceived by the likes of Bernard-Henri Lévy. Rather than being the friends of Syria, these personalities are arguably working to secure their own financial interests in, around, and via Syria. The two Arab politicians are the two foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They have declared that those forces acting violently against the Syrian state should be armed and financially supported. In short, these conventions of the so-called ‘Friends of Syria’ are probably no more than a ‘modern’ version of those meetings conducted by Viceroy Lord Curzon, who, in 1903, addressed the ‘Chiefs of the Arab Coast’ on HMS Argonaut in Sharjah (UAE).

More »

Stephen Lendman

Work at a natural gas site in Assaluyeh, Iran, has slowed as inter-
national sanctions have forced foreign companies to pull out.

Washington bears full responsibility for imposing illegitimate sanctions on Iran. Other countries are pressured to agree. Doing so harms their own interests. Heavy-handed US bullying largely gets its way. Rule of law principles and norms are violated. At issue is advancing Washington's imperium.

America's 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) lets presidents claim unusual and/or extraordinary foreign threats, declare a national emergency, and regulate commerce accordingly. Presidents have taken full advantage deceptively, unjustifiably, and illegally.

In November 1979, Washington seized $12 billion in Iranian government bank deposits, securities, gold, and other properties. They included $5.6 billion held by overseas branches of US banks.

A full trade embargo followed. In January 1981, it was lifted under provisions of the Algiers Accords. Most Iranian assets were unblocked. Nonetheless, Iranian Assets Control Regulations remained in effect.

For decades, Washington ruthlessly targeted Iran and its people. It continues relentlessly today. More on that below.

More »

Kumaran Ira

Romani people sit next to their luggage shortly after arriving
from France at the international airport in Bucharest.

France’s Socialist Party (PS) government has threatened to forcibly dismantle Roma encampments in France, raising the spectre of mass expulsions of Roma. It also announced plans to force the Roma into “integration villages.”

PS Interior Minister Manuel Valls is leading the campaign to close down Roma camps. On July 31 he told Europe1: “Prefects have a mission to dismantle Roma camps when there is a court ruling. Things are simple. Yes, when there is a court ruling the camps will be dismantled.”

While preparing measures to expel Roma, there are also plans to place them in the so-called “integration villages.” There, the Roma would be forced to remain in ultra-cheap prefabricated housing and monitored by state employees and security forces.

According to Le Monde, there are five villages and three more are under construction in Lille, the hometown of PS First Secretary and Lille mayor Martine Aubry. Under the guise of providing social support for Roma, the purpose of such “villages d’insertion” is to ghettoize the Roma population.

Valls’s campaign against the Roma is a clear expression of the reactionary character of PS government, which is continuing the persecution of Roma and other immigrants from the previous government of conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In his speech in Grenoble on July 30,2010, President Nicolas Sarkozy called for dismantling Roma camps across France, penalizing families and stripping French citizenship from migrants. After his speech, Sarkozy’s government deported over 10,000 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria. An estimated 15,000 Roma live in improvised housing encampments on the edges of major cities throughout France.

More »

Jonathan Cook

The real obstacles to peace [are] Israel, its occupation and western complicity

Israel has barely put a foot right with the international community since its attack on Gaza more than three years ago provoked global revulsion.

The right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu has serially defied and insulted foreign leaders, including US President Barack Obama; given the settlers virtual free rein; blocked peace talks with the Palestinians; intimidated and marginalised human rights groups, UN agencies and even the Israeli courts; and fuelled a popular wave of Jewish ethnic and religious chauvinism against the country's Palestinian minority, foreign workers and asylum seekers.

No wonder, then, that in poll after poll Israel ranks as one of the countries with the most negative influence on international affairs.

And yet, the lower Israel sinks in public estimation, the more generous western leaders are in handing out aid and special favours to their wayward ally. The past few days have been particularly shameless.

It was revealed last week that the European Union had approved a massive upgrade in Israel's special trading status, strengthening economic ties in dozens of different fields. The decision was a reversal of a freeze imposed in the wake of the Gaza attack of winter 2008.

Amnesty International pointed out that the EU was violating its own commitments in the European Neighbourhood Policy, which requires that, as a preferred trading partner, Israel respect international human rights, democratic values and its humanitarian obligations.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Gore Vidal spent decades criticizing the religious right, US imperialism, perpetual wars, political extremism in the name of national security, America's military/industrial complex, and other political, social and economic injustices.

On July 31, Gore Vidal died from complications of pneumonia at his Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles home. He was 86. Many labels characterize him: distinguished author, essayist, playwright, historian, acerbic sociopolitical/cultural critic, freethinker, intellectual, and humanist. In 2009, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him honorary president. Los Angeles Times writer Elaine Woo called him a "gadfly on the national conscience" and "literary juggernaut." He was that and much more. He'll be missed.

■ New York Times writer Charles McGrath said he was "an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent."
■ Random House editor Jason Epstein called him "an American version of Montaigne."
■ As an essayist, New York Time Book Review writer RWB Lewis said he was "so good that we cannot do without him. He (was) a treasure of state."
■ London Guardian writer Richard Lea called him "one of the towering figures of American cultural and political life for more than six decades."

More »

Khalid Amayreh

The moral callousness and depravity eroding America, mainly as a result of Jewish domination, will boomerang sooner or later.

One of the grim signs underscoring the utter corruption of the American political environment is the ongoing tuneful and vapid contest between incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney to win the heart of the Zionist state of Israel.

The two are behaving like determined political whores, hell-bent on wining the biggest show on earth, without the slightest concern for or compunction about the moral price of their obscene embrace of the Jewish golem.

Israel is undoubtedly a crime against humanity; this is what it essentially was when the brat was misbegotten 64 years ago, and this is what it has always been ever since, a diabolical entity living and thriving on aggression, bellicosity and war.

Indeed, the fact that almost every American politician, let alone the President of the Republic, feels obliged to grovel at Israel's feet, or else commit political suicide, illustrates the moral degeneration corroding America's collective conscience.

Alas! How could 320 million Americans, considered among the smartest in the world, have allowed a few rich Jews to eviscerate America of its soul and moral values, so much so that the country of Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, and Washington, has effectively succumbed to the harlot, becoming a willing whore eager to serve and appease the rapacious Jewish pimp?

John Winthrop dreamed of a shining city on a hill, must be turning in their graves, seeing their country teetering under the evil Jewish yoke, a yoke that has morphed America from a shining city on a hill, into a Goliath sword, spreading evil, oppression and death everywhere.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Since WW II, America lost every war it waged. Its only success was destroying nations and murdering millions. Imagine that legacy for current and future historians to address. Imagine how few will do it accurately and honorably. Imagine a nation glorifying wars in the name of peace.

Historians Charles Beard and Gore Vidal called them "perpetual war(s) for perpetual peace." Historian Harry Elmer Barnes addressed the same issue, saying:

"If trends continue....we shall soon reach this point of no return, and can only anticipate interminable wars, disguised as noble gestures for peace." "Such an era could only culminate in a third world war which might well, as Arnold J. Toynbee has suggested, leave only the pygmies in remote jungles, or even the apes and ants, to carry on 'the cultural traditions' of mankind."

Wars to end all future ones is popular fiction. Woodrow Wilson wanted war and got it. So did Roosevelt, Truman, and other US presidents. Wars and violence define America. They're normal, commonplace, and unending. Peace, tranquility, and security are illusions. So are democratic values and rule of law principles.

Pacifism in America is considered sissy and unpatriotic. Wars of aggression are called liberating ones. Patriotism means supporting them. It's also about advancing the nation's imperium at the expense of vital homeland needs and security.

Imagine what's coming if this madness isn't stopped. Nothing in prospect looks promising. Media scoundrels promote war. They cheerlead it. They glorify what they should condemn.

More »