USA – The World’s Invasion Nation
Or How Big Brother Grips Americans’ Minds to Support Invasions
Eric Zuesse
Image source.
On November 29th, Gallup headlined “Democrats Lead Surge in Belief US Should Be World Leader” and reported that “Three-fourths (75%) of Americans today think the United States has ‘a special responsibility to be the leading nation in world affairs,’ up from 66% in 2010. The surge is driven by Democrats, whose belief in this idea has increased from 61% eight years ago to 81% now.” This finding comes even after the lie-based and catastrophic US invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Libya in 2011 (and of so many others, such as Afghanistan, where the US and Sauds created the Taliban in 1979). Americans — now even increasingly — want ‘their’ (which is actually America’s billionaires’) Government to be virtually the world’s government, policing the world. They want this nation’s Government to be determining what international laws will be enforced around the world, and to be enforcing them.
Most Americans don’t want the United Nations to have power over the US (its billionaires’) Government, but instead want the US Government (its billionaires) to have power over the United Nations (which didn’t authorize any of those evil, lie-based, US invasions).
Not only would doing this bankrupt all constructive domestic functions (health, education, infrastructure, etc.) of the US federal Government, but it would also increase the global carnage, as if the US Government hasn’t already been doing enough of that, for decades now.
The leadership for this supremacist craving comes straight from America’s top, not from the masses that are being sampled by the Gallup organization, who only reflect it — they are duped by their leaders. Here is how US President Barack Obama (a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2009, for nothing at all but his ‘kindly’ but insincere verbiage when he had been a candidate) stated this widespread delusional American belief in American global moral supremacy, when addressing the graduating class at West Point Military Academy, on 28 May 2014:
The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation*. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come…America must always lead on the world stage.
[*Every other nation is therefore ‘dispensable’; we therefore now have “Amerika, Amerika über alles, über alles in der Welt”.]
This had certainly not been the objective of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he set up the U.N. just before his death in 1945; he instead wanted the U.N. to evolve into a democratic government of the world, with elected representatives of each and every one of the world’s governments — to evolve into becoming the global international republic — regardless of whether or not the US Government approves or disapproves of another nation’s government. The idea on which the U.N. was founded was not to involve the US Government in the internal affairs of other nations, not to be the judge jury and executioner of other governments that it doesn’t like, nor to dictate what other nations should or should not do within the given nation’s boundaries. FDR intended that there instead be democratically represented, at the U.N., each and every nation, and each and every people within that global government, where each of these national governments is (hopefully but not necessarily) a democracy.
FDR was just as opposed to dictatorship internationally, as he was opposed to dictatorship nationally, and he recognized that inevitably some governments will disapprove of other governments, but he was deeply committed to the view that a need exists for laws and law-enforcement between nations, on an international level, and not only within the individual nations, and that each nation is sacrosanct on its own internal laws. He respected national sovereignty, and opposed international empire. (This was his basic disagreement with Winston Churchill, then, and with American leaders such as Obama and Trump now.) Unlike President Obama (and evidently unlike the vast majority of today’s Americans) FDR didn’t want this international government to be an American function, but instead an entirely separate international governmental function, in which there is no international dictatorship whatsoever — not American, and not by any other country. He knew that this is the only stable basis for international peace, and for avoiding a world-annihilating World War III.
Barack Obama rejected FDR’s vision, and advocated for the United States as being (and even as if it already had been for a century) virtually the government over the entire world, which “must always lead on the world stage.” Adolf Hitler had had that very same international vision for his own country, Germany, “the Thousand-Year Reich,” but he lost World War II; and, then, when FDR died, Hitler’s vision increasingly took over in America, so that ideologically, FDR actually lost WW II, when Harry S. Truman took over the White House and increasingly thereafter, until today, when the US commits more invasions of foreign countries than do all other nations in the world combined. Americans (apparently, as shown in this and other polls) like this, and want more of it. Nobody else does.
For example, nobody (except the US and Saudi and Israeli aristocracies and their supporters worldwide, which are very few people) supports the US regime’s reinstitution of sanctions against Iran, which the US regime is imposing as the global dictator. America’s economic sanctions are like spitting into the face of FDR, who had opposed such imperialistic fascism in the more overtly military form when Hitler’s regime was imposing it. It’s also spitting at the U.N.
This latest Gallup finding displays an increase, but nothing that’s at all anomalous as compared to the decades-long reality of imperialistic US culture. For decades now, Gallup’s polling has shown that the most respected of all institutions by the American people is the nation’s military — more than the church, more than the Presidency, more than the US Supreme Court, more than the press, more than the schools, more than anything. America is invasion-nation. This is true even after the 2003 invasion of Iraq on the basis of blatant lies, which destroyed Iraq — a nation that had never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. The American people are, resolutely, bloodthirsty for conquest, even after having been fooled into that evil invasion, and subsequent decades-long military occupation in Iraq, and after subsequent conquests or attempted conquests, in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere — all destroying nations that had never invaded nor even threatened America. Why? How did this mass-insanity, of evil, come to be?
How is this aggressive nationalism even possible, in America’s ‘democracy’? It’s actually no democracy at all, and the public are being constantly fooled to think that it is a democracy, and this deception is essential in order for the public to tolerate this Government, and to tolerate the media that lie for it. This widespread deceit requires constant cooperation of the ‘news’-media — and these are the same ‘news’-media that hid from the public, in 2002, that the US Government was outright lying about “WMD in Iraq.”
The public simply do not learn. That’s a tragic fact. Largely, this fact results from reality being hidden by the ‘news’-media; but, even now, long after the fake ‘news’ in 2002, about the US regime’s having possessed secret and conclusive evidence of “Saddam’s WMD,” the published ‘history’ about that invasion still does not acknowledge the public’s having been lied-to at that time, by its Government, and by the ‘news’-media. So, the public live, and culturally swim, in an ongoing river of lies, both as its being ‘news’, and subsequently as its having been ‘history’. This is why the public do not learn: they are being constantly deceived. And they (as Gallup’s polls prove) tolerate being constantly deceived. The public do not rebel against it. They don’t reject either the politicians, or the ‘news’-media. They don’t demand that the American public control the American Government and that America’s billionaires lose that control — especially over the ‘news’-media.
Honesty is no longer an operative American value, if it ever was. That’s how, and why, Big Brother (the operation by the international-corporate billionaires) grips Americans’ minds to support foreign Invasions. Americans support liars, and it all comes from the top; it’s directed from the top. It is bipartisan, from both Democratic Party billionaires and Republican Party billionaires. National politicians will lose their seats if they disobey.
A good example, of this Big-Brother operation, is America’s Politifact, the online site which is at America’s crossover where ‘news’ and ‘history’ meet one-another. It’s controlled by billionaires such as the one who founded Craigslist. Millions of Americans go to Politifact in order to determine what is true and what is false that is being widely published about current events. The present writer sometimes links to their articles, where I have independently verified that there are no misrepresentations in an article. But, like the ‘news’-media that it judges, Politifact is also a propaganda-agency for the (US-Saud-Israeli) Deep State, and so it deceives on the most critically important international matters.
An example of this occurred right after the US regime had overthrown, in February 2014 in a bloody coup, the democratically elected Government of Ukraine, and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian racist fascist or nazi Government on Russia’s doorstep, a regime that was selected by the rabidly anti-Russian (but lying that it wasn’t) Obama regime. This Politifact article was dated 31 March 2014, right after over 90% of Crimeans had just voted in a referendum, to rejoin Russia, and to depart from Ukraine, which the Soviet dictator had transferred them to, separating them from Russia, in 1954. (None of that history of the matter was even mentioned by Politifact.)
The Politifact article was titled “Viral meme says United States has ‘invaded’ 22 countries in the past 20 years”, and it was designed to deceive readers into believing that “Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea” reflected the real instance of “invasion” that Americans should be outraged against — to deflect away from America’s recent history as being the world’s actual invasion-nation. This propaganda-article said nothing at all about either Crimea or Ukraine except in its opening line:
A Facebook meme argues that Americans are pretty two-faced when it comes to Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea.”
It then proceeded to document that the exact number of American invasions during the prior 20 years wasn’t 22, and so Politifact declared the allegation “false” (as if the exact number were really the entire issue or even the main one, and as if America’s scandalous recent history of invasions were not).
So, it’s on account of such drowning-in-propaganda, that the US public not only respect what US President Dwight Eisenhower derogatorily called the “military-industrial complex,” but respect it above even the US Presidency itself, and above all other US institutions (as Gallup’s constant polling demonstrates to be the case).
Here’s the reality: The same group of no more than a thousand super-wealthy Americans control both the United States Government and the weapons-manufacturing firms (such as Lockheed Martin), which are the only corporations whose only customers are the US Government and its chosen allied governments. So, these few people actually control the US Government’s foreign relations, and foreign policies. They create and control their own markets. This is the most politically active group of America’s super-rich, because they own America’s international corporations and because their business as owners of the military ones is military policy and also diplomatic policy, including the conjoining of both of those at the CIA and NSA, including the many coups that they (via their Government) engineer.
They also control all of the nation’s major news-media, which report international affairs in such a manner as to determine which foreign governments will be perceived by the mass of Americans to constitute the nation’s ‘enemies’ and therefore to be suitable targets for the US military and CIA to invade and conquer or otherwise “regime-change” — such as have been the lands of North Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Venezuela, etc., at various times.
The weapons-manufacturers won’t have any markets, at all, if there are no ‘enemy’ nations that are deemed by the public to be suitable targets for their weapons. ‘Enemy’ nations, and not only ‘allies’ (or ‘allied’ nations), are necessary, in order for the military business to produce the most profits. Overwhelmingly, if not totally, the chosen ‘enemies’ are nations that have never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States; and, so, in order to keep this Government-funded business (the war-profiteering and associated international natural-resources extractions businesses) growing and thriving, what’s essential is continuing control over the nation’s ‘news’-media.
As Walter Lippmann wrote in 1921, “the manufacture of consent” is an essential part of this entire operation. It happens via the media. Even Germany’s Nazis needed to do that. Any modern capitalist dictatorship (otherwise called “fascism”) does. The US regime, being a capitalist dictatorship, certainly does.
Physically, Hitler lost, but his ideology won, he won even as nazism (racist fascism) instead of merely as fascism, and this racism is shown because the US regime is rabidly racist anti-Russian (not merely anti-communist), and has been so for at least a century. (Maybe it’s what Obama actually had secretly in mind when he said “That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.” And Trump is no less a liar than Obama, and he continues this aim of ultimately conquering Russia.)
They say they’re only against Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, but Putin shows in all polls of Russians, even in non-Russian polls, to be far more favorably viewed by Russians than either Barack Obama or Donald Trump are viewed by Americans. This is why regime-change-in-Russia is increasingly becoming dominated by US economic sanctions and military, and less dominated by CIA and other coup-organizers. The actual dictatorship is in America, and it requires participation by its ‘news’-media. Demonizing ‘the enemy’ is therefore crucial. It is crucial preparation for any invasion.
The United States Government spends at least as much money on its military as do all of the other governments in the world combined. Its ‘news’-media (that is to say, the media that are owned by, and that are advertised in by, the corporations that are controlled by, the same small group of billionaires — America’s billionaires — who fund the political campaigns of both the Democratic Party’s and the Republican Party’s nominees for the US Congress and the Presidency) may be partisan for one or the other of the nation’s two political Parties, but they all are unitedly partisan for the international corporations, such as Lockheed Martin, that America’s billionaires control, and that sell only to the US Government and to the foreign governments that are allied with the US Government. They also are partisan for the US-based oil and gas and mining international corporations, which need to extract at the lowest costs possible, no matter how much the given extractee-nation’s public might suffer from the deal. “Three-fourths (75%) of Americans today think the United States has ‘a special responsibility to be the leading nation in world affairs,’” and the actual beneficiaries of this mass-insanity are the owners of those US-based international corporations, the military and extraction giants.
Anthony Cordesman, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, headlined on 15 August 2016, “US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen: What Are The Endstates?” and he said, “Once again, the United States does not seem to be learning from its past. The real test of victory is never tactical success or even ending a war on favorable military terms, it is what comes next.”
But he ignored the main reason why these invasions had occurred. America’s weapons-manufacturers won’t have any markets, at all, if there are no ‘enemy’ nations that are deemed by the American public to be suitable targets for their weapons. Cordesman is there calculating success and failure on the basis of the myths (such as that the US Government cares about those “Endstates”), not of the realities (that it craves targets). The realities focus upon the desires of the owners and executives of the weapons-manufacturers and the extraction-firms, for ongoing and increased profits and executive bonuses, and not on the needs of America’s soldiers nor on the national security of the American people. Least of all, do they focus upon the needs — such as the welfare, freedom, or democracy — of the Iraqi people, or of the Syrian people, or of the Libyan people, or of the Yemenite people.
It’s all just lies, PR. Those invasions served their actual main functions when they were occurring. “The Endstates” there are almost irrelevant to those real purposes, the purposes for which the invasions were, and are, actually being done.
Here’s an ideal example of this mass mind-control: On 19 November 2017, Josh Rogin at the Washington Post headlined “The US must prepare for Iran’s next move in Syria” and reported that:
A task force of senior former US diplomatic and military officials has come up with suggestions for how Trump could prevent Iran from taking over what’s left of liberated Syria and fulfill his own promise to contain Iranian influence in the region.
“Most urgently…the United States must impose real obstacles to Tehran’s pursuit of total victory by the Assad regime in Syria,” the report by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America states. “Time is of the essence.”
The underlying presumption there was that the US regime has legitimate authorization to be occupying the parts of Syria it has invaded and now occupies, and that Iran does not. But the reality is that the US regime is occupying Syria instead of assisting Syria’s Government to defeat the US-Saud-Israeli invasion to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government, by stooges who will be selected by the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and the reality is that Iran’s forces there are invitees who are instead assisting Syria’s Government against the Saudi-Israeli-American invasion. In other words: this WP article is basically all lies. Furthermore, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America is a front-organization for the fascist regime that rules Israel, and the WP hid that fact, too, so its cited ‘expert’ was a mere PR agency for Israel’s aristocracy. So, this is Deep-State propaganda, parading as ‘news’.
Americans actually pay their private good money to subscribe to (subsidize) such bad public ‘news’papers as that. The billionaire who happens to own that particular ‘news’paper (the WP), Jeff Bezos, had founded and leads Amazon, which receives almost all of its profits from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud-computing division, which supplies the US ‘Defense’ Department, CIA, and NSA.
For example, “without AWS and Prime, Amazon lost $2 billion in the 1st quarter of FY18. … These losses come from Amazon’s retail business. About 60% of Amazon’s revenue comes from retail and that’s where Amazon is losing money.” Amazon is profitable because of what it sells mainly to the Government, but also to other large US international corporations, and they all want to conquer Syria. None opposes that evil goal. Although Bezos doesn’t like the Sauds, he has actually been (at least until the Khashoggi matter) one of their main US media champions for the Sauds to take over Syria. It’s all just a fool-the-public game. It works, it succeeds, and that’s what Gallup’s polls are demonstrating. The public never learns. It’s a fact, which has been proven in many different ways.
This reality extends also to other nations, allies of the US aristocracy, and not only to the US regime itself. For example, on 27 November 2018, a whistleblowing former UK Ambassador, Craig Murray, who is a personal friend of Julian Assange, headlined “Assange Never Met Manafort. Luke Harding and the Guardian Publish Still More Blatant MI6 Lies”, and he proved that Britain’s Guardian had lied with total, and totally undocumented (and probably even totally non-credible), fabrications, alleging that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks had secretly met (in 2013, 2015, and 2016) with Paul Manafort of the Trump campaign.
The UK, of course, is a vassal-nation of the US aristocracy, and the Guardian is run by Democratic Party propagandists (paid indirectly by Democratic Party and conservative Tony-Blair-wing Labour Party billionaires) and therefore fabricates in order to assist those Parties’ efforts to impeach Trump and to dislodge Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party’s leadership. However, each of America’s two political parties (like the UK’s aristocracy itself) represents America’s aristocracy, which, like Britain’s aristocracy, is united in its determination to eliminate Assange — they are as determined to do that to him, just as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud was determined to eliminate Jamal Khashoggi. ‘Democracy’? This? It is Big Brother.
Only if the population boycott lying individuals and organizations, is democracy even possible to exist in a nation. Democracy can’t possibly exist more than truth does. In political matters, deceit is always treachery; and its practitioners, whenever the evidence for it is overwhelming and irrefutable, should experience whatever the standard penalty is for treachery. Only in a land such as that, can democracy possibly exist. Elsewhere, it simply can’t. The only basis for democracy, is truth. Deceit is for dictators, not for democrats. And deceit reigns, in the US and in its allied countries. Is this really tolerable? Americans, at least, tolerate it.
When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the far-right Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal editorialized against Obama on 10 October 2009, by saying that “What this suggests to us — and to the Norwegians — is the end of what has been called ‘American exceptionalism’.”
Little did anyone then know that after winning re-election upon the basis of such war-mongering lies from Obama, as that “America remains the one indispensable nation”, Obama in February 2014 would go so far as to perpetrate a bloody coup overthrowing the democratically elected Government of one “dispensable” nation, Ukraine. And then, on 28 May of 2014, Obama would be telling America’s future generals, that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation” and that Obama would, in that speech, explicitly malign Ukraine’s neighbor Russia.
He did it, in this speech, which implicitly called all nations except the US “dispensable.” He had carefully planned and orchestrated Americans’ hostility toward Russia. His successor, Trump, lied saying that he wanted to reverse Obama’s policies on this, and Trump promptly, once becoming elected, increased and expanded those policies. Whatever a deceitfully war-mongering country like this might be, it’s certainly no democracy. Because democracy cannot be built upon a ceaseless string of lies.
Originally posted at strategic-culture.org
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“USA – The World’s Invasion Nation”
So why use that picture with three Mig 29’s?
From today’s SyrianPerspective: “Reality is closing in on the Yankee Doodle cannon fodder garrisoned at Al Tanf. Are they more feeling like sitting ducks now than birds of prey?
Russia has established a new base only 55 KM north of the US base in AlTnaf south of Syria.
The Russian base is guarded by AA and EW systems”
The US can’t be that powerful. Russia hijacked an election with a mammoth $4,700.
The fact that the US military is the most respected institution in the US is a direct result of the orchestrated propaganda which is neocon derived. This serves to deflect attention from the fact that the control of the military could not be more racist. No Asians, no high-ranking blacks to speak of and if there were any they are marginalized and betrayed like was Colin Powell. It seems very likely that the techniques honed by the NSA to screen their 40,000 Stepford employees have been used to staff the military. No left wingers, no boat rockers, no human sympathies, no questioning of authority….
So how exactly do they earn respect? Appearing at the halftime of football games? Seventh inning stretches of baseball? Despite being the same uneducated racist unemployable torturers at Abu Ghraib? The bombers of Afghan weddings. The loiterers of sandbars in the South China Sea? Beaten like rented mules by the peasants of Nam? The New World invasion monkeys can trample Granada, and Iraq and ruin Libya, yet the American people are proving you can fool all tv watchers and the MSM readership, all of the time.
I have to question the choice of image to illustrate this article, on the grounds that the airplanes depicted therein are quite clearly Russian-made MiG-29s. Given how the world is currently organized, these must surely count as an anti-imperial factor, as seen in Syria.
compare here:
Could just as easily be F-18s…
http://www.alexlaird.com/content/uploads/2011/06/F18-High-Gs.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RagJ3TMape0/S9Xg_eFoOvI/AAAAAAAAAIc/GY7rDZu-MYs/s1600/mig-35b.jpg
And from Syria, Uncle $cam the Man Who Came to Dinner (uninvited) — and stayed and stayed and stayed.
“Does a New US Goal for Syrian Training Portend a Longer Mission? The military’s top general raised expectations for the Syrian Democratic Forces [aka, NATZO’s Kurdish proxries]. Pentagon bumped up training the SDF, which one expert called a long haul ahead for U$ troops there.
Alongside the myriad of US Military bases— including just one that is more then 500 acres large.. Miles of airstrip. More bases. Outposts along the border of Kurd occupied Syria, manned by PKK to save the occupiers from Turkey.
_The U$ looks well embedded alongside their PKK/YPG proxies… to the dismay of everyone_
And from Whosear BTL SyrPer, “Looks like we are in for a hot Christmas”:
Major buildup by the [dual-citizen] settler state along parts of the Lebanese border
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news/world-news/3572-israel-puts-troops-on-lebanon-border-lebanon-now-deploying-troops-to-face-them
Then of course is the imminent war within Ukraine
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/4632024.html
And 2 Snow Birds are wintering in Venezuela.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/4632650.html
NATZO Dreaming of a Hot Xmas, From GH Eliason for The Saker Blog:
“Everything is pointing to the EU$A-Israel dual citizen junta of Ukraine starting a winter offensive in Donbass and the possible use of a chemical weapon false flag event to kick it off.
The Ukraine of 2018 is far different than what the sheeple of Europe were expecting from their Leaders rosy prosnostications when U$-Israel dual citizen Julia Nudelman handed out $5G of cookies to Ukrainian-Israeli dual citizen Yats, our man” to stir up the Ukrainian nazis. Instead of economic and social reform that was promised at Ukraine’s 2014 Euro-maidan coup, the dual-citizen government of Petr Poroshenko is taking a brute force approach to retaining power.
…
_On December 10th, DNR’s Eduard Basurin stated they had Intelligence Kiev is going to stage an attack on December 14th, the day before the Ukrainian Orthodox Church votes for Autocephaly (freedom from the Moscow Patriarchate)_
So right now the US power Cabal is hiding behind the Democrats; under the Bush family it was behind the Republicans. The Cabal doesn’t care: whoever serves their purpose.
Antonym – “So right now the US power Cabal is hiding behind the Democrats; under the Bush family it was behind the Republicans.” – Exactly right! You are completely accurate in that observation. The Clinton’s are and have been the Democratic Party “face” of the CIA, while the Bush family has long been the Republican “face” of the CIA.
One of the most delicious ironies in the history of American presidential politics is that during the infamous Iran/Contra Affair, two future presidents, G. Bush and Bill Clinton were both up to their necks in the drugs for guns scheme to support the Contra war. Bush as vice president and former CIA director ran the operation, while Bill Clinton, then a small time Arkansas governor squashed repeated attempts by his own State Police force to investigate the constant drug shipments coming in to the Mena, Arkansas airport. It seems clear to me that Bill Clinton proved his trustworthiness to the CIA/deep state nexus with his role in this matter. It is only fitting I suppose that Clinton rose from complete obscurity to the highest office in the land just as Bush was leaving office. Two drug running criminals occupying the White House “back to back.” Truth, I dare say, is much stranger than fiction.
“How is this aggressive nationalism even possible, in America’s ‘democracy’? ”
This is Adolf Hitler’s kind of definition of nationalism; why follow that malign example?
The US in the 1930’s was into isolationism, a benign nationalism : https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-isolationism
Trump talked like this too; he may well lose to the US power Cabal (CIA, NSA FBI elements, MSN, big Oil, big Defence, big Banks).
.
Don’t forget Big Pharma.
The main reason for the US public’s lack of caring about non-Americans killed by the US’ military complex is a sad coincidence of geography. America is bordered by two friendlies and for centuries has never been seriously invaded to the point where any civilians are struggling to survive or escape gunfire or bombs. The average civilian is incapable of sympathizing with a Yemeni or Libyan or Iraqi on a visceral level. It’s all theoretical.
Solutions would be advancements in drones and other weapons so that enemies, even the weak countries, can return strife and suffering to the actual US. Another solution might be if the US actually engages a country such as Iran. An entire carrier group could be at the bottom of the sea in hours from mini-subs or missiles. That’s as likely to have Americans clamoring for nuking Tehran rather than asking why thousands of sailors just died.
I guess something journalists could do is to greatly increase the “photo” aspect of it. Pictures are still worth a thousand words–see abu ghraib. Papers or progressive websites should lead every story and every page with photos of the burned and dismembered corpses of the country’s innocent victims. Seeing a “US-Saudi bombs kill 40 schoolchildren” isn’t enough. The body parts need to be shown on billboards and street corners and their internet equivalents.
The only matter of contention I have with Eric’s article is that he suggests that the US is being manipulated by only US billionaires. In reality, billionaires worldwide are all connected and party to this huge assault against ordinary people.. Russian oligarchs would betray their own peoples in order to promote this monstrous fascist design, as would the billionaires in the UK, African and South American countries, Sweden, all Slavic and Baltic nations (not Russian ethnic majorities), India, China and many many other elitists and privileged classes from Venezuela to Thailand. They all feed from the same trough and have everything to gain because they all have shared interests in the mega corporations which own the majority of wealth around the globe whether that shared interest be it in banking, military arms sales, manufacturing industries and heavy and light industry(especially in the UK)not to forget the energy suppliers owned by global cabals, the pharma and food corp’s etc. etc. They may be few in number compared to the 7 billion people who inhabit this planet, but they all have one creed in common….greed and dominion. The article could just as easily apply (in respect of who is involved) to the neoliberal and neocon billionaires irrespective of nationality(they have none, their colours hoisted, are the same.
Otherwise Eric’s article is pretty sound in it’s appraisal of the corrent drive to initiate, foment and export war and suffering.
Very well pointed out.
Good point, Mohandeer. Serious, new empirical work – on the relations between state and capital in the age of monopoly capitalism, aka imperialism – is long overdue.
We just lowered the flag again for yet another of our mass murdering, psychopaths. These are our collective values. But I must say ……Democrats, to me, are most certainly at the bottom of our foul barrel.
Indeed so.
But if Americans really do want more invasions of foreign countries, it is only because those foreign countries are thousands of miles away from their home town.
But nuclear fallout respects no boundaries, and Americans should know that their isolationist and exceptionalist policies only work if nothing changes.
And things always change.
As Buddha said, “Nothing endures”.
You’d think everybody would know that by now, but of course short-term greed also recognizes no boundaries…
I suppose you could say it is the individuals who put their savings into the ETFs and other funds that these companies provide. Everyone can profit from war and mayhem.
Yes, you could say that, but the politicians would only use it as another excuse for not cleaning up their act.
The Americans are increasingly coming out of the closet and openly declaring what they have desired all along: the American New World Order.
Pax Americana: Pompeo tells UN, WTO, ICC to bow and comply with US-led world order
https://www.rt.com/news/445731-new-pax-americana-pompeo/
Who are the scum of the earth hiding behind these “Top 5 Shareholders of Lockheed Martin” ? See any names of individuals ? These avaricious morally bankrupt cretins hiding behind such institutions pocket money from their trade in the deaths of their fellow human beings. They have no conscience and sleep soundly at night….
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/081416/top-5-shareholders-lockheed-martin-lmt.asp
Meanwhile the masses sit and stare at their flat screen TV’s which pour out dross advertising such as this…………
“All The Television You’re Going To Be Obsessed With In 2019”
We are in real trouble now.
Which is why I bought a curved screen TV. And the only channel playing is RT.
America used to be the arsenal of democracy. Now it’s just the arse.
Beg to differ Michael. If one digs deep enough in ‘unrecorded history’ it does seem United States of America was in fact every inch an empire in its character from the onset… just that the facade was perhaps too dense to see through… and still is for most of the mass populace. With that said, good twist of words there 🙂
At least Mark Twain partially redeemed the USA by being one of those who was able to see through that dense facade, and he said so.
Now all we have to do is get people to read up on him.
There is no different between the unDemocratic International Interventionists and their GOP counterparts. I would wager a fiver that their common thread is AIPAC affiliation.
Hello! Two pieces in two days that rocks my credulity.
Another article from the is he/isn’t he gatekeeper! I know if you want to make an omelette you have to break eggs – but shish this one has every type of egg going – from chicken shit to crocodile tears to the platypus and snake in the grass…
And of course the curates egg.
“Americans support liars, and it all comes from the top; it’s directed from the top. It is bipartisan, from both Democratic Party billionaires and Republican Party billionaires.”
Should have stopped there. Or started earlier by explaining how the billionaires came to be. Could have mentioned Chatham House / CFR and their founders – Cecil Rhodes and partners, the Rothschild’s leading psychopathic frontmen.
Could have gone back to the China invasion and the Sasoon monopoly of all the opium in India. Could have gone all the way back to the treaty of Westphalia…
The weird deification of FDR, without a single mention of Eleanor’s role in events, or of the original Teddy bear, himself a pawn.
Anyone reading this alternate universe history would be well advised to look up multiple sources before making up their minds. I haven’t seen them myself but read a transcript of one of James Corbetts recent origins of WW1 webcasts – seems to cover just about everything. It leaves a better taste on the pallette than this failed souffle – which resembles a fine dogs dinner.
You haven’t actually seen the Corbett stuff but you know it’s better than this …. right O.K.
“read a transcript”
Allows for a fuller understanding at my leisure and has links to cited facts, that i can check for myself.
Or do you just believe everything you see, hear snd read?
Oh and lets see how the plans for Venezuela goes for the DS, now that
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/clone.of.russia-scoffs-criticism-bomber-deployment.html
I believe Chinese naval ships are prone to visiting also.
Meanwhile Southfront reports that ukrainian soldiers not keen to invade in the east face summary execution under martial law. That is in addition to reports that a ff attack and full invasion of the eastern ukraine is planned for the 14th.
Wonder if Zeusse has any opinion?
Southfront reports that ukrainian soldiers not keen to invade in the east face summary execution under martial law.
In that case, their best option is to shoot their own officers, as their ancestors did in 1917.
“What we are seeing in the world is far from the democratic and republican global governance that FDR had visualised.
It has become a totalitarian nightmare controlled even more tightly by the ever more wealthy and internationally occult, aristocratic predator class aka the ubiquitous Black Nobility. Their joy must be reaching the point of psycho-orgasm on a daily basis because, as long as the bread and circuses, self esteem and false pride are pumped up by their mass media, the chemically coshed, hypnotised public will keep trotting off to work and paying up the taxes that keep the war machine roaring and the predators’ pockets bulging.”
https://steemit.com/news/@francesleader/the-black-nobility-hijacked-the-united-nations-and-created-a-monster
Flicking through the (UK) TV channels just now I caught the last couple of minutes of one of my childhood favourites from the ’60s…the excellent and entertaining satirical comedy Get Smart, co-written by Mel Brooks. Maxwell Smart (inept Secret Service Agent ’86’, played by Don Adams) and Agent ’99’ (Barbara Feldon) had succeeded in the nick of time in killing their enemy by blowing him up with explosive cigarettes. On surveying his body (not, of course, shown to the audience) they both recoiled in horror, to which Smart states in his inimitable naive way “It couldn’t be avoided. We have to shoot and kill and destroy. We represent everything that’s wholesome and good in the world”. I doubt very much that I appreciated the satire at eight years of age but I certainly do now! I doubt that they show re-runs (as they call them) in the US. Ironically, the channel I found it on was Forces TV.
I come across ordinary Americans on non-political off-topic forums here and there and when issues concerning politics and the world and American wars etc come up what I see is their mindsets are absolutely formed by the official US mainstream narrative. They believe it absolutely with the same conviction they believe the ground beneath their feet is solid.
They absolutely believe that president Putin is a communist dictator who invaded Ukraine; that President Assad is a crazed Arab psychopath who wants to kill his own people with chemicals and barrel bombs; and President Trump is a moron who succeeded in business by accident and defeated Clinton because the Russians rigged the elections.
And what they believe most deeply, even more than they believe in god, is in American exceptionalism and benevolent global hegemony; the absolute right for the US to police and discipline and if necessary sanction or bomb or invade any country it chooses to.
David Eire – I’m an American who falls so outside the “norms” of the American thinking you describe that I’m so invisible here at home that I might as well be a ghost. I can assure you David you are absolutely correct about the American mind. I have literally “one friend” and my wife with whom I can have an informed sane rational political discussion (thus my presence at sites like this one). Up until a bit less than one year ago I had spent most of the last three years living in rural France. I could and did quite often have interesting and lively political discussions with both British ex-pats and the local French, often with people I had just met in a cafe and would perhaps never see again, as well as with friends. We might agree, we might disagree, but everyone had the capacity to think critically and make logical arguments to support their positions. It was quite refreshing.
Now that I’m back living in the U.S. for the foreseeable future – (to be near two small grandchildren) – what I find is that it is literally impossible to have such intelligent conversations here in America. Not only is it impossible with strangers in the pub or cafe, but it is impossible with one’s friends and family, no matter how “liberal” they take themselves to be. The brainwashing you allude to encompasses the entire political spectrum and all but a very tiny fringe of the population.
Your description of the American mind is sadly all too accurate. As this article points out the constituencies of both political parties are now united in their overwhelming majority support of the concept of “American exceptionalism.” This frightening state of affairs makes living here in the U.S. for my wife and I the equivalent of being confined to some sort of psychic gulag where rational critical thought is simply outlawed and therefore completely banned. We live as strangers in our own strange country.
Overall we American’s are a nation in which the majority of the population believes in god (over 90%), most believe in angels (over 80%) and most believe in our own “exceptionalism” (about 80%). Along with this constellation of quite terribly alarming “beliefs,” we are also armed with an almost unlimited supply of nuclear and conventional weapons, all while completely lacking the ability to think critically and independently. If you’re asking yourself “what could possibly go wrong?” – you’re not alone. Our military, intelligence and political leaders are an assemblage of psychopaths, sociopaths and malignant narcissists. No sane person would allow such people to take care of his cat while he is away on vacation – much less create policy and initiate illegal wars willy nilly about the globe. Somehow most American’s don’t seem to notice.
It is clear to me that America and we Americans are the greatest danger to human survival going forward. I appreciate you sharing your observations.
The underlying problem is that America is religion–a fundamentalist one that believes in its own moral righteousness.
Contrary to what the Left, Right, or Centrists in the USA assert, the problem is not just the US Regime or ruling elites but also the American masses themselves, who share this warped national religion of American Exceptionalism.
For them, America is the Shining City on a Hill divinely selected by God to act as a Beacon of Liberty for the entire world.
Like the Zionists who believe that Jews are God’s Chosen People, Americans believe they are God’s Chosen Nation (or Empire).
This ideology goes back to the very spawning of the USA and its Puritan political roots.
This is messianic national ideology is what makes America an existential threat on a planetary scale.
America Is a Religion – An Aggressive One
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/how-its-exceptionalism-makes-america-dumb-and-aggressive/ri12257
Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/58940/americanismthe-fourth-great-western-religion-by-david-gelernter/9780385522953/
Thank you USAma Bin Laden for those excellent insights and links. I agree that the US is currently the greatest threat to world peace and the future of our civilization and perhaps even our species.
These are the most dangerous times our species has ever faced. This century will be make or break for our civilization; perhaps even for our species. We are facing extinction level threats on a scale beyond anything we faced previously; specifically nuclear annihilation and biospheric poisoning; both of our own making.
Thank you intergenerationaltrauma for sharing that personal report. My heart goes out to you and your wife; very difficult and isolating. It is not as bad but it is bad enough here in Europe too. Many people believe the lies and propaganda in the media; but we dont have the exceptionalism virus. These are difficult times of tremendous polarization and manipulation of populations by globalist elites and their media and political agents.
The British Empire regarded itself as exceptional in much the same way as America does now. Even after the loss of the Empire the British maintained that belief built on plain old racism. I hazard a guess that a majority of Brits believe they are in many ways superior to others, especially non whites. It’s a habit that dies hard, even after utter defeat such as Suez. The only rival to British exceptionalism in Europe is the French Imperial state now eagerly cementing its influence in the Middle East by parading its aircraft carriers up and down the Eastern Mediterranean Sea threatening Syria with missile assaults. French memories of the 1924 Rebellion in Syria against newly imposed French rule have long faded but Syrians still remember the carnage and visicious brutality of the French repression that followed, giving Syrians a taste of what was to come in Algeria later. Exceptionalism seems to come with great power and a belief in colonisation to spread a particular culture; the French for example still believe in their ‘civilising’ influence on ‘backward’ Arabs.
The public education system in the US has been neglected by successive governments for a reason.
Dumbing down.
That, combined with the perverse flag waving jingoism, has set the US on a course with self destruction.
I am an American (at least, by birth, though whether ordinary or otherwise is subjective – I like to think of myself as something other than ‘ordinary’, but that is probably a very ordinary perspective). I, however, do not think that Putin is a communist dictator, but actually one of the adults on the world stage, a rational and fair-minded person. I don’t think that Assad is a crazy Arab psychopath, but a man who was trained as a doctor, had no desire to lead Syrian but was living in the UK, practicing his profession but with the death of his older brother, who was supposed to succeed his father, reluctantly took the mantle of being the leader of Syria. I don’t know for sure, but I read credible reports that there was an election in the past and Assad handily won, and people in Damascus, certainly, do not want their country to become a Saudi style Islamic republic, as many of the citizens are Shiite, or Alawite – a kind of branch of Shiite. There are also many Christians living there. They certainly, and understandably, don’t want their country to become an Islamic republic run by fundamentalist extremists. So, there is absolutely no way that I could be characterized as an “American”, at a least the way you have done here. I also am convinced that all the assertions of the use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons by the Syrian government are clearly false flag operations, explicitly designed by the rebels to draw in western support (and I am American, so go figure!!).
With regard to Trump, I do see both positives and negatives. One positive is that he has not yet initiated any new wars. I like the way he seems to have negotiated some kind of rapprochement with Kim Jong Un, and he seems to have honestly tried to get alone with Putin, as his meeting in Helsinki was amicable and both men seem to get along OK (for which Trump was roundly castigated by CNN and its ilk as ‘weak’, ridiculous characterizations like that, which you can read every single day in CNN’s headlines – what a terrible excuse of a supposedly honest media organization that is!). However, I do see that he demonizes Iran, and doesn’t seem to be pulling Saudi Arabia away from its inexcusable and horrific war on Yemen, which is probably just placating the military and justifying the need for increased production of armaments, a huge sector of the American economy. After all, Trump is a businessman and for these kind of people, money is what talks. That is probably America in a nutshell and no one can deny Trump is representative of that. But, I personally think his bark is worse than his bite, as can be seen by the way he dealt with N. Korea. I still remain guardedly optimistic about him and he was certainly vastly superior to Hillary, who almost single-handed orchestrated the horrific destruction of Libya in such a sneaky and duplicitous way – ‘RTP’, ‘right to protect’ the people from Gaddafi ‘killing his own people’, what a pile of crap that was, and she knew it all along. In a fair world, both Hillary, Sarkozy, and Cameron, would in the docks of a war crimes tribunal, but we know that those tribunals only apply to those who are defeated, not the victors in any war.
Dear Savorywill.
I like your optimism, but I think you will be disappointed. The CIA, FBI and NSA did not reign Clinton in our of the kindness of their hearts, more likely is the blackmail threat of “do as we say or we’ll let Clinton attack dogs rip you apart” and the veiled threat of having him “accidented” in the usual discreet way.
I’d like to think you are right and I do agree that Trump is still the lesser of two evils.
Yes my jury is still out on Trump too. We shall see how he does or what he does. But I know what we would have got with Clinton – so I was relieved when she lost. I cannot stand the blind mindless hatred I see and hear all around me for Trump and his family. It really is disgusting.
I see the Iran thing similar to you. A president can only do so much. The Deep State is more powerful than any President. A President must bend and compromise. At least so far he has not started any wars and in spite of his alarming rhetoric about North Korea early on he managed to bring hope to that fractured land. I hope his work will not be undone. I imagine the neocons and Pentagon will be reluctant to remove their assets – from the eastern borders of Russia and China.
It seems the affair surrounding the Saudi Crown Prince is another battle in the Deep State v Wayward Presidents who fail to realise they are very part time actors on the World stage. The Deep State insists Trump’s close ally and Kushner’s friend (!) ordered the murder in Istanbul thereby greatly reducing his power and influence and inevitably damaging Trump and his son in law. It seems there was some ‘arrangement’ between Erdoghan and American Intelligence Agencies about presenting the story. State murders are usually never mentioned or downplayed even serial assassinators like Mossad regularly get away with it with “We never comment on such matters”. Behind the ‘understanding’ may be a Turkish-American agreement about Northern Syria being divided between them and excluding the Kurds. It would ‘allow’ the US to stay in Syria and control the huge revenues from the most productive oil field in the country. The Deep State once again makes its own foreign policy which will be to stay in Syria, disrupt Syria (if not kill Assad) and prepare bases for any war against Iran. Presidents come and go and there will be another one in 6 years time while the CIA has had unrestricted power since 1947. Trump can splutter and tweet as much as he likes but he can’t break the Agencies without risking his life. It’s hard to see him risking martyrdom to prove his point in the way Kennedy did.
A sad note — William Blum, who knew more and wrote more about this topic than anyone else in the world, died yesterday.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/12/william-blum-died.html#comments
The Anglo American establishment:
Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902).
“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race… the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars…I look into history and read the story of the Jesuits. I see what they were able to do in a bad cause and I might say under bad leaders. In the present day I became member of the Masonic Order. I see the wealth and power they possess, the influence they hold…Why should we not form a secret society with but one object – the furtherance of the British Empire, for the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for the making of the Anglo-saxon race but one empire…We learn from the past how to frame our future…What has been one of the causes of the success of the Romish Church? Let us form the same kind of society which should have its member in every part of the British Empire working with one object, and one idea, who should its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands […]
The Society should inspire and even own portions of the press, for the press rules the mind of other people.”
And with all those African slaves, toiling for good old Cecil, hauling out Africa’s gold and diamonds. What a great humanitarian! Must have been very good mates with Leopold who chopped off the limbs of the Congolese who did not meet their work quotas. He sounds very much like Hitler.
Anyone who has ever lived in the U.S. knows why they need to be treated as special, basically because they are the last of the Class! In absolutely everything? How are we to believe that there are spies lookin for the Caramilk secret still???
As an American citizen I can, unfortunately, say that the author’s observations on the state of things here are absolutely spot on the money. The Nazis may have lost WWII, but our fascist oligarchy which runs the CIA and the State Department and the military most definitely – “won” – and they continue to rule today.
The American predator government has become the stuff of Saturday morning cartoon villainy. Regularly voted the greatest threat to world peace, they seem anxious not to relinquish that crown.
What will it take for the world to rid itself of the pain and itching of these rapacious psychopaths?
The American drive towards World dominance is the elephant in every room on the planet. But the sudden explosion of information and diverse opinion in the Internet age IS melting the thin plastic veneer covering up the falsity of MSM and the corrupt politics that underlie it. We owe a lot to sites like this and the many links it gives, for example strategic-culture mentioned above. Knowledge is power – and we’re blessed by easy access to what we want to know. While the elephant might not yet be discernible to many the nasty smell about is putting people on alert.
”Knowledge is power” I wish this were true, but this is a misunderstanding, if anything the opposite is nearer the mark. power is knowledge, and this is the gist of Zuesse’s article. The propaganda is very effective, in the main because it is cost-free. As was the case in the Vietnam war, however, American public opinion moved against the war when the costs, in terms of the body bag count, began to make itself felt. And no amount of sophisticated mind control was able to spirit those facts away.
At the present time the US(AIPAC) seems intent on going to war with just about everyone, threatening every states’ national sovereignty, allies (vassals) included. And they appear to think that the rest of the world is going to meekly surrender to this master race, or, if they prefer, ‘indispensable people’.
So let us see how this plays out. Will the Americans launch a war on Russia with minimal costs. No. So what are the cost calculations for America. Will Americans just go on in their usual insular ways. I very much doubt it. What we have had so far is sabre-rattling and provocations., cost-free gestures. And what of the Europeans? Are they willing to make themselves targets for medium range Russian nuclear missiles as a result of the American decision to quit the INF Treaty? All Unknowns and unknown unknowns.
Getting the population psyched up for war is one thing, launching such a war is quite a different kettle of fish. As Von Moltke (the elder) once said:
“No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.”
Francis Lee. The problem with your perception is that back in the 50’s when the likes of Jane Fonda was giving the war hawks hell, the people still had some freedom of mind , but what Eric is saying is that, that freedom has been eroded or the people brainwashed into believing that which is just not true or indeed, that it actually matters and the mindset is now of Americans having exceptionalism,just as they have been programmed to believe.
‘ … back in the 50s’
I think you’re a decade too early old chap, it was the 60s that the anti- Vietnam war movement got going. But consciousness doesn’t stay the same. Experience of reality has a sobering effect on ideological beliefs. At the beginning of WW1 there all the widesrpead propaganda about Germans bayoneting babies, but enthusiasm for the war was just about over by 1916, after the bloodbaths of Verdun and the Somme. Russia dropped out of the war when Trotsky negotiated peace with the Germans, the French army mutinied after the Neville offensive in 1917, Germany was virtually starving due to the British naval blockade. There was the spartacist uprising in Berlin. All events which led to a huge shift in public awareness of what was going on.
In his novel ‘Coming Up For Air’ Orwell described this situation through experience of the novel’s anti-hero, George Bowling.
”Why had I joined the British Army in 1914? Or the million or so other idiots who joined up before conscription came in? Partly for a lark and partly because of England my England, Britons never, never, and all that stuff. But how long did that last. Most of the chaps that I knew had forgotten about this before the even got to France. The men in the trenches were not patriotic, didn’t hate the Kaiser, didn’t give a damn about gallant little Belgium and the Germans raping nuns on tables (it was always on tables as though that made it much worse) in the streets of Brussels, and of course bayoneting babies.”
Thus propaganda is only effective up to a point. Rational argument is pretty well useless as a counter instrument to the war mania/psychosis as we now bear witness to. But eventually all the big talk has to stop the casualty lists come in and the prospect of nuclear obliteration becomes an objective reality.
We are now in a situation similar to the run-up to WW1. But the masses look quietly on; going about the lives in a semi-somnambulistic state. But forthcoming events will change the world out of all recognition. There is a marvellous quote from Trotsky which describes the situation.
”Only idealists imagine that the world is moved forward through the free initiative of human thought. In actual fact the thought of society or of a class does not take single step forward except when there is extreme need to do so. Where it is at all possible old ideas are adapted to new facts. We speak frankly if we say that classes and peoples have hitherto not shown decisive initiative except when history has thrashed them with its heavy crop. Had things been different, would people have allowed the imperialist war (1914-18) to happen? After all the war drew nearer under the eyes of everyone, like two trains hurtling towards each other on a single track. But the peoples’ remained silent, watched and went on with their familiar, everyday, conservative lives. The fearful upheavals of the imperialist war were needed for certain changes to be absorbed into the consciousness and into social life.’ The dynasties of the Romanovs, the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns were no more. The war was needed for these changes to take place. The war with its tens of millions of dead, wounded and maimed …
What a clear proof this is of how conservative and slow to move is human thought, how stubbornly it clings to the past, to everything that is known, familiar and ancestral – until the next blow of the scourge.”
Dear Paul, spot on and that is exactly the reason why so many lackies of the priveleged few are trying to destroy sites like this.
The ardent centrist/moderate support for these murderous activities overseas tells you everything you need to know about liberals. They take pride and pleasure in crimes that they would loudly condemn if any other country was committing them.
We are NOT the worlds shining example of Democracy. Prior to personal computers this may have passed as acceptable to the masses of the world. Today, along with many other sources of news reporting that is not corrupted , people worldwide are seeing what really goes on in the US Govt. They see what the Israeli’s under Netanyahu and the Likud Party are doing to the Palestinians. They see the turmoil in the Mid-East and know who is behind it. They also know it’s all a charade and are aware of the central and South American meddling in the Govt’s, there by having a puppet Govt. installed ,allowing the US Corps. to control the natural resources such as Oil and Minerals. We are not leaders in climate change now and the world knows that and are moving ahead on their own. All we, the USA, the bullies on the playground. Personal enrichment and power rules the USA.