NATO Summit – 70th Anniversary 

In London, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), will show how it is ready to fight Cold War 2. It will showcase its readiness initiative – the ability to deploy 30 battalions by land, 30 air squadrons and 30 naval vessels in just 30 days. Why? To confront future threats from China and Russia’s hypersonic missiles and cyber warfare?What for? Will these questions be addressed at NATO’s summit? 

France’s President Macron, recently told the Economist in early November that NATO was “brain dead.” Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign declared that “NATO is obsolete.” Both Presidents are right, NATO is “brain dead” and “obsolete.” Maybe they should take this opportunity to cajole the alliance members out of their collective pact and rethink the whole philosophy behind NATO.

Obsolete

NATO, was originally founded by the United States and 11 other Western nations as an attempt to curb the rise of communism in 1949. The treaty sets out the idea of collective defense, meaning that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies. From its inception, its main purpose was to defend each other from the possibility of communist Soviet Union taking control of their nation. 

Six years after NATO was signed, Communist nations founded the Warsaw Pact and through these two multilateral institutions, the entire globe became a Cold War battleground. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the Warsaw Pact disbanded and NATO expanded, growing from its original 12 members to 29 member countries.

While “preserving peace,” NATO’s resume is suspect, it has a history of bombing civilians and committing war crimes. In 1999, NATO engaged in military operations without UN approval in Yugoslavia. Its illegal airstrikes during the Kosovo War left hundreds of civilians dead.

In 2001, far from the “North Atlantic,” NATO joined the United States in invading Afghanistan. In 2011, NATO forces illegally invaded Libya, creating a failed state that caused masses of people to flee. Rather than take responsibility for these refugees, NATO countries have turned back desperate migrants on the Mediterranean Sea, letting thousands die.

NATO is a gigantic alliance with tanks, nuclear bombs, armies, aircraft, ships and submarines. It now accounts for about three-quarters of military spending and weapons dealing around the globe. Instead of preventing war, it promotes militarism, exacerbates global tensions and makes war more likely.

NATO Expansion

At its founding, NATO consisted of twelve countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1952, Greece and Turkey became members of the Alliance, joined later by West Germany (in 1955) and Spain (in 1982). In 1990 came the first ex-Soviet Block country to join NATO.

In 1990 with the reuniting of East and West Germany, then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990. This was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents.

Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the “not one inch eastward” formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker assured Gorbachev that “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place,” and that the Americans understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

Encircling Russia

After Cold War 1, the United States ignored Russia’s historical insecurity about foreign encirclement by expanding NATO. This came at a time when Russia’s territory was the smallest it had been since the 1700’s under the reign of Catherine the Great.

President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, decided to expand NATO eastward from Germany. Since the end of Cold War 1, 13 countries have joined NATO; the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), and Montenegro (2017).

Democrats and Republicans have insisted that Eastern Europe is a “vital US national interest.” Those that understood Russian history opposed that folly and warned it would lead to dangerous conflicts with Moscow, conceivably even war. Russia has historically sought a buffer to protect itself from foreign invaders. The Soviets wanted territory from Turkey and Iran after World War II to act as a buffering territory to Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

It’s therefore not surprising that Russia was incensed when Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and others were ushered into NATO membership starting in the mid-1990s. Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Gorbachev himself protested through both public and private channels that U.S. leaders had violated the non-expansion arrangement. As NATO began looking even further eastward, to Ukraine and Georgia, protests turned to outright aggression and saber-rattling. 

Cold War Scholars React

Many of America’s most reputable officials and academics have opposed post-Cold War NATO expansion for substantive reasons. George Kennan, perhaps our most famous Cold War diplomat and widely considered to be the father of the United States’ containment strategy, famously opposed NATO expansion in the 1990s, writing in the New York Times that expanding NATO would be a “fateful error” that would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion” and “restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations.” Like Senator Paul, Kennan also worried about the problems of credibility and overextension.

In 1995, a group of almost two dozen retired Foreign Service, State Department, and Department of Defense officers who served during the Cold War signed an open letter opposing NATO expansion on grounds similar to Paul and Kennan. They argued it risked exacerbating instability and “convincing most Russians that the United States and the West are attempting to isolate, encircle, and subordinate them.” The signatories included Paul H. Nitze, former Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense, as well as Jack F. Matlock, Jr., former Ambassador to the USSR, and John A. Armitage, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.

Enter Putin

In the year previous to Putin’s presidency NATO had given the acceptance of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Then from March 24, 1999  to June 10, 1999 NATO bombed Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. These provocative actions along combined with NATO expansion, support for the so-called “color revolutions,” regime change wars in the Middle East—have triggered historical Russian suspicions of foreign intervention and enraged the security sensitive Russians. Thus putting Russo-American relations into a historic impasse.

“At bottom of [the] Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” wrote George F. Kennan, in his famous Long Telegram. “Whereas the West sees Russia’s fear of invasion as groundless, history has shown Russian leaders that foreign intentions are typically hidden or fluid. Each age brings a new existential threat; there would always be another Napoleon or Hitler,” writes Benn Steil in Foreign Policy.

Divorce – Attendant Circumstances

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed to commit its members to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law, as well as to peaceful resolution of disputes. NATO was not to reconfigured Europe or to maintain U.S. domination, or to mobilize against Russia. It should not be expanding but disbanding, seventy years of militarism is more than enough.

The US should leave NATO. It should not be held hostage to an organization that  now stokes the embers of fear like terrorism; piracy; ethnic violence; inadequate economic reform; threats to energy supplies; arms proliferation; drug trafficking; cyber attacks; laser weapons; electronic warfare; health risks; climate change and something called “instability.”

“Brain Dead”

The idea that the US, for that matter 28 nation, be obligated go to war on behalf of one nation’s conflict is completely ludicrous, “Brain Dead.” When will we discard this Cold War mentality? Shouldn’t Americans want a less aggressive foreign policy that focuses on peace, diplomacy, and economic engagement instead of military force?

The Forth Branch of Government

The US Constitution created three branches of government: the Executive (presidential), Legislative (congressional), and the Judicial (the court system). A forth piece of government has metastasized into an entity of supreme power. The non-elected, bureaucratic deep-state, appears to be the guardian over the constitutional established three branches. Feed by legislation from the National Security Act of 1947 up to the “Patriot Act” of 2001 the U.S. aligns more with a National Security State than a Democratic Republic.

The American national security system was defined and empowered by these three constitutional institutions. However, recent signs indicated that the roles have been reversed. “The bureaucracy was never intended to be a coequal of the three branches of the federal government. It was intended to get power from them, not to grant power to them.” (Populism, Elites, and National Security, by Michael J. Glennon; The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University)

The decisions that were once made by elected officials are in fact being made by: “the nation’s most powerful elite—a largely concealed managerial directorate, consisting of the several hundred leaders of the military, law enforcement, and intelligence departments and agencies of our government. Those managers have been operating without constitutional limits and restraints, moving our nation slowly toward autocracy.” (Michael J. Glennon, Tufts University) Glennon goes on to state how, “easy it is for zealots, acting in secret and freed from the restraints of accountability, to push the nation slowly and silently toward autocracy.“

Balancing Power – It Is The People

James Madison said: “I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us?  If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

Madison makes it clear, that the framers believed that the true power of “checks and balances” provided in the Constitution, was that of civic virtue. He believed that its citizens had to be engaged and informed, so as to be able to participate meaningfully.

We the people are failing this civic virtue test. Mainstream media, the citizens information conduit, is also failing its responsibility to inform in an unbiased manner. They have shepherded the public into believing the security state is vital to our protection in both domestic and foreign issues. This symbiotic relationship is the real destructive collusion that is eroding our democratic republic. 

Exposed

In 2018, Michael J. Glennon wrote about the “realm of national security.” He says “its managers believe that they are the wise, the all-seeing guardians in charge commandeering the ship of state when some unsteady captain or crew sails it into the shallows.”

Based upon the testimony in the Trump Impeachment coup, the national security bureaucracy truly believes that they are the check on elected officials. Michael Morrell, a former acting head of the CIA, expressed the Security State’s narrative when he worried openly that “the President’s advisers have not been able to properly ‘manage’ the president.” 

This sentiment will not change until we the people become more studious in our pursuit of civic virtue.  How blatant must the “Deep State” bureaucratic coup become?

Populism, Elites, and National Security, Michael J. Glennon, Tufts University:

https://css.cua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Populism-Elites-and-National-Security.pdf

The holiday season is a time to enjoy all those classic Hollywood movie like: It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Christmas Story or maybe even Home Alone.  However, with US Troops in Saudi Arabia I fear I’ll be force to watch: A Bridge to Far, Apocalypse Now, Pearl Harbor or Lawrence of Arabia. 

Recently, the Trump Administration sent letters to the House and Senate informing them that the President is deploying 3,000 additional ground troops to protect Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. Some of those troops are now in “the lands of Islam in the holiest of places.”

If memory serves me correctly, The presence of US Troop in Saudi Arabia is what motivated al-Qaeda‘s 9/11 attacks. Memory, as a forgetful retired teacher or maybe a victim of the Orwellian memory hole, can be fleeting. However, history backs me up.

In 2003, after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush removed troops from Saudi Arabia for security reasons. Why would he do that? After all, the U.S. stations its military personnel all over the Middle East, so why not in “friendly” Saudi Arabia too? Because even war criminal George Bush recognized that troops on the Arabian Peninsula only put American lives at risk.

Forget all that, they’re rolling back in! This time, troops will deploy because of the existential threat posed by America’s current favorite villain, Russia… I mean Iran. Sorry, It’s hard to keep up with all the villains I’m told to hate.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane. It can be revealing.

Remember Kuwait?

In August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Then, in 1991, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia served as a launch point for the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait. But why did Saddam Hussain invade Kuwait?

Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the U.S. government backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran. After eight years and a million deaths, the Iran-Iraq war ended in a stalemate. Iraq was on the verge of economic disaster. The war had sunk Iraq deep into debt and crippled their oil production, and the declining global price of oil only worsened Iraq’s economic crises.

Kuwait – far from being the innocent victim depicted by the US media – happily financed Saddam’s senseless war with Iran. After the war, Kuwait immediately demanded repayment from Saddam. As Iraq’s economic woes deepened, Saddam accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil with “slant drilling,” and undermining the global oil market.

On July 25, 1990, eight days before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a meeting took place between Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. After Saddam’s invasion plans were revealed to U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, the US diplomat made no clear objection. Glaspie said, ”We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

These events were interpreted by Iraq as a green light from Washington. On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded Kuwait. Saddam’s invasion was taken as a threat to Saudi Arabia and the kingdom panicked.

Remember Osama?

Fearing that their oil fields needed protection, Saudi Arabia was in search of a mercenary force to protect the Kingdom’s wealth. A prodigal son offered to return, raise a new army of jihadis and defend the kingdom against Hussein’s forces.

That prodigal son was Osama Bin Laden (remember him?), full of grandeur, believing that his Arab army had driven the Soviets from Afghanistan (but in reality, it was mostly the native Afghan rebels, backed by American and Gulf States’ military aid, that had pushed the Soviets out).

The Saudis were not convinced of bin Laden’s capabilities. They choose instead to invite the U.S. military into the kingdom. Rebuked by the Saudi king and overshadowed by the massive U.S. military, bin Laden developed a lifelong animus toward both the kingdom and America. So began Iraq War 1, Desert Storm.

After Iraq War 1, the U.S. Military, like all good empires, stuck around in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. military presence near the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina angered bin Laden and an entire generation of Arab jihadists.

In February of 1996, Bin Laden declared on war on the United States:
“For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.”

Remember 9/11?

Bin Laden, the monster, had a point. His vendetta would prove pivotal, in the following history-altering events:

1996: Nineteen American troops were killed in a terrorist bombing of the Air Force’s Khobar towers barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

1998: The bombing of two American embassies in Africa

2000: the bombing of the USS Cole at the port of Aden, in Yemen

2001: 4 airplanes hijacked, 4 buildings destroyed, and 3000 Americans civilians killed

Thousands of Americans died in the combined attacks; 18 years ago Bush Jr. started a war that has yet to end. The total cost (so far): 7,000 American troops dead, at least 244,000 foreign civilians killed and over $6.4 trillion (Note: Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University just updated) in U.S. tax dollars wasted.

Remember Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz?

On May 09, 2003, he said about the removal of, “…our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It’s been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina.”

Remember Blowback?

Today’s fresh infusion of U.S. troops back into the vicinity of the Islamic holy places is a major event with potentially devastating consequences for the U.S. military—and perhaps even the American homeland. This latest move into Saudi Arabia is all risk and no reward.

One risk may bear a striking resemblance to what unfolded the last time Washington thought it prudent to garrison Saudi Arabia. There is a reason why the majority of the 9/11 terrorist were Saudi citizens. It is a perfect scenario for what author Chalmers Johnson referred to as “blowback.”

The second risk is that U.S. troops in the Saudi Arabia just might allow for a blunder that will put us into another un-necessary, un-winnable, un-ethical war, this time with Iran, a nation of 80 million people. This would further destabilize the Middle East and quite possibly bankrupt the US.

Remember Peace?

Today’s, open-ended deployments to “protect US interests and enhance force protection in the region against hostile action by Iran and its proxy forces” is Orwellian double talk.  Trump’s move can only incite more hostility and make us less safe.

Bring all of our troops home!

The impeachment frenzy is the result of an intervention by the intelligence community into the domestic political affairs of the United States. The ongoing impeachment proceedings is predicated upon a politicized CIA agent’s (whistleblower?) complaint. This is the issue that should be deeply concerning, not some expansive definition of a quip pro quo.

The attempted removal of an elected president from office, initiated in secrecy, by a member of the intelligence community acting well outside his legal responsibilities threatens the viability of the American constitutional republic.

The issues being investigated by the House Intelligence Committee is the smokescreen used to conceal the shady, if not criminal, process by which these proceedings have been initiated. The whistleblower should be identified, called before the House Intelligence Committee, and other relevant Congressional committees, and be compelled to answer for his actions.

“Impeachment is a constitutional remedy afforded to the U.S. Congress to deal with the political issues surrounding the conduct of a sitting president. If this constitutional remedy can be triggered by the intelligence community in a manner which obviates laws prohibiting the intrusion of intelligence agencies into the domestic political affairs of the United States, and done so in a manner where the identities of the persons and organizations involved, along with their possible motives, are shielded from both American people and those whom they elect to represent them in Congress, then a precedent will have been set for future interventions of this nature which undermine the very foundation of American democracy.” Scott Ritter

Honest investigative journalism should be the narrative of our mainstream media, not the sophomoric infatuation and naive compliance with the cretinous intelligence community that exists today.

Oh, here’s one to be Thankful:

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/27/scott-ritter-the-whistleblower-and-the-politicization-of-intelligence/

It’s the Narrative – Stupid

Readers look for writers who reinforce their beliefs but if the king kills the messenger, of unwanted news, only an agenda of those who control the explanations dominate. Well paid empire loyal propagandist carefully constructed narratives and the compliant mainstream media blindly recite them.

ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all cover the same narrative spun through different prisms. They condition their audiences for the sake of ratings by fostering tribalism. The media-politico complex program their audience like Pavlov’s dog while giving cover to injustice. “The media-politico complex is an incestuous cesspool that is populated by charlatans and shysters.”

Today’s media-politico complex have perfected Joseph Goebbels’ policy of propaganda. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, thus the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Government and Media

Facts often prove one thing but the narrative says another. Why does the narrative takes precedence over fact? Could it be because a plutocratic class funnels money into buying up media influence, funding think tanks, and other means of narrative control? When you control the narrative, no amount of facts will deter the public from going along with your agendas.

In this environment, explanations contrary to the narrative is portrayed as a justification. For example, if one provides an explanation of slavery the assumption is that the writer approves of slavery. Congresswomen Ilhan Omar’s criticism of an Israel Lobby group made her an “anti-Semite.”  The defense of white people from the propagandistic accusations leveled at them by Identity Politics, makes you a “white supremacist .”

Narratives are powerful. You see it in the social media users, you see it in the behavior of governments, you see it in religions and politics. Honest ordinary language becomes risky as many are not attending to the validity of the analysis but are looking for indications of racism and sexism. Consequently, the people cling more tightly to the lie that deceives them.

Exposure of government deceptions gets branded as “anti-American.” The accepted narrative is that American patriots do not criticism US policies. To criticize war is to take the side of the enemy and be against one’s own country interests. The Bush regime even created the, “Support the Troops” slogan campaign to reinforce this narrative.

Kill the Messenger

So, when US Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran of two deployment to Iraq, met with Assad of Syria she was accused of supporting a Middle East dictatorship. She was immediately criticized for not supporting the troops and aligned with the enemy.

Tulsi Gabbard is the only 2020 Presidential candidate promoting peace and non-intervention. She has challenged the core policy of US exceptionalism. Ever since she announced her candidacy narratives against her candidacy have been leveled against her. The establishment narrative engineers have been scrambling to kill her message. Gabbard has fought back and has been shaking the establishment matrix.

Interviewers and show hosts have continued to employ the “Gabbard is loyal to Assad” narrative. This has been a high-priority agenda of the mainstream media ever since her announcement. She, the adult in the room, explained “In the pursuit of peace and security. If we are not willing to meet with adversaries, potential adversaries, in the pursuit of peace and security, the only alternative is more war. That’s why I took that meeting with Assad. In pursuit of peace and security.”

Gabbard recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the show’s host solemnly ran down a list of textbook beltway smears against Gabbard and immediately put her on the defensive. She adroitly defended her foreign policy views and answered Colbert’s loaded questions.

Colbert twice interjected the State Department’s line about the alleged Assad chemical attack on his own people. Tulsi then corrected him saying several of the groups, including al Qaeda & ISIS, had been trained by the US and had been reported as being a part of those alleged chemical attacks.

On intervention for the “good of the people,” Gabbard, had to explain to Colbert that for the United States to be a force for good in the world it must do good. Then she made it clear that her definition of good is not raining fire upon every nation it dislikes. It is an undeniable fact that US military interventionism is consistently disastrous, never helpful and robs the US public of resources that are rightfully theirs.

Colbert, in trouble at this point, responded by reading off his blue index card to repeat yet another anti-Gabbard narrative, “You’ve gotten some fans in the Trump supporter world: David Duke, Steve Bannon, and, uh, Matt, uh, Gaetz, is that his name? Matt Gaetz? What do you make of how much they like you?”

It boggles my mind how politians and their tools are so child-like, the word vindictive comes to mind. If you are losing or have lost an argument, call in some divisive, mainstream narrative like Russia, Trump, racism, sexism or any other diversion, just don’t acknowledge defeat.

Late night comedy shows, are usually very friendly to presidential candidates and are treated to light, jokey banter about politics. Not so for Ms. Gabbard, because she speaks out against bad policies; “self-serving politicians, greedy corporations and special interests,” the military-industrial complex and decries the “powerful forces that have ruled over both parties in Washington for far too long.”

These types of ambushes have been common on the mainstream media. in an appearance on The View, John McCain’s sociopathic daughter called her an “Assad apologist”. We saw it on a CNN town hall, where a consultant who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign was presented as an ordinary audience member to help CNN’s Dana Bash paint Gabbard’s skepticism of intelligence reports about an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government. We saw it in her appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last month, where the entire panel piled on her in outrage that she wouldn’t call Assad an enemy of the United States.

An example of how narratives become common propaganda talking points was recently demonstrated by New York Times writer, Bari Weiss, when she made a laughingstock of herself by repeating “a self-evident truth” on The Joe Rogan Experience.  When Mr. Rogan questioned her usage of the word toady, it became clear that she did not have the faintest clue of what the word meant and the specific facts it was meant to refer to. She heard the establishment pundits saying it and she just repeated it.

This is an organized narrative by the mass media attempting to publicly marry Gabbard to a child-murdering monster that “gases his own people”, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, a mass murderer or any other unsavory character. The fact is that some distasteful ideologies just happen to oppose US interventionism for their own reasons.

Gabbard has encounter this smear campaign at every mainstream media appearance because she contests empire-serving narratives and challenges US political orthodoxy on military violence.  No amount of capitulation will keep them from trying to prevent the public from trusting her words.

Narratives Camouflage Reality

The narratives were in full force after a recent Tulsi Gabbard tweet: “Short-sighted politicians & media pundits who’ve spent last 2 years accusing Trump as a Putin puppet have brought us the expensive new Cold War & arms race. How? Because Trump now does everything he can to prove he’s not Putin’s puppet—even if it brings us closer to nuclear war.”

The Democratic establishment loyalists responded against her assessment as follows: “Gabbard staking out a bold ‘Trump is *too* tough on Putin’ lane in the Democratic primary; “As predictable as it is absurd”; “Tulsi Gabbard’s is the only Twitter account other than Trump’s that I routinely have to check to make sure it’s actually hers, because the tweet is so absurdly ridiculous”; “Now she’s defending Trump on Russia. Why is she a Democrat? And she’s actually using Kremlin talking points (nuclear war!). Unbelievable”; “Tulsi, you aren’t the first American politician to cozy up to foreign dictators and to serve as a Putin mouthpiece” ; “While you, Putin and Trump fear monger about nuclear war, we’ll protect our democracy and hold corrupted politicians accountable.”

 The indisputable fact is that Donald Trump has escalated nuclear tensions with Russia more than any other president since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Russia-gate, Hillary’s revenge, has allowed Trump to advance an insanely aggressive escalations policy against Russia and its allies, His administration has endangering the life of every organism on this planet by escalating nuclear tensions with Russia.

In an article published by Moon of Alabama: “List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia” https://www.moonofalabama.org lists over 30 mainstream articles from April 2017 to today that document Trump’s bellicose position against Russia. When facts challenge a narrative, they become a lie.

“Pay attention to the media-politico complex and you will see the devil’s foot-soldiers doing his bidding as they bend justice and break humanity.”  WolvesNFoxes

Divide and Conquer – Tribalism

Divide the people, empower demagogues to convince each subgroup that their pains are different and get those groups to turn on each other. This is how a few thousand colonizers subdued a billion people on the African continent during the hay-day of Imperial colonization.

Colonizers pulled off this stunning feat by elevating one tribe above the rest and then telling the marginalized tribes that their enemies were the elevated tribe. Status, money and privilege were given to the elevated tribe while grief, tribulation and hopelessness were doled out to the marginalized tribe.

The elevated tribe, so leery of the out groups, fought like hell to keep their status even though most within that elevated tribe suffered along with the rest. The marginalized tribe, so convinced that their foes were the elevated tribe, seethed and could not wait to have their turn at the seat of power. Within this paradigm, social strife became the norm as colonizers turn a once free people into prisoners in their own land.

The West’s tribalism scheme has been professional marketed, it has been camouflaged much better than the one sowed in Africa. The tribes here are based on color, ideologies, gender, orientation, religion and an endless procession of adjectives that forces people to focus on our differences. Division makes it hard to form a coalition to defend our common interests. It has gotten to the point where people say four or five descriptors of what they are before they say who they are.

It’s easy to whip everyone up into two camps of highly polarized and radicalized camps across multiple political vectors: Trump vs. Liberals; Open borders vs. Immigration control; Global warming alarmists vs. Skeptics; Gun Control vs The Deplorables.

Conclusion – Eye on the Prize

Our founders established some common interests; secure the blessings of liberty and posterity, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility by providing a common defense and promote the general welfare of our citizens. These all seem to be reasonable and obtainable but only if we keep an eye on the prize.

The current media-politico complex distracts us from our common interest. They wage informational warfare that divides society and pushes us closer and closer to tribal conflict. Tribal conflict just makes our oppressor more powerful. It’s the narrative – stupid.

 

#FreeAhed

AhedTamimi is a sixteen-year-old Palestinian girl. Her case is one of the more important events in recent years because it expose to the world the difference in moral tone between the two sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The 16-year-old Ahed a blue eyed, long blonde haired, Palestinian girl, slapped a heavily-armed Israeli soldier who was occupying her back yard. This incident took place shortly after another Israeli soldier had shot Tamimi’s cousin in the face. When a video recording of this slapping hit the internet, it went viral.

Upon the release of the video showing the slapping, many in Israeli society called for the girl’s arrest, and many were enraged that the soldier was passive and did not react. The next night after the slapping Ahed Tamimi was arrested in a midnight raid; she is presently being held “without” charges, as leading Israelis urge that the key be thrown away, and worse.

Yesterday, an Israeli judge ruled for the third time that her detention is to be extended, this time for another five days. The reasoning for the judge’s rulings to extend her detention are that she “poses a risk “.

Over the past week and a half, Ahed has been shuffled between numerous Israeli prisons and police stations. She has been held in painfully cold isolation cells with cameras pointing at her 24 hours a day. Without a parent or lawyer present, the Israeli authorities have attempted to interrogate her. This is common treatment for Palestinian minors that are arrested for protesting.

History of the Tamimi Family Protest

The Tamimi family has been demonstrating every Friday for about a decade. Their protest is against the takeover of Nabi Saleh’s (a Palestinian Village) natural water spring by a nearby illegal Israeli settlement. As Bassem Tamimi, Ahed’s father explained, the villagers said nothing when the army built the settlement of Halamish (originally Neve Tzuf) on Palestinian land but when the settlers confiscated their fresh water spring, and the army then prevented the Tamimis from accessing it, Bassem and his extended family decided to draw a red line.

Every week the Tamimis family gather at the top of the hill inside their village, carrying flags and banners, and walk toward the road that separates them from the spring. The goal is simply to cross the road and walk to the spring. And every week, the army deploys security forces inside and around the village to stop the protesters from reaching their destination.

The way it works is something like this: at around noon, Israeli military vehicles enter the village and park at the bottom of its bisecting road. Security forces, heavily armed and wearing combat gear, descend from the vehicles, load their weapons, and wait. Sometimes they start shooting as soon as the demonstration begins, and sometimes they wait for a teenager to throw a stone in their direction before opening fire.

On Friday, December 15, during the protest, Ahed’s 14-year-old cousin Mohammed Tamimi was shot in the face with a rubber bullet. He was taken to the hospital where he required surgery and a was placed in a medically-induced coma.

A few hours after the shooting, armed soldiers came to Ahed’s home demanding to enter. The Israeli soldiers apparently parked themselves on Tamimi’s family’s land and fired tear gas at their house, smashing windows.

Ahed did what any brave young woman would, she pushed back. She slapped and kicked them, and screamed that they could not come in. Her family says she was expressing a legitimate protest at this treatment.

Situations like this are common in Israeli occupied Palestine. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) regularly detains Palestinian teens, on an average of two a night but due to the riots of the past few weeks, (Trump’s Embassy move to Jerusalem) the number is unusually high. As part of the ongoing operations of the Israeli military’s support of the illegal settlers, IDF gunman fire rubber-coated bullet into crowds of protesters.

Payback

On Friday, December 15, in Nabi Saleh, the IDF was embarrassed. Their pride was mortally wounded when an unarmed girl managed to drive away an Israeli gunman with yells and a few slaps. When the IDF is embarrassed someone must pay. Ahed, a sixteen-year old Palestinian girl is paying for her brave action against an Israeli occupational force.

The Israeli media likes to call these incidents “provocations”.  The Jim Crow era had its provocation too. In a governmental enforced, apartheid society, the actions of a “downtrodden” person who dares to publicly oppose his persecutors will be considered as “posing a risk “.

The established Israeli order is that IDF gunmen may shoot Tamimi’s relative in the head, and then invade their houses. But standing up to the gunmen – that’s the provocation. That is the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian existence and the Israeli courts back it up.

Living in fear of this sort of treatment for 21st century Palestinians is common. Their lives are deprived of healthcare, an economy, a justice system, living in abject poverty with no food or water security and military violence against them and their children.

While most of the West seems indifferent to Ahed’s plight, Israel is hell-bent with hatred against this girl. Israeli Education Minister Neftali Bennett called for Ahed and her family to “spend the rest of their lives in prison.” Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman said she and her family should “get what they deserve,” and the prominent Israeli journalist Ben Caspit said that Israel should “exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras.” Really, what is he advocating?

Stand-up Against Israel “anti-Semite”

Israel has a powerful billion-dollar lobby in Washington DC that has its hooks so deeply embedded in the American political system and in the national media that the Jewish state is virtually bullet-proof. Any critic of Israel is immediately labeled an “anti-Semite.” This makes it difficult for the less courageous to criticize Israel especially the gutless U.S. Senators and Congressmen that drink from the Israeli lobby’s trough.

Supporting Ahed would be considered a condemnation of the state of Israel. It would be a condemnation of Israel’s military court system which allows children to be held in isolation and denied access to their parents during interrogation. It would be a condemnation of Israel’s settlement enterprise and stealing of Palestinian land and water.

To support Ahed is to rebuke Israel’s assertion that Palestinians must comply with their occupiers, that they must open the doors for the soldiers who enter their homes. To support Ahed would challenge the “only democracy in the Middle East” fallacy.

Mainstream media does not have the integrity nor the will to criticize Israel. They have witnessed the power of the Israeli lobby. As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”

The NBA had to apologize and remove wording from its website referring to “Palestine-occupied territory” after complaints by an Israeli minister. The Israeli sports minister Miri Regev had sent a letter to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver calling Palestine “an imaginary ‘state’,” and asking for the reference to be removed from the basketball league’s website. The NBA “corrected it.”

Ahed – A  Warrior That Feminist Should Know

Ahed Tamimi risked her life to fight off predators. For her bravery, she will sit in an Israeli jail for another five days. I would think that slapping a powerful man in army gear equipped with a loaded gun to prevent an invasion of her property would get the attention from the #MeToo crowd and other woman rights groups.

I encourage the very powerful women advocacy groups to help expose the dehumanization that submission invokes when living under occupation. There exists an opportunity to embrace, promote and support a strong, proactive, young woman who is sitting in jail, in Israel, for standing up to the authority. Ahed Tamimi choose not to be a victim, she refused to submit, she is a heroine.

Maybe a 16-year-old young woman armed with courage and fueled by a vision of justice can become the poster child to end oppression in Israel. Then again, maybe young Palestinian women must not raise an arm against the abusive and just submit to the Zionist state.

Winner – Nikki Haley – The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation on Iraq to the United Nations Security Council Powell’s was impressive. His speech was a standard for the misuse of intelligence to sell the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nikki Haley may be as deceitful as Mr. Powell was on that February day.

Nikki Haley has provided the closest replication yet of that notorious performance in 2003. Haley is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations but recently did her show-and-tell at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington.

Haley used tendentiously and selectively props including physical “pieces” of a missile and other intelligence to stir up hostility in support of the Trump administration’s hostilities towards Iran.

Powell used a small vial as a prop in talking about a biological weapon. Haley displayed a warehouse full of wrecked hardware, including the missile remnants. The featured piece consisted of remnants of a missile fired from Yemen in the direction of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The missile fired at Riyadh was a rather feeble and ineffective response to the continuing air assault on Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition that has turned a civil war sparked by tribal disgruntlement into one of the world’s biggest current humanitarian disasters.

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) estimates 13,893 civilian casualties (5,144 dead, 8,749 wounded) in Yemen since the Saudi bombing campaign began in March of 2015, but that figure has not been updated in over three months.

As if the situation couldn’t possibly get worse, Saudi Arabia has destroyed all of the Yemeni infrastructure that is the major cause of a cholera outbreak. The cholera outbreak has enveloped Yemen since October of 2016. The World Health Organization currently estimates 900,000 cases of the illness, but expects the figure to exceed 1 million by the end of the year.

The Saudi-led air war is clearly the biggest source of the carnage not a missile aimed at the Riyadh airport that produced no casualties.

The United States aids the Saudi air war. The exact nature and extent of the assistance are unclear, but what is publicly acknowledged includes U.S. provision of targeting information and refueling of Saudi warplanes.

It is morally offensive for Haley to try to focus attention on Iranian-related markings on a missile fragment while her own government abets far more suffering and destruction in the same war of which that missile was a part.

Haley’s remarks at the show-and-tell did nothing to explain how the munitions displayed around her demonstrate had anything to do with Iranian policies or how they are proof that Iran is the driver of conflict and instability in the Middle East.

Coincidently, Iran’s sworn enemies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates provided most of the material on display. The U.S. officials would not or could not say where the “evidence” had been recovered. Nor could they say when the weapons had been supplied or when they were used.

Officials of the United States, the world’s leading exporter of arms, ought to be especially careful about suggesting that factory markings on munitions equate to evidence about a country’s foreign policy, given how U.S. origin arms have been used by the likes of ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Scare tactics were a big part of the Bush administration’s campaign of selling its war, with the brandishing of things like vials. The Bush administration told us to imagine the damage if these vials were filled with bio-chemical weapons, in reference to those being “produced” in Iraq.

Haley got fully into the same mode when she warned about the missile that hit close to the Riyadh airport, “Just imagine if this missile had been launched at Dulles Airport or JFK, or the airports in Paris, London, or Berlin. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what Iran is actively supporting.”

We still don’t know exactly where Trump, Haley, or anyone else in the current administration wants or expects to go with their campaign of stoking maximum tension and hostility toward Iran. However, more and more of their campaign sounds a lot like what the Bush administration and neoconservatives were saying about Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

Intelligence is to inform policy makers so that they can make decisions that have not already been made. When the U.S. begins a campaign to use selective intelligence and tragic events to sell a threat it usually indicates that a decision for armed conflict has already been made. This campaign is underway both at Iran and at North Korea.

Remember the Maine (Spanish-American War), the Lusitania (WW1), Pearl Harbor (WW2), the Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnam), Saddam’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq), post-9/11’s War on Terrorism (Afghanistan) and saving the Yazidi from ISIS (Syria). These events coupled with “convenient” propaganda were successful in selling those wars.

Congratulations to Nikki Haley as the latest entry into the Snake Oil Salesperson’s gallery of rogues.

 

Afghanistan – The Harvey Weinstein Strategy

In our post-Weinstein world, men charged with sexual misconduct are guilty until proven innocent, their crimes are capital offenses, there exists no statute of limitations, and “zero tolerance” has become a battle cry. The pain, suffering, and humiliation of the women preyed upon by reprobates should not be minimized but let us consider other victims and their perpetrators.

The American people retain a capacity for outrage. We can distinguish between the tolerable and the intolerable. And we can demand accountability of powerful individuals and institutions. However, I am confused why this same level of outrage is absent when it comes to needless war.

Compare the culpability of these sexual scoundrels to those of the high-ranking officials who have presided over or promoted this country’s various military misadventures of the present century. These wars have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and will ultimately cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars. *

The public treats, with respect, the views of pundits and media personalities who persist in promoting war while condemning any innuendo of sexual harassment. If I was more of a conspiracy nut I would conclude that mainstream media is guilty of colluding with the government to distract the public’s attention away from our executions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalis, Syria, Pakistan and soon to be North Korea or Iran.

When it comes to sexual harassment there are no statute of limitations and “zero tolerance” is expected in response to all allegations. So, why when it comes to war the past doesn’t count. The media prefers to sustain the pretense that tomorrow is full of possibilities. Victory lies just around the corner.

The president, who has yet to visit Afghanistan, in his Thanksgiving message to the troops remarked, “We’re not fighting anymore to just walk around,” he continued “We’re fighting to win. And you people [have] turned it around over the last three to four months like nobody has seen.”

The term winning is quite elastic. Trump may think that it implies vanquishing the enemy—white flags and surrender ceremonies on the U.S.S. Missouri. General Nicholson knows better. “Winning,” the field commander says, “means delivering a negotiated settlement that reduces the level of violence and protecting the homeland.”

It took a succession of high-profile scandals before Americans truly woke up to the plague of sexual harassment and assault. What will it take before the public concludes that they have had enough of wars that don’t work? Vietnam had a televised war, body bags returning and the My Lai Massacre to awakened our outrage.

The crime that is not being reported is that General “Mad Dog” Mattis, General Nicholson, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster are following the Harvey Weinstein playbook: keep doing it until they make you stop.

Consider a recent article in U.S. News and World Report;

“Armed with a new strategy and renewed support from old allies, the Trump administration now believes it has everything it needs to win the war in Afghanistan. Top military advisers all the way up to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis say they can accomplish what two previous administrations and multiple troop surges could not: the defeat of the Taliban by Western-backed local forces, a negotiated peace and the establishment of a popularly supported government in Kabul capable of keeping the country from once again becoming a haven to any terrorist group.”

Over the past 17 years the US has experimented with just about every approach imaginable: invasion, regime change, occupation, nation-building, pacification, decapitation, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency, not to mention various surges, differing in scope and duration.

We have had a big troop presence and a smaller one, more bombing and less, restrictive rules of engagement and permissive ones. And how about that MOAB that made a big boom but no “surrender” materialized. What is next using nuclear weapons?

If you believe that Harvey Weinstein has learned his lesson and can be trusted to interview young actresses while wearing his bathrobe then the “new strategy” in Afghanistan is right up your alley.

* By 2015, the Afghan project, had already absorbed at least $65 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars and more than 300,000 dead. By the way have those costly military efforts have not eliminated “terrorism,” they have fertilized the terrorist community.

 

 Paul Harvey 

The November 19th 60 Minutes program attempted to shed some light on the humanitarian crisis being played out in Yemen. Their broadcast found me nostalgic for Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey was synonymous with ABC’s radio show called “The Rest of the Story”. The program had its beginning during World War 2 and  premiered on the ABC Radio Network in the 1970’s.

The Rest of the Story consisted of stories presented as little-known or forgotten facts on a variety of subjects with some key element of the story  held back until the end. The broadcasts always concluded with Harvey completing his narrative with: “And now you know the rest of the story.”

Yemen

A year ago, I wrote two blogs about Yemen, #012 Oh Yemen! – Man, It’s Hard Just to Live and #013 Part 2 “America is killing the Yemeni people.” Since those blogs appeared, the crisis in Yemen has gotten worse. On November 19^th, 60 Minutes attempted to expose the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Their effort should be applauded but it failed to provide a complete picture and may have even mislead the public.

60 Minutes

The 60 Minutes report fell short of telling the rest of the story. They refused to call the blockade what it is, a weapon of genocide and they conviently omitted the names of those countries, that David Beasley of the World Food Program, referred to as “all of those involved”. 

The Rest of the Story

Hunger Blockades 

Enforcement of sanctions and blockades, by States on other States is a criminal act against humanity. States throughout history have encumbering and prohibited trade. Seldom, however, can the consequences of such an effort, have been as devastating as in the case of the British naval blockade of Germany in the First World War. This hunger blockade belongs to the category of forgotten state atrocities of the twentieth century. The Saudi blockade on Yemen is this century’s atrocity.

In 1914, at the outset of World War 1, Great Britain under the direction of the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, implemented a blockade against Germany. Churchill described his aim as, to “starve the whole population—men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound—into submission”.

At that time, Americans denounced this action as inhumane.  Yet when the US went to war in 1917, the US supported the British’s effort to “starve the whole population”.  This starvation blockade was responsible for at least 762,106 civilian deaths. One hundred years have pasted and the U.S. is again supporting a “Hunger Blockade”.

War has a “funny” way of changing the perspective of participating nations.  Upon entering World War 1, a U.S. admiral explained our changing position to then British Prime Minister Lloyd George, “you will find that it will take us only two months to become as great criminals as you are.” The only thing that has changed in 100 years is that we no longer need two months of training.

 U.S. Entry into World War 1

In 1915 Germany responded to the British “Hunger Blockade” when it launched a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. Germany declared the area around the British Isles a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, would be attacked by the German navy. This retaliatory action culminating in the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat.

After the Lusitania incident, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the German government end its attacks against unarmed merchant ships. By September 1915, the German government imposed stricter constraints on the operation of its submarines. The German navy would later suspend U-boat warfare altogether. This action had no effect on the British “Hunger Blockade”.

Then on January 31, 1917, the German Reichstag government announced that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume the next day. In April, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean as one of the main reason for his declaration.

 Selective and incomplete reporting appears to be the narrative for the mainstream media, they have become too complicit with the noise being generated in Washington D.C. by our political and military leaders. The media never directs the viewers to the actual role that the United States government plays in global crisis.

 “Hunger Blockade” on Yemen – Famine or Genocide?

The 60 Minutes production focused almost entirely on Yemen’s hunger crisis, David Beasley of the World Food Program told 60 Minutes that if his organization doesn’t get substantially more international assistance in the next few months, 125,000 children could starve to death. The starvation issue in Yemen is only one of the many crisis facing the Yemeni people.

60 Minutes does report that Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies had placed an almost total blockade on Yemen. The fact that 60 Minutes falls short of calling the Yemen’s starvation crisis a genocide caused by Saudi actions is under reporting. The viewer should walk away from the 60 Minute piece clearly understanding that Saudi Arabia is the direct cause and their coalition members are conspirators

This humanitarian crisis is not due to natural occurring conditions such as weather, crop failure, drought or even population shifts. It is caused by a concerted effort by the Saudi coalition to punish and murder the Yemeni population living in the Houthi controlled areas of Yemen. Based upon David Beasley’s input, one would conclude that the humanitarian atrocity taking place in Yemen, the Saudi’s two and one half year bombing campaign and the Saudi led blockade of Yemen ports and airfields are apparently coincidental.

The Houthi vs The Saudi  

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been waging a brutal military operation in Yemen in response to the Houthis seizing control of the capital, Saana and ousting the Saudi backed President Abdurabu Mansur Hadi. Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia to beg the royals for support to get his prize back.

The Houthi, native to Yemen, are made up of tribes who have come together to reclaim their role within Yemen’s political society. The name comes from its founder-leader Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. His following began as a theological movement preaching peace. The Houthi are a Zaidi predominantly Shia-led religious-political group. Their religious belief puts them on the other side of the new Middle East “Cold War”. (Iran versus Saudi Arabia)

The Saudi’s intolerant Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam and its commercial mercenaries act to overthrow and shatter Arab regimes and societies that have independent modern, nationalist and secular leadership or practice multi-ethnic or multi-religious tolerance. They also target republics with Shia-majority governments opposed to Saudi-Wahhabi domination in the Middle East.

Intervention in Presidential Elections? – US Fingerprints

The Houthi movement turned to violent clashes with government going back to the 1990 and through the 2011 Yemeni Revolution, its version of the Arab Spring. The Houthi’s opposition took a more focused attack on the central government after the staged 2012 elections.

The US backed and recognized the corrupt and violent national election that had only one name on the ballot. The only candidate was the Saudi and US backed, Vice President Abdurabu Mansur Hadi. Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton congratulated the people of Yemen “on today’s successful presidential election,” calling it “another important step forward in their democratic transition process.”

In a speech, one of the Houthi’s current leaders, Abdulmalek al-Houthi proclaimed that, “this government is a puppet in the hands of influential forces, which are indifferent to the rightful and sincere demands of these people,” referring to the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Fast forward: in the fall of 2014 the Houthi attack and takeover Saana; the US agrees, in concept, to a nuclear treaty with Iran; events upset the Saudi royals; the Saudi’s puppet Hadi forced into exile; Saudi ask and receives permission to bomb Yemen; the Obama administration admits that their approval is to placate the very sad Saudi’s.

The Saudi’s military campaign against Yemen began in March of 2015 with significant US funding, logistical support, and arms the bombing has caused enormous suffering in what was the poorest nation in the Arab world. However, over the past two years, the Saudi Arabia-led operations, have enforced restrictions on Yemen’s airspace and blockades of its seaports thus cutting off food and medical supplies to the Yemeni civilians.

The bombings and blockade has accounted for Yemen’s malnutrition crisis of colossal proportions. Close to 80 percent of Yemen’s population lacks reliable access to food, and the United Nations estimates that 7 million of the country’s population of 28 million people are facing a death sentence handed down by the Saudi regime.

Cholera –  The Saudi Weapon of Choice

The U.N. reported that there have been over 2,000 deaths due to cholera since the end of April, most victims being children. 60 Minutes fails to make it clear that, death from cholera, is preventable with the consumption of clean potable water or other hydrating fluid. The 60 Minutes connects the outbreak of cholera with the Saudi and its supporting allies but fails to deliver the knockout blow.

The Saudi’s blockade of fuel to operate sewage and water works facilities and their targeting of these facilities, has created a petri-dish for cholera. The destruction of the Yemeni infrastructure put millions of the Yemeni at risk of contracting and spreading of cholera. Dr Homer Venters, director of programmes for the research group Physicians for Human Rights, says the Saudi coalition hits on clinics and sewage works are a “tactic of war” that amounts to the “weaponisation of disease”. (cholera)

Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Yemen, Alexandra Faite, said “we could reach up to 1 million [cases] the end of the year.” CNN reports that an estimated 5,000 people were becoming infected by cholera daily as of September. Save the Children’s country director for Yemen, Tamer Kirolos, told CNN that cholera is “easily treatable if you have access to basic healthcare.”

Really – Blame It On Iran

On November 4, Saudi Arabia shot down a ballistic missile that the Houthis had fired towards Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The Houthi missile caused no casualties but it “shook the Saudi capital”. This attack was the first first-ever missile strike targeting the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The Houthi missile launch is a logical response against a country committing “war crimes” against the Yemeni.

Saudi Arabia reacted quickly, and harshly, on November 6, it declared the attack to be “an act of war” by Iran. This is a strange statement considering that the missiles were manufactured in Yemen. The Houthi missile was a counter-attack to the Saudis’ starvation blockade and daily bombing of Yemeni cities. Iran had no role in the launching of the missile.

“All of Those Involved”

The Saudis tightened its blockade of Yemen, rendering it virtually impossible for humanitarian aid to reach Yemen’s air and seaports. The blockade of Yemen’s ports is not new, with the US approval, Saudi Arabia and its allies have been stopping food and medical supplies, to a country that depends almost entirely upon imported food and medical supplies, for the past two years.

Saudi Arabia’s newer version the “hunger blockade” is intended to exacerbate what the United Nations has deemed the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” Under international pressure the Saudis “modified” the blockade to apply only to Houthi held areas.  This area, is where there is a desperate need for humanitarian assistance.

The Saudi decision to “ease” the blockade is meant to make Riyadh seem reasonable. The fact is that it is a meaningless gesture that has done little to really improve the situation in Yemen. Houthi terrain has seen 84 percent of cholera infections – 456,962 out of 542,278 cases. Those infected have more chance of dying in Houthi held areas.

On the 60 Minutes program, David Beasley of the World Food Program made an interesting statement about the usage of food as part of the Saudi’s strategy. “I don’t think there’s any question the Saudi-led coalition, along with the Houthis and all of those involved, are using food as a weapon.”

“All of those involved” aren’t currently blockading Yemen from the air, land, and sea. “All of those involved” aren’t equally responsible for nearly a million Yemenis suffering from cholera without access to proper medical care. And “all of those involved” aren’t regularly conducting airstrikes that hit civilian targets, weddings, schools and funerals, in Houthi-held northern Yemen.

The ambiguity of Beasley’s statement, “all of those involved”, confuses the audience. His attempt to avoid the appearance of being bias is disgraceful, with an estimated seven million Yemenis in or nearing famine conditions, it’s long past the point of trying to protect Riyadh’s delicate feelings.

Damn It – Connect the Dots

The most egregious part of the 60 Minutes coverage was its total failure to completely identify Who “all of those involved” are, namely the role that the United States and Britain have played in arming and sustaining the Saudi war effort. The United States has been intimately involved in the Saudi intervention in Yemen. The Obama and Trump administrations have provided logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi Arabian-led war effort, and approved billions of dollars in American arms shipments.

Saudi airstrikes have targeted civilian areas like marketplaces, hospitals, rehab centers for the blind, and funeral homes. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 16 attacks in which the coalition has used cluster bombs banned under international law. Destruction of the country’s infrastructure has caused the spread of easily preventable diseases like cholera. The economy has been brought to a nearly complete standstill.

 al-Monitor has reported that: “the US Department of Defense provided about 480,000 gallons of aviation fuel to the mission at a cost of more than $1 million in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a 140% increase over the previous year. The disclosure comes as Yemen suffers the world’s worst cholera epidemic and the Saudis face international pressure to lift their blockade of the country’s ports.”

This revelation should be a wake-up call to every American that this country is literally fueling the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history,” said Kate Gould, a lobbyist with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker group. “The [United States] is operating these gas stations in the sky to fuel Saudi and UAE bombers as they rain down terror on Yemeni water and other sanitation infrastructure — the last safeguards Yemen has against these disease outbreaks sweeping the country.”

The Saudi operation in Yemen depends on this ongoing logistical support from the U.S. It also depends on arms, like American cluster bombs and British missiles, that U.S. and U.K. arms dealers eagerly sell to the Saudis. Which means that it’s within American and British power to end this atrocity, to end the starvation, to force the Saudis to reopen the entire country to humanitarian aid.

The US and British are very invested in maintaining their toxic but lucrative relationships with the Saudi monarchy. Their cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia has prevented them from stopping their support of the Saudi crimes.

Neither Washington nor London has taken any substantive steps to end or even reduce their involvement in immiserating the Yemeni people. Without a public outcry against this genocide the US and England will continue to promote the Saudi propaganda about Iran level of involvement.

Main-stream Media – You’re not Paul Harvey

60 Minutes, the hard-hitting news magazine, did not utter a single sentence in its Yemen segment to explain how America and Britain are responsible for the many images of starving children that their viewers were seeing on Sunday night.

60 Minutes even went out of their way to muster up a feeble example of how the US attempted to “help” the Yemeni by suppling dock cranes. Their selective reporting, ignoring the US support for the Saudi genocide of the Yemeni people, misleads the audience. The complete American story of the Yemen crisis seems to have escaped the award-winning show.

Stunning omissions of the facts is certainly not a new phenomenon in Western media. It has made a habit of downplaying or outright ignoring American and British involvement in Yemen. The American audience deserves to know that our government has helped to create the atrocities that flashed on the screen. In failing to provide a complete report, 60 Minutes did its viewers, and the people of Yemen, a tremendous disservice.

“Irreversible Harm”

Fifty-four years after President Kennedy’s assassination, the CIA and FBI asked for and received more time to decide what secrets they need to preserve. “I have no choice – today – but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation’s security,” Trump wrote. Is President Trump the latest President to bow to the power of our intelligence community?

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was murdered in the streets of Dallas.  For a quarter century, the CIA and FBI have known the “final” deadline for releasing the JFK files was to be in the year 2017. Some 2800 files were released in full by the National Archives, but another 300 will remain sealed. It is ludicrous that the CIA and FBI would need a six-month extension to decide what secrets that they still must hold back from the citizens of the US.

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone points out that the biggest revelation from last week’s limited release of the JFK files is “the fact that the FBI and CIA still desperately need to keep secrets about something that happened 54 years ago.” The need to prevent these documents from being released to the public does make sense if both agencies were involved with a cover-up and the execution.

The Cold War – 1960 Presidential Election

Cold War rhetoric dominated the 1960 presidential campaign both Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon pledged to strengthen American military forces and promised a tough stance against the Soviet Union and international communism. Kennedy warned of the Soviet’s growing arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pledged to revitalize American nuclear forces.

Kennedy criticized the Eisenhower administration for permitting the establishment of a pro-Soviet government in Cuba. In his inaugural address, Kennedy stressed the contest between the free world and the communist world, and he pledged that the American people would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

The fact that Kennedy was a hard core Cold War warrior is suspect. His actions and the information now available indicates that Kennedy began a transformation to a peace advocate upon entering the White House. In 1960, at the height of the Cold War, this was perceived by many as a weakness.

Kennedy came to see the generals who advised him as devoid of the tragic sense of life and as hell-bent on war.  He was aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals, the CIA and the intelligence community.

On numerous occasions, Kennedy spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’état against him.  On the night before his trip to Dallas, he told his wife, “But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it.”

The Agency

Exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Harry Truman titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.”

The op-ed appeared only in the Post’s early edition on Dec. 22, 1963. It was removed from that day’s later editions and, despite being authored by the President who was responsible for setting up the CIA in 1947, the op-ed was ignored in all other major media.

Truman believed that the spy agency had wandered off into troubling directions. He began his op-ed by underscoring “the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency … and what I expected it to do.” It would be “charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without Department ‘treatment’ or interpretations.”

Truman was bothered by the CIA’s apparent abuse of its responsibility “the most important thing was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.”

“Give them hell Harry’s” honesty and common man persona deserves credit for admitting that he had regretted creating the CIA. Speaking to a biographer in the 1960s, less than 20 years after signing the National Security Act of 1947, Truman expressed his thought concerning the agency:

Biographer Merle Miller: “Mr. President, I know that you were responsible as        President for setting up the CIA. How do you feel about it now?”

Truman: “I think it was a mistake. And if I’d know what was going to happen, I never would have done it.”

CIA – Allen Dulles’ Footprint

Eisenhower employed the CIA to tackle the specter of communism in developing countries outside the Soviet Union’s immediate sphere of influence. Newly appointed CIA director Allen Dulles took enormous liberties in conducting a variety of covert operations. Thousands of CIA operatives were assigned to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and attempted to launch coups, assassinate heads of state, arm anti-communist revolutionaries, spread propaganda, and support despotic pro-American regimes.

Eisenhower began to favor using the CIA instead of the military because their covert operations didn’t attract as much attention and cost much less money. The covert operation of the CIA could be conducted so that the President could easily deny any involvement.

Iran

In a CIA-sponsored coup in Iran in 1953, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers authorized the agency to overthrow a democratically elected Prime Minister. The new Iranian government negotiations for more of a percentage of profits from the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company were unsuccessful. Prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh threatened to nationalize for the control of the British-owned Oil Company. The West, afraid that the popular, nationalist, prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, would then cut off oil exports to the United States, CIA operatives convinced military leaders to overthrow Mossadegh and restore Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah, as head of state in 1953.

Pahlavi returned control of Anglo-Iranian Oil to the British and then signed agreements to supply the United States with almost half of all the oil drilled in Iran. He installed a repressive regime that was well armed with US made weapons. This is the same guy that in 1979 provoked a radical group of students to seize the American Embassy in Tehran and hold US worker’s hostages for 444 days after the US allowed him into our country.

Guatemala

The following year, in 1954, a similar coup in Guatemala when the CIA helped overthrow the elected government of Guatemala. Eisenhower and his top advisers worried that President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán program of land reform was a step toward Guatemala’s becoming a Marxist state. The land reform produced a strong opposition from the United Fruit Company, the major land owners in Guatemalan. When Arbenz bought weapons from Communist Czechoslovakia after the Eisenhower administration cut off Guatemala’s access to U.S. military supplies the CIA initiated their second successful coup in less than one year.

The CIA helped counterrevolutionaries drive Arbenz from power in June 1954. Guatemala appealed in vain to the United Nations, and administration officials denied that the United States had anything to do with the change in government in Guatemala. The new President, Carlos Castillo Armas, reversed land reform, clamped down on the Communists, restricted voting rights and curtailed civil liberties before an assassin murdered him in 1957.

Bay of Pigs

Guatemala became the base for another CIA covert action that the Eisenhower administration planned but did not carry out before leaving office. Eisenhower decided that Fidel Castro, who came to power in Cuba in 1959, was a “madman” who had to be deposed. In 1960, the CIA began the training in Guatemala of anti-Castro exiles who would invade Cuba. Soon after John F. Kennedy became President, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion began April 1961.

Kennedy vs Dulles

Plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion had been set in motion under President Dwight Eisenhower. When Kennedy became President, he refused to approve the use of U.S. combat forces and air support for the invasion. CIA Director Allen Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy questioned the CIA’s Bay of Pigs plans.

Dulles, a man that was not use to taking no from Presidents, set out to give the President no choice except to send U.S. troops to the rescue. Speaking to his friends Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell about those who planned the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, JFK said, “They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face.  Well, they had me figured all wrong.”

Classified documents uncovered in 2000 revealed that the CIA had discovered that the Soviets had learned of the date of the invasion more than a week in advance and that they had informed Castro so that he could prepare his forces for the invasion. The CIA withheld this information from the President.

CIA Director Allen Dulles, tried to trick President Kennedy into sending U.S. forces to rescue the group of invaders who had landed on the beach at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA knew that there was no chance of success without a speedy commitment of U.S. air and ground support. The planned mouse-trapping of the novice President Kennedy had been underpinned by a rosy “analysis” showing how this pin-prick on the beach would lead to a popular uprising against Fidel Castro.

Dulles had misjudged Kennedy. Notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. In his notes, Dulles explained that, “when the chips were down,” Kennedy would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”  The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was the overthrow of Fidel Castro. The CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy for its failure.

A few months after the abortive invasion of Cuba, Kennedy was quoted by a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” Clearly, the outrage was mutual. This treachery set the stage for events to come.  For his part, sensing but not knowing the full extent of the set-up, Kennedy fired CIA Director Allen Dulles and his assistant General Charles Cabell.

While Dulles was attempting to get his man in Cuba, he paid little or no attention to how Castro’s patrons in Moscow reacted. Shortly after the Bay of Pigs failure the Soviets began installing nuclear missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to future U.S. aggression. This lead directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

*In the “you cannot make this stuff up category”, in 1963 President Johnson named Dulles to The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, commonly known as the Warren Commission. General Charles Cabell’s brother Earle Cabell was the mayor of Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed.  

JFK – Digging His Grave

Kennedy become the antagonist to nearly all his advisers. His opposition to the use of force in U.S. foreign policy became louder and louder. In 1961, despite the Joint Chief’s demand to put troops into Laos, Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, “Did you understand?  I want a negotiated settlement in Laos.  I don’t want to put troops in.”

Also in 1961, he refused to concede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia.  Walking out of a meeting with top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, “These people are crazy.”

In October of 1962, John F. Kennedy and his advisers learned that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear-armed medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. These offensive weapons represented a new and existential threat to America. Kennedy’s advisers, pushed for air strikes against Cuba and a full-scale invasion as “the last chance we will have to destroy Castro.”

Had the military and the intelligence advisors wishes prevailed a nuclear war would have been a nearly certain outcome. Instead Kennedy delivered the Soviets an ultimatum insisting on their removal and announced an American “quarantine” of Cuba to force compliance with his demands.

Kennedy refused to bomb and invade Cuba as his military advisors wished. Kennedy took another tact and arranged a private negotiation with the Soviet leader Khrushchev. The two engaged in a missile swap. The two superpower leaders agreed that Moscow would remove their missiles in Cuba and Washington would remove its missiles in Turkey.

The Kennedy and Khrushchev triumph of diplomacy was view as a sign of weakness by hardened Cold War advocates on both sides. This backing down from the brink of war had grave consequences on both Kennedy and Khrushchev. Khrushchev was removed from office within a year and many believe that this to be another nail in Kennedy’s coffin.

In June1963, he gave a speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” and movement toward “general and complete disarmament.”

In October 1963, he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and a total withdrawal by the end of 1965, later over turned by President Johnson

A few months later Kennedy signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev. Secret negotiations with Khrushchev were held via the KGB, Norman Cousins, and Pope John XXIII, and with Castro through various intermediaries, one of whom was French Journalist Jean Daniel angered the intelligence and military communities to the point of mistrust.

In an interview with Daniel, JFK made statements about Cuba that were considered treasonous, to the CIA and top generals. On October 24, 1963 Kennedy said, “I approved the proclamation Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption.  I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of several sins on the part of the United States.  Now we will have to pay for those sins.  In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.”

Every move that Kennedy was making appeared to be anti-war and a reconciliation toward both Cuba and the Soviet Union. JFK, a war hero, who had experienced the horror of war was shaken by how close the world had come to destruction during the Cuban missile crisis.

Kennedy’s actions in 1963 were very different than his 1960 campaign declaration of being a Cold War warrior. JFK had become a major threat to the burgeoning military-industrial complex and the Intelligence Community. They accused President Kennedy by being soft on communism and a threat to national security.

Kennedy’s refusal to go to war in Cuba, his decision to engage in private with Khrushchev, his “treasonous statements” about the Castro’s revolution, his back-channel communications with the Soviets, giving up US missiles in Turkey, pulling back of military personnel in Vietnam, his signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, his calling for a complete disarmament, the firing of the Director of the CIA Dulles, and his threat to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces” marked him as an enemy of the national security state. The collision course was set.

Oswald – “I’m just a patsy”

In the Dallas Police station, shortly after President Kennedy’s assassination, a reporter asked Oswald, “Did you kill the President?” Oswald’s response, “No, they’ve taken me in because of the fact, that I lived in the Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy!”

The dictionary defines a patsy as a person who is easily taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something. Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy for the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA to explain the assassination of JFK. Oswald moved around the globe like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, Oswald was captured and silenced in the Dallas police headquarters.

Oswald “On the Radar”

Oswald served as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s top secret U-2 spy plane operating base at Atsurgi Naval Air Station in Japan. Oswald had a Crypto clearance. Oswald’s unit was responsible for tracking the U-2’s and communicating with them while in flight over the Soviet Union collecting information on their ballistic missile program.

Oswald was discharged from the Marines in September 1959 and defected to the Soviet Union in October of 1959.  At the American Embassy in Moscow Oswald renounced his US citizenry and threatened to give the Soviets radar procedures of the US Marines. This act brought him to the attention of both the FBI and the CIA. Providing the Soviets with this information would have been very important to their intelligence and would be considered an act of treason for the American. The CIA opened a defection 201 file on him but it took them over one year to open the file. The Soviets feared that the Oswald defection was arranged.

The Soviets moved Oswald from Moscow to Minsk. While working at a Soviet factory in Minsk, he met and married his Russian wife Marina. During his time in Minsk, Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union. No connection between these two events have ever been linked.

In Minsk, Oswald became disenchanted with the Soviet system. The Soviets apparently never quite trusted him and he was constantly monitored by the authorities. Oswald would ask for a permit to return to the US. Oswald would be granted the permit and the application process, for unknown reasons, took 2 years to complete.

The CIA – An Escort Service

Oswald return to the U.S, by way of a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, was met at the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey by, Spas T. Raikin, a prominent Bulgarian anti-communist with intelligence connections.  Raikin was apparently recommended by the State Department to escort Oswald through his immigration process and his return to the Dallas area.  Raikin bought Oswald and his family (Marina and their daughter) bus tickets for their trip to Fort Worth.
In Texas, with the help of a Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, Oswald was befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, a wealthy anti-communist Russian, with CIA assets, connections to Texas Oil Industry and several prominent US aristocratic families. de Mohrenschildt and Oswald met, in October 1962. The de Mohrenschildts and Oswalds soon became inseparable.

George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt were constantly in and out of the Oswald household, making introductions and offering help in finding housing, child care, marriage counseling and social introductions. De Mohrenschildt got him a job at a graphic arts company where he worked on maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba.  Oswald was shepherded around Dallas by de Mohrenschildt.

When Oswald moved to New Orleans, de Mohrenschildt exited the picture, taking a $285,000 contract from the CIA to conduct a geological survey for Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier. de Mohrenschildt handed Oswald off to Ruth Paine. Ruth was introduced to Oswald by de Mohrenschildt.

Ruth Paine had both CIA associations and personal relation that lead back to Allen Dulles. Ruth’s sister Sylvia had worked for the CIA and Paine’s mother-in-law was a close friend of Mary Bancroft, who was a former OSS spy and the mistress at varying times with Allen Dulles. In April 1963 Marina and her daughter moved in with Ruth Paine and was living in Ruth Paine’s house in Irving at the time of the Kennedy assassination.

The Making of a Patsy

In New Orleans Oswald became further emerged with CIA connections. Oswald’s first job in New Orleans was with the Reilly Coffee Company. Reilly Coffee was owned by the CIA-affiliated William Reilly.  The Reilly Coffee Company was conveniently located near the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence offices.

Another connection to the CIA was Guy Bannister, a former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, a munitions supplier for the Bay of Pigs Invasion and trained anti-Castro paramilitaries. Bannister was a right-wing activist with strong anti-Castro connections.

Oswald would work with Bannister. Bannister’s office was the source for the leftist pro-Castro leaflets, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, that Oswald had handed out, on the streets of New Orleans. Oswald engaged in contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, many of these theatrical performances appear to have been directed from Bannister’s office.

New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigations convinced him that a group of right-wing activists, including Banister, were involved in a conspiracy with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Kennedy. Garrison claimed that the motive for the assassination was anger over Kennedy’s attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam. DA Garrison believed that Banister and his associates in New Orleans had conspired to set up Oswald as a patsy in the JFK assassination

Oswald’s affiliations and his multiple antithetical roles still confound many students of the Kennedy assignation. His behavior in New Orleans make it difficult for anyone to deciphering the purposes behind his actions. The one thing that is crystal clear is that the Washington Intelligence Agency’s fingerprints are all over Oswald’s stay in New Orleans.

If Oswald’s actions were a ploy to set him up as a future patsy it was very successful.  By the time that Lee Harvey Oswald returned to Dallas he had been turned into a man with multiple personas, all of them capable of killing Kennedy. Oswald hated Kennedy either because he – Oswald – admired Castro or because he was anti-Castro. Perhaps Oswald was angry at Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or else he just liked to take potshots at important people. He was fond of guns, a bit violent, and even sometimes beat up his wife.

The Right Place at the Right Time

In early October, Oswald returned to Dallas. With Marina and their daughter living at Ruth Paine’s house in Irving, Oswald rented a room in a boarding house in the Oak Cliff district of Dallas. Oak Cliff is proximity to the central business district of downtown Dallas and the School Book Depository.

Ruth Paine conveniently got Oswald a job in the Texas Book Depository where he began work on October 16, 1963. The owner of the Book Depository building was D. Harold Byrd, a right-wing oilman, a Kennedy foe and a close friend of George de Mohrenschildt. Byrd had employed de Mohrenschildt at his Three States Oil and Gas Co. during the 1950s and de Mohrenschildt had put D. Harold Byrd’s wife on the board of his charity foundation devoted to the study of cystic fibrosis.

Some theories contend that Oswald – or anyone who might have been directing him – could not have known that the motorcade would pass by the Book Depository at the time he took the job there. But there were only two possible routes through downtown to JFK’s destination, the Dallas Trade Mart, the Book Depository building stood on one of those routes.

Kennedy’s trip to Dallas was announced to the public in September of 1963. One week before the assassination two Secret Service agents rerouted the motorcade from proceeding down Main Street to turning onto Elm. This adjustment put the motorcade’s route in front of the School Book Depository building.

Coincidence – Connection Is Apparent

Texas laws in 1963 allowed untraceable over-the-counter firearms purchases, Oswald went through unnecessary and inconvenient steps to order his guns through the interstate mail, this tied the “murder weapon” to Oswald because it required identification and left a paper trail. Moreover, the two guns he ordered through the mail were both from companies that were being investigated by the ATF and the Senate.

Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker withdrew all police protection for Kennedy on the morning of November 22^nd:  the Secret Service withdrew the police motorcycle escorts from beside the president’s car; they took agents off the back of the car where they were normally stationed to obstruct gunfire; they approved a clear security violation with the final sharp, dogleg turn onto the street that Kennedy was executed on; squelched the testimony of all the doctors and medical personnel who claimed the president had been shot from the front in his neck and head.

Abraham Bolden was the first African-American Secret Service agent personally brought on to the White House detail by JFK. Bolden was prosecuted and imprisoned after he had warned that the president was going to be assassinated. He has also provided evidence of an aborted plot to kill JFK in Chicago, on November 2, 1963.

The list of people who turned up dead, the evidence and events manipulated, the inquiry squelched, distorted, and twisted in an ex post facto cover-up – clearly point to forces within the government, not a lone rogue actor.  This is the only “irreversible harm to our nation’s security” that makes sense.

Allen Dulles, former Director of the CIA, is the trunk of the family tree that killed Kennedy. The branches include General Charles Cabell, his brother Earle Cabell, George de Mohrenschildt, Ruth Paine, William Reilly, Guy Bannister, D. Harold Byrd’s just to name a few.

James W. Douglass author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters writes “The extent to which our national security state was systematically marshaled for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains incomprehensible.  When we live in a system, we absorb and think in a system.  We lack the independence needed to judge the system around us.  Yet the evidence we have seen points toward our national security state, the systemic bubble in which we all live, as the source of Kennedy’s murder and immediate cover-up.”

A “Scary” After Thought

In Kennedy’s day, the Cold War provided the rationale for outsized expenditures. Today, new and more creative rationales are used to justify the intelligence community growth. Since the Kennedy’s assassination the Soviet Union and communism has, for all practical purposes, disappeared. Yet the national-security state continues to grow in scope and influence. In Kennedy’s day, the CIA dominated the field of intelligence, today the national “intelligence community” consists of some 17 agencies.

The size and payroll of this blotted apparatus grew by leaps and bounds in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Today, intelligence spending exceeds $80 billion per year, more than the budget of the Department of State ($49 billion) and the Department of Homeland Security ($43 billion). The reality is that with every new “crisis” the intelligence community expands.

Expansion of the intelligence community cost US tax payers dearly, more US debt is incurred and more taxes are used to limit freedom and rights of the individual. What worked during the Cold War still works today: if you scare the hell out of the public they will get on board.

Final Conclusion

Recently, Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, the Senate Minority Leader with 36 years of experience in Congress explained the dangers of “taking on the intelligence community.” Schumer, when asked about Trump’s spats with the Intelligence community said: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

The US national security state, the systemic bubble that the government insist is needed to protect its citizens against; in the 60’s – communism; today – terrorism. In 1963, a faction of the US national security state, executed a domestic coup d’état. This is the only irreversible harm to our nation’s security that is being protected. The result of November 22, 1963 was that the power of the Presidency was curtailed and the intelligence community usurped control of the Executive Branch.