Those Permanent War “Progressives” #Democrats

Featured at Off-Guardian and Oped News.

“Get out of here, you lowlife scum!”

-Sen. John McCain to anti-war protesters,

January 29, 2015

by Joe Giambrone

One unexpected revelation, that John McCain’s death has shown us, is that we completely misjudged some notable players on the national stage. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and even Audrey Denney in Northern California have praised the serial warmonger as some kind of national treasure. Real progressives, on the ground, expect those people to fight against John McCain’s imperial agenda of mass murder for mass profits.

What do these representatives stand for in reality? When did imperial wars of aggression become the norm and beyond criticism? What alternatives do we now have in America to this Nazi-styled, industrial-scale barbarism and an ongoing domestic propaganda victory, which Goebbels would have been proud of concocting? Belligerence is now heroism.

(So did Joseph Stalin, Audrey.)

The right-wing knew for years that McCain was on his way out, and they planned their massive PR offensive, which still unfolds all around us. It’s a sickening nationalism with a fake martyr who isn’t supposed to be criticized.

For fifty years, John McCain was elevated by the right-wing because of his victim status. Being a captured prisoner of war made him a solid, reliable commodity. His “patriotism” was beyond question. This allowed McCain, or “McNasty” as he was known to his military peers, to rise through the ranks and become one of the most malignant politicians of our lives, selling war after war, supporting any and all blood-drenched tyrants, terrorists, or Nazis who would do business with America. McCain’s agenda was the problem, the main problem in the world today. Millions of innocent civilians perished in part due to John McCain’s tireless efforts to launch more US wars of aggression, both overt and covert.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham with the head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abdelhakim Beladj, who has both Al Qaeda and ISIS links.

Your Empire at Work

Empires persist because of several principles which aren’t taught in American K-12 schools. No public school, to my knowledge, dares call America an empire at all, despite it keeping military bases and active soldiers in the overwhelming majority of foreign lands on this planet. It is an invisible empire then, and the less the general public knows about it the easier it is to manage. Good guys and bad guys are assigned on the fly, minor bit parts to sell the latest news cycle, nothing more. Often the good guys pop up later as bad guys or vice-versa.

Osama bin Laden in 1993 – “Good” Guy?

One principle that is obvious and common to every empire since Rome is “bread and circuses.” The domestic population is kept at a slightly elevated standard of living–that’s the bread–but distracted with entertainment as much as possible, a devil’s bargain. Your morals for a wide-screen TV, now shut up and watch it. The people therefore have something to lose, and they aren’t educated enough about current global situations to mount any kind of organized challenge to the powers that be. That’s the game.

Opportunity cost is the phenomenon that prompts an empire to promote distraction and entertainment. If the people spend their lives watching football, television, or video games, or just fighting with each other over race and religion, then they are not learning about flash points across the globe. The average citizen cannot do both. Few Americans today could locate Syria on a blank map, despite it being the target of US belligerence since at least 2011.

A second principle of running an empire is to outsource your dirty work to your vassals, your “friends.” This is about creating a false perception of ethics and morals. Your foreign henchmen serve as proxies to enforce your will on the periphery. You ship them high-tech arms, intelligence, money if need be, in order to exercise control beyond your own borders. Thus, America is in bed with the leaders of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Uzbekistan, Israel, and too many “human rights” abusers to list.

“Progressive” Voices

The problem with political labels is that they don’t actually mean much. They cover a wide range of people, views, and agendas.

In the context of this article, we see “Progressive” voices supporting an agenda of widespread atrocities against foreign lands which they would never–in a million years–condone against people at home. There’s a rift, a dichotomy, a split-personality disorder of sorts. What we do to them versus what we do to us, that’s the distinction. The domestic population is slightly elevated, more important, deserving of some human rights vs. their enemies around the world, who are fair game.

So, what can we expect from the most “Progressive” Democratic Party options alive today? They have endorsed McCain without qualifying in any way the immoral criminality of his lifelong agenda of war and more war. No recollection of his Beach Boys parody, “Bomb bomb Iran.” Certainly no talk of his meeting with Al Qaeda and other Jihadist elements in both Libya and Syria! His selling Jihad as “freedom” on US television. Nothing about his supporting the ranting, raving neo-Nazis in Ukraine, nor the violent illegal coup there, which McCain was a part of.

Jihadist kidnappers meet with US senator McCain, exposed in Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star.

Bernie Sanders voted to bomb Serbia in 1999 and to invade Afghanistan in 2001. It was well known that the Taliban had offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to a legitimate international court if evidence was produced to implicate him in the 9/11 attacks. Instead of pursuing this diplomatic solution, it was instead the start of an endless war that continues to this day, the longest war in America’s history. Sanders cast a vote in favor of the attack and against a peaceful diplomatic solution, against justice.

Bernie Sanders also supported:

“Israeli onslaughts against the Gaza Strip, most recently the savage bombardment of July-August 2014 which killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians, including more than 500 children. At an August 2014 town hall meeting, Sanders notoriously demanded that audience members “shut up” when they questioned his support for Israel’s criminal actions.”

Further, Bernie Sanders was right on John McCain’s side in backing the 2014 fascist coup in Ukraine. “The entire world has got to stand up to Putin,” he argued, ignoring that US/EU support to a completely undemocratic seizure of power in Ukraine prompted the Russian response. So who was the real aggressor?

Are these new “Progressive” kids on the block more of the same? Did we get fooled again? With the country lurching toward a Robber Baron kakistocracy, these alternatives may seem like rays of sunshine. Perhaps they are, but the devil is in the details.

How many more wars, “Progressives?” How many?

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Joe Giambrone is an author and filmmaker.

Brainwashed Public Understands Nothing About 9/11

WTC 7 never hit by a plane but somehow mysteriously imploded into its own footprint.

Joe Giambrone
September 10, 2018

They let it happen on purpose to usher in an age of perpetual war, perpetual profits, a global military empire to control the world’s diminishing natural resources. They wrote about it a year prior in the Project for a New American Century’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” You can only rebuild something after it fails. Kind of obvious.

Further, foreign governments were implicated in participating in the 9/11 attack. These facts were treasonously covered up. Some of the cover-up has since been made public, particularly the Congressional investigation chapter, those 28 pages on Saudi Arabia giving direct aid to Al Qaeda hijackers inside the USA. Since the Al Qaeda hijacker story is the official story of the event, this is prima facie evidence of high Treason. You cannot give “aid and comfort” to the people who attack your country–but that’s exactly what multiple administrations did. That Al Qaeda cell arrived in San Diego under Bill Clinton’s presidency (March 2000). It was allowed to operate freely for the next 16 months despite being known to more than 50 CIA officers.

Multiple countries and multiple intelligence agencies knew all about the plan, but they let it happen anyway. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the US, and Israel all had knowledge of the 9/11 plot but did not act to prevent it.

Israeli agents were arrested on the afternoon of 9/11 after calling attention to themselves by celebrating so jubilantly when the World Trade Center was attacked that they prompted FBI alerts to catch them. One of the Mossad agents, Sivan Kurzberg appeared in photos, developed by the FBI, holding up a cigarette lighter with the burning WTC in the background.

Urban Moving Systems, the intelligence front company where the Mossad agents operated, closed up and its owner fled to Israel rather than be interviewed by the FBI. It has never been made clear exactly what “Urban Moving Systems” was moving, but a lone dog barked as if traces of explosives had been found in that van the men were driving.

 

 

(By the way, Google search is today monkeying the results for History Commons, providing every other tangential link but not showing the Complete 9/11 Timeline in its results. That is a form of censorship, and it has happened before. Google censors that website from its results.)

The best evidence to date suggests that some of them let it happen, while others made it happen. Some were duped, and most are still duped. The reason for 9/11, the motive, is very clear. They wanted an unrestrained empire that destroys its enemy countries with impunity and seizes resources for its corporate owners. That part is not complicated. The 9/11 attacks also worked wonders to turn the world’s greatest bully into a victim deserving of sympathy and understanding. This propaganda victory was staggering. The 9/11 attack was also a “Reichstag Fire” moment, with emergency powers granted in the “PATRIOT ACT” (sic) to allow the federal government to seize more power and diminish civil liberties.

Treason matters.

” In the decade following Sept. 11, 2001, military spending increased 50 percent, adjusted for inflation.”
–National Priorities Project

 

Key Articles:

9/11 & 28 Pages of Treason

Noam Chomsky and The War on Straight Answers

Disinformation Killed 9/11 “Truth”

Truth, Proof

You Don’t Know What Happened On 9/11 

Toxic Beef: Sacred Cows & Left Gatekeepers

 

N.E.D. Lies and Regime Change

 

ALTERNET ignores the responsibility of Obama and Clinton with its expose. It is not an independent source, relying on foundation money to produce propaganda. Their intent is to blame as much as possible on Republicans and to gloss over the Democrat responsibility.

 

Andre Vltchek’s “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”

(A Book Review)

By David William Pear, August 6, 2018

 

A Book Review and Commentary on Andre Vltchek’s new book: “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”, by David William Pear

How can I write a review of Andre Vltchek’s new book Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism? I am damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. Andre himself says that:

“There is nothing to add to the writing of maverick revolutionary philosophers. Hands off their work! Let them speak! Editions without prefaces and introductions, please; no footnotes! The greatest works of philosophy were written with heart, blood and passion! No interpretation is needed. If allowed to read them, even a child can understand.”.

He is speaking about the works of other great revolutionary writers, not himself. I think Andre is a great revolutionary writer, too. But, who am I to speak for Andre? Read his great works for yourself, and you will understand them without my introduction. You will find that Andre has the guts to put himself out there, let it all hang out, and expose his vulnerabilities as well as his wisdom…

But I am damned if I don’t write a book review for Andre’s book, because I told him I would give it a try. I don’t want to let him down. This is the best I can do. So, you can stop reading right here if you wish, and just buy Andre’s book and let him speak to you for himself.

Our struggling revolutionary artists whom still speak and write the truth need all the support we can give them. That goes for the alternative media site you are reading this on. We are in a war, an information and propaganda war. Truth tellers are an endangered species. The Empire is trying to shut them up and shut them down.

That “Freedom”

by Joe Giambrone

 

The freedom of corporate shareholders to fire your ass and move your job to anywhere that pays less, that’s one of them. We’re going to keep it real now, okay?

Each year on July 4th, the working classes of America drink themselves into stupors and play with innocuous explosives in their driveways. To them, this is some kind of representation of “freedom.” Yes, they can blow up paper cylinders; what they cannot blow up is the system that holds them as wage slaves. Say “no” to your boss, and you are economically destroyed. Not so “free” at work it turns out.

America has a twisted, immoral relationship with the word “freedom.” Each war of the modern age has been disguised, inside mountains of propaganda, as an effort to bring so-called “freedom” to somebody somewhere. If they didn’t ask for it, well, that’s no concern.

Freedom is good because we say it is. We liberate a lot of oil and mineral wealth, which needs to break free and become corporate profit. That’s the kind of freedom that launches the Marines or the Special Forces to invade your land. This “freedom” is not a freedom for your people and their human rights, but the freedom of US big money investors to plunder your land’s resources.

This is proven beyond any reasonable doubt, in 2003, by Paul Bremer’s “100 Orders” of the occupying United States. These illegal “Orders” dismantled the entire government of Iraq and wrote in numerous rights for foreign investors. The entire enterprise remains an illegal war of aggression, and the profit motive of the invaders stands as evidence:

 

“Bremer implemented his “100 Orders” with the force of law, all but a handful of which remain in place today. As the preamble to many of the orders state, they are intended to “transition [Iraq] from a … centrally planned economy to a market economy” virtually overnight and by U.S. fiat.

Bremer’s orders included firing the entire Iraqi military–some half a million men–in the first weeks of the occupation. Suddenly jobless, many of these men took their guns with them and joined the violent insurgency. Bremer also fired 120,000 of Iraq’s senior bureaucrats from every government ministry, hospital and school. His laws allowed for the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises (excluding oil) and for American companies to receive preferential treatment over Iraqis in the awarding of reconstruction contracts. The laws reduced taxes on all corporations by 25 percent and opened every sector of the Iraqi economy to private foreign investment. The laws allowed foreign firms to own 100 percent of Iraqi businesses (as opposed to partnering with Iraqi firms) and to send their profits home without having to invest a cent in the struggling Iraqi economy. Iraqi laws governing banking, foreign investment, patents, copyrights, business ownership, taxes, the media, agriculture and trade were all changed to conform to U.S. goals.”
-Spoils of War, In These Times 

 

That’s the definition of “freedom,” literally, as George W. Bush told us so. That was why he launched the war. That is what he did to the nation of Iraq once it was defeated.

So, clearly, there are different types of freedom. There is what the prisoner yearns for, and there is what the CEO bribes politicians for. Do not confuse them, as that is how propaganda turns freedom to slavery, peace to war, intelligence to idiocy.

Corporate CEOs in the Trump era are stockpiling freedom too. They want freedom to destroy unions, thus disempowering their workers further. They want the freedom to pollute the air and water more than it is already polluted. They want the freedom to keep all the profits for themselves and externalize all the costs onto the lower classes. They even want the freedom to steal American’s Social Security trust fund.

Criminals absolutely love freedom, as it gives them a window of opportunity to pounce.

This July 4th watch the words. Watch your ass.

 

North Korea Can Never Trust the U.S.A.

By David William Pear

 

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (i.e. North Korea) cannot trust the United States of America. The US does not keep its promises, honor its treaties and obey international laws. This is not opinion; it is the history of the US, beginning with the many broken promises and treaties with the Native Americans.

The US has broken promises and treaties in every corner of the globe. The US ignores the UN Charter, which is a treaty. It flouts international law, which is based on treaties. The US habitually starts asymmetrical wars, which is aggression and the worst of all war crimes. It destroys nations, leaving millions of people dead, dying, and in misery.

Libya was once a prosperous nation. Muammar Gaddafi was an eccentric dictator, but he had a love for Libya and its people. Under Gaddafi the people enjoyed a high standard of living, economic freedom, and gender equality. Education and medical care were free. Having a home and food was considered a human right. Libya’s oil wealth benefited the people.

Gaddafi was attacked and vilified by the US for decades. After the attacks on the US of September 11, 2001 Gaddafi cooperated with the US in the War on Terror. That is not to say that the War on Terror was a good thing, but Gaddafi was being US friendly. In further efforts to establish friendly relations with the US, Gaddafi denuclearized in 2003. President George W. Bush praised Libya for denuclearizing and suggested Libya as a model for North Korea. In 2011 President Obama wantonly destroyed Libya and conspired in Gaddafi’s assassination. Obama’s Secretary of State gloated afterwards “we came, we saw, he died…ha,ha,ha”.

Even if North Korea completely and forever denuclearizes Kim Jong-un can never be assured that one day the US won’t try to do the same thing to North Korea that it did to Libya. North Korea can never put its trust in the US, because the US has proved itself untrustworthy over and over again.

Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program since the early 1990’s. After the First Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein cooperated with the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors right up until the US invasion in 2003. The weapons inspectors advised against the invasion and recommended that the inspections be continued. President George W. Bush invaded anyway based on known lies that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program. After the invasion and destruction of Iraq, 1625 weapons inspectors spent the next 2 years searching Iraq and found no weapons of mass destruction.

The US continues to accuse Iran of having a nuclear weapons program even though the IAEA certifies that it doesn’t, and all 16 US intelligence agencies have said that Iran has not had an active nuclear weapons program since 2003. Facts do not matter to the US. It creates its own reality. Based on its own unreality, the US can invent any reason it wants to impose sanctions and invade asymmetrical countries.

Iraq denuclearized, Libya denuclearized and Iran denuclearized. The US invaded Iraq based on the unreality of the existence of nuclear weapons. Libya was invaded based on the invented unreality that the invasion was for human rights. The US has imposed sanctions on Venezuela because it does not consider it “democratic enough”. The US has imposed sanction against Russia because of its alleged invasion of Ukraine, after a US instigated putsch.

Indefinite Detention and Endless Global War

ACLU:

Senators Have a New Plan to Expand Indefinite Detention and Endless Global War