.
11/17/16, "Democrats who voted for Trump," Rosa Koire, Democrats Against UN Agenda 21
"I can understand Democrats who
feel as if they were suddenly jettisoned from the driver's seat into a
free fall of confusion. They've lost their sense of being in power and
want to feel that intense camaraderie and joy of righteousness they had
with Obama. They need to remain connected to their cohort. I get it. They're stunned. They
meet at restaurants, in the check-out line at Whole Foods, at Starbucks,
at street protests, and they look into one another's faces with a
wide-eyed terror. They're like children at a scary movie. They've
succeeded in terrorizing themselves. Their own children are terrified
and panicked as they watch their parents fall apart predicting mass
deportations, loss of abortion rights, and global inundation from rising
seas. And, in spite of the
heavy indoctrination and social attacks, you know that many Democrats
did vote for Trump. Even if they won't admit it....
Why are Democrats so unable to hear the truth?
They are so
accustomed to being agreed with that they literally cannot hear dissent.
If they're young people they've been schooled to filter out and block
dissent. During the Occupy sleep-ins around the country we interviewed
Occupiers and found them to be angered by mere questions that did not
follow the accepted line. Anything that challenged their prepared script
was too threatening and too dangerous for them to listen to. It's the New Man. It's Common Core. It's Agenda 21....
And as I've
said to other Democrats: Ask yourself why half of the voters in this
nation would vote for a President who has never even been elected to a
city council. Why are people so desperate that they will elect an
inexperienced billionaire to the office of President? People have been
driven to this by the aggressive implementation of UN Agenda 21 in every
area of America. It has to stop.
NOW TAKE THE BALL AND RUN WITH IT."...
...............
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Austria will ask EU for permission to hire locals ahead of other EU workers. Center left chancellor says eastern European countries are exporting their joblessness to Austria-BBC, 1/11/17
.
1/11/17, "Austria to ask EU for right to hire locals ahead of other EU workers," BBC
Christian Kern made the pledge at the launch of a 10-year economic plan focussing on job creation.
"These eastern European countries are exporting their joblessness to Austria," the Social Democrat said.
He was speaking in Wels, run by the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).
Fears over immigration and unemployment have put the FPOe ahead in the polls.
The pledge is seen as a bid to win back support to the Social Democrats, who last year were eliminated in the first round of the presidential election, along with their traditional mainstream rivals, the centre-right People's Party.
An independent candidate eventually won over the far-right nominee. Mr Kern's party is supported by roughly 27% of voters, polls suggest."
.....
1/11/17, "Austria to ask EU for right to hire locals ahead of other EU workers," BBC
"Austria's centre-left chancellor has
said he will ask the EU to let local employers hire Austrians before
other EU citizens, unless there are no suitable candidates.
"These eastern European countries are exporting their joblessness to Austria," the Social Democrat said.
He was speaking in Wels, run by the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).
Fears over immigration and unemployment have put the FPOe ahead in the polls.
The pledge is seen as a bid to win back support to the Social Democrats, who last year were eliminated in the first round of the presidential election, along with their traditional mainstream rivals, the centre-right People's Party.
An independent candidate eventually won over the far-right nominee. Mr Kern's party is supported by roughly 27% of voters, polls suggest."
.....
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Hillary's pro-corporatist and pro-war candidacy lost her key Rust Belt states, not an incendiary Russian conspiracy theory that could end in the planet's nuclear annihilation. As neocons, McCain and Graham have never been right about any wars they've promoted, but they're helping gin up war with Russia. As luck would have it, there's already a massive buildup of US taxpayer funded weapons and tanks surrounding Russia-Consortium News, Norman Solomon (US taxpayers wonder why they can't get tanks on their own borders which are invaded daily)
.
"The first of what Washington promises will be back-to-back nine-month rotations in the "foreseeable future." Beginning in February, U.S. military units will spread out across Poland, the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania and Germany."...
1/6/17, "US Tanks, Equipment Arrive for NATO Exercises in Eastern Europe," Reuters, Bremerhaven, Germany, via voanews.com
(Comment: To Reuters: Is the US inaugurating a person named "Washington" on 1/20/17? Reuters says "Washington promises" many months of US taxpayer funded troops and heavy weapons across Europe and on Russian border. No one on 1/6/17 is authorized to "promise" confiscation of US taxpayer dollars for endless military actions in foreign lands after 1/20/17. US taxpayers are no longer global slaves. PS: Save the Fake News rap about Ukraine war.)
..................
1/10/2017, "The Democrats’ Russia-Did-It Dodge," Consortium News, Norman Solomon
"To avoid facing up to why Hillary Clinton’s pro-corporatist candidacy really lost key Rust Belt states, national Democrats are finding it easier to blame Russia, a dangerous and self-defeating game, says Norman Solomon at The Hill."
"Two months after the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the most cohesive message from congressional Democrats is: blame Russia. The party leaders have doubled down on an approach that got nowhere during the presidential campaign — trying to tie the Kremlin around Donald Trump's neck.
Still more interested in playing to the press gallery than speaking directly to the economic distress of voters in the Rust Belt and elsewhere who handed the presidency to Trump, top Democrats would much rather scapegoat Vladimir Putin than scrutinize how they’ve lost touch with working-class voters.
Meanwhile, the emerging incendiary rhetoric against Russia is extremely dangerous. It could lead to a military confrontation between two countries that have thousands of nuclear weapons each.
At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last Thursday on foreign cyber threats, ranking member Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, denounced “Russia’s rejection of the post-Cold War international order and aggressive actions against its neighbors,” and he condemned “a regime with values and interests so antithetical to our own.” It was the kind of oratory that would have made John Foster Dulles or Barry Goldwater proud.
Like so many other senators on the committee, Reed seemed eager for a new Cold War while accusing Russia of digital aggression. “In addition to stealing information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign,” he said, “and cherry-picking what information it leaked to the media, the Russian government also created and spread fake news and conspiracies across the vast social media landscape.’’"...
[Ed. note: How is that different or worse than what the US media did 24/7, led by the NY Times and Washington Post, to try and tilt the election to its choice?]
(continuing): "The Russia-Did-It Conspiracy Theory
The Russian government may have hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and it may have given those emails to WikiLeaks. But that’s hardly a slam dunk.
Over the weekend, after Friday’s release of a much-ballyhooed report from the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the report underwent a cogent critique by former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry. Stripping the 25-page DNI report down to its essence, Parry pointed out that it “contained no direct evidence that Russia delivered hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta to WikiLeaks.”
Parry added: “The DNI report amounted to a compendium of reasons to suspect that Russia was the source of the information — built largely on the argument that Russia had a motive for doing so because of its disdain for Democratic nominee Clinton and the potential for friendlier relations with Republican nominee Trump. But the case, as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof.”
While stenographic accounts of official claims have dominated coverage of the Jan. 6 report, major flaws are coming to light in mainstream media. For instance, a piece that appeared on Saturday in the New York Times, by Scott Shane, reported in its ninth paragraph: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack.”
The article reported: “Under the circumstances, many in Washington expected the agencies to make a strong public case to erase any uncertainty. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’
There is no discussion of the forensics used to recognize the handiwork of known hacking groups, no mention of intercepted communications between the Kremlin and the hackers, no hint of spies reporting from inside Moscow’s propaganda machinery.”
No Doubts
But Democratic lawmakers aren’t interested in doubts or caveats. They believe the Russian hacking issue is a political winner.
Whether or not that’s true, it’s certainly a convenient way to evade the sobering lessons that should have been learned from the last election about the Democratic Party’s lack of authenticity in its claims to be fighting for the interests of working people.
At the same time, enthusiasm for banging the drum against Putin is fast becoming a big part of the Democratic Party’s public identity in 2017. And — insidiously — that’s apt to give the party a long-term political stake in further demonizing the Russian government.
The reality is grim, and potentially catastrophic beyond comprehension. By pushing to further polarize with the Kremlin, congressional Democrats are increasing the chances of a military confrontation with Russia. By teaming up with the likes of Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to exert bipartisan pressure for escalation, Democrats could help stampede the Trump administration in reckless directions.
This approach is already underway. It is worse than irresponsible. It is madness that could lead to a nuclear holocaust."
"Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org, which has 750,000 members. He is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. [This article originally appeared as a column at The Hill, at http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/313295-democrats-are-playing-with-fire-on-russia ]"
.................
Added: As is the case with all neocons, McCain and Graham have never once been right. By their own words the Libya regime change they promoted was a massive failure. They've never even apologized.
""Ultimately, our intervention in Libya will be judged a success or failure based not on the collapse of the Kadafi regime, but on the political order that emerges in its place," the senators said."
Aug. 21, 2011, "John McCain, Lindsey Graham weigh in on Libya," LA Times, Kim Geiger
"The fall of the Kadafi regime is a victory for Libya, the Middle East and the world, said U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had been strong advocates for U.S. military intervention in the months-long conflict.
"Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Kadafi," the senators said in a statement released late Sunday night. "But we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower."
The senators said the U.S. "must lead the international community to provide the support that our Libyan friends need."
"Ultimately, our intervention in Libya will be judged a success or failure based not on the collapse of the Kadafi regime, but on the political order that emerges in its place," the senators said.
"Today marks a big step forward for the Libyan people towards freedom and democracy. As they continue on this journey, America must continue to stand with them.""
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/21/news/la-pn-mccain-graham-on-libya-20110821
..........................
Added:
In April 2011, McCain is given hero's welcome in Benghazi, Libya, where he brags that people should visit "free" Benghazi to see how great it is thanks to his intervention (meaning US taxpayer funded bombing): "Mr McCain called on critics of intervention to tour Benghazi to see a 'powerful and hopeful example of what a free Libya can be.'" Obviously, nothing good happened in Libya, least of all in Benghazi. Neocons exist only via their access to endless US taxpayer dollars and have never been right or "heroic" about anything. They create permanent misery and suffering wherever they go. They're basically a money laundering operation. Today Libya is home to countless terrorist groups. It's also a transit route for African "refugees" flooding to Europe. How embarrassing for US taxpayers. Take a "tour" of "free" Benghazi.
4/22/2011, "'Let's get this thing over with,' says McCain as he calls for more help for rebels in Libya," Daily Mail
"A day after the U.S. said it was deploying drones in Libya, Senator
John McCain called for more help for Libyan rebels so that can 'get this
thing over with.'...
The former Republican presidential candidate toured the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on Friday.
He received a hero's welcome on his tour as rebel forces, locked in a deadly stand-off with forces loyal to strongman Moammar Gaddafi, gained ground in central Misrata.
Mr McCain said the drones would increase NATO's capability but not enough to make up a shortfall needed to break a 'significant degree of stalemate.'...
Mr. McCain called on critics of intervention to tour Benghazi to see a 'powerful and hopeful example of what a free Libya can be.'
People waved American flags as a crowd of about 100 Libyans greeted McCain, the leading Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee."...
-------------------------------
More about neocons:
6/20/2014, "Being a Neocon Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry," Foreign Policy, Stephen M. Walt
"The neoconservative-liberal alliance in effect re-legitimates the neoconservative world view, and makes their continued enthusiasm for U.S.-led wars look "normal.""
............... .........
9/7/2015, "How Neocons Destabilized Europe" by Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com
........
"The refugee chaos that is now pushing deep into Europe...started with the cavalier ambitions of American neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks who planned to remake the Middle East and other parts of the world through “regime change.”
..........
Instead of the promised wonders of “democracy promotion” and “human rights,” what these “anti-realists” have accomplished is to spread death, destruction and destabilization across the Middle East and parts of Africa and now into Ukraine and the heart of Europe. Yet, since these neocon forces still control the Official Narrative, their explanations get top billing – such as that there hasn’t been enough “regime change.”"...
...............
"(Hillary) Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations....Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger." ...
April 1, 2016, “Cleaning Up Hillary’s Libya Mess,” Robert Parry, Consortium News
"Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in (Oct. 20) 2011.
The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.
There is also desperation among some Obama administration officials because the worsening Libyan fiasco threatens to undermine not only President Barack Obama’s legacy but Clinton’s drive for...the White House.
The continuing crisis threatens to remind...voters about Hillary Clinton’s role in sparking the chaos in 2011 when she pressured President Obama to counter a military offensive by Gaddafi against what he called Islamic terrorists operating in the east.
Though Clinton and other “liberal interventionists” around Obama insisted that the goal was simply to protect Libyans from a possible slaughter, the U.S.-backed airstrikes inside Libya quickly expanded into a “regime change” operation, slaughtering much of the Libyan army.
Clinton’s State Department email exchanges revealed that her aides saw the Libyan war as a chance to pronounce a “Clinton doctrine,” bragging about how Clinton’s clever use of “smart power” could get rid of demonized foreign leaders like Gaddafi. But the Clinton team was thwarted when President Obama seized the spotlight when Gaddafi’s government fell.
But Clinton didn’t miss a second chance to take credit on Oct. 20, 2011, after militants captured Gaddafi, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Appearing on a TV interview, Clinton celebrated Gaddafi’s demise with the quip, “we came; we saw; he died.”
However, with Gaddafi and his largely secular regime out of the way, Islamic militants expanded their power over the country. Some were terrorists, just as Gaddafi had warned.
One Islamic terror group attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, killing U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American personnel, an incident that Clinton called the worst moment of her four-year tenure as Secretary of State.
As the violence spread, the United States and other Western countries abandoned their embassies in Tripoli. Once prosperous with many social services, Libya descended into the category of failed state with the Islamic State taking advantage of the power vacuum to seize control of Sirte and other territory. In one grisly incident, Islamic State militants marched Coptic Christians onto a beach and beheaded them.
Yet, on the campaign trail, Clinton continues to defend her judgment in instigating the Libyan war. She claims that Gaddafi had “American blood on his hands,” although she doesn’t spell out exactly what she’s referring to. There remain serious questions about the two primary incidents blamed on Libya in which Americans died – the 1986 La Belle bombing in Berlin and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
But whatever Gaddafi’s guilt in that earlier era, he renounced terrorism during George W. Bush’s presidency and surrendered his unconventional military arsenal. He even assisted Bush’s “war on terror.” So, Gaddafi’s grisly fate has become a cautionary tale for what can happen to a leader who makes major security concessions to the United States.
The aftermath of the Clinton-instigated “regime change” in Libya also shows how little Clinton and other U.S. officials learned from the Iraq War disaster. Clinton has rejected any comparisons between her vote for the Iraq War in 2002 and her orchestration of the Libyan war in 2011, saying that “conflating” them is wrong....
Though her (past) Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, hasn’t highlighted her key role in the Libya fiasco, Clinton can expect a tougher approach from the Republicans if she wins the nomination. The problem with the Republicans, however, is that they have obsessed over the details of the Benghazi incident, spinning all sorts of conspiracy theories, missing the forest for the trees.
Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger.
Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations."
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/01/cleaning-up-hillarys-libyan-mess/
............................................
Feb. 2015: "ISIS beheadings of Coptic Christians on Libyan beach brings Islamists to the doorstep of Europe:"
2/16/2015, "ISIS beheadings of Coptic Christians on Libyan beach brings Islamists to the doorstep of Europe," UK Independent, Lizzie Dearden
"Former Libyan PM previously warned that they would reach Mediterranean."
..........
"Militants in Libya had been holding the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians hostage for weeks, all laborers rounded up from the city of Sirte in December (2014) and January." Reuters image
"Destroyed: There were at least seven strikes in Derna in the east of the country, which has become a hotbed of Islamic extremism since dictator Libyan Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011," twitter via Mailonline
2/16/2015, "Egypt retaliates with air strikes after ISIS marches 21 Coptic Christians along a lonely Libyan beach and beheads them en masse for their faith," Mailonline, John Hall, Sara Malm
================
Comment: No amount of human suffering is enough for neocons who are now entrenched throughout US institutions.
"Neocons" were once just a few fringe, demented Republicans like George W. Bush and his cronies.
.................
"The first of what Washington promises will be back-to-back nine-month rotations in the "foreseeable future." Beginning in February, U.S. military units will spread out across Poland, the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania and Germany."...
1/6/17, "US Tanks, Equipment Arrive for NATO Exercises in Eastern Europe," Reuters, Bremerhaven, Germany, via voanews.com
(Comment: To Reuters: Is the US inaugurating a person named "Washington" on 1/20/17? Reuters says "Washington promises" many months of US taxpayer funded troops and heavy weapons across Europe and on Russian border. No one on 1/6/17 is authorized to "promise" confiscation of US taxpayer dollars for endless military actions in foreign lands after 1/20/17. US taxpayers are no longer global slaves. PS: Save the Fake News rap about Ukraine war.)
..................
1/10/2017, "The Democrats’ Russia-Did-It Dodge," Consortium News, Norman Solomon
"To avoid facing up to why Hillary Clinton’s pro-corporatist candidacy really lost key Rust Belt states, national Democrats are finding it easier to blame Russia, a dangerous and self-defeating game, says Norman Solomon at The Hill."
"Two months after the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the most cohesive message from congressional Democrats is: blame Russia. The party leaders have doubled down on an approach that got nowhere during the presidential campaign — trying to tie the Kremlin around Donald Trump's neck.
Still more interested in playing to the press gallery than speaking directly to the economic distress of voters in the Rust Belt and elsewhere who handed the presidency to Trump, top Democrats would much rather scapegoat Vladimir Putin than scrutinize how they’ve lost touch with working-class voters.
Meanwhile, the emerging incendiary rhetoric against Russia is extremely dangerous. It could lead to a military confrontation between two countries that have thousands of nuclear weapons each.
At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last Thursday on foreign cyber threats, ranking member Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, denounced “Russia’s rejection of the post-Cold War international order and aggressive actions against its neighbors,” and he condemned “a regime with values and interests so antithetical to our own.” It was the kind of oratory that would have made John Foster Dulles or Barry Goldwater proud.
Like so many other senators on the committee, Reed seemed eager for a new Cold War while accusing Russia of digital aggression. “In addition to stealing information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign,” he said, “and cherry-picking what information it leaked to the media, the Russian government also created and spread fake news and conspiracies across the vast social media landscape.’’"...
[Ed. note: How is that different or worse than what the US media did 24/7, led by the NY Times and Washington Post, to try and tilt the election to its choice?]
(continuing): "The Russia-Did-It Conspiracy Theory
The Russian government may have hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and it may have given those emails to WikiLeaks. But that’s hardly a slam dunk.
Over the weekend, after Friday’s release of a much-ballyhooed report from the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the report underwent a cogent critique by former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry. Stripping the 25-page DNI report down to its essence, Parry pointed out that it “contained no direct evidence that Russia delivered hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta to WikiLeaks.”
Parry added: “The DNI report amounted to a compendium of reasons to suspect that Russia was the source of the information — built largely on the argument that Russia had a motive for doing so because of its disdain for Democratic nominee Clinton and the potential for friendlier relations with Republican nominee Trump. But the case, as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof.”
While stenographic accounts of official claims have dominated coverage of the Jan. 6 report, major flaws are coming to light in mainstream media. For instance, a piece that appeared on Saturday in the New York Times, by Scott Shane, reported in its ninth paragraph: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack.”
The article reported: “Under the circumstances, many in Washington expected the agencies to make a strong public case to erase any uncertainty. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’
There is no discussion of the forensics used to recognize the handiwork of known hacking groups, no mention of intercepted communications between the Kremlin and the hackers, no hint of spies reporting from inside Moscow’s propaganda machinery.”
No Doubts
But Democratic lawmakers aren’t interested in doubts or caveats. They believe the Russian hacking issue is a political winner.
Whether or not that’s true, it’s certainly a convenient way to evade the sobering lessons that should have been learned from the last election about the Democratic Party’s lack of authenticity in its claims to be fighting for the interests of working people.
At the same time, enthusiasm for banging the drum against Putin is fast becoming a big part of the Democratic Party’s public identity in 2017. And — insidiously — that’s apt to give the party a long-term political stake in further demonizing the Russian government.
The reality is grim, and potentially catastrophic beyond comprehension. By pushing to further polarize with the Kremlin, congressional Democrats are increasing the chances of a military confrontation with Russia. By teaming up with the likes of Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to exert bipartisan pressure for escalation, Democrats could help stampede the Trump administration in reckless directions.
This approach is already underway. It is worse than irresponsible. It is madness that could lead to a nuclear holocaust."
"Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org, which has 750,000 members. He is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. [This article originally appeared as a column at The Hill, at http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/313295-democrats-are-playing-with-fire-on-russia ]"
.................
Added: As is the case with all neocons, McCain and Graham have never once been right. By their own words the Libya regime change they promoted was a massive failure. They've never even apologized.
""Ultimately, our intervention in Libya will be judged a success or failure based not on the collapse of the Kadafi regime, but on the political order that emerges in its place," the senators said."
Aug. 21, 2011, "John McCain, Lindsey Graham weigh in on Libya," LA Times, Kim Geiger
"The fall of the Kadafi regime is a victory for Libya, the Middle East and the world, said U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had been strong advocates for U.S. military intervention in the months-long conflict.
"Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Kadafi," the senators said in a statement released late Sunday night. "But we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower."
The senators said the U.S. "must lead the international community to provide the support that our Libyan friends need."
"Ultimately, our intervention in Libya will be judged a success or failure based not on the collapse of the Kadafi regime, but on the political order that emerges in its place," the senators said.
"Today marks a big step forward for the Libyan people towards freedom and democracy. As they continue on this journey, America must continue to stand with them.""
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/21/news/la-pn-mccain-graham-on-libya-20110821
..........................
Added:
In April 2011, McCain is given hero's welcome in Benghazi, Libya, where he brags that people should visit "free" Benghazi to see how great it is thanks to his intervention (meaning US taxpayer funded bombing): "Mr McCain called on critics of intervention to tour Benghazi to see a 'powerful and hopeful example of what a free Libya can be.'" Obviously, nothing good happened in Libya, least of all in Benghazi. Neocons exist only via their access to endless US taxpayer dollars and have never been right or "heroic" about anything. They create permanent misery and suffering wherever they go. They're basically a money laundering operation. Today Libya is home to countless terrorist groups. It's also a transit route for African "refugees" flooding to Europe. How embarrassing for US taxpayers. Take a "tour" of "free" Benghazi.
4/22/2011, "'Let's get this thing over with,' says McCain as he calls for more help for rebels in Libya," Daily Mail
The former Republican presidential candidate toured the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on Friday.
He received a hero's welcome on his tour as rebel forces, locked in a deadly stand-off with forces loyal to strongman Moammar Gaddafi, gained ground in central Misrata.
Mr McCain said the drones would increase NATO's capability but not enough to make up a shortfall needed to break a 'significant degree of stalemate.'...
Mr. McCain called on critics of intervention to tour Benghazi to see a 'powerful and hopeful example of what a free Libya can be.'
People waved American flags as a crowd of about 100 Libyans greeted McCain, the leading Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee."...
-------------------------------
More about neocons:
6/20/2014, "Being a Neocon Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry," Foreign Policy, Stephen M. Walt
"The neoconservative-liberal alliance in effect re-legitimates the neoconservative world view, and makes their continued enthusiasm for U.S.-led wars look "normal.""
............... .........
9/7/2015, "How Neocons Destabilized Europe" by Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com
........
"The refugee chaos that is now pushing deep into Europe...started with the cavalier ambitions of American neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks who planned to remake the Middle East and other parts of the world through “regime change.”
..........
Instead of the promised wonders of “democracy promotion” and “human rights,” what these “anti-realists” have accomplished is to spread death, destruction and destabilization across the Middle East and parts of Africa and now into Ukraine and the heart of Europe. Yet, since these neocon forces still control the Official Narrative, their explanations get top billing – such as that there hasn’t been enough “regime change.”"...
...............
"(Hillary) Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations....Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger." ...
April 1, 2016, “Cleaning Up Hillary’s Libya Mess,” Robert Parry, Consortium News
"Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in (Oct. 20) 2011.
The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.
There is also desperation among some Obama administration officials because the worsening Libyan fiasco threatens to undermine not only President Barack Obama’s legacy but Clinton’s drive for...the White House.
The continuing crisis threatens to remind...voters about Hillary Clinton’s role in sparking the chaos in 2011 when she pressured President Obama to counter a military offensive by Gaddafi against what he called Islamic terrorists operating in the east.
Though Clinton and other “liberal interventionists” around Obama insisted that the goal was simply to protect Libyans from a possible slaughter, the U.S.-backed airstrikes inside Libya quickly expanded into a “regime change” operation, slaughtering much of the Libyan army.
Clinton’s State Department email exchanges revealed that her aides saw the Libyan war as a chance to pronounce a “Clinton doctrine,” bragging about how Clinton’s clever use of “smart power” could get rid of demonized foreign leaders like Gaddafi. But the Clinton team was thwarted when President Obama seized the spotlight when Gaddafi’s government fell.
But Clinton didn’t miss a second chance to take credit on Oct. 20, 2011, after militants captured Gaddafi, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Appearing on a TV interview, Clinton celebrated Gaddafi’s demise with the quip, “we came; we saw; he died.”
However, with Gaddafi and his largely secular regime out of the way, Islamic militants expanded their power over the country. Some were terrorists, just as Gaddafi had warned.
One Islamic terror group attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, killing U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American personnel, an incident that Clinton called the worst moment of her four-year tenure as Secretary of State.
As the violence spread, the United States and other Western countries abandoned their embassies in Tripoli. Once prosperous with many social services, Libya descended into the category of failed state with the Islamic State taking advantage of the power vacuum to seize control of Sirte and other territory. In one grisly incident, Islamic State militants marched Coptic Christians onto a beach and beheaded them.
Yet, on the campaign trail, Clinton continues to defend her judgment in instigating the Libyan war. She claims that Gaddafi had “American blood on his hands,” although she doesn’t spell out exactly what she’s referring to. There remain serious questions about the two primary incidents blamed on Libya in which Americans died – the 1986 La Belle bombing in Berlin and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
But whatever Gaddafi’s guilt in that earlier era, he renounced terrorism during George W. Bush’s presidency and surrendered his unconventional military arsenal. He even assisted Bush’s “war on terror.” So, Gaddafi’s grisly fate has become a cautionary tale for what can happen to a leader who makes major security concessions to the United States.
The aftermath of the Clinton-instigated “regime change” in Libya also shows how little Clinton and other U.S. officials learned from the Iraq War disaster. Clinton has rejected any comparisons between her vote for the Iraq War in 2002 and her orchestration of the Libyan war in 2011, saying that “conflating” them is wrong....
Though her (past) Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, hasn’t highlighted her key role in the Libya fiasco, Clinton can expect a tougher approach from the Republicans if she wins the nomination. The problem with the Republicans, however, is that they have obsessed over the details of the Benghazi incident, spinning all sorts of conspiracy theories, missing the forest for the trees.
Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger.
Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations."
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/01/cleaning-up-hillarys-libyan-mess/
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Feb. 2015: "ISIS beheadings of Coptic Christians on Libyan beach brings Islamists to the doorstep of Europe:"
2/16/2015, "ISIS beheadings of Coptic Christians on Libyan beach brings Islamists to the doorstep of Europe," UK Independent, Lizzie Dearden
"Former Libyan PM previously warned that they would reach Mediterranean."
..........
"Militants in Libya had been holding the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians hostage for weeks, all laborers rounded up from the city of Sirte in December (2014) and January." Reuters image
"Destroyed: There were at least seven strikes in Derna in the east of the country, which has become a hotbed of Islamic extremism since dictator Libyan Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011," twitter via Mailonline
2/16/2015, "Egypt retaliates with air strikes after ISIS marches 21 Coptic Christians along a lonely Libyan beach and beheads them en masse for their faith," Mailonline, John Hall, Sara Malm
================
Comment: No amount of human suffering is enough for neocons who are now entrenched throughout US institutions.
"Neocons" were once just a few fringe, demented Republicans like George W. Bush and his cronies.
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Bill Clinton received standing ovation for promising to cut back on large numbers of illegal aliens entering US, that they hold jobs that might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants, that public services they use burden our taxpayers, that he'll deport twice as many criminal aliens and bar welfare benefits to illegals. Jan. 24, 1995 State of the Union-You Tube and transcript, 1/24/1995
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"Bill Clinton Jan. 24, 1995 State of the Union--Immigration laws--STANDING OVATION"
Bill Clinton, Jan. 24, 1995:
"All Americans not only in the state's most heavily affected, but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens....We will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan."...(lawmakers give standing ovation to Clinton)
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Transcript, "1995 State Of The Union Address, Jan. 24, 1995," Washington Post. Scroll to "Illegal Immigration" subhead
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From You Tube page: "(Ben) Carson:...."Bill Clinton says basically the same thing Trump says, but when he (Clinton) sas it, wow! Great standing ovation! But when Trump says it, it’s hate speech. What hypocrisy!”"
....................................
.....................
"Bill Clinton Jan. 24, 1995 State of the Union--Immigration laws--STANDING OVATION"
Bill Clinton, Jan. 24, 1995:
"All Americans not only in the state's most heavily affected, but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens....We will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan."...(lawmakers give standing ovation to Clinton)
...................
Transcript, "1995 State Of The Union Address, Jan. 24, 1995," Washington Post. Scroll to "Illegal Immigration" subhead
...............................
From You Tube page: "(Ben) Carson:...."Bill Clinton says basically the same thing Trump says, but when he (Clinton) sas it, wow! Great standing ovation! But when Trump says it, it’s hate speech. What hypocrisy!”"
....................................
.....................
Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation. The truth is that Obama has continually appeased Putin. Until now, he saw no reason to stop enabling Russia-Victor Davis Hanson, 1/5/17
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The administration also did not mention that the election hacking occurred largely because of Podesta’s own carelessness in using his security password. Moreover, it failed to acknowledge that the Republican National Committee was likewise targeted, but apparently had enough safeguards to prevent successful entry into its records. Finally, the administration refused to mention that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange went on the record saying that he did not receive the email trove from the Russians.
The truth is that Obama, throughout his presidency, has appeased Putin. As president, Obama ended the previously agreed-on Eastern European missile defense; he made open-mic promises to be more flexible with Putin after his reelection; he barely responded to Russia’s aggression toward Crimea and Ukraine; and he constantly criticized both George W. Bush and Mitt Romney for being inordinately tough on Russia.
Until now, he saw no reason to stop enabling Russia. Had Hillary Clinton won the election, Putin’s alleged hacking would not have earned any administration attention. But this time around, an emboldened Putin allegedly went too far and crossed the only red line that Obama might have enforced by supposedly enabling the release of information that might have turned off some voters on Clinton. Blaming Putin for Clinton’s loss was a more convenient narrative than admitting that Obama’s own policies have turned off even traditional Democratic constituencies and for now reduced the Democratic Party to a minority coastal party.
All administrations play fast and loose with the truth. It is the nature of high politics to fib, cover up, and fudge in order to ensure the success of a so-called noble agenda for the greater good. But not since the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations have we seen a president so institutionalize misrepresentation.
There are ample examples. It was clear from Clinton’s own leaked emails and from real-time memos from intelligence agencies that the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was not a spontaneous riot over an insensitive video produced by a reactionary Coptic zealot residing in the United States, as the administration claimed. But such a concoction fit Obama’s 2012 reelection narrative: the recklessness of right-wing Islamophobes endangers national security abroad.
In contrast, the reality—a preplanned al-Qaeda-affiliated attack on an unprepared and semi-covert American consulate—challenged Obama’s reelection myth that Al Qaeda was “on the run” and that the administration was vigilant in ensuring security for our diplomatic personnel in the Middle East.
The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. at the time, Susan Rice, went on five Sunday morning talk shows to insist, quite wrongly, that the deaths of four Americans in the attack were the tragic result of ad hoc furor over intolerance. The video-maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was abruptly jailed on probation violation charges, in a display of swift American justice never matched by a commensurately prompt arrest and prosecution of real terrorists.
Another example of Obama administration’s misrepresentation concerns U.S. army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who went AWOL from his post in Afghanistan and ended up a captive of Taliban affiliates from June 2009 until his release in May 2014. The Obama administration conducted lengthy and stealthy negotiations to return the deserter to U.S. custody. As part of the bargain, it agreed to release five Taliban terrorists from the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. In an about-face, an Army command announced last year that Bergdahl will soon be facing charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Yet to gain Bergdahl’s release, the Obama administration fabricated a completely different narrative to justify the embarrassing swap and concessions to the Taliban. Bergdahl, in National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s words, “served the United States with honor and distinction.”
Upon his release, Bergdahl parents were brought to the White House for photo-ops, where his father appeared with a long beard and shaved lip—not unlike the facial hair worn by his son’s Taliban captors. Bill Bergdahl thanked the concerned parties and broke into rudimentary Pashto and Urdu, praising Allah for his son’s release. The staged press conference was designed to underscore the administration’s view that the son of a multicultural family had naively and innocently wondered off from his compound. But now, young Bergdahl was safe with his family, due to the Obama administration. The disturbing truth was more likely that the administration traded prisoners for a U.S. deserter, while pushing the false narrative of returning an American patriot to his parents.
The far more important Iran nuclear deal of summer 2015 followed a similar pattern of dissimulation. “Bold” and “courageous” Middle East diplomacy nonetheless required White House subterfuge and deceitfulness. Ostensibly only Barack Obama was unaffected by past presidents’ prejudices against the revolutionary regime in Iran and thus could appreciate the mutual advantages of a breakthrough agreement to deter Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb—as part of a larger diplomatic effort to return Shiite and Persian Iran to its natural role as a balancing force in the otherwise largely Sunni and Arab Middle East.
In exchange for the U.S. and its allies dropping sanctions and commercial penalties—some of them approved by the UN—the theocracy purportedly agreed to reduce its installed centrifuges for 10 years. It promised to put limits on the purity of its enriched uranium and to reduce existing stockpiles. It agreed not to expand its enrichment facilities, while allowing on-site inspections.
But after 18 months, the true character of the deal has been revealed through slow leaks. In a secret side deal, Iran can update and improve its centrifuges; it can also inspect its own enrichment centers and report the results to international authorities; beyond that, Iran received a $400 million ransom payment on the exact day that Iranian-held U.S. hostages were let go.
More recently we learned that Iran got the sanctions lifted before it met all its obligations outlined in the deal. Ben Rhodes, an architect of the swap and deputy national security advisor, boasted about the administration’s affinity for deceit. Rhodes, described by a New York Times interviewer as “a storyteller who uses a writer’s tools to advance an agenda that is packaged as politics but is often quite personal,” explained the methods of concocting an Iran narrative to a guidable media: “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” Rhodes intoned. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Rhodes’s cynicism was reminiscent of the boasts of another administration advisor, the MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who bragged of the administration’s ability to get passed the Patient Protection and affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), largely through deliberate deceit about the inevitable consequences of higher premiums and deductibles, the dropping of existing coverage and doctors, and increases in federal outlays. Some of the bill’s more obvious and unpopular elements—such as the employer mandate—were not enforced until after Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. Gruber admitted that the law was composed “in a tortured way” to delude people into accepting that “healthy people pay in and sick people get money”—a subterfuge that was both necessary and worked because of “the stupidity of the American voter,” a fact confirming that the “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage”
Other examples of dissimulation exist—from Obama’s about-face on border enforcement, in which he redefined deportation and reneged on his promises to enforce existing law, to the linguistic gymnastics he employed to mask the disastrously abrupt pullout of peacekeepers from Iraq (ISIS as “the “jayvees”). Most recently, the administration has not been candid about the details of its latest estrangement with Israel. Obama and his foreign policy team hid the fact that they had helped to engineer a UN resolution condemning Israel, by suggesting to the public that they were unaware of the depths of apparently spontaneous expressions of anti-Israeli anger.
Why does the Obama administration contort reality and mask the consequences of its initiatives?
Two reasons come to mind. One, Obama advanced an agenda to the left of that shared by most past presidents. Obamacare, the Benghazi catastrophe, the Iran deal, his strange stance toward radical Islam, and the Bergdahl swap were unpopular measures that required politically-driven recalibrations to escape American scrutiny.
Second, Obama’s team believes that the goals of fairness and egalitarianism more than justify the means of dissimulation by more sophisticated elites. Thus Gruber (“the stupidity of the American voter”) and Rhodes (“They literally know nothing”) employ deception on our behalf. Central to this worldview is that the American people are naive and easily manipulated, and thus need to be brought up to speed by a paternal administration that knows what is best for its vulnerable and clueless citizenry.
Such condescension is also why the administration never believes it has done anything wrong by hiding the facts of these controversies. Its players believe that because they did it all for us, the ensuing distasteful means will be forgotten once we finally progress enough to appreciate their enlightened ends."
................
1/5/17, "Obama’s Legacy Of Deceit," by Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover.org
"In its remaining days in power, the Obama administration suddenly punished Vladimir Putin’s Russia for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election. It claimed that Russian or Russian-hired hackers tapped into the records of the Democratic National Committee as well as the correspondence of John Podesta, a Clinton advisor.
But what the Obama administration did not say was that such cyber-crimes are by now old hat. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation.
"In its remaining days in power, the Obama administration suddenly punished Vladimir Putin’s Russia for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election. It claimed that Russian or Russian-hired hackers tapped into the records of the Democratic National Committee as well as the correspondence of John Podesta, a Clinton advisor.
But what the Obama administration did not say was that such cyber-crimes are by now old hat. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation.
The administration also did not mention that the election hacking occurred largely because of Podesta’s own carelessness in using his security password. Moreover, it failed to acknowledge that the Republican National Committee was likewise targeted, but apparently had enough safeguards to prevent successful entry into its records. Finally, the administration refused to mention that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange went on the record saying that he did not receive the email trove from the Russians.
The truth is that Obama, throughout his presidency, has appeased Putin. As president, Obama ended the previously agreed-on Eastern European missile defense; he made open-mic promises to be more flexible with Putin after his reelection; he barely responded to Russia’s aggression toward Crimea and Ukraine; and he constantly criticized both George W. Bush and Mitt Romney for being inordinately tough on Russia.
Until now, he saw no reason to stop enabling Russia. Had Hillary Clinton won the election, Putin’s alleged hacking would not have earned any administration attention. But this time around, an emboldened Putin allegedly went too far and crossed the only red line that Obama might have enforced by supposedly enabling the release of information that might have turned off some voters on Clinton. Blaming Putin for Clinton’s loss was a more convenient narrative than admitting that Obama’s own policies have turned off even traditional Democratic constituencies and for now reduced the Democratic Party to a minority coastal party.
All administrations play fast and loose with the truth. It is the nature of high politics to fib, cover up, and fudge in order to ensure the success of a so-called noble agenda for the greater good. But not since the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations have we seen a president so institutionalize misrepresentation.
There are ample examples. It was clear from Clinton’s own leaked emails and from real-time memos from intelligence agencies that the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was not a spontaneous riot over an insensitive video produced by a reactionary Coptic zealot residing in the United States, as the administration claimed. But such a concoction fit Obama’s 2012 reelection narrative: the recklessness of right-wing Islamophobes endangers national security abroad.
In contrast, the reality—a preplanned al-Qaeda-affiliated attack on an unprepared and semi-covert American consulate—challenged Obama’s reelection myth that Al Qaeda was “on the run” and that the administration was vigilant in ensuring security for our diplomatic personnel in the Middle East.
The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. at the time, Susan Rice, went on five Sunday morning talk shows to insist, quite wrongly, that the deaths of four Americans in the attack were the tragic result of ad hoc furor over intolerance. The video-maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was abruptly jailed on probation violation charges, in a display of swift American justice never matched by a commensurately prompt arrest and prosecution of real terrorists.
Another example of Obama administration’s misrepresentation concerns U.S. army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who went AWOL from his post in Afghanistan and ended up a captive of Taliban affiliates from June 2009 until his release in May 2014. The Obama administration conducted lengthy and stealthy negotiations to return the deserter to U.S. custody. As part of the bargain, it agreed to release five Taliban terrorists from the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. In an about-face, an Army command announced last year that Bergdahl will soon be facing charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Yet to gain Bergdahl’s release, the Obama administration fabricated a completely different narrative to justify the embarrassing swap and concessions to the Taliban. Bergdahl, in National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s words, “served the United States with honor and distinction.”
Upon his release, Bergdahl parents were brought to the White House for photo-ops, where his father appeared with a long beard and shaved lip—not unlike the facial hair worn by his son’s Taliban captors. Bill Bergdahl thanked the concerned parties and broke into rudimentary Pashto and Urdu, praising Allah for his son’s release. The staged press conference was designed to underscore the administration’s view that the son of a multicultural family had naively and innocently wondered off from his compound. But now, young Bergdahl was safe with his family, due to the Obama administration. The disturbing truth was more likely that the administration traded prisoners for a U.S. deserter, while pushing the false narrative of returning an American patriot to his parents.
The far more important Iran nuclear deal of summer 2015 followed a similar pattern of dissimulation. “Bold” and “courageous” Middle East diplomacy nonetheless required White House subterfuge and deceitfulness. Ostensibly only Barack Obama was unaffected by past presidents’ prejudices against the revolutionary regime in Iran and thus could appreciate the mutual advantages of a breakthrough agreement to deter Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb—as part of a larger diplomatic effort to return Shiite and Persian Iran to its natural role as a balancing force in the otherwise largely Sunni and Arab Middle East.
In exchange for the U.S. and its allies dropping sanctions and commercial penalties—some of them approved by the UN—the theocracy purportedly agreed to reduce its installed centrifuges for 10 years. It promised to put limits on the purity of its enriched uranium and to reduce existing stockpiles. It agreed not to expand its enrichment facilities, while allowing on-site inspections.
But after 18 months, the true character of the deal has been revealed through slow leaks. In a secret side deal, Iran can update and improve its centrifuges; it can also inspect its own enrichment centers and report the results to international authorities; beyond that, Iran received a $400 million ransom payment on the exact day that Iranian-held U.S. hostages were let go.
More recently we learned that Iran got the sanctions lifted before it met all its obligations outlined in the deal. Ben Rhodes, an architect of the swap and deputy national security advisor, boasted about the administration’s affinity for deceit. Rhodes, described by a New York Times interviewer as “a storyteller who uses a writer’s tools to advance an agenda that is packaged as politics but is often quite personal,” explained the methods of concocting an Iran narrative to a guidable media: “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” Rhodes intoned. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Rhodes’s cynicism was reminiscent of the boasts of another administration advisor, the MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who bragged of the administration’s ability to get passed the Patient Protection and affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), largely through deliberate deceit about the inevitable consequences of higher premiums and deductibles, the dropping of existing coverage and doctors, and increases in federal outlays. Some of the bill’s more obvious and unpopular elements—such as the employer mandate—were not enforced until after Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. Gruber admitted that the law was composed “in a tortured way” to delude people into accepting that “healthy people pay in and sick people get money”—a subterfuge that was both necessary and worked because of “the stupidity of the American voter,” a fact confirming that the “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage”
Other examples of dissimulation exist—from Obama’s about-face on border enforcement, in which he redefined deportation and reneged on his promises to enforce existing law, to the linguistic gymnastics he employed to mask the disastrously abrupt pullout of peacekeepers from Iraq (ISIS as “the “jayvees”). Most recently, the administration has not been candid about the details of its latest estrangement with Israel. Obama and his foreign policy team hid the fact that they had helped to engineer a UN resolution condemning Israel, by suggesting to the public that they were unaware of the depths of apparently spontaneous expressions of anti-Israeli anger.
Why does the Obama administration contort reality and mask the consequences of its initiatives?
Two reasons come to mind. One, Obama advanced an agenda to the left of that shared by most past presidents. Obamacare, the Benghazi catastrophe, the Iran deal, his strange stance toward radical Islam, and the Bergdahl swap were unpopular measures that required politically-driven recalibrations to escape American scrutiny.
Second, Obama’s team believes that the goals of fairness and egalitarianism more than justify the means of dissimulation by more sophisticated elites. Thus Gruber (“the stupidity of the American voter”) and Rhodes (“They literally know nothing”) employ deception on our behalf. Central to this worldview is that the American people are naive and easily manipulated, and thus need to be brought up to speed by a paternal administration that knows what is best for its vulnerable and clueless citizenry.
Such condescension is also why the administration never believes it has done anything wrong by hiding the facts of these controversies. Its players believe that because they did it all for us, the ensuing distasteful means will be forgotten once we finally progress enough to appreciate their enlightened ends."
................
Monday, January 9, 2017
Mainstream media continues to threaten existence of life on Earth by eagerly selling aggressive and slanderous accusations about Russia on behalf of war-loving US political establishment which exists only via its access to US taxpayer dollars. Russia (not ISIS) is now surrounded with missile batteries, nuclear-armed subs, Aegis missile destroyers, military bases and exercises on a grand scale-Nicolas Davies, Consortium News, 1/9/17
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"The term “propaganda,”...was defined by Edward Bernays in his classic 1928 book, Propaganda, as involving the use of mass media to plant ideas in the mind of the public on behalf of powerful political and commercial interests."...
1/9/17, "The ‘Post-Truth’ Mainstream Media," Nicolas J S Davies, Consortium News
"Three Minutes to Doomsday
"The dangers of a “New Cold War” are not distant threats that might materialize at some point in the future. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, advised by Stephen Hawking, 17 Nobel prizewinners and 20 other eminent scientists and experts, has been warning for two years that we are already as close to Doomsday as at any time in our history except for the period from 1953 to 1960, after the U.S. and the Soviet Union first deployed hydrogen bombs. As the U.S.-Russian confrontation escalated in Ukraine and Syria, the atomic scientists advanced the hands of their “Doomsday Clock” from 5 minutes to midnight to 3 minutes to midnight, with this warning:
“The threat is serious, the time short. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists does not move the hands of the Doomsday Clock for light or transient reasons. The hands of the clock tick now at just 3 minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty – ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization.”
And yet, in the midst of these real existential dangers to human society, Orwellian “post-truth” media are leading the public into a kind of dream world in which words like “aggression,” “propaganda,” “terrorism,” “defense,” “security,” “threat” and “violence” are exclusively appropriated as tools in the hands of powerful political interests and deprived of their objective meaning as useful terms for discussing the real dangers we are facing.
A recent campaign by an anonymous and shadowy Web site — given credibility by the Washington Post – sought to brand Consortiumnews.com and other independent alternative media as “Russian propaganda.” The blacklist of some 200 Web sites was produced by a new group called PropOrNot (which hides the identities of its participants and may be linked to the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command or Cyber Command at Fort Belvoir in Washington D.C.).
PropOrNot and the Post abused the term “propaganda,” which was defined by Edward Bernays in his classic 1928 book, Propaganda, as involving the use of mass media to plant ideas in the mind of the public on behalf of powerful political and commercial interests.
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Ironically, this is exactly what the Washington Post and PropOrNot are doing and the exact opposite of what independent alternative media do, so this campaign has given Americans one more reason to trust independent news sites with long records of producing genuine journalism over profit-driven servants of power like the Washington Post.
President Obama has just signed into law a “National Defense” bill that includes $160 million for new U.S. propaganda operations, nominally designed to counter “Russian propaganda.” But the Keystone Cops PropOrNot operation suggests that this escalation of U.S. information warfare will produce more blacklists, trolling, hacking, denial-of-service attacks and demonization of alternative, independent media by U.S. military psy-ops, “intelligence” agencies and P.R. firms, which will be loyally amplified and reinforced by censorship, rote repetition and circular analysis in the echo chamber of the corporate media, including by “social media” corporations like Facebook.
Like many institutions in our society, the U.S. media system has been degraded by the inherent corruption of the neoliberal order that has been consolidating its power over our lives and society for the past generation. Just as commercially driven corporate control has proven to be a destructive model for education, healthcare and other public services that leads only to corruption and declining quality, handing over the responsibility for informing the public about what is happening in the world to increasingly monopolistic for-profit corporations is eroding yet another vital pillar of American life.
Understanding the world we live in is a basic human need, and an informed, educated population is the most basic building block of any form of democratic society. So we desperately need independent media institutions that genuinely and honestly shed light on the world around us, instead of profit-obsessed media corporations cynically exploiting and abusing our concerns for our world and our future as bait for advertising and propaganda....
Imbalanced Accusations
To loosely use the term “aggression” to describe any Russian action that conflicts with U.S. or Western interests is to trivialize what the judges at Nuremberg called the “supreme international crime.” If U.S. officials or commentators were serious about the legitimate enforcement of international laws against aggression, they would first call for the prosecution of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and then try to make a reasonable case that President Putin’s actions meet the same standard of criminality....
'Russian Aggression'...
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) convicted the United States of aggression against Nicaragua in 1986, and international lawyers regard the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the U.S.-U.K invasion of Iraq and U.S. drone strikes as crimes of aggression under international law. Many believe that the invasion of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the government of Libya, the U.S. role in the Saudi-led war on Yemen and the U.S. bombing of Syria are also crimes of aggression for which the United States and its leaders should be held criminally accountable.
But the U.S. has carved out a regime of impunity for its crimes by withdrawing from the binding jurisdiction of the ICJ after its conviction in U.S. v. Nicaragua, undermining the new International Criminal Court, and using its U.N. Security Council veto twice as often as the other Permanent Members combined since the 1980s. U.S. government lawyers therefore enjoy the privilege, unique in their profession, of issuing legally indefensible but politically creative legal cover for war crimes, secure in the knowledge that they will never have to defend their opinions before impartial courts or the Security Council....
Nobody denies that the U.S. engages in cyber warfare and tries to influence elections in other countries, so the unsubstantiated charges against Russia over the 2016 U.S. election are only that they do the same as we do. In any case, Julian Assange of Wikileaks has explained in interviews that Russia was not the source of the emails he published. Former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray, who risked and ultimately lost his career for telling the truth about CIA complicity in torture in Uzbekistan, claims that there were two separate sources, both American, and that he met with one of the sources (or a representative) in Washington last September.
Murray’s record of integrity as a whistle-blower and truth-teller makes him a highly credible informant, which may explain why U.S. officials and corporate media have chosen mainly to ignore him instead of trying to impeach his credibility. Assange has also pointed out that nobody has challenged the authenticity of the emails he published, so, if their publication somehow lost the election for Hillary Clinton, it was because voters reacted to what she and her staff wrote in them, not to anything he, the Russians or anybody else said or did.
–As for some kind of generalized “aggression” or threat to its neighbors, Russia has not been involved in an attack on another country since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Instead it is the U.S. that has surrounded Russia with missile batteries, nuclear-armed submarines, Aegis missile destroyers, military bases and exercises on a scale that Russian military leaders could only dream of, since their military budget is only one-tenth of ours.
When a truly aggressive military power falsely slanders a rival nuclear-armed power as an aggressor, we should all be afraid, very afraid, not so much of the target of this campaign, but of the proven aggressor that threatens the very existence of human life on Earth by stoking these dangerous rising tensions."...
"Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader." image above via Consortium News
...............
"The term “propaganda,”...was defined by Edward Bernays in his classic 1928 book, Propaganda, as involving the use of mass media to plant ideas in the mind of the public on behalf of powerful political and commercial interests."...
1/9/17, "The ‘Post-Truth’ Mainstream Media," Nicolas J S Davies, Consortium News
"Three Minutes to Doomsday
"The dangers of a “New Cold War” are not distant threats that might materialize at some point in the future. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, advised by Stephen Hawking, 17 Nobel prizewinners and 20 other eminent scientists and experts, has been warning for two years that we are already as close to Doomsday as at any time in our history except for the period from 1953 to 1960, after the U.S. and the Soviet Union first deployed hydrogen bombs. As the U.S.-Russian confrontation escalated in Ukraine and Syria, the atomic scientists advanced the hands of their “Doomsday Clock” from 5 minutes to midnight to 3 minutes to midnight, with this warning:
“The threat is serious, the time short. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists does not move the hands of the Doomsday Clock for light or transient reasons. The hands of the clock tick now at just 3 minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty – ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization.”
And yet, in the midst of these real existential dangers to human society, Orwellian “post-truth” media are leading the public into a kind of dream world in which words like “aggression,” “propaganda,” “terrorism,” “defense,” “security,” “threat” and “violence” are exclusively appropriated as tools in the hands of powerful political interests and deprived of their objective meaning as useful terms for discussing the real dangers we are facing.
A recent campaign by an anonymous and shadowy Web site — given credibility by the Washington Post – sought to brand Consortiumnews.com and other independent alternative media as “Russian propaganda.” The blacklist of some 200 Web sites was produced by a new group called PropOrNot (which hides the identities of its participants and may be linked to the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command or Cyber Command at Fort Belvoir in Washington D.C.).
PropOrNot and the Post abused the term “propaganda,” which was defined by Edward Bernays in his classic 1928 book, Propaganda, as involving the use of mass media to plant ideas in the mind of the public on behalf of powerful political and commercial interests.
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Ironically, this is exactly what the Washington Post and PropOrNot are doing and the exact opposite of what independent alternative media do, so this campaign has given Americans one more reason to trust independent news sites with long records of producing genuine journalism over profit-driven servants of power like the Washington Post.
President Obama has just signed into law a “National Defense” bill that includes $160 million for new U.S. propaganda operations, nominally designed to counter “Russian propaganda.” But the Keystone Cops PropOrNot operation suggests that this escalation of U.S. information warfare will produce more blacklists, trolling, hacking, denial-of-service attacks and demonization of alternative, independent media by U.S. military psy-ops, “intelligence” agencies and P.R. firms, which will be loyally amplified and reinforced by censorship, rote repetition and circular analysis in the echo chamber of the corporate media, including by “social media” corporations like Facebook.
Like many institutions in our society, the U.S. media system has been degraded by the inherent corruption of the neoliberal order that has been consolidating its power over our lives and society for the past generation. Just as commercially driven corporate control has proven to be a destructive model for education, healthcare and other public services that leads only to corruption and declining quality, handing over the responsibility for informing the public about what is happening in the world to increasingly monopolistic for-profit corporations is eroding yet another vital pillar of American life.
Understanding the world we live in is a basic human need, and an informed, educated population is the most basic building block of any form of democratic society. So we desperately need independent media institutions that genuinely and honestly shed light on the world around us, instead of profit-obsessed media corporations cynically exploiting and abusing our concerns for our world and our future as bait for advertising and propaganda....
Imbalanced Accusations
To loosely use the term “aggression” to describe any Russian action that conflicts with U.S. or Western interests is to trivialize what the judges at Nuremberg called the “supreme international crime.” If U.S. officials or commentators were serious about the legitimate enforcement of international laws against aggression, they would first call for the prosecution of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and then try to make a reasonable case that President Putin’s actions meet the same standard of criminality....
'Russian Aggression'...
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) convicted the United States of aggression against Nicaragua in 1986, and international lawyers regard the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the U.S.-U.K invasion of Iraq and U.S. drone strikes as crimes of aggression under international law. Many believe that the invasion of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the government of Libya, the U.S. role in the Saudi-led war on Yemen and the U.S. bombing of Syria are also crimes of aggression for which the United States and its leaders should be held criminally accountable.
But the U.S. has carved out a regime of impunity for its crimes by withdrawing from the binding jurisdiction of the ICJ after its conviction in U.S. v. Nicaragua, undermining the new International Criminal Court, and using its U.N. Security Council veto twice as often as the other Permanent Members combined since the 1980s. U.S. government lawyers therefore enjoy the privilege, unique in their profession, of issuing legally indefensible but politically creative legal cover for war crimes, secure in the knowledge that they will never have to defend their opinions before impartial courts or the Security Council....
Nobody denies that the U.S. engages in cyber warfare and tries to influence elections in other countries, so the unsubstantiated charges against Russia over the 2016 U.S. election are only that they do the same as we do. In any case, Julian Assange of Wikileaks has explained in interviews that Russia was not the source of the emails he published. Former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray, who risked and ultimately lost his career for telling the truth about CIA complicity in torture in Uzbekistan, claims that there were two separate sources, both American, and that he met with one of the sources (or a representative) in Washington last September.
Murray’s record of integrity as a whistle-blower and truth-teller makes him a highly credible informant, which may explain why U.S. officials and corporate media have chosen mainly to ignore him instead of trying to impeach his credibility. Assange has also pointed out that nobody has challenged the authenticity of the emails he published, so, if their publication somehow lost the election for Hillary Clinton, it was because voters reacted to what she and her staff wrote in them, not to anything he, the Russians or anybody else said or did.
–As for some kind of generalized “aggression” or threat to its neighbors, Russia has not been involved in an attack on another country since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Instead it is the U.S. that has surrounded Russia with missile batteries, nuclear-armed submarines, Aegis missile destroyers, military bases and exercises on a scale that Russian military leaders could only dream of, since their military budget is only one-tenth of ours.
When a truly aggressive military power falsely slanders a rival nuclear-armed power as an aggressor, we should all be afraid, very afraid, not so much of the target of this campaign, but of the proven aggressor that threatens the very existence of human life on Earth by stoking these dangerous rising tensions."...
"Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader." image above via Consortium News
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Sunday, January 8, 2017
Obama flip flop on his way out the door, orders 300 Marines to Afghanistan's Helmand province for "high risk mission." In 2014 Obama said combat mission was over. Taliban mock "final failed efforts" of Obama-Reuters, 1/8/17
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1/8/17, "U.S. to send 300 Marines to Afghanistan's Helmand province," Reuters, Josh Smith
"About 300 U.S. Marines will be sent to Afghanistan's Helmand province to assist Afghan security forces battling Taliban insurgents in intelligence and logistics matters, the unit's commander said over the weekend.
The deployment to Helmand will be the Marines' first to the southern province since they left in 2014 as the U.S. declared an end to its combat mission. Since then, Afghan security forces, still backed by Washington in the form of air strikes and hundreds of advisors, have struggled to contain the Taliban advance in Helmand.
Brigadier General Roger Turner told reporters on a conference call that the deployment would be part of a regular rotation to replace a U.S. Army unit already training and advising Afghan troops in the province. And although the 300 Marines would mostly be experienced and senior officers who will work on intelligence, logistics, and administration, Turner said they were braced for a dangerous mission.
"We're viewing this as a high-risk mission...We're not in any way viewing this as a noncombat mission, or something to take lightly."
Tens of thousands of Marines fought fierce battles against the Taliban in Helmand over five years.
Nearly 1,000 coalition troops have been killed there since the U.S.-led military intervention in 2001, more than in any other province.
In the last two years the Taliban have captured areas that were the site of some of the deadliest battles for the Marines, including Sangin, Marjah and Nowzad, and for much of 2016 they have threatened to take the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
In a statement posted online, Taliban officials ridiculed the Marines' deployment as one of the "final failed efforts" by outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama to stem the violence in Afghanistan.
In recent months the U.S. military has also announced rotations of roughly 3,000 Army soldiers to Afghanistan, where about 8,400 American troops conduct both advising missions, as well as "counter terrorism" operations against groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda.
A small number of Marines are already in Afghanistan, including around 60 who help to secure the huge air base at Bagram."
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1/8/17, "U.S. to send 300 Marines to Afghanistan's Helmand province," Reuters, Josh Smith
"About 300 U.S. Marines will be sent to Afghanistan's Helmand province to assist Afghan security forces battling Taliban insurgents in intelligence and logistics matters, the unit's commander said over the weekend.
The deployment to Helmand will be the Marines' first to the southern province since they left in 2014 as the U.S. declared an end to its combat mission. Since then, Afghan security forces, still backed by Washington in the form of air strikes and hundreds of advisors, have struggled to contain the Taliban advance in Helmand.
Brigadier General Roger Turner told reporters on a conference call that the deployment would be part of a regular rotation to replace a U.S. Army unit already training and advising Afghan troops in the province. And although the 300 Marines would mostly be experienced and senior officers who will work on intelligence, logistics, and administration, Turner said they were braced for a dangerous mission.
"We're viewing this as a high-risk mission...We're not in any way viewing this as a noncombat mission, or something to take lightly."
Tens of thousands of Marines fought fierce battles against the Taliban in Helmand over five years.
Nearly 1,000 coalition troops have been killed there since the U.S.-led military intervention in 2001, more than in any other province.
In the last two years the Taliban have captured areas that were the site of some of the deadliest battles for the Marines, including Sangin, Marjah and Nowzad, and for much of 2016 they have threatened to take the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
In a statement posted online, Taliban officials ridiculed the Marines' deployment as one of the "final failed efforts" by outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama to stem the violence in Afghanistan.
In recent months the U.S. military has also announced rotations of roughly 3,000 Army soldiers to Afghanistan, where about 8,400 American troops conduct both advising missions, as well as "counter terrorism" operations against groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda.
A small number of Marines are already in Afghanistan, including around 60 who help to secure the huge air base at Bagram."
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Friday, January 6, 2017
Electoral College makes it official: Trump wins presidency, Joe Biden says, "It's over." Trump finished with 304 electoral votes, Hillary with 227-AP, 1/6/17
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Trump finished with 304 electoral votes and Democrat Hillary Clinton got 227. There were seven protest votes for other candidates. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
As expected, Mike Pence was elected vice president. Trump and Pence are to be sworn in on Jan. 20.
As the votes were announced for state after state, Democratic members of the House stood up to object. But in each case, no Democratic senator would join them, and Biden cut them off.
"There can be no debate," Biden said repeatedly.
Under federal law, if at least one senator and one House member object to the vote from any state, the House and Senate will meet separately to debate the merits of the objection.
Toward the end of the count, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., pleaded for a senator to join her in objecting.
"Is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection?" Waters said to boos from Republicans. None did.
Several protesters were ejected from the public gallery as the vote count concluded."...
Congress certified
Donald Trump's presidential victory Friday over the objections of a
handful of House Democrats, with Vice President Joe Biden pronouncing,
"It is over."
House Democrats objected to the votes from at least 10 states....In each case, their objections were denied because they didn't have the support of any senators.
All 538 electors met in their respective state capitals in December to cast their votes.
Friday's vote count made it official. Biden presided over the count in his role as president of the Senate.
House Democrats objected to the votes from at least 10 states....In each case, their objections were denied because they didn't have the support of any senators.
All 538 electors met in their respective state capitals in December to cast their votes.
Friday's vote count made it official. Biden presided over the count in his role as president of the Senate.
Trump finished with 304 electoral votes and Democrat Hillary Clinton got 227. There were seven protest votes for other candidates. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
As expected, Mike Pence was elected vice president. Trump and Pence are to be sworn in on Jan. 20.
As the votes were announced for state after state, Democratic members of the House stood up to object. But in each case, no Democratic senator would join them, and Biden cut them off.
"There can be no debate," Biden said repeatedly.
Under federal law, if at least one senator and one House member object to the vote from any state, the House and Senate will meet separately to debate the merits of the objection.
Toward the end of the count, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., pleaded for a senator to join her in objecting.
"Is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection?" Waters said to boos from Republicans. None did.
Several protesters were ejected from the public gallery as the vote count concluded."...
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