Israel always needs an existential threat to survive: Nima Shirazi

Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Nima Shirazi is a political commentator from New York City. His analysis of United States foreign policy and Middle East issues, particularly with reference to current events in Israel, Palestine, and Iran, is published on his website, WideAsleepInAmerica.com.

His articles and commentaries are published on a variety of online and print publications including Foreign Policy Journal, Palestine Chronicle, Mondoweiss, Media with Conscience, Monthly Review, Dissident Voice, Salem-News, Middle East Online, Indymedia, The Palestine Telegraph and Axis of Logic.

Shirazi is widely acclaimed for his precise and accurate analysis of the Middle East events and the U.S. foreign policy.

The world-renowned author and political scientist Norman Finkelstein has praised Nima Shirazi's work, saying that he is "a very smart fellow and remarkably well informed. It's worth taking the time to read what he writes."

Jeremy R. Hammond, political journalist and the editor of Foreign Policy Journal has said about him: "Nima Shirazi is a brilliant analyst whose writing gets right to the heart of the issue without any messing around. Reading articles in not only the mainstream media, but also on alternative and independent websites and blogs, is generally a frustrating experience, for the broad adherence of most (actually, almost all) commentators to a limited manufactured framework."

What follows is the complete text of my interview with Nima Shirazi with whom I discussed on a variety of issues including Israeli-American relations, Iran's nuclear program, the death of Osama Bin Laden and the Western media propaganda against Iran.


America Is Under Attack!

William T. Hathaway


World Trade Center Building 7 before the
treacherous government of the United States
& Zionist Israel demolished it, thus starting
their phoney "war on terror". - Editor

"Vicious fanatics are trying to kill us and destroy our country. They're blowing up our soldiers overseas. They've infiltrated our country. We must defend ourselves against these mad-dog berserkers before it's too late."

This litany has been repeated by corporate-controlled media and politicians for years now, pumping fear into us. It is used to justify a massive ongoing war that has killed hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings and almost bankrupted the USA.

But is it really true? Who started this war? When did it begin? The history of this conflict reveals a different story than the one continually beamed at us. The Romans were the first Westerners to try to dominate and plunder the Middle East; the Christian crusaders followed, then nineteenth-century imperialists. From the Arabs' perspective, the barbarians keep descending on them from the north, and they keep throwing them out. In the past hundred years the attacks have intensified as new treasure has been discovered: vast reserves of black, liquid gold under the desert sands.

During World War One, the British persuaded the Arabs to fight on their side by promising them independence. Thousands of them died in battle for the Brits because of this promise of freedom. But after the victory Britain refused to leave. It maintained control by installing puppet kings -- Faisal in Iraq and Ibn Saud in Saudi Arabia -- to rule in its interest.

After World War Two, Britain and the USA pressured the United Nations into confiscating Arab land to form the state of Israel, making the Arabs pay for the crimes of the Germans. In addition to providing a nation for the Jews, Israel would be a forward base for Western economic and military power in the Middle East. To the Arabs it was another European invasion of their territory.

In the early 1950s, the USA and Britain overthrew the government of Iran because it tried to nationalize its oil industry, which was under Western control. We installed the Shah as dictator, and he promptly gave the oil back to us. Then he began a twenty-five year reign of terror against his own people. His secret police jailed, tortured, or killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians who opposed him. Since they knew he was kept in power only by American military aid, they began hating the USA. They finally ousted the Shah, but then the CIA started subverting the new government, trying to bring it down. At that point the Iranians fought back by holding US Embassy officials hostage, which was a mild response, considering what we had done to their country.


The liberal way to run the world - "improve" or we'll kill you

John Pilger

What is the world's most powerful and violent "ism"? The question will summon the usual demons such as Islamism, now that communism has left the stage. The answer, wrote Harold Pinter, is only "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged", because only one ideology claims to be non-ideological, neither left nor right, the supreme way. This is liberalism.

In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mill described the power of empire. "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians," he wrote, "provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end." The "barbarians" were large sections of humanity of whom "implicit obedience" was required. The French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville also believed in the bloody conquest of others as "a triumph of Christianity and civilisation" that was "clearly preordained in the sight of Providence".

"It's a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers," wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, "but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open ended nature - its conviction that it represents a superior form of life [while denying its] selfrighteous fanaticism." He had in mind a speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which Blair promised to "reorder this world around us" according to his "moral values". At least a million dead later - in Iraq alone - this tribune of liberalism is today employed by the tyranny in Kazakhstan for a fee of $13m.


Living Under Israeli State Terror

Stephen Lendman

On November 6, Americans vote for president, Congress, and regional candidates. On matters concerning Israel, virtually every officeholder and aspirant expresses wholehearted support.

One-sided bipartisan platform language endorses it. Rock solid commitment defines it. Obama and Romney practically fall over each other affirming it. Doing so lets Israel to get away with crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide with impunity. It's no exaggeration.

Longstanding US policy permits it. Palestinians were thrown under the bus decades ago. Israel considers them lesser beings. So does America. Policies in both countries show it.

Human suffering is out of sight and mind. In late August, a UN report said Gaza won't be "livable" by 2020 without urgent help. At issue is improving water supply and safety, power, healthcare, education, other essential services, and rebuilding what war and regular Israeli attacks destroy.

UN humanitarian coordinator Maxwell Gaylard said conditions already are too severe to bear. Gaza's been suffocating under Israel's blockade for over five years.

It's democratically elected government is unrecognized. At the behest of Israel, Washington declared it a terrorist organization. Isolation renders Gaza's economy nonviable.

Peace and security don't exist because Israel prevents it. Land, sea and air attacks happen regularly. No one knows from day to day who'll live, die, or become permanently disabled.


Two New Wars for Us

Philip Giraldi

Normally Washington bureaucracies shut down in August, but this year the intelligence community was working flat out to develop information on two crises in the Middle East. One official describes a deep sense of foreboding, recalling NSC Counter Terrorism Security Group chairman Richard Clarke’s description of walking around the West Wing in August 2001 with his “hair on fire.”

Syria is on the frontburner as a shooting war in which the U.S. is already clandestinely involved. The attempt to come up with a consensus National Intelligence Estimate on the crisis has been put on hold, both because the situation is too volatile and because new intelligence paints an increasingly dark picture of the insurgency. A number of atrocities against civilians previously attributed to the Assad government are now known to be the work of the rebels, who are becoming less reticent about their plans to eliminate all regime supporters, which would include most Alawites as well as many in the Christian community. U.S. intelligence has also come to the conclusion that rebel militias are heavily infiltrated and frequently commanded by jihadis linked to al-Qaeda. Attempts by CIA officers to discuss the issue with the rebels’ political representatives in Lebanon and Turkey have been blown off or deferred, suggesting that the movement’s leadership might be fully complicit. There is also increasing concern about a domino effect spreading unrest to Lebanon. Even the Turks are backing away from more direct involvement, worried that major refugee and Kurdish-based terrorism problems are developing.


Destabilizing Venezuela Pre-Election

Stephen Lendman

On October 7, Venezuelans get to choose between Bolivarianism under Chavez and Henrique Capriles Radonski's corporatism they rejected resoundingly in 1998. Polls show they'll do it again. IVAD late August results show Chavez ahead 55% to 34%. Only 10% of Venezuelans are undecided. Eight major July polls showed Chavez leading by 15 - 27%. Subsequent ones weeks later revealed his support remains strong. Few doubt October's outcome. At issue is only by how much. On December 16, regional elections follow.

In late August, Chavez warned that opposition forces plan to declare victory before electoral results are announced. They'll say they won, reject National Electoral Council (CNE) totals, and claim fraud. They'll call for violence, destabilization and US help. "They are gearing up….with some allies in the world, some media, some social organizations to claim victory," said Chavez. "We know they are capable of anything." He urged respect for official results, adding:

"We will support the National Electoral Council. We call on all sectors to respect the referee, the Constitution, the laws."

Capriles' economic advisor, Ricardo Hausmann, said his campaign will announce its own results independently of official ones. Ultimas Noticias editor Eleazar Díaz Rangel said they'll "claim fraud (and won't) recognize the people's will."

Since Chavez took office in February 1999, 15 national and regional elections were held. Independent observers declared them open, free and fair. America's Carter Center calls Venezuela's electoral system one of the world's most reliable. Around 200 or more international observers will monitor October 7 voting. Expect confirmation of another exemplary democratic process. It puts America's to shame and then some. US federal and many regional ones lack legitimacy. Big money controls them. Ordinary people have no say.

Venezuelans however get the real thing. They're not about to accept pre-Chavez harshness. They want no part of corporatism at their expense.


Obama speech caps two weeks of demagogy and right-wing policies

Patrick Martin


Code Pink anti-war protesters march before the start of the
Democratic National Convention on Sep. 2, 2012 in Charlotte,
North Carolina.
(Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday night accepting the Democratic Party nomination for reelection brought two weeks of political demagogy at the Republican and Democratic national conventions to a shameful and repulsive conclusion.

In its banality, hollowness, self-glorification and unadulterated lying, Obama’s address was typical of those delivered by the politicians of the two corporate-controlled parties that are vying for power in the 2012 election.

Neither in Tampa nor in Charlotte was there any serious discussion of the actual conditions facing tens of millions of working people four years after the Wall Street collapse triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Still less was any program elaborated by either capitalist party to provide jobs for the unemployed or alleviate the mass suffering created by the crisis of the profit system.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact of the two conventions is that not a single significant political difference was articulated by either party. In a country with more than 300 million people, riven by social and economic polarization, the two officially recognized parties proceed with unanimity on all essential questions.

To call either Tampa or Charlotte a political convention amounts to false advertising. These assemblies decided nothing and discussed nothing. The delegates served not as representatives from states and regions across a vast continent, but as spectators and props in a political infomercial featuring appearances by politicians and celebrities.


Unemployment, Homelessness, and Debt: The Plight of the Young

Adnan Al-Daini

“Unemployment sucks. Youth unemployment sucks even more”

It is not a good time to be young. Our youth are bearing the brunt of the economic depression and its self-defeating solution of austerity and cuts. The future to them looks bleak; unemployment, debt and homelessness in various combinations, or all three beckon. Of course these three scourges (unemployment-debt-homelessness) are linked.

Youth unemployment (16-24 years old) is now 20.7 % in the UK. The average across the EU is 22.4%, with Greece and Spain leading the misery index at 52.8 % and 52.7 % respectively.

A report entitled “Youth unemployment: the crisis we cannot afford” produced by ACEVO (Association of Chief Executive of Voluntary Organizations) puts the human cost thus:

“Unemployment hurts at any age; but for young people, long-term unemployment scars for life. It means lower earnings, more unemployment, [and] more ill health later in life. It means more inequality between rich and poor – because the pain hits the most disadvantaged.”

The report quantifies the financial cost as follows:

“The human misery of youth unemployment is also a time-bomb under the nation’s finances. At its current rates, in 2012 youth unemployment will cost the [British] exchequer £4.8 billion (more than the budget for further education for 16-to-19-year-olds in England) and cost the economy £10.7 billion in lost output. But the costs are not just temporary. The scarring effects of youth unemployment at its current levels will ratchet up further future costs of £2.9 billion per year for the exchequer (equivalent to the entire annual budget for Jobcentre Plus) and £6.3 billion p.a. for the economy in lost output. The net present value of the cost to the Treasury, even looking only a decade ahead, is approximately £28 billion.”


Democrats Throw Palestinians Under the Bus

Stephen Lendman

Photo: Schumer calls the Jerusalem platform omission a 'mistake'. Luckily for the delegates, they saw their mistake in time and hastily corrected the platform. You see, AIPAC knows all there is to know about democracy. Paraphrasing Orwell's Animal Farm, we now happily bleat: All animals are chosen, but some are more chosen than others. - Or if you like, "Napoleon is always right." -Ed.

On Wednesday evening, Democrat convention delegates took three voice votes calling Jerusalem Israel's capital. Each time, nays sounded louder than yeas.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa chaired the convention. Despite boos and no votes more audible than yes ones, he declared rewriting platform language policy. Doing so violates international law and justice. Obama caved to AIPAC and other Israeli Lobby organizations. Pandering to Lobby pressure and Israeli lawlessness is policy. Palestinians don't matter so ignore them. Spurning international law is OK.

In 1947, the UN designated Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council. The area includes Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Beit Sahour. It encompasses Christian and Muslim holy sites. After Israel's 1947-48 War of Independence, it was divided between Israel and Jordan. During Israel's 1967 Six-Day War, East Jerusalem was captured and occupied. It remains so lawlessly today.


The Democratic convention: A scripted and empty spectacle

Patrick Martin


Michelle Obama 'loves her husband more now than she did four
years ago
'? The wives & family of all the people that have seen
their loved ones tortured and killed by Obama during his presi-
dency, what would they think about this tasteless spectacle?

The platform is discreetly silent on Obama’s claim of presidential authority to assassinate American citizens. Indeed, the word “drone” makes no appearance in the 80-page document.

As the Democratic National Convention went into its second day Wednesday, the predictable and banal character of this event became increasingly evident. Representing one of the two parties of American big business, the delegates assembled in Charlotte are a million miles away from the real conditions of life facing working people in the United States.

Speaker after speaker has sought to present the Democrats as the party more sympathetic to the plight of workers, young people, the unemployed, the poor, the sick and the elderly. But the speeches, devoid of any actual political content, have only demonstrated the vast social gulf separating the delegates, drawn largely from the more privileged layers of the upper-middle class, and the masses of working people.

Some speakers attempted to bridge the gulf with demagogy, usually of a right-wing populist and nationalist character, like the remarks of former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley on Tuesday.

Others told personal stories aimed at demonstrating their own rise from humble beginnings, like the keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. These accounts, usually of cloying sentimentality, aimed only to distract attention from the right-wing, pro-corporate policies of the Democratic Party.


What Bibi Wants

Philip Giraldi

It is September. And as surely as the swallows are preparing to depart Capistrano, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be arriving in New York. It is an annual ritual, with Netanyahu explaining to a skeptical U.N. General Assembly why Israel is not bound by the rules that most other nations observe. Last year the theme was Palestinian statehood, meaning that the Palestinians should not have any such thing until Israel says it’s okay. This year it is all about Iran, with Netanyahu preparing to “tell the nations of the world in a clear voice the truth about the terror regime of Iran which represents the greatest threat to world peace.”

Bibi will be in the U.S. for at least three days, and it is not certain whether he will meet with either President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney. I believe that he will likely meet with both because he knows that he has them in a vulnerable position that he will want to take advantage of to maximize what he can get out of them. He already has a commitment from Romney to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, which would make the United States the only nation to have its diplomatic mission in the disputed city that Israel claims as its capital, but this time he will be shooting for something much bigger. He wants nothing less than war with Iran, and he expects the United States to provide him with a casus belli, to set a date for the war to begin, and to actually do the fighting for him.


US Radio Host: Iran's International Profile Raised through Hosting NAM Summit

Interview by Kourosh Ziabari
With Some Final Comments by Stephen Lendman

TEHRAN (FNA)- American writer and radio host Stephen Lendman believes that the successful arrangement and hosting of the 16th heads-of-state Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran was diplomatically a triumph for the Islamic Republic, which disappointed Israel and the United States and helped Iran improve its political profile on the international scene.

Stephen Lendman believes that despite the US and Israeli propaganda, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran which wrapped up on Friday was a great diplomatic victory for Iran and meant a great defeat and failure for the US and the Zionist regime of Israel.

What follows is the full text of Fars News Agency's interview with Stephen Lendman in which a number of issues pertaining to the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran, the frustration of Western powers at the successful summit in Tehran, the attendance of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi at the summit, the prospects of the movement under Iran's presidency and the role it can play in fostering global peace and stability were discussed.


America’s Takeover of the United Nations

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya


Obama, Ban and the late Leader of Libya, Moammar Ghadafi
in 2009. Obama and Ban apparently did not feel comfortable
in Mr. Ghadafi's presence. (They later had him killed.)

The calls at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran for reforming the United Nations and democratizing the Security Council were not exactly new. These calls for UN reform were embodied by the conference’s dictum of “lasting peace through joint global governance.” These demands have been made over and over again by various countries and groups throughout the years.

Nor was everyone present at the NAM gala in Tehran a friend of Iran or open to the Iranian proposals for reforming the United Nations. The visibly shaken Jeffry Feltman, who was uncomfortably sitting with Iranian officials in Tehran alongside his new boss Ban Ki-moon, can testify to all this. Feltman is a clear symbol of how contaminated the United Nations has become by the imperialist interests of Washington.

The manipulation of the United Nations for imperialist interests, however, goes back a long way. From its inception, the United Nations was meant to facilitate the global influence of the US after the Second World War. The idea of the United Nations, which gets its name from the military coalition (called the United Nations) of the Allied countries that was formed against Germany and the Axis countries, was based on an agreement drafted by the US and the UK during the Second World War. This agreement, the Atlantic Charter, was written out while the US was officially neutral, but secretly supported the British war effort against Germany and its Axis allies by sending supplies to Britain through Canada. The US would later use the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a justification for entering the war and getting the other Allies to accept the Anglo-American Atlantic Charter during the war and then at the San Francisco Conference in 1945.


Stealth Corporate Coup d'Etat

Stephen Lendman

When freedom is on the line, mass support must save it. There's still time, but it's running out fast. Learn the facts. Know the stakes. Tell others, and join a struggle too important to lose.

Obama and other Washington extremists support an alphabet soup of federal and international freedom-destroying measures. SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, ACTA, and now TPP are stealth pro-corporate, anti-populist hellish schemes. Two previous articles by this writer called TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) ACTA 2.0 and a trade deal from hell. Another one said ACTA is worse than SOPA and PIPA.

Public Citizen's Lori Wallach heads its Global Trade Watch division. It monitors destructive trade deals like TPP. On June 27, she headlined her Nation magazine article "NAFTA on Steroids," saying:

TPP, like other destructive trade deals, is being secretly negotiated. Most people never heard of it. Media scoundrels ignore it. Whatever corporations want they support. TPP was cleverly misbranded. In 2008, Bush officials initiated discussions. They continue under the radar. By late 2009, Obama picked up where Bush left off. He backs everything he supported and then some. He wants virtual total corporate empowerment. Think of the TPP as a stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not survive public scrutiny. It provides Trojan horse cover for grandiose new rights and privileges for corporations and permanent constraints on government regulation. It favors investors at the expense of public health, food safety, clean air and water, sovereign control of resources, land use, energy, and virtually everything else that smells money, power and privileges afforded both. The stakes are extremely high because TPP may well be the last 'trade' agreement Washington negotiates." If enacted, other countries can join. If enough do, it'll be a global NAFTA on steroids.

Member countries will sacrifice national sovereignty. Their laws, regulations and rights will be subordinated to TPP rules. Their use of tax revenues will also be restricted. Buy America and similar national priorities will end. Rule-breakers will face TPP tribunal lawsuits and sanctions. Corporations will be empowered to sue countries outside their domestic courts. Private sector attorneys will become judges and juries.


NATO nations can never escape: even left-wing governments and parties are infiltrated by Atlanticists

Wayne Madsen

France and Greece were the only NATO nations to successfully quit the military structure of the Western «defense» organization. In 1966, President Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO’s military command structure and expelled NATO’s headquarters from outside of Paris. France has been a full-fledged member of the military wing of NATO since 2009 when Nicolas Sarkozy, with only verbal grandstanding from the French Socialist Party, reversed de Gaulle’s nearly four-decade old policy. In fact, in 1966, the French Socialist Party moved to censure de Gaulle for pulling France out of NATO’s military structure. Socialist President Francois Hollande has shown no inclination toward re-adopting de Gaulle’s policy and withdraw France from NATO’s military command. Hollande, like Sarkozy and the last Socialist President Francois Mitterand, is a committed Atlanticist.

In 1974, Greece withdrew from NATO’s military command structure in protest over the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. However, conservative New Democracy Prime Minister Konstantine Karamanlis, a fervent supporter of NATO, rejoined NATO’s military command structure in 1980.

Declassified Central Intelligence Agency documents point to a major program by the United States to woo leaders of European NATO countries to support the alliance, even though they may have been committed left-wingers and, at least in public, against NATO policies.


Phony populism from a party of corporate America

Patrick Martin

The opening night of the Democratic National Convention provided a grossly distorted picture of the Obama administration, presenting a right-wing, pro-corporate, anti-working-class government as though it was the second coming of the New Deal.

Speaker after speaker bashed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as the candidate of wealth and privilege and portrayed Obama as the advocate of working people and his reelection as the key to social and economic progress.

The utter cynicism of this claim was demonstrated by the continual references to Obama’s bailout of the auto industry as the high point of his concern for the working class. This action supposedly “saved a million jobs,” but there was no examination of the actual impact of the government intervention into General Motors and Chrysler on autoworkers.

Using the threat of imminent liquidation of the two companies, Obama’s auto task force, drawn from the top circles of investment banking, cut the wages of new hires by 50 percent, released the auto bosses of their obligation to pay healthcare benefits to retirees, and even stole dental and optical care from retired workers and their families.

White House officials—themselves largely drawn from Wall Street—spoke with contempt about the “unsustainable” pay and “gold-plated” benefits for which autoworkers had fought over two generations.


Entangled With Israel

Philip Giraldi

A guarantee of support for a strike against Iran overlooks the lessons of the First World War.

Israel’s attempt to steer American foreign policy has been nowhere more evident than in the sustained campaign to move the United States in the direction of war with Iran, a war that serves no American interest unless one believes that Tehran is willing to spend billions of dollars to develop a nuclear weapon only to hand off the result to a terrorist group.

The most recent overtures by the Israeli government have pushed the United States to make a declaration that negotiations with Iran have failed and will not be continued. For Israel, this is a necessary first step towards an American military intervention, as failed negotiations mean there is no way out of the impasse but by war, if the Iranians do not unilaterally concede on every disputed point.

Two recent op-eds have elaborated the argument, promoting the necessity of convincing the Israelis that the United States is absolutely serious about using military force against Iran if the Iranians seek to retain any capacity to enrich uranium. One might note in passing that this new red line, sometimes also called the abstract “capability” to create a nuclear weapon, has been achieved by moving the goal posts back considerably. At one time Iran was threatened with a military response if it actually acquired a nuclear weapon (which is still the official position of the Obama administration), but earlier benchmarks within that policy saying that enrichment should not exceed 20 percent or that the enrichment should not take place on Iranian soil have been abandoned in favor of what now amounts to zero tolerance. Those who note that Iran, which is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is under IAEA inspection, has a clear legal right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes have been ignored in favor of those who believe that Iran is somehow a special case.


Barbarians at the Gate: Terrorism, the US, and the Subversion of Russia

Eric Draitser


The damaged turbine hall of Baksanskaya hydroelectric power station after
it was attacked by militants in Russia’s restive North Caucasus region.

The seemingly endless attempts to subvert the Putin government are cynically designed operations whose overarching goal is geopolitical in nature.

The shootings and bombings in Ingushetia and Dagestan this week rekindled a long-standing, brutal campaign of violence and terrorism in Russia’s Caucasus region – one that has seen more than its share of terror stretching back to the Chechen “rebellion” of the 1990s. However, in examining the recent attacks, it becomes clear that there are political and geopolitical interests behind the scenes that are actively working to destabilize Russia, with violence as their most potent weapon. The attacks are not simply isolated terrorist actions, but rather, cynically orchestrated events carried out by well-connected criminal networks whose goal is to foment conflict and carry out the agenda of the US intelligence establishment in its subversion of Russia.


Wikileaks: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

William Blum

"We pledge allegiance to the republic for which America stands and not to its empire for which it is now suffering." [1]

Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, the Third Reich needed World War II, the Land of the Rising Sun needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home. What will the American Empire need?

Perhaps losing the long-held admiration and support of one group of people after another, one country after another, as the empire's wars, bombings, occupations, torture, and lies eat away at the facade of a beloved and legendary "America"; an empire unlike any other in history, that has intervened seriously and grievously, in war and in peace, in most countries on the planet, as it preached to the world that the American Way of Life was a shining example for all humanity and that America above all was needed to lead the world.

The Wikileaks documents and videos have provided one humiliation after another ... lies exposed, political manipulations revealed, gross hypocrisies, murders in cold blood, ... followed by the torture of Bradley Manning and the persecution of Julian Assange. Washington calls the revelations "threats to national security", but the world can well see it's simply plain old embarrassment. Manning's defense attorneys have asked the military court on several occasions to specify the exact harm done to national security. The court has never given an answer. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, consider an empire embarrassed.


The hidden, obvious, peculiar, fatal, omnipresent bias of American mainstream media concerning US foreign policy

William Blum

There are more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States. Can you name a single paper, or a single TV network, that was unequivocally opposed to the American wars carried out against Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam? Or even opposed to any two of these wars? How about one? (I've been asking this question for years and so far I've gotten only one answer — Someone told me that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had unequivocally opposed the invasion of Iraq. Can anyone verify that or name another case?)

In 1968, six years into the Vietnam war, the Boston Globe surveyed the editorial positions of 39 leading US papers concerning the war and found that "none advocated a pull-out".[1]

Now, can you name an American daily newspaper or TV network that more or less gives any support to any US government ODE (Officially Designated Enemy)? Like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Fidel or Raul Castro of Cuba, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Rafael Correa of Ecuador (even before the current Assange matter), or Evo Morales of Bolivia? I mean that presents the ODE's point of view in a reasonably fair manner most of the time? Or any ODE of the recent past like Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, or Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti?


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