Stephen Lendman

March 5, 2012: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

AIPAC is a destructive, malevolent, evil force. It's heading Washington for war.

AIPAC is an unregistered foreign agent. It calls itself "America's Pro-Israeli Lobby." It's represented Israeli interests since 1953. Virtually no one in Congress confronts it. Doing so is a career-ender. It has enormous influence over US Middle East policies affecting Israel, including war and peace. It disseminates disinformation, lies and hate. It viciously attacks opponents. It calls Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and is racing toward a nuclear weapons capability." It manufactures threats to promote fear. It wants the Islamic Republic destroyed. It targets other regional states. It wants unchallenged Israeli regional dominance. James Petras says AIPAC's sole purpose "is to ensure Israel’s unchallenged military and political power over a huge region from North Africa to the Persian Gulf."

Its annual meeting "is the most outrageous public display of Zionist-Jewish power as it shapes US foreign policy." It threatens "to drag the US into another major war in the Middle East - this time against Iran." Doing so is lawless, madness, and self-destructive.

Philip Giraldi

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, poses for a picture with
the national synchronized swimming team during an awards cere-
mony for Russia's Olympians in Moscow's Kremlin. (08/15/12)

That 120,000 Russians can gather in the streets to protest an election speaks well of them and they should be left alone to find their own way. Would that half that many Americans could come together to actively protest the political process in the United States. That would be something worth seeing.

I confess that I cannot quite understand the campaign by the neoconservatives and also a number of leading Democrats to vilify Russia and confront it at every opportunity. The Cold War has been over for more than 20 years, but some appear to want to revive it. Russia has evolved into a developing democracy, has a relatively free press, has a judiciary that functions at least some of the time, is natural-resource rich, and has an economy that is now linked to the rest of the world and is doing reasonably well. On the negative side, it is plagued by corruption and cronyism as well as increasing authoritarianism, but the average Russian enjoys freedoms never experienced in Soviet days and can also see steady improvement in the standard of living. The country’s president, Vladimir Putin, continues to be supported by most Russians, though dissent is admittedly growing over his clear reluctance to give up power.

Russia has a lot to offer the West. It has good ties with its traditional friends in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, and it still is seen by many foreign governments as an anti-colonial power. This means it is well placed to help mediate crisis situations with countries like Syria and Iran, which no longer trust Washington or the Western Europeans. Instead, however, the U.S. and some of its allies have seen Russia as an obstruction precisely because it refuses to endorse “humanitarian intervention” and regime change. Regime change has not exactly worked out very well in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and we shall soon see what will happen in Syria. Moscow’s cautious approach is almost certainly the better option.

And Russia is still a major military power. It is the only country in the world that has the ability to destroy the United States, which one might think would be sufficient reason to establish a friendly relationship. Russia has also indicated its willingness to reduce its own nuclear and chemical arsenals and to work with Washington to safeguard existing nuclear stockpiles through the bilateral Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.

Stephen Lendman

Never bet against Washington's imperial plans. New tactics follow failed ones. Efforts to oust Assad continue. Proxy killers can't do it alone. They're no match against Syria's superior military strength. It's committed to rout them. Expect NATO intervention anytime or perhaps post-US November elections. Libya 2.0 looks increasingly likely. What better way to finesse it than by staging a false flag attack blamed on Assad. America's false flag history suggests it.

■ In 1898, Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba harbor. The Spanish-American war followed.
■ Roosevelt manipulated Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. South Korea was used to instigate war on the North. Lyndon Johnson wanted war on Vietnam and got it.
■ Fake threats sent US marines to Grenada. Manufactured incidents precipitated America's Panama invasion.
■ Saddam was head-faked into invading Kuwait. The Gulf War, two decades of sanctions, another war, and occupation followed.
■ September 11, 2001 was the mother of all false flags. It's the big lie of our time. Eleven years of imperial wars followed. One segues to another without end. Syria is Washington's latest. Iran is next. Proxy wars always rage. Media silence makes pretexts unnecessary.