On Friday night, July 28, US President Donald Trump said that he would sign into law the increased economic sanctions (passed by 98–2 in the Senate and 419–3 in the House) against any business that is declared to have “knowingly provided goods or services . . . for construction, modernisation, or repair of Russia’s energy export pipelines.” Continue reading
Russia has long been the chief seller of energy—mainly gas and oil—in the world’s largest energy-market: the EU, or Europe. This means that U.S.-based energy companies, such as Exxon and Halliburton, aren’t the ones who dominate in supplying oil, gas, pipelines, and other energy-supplying needs, to the consumers and businesses in the world’s largest energy-market: Europe. Continue reading
This isn’t only about U.S. President Barack Obama’s secret policy on Syria; it’s also about his successor, Donald Trump, adopting that secret policy, and about the U.S. press keeping this policy secret from the U.S. public—effectively blinding America’s voters so they can’t see, much less understand, the U.S. government’s ongoing international looting-operation, nor even the key parts of it. Continue reading
The official U.S. government line is that Iran is the main country responsible for the 9/11 attacks in America. On 9 March 2016, a U.S. civil court ruled that Iran must pay to some victims of the 9/11 attacks $10.5 billion in fines, and the Obama administration had no comment, so the U.S. press ignored the verdict almost totally. But this verdict was the only official U.S. court ruling thus far about state-sponsorship of the 9/11 attacks, 16 years after the event. It was therefore huge news on 9 March 2016—it created a precedent, for the U.S. government to allege that Iran had caused the 9/11 attacks and is consequently ‘the number one terrorist state’ (as Israelis have long claimed). But it received very little coverage at the time. Continue reading
On Wednesday, May 17, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has built his political career as both a fundamentalist Christian, and a client of the libertarian Koch brothers’ extensive fundraising network, made his unofficial but starting bid to become the U.S. president: he formed an organization to raise funds from billionaires and centi-millionaires, in order for Pence to be able to distribute those wealthy investors’ funds to Republican politicians (especially to ones in the U.S. Senate and House) whom Pence favors, and who might reasonably then be expected to return that favor by their supporting a Pence bid to become the U.S. president. Of course, the presidency is the only American political office that’s higher than Pence’s current one, the vice presidency. Continue reading
What’s behind restoration of the Cold War is a fall off in the global armaments trade after the capitalist-versus-communist Cold War ended with the 9 November 1989 opening-up of the Berlin Wall, and after the ideological excuse for buying and using nuclear weapons thus ended when the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance against America’s NATO alliance ended soon thereafter, in 1991. Weapons became less needed, because there was no longer an ideological excuse available for invading, and for perpetrating (and/or backing) coups in, foreign countries. And this reduction in the weapons-market harmed the major investors in arms-manufacturing international corporations. Their business was suffering. Continue reading
The New York Times, as Robert Parry has pointed out, “Cheers the Rise of Censorship”, but only of censorship of any allegations that expose the fraudulence of the NYT’s allegations. The Washington Post, Google, the TV networks, and practically all of the famous providers of ‘news,’ have joined forces in order to block from the internet any statements that contradict, or especially any evidence that disproves, what they collectively define to be ’true’; and, while they do this, they add a lie, that their sole aim in doing this rigging of web-search results is to prevent ‘misinformation’ from polluting your mind. They use as an excuse the existence of some flagrantly fabricated reports on obscure websites, but if the mainstream press can ban reports such as those, then they can also ban real news reports, which expose the mainstream’s own lies. In other words: they are implementing their collective power to block you from being able to know that they’re systematically lying. Will the public trust them with this power? Continue reading
It usually comes from his actions, instead of from his words, but sometimes Trump mocks his voters verbally too, such as when the New York Daily News bannered on 9 December 2016, SEE IT: Donald Trump admits he doesn’t ‘care’ about locking up Hillary Clinton and opened: President-elect Donald Trump once again disassociated himself from his aggressive campaign rhetoric when he told a crowd in Michigan on Friday [9 December] that he doesn’t “care” about putting Hillary Clinton in jail anymore. Continue reading
On Monday, April 25, the AP headlined, “US general in Afghanistan suggests Russia arming the Taliban” and reported that U.S. Pentagon chief James “Mad Dog” Mattis was accusing Russia of violating the sovereignty of unnamed nation(s) and was supplying weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan—the very same group that the U.S. back in 1979 had begun arming in Pakistan so that the Taliban would invade Afghanistan and lure Soviet forces into Afghanistan, so as to make the Soviets “bleed” there, as the U.S. itself had bled in its Vietnam War. The U.S. National Security Advisor at that time went to Pakistan and rallied the Taliban there by saying “Your cause is right, and God is on your side!” Continue reading
According to Bloomberg News, “When it comes to buying homes on the coast, most Floridians are still optimists. Since the end of 2010, median home prices in and around Miami rose 120 percent.” In other words: they’ve more than doubled. And yet, “Relative sea levels in South Florida are roughly four inches higher now than in 1992. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts sea levels will rise as much as three feet in Miami by 2060.” Continue reading
Daniel Goldhagen blamed the Holocaust on “the Germans” (by which he meant the German people), and said that they perpetrated the Holocaust because they positively enjoyed murdering “the Jews.” But, as has long been well understood by historians (except when they fail to point to it as being a disproof of Goldhagen’s bigoted and indefensible anti-German thesis), Hitler had to work long and hard in order to bring about a consensus, first amongst his own leadership group, and then in the population as a whole, favoring the extermination-option. Hitler, Der Fuehrer, “The Leader,” clearly was the catalyst turning the chemical mixture into the chemical reaction known as the Holocaust. Without Hitler, it would not have taken place. Thus, the issue that has always been failed by ‘historians’ is not why “the Germans” did it (which Goldhagen botched), but why the Nazi leadership did it, and ultimately why Der Fuehrer did it. Continue reading
Who trusts the U.S. government and American news media nowadays? Only dupes possibly can. Just look at the recent history, for the evidence on that. Continue reading
Donald Trump has reversed his national-security policies 180 degrees, and is now focusing it around conquering Russia, instead of around reducing the threat from jihadists. The reason for this drastic change is in order for him to be able to win the support of the U.S. aristocracy, who had overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton during the presidential contest, and who (and whose ‘news’media) have been trying to portray Trump as “Putin’s fool” or even as “Putin’s Manchurian candidate” and thus as an illegitimate president or even traitor who is beholden to ‘America’s enemy’ (which to them is Russia) for Trump’s having won the U.S. presidency—which they had tried to block from happening. Continue reading
As Trump’s presidency gets initial bearings, it’s increasingly marching in step with former President Barack Obama’s pro-Saudi, strongly fundamentalist-Sunni and anti-Shiite (especially anti-Iranian), and anti-Russian, military shoes. They have a very similar military-strategic footprint, one that Trump had condemned during his election-campaign: favoring more jihadists, more invasions, more wars, less security for the American people, and the creation of more failed states, and less security for everyone. Continue reading
Lee Fang at The Intercept revealed on March 31, that the Republican Party was defrauding the American people with assertions that its party has an alternative to Obamacare—the Affordable Care Act—and that it will pass it if and when it comes to power. His headline summarized the considerable evidence for this, “GOP Lawmakers Now Admit Years of Obamacare Repeal Votes Were a Sham”, and his article made clear that the Republican Party has no desire to serve the public, in public office, but are total fraudsters, whose sole real goal is to gain power in order to do what their big billionaire donors want done. Continue reading
Republicans demand a healthcare bill (or medical system) that will simultaneously (and without sacrificing quality of healthcare) reduce their total expenses on medical care—including their insurance premiums and their out-of-pocket costs—and that will also be more free-market (with less government involvement and regulations) than in existing U.S. healthcare policy (both before and after Obamacare began); they want more free-market, and less cost, and also no sacrifice on quality. Continue reading
The Republican House proposed healthcare legislation is a substantially more free-market approach to health care than exists in any industrialized nation. It would greatly reduce regulation of health care in America, and also considerably increase the choices that consumers would have in their health care. Another way of putting this is: it would considerably decrease the requirements that are placed upon health care insurers and providers. It would be as close to extreme free-market health care as can be achieved except for a system in which anyone can legally sell anything and call it “health insurance” or call it “medical care.” In other words, it would be more like anarchy in these fields. Continue reading
The AP headlined on March 9, “GOP health bill would cut CDC’s $1B disease fighting fund” and reported that this “pillar of funding for the nation’s lead public health agency,” which provides “public health programs designed to prevent illness and, therefore, reduce health care costs,” is targeted for “elimination,” by the Republican Paul Ryan-introduced healthcare bill—i.e., by the proposed legislation that President Donald Trump now says he is “proud to support.” Continue reading
Trumpcare—his promised replacement for Obamacare—is so blatantly atrocious that an excellent NBC News article on it is headlined, and documents that “Experts: The GOP Health Care Plan Just Won’t Work”. This was even before the Congressional Budget Office has had a chance to price out its costs to taxpayers (which can only sink it even deeper). Continue reading
The “deep state” is the aristocracy and its agents. Continue reading
Syria’s peace-talks are about settling a horrific six-year-long war, but this is more of an international war that’s being waged on the battlefields of Syria, than it is a civil war within Syria itself. This fact is often ignored by the press, but the peace-talks are really more between the foreign powers than between their proxies who are killing each other (and Syria’s civilians) within Syria. These peace-talks are international because the principals in this war are international. And, because the principals are international, the principles that are being fought over are, too—they are so basic that the end-result from these talks will be not only some sort of new peace, but some sort of new Constitution for Syria: really a new nation of Syria. Continue reading
On February 27, Reuters headlined “Trump seeks ‘historic’ increase of 9 percent in U.S. military’s budget” and reported that “Trump will ask Congress to boost Pentagon spending in the next fiscal year by $54 billion in his first budget proposal and slash the same amount from non-defense spending.” Continue reading
U.S. President Donald Trump came into office promising to “drain the swamp” of corruption, and to restore the American people’s control over their government, but what he has been doing since he started his presidency on January 20 is exactly the opposite: handing control of the U.S. government over to international corporations, and, really, over to the billionaires who control their corporations and who use them to rob the public everywhere (in ways some of which will here be described). Continue reading
ZeroHedge’s “Tyler Durden” headlined on February 21, “Bannon Breaks With Pence, Delivers Warning To Europe” and noted that before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis reassured European leaders this past weekend that the U.S. is as anti-Russian now as it was under Barack Obama, U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, had told European leaders “that he viewed the EU as a flawed construct and favoured conducting relations with Europe on a bilateral basis”—and that this fact supposedly raises a question regarding the Trump administration, of “which axis is dominant: that of Trump/Bannon/Miller or Pence/Mattis/Haley.” However, there is actually no such conflict: the Trump Administration, ever since at least February 14’s White House press conference stating it firmly as President Trump’s policy, is and will remain anti-Russian. Continue reading
Here is the reason why we are currently even closer to a civilization-ending nuclear war than was the case during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 . . . Continue reading
To say that a voter cares whether or not a given politician is a liar, is to say that even if the politician is of that voter’s own political party, the voter will reject the politician for being a liar. Continue reading
The Big Lies that pervade the U.S. ‘news’ media are the ones that are essential to sustain in order for the deceived American public to accept the fraudulent basis upon which the U.S. regime of Barack Obama has ‘justified’ his economic sanctions against Russia, and his pouring of U.S. troops and weapons onto and near Russia’s borders. Continue reading
Regarding the suppressed history in this present matter, here is the core of it from Schanberg’s 8,130-word article: Continue reading
Here’s an example: Ron Unz has called this article that he published in his magazine, The American Conservative, in 2010, and which The Nation magazine had briefly published in 2008 in an abbreviated version and quickly removed from its website, and which The Nation also blocked from being stored on any web archive site—he called it ”the biggest story of his [i.e., of Pulitzer-winner Sydney Schanberg’s] career, which has seemingly vanished down the memory hole without trace.” Unz asked, ”Could a news story ever be ‘too big’ for the media to cover?” The “alternative news” site CounterPunch reported on this story in print at the same time as The American Conservative, but also removed it from their site if it ever really was on their site (which site has far more readers than their print magazine ever did). CounterPunch had even earlier quoted excerpts from it but then removed that article also from their site. Continue reading
In the United States, there appears to be a virtual news blackout of what is happening in Ukraine and of why, and the following news-report breaks through it, so that the American public will know the situation that actually exists there. Continue reading
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The destructiveness of America’s alliances
Posted on July 13, 2017 by Eric Zuesse
Alliances between nations are military. Without being military, they would be nothing at all. Trade agreements don’t require alliances. World War I wouldn’t have occurred if there had not been alliances—it was built upon alliances. It was not built on trade agreements. It wasn’t even built on trading-blocs. Continue reading →