Tuesday 26th of November 2024
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the flag of the nightmare...

empiredoom

The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping. The current night and daymares that we are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present.

 

No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves. We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on “a vast tapestry of lies” that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a very long time. We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home and abroad.

But, as Pinter said, “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”

No one is more emblematic of this noble effort than David Ray Griffin, who, in book after book since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has meticulously exposed the underside of the American empire and its evil masters. His persistence in trying to reach people and to warn them of the horrors that have resulted is extraordinary. Excluding his philosophical and theological works, this is his fifteenth book since 2004 on these grave issues of life and death and the future of the world.

In this masterful book, he provides a powerful historical argument that right from the start with the arrival of the first European settlers, this country, despite all the rhetoric about it having been divinely founded and guided, has been “more malign that benign, more demonic than divine.” He chronologically presents this history, supported by meticulous documentation, to prove his thesis. In his previous book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, Griffin cataloged the evil actions that flowed from the inside job/false flag attacks of September 11th, while in this one – a prequel – he offers a lesson in American history going back centuries, and he shows that one would be correct in calling the United States a “false flag empire.”

The attacks of 11 September 2001 are the false flag fulcrum upon which his two books pivot. Their importance cannot be overestimated, not just for their inherent cruelty that resulted in thousands of innocent American deaths, but since they became the justification for the United States’ ongoing murderous campaigns termed “the war on terror” that have brought death to millions of people around the world. An international array of expendable people. Terrifying as they were, and were meant to be, they have many precedents, although much of this history is hidden in the shadows. Griffin shines a bright light on them, with most of his analysis focused on the years 1850-2018.

As a theological and philosophical scholar, he is well aware of the great importance of society’s need for religious legitimation for its secular authority, a way to offer its people a shield against terror and life’s myriad fears through a protective myth that has been used successfully by the United States to terrorize others. He shows how the terms by which the U.S. has been legitimated as God’s “chosen nation” and Americans as God’s “chosen people” have changed over the years as secularization and pluralism have made inroads. The names have changed, but the meaning has not. God is on our side, and when that is so, the other side is cursed and can be killed by God’s people, who are always battling el diabalo.

He exemplifies this by opening with a quote from George Washington’s first Inaugural Address where Washington speaks of “the Invisible Hand” and “Providential agency” guiding the country, and by ending with Obama saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” In between we hear Andrew Jackson say that “Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number” and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1900 characterize America’s divine mission as “manifest destiny.” The American religion today is American Exceptionalism, an updated euphemism for the old-fashioned “God’s New Israel” or the “Redeemer Nation.”

At the core of this verbiage lies the delusion that the United States, as a blessed and good country, has a divine mission to spread “democracy” and “freedom” throughout the world, as Hilary Clinton declared during the 2016 presidential campaign when she said that “we are great because we are good,” and in 2004 when George W. Bush said, “Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.” Such sentiments could only be received with sardonic laughter by the countless victims made “free” by America’s violent leaders, now and then, as Griffin documents.

Having established the fact of America’s claim to divine status, he then walks the reader through various thinkers who have taken sides on the issue of the United States being benign or malign. This is all preliminary to the heart of the book, which is a history lesson documenting the malignancy at the core of the American trajectory.

“American imperialism is often said to have begun in 1898, when Cuba and the Philippines were the main prizes,” he begins. “What was new at this time, however, was only that America took control of countries beyond the North American continent.” The “divine right” to seize others’ lands and kill them started long before, and although no seas were crossed in the usual understanding of imperialism, the genocide of Native Americans long preceded 1898. So too did the “manifest destiny” that impelled war with Mexico and the seizure of its land and the expansion west to the Pacific.

This period of empire building depended heavily on the “other great crime against humanity” that was the slave trade, wherein it is estimated that 10 million Africans died, in addition to the sick brutality of slavery itself. “No matter how brutal the methods, Americans were instruments of divine purposes,” writes Griffin. And, he correctly adds, it is not even true that America’s overseas imperialistic ventures only started in 1898, for in the 1850s Commodore Perry forced “the haughty Japanese” to open their ports to American commerce through gunboat diplomacy.

Then in 1898 the pace of overseas imperial expansion picked up dramatically with what has been called “The Spanish-American War” that resulted in the seizure of Cuba and the Philippines and the annexing of Hawaii. Griffin says these wars could more accurately be termed “the wars to take Spanish colonies.” His analysis of the brutality and arrogance of these actions makes the reader realize that My Lai and other more recent atrocities have a long pedigree that is part of an institutional structure, and while Filipinos and Cubans and so many others were being slaughtered, Griffin writes, “Anticipating Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s declaration that ‘we don’t do empire,’ [President] McKinley said that imperialism is ‘foreign to the temper and genius of this free and generous people.’”

Then as now, perhaps mad laughter is the only response to such unadulterated bullshit, as Griffin quotes Mark Twain saying that it would be easy creating a flag for the Philippines:

We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.

That would have also worked for Columbia, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries subjugated under the ideology of the Monroe Doctrine; wherever freedom and national independence raised its ugly head, the United States was quick to intervene with its powerful anti-revolutionary military and its financial bullying. In the Far East the “Open Door” policy was used to loot China, Japan, and other countries.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/09/a-diabolic-false-flag-empire-a-revie...

there are no patriots here...

 

By PETER VAN BUREN

The anonymous New York Times op-ed writer inside government thwarting Trump’s plans does not understand how government works. Amplified by worn accusations in Bob Woodward’s new book, the op-ed is nonetheless driving calls for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment to save America. But look closer: there are no patriots here, and little new; it’s all nasty politics.

You don’t join government to do whatever partisan thing you think is right; you serve the United States, and take an oath to a Constitution which spells out a system and chain of command. There is no Article 8 saying “but if you really disagree with the president it’s OK to just do what you want.”

I served 24 years in such a system, joining the State Department under Ronald Reagan and leaving during the Obama era. That splay of political ideologies had plenty of things in it my colleagues and I disagreed with or even believed dangerous. Same for people in the military, who were told who to kill on America’s behalf, a more significant moral issue than a wonky disagreement over a trade deal or a boorish tweet.

But the only way for America to function credibly was for us to work on her behalf, and that meant following the boss, the system created by the Constitution, and remembering you weren’t the one elected, and that you ultimately worked for those who did the electing. There were ways to honorably dissent, such as resigning, or writing a book with your name on the cover (my choice), and otherwise taking your lumps.

read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/there-is-no-patriot-or-...

 

see: 

"The Age of Deceit"

 

see also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34254

another book banned by the mediocre media?


NY Times bestselling author Jerome Corsi reveals the secret plan to destroy President Trump.



Now Trump must fight back to save his presidency and America.

 

Secretly operating behind the curtain of “national security” in Washington, D.C., exists the real government of the United States — the Deep State. This is the story of the players who pull the strings, no matter who you voted for, who actually sits in the Oval Office, or even who controls Congress.

Now, the New York Times bestselling author of The Obama Nation, The Late Great USA, and Unfit for Command pulls the veil off the Deep State and the powerful agencies behind it — the FBI, CIA, DOJ, NSA, and the Federal Reserve.

In his latest bestseller, Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump, Dr. Jerome Corsi reveals for the first time powerful evidence that the Deep State is seeking to remove President Trump from office.

Corsi argues that no government agency, department, or official inside Washington — including the president of the United States — is immune from the powerful grip of the Deep State.

And despite an almost total media ban on this book — CNN, ABC, NBC and even Fox News won’t put Corsi on — Killing the Deep State has exploded on the bestseller lists — and is a New York Times bestseller, #1 Amazon bestseller and a Barnes & Noble bestseller!

 

Read more:

https://w3.newsmax.com/General/NMM/Offers/Killing-the-Deep-State-6Mo-V4?...

 

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america’s unsustainable global commitments...

 

Russia Gives Up on Trump and the West

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN 

By the end of his second term, President Ronald Reagan, who had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” was strolling through Red Square with Russians slapping him on the back.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.

And how have we husbanded the fruits of our Cold War triumph?

This month, China’s leader-for-life Xi Jinping stood beside Vladimir Putin as 3,000 Chinese troops maneuvered with 300,000 Russians, 1,000 planes, and 900 tanks in Moscow’s largest military exercise in 40 years.

It was an uncoded message to the West from the East.

Richard Nixon’s great achievement of bringing in Peking from the cold, and Reagan’s great achievement of ending the Cold War, are history.

Bolshevism may be dead, but Russian nationalism, awakened by NATO’s quick march to Russia’s ancient frontiers, is alive and well.

Moscow appears to have given up on the West and accepted that its hopes for better times with President Donald Trump are not to be.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is berating Russia for secretly trading with North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, saying, “Lying, cheating, and rogue behavior have become the new norm of the Russian culture.”

Cold wars don’t get much colder than defaming another country’s culture as morally debased.

The U.S. has also signaled that it may start supplying naval and anti-aircraft weaponry to Ukraine, as Russia is being warned to cease its inspections of ships passing from the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov.

The three-mile-wide strait lies between Crimea and Kerch Peninsula. In Russia’s eyes, both banks of the strait are Russian national territory.

With U.S. backing, Ukraine has decided to build a naval base on the Sea of Azov to “create conditions for rebuffing the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation in this region.”

Kiev has several patrol boats in the Sea of Azov, with a few more to be transferred there in coming months. Russia’s navy could sink those boats and wipe out that base in minutes.

Are we going to send our Navy across the Black Sea to protect Ukraine’s naval rights inside a sea that has been as historically Russian as the Chesapeake Bay is historically American?

Poland this week invited the U.S. to establish a major base on its soil, for which the Poles will pay $2 billion, to be called “Fort Trump.”

Trump seemed to like the idea, and the name.

Yet the Bush II decision to install a missile defense system in Poland brought a Kremlin counter-move: the installation of nuclear-capable Iskander cruise missiles in Kaliningrad, the former German territory on Poland’s northern border annexed by Stalin at the end of World War II.

In the Balkans, over Russian protests, the U.S. is moving to bring Macedonia into NATO. But before Macedonia can join, half of its voters have to come out on September 30 to approve a change in the nation’s name to North Macedonia. This is to mollify Greece, which claims the birthplace of Alexander the Great as it own.

Where are we going with all this?

With U.S. warships making regular visits into the Eastern Baltic and Black Sea, the possibility of a new base in Poland, and growing lethal aid to Ukraine to fight pro-Russian rebels in the Donbass and the Russian navy on the Sea of Azov, are we not crowding the Russians a bit?

And are we confident the Russians will always back down?

When Georgia, believing it could kick Russian peacekeepers out and re-annex its seceded province of South Ossetia, attacked in August 2008, the Russian army came crashing in and ran the Georgians out in 48 hours.

George W. Bush wisely decided not to issue an ultimatum or send troops. He ignored the hawks in his own party who had helped goad him into the great debacle of his presidency: Iraq.

So what exactly is the U.S. grand strategy with regard to Russia?

What might be called the McCain wing of the Republican Party has sought to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would make the containment of Russia America’s policy in perpetuity.

Are the American people aware of the costs and risks inherent in such a policy? What are the prospects of Russia yielding always to U.S. demands? And are we not today stretched awfully thin?

Our share of the global economy is much shrunk from Reagan’s time. Our deficit is approaching $1 trillion. Our debt is surging toward 100 percent of GDP. Entitlements are consuming our national wealth.

We are committed to containing the two other greatest powers, Russia and China. We are tied down militarily in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, with the War Party beating the drums for another larger war with Iran. And we are sanctioning adversaries and allies for not following our leadership of the West and the world.

In looking at America’s global commitments, greatly expanded since our Cold War victory, one word comes to mind: unsustainable.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/russia-gives-up-on-trum...

 

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The US are ruled by two entities: the president and the "deep state".  Fair minded people who don't believe in conspiracies don't "believe in the "deep state". What is it? Who are the deep state?

In the United States the term "deep state" is used in Republican and conservative political messaging to describe a conspiracy theory of influential decision-making bodies believed to be within government who are relatively permanent and whose policies and long-term plans are unaffected by changing administrations. The term is often used in a critical sense vis-à-vis the general electorate to refer to the lack of influence popular democracy has on these institutions and the decisions they make as a shadow government.[1][2]

The term was originally coined in a somewhat pejorative sense to refer to similar relatively invisible state apparatus in Turkey and post-Soviet Russia, where the Turkish military colluded with drug traffickers.[3] With respect to the United States, the concept has been discussed in numerous published works by Marc Ambinder, David W. Brown, Peter Dale Scott, Mike Lofgren, Kevin Shipp, Michael Tomasky and Michael Wolff.

While definitions vary, the term gained popularity among various groups, primarily supporters of Donald Trump and conspiracy theorists, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in opposition to establishment Republican and Democratic candidates. Following Trump's inauguration, the term was widely adopted among partisans alleging that there exists a deep-state conspiracy to delegitimize the presidency and thwart its policy goals.[4]

 

Read more:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_the_United_States

 

So, does the deep state exist? Well we know that something is not quite right and we know that some people in the Trump's administration are pushing for his demise, on behalf of ... you can fill in the blanks... knowing that the CIA, the FBI and other "intelligence" agencies in the USA have been lying through their teeth.

the sanction regime...

Washington is filled with talk of American exceptionalism. Policymakers insist that the U.S. has a unique mission in the world: to represent the aspirations of all mankind. This hubris has become the foundation of American foreign policy, especially when it comes to economic sanctions.

Sanctions proponents routinely extol the supposed benefits of their policies, without ever providing much evidence. Studies have found that sanctions are most likely to work when restrictions are international, applied to a limited number of products, and intended to achieve modest goals. Even then, governments rarely sacrifice fundamental interests in response to economic pressure. Rather, they respond like Washington would in a similar situation, resisting concessions even more fiercely.

Frustration with failure has encouraged U.S. officials to double down. So now Washington routinely punishes other nations’ individuals and companies. Last year, the Treasury Department added roughly 1,000 people and organizations to the Specially Designated Nationals List. American policymakers currently use the dominant U.S. role in the global financial system as a weapon even against friendly states, denying them access to the American market. Third parties face multi-billion dollar fines for dealing with those on Washington’s naughty list.

Even large, prosperous nations are vulnerable to American pressure. Thus, U.S. threats are typically enough to isolate any small country. For instance, for years the Sudanese government was forced to operate on a cash basis overseas, flying currency into the U.S. for its embassies. The Trump administration’s reimposition of sanctions on Iran opened the door for a rush of companies fleeing Tehran.

Yet even such enhanced penalties rarely change the governments they target. Communism continues to reign in Cuba. Sudan’s government remains authoritarian and Islamist. Few Korea specialists believe that Pyongyang will ever surrender its nuclear weapons. Russia’s Putin has not buckled under economic pressure. Instead, foreign states look for non-economic ways to retaliate against U.S. interests.

International economic pressure played a role in moving Burma, Iran, Libya, and North Korea towards negotiation with the West. However, sanctions were combined with positive inducements. And even then, success still was limited. Naypyidaw remains repressive, brutalizing an entire people, the Rohingya. Tehran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which has since been repudiated by the Trump administration, making further progress unlikely. The ouster of Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi will discourage any government from making serious concessions in the future. North Korea is likely to maintain its nuclear arsenal for years, even decades to come.

Sanctions are worse than ineffective: they have potentially far-reaching economic impacts. Limiting Iran’s oil sales pushes up energy prices globally. Penalizing technology sales to Moscow disproportionately affects European firms. Even smaller markets matter. Warned Peter Harrell, an attorney specializing in sanctions: “Trump’s August 9 tariffs on Turkey spurred a dramatic market selloff that not only affected Ankara but also caused the stocks of major European banks with business in Turkey to plunge and raised concerns about contagion to other emerging markets.” Washington’s promiscuous use of economic sanctions has moved the global economy away from the liberal marketplace.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/washingtons-endless-san...

 

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voting for the blue or the red nags...

So, it’s three weeks before the US midterm elections, and it looks like we have got ourselves a horse race! That’s right, folks, once again, it’s time to start playing with those forecast maps on Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight, and obsessively following the fluctuating poll numbers of congressional candidates you have never heard of competing in districts you couldn’t locate if someone held a gun to your head. You need to start doing this immediately, if not sooner, as the stakes in these midterms could not be higher. Nothing less than the continued existence of “American democracy” hangs in the balance, so the ruling classes need every last one of us to get out there and vote for somebody!

The fact that it only marginally matters who that somebody that you vote for is should not dissuade you from voting for somebody. Voting for somebody is your civic duty, and is no less important than rooting for a sports team, or maintaining a personal favorite color, or celebrity, or brand of hemorrhoid creme. Remember, if you don’t vote for somebody, somebody else is going to win, and we can’t afford to let that happen!

Now, your choices this year are particularly exciting, despite the fact that they are exactly the same as in every other US election since approximately the 1970s. Yes, that’s right, once again, it’s the Transgender Panethnic Communists of Color versus the Old White Cisnormal Capitalist Nazis, and what a spectacle it promises to be! The Old White Cisnormal Capitalist Nazis (hereinafter the “OWCCN”) currently control … well, pretty much everything (i.e., the House, the Senate, and executive branch), and so the Transgender Panethnic Communists of Color (hereinafter the “TPCoC”) are hungry, and are looking for some serious payback after getting their butts kicked in 2016. Rumor has it, the TPCoC are preparing to unleash a “Blue Tsunami” on vulnerable OWCCN incumbents, take control of the House of Representatives, and then not impeach the ass clown President they’ve been telling everyone for the last two years is both a traitorous Russian intelligence asset and the resurrection of Adolf Hitler.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/17/please-remember-not-to-vote/

the indissoluble link between militarism and imperialism...

Replete with historical examples, Griffin shows the gap between moral rhetoric and practical politics and the indissoluble link between militarism and imperialism –America has 700 bases throughout the world. The overall thrust of the argument is that the trajectory of American foreign policy ‘has been more malign than benign, more demonic than divine’ (p. 31).

 

Read more:

 

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/06/review-david-ray-griffin-the-america...

 

 

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