Blowback in Paris –Stirred *Up Muslims/ Terrorists Kill at Least 140 *Stirred up-Note ;When questioned if he had any regrets in supporting Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan during 1980s , Zbigniew Brzezinski in a January 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, replied, "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"." Nonsense--" responded Brzezinski when asked "If Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today." Brzezinski was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser. "Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators and warriors have resorted to through history. If, as Clausewitz wrote, war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means." Patrick J. Buchanan "The United States has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six de

Blowback in Paris –Stirred *Up Muslims/ Terrorists Kill at Least 140

*Stirred up-Note ;When questioned if he had any regrets in supporting Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan during 1980s , Zbigniew Brzezinski in a January 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, replied, "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"." Nonsense--" responded Brzezinski when asked "If Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today." Brzezinski was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser.

"Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators and warriors have resorted to through history. If, as Clausewitz wrote, war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means." Patrick J. Buchanan

"The United States has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six decades, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly," and is thus "partly to blame for the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a world-wide phenomenon." Robert Drefuss.

Blowback in Paris –terrorists Kill at Least 140

By Reuters

November 14, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Reuters" -  PARIS: Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked busy restaurants, bars and a concert hall at locations around Paris Friday, killing scores of people in what a shaken President Francois Hollande described as an unprecedented terrorist attack.

Police sources said at least 100 people were killed in a concert hall alone, with more than 40 killed in other attacks and at least another 60 wounded in the Paris region.

French media reported varying unofficial death tolls.

The apparently coordinated gun and bomb assault came as the country, a founding member of the U.S.-led coalition waging airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks ahead of a global climate conference due to open later this month.

Hollande, who was attending an international football match with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier when several blats took place outside the national stadium, declared a state of emergency in the Paris region and announced the closure of France's borders to stop perpetrators escaping.

"This is a horror," the visibly shaken president said in a midnight television address to the nation before chairing an emergency cabinet meeting.

All emergency services were mobilized, police leave was canceled and hospitals recalled staff to cope with the casualties.

Hollande said police were launching an assault at one of the attack sites as he spoke.

A Reuters witness heard five explosions outside the Bataclan music hall, where up to 60 people were being held hostage.

A second Reuters reporter later said police had completed an operation at the building. BMF TV said three gunmen had been killed.

Earlier, witnesses said an elite anti-terror unit had taken up positions outside the popular concert venue, which was attacked by two or three gunmen, who were reported to have shouted slogans condemning France's role in Syria.

"We know where these attacks come from," Hollande said, without naming any individual group. "There are indeed good reasons to be afraid."

France has been on high alert ever since Islamist gunmen attacked the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket in Paris in January, killing 18 people.

U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel led a global chorus of solidarity with France and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the "despicable attacks" and demanded the release of the hostages.

Julien Pierce, a journalist from Europe 1 radio, was inside the concert hall when the shooting began. In an eyewitness report posted on the station's website, Pierce said several very young individuals, who were not wearing masks, entered the hall while the concert was under way armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and started "blindly shooting at the crowd." "There were bodies everywhere," he said.

French media reported five more or less simultaneous attacks in mid-evening in central Paris and outside the Stade de France stadium in the suburb of Saint-Denis, north of the city center.

There was no immediate verifiable claim of responsibility but supporters of the ISIS militant group, which controls swaths of Iraq and Syria said in Twitter messages that the group carried them out.

"The State of the caliphate hit the house of the cross," one tweet said.

Three explosions were heard near the Stade de France, where the France-Germany friendly football match was being played.

A witness said one of the detonations blew people into the air outside a McDonald's restaurant outside the stadium.

The match continued until the end but panic broke out in the crowd as rumors of the attack spread, and spectators were held in the stadium and assembled spontaneously on the pitch.

TF1 television said up to 35 people were dead near the football stadium, including two suspected suicide bombers.

Police helicopters circled the stadium as Hollande was rushed back to the interior ministry to deal with the situation.

In central Paris, shooting erupted in mid-evening outside a Cambodian restaurant in the capital's 10th district.

There were unconfirmed reports of other shootings in Rue de Charonne in the 11th district and at the central Les Halles shopping and cinema complex.

"There are lots of people here. I don't know what's happening, a sobbing witness who gave her name only as Anna told BFM TV outside the Bataclan hall.

"It's horrible. There's a body over there. It's horrible."

The attacks came within days of attacks claimed by ISIS militants on a Shiite district of Beirut's southern suburbs, and a Russian tourist aircraft that crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Earlier Friday, the United States and Britain said they had launched an attack in the Syrian town of Raqqa on a British ISIS militant known as "Jihadi John" but it was not certain whether he had been killed.

Both Iraqi Prez Saddam Hussain and Col Qaddafi were lynched

 

Now US Prez Candidate,then Sec of State Hilairy Clinton  had commented at Qaddafis lynching ,"We came, we saw he died, " Such a ghoulish statement ?So much for the so called superior culture and civilisation of Americans.

 

Another Paris False Flag Attack? By Paul Craig Roberts
	What do refugees have to gain from making themselves unwelcome with acts of violence committed a

 

 

Reaping the Whirlwind of Western Support for Extremist Violence

By Chris Floyd

November 14, 2015 "Information Clearing House" -  We, the West, overthrew Saddam by violence. We overthrew Gadafy by violence. We are trying to overthrow Assad by violence. Harsh regimes all — but far less draconian than our Saudi allies, and other tyrannies around the world. What has been the result of these interventions? A hell on earth, one that grows wider and more virulent year after year.

Without the American crime of aggressive war against Iraq — which, by the measurements used by Western governments themselves, left more than a million innocent people dead — there would be no ISIS, no "Al Qaeda in Iraq." Without the Saudi and Western funding and arming of an amalgam of extremist Sunni groups across the Middle East, used as proxies to strike at Iran and its allies, there would be no ISIS. Let's go back further. Without the direct, extensive and deliberate creation by the United States and its Saudi ally of a world-wide movement of armed Sunni extremists during the Carter and Reagan administrations (in order to draw the Soviets into a quagmire in Afghanistan), there would have been no "War on Terror" — and no terrorist attacks in Paris tonight.

Again, let's be as clear as possible: the hellish world we live in today is the result of deliberate policies and actions undertaken by the United States and its allies over the past decades. It was Washington that led and/or supported the quashing of secular political resistance across the Middle East, in order to bring recalcitrant leaders like Nasser to heel and to back corrupt and brutal dictators who would advance the US agenda of political domination and resource exploitation.

The open history of the last half-century is very clear in this regard. Going all the way back to the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953, the United States has deliberately and consciously pushed the most extreme sectarian groups in order to undermine a broader-based secular resistance to its domination agenda.

Why bring up this "ancient history" when fresh blood is running in the streets of Paris? Because that blood would not be running if not for this ancient history; and because the reaction to this latest reverberation of Washington's decades-long, bipartisan cultivation of religious extremism will certainly be more bloodshed, more repression and more violent intervention. Which will, in turn, inevitably, produce yet more atrocities and upheaval as we are seeing in Paris tonight.

I write in despair. Despair of course at the depravity displayed by the murderers of innocents in Paris tonight; but an even deeper despair at the depravity of the egregious murderers who have brought us to this ghastly place in human history: those gilded figures who have strode the halls of power for decades in the high chambers of the West, killing innocent people by the hundreds of thousands, crushing secular opposition to their favored dictators — and again, again and again — supporting, funding and arming some of the most virulent sectarians on earth.

And one further cause of despair: that although this historical record is there in the open, readily available from the most mainstream sources, it is and will continue to be completely ignored, both by the power-gamers and by the public. The latter will continue to support the former as they replicate and regurgitate the same old policies of intervention, the same old agendas of domination and greed, over and over and over again — creating ever-more fresh hells for us all to live in, and poisoning the lives of our children, and of all those who come after us.

Chris Floyd is an award-winning American journalist, and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Regime. For more than 11 years he wrote the featured political column, Global Eye, for The Moscow Times and the St. Petersburg Times in Russia. He also served as UK correspondent for Truthout.org, and was an editorial writer for three years for The Bergen Record.http://www.chris-floyd.com/

US  Led 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq and its brutal occupation ,as a result of which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed .Since the there are regular attacks and counter attacks in sectarian warfare created by US policies .

 

I have written more than 50 articles beginning from Sept 2002

 

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/12/50-articles-on-us-led-illegal-war-on.html

 

N0 37.Gen Taguba Unveils Abu Ghraib, US Gulag –

 "The abused are only Iraqis!" was the view of the US generals told to Gen Taguba

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34046&hd=&size=1&l=e     27 June, 2007

 

Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world : Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service. And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values."US Gen Antonio Taguba.

A senior US General in Iraq to Gen Taguba --" the abused detainees were 'only Iraqis.'"

 

38. IRAQ'S DOOMED 'SURGE' ONLY WIDENS GATES OF HELL     http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m34176&hd=&size=1&l=e                            3 July ,2007

 

"Be nice to America, otherwise we will bring you democracy." A bumper sticker in New York
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. Albert Camus
Television images showed a man running down a smoke-filled street in Baghdad holding a lifeless baby above his head. Smoke was rising off the baby.

 

Revenge of Muslim Terrorists against the citizens of France ,an ally in the regime change in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in Greater Middle East against UN Charter and international law destroyed by US led western powers

 

Amb (Rtd)K.Gajendra Singh 16 November,2015,Mayur Vihar,Delhi

 

http://tarafits.blogspot.in/2014/02/amb-rtd-k-gajendra-singh-cv-post.html

 

Terrorism is a new ideological trend, has nothing to do with Islam - Grand Mufti of Syria

The Middle East conflict - war in Syria and Iraq - has already spilled over. No one is safe from the terrorist attacks, neither East, nor West. Islamic State claims it is still strong, and its ideas are attracting new recruits to replace those...

 

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GOP & Dems just puppets of wealthiest US families - Justice party leader

The US faces lots of issues right now, from being sucked into a war in Syria to stagnating salaries and a shrinking middle class – and ahead of the upcoming presidential elections, people are looking for a candidate who can actually bring...

Nov 9, 2015 07:17

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US in stupor, doesn't know what to do or even what it wants in Syria - MidEast studies academic

As Syrian peace talks pick up speed, should we hope for any progress in ending the war? This conflict is a riddle, surely - as years go on, it becomes more and more difficult to sort out who's fighting whom and for what purpose. And over that...

Nov 6, 2015 08:46

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Eurozone crisis ready for comeback, here for a decade - German Economic Ministry adviser

The European Union and its euro currency were created by those who dreamt of a truly united Europe - one without borders, both physical and economic. However, wave after wave of crises are now shaking the foundations of that dream. Voices of...

Nov 2, 2015 07:23

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US military gives incorrect data on war with ISIS to White House - CIA veteran

As the war in Syria and Iraq drags on, and violence in Afghanistan continues, the War on Terror seems to be lost. Will the US rethink its strategy? Will Washington have enough courage to admit mistakes and learn lessons? Will other countries -...

Oct 30, 2015 10:06

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French ex-prime minister: Without Assad, neither EU nor US will be able to end Syrian crisis

Conflicting views over the Syrian crisis are stalling the fight against global terror. Under the pressure of the economic and refugee crises, European unity is too strained. Can the escalation of fighting be stopped - and what are the instruments...

Oct 26, 2015 08:05

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Saudi-Iranian feud unleashed sectarian war on the whole Middle East - anti-extremism advisor

There are too many players in the Middle East, and each for their own goal: a clash of Sunni and Shia, of East and West - and of course, there's a full-scale war with Syria and Iraq in the center. Islamic State, despite being a tyranny of...

Oct 23, 2015 07:41

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Former Afghan President: US not interested in winning 'War on Terror'

Despite 14 years of combat, the Taliban in Afghanistan are still strong and are launching another massive offensive. Can the extremist tide be stopped? Will Afghanistan be able to hold - and does the American presence help in the fight against...

Oct 19, 2015 07:19

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Bernie Ecclestone: America falsely believes it's greatest superpower

This sport is all about speed. Formula One is one of the riskiest competitions, with great victories often coming along with great tragedies. This year, the event is in Russia, and thousands of fans gathered to watch and see the road battle for the...

Oct 16, 2015 10:17

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US Congressman: Washington aims to impose disastrous trade policies everywhere in the world

A historic deal between the US and 11 Pacific Rim nations has just been brokered; American elites are praising it as the most beneficial deal for businesses – and yet, many predict that thousands in the US will lose their jobs because of it....

Oct 12, 2015 06:59

 

The US ‘Media Troika’: The Financial Press and Political Warfare

USA's'Troika' of financial media whores–The Wall Street Journal, (WSJ), the New York Times (NYT), and the Financial Times (FT) – 

Indian financial journalists treat them as Bible, Quran and Geeta .well produces London Economist serves as an elegant media whore and is very successful in Indian.

Extracts from US?UK media's role as handmaidens of western wramongers

IRAQ WARS-WESTERN MEDIA, PROPAGANDA ARMS OF GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATE INTERESTS

By K. Gajendra Singh,    Bucharest (Romania). 12 March, 2004

                                "Demand a broader view. " BBC      

BBC's Director General Greg Dyke, who resigned after Lord Hutton's "white wash" of the British government's role in the spat over correspondent Andrew Gilligan (in a Channel 4 News poll last week 90% thought Hutton was unfair) , said that Prime Minister Tony Blair's top spin doctor Alastair Campbell had written letter after letter throughout the conflict. "What Alastair Campbell was clearly trying to do was intimidate the BBC so that we reported what he wanted us to report as opposed to what we wanted to report," he said. Dyke had attacked American television reporting of Iraq war"For any news organization to act as a cheerleader for government is to undermine your credibility," he said. "They should be... balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other." He added that research showed that of 840 experts interviewed on American news programmes during the invasion of Iraq, only four opposed the war. "If that were true in Britain, the BBC would have failed in its duty."

How ever, BBC itself gave in its over all coverage a mere 2% time to opposition's anti-war voices, which was really the majority view of the British people. It was the worst of the leading broadcasters, including US networks, according to Media Tenor; a Bonn-based non-partisan media research organization. So much for the most hyped pristine western media outlet. ABC of USA with 7% was the second-worst case of denying access to anti-war voices.  

In a 4 July, 2003 comment in " the Guardian" titled "Biased Broadcasting Corporation", Justin Lewis, Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University confirmed the above result while refuting the anecdotal view that BBC was anti-war in its coverage.  "Just the opposite was the truth". A careful analysis by the University of All the Main Evening News Bulletins during the war, concluded that of the four main UK broadcasters - the BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky, BBC's coverage was the worst in granting anti-war viewpoint. The BBC had "displayed the most pro-war agenda of any [British] broadcaster."  Matthew d'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph described how "in the eyes of exasperated Blairites - the BBC whinged and whined, and did its best to sabotage the war effort". But the pattern that emerges from their study was very different.  

The supposed "impartiality" of the BBC did not fool many opponents of the war, who correctly saw it as a voice of the government. On March 29, 2003 for example, a demonstration by 400 anti-war protesters was held outside the BBC's office in Manchester and criticised the BBC for its pro-government and anti-Iraq coverage. 

The 'Media Troika': The Financial Press and Political Warfare

Western 'Mainstream' Extremism: Distortion, Fabrication and Falsification in the Financial Press

By James Petras

November 04, 2015 "Information Clearing House" -  With the collapse of the Communist countries in the 1990's and their conversion to capitalism, followed by the advent of neo-liberal regimes throughout most of Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, the imperial regimes in the US and EU have established a new political spectrum, in which the standards of acceptability narrowed and the definition of adversariesexpanded.

Over the past quarter century, the US and EU turned their focus from systemic adversaries (anti-capitalist and anti-imperial states and movements) to attacking capitalist regimes, which

(1) had adopted nationalist, re-distributive and Keynesian policies;

(2) had opposed military interventions, coups and bases;

(3) had aligned with non-Western capitalist powers;

(4) had opposed Zionist colonization of Palestine and Gulf State-financed Islamist terrorists;

(5) and had refuse to follow the financial agendas dictated by Wall Street and the City of London investment houses, speculators and vulture funds. 

The Western imperial regimes (by which we mean the US, Canada and the EU) have exercised their political, military, economic and propaganda powers to

(1) eliminate or limit the variety of capitalist options;

(2) control the kinds of market-state relations; and

(3) secure compliance through punitive military invasions, occupations and economic sanctions against targeted adversaries.

The 'Media Troika': the Financial Press and Political Warfare

The major financial newspapers of record in the United States have played a key role in disseminating the post-communist political line regarding what are acceptable capitalist policies: The Wall Street Journal, (WSJ), the New York Times (NYT), and the Financial Times (FT) – the 'Troika' – have systematically engaged in political warfare acting as virtualpropaganda arms of the US and EU imperialist governments in their attempts to impose and/or maintain vassal state status on countries and economies, 'regulated' according to the needs of Western financial institutions.

The propaganda Troika not only reflects the interests and policies of the ruling elites, but their editors, journalists and commentators shape policies through their reportage, analyses and editorials.

The Troika's methods of political operation and the substance of their policiespreclude any kind ofbalanced reportage.

Day in and day out, the Troika (1) fabricates 'crises' for adversaries and illusory promises of 'recovery' for vassals; (2) distorts and/or omits favorable information regarding adversaries, dismissing targeted regimes as 'authoritarian' and 'corrupt'. In contrast, obedient and submissive rulers are described as 'pragmatic'and 'realist'. The Troikaattributes 'military threats' and 'aggressive behavior' to adversaries engaged in defensive policies, while labeling vassal state invasions or aggression as justified, retaliatory or defensive.

A close reading of the reportage by the stable of Troika scribes over the past 2 years reveals the repeated use of vitriolic and highly charged terms in describing adversarial leaders. This prepares the reader for the one-sided, negative assessment of past, present and future policies adopted by the targeted regime.

Once the imperial states and the Troika decide on targeting a government and its leaders, all the subsequent 'news' is designed to present the motives of these leaders as 'perfidious' and the economic and social impact of their policies as 'catastrophic'.

And whenever the 'Troika's' analyses or predictions or prognostications turned out to be blatantly wrong – there are never corrections. Brazen lies are glossed over with nary a ripple in their smooth fabric of propaganda.

Once a government is designated as 'enemy' (ripe for 'regime change'), the Troika recycles the same hostile messages almost daily. The readers, upon viewing Troika headlines, already know at least three quarters of the content of the 'article'. A small portion of a report may refer tangentially to some particular event or policy decision for which the diatribe launched.

Working hand-in-hand with Western imperial regimes, the Troika targets the same regimes, using the exact same terms dished out by imperial policy spokesmen and women.

In this essay, we will discuss the main regimes and policies targeted by the Troika and its Western imperial state partners. We will then proceed to evaluate Troika facts, interpretations and their track record from the beginning of the onslaught to the present. We will conclude by examining the conversion of the mainstream 'serious' financial press into a triumvirate of tub-thumping warmongers.

The Troika's Targeted Regimes: Trumpeting Their Sins and Denying Their Successes

The Troika's propaganda war not only converges with the imperial states'destabilization policies ('regime change') but also is aimed at specific policies and agreementsamong supposed allies, partners and even vassal states.

The intensity of vitriol and the frequency of hostile articles vary according to the level of conflict between the imperial regime and its target for 'regime change'. The greater the conflict the more violent the language.

We find intense Troika hostility, in the form of frequent, hysterical attacks, directed against Russia, China, Venezuela, Argentina and Palestine. Even any suspected 'deviations'by vassals, like Chile or Brazil, in the form of popular domestic social legislations, are subjected to stern scolding and warnings of dire consequences.

The Troika Maligns Russia

The Troika's attacks vary to some degree with each target. In the case of Russia, theTroika routinely denounces President Vladimir Putin as an authoritarian ruler who has undermined Russian democracy. They claim Russia's economy is in crisis and facing imminent collapse. They vilify Russia's military assistance to the Syrian government of Bashar Assad. They question the viability of Russia's military treaties and economic agreements with China. In sum, the Troika portrays Russia as a once peaceful, democratic law-abiding country (during the kleptocratic years of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990's), which has been taken over by former secret KGB officials who have embarked on reckless overseas military adventures, while repressing their own ethnic Muslim populations (in Chechnya and Dagestan) and which is being run into the ground because of mismanagement and Western economic sanctions. They never bother to explain why the 'authoritarian' Putin maintains a consistently high citizen approval despite theTroika's litany of evils…

Troika-Backed Ukrainian Puppet Secures 1% Approval:

In December 2013, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, the foul mouth diplomat, puppet dominatrix and austerity zealot, bragged that Washington had poured $5 billion dollars into Ukraine in order to pursue 'regime change'and install a puppet regime headed by President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister ('Our Man Yats') Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister. Obedient to his Western sponsors and theTroika, Yatsenyuk proceeded to sign off on an IMF bailout and austerity program slashing salaries and pensions of Ukrainian citizens by half, reducing GNP by 25%, ending fuel and food subsidies and tripling unemployment.  These policies brought windfall profits for his billionaire crony capitalists and intensified corruption. The Troika labelled the Nuland's putsch a 'democratic revolution', applauding Yastenyuk for vigorously applying the IMF dictated program and predicted a prosperous future…

As discontent spread and anger mounted among Ukrainian citizens, Yatsenyuk continued to feed his own ego by reading the Troika's puff-piece editorials lauding his courage for staying the course of austerity and ignoring his compatriots' opinion polls, up until the October 25, 2015 elections.

As the elections neared, opinion polls revealed that 99% of the electorate (which excluded millions of restive citizens of the Donbas region) completely rejected Arseniy (now known as 'Nuland's arsehole') Yatsenyuk. Faced with the universal rejection of his starvation policies and crony capitalism, he withdrew his party (the Popular (sic) Front) from the election, but not from the 'democratic' government…

For two years the Troika had praised the Kiev junta, fabricating 'reports' about Kiev's positive economic 'reforms' ….which had benefited the 1% corrupt oligarchs while impoverishing the masses. The Western propaganda mills systematically distorted popular reaction among the Ukrainian citizens, citing imaginary 'anonymous experts' and phantom 'men in the street' in praise of the debacle. Never had the Troikaengaged in such blatantlydeceptive 'journalism' as its account of the two years of pillage and mass immiseration under Prime Minister Yatsenyuk. And when 'Yats' was faced with total repudiation, he blithely dismissed Ukrainian public opinion, claiming he was 'not concerned by temporary (sic) political party ratings'. His indifference with an electoral repudiation of 99% is rooted in a delusion that he will remain Prime Minister because he is widely praised by the EU, the US, the IMF … and the media Troika.

The Troika and China: Here Comes the Crash . . .?

In its 'journalistic pivot to Asia', the Troika deprecates China's high-growth economy by questioning its data and by repeatedly predicting the impending crisis, breakdown and mass disaffection.

The Troika describes China's defense policy as a 'military threat to its neighbors' and labels its overseas trade and investment policies as 'neo-colonial exploitation'.

China's national campaign against corruption and its prosecution of corrupt officials is dismissed by theTroika as a 'political purge by a power-hungry president'.

The Troika attributes Chinese advances in science and technology as mere 'cyber-theft of Western innovations'.

The movement of Chinese workers (internal migration) to areas with better paying jobs and investments is called 'colonization'.

The Chinese government's response to terrorism and armed separatists from Tibet and the Western Uighur regions is denounced as "Beijing's systematic violation of the human rights of minorities".

The Troika Castigates Capitalist Argentina (for a Decade of Growth)

Argentina has been on the Troika's radar for a decade, despite the fact that it has a center-left government, which rescued capitalism from a total collapse (the Crisis of 1998-2002) restoring the growth of profits. Multi-nationals, like Monsanto and Chevron, enjoy huge returns on their investments in Argentina.

The Troika denounces the government for running up budget deficits while ignoring the impact of a Manhattan court judgement to award a group of Wall Street 'vulture fund' speculators 'interest payments' of one-thousand percent on old pre-crisis debt.

The Troika claims the regime engages in populist excesses, which prevent large-scale inflows of investment capital.

The Troika describes the recent slowdown in the economy as a 'deep crisis', which requires 'deep structural changes' (namely the elimination of social funding for pensioners, low income wage earners and school children).

The Troika paints a catastrophic picture of Argentina: a decaying economy run by a demagogic political leadership engaged in falsifying data…to mask an imminent collapse…Troika and its 'Hate Venezuela'Campaign

The Troika's journalists and editorial writers, portray Venezuela as an unmitigated disaster: a stagnant and collapsing economy, ruined by an authoritarian populist regime repressing peaceful opposition dissenters.

According to the Troika, Venezuela is incapable of providing basic goods to consumers. Instead it resorts to draconian confiscation of goods from honest businesses – unjustly accused of hoarding and profiteering. The daily reality of manufactured 'shortages' is consistently ignored.

When the Venezuelan government attempts to stop violent cross border raids by Colombian paramilitary gangs and smugglers it is denounced as arbitrarily repressing Colombian immigrants.

When Caracas arrests opposition leaders because of their well-documented involvement in violent street demonstrations, promoting the sabotage of power plants and clinics and for planning coups, they are portrayed as violating the 'human rights of legitimate dissidents.'.

The Troika never mentions the tens of millions of US dollars provided by Washington to opposition NGOsto pursue its destabilization campaign against Venezuela. It labels US-funded opposition NGO's as "independent civil society organizations" (just like Ukraine before the putsch).

For almost 2 decades, the Troika has praised Venezuelan opposition groups as formidable critics of the Chavez-Maduro government, but has never explained to their readers why such 'formidable' groups have been soundly defeated in 14 of the 15 elections.

The Troika and Palestine: In Defense of Israeli Terror

In its Middle East coverage, the Troika consistently depicts the Palestinians as violent terrorists and aggressors while describing Israelis as their victims. According to the Troika, the Israeli army is engaged in justifiable 'reprisals' when they bomb and slaughter Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. The endless dispossession of Palestinians of their homes, farms and rights and the violent settler occupation by Israeli Jewish colonists is presented as the just settlement of Jews escaping persecution.

No mention or little importance is given to:

(1)  Israeli-Jewish desecration of Islamic and Christian religious sites;

(2)  Israeli systematic terror and mass jailing of peaceful protesters.

Palestinian resistance is described as 'incendiary, irrational violence'.

The Troika journalists produce 'articles' which are virtually indistinguishable from the press handouts of the Zionist Power Configuration in the US. The Troika even chastises their partner US-EU regimes for their bland criticism or expression of shock at Israel's most egregious crimes.

The Troika echoes Israeli and Zionist attacks on international tribunals charging Israeli officials with crimes against humanity. The Troika claims they lack 'balance'.

The Troika and Syria: Armchair Generals

The Troika has demonized the Syrian government of Bashar Assad while backing jihadi terrorists dubbed 'rebels or 'moderates'. It has long argued for greater direct military intervention by NATO armies to overthrow the government in Damascus.

The Troika, masquerading as an independent 'financial press' publishes scores of articles by dozens of 'armchair generals' who concoct military strategies against Damascus while ignoring heavy economic costs, the social catastrophe of 4 million internal and external Syrian war refugees and the grave consequences of the splitting up a once-unified secular nation-state.

The Troika and Wayward Neo-Liberals

The Troika even chastises states and governments which have adopted 'free market policies' but maintained or introduced moderate social palliatives. For example, the Chilean regime of Michelle Bachelet fell victim to Troika criticism for promoting a mild increase in corporate taxes and implementing trade union legislation allowing for greater workers' rights. According to the Troika, these mild reforms have led to economic stagnation, a decline in investment and greater social polarization.

Evaluation: Unmasking the Troika's Distortions, Fabrications and Falsifications

The Troika's 'journalism and editorializing' on Russia has totally distorted its recent political and economic history. Like all confidence men, Troika journalists and editors mix a few threads of facts with patent falsehoods, magnifying defects and minimizing achievements, ignoring positive long-term trends and emphasizing episodic negatives.

The Troika's accounts of Russia's recent military and diplomatic assistance to the Syrian government's struggle against Islamist terrorists, ignores the achievement in reversing IS advances and stabilizing the central government.

The Troika paints a specter of Great Russian geopolitical expansion and ignores the long-standing political partnerships and alliances between Russia and major countries in the region, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

With matters 'economic', the Troika describes the 'catastrophic' impact of US-EU sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, while ignoring the positive long-term results for Russia's economy –greater self-reliance and investment in manufacturing and agriculture as a stimulus to local producers and the emergence ofalternative overseas suppliers and markets, especially China and Iran.

The Troika highlights Russia's two-year recession while ignoring a decade and a half of substantial growth after the catastrophic 'Yeltsin' years.

The Troika falsifies past and present political developments. They discretely praise the Western-backed violent gangster-oligarchs who ruled Russia during the pillage years of the 1990's as a democracy while denouncing the relatively peaceful and competitive elections under the Putin Presidency as 'authoritarian'.

The Troika resorts to similar propaganda ploys with China. Any slowdown from China's three decades of double digit growth gets spun as an imminent collapse, ignoring the fact that the US-European business community can only dream of China's still robust growth rate of 7%.

The allegations of Chinese cyber theft of Western science and technology ignore the obvious fact that China's enormous public investment in basic and applied science and technology in dozens of centers of excellence has produced stunning achievements and levels of scholarship. A review of the international scientific literature and journals – paints an entirely different picture of Chinese advances from that described by the Troika.

Chinese economic growth through seaborne exports requires major investment and commitment to its maritime routes and security. To counter Chinese growth and assert US supremacy, Washington has signed new, provocative military pacts with Japan, Australia and the Philippines and escalated the intrusion of its planes and ships into Chinese waters and airspace. The Troika labels China's defense of its waterways as an "aggressive" military threat to its regional neighbors, while US military investments in bases in Asia and constant intelligence gathering exceed Beijing's five- fold. US warships brazenly violate China's 12 mile maritime boundary.

Troika scribes completely ignore the recent history of US and Japanese empires invading dozens of Asian countries, establishing colonies, and killing scores of millions of people. In contrast to the enormous US strategic ring of military bases and communications outposts throughout the Asia-Pacific region, China has no foreign bases or overseas troops – a fact one will never learn from the 'Troika'

The Troika's campaign against Argentina, permeating its pages, minimizes the role of a short-term contemporary slow-down in international demand for commodities and attributes Argentina's problems to its welfare programs, capital controls and state regulation. TheTroika fails to acknowledge the past decade of growth, prosperity and rising living standards among the people in Argentina.

The source of Argentine stagnation is not because of a lack of free market policies but the Fernandez regime's accommodation and promotion of the interests of international bankers, virtually all foreign debt holders (except one notorious 'vulture'!) and extractive capitalists (agribusiness, Monsanto, Barrack Gold etc.).

The Troika ignores 'the decade of infamy' – the 1990's – during which Argentina served as a bargain bazaar for the privatization of lucrative public enterprises and eventually collapsed in the 2001 crash with major bank closings, one hundred thousand bankruptcies and five million unemployed (30% of the labor force) – a thoroughly pillaged economy. Instead the Troika fabricates an ideal world of past free market prosperity in order to condemn contemporary Argentine, ignoring the real historical record of a liberal debacle and Keynesian recovery.

Venezuela is currently in a severe crisis, as the Troika scribes remind us in their shrill reports – blaming it entirely on 'populist' (i.e. public spending on social welfare) and 'nationalist' policies.

The Troika ignores the well-documented sabotage by the importers and distributers in the private business community, hoarding, excess profiteering and currency speculation. These problems are exacerbated by the sharp decline of oil revenues resulting from international market forces, and not merely government mismanagement.

The Troika tells their readers that the Chavez and Maduro governments are authoritarian, ignoring the dozen and a half free and competitive elections since Chavez' ascent to power. Moreover, the Troika has remained rather quiet over their verbally violent editorial support for the opposition business-led and US embassy-backed military coup in 2002 and an aborted coup in 2014.

Conclusion

The Troika: the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the Financial Times have repeatedly made false prognoses regarding the economic performances of governments targeted for 'regime change'. Their economic predictions were repeatedly wrong and their readers among the investor public would have lost their shirts if they had taken their cues from the Troika's editorial pages and bet 'short' against China and the rest…

Their perverse denunciations of Russian and Chinese military defense activities are sharpening world tensions. Their support for ethnic separatists in the Russian Caucuses and western China has encouraged acts of terrorism leading to the deaths of hundreds of Chinese workers murdered by Uighur and Tibetan terrorists, hundreds of Russians at hands of Chechen terrorists and thousands of Russian-speakers in Ukraine's Donbas region.

The Troika cannot be relied on for reliable information, especially regarding the economic, political and foreign policies of US and EU adversaries (those targets for 'Regime change').

At most their polemical screeds give the discerning reader an insight into the propaganda line promoted by the Western powers.

Moreover in recent times, the Troika has become even more strident and militaristic than the ruling elites. The Troika's armchair generals mocked Obama for not sending ground troops into Syria; chastised the US and EU for signing the nuclear agreements with Iran; and embraced Israel's systematic murder of Palestinians.

Unreliable and more given to strident invective than reporting the facts in a balanced way, the Troika has lost credibility for intelligent, serious readers who strain to 'read between the lines' when they write that a government is 'unpopular' during elections. More likely than not, the incumbents sweep the elections and retain popular majorities as has been the case so far in Russia, Argentina, Venezuela and elsewhere.

If and when the Troika succeeds in promoting more wars, as it has been doing in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia, each and every militaristic adventure will lead to economic and social disasters spawning millions more refugees.

When imperial governments, like England, adopt conciliatory policies toward China, eschewing zero sum confrontations, in favor of win-win cooperation, the Troika's armchair generals are sure to mock and accuse the conservative government of 'kowtowing' to authoritarians – dismissing the $30 billion dollar investment deals.

The Troika has gone far beyond its earlier role of presenting the line of imperial regimes. They now march, rather independently, to the military drum of real and imagined nuclear warriors and terrorists. Welcome to the "free press" and the 'lies of our Times'!

James Petras is a retired Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. http://petras.lahaine.org/

 

Who will fight the next US war? On ground

 

Who will fight the next US war? On ground , the American Youth !

 

Given below is an interesting article on the readiness of the American youth, in spite of various inducements by the government to enlist in USA's ground forces.. Since the invention of the catapult if not earlier and its upgrading to bombing and killing by aircraft and helicopters, it needs physical courage and dedication to fight on the ground, which is a major motivation for the home countries around forces to defend themselves. Many a military commanders happen to be Airforce officers who provide glib scenario by video presentation of how the enemy positions on the ground can be bombed and quick victory achieved. But ultimately it takes a human being and infantry soldier to go , occupy the place and defend it. This of course leads to many casualties which the American youth is not ready to bargain for.

 

As I have maintained it was the Soviet Armed Forces which destroyed 80% of the Nazi war machine at great sacrifice involving 15 million soldiers and citizens. The Americans only joined the war later and with little sacrifice moved up to Berlin. Later they produced many films like "The longest day", "Gen Patton" to glamorise and propagandise their contributions in the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. US claims are rubbish.

 

The American youth in spite of many inducements are not ready to join the ground Armed Forces and for this the credit go should go to the Iraqi resistance after U.S.-led illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its brutal occupation. There are many estimates ,which run into million and half or even more of Iraqis killed directly following the invasion and incitement of sectorial wars financed , overseen and encouraged by the United States government.

 

Nevertheless after a loss of between 5 to 6000 US GIs on the ground but with many score thousands  of US soldiers , mentally disturbed and deranged in Iraq, the American youth has no heart to sacrifice itself for a government which is basically an oligopoly of Jewish controlled military industry complex , and energy and financial interests .

 

Only when the raging inhuman beast, the white racists from West Europe who invaded and destroyed the indigenous Indian nations in the continent of America goes down financially as many people hopefully expect sooner than later that the world might see some signs of peace on planet Earth.

 

Civil-military relations

Who will fight the next war?

Failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have widened the gulf between most Americans and the armed forces

Oct 24th 2015 | ATLANTA | From the print edition

 

CRUISING a Walmart in Clayton County, Georgia, with Sergeant Russell Haney of US army recruiting, it would be easy to think most Americans are aching to serve Uncle Sam. Almost every teenager or 20-something he hails, in his cheery Tennessee drawl, amid the mounds of plastic buckets and cut-price tortilla chips, appears tempted by his offer. Lemeanfa, a 19-year-old former football star, says he is halfway sold on it; Dseanna, an 18-year-old shopper, says she is too, provided she won't have to go to war. Serving in the coffee shop, Archel and Lily, a brother and sister from the US Virgin Islands, listen greedily to the education, training and other benefits the recruiting sergeant reels off. "You don't want a job, you want a career!" he tells them, as a passer-by thrusts a packet of cookies into his hands, to thank him for his service.

Southern, poorer than the national average, mostly black and with longstanding ties to the army, the inhabitants of Clayton County are among the army's likeliest recruits. Last year they furnished it with more soldiers than most of the rest of the greater Atlanta area put together. Yet Sergeant's Haney's battalion, which is responsible for it, still failed to make its annual recruiting target—and a day out with the unit suggests why.

 

Much of the friendly reception for Sergeant Haney he puts down to fine southern manners; in fact, no one in Walmart is likely to enlist. Lemeanfa has a tattoo behind his ear, an immediate disqualifier. Dseanna has a one-year-old baby, and would have to sign away custody of him. Lily's girlfriend has a toddler she does not want to leave; Archel won't leave his sister. Even the cookie-giver is less propitious than he seems: he symbolises, Sergeant Haney says ruefully, as he bins his gift, that paying lip-service to the armed forces, as opposed to doing military service, is all most Americans are good for. 

 

In a society given to ostentatious public obeisance to the services—during National Military Appreciation Month, on Military Spouse Day and on countless other such public holidays and occasions—the figures that support this claim are astonishing. In the financial year that ended on September 30th America's four armed services—army, navy, air force and marines—aimed to recruit 177,000 people, mainly from among the 21m Americans aged 17-21. Yet all struggled, and the army, which accounted for nearly half that target, made its number, at great cost and the eleventh hour, only by cannibalising its store of recruits for the current year. It failed by 2,000 to meet its target of 17,300 recruits for the army reserve, which is becoming more important to national security as the full-time army shrinks from a recent peak of 566,000 to a projected 440,000 by 2019—its lowest level since the second world war. "I find it remarkable," says the commander of army recruiting, Major-General Jeffrey Snow. "That we have been in two protracted land campaigns and we have an American public that thinks very highly of the military, yet the vast majority has lost touch with it. Less than 1% of Americans are willing and able to serve."

 

That is part of a longstanding trend: a growing disconnect between American society and the armed forces that claim to represent it, which has many causes, starting with the ending of the draft in 1973. Ever since, military experience has been steadily fading from American life. In 1990, 40% of young Americans had at least one parent who had served in the forces; by 2014, only 16% had, and the measure continues to fall. Among American leaders, the decline is similarly pronounced. In 1981, 64% of congressmen were veterans; now around 18% are.

 

Seasonal factors, including a strengthening labour market and negative media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have widened the gulf. So have the dismal standards of education and physical fitness that prevail in modern American society. At a time of post-war introspection, these factors raise two big questions. The first concerns America's ability to hold to account a military sector its leaders feel bound to applaud, but no longer competent to criticise. Andrew Bacevich, a former army officer, academic and longstanding critic of what he terms the militarism of American society, derides that support as "superficial and fraudulent". Sanctified by politicians and the public, he argues, the army's top brass have been given too much power and too little scrutiny, with the recent disastrous campaigns, and similarly profligate appropriations, the almost inevitable result. The second question raised by the civil-military disconnect is similarly fundamental: it concerns America's future ability to mobilise for war.

 

During the Korean war, around 70% of draft-age American men served in the armed forces; during Vietnam, the unpopularity of the conflict and ease of draft-dodging ensured that only 43% did. These days, even if every young American wanted to join up, less than 30% would be eligible to. Of the starting 21m, around 9.5m would fail a rudimentary academic qualification, either because they had dropped out of high school or, typically, because most young Americans cannot do tricky sums without a calculator. Of the remainder, 7m would be disqualified because they are too fat, or have a criminal record, or tattoos on their hands or faces. According to Sergeant Haney, about half the high-school students in Clayton County are inked somewhere or other; according to his boss, Lieutenant-Colonel Tony Parilli, a bigger problem is simply that "America is obese."

 

Spurned by the elite

That leaves 4.5m young Americans eligible to serve, of whom only around 390,000 are minded to, provided they do not get snapped up by a college or private firm instead—as tends to happen to the best of them. Indeed, a favourite mantra of army recruiters, that they are competing with Microsoft and Google, is not really true. With the annual exception of a few hundred sons and daughters of retired officers, America's elite has long since turned its nose up at military service. Well under 10% of army recruits have a college degree; nearly half belong to an ethnic minority.

 

The pool of potential recruits is too small to meet America's, albeit shrunken, military needs; especially, as now, when the unemployment rate dips below 6%. This leaves the army, the least-favoured of the four services, having either to drop its standards or entice those not minded to serve with generous perks. After it failed to meet its recruiting target in 2005, a time of high employment and bad news from Baghdad, it employed both strategies zealously. To sustain what was, by historical standards, only a modest surge in Iraq, around 2% of army recruits were accepted despite having failed to meet academic and other criteria; "We accepted a risk on quality," grimaces General Snow, an Iraq veteran. Meanwhile the cost of the army's signing-on bonuses ballooned unsustainably, to $860m in 2008 alone.

 

That figure has since fallen, as part of a wider effort to peg back the personnel costs that consume around a quarter of the defence budget. Yet the remaining sweeteners are still generous: the army's pay and allowances have risen by 90% since 2000. In a role-play back at Sergeant Haney's recruiting station, your correspondent, posing as an aimless school-leaver, asked what the army could offer him. The answer, besides the usual bed, board and medical insurance, included $78,000 in college fees, some of which could be transferred to a close relative; professional training, including for 46 jobs that still offer a fat signing-on bonus; and post-service careers advice. Could the army perhaps also overlook the youthful drugs misdemeanour your correspondent, in character, admitted to? Sergeant Fred Pedro thought it could.

 

It is a good offer, especially set against the bad jobs and wage stagnation prevalent among the Americans it is mostly aimed at. That the army is having such trouble selling it is partly testament to the effects on public opinion of its recent wars. In the three decades following America's withdrawal from Vietnam, in 1973, the army fought a dozen small wars and one big one, the first Gulf war, in which it suffered only a few hundred casualties in total. Even as Americans grew apart from their soldiers, therefore, they were also encouraged to forget that war usually entails killing on both sides.

In that blithe context, America's 5,366 combat deaths, and tens of thousands of wounded, in Iraq and Afghanistan have come as a terrible shock. Most young Americans associate the army with "coming home broken, physically, mentally and emotionally", says James Ortiz, director of army marketing. Almost every member of the journalism class at D.M. Therrell High School in Atlanta concurs with that: "I'd maybe join if there's no other option. But I just don't like the violence," shudders 16-year-old Mayowa.

 

Decades of army advertising that focused largely on the college money and other perks of service probably added to the misapprehension. "Americans do not understand the army, so do not value it," says Mr Ortiz. A marketing campaign launched last year, Enterprise Army, instead emphasises the high values and good works the army seeks to promulgate. Yet it will take more than this to turn Americans back to a life which many consider incompatible with atomised, sceptical, irreverent modern living. Moreover, it is also likely that, when the army next needs to surge, it will be for a war much bloodier than the recent ones. America's biggest battlefield advantage in recent decades, its mastery of precision-guided weapons, is fading, as these become widely available even to the bigger militant groups, such as Hamas or Hizbullah.

 

The result is that America may be unable, within reasonable cost limits and without reinstituting the draft, to raise the much bigger army it might need for such wars. "Could we field the force we would need?" asks Andrew Krepinevich of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Probably not: "The risk is that our desire to ask only those who are willing to fight to do so is pricing us out of some kinds of warfare."

 

From the print edition: United States

 

 

 

 

The Longest War in U.S. History

 The Longest War in U.S. History 

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act,"George Orwell

 

 'Be nice to America otherwise we will bring you Democracy,' A protest placard in New York against US led 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq.

 

In fact, the complete United States history from the beginning has been a history of bigotry, apartheid, criminality, brutality and inhumanity .The European settlers war on American continent has never come to an end .After the conquest and domination of the America, attacks and wars have continued throughout their history, all over the world .The Middle East is the latest theatre of devastation .War and destruction is embedded in the US DNA.

 

Since 16^th century Europeans have been raiding, attacking, bombing and destroying peoples and nations , beginning from  the new world, north America ie USA and the allover the world .This mayhem continues, based in the belief of the survival of the fittest . But the means of destruction are now so powerful that a large part of humanity will be destroyed and killed if a nuclear clash takes place between US and Russia .The last escape was in 1962 in Cuban waters.

 

US had full sway after 1990  , when USSR and its scientific socialism collapsed , allowing US crooks to transfer billions of wealth under the charade of Globalisation , a higher form of exploitation and loot after colonialism .Yes ,there are pure and simple lootings as after any war like first and second World Wars. Iraq and Libya .And India too, after 1857 revolt, the English authorities exiled all citizens of the Moghul capital Delhi, dug up silver, gold and jewels and carted the loot to London. (Those who praise British imperialism in India are sick in mind and suffer from Stockholm syndrome and have done well for themselves) More than a million young men in north areas of revolt, a possible future threat were eliminated)

 

See the results below for UK and Europe .Since WWII, when US world share of GDP went up to 50% has now been reduced to 40%, result of rise of China, India etc .Of 40%, 25% is financial economy, ie various kind of derivatives ie jiggery pokery with no Gold Support, the real unit of exchange as even Fed Reserve head Alan Greenspan admitted.

 

 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT POWERS by Paul Kennedy

 

TABLE 6. Relative Shares of World Manufacturing Output, 1750-1900

                                          1750  1800   1830   1860   1880  1900    

(Europe as a whole)         23.2  28.1  34.2  53.2  61.3  62.0

United Kingdom              1:9    4.3    9.5    19.9  22.9  18.5

Habsburg Empire             2.9    3.2    3.2    4.2    4.4    4.7   

France                                         4.0    4.2    5.2    7,9    7.8    6.8   

German States/Germany  2.9    3.5    3.5    4,9    8.5    13.2

Italian States Italy              2.4    2.5    2.3    2.5    2.5    2.5   

Russia                                            5.0 ~ 5.6    5.6    7.0    7.6    8.8   

United States                             0.1    0.8    2.4    7.2    14.7  23.6

Japan                                       3.8    3.5    2.8    2.6    2.4    2.4   

Third World                               73.0  67.7  60.5  36.6  20.9  11.0

China                                                32.8  33.3  29.8  19.7  12.5  6.2   

India -Pakistan                       24.5  19.?  17.6  8.6    2.8    1.7

 

After WWII till mid 1980s US led Nato  block and Russia led Warsaw blocks provided some balance .Leaders like Nehru ,Nasser ,Tito and others tried to keep out of cold war to build their institutions and industry according to their genius ,balancing one block against the other.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union ,Washington had a free run till Vladimir Putin took over te Russian leadership .Mercifully the two sides remain in touch to avoid Armageddon ,as they are doing now in Syria and the Middle East .China is the 3^rd useful leg for Russia at the moment and vice versa.

 

Both in1965 and1971, US and Russia kept in touch and would not allow any major changes

 Between India and Pakistan So the cacophony that India could have occupied Pak Punjab and other areas are claims of dimwits .In Middle East ,both Russia and US are in contact playing military chess and poker , along with Allie like China, Europeans and Arab states .

 

The Longest War in U.S. History 

Extracts ; While the First Nations( original native inhabitants of north America ) were falling beneath the juggernaut of settler colonialism, there were few voices in opposition. Their struggle was not a struggle for most labor unions, parties of the political Left, and in some important cases, not even for other peoples who were victimized by white supremacist racial and national oppression. That silence made each of these movements not neutral, but complicit in one of the greatest horrors of the last five hundred years.

There was a 30 year-long war from 1860-1890, spanning many nations, led by the U.S. government against "insurgents" who populated what would become Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Part of a larger, longer genocide, this was one sustained war, which looked unsurprisingly similar to today's campaigns in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Fought by the U.S. Army against the Apache, Cheyenne, Navajo, Sioux, and other nations, this war saw resistance armies, led by Geronimo and Sitting Bull, give birth to the guerrilla warriors like Crazy Horse and Little Wolf, and saw the introduction of "counter-insurgency" tactics by the U.S. Cavalry. War crimes abounded as the United States systematically eradicated the buffalo with the intention of depriving the guerrilla warriors of food, to bring an end to their peoples and nations, and to steal their land.

The myths associated with US history, including rugged individualism or even some myths associated with the Civil War, run up against the reality of what took place for Native Americans.  Consider the US Civil War.  Some of the greatest Union generals, e.g., William Tecumseh Sherman, who fought valiantly against the Confederacy, were themselves—or became—leaders in the genocide against Native Americans.  General Sherman, who issued an order that opened up the possibility for the redistribution of land to the African former slaves, became one of the major architects of the war against the First Nations, a war in which he and many other military leaders had little interest in ending without the total destruction of the First Nations. It was also during the Civil War that President Abraham Lincoln opened up more land for settlers and sought the removal of First Nations in order that the homesteaders could claim territory.

The (US Settlers') aim, as became quite clear in the case of North America, was to remove the Native Americans from the land and, indeed, from the Earth. This took various forms ranging from repeated forced removals of Native Americans from their land by the settlers upon a military victory; to mass murder; to the introduction of bacteriological warfare (by Lord Jeffrey Amherst in the 1760s via smallpox). 

Consider the US Civil War.  Some of the greatest Union generals, e.g., William Tecumseh Sherman, who fought valiantly against the Confederacy, were themselves—or became—leaders in the genocide against Native Americans.  General Sherman, who issued an order that opened up the possibility for the redistribution of land to the African former slaves, became one of the major architects of the war against the First Nations, a war in which he and many other military leaders had little interest in ending without the total destruction of the First Nations. It was also during the Civil War that President Abraham Lincoln opened up more land for settlers and sought the removal of First Nations in order that the homesteaders could claim territory.

In reading An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States it is actually quite easy to understand the historic basis for support among large sections of the US population for Israel against the Palestinians.  The Palestinians are today's Native Americans.  They are in the way of progress. The Israelis are a largely European population that is on a mission, and, much like the European and Euro-American settlers of the 17th through 19thcenturies (in North America), believe that they have an entitlement to the land either because God allegedly offered it to them or because the Israelis are somehow allegedly superior to or more civilized than the Palestinians. It all fits together. The Israelis look like 'us' (European); they have built cities that look like Miami or Los Angeles; and they are bringing civilization to a 'barbaric' region of the planet.

 

Note on Writer Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz , who reminds us that it is actually never too late to turn history on its head.  That is where this book has its immense value.

By Ryan Harvey

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43121.htm

 

October 12, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "teleSur" - Though it has been a long 14 years, it is historically inaccurate to call the war in Afghanistan "The Longest War in U.S. History." This title reveals a deep-seated problem in the popular mythology of U.S. history – that the nations and assemblies of peoples that existed here before Europeans came were not sovereign, or even real. Let's get the facts right:

There was a 30 year-long war from 1860-1890, spanning many nations, led by the U.S. government against "insurgents" who populated what would become Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Part of a larger, longer genocide, this was one sustained war, which looked unsurprisingly similar to today's campaigns in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Fought by the U.S. Army against the Apache, Cheyenne, Navajo, Sioux, and other nations, this war saw resistance armies, led by Geronimo and Sitting Bull, give birth to the guerrilla warriors like Crazy Horse and Little Wolf, and saw the introduction of "counter-insurgency" tactics by the U.S. Cavalry. War crimes abounded as the United States systematically eradicated the buffalo with the intention of depriving the guerrilla warriors of food, to bring an end to their peoples and nations, and to steal their land.

The chapters of this tragic story – Red Cloud's War, The Battle of Powder River, The Battle of Little Bighorn, The Apache Wars – were book-ended by brutal massacres at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, where U.S. soldiers slaughtered hundreds of Native Americans, children and infants included.

Ryan Harvey is a musician, writer, and activist from Baltimore, MD.

=====

An Indigenous People's History of the United States

History Is Not the Past: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Takes on the Mega-Genocide Against the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

By Bill Fletcher Jr

Dunbar-Ortiz has constructed a very accessible examination of the history of the USA as seen through the eyes of the Native American/First Nations/Indigenous peoples.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Boston, MA:  Beacon Press, 2014).  296 pps.  U.S. $27.95, CAN $32.95

(Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (born September 10, 1939) is an American historian, writer and feminist.Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1939 to an Oklahoma family, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in Central Oklahoma, daughter of a sharecropper and a half-Native American mother. )

There are two things that immediately emerged for me after reading Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's outstanding book, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. The first had to do with US history itself.  The second, and this may at first glance appear strange, was the plight of the Palestinians.

Dunbar-Ortiz has constructed a very accessible examination of the history of the USA as seen through the eyes of the Native American/First Nations/Indigenous peoples. In a remarkably condensed yet comprehensive form, she begins with an explanation of what Indigenous societies looked like prior to the European invasion. From there she takes the reader into an emotionally troubling, yet historically rigorous look at the European invasion/colonization of the Western Hemisphere and its ramifications.

What Dunbar-Ortiz helps the reader to understand, more than anything else, was that the genocide carried out against the Native Americans was not accidental. That may sound like a strange choice of words, but throughout so-called mainstream US history there is a tendency to suggest that the European colonization was, at least at first, well-intentioned, relatively benign, and had the unfortunate consequence of introducing deadly diseases into the Western Hemisphere which the immune systems of the peoples of the First Nations were unprepared to resist.

Dunbar-Ortiz demolishes such arguments and points to the mythology that has been connected with the European colonization of the hemisphere and, in the USA, the expansion westward.  The aim, as became quite clear in the case of North America, was to remove the Native Americans from the land and, indeed, from the Earth. This took various forms ranging from repeated forced removals of Native Americans from their land by the settlers upon a military victory; to mass murder; to the introduction of bacteriological warfare (by Lord Jeffrey Amherst in the 1760s via smallpox).  

Dunbar-Ortiz points out that in North America, as opposed to Central and South America, the settlers had no interest in mixing with the Indigenous people and certainly no interest in creating a North American mestizo grouping. The Indigenous were seen as an obstacle to progress, a progress that was dictated by a certain religious zeal that linked with empire.  This use of religion by the settler-colonists is a very important factor in all settler states, most notably Northern Ireland, apartheid South Africa, the United States and Israel. In each case, God allegedly spoke to the settlers and told them that this land was to be their land. Why God did not speak to the Indigenous and tell them to move on has never been explained.

The difficulty in reading An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is that it upends the entire mythology connected with US history. This is not only a 'problem' for the mainstream USA, but it is also a problem for many progressives and leftists in the USA who have, to varying degrees, accepted elements of the settler narrative.

There are obvious examples of the mythology such as the story connected to Thanksgiving. But the brutality of the westward expansion is rarely addressed in mainstream history or fiction.  Instead, the Native American is regularly painted as the aggressor, and the ungrateful aggressor at that.  The other component of this myth, however, is the idea that the land was vacant.  There are many examples of this but in the realm of fiction, if one thinks of the classic Western Shane (with Alan Ladd), there is not one sense that that beautiful land had been occupied by a prior civilization.  In watching such films, one views the magnificence of that late 19th century West and thinks of the challenges facing the people who entered into that vacant land…

…Except for one problem:  the land was not vacant.  It had been occupied and the people living there were removed.

For many of us to the left of center, there are complications when viewing US history. The myths associated with US history, including rugged individualism or even some myths associated with the Civil War, run up against the reality of what took place for Native Americans.  Consider the US Civil War.  Some of the greatest Union generals, e.g., William Tecumseh Sherman, who fought valiantly against the Confederacy, were themselves—or became—leaders in the genocide against Native Americans.  General Sherman, who issued an order that opened up the possibility for the redistribution of land to the African former slaves, became one of the major architects of the war against the First Nations, a war in which he and many other military leaders had little interest in ending without the total destruction of the First Nations. It was also during the Civil War that President Abraham Lincoln opened up more land for settlers and sought the removal of First Nations in order that the homesteaders could claim territory.

Thus, when looking at the Civil War, for instance, one must rethink the entire period. It was not a binary of good vs. evil or even the Union (fighting against slavery) vs. the Confederacy (fighting to support slavery), but an overdetermined moment in which multiple contradictions were at play. An example of this was the siding with the Confederacy by some Native Americans because they believed that a victory by the Union would set the stage for their own annihilation. 

Another example of the challenge to those of us to the Left of center is contained in the critique offered by Dunbar-Ortiz of the widely praised documentary by Oliver Stone and Peter Kusnick (The Untold History of the United States). Stone and Kusnick suggest that much of what happened after World War II, vis a vis US foreign policy, was inconsistent with the direction of the so-called Founding Fathers.  Dunbar-Ortiz disputes this and argues that the path has been entirely consistent. There was no 'golden age', in other words, wherein there was not an aggressive, imperial instinct within the Republic.  While it may have taken various forms, it was not something that was rooted in one or another Presidential administration or Congressional Session, but rather has been hard-wired into that which we have come to understand to be the United States of America.  This has been demonstrated in the unfolding of the continuous wars of expansion since 1783.

The genocide against the Native Americans, does not exist in the past, but is a continuing reality as evidenced in the violation of treaties or the inconsistency of the US government (and state governments) in recognizing the need for restitution.  Demands for restitution and resistance to continued oppression—and genocide—have been very important features of the movement among Native Americans, both in the USA and throughout the Western Hemisphere.  This is a key component of the book, not simply to ward off despair, but to remind the reader that through the hundreds of years of genocidal expansion and against all odds, the First Nations have continued to fight back and, at various moments, reconstitute their resistance.

I mentioned in the beginning of this review the Palestinians. As I turned each page of this book I found myself thinking about the Palestinians. In the two visits that I have made to the Occupied Palestinian Territories I have found myself thinking about the Native Americans. It is not only that the land, itself, reminds one of the Southwest, but the conditions of the people is so familiar and so similar.

In the case of the Occupied Territories, one of the key features in common is that the Israelis have no interest in 'integrating' with the Palestinians.  As opposed to the Spanish in Latin America who did not send the same proportion of settlers to the Western Hemisphere and who found it useful to mix with the Indigenous and Africans (thereby creating intermediary groups as an instrument of social control), the English in North America were interested in the removal of the Indigenous. The same is true of Israel and the Palestinians. The more extreme elements of the Israeli political class openly and audaciously advocate the forced transfer of Palestinians out of Israel and the Occupied Territories into Jordan (which the Zionists claim to be the actual Palestinian homeland).  

In reading An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States it is actually quite easy to understand the historic basis for support among large sections of the US population for Israel against the Palestinians.  The Palestinians are today's Native Americans.  They are in the way of progress. The Israelis are a largely European population that is on a mission, and, much like the European and Euro-American settlers of the 17th through 19thcenturies (in North America), believe that they have an entitlement to the land either because God allegedly offered it to them or because the Israelis are somehow allegedly superior to or more civilized than the Palestinians. It all fits together. The Israelis look like 'us' (European); they have built cities that look like Miami or Los Angeles; and they are bringing civilization to a 'barbaric' region of the planet.

To the extent to which this narrative is ignored or goes unchallenged, what awaits the Palestinians will, at best, be silent complicity in their removal, if not an actual genocide.  And, perhaps this is the concluding point of this review. While the First Nations were falling beneath the juggernaut of settler colonialism, there were few voices in opposition. Their struggle was not a struggle for most labor unions, parties of the political Left, and in some important cases, not even for other peoples who were victimized by white supremacist racial and national oppression. That silence made each of these movements not neutral, but complicit in one of the greatest horrors of the last five hundred years.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reminds us that it is actually never too late to turn history on its head.  That is where this book has its immense value.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the host of The Global African on Telesur-English.  He is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer.   Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.