WAR AND MORE WAR

• I got the photo above from my dear friend Will Park in Florida.  He wrote, "Look how early our children are 'prepped' to love things military and war.  No wonder so few care about peace and justice."  The future generations are being 'prepped' for a life of endless war to aid the corporations that control our government and have turned us into nothing more than a glorified resource extraction service.

• I am convinced that after being thrown out of Iraq (largely because Iraq refused to give US troops legal immunity from their attacks on the Iraqi people) the US has helped set up the growing instability which now results in the cavalry having to rush back in to save all the "good we have done there".  You can sign a petition opposing more US war in Iraq here.  Haven't we done enough evil in Iraq, killing at least one million people over the years and turning that country back to the stone age?  I saw a video this morning with right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson even saying that we should never have gone into Iraq - much to my surprise he nailed Bush for his lies.

• How did ISIS get all their weapons to make this major operation in Iraq?   The US and Saudi sponsored proxy war to topple the government of Syria provided the terror group with its weapons. Following the US-NATO take down of Libya the CIA and its partners moved weapons into Syria. Seymour Hersh, the award-winning investigative journalist, explained how the Senate buried information about the CIA and the gun-running operation in Benghazi:

A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)

The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognized exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.

• While all eyes are on Iraq the fascist regime in Kiev is stepping up their shelling of eastern Ukraine.  Here is a brief update from a credible source inside the embattled east:

Kramatorsk as I write is being flattened, the entire city is under intense bombardment including Grad and Hurricane MLRS. Everything, industrial areas, shopping areas, infrastructure areas, living areas, is being flattened. We're going to have I think hundreds if not a thousand dead civilians. Is this the atrocity needed to bring in Russia? I don't know. Yet.

• People around the world are slowly beginning to open their eyes to see the dangers coming from the US-NATO sponsored Ukrainian government.  Russia has been slow to react to the constant poking at them by the oligarchs and fascists put into power by Washington.  Inside Russia there is growing outrage and demands that their government do something to stop the killing now underway in eastern Ukraine. One of my favorite blogs on the Ukraine situation is the very reliable Vineyard of the Saker.  He writes:

[T]he decision has been made in Moscow to wait as long as possible simply to get a justification for the inevitable Russian intervention which would be as clear cut as possible.  Please understand that Russia does not need to make any specific preparatory move to intervene in Novorossia.  All that NATO nonsense about Russian troop movement and concentrations along the border is just propaganda for civilians.  The fact is that Putin can give the order and in the next 30 minutes the entire airspace of Donbass will become a no-fly zone, within the next 60 minutes most Ukrainian artillery positions and command posts will be destroyed by missile strikes after which the NDF (backed by a few more volunteers) will be basically sufficient to take full control of the Donbass.  As for the Ukie death-squads they will run for their lives as fast as they can.  The only problem is timing.  The Kremlin is desperately waiting for a sign that the Europeans are slowly coming to realize the monster which they have unleashed in the Ukraine.  I personally do not believe that the Europeans will suddenly grow a conscience or a spine and considering the mass murder taking place today in Novorossia I continue to believe that a Russian intervention is inevitable.

• I am convinced, more than at any other time in my life, that the US has become the leading agent for global war and instability.   Our national resources are being poured down a rat hole, our civil liberties have been destroyed, our infrastructure has been hollowed out, the people are being dumbed down by corporate media and underfunded schools, and we face the coming ravages of climate change.  And with all that said, still we have many Americans falling for the hype that we are the world's 'exceptional' nation.  If you ever wondered what it was like during the early days of Nazi Germany just take a good look in the mirror.  While we might not yet have the brown shirts (although many around the country being constantly beaten and shot by out-of-control police would argue the point) we do have the open carry gun nuts massing at the local hamburger stand.  It's only a matter of time before they start shooting at the rest of us.
• Last night we went to hear award-winning journalist Chris Hedges speak at the annual meeting of Peace Action Maine in Portland.  He strongly made this very case and when questioned about what we can do his simple reply was that we should all resist.  Do what ever you can each day to stand in resistance to this madness.