Lest We Forget - Corporate Support for Fascism in the U.S. & Around the World

Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

In his 1935 book War is a Racket, he described the workings of the military-industrial complex and, after retiring from service, became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.

In November 1934, Butler alleged the existence of a political conspiracy of Wall Street interests to overthrow President Roosevelt, a series of allegations that came to be known in the media as the Business Plot.

Disclosure of Long U.S. Control of Poroshenko

It is sad that the US corporate run media won't report any real news anymore.  But I am determined to keep searching for any truths I can get my hands on.

I'm tired of seeing the crap we get ladled each day from the likes of 'war hero' Brian Williams and his ilk - including National Public Radio (NPR).  Quite a commentary when more people are watching Jon Stewart for news than the slimy networks.  I guess though it's a good sign.... means more folks are figuring things out at last. 

I keep seeing stories about German mainstream media in trouble as their lies about Ukraine and Russia are exposed.  I read that one major media outlet there had to lay-off 200 journalists due to collapsing profits..  The latest is shared by Sputnik:

The German federal television channel ZDF got into a bit of trouble recently after a citizens' media monitoring group called them out over false reporting on the presence of Russian tanks in eastern Ukraine.

A German media monitoring organization has filed a complaint against federal channel ZDF over false reporting on the situation in eastern Ukraine, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten has reported.

About 8,000 Kiev troops have been surrounded for the past week by the self-defense forces in eastern Ukraine.  The US puppet President Poroshenko keeps denying this fact but his soldiers are calling home to momma on their cell phones and saying they are out of ammo, food, fuel, etc.  Some mothers took to the streets blocking traffic with banners to bring this truth to the public.  The self-defense forces in Donbass offered a 'green corridor' to leave what is called the Debaltsevo cauldron. The self-defense forces only demanded that Kiev's Army leave their weapons and walk toward home.

Senior Poroshenko though has refused to allow his troops to leave this mess he got them in.  Instead he forces his Army to die or surrender.  Many are indeed waving the white flag and choosing to live.  They are beginning to understand that the US-NATO war in Ukraine is not their fight.  Their mothers are telling them to walk away from the Kiev-Washington war.

Here is a joke going around about Kiev's Army which is losing to eastern self-defense forces which are made up of ordinary citizens just trying to protect their families and land:  "To lose is always painful. It’s a hardship especially when you lose to yesterday’s miners and tractor drivers. But life is life."

Ukrainian Nazi Leader Coming to Washington to Ask for Weapons

Andriy Parubiy (on left) from Ukraine's Svoboda Nazi party, pictured with NATO official, is coming to Washington to request weapons for their civil war

Stepan Bandera (center) was a Ukrainian nationalist leader who supported the WW II Nazi invasion of the former Soviet Union.

Today Stepan Bandera remains the ideological hero of current Nazi's in Ukraine who are waging war against their fellow citizens in eastern Ukraine who live near the Russian border. 

Andriy Parubiy was a founder of the Social-National Party of Ukraine, or Svoboda, which the CIA renamed the “Freedom” Party in order to hide its origin as Ukraine’s Nazi party.  Parubiy is the former Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, appointed after leading the 2014 anti-government coup d'etat in Kiev.

Parubiy announced on February 15 that, “Next week I'm off to the United States to speak about this very subject” of getting Washington to supply the weapons necessary to finish the job of killing legions of Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens in the eastern part of the country - what is usually referred to as the Donbass region.

According to German intelligence sources, about 50,000 people have been killed so far in the operation and more than a million have fled. A retired Ukrainian general who supports the military operation said, “The shelling there [of civilians in eastern Ukraine] is done as intimidation, … not just object destruction, but [also as] intimidation [to get the population to flee to nearby Russia]. The civilian population is intimidated by a chaotic bombardment.” 

That constant bombardment requires lots of bombs and bullets, which is why Parubiy is heading to Washington.

Crimea's Chief Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya, who lived in Kiev and was a criminal prosecutor in Ukraine’s national government until the 2014 coup, quit her former post because she didn’t want to serve in what she called a “Nazi” government which was being established after the coup.  She says that Parubiy “was the leader of the armed part of Maidan” --  he was the key organizer of the masked snipers who dressed as government forces and shot both the police and the Maidan demonstrators during the coup and so brought down the sitting President of Ukraine. 

Some history is important here.  The western capitalist countries wanted to take down the former Soviet Union because of their ideological opposition to Communism.  Early on many western industrialists and bankers saw Hitler's rise to power as a bulwark against Communism and helped arm the German Nazi leader. (Sen. Prescott Bush from Connecticut was one such American who supported the creation of Hitler's war machine.  Sen. Bush was the father of George H. W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush and Jeb Bush.)

But Hitler turned on his western backers, got greedy, and went for the whole ball of wax.  In the end Nazi Germany did invade the former Soviet Union but also attacked the capitalist countries in Europe.  The rest is history.

The western capitalist countries, today led by the US and a hyper aggressive NATO military machine, still long to take down Russia even though that nation itself has become capitalist.  But Russia sits on the world's largest supply of natural gas and significant supplies of oil.  Russia also has the largest land border with the Arctic Ocean and due to the melting ice, as a result of climate change, the US and western oil corporations are drooling over the prospects of controlling that entire region.  But Moscow, and a resistant Putin, stand in the way.

Thus we see this ugly alliance with Nazi's in Ukraine that has become the current strategy to create instability along the Russian border in hopes of destabilizing the government in Moscow.  This of course is being done in conjunction with major expansion of NATO military operations into eastern Europe and the Baltic states that also border Russia.  Missile defense deployments in many of these NATO outposts are an attempt to give the US the hope of a successful first-strike attack capability on Russia.

It is indeed hard for the American people to wrap their heads around the fact that the US is actively collaborating with Nazi's today.  It is even harder for people in the US to contemplate that our nation's current program of endless war and 'Full Spectrum Dominance' are so similar to the Nazi slogans of 'blitzkrieg' and 'Deutschland über alles'.  The truth is always hard to swallow.

Remembering Philip Agee

I stayed up quite late last night rereading a book by former CIA agent Philip Agee.  I had the great fortune to meet Agee twice - the first time organizing a speaking event for him in Orlando in the 1990's that drew folks from across Florida.  The second time I visited his home in Hamburg, Germany in 1995 while on a speaking tour against NASA's Cassini plutonium launch.

Agee is one of my heroes - he was a man of true conscience who left the CIA after serving for about a dozen years in Latin America.  He was determined to publish a book exposing the wicked work of the CIA and after a difficult four-year period he was able in 1974 to release his book entitled Inside the Company. 

From that day on, Agee was marked by the CIA as its enemy.  He was hunted, arrested, threatened, expelled from country after country (often illegally) and sometimes prosecuted.  He tells this riveting story in the 1987 book entitled On the Run.  This is the book Agee gave me when I visited him in 1995 and began rereading last night.

Agee was from Tampa, Florida and had a sister in the Orlando area.  He put me in touch with her and she began coming to our office at the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice in the 1990's to help put out bulk mailings.  She was the one who arranged for her brother to speak in Orlando at the statewide event that I organized that filled a huge downtown Methodist Church.  Then when I went to Germany on my speaking tour in 1995 Agee's sister made it possible for me to stay with her brother.

When I visited Agee in Hamburg he took me on a walking tour of parts of the city.  That evening he took me to a wonderful Italian restaurant that had a spaghetti sauce that I'll always remember.  We had fascinating discussions about his life-long efforts to expose the crimes of the CIA. He was a very humble and ordinary guy and I really grew to admire him tremendously.

In his later years Agee moved to Cuba and started a travel business to help people make the trip to that 'forbidden nation'.  He died there in 2008.

Agee was truly in the mold of Ellsberg, Snowden, Manning and other such remarkable whistle blowers.

In On the Run Agee wrote:

I would try to show how our [CIA] operations help sustain favorable operating conditions for US-based multi-national corporations.  These conditions, together with political hegemony, were our real goals.  So-called liberal democracy and pluralism were only means to those ends.  "Free elections" really meant freedom for us to intervene with secret funds for our candidates.  "Free trade unions" meant freedom for us to establish our unions.  "Freedom of the press" meant freedom for us to pay journalists to publish our material as if it were the journalists' own.  When an elected government threatened US economic and political interests, it had to go.  Social and economic justice were fine concepts for public relations, but only for that.

The News is Twisted

Who Are You to Challenge Me?

I heard a story the other day
about a Bangor Daily News (BDN) media official
telling peaceniks they had not covered their recent protest
because it was old news.
Redundant...old hat...
stuff like that

One peacenik thought about it
and wrote the guy back
and wondered if the BDN
was going to judge car crash stories
and murder and fires
by the same journalistic standards.
I'm certain the BDN scribe was insulted by such audacity.
How dare you say such things to me he must have thought.
I am the creator of the community reality
I am the maker of fortunes and careers
I am the breaker of hearts and lives
I am the one who does as his corporate bosses tell him
I am the chief lackey around here
Who are you to challenge me?

I remember many years ago
a media gatekeeper telling a friend and me
not to worry our pretty little heads
about informing the public on a particular concern
The newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel, had a plan
They were on the case and had it under control.
The media was the message
the media the god
A democratic debate was not needed
activism was not needed
agitation was not needed
ideas from the great unwashed were not needed
the media boys were on the case...
Go home and find something useful to do
with your otherwise wasted lives.

And so it goes today
from Iraq to Bangor.
The pages are filled with all the news that is fit to be printed.
Whole sections of the paper are left blank for me now
as I rustle through the daily rag
passing the big adverts,
the color pictures of men in orange suits
in handcuffs
on their way to trial
for another sensational murder
or driving under the influence
of a crazy society.
Pages of stories about oranges looking like grapefruit
and birds singing in winter
while Baghdad blows up again
and people cry invisible tears
and Washington burns our health care money
and politicians tell us they are almost there.

The news is twisted
and turned
and flattened out
and squeezed
and bled
and contorted
and changed
and shortened
to fit the tiny spaces
between the ads for women's underwear
and cars
and SUV's
and hummers
and big stories about violent video games
and returning heroes from a war far away.

A letter here and an announcement there
keep alive the illusion
that all is well here at home.
That democracy and the old ways are sound.
But the truth lies with the rusty scissors
as fewer pages are clipped
and stored
in our scrapbooks
where the stories of our lives
used to be collected
to pass on to our children
so we could teach them
about the good work that was done
the keep the fires burning.

Somehow the spirit rages on.
The Soviets learned to read between the lines
of Pravda
and today we turn the New York Times upside down
trying to learn the same lesson
so we can be free again.

Bruce K. Gagnon
(3/11/2007)

Sunday Song

TV Reruns: Saturday Night at the Funnies

German satire about double standards in international law and democracy as it relates to media coverage of Ukraine story ....

More on Corporate Media Deception

Patrick Lancaster, a freelance journalist on the front line in Ukraine, talks to Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi about the truth of what is happening there.

Footage he took of government forces shelling a soup kitchen was misrepresented by On Demand news, affiliated with ITN, as being rebel forces attacking. Even in the original video, he points out that one of the women in it is cursing Poroshenko, and it was clear that it was government forces making the attack, and it was 'definitely an attempt to twist the truth or outright lie.'

The Guardian Media Group picked up and ran the story, but did later apologise for their error. He says he sees civilians dying on a daily basis from artillery attacks and people 'despise' the Kiev government, seeing Poroshenko as a 'murderer of their children.' There is no way Lugansk or Donetsk will ever want to be part of Ukraine again, he says, they have lost the people.

He was in Kramatorsk when the government shelled for 5 days in a row, and the only things he saw hit were civilian homes, school, orphanages and gas stations. The people in eastern Ukraine want Russia to make a bigger stand to help stop civilians dying. He says the population think of ceasefire agreements as a 'joke' that 'never last more than 15 minutes.'

And if Kiev are armed by Britain or the U.S. it will move the situation further from peace, and the only way it will stop is if Ukraine will accept that people there want nothing to do with them and put up borders.

The Writing on the Wall

Confused About US Policy in Iraq?

Washington is working to install a new air base in Iraq’s Kurdistan to be used in a campaign against Islamic State (ISIS). This comes as the White House speaks of a ground operation in Iraq against the militants.

I thought Obama said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were over?

Corporate Watch: Privatize Education

This Republican Congressman from Virginia is the perfect example of the kind of challenge we face these days.  He wants to privatize education which means that the rich kids will have good foundational learning and the poor kids could be "trained on a rock" like Plato was.

Privatization of education, Social Security, health care, sewer and water systems, public transit, roads, bridges, etc are attempts to corporatize all aspects of our lives - turning every public service into a profit generator.  This is what the big $$$ is doing to politics today in the US.  The Congress is bought and sold - like slaves - by the corporations.  They don't give a damn about the people or the planet.  It's a sickness - only money matters.

Years ago while living in Florida I remember Jeb Bush's first inaugural speech in Tallahassee after he was elected governor.  He stood amongst the state government buildings and with sweeping arms declared that "My dream is that someday these buildings will be shut down."  Bush's dream was to turn the work of the public good over to the greedy land developers, agri-business interests, energy companies, and other assorted profiteers.

The reason humankind came up with the idea of government was to regulate the greedy and to ensure a fair distribution of resources amongst all the people.

A very "Christian" thing to do.

But even that basic truth of sharing and caring for others is under attack by the merchants of greed.  I once heard a minister ask this question:  "If Jesus came back today would he ride a bicycle or drive a Cadillac?"  For sure I thought he'd ride a bike.  But no, the minister claimed - he'd drive the Caddy.  When so-called Christian ministers endorse the prosperity, greed and selfishness ethic you know that we are in deep trouble.

Nazi Crimes in Ukraine

 

Published today in Times Record:

Just a few miles outside of Kiev there is a ravine called Babi Yar where, between Sept. 29-30, 1941, 33,771 Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis and their Ukrainian fascist collaborators during the Nazi campaign against the Soviet Union. By the summer of 1943, the ravine held as many as 100,000 corpses — Jews, Roma, prisoners of war and others.

How ironic. Recently, American General Ben Hodges, chief of the U.S. Army in Europe, awarded medals to a current group of Ukrainian fascists in Kiev’s Central Military Hospital. The medal, he said, is a symbol of the U.S. Army in Europe.

The Israeli government, much to its shame, is keeping its mouth shut. In the current scenario, Ukrainian separatists have become the Jews, the Ukrainian Fascists have remained unrepentant and the Nazis have morphed into Americans. We are indeed in the hands of historical ignoramuses.

Herschel Sternlieb
Brunswick, Maine

U.S. 'Missile Offense' Bases in Romania & Poland

The U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) headquarted in Stuttgart, Germany announces a second new "missile defense" (MD) base under construction.  These bases in Romania and Poland, and their interceptor missiles, will be aimed at Russia as part of the Pentagon-NATO military encirclement of that nation.

MD systems are key elements in US first-strike attack planning.  Their job is to pick off any remaining retaliatory nuclear response after the Pentagon unleashes its sword.  MD thus become the shield that the US seeks in order to deliver a 'successful' first-strike attack.

Each year the US Space Command computer simulates such a first-strike attack against Russia and China - the war game is called 'blue team against red team'.

MD systems are being deployed on land and on Navy Aegis destroyers around the globe to surround Russia and China.

Here is part of the USEUCOM announcement about the new Poland base:

As a demonstration of our continued efforts to provide a ballistic missile defense (BMD) capability for U.S. and European NATO Allies against established and emergent threats, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), U.S. European Command (EUCOM), the U.S. Navy, and the Polish Ministry of Economy hosted U.S. Industry Day in Warsaw, Poland, on Feb. 11 and 12.

The two-day event was designed to help provide information on the general scope of work.... to support a planned U.S. missile defense asset deployment in Poland.

"Missile defense is a critically important part of NATO security, and the United States deeply appreciates Poland’s contributions to the NATO missile defense effort," said Ambassador Stephen Mull, U.S. Ambassador to Poland. "Poland plans to spend an estimated $10 billion USD on integrated air and missile defense systems over the next ten years. This is in addition to Poland’s decision to host an American missile defense base at Redzikowo."

As approved by the President in September 2009, the purpose of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to ballistic missile defense is to protect European NATO allies, and U.S. forces in the region.... This key event demonstrates that we are moving forward with deploying an Aegis Ashore site in Poland in the 2018 time frame and that the U.S. continues to work in close cooperation with NATO allies to integrate BMD capabilities into a NATO missile defense system.

Modus Operandi: Faking the Evidence to Justify a War

These pictures purported to show how Russia is intervening in Ukraine, and were used as evidence by US Senators who were pushing for lethal aid to be sent to Kiev. RT's Lizzie Phelan has the details of an incident which has left some red faces on Capitol Hill. RT is also joined by political writer John Wight.

Kiev: This So-Called Cease Fire

US puppet President Poroshenko reveals true nature of the ceasefire for Ukraine.

Speaking to the 'Non-Choir'

The UK arms industry's Annual Dinner took place on 3rd February 2015 at the London Hilton on Park Lane. The £246-a-head banquet was attended by arms industry executives and more than 40 MPs.

This industry, which profits from selling arms to repressive regimes and conflict zones including Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain, is supported and subsidised by the UK government.

Activists from Campaign Against Arms Trade were there to greet the arriving arms dealers and deliver an impromptu speech asking them to reconsider their choice of career.

The Monied Interests

Chomsky on Ukraine & Iraq

Noam Chomsky interviewed by TV Channel4 host Jon Snow about Ukraine and ISIS. 

Shaky Ceasefire Declared

I've been reading this morning about the Minsk-2 negotiations on the civil war inside Ukraine.  A deal has been partially agreed upon - emphasis on the word partial.  What is most interesting is that Washington was excluded from the negotiations - it's a simple admission that the US has been a major instigator of this whole mess and the more they are kept out of the negotiations the better.

The primary aspect of the deal calls for a ceasefire to begin at midnight of February 15 and a pull back of heavy artillery from both sides.  (The last time a ceasefire was agreed upon at Minsk-1 the Kiev puppet government constantly violated the agreement by continuing to shell eastern Ukraine.)

The real sticking points in the negotiations are about autonomy for eastern Ukraine - some sort of federalization.  (It's real important to note here that Putin has said over and over again that Russia does not want to annex these break-a-way eastern provinces.  Putin has always maintained that they should be given more political and economic self-control within the framework of the Ukrainian state.  This is usually not reported in the western media because it runs counter to the US-NATO narrative that Russia is out to "expand their empire".)

Some agreements appear to have been made around more local self control such as local election of political leaders rather than appointment by Kiev.  (Local democracy, what a concept.)  But these ideas are still not yet firmly agreed upon and could fall by the wayside.

You can see the full text of the agreement here

In the end Ukraine's puppet President Poroshenko remains a key obstacle and the day before the Minsk-2 meeting he threw more red meat to the 'nationalists' in the western part of the county by declaring that they are the "true" Ukrainians.  (Ethnic/social purity kind of trash.) So even in the midst of negotiations Poroshenko (carrying water for US-NATO) still found a way to stir up hatred.

The only reason that Minsk-2 was happening at all is because of recent military progress by the self-defense forces in the east as they consolidate control over their own lands.  That, and the growing fierce opposition to the recent troop mobilization Poroshenko called throughout the country, indicates that Kiev's war project is in deep trouble.

Most commentators I read this morning are skeptical that Washington will allow this ceasefire to really work.  Time will tell. The way the EU goes on this will be important to follow.

In video below the two leaders of the eastern self-defense forces react to the ceasefire agreement.

Looking Back to the February 2014 "Maidan"

A German TV investigation disproved the West's claim that former Ukrainian President Yanukovych was responsible for killing of dozens of Ukrainian protesters in February 2014 during the "Maidan" that toppled the elected government in that country.  This act was one of the primary justifications for the US-NATO directed coup d'etat.