Because he's a product of the cold war, Zbigniew Brzezinski isn't capable of some simple 'can't we call get along' vision that would mean scaling back the rapacious greed and violence of the United States.
Other than that he's a bully, but he's by no means the worst and along with Brent Scowcroft and Heinz Kissinger is a good indication of the eminence grise view of US imperialism. A stable view not a neocon ultraviolent Zionist view of world geopolitics is needed. Thank God.
Elliott Abrams is a Zioncon warmonger from the Iran Contra days of blood and massacre in Nicaragua. He's a proven liar but as we know George W Bush promoted many hundreds of these psychopaths to justify his illegal war in Iraq. Normally a psycho like this should be in an insane asylum but in our sick society they get well paid positions on the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow or Sick Fucks as I notice most of the senior fellows are including Ed Husain who advocated and lobbied for intervention in Syria and is now running from the bloodshed they have invoked. This interview is a must listen for the breeze block stupidity of Elliot Abrams advocating religious groups as the solution to sectarian divide in Syria. Even Ed Husain realises the madness of this.
I am a big fan of Jewish contribution to history including arts and philosophy as much as I am an Arab fan for their contribution to mathematics and astrology but these Jewish Neocon warmongers on think tanks are appalling. They appall me. I'm appalled.
Go on. Listen. Do the work. Listen to the abject stupidity that is followed by war dollars and heart breaking misery.
This is so gay it's worthy of analysis and comment. The 20 minute presentation by the Office of Naval intelligence practically bleeds fear and cold war paranoia. It tells us that the US Navy really didn't want to get into a proxy war in Korea after destroying and killing a third of the civil population and losing so many American lives in glaring hot summers and brutal winters during the US war on the Korean peninsula.
Which makes you wonder why the US didn't drop a nuke again as they killed more of the innocent civilian population one by one in North Korea?
The over the top explanation for naval manoeuvres that led to a the USS Pueblo being confiscated by North Korea from the US Navy serves to demonstrate what would the American people feel if a North Korean Navy ship was 10 nautical miles off Seal Beach, California?
I'm quite happy to take comments on this one if any of my assumptions are erroneous. I understand cold war ambiguity but this isn't the cold war and the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) sit on some of the most needed technology by mankind are incapable of rounding up a few banksters and crooks. Unable to do a real job they persecute people who eschew violence and killing. That's called cowardice where I come from. Update: The video has been removed but its worth bearing in mind that the ONI were taken out by Mossad and their Neocon buddies on 9/11.
Events over the last several days reveal that the United States and Israel plan to conduct a false flag terror event to be blamed on Iran. The event will likely occur within the next six months and will result in an attack on Iran prior to the November election.
Obama’s intelligence chief, James Clapper (center), warned of Iranian terror attacks inside the United States.
Intelligence in U.S. and Israel Warn of Domestic Terror Attack
Officialdom in the United States and Israel have issued a warning about an Iranian “threat stream” against Israeli “soft targets” in America.
The warning arrives several days after Obama’s intelligence boss James Clapper said Iran may strike inside the United States,
“We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase… on both our guarded sites and ‘soft’ sites,” states a letter sent out by the head of security for the Israeli Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States.
Guarded sites are Israeli government facilities like embassies while soft sites are Jewish synagogues, schools, and community centers.
Yoram Cohen, the head of Israel’s security service Shin Bet, said recently that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will attack Israeli and Jewish targets abroad in response to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.
In January it was reported Mossad was behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan.
“The thwarted assassination plot of a Saudi official in Washington, D.C., a couple of months ago was an important data point,” a nameless official told ABC News, “in that it showed at least parts of the Iranian establishment were aware of the intended event and were not concerned about inevitable collateral damage to U.S. citizens had they carried out an assassination plot on American soil.”
Cohen linked the alleged threat to the discredited plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in October.
A court document in the case revealed that the FBI and the DEA concocted the plot as a sting operation and used failed used car salesman and alcoholic Mansour Arbabsiar as a patsy. Arbabsiar, who is from Iran, thought he was participating in a drug deal.
Despite the fallacious nature of the plot, intelligence officials used it to hype the specter of Iranian terrorism that will likely result in a false flag operation used as a pretext to invade Iran.
“In the past few weeks, there has been an escalation in threats against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world,” an intelligence document cited by ABC News states. It warns that demonstrations against Israel “could potentially turn violent at local synagogues, restaurants, the Israeli Embassy and other Israeli sites.”
The Israeli bulletin also provides an excuse for the TSA to step-up intrusive pat-downs and demand travelers be subjected to dangerous naked body scanners at airports across the United States.
“According to our evaluation there is a possibility that the forged passports will be used in order to pass as Israeli citizens at the security checks in Israel and around the world.
Israeli security authorities may consider an Israeli citizenship as a [criterion] to proceed with a more lenient security check in secure sites such as airports, etc.,” the bulletin explains.
The latest warning arrives two weeks after the Turkish newspaper Zaman reported that a cell of the Quds Unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard planned to attack U.S. embassy in Ankara and other targets across Turkey.
Fast Moving Timeline for War
The latest development follows a number of events over the past few weeks that point toward a concerted attack by Israel and then the United States on Iran:
• DEBKAfile reported earlier in the week that the United States will have 100,000 troops in the region by March. “Pentagon has been quietly massing troops and armaments on two islands located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, and within easy striking distance of Iran,” Mac Slavo wrote on January 31.
• On Friday, the establishment media reported that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June,” according to the Washington Post. The timeline is predicated on Iran entering an Israeli contrived “zone of immunity” in its unsubstantiated effort to build a nuclear bomb.
Iran has issued a number of threats in response to punitive oil and economic sanctions devised by the United States and Europe. On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a nationally televised speech that his country will retaliate if Western nations impose crippling oil sanctions. In January, in response to European Union foreign ministers deciding to impose an oil embargo on the country, Iran vowed to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
• Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey admitted on January 9 that Iran has the ability to close off the strategic shipping lane linking the Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf. He said doing so would constitute a “red line.”
• In December, in response to Sec. Def. Panetta’s not ruling out an attack, Iranannounced it would hold a military exercise in the Persian Gulf. The 10 day exercise, dubbed “Velayat-e 90,” demonstrated that Iran has the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. further exacerbated the situation by sending the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis through the Strait of Hormuz while Iran was conducting its war game.
• Russia and China have indicated that an attack on Iran would constitute an attack on their national security. “Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus.Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,” said Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO, in mid-January.
War President: Re-electing Obama
In November, DEBKAfile said Obama will use war as a re-election tool. “President Barack Obama went on line to America’s senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 – unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs,” the neocon-connected subscriber-only publication predicted.
“Obama’s announcement was not perceived as a general directive to US allies, but a guideline to blow the dust off the contingency plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities which stayed locked in bottom drawers for three years,” states the report, adding that “Obama’s announcement spurred Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Israel into girding their navies, air forces, ballistic units and anti-missile defense systems for the challenges ahead.”
Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague said in January his country has not ruled out military action against Iran. Britain had dispatched its “most formidable warship HMS Daring” to the Persian Gulf region prior to Hague’s remarks.
In 2010, as Obama’s job rating began its descent into the abyss, former Clintonite and Democrat operative Mark Penn said Obama needs a domestic terror attack to regain his popularity. In July of that year, another former Clintonite, Robert Shapiro, said the only thing can preserve the Obama presidency is war.
“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, writing for the Financial Times. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”
The late Washington Post columnist David Broder was more succinct. “With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs.
This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve,” he wrote in late 2010.
Tensions will undoubtedly rise if there is a terror attack inside the United States, either against an Israeli target or American one.
It would provide an airtight excuse to unleash the awesome power of the U.S. military against Iran and cast Obama in the adulatory light all “war presidents” receive as the masses fall in line and wave their flags and cheer on “our boys” as they decimate another country and engage in yet another bloody massacre of innocents.
This Real News Network segment discusses how a small number of American Jewish billionaires are promoting a hawkish, aggressively pro-Israel stance which is at odds with the anti-war, anti-neocon views of many Jewish voters. The interviewee, Max Blumenthal, points out that this concerted, well-funded effort to direct American policy risks playing into anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Chris Hitchens is on the ropes. Intellectually he's still clinging onto the totally discredited 911 commission report which was subject to Pentagon manipulation and deception and all the usual controls such as ignoring building 7 that have been rolled out as commission standard operational procedure since that coup d'etat JFK killing.
Apparently the only person who believes his government these days is Hitchins who prefers to attack Professor Chomsky with a first paragraph that ignores Noam's Jewish roots and smears him through association with other people (David Shayler) who are unconnected. Is it a last loyal attempt to collect his CIA disinformation pay cheque? That's the only reason I can find to explain his silly foolishness. History will prove him wrong and he only needs to hang in for a few more months to see that. Time though is not on his side and that goes in his favour when talking such nonsense though to be absolutely fair to the entire article some of his later comments on Chomksy are not inaccurate though they are despicably mean and say lots about a man who is at a loss for words when they aren't insulting. I've noticed his modus operandi is to attack people through ad hominen slurs rather than civil discourse. Shame on him.
Christopher Hitchins threw his towel in with the Neocon nazis and refuses to take responsibility for the million or so deaths as a result of that. Call it half a million if you wish it's still unconscionable but Hitchins is blind to his own responsibility and until he mans up, his words are cheap. The US is a diminished country as a result of the people that Hitchin's carries the flag for.
I've also just been reminded that Hitchens himself wrote shortly after 9/11 that it paled in comparison to "Crimes of the Empire." Just before his miraculous conversion to the Church of State. Lets assume the boys from the three letter agencies paid him a visit and he's singing their tune.
I swear I wasn't going to do this and that I even started to write, but thought I'd be boring all three of you shitless so I canned it originally. However everything being seemingly connected I have to come back to it because Christopher Hitchens is in the news for debating Tony Blair on religion, so if you can indulge me, I'll just throw in those few thoughts on Christopher Hitchens that I fretted about at first.
I think he's a complicated man. I first became aware of him as a supporter of the Neocons when I was trawling through the Project for a new American Century's archives, and building my personal shit-list of people who I think are deeply venal. That also included Francis Fukuyama who added his name to the cosigners of PNAC fan boys, though it's now probably evident that it's more a case of the end of Fukuyama than the 'End of History' as he originally claimed, although to be fair Zizek think's we're all Fukuyamaists now if seen through the lens of neo-liberal economics. That point is debatable, though getting back on topic I find it hard to be totally binary on Hitchens because he's clearly an educated and interesting guy and unlike most British thinkers, is easy on the eye.
So I was schmoozing around on Youtube earlier, and the highest viewed clip on a search of his name, is the one of Hitchens going through the waterboarding torture process. That's when I realised I wanted to write about the man. Whatever I may think of his jumping ship to the right when in his earlier days he was a staunch socialists/leftist I admire a person who takes the trouble to find out for himself what something actually feels like rather than the armchair theologian debates on what constitutes torture by people who are mainlining on corn syrup and day trading in their pyjamas.
I was particularly shocked to observe and later watch Hitchins describe the overwhelming sensation of the amygdala's adrenalin-release of fight or flight kick-in. You should watch at least the first 30 seconds of the video if you want to hear a pro Iraq invasion supporter articulate why water boarding is in no way fucking around. Then if you really want to dig into the obnoxious but moral relativism details of the act I'd read Fox News explaining why Khalid Sheik Mohammed was not actually waterboarded 183 times, but was mostly put through dummy runs of it even though Hitchens explains above that he had nightmares of the experience after only one girlyman waterboarding session in the film above. It's extraordinarily sobering.
So even though I think Christopher was somewhat ungallant when he debated Tariq Ali over here just last year, by resorting more to mild calumny than debating, it seems evident that the two men are of a similar generation and seemingly rely on an independence of thought which often finds them with more in common than not. That's a good thing.
So I think I can let Hitchens slide a little there. I also can't condemn a man for changing his political ideology when if you were to ask my Mr Carter, my physics Teacher at St. George Roman Catholic School if I were a solid socialist he'd laugh in your face and explain I was the most annoying of Conservative pupils he probably ever had.
I was young, what can I say.
That old trope about being a socialist when young and a conservative when older is for people who stopped evolving intellectually. Even though I have some unorthodox ideas on infrequent uses of hard core sandboxed capitalism to give the State sector a kick in the junk once in a while.
Then there's religion and Hitchens. The man is practically Richard Dawkin's atheist rottweiller security. Don't get me wrong, I'm particularly despairing of pretty much all religions but I find the absence of the awareness of God particularly troubling in lots of people when for me that subject is both not up for debate and yet at the same time is beyond our ability to fully comprehend. Or to quote James Ellroy; "If you're still an atheist when you get to my age then you don't know shit". Not that Elroy and I have all that much in common. But really, if the educated world are debating the subject what the fuck are we thinking of doing with the illiterate poor. Think about that one.
But I can let Hitchens slide on that one too. All in all it's probably that Neocon thing, though I definitely would like to paint the town red with the guy and score some tail if I were up for that kind of hedonistic life..wait a minute.
Anyway, on a more sombre three chord guitar riff, Hitchens is now afflicted with cancer and unlike say the Bush family and the rest of the war profiteers I wish him only the best of health and yes, a miraculous recovery as I think the world is a better place...generally speaking. But getting back to the second reason for this post, his debate earlier against Tony Blair about religion had him saying a line I'm very glad to know because it's a simple but scientific point for any of us interested in a better world for the impoverished and hungry. He said:
It's for this reason I felt compelled to come back against the far less important topic of waterboarding which I thought was a good one in the first place. But I didn't want to get too political.
Once in while I'll come across one of those inexplicably embarrassing gaps in my knowledge of the world where it seems I've must have gone out of my way to avoid getting to know something or someone.
In 1967 Ali was inCamiri,Bolivia, not far from whereChe Guevarawas captured, to observe the trial ofRegis Debray. He was accused of being a Cuban revolutionary by authorities. Ali then said "If you torture me the whole night and I can speak Spanish in the morning I'll be grateful to you for the rest of my life."
This says a lot about a man. Even if it wasn't true it's a first class anecdote. If you want to know my politics by proxy then before this weekend, I'd have said listen/watch/read everything Chomsky has to say. I'm now adding Tariq Ali to the short list of people who can't seem to put a foot wrong. This isn't quite as gemütlich as it may sound. I'd prefer it if I disagreed with someone on some points and at least once or twice fundamentally.
It's more plausible to have some disagreement isn't it?
However after working through a good deal of his online presence, I've yet to find that point. The video above is classy. I've noticed it seems to start at a slightly later point than when I originally watched it, so I may rectify that if it changes, but it's worth it just to see a man who can talk about the American Empire through the mind of the Roman Tacitus or even more juicy Neocon gossip, mentioning that the inside story on a troubled Korean peninsula is not about the North Korean's but perversely about the South Korean Generals who have already factored in the potential of acquiring nuclear weapons overnight in the event of conflict with the North. This would destabilize the region putting pressure on the Japanese to nuke up in double quick time. It actually makes startling sense for East Asia watchers, but then so does much of what the erudite but avuncular Tariq Ali says.
I've learned something recently. The really class acts are the people who sound most relevant the further you dig back into their historical record. It's hard enough to stand out from the crowd in the present, but to consistently stand out in the past? That's quite rare. Don't take my word for it with respect to this gentleman. There's a lot online and I'll be coming back to some of it now and again to knock on the head some double standards I can no longer remain silent over.
I really like Oliver Stone's work. I think he's consistently dealt with the most excruciating themes of the American 20th century in a candid way that most Americans aren't ready to deal with. I also like that he did two tours of duty in Vietnam despite being part of that privileged elite who could have avoided the draft, as did the Neocon chicken-hawks; Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol et al.
I just rewatched Stone's Nixon earlier because yesterday I finally got round to seeing Frost/Nixon, a clip of which I've used above. It's extraordinarily good and made me want to revisit Nixon the man because in the thick of all the Bush bashing (when it's evident he never really had the intellectual gravitas to manipulate the world but was instead a subject of manipulation) I took great delight in telling people Nixon was one of my favourite presidents. I can't say it now because I've dug a bit deeper after watching this, though I will say that despite the carnage that Nixon authorised, particularly the unconscionable bombing of Laos and Cambodia he still presided over the most geopolitically volatile period apart from all out world war. It's easier with hindsight but the question remains did he exploit that geopolitical volatility? Was it really necessary?
The answer's probably no because proxy ideological wars in far away places are at a primary assessment level abysmal failures though arguably have much more complex secondary geopolitcal angles like the suggestion I read today that Afghanistan and Iraq is about having an experienced army at hand if middle Asia becomes the arena for conflict over resources (not just oil). Believe me the only peaceful ideological solution we have for that is a sharing one. Marx came close and I suggest we need to try again, because the profit motive is hitting a dead end and hey, even the Wright brothers didn't quit when their first plane nose dived. However my ideological chin sticking out affirms a simple principle. Don't bomb and maim small Buddhist countries to achieve larger geopolitical ends. Take some pain on the chin, and I most definitely am looking at the United Kingdom as well as the United States too.
It's time to open up an Easter Egg on this blog because when I wrote that last Nixon piece it had another story behind it. It was allegorical too, because my apartment was being broken into at the time. The protagonist(s) were also reading my blog (note the personal Wifi router the case is sitting on) so I thought I'd land a punch when it suited me and today it does. So I guess I got to write about it, share what I think about Richard Nixon and pluralistic thinking, as well as nail a date and a time to that period when things like my Porsche briefcase had it's combination lock popped while I wasn't at home. I did walk away with my full deposit from that affair. That's unheard of in Asia when two warring sides choose to go their separate ways with a tenancy contract between them.
I don't mind confessing there were days when I thought I'd lose a lot more than the deposit as I'm stubborn. It's irrespective of what influence or power I'm up against though a shiny motorcycle police escort one early morning while nipping down to 7 Eleven prompted me to settle for the cash. A foreigner never actually win's in Asia so I did OK given who I was up against, and that post I wrote time stamps accusations without ambiguity. Not that I didn't appreciate it being nominated for post of the month too because the dual narratives were completely coherent and utterly sincere. You'll forgive me if I killed two birds with one stone. It's the mark of a really lazy person not an industrious one ironically.
Anyway that was all wild and I learned that snakes really do writhe when you have them by the tail but the reason for this post is very simply to outline that Oliver Stone is for me, more of a patriot than any of the abysmal Tea Party crowd and (I contest) a brave creative American icon. Which is kind of my way of saying sorry, because I met him in a nightclub once, here in Bangkok. He'd been filming Alexander the Great and unfortunately I'm less amusing after a cocktail than I think I am so I confirmed if his name was Oliver and leaned into his ear sharing something along the lines of 'I hope you didn't omit from your film, that while Alexander was pinning down Asia, he was also pinning down his Generals'.
Oliver immediately backed away as if purgatory was imminent and his entourage protectively engulfed me from saying another word, sweeping me away back into a less interesting world. The moral of the story I guess is just be nice, say hi and 'how are you' when you meet someone you respect instead of being a smart ass, and also just make sure they haven't directed a turkey of a movie.
Both Nixon and Frost Nixon are brilliant films. The first historically and the second, well the second did something that a small screen has never done for me before. I've been moved by actors on the big screen theatre but the Nixon character in this second movie. I was spellbound by the end. I never believed that a small netbook screen could ever command or impose such pathos and yet it was all there. You should watch it because even if you don't care about politics you should care about how the mightiest can fall and once again how little in life is black and white all set to a Greek tragedy of biblical proportion. I just discovered that Frank Langella was nominated for an Oscar in this movie and that's the most deserving nomination I can think of for some time. I also think it's great to see actors doing very fine jobs of David Frost and John Birt. Both of whom now I think have knighthoods. Watch Langella in this. Sometimes it's like a bear leaning over you baring perfectly ominous but preternaturally perfect teeth. Or is that Frost as well?
