zaterdag 25 oktober 2014

John Pilger 71

The Forgotten Coup - How the US and Britain Crushed the Government of its "Ally" Australia

Saturday, 25 October 2014 09:52 By John PilgerTruthout | News Analysis 
2014 1025 whit stFormer Prime Minister of Australia, Edward G. Whitlam, walks with President Nixon as he leaves the White House, July 30, 1973. (Photo: Jack Kightlinger / Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum)
Across the political and media elite in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died. His achievements are recognized, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.
Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had "reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution." Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia toward the Non-Aligned Movement, supported "zones of peace" and opposed nuclear weapons testing.
Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor Party, Whitlam was a maverick social Democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country's resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to "buy back the farm." In drafting the first Aboriginal land rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonization of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.
Latin Americans will recognize the audacity and danger of this "breaking free" in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the United States in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided "black teams" to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.
Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be "vetted or harassed" by the Australian security organization, ASIO - then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as "corrupt and barbaric," a CIA station officer in Saigon said, "We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators."

Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner, which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. "Try to screw us or bounce us," the prime minister warned the US ambassador, "[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention."

Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, "This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House.  . . . a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion."

Pine Gap's top-secret messages were decoded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the decoders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the "deception and betrayal of an ally." Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as "our man Kerr."
Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had long-standing ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny, of the Wall Street Journal, in his book, The Crimes of Patriots, as, "an elite, invitation-only group . . . exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA." The CIA "paid for Kerr's travel, built his prestige . . . Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money."
When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure, who worked in the shadows of America's "deep state." Known as the "coupmaster," he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia - which cost up to a million lives. One of his first speeches in Australia was to the Australian Institute of Directors and described by an alarmed member of the audience as "an incitement to the country's business leaders to rise against the government."
The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain's MI6 was operating against his government. "The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office," he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, "We knew MI6 was bugging cabinet meetings for the Americans."
In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the "Whitlam problem" had been discussed "with urgency" by the CIA's director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said, "Kerr did what he was told to do."

On November 10, 1975, Whitlam was shown a top secret telex message sourced to Theodore Shackley, the notorious head of the CIA's East Asia Division, who had helped run the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile two years earlier.

Shackley's message was read to Whitlam. It said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. The day before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia's NSA, where he was briefed on the "security crisis."

On November 11 - the day Whitlam was to inform Parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia - he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice regal "reserve powers," Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The Whitlam problem" was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission

JOHN PILGER

John Pilger is an Australian-born, London-based journalist, filmmaker and author. For his foreign and war reporting, ranging from Vietnam and Cambodia to the Middle East, he has twice won Britain's highest award for journalism. For his documentary films, he won a British Academy Award and an American Emmy. In 2009, he was awarded Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize. John Pilger's films can be viewed on his website.

Canadian Terror 2

Canada and the War on Terror: The Ottawa Shootings, What Really Happened?

Global Research, October 25, 2014

Prime Minister Steven Harper and the Canadian federal government are using the shooting rampage on Parliament Hill as a justification for imposing surveillance and detainment measures that they were already implementing and going forward with.
On October 22, 2014 a solitary gunman named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (originally Michael Joseph Hall) from the city of Laval, Quebec went on a shooting spree in downtown Ottawa, the capital of Canada.
Firstly, it was reported that there were shootings in the Rideau Centre which from the northern side of the Mackenzie King Bridge faces National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ), the nerve of Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND). This proved to be false or wrong. The gunman had killed a reservist guard in front of the National War Memorial and then made his way northward to Parliament Hill.
Secondly, it was reported that there were multiple gunmen. As a result all government employees were not allowed to enter or leave their respective buildings throughout the interprovincial National Capital Region, which includes the city of Gatineau. Although the police did the right thing in taking precautions to make sure that there were no other gunmen and declined to give explanations, the public was led to believe that there were multiple shooters. This justified the lockdown and suspension of mobility that took place for hours.
A lot of important questions also remain unanswered. NBC News reported on October 8, 2014 that US intelligence officials told it «that Canadian authorities have heard would-be terrorists discussing potential ISIS-inspired ‘knife and gun’ attacks» inside Canada. Canadian officials, however, dismissed the report. Did US intelligence know something that its Canadian counterparts did not know? Why the contradictions?
Another important question is the following: how could an armed gunman that had already started a rampage make his way into the Centre Bloc of the Canadian Parliament unchallenged? Anyone that has been to Parliament Hill knows that there is a relatively large armed presence on the whole area and, specifically, at the entranceway and doors which is comprised of Canada’s national police force (the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), the local municipal police (the Ottawa Police Services), and two special federal forces (the House of Commons Security Services and Senate Security).
Framing: Media Discourse and Government Policy Links
Also, if he was indeed in touch with terrorist groups, how was he communicating with them?
Complicating the picture is the case of Martin Couture-Rouleau. Couture-Rouleau is a French-Canadian who became a Muslim in 2013. He deliberately hit two Canadian soldiers with his car in the St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec on October 20, 2014. One of the soldiers would later die.
Couture-Rouleau would be chased by the police and then gunned down after his hit-and-run attack. Although the fatal hit-and-run murder in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu is a criminal act, it has been presented as terrorism and linked to Canada’s involvement in the fighting in the Middle East.
The two attacks respectively in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa have no relationship whatsoever. While there was no visibly no coordination between the two events, the media has presented them as a part of a carefully planned (jihadist) plot. The hit-and-run attacks have been added to the narrative of what happened on October 22 to construct the image of an all-out battle. This is part of what sociologists call a moral panic.
What exactly motivated this gunman? It appears that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was not part of some intricate plot against Canada by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He had a criminal record and appeared to be psychologically deteriorating from increasing narcotics usage. He was troubled by hallucinations and heavy drugs, and became a Muslim relatively recently. According to information coming from people who knew him, it appears that he was upset with «the government» for not leaving him alone. This anger could be tied to the social workers and parole officers in his life and a suffocating feeling of being caught in a downward spiral.
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was staying at the Ottawa Mission, a homeless shelter, between two weeks and a month. Before he went on his rampage, he told other people at the homeless shelter to pray because the world was coming to an end. In this context, it is also important to ask: how a psychologically troubled man staying at the Ottawa Mission homeless shelter could get a weapon?
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, however, has been portrayed to varying degrees as an ISIL member, which is being used to support the narrative that Canadians are under immediate threat from the ISIL by societal actors that sociologists call «moral entrepreneurs». The goals of moral entrepreneurs is to change societal norms, values, laws, and regulations. In this case the moral entrepreneurs want to sell a security agenda.
Although the gunman that attacked Parliament Hill was a French-Canadian (who had adopted both the last name of his Arab-Canadian stepfather and his mother’s maiden name) that spent most of his life being a Roman Catholic (starting off as a devout Christian and then falling out of practice over the years), he has been portrayed or framed differently. From the start there was a tacit drive to give him an Arab and Muslim persona. Even when his identity was discovered, his Arab-Canadian stepfather was portrayed as his biological stepfather. The adoption of his stepfather’s Arabic last name was tacitly presented as a marker of his Muslim identity, even though he was a Christian when he adopted the Arabic last name alongside his mother’s maiden name due to legal reasons.
Very telling was how the media initially described Zehaf-Bibeau. He was referred to as a «Canadian-born man.» This is very deceptive language and discourse that needs to be critically analyzed. When someone is called «Canadian-born» it means that they are not really Canadian, but are merely born in Canada. Referring to a Canadian citizen in these terms conceptually strips them of their Canadian identity and otherizes them as a foreigner that does not belong to the collective.
The Media Reaction
Many Canadians are proud of their media’s reaction and have contrasted it to the sensationalism of US media. Although the media in Canada was much calmer than how the US media would have reacted under similar circumstances if the same incident took place in the United States, it was still emotionally charging the atmosphere with a sense of siege on Ottawa. Headlines and news broadcasts included titles like «Ottawa under attack.» Ottawans were liberally afraid that the ISIL was attacking Canada’s shores.
Speculation about a Middle East connection kept being raised throughout the day. By the time that Prime Minister Harper spoke in the evening, it was clear that he wanted was to link the events to the Middle East and the terrorism panic to justify his national security agenda. “Canada will not be intimidated”.
The media coverage, the massive lockdown in Ottawa’s downtown core, and the national measures taken by the federal government created an atmosphere of panic in Ottawa and across Canada. Under this type of atmosphere, people can act unpredictability or abnormally and they are willing to make concessions to the government that they would not normally agree with making. In other words, when societies are gripped by fear many of their members are willing to forfeit their civil liberties and let them be stripped by the authorities.
The New Normal and the Striping of Civil Liberties
When the Rideau Centre was stormed by three armed robbers in 2003 and half the local police force’s fleet was sent after two of them who had escaped, the same panic did not exist nor did the media give it as much urgency or attention. Arguably the danger to safety was much greater then, even though an important national institution was not being attacked.
Legally speaking, Martin Couture-Rouleau and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau are murderers. Instead of treating criminals, the politicized and psychologically-charged terms of «terrorism» and «terrorist» are being applied. All the laws to deal with these criminals are in place in Canada, but new legislation is instead being made that also has the potential to be used against legitimate dissenters who oppose government policy.
Moreover, the police are being militarized under the new security paradigm of fighting terrorism. The day after the attack on Parliament Hill, on October 23, the severity of the police reaction to a homeless man crossing a yellow police line is testimony to the change in security habitus and tensions among the police in Ottawa. The measures that the Harper Government wants to normalize also include control and censorship over the internet, the unconstitutional and illegal act of taking citizenship away, and removing the mobility rights granted by the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms. The last measure has already begun with the confiscation of passports.
All Canadians have the right to leave and enter Canada freely, unless they have committed a crime. The government wants to have the legal authority to confiscate passports on mere suspicion without evidence. In the case of Martin Couture-Rouleau, he was detained and had his passport taken away when he wanted to go to Turkey in June or July 2014. The police could not arrest him and had to let him go, because of his views. «We could not arrest someone for having radical thoughts. It’s not a crime in Canada,» RCMP Superintendent Martine Fontaine explained in an October 21, 2014 press conference.
The position of the RCMP says a lot about where the Harper Government wants to go with its new security paradigm. It wants the ability to arrest people for their views.
Revoking Citizenships?
Even more dangerous is the flirtation with the idea of revoking citizenship. Already unconstitutional precedents are being set for removing it among the so-called Western coalition of countries that consistently pay lip service to democracy and then stand shoulder to shoulder with dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, and Qatar. For example, the British Parliament took steps to remove British-born Asma Al-Assad’s British citizenship in 2012 simply on the account of the fact that she was Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s wife.
The Canadian legal system does not treat everyone equally and all people are not equal in the court system. Non-citizens are disadvantaged compared to Canadian citizens. In this context, the threat of stripping citizenship away is being viewed instrumentally as a way of circumventing the domestic laws and rights protecting citizens. Without these rights the government can indefinitely detain someone without charge, put them on trial in special security courts where they will not even be told what the evidence against them is, and be prevented from accessing a lawyer. This has been the case of some non-citizens living inside Canada that have been held on security certificates for years.
The idea of taking citizenship away is also a political issue being used to politically cater to segments of different societies in various countries that have xenophobic views and dislike certain strata in their societies for various reasons.
Ignoring the Roots of the Problem
There is an old saying that society gets all the criminals it deserves. What is meant by this is that many criminals arise out of a structural problem in society.
It is no coincidence that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau once asked to be detained to fight his cocaine and crack addiction. Both attackers were drug users and had psychological problems that needed to be helped. In the case of the gunman in Ottawa, he tried reaching out for help and felt a toxic feeling of hopelessness and not belonging.
Instead of looking overseas or blaming outside forces, Canada needs to look inside. The roots of the problem include the declining social services of Canada that have progressively faced government cutbacks and austerity measures. By blaming the ISIL and the internet the government is also refusing to acknowledge this failure and the marginalization of many members of Canadian society that are not getting the help they need.
The Slippery Slope and the Harper Government’s Dirty Hands
There is a call for Canadians to be vigilant against an inflated terrorist threat from the ISIL. This is why Prime Minister Steven Harper and his government are doing their best to portray the events in Canada as an extension of the front in the Middle East. Redefining criminals as terrorists is helping reinforce this perception. Canadians and the citizens of other countries, however, should be vigilant over their rights and freedoms that took centuries of struggle to obtain.
Changing the criterion for the granting of citizenship is a whole different topic, but its removal is a dangerous and slippery slope. Although the claims are that these type of measures are for the greater good or public safety, the historic record has shown that the suspension of civil liberties has been used for ulterior motives.
As a final note, the same people inflating fears of terrorism in Canada have also supported it overseas. It should never be forgotten that Prime Minister Steven Harper and his cabinet supported the «terrorists» they now claim to oppose. The Harper Government tacitly encouraged Canadians to go fight in places like Libya and Syria for the sake of assisting Washington’s foreign policy of regime change. Canada even armed the militants linked to Al-Qaeda in Libya with drones and weapons in 2011 and allowed private security firms (mercenaries) to assist them. This should not be overlooked when people question how such a state of affairs has arisen.
ADDENDUM
Important details have emerged that strengthen the case against the Harper Government as intellectually dishonest opportunists.
(1) The Toronto Star originally reported on October 20, 2014 that multiple witnesses confirmed that Martin Couture-Rouleau’s hands were in the air in surrender when he was shot. Here is a passage from the article:
«Witnesses who spoke with the TVA network Monday afternoon said they saw a man emerge from the flipped vehicle that was lying in a ditch on the side of the road. The man had his hands in the air and was walking toward police when at least one officer opened fire on the suspect. The witnesses said they heard up to seven gunshots.»
Later the article would redact this and be re-edited.
(2) A Canadian investigative journalism webpage (FreeThePressCanada.org), noticed that before the scene was secured in Ottawa at 10:54 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) that the US news network CBS reported the following:
«The gunmen has been identified by U.S. officials to CBS News as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian national born in 1982.»
This was many hours before Canadians were even told the gunman’s identity or that he was alone. The CBS article would even be edited to remove Zehaf-Bibeau’s name or any mention that the US government was aware of it. Although security can be cited for this, it can also be looked at politically as part as a means of keeping the public in suspense and allowing a state of shock to reverberate across Canada so that the Harper Government can justify its foreign policy and security initiatives.

Media Corruptie 16



In zijn essay 'How Obama Betrays Reverend King's Philosophy of Nonviolence,' gepubliceerd op 18 januari 2010, wees de Amerikaanse auteur Jeff Nall op de continuïteit van het agressief expansionisme in de geschiedenis van de Verenigde Staten:

On December 10, 2009, Obama followed in the footsteps of so many believers in war before him: letting out a cry for peace while loading his guns. In his Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech Obama said, 'We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes,' said Obama. 'There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.' Later in his speech Obama stated plainly that 'the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.'

The history Obama recognizes… is that cruel, blood-soaked fable of American Exceptionalism. Reverend Martin Luther King saw through this fraudulent cloak of Divine American Right when he observed, on April 4, 1967, that it was the United States that is 'the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.' 

Omdat naar het oordeel van ook president Obama zijn land 'exceptionalistisch' is, mag het, nee moet het zijn eigen koers varen, ongehinderd door het internationaal recht en welke beschavingsnorm dan ook. Die opvatting is vanaf het allereerste begin de drijfveer geweest achter de verovering en exploitatie van het grondgebied dat nu de Verenigde Staten heet. En nadat in 1894 de grenzen van de continentale VS waren vastgelegd, begon het overzeese expansionisme, via Hawaii, Guam, en de Filippijnen, waar een imperialistische oorlog tegen de bevolking vele honderdduizenden burger-slachtoffers veroorzaakte. Het bloedbad was zo massaal en zo weerzinwekkend dat Mark Twain in 1900 verklaarde voorgoed te zijn veranderd van 'a red-hot imperialist' in 'an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.' Maar tezamen met een kleine groep Amerikaanse intellectuelen behoorde hij tot een minderheid. Voor de politieke en economische elite gold dat ze de grondstoffen en markten elders nodig hadden om nog rijker en machtiger te kunnen worden. En wie zou hen durven stoppen? Per slot van rekening waren ze eeuwenlang succesvol druk doende geweest met het veroveren van andermans land en het uitmoorden van de oorspronkelijke bevolking. Niemand die hiertegen protesteerde, behalve dan de Indianen, maar naar hen werd niet geluisterd. Sterker nog, de blanke christelijke kolonisten werden door de Europeanen bewonderd voor hun moed en doorzettingsvermogen. Nu rond het begin van de twintigste eeuw op het continent niets meer te veroveren was en geen enkel Indianenvolk meer kon worden uitgeroeid, eisten de meest daadkrachtigen nieuwe veroveringen ten koste van nieuw bloedvergieten. 

'Liberating' the Philippines – Admiral Dewey was ordered by Naval Undersecretary Theodore Roosevelt (in his last act before resigning from government to volunteer to fight in Cuba) to attack Spanish forces in Manila Bay for strategic purposes.  This attack was successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams; while Filipinos hoped this would quickly mean independence for their country, its perceived importance for the dreamed of empire of the United States meant something else.

In 1897, vier jaar voordat hij Amerikaans president werd, schreef Theodore Roosevelt in een brief aan een vriend:

I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.

De fameuze Amerikaanse historicus, wijlen, Howard Zinn schreef in A Young People's History of the United States (2007) met betrekking tot Theodore Roosevelt's hevige verlangen:

Maybe a war would take up some of the rebellious energy that people were pouring into strikes and protests.  Maybe it would unite the people with the armed forces against a foreign enemy. And there was another reason — an economic one.

Before he was elected president, William McKinley had said, 'We want a foreign market for our surplus goods.' Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana spelled it out in 1897. He said: 

'American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; the trade of the world must and shall be ours.

These politicians and others believed that the United States had top open up other countries to American goods — even if those markets were not eager to buy. If factories and farms could sell their surplus production overseas, American companies would keep earning money, and the economy might agoid the crises that had sparked class war in the 1890s.

War was probably not a thought-out plan among most of the elite ruling classes. Instead, it grew naturally from two sources, capitalism and nationalism. Capitalism demanded more markets. Nationalism, the spirit of strong national pride, made people think that the United States had a right, or even a duty, to expand itself and to shape the affairs of other countries. 

Stretching the United States' arm overseas was not a new idea. The war against Mexico had already carried the United States to the Pacific Ocean. Before that, in 1823, President James Monroe had produced the Monroe Doctrine. This statement made it clear that the United States claimed an interest in the politics of the entire Western Hemisphere — North, Central, and South America. It warned the nations of Europe not to meddle with countries in the America's. 

The United States, however, didn't feel that it had to stay out of other countries' affairs. Between 1798 and 1895, the United States sent troops to other countries, or took an active role in their affairs, 103 times. In the 1850s, for example, the U.S. Navy used warships to force Japan to open its ports to American shipping.

At the end of the nineteenth century, many military men, politicians, and business men supported the idea of still more foreign involvement. A writer for the Washington Post said:

'A new consciousness seems to have come upon us — the consciousness of strength — and with it a new appetite, the yearning to show our strength… The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people.'

Waar het Amerikaans exceptionalisme op uitloopt is al bekend sinds het begin van de genocidale verovering van het gebied dat nu de VS omvat. Het probleem is alleen dat de mainstream pers dit verzwijgt. Hierboven de slachtoffers van de Amerikaanse 'bevrijding' van de Filippijnen, in het kader van wat nu 'humanitair ingrijpen' wordt genoemd, of 'R2P, responsibility to protect.' 

Een decennium later, in 1907, verklaarde 6 jaar voordat hij president werd, de historicus Woodrow Wilson tijdens een college aan Columbia University:

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down … Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.' 

De Amerikaanse socioloog en historicus James James W. Loewen schreef in zijn 'National Bestseller' getiteld Lies My Teacher Told Me. Everything Your American History Book Got Wrong (1995) het volgende:

With hindsight we know that Wilson's interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua set the stage for the dictators Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and Somozas, whose legacies still reverberate.

Wilson zond daarnaast troepen naar Mexico om daar Amerikaanse investeringen veilig te stellen. Piero Gleijesus, hoogleraar aan de Johns Hopkins University en expert op het gebied van US intervention in Latin America, schreef: 

It is not that Wilson failed in his earnest efforts to bring democracy to these little countries. He never tried. He intervened  to impose hegemony, not democracy. 

Loewen:

The United States also attacked Haiti's proud tradition of individual ownership of small tracts of land, which dated back to the Haitian Revolution, in favor of the establishment of large plantations. American troops forced peasants in shackles to work on road construction crews. In 1919 Haitian citizens rose up and resisted U.S. occupation troops in a guerrilla war that cost more than 3,000 lives, most of them Haitian [...] George Barnett, a U.S. marine general, complained to his commander in Haiti: ‘practically indiscriminate killing of natives has gone on for some time,'

hetgeen de historicus James Loewen tot de conclusie voert dat Wilson's politiek in de praktijk gebaseerd was op drie keiharde feiten: 'colonialism, racism, and anticommunism.' En het was dezelfde, door onder andere de journalist en bestseller-auteur Geert Mak zo geprezen, Woodrow Wilson die

personally vetoed a clause on racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations... Wilson's legacy was extensive: he effectively closed the Democratic Party to African Americans for another two decades, and parts of the federal government remained segregated into the 1950s and beyond... Wilson was an outspoken white supremacist who believed that black people were inferior. During his campaign for the presidency, Wilson promised to press for civil rights. But once in office he forgot his promises. Instead, Wilson ordered that white and black workers in federal government jobs be segregated from one another... When black federal employees in Southern cities protested the order, Wilson had the protesters fired.

Voor een onafhankelijke waarnemer is het overduidelijk dat de huidige gewelddadige interventies van de VS naadloos passen in de continuïteit van de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek. Desondanks wordt deze context door de 'vrije pers' voortdurend verzwegen. In haar voorstelling van de werkelijkheid worden  wij gedreven door nobele motieven, terwijl de vijanden het levende Kwaad vertegenwoordigen. Met betrekking tot dit onvermogen om het eigen kwaad onder ogen te zien, wijst de Brits-Indiase neurobioloog en historicus Kenan Malik in de International New York Times van vrijdag 24 oktober 2014, op het volgende:

It is not just German history about which Britain lacks insight. While the enormity of the Holocaust has forced Germany to address the darkest aspects of its past, Britain has never had to think about its history in that fashion. From the Opium Wars to the Bengal famine, the shameful episodes of Britain’s imperial past are rarely discussed.

Perhaps nowhere is this blind spot more obvious than in the current debate about World War I. There has been much discussion in Britain about the role of German militarism and imperial ambitions in fomenting war. Rarely acknowledged is that all the great powers of the time had expansionist aims; that in the decades leading to the war, they had carved up the globe among them; that at the center of the global imperialist network stood not Germany but Britain.

Diezelfde blindheid treft de mainstream polderpers zodra het de VS betreft. Obama deugt, Poetin deugt niet, aldus haar simplistisch wereldbeeld. Daarentegen zijn opvallend veel  vooraanstaande Amerikaanse intellectuelen kritisch over hun eigen geschiedenis en de geclaimde nobele motieven van hun politieke en economische elite. Zo schreef de eerder genoemde Jeff Nall begin 2010:

Standing on the world’s stage, receiving a prize for peace, Obama stared straight into the eyes of Reverend King’s legacy and declared not hostility but rather his loyalty to militarism. Rev. King called for America to 'get on the right side of the world revolution' by undergoing a 'radical revolution of values.' Obama defended the American exceptionalism which has and continues to color U.S. militaristic violence in a divine shade of ineffability. Dismissing the hundreds of thousands left dead from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama described the U.S. as the world’s great savior which never does wrong. 'Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.' As if tearing out pages from reality and replacing them with the most egregious doublespeak Obama stated plainly: 'America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens.'

Gezien Obama's Orwelliaanse 'waarheden' kan het niemand echt verbazen dat de president in 2012 meer dan een miljard dollar van de economische elite ontving voor zijn verkiezingsfonds, natuurlijk niet om een 'change we can believe in' te verwezenlijken, maar juist om de belangen van de gevestigde orde te beschermen. De kritische Amerikaanse blogger Arthur Silber merkte in dit verband op:

I have been discussing certain of these themes for several years. I point you in particular to an article from May 2009: 'Obama and the Triumph of the American Myth.' The second, major part of that essay, 'Torture and the American Project,' sets forth many of the facts of American history that Obama steadfastly refuses to acknowledge and, as Nall observes, blatantly lies about. Obama announced his dedication to the propaganda of American Exceptionalism on a comprehensive scale in his widely praised speech on race; see 'Obama's Whitewash' for the details. 

But there is an earlier passage in 'Obama and the Triumph of the American Myth' that I offer again here, since it speaks to Nall's argument:

Given the fundamentalist fervor with which the U.S. ruling class maintains and burnishes the national mythology, an exercise in which the majority of 'ordinary' Americans join with equal enthusiasm (for such dedication to onanistic joys will forever find many followers), Barack Obama was inevitable. It was dangerous enough when truth was the enemy; truth was to be destroyed, but there remained a barely discernible acknowledgment that the truth still existed. With the ascension of Obama the Marketer, Obama the Fulfiller of Dreams, Obama the Commander of Illusion, the lie occupies the most prominent national space. Once installed, the lie grows daily and hourly. The smallest remaining tatters of truth are pushed always farther to the edges, until they vanish into the growing swamp of pain, suffering and death. To search for the truth in these circumstances is to sentence oneself to ridicule and hatred. To speak the truth is to render oneself irrelevant and invisible.

Dit laatste is de belangrijkste reden waarom een publiek debat over de werkelijkheid in het Westen nooit mogelijk is zolang de commerciële massamedia worden beheerst door corrupte opiniemakers als Hubert Smeets en Chris Kijne. Ik noem deze twee niet bij toeval, want, zoals te verwachten was, treedt dit duo volgende week donderdag 30 oktober, weer  op, want 

Aan de vooravond van de herdenking van de val van de muur organiseren NRC en VPRO op 30 oktober samen Café Europa: Oost en West, 25 jaar na de val van de muur,

waar opnieuw de bekende en inmiddels versleten anti-Rusland propaganda zal worden verkondigd. Deelnemers zijn de 'usual suspects' als ik Smeets' jargon even leen, zoals daar onder andere zijn de zwaargewichten in de polder: 'Femke Halsema, Hubert Smeets en Renée Postma. Presentatie Chris Kijne.' Het gezelschap is met zorg uitgekozen om te voorkomen dat kritische stemmen de aloude mainstream-propaganda onderuit zullen halen, want een ware discussie wordt door de 'vrije pers' intens gehaat,  en dus Femke, Hubert, Renée en wie anders dan interviewer Chris, die zich vereeuwigde door in 2008 de vraag op te werpen 'of er' voor een journalist 

inderdaad niet even een hoger belang is dan 'de waarheid, niets dan de waarheid,'  

en hij dus moet zwijgen zodra het neoliberale kapitalisme bedreigd wordt door een zelf gecreëerde kredietcrisis.   


De domineeszoon Chris Kijne, journalist van de VPRO, die eraan twijfelt of hij zijn publiek 'de waarheid, niets dan de waarheid,'  moet vertellen.

Opvallend hierbij is het ontbreken van een kritische intelligentsia in de polder, waardoor het niveau van kennis en discussie erbarmelijk laag blijft, zeker als men dit vergelijkt met de vele, op mijn weblog herhaaldelijk geciteerde, kritische Amerikaanse intellectuelen. Hoewel het laatste in feite een pleonasme is, beseft de polderpers dit niet. Zo spreekt ook Geert Mak niet van gewelddadig Amerikaans expansionisme, maar draait hij kritiekloos de werkelijkheid om met beweringen als dat de VS na 1945 ‘decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent [fungeerde].' Dat in werkelijkheid de macht in Washington en haar geheime dienst, de CIA, een 'Legacy of Ashes' in de hele wereld achterliet, of  'Een Spoor Van Vernieling' door de wereld trok, zoals de Nederlandse titel luidt van de uitgebreid gedocumenteerde studie van de vooraanstaande New York Times-onderzoeksjournalist Tim Weiner, is een te verwaarlozen detail voor Nederlandse mainstream-opiniemakers als Geert Mak, Chris Kijne en natuurlijk Hubert Smeets voor wie 'Poetin' de grote bedreiging van de wereldvrede vertegenwoordigt. Deze opiniemakers tonen geen interesse om hun stellingen in een bredere en historische context te plaatsen. Smeets' obsessieve fixatie op de Russische president grenst aan een stoornis, zoals ondermeer blijkt wanneer hij in een Russische film alleen maar een afrekening kan zien met het 'poetinisme,' dat de een hedendaagse vorm van stalinisme suggereert. Woensdag 22 oktober 2014 liet de opiniemaker van de NRC zijn publiek het volgende weten over de nieuwe film van de Russische regisseur Andrej Zvjagintsev:

Zijn laatste film Leviathan is ronduit maatschappelijk geëngageerd. Het script over de strijd van een autonome man, een klusser die zijn huis en haard wil beschermen tegen de corrupte burgemeester in een dorp bij de poolcirkel, heeft zelfs Hollywoodtrekjes. De film won op het festival in Cannes dit voorjaar een Gouden Palm voor het beste script en wordt ingezonden voor een Oscar.

Maar er is één verschil met Hollywood. In Leviathan overwint het kwaad. Het poetinisme trekt aan het langste eind: de macht kan ongestoord verder drinken. En de priester bedekt dat onder een vrome woordendeken. Nog meer dan in Elena, ook geen toonbeeld van optimisme over de menselijke aard, toont Zvjagintsev zich in Leviathan de grootmeester van de ‘feel bad movie.'

Smeets' beschrijving is voor een oplettende lezer onthullend, omdat de opiniemaker onbewust en impliciet zo'n helder beeld geeft van zijn ideologische kijk op de werkelijkheid. Daarover de volgende keer.



vrijdag 24 oktober 2014

MH 17 MYSTERY 17

MH17: The Untold Story         MH17: The Untold Story


Published on Oct 22, 2014


Three months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was violently brought down from the skies over Ukraine, there are still no definitive answers to what caused the tragedy. Civil conflict in the area prevented international experts from conducting a full and thorough investigation. The wreckage should have been collected and scrupulously re-assembled to identify all the damage, but this standard investigative procedure was never carried out. Until that’s done, evidence can only be gleaned from pictures of the debris, the flight recorders or black boxes and eye-witnesses' testimonies. This may be enough to help build a picture of what really happened to the aircraft, whether a rocket fired from the ground or gunfire from a military jet.


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