All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo.
Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.
That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.
-Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications under Obama
“Real journalism” is propaganda from Washington DC.
The news simply quotes the politicians, believes the names of bills will become reality, and buys hook, line, and sinker what the spy-masters in the Pentagon tell them.
And here we are again, being sold a justification for yet another war in the middle east.
The US government claims that Iran attacked a Japanese shipping vessel with mines. Iran claims this is a lie.
The events just seem too perfect, justifying what America already wanted: to go to war.
It doesn’t even have to be an American-orchestrated false flag. It could simply be a misrepresentation, like the Gulf of Tonkin incidents which escalated the Vietnam War.
The US said that North Vietnam attacked its ship, but the truth was that the American ship fired the first “warning shots.” In the end, the American ship sustained one bullet hole and no casualties, while four North Vietnamese soldiers were killed.
But most Americans would never even hear about the Gulf of Tonkin if it wasn’t for fake news sites like Babylon Bee.
The headline reads: John Bolton: ‘When Has The Government Ever Lied About Attacks On Ships In A Gulf Somewhere Just To Provoke War?’
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) found himself in hot water recently over comments he made in defense of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who faces war crimes charges over his alleged conduct while serving in combat overseas. Gallagher is charged with stabbing a 15 year old ISIS member while in custody, of taking photos posing with the corpse of the teen, and with killing several civilians.
Defending Gallagher recently, Hunter put his own record up next to the SEAL to suggest that he’s an elected Congressman who has done worse things in battle than Gallagher.
That’s where Hunter’s defense earned him some perhaps unwanted attention. While participating in the first “Battle of Fallujah” in early 2007, by Hunter’s own account he and his fellow soldiers killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. They fired mortars into the city and killed at random.
In the sanitized world of US mainstream media reporting on US wars overseas, we do not hear about non-combatants being killed by Americans. How many times has there been any reporting on the birth defects that Iraqis continue to suffer in the aftermath of US attacks with horrific weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorus?
Rep. Hunter described his philosophy when fighting in Iraq:
“You go in fast and hard, you kill people, you hit them in the face and then you get out…We’re going to hurt you and then we’re going to leave. And if you want to be nice to America, we’ll be nice to you. If you don’t want to be nice to us, we’re going to slap you again.”
This shows how much Duncan Hunter does not understand about war. When he speaks of hitting people in the face until they are nice to America, he doesn’t seem to realize that the people of Fallujah – and all of Iraq – never did a thing to the US to deserve that hit in the face. The war was launched on the basis of lies and cooked-up intelligence by many of the people who are serving in the current Administration.
Yemeni experts on the conflict say that Houthi arms acquisition today has likewise little to do with Iran. Yemen has always had a flourishing arms black market in which weapons, large and small, can be obtained in almost any quantity if the money is right. Anti-Houthi forces, copiously supplied by Saudi Arabia and UAE, are happy to profit by selling on weapons to the Houthis or anybody else.
However, it was the friendly US official and I who were being naive, forgetting that the real purpose of state secrecy is to enable governments to establish their own self-interested and often mendacious version of the truth by the careful selection of “facts” to be passed on to the public. They feel enraged by any revelation of what they really know, or by any alternative source of information. Such threats to their control of the news agenda must be suppressed where possible and, where not, those responsible must be pursued and punished.
We have had two good examples of the lengths to which a government – in this case that of the US – will go to protect its own tainted version of events. The first is the charging of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for leaking 750,000 confidential military and diplomatic documents in 2010.
The second example has happened in the last few days. The international media may not have always covered itself in glory in the war in Yemen, but there are brave journalists and news organisations who have done just that. One of them is Yemeni reporter Maad al-Zikry who, along with Maggie Michael and Nariman El-Mofty, is part of an Associated Press (AP) team that won the international reporting Pulitzer prize this year for superb on the ground coverage of the war in Yemen. Their stories included revelations about the US drone strikes in Yemen and about the prisons maintained there by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The US government clearly did not like this type of critical journalism. When the Pulitzer was awarded last Tuesday in New York Zikry was not there because he had been denied a visa to enter the US. There is no longer a US embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, but two months ago he made his way to the US embassy in Cairo where his visa application, though fully supported by AP and many other prestigious institutions, was rejected.
After AP had exerted further pressure, Zikry made a second application for a visa and this time he was seen by a Counsellor at the embassy. He reports himself as asking: “Does the US embassy think that a Yemeni investigative journalist doing reporting for AP is a terrorist? Are you saying I am a terrorist?”
The Counsellor said that they would “work” on his visa or, in other words, ask the powers-that-be in Washington what to do. “So, I waited and waited – and waited,” he says. “And, until now I heard nothing from them.”
Of course, Washington is fully capable of waiving any prohibition on the granting of a visa to a Yemeni in a case like this, but it chose not to.
Can what Assange and Wikileaks did in 2010 be compared with what Zikry and AP did in 2019? Some commentators, to their shame, claim that the pursuit of Assange, and his current imprisonment pending possible extradition to the US or Sweden, has nothing to with freedom of expression.
In fact, he was doing what every journalist ought to do and doing it very successfully...
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that Iran has provided the Houthis “with the missile system, the hardware, the military capability” that they have acquired.
National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Wednesday that Iran risked a “very strong response” from the US for, among other things, drone attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia for which he holds the Iranians responsible.
These accusations by the US, Saudi Arabia and whoever is their Yemeni ally of the day that the Houthis are stooges of Iran armed with Iranian-supplied weapons has a long history. But what do we know about what Washington really thinks of these allegations which have not changed much over the years?
American foreign policy can be so retro, not to mention absurd. Despite being bogged down in more military interventions than it can reasonably handle, the Trump team recently picked a new fight — in Latin America. That’s right! Uncle Sam kicked off a sequel to the Cold War with some of our southern neighbors, while resuscitating the boogeyman of socialism. In the process, National Security Advisor John Bolton treated us all to a new phrase, no less laughable than Bush the younger’s 2002 “axis of evil” (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea). He labeled Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny.”
Alliteration no less! The only problem is that the phrase ridiculously overestimates both the degree of collaboration among those three states and the dangers they pose to their hegemonic neighbor to the north. Bottom line: in no imaginable fashion do those little tin-pot tyrannies offer either an existential or even a serious threat to the United States. Evidently, however, the phrase was meant to conjure up enough ill will and fear to justify the Trump team’s desire for sweeping regime change in Latin America. Think of it as a micro-version of Cold War 2.0…
strap yourself in for a bumpy ride. After all, the demonization of Latin American “socialists” and an ill-advised war in the Persian Gulf have already been part of our lived experience. Under the circumstances, remember your Karl Marx: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
And add this irony to the grim farce to come: you need only look to the Middle East to see a genuine all-American troika of tyranny. I’m thinking about the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the military junta in Egypt, and the colonizing state of Israel — all countries that eschew real democracy and are working together to rain chaos on an already unstable region.
If you weren’t an American, this might already be clear to you. With that in mind, let’s try on a pair of non-American shoes and take a brief tour of a real troika of tyranny on this planet, a threesome that just happen to be President Trump’s best buddies in the Middle East.
U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton accused Iran Wednesday of “almost certainly” being behind attacks on four oil tankers moored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) earlier this month.
Mr. Bolton is visiting Abu Dhabi amid the backdrop of soaring tensions between Washington and Tehran which the U.S. accuses of threatening American interests and allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
His assertion came on the eve of emergency Arab and Gulf summits called by Iran’s regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia to discuss the standoff.
The four ships, including two Saudi tankers, were attacked by “naval mines almost certainly from Iran”, Mr. Bolton told journalists at the U.S. embassy briefing regarding the May 12 attacks.
“It’s clear that Iran is behind the Fujairah attack. Who else would you think would be doing it? Someone from Nepal?
“There is no doubt in anybody’s minds in Washington, we know who did this and it’s important Iran knows we know,” he added…
The Trump administration has ordered non-essential diplomatic staff out of Iraq, citing threats from Iranian-backed Iraqi armed groups, and moved an aircraft carrier and heavy B-52 bombers to the region…
Below are seven suggestions which will accelerate your popularity while infuriating your critics and putting them on the defensive at the same time:
Pardon all non-violent federal drug offenders. The First Step Act was hailed even by your opposition as “the most significant criminal justice reform law at the federal level in years.” Now you can build on that. Perhaps 70,000 or more prisoners are in this population. Set up an independent commission to identify these non-violent prisoners and pardon them at the rate of 700 per day with much ceremony and publicity. Their friends and families, along with other voters who find the huge prison population in this country disturbing, will have an increased enthusiasm and respect for you.
Fire Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. They do not support your much-stated foreign policy goal of avoiding foreign wars. Replace them with Republican intervention skeptics like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan—or cross the aisle and choose principled Democratic non-interventionists like Tulsi Gabbard and Mike Gravel.
Propose not only another tax cut but serious spending cuts as well. A second round of tax cuts reducing the current top rate on corporations from 21% to 15% and the current individual top rate from 37% to 25% will further boost US output and attract more of the world to set up shop within our borders, thus boosting American economic greatness. Announce that your plan is to cut taxes again every two years. Senator Rand Paul proposed a $500 billion spending reduction in 2011. Ask Paul to head a commission to make a similar proposal.
Pay down the national debt. You could be the first president in nearly 100 years to leave office with the national debt smaller then when you entered. The debt could be paid down by selling federal assets, as President Clinton once proposed. Go bipartisan again and ask the former president to head a commission to pick federal assets to sell.
Announce to each country in the world that you will reduce US tariffs to zero if they will. You’ve stated you want zero tariffs, zero barriers, zero subsidies. Here’s the way to achieve that goal and go down in history as the greatest trade creator who ever served in office. Since trade reduces conflict between countries—trade and peace go hand in hand—you’ll also be one of the greatest peace makers ever.
Increase the child deduction. Polls show that Americans would like to have more children than they do. Increasing the child tax deduction to $5,200 (the inflation-adjusted level of 60 years ago) will empower many of them to do so.
End the federal war on marijuana. A whopping two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, favor this. The time is ripe to steal a key issue away from your Democratic opponents, win millions of voters to your side, and go down in history as the president who ended this failed and hugely unpopular modern-day Prohibition.
Mr. President, these proposals will confound your critics, expand your base, and go a long way toward fulfilling your pledge to Make America Great Again. Seize the day!
The New York Times revealed the answer to the mystery on May 16: “In meetings in Washington and Tel Aviv in the past few weeks,” the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent wrote, “Israeli intelligence warned”
President Donald Trump’s national security team has been leaking “intelligence” about Iranian threats for a week now in an attempt to justify escalating tensions, including moving American air attack assets to the Persian Gulf. But a closer look suggests that National Security Advisor John Bolton and other senior officials are trying to pull off an intelligence deception comparable to the fraudulent pretense for war in Iraq.
There’s also credible evidence that Israel could be playing a key role in this subterfuge.
This deception has served to defend not only a U.S. military buildup in the region, but an expansion of the possible contingencies that could be used to justify military confrontation. In Bolton’s White House statement on May 5, he said the deployment of assets to the Gulf would “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”
But public claims by the White House about Iran don’t reflect “intelligence” in any technical sense of the word. No one has cited a single piece of hard evidence that justifies these claims of threats, let alone any that are “new,” as press leaks have suggested. All of them appear to be deliberate and gross distortions of actual facts. Thus do they parallel the infamous aluminum tubes of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, which were presented as proof of an incipient Iraqi nuclear weapons program, despite the fact that technical analysis had shown that they couldn’t have been used for that purpose.
The Washington Postreported on May 15 that Pentagon and intelligence officials had cited three “Iranian actions” that had supposedly “triggered alarms”:
“Information suggesting an Iranian threat against U.S. diplomatic facilities in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Irbil.”
“U.S. concerns that Iran may be preparing to mount rocket or missile launchers on small ships in the Persian Gulf.”
“A directive from [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular Iranian military units that some U.S. officials have interpreted as a potential threat to U.S. military and diplomatic personnel.”
None of those three claims describes actual evidence of a threatening Iranian “action”; all merely refer to an official U.S. “concern” about a possible Iranian threat.
The notion of missile launchers on small Iranian boats threatening American ships has been the subject of extensive leaks to the media. But a closer examination of that story shows that it’s an entirely artificial construct.
Multiple news outlets have reported that the concerns over missiles launchers are based on aerial photographs showing Iranian missiles in small fishing boats, or dhows, that are “believed” to be under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. An ABC News story claims that these photos were “taken by U.S. intelligence” above the Iranian port of Chabahar. This is said to have stoked fears that the IRGC would use them against U.S. naval ships.
..Liberty-minded Americans agree with the rhetoric of Mr. Trump that we need better relations with Russia and to end the war in Afghanistan, while staying out of civil wars like the one in Syria. Somehow, Mr. Bolton has undermined Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and has slow-walked the president’s stated goal of dialing back America being everywhere all the time.
One area one would think that Mr. Bolton could do no harm is with our national pastime — Major League Baseball (MLB). Mr. Bolton recently ended a Trump administration agreement that allowed Cuban baseball players safe passage to the United States to play in Major League Baseball. This act by the Trump administration will result in Cuba’s most talented baseball players seeking out human smugglers to play professional baseball in the United States. A December agreement between Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Cuban Baseball Federation had allowed Cuban players to avoid hardship when coming to play in the United States.
The agreement had the stamp of approval from the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Treasury Department and was similar to agreements with other baseball organizations in other nations. Andrew Zimbalist wrote in Forbes on April 11, 2019, “MLB and the [Cuban Baseball Federation] reached an agreement that was similar to the agreements that MLB has with baseball organizations in Japan, South Korea, China and Mexico. In addition, the new system would have allowed Cuban players to live in or visit Cuba and would have promoted the integration of Cuban players into the major leagues. It also would have provided for MLB scouts to travel to Cuba to identify promising players, avoiding the situation where a Cuban player defects but is then not signed to a professional contract and is stuck in a third country without employment and unable to return home.”
Seems reasonable, yet Mr. Bolton has falsely claimed that the Major League Baseball agreement somehow helped to prop up the regime in Venezuela.
As we have learned through experience, sanctions against Cuba don’t work. The U.S. government recognized this fact when it carved out big U.S.-based companies from existing sanctions regimes. U.S. airlines, financial institutions and telecommunications companies have been allowed to avoid the Cuban embargo and have provided $100 million directly to the Cuban government over the past few years. By contrast, the MLB deal was with a Cuban-based baseball organization. The MLB-specific sanctions are a high-profile publicity stunt and not based in any real policy outcome.
Before the agreement, Cuban baseball players who wanted to come to play Major League Baseball were moved by criminal organizations. Players paid large sums of money to human traffickers to get themselves and family members out, resulting in a dangerous trip out of the country. Many who left family members behind had them threatened by the government and criminal human trafficking enterprises attempting to extort money. Once the players left, they could not go back to Cuba.
Cubans who have worked their whole lives to become good enough to play in the world’s most competitive baseball league in the United States had their dreams dashed because of politics…
Speaking on state TV of the prospect of a war in the Gulf, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei seemed to dismiss the idea.
“There won’t be any war. … We don’t seek a war, and (the Americans) don’t either. They know it’s not in their interests.”
The ayatollah’s analysis — a war is in neither nation’s interest — is correct. Consider the consequences of a war with the United States for his own country.
Iran’s hundreds of swift boats and handful of submarines would be sunk. Its ports would be mined or blockaded. Oil exports and oil revenue would halt. Air fields and missile bases would be bombed. The Iranian economy would crash. Iran would need years to recover.
And though Iran’s nuclear sites are under constant observation and regular inspection, they would be destroyed.
Tehran knows this, which is why, despite 40 years of hostility, Iran has never sought war with the “Great Satan” and does not want this war to which we seem to be edging closer every day.
What would such a war mean for the United States?
It would not bring about “regime change” or bring down Iran’s government that survived eight years of ground war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
If we wish to impose a regime more to our liking in Tehran, we will have to do it the way we did it with Germany and Japan after 1945, or with Iraq in 2003. We would have to invade and occupy Iran.
But in World War II, we had 12 million men under arms. And unlike Iraq in 2003, which is one-third the size and population of Iran, we do not have the hundreds of thousands of troops to call up and send to the Gulf.
Nor would Americans support such an invasion, as President Donald Trump knows from his 2016 campaign. Outside a few precincts, America has no enthusiasm for a new Mideast war, no stomach for any occupation of Iran.
Moreover, war with Iran would involve firefights in the Gulf that would cause at least a temporary shutdown in oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — and a worldwide recession.
How would that help the world? Or Trump in 2020?
How many allies would we have in such a war?
Spain has pulled its lone frigate out of John Bolton’s flotilla headed for the Gulf. Britain, France and Germany are staying with the nuclear pact, continuing to trade with Iran, throwing ice water on our intelligence reports that Iran is preparing to attack us.
Turkey regards Iran as a cultural and economic partner. Russia was a de facto ally in Syria’s civil war. China continues to buy Iranian oil. India just hosted Iran’s foreign minister.
So, again, Cicero’s question: “Cui bono?”…
Who wants us to plunge back into the Middle East, to fight a new and wider war than the ones we fought already this century in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen?
Answer: Pompeo and Bolton, Bibi Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Sunni kings, princes, emirs, sultans and the other assorted Jeffersonian democrats on the south shore of the Persian Gulf.
And lest we forget, the never-Trumpers and neocons in exile nursing their bruised egos, whose idea of sweet revenge is a U.S. return to the Mideast in a war with Iran, which then brings an end to the Trump presidency.
“I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran,” Clawson began.
That Time John Bolton Said It’s Good To Lie About War
Journalist Whitney Webb recently tweeted a 2010 video clip I’d never seen before featuring US National Security Advisor John Bolton defending the use of deception in advancing military agendas, which highlights something we should all be paying attention to as Trump administration foreign policy becomes increasingly Boltonized.
On a December 2010 episode of Fox News’ Freedom Watch, Bolton and the show’s host Andrew Napolitano were debating about recent WikiLeaks publications, and naturally the subject of government secrecy came up.
“Now I want to make the case for secrecy in government when it comes to the conduct of national security affairs, and possibly for deception where that’s appropriate,” Bolton said. “You know Winston Churchill said during World War Two that in wartime truth is so important it should be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies.”
“Do you really believe that?” asked an incredulous Napolitano.
“Absolutely,” Bolton replied.
“You would lie in order to preserve the truth?”
“If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it,” Bolton answered.
“I don’t think we’re often faced with that difficulty, but would I lie about where the D-Day invasion was going to take place to deceive the Germans, you’d better believe it,” Bolton continued.
“Why do people in the government think that the laws of society or the rules don’t apply to them?” Napolitano asked.
“Because they are not dealing in the civil society we live in under the Constitution,” Bolton replied. “They are dealing in the anarchic environment internationally where different rules apply.”
“But you took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and the Constitution mandates certain openness and certain fairness,” Napolitano protested. “You’re willing to do away with that in order to attain a temporary military goal?”
“I think as Justice Jackson said in a famous decision, the Constitution is not a suicide pact,” Bolton said. “And I think defending the United States from foreign threats does require actions that in a normal business environment in the United States we would find unprofessional. I don’t make any apology for it.”
So that’s a thing. And it’s important for us to know it’s a thing because of the way things are heating up in Iran right now, since Bolton’s fingerprints are all over it.
This is an environment that is ripe for deceptions of all sorts, and, given what Bolton said on live television nearly a decade ago, we would all do very well to remain very, very skeptical of any and all news we hear about Iran going forward. If for example you hear that within this environment of escalated tensions and military posturing Iran or one of its “proxies” has attacked the United States in some way, your immediate response should be one of intense skepticism about what the mass media talking heads are telling you to believe.
“I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran,” Clawson began.
(Can I just pause here to note what a bizarre series of words that is? “Get us to war with Iran?” Get us to the thing that every sane human being wants to avoid with every fiber of their being? You want to “get us to” there? This is not the kind of thing normal humans say. You only hear this kind of insanity in the DC swamp where creatures like John Bolton have their roots.)
“Which leads me to conclude that if in fact compromise is not coming, that the traditional way that America gets to war is what would be best for US interests,” Clawson added. “Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into the war… you may recall we had to wait for Pearl Harbor. Some people might think that Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War One; you may recall we had to wait for the Lusitania episode. Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to get us into Vietnam; you may recall we had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode. We didn’t go to war with Spain until the USS Maine exploded. And may I point out that Mr. Lincoln did not feel that he could call out the Army until Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians said would cause an attack.”
“So if, in fact, the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war,” Clawson continued. “One can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down. Some day, one of them might not come up. Who would know why? We can do a variety of things, if we wish to increase the pressure (I’m not advocating that) but I’m just suggesting that this is not an either/or proposition – just sanctions have to succeed or other things. We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.”
So these are ideas that have been in circulation for many years. That gun is loaded and ready to fire.
Bolton trussed up his 2010 confession using an example that most people would agree with: that it was reasonable for the Allied forces to deliberately deceive the Nazis about the nature of the D-Day invasion. But we know John Bolton better than that by now. This PNAC director and architect of the Iraq war once threatened to murder a foreign official’s children because his successful diplomatic efforts were putting a damper on the manufacturing of consent for the Iraq invasion. He wasn’t defending the use of deception in crucial military options used to halt tyrants trying to take over the world, he was defending the use of deception in the senseless wars of aggression that he has built his political career on advancing.
Take everything you hear about Iran with a planet-sized grain of salt, dear reader, and everything you hear about Venezuela too while we’re on the subject. There are skillful manipulators who are hell bent on toppling the governments of those nations, and they have absolutely no problem whatsoever with deceiving you in order to facilitate that. And they don’t believe the rules apply to them.
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