Wired’s Gee-Whiz High-Tech Militarism view post on FAIR.org by Julianne Tveten A deluge of major Western publications stated last month that the US destroyed an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman (e.g., New York Times, 7/18/19; NPR, 7/19/19; NBC News, 7/18/19 ). Citing unproven reports from Donald Trump and the US Department of Defense, the outlets stated that the drone came within 1,000 yards of a US Navy warship, after ignoring “multiple calls to stand down.” Iran denied the accusations, providing a time-stamped video meant to demonstrate that the drone remained airborne “before and even after the time Americans claim” (BBC, 7/19/19). The US, meanwhile, provided a dubious series of photos, with no indication of when they were taken or their relationship to each other. A Wired article (7/22/19) celebrates “the first-ever ‘kill’ by a US directed-energy weapon.” Most of the aforementioned media noted Iran’s denial. Wired’s take, however—entitled “The Marines’ New Drone-Killer Aces Its First Real World Test” (7/22/19)—ignored Iran’s response entirely. Instead, Wired accepted the US’s warmongering narrative fully, even cheerleading the military for its engineering prowess. The article’s cause for celebration: The US Marines took down a drone for the first time by blasting radio signals to interrupt communications between the drone and its base, rather than using more conventional weapons such as guns or lasers. The article wasn’t concerned with the geopolitical or moral context of a potential act of US aggression against Iran. Rather, as Wired made explicit, its focus was the technological tour de force of downing the drone: But the significance lies less in heightened tensions in the region than it does in the weapon of choice. The strike marks the first reported successful use of the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System, an energy weapon that blasts not artillery or lasers but radio signals. After listing the technical merits—and, to a far lesser extent, shortcomings—of the energy weapon, the article proceeded to call the use of this weapon “fun.” Wired has a history of portraying US military operations as dazzling, do-good technological marvels. Days before championing the Marines’ energy weapon, the outlet published a ringing endorsement of the Air Force’s new rescue helicopter (7/19/19), which doubled as an advertorial for both the Air Force and aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Not unlike a car commercial, the article detailed the vehicle’s bells and whistles: Twice the fuel capacity! Extra range! New surveillance cameras! Weapon mounts! The idea that some of the countries targeted might seek to develop defenses to these devastating attacks was described as the “challenge” of “rapid evolution of opposition to the American military.” A new fighter-jet ejection system garnered equally glowing coverage (8/31/18), promising to make “rocketing out of a B-2 bomber surprisingly safe.” A five-pound Lockheed Martin “hit-to-kill” missile, which Wired (5/5/18) playfully termed a “pocket rocket,” received the same PR sheen for its size. Lockheed (11/28/17 ) was similarly lavished with praise for supplying the US Army and Air Force with “sci-fi” laser weapons, described as a “toy” that “lets you waltz into enemy territory, do your job while zapping missiles out of the sky, and cruise home.” Noting that that “job” involves dropping high explosives on human beings is left unmentioned, lest all the fun be taken out of it. Wired (7/2/19) compares a military development lab to the “storied garages where Apple and Hewlett-Packard began.” Last summer, Wired (7/2/18) told the story of how the Army was “building a dream team of tech-savvy soldiers,” replete with a cast of noble, innovative characters. Matt, an anonymized computer scientist and Army captain, developed “hacks” to save money and time on drone-disabling technology, evoking what the story termed the “romance” of early Silicon Valley garage startups. Meanwhile, a group of plucky Army tech officials sought to render the Army more “nurturing” for talent like Matt. The result: Matt assembled the ballyhooed dream team, “like a scene out of Ocean’s Eleven ,” where they’d work alongside former Facebook and Dropbox staffers now under the employ of the armed forces. An earlier piece examining the “future of war” (6/13/17) fawned over the prospect of videogame-inspired combat. Its premise: Wouldn’t it be cool if the Pentagon supplied soldiers of the future with algorithm-generated maps, notifications and color-coding systems? Its source—Will Roper, a Defense Department employee whose job was to “study where war is headed, and to develop the technological tools that help the United States win there”—threw the magazine’s political allegiances into sharp relief. While the story acknowledged matters of morality, it offered little more than throwaway comments secondary to the wonder of fusing combat training with videogames. The Army could send machines into combat, Wired noted, but, it asked, “does any country want to delegate the decision to kill someone to a machine?” The article further conceded that “Call of Duty for real” may, to some, be “horrifying” (though “patriotic” to others). These could have been opportunities to include a dissenting voice that might elaborate on the inhumanity of a combat game come to life, or acknowledge the cruelty of using people to kill people. Neither concern was anywhere to be found. It’s one thing to detail the technical properties of machinery, and quite another to try to leverage those properties into public support for US belligerence. In Wired’s propagandistic imagination, military weapons resemble otherworldly creations, high-tech spectacles, the stuff of science fiction. Within that framing, there’s no need to consider the people around the world for whom those weapons are all too real. You can send a message to Wired at mail@wired.com, or via Twitter: @Wired. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.

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RSN: Provoking Nuclear War by Media

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FOCUS: John Pilger | Provoking Nuclear War by Media 
 
John Pilger, teleSUR 
Pilger writes: "Obeisance to the United States and its collaborators as a benign force 'bringing good' runs deep in western establishment journalism." 
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Obeisance to the United States and its collaborators as a benign force “bringing good” runs deep in western establishment journalism.

he exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually“condemned ethnic cleansing,” opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590-page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato’s illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.

Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented “international tribunal.” Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by US officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed.

Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the western media as the “butcher of the Balkans” who was responsible for “genocide,” especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against “this new Hitler.”

David Scheffer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], declared that as many as“225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59” may have been murdered by Milocevic’s forces.

This was the justification for Nato’s bombing, led by Bill Clinton and Blair, that killed hundreds of civilians in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios and destroyed Serbia’s economic infrastructure. It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious “peace conference” in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were “worth it.”

Albright delivered an “offer” to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces “outside the legal process,” and to the imposition of a neo-liberal “free market,” Serbia would be bombed. This was contained in an “Appendix B,” which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe’s last independent “socialist” state.

Once Nato began bombing, there was a stampede of Kosovar refugees “fleeing a holocaust.” When it was over, international police teams descended on Kosovo to exhume the victims. The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines.” The final count of the dead in Kosovo was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the pro-Nato Kosovo Liberation Front. There was no genocide. The Nato attack was both a fraud and a war crime.

All but a fraction of America’s vaunted “precision guided” missiles hit not military but civilian targets, including the news studios of Radio Television Serbia in Belgrade. Sixteen people were killed, including cameramen, producers and a make-up artist. Blair described the dead, profanely, as part of Serbia’s“command and control.”

In 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, revealed that she had been pressured not to investigate Nato’s crimes.

This was the model for Washington’s subsequent invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and, by stealth, Syria. All qualify as “paramount crimes” under the Nuremberg standard; all depended on media propaganda. While tabloid journalism played its traditional part, it was serious, credible, often liberal journalism that was the most effective – the evangelical promotion of Blair and his wars by the Guardian, the incessant lies about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the Observer and the New York Times, and the unerring drumbeat of government propaganda by the BBC in the silence of its omissions.

At the height of the bombing, the BBC’s Kirsty Wark interviewed General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander. The Serbian city of Nis had just been sprayed with American cluster bombs, killing women, old people and children in an open market and a hospital. Wark asked not a single question about this, or about any other civilian deaths.

Others were more brazen. In February 2003, the day after Blair and Bush had set fire to Iraq, the BBC’s political editor, Andrew Marr, stood in Downing Street and made what amounted to a victory speech. He excitedly told his viewers that Blair had “said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.” Today, with a million dead and a society in ruins, Marr’s BBC interviews are recommended by the U.S. embassy in London.

Marr’s colleagues lined up to pronounce Blair “vindicated.” The BBC’s Washington correspondent, Matt Frei, said, “There’s no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially to the Middle East … is now increasingly tied up with military power.”

This obeisance to the United States and its collaborators as a benign force “bringing good” runs deep in western establishment journalism. It ensures that the present-day catastrophe in Syria is blamed exclusively on Bashar al-Assad, whom the West and Israel have long conspired to overthrow, not for any humanitarian concerns, but to consolidate Israel’s aggressive power in the region. The jihadist forces unleashed and armed by the US, Britain, France, Turkey and their “coalition” proxies serve this end. It is they who dispense the propaganda and videos that becomes news in the US and Europe, and provide access to journalists and guarantee a one-sided “coverage” of Syria.

The city of Aleppo is in the news. Most readers and viewers will be unaware that the majority of the population of Aleppo lives in the government-controlled western part of the city. That they suffer daily artillery bombardment from western-sponsored al-Qaida is not news. On 21 July, French and American bombers attacked a government village in Aleppo province, killing up to 125 civilians. This was reported on page 22 of the Guardian; there were no photographs.

Having created and underwritten jihadism in Afghanistan in the 1980s as Operation Cyclone - a weapon to destroy the Soviet Union - the U.S. is doing something similar in Syria. Like the Afghan Mujahideen, the Syrian “rebels” are America’s and Britain’s foot soldiers. Many fight for al-Qaida and its variants; some, like the Nusra Front, have rebranded themselves to comply with American sensitivities over 9/11. The CIA runs them, with difficulty, as it runs jihadists all over the world.

The immediate aim is to destroy the government in Damascus, which, according to the most credible poll (YouGov Siraj), the majority of Syrians support, or at least look to for protection, regardless of the barbarism in its shadows. The long-term aim is to deny Russia a key Middle Eastern ally as part of a Nato war of attrition against the Russian Federation that eventually destroys it.

The nuclear risk is obvious, though suppressed by the media across “the free world”. The editorial writers of the Washington Post, having promoted the fiction of WMD in Iraq, demand that Obama attack Syria. Hillary Clinton, who publicly rejoiced at her executioner’s role during the destruction of Libya, has repeatedly indicated that, as president, she will “go further” than Obama.

Gareth Porter, a journalist reporting from Washington, recently revealed the names of those likely to make up a Clinton cabinet, who plan an attack on Syria. All have belligerent cold war histories; the former CIA director, Leon Panetta, says that “the next president is gonna have to consider adding additional special forces on the ground.”

What is most remarkable about the war propaganda now in flood tide is its patent absurdity and familiarity. I have been looking through archive film from Washington in the 1950s when diplomats, civil servants and journalists were witch-hunted and ruined by Senator Joe McCarthy for challenging the lies and paranoia about the Soviet Union and China. Like a resurgent tumor, the anti-Russia cult has returned.

In Britain, the Guardian’s Luke Harding leads his newspaper’s Russia-haters in a stream of journalistic parodies that assign to Vladimir Putin every earthly iniquity. When the Panama Papers leak was published, the front page said Putin, and there was a picture of Putin; never mind that Putin was not mentioned anywhere in the leaks.

Like Milosevic, Putin is Demon Number One. It was Putin who shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Headline: “As far as I’m concerned, Putin killed my son.” No evidence required. It was Putin who was responsible for Washington’s documented (and paid for) overthrow of the elected government in Kiev in 2014. The subsequent terror campaign by fascist militias against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine was the result of Putin’s “aggression.” Preventing Crimea from becoming a Nato missile base and protecting the mostly Russian population who had voted in a referendum to rejoin Russia – from which Crimea had been annexed – were more examples of Putin’s “aggression”. Smear by media inevitably becomes war by media. If war with Russia breaks out, by design or by accident, journalists will bear much of the responsibility.

In the US, the anti-Russia campaign has been elevated to virtual reality. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, an economist with a Nobel Prize, has called Donald Trump the “Siberian Candidate” because Trump is Putin’s man, he says. Trump had dared to suggest, in a rare lucid moment, that war with Russia might be a bad idea. In fact, he has gone further and removed American arms shipments to Ukraine from the Republican platform. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia,”he said.

This is why America’s warmongering liberal establishment hates him. Trump’s racism and ranting demagoguery have nothing to do with it. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s record of racism and extremism can out-trump Trump’s any day. (This week is the 20th anniversary of the Clinton welfare “reform” that launched a war on African-Americans). As for Obama: while American police gun down his fellow African-Americans the great hope in the White House has done nothing to protect them, nothing to relieve their impoverishment, while running four rapacious wars and an assassination campaign without precedent.

The CIA has demanded Trump is not elected. Pentagon generals have demanded he is not elected. The pro-war New York Times - taking a breather from its relentless low-rent Putin smears - demands that he is not elected. Something is up. These tribunes of “perpetual war” are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Putin, then with China’s Xi Jinping. Their panic at the possibility of the world’s great power talking peace – however unlikely – would be the blackest farce were the issues not so dire.

“Trump would have loved Stalin!” bellowed Vice-President Joe Biden at a rally for Hillary Clinton. With Clinton nodding, he shouted, “We never bow. We never bend. We never kneel. We never yield. We own the finish line. That’s who we are. We are America!”

In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn has also excited hysteria from the war-makers in the Labour Party and from a media devoted to trashing him. Lord West, a former admiral and Labour minister, put it well. Corbyn was taking an “outrageous” anti-war position “because it gets the unthinking masses to vote for him.”

In a debate with leadership challenger Owen Smith, Corbyn was asked by the moderator: “How would you act on a violation by Vladimir Putin of a fellow Nato state?”

Corbyn replied: “You would want to avoid that happening in the first place. You would build up a good dialogue with Russia … We would try to introduce a de-militarisation of the borders between Russia, the Ukraine and the other countries on the border between Russia and Eastern Europe. What we cannot allow is a series of calamitous build-ups of troops on both sides which can only lead to great danger.”

Pressed to say if he would authorize war against Russia “if you had to,” Corbyn replied: “I don’t wish to go to war – what I want to do is achieve a world that we don’t need to go to war.”

The line of questioning owes much to the rise of Britain’s liberal war-makers. The Labour Party and the media have long offered them career opportunities. For a while the moral tsunami of the great crime of Iraq left them floundering, their inversions of the truth a temporary embarrassment. Regardless of Chilcot and the mountain of incriminating facts, Blair remains their inspiration, because he was a “winner.”

Dissenting journalism and scholarship have since been systematically banished or appropriated, and democratic ideas emptied and refilled with “identity politics” that confuse gender with feminism and public angst with liberation and willfully ignore the state violence and weapons profiteering that destroys countless lives in faraway places, like Yemen and Syria, and beckon nuclear war in Europe and across the world.

The stirring of people of all ages around the spectacular rise of Jeremy Corbyn counters this to some extent. His life has been spent illuminating the horror of war. The problem for Corbyn and his supporters is the Labour Party. In America, the problem for the thousands of followers of Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party, not to mention their ultimate betrayal by their great white hope.

In the U.S., home of the great civil rights and anti-war movements, it is Black Lives Matter and the likes of Codepink that lay the roots of a modern version.

For only a movement that swells into every street and across borders and does not give up can stop the warmongers. Next year, it will be a century since Wilfred Owen wrote the following. Every journalist should read it and remember it.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/38738-focus-provoking-nuclear-war-by-media

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Intrepid Report: Hillary Clinton is the most qualified to head the Evil Empire, Brazil’s coup plotters aimed to block corruption investigation, Americans are a conquered people: The new serfs

Intrepid Report Newsletter

We cannot keep publishing without your help. We rely on you to help us pay our monthly expenses. So please Donate Monday Gurus of the progressive community . . . Chomsky and Goodman By Dave Alpert There was a time when I, like tens of thousands of my progressive partners, held Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman in awe. After all, Amy informed us and Noam spoke for us, coherently explaining the issues. However, as I became more aware and more informed, I realized that there were great differences between their thinking and mine. Presidential campaign computer networks become national security systems By Wayne Madsen By simple fiat, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper has designated the computer systems and networks used by the top three presidential campaigns as being of “national security interest.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI have directed the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump to accede to the dictates of the national security state to protect their computer systems from unnamed “foreign hackers.” Democrats can’t unite unless Wasserman Schultz goes! The Democratic National Committee chair has thrown fuel on the flames of infighting just as the party faces a critical November election. By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship To paraphrase the words of that Scottish master Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice, men—and women—go often astray, or “gang aft agley,” as they say in the Highlands. No one knows this better than Hillary Rodham Clinton. Can Russia survive Washington’s attack? By Paul Craig Roberts It is not only American generals who are irresponsible and declare on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that “Russia is an existential threat to the United States” and also to the Baltic states, Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, and all of Europe. British generals also participate in the warmongering. UK retired general and former NATO commander Sir Richard Shirreff, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe until 2014, has just declared that nuclear war with Russia is “entirely plausible” within the year. Daddy knows best By Missy Comley Beattie According to this article, Obama’s advice to the graduates was admonitory. Though he never mentioned Donald Trump, his message was: Do not elect Trump. His seriousness was palpable, with the addition of “as I can be” to his customary “let me be [as] clear.” Tuesday Short lifespan of American Demo-Republicanism By Ben Tanosborn It doesn’t seem so long ago when an ambitious political couple holding preteen Chelsea Clinton by the hand was moving from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas, to the august quarters of the White House in D.C. A young Democratic president had just defeated Ronald Reagan’s heir, Papa Bush, and a prophetic populist with a Texan twang, Ross Perot, in the colorful presidential fray of 1992. Why hating the media could make the difference in November The winning candidate may be the one who most successfully stirs the public's mistrust of journalists and journalism. By Neal Gabler As the political pundits keep reminding us, this might be called the “hate” election. Both major parties’ presumptive nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have historically high net unfavorable ratings—so high that voters are said to be casting their ballots against a candidate rather than in favor of one. The question seems to be: Who do you hate less? Death threats received by woman for wearing America Was Never Great hat By Stephen Lendman American exceptionalism, the “indispensable nation,” an “empire of liberty,” the “leader of the free world,” a “shining city on a hill,” and other patriotic slogans mask hard truths about the most ruthlessly dangerous regime in world history. Eurovision a U.S. propaganda tool against Russia By Wayne Madsen Eurovision, the annual European song competition that launched the careers of the Swedish group Abba and Canada’s Celine Dion, has become nothing more than a propaganda tool of the United States. Obscured American: Michael the Philly Jesus By Linh Dinh Philly is blessed with a generous allotment of public space at its very center. On any day of the week, weather permitting, there are throngs of people at Love Park, Dillworth Park and near the Clothespin. Around this 45-foot-tall sculpture by Claes Oldenburg, I’ve seen an assortment of petty hustlers selling everything from loosies to oddball T-shirts, such as one that said, “IF YOU SMELL SOMETHING STINKING . . . IT’S ILL-ADELPHIA BECAUSE WE’RE THE SH!T. Black Israelites can often be found nearby. Wearing studded wrist bands, studded belts and studded vests over studded, knee-length, fringe tunics, they rail against white people and gays. I’ve seen these guys not just in Philly, but Washington D.C. and Minneapolis. Wednesday Propaganda countdown to WW III: Armenians in the crosshairs By Joachim Hagopian While the two leaders from Armenia and Azerbaijan met this week and agreed to comply with the treaty set forth that ended their bloody six year war back in 1994, both action on the ground along the Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) Line of Contact as well as the fierce information and propaganda war belie purported reaffirmations made by both nations’ top politicians. No one can take the Vienna talks seriously anymore between Armenia’s President Sargsyan and Azeri President Aliyev for the precise reason that moments after they were agreeing to uphold another ceasefire yet more Azeri gunfire, grenade launchers and mortar fire were killing yet another Armenian soldier. Why did US seize Iran’s $2 billion? By Eric Walberg What looked to be a new window of detente between the US and Iran, following the signing of the Joint Comprehensive plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program has quickly turned opaque. A US decree was issued to seize $2 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), holding Iran financially responsible for the 1983 bombing that killed 241 Marines at their barracks in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The funds in question have been blocked since the civilian trial in the bombing began in 2011, but awaited the final legal touch to bless the blatant theft. This came when the US Supreme Court recently upheld the Congress bill, with the approval of President Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton is the most qualified to head the Evil Empire By Cindy Sheehan I’ve run for political office a few times myself, and even though I have always met constitutional qualifications, I always have been told that I was not “qualified.” History must not repeat itself: How the Democrats could lose the presidency—again By Walter Brasch In 1967, the United States was digging itself deeper into the war in Vietnam. Extrajudicially held Guantanamo detainee to be released By Stephen Lendman Guantanamo remains a black hole of US extrajudicial viciousness, hundreds of innocent men and boys (all Muslims, most sold for bounty) held lawlessly since January 2002—denied due process and judicial fairness. Thursday Elites vs. too much democracy: Andrew Sullivan’s afraid of popular self-government The trouble with Trump isn't because of too much democracy; it's decades of political malfeasance that have made Americans furious. By Mike Lofgren British expatriate writer Andrew Sullivan recently returned to the public eye with a piece that has aroused considerable comment, some of it reasonably on point, and some bloviatingly incoherent. Brazil’s coup plotters aimed to block corruption investigation By Stephen Lendman US-supported coup plotters had multiple aims in mind — replacing democracy with tyranny, weakening or ending social justice programs, instituting neoliberal harshness, and undermining corruption investigations involving 303 of Brazil’s lower house members, 49 of 81 senators, and 37 of the 65-member impeachment commission. South China Sea hypocrisy: Washington’s imperialistic hold on tiny islands By Wayne Madsen While the Pentagon and US State Department continue to issue forth missives and warnings to China about it activities in staking territorial claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea, Washington has its own sordid history of retaining control of islands claimed by other nations. Enough mind games over EgyptAir flight By Linda S. Heard Ever since the disappearance of the EgyptAir Airbus A320 en route to Cairo from Paris last Thursday, which we now know crashed into the Mediterranean, the media has been rolling out expert after expert, each with his own theory, and more often than not they are contradictory. Americans are a conquered people: The new serfs By Paul Craig Roberts As readers know, I have seen some optimism in voters support for Trump and Sanders as neither are members of the corrupt Republican and Democratic political establishments. Members of both political establishments enrich themselves by betraying the American people and serving only the interest of the One Percent. The American people are being driven into the ground purely for the sake of more mega-billions for a handful of super-rich people. Friday All the presumptive nominee’s men For a guy who yells about Washington and Wall Street money in politics, Donald Trump sure has a lot of insiders on his team. By Michael Winship Right after Barack Obama’s election in 2008, I flew off to Australia and New Zealand to attend a conference and take some vacation time. At the end of the long flight, when I got to Sydney, I picked up one of the local newspapers and read that the president-elect had chosen Rahm Emanuel, poster boy for corporate Democrats and the status quo, to be his chief of staff. Will the November US presidential election bring the end of the world? By Paul Craig Roberts “We have been watching for nearly a month a steady buildup of American and NATO forces along Russia’s borders—on land, on sea and in the air. There has been nothing like this on Russia’s borders, such an amassing of hostile military force, since the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.” What it takes to be president of the American police state Anti-big money, antiwar, pro-Constitution, freedom-loving candidates need not apply By John W. Whitehead Long gone are the days when the path to the White House was open to anyone who met the Constitution’s bare minimum requirements of being a natural born citizen, a resident of the United States for 14 years, and 35 years of age or older. Time to end the ‘hasbara’: Palestinian Media and the search for a common story By Ramzy Baroud Merely being in the company of hundreds of Palestinian journalists and other media professionals from all over the world has been an uplifting experience. For many years, Palestinian media have been on the defensive, unable to articulate a coherent message, torn between factions and desperately trying to fend off the Israeli media campaign, along with its falsifications and unending propaganda or ‘hasbara.’ Freedom Rider: Georgetown should pay for slavery By Margaret Kimberley When the Civil War began in 1861 the total value of enslaved people in the United States was “worth more than all of America’s manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together. Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy. The only thing worth more than the slaves in the American economy of the 1850s was the land itself.” Myriad institutions owed their existence to the vast fortunes created by chattel slavery.

This & that.....another pipeline spill, MORE WARS, Paul Ryan promising Government Shut Down

Disclose.tv with Scott Rickard and 11 others

Why do we have wars?
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GOP Candidate Says Military Retirees Must Pay More for Health Care

Sen. Lindsey Graham says Tricare fees must increase to help pay for the rising cost of military health care.

MILITARY.COM

Bold Nebraska

Another Plains All American Pipeline has spilled -- this one spewed over 4,000 gallons into a creek. Just as they are set to reopen Refugio Beach in California after the recent spill...

Pipelines leak; it's not if, it's when. ‪#‎NOKXL‬

Oil pipeline spills over 4,000 gallons of oil into creek

HIGHLAND, IL (KTVI) – Friday afternoon Highland city officials were notified that an oil pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. had discharged around 100 barrels of crude oil. 100 bar...

FOX2NOW.COM

The other Republican candidates cloaked identical beliefs more tactfully. 
Donald Trump may be a clown defining the REAL Republican Party, warts and all.

VoteVets.org

· 

Donald Trump wants to "bomb the hell" out of Iraq's oil fields in order to strike at ISIS. That may not be such a good idea, CNN's military analysts say.That's because bombing Iraq's oil fields would be a serious blow to Iraq and efforts to recover once ISIS is expelled from the country.

"If I win, I would attack those oil sites that are controlled and owned -- they are controlled by ISIS," Trump said. "I wouldn't send many troops because you won't need 'em by the time I'm done."

What do VoteVets members think of Trump's war mongering?

Military analysts fact check Donald Trump on bombing oil fields - CNNPolitics.com

Donald Trump wants to "bomb the hell" out of Iraq's oil fields in order to strike at ISIS. That may not be such a good idea, CNN's military analysts say.

CNN.COM|BY JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN

Reader Supported News

“Many Americans have very few, if any, options when it comes to choosing their local cable and Internet provides," the senators said in a letter that was sent Thursday, but released on Friday. "As the telecommunications industry has become increasingly concentrated, this lack of choice has resulted in huge price increases and often poor services for customers."

Sanders, Warren Want Probe Into 'Ridiculous' Cable, Internet Prices

READERSUPPORTEDNEWS.ORG|BY JORDAIN CARNEY, THE HILL

Daily Kos

‪#‎Truth‬

Thanks to The Other 98% for sharing.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/09/paul-ryan-threat-government-shutdown-real-unless-dems-back-down?onswipe_redirect=no&oswrr=1

"House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) warned on Thursday that the threat of another government shutdown is real unless President Obama and the Democrats end their opposition to a GOP budget plan that boosts defense spending while capping domestic programs."

Paul Ryan: Threat of Government Shutdown Is Real Unless Dems Back Down

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) warned on Thursday that the t

M.THEFISCALTIMES.COM

The Republican party by obstructing Medicaid expansion in red states to restrict affordable care are culpable for the lives of their constituents lost due to their blatant dereliction of duty.

Occupy Democrats

Governor Rick Scott has blood on his hands.

This was Charlene Dill. She collapsed and died on March 21, 2014, while working. A separated mother of three, she fell in to "the coverage gap" because her state, Florida, is one of 21 states who have refused to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Charlene didn't have to die. She was a pawn in a political game.

The 21 refusing states are:

Alabama
Alaska
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Louisiana
Maine
Mississippi
Montana
Nebraska
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Read her story @ http://orlandoweekly.com/…/the-perils-of-florida-s-refusal-…

Thanks to Occupy Posters.

Erin Brockovich

How do you spell pandemic?

Our USDA trades health safety for profits for the beef industry. In a trade off the USDA approved the import export of chicken to and from China so the beef industry will have access to Chinese Markets!!! Health safety should trump profit but that's not the case in politics.

Bend over and take it ... we have been sold out.