zaterdag 14 februari 2015

Henk Hofland en de Massa 2


Wanneer Henk Hofland in De Groene Amsterdammer schrijft dat de 'massa in de openbare ruimte een onvermijdelijk bijverschijnsel van onze samenleving [is] geworden,' roept dit onmiddellijk de vraag op: van wat is 'de massa' in de publieke 'ruimte' een 'bijverschijnsel' geworden? Oftewel: wat is het hoofdverschijnsel? Hofland verzwijgt zijn hele werkzame leven angstvallig hierop antwoord te geven. Dat is niet vreemd, want een journalist moet het niet alleen van een zo groot mogelijk publiek hebben, of dat nu NRC Handelsblad leest of De Telegraaf, uiteindelijk is de 'massa' zijn/haar werkgever. En zoals Kundera stelde, kan men zich 

de toekomst wel voorstellen zonder de klassenstrijd of zonder de psychoanalyse, maar niet zonder de onweerstaanbare opkomst van pasklare ideeën die, ingevoerd in computers, gepropageerd door de massamedia, het gevaar met zich meebrengen binnenkort een macht te worden die elk oorspronkelijk en individueel denken verplettert en zo de werkelijke essentie van de Europese cultuur van onze tijd verstikt. 

De van origine Tsjechische romanschrijver waarschuwde dat op die manier de westerling de wereld van de kitsch  binnentrad, want 

Op grond van de dwingende noodzaak te behagen en zo de aandacht van het grootst mogelijke publiek te trekken, is de esthetiek van de massamedia onvermijdelijk die van de kitsch en naarmate de massamedia ons gehele leven meer omsluiten en infiltreren, wordt de kitsch onze dagelijkse esthetiek en moraal.

Kortom, als NRC-columnist kan Hofland per definitie niet tegen de smaak en meningen van zijn eigen middenklasse-publiek ingaan. Tegelijkertijd kan hij zijn achterban niet de werkelijkheid van het 'hoofdverschijnsel' vertellen. Hij moest zich soms in mindere maar vaker in meerdere mate vereenzelvigen met de angsten, verlangens, en vooral het snobisme van de gezeten burgerij. Vandaar dat hij met opvallende regelmaat afgeeft op de 'hufterigheid' en 'wansmaak' van de, in zijn ogen, onderkaste. Dat die klasse middels culturele deprivatie bewust door de elite en haar  woordvoerders van de 'vrije pers' is gekweekt, omdat anders de Hoflanden zelf het zware en smerige werk zouden moeten verrichten, is een feit waarover hij niet kan schrijven. Hoe luidruchtiger het volk zich manifesteert des te groter wordt de afkeer van Hofland en zijn 'politiek-literaire elite.'  In plaats van zich te verdiepen in de oorzaken van de almaar toenemende culturele kloof en de verpaupering in het kapitalisme, richtte Hofland's weerzin zich niet tegen het systeem zelf, maar tegen de slachtoffers ervan. Dit was tevens de enige manier om de aandacht af te leiden van zowel de fundamentele onrechtvaardigheid van het systeem, als van het feit dat zijn eigen 'esthetiek en moraal' steeds kitscherige trekken begon te vertonen. Zijn grove veroordeling van de onderklasse demonstreert zijn hardvochtige arrogantie. De massa moet niet worden gezien noch gehoord, zij dient slechts te gehoorzamen. Het probleem met opiniemaker Henk Hofland is dat het hem ontbreekt aan empathie voor al die individuen die alleen hebben geleerd om in massaal verband zichzelf te overstijgen. De psychologische reflexen van het individu in elk modern, totalitair functionerend systeem, inclusief het naakte kapitalisme, is door Nobelprijswinnaar Elias Canetti haarscherp als volgt beschreven in Massa & Macht (1960): 

Voor niets is de mens meer beducht dan voor de aanraking door iets onbekends…. Overal gaat de mens de aanraking door een vreemd element uit de weg… Alle afstanden die de mensen om zich heen geschapen hebben, zijn door deze aanrakingsvrees ingegeven… Deze weerzin tegen de aanraking verlaat ons ook niet wanneer we ons onder de mensen begeven. De manier waarop we ons op straat, tussen veel mensen, in restaurants, in treinen en autobussen bewegen, wordt door deze vrees ingegeven…

Alleen in de massa kan de mens van deze aanrakingsvrees worden verlost. Het is de enige situatie waarin deze vrees in haar tegendeel omslaat. Hiertoe is de dichte massa nodig, waarin lichaam tegen lichaam gedrukt is; dicht ook in geestelijke zin, namelijk zo dat men er niet op let wie het is die zich ‘opdringt.’ Zodra men zich eenmaal aan de massa heeft overgegeven, vreest men haar aanraking niet. In het ideale geval zijn allen aan elkaar gelijk. Er geldt geen enkel verschil, zelfs niet tussen de geslachten. Wie het ook is die zich tegen ons aandrukt, hij is gelijk aan onszelf. Men ondergaat hem zoals men zichzelf ondergaat. Alles speelt zich dan plotseling als binnen één lichaam af… Hoe steviger de mensen tegen elkaar aangedrongen zijn, des te zekerder ze voelen dat ze geen angst voor elkaar hebben. Dit omslaan van de aanrakingsvrees is een kenmerk van de massa.

Het is daarom  dat de elite de eenwording, waarin iedereen gelijk wordt aan elkaar, zo intens vreest, vooral als dit spontaan gebeurt, dat wil zeggen zonder de manipulatie van de elite. In het proces van 'ontlading' is de massa voor de machtigen kortstondig onbeheersbaar geworden en kan de menigte haar eigen weg gaan. De hiërarchie is doorbroken. Canetti:

In zijn afstanden verstart en versombert de mens. Hij tilt zwaar aan deze last en komt niet van zijn plaats. Hij vergeet dat hij zichzelf zijn last heeft opgelegd en hunkert naar een bevrijding ervan. Maar hoe kan hij zich in zijn eentje bevrijden? Wat hij er ook voor zou doen, en hoe vastbesloten hij ook zou zijn, hij zou zich onder andere mensen bevinden die zijn pogingen verijdelen. Zolang zij aan hun afstanden vasthouden komt hij geen stap nader. Slechts allen tezamen kunnen zich van de last van hun afstanden bevrijden. En dat is precies wat in de massa gebeurt. In de ontlading worden de verschillen afgeworpen en voelen zich gelijk. In deze dichtheid, waarin nauwelijks ruimte tussen hen is, waarin lichaam zich tegen lichaam perst, is de een de ander even nabij als zichzelf. De verlichting hierover is kolossaal. Ter wille van dit gelukkige ogenblik, waarin niemand méér, niemand beter is dan de ander, worden de mensen tot massa.

Die massa wordt doorgaans gedreven door primitieve instincten, niet door abstracte ideeën. De massa zoekt ook geen oplossing, maar een 'ontlading' en wel omdat 'in de ontlading de verschillen [worden] afgeworpen en allen zich gelijk [voelen].' En die 'gelijkheid' kan de westerse 'democratie' absoluut niet bieden, omdat de 'democratie' ten dienste staat van de economische elite. Canetti wees erop dat, godzijdank voor de macht, 

het zo begeerde en zo gelukkige ogenblik van ontlading zijn eigen gevaar in zich [draagt]. Het lijdt aan een fundamentele zinsbegoocheling: de mensen die zich plotseling gelijk voelen zijn niet werkelijk en voor altijd gelijk geworden. 

Dankzij het 'uiteenvallen' van de 'massa' weet de elite de macht te houden. Het is daarom dat 

Zij de afbraak [vreest]. Ze kan slechts blijven bestaan als het proces van ontlading wordt voortgezet, in nieuwe mensen die zich bij haar aansluiten. Slechts het aangroeien van de massa belet hen die er reeds toe behoren om onder het juk van hun persoonlijke lasten terug te keren.

Een repressieve maatschappij, of dit nu een communistische dan wel een kapitalistische is, blijft een zieke samenleving. Centraal in de massapsychologische uiteenzetting van Elias Canetti staat zijn constatering dat  'Ter wille van dit gelukkige ogenblik, waarin niemand méér, niemand beter is dan de ander, worden de mensen tot massa.' Dit verklaart de nadruk van het kapitalisme op het 'individualisme.' Het opmerkelijke feit doet zich namelijk voor dat terwijl het 'individualisme' door politici wordt verheerlijkt,  reclame en politieke propaganda het conformisme afdwingen. In deze schizofrene werkelijkheid speelt de 'vrije pers' een doorslaggevende rol. Hoe onvrijer de massamens is, des te meer de illusie van vrijheid wordt gepropageerd. Tot uiteindelijk de werkelijkheid en de illusie zover uit elkaar komen te liggen dat de propaganda wordt doorzien en daardoor haar functie verliest. Tot die tijd geldt elke dag weer het dogma dat 'more can be won by illusion than coercion,' zoals de gezaghebbende Amerikaanse socioloog Harold D. Lasswell het formuleerde in zijn baanbrekende studie Propaganda Technique in the World War (1938). In financieel, sociaal en politiek opzicht kost het veel meer om de massa te onderdrukken dan de bevolking via bedrieglijke mythen te beheersen. Lasswell had als adolescent in de jaren twintig van de vorige eeuw de geboorte van de massamaatschappij van nabij meegemaakt en als 'een van de creatiefste en invloedrijkste wetenschappers van zijn tijd' had hij daarop vervolgens een niet geringe stempel gedrukt. Wikipedia meldt over hem:

Door gebruik te maken van een scala van psychologische en sociologische methoden in een discipline die tot dan toe alleen gebruik maakte van historische, juridische en filosofische methoden werd Harold Lasswell de grondlegger van de hedendaagse politieke wetenschap en met name de politieke psychologie.

Ook op het gebied van de communicatiewetenschappen heeft hij met zijn communicatiemodel een grote invloed gehad.

Op het gebied van beleidsstudies was het Harold Lasswell die de richting aangaf met de omschrijving waaraan deze (toen) nieuwe discipline moest voldoen (multidisciplinair, probleem oplossend, expliciet normatief).
Als eerbetoon wordt jaarlijks door de American Political Science Association (APSA) de Harold D. Lasswell Award uitgereikt voor het beste proefschrift op het gebied van de beleidsstudies.

Met betrekking tot de mainstream media schreef professor Lasswell in 1927: 'Propaganda is one of the most powerful instrumentalities in the modern world.' En de reden waarom het bewust manipuleren van 'significant symbols' zo belangrijk was geworden was volgens hem simpelweg deze: 

The bonds of personal loyalty and affection which bound a man to his chief have long since dissolved. Monarchy and class privilege have gone the way of all flesh, and the idolatry of the individual passes for the official religion of democracy. It is an atomized world, in which individual whims have wider play than ever before, and it requires more strenuous exertions to co-ordinate and unify than formerly. The new antidote to willfulness is propaganda. If the mass will be free of chains of iron, it must accept its chains of silver. If it will not love, honor and obey, it must not expect to escape seduction.

Volgens Lasswell's cynisch mens- en wereldbeeld gold dat aangezien 'the masses are still captive  to ignorance and superstition' de komst van de democratie 'compelled the development of a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda.' Want, zo stelde hij, propaganda is 'the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery or other possible control techniques.' Het spreekt voor zich dat juist in 'democratieën' de taak van het mobiliseren en disciplineren van de massa in handen is gegeven van de commerciële massamedia, de priesterkaste van de moderne tijd. De Poolse journalist Ryszard Kapuściński schreef in verband daarmee in De Ander. Essays van de reporter van de eeuw (2011) dat 

Het woord ‘massa’ tot sleutelwoord [is] geworden waarmee die wereld wordt beschreven. Zo zijn er: massacultuur en massahysterie, massamode (of veeleer gebrek aan smaak) en massa-gekte, massaknechting en tot slot massavernietiging. De massa is de enige held op het wereldtoneel en het belangrijkste kenmerk van deze menigte is haar anonimiteit, haar gebrek aan individualiteit, identiteit, gezicht. Het individu raakte verdwaald in die menigte, werd overspoeld door de massa, werd door de wateren verzwolgen. Het individu verwerd, zoals Gabriel Marcel (Franse  filosoof svh) het formuleerde, tot ‘een onpersoonlijke anonymus in een onvolledige toestand.’

De massa is in deze optiek als een wild beest, een voortdurende bedreiging, al was het maar omdat de psychologische wetten van de massa anders zijn dan die van het individu. Om over de massa te heersen moet de elite haar indoctrineren; haar negeren kunnen de heersers natuurlijk niet zonder hun eigen positie in gevaar te brengen. Elke dag weer moeten de machtigen de massa controleren, indoctrineren en manipuleren willen zij hun positie legitimeren. Dit feit gaat op voor zowel een zogenaamde 'democratie' als voor een dictatuur, het maakt niet uit aangezien beide systemen totalitaire technocratieën zijn. Beide systemen moeten per definitie alle aspecten van het bestaan van de massa beheersen, zowel in de publieke- als in de privé-sfeer, want niets in de wereld beangstigt de elite zo intens als de massa, en zeker een massa individuen. Vandaar dat de Amerikaanse National Security Agency ook de eigen bevolking permanent bespioneert. 'Security' is net als 'democracy,' een verhullend politiek begrip, waarachter de werkelijk macht van alles kan uitspoken. Of zoals George Orwell het formuleerde: 'Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.' 

De westerse wereld wordt geconfronteerd met een constante demasqué. Eén van de symptomen daarvan is dat fundamenteel afwijkende zienswijzen vandaag de dag door de poortwachters van de elite onmiddellijk worden gecriminaliseerd en dissidenten ogenblikkelijk worden gemarginaliseerd. Maar het probleem, de frictie, de sociale onrust, het maatschappelijke verzet verdwijnt daardoor natuurlijk niet. Zoals de auteurs van Four Horsemen. The Survival Manual (2012) stellen: 'in a world where well-oiled media machines display images of privilege and obscene wealth to the poorest people, it's hardly surprising that growing numbers feel deprived.' Het systeem zelf bereid ondermeer op die manier zijn eigen ondergang voor. Desondanks, of beter nog, juist daarom proberen de mainstream-media in een ultieme poging de status quo te handhaven, door de werkelijkheid te ontdoen van logica. De wetten van oorzaak en gevolg worden ontkend, en het slachtoffer wordt geportretteerd als dader. 'Blaming the victim.' Four Horsemen stelt daar tegenover dat 

Economic exclusion inevitably causes resentment and alienation. Securing economic advantage through military superiority is wrong. It may have been the way of things for much of human history but moral advance renders it unacceptable today. In the face of disastrous military interventions, many people have lost all faith in the arguments of politicians and their policy decisions, devoid as they are of any moral reflection.

If democracy is unable to prevent the abuse of military power by rich nations, it is no better at holding elites to account over an economic system which favors rich nations over poor… 

In the rich countries, institutions have evolved to legitimize the channelling of wealth from those who create it to those who set the rules.

Als spreekstalmeester van dit circus tracht Henk Hofland zijn behoudend publiek met ressentimenten te mobiliseren tegen de 'massa in de openbare ruimte' die, in zijn benepen wereldbeeld, slechts 'een onvermijdelijk bijverschijnsel van onze samenleving [is] geworden,' en niet juist de kern van een massamaatschappij vormt  Met de woorden 'onze samenleving' benadrukt hij nog eens dat die anderen niet worden geaccepteerd, maar getolereerd. Voor hem en de zijnen is de massa oké, zolang zij maar de elite en haar 'politiek-literaire' spreekbuizen gehoorzaamt, keurig haar werk blijft doen. Maar zij moet allereerst en vooral onzichtbaar blijven en politiek apathisch. Zoals eerder gesteld: als snob mist Hofland empathie voor de mens, en zeker voor degene onderaan de maatschappelijke ladder. Hij veracht ieder mens die hij inferieur acht, en demonstreert daarmee — ironisch genoeg — hoe erg ook hij als banaal mens naadloos past in het 'hufterige' hiërarchische systeem. Zijn houding is niet meer dan een 'bijverschijnsel' van het failliete neoliberalisme. 


Why the United States Always Loses Its Wars

Global Research, February 13, 2015

War USA

America loses all its wars because it seems we’ve always been on the wrong side of history. Morally nor legally should any nation have the right to invade and occupy another sovereign nation, much less believe it can achieve victory in long, protracted wars. Yet in violation of all ethical precepts and all international laws, the sole global superpower citing its impunity through exceptionalism hypocritically insists it can maintain its moral high ground in its relentless pursuit of regime changes anywhere it so chooses on earth. We are the global village bully that’s hated by much of the world. And it’s pure self-aggrandizing bullshit to perpetrate the myth that America is hated because of our “freedom,” another rhetorical brainwashing lie. We now live in a fascist totalitarian police state run by a globalized crime syndicate of the central banking cabal. As of last April per a Princeton-Northwestern study the US has officially been designated an oligarchy.

Last year after a group of ethnic Russians living in Crimea voted to become part of Russia, the Russian military claimed control over its own naval base there that the US-NATO had been lusting to steal after the unlawful overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected sovereign government. Ever since it’s been nonstop lies and propaganda propagated to demonize Putin as the aggressor when in fact all along it’s the American Empire that’s been recklessly pushing what could end up World War III against nuclear powered Russia. With US-NATO missiles installed on Russia’s doorstep in virtually every former Soviet eastern bloc nation, hemming Russia in, who’s really the aggressor here?



The WMD lie that was the repeated mantra used as prewar drum beating propaganda to launch a war against humanity in Iraq a dozen years earlier is now being replayed as déjà vu all over again to amnesic, dumbed down Americans. Despite defeats in both Iraq and Afghanistan still being dragged out as America’s longest running wars in its history, the US-NATO war machine is once again prepping for yet more war raging now in Eastern Ukraine. The US government’s rush to war hit a minor snag the other day when various European nations like France and Germany announced their opposition and refusal to send arms to the Ukraine government, wanting to give peace talks with Russia a chance. Today’s headlines state that Obama has been forced to pause in his arms rush, not unlike the world turning against his rush a year and a half ago for air strikes in Syria after the false flag chemical weapons attack that was actually launched by US backed rebels. So it may not be full speed ahead for US Empire to ship its heavy weaponry to the eastern warfront after all. It is being reported that mercenaries speaking American English, Polish, French and Flemish are fighting for the Kiev government in Eastern Ukraine against ethnic Russians who are fighting for their independence, their home and their very survival. And with their backs up against the wall, recently the eastern Ukrainianshave beaten back the Ukrainian government forces. Again, the US has a knack for being on the wrong side of history.


No true victor can emerge from any war on either side. The incessant US aggressor boasting superior firepower as the most deadly, expensive military force on the planet (spending more than the next ten nations combined), America has little to show for itself as it has not won a single war in seventy years! Neo-colonialism cloaked in imperialism, balkanization, economic exploitation, debtors’ theft, indentured servitude and enslavement can never be justified as the spoils of war. It’s a losing proposition in every imaginable way, not only for the aggressive American Empire that keeps starting and losing war after war, but especially for the ravaged nations it devastates and turns into demolished failed states with the King Midas in reverse touch. There is only one winner in all this evil business of war making – the oligarchs that own and control both the US and the failed state nations. As Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wisely pointed out way back in 1933:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

Fortune 500 companies win bigger profits sucking up the last precious, nearly tapped oil reserves and other diminishing natural resources off the face of the earth. This nonstop predatory practice of using, abusing and plundering smaller Third World countries is good for no one but the thieving transnational war profiteers and the oligarchs who own and control them.


This month’s Atlantic has a well written, thought provoking feature article called “The Tragedy of the American Military” authored by James Fallows. Though on the cover the question is asked, “Why Do The Best Soldiers in the World Keep Losing?” the article never quite delivers the answer. Instead it laments how the US fighting machine consisting of just two million (both active and reserved) out of more than 316 million Americans has created a cultural chasm of “out of sight, out of mind” convenience for a civilian population that disingenuously pays only lip service to “support our troops” while repeated Empire wars (and defeats) fought half a world away never cease.


Meanwhile, despite costing US taxpayers up to six trillion dollars and counting in Iraq alone and another trillion so far in Afghanistan in this age of increasing austerity, the albeit detached reverence for the US military and its abysmal losing war record fail to draw much notice or reflection, much less any real criticism or troubleshooting that might correct the same pattern of mistakes being repeated indefinitely. Another article in the same issue calls for resurrecting the draft as the feeble answer, something my ex-West Point roommate-former Afghan Ambassador-retired general and current Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Karl Eikenberry has also publicly advocated. They are all missing the point, unwilling or unable to address the pink elephant in the global room.


Respected author-activist David Swanson wrote an incisive rebuttal also confronting the Atlantic article for not answering the obvious question of why America loses at war. He makes the excellent point:

The U.S. has killed huge numbers of men, women, and children, made itself hated, made the world more dangerous, destroyed the environment, discarded civil liberties, and wasted trillions of dollars that could have done a world of good spent otherwise. A draft would do nothing to make people aware of that situation.

But Swanson merely glides over as a passing fact that the ruling elite is the only entity that stands to gain from war. He fails to emphasize that it is the elite’s power, money and influence that both initiates, but then by calculated design, willfully sabotages the chance of any US military victory after World War II. The reason is simple. If the US triumphed in war it would only delay the totalitarian New World Order from materialization. Only a weakened United States would expeditiously promote a one world government.

Some analysts with a micro-filter would blame inept planning and decision making by civilian commanders-in-chief and their equally inept civilian counsel. Both the Bush and Obama regimes come readily to mind, and before them the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. Historically the chickenhawk elite as behind the scene war proponents have been represented by members of the Counsel on Foreign Relations in advisory roles that in effect have shaped and controlled every single US president’s foreign and war policy along with key Congressional warmongers always promoting the self-interests of the military industrial complex that outgoing President Eisenhower warned us about over and above the interests and well-being of the American people.

Other critics like Thomas E. Ricks in recent years have been quick to point the finger at the poor military leadership. As a West Point graduate who went to school in the same regiment with surge man himself former CIA Director and General David Petraeus, NSA Big Brother architect Keith Alexander and current Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, I can attest to the inferior brand of leadership cranked out of the academy brass factory over the last half century. West Point trains and teaches robotic followers in the form of sycophantic, self-serving bureaucrat-politicians, not dynamic, caring, humanitarian leaders. Entrepreneurial, innovative, creative instincts are drummed out of cadet and officer corps by a failed, punch-your-ticket to seniority system that breeds a range of incompetence from run-of-the-mill mediocrity to highly toxic leadership. Theunprecedented soaring rates at which the most gifted, strongest leaders have been leaving the military services in droves the first chance they get upon completion of their 5-year post academy commitment calls into question the dubious worth of a half million dollar taxpayer-funded price tag of an elitist academy education. With the bland bureaucrat-politicians left in charge as generals leading the US Empire forces in war, then throw in the sobering reality that the military system fails to hold its own poor leadership accountable, it’s really no wonder the United States keeps losing every time out.

But all this plausible rationalization and blame-game excuses to explain away why the US persists in its streak of disastrous war defeats fails to address the fundamental reason why. Bottom line, no war is justified when humans and all life forms on this planet always stand to lose, especially when the only winners are the war profiteers who in my opinion are not human. Without a conscience and totally devoid of their humanity and compassion, they’re simply greed-driven, psychopathic predators feeding off the lifeblood of other humans and nations that must suffer immeasurable and unspeakable harm at their singular gain.

During this last century alone it’s been this same line of globalists working overtime, primarily through the CFR (since 1921), the Pentagon and other elitist “think tanks” that have been pulling the puppet strings of all US presidents, busily creating one false flag after another to start every single war America ever fights. Nearly every president has been a card carrying CFR member, and those few who haven’t were surrounded by CFR in key cabinet roles. Since the 1947 National Security Act established the cabinet office of the Secretary of Defense, every man who has held that key position in the US government has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Since 1940 every Secretary of State has been a CFR plant. For the last 80 years virtually every National Security Advisor been a CFR insider as have been all the top generals like my West Point ex-roommies Eikenberry and the longest running Afghanistan and Iraq War commander General Abizaid as well as the aforementioned Class of 1974 grads Petraeus and Dempsey. Let’s examine how key insiders with their one world government vision have made war at will through false flag lies blaming their designated enemies contributing to America’s long history of nonstop war for over 91% of its years in existence (218 out of 239 years).

As a brief historical review tracing events from the dawn of the twentieth century, media mogul Randolph Hearst used the false flag of the Spanish American War to “remember the USS Maine” sinking in the 1898 Havana harbor as its deceitful justification to ruthlessly, violently colonize Cuba and the Philippines, committing ethnic cleansing with estimates as high as near a half million dead Filipinos in that bloodbath.

Then it was the “great” English statesman Winston Churchill who plotted the sinking of the Lusitania killing nearly 1200 of his own British citizens (along with 128 Americans) as the baited sacrifice secretly carrying arms to ignite the First World War that was supposed to end all wars. This in turn led to the first NWO effort toward globalized government in the League of Nations that several decades later materialized into the United Nations, a huge globalist milestone on its march toward one world government. As is custom, globalist money busily finances both sides in every war, in this case militarizing German Kaiser Wilhelm and Lenin’s revolutionary rise to red power during World War I and then a few years later Hitler’s ascendancy to initiate World War II. HW Bush’s father was actually arrested for funding the Nazi enemy. Pearl Harbor was the sinister false flag machination that carried the deadly sacrifice of over 2500 slaughtered Americans as Roosevelt’s chickenhawk “excuse” to enter WWII. The real purpose of the so called last “justified war” was to eclipse the British Empire and usher in the imperialistic reign of the emerging American Empire and its subsequent cold war that’s still raging dangerously stronger than ever to this day.

Then several years later the US encouraged South Korean incursions into Communist North Korea in order to manipulate North Korea into responding in kind. Guaranteeing South Korea full UN support, when the baited North Koreans retaliated by moving two miles inside the South Korean border, that June 1950 “transgression” immediately became the false pretense used to initiate the Korean War. After that conflict ended in a stalemate, a mere decade later as the imperialistic cauldrons of cold war grew hotter, in August 1964 President Johnson lied to the American people with the bogus claim that a US Navy ship was attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin to launch America’s longest running war in history (that is until this century’s everlasting war of terror). That false flag cost near 60,000 American lives and over 3 million dead Southeast Asians, in addition to being the first US humiliating war defeat in its history, marking the first of many consecutive losses.

The smaller, less intensive military campaigns of Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the First Gulf War, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo were all jingoistic saber rattling manipulations of imperialistic Empire overpowering far weaker opponents to take down former US allied dictators (or in the case of Saddam Hussein a preliminary step to the father-son neocon tag team), balkanizing a divide and conquer strategy for global hegemony and imperial war profiteering from the always lucrative drug trafficking trade.

The actual reason America has been losing all its wars for seven decades now is simply because the oligarchs want it that way. The fact is we were never meant to win any war after WWII. Over and over again the most powerful army in the world has been defeated by much smaller ill equipped forces that are far less armed, modern and funded. Yet fighting on their turf against the imperialistic occupying Goliath-like oppressor, they always win. Like everything major that goes down on this earth, it’s all part of the ruling elite’s diabolical plan – by design, the US as the constantly warring nation should keep losing war after war. American soldiers and their families always suffer the heaviest losses, only surpassed by the millions of people whose homelands become targeted US Empire battlefields. The shrinking US middle class at home bearing the brunt of the burden financing exorbitant costly wars also loses big time. But then of course this grave calamity and human tragedy is all by sinister design. Because the ruling class no longer has a need for America’s middle class, it’s become the latest war of terror casualty.

Meanwhile, the only true winners of all wars is the oligarch owned and controlled central banking cabal and its Wall Street 500. Once American Empire wreaks military havoc to achieve another ravaged failed state, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, a second invasion that becomes the permanent occupation arrives in the form of IMF and World Bank loans. When the war destroyed nation cannot pay the bankster cabal’s loan shark extortion, privatization through transnational corporations rapidly descends as economic hit men-vultures move in for the final kill. The game’s been rigged, set up so no one but the filthy, gluttonous, bloodthirsty, psychopathic vampires comprising the ruling elite can possibly win from all this rigged warring death and destruction.

The Zionist neocon creation with a little help from their Saudi-Israeli evil axis friends pulled off the coup of the century on 9/11, massacring 3,000 Americans as their sacrificial lambs, setting into motion the fabricated war on terror masking their actual war on Islam to ensure that a constant fresh supply of made-by-the-USA enemy materializes to justify permanent global violence. During the near ten years that Americans fought in Iraq near a half million Iraqis lost their life, mostly innocent civilians. That toll has only since risen with war still raging. The Islamic State jihadists that the US-Saudi-Israeli unholy alliance secretly created, trained, armed and has funded (just as it did al Qaeda for decades) invaded Iraq last June and is currently in control of more area in Iraq than the weak US puppet government in Baghdad with no end of sectarian violence in sight.

Afghanistan looks no better with the puppet Kabul government holding less territory than the surging Taliban that has been waiting for the US military exodus by December 2014 leaving 10,800 US military advisors still remaining behind. A million Afghan citizens died during the decade long war with the Soviet Union in the 1980’s, then hundreds of thousands more during the ensuing civil war afterwards. With the death toll doubling in 2014 from the previous year, upwards of 30,000 civilians have died during America’s longest war in history in the graveyard of empires. The human costs for Americans killed on these two warfronts for both the US soldiers and civilian contractors are about 6,800 each as of April 2014. Three quarters of the American casualties in Afghanistan died on Obama’s watch.

The proxy wars leaving Libya as a corrupt and lawlessly violent failed state and Syria a stalemated quagmire with Islamic State mercenaries our not-so-secret friendly boots on the ground still unable to topple and remove Assad from power. Meanwhile, near a quarter of a million people have died in the war in Syria and an astounding 6.5 million have been displaced in that colossal human tragedy supported and caused by the United States. Syria at no time was a threat to US national security. Yet for years now the US has been determined to bring down Syria on its way to the ultimate regime change prize of Iran, the last of the seven sovereign nations to be taken down in the Middle East and North Africa within the designated five years on that notorious neocon list that retired General Wesley Clark learned in 2001 had already been in existence even prior to 9/11.

Ever since Korea and Vietnam the ruling elite in its New World Order agenda will not allow the most lethal fighting force in the world to win another war. And as shown, the King Midas touch in reverse that has every nation the US intervenes plummeting into flames as failed states, totally vulnerable as easy pickings for the predatory oligarch sharks to feast on whatever precious natural resources are left, boots on the ground or not. While the entire planet loses, this endless, spilled blood for oil end game remains a win-win proposition only for the demonically ruled ruling class that’s been systematically creating and profiting from war for countless centuries.



Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing.



Noam Chomsky 121

Noam Chomsky: “The world that we’re creating for our grandchildren is grim” 

The intellectual sat down with Jacobin to discuss ISIS, Israel and climate change 


Noam Chomsky: "The world that we’re creating for our grandchildren is grim"Noam Chomsky  (Credit: fotostory via Shutterstock)
Renowned linguist and well-respected political commentator, Noam Chomsky, was interviewed by journalist David Barsamian for Jacobin. In the fascinating and thought-provoking conversation the two touch on the origins of ISIS, America’s relationship with Israel, among other foreign policy topics. Below are a few choice selections from the interview, which can (and should) be read in full at Jacobin.

When asked about the origins of ISIS Chomsky explained how sectarian conflict derived from the Iraq war:
“There’s an interesting interview that just appeared a couple of days ago with Graham Fuller, a former CIA officer, one of the leading intelligence and mainstream analysts of the Middle East. The title is “The United States Created ISIS.” This is one of the conspiracy theories, the thousands of them that go around the Middle East.
But this is another source: this is right at the heart of the US establishment. He hastens to point out that he doesn’t mean the US decided to put ISIS into existence and then funded it. His point is — and I think it’s accurate — that the US created the background out of which ISIS grew and developed. Part of it was just the standard sledgehammer approach: smash up what you don’t like.”
Late in the answer Chomsky continues:
“Finally, the US just decided to attack the country in 2003. The attack is compared by many Iraqis to the Mongol invasion of a thousand years earlier. Very destructive. Hundreds of thousands of people killed, millions of refugees, millions of other displaced persons, destruction of the archeological richness and wealth of the country back to Sumeria.
One of the effects of the invasion was immediately to institute sectarian divisions. Part of the brilliance of the invasion force and its civilian director, Paul Bremer, was to separate the sects, Sunni, Shi’a, Kurd, from one another, set them at each other’s throats. Within a couple of years, there was a major, brutal sectarian conflict incited by the invasion.
You can see it if you look at Baghdad. If you take a map of Baghdad in, say, 2002, it’s a mixed city: Sunni and Shi’a are living in the same neighborhoods, they’re intermarried. In fact, sometimes they didn’t even know who was Sunni and who was Shi’a. It’s like knowing whether your friends are in one Protestant group or another Protestant group. There were differences but it was not hostile.
In fact, for a couple of years both sides were saying: there will never be Sunni-Shi’a conflicts. We’re too intermingled in the nature of our lives, where we live, and so on. By 2006 there was a raging war. That conflict spread to the whole region. By now, the whole region is being torn apart by Sunni-Shi’a conflicts.
The natural dynamics of a conflict like that is that the most extreme elements begin to take over. They had roots. Their roots are in the major US ally, Saudi Arabia. That’s been the major US ally in the region as long as the US has been seriously involved there, in fact, since the foundation of the Saudi state. It’s kind of a family dictatorship. The reason is it has a huge amount oil.”

Asked about Congress’ unfailing support for Israel — even beloved progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren — Chomsky responds thusly:
“She probably knows nothing about the Middle East. I think it’s pretty obvious. Take the US prepositioning arms in Israel for US use for military action in the region. That’s one small piece of a very close military and intelligence alliance that goes back very far. It really took off after 1967, although bits and pieces of it existed before.
The US military and intelligence regard Israel as a major base. In fact, one of the more interesting WikiLeaks exposures listed the Pentagon ranking of strategic centers around the world which were of such significance that we have to protect them no matter what, a small number. One of them was a couple of miles outside Haifa, Rafael military industries, a major military installation.
That’s where a lot of the drone technology was developed and much else. That’s a strategic US interest of such significance that it ranks among the highest in the world. Rafael understands that, to the extent that they actually moved their management headquarters to Washington, where the money is. That’s indicative of the kind of relationship there is.
And it goes way beyond that. US investors are in love with Israel. Warren Buffet just bought some Israeli enterprise for, I think, a couple billion dollars and announced that outside the US, Israel is the best place for US investment. And major firms, like Intel and others, are investing heavily in Israel, and continue to. It’s a valuable client: it’s strategically located, compliant, does what the US wants, it’s available for repression and violence. The US has used it over and over as a way of circumventing congressional and popular restrictions on violence.”
And he says this about climate change:
“The world that we’re creating for our grandchildren is grim. The major concern ought to be the one that was brought up in New York at the September 21 march. A couple hundred thousand people marched in New York calling for some serious action on global warming.
This is no joke. This is the first time in the history of the human species that we have to make decisions which will determine whether there will be decent survival for our grandchildren. That’s never happened before. Already we have made decisions which are wiping out species around the world at a phenomenal level.
The level of species destruction in the world today is about at the level of sixty-five million years ago, when a huge asteroid hit the earth and had horrifying ecological effects. It ended the age of the dinosaurs; they were wiped out. It kind of left a little opening for small mammals, who began to develop, and ultimately us. The same thing is happening now, except that we’re the asteroid. What we’re doing to the environment is already creating conditions like those of sixty-five million years ago. Human civilization is tottering at the edge of this. The picture doesn’t look pretty.”
Sarah Gray is an assistant editor at Salon, focusing on innovation. Follow @sarahhhgray or email sgray@salon.com.


De Holocaust Is Geen Rechtvaardiging meer Voor Joodse Nazi's

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