Corbett Report - Episode 215: History Repeating

Source: Corbett Report
James Corbett

From My Lai to Abu Ghraib to Afghanistan, we have seen the all-too-familiar pattern: denials followed by excuses followed by faux apologies and offical handwringing. What is never examined is how each event fits into the bigger picture of the dehumanization of war. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we go in search of the thread that connects our own time to the history that helps to explain it.

 

Documentation

Bogus Tales of Iran's Nukes Used to Feed US Militarism

Source: Global Research
Ben Schreiner

With seemingly each passing day, the tensions between the US and Iran over the latter’s nascent nuclear program mount.  And with the voices clamoring for conflict growing ever louder, the clouds of war darken.  

As Mark Helprin warns in a January 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed, the Iranian nuclear program poses “a mortal threat” to the US.  As he explains, “we cannot dismiss the possibility of Iranian nuclear charges of 500 pounds or less ending up in Manhattan or Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Jamie Fly and Gary Schmitt, meanwhile, argue in a January 17 Foreign Affairs piece for outright regime change.  As they state: “After all, Iran’s nuclear program is a symptom of a larger illness—the revolutionary fundamentalist regime in Tehran.”  (An anonymous US official was quoted in the Washington Post on January 10 to hold regime change aspirations as well, before the paper later "clarified" the official’s remarks.)

Such frenzied and war hungry rhetoric, however, has not been limited to the standard purveyors of neoconservative drivel.  In fact, dramatically escalating the tensions and sense of fear amongst the American public has been the nation’s mainstream press corps, which has readily abandoned any and all pretensions of journalistic integrity in the service of propaganda.  

Indicative of this is the fact that it is now a common occurrence to have dire warnings of an Iranian nuclear weapons program splashed across the pages of the nation’s preeminent newspapers.  This endless chorus, though, comes despite the fact that an Iranian nuclear weapons program—as does its purported desire to even develop such a program—currently exists only in one’s imagination.  This much we know from the latest US National Intelligence Estimate.  

Nonetheless, the sheer and utter invention of an Iranian nuclear weapons program has increasingly come to be held by the American press as fact.  For as Joseph Goebbels would have it: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Illustrative of this dark axiom at work, we read in a January 12 Los Angeles Times editorial that: “Iran’s development of nuclear weapons [emphasis added] poses a grave threat to world stability and possibly an existential threat to this country’s Middle Eastern ally, Israel.”  In a January 10 Washington Post editorial we read that, “Iran may be feeling some economic pain, and it may be isolated.  But its drive for nuclear weapons continues [emphasis added].”  And in a January 4 New York Times piece we learn that, “The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective [emphasis added], is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign.”

Of course, the hysteria over a hypothetical Iranian nuclear weapons program has by no means been limited to US print media.  The cable broadcast network CNN (i.e., “the most trusted name in news”) has also reported the fictitious claim that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective as fact. 

Creating American Terrorists

Source: Council of the National Interest
Philip Giraldi

Defenders of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, which declares the entire world to be a “battlefield” against terrorism and authorizes the U.S. military to detain indefinitely anyone suspected of being a terrorism supporter, have claimed that the White House will only use its new power carefully and with due process. Opponents note that the White House has never hesitated to use any new authority, no matter how outrageous, and that the trend of law enforcement and security agencies is to expand on powers granted, not to rein them in or limit them.

The track record of the Obama administration on civil liberties is particularly bad, as it has broadened its definition of war powers, reneged on its promise to close Guantanamo Prison, and supported numerous dubious terrorism prosecutions. It has also become adept at silencing critics through the repeated exploitation of the state-secrets privilege, which effectively dismisses any case accusing the government of abuse or malfeasance.

So let us accept that the government now has the power to send a team of military police to anyone’s home in any state in the Union and can demand that that person surrender without any recourse to a lawyer or judicial due process. The military can then detain the individual incommunicado for any length of time and can presumably send him to Guantanamo for special confinement, claiming that the reason for the detention is support of terrorism, which can be almost anything, including a letter to the editor of the local paper complaining about the goonery of the Transportation Security Administration. Once in detention, the suspect only has such options as are granted to him by the military. He cannot see a lawyer, cannot invoke habeas corpus or other constitutional privileges, cannot confront any witnesses against him, and cannot challenge any information prejudicial to him even if it is hearsay or fabricated. In other words, the accused can be arrested for no reason and held indefinitely without any protections that enable him to push back against being detained. Most people would consider a criminal justice system that permits such detention ipso facto a police state.

There's Something Very Odd about GOP Primary Pre-polling and Vote

Source: Activist Post
Eric Blair

Okay.  It's time somebody says it. Something seems very strange about the GOP primary pre-polling and vote thus far.

As a Ron Paul fan, I didn't want to seem like a sore loser after the odd Iowa result where the failed no-name Senator, Rick Santorum, was catapulted to victory with very little tangible support.

But now, how on earth could Newt Gingrich win the South Carolina primary when the day before the vote he had to cancel a major campaign stop because of lack of attendance?

The Associated Press reported:

Newt Gingrich has cancelled a campaign appearance in South Carolina because of poor attendance. 

The Republican presidential candidate was scheduled to speak to the Southern Republican Leadership on Friday. But a campaign spokesman told reporters that he would no longer be appearing due to poor attendance. 

There were just a few dozen people in the audience at the College of Charleston's arena, where the event was taking place.

Meanwhile, on the same day Ron Paul boasted over 1000 attendees at his campaign event in Charleston:

2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul attracted more than 1,000 supporters in Charleston today, demonstrating his strong support among younger voters and his overall popularity. 

The crowd gathered expressly for the 12-term Congressman from Texas as he participated in “The Bully Pulpit Series” at 11:00 a.m. EST at the College of Charleston, located at 7 College Way, Charleston. The candidate had been in Washington the day prior for a key House vote against President Obama raising the debt ceiling, but upon his return there was apparently no loss of enthusiasm.

Corbett Report Radio - Deconstructing the Panopticon

Source: Corbett Report
James Corbett

The Panopticon is the perfect prison — an architectural idea that embodies the rule of the many by the few. But it has a secret weakness, one that the system doesn’t want you to know about: it only works if you fear it. Tonight on Corbett Report Radio we dig a tunnel out of the panopticon prison by exposing the truth and dispelling the fear.

 

Works Cited:

Corbett Report Podcast Episode 035 – The Panopticon
India enrolling over 1 billion people in world’s largest biometric database
Welcome to the Panopticon
The Last Word on CCTV
Charles Farrier on No CCTV (UK)

NEO-NAZISM: United Nations Anti-Nazi Resolution and Falsification of History

Source: Global Research
Carla Stea

Iran, Israel, Syria, Russia United in UN General Assembly Vote against Neo-Nazism

On December 19, 2011, in an extraordinary vote, Iran, Israel and Syria united in support of United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/66/460 on “Inadmissibility of Certain Practices That Contribute to Fuelling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” The resolution was adopted by a majority vote of 134, with 24 opposed and 31 abstentions. Among the 32 co-sponsors of the Resolution were, notably, Iran, Syria, Belarus, the Russian Federation, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Venezuela, Viet Nam. The resolution states:

4. “Expresses deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials and holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism, as well as by declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti-Hitler Coalition and collaborated with the Nazi movement participants in national liberation movements.

5. “Expresses concern at recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and in this regard urges States to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under Article 34 of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

8. Stresses that the practices described above do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of crimes against humanity committed in the Second World War, in particular those committed by the SS organizations and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition and collaborated with the Nazi movement, and poison the minds of young people, and that failure by States to effectively address such practices is incompatible with the obligation of States members of the United Nations under its Charter and is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Organization.”

In 1945 George Braziller published Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn’s “The Plot Against the Peace,” which documents, in chapter 6, the nazi doctrine’s explicitly defined policy of xenophobia and racial genocide against the Slavic peoples and the Jews:

“Immediately after Hitler came to power, the Nazi government launched a systematic campaign aimed at the ultimate extermination of the Jewish population of the Third Reich…” But “It was against the Slav peoples, the traditional enemy of Pan-Germanism, that the policy of genocide was most extensively applied…’It will be one of the chief tasks of German statesmanship,’ Hitler told Hermann Rauschning, ‘for all time to prevent, by every means in our power, the further increase of the Slav races.’” (From “The Plot Against the Peace,” by Sayers and Kahn, 1945).

By the end of World War II, in addition to the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis, approximately 30 million Soviet citizens had been exterminated, only one third of whom had been soldiers. 

Russia and BRICS Nations Warn West to Back Off Iran and Syria

Source: The Hindu

Russia warned the West against military intervention in Iran and Syria and rejected unilateral sanctions against the two nations.

Military action against Iran would have “catastrophic consequences,” Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Mr. Lavrov told an annual press conference that Moscow is seriously concerned about the threat of a military operation against Iran and is “doing its best to prevent it.” He said the war would provoke an exodus of refugees from Iran to Azerbaijan and Russia, would pour fuel into the simmering Shia-Sunni conflict and trigger a chain reaction.

The press conference was devoted to Russia's foreign policy in 2011, but Mr. Lavrov's tough language suggested that Moscow was bracing up for hardnosed confrontation with the West in 2012.

Mr. Lavrov said the West's unilateral sanctions against Iran, such as the proposed oil embargo, were “aimed at suffocating the Iranian economy” and “inciting popular discontent.”

He said Iran was ready for a resumption of talks with international mediators and hinted that Europe and the United States were imposing new sanctions at this juncture with the specific purpose of torpedoing further negotiations.

The Russian Foreign Minister said Moscow would block any Western attempts to obtain United Nations mandate for military interference in Syria. A draft resolution submitted by Russia states that all Security Council members refrain from interference and use of force in Syria. Mr. Lavrov said it was self-revealing that Western powers were trying hard to remove from the Russian draft the part stating that “nothing in the present resolution can be interpreted as allowing the use of force against Syria by any party.”

At the same time, China and the other members of the BRICS group have thrown their support behind the Russian draft, Mr. Lavrov said.