Censored documentary on Zionist Lobby in the USA finally available

Parts 1 and 2: https://electronicintifada.net/content/watch-film-israel-lobby-didnt-want-you-see/25876

Parts 3 and 4: https://electronicintifada.net/content/watch-final-episodes-al-jazeera-film-us-israel-lobby/25896


The documentary was part of a wider resarch journalism effort by Al Jazeera, the public TV of Qatar, which also included a documentary on the British Zionist Lobby and how it influences British politics, quite interesting to watch (I'll see if I can find the link later on). While the British part of the research was published without restrictions, the US part was censored by the Qatari government and never released by Al Jazeera.

However now the full documentary has been leaked and made available by the Electronic Intifada website. Thanks also to The Real News for making me aware of this important must-watch revelation.

G7, G-what?

By snubbing the most important imperial tool for governability (aside NATO but not really different from NATO), Donald Trump is throwing rocks at his own roof, because it's hard to see how would the USA project its power through the world without the G7. G7 is the backbone of NATO, all its members except Japan (the backbone of "Eastern NATO" on its own right) are major NATO powers and that's why the G7 exists and why it has been instrumental to establish US imperial hegemony over the world. Trump is destroying that, and I for one welcome it, even not without some vertigo, as all major changes should inspire. 

The pouting face of Merkel, the tears of British newspapers crying foul about Brexit and the non-existent "special relationship" (bootlicking vassallage I call it, because Britain gets nothing from its subservience to the USA) and then of course the stupid childish face of Trump himself, they are all very worth a sinking global system that was already sinking anyhow, so why to spare this old man the joys of laughing at this childish game of armchairs?

NATO was already cracking, notably because of the major difficulties that the Berlin-Washington relation undergoes as the USA and its most loyal puppets (France, Britain) have rampaged with no criterion across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, against Libya, Syria and Russia. Remember how Italy and Germany rejected to join the adventurerist toppling of Muamar el Gaddafi, mostly because it was an attack on Italian interests in favor of French and British ones? Most people don't grasp this well: they tend to think in terms of unilateral imperialism but imperialism is always multilateral, multipolar, and it always leads to conflict and wars (even if nukes seem to prevent major global wars, smaller localized wars and the ever growing "cold war" tension is certainly there); in the case of Libya, it was Italy the main loser (after Libya itself, of course) and Germany was already upset enough to align themselves with Rome rather than with the big boss in Washington D.C.

That's because Germany, as manufacturer-exporter power, has a very long history of searching for all kinds of markets and one of them used to be Iran. And who have therefore harmed US/EU sanctions against Iran? Germany among others. And it is exactly the same with the anti-Russia sanctions but I'd dare to say that even much more severe. Germany has been a good dog anyhow and bowed to what master commanded, albeit reluctantly, but this was only or mostly because the other markets it had access to compensated. But now? With all this Trumptard "nationalism" in form of tariffs, what will keep Germany in line? The military occupation? Well, it does not seem enough: if Germany says "US and NATO bases out" it's hard to see how NATO will be able not to comply. They'd move just a few steps away to Poland but that's another story.

But of course Germany does not want that because NATO and EU are extremely imbricated with each other, and Germany needs EU, which is its primary market and a major pillar of its imperialist policy, what Varoufakis called the "postmodern IV Reich". So basically Trumptard Washington is playing with fire and putting Germany between a rock and a hard place: threatening to blow up Germany's most prized market and subservient sphere of influence (EU, which will blow up anyhow on its own contradictions, sooner than later: watch Italy, remember Brexit, ponder Spain about to blow up in pieces, look at the massive strikes and related street fights in France) if Germany does not behave as a bootlicking slave of the USA. 

And Germany does but there will be a point where it won't anymore. When and how is that? Probably not very far away in time. I already explained how Trump wants to destroy the EU and make sure Europe becomes a colony of the US empire, at least to a much larger degree it has been so far (because of the cold war cum class war of the mid 20th century, and also the transition from a Europe-centered world to a US-centered one), and it is clear that the EU will blow up in pieces soonish (something that the US wants but while keeping NATO as intact as possible, what may not be possible). 

Another crack in NATO is Turkey. Turkey is under Erdogan almost identical to Nazi Germany in its arrogant warmongering and incontrollability (and Erdogan makes no secret of his admiration for the German genocider). All major powers love (and secretly hate) Erdogan because of that: the USA wants Turkey to remain in NATO and keep aiding them to de-stabilize the Middle East, Russia wants Turkey to leave NATO and especially to be "independent" enough to act as their ally, including in the infamous "Pipelinistan", which is another facet of imperialism. But the most coveted asset of Turkey are the straits (Bosphorus-Marmara-Dardanelles) that join the Aegean and Black seas, of critical importance to Russia since times immemorial.

So we have the following cocktail of instability:

1. The USA wanting to reform the Empire in favor of the metropolis even at rist of destroying the Empire itself.
2. Germany wanting to get their way in both exploiting the EU as a semi-colony and being allowed to have unrestricted business with Russia, Iran, etc., this last against the will of the Imperial master, now asserting itself as "iron fist" madman in charge and reminding everybody else they are nothing but minions.
3. Turkey playing to be the Muslim version of Nazi Germany and being flirted by a despaired former lover (USA) and an aspiring new lover (Russia).
4. Latin Europe exploding at slow motion but in ways that seem impossible to stop. This happens in different ways in each state but it happens all across the region (except for Portugal, where social-democracy with a green touch has made the country gain stability).
5. Poland playing to be Mussolini's Italy in Eastern Europe, with full backing of the USA but directly in contradiction since long ago with the interests of Germany (and of course, those of Russia). 
6. Britain drifting aimlessly between the Brexiter despair, the Corbynist hope and the nearly total indifference by all its "allies", including the USA.

And then of course in the background is China, whose local expression in Europe typically comes by the name of Russia. Mind you that Russia would prefer a more balanced independent role but that the USA has cornered it against the all-embracing arms of China. Remember that no long ago the G7 used to be called the G8... but then Russia was kicked out.

Probably the most crucial element in all this is the weakness of Germany as power: it is an economic powerhouse that cannot assert itself against its master and overlord the USA. Or can it? And, if so, how? Nobody, as far as I know, defends in Germany a more belligerant and independent stand... yet. But, on the other side, it seems like there is no alternative for Germany than actually becoming more belligerant. However becoming more belligerant, asserting itself as power by means other than economic and diplomatic would not just break taboos but actually would initially cause its global market share to shrink dramatically. And those are the marked cards Trump is playing with: you may pout all you want, Angela, but if you dare to do anything, you won't sell a single Volkswagen or Siemens thing in the USA, and your darling EU house of cards may easily fall down with a single but determined blow.

The question is: can the USA survive that kind of upheaval of its own imperial structure? My bet is that it cannot and that it's actually only doing that out of desperation because it's already riddled with holes and problems it can hardly overcome.

USA: police or terrorist occupation forces?

This happened in Georgia (USA), just a few days ago, police equipped as soldiers and acting as the most brutal occupation forces I've seen outside Palestine, attack a peaceful antifascist demo:

You can read the whole story at Raw Story.

Hariri's kidnapping is just part of a major coup in Saudi Arabia

This intereview with Lebanese journalist Marwa Osman at The Corbett Report is most interesting:

The most luxurious hotel in Riyadh is now a prison for all the princes in the realm. Furthermore at least one key prince, Fahed bin Abdullah was killed by gunfire. Incidentally this man was best friend since childhood of kidnapped Lebanese PM Hariri and his business partner.

Israel and Washington behind the scenes

In min. 14:55 she says: "He [Mohamed bin Salman] sees Hizbollah as a threat to himself. I don't know why, because Hizbollah is a threat to Israel not to him".

To understand that one has to take in account the revelations that Prince Khalid bin Farhan al-Saud made in June to the Middle East Monitor: Mohamed has made a deal with Trump by which the USA backs his bid for total power, including speedy ascension to the throne (his father, the nominal king, has Alzheimer). in exchange for Saudi blessing and financing for the Final Solution against Gaza Strip, a territory that Israel now covets for their version of the Suez Canal. 

I discussed this and the sudden hostility against Qatar here.

USA moves against Germany with an anti-Russian pretext - the EU is doomed

Remember what I said months ago about Europe being bound to become a US colony or worse? Well, it is happening right now. All that blah-blah about Trump siding with Russia was of course just a smokescreen: Trump has managed instead to lead a massive consensus in US politics for new Cuba-style sanctions against Russia. Why? Because that is the perfect opportunity to start a trade war against Germany and shatter the EU into pieces.

I won't cry for the EU but we will all cry for the conflicts that this IMPANSIONISM of the US Empire is about to trigger. 

Germany and its close ally Austria are clearly angry but I am not at all so sure as they claim to be about the EU standing united against the US intentions. Certainly Britain is out for good but also Bankster-President Macron of France has been actively and shamelessly courting Donald Trump, with greater success than Angela Merkel, no doubt, but unclear consequences as of now. 

Actively anti-Russian regimes in the EU are also Poland, Sweden and the three small Baltic states. Norway is probably also siding with the USA and the rest is all indecision. 

Anyway, what can Germany do? Well, first of all expel all US and other "ally" bases from its territory, a legacy of a long occupation that was formally ended in the 1990s. They could also choose to exit NATO's integrated military command, as De Gaulle (France) did in the 1950s, and they could once again demand from the USA the return of their gold reserves stored in Fort Knox (which the USA already declined to do a few years ago). But of course they'd be much more effective if they could rally the EU around them in a proper trade war against the USA, in which there is no clear winner other than China. The problem is that Germany's austericidal policies have already alienated any hope of internal solidarity within the EU. Basically Merkel's Germany has wasted its chance at leading the bloc in a way that is good for all, and not just for Germany, and now nobody will care too much if Germany suffers a bit or two. 

That does not mean I'm declaring Germany's position lost, just that it's much much weaker than they imagine (wishful thinking never solved anything). In any case Germany and whoever rallies around it is bound to clash with Washington: the interest they have in the Nord Stream pipeline is way too serious and they are already pissed off by the US and allies' troublemaking in Ukraine, including the first round of anti-Russian sanctions. Worse, the issues come from older times: anti-Iran sanctions also harmed Germany's economy and the intervention in Libya was shunned by Germany and Italy. To a large extent Germany is in the same difficult position as Russia was put into, just that, while Russia has a much larger degree of sovereignty, not just because of its huge and very effective military but also because of its extension and natural resources, Germany is much smaller in size, has a relatively weak military (and no nukes!) and, above all, it is extremely dependent on the EU trading bloc, which it has used and abused to further their own interests. 

What does the USA want? Forcing Germany to accept an even more marked subservient position, to reduce their exports (something that Trump has been outspoken about but would mean the collapse of the German economy) and in general establish a truly imperial rule on Europe by Washington. 

I can't say how this new major conflict will evolve but my best hunch is one of conflict inside Europe, the quite possible collapse of the EU as we know it, maybe of NATO too (the remnants would be recycled into a satellite US "province" with unmistakable US dominance) and I would definitely not discard wars and military coups. But what I do think is very clear is that Germany cannot afford the luxury to budge once again at Washington's demands, no matter how extended is the anti-Russian consensus which is used as a pretext, because it is transparent that the target is not so much Russia but Germany. 

I'm sure I will have to write more on this soon, because it is clear that this conflict is bound to become the epicenter of European and even global politics in the next months and years. Serious stuff, really!

Behind Qatar's crisis: Israel's plan to annex Gaza and expel all its inhabitants

I have been as puzzled as anyone about what on Earth was going on behind the sudden blockade and blackmail by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and a couple of lesser players (UAE and Bahrain) against Qatar. But today suddenly the puzzle begins to take shape with the addition of two new pieces:

1. Egypt's Parliament voted to cede two strategic islands to Saudi Arabia. The islands of Tiran and Sanafir are located at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, making that strait Egyptian territorial waters. This cession was done against Egyptian national interest and historical pride and without Saudi Arabia having ever staked any claim on those islands. Actually the cession is not about Egypt nor Saudi Arabia but about Israel, because by giving away those strategic islands, the Zionist Colony gains free access to the Red Sea via what will suddenly become international (and not anymore Egyptian) waters. 

Tiran and Sanafir islands (source: The Real News)

2. Prince Khalid Bin Farhan al-Saud, who lives outside the rigors of the Saudi courtly plots in Germany, has revealed that the conditions imposed by the USA to the current Crown Prince (heir) and effective strongman of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed Bin Salman, in order to allow his raise to the throne before his (demented) father's death are that Saudi Arabia accepts the genocide in Gaza and finances the resettlement of Palestinians in Sinai, and also the internationalization of the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba.

From the Middle East Monitor:

The alleged conditions include “absolute obedience to the US and Israel and carrying out whatever they ask him to do.” Three other conditions, claimed Khalid, are stated in return for helping Bin Salman take the throne before the death of his father: “Working to settle all Gaza residents in north Sinai as an alternative homeland and Saudi Arabia along with the UAE will afford the needed funds; getting rid of Hamas and whoever supports it; and getting Sanafir Island from Egypt.”

Bin Farhan said that the last condition would make the Gulf of Aqaba international waters instead of Egyptian territorial waters, which would facilitate Israeli shipping to and from the port of Eilat. It would also help Israel to carry out a project planned to operate in parallel to the Suez Canal. A retainer of around $500 million is also involved, he claimed.

Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and Gulf of Aqaba (credit: Graphic Lab (ru))

For the last many years Gaza has been ruled by Hamas, originally a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, against whose elected government arose the current military strongman and President of Egypt. Both moderate islamist organizations are the main pretext for the Saudi-Egyptian aggression against Qatar. 

It is worth reminding that Turkey, whose autocratic President Erdogan seems to have been falling apart with the USA and even flirting with Russia and Iran, has rushed to protect Qatar from any possible Saudi invasion and can be perceived as a historical mild ally of the Muslim Brotherhood and even Hamas (remember the Mavi Marmara). However Turkey remains part of NATO and provides a key air base (Inçirlik, near the Syrian border) to the USA and its European vassals ("allies").

It would seem that when Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed his happiness about Trump's election, he knew well what was going on behind the obvious political and geostrategical clumsiness of the White House's buffoon (so-called "President"). Only someone of the low stock as Trump would allow for such a blatant a genocide to take place before our noses.

The plan is quite apparently already ongoing, the cession of the islands is a clear sign, so we should expect that in few weeks, months at most, the plan to invade Gaza and expel all its inhabitants, more than one million people, most of them refugees from what is now Israel, will begin.

Let's not be mere spectators, let us make everything possible to prevent this new genocide.

Trump uses the Army to repress peaceful citizens in Dakota

A few days ago I was called the attention to a DHS (US Gestapo) leaked draft document that authorized the use of the National Guard (Army reserves) to enforce Trump's "final solution" to the issue of illegal immigration. I was at first a bit dismissive of the credibility of such claims, after all it is very apparent that a large segment of the US Oligarcy, led by the likes of Soros, Clinton, McCain, etc. are actively opposed to Trump, but they seem to be very real.

The evidence is on how the protest camp against the pipeline at Standing Rock was brutally evicted yesterday, with use of military forces and equipment. And journalists have been the first victims of the fascist repression. The information is therefore not fully clear but it is apparent that some protesters have been injured and many more arrested, often on absolutely no grounds.

In this no-words video report you can appreciate some of the magnitude of the militarization of repression:

Here a raw report from inside Oceti Camp as it was being raided:

I can only imagine this are "testing grounds" for a brutal escalation in repression and militarization inside the USA (and therefore in all its imperial area of influence). They are primarily targeting "minorities" because that is how you boil the frog alive: by only slowly increasing the temperature. You know: "first they came for the communists and I did not speak out..." But this affects every single person inside the borders of the USA and also outside (as the practices are being extended, in various ways, to every single country in NATO-plus).

This is the true ugly face of Capitalism, a psychopathic abuser that sometimes pretends to be "nice" but only to deceive you and then shows its true face: brutal repression and exploitation. On the good side, it is a symptom of its final crisis, on the bad side, unless we wake up and take back what is ours, is only going to get much worse before people wake up and do what we must.

Naval Empire, no functional Navy?

A few days ago I read that all of Britain's Trident class nuclear submarines are out of order (except one that is on trial). Granted that the info comes from The Sun but these days it's even possible that such a tabloid has better info than Prime Minister May. 

Alright, Britain has been decaying for a century or so, guess that it is a bit shocking but more or less within expectations. But today I read that more than half of US Navy aircraft and almost two thirds of the class F/A 18, which provide striking power to the famed or infamous US aircraft carriers, which allow the US Empire to extend its power projection to about all the planet, are out of service.

In this case the source is not a sensationalist newspaper but Defense News, a medium oriented to military personnel and contractors primarily. While it is normal that around 1/4 or even up to 1/3 of the aricraft are routinely undergoing maintenance at any moment, these figures are twice the normal and could severely hamper the operating capabilities of the feared US Navy. 

And this is what we get to know. How real is the power projection of the USA and its NATO-plus makeshift empire? Is The Empire a giant with feet of clay? 

Let's not forget that the power of the US dollar depends on its Navy and vice-versa: that the power of the US Armed Forces depend on the primacy of the green buck over all other currencies, because that's how they manage to export inflation and borrow infinitely from nowhere. This is no trivial matter at all.

Letter to a US-American: the very sad Obama legacy and the perilous new 'Trumpland' regime

This is a real letter (well, e-mail to be precise) that I wrote the other day to a friend in the United States and then thought maybe worth publishing. She was so kind as to even provide some corrections to my spontaneous and sometimes exotic English, some of which I'm adopting in this version (for the rest, I like to believe I'm just anticipating future English -- nothing remains static, everything changes and we should proudly accept the fact that we are agents of such change):

Obama looks like a human being: he has presence and charisma but he has lied at least as much as any other and he has been involved in as many wars, most of them very dirty and destructive, as the worst president you can imagine:

1. Libya: toppling an authoritarian regime with Islamist militias only to leave a chaos and redistribute oil concessions to the Anglo-Saxon companies. This happened under Hillary Clinton's direct and quite scandalous "leadership".

2. Yemen: systematic drone-bombing of alleged "terrorists" (often civilians in fact) and later support of Saudi-led absolutely terrorist intervention, still ongoing and unlikely to succeed.

3. Ukraine: artificially creating a "fake revolution" with the use of armed fascist militias, which ended in a full fledged coup, only to put brutal pressure on Russia (Ukraine is just some 800 km away from Moscow, closer to the Russian heartland than Cuba ever was to the US one). This resulted in the Russian-speaking Crimea autonomous republic declaring independence (with a perfectly democratic referendum) and requesting incorporation to Russia afterwards, which was swiftly granted, as the territory is not just historically Russian but also a key naval hub. Other Russian-speaking regions attempted to do the same with two succeeding, out of sheer determination and in spite of strict neutrality from Russia. Elsewhere it was terror by the fascist militias and political persecution for any dissident, from communists to independents, with many brutally murdered. All this was used as pretext for sanctions and war-mongering against Russia.

4. Syria: the USA and allies (European powers, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel) used Al Qaeda (the very same Al Qaeda which allegedly attacked the USA in 9/11/2001) to create a very artificial civil war in Syria. Maybe at the beginning there were some more or less legitimate groups but soon only the Kurdish communists remained as such, in unstable alliance with "the regime". "Regime" that was moving swiftly towards greater democratization and held widely respected elections in the midst of the war in which Assad was reelected by massive majority (also among the refugees who could vote, mostly in Lebanon, as Europe and Turkey forbade the elections in their territories). Even Qatari opinion polls agree that Assad has a massive backing inside Syria. Later a splinter group of Al Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State (DAESH) invaded Iraq in what many see as an attempt to weaken its pro-Iran and pro-China elected government (the very same government imposed by the USA, shit happens) and soon became infamous for their unprecedented acts of terror and slavery that could almost shame even the worst of talibans. DAESH is officially rejected by everyone but also effectively backed by everyone (Turkey beyond any doubt, Saudi Arabia has transported many of their cells to Yemen, the USA has definitely financed their equipment and Israel buys their dirty oil). The ceremony of confusion has gone many steps in the zone of total excess and probably farce with the attacks against civilians in France and Germany, probably in order to rally the masses around the banners of war and the police state, but the worse affected are definitely Arabs and Kurds (Turkey has used the "Syrian" jihadists as death squads in the genocidal repression in North Kurdistan, and also indirectly in the South).

5. Latin America: if under the Bush administration the focus was so exclusively in the Middle East that Latin American more or less "leftist" experiments could thrive rather unmolested, since Obama arrived it has been one indirect intervention after another. It began in Honduras in 2009, with the country being given to the "Libertarian" mafiosi (free trade nazis), continued with a coup in Paraguay and growing pressure against the Venezuelan "bolivarian" social-democracy, only to culminate this year with a "soft" coup in Brazil that is clearly a major blow to the BRICS and to Latin American sovereignty.

6. Persecution of dissidents and whistleblowers at home and abroad. The very fact that Snowden had to find refuge in Putin's Russia and that the presidential airplane of Bolivia was forced to undergo a search by European NATO allies (France and Spain notably) because of slight suspicion that Snowden could be traveling in it, says it all. The situation of Assange is not a bit better after five years besieged in Ecuador's embassy in London just because the USA wants him extradited on most unclear charges (the Swedish case is just an intermediate pretext: persecution for having consensual sex without condoms, go figure!) And then of course the Manning case, to whom Obama did not even given a full pardon but only a partial one.

7. The police state has been reinforced: not only do all the practices against privacy in communications remain untouched but Obama just signed a decree allowing the NSA surveillance to be shared with other intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, etc.) upon request. Guantanamo torture camp was never closed.

8. Monopolistic concentration of power in way too few hands has remained absolutely unchecked, affecting all sectors but most visibly the mainstream media, which has become today a mere propaganda mouthpiece of the imperial regime. All that power is of course being transferred to Trump or whoever holds the oval office throne, because they need those oligarchs as allies.

In brief: the USA under Obama has been extremely aggressive outside and inside. All he can claim as achievement is "Obamacare", and even that is so mild and oriented to private profit that those who criticize it have it very easy.

Yes, he has style, manners and charisma but that's not enough to make a statesman, much less to claim he has honored even slightly his "Change" campaign. Unlike him or Hillary, Sanders was really for some real change and he would have beaten Trump, no doubt, but the regime would not allow him to run, he never had a chance. And they are still doing it: with Sanderist personalities being pushed out of the Democratic Party apparatus as we speak, just for being serious about social-democracy and change, about social and civil rights.

I would even dare to forecast that the Democratic Party camp is going to head internally divided into the next Presiential elections because of this, with the "Sanderists" creating a new party even because it is obvious that the Dem apparatus will not give them any room whatsoever. And,  barring a surprise victory (everything can happen when the window of chaos is open but I feel it's a bit too early), that will allow Trump (or Pence if Trump gets removed) to get a second term, because of the winner-takes-all and voting restrictions system.

Furthermore, it can be even worse: it can be as Moore forecast in his documentary that there will be no more elections until a revolution topples the new "Trumpland" regime. But I doubt it will turn out that way: elections can be easily manipulated in the USA (electronic voting is totally opaque to begin with), so they can keep the pretense for the time being. This slow-motion coup is totally like what happened in the Roman Republic some 2000-plus years ago: the Empire was never officially inaugurated, just someone became way too powerful and the old institutions (more or less representative) were just gradually displaced, step by step.

However it is at the same time that transition from Republic to Empire and the late Empire's transition to feudalism (corporate post-industrial feudalism it is now, they call it "libertarianism"). So it is like repeating all Roman history packed in just a few decades or even years and in totally unrelated conditions of a highly educated and connected population with actual power to disrupt everything if they do ever get serious. It just cannot work: it is a mirage, it is just the last attempt ever to resurrect the Roman Empire and, as all the previous attempts, it will fail strenuously.

The bilionaire behind Trump's sucess

So much noise, fake news, about Putin and then we find out that the real guy behind Trump's success is 100% made in the USA, as everything behind the blondie elderly far-right decadent phenomenon.

From The Real News:

Also it seems already that all that spam about "getting along with Russia" was just electoral propaganda: his appointees are now clearly saying that Russia is the enemy to beat. So once again there was no choice in foreign or imperial policies in this US election, the Deep State always wins:

→ Finian Cunnigham (op-edge at RT): 'Deep State' wins… Trump is being tamed to toe the line.

Millions negated the right to vote in US "democracy"

I often contend that non-proportional electoral systems are extremely anti-democratic and that, of course, electronic vote is almost certainly a scam: the perfect way to rig an election. All that is present in the US so-called "democracy" but it gets even worse: the system is intently chaotic allowing for governors to dramatically limit the ability to vote of people they suspect may support their opponents (in essence more left-leaning options: democrats when republicans but also real lefties when liberal democrats are in control). This particularly affect poorer neighborhoods, minorities, etc., who have to endure an obstacle race in order to exert their most elementary right: the right to vote.

And gets even darker: millions, mostly minorities, are just slashed out of the voting rolls with pretexts. All this is explained in detail in this interview (two parts) with investigative journalist Greg Palast, courtesy of The Real News Network:

Don't panic: that's how the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie actually works, part of it at least. Just please let's not be naive anymore about the supposed quality of US "democracy", let's face reality instead.

Trumpinsomia

The idea of "President Trump" (or similar, if he falls down a balcony and Mike Pence takes over it won't make any difference) is beginning to affect my emotions and therefore my sleep. Yeah, the USA is far away across the Atlantic but, it's not just the main superpower, but also it is very plausible that the same will happen across Europe, with Le Pen maybe winning the French presidential election or the equally fascist Hofer quite likely winning the republic's top post in the repetition of the Austrian polls next month. The prospect of Beppe Grillo (another professional buffoon, like Trump) maybe becoming the next Prime Minister of Italy is not the least comforting either, as the unusual 5 Star Movement aligns with the Far Right beyond the Alps and is also penetrated by many neofascists inside.

Sure the Great Coalition parties are not comforting at all either but we all know that outright Fascism is much much worse, notably because it is much much more difficult to revert once in power.

And the brown shirts are beginning to show up very clearly in the upcoming US government. For example Trump has appointed the well known extremist Stephen K. Bannon, a total psychopath, as his chief strategist.

He is not just a racist bigot, he is an extremist misogynist, confirming the worst suspicions about Trump's sexism. Just read his own articles at his own site (link1, link2), which could well have been signed by the self-appointed Caliph of Raqqa. He's also the best known leader of the so-called "alt-right", the modern version of Fascism in North America.

I watched yesterday this fragment of Michael Moore's last film, which is so well told an clairvoyant, that the very supporters of Trump used it, cutting off the last part, for their campaign. But the last part is where the panic sets on, because the foreseeing Moore states unmistakably that Trump will be "the last President of the United States".

Truly scary but it is happening right now.

And, thanks to the authoritarian complacency of his predecessors, Trump will have a lot of legal mechanisms to make his Fascism unstoppable: many emergency laws that dramatically increase presidential power, a heavily militarized police, an ultra-conservative Supreme Court, etcetera. Just as Hitler used in 1933 the emergency provisions that the pre-existing legal system allowed for emergencies, it seems very likely that Trump will do the same, even if he needs to fabricate a pretext, as Hitler did with the Reichstag fire. 

It looks very bad, because there are no legal emergency breaks for a situation like this, only a true revolution could change things but I seriously doubt that the USA is mature for such a critical scenario, really.

The rain dance is broken

Unimaginative "more of the same" after eight years of THE CRISIS? Seems it does not work anymore just pretending that old school methods will work and that somehow miraculously there will be light out of the tunnel just out of the blue. 

A medicine man, or woman, who is unable to call the rain won't be respected, a superstitious doctrine that promises rain but only produces drought again and again will lose support sooner than later. That is what is happening and that's why Hillary More-of-the-Same Clinton could not beat Trump: her doctrine is spent, less and less people can believe in the old magics because they just don't work and credulity is limited. 

Of course nothing guarantees that a new medicine-man with new pretentious rituals will produce the so-desired rain. Almost certainly he won't but there is a good logic on trying something new when the old method is so clearly broken. And that's why opinion polls predicted better chances for victory to Sanders than to Rodham-Clinton, because he at least promised something not so clearly demonstrated to be wrong, something innovative enough to raise the hope of the masses.

That's the logic of these elections and probably many others: more of the same doesn't work and people is not anymore believing in it, they want and really need to try something new, because just repeating a clearly failed routine is clearly not a reasonable option. 

With the beginning of the Trump presidency, after all, we will be entering the 10th year of THE CRISIS, if we count from the Lehman Brothers affair: that's just too long of not getting things straight. No, Trump won't solve anything: THE CRISIS is here to stay sadly enough and his methods are even worse; for example he is a climate warming negationist, what is as good as negating the deep causes and effects of the crisis, which goes well beyond the mere economy into the ecology. Actually there is no possible exit within Capitalism but it seems that more frustration and even desperation is needed before most people realizes this basic truth.

But I guess that in terms of symptoms it is a positive note that people is willing to experiment somewhat and that they are not taking anymore proven inefficacy. All the rest that comes in the package I don't like and I do fear but, well, history is complicated, dialectic, convoluted and contradictory. What is clear is that the unimaginative "center" of "the lesser evil" does not work as it used to. One does not need to be radical or leftist to be outside of the "center", it is enough to be provocative and extremist -- even if that is empty posturing. And it is the time when to be at the center, to be pseudo-moderate gathers more hatred than love, because the system is so broken that it does not rally support anymore. 

And that's why Sanders could have won: because he is not just "more of the same" but much less of the same than Trump, who in most ways is also "more of the same"... just pretending not to be.

Too close to call yet but it seems it's gonna be Trump

Well, not really surprising for me but seems that it was for most. Apparently a dull ultra-Zionist hawkish corporatist and right-leaning candidate presented to the left should have been able to beat a dynamic blunt provocative and somewhat anti-system far-right candidate presented to the right and whoever in the grey zone was tired of more of the same. Seems that the prognostic was not correct at all.

Clinton could not appeal to her supposed voters (too far to the right, too rich, too corporatist, too establishment, too hawkish and too Zionist), Sanders could have won (so said early polls) but the establishment was not willing to accept a self-proclaimed socialist as candidate (and I guess Sanders himself was not as good tactician as Trump, so he could not beat Clinton at her own game in the Democratic Party, while the madman did instead beat each of his opponents one by one in a masterful game of power).

So the devil won, the witch came close second but almost doesn't count. What now?

The truth is that nobody seems to know but here there is a clue, courtesy of The Real News: his vice president Pence wants to be like Dick Cheney:

And I guess that if Trump falls out of a balcony accidentally, he would like to be like Caligula, right?

Dick Cheney was not a bit less hawkish than Clinton, I'd say he was even more aggressive, and particularly creative at rallying the nation around the false flag attack of 9-11. Are we set for another Hollywoodian staged self-attack? One that will bring the USA against China after securing the neutrality of Russia? Just saying, I really don't know but I guess it fits with what Trump has mumbled so far: Russia cool, China bad, Mexico scum.

Over here a lot of left-leaning people (the right, the center and the center-left are all with Hillary) has been speculating about whether a Trump victory could be relatively "good" (maybe he dismantles NATO with his weird ideas about everybody paying their share, even those who are totally uninterested in NATO and are only in by inertia, maybe he makes friends with Putin delaying WWIII, it can't be worse than more-of-the-same-but-even-worse Hillary, right?) But I don't think it will be any good: it's debatable if he'd be worse than Rodham-Clinton but he's not clearly going to be any better at all. 

Maybe good for Syria and the real Ukraine, as he's said he will respect Putin's Russia. And that is also good for Europe in principle, at least for most of us (all those who are not crazy ultra-nationalist and ultra-catholic Poles or similar). But the dangers seem to lay everywhere else, particularly I would be quite unhappy in the position of China (although they will probably outsmart the New Yorker, they have done before). I would also be very unhappy in the position of the Eurocrats, who are just totally in the role of being self-interested subservient cogs of NATO, which he may well dismantle, almost accidentally, when he demands protection money to totally broken economies. And I would be absolutely unhappy in the shoes of Mexico, of course, because the colonial status quo forged by the Coca-Cola boy, Fox, is suddenly being questioned in its entirety. 

Actually the uncertainty is so extreme that Japan's Nikkei has collapsed and Mexico's financial bodies have called a press conference later today. The Mexican peso is sinking relative to the US dollar but the imperial currency is also falling severely relative to such a Frankenstein currency as is the euro. Good for US exports to Europe, I guess, bad for Gringo imports from places other than Mexico.
Currency falls, inflation, are bad for importers and consumers but good for exporters. 

Anyhow: will Trump victory be a brown shirts' march towards Washington, sort of, as many fear in the USA? I can't say but we know already that French fascist Marine Le Pen has been the first European leader to congratulate Donald Trump on his apparent victory, and also that the Canadian immigration service online page has collapsed tonight because of excess visitors. Canada is not far enough and anyhow you can't really run away from the main global superpower, with military bases and occupation contingents all over the World, with the NSA so actively spying the Internet and with laws that allow the Government to assassinate anyone anywhere, including of course US citizens. Look at the difficult situation of several better known US and allies' dissidents: Manning in jail and apparently attempting suicide once and again, Assange for several years refuged in the Ecuador Embassy in London, Snowden fled to Moscow, Meissan (French investigative journalist) had to find refuge in Syria, Assata Shakur has been refuged in Cuba since the 70s, etc. Maybe rather than looking for refuge in Canada, you should consider places like North Korea, really - at least they have nukes and a crazy chubby leader mad enough to threaten the USA itself, he may like you, who knows?

Well, so far my improvised opinions. Which are yours?

USA elections: only option is to vote for Jill Stein

Jill Stein and Ujamu Baraka
(Green Party candidates for President and VP)

The mad man and the mad woman, the witch and the devil. Clearly US citizens tomorrow will have a non-election in which whoever win will be bad and even worse. 

Why to bother voting then? Because it's not just about these elections: it is about building hope for the future and the more votes that Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the only decent candidate, gets is a brick on the rampart of a better democracy tomorrow. 

Do not choose the lesser evil, there's no such thing, choose the reasonably good one. It's not better the devil you know than the devil you don't: they are both horribly bad. 

Stein backed Sanders for the Democratic nomination but old Sanders and his illusion of a Democratic Party relocated to the left (rather than clearly to the right, as it is under Rodham-Clinton) is out of the contest (he didn't even get the post for Vice-President). There is no realistic option but voting for Stein. Abstaining will not help, building up percentage will instead. There is a future after 2016 and you have to look forward to it.

Also voting Hillary will make you accomplice of her heinous war crimes in the Middle East, past and future, among other stuff. Please don't do that.

Russia accuses USA of actively backing DAESH, UN Security Council called

We already knew, we knew that all the blah-blah about fighting DAESH (Islamic State) was just propaganda and that neither the DAESH nor Al Nusra/Al Qaeda would be there without the very active backing of the USA and its allies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, France, Britain). 

But recently we had become a bit less certain: some US actions backed the Kurdish-centered Syrian Democratic Forces, Turkey and Washington seemed to have fallen apart on the issues of the military coup and the Kurds and even there were some poses about the USA backing a possible attack against Raqqa, the main Islamist capital. 

We can forget about that now: US air forces attacked the Syrian Army at Deir ez-Zor, an enclave at the Euphrates that Damascus has managed to hold free and safe for all these years of war in spite of being surrounded by DAESH forces. The attack killed 62 Syrian soldiers and injured at least one hundred. Russia says that it was meant to pave the way for the Islamist takeover of the town and that only their own counter-strikes allowed for the loyalist enclave to resist. 

The attack, along with the disdain by other US-backed "rebels" (Islamists affiliated to Al Qaeda) for the recently agreed ceasefire, puts in jeopardy any attempt to bring peace to the beleaguered Arab country, something we already knew would not happen: what we did not know was that the truce would be definitely destroyed by US open support of the terrorist forces of DAESH that so many people have murdered, tortured, raped and enslaved, in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. 

If you are reading this and are a US citizen, please vote Jill Stein (Green Party) this autumn, because she is the only one who holds a reasonable stand in internal and external affairs. All the rest are just crazy war-mongers of the worst kind, who should considered for what they are: class A war criminals. She may not win but it is important to set some good bases for the future in any case if this World has to have some hope. 

Source and more details: RT.

Let's not fall to the official deceit on Islamist terror, please

The DAESH attacks in Paris and Brussels should be a total political scandal, because it is obvious to those who dare to scratch the surface that they are under the command of those who rule NATO, EU and their member states. The exact details may be murky but overally it is clear that we are under attack by our own rulers. 

Sadly enough, almost nobody seems willing to hang the bell from the cat's neck but rather feel more comfortable ranting inside the official discourse, regardless of the exact details of their empty discourses. 

Let's get specific. For example, Toni Cartalucci explains at Global Research:

All of the suspects have been under the nose, on the radar, and in the prisons of Western security agencies on and off for years, yet were still able to carry out at least one high profile terrorist attack – possibly two, and with the vast majority of the suspects involved having traveled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS before inexplicably being allowed to re-enter Europe and rejoin society without consequence – as if inviting them to take their extremism to the next level.

Let's not forget that the supply lines of DAESH are controlled by NATO, specifically Turkey, whose Hitler-loving President Erdogan even dared to predict an attack in Brussels just a few days ago (astonishing "coincidence").

Even the official channels of DAESH in the Internet are apparently run by NATO and allies. Specifically the Twitter accounts of DAESH propaganda have been tracked via IP to the British Department of Work and Pensions. This ministry has rejected any responsibility claiming that they sold a large bloc of IP addresses to two Saudi firms, Saudi Telecom and Mobile Telecommunications Company, but it does not matter the least because Saudi Arabia is a very close ally of NATO (and of DAESH, Al Qaeda, etc.) and it is ridiculous to think that they would operate without Royal Saudi and NATO/Pentagon consent.

Another specific, already mentioned in this blog, is the implication of a French agent, former security chief of the fascist party National Front and akin to super-judge Marine Le Vert, Claude Hermant, in the sale of weapons to the DAESH cells that attacked Paris. Luckily for us Europeans, there are honest provincial judges who dare to investigate these matters, because all the anti-terrorist apparatus of Europe would not.

There are many more specifics but in many cases we would be going back to the origins of DAESH, a schism of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra, and its financing and even training by the USA and allies. But this is something they even dare to admit, as they do regarding the CIA training and equipment of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. They just pretend that the experiment went wrong at some point, that the Islamists have the tendency to bite the hand that feeds them. However nothing suggests, beyond mere words, that anything has changed at all. Obviously Turkey would not be supplying DAESH and buying their illegal oil if NATO was truly at war with DAESH, or, if they did, they would face the rage of the White House, which has the resources to put Turkey back in line easily. Nope. 

The reality is that DAESH, like Al Qaeda before, is nothing but a useful puppet, a convenient fake "enemy" under control in two ways: first, the direct operative control of the Western and allied secret services and, second, the effective control that prevents them from going rogue: that Islamism is a ghetto ideology that can never spread outside very specific cultural groups (unlike what may happen with Communism, a truly universal and genuinely antagonistic ideology) and that every single reactionary ideas recycled from the feudal period are expendable and can't last for long for intrinsic reasons of inviability. 

In fact this recycling of ideas from the Ancien Régime is typical of fascism and conservatism, but their practical function is only to serve as pretext to more practical goals: repression, imperialism and exploitation. In this case it is not even "Muslim" imperialism to what Islamism (at least the Sunni version of it, under tight Saudi control) serves to, it serves only to the imperialism of the West, largely against "Muslim" nations themselves. For example DAESH has been used to threaten key states like Indonesia or Nigeria against their drift towards more independent stances that may favor China and harm US/Western imperialism. 

But, beyond being a pretext for imperialist intervention or a tool in the Cold War II, islamo-fascist terrorism serves another key purpose inside the West: to sow fear that serves to justify repression and a drift towards a quasi-fascist political system, towards a totalitarian police state. Fortunately Europeans are showing to be less gullible in this aspect than their North American "friends" and attempts to enshrine a permanent state of emergency, as already happens in the USA, are being stopped. However that is the agenda of the NATO Empire and its key oligarchic shadow leaders: to consolidate itself as true formal and authoritarian empire, Roman style, and therefore it is likely that we will suffer more attacks until we either break free from NATO and Capitalism or we bow to the designs or the dark "masters of the universe", whose only real power is the control of token money (i.e. nothing too real, nothing that cannot be destroyed by democratic legislative action, because only law backs, or not, the dark magic of money).

I want to close this entry to an appeal to the real left: comrades, please, stop being so gullible and "good-ist", no real leftist, progressive, socialist alternative can be construed on the acceptation of the falsehoods of the official discourse. I know that it is not easy to challenge the mainstream discourse, built mostly by the bourgeois media at the service of their wealthy masters, but nothing is easy in the class war, so please, do your homework, document the many many inconsistencies in that official discourse and denounce them with all the loudspeaker power you can muster. What else?!

Islamist terror: nobody points to the culprits

First of all my condolences and solidarity with the victims of the Brussels attacks. Nobody surely deserves that but much less random civilians. 

But then I must say that, when Hollande and others talk of "war", they are not declaring "war" to the perpetrators but to the victims. Because the only victim of the police state is the common citizen, just as the victims of the terror attacks: the police state, the emergency laws are not any solution but exactly what the terrorist bosses intend. 

Even more bewildering is that nobody is declaring sanctions, war or whatever other punitive measure against those states who support DAESH. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the most prominent and unrepentant ones, with lots of evidence pointing to them in spite of the discourse: the DAESH could not exist without them: Turkey controls its supplies routes but only feigns to "attack" DAESH as a pretext to murder Kurds, Saudi Arabia is not only the main human source of the terror group but also the principal financier and has been moving many of them between Syria/Iraq and Yemen, according to their priorities. Saudi Arabia has been in fact for four decades already behind Sunni Islamist terror worldwide, initially (1980s) in Afghanistan and Algeria primarily but then worldwide. Of course neither of these two could have ever done anything without the support of the United States and its local colony: Israel. While Israel has hidden better its own trail, the USA is well known to have created DAESH and equipped it. To this day it has done nothing to stop Turkey and Saudi Arabia from keeping the terrorist monster alive, on the contrary, it seems that "the problem" for them is only the legitimate governments of Damascus and Baghdad. 

So when are the sanctions and blockade against Saudi Arabia begin? When will Turkey be expelled from NATO and denied any kind of credence by the European Union? If you guys want to make "war" against DAESH terrorism, that's the way to go: attacking, not necessarily by military means, the states that support it, namely Turkey and Saudi Arabia (as well as others, but primarily these two rogue regimes). 

As far as anyone knows neither Iran, nor North Korea, nor Syria, nor Russia, nor any of the capricious victims of US-orchestrated imperialist sanctions supports the DAESH in any way, instead "our allies" do, "we" do. Why are "we" bombing ourselves? Should not we declare "war" on "us" (or should I capitalize "US")?

Let's get real: this is not a time for hystery nor for rallying the masses around those who support DAESH against a ghostly threat. The threat is within NATO, it controls state and even imperial level resources, and therefore the only possible "war" is internal within the imperial alliance against all those who feign outrage but actually allow or even promote this kind of senseless terror. We must wake up, this is just the burning of the Reichstag at another scale and, as soon as we scratch the surface, we can't but know it. 

The enemy is inside, the war, the only possible war, the only logical and fruitful one, is against those who control DAESH inside our very own states and imperial alliance.

9/11: follow the money (excellent documentary)

I watched yesterday this excellent video-documentary by The Corbett Report on the 9/11 money trail, and I can't but strongly recommend it:

For further info on what actually happened in 9/11 (which is not at all what the official version says), you may want to browse Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth or the International Center for 9/11 studies, among other sites (for instance: Voltaire Net has more than 500 articles on the matter, some of which reveal information not available elsewhere).

Serious erosion of US economic hegemony in two key details

One is that Russia is about to replace the USA as main global wheat exporter. Being an agricultural exporter may seem minor but it is an strategical way to make sure you hold the pan by the handle and that, of course, in case of crisis your state is self-sufficient to feed its own people and maybe also its allies. The USA knows it and that is why agriculture is over-protected, mega-subsidized and systematically exempt from foreign trade agreements. A few decades ago only the USA, Canada and Argentina were global grain exporters. This is changing fast. 

The other one is that Iran is selling oil for euros, not dollars anymore. This is a direct attack against the dollar hegemony and to the ability of the imperial power to finance its own deficit, caused by consumerism and military costs. The US' imperial power heavily depends on the denomination of oil in dollars but sales of oil in US dollars have decayed to just 60% globally. The last one in the OPEC who tried to do that was Saddam Hussein, however Iran is a much bigger and better backed state and therefore invasion is not likely at all.