War party – Antiwar.com Blog

Why you MUST be shielded from Wikileaks!

You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the police. –J. B. R. Yant

Apparently the folks from Wikileaks.org have spoken both truly and well. Which is why you must be shielded from them – – –

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State." –Chief Nazi "Information Officer" Dr. Joseph P. Goebbels

Thus the American establishment — including opinion mills from both halves of the War Party — is actively looking for any which-way it can to repress the release of more of it’s mortal enemy to "we the people." The methods of repression include a very shakey prosecution of head Wikileaks dude, Julian Assange, threats in fact, to persecute him all over the world, an on-going investigation of Wikileaks by Mr. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, presumably to invoke the Espionage Act, etc.

There have also been calls to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by U.S. Representative Peter King (R-NY) to have Wikileaks declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization, or FTO on a par with al’Qaeda. That would open Wikileaks associates to assassination, etc. as per the latest White House push to authorize executive kill lists.

Is it just me, or does it seem as if the U.S. establishment — in fact, establishments world wide [1] — are as terrified by the truth as they want us to be of al’Qaeda?

Perhaps Wikileaks front dude Julian Assange and company aren’t aware of the dangers the truth poses, not only to the state as Goebbels revealed, but to those ill-advised enough — or brave enough — to reveal it.

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. –George Orwell

If you’re going to start talking the truth, keep one foot in the saddle of your fastest horse. –Chinese proverb

So, is your foot in the saddle?

No? It’s OK, but how about the next best thing: Support these brave folks, not only wikileaks, but the folks brave enough to put antiwar.com up for more than 12 years, etc.

Notes:

[1]

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community," Clinton said, following talks in Washington with Turkey’s foreign minister. –[Hillary] Clinton accuses WikiLeaks of ‘attack’ on the world return

Dubya was right??

From film-maker Oliver Stone’s interview with former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, we discover:

Oliver Stone: "Were there any eye-to-eye moments with President Bush that day, that night?"

Nestor Kirchner: "…I said that a solution to the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan. …He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war and that the United States has grown stronger with war."

Stone: "War. He said that?"

Kirchner: "He said that. Those were his exact words."

Stone: "Was he suggesting that South America go to war?"

Kirchner: "Well, he was talking about the United States. …All of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by the various wars. He said it very clearly. –Fmr. Argentine President Kirchner Dies of Heart Attack, Democracy Now!, Oct. 28, 2010

So, WAS Dubya right?

"War" [1] is indeed a key part of the U.S. economy. Some folks call this "military keynesianism."

Consider: Despite one of the most defensible geographic situations on earth — unless you fear the Canadians — the U.S. Government spends more on "defense" than almost the rest of the world combined. AND, not surprisingly, U.S.A. is the biggest arms merchant in the world.

So, Mr. Bush was exactly right.

If you’re a U.S. Citizen, approximately 43% of your income taxes go to pay for wars, past and present. And that’s before Uncle Sam is forced, kicking and screaming, into officially admitting PTSD is nearly universal in combat veterans, lasts a lifetime, and is expensive to treat. According to former IMF Chief Economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the two current "wars" will eventually cost U.S. taxpayers between four and six trillion dollars. That’s trillion. With a "T."

And don’t fret about the militaryindustrial budget. While Mr. Obama isn’t yet responsible for killing as many men, women and children as Mr. Bush — and hasn’t spent as much doing so, give him a chance — he’s not even two years into his presidency and he’s already sent at least 60,000 new U.S. troops into Afghanistan and has plans to escalate the U.S. presence in Pakistan, and the largely ignoredU.S. presence in Yemen too.

With these kinds of numbers — that 43% of your income tax spent for “wars” for example — maybe a bit of money invested in antiwar.com to stop them might be a good investment, not only for you, but for your kids, grand kids and the yet unborn. What do you say?

Notes:

[1] The U.S. Government hasn’t been at war according to its Constitution since the end of World War II. That would require the U.S. House of Representatives to vote for war, which it hasn’t done. This means the so-called "wars" — the Korean "War," the Vietnam "War," The Iraq "Wars," the "War" in Afghanistan, etc. — must be something else. Or, since they insist on calling them "wars" anyway, unconstitutional. But as George W. Bush is reported to have claimed, "The constitution is just a damned piece of paper." So, who cares? return

Yellow Journalism Alive and Well: Newsmax Tries to “Supply the War”

“You supply the pictures and I’ll supply the war”
– William Randolph Hearst

The call to war with Iran is alive and well today, as hawkish self-styled media outlet Newsmax.com is pushing a story entitled “Iran Admits It Could Pull Nuke Trigger on US, Israel“. The article is festooned with scare quotes designed to prove that Iran’s Defense Ministry is “dropping the pretense that it is developing nuclear technology purely for peaceful purposes.”

And in the great history of Yellow Journalism the story appears to be virtually entirely invented out of whole cloth. The article quotes heavily from a fictional “strategic analysis” by an apparently fictional “top adviser to (Iran’s) Defense Minister.”

Yet there is no indication, beyond that article, that the so-called author of the analysis Alireza Sedidabadi even exists, and the “intelligence ministry website alef.ir,” from which Newsmax author Ken Timmerman claims to have obtained the shocking revelations, isn’t real either.

No kidding, visit alef.ir. Now ask yourself “how many Iranian government websites feature prominent pro-Green Movement articles and Samsung advertisements.” You could also go to the “links” section on the site and ask “how many Iranian government websites link to the Jerusalem Post” as a news source?

Indeed, the only Iranian quoted in the whole Newsmax article who seems to be real is self-described CIA spy Reza Khalili, who of course plays up the call to war that the piece so clearly is designed to be, even claiming Iran is “very close to being able to arm their ballistic missiles with nuclear war heads,” a claim so demonstrably absurd it seems incredible that it was even included.

Taking a page out of Hearst’s book, Newsmax is quite literally trying to “supply the war” here. Fortunately for us they don’t seem to be particularly good at it, and such nonsense will likely only “convince” the people who were sold on the idea of the war already.

Is the War Party out to get Gen. Jones?

Steve Clemons and TNR are both reporting a move inside the Obama White House to get rid of National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.Â Clemons says the line being pushed is that the man is just plain lazy and a bad manager (which would explain his success in government), but that

what is clear is that Jones has enemies and that they are trying to undermine his place in the Obama orbit.

Their motives may not be earnest concern about the tempo or pace of Jones’ management style — but they very well could be his unwillingness to allow the liberal interventionists inside the Obama administration to have more than their fair share of power in the Obama decision-making process.

Jones has structured an all views on the table approach to decision making — quite evident when it comes to Middle East policy — and the hawkish/neocon-friendly/Likudist-hugging part of the Obama administration’s foreign policy operation may be engaged in a coup attempt against Jones.

I don’t know if he’ll survive this latest effort to oust him — but folks need to know that those “longer knives”, on the whole, do not have pure motives.

This is why America’s founders were so intent on maintaining a standing army, so that the generals would serve as a restraining influence on the warmongering civilian thinktanker-types, right?