Month: January 2022

Aaron Mate: “The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored by US Hegemony and War Profiteers”

The investigative journalist Aaron Mate, has a good piece at his blog today about the American tensions with Russia over Ukraine. I encourage you to

Journalist Aaron Mate

check it out.

Below is an excerpt:

If Biden can interrupt NATO expansion and war profiteering, the US-Russia standoff over Ukraine can be resolved.

The US-Russia standoff over Ukraine has sparked bellicose threats and fears of Europe’s biggest ground war in decades. There are ample reasons to question the prospects of a Russian invasion, and US allies including France, Germany’s now-ousted navy chief, and even Kiev itself appear to share the skepticism.

Another potential scenario is that Russia draws on the Cuban Missile Crisis and positions offensive weapons within the borders of Latin American allies. Whatever the outcome, the crisis has underscored the perils of a second Cold War between the world’s top nuclear powers.

If the path forward is unpredictable, what got us here is easy to trace. The row over Ukraine is the outgrowth of an aggressive US posture toward Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, driven by hegemonic policymakers and war profiteers in Washington. Understanding that background is key to resolving the current impasse, if the Biden administration can bring itself to alter a dangerous course.

Russia’s central demands – binding guarantees to halt the eastward expansion of NATO, particularly in Ukraine, and to prevent offensive weapons from being stationed near its borders – have been publicly dismissed by the U.S government as non-starters.

In rejecting Russian concerns, the Biden administration claims that it is upholding “governing principles of international peace and security.” These principles, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says, “reject the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.”

The US government’s real-world commitment to these principles is non-existent. . .

. . . The standard narrative of the origins of the current Ukraine crisis, as the New York Times recently claimed, is that Ukrainians revolted in street protests that ousted “pro-Russian leader” Viktor Yanukovych, “prompting [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to order the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and instigate a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.” In reality, the US backed a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government and sabotaged opportunities to avoid further conflict.

The immediate background came in the fall of 2013, when the US and its allies pressured Yanukovych to sign a European Union association agreement that would have curtailed its ties to Russia. Contrary to how he is now portrayed, Yanukovych was not “pro-Russian”, to the point where he even “cajoled and bullied anyone who pushed for Ukraine to have closer ties to Russia,” Reuters reported at the time. . . 

Read the complete article here.

 

 

Washington Post: The Less Americans Know About Ukraine’s Location the More They Want the US to Intervene

This article from the Washington Post was published in April 2014, however I doubt very much if the correlations have changed. It’s date also shows how long the US has been flirting with the idea of military intervention in Ukraine.

The article, written by political scientists Kyle Dropp (Darmouth), Joshua D. Kertzer (Harvard), and Thomas Zeitzoff (Princeton) is entitled “The Less American’s Know About Ukraine’s Location, The More They Want the U.S. to Intervene.”

The article is well worth reading. Below is the article final paragraph:

However, the further our respondents thought that Ukraine was from its actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene militarily. Even controlling for a series of demographic characteristics and participants’ general foreign policy attitudes, we found that the less accurate our participants were, the more they wanted the U.S. to use force, the greater the threat they saw Russia as posing to U.S. interests, and the more they thought that using force would advance U.S. national security interests; all of these effects are statistically significant at a 95 percent  confidence level. Our results are clear, but also somewhat disconcerting: The less people know about where Ukraine is located on a map, the more they want the U.S. to intervene militarily.

You can read the entire article here.

We Are the Aggressors, Not Russia: America’s Flirtation with War Over Ukraine is Belligerent Insanity

The American Establishment is feverishly propagandizing us into preparing ourselves for a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.

Day after day more anonymous sources – who never provide any evidence to substantiate their “frightening” revelations, and are never asked by the corporate media to produce whatever evidence they may have – drop another scary soundbite into our vapid, undiscerning public discourse.

Fear-mongering among the uninformed is one of propaganda’s most useful strategies because the uninformed are easy to mislead.

Fortunately for energetic propagandists, the average American imagines that world history began yesterday, which makes the general public a sucker for lies and disinformation about that scary world looming beyond our glistening shores.

This time-dishonored tactic is now being exploited with wild abandon by every major American news outlet, without exception. I am urging you: do not believe a word of what you hear on this subject from ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, or Newsmax.

Now that the US is firmly rooted in a “second Cold War” with Russian – a needless and very dangerous antagonism manufactured out of whole cloth by our military-industrial-media complex – its time to beat the drums of war again. Or so the Establishment believes.

Why? Because war always makes a lot of money for the military-industrial complex, including US corporations.

The beast must be fed. It’s hungry. It can’t devour Afghanistan anymore, so it needs fresh meat. God help us all.

Here is what every American needs to know, remember, or investigate concerning the history of US, Russian, Ukrainian relations:

(By the way, for one of the best, most sensible discussions of the current

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (retired). Former chief of staff for Colin Powell during the George W. Bush administration

problems, please watch Medea Benjamin’s informative conversation with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson – a man who knows his stuff inside and out — right here.)

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 much of eastern Europe was thrown into turmoil. Two events were particularly troubling for Russia as it watched its empire disappear.

First, the Warsaw Pact, the eastern European counterpart to NATO which had served as the guardian of Soviet security, was quickly disbanded.

Second, East Germany reunited with West Germany, creating a unified German republic as a part of NATO.

Russia, quite reasonably, saw these two developments as an immediate threat to its national security. Not only had NATO, Russia’s historic antagonist, expanded, it had just taken a monumental step eastward towards the Russian border. And many other formerly Eastern-bloc countries were lining up to follow suit.

Mikhail Gorbachev (Photo by: Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images)

The Russian leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev – who was responsible for the new openness that led to the collapse of Soviet communism – quickly asked for a US guarantee that NATO would not invite any former members of the Soviet Union to join its western alliance.

President George H. W. Bush agreed.

Bush promised that NATO would stop in its tracks, moving no further east

George H. W. Bush

towards the Russian border. (I have always held that NATO should have immediately disbanded along with the Warsaw Pact. I was once arrested for demonstrating for this cause. But no one in Washington D. C. listens to me. Alas.)

Unfortunately, Bill Clinton quickly ignored Bush’s pledge to Gorbachev. By manhandling the easily manipulated Boris Yeltsin, Clinton began to expand NATO further eastward.

NATO membership requires that new entrants must possess a certain level of military capability. After all, NATO members all pledge to defend one another in case of an attack.

US weapons companies make a bundle of cash selling new, advanced, American-made weaponry to these fledgling member states. And, of course, all of those missiles, rockets, and guns are generally pointed, you guessed it, towards Russia.

For 30 years, then, Russia has watched its old nemesis, NATO, moving further and further east, coming closer and closer to its western border, in direct violation of the promise given by an American president.

Most recently, NATO invited Ukraine, which borders Russia, to join its

Vladimir Putin

military club. The US wants to begin selling advanced weaponry to Ukraine. Is it any surprise that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees NATO and the United States as a direct threat to Russia’s national security?

Of course, not. He would be stupid not to, and one thing Putin is not, is stupid.

In the current negotiations, Putin’s primary demand is that president Biden not allow Ukraine into NATO. Behaving like a typical American politician, Biden told Putin to drop dead.

And here we are. Unnecessary, dangerous escalation on every front.

Let’s stop and put ourselves in Putin’s shoes.

How would the US respond if an antagonistic country, let’s say China, began to move its military into Canada or Mexico, cheek-to-jowl with the US border?

We all know the answer to that question.

Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?

President Kennedy learned that the Soviets were moving nuclear missiles

President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, June 3, 1961. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)

into Cuba. He immediately told Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev that the US would not tolerate Soviet weapons near its borders. We came close to a nuclear war over this, and Khrushchev withdrew the missiles.

Why should we expect Putin and the Russians to react any differently?

What we need right now is an American president who will demonstrate the wisdom and humility of Nikita Khrushchev.

There are no two ways about it folks. In this current “confrontation,” the United States is the threatening aggressor. We have always been the mangy wolf salivating at Russia’s western doorstep. We are the ones causing these problems. Not Russia. Not Putin.

No wonder Putin has become antagonistic!

All of the blame – all of it! – falls on the US and now onto president Biden.

Recall that war-mongering is a bipartisan habit in this country. The US loves to be at war. Powerful people make a lot of money, billions of dollars, from it.

But American saber rattling must stop! Please call or write your senators and representatives. Tell them that you strongly oppose this administration’s position on Russia and Ukraine.

Tell them you do not want a new Cold War with Russia, and they need to stop bad mouthing president Putin in public. It doesn’t help. Putin is not the bad guy in this particular drama.

Tell them that Ukraine has no business joining NATO. The US has no business sending American troops into Ukraine or the surrounding nations.

This is very, very serious business, folks.

 

 

Another Lesson in Framing and Propaganda

Perhaps you have heard or read about some recent confrontations between Israeli soldiers and Bedouins living in the Negev in southern Israel.

Below are two video clips of the same incident. The first is from i24 News, an official Israeli news outlet. The second is from Middle East Eye, a London-based news outlet covering news in the Middle East and North Africa.

Notice the differences. How is the same story being relayed in each clip?

First, notice the inflammatory language used in the i24 News clip:

  • Bedouins are not protesting; they are “rioting.”
  • Soldiers are only responding to Bedouin “crimes.”
  • That Bedouins would object to trees being planted (without consultation) on their property is part of “Israel’s crazy reality.”
  • The only person allowed to speak is a representative of the Jewish-only settlements replacing Bedouin homes and families.

Now notice the language and storyline in the second clip:

  • Bedouin protesters are allowed to speak for themselves.
  • The protests are placed within their broader context, which (quite tellingly) is never explained in the i24 clip.

The bigger narrative goes like this.

[a] The Israeli government unilaterally expropriates (i.e., steals) land on which Bedouins have lived for generations; it is now called “disputed land.” The Bedouin village is labeled as “unrecognized,” making  it easier to eradicate.

[b] The Zionist process of ethnic cleansing and colonization moves forward.

The Jewish National Fund (the largest land owner in Israel, which prohibits Palestinians from living or working on JNF land) plant trees (probably non-native) on Bedouin grazing land.

The Bedouins are told they must move out.

Bedouin homes are demolished.

The people resist and demonstrate against their expulsion.

The colonizers call the Bedouin resistance “criminal” and “crazy” while their invasion brings “noble” results. (A common technique used by settler-colonizers).

These stark differences in how the story is framed and described illustrates both the construction and the power of propaganda.

It also reminds us of how we should doubt and question every news story presented to us by the media.

Watch the clips again. Who is providing a more accurate version of the actual events?

For further discussion of this situation, I recommend Gideon Levy’s article “A Bedouin Negev is No Less Israeli Than a Jewish On.”

I love the smile on the young protester’s face. She is going to a military jail, but she is not intimidated.

And an article in +972 Magazine by Amjad Iraqi, “When a forest has more rights than a Bedouin village.”

Dave Ramsey Has Become a Demonic Voice Within the Church

Some time ago I blogged about the public complaints made by some of Dave Ramsey’s (former) employees. Most of their charges accused him of an  authoritarian, even dictatorial, management style that intruded into employees’ private lives.

Most recently Mr. Ramsey has come to the attention of several independent news podcasts because of his advice to landlords about raising rent and evicting tenants from their homes because “the market” is dictating rent increases.

Watch the video below called “Should Landlords Feel Guilty.” I offer my reaction below:

The most important thing to notice in this video is the way Mr. Ramsey has surrendered his conscience and his behavior to the requirements of our capitalistic “marketplace.” 

When it comes to his economic, investment decisions the marketplace is sovereign over Mr. Ramsey’s financial life. If the market “demands” that he, as a landlord, evict families from their rental homes, then he apparently has no choice.

The rules of capitalism and the “free market” command his allegiance.

Never mind that the country is experiencing a housing crisis with its dire lack of affordable housing.

Never mind that large corporations are in a buying frenzy scooping up foreclosed properties in order to rent them out at top dollar prices, thus maximizing their bottom line and the profits paid to corporate shareholders.

Never  mind that the homeless population continues to grow at a shocking rate.

Oh sure. Mr. Ramsey assures his listeners that they need to be kind and thoughtful in their personal relationships with other individuals. But this is a disingenuous smokescreen typical of American evangelicals whose morals are so enslaved to American individualism that the larger, collective questions of system evil never cross their minds.

Ramsey flippantly throws out Christian sounding language that serves only  to distract from the colossal compromise of both character and conscience revealed by his abject submission to the laisse faire market forces that obviously have gained Lordship over his life.

At this point, Mr. Ramsey’s economic advice is more demonic than it is Christ-like.

Not long ago I argued that the primary way in which we experience “demonic temptation” is through the corrupt power structures that surround us. To catch up on that analysis I urge you to revisit my blog post.

It’s important for the current discussion.

Because he exists within a supposedly free-market, capitalist, economic environment, in which anyone who questions the system is vilified as a Marxist (or worse), Ramsey obviously accepts this system as, at least, morally neutral, and perhaps even, virtuous.

Thus, surrendering to the dictates of the market, and behaving as any good capitalist would, obviously has no bearing on Ramsey’s Christian confession. He can remain a “good Christian” while ejecting people from their homes into an uncertain, competitive, laisse faire, dog eat dog housing market.

Yep. It’s a cruel world, but that’s the way the capitalist, cookie crumbles.

On the other hand, as I have argued extensively on this blog and in other writings, if we understand the Christian life in terms of our citizenship in the kingdom of God, then Mr. Ramsey has made himself the poster child for the besetting sin of American Christianity: Cultural Captivity.

Rather than critiquing our cultural environment; rather than analyzing, evaluating, and then criticizing the various power structures in which we find ourselves — as serious citizens of God’s kingdom should — we have a lamentable tendency to roll over and play dead in the face of society’s structures of power.

We accept our corrupted, and corrupting, systems of power and control as normal, inevitable, unchangeable, and even preferable to their alternatives. Yet, I am convinced that it is through these normalized systems of power, control, and domination that the Evil One is more successful in tempting and corrupting humanity.

In the face of “what is normal,” the ethics of Jesus and the lifestyle required of every citizen in the kingdom of God all become “unrealistic and unmanageable” given the nature of the world we live in.

I am sure that this is what Mr. Ramsey will say were anyone to challenge his highly dubious ethics of landlordship. Making people homeless when I have the opportunity of higher income in the face of higher expenses is, after all,  normal.

We need to take a lesson from the early Christian church about how to deal with such ideas of “normal.”

For the first several centuries of Christianity, church leaders insisted that no church member could ever work for the police, the military, or the judiciary. (For more on this issue, check out my book I Pledge Allegiance.)

Anyone in the church who did happen to work for any of these three power structures had either to quit their job or be excommunicated from the church.

Why?

Because the early Christians understood — far better than most Christians do today — that Jesus taught his disciples to live lives of non-violence. Thus, no follower of Jesus had any business being party to violence or coercion.

And anyone serving in the police, the military, or the judiciary would eventually have to be involved with violence and/or coercion in the course of fulfilling their “normal” responsibilities.

But early Christian leaders insisted: It does not matter what society and its power structures have normalized for this world. Certain behaviors are always unacceptable for Christians because the Lordship of Jesus Christ always defeats the secular attempts at material lordship this fallen world tries to impose upon us.

I suspect that Mr. Ramsey’s cultural captivity may have begun with his extraordinary success which led to his great wealth and influence.

For all of these things, wealth, success, and power, have a sly, corrupting, acidic effect on the conscience if we do not guard ourselves against them.

Consequently, I want to suggest that it is time to excommunicate Dave Ramsey from the Christian church. Or, at least, to depose him from any leadership or teaching roles.

His financial advice is becoming demonic.

 

 

Why Israel’s “Peace” Negotiations Have Always Been a Farce

Future Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, recently announced, “When I am prime minister, we still won’t hold negotiations with the Palestinians.”

In one sentence, Lapid brazenly let the proverbial cat out of the bag. For the truth is that Israel has never been an honest negotiating partner in the Palestinian/Israel peace process.

Israel’s Likud party, which has been the nation’s dominant political party since the time of Menachem Begin (Israel’s sixth Prime Minister, 1977 – 1983), has it written into its party platform that Israel’s eastern border must extend to the Jordan River denying any possibility of a Palestinian state.

You can read the Likud party platform here in an article by Jonathan Weiler. Items one and three in the platform declare:

a. “The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”

c. “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

So much for all the gibberish we have heard over the decades about Israel’s willingness to “exchange land for peace.”

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

Gideon Levy’s new article in Haaretz discusses the real world consequences of Israel’s historic hostility towards peace with the Palestinians. His piece is entitled “The Truth Will Set You Free.”

Below is an excerpt (all emphases are mine):

. . . This item [Lapid’s statement] didn’t make big headlines, which isn’t surprising, since there is nothing new here – aside from the spectacle of a minister telling the truth, if

Yair Lapid said he will not negotiate with the Palestinians when he is Prime Minister. Credit. Gil Eliyahu

only for a moment. Lapid deserves credit for revealing something that has long been known: There is no Israeli partner. No Israeli partner for ending the occupation, no Israeli partner for any solution, nor even an Israeli partner for negotiations. In truth, there never was, but now official Israel, for the first time in its history, is acknowledging as much. The explanation, as usual, comes from internal politics. “The coalition agreements prevent progress in this channel,” the prime-minister-in-waiting explained. . .

If an Israeli foreign minister had said something like this years ago, the sky would have fallen. No negotiations? None? The Americans would have issued condemnations, the Europeans would have been furious, the UN would have passed a resolution, Labor and Meretz would have threatened to quit the government. But now – no one bats an eyelid.

Lapid spared us all of that. He announced the end to the peace process ritual that has facilitated the many years of occupation. No one really thinks that Israel will get a more moderate government than this one in the coming years, and anyway the 50 years of moderate peace governments should have been enough to make us see that there is no one to talk to in Israel, no matter who is in power. Lapid is advancing one small but important step towards recognition of this fact. Now it needs to really sink in: There will be no solution, definitely not a two-state solution.

The possibility that the Palestinians will be doomed to another hundred years of apartheid cannot be dismissed. In fact, it is the most likely possibility. For who is going to extricate them from this apartheid, and how exactly can they extricate themselves from it? They’ve tried everything already. Now they at least understand, and the world too, that there is no chance of them having a partner, because Israel has coalition agreements.

The Americans won’t keep bugging us with their special envoys, the Europeans won’t keep issuing hollow statements of condemnation, nor will the UN, and the Quartet will die too. World leaders will no longer have to waste their time and honor on pointless talks about the Palestinian issue; for there’s no one to talk to about that in Israel. . . 

For anyone is interested in learning more about the reality of past “peace negotiations” and the dishonest coverage they receive in western media, here are a few good books to read:

Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.

Naseer H. Aruri, Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine.

Rashid Khalidi, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East.

Clayton E. Swisher, The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story About the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process.

Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit, Israeli Rejectionism:  A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process.

Why Have Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s Ties to Israeli Intelligence Never Been Discussed in Media Coverage?

Now that Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted on 5 of the 6 charges against her, important questions remain.

First, will she try to negotiate a reduced sentence by finally revealing the whereabouts of the many incriminating photographs and video tapes of internationally famous figures having sex with minors?

Second, will the fact that she and Jeffrey Epstein were both agents working for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, which used their photographic evidence for the purposes of blackmail, finally be openly discussed?

Actually, I suspect that we can guess the answer to both of my questions: No, and No.

Israeli spy-masters will not allow any of that information to become public.

Rather than tell the story myself, I have posted a montage of stories below — which I hope you will take the time to read closely — explaining the long

Robert Maxwell with wife and daughter Ghislaine

story of how spying for Israel became a Maxwell family business, beginning with the family patriarch, Robert Maxwell.

Ghislaine’s career as Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time “Madame of the Honey-Trap” would certainly have made her father proud.

The story begins with father, Robert Maxwell, and his well-reported work for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad (see here, here, and especially here).

Ghislaine’s sister, Isabel, has a long record of working for Israeli

Isabel Maxwell

intelligence within the circles of Silicon Valley (see here and here).

A recent book by the “alleged former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe” entitled  Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales explains that:

The couple reportedly ran a “honey-trap” operation in which they provided young girls to prominent politicians from around the world for sex, and then used the incidents to blackmail them in order to attain information for Israeli intelligence.

Also see here.

Below I have copied yesterday’s article by Philip Giraldi, former CIA and military intelligence officer, entitled “Ghislaine Maxwell Convicted — Israeli Connection Covered Up.” (All emphases are mine).

There has been a lot of speculation regarding whether convicted sex offender

Jeffrey Epstein

Ghislaine Maxwell will now ‘spill the beans’ on the folks in power who exploited those young female offerings pedophile Jeffrey Epstein made available. No chance of that, I am afraid, as the trial itself was narrowly construed and limited to certain sex related charges to avoid any inquiry into the names of the actual recipients of the services being provided.

Nor was there any attempt made to determine if Epstein was working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, most likely Israeli, which has been claimed in a recent book by a former Israeli case officer, who states that top politicians would be photographed and video recorded when they were in bed with the girls. Afterwards, they would be approached and asked to do favors for Israel. It is referred to in the trade as a “honey-trap” operation.

The fact that Epstein and his activities were being “protected” has also been

Ghislaine Maxwell

confirmed through both Israeli and American sources. It is known that Bill Clinton flew on the Epstein private 727 jet the “Lolita Express” 26 times, traveling to a mansion estate in Florida as well as to a private island owned by Epstein in the Caribbean. The island was referred to by locals as the “Pedophile Island,” but Clinton has never even been questioned by either the NYPD or FBI.

Maxwell is presumed to have been an active participant in the Epstein spy operation acting as a procurer of young girls and on at least one occasion has hinted that she knows where the sex films made by Epstein are hidden. That claim was also not explored in what passed for a trial.

It doesn’t take much to pull what is already known together and ask the question “Who among the celebrities and top-level politicians that Epstein cultivated were actually Israeli spies?” But that, of course, is where the judicial farce and cover-up began. We are in an era of government control of information and have just been witnessing selective management of what Maxwell was being charged with to eliminate any possible damage to senior US politicians or to Israel.

If anyone had actually expected the espionage angle to surface even implicitly during the Maxwell trial, they must now be terribly disappointed because Alison Nathan, the Obama appointed judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York did not allow it, the prosecutor did not seek it, and even the defense attorneys did not use it in their arguments.”

I Survived Covid-19 and Will Begin Posting Again. Yeah!

I am holding onto the tail-end of recovering from a wrestling match with covid-19. I do not recommend the experience to anyone!

Actually, it wasn’t much of a contest. I was down-and-out for a considerable period of time. Being bedridden is the main reason for the temporary disappearance of HumanityRenewed.

But now we are back. Hopefully, not with a vengeance, even though my inherent cheekiness and impatience with arrogance and stupidity will continue.

So, I hope you will continue reading!

And for those friends who knew about my illness, I thank you deeply for your prayers and concerns. Your periodic emails asking about my health have meant a lot.

God is good — though I well know that he would still be a good God had I shed this mortal coil.