After two years, the election of Donald Trump has become a brilliant illustration of the limits of ‘ballot-box’ democracy: more often than by outside entities, it can be manipulated by unethical national actors, whether presidents, other elected officials, or private interests whose money has been determined by the Supreme Court to be ‘free speech’ [...]
Or at the very least, an incipient monarchy: the only problem is that the monarch — while having plenty of clothes — has no head.
The most famous twentieth century American journalist, Bob Woodward, who together with his buddy Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story that forced President Richard Nixon to resign, has written a book that reveals White House palace intrigues worthy of any European king — although it is the French President, Emanuel Macron, who calls himself Jupiter.
Under the ominous title Fear, Woodward quotes high-ranking members of the White House staff as well as the heads of crucial departments affirming that, for the good of the country, they work to prevent Trump from signing dangerous documents. And like the proverbial cherry on the cake, in finely tuned coordination, on the day the book was released to the press, the New York Times broke with tradition to publish an anonymous op-ed by one of those senior White House officials whose first sentence is “I am part of the Resistance”, a phrase Americans know from watching World War II movies featuring European partisans fighting Germans in the woods.
Last year, a group of psychiatrists issued a book-length report on Donald Trump’s mental health, and recently a participant in the former Trump TV show THE APPRENTICE, who eventually made it into the White House, released a memoir of her time there. Biased against the flamboyant woman who wrote it, the press failed to take Manigault Newman’s book Unhinged seriously, however Bernstein’s book presents strikingly similar testimonies. Unless the political class is totally feckless — and that is not to be excluded — these revelations should bring down the presidency, because it details actions taken by senior cabinet members, such as Pentagon Secretary Jim Mattis removing from Trump’s desk a document that could have dire consequences if he signed it, knowing he will forget about it…. The news hunt is on to discover who actually wrote the oped, while vast part of the world continue in turmoil, totally ignored by the hourly newscasts. In fact, nothing better illustrates the state of the US media than the fact that twenty-four hour news (literally!) is devoted to detailed analyses and opinions about the ‘state of the Union’, down to a analyses of state candidates in nation-wide elections, rather than information about the rest of the world
The United States has the dubious honor of throwing up more scandals than any other ‘democracy’, their accelerating pace suggesting that the end of the current presidency is near. In an ominous sign, these events are taking place at the same time as the president’s latest pick for the Supreme Court is being evaluated by a Congress aware of his backing for a unitary — or ‘imperial’ presidency — but seemingly powerless to deny him their approval.
The decline of the American ‘system of checks and balances’ has been under way for decades, and is now terminal, demonstrating if need be that when all is said and done, a democracy is only as good as its ethics. The election of a brazen liar and proven cheat to the ‘highest office of the land’ is laid at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s door. However, pundits do not accuse Putin of actually tipping the election to a feckless ‘idiot’, knowing this would be impossible to prove, but of ‘dividing’ Americans. As if Americans are not already traditionally divided among Democrats and Republicans, elections serving to determine whose desires will prevail (while those of the minority are ‘protected’…). No one has asked in what way ‘Russian interference’ furtherdivided Americans.
In response to a growing wave of interest in Bernie Sanders’ socialist ideas, the Democratic Party dug its own grave by manipulating obscure rules in order to prevent him from becoming its candidate, thanks to the Clinton political ‘machine’ (the ominous synonym for a political party). These maneuvers, which would make front page headlines in any other democratic country, are business as usual in Washington, while the recently revealed $50,000 Russian ’contribution’ that bought four tickets to President Trump’s inauguration, is denounced as ‘interference’ — as if by the mere fact of being a spectator at the event a Russian could influence his presidency.
After two years, the election of Donald Trump has become a brilliant illustration of the limits of ‘ballot-box’ democracy: more often than by outside entities, it can be manipulated by unethical national actors, whether presidents, other elected officials, or private interests whose money has been determined by the Supreme Court to be ‘free speech’. The reluctance of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings — or even invoke Article 25 on presidential incapacity, is the final straw: give me a good King any day!
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The real question is not whether the status of Kosovo and Metohija should be negotiated; the actual questions to be asked are: On which basis? About what? Whom with?The sole legitimate basis is that Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia currently placed under UN mandate, pending a Security Council decision ending it. In other words, this is mandate cannot be terminated either by the EU, or NATO, the USA, Germany, or France and, should this idea ever occurred to anyone, Serbia cannot end it, either.International law (the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act) and the Constitution of ...
Never had so many people been put in prison. The size of the Allied captures was unprecedented in all history. The Soviets took prisoner some 3.5 million Europeans, the Americans about 6.1 million, the British about 2.4 million, the Canadians about 300,000, the French around 200,000. Uncounted millions of Japanese entered American captivity in 1945, plus about 640,000 entering Soviet captivity.As soon as Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, the American Military Governor, General Eisenhower, sent out an “urgent courier” throughout the huge area that he commanded, making it a crime punishable by death for German civilians to feed prisoners. ...
America is a warrior state, a serial aggressor, unaccountable for unparalleled high crimes against peace because of public ignorance and indifference.Americans are sublimely unaware of their nation’s history. Its so-called war of independence substituted new management for old. Everything changed but stayed the same.Civil war had nothing to do with freeing slaves, everything to do with keeping the nation intact, maintaining business as usual.Imperial America enslaved Black Africans, exterminated its native people, stole their land and resources, stole half of Mexico, followed by Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Canal Zone, Puerto Rico and other territories.Peace ...
The two most militarily powerful nations in the West, both free to project naval power and maritime domination anywhere in the world, get together to punish and overthrow regimes they find guilty of human rights abuses and political repression in the name of human rights and promoting democracy: What could possibly go wrong?It is of course NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s new call for NATO, which has already over the past decade exercised its nation-building and promotion of enlightened regime policies with such brilliant success in Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan to spread its mantle of protection, enlightenment and peace over ...
IntroductionThe last open armed conflict in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – FYROM (former Socialist Republic of Macedonia as one of six federal republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in May 2015 was just an expected continuation of constant tensions between the ethnic Albanians and the Macedonian Slavs during the last quarter of a century.[i] However, these tensions are time to time transformed into the open armed conflicts of the Albanian extremists, usually coming from Kosovo, with the Macedonian security forces.The most notable conflict incidents in Macedonia after the Kosovo War in 1998−1999, when the Kosovo Albanians ...
The origins of Czechoslovakia (1918−1920)Czechoslovakia gained its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. Even though the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was one political entity, the Austrian part and the Hungarian part existed under a Dual Monarchy. Each half of the empire had a large amount of control over their area independent of the other half of the country. The differing policies of the Austrians and the Hungarians had a strong impact on the state of what is now the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. In particular, the Czech industry was developed, while Slovakia remained a mostly agrarian area managed by ...
“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it”. – Frederick Douglass (former slave who would later become a great American statesman and diplomat)It has always been an utmost necessity to exercise caution when reading the historical accounts of great periods that threatened to change the course of the world. As is widely recognised though not reflected upon enough, ‘history is written by the victors’, and if this be indeed the truth, than we must be aware of what lens we ...
What is the bigger story? The West Against the Rest or The West Against Itself?The Illiberal Quartet of Xi, Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan is in the line of fire of haughty homilies about Western “values.”Illiberalism is arrogantly and provocatively depicted in the West repeatedly as a Tartar Invasion 2.0. But closer to home Illiberalism is responsible for the social, civil war in the U.S. as Trump’s America has long ago forgotten what the European Enlightenment was all about.The Western view is a maelstrom of a Judaeo-Greco-Roman, pseudo-philosophy steeped in Hegel, Toynbee, Spengler and obscure biblical references decrying an Asian attack ...
Author’s note: The following article focussing on the jihadist terrorist insurgency in Macedonia was first published by antiwar.com in July 2001, barely two months before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.Known and documented, since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin (“holy warriors”) to fight covert wars on Washington’s behest had become an integral part of US foreign policy. A report of the US Congress had revealed how the US administration – under advice from the National Security Council headed by Anthony Lake – had “helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base” leading to the recruitment ...
One of the most controversial, influential, and well-known revolutionary organizations in the world was the Irish Republican Army (the IRA) considered to be both patriotic and terrorists.The FeniansIt is of extreme debate the question of its real origin but it is mostly accepted the standpoint that the origins of the IRA are in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the IRB) or popularly known as the Fenians as it grew out of the Fenian movement.[1] The name is coming from the Irish armed forces in legendary times. The Fenian movement was founded as both the Fenian Brotherhood in the USA by John ...
At least from the very academic viewpoint, war is a condition of armed conflict between at least two sides (but, in fact, states). There are, historically, several types of warfare as conventional warfare, civil war, lightning war (blitzkrieg in German), total war, hegemonic war, liberation war, war on terrorism, etc. However, according to the used warfare technique, there is, for instance, little war (guerrilla war in Spanish) or according to the (counter)balance of warfare sides, there is asymmetric war as an example.Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. ...
Crimea’s breakaway from Ukraine and rejoining Russia is treated in the US-and-allied world as being justification for the explosive re-emergence in 2014 of America’s Cold War NATO alliance as being a restored war against Russia; and, so, whether or not that ‘justification’ is truthful is the paramount geopolitical issue in our era; and it will therefore be discussed and (via the links here) documented in this article.Though international law is generally an unenforced mess that is interpretable far more by partisanship than by any clearly applicable principles, the US Government does quite blatantly violate it on a routine basis, by ...
Both before and after Crimea left Ukraine and joined Russia in a public referendum on 16 March 2014, the Gallup Organization polled Crimeans on behalf of the U.S. Government, and found them to be extremely pro-Russian and anti-American, and also anti-Ukrainian. (Neither poll was subsequently publicized, because the results of each were the opposite of what the sponsor had wished.) Both polls were done on behalf of the U.S. Government, in order to find Crimeans’ attitudes toward the United States and toward Russia, and also toward Ukraine, not only before but also after the planned U.S. coup in Ukraine, which occurred ...
The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA’s Drug-Running Terrorists and the “Arc of Crisis”Part IIntroductionAs the 9th anniversary of 9/11 nears and the war on terror continues to be waged and grows in ferocity and geography, it seems all the more imperative to return to the events of that fateful September morning and re-examine the reasons for war and the nature of the stated culprit, Al-Qaeda.The events of 9/11 pervade the American and indeed the world imagination as a historical myth. The events of that day and those leading up to it remain largely unknown and little understood by the ...
With a critical public increasingly turning to social media to scrutinize the claims of the mainstream as well as the credibility of the assertions made by the various NGOs and government-funded human rights organisations, it’s arguably becoming more difficult for the corporate press to pass their propaganda off as legitimate news.This is particularly the case during periods when the establishment pushes for military conflicts. One salutary lesson from the Iraq debacle, is that the public appear not to be so readily fooled. Or are they?It’s a measure of the extent to which the mass media barely stray from their paymasters ...
Global Research Editor’s NoteRatko Mladić has recently been convicted to life imprisonment by the the ICTY on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity while he was Chief Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.This detailed account first published in 1998 by former UN Military Observer Carlos Martino Branco casts doubts on the decision of the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) that “genocide was committed in Srebrenica in 1995.”“…Bosnia Serb forces carried out genocide against the Bosnian Muslims (…) .Those who devise and implement genocide seek to deprive humanity of the manifold ...
In Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Metropolitan Books. New York. 2013), Turse writes that the US military’s official position, and the popular understanding in the US, is that leadership “has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.” (2) On the rare occasions when atrocities are brought to light, they are blamed on low-level individuals and are said to be aberrations having nothing to do with official policy. The My Lai massacre, for example, was blamed on Lieutenant William Calley, who is said to have gone “crazy” (4,5) – although he and his unit ...
Wednesday, December 5, 2012, the Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha advocated granting Albanian citizenship to all Albanians, wherever they reside. This statement was made during a visit of the city of Vlora where the independence of the Albanian state was declared, only 100 years ago. At the time Albania had just liberated itself from Ottoman rule.This declaration follows a separate statement, collective this time, that Sali Berisha had made with his Kosovar counterpart Hashim Thaci a few weeks ago, promising the union of all Albanians. The place was, I must say, well chosen since the vast majority of the inhabitants ...
The Six Day War of June 1967, a series of battles fought by the armed forces of the state of Israel against a combination of Arab armies, is one of manifold significance. From a military standpoint, it presented a model strategy of how to prosecute and win a war waged on several fronts.The stunning victory also created a sense of euphoria among communities in the Jewish Diaspora: Among American Jews, a segment of Jewry David Ben Gurion viewed with disdain because of their failure to migrate en masse to Israel, a new sense of commitment in both emotional and financial ...
Under the ominous title Fear, Woodward quotes high-ranking members of the White House staff as well as the heads of crucial departments affirming that, for the good of the country, they work to prevent Trump from signing dangerous documents. And like the proverbial cherry on the cake, in finely tuned coordination, on the day the book was released to the press, the New York Times broke with tradition to publish an anonymous op-ed by one of those senior White House officials whose first sentence is “I am part of the Resistance”, a phrase Americans know from watching World War II movies featuring European partisans fighting Germans in the woods.
In response to a growing wave of interest in Bernie Sanders’ socialist ideas, the Democratic Party dug its own grave by manipulating obscure rules in order to prevent him from becoming its candidate, thanks to the Clinton political ‘machine’ (the ominous synonym for a political party). These maneuvers, which would make front page headlines in any other democratic country, are business as usual in Washington, while the recently revealed $50,000 Russian ’contribution’ that bought four tickets to President Trump’s inauguration, is denounced as ‘interference’ — as if by the mere fact of being a spectator at the event a Russian could influence his presidency.
