In a signed editorial in Pravda, April 11, 1913, Lenin wrote:
It is not important who directly advocates a particular policy, since under the present noble system of capitalism any money-bag can always “hire”, buy or enlist any number of lawyers, writers and even parliamentary deputies, professors, parsons and the like to defend any views. ...Yes, indeed! In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures.
Lenin was a lot of things, few of them good. But perhaps better than most 20th century figures he understood how power is attained and wielded, in his case for evil. He was no dummy. In the above passage he may well be describing our situation today. Why does the mainstream media toe the White House line when it comes to foreign policy action? Does it matter who advocates more bombs on Syria or Yemen? Whether CNN or FoxNews? It matters if you are on "Team A" or "Team B"? You're a Maddow-ite or a Hannity-ite? No. They are selling the same product. War and empire.
Who gains? The elites.
The great free-market, free-ideas website ZeroHedge ran an important article
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-01/7-reasons-corporate-media-pro-war
a few months ago about why the mainstream (and even some leading "alternative") media is so pro-war.
The voices opposed to war are marginalized. They are still drowned out by the mainstream media and the government propaganda forces propping up mainstream views. A few, likely highly scripted, optics of children seemingly suffering from a gas attack at the hands of their president, Assad, is enough to tug at the heartstrings -- in the same way as did the phony "babies pulled from incubators in Iraq" story
http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html
cooked up by a Washington PR firm -- and put the finishing touches on a policy that had already been concocted long ago by the neocons, liberal interventionists, and compliant media to all add up to one historical inevitability as seemingly ironclad as Lenin's dialectic: "Assad must go."
Yes, Assad must go. We keep being fed the bumper stickers. The Saudis are fighting for freedom in Yemen. We are fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq. And so on. These are the catch-phrases of our time. They are repeated nightly. To question them is to question our goodness, the wisdom of our benevolent interventionism worldwide. It is almost deafening. It is all hollow.
Meanwhile these two young Christian girls were killed in the Abo Remaneh district of Damascus today by mortar fire from US-backed "moderate" rebels:
Their names are Grace Khoury and Dina Yazjdi.
If Trump's new "Assad must go" policy is adopted, Syrian Christians will disappear,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/assad-palm-sunday-us-assad/
as did Iraqi Christians
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/21/christianity-in-iraq-is-finished-says-canon-andrew-white-vicar-baghdad.html
after their US "liberation."
While it may seem hopeless, Washington seems to be losing the script, even if the mainstream media pretends not to notice. The contradictions are becoming too difficult to manage. Perhaps a few quick examples will suffice:
1) According to an important recent study by the respected mainstream IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, it really is Assad who is fighting the most against ISIS. Some 43 percent of ISIS's battles are against Assad's forces while ISIS battles the US-backed coalition only 17 percent of the time. Jane's concluded that a successful US overthrow of Assad would usher in a victory for ISIS in Syria. Let that sink in next time you hear a Trump Administration official repeat "Assad must go."
2) Our NATO allies Turkey are bombing our main proxy army in Syria, the Kurdish YPG. Let that sink in as well. We are literally backing both sides while at the same time backing ISIS and al-Qaeda against Assad. This is a dream of those who manufacture the war components, but the American people by and large are not being informed that they are funding among the most cockamamie non-strategy in history in Syria. Washington entertains the fantasy that once Raqqa is "liberated" from ISIS rule, it can place the Kurds in charge of this strategic eastern capital of Syria. As if the Turks will accept the creation of a de facto Kurdish state.
3) Trump's one-off bombing of a Syrian airbase underscores US weakness in the conflict rather than strength. There is no longer any possibility of a Sunni proxy army doing the US bidding in Syria. The last vestiges of that US effort are slowly being killed in Idlib province. They are all al-Qaeda, these US allies. They are also the ones whose claims about the Assad "chemical attack" Washington takes as gospel. Can you imagine Washington taking al-Qaeda's word for it just 16 years after 9/11?
4) Newsweek is reporting
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-inadvertently-arming-al-qaeda-yemen-589384
that the US involvement in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen is actually benefitting al-Qaeda, as al-Qaeda's biggest enemy, the Houthis, are also Washington's biggest enemies. Why? The canard
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/27/the-houthis-are-not-hezbollah/
that Iran is behind the Houthis.
While it is still cringeworthy to listen to someone drop the line without real contemplation that the US is behind ISIS and al-Qaeda, the facts on the ground suggest this is the case. It is because Washington loves jihad? Not at all. But this grotesque distortion is what happens when 16 years of interventionism continue to produce bitter fruits: Washington hands the rest of us those fruits and expects us to savor them as dripping with milk and honey.
Many do. We do not.
Daniel McAdams
Executive Director
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/
It is not important who directly advocates a particular policy, since under the present noble system of capitalism any money-bag can always “hire”, buy or enlist any number of lawyers, writers and even parliamentary deputies, professors, parsons and the like to defend any views. ...Yes, indeed! In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures.
Lenin was a lot of things, few of them good. But perhaps better than most 20th century figures he understood how power is attained and wielded, in his case for evil. He was no dummy. In the above passage he may well be describing our situation today. Why does the mainstream media toe the White House line when it comes to foreign policy action? Does it matter who advocates more bombs on Syria or Yemen? Whether CNN or FoxNews? It matters if you are on "Team A" or "Team B"? You're a Maddow-ite or a Hannity-ite? No. They are selling the same product. War and empire.
Who gains? The elites.
The great free-market, free-ideas website ZeroHedge ran an important article
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-01/7-reasons-corporate-media-pro-war
a few months ago about why the mainstream (and even some leading "alternative") media is so pro-war.
The voices opposed to war are marginalized. They are still drowned out by the mainstream media and the government propaganda forces propping up mainstream views. A few, likely highly scripted, optics of children seemingly suffering from a gas attack at the hands of their president, Assad, is enough to tug at the heartstrings -- in the same way as did the phony "babies pulled from incubators in Iraq" story
http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html
cooked up by a Washington PR firm -- and put the finishing touches on a policy that had already been concocted long ago by the neocons, liberal interventionists, and compliant media to all add up to one historical inevitability as seemingly ironclad as Lenin's dialectic: "Assad must go."
Yes, Assad must go. We keep being fed the bumper stickers. The Saudis are fighting for freedom in Yemen. We are fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq. And so on. These are the catch-phrases of our time. They are repeated nightly. To question them is to question our goodness, the wisdom of our benevolent interventionism worldwide. It is almost deafening. It is all hollow.
Meanwhile these two young Christian girls were killed in the Abo Remaneh district of Damascus today by mortar fire from US-backed "moderate" rebels:
Their names are Grace Khoury and Dina Yazjdi.
If Trump's new "Assad must go" policy is adopted, Syrian Christians will disappear,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/assad-palm-sunday-us-assad/
as did Iraqi Christians
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/21/christianity-in-iraq-is-finished-says-canon-andrew-white-vicar-baghdad.html
after their US "liberation."
While it may seem hopeless, Washington seems to be losing the script, even if the mainstream media pretends not to notice. The contradictions are becoming too difficult to manage. Perhaps a few quick examples will suffice:
1) According to an important recent study by the respected mainstream IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, it really is Assad who is fighting the most against ISIS. Some 43 percent of ISIS's battles are against Assad's forces while ISIS battles the US-backed coalition only 17 percent of the time. Jane's concluded that a successful US overthrow of Assad would usher in a victory for ISIS in Syria. Let that sink in next time you hear a Trump Administration official repeat "Assad must go."
2) Our NATO allies Turkey are bombing our main proxy army in Syria, the Kurdish YPG. Let that sink in as well. We are literally backing both sides while at the same time backing ISIS and al-Qaeda against Assad. This is a dream of those who manufacture the war components, but the American people by and large are not being informed that they are funding among the most cockamamie non-strategy in history in Syria. Washington entertains the fantasy that once Raqqa is "liberated" from ISIS rule, it can place the Kurds in charge of this strategic eastern capital of Syria. As if the Turks will accept the creation of a de facto Kurdish state.
3) Trump's one-off bombing of a Syrian airbase underscores US weakness in the conflict rather than strength. There is no longer any possibility of a Sunni proxy army doing the US bidding in Syria. The last vestiges of that US effort are slowly being killed in Idlib province. They are all al-Qaeda, these US allies. They are also the ones whose claims about the Assad "chemical attack" Washington takes as gospel. Can you imagine Washington taking al-Qaeda's word for it just 16 years after 9/11?
4) Newsweek is reporting
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-inadvertently-arming-al-qaeda-yemen-589384
that the US involvement in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen is actually benefitting al-Qaeda, as al-Qaeda's biggest enemy, the Houthis, are also Washington's biggest enemies. Why? The canard
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/27/the-houthis-are-not-hezbollah/
that Iran is behind the Houthis.
While it is still cringeworthy to listen to someone drop the line without real contemplation that the US is behind ISIS and al-Qaeda, the facts on the ground suggest this is the case. It is because Washington loves jihad? Not at all. But this grotesque distortion is what happens when 16 years of interventionism continue to produce bitter fruits: Washington hands the rest of us those fruits and expects us to savor them as dripping with milk and honey.
Many do. We do not.
Daniel McAdams
Executive Director
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/
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