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By Craig Murray
A social culture where perception of others is not conditioned by skin tone is obtainable. In the process of getting there, a system of law with no impunity for racism and with exemplary punishment for agents of the state in contravention is essential.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] court will judge whether there was intent to kill George Floyd; what is absolutely apparent is there was certainly no intent by the police to preserve his life or health. It is also plain that the force used was wildly disproportionate for the alleged offence. It is further undeniable that police violence in the USA impacts particularly on black people, and that in dealing with black people the police act with an arrogance founded on anticipated impunity. The societal change whereby the majority of adults have camera phones at the ready has given a new power of resistance to the public in this regard. That must be reinforced by exemplary sentencing.
If a police officer unlawfully harms a citizen, the officer is subject to assault or homicide charges—no different than if the officer committed these crimes off duty. [2] However, if a citizen unlawfully harms a police officer, the citizen is automatically subject to aggravated assault or aggravated homicide charges, which carry more severe punishment. [3] In fact, some states make the intentional killing of an on-duty officer a capital offense. [4] Enhanced charges in police encounters are thus asymmetrical. They only apply if a citizen harms an officer but not if an officer harms a citizen.
Police who kill in the course of their duties are given every latitude by the courts and far lower sentences than others who kill. That attitude needs to reverse. Police need to understand that their duty to protect and deal fairly embraces both the alleged victim and the alleged criminal. Breach of this public duty to protect should be an aggravating factor when the police kill, and sentences should be stiffer than for the general public. There are moments in public discourse where you need to come down off the fence and decide which side you are on; I am on the side of Black Lives Matter.
Here are two murdered men who have even less chance of receiving justice than George Floyd.
There is a stark contrast between the justified international outrage at Floyd’s death, and the unremarked killing of just a couple more Palestinians. I recommend this twitter thread by the ever excellent Ben White, and the links it gives. Ben does not mention that Iyad, on the left, was on his way to classes for those with special needs when he was chased and gunned down by Israeli soldiers.
This may surprise you. The police in the USA have less impunity for killings than the police in the UK.
Even as straightforward a case as the murder of Jean Charles De Menezes, who did nothing wrong whatsoever, brought no action against the police in the UK. The killing of Sheku Bayoh in Fife had obvious parallels with that of George Floyd, yet nobody was charged. 457 people have died in police custody since 1998, from all causes. From 2005-2015 10% of 294 deaths were “restraint related”. That is 30 people in the UK in ten years who have died at the hands of police in much the same way George Floyd died. That figure excludes those shot by the police.
Not one British policeman has been convicted of an unlawful killing in all these deaths. – not one. The last British policeman convicted was in 1969. That is what I call real impunity.
And that is without examining the similar impunity enjoyed even by private contractors in the UK responsible for the many deaths in the prison system and in immigration detention.
Impunity is a major problem all round the world, and everywhere it enables disproportionate use of state violence against minorities. But it is most sinister in a state like the United Kingdom, where the support of the prosecutorial and judicial institutions of the state for those who enforce the state’s monopoly of violence is absolute, and where the public are so conditioned to the power of the state they do not even notice the impunity.
The United Kingdom is full of people, right now, looking at the images of unrest from the USA and telling each other that the way the police kill black people in the USA is terrible. We do not process that in the UK law enforcement officers enjoy still greater impunity than in the USA.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. He blogs at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk
Acclaimed by critics, Ron Ridenour’s incisive history of the struggle between the US and Russia, extending from the Bolshevik revolution to our day, plus a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of many cultural America features which continue to bolster the US drive for world domination, is now available in print at a discount price. It’s 564 pages packed with information, many critical but practically unknown facts, and an uncompromising revolutionary perspective on the colossal challenges confronting this generation. (Click here or on the image below to order.)
How the British Empire Created and Killed George Orwell
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), happily amplified by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the United States which carries its World News, continues to pump out its regular dreck about the alleged economic chaos in Russia and the imagined miserable state of the Russian people.
It is all lies of course. Patrick Armstrong‘s authoritative regular updates including his reports on this website are a necessary corrective to such crude propaganda.
But amid all their countless fiascoes and failures in every other field (including the highest per capita death rate from COVID-19 in Europe, and one of the highest in the world) the British remain world leaders at managing global Fake News. As long as the tone remains restrained and dignified, literally any slander will be swallowed by the credulous and every foul scandal and shame can be confidently covered up.
Orwell didn’t know jack shit about the USSR and wrote about the UK’s “liberal” imperial government. But, global anti-communism absorbed him into their movement and the rest is history. — Jeff J. Brown
None of this would have surprised the late, great George Orwell. It is fashionable these days to endlessly trot him out as a zombie (dead but alleged to be living – so that he cannot set the record straight himself) critic of Russia and all the other global news outlets outside the control of the New York and London plutocracies. And it is certainly true, that Orwell, whose hatred and fear of communism was very real, served before his death as an informer to MI-5, British domestic security.
But it was not the Soviet Union, Stalin’s show trials or his experiences with the Trotskyite POUM group in Barcelona and Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War that “made Orwell Orwell” as the Anglo-America Conventional Wisdom Narrative has it. It was his visceral loathing of the British Empire – compounded during World War II by his work for the BBC which he eventually gave up in disgust.
And it was his BBC experiences that gave Orwell the model for his unforgettable Ministry of Truth in his great classic “1984.”
George Orwell had worked in one of the greatest of all world centers of Fake News. And he knew it.
More profoundly, the great secret of George Orwell’s life has been hiding in plain sight for 70 years since he died. Orwell became a sadistic torturer in the service of the British Empire during his years in Burma, modern Myanmar. And as a fundamentally decent man, he was so disgusted by what he had done that he spent the rest of his life not just atoning but slowly and willfully committing suicide before his heartbreakingly premature death while still in his 40s.
The first important breakthrough in this fundamental reassessment of Orwell comes from one of the best books on him. “Finding George Orwell in Burma” was published in 2005 and written by “Emma Larkin”, a pseudonym for an outstanding American journalist in Asia whose identity I have long suspected to be an old friend and deeply respected colleague, and whose continued anonymity I respect.
“Larkin” took the trouble to travel widely in Burma during its repressive military dictatorship and her superb research reveals crucial truths about Orwell. According to his own writings and his deeply autobiographical novel “Burmese Days” Orwell loathed all his time as a British colonial policeman in Burma, modern Myanmar. The impression he systematically gives in that novel and in his classic essay “Shooting an Elephant” is of a bitterly lonely, alienated, deeply unhappy man, despised and even loathed by his fellow British colonialists throughout society and a ludicrous failure at his job.
This was not, however, the reality that “Larkin” uncovered. All surviving witnesses agreed that Orwell – Eric Blair as he then still was – remained held in high regard during his years in the colonial police service. He was a senior and efficient officer. Indeed it was precisely his knowledge of crime, vice, murder and the general underside of human society during his police colonial service while still in his 20s that gave him the street smarts, experience, and moral authority to see through all the countless lies of right and left, of American capitalists and British imperialists as well as European totalitarians for the rest of his life.
The second revelation to throw light on what Orwell had to do in those years comes from one of the most famous and horrifying scenes in “1984.” Indeed, almost nothing even in the memoirs of Nazi death camp survivors has anything like it: That is the scene where “O’Brien”, the secret police officer tortures the “hero” (if he can be called that) Winston Smith by locking his face to a cage in which a starving rat is ready to pounce and devour him if it is opened.
I remember thinking, when I was first exposed to the power of “1984” at my outstanding Northern Irish school, “What kind of mind could invent something as horrific as that?”) The answer was so obvious that I like everyone else missed it entirely.
Orwell did not “invent” or “come up” with the idea as a fictional plot device: It was just a routine interrogation technique used by the British colonial police in Burma, modern Myanmar. Orwell never “brilliantly” invented such a diabolical technique of torture as a literary device. He did not have to imagine it. It was routinely employed by himself and his colleagues. That was how and why the British Empire worked so well for so long. They knew what they were doing. And what they did was not nice at all.
A final step in my enlightenment about Orwell, whose writings I have revered all my life – and still do – was provided by our alarmingly brilliant elder daughter about a decade ago when she too was given “1984” to read as part of her school curriculum. Discussing it with her one day, I made some casual obvious remark that Orwell was in the novel as Winston Smith.
My American-raised teenager then naturally corrected me. “No, Dad, ” she said. “Orwell isn’t Winston, or he’s not just Winston. He’s O’Brien too. O’Brien actually likes Winston. He doesn’t want to torture him. He even admires him. But he does it because it’s his duty.”
She was right, of course.
But how could Orwell the great enemy of tyranny, lies and torture so identify with and understand so well the torturer? It was because he himself had been one.
“Emma Larkin’s” great book brings out that Orwell as a senior colonial police officer in the 1920s was a leading figure in a ruthless war waged by the British imperial authorities against drug and human trafficking crime cartels every bit as vicious and ruthless as those in modern Ukraine, Columbia and Mexico today. It was a “war on terror” where anything and everything was permitted to “get the job done.”
The young Eric Blair was so disgusted by the experience that when he returned home he abandoned the respectable middle class life style he had always enjoyed and became, not just an idealistic socialist as many in those days did, but a penniless, starving tramp. He even abandoned his name and very identity. He suffered a radical personality collapse: He killed Eric Blair. He became George Orwell.
Orwell’s early famous book “Down and Out in London and Paris” is a testament to how much he literally tortured and humiliated himself in those first years back from Burma. And for the rest of his life.
He ate miserably badly, was skinny and ravaged by tuberculosis and other health problems, smoked heavily and denied himself any decent medical care. His appearance was always abominable. His friend, the writer Malcolm Muggeridge speculated that Orwell wanted to remake himself as a caricature of a tramp.
The truth clearly was that Orwell never forgave himself for what he did as a young agent of empire in Burma. Even his literally suicidal decision to go to the most primitive, cold, wet and poverty-stricken corner of creation in a remote island off Scotland to finish “1984” in isolation before he died was consistent with the merciless punishments he had inflicted on himself all his life since leaving Burma.
The conclusion is clear: For all the intensity of George Orwell’s experiences in Spain, his passion for truth and integrity, his hatred of the abuse of power did not originate from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. They all flowed directly from his own actions as an agent of the British Empire in Burma in the 1920s: Just as his creation of the Ministry of Truth flowed directly from his experience of working in the Belly of the Beast of the BBC in the early 1940s.
George Orwell spent more than 20 years slowly committing suicide because of the terrible crimes he committed as a torturer for the British Empire in Burma. We can therefore have no doubt what his horror and disgust would be at what the CIA did under President George W. Bush in its “Global War on Terror.” Also, Orwell would identify at once and without hesitation the real fake news flowing out of New York, Atlanta, Washington and London today, just as he did in the 1930s and 1940s.
Let us therefore reclaim and embrace The Real George Orwell: The cause of fighting to prevent a Third World War depends on it.
Martin SIEFF • During his 24 years as a senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Times and United Press International, Martin Sieff reported from more than 70 nations and covered 12 wars. He has specialized in US and global economic issues.
• remember: ALL CAPTIONS, IMAGES, PULL QUOTES AND ANNOTATIONS BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHOR—
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Acclaimed by critics, Ron Ridenour’s incisive history of the struggle between the US and Russia, extending from the Bolshevik revolution to our day, plus a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of many cultural America features which continue to bolster the US drive for world domination, is now available in print at a discount price. It’s 564 pages packed with information, many critical but practically unknown facts, and an uncompromising revolutionary perspective on the colossal challenges confronting this generation. (Click here or on the image below to order.)
THE AUSTRALIAN CHEWING-GUM IS NOW ON THE RUSSIAN SHOE
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John Helmer
Among America's vassal states few compare these days to "Albion's children" for vile complicity in Washington's crimes. In this bunch, besides the mother nation itself—Britain—Canada and Australia stand out for their equally rotten ruling classes. The Canadians and the Aussies have a good image internationally—easy-going genial chaps—but on closer examination we find nations descending fast into the kind of repulsive moral and political rot that defines the US hegemon in this period of well deserved decline. And both nations—of continental size like the US—have done a splendid job of destroying and neglecting—some would say murdering— their natural environment. In Australia, the pathetically corrupt Morrison government should be considered a global example of blatant gangsterism against the environment and the ordinary citizen's interest, which he betrays with abandon, a trait now common among Western politicians. His notorious disregard for the nation's ecology recently cost the death of billions of animals and scandalised even the usually complacent Australian population. Toping off this lovely picture we now see Australians in their unmasked role as a US colony, servilely doing Washington's bidding in its current imperial war of choice against China. This is the backdrop you need to remember when reading this report.
One day after Australia was defeated at the World Health Assembly in a joint effort with the Trump Administration to attack China, and after Beijing retaliated, calling the Australian Government a US puppet, a joke, and chewing-gum on China’s shoe, Australia has telephoned Moscow for help. In a call initiated by Foreign Minister Marise Payne (lead image below, left), Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked to boost Russian imports from Australia and send more Russian tourists to the country.
Lavrov replied that Australia should stop fabricating evidence of Russian involvement in the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, and withdraw from the Dutch show trial which is scheduled to resume hearings in Amsterdam next month.
Payne has not disclosed the telephone call to Moscow in her twitter stream nor is it revealed in her ministry’s news releases. No Australian newspaper or television broadcaster — half of them owned by Rupert Murdoch and equally hostile to both Russia and China — has reported the Payne-Lavrov conversation.
Payne’s spokesman, David Wroe, refused a request to confirm the conversation, which took place in the early Moscow afternoon of Wednesday. Payne’s ministry in Canberra is also refusing to explain why the minister made the first-ever telephone call to Lavrov on record in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s archive.
“A clumsy move by the Australians,” commented a Moscow source close to the General Staff, “to make it appear they can balance ‘positive’ relations with Russia against the bad relationship they caused with China. In Mao’s day, the Australians were called paper tigers and running dogs. Recently we’ve experienced how much of a US puppet the Australians are; they imposed trade sanctions against us in 2014; they have lied consistently about the MH17 affair and tried against us the same ‘international investigation’ ploy they failed to achieve against the WHO. This telephone call changes nothing except to convince us, and the Chinese of course, that Australian officials are blundering so badly in the world Trump won’t be able to save them.”
“On May 20 Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a telephone conversation with Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia Marise Payne on the Australian side’s initiative,” the Foreign Ministry communiqué says. “The ministers discussed topical aspects of Russian-Australian relations with emphasis on the pragmatic development of their cooperation in the spheres of mutual interest as well as the problems of international interaction in countering the spread of the novel coronavirus in the context of the results of the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly.” The reference to “problems of international interaction” was Lavrov’s reminder to Payne that she and the Americans had failed to convince any of their NATO or Asian allies to support their attack on China and the WHO’s role in dealing with the corona virus pandemic.
Lavrov was being diplomatic. The Chinese Embassy in Canberra declared that Payne’s conduct had been a “joke”. A leading Chinese media editor announced: “Australia is always there, making trouble. It is a bit like chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes. Sometimes you have to find a stone to rub it off.” For the full story of the defeat of Australia in the World Health Assembly by the European Union, Russia, India and China, read this.
Australian media have reported Payne’s defeat in reverse: “Australia’s COVID-19 inquiry campaign won the day…The last time Australia had played such a prominent international role was 2015, when Julie Bishop led calls to establish an MH17 inquiry after 298 people were shot out of the sky by a Russian-Ukrainian missile.”
According to Lavrov’s record, Payne “touched upon the continuing investigation of the МН17 catastrophe above Ukraine in July 2014. Sergei Lavrov said that Russia will disseminate in the UN a comprehensive document with the facts revealing the serious problems in the operation of the Netherlands-established Joint Investigative Team (JIT), whose activities fail to conform to the high standards set by UN Security Council Resolution 2166. He also reaffirmed the readiness of Russian experts to hold consultations with their Australian and Netherlands colleagues to clear up answers to the numerous questions put during their cooperation with the JIT.”
Australian police investigators and intelligence agents have been much more skeptical of the MH17 allegations prepared by Ukraine and promoted by the Dutch, than Australian politicians have endorsed in public. Read more.
In the past, the Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the Australian Government of having “groundlessly accused our country of being involved in the crash of the Malaysian airliner and demanded, in the form of an ultimatum, to start talks to discuss the legal consequences of such responsibility, including compensation for the relatives of the crash victims. By doing so, these two JIT members [Australia, The Netherlands] have demonstrated their unwillingness to continue full-fledged constructive cooperation on the MH17 case, as well as lack of interest in conducting a comprehensive, objective and independent international investigation.”
Foreign Minister Lavrov’s last face-to-face meeting with an Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, at the United Nations, New York, September 24, 2013. Bishop was regarded in Moscow as the most virulently anti-Russian Australian politician they have dealt with. Click to read more. Bishop used the publicity she generated by her attacks on Russia and President Putin to raise her domestic poll rating in a bid to win the prime ministry. She failed.
Lavrov also reminded Payne that since Australia began its Ukraine war sanctions in 2014, there has been a serious imbalance in their two-way trade. World Bank data show the collapse between 2014 and 2015, when Australian imports of Russian chemical products, timber, and machinery dropped from US$1.2 billion in 2014 to $252.5 million. Australian exports to Russia – mostly alumina, meat and other foodstuffs – reached peak in 2014 at $476.5 million. Since then they continued falling to $85.3 million in 2017; they recovered to $462.9 million in 2018.
The Russia trade numbers are dwarfed by Australia’s trade with China; there is no prospect that if China sanctions Australian trade and the ban continues on Chinese tourist and student travel to Australia, Russia can make up for the loss. Lavrov said he and Payne had discussed an “increase in mutual trade and provision for its more balanced nature.” These sums are minuscule compared to the billions of dollars in Australian export value which are now at risk, as Beijing imposes restrictions on Australian barley for price-dumping, on Australian meat for sanitary control violations – with more trade cuts to come.
In 2018, China took $87.7 billion worth of Australian goods and services, including tourism and education; Australia, $57.7 billion in Chinese goods in return. China accounts for 37% of Australian exports to the world; for 23% of Australia’s imports from the world. But in China’s trade figures, Australian imports represent only 5% of the global aggregate while Chinese exports to Australia amount to less than 2%. This is what Australian chewing-gum means on China’s shoe.
Born and raised in Australia, John Helmer graduated in political science from Harvard University in the United States, and worked in the White House as an aide of President Jimmy Carter.[1] He published several books on military and political topics, including essays on the American presidency and on urban policy in the US and essays on Greek, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern politics and foreign policy. Since 1989 he has published almost exclusively on Russian topics.[1] He was married to Australian journalist and foreign correspondent Claudia Wright who died in 2005. He was allegedly recruited by the KGB in the 1980s (according to the claims of Yuri Shvets) and left to live in Russia permanently.[3] However, Victor Cherkashin claims that Helmer was unaware that Shvets was a KGB officer, and that Cherkashin himself called Shvets off. Later, after Shvets' concerns attracted controversy, Cherkashin confirmed that Helmer was not an agent. Helmer has been based in Moscow since 1989 and, from there, has worked for The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and other newspapers.
• remember: ALL CAPTIONS, IMAGES, PULL QUOTES AND ANNOTATIONS BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHOR—
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Acclaimed by critics, Ron Ridenour's incisive history of the struggle between the US and Russia, extending from the Bolshevik revolution to our day, plus a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of many cultural America features which continue to bolster the US drive for world domination, is now available in print at a discount price. It's 564 pages packed with information, many critical but practically unknown facts, and an uncompromising revolutionary perspective on the colossal challenges confronting this generation. (Click here or on the image below to order.)
"Not many people are aware of the extent of the destruction of many Japanese cities which the author details here. He points out that the Soviet Union kept its word to help the United States by its intervention against Japan, the decisive reason why Japan was defeated even before the atomic bombs fell. A stunning but little known fact is that in response to the Russians' sacrifice the Anglo-American leaders—first Churchill and later Truman— were hatching Operation Unthinkable and Operation Pincher to launch a surprise war against Soviet forces in Europe. These military plots included the potential use of nuclear bombs. This is a book that no well-informed Western reader should be without, especially those inhabiting the homeland of the new empire, the dangerously brainwashed United States." —(An excerpt from the publisher's blurb on Amazon).
UK-funded propaganda campaign in Syria was bloated, inefficient & possibly illegal, a ‘scathing’ internal review reveals
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The UK has been a devious but eager and effective accomplice in almost all imperialist crimes committed by the US since the end of WW2.
Utterly hypocritical leaders like Theresa May and Tony Blair—from both major UK parties—typify the British establishment's sordid alliance with Washington.
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ritish state-funded propagandists created “a constellation of media outlets” in Syria and produced so much content that people “no longer knew who or what to believe,” an internal review into the failed operation has revealed.
Details of the UK government's Syria propaganda campaign, aimed at supporting the so-called ‘moderate armed opposition’, were published by Middle East Eye (MEE) in February. The work, which began in 2012, involved establishing a network of anti-government citizen journalists to shape public perceptions of the war, the outlet’s investigation found.
Now MEE has revealed the contents of a “scathing” internal government review, which found that the programs – collectively dubbed ‘Operation Volute’ – were sloppily and inefficiently run and may even have broken UK laws. The review also concluded that some projects “were designed to impress the US government,” the outlet said.
This image of Britain as a prolific propaganda-pusher is in stark contrast to the mainstream media view of Western powers acting as the ultimate truth-tellers in a world of ‘bad guys’ and fake news, which Britons are accustomed to hearing about.
The MEE report bursts that bubble, revealing that communications companies contracted by the British government used “news agencies, social media, poster campaigns and even children’s comics” to covertly bolster the Syrian opposition and to undermine the Assad government, as well as the Islamic State (IS). Efforts were stepped up “dramatically” in 2013 after the UK parliament inconveniently voted against military intervention in the country.
The White Helmets: a product of British intel and a complicit media. Mercenaries and murderous fanatics posing as noble samaritans.
However, the review, carried out in 2016, found that London’s grand plans weren’t exactly as effective as envisioned and said the initiatives suffered from “fundamental shortcomings” – including the fact that “no conflict analysis” and “no target audience analysis” was done. Unsurprisingly, the review referred to the work euphemistically as “strategic communications” rather than propaganda.
The contractors were pumping out so much content that they created “a constellation of media outlets,”where Syrian audiences and activists “got lost and were distracted.” The result was that “people no longer knew who or what to believe,” MEE said.
Ironically, while all this was happening, the British mainstream media was busy obsessing over and publishing stories on Russian propaganda, while completely ignoring and failing to investigate its own government’s massive influence operation and potential law-breaking.
The assessment revealed that concerns had been voiced within the UK government about whether there was even a need for the programs, and about the “major risk” that the activities of the contractors were “in contravention of UK law” – though there is no more detail given on how that may be the case, MEE reported.
The review also pointed to a “duplication” of efforts and warned of possible “reputational damage” to the British government if its funding of the programs was revealed.
Deaths and ‘work that caused harm’
Some of the projects were overseen by a Ministry of Defence (MoD) unit called Military Strategic Effects. Offices were also set up in Istanbul and Amman, where Syrians were recruited for the work. Many of the stringers (part-time local reporters) who were employed inside Syria were not even aware that they were working on projects funded by the British government. The budget for the projects in 2015-16 came to £9.6 million – and more was earmarked for future work.
The British government was seemingly unmoved by the fact that some of these people also lost their lives in the course of the work, noting coldly that one of their contractors “suffered losses of core staff that damaged the organisation quite fundamentally.”
“The department declined to say whether the effects hoped for were weighed against the risk to life; how many people died; and whether the UK was supporting their dependents,” MEE said.
The government also noted that some of the stringers working with the “moderate” rebels were “undertaking work which could cause (and has caused) harm,” but did not give more details.
‘Value for money’
Unsurprisingly, the programs were most heavily pushed by the Ministry of Defence. In fact, “the only” government ministers who were “fully committed” to the propaganda programs in 2013 were those at the MoD. They felt they were getting “extraordinary value for money given current policy restraints.” Those “policy restraints” referring, of course, to parliament’s vote not to intervene militarily. Some other ministers were asking “whether taxpayers’ money should be spent” on the projects while there remained “substantial doubts” about them.
While the review is highly critical of inefficiencies, nowhere in the government review is the decision to pour millions into propaganda campaigns and influence operations in a foreign war ever actually questioned. (Identical approach to that followed in Washington, where in bipartisan manner the "efficiency" and "mismanagement" of US criminal operations is criticized, but not its actual morality or legality under international law.—Ed)
Acclaimed by critics, Ron Ridenour’s incisive history of the struggle between the US and Russia, extending from the Bolshevik revolution to our day, plus a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of many cultural America features which continue to bolster the US drive for world domination, is now available in print at a discount price. It’s 564 pages packed with information, many critical but practically unknown facts, and an uncompromising revolutionary perspective on the colossal challenges confronting this generation. (Click here or on the image below to order.)
THE DEEP STATE IS CLOSING IN
The big social media —Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are trying to silence us.
America’s enemy is England, not Russia. Historically, Russia has been perhaps America’s main Ally; England remains America’s top enemy, just as during the American Revolution
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This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches by historian Eric Zuesse
It's no accident that the British press often outdoes the American in its bile toward the leaders of the main nations resisting the Anglo-American hegemonic project—Iran, China and Russia.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]merica’s sole enemy during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) was England. Ever since being defeated in that war, England (controlled by the British aristocracy) has tried various ways to regain its control over America. The British aristocracy’s latest attempt to regain control over America started in 1877, and continues today, as the two countries’ “Deep State” — comprising not only the lying CIA and the lying MI6, but the entire joint operation of the united aristocracies of Britain and the U.S. These two aristocracies actually constitute the Deep State, and control the top levels of both intelligence agencies, and of both Governments, and prevent democracy in both countries. The aristocracy rules each of them. The 1877 plan was for a unification of the two aristocracies, and for the then-rising new world power, American industry, and its Government, to become controlled by the wealthiest individuals in both countries. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tried to break the back of that intended global-imperialist combine, but he tragically died before he achieved this goal.
America’s second war against a foreign power was the War of 1812 (1812-1815), in which the U.S.A., so soon after its own victorious Revolution to free itself from Britain, tried to go even further, and to remove Britain altogether from North America. There still remained, among Americans, some fear that England might try to retake the U.S.A. The historian, Don Hickey, wrote that “In North America, the United States was the only belligerent that could lose the war and still retain its independence. Since Great Britain’s independence was at stake in the Napoleonic Wars, one might argue that the United States was the only belligerent on either side of the Atlantic in the War of 1812 that had nothing to fear for its independence.” Because King George III was still hated by many Americans, the U.S. aimed to free from Britain’s control the British colonies that remained to the north of America’s border, present-day Canada. Most of the residents there, however, continued to think of themselves as subjects of the King, and so the U.S. effort failed. Furthermore, British soldiers, coming down from what now is Canada, actually did manage to to jeopardize America’s independence: they burned down Washington. It wasn’t the King’s subjects north of America’s border who did this; it was British troops. The King’s army did it. Americans did have real reason to fear King George III. America’s continuing independence was, indeed, at stake in that war. That wasn’t merely the perception of the Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson’s Party); there was reality to it.
During a 25 May 2018 phone-call between the Presidents of America and Canada, America’s ignoramus President — Donald Trump — justified tariffs against Canada partially by saying “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” However, King George III’s troops had actually done that, on 24 August 1814 (and destroyed the Capitol building on the same day); and not only did Canada not yet exist at that time, but the King’s troops had done this in retaliation for a successful American invasion into the King’s northern territory — which territory was subsequently to win its own partial independence (after the unsuccessful rebellions of 1837-1838, by the King’s subjects there). Though the U.S. won the War of 1812, in the sense of not losing its independence to England, it failed to free Canada. However, two years after America’s own Civil War (1860-1865), Canada finally won a messy partial independence in 1867.
The rebuilding of the British-destroyed U.S. White House was completed in 1817; that of the British-destroyed U.S. Capitol was completed in 1826.
The most celebrated battle in the War of 1812 was at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, on 13 September 1814, where America’s soldiers hoisted in victory the U.S. flag, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner”. That ode was celebrating what became considered by Americans to have been their country’s second victory against Britain’s imperial tyranny.
England’s next big attempt to conquer the U.S. was during the Civil War, when England was supporting the Southerners’ right to continue enslaving Blacks and to break away from the federal Union for that purpose (to perpetuate slavery). If the South had won, this would not only have considerably weakened the U.S.A., but it would have placed to America’s south a new nation which would be allied with America’s enemy, Britain, the Southern Confederacy.
By contrast against England’s support for slavery, and for the breakup of the United States, Russia was a leading global supporter of the U.S., and of its movement to abolish slavery. Under Tsar Alexander II, the Russian Government opposed not only slavery but also serfdom, and thus became immortalized amongst Russians as “The Great Liberator,” for his ending serfdom, which was, for Russia, what slavery was for America — a repudiated relic of a former monarchic absolutism (that Tsar’s predecessors). When the erudite Cynthia Chung headlined on 16 October 2019, “Russia and the United States: The Forgotten History of a Brotherhood” and wrote there about “Cassius Clay,” she wasn’t mistakenly referring to the famous American boxer Muhammad Ali (1942-2016), but instead, quite correctly, to the individual who is far less well-known today but in whose honor that renowned boxer had originally been named, Cassius Marcellus Clay. The namesake for that boxer was quite reasonably referred-to by Chung as having been “possibly the greatest US Ambassador to Russia (1861-1862 and 1863-1869).” This “Cassius Clay” was, indeed, one of America’s unsung historical heroes, not only because this Kentuckian “Cassius Clay” was an extremely courageous champion of outlawing slavery, but also because he became a great asset to his friend Abraham Lincoln’s war to achieve the goal of emancipating America’s slaves. As Wikipedia’s article “Cassius Marcellus Clay (politician)”says, when describing Clay’s role in the “Civil War and Minister to Russia”:
President Lincoln appointed Clay to the post of Ministerto the Russian court at St. Petersburgon March 28, 1861. The Civil Warstarted before he departed and, as there were no Federal troops in Washington at the time, Clay organized a group of 300 volunteers to protect the White House and US Naval Yard from a possible Confederate attack. These men became known as Cassius M. Clay’s Washington Guards. President Lincoln gave Clay a presentation Colt revolver in recognition. When Federal troops arrived, Clay and his family embarked for Russia.[10]
As Minister to Russia, Clay witnessed the Tsar’s emancipation edict. Recalled to the United States in 1862 to accept a commission from Lincoln as a major generalwith the Union Army, Clay publicly refused to accept it unless Lincoln would agree to emancipate slaves under Confederate control. Lincoln sent Clay to Kentucky to assess the mood for emancipation there and in the other border states. Following Clay’s return to Washington, DC, Lincoln issued the proclamation in late 1862, to take effect in January 1863.[11]
Clay resigned his commission in March 1863 and returned to Russia, where he served until 1869. [3]He was influential in the negotiations for the purchaseof Alaska.[12
Thus, this friend of both “The Great Liberator” and “The Great Emancipator” helped them both. As Blake Stillwell well summarized in his 16 October 2015 article “How Russia guaranteed a Union victory in the Civil War”, Ambassador Clay knew and personally shared the deeply shared values between the heads-of-state in both the U.S. and Russia, and he thereby persuaded Tsar Alexander II to commit to join the U.S. in a war to conquer England if England would overtly and actively join the U.S. South’s war against the United States. Tsar Alexander II thus stationed Russian warships in New York City and San Francisco during the Civil War, so as to block England from actively supporting the Southern Confederacy, which England had been planning to do. Probably no single country was as helpful to the Union cause as was Russia, and this was not merely for purposes of power-politics, but very much for democratic and progressive principles, both Lincoln’s and that Tsar’s — their shared Enlightenment goals for the world’s future.
Imperialistic England’s imperialistic foe France was also pro-slavery, but not as big a threat to the U.S. as England was. The way that Michael O’Neill phrased this in his 10 May 2019 “France’s Involvement in the U.S. Civil War” was: “The French government certainly had sympathies for the Confederacy because both regimes were aristocratic, while the North had a more democratic social and economic system that wasn’t as rigidly hierarchical. France’s trade prospects were also hurt because of Northern blockades of Southern ports. France wanted to intervene in order to ensure the trade of cotton, wine, brandy and silk.” This was an instance where the English and French empires were on the same side — against democracy, and for slavery. Every aristocracy is driven by unlimited greed, and this greed drove the French and English aristocracies together, regarding America’s Civil War. Tsar Alexander II was an extremely rare progressive aristocrat — like U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt subsequently also was.
As Chung’s article also noted, the friendly relations between Russia and the United States had started at the time of the American Revolution, and Benjamin Franklin (who then was America’s Ambassador to France) was key to that.
In 1877, the future British diamond-magnate Cecil Rhodes came up with his lifelong plan, to unite the aristocracies of Britain and the U.S. so as to ultimately conquer the entire world. His plan was to be activated upon his death, which occurred in 1902, when the Rhodes Trust began and created the core of a spreading movement at the top levels of finance in both countries, including the Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs, a.k.a., Chatham House, in London, and then the Council on Foreign Relations in NYC (RIFA’s U.S. branch), both of which institutions became united with the European aristocracies in the Bilderberg group, which started in 1954, and which was initiated by the ‘former’ Nazi Prince Bernhard of Netherlands, and David Rockefeller of U.S.; and, then, finally, the Trilateral Commission, bringing Japan’s aristocrats into the Rhodesian fold, in 1973, under the aegis of David Rockefeller’s agent and chief anti-Russian strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Nelson Rockefeller’s chief anti-Russian strategist was Henry Kissinger.)
There are also other significant offshoots from the Rhodes Trust — it’s the trunk of the tree, and Cecil Rhodes seems to have been its seed.
Then, during World War I, the U.S. and Russia were, yet again, crucial allies, but this time England was with us, not against us, because Britain’s aristocracy were competing against Germany’s. The Marxist Revolution in Russia in 1917 terrified all of the world’s super-rich, much as they had been terrified by America’s enemy is England, not Russia. Historically, Russia has been perhaps America’s main Ally; England remains America’s top enemy, just as during the American Revolution.the failed revolutions in Europe during 1848, but this in Russia was a revolution for a dictatorship by workers against the middle class (“the bourgeoisie”) and not only against the aristocracy; and, so, it was no Enlightenment project, and it certainly wasn’t at all democratic. Furthermore, Germany during World War I was even more dictatorial than was England. Indeed: Kaiser Wilhelm II initiated the World War in order to maintain and continue the ancient tradition of the divine right of kings — hereditary monarchy (the most retrogressive of all forms of governmental rule, hereditary rule). And Germany was threatening America’s ships, whereas England was not.
At the Versaille Peace Conference after WW I, four influential leaders of the U.S. delegation were intensely pro-British: the extremely conservative pro-aristocracy Democrat and U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, and his two nephews, the extremely conservative devoutly Christian pro-aristocracy Republicans John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen Dulles, and the devoutly Christian partner of J.P. Morgan, Thomas Lamont. All four supported an obligation by Germany’s taxpayers to pay reparations to French taxpayers so large as to destitute the newly established democratic Weimar German Government. This destitution of Germans — approved by the U.S. delegation — helped to cause the extremist conservative right-wing-populist Nazi Party to come into power against the democratic Weimar Government. The Dulles brothers had many friends amongst the aristocracies of both England and Germany, and became two leaders of the war to conquer Russia, under U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. Whereas U.S. President Harry S. Truman had sought to “contain” the Soviet Union, the Dulles brothers sought instead to “conquer” it. Both of them had a visceral hatred of Russia — not only of communism. It was a hatred which was widely shared amongst the aristocracies of all empires, especially England, U.S., Germany, and Japan.
U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an exception to the almost universal hatred of Russia amongst U.S.-and-allied aristocracies: he recognized and acknowledged that though Joseph Stalin was a barbaric dictator, Stalin was a deeply committed anti-imperialist like FDR himself was, because Stalin led the Communist Party’s anti-imperialist wing, against Trotsky’s imperialist wing. Stalin advocated passionately for “communism in one country” — the doctrine that the Soviet Union must first clearly establish a thriving economy within the country and thereby serve as a model which would inspire the masses in capitalist nations to rise up against their oppressors; and that only after such a communist model of success becomes established can communism naturally spread to other countries. FDR was absolutely opposed to any sort of imperialism, and he had passionate private arguments against Winston Churchill about it, because Churchill said, “There can be no tampering with the Empire’s economic agreements,” in reply to FDR’s “I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.” And, afterwards, FDR said privately to his son Elliott, contemptuously against Churchill, “A real old Tory, isn’t he? A real old Tory, of the old school.” FDR’s post-war vision was for a United Nations which would possess all nuclear and all other strategic weapons, and which would control all aspects of international law, and nothing of intranational law (except perhaps if the Security Council is unanimous, but only as being exceptions). Each of the major powers would be allowed to intervene intranationally into their bordering nations, but only so as to prevent any inimical major power from gaining a foothold next door — purely defensive, nothing else. This would have been very different from what the U.N. became. It’s something that the gullible Truman (who knew and understood none of that) was able to be deceived about by Churchill, and, even more so, by the then-General, Dwight Eisenhower, because both of them were committed imperialists and aimed to conquer Russia — and not only to end its communism. The crucial date was 26 July 1945, when Eisenhower convinced Truman to start the Cold War. Then, on 24 February 1990, U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush established the policy of the U.S. since then: that when the Soviet Union would end its communism in 1991, the U.S. and its allies would secretly continue the Cold War against Russia, until Russia becomes conquered so as to be part of the U.S. empire, no longer an independent nation. This is continuation of Cecil Rhodes’s plan: the U.S. doing the British aristocracy’s bidding to lead in conquering the entire world.
On 14 August 1941, at the time when FDR and Churchill formed the Atlantic Charter and were planning for a joint war against Hitler, they agreed to form the “UKUSA Agreement”, a “secret treaty” between those two countries, which became formalized on 17 May 1943 as the “BRUSA Agreement” and then on 5 March 1946 under President Truman became officially signed, and its contents finally became public on 25 June 2010. It was/is the basis of what is more commonly know as “the Five Eyes” of the Cecil-Rhodes-derived (though they don’t mention that) foreign-intelligence operations, uniting UK and U.S. intelligence as the core, but also including the intelligence-operations of the other Anglo-Saxon English-speaking colonies: Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. India and other ‘inferior races’ of English-speaking countries (as Rhodes and Winston Churchill viewed them) weren’t included. For examples: the UK/USA joint effort to produce the death of Julian Assange (and seem likely to succeed soon in doing that) became part of this UK/USA working-together, as have also been the UK/USA sanctions against Russia regarding the trumped-up cases and sanctions against Russia concerning Sergei Magnitsky in 2012 and Sergei Skripal and the “Russiagate” charges against Donald Trump in 2018. This full flowering of the Rhodesian plan is also publicly known as “the Special Relationship” and as “the Anglosphere”.
It’s the U.S. and UK aristocracies, against their own nations — against their own people — but for the essential imperial operations by both U.S. and UK international corporations, which those billionaires control.
This is why all sanctions against Russia are based on lies. Certainly, it doesn’t happen by accident. At each step, in virtually each instance, the U.S. and UK aristocracies are working together on these libels — libels against the actual main foreign ally of the U.S. (UK’s aristocracy has always been the main enemy of the UK’s public, and also against Russia — and against the American people. This is entirely consistent with Rhodes’s plan, which was to use the U.S. in order to expand Britain’s Empire. That is the history of our times.)