"With Liberty and Justice for All??"

Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange

By Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief.

Surely, I thought, Assange must be a rapist! But what I found is that he has never been charged with a sexual offence. True, soon after the United States had encouraged allies to find reasons to prosecute Assange, Swedish prosecution informed the tabloid press that he was suspected of having raped two women. Strangely, however, the women themselves never claimed to have been raped, nor did they intend to report a criminal offence. Go figure. Moreover, the forensic examination of a condom submitted as evidence, supposedly worn and torn during intercourse with Assange, revealed no DNA whatsoever — neither his, nor hers, nor anybody else’s. Go figure again. One woman even texted that she only wanted Assange to take an HIV test, but that the police were “keen on getting their hands on him”. Go figure, once more. Ever since, both Sweden and Britain have done everything to prevent Assange from confronting these allegations without simultaneously having to expose himself to US extradition and, thus, to a show-trial followed by life in jail. His last refuge had been the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Alright, I thought, but surely Assange must be a hacker! But what I found is that all his disclosures had been freely leaked to him, and that no one accuses him of having hacked a single computer. In fact, the only arguable hacking-charge against him relates to his alleged unsuccessful attempt to help breaking a password which, had it been successful, might have helped his source to cover her tracks. In short: a rather isolated, speculative, and inconsequential chain of events; a bit like trying to prosecute a driver who unsuccessfully attempted to exceed the speed-limit, but failed because their car was too weak.

Well then, I thought, at least we know for sure that Assange is a Russian spy, has interfered with US elections, and negligently caused people’s deaths! But all I found is that he consistently published true information of inherent public interest without any breach of trust, duty or allegiance. Yes, he exposed war crimes, corruption and abuse, but let’s not confuse national security with governmental impunity. Yes, the facts he disclosed empowered US voters to take more informed decisions, but isn’t that simply democracy? Yes, there are ethical discussions to be had regarding the legitimacy of unredacted disclosures. But if actual harm had really been caused, how come neither Assange nor Wikileaks ever faced related criminal charges or civil lawsuits for just compensation?

But surely, I found myself pleading, Assange must be a selfish narcissist, skateboarding through the Ecuadorian Embassy and smearing feces on the walls? Well, all I heard from Embassy staff is that the inevitable inconveniences of his accommodation at their offices were handled with mutual respect and consideration. This changed only after the election of President Moreno, when they were suddenly instructed to find smears against Assange and, when they didn’t, they were soon replaced. The President even took it upon himself to bless the world with his gossip, and to personally strip Assange of his asylum and citizenship without any due process of law.

In the end it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide. And thus, a legal precedent is being set, through the backdoor of our own complacency, which in the future can and will be applied just as well to disclosures by The Guardian, the New York Times and ABC News.

Very well, you may say, but what does slander have to do with torture? Well, this is a slippery slope. What may look like mere «mudslinging» in public debate, quickly becomes “mobbing” when used against the defenseless, and even “persecution” once the State is involved. Now just add purposefulness and severe suffering, and what you get is full-fledged psychological torture.

Yes, living in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard may seem like a sweet deal when you believe the rest of the lies. But when no one remembers the reason for the hate you endure, when no one even wants to hear the truth, when neither the courts nor the media hold the powerful to account, then your refuge really is but a rubber boat in a shark-pool, and neither your cat nor your skateboard will save your life.

Even so, you may say, why spend so much breath on Assange, when countless others are tortured worldwide? Because this is not only about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent likely to seal the fate of Western democracy. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course. We will have surrendered our voice to censorship and our fate to unrestrained tyranny.

This Op-Ed has been offered for publication to the Guardian, The Times, the Financial Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Canberra Times, the Telegraph, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Newsweek.

None responded positively.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

 

The Problem With Truth

It is almost a cliche that the aphorism "Lying propaganda travels half-way around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." No greater example of this exists than the heated rhetoric between the right and left extremes of the political spectrum. This sad situation is brilliantly discussed by Paul Craig Roberts:

Remarks on Right-wing Talk Radio

January 10, 2020 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

Remarks on Right-wing Talk Radio
Paul Craig Roberts
Over the course of my life as a university professor, government official, business consultant, president of a community water company and editor and journalist for national and international publications, I have learned that a majority of people cannot think outside the indoctrination they received that formed their biases.  If you provide them with a different view or explanation, instead of thinking about it, they just get angry. This is true also of academics. University professors resist their human capital being devalued and placed in need of renewal by new discoveries and explanations. No academic wants to have to redo all his lecture notes or see his own scholarly contributions bypassed by new explanations. As Niccolo Machiavelli truthfully said, “There is nothing more difficult, more perilous or more uncertain of success, than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things.”
Conservatives with right-wing biases usually write me off as left-wing, and leftists with left-wing biases write me off as conservative, especially as I had a high appointment in the Reagan administration.  The only way to write successfully for these people is to tell them what they want to hear.  Then they love you instead of hate you.
It is pointless to write for such people, and I don’t.  Ninety-nine percent of my readers can think independently and look to me for explanations that make more sense than the controlled explanations they get from the print, TV, and NPR media.  That is the reason I write. As the IPE website states, we try to be accurate but are only human and can be mistaken on occasion.  But the agenda is to discover and tell the truth, not to sell an agenda.
Truth is not the purpose of the print, TV, and radio media or much, perhaps most, of the Internet and social media.  Just as the ruling establishment has taken over the print and TV media, they censure social media and are taking over the Internet.  Before long, truth will have to rely on mimeograph machines and people to hand out fliers in areas where there are no spying cameras if any such areas will exist in the future.
There is no doubt that truth is an endangered species.  It has always been endangered, but the technology today provides control powers even beyond George Orwell’s imagination.
So what can we do with truth for the time that it remains available to us? Clearly, we should at least make people aware that truth is endangered and that they are brainwashed with explanations that advance the agendas of the ruling elites.  But unless a truth-teller has donors to make him independent, as this site’s donors make me, he can’t tell the truth and also be successful. This is especially true with anything that pertains to Israel.  This brings me to right-wing talk radio.
On the Russiagate and impeachment hoaxes, right-wing talk radio got it right.  They could defend Trump on the facts.  But when it comes to Russia and Iran right-wing talk radio cannot get it right, because their patriotic conservative audience has swallowed the neoconservative propaganda that Russia and Iran are our enemies and that Russia interfered in the US election. Sean Hannity, for example, repeatedly affirms that Russia interferred in our election despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that Russia interferred in the election.  Why does he do this?  Because his conservative audience in its gullible patriotism wants to stand up for America against “them Russians.”  Few conservatives can admit that 9/11 was a false flag to launch America on 20 years of war in the Middle East for the sake of power and profit and Israel’s territorial expansion.  Their gullibility leads them to declare: “The American government would never kill its own people.”  Ha!  All they need to do is to read the Northwood Project.  But that would upset them, whereas denouncing Arabs and Muslims and calling for them to be nuked is emotionally very satisfying.  By playing to the ignorant biases of its audience, right-wing talk radio decreases both the chance for peace and for truth.
This is not a beat-up session on the right-wing.  It is an explanation of why truth is so hard to establish.  The left-wing is just as guilty of deep-sixing truth.
When I was on George W. Bush’s case, I was a hero for CounterPunch which even published one of my books.  Today I am persona non grata.  
The problem with truth is that it seldom supports establishment interests.  Thus, truth is in the way of material and selfish interests of the powerful.  That is why it is hard to defend truth and why so few do so. To tell the truth is extremely costly.
If a person gets too serious about truth, they end up in prison like Julian Assange and Manning, both of whom are in solitary confinement despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong except tell the truth.  And where are their defenders?  The presstitute media doesn’t come to their aid, because their truth-telling is an embarrassment to the presstitutes who lie for their living.  
Right-wing talk radio misrepresents these truth-tellers as “traitors to America.”  Assange, of course, is not even an American, so how can he be a traitor to America?  A question this simple is over the head of right-wing talk radio and over the heads of the American and British populations that permit the outrage of destroying those who bring us truth.

One is best served by the old 1960s leftist cliche regarding government and media pronouncements: "believe nothing and question everything."

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ 

Worth 1000 Words?

                                                  click on graphic to enlarge

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

The Lies

Ron Paul:

At some point, when we’ve been lied to constantly and consistently for decades about a “threat” that we must “take out” with a military attack, there comes a time where we must assume they are lying until they provide rock solid, irrefutable proof. Thus far they have provided nothing. So I don’t believe them.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Definitions: Evil

Posted by: ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

The Enemy

by Rudyard Kipling

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy -- willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

Who Knew?

Assange Never Met Manafort.

By Craig Murray

The Ecuadorean government of President Moreno continues to churn out its production line of fake documents regarding Julian Assange, and channel them straight to MI6 mouthpiece Luke Harding of the Guardian.

Amazingly, more Ecuadorean Government documents have just been discovered for the Guardian, this time spy agency reports detailing visits of Paul Manafort and unspecified “Russians” to the Embassy. By a wonderful coincidence of timing, this is the day after Mueller announced that Manafort’s plea deal was over.

The problem with this latest fabrication is that Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these “Russians” are in the visitor logs.

This is impossible. The visitor logs were not kept by Wikileaks, but by the very strict Ecuadorean security. Nobody was ever admitted without being entered in the logs. The procedure was very thorough. To go in, you had to submit your passport (no other type of document was accepted). A copy of your passport was taken and the passport details entered into the log. Your passport, along with your mobile phone and any other electronic equipment, was retained until you left, along with your bag and coat. I feature in the logs every time I visited.

There were no exceptions. For an exception to be made for Manafort and the “Russians” would have had to be a decision of the Government of Ecuador, not of Wikileaks, and that would be so exceptional the reason for it would surely have been noted in the now leaked supposed Ecuadorean “intelligence report” of the visits. What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort? Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged “Russians”.

Previously Harding and the Guardian have published documents faked by the Moreno government regarding a diplomatic appointment to Russia for Assange of which he had no knowledge. Now they follow this up with more documents aimed to provide fictitious evidence to bolster Mueller’s pathetically failed attempt to substantiate the story that Russia deprived Hillary of the Presidency.

My friend William Binney, probably the world’s greatest expert on electronic surveillance, former Technical Director of the NSA, has stated that it is impossible the DNC servers were hacked, the technical evidence shows it was a download to a directly connected memory stick. I knew the US security services were conducting a fake investigation the moment it became clear that the FBI did not even themselves look at the DNC servers, instead accepting a report from the Clinton linked DNC “security consultants” Crowdstrike.

I would love to believe that the fact Julian has never met Manafort is bound to be established. But I fear that state control of propaganda may be such that this massive “Big Lie” will come to enter public consciousness in the same way as the non-existent Russian hack of the DNC servers.

Assange never met Manafort. The DNC emails were downloaded by an insider. Assange never even considered fleeing to Russia. Those are the facts, and I am in a position to give you a personal assurance of them.

I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services.

I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But to see the partisans of the defeated candidate (and a particularly obnoxious defeated candidate) manipulate the security services and the media to create an entirely false public perception, in order to attempt to overturn the result of the US Presidential election, is the most astonishing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime.

Plainly the government of Ecuador is releasing lies about Assange to curry favour with the security establishment of the USA and UK, and to damage Assange’s support prior to expelling him from the Embassy. He will then be extradited from London to the USA on charges of espionage.

Assange is not a whistleblower or a spy – he is the greatest publisher of his age, and has done more to bring the crimes of governments to light than the mainstream media will ever be motivated to achieve. That supposedly great newspaper titles like the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post are involved in the spreading of lies to damage Assange, and are seeking his imprisonment for publishing state secrets, is clear evidence that the idea of the “liberal media” no longer exists in the new plutocratic age. The press are not on the side of the people, they are an instrument of elite control.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Lookout Below!!

By James Howard Kunstler

Looks like somebody threw a dead cat onto Wall Street’s luge run overnight to temporarily halt the rather ugly 2000 point slide in the Dow Jones Industrial Average — and plenty of freefall in other indices, including markets in other countries. A Friday pause in the financial carnage will give the hedge funders a chance to plant “for sale” signs along their Hamptons driveways, but who might the buyers be? Hedge funders from another planet, perhaps? You can hope. And while you’re at it, how do you spell liquidity problem?

Welcome to the convergence zone of the long emergency, where Murphy’s law meets the law of unintended consequences and the law of diminishing returns, the Three Amigos of collapse. Here’s where being “woke” finally starts to mean something. Namely, that there are more important things in the world than sexual hysteria. Like, for instance, your falling standard of living (and that of everyone else around you).

The meet-up between Kanye West and President D.J. Trump was an even richer metaphor for the situation: two self-styled “geniuses” preening for the cameras in the Oval Office, like kids in a sandbox, without a single intelligible idea emerging from the play-date, and embarrassed grownups all standing ‘round pretending it was a Great Moment in History. You had to wonder how much of Kanye’s bazillion dollar fortune was stashed in the burning house of FAANG stocks. Maybe that flipped his bipolar toggle. Or was he even paying attention to the market action through all the mugging and hugging? (He did have his phone in hand.) Meanwhile, Mr. Trump seemed to be squirming through the episode behind his mighty Resolute desk as if he had “woke” to the realization that ownership of a bursting epic global financial bubble was not exactly “winning.”

If I were President, I’d declare Oct 12 Greater Fool Day. (Nobody likes Christopher Columbus anymore, that genocidal monster of dead white male privilege.) The futures are zooming as I write, a last roundup for suckers at the OD corral, begging the question: who will show up on Monday. Nobody, I predict. And then what?

The great false front of the financial markets resumes falling over into the November election. The rubble from all that buries whatever is left of the automobile business and the housing market. The smoldering aftermath will be described as the start of a long-overdue recession — but it will actually be something a lot worse, with no end in sight.

The Democratic Party might not be nimble enough to capitalize on the sudden disappearance of capital. Their only hope to date has been to capture the vote of every female in America, to otherwise augment their constituency of inflamed and aggrieved victims of unsubstantiated injustices. It’s been fun playing those cards, and the Party might not even know how to play a different game at this point. Democratic politicians may also be among the one-percenters who watch their net worth go up in a vapor in a market collapse, leaving them too numb to act. The last time something like this happened, in the fall of 2008, candidate Barack Obama barely knew what to say about the fall of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing cascade of misery —  though unbeknownst to the voters, he was already a hostage of Wall Street.

Complicating matters this time will be the chaos unleashed in politics and governing when the long-running “Russia collusion” melodrama boomerangs into a raft of indictments against the cast of characters in the Intel Community and Department of Justice AND the Democratic National Committee, and perhaps even including the Party’s last standard bearer, HRC, for ginning up the Russia Collusion matter in the first place as an exercise in sedition. The wheels of the law turn slowly, but they’ll turn even while financial markets tumble. And the threat to order might be so great that an unprecedented “emergency” has to be declared, with soldiers in the streets of Washington, as was sadly the case in 1861, the first time the country turned itself upside down.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Who Knew?

Posted by: ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

NATO Now Serves the Interests of the Transatlantic Ruling Class

By Angelo Codevilla
If we’re to believe the recent NATO summit’s communique and the mainstream media’s commentaries about it, the alliance serves roughly the same essential purpose today as it did in 1948, and Americans had better heed European Council President Donald Tusk’s thinly veiled warning: rein in President Trump’s criticisms of NATO, because its members are about the only allies America has got.
 
But although the people who run today’s European and American societies are perhaps closer to each other than in 1948—which accounts for their dogged defense of “the alliance”—in fact, they themselves have changed in ways that obviate the purposes for which the alliance originally was formed.

The point of departure for understanding U.S.-European relations is that the relationship between “the people who count” on both sides of the Atlantic are so good precisely because they  have become aliens to their own peoples. And, since all are in the process of being rejected by their own peoples, they are each others’ natural allies. But against whom are they allied?

What is the purpose of this alliance and what does it mean to us Americans?

Herewith, a summary of these moral and political changes, whose importance dwarfs the massive material transformations that the world has undergone in the past 70 years.

Defense of the West
In 1948, Europe faced the mighty Red Army, prostrate, poor, and penetrated by Communist organizations. But its principal figures—Konrad Adenauer, Charles De Gaulle, and Alcide De Gasperi—were devout Christians leading peoples who, chastened by war, were eager to safeguard and bolster what remained of their civilizations. All were conscious of their dependence on the United States of America for pretty much everything and grateful to us for it. That moral-political strength made up for a lot of material weakness.

It should be remembered, too, that keeping fellow Christians from succumbing to godless Communism moved that generation of Americans almost as much as the realization that the Soviet conquest of Europe would be very dangerous for us. Most came to believe that an alliance that reassured a weak-but-willing Europe was the best way to prevent it. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, in tune as they were with ordinary Americans as well as with European leaders of their era, had no trouble forging a North Atlantic alliance based on the axiomatic commitment to nuke the Soviets were they to invade Europe.

Progressive Infection
NATO’s rot started in America. John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election brought to power progressives, who self-identified as “the best and the brightest.” Shaped intellectually and morally by the doctrines of (eventual Nobel laureates) Henry Kissinger and Thomas Schelling, they saw men like Adenauer and De Gaulle as of a piece with the American conservative persons and ideas they were displacing.

At the first NATO meeting after Kennedy’s inauguration, they removed the U.S. commitment to nuke the Soviets. They also removed the U.S. medium range missiles on the necessity of which that generation of European leaders had staked their legitimacy. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, these Americans did their best to foster the rise of progressive Europeans, who would be partners in the grand pursuit of “detente” with Moscow. They got what they wished, and then some.

In retrospect the 1980s, dominated as they were by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl, were a brief anomaly.

Today, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have the opposite of 1948: political weakness born of the ruling class’s civilizational renunciation undermines vastly increased economic and (in the United States) military power. Russia’s army, backed by scarcely a tenth of the European Union’s GDP, would have little trouble making prisoners of NATO’s forward-deployed forces and reaching the Atlantic.

An Alliance to Protect the Ruling Class’s Power and Prestige

Today the transatlantic ruling class has its own civilizational agenda, manifested by its subsidies for constituencies both business and cultural, ranging from “renewable energy resources,” to education, the arts, and lifestyle. Far from allied to safeguard and promote Western civilization, this ruling class treats its cornerstone, Christianity, as unmentionable at best and usually as the main feature to be extirpated from people’s lives. This class also regards self-rule, the capacity of people in towns, regions, or nations to decide by vote how they shall live, as among the evils to be done away with. It treats as enemy anything—thoughts, practices, institutions—that limit its own its own power and prestige. For their power and prestige, after all, are what it is allied to protect.

Since ordinary people in each and all of NATO’s countries pose the clearest and most present danger to that power and prestige, whenever any country’s people have challenged the  power or prestige of their local member of the club, the other countries’ ruling classes have treated it as an attack on themselves. Under this updated version of the famous Article 5, the allied transatlantic rulers have warned, on pain of horrid consequences, the people of Britain to stay in the EU, the peoples of France to elect anybody but Le Pen, the peoples of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and most recently of Italy, not to vote as they did.

Most of all, they warned Americans not to elect Donald Trump.
Nothing has equaled their fury against him. This, of course, has little to do with Trump himself. Rather, it is the transatlantic allies’ reaction to their inability to bend the American people to their ways. The American people’s adherence to Western civilization, our inflexible desire to rule ourselves, is the negation of everything for which this class stands. And because America is what it is, the election of an anti-ruling class candidate has inspired European peoples to do likewise.

As the transatlantic allies have lost election after election, they have retreated to their bastions in the supranational institutions, the banks, the corporations, the media, etc. Their objective seems to be to punish voters—psychologically if in no other way—to convince them to repent. Their hands will have to be pried off the levers of power.

Because such things as Russia’s power, the Third World’s physical occupation of Europe and the United States, never mind the international military balance, do not threaten what the transatlantic ruling class is allied to protect, they cannot be bothered to take these questions seriously. Hence, for the American people, NATO as it exists today is yet one more ruling class institution to be overcome.

What good—and it may be considerable—that Americans might achieve by working with Europeans would have to be pursued with such peoples as have freed themselves from the transatlantic ruling class’s power.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

The "Never Trump's" Dilemma

By Michael Rozeff

Many headlines question Trump’s triumph in Singapore, unreasonably so. Petty minds are at work who are paid to create stories, and stories always have conflict as a central element. If there is no conflict, the pundits imagine it. This is why fake news is not news but a form of entertainment. Besides, the audience for anti-Trump material is large.

The media belittle Trump’s accomplishment in countless petty ways, but they’ll soon be forgotten as they go on to the next concocted story. Trump will be remembered when they are long forgotten.

The big picture is that Trump outfoxed China. Trump broke the ice. He broke a frozen situation in Korea that favored China and its erstwhile ally, North Korea. China is trying to act as if it was critical in this movement, because China wants to hold North Korea in its sphere of economic and political influence. However, a united Korea stands like a united Vietnam as a stopping point for Chinese pretensions to project its power beyond its borders. Trump’s agreement with Kim signals the blocking of China and a limit to Chinese hegemony over its neighbors, and that is a major accomplishment for the U.S. strategy toward China.

The big picture is that in Singapore Trump and Kim furthered a peace process that began on May 10, 2017 when the newly-elected Moon made peace with North Korea a priority. Other steps have been taken during the past year, including meetings between Moon and Kim. The Singapore Agreement is yet another step that keeps the momentum of this process going. Hypercritical media comments and questions about the latest summit ignore or miss the big picture, which is that it is part of a stepwise process. This involves discovery by all sides of what can be done and invention of ways to do it, all embedded in a complex situation that involves neighbors like China and Japan who also have interests in the region. Trump’s approach was to endorse a general framework, and that’s sensible because the discovery-invention process takes a lot of time and dickering. Both sides retained flexibility through this lean approach.

Cold War and post-Cold War warriors who remain outspoken and influential in Washington did not succeed in getting their way with North Korea, after decades of trying. The situation threatened to come to open war. Trump has postponed that day and opened up the opportunity to make sure that that day never arrives. This is a major accomplishment and triumph.

The deal is not done, and Trump knows it. His followup remarks have been open and frank concerning how matters can change as time passes. Trump unfroze the untenable situation created by his predecessors. Kim, Moon and Trump will now have to keep doing that by concrete steps such as Trump’s calling for a halt to joint war games with South Korea.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΑΣ

"Corporal" Hitler's Folly

By Eric Margolis

On my many walking visits to the vast Normandy battlefield in France, I kept recalling the ever so wise dictum of Prussia’s great monarch, Frederick the Great:  ‘he who defends everything, defends nothing.’  On this 74th anniversary of the D-Day landings, it’s well worth recalling the old warrior-king.

Adolf Hitler, a veteran of the infantry, should certainly have known better. Defending the European coast from Brittany to Norway was an impossibility given Germany’s military and economic weakness in 1944.  But he did not understand this.  Having so brilliantly overcome France’s Maginot Line fortifications in 1940, Hitler and his High Command repeated the same strategic and tactical errors as the French only four years later: not having enough reserves to effectively counter-attack enemy breakthrough forces.

Germany’s vaunted Atlantic Wall looked formidable on paper, but it was too long, too thin, lacked defensive depth and was lacking in adequate reserve forces.  The linear Maginot Line suffered the same failings.  America’s fortifications protecting Manila and Britain’s ‘impregnable’ fortifications at Singapore also proved worthless. The Japanese merely marched into their undefended rears.

In 1940, the German Wehrmacht was modern history’s supreme fighting machine.  But only four years later, the Wehrmacht was broken.  Most Americans, British and Canadians believe that D-Day was the decisive stroke that ended WWII in Europe. But this is not true.

Germany’s mighty Wehrmacht, which included the Luftwaffe, was destroyed by Stalin’s Soviet Union.  The Red Army claims to have destroyed 507 German divisions, 48,000 German tanks, 77,000 German aircraft, and 100 divisions of Axis troops allied to Germany from Italy, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia,  and Finland.

Few Americans have ever heard of the Soviet Far East offensive of 1945, a huge operation that extended from Central Asia to Manchuria and the Pacific.  At least 450,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, wounded or captured by the Red Army, 32% of Japan’s total wartime military losses.  The Soviets were poised to invade Japan when the US struck it with two nuclear weapons.

Of Germany’s 10 million casualties in WWII, 75% were inflicted by the Red Army.  The once mighty Luftwaffe was decimated over Russia.  Almost all German military production went to supplying the 1,600 km Eastern Front where Germany’s elite forces were ground up in titanic battles like Kursk and Stalingrad that involved millions of soldiers.

Soviet forces lost upwards of 20 million men. Total US losses, including the Pacific, were one million.  To Marshal Stalin, D-Day, the North African and Italian campaign were merely diversionary side-shows to tie down Axis forces while the Red Army pushed on to Berlin.

D-Day was without doubt one of the greatest logistical feats of modern military history. Think of General Motors versus the German warrior Siegfried.  For every US tank the Germans destroyed, ten more arrived.  Each German tank was almost irreplaceable.  Transporting over one million men and their heavy equipment across the Channel was a triumph.  But who remembers that Germany crossed the heavily defended Rhine River into France in 1940?

By June, 1944, German forces at Normandy and along the entire Channel coast had almost no diesel fuel or gasoline.  Their tanks and trucks were immobilized.  Allied air power shot up everything that moved, including a staff car carrying Marshal Erwin Rommel strafed by Canada’s own gallant future aviator general, Richard Rohmer.  German units in Normandy were below 40% combat effectiveness even without their shortages in fuel.

The Germans in France were also very short of ammunition, supplies and communications.  Units could only move by night, and then very slowly.  Hitler was reluctant to release armored forces from his reserves. Massive Allied bombing of Normandy alone killed 15,000 to 20,000 French civilians and shattered many cities and towns.

Churchill once said, ‘you will never know war until you fight Germans.’  With no air cover or fuel and heavily outnumbered, German forces in Normandy managed to mount a stout resistance, inflicting 209,000 casualties on US, Canadian, British, Free French and allied forces.  German losses were around 200,000.

The most important point of the great invasion is that without it, the Red Army would have reached Paris and the Channel Ports by the end of 1944, making Stalin the master of all Europe except Spain.  Of course, the Allies could have reached a peace agreement with Germany in 1944, which Hitler was seeking and Gen. George Patton was rumored to be advocating.  But the German-hating Churchill and left-leaning Roosevelt were too bloody-minded to consider a peace that would have kept Stain out of at least some of Eastern Europe.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Roman Empire II?

By Mike Rozeff

Pompeo’s speech today, making 12 demands upon Iran while threatening new sanctions, exemplifies an America trapped in the empire of its government’s making. Americans are hostages who have acquiesced. We can only escape our bonds by ending the empire.

Once an empire expands to take in numerous lands beyond the borders of its core country, its government (in this case, the U.S.) finds that its defense requires removing threats and potential threats in a host of places that are far from the core country, which is America, taking in these 50 states.

Pompeo says at the outset: “President Trump withdrew from the deal for a simple reason: it failed to guarantee the safety of the American people from the risk created by the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Pompeo misstates the reality. The American people or this country consisting of the 50 states, faces no safety risk from Iran. It’s the government, the U.S., that perceives the risk. America is not the U.S.; the U.S. is the government of America.
Although America, if it were shorn of its empire, and were reduced to its 50 states, faces no safety risk or military threat whatsoever from the IRI, when America is viewed as an empire with numerous overseas allies and obligations, then its leaders sense all sorts of distant threats and act against them. America is then trapped in the empire created by its own government, the U.S.

Pompeo and the rest of the foreign policy and defense establishment are men and women of empire. The Congress is too. This means that they do not act on behalf of America and Americans. They act on behalf of the empire. They are always giving us Americans a song and dance that they’re acting for our own good, our safety.
Iran presents absolutely no threat to America. By the U.S. empire, however, it’s conceived as a threat to its interests. America is trapped by its acquiescence to the U.S., which is the government controlling the empire.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Bravo Hungary!!

By Free West Media

It is well-known that Hungary put up a border fence, but how does it really work to keep migrants out? It appears to be a multiple-layer border fence stopping illegal migration to the country almost totally. The legal framework is nothing short of astounding.

The main ruse of all Soros-funded NGOs is constant litigation. Today, most illegal immigrants enter countries in the EU legally but overstay or violate whatever visa they may have obtained.

When the illegals get detained waiting for a deportation trial, lawyers employed by NGOs funded by billionaire George Soros, have unlimited funds to plead for their release.

The litigation overcrowds detention centers, because the longer the deportation legal process takes, the fewer deportations can be carried out.

If the detention center overflows, the authorities have no other option but to let the low-risk migrants back into the population where they disappear. This is called catch-and-release, done to prevent the system from becoming overburdened.

The genius solution of the Viktor Orbán government to this particular problem, is that the border fence is not actually on the border. It is situated a few meters from it. So there is a strip of land which is legally Hungary, before the migrants hit the fence.

In some zones, the border fence cuts deep into Hungarian territory, creating large areas of Hungary outside of the fence. These are called “transit zones”.
When a migrant is caught inside Hungary, he is instantly transferred to the transit zone, through one of the gates. This act is not deportation, but detention as the migrant is still in Hungary.

Lawyers from these NGOs can do nothing to intervene since there are no legal remedies available to migrants inside Hungary, technically speaking.
The migrant is able is approach one of the barracks set up inside these zones where he could present an asylum request, wait for its processing and the subsequent court appeal if he is rejected.

The point is that while the migrant is waiting, he is outside of the fence, so he is not actually in Hungary, although legally he is.

The zone has no fence on the border side, so migrants are free to leave that way – back to where they came from. This measure obviously prevents overcrowding. Most migrants do not wait around for their trials, but go back to try to cross the border somewhere where it is easier to get into the EU.

But by not being present for a trial, the case is then dismissed.
So it does not matter how long it takes before a migrant is legally deported from Hungary, because he never entered Hungary and never burdened the state, since most of them leave the zone.

Posted by  ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Inequality!!

By Thomas Woods

I just finished reading an article on "the new American aristocracy" in The Atlantic. The subtitle included this predictable reproof: "You're probably part of the problem."

It's the usual breast-beating about inequality, and -- of course -- the out-of-hand rejection of the possibility that some folks may make better decisions than others.

No, no, citizen. Why, to think that way would be to "blame the victim"!

(I've discussed the numbers and the details of inequality numerous times on the Tom Woods Show, incidentally.)

We are instead to believe that tens of millions of Americans are the passive victims of an impersonal "system" that keeps them down. All the responsibility and good behavior in the world can't deliver them from this wily trap, we are solemnly assured.

Naturally there are plenty of cases of people who through no fault of their own are in precarious situations, and in my personal life I've been all too happy to help those people.

But we are truly delusional if we do not recognize that some people hold juvenile, even destructive ideas about money, wealth, and work, and that this is why they do not make progress.

Time after time I've tried to help people we've come across who have struggled financially. And in all but one case, the money did no good. A lack of money was only superficially their problem.

The Atlantic complains about schools and their alleged lack of resources. But the schools do not lack resources -- $12K per student per year ought to be plenty to convey basic knowledge to students, yet surveys of American adults reveal them to be woefully ignorant of even the basics of science, history, or politics.

Meanwhile, the student population has increased by about eight percent since 1970, but nonteaching staff has increased by a mind-boggling 130 percent.

That's not the one percent's fault.

As for this being a uniquely difficult time to be alive, I've consistently dissented.

On my podcast I advertise a service I deeply believe in: Skillshare, which offers access to over 20,000 classes, each of which will make you a more in-demand professional, or will teach you a skill you can use to make a living. (The deal they're running now is two months' access for 99 cents.)

They don't pay me anything for mentioning them in this email, of course. But they're such a great example that I can't restrain myself.

Likewise, Udemy lets you take top-notch courses on anything under the sun. Here again you can learn a marketable skill in your spare time, from the comfort of your home.

This -- and a million other novelties like it -- is a veritable miracle. Nobody had opportunities like this before today. We cannot let the inequality hysteria distract us from these extraordinary advances.

Oddly enough, the article admits the following:

"In total population, average life expectancy, material wealth, artistic expression, rates of violence, and almost every other measure that matters for the quality of human life, the modern world is a dramatically different place than anything that came before."

So the moment you've decided to complain is the moment in history where world economies can support more people than ever before, and where the indicators of human well-being are at all-time highs?

But then we get this:

"Historians offer many complicated explanations for this happy turn in human events—the steam engine, microbes, the weather—but a simple answer precedes them all: equality."

Wait, so you're not even going to mention the historians who think economic freedom might have had a teensy bit to do with this explosion of wealth? Not so much as a word about that?

Or there's Deirdre McCloskey, who argues that it was an ideological change, a change in the way in which we view commerce and the people who engage in it, that made this extraordinary world possible.

Nope. "Microbes" and "the weather" are what we're told about.

But the idea that equality yielded us all this is most preposterous of all.

Equality in the sense that no artificial barrier prevents someone from rising above his original station is certainly important, but this is never the kind of equality the folks at The Atlantic have in mind.

In fact, the explosion in wealth that is conceded in the article occurred in the face of tremendous inequality.

Ludwig von Mises noted that in the old days, the rich man traveled in a coach-and-four, while the poor man traveled on foot. Today, the rich man travels in a fancy car while the poor man travels in a beat-up car.

That represents a dramatic decrease in inequality.

Average people now enjoy amenities that the richest monarchs of Europe could scarcely have imagined.

The world's greatest orchestras can be piped into our homes at the push of a button. The great works of literature are a mouse click away. We can take courses from the world's greatest universities without paying a dime.

Let that sink in. It's like science fiction.

And our complaint is that some people are really rich?

All of us are rich.

All of us -- even our poorest -- enjoy living standards and opportunities for enrichment that should make us full of joy and gratitude to be alive.

How dare we be ungrateful or envious.

The things I do on my laptop to support my family would have been inconceivable even 20 years ago.


Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

The New Policing

Your humble editor finds this posting more disturbing than usual for reasons related to nostalgia for "the way we were".

By Charles Goyette

We are all the beneficiaries of former CIA senior official Ray McGovern’s participation in the public debate. The more visibility he has, the more people that hear him, the better I like it.

I still treasure the moment when Ray confronted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about his Iraq war lies.

In the opening days of the elective war on Iraq Rumsfeld had made the outlandish claim the he knew where the non-existent WMDs were. When McGovern confronted the Pentagon chief in 2006 at a public forum in Atlanta, Rumsfeld pivoted to the brazen denial, insisting that he had said no such a thing – never mind that this is the electronic media age, and all anyone had to do was “roll the tape” to watch Rumsfeld’s balderdash.
 Rumsfeld on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, March 2003: “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.”

I was especially glad to see Rumsfeld held to account, because my employer at the time, broadcast giant Clear Channel Communications, had “suspended” me for a day from my prime time talk show for calling Rumsfeld “the worst secretary of Defense since Robert Strange McNamara.”

Rumsfeld was eventually squeezed out of office when a growing number of admirals and generals, retired and with nothing to lose, began to complain about his incompetence.

Ray McGovern distinguished himself again last week at the Senate confirmation hearing for Trump’s torturer, Bloody Gina Haspel, to head the CIA.

While the evidence-destroying Haspel was untouched during her appearance before the Senate committee, Ray McGovern, who has actually served his country with integrity, was wrestled to the floor and dragged out.  See it HERE.

Take note of the way the thugs who took Ray down immediately began shouting the mantra “Stop resisting arrest.” They are

trained like performing seals to do this so that prosecutors can pile up phony charges. Watch the 78-year old Ray being swarmed and see if there is anything other than someone protecting himself from being dragged about and roughed up. But if a defendant as much as raises his hands to protect his face, or if his limbs don’t contort in the way the detaining thugs demand, the petty authoritarian’s catch-all charge of resisting arrest is waiting in the wings.

My friend Marc Victor, the best known criminal defense attorney in Arizona, is admired for his professional skill, tenacity, and principles.  Marc has represented more than 2,000 defendants, numerous high-profile cases, federal and state alike. His law firm, Attorneys for Freedom, is staffed with attorneys who share Marc’s pro-freedom views. And yet for all his experience, Marc confesses that it wasn’t until he had his own run in with goons shouting the obligatory “stop resisting arrest,” that he really understood the depth of the criminal justice system’s dark side.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

The Swiss Push Back

From Ammoland.com

Fairfax, VA – As NRA-ILA reported on April 27, peaceful Switzerland is in the crosshairs of international and domestic gun control advocates who are intent on abolishing the idyllic nation’s tradition of an armed citizenry. Using the 2017 changes to the European Firearms Directive as justification, these foreign and home-grown forces are attempting to burden the tranquil republic with gun controls the Swiss people have continually rejected. However, as was pointed out in a recent Bloomberg article, many Swiss citizens are refusing to take this assault on their inalienable rights and national sovereignty lying down.

In the Swiss tradition of neutrality, Switzerland is not a member of the European Union. However, Switzerland is a member of the Schengen Agreement, which created the Schengen Area. Schengen Area states have abolished the international border checks between them and permit the free movement of people throughout the area.

As members of the Schengen Area, non-EU members Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Lichtenstein are obligated to comply with certain EU laws. In 2017, the EU imposed further firearms restrictions on its Member States when it enacted a new version of the European Firearms Directive. Under the European Firearms Directive, all Member States, and those under the Schengen Agreement, are required to meet a minimum threshold of gun restrictions. The 2017 update enacted more stringent firearms registration and licensing requirements, and re-categorized certain types of semi-automatic firearms and their magazines in a way that nearly prohibits civilian possession.

The Swiss Federal Council has put forward gun control legislation that would bring the country’s gun laws in line with the new Firearms Directive, contending that the onerous new rules would require “little effort” from gun owners.

As NRA-ILA previously noted and the Bloomberg piece reiterates, Swiss gun rights group ProTell and the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) are leading the charge against the new legislation.

Referencing a Firearms Directive provision that would make it harder for Swiss citizens to possess semi-automatic firearms and the Swiss tradition of permitting members of the militia to possess their military rifle after service, Bloomberg quoted ProTell Secretary-General Robin Udry as stating, “It would mean that the day you leave the army, you’re no longer trusted with your SIG 550 and treated like a potential terrorist or criminal.”Udry went on to explain, “In Switzerland, these kind of guns are all very well-controlled, so why should we now accept legislation from the EU when we don’t have this problem?”

In a piece for the SVP website, National Councilor David Zuberbühler outlined the party’s position on the new EU gun law. Zuberbühler explained that complying with the new rules would result in more bureaucracy and less security, by requiring the Swiss cantons to establish large and costly administrative schemes. Noting that the new restrictions would do nothing to combat terrorism, the councilor explained that violent criminals would acquire their weapons on the black market. Zuberbühler also pointed out that in 2011 Swiss citizens had the opportunity to adopt strict gun controls through a referendum. These gun restrictions were rejected at the polls.

Further, there is increasing evidence that Swiss citizens are gearing up for a fight. According to English-language Swiss news site Swissinfo.ch, ProTell membership rose 44 percent from June 2017 to April 2018, fueled by opposition to the new EU gun restrictions. The site quoted interim ProTell President Jean-Luc Addor, who said, “This increase shows that more and more citizens are worried about their rights and freedoms in this country.”Confident in the Swiss people’s respect for their right to keep and bear arms, ProTell has warned politicians that it is prepared to gather the 50,000 signatures necessary to hold a referendum to reject the new EU gun laws.

As with other attempts to exert national sovereignty in the face of the EU superstate, some have resorted to fear tactics to force the Swiss to comply with the new Firearms Directive. According to the Bloomberg piece, Pierre-Alain Fridez of the Swiss Socialist party has warned that if the Swiss do not capitulate, they would be thrown “out of Schengen” and would “lose the freedom of movement.” Swedish Green Party Member of European Parliament Bodil Valero had a similar warning, stating that a failure to comply “would drive a wedge between the EU and Switzerland and could lead to sanction measures.”

Director of the Global Studies Institute at the University of Geneva Rene Schwok offered a more measured take on the potential referendum. Schwok explained, “The Federal Council and the parliaments will ultimately not automatically abandon Schengen just because of this vote…They will try to negotiate an arrangement with Brussels.”
NRA-ILA will continue to monitor Swiss gun rights supporters’ battle to preserve their republican heritage of an armed citizenry and will apprise our members of the latest developments in this vital fight for freedom.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

U.S. Spin Machine State Department

By Michael Rozeff

The new Secretion [sic] of State wants a new map of the Meddle East. To that end, he’s trumpeting propaganda on Iran, such as:
“I think Rouhani and Zarif need to explain why it’s the case that while this agreement was in place, Iran continued its march across the Middle East.”
What march? There hasn’t been any Iranian march! If Iran had invaded anyone, the noise at the U.N. would have been deafening.

By contrast, the U.S. marched, flew, drove, rolled and sailed into Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

If anyone is on the march in the Meddle East, it is the U.S.

Besides, the Iran nuclear deal didn’t preclude either Iran or the U.S. from altering their political, economic and military influence in other countries. Pompeo’s rhetoric is totally fraudulent. The new Secretion of State comes across as a man fond of deception.

Pompeo lies. He claims Iran has “now fired missiles into an airport where Americans travel each day in Riyadh.” Those responsible for firing missiles at Riyadh’s airport haven’t been identified as Iranians. A Reuters report says otherwise: “Yemen’s Houthis fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia’s capital on Wednesday.”

Pompeo knows he’s exaggerating, misleading and lying. His purpose is to create an image of Iran that’s so negative that Trump can have a free hand in choosing Iranian targets to attack, and can place Iran on the defensive, and can justify Israeli attacks, and can justify Saudi forces in Syria.

Iran definitely has advanced its influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and what’s left of Palestine ever since the U.S. lost its control of Iran in 1979. So what? Let these countries deal with their own affairs. U.S. meddling and missteps in the Meddle East going back for 70+ years have brought about its own loss of influence.

There was never good reason, including oil security, for the U.S. to have gotten so deeply involved in this region. The price of oil security has been demonstrably exorbitant. There has never been good reason for the U.S. to aim at controlling Meddle East governments, supplying vast armaments, participating in wars, all the while choosing up allies and making enemies. The entire project of empire and oil security has been fruitless. To continue this posture now with the aim of controlling Iran’s aspirations is equally irrational.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ

Another Lost War About to Begin?

By Eric Margolis

Israel launched waves of air attacks and ground shelling on a score of alleged Iranian military positions in Syria this week.   Was this a big step forward in the plan by Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally Donald Trump to provoke a major war with Iran?

It certainly looks so.  The US, Saudi Arabia and Israel all recently suffered a stinging defeat in Syria. Their campaign to overthrow the Assad government in Damascus by using the rag-tag ISIS movement, then Sunni Muslim jihadist wild men, was defeated by the Syrian Army, backed by Russian air power, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and some Iranian militia groups and army advisors.

Israel now claims to have wiped out more than a score of Iranian positions in Syria.  As far as we can tell, these were minor logistics or communications facilities, not the backbone of a supposed Iranian offensive against Israel.

In fact, the alleged Iranian rocket barrage was directed at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that were illegally annexed and occupied after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and are still held, legally, as part of Syria. Israel is very nervous about having world attention drawn to its continued occupation of the strategic Golan Heights from which Israeli heavy artillery can reach Damascus.

But now that the Trump administration has fallen fully under the influence of the pro-war neocons, an attempt to overthrow the Iranian government appears highly likely, using both military intervention and intensified economic warfare.

Iran has been under siege by the US since the American/British installed shah was overthrown by a popular revolution in 1979. The CIA and Britain’s MI6 have mounted numerous attempts to oust the Islamic Republic and re-install a client ruler.

Ironically, the ‘democratic’ western powers – the US, Britain and France – rely on medieval monarchs and dictators to control the Mideast while democratic politicians and movements are ignored.  Iran, in spite of its many rigidities and failings, remains one of the region’s more democratic states.   Ask our Saudi or Kuwaiti allies when was the last time they held a real election?

The failure of western intelligence services to provoke serious uprisings in Iran (or Russia), means that the military option is increasingly tempting.   This probably means provoking military clashes with Iran in the Gulf leading to full-scale attacks on its nuclear infrastructure and industry.   US warplanes and warships are actively probing Iran’s borders.  In addition, US forces are getting ever more deeply involved in the Yemen War.

When the US last considered a major attack on Iran during the Bush years, the Pentagon (which opposed the idea) estimated it would need 2,800 air strikes against Iran on Day One alone.

Many of the same war party crowd that engineered the 2003 US invasion of Iraq are now running the Trump administration.  Their goal is to cripple Iran and leave the Mideast to joint Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli control.

Recall President George W. Bush’s assertion that once he had crushed Iraq the next targets of US military intervention would be Lebanon, Syria, Iran and then Pakistan.

Invading Iran would not be easy.  Iran has very little capability to project power beyond its borders.  Its air force, artillery and tanks are decrepit.  America controls the skies from Morocco to Afghanistan.  Iran is vulnerable to raids and small incursions but subjugating this large, mountainous nation of 80 million would be very difficult.

In fact, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander once told me, ‘let the Americans invade. They will break their teeth on Iran.’  Over-confidence, of course, but he had a point.  Fighting on the defensive in urban areas, Iran could offer fierce resistance.

America’s imperial machine, like its British Imperial predecessor, likes small, easy wars against small, backwards nations.  Iran would be very different.

As we have just seen with North Korea, Iran’s best survival strategy, short of security guarantees by Russia and China, would be to race to produce a small number of nuclear weapons to deter attacks by the US and Israel.

Europe, which co-sponsored the Iran nuclear act and is now humiliated by Trump reneging on the deal, is too weak and disorganized to guarantee the pact and stand up to Washington.  This is too bad.  Now would have been a fine time for the EU to assert its independence from US hegemony and begin building its own independent European military forces.

Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ