Wikileaks' Julian Assange to Join RPI Conference!

Daniel McAdams — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 17:46:37 GMT

The Ron Paul Institute's second annual Washington, D.C. conference got a shot in the arm over the weekend, as Wikileaks founder and chief editor Julian Assange agreed to open up the Whistleblowers Roundtable with a talk on the recent US Senate and Director of Central Intelligence attacks on Wikileaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence agency." Assange's appearance at the conference could not be more timely, as it looks like US intelligence is about to take more "active measures" against Wikileaks for publishing information that the spy agencies find embarrassing. Freedom of the press is under attack in the United States and Julian Assange will tell us what is at stake. There are few tickets to this event. Get yours here.

One Way to End Drug War Violence

Jacob G. Hornberger — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 16:38:55 GMT

Two police officers in Kissimmee, Florida, were recently shot and killed while investigating illegal drug activity in a dangerous part of town. According to the New York Times, government officials praised the officers for their service and asked Floridians to pray for other law-enforcement personnel. President Trump weighed in with a tweet in which he offered his thoughts and prayers for the Kissimmee police and their families.

There is one big thing about that picture, however: It is the drug war itself, which Trump and, no doubt, most of the Kissimmee police department, favor, that is the reason that those two police officers are dead. If drugs were legal, those two dead police officers would not have been investigating illegal drug activity because there would be no illegal drug activity.

Take a look at this very interesting and revealing article in yesterday’s New York Times about a DEA agent named Enrique Camarena. He too is dead, having been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in 1985 by a Mexican drug gang. Not surprisingly, the DEA went ballistic over the murder and pulled out all the stops, including violent kidnapping, to bring the malefactors to justice.

One big thing to notice, however: It is the drug war itself, which most DEA agents favor, that brought about Camarena’s death. If drugs had been legal, Camarena wouldn’t have been in Mexico investigating illegal drug activity because there wouldn’t have been any illegal drug activity.

Consider this article from yesterday’s Washington Post, entitled “Acapulco is Now Mexico’s Murder Capital.” Why are there so many murders in Acapulco? Because of the drug war. If drugs were legal, there would be no more drug-war murders in Acapulco because there would no longer be a drug war.

In the early days of the drug war, proponents could innocently say, “We had no idea that drug laws would produce violence and, therefore, we are not really responsible, in a moral sense, for the consequences of this government program that we support.”

However, after decades of drug-law experience, no one can innocently make that claim. Drug laws have brought into existence drug gangs, drug lords, drug cartels, and drug violence, much like alcohol Prohibition brought into existence Al Capone and his spree of violence. At some point, the proponent of drug laws loses his innocence and must inevitably acknowledge that he himself is morally culpable for the death and destruction that accompanies a government program that he himself supports.

Mexico used to be a wonderful place to visit. And a safe place. American tourists in Acapulco and other parts of Mexico didn’t have to worry about drug-war violence because there was no drug war. The drug war changed all that. It converted Mexico into a hell-hole of violence, much like it has done in the Philippines.

Ever since the 1960s, we have become accustomed to those great big, well-publicized drug busts, especially when they involve some big drug lord. When that happens, there are all sorts of accolades for drug enforcement officers. They almost always call it a watershed event in the war on drugs. They send drug lords to jail for decades.

And then something interesting happens. The drug war goes on, as if nothing had happened. Those great big drug busts have had no effect on the drug-war process. The NYT article about Camarena explains why this is so. As soon as they bust a drug lord or a drug cartel, he or it is immediately replaced by new drug lords or drug cartels. If they are busted, they’re replaced by still more. The process is endless because the more they crack down, the higher the profits that are to be made from drug deals. The higher profits inevitably attract more unsavory and more violent people into the business.

There is only one way to put these people out of business, and it isn’t more drug busts and more criminal prosecutions. That one way is drug legalization. Legalizing drugs means no more black market, no more drug lords, and no more drug gangs or cartels. They immediately go out of business because they cannot compete in a legalized market. So, all the cops who are currently being killed investigating illegal drug activity will no longer be killed because there won’t be any more illegal drug activity to investigate.

The best thing Mexican officials could do for the Mexican people is to legalize drugs. Legalizing drugs would bring an immediate end to all the drug-war violence in Mexico. It’s what drug lords, drug gangs, and drug cartels fear most because they know that drug legalization would put them out of business immediately. Sure, US officials would be livid and would scream to the rafters in protest. But drug legalization would restore a peaceful society to Mexico, one that American tourists would soon start returning to.

Why would US officials be so angry? Because the drug war has become big business for many in the federal bureaucracy. You’ve got an enormous bureaucratic army of judges, prosecutors, law enforcement personnel, clerks, and CIA agents whose livelihood depends on the drug war. They know that if drugs were legalized, many of them would be twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do, which is precisely why they continue to support the drug war knowing full well that dead law-enforcement officers come with it.

Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation.

I Predict a 'RIOT' as Dissent in American Media Becomes Illegitimate

Bryan MacDonald — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 14:46:36 GMT

Since the German Marshall Fund of the United States unveiled its “Alliance For Securing Democracy (AFSD)," I’ve resisted commenting, simply because the lobby group’s “Hamilton 68 dashboard” is too preposterous to merit serious analysis.

It has rightly been ridiculed by journalists and activists who never tire of knocking the Kremlin.

The portal purports to use “600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence efforts online” to prove how Moscow is trying to sow seeds of doubt in the Western political system, via the social network. However, the creators won’t reveal the users concerned, and results seem to suggest they are mostly members of the US alt-right and alt-left. Meaning this is yet another attempt to pass off American dissent as some Kremlin “Psy-op.” Which is beyond ridiculous.

Furthermore, the names behind AFSD betray the project’s real purpose: to shift blame from internal American and European factors to the convenient Russian bogeyman. Which, of course, suits its financial backers, including the State Department, NATO, and the ubiquitous weapons maker Raytheon. All of whom benefit commercially and politically from strained ties between Moscow and Washington.

To achieve these goals they’ve hired the usual roll call of reliably anti-Russia blowhards. Including Estonian-American politician Ilves Toomas and rent-a-quote talking head Michael McFaul, the 'Mother Theresa of the Russia beat.' Those two are joined by neoconservative windbag William Kristol and ex-CIA chief Michael Morell.

Convert zeal

The dashboard itself is helmed by a chap named J.M. Berger, who was apparently an expert on ISIS and the Middle East, before discovering the Russia-bashing gravy train this summer. This week, he’s taken to the pages of Politico to explain his plaything. What follows is best described as an inept and ignorant form of thrift-store McCarthyism.

Berger tells us how his dashboard displays “the near-real-time output of Russian Influence Operations on Twitter.” Something he calls RIOT, for short. And he cites things like RT’s coverage of Vladimir Putin’s recent pike fishing trip, a jaunt also prominently featured in The New York Times, The Daily Mail and The Sun, which incidentally described Putin as a “beefcake.” Meaning, either Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch are Russian agents, or this contention is just farcical.

The lobbyist also frets over this network’s widely-shared report on Oliver Stone’s Facebook post “condemning US sanctions against Russia and claiming US intelligence agencies are engaged in a 'false flag' war against Russia.” Which exposes a total lack of comprehension of how news works. Because Stone is one of Hollywood’s most famous figures and his name attached to a perspective like this was bound to attract plenty of attention, regardless of the messenger. It’s also worth pointing out (for the really obtuse) that RT obviously doesn’t control Stone’s Facebook and was merely bringing to a wider audience the American writer and director’s personal beliefs.

The examples become ever stranger. Berger bemoans “conspiracy theories seeking to discredit Bana al-Abed, a young girl in Syria who tweeted about the civil war.” But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest the then seven-year-old was manipulated to serve a propaganda effort. Especially after a press interview revealed how the child couldn't understand even rudimentary English, despite issuing hundreds of perfectly crafted tweets in the language.

Rock Bottom

Our hero descends further into hogwash when observing how “the most retweeted Russia Today stories recorded by the dashboard involved scaremongering videos appearing to show refugees swarming into Spain.” But, two weeks ago, a boatful of migrants did land on a Spanish tourist beach, near Cadiz, and quickly scattered to evade police detection. And numerous outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian and the BBC prominently reported the story. But apparently, it's only an issue when RT gives it coverage.

But the garrulous quack isn’t finished, asserting how RT “treads relatively carefully in their flirtation with the far right, and they devote a significant amount of space to the far left as well.” Hardly news, given how the channel openly admits offering a platform for alternative voices, regardless of their political compass. Incidentally, a mirror image of what America’s state broadcaster’s RFE/RL and VOA do in Russia where they laboriously detail the travails of nationalist politicians like Alexei Navalny and their leftist counterparts, such as Sergei Udaltsov. This is what alternative media does in every market, but it seems to be only unusual when “the Russians” are involved.

Berger does concede one salient point: “it is important to note here again that we are not asserting Russia is responsible for creating or shaping this content,” he writes. Which suggests he fully understands how his project is geared to smear anybody who opposes US policy as working for Moscow’s interests.

Yellow press

But, not content with mulching around the bottom of the barrel, he reaches into the depths when he states “while the alt-right has a very real base of support in the United States, it also enjoys deep and undisputed ties to Russia, many of which can be found offline in the real world." Amazingly, the link he uses to justify his contention is a Daily Beast article on how American white supremacist Richard Spencer was married to an ethnic Russian. The lady involved has no profile in Russia, doesn’t live in the country and is a follower of a fringe philosopher called Alexander Dugin. Who is so far outside the Russian mainstream that he can't even hold down a job in Moscow.

The fact Berger has to descend to such irrelevant tittle-tattle to score a few points tells us all we need to know about the moral bankruptcy of the Alliance For Securing Democracy. This is pathetic, miserable and feeble stuff and the German Marshall Fund of the United States should be ashamed of themselves for financing this sort of muck.

Reprinted with permission from RT.

Trump and Korea. I’m Also Scared

Eric Margolis — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 14:50:25 GMT

President Trump’s ability to trigger a nuclear war is "pretty damn scary" said former US intelligence director James Clapper this week. Remember when Trump vowed to "bomb the shit" out of his enemies?

I don’t have much respect for Clapper, who brazenly lied to Congress and is a ringleader of the deep government’s efforts to overthrow Trump. But this time, Clapper is 100 percent right. He’s scared and I am too.

This week, Trump proclaimed he would continue the pointless, stalemated US colonial war in Afghanistan and might ask India to help there – a sure-fire way to bring nuclear-armed India and Pakistan into a terrifying confrontation.

Meanwhile, Trump has backed himself into a corner over North Korea. His threats and bombast have not made the North’s leader Kim Jong-un stop threatening to launch nuclear-armed missiles at the US island of Guam, Hawaii, Japan and South Korea. That is, if the US and South Korea keep up their highly provocative annual military war games on North Korea’s borders that each year invoke North Korea’s fury.

The Pentagon insists these war games are just a routine military exercise. But that’s not the view in Pyongyang, and, as a long-time Korea military analyst, not mine.

North Korea, which faces the 500,000-man South Korean Army (ROK) most of which is just down the main highway, has good reason to be nervous. I’ve been with the 1st ROK Division up on and under the Demilitarized Zone. The South Koreans are heavily armed with top line equipment and tough as nails. They are backed by massive US/South Korean air and naval power.

North Koreans are well aware that Egypt deceived Israel in the 1973 war by using frequent military exercises to mask its plans to storm the Suez Canal. It worked. Israel was caught flat footed by the surprise Egyptian attack on the canal.

By refusing a peace to end the 1950-53 Korean War, and by continuing economic and political warfare against North Korea, the US has only itself to blame for North Korea developing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Kim Jong-un saw what happened to Libya’s Khadaffi (thanks to Hillary Clinton) and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Trump is now in a serious fix over North Korea. Jong-un has called Trump’s bluff and sneered at the Donald’s fire and brimstone threats. So Trump’s choices are to back away from the Korean crisis he created or else attack North Korea. But the North’s weapons and leadership are very well dispersed and deeply dug into the mountains. A US conventional attack on the North is estimated to cost 250,000 American casualties.

The US can certainly knock out some of Kim’s medium and longer-ranged missiles in a major blitz, but it can’t be certain that a few nuclear tipped N. Korean missiles won’t survive to strike Japan, South Korea, Hawaii, Okinawa or Guam – and maybe even Los Angeles and San Francisco. It is unlikely that South Korea and the US can decapitate North Korea’s leadership by using conventional weapons – starting with Kim Jong-un.

Unless, of course, Trump, who managed to avoid Vietnam era military service because of a bump on his foot, decides to go nuclear. This would mean hitting North Korea with a score or more nuclear weapons, large and small, before the North could riposte. North Korea would be totally destroyed, and its 25 million people left dying, maimed or starving. Japan, the world’s third largest economy, would also be shattered.

Nuclear fallout would shower South Korea, Northern China, and Pacific Russia – and eventually blow east to the US and Canadian west coasts. If the Trump administration decided to use nuclear weapons against North Korea, then why not in Afghanistan? The temptation will be obvious.

President Dwight Eisenhower refused pleas by France to use nuclear weapons to rescue the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. Trump may not be as cautious. He can’t afford to be seen backing away from the Korean crisis. His aides clearly did not think through the ramification of his bellicose threats against North Korea. Bullies tend to grow lazy.

That’s why I’m as nervous as Lt. Gen. Clapper.

Reprinted with permission from LewRockwell.com.

Trump’s New Strategy for Afghanistan Is Neither New, nor a Strategy, nor Trump’s

James George Jatras — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 12:46:21 GMT

For some time it has been clear that the White House of President Donald Trump was convulsed with a struggle among various court factions vying for the Emperor’s ear. Crudely oversimplified, these are variously described as:

1. The military "Junta" (Generals McMaster, National Security Council; Mattis, Pentagon; and Kelly, White House Chief of Staff;

2. The Goldman-Sachs "Globalists" (preeminently First Daughter Ivanka and First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner);

3. The "Populist-Nationalists" ("the two Steves" Bannon and Miller); and

4. The Regular Republicans who, to their credit, in 2016 chose to join the Trump populist movement over more conventionally "conservative" GOP candidates (Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway).

It is understood that the first two factions were generally allied against the second two. Following Priebus’s ouster, the bellwether would be who got tossed out next: Bannon or McMaster. It was Bannon.

On August 18, with Bannon’s defenestration, it became clear that the Junta and the Globalists were firmly in charge. The only outliers left – besides somebody named Trump – are Conway and Miller. We’ll see how long they last. Any of them.

The immediate impact of the Junta/Globalist victory in the internal struggle was renewed sharp rhetoric against North Korea (Bannon’s suggestion the there was no acceptable military option may have been one proximate cause of his ejection) and, even more so, Trump’s speech on Afghanistan on August 21 in front of a military audience.

Before addressing the specifics, it’s important to note that his remarks not only signaled a humiliating defeat of Trumpism within Trump’s own administration but reflected the damage done by the vicious attacks he has suffered for speaking the truth about events in Charlottesville. His offense: to affirm that responsibility for violence lay not only with the "white nationalists" but also with the armed Antifa "protesters" bent on attacking them. In fact, to anyone with a fair mind watching the TV coverage, it was clear that the violence overwhelmingly came from the latter, abetted by the evidently deliberate decision of Virginia Governor and likely 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Terry McAuliffe to withdraw police separation of the two sides and herd the nationalists up against Antifa.

While not mentioning Charlottesville by name, the entire beginning section of Trump’s Afghanistan speech – his first prime time televised address to the nation as president – stuck to a politically correct script, ritually intoning that "there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, and no tolerance for hate." (In yet another zigzag, the very next night, at a rally with cheering supporters in Phoenix, Trump read back aloud his previous comments on Charlottesville and denounced Antifa. The media, notably CNN, dissolved in a deranged fit of rage.)

As to what he now plans for Afghanistan:

It’s not new, it’s same-old same-old: Aside from a few Trumpish rhetorical flourishes, it was a speech that could have been given by President Hillary Clinton or President Jeb Bush. In substance, it was a rehash of the failures of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Only a few details changed. He will loosen rules of engagement for US forces, which among other things will mean more dead Afghans and more Taliban recruits. He will boost troop numbers but won’t tell the enemy – or the American people – by how many; the number 4,000 has been kicked around, but who knows. Finally, no timetables will "guide our strategy," just "conditions on the ground," but what those conditions need to be for us to finally get out are not described either. Nor is there any clue as to how boosting American numbers to about 13,000 will accomplish what 100,000 couldn’t.

"We will ask our NATO allies and global partners to support our new strategy with additional troop and funding increases in line with our own," said the President. "We are confident they will." Pure fantasy. On the other hand, Trump completely ignored Afghanistan’s record opium production. Evidently promising to stamp that out would be just too fantastical.

It’s not a strategy, it’s just a policy: One of the problems with being entirely guided by military men is their tendency to focus on their tactical tradecraft. Hopefully that’s something they’re good at. But their knowledge and skill, though vitally important, doesn’t of itself constitute a strategy. Or put another way, professional military men can tell a policymaker how to accomplish what he wants, but they can’t tell him what he wants. The result is a policy composed of various tactics that don’t add up to much of anything except more of what we’ve seen since 2001.

We will not engage in nation-building, said Trump, or tell Afghans how to live. This could mean no more nagging them over laws mandating the killing of apostates or about women’s rights. ("Don’t throw acid in the face of little girls because they attend school. That’s not nice.") We weren’t doing much of that anyway, but now it’s official: Americans are fighting to make Afghanistan safe for Sharia. (Paradoxically, Trump was reportedly convinced that Afghanistan is not doomed to be a Hobbesian abode of savages by McMaster’s showing him a picture of mini-skirted Afghan female students from the 1970s. As Justin Raimondo points out, the good general surely neglected to mention the reason there are no more mini-skirts to be seen is because of our support, with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Mission accomplished!)

On the other hand, is it telling Afghans how to live when Trump promised to root out corruption? (What Americans are calling corruption is what in Afghanistan is usually just called "life.") Indeed, very little was said about what the Afghan government thinks about the "new" plan. But then again, we barely care what Seoul thinks about deploying the THAAD system in South Korea, so why should we ask the opinions of an Afghan government that wouldn’t last a week without American support? One is reminded of the Soviet-era quip that Afghanistan was the most peace-loving country in the world. Why? Because it doesn’t even interfere in its own internal affairs.

Regionally, Trump vowed to force Pakistan to stop providing safe haven for the Taliban (sure, that will work) and to get India more involved. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that in addition to "putting the pressure on Pakistan" Washington would "put the pressure on India that they have to be part of the political solution." Just like we "pressure" North Korea, or "pressure" China on Korea and the South China Sea, and "pressure" Russia on Syria, Ukraine, what have you. Pressure, pressure, pressure! Doesn’t anyone in Washington know how to talk with anyone to seek common interests? Why no mention of the three regional powers – Russia, China, and Iran – that like India (but unlike Pakistan) don’t want an Afghanistan ruled by Salafists? Now that could be a strategy.

It’s not Trump’s policy, it’s the Swamp’s: Trump pretty much let the cat out of the bag when he conceded that his first impulse was to get out of Afghanistan. (Interestingly the reflexively pro-war Washington Post and National Review published calls for the US to withdraw our forces, saying Trump’s earlier instinct was right! Be prepared for them to rip out his liver when things turn out badly.) But then Trump talked with the big boys with the short haircuts who explained the facts of life to him. He seems to have bought the Swamp’s line that because Obama "hastily and mistakenly withdrew from Iraq" the result was ISIS. Nonsense. ISIS came into being because (a) we invaded Iraq in the first place and (b) for years Obama armed terrorists seeking to overthrow the government of Syria, continuing a policy in place since the 1980s Afghanistan war against the USSR. Given such assumptions, the most optimistic hope is for a "surge" like that in Iraq in 2007, which at least superficially stabilized Anbar province and Baghdad. Again, very optimistically, that could provide cover for us to withdraw our forces. More likely, given the fear of "hastily and mistakenly" withdrawing Obama-style, we will stay for an indefinite period amounting to a permanent occupation. After all, look how long we’ve been successfully stabilizing Germany, Japan, and South Korea!

The sad fact is that Trump almost certainly knows all this, at least on a gut level. What exactly the exact political alchemy is that has led him to this juncture is open for speculation. But what is not speculative is the grim fact that whether or not this is Trump’s policy, Afghanistan is now Trump’s war.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Unlike Trump, JFK Didn't Bend the Knee

Jacob G. Hornberger — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 13:39:58 GMT

NOTE: I’ll be speaking at the Ron Paul Institute’s Peace and Prosperity 2017 Conference. Saturday, September 9, from 9:30 am to 3:00 p.m., Washington Dulles Airport Marriott. Last year’s conference was a sell-out and this year’s conference promises to be even better. Only $75. I hope you’ll join us for a timely and very important conference. Register here.

Like President Trump, President Kennedy was subjected to the same type of pressure by the Pentagon and the CIA to engage in military action overseas. Unlike President Trump, however, Kennedy stood his ground and refused to succumb to the will of the national-security establishment. In fact, Kennedy is the only president in the post-World War II era who has stood up to the demands of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.”

After the CIA’s regime-change debacle at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, Kennedy never trusted the CIA again. It didn’t take long for him to have the same sentiment toward the Pentagon.

Like the CIA, the Pentagon was obsessed with regime change in Cuba. The national-security establishment was convinced that the United States would cease to exist with a communist “dagger” pointed at it from only 90 miles away. In the eyes of the Pentagon and the CIA, there was only one thing that could be done to save America — oust the communist regime in Cuba and replace it with a pro-US dictatorship, much like the Batista regime that that Fidel Castro had ousted from power in the Cuban Revolution.

The Pentagon understood the political and diplomatic problems associated with initiating a military attack another country, especially one that had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. After all, that’s what Japan had done with its undeclared surprise attack on US forces at Pearl Harbor, an act that US officials had vehemently condemned.

The CIA had tried to get around that problem with its Bay of Pigs invasion by trying to make it look like the invaders were simply an independent group of Cuban exiles rather than trained agents of the CIA.

The Pentagon got around the problem by coming up with a plan that would make it look like Cuba had started a war with the United States and that the United States was simply acting in self-defense. That’s what Operation Northwoods was all about. Unanimously approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the plan called for terrorist attacks to be carried out here in the United States and for hijackings of American planes.

Here is the kicker: The terrorists and the hijackers were going to be CIA agents who would be posing as communist agents of Fidel Castro. Under the plan, Pentagon and CIA officials, as well as President Kennedy, would exclaim, “Our country has, once again, been hit by a surprise attack, this time by Cuban communists who have attacked our nation and killed innocent Americans. We have the right to defend ourselves by invading Cuba and effecting regime change there.”

To Kennedy’s everlasting credit, he stood up to the national-security establishment’s pressure, remained true to his convictions, and said no to Operation Northwoods.

The Pentagon and the CIA also presented a plan to Kennedy that proposed a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It was to be a “preventive war” much like the one that some people today are recommending Trump initiate against North Korea.

In the early 1960s, the United States had vast nuclear superiority over the Soviets. The Pentagon’s argument was as follows: Since war with Russia was inevitable anyway at some point in the future, the United States would gain an enormous edge by initiating an all-out surprise nuclear attack on the entire Soviet Union. In such an attack, the United States would be able to knock most of the nuclear retaliatory capability of the Soviets, leaving only a few nuclear missiles that would likely be able to reach the United States.

When Kennedy asked the Joint Chiefs how many Americans would be estimated to die even given the limited amount of nuclear retaliation, they responded around 40 million, which would, in their eyes, mean that the United States would come out the winner because everyone in Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union would be dead.

Kennedy stood up to the Pentagon and said no. After he left that particular meeting, he indignantly remarked to an aide, “And we call ourselves the human race.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pentagon and the CIA were exerting enormous pressure on Kennedy to bomb and invade Cuba. In their eyes, the crisis presented them with the opportunity they had been waiting for — a justification for invading Cuba to destroy the Soviet offensive missiles that were being installed on the island — missiles, they were convinced, that were intended to initiate an attack on the United States.

The pressure on Kennedy from the national-security establishment grew so large that the president’s brother, Bobby, even expressed grave concerns over the possibility that the national-security establishment would remove Kennedy from power and take control of the federal government, with the aim of protecting national security and saving the country from communism.

Kennedy resisted the pressure and said no. Instead, he struck a deal with the Soviets in which he agreed that the Pentagon and the CIA would never invade Cuba in return for the Soviets’ withdrawal of their missiles. Additionally, Kennedy secretly agreed that the United States would withdraw its nuclear missiles in Turkey that were aimed at Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union. The national security establishment was livid, believing that Kennedy’s resolution of the crisis to be one of the worst defeats in US history and leaving US national security permanently threatened.

It’s a good thing that Kennedy refused to succumb to the Pentagon’s and CIA’s pressure to bomb and invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unbeknownst to the CIA, the Soviet commanders on the ground had fully armed nuclear missiles and had been given battlefield authority to fire them in the event of a bombing attack or an invasion by US forces. If Kennedy had succumbed to the pressure by ordering a bombing attack or an invasion, it is a virtual certainty that the result would have been all-out nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.

With his decision to surround himself with generals and, now, his flip flop on Afghanistan, it is painfully clear that President Trump has been absorbed into the national-security establishment and s now bending to its will. That’s too bad. But hey, maybe Trump is smarter than we give him credit for. Look at what happened to Kennedy. (See FFF’s ebooks JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne; The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger; Regime Change: The Kennedy Assassination by Jacob Hornberger; The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger; CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley.)

Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation.

US Liberals Cozy up to Antifa, America's Anti-Free Speech 'Taliban'

Robert Bridge — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 13:49:37 GMT

The liberal media is pushing the idea that any violence committed on the part of Antifa, the so-called "anti-fascist" leftist group, is acceptable if it is directed at the political right. Such delusional thinking will only lead to civil war.

Following the recent spate of violence that rocked Charlottesville after right-wing groups assembled to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, it became quickly apparent the US media had a dog in this fight. And a vicious dog at that.

Liberals howled in pain after Trump called out not only the aggressive tactics of the "alt-right," but of the "alt left" as well, saying there was “blame on both sides.”

Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart gave a startling apology for Antifa and its violent methods:

For starters, while antifa perpetrates violence, it doesn’t perpetrate it on anything like the scale that white nationalists do. It’s no coincidence that it was a Nazi sympathizer—and not an antifa activist—who committed murder in Charlottesville ... Second, antifa activists don’t wield anything like the alt-right’s power. White, Christian supremacy has been government policy in the United States for much of American history…

First, to suggest that Antifa is perpetrating "less violence" than that of its distant far-right cousin is a disingenuous and subjective appeal to moral relativism. Considering this anarchist group's tactics of hurling stones and incendiaries, swinging bats and utilizing home-made flame throwers, it is only due to sheer luck that nobody has been killed during one of their "protests." Equally disturbing is the anarchist group's reasoning for inciting violence, which is to shut down free speech and assembly on the part of the right. This they openly admit on their anarchist website, that carries the delightfully foreboding title, "It's Going Down."

Whatever one may think of the far right, shutting down free speech is not a defensible tactic. In fact, it comes off as absolutely fascist, and may explain why their members go to great lengths to conceal their identities – out of pure shame. What would their mothers say

In February, Berkeley University – once the proud bastion of the Free Speech Movement – descended into a war zone as black-masked Antifa members began setting fires, smashing windows and pulling down police barricades in a brazen effort to shut down a speech - yes, a speech - by far-right commentator, Milo Yiannopoulos (Conservative author Ann Coulter, YouTube sensation Lauren Southern, and others have also had their speaking engagements shut down). And there was absolutely nothing “defensive” about such an action; it was purely provocative. And worse, it worked. Berkeley should have firmly stood its ground, refusing to surrender one square inch to such barbaric tactics. Instead, forgetting that stuff can be replaced much easier than hard-fought civil liberties, Berkeley blinked at the first sound of breaking glass.

It must be emphasized that Yiannopoulos, a right-leaning homosexual with controversial views on everything from feminism to the moon landing, would never be confused as a neo-Nazi or white supremacist (nor could Coulter and Southern). He is simply a guy who wishes to engage in honest, healthy debate with regards to the shroud of political correctness that has settled upon the American landscape like Sharia Law. His only crime to date, aside from being white, I suppose, is that he conforms to conservative ideology, which, ever since Trump appeared on stage, ranks as a mortal sin among the far-left.

Though the right is certainly not beyond recrimination, I have yet to hear of any left-wing speakers being denied the right to give a speech at the venue of their choice. As a result, Antifa’s short-sighted strategy appears to be backfiring and actually creating a level of public animosity over their tactics (ironically, the very same thing happened to the communists in their fight against the Nazis). Just last week a petition was started to formally recognize Antifa as a terrorist organization. It has garnered almost 250,000 signatures, while the group has already been declared a terrorist group by the New Jersey Dept. of Homeland Security.

Pat Buchanan, former senior adviser to three US presidents, went so far as to equate the extreme left, which is now on a cross-country statue-crashing tour, with the Taliban and ISIS:

In Durham, North Carolina, our Taliban smashed the statue of a Confederate soldier. Near the entrance of Duke University Chapel, a statue of Lee has been defaced, the nose broken off...Baltimore carried out a cultural cleansing by taking down statues of Lee and Maryland Chief Justice Roger Taney who wrote the Dred Scott decision and opposed Lincoln’s suspension of the right of habeas corpus.

Like ISIS, which smashed the storied ruins of Palmyra, and the al-Qaida rebels who ravaged the fabled Saharan city of Timbuktu, the new barbarism has come to America.

This is going to become a blazing issue, not only between but within the parties.

Meanwhile, Beinart argued on behalf of Antifa activities because, as he argues, "White, Christian supremacy has been government policy in the United States for much of American history."

Last time I checked, however, the US government adheres to a policy known as "separation of church and state," which denies government institutions from so much as putting up Nativity scenes at Christmastime. So this mythical concept of "White, Christian supremacy" resonates more as a fictitious location in a David Lynch film than a place called reality, and will only serve to alienate the millions of American Christians who do not associate themselves with neo-Nazism or white supremacism, but rather simple conservative values.

There is yet another disturbing question about Antifa, and that is the glaring failure of the police to actively engage them wherever and whenever they rear their hooded heads. Even the left-leaning Washington Post noted that strange tendency following the Berkeley riots. "How is it that after more than 100 thugs organized, well in advance, to invade the campus, and police were alerted to the risk of violence, again well in advance, no arrests were made the night of the attack? Indeed, in the days afterward, police following up (are they following up?) are unable to find any digital fingerprints or other pieces of evidence to begin prosecuting those responsible."

The very same comments were heard in the aftermath of the Battle of Charlottesville. The police were practically a no-show; their only public service appearing to be that of provocateurs, or Keystone Cop impersonators, as they literally pushed the two opposing sides together as if they were officiating a rugby match, not a riot. Multiple witnesses and video have proven this was the case. Knowing full well that the likelihood of violence was extremely high, the job of the local police was obvious: keep these two groups far away from each other. Since this is nothing more than rules understood among children on any playground, the fact they did the opposite could only have been deliberate.

We already know the history of the far-right, which is full of nightmares of every conceivable sort, but Americans know next to nothing about the left-wing Antifa. Briefly, the group got its start in Europe back in the 1920s and 30s as a means of the communists and other leftists countering the rise of the extreme right in places like Italy, Spain and Germany.

As the Washington Post delicately describes Antifa:

Its adherents are predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists who reject turning to the police or the state to halt the advance of white supremacy. Instead they advocate popular opposition to fascism as we witnessed in Charlottesville ... Behind the masks, antifa are nurses, teachers, neighbors, and relatives of all races and genders who do not hesitate to put themselves on the line to shut down fascism by any means necessary.

Almost makes you feel like signing up, doesn't it?

Although I would be the first to support any group whose stated goal was to crush fascism, Antifa has not lived up to its heavy advertising campaign. The willingness of these "social justice warriors" to crash public venues every time an individual from the right is invited to speak has absolutely nothing in common with the historical efforts of this group. Nor is it remotely American in the sense that we have a constitution that guarantees the freedom of speech and assembly.

Finally, none of the speaking events Antifa has been responsible for canceling through naked aggression have had anything to do with promoting hate speech, neo-Nazism or white supremacism. That fact alone should make Americans very uncomfortable.

The history of the 20th century, for all its technological advances, was overshadowed by dual catastrophes on opposite sides of the political spectrum: on the left, the Soviet gulags of communism; on the right, the Holocaust that derived from Nazi ideology. Together, these epic historical tragedies were responsible for the death and displacement of untold millions of innocent people. Yet today, the extreme left, in its compulsive determination to oust Trump from the White House, wants Americans to believe that its philosophy is somehow morally superior to that of the extreme right variation. The history books, however, tell a very different story.

The simple fact is, there is no place in America for either an anarchist, anti-capitalist group, or an extreme-right movement that promotes racism. Both are noxious and worthy of banishment from American political life.

Although we should be concerned about the rise of the extreme right in America, relying on a misguided group of masked anarchists to counter the movement, as the media oddly condones, is not the remedy. It is part of the disease.

Reprinted with permission from RT.

The Mini-Skirt Deception: How McMaster Got His Afghan ‘Surge’

Justin Raimondo — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 13:10:46 GMT

According to reports, Gen. H. R. McMaster convinced President Trump to give up his longstanding opposition to the Afghan war by showing him this photograph, below, of Afghan women in what the media are describing as “miniskirts.” As the Washington Post put it:

One of the ways McMaster tried to persuade Trump to recommit to the effort was by convincing him that Afghanistan was not a hopeless place. He presented Trump with a black-and-white snapshot from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul, to show him that Western norms had existed there before and could return.

The irony is that, in 1972, when this photo was taken on the grounds of Kabul University, Afghanistan was firmly in the orbit of the Soviet Union, as it had been since 1953, when Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan rose to power and instituted a series of progressive reforms, including equal rights for women. The next year, Khan deposed King Mohammed Zahir Shah, and Soviet aid poured in, alongside the Red Army.

More irony: it was the United States, alongside Washington’s then-ally Osama bin Laden, that overthrew the communist regime, and conducted a guerrilla war against the Afghan government and their Soviet sponsors. The last Soviet troops left in 1989 — and there were no more miniskirts to be seen anywhere in Afghanistan.

Gen. McMaster knows all this: our President does not. Does McMaster think he can bring communism back to Afghanistan? I jest, but with serious intent. Because the commies attempted what our President has vowed not to do in Afghanistan: they sought to create a nation out of a collection of mountain-guarded valleys, isolated bastions untouched by time or the vaunted ambitions of their many would-be conquerors.

Here is Trump, trying to justify the prolongation of the longest war in our history:

I am here to talk about tonight, that nearly 16 years after September 11 attacks, after the extraordinary sacrifice of blood and treasure, the American people are weary of war without victory.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history – 17 years. I share the American people’s frustration. I also share their frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money, and most importantly, lives trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations.

How to reconcile this abjuration of hubris with that photo of mini-skirted Afghan women? It can’t be done, but then again Trump is all about contradictions:

Shortly after my inauguration, I directed Secretary of Defense Mattis and my national security team to undertake a comprehensive review of all strategic options in Afghanistan and South Asia.

My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts. But all my life, I have heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the oval office. In other words, when you are president of the United States.

Has such a confession of betrayal ever been uttered by a public figure? For years he told us Afghanistan was a waste of lives and treasure, and that we had to get out. And now he’s flip-flopped because McMaster showed him a photo of Afghan women in mini-skirts! Oh, how easy it was – too easy!

“So I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle,” he claims. Really? Did he study it enough to realize that no one has ever conquered Afghanistan? Did he contemplate the storied history of that unforgiving land, which caused even Alexander the Great to turn back? Did he study the provenance and context of that photograph, in which Afghan women dared to show their knees?

Of course not!

“After many meetings over many months,” Trump continued,

[W]e held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David with my cabinet and generals to complete our strategy. I arrived at three fundamental conclusions about America’s core interests in Afghanistan.

First, our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives. The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory. They deserve the tools they need and the trust they have earned to fight and to win.

What is the moral meaning of this? That lives wasted in a futile crusade must be matched by yet more sacrifices on the altar of the war god? We are told that Trump met with five enlisted soldiers before making his decision to go along with the generals’ war plan: I’d like to know what they said. The White House won’t tell us.

From this moral inversion Trump descends into an inversion of the facts:

Second, the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan because that country by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists. A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks were planned and directed from Hamburg, Germany, and right here in the United States – indeed, not too far from Mar-a-Lago — not Afghanistan. This “safe haven” argument is so tattered and overused that it comes apart under the most cursory inspection. And what are we to make of someone who describes ending a 16-year war as “a hasty withdrawal”?

We are then treated to the myth of “victory denied in Iraq,” which attributes the rise of ISIS to US withdrawal from Iraq – when it reality ISIS was created by our “ally” Saudi Arabia and the Arab sheikhs of the Gulf states who have funded and encouraged their co-co-religionists in the Sunni-versus-Shi’ite civil war that has sundered the Muslim world. And of course there would be no ISIS if not for the invasion of Iraq – but even Trump knows this quite well.

Drifting off into vague threats against Pakistan, Trump reiterates his determination to solve “big and intricate problems.” But how? How will it be different, this time?

As a result of our comprehensive review, American strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia will change dramatically in the following ways: A core pillar of our new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions. I’ve said it many times, how counterproductive it is for the United States to announce in advance the dates we intend to begin or end military operations.

We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy from now on. America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out.

A child could see through this rodomontade. Because unless we intend to stay in Afghanistan forever, what is to prevent the Taliban from simply waiting us out? We have to leave sometime. So what is the purpose of this vow of silence? It is simply to keep the truth from the American people. We won’t know how many troops are in Afghanistan, nor will we know when more are sent in: it’s all to be conducted under the radar, so that Trump’s voters – who took seriously his tirades against foreign wars – won’t know the extent to which he has betrayed his mandate, and them.

The absurdities accumulate like refuse during a garbage strike:

"We are not nation building again. We are killing terrorists.” Yet Gen. McMaster, a disciple of Gen. David Petraeus and his “COINdistas,” are the original nation-builders – aside from the Soviets, that is, from whom they cadged their “strategy.”

“We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars, at the same time they are housing the same terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change. And that will change immediately.” No it won’t. Remember when Sen. Rand Paul tried to end US aid to Pakistan? It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now.

“As the prime minister of Afghanistan has promised, we are going to participate in economic development to help defray the cost of this war to us.” So Afghanistan is going to pay for this war, just like Mexico is going to pay for the Great Wall of Texas! In your dreams, Mr. President.

“Our commitment is not unlimited, and our support is not a blank check.” The history of the past 16 years refutes this, as does the content of the President’s peroration. Of course we’re giving them a blank check: that’s because the Afghan government only has such resources as we give to it. And since Trump is refusing to say when or even if we’re leaving, then our commitment is indeed potentially unlimited. Does he imagine our Afghan puppets, who are happily stealing us blind, don’t know this?<

I can’t bear to go on cataloging the lies, the contradictions, the flip-flops – it pains me to even think about it, much less write about it. The “America First” foreign policy Trump promised during the campaign is just a memory, and his baffled supporters are left to contemplate the most brazen betrayal in modern American political history.

Yet there are some benefits, here, for anti-interventionists to reap, which may not be readily apparent. Because Trump’s supporters, who took seriously his anti-interventionist rhetoric, are now wondering what hit them. They had to go through this experience: betrayal can be enlightening.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

Freedom for the Speech We Hate: The Legal Ins and Outs of the Right to Protest

John W. Whitehead — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 20:22:51 GMT

“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”— Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

There was a time in this country, back when the British were running things, that if you spoke your mind and it ticked off the wrong people, you’d soon find yourself in jail for offending the king.

Reacting to this injustice, when it was time to write the Constitution, America’s founders argued for a Bill of Rights, of which the First Amendment protects the right to free speech. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was very clear about the fact that he wrote the First Amendment to protect the minority against the majority.

What Madison meant by minority is “offensive speech.”

Unfortunately, we don’t honor that principle as much as we should today. In fact, we seem to be witnessing a politically correct philosophy at play, one shared by both the extreme left and the extreme right, which aims to stifle all expression that doesn’t fit within their parameters of what they consider to be “acceptable” speech.

There are all kinds of labels put on such speech—it’s been called politically incorrect speech, hate speech, offensive speech, and so on—but really, the message being conveyed is that you don’t have a right to express yourself if certain people or groups don’t like or agree with what you are saying.

Hence, we have seen the caging of free speech in recent years, through the use of so-called “free speech zones” on college campuses and at political events, the requirement of speech permits in parks and community gatherings, and the policing of online forums.

Clearly, this elitist, monolithic mindset is at odds with everything America is supposed to stand for.

Indeed, we should be encouraging people to debate issues and air their views. Instead, by muzzling free speech, we are contributing to a growing underclass of Americans—many of whom have been labeled racists, rednecks and religious bigots—who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”

Remember, the First Amendment acts as a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world. When there is no steam valve to release the pressure, frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.

The attempt to stifle certain forms of speech is where we go wrong.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that it is “a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment...that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.” For example, it is not a question of whether the Confederate flag represents racism but whether banning it leads to even greater problems, namely, the loss of freedom in general.

Along with the constitutional right to peacefully (and that means non-violently) assemble, the right to free speech allows us to challenge the government through protests and demonstrations and to attempt to change the world around us—for the better or the worse—through protests and counterprotests.

As always, knowledge is key.

The following Constitutional Q&A, available in more detail at The Rutherford Institute (www.rutherford.org), is a good starting point.

Q: WHAT LAWS GIVE ME THE RIGHT TO PROTEST?

A: The First Amendment prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Protesting is anexercise of these constitutional rights because it involves speaking out, by individual people or those assembled in groups, about matters of public interest and concern.

Q: WHERE CAN I ENGAGE IN PROTEST ACTIVITY?

A: The right to protest generally extends to places that are owned and controlled by the government, although not all government-owned property is available for exercising speech and assembly rights. However, beyond public or government property, a person cannot claim a First Amendment right to protest and demonstrate on property that is privately owned by someone else. This also applies to private property that is generally open to the public, such as ashopping mall or shopping center, although these areas sometimes allow demonstrations and other free speech activity with permission from the owner. You are also entitled to engage in protest activities on land you own. The Supreme Court has ruled that the government may not forbid homeowners from posting signs on their property speaking out on a political or social issue.

Q: WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS TO PROTEST IN A TRADITIONAL PUBLIC FORUM?

A: Places historically associated with the free exercise of expressive activities, such as streets, sidewalks and parks, are traditional public forums and the government’s power to limit speech and assembly in those places is very limited. The government may not impose an absolute ban on expression and assembly in traditional public forums except in circumstances where it is essential to serve a compelling government interest. However, expression and assembly in traditional public forums may be limited by reasonable time, place and manner regulations. Examples of reasonable regulations include restrictions on the volume of sound produced by the activity or a prohibition on impeding vehicle and pedestrian traffic. To be a valid time, place and manner regulation, the restriction must not have the effect of restricting speech based on its content and it must not be broader than needed to serve the interest of the government.

Q: CAN I PICKET AND/OR DISTRIBUTE LEAFLETS AND OTHER TYPES OF LITERATURE ON PUBLIC SIDEWALKS?

A: Yes, a sidewalk is considered a traditional public forum where you can engage in expressive activities, such a passing out literature or speaking out on a matter of public concern. In exercising that right, you must not block pedestrians or the entrances to buildings. You may not physically or maliciously detain someone in order to give them a leaflet, but you may approach them and offer it to them.

Q: CAN MY FREE SPEECH BE RESTRICTED BECAUSE OF WHAT I SAY, EVEN IF IT IS CONTROVERSIAL?

A: No, the First Amendment protects speech even if most people would find it offensive, hurtful or hateful. Speech generally cannot be banned based upon its content or viewpoint because it is not up to the government to determine what can and cannot be said. A bedrock principle of the First Amendment is that the government may not prohibit expression of an idea because society finds it offensive or disagreeable. Also, protest speech also cannot be banned because of a fear that others may react violently to the speech. Demonstrators cannot be punished or forbidden from speaking because they might offend a hostile mob. The Supreme Court has held that a “heckler’s veto” has no place in First Amendment law.

Q: HOW DO THESE RIGHTS APPLY TO PUBLIC PLACES I TYPICALLY VISIT?

A: Your rights to speak out and protest in particular public places will depend on the use and purpose of the place involved. For example, the lobbies and offices of public buildings that are used by the government are generally not open for expressive activities because the purpose of these buildings is to carry out public business. Protesting would interfere with that purpose. Ironically, the meetings of a governmental body, such as a city council or town board, are not considered public forums open for protest activities because the purpose of the meeting is generally to address public business that is on the agenda. However, some government councils and boards set aside a time at the meeting when the public can voice their complaints.

The grounds of public colleges and universities are generally considered available for assembly and protest by students and other members of the institution’s community. However, those who are not students, faculty or staff of the institutionmay be denied access to the campus for speech and protest activities under rules issued by the school.

Public elementary and secondary school grounds also are not considered places where persons can engage in assembly and protest. However, students at these schools do not lose their right to free speech when they enter the school. The First Amendment protects the right of students to engage in expressive acts of protest, such as wearing armbands to demonstrate opposition to a war, that are not disruptive to the school environment.

Q: DO I NEED A PERMIT IN ORDER TO CONDUCT A PROTEST?

A: As a general rule, no. A person is not required to obtain the consent or permission of the government before engaging in activities that are protected by the First Amendment. One of the main reasons for that constitutional provision was to forbid any requirement that citizens obtain a license in order to speak out. The government cannot require that individuals or small groups obtain a permit in order to speak or protest in a public forum.

However, if persons or organizations want to hold larger rallies and demonstrations, they may be required by local laws to obtain a permit. The Supreme Court has recognized that the government, in order to regulate competing uses of public forums, may impose a permit requirement on those wishing to hold a parade or rally. Government officials cannot simplyprohibit a public assembly according to their discretion, but the government can impose restrictions on the time, place, and manner of peaceful assembly, provided that constitutional safeguards are met. Such time, place and manner restrictions can take the form of requirements to obtain a permit for an assembly.

Whether an assembly or demonstration requires a permit depends on the laws of the locality. A permit certainly is required for any parade because it would involve the use of the streets and interfere with vehicle traffic. A permit to hold an event in other public places typically is required if the gathering involves more than 50 persons or the use of amplification.

Q: DO COUNTER-DEMONSTRATORS HAVE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS?

A: Yes, they do. Just because counter-demonstrators oppose you and the viewpoint of your demonstration does not mean they have any less right to speak out and demonstrate. However, the same rules apply to counter-demonstrators as apply to the original assembly. The group cannot be violent and must assemble and protest in an appropriate place and manner.

Q: WHAT CAN'T I DO IN EXERCISING MY RIGHTS TO PROTEST?

A: The Supreme Court of the United States has held that the First Amendment protects the right to conduct apeaceful public assembly. The First Amendment does not provide the right to conduct a gathering at which there is aclear and present danger of riot, disorder, interference with traffic on public streets or other immediate threat to public safety. Laws that prohibit people from assembling and using force or violence to accomplish unlawful purposes arepermissible under the First Amendment.

Q: AM I ALLOWED TO CARRY A WEAPON OR FIREARM AT A DEMONSTRATION OR PROTEST?

A: Your right to have a weapon with you when you protest largely depends on what is allowed by state law and is unlikely to be protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee to freedom of speech. Not all conduct can be considered “speech” protected by the First Amendment even if the person engaging in the conduct intends to express an idea. Most courts have held that the act of openly carrying a weapon or firearm is not expression protected by the First Amendment.

The right to possess a firearm is protected by the Second Amendment, and all states allow carrying a concealed weapon in public, although most require a permit to do so. Some states allow persons to openly carry firearms in public. However, it is not yet settled whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess a firearm in public. Thus, the right to carry a firearm at a demonstration or protest is a matter that depends on what is allowed under state law. Carrying other weapons, such as stun guns, which are not firearms also is subject to restrictions imposed by state law. Possession of weapons also may be prohibited in certain places where demonstrations might take place, such as a national park.

Even if possession of weapons is allowed, their presence at demonstrations and rallies can be intimidating and provocative and does not help in achieving a civil and peaceful discourse on issues of public interest and concern. Demonstrations often relate to issues raising strong feelings among competing groups, and the presence of counter-demonstrators makes conflict likely. In these situations, where the purpose of the gathering is to engage in speech activities, firearms and other weapons are threatening, result in the suppression of speech and are contrary to the purpose of the First Amendment to allow all voices to be heard on matters of public importance.

Q: WHAT CAN’T THE POLICE DO IN RESPONDING TO PROTESTERS?

A: In recent history, challenges to the right to protest have come in many forms. In some cases, police have cracked down on demonstrations by declaring them “unlawful assemblies” or through mass arrests, illegal use of force or curfews. Elsewhere, expression is limited by corralling protesters into so-called “free-speech zones.” New surveillance technologies are increasingly turned on innocent people, collecting information on their activities by virtue of their association with or proximity to a given protest. Even without active obstruction of the right to protest, police-inspired intimidation and fear can chill expressive activity and result in self-censorship. All of these things violate the First Amendment and are things the police cannot do to censor free speech. Unless the assembly is violent or violence is clearly imminent, the police have limited authority under the law to shut down protesters.

Clearly, as evidenced by the recent tensions in Charlottesville, Va., we’re at a crossroads concerning the constitutional right to free speech.

As Benjamin Franklin warned, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

It must be emphasized that it was for the sake of preserving individuality and independence that James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely.

This freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society. Conversely, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, when we fail to abide by Madison’s dictates about greater tolerance for all viewpoints, no matter how distasteful, the end result is always the same: an indoctrinated, infantilized citizenry that marches in lockstep with the governmental regime.

Some of this past century’s greatest dystopian literature shows what happens when the populace is transformed into mindless automatons. For instance, in George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”

Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

This is the final link in the police state chain.

If ever there were a time for us to stand up for the right to speak freely, even if it’s freedom for speech we hate, the time is now.

Reprinted with permission from the Rutherford Institute.

The International Criminal Court is the Antithesis of Justice

Richard Galustian — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 19:34:53 GMT

If there was a prize for the world’s most ineffective institution, the International Criminal Court would win hands down.

Consider this: The court has been in operation for fifteen years, has spent over a billion Euros, and has convicted just four war criminals. Yes, that's correct. In a decade and a half, an institution proclaiming itself the world’s first permanent war crimes court has jailed just four war criminals.

In any other justice system that kind of abysmal conviction rate would get its chiefs sacked. But not the ICC. They continue to have a comfortable luxurious life in The Hague, ruling on the handful of cases that come their way, while the world’s wars rage fiercer than ever.

One reason the ICC is such a disaster is the paradox at the heart of its existence.

The ICC is not part of the United Nations. Instead, it has authority over the 124 states that have joined it. But most states likely to commit war crimes don’t join the ICC. The result? A court full of states that don’t commit war crimes.

The big three powers, the United States, China, and Russia have have all refused to join, concerned about accountability. The US State Department puts it best, saying there are "insufficient checks and balances on the authority of the ICC prosecutor and judges," and the court has "insufficient protection against politicized prosecutions or other abuses.”

A close look at the ICC shows these concerns are well founded.

Other court systems in other parts of the world are controlled by governments. The ICC is controlled by majority votes among its member states, but those states have no power over legal decisions themselves. In effect, the ICC runs itself.

Nor does the ICC have juries. In the Hague, the judges are the jury also.

Most seriously, the ICC has no legal oversight body to keep it honest.

Most states around the world have fully independent appeals processes, like the US Supreme Court, which is separated from the courts it keeps in line.

Not the ICC. It does have an appeals court, but its appeal judges are part of the ICC. They socialise, inevitably, with the rest of the ICC in the Hague.

Even when the UN does get involved, the results at the ICC are dismal. The UN Security Council can order the ICC to investigate war crimes in a State that is not an ICC member. It did just that with Sudan and Libya. But so far, nobody from either country has been jailed by the Hague.

The latest ICC Libya indictment has been been issued against an army special forces commander charged with executions in Benghazi. But many Libyans wonder why the most terrible crimes seen in Libya in recent years, such as televised mass executions by Islamic State, go unpunished. Why has the ICC has decided not to indict ISIS, the most horrific force on the planet?

Another controversy is the trial of Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief Abdullah al Senussi, who Hague judges decided could be tried in Libya despite the country being in the grip of war and chaos. A mad cap trial, guarded by militias, ended with a death sentence in a process slammed by human rights groups.

Meanwhile, African leaders are furious that their continent is the only one being investigated. Until January last year all nine ICC cases were in Africa, and the only change since then is the addition of, of all places, Georgia!

Several African states, including South Africa, have mooted or actually quit the ICC altogether.

Maybe some in the ICC assume that African states require the Europeans in Holland to keep Africans in line and adhering to human rights practices not through their own judicial institution but by a internationally politically manipulated ICC kangaroo Court.

Finally, when cases finally get underway, they last for what seems like an eternity. Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was arrested for alleged rights violations in 2011 but his Hague trial didn’t get going until January of last year and is still continuing. If he’s found innocent this year, he will have spent more than seven years locked up in a Hague prison for nothing. Justice? Not exactly. This July, Presiding Judge Piotr Hofmański rejected a decision by the trial judges denying the 72-year-old Gbagbo interim release.

Yet, unbelievably, ICC spending keeps growing, jumping from 80 million Euros a year in 2007 to 141 Euros last year.

A sign of the ICC’s impotence is the recent ruling in the Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir case. Even though the ICC wanted to send a clear message to all its members, and to South Africa, with their ruling, Bashir travelled in and out with impunity. The South African government was not going to observe the ICC's ruling. It's that simple.

The ICC must either be totally reformed or, preferably, disbanded. It is the antithesis of truth and justice and inevitably a hindrance to peace and reconciliation in countries they purport to investigate.

One Step Closer to War: US, South Korea Hold New Military Drills

Andrei Akulov — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:22:06 GMT

The US and South Korean large-scale combined joint exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) begins on Aug. 21 to last till Aug. 31. There will be approximately 17,500 total US service members participating, with roughly 3,000 coming from off-peninsula - 500 more than last year. The numbers of all participants swell to a total of about 530,000 because South Korean servicemen (around 50,000), government officials and civilians also take part in the drills. The missions include: amphibious landings, intense live-fire exercises, counter-terrorism drills and simulated or tabletop battle plans.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow was deeply worried and considered the risk of military conflict between the US and North Korea "very high." He suggested a plan under which North Korea would halt missile tests if the US and South Korea would cancel the drills. China also objects to the exercise.

The UFG training event was initiated in 1976 and is conducted annually during August or September. This year, it is the first UFG exercise to be held after Pyongyang fire-tested intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking US territory, such as the island of Guam. North Korea feels threatened by a squadron of B-1B bombers on the island. The aircraft flying to the peninsula for taking part in the exercise could provoke it into launching ballistic missiles to spark a war. Last year, Pyongyang responded to the UFG by testing a nuclear weapon.

North Korea alleges that the drill is a precursor to a war planned against it. With bits of information coming from various sources pieced together, one can come to conclusion that this time it may be right. It’s not a routine training event.

This year, the scenario includes training for "decapitation strikes" to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his top lieutenants. It makes the North Korean leadership increasingly sensitive to the event.

The drills take place right after the new sanctions against North Korea went into effect. President Trump signed the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act into law on August 2. According to the data received from US satellites, North Korean missile launchers had been moved into positions ready to strike Guam. The possibility of escalation is made even more acute by the lack of any means of official communication across the demilitarized zone.

Australia has decided to join the training event. Last week, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed his country would join the US in any conflict with North Korea if it carries out its threat to fire missiles towards Guam. Tokyo has moved a ballistic missile defense (BMD) capable destroyer into the Sea of Japan. It has also deployed four land-based defence systems in case US interceptors failed to hit any North Korean missiles. Canada, Columbia, Denmark, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, will also participate in the exercise.

The question now is why should the US send more forces to South Korea, with about 30,000 combat ready troops already stationed in that country? American servicemen are also deployed in Japan. The number of American troops to take part in the exercise is over 17,000, the Pentagon has 28,500 already in place, then why spend money, time and effort to transport more forces from the continental USA?

According to the tweet posted on August 19 by the source named Already Happened, US military loaded around 1,500 military vehicles including Stryker AFVs onto USNS Bob Hope and Cape Isabel vehicle cargo ships in WA, West Coast. The information is supported by photos. Before that, long trains loaded with US Bradley IFVs and other vehicles had been spotted in Houston, TX. Already Happened provided videos to confirm the report.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has just wound up his Asia trip, visiting South Korea, China and Japan. According to him, a "full range" of contingency plans had been drawn up in case diplomatic and economic sanctions did not deter Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons.

The exercise may hold more potential to provoke a conflict than ever, given the fact that the war game kicks off after North Korea successfully flight-tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles last month and threatened to strike Guam with intermediate range ballistic missiles. The calls to ease the tensions on the Korean Peninsula and give diplomacy a chance have been ignored by the US The training event may provoke Pyongyang into another ICBM test to make the war almost unavoidable. The only thing left is to keep the fingers crossed hoping the worst won’t happen.

Reprinted with permission from the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Oppose Fascism of the Right and the Left

Ron Paul — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:38:46 GMT

Following the recent clashes between the alt-right and the group antifa, some libertarians have debated which group they should support. The answer is simple: neither. The alt-right and its leftist opponents are two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

The alt-right elevates racial identity over individual identity. The obsession with race leads them to support massive government interference in the economy in order to benefit members of the favored race. They also favor massive welfare and entitlement spending, as long as it functions as a racial spoils system. Some prominent alt-right leaders even support abortion as a way of limiting the minority population. No one who sincerely supports individual liberty, property rights, or the right to life can have any sympathy for this type of racial collectivism.

Antifa, like all Marxists, elevates class identity over individual identity. Antifa supporters believe government must run the economy because otherwise workers will be exploited by greedy capitalists. This faith in central planning ignores economic reality, as well as the reality that in a free market employers and workers voluntarily work together for their mutual benefit. It is only when government intervenes in the economy that crony capitalists have the opportunity to exploit workers, consumers, and taxpayers. Sadly, many on the left confuse the results of the “mixed economy” with free markets.

Ironically, the failure of the Keynesian model of economic authoritarianism, promoted by establishment economists like Paul Krugman, is responsible for the rise of the alt-right and antifa. Despite a recent (and likely short-lived) upturn in some sectors of the economy, many Americans continue to struggle with unemployment and a Federal Reserve-caused eroding standard of living. History shows that economic hardship causes many to follow demagogues offering easy solutions and convenient scapegoats.

Left-wing demagogues scapegoat businesses and the “one percent,” ignoring the distinction between those who made their fortunes serving consumers and those who enriched themselves by manipulating the political process. Right-wing demagogues scapegoat immigrants and minorities, ignoring how these groups suffer under the current system and how they are disproportionally impacted by policies like the war on drugs and police militarization.

As the Keynesian-Krugman empire of big government and fiat currency collapses, more people will be attracted to authoritarianism, leading to an increase in violence. The only way to ensure the current system is not replaced with something even worse is for those of us who know the truth to work harder to spread the ideas of liberty.

While we should be willing to form coalitions with individuals of good will across the political spectrum, we must never align with anyone promoting violence as a solution to social and economic problems. We must also oppose any attempts to use the violence committed by extremists as a justification for expanding the police state or infringing on free speech. Laws against hate speech set a dangerous precedent for censorship of speech unpopular with the ruling elite and the deep state.

Libertarians have several advantages in the ideological battle over what we will replace the Keynesian welfare model with. First, we do not need to resort to scapegoating and demagoguing, as we have the truth about the welfare-warfare state and the Federal Reserve on our side. We also offer a realistic way to restore prosperity. But our greatest advantage is that, while authoritarianism divides people by race, class, religion, or other differences, the cause of liberty unites all who seek peace and prosperity.

Escape from Aleppo

Eric Margolis — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 19:39:56 GMT

AMMAN JORDAN – I haven’t seen many miracles in my decades of travel around the globe, particularly not in the strife-torn Mideast.

But last week I participated in a real miracle in Jordan as the splendid Four Paws International group staged a daring rescue of 13 wild animals trapped in the wartime hellhole of Aleppo, Syria. It appeared to be a mission impossible.

Syria has been torn apart for the past six years by a bloody civil war that has killed over 400,000 people and reduced many parts of this beautiful country to ruins. Half the population has become refugees. The ancient northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, was laid waste.

Just outside Aleppo lies a wrecked 40-acre amusement park cum zoo that once held hundreds of imprisoned wild animals to entertain children. The animals were abandoned in their cages in the midst of constant gunfire and shelling. Many were killed; the rest were left to starve to death or die of thirst. Some starving Syrians shared their meager rations with the animals.

No one else cared about these abandoned creatures that included five lions, two tigers, two Asian black bears, two hyenas and two Husky dogs.

But the Vienna-based Four Paws Charity did, and so did I. Four Paws had rescued a majestic lion named Simba and a charming honey-colored bear named Lula from Iraq’s abandoned Mosul zoo. Both had been starving. I agreed to sponsor much of the rescue operation in Aleppo.

I spent a morning in the New Hope Refuge outside Amman, Jordan, presided over by Jordan’s Princess Alia, the king’s sister. Over lunch, she showed remarkable compassion and understanding for wild animals.

Previously, Four Paws, led by its veterinarian, Dr. Amir Khalil, had rescued numerous starving or sick animals from the ghastly zoo in Gaza, Palestine.

Last week, a security team engaged by Four Paws International finally entered war-ravaged Aleppo which is besieged by feuding jihadist bands supported by competing outside powers that include al-Qaida and even Israel. Throw in Kurds, Turks, the Syrian government, Iranians, Hezbollah and the US for a total madhouse – and a very dangerous one.

Risking their lives, the security team managed to get around the jihadists and then into the Aleppo zoo. Over two trips, the thirteen remaining animals were coaxed into cages, then lifted onto flatbed trucks. Then the convoy headed for the Turkish border. This was the second attempt. A previous one had been held at the border, then forced to turn back.

The daring rescue team had to negotiate with the bands of trigger-happy jihadists surrounding them. A team of well-armed ‘security consultants’ came in to guard the convoy escaping from Aleppo. There was talk that the Israeli army might come to aid the animals, or a Turkish-backed militia. In any event, the little mercy convoy finally got to the Turkish border under the cover of darkness.

But the gate leading into Turkey was locked. Four Paws, with the help of Turkish volunteers, managed to talk the guards into opening it – yet another small miracle.

The animals were then driven for over 24 hours to an animal sanctuary near Bursa, south of Istanbul. There, one of the tigers, an imposing male that I named Sultan, went into cardiac arrest. Another wonderful veterinarian, Dr. Frank Goeritz, got into his cage and managed to bring him back to life, warning his aides ‘leave the gate open in case he wakes up.’ Sultan was saved.

Wheels had to be cut off the cages to fit them into a commercial aircraft. Finding the right tool to do this in the middle of the night in Istanbul was another challenge.

After long delays, the mercy flight finally got to Amman where we met them at 5:30 am. Four Paws director Heli Dungler was waiting with us. Thanks to the patronage of Princess Alia we got the animals through border controls and then onto flat-bed trucks for a two hour journey north to the al-Ma’wa animal refuge near the ancient Roman city of Jerash. Drivers on the road could not believe their eyes as our convoy of big predators rolled by.

After a labor of Hercules, the heavy cages were unloaded from the trucks and the 13 new residents were gently introduced into their new enclosures. The animals were of course confused, exhausted and testy, but we were thrilled that our wards were finally safe in their new homes.

We humans were also exhausted, but elated. I had slept no more than a few hours for days and was groggy from jet lag and fatigue. But Four Paws had achieved the impossible and shone a beacon of humanity into the boiling darkness of Syria’s civil war.

As a final sign of good karma, lioness Dana gave birth to a feisty little girl who begins her life in a far better place.

Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.

Everyone Is Wrong About North Korea

Darius Shahtahmasebi — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 18:07:56 GMT

Imagine a world where one country – country X – is bombing at least seven countries at any one time and is seeking to bomb an eighth, all the while threatening an adversarial ninth state – country Y – that they will bomb that country into oblivion, as well. Imagine that in this world, country X already bombed country Y back into the Stone Age several decades ago, which directly led to the current adversarial nature of the relationship between the two countries.

Now imagine that country Y, which is currently bombing no one and is concerned mostly with well-founded threats against its own security, threatens to retaliate in the face of this mounting aggression if country X attacks them first. On top of all this, imagine that only country Y is portrayed in the media as a problem and that country X is constantly given a free pass to do whatever it pleases.

Now replace country X with the United States of America and country Y with North Korea to realize there is no need to imagine such a world. It is the world we already live in.

As true as all of this is, the problem is constantly framed as one caused by North Korea alone, not the United States. “How to Deal With North Korea,” the Atlantic explains. “What Can Trump Do About North Korea?” the New York Times asks. “What Can Possibly Be Done About North Korea,” the Huffington Post queries. Time provides 6 experts discussing “How We Can Solve the Problem” (of North Korea). “North Korea – what can the outside world do?” asks the BBC.

That being said, some reports have framed the issue in completely different terms. In an article entitled “The Game is Over and North Korea Has Won,” Foreign Policy’s Jeffrey Lewis explains that the United States should accept North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and pursue other courses of action:

The big question is where to go from here. Some of my colleagues still think the United States might persuade North Korea to abandon, or at least freeze, its nuclear and missile programs. I am not so sure. I suspect we might have to settle for trying to reduce tensions so that we live long enough to figure this problem out. But there is only one way to figure out who is right: Talk to the North Koreans.

Lewis explains further:

The other options are basically terrible. There is no credible military option. North Korea has some unknown number of nuclear-armed missiles, maybe 60, including ones that can reach the United States; do you really think U.S. strikes could get all of them? That not a single one would survive to land on Seoul, Tokyo, or New York? Or that U.S. missile defenses would work better than designed, intercepting not most of the missiles aimed at the United States, but every last one of them? Are you willing to bet your life on that?

It’s also worth mentioning that Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Paul Selva, already testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that experts tell him North Korea does not have “the capacity to strike the US with any degree of accuracy or reasonable confidence of success.”

Compare these observations to every single keyboard warrior on Facebook and Twitter who thinks the United States has a duty to defend itself from – and destroy – this rogue state, which is currently attacking no one else nor has any underlying reason to (especially considering that South Korea is open to talking with the North rather than relying solely on a military confrontation).

The problem with the mind-numbingly militarized approach to this conundrum is that it completely ignores the historical factors that led the United States to this crossroads in the first place.

In the early 1950s, the U.S. bombed North Korea into complete oblivion, destroying over 8,700 factories, 5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals, 600,000 homes, and eventually killing off perhaps 20 percent of the country’s population. As noted by the Asia Pacific Journal, the U.S. dropped so many bombs that they eventually ran out of targets to hit:

By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans.

In its isolated state, the North Korean leadership that held office after the end of the Korean war requested nuclear weapons technology from both China and the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet empire, spearheaded by the US, North Korea began to deteriorate even further, as it had relied heavily on Soviet aid. Following a famine in the nineties that reportedly killed as many as 500,000 civilians, North Korea was left to its own devices as it watched its southern neighbors prosper. It began to rapidly accelerate its nuclear weapons program.

Under the Clinton administration, a deal was struck with North Korea that aimed to ensure the communist nation would eventually freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program.

George W. Bush intentionally derailed this deal in a manner similar to what President Trump is currently doing in his attempts to derail the nuclear deal arranged with Iran in 2015. Then, to make matters worse, the Bush administration accused Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction and invaded the country in 2003, plunging the country into a state of chaos even though Iraq clearly possessed no nuclear weapons.

This decision – coupled with Barack Obama and his NATO cohorts’ decision to invade Libya in 2011 — taught North Korea a very valuable lesson about what can happen to an adversarial state if they give up their nuclear weapons program. This isn’t conjecture. It has come straight from the horse’s mouth.

“The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson,” which was that Libya’s decision to abandon its weapons programs in 2003, applauded by George W. Bush, had been “an invasion tactic to disarm the country” – according to North Korea’s Foreign Ministry.

The invasion of Iraq was quite clearly tied to natural resources and money, as was the decision to invade and topple Libya. Lo and behold, North Korea is reportedly sitting on a stockpile of minerals worth trillions of dollars. It also happens to have only one real major ally: America’s economic thorn in the backside, China, a country the US has had a specific containment policy towards.

It is quite clear that threats of provocation to what is becoming a rapidly growing nuclear-armed state, which is allied to another nuclear-armed state, have nothing to do with concerns about global security or human rights. China has already warned that their leadership will only pick sides in the conflict if the United States strikes first. A simple solution, therefore, would be for the US not to strike at all.

It is for these reasons that Donald Trump stated in 1999 that the US should negotiate with North Korea as a first resort. Now that he is in the nuclear-code hot seat with a decaying presidency on the verge of failure, he has changed his approach.

People sitting behind their computer screens claiming the US should have blown up North Korea a long time ago fail to realize that the US already did just that, as well as the fact that the US has specifically cultivated the conditions under which a state like North Korea would want to acquire nuclear weapons in the first place. These people also fail to realize that the US and South Korea simulate an invasion of North Korea every year and have also planned to simulate nuclear strikes, as well. In its regular joint exercises, the U.S. has even flown bombers low to the ground on the North-South border, dropping 2,000-pound (900 kilograms) bombs.

Who is provoking whom?

If you find yourself fearing North Korea, try to imagine how North Koreans feel about your current and former governments.

No one is pretending Kim Jong-un is a saint, but he is currently bombing no one, and any attempt on his part at bombing America’s allies or bases would see his inevitable assassination and the destruction of his entire regime. This war would also create a refugee crisis that makes the current crisis pale in comparison.

North Korea’s nuclear strategy is a deterrent strategy only. The country has learned many lessons from its own past, as well as lessons from the US-led invasions of Iraq, Libya, and other weaker nations — and in response, it has made it a pointed policy to never succumb the fate of these aforementioned countries.

Anyone who is able to absorb and digest all of this information and still demand war between these two countries needs to pack their bags and sign up for the military with the specific intention of being on the front lines of this battle. If you believe in this war that genuinely, you need to be prepared to fight it.

Anything else is pure cowardice, glorified by sheer ignorance of this conflict’s historical background, its geopolitical concerns, and the humanitarian crisis it would create.

Reprinted with permission from The Anti-Media.

Weapons Money Intended for Economic Development Being Secretly Diverted to Lobbying

Alex Emmons — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 16:38:46 GMT

The United Arab Emirates created a “slush fund” using money meant for domestic economic development projects and funneled it to a high-profile think tank in the United States, emails obtained by The Intercept show.

Last week, The Intercept reported that the UAE gave a $20 million grant to the Middle East Institute, flooding a well-regarded D.C. think tank with a monetary grant larger than its annual budget. According to an email from Richard Clarke, MEI’s chairman of the board, the UAE got the money from offset investments — development investments by international companies that are made as part of trade agreements.

The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas, it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer programs to “offset” that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest in the country’s economy, either in defense or civilian sectors.

Offsets provide a way to sell weapons at inflated prices, when companies offer juicier offset packages. Critics say the lack of transparency in how offset investments are carried out leaves a window open for a form of legalized corruption. The emails lift a veil on what has long been an obscure element of the arms trade.

According to an email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. ECSSR then began sending that money to the Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ...

So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States.

Fair use excerpt. Full article here.

Marco Rubio Says It’s OK To Beat People For Their Thoughts

Shane Kastler — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 05:00:33 GMT

In a truly “free” society, no one gets beaten up for their political views. Laws cannot be passed against thoughts or symbols. And mob violence is not allowed to rule the day. But Florida Senator Marco Rubio, like most establishment political hacks, is not interested in a free society. He’s interested in seizing power in any way possible. And if that means excusing and encouraging mob violence, to achieve his political ends, then so be it. While Rubio may rail against dictators, his statements sound eerily like the late Fidel Castro, and other tyrants like him.

Rubio’s statement came in the form of a series of tweets he posted in response to the Charlottesville circus. Here are his exact words: “When entire movement built on anger & hatred towards people different than you, it justifies & ultimately leads to violence against them.” While the trained seals who follow hucksters like Rubio will bark their approval for his “brave words”; those who love liberty will shudder at the true ramifications of what he is saying. But let’s begin by trying to parse who exactly he is saying it about.

Like a good political opportunist, he speaks in vague terms. One might surmise that his reference to an “entire movement” is a shot at Donald Trump and his supporters. Myriads of establishment politicians have accused Trump of “anger & hatred”; yet examples of this are never forthcoming, other than disagreements over something like immigration policy. So, is Rubio saying it’s OK to physically attack any who belong to “the movement” that elected Trump? And if so, then is Rubio also saying it’s OK to physically attack Trump? The supposed leader of this “movement?” The political vagaries allow Rubio to deny this, and perhaps say that he is talking about white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or the KKK. But even if he is talking about these groups…. Is he correct in saying it’s “justifiable” to physically attack them for their views? If so, then he is no friend to freedom in general, nor to free speech in specific.

Most Americans, including me, abhor the ideologies of white supremacy, Nazism, and the KKK. But if a nation truly wants free speech, then even those we abhor must be allowed to speak their mind. There is no need to pass laws protecting polite speech. It is the very thoughts and words of those we vociferously disagree with that must be protected. Otherwise, there is no freedom at all. Only a rotating cycle of dictatorships, who suppress the people they conquer. And any U.S. Senator who encourages violence against anyone for their political views is a part of the problem and not the solution. While Rubio may rail against Castro, his views toward free speech are identical. He may rail against Adolph Hitter, but his views on free speech are no different.

Rubio is a political hound dog, who lifts his nose to try and sniff which way the popular winds are blowing. And then he (or one of his lackeys) issues a tweet to kiss-up to the mobs he wishes to appease. Rubio has always been a political robot, seemingly incapable of generating a unique thought. This was publicly displayed in that infamous, cringe-worthy presidential debate when Chris Christie tried to engage him in an actual exchange of ideas, and Rubio began sweating profusely and repeating his talking points. Over and over and over. The moment exposed him for the phony that he is and almost ruined his political career. But now, he smells an opportunity to rally the mob and save his career. His actions are truly deplorable.

Sadly, many in this country would side with Rubio and say violence and laws should be enacted to silence “hate speech.” One of the questions this leads to is, “How do you define hate speech?” People, with their selfish natures, typically define “hate speech” as anything uttered that they disagree with. This leads to a person’s thoughts being criminalized. For example, if I think or speak in favor of Christianity, then non-Christians can deem this “hate speech.” Of course the same goes for any other viewpoint that might be expressed. Those in power use the power of intimidation and law to silence opposition. This is what Rubio declares “justifiable.” And the use of baseball bats and clubs are acceptable.

As it pertains to “symbols” some say the mere presence of a Nazi flag, or a Confederate one, justifies violence. Many have shockingly said that showing a symbol is “inciting a riot” and inviting violence against the symbol-wavers, for their views. But this is a slippery slope that all freedom-loving people should avoid. This past week, a man of German origin told me that he had family members killed by the Nazis. Therefore, any violence carried out against those who wave a Nazi-flag is justified. While I have no sympathy toward Nazis, my argument back to him was that I had Southern family members killed by men carrying the American flag during the Civil War. Does this mean I can physically attack anyone who waves an American flag? Politicians like Rubio would never say this, because he’s too busy wrapping himself in the flag as he tries to further his career. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If one group can physically attack another group over a symbol. Then what stops the attacked group from reciprocating? And using Rubio’s incendiary words as justification?

If people really want a “free country” like they claim they do, then political thoughts, speech, and symbols cannot be outlawed. Nor can men as powerful as U.S. Senators justify violence against any group because of their views. It’s become passé to call anyone who disagrees with you a Nazi. In some cases, those who disagree with you truly are Nazis. But in this case, Marco Rubio is displaying the philosophy of a Nazi. If Rubio’s supporters truly want freedom, they will call him out for his incendiary comments. They will stand up to him and others like him and say free speech, truly means “free speech.” And they will look for ways to peacefully keep dictatorial men like him from seizing power. Rubio loves to talk about how his family fled the tyranny of Castro’s Cuba to find freedom in America. But today, Rubio’s political ambitions have caused him to revert back to the behavior that his ancestors fled. Or maybe this has been Rubio’s mindset all along. Evil men desire power for themselves more than they desire freedom for all. And they will say and do whatever it takes to gain such power. Rubio’s words expose him once again as what he truly is. If encouraging mob violence furthers his career, then he’s all game. Maybe instead of calling him “Little Marco” people should start calling him “Little Castro.” A more fitting moniker could not be found.

Reprinted with permission from author's blog.

Iran Will be Trump's Nemesis

Melkulangara Bhadrakumar — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 22:24:41 GMT

The White House readout of US President Donald Trump’s phone call to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday highlighted that the latter “thanked” Trump for his “strong leadership uniting the world against the North Korean menace.” Modi must be the only world leader who has given such fulsome praise to Trump for his performance vis-a-vis North Korea. And, Trump naturally felt elated.

In reality, though, it wasn’t particularly difficult for Modi to say such a strange thing, because India has no role to play in resolving the North Korea problem. What the readout betrays is Washington’s craving for endorsement by the world community for its incoherent approach to the North Korean problem. However, Modi has taken a risk here by raising new expectations in Trump’s mind. The point is, Trump is getting into a collision course with Iran.

Trump has tried to outsmart Tehran by not tearing up the Iran deal but instead undermining it systematically. But Tehran has decided to draw the ‘red line’ and challenged Trump to cross it. On Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened Trump that if his administration imposes any further sanctions on Iran, Tehran will restart its nuclear programme. Period. Significantly, Rouhani issued the stark warning to Trump while addressing the Iranian Majlis:

The new U.S. officials should know that the failed experience of sanctions and coercion compelled their previous governments to eventually come to the negotiation table. If they want to try those experiences again, Iran will definitely revert to a far more advanced situation than it had before the negotiations, not in a matter of weeks or months but in a matter of days or hours.

Top Iranian officials have also been lately articulating a demand that Iran should restart industrial scale uranium enrichment. Notably, Ali Akbar Salehi, president of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and a moderate voice in the establishment who had been a consistent supporter of the nuclear deal with the US, said recently that the country could go up to 20 percent enrichment to “surprise the Americans and their supporters.” Of course, if Iran starts enriching uranium up to the level of 20 percent, it will be a step toward building a nuclear weapon.

All the same, a military showdown with Iran would have catastrophic consequences not only for US interests all across the region but also for Israel. Rouhani’s remarks came only two days after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei directly attacked Trump. In a language reminiscent of the past hostility between Iran and the US, Khamenei said:

Those in power in the United States, wishfully and naively, are still suffering from the illusion that they rule the world. They talk in a manner as if they are dictators over the entire earth! And there are some who obey them out of fear and low self-esteem. Today, the Islamic Republic stands in full power against the United States and tells those in power, who do you think you are? If you are a powerful state, then go manage your own country! If you really care, then tackle the insecurities and violence on the streets of Washington DC, New York City, and Los Angeles! If you really care, go fix racial discrimination and the disastrous violations of human rights for both whites and blacks in your own country! Mind your own business, rather than meddling with other nations’ affairs!

Trump is unused to being spoken to like this. Even those world leaders who think poorly of Trump – such as Germany’s Angela Merkel or Turkey’s Recep Erdogan – speak in innuendos. For sure, this may turn out to be an entanglement that Trump will rue – like in the case of Jimmy Carter. The UN Security Council will never go along with a move by the Trump administration against Iran.

Trump’s credibility is abysmally poor, including among those who may flatter him — like Modi. The US will not even get regional allies to fight its war with Iran. As the 3-day visit by the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri to Turkey testifies — an event without precedent, by the way — the US is pretty much isolated in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the regional alignment involving Russia, Iran and Turkey has jelled, finally, and it binds Trump’s hands. The three countries have just signed a mega $7 billion deal to drill for oil and gas in Iran.

Reprinted with permission from Indian Punchline.

Korea and Venezuela: Flip Sides of the Same Coin

Jacob G. Hornberger — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:26:35 GMT

By suggesting that he might order a US regime-change invasion of Venezuela, President Trump has inadvertently shown why North Korea has been desperately trying to develop nuclear weapons — to serve as a deterrent or defense against one of the US national-security state storied regime-change operations. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Venezuela and, for that matter, other Third World countries who stand up to the US Empire, also seeking to put their hands on nuclear weapons. What better way to deter a US regime-change operation against them?

Think back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US national-security establishment had initiated a military invasion of the Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, had exhorted President Kennedy to bomb Cuba during that invasion, and then had recommended that the president implement a fraudulent pretext (i.e., Operation Northwoods) for a full-scale military invasion of Cuba.

That’s why Cuba, which had never initiated any acts of aggression against the United States, wanted Soviet nuclear missiles installed in Cuba. Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro knew that there was no way that Cuba could defeat the United States in a regular, conventional war. Everyone knows that the military establishment in the United States is so large and so powerful that it can easily smash any Third World nation, including Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela.

Castro’s strategy worked. The Soviet nuclear missiles installed in Cuba drove Kennedy to reject the Pentagon’s and CIA’s vehement exhortations to bomb and invade Cuba. The way the Pentagon and the CIA saw the situation was that Kennedy now had his justification for effecting a violent regime-change operation in Cuba. The way Kennedy saw the situation was that a violent regime-change operation through bombing and invasion could easily result in all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

It turned out that Kennedy was right. What the Pentagon and the CIA didn’t realize at the time is that Soviet commanders on the ground in Cuba had fully armed tactical nuclear weapons at their disposal and the battlefield authority to use them in the event of a US bombing or invasion of the island. If Kennedy had complied with the dictates of the Pentagon and the CIA, it is a virtual certainty that the result would have been all-out nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. To his ever-lasting credit, Kennedy struck a deal in which he vowed that the United States would cease and desist from invading Cuba in return for the Soviet Union’s withdrawal of its nuclear missiles from Cuba.

The point is this: If the Pentagon and the CIA had not been trying to get regime-change in Cuba, Cuba would never have felt the need to get those Soviet missiles. It was the Pentagon’s and CIA’s commitment to regime change in Cuba that gave us the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Equally important, the resolution of the crisis showed that if an independent, recalcitrant Third World regime wants to protect itself from a US national-security-state regime-change operation, the best thing it can do is secure nuclear weapons. Thus, the current crisis over North Korea’s quest to get nuclear weapons to deter a US regime-change operation is rooted in how Cuba deterred the US national security establishment’s regime-change efforts in 1962.

Americans would be wise to view regime change operations in North Korea and Venezuela in the context of the US government’s overall foreign policy of military empire and interventionism.

Recall, first of all, that the US government has a long history of interventionism in Latin America, where it has brought nothing but death, destruction, suffering, misery, and tyranny. Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Panama, and Grenada come to mind.

In fact, the situation in Chile that resulted in US intervention was quite similar to today’s situation in Venezuela. In Chile, a socialist was democratically elected and began adopting socialist policies, which caused economic chaos and crisis. The CIA and Pentagon intentionally and secretly did everything they could to makes matters worse. US officials even engaged in bribery, kidnapping, and assassination in Chile. They incited and encouraged a coup that succeeded in ousting the democratically elected socialist and replaced by a “pro-capitalist” military general, whose forces proceeded to round up, kidnap, torture, rape, or execute tens of thousands of people, including the murder of two Americans, all with the support and complicity of the Pentagon and the CIA.

Haven’t we seen the same types of results with the US regime-change operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere? Death, destruction, and chaos, not to mention a gigantic refugee crisis for Europe.

And look at what the pro-empire, interventionist system has done to the American people. Constant, never-ending crises and chaos, with North Korea being just the latest example. Out of control federal spending and debt that are threatening the nation with financial bankruptcy and economic and monetary crises. Totalitarian-like powers being exercised by the president and his national-security establishment, including assassination, torture, and indefinite detention. Weird, bizarre random acts of violence that reflect the same lack of regard for the sanctity of human life that US officials display in faraway countries.

None of this is necessary. It’s entirely possible for Americans to live normal, healthy, free lives. All it takes is a change of direction — one away from empire and interventionism and toward a limited-government republic and non-interventionism in the affairs of other nations. That’s the way to achieve a free, prosperous, harmonious, and friendly society.

Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation.

The Wrong Narrative in Charlottesville

Jeff Deist — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 18:42:32 GMT

The political violence in Charlottesville yesterday was as predictable as it was futile. One person was killed and dozens badly injured, marking a new low in the political and cultural wars that are as heated as any time since in America since the 1960s.

This relentless politicization of American culture has eroded goodwill and inflamed the worst impulses in society. Antifa and the alt-right may represent simple-minded expressions of hatred and fear, but both groups are animated entirely by politics: the perception that others can impose their will on us politically. The only lasting solution to political violence is to make politics matter less.

We’ve allowed politics to invade every aspect of American life, from religion and family life to sex and sexuality, from bathrooms to ball fields to the workplace. But what has it gotten us besides identity politics on steroids? The “personal is political” is hardly the rallying cry of a free and confident nation. Even as we enjoy historically unparalleled material prosperity, we are dispirited by the 2016 election hangover and looking for scapegoats to explain the American malaise.

It’s easy to decry Antifa and its violent leftwing rhetoric. It’s easy to decry the alt-Right, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and fascists. It’s more important to understand them as exemplars of a new political age. Progressives demanded permanent revolution; conservatives responded by becoming permanent reactionaries. And the media bias (overwhelmingly anti-right) makes things worse: one “side” becomes convinced of its moral superiority, while the other becomes convinced the fix is in.

We suspect, without knowing, that a Hillary voter is just a step or two removed from a bandanna-clad Antifa, while a Mitt Romney voter is but a few degrees removed from an alt-Right nationalist marching in the streets. This may seem farcical, but the political society promoted by Clinton and Romney encourages it. Everyone must take a side, and live with the excesses.

What we saw this weekend was a demonstration of the horseshoe effect, where both groups begin to sound and act like the other-- both illiberal, both demanding omnipotent state solutions to problems mostly created by government in the first place.

To be sure, Antifa and the alt-right represent only a tiny fraction of the population and have little economic, social, or political power. But they serve as perfect fodder for a media narrative that benefits from a sky-is-falling narrative to ratchet up viewership. The narrative is fed by our vanity and desire to imagine easy solutions to complex problems (e.g. more “education,” hate speech laws, welfarism, etc.) And we play along, assuming the worst of others and issuing smug affirmations of our own superiority on Facebook and Twitter.

In 2018 we will suffer through a round of mid-term congressional elections which will only intensify the political and cultural divide. Both political parties will use events like Charlottesville to serve their shameful partisan goals. The need for each side to vanquish the other, to punish and repudiate the other’s existence, demonstrates why politics is termed war by other means. It’s not a peaceable process. Yet underneath it all the “policy” differences between Democrats and Republicans are laughably small. Theirs is a turf battle, nothing more.

In a winner takes all political world, elections are weapons. Unless and until we learn to reject politics as the overarching method for organizing society, hatred and fear of “the other” will remain pervasive. Americans understand viscerally that government has far too much power over who wins and loses in our society, but haven’t fully grasped the degree to which the political class benefits from division. We still want to believe in grade-school notions of democracy and voting.

People of goodwill don’t impose themselves on others politically any more than they do militarily. Libertarianism, with its goal of radically diminishing the scope of government and politics in our lives, offers a path to a more peaceful future. Only libertarians can claim the mantle of anti-authoritarianism, because only libertarians would deny government the power and size to become authoritarian. The political world isn’t working, so why do we insist on more politics to fix it?

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

North Korea and The Unintended Consequences of Trump

Patrick Henningsen — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 12:37:58 GMT

There’s something very strange and disturbing about the hype around the White House and US media’s latest obsession with North Korea. It’s not just the usual war-mongering and hot air though. We’ve seen all that before. This goes beyond sabre-rattling. There’s something uncomfortably bipartisan about this new appetite for war.

Watching CNN this week, you got the impression we’ve entered a new comic book phase in the American experiment, driven by an 24 hour media environment where facts and analysis seem like a distant nostalgic hallucination. I asked myself, is it real? Where does the show finally end, and the war begin?

We’re told that North Korea has now defied recent threats of “fire and fury” from US President Donald Trump, and that the regime has announced its plan to launch missiles at the nearest US territory, the island of Guam in the Pacific. So that’s it. It’s war then, right?

Trump’s generals wasted no time throwing petrol on the fire, led by Defense Secretary Gen. James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis who warned Kim Jung-Un that the US military “possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth.”

Whatever your views might be of Trump, North Korea, US foreign policy, or "global security," at this point we’d all do well to hit the breaks.

When one considers that North Korea has been making noises about the American devil and its puppet state South Korea, for the last 18 years – having done absolutely nothing about it during that time, then it’s logical, at least for now, to conclude that Pyongyang either doesn’t want to do anything about it, or more likely, simply cannot do anything about it. Unless of course, you buy into the US mythology about unstable rogue regimes and the constant reincarnation of the Hitler avatar. Saddam should have taught us that lesson already, but apparently not.

Is North Korea a threat to the United States and its allies? This is not the conclusion to which many sober foreign policy analysts have come. Unfortunately, sober analysis is in short supply in Washington DC, but also in London and Down Under too. Emboldened by a media that is desperate for ad-generating eye balls (and the best way to generate ratings is by broadcasting a crisis, or fear-based narrative) you then see wild statements like the one made by the Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull this week assuring the US that he would invoke the "longstanding military alliance" with America in the event the North Korean regime attacked the US.

What’s most dangerous about all of this is that no one is asking any questions.

The first question that needs to be answered in any intelligence briefing is: what is the nature of the threat?

Missile Threat?

Conveniently ignored by the entire US media and swamp alpha dogs, is the fact that there is no evidence to date that North Korea has an actual operational military ballistic missile program. No evidence suggests their test modules are capable of medium range strikes, let alone any intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability. In terms of ICBM capability – the ability to launch a missile into the outer atmosphere with a 10,000 km range – there exists no real indication that North Korea will have this ability in the near future. A series of recent botched tests (celebrated as ground-breaking by DPRK state media) of relatively short-range Hwasong-12 rockets (glorified Scud missiles) means North Korea cannot yet pose a physical threat to the US, unless of course, you are going by the colorful war graphics plastered all over Wolf Blitzer’s ridiculous Situation Room, airing daily on the military industrial promotional network CNN.

Still, US military officials are lining-up to confirm that the Kim regime can deliver on his threats, issuing a series of Orwellian statements along the way. Vice-Admiral James Syring, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, primed the media pump back in May, stating, “It is incumbent on us to assume that North Korea today can range the United States with an ICBM carrying a nuclear warhead.”

In other words, if the threat is not yet there, we need to make sure you think it is.

In typical dramatic style, Pyongyang claimed on July 4th (US Independence Day, no less) that it had conducted its first ICBM test, and that the test had been a resounding success. The missile was capable of reaching “anywhere in the world,” they said on state TV. The amazing thing is that the US media willingly bought it. To borrow a turn from Donald Trump, the media were suddenly “locked and loaded.”

Now for an example of just how mindless (or controlled) western journalism has become, rather than challenge the wild propaganda claim, The Guardian’s man in Osaka, Justin McCurry, axiomatically validated it:

The claim was verified by the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who described the test as 'a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region and the world.'

At this point, anyone who has not dismissed the credibility of the comic book media outfit in Pyongyang cannot rightly call themselves a journalist, nor an "expert" on the DPRK. This seems to be the new formula applied by the west: Pyongyang releases another bombastic, wishful statement, which is then elevated to credulity by an US official, before finally being codified by a western news desk as “official.” It’s enough to make heads spin at Stalin’s Izvestia. Back then, the average Soviet citizen knew Izvestia was pure tripe. Not so in today’s Anglo-American empire.

Again, another in a long list of examples of why the western mainstream media is no longer fit for purpose.

When this latest round of North Korea hype first broke out in June, all the focus was on the ICBM threat which “could hit San Diego.” Because of this glaring technical reality gap in the narrative, the international mainstream media machine has quickly compensated by simultaneously downgrading the threat to the continental USA and blowing-up the talking point that Kim will instead be attacking the US military stronghold of Guam instead. Their source? Well, it’s North Korea’s state-run propaganda bureau. Credible you say? After 18 years of nonstop nonsense from the Kim Dynasty, the answer should really be no, only for the western media, North Korea’s state-run KCNA is as good as gold (ratings gold). Again, we can confidently say that the mainstream corporate media is guilty of laundering DPRK propaganda, before spinning it into millions in advertising revenue at home, not to mention a nice little nudge for US military industrial share prices whose directors also sit on the boards of those same mainstream media outlets. Another little useful equation.

If you haven’t had an epiphany by this point, then you should consider moving to the DPRK.

There’s more. Pyongyang "confirms": “The Hwasong-12 rockets to be launched by the KPA will cross the sky above Shimane, Hiroshima and Koichi Prefectures of Japan.”

General Kim Rak Gyom, the head of the country’s strategic forces, took to the airwaves to assure his comrades that The Korean People’s Army (KPA) will complete its plans in mid-August, ready for the final order from The Dear Leader.

They also claim that although the missiles will head towards Guam, they actually ditch into the sea about 18 to 25 miles before the island.

Guam is still 2,100 miles away from North Korea. If believed, North Korea’s own Academy of Defence Science boasted that their best "test" so far has only reached an altitude of 1,741 miles (2,802km), and flew a merger 580 miles – calling it their most "successful missile test" to date. While this report could rightly be classed as DPRK propaganda, The Guardian still reinforced Pyongyang’s claim, spinning it in spectacular fashion:

The US initially described it as an intermediate-range missile but later conceded it was an ICBM.

Dazzling spin. If you didn’t know better, you’d think that The Guardian’s Osaka desk was wired into the Pentagon’s communications department. Interestingly, buried at the bottom of their missile section of the report, you find this contradictory admission:

John Schilling, a missile expert at the 38 North think tank in Washington, estimates it will take until at least 2020 for North Korea to be able to develop an ICBM capable of reaching the US mainland, and another 25 years before it will be able to build one powered by solid fuel.

Not good for the narrative (it’s worth noting that it took India more than 13 years to create an ICBM powered by solid fuel).

If you are brave enough to venture off the western media reservation, you will quickly learn from a number of different sources that these North Korean missile tests most likely did not have any guidance systems on board. Why not? Maybe because they haven’t managed to develop any yet.

“Nobody really knows if they’ve managed to miniaturize the weapons to put on top of the missiles,” said Robert Kelly, Associate Professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, telling Quartz:

It depends on miniaturization and guidance. The communist countries have traditionally not been good at guidance. That’s why the Soviets built gigantic missiles, because they didn’t know where they were going to land… My guess is that the North Koreans are not good at guidance. My guess is that when they start launching, a lot of them are just going to fall in the water.

What’s worse than Pyongyang’s state-generated bluster propaganda, is how the White House and the western media react to this as if it were a genuine news release. This fact alone should cause western electorates to seriously question the sanity of our media-driven narratives. But we see this familiar pattern time and time again – the US leadership and the western media mindlessly reacting to made-for-purpose propaganda, whether it’s coming from Pyongyang, or from ISIS’s Amaq news agency‘s press releases.

A Nuclear Threat?

Way back when, the topic of nuclear conflagration used to be treated with seriousness, but in today’s America it’s become something of a geopolitical sideshow. One reason for this could be for the US and Israel’s determination to deflect away from any serious discussion about nuclear disarmament, a concept which had achieved some political status in the 1980’s but has steadily waned ever since Francis Fukuyama declared The End of History and the Last Man in 1992.

On top of the fact that North Korea appears to have no operational (their series of failed, underwhelming "tests" do not count as operational) medium range ballistic missile arsenal, and no proven long-range ICBM capability, there is also no discernible nuclear weapons capability.

Estimates vary on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. To date, the US has no hard intelligence on any operational nukes. Reports on their supposed nuclear detonation tests are equally as sketchy. So it seems near impossible at the present juncture to accurately verify just how far along North Korea is with their alleged WMD program. Most estimates are generated by Washington-based think tanks, and are based on how much fissile material they might have, which is based on how much highly enriched uranium it may have produced over the last decade.

The Washington Post even questioned the status of their nuclear arsenal back in 2013. When a former senior Obama administration official was asked if he had seen any actual evidence of any such weapons, his reply was strikingly vague, stating, “We’re worried about it, but we haven’t seen it.”

Logic would dictate that we should only worry about the DPRK’s nuclear weapons until such a time when we have some verifiable intelligence to suggest they have the means to build them. At the moment, a sane argument can be made that they do not.

Despite all this, The Guardian continues to stoke the public fear by proffering the following:

Can anything be done to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions? At this point, the obvious response is no.

One thing that should be crystal clear to anyone by now is that a major component of the Kim regime’s domestic legitimacy requires the state to remind its citizens that they are under constant threat from the US and neighboring allies, South Korea and Japan. Again, what Donald Trump and the US media are doing by amplifying the “fire and fury” rhetoric is tapping directly into the Kim propaganda mill. You could make the argument that there’s a symbiosis between Washington and Pyongyang, a predictable tango of mutually assured public relations outcomes. How many times have we heard the old national security trope, “America takes these threats seriously. We’re putting the enemy on notice.” When this happens, it feeds directly into the DPRK newspeak machine, and so you see a predictable chain of events occur, all of which is turbo-charged by mainstream media spin.

‘Being There’

Putting aside the issue of how China would react to an US strike near its border, there are a number of good reasons to pause and consider the consequences of any such action.

Here is where we shift gears, from TEAM America, to Chauncey Gardiner. Not to make light of such a serious situation, but I still find myself asking whether there’s not a man or woman around him who has either the clout or the stones to tap the President on the shoulder and calmly say, “Your excellency, a quick word if that’s ok. Maybe ratcheting up the war rhetoric and threatening a preemptive strike in Asia may not be the best way to go about it this.”

The impression one gets is that no such person exists in the President’s inner circle, and if they did, he is not paying them any notice. Maybe he is genuinely still feeling insecure about how to communicate publicly on matters of state. After all, this is a unique experiment in itself – the country’s first non-politician sitting in the chief executive’s chair. This leads us back to one of Trump potential handicaps; he had signaled very early on in his campaign that he would be relying on “the generals” to make all of his important military decisions. At the time, this might have seemed like a prudent move back in 2016 when he was juxtaposed with the bevy of 16 "national security" savants standing to his right and his left on an overcrowded Republican debate stage. As the only one on the stage with no experience in public service or politics, it seemed like a tactical move for Trump; if you can’t compete with the swamp purely on swamp credentials, then just dismiss that section of the résumé by deferring to the military brass, and thus bypassing faux hawks like Lindsey Graham who are constantly grandstanding, whilst pretending to know which war to start and when, or Little Marco shrieking on about going to war with everyone and Cuba, a dizzy Ben Carson, or Jeb Bush trying to defend his brother’s epic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the others – each competing for the crown of who’s toughest on terror, ISIS and Russia.

At the same time, Trump alluded to a clear shift away from a contiguous Clinton-Bush-Obama R2P policy, and towards a non-interventionist foreign policy. This was especially necessary early on in the campaign in order to knock out Jeb Bush, and distance oneself from the Dubya neocon stigma. However, by adopting a more Paulish, paleoconservative stance, Trump had indirectly declared war on the neoconservative Republican establishment and the deep state and their intelligence agency shadow steering committee, a faction which still remains at war with the President today. Come election time though, that didn’t matter because Trump struck a chord with America’s silent majority who were still embarrassed by the disastrous George W. Bush era, and even more disappointed by the Obama’s continuance of it. That crowd responded with positive feedback for Trump which translated into votes and his eventual GOP nomination (something which perennial presidential losers like John McCain and Lindsey Graham may never fully understand). This was the making of Trump. Moving into the general election, he simply refashioned this same platform to exhibit contrast with a hopelessly hawkish Hillary Clinton. Again, that strategy worked for Trump, but he still never addressed what might be his fundamental flaw, namely, a lack of knowledge in international diplomacy and geopolitics. Instead, he did what any good business man does – he delegated, and doubled-down on the generals.

The problem with all of the generals is that they are also career stakeholders in the previous military failures of the Clinton-Bush-Obama gestalt. With not a whistleblower among them (save for Gen. James Cartwright, skillfully indicted and ultimately excommunicated by Obama for whistleblowing on STUXNET), men like Gen. James Mattis, and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, having presided over a series of illegal and disastrous wars in American history, suddenly find themselves in even higher decision-making positions than before. We can only pray they’ve all had a come to Jesus moment and hopefully developed some empathic qualities that may help avert further wars. So far, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Given that Trump respects the generals, you’d expect that if the generals were telling him to calm down (and stop making an ass out of himself) then he wouldn’t be popping-off like he has been. So it looks like the generals may not be telling Trump to hold it down. Maybe they are encouraging him to play the role of war hawk and all-round tough guy. Either way, it looks like it’s back to square one for Trump – back to competing against sad individuals like Graham and McCain for the title of Most Flippant.

The Pro-War Left

On the other side of the aisle, we have something altogether more dangerous, a new fifth column in the United States. The new anti-antiwar left that has been carefully groomed during eight years of the Obama Odyssey, nudged into their current position by the ungodly neolib-neocon chimera led by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and flanked by Susan Rice, Samantha Power, wholly endorsed by John McCain, and backed-up by the terrible tandem of Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan, and so on. These are the people leading the call for what seems like an endless list of military interventions. What should worry concerned citizens is that this unholy alliance is now completely bipartisan.

Robert Parry from Consortium News illustrates the level of political gymnastics involved in this ideological inversion:

Since the neocons’ emergence as big-time foreign policy players in the Reagan administration, they also have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, receiving a steady flow of money often through US government-funded grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and through donations from military contractors to hawkish neocon think tanks.

But neocons’ most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left’s disgust with President Trump.

Their victory over the old antiwar left was achieved through the construct of the Arab Spring and by a relentless media disinformation campaign which suffocated any logical and non-orientalist discourse around interventions in Libya and Syria, and also around Afghanistan which turned out to be NATO’s first unofficial feminist war (where arguably, women and children are worse off in 2017 than before the US invasion on 2002).

So well-trained the new anti-antiwar left has become, that when Donald Trump launched his errant cruise missile attack on Syria, it was met with cheers and congratulations by Trump’s liberal critics and the robotic pundits at CNN and in US mainstream media. Hence, Trump’s lesson: aggressive war action equals a bounce in the polls. There was a method to their madness however. In their infinitely myopic geopolitical view, American progressives worked out a rudimentary equation in their heads: because the Syria government is closely allied with Russia, then anything which was bad for Damascus was also bad for Putin and Moscow. Granted, that might sound a bit like Simple Jack foreign policy, but that’s the intelligence level which most Democrats and ‘progressives’ are working on at the moment.

Another consequence of Trump being there, is that the political left in America have lost their minds and are still relying on the elaborate Russiagate conspiracy theory for their resurrection. Just ask Adam Schiff. If the left truly opposed Trump, it would have been a good opportunity to pin him down on the fact that the US had no evidence of a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhun, Idlib, but instead they passed on it.

Similarly, you would think that Democrats would have learned their lesson in Syria (a 7 year proxy war which the US has now lost), and use Trump’s bellicose outbursts over North Korea as a real opportunity to at least pose as genuine opposition, but again, no such luck. Parry explains how the border of this left-right maze is constructed:

People who would normally favor international cooperation toward peaceful resolution of conflicts have joined the neocons in ratcheting up global tensions and making progress toward peace far more difficult.

The provocative 'Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,' which imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea while tying President Trump’s hands in removing those penalties, passed the Congress without a single Democrat voting no.

The only dissenting votes came from three Republican House members – Justin Amash of Michigan, Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – and from Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Senate.

In other words, every Democrat present for the vote adopted the neocon position of escalating tensions with Russia and Iran. The new sanctions appear to close off hopes for a détente with Russia and may torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran, which would put the bomb-bomb-bomb option back on the table just where the neocons want it.

If you are hoping that this new bipartisan war consensus will change any time soon, don’t hold your breath. Unless the American "left" or progressives actually wake up and realize how far out to sea they’ve drifted on the issue of war, then Washington will be locked into a new normal for the foreseeable future.

The danger of this current North Korean war plan is the level of political inertia pushing it. Like in 1914, when no one thought it could happen, and when it began, no one knew how to stop it.

The good news (well, sort of) is that Rex Tillerson seems to be prone to making intermittent statements which resemble sanity. When the war volume was reaching fever pitch on August 2nd, the Secretary of State weighed in saying, “We do not seek a regime change; we do not seek the collapse of the regime; we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula; we do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel.”

If the rest of the Administration could adopt this tone now and again, it would go a long way towards reducing public anxiety.

Perhaps Trump’s hawkishness will reawaken the moral core of American antiwar movement.

All of these outcomes could end up being the unintended consequences of Trump.

As for the US media, so far we can see there are no Tillerson-types around.

By now, we should all have learned the lesson: mainstream media, not politics, is the true engine of war.

Reprinted with author's permission from 21st Century Wire.