{"id":106903,"date":"2018-02-26T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=106903"},"modified":"2018-02-25T06:38:26","modified_gmt":"2018-02-25T06:38:26","slug":"the-coming-wars-to-end-all-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/02\/the-coming-wars-to-end-all-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coming Wars to End All Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe compulsive hatred of Putin by many who have almost zero idea about Putin or Russian history is disproportionate to any rational analysis, but not surprising. Trump and Putin are like weird doppelgangers in the liberal imagination.\u201d <\/em>
\n— John Steppling, \u201cTrump, Putin, and Nikolas Cruz Walk into a Bar\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

24 Feb 2018 – <\/em>The Trump and Netanyahu governments have a problem: How to start a greatly expanded Middle-Eastern war without having a justifiable reason for one.\u00a0 No doubt they are working hard to solve this urgent problem.\u00a0 If they can\u2019t find a \u201cjustification\u201d (which they can\u2019t), they will have to create one (which they will).\u00a0 Or perhaps they will find what they have already created. \u00a0Whatever the solution, we should feel confident that they are not sitting on their hands. History teaches those who care to learn that when aggressors place a gun on the wall in the first act of their play, it must go off in the final act.<\/p>\n

These sinister players have signaled us quite clearly what they have in store.\u00a0 All signs point toward an upcoming large-scale Israeli\/U.S. attack on Lebanon and Syria, and all the sycophantic mainstream media are in the kitchen prepping for the feast.\u00a0 Russia and Iran are the main course, with Lebanon and Syria, who will be devoured first, as the hors d\u2019oeuvres.\u00a0 As always, the media play along as if they don\u2019t yet know what\u2019s coming.\u00a0 Everyone in the know knows what is, just not exactly when.\u00a0 And the media wait with baited breath as they count down to the dramatic moment when they can report the incident that will compel the \u201cinnocent\u201d to attack the \u201cguilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone with half a brain can see the greatly increased anti-Russian propaganda of the past few weeks.\u00a0 This has happened as the Russia-gate claims have fallen to pieces, as former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, the late Robert Parry, Paul Craig Roberts, and others have documented so assiduously. \u00a0All across the media spectrum, from the big name corporate stenographers like The New York Times, CNN, National Public<\/em> Radio, The Washington Post<\/em> to The Atlantic<\/em> and Nation<\/em> magazines and other \u201cleftist\u201d publications such as Mother Jones<\/em> and Who What Why<\/em>, the Russia and Putin bashing has become hysterical in tone, joined as it is with an anti-Trump obsession, as if Trump were a dear friend of Putin and Russia and wasn\u2019t closely allied with the Netanyahu government in its plans for the Middle-East.\u00a0 As if Trump were in charge. \u201cRussia Sees Midterm Elections as a Chance to Sow Fresh Discord (NY Times<\/em><\/a>, 2\/13), \u201cRussia Strongman\u201d (Putin) has \u201cpulled off one of the greatest acts of political sabotage in modern history (The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, Jan. \/Feb. 2018), \u201c\u201dMueller\u2019s Latest Indictment Shows Trump Has Helped Putin Cover Up a Crime\u201d (Mother Jones<\/em><\/a>, 2\/16\/18), \u201cA Russian Sightseeing Tour For Realists\u201d (whowhatwhy.com<\/a>, 2\/7\/18), etc.<\/p>\n

I am reminded of the turn to the right that so many \u201cmuckrakers\u201d made during and after WW I.\u00a0 Afraid of a revolt from below, bewitched by their own vision to articulate the world\u2019s future, heady over their own war propaganda, and wanting to be on the safe side of the government crackdown on dissent (The Espionage Act, the Palmer Raids, etc.), many progressives of the era embraced a jingoism similar to the anti-Russia mania of today.<\/p>\n

Only someone totally lacking a sense of humor and blind to propaganda would not laugh uproariously at today\u2019s media nonsense about Russia, but such laughter would be infused with a foreboding awareness that as the Middle East explodes and U.S.\/NATO backed Kiev forces prepare to attack the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, the world is entering a very dangerous period.\u00a0 And of course Trump has said, “The U.S. has great strength and patience but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”\u00a0 Totally destroy 26 million human beings.\u00a0 While his bully buddy in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently said at the Munich Security Conference that Iran is \u201cthe greatest threat to the world,\u201d compared it to Nazi Germany, and claimed it was developing ballistic missiles to strike deep into the United States.\u00a0 \u201cIran seeks to dominate our region, the Middle East, and seeks to dominate the world through aggression and terror,\u201d he said.\u00a0 And he vowed to act against Iran and anyone who supported it \u2013 i.e. Lebanon and Syria (Russia).<\/p>\n

Putin also, like all the mythic bogeymen, is portrayed as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world.\u00a0 If the American public wasn\u2019t so \u201csophisticated\u201d and adept at seeing through lies \u2013 pause and laugh \u2013 we could expect some World War I posters<\/a> with Russian soldiers (like The Huns), sharp teeth glistening, gorilla strong and beastly, holding American women in preparation for the kill or rape.\u00a0 Last year, when Oliver Stone did the world the great service of releasing his four-part interview with Putin<\/a>, he was bashed, of course.\u00a0 Just as he was with his film JFK, <\/em>the only movie in history to be reviewed and panned one year before its release by a Washington Post<\/em> reviewer who didn\u2019t see the movie but had a purloined preliminary script as his source.\u00a0 The Washington Post<\/em>: the object of the latest film drivel, The Post,<\/em> portraying it falsely as the savior of the nation through the publication of the Pentagon Papers (which is another story).\u00a0 The Washington Post \u2013 <\/em>the CIA\u2019s dear friend.<\/p>\n

In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin.\u00a0 Of course Putin is a politician and the leader of a great and powerful nation, and one should receive his words skeptically. But watching Stone interview Putin for four hours, one comes away \u2013 but I doubt few have watched the four hours \u2013 with a reasonably good sense of the man.\u00a0 And putting aside one\u2019s impressions of him, he makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts.\u00a0 One: that the U.S. needs an external enemy (\u201cI know that, I feel that.\u201d). Two: the U.S.A. engineered the coup d\u2019\u00e9tat in the Ukraine on Russia\u2019s border.\u00a0 Three: the U.S. has surrounded Russia with US\/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missile aimed at Russia.\u00a0 This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror.\u00a0 If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable?\u00a0 What would CNN<\/em> and The New York Times <\/em>have to say?\u00a0 Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia\u2019s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with U.S\/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.\u00a0 So too Iran that is also surrounded. \u00a0These media are propagandists, that\u2019s why.\u00a0 They promote war, as they always have.\u00a0 They are pushing for war with Russia via Syria\/Lebanon\/Iran and Ukraine, and they are nihilistically demonizing North Korea (as part of Obama\u2019s pivot toward Asia and the encircling of China, as John Pilger has brilliantly documented in his film The Coming War on China<\/em><\/a>) in what can only be called a conspiracy to commit genocide, as Dr. Graeme MacQueen and Christopher Black make clear in their Open Letter to the International Criminal Court: https:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/the-genocide-conspiracy-against-north-korea-an-open-letter-to-the-international-criminal-court\/5627351<\/p>\n

We are moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international ant-war movement doesn\u2019t quickly arise to stop it.\u00a0 Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it. It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s so obvious that most can\u2019t see it, or don\u2019t want to.\u00a0 The corporate main stream media are enemies of the truth; are clearly part of the continuation of the CIA\u2019s Operation Mockingbird, and those who still rely on them for the truth are beyond reach.\u00a0 Douglas Valentine, in The<\/em> CIA as Organized Crime<\/em>, says the CIA has long aimed to use and co-opt the \u201cCompatible Left, which in America translates into liberals and pseudo-intellectual status seekers who are easily influenced.\u201d\u00a0 And he adds that the propaganda is not just produced by the CIA but by the military, State Department, and red, white, and blue advertisements that are everywhere.\u00a0 Nothing has changed since the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s.\u00a0 Valentine adds:<\/p>\n

All of that is ongoing, despite being exposed in the late 1960s.\u00a0 Various technological advances, including the internet, have spread the network around the world, and many people don\u2019t even realize they are part of it, that they\u2019re promoting the CIA line.\u00a0 \u201cAssad\u2019s a butcher,\u201d they say, or \u201cPutin kills journalists,\u201d or \u201cChina is repressive.\u00a0 They have no idea what they\u2019re talking about but spout all this propaganda.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

William Blake said it truly:<\/p>\n

In every cry of every Man, <\/em>
\nIn every Infants cry of fear, <\/em>
\nIn every voice: in every ban, <\/em>
\nThe mind-forg’d manacles I hear\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em>How to break the chains \u2013 that is our task.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>.\u00a0 He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. <\/em>A former college basketball player, he teaches the sociology of sports, and writes on a wide range of topics.\u00a0 His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24 Feb 2018 – The Trump and Netanyahu governments have a problem: How to start a greatly expanded Middle-Eastern war without having a justifiable reason for one. No doubt they are working hard to solve this urgent problem. If they can\u2019t find a \u201cjustification\u201d (which they can\u2019t), they will have to create one (which they will). Or perhaps they will find what they have already created. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}