“Human nature is constructed in such a way that you end up learning much more from suffering than from a life of ease.”
José Mujica, nicknamed Pepe Mujica, was President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. A former Tupamaros freedom fighter in the 60s and the 70s, he was detained, like a hostage by the dictatorship between 1973 and 1985. He advocates a philosophy of life focused on sobriety: learn to live with what is necessary and fairest.
By Peter Phillips
The presidential primaries offer a single choice for both Democrats and Republicans to vote for empire and permanent war. This year’s entertainment spectacle, what we call democratic elections, is a particularly gross circus of meaninglessness, misinformation, sound bites, and lies. Both parties are in support in the continuation of the US/NATO global empire of permanent war and the protection of the capital of the global 1%. Even Bernie Sanders calls for drone strikes and continued war on Isis and other evil terrorists.
[…]
The US/NATO global empire is primarily in service to the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC) not the people of the United State or the installed President in Washington. These few thousand people controlling global capital amount to less than 0.0001 percent of the world’s population. The TCC, as the capitalist elite of the world, dominate nation states through international treaty agreements and transnational state organizations such as the Work Bank, Bank for International Settlements, and the International Monetary Fund. The TCC communicates their policy requirements through global networks such as the G-7, G-20, and various non-governmental policy organizations like the Word Economic Forum, Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberger Group. Presidents and Presidential candidates listen to the TCC or they will not be allowed into office. Rigged elections, assassinations, and October surprises are in the tool kit of the TCC and deep state powers.
Read the full article at: CounterPunch
Below, a short excerpt from Edward Snowden’s article in The Intercept: Whistleblowing Is Not Just Leaking — It’s an Act of Political Resistance.
“A single act of whistleblowing doesn’t change the reality that there are significant portions of the government that operate below the waterline, beneath the visibility of the public. Those secret activities will continue, despite reforms. But those who perform these actions now have to live with the fear that if they engage in activities contrary to the spirit of society — if even a single citizen is catalyzed to halt the machinery of that injustice — they might still be held to account. The thread by which good governance hangs is this equality before the law, for the only fear of the man who turns the gears is that he may find himself upon them.”
Read the full article at The Intercept
An RT Documentary crew filming in northern Syria has seen Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL) documents abandoned by retreating terrorists and found by the Kurds that, along with captured IS recruits, provide a stunning insight into the ISIS oil trade.
Only ten days after the town of Shaddadi in Syrian Kurdistan was liberated from the ISIS militants, an RT Doc film crew followed Kurdish soldiers around houses that had been abandoned in haste by fleeing jihadists. There, they found documents shedding light on the ISIS oil trade, jihadist passports with Turkish entry stamps, an instruction booklet – printed in Turkey – on how to wage war against the Syrian government, and more.
The areas surrounding Shaddadi has large natural oil reserves, and until recently, ISIS militants profited from it, forcing members of the local population to work in their oil industry. Piles of detailed invoices used by ISIS to calculate daily revenues from selling oil were found on the site. Local residents attested that intermediaries from Raqqa and Aleppo arrived to pick up the oil and often mentioned Turkey, while a captured ISIS recruit admitted on camera that the terrorist group sells oil to Turkey. He and another foreign fighter from Saudi Arabia also revealed that it had been easy to cross the Turkish border.
The documentary contains exclusive footage from towns liberated from ISIS, and features interviews with locals who had worked on ISIS oil refineries as well as testimonies from the ISIS members captured by Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) soldiers. Discover what RT Doc crew found in oil-rich areas that were under ISIS occupation only days ago.
Source: RT News
Digging deep into Hillary’s connections to Wall Street, Abby Martin reveals how the Clinton’s multi-million-dollar political machine operates.
This episode chronicles the Clinton’s rise to power in the 90s on a right-wing agenda, the Clinton Foundation’s revolving door with Gulf state monarchies, corporations and the world’s biggest financial institutions, and the establishment of the hyper-aggressive “Hillary Doctrine” while Secretary of State. Learn the essential facts about the great danger she poses, and why she’s the US Empire’s choice for its next CEO.
The so-called Panama Papers are sold to us as a vast leak chronicling the financial misdeeds of the rich and powerful. But is this really the case? Certainly we are given insight into the secretive world of offshore banking, but is it a complete and balanced story? One interpretation of the Panama Papers is the West targeting its enemies.
CrossTalking with Mitch Feierstein, Alexander Mercouris, and Pepe Escobar.
NATO headquarters in Brussels. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)
By Danielle Ryan
Birthdays are always a good time to take stock of one’s achievements, make some resolutions and contemplate the road ahead. So, with NATO turning sixty-seven today, perhaps it’s time for the military alliance to engage in some honest self-reflection.
The problem is, sometimes it’s just hard to let go. No one wants to admit their glory days are behind them. Everyone wants to feel they have a purpose, some grand vision yet to fulfill. When the time comes to hang up your hat, some bow out gracefully. Others need to be dragged kicking and screaming.
If Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove’s latest comments are anything to go by, the alliance won’t be performing a graceful exit any time soon. Instead, the 28-member bloc is simply recalibrating its efforts in an attempt to justify its existence and remain relevant.
Intending to provide collective security against the Soviet Union, the military alliance was founded on April 4, 1949 by 12 countries, led by the United States. The bloc would aim to prevent the spread of communism and promote American economic interests across the European continent. Once the Soviet Union collapsed and ceased to exist in December 1991, NATO was at a bit of a loose end. Instead of disbanding, the organization continued to usher in new members in bouts of expansion that were sure to provoke modern Russia.
As I have written before, there were those even at the time of the organization’s founding that foresaw such a situation emerging. US Senator Robert A. Taft — the son of President William Howard Taft — was one of them. Taft was outspoken in his misgivings about the appropriateness of such an alliance. He believed that a military bloc built on arming nations against the USSR could leave Moscow feeling “ringed” in and could lay the groundwork for another world war — even going so far as to say it is “not a peace program, it is a war program.” In a speech explaining his vote against the formation of the alliance, he asked: “How would we feel if Russia undertook to arm a country on our border; Mexico, for instance?”
For as long as it has existed, NATO has been geared primarily towards serving Washington’s geostrategic interests. It was then, as it is now, far more about creating vassal states in Europe that would do America’s bidding than it was about keeping them safe. The goal was to unite as many nations as possible under a pro-Washington umbrella which would rarely, if ever, question US foreign policy.
Full article at: RT Op-Edge
Russia’s envoy to NATO has vowed a “totally asymmetrical” response if the alliance stands by a plan to deploy new armored units to Eastern Europe. Citing Russian “aggression” as a pretext, the US has announced “continuous troop rotations” starting 2017.
“We are not passive observers, we consistently take all the military measures we consider necessary in order to counterbalance this reinforced presence that is not justified by anything,” Moscow’s permanent representative at the alliance, Aleksandr Grushko, said in an interview with TV channel Russia-24 on Wednesday. “Certainly, we’ll respond totally asymmetrically.”
Grushko did not elaborate on his statement, but said Russia’s actions would correspond to its “understanding of the extent of the military threat, would not be extremely expensive, but also highly effective.”
“As of today, assessing as a whole what that the US and NATO are doing, the point at issue is a substantial change for the worse in the security situation,” he said.
The comments from Russia’s NATO envoy came shortly after the Pentagon announced a plan to increase its troop presence in “the European theater” of up to three fully-manned Army brigades by the end of 2017, one armored, one airborne and one Stryker brigade.
“This Army implementation plan continues to demonstrate our strong and balanced approach to reassuring our NATO allies and partners in the wake of an aggressive Russia in Eastern Europe and elsewhere,” Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove of the US European Command said. “This means our allies and partners will see more capability – they will see a more frequent presence of an armored brigade with more modernized equipment in their countries.”
The first such rotational armored brigade combat team would arrive in Europe in February next year. Each of the brigades will be on nine-month rotations and bring their own equipment to use for exercises across Europe. NATO also wants to enhance Europe’s current equipment and replace it with “the most modern the Army has to offer.” At the same time, the older gear would become the core of the previously unveiled “Army pre-positioned stocks,” which NATO would keep in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
Full story at RT News
U-2 Spy Plane Downed by the Soviets in 1960
NATO’s supreme allied commander General Philip Breedlove, known in some circles as “that crazy guy who keeps mumbling about protecting his precious bodily fluids”, has concocted a truly brilliant scheme to create “additional intelligence collection platforms” in the fight against a “resurgent” Soviet Union/Russia/whatever:
The U-2 spy plane, one of the most emblematic aircraft of the Cold War, should return to Europe to conduct surveillance on a resurgent and aggressive Russia, a top [and profoundly mentally unsound — Ed.] American general has warned.
The suggested return to European skies of the slender espionage plane, which first flew six decades ago and has survived several attempts to force its retirement, could also risk provoking Russian ire by resurrecting memories of the U-2’s role in the most incendiary moments of the Cold War.
In 1960, a U-2 on a spy mission over Russia was downed by a surface-to-air missile and its CIA pilot, Gary Powers, held captive for two years.
Source: Russia Insider
Against the Grain 