Bitter Lake (2015)


BBC documentary film by filmmaker Adam Curtis

Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis – leaving us bewildered and disorientated.

Bitter Lake is a new, adventurous and epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer.

The narrative takes in events in America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia – but the country at the heart of it is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted our politicians with the terrible truth – that they can no longer understand what is going on.

The film reveals the forces that over the past 30 years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange, dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this.

But Bitter Lake is also experimental. Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of almost everything that the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan – and used them in new and radical ways.

In so doing, he builds a different and more emotional way of depicting what has happened in Afghanistan – a counterpoint to what he sees as the narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power.

Watch the full documentary here or here.

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Chaos – Not Victory – is Empire’s Name of the Game

By Peter Koenig

This is precisely the point: The Washington/NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assure the west is in continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.

That’s the name of the game – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya…. you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS/ISIL/IS/DAISH/DAESH/Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just tags to confuse.

You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.

The west has invented a vocabulary so sick, it’s like a virus ingrained in our brains – or what’s left of it – that we don’t even know anymore what the words really mean. We repeat them and believe them. After all, the MSM drills them into our intestines day-in and day-out. People who fight for their freedom, for survival against oppressive regimes, are ‘terrorists’, ‘rebels’. The refugees from Africa, from the Washington inflicted conflict-stricken countries, the refugees of whom more than 4,000 have already perished this year trying to cross the Mediterranean for a ‘better life’ – they have been conveniently renamed ‘immigrants’. Often the term ‘illegal’ is added.

Spreading unrest, chaos, misery – that is what Washington and its vassals do best. They do not want to ‘win’ wars; they want eternal chaos, misery; people who can be subdued easily – full spectrum dominance, they call it.

And since the US army and its big brother (or sister) NATO cannot be everywhere, doesn’t want to be seen everywhere, they hire to kill. Washington invents and creates, then funds with its endless money stream, the ISILs, Daesh’s, Al-Qaedas – and the repertoire grows as the masters please – to fight for them, to kill for them, to produce chaos and false flags – so that eventually they – NATO and the Pentagon bulldozer – can come in and make believe ‘destroying’ those mercenaries that they generated in the first place. But the mainstream media won’t tell you the truth.

They have you believe that the Houtis, a secular humanitarian left-leaning group of Shias, and the Sunnis are fighting each other in Yemen for power; that the Saudis and their GCC cronies are just freeing Yemen from a bunch of terrorists; that the Houtis are supported by Iran (a predominant Shia country) – recently vehemently denied by a UN official – so, the Houtis have to be subdued. At the same time there is more reason for Washington to put yet another blame on Iran. Once the Houtis are dominated and killed off in sufficient numbers, a puppet president will be put in place, like the ex-President Saleh, or his successor Hadi, so that Washington can keep calling the shots – oppressing the country’s population to maintain unlimited access to the strategic port of Aden – and to the Gulf.

Ukraine is the same: Are ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, Al-Qaeda, or whatever their names may be, in the Ukraine? – You bet they are, under the command of CIA and some 6,000 US troops, trainers of course. They train the Kiev troops how best and fastest to kill their brothers in the Donbass; they train them how to create lasting chaos. And if the soldiers refuse to be trained to kill their brothers, the Kiev Nazi regime will shoot them as traitors. Point blanc. So easy. So that nobody will resist.

Not least, the US military ‘advisors’ and CIA with the help of their hired killers, the Kiev Nazis, the ISIS/Daesh/Al-Qaeda, are attempting to provoke President Putin into war – possibly a third World War. Yes, the third in less than hundred years, potentially devastating Europe, and possible the world. So far, the world has been spared this disaster, largely thanks to Mr. Putin’s wise strategy of non-confrontation.

So – no question whether the ISIS/Daesh/Al-Qaeda are in the Ukraine. They are everywhere the empire orders them to be. That’s what they are paid for. That’s what prostitutes do. Especially created prostitutes; well-paid prostitutes. Ideology is just a fig leaf, conveniently used by the western media – so we all may believe that the Muslims are evil, some even more than others. The west must fight them, because they are a serious and present danger for our freedom, our liberty our democracies – and especially our neoliberal everything-goes free market values.

Because that is the ultimate goal: humans as a market commodity, dispensable, reducible to cannon fodder, to be killed off in masses by (poisoned) genetically modified food, by drones, by bombs, by artificially created famine, so that at the end the survivors are serfs to a small elite which controls the four corners of the globe and ALL its resources, to maintain a lifestyle of exceptional people – yes, the exceptional nation, will be reduced to a bunch of exceptional people living in grand splendor.

Remember Henry Kissinger’s infamous words, the vision of one of the most atrocious war criminals still alive today – another Nobel Laureate (sic) – spoken some fifty years ago:

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

These words ring truer every day. But only as long as we allow it; as long as We, the People, We the 99.999% of the globe’s inhabitants, allow it.

Extracted from: Veterans News Now

Posted in Espionage & Secret Agencies, False Flag Operations, Imperialism & Colonialism, NWO & Global Governance, War & Terror | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Chris Hedges: Make the Rich Panic

Many will call me an adventurer – and that I am, only one of a different sort – one of those who risks his skin to prove his truths… I have loved you very much, only I haven’t known how to express my affection. I am extremely rigid in my actions, and I think that sometimes you didn’t understand me. It hasn’t been easy to understand me. Nevertheless, please take me at my word today… An abrazo (hug) from your obstinate and prodigal son. — Che Guevara, March 31,1965

It does not matter to the corporate rich who wins the presidential election. It does not matter who is elected to Congress. The rich have the power. They throw money at their favorites the way a gambler puts cash on his favorite horse. Money has replaced the vote. The wealthy can crush anyone who does not play by their rules. And the political elites—slobbering over the spoils provided by their corporate masters for selling us out—understand the game. Barack and Michelle Obama, as did the Clintons, will acquire many millions of dollars once they leave the White House. And your elected representative in the House or Senate, if not a multimillionaire already, will be one as soon as he or she retires from government and is handed seats on corporate boards or positions in lobbying firms. We do not live in a democracy. We live in a political system that has legalized bribery, exclusively serves corporate power and is awash in propaganda and lies.

If you want change you can believe in, destroy the system. And changing the system does not mean collaborating with it as Bernie Sanders is doing by playing by the cooked rules of the Democratic Party. Profound social and political transformation is acknowledged in legislatures and courts but never initiated there. Radical change always comes from below. As long as our gaze is turned upward to the powerful, as long as we invest hope in reforming the system of corporate power, we will remain enslaved. There may be good people within the system—Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are examples—but that is not the point. It is the system that is rotten. It must be replaced.

We must build mass movements that are allied with independent political parties—a tactic used in Greece by Syriza and in Spain by Podemos. Political action without the support of radical mass movements inevitably becomes hollow, and that, I think, will be the fate of the Sanders presidential campaign. Only by building militant mass movements that are unrelentingly hostile to the system of corporate capitalism, imperialism, militarism and globalization can we wrest back our democracy.

Full article at Truthdig

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The Saudi-Israeli Alliance: Syria’s Nightmarish Narrative

Israel and Saudi Arabia secret dealings behind the Arab and Muslim World

With military and political help from Saudi Arabia and Israel, the nightmare scenario of an Al-Qaeda and/or Islamic State victory in Syria may be coming true, as the army of the more secular Syrian government retreats and as President Obama seems frozen by indecision, reports Robert Parry.

The Saudi-Israeli alliance, in league with other hard-line Sunni countries, is helping Al-Qaeda affiliates advance toward gaining either victory or at least safe havens in Syria and Yemen, highlighting unresolved contradictions in President Barack Obama’s policies in the Middle East.

Fueled by a surge of support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – and with Israel striking at Syrian government allies – Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda’s hyper-brutal spinoff, the Islamic State, are making major advances in Syria with some analysts now predicting the likely collapse of the relatively secular government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have made clear over the past few years that they regard the overthrow of the Iranian-backed Assad government as a geopolitical priority even if it results in a victory by Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. But Obama, who has been unwilling or unable to rein in the Saudi-Israeli alliance, would then have to decide what to do with Islamic terrorists dominating a major Mideast nation.

Some of these Sunni radicals have shown that they will move aggressively toward slaughtering minority groups that they consider infidels, including Christians, Alawites and Shiites. The terrorists could leave the streets of major Syrian cities running red with blood – and give Al-Qaeda a solid platform from which to launch terrorist attacks against the West.

[…]

During Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to a joint session of Congress, he further indicated Israel’s preference for the Saudi-backed jihadists over Iranian allies in the Syrian government. He urged the U.S. government to shift its focus from fighting Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to fighting Iran.

Netanyahu depicted the danger from the Islamic State as relatively minor – with its “butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube” – compared to Iran, which he accused of “gobbling up the nations” of the Middle East.

To the applause of Congress, he claimed “Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow.” His choice of capitals was peculiar, however, because Iran took none of those capitals by force and, indeed, was simply supporting the embattled government of Syria and was allied with Shiite elements of the government of Lebanon.

As for Iraq, Iran’s allies were installed not by Iran but by President George W. Bush via the U.S. invasion. And, in Yemen, a long-festering sectarian conflict has led to the capture of Sanaa by Houthi rebels who are Zaydi Shiites, an offshoot of Shia Islam that is actually closer to some Sunni sects. The Houthis deny they are agents of Iran, and Western intelligence services believe Iran’s support has consisted mostly of some funding.

Full article at Consortiumnews

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Stephen Cohen: Isolating Russia Really Means Regime Change


“Equating Putin with Adolf Hitler is another example of how our new cold warriors are recklessly damaging US national security in vital areas where Putin’s cooperation is essential.”

Professor Stephen F. Cohen gives speech at a recent Munk Debate, “Should the West engage or isolate Russia?”

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William Blum: US Foreign Policy is All About World Domination


Obama’s time as leader of the US is coming to an end – his term concludes next year. Wannabe presidents have already joined the race to the White House. And as President Obama goes through the final year of his rule, Washington suddenly changes its tone – now Iran is an appropriate nation to talk to, and it’s okay to meet with Cuban and Venezuelan leaders. But what is in that change? Has Washington finally dropped its previous policies? What does Obama want to achieve? And will the new, as yet unknown, leader of America make any difference? We pose these questions to prominent historian, author of bestsellers on US foreign policies, William Blum, who is on Sophie&Co today.

Full transcript at RT SophieCo

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Real Face of War: New Video of Ukraine Conflict

Warning: the video contains extremely violent footage!

 
A video by musician and amateur filmmaker Artem Grishanov has gone viral on Youtube, providing a harsh commentary on the divide between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s impassioned rhetoric about the conflict in eastern Ukraine and his own military’s destructive campaign, which has affected tens of thousands of civilians.

The video, with subtitles in English, features the Ukrainian president speaking with tears in his eyes about an unexploded rocket landing in a residential yard, and is followed by imagery of the Ukrainian military’s shelling of residential areas in the Donbass, and local residents’ reactions of terror and resistance. The video features original music by Grishanov about the Ukrainian government’s “‘kindness’ falling on our homes” in the form of rockets.

The video mixes a variety of imagery from the last year in Ukrainian politics, showing the connections the war in the east has to Ukrainian and international politics, and the incredible hypocrisy and sheer horror of the fact that Western politicians have ended up consciously or unconsciously supporting the bloodshed, via moral and political support, along with the provision of weaponry.

The video yearns to convey several facts about the war, including that over 6,000 civilians have been killed, over 15,000 injured and 1,500,000 turned into refugees, and that the Ukrainian military is using munitions prohibited under the Geneva Convention. The video also notes that while “the humanitarian aid coming from Russia to the people in the destroyed cities is regarded as an act of invasion and aggression… the USA and EU countries are going to supply weapons to Ukraine to continue the bloodshed.”

Source: Sputnik International

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Noam Chomsky: US is World’s Biggest Terrorist


Noam Chomsky is one of the superstars of the intellectual world; a prolific author and self-proclaimed anarchist, who, at the age of 86 still doesn’t seem to be slowing down. He still rails against a whole host of perceived injustices, with the West generally in his line of fire. Isabelle Kumar of Euronews interviewed him about terrorism, Cuba and the future of Europe.

Full transcript at Euronews

Posted in Culture & Society, Nature & Environment, Videos & Documentaries, War & Terror | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Why So Many Americans Strongly Support Israel

A new poll from Bloomberg Politics contains a finding that, if you really think about it, is quite remarkable:

Almost half of all Americans want to support Israel even if its interests diverge from the interests of their own country. Only a minority of Americans (47 percent) say that their country should pursue their own interests over supporting Israel’s when the two choices collide.

It is inconceivable that a substantial portion of Americans would want to support any other foreign country even where doing so was contrary to U.S. interests. Only Israel commands anything near that level of devoted, self-sacrificing fervor on the part of Americans. So it’s certainly worth asking what accounts for this bizarre aspect of American public opinion.

The answer should make everyone quite uncomfortable: it’s religious fanaticism. The U.S. media loves to mock adversary nations, especially Muslim ones, for being driven by religious extremism, but that is undeniably a major factor, arguably the most significant one, in explaining fervent support for Israel among the American populace.

The primary reason evangelical Christians in the U.S. are so devoted to Israel is simple: their radical religious dogma teaches them that God demands this. In 2004, Pat Robertson delivered a speech entitled “Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel” and said: “evangelical Christians support Israel because we believe that the words of Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel were inspired by God,” and “we believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God.” He added that “God’s chosen people” — Jews — have an obligation to God to fight against “Muslim vandals” so that Israel remains united in their hands.

Full article at: The Intercept

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Secret Documents: US Turned Blind Eye to Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program

(Photo credit: Flickr: Pierre J.)

Recently unearthed US government documents have shed some light on how the White House repeatedly missed an opportunity to disclose the Israeli secret nuclear weapons program.

The creation of the Israeli Dimona nuclear site has long been shrouded in secrecy, however, recently disclosed US government documents show that Washington either missed or deliberately turned a blind eye to warning signs about Jerusalem’s nuclear program.

In 1955, under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s rule, Israel launched a secret program aimed at producing nuclear explosives. In 1958 and 1959 the United States’ officials received the first warning signs about Israel’s secret project. Richard Kerry (the father of US Secretary of State John Kerry), who was working at the US embassy in Norway, found out that the country provided Israel with 20 tons of heavy water, a key ingredient for a nuclear reactor. A year earlier in Tel Aviv another American diplomat learned that Jerusalem was working on a nuclear project.

Eventually, in December 1960, Ben-Gurion officially admitted that Israel was building a nuclear reactor, and asserted that the reactor was for peaceful purposes. Remarkably, the US State Department bought into this idea, welcoming the statement of the Israeli prime minister.

Full article at: Sputnik International

See also: How Israel Hid Its Secret Nuclear Weapons Program

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