Obama's Confused Middle East Policy

Originally published on American Thinker on September 30, 2016

The Obama administration's policy in the Middle East appears to be designed to remove secular tyrants and replace them with more religiously oriented regimes.  Thus, Gaddafi ("We came, we saw, he died."  Ha ha ha.) and Mubarak were targeted.  Bashar al Assad is the current target.  This policy has been marked by monumental incompetence, mendacity, and confusion.  Nothing about it should be accepted without a healthy dose of skepticism, including what follows.

The Telegraph of the U.K. has a video of U.S. commandos fleeing a town under a barrage of insults ("Crusaders!  Infidels!  Dogs!  Get out!") from the Free Syrian Army, our supposed allies.  CENTCOM commander General Lloyd Austin testified that a 500-million-dollar program to train opposition soldier had resulted in "four or five" being trained.  CIA-backed rebels have had armed confrontations with Pentagon-backed forces.  Two of Senator John McCain's Libyan "heroes," Abdelhakim Belhadj and the late Abu Mosa, turned out to be ISIS leaders.  Turkish and Saudi allies clearly do not have the same objectives as the U.S.  Former U.S. Department of State senior adviser David Phillips said, "Turkey's role has not been ambiguous – it has overtly supported the ISIL."

This confused U.S. policy has led to speculation that the U.S. created and still supplies ISIS.  In an interview with a reporter from the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper, Abu Al Ezz, a militant jihadist commander with Jabhat Al-Nusra, claims, "The U.S. is on our side."  Abu Al Ezz claims that his tanks came from Libya and that they have been supplied with American-made TOW rockets.  He also claimed that "we had officers from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and America here[.] ... Experts in the use of satellites, rockets, reconnaissance and thermal security cameras."  Al Ezz claimed that Jabhat Al-Nusra broke with ISIS because "[m]ost of the IS leaders are working with intelligence services, and it's now clear for us. We, the Jabhat Al-Nusra, have our own way."  Jabhat al-Nusra has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and U.N.

Al Ezz's allegations are supported by documents obtained by Judicial Watch that reveal early U.S. support for ISIS.  The same article reported that U.K.-based Conflict Armament Research's report traced the origins of Croatian anti-tank rockets recovered from ISIS to a Saudi/CIA joint program via serial numbers.  In 2012, Kenneth R. Timmerman reported that the Taliban fired on a CH-47 helicopter with a Stinger missile.  He reported, "The Stinger [serial number] tracked back to a lot that had been signed out by the CIA recently, not during the anti-Soviet jihad."  Jihadists have also obtained a "significant" number of tanks and Humvees from their operations in Iraq.  These weapons have undoubtedly led to the deaths of American servicemen.  Attacks on U.S. forces could have been led by released Guantanamo detainees.  The Washington Post reports that at least 12 former detainees have launched attacks against the U.S.

The anti-Assad coalition may also have used poison gas in order to justify a U.S. attack on the Assad regime.  The network nsnbc claims that evidence of approval leads directly to the White House.  Dr. Christof Lehmann has done an extensive study on the gas attack.  Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh claims that Hillary Clinton approved sending the gas to Syria.  Although this attack was to be attributed to the Assad regime, the evidence would not justify a U.S. attack.  German intelligence claimed that it had intercepted phone calls between Syrian officers and the Syrian High Command that convinced them that none of the Syrian forces has used a chemical weapon.

Al Ezz also commented ten days prior to the attack on the aid convoy bound for Aleppo that Jabhat Al-Nusra would not allow the aid to go through.  The aid convoy was attacked on September 15, resulting in 20 civilian fatalities.  U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that he had no doubt that it was a Russian attack and called it an "unacceptable atrocity."  He based this on the fact that two Russian aircraft were in the area of the strike when it happened, but he admitted he "had no facts."

Secretary of state John Kerry has proposed grounding Syrian and Russian aircraft over Syria.  However, according to General Dunford, "Right now ... for us to control all of the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia."  Defense secretary Ash Carter stated that U.S. jets conduct their strikes "with exceptional precision … that no other country can match."  He said this after U.S. airplanes struck a Syrian base at Dayr Az Zawr.  CENTCOM declared that they halted this airstrike when they were informed by Russian officials that the target hit by U.S. airplanes may have been a Syrian Arab Army base.  There is no evidence of coordination, but ISIS assaulted and overran the Syrian Army base right after the U.S. airstrike. 

The Dayr Az Zawr attack may have been the result of relying on intelligence provided by anti-Assad forces.  Apparently, U.S. intelligence does not have a good reputation.  Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, has stated, "Everyone is extremely skeptical about U.S. intelligence revelations."  A congressional task force has confirmed allegations that senior U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) leaders manipulated intelligence assessments in 2014 and 2015 to make it appear that President Barack Obama is winning the war against the Islamic State."  And two senior intelligence analysts at CENTCOM say the military forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria.

A spokesman for the Syrian military called the Dayr Az Zawr strike a "serious and blatant attack on Syria and its military" and "firm proof of the U.S. support of Daesh."  (Daesh is the Arabic acronym for ISIS.)  A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, announced, "The White House is defending Islamic State. Now there can be no doubts about that."  Our U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, said Zakharova should be embarrassed by that claim.

It is not only Russians and Syrians who question U.S. policy.  U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney has claimed, "We are not trying to destroy ISIS."  Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute, asserted, "The CIA agenda is definitely not anti-ISIS [Daesh], it's primarily anti-Assad."  Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev claimed, "The strengthening of the Islamic State became possible partially due to irresponsible policies of the United States."

Naturally, U.S. policy has led to increased tension.  U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power stated, "It's apocalyptic what is being done in eastern Aleppo."  She may be closer to the truth than she realizes.  State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told the press, "I think when American lives are at stake, when we're talking about defending our own interests, we're not looking for the approval of the Syrian regime."  Why is the State Department so unconcerned about Syrian airspace yet scrupulous about Libyan airspace when an ambassador is under attack?

Croatia’s WWII Revisionism ‘Terrifying’, Says “Historian”

Following is an article appearing in Balkan Transitional Justice (http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/croatia-s-wwii-revisionism-terrifying-says-historian-09-26-2016) and my response.

Croatia’s WWII Revisionism ‘Terrifying’, Says Historian

British historian Rory Yeomans, who has researched the Croatian fascist Ustasa movement, says he is worried by attempts by politicians and academics to play down the crimes it committed in World War II.

Sven Milekic BIRN Zagreb

Rory Yeomans. 

Distinguished historian Rory Yeomans, who is currently an independent researcher financed by the British Council, told BIRN in an interview that revisionist views of the wartime Ustasa movement and the Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia, NDH, have entered Croatia’s political mainstream in recent years.

“Such views used to be seen as the lunatic fringe; now they are part of the mainstream. That’s terrifying,” said Yeomans, the author of books including Visions of Annihilation: the Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941-1945 and The Utopia of Terror: Life and Death in Wartime Croatia.

He also expressed concern that such views were being expressed by “would-be historians” in mainstream media in the country.

“Then you read the comments under the articles and you read that ‘Communists lied us for 70 years; there was no death camp in Jasenovac, there was no genocide; they lied about the NDH’,” he explained.

Between 1941 and 1945, Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croatian anti-fascists were killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp which was run by the Ustasa. The Jasenovac Memorial Site has managed to name 83,145 victims of the camp, while the total death toll is generally believed to be between 100,000 and 110,000.

Yeomans said that some journalists and historians in Croatia are disregarding the facts and claiming that Ustasa did not commit massive crimes against Serbs, Jews and Roma and that the NDH was “a benevolent regime”.

“If you say, I want to prove that the NDH was a cultured and civilised state, and then you go to the archives and you find all the information you can find that proves that and then you just discard everything which militates against that, that’s the bad way of writing history,” he explained.

Trends in Croatia and Serbia regarding the rewriting of WWII history are also quite similar, he suggested.

Yeomans cited the recent rehabilitation of Dragoljub ‘Draza’ Mihailovic, the Serbian nationalist Chetnik movement leader.

The Belgrade court cleared Mihailovic of his alleged WWII-era crimes, arguing that he did not get a fair trial under the Yugoslav regime, but Yeomans said that does not mean the Chetnik leader was innocent.

“Even if Mihailovic was tried today, he would be found guilty of war crimes, because, even if he wasn’t personally involved, he was the commander of the groups that committed really horrible crimes, mass killings,” he said.

Hatred of Communism

Yeomans suggested that many of the Croatian historians who are trying to rewrite the past are motivated by a “hatred towards communism and strongly dislike the socialist Yugoslavia”.

“And part of the reason why I think they are becoming more successful is that socialist Yugoslavia never dealt with the issue of Bleiburg and never dealt with post-war crimes, which there were many, not just against Croats, but as well Serbian nationalists and Slovenian nationalists, and Bosniak separatists,” he said.

After Ustasa and NDH forces - as well as other Yugoslav forces that collaborated with the fascists - surrendered to the British Army at Bleiburg in Austria, the Communist Partisans killed an unknown number of them, along with an unknown number of civilians who were accompanying them.

In Yugoslav times, victims’ families gathered at Bleiburg to commemorate the dead, but also partly to praise the fallen NDH, making it a symbolic place for Croatian right-wingers. After Croatia became independent from Yugoslavia, the state started to use the event to officially commemorate the crimes.

Revisionist historians claim that a conspiracy of silence existed among Yugoslav-era historians who sought to cover up Bleiburg and other post-war crimes. The revisionists also seek to downplay the crimes committed by the NDH.

But Yeomans emphasised that as early as April 11, 1941 – a day after taking power – the Ustasas arrested the first Jews in Zagreb.

Then in May 1941, a group of nearly 170 Jewish youths were arrested in Zagreb by the Ustasa police and transported first to the Danica concentration camp in central Croatia and then to Jadovno, near the coast, where all but three perished.

Yeomans also said the Ustasa regime started purges of state companies and institutions in May 1941 and completed them by July the same year, a process that took Nazi Germany around a decade.

“It’s very interesting listening to Croatian politicians then they say, ‘Well it was tragic, but unfortunately Croatia sided with the Nazis.’ It’s almost like they try to blame Hitler and Mussolini for what happened in Croatia, which had nothing to do with Hitler and Mussolini. Essentially, this was the decision of the people that led Croatia in 1941, although nobody voted for them and they didn’t have a popular mandate,” Yeomans said.

Tackling WWII myths

“In my opinion, from what I can see in Croatia, there are two basic myths,” Yeomans said.

“The first myth is that nobody supported the Ustasa regime and everyone was against them, apart from a few quislings, and that everyone supported the Partisans,” he explained.

The second myth, the one preferred by Serbian nationalists, is that the most Croats supported the Ustasa regime - although Yeomans cautions that it is “very hard to measure how much the general population supports the values of the regime”.

Politically in Croatia, the last government, led by the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, did not directly encourage revisionist ideas about WWII, but created an atmosphere in which they could flourish and gain legitimacy, Yeomans believes.

He cited the controversial culture minister Zlatko Hasanbegovic, “who has a problematic past when it comes to confronting the Ustasa regime and the Holocaust”, he said.

After Croatian newspaper Novosti reported that Hasanbegovic had written for a pro-fascist bulletin while he was a student, the minister responded by saying that he was never “an apologist for any criminal regime, regardless of whether it was an Ustasa or Communist regime”.

However he did not specifically apologise for the article in which he described the Ustasa as martyrs and heroes.

“These people create a certain ‘mood music’ and other factors react to that. I’ve read his interviews in different papers - Le Monde, Il Piccolo - and I think it’s very problematic when he says ‘we condemn all totalitarian movements’, actually saying that socialist Yugoslavia was equivalent to the Independent State of Croatia, and that isn’t true on any kind of level,” Yeomans explained.

“In that way, what one actually says is that the Holocaust that took place in the Independent State of Croatia is not exceptional and that it is not different to any other period of history,” he added.

He also noted that such revisionist tendencies were not seen under the previous HDZ-led governments of Ivo Sanader and Jadranka Kosor, between 2003 and 2011.

“Even under [1990s right-wing President] Franjo Tudjman, it was less extreme than now, because Tudjman in a certain way wanted to reconcile Partisans and Ustasas, bizarre as the idea was, and revisionist history reflected that,” he said.

“The new younger revisionists, by contrast, demonised the Partisan movement and sought to normalise and rehabilitate the Ustasa movement and deny their mass crimes, not just relativise them, by claiming the Partisans were the real war criminals,” he added.

“This can be seen in the way they are trying to turn Jasenovac from a concentration camp where Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascists were murdered into simply a ‘labour and collection camp’ which, they claim, after the war the Partisans used deliberately to kill Croats and destroy their national consciousness.”

My Response:

It is important that people know their history.  However, history can be used as a propaganda tool to perpetuate ancient animosities.  There are people today who are angry about the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition.  They have been taught this.  This is not history it is propaganda.  It is the selective presentation of facts in order to further an agenda.  Every year a new film comes out about Nazi atrocities.  Rarely is there a film produced about Soviet crimes.  The greatest mass murderer, Mao, has escaped Hollywood’s attention entirely.  

Yeoman appears to be looking at Croatia’s past from an ideologue’s perspective.  Commentator Manet sees the article as “divisive and hateful,” while commentator guest saw it as “an excellent piece of scholarship that is another warning about the danger of rising fascism on Croatia.”  It is normal to downplay atrocities committed by those we admire and emphasize atrocities by those we oppose. Tito and his allies in the West did not emphasize Bleiburg or a thousand other atrocities.  The Katyn Forrest Massacre was denied to the bitter end.  Yeomans suggests that many Croatian historians are trying to rewrite the past because of their, “hatred towards communism.”  Tito’s historians wrote that history in the first place because they hated their opposition.  

Unfortunately much history is based on myths.  Yeoman explains, “The first myth is that nobody supported the Ustasa regime and everyone was against them, apart from a few quislings, and that everyone supported the Partisans.”  You can substitute Vichy or a number of other regimes for Ustasa in that sentence.  All of Europe had its share of Nazi collaborators.  Yeoman is troubled by those who see socialist Yugoslavia as equivalent to the Independent State of Croatia in the crimes they committed.  He views the Ustashi as more criminal than the partisans.  Others see the opposite.

It is unnatural for a nation to wallow in guilt for past crimes.  Germany is an exception only because of the psychological conditioning instituted following the Second World War.  Do Russians feel responsible for the crimes of the Bolsheviks?  The Chinese still revere Mao Zedong, the greatest mass murderer in history.  It is troubling that many of the techniques used on the Germans following WWII are now being used on Americans.  Americans are being bludgeoned over slavery which was practiced over a century ago by a small minority of Americans.  The descendants of immigrants who arrived after the Civil War are also held responsible.  If historians are truly interested in slavery they might look into FDR’s policies.  Slave labor was an integral part of the Morgenthau Plan and the Yalta Agreement.  However, this subject does not suit the current crop of “historians.”    

Mark Pickles Joins the Linkedin Discussion

Mark Pickles: Perhaps you were in a hurry when you wrote the above, because it is incoherent and pointless. Yes, of course "young males" can run further distances and survive more oceans. Perhaps, John, as a young man were a rare type indeed, who can convince us you would have accepted death by fire or pulverisation by bombs, and not felt inclined to survive. I cannot believe that 80% of refugees are young men. All the refugee camps in the Middle East are full of families with children.

John Dietrich: My apologies for being incoherent and pointless. I was waiting for Godot at the time.  I don’t quite understand, “Perhaps, John, as a young man were a rare type indeed, who can convince us you would have accepted death by fire or pulverisation by bombs, and not felt inclined to survive.”  I am easily confused but I don’t believe I said or implied that.  I also have to apologize for my 80% figure.  Check, http://therightscoop.com/united-nations-says-72-of-syrian-refugees-are-men-only-13-are-children/.  Of course by Swedish standards you can be 46 years old and declare yourself a child.  The 80% figure is frequently used.

John Dietrich: I think I figured out that sentence I quoted.  Correct me if I am wrong but I believe you left out the word “you” between man and were.  If this is the case it is a very revealing sentence.  It exposes you as a thoroughly modern man.  It is a personality type described by Charles Reich in Greening of America and Norman Mailer in The White Negro.  A type all too common today.  A type that cannot conceive of sacrificing its life (or in some cases its comfort) in defense of those it loves.  I have never been in such a situation.  However, I would hope that I had the courage to die with dignity.

Je suis Pepe.

Mark Pickles

Writer

John.  Once again, what you have written is incoherent.

I write for a living. English is my native language, and I speak five languages, and I'm highly intelligent.  And so I suspect the inability to for us to communicate is not my problem

But, hey, I must make allowances for the Yanks. They are almost all monoglots, and apparently half of them cannot accept that planet Earth is over 6000 years old. And this is the same half USA: the "exceptional" nation, the "indispensable" nation that this year will choose to impose Clinton or Trump on the world.

The USA's own “Pew Research Center”, which describes itself as “a nonpartisan fact tank”, has a paper on its website called “People see a future of promise and peril”. In the paper we read that 58% of the people of the USA believe that a world war within a generation is “definite or probable”.  And we also read that 41% of Yanks expect that “Jesus will return to Earth before 2050” (this is 41% of the whole population, not just the Christians) and 13% don’t know.

58% of Yanks believe that an imminent world war is probable. And most of these believe that the USA is being called on by God to bring the world into a kind of violent redemption. 

In the meantime, the Peacemakers amongst us are getting on with the job, knowing that the USA will become as irrelevant as the Philistines were to King David.

Dear Mr. Pickles,

Thank you for informing me that you are highly intelligent.  As for our inability to communicate, I will leave that to a third party.  But then again they may be lacking in intelligence.  I too am a polyglot.  Does that make any difference.  I’m a Buddhist so I can’t speak for the Christians.  As for the U.S. becoming irrelevant as the Philistines, “Great” Britain has been doing a great job of becoming one with Nineveh and Tyre.  Please let me know what you “peacemakers” are doing to get on with your job.  Sounds like busybodies poking their noses in other people’s business.  We have plenty of those here in the U.S.

Response to Linkedin.com Humanitarian Concern About Conflict in Syria

ALEPPO the shame of the world

Published on September 24, 2016

Anne Davison Writer and Lecturer

I usually only write a post when I feel an all-consuming rage or passion rising within me. My first ever post, in November 2014, is a case in point. It was provoked by a report that:

The British Government is prepared to accept a suggested EU ruling from Brussels that ‘the best way to discourage refugees from north Africa from seeking a better life is to let them drown ’ ( Paddy Ashdown ‘An inhumane answer to the Mediterranean migrants’ plight ’FT Weekend 1st November 2014).

Since that time hundreds, probably thousands, of innocent men women and children have indeed drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands have suffered untold hardship trekking through mud and snow across Europe only to find barbed wire and walls blocking their way. Today thousands more are trapped in ‘camps’ in countries such as Greece, Turkey and France. And millions more in Syria are either displaced or held captive at the brutal hands of Daesh.

 Occasionally, as the world looks on, there is a short-lived outcry at the horrors we are witnessing. The sight of the body of the little boy washed up on a beach for example and more recently the bewildered child smothered in ash wiping the blood from his eyes. But very quickly our outrage subsides. We say to ourselves: ‘Yes, it’s awful, but what can we do about it?’ And so we move on. We return to our own immediate problems and our own little world. But it doesn’t feel very comfortable because deep down I’m sure most of us feel that we MUST be able to do something.

 It has often felt to me that it can’t get any worse. But it can and it has. The bombing of Aleppo over the past few days is causing perhaps the worst ever suffering of innocent people in this conflict to date. Horrific images of children being pulled from rubble. Many already on the point of starvation now have no water. I don’t need to catalogue the details of what appears to be the annihilation of an ancient and beautiful city along with its innocent people. You can see it all for yourselves daily on the TV screens.

 So, back to the question: What can we do about it?

Things don’t look good. 

• Attempts at a recent cease fire unsurprisingly broke down.

• Bringing people around the table for talks is fraught with difficulties because there are literally hundreds of different factions involved in the fighting apart from Syria, Daesh and the more liberal opposition groups.

• With the help of Russia, Iran and the Hezbollah of Lebanon Syria is gaining strength.

• The Arab states, while perhaps supporting the various ‘rebel’ groups, are noticeable by their absence. 

• The role of Turkey, apart from wanting to crush all the Kurds, is to say the least, unclear.

What about the ‘West’? 

• The European Union has been unable to control the mass migrations.

• Germany’s open policy towards refugees has backfired. In fact, right across Europe the mass influx of refugees and migrants has resulted in a nasty Right Wing and xenophobic backlash.

What distresses me most is the response, or lack of it, of the two remaining parties: the United States and the United Kingdom.

• Both countries are at a critical moment politically.

• But both counties have one thing in common. They are both claiming to make their country ‘Great again’. That is Donald Trump’s war-cry and it was the same for many within the Leave Campaign who wanted to take back control and make Britain ‘Great again’.

 But what does it mean to be a great nation?  

• Does it mean building walls and fences and doing all in our power to keep people out? 

• Does it mean looking inwards and selfishly taking care of our own needs with no concern for the rest of the world? Surely this route only leads to isolation and atrophy.

 No, history has taught us that the greatest powers have been those who are outward looking, generous in spirit and above all with a sense of global responsibility towards both our people and our planet. 

What we are seeing is a meanness of spirit that is fueled by a false sense of fear. And every day we are failing the people of Aleppo. Shame on us.

Anne,

You are obviously a very caring person.  However, you should be careful how this trait is abused.  You are concerned about the “refugees.”  80% of the “refugees” are young males.  What type of character runs off during a conflict, leaving his wife, mother, sister and children behind?  Among them are many potentially productive people.  However, many have displayed a sense of ingratitude and a tendency to commit violent crime.  (People who comment on this are labeled Nazis.)  You write about children being victimized.  This is a favorite propaganda tool.  Have you seen the photo of the child’s body on the street in Nice?

You criticize Russia for supporting Syria.  Are you critical of the U.S. for supporting the rebels.  There is evidence that U.S. policies have created this conflict.  The first violations of the cease fire was the U.S. bombing of Dayr Az Zawr. This “accident” could easily be interpreted as an act of war.  Our Noble Peace Prize winning president did not gat approval from Congress for this.

There is a middle ground between “looking inwards and selfishly taking care of our own needs with no concern for the rest of the world” and being the world’s policeman.  This administration’s efforts to fundamentally transform the Middle East have been a disaster.  The “Arab Spring” has left Libya in chaos.  

The MSM vs. Trump

"A man's judgment cannot be better than the information on which he has based it" - Arthur Hays Sulzberger

            During a rally in New Hampshire Donald Trump announced that the representatives of the press were going to be a half hour late and had asked him to postpone his speech.  He responded with a definitive NO.  The audience gave a resounding cheer for his response.  This disturbed the CNN’s talking heads, Ashleigh Banfield and Dylan Byers. Banfield complained, “So what I’m wondering is why so much cheering, other than a lot of people who go to Trump events like to besmirch the media too. Do people not realize or are they forgetting that other critical element of it?  Either you have a media, or you have what I witnessed in Saddam’s era … where you never got to actually call yourself press or you’d go to jail for it."  Byers complained that trust in the media was at an all-time low.  He attributed this to the Republicans and Trump in particular with his aggressive anti-media rhetoric.

            It is difficult to believe that these supposedly well educated and successful people are so clueless.  However, they are following in the footsteps of generations of people who have traveled to the Soviet Union, Communist China and Cuba, and have seen paradise.  Sociologist Philosopher Lewis Feuer commented, ”The Intellectual Elite in both the United States and Europe has a record of recurrent misjudgement and misperception of social reality.  Its members have yielded to wish fulfillment, emotional indulgence and even insincerity while claiming to the public at large that they were inspired by scientific reasoning.”

            Banfield and Byers’ “misjudgments” depend on a lack of information.  They are even ignorant of the history of their own organization.  In 2003 CNN head Eason Jordan admitted in a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves” that he deliberately whitewashed Saddam Hussein’s atrocities.  Other examples of blatant media “misjudgments” include Jayson Blair and Pulitzer Prize winner Janet Cooke.  Of course the greatest Pulitzer winner was Walter Duranty who successfully covered up the Ukrainian famine for the New York Times.   On a visit to Berlin in June 1931, Duranty informed A.W. Klieforth of the US Embassy that, "in agreement with The New York Times and the Soviet authorities, his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own.”  Newspapers have a long history of distorting the truth in order the achieve their objectives.  William Randolph Hearst told Frederic Remington when he was on assignment for the paper, “You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."  It is quite possible that the United States would not have recognized the Soviet Union in 1933 or engaged in the Spanish-American War if not for the media.

            Donald Trump has been somewhat restrained in his contempt for the media.  When reporter Walter Winchell told President Roosevelt that Alger Hiss was spying for Moscow, Winchell claimed, “Leaning closer and pointing a finger in my face, he [Roosevelt] angrily said, ‘I don't want to hear another thing about it!  It isn't true.’"  Winchell was not invited back to the White House for several months.  In the final days before the election, three newspapers that endorsed John McCain were booted from the Obama campaign bus. The New York Post, Dallas Morning News and Washington Times were unceremoniously shown the door immediately after their papers' endorsements appeared and were replaced with Jet and Ebony magazines.

Colin Kaepernick's Pig Socks

The current kerfuffle over Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the national anthem is all part of the continued psychological conditioning of the American public.  It is part of the fundamental transformation of Western society advocated by the Frankfurt School.   As First Lady Hillary Clinton stated, “remolding society certainly in the West is one of the great challenges facing all of us.”  The owners of the NFL are members of the elite who are working for this outcome.  They see nothing wrong with Kaepernick’s behavior, in fact they encourage it.  The owners of the NFL have repeatedly revealed where they stand.

The NFL has imposed penalties for behavior during games.  Players are prohibited from excessive demonstrations after touchdowns.  The Dallas Cowboys were told they could not honor fallen officers with a patch on their helmets.  Kaepernick has been wearing his idiotic “pig socks” during practice without comment.  Beyonce’s Super Bowl halftime show in February was a tribute to the Black Panthers.  The “hands up, don’t shoot" pose has become popular.  Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction was not an accident.  All these incidents are designed to push the progressive agenda forward.  Kaepernick is praised by the president and egged on by the media.

Kaepernick states, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.  There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”  He wears a Fidel Castro t-shirt.  Perhaps he should try to remain seated during the playing the Cuban national anthem on a visit to Havana.  

At one time America was populated by “deplorables.”  Most NFL fans are still “deplorables.”  Through the media and academia the progressives have managed to reduce the number of “deplorables.”  The public schools and universities are teaching that America is the greatest source of evil in the world using textbooks by Howard Zinn and others.  

Many professional athletes are multimillionaire thugs.  Their crimes are kept out of the media unless they are so outrageous that it is not possible to suppress.  They have no sense of gratitude.  It is remarkable that in spite of their tremendous success they can still feel resentful.  If a professional athlete were crazy enough to display a Confederate flag there would be no babble about freedom of speech.  One just has to recall the fate of John Rocker.  He made some innocent statements about New York and was promptly sent to reeducation camp.

Colin Kaepernick wrapped up his second start this season for the San Francisco 49ers, and decided to go with another statement t-shirt at his post-game press conference. Kaepernick sported a Black Panther Party t-shirt.

Book Review: Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent

            Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent provides excellent commentary on the dangers of distorting history.  However, he frequently repeats commonly accepted distortions.  When discussing the bombing of Hamburg he states, “the statistics were not reliable.  In a city where bodies were concealed beneath a mountain of rubble, where some had been

fused together by the intense heat while others were reduced to mere ashes, it was impossible to measure the number of dead with any kind of precision.”  Yet, when discussing the bombing of Dresden he states the claims of 100,000 deaths are refuted by “most reliable sources” who put the figure at 20,000.  Over ninety percent of Dresden’s city center was destroyed.  It’s population had swelled to approximately 1.2 million with mostly women and children refugees fleeing the Red Army.  U.S. and British bombers had dropped 650,000 incendiaries on the city creating a firestorm.  Anyone looking at photographs of the rubble and believing it resulted it only 20,000 fatalities cannot be serious.  People claiming that Dresden was bombed for military reasons are not aware that the city’s military borough, the Albertstadt, was never targeted.

            Lowe minimizes the atrocities committed during the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe.  He makes only a brief reference to Henry Morgenthau who was instrumental in forming U.S. postwar policy.  He makes no mention of Harry Dexter White, the author of the Morgenthau Plan and a Soviet agent of influence.  This plan was devised by White to push the rest of Europe into the arms of the Soviets.  Lowe does not believe that Europe was on the verge of going Communist.  Most foreign policy experts believe the opposite.  Lowe claims “McCarthy’s portrayal of American Communists . . . was every bit as irrational as eastern Europe’s anti-Americanism.”  Senator McCarthy had no idea of how extensive Communist infiltration was.   His fears were far from irrational.

            There is an acceptable narrative that must not be contradicted.  Lowe mentions author John Sack who wrote a book about atrocities committed by Jewish prison camp officials in Poland.  Sack’s agent refused to represent the book and his published who had paid for the book decided not to publish it.  Lowe states, “like James Bacque’s book about German POWs, was considered dangerous precisely because it contained seeds of truth.”  The 1978 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records has a category for Mass Killings.  It placed Adolf Hitler in third place after Mao and Stalin.  The category did not appear in subsequent editions.  Clearly there is an effort to suppress information that does not conform to this narrative.  My own work on the Morgenthau Plan deserves more coverage than it has received.

Book Review: Bloodlands - Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder

Having read extensively about the Second World War and its aftermath, I have become exceedingly skeptical of everything I read.  Seventy years is not long enough for the passions aroused by this war to subside enough to allow an objective report of what transpired.  The Peloponnesian War undoubtedly aroused passion.  However, no one today would suggest that that war be continued.  Perhaps in another 2500 years the events surrounding this period will be viewed more objectively.  Until then all accounts should be viewed with a certain amount of skepticism.

It is unlikely, but possible, that Snyder wrote an account void of error.  However, his account conflicts with many other sources.  Snyder gives a figure of 21,892 Poles murdered by the Soviets in what is called the Katyn Forest massacre.  General Pavel Sudoplatov in his book Special Tasks gives a figure of 27,500.  He also provides a memo to Stalin signed by Lavrentiy Beria proposing the execution of the Polish prisoners.

His account of the Lidice massacre is also in conflict with other sources.  He claims, “Its men were shot on the spot, its women sent to the German concentration camp at Ravensbruck, and the children gassed at Chelmno.”  (p.262)  Jan Kaplan and Krystyna Nosarzewska report in Prague: The Turbulent Century that, “153 women and 17 children returned after the war.”  

Snyder appears to minimize the atrocities associated with the expulsion of Germans from the East.  He states, “Much responsibility for the deaths associated with flight and expulsion thus rested with the Nazi regime.”  He spends little time on this section of the “bloodlands.”  He states that the expulsions were not designed to liquidate Germans.  This appears to conflict with Churchill’s view.  In 1943 he told Edvard Benes, “Many (Sudeten) Germans will be killed in your country as well - it cannot be helped and I agree with it.  After a few months we’ll say ‘that’s enough,’ and we shall start on the work of peace: try the guilty men who stayed alive.”  Benes stated, “Woe, woe, woe, thrice woe to the Germans, we will liquidate you!”  

He also claims that Polish communist leader Boleslaw Beirut was not Jewish.  I seem to recall reading that he was.  Again Snyder may be correct in all his assertions.  

Clinton Rally Photos v. Trump Rally Photos

I was going to compare photos of Trump rallies with Clinton rallies.  I googled “Trump rallies” and copied a photo of Trump’s Dallas rally showing quite a few thousand people.  Next I googled “Clinton rallies.”  I saw a couple of photos of crowds as large or larger than the Dallas rally.  I was about to quit saying to myself, “There goes that theory.”  However I took a closer look at the photos and it turns out they were Barney (I call him Barney) Sanders rallies.  Why do they put Sanders rally photos on a Clinton image search? 

Trump Dallas Rally

Sanders Rally under Clinton Rally Images

  My original theory was correct: Trump rallies are significantly larger than Clinton rallies.  To be fair I should have included a photo of a Clinton rally with higher attendance.  Why be fair?  Most of the photos shown by the “mainstream” media are shot at an angle to be advantageous to Clinton.  However here is her Baltimore rally where 5,000 people showed up.  

Clinton Omaha Rally

Clinton Baltimore Rally Early in Campaign

Attendance numbers at political rallies do not necessarily indicate a candidates strength.  However, when the numbers are so dramatically different it will be almost impossible for the loser to steal an election.