Tag Archives: Peace

Russia’s Sound Proposal for Gulf Peace, by the Strategic Culture Editorial Board

Posted on August 18, 2019 | 2 comments

Russia’s proposal makes a lot more sense than anything Trump and Israel have proposed. From the Strategic Culture Editorial Board at strategic-culture.org:

There is an eminently reasonable and feasible way to avoid conflict in the Persian Gulf, and to secure peace. The principles of multilateralism and international law must be adhered to. It seems almost astounding that one has to appeal for such obvious basic norms.

Fortunately, Russia has presented a roadmap for implementing a security concept in the vital waterway based on the above principles.

Russia’s deputy envoy to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, outlined a possible international coalition to provide security for commercial shipping through the strategically important Persian Gulf. The narrow outlet accounts for up to 30 per cent of all globally shipped oil on a daily basis. Virtually every nation has a stake in the safe passage of tankers. Any disruption would have huge negative consequences for the world economy, impacting all nations.

The Russian proposal, which has been submitted to the UN Security Council, is currently being considered by various parties. Crucially, the security concept put forward by Moscow relies on the participation of the Gulf nations, including Iran. Rather than being led by an outside power, the Russian proposal envisages a region-led effort.

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Two Contrasting Commencement Addresses a Half Century Apart, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on June 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Contrast Mike Pence’s war mongering with President Kennedy’s vision of peace. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

On June 1, 2019, American vice president Mike Pence gave the commencement address at West Point. He told the graduates that it was a certainty that they will “be on a battlefield for America” and “will move to the sound of guns.”  https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-west-point-graduation-ceremony/ 

Pence did not say for whose agenda they would be fighting, whether it would be the oil companies’ agenda, or Israel’s, or the New York Banks’, or for the neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony, or for the CIA’s drug business.  Indeed, the West Point graduates will die without ever knowing for whose interest they are fighting.  

Pence’s address is a perfect illustration of The Matrix at work.  The innocent and ignorant graduates are sitting ducks for recrutiment into what US Marine General Smedley Buttler described as the hit men for American corporate interests.  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/05/27/something-to-think-about-on-memorial-day/ 

War and the preparation for war has been the hallmark of America since the Clinton regime. In American history, the wars have always been for empire and the economic and financial interests that benefit from empire. There are very few years in American history when the government has not been at war with someone.

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Model Soldiers, by Joel Bowman

Posted on November 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

Model soldiers, faithfully following orders, kill many people, including civilians, and many die themselves. From Joel Bowman at internationalman.com:

When Napoleon crossed the Niemen, at the outset of the 1812 French invasion of Russia, he had under his command 422,000 men, give or take a few proudly beating hearts. When he approached those same waters the following year, this time from the east, in sluggish, worn down retreat after defeats in Moscow, Borodino, Smolensk…his ranks had been cut to barely 10,000.

A few enfeebled diehards were all that remained of the Grande Armée.

[Pictured: Charles Joseph Minard’s famous graph shows the decreasing size of the Grande Armée. The brown line (followed from left to right) shows Napoleon’s march to Russia. The black line (followed from right to left) depicts his retreat. The size of the army is shown equal to the width of the lines.]

Like politicians and their voting public, military strategists too are slow to learn and quick to forget. Napoleon wasn’t the only fool to covet the vast plains of the east. One hundred and thirty years later, with “Lebensraum” (living space) firmly in his sights, Adolf Hitler embarked on Operation Barbarossa. It would be the largest military operation in human history, both in terms of manpower… and casualties.

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U.S Elections. Not a Word about Wars, not a Peep about Peace: Beware! by Gerald Celente

Posted on November 14, 2018 | Leave a comment

Brutally stupid, inconclusive wars that have inflicted immeasurable chaos and killed thousands of American military and the people they are supposedly protecting merited almost no mention during the latest campaign season. From Gerald Celente at The Trends Research Institute via lewrockwell.com:

Counting up the votes in a midterm election turnout that hit a 50-year high in the United States, all major party candidates running for the House and Senate championed America’s military/industrial/intelligence defense complex and its ballooning budget.

Throughout the election cycle, not one Republican or Democratic candidate presented a campaign platform to end America’s longest, losing Afghan War, nor to end its other illegal and unconstitutional foreign engagements in the Middle East and Africa that’s killing people, destroying nations and intensifying the hatred against We the People.

Indeed, not only was “Peace” a dirty word on the 2018 campaign trail, eight House seats that went to Democratic candidates were won by former members of the military/national security complex… veterans, Central Intelligence Agency and State Department officials. And even the gubernatorial race in solidly Republican Kansas was won by a Democrat who touted her family’s strong military credentials.

Imagine, trillions spent and millions killed in illegal, immoral wars with no end in sight – launched on platforms based on lies from Washington and promoted by the media – and it was NEVER a campaign issue in the 2018 midterm elections.

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They Were Ordered to Shoot… by Bill Bonner

Posted on June 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

Does “Just following orders” excuse criminality? From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” is a line from Jesus of Nazareth.

Typically clever, and almost evasive, it left open the mischievous question – “What is Caesar’s?” – for roughly 2,000 years.

Moral philosophers had been bedeviled for even longer: If you want to do the right thing, can you just obey the authorities… or do you have to figure it out for yourself?

Finally, last week, like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai, legal and biblical scholar, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions – who previously distinguished himself by sponsoring a bill to name September 2016 as “National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month” – handed down the answer.

More on that shortly. But first…

Dry Spell

The Dow was down again yesterday… but only slightly. That makes it the seventh straight day of losses for the index, the worst losing streak in over a year [more in today’s Market Insight].

Where it will go from here, no one knows. But there are good reasons to think that the “top is in.” If so, we’re in for a long dry spell.

If we’re right, U.S. stocks will “underperform” for many years. Readers are advised not to expect to get rich in the stock market, unless they are very lucky or well-advised. Las Vegas is likely to be more rewarding than Wall Street.

We’ll leave it to the technicians and cycle-watchers to make their own case. Here at the Diary, we focus on fundamentals.

Obviously, U.S. finances are worsening. Government deficits are increasing, just as the Fed is putting up interest rates. This is bound to lead to trouble.

But the bigger, or more insidious, problem is Caesar himself; he seems to want more and more things rendered unto him. And our observation is that the more Caesar gets, the less is left for everyone else.

To continue reading: They Were Ordered to Shoot…

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Posted in Crime, Governments, History, Law, Military, Morality, Philosophy, Politics, War

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The Unfreezing of Korea Begins, by Tom Luongo

Posted on June 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

Tom Luongo finds the positives in the Singapore summit. From Luongo at tomluongo.me:

Now that we’ve had a few days to let the war-mongers and Democrats (or do I repeat myself) fulminate over the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un it’s important to look at what actually happened and where we’re going next.

For a good analysis of what was actually accomplished, read this excellent post over at Moon of Alabama.

… the ‘freeze for freeze’ North Korea had offered [Obama previously in 2015 and 2016] and China promoted. The U.S. stops the large “strategic” maneuvers involving nuclear capable bombers flying from Guam, aircraft carriers and the like, while North Korea stops testing nukes and missiles. North Korea achieved its first aim. It can now lower its miliary posture and develop its economy.

The situation is still somewhat unstable as both freeze steps are reversible.

The ‘freeze for freeze’ is, as the Chinese Foreign Minister envisioned, a starting point for a long series of talks which may finally lead to a peace agreement and some nuclear disarmament. Now comes the “dual-track approach” of a peace agreement in exchange for some disarmament “in a synchronized and reciprocal manner”. This will be a “step-by-step” process which will take years or even decades.

Russia was promoting this same strategy publicly during the worst of the tensions between Trump and Kim last year. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of the ‘double freeze’ repeatedly.

And it was always going to end this way because, as I’ve been saying all along, North Korea has a nuclear weapon and the U.S. will only come to the bargaining table when it has lost significant leverage.

And a nuclear deterrent is a major bit of leverage.

So, the “Freeze for Freeze” is now in effect.   The war games are a direct economic benefit to North Korea as MoA points out at length.  And Trump gets the win by spinning it as a cost-cutting measure.

The imperial sycophants and quislings are crying in their lattes over this and defense stocks have taken it on the chin.  All of this is to the good of mankind.

To continue reading: The Unfreezing of Korea Begins

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Trump the Deal-maker and the Middle East, by Amir Taheri

Posted on March 4, 2018 | 1 comment

An outsider, like President Trump, has little chance of negotiating a Middle East peace. From Amir Taheri at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • The first reason that so many deal-makers have failed is that peace is never negotiated and is always imposed by the side that wins a war. There is not any instance in history, which is primarily a narrative of countless wars, in which an outsider has imposed peace on unwilling belligerents.
  • The second reason is that outside deal-makers have their interests and agendas which make an already tangled web even more complicated. For example, in the case of American deal-makers, how to win Jewish votes in the US without antagonizing the Arabs who sell us oil and buy our arms?
  • The third reason is that whenever a status quo is at least tolerable for both belligerents, the desire for risking it in the hope of an ill-defined peace is diminished. Many people in the world live with a status quo they don’t regard as ideal.
  • There is one thing that Trump the deal-maker could do. He could ask the Israelis and the Palestinians to work on an agreement, each in their own camp, on what they exactly want, and report to him.

Casting himself as the best friend Israel could hope for, President Donald Trump is promising, some may say threatening, to unveil his grand plan for a peace “deal” to end the so-called “Middle East problem”.

Trump has always fancied himself as a deal-maker; he has even written a book on the subject. It is, therefore, no surprise that he might want to put his skill to use on an issue which has defied numerous deal-makers for six decades.

What are the chances of him succeeding? The short answer is: nil!

To continue reading: Trump the Deal-maker and the Middle East

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Thanksgiving for JFK, by Edward Curtin

Posted on November 22, 2017 | Leave a comment

Today is the 54th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It is impossible to understand the 20th century without understanding the real story of JFK’s murder. Edward Curtin mentions James W. Douglass’s book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. I’m currently reading it and it’s living up to it’s title. Curtin also mentions The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. I’ve read that one, and it’s an outstanding examination of Allen Dulles, an understanding of whom is also essential for understanding the 20th century. From Edward Curtin at lewrockwell.com:

If he had lived, President John F. Kennedy would have been 100 years old this year.  At Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, his family would be raising a glass in his honor.

But as we all know, he was murdered in Dallas, Texas on this date – November 22nd – in 1963.  A true war hero twice over, he risked his life to save his men in World War II, and then, after a radical turn toward peace-making in the last year of his life, he died in his own country at the hands of his domestic enemies as a soldier in a non-violent struggle for peace and reconciliation for all people across the world.

But we can still celebrate, mourn, and offer thanksgiving for his courageous witness.  When we gather tomorrow to give thanks, we should remember today – the profound significance of the date – and the absent presence of a man whose death, dark and bloody as it was, is a sign of hope in these dark times. For if John Kennedy had not had the spiritual conscience to secretly carry-on a back channel letter correspondence with Nikita Khrushchev, facilitated by Pope John XXIII, we very well might not be here, having been incinerated in a nuclear holocaust.

Hope?  Not because he was assassinated, but why he was assassinated.

While there is much media focus on the release of more of the JFK files, they are beside the point.  They were withheld all these years to dribble out the clock on an endless pseudo-debate about who killed President Kennedy.  We know who killed him: the national security state, led by the CIA, killed him, not Lee Harvey Oswald.  It was a coup d’état purposely conducted in plain sight to send a message that every president since has heeded: Your job is to make war and threaten nuclear annihilation for the Deep State elites.  Follow orders or else.  They have followed.

If you find my assertion about the CIA audacious and absurd, first read James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, a book widely regarded as the best book on the assassination and its meaning.  Read it very closely and slowly.  Check all his sources, read his endnotes, and analyze his logic.  Approach his meticulous research as if you agreed with Gandhi’s saying that truth is God and God is truth. Try to refute Douglass. You will be stymied. Then read David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government for further clarification. You will come away from these two books profoundly shaken to your core.  Be a truth-seeker, if you are not one already.

To continue reading: Thanksgiving for JFK

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He Said That? 7/10/17

Posted on July 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

From Thomas Merton (1915-1968) American Catholic writer, theologian, mystic, Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion:

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience

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Good News: Washington Frozen Out of Syria Peace Plan, by Ron Paul

Posted on January 2, 2017 | Leave a comment

Russia, Iran, and Turkey put together a ceasefire in Syria and the US was excluded. Perhaps there are parts of the world that can survive without the US government’s tender ministrations. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:
As the US mainstream media obsessed last week about Russia’s supposed “hacking” of the US elections and President Obama’s final round of Russia sanctions in response, something very important was taking place under the media radar. As a result of a meeting between foreign ministers of Russia, Iran, and Turkey last month, a ceasefire in Syria has been worked out and is being implemented. So far it appears to be holding, and after nearly six years of horrible warfare the people of Syria are finally facing the possibility of rebuilding their lives.

What is so important about this particular ceasefire? It was planned, agreed to, and implemented without the participation of the United States Government.

In fact it was frustration with Washington’s refusal to separate its “moderates” from terrorist groups and its continued insistence on regime change for the Syrian government that led the three countries to pursue a solution on their own for Syria. They also included the Syrian government and much of the opposition in the agreement, which the US government has been unwilling to do.

We have been told all along by the neocons and “humanitarian interventionists” that the United States must take a central role in every world crisis or nothing will ever be solved. We are the “indispensable nation,” they say, and without our involvement the world will collapse. Our credibility is on the line, they claim, and if we don’t step up no one will. All this is untrue, as we have seen last week.

The fact is, it is often US involvement in “solving” these crises that actually perpetuates them. Consider the 60-plus year state of war between North and South Korea. Has US intervention done anything to solve the problem? How about our decades of meddling in the Israel-Palestine dispute? Are we any closer to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians despite the billions we have spent bribing and interfering?

To continue reading: Good News: Washington Frozen Out of Syria Peace Plan

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