Almost 17 Years Ago, This SWAT Team Knocked Down My Door – They Are Still Here and Will Not Leave

So back in 2003, this SWAT team busted down my door because they claimed I had a very dangerous illegal weapon. In the process, the house was almost totaled, many of my family died, but as time went on they kept claiming they were making our family safe and free. Sure they bought an oven and then a fridge BUT they are the ones that use those appliances the most. The electrical is still flaky as we lose power for seconds or minutes a few times a week. There was a time when they claimed they left in 2007 or so but by 2014 they were back using the oven and fridge again. It seems they have a thing for our neighbor too, swearing at them at every opportunity and robbing them of their Amazon packages off the porch. They have also claimed that they were bad people so that others would not deal with them, and would not sell them things they need to them and their kids.

Just last week was the icing on the cake. They not only killed our uncle right in our house, but killed the next door neighbor’s uncle who happened to be in our home too! That was the last straw, we told them to leave but they said F*** Y**, we want to renegotiate our “partnership”.

Are you kidding me? Stay in this abusive relationship where no one knows who will get killed next and the house never gets fixed to the point it was in 2003? I don’t think so. Look at my house back in the day:

Look at my relatives in my home:

I hope you know by now this is not MY house, but the nation of Iraq.

The SWAT team that has stayed in control in this abusive one-sided relationship is the US Empire. They flat out refuse to leave!

From Moon of Alabama:

Iraq’s caretaker prime minister asked Washington to start working out a road map for an American troop withdrawal, but the U.S. State Department on Friday bluntly rejected the request, saying the two sides should instead talk about how to “recommit” to their partnership.

Main stream media (MSM – propaganda arm of the US Empire), specifically the Associated Press (AP) got it all wrong then they claimed:

… the move was “stoked by the American drone strike on Jan. 3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani”. The move was stoked five days earlier when the U.S. killed 31 Iraqi security forces near the Syrian border despite the demands by the Iraqi prime minister and president not to do so. It was further stoked when the U.S. assassinated Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, the deputy commander of the Popular Militia Forces and a national hero in Iraq.

No s**t .. confusing Iran and Iraq again .. just like their confusion between Shia and Sunni .. but I digress.

The [US] State Department issued a rather aggressive response to Abdul-Mahdi’s request:

America is a force for good in the Middle East. Our military presence in Iraq is to continue the fight against ISIS and as the Secretary has said, we are committed to protecting Americans, Iraqis, and our coalition partners.

Notice the order, just like the police protect themselves 1st, the US Empire also protects itself 1st .. and that is where the partnership is not nor will ever be equal. The US Empire is not “protecting” Iraq, they are projecting through Iraq in this region to continue to interfere in Iran and Syria.

Iraq continues to be used and abused in this relationship. Trump implies that when he thought that extending NATO to the Middle East .. oh yeah, what the Middle East “needs” is another dysfunctional “partner”.

Epic BS on the part of the war party in DC who all love the profits and lobbyists money from MIC and job security for the CIA while keeping the CIA black budget funded from Afghanistan poppy fields.

Peace out

-SF1

Traits of an Empire: Rarely if Ever Honorable

From my last post lamenting the benefits of small nations or federations of small republics and city-states, it became rather obvious that the formation of the Articles of Confederation which linked thirteen colonies together to fight against the British Empire was a noble effort, and that Switzerland decided early on to retain this focus unlike the United States:

After the revolutionary war, many founders abandoned the Swiss model as being too week and opted again towards the large-state model..

In today’s post, I use primarily an article from Darius Shahtahmasebi that explains the impact that many of the US Empire’s wars have had on Muslims over time. Darius does a great job of balancing the fact that it is not that the Muslims were targeted, but like the American Indians, it has more to do with the content their lands have for potential empire resources or disruptions in trade routes.

There are then several phases of the US Empire’s history that I hope to unpack today as a lesson we can all learn from so we can better understand the true character of the empire’s endeavors.

The first phase happened when the united States, having been victorious in its quest for independence from the British Empire, was potentially left unprotected in world trade. The source I chose for this was an article that helps to identify what really might have gone town in the tension between the US (which many consider to be a Christian nation) and the Barbary Powers (that happened to be primarily Muslim in religious terms). The truth is that these Barbary ‘corsairs’ were not only Muslim but also included English privateers and Dutch captains who exploited the changing loyalties of an era in which friends could become enemies and enemies friends with the stroke of a pen.

In the Barbary ‘pirate’ era, these entrepreneurs were not content with attacking ships and sailors, the corsairs also sometimes raided coastal settlements in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, and even as far away as the Netherlands and Iceland. They landed on unguarded beaches, and crept up on villages in the dark to capture their victims. This did not begin with these powers that ended up enslaving over one million Europeans, but was preceded by Christian pirates, primarily from Catalonia and Sicily, that dominated the seas, posing a constant threat to merchants in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Back to the Barbary powers of the Ottoman Empire of the 15th century:

During the era of the American colonies, American merchant vessels received protection by virtue of being of being British; the British were among the countries that paid tribute. Then, during the American Revolution, an alliance with France protected American ships. But full independence brought an end to that.

Initially, the United States decided to pay tribute. But American leaders, including Jefferson, seethed at having to do it, saying it would only inspire more and more outrageous financial demands. On July 11, 1786, Jefferson wrote to John Adams, “I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro’ the medium of war.” The following month, he wrote to James Monroe that the Barbary powers “must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them.”

Jefferson truly believed that the sea trade routes should be free. However, during the George Washington and John Adams administrations, the tribute was paid as was done by all the European powers, in fact, the rift was identified as economic in nature and not seen as religious:

As early as 1797, the United States made clear in a treaty with Tripoli that “as the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims) and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan (Mohammedan or Muslim) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Once Jefferson became the US President, he decided that enough was enough:

After Jefferson became president in 1801, he rejected Tripoli’s demand for payment. The pasha of Tripoli countered by declaring war on the United States. Jefferson sent forces to the Mediterranean, and after sporadic combat, hostilities ended four years later with a negotiated settlement in which the United States paid a smaller tribute than had initially been demanded.

The era of Barbary corsairs effectively ended a decade later, when, after the U.S. Navy, battle-hardened from the War of 1812, won a quick victory against Algiers, effectively ending all tribute payments.

By 1815, after the US’s war against the British Empire, the US flexed its muscles and used force to protect US shipping going forward. Shortly after this, the US found itself in a war with Mexico in the late 1840s and by 1860, fought an attempt to split the United States into two confederations. By this time there were powerful elites who saw that the economies of scale incentivized a violent end to the effort to have an adjacent federation have in effect a free trade zone.

The trend in hindsight becomes clear as the United States, in its second phase, turns its eyes to the Plains Indians after successfully placing the South in military districts, as this article explains:

In an attempt at peace in 1851, the first Fort Laramie Treaty was signed, which granted the Plain Indians about 150 million acres of land for their own use as the Great Sioux Reservation. Then, 13 years later, the size was greatly reduced to about 60 million acres in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which recreated the Great Sioux Reservation boundaries and proclaimed all of South Dakota west of the Missouri river, including the Black Hills, solely for the Sioux Nation.

As part of the treaty, no unauthorized non-Indian was to come into the reservation and the Sioux were allowed to hunt in unceded Indian territory beyond the reservation that stretched into North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado. If any non-Indian wanted to settle on this unceded land, they could only do it with the permission of the Sioux.

That was until 1874, when gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills. The treaties that were signed between the Native Americans and the U.S. government were ignored as gold rushers invaded Indian Territory and issues arose, such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

As time went on, the American Indians continued to be pushed into smaller territories and their lives began to diminish. In 1889, the U.S. government issued the Dawes Act, which took the Black Hills from the Indians, broke up the Great Sioux Reservation into five separate reservations, and took nine million acres and opened it up for public purchase by non-Indians for homesteading and settlements.

The Native Americans were squeezed into these smaller territories and didn’t have enough game to support them. The bison that had been a staple to their way of life were gone. Their ancestral lands that sustained them were no longer theirs. The resistance was over. They were no longer free people, living amongst themselves, but “Redskins” confined by the “white man” in reservations they had been forced to, many against their will.

At this point, one might logically think that the US is done with its expansion as it now is in total control of all the lands from the east to the west coast of North America. However, there were plenty of elites that were very willing in their agenda for:

… capitalizing on a national tragedy to push through an unrelated agenda. The explosion of the Maine in Havana’s harbor — killing some 260 sailors — was the immediate catalyst for the invasion of Cuba and then the Philippines.

Y’all do know that the USS Maine was NOT sabotaged by the Spanish in Cuba, right?

The result was a third phase in this trend toward empire.

Again, you have a list of critical thinkers that understand the down-side of empire, called the Anti-Imperialist effort in 1898, outlined in this article:

“We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is ‘criminal aggression’ and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government.

“We earnestly condemn the policy of the present National Administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror. We protest against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods…”

.. to your typical statist media b*llshit we still see today:

Today, the medium from which most Americans get their news, television, plays much the same role as the “yellow press” of William Randolph Hearst — cheerleading for war. Then, as now, the argument justifying war started as a matter of self-defense, then morphed into a war for “freedom,” and finally stood naked as a political and economic power grab

So on and on it goes, the US Empire emerges well in advance of WWII, already using shady ways to promote its power on the world’s stage.

The latest chapter is probably not that last, but the character of this empire will be remembered for generations:

U.S.-led wars in the Middle East have killed some four million Muslims since 1990. The recently published Afghanistan papers, provided an insight into the longest war in U.S. history and revealed how U.S. officials continuously lied about the progress being made in Afghanistan, lacked a basic understanding of the country, were hiding evidence that the war was unwinnable, and had wasted as much as $1 trillion in the process.

This parallels a little known previous ‘longest war’ that was initiated a century before:

.. the U.S. waged a war from 1899 to 1913 in the southernmost island of the Philippines. Known as the Moro War, it was the longest sustained military campaign in American history until the war in Afghanistan surpassed it a few years ago. As a result, the U.S. and the Philippine governments are still embroiled in a battle with Islamist insurgents in the southern Philippines, which takes the meaning of “forever war” to a whole new level

.. the U.S. military was not welcome in the Philippines, much as it is not welcomed by Afghanistan or any other Muslim-majority nation which has to duel with the U.S. Empire. After the U.S. defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and annexed the Philippines under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the Moro population were not even consulted. The U.S. then sought to “pacify” them using brute force.

“I want no prisoners,” ordered General Jacob Smith on Samar Island during the war in 1902. “I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me.”

The tactics remain the same, total war from Sherman and Sheridan used in the so-called Civil War, to the war on the American Indians, to the war in the Philippines, to Afghanistan and beyond is somehow construed to be “American Exceptionalism”.

I think I am sick to my stomach.

Enough for now.

Peace out.

-SF1

Epic Lies: Bringing Democracy to the World & Mission Accomplished

Usually, when the bombs start to drop, it is really the middle of the story. The start of the story is usually hidden to the public at large, both intentionally and by sheer ignorance.

The “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq by US forces in 2003 was not the reaction to something Saddam did wrong, like having WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), but was part of an agenda that was set in motion years if not decades before:

It’s surely clear to almost everyone now that we were lied into an illegal war which not only destroyed an entire country, but which also led directly to the rise of ISIS and helped bring terrorism to Europe too. – Ron Paul (2016)

While statism kills, empires kill on a whole different level. While nations like Germany (Jews) and China (farmers) and USSR (Ukrainians, etc) and USA (Southerners and American Indians) do their share of genocide, there is nothing like an empire that can take that to a whole different level.

But it was not always so. Take for instance a majority of the time the British Empire was a world power, as Eric S. Margolis in this article explains:

The British were always masters of efficient imperialism. In the 19th century, they managed to rule a quarter of the Earth’s surface with only a relatively small army supported by a great fleet. Many of their imperial subjects were so overawed by the pomp and circumstance of British rule that they often willingly cooperated, or at least bent the knee.

Call it colonialism 101. Ardent students of Roman history, the British early on adopted the Roman strategy of ‘divide et impera’, divide and conquer. The application of this strategy allowed the British Empire to rule over vast numbers of people with minimal force.

For over one hundred years, life in the American colonies were not bad at all actually. This is why there was 1/3rd of Americans that did NOT want to go to war with the British Empire, as up until the 1760s, the British ruled in a minimalist way!

When we reflect on the poor country of Iraq, and how it was somewhat abused by English power in the early 20th century especially after the discovery of oil, never really knew what was in store for them by 1990. From a post WWII transition that saw American influences in the Middle East region on the increase, and with Saddam Hussein in the employ and control of the CIA, even supplying Iraq with chemical weapons in its war against Iran in the 1980s, it is clear that the American Empire was in the driver’s seat.

In 1990, when the world was shocked that Hussein invaded Kuwait, there were those in the US Government that were not surprised as they gave him the green light. This even allowed the US Empire a “reason” to respond to this attack on an adjacent sovereign nation and allowed a “coalition” of UN nations to mount an attack on Iraq (Gulf War I) to place it under tighter control until the US again invaded 12 years later.

Eric S. Margolis goes on to explain:

I was in Iraq in 2001 and 2003 and saw how much it had developed in spite of the draconian rule of Saddam Hussein. I was one of only a few journalists trying to dispute the western lies about Iraq. The dim-witted Iraqi secret police threatened to hang me as a spy – after I revealed their germ warfare plant at Salman Pak had been set up and was secretly run by British technicians.

There was enough fake news in the early 2000s to convince the American public and the world that Saddam was bad and that the US and its allies were good.

Iraq, let’s recall, was the target of a major western aggression concocted by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Britain’s Tony Blair, financed and encouraged by the Gulf oil sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia.

Truth be told, these “leaders” are in fact war criminals still walking free.

Most people don’t understand that Iraq remains a US-occupied nation. We hear nothing about the billions of dollars of Iraqi oil extracted by big US oil firms since 2003. For the US, Iraq was a treasure house of oil with 12% of world reserves. It was OPEC’s 2nd largest producer.

Recall one of the leading neocons who engineered the invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, claimed the US could finance its entire invasion of Iraq (he estimated the cost at about $70 billion) by plundering Iraq’s oil. Today, the cost of the occupation has reached over $1 trillion. Wolfie is nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, President Trump says the US will grab Syria’s oil fields.

It is all very sick, but the problems in Iraq do not make it into MSM these days:

Ever since the 2003 invasion, Iraq has been ruled by a succession of US-appointed figureheads who have proven as corrupt as they are inept. During the war, the US destroyed most of Iraq’s water and sewage systems, causing some 500,000 children to die from water-borne diseases, wrecking much of its industry and commerce, leaving millions of men unemployed. Public services have broken down.

Before the US invasion, Iraq led the Arab world in industry, farming, medicine, education and women’s rights. All that was destroyed by the ‘liberation.’

The fallout from this conflict and that in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria have produced economic refugees that have invaded Europe and dispersed Christians out of the Middle East. Will we ever know the true statistics for all the chaos that was put into action in 2001 (Afghanistan) and 2003 (Iraq)?

How is that for the legacy of American Exceptionalism?

Blow-back (CIA term) is a thing, and we thought the 2000/2010s had seen enough terrorism as a result, just wait ..

-SF1

Washington DC: The Capital of Hypocrisy – When BS is Called Truth

It would be entertaining if it were not so sad and dangerous. Our political class, enables by the elites, scurry around pointing fingers at people assuming that no one can remember the past few years, let alone the past few decades.

Remember Democrats, the “peace” party? Well, they identify as the “war” party now. That transition was amazingly fast and all the sheep that identify with their blue sticker stayed true to blue.

Apparently, Moon of Alabama (MoA) has been following the impeachment hearings, something that I would not waste my own time on, and noted some points of hypocrisy that only comes out when politicians open their mouths.

“It is clearly in our national interest to deter further Russian aggression,” Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said in explaining why Trump’s decision to withhold congressionally appropriated aid to the most immediate target of Russian expansionism didn’t align with U.S. policy.

But at a time when Democrats are simultaneously eager to influence public opinion in favor of ousting the president and quietly apprehensive that their hearings could stall or backfire, the first round felt more like the dress rehearsal for a serious one-act play than the opening night of a hit Broadway musical.

“In direct contravention of U.S. interests” says the NBC and quotes a member of the permanent state who declares “it is clearly in our national interest” to give weapons to Ukraine.

But is that really in the national U.S. interest? Who defined it as such?

President Obama was against giving weapons to Ukraine and never transferred any to Ukraine despite pressure from certain circles. Was Obama’s decision against U.S. national interest? Where are the Democrats or deep state members accusing him of that?

Russian aggression can be summed up in the following map:

Oh crap … wrong map? No, correct map, just a member of the permanent state talking BS .. “Russian aggression” .. pleeeeaaaasssseee.

MoA also points out who gets to set national foreign policy:

The U.S. constitution “empowers the President of the United States to propose and chiefly negotiate agreements between the United States and other countries.”

The constitution does not empower the “U.S. government policy community”, nor “the administration”, nor the “consensus view of the interagency” and certainly not one Lt.Col. Vindman to define the strategic interests of the United States and its foreign policy. It is the duly elected president who does that

The president does not like how the ‘American policy’ on Russia was built. He rightly believes that he was elected to change it. He had stated his opinion on Russia during his campaign and won the election. It is not ‘malign influence’ that makes him try to have good relations with Russia. It is his own conviction and legitimized by the voters.

[I]t is the president who sets the policies. The drones around him who serve “at his pleasure” are there to implement them.

Just as Thomas Jefferson changed course when he came into office after John Adams, so too can Trump after Obama, BUT WAIT .. is what Trump doing so different than Obama?:

President Obama was against giving weapons to Ukraine and never transferred any to Ukraine despite pressure from certain circles.

Oh really now. But something changed that got the Democrat’s dander up .. I am thinking they are courting the Military Industrial Complex more and more because all that lobbying money talks!

Finally, there seems to be some people in this world (much less than 5% for sure) that have thought things through .. and this Ukrainian businessman has been doing some thinkin’:

It is not in the interest of Ukraine to be a proxy for U.S. deep state antagonism towards Russia. Robber baron Igor Kolomoisky, who after the Maidan coup had financed the west-Ukrainian fascists who fought against east-Ukraine, says so directly in his recent NYT interview:

Mr. Kolomoisky, widely seen as Ukraine’s most powerful figure outside government, given his role as the patron of the recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, has experienced a remarkable change of heart: It is time, he said, for Ukraine to give up on the West and turn back toward Russia.“They’re stronger anyway. We have to improve our relations,” he said, comparing Russia’s power to that of Ukraine. “People want peace, a good life, they don’t want to be at war. And you” — America — “are forcing us to be at war, and not even giving us the money for it.”

Mr. Kolomoisky [..] told The Times in a profanity-laced discussion, the West has failed Ukraine, not providing enough money or sufficiently opening its markets.

Instead, he said, the United States is simply using Ukraine to try to weaken its geopolitical rival. “War against Russia,” he said, “to the last Ukrainian.” Rebuilding ties with Russia has become necessary for Ukraine’s economic survival, Mr. Kolomoisky argued. He predicted that the trauma of war will pass.

Mr. Kolomoisky said he was feverishly working out how to end the war, but he refused to divulge details because the Americans “will mess it up and get in the way.”

Yes, the US was just USING the Ukraine, that is why the color revolution under the Obama administration, just to undermine Russia.

Unfortunately, Trump has gone along with the economic war with Russia, but as it turns out, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so Russia of 2019 is a lot stronger than Russia of 2014. Maybe this is the 3D/4D/8D chess that Trump has been playing all along?

The bottom line? Well I agree with Bionic Mosquito on this one:

… he [Trump] was voted in based on his most basic attacks against the system: war and empire, central banking, Hillary is a crook and should be in prison, fix immigration.

On at least one of these – war and empire – I offer two thoughts: first he hasn’t started a meaningful new war; second, he is doing a great job of accelerating the rest of the world’s movement away from the American empire. Both are tremendous libertarian victories as far as I am concerned.

On the others, Trump has been pretty useless.

Now that is something to think about.

Signing out for now .. stay tuned.

-SF1

Cuba: Scary in 1961 and Still is 30 Years After the Cold War? – Give it Up!

1962 Key West Florida Beach – Hawk Guided Missile Defense During Cuban Missile Crisis

Having served in the US Navy, based for a time in Key West, FL, I am aware first hand how ridiculous it is that US national security is still threatened by this poverty stricken island of Communism. Even back in 1982 I was warned along with the rest of the crew that we were to keep quiet about our ship’s itinerary, not telling family or friends since possibly Castro might find out. I told our CO that our own “getting underway” procedures alerted Castro with a lot more accuracy since our radars were turned on 30 minutes prior to port departure only 90 miles from the Cuban coast. Each radar has an electronic “fingerprint” that identifies the vessel, since we used that all the time when we encountered Russian vessels at sea as well.

Jacob Hornberger, from Future of Freedom Foundation, gives us the low-down on Cuba and some possible reasons why the US military and Deep State might want to keep Cuba poor and on the “bad guy” list:

Of all the ludicrous aspects of the Cold War, among the most ridiculous was the notion that Cuba posed a threat to US “national security.” For some 30 years [since the fall of the USSR], the US deep state (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA) maintained that Cuba was a communist “dagger” pointed at America’s neck and, therefore, was a grave threat to “national security.”

Again, whenever you hear the government use the “fear card”, you have to do your research instead of accepting it. Our government uses fear to keep us “safe” in our chains, and ignorant, so that we will not ask questions.

Did they mean that the Cuban army was about to invade Florida, conquer the state, move up the Eastern Seaboard, and end up forcibly taking over the reins of the federal government, thereby enabling it to control the IRS and HUD?

If so, that’s absolutely ridiculous. Cuba has always been an impoverished Third World country, one with a very small military force. Even if it could have scrounged up a few transport boats to get a few dozen troops to Miami, they would have been quickly smashed by well-armed private American citizens.

It is true that even my little ship, a 131 foot (40m) US Navy Hydrofoil, went quickly in and out of Cuban waters only to scramble a MIG-21 or MIG-23 our way. This is what a bully does to someone who has no real fighting chance.

Maybe they meant that Cuban leader Fidel Castro would export socialist ideas to the United States, where they would then infect the minds of the American people.

If so, that’s ridiculous because socialism was already taking over the minds of the American people, and long before Fidel Castro took power in Cuba. That’s what President Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security scheme was all about — bringing socialism to America. That was some 25 years before Castro came to power!

Let’s not forget, after all, that Social Security did not originate with James Madison or Patrick Henry. It originated among German socialists near the end of the 1800s and then came to the United States in the 1930s. That’s why the Social Security administration has a bust of Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, prominently displayed on its website. Bismarck introduced Social Security to Germany. He got the idea from German socialists.

So it was NOT a physical threat to Florida or a socialist export threat to the US as a whole as this came into our culture by other means.  It just has to be those “offensive” Cuban missiles that are pointed at America right?

What about the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Castro invited the Soviet Union to install nuclear missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States? They were defensive in nature. The Pentagon and the CIA were pressuring President Kennedy to wage a war of aggression against Cuba, with the aim of installing another pro-US dictator into power, such as Fulgencio Batista, the brutal and corrupt Cuban dictator who preceded Castro. A prime example was Operation Northwoods, the false and fraudulent scheme that the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously presented to Kennedy after the CIA’s Bay of Pigs disaster, with the aim of securing regime change in Cuba. (To Kennedy’s everlasting credit, he rejected it.)

To deter another US attack or to defend against such an attack, Castro sought assistance from the Soviets. If the Pentagon and the CIA had not been pressuring Kennedy to attack Cuba, Castro would never have invited the Soviets to install those missiles. This was confirmed by the fact that once Kennedy promised that he would not permit the deep state to attack Cuba again, the Soviets took their missiles home.

Oh, defensive, I see.  Okay, so now what, what could possibly be of benefit by ensuring that the people of Cuba remain in poverty much like the North Korean people?

Today, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, the US deep state steadfastly maintains that Cuba continues to pose a threat to US “national security.” That’s what the decades-old economic embargo that targets the Cuban populace with impoverishment and death is all about.

But the fact is that Cuba has never posed a threat to US “national security,” whatever definition one puts on that nebulous, meaningless term. The truth is that it has always been the US government that has posed a threat to Cuban “national security,” as manifested by such illegal and wrongful actions as the CIA invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the decades-long cruel and brutal economic embargo against the Cuban people, the false and fraudulent Operation Northwoods, state-sponsored assassinations attempts against Castro, and acts of terrorism and sabotage within Cuba.

At the end of the day, it is the Deep State (CIA, NSA, and Pentagon) that uses it primarily as a marketing tool to keep defense spending a top priority for the American tax slaves.

Now you know.

-SF1