Category: Foreign Policy

On US Empire’s M.O. List in Regime Change: Power Outages

History can always be used when investigating the scene of a crime. Investigators evaluate what happened and then piece the puzzle together be going back in time looking for evidence. It is hard to do on the criminal’s first crime, but when the same criminal continues their crime-spree, the investigators look for trends that help them accelerate and even be able to predict their next move.

The same can be said for the post-WWII US Empire. Within a few years it established their way of controlling the reach of the empire. It was decided that the US would not follow directly in the steps of the British Empire which tended to control other countries directly through an imperialistic form of control, but the US would use other more covert methods towards control.

Off the cuff, one thinks first of sanctions (like the US did to Japan before Pearl Harbor), and then on to propaganda to further agitate those opposed to the regime within the target country, and even using the UN to paint these countries as global lawbreakers.

Another method is going to the very heart of a country’s infrastructure that impacts everyday living to continue the agitation, the power grid.

As Moon of Alabama pointed out the other day:

The U.S. is well know for cyberattacks as well as for attacks on electricity networks. In 2012 it knocked Syria off the internet when it ‘bricked’ the central router in Syria while attempting to install malware. In 2015 it systematically bombed Syria’s power plants.

This is only the most recent concerning Syria. Do you remember what the US did to Iran’s centrifuges? This occurred about a decade ago that turned out to be a secret U.S-Israeli cyberwar strike on Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and elsewhere. The Stuxnet virus we introduced into Natanz put 1,000 centrifuges out of action, from a random worker’s USB drive as these devices were not on any network. The worm found the controlling software and inserted itself into it, seizing control of the centrifuges. Stuxnet carried out two separate attacks. First, it made the centrifuges spin dangerously fast, for about 15 minutes, before returning to normal speed. Then, about a month later, it slowed the centrifuges down for around 50 minutes. This was repeated for several months eventually causing these centrifuges to physically fail.

Unintended consequences followed as by 2010 this virus spread globally!

What does this have to do with Venezuela? Well, from the 2016 & 2017 sanctions the US placed on that country was followed up with more rhetoric during 2018. While the US is the biggest importer of the declining oil output from Venezuela, India and China come in at #2 and #2 and would be more than willing to pick up the slack for cheap oil.

The US was actually encouraged when it was announced that Venezuela would no longer sell its oil using USD in September of 2017. The decision is similar to that once made by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who dropped the dollar in favor of the euro a few years prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Countries that do this are well aware of the risks involved in shunning the US Empire.

This cycle will continue as it has in previous regime change attempts the US has engineered. I am sure the “greater good” propaganda will be flown as the citizens of Venezuela suffer, but a lot of it depends on how much truth emerges in these critical weeks before the US steps up the “need” for regime change.

This tidbit did not go unnoticed in the past few days as Moon of Alabama again points out:

When the first outage happened U.S. Senator Marco Rubio eagerly mocked the government of Venezuela. He also mentioned that some backup generators failed:

Marco Rubio @marcorubio – 22:18 utc – 7 Mar 2019
ALERT: Reports of a complete power outage all across #Venezuela at this moment.
18 of 23 states & the capital district are currently facing complete blackouts.
Main airport also without power & backup generators have failed.
#MaduroRegime is a complete disaster.

After the first outage the government of Venezuela said that it was caused by a cyberattack on the automated control system but gave no further details:

Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said Maduro’s government planned to bring “proof” of US involvement in the blackout to a UN Human Rights envoy who is set to visit the country in the coming days.

Rodriguez pointed to the Rubio tweet:

‘How did Marco Rubio know that backup generators had failed? At that time, no one knew that,’ the Bolivarian government official asked.

The Venezuelan government should contact the Russian cybersecurity specialists at Kaspersky Lab who are well known for detecting U.S. produced malware like the one used for the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s uranium enrichment plant. Kaspersky is highly respected in the international cybersecurity scene. Should it confirm that a U.S. attack malware caused the problem the U.S. will find it difficult to deny.

Yes, since there is history, a M.O. (modus operandi – a method of procedure), it will be fairly easy to identify the US fingerprints on this. Maybe that is why, as late as today, the US now states that their “regime change” timeline is not defined.

While one thinks that an electrical outage is not a big deal, one should know that attacks on electricity networks greatly affect the civilian population with hospitals being are hard to run without electricity depending on emergency generators. This also cuts off the civilian population to the Internet, to know what is really going on in their country and in the world:

It should be noted that in the Korean War, the US bombed dams to unleash great swaths of destruction on the civilian population. The blow-back of this kind of manipulation is a civilian population that will accept a bad government over the one that is doing this. Even in our own Civil War (War Against Southern Independence), these atrocities embittered people for generations.

But Sherman’s and Sheridan’s legacy lives on in the US Empire’s tactics. Both the Obama and the Trump administration, rejected international attempts to ban cyberattacks that “indiscriminate or systemic harm to individuals and critical infrastructure”:

All members of the European Union signed the agreement. Australia and Turkey joined the United States in declining.
…
Israel, which along with the United States conducted the most sophisticated cyberattack in history, the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, also declined to sign.

Bottom line:

Why Venezuela? Why now? Well, all the indicators show that the US petro-dollar is in trouble, countries have left or are starting to create ways to leave. From this site shows those smart countries who are aware of history and making preparations:

The list of the 23 countries which are creating new swap lines outside of the dollar include China, Russia, India, and surprisingly, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. This means that the Eurozone itself is abandoning the dollar, and preparing for transition to a new central banking system.

To facilitate the transfer of currencies and swap lines, there needs to be a bank of sufficient size and stature to aid in handling of this monumental task. One year ago, China, along with the BRICs nations of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, loaned money to a new financial institution they established and labeled the BRICs bank. This bank was created with the intention of bypassing the dollar, and allowing free trade to occur between nations without the need to trade for dollars first, as is currently the format under the petrodollar system.

Russia, China and Iran already have their own way to trade since 2012, and attempted regime change by the US Empire in Syria was a strategic effort towards reversing this trend. These actions only make the Empire look more desperate. As Ron Paul pointed out how we got to this point:

“In essence, we declared our insolvency in 1971. Everyone recognized some other monetary system had to be devised in order to bring stability to the markets. Amazingly, a new system was devised which allowed the U.S. to operate the printing presses for the world reserve currency with no restraints placed on it– not even a pretense of gold convertibility! Realizing the world was embarking on something new and mind-boggling, elite money managers, with especially strong support from U.S. authorities, struck an agreement with OPEC in the 1970s to price oil in U.S. dollars exclusively for all worldwide transactions. This gave the dollar a special place among world currencies and in essence backed the dollar with oil.

The empires demise will probably take decades, but the writing is on the wall. Few empires have been able to willingly let go of its dominate role in global affairs. The USSR is a great example of a peaceful move towards the release of central power, just waiting for those in the US to use history to see that this might be the best way forward.

Reality is a b*tch, but learning from history can allow people groups to emerge into a better spot, but it will take a brave generation to accomplish.

Is there a generation of Americans that are up to this challenge?

Time will tell. Hang on, the surf’s up dude, we are in wild times.

-SF1

Empire Tactics: 1780 Green Dragoons/Hessians to 2019 US Special Ops/Blackwater

The benefit of knowing history is knowing when you are about to be scammed. In the past week we have heard that President Trump suddenly, without the blessing of his neo-con staff personnel, decided to exit Syria in the near-term. What happened next was typical to this empire’s entertainment aspects, people that were against war at some point in their life all of a sudden WANT war in Syria. I mean it was normal to hear most of Congress (who have been lobbied by the Military Industrial Complex – $$$) get upset that we can’t keep our “covert” war there intact since we have invested 7 years there with various rebel groups including ISIS.

It is all indeed a show, and having watched Home Alone over the Christmas break seeing Donald Trump giving advice to Kevin, we can’t be surprised in 2019 to understand that Donald Trump is still acting. All empires need good actors when they approach end of life status, it keeps the masses entertained while what is happening behind the scenes gets more and more desperate.

During the Revolutionary War, the British Empire used 30,000 Hessian mercenaries (30% of the total British force in the American Colonies) towards their attempt to hang on to their empire. Also deployed was their Green Dragoon Legions and the tactics that had local innocent citizens and their property in the cross-hairs of these forces.

During the follow-up of the Iraq invasion in 2003, the US Empire also used mercenaries in their attempt to hang on to the territory in Iraq as part of the US Empire. By 2007 there had been a huge number of incidents where these mercenaries were guilt of massacres throughout Iraq. In fact, trials are still ongoing here in 2019!

A more in depth article is this one by Chuck Baldwin who has been following closely the Trump promises before his election compared to the Trump realities to date. One of the most startling statistics is in the quote that follows:

.. the first two years of Trump’s presidency was a flagrant disavowal of that campaign promise. Not only did Trump not disengage our forces from these illegal and immoral wars, but, as I have documented, he dramatically INCREASED America’s involvement in these wars. In fact, President Trump has dropped more bombs on more people in his first two years of office than President Obama did in his entire last term in office. Plus, he sent thousands of additional ground troops to Afghanistan and Syria and several other countries.

So that leads us to Trump’s latest claim, that the US is “leaving” Syria and also drawing down troops in Afghanistan. Well, it all depends on who is doing the counting and what is being counted. Knowing full well that none of these numbers include deep state CIA operatives throughout the region, if we are talking “official military” personnel in Syria, the US claims that only 2000 are there currently. I highly doubt that. But what is really going on? Chuck says:

This month, in the January/February print issue of the gun and hunting magazine “Recoil,” the former contractor security firm Blackwater USA published a full-page ad, in all black with a simple message: “We are coming.”

Is the war in Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere ― about to be privatized?

If Blackwater returns, it would be the return of a private security contractor that was banned from Iraq, but re-branded and never really went away.

21st century Hessians! This Empire is outsourcing the dirty work left behind by the 17 year Afghanistan conflict and the 7 year illegal intrusion into the sovereign nation of Syria that Obama pulled the trigger on.

The legacy is trillions spent, that we have a debt for, just to _______? You fill in the blank, is this to keep military contractors employed? Is this to keep the petro-dollar in placed globally? Is this to help Israel out .. perpetually?

And what of the US Empire’s legacy?

Here’s the horrifying part: These “private contractors,” i.e., mercenaries, operate in a manner that is totally unaccountable to the rule of law. Totally! They operate outside the Constitution, outside the Rules of Engagement, outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), outside the Law of Nations, outside law period—and also outside public scrutiny. There is virtually no accountability for whatever murders, rapes, plunderings or criminalities of any sort that these mercenaries commit.

More terrorists are home-grown the more the empire’s atrocities are known. This is “job-security” as the US Empire’s last gasp around the globe. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In summary, Chuck Baldwin concludes:

Combining Special Forces units that are already plagued with rampant abuses of power with mercenaries who are virtually unaccountable to any human authority is a recipe for the worst kind of barbarity and atrocity. This is what the Roman Empire did during its last days of power and what Great Britain did in its failed war against the American colonies. And this is exactly what Donald Trump is preparing to do. In fact, Trump is already setting the table for an unaccountable military force by shutting down military watchdog groups, thus turning off the light of public knowledge and ensuring military unaccountability.

The “swamp” is still intact. The cynic in me points to the root of this nation’s poisonous government. Many, including Chuck claim that if we would just get back to the Constitution … yeah, it was never meant to be “got back to”. As Lysander Spooner said in the 19th century:

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

My thinking, thanks to Ben Stone’s efforts and his manual , has evolved to this:

When I first read this a year ago I just laughed. About six months ago I read this and still thought that maybe Thomas Jefferson was blindsided by this whole Constitution coup d’tat that happened while he was Ambassador to France. I understood that George Washington was a Federalist at heart and wanted a mini-British nation on this continent, and that Benjamin Franklin was getting old and nodded his consent. But the likes of George Mason and Patrick Henry saw through all this and rightfully noted the slippery slope that this document created a path for going forward.

I now think that Thomas Jefferson really thought that there would be another revolution inside a generation as what was created was just an “experiment”, a beta-test version 1.0 of a federated republic that would have checks and balances like nullification and secession options that could keep it grounded until another version could be tried.

I do think that the pioneer spirit of that founding generation did not even last a decade before this country fell back into its old ways. Before you know it you have George Washington taking thousands of troops into Pennsylvania to enforce a 25% Whiskey Tax to fund his government. You can not possibly make this stuff up!

Happy 2019 y’all .. I will try to stay more positive in my future posts this year, if the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

-SF1

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun – Ecclesiastes 1:9

Intrigued: A Ten Year Old Book Predicts a Political Tsunami – Morality Wars

The past few weeks and especially the past few days has been particularly revealing. I have said “only in 2018” so many times this year that it does seem to be the swell one sees before a tsunami. *

(* – actually, not a perfect analogy as the water rushes OUT to sea just before a tsunami hits)

It started this morning when I read this from Lew Rockwell’s fantastic site, an article from Michael S. Rozeff that has a line stating:

America used to greet bringing the boys home from foreign wars with applause. Now there is immense criticism from all components of the pro-empire contingent, who act as if the empire and Washington will crumble because 2,000 American soldiers are leaving Syria.

We are talking 2000 soldiers (if we can trust Pentagon numbers, since they failed their first ever audit and also misplaced trillions, as in, “we can’t account for that money” over the course of the past 20 years) but more importantly is the continued US and coalition efforts in Syrian airspace without Syrian permission!

But I digress, what this article then led me to, which is so intriguing to me, is the relationship between empire, religion and political correctness. I love it when society, and the human psyche can link so many things like this into the “real life” experience here in 2018. Below was my segue:

For an explanation of the relation between the empire and immoral moralism, see here.

It does look to me like I will be spending $20 for this Kindle version of Morality Wars: How Empires, the Born-Again, and the Politically Correct Do Evil in the Name of Good in order to blog about this from time to time going forward. As usual, I have a dozen or so books that I am in the middle of and they all are vying for a blog post or two to highlight my own research and my own learnings.

Here are a few excerpts:

From Amazon reviewer John Williamson, Provincetown, MA shares that the authors of this book point out:

… the US Government has long been involved in immoral actions that have often been justified using arguments suggesting that the action was being taken for moral reasons .. We learn that, “In 1783 George Washington characterized the colonies as `a rising empire,’ and nearly all the Founders saw America as destined to become one of the world’s great empires. A great deal of attention is given to examples drawn from prior empires such as the Roman empire, the Spanish empire and the British empire to name only a few ... They review also describe how the neoconservatives used moralistic rhetoric to justify US involvement in Iraq .. The argument is that PC puts limits on “the range of acceptable thoughts, seeking to outlaw or marginalize those ways of thinking that might challenge the powers that be .. Right PC uses the concept of patriotism to intimidate and silence those on the left who are critical of the war in Iraq. They are vulnerable to the criticism of being unpatriotic .. the PC of the New Left during the 1960s as well as the current identity politics of feminist, gay, and race movements. Their focus is on the ways in which these movements use PC pressures to keep certain issues off the table. For example, in connection with feminist PC such questions as: (a) Do fetuses have any rights? ( b) Or are fathers discriminated against in marriage laws and divorce courts?..

… The authors tell a story of the evolution of the American empire or more precisely what they refer to as the five American Empires: (1) The Fledging Constitutional Empire, 1776-1828, (2) Manifest Destiny Continental Empire, 1828-1898, (3) Allied Global Empire, 1898-1945, (4) The Good Empire versus the Evil Empire, 1945-1991, and (5) World Hegemon: 1991-Present. This section of the book basically reviews the many ways in which the US behaved badly – in the name of high moral ideals – like other prior empires during each of these periods.

So a clip from the book’s introduction states (remember, this is a ten-year old book):

I do not know about you, but I do see, especially since Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, quite the storm, perfect in only that there are so many triangulations involved that the average person can’t keep up and they depend on MSM or the government to explain what is going on.

I still say, there is a LOT to learn from history that helps the discerning thinker and reader to consider things that they previously had made up their mind on. Critical thinking is extremely in scarce these days, however, it is these kind of people that will be invaluable in charting the course in this storm and into the world beyond it.

This thinking will be scary to most, however, as I have said before here, a crumbling empire is a perfect environment for a grassroots, black market, underground networking of Love to give hope during and after the storm, as was demonstrated in the 1st century in the Roman Empire. It will be in that environment I do hope many can entertain a thought without accepting it as they try to adjust to a very different world.

Just thinking of my kids and grand-kids yet again, seems to be a theme .. (yes, I am not your typical “boomer”)

Stay tuned

SF1

Terrorism: 1780, 1865, 1991 and Beyond

In the past weeks and months I have indicated how the British Empire’s use (and sometimes American patriots as well) of tactics that are less than honorable, yet attain short term military goals, would have unintended consequences .. when is it proper to apply this same understanding to other periods of American History?

The last few days has been a time in “American society life” that reflects on a 90-something man’s passing away and a reflection on what he meant to this country as well as the world. This man was the last president to have participated in WWII, which alone puts him on a pedestal in this land. Although the actual events surrounding him being the lone survivor of the plane he was piloting are cloudy at best (pardon the aviator’s pun), it seems that American loves heroes, and it willingly excuse many many character faults along the way as long as one has this elite (no pun intended) status. (think George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, etc)

While this post is not about the life of HW Bush, and while I have no animosity towards him personally (“revenge is mine says the Lord”), or his family who is in mourning, it does us well as a people (or as various groups of people/cultures across this land) to reflect of certain aspects of their legacy and learn from them.

“Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.” George Santayana

So the point here is to reflect on an aspect of Gulf War I that has always disturbed me even as I “thought” I understood the justification of the war at this time. From The Intercept article we read the following:

U.S. bombs also destroyed essential Iraqi civilian infrastructure — from electricity-generating and water-treatment facilities to food-processing plants and flour mills. This was no accident. As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported in June 1991: “Some targets, especially late in the war, were bombed primarily to create postwar leverage over Iraq, not to influence the course of the conflict itself. Planners now say their intent was to destroy or damage valuable facilities that Baghdad could not repair without foreign assistance. … Because of these goals, damage to civilian structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the war as ‘collateral’ and unintended, was sometimes neither.”

Got that? The Bush administration deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure for “leverage” over Saddam Hussein. How is this not terrorism?

Here we are 27 years later knowing that Iraq has since been invaded yet a second time and has never returned to its previous state where the average Iraqi could earn enough to support their family in relative peace. We all know it will take decades or centuries to recover from this US/UN effort to “spread democracy” to the Middle East.

If we back up in our mind’s eye and consider the tactics the British opted to use more frequently, especially as they grew increasingly frustrated in not meeting their objectives against “farmers with pitchforks”. Is it ever right to choose tactics that are less than honorable to achieve the ends usually determined by leaders and politicians far away? How can those “sworn” into the service of these military entities individually object to be a part of those types of actions?

In 1780 it was the dreaded Tarleton that we read about and how he is the bad guy. But what happens when these types are on “our” side? Do we treat them different? How does this country’s text books treat Sheridan, Grant and Sherman from the directives each of these generals issued in the early 1860s against innocent families that happened to be in states that peacefully seceded?

“To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better . . . . Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources” – William T. Sherman after the war

“Government of the United States” had the “right” to “take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything . . . . We will take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property . . . ” – William T. Sherman after the war

“the war will soon assume a turn to extermination not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people . . . . There is a class of people, men, women, and children, who must be killed . . .” – letter to William T. Sherman’s wife on 31JUL1862

“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to the extermination, men, women and children” ..”The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year,” William T. Sherman wrote to Sheridan. By 1890 the U.S. Army murdered as many as 60,000 Indians, placing the survivors in concentration camps known as “reservations.”

So it seems we have the British Empire using these tactics in 1780s, and the USA adopting these tactics in 1860s as well as with the American Indians the balance of that century .. and then fast-forward to 1991 and we find ourselves as “bad” as the British yet again!

So what kind of “democracy” are we spreading? It stinks!

All of this to say once again, to know history is to be best prepared to scrutinize government propaganda when their mouthpieces try to convince the public of the “good” in what they are doing. They know that the first impression is a lasting impression for so many that are not critical thinkers in this land.

So be prepared! Be a student of history, a critical thinker, considering things that you are still in process forming an opinion on.

Stay the course!

-SF1