Tag: MIC

If 2020 Vision Woke Up People to Their Slavery, 2021 Already Gave Us a Look Ahead!

(Photo by: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images)

2020 will go down as the year most people remember complying with two weeks to flatten the curve, “supporting” BLM/Antifa as they took their anger out on 150 federal buildings, untold private businesses and killing hundreds and then becoming deputized to enforce the various mask mandates until looking forward to Operation Warp Speed’s vaccines. The rest of us saw many of our family members, friends and co-workers become happy with the chains that have, loving the safety they feel from the government religion. The most common word for 2020 was “stupid” for those of us that could think critically. Logic seemed missing as feeings ruled.

Well enough about 2020 as that year is in our rear-view mirror, already in 2021 we can see the trends and chart the trajectory. As 2021 dawned it became very apparent that the grand merger has happened, big business and big government are indeed one in the same. In the past it was one thing to see the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) in action in Vietnam, the Cold War and quickly followed by Gulf War I, Afghanistan, the Iraq Invasion and then the Democrats, seeing the lure of MIC lobbyist money, sparked Libya and Syria. But what emerged in 2020 was another MIC, the Medical Industrial Complex and its partner by way of the Bill Gates connection, another MIC, the Media Industrial Complex including big tech and MSM.

Angelo Codevilla’s 19JAN2021 article is a great place to review how it all happened and gives us a glimpse into the future. He writes:

In 2021, the laws, customs, and habits of the heart that had defined the American republic since the 18th century are things of the past. Americans’ movements and interactions are under strictures for which no one ever voted. Government disarticulated society by penalizing ordinary social intercourse and precluding the rise of spontaneous opinion therefrom. Together with corporate America, it smothers minds through the mass and social media with relentless, pervasive, identical, and ever-evolving directives. In that way, these oligarchs have proclaimed themselves the arbiters of truth, entitled and obliged to censor whoever disagrees with them as systemically racist, adepts of conspiracy theories.

Corporate America and the Federal Government have teamed up on a final assault of anything that rings of individual liberty, freedom and Natural rights. The shift towards USSR-think has been astounding, but so many in their corporate jobs that required years in socialist universities are blind toward any problem. Between their remote status and their student loan debt, they are as dependent on government as those that are on welfare.

Angelo goes on:

Corporations, and the government itself, require employees to attend meetings personally to acknowledge their guilt. They solicit mutual accusations. While violent felons are released from prison, anyone may be fired or otherwise have his life wrecked for questioning government/corporate sentiment. Today’s rulers don’t try to convince. They demand obedience, and they punish.

This is 2021 and beyond. This is the squeeze. Between big business and those directly dependent on the government, obedience will be the main thing as the compliance of 2020 made the elite ever so bold in this assault.

“the United States of America is now a classic oligarchy”

Angelo does a great job in charting the course of this moment back to the late 1800’s and shows how our grandparents and parents were also blind to this trajectory. Personally, for me the rot came in 1787 with the secret penning of the US Constitution when Patrick Henry said “I smell a rat”

Angelo also shows the recent acceleration of America’s path to oligarchy, through a catalyst called Donald Trump:

Thus, as the oligarchy set about negating the 2016 electorate’s attempt to stop its consolidation of power, Trump had assured them that they would neither be impeded as they did so nor pay a price. Donald Trump is not responsible for the oligarchy’s power. But he was indispensable to it.

Trump’s rise gave clarity to the Resistance as to who they were up against and gave fuel to motivate them to rally their allies:

#TheResistance rallied every part of the ruling class to mutually supporting efforts. Nothing encourages, amplifies, or seemingly justifies extreme sentiments as does being part of a unanimous chorus, a crowd, a mob—especially when all can be sure they are acting safely, gratuitously. Success supercharges them. #TheResistance fostered the sense in the ruling class’ members that they are more right, more superior, and more entitled than they had ever imagined. It made millions of people feel bigger and better about themselves than they ever had.

Moral superiors, not unlike how the North felt toward the South in 1861, that being just as racist, or even more than their Southern brothers, they felt as though they were on the right side and could justify ANYTHING that stood in their way of making the whole country “right”. Talk about a narrative that cost 750,000 lives, not unlike other totalitarian narratives of Mao, Stalin and Hitler that cost millions.

The trigger for this rapid transition was non other than a virus with an IFR of 0.01%, the scary Covid-19 and Trump’s actions in mid-March 2020:

Because the power to crush the general population’s resistance to itself is the oligarchy’s single-minded focus, it was able to bend fears of COVID to that purpose. Thus, it gathered more power with more consequences than the oligarchs could have imagined.

But only President Trump’s complaisance made this possible. His message to the American people had been not to panic, be mindful of the scientific facts—you can’t stop it, and it’s not that bad—while mitigating its effects on vulnerable populations. But on March 15, Trump bent, and agreed to counsel people to suspend normal life for two weeks to “slow the spread,” so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. Two weeks later, the New York Times crowed that Trump, having been told “hundreds of thousands of Americans could face death if the country reopened too soon,” had been stampeded into “abandoning his goal of reopening the country by Easter.” He agreed to support the “experts’” definition of what “soon” might mean. By accrediting the complex of government, industry, and media’s good faith and expertise, Trump validated their plans to use COVID as a vehicle for enhancing their power.

The Covid-19 express was then followed by the BLM/Antifa distraction once Trump’s impeachment process concluded, and this would give cover to the oligarchy all the way to election day:

The oligarchy’s proximate objective, preventing the 2020 presidential election from validating the previous one’s results, overrode all others. The powers it had seized under COVID’s cover, added to the plethora that it had exercised since the 2016 campaign’s beginning, had surely cowered some opposition. But as November 2020 loomed, no one could be sure how much it also had energized.

Few people were happy to be locked down. It was a safe bet that not a few were unhappy at being called systemically racist. The oligarchy, its powers notwithstanding, could not be sure how people would vote. That is why it acted to take the presidential election’s outcome out of the hands of those who would cast the votes and to place it as much as possible in the hands of its members who would count the votes.

I know Trump saw this coming, he barked about this up to election day but only did something when it was too late:

Pennsylvania et. al. answered Texas’s late lawsuit by arguing it demanded the invalidation of votes that had been cast in good faith. True. But Texas argued that letting stand the results of an election carried out contrary to the Constitution devalued the votes cast in states such as Texas that had held the election in a constitutional manner. Also true. Without comment, the Supreme Court chose to privilege the set of voters on the oligarchy’s side over those of their opponents. Had the lawsuit come well before the election, no such choice would have existed. Typically, the Trump Administration substituted bluster for action.

So now, what does the future hold? Well as long as the oligarchy can stay united in its hate for 74 million Americans that voted for Trump, it can do quite a bit of pent-up damage from the last 4 years that they hope to recover from:

The logic of hate and disdain of ordinary Americans is not only what binds the oligarchy together. It is the only substitute it has for any moral-ethical-intellectual point of reference. Donald Trump’s impotent, inglorious reaction to his defeat offered irresistible temptations to the oligarchy’s several sectors to celebrate victory by vying to hurt whoever had supported the president. But permanent war against some 74 million fellow citizens is a foredoomed approach to governing.

The Democratic Party had promised a return to some kind of “normalcy.” Instead, its victory enabled the oligarchy’s several parts to redefine the people who do not show them due deference as “white supremacists,” “insurrectionists,” and Nazis—in short, as some kind of criminals—to exclude them from common platforms of communication, from the banking system, and perhaps even from air travel; and to set law enforcement to surveil them in order to find bases for prosecuting them. Neither Congress nor any state’s legislature legislated any of this. Rather, the several parts of America’s economic, cultural, and political establishment are waging this war, uncoordinated but well-nigh unanimously.

Division keeps the eye off government’s own short-comings, which they are many, but in order to stay relevant, they all have to stay “in the loop”.

In summary, Angelo states that in effect, the actions of the woke-elites sends a message loud and clear to those who treasure family and community, and business no matter how small. Separate!

In sum, intending to relegate conservative America to society’s servile sidelines, the oligarchy’s members drew a clear, sharp line between themselves and that America. By telling conservative Americans “these institutions and corporations, are ours, not yours,” they freed conservative America of moral obligations toward them and themselves. By abandoning conservative America, they oblige conservative America to abandon them and seek its own way.

If there were a way to do this peacefully like the USSR did that would be great. But I do not see the ruling elite as giving up ANYTHING they value in this separation. Please note how the so-called American Civil War ended, with the southern region ruined in poverty for 100 years!

Time to be wise as serpents as we who value the individual over the collective, freedom over slavery and family over government chart our future.

Peace out

-SF1

Quick Money or Invest for the Future: New Polar Silk Road

Quick money is the natural inclination of those that are in “it” for themselves. Investing in the future honorably is something “other centered” people do, knowing not only their positive character traits can be an inspiration to next generations, but that any value added was accomplished without using people as if they were just cannon fodder while also holistically enriching those that follow us.

While my typical posts tend to be negative and critical, this post is one of hope. The dream of those that are anti-state, anti-war and pro-market is that peaceful trade will be the antidote to war.

My hope for my kids and grandkids is a future where wars are minimized and that life, liberty and freedom abound.

With this in mind, this particular post called “Trump’s Suprising Alaska-Canada Rail Announcement” from Matthew Ehret demonstrates the things that are in the works that the average MSM watcher misses, the good news.

For all of his limitations, President Trump has displayed a rare and invaluable quality unseen in an American president for decades: Humanity and genuine patriotism. While neocons and technocrats attempt to gain the upper hand amidst the impending blowout of the $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble called the western economy, a new epoch of serious nation building has emerged with the Russia-China alliance and Belt and Road Initiative, which has extended development corridors, industrial zones and mass infrastructure led by rail throughout Asia, Africa and increasingly into the Russian Arctic under the Polar Silk Road.

Rare praise for what President Trump is up to that gains little attention in the press that is infatuated with the here and now instead of the future of the people of the US, Canada and yes even Russia and China.

What is also missed by MSM has been Trump’s behind the scenes efforts towards an economic effort, verses BushII/Obama style “bombing for democracy” which is code for war for quick profits to the MIC (Military Industrial Complex). Here is Trump in noble action in SEP2020 towards healing the scars (thanks Clinton administration) in the Kosovo/Serbia region since the 2008 conflict:

Trump’s normalisation agreement provides for increased economic collaboration between Kosovo and Serbia, particularly in the areas of transport and infrastructure. It also requires the two countries to increase the work they have been doing on issues of missing persons, refugees and internally displaced persons from the 1990s Kosovo war.

On the back of this success President Trump made this ‘Polar Silk Road’ announcement (do note that I am not convinced that the “Lincoln Principles of Government” has much merit, since his “Might” was made “Right” in his own eyes after the seven southern states seceded in late 1860 and early 1861, but I digress), Matthew Ehret shares HIS thoughts:

In its essential character, this Multipolar alliance represents a form of thinking and action which are much more in alignment with discoverable principles of natural law (premised not on “Might Makes Right but rather “Right makes Might” as enunciated famously by the great Chinese President and revolutionary in his Three Principles of the People (modelled on his studies of Lincoln’s principles of government) where he said: “The rule of Right respects benevolence and virtue, while the rule of Might only respects force and utilitarianism. The rule of Right always influences people with justice and reason, while the rule of Might always oppresses people with brute force and military measures.”

Todays potential re-emergence of the Alaska-Canada Railway which would be driven under a pro-Pacific and pro-Arctic development model represents the first genuine display of this paradigm in North America in decades.

This is not innovative or new, as the balance of Matthew Erhet’s article demonstrates, but is instead a visionary look ahead that could help to make America great again.

Ever since the days of the sale of Alaska from Russia to the USA in 1867, it was understood by leading statesmen of both nations that an inevitable next phase in human society’s evolution would involve extending the U.S. Trans Continental Railway through Canada, into Alaska and thence into Russia and Asia via the Bering Strait rail tunnel. This project had received fervent support from such figures as Russian Prime Minister Sergei Witte, Colorado’s Governor William Gilpin and even Czar Nicholas II who commissioned American engineers to conduct a feasibility study in 1906. These stories were told in full in my recent reports The Missed Chance of 1867, and The Real Story Behind the Alaska Purchase.

It is indeed heartening to see glimpses of peace and commerce offset that of war and refugees. Thomas Jefferson would be proud:

Peace out.

-SF1

With China Reeling from Corona-virus, Is Russia in the US Empire’s Cross-hairs?

 

Sanctions, embargoes and tariffs might not enough for the DC Elite to be convinced that Russia is not a threat to the US Empire’s future. It seems that China, which owns a substantial chunk of US debt, has been marginalized, either by design or by coincidence.

What is the source of this paranoia? Is it that the Russians embarrassed the US by really defeating ISIS? Maybe it was what the Russians found in Syria after ISIS retreated that had the US Empire’s fingerprints all over it. Maybe it is because Russia has done fairly well in spite of the embargoes by trading with other nations, getting off the USD petro-dollar and securing Crimea? Is it because Putin pulled levers to get Trump elected? (Don’t make me laugh)

The MIC / Deep State does need a war soon to keep the defense industry humming and keep those DC lobbyists busy with a majority of Congress in lining their pocketbooks. The Israel-First policy has been a great program for two intense decades (preceded by a couple of decades of US-centric support) ..

.. but that program might be plateauing a bit now that Iraq is pushing for independence from the US orbit, thanks to Trump’s assassination of Iran’s 2nd in command on Iraqi soil. Israel will keep crying that it needs the Golan Heights, more Palestinian soil to settle on and protection from Iraqi missiles.

So to move on and ratchet up some war or preparation for war somewhere on this globe, the US has to focus on Russia. I mean, look at the way Russia has encroached on NATO since 1990:

Oops, I guess NATO has been in expansion mode. Oh well, the narrative pays little attention to facts.

Paul Craig Robert’s article caught my eye this week as he sensed that Russia should be alert to what the US Empire is up to. It seems from this article, that the Russian people don’t see the US as an enemy:

… a contemporaneous poll published by the Levada Center, an independent Russian pollster, reports that 80% of Russians see Washington and its NATO vassals as “friends.” https://tsarizm.com/news/eastern-europe/2020/02/18/poll-4-out-of-5-russians-view-west-as-a-friend/

“Only 3% of Russian respondents said they see the West as Russia’s enemy, Levada said. Another 16% said they view the West as a rival.

“Two-thirds of Levada’s respondents (67%) said Russia should treat the West as a “partner,” while 11% said Russia should treat the West as a “friend,” according to the Kommersant business daily’s breakdown of the data.”

Roberts is concerned that the reality of the US Empire’s hate on Russia is a struggle that should be more apparent and real.

Consider the expense (and debt) that the US has expended only to be shown up by Russia’s new hyper-sonic missiles and other emerging technologies.

Examples of the technological lag were made public almost two years ago:

– Mach 20 allows supersonic missile delivery system that can quote “deliver missiles to the needed point in just a matter of the seconds

– A cruise missile with a nuclear engine

– The 200 ton SARMAT ballistic missile that circles around the Earth and again come to the other continents from a surprisingly weird angles

There are a couple more, but I think you get the picture.

With a 1/10th of the US Empire budget (not including the black budgets and other military agencies that do not figure into the DoD official budget), Russia has been 10x more innovative in an attempt to defend itself. I contend that only these new systems that have come of age in the last 5 years helps to deter the US from attempting regime change on Russia itself .. again.

While Roberts thinks that Russia’s military understands the latest war-game that NATO is amassing near Russia’s borders, he contends that the government is failing their people in getting them to understand this reality. Maybe Russia understands that a distracted population is not an innovative or productive one, I guess that would be my own take. In either case, Roberts then says:

How can the Russian people, humiliated by American sanctions and endless denunciations of their elected president, who led them out of American captivity, and threatened by Washington’s nuclear missiles on their border, possiblly(sic) believe in friendship and partnership with Washington?

If the polls are correct, and the Russian people do not understand Washington’s hegemonic impulse, Russian sovereignty is not a sure thing.

I contend that psychologically, having the people surprised by an overt act of aggression on the part of the US Empire would kindle a defensive posture more than warning them day after day that the evil empire (US) is poised to strike at any minute. That is something only the US government would do to justify expensive military interventions around the globe as well as a massive debt.

I stand impressed to date of Russia’s attitude on the world stage, patient with countries like Turkey that vacillate between Russian and US circles while providing true relieve to the people of Syria that is still reeling from Obama’s and Hillary’s induced “civil war’ there using ISIS as their weapon of choice.

Things sure have changed in 40 years, from crazy Ivan to reasonable Putin while the US’s collateral damage was JFK on their way to having crazy Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama and now Trump manning the wheel.

Peace out

-SF1

Gaining a Middle East Perspective, Apart from the Official US Empire/Media Narrative

Lebanese ‘Vision for Peace’ for a brighter future for the people in North America

Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

The Who – “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

By now, one has to understand that it really makes no difference who is president, except for maybe if one has the gift of eloquent speech, another a gift of making it to 3rd base with an intern, another a gift of “duh” while targeting countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, another the gift of racial equality and finally a politician that can create tweets on Twitter and trigger millions. We sure have made “progress”.

However, in the real world, the US Empire has been marching on from CIA assassinating other nation’s democratically elected presidents (1953, Iran) to open US military assassination of other nation’s #2 national leader and hero from his strategy to defeat ISIS (2020, Iran), nothing has halted the evil empire’s advance. Yes, I agree with Oliver Stone that the evil of the USSR in the 1980s has been replaced by the US Empire of the 2000s and beyond.

Things have changed a lot since then, at least for Stone. “Empires fall. Let’s pray that this empire, these evil things… because we are the evil empire,” he said in an interview to RT. “What Reagan said about Russia is true about us.” – Sputnik / Alexei Druzhinin

To get a real picture of what has evolved in the Middle East and how we (US Empire) are not helping, I believe that Eric Margolis’ experience is something that can be drawn on as a starting point where one can research for themselves from there. In his latest piece picked up by the Ron Paul Institute from Lew Rockwell, called “Grand Theft Property”, Eric outlines how this latest Trump “Peace Plan” is nothing more than continued theft of Palestinian land that will only serve to ensure continued violence in the region that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) will love so that their profits are assured. Eric explains:

As they ask in my native New York City, “Is it good for the Jews?”, the answer is a resounding no! The Trump-Bibi theft of ancestral Arab lands condemns Arabs and Jews to another five decades of violence and hatred. The Promised Land was not supposed to be like this.

Ain’t that the truth. The fact is, visions do not create rights. They have no legal grounds. They do not convey legality to anything.

Don’t go away, for the backstory is even better. One needs to know the context and history that brought us to this point where it seems to be accepted that Israel and the US can decide how to partition up the Middle East:

In 1916, as World War I raged on, a British diplomat, Mark Sykes, met with his French counterpart from the Quai d’Orsay, Monsieur Picot, and signed an agreement to partition the Ottoman Empire once victory was achieved.

The heart of the Mideast – Palestine, Syria, and Iraq – was divided between Britain and France. Italy and Russia were offered other Ottoman lands: southern Turkey was promised to Italy and Constantinople to Russia. All this was top secret but was later revealed by the Bolsheviks after their 1917 revolution.

Do you see this? World powers, the empires, can just decide where to draw the lines, the benefits of wars go to the state while the cost of war is the burden that those who fought and sometimes died along with their families and the innocent civilians caught up in these great conflicts where life is never the same.

I have heard the term that bigger is better, however, when it comes to states, the bigger the state they more tyrannical they can be. This tyranny extends from the politicians who enable the state and give the state legitimacy, because politicians were “voted” in, all the way to all the people who follow orders blindly, from CIA assets, to the military all the way to the police, from the capital, to the states all the way to the local governments that are dependent on federal funding.

I agree with G.K. Chesterton who said:

“The men whom the people ought to choose to represent them are too busy to take the jobs. But the politician is waiting for it. He’s the pestilence of modern times. What we should try to do is make politics as local as possible. Keep the politicians near enough to kick them. The villagers who met under the village tree could also hang their politicians to the tree. It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”

That kind of local government could easily have prevented the following:

  • 70 million killed in China
  • 60 million killed in USSR
  • 4 million killed in Cambodia
  • 5 million killed in North Korea
  • 1 million killed in Yugoslavia
  • 1 million killed in Ethiopia
  • 1 million killed in Indonesia
  • 800,000 killed in Rwanda
  • 800,000 killed in US Civil War

Anyway, it appears that the US Empire train, similar to the USSR and Roman ones before it, will continue on down this track until it self destructs, no matter who is the president.

-SF1

The US / Iraq Spat: What is it Really About? (Occupation, Drones, Oil, Petro$ ..)

Critical thinkers, after a spat or confrontation, will reflect on the encounter and attempt to understand the motives of those involved. This requires getting out of your own shoes and into the shoes of others.

We usually assume the best in others by default. People we meet for the first time we try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Over time we can then compare words with actions and be a pretty good judge of character.

We are also influenced by our upbringing, and our schooling, and if that involves government schools or even most private schools, the bias is there. We have learned of George Washington and the cherry tree (myth), we have learned about Honest Abe (myth) and we have learned about good government.

There is no doubt that this base operating system allows most people to see government as a natural safety net, and a natural “go-to” for any life problem that comes along, the Nanny State can take care of it best. But I digress.

When it comes to thinking about the United States of America, or more accurately, the US Empire, there is a natural inclination to think of American Exceptionalism. Being proud of America to the point of thinking it knows best for every people group around the world is as American as “apple pie”.

So when President Donald Trump says:

Over the last three years, under my leadership, our economy is stronger than ever before and America has achieved energy independence. These historic accomplishments changed our strategic priorities. These are accomplishments that nobody thought were possible. And options in the Middle East became available. We are now the number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. We are independent, and we do not need Middle East oil. (emphasis added)

.. you have to really wonder, what about all the times he references oil in Syria as being critical for the US to protect or wanting 50% of Iraq’s oil revenue to pay for all that the US has done in Iraq since the invasion, is it really about the oil, or things links to and through the oil?

Whitney Webb from a Mint Press article does a great job at looking at all the angles to determine motives. She even references another great thinker, Tom Loungo and his Gold, Goats N’Guns web page in her attempt to get her mind around what Trump, the Neo-Cons and the War Party are angling for:

Yet, given the centrality of the recent Iraq-China oil deal in guiding some of the Trump administration’s recent Middle East policy moves, this appears not to be the case. The distinction may lie in the fact that, while the U.S. may now be less dependent on oil imports from the Middle East, it still very much needs to continue to dominate how oil is traded and sold on international markets in order to maintain its status as both a global military and financial superpower.

Bingo Whitney.

This is the core that fuels the MIC, the Deep State, the War Party as well as the US Empire itself. Without the petrodollar, the US military can no longer have its $1T annual budget, and the whole US economic charade would be revealed.

 

The article continues to say:

As Kei Pritsker and Cale Holmes noted in an article last year for MintPress:

The takeaway from the petrodollar phenomenon is that as long as countries need oil, they will need the dollar. As long as countries demand dollars, the U.S. can continue to go into massive amounts of debt to fund its network of global military bases, Wall Street bailouts, nuclear missiles, and tax cuts for the rich.”

Yes, at its core, this is probably the only long-range thinking the US Empire cares about with the only exception of possibly Israel’s survival.

Historically, Iraq remembers:

It appears that the ever-present role of the petrodollar in guiding U.S. policy in the Middle East remains unchanged. The petrodollar has long been a driving factor behind the U.S.’ policy towards Iraq specifically, as one of the key triggers for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s decision to sell Iraqi oil in Euros opposed to dollars beginning in the year 2000. Just weeks before the invasion began, Hussein boasted that Iraq’s Euro-based oil revenue account was earning a higher interest rate than it would have been if it had continued to sell its oil in dollars, an apparent signal to other oil exporters that the petrodollar system was only really benefiting the United States at their own expense.

Libya also found out the hard way what happens to countries outside of the US Empire’s orbit.

The tilt away from the US Empire started earlier last year in AUG2019 when Iraq asserted its sovereignty on its border with Syria:

Luongo also argued that the current tensions between U.S. and Iraqi leadership preceded the oil deal between Iraq and China by several weeks, “All of this starts with Prime Minister Mahdi starting the process of opening up the Iraq-Syria border crossing and that was announced in August. Then, the Israeli air attacks happened in September to try and stop that from happening, attacks on PMU forces on the border crossing along with the ammo dump attacks near Baghdad ..

Then, it was Iraq looking at options for its own rebuilding (the US Empire has squandered billions of dollars on projects that help the US Empire more than it does the Iraqi infrastructure, even though the US invasion was a mistake and rightly should have the US bear the expense of rebuilding).

Iraq looked to the east, with China, and found a better deal than the one that Trump offered Iraq:

While Trump demanded half of Iraq’s oil revenue in exchange for completing reconstruction projects (according to Abdul-Mahdi), the deal that was signed between Iraq and China would see around 20 percent of Iraq’s oil revenue go to China in exchange for reconstruction.

It was right after that Chinese conference that Iraq started seeing unrest, “coincidentally”:

Abdul-Mahdi’s delegation to China ended on September 24, with the protests against his government that Trump reportedly threatened to start on October 1. Reports of a “third side” firing on Iraqi protesters were picked up by major media outlets at the time, such as in this BBC report which stated:

Reports say the security forces opened fire, but another account says unknown gunmen were responsible….a source in Karbala told the BBC that one of the dead was a guard at a nearby Shia shrine who happened to be passing by. The source also said the origin of the gunfire was unknown and it had targeted both the protesters and security forces. (emphasis added)”

This is exactly what the US did in Ukraine back in 2014 .. it has the US Empire’s fingerprints all over it.

Then ..

.. after my [Abdul-Mahdi] return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I also refused, and he threatened [that there would be] massive demonstrations to topple me. Indeed, the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event of non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, whereby a third party [presumed to be mercenaries or U.S. soldiers] would target both the demonstrators and security forces and kill them from atop the highest buildings and the US embassy in an attempt to pressure me and submit to his wishes and cancel the China agreement.”

“I did not respond and submitted my resignation and the Americans still insist to this day on canceling the China agreement. When the defense minister said that those killing the demonstrators was a third party, Trump called me immediately and physically threatened myself and the defense minister in the event that there was more talk about this third party ..

Yes, this is the true character of the US empire, in actions, verses the words from George W. Bush in DEC2005:

Just over two-and-a-half years ago, Iraq was in the grip of a cruel dictator who had invaded his neighbors, sponsored terrorists, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction, murdered his own people, and for more than a decade, defied the demands of the United Nations and the civilized world. Since then, the Iraqi people have assumed sovereignty over their country, held free elections, drafted a democratic constitution, and approved that constitution in a nationwide referendum. Three days from now, they go to polls for the third time this year, and choose a new government under the new constitution.

Democracy arrived in Iraq in 2005, but now 15 years later, with the US still occupying this country that it wrongfully invaded, the US wants a monopoly on “re-building Iraq” and “keeping ISIS out of Iraq”.

Whatever, go home US Empire!!

Peace out

-SF1