Ever since Trump took office last year his mainstream opposition has been giving us daily reminders that “THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL.” on social media and wherever they can find a platform. The idea, apparently, is that Trump’s presidency is some sort of extraordinary, unprecedented evil, and we mustn’t “normalize” it or else we’ll forget how to get back to what normal is.
Thing is, the “normal” that they are trying to get back to has never existed. It’s a lie.
Which is why Trump’s rank-and-file opposition are running around like they’re on a bad acid trip and swinging at shadows in a state of manic disorientation with vagina hats on their heads.
Media has spent the past week openly lusting for yet another Middle East war and yet you don't hear the typical hand-wringers screaming This. Is. Not. Normal — because it really *is* normal, and that's the problem
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 13, 2018
The “THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL.” sentiment on social media is typically a response to some new revelation related to the Russiagate conspiracy theory or the Trump administration’s attempt to push back on it. These McResistance ejaculations arise from the delusion that prior to January of last year, America was a functioning democracy that operated more or less the way they were taught about in grade school, wherein the government more or less told the truth, media outlets painted a more or less accurate picture of what the world is like, and everything was more or less stable.
And of course nothing could be further from the truth. The United States is a corporatist oligarchy ruled by a loose collaboration between plutocrats and defense/intelligence agencies in which ordinary people have virtually no say and the mass media exists to prevent everyone from realizing it. This oligarchy is built upon a power structure that is fast approaching post-primacy, and it will do things that are absolutely unthinkable to the “THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL.” crowd in order to retain dominance.
This includes deceiving the entire western world about what is happening in Syria and Russia.
A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018
US, French and British forces bombed the Syrian government yesterday in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack that was very clearly not what we’re being told. There are repeated instances of children’s bodies being posed to elicit sympathy and outrage, and testimony from purported witnesses that the narrative was deliberately and dishonestly manipulated on the scene to make cases of smoke inhalation look like people recovering from a chemical weapons attack. Jaysh al-Islam, the terrorist faction in control of Douma at the time, was clearly involved in a propaganda effort against the Assad government marketed to a western audience.
We aren’t allowed to say this, by the way. Used to be that you’d get shouted down by establishment loyalists for suggesting that the government might have staged a false flag. Now you even get shouted down by establishment loyalists for suggesting that an actual, literal terrorist group staged a false flag. That’s how stupid the propaganda machine has made everyone.
And they went ahead with the attack. In spite of all the gaping plot holes, the western empire rained a quarter billion dollars worth of explosives down upon Syrian soil to the thunderous applause of establishment loyalists on both sides of the aisle. The evidence that they are giving us for the basis of this attack is laughable; the “proof” French President Macron told us he had consists of garbage open-source information of the sort Atlantic Council propaganda firm Bellingcat might put out, and the way the attack was conducted makes it apparent that the chemical weapons facilities it claimed to have attacked weren’t there at all.
The rhetoric from this administration has been more unequivocal than ever that we can absolutely expect more aggressive acts of war if there are any more chemical weapons false flags, which of course in a region crawling with known terrorist factions who understand propaganda and have a vested interest in overthrowing Assad is a great way to guarantee more false flag chemical weapons attacks. Nikki Haley could not have made this clearer with her comment to the UN Security Council, “I spoke to the president this morning and he said if the Syrian regime uses this poison gas again, the United States is locked and loaded. When our president draws a red line, our president enforces the red line.”
So there’s no reason to believe that was the end of this administration’s attacks on the Syrian government, and there’s every reason to believe we’ll see a lot more.
In response to this attack, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov stated that “such actions will not be left without consequences,” and that all responsibility for those consequences “rests with Washington, London and Paris.” Putin strongly condemned the attack.
Those of us ruled by the western empire are meant to hate Russia while simultaneously being acutely aware that it is only Russian cool-headedness that is saving us from a world war right now. But whether they admit it or not, anyone paying attention to this situation is wondering how far Russia can be pushed. How many more acts of aggression facilitated by blatant false flags will it take before Russia responds aggressively? How much can you poke the bear before it bites?
These are questions that have an answer, and the people at the steering wheel of this empire seem determined to find that answer.
And this was planned. All of it was planned in advance.
I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, ‘We must do something about this monster in Iraq.’ I said, ‘When did you first think that?’ He answered honestly, ‘A month ago’. #Propaganda @medialens
— Malcolm Pryce (@exogamist) April 12, 2018
Ordinary Americans rarely thought about Russia prior to 2016. It certainly wasn’t a nation the rank-and-file west was thinking and talking about constantly. Then all of a sudden, through nothing other than the power of sheer narrative, it’s become an omnipotent, insidious force in the eyes of the public with the ability to infiltrate and overturn democracies all around the world and influence major events everywhere from the US to the UK to Syria. The Facebook ads could have been a second-page story for one day and nobody would have cared. The DNC hack, even if it happened, could have disappeared from the news after a day or two and it would have gone unnoticed. But because the mass media propaganda machine has been hammering Russia, Russia, Russia all day every day, it now seems perfectly reasonable to believe that Putin is behind every major event in the world; perfectly reasonable for so much of the Syria saber rattling to be targeted not at Damascus but at Moscow.
This anti-Russia propaganda campaign started in 2016 not because of the 2016 election, but because that was when a Russia hawk was scheduled to replace Barack Obama in office.
In 2014, to the notice of hardly anybody, the US staged a coup in Ukraine. Here’s an article from the beginning of 2015 about Hillary Clinton promoting a very anti-Russia position on Ukraine which contrasted sharply with Obama’s, and here is an article from June 2015 about people on both sides of the aisle being made nervous by Clinton’s Russia hawkishness. This was long before Russia was a blip on the radar in American consciousness, but the then-heir apparent to the throne was already gearing up for escalations with that nation.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/984078495532965888
The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald and Zaid Jilani recently published an article about something I’ve been yelling about for a while now: the fact that the Trump administration, despite all the allegations of Russian collusion, is actually vastly more hawkish toward Russia than Obama ever was. After his surprise win Trump was taken in, shown around, and then pressured by Washington insiders and/or by the political pressures of Russiagate into doing the thing Hillary Clinton had been planning on doing: greatly escalating the new cold war. Obama’s refusal to fully collaborate with ramping up tensions with Russia was scheduled to be rectified by Clinton, and since they didn’t get her they’re getting the same thing from Plan B.
This was all planned. A desperate, declining empire with a need to sabotage the rise of nonconforming nations and their allies has been planning for years to either squeeze Russia like a python until it taps out and moves out of the way, or until it fights back and is crushed militarily. That’s the plan, and since the life of the empire depends upon its success, they’ll do literally anything to make sure it succeeds. This includes lying to the world to an extent that has never before been seen in modern history.
The US-centralized empire is not normal. It never has been. Nothing about this is natural or healthy, and you couldn’t ask for a better sign of this than our close proximity to world war with a nuclear superpower. We’ve got to shuck off these parasites and find a healthier way to function as a species.
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6 responses to “All Of These Russia Escalations Were Planned Years Ago”
Have we forgotten the Atlanticists and their shor- term plan to push democracy (read capitalism) in countries that have similar cultures, and long-range plans to gradually bring in other cultures/nations? How to do this in an area like the Near/Middle East (with its additional cache of oil) which is culturally and religiously different from the Atlanticists nucleus of (you got this?) US, Britain and France? The most likely plan was to change their “regimes” and seat pro-Western leaders, if possible, or dictators that can be bought. This is all part of a much larger plan to unite all countries (eventually) in a federalist (capitalist) system.
Can we never lose sight of the fact that almost every action taken is somehow, related to making the super-wealthy and powerful, much more of the same. Certainly, our declining empire wants to do everything to prevent further strengthening of a Russia-China relationship. And, certainly, it wants regime change in Syria, so as to find the next ruler there favoring the oil pipeline across Syria that Assad steadfastly declined to be built.
Still, there’s this nagging thought in the back of my mind that the increasing animosity toward Russia and the planting of the idea of a successful air strike against a ‘devil,’ may also, in some small (?) part, be a way for Trump’s Republican Party to sway enough minds to prevent the expected onslaught of Democratic Party victories in November, a barrage that could well change the balance of power in the U.S. Congress. It seems to me that the numerous Republican refusals to run for reelection recognize that as a possibility, so the weakest, or most disliked Republicans are being systematically removed to increase the chance that a more likeable candidate may prevent a Democratic takeover. Sure the two major parties are more alike than not, but let us never forget that while that may be so, the two parties also have this also in common – each wants to be the one calling the shots – even when those shots risk nuclear holocaust, due to false accusations followed by military incursions against the weak and relatively powerless.
Yeah, on Greenwald – he was on NPR a couple of days ago, saying that while Congress needs to weigh in on whether or not the US bombs the crap out of Syria, “clearly something must be done to stop Assad from gassing his own people”. Obviously, Greenwald has no trouble with the official story.
But then, Greenwald said the same thing about Libya; his only issue with that horrible event perpetrated on an innocent country was that Congress didn’t get to vote first. Otherwise, he felt Gaddafi was a despot who had to be taken out. Bought the whole R2P (responsibility to protect) bullshit – hook, line, and sinker.
The questions I have are:
Why didn’t the Syrian air force or defense missiles
take down at least one of the NATO attack planes?
Could this have been a pre-scripted a dog & pony show?
Are we anti-war folk being manipulated by ALL the players?
Elko John, the Syrians and the Russians did not want to escalate beyond what was necessary to defend themselves. And it seems this time around, it were the British who were pushing for war more than the Americans.
Russia said they have evidence that the British intelligence agencies were involved in with the Ghouta rebels, were even pressuring them to stage the false-flag attack so that a larger war could be justified.
However since the Syrian army with the help of Russia had advanced so fast and had practically won the war in this whole area, the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government became so implausible, that the Americans became reluctant to use that obvious lie.
However the British needed to act because they had budged the Skripal affair so badly they were losing all credibility in Europe.
Elko,
I am no military expert at ALL, but from what I have been reading from people who are, it appears that the US/UK/France fired from missiles from ships quite a distance away and the Syrian army doesn’t have weapons with such long-range capability. However, reports are also coming out that say Syria was able to knock down some of the missiles in the air as they traveled closer to their targets. The US denies this, but there are other countries that state categorically this happened.
Also, why would Syria want to start taking out planes and pilots, which would escalate this into a global war? They knew in advance which facilities would be hit, so they evacuated them and and ceded the buildings.
It’s a dog and pony show in the sense that the US and its allies are running a narrative that is distinctly false, but it certainly appears that the US really does want to take out Syria, make a detour to Iran, and then take on Russia, and perhaps China. We are crazy.