Crop Circle Appears in Wheat Field in Rural Washington…Again

Via CBS News:

Residents in rural Wilbur, WA were mostly amused to discover that a crop circle had appeared in a local wheat field. The circle is described as resembling Mickey Mouse or a four leaf clover and covers approximately one acre. This isn’t the first time that it’s happened, either:

Crop circles have been a worldwide phenomenon for decades, and this is not the first one in Lincoln County. Similar circular patterns were left in crops in the Wilbur area in 2010 and in 2008 or 2009, Geib said.

Lynne Brougher, public affairs officer for the Grand Coulee dam, hadn’t heard about the latest crop circles but said the previous one was no cause for alarm.

“It seemed to be highly unusual,” Brougher said. “As I recall from a couple of years ago, there was no good explanation of how they got there.”

Most people believe that crop circles are man-made, perhaps with planks and rope. However, Richard Taylor of the University of Oregon recently suggested that they may be created with modern technology, namely magnetrons and GPS gear.

Read more at CBS News.

Mysterious crop circles appear in Washington wheat field

By NBC News staff

A set of crop circles appeared in an eastern Washington wheat field last week, much to the amusement of the field’s owners.

“You can’t do anything other than laugh about it,” Cindy Geib, who owns the field along with her husband, Greg,told the Associated Press. “You just kind of roll with the theory it’s aliens and you’re special because aliens chose your spot.”

The crop circles were first spotted July 24, when friends of the Geibs noticed the flattened wheat about five miles north of the town of Wilbur, Wash. The field is 10 miles south of the Grand Coulee dam, which the Bureau of Reclamation says is the largest hydropower producer in the U.S.

The circles resemble a four-leaf clover. Cindy said they remind her of Mickey Mouse ears. The design knocked down about an acre of their wheat.

Greg, a fifth-generation wheat farmer, is set to begin harvest next week, and he said some of the crop will be lost, but there hasn’t been much harm done. Rather, it’s more of an inconvenience when he comes to that particular section of wheat.

“You just kind of brush it off, you don’t think too much about it,” Greg told NBC affiliate KHQ in Spokane, Wash. “There’s not really a whole lot that can be done about it.”

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These aren’t the first crop circles that have appeared in Lincoln County. Every year or so, a new set has appeared in one of the wheat fields, KHQ reported.

Crop circles in a wheat field owned by Greg and Cindy Geib near Wilbur, Wash., on July 30.

Lynne Brougher, a public affairs officer for the Grand Coulee dam, hadn’t heard about the latest crop circles but said the previous one was no cause for alarm.

“It seemed to be highly unusual,” Brougher told the Associated Press. “As I recall from a couple of years ago, there was no good explanation of how they got there.”

Cindy said those responsible for the crop circles near her home remain a mystery.

“We’re trying to figure out how they got there without breaking any of the wheat,” she said. “It’s hard to walk through the crunchy wheat and not knock it down. They had to be fairly young in my estimation because it’s a long ways out, and they had to pack a lot of stuff out there to smash it down.”

Both Cindy and Greg said their family is choosing to remain lighthearted about the crop circles and all of the attention they’re bringing.

“I think it would be kind of cool if it really were aliens,” Cindy said. “I think it’d be pretty cool.”

Washington Wired for War: Why Syria Could Spell World Catastrophe

by Finian Cunningham

When Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip fatally shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, the assassination is seen as the event that ushered in the First World War. Within a month, the Great Powers of Europe would become embroiled in a four-year war owing to a web of alliances and treaties: Russia, France, Britain on the one hand; Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires on the other. The US would eventually enter the maelstrom in April 1917 on the side of Britain and the Entente allies against the Central Powers.

The eventual death toll was between 10 and 16 million, making it one of the biggest cataclysms in human history. The war was, of course, not the consequence of a mere single act on that fateful day in Sarajevo. It was the culmination over many years of diplomatic and political skirmishing stemming from economic rivalry between the European capitalist powers. Although some later historians dispute the role of economics as the determinant, it is hard not to conclude as many others have done that the First World War was the classic outcome of imperialist rivalry.

In particular, the then top European power Britain had long seen the rising star of Germany as its nemesis for the control of markets and resources. For its part, the newly formed German Empire arising from the unification of Prussia in 1871 felt that its economic development was being unfairly thwarted by London.

This latent conflict over resources was underscored by several concomitant trends at the turn of the 20th century: the economic decline of Britain compared with the technological powerhouse of Germany; the “scramble for African colonies”; the encroachment of German industrialists upon newly discovered Persian oil fields; and the perceived threat to the eastward trade routes with India – the jewel in the crown of Britain’s Empire.

The First World War can thus be seen as proof of the maxim conceived by military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) that “war is but the continuation of politics by other means”. The political and economic rivalry between Britain and Germany was in that way a powder keg that exploded into war upon a Serbian spark.

Turning to the present world situation and potential for conflict, it is likewise incumbent to see the bigger picture beyond immediate tensions and events. We need to see beyond the trees and branches in order to survey the entire forest; and not only the forest, but the historical road that leads up to the forest.

It is also critical for the appreciation of the scope for war in the present day to accept the premise that the capitalist economic system is at root “wired for war”. Or as Karl Marx put it: “War is inherent in capitalism”.

This premise of war as an integral part of capitalism holds because, under the iron law of the profit motive, nations will always be driven by an intense demand for natural resources and markets beyond national boundaries. As a result, nation states will always be thrown into competition for the control of resources and dominance in markets. This tendency towards conflict and eventually war may be held off for some time under conditions of quasi “peace” by international trade pacts and regulations, but eventually the do-or-die imperative of securing economic advantage will over-ride all supposedly civilised constraints.

The political and economic slide towards the headlong collision of the First World War is proof of that dynamic. By way of further proof, only 20 years after “the war to end all wars”, following even deeper economic turmoil between nations, the world was plunged into the even greater conflagration of the Second World War, which involved for the first time the deployment of nuclear weapons and a death toll exceeding 50 million.

Of utmost concern is that the contradiction between national antagonisms in the realm of international relations as dictated by capitalist economics is still far from resolved.

Granted, under the process of globalisation, nation state capitalism has expanded over recent decades to take on, increasingly, a transnational character and function. This has resulted in networks of global capital in the form of multinational banks and corporations. In that way, nation states can appear to be cooperating seamlessly in the function of global capital. The US can be seen as the executive power in the world capitalist system that also appears to seamlessly benefit Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China among others. Also because of historic institutional ties some nations are closer than others in the functioning of the capitalist order. Washington and London, for example, are closely aligned in the sphere of finance capitalism and consequently share overlapping national interests.

Nevertheless, despite the global character of capital, there is still a powerful demarcation of and competition between national interests among the capitalist powers.

One constant factor in the source of rivalry between nations is the control of oil, the lifeblood of the capitalist system. Indeed, the control of oil has become an even greater determinant today for international hegemony. This was well understood by US planners in the aftermath of the Second World War. With less that five per cent of the world’s population, but consuming more than 25 per cent of the world’s oil production, US planners have long been aware of the crucial importance of controlling global oil production for the preservation of America’s economic power. This vital national interest far outweighs any much-vaunted American ideals of democratic values.

With more than 60 per cent of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves located in the Middle East, this region is the ultimate key to continuing US global power. It was for this reason that the former US secretary of state James Baker candidly revealed in an interview on America’s PBS Frontline programme in mid-October 2001 that Washington would always be ready and willing, as a matter of national security, to go to war in order to protect its ally Saudi Arabia and the other oil-rich Arab allies. The despotic, dictatorial nature of these regimes is a virtue, not a vice, for guaranteed American oil supply and the continued dominance of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

This is why today Washington remains silent on the crackdown by the House of Saud against pro-democracy protests in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. It is also the reason why Washington is allied with the Sunni dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the covert campaign for regime change against perceived recalcitrant governments in Syria and Iran, as it did in Libya with the overthrow and murder of Muammar Gaddafi.

At around the same time that Baker gave his interview outlining the unconditional support by Washington for the oil sheikhdoms, the Pentagon had then concocted a plan for redrawing the political map of the Middle East region and beyond, as the former NATO commander Wesley Clark was to later disclose. Over the ensuing years from late 2001, the Pentagon had designated regime change for seven countries: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan and Somalia.

Subsequent events and interventions by Washington and its allies in these aforementioned countries – albeit under a guise of defending democracy, human rights and international law – indicates that the Pentagon’s plan is being implemented methodically. The plan evidently holds whether the US president is a Republican or a Democrat, which points up the secret elite nature of government in Washington for which elections are mere window dressing.

These neo-imperialist interventions are not just about securing reliable supplies of the world’s primary commodity for the US and its capitalist allies. It is also equally about asserting hegemony over potential rivals for this resource and other markets. As with Britain at the turn of the 20th century, the economic decline of the US in the 21st century is palpable; the rise of China is to America today what Germany was to Britain one hundred years ago. Many analysts believe that is only a matter of a few years before China overtakes the US as the world’s largest economy, with far-reaching implications for oil supply and demand.

The unveiling of new US military bases and partnerships in Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam are the demonstration of Washington’s increasing militarist agenda towards China. The calculated confrontation with China is what lies behind Washington’s recent and much-heralded “pivot to the Pacific”.

US-led military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and across sub-Saharan Africa are aimed at thwarting China’s economic expansion, especially because Chinese partnerships have been welcomed in such countries. The NATO-induced regime change last year in Libya alone is reckoned to have cost China billions of dollars in oil and infrastructure investments. The same US game plan is unfolding covertly in Syria and Iran, with the Western powers and their Arab, Turk and Israeli allies waging a criminal war of state-sponsored terrorism and destabilisation. That is the bigger picture of immediate hostilities. How long China and its allies in Damascus, Tehran and Moscow will tolerate this provocation before engaging in all-out war is not clear. But one thing is clear: the repercussions of such an outcome will be cataclysmic.

Furthermore, when the trigger is pulled in the form of a downed fighter jet or a false flag terror attack on a tourist bus or some other incident, it can be said – like the assassination of archduke Ferdinand – that it was a long time in the making.

However, war is not inevitable. It is an ineluctable outcome of capitalist power rivalry, which history has shown us time and again. But it is not inevitable. The way to stop another world war is for the mass of people to put an end to the capitalist system. That means bringing governments, banks, industries and militaries under public, democratic control on the basis of internationalist solidarity.

We got nothing to lose except our chains.

Finian Cunningham is Globalresearch’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent

cunninghamfinian@gmail.com

Washington’s Plan B for Syria

by Stephen Lendman

Replacing independent governments with pro-Western puppets is official US policy. So is war on Islam.

After Soviet Russia dissolved, Muslims replaced communists as public enemy number one. Since the 1990s, millions were ruthlessly killed. Many more die daily. Dozens succumb every day in Syria. US-sponsored death squads murder them.

On July 20 or 21st, Ramadan began. It continues for 30 days until August 18. It’s a time for prayer, fasting, reflection, spiritual purification, self-sacrifice, charity, and forgiveness.

On July 20, Obama hypocritically “extend(ed) warmest wishes to” American and global Muslims. He wished them a “blessed month.” He did it despite official US policy to murder them. It doesn’t stop in deference to Ramadan, Christmas, or any other time of year.

He contemptuously expressed support for their determination to achieve “democracy,” “equality,” “justice,” and “universal rights.” He said his administration stands forthrightly with them.

He lied. He’s a serial liar. He’s also a war criminal multiple times over.

America deplores these values at home and abroad. It won’t tolerate them. They’re anathema to the nation’s imperium. It seeks unchallenged global dominance. Ravaging the world one country at a time or in multiples is policy to achieve it.

Plans to get Security Council authorization for war failed. Russia and China vetoed three resolutions. Vladimir Putinsaid no to Libya 2.0.

He denounced efforts to circumvent Security Council authority. He said Russian National Security Council members deplore Western attempts to link ongoing violence to Moscow’s position.

Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov called Washington’s statements “hypocritical.” He added that America subverts efforts to urge opposition leaders to dialogue responsibly with Assad.

He called Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice accusations “absolutely unacceptable.”

Taking aim at Washington and Britain primarily, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said don’t “be misled by humanitarian discourse by some countries.”

“The policies on Syria are more geopolitical than humanitarian.”

“Unfortunately, the consequences of these policies will make the conflict and bloodshed continuous.”

He indicated that so-called aid is a prelude and pretext for military intervention, adding:

“The US and the UK intervened in Iraq under the most sublime of pretexts, causing (massive numbers of) civilian (deaths), let alone the displaced people inside and outside Iraq.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich warned of serious consequences if Washington intention circumvents Security Council authority and intervenes directly in Syria’s internal affairs.

He said doing so constitutes “a very very alarming signal.” He rejected US retaliatory threats. He criticized congressional action and Western media denunciations.

Russia’s Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Aleksey Pushkov called Western nations’ position on Syria political cover to escalate tensions. He rejected calls for unilateral approaches.

He accused Washington and so-called “Friends of Syria” of “double standards.” On the one hand, they support diplomatic solutions. On the other, they further violence, bloodshed, and resolving Syria’s conflict militarily. Russia stands firmly opposed.

Last week, Washington upped the stakes. Killing Syrian officials at Damascus National Security headquarters Wednesday was strategically timed.

They happened ahead of the latest Western Security Council scheme to authorize military intervention. It failed. At the same time, battles raged in and around Damascus and elsewhere. They failed.

Efforts were made to hijack Syria’s satellite channel frequencies and silence other state run online media. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) was repeatedly hacked and shut down. On Sunday it was operating. It and other Syrian media remain vulnerable.

So far Western and complicit regional attempts to destabilize, weaken, and perhaps bring down the government failed. Expect continued schemes to topple Assad and his regime.

On July 21, a New York Times editorial headlined “Stymied at UN, US Refines Plan to Remove Assad,” saying:

Obama officials “abandoned efforts for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Syria, and instead it is increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad, American officials say.”

Obama officials are meeting with Israeli, Turkish, and Western counterparts. They’re also discussing policy with Syrian opposition leaders.

Internal Washington “daily high-level meetings” are held. At issue is Plan B “to help map out a possible post-Assad government.”

“The administration has had regular talks with the Israelis about how Israel might move to destroy Syrian weapons facilities, administration officials said.”

Washington is directly involved in arming, funding, training, and directing Syrian opposition mercenaries. They’re cutthroat killers. They’re enlisted to commit mass murder.

They target pro-Assad civilians and others randomly. Expect stepped up efforts ahead of direct Western and/or regional allies’ intervention.

Unnamed US officials said:

“You’ll notice in the last couple of months, the opposition has been strengthened. Now we’re ready to accelerate that.”

According to hawkish, pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) member Andrew Tabler:

“We’re looking at the controlled demolition of the Assad regime.”

He left unsaid that official Washington policy includes all options. They include full-scale war.

International Crisis Group member Robert Malley warned of “war that never ends.” Syrians won’t tolerate being ruled by elements now fighting them.

Josh Rogin reports on national security, foreign policy, and defense issues. On July 20, his Foreign Policy article headlined “Inside the quiet effort to plan for a post-Assad Syria,” saying:

Senior Syrian opposition group representatives are meeting covertly in Germany. The State Department provides funding.

For “the last six months,” they’ve been working with so-called US Institute for Peace (USIP) members. They’re planning a post-Assad government.

USIP is a pro-Western front group. According to the Weekly Standard:

Washington supplies millions of dollars. “Since 1985, taxpayers have forked over more than $720 million (inflation adjusted).”

“That has included support for a gleaming new 150,000 square foot office building in the shadow of that other taxpayer-supported institution (allegedly) devoted to peace: the State Department.”

USIP’s Steven Heydemann heads the initiative. In June, he met with Friends of Syria representatives in Istanbul. The project is called:

“The day after: Supporting a democratic transition in Syria.” Heydemann said USIP is “working in a support role with a large group of opposition groups to define a transition process for a post-Assad Syria.”

USIP shortly plans releasing a report. It’s a regime change strategy document. Implementing initial priorities needs to start now, said Heydemann. He disingenuously claims pushing Assad from power isn’t discussed.

“We have very purposely stayed away from contributing to the direct overthrow of the Assad regime,” he said. “Our project is called ‘the day after.’ There are other groups working on the day before.”

Of course, they’re interconnected. As the lyrics to the well-known spiritual “Dem Bones” say, the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, etc.

USIP board chairman J. Robinson West is a corporate CEO (PFC Energy). President Richard H. Solomon is a former Assistant Secretary of State. Vice chairman of the board George E. Moose is a former Assistant Secretary of State.

Other board members include:

Judy Van Rest: right-wing International Republican Institute (ISI) executive vice president.

Michael H. Posner: Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

Of course, all US administrations deplore these values. They tolerate none of them at home or abroad.

James N. Miller: Obama’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Nancy McEldowney: Interim president of the National Defense University (NDU).

Eric S. Edelman: A retired US Foreign Service Career Minister. He also held senior Defense Department positions.

Judy Ansley: Previously she held various high-level national security and Senate staff positions.

Syrian opposition members support violently overthrowing Assad’s government. Most Syrians support it. In May, free, fair, and open parliamentary elections were held. Ruling party members won most seats.

Washington, key NATO partners, and so-called Friends of Syria don’t recognize them. They represent Syria, not Western interests.

Replacing them with subservient puppets is policy. USIP was enlisted to help. It’s a wrongly named imperial tool. It supports war, not peace. It’s well paid for furthering Washington’s imperium. Destroying Syria is prioritized.

U.S. to focus on toppling Syrian government

By ERIC SCHMITT and HELENE COOPER 
The New York Times


WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has for now abandoned efforts for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Syria, and instead it is increasing aid to the rebels and redoubling efforts to rally a coalition of like-minded countries to forcibly bring down the government of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials say.

Administration officials have been in talks with officials in Turkey and Israel over how to manage a Syrian government collapse. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is headed to Israel in the next several days to meet with Israeli defense counterparts, following up on a visit last week by President Obama’s national security adviser Thomas Donilon, to discuss, in part, the Syrian crisis.

The administration has been holding regular talks with the Israelis about how Israel might move to destroy Syrian weapons facilities, administration officials said. The administration is not advocating such an attack, the officials said, because of the risk that it would give Assad an opportunity to rally support against Israeli interference.

The White House is holding daily high-level meetings to discuss a range of contingency plans — including safeguarding Syria’s vast chemical-weapons arsenal and sending explicit warnings to both warring sides to avert mass atrocities — in a sign of the escalating seriousness of the Syrian crisis after a week of intensified fighting in Damascus, the capital, and the killing of Assad’s key security aides in a bombing attack.

Administration officials insist they will not provide arms to the rebel forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are financing those efforts. But U.S. officials said the United States was likely to supply some intelligence support and provide more communications training and equipment to help improve the combat effectiveness of disparate opposition forces in their widening, sustained fight against Syrian army troops.

By enhancing the command-and-control of the rebel formations, largely by improving their ability to communicate with one another and their superiors and to coordinate combat operations, U.S. officials say they are seeking to build on and fuel the momentum of the rebels’ recent battlefield successes.

Senior administration officials say the changes are in response to a series of setbacks at the U.N. Security Council, where Russia has staunchly refused to engineer the removal of Assad, as well as the turmoil that has left the Syrian government reeling, at least for the moment.

“We’re looking at the controlled demolition of the Assad regime,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But like any controlled demolition, anything can go wrong.”

The escalating violence has so far sent as many as 125,000 people fleeing across Syria’s border into neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, according to the State Department.

This month, Syria started moving parts of its huge stockpile of chemical weapons out of storage, drawing stern warnings from U.S. officials not to use them or face unstated consequences.

Some U.S. intelligence officials said later that the movements were most likely a precaution as security conditions across the country rapidly deteriorated.

“It’s going to take an international effort when Assad falls — and he will fall — in order to secure these weapons,” Adm. William McRaven, the head of the military’s Special Operations forces, told Congress in March.

U.S. and other Western intelligence officials have expressed concern that some of the more than 100 rebel formations fighting inside Syria may have ties to al-Qaida that they could exploit as security worsens in the country or after the collapse of the government.

“If the Assad regime did fall, this would provide more Islamist militants with a potential opportunity to establish a new foothold in the heart of the Middle East,” said Charles Lister, an analyst with Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center. “The temporary lack of state structures would also afford aspirant militant Islamists with a safe area for training.”

FBI, Homeland: No info about more shooting sprees

• 
  Police block the road in front …

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI and Homeland Security Department say there is no information indicating plans for more shooting sprees at movie theaters around the country.

According to an intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press, investigators have not figured out the suspected shooter’s motivations for killing 12 people and injuring others during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie in a suburban Denver theater.

Security at some movie theaters around the country has been increased after the deadly attack in Colorado. And some events around the world for the premiere of the new Batman movie have been cancelled or scaled back.

Shortly after the shootings, police arrested James Holmes, a 24-year-old former neuroscience graduate student.

The intelligence bulletin, dated July 20, was distributed to law enforcement officials around the country.

War On All Fronts

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
July 17, 2012

The Russian government has finally caught on that its political opposition is being financed by the US taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy and other CIA/State Department fronts in an attempt to subvert the Russian government and install an American puppet state in the geographically largest country on earth, the one country with a nuclear arsenal sufficient to deter Washington’s aggression.

Just as earlier this year Egypt expelled hundreds of people associated with foreign-funded “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) for “instilling dissent and meddling in domestic policies,” the Russian Duma (parliament) has just passed a law that Putin is expected to sign that requires political organizations that receive foreign funding to register as foreign agents. The law is based on the US law requiring the registration of foreign agents.

Much of the Russian political opposition consists of foreign-paid agents, and once the law passes leading elements of the Russian political opposition will have to sign in with the Russian Ministry of Justice as foreign agents of Washington. The Itar-Tass News Agency reported on July 3 that there are about 1,000 organizations in Russia that are funded from abroad and engaged in political activity. Try to imagine the outcry if the Russians were funding 1,000 organizations in the US engaged in an effort to turn America into a Russian puppet state. (In the US the Russians would find a lot of competition from Israel.)

The Washington-funded Russian political opposition masquerades behind “human rights” and says it works to “open Russia.” What the disloyal and treasonous Washington-funded Russian “political opposition” means by “open Russia” is to open Russia for brainwashing by Western propaganda, to open Russia to economic plunder by the West, and to open Russia to having its domestic and foreign policies determined by Washington.

“Non-governmental organizations” are very governmental. They have played pivotal roles in both financing and running the various “color revolutions” that have established American puppet states in former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire. NGOs have been called “coup d’etat machines,” and they have served Washington well in this role. They are currently working in Venezuela against Chavez.

Of course, Washington is infuriated that its plans for achieving hegemony over a country too dangerous to attack militarily have been derailed by Russia’s awakening, after two decades, to the threat of being politically subverted by Washington-financed NGOs. Washington requires foreign-funded organizations to register as foreign agents (unless they are Israeli funded). However, this fact doesn’t stop Washington from denouncing the new Russian law as “anti-democratic,” “police state,” blah-blah. Caught with its hand in subversion, Washington calls Putin names. The pity is that most of the brainwashed West will fall for Washington’s lies, and we will hear more about “gangster state Russia.”

China is also in Washington’s crosshairs. China’s rapid rise as an economic power is perceived in Washington as a dire threat. China must be contained. Obama’s US Trade Representative has been secretly negotiating for the last 2 or 3 years a Trans Pacific Partnership, whose purpose is to derail China’s natural economic leadership in its own sphere of influence and replace it with Washington’s leadership.

Washington is also pushing to form new military alliances in Asia and to establish new military bases in the Philippines, S. Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

Washington quickly inserted itself into disputes between China and Vietnam and China and the Philippines. Washington aligned with its former Vietnamese enemy in Vietnam’s dispute with China over the resource rich Paracel and Spratly islands and with the Philippines in its dispute with China over the resource rich Scarborough Shoal.

Thus, like England’s interference in the dispute between Poland and National Socialist Germany over the return to Germany of German territories that were given to Poland as World War I booty, Washington sets the stage for war.

China has been cooperative with Washington, because the offshoring of the US economy to China was an important component in China’s unprecedented high rate of economic development. American capitalists got their short-run profits, and China got the capital and technology to build an economy that in another 2 or 3 years will have surpassed the sinking US economy. Jobs offshoring, mistaken for free trade by free market economists, has built China and destroyed America.

Washington’s growing interference in Chinese affairs has convinced China’s government that military countermeasures are required to neutralize Washington’s announced intentions to build its military presence in China’s sphere of influence. Washington’s view is that only Washington, no one else, has a sphere of influence, and Washington’s sphere of influence is the entire world.

On July 14 China’s official news agency, Xinhua, said that Washington was interfering in Chinese affairs and making China’s disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines impossible to resolve.

It looks as if an over-confident US government is determined to have a three-front war: Syria, Lebanon, and Iran in the Middle East, China in the Far East, and Russia in Europe. This would appear to be an ambitious agenda for a government whose military was unable to occupy Iraq after nine years or to defeat the lightly-armed Taliban after eleven years, and whose economy and those of its NATO puppets are in trouble and decline with corresponding rising internal unrest and loss of confidence in political leadership.http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pew-study-finds-steep-declines-in-faith-in-politicians-and-capitalism-a-844127.html 

On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build-Up in the Persian Gulf

by Ben Schreiner

The familiar menace of U.S. war drums have resumed at a fevered pitch, as Iran finds itself once again firmly within the Pentagon’s cross hairs. 

According to multiple reports, the U.S. is currently in the midst of a massive military build-up in the Persian Gulf on a scale not seen in the region since prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.  The military surge reportedly includes an influx of air and naval forces, ground troops, and even sea drones.  Lest one forgets, the U.S. already has two aircraft carriers and their accompanying striker groups in the region. 

A growing sense of Iran war fever can also be seen mounting in Washington.  For instance, in an effort to foil ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany), a bipartisan group of 44 U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the administration to “focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists.”

Such hawkish posturing occurs despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community (as well as the Israeli intelligence community, for that matter) finds no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon–the ostensible reason behind Western sanctions and threats of attack.  Moreover, as an April Pentagon report states, Iran’s military doctrine remains one of self-defense, committed to “slow an invasion” and “force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.”  (Compare this to the U.S. military doctrine rife with notions of global “power projection” and one sees where the credible threat lies.)  

The nuclear issue, though, is but a pretext used to veil U.S. imperial designs in the region.  As a senior U.S. Defense Department official recently let slip to the New York Times:  “This is not only about Iranian nuclear ambitions, but about Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions.”  In other words, it is about removing one of the last irritants to U.S. power projection in the resource-rich Middle East.

Of course, Iran already finds itself under siege from a lethal trifecta comprised of U.S.-led cyber attacks, Israeli-led assassinations, and oppressive Western economic sanctions.  The latter of which has left ordinary Iranians to confront a toxic mix of ballooning inflation and rampant unemployment.  In short, as Conn Hallinan writes at CounterPunch, the West is “already at war with Iran.”

The question, then, is just how far this “war by other means” shall ultimately escalate?

Towards a Dangerous Escalation

Although punitive economic sanctions are frequently sold as an alternative to war, history is replete with evidence to the contrary.  In the end, sanctions are often but a prelude to military hostilities.  (One only needs to cross over to Iraq and look at the history of Western sanctions and eventual U.S. invasion.) 

In fact, a recent report in the New York Times warned of much the same.  The current round of Western economic penalties imposed on Iran, the paper wrote, “represent one of the boldest uses of oil sanctions as a tool of coercion since the United States cut off oil exports to Japan in 1940. That experiment did not end well: The Japanese decided to strike before they were weakened.”

But much like the attempted torpedoing of Japan’s economy prior to the Second World War, the current attempt to bring Iran to its knees via economic sanctions may very well be designed to draw an attack from Iran–thus creating a justification for a full-fledged U.S. military campaign to impose “regime change.” 

And much the same as in the 1940s, a global crisis of capitalism greases our current path to war.  After all, war enables the forcible opening of new markets, along with bounties galore to be wrought via “creative destruction”; both of which are desperately needed for the sustenance of an imperiled economic system predicated on limitless growth and expansion.  Indeed, this enduring allure of war has already reared its ugly head amidst the current crisis.

The colonial smash-and-grab that was the 2011 N.A.T.O. intervention into Libya, as Alexander Cockburn has deemed it, was our first evidence that Western elites have settled on war as a means to resolve the current intractable capitalist crisis.  But the spoils from Libya have proven to be insufficient to revive growth stymied since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. 

A heavily sanctioned Iran, on the other hand, boasts a G.D.P. over five times larger than pre-“liberated” Libya, while also sitting atop the world’s third largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves.  A defeated and placated Iran able to be enveloped more fully into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system thus holds great potential for global capitalism’s needed regeneration.  Of course, in seizing control over Iran’s energy resources, the U.S. and its allies would also come to possess a monopoly over the Middle East’s energy resources–a strategic key in any future conflict with rivals Russia and China.

And so it is that under the imperative of renewing global capitalism that the U.S. swiftly amasses its military hardware to the Persian Gulf under to cloak of combating nuclear proliferation.  The accompanying talk of military hostilities and of using “all options” against Tehran by elites in Washington thus ought not to be taken as idle threats. 

Clearly, we stand at the very precipice of outright war.

Misinformation campaign targets USA TODAY reporter, editor

WASHINGTON – A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.

Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names.

The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY’s reporting on the military’s “information operations” program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan —campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored.

STORY: U.S. ‘info ops’ programs dubious, costly

STORY: Congress members call for probe of information ops program

For example, Internet domain registries show the website TomVandenBrook.com was created Jan. 7 — just days after Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook first contacted Pentagon contractors involved in the program. Two weeks after his editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story, someone created a similar site, RayLocker.com, through the same company.

If the websites were created using federal funds, it could violate federal law prohibiting the production of propaganda for domestic consumption.

“We’re not aware of any participation in such activities, nor would it be acceptable,” said Lt. Col. James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman.

A Pentagon official confirmed that the military had made inquiries to information operations contractors to ask them about the Internet activity. All denied it, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiries were informal and did not amount to an official investigation.

The websites were taken down following those inquiries. Various other sites and accounts were removed for violating their providers’ terms of service.

“I find it creepy and cowardly that somebody would hide behind my name and presumably make up other names in an attempt to undermine my credibility,” Vanden Brook said.

The activity is the work of what online reputation expert Andy Beal calls a “determined detractor.”

“It’s like a machine gun approach. They’re trying to generate as much online content as they can,” he said. “The person who’s behind this, we can give them a lot of credit here and assume they’re very sophisticated about reputation attacks.”

It can cost $10 to register a domain name, but $50 to pay for a proxy service to hide the owner’s identity, as was done with two of the websites. A third was registered to a non-existent address in Pueblo, Colo.

“This is the work of somebody who knows what they’re doing. They have some experience of covering their tracks. This is probably not the first time they’ve done something like this,” said Beal, CEO of Trackur, an online reputation tracking service.

Some postings merely copied Vanden Brook’s and Locker’s previous reporting. Others accused them of being sponsored by the Taliban. “They disputed nothing factual in the story about information operations,” Vanden Brook said.

On Feb. 8, as Vanden Brook continued to ask questions of contractors, a new Wikipedia user attempted to create an entry on him, alleging he “gained worldwide notoriety” for his “misreporting” of the 2006 Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia.

Early reports from the scene, relying on faulty information from the governor and mine operators — said 12 of 13 miners were found alive, when in fact only one was. Many news outlets — including the Associated Press, The New York Times and USA TODAY — conveyed the inaccurate reports in early editions.

Wikipedia took down the page and banned the user, but similar comments started populating Internet message boards and blogs. In one case, the fake @Tomvandenbrook Twitter account defended his Sago reporting to another apparently fake account.

Vanden Brook said he’s continuing to pursue the propaganda story. “If they thought it would deter me from writing about this, they’re wrong.”

“This is a clear attempt at intimidation that has failed,” Locker said.

The Collapsing US Economy and the "End of the World"

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

In a recent column, “Can The World Survive Washington’s Hubris,” I promised to examine whether the US economy will collapse before Washington in its pursuit of world hegemony brings us into military confrontation with Russia and China. This is likely to be an ongoing subject on this site, so this column will not be the final word. Washington has been at war since October, 2001, when President George W. Bush concocted an excuse to order the US invasion of Afghanistan.

This war took a back seat when Bush concocted another excuse to order the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war that went on without significant success for 8 years and has left Iraq in chaos with dozens more killed and wounded every day, a new strong man in place of the illegally executed former strongman, and the likelihood of the ongoing violence becoming civil war. Upon his election, President Obama foolishly sent more troops to Afghanistan and renewed the intensity of that war, now in its eleventh year, to no successful effect.

These two wars have been expensive. According to estimates by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, when all costs are counted the Iraq invasion cost US taxpayers $3 trillion dollars. Ditto for the Afghan war. In other words, the two gratuitous wars doubled the US public debt. This is the reason there is no money for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the environment, and the social safety net.

Americans got nothing out of the wars, but as the war debt will never be paid off, US citizens and their descendants will have to pay interest on $6,000 billion of war debt in perpetuity. Not content with these wars, the Bush/Obama regime is conducting military operations in violation of international law in Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa, organized the overthrow by armed conflict of the government in Libya, is currently working to overthrow the Syrian government, and continues to marshall military forces against Iran. Finding the Muslim adversaries Washington created insufficient for its energies and budget, Washington has encircled Russia with military bases and has begun the encirclement of China. Washington has announced that the bulk of its naval forces will be shifted to the Pacific over the next few years, and Washington is working to reestablish its naval base in the Philippines, construct a new one on a South Korean island, acquire a naval base in Viet Nam, and air and troop bases elsewhere in Asia. In Thailand Washington is attempting to purchase with the usual bribes an air base used in the Vietnam war.

There is opposition as the country does not wish to be drawn into Washington’ s orchestrated conflict with China. Downplaying the real reason for the airbase, Washington, according to Thai newspapers, told the Thai government that the base was needed for “humanitarian missions.” This didn’t fly, so Washington had NASA ask for the air base in order to conduct “weather experiments.”

Whether this ruse is sufficient cover remains to be seen. US Marines have been sent to Australia and elsewhere in Asia. To corral China and Russia (and Iran) is a massive undertaking for a country that is financially busted. With wars and bankster bailouts, Bush and Obama have doubled the US national debt while failing to address the disintegration of the US economy and rising hardships of US citizens. The charts below are courtesy of http://www.shadowstats.com The annual US budget deficit is adding to the accumulated debt at about $1.5 trillion per year with no prospect of declining.

The financial system is broken and requires ongoing bailouts. The economy is busted and has been unable to create high-paying jobs, indeed any jobs. Despite years of population growth, payroll employment as of mid-2012 is the same as in 2005 and substantially below 2008. Yet, the government and financial presstitute media tell us that we have a recovery. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in 2011 was only 1 million more than in 2002. As it takes about 150,000 new jobs each month to stay even with population growth, that leaves a decade long job deficit of 15 million jobs.

The US unemployment and inflation rates are far higher than reported. In previous columns I have explained, based on statistician John Williams’ work (shadowstats.com), the reasons that the government’s headline numbers are serious understatements. The headline (U3) unemployment rate of 8.2% counts no discouraged workers who have given up on finding a job. The government has a second unemployment rate (U6), seldom reported, which includes short-term discouraged workers. That rate is 15%. When the long-term discouraged workers are added in, the current US unemployment rate is 22%, a number closer to the unemployment rate of the Great Depression than to the unemployment rates of postwar recessions. Changes in the way inflation is measured have destroyed the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as a measure of the cost of living.

The new methodology is substitution based. If the price of an item in the index rises, a lower priced alternative takes its place. In addition, some price rises are labeled quality improvements whether they are or not and thus do not show up in the CPI. People still have to pay the higher price, but it is not counted as inflation. Currently, the substitution-based rate of inflation is about 2%. However, when inflation is measured as the actual cost of living, the rate of inflation is 5%. The Misery Index is the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates. The level of the current Misery Index depends on whether the new rigged measures are used, which understate the misery, or the former methodology that accurately measures it. Prior to the November 1980 election, the Misery Index hit 22%, which was one reason for Reagan’s victory over President Carter.

Today if we use previous methodology, the Misery Index stands at 27%. But if we use the new rigged methodology, the Misery Index is 10%. The understatement of inflation serves to boost Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is calculated in current dollars. To be able to determine whether GDP rose because of price rises or because of increases in real output, GDP is deflated by the CPI. The higher the inflation rate, the less the growth in real output and vice versa. When the substitution based methodology is used to measure inflation, the US economy experienced real growth in the 21st century except for the sharp dip during 2008-2010. However, if the cost-of-living based methodology is used, except for a short period during 2004, the US economy has experienced no real growth since 2000. In the chart above,the lower measure (blue) of real GDP is deflated with the inflation methodology that measured cost-of-living. The higher GDP measure (red) deflates GDP with the new substitution based methodology. The lack of employment and real GDP growth go together with the decline in real household median income. The growth in consumer debt substituted for the lack of income growth and kept the economy going until consumers exhausted their ability to take on more debt. With the consumer dead in the water, the outlook for economic recovery is poor. Politicians and the Federal Reserve are making the outlook even worse. At a time of high unemployment and debt-stressed households, politicians at local, state, and federal levels are cutting back on government provision of health care, pensions, food stamps, housing subsidies and every other element of the social safety net. These cutbacks, of course, further reduce aggregate demand and the ability of incomestressed Americans to survive. The Federal Reserve has interest rates so low that retirees and others living on their savings can earn nothing on their money. The interest rates paid on bank CDs and government and corporate bonds are lower than the rate of inflation. To live on interest income, a person has to purchase Greek, Spanish, or Italian bonds and run the risk of capital loss. The Federal Reserve’s policy of negative interest rates forces retirees to spend down their capital in order to live. In other words, the Fed’s policy is destroying personal savings as people are forced to spend their capital in order to cover living expenses. In June the Federal Reserve announced that it was going to continue its policy of driving nominal interest rates even lower, this time focusing on long-term Treasury bonds. The Fed said it would be purchasing $400 billion of the Treasury’s 30-year bonds. Driving interest rates down means driving bond prices up. With 5-year Treasury bonds paying only seven-tenths of one percent and 10-year Treasuries paying only 1.6%, below even the official rate of inflation, Americans desperate for yield move into 30-year bonds currently paying 2.7%. However, the the high bond prices mean that the risk of capital loss is very high. The Fed’s debt monetization, or a drop in the exchange value of the dollar as other countries move away from its use to settle their balance of payments, could set off inflation that would take interest rates out of the Fed’s control. As interest rates rise, bond prices fall. In other words, bonds are now the bubble that real estate, stocks, and derivatives were. When this bubble pops, Americans will take another big hit to their remaining wealth. It makes no sense to invest in long-term bonds at negative interest rates when the federal government is piling up debt that the Federal Reserve is monetizing and when other countries are moving away from the flood of dollars. The potential for a rising rate of inflation is high from debt monetization and from a drop in the dollar’s exchange value. Yet, bond fund portfolio managers have to follow the herd into longer term maturities or see their performance relative to their peers drop to the bottom of the rankings. Some individual investors and foreign central banks, anticipating the dollar’s loss of value, are accumulating gold and silver bullion. Realizing the danger to the dollar and its policy from the rapid rise in the price of bullion during 2011, the Federal Reserve has arranged offsetting action. When the demand for physical bullion drives up the price, short sales of bullion in the paper market are used to drive the price back down. Similarly, when investors begin to flee Treasuries, thus causing interest rates to rise, J.P. Morgan and other dependencies of the Federal Reserve sell interest-rate swaps, thus offsetting the effect on interest rates of the bond sales. (Keep in mind that interest rates rise when bond prices fall and vice versa.) The point of all this information is to establish that except for the 1 percent, the incomes and wealth of Americans are being cut back across the board. From 2002 through 2011 the economy lost 3.5 million manufacturing jobs. These jobs were replaced with lowerpaying waitress and bartender jobs (1,189,000), ambulatory health care service jobs (1,512,000) and social assistance jobs (578,000). These replacement jobs in domestic services mean that on a net basis US consumer income was moved out of the country. Potential aggregate demand in the US dropped by the differences in pay in the job categories. Clearly and unambiguously, jobs offshoring lowered US disposable income and US GDP and, thereby, employment. Despite the lack of an economic base, Washington’s hegemonic aspirations continue unabated. Other countries are amused at Washington’s unawareness. Russia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa are forming an agreement to abandon the US dollar as the currency for international settlement between themselves. On July 4 the China Daily reported: “Japanese politicians and prominent academics from China and Japan urged Tokyo on Tuesday to abandon its outdated foreign policy of leaning on the West and accept China as a key partner as important as the United States. The Tokyo Consensus, a joint statement issued at the end of the Beijing-Tokyo Forum, also called on both countries to expand trade and promote a free-trade agreement for China, Japan and South Korea. “ This means that Japan is in play. The Chinese government, more intelligent than Washington, is responding to Washington’s military threats by enticing away Washington’s two key Asian allies. As the Chinese economy is now as large as the US and on far firmer footing, and as Japan now has more trade with China than with the US, the enticement is appealing. Moreover, China is next door, and Washington is distant and drowning in its hubris. Washington, which flicked its middle finger to international law and to its own law and Constitution with its arrogance and gratuitous and illegal wars and with its assertion of the right to murder its own citizens and those of its allies, such as Pakistan, has made the United States a pariah state. Washington still controls its bought-and-paid-for NATO puppets, but these puppet states are overwhelmed with derivative debt problems brought to them by Wall Street and by sovereign debt problems, some of which were covered up by Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs. Europe is on the ropes and has no money with which to subsidize Washington’s wars of hegemony. Washington is becoming an isolated and despised element of the world community. Washington has purchased Europe, Canada, Australia, the former Soviet state of Georgia (and almost Ukraine), and Columbia, and continues its effort to purchase the entire world, but sentiment is turning against the rising Gestapo state that has shown itself to be lawless, ruthless, and indifferent, even hostile, to human life and human rights. A government, whose military was unable with the help of the UK to occupy Iraq after eight years and was forced to end the conflict by putting the “insurgents” on the US military payroll and to pay them to stop killing American troops, and a government whose military has been unable to subdue a few thousand lightly armed Taliban after 11 years, is over the top when it organizes war against Iran, Russia, and China. The only prospect Washington has of prevailing in such an undertaking is first use of nuclear weapons, of catching its demonized opponents off guard by nuking them out of the blue. In other words, by the elimination of life on earth. Is this Washington’s program revealed by the neoconservative warmonger, Bill Kristol, who had no shame to ask publicly: “What’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them?” Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts