Empire Slayer: It is Not Confusing that US Abandons Own Citizens in Yemen War-Zone but Rescues Saudi Bombers

Most Americans have no idea any of these events are occurring or have only vague, US government/press-created notions of them, but many who are cognizant – principally the abandoned people themselves – express confusion. Why would eight countries, including Russia, China, and India, carry out risky missions to save their own citizens, as well as foreign nationals, stuck in Yemen, but the US would staunchly refuse to do so? All we ever hear from the US government and press is that the US is so incredibly good and altruistic. So, how could this be happening?

There is nothing confusing about the US government abandoning its own citizens in a war zone but rescuing and assisting Saudi bombers in the same war zone (“U.S. military assets had been used to rescue two Saudi pilots” McClatchy; Pentagon spokesman told McClatchy the US will be refueling Saudi bombers “every day from now on.”)

The recently conducted and largest study to date of who effects the actions of the US government, conducted by political scientists from Princeton and Northwestern, looked at about 1,800 US policies – essentially any policy one could imagine – and found:

“…economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

“…the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Even back during the WWI era, politician Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette fought to oppose “the growing dominance of corporations over the Government”. (Though he was widely hated for this stance at the time, a 1957 Senate Committee “selected La Follette as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators”.)

Complete story at - Empire Slayer: It is Not Confusing that US Abandons Own Citizens in Yemen War-Zone but Rescues Saudi Bombers

Heinous Waste of Money Officially Begins - The New Yorker

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The two major political parties’ unconscionable waste of money officially commences this weekend, as Democrats and Republicans will soon begin spending an estimated five billion dollars of their corporate puppet masters’ assets in an unquenchable pursuit of power.

The billions, which could be spent rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, improving schools, or reducing the scourge of malaria in Africa, will instead be squandered in a heinous free-for-all of slander and personal destruction, alienating voters as never before.

The media will inevitably focus on the personalities of the bloated roster of narcissists lusting after the White House, but scant attention will be paid to the Wall Street bankers, industrial polluters, and casino magnates whose grip on American democracy will remain vise-like.

While attention this weekend turns to the Democrats, the Republicans remain quietly confident about their chances of purchasing the nation’s highest office. In the words of one top operative, “Our billionaires can beat their billionaires.”

Complete story at - Heinous Waste of Money Officially Begins - The New Yorker

OK, so this guy does satire. But he ain't wrong!

The Myths of US Exceptionalism | Opinion | teleSUR

The appeal to exceptionalism is just another ideological ploy to get working classes to accept their deteriorating conditions.

One of the elements of cultural ideology in the USA is that the United States is somehow exceptional compared to other countries; that is, it is different in a number of positive ways that distinguish it from all other countries.

Exceptional in Health, Education & Retirement?

In a perverted way, there is some truth to this. The United States is exceptional in that it is the only advanced economy in the world that has failed to provide universal health care for its citizens. It has a large, parasitical for-profit health care system, dominated by multi-billion dollar profit making private health insurance companies that suck $1 trillion a year from the wallets of US consumers for pushing paper around, a vast network of ‘for profit’ hospital chains that suck another $900 billion a year, pharmaceutical drug companies that charge $94,000 for drugs to treat someone with hepatitis C (that’s $1,125 per pill) and charge patients $14,000 to $64,000 a month for cancer drugs, and it has the highest paid professional medical personnel in the world.

The US spends more than $3 trillion a year, and rising, on health care. That’s about 18% of its $17.4 trillion annual GDP, or almost one dollar out of every five spent on everything is for healthcare. That’s the highest spending on healthcare in the industrial world. In return for that massive spending , it ranks 39th in infant mortality rates, 42nd in adult mortality, and 36th in life expectancy. Yes, the US is exceptional in health care.

It is also exceptional in education. Its college students have become, in effect, indentured servants to the education establishment of overpaid administrators and bankers, owing more than $1.1 trillion in debt just to get a college education—more per capita higher education debt than any other country in the world. The cost of attending a four year college today is, on average, $30,000 to $60,000 a year for a four year undergraduate education. For those who can’t afford college there’s no meaningful job training programs available any longer. Meanwhile, 70% of college professors and instructors in the US are part time/temp workers, many of whom earn poverty wages and have no benefits. That too is ‘exceptional’, I suppose.

US workers work the longest hours among the industrial economies, have the shorted annual paid vacations (on average 7 days paid a year), and face the prospect of poverty when they retire or can no longer work. Social security pensions average only $1,100 a month, private pensions (called 401k plans) average less than $50,000 total savings for those age 60 and approaching retirement, and more than half of US workers live pay check to pay check with no personal savings whatsoever. As 70 million ‘baby boomers’ born after 1945 start to retire, tens of millions of them face the prospect of a penniless, poverty-ridden retirement. No wonder the fastest growing segment of the US workforce is those aged 65-74, as many return to work just to make ends meet.

Complete story at - The Myths of US Exceptionalism | Opinion | teleSUR

The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | What is lost in Poles’ memories?

This is from February, but still appropriate:

A few days ago Polish President Bronisław Komorowski (left) proposed a Victory Day parade on May 8 in Westerplatte – a section of Gdansk where World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939. He was supported by Poland’s foreign minister, Grzegorz Schetyna, speaking on Radio RMF. Responding to the host’s question as to whether the Polish proposal was an attempt to undercut the celebrations in Moscow, Schetyna was frank: “It’s natural to commemorate the end of the war at the site where it began… Why are we so accustomed to the idea that Moscow is where we should honor the end of the Second World War, instead of London or Berlin?”

His statement came shortly after the scandal resulting from his claims that the concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated by the Ukrainians. President Komorowski had to smooth those words, while other Polish officials have brought their apologies to the Russians.

We could see even more fallout from this latest Polish initiative. The strategy to fabricate the history of WWII by presenting Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as equal “aggressors” was launched years ago. Various distortions and demonization of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement is the cornerstone of this strategy. But the attempts to portray Poland as an innocent victim of World War II, as well as the place where the biggest events of those years took place, do not hold up to any serious inspection.

Complete story at - The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | What is lost in Poles’ memories?

5 Myths about Greece the Banksters need you to believe Washington's Blog

Greece’s Prime Minister Alex Tsipras will be heading to Moscow tomorow, and the legacy media that is the de facto public relations wing of the IMF and World Bank are in overdrive to continue to advance the narrative that Greeks are irresponsible, indolent, the visit is an amateurish attempt to blackmail Germany, and further evidence that the Syriza government is out of its depth.

Those who continue to buy into the IMF propaganda without pause should consider these points, before they decide whether or not they want to continue to do the legacy media’s work for them by reporting their key talking points almost verbatim in the comments section of every blog or media account of the current contretemps.

This should not be relied upon as a comprehensive list, but rather a starting point for your own investigation and research:

Talking Point 1: The Greeks are “lazy” and brought this on themselves.

Economic and other data sourced from independent watchdog groups state otherwise.

Pointing to one key economic factor, Average Working Hours per year, the Groningen University Growth and Development Center found that between 1995 and 2005, Greece was consistently the EU country with the highest number of annual work hours per employee. In 2011, the work-hours for Greece was 2,032 – in contrast to the US, in the same time period, which clocked in at 1,836. US work hours have continued to decline, to a current average of approximately 32 hours per week. Very few Americans would attribute this decline due to “laziness” or “indolence”, but would point to external factors, such as the Obama administration’s policies that have driven employer’s shift from fulltime workers with benefits to part-time staffing with limited or no benefits.

It would seem that the IMF talking point doesn’t match the information gathered by independent sources regarding the work ethic of Greeks.


Talking Point 2: Greece’s Economy is so small it doesn’t matter

Talking Point 3:  Greeks are poor and want “something for nothing”

Talking Point 4:  Greece will back down in the 11th hour, because they have nowhere else to go…

Talking Point 5:  Greece will never leave the EU or NATO

Complete story at - 5 Myths about Greece the Banksters need you to believe Washington's Blog

Someone Crunched the Numbers on What the Bankers Did to the Greeks, and the Results Will Blow You Away | Alternet

OK, well maybe not. This is what bankers do.

If there's one country in the Western World that is a poster child for what austerity can do to an entire society, it's Greece. The country has been subject to strict austerity programs imposed on it by the rest of Europe, at the behest of finance kingpins who caused the financial crisis in the first place.

The blog Keep Talking Greece looks at a report put out by the Germany Institute for Macroeconomic Research that tallies up the damage from the austerity regime between 2008 and 2012. Here are some of the key findings:

Greek Poor Lost Almost All Of Their Income, The Rich Fared Better: Although sloganeering for austerity often invokes the need to tighten belts, not everyone in Greece had to tighten quite so much. The poor lost 86 percent of their income, but the richest Greek households lost closer to 17 to 20 percent.

The Poor Were Hit With A Huge Tax Hike, The Rich Only A Tiny One: The poorest Greeks were hit with a 337 percent increase in taxes, while the richest saw their taxes increase by only nine percent.

Complete story at - Someone Crunched the Numbers on What the Bankers Did to the Greeks, and the Results Will Blow You Away | Alternet

The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | The Siege of Sevastopol (1941-42): Why Crimea Matters to Russians

Preface

The Siege of Sevastopol during the Second World War is almost unknown in the West. If most educated Westerners have some knowledge of the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad and of the siege of Leningrad, scarcely any know of the passionate eight month defence of Sevastopol against overwhelming odds in what was for the Russians the darkest period of the war.

There are times when this ignorance appears to be the product less of indifference and more of deliberate historical suppression.

For historically minded Britons words like “Siege of Sevastopol” and “Crimean War” conjure up memories not of the Second World War but of the war the British and French fought in the Crimea against the Russians from 1854 to 1856.

Memories of that earlier war seem at times to be used to obscure the far greater and more important war that was fought in the Crimea during the Second World War.

Consider for example a recent work from 2010 like “Crimea: The Last Crusade” by the British historian Orlando Figes.  Not only does this work about the Crimean war of the 1850s manage to make no reference to the far greater conflict fought in Sevastopol and the Crimea during the Second World War, but it contains deeply misleading passages like this one:

“…..In Sevastopol there are ‘eternal flames’ and monuments to the unknown and uncounted soldiers who died fighting for the town.  It is estimated that a quarter of a million Russian soldiers, sailors and civilians are buried in mass graves in Sevastopol’s three military cemeteries”.

Complete story at - The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | The Siege of Sevastopol (1941-42): Why Crimea Matters to Russians


The Siege of Sevastopol, by Franz Roubaud, memorializes the assault of that city by a Franco-Turco-British force against Russian defenders.  The Siege lasted from September 1854 until September 1855, during the Crimean War.  The allies’s armies peaked at about 175,000 men, while the Russian garrison never exceeded 38,000.

Russia's Central Bank Governor Is Way Smarter Than Ours - The Automatic Earth

It wouldn’t be a first, but it would certainly be a – bigger – shock. That is to say, the Bank of England hijacked the head of Canada’s central bank some time ago, but, while unexpected enough, that would pale in comparison to the US hiring the present Governor of the Russian central bank, Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina. It would still seem to be a mighty fine idea, though.

Not that I think it will happen, not to worry if you think Yellen is just what it takes at the Fed. But Nabiullina is both razor sharp and fiercely independent. Yellen is obviously neither; she’s a cog in a machine that huffs and puffs and pumps and dumps to make sure her overlords in the blissful world of US finance make ever more profit no matter how bad things get in American society.

There’s no need to be particularly sharp in order to play that role, and she was picked exactly because she’s NOT independent. Or let’s just say she’s a good listener.

Nabiullina is a whole different story. Not that I have much confidence in western readers understanding that this is so, let alone why. Not after the 24/7 highly public media campaigns and sanctions and oil price wars and Ukraine war talk and chest thumping directed at Putin and Russia, and after everything else that we don’t even know that plays out behind the veils.

Enjoy your conspiracies while you can, I’d say. Because despite more than a year of intense efforts to make Russia look like the empire of unspoken evil, financial markets, yes, the same ones Yellen manipulates at her lords’ bidding, have now made the Russian ruble and the Moscow stock exchange the biggest winners so far this year.

And that is due to a substantial extent to Elvira Nabiullina. You see, if she were just a blind or scared servant of Putin, or of his economic ideas, that would mean it was he who masterminded the resurrection of the currency and the stock market.

Complete story at - Russia's Central Bank Governor Is Way Smarter Than Ours - The Automatic Earth

Ukraine 'Disappears' Regime Opponents Washington's Blog

In Odessa — the same city where the Ukrainian civil war started on 2 May 2014 with a massacre of opponents that had been carefully planned by a team connected to the U.S. White House — there are reported to be two bloggers for the “Voice of Odessa” political site who were seized by the Security Bureau of Ukraine on April 7th, and whose “whereabouts are unknown.” This report appeared in the local Odessa News.

The “Voice of Odessa” site was formed right after the massacre, in order to get an independent investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators of that massacre, in which officially 46 people were burned, shot and clubbed to death, but unofficial estimates run over 200, all victims who have not been heard from since, and some of whom had allegedly even been abducted from hospitals after the massacre.

This report’s translated headline reads “SBU Detained Activists at Kulikov Field.” Kulikov Field is the square or plaza in front of the former Odessa Trade Unions Building, which is the building where the massacre-victims, who had been printing and distributing pamphlets opposing the newly installed government, were murdered, by Right Sector troops in plain clothes, and also by mercenaries in the private army of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who had allegedly announced in advance that he would pay $5,000 per corpse. (There has been no reported follow-up, regarding whether he actually paid everyone who participated, or how he paid them.)

The report on these disappearances says that the names of the missing bloggers are Svetlana Naboka and Marina Zhavoronkova, and that both women were seized at around 10 in the morning of April 7th. Furthermore, “one of the detainees seized during the search is now lacking her home computer, telephone and other personal belongings,” which presumably, were also taken by the state security force.

Whereas none of the perpetrators of the massacre has been prosecuted, the regime is trying to eliminate its opponents. On the same day that the two bloggers were seized, there was a related headline, “SBU reported on the closure of a number of sites for anti-Ukrainian propaganda.” That news report carried the following statement, from the SBU:

“The security service of Ukraine … has discontinued operation of a number of Internet sites that were used to perpetrate information campaigns of aggression on the part of the Russian Federation aimed at violent change or overthrow of the constitutional order and territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.”

Presumably, the abduction, and perhaps elimination, of Svetlana Naboka and Marina Zhavoronkova, was part of that “discontinued operation” by the SBU against “aggression of the Russian Federation.”

The coup-established regime was not ‘the constitutional order’ in Ukraine. It overthrew the constitutionally elected President, and violated the Ukrainian constitution. However, “Big Brother” is based upon the Big Lie. So, it’s ‘the constitutional order.’ A good video shows the coup being carried out, but it actually started much earlier, in Spring of 2013. The same videographer also did a good video of the Odessa massacre.

Complete story at - Ukraine 'Disappears' Regime Opponents Washington's Blog

(Image of Big Brother by Joo Serk Lee)

The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | While the American media look the other way, the US/NATO axis systematically represses anti-war activists in Europe

For all its rhetoric about “liberal democracy” and “freedom,” Europe has quietly become a hotbed of political repression. While some groups are allowed to express themselves openly – from fascists that praise Nazi collaborators of the World War II period, to feminist and gay rights groups – there is one particular brand of free speech that is simply not allowed: anti-war protest.

Masking the repression of anti-war, anti-NATO, and anti-imperialist groups behind defamatory rhetoric and demonization, the mass media in Europe attempts to portray such activists as little more than “pro-Kremlin” puppets whose strings are secretly being pulled by the wicked villains of Moscow. Rather than engaging with the critical issues raised by such groups, the political and media establishment instead targets them for repression.

Police and state repression, often of a violent nature, has been carried out under the auspices of “fighting terrorists” in Ukraine all throughout the conflict that erupted in early 2014. So too has such repression reared its ugly head in Lithuania in recent months, as anti-imperialist leftist organizers have been singled out for political persecution by the vehemently Russophobic, Euro-sycophant government. Additionally, Estonia has continued its systematic oppression of its Russian-speaking population which has been forced to exist as second class citizens, with dubious legal protections to say the least.

But these forces of repression have been unable to stem the growing tide of anti-war, anti-NATO sentiment throughout Eastern Europe, as protests against the US-NATO agenda in Ukraine and beyond gather steam. From moderate Czech Republic to belligerent Poland, countless citizens are beginning to organize themselves into true anti-imperialist movements demanding peace in Europe, and rejecting the insanity of aggression directed at Russia.

Domestic Repression in the New Europe

The US-backed coup in Ukraine, and the subsequent civil war it touched off, has rocked Europe, polarizing various political factions, drawing stark dividing lines in a number of countries. In Ukraine, there is a mountain of evidence documenting continued political persecution of anything that can be branded as “pro-Russian” or “anti-Ukrainian”. While these terms are utterly devoid of any real meaning or substance, they serve as political scarlet letters meant to justify any sort of vile repression of forces deemed to be a threat to the US puppet government in Kiev.

Complete story at - The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | While the American media look the other way, the US/NATO axis systematically represses anti-war activists in Europe