Michel Chossudovsky: While securing corporate control over extensive oil reserves and pipeline routes along the Eurasian corridor on behalf of the AngloAmerican oil giants, Washington's ultimate objective is to eventually destabilize and then colonize both China and Russia. This means the takeover of their national financial systems and the control over monetary policy, leading eventually to the imposition of the US dollar as the national currency. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Allen Dulles: By sowing chaos in Russia we imperceptibly replace their values with false ones, which will force them to believe. How? We'll find our accomplices, helpers and allies in Russia herself. In a series of episodes, a tragedy, grandiose in scale, will be played out: the demise of the last unbroken nation on earth, the final irrevocable extinguishment of their national self-consciousness. From art and literature, for example, we'll gradually exterminate the social element. We'll retrain artists, discourage in them the desire to depict the world and examine those processes taking place in the masses of the people. Literature, the theatre and the cinema will all proclaim the basest of human feelings. We shall use all our means to support and promote those so-called creators who will hammer into the people's consciousness the cult of sex, violence, sadism, and betrayal, in a word - immorality. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Paul Wolfowitz: Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival... This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power... First the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Hudson: American foreign policy remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy, running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks. By imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits and the assets of its state-owned Citco, the United States is making it impossible for Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats hope to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela's oil resources and seize its foreign assets. Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile's "economy scream," so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela. It is using that country as a "demonstration effect" to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents their economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Peter Phillips: The leadership class in the US is dominated by a neo-conservative group of some several hundred people who share a goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group (GDM) continues under both Republican and Democratic rule. In cooperation with major military contractors, the corporate media, and conservative foundations, the GDM has become a powerful long-term force in military unilateralism and US political processes. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Richard Perle: No stages. This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq, then we take a look around and see how things stand. This is entirely the wrong way to go about it... If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Tom Engelhardt: Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it's hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
blacklistednews.com: A feature of U.S. coups is the role of the Western media in publicizing official cover stories and suppressing factual journalism. This role has also been consistent since 1953, but it has evolved as corporate media have consolidated their monopoly power... By only reporting official cover stories, they become unwitting co conspirators in the critical propaganda component of these operations. But the U.S. corporate media have turned vice into virtue, relishing their role in the demonization of America's chosen enemies and cheerleading U.S. efforts to do them in. They brush U.S. responsibility for violence and chaos under the carpet, and sympathetically present U.S. policy as a well-meaning effort to respond to the irrational and dangerous behavior of others. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Paul Waldman: According to the Defense Department's 2007 Base Structure Report, we maintain 823 military facilities in 39 foreign countries, and another 86 facilities in seven U.S. territories. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Paul Edwards: The term 'war' is pathetically applied to any violent rape by the American War Machine of any putative "enemy", regardless of the incommensurate forces involved, often when the victim - not even a legitimate adversary - has no capacity at all to strike back or defend itself. This suits the psychopaths who govern us perfectly, which is no surprise considering what they are. The system of War Capitalism that owns their contemptible, diseased souls can only burgeon and grow fatter by extortion of literally uncountable sums of our money, every dollar diverted from any beneficent use in our society or the least social profit for our people. The tragedy - no surprise, either - is that the American people are so deeply steeped in the pretty poison of Exceptionalism that they are, if not overtly, then tacitly, fully behind the mindless military vandalizing and brutalization of people just like them in all essentials: powerless. So far gone are we as a culture in the adulation, if not worship, of our own state primacy and the infliction of horror and death on which it is based, that even women, creators and nurturers of life, including many prominent ones, betray their higher selves by supporting our indefensible state murder of hundreds of thousands of their distant sisters and helpless children. Four CEOs of the five giant industrial purveyors of death and destruction - Northrup Grumann, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin - are now women. That Glass Ceiling was apparently shot out, not broken. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
I don't 100% love the platforms I'm on 100% of the time but calling one or more of them evil seems inappropriate/disproportionate? I don't get people who think Fedi or Bluesky should fail.
Douglas Valentine: The CIA conducts false flag operations all over the world to enhance public fear of terrorists, even as they arm and train them in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere to overthrow elected governments. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Fred Reed: Washington desperately needs to stop the rollback of American power, stop the erosion of the dollar, block the economic integration of Eurasia and Latin America, keep Russia from trading amicably with Euripe. It will do anything to maintain its grip. All of its remote wars in far-off savage lands, of no importance to America or Americans, are to this purpose. A militarized America threatens Russia, threatens China, threatens Iran, threatens North Korea, threatens Venezuela, expands NATO, on and on. America has been hijacked. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Hudson: Pro-U.S. policies made Venezuela a polarized Latin American oligarchy. Despite being nominally rich in oil revenue, its wealth was concentrated in the hands of a pro-U.S. oligarchy that let its domestic development be steered by the World Bank and IMF. The indigenous population, especially its rural racial minority as well as the urban underclass, was excluded from sharing in the country's oil wealth. The oligarchy's arrogant refusal to share the wealth, or even to make Venezuela self-sufficient in essentials, made the election of Hugo Chavez a natural outcome. ... Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela, using its government revenue - mainly from oil - to develop infrastructure and domestic spending on health care, education, employment to raise living standards and productivity for his electoral constituency. What he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and built-in rake-off of income from the oil sector. And he was unable to stem the capital flight of the oligarchy, taking its wealth and moving it abroad. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
My first post. Been looking into Friendica lately so decided to give it try. My post will be mostly related to TV and Movies, climate issues, food security. Personally I have a nihilistic view of the world, do not think the future is bright...
@Shiri Bailem thank you for the warm welcome. I am still trying to figure out how to use Friendica , as the info is not displayed like in Mastodon or Pleroma. Any good clients for iOS?
Lewis H. Lapham: The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas. ... Ronald Reagan's new Morning in America brought with it in the early 1980s the second coming of a gilded age more swinish than the first, and as the country continues to divide ever more obviously into a nation of the rich and a nation of the poor, the fictions of unity and democratic intent lose their capacity to command belief. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Original post is too long for Bluesky. Click this to read.
Someone on fedi decided that they'd use their Fedi account as a syndication feed for their blog and switch to Bluesky because nobody (t)here respected her boundaries, which is sad but perfectly understandable. Then some clown replied that they would be blocking her now because Bluesky is pure evil or something and it's like bitch that's what she was talking about. That's the boundary violating behavior.
S. Brian Willson: Two million civilians killed/ murdered in North Viet Nam; 2 million civilians killed/ murdered in South Viet Nam (out of 17 million population in the South, or 12 percent); 1.1 million North Vietnamese fighters killed, plus 223,748 South Vietnamese fighters killed. Total Vietnamese killed: over 5.32 million. Total Southeast Asians killed: 5.32 million Vietnamese, plus 600,000 Cambodians, plus 350,000 Laotians equals 6.27 million. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Federico Pieraccini: Julian Assange's Wikileaks revelations struck at the very foundations on which the edifice of "American exceptionalism" is built, namely, the democracy that is meant to be a light unto the world, and the "just wars" that flow from a missionary zeal to make the world safe for democracy. The media and politicians accordingly crow about the high-tech weaponry that will be employed in the ensuing humanitarian interventions, while omitting to mention that the military-industrial complex that benefits so much from endless wars may be the very donors who fund the warmongering politicians into office, and that the warmongering editorial line of newspapers may be influenced by share portfolios of the editors themselves. Releasing footage of US military personal laughing as they slaughter dozens of clearly unarmed Iraqis civilians from the distant safety of an Apache helicopter is one of the strongest ways of showing how false, artificial and propagandistic the concept of "humanitarian war" and "responsibility to protect" (R2P) is. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Ledeen: We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Enver Hoxha: The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Stalinists, thinking that they insult us and, in fact, that is what they have in mind. But, on the contrary, they glorify us with this epithet; it is an honor for us to be Stalinists for while we maintain such a stand the enemy cannot and will never force us to our knees. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Nelson Mandela: Every Party member must raise his revolutionary qualities in every respect to the same level as those of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Ramzi Mourad • •Ramzi Mourad likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •Ramzi Mourad
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •I am still trying to figure out how to use Friendica , as the info is not displayed like in Mastodon or Pleroma.
Any good clients for iOS?
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Ramzi Mourad • •