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Norwegian film director reveals viral "Syrian hero boy" video a hoax to Invade Syria
This we read, but we read nothing as to why this may be so, assuming for argument’s sake it is. We are invited to accept that there is no reason worth reporting.If it hasn't occurred to you at least several times over the last months (if not for decades before) that the news that the major media is reporting to denizens of the U.S. (and the West in general) is not just tainted with a smell of tricksyness flavored heavily by massive amounts of dollars at work internationally (and is demonstrably false), then maybe you're just not paying attention (anymore). Or have just lost interest in learning what's really going on in the world due to a history of invasive but secretive powerful-interest-protecting mendacity.
Again.
And again.
And if you don't read through this essay for the full meaning of bought-off reporting (and this is still going light as it is still a media maven voice), then no unexpected, threatening future events should displease you (very much anyway).
Salon steps up (making me wonder what the back story is there):
What Really Happened in Beijing: Putin, Obama, Xi — And the Back Story the Media Won’t Tell You
Ukraine, Iran's nukes, the price of oil: There are ties worthy of a Bourne film, if the media connected the dots
By way of events on the foreign side, the past few weeks start to resemble some once-in-a-while event in the heavens when everyone is supposed to go out and watch as the sun, moon and stars align. There are lots of things happening, and if we put them all together, the way Greek shepherds imagined constellations, a picture emerges. Time to draw the picture.
The situation on the ground in Ukraine is getting messy again. Equally, events of the past year now leave Ukraine’s economy not far from sheer extinction. You have not read of this because it does not fit the approved story, but Ukraine’s heart barely beats. Further east, we hear in the financial markets that the ruble’s decline brings Russia to the brink of another financial collapse.
Let’s see. Oil prices are now below $80 a barrel. It costs me nearly $20 less to put gasoline in my car than it did a year ago, and good enough. But why has the price of crude tumbled in so short an interval? It makes little sense when you gather the facts, and — goes without saying — you get no help with that from our media.
Let’s keep on trucking. Secretary of State Kerry went to Oman for another round of talks on the Iranian nuclear question last weekend. Russia recently emerged as a potentially key part of a deal, which will be the make-or-break of Kerry’s record. In effect, he now greets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with one hand and punches him well below the belt with the other. Somewhere beyond our view this must make sense.
En avant! Obama went to Beijing last week for a sit-down with Xi Jinping, who makes Vladimir Putin look like George McGovern when he wants to, which is not infrequently. Still in the Chinese capital, our president then attended a meeting with other Asian leaders to push a trade agreement, one primary purpose of which is to isolate China by bringing the rest of the region into the neoliberal fold. (Or trying to. Washington will never get the overladen, overimposing Trans-Pacific Partnership off the ground, in my view.)
A big item on Xi’s agenda — he was in on the Pacific economic forum, too — was the recent launch of an Asians-only lending institution intended to rival the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank affiliate doing the West’s work in the East. Being entirely opposed to people helping themselves advance without American assistance and all that goes with it, Washington used all means possible to sink this ship. When Obama got off the plane in Beijing, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank had $50 billion in capital and 20 members, more to come in both categories.
Xi, meantime, had a productive encounter — another — with the formidable Vlad. My sources in attendance tell me both put in strong performances. In short order, Russia will send enough natural gas eastward to meet much of China’s demand and — miss this not — in the long run could price out American supplies in other Pacific markets, which are key to the success of the current production boom out West.
This is a lot of dots to connect. As I see it, the running themes in all this are two: There is constructive activity and there is the destructive. Readers may think this oversimplifies, but for this there is the ever-lively comment box below. I am willing to listen.
Let’s go back to early September. On Nov. 5, Germany brokered a cease-fire between the Ukraine government in Kiev and the rebels in the eastern Donbass region. Washington made it plain it wanted no part of this, preferring to continue open hostilities. And then strange things happened.
Less than a week after the Minsk Protocol was signed, Kerry made a little-noted trip to Jeddah to see King Abdullah at his summer residence. When it was reported at all, this was put across as part of Kerry’s campaign to secure Arab support in the fight against the Islamic State.
Stop right there. That is not all there was to the visit, my trustworthy sources tell me. The other half of the visit had to do with Washington’s unabated desire to ruin the Russian economy. To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1) to raise production and 2) to cut its crude price. Keep in mind these pertinent numbers: The Saudis produce a barrel of oil for less than $30 as break-even in the national budget; the Russians need $105.
Shortly after Kerry’s visit, the Saudis began increasing production, sure enough — by more than 100,000 barrels daily during the rest of September, more apparently to come. Last week they dropped the price of Arab Light by 45 cents a barrel, Bloomberg News just reported. This has proven a market mover, sending prices to $78 a barrel at writing.
Think about this. Winter is coming, there are serious production outages now in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, other OPEC members are screaming for relief, and the Saudis make back-to-back moves certain to push falling prices still lower? You do the math, with Kerry’s unreported itinerary in mind, and to help you along I offer this from an extremely well-positioned source in the commodities markets: “There are very big hands pushing oil into global supply now,” this source wrote in an e-mail note the other day.
The Russians, meantime, are reported to be sending soldiers and artillery back across, or maybe just across, the Ukrainian border. This we read, but we read nothing as to why this may be so, assuming for argument’s sake it is. We are invited to accept that there is no reason worth reporting.
I decline the invitation. The possibility-likelihood-probability — it is impossible to say, we are so ill-informed — is that these reported deployments are in reaction to moves kept out of sight. Given Washington’s disapproval of the Minsk accord and its underhanded manipulations in the oil markets since it was signed, I label this a likelihood, at least, maybe more.
As to the Ukrainian economy, this is getting sordid even before the International Monetary Fund gets its mitts on the place. A Royal Bank of Scotland analyst in Hong Kong, Roland Hinterkoerner, just published a tour d’horizon, a few of the highlights (or lowlights) being these:
- With the Russian ruble cratering, Kiev recently had to remove a currency peg of 13 hryvnia to the dollar. It dropped 15 percent in the next five trading sessions. From a rate of 8 to 1 a year ago, it now cost 16 hryvnia to buy a dollar.
- With the banking system in peril, a third of deposits had been withdrawn—before the currency collapsed, this is. “There is no way to repair this damage by doing some kind of recapitalization exercise that may still work in the eurozone,” the RBS man writes.
- Efforts to stem the hryvnia’s fall have dangerously depleted foreign currency reserves. As of October, the central bank had $12.6 billion dollars in assets—taxi fare in the context.
- Ukraine owes Russia $1.6 billion in gas bills by yearend—and then faces fees of $700 million a month for new supplies.
This kind of report leaves me nearly speechless — and our correspondents silent, of course. All that we have read of this past year, events taking place in the name of democracy and a better life for Ukrainians, comes to this. “The economy?” Hinterkoerner concludes. “What economy?”
- The Ukrainian automobile association, to burrow in slightly, just reported that new car registrations fell by 65 percent in October from the previous year, to 5,900 units—this in a nation of 46 million. The No. 1 producer, Saporisky Awtomobilebudiwny Sawod, turned out 1,007 vehicles. It has 21,000 employees on the payroll.
Onward. “Going forward,” as the State Department’s chirpy spokespeople like to put it.
Kerry just finished up in Oman, where a round of talks on the Iran question were held just short of the Nov. 24 deadline for a deal. Russia’s role in these talks has suddenly grown potentially large. To break the impasse over Iran’s centrifuge count, Moscow offers to take most of Iran’s stockpile of unprocessed uranium and send back enriched fuel when Iran needs it to power the nuclear energy program it wants. This is a reprise of an idea first floated five years ago, and this time Tehran finds it acceptable, at least tentatively.
Put this in the larger context: With the prospect of ending three and a half decades of pointless hostility within reach, this is the moment to be battering Russia as near to a pulp as possible with sanctions, market interventions to its disadvantage, and who can tell what on the military side in Ukraine? You start to think Washington simply cannot help itself, and more on this in a minute.
And so to Beijing. Nobody will put it this way, but Obama arrived with one failure already accomplished and others to come. It was a mistake to oppose the Beijing-sponsored Asian lending institution in the first place, and already it begins to cost the Americans. The TPP trade pact is no further along, you may have noticed. The climate pact Obama and Xi signed looks so far like an agreement for the sake of an agreement — something Obama could bring home in triumph. The only “successes” American media were able to report were a few market-opening measures of benefit to specific American corporations. Nothing visionary, fair to say. A junior trade negotiator could have got this done.
And here is why, a point hardly lost on the Chinese: There is no vision on the American side, only resistance and objection. Xi has consistently urged a “new great power relationship,” and if someone can explain why this is not a perfectly logical thought in the face of 21st century realities, again, to the comment box with it.
Washington’s claim to be an unrivaled Pacific power by destiny goes back to Teddy Roosevelt’s imperial cruise around the region after the U.S. defeated the Spanish and massacred the Jefferson-reading Filipino democratic movement. We simply cannot surrender the turf, realities be damned.
Xi, on the other hand, is all about realities, and not a few have to do with stronger ties with Russia. Xi and Putin shook hands on a historically huge, $400 billion gas deal earlier this year. How did Obama feel when the two announced during his visit that they have just reached another one, this time for $325 billion?
Details: The gas will arrive from Siberia by way of a not-yet-constructed pipeline. PetroChina will take a 10 percent share of a subsidiary of Rosneft, the Russian gas company. By 2020, China will source a quarter of its demand from Russia; the Russians, in turn, will by then sell more gas to China than they now send to Europe.
Listen to the sound of the world turning. Wonder why your media do not pass it on to you.
Always more in this line, it seems. Russia is also in numerous other energy deals with China, including one that doubles petroleum exports to the People’s Republic. Then there is the Silk Road Investment Fund, a $40 billion vehicle to finance development projects in the seven nations of Central Asia. Relations with Vietnam and Japan, horrible of late, now appear to be on the mend. So much, maybe, for Washington’s role as protector of the region from the reawakening empire.
“Add this up,” writes Ken Courtis, a close observer of the international scene for decades, “and you have the outline of a number of important initiatives which will be key to China’s increased lead role in development through investment in other emerging market economies.”
Courtis had a curious exchange with Putin during some of the economic forum sessions in Beijing. He asked if Russia would provide North Korea security guarantees if it agreed to renounce nuclear weapons.
Putin replied in part: “Your question is too clever. This is not the moment yet even to raise that question, let alone answer it. Often, the problem in the world is not that small countries, who feel they are under siege, are unwilling to change. Rather, it is that the bigger countries are all piling on like bullies in the school yard – and they don’t know when to stop.”
I hope Kerry and Obama were listening at that moment. As Courtis heard it, “I think Putin was signaling to the West that there will be no more help from Russia with sanctions on North Korea, or anywhere else. One could also read Iran, Syria, Venezuela, etc., into that line of reasoning.”
I agree. We can start to connect the stars, then, see our constellation, and identify the costs of a consistent pattern of destructive behavior on Washington’s part here, there and everywhere. Specific to the case, the Sino-Russian energy deals cannot possibly be taken as other than long-term responses to the West’s renewal of Cold War hostilities toward Russia and its refusal to countenance China’s emergence. More narrowly, Putin wants an Iran deal to demonstrate Russia’s importance as a global player, yes, but he is not so far from fed up even there.
The obvious question is what we are watching as all these events unfold and then coalesce into a single reality. This peculiar moment seems to make this reality clear. Nostalgic for the period of primacy known as the American Century, the U.S. cannot accept its passing. Logically enough, the task becomes essentially destructive of the world as it is a-borning — an effort, in the end, to destroy history itself.
The planet’s other major powers, for all their imperfections and, indeed, disgraces, understand that their time has come, parity between West and non-West is upon us. This is the core reality, not to be lost sight of. China’s and Russia’s domestic problems are rather like America’s; they are to be resolved by Chinese, Russians and Americans, a point we understand easily when it comes to the interference of others but not the other way around, when the question is our interference elsewhere.
All too bad. But only for those who insist on holding on to the wrong end of the stick. This century’s winners and losers are not yet clearly marked — I have to preserve my optimism on this point — but with each passing event, each mistake, who is fated for which side becomes a little more evident.
I like the thought a Chinese scholar-turned-diplomat-turned-scholar again made at a dinner in Beijing the other night, as passed on by a friend. He spoke of Ukraine, but the remark applies across the board.
“From our perspective, we see all of this agitation as noise at the surface,” he said. Then he cited that scene from “Macbeth” at Dunsinane Castle, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The Chinese — always attuned to the long view. Who are the idiots in this man’s rendering?
I leave it there.
(Patrick Smith is the author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century.” He was the International Herald Tribune’s bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote “Letter from Tokyo” for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @thefloutist.)
Comments:
bastawisee @Schnitzler The rising value of the $ must be compensation to the Saudis for dropping the price of oil, don't you think?
tomcinillinois The other side of increased Saudi oil production is that lower prices undercut the viability of the Keystone pipeline, which relies on higher prices to exceed high production and transportation costs. Simply raising the question of intermediate term economic viability could substantially cut into North American oil production in the decade ahead and maintain the economic and political importance of Middle East oil for the foreseeable future.
Schnitzler @freebird: Everyone wants to get their hands on sectors of the Ukrainian economy, and the more it implodes, the easier it will be for EVERYONE to get what they want: cheap agricultural products for the EU; coal, coke and steel for China; geo-political control for Russia; farmland for the US and the EU; cheap, educated labour force for whoever needs/wants it. If Ukraine becomes a rump state as it has always been in world affairs, the easier for other groups to pick and choose what they want. No further sanctions against Russia from the EU and the US? (They got what they wanted, which was a cheaper rouble.) No more talk of aid for Syria? (It's become a military free-for-all and a chance to test even more of the latest weaponry--same with the Russians in Ukraine.) Dropping price of oil doesn't just hurt Russia but also the frack-heads in the US, who also have huge costs of production. (Letting the Saudis pump more oil is a way for the US to "cede" production to the Saudis and allow them a freer hand in controlling or abusing OPEC production quotas.) China emerges as the world leader in everything: energy consumption AND balance-of-payment deals in renminbi, not USD; they will soon dominate global economic trading on a scale never before appreciated, especially as they ramp up green tech to sell to the rest of the world. Spending money with China means buying and selling renminbi. The Chinese hold a lot of USD in forex b/c they want to be in control of world currency markets before the collapse of the USD and the rise of the CNY (renminbi).
Why is it the leaders in China seem to make the best decisions now? Not to mention Putin who sees very clearly where his country's headed.
Short-term $$$$$$$?
Always a civilization killer.
(Ask the Romans.)
Why isn't their internal corruption leading them to shun green products and stop building industries within their increasingly expensive civilizations?
It's just a time problem maybe.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Paul Craig Roberts has some media-maven stories of his own for our continued dismay. I know that I've thought "What unbelievable nonsense!" many times since 9/11/01.
And did you catch his essay on the fake job-creation/growth statistics? It's a doozie.
Economists, or rather the few who haven’t sold their souls, know that the government’s economic data are pulled out of a magician’s hat and massaged to produce numbers contradicted by reality. Unemployment is measured according to methodologies designed to prevent its discovery. Inflation is measured according to methodologies designed to deny its existence. Jobs are reported that don’t exist, and GDP growth rates are announced that declines in real median family incomes and consumer credit make impossible.The poverty level income is set artificially low in order to minimize welfare spending.The lies that Washington and the powerful private interest groups that control the US government tell us go unchallenged by the print and TV media and by NPR. The propaganda that Americans are fed is more extreme than the propaganda of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984.. . . The uncounted unemployed can be measured in the sharp 21st century decline in the labor force participation rate. The labor force participation rate has declined because there are no jobs to participate in. But Washington, the financial media, and the bought and paid for economists lie. They say the participation rate is down because the baby boomers are retiring. However, as John Titus, Dave Kranzler, and I documented with the government’s own data in a recent column, the participation rate of baby boomers is the highest of all and the only one that is rising. . . . To supplement their Social Security pensions (a rigged CPI prevents or minimizes cost-of-living increases), retirees take the temporary, lowly paid jobs that are all that the US economy can produce.. . . As I have pointed out for a decade, or longer, the US economy no longer creates First World jobs. The US economy creates jobs for waitresses and bartenders, hospital orderlies, and retail clerks. The fact that the complexion of the US work force is becoming Third World is not considered a notable problem by the media or financial press, and economists seem immune to the facts.. . . If you look at the jobs that the BLS reports the US is creating, they are third-world jobs. How is the US “the world’s only superpower” when it cannot create a middle class job?
Oh well, who's listening anyway? It's just the ultimate House of Cards.
The Federal Reserve’s announcement that QE is terminated has improved the outlook for the US dollar. However, as Nomi Prins makes clear, QE has not ended, merely morphed. http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2014/11/10/qe-isnt-dying-its-morphing.html
As Dave Kranzler and I (and no doubt others) have pointed out, a stable or rising dollar exchange value is the necessary foundation to the house of cards. Until three years ago, the dollar was losing ground rapidly with respect to gold. Since that time massive sales of uncovered shorts in the gold futures market have been used to drive down the gold price. . . . The extent of financial corruption involving collusion between the mega-banks and the financial authorities is unfathomable.
And no one in the U.S. even seems concerned except for when the next Kevin Spacey (great name, eh?) rerun is scheduled.
Another Fake Bin Laden Story
Paul Craig Roberts
November 7, 2014
RT, one of my favorite news sources, has fallen for a fake story put out by the Pentagon to support the fantasy story that a SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden, who died a second time in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a decade after his first death from illness and disease. ( http://rt.com/usa/202895-navy-seal-shot-binladen/)
This fake story together with the fake movie and the fake book by an alleged SEAL team member is the way the fake story of bin Laden’s murder is perpetrated. Bin Laden’s alleged demise at the hands of a SEAL team was a propaganda orchestration, the purpose of which was to give Obama a hero’s laurels and deep six Democratic talk of challenging his nomination for a second term.
Osama bin Laden died in December 2001 of renal failure and other health problems, having denied in his last recorded video any responsibility for 9/11, instead directing Americans to look inside their own government. The FBI itself has stated that there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11. Bin Laden’s obituary appeared in numerous foreign and Arabic press, and also on Fox News.
No one can survive renal failure for a decade, and no dialysis machine was found in the alleged Abbottabad compound of bin Laden, who allegedly was murdered by SEALs a decade after his obituary notices.
Additionally, no one among the crew of the ship from which the White House reported bin Laden was buried at sea saw any such burial, and the sailors sent messages home to that effect. Somehow a burial was held onboard a ship on which there are constant watches and crew on alert at all hours, and no one witnessed it.
Additionally, the White House story of the alleged murder of bin Laden changed twice within the first 24 hours. The claim that Obama and his government watched the action transmitted live from cameras on the SEALs’ helmets was quickly abandoned, despite the release of a photo of the Obama regime intently focused on a TV set and alleged to be watching the live action. No video of the deed was ever released. To date there is no evidence whatsoever in behalf of the Obama regime’s claim. Not one tiny scrap. Just unsubstantiated self-serving claims.
Additionally, as I have made available on my website, witnesses interviewed by Pakistan TV reported that only one helicopter landed in Abbottabad and that when the occupants of the helicopter returned from the alleged bin Laden compound, the helicopter exploded on takeoff and there were no survivors. In other words, there was no bin Laden corpse to deliver to the ship that did not witness a burial and no SEAL hero to return who allegedly murdered an unarmed bin Laden. Moreover, the BBC interviewed residents in Abbottabad, including those next door to the alleged “bin Laden compound,” and all say that they knew the person who lived there and it was not bin Laden.
Any SEAL who was so totally stupid as to kill the unarmed “Terror Mastermind” would probably have been courtmartialed for incompetency. Look at the smiling face of the man Who Killed Bin Laden. He thinks that his claim that he murdered a man makes him a hero, a powerful comment on the moral degeneracy of Americans.
So what is this claim by Rob O’Neill about? He is presented as a “motivational speaker” in search of clients. What better ploy among gullible Americans than to claim “I am the one who shot bin Laden.” Reminds me of the western movie: "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." What better way to give Rob O’Neill’s claim validity than for the Pentagon to denounce his revelation for breaking obligation to remain silent.
The Pentagon claims that O’Neill by claiming credit has painted a big target sign on our door asking ISIS to come get us.
What unbelievable nonsense. ISIS and anyone who believed Obama’s claim to have done in bin Laden already knew, if they believed the lie, that the Obama regime claimed responsibility for murdering an unarmed bin Laden. The reason the SEAL team was prevented from talking is that no member of the team was on the alleged mission.
Just as the ship from which bin Laden was allegedly buried has no witnesses to the deed, the SEAL unit, whose members formed the team that allegedly dispatched an unarmed Terrorist Mastermind rather than to take him into custody for questioning, mysteriously died in a helicopter crash when they were loaded in violation of procedures in an unprotected 1960s vintage helicopter and sent into a combat zone in Afghanistan shortly after the alleged raid on “bin Laden’s compound.”
For awhile there were news reports that the families of these dead SEALS do not believe one word of the government’s account. Moreover, the families reported receiving messages from the SEALs that suddenly they felt threatened and did not know why. The SEALs had been asking one another: “Were you on the bin Laden mission?” Apparently, none were. And to keep this a secret, the SEALs were sent to their deaths.
Anyone who believes anything the US government says is gullible beyond the meaning of the word.(Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.)
Continuing on in the wake of Tim Geithner's New York Fed leadership (and his tome's mea culpas, the few there were), the following dismaying major headline hardly even excites the D.C. pulse anymore. (Well, we don't want to punish our friends too much, do we?)
The New York Fed Has Contracted JPMorgan to Hold Over $1.7 Trillion of its QE Bonds Despite Two Felony Counts and Serial Charges of Crimes
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., which functions as the central bank of the United States, has farmed out much of its Quantitative Easing (QE) programs to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since the financial crisis of 2008. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has, in turn, contractually farmed out a hefty chunk of the logistics of that work to JPMorgan Chase in the last six years.
Sitting quietly on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s web site is a vendor agreement and other documents indicating that JPMorgan Chase holds all of the Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) that the New York Fed has purchased under its various Quantitative Easing programs. As of last Wednesday, that figure was $1.7 trillion dollars. (The New York Fed has confirmed that JPMorgan is custodian for these assets.)
In addition to holding the MBS, JPMorgan also has a contractual agreement to exercise discretion (its own judgment) in trading the surplus cash that sits in the New York Fed’s cash account. While JPMorgan is restricted to holding collateral backed by U.S. government securities for these cash trades in Repurchase Agreements, its approved list of counter parties include global banks variously charged with rigging the international interest rate benchmark known as Libor, money laundering, aiding and abetting tax evasion, and defrauding clients.
I'm guessing that they're no longer afraid now to let us know who's really in charge.
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