The Untold History of US War Crimes

Edu Montesanti: Professor Peter Kuznick, thank you so very much for granting me this interview. In the book The Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone and you reveal that the the launch of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by President Harry Truman was militarily unnecessary, and the reasons behind it. Would you comment these versions, please?

Peter Kuznick: It is interesting to me that when I speak to people from outside the United States, most think the atomic bombings were unnecessary and unjustifiable, but most Americans still believe that the atomic bombs were actually humane acts because they saved the lives of not only hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have died in an invasion but of millions of Japanese.

That is a comforting illusion that is deeply held by many Americans, especially older ones. It is one of the fundamental myths emanating from World War II. It was deliberately propagated by President Truman, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and many others who also spread the erroneous information that the atomic bombs forced Japanese surrender. Truman claimed in his memoirs that the atomic bombs saved a half million American lives.

President George H.W. Bush later raised that number to “millions.” The reality is that the atomic bombings neither saved American lives nor did they contribute significantly to the Japanese decision to surrender. They may have actually delayed the end of the war and cost American lives. They certainly cost hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives and injured many more.

As the January 1946 report by the U.S. War Department made clear, there was very little discussion of the atomic bombings by Japanese officials leading up to their decision to surrender. This has recently been acknowledged somewhat stunningly by the official National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, DC, which states, “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military.

However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria…changed their minds.” Few Americans realize that six of America’s seven five star admirals and generals who earned their fifth star during the war are on record as saying that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary or morally reprehensible or both.

That list includes Generals Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Ernest King, and Chester Nimitz. Leahy, who was chief of staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, called the atomic bombings violations of “every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.” He proclaimed that the “Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…The used of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. In being the first to use it we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark ages.”

Eisenhower agreed that the Japanese were already defeated. MacArthur said that the Japanese would have surrendered months earlier if the U.S. had told them they could keep the emperor, which the U.S. did ultimately allow them to do.

What really happened? By spring 1945, it was clear to most Japanese leaders that victory was impossible. In February 1945, Prince Fumimaro Konoe, former Japanese prime minister, wrote to Emperor Hirohito, “I regret to say that Japan’s defeat is inevitable.”

The same sentiment was expressed by the Supreme War Council in May when it declared that “Soviet entry into the war will deal a death blow to the Empire” and was repeated frequently thereafter by Japanese leaders.

The U.S., which had broken Japanese codes and was intercepting Japanese cables, was fully aware of Japan’s increasing desperation to end the war if the U.S. would ease its demand for “unconditional surrender.” Not only was Japan getting battered militarily,

it’s railroad system was in tatters and its food supply was shrinking. Truman himself referred to the intercepted July 18 cable as “the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.” American leaders also knew that what Japan really dreaded was the possibility of a Soviet invasion, which they maneuvered unsuccessfully to forestall.

The Japanese leaders did not know that at Yalta Stalin had agreed to come into the Pacific War three months after the end of the fighting in Europe. But Truman knew this and understood the significance. As early as April 11, 1945, the Joint Intelligence Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was reporting that “If at any time the USSR should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”

At Potsdam in mid-July, when Truman received Stalin’s confirmation that the Soviets were coming into the war, Truman rejoiced and wrote in his diary, “Fini Japs when that comes about.” The next day he wrote home to his wife, “We’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed.”

So there were two ways to expedite the end of the war without dropping atomic bombs. The first was to change the demand for unconditional surrender and inform the Japanese that they could keep the emperor, which most American policymakers wanted to do anyway because they saw the emperor as key to postwar stability. The second was to wait for the Soviet invasion, which began at midnight on August 8.

It was the invasion that proved decisive not the atomic bombs, whose effects took longer to register and were more localized. The Soviet invasion completely discredited Japan’s ketsu-go strategy. The powerful Red Army quickly demolished the Japan’s Kwantung Army. When Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki was asked why Japan needed to surrender so quickly, he replied that if Japan delayed, “the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido.

This will destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war when we can deal with the United States.” The Soviet invasion changed the military equation; the atomic bombs, as terrible as they were, did not. The Americans had been firebombing Japanese cities for months. As Yuki Tanaka has shown, the U.S. had already firebombed more than 100 Japanese cities.

Destruction reached as high as 99.5 percent in downtown Toyama. Japanese leaders had already accepted that the United States could wipe out Japanese cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two more cities to vanquish, however thorough the destruction or horrific the details. But the Soviet invasion proved devastating as both American and Japanese leaders anticipated it would.

But the U.S. wanted to use atomic bombs in part as a stern warning to the Soviets of what was in store for them if they interfered with U.S. plans for postwar hegemony. That was exactly how Stalin and those around him in the Kremlin interpreted the bombings. U.S. use of the bombs had little effect on Japanese leaders, but it proved a major factor in jumpstarting the Cold War.

And it put the world on a glide path to annihilation. Truman observed on at least three separate occasions that he was beginning a process that might result in the end of life on this planet and he plowed ahead recklessly. When he received word at Potsdam of how powerful the July 16 bomb test in New Mexico had been, he wrote in his diary, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.

It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era after Noah and his fabulous Ark.” So the atomic bombings contributed very little if anything to the end of the war, but they began a process that continues to threaten humanity with annihilation today–70 plus years after the bombings. As Oliver Stone and I say in The Untold History of the United States, to kill innocent civilians is a war crime. To threaten humanity with extinction is far, far worse. It is the worst crime that can ever be committed.

Edu Montesanti: In the Vietnam War’s chapter, it is revealed that the US armed forces conducted in that small country the launch of a greater number of bombs that all launched during World War II. Would you please detail it, and comment why you think it happened, professor Kuznick?

Peter Kuzinick: The U.S. dropped more bombs against little Vietnam than had been dropped by all sided in all previous wars in history–three times as many as were dropped by all sides in WWII. That war was the worst atrocity–the worst example of foreign aggression– committed since the end of WWII. Nineteen million gallons of herbicide poisoned the countryside. Vietnam’s beautiful triple canopy forests were effectively eliminated. The U.S. destroyed 9,000 of South Vietnam’s 15,000 hamlets.

It destroyed all six industrial cities in the North as well as 28 of 30 provincial towns and 96 of 116 district towns. It threatened to use nuclear weapons on numerous occasions. Among those who discussed and occasionally supported such use was Henry Kissinger. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told my students that he believes that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in the war.

Thus, the war was truly horrific and the Americans have never atoned for this crime. Instead of winning a Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war, Henry Kissinger should be in the dock in the Hague standing trial for having committed crimes against humanity.

Edu Montesanti: Please speak of your experiences in the 60′s in Vietnam, and why the US decided to engage a war against that nation.

Peter Kuznick: Oliver and I approached the war from different perspectives. He dropped out of Yale and volunteered for combat in Vietnam. He was wounded twice and won a medal for combat valor. I, on the other hand, was fiercely opposed to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam from the start.

As a freshman in college, I started an anti-war group. I organized actively against the war. I hated it. I hated the people who were responsible for it. I thought they were all war criminals and still do. I attended many antiwar marches and spoke often at public events. I understood, as my friend Daniel Ellsberg likes to say, we weren’t on the wrong side. We were the wrong side.

The U.S. got gradually involved. It first financed the French colonial war and then took over the fighting itself after the Vietnamese defeated the French. President Kennedy sent in 16,000 “advisers,” but realized the war was wrong and planned to end it if he hadn’t been killed. U.S. motives were mixed. Ho was not only a nationalist, he was a communist. No U.S. leader wanted to lose a war to the communists anywhere.

This was especially true after the communist victory in China in 1949. Many feared the domino effect–that Vietnam would lead to communist victories across Southeast Asia. That would leave Japan isolated and Japan, too, would eventually turn toward the communist bloc for allies and trading partners. So one motivation was geopolitical.

Another was economic. U.S. leaders didn’t want to lose the cheap labor, raw materials, and markets in Indochina. Another reason was that the military-industrial complex in the U.S.–the “defense” industries and the military leaders allied with them–got fat and prosperous from war. War was their reason for being and they profited handsomely from war in both inflated profits and promotions.

So it was a combination of maintaining U.S. preeminence in the world, defending and exploiting U.S. economic interests, and a perverse and corrosive anti-communist mentality that wanted to defeat the communists everywhere.

Edu Montesanti: What were the real reasons behind the US Cold War with the Soviet Union?

Peter Kuznick: George Kennan, the U.S. State Department official who provided the theoretical rationale for the containment theory, laid out the economic motives behind the Cold War in a very illuminating memo in 1948 in which he said, “We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population…we cannot fail to be the object of envying resentment.

Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.” The U.S. pursued this task. Sometimes that required supporting brutal dictatorships. Sometimes it required supporting democratic regimes. The fight occurred on the cultural as well as the political, ideological, and economic realms.

Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life Magazines, said, in 1941, that the 20th century must be the American Century. The U.S. would dominate the world. The U.S. set out to do so. The Soviets, having been invaded twice through Eastern Europe, wanted a buffer zone between themselves and Germany. The U.S. was opposed to such economic and political spheres that limited U.S. economic penetration.

Although the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, never went to war, they fought many dangerous proxy wars. Human beings are lucky to have survived this dismal era.

Edu Montesanti: How do you see US politics towards Cuba since the Cuban Revolution, and towards Latin America in general since the Cold War?

Peter Kuznick: The U.S. completely controlled the Cuban economy and politics from the 1890s until the 1959 revolution. Batista carried water for U.S. investors. The U.S. had intervened repeatedly in Latin American affairs between 1890 and 1933 and then often again in the 1950s. Castro represented the first major break in that cycle.

The U.S. wanted to destroy him and make sure that no one else in Latin America would follow his example. It failed. It didn’t destroy his revolution, but it guaranteed that it would not succeed economically or create the people’s democracy many hoped for.

However, it has succeeded in other ways. And the revolution has survived throughout the Cold War and since. It has inspired other Latin American revolutionaries despite all the U.S.-backed and U.S.-trained death squads that have patrolled the continent, leaving hundreds of thousands of dead in their wake.

The U.S. School for the Americas has been instrumental in training the death squad leaders. Hugo Chavez and others have picked up where Fidel left off in inspiring the Latin American left. But many progressive leaders have been brought down in recent years.

Today Dilma Rouseff is fighting for her life but Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcie Linera in Bolivia are standing proud and standing tall to resist U.S. efforts to again dominate and exploit Latin America. But across Latin America, progressive leaders have either been toppled or are being weakened by scandals. U.S.-backed neoliberals are poised once again to loot local economies in the interest of foreign and domestic capitalists. It is not a pretty picture. The people will suffer immensely while some get rich.

Edu Montesanti: According to your researches, Professor Kuznick, who killed President John Kennedy? What interests were behind that magnicide?

Peter Kuznick: Oliver made a great movie about the Kennedy assassination–JFK. We didn’t feel that we needed to revisit those issues in our books and documentaries. We focused instead on what was lost to humanity when Kennedy was stolen from us. He had grown immensely during his short time in office.

He began as a Cold Warrior. By the end of his life, following the lessons he learned during the first two years of his administration and punctuated by the Cuban Missile Crisis, he wanted desperately to end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. Had he lived, as Robert McNamara stated, the world would have been fundamentally different.

The U.S. would have withdrawn from Vietnam. Military expenditures would have dropped sharply. The U.S. and the Soviets would have explored ways to work together. The arms race would have been transformed into a peace race. But he had his enemies in the military and intelligence communities and in the military sector of the economy.

He was also hated by the Southern segregationists, the Mafia, and the reactionary Cuban exile community. But those behind his assassination would much more likely have come from the military and intelligence wing.

We don’t know who did it, but we know whose interests were advanced by the assassination. Given all the holes in the official story as detailed by the Warren Commission, it is difficult to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that the magic bullet did all that damage.

Edu Montesanti: Do you think US imperialism against the region today, especially attacks against progressive countries are in essence the same policy during the Cold War?

Peter Kuznick: I don’t think the U.S. wants a new cold war with a real rival that can compete around the globe. As the neocons proclaimed after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. really wants a unipolar world in which there is only one superpower and no rivals.

Progressive countries have fewer major allies today than they had during the Cold War. Russia and China provide some balance to the U.S., but they are not really progressive countries challenging the world capitalist order. They both are beset by their own internal problems and inequalities.

There are few democratic socialist models for the world to follow. The U.S. has managed to subvert and sabotage most of the forward thinking and visionary governments. Hugo, despite all his excesses, was one such role model. He achieved great things for the poor in Venezuela. But if we look at what is happening now in Brazil, Argentina, Honduras, it is a very sad picture.

A new revolutionary wave is needed across the third world with new leaders committed to rooting out corruption and fighting for social justice. I am personally excited by recent developments in Bolivia, despite the results of the latest election.

Edu Montesanti: How do you see the Cold War culture influences US and world society today, Professor Kuznick? What role the Washington regime and the mainstream media play on it?

Peter Kuznick: The media are part of the problem. They have served to obfuscate rather than educate and enlighten. They inculcate the sense that there are dangers and enemies lurking everywhere, but they offer no positive solutions.

As, a result, people are driven by fear and respond irrationally. Former U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace, one of America’s leading visionaries in the 20th century, responded to Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in 1946 by warning,

“The source of all our mistakes is fear… If these fears continue, the day will come when our sons and grandsons will pay for these fears with rivers of blood… Out of fear great nations have been acting like cornered beasts, thinking only of survival.”

This also operates on the personal level where people will sacrifice their freedoms to achieve greater security. We saw that play out in the U.S. after 9/11. We’re seeing that now in France and Belgium.

The world is moving in the wrong direction. Inequality is growing. The richest 62 people in the world now have more wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion. That is obscene. There is no excuse for poverty and hunger in a world of such abundant resources. In this world, the media serve several purposes, the least of which is to inform the people and arm them with the information they need to change their societies and the world.

The media instead magnify people’s fears so that they will accept authoritarian regimes and militaristic solutions to problems that have no military solutions, provide mindless entertainment to distract people from real problems, and narcotize people into somnambulence and apathy.

This is especially a problem in the United States where many people believe there is a “free” press. Where there is a controlled press, people learn to approach the media with skepticism. Many gullible Americans don’t understand the more subtle forms of manipulation and deception.

In the U.S., the mainstream media rarely offer perspectives that challenge conventional thinking. For example, I’m constantly getting interviewed by leading media outlets in Russia, China, Japan, Europe, and elsewhere, but I’m rarely interviewed by media in the United States.

Nor do my progressive colleagues get invited onto mainstream U.S. shows. So, yes, there is a certain measure of press freedom in the United States, but that freedom is undermined not by the government as much as it is by self-censorship and silencing of progressive voices. Much of the rest of the world is more open to criticizing the U.S. but not as forthright when it comes to criticizing their own governments’ policies.

Edu Montesanti: What could you say about the ideia that the current US “War on Terror” and even “War on Drugs” especially in Latin America are ways the US has found to replace the Cold War, and so expand its military power and world domination?

Peter Kuznick: The U.S. rejects the methods of the old colonial regimes. It has created a new kind of empire undergirded by between 800 and 1,000 overseas military bases from which U.S. special forces operate in more than 130 countries each year.

Instead of invading forces consisting of large land armies, which has proven not to work in country after country, the U.S. operates in more covert and less heavy-handed ways. Obama’s preferred method of killing is by drones.

These are of dubious legality and produce questionable results. They are certainly effective in killing people, but there is lots of evidence to suggest that for every “terrorist” they kill, they create 10 more in his or her place.

The War on Terror that the U.S. and its allies have waged for the past 15 years has only created more terrorists. Military solutions rarely work. Different approaches are needed and they will have to begin with redistribution of the world’s resources in order to make people want to live rather than to kill and die. People need hope.

They need a sense of connection. They need to believe that a better life is possible for them and their children. Too many feel hopeless and alienated. The failure of the Soviet model has produced a vacuum in its place. As Marx warned long ago, Russia was too culturally and economically backward to serve as a model for global socialist development.

The Revolution was challenged from the start by invading capitalist forces. Problems abounded from the beginning. Then Stalinism brought its own spate of horrors. To the extent that the Soviet model became the world standard for revolutionary change, there was little hope for creating a decent world. Nor did the Chinese model provide a better standard.

So some have turned to radical Islam, which brings its own nightmare vision. As progressive governments continue to stumble and fall, U.S. hegemony strengthens. But the U.S. has had little positive to offer the world. Future generations will look back at this Pax Americana not as a period of enlightenment but one of constant war and growing inequality.

Democracy is great in principle but less uplifting in practice. And now with the nuclear threat intensifying and climate change also threatening the future existence of humanity, the future remains uncertain. The U.S. will cling to wars on terror and wars on drugs to maintain the disparities that George Kennan outlined 68 years ago. But that is not the way forward.

The world may look upon U.S. internal politics as a descent into lunacy–an amusing sign of the complete failure of American democracy–but the outsider success of Bernie Sanders and even the anti-establishment revolt among the Republican grassroots shows that Americans are hungry for change. Both Hillary Clinton and the Republican establishment, with their Wall Street ties and militaristic solutions, do not command respect outside of certain limited segments of the population.

They may win now, but their time is limited. People everywhere are desperate for new positive, progressive answers. Some, clearly, as we see now across Europe, will turn to rightwing demagogues in times of crisis, but that is at least in part because the left has failed to provide the leadership the world needs.

A revitalized left is the key to saving this planet. We’re running out of time though. The road ahead will not be easy. But we can and must prevail.

A new financial report projects that the largest US defense contractors are looking forward to a new bonanza of expensive aircraft sales to Gulf states and Israel.

Pirro found herself the source of controversy once again when she discussed the attacks on the Western world at the hands of radical Islamists. She cited specifically the Philadelphia police attack and the terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

Pirro commented that the Obama administration and Islamic radicals might as well be on the same side, because it is clear our ‘leader’ is not going to do anything to prevent these acts in the future.
Watch her comments below and tell us what you think. Do you agree with Pirro?

While the world is distracted by bathrooms, celebrity gossip, and Beiber’s new haircut, the world is having MAJOR issues that need attention and cooperation to prevent us sleep walking into preventable catastrophes.  Below are just SOME.

MISSOURI:
According to a Missouri emergency plan a fire at the Bridgeton Landfill is closing in on a nuclear waste dump. The fire has been burning uncontrolled for over five years.

Clouds of smoke drift into St. Louis leaving it heavily polluted. In December of last year, the EPA said they would install a physical barrier to isolate the nuclear waste, but it could take up to a year to build. Many residents aren’t happy with that timetable, and think the government haven’t done enough to prevent this possible environmental disaster.

Apart from the threat of nuclear waste erupting into flames in the near future, there are also two nuclear reactors inside the United States that have been leaking for months.

FLORIDA:
A study by Miami-Dade County concluded that the area’s 40 year old nuclear power plants at Turkey Pointare leaking into Biscayne Bay.

This damage is polluting the bay’s surface waters and it’s fragile ecosystem. Recently bay waters near the plant have had a large plume slowly moving towards water wells several miles away that supply clean water to millions of people in Florida.

Samples taken during the study found things from radioactive tritium, ammonia, and phosphorous. The scientists conducting the study say the levels of tritium are too low right now to harm people.

“We now know exactly where the pollution is coming from, and we have a tracer that shows it’s in the national park,” said Laura Reynolds, an environmental consultant who is working with the Tropical Audubon Society and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which intend to file the lawsuit, according to the Times. “We are worried about the marine life there and the future of Biscayne Bay.”

NEW YORK:
Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York. At this site, there’s been an uncontrollable radioactive flow leaking into the groundwater which leads into the Hudson River, only 25 miles from New York City. The tritium leak is the ninth in just the past year.

Thyroid cancer registered the biggest increase, going from 13 percent below the national average to 51 percent above. But apparently things like this don’t make the news anymore, only celebrity gossip, and political distractions.

There are some folks out there however, that wish you to be informed of our actual priorities. If you’re one of them, feel free to share this information with others to help raise awareness towards the real issues that need attention.

During Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual call-in show on April 16, which received more than 3 million calls and lasted almost four hours, Putin clearly articulated what underpins the continuing animosity in the U.S.-Russia relationship when he was asked:

“Who would be better for Russia, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton (as US president)?”

Putin made clear that the contentious relationship was not the result of individual politicians, but rather stemmed from a belief that America was “exceptional” among the concert of nations. The Russian leader noted that U.S. should “act respectfully toward all its partners, including Russia” and set aside its “imperial ambitions.”

These “imperial ambitions” have been consistently on display as NATO prepares to deploy four battalions – close to 4,000 soldiers – to the Western border of Russia. The U.S. claims the military escalation is in response to Russian military exercises near the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – famously parroted in the Western media as “Russian aggression.”

What the military and media fail to mention is that these “aggressive actions” the Russians are claimed to be undertaking are simply Russia conducting drills on its own soil. All one need do is analyze the Orwellian speak from U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Works to fully understand the insanity of U.S. policy towards Russia.

The Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams succinctly drove home the insanity of this logic, writing:

What is not made clear in the article but should not be lost on readers is that “right up against the borders” is still Russian territory. But “right up against the borders” on the other side — where the US military is to be deployed and to conduct exercises — is most definitely not US territory. In other words, the US is traveling thousands of miles to place its troops on Russia’s border in response to Russian troops inside its border.

Here is Washington logic: Russian military exercises inside Russia are “extraordinarily provocative” but somehow stationing thousands of US troops on the border with Russia is not at all provocative. Just like US military exercises in the Baltic Sea some 50 miles from Russian soil is not at all provocative, but Russian military plane fly-overs in response to these US military exercises is “reckless and provocative.” And just like the US flying a spy plane over highly-secret Russian military facilities on the Kamchatka peninsula is not at all provocative, but when the spy plane is buzzed by another Russian fighter, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warns, “This is unprofessional. This is dangerous. This could lead somewhere.”

The media parroting of “Russian aggression” is dangerous, as it conditions the public to incite fear and hate towards a state and people that pose very little risk to the United States.

Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski recently offered pertinent insight in an interview with RT about why Russia continues to be so vilified by the Pentagon and American media alike:

“The Pentagon needs and wants Russia to be the next big enemy that they are arming against it, budgeting against it, that they are targeting. Certainly, we have talked for a long time about China and China plays an important role as the enemy of choice for the U.S. military. But Russia is ideal in part, because we don’t import a lot of things from Russia, in part because we don’t have the debt relationship with Russia that we do with China. So, Russia makes for a very convenient enemy for the Pentagon in terms of its mission, its budgeting, and its intelligence organization…

“The Pentagon needs that kind of enemy,” Kwiatkowski continued. “And [U.S. Secretary of Defense] Ashton Carter, if you listen to what he says continually — even from the beginning of time he was put in office — his job is fundraising, just like the university president’s job is not education but rather fundraising. Ashton Carter’s job is also fundraising, and he fundraises through this processof identifying, pushing, and delivering up an enemy that will justify their budgets.”

Though Russia could never be mistaken for an international saint, the U.S. military and White House’s Cold War 2.0 propaganda of an increasingly “aggressive Russia” is simply cannon fodder for the military industrial complex to maintain its hegemonic grip on the levers of power within the United States.

The continual eastward expansion of NATO allows the alliance to deploy forces next to Russia’s borders and then accuse Moscow of“carrying out dangerous maneuvers” near the alliance’s bases, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“This is a mean-spirited attempt to turn the issue on its ears,” Lavrov told Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter daily.

“NATO military infrastructure is inching closer and closer to Russia’s borders. But when Russia takes action to ensure its security, we are told that Russia is engaging in dangerous maneuvers near NATO borders. In fact, NATO borders are getting closer to Russia, not the opposite,”the Russian FM pointed out.

It is virtual insanity for the U.S. to posture and provoke Russia in a manner that will ultimately force the Russians into a defensive military conflict. The Russians will protect their sovereign soil, just as the United States would do with a foreign force amassing on its borders.

To attempt to force the military hand of a state that has virtual nuclear parity with the U.S., as well as the second largest military in the world is nothing less than a suicide mission of global proportions.

Initial ceasefire became possible in Syria owing to Russia's efforts, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview with CNN.

In the interview, Kerry explained Russia's vision of the political solution to the conflict in Syria may be "workable," but it was Moscow's participation in the conflict that "saved tens of thousands of lives." The US diplomat also said that nearly a million people were able to receive humanitarian aid.

"Literally tens of thousands of lives were saved. You can add it up: 200 people a day were being killed. That stopped for a period of time," Kerry said. "People hadn't received any humanitarian assistance for years. Almost a million people have now received humanitarian assistance, and so there has been some benefit to this. Is it perfect? No. Are there still problems to work out? Yes," he added.

Earlier, Moscow and Washington recognized progress in the process to resolve the conflict in Syria. The situation has been improving owing to the ceasefire regime. Russia and the United States will continue to work to increase the number of humanitarian corridors and reach a political settlement for the conflict in the republic.

It is not the first time when John Kerry shares his positive view of Russia's actions in Syria. In February, at a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Secretary of State said that the ceasefire agreement in Syria would have been impossible to reach without cooperation with Russia.

It is believed that Donald Trump is in danger because he promised to reveal the truth about 9/11 and other controversial topics.

The New World Order controlled evil in Washington does not only kill foreign leaders who try to disrupt their master plan, they also kill their own.

JFK warned that secret societies were running the world and their was a plan to enslave every American man, woman, and child.  This was enough to get the popular President killed.

Now Trump is threatening to expose the US establishment’s biggest secrets should he become President.  Speaking at a campaign event in Bluffton, SC, Trump raised the issue of the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001.

“We went after Iraq, they did not knock down the World Trade Center.” Trump told those in attendance.  “It wasn’t the Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center, we went after Iraq, we decimated the country, Iran’s taking over, okay,” Trump continued.

“But it wasn’t the Iraqis, you will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center. Because they have papers in there that are very secret, you may find it’s the Saudis, okay? But you will find out.”

Trump was referring to the 28 pages of the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, which remain classified and withheld from the public on grounds of ‘national security’.  The pages are thought to implicate the Saudi Royal Family in financing the supposed hijackers in the United States prior to the attacks.

The GOP, his own party, are even having trouble deciding whether to support him.  While he has become the presumptive nominee and his primary battle is all but over, there is a war going on inside the Republican Party.  Some members of Congress are saying they will back him.  However most Senators and senior party members are having serious jitters about Trump and are refusing to rally around him.

Both sides of the political establishment don’t want Trump anywhere near the White House.  The mainstream media are vilifying him.  In short, the sock puppets of the New World Order are united against him.  They have a lot to lose if somebody who isn’t playing by their rules takes control.

Will they allow an outsider to win the election?  And if he manages to overcome their efforts against him, how long until he is taken out?  Do not be surprised if this happens – and soon – with a Muslim or possibly Mexican assassin lined up as a convenient scapegoat for another New World Order political assassination in America.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said preparations are underway to file a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in the Hague against the US administration for its decision to confiscate Tehran's assets based on a court ruling.

"Of course, the government will never allow the money which belongs to the Iranian nation to be used by the Americans so easily and with God's assistance, we will raise the case at the International Court (of Justice)," Rouhani said, addressing the Iranian people in the Southern city of Kerman on Tuesday.

He promised the Iranian nation to restore their legal, political and banking rights.

His remarks came after Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called on the foreign ministry to lodge a complaint with the International Court of Justice in the Hague against a recent court ruling by the US Supreme Court which authorized the transfer of $2 billion of Tehran's frozen assets to the families of the victims of a 1983 bombing in Beirut.

"The US stealing of Iran's assets is against all international regulations," Larijani said, addressing an open session of the parliament in Tehran on Tuesday.

Noting that the US impudence in confiscating Iran's assets should be responded, he underlined, "The foreign ministry should raise the US rulers' shameless act at the International Court of Justice in the Hague and defend the Iranian nation's rights powerfully."

Larijani also urged the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission to pursue the issue seriously.

Late in April, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon underlined that the country will take legal action against a US court ruling.

"Tehran reserves the right to take countermeasures in response to the decision made by the US Supreme Court," Zarif wrote in his letter.

He said that in the past few years, the US has persistently engaged in a dangerous practice of defying international law and order by allowing private litigants to bring civil action before US domestic courts against sovereign states, including Iran.

"Trials have been organized in absentia; self-serving judgments have been obtained in default; and claims have been laid on the assets of the Iranian people," the Iranian foreign minister said.

Earlier last month, Zarif blasted the US Supreme Court ruling, stressing that Iran doesn’t recognize it.

"The US has long been taking decisions against Iran which contradict the international laws and the Americans have filed different lawsuits against Iran during the past years; (but) we don’t recognize the US courts' rulings," Zarif said in a joint press conference with his Macedonian counterpart Nikola Poposki in Tehran.

Noting that he has raised the issue during his recent meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York on the sidelines of a UN conference, the Iranian top diplomat said, "We see the US administration as the responsible body with regard to this issue and if they encroach (confiscate Iran's assets), we will claim compensation from the US administration."

Zarif also announced formation of a special committee in the government to study the US decision to transfer Iran's assets.

In 2012, the US Congress passed a law that specifically directed the US-based Citibank to turn over the Iranian assets to families of victims of the Beirut bombing.

Iran argues that Congress is intruding into the business of federal courts over the case. Tehran has long rejected allegations of involvement in the 1983 Beirut bombing.

Don't hold your breath, it’s only a test.

The Department of Homeland Security will release “harmless particle materials” in the city’s subway system next week.

The “non-toxic, safe gas material” will be released at subway stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens in order to understand where hazardous material would travel in the event of a biological terrorist attack.

“This is important information to help local authorities to enhance their emergency preparedness,” DHS Program Manager Dr. Donald Bansleben said Friday.

Officials said there is currently no credible threat against either New York City or the subway system.

Russia say they managed to extract the Clinton emails in 2013 after monitoring Romanian computer hacker Marcel Lazăr Lehel (aka Guccifer)  after he attempted to break into the computer system belonging to Russian funded television network Russia Today.

After monitoring Guccifer, the Russians were reportedly able to record (both physically and electronically) his actions which allowed the Russian intelligence analysts, in 2013, to not only detect his breaking into the private computer of Secretary Clinton, but also break in and copy all of its contents as well.

The report notes that shortly after Russia obtained Clinton’s emails, they released a limited amount to RT TV which were published in an article in March 2013, titled Hillary Clinton’s ‘hacked’ Benghazi emails: FULL RELEASE.

Apparently no Western journalists promoted this story in 2013.

A couple of years later, in 2016, the US then brought in Guccifer for questioning related to this incident.  According to the report, NBC news knew why Guccifer was being questioned but withheld this information from the American public.

The Associated Press reported in October 2015 that “Hillary Clinton’s private email server maintained in her home while serving as secretary of State was possibly hacked by Russia-tied authorities, and others, on five separate occasions.”

The AP report noted that investigators discovered among Clinton’s cache of released emails malicious software aimed at transmitting data to three overseas computers, including at least one in Russia. This malicious software was reportedly activated by clicking on it; but in October it was not clear if Clinton actually opened these messages or not, per the AP.

Recently separate reports have come out noting that Guccifer had indeed hacked Clinton’s emails.  Now according to this latest report, Clinton’s server was not only compromised by Guccifer but also by Russia. Guccifer told FOX News last week that he hacked Hillary’s homebrew server and so did at least 10 others.

UPDATE: Judge Andrew Napolitano told Megyn Kelly on Monday,

“There’s a debate going on in the Kremlin between the Foreign Ministry and the Intelligence Services about whether they should release the 20,000 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails that they have hacked into.”

Saudi Arabia is confident nothing in a secret 28-page section of a US congressional report on the September 11 attacks implicates its leaders.

But some officials worry its eventual publication -- 15 years after the assault on New York and Washington -- will stir suspicion at a time of tense ties.

In December 2002, a year after the attacks, the House and Senate committees on intelligence published a report into the US investigation into them.

But the then president, George W. Bush, ordered that 28 pages of the report be classified to protect the methods and identities of US intelligence sources.

Last month, former senator Bob Graham said the pages should be made public and alleged Saudi officials had provided assistance to the 9/11 hijackers.

Graham, who was the Senate intelligence committee chairman, said the White House had told him they will decide by June whether to declassify the pages.

The issue of alleged -- and fiercely denied -- Saudi involvement in the attacks has been brought up again by attempts to lodge a law suit against the kingdom.

Relatives of some of the American victims of the hijackers are lobbying Congress to pass a law lifting Saudi Arabia's sovereign immunity from liability.

- Mystery pages -

But Riyadh insists it has nothing to fear from the mysterious 28 pages and that US investigators have thoroughly debunked all the allegations they contain.

"Our position, since 2002 when the report first came out, was 'release the pages'," Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in Geneva last week.

"We know from other senior US officials that the charges made in the 28 pages do not stand up to scrutiny. And so yes, release the 28 pages."

For most in Washington, the congressional report was superseded in July 2004 by the final report of the separate 9/11 Commission set up by Bush.

This found no evidence of official Saudi complicity -- but the ongoing secrecy surrounding Congress' earlier 28 pages has continued to stir suspicion.

"We can't rebut charges if we're being charged by ghosts in the form of 28 pages," Jubeir said.

"But every four or five years this issue comes up and it's like a sword over our head. Release it."

Jubeir added that, thanks to multiple leaks in the years since the congressional report was locked away in a safe on Capitol Hill, he can guess what it says.

"Nothing stays a secret," he said. "So we know that it's a lot of innuendo and insinuations."

So what exactly are the secret allegations?

The 28 pages are thought to include a claim that Princess Haifa, the wife of then Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, sent money to the hijackers.

Princess Haifa sent thousands of dollars to Osama Basnan, a Saudi living in San Diego who befriended 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

Investigators were told the money was to pay to treat Basnan's wife for thyroid cancer. The 9/11 Commission found no evidence it was passed to the hijackers.

Another likely allegation in the missing pages concerns Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi civil aviation official who had been studying in California.

Bayoumi was arrested in England 10 days after the September 11 attacks and questioned by British and US authorities before being released without charge.

It is thought the missing pages cite allegations that he met Hazmi and Mihdhar at a Los Angeles restaurant.

- Clandestine ties? -

Later he helped the pair settle in San Diego, leading to suspicions that he was acting on behalf of Saudi paymasters to help prepare the Al-Qaeda attack.

But the 9/11 Commission report said FBI investigators found Bayoumi to be "an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists."

Whatever allegations are in the missing pages of the congressional report, Saudi Arabia's defenders will point to the later 9/11 Commission report.

"Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of Al-Qaeda funding," it said.

"But we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization."

But if Riyadh is so confident in its defense, why then the nervousness about the release?

Reports allege the kingdom threatened to withdraw $750 billion in investments from the United States if Congress strips it of its immunity in US courts.

The United States is about to activate its missile systems across Europe, despite Russia’s warnings against a systematically increasing US-led arms deployment near its borders.

Almost after a decade of pledging to protect members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Washington will on Thursday activate a web of missile systems it has deployed across Europe over the years.

American and NATO officials are slated to declare operational the so-called shield at a remote air base in Deveselu, Romania.

“We now have the capability to protect NATO in Europe," said Robert Bell, a NATO-based envoy of US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

He claimed that the shield is supposed to protect Europe from an Iranian missile threat, a claim Moscow has repeatedly rejected, saying the missiles are aimed at Russia instead.

"The Iranians are increasing their capabilities and we have to be ahead of that. The system is not aimed against Russia," Bell told reporters, adding that the system will soon be handed over to NATO command.

He echoed US State Department spokesman John Kirby who had said the system “is defensive in nature” and therefore can’t be targeted “at anybody.”

Despite American assurances, Moscow accuses Washington of trying to neutralize its nuclear arsenal and buy enough time to make a first strike on Russia in the event of war.

Russia’s response

General Sergey Karakayev, commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (SMF), downplayed the system’s impact, saying that the Russian military was paying “special attention” to enhance their weapons and overcome US missile defense systems.

"Threats from the European segment of the missile defense system for the Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) are limited and don’t critically reduce the combat capabilities of the SMF," Karakayev (pictured below) said on Tuesday.

The general added that Russian ballistic missiles can carry new warheads and deliver them through energy-optimal trajectories in multiple directions, making their path difficult to predict for missile defense systems.

During a Senate hearing in April, US Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Brian McKeon, requested a budget boost for the Missile Defense Agency, saying the funding was crucial for upgrading US missile systems to counter Russian and Chinese missiles.

Russia does not look favorably upon the North Atlantic Organization Treaty (NATO)’s growing deployment of missiles and nuclear weapons near its borders, with the Russian President Vladimir Putin saying in June last year that if threatened by NATO, Moscow will respond to the threat accordingly.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will visit Israel "soon", he said told an Israeli newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday.

"Yes, I will be coming soon," Trump said without giving further details in response to a question from the Israel Hayom newspaper, a freesheet considered close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump had scheduled a visit to Israel for late December but postponed it a few days before following an uproar over his proposal to bar all Muslims from entering the United States.

"I have decided to postpone my trip to Israel and to schedule my meeting with @Netanyahu at a later date after I become president of the U.S.," he tweeted at the time.

In the interview published on Wednesday, Trump renewed his criticism of U.S. President Barack Obama over a July nuclear deal with Iran that was vigorously opposed by the Israeli prime minister.

"The current threat against Israel is more important than ever" because of "President Obama's policy towards Iran and the nuclear deal," he said.

"I think the people of Israel have suffered a lot because of Obama."

White House hopefuls often visit Israel as part of efforts to bolster their foreign policy credentials.

This has been a great year for gold.

The precious metal is up 19%, and recently crossed $1,300 per ounce for the first time in 15 months before pulling back into the $1,265 area. One of the most encouraging signs for the yellow metal is that demand has come from all sorts of places.

Buyers have come back into the market in India, the world's largest buyer of gold, after a strike by the country's jewelers associations brought business to standstill. In the US, demand for bullion is the strongest it's been in 30 years.

But it's not just everyday people who are scrambling to get their hands on gold: Central banks are loading up as well. Data from the World Gold Council showed that central banks scooped up a net 45 tonnes of gold during the first quarter. According to Capital Economics' commodities economist, Simona Gambarini, central-bank demand in the first quarter climbed 28% versus a year ago.

Of the buyers, Russia (+46 tonnes), China (+35 tonnes), and Kazakhstan (+7 tonnes) were the most active in the market, Capital Economics says. As for why the central banks are buying, here's the research firm:

The primary driver of central banks' gold buying continues to be diversification away from the US dollar with some also looking for a hedge against currency volatility more generally. Indeed, historically gold is negatively correlated with the US dollar, the main asset held by central banks across the world, making it an effective hedge against future dollar weakness. What's more, gold tends to have little or no correlation to other traditional or alternative reserve assets, like government bonds.

Going forward, Capital Economics thinks that "the upbeat Q1 figure is in line with our view that the official sector will continue to be a steady source of demand for gold, helping to underpin our positive view on prices."

Capital Economics isn't the only one with a positive view on gold. In a mid-April note to clients, Murray Gunn, HSBC's head of technical analysis, noted that gold is "in an uptrend with a bullish Elliott Wave structure."

At the time, Gunn suggested: "With momentum turning up we open a long position at a spot reference of $1,260. A stop-loss is set at $1,200 with an initial target of $1,500."

With the news focused on the pending release of 28 redacted pages from the 9/11 commission, the world learns that the FBI hid 80,266 classified papers from the congressional terror investigation.

Outspoken U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has claimed in a book that he would be willing to bomb North Korea’s nuclear facilities if he became president.

Trump said he would advocate a surgical strike if negotiations failed to negate the threat of a nuclear attack by the rogue nation on U.S. cities.

Trump is a successful business man in the real estate market and is recognized for his art of negotiating a deal. He also has experience as a judge on the TV reality show, The Apprentice.

The Donald recently said that he admired the young dictator Kim Jong-un for taking over the reigns of power in North Korea after his father died; with such ease and brutal grace that would put many other apprentice dictators to shame.

He wrote: “What would I do in North Korea? Fair question. It’s easy to point out the problem, but what should be done to solve it? Am I ready to bomb this reactor? You’re damned right.”

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee added: “As an experienced negotiator, I can tell you that negotiation with these madmen will be fruitless once they have the ability to lob a nuclear missile into Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York.

“I don’t advocate thermonuclear war, but if negotiations fail, I advocate a surgical strike against these outlaws before they pose a real threat.”

The outspoken presidential candidate said he is not trigger-happy but “as President I would be prepared to order a strike – using conventional weapons – against North Korean targets if it prevented nuclear blackmail or the nuclear destruction of the U.S. population”.

In the book, written in 2000, he added: “A surgical strike would not only put out the fire in North Korea, but it would also send a message around the world that the United States is going to eliminate any serious threat to its security.”

It is unclear if the brash businessman still advocates strikes on the secretive state but has referred to the despot as a “madman” and a “maniac”.

But Trump has also praised the dictator for killing his rivals to stay in power.

He said the tyrant deserves “credit” for ruthlessly executing his generals, one of which was own uncle.

Speaking at a Republican rally in January, Mr Trump said: “You’ve got to give him credit. How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals, and all of a sudden — you know, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it. How does he do that?”

In brief, the Global War on Terror sledgehammer strategy has spread terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world, from Africa through the Levant and South Asia to Southeast Asia. It has also incited attacks in Europe and the United States. The invasion of Iraq made a substantial contribution to this process, much as intelligence agencies had predicted.

Terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimate that the Iraq War “generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.” Other exercises have been similarly productive.

A group of major human rights organizations — Physicians for Social Responsibility (U.S.), Physicians for Global Survival (Canada), and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany) — conducted a study that sought “to provide as realistic an estimate as possible of the total body count in the three main war zones [Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan] during 12 years of ‘war on terrorism,'” including an extensive review “of the major studies and data published on the numbers of victims in these countries,” along with additional information on military actions. Their “conservative estimate” is that these wars killed about 1.3 million people, a toll that “could also be in excess of 2 million.” A database search by independent researcher David Peterson in the days following the publication of the report found virtually no mention of it. Who cares?

More generally, studies carried out by the Oslo Peace Research Institute show that two-thirds of the region’s conflict fatalities were produced in originally internal disputes where outsiders imposed their solutions. In such conflicts, 98% of fatalities were produced only after outsiders had entered the domestic dispute with their military might. In Syria, the number of direct conflict fatalities more than tripled after the West initiated air strikes against the self-declared ISIS and the CIA started its indirect military interference in the war — interference which appears to have drawn the Russians in as advanced US antitank missiles were decimating the forces of their ally Bashar al-Assad. Early indications are that Russian bombing is having the usual consequences.

The evidence reviewed by political scientist Timo Kivimäki indicates that the “protection wars [fought by ‘coalitions of the willing’] have become the main source of violence in the world, occasionally contributing over 50% of total conflict fatalities.” Furthermore, in many of these cases, including Syria, as he reviews, there were opportunities for diplomatic settlement that were ignored. That has also been true in other horrific situations, including the Balkans in the early 1990s, the first Gulf War, and of course the Indochina wars, the worst crime since World War II. In the case of Iraq the question does not even arise. There surely are some lessons here.

The general consequences of resorting to the sledgehammer against vulnerable societies comes as little surprise. William Polk’s careful study of insurgencies, Violent Politics, should be essential reading for those who want to understand today’s conflicts, and surely for planners, assuming that they care about human consequences and not merely power and domination. Polk reveals a pattern that has been replicated over and over. The invaders — perhaps professing the most benign motives — are naturally disliked by the population, who disobey them, at first in small ways, eliciting a forceful response, which increases opposition and support for resistance. The cycle of violence escalates until the invaders withdraw — or gain their ends by something that may approach genocide.

Playing by the Al-Qaeda Game Plan

Obama’s global drone assassination campaign, a remarkable innovation in global terrorism, exhibits the same patterns. By most accounts, it is generating terrorists more rapidly than it is murdering those suspected of someday intending to harm us — an impressive contribution by a constitutional lawyer on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which established the basis for the principle of presumption of innocence that is the foundation of civilized law.

Another characteristic feature of such interventions is the belief that the insurgency will be overcome by eliminating its leaders. But when such an effort succeeds, the reviled leader is regularly replaced by someone younger, more determined, more brutal, and more effective. Polk gives many examples. Military historian Andrew Cockburn has reviewed American campaigns to kill drug and then terror “kingpins” over a long period in his important study Kill Chain and found the same results. And one can expect with fair confidence that the pattern will continue.

No doubt right now U.S. strategists are seeking ways to murder the “Caliph of the ISIS” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is a bitter rival of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. The likely result of this achievement is forecast by the prominent terrorism scholar Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. He predicts that “al-Baghdadi’s death would likely pave the way for a rapprochement [with al-Qaeda] producing a combined terrorist force unprecedented in scope, size, ambition and resources.”

Polk cites a treatise on warfare by Henry Jomini, influenced by Napoleon’s defeat at the hands of Spanish guerrillas, that became a textbook for generations of cadets at the West Point military academy. Jomini observed that such interventions by major powers typically result in “wars of opinion,” and nearly always “national wars,” if not at first then becoming so in the course of the struggle, by the dynamics that Polk describes. Jomini concludes that “commanders of regular armies are ill-advised to engage in such wars because they will lose them,” and even apparent successes will prove short-lived.

Careful studies of al-Qaeda and ISIS have shown that the United States and its allies are following their game plan with some precision. Their goal is to “draw the West as deeply and actively as possible into the quagmire” and “to perpetually engage and enervate the United States and the West in a series of prolonged overseas ventures” in which they will undermine their own societies, expend their resources, and increase the level of violence, setting off the dynamic that Polk reviews.

Scott Atran, one of the most insightful researchers on movements, calculates that “the 9/11 attacks cost between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute, whereas the military and security response by the U.S. and its allies is in the order of 10 million times that figure. On a strictly cost-benefit basis, this violent movement has been wildly successful, beyond even Bin Laden’s original imagination, and is increasingly so. Herein lies the full measure of jujitsu-style asymmetric warfare. After all, who could claim that we are better off than before, or that the overall danger is declining?”

And if we continue to wield the sledgehammer, tacitly following script, the likely effect is even more violence with broader appeal. The record, Atran advises, “should inspire a radical change in our counter-strategies.”

Al-Qaeda/ISIS are assisted by Americans who follow their directives: for example, Ted “carpet-bomb ’em” Cruz, a top Republican presidential candidate. Or, at the other end of the mainstream spectrum, the leading Middle East and international affairs columnist of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, who in 2003 offered Washington advice on how to fight in Iraq on the Charlie Rose show: “There was what I would call the terrorism bubble… And what we needed to do was to go over to that part of the world and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, and, uh, take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble. And there was only one way to do it… What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, which part of this sentence don’t you understand? You don’t think we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy we’re going to just let it go? Well, suck on this. Ok. That, Charlie, was what this war was about.”

That’ll show the ragheads.

Looking Forward

Atran and other close observers generally agree on the prescriptions. We should begin by recognizing what careful research has convincingly shown: those drawn to jihad “are longing for something in their history, in their traditions, with their heroes and their morals; and the ISIS, however brutal and repugnant to us and even to most in the Arab-Muslim world, is speaking directly to that… What inspires the most lethal assailants today is not so much the Quran but a thrilling cause and a call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends.” In fact, few of the terrorists have much of a background in Islamic texts or theology, if any.

The best strategy, Polk advises, would be “a multinational, welfare-oriented and psychologically satisfying program… that would make the hatred ISIS relies upon less virulent. The elements have been identified for us: communal needs, compensation for previous transgressions, and calls for a new beginning.” He adds, “A carefully phrased apology for past transgressions would cost little and do much.” Such a project could be carried out in refugee camps or in the “hovels and grim housing projects of the Paris banlieues,” where, Atran writes, his research team “found fairly wide tolerance or support for ISIS’s values.” And even more could be done by true dedication to diplomacy and negotiations instead of reflexive resort to violence.

Not least in significance would be an honorable response to the “refugee crisis” that was a long time in coming but surged to prominence in Europe in 2015. That would mean, at the very least, sharply increasing humanitarian relief to the camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey where miserable refugees from Syria barely survive. But the issues go well beyond, and provide a picture of the self-described “enlightened states” that is far from attractive and should be an incentive to action.

There are countries that generate refugees through massive violence, like the United States, secondarily Britain and France. Then there are countries that admit huge numbers of refugees, including those fleeing from Western violence, like Lebanon (easily the champion, per capita), Jordan, and Syria before it imploded, among others in the region. And partially overlapping, there are countries that both generate refugees and refuse to take them in, not only from the Middle East but also from the U.S. “backyard” south of the border. A strange picture, painful to contemplate.

An honest picture would trace the generation of refugees much further back into history. Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reports that one of the first videos produced by ISIS “showed a bulldozer pushing down a rampart of sand that had marked the border between Iraq and Syria. As the machine destroyed the dirt revetment, the camera panned down to a handwritten poster lying in the sand. ‘End of Sykes-Picot,’ it said.”

For the people of the region, the Sykes-Picot agreement is the very symbol of the cynicism and brutality of Western imperialism. Conspiring in secret during World War I, Britain’s Mark Sykes and France’s François Georges-Picot carved up the region into artificial states to satisfy their own imperial goals, with utter disdain for the interests of the people living there and in violation of the wartime promises issued to induce Arabs to join the Allied war effort. The agreement mirrored the practices of the European states that devastated Africa in a similar manner. It “transformed what had been relatively quiet provinces of the Ottoman Empire into some of the least stable and most internationally explosive states in the world.”

Repeated Western interventions since then in the Middle East and Africa have exacerbated the tensions, conflicts, and disruptions that have shattered the societies. The end result is a “refugee crisis” that the innocent West can scarcely endure. Germany has emerged as the conscience of Europe, at first (but no longer) admitting almost one million refugees — in one of the richest countries in the world with a population of 80 million. In contrast, the poor country of Lebanon has absorbed an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees, now a quarter of its population, on top of half a million Palestinian refugees registered with the U.N. refugee agency UNRWA, mostly victims of Israeli policies.

Europe is also groaning under the burden of refugees from the countries it has devastated in Africa — not without U.S. aid, as Congolese and Angolans, among others, can testify. Europe is now seeking to bribe Turkey (with over two million Syrian refugees) to distance those fleeing the horrors of Syria from Europe’s borders, just as Obama is pressuring Mexico to keep U.S. borders free from miserable people seeking to escape the aftermath of Reagan’s GWOT along with those seeking to escape more recent disasters, including a military coup in Honduras that Obama almost alone legitimized, which created one of the worst horror chambers in the region.

Words can hardly capture the U.S. response to the Syrian refugee crisis, at least any words I can think of.

Returning to the opening question “Who rules the world?” we might also want to pose another question: “What principles and values rule the world?” That question should be foremost in the minds of the citizens of the rich and powerful states, who enjoy an unusual legacy of freedom, privilege, and opportunity thanks to the struggles of those who came before them, and who now face fateful choices as to how to respond to challenges of great human import.

Donald Trump’s longtime butler Anthony Senecal told NBC News Thursday that he thinks President Barack Obama should be “hung … from the portico of the White Mosque — it used to be the White House.”

It was the latest inflammatory statement from the servant turned unpaid Mar-a-Lago historian, whose Facebook post arguing Obama should’ve been “shot as an enemy agent in his first term,” first reported by Mother Jones, prompted a Secret Service investigation.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Eugene, Oregon, U.S. on May 6, 2016. JIM URQUHART / Reuters
The agency released a statement Thursday saying they were “aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation.”

But in a phone interview with NBC News, Senecal stood by his remarks in the Facebook post and went even further, saying the president’s children were “rent-a-kids” because he felt they didn’t look sufficiently like their parents, and that Muslims should be shot or bombed in the U.S.

“There’s more than some issues with [President Obama] — he’s a goddamn traitor, T-R-A-I-T-O-R,” Senecal said. “I think he should be hung. I think he should be hung next to Hillary Clinton, and I think it should be public, I think it should be televised.”

He added: “I think it ought to be done from the portico of the White Mosque — it used to be the White House.”

Senecal said “it’s a good possibility” that President Obama is a Muslim, and “I know he was” born in Kenya, though he admitted he can’t prove it.

Of the Obama’s children, Senecal said he felt they may not actually be related to the president and his wife because, “first of all, they don’t even look like him. There’s no notification of their birth. I haven’t seen a baby picture yet.”

Senecal also expressed frustration over Muslims, saying, “I do not like them, any of them … I don’t trust them.” He added that the few American Muslims he knows are “nice people,” though he had harsh words for Muslim immigrants.

“But the boatloads they’re bringing in here, I have no use for,” he said. “I think they ought to be shot at the shore.”

Senecal said Muslims have “just totally disgraced” some cities in the U.S., naming Detroit and Milwaukee as examples, and suggested the U.S. “designate those as nuclear bomb sites.”

“We need to bomb em out,” he said. “I could care less if they’re in the U.S. — I don’t want em in the U.S., they don’t belong here. They belong in the sand dunes where they came from.”

While Senecal’s proposals for handling Muslims in the states are more extreme than the Muslim ban proposed by his employer, the two share a skepticism of Islamic followers and President Obama’s citizenship. Still, Senecal said repeatedly he had never discussed his political views with his employer, choosing rather to air them on Facebook when “I get really ticked off.”

I am friendly with Donald Trump’s son-in-law and daughter, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. They are both extremely fine people. Jared is a leading advisor to his father-in-law on Israel and is rock-solid on all matters pertaining to the Jewish state. He stems from a famously philanthropically Jewish family who are devoted in every way to the interests of the Jewish community.

I am in accordance with Mr. Trump on his strong position on issues of national security, fighting ISIS and terrorism, and tearing up the disastrous Iran nuclear deal which has already been breached by the Iranian government, making a mockery of the agreement. In addition, Iran continues to breach the1948 UN Anti-Genocide Convention, to which the United States is signatory, through repeated genocidal incitement against Israel, making a mockery of that agreement as well. Neither President Obama nor Secretary Clinton has ever held Iran accountable for their repeated threats to annihilate the Jewish state.

In addition, the pro-Israel community must be deeply concerned about Hillary Clinton’s incredibly close ties to her foremost advisor, Sidney Blumenthal, and his son Max, who also advises her on the Middle East and whom she has called “a mitzvah.” While the father is merely an arch-critic of Israel, the son is the foremost Israel hater in America, regularly comparing Israel to a Nazi State and the IDF – where my son Mendy serves bravely as an IDF combat soldier – to the SS. Max Blumenthal is an abomination to decency, and it is extremely troubling that Hillary Clinton has categorically refused to repudiate Sidney and Max Blumenthal as an advisors. Even the Obama Administration refused to hire Sidney Blumenthal due to his penchant for unbecoming political tricks.

For all those reasons and more, it is clear that Donald Trump is the right candidate for the Presidency over Hillary. What Hillary promises is more of the failed Obama foreign policy which has left the Middle East on fire and has emboldened our enemies around the world, not to mention America overlooking the genocide of both innocent Arabs in Syria as well as the genocide of Christians throughout the Middle East.

Donald Trump and I disagree on many issues, as is proper in any democracy deserving of the name. Most of all, I disagree with him on a ban on Muslim immigration into the United States. America has, and should never have, a religious litmus test. Indeed, I was extremely proud that at our annual International Champions of Jewish Values Awards Gala held one week ago by our organization The World Values Network at the Marriot Marquis, where Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson served as hosts, we highlighted a Muslim family from Afghanistan whose lives we saved by extracting them from Afghanistan after they had saved a young Muslim woman from an honor killing. Fatima Kazimi, who ran a woman’s shelter in Bamian, came in person and publicly thanked both the Adelsons and our organization for saving her family’s lives.

America is a country built on immigrants, including my father and my grandparents.

But whatever my differences with Donald Trump, he is the right candidate to protect Israel, bolster the security of the United States, and hold terrorists accountable for their atrocities against innocent civilians around the world.

I thank Mr. Trump for his strong support of the Jewish state and for his long friendship with the Jewish community, culminating in his daughter obtaining an orthodox conversion to the Jewish faith which she and her children practice proudly and openly.

Russia is being forced to look for ways to neutralize threats to its national security due to deployment of the NATO anti-missile shield in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after the alliance launched a missile defense site in Romania.

“Now, after the deployment of those anti-missile system elements, we’ll be forced to think about neutralizing developing threats to Russia’s security,” Putin said.

The US missile shield in Europe is a clear violation of Russian-American arms treaties, Putin said at a meeting with Russian military officials, adding that the anti-missile facilities can be easily repurposed for firing short and midrange missiles.

The US anti-missile shield in Europe is yet another step in increasing international tensions and launching a new arms race, he stressed.

"We're not going to be dragged into this race. We’ll go our own way. We’ll work very accurately without exceeding the plans to finance the re-equipment of our Army and Navy, which have already been laid out for the next several years,” Putin said.

"Recent developments indicate that the situation isn’t getting better. Unfortunately, it’s deteriorating. I’m talking about the launch of the radar station in Romania as one of the elements of the up-and-coming US anti-missile defense program,” Putin said.

Russia is making every effort to maintain the strategic balance of power, in order to avoid the outbreak of large-scale conflicts, the president said.

NATO formally declared its missile defense base in Deveselu, Romania, operational on Thursday, bringing to fruition a plan to construct a shield in Eastern Europe first announced by George W. Bush in 2007.

Earlier, Moscow said that not only was the US missile defense aimed at neutralizing Russia’s offensive capability – an accusation the Pentagon has repeatedly rejected – but that the Deveselu’s MK 41 launching systems it uses could be re-equipped with offensive cruise missiles.

Russia also stated that US actions are a violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and warned that it may pull out from the deal if Washington continues with its anti-missile plans.

The missile shield uses a network of radars that track potential threats in the atmosphere, before launching an interceptor missile from a stationary base, or a fleet.

Simultaneously with Romania coming online, NATO is beginning construction on another base in Poland, which will complete the Eastern European segment of the shield in 2018.