| Stoking a war that can’t be won
Madmen and madwomen pulling the strings — again!
By Gerald Celente
PUBLISHER of Trends Journal (2014 Spring Edition) trendsjournal.com 
Ides of March: The next chapter in the History of the Future was being written. If it held true, billions
of people and millions of species would be annihilated. The narrative was as clear as day and
anyone should have been able to see how the drama would play out. But, intellectually and emotionally
paralyzed, most people did nothing to save their lives. Many who did see it coming weren’t
able to believe what they saw, while others simply hoped for divine intervention. Some would try
to act, but only after it was too late.
History, as it does, was repeating itself. From Cain and Abel to the War on Terror, it was more of the same, just for different reasons. Only the uniforms and the eapons changed. From sticks and stones to biological, cyber, chemical, and nuclear weapons …civilization had come a long way in its ability to kill more with less.
Once again, a handful of madmen and madwomen in high government positions were leading their people in the march toward death and mass destruction. And right on cue, as in ages past, hundreds of millions of madmen and madwomen were joining up and signing on as loyal followers and true believers in the “cause.”
How stupid can they be? Very stupid!
It was as though 21st-century civilization itself was suffering from chronic Attention Deficit Disorder
and Alzheimer’s Disease at the same time. Billions of people were behaving as though yesterday never
happened.
Were their brains too fried to remember just a decade back? Or were they too ashamed to admit to being conned by Little Boy George Bush who blew his horn — trumpeting that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda —and Tony “Bullshit” Blair, who swore to God, Queen and Country that he had the proof in his hands?
Do “We the People” lack the courage to remember how we” (not me) believed Secretary of State Colin “Lying” Powell’s two-bit UN act, during which he unveiled bogus “proof” of Saddam’s mobile WMD labs? Are those patriots who waved flags and swore their support afraid to recall nasty National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice’s ominous warning that “We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon … we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”?
The messages of fear and hate were planted in the minds of the populace, and the propagandists didn’t
have to dig too deep to sow the seeds. The average Joe and Jane’s excuses for their ignorance, denial and/or support for war range from; “I’m too busy and don’t have the time to worry about what’s going on” or, “I don’t want to know, it depresses me,” to, “they are our leaders, they know best.”
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the
Joint Chief of Staff, CIA Director, Senators, Congressmen, Congresswomen, policy chiefs, military
experts, retired generals — a never-ending parade of war hawks — were flooding the airwaves, screeching for the blood of Saddam Hussein. Day in, day out, they spread the word that if “we” didn’t kill Hussein, he’d kill us with WMDs. And that was just for starters! Given his ties to Al Qaeda, terrorists would soon wreak havoc in a neighborhood near you. The White House lied and the media swore to it.
Want more facts? Here they are:
Lapdogs USA
In the years subsequent to the Iraq invasion, evidence has proved that the Bush administration not only cherry picked intelligence to reach a predetermined conclusion, but knowingly twisted information known to be unreliable into an unassailable argument for war. Anyone, including myself, who questioned or challenged that conclusion was blacklisted by the media, threatened, and more or less accused of treason. Presidential mouthpiece Ari Fleisher — contender for the “Josef Goebbels Award for Distinguished Service” — declared, “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.”
As we would document in a special Trends Journal report, “Trends and Tragedies,” TV and cable anchors feared reprisal. (See “Trends and Tragedies,” Trends Journal,June 2008).
“There was a sense, a pressure from the corporations who own where we work, and from government itself, to
really squash any dissent,” said CBS’s Katie Couric. “I can remember getting in trouble with administration officials because of asking questions that they didn’t feel comfortable with.”
“There was just a drumbeat of support from the administration and it is not our job to debate them,” cowered
ABC’s Charlie Gibson.
Studies showed that of the 393 on-camera sources appearing on ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS newscasts, only
one percent was anti-war and just six percent expressed skepticism. In “Trends and Tragedies” we built the case that high crimes and misdemeanors had been committed by President Bush and others in his administration. The correctness of the position we had taken from the onset of the war was irrefutably confirmed by additional information provided by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, in his book “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.” Whistleblower McClellan accused the White House of “spreading distortions,” “shading the truth,” speaking “half-truths,” and telling “outright lies” in a “political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the America people.”
(Trends Journal, Winter 2011)
the real story
Now, in April 2014, the tune’s the same, just the lyrics have changed. The current villain is Vladimir
Putin, the new Adolf Hitler. Once again, the public is being lied into war and programmed to hate. And
once again, every media Tom, Dick and Harriet has quickly bought into the lies and eagerly peddled
them to anyone who will listen.
FROM START TO FINISH
Forecasting trends requires knowledge of the past and understanding of the present in order to anticipate
the future. Since the end of the Cold War, relations between the U.S. and Russia have ranged from cordial, during Clinton’s years, to stormy, through Bush’s terms, and are now extremely rotten under
Barack Obama’s reign. For the general public of both nations, it was a distant relationship with no
strong feelings one way or another. That is, up until now.
I have been warning about “Cold War 2.0” breaking out between the U.S. and Russia for years.
Most recently, in the Winter 2014 Trends Journal, I wrote about how Russian President Putin stopped
U.S. President Obama from launching a military strike against Syria. And how, as a result, President
Obama’s prestige suffered after he backed down from his threat to punish Syrian President Assad for crossing the “red line” that Obama had drawn. In contrast, Forbes magazine, highly respected among America’s financial elite, ranked the Russian President — for taking measures to work towards peace in Syria — as the most powerful person in the world.
But it was more than just Putin that had Obama’s prestige and poll numbers sinking to new lows. Obama’s act was turning sour. The appeal of the President’s plastic smile and teleprompter oratory had run its course. After five years in office, Obama had failed to deliver either “Hope” or “Change” that anyone could believe in. He didn’t even deliver on the first promise he made on his first day in office: To return America to the “moral high ground,” and “to restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great,” by closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within a year.
The only bragging rights Obama could claim was that “he” killed America’s Public Enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden. What had been hyped as the signature piece of legislation that would define his legacy, “Obamacare,” turned out to be the biggest federal fiasco in the course of our nation’s history. Further hacking away at Obama’s image, Putin, in November 2013, killed a U.S.-sponsored trade agreement that was about to be struck between the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the Ukraine government by offering better terms. The rest is history.
And amidst all I’ve read, watched and witnessed on
the subject, the most thorough telling of the United
States’ role in overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically
elected government, the import of the Crimea situation
and the way Putin’s deal was scuttled and IMF
terms imposed upon Ukraine … has been done by
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. It’s all there for those wishing
to open their minds, study the facts and draw their
own conclusions. But the history you will read in Dr.
Roberts accounting is not the history you will read in
the official tomes a hundred years from today. Nor
will it mirror the outright lies, twisted facts and government
propaganda being hawked by the Western
media and sold by presstitutes today. Dr. Roberts has
written history as it happened. You can read all about
it in this issue (page 16) and on his web site: www.
paulcraigroberts.org/
As detailed in Dr. Roberts’ observations, Ukraine
was only one part of a much grander geopolitical
strategy. Under the Obama Administration, U.S. conflict
with Vladimir Putin’s Russia was part of a trend:
Back In The (Old) USSR
Kicking off his run for a return engagement, old boss
Vladimir Putin, as it now stands, will win the race for
Russian President in March 2012, despite some unexpectedly
vocal and well financed opposition … and despite
what he says is an attempt by the United States to derail
his victory.
Following parliamentary elections in December, large
scale political protests erupted in Russia, provoked by
claims that the elections had been rigged. In response to
the unrest — unprecedented in his more than decade long —
Putin claimed it had been instigated by America: “I looked at the first reaction of our US partners,”
Mr. Putin said. “The first thing that the Secretary of
State did was say that they [the election results] were not
honest and not fair, but she had not even yet received the
material from the observers. She set the tone for some
actors in our country and gave them a signal,” Mr. Putin
continued. “They heard the signal and with the support
of the US State Department began active work.”
(Trends Journal, Winter 2012)
the real story
Two years and several geopolitical squabbles
later — in the months leading up to the
Ukraine crisis — a not so subtle volley in a
“More trouble with Russia” campaign was launched
by the US. Not willing to let an atrocity go to waste,
on 29 December 2013, following a terrorist bombing
in a train station in Volgograd, a Russian city several
hundred miles from where the Sochi 2014 Olympics
were to be hosted, headlines across America blared:
“Terror Attacks Hit Russia Leading Into 2014 Winter
Olympics.” Week after week, leading up to the February
games, government officials, “credible sources,”
and “intelligence experts” warned Americans that
travelling to Sochi was risky. From toothpaste bombs
and shoe bombs to black widow bombers, the message
was clear:
Security expert: It’s not if but when for Sochi Olympics terror attack
Leading up to the Sochi Olympics, media and government officials warned of looming terror attacks, hotels in disrepair, filth, yellow
drinking water, and homophobes everywhere. The propaganda campaign primed Americans to view Russia unfavorably.
Veteran security consultant Bill Rathburn hopes that he’s
wrong about the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia,
but he has more than a hunch that he’s not.
“The security threat is higher than it’s ever been in the
history of the Olympic Games,” Rathburn told Yahoo
News. “In my opinion, it’s not a matter of whether there
will be some incident, it’s just a matter of how bad it’s
going to be.”
Rathburn, a former police chief in Los Angeles and
Dallas, directed security for the 1996 Summer Games in
Atlanta and served in various planning roles for six other
Olympics.
Rathburn’s biggest concern is with Doku Umarov, described
by some as “Russia’s bin Laden.” Six months ago
the Chechen rebel leader threatened attacks on civilians
in Russia and urged Islamic separatists to use force to disrupt
the Olympics, which he described as “satanic dances
on the bones of our ancestors.”
The fear campaign worked. Just days before
the opening ceremony, a February 5th CNN poll
showed that 57 percent of Americans believed
terror would strike during the Sochi Games. And
that wasn’t all. According to the steady stream of
reports, hotel rooms were in disrepair, the city was
filthy, poor people had been shipped out of sight
and stray dogs shot. The Olympic venues were not
ready, reporters claimed, it wasn’t safe to drink
the yellow water … and there were homophobes
The fear campaign worked. Just days before
the opening ceremony, a February 5th CNN poll
showed that 57 percent of Americans believed
terror would strike during the Sochi Games. And
that wasn’t all. According to the steady stream of
reports, hotel rooms were in disrepair, the city was
filthy, poor people had been shipped out of sight
and stray dogs shot. The Olympic venues were not
ready, reporters claimed, it wasn’t safe to drink
the yellow water … and there were homophobes
the real story
Would a down-and-out President take the nation to war to regain his lost power and diminishing popularity?
everywhere. Minor annoyances were magnified
and achievements were dismissed. Americans even
popularized a hashtag #SochiProblems on Twitter
to highlight any failures.
The propaganda campaign was a resounding success.
U.S. TV ratings fell 12 percent from those for the
Winter Olympics in Vancouver, four years earlier.
A Gallup poll in early February showed 60 percent
of Americans viewed Russia unfavorably, the most
since 1994, while 63 percent viewed Putin unfavorably.
Thus, when the Ukraine crisis violently erupted,
American minds had already been pre-programmed
by propaganda. Facts would not get in the way. The
stage for war and hate had been masterfully set.
BAD NEWS AND GOOD RATINGS
After the 2000 Presidential election of hanging
chads, uncounted ballots, and a Supreme Court
decision that weaseled him into the White House,
George W. Bush began his first term with a 57 percent
approval rating. From that point on, it was all
downhill. On the day before 9/11, Bush’s popularity
rating fell to 51 percent. America was in recession and
it had become obvious to everyone half awake that
the President of the United States was as incompetent
as he appeared to be.
At the instant “terror” struck, however, Bush’s poll
numbers skyrocketed, as if by magic. Just ten days
later, with war drums loudly beating, his popularity
soared to 90 percent. It was a miracle. Overnight, he
was transformed from a disaster-in-the-making into
the Commander in Chief. On 7 October 2001, with
88 percent of Americans and most of the Western
world cheering him on, George W. Bush launched
Operation Enduring Freedom, what would be the
longest war in American history.
Now, in April 2014, with Barack Obama sinking in
the poll ratings, would history repeat itself? Would
a down-and-out President take the nation to war to
regain his lost power and diminishing popularity?
Time and trends will tell. TJ |
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