The neocons who control the US Government are eager to foment a nuclear war with Russia, beginning with beefing up the NATO countries abutting Russia. Needless to say, those countries would be the first destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, and the insane neocons could care less. While the countries of the European Union are currenly vassals of the US, Germany and France are beginning to worry. If Germany were to pull out of NATO and establish a detente with Russia, it would be "game over" for the neocons. Let us pray that this is what will happen.

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Germany accuses NATO of “dangerous propaganda”. America’s strategic objective is to prevent a German-Russian alliance

From Russia Insider, March 23, 2015                                                                Original Here
Jens Wernicke and Dr. Daniele Ganser

This article originally appeared at NachDenkSeiten. Translated for RI by Mihajlo Doknic

The German Chancellery has accused NATO chief Philip M. Breedlove of “dangerous propaganda”. The question: what to think about this critique coming from a government that uses this kind of propaganda technique itself. Jens Wernicke, media scientist and author of several books, talked with the renowned Swiss peace researcher and NATO expert Dr. Daniele Ganser.

Mr. Ganser, the German Chancellery accuses NATO chief Philip M. Breedlove, of “dangerous propaganda”. Breedlove exaggerates Russia’s military involvement in East Ukraine, for example. What is going on here? Is the German government just accusing NATO of war propaganda?

The German Chancellery is right with its critique. In my opinion, something dangerous is happening right now: US generals like Breedlove are trying to provoke a war, where Germans and Russians would kill each other in order to weaken both countries. This is a cynical, actually a diabolical plan. But this is exactly what US strategist like Georg Friedman, director of the Stratfor think tank, are suggesting. United, Germany and Russia are the only power that could threaten the US, Friedman said in a speech in February 2015 in Chicago.

“Our primordial interest [preventing a German-Russian alliance] is to ensure that will never happen,” said Friedman.

“The US, as an empire, cannot intervene in Eurasia all the time,” he explained. Therefore they must turn countries against each other, so they don’t build close alliances. “I suggest something President Ronald Reagan used against Iraq and Iran: He supported both war parties!” Freidman stated. The war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988 claimed at least 400.000 dead, so from the point of peace science it is frightening what Friedman suggests. “So the Iranians and Iraqis fought against each other and not against us,” explained Freidman in his speech. “That was cynical and amoral. But it worked.”

The USA cannot occupy Eurasia. The same moment we put our boots on European soil, we will be outnumbered due to demographics. In my opinion the radical US generals like Breedlove are trying to implement this strategy, where in future German and Russian Soldiers kill each other in Ukraine, thus destabilizing and weakening the whole of East Europe. That would be a catastrophe. Therefore a peace movement needs to encourage an alternative solution, like the neutrality of Ukraine. No NATO membership and friendship between Germany and Russia.

How is NATO trying to fuel this conflict?

NATO General Breedlove often sticks out by spreading exaggerated and untrue claims. This is how NATO is fueling the war. This is dangerous, because the situation is very tense, as we know. On the 12th of November 2014 Breedlove claimed that Russian toops and tanks have marched into Ukraine! But that wasn’t true and it wasn’t just a little thing. Literally the NATO general said: “We have seen that Russian troops, Russian tanks, Russian artillery and air defense systems have moved into Ukraine.” BBC and other mass media spread that worldwide but it was a lie.

And US General Ben Hodges, commander of the US troops in Europe, also pushes for war by supporting the Ukrainian army. In January 2015 he visited a military hospital in Kiev and handed over a medal for bravery of the US Army to a wounded Ukrainian soldier! That, of course, increases tension.

However, the US General Hodges shows symbolically: The US is an “active party of war” in the Ukraine. It stands by the Ukrainian army that is fighting the Russian supported separatists in East Ukraine. Because Germany is a NATO member, there is a danger that German soldiers are dragged into this war by the US. Similar to Afghanistan after 2001. If that happens, then we have exactly the situation Friedman is asking for: Germans and Russians shooting at each other in the Ukraine. Of course I hope that this won’t happen. However, a peace movement needs to raise this and warn of such dangers in order to avoid them.

Is this a very common thing, I mean, that NATO lies, exaggerates or deceives?

Yes, regrettably NATO has, on a regular basis, combined lies and war. In my book NATO’s secret armies in Europe. Staged terror and clandestine warfare I show how, during the Cold War, NATO had built in Western countries, supported by CIA and the British secret service MI6, secret armies, of which existence the governments and population didn’t know anything.

Especially the US generals are dangerous, because they have been continuously fighting wars in different countries during the last 70 years. As representatives of an empire they are not only used to kill but also to deceive. General Lyman Lemnitzer, for example, who served as SACEUR of NATO (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) between 1963 and 1969, so one of Breedlove’s predecessors, suggested in the 60s that the US should stage a war against Cuba by destroying an American ship at the military base in Guantanamo and by staging terror attacks in Washington, and then for both crimes accuse Fidel Castro in order to get the American public behind the war. John F. Kennedy, however, stopped the operation [Northwoods]. But it shows, how dangerous the officers in the Pentagon are.

Is only the US pushing for wars or are other countries also involved?

NATO has 28 members and unfortunately other NATO countries are involved in war propaganda as well. For example, the Brits! In March 2003, before they attacked Iraq, Tony Blair, the then prime minister, said: “Iraq is in possession of chemical and biological weapons. Its rockets are ready for use within 45 minutes.” That was a lie! The attack on Iraq by USA and Great Britain started, nevertheless, without an UN mandate. So it was illegal!

It was also an illegal aggression when NATO, on the 24th of March 1999, started bombing Serbia. Because NATO didn’t have a mandate of the UN Security Council. Back then it was Germany under the Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the Defense Minister Rudolph Scharping and the Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, that actively took part in the aggression [War on Yugoslavia], together with the US. In the run-up to the aggression lies were spread to get the people behind this war. Later, in 2014, Schröder admitted that NATO violated International Law. “When the question came up how to deal with developments in Yugoslavia and Kosovo respectively, we sent our planes, our Tornados [German warplanes] to Serbia together with NATO and bombed a sovereign state without a Security Council Resolution,” admitted Schröder self-critically.

How come that in those cases nobody raises its voice and we only read the same NATO statements with their arguments?

The mass media in Germany are pushing people into a direct confrontation with Russia, in a way the radicals in the US, like Stratfor director Friedman, are asking for. It means, they fuel animosity towards Russia. And very rarely there is a critical discussion about NATO or about the strategic interests of the US, those powers that are fueling the war in Ukraine.

Many journalists don’t even call the US an empire fearing for their jobs and other things. But it is apparent that the US is an empire of our times, the most powerful nation that, of course, is pursuing its national interests. This fact is rarely raised by the mass media. So many people watching TV don’t even know the term ‚US Empire’ or the strategic interests of this empire in Eurasia. Therefore, critical people disappointed by the TV and Newspapers are trying to inform themselves through alternative media on the Internet.

So, do you think the critique by our [German] government is a sign that they finally try to break the global spiral of violence and distance itself from propaganda in favour of respectful dialogue with Russia? And, is our government more credible than NATO itself?

I am from Switzerland, which is not part of NATO. So I do look at the German policy and Chancellor Merkel from the outside. And I see that many people are concerned with the situation [war] in Ukraine, because of its proximity. And most of the Germans that I know, they don’t want a future, where German soldiers and Russian soldiers shoot at each other! But I am not sure what the German government wants. They move in a zigzag course. One day, as a NATO member, they fuel, together with the US, the war in the Ukraine by increasing tensions with Russia. And sometimes they try to keep the friendship or at least the respect with Russia by publically criticizing NATO war-hawk Breedlove. So which line will be predominant in future its hard to tell.

What is your assessment of the departure of the hawk Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO General Secretary? Will Jens Stoltenberg establish himself as a peaceful successor? To put it differently: How much influence has a Secretary General actually on NATO policies?

If you study the history of NATO it is easy to notice that the post of Secretary General is always staffed with an European, now Stoltenberg, a Norwegian, and before that, Rasmussen, a Dane. But the Europeans should not be mistaken as to who is calling the shots in NATO, it is the US! Secretary General is not the most important post. It is actually the one of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, because here lies the military command. An American, now Breedlove, always holds this position.

Has Stoltenberg publically criticized Breedlove or tried to stop him? No, he is not able to. His job as Secretary General is primarily to give NATO an European face. This is better received in Europe, than having a US diplomat appear all the time.

So I don’t believe that Stoltenberg is able or willing to transform NATO into a peaceful organization. Also because of the track record of NATO in the past two decades: NATO wars and the technique of, Regime Change’ have left countries in ruins and traumatized people, in Libya, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. So I hope that Ukraine won’t be put on this list too!

Thank you for the interview.

http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/23/4815

http://www.globalresearch.ca/germany-accuses-nato-of-dangerous-propaganda-americas-strategic-objective-is-to-prevent-a-german-russian-alliance/5439264

The most essential story of our time (an absolute must read) is related here by reporter John Pilger. Among his quotes is that by distinguished American investigative journalist Charles Lewis: "...if we journalists had done our job 'there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq'.” Pilger notes that Dan Rather of CBS and David Rose of the Observer gave the same answer: "...had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children might be alive today; and millions might not have fled their homes; and the infamous Islamic State might not now exist." "The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News – but beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn’t Fox News; it was the New York Times." "The same is true of the Washington Post and the Guardian, both of which have played a critical role in conditioning their readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All three liberal newspapers have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia – when, in fact, the fascist led coup in Ukraine was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato." "The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember." "As I write this, the US Congress votes on Resolution 758 which, in a nutshell, says: 'Let’s get ready for war with Russia'.” Blogger's remark: A nuclear war with Russia could kill us all ...thanks to our despicable mainstream media.

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AlterNet / By John Pilger                                                                                                               Original Here

Propaganda Has Triumphed over Journalism, and the Consequences Are Enormous

We need a press that teaches the young to be agents of people, not power.

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December 5, 2014  |  Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?

Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity?  And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an “invisible government”. It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.

The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media – a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.

This power to create a new “reality” has been building for a long time. Forty-five years ago, a book entitled The Greening of America caused a sensation. On the cover were these words: “There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual.”

I was a correspondent in the United States at the time and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of the author, a young Yale academic, Charles Reich. His message was that truth-telling and political action had failed and only “culture” and introspection could change the world.

Within a few years, driven by the forces of profit, the cult of “me-ism” had all but overwhelmed our sense of acting together, our sense of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the political, and the media was the message.

In the wake of the cold war, the fabrication of new “threats” completed the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a vehement opposition.

In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the distinguished American investigative journalist.  We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier.  I asked him, “What if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims, instead of channeling what turned out to be crude propaganda?”

He replied that if we journalists had done our job “there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq.”

That’s a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question. Dan Rather, formerly of CBS, gave me the same answer.  David Rose of the Observer and senior journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous, gave me the same answer.

In other words, had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children might be alive today; and millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and the infamous Islamic State might not now exist.

Even now, despite the millions who took to the streets in protest, most of the public in western countries have little idea of the sheer scale of the crime committed by our governments in Iraq. Even fewer are aware that, in the 12 years before the invasion, the US and British governments set in motion a holocaust by denying the civilian population of Iraq a means to live.

Those are the words of the senior British official responsible for sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s – a medieval siege that caused the deaths of half a million children under the age of five, reported Unicef.  The official’s name is Carne Ross. In the Foreign Office in London, he was known as “Mr. Iraq”.  Today, he is a truth-teller of how governments deceive and how journalists willingly spread the deception.  “We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence,” he told me, “or we’d freeze them out.”

The main whistleblower  during this terrible, silent period was Denis Halliday. Then Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and the senior UN official in Iraq, Halliday resigned rather than implement policies he described as genocidal.  He estimates that sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis.

What then happened to Halliday was instructive. He was airbrushed. Or he was vilified. On the BBC’s Newsnight programme, the presenter Jeremy Paxman shouted at him: “Aren’t you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?” The Guardian recently described this as one of Paxman’s “memorable moments”. Last week, Paxman signed a £1 million book deal.

The handmaidens of suppression have done their job well.  Consider the effects.  In 2013, a ComRes poll found that a majority of the British public believed the casualty toll in Iraq was less than 10,000 – a tiny fraction of the truth. A trail of blood that goes from Iraq to London has been scrubbed almost clean.

Rupert Murdoch is said to be the godfather of the media mob, and no one should doubt the augmented power of his newspapers – all 127 of them, with a combined circulation of 40 million, and his Fox network. But the influence of Murdoch’s empire is no greater than its reflection of the wider media.

The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News – but beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn’t Fox News; it was the New York Times.

The same is true of the Washington Post and the Guardian, both of which have played a critical role in conditioning their readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All three liberal newspapers have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia – when, in fact, the fascist led coup in Ukraine was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato.

This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington’s military encirclement and intimidation of Russia is not contentious. It’s not even news, but suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war.

Once again, the evil empire is coming to get us, led by another Stalin or, perversely, a new Hitler. Name your demon and let rip.

The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The biggest Western military build-up in the Caucasus and eastern Europe since world war two is blacked out. Washington’s secret aid to Kiev and its neo-Nazi brigades responsible for war crimes against the population of eastern Ukraine is blacked out. Evidence that contradicts propaganda that Russia was responsible for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner is blacked out.

And again, supposedly liberal media are the censors. Citing no facts, no evidence, one journalist identified a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine as the man who shot down the airliner. This man, he wrote, was known as The Demon.  He was a scary man who frightened the journalist. That was the evidence.

Many in the western media haves worked hard to present the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.

What the Russian president has to say is of no consequence; he is a pantomime villain who can be abused with impunity. An American general who heads Nato and is straight out of Dr. Strangelove — one General Breedlove – routinely claims Russian invasions without a shred of visual evidence. His impersonation of Stanley Kubrick’s General Jack D. Ripper is pitch perfect.

Forty thousand Ruskies were massing on the border, according to Breedlove. That was good enough for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Observer — the latter having previously distinguished itself with lies and fabrications that backed Blair’s invasion of Iraq, as its former reporter, David Rose, revealed.

There is almost the joi d’esprit of a class reunion. The drum-beaters of the Washington Post are the very same editorial writers who declared the existence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction to be “hard facts”.

“If you wonder,” wrote Robert Parry, “how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire US political/media structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats versus black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts or reason.”

Parry, the journalist who revealed Iran-Contra, is one of the few who investigate the central role of the media in this “game of chicken”, as the Russian foreign minister called it. But is it a game? As I write this, the US Congress votes on Resolution 758 which, in a nutshell, says: “Let’s get ready for war with Russia.”

In the 19th century, the writer Alexander Herzen described secular liberalism as “the final religion, though its church is not of the other world but of this”. Today, this divine right is far more violent and dangerous than anything the Muslim world throws up, though perhaps its greatest triumph is the illusion of free and open information.

In the news, whole countries are made to disappear.  Saudi Arabia, the source of extremism  and western-backed terror, is not a story, except when it drives down the price of oil. Yemen has endured twelve years of American drone attacks. Who knows? Who cares?

In 2009, the University of the West of England published the results of a ten-year study of the BBC’s coverage of Venezuela. Of 304 broadcast reports, only three mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the government of Hugo Chavez. The greatest literacy programme in human history received barely a passing reference.

In Europe and the United States, millions of readers and viewers know next to nothing about the remarkable, life-giving changes implemented in Latin America, many of them inspired by Chavez. Like the BBC, the reports of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and the rest of the respectable western media were notoriously in bad faith. Chavez was mocked even on his deathbed.  How is this explained, I wonder, in schools of journalism?

Why are millions of people in Britain are persuaded that a collective punishment called “austerity” is necessary?

Following the economic crash in 2008, a rotten system was exposed. For a split second the banks were lined up as crooks with obligations to the public they had betrayed.

But within a few months — apart from a few stones lobbed over excessive corporate “bonuses” — the message changed. The mugshots of  guilty bankers vanished from the tabloids and something called “austerity” became the burden of millions of ordinary people. Was there ever a sleight of hand as brazen?

Today, many of the premises of civilised life in Britain are being dismantled in order to pay back a fraudulent debt – the debt of crooks. The “austerity” cuts are said to be £83 billion. That’s almost exactly the amount of tax avoided by the same banks and by corporations like Amazon and Murdoch’s News UK. Moreover, the crooked banks are given an annual subsidy of £100bn in free insurance and guarantees – a figure that would fund the entire National Health Service.

The economic crisis is pure propaganda. Extreme policies now rule Britain, the United States, much of Europe, Canada and Australia. Who is standing up for the majority? Who is telling their story? Who’s keeping record straight? Isn’t that what journalists are meant to do?

In 1977, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, revealed that more than 400 journalists and news executives worked for the CIA. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the TV networks. In 1991, Richard Norton Taylor of the Guardian revealed something similar in this country.

None of this is necessary today. I doubt that anyone paid theWashington Post and many other media outlets to accuse Edward Snowden of aiding terrorism. I doubt that anyone pays those who  routinely smear Julian Assange – though other rewards can be plentiful.

It’s clear to me that the main reason Assange has attracted such venom, spite and jealously is that WikiLeaks tore down the facade of a corrupt political elite held aloft by journalists. In heralding an extraordinary era of disclosure, Assange made enemies by illuminating and shaming the media’s gatekeepers, not least on the newspaper that published and appropriated his great scoop.  He became not only a target, but a golden goose.

Lucrative book and Hollywood movie deals were struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and its founder. People have made big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.

None of this was mentioned in Stockholm on 1 December when the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, shared with Edward Snowden the Right Livelihood Award, known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize. What was shocking about this event was that Assange and WikiLeaks were airbrushed. They didn’t exist. They were unpeople.

No one spoke up for the man who pioneered digital whistleblowing and handed the Guardian one of the greatest scoops in history. Moreover, it was Assange and his WikiLeaks team who effectively – and brilliantly – rescued Edward Snowden in Hong Kong and sped him to safety.  Not a word.

What made this censorship by omission so ironic and poignant and disgraceful was that the ceremony was held in the Swedish parliament  — whose craven silence on the Assange case has colluded with a grotesque miscarriage of justice in Stockholm.

“When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”

It’s this kind of silence we journalists need to break. We need to look in the mirror.  We need to call to account an unaccountable media that services power and a psychosis that threatens world war.

In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn’t wash any more. What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika – an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism.

It’s 100 years since the First World War. Reporters then were rewarded and knighted for their silence and collusion. At the height of the slaughter, British prime minister David Lloyd George confided in C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: “If people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow, but of course they don’t know and can’t know.”

It’s time they knew.

This was John Pilger’s address to the Logan Symposium, “Building an Alliance Against Secrecy, Surveillance & Censorship”, organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism, London, 5-7 December, 2014. Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com

John Pilger's documentaries have won academy awards in both the U.K. and the U.S. His new film, "Utopia," was released in Australia in January. 

Paul Craig Roberts: "The extraordinary propaganda being conducted against Russia by the US and UK governments and Ministries of Propaganda, a.k.a., the “Western media,” have the purpose of driving the world to war that no one can win." "In contrast, Russia has emerged from tyranny and from a government based on lies..."

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War Is Coming — Paul Craig Roberts

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July 28, 2014 | Original Here                                              Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

War Is Coming

Paul Craig Roberts

The extraordinary propaganda being conducted against Russia by the US and UK governments and Ministries of Propaganda, a.k.a., the “Western media,” have the purpose of driving the world to war that no one can win. European governments need to rouse themselves from insouciance, because Europe will be the first to be vaporized due to the US missile bases that Europe hosts to guarantee its “security.”

As reported by Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge, the Russian response to the extra-legal ruling of a corrupt court in the Netherlands, which had no jurisdiction over the case on which it ruled, awarding $50 billion dollars from the Russian government to shareholders of Yukos, a corrupt entity that was looting Russia and evading taxes, is telling. Asked what Russia would do about the ruling, an advisor to President Putin replied, “There is a war coming in Europe.” Do you really think this ruling matters?”

The West has ganged up on Russia, because the West is totally corrupt. The wealth of the elites is based not only on looting weaker countries whose leaders can be purchased (read John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for instruction on how the looting works), but also on looting their own citizens. The American elites excel at looting their fellow citizens and have wiped out most of the US middle class in the new 21st century.

In contrast, Russia has emerged from tyranny and from a government based on lies, while the US and UK submerge into tyranny shielded by lies. Western elites desire to loot Russia, a juicy prize, and there stands Putin in the way. The solution is to get rid of him like they got rid of President Yanukovich in Ukraine.

The looting elites and the neoconservative hegemonists have the same goal: make Russia a vassal state. This goal unites the Western financial imperialists with the political imperialists.

I have recorded for readers the propaganda that is used in order to demonize Putin and Russia. But even I was stunned by the astounding and vicious lies in the UK publication The Economist on July 26. The cover is Putin’s face in a spider web, and, you guessed it, the cover story is “A Web of Lies.” http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21608645-vladimir-putins-epic-deceits-have-grave-consequences-his-people-and-outside-world-web?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709

You need to read this propaganda both in order to see the gutter level of propaganda in the West and the obvious drive to war with Russia. There is no evidence whatsoever in the story to support The Economist’s wild accusations and demand for the end of Western “appeasement” of Russia and the harshest possible action against Putin.

The kind of reckless lies and transparent propaganda that comprises The Economist’s story has no other purpose than to drive the world to war.

The Western elites and governments are not merely totally corrupt, they are insane. As I have previously written, don’t expect to live much longer. In this video one of Putin’s advisors and Russian journalists speak openly of US plans for a first strike on Russia:
http://financearmageddon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/official-warning-u-s-to-hit-russia-with.html

Blogger's Note: I provide below the video linked to just above. Everyone should play this video!

I HAD A HUNCH THAT WHEN RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT FROM JAPAN BEGAN REACHING OUR SHORES OUR GOVERNMENT WOULDN'T TELL US HOW BAD IT WAS. BUT I NEVER DREAMED THAT THE FDA WOULD RAISE THE LIMITS ON THE AMOUNT OF NUCLEAR RADIATION WE CAN "SAFELY" ABSORB!

Original

FALLOUT

EPA Plans to Reduce Cleanup of Nuclear Fallout Now

“No rest for the wicked!" Says EPA Employee With a Smile

by Michael Kane

(Special to CollapseNet)

© Copyright 2011 CollapseNetwork, Inc.   (Please Distribute Widely)

[Long time readers will remember Michael Kane from his years of writing for From The Wilderness where he proved himself a fearless investigative journalist. Michael also contributed a chapter to my book “Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. It’s nice to see him in the field again. – MCR]

March 24, 2011, 12:30 EDT, NEW YORK CITY– In the wake of the continuing nuclear tragedy in Japan, the United States government is still moving quickly to increase the amounts of radiation the population can “safely” absorb by raising the safe zone for exposure to levels designed to protect the government and nuclear industry more than human life. It’s all about cutting costs now as the infinite-growth paradigm sputters and moves towards extinction. As has been demonstrated by government conduct in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Deepwater Horizon and in Japan, life has taken a back seat to cost-cutting and public relations posturing.

The game plan now appears to be to protect government and the nuclear industry from “excessive costs”… at any cost.

PAGs

Protective Action Guides , or PAGs as they are called by the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ), are used to enforce the law following any incident involving the release of radioactive material. If there were a dirty bomb attack in America or nuclear meltdown, how would the EPA interpret the Clean Water Act? How would it interpret a whole suite of laws that impact upon our food, water and soil? As with the incredibly toxic pollution which has claimed many lives of 9-11 responders, the sole decision about what is safe is an administrative EPA process shielded from public scrutiny.

In 1992, the EPA produced a PAGs manual that answers many of these questions. But now an update to the 1992 manual is being planned, and if the “Dr. Strangelove” wing of the EPA has its way, here is what it means (brace yourself for these ludicrous increases):

•  A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90;
• A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and
• An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.ⁱ

The new radiation guidelines would also allow long-term cleanup thresholds thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever judged safe in the past. Under long-established EPA policy, in conformity with long-accepted international standards on “acceptable” amounts of radiation these proposed changes would increase the permissible amounts of radiation to levels where 25% of those exposed to these “new acceptable levels” would develop cancer based on the EPA’s own numbers.ⁱⁱ

And the scariest part is that once the EPA publishes the changes in the Federal Register, it is a done deal. EPA deliberations are not discussed in public or debated in Congress. There is only a public comment period after the new PAGs are published. But it could be said that the EPA is notorious for ignoring what the public has to say during such comment periods.

These insane changes are nothing new. In the final days of the Bush Administration, the “Dr. Strangelove” wing of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was preparing to dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after “radiological incidents.”

Radiological incidents include both reactor incidents at power plants and dirty bomb attacks.
This psychotic move was stopped in the eleventh hour in 2009 by a group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER  ) who submitted two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. When the EPA was not forthcoming with all of the documentation, PEER sued obtaining the desired docs and winning $12,000 in lawyer fees. They thought that was the end of it.ⁱⁱⁱ
  

THE INSANITY IS BACK!!!

        

Right now there is another push within the EPA to resurrect this agenda. Many mid and upper-level managers currently at EPA were working for the agency under Bush and are, in fact Bush-Cheney era appointees.
One such person is Sara DeCair, a health physicist with the EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air since 2003. She is currently one of those rewriting the standards.

In an internal EPA email that was obtained by PEER, DeCair explains that the Head Administrator of the EPA, Lisa P. Jackson  , had given the green light to go forward with these changes sometime in the beginning of May, 2010. In that email, which was time-stamped 05/06/2010 04:35 PM EDT, DeCair ominously wrote the following:

“We have noticed that she (Lisa P. Jackson) does not like any delay between deciding a thing and moving forward. No rest for the wicked, I like to say! Thank you :)” (emphasis added)^{iv (see below)}

Notice how Sara DeCair closes the email with a smiley face. Why didn’t she just go ahead and throw in a   LOL or LMFAO ? No rest for the wicked, indeed.

Not all in EPA agreed to the Draconian changes. There is an internal battle being fought, but it appears – based on the email obtained by PEER which is published at the end of this report – that the battle may have already been won since Lisa P. Jackson has seemingly given the green light.

Jackson is the Head Administrator of EPA. The final decision rests with her and President Obama. While it seems she may have already been swayed by the Dr. Strangelove wing of her agency, she needs to be swayed back down to reality on planet earth with the rest of us.

Here is Jackson’s email address:  jackson.lisap@epa.gov
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Email Lisa P. Jackson and tell her you are outraged that she seems to have given the green light to this horrific EPA plan. Demand that she stops the process and fires Sara DeCair for putting a smiley face on serving the corporate interest over the public interest.

Email or call Sara DeCair here: decair.sara@epa.govThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it    (202) 343-9713

Let DeCair know her words are being read and examined, and that you’ve emailed the Head Administrator of the EPA (Jackson), demanding DeCair be fired. Until these people know we are holding them accountable, they will hide in the shadows where they are most dangerous.

Reading the above-mentioned EPA email (provided at the end of this report) makes it clear that the agency has very little interest in protecting the environment but is consumed with its “communication strategy” to the power-players involved, most notably the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They even state that DHS needs to be met with first “so that the DHS is not surprised when we begin the Interagency discussions.” 
[Or maybe so that DHS can keep their personnel out of areas labeled safe for useless eaters. – MCR]

Act of Congress or Enforcement?

As I learned about this, my first question was, “Wait a minute. Isn’t this all about legislation? Wouldn’t such a change require an act of Congress?”

NO! This is all about enforcement, and enforcement rests with the executive branch, which in this case is the EPA. It is the EPA who decides in advance how laws will be enforced by the rest of government.

And these decisions are hammered out in backroom deals so concealed from the public that members of the EPA itself feel comfortable giving their work the tagline of “no rest for the wicked” with a smiley face in communications where they are attempting to fast-track a process that would jeopardize millions of lives and risk further injury to our obviously unstable environment.

Federal Register

Published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Federal Register is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents.^v

The EPA will be publishing their update of PAGs in the Federal Register once clearance has been given by the EPA’s Head Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, and, of course, by President Obama. Once that happens, it is effectively game-over. So stopping the new PAGs before they make it to the Federal Register is imperative.
How much time is there to stop it? That’s hard to say because it is not a public process. The only time we get a glimpse as to the rollout plans of the EPA is when groups like PEER are successful with FOIA requests for internal documents.

According to Jeff Ruch, the Executive Director of PEER (www.peer.org ), his organization currently has yet another FOIA request in process that should result in the disclosure of all of the EPA’s documents in this regard. Originally the request was put in while the documents were still in draft form, so a follow-up was required. Ruch anticipates that all documentation will be provided in fairly short time.

PEER’s plan is to air those documents in full daylight and let them speak for themselves. Ruch feels confident that – in light of the crisis in Japan – the EPA will have no choice but to back off of this redrafting of PAGs (for the time being).

Bridge The Gap

The overwhelming majority of the above information was provided to  CollapseNet by Jeff Ruch and PEER. Ruch got us in touch with Dan Hirsch, who is President of The Committee to Bridge the Gap . Ruch told CollapseNet that Hirsch and his organization were the main players opposing the EPA’s changing of PAGs.
In a phone interview with Hirsch, CollapseNet asked what he and those he worked with were planning to do to stop the EPA from making these life-threatening changes.

Hirsch indicated that he had planned to write to the Assistant Administrator of the EPA expressing concern that the PAGs had not been addressed properly and request another face-to-face meeting. Hirsch informed me he and his colleagues had met with EPA a year and a half ago in regards to their attempt to change the PAGs back at that time. Remember, this process began at the end of the Bush administration and has only recently resurfaced. 

Japan

It took only a few minutes for Hirsch to state that all his PAGs work has been put on hold by the unfolding events in Japan. He has been consumed with trying to get the American government to deploy appropriate radiation monitors – which they do have, somewhere – into California to detect radioactive iodide from radioactive plumes possibly coming from Japan. No such deployment has occurred.

Hirsch said there were 12 monitors deployed in California and that only 5 of them are operational. None of them are capable of detecting radioactive iodide. Under standard operating procedures the samples would be sent to Georgia for processing and the results should be available 5 days later. But by that time the radioactive plume would no longer be in California so the data would be completely useless in helping to protect humans from being exposed to radiation.

The government does have monitors that can detect radioactive iodide instantly, but they have not been deployed in California as of this writing. CollapseNet told Hirsch that, based on what he was saying, it seemed like the federal government had no intent to detect radioactive iodide in time to prevent exposure.
“It certainly gives that impression,” responded Hirsch.

Worst Fears

It seems that the Strangelove-wing of the EPA is working so hard to change the PAGs it is as if the powerful are anticipating radiological disasters in America as inevitable. Anything is possible, and everything is conceivable in the continuing collapse of human industrial civilization.

----------------------------

ENDNOTES
ⁱ Interview with Jeff Ruch, Executive Director of PEER (www.peer.org), on March 17, 2011 at 4:45pm EST
See also http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110316/NEWS08/110316027/1969/NEWS/Group-warns-EPA-ready-increase-radioactive-release-guidelines-?odyssey=nav|head

ⁱⁱ Ibid

ⁱⁱⁱ Ibid

^iv The email originating with Sara DeCair was sent to me via pdf attachment from Jeff Ruch on March 17, 2011, and has been published along with this report.  (see below)
^v http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/