Global Research

16 years ago today, I was watching the Iraq Shock & Awe bombing campaign after having interviewed Weapons Inspectors who told us that there were NO WMDs in Iraq while showing us their inspection reports. I was doing research for a documentary on all the false intel and mainstream propaganda during the run-up to the invasion. It was called “WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception” directed by my old friend Danny Schechter (RIP Danny).

What I watched very closely play out in Iraq is playing out now throughout the US. I talked about it in a recent podcast, here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

“Also, now that I brought up my old friend [late] Danny Schechter, one of the first projects I worked on with Danny was a documentary called “W.M.D.: Weapons of Mass Deception,” which was about how the TV “news” media became a propaganda system during the run-up to the Iraq War. Before the invasion even began, before the Shock & Awe bombing campaign even started, we interviewed weapons inspectors who were monitoring weapons inside Iraq. They showed us their reports saying that Iraq didn’t have any Weapons of Mass Destruction.

We reported on the false intel on Iraq’s alleged involvement in 9/11, before the invasion even began. This was all known before the war started, but the mainstream media ignored all this vital information.

We knew that Ahmed Chalabi, the so-called Iraqi dissident who provided false WMD intel and false intel linking Saddam to 9/11 and al Qaeda, it turned out that Chalabi was actually on SAIC’s payroll.

SAIC is an incredibly powerful global private military contractor. Then we watched as Baghdad fell and the new Iraqi government was then run by SAIC. Literally, once Baghdad fell SAIC took over the country, literally. They even made Ahmed Chalabi the Iraqi Oil Minister, it was such blatant imperialism.

The guy who provided all the false intel to wrongfully justify the invasion, yeah that guy, he was put in charge of Iraq’s oil supply, he became the Iraqi Oil Minister. I mean, you couldn’t even make this stuff up. It’s a cheesy over-the-top movie plot. It was such blatant imperialism.

Anyhow, SAIC set up the Iraqi Media Network, what became Iraq’s mainstream media system, and they began to stoke sectarian and tribal conflicts, while they helped deploy divide & conquer PSYOPS to create and exacerbate sectarian conflicts, tribal conflicts throughout the region.

The Iraqi Police Forces were armed, and then they fired those police officers, leaving them with no job prospects or ability to support their families. This was right after they gave them all sorts of weapons. Ah, what does 2+2 =?

The plan all along was to create civil wars throughout the region. The plan was to create terrorist groups so they could destabilize the region, creating groups like ISIS was the exact plan, and it is still paying off for them to this day, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

It’s a never-ending racket, the never-ending war racket robbing trillions from the U.S. Treasury.

Paul Bremer, he was installed as the Iraqi Viceroy, and he did everything he could to destabilize the Iraqi population, all with SAIC’s help. They stoked tribal and sectarian conflicts; it was barbaric imperialism 101.

It was a horrifyingly grotesque display of barbaric imperial greed. And U.S. taxpayers are still pouring billions upon billions annually into this imperial heist.

It’s the gift that just keeps giving.

I don’t want to get too deep into Iraq right now, covering all of that in such detail was a horrible experience, seriously traumatizing, such a grotesque display of barbaric imperial greed. I don’t want to get into it.

I’m digressing a bit here anyway… bottom line though, and this is what scares me, what happened throughout Iraq and the Middle East is very similar to what is beginning to unfold here in the United States now. It is unfolding on a much more incremental scale here though.

You can look at Iraq and destabilization of Middle Eastern nations as experimental operations, where they honed their skills for what is being incrementally, tactically deployed throughout the U.S. and Europe now. I don’t want to sound overly conspiratorial, I don’t think it is one group with some master plan or anything like that. It is not so simple and black and white like that, at all, but I do think it is a fundamental dynamic of the overall global centralizing imperial system.

The imperial seed is blossoming, coming full circle. It’s a self-perpetuating global centralizing force that has taken on a life of its own, a momentum of its own. I’ll get into what I mean by a self-perpetuating global centralizing force and the imperial seed blossoming throughout this series, I’ll spend significant time on that.

For now, let’s just look at all the similar dynamics unfolding here in the U.S. that happened throughout Iraq and the Middle East. What happened there is very similar to what is happening here in the United States now.

We are flooded in all this divide and conquer propaganda, in tribal, identity politics. The U.S. is also flooded with guns and weapons now, throughout the civilian population, and they have militarized police forces all throughout the U.S. now as well. At this point, here in the U.S., they can’t even produce bullets fast enough to keep up with demand now.

People are stockpiling weapons all over the country. And don’t get me wrong here, I’m not anti-2nd Amendment rights; I understand how tyrannical governments can get, as we’ve been discussing. It’s just that this strategy, it’s a power play that we’ve seen clearly before.

Flood the local population with weapons, militarize the police, then stoke divide & conquer propaganda, identity politics, wedge issues, and while the population fights with each other, global imperial forces rob their resources and wealth, and bury the population in debt.

Debt is a key part. And look, we now have all-time record-breaking debt, across the board. National debt is at an all-time high now, and it just keeps skyrocketing, exponentially now. State debt is at an all-time high now, household debt is at an all-time high now, and personal debt is also at an all-time high right now. Our overall debt is skyrocketing now.

It is an Imperial Debt Death Spiral.

Debt is the imperialists’ ultimate weapon, an effective and efficient weapon. So debt and divide and conquer propaganda are the imperialists 1, 2 punch.

I mean, just do a serious analysis of our present overall situation. It’s not very surprising that the U.S. is now the world’s top oil and gas “exporter.”

In 2018, petroleum production increased by 1.3 million barrels per day… by 1.3 million barrels per day.

Quite the smash and grab imperial heist.

And Congress has now decided to sell off 290 million barrels of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Given the strategic importance of keeping our energy reserve supplies after recent extreme weather events, after major storms caused us to use more of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve recently, it is shocking that they would now decide to cut our Strategic Petroleum Reserve in half now.

That is leaving us wide open and exposed for when new disasters strike. It’s imperial plunder.

As we discussed before, our natural resources are being looted for pennies on the dollar at record-breaking extraction rates. It’s such a smash and grab heist, our land is being polluted in the process, in unprecedented fashion.

Water supplies are being contaminated in communities across the entire country. I’ll go into detail on all of this. It’s a free-for-all smash and grab heist across the entire government, an all-out imperial heist.

The Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management, the agencies who oversee our natural resources, they are being run by people who worked with companies that are currently looting our natural resources for pennies on the dollar.

Corruption is running amok. It is happening across the board. The revolving door is spinning between predatory Global Interests and every sector of our government that is supposed to protect us against those predatory Global interests.

It’s not very surprising that tax dollars are being looted by the trillions, throughout our entire tax system now.

It’s not very surprising that national and state debt has skyrocketed to all-time record-breaking levels, as have household and personal debt.

It’s not very surprising that the government and economic systems are rigged.

It’s not very surprising that identity politics and all sorts of divisive rhetoric are being spewed throughout the mainstream media.

It’s not very surprising that guns are flooding our streets as police forces are militarized.

2+2 = what? Basic math.

We’ve seen this tyrannical imperial power play many times before.

So back to what I was saying was the primary problem. This is all happening because the journalistic societal guidance systems throughout the US have been decapitated.

The journalistic societal guidance systems that are supposed to inform and warn the American people about all of this have been destroyed. They have been systematically, systemically undermined. Journalism is dead throughout the U.S..

Getting back to the original point, if you are an average American worker, you don’t have the time it takes to understand the wider-societal power dynamics. If you are working full-time, taking care of your family, there is no way that you have the time it takes, the energy and psychological bandwidth left over after working and taking care of a family.

After a long day, it not like you are going to investigate and research complex issues and analyze wider-societal power dynamics, on a global scale. It is not going to happen, so this is where real journalism is supposed to step in to fill the void, to serve this critical societal function, to be a vital societal guidance system.

Real journalism provides vital information to people so they can make wise decisions that affect their lives and largely determine their fate, their family’s future. So with this vital societal guidance system dismantled, people are easily manipulated by propagandists, by psychological operations experts, by PR firms, by Democratic and Republican talking points that are repetitiously reinforced throughout the mainstream media and large online companies, and by Artificial Intelligence algorithms now, which are incredibly effective with specifically tailored messaging based on an individual basis now.

The AI Algo Bots are no joke. They edit your reality in real-time. They are Orwellian Thought Police on steroids. It sounds crazy, and it is crazy, but it’s true. The AI Algo Bots will make you think exactly what powerful interests want you to think, with incredible precision now.

They know exactly how you think, what you like and don’t like. As Cambridge Analytica’s Director said, they can “drop the bucket further down the well” of your consciousness then you realize, and they may indeed know your “hopes and fears” better than you do.

For now, I just want to make it clear to people that real journalism is dead in this country. Journalists, real investigative journalism is hard work, very time consuming, and it is a high wire act. Powerful people, powerful interests do not like people reporting on their corrupt activities, obviously. But doing it independently now, you don’t have the backing of any large news organization, you are forced to do it without resources and any significant backing.

I’ve fought hard, a 20-year ever-evolving battle to get this far, this is no joke. It’s a high wire act, a high stress, high risk, high wire act, and it doesn’t pay well at all. It is an enormous risk, and in the grand scheme of things you’re this little gnat, a gadfly. I don’t know how I’ve made it this far. It’s an ever-evolving battle.

Based on everything that I can see, the American People are defenseless at this point. We are exposed, our defenses, our support systems have been systematically dismantled.

Where is the legit leadership?

Where is the effective leadership?

I just don’t see it.

People who understand power well enough, who care about the overall well-being of the American people, those people, those voices are being systematically wiped out, snuffed out.

People who put the overall wellbeing of the American people before cashing-out to the Global Imperial Elite, they are in short supply. They are a shrinking demographic within the government as well.

When you go beyond the Republican vs Democrat dynamic and focus on the fundamentals of corruption, when you defend the American People against predatory Global Interests, you are kept out of the mainstream media, you get hacked, you get censored and suppressed online, they undermine your ability to make a living at doing investigative reporting.

The main point here, journalists who can report on systemic corruption in a way that can overcome divide and conquer narratives and unite the American people, journalists who can report on systemic corruption in a way that unites Americans are kept out of the mainstream media and they are targeted for hacking, online censorship and many forms of suppression.

Journalists who can report on systemic corruption in a way that unites Americans and informs them on the fundamentals of real power are targeted and the primary objective is to make it impossible for them to make a living at doing that reporting. That is the bottom line; make it impossible for investigative journalists to make a living.

Honestly, at this point, there is no way you can just work part-time and do a serious investigation into power, and get people to actually notice it. People are bombarded by so much bullshit. There is so much noise.

Real investigative journalism is incredibly hard work, time consuming, high-pressure work. At this point, it is too risky, too costly. It takes a heroic effort just to do it over the short-run, the sustainability that is needed is just not there anymore. The support systems have been dismantled.

So the Journalistic Guidance Systems have been destroyed, and now the American people are lost out to sea.

We did have this brief window of opportunity with the Internet. Journalists who had a deeper understanding of systemic corruption, and could cut through the divide and conquer narratives were able to thrive online for a while, but now the Iron Curtain is coming down online.

Voices who can cut through the divide and conquer narratives are being hacked, censored and suppressed on a much wider scale and in much more sophisticated ways now.

I mean, at the most basic level, now if you can cut through Republican Vs Democrat divide and conquer narratives they smear you as being a Russian bot of some kind, or something like that. That whole Prop or Not PSYOP was the beginning of the end for independent online journalism.

I do think the biggest reason why I’m hacked and censored online is because I focus on systemic corruption in a way that unites people. The supporters I have, the people who support my work are people with opinions across the political spectrum, across many demographics. Systemic corruption has gotten so bad now, most demographics are feeling the negative impacts in various ways.

No one wants to have their tax dollars stolen. No one wants to have their water supply contaminated. No one wants to eat toxic food. No one wants to pay twice as much for healthcare than any other nation pays.

The corrupt global imperial elite interests who are robbing our tax dollars and our nation’s wealth, they don’t care what your political perspective or ideological viewpoint is. It’s not like they are only stealing tax dollars and wealth from liberals and not conservatives. It’s not like they distinguish between looting the wealth of conservatives or liberals, the old or the young, women or men. Global Imperialists don’t discriminate in any way, they will rob anyone and everyone.

All right, look, I’ll wrap this 2nd session, 2nd podcast up right now. I know these first few sessions are very long, long-form, probably too long for everyone’s ever-shorting attention spans….”

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