Coups for Corporate Profit Define Our Foreign Policy

With all the distractions it is difficult for regular folks to see the steady move toward a disastrous war with Iran. We are well on the road to upsetting the social reforms and nationalized oil resources of Venezuela (as we discussed last week). Isn't it interesting how the terrorists and our existential enemies always seem to be where there is oil. Korea fired another missile...I'm sure our response will be bellicose, despite the fact the only request they have is for us to stop military exercises around their country. This week the health insurance conflict (it's not about health care) dominated the cycle. Russiagate perks along. T-rumps cabinet cleaning has been part of the media feeding frenzy too. So the firehouse sprays and the people are too overwhelmed to see what is obvious (like our idiotic Iranian policy) and what is hidden (like the arrest of Imran Awan).

Let's begin with the irony of Iran. Here's a one minute warning from Vijay Prashad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4qEkAp8tao
The entire conversation with Vijay Prashad and Paul Jay on Iran and the middle east is interesting. (40 min and transcript)
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19620:%26%238203%3BVijay-Prashad%3A-Trum...

Informative conversation with Ervand Abrahamian, a retired professor of history at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is the author of several books, including "The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations." Great background and summary. 2 parts video and text
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/24/incoherent_policy_us_imposes_sanc...
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/24/newly_declassified_documents_conf...

How can we support the Saudis and oppose Iran? It blows my mind. Jimmy Dore's too. (7 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu7rap9jVqs

But there's no doubt about it, Iran is in our sights...

After a contentious meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week, President Donald Trump instructed a group of trusted White House staffers to make the potential case for withholding certification of Iran at the next 90-day review of the nuclear deal.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/21/trump-assigns-white-house-team-to-ta...

We refuse to look at our own history, but we're no longer are hiding it. Tillerson's department of Exxon released the 1953 story of the Iranian coup we engineered. They used to deny this shit, and now they're advertising.

The Department of State recently released a long-suppressed volume of historical records documenting the role of the United States in the 1953 coup against the Iranian government of Mohammad Mosadeq.
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2017/06/iran-frus-release/

The report makes no qualms...we instigated a coup primarily for corporate interest. I heard it suggested Tillerson released this report in order to piss off the Iranians. Western media ignores the report as the T-rumpeteers move toward war. From the preface of the report:

This Foreign Relations retrospective volume focuses on the use of covert operations by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations as an adjunct to their respective policies toward Iran, culminating in the overthrow of the Mosadeq government in August 1953. Moreover, the volume documents the involvement of the U.S. intelligence community in the policy formulation process and places it within the broader Cold War context. For a full appreciation of U.S. relations with Iran between 1951 and 1954, this volume should be read in conjunction with the volume published in 1989.

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951-54Iran/comp1

In over 1,000 pages of internal cables and letters released with little publicity on June 15, U.S. officials discussed western economic and political interests in Iran, as well as the tactics and viability of arranging a coup in the year leading up to Mosaddegh's eventual removal.
The plot was eventually successful, although knowledge that the CIA had been involved led to widespread popular anger that some have said laid the conditions for the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when the U.S. Embassy was occupied.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/New-Documents-Reveal-CIA-Motives-T...

The papers released this month show U.S. fears over the spread of communism, as well as the British desire to regain access to Iran’s oil industry, which had been nationalized by Mosaddegh. It also offers a cautionary tale about the limits of American power as a new U.S. president long suspicious of Iran weighs the landmark nuclear deal with Tehran reached under his predecessor.
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/us_state_department_document...

Jimmy Dore talks with Jordan Chariton about the media corruption (13 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YrfoRV-xHY

A complicit media helps prepare for war. A 10-minute film, titled “The Middle East’s Cold War, Explained,” is a textbook example of how US government propaganda pervades corporate media. With the help of a former senior government official and CIA analyst, the Vox video articulates a commonplace pro-US, anti-Iran narrative that portrays the violent conflicts in the Middle East as sectarian proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
http://fair.org/home/vox-cia-iran-saudi-arabia-middle-east-cold-war/

It is the corporate media that provides us the opportunity to create the disasters like the one in Yemen http://www.alternet.org/world/yemen-worlds-largest-humanitarian-crisis?a...

The CIA control of the MSM is so complete today that every evil government action is immediately seconded, whether it be the lies about the Attacks of September 11, 2001, the wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc., the coup in Ukraine, the downing of the Malaysian jetliner there, drone murders, the looting of the American people by the elites, alleged sarin gas attacks in Syria, the anti-Russia bashing – everything.  The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NPR, etc. – all are stenographers for the deep state.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/27/the-deep-state-now-and-then/

Jimmy Dore gives a specific example of CIA collusion with the Washington Post (19 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwMvNoq0NUA

Lee Camp discusses how CIA head Pompeo plans to bring stability to the Middle East and fight terrorism with the same failing policies that have made lives of civilians there miserable and have turned them against America. (8 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqauyNSM51A

Venezuela votes today for representatives to a constitutional assembly. The coverage is all about the anti Maduro protests, but there are supporters too. Abby Martin interviews several. (25 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYWrPiUeWY

Much of the international left has been misled about the violence in Venezuela, thinking that the government is the only one responsible, that President Maduro has declared himself to be dictator for life (when he actually confirmed that the presidential elections scheduled for late 2018 will proceed as planned), or that all dissent is being punished with prison (when a major opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, who was partly responsible for the post-election violence in 2014 was just released from prison, now under house arrest). If this is the reason for the silence on Venezuela, then the left should be ashamed for not having read its own critiques of the mainstream media.
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/content/article/161-more-blog-posts-...

Medea Benjamin is so correct...
You would think it would be easy to form a united front with activists from different movements who want to redirect our tax dollars. Students fighting for free education should understand that stopping just one weapons system, the expensive and unnecessary Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, would fund the education of all college students for the next two decades. Nurses fighting for universal health care should understand that if we cut the bloated military budget, we’d have plenty of money for a national health-care system like the Europeans have. Environmentalists paddling their kayaks to block oil-digging ships should understand that if we dramatically cut our military spending, we’d have hundreds of billions of dollars to propel us into the era of green, sustainable energy. Unions should recognize that the military is one of the worst creators of jobs in relation to money spent.
http://www.alternet.org/activism/mass-movement-stop-mass-killing?akid=15...

The department’s budget is awash in waste, as you might expect from the only major federal agency that has never passed an audit.  For example, last year a report by the Defense Business Board found that the Department of Defense could save $125 billion over five years just by trimming excess bureaucracy.  And a new study by the Pentagon’s Inspector General indicates that the department has ignored hundreds of recommendations that could have saved it more than $33.6 billion.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/10-ways-military-gobbles-your-...

Great conversations from the week.

The intercept podcast (with transcript) was good this week. Glenn filled in for Jeremy and covers the new cold war. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald find something they can actually agree on (the Democratic establishment’s Russia hysteria), but diverge on Tucker’s coverage of immigration and crime. And Russian-American writer Masha Gessen explains how conspiracy thinking is a mirror of the leaders we put in power, and why it’s so tempting — and dangerous — to believe in simplistic reasons for Trump’s election.
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/intercepted-podcast/

Another podcast about the deep state recommended by Big Al
http://www.gunsandbutter.org/blog/2017/03/18/the-deep-state-as-fake-news

Great discussion with Chris Hedges and Eugene Puryear, the 2008 and 2016 vice presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation and author of “Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America”. They discuss the emerging radicalism among American youth and how to end mass incarceration. (25 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buWC8f88uL4

Journalist Joshua Green explains how Bannon took his hard-right nationalist politics from the fringes of the Republican Party all the way to the White House. (3 parts, video and transcript)
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/26/joshua_green_on_the_devils_bargain
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/26/joshua_green_on_how_steve_bannon
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/26/joshua_green_on_how_bannons_exper...

But what about T-rump? Don't you know he's always the focus of the News!

White-collar criminologist and economist Bill Black can't quit laughing at the absurdity of T-rump. There's a transcript but it is worth a short listen anyway. You'll find yourself laughing too.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&...

The big deal has been the cabinet cleaning. Will Bannon be next...especially given his ideas?

Steve Bannon is represented as the grim reaper on SNL. Is he all bad or does he have any good ideas?
Top White House adviser Steve Bannon is pushing for tax reform to include a new 44 percent top marginal tax rate, hitting people who earn more than $5 million a year, with the revenue paying for tax cuts for the rest, according to three people who’ve spoken to him recently. Too bad he doesn't want to use the money for health care, education, and so on.
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/steve-bannon-pushing-for-44-percent-...
Tech companies like Facebook and Google that have become essential elements of 21st-century life should be regulated as utilities, top White House adviser Steve Bannon has argued.
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/steve-bannon-wants-facebook-and-goog...

It's not election hacking, but dirty money laundering that T-rump and Russians have in common. A Guardian investigation has established a series of overlapping ties and relationships involving alleged Russian money laundering, New York real estate deals and members of Trump’s inner circle.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/24/jared-kushner-new-york-r...

The Democraps have plenty of problems too!

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-e...

DNC fraud lawsuit proceeds despite threats to the attorney (16 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bmMl2OGVQ0

Have you heard about the Awan arrest?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0Kc3_NA3o4

George Webb and his wide ranging review of the Awan family and their business activities (23 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk4asQ_ztjg

There is a push to urge the dems to support a peoples platform

However Nina Turner was barricaded from delivering the platform with over 100,000 signatures to the DNC. (text and video)
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19640:DNC-Used-Barricades-To-Keep-Out-Ni...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CObAsBDM3zs&feature=youtu.be (11 min)

Well maybe World Chaos won't be our fault much longer. Perhaps Our Reign of Terror Wanes.
It is the beginning of the end of the American Empire. Alfred McCoy predicts that China is set to surpass the influence of the U.S. globally, both militarily and economically, by the year 2030. https://theintercept.com/2017/07/22/donald-trump-and-the-coming-fall-of-...

We're to the point where we openly admit we manufacture CIA coups to promote the profit of the petro giants. How crude that oil lubricates the machinery of war, and our enemies always seem to be where there's oil (or some other important resource). If we would embrace solar and wind energy we could eliminate our need for oil and the war perpetrated in the search of ever more profit. Eliminating the wars which we manufacture and maintain would create enough savings to do great public works. I can imagine a sane world, but overcoming the bullhorn of corporate media is the challenge to restoring sanity to the social system.

There was so much news this week that it is easy to get lost in the swirl. I've touched on a fraction of the issues. What are the important stories? I look forward to your comments!