Removing The Scales
July 2, 2012 by Bob Livingston
As [Saul] was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. (Acts 9:3-8, NASB)
Like Saul, the American people are now being led blindly to Damascus. Unlike Saul, their journey is not heaven-inspired.
Americans have been brainwashed by constant fearmongering from government propagandists to believe there are terrorists under every rock who are driven by a desire to kill us because of our way of life. This is part of a disinformation campaign.
What Americans aren’t told is that those terrorists have been created in response to American imperialism. And what’s worse, they have been aided and abetted by agents in government or on behalf of government — both in the United States and other countries — through training and the supply of weapons and explosives.
In reality, the United States’ goal is to control the Mideast and North Africa. It uses terrorism in other countries and the threat of terrorism — and actual false-flag incidents — here to achieve this.
America’s goal is to factionalize and destabilize the region for America’s benefit and the benefit of Saudi Arabia and Israel. These countries, along with Turkey, essentially own American government through bribes, cronyism, weapons purchases, etc.
The United States began its Mideast coup in 1951 when Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a CIA agent, was sent to Iran to organize a revolt against that country’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, after Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s petroleum assets, cutting out the British petroleum company that would later become known as BP.
Mossadegh, TIME magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1951, outraged Great Britain by his actions. But England and America feared that a direct military response would provoke the Soviet Union. So Roosevelt went in and used payoffs and threats to organize a series of street riots and violent demonstrations. These created the sense that Mossadegh was unpopular (he wasn’t) and inept.
By the end of the year, Mossedegh was forced out. He spent the rest of his days under house arrest. The United States installed its puppet, Mohammed Reza Shah, as Iran’s dictator, and Roosevelt’s success ushered in a new mode of empire building that continues to this day.
For years afterward, the United States continued to employ this tactic to subjugate other countries and exploit their resources. But rather than using direct CIA involvement as in Iran, more subtle means were used. Large corporations, aided by CIA front groups and using money from the U.S. Treasury laundered through the World Bank, went in and bought off the leadership of targeted countries with pie-in-the-sky infrastructure improvement projects and bribes. If the leadership balked, jackals — CIA operatives — came in and offered presidents and prime ministers “deals they couldn’t refuse.” Those who did refuse died under mysterious circumstances or saw their countries attacked by the United States in “police actions.” 1
Most of the so-called Arab Spring revolutions that began last year were similar operations. It’s easy to see which ones were backed by America and which were spontaneous revolts against totalitarianism. For instance, in Bahrain, where a U.S. puppet rules and the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, anti-government protesters were shot by government forces — aided by American military personnel, arrested and fired from their jobs. This story barely made a blip in the mainstream media. In the stories that did run, the revolts were couched as Iran-inspired unrest.
Yet when anti-government protests began in Egypt, Libya and Syria, America and/or NATO intervened on the side of the protesters. That’s because it was time to remove a puppet (Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak) or do away with recalcitrant leaders who refused to play along (Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and Bashar Assad in Syria).
If you don’t think America didn’t control events in Egypt, you aren’t thinking. The same tactics Roosevelt used in Iran in 1951 were employed in Egypt: Agents provocateur sowed the seeds of unrest to destabilize and overthrow a government — in this case one that had been a useful puppet of America and enriched by American dollars for many years.
The U.S. government is publicly bemoaning Egypt’s takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood. But the Muslim Brotherhood’s ties go to the top of the State Department. And the revolution led by the Muslim Brotherhood, the April 6 Youth Movement and Kifaya were funded and directed by the National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department/CIA front group. Some of these players have ties to American CIA operations as far back as the 1999 bombings of Yugoslavia and the caretaker government installed in Serbia. (As an aside, the NED and/or other CIA front groups and some of the same players behind Arab Spring organized and funded the Occupy Wall Street movement. Details of all these ties can be read here and here.)
Egypt’s new president is Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi. Morsi’s wife served in the women’s division of the Muslim Brotherhood with Saleha Mahmood Abedin. Abedin’s daughter is Huma Abedin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and the wife of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner. (Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was also on very friendly terms with women’s division and invited them into the White House.)
In March 2007, Seymour Hersh wrote about the U.S. alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia and their efforts to destroy Shiite Muslims and factionalize Muslim countries. Quoting Vali Nasr, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations:
“The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.”
The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.
Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
In Libya, the U.S./NATO-financed and armed “rebels” were al-Qaida forces who had previously fought against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. They routinely attacked civilians and laid blame on the Gadhafi government. Once they had sufficiently destabilized the country and Gadhafi brought out his military in an effort to retain power, America intervened for “humanitarian” reasons. What’s humane about NATO bombs falling on and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians was never explained. Nor was why the United States was supposedly fighting al-Qaida forces in the so-called “War on Terror” while supporting them in their effort to overthrow a popular leader in Libya.
Now that Gadhafi is gone, the Muslim Brotherhood is moving in to fill the political vacuum.
The United States is now using the same playbook in Syria, but with a twist. Heavily armed Syrian rebels are massacring civilians — as rebels did in Libya — and blaming Assad. Evidence of U.S. and NATO intervention comes in the form of the weapons the rebels are using.
According to Debkafile, British special forces have been operating inside Syria since May 26. And in an apparent false-flag operation, NATO member Turkey sent one of its planes into Syrian territory where it was shot down in a Gulf of Tonkin-style false-flag incident designed to give legitimacy to NATO intervention.
Turkey’s involvement is especially insidious given revelations by former FBI interpreter and later whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. In her new book, Classified Woman, (which I will review Thursday), Edmonds says she stumbled upon evidence that Turkish elements had ties to 9/11 that reached up through the FBI, the State Department and into Congress and the George W. Bush Administration.
What she found was that people in American government were willing to sell — or facilitate the sale of — arms and information to the highest bidder regardless of whether the buyers were enemies or friends. When she tried to report these revelations to her superiors, they shut her up. Finally, she was harassed, fired by the FBI, gagged by the Department of Justice and the courts and stymied in her attempts to report to Congress. Even though she could name names, the 9/11 Commission wouldn’t consider her testimony, Republicans in Congress ignored her because she was naming Republicans, and Democrats in Congress wouldn’t touch her because some Democrats were involved.
The problem the American war machine now faces is similar to the one it faced in 1951. Russia — with China’s backing — has said “no more” to American imperialism and indicated an American or NATO response in Syria or Iran might provoke a military response. A miscalculation by either side would have tragic consequences for the world.
Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And the Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.” So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized; and he took food and was strengthened. (Acts 9:10-19, NASB)
Americans have been propagandized into believing the country’s motives in the Mideast are about defeating terrorism and spreading democracy. But the motives are much more sinister.
And just like Ananias had to be convinced that the stories he had heard about Saul no longer applied, Americans must understand America’s motives aren’t as altruistic as they’ve been led to believe. They must remove the scales from their eyes and see the Mideast situation for what it really is. It’s not about fighting a War on Terror or about humanitarian intervention.
This must be understood, and America’s leadership must be stopped before it gets to Damascus.
1 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.
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