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Official Washington's Delusions on Delusions
#1
By Robert Parry of the Consortium

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Official Washington's Delusions on Delusions

March 10, 2015

Exclusive: Official Washington operates in its own bubble of self-delusion in which the stars of U.S. politics, policy and media don't realize how the rest of the world sees their sociopathic behavior. This craziness is now reaching a crisis point on Iran and Russia, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The chasm between reality and the U.S. political/media elite continues to widen with Official Washington's actions toward Iran and Russia making "the world's sole remaining superpower" look either like a Banana Republic (on Iran) or an Orwellian Dystopia (regarding Russia).
On Iran and the international negotiations to rein in its nuclear program, the American people witnessed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu striding into the U.S. Congress like some imperial proconsul to deliver a faux State of the Union address that undermined the sitting U.S. president. Then, 47 Republican senators furthered Netanyahu's intent to denigrate President Barack Obama by sending an open letter to Iranian leaders designed to prevent a deal.
[Image: 1984-big-brother-poster-210x300.jpg?f0ee9e]Big Brother poster illustrating George Orwell's novel about modern propaganda, 1984.
Yes, I know many Republicans and their overwhelmingly white "base" don't consider the African-American Obama the legitimate President despite his two election victories. But never in American history has a major political party as brazenly challenged the constitutional authority of a sitting president to conduct foreign policy.
The letter to the Iranian leaders warned that once Obama is out of office in 2017, "the next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time." In other words, the Republicans were telling Iran's leaders that whatever they plan to sign with Obama and five other world leaders isn't worth the paper that it's written on.
This stunning congressional intervention into U.S. diplomacy was signed not just by a few backbenchers but by the Senate's Republican leadership and several prospective GOP presidential candidates, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who had been viewed by some on the Left as well as the Right as a person who would not toe the Israeli line on Middle East issues.
This double whammy of Netanyahu's extreme rhetoric on Iran and the Republicans' extraordinary subversion of the Iranian nuclear talks left people around the world wondering whether the U.S. government had completely lost its bearings. Meanwhile, the U.S. news media continued veering off into its own Bermuda Triangle.
What is particularly striking about this current moment is how the madness that permeates the U.S. government equally pervades the mainstream U.S. media, which is now incapable of covering major international events except through the lens of State Department propaganda, a situation that has reached extreme levels in the reporting on the Ukraine crisis.
The only filter that the MSM can place on the events in Ukraine is one endlessly vilifying Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though this technique of personalizing foreign policy disputes has become standard operating procedure for the U.S. press corps think of Daniel Ortega, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Viktor Yanukovych, etc. the U.S. media's "group think" on Russia may even surpass those earlier examples.
Plus, nothing from the Ukraine crisis can ever be blamed on the U.S. government, even though Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland helped orchestrate the violent coup that overthrew Ukraine's elected government in February 2014 and threw the nation of 45 million people into a bloody civil war.
Everything must be blamed on Putin and any alternative analysis, recognizing another side to the story, must be dismissed as "Russian propaganda." [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine."]
Russian Propaganda'
On Monday, the Washington Post delivered what could become a textbook case of journalistic self-delusion noting that the Russian people have developed an intensely negative view of the United States but only because the Russian media portrays the U.S. government in a hostile way.
The Post article by Michael Birnbaum blamed the collapse of U.S. popularity on "furious rhetoric [that] has been pumped across Russian airwaves … a passionate, conspiracy-laden fascination with the methods that Washington is supposedly using to foment unrest in Ukraine and Russia."
Citing recent polling, the article noted that more than 80 percent of the Russian people hold negative views of the United States. But that couldn't be because of American behavior! No, it's impossible that anyone looking at the U.S. today could possibly find anything to criticize! It had to be Putin's fault, spreading spurious criticism of the U.S. via Russian media. Or as the Post put it:
"Fed by the powerful antagonism on Russian federal television channels, the main source of news for more than 90 percent of Russians, ordinary people started to feel more and more disillusioned [about the U.S.]. The anger seems different from the fast-receding jolts of the past, observers say, having spread faster and wider."
The article quoted Lev Gudkov, director of the polling firm Levada Center, explaining: "This anti-Western propaganda radically changed the atmosphere in the society. … It has become militarist."
Another voice cited by the Post was Maria Lipman, described as "an independent Moscow-based political analyst," saying: "What the government knew was that it was very easy to cultivate anti-Western sentiments, and it was easy to consolidate Russian society around this propaganda."
In other words, it wasn't what the U.S. government has done around the world that has provoked this antipathy from the endless boasting about America's "indispensable" and "exceptional" qualities to its destructive behavior, including spreading bloody havoc via "regime change" schemes in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.
And, it's not that the U.S. government looks clownish when the majority party in Congress expresses doubts about global warming and other scientific judgments. Nor is it the continued examples of racism and the police shootings of unarmed blacks. Nor the global spying by the National Security Agency. Nor the national self-degradation when members of Congress behave like trained seals jumping up and down to applaud Israel's Netanyahu.
No, the only reason that the Russian people look askance at the United States is that they are being deceived by the lying "propaganda" dictated by the evil Vladimir Putin. By contrast, the American people always get the straight story from their mainstream U.S. news media, the gold standard for the world!
Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. media have taken on the characteristics of a male stalker who can't understand why his female target finds him repulsive. It must be because someone is poisoning her mind with negative comments about his sterling personality. We now live in a system of delusions built upon delusions.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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#2
The following is the text of the GOP Senators Letter

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[Image: email_icon.png] [Image: print_icon.png]


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[Image: P1-BS979_USISRA_G_20150303195540.jpg]U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this month. Aude Guerrucci/Press Pool/Getty Images
Dozens of Republican senators wrote an open letter to the leadership of Iran, warning them that any nuclear deal signed between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama might not last beyond his presidency, without Congress signing off on it as well. Here is the text of the letter.
An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:
It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

More In Iran



First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.
Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics.
For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then perhaps decades.
What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.
We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.
Sincerely,
Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR
Senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA
Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY
Senator Richard Shelby, R-AL
Senator John McCain, R-AZ
Senator James Inhofe, R-OK
Senator Pat Roberts, R-KS
Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL
Senator Michael Enzi, R-WY
Senator Michael Crapo, R-ID
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC
Senator John Cornyn, R-TX
Senator Richard Burr, R-NC
Senator John Thune, R-SD
Senator Johnny Isakson, R-GA
Senator David Vitter, R-LA
Senator John A. Barrasso, R-WY
Senator Roger Wicker, R-MS
Senator Jim Risch, R-ID
Senator Mark Kirk, R-IL
Senator Roy Blunt, R-MO
Senator Jerry Moran, R-KS
Senator Rob Portman, R-OH
Senator John Boozman, R-AR
Senator Pat Toomey, R-PA
Senator John Hoeven, R-ND
Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL
Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI
Senator Rand Paul, R-KY
Senator Mike Lee, R-UT
Senator Kelly Ayotte, R-NH
Senator Dean Heller, R-NV
Senator Tim Scott, R-SC
Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX
Senator Deb Fischer, R-NE
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV
Senator Bill Cassidy, R-LA
Senator Cory Gardner, R-CO
Senator James Lankford, R-OK
Senator Steve Daines, R-MT
Senator Mike Rounds, R-SD
Senator David Perdue, R-GA
Senator Thom Tillis, R-NC
Senator Joni Ernst, R-IA
Senator Ben Sasse, R-NE
Senator Dan Sullivan, R-AK
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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#3
Quote:iran's foreign minister explains international law to senate republicans
march 10, 2015




[email=?subject=iran%27s%20foreign%20minister%20explains%20international%20law%20to%20senate%20republicans&body=http://theweek.com/speedreads/543362/irans-foreign-minister-explains-international-law-senate-republicans] [/email]


johannes simon/getty images
the next time republicans in the senate try to explain treaties and the u.s. Constitution to iranian officials, they may want to pick someone other than a foreign minister with a masters and phd in international relations from the university of denver, plus two degrees from san francisco state university. Javad zarif, who is also iran's chief nuclear negotiator, responded to a letter from sen. Tom cotton (r-ark.) and 46 other gop senators with an explainer of his own.
Not only are the senators shaky on their own constitution's separation of powers, zarif wrote, according to iran's tasnim news agency, but "the authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states, and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations."
that's important, zarif added, because "the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by u.s. Domestic law." he continued:
Change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about iran's peaceful nuclear program.... I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with 'the stroke of a pen,' as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law. [zarif]
iran's foreign minister ultimately dismissed the gop letter as having "no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy." but it also gives some propaganda ammunition to zarif and iran, notes akbar shahid ahmed at the huffington post. Zarif used "the gop misstep to seize an advantage that the obama administration has said it does not want to give iran: The chance to say the nuclear negotiations could fail because of the u.s."peter weber
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The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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#4
::laughingdog::
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx

"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.

“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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