Making the evil seem good: US Foreign Policy. Middle Nation Podcast (E:18)

This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation podcast. This is episode number 18. It's important to understand that terms used by politicians are very often euphemisms designed to misportray policy objectives as benign or virtuous to the public because the real objectives are ruthlessly strategic and serve the interests of a country's most powerful minority, I e corporations, financial institutions, and the extremely wealthy. In this way, policymakers often employ Chetan's technique of making evil appear good so that well meaning people will support policies that fundamentally contradict their own values and principles.

I would also say that these policymakers themselves have been subjected to that same technique by Shaitan and probably genuinely believe that what they are doing is essentially good even if they are fully aware that the way they are portraying their policies is dishonest. They do believe that the policies are themselves correct. Now The United States, my country, has a very long history of pursuing ruthless and immoral policies internationally while justifying them through virtuous propaganda. And I think it is useful to remind ourselves of this history from time to time, particularly at a moment when such propaganda is flooding every available media outlet in the English language over the issue of Ukraine. The first successful overthrow of a government engineered by the CIA was in Syria in 1949 against the newly independent republic's first democratically elected president, Shukri al Qawatli, because he had denied transit rights for the trans Arabian pipeline, which was to pump Saudi oil through Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon for eventual export.

Al Qawatli had blocked the pipeline in objection to American support for the creation of Israel. Now American meddling in Syria obviously did not end there, but let it suffice for now that the CIA inaugurated its involvement in US foreign policy by executing a coup for the sake of American energy strategy. The US subverted democracy in France, of all places, and Italy after the second world war to prevent leftists from gaining power. They funded covert operations through the Marshall Plan, which was earmarked for the rebuilding of Europe after the war. They made economic aid contingent upon the removal of leftists from the government, leading the then French prime minister Paul Remadier to say, a little of our independence is departing from us with each loan we obtain.

But they did not only use money against leftists in France and Italy. They used brute violence, beating and killing union organizers and striking workers. This was all portrayed as protecting French and Italian democracy. Between 1947 and 1949, The US supported neo fascists in Greece against the Greek leftists, Greek leftists who had led that country's fight against the Nazis. They helped to install a neo fascist government in Greece against the will of the population that went on for decades.

And again, this was a policy to preserve democracy. In the nineteen fifties in Germany, The US recruited, trained, and deployed civilian militants to carry out acts of sabotage and terror that could be blamed on leftists to ensure that no government could come to power in Western Europe that might oppose NATO operations or American policy. Now this initial project expanded into what was known as Operation Gladio, which saw the creation of multiple, usually far right extremist groups throughout Western Europe. These American backed militants continued to carry out their work for decades and were responsible for the Bologna train station bombing in 1980, which was initially blamed on Palestinians. Now I think most of us are aware of the US coup that overthrew Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossaddegh, after he supported the nationalization of Iran's oil industry and expelled foreign corporations from that country in 1953, which led to the installment of the shah as Iran's supreme dictator whose brutal rule lasted until 1979 with total American support.

US violent intervention in Central And South America throughout the nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties should be well known, and it would take too much time to enumerate the catalog of atrocities committed over the years in the name of democracy in the Western Hemisphere during the period known as the dirty wars. The American Embassy in Honduras was the headquarters for organizing death squads in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua to torture and terrorize the populations. And The US did the same thing in Argentina. They overthrew the governments of Brazil and Bolivia in the early nineteen sixties, in Chile in the nineteen seventies, and used the entire region as a laboratory for honing the neoliberal program of economic sabotage for decades. Again, all for the sake of democracy and freedom.

In Indonesia, popular president and prominent figure in the nonaligned movement Sukarno was subjected to multiple plots throughout the nineteen sixties, including coup attempts and failed assassinations until The US finally replaced him with general Suharto, whose army carried out mass killings of leftists and supposed communists, whose names were supplied to the army by the US embassy. Now I'm not even mentioning the overthrow of governments, the assassinations, and the organized brutality of US policy in Africa. I'm not mentioning America's virtual occupation of Thailand and other horrendous crimes undertaken in the context of the Vietnam War, nor am I discussing their subterfuge and destabilization of other countries in The Middle East throughout my lifetime. Again, there's simply too much to talk about. Now you'll notice that most of these American interventions were aimed at destroying so called leftists or communist movements, and that needs some clarification.

During the Cold War, two ideologies dominated global political discourse, capitalism and communism. But while capitalism basically meant subservience to American business interests, communism meant concern for the poor and the preservation of national economic sovereignty. It did not really mean adherence to communist dogma or becoming a satellite of the Soviet Union. In other words, independence in the developing world was deemed as communist, just as subordination to The United States meant and still means independence in the parlance of American propagandistic euphemisms. So let's bring the discussion forward to the matter of Ukraine.

The United States says that Ukraine's independence and sovereignty must be defended. Well, this is a country which had its democratically elected leader, Viktor Yanukovych, overthrown in a revolution openly supported, if not entirely engineered by The United States in 2014 and replaced by a pro American, pro EU prime minister with glaring neo Nazi leanings. During the Obama administration, then vice president Joe Biden bragged about his ability to strong on the Ukrainian government about official appointments or removals of prosecutors. And Ukrainian energy company, Barisma, paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, $50,000 a month in order to gain favor with Joe Biden and access to him because he was functionally running the country. So this is the classic definition of an independent nation according to America's criteria.

In other words, Ukraine is a client state. America did in Ukraine and is doing the same thing that they did earlier with operation Gladio and throughout the dirty wars in Latin America. They are recruiting, arming, training, and funding ultra right wing militants and mercenaries to kill, torture, and terrorize and to create regional instability through violence. Just as this was historically done to destroy independence and economic sovereignty, so it is being done now for the same reason. Only this time, it's Europe.

In my view, the long game of The US here is to ensure the success of their long discussed pivot to Asia because the relative economic power of Russia and China allow Asian countries to potential trading and investment partners too many. Asia here basically refers to not only Asia, but also to the Middle East and Africa. America does not want any countries in the Eastern Hemisphere or in the global South to have options, not China, not Russia, and indeed not Europe. As I've discussed more than once on this podcast, Europe is in the process of a catastrophic demographic collapse. Thought leaders and policymakers in the West are preparing for the inevitable, the disappearance of the workforce and consumer pool, the transition to automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence, and the relegation of the remaining population to irrelevance and poverty.

Knowing that this will undoubtedly lead to mass discontent and civil unrest, preemptive efforts are being made to enhance surveillance, lower people's expectations, normalize their acquiescence, and acclimate their populations to curtailments of liberty and to conditions of severe austerity. The creation of artificial emergencies and conflicts to justify or to otherwise distract from these measures is enormously useful in pursuing this agenda. It is essentially a sophisticated version of the shock doctrine as identified and explained by Naomi Klein in her book of the same name, and it is completely in line with American foreign policy strategies over the last seventy years. Now this is not a conspiracy theory. This is a rationally consistent approach to international affairs within the context of America's framework of priorities and objectives.

Ever since Charles Irwin Wilson, former secretary of defense and CEO of General Motors, said that whatever is good for General Motors is good for America, it has been accepted that serving the interests of corporations and the wealthy was in the best interest of the country, and US policy has implemented that belief without remorse for decades. Now, you will find a number of influential figures and organizations promoting ideas like the great reset and a future where, quote, you will own nothing and you will be happy, like the World Economic Forum. And the first reflex is to believe that these figures and organizations run the world and that someone like Klaus Schwab, founder and head of the World Economic Forum, or someone like Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, the world's largest investment firm, are the maniacal leaders of a grand conspiracy to control the globe. But that reflex is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of who these people are and what their role is. They are not dictators of policy.

They are translators of the already existing will and desires of power into the language of policy. The World Economic Forum, like the Trilateral Commission before them or the Bilderberg Group or any assortment of elite organizations you can think of is essentially a think tank. They craft the philosophical basis and rationales for policies and brainstorm the practical strategies that will serve the interests of the most powerful global players. This includes the pushing of climate hysteria, panic about COVID to justify lockdowns, and outrage against Russia, all of which advance the consolidation of power and control by the biggest private sector players and regiments society to accommodate their interests. These actual players, the actual power players include, for example, the Bank of International Settlements and its constituent central banks, and of course, the world's largest corporations who together control at last count around 80% of global wealth.

So BlackRock, for example, represents a coalition of these companies, and Larry Fink's job is to serve and advocate their interests. The job of national governments, including the US government, is to enforce what is in the best interests of these private sector power networks, and that becomes state policy, both domestic and foreign. America has been for quite some time the most powerful state in the world, and as such, it is the strongest instrument for the enforcement of policy for the benefit of a national private sector power. But that power, it is crucial to understand, does not belong to any nation. It is not nationalistic or ideological in any way.

And that's why it has no hesitation about imposing the same patterns of subversion in Europe by means of American policy as has been imposed throughout the developing world for the last seven decades. So you should understand that when I'm talking about America wanting this or that or doing this or that, I'm not talking about America itself, but about policies America is pursuing on behalf of international private sector power. As stated, these policies will be pursued mercilessly, but will be invariably presented as benign and virtuous even when they sow fitna and destruction around the world. As Muslims, we should be intelligent enough and informed enough to recognize Shaitan's work when we see it and call it out for what it is.