Some War Truth In A Single Photograph
By Bill Willers | Dissident Voice | January 5, 2020
Once I realized to my dismay that I couldn’t believe a word of what our media and political leaders said about major events in the here and now, their credibility on controversial happenings so long ago and far away entirely disappeared.” — Ron Unz, 2018
The 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, generated renewed interest in the First World War, its beginnings, its aftermath, and the lead up to World War II. For anyone brought up with the carefully-crafted narratives that constitute “popular” history, a dive into details of the World Wars can shake one’s faith in the validity of all generally accepted history. A good introduction to long buried aspects of the era of the World Wars is Patrick J. Buchanan’s 2008 book “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War“, in which all roads lead back to Britain’s 1914 declaration of war on Germany, which soon involved much of the world. Germany’s rising power had threatened British imperial dominance within a Rube Goldberg complexity of formal alliances and secret agreements. A Serbian shot an Austrian archduke, Serbia allied with Russia, but Austria-Hungary allied with Germany, and Russia with Britain and France, etc. Ultimately, the “Great Men” leading the masses appeared powerless to stop the WW I slaughter: 8 million dead, 20 million wounded. Thereafter, the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany grossly unjust reparations, this leading ultimately to a humiliated Germany embracing Hitler’s rise, thence to a war with a price tag of more than 50 million human lives.
Massive works on Churchill and Hitler by the towering historian David Irving are based on every conceivable information source down to personal diaries and interviews. Irving’s departure from widely accepted “mainstream” story lines has irked some fellow historians, and because he has not been perfectly in synch with Holocaust dogma, he, like so many, has suffered unwarranted accusations of anti-semitism. He writes that many details in the generally-accepted history of WW II, apparently like much of history itself, are simply wrong. His depiction of Winston Churchill is as a central causative agent of both world wars. What’s that? you say! Churchill, during his lifetime considered the greatest living Englishman, a war monger? Likewise, Adolph Hitler struggled to avoid war? Are these too shocking to accept? Research for yourself, and you may find yourself in agreement with Caitlin Johnstone: “Our species fought two world wars (or arguably one world war with a long intermission to grow more troops) for no justifiable reason at all.”
Insight into how governmentally-sanctioned histories might be managed for mass consumption is offered by Ron Unz who cites an amazing number of A-list commentators (scroll down to subtitle “Purging our Leading Historians and Journalists”) who, on diverging from authorized accounts, were simply blacklisted, thereafter unable to get published. It seems that a thread of decency runs through the human family such that elaborate lies must be maintained by governments in order to justify and generate and perpetuate wars. If the Spanish-American War, the two World Wars, Vietnam and both invasions of Iraq have anything in common, it is that all six involved official lies used to bring We The People on board: Remember the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, Kuwaiti babies, Weapons of Mass Destruction. Lies.
During Christmas, 1914, certain British and German soldiers of WW I got the urge for a truce. Shouts of “Merry Christmas!” across “no man’s land” of the front led to troops emerging from trenches, exchanging food and trinkets, playing a bit of soccer. Photos are easy to find on the Internet, but one in particular crystalizes a truth about humanity, regardless of what contorted propaganda might be coming down from the damned stuffed shirts who send humans to slaughter. Historians necessarily focus on political power players and the decision makers of war, but it is decent folk within the powerless masses who are the ones driven to do the killing and the dying. The two youths in the photo — not many years beyond childhood — could be any soldiers from any period of time, of any ethnicity, in any war. Like healthy people everywhere, they would have greatly preferred to be friends, and it shows.
Dwight Eisenhower, a General turned President, is quoted as having said “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.” Such a day is not yet visible on the horizon.
Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He can be contacted at willers@uwosh.edu.
US Long-Planned Assassination of Soleimani Lacks Legal, Strategic Justification – Ex-Envoy
Sputnik – 04.01.2020
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration’s unlawful execution of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani is a strategic blunder of mammoth proportions that has now turned every American military official into a target, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told Sputnik.
Soleimani, considered the second most powerful person in Iran’s leadership structure, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Thursday in the wake of attacks on the American embassy in Iraq. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), was also killed in the strike.
“This was not retaliation as claimed, but the pre-planned exploitation of a pretext to assassinate a foreign official designated as an enemy,” Freeman said on Friday. “It was an act of war that will inevitably evoke reprisal.”
President Donald Trump claims he ordered the strike because Soleimani and the militia chief had allegedly been plotting “imminent” attacks against US interests.
Freeman, who also served as US Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, said there is no concrete evidence to corroborate Trump’s claims or justify preemptive action.
“The charge that these two were planning attacks on American soldiers and officials could equally well be leveled at US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House officials, and US military commanders at all echelons,” he said.
Freeman called the attack an “extrajudicial execution” and further departure from the rule of law in the United States.
The former diplomat observed how the escalation began Sunday with suspicious US strikes against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq, which sparked the attacks against the embassy in Baghdad.
“[Soleimani’s death] was preceded by three airstrikes on elements of Kataeb Hezbollah for the death of a civilian contractor in Kirkuk. None of these [US] airstrikes was anywhere near Kirkuk,” Freeman said. “They bore the marks of a pre-planned operation looking for a pretext to launch.
“Meanwhile, Iran has already promised to exact “savage” retribution, he noted.
“Soleimani was the equivalent of the US national security adviser or the commanders of CENTCOM, SOCOM, and SOCCENT. All are now potential Iranian targets,” Freeman warned.
Meanwhile, Kataeb Hezbollah is likely to be joined in its campaign against US forces and officials in Iraq by other patriotic militias including some historically hostile to Iran, the former envoy added.
Although likely a welcome distraction to the impeachment proceedings, in foreign policy terms Trump’s decision “makes no sense at all,” he said.
“It is not a deterrent to Iran so much as a provocation. It pushes Iraq further into the arms of Iran and invites the humiliating expulsion of US forces from Iraq. It makes every American in Iraq a target for murder or hostage taking,” Freeman said.
Trump’s “strategy-free” decision is tantamount to beginning a game of chess with only an opening move in mind, he said.
“It is thus a reminder to the word of the witless hubris and violence with which the United States now conducts its international relations,” Freeman concluded.
Trump’s Fatal Mistake in Iraq and Beginning of End for US Occupation
Iraqi PMU commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad following their defeat of ISIS in 2017 (Photo: Patrick Henningsen 2017©)
By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | January 3, 2020
The United States may have just worn out its welcome in Iraq. Whatever comes next will be laid at the feet of the Trump Presidency.
As a result of a series of disastrous moves by US central command, the region now faces the very real prospect of another multinational conflagration in the Middle East, which could include a direct military confrontation between the US and Iran.
How It Began
This past Sunday December 29th, just before the New Year rang in, President Donald Trump gave the order to bomb an Iraqi military base, killing and wounding a number of Iraqi military personnel, including Iraqi Army officers, Iraqi police, as well as soldiers belonging to the People’s Mobilization Unit (PMUs). US Air Force F-15E fighters struck five targets located in Iraq and along the Syria-Iraq border, all said to be controlled by an ‘Iranian-backed paramilitary group,’ according to the Pentagon.
According to Washington defense spokespersons, Sunday’s US airstrike was supposedly in response to a rocket attack which struck the “K1” joint US-Iraqi military base located in Kirkuk in north Iraq, which happened just two days before on Friday December 27th, killing one U.S. defense contractor, and one Iraqi police officer, as well as wounding a further 4 US defense contractors, and 3 Iraqi Army officers. US officials claim they had intelligence which confirmed that Friday’s rocket attack near Kirkuk was the work of “Iranian militia,” therefore holding the Islamic Republic of Iran responsible. However, no evidence was presented by the US in relation to the claim.
In response to the US bombing its facility on Sunday, Iraqi protesters, including friends and family of fallen soldiers killed in the US bombing raid, and led by Iraqi PMU members and their supporters, stormed the outer perimeter of the US embassy in Baghdad located inside the infamous US-controlled Green Zone. Many US embassy staff were evacuated or airlifted from the compound, and an additional detachment of 100 US Marines were called in as reinforcements, along with an additional 750 troops from fast battalion 82nd Airborne Division sent to Kuwait preparing to go into Iraq. US combat helicopters circled overhead, as well as around the entire Green Zone and over civilians neighborhoods in Baghdad. This move was not received well by the Iraqi government who forbid such US military patrols as part of their status of forces agreement for the country. The siege lasted until News Years Eve on December 31st, before the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Mukhabarat internal security eventually arrived to disperse the angry crowds.
Following the embarrassing scenes at the US embassy on New Years Eve, Washington promised retribution. What followed could very well be the trigger for a renewed war in Iraq, and which may likely result in US forces and personnel eventually being asked (or forced) to leave the country. On Wednesday January 2, 2020, the US launched another airstrike, targeting an access road leading to Baghdad International Airport, and reportedly killed Iranian Quds Force leader, General Qasem Soleimani, as well as senior Iraqi PMU commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, according to reports by Iraqi TV.
Both Soleimani and al-Muhandis are considered to be among Iran and Iraq’s most revered military figures, and their targeted assassinations by the US government will certainly be viewed as an act of war by a large portion of the Iraqi and Iranian populations, as well as their respective military and security apparatuses. In particular, al-Muhandis is regarded by many a hero in Iraqi’s hard-fought victory over ISIS in 2017.
Iraqi cabinet officials and parliamentarians have been meeting over the last 48 hours to discuss reviewing the status of their cooperation agreement with the United States which allows for intelligence sharing and US training and technical assistance for Iraqi military divisions. Whether this escalates into officials calling for the US military and its 20,000 troops and defense personnel to pack up and leave the country – remains to be seen.
It should go without saying that this provocative military action by the United States means that US troops and personnel may no longer be safe operating in Iraq.
Questioning US ‘Intelligence’
In order to grasp the full gravity of what the Trump Administration has just done, it’s essential to consider these events in historical context, as the latest reckless move in a long line of US failures in Iraq.
According to veteran Middle East correspondent Elijah Magnier, “The United States of America has fallen into the trap of its own disinformation policy, as exemplified by the work of one of its leading strategic study centres, a neocon think tank promoting war on Iran.”
Magnier adds, “Analysts’ wishful thinking overwhelmed their sense of reality, notably the possibility of realities invisible to them. They fell into the same trap of misinformation and ignorance that has shaped western opinion since the occupation of Iraq in 2003. The invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ which never existed.”
According to Iraqi officials, at the time of the initial rocket attack on Dec 27th, it was not clear who had actually fired on the K1 joint base. Regardless, a number of data points strongly indicate that the US had already decided who it would be targeting.
According to the New York Times, “President Trump was briefed by Defense Department leaders on Saturday, and allowed the strikes to proceed. Senior officials including Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday for discussions with the president, American officials said.”
The US had already taken the decision to bomb Iraq before any joint investigation could be conducted between the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and the US authorities. Soon after the Mar-a-lago meeting, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper called acting Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to inform him the US was not interested in working with Baghdad to find out what happened and who had fired the rockets. Esper told the Iraqi PM that Washington had already received “intelligence” from its trusted sources which said the rocket attack was carried out by a branch of the Iraqi PMUs known as Katiab Hezbollah (no relation to Lebanon’s Hezbollah defense force). It should be noted that these PMU brigades are composed of Iraqi citizens who serve under the official Iraqi military command headquartered in Baghdad. Because this PMU division’s membership is composed of Shia Muslims, United States officials and the US mainstream media have taken the liberty of labeling them as “Iranian militia” – a blatant falsehood, but one which has been disseminated by US officials in order to infer these are somehow ‘Iranian proxies’ and proceeded to pin the alleged responsibility of the initial rocket attack on Iran, in effect, justifying the heavy-handed US retaliation on Sunday, and Washington’s targeted assassinations of Qasem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on January 2nd.
To date, US officials have provided no evidence to support their claim that the rocket attack on Dec 27th was carried out by Katiab Hezbollah PMUs, nor has the US given any specifics as to the provenance of its ‘intelligence’ which attributed blame to PMUs. If this was indeed a rush to judgement, it would not be the first time the US has perpetrated an act of war against a sovereign state based on faulty, and less than credible intelligence. The recent OPCW leaks have demonstrated beyond any doubt that the US-led airstrikes against Syria in April of 2018 were based on misinformation of a supposed ‘chemical attack’ just days earlier in Douma, Syria on April 7, 2018.
Upon closer review, it’s now clear that what the US claimed it was doing, does not actually match the actions which it had undertaken on Dec 29th. In addition, the US bombing raid on Dec 29th will also have aided ISIS. Magnier explains the obvious US disconnect here:
Mr Abdel Mahdi asked Esper if the US has “proof against Kataeb Hezbollah to share so Iraq can arrest those responsible for the attack on K1”. No response: Esper told Abdel Mahdi that the US was “well-informed” and that the attack would take place “in a few hours”.
In less than half an hour, US jets bombed five Iraqi security forces’ positions deployed along the Iraqi-Syrian borders, in the zone of Akashat, 538 kilometres from the K1 military base (that had been bombed by perpetrators still unknown). The US announced the attack but omitted the fact that in these positions there were not only Kataeb Hezbollah but also Iraqi Army and Federal Police officers. Most victims of the US attack were Iraqi army and police officers. Only 9 officers of Kataeb Hezbollah – who joined the Iraqi Security Forces in 2017 – were killed. These five positions had the task of intercepting and hunting down ISIS and preventing the group’s militants from crossing the borders from the Anbar desert. The closest city to these bombed positions is al-Qaem, 150 km away.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that the US and allies have targeted an Iraqi PMU facility and tried to label it as “Iranian.” Back in September, 21WIRE reported how Israel and Saudi Arabia were reported to have launched supposed ‘retaliatory’ airstrikes against “pro-Iranian militias” stationed along the border between Syria and Iraq. This was reported by the Jerusalem Post at the time:
“Saudis, Israel attack pro-Iran militias on Syria-Iraq border,” and adding that,“Saudi fighter jets have been spotted along with other fighter jets that have attacked facilities and positions belonging to Iranian militias.”
21WIRE also noted how the Jerusalem Post had compiled their report citing multiple sources, including pieces of information from the Independent Arabia, Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. They reported air strikes hitting targets over the course of that week, killing 31, after hitting what they called “Iranian-backed” Iraqi Hash’d Shaabi (PMUs) positions along the Iraqi-Syria border.
“On Wednesday, five people were killed and another nine were wounded in an airstrike carried out by unidentified aircraft that targeted positions of the Iranian-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces militia in Albukamal, according to Sky News Arabia.”
Why this is crucial, is because it demonstrates previous form by Israel and Saudi Arabia – against near identical targets which the US bombed on Dec 29. It stands to reason then, that the ‘intelligence’ source for both attacks, on Sept 19th, and Dec 29th, seem to be related, deriving from either Israel or Saudi Arabia – both of which are heavily biased against Iran, and viewed it as an existential threat to their own regional geopolitical and military hegemony. In the case of Israel, it has played a visible role in directing US policy regarding Iran since the onset of the Trump Administration. It was Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu who boasted about his role in convincing the White House to unilaterally withdrawal from the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal in May 2018.
It’s also important to note with the US bombing raid on Sunday Dec 29th, the Iraqi bases hit along the Syrian-Iraqi border are located approximately 540km from Kirkuk, far away from where the US claim that Kaitab Hezbollah PMUs had fired the initial rocket attack on Dec 27th – which means that those US targets played no role in Friday’s rocket attack on K1, and more likely had already been selected in advance of Dec 27th, and the US was simply waiting for the right ‘incident’ to green-light a military attack on what it claims to be “Iranian” military targets.
Again, the fact that the US insists on mislabeling its supposed enemy means that nothing productive can come out of the latest series of events – unless Washington considers another full-scale war in Iraq a productive endeavor – a proposition which many would not find that far-flung considering America’s tawdry record in the region.
Iraqi PMUs Defeated ISIS in 2017
In order to properly understand the Iraqi military and PMU’s reaction to this ham-fisted US attack on Iraqi soil, it is important to understand who are the Iraqi People’s Mobilization Units (PMUs), aka the Hash’d al-Shabbi, or ‘Hasheed’ for short. This is the new national militia of Iraq and are the very same soldiers who have fought and died against ISIS for ultimately defeating their terrorist occupation in late 2017. The PMUs were formed in response to the emergence of ISIS and the fall of Mosul in June 2014. The Grand Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa in the summer of 2014, which called on all able-bodied men of fighting age to form a coalition of national militias, roughly 130,000 strong, to fight back against ISIS after it had routed the Iraq Army during ISIS’s summer blitzkrieg which saw several key cities taken by the terrorist army, as they headed dangerously close to the capital city Baghdad.
Based on the rhetoric and media coverage we are seeing this week, it’s painfully obvious that few, if any, within the ranks of American foreign policy ‘experts’ and national security journalists, are really aware of this reality on the ground in Iraq. It is widely acknowledged in Iraq, and in the region, that the PMUs played the decisive role in defeating ISIS and securing liberated communities in the latter stages of the country’s terrorist ordeal. It’s important to note also that tens of thousands of Iraqis, including Iraqi Army, Police, Iraqi civilians, and Iraqi PMUs – including these very same PMU units who the US has killed this week – have all died, sacrificing their lives for their country in the fight against the foreign-backed terrorist menace. For the United States political leadership and mainstream media to crassly label them as “Iranian militias,” is to rob Iraqis of an important national victory and strip them of their agency.
As we can now see from the incredible scenes at the US embassy on Tuesday, Washington’s ignorance of the reality on the ground in Iraq has come at a heavy price.
Since its opening in 2008, the new US embassy has not faced any serious challenge to its structural integrity. It is not just any embassy either – it is the world’s largest and most expensive embassy ever constructed, covering a total of 104 acres which is roughly the size of Vatican City, and houses 5,000 embassy staff, military and intelligence personnel. Iraqi protesters breached its outer security walls and main gate, and proceeded to lay waste the embassy’s periphery structures, before pinning down US Marines guarding the compound inside the foyer of one of the outer reception buildings. Now that this facility has been compromised, it can no longer be relied on as the ‘fortress America’ and forward operating station it has been for the past decade.
Trump and Washington’s Fundamental Error
Another important takeaway from all of this is for Americans to realize that Iran posed no national security threat to the United States, but Washington’s insistence on framing every incident in the region as “the work of the Iranian regime” means that forces in Washington desperately want war, and now they can’t hide their agenda. This drive is most certainly being spurred on by US allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia. From an imperialist standpoint, the US and its allies do benefit geopolitically by keeping Iraq divided and weak – ensuring that it can never get back on its feet economically or politically to become influential in the region, and can never become close partners with its two most important neighbors Syria and Iran.
For Washington and Tel Aviv, the road to Tehran has always been through Baghdad, only we’re not in 2003 anymore, and the Middle East playing field has changed dramatically since that time, mostly as a direct consequence of US military and proxy aggression in the region.
Besides this, Iraqis are well aware by now that it is the United States and not Iran, who has already ruined their country for generations to come.
If Washington continues down this path, it could also lead to Trump’s downfall politically.
Unfortunately, Iraq is set again to become the pitch for another ugly geopolitical grudge match between the West and Iran. By showing its ugly hand, Washington has left its adversaries with little choice but to fight back this time.
***
Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq. See his archive here.
Obama’s NSC Holdovers Finally Booted After Three Years Of Non-Stop Leaks
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 01/02/2020
The White House National Security Council is sharply downsizing ‘in a bid to improve efficiency’ by consolidating positions and cutting staff, according to the Washington Times – which adds that a secondary, unspoken objective (i.e. the entire reason) for the cuts is to address nonstop leaks that have plagued the Trump administration for nearly three years.
Leaks of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders and other damaging disclosures likely originated with anti-Trump officials in the White House who stayed over from the Obama administration, according to several current and former White House officials. – Washington Times
The reform is being led by National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien, who told the Times that 40-45 NSC staff officials had been sent back to their home-agencies, and more are likely to be moved out.
“We remain on track to meeting the right-sizing goal Ambassador O’Brien outlined in October, and in fact may exceed that target by drawing down even more positions,” said NSC spokesman John Ullyot.
Under Obama, the NSC ballooned to as many as 450 people – and officials wielded ‘enormous power’ according to the report, directly telephoning commanders in Afghanistan and other locations in the Middle East to give them direct orders in violation of the military’s strict chain of command.
Meanwhile, the so-called second-hand ‘whistleblower’ at the heart of President Trump’s impeachment was widely reported to be a NSC staffer on detail from the CIA, Eric Ciaramella, who took umbrage with Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to investigate former VP Joe Biden – who Ciaramella worked with.
After O’Brien is done, less than 120 policy officials will remain after the next several months.
The downsizing will be carried out by consolidating positions and returning officials to agencies and departments such as the CIA, the State and Defense departments and the military.
Mr. O’Brien noted that the NSC had a policymaking staff of 12 in 1962 when President Kennedy faced down the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis. During the 2000s and the George W. Bush administration, the number of NSC staff members increased sharply to support the three-front conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism.
However, it was during the Obama administration that the NSC was transformed into a major policymaking agency seeking to duplicate the functions of the State and Defense departments within the White House. – Washington Times
“The NSC staff became bloated during the prior administration,” said O’Brien. “The NSC is a coordinating body. I am trying to get us back to a lean and efficient staff that can get the job done, can coordinate with our interagency partners, and make sure the president receives the best advice he needs to make the decisions necessary to keep the American people safe.”
“I just don’t think that we need the numbers of people that it expanded to under the last administration to do this job right,” he added.
Obama-era NSC officials are suspected of leaking classified details of President Trump’s phone conversations with foreign counterparts.
After Mr. Trump’s election in November 2016 and continuing through the spring of 2017, a series of unauthorized disclosures to news outlets appeared to come from within the White House. Several of the leaks involved publication of sensitive transcripts of the president’s conversations with foreign leaders.
Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said this year that he sent the Justice Department eight criminal referrals related to the leaks, including those related to Mr. Trump’s conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon said efforts to weed out the Obama holdovers was a priority early in the administration.
“The NSC had gotten so big there were over 450 billets,” said Mr. Bannon, adding that he and others tried to remove the Obama detailees from the White House.
“We wanted them out,” he said. “And I think we would have avoided a lot of the problems we got today if they had been sent back to their agencies.”- Washington Times
In addition to Ciaramella, Lt. Col. Alexander Vimdman (likely Ciaramella’s source) testified against President Trump during the House Impeachment investigations – telling the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee that he was “concerned” by what he heard on Trump’s call with Zelensky.
NSC official Tim Morrison, meanwhile, testified that Vindman was suspected of leaking sensitive information to the press, a claim Vindman denied.
Read the rest of the report here.
Pentagon chief threatens Iran with ‘pre-emptive action’ if embassy attacks continue
RT | January 2, 2020
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has warned that he will take “preemptive action” to “protect US forces” if he receives word of attacks by Iran or its “proxy forces,” claiming to have indications of such attacks in the future.
Esper said he expects more “provocative behavior” by “Iran-backed” groups – and warned that “they will likely regret it.”
“They’ve been… attacking our bases for months now,” Esper claimed, apparently pinning every rocket attack on a coalition base in recent months on Iran. He called on Iraq to “do more… to address these Iran-sponsored militia groups and to stop their attacks on US and coalition forces,” complaining the US has not “seen sufficient action on that front” from Baghdad.
The Trump administration blamed Tuesday’s siege of the US embassy in Baghdad on Tehran and sent 750 troops to Iraq in order to beef up security at the diplomatic compound. Iran, President Donald Trump has said, will be held “fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities.”
However, the protesters who surrounded the embassy were motivated by rage over US strikes that killed 25 members of Kataib Hezbollah, part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) and officially part of the Iraqi military.
Tehran, meanwhile, has accused the US of punishing it for defeating Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists. It slammed the “audacity” of Washington fobbing responsibility for the protests off on Iran when US airstrikes – supposedly in response for an attack on a coalition base near Kirkuk – had actually motivated the embassy-storming.
The Trump administration’s rhetoric regarding Iran may trigger deja vu for those who remember the most recent Iraq War, with its talk of preemptive strikes against leader Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader was said to be was sitting on a cache of weapons of mass destruction and had to be stopped before he could use them. Now known to be a complete fiction, the “weapons of mass destruction” trope has been recycled in the Trump administration’s sanctions on Iran, deeming the country’s largest airline a “weapons of mass destruction proliferator.”
The US could send still more forces to the Middle East, Esper said, pledging to “take it day by day.”
“A variety of forces” are standing by in case they are needed, Joint Staff General Mark Milley said. The US has some 60,000 troops in the region already.
Georgia and Ukraine Joining NATO Will Likely Have the Opposite Effect Against Russia
By Paul Antonopoulos | December 30, 2019
Back in April, during a ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in Washington, it was agreed that a package of measures to strengthen support for Georgia and Ukraine, particularly in the area of maritime defense, would be made.
“We agreed on a package of measures to improve our situational awareness and to step up our support for both Georgia and Ukraine in areas such as the training of maritime forces and coast guards, port visits and exercises and sharing information,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, while NATO ships were simultaneously conducting naval exercises with Ukraine and Georgia in the Black Sea.
There is little doubt that there is the long-term goal of bringing Ukraine and Georgia into the NATO alliance as a three-pronged attack against Russia in the attempt to isolate and pressure the Eurasian Giant:
Both Ukraine and Georgia are Black Sea states, along with Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey who are already NATO members. The Black Sea is the location of Russia’s warmwater ports, i.e. its access for year-round trade with the international community.
Although Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast is completely surrounded by NATO members Poland and Lithuania, and fellow NATO members Norway, Estonia and Latvia share small land borders with Russia, a Ukrainian admittance into the alliance will be the biggest encroachment by NATO against Russia since the infamous February 1990 promise made by then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker who made “iron-clad guarantees” to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward,” if the Soviets supported the reunification of Germany. This was obviously a lie.
Georgia will become a Caucasian salient, on the fringes of where Europe becomes Asia, in the attempt to surround and isolate Russia.
However, both Ukraine and Georgia face significant obstacles as they have unresolved territorial disputes: Ukraine with the Lugansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic, and Georgia which does not recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia despite the reality that these states have achieved sovereignty. So long as the sovereignty and independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the status quo of Donbass remain unresolved, there is little chance Ukraine and Georgia will be able to join NATO with European member states unwilling to go to war with Russia for the sake of these two countries.
As L. Todd Wood, a former special operations helicopter pilot, said in an opinion piece published in the Washington Times in November last year, “Ukrainians and Georgians are good people and deserve our support to realize their dreams. But it’s time to stop with the creeping borders of the alliance. Moscow […] declared that if Georgia or Ukraine joined NATO, Russia would be “forced to act.” I take that threat at face value. Frankly, they have no choice. Any self-respecting Russian leader would have to react or resign.”
Perhaps this is exactly what the U.S. wants though? The Soviet Union, the reason for the establishment of NATO to begin with, is long gone and will not return. This calls into question the purpose of NATO today, and it comes down to two U.S. self-serving reasons:
The desperate prevention of a new Multipolar World Order, which Russia plays a critical part in. It is for this reason that China has now also been identified by NATO as a “very strong competitor.” However, Russia’s defense of South Ossetia in 2008 and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative have already indicated that the era of unipolarity has come to an end.
To ensure that the U.S. Military Industrial Complex maintains a monopoly on arms sales to the 29-member alliance. The addition of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO will force these countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their military, which U.S. military manufacturers will benefit from.
Any Ukrainian-Georgian admittance into NATO will undoubtedly create problems for Russia as it will have to increase its defense spending and it would signal the final eastward expansion onto large swathes of Russia’s European borders. Realistically though, NATO is fractured as never seen before. It is unlikely that Georgia and Ukraine will join the alliance anytime soon, especially as mentioned, it is unlikely European states will want to risk a conflict with Russia over them despite what Washington may want.
In turn, Moscow has its own options to utilize against Georgia and Ukraine such as deepening military support and ties to Donbass, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Also, as done in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the local government of Sevastopol in 2014, referendums could be conducted in Donbass, Abkhazia and South Ossetia to determine if these republic’s want to join Russia. With this trump card (trump being used unironically), by Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO, they could be further weakened by the potential expansion of Russian territory through legal means.
In this light, although Georgia and Ukraine have the goal of joining NATO in the belief that it will help defend their interests against a so-called Russian aggression, it is likely to have the opposite outcome.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
NATO: General Delawarde assesses final London Declaration
By Alexandra Kamyshanova | December 30, 2019
General Dominique Delawarde, the former head of the “Situation – Intelligence – Electronic Warfare 19” section at the joint operational planning staff and a cyberwarfare expert, provides insight into the nine articles of the final London Declaration, published on the NATO website.
Question: Can members of the Alliance really “reaffirm their adherence to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter”, as stated in Article 1?
Answer: A simple observation of how history has unfolded after the Cold War demonstrates that two important elements of Article 1 are erroneous, if not flat-out false. Since 1991, NATO actions have been aimed not at preventing conflicts and maintaining peace, but exactly the opposite. They do cause them themselves by their never-ending destructive interference in the affairs of sovereign countries. Over a quarter-century (1995-2019), its member states dropped more than a million bombs on our planet, which entailed, whether overtly or covertly, the death of several million people. The only objective was to establish hegemony over the “international community”. Alliance members cannot “reaffirm their adherence to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter” by violating or ignoring international rules established by the United Nations. The illegal occupation of part of the Syrian territory serves as evidence of this.
Q: Can we say that the funding efforts outlined in Article 2 fail to reflect the true situation?
A: This statement about efforts to increase funding for NATO members’ defense capabilities is virtually misleading. It loses sight of the fact that defense spending has halved since 1991 (peace dividends) and does not specify any deadline for reaching the 2% target. Finally, this statement is unfeasible and won’t be implemented in the short or medium term, given the economic and social complexities faced by all the key NATO member states. So this is mere verbiage.
Besides, NATO will not be able to compete with the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), because defense spending parity in PPP (purchasing power parity) dollars has almost been reached between NATO and the SCO; the cumulative defense budget of NATO member states accounts for 1000 billion dollars (PPP), and that of SCO member states is going to reach parity with the NATO budget in 2020 already. To date, the annual growth rate of defense spending in SCO countries is two to three times higher as compared to NATO countries. The SCO has a much wider scope for expansion (major countries like Iran and perhaps Turkey, why not) than NATO (North Macedonia, Georgia, Bosnia). Speaking of Turkey, an untrained eye should know that the SCO-NATO dual membership is not prohibited, since in 2005, the United States itself applied to join the SCO as nonmember state (the application was unanimously rejected by SCO members, guess why).
Q: Should we consider Russia as a threat, as stated in Article 3?
A: This list of universal threats and perpetual accusations against Russia, which is presented as a source of aggression and threat, are familiar pretexts to justify the very existence of NATO. As for anti-Russian statements, NATO is clearly resorting to an accusatory inversion. It is NATO members, not Russia, who have dropped over a million bombs and caused the death of several million people since 1995, and it is them who violate UN rules by continuing the military occupation of part of the Syrian territory. This is also the case of the coup organized in Ukraine, the division of the former Yugoslavia, and the constant advancing to the borders of Russia, which is in total disregard of the promises made to Gorbachev.
As for terrorism and instability observed beyond our borders, the Alliance forgets to remind that both arise from their omnidirectional interference in the affairs of sovereign states at the slightest pretext. They arise from their unlawful bombings, humiliations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the replacement of strong secular leaders with the chaos we observe today, and the wars waged under false pretexts (Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria). Migration is a blowback.
It should be recognized that state and non-state actors shattering the international order are mostly representatives of the West and NATO. The April 14, 2018 joint strike on Syria by the United States, France and the United Kingdom is yet another proof of this. Anglo-Saxon non-governmental NGOs, ostensibly independent but actually used by government agencies and / or their American sponsors (Soros), are wreaking havoc by promoting North Atlantic strategies. They use various useful idiots for their own purposes, who may inherently have good intentions. Finally, the main and only known cyber threat uncovered by Snowden, Assange and Manning is America, not Russia or China. The United States has installed wiretaps of all the political and economic Western leaders (NSA) and has pretty reliable bargaining chips to blackmail our heads of state and seize our businesses.
Q: Do you agree with the statement of Article 4: “NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to any country”?
A: You need to ask the countries that have been bombed for 25 years.
The Alliance does not act “prudently and responsibly” in relation to Russia: the expansion to the East which runs counter to NATO promises of 1990, the coup in Ukraine, the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the INF and other treaties, including the Iranian nuclear program. They pretend to be combating terrorism, even though many of its elements are funded by the West itself or some of its Arab allies – this is simply ridiculous. NATO members take us for perfect fools.
Q: What do you think about the phrasing of Article 5 that NATO seeks to “work to increase security for all, deepen political dialogue and cooperation with the United Nations”?
A: NATO provokes chaos, migration crisis, surge of terrorism and anti-Western hatred that have now pummelled Europe. You cannot drop a million bombs over 25 years on the countries that have never attacked a single member of the Alliance. Think about the five thousand soldiers from 11 NATO member states who died for nothing in Iraq, in a deceitful war unleashed in 2003. It is worth paying tribute to the memory of those who fell victim to American aggression supported by 10 European NATO member states that agreed to take part.
Q: What does NATO mean in Article 6 when mentioning “the resilience of our societies”, “our energy security” and “the need to rely on secure and resilient systems”?
A: This reflects the current US obsession: “to increase the resilience of our energy security” means ” NATO’s opposition to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, to spite the vicious Russians and to the benefit of the goodу American gas market.” “Security of our telecommunications, including 5G” means “the rejection of the Chinese Huawei technology, to the detriment of the Chinese and in favor of American technologies.” The US has long been spying on our political and economic leaders’ telecommunications, while accusing China of “intending” to spy on the alliance members by means of its 5G system.
China poses “challenges that we need to address together”. So, NATO is embarking on a path of confronting China, which is beneficial to the United States alone.
Q: What is meant by “strengthening NATO’s political dimension” referred to in Article 7?
A: NATO’s ten-year strategy is now being updated, and the “relevant expertise” will be that of American and European neoconservatives. The essence of Article 7 is discernable: “strengthening NATO’s political dimension”. Since the end of the Cold War, the 1949 “military-defensive” alliance has been increasingly turning into a political and offensive one, often to accommodate certain economic interests.
Q: What do you think Article 8 is remarkable for?
A: For postponing the revision of the strategic concept from the year 2020 to 2021. Trump’s unpredictability scares Europe, with its people hopeful that he won’t be re-elected and that another President will bring the crisis-stricken Alliance back into the ranks.
Q: Is it serious that Article 9 stresses NATO’s greater protection for the peoples of its member states?
A: NATO has been sowing too much hatred and chaos on the planet since 1991 to be a security factor in Europe, and it has been so since the end of the Cold War. The North Atlantic Charter does not present NATO as an instrument of American hegemony. Therefore, the dissolution of NATO, or at least the withdrawal of France would be the best decision at the moment, unless NATO returns to the original principles of a defensive alliance with its activities covering only the territories of its member states, and ceases to invent new threats to serve as false pretexts to justify wars and intervention aimed at maintaining Western hegemony on the planet.
Q: What conclusion would you draw?
A: It is not just about a “brain death” in NATO. Can their solidarity survive the global economic crisis that experts predict, and the inevitable subsequent upheaval in the hierarchy of forces? Hardly probable. The prosperity of the West and the financing of its armed forces rest today on a whole ocean of debts.
The future will belong to those who keep ahead of the game. A long-term vision is needed to pursue foreign policy. Russia, China and India have long ago grasped this.
“Opposing Interventionism In Nation X Means You Love Nation X’s Government!”
By Caitlin Johnstone | December 27, 2019
Every time you speak out against western imperialism in a given nation or question western propaganda narratives about that nation’s government, you will inevitably be accused of loving that nation’s government by anyone who argues with you.
When I say “inevitably”, I am not exaggerating. If you speak in any public forum for any length of time expressing skepticism of what we’re told to believe about a nation whose government has been targeted by the US-centralized empire, you will with absolute certainty eventually run into someone who accuses you of thinking that that government is awesome and pure and good.
I have never, ever had this fail to occur, even once. If I write an article about the mountain of evidence suggesting we were lied to about a chemical attack in Syria, I get people telling me I think Bashar al-Assad is a girl scout who’s never ever done anything wrong. If I express skepticism of the flimsy narratives we’re being fed in the escalating propaganda war against China, I get “If you love Beijing so much and think Xi is so innocent you should go and move to China!” It’s one of the only completely predictable things about this job.
Which is of course idiotic. Understanding that the US government and its allies lie constantly with the full-throated support of western news media in no way suggests a belief that the targeted government in question is wonderful, and there’s absolutely no legitimate reason to infer such a thing. The indisputable fact that US-led military interventionism is universally disastrous and based on lies has nothing to do with anyone’s level of emotional support for the governments targeted for destruction by the US-centralized empire. Yet everyone reading this who’s ever tried to speak out against US foreign policy has encountered the behavior I’m describing here.
Why is that? Why do establishment loyalists engage in such a weird, nonsensical behavior with such reliable consistency? Why do they literally always accuse anyone who questions any narrative about any empire-targeted government of having positive emotions toward that government, even though there is no rational reason for them to do so?
I’ll tell you why: Hollywood.
Well, not just Hollywood. Really the dynamic we’re about to discuss has been going on for as long as there have been war stories. But the dominant storytellers of today are in Hollywood, and that’s where the dominant war stories are told.
For as long as war stories have been told, those stories have been framed as a battle between good and evil. The good side is the side you identify with, and the evil side is the one you want to lose. You see this in almost all depictions of war coming out of Hollywood today, from movies based on actual wars to sci-fi and fantasy films like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Over and over and over again from childhood we are trained to assume that mass military violence must have a Good side and an Evil side, so when we see a war being depicted anywhere we immediately start trying to sort out who are the Good Guys and who are the Bad Guys, usually without even thinking about it.
Obviously war isn’t actually about Good versus Evil; usually it’s nothing more noble than geostrategic agenda versus geostrategic agenda. But because people are conditioned from an early age to overlay any ideas about large-scale conflict with this false Good or Evil dichotomy, there’s an immediate assumption that if you’re suggesting that one side might not be Good, then the other side are the Good Guys. If you say the government pushing regime change in Iran is doing something immoral, then you’re saying they’re the Bad Guys, which means you think the Iranian government are the Good Guys.
Yes, the behavior in question really does boil down to something that stupid. This phenomenon where empire apologists will predictably accuse you of loving an empire-targeted nation just because you oppose imperialist agendas is primarily due to a combination of dumb binary thinking and watching too many Hollywood movies. In other words, it’s due to bad information meeting bad thinking.
All we can really do to address this dynamic is bring consciousness to it. When someone’s acting out the unexamined assumption that because you are critical of western imperialism you must necessarily believe that all of its targets are perfect and wonderful, you can point out the absurdity of this position and invite them to think a little harder about it. Or just link them to this article.
Beyond that, all you can really do is understand what you’re looking at, roll your eyes, and sigh.
Japan to send helicopter-carrying destroyer & spy planes to ensure ‘safe passage’ of oil from increasingly crowded Middle East
RT | December 27, 2019
Japan’s cabinet has approved a plan to send its warship and surveillance planes to the Middle East, framing the controversial mission as “study and research activities” totally separate from the US initiative to contain Iran.
Tokyo is expected to send a destroyer with 200 crew and carrying up to two patrol helicopters alongside two P-3C anti-submarine patrol airplanes to the Gulf of Oman sometime in February, for a year-long mission.
The deployment is styled as a “study and research” mission to ensure “safe passage” for Japanese vessels through the region from which Tokyo receives some 90% of its oil imports. Yet in case of “unexpected developments,” local media report, a special order might be issued by the Japanese defence minister to allow the ‘Self-Defense Force’ to use weapons.
The possibility of Japanese deployment to the region was first voiced soon after a Japanese oil tanker came under a totally not suspicious attack back in June that by pure coincidence occurred just as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.
Washington blamed Tehran for that and other attacks, pitching the idea of a maritime ‘policing’ mission but finding little enthusiasm among its allies. Besides Bahrain and the UAE, only the UK agreed to send a couple of destroyers after an embarrassing incident when it tried to seize an Iranian tanker under a bogus pretext only to get its own vessel impounded in a tit-for-tat response. Saudi Arabia joined the naval alliance after a drone attack – that was also pinned on Iran – targeted a major oil facility in the country. In addition, Australia promised to join sometime next year and the US says it’s only a “matter of time” until Qatar and Kuwait also join.
France in the meantime is spearheading a European-led mission independent of the US-led maritime initiative, as the US failed to convince European allies that its gunboat diplomacy was indeed only aimed at ‘protecting’ crucial waterways rather than enforcing Washington’s unilateral sanctions on Iran.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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Aletho News- CHD Scientist: CDC, FDA COVID Vaccine Safety Monitoring ‘Insulting, and Many People Are Injured’
- COVID Conniving Receives First Federal Indictment
- Iran Blockade Complications /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Nima Alkhorshid
- Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents
- Minab children massacre not ‘unfortunate situation’ but ‘heinous war crime’: Tehran
- OPCW Forced To Pay Damages To Whistleblower Who Found Evidence Of False Flag In Syria
- Iran can thrive under blockade, the US and its allies cannot
- Iran slams US leadership, debunking fabrications, false war costs
- Here’s why Iran is sovereign and Germany is not
- Israel pours $730m into global propaganda machine as reputation collapses
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- Nun assaulted in Jerusalem amid ‘pattern’ of anti-Christian attacks by Israelis
- Former Tik Tok official describes massive pressure from Israel lobby
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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