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Iran nuclear issue at inflection point

French President Emmanuel Macron met Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani at UN Hqs, New York, Sept 24, 2019
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | September 30, 2019

The unexpected move by the Pentagon to shift the Combined Air and Space Operations Center (CAOC) at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar to the Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina 7,000 miles away from the Middle East took place against the backdrop of the gathering storms in the regional environment. It injects a crisis atmosphere into regional politics.

To put the Pentagon move in perspective, in addition to hosting Qatari forces, the base also hosts the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the US Air Force. Other US military has been active in the country as well including the US Navy SEALS. The facility is also used by the British Royal Airforce. The al-Udeid Air Base is one of the few US airbases overseas where B-52 bombers, America’s largest warplane can land due to the long runways.

This is not the first time that the US temporarily relocated the CAOC. The last time it happened was 13 years ago. When tensions erupted between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, there was even talk of relocating the Central Command out of Qatar.

However, in the current scenario, the Pentagon move is undoubtedly related to the US’ mounting tensions with Iran. If push came to shove and a full blown US-Iran conflict erupts, the CAOC would be one of Iran’s priority targets. The CAOC is so critical to providing fire power for the US forces operating in the region that the Pentagon cannot take risks. The US commander of the 609th Air and Space Operations Center has been quoted as saying, “Iran has indicated multiple times through multiple sources their intent to attack US forces.”

How serious are the prospects of a US-Iran military conflict? Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani disclosed after his return to Tehran from New York that the two sides came breathtakingly close to a summit meeting on the sidelines of the UN GA in New York last week. Rouhani said,

“They (Americans) had sent messages to almost all European and no-European leaders that they wanted one-to-one negotiations between the two Presidents, but we had rejected it, saying that negotiations had to be done in the framework of P5+1, and they accepted.”

“Of course, 3 out of the 6 countries, that is the Chancellor of Germany, Prime Minister of Britain, and President of France all insisted for the meeting to be held, saying that the US would lift all sanctions. But the problem here is that under sanctions and maximum pressure, even if we want to negotiate with the Americans within the framework of P5+1, nobody can predict about the end and upshot of the negotiation.”

Significantly, last Tuesday, during the UNGA in New York, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) also spoke with noticeable restraint in a rare interview with CBS’ ’60 Minutes’. MbS warned, “If the world does not take a strong and firm action to deter Iran, we will see further escalations that will threaten world interests. Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.” And he went on to stay that a “political and peaceful solution is much better than the military one.”

Importantly, he was categorical that there should be a US-Iranian summit meeting, and added, “this is what we all ask for.” Conventional wisdom is that Saudi Arabia is petrified that the US may engage with Iran directly. But that is apparently not the case.

No doubt, the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Saudi Arabia in October will be keenly watched. Prior to the Saudi visit, Putin will be meeting Rouhani on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in Yerevan on October 1 when the regional situation and the Iran nuclear deal will certainly be on the agenda of discussion.

This is a defining moment in Russian-Iranian relations too, as Iran is about to sign the formal agreement to join a free trade zone with the EAEU, which of course is a prestigious Kremlin project.

Moscow is cautiously optimistic that “Possibly we will achieve some positive solution (on the 2015 nuclear deal) over several months to come, or else the situation will continue to get worse,” to quote Russia’s representative at international organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov during a press conference on Friday to highlight that the Iran nuclear issue is approaching an inflection point.

But Iran is potentially inching its way back [?] in the nuclear weapons business, with a fourth step it is expected to take in early November to reduce its commitments under the 2015 deal. A report in the Guardian last week said the European Union has “privately warned Iran that it will be forced to start withdrawing from the nuclear deal in November if Tehran goes ahead with its threat to take new steps away from the deal… The EU told Iran that it would put the issue of Iranian non-compliance into the agreement’s formal dispute mechanism if the next Iranian move away from the deal is significant… Once the deal’s dispute mechanism is triggered, both sides have 30 days to prove significant non-compliance, and if necessary a world-wide sanctions snap-back occurs.”

The Guardian report put across the European dilemma on the following lines: “The difficulty is that Iran says the steps are reversible, but if they learn about building a nuclear bomb, that is irreversible.”

Iran is no longer finding the support it hoped for in Europe and could be susceptible to broad censure. Conversely, the US is getting the opportunity to restore a modicum of credibility with its allies and the international community, which would broaden the pressure on Iran.

On the other hand, a climb-down by Trump is becoming more difficult in the rising tumult of impeachment proceedings. But while he may appear to have boxed himself in, it is still up to him to offer to Iran that resuming compliance with the 2015 agreement would be met with concrete benefits, like the $15 billion bailout package France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has proposed.

Such a turn to events between now and November cannot be ruled out. After the UNGA, Trump hinted at willingness to negotiate. He said on Friday, “I don’t want military conflict. We’ve offered to talk, we’ve offered to discuss things… I’ve shown great restraint and hope that Iran likewise chooses peace.”

It is within these broad parameters that events may unfold in the coming months. Meanwhile, Pentagon is doing advance planning by shifting the CAOC away from the zone of conflict.

September 30, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Malaysian PM: Israel is the origin of modern terrorism

MEMO | September 29, 2019

The creation of Israel by seizing Palestinian land and expelling its 90 per cent Arab population is the root cause of terrorism, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr Mahathir Mohamad said in his speech at the UN, reports Malay Mail.

The Malaysian PM stated that since the creation of Israel “… wars have been fought in many countries, many related to the creation of Israel. And now we have terrorism when there was none before, or at least none on the present scale.”

Making his comments at the General Debate of the 74th UN General Assembly in New York, he added: “Military action against acts of terrorism will not succeed. We need to identify the cause and remove it. But the great powers refuse to deal with the root cause.”

The prime minister added that “… Malaysia cannot accept the blatant seizure of Palestine land by Israel for their settlements as well as the occupation of Jerusalem by Israel. The Palestinians cannot even enter the settlements built on their land…”

He went on to add: “Because of the creation of Israel, there is now enmity towards the Muslims and Islam. Muslims are accused of terrorism even if they did nothing. Muslim countries have been destabilised through the campaign for democracy and regime change. Muslims everywhere have been oppressed, expelled from their countries and refused asylum.”

“Thousands have died at sea and in the severe winters. One cannot deny that in the past there were no massive migration. Now the wars and instability due to regime change have forced them to run away from their countries,” he added.

Dr Mahathir also said that the application of the rule of law has been selective.

He said: “Friends may break any law and get away scot-free. Thus, Israel can break all the international laws and norms of the world and it will continue to be supported and defended. The unfriendly countries can do nothing right. There is no justice in the world.”

September 29, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump Frees Himself From Bolton – but Robert O’Brien Will Be Just as Bad

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 26, 2019

After months of rumors, John Bolton was finally fired from the White House but the post mortem on why it took so long to remove him continues, with the punditry and media trying to understand exactly what happened and why. Perhaps the most complete explanation for what occurred came from President Donald Trump himself shortly after the fact. He said, in some impromptu comments, that his national security advisor had “… made some very big mistakes when he talked about the Libyan model for Kim Jong Un. That was not a good statement to make. You just take a look at what happened with Gadhafi. That was not a good statement to make. And it set us back.”

Trump has a point in that Bolton was clearly suggesting that North Korea get rid of its nuclear weapons in exchange for economic benefits, but it was the wrong example to pick as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave up his weapons and was then ousted and brutally killed in a rebel uprising that was supported by Washington. The Bolton analogy, which may have been deliberate attempt to sabotage any rapprochement, made impossible any agreement between Kim and Trump as Kim received the message loud and clear that he might suffer the same fate.

More recently, Bolton might have been behind media leaks that scuttled Trump’s plan to meet with Taliban representatives and that also, acting on behalf of Israel, undercut a presidential suggestion that he might meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Trump summed up his disagreements with Bolton by saying that the National Security Advisor “wasn’t getting along” with other administration officials, adding that “Frankly he wanted to do things — not necessarily tougher than me. John’s known as a tough guy. He’s so tough he got us into Iraq. That’s tough. But he’s somebody that I actually had a very good relationship with, but he wasn’t getting along with people in the administration who I consider very important. And you know John wasn’t in line with what we were doing. And actually in some cases he thought it was too tough, what we were doing. Mr. Tough Guy.”

Trump’s final comment on Bolton was that “I’m sure he’ll do whatever he can do to spin it his way,” a throw-away line that could well set the stage for what comes next. Bolton has many supporters among hardliners in the GOP and the media and will no doubt be inclined to respond to the president in kind, but once the back and forth starts many other factors and relationships will come into play.

After the firing, it was widely believed that Donald Trump might have actually gotten rid of Bolton for all the right reasons, namely that as president he is disinclined to start any new wars and seeks negotiated solutions to existing conflicts, both of which concepts were no doubt regarded as anathema by the National Security Advisor. Unfortunately, that argument runs into problems where rhetoric and deeds disconnect if one considers actual actions undertaken by the president, to include the man that Trump has now named as Bolton’s replacement, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Robert O’Brien.

O’Brien might well have been ranked among the worst possible choices among the names floated in the media for the National Security Advisor position, mostly because he is almost completely lacking in actual experience related to the job. To be sure, he looks more presentable than the wild-eyed and walrus mustachioed Bolton, but Trump has repeatedly been overly deferential towards the bona fides of hardliners like O’Brien who boast of American Exceptionalism. The president will also likely appreciate that the sycophantic O’Brien’s lack of experience will mean that he will be completely deferential to the Chief Executive’s point of view at all times.

Trump’s cabinet choices have been so bad that they have led to musical chairs in nearly all senior positions. The president is to blame for having appointed Bolton, a man he disliked, though admittedly under orders from Israeli-American casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, and he also did not have to elevate Mike Pompeo first as CIA Director and then as Secretary of State. There is no one around who outdoes Pompeo when it comes to avoiding diplomacy and negotiations while also threatening dire consequences for America’s “enemies.” O’Brien’s hardline credentials are largely indistinguishable from those of Pompeo and Bolton and it is widely believed that his appointment was due to advocacy by the Secretary of State, who is reportedly assembling his national security team.

And it should be observed that Trump’s claimed avoidance of war credentials are pretty thin. Far from fulfilling campaign promises to end the wars he inherited, Donald Trump has continued and even escalated those conflicts. He has withdrawn from agreements with Russia and Iran that enhanced US national security. Drone strikes under Trump have increased dramatically and have exceeded the number occurring during both of Obama’s terms, while new rules of engagement have led to a major increase in civilian casualties from US bombing directed against ISIS and the Taliban. Most recently in Afghanistan, 30 farm workers were killed in a drone strike. Trump is also doubling down on his support for the Saudi genocide against Yemen.

And the president has demonstrated that he is willing to attack countries that do not threaten the US and with which Washington is not at war. He has twice illegally bombed Syria based on phony intelligence and even when he decided at the last minute not to use force, as he did earlier this year with Iran, there was no serious evidence that he was truly seeking dialogue. He is waging “maximum pressure” economic warfare against both Iran and Venezuela, in both of which countries he has called for regime change. He has threatened Russia over Crimea and Ukraine and is in a trade war with China. Transparent regime change policies coupled with willy-nilly imposing of sanctions are destructive, hostile steps that kill people in the targeted countries and make enemies where none previously existed.

America’s new National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien recently featured in a taxpayer funded trip to Stockholm to obtain the release of rapper ASAP Rocky, who had been arrested after getting involved in a fist fight. O’Brien had orders to threaten unspecified retaliation against the Swedish government if it did not accede to White House demands. That exercise in international bullying means that O’Brien is quintessentially Trump’s kind of guy. He has written a book entitled While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis, calling on the United States to end any “appeasement and retreat,” and has described the nuclear agreement with Iran, in predictable neocon fashion, as a repeat of 1938, Hitler and Munich. He was Mitt Romney’s foreign policy adviser and is a Mormon, which means he basically lines up alongside the Christian Zionists when it comes to Israel.

The Israel Lobby has predictably welcomed O’Brien. Sandra Parker or Christians United for Israel (CUFI), enthused how “CUFI enjoys a close working relationship with many officials throughout the Trump Administration, and we look forward to working with Ambassador O’Brien on strengthening the US-Israel relationship, confronting the Iranian menace, and curtailing the threat posed by terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Mort Klein President of the Zionist Organization of America observed how “Mr. O’Brien is a great friend of Israel, and is now the top-ranking Mormon in the pro-Israel Trump administration. He is also best friends with ardent Zionist US Ambassador to Germany [Richard] Grenell … And you can’t be a great friend of evangelical Christian Grenell unless you support Israel.”

So, does the firing of John Bolton and replacement by Robert O’Brien mean that there will be a change of direction in US foreign policy? The answer has to be no. Trump might well be maneuvering to avoid a new war as he will be in full 2020 campaign mode and wants to avoid falling into a quagmire, but the basic belligerency of the administration and its strong tilt towards supporting feckless allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia is certain to continue.

September 26, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

A Precision Strike on US Credibility – Shattering a US Paradigm

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 23, 2019

The precision attack on the Saudi ‘jewel in the crown’, crude-processing installation last week, is also a precision assault on Saudi credibility, on the believability of the US security ‘umbrella’, and a humiliation for Trump, and particularly to America’s image as a competent military and intelligence power.

Gulf States will be pursing their lips as they consider now their own vulnerabilities and question their reliance on that US umbrella. Even the Pentagon might be questioning, ‘what then – is the point to CentCom’ in light of what has happened? And above all, Israel will be experiencing a very chill wind sending shivers up the spine: Israelis cannot but be a tad struck in awe at the attack’s precise targeting and technical efficacy. Quite impressive – especially given that Saudi spent $65 billion on weaponry last year, to no good avail.

Facing this humiliation, the US Administration has been ‘blowing smoke’: tossing around red-herrings about the origin and launch of the UAVs and cruise missiles. ‘It can’t be AnsarAllah (the Houthis), because such an operation was sophisticated beyond their capabilities’. Apart from the obvious Orientalism to this assertion (for, if Hizbullah can manufacture smart drones and smart cruise missiles, why shouldn’t the Houthis be able so to do?), do the exact, individual contributions towards the strike on Abqaiq really matter? What is most telling is that the US – with all its massive resources in the Gulf – cannot provide the evidence from whence came these UAVs to Abqaiq.

Actually, the ambiguity about the strike modus operandi represents just another layer to the sophistication of the attack.

The US is ‘blowing smoke’ about launch sites mainly to divert from the very obvious (but embarrassing) fact that the raining down of missiles on Abqaiq, primordially owes to the Saudi war on Yemen (supported unreservedly by Trump). The Houthis have claimed the attack; they say they will demonstrate their weaponry (which certainly in the case of the Houthi Quds 1 cruise missile is no mere copy of the Iranian Soumar missile – see here), and promise to repeat their attacks in the near future.

What the precision strike has done is to shatter the ‘vessel’ of the US posing as somehow ‘guardian’ of the Gulf, and guarantor of the crude oil lifeblood feeding into the veins of a fragile world economy. This to say, it was a precision strike aimed at the prevailing paradigm – and it scored a direct hit. It exposed the hollowness of both claims. Anthony Cordesman writes, “the strikes on Saudi Arabia provide a clear strategic warning that the US era of air supremacy in the Gulf, and the near US monopoly on precision strike capability, is rapidly fading”.

Were the Iranians directly or indirectly involved? Well … it doesn’t really matter. To understand the implications properly, it should be understood as somehow a joint message – coming from a common front (Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hash’d a-Shaibi and the Houthis). This was about blasting the wider sanctions crisis to a head: a strategic (missile) popping of the over-inflated ‘balloon’ of the efficacy of US “maximum pressure” tactics. Trump’s ‘sanctioning/tariffing the world’ had to be brought to a head – and be exploded. Russia and China would almost certainly concur, and (quietly) applaud.

There are clear risks to this approach. Will the message be heard correctly in Washington? For, as Gareth Porter points out in a different context, Washington’s ability to comprehend, or to ‘read well’, its ‘enemies’ mind seems to have been somehow lost – out of a failure in Washington to discover any strain of empathy towards ‘otherness’ (either Iranian, Chinese or Russian). So the prospects, probably, are not great. Washington will not ‘get it’, but rather, may double-down, with potentially disastrous consequences. Porter writes:

“The Abqaiq strike is also a dramatic demonstration of Iran’s ability to surprise the United States strategically, [thus] upsetting its political-military plans. Iran has spent the last two decades preparing for an eventual confrontation with the United States, and the result is a new generation of drones and cruise missiles that give Iran the ability to counter far more effectively any US effort to destroy its military assets and to target US bases across the Middle East.

“The United States was apparently taken by surprise when Iran shot down a high-altitude … surveillance drone … Iran’s air defence system has been continually upgraded, beginning with the Russian S-300 system it received in 2016. Iran also just unveiled in 2019 its Bavar-373 air defence system, which it regards as closer to the Russian S-400 system coveted by India and Turkey – than to the S-300 system.

“Then there is Iran’s development of a fleet of military drones, which has prompted one analyst to call Iran a ‘drone superpower’. Its drone accomplishments reportedly include the Shahed-171 “stealth drone” with precision-guided missiles, and the Shahed-129, which it reverse-engineered from the US Sentinel RQ-170 and the MQ-1 Predator” [link added].

Understanding Porter’s message represents the key to comprehending the nature of the ‘Great Shift’ taking place in the region. Robot planes and drones – simply – have changed the calculus of war. The old verities no longer hold – there is no simple US military solution to Iran.

A US attack on Iran will bring only a firm Iranian response – and escalation. A full US invasion – as in the 2003 invasion of Iraq – is no longer within US capabilities.

There is only a political answer. But for now, the US and MbS both, are in a stage of denial: the latter apparently believes that continuing with the partial sale of Aramco might solve his problems (though markets have just re-awoken to geo-political risk to assets, such as Aramco), and Trump seems still to believe that maximum pressure might still come up trumps.

For the rest of us, ‘the political’ is pretty obvious for Saudi Arabia: Accept defeat in Yemen, and with it, its corollary – engaging with Iran and Russia is a sine qua non for achieving any settlement. For sure it will be costly for MbS, both politically and financially. But what is the alternative? Wait upon further Abqaiqs? To be fair, there are reports that the al-Saud understand their situation now to be existential. We shall see.

And for Trump, the lesson surely is clear. The strike on Abqaiq could have been easily worse (with greater interruption to oil supplies). Oil markets and markets more generally have woken up to the geo-political risks to Trump’s maximum pressure tactics. And they are becoming nervous, as world trade falters.

Headlines such as “Stunning weekend attacks take out 50% of Saudi Arabia’s oil output … Can the economy survive a higher oil price…?” may be a bit too alarmist, but they make the point: Supply disruption could easily tip the fragile US and the global economy into recession, were higher prices to be sustained.

No one is more aware of this than President Trump because his re-election chances in 2020 may hinge on whether the US can stay out of recession. Generally speaking, US Presidents who seek a second term are always re-elected, unless they have a recession late in their first term. This happened to Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush – both lost re-election bids because of recessions on their watches.

Already both Saudi Arabia and Trump are rowing back from a possible (diversionary) confrontation with Iran (in lieu of addressing the Yemen issue, which remains at the root of Saudi’s difficulties). The question is how long denial over the flaws to the maximum-pressure Iran policy might continue? Up to the elections? Probably yes. Trump has some constituency egos he must stroke – in parallel to avoiding the potentially fatal landmine of recession – if he is to gain a second term. And that means pandering to the Evangelical and AIPAC obsession with Iran as our era’s ‘cosmic evil’ – one positive ‘straw in the wind’ might be the end to the Netanyahu reign (although Gantz is no Iran ‘dove’).

September 23, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Will More US Troops in Saudi Arabia Make America Great?

By Ron Paul | September 23, 2019

President Trump deserves credit for resisting the war cries from neocons like Sen. Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after last week’s attack on two Saudi oil facilities. Pompeo was eager to blame Iran because he wants war with Iran and anything that can trigger such a war is fine with him. So he put the president in a difficult spot by declaring Iran the culprit: suddenly the president’s options in the media and in Washington were limited to “how to punish Iran.”

A week has now passed since the attack and Pompeo’s rush to judgement has been shown for what it was: war propaganda. That is because there has still been no determination of who launched the attack. Yemen’s Houthis took responsibility right away and Iran denied any involvement. We have seen nothing to this point that contradicts this.

President Trump likely understands that a US war on Iran will be his undoing as president. Who knows, maybe that’s what his closest advisors want. But according to a Gallup poll just last month, only 18 percent of Americans were in favor of military action against Iran. Seventy-eight percent of Americans – including 72 percent of Republicans – want the president to pursue diplomatic efforts over war. Iran has made clear that any attack on its territory will trigger a total war. The Middle East would be engulfed in flames and the US economy would be in the tank. Suddenly we’d see Democrat challengers pretending to be antiwar!

The message to Trump is pretty clear – war with Iran would be deeply unpopular – and it seems clear he understands the message. Just hours after his Secretary of State put the US on war footing with Iran, President Trump was forced to walk back Pompeo’s aggression. When asked about going to war with Iran, President Trump said, “Do I want war? I don’t want war with anybody.”

Unfortunately, with pressure on President Trump to “do something” even as Iran has not been found to have been behind the attack, the president has settled on two measures – one pointless and the other dangerous. On Friday Trump announced yet even more sanctions on Iran, leaving many of us to wonder what is possibly left to sanction. He also announced a deployment of US military forces to Saudi Arabia of a “defensive nature.” Why should the military be sent to “defend” one of the wealthiest and most repressive countries on earth? It is hard to see how putting US servicemembers into harm’s way – into a war zone – to defend Saudi Arabia can in any way make America great again. I believe most Americans would agree.

President Trump should immediately cancel the order to send US troops to Saudi Arabia and should immediately remove what troops are already on Saudi soil. Then the Saudis would understand that they must end their aggression against Yemen.

Attempting to placate the neocons is a fool’s errand, because they are never satisfied even up to and including war. The tide is turning in America – and even in Washington – against Saudi Arabia. After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a catastrophic four-year Saudi war on Yemen, no American politician is any longer in the mood to stick his or her neck out to defend Saudi Arabia. President Trump would be wise to use caution: it’s always dangerous sticking one’s neck out when the Saudi government is around.

Copyright © 2019 by RonPaul Institute.

September 23, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Peace vs. Climate

By Peter Koenig | The Saker Blog | September 23, 2019

Today, Monday 23 September, the UN in New York is hosting a special meeting on Climate Change. There were massive predominantly youth demonstrations of tens of thousands around the globe, many of them in New York, one of them led by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 16-year-old climate activist, who is sponsored mostly by Soros and his clan to travel around the world and address world leaders to act on climate chance – preventing climate change, stop climate change. Others with the same objective, called “Friday’s for the Future”, originated in Germany, students striking every Friday – meaning literally not going to school, on behalf of stopping climate change.

The worldwide spill-over is apparently enormous. On Saturday some youth groups met with UN Secretary General, António Guterres, telling him that Climate Change is the world’s political issue number ONE. Mr. Guterres did not contradict, yes, it was a key problem and had to be addressed and world leaders needed to commit to take actions. The UN General assembly will further dedicate part of its program to Climate Change.

Wait a minute – Climate Change number ONE? – How about PEACE? – Nobody thought about that? Not even Guterres, whose mandate it is to lead the world body towards conflict solutions that bring PEACE – this is the very mandate that the UN has been founded on. Not climate, but PEACE.

Have these western kids, mostly from elite ranks, been brainwashed to the extent that they do not realize that the world has other priorities, namely stop the indiscriminate killing, by never ending US-launched and instigated wars around the globe?

Do they not realize that their brothers and sisters in Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and in many more places of conflict and extreme poverty, are being killed left and right by the US-NATO killing machine, by famine, by war-related diseases, and by US vassal states, the very nations from where they, the rich kids, come to protest against climate change, but NOT against war? When do they wake up to reality? Maybe never, or when it’s too late – when even they are being bombed by the never-ending neoliberal greed-driven wars.

Do they know that these wars and conflicts, carried out directly or through proxies by US-NATO forces have killed between 20 and 25 million people since WWII alone, and between 12 and 15 million since 9/11? – Isn’t stopping this killing more important than vouching for a cause that arrogant human kind cannot stop – simply because climate change has been part of nature of the last 4 billion years of Mother Earth’s existence.

But it’s typical for mankind’s arrogance to believe and especially make believe to the masses that we, they, have the power to influence Mother Earth’s climate, and those who say Mother Earth, say Universe, because all is connected, and if we want to look very close we have to look at our sun which has enormous influence on our climate, much more than we want to admit; our sun, the source of life on earth together with water resources – that’s what we have to protect – and work for PEACE.

Screaming and hollering for something where mankind is important to do anything about is a waste of energy, but also a deviation from the real issue: How to stop war and achieve world PEACE. And even if we could influence climate, let’s just assume for a moment we could change the course of climate – do you, Greta and the Friday kids – and perhaps you too, Mr. Guterres – know that these wars that kill millions of people, are the largest Co2 / greenhouse gas producers by far – and this is pointing the finger straight to the US – NATO military complex – more than half! – And do you know, that up to now, none of the climate conferences – of these international glamour events, where politicians talk, promise but never follow their promises – that the military / war-caused Co2 pollution is never allowed to be addressed in these conferences? – So, what good do they do?

Do you also know, that the half a dozen or so huge climate conferences that cost a fortune for zilch, have brought absolutely no change to climate whatsoever? – First, because they can’t, since we are not the masters over Mother Earth – thank god! And second, because the politicians, especially in the western world, those that we call our leaders, are in bed with the corporate and finance key polluters? They are bought by them, the huge profit-making industries; profits they would not be able to make without the almost indiscriminate use of hydrocarbons. Our politicians, “leaders” (sic) would never even dare talking seriously about legislation that would prevent them from contaminating our atmosphere with greenhouse gases. No. Never. Not in the turbo-capitalist private sector dominated west.

At every one of these conferences Armageddon is being painted on the wall – in 5 years, 10 years, in 30 years in the best of cases – well, more than 20 years have passed since the first UN-sponsored Conference on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 – and we are still ticking, still propagating the same slogans – still spreading he same fear mongering – temps will rise by 3 degrees, by 5 degrees, but they are allowed only to rise by 2.5 degrees C – says WE, the masters of the universe. WOW! – Doesn’t that sound a bit arrogant, when you think about it?

But, in case you didn’t know, dear Greta crowd and Friday kids, and you Mr. Guterres too, PEACE is more important, frankly, than climate change. PEACE is and ought to be number ONE of our political agenda, of the UN agenda. Climate will happen with or without us; yes, it changes, it changes all the time. But get this, we humans, can’t stop it from changing. What this climate hype does, is allow and prompti a plethora of new taxes, polluter taxes to be collected from the common people, from you and me.

Corporations will be exempt from them. This means shuffling again trillions of dollars up the ladder from the poor to the rich, as always happens when the corporate finance dominated west wants to milk some more accumulated social capital from the working class to the upper echelons. – and climate is an excellent tool for it. Mr. Soros, you got it once again right. But you, Mr. Guterres, have been elected to lead the world through the UN system to PEACE, not to stop the climate from changing.

Trillions are being collected; they will end up in the banks, will become yet another derivative to be blown into a balloon that is predestined to burst one day – and the system collapses again. We know about these bubbles – but keep creating new ones. Does anybody dare to ask, or want to know what will be done with these newly collected trillions? How are they going to be applied to stop the climate from changing?

Nobody really cares. Once we guilt-driven Judeo-Christians have paid our dues, our conscience goes to rest – and we sleep well again, while nothing changes. Not climate change, nothing.

There may be better ideas, Mr. Guterres, if you want to do something for PEACE and for the environment, why not a special conference on banning plastic, the production of useless plastic – plastic as in plastic bottles – billions being used per day and less than 5% are recycled, the rest ends up in the sea, in stomachs of fish and birds, – in our own bodies in the form of microplastic. Stop plastic for packaging food and all sorts of consumables – packaged in plastic – unnecessarily so. Why? Because you would have to convert a whole plastic packaging industry, bottling industry – and you would have to convince the Nestlés and Coca Colas of this world to change their concept – perhaps going as far as abandoning their chief business, selling water in bottles. In addition to the use of plastic bottles, this has become, as we know, in many countries, including in the USA a socioenvironmental calamity.

You, Mr. Guterres, could request the western world to stop wasting 30% or more of our food. Yes, wasting, as in throwing it away, even though it would be perfectly fine to be used, But throwing it away brings more profit. – You could also launch a motion to prohibit all speculation with food stuff, grains – which would make food more affordable and could prevent many famines. Saving food for redistribution to those that need it, might – would – also contribute to peace.

How about this kind of an approach – an approach towards Peace and a protected environment. This would be something extraordinary – youth for PEACE and youth for a better distribution of food, and youth for a serious protection of our environment. Mr. Soros and his allies may not like it, because demonstrating against Climate Change, making a publicity hype of Climate Change – is clearly a deviation from ongoing wars that kill – millions and millions – in the name of profit and dominance – and eventually hegemony over the world’s resources and people.

Kids, ask the UN for achievable goals – for PEACE. It’s not easy, but it’s a worthwhile goal which we, mankind with a conscience are able to achieve.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.  Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

September 23, 2019 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Washington’s Warmongering Keeps Claiming New Victims

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By Grete Mautner – New Eastern Outlook – 22.09.2019

According to the data presented in a number of American media sources, a total of 6,979 US servicemen perished in the so-called Global War on Terror that was launched back in 2001 and lasted up until 2018. Over the same time span, the number of civilian casualties that became victims of US-led wars in the Middle East and other regions of the world reached hundreds of thousands. As has been revealed by the UN, in Afghanistan alone some 32 thousand civilians died in the course of US-led air strikes and ground operations over the last decade.

However, nobody seems to be willing to acknowledge that various weapons research programs can be as lethal to the civil population as military conflicts are. Nothing is ever being said about the countless nuclear weapons tests that Washington conducted in the second half of the 20th century that keep claiming human lives to this day.

Back in 1986, in the aftermath of the horrendous Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the US would launch a media campaign against the USSR, saying that the radioactive contamination of Europe that followed the disaster was unacceptable. At the same time, Washington chose to conceal the truth about the damage it inflicted upon this planet through a series of nuclear weapon tests on the Marshall Islands.

Against this backdrop, it’s particularly revealing that the recent piece run by the Business Insider states that the contaminated zone of alienation around Chernobyl is less radioactive than the above mentioned islands that were known for their idyllic landscapes prior to a series of nuclear weapon tests. In total, the United States conducted 67 of those in a time span from 1946 to 1958 on the once pristine Marshall Islands.

Less than three years after its atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Washington started conducting nuclear weapon tests on the Marshall Islands, with the most powerful of them being the “Bravo” hydrogen bomb in 1954, which was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It’s been pointed out that the total explosive yield of American nuclear militarism in the Marshall Islands was 93 times that of all US atmospheric tests in Nevada, and more than 7,000 Hiroshima bombs.

Recent studies show that the seabed around the islands, and their soil upon which fruit bearing trees grow have been accumulating radioactive particles at rates that far exceeds any safety standards. Upon testing the soil of Bikini and Enewetok atolls, scientists came to a conclusion that nuclear weapon tests must have produced a more lasting damage to the environment than was originally anticipated.

As has been revealed by Monica Rouco, who was deputy director of Project K = 1, the center of nuclear studies at Columbia University, there have been no independent investigations of radioactive contamination levels and the possible consequences of those on the Marshall Islands, says El Pais. According to this publication, Monica led a group of K=1 scientists they carried out a series of tests on the Marshall between 2015 and 2018. Prior to that, the only tests carried out across this former Spanish colony were conducted by the US military personnel from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that had no interest in telling the rest of the world the truth about the contamination levels.

Against this backdrop, a recent study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that the lasting effect of a series of US nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands lies in the contaminated soil. It states specifically that:

We were not able to detect any 37Cs contamination in fruits from Enewetak and Utirik Atolls. However, Bikini and Rongelap Atolls have 137Cs levels in fruits that exceed action limits set by IPPNW in 2016, and the governments of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Japan, in response to nuclear disasters in those countries. Additionally, they exceed values found near Fukushima in February 2018 and values measured from 2011 to 2015 in areas near the Chernobyl accident.

Against this backdrop, it’s particularly telling that back in 1968 Washington announced that the Bikini atoll was perfectly safe for humans and announced that the indigenous population may return to their homes, if they choose to do so. When we know that even fifty years after the tests this area remains contaminated, it’s hardly a surprise that some 840 inhabitants of the Bikini atoll died from cancer and other illnesses associated with radioactive poisoning over this period of time. However, nobody wants to speak about these facts in the West.

According to Barbara Rose Johnston, an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Center for Political Ecology, it wasn’t reported to an interested world public that the heavily exposed people of Rongelap, once evacuated, were immediately enrolled as human subjects in a top-secret study, Project 4.1, which documented the array of health outcomes from their acute exposures, but did not treat the pain or discomfort of radiation burns, nor utilize antibiotics to offset any potential infection.

There’s no public discussion of the fact that in 1977 the United States used a crater from an especially large nuclear bomb test on Runit Island to stash away the radioactive soil. The 328-foot crater from a May 1958 test was designated the dumping ground. It means that the radioactive isotope plutonium-239, a byproduct of nuclear bombs that decays with a half-life of 24,100 years may be leaking into the Pacific Ocean.

Yet, there’s no strict control over the weapons tests that are being carried in utmost secrecy in various parts of the world today, and safe to say that should something go wrong in one of such tests, we, just like the inhabitants of the Bikini atoll will be the last to learn about that.

Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany.

September 22, 2019 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

‘We don’t need aircraft carriers, we need weapons to sink them with’ – Russian defense minister

RT | September 22, 2019

The US may have a military budget that far exceeds that of Russia, but it doesn’t matter since the Russian military is there to defend the country, not attack other nations, the Russian defense minister said.

Russia’s military budget received a hike a few years ago for a massive rearmament program, but has been rolled back in recent years. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated Russia to be the world’s sixth biggest defense spender in 2018, behind the US, China, Saudi Arabia, India, and France. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been showered with money under the Trump administration, dwarfing other nations’ military budgets.

But the man in charge of the Russian Defense Ministry says his fellow Russians have no reasons to worry, because their taxpayer rubles are well spent.

“The US spends huge amounts of money on private military contractors, on aircraft carriers. Well, does Russia really need five to ten aircraft carrier strike groups, considering that we do not intend to attack anyone?” Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told a Russian newspaper.

“We need the means we could use against the enemy’s carrier strike groups should our country come under attack. They are far less costly and more efficient.”

The minister also criticized Washington for its habit of justifying its military interventions throughout the world by the interests of the people living in the nations it targets.

“In which of the nations they went ‘to bring democracy’ did democracy flourish? Was that Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria?” Shoigu said. “And one certainly can forget about sovereignty and independence after American involvement.”

He added that the US doesn’t seem to be losing its appetite for ruining other nations, be it through military intervention or other means.

“Our Western colleagues love to accuse Russia of waging ‘hybrid wars’ or whatever. Well, I say [the] West is the one conducting actual hybrid warfare. The US now is about to leave Afghanistan in half-ruins and at the same time they work hard to stir things in Venezuela – all for the ‘triumph of democracy’ of course.”

The US tried this year to topple the Venezuelan government by supporting Juan Guaido, who declared himself interim president of the Latin American country. His pretendership, however, has not been that successful. His two attempts at triggering a large-scale public uprising and ousting President Nicolas Maduro fizzled despite Washington’s promise that it would lift crippling economic sanctions against Venezuela once their man takes control.

September 22, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Trump’s New Security Adviser Could Boost Bid to Negotiate With Iran – Ex-White House Aide

Sputnik – September 20, 2019

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump picked hostage negotiator Robert O’Brien to replace John Bolton as national security adviser to boost efforts to engage diplomatically with countries like Iran and North Korea, former White House staffer and Middle East expert Gwenyth Todd said.

“I see O’Brien as Trump’s effort to appease [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and the hawks while hoping to find, finally, a guy who will doggedly support and even contribute to Trump’s efforts to negotiate with countries like Iran and North Korea”, Todd, who served as a member of the White House National Security Council during the Clinton administration, said.

Trump fired Bolton, his third national security adviser in less than three years, last week due to disagreements over a range of US foreign policy issues related to Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, among others.

Although O’Brien is expected to be less of a hardliner than Bolton, he does have hawkish tendencies. In his 2016 book “While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis” O’Brien expressed hostility towards Russia and was critical of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Todd said that while appointing a hostage negotiator as security adviser “seems” like a positive step as the administration seeks new deals, it remains to be seen “if O’Brien is Trump’s man or Pompeo’s man.”

“Pompeo will likely dominate every Principal’s Committee meeting but all that matters is how the National Security Adviser words the ensuing recommendations to Trump, who wants to be offered options that include minimal kinetic solutions but maximal deal-making solutions”, she explained.

The former White House staffer also maintained that Bolton’s influence in the Trump administration had been exaggerated.

“Bolton was always there as a prop to placate the hawks. He has always been a despised blowhard in Washington and was there to be fired if Trump needed a scapegoat. I found people’s panic over Bolton’s absurd stances rather amusing because it was all for show”, she said.

With respect to Iran, Todd said it was important for people to recognise Trump’s demonstrated aversion to involving the United States in a new war.

“It would be a matter of the US kicking a hornet’s nest and then disappearing, leaving the region, including our thousands of US families deployed in the Gulf, open for a devastating retaliation from Iran, as well as from millions of Arab Shi’a and other sympathisers,” she said. “That would be horrendous for Trump’s image and legacy, which is really all that concerns him”.

Todd also said that while Trump likes to threaten raining hell down on enemies, it is all a negotiating tactic.

“He always pulls the rug out from under the hawks at the last minute and they are left with no traction”, she said.

Trump appointed O’Brien on Wednesday just as the White House weighs bombing Iran after blaming the Islamic Republic for involvement in recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities, despite the fact the Houthis claimed responsibility for the incident.

September 20, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Trump’s Real War Is With the Deep State, not Iran

By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 20, 2019

Should we chalk it up to coincidence theory that just days after Trump gives John Bolton the boot as his National Security Adviser, Iran is blamed for an attack on a Saudi oil facility, forcing Washington to forego any hope of peace with Tehran?

One day before Bolton’s abrupt departure from the White House, Trump had reportedly discussed with his security advisers the possibility of easing sanctions on Tehran in an effort to create the “right conditions” for a possible meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations later this month.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters last week. “I do believe they’d like to make a deal.”

Now we may never know how things may have turned out because one week later that comment looks like a page torn from ancient history.

On Saturday, Yemen Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for sophisticated drone attacks on the Saudi Aramco oil factory, which is situated deep inside the country, more than 1,000 kilometers away from the Yemen border. If the claims are true, it would mark a serious turning point in the four-year military ‘intervention’, which has seen US- and British-backed Saudi forces take a heavy-handed approach to extricating the rebels from the capital, Sanaa.

Yemeni military spokesman Yahya Sari said the attack involved an “accurate intelligence operation” that was assisted by “honorable and free” men working inside of the Kingdom. That televised confession, however, wasn’t going to stop the United States and its regional allies from believing what they wanted to believe, which was that Iran was solely responsible for the incident.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose pugilistic presence in the Trump administration makes Bolton’s absence seem almost imperceptible, proclaimed in a tweet that Iran is responsible for launching “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”

Pompeo went on to say there was “no evidence the attacks came from Yemen,” while never proving evidence the attack originated from Iran either. In other words, Trump is being pushed into a situation where he has no choice but to fight. Not the best situation for an incumbent president heading into the election season. And it certainly doesn’t help his situation when members of his own party shake the pompoms for war, as Senator Lindsey Graham did when he called for attacks on Iran’s oil refineries.

Thus, in a matter of hours, Trump has gone from being open to the idea of talking to Iran to saying the US is “locked and loaded” and just waiting to “hear from the Kingdom” before the White House takes some kind of action against the suspected perpetrator.

Incidentally, although that ominous tweet certainly got the attention of Iranian officials, it is worth noting that just over two years ago, as the war rhetoric between Pyongyang and Washington was hitting its crescendo, Trump used exactly the same threatening phrase “locked and loaded.” Yet today relations between the two countries have calmed considerably and Trump even went on to become the first US leader to enter North Korea. Was Trump sending a message to Tehran? Will the maverick from Manhattan soon be strolling down the streets of Tehran, shaking hands with imams as he did Kim Jong-un? Nothing would enrage the US deep state more.

With regards to the idea that Iran was behind the attacks on the Saudi oil factory that claim sounds highly dubious. Once again, we are expected to accept the narrative that sovereign states have some sort of suicide wish, and would happily submit to a mortal self-inflicted wound at the most incongruous time (as was the case with Syria, by the way, which, as the media desperately wanted everyone to believe, decided to carry out chemical attacks against the rebels, thereby risking a full-blown attack by the US military and half of NATO).

Indeed, why would Iran, even through the use of proxy forces, risk an attack on Saudi Arabia that could set the entire Middle East alight? The idea becomes all the more preposterous when we remember that just several weeks ago, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, made a surprise visit to the G7 summit, hosted by France, where world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, were gathered. Trump, alongside French President Emmanuel Macron during a post-summit press conference, agreed to the possibility of meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani.

Trump even seemed open to the idea of backing away from current US policy of “maximum pressure” on Tehran, saying he would consider providing Iran with an emergency credit line backed by its oil production.

Why would Tehran risk igniting World War III when the prospect for peace – not to mention financial relief – seems to be near at hand?

The circumstantial evidence points to the fact that Iran, as it has vociferously declared, had nothing to do with the brazen assault on Saudi Arabia. Trump, I would imagine, is probably also very wary of the accusations, spouted by none other than his own Secretary of State, since he is very familiar with such underhanded tactics due to his experience in Syria.

Thus far in his presidency, Donald Trump has been able to avoid full-blown war despite serious efforts by a consortium of concerns to trigger such an event. Despite the hawks he gathers around himself, probably in an effort to “keep his enemies closer,” as Sun Tsu recommended, Trump is clearly not enamored of the battlefield as are so many others in Washington. Trump is a businessman, and sees much more advantage in walking away from a hard-won contract than walking away from an obliterated landscape, the worst imaginable thing for a real estate developer. Nevertheless, it is a nerve-racking experience watching the author of the ‘Art of the Deal’ bluster and bluff his way against rivals right up to precipice of disaster before retreating back again to stable ground.

This strategy keeps the Deep State constantly off guard as to his real intentions, which is not about triggering World War III. How long the Deep State will tolerate such a relative atmosphere of global peace is another question, but they will certainly be doing everything in their power to ensure he does not secure another four years in the White House. And that is the tragic reality of Donald Trump’s real war.

September 20, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran vs Saudi Arabia: it’s game-over

By Ghassan Kadi | The Saker Blog | September 19, 2019

Is the attack on ARAMCO the first of a long war or is it game-over already? It seems like the latter and in more ways than one, the war between Iran and Saudi Arabia has ended before it even started. One single solitary Houthi attack on Aramco has sent Saudi oil exports tumbling down by half; not to mention a 20% hike on the price of crude.

Now, even though the Houthis have declared responsibility for the ARAMCO attack, the Trump administration wants the world to buy the idea that it was Iran who launched the attack, not the Houthis. Thus far, at least Japan seems unconvinced, and so is France.

In reality however, the resolve of Saudi Arabia and its capability to stand up and fight has little to do with the identity of the attacker, and this is because Saudi Arabia has demonstrated that it didn’t take much for it to suffer what it suffered. This begs the question; how many such similar attacks can Saudi Arabia weather before it totally capitulates? Seemingly, not many.

In a previous article, I anticipated such scenarios because the Saudi economy and infrastructure are highly vulnerable. A country that has virtually one major wealth-producing base (ie oil) and just a few desalination plants that pump fresh water into its major cities, is a very soft target indeed. After all, if those handful of vital targets are hit, not only will oil exports stop, but water will stop running in households. But the water desalination plants do not have to suffer a direct hit for them to stop running. They need power to run, and the power comes from fuel, and if the fuel supplies stop, so will they, and so will electricity-generating plants in a nation that cannot survive without air-conditioning.

Up until recently, people of Arabia were used to drought, brackish water and searing heat. They lived in and around oases and adopted a lifestyle that used little water. But, the new generation of Saudis and millions of expats are used to daily showers, potable water and climate control in their households. During wars, people normally go to nature to find food and water. They hunt, they fish, they collect local berries and edible wild plants, they fill jars from running rivers and streams, they grow their own vegetables in their backyards, but in Saudi Arabia, in the kingdom of sand, such alternatives do not exist at all.

Furthermore, with a population that has swelled from a few million in the 1950’s, the current population of Saudi Arabia stands at 33 million, and this includes the millions of expats who work and live there.

The limited supply of brackish water is not enough to get by until any damaged infrastructure is fixed, and it’s not even piped to begin with.

As the nation with the third highest global defence budget, higher than Russia’s, Saudi Arabia continues to import everything from Patriot Missiles all the way down to bullets.

This is in sharp contrast with Iran’s geography, natural assets and demography. Iran is a nation of mountains, valleys and rivers, meadows, thriving agriculture and 70 million citizens who have been taught to be innovative and self-sufficient; courtesy of US-imposed sanctions.

And to say that the ARAMCO target was hit by surprise would be quite absurd and inexcusable given that Saudi Arabia is already in a state of war with Yemen, and especially given that the Yemeni aerial strikes have been escalating in recent months. To make the situation even more embarrassing for the Saudis; the spectre of war with Iran is currently hot on the agenda, so how could key Saudi installations be unprotected?

But here’s the other thing, had it been truly Iran that was responsible for the attack as the Trump administration alleges and wants us to believe, America would then be admitting that Iranian missiles flew from mainland Iran, across the Gulf, managed to dodge American defences and state-of-the-art detection hardware and software, and effectively reached their target on Saudi soil. If this is the scenario Trump wants us to believe, what does this say about the capability of America to engage militarily with Iran? This is a much bigger farce than that of Russia-gate; a claim that Russia can indeed affect the outcome of the presidential elections of the allegedly “greatest and strongest nation on earth”. Do such claims mean that America’s adversaries are extremely organised, smart and strong or that America is in disarray, stupid and weak; or both? Either way, when such claims are perpetrated by none but America itself, they certainly do not put America in a good light.

The weaknesses and vulnerabilities of Saudi Arabia and Big Brother are only matched by the other ally, the UAE. As a matter of fact Houthis spokesperson Yahia Saria gave the Emirates a stern warning if they want to protect their glass skyscrapers. In his address, Saria is perhaps giving a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Arabic proverb which says that if one’s house is made of glass, he should not cast rocks at others. After years of indiscriminate shelling under the watchful and indifferent eyes of the world, after years of ruthlessly trying to starve the Yemenis into submission, why would one expect the Houthis to exercise any mercy towards their aggressors?

But let us face it, Dubai and other thriving metropolises of the UAE are predestined to morph into ghost towns. It is only a question of time before they run out of their current charm and their fake onion skin deep glitter. After all, there is nothing in those fantasy cities that is real, substantial and self-sustaining. If anything, a war with Iran has the potential to fast-track the decay process and leave foreign investors and expats exiting in droves; if not running for their lives.

Ironically, the American/Saudi/UAE alliance, if it is indeed an alliance, accuses Iran of spreading its dominion over the region; and perhaps there is evidence to support this accusation. However, the alliance seems to conveniently forget that it was its own orchestrated invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam that created a power vacuum in Iraq that was soon filled by Iran. And even though the eight-year long and bitter Iran-Iraq war ended up with no winners or losers, the fall of Saddam at the hands of the American/Arab alliance has turned Iran into the virtual winner that the same alliance is now trying to curb. How more ironic can this farcical situation be?

America plays down the strength of Iran’s Army, and Iran does the opposite. This is normal and part-and-parcel of the psychological warfare. In reality however, no one knows for certain what is Iran’s military capability. For this reason, any all-out confrontation with Iran may at least initially sway America to move its vessels out of the Gulf and further away from the reach of short-range Iranian missiles until and if they feel confident to move closer at a later stage. However, Saudi key and vital ground targets cannot be moved, and for Iran to only be able to hit a few that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, can lead to a total Saudi/UAE capitulation.

Whilst no one knows Iran’s real strength, what we do know is that Saudi Arabia has failed abysmally in defeating the much weaker, poorer, underprivileged starving people of Yemen.

America will not commit boots on the ground and, to this effect, has little to lose apart from risking naval vessels. The soft targets will be Saudi and UAE key infrastructures and no Patriot defence systems will be able to intercept all missiles poised to hit them. If the Houthis could do it, it is a given that Iran also can.

I have recently watched the series “The Vietnam War” on Netflix, and I remembered how back then when the truth about that war was exposed, I believed that American hawks would never get away with lying to their people and the rest of the world again, or ever invade another country in the way that they did with Vietnam. In less than two decades however, they moved full throttle into Iraq, and the masses believed their story. Perhaps some things will never change, and after the losses in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, America seems still determined to fight Iran. This time around, the biggest loser may not end up to be America itself, but its Arab allies; namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the recent attack on ARAMCO is only a prelude to an inevitable outcome, because the writing is already on the wall and it clearly reads: GAME-OVER.

September 19, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Black Swan Is a Drone

By Charles Hugh Smith | of two minds | September 15, 2019

Predictably, the mainstream media is serving up heaping portions of reassurances that the drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities are no big deal and full production will resume shortly. The obvious goal is to placate global markets fearful of an energy disruption that could tip a precarious global economy into recession.

The real impact isn’t on short-term oil prices, it’s on asymmetric warfare: the coordinated drone attack on Saudi oil facilities is a Black Swan event that is reverberating around the world, awakening copycats and exposing the impossibility of defending against low-cost drones of the sort anyone can buy.

(Some published estimates place the total cost of the 10 drones deployed in the strike at $15,000. Highly capable commercially available drones cost around $1,200 each.)

The attack’s success should be a wake-up call to everyone tasked with defending highly flammable critical infrastructure: there really isn’t any reliable defense against a coordinated drone attack, nor is there any reliable way to distinguish between an Amazon drone delivering a package and a drone delivering a bomb.

Whatever authentication protocol that could be required of drones in the future–an ID beacon or equivalent–can be spoofed. For example: bring down an authenticated drone (using nets, etc.), swap out the guidance and payload, and away it goes. Or steal authentication beacons from suppliers, or hack an authenticated drone in flight, land it, swap out the payload–the list of spoofing workaround options is extensive.

This is asymmetric warfare on a new scale: $20,000 of drones can wreak $20 million in damage and financial losses of $200 million–or $2 billion or $20 billion, if global markets are upended.

If it’s impossible to defend against coordinated drone attacks, and impossible to differentiate “good” drones from “bad” drones, then the only reliable defense is to ban drones entirely from wide swaths of territory.

So much for the lightly regulated commercialization of drones.

What sort of light bulbs are going off in the minds of copycats? It doesn’t take much imagination to see the potential for mayhem–and without sacrificing your own life. I won’t elaborate on the possibilities here, but they’re obvious to us all.

The range and payload of low-cost drones is limited. The big drones can fly hundreds of miles and carry hundreds of pounds of weaponry, but these can be targeted by radar and conventional ground-to-air missiles. So-called hobby drones skimming over the rooftops (or deserts or forests) are difficult to shoot down, especially if the attack is coordinated to arrive from multiple directions.

Larger commercially available drones can carry up to 20 KG or 40 pounds–more than enough explosive capacity to take out any number of targets.

Defense and intelligence agencies have no doubt war-gamed the potential for coordinated drone attacks, and the world’s advanced militaries are already exploring the potential for self-organizing “drone hordes” of hundreds or even thousands of drones overwhelming defenders with sheer numbers. The success of the oil facilities attack proves the effectiveness of much smaller scale drone attacks.

Put yourself in the shoes of those tasked with securing hundreds of miles of pipelines carrying oil and natural gas around the world. What’s your defense against drone attacks? A.I.-controlled or remote-operated gun towers every few hundred yards, along thousands of miles of pipelines? Human patrols covering the entire pipeline 24/7? The cost of such defenses would burden the defenders with enormous costs without providing 100% reliable security. (Guards can be bribed, remotely operated guns can be overwhelmed by an initial wave of cheap unarmed hobby drones, etc.)

It’s obvious there are no low-cost, effective defenses of thousands of miles of pipelines. (Recall that the Saudis depend on seawater being piped hundreds of kilometers into the desert to inject into oil wells to maintain production. Taking out these water lines and pumps would cripple production, too.)

The only effective way to limit drone attacks is to ban all drones and institute a shoot-on-sight policy in restricted areas. But that will not negate the potential for coordinated drone strikes or drone attacks on remote facilities.

The mainstream media will be under permanent pressure to downplay the consequences of this attack, but the cat is out of the bag: the Black Swan is a drone. What was “possible” yesterday is now a low-cost proven capability, and the consequences are far from predictable.

This unpredictability alone should unsettle markets, as the risk of future asymmetric warfare drone strikes just increased to a degree that is difficult to measure or hedge.

September 19, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

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