“Allegations of Targeting US Warship Aimed at Covering Up Aggression against Yemen”
Al-Manar – October 13, 2016
A Yemeni military source denied on Thursday targeting US warship earlier this week, stressing that Washington uses such allegations as a pretext to escalate the aggression against Yemen.
Earlier on Thursday, the Pentagon announced that the US had bombed three radar sites controlled by Houthi revolutionaries in Yemen after the destroyer USS Mason was targeted by missile fire for the second time in four days.
“Those claims are baseless,” Saba news agency quoted the military source as saying.
“The army and the Popular Committees have nothing to do with this action,” according to the source.
“Such claims aim to create false justifications to step up attacks and to cover up for the continuous crimes committed by the (coalition) aggression against the Yemeni people,” Saba quoted the source as saying.
Saudi, French special forces hold joint drills near Lille: Report
French troops engage in joint drills with Saudi forces on the outskirts of the northeastern French city of Lille (Photo by alsharq.net.sa)
Press TV – October 12, 2016
Special Forces units with the Saudi and French armies have partaken in joint military drills in France.
The exercise engaged the Royal Saudi Land Forces’ crack unit brigade and its French counterpart in the town of Meer, London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Citing the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA ), the paper said the maneuvers had started last week.
The news comes only three days after the kingdom’s navy finished 10 days of live-fire military exercises in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz.
The seaborne drills involved warships, speedboats, marines and special forces in the strategic waters.
The SPA alleged that the maneuvers sought to test combat readiness “in preparation for the protection of the marine interests of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against any possible aggression.”
France is known for its close relations with Saudi Arabia. The two sides have been seeking to boost their military ties in recent months.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the kingdom’s defense minister and most powerful figure after the monarch, has twice traveled to France since 2015.
During Salman’s visit to France last June, Paris and Riyadh reportedly sealed military deals worth up to USD 12 billion for the delivery of modern weaponry to the Arab kingdom amid Riyadh’s deadly military campaign against Yemen.
The prince paid another visit to France in July this year, in what was widely seen as an attempt to finalize the agreements reached with Paris the previous year.
Last year, the Paris government raised controversy by closing off a French beach for a visit by Saudi King Salman.
Is Andrew Mitchell MP really suggesting we start WWIII?
OffGuardian | October 11, 2016
The House of Commons is set to have an “emergency debate” on the declaration of a no-fly zone over Syria, specifically to “defend Aleppo from Russia”. The debate, called by Andrew Mitchell, will be over whether or not NATO planes should confront, and attack, Russian jets. Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme Mitchell said:
… what we do say is that the international community has an avowed responsibility to protect and that protection must be exerted. If that means confronting Russian air power defensively, on behalf of the innocent people on the ground who we are trying to protect, then we should do that.”
He added:
I think that Britain should explore with its allies how it would enforce a no-fly zone.”
Well, we can save Britain and her allies some time here, there’s nothing to “explore”. There is only one way to enforce a no-fly zone, and that is by shooting down any plane that violates it. There is literally no other action to be taken.
Curiously, when the Today host John Humphrys pointed out – very reasonably – that this is tantamount to declaration of war, Mitchell disagreed:
It’s not a declaration of war against Russia but it is an absolute declaration that we will seek to protect the innocent victims of these war crimes.”
…. without any reference to that fact that, from Russia’s POV, it would DEFINITELY be an act of war.
This debate is, at best, some ridiculous macho-posturing from an idiot who wants to be seen as “tough”, and at worst an indication that the British political class are literally, totally divorced from reality. Either way it is a highly dangerous situation, because whatever the intentions of Mitchell and the Commons at large, there’s no telling how or when the lunatics in the Pentagon will pick up this ball and run with it. There are crazy hawks in Washington who genuinely want a war with Russia, and it is the responsibility of all people with any sense to box in this element and limit their opportunities to incite chaos.
If nothing else the debate is the first real test of Jeremy Corbyn since his re-election as Labour leader. Will he stand up to the increasingly bizarre and dangerous view of the Syrian conflict being presented in the Western press? Or will he vacillate and equivocate in the worst traditions of Britain’s soft-left non-opposition?
Watch this space.
Pentagon spends most of US government PR budget
RT | October 10, 2016
By far the greatest share of the US government’s public relations budget – more than all the other agencies combined – is spent by the military, an audit has revealed. While that has helped the Pentagon pitch fancy weapons, it hasn’t managed to make them work.
The Department of Defense employs 40 percent of the government’s public relations workforce and accounts for almost 63 percent of all public relations spending between 2006 and 2015, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO report on government PR spending, released last week, showed a $1 billion annual outlay on various forms of public relations, with 5,000 government employees working in PR for a combined annual salary of $475 million in 2015. By comparison, the entire Department of Education has 4,500 employees.
Of those expenditures, the Pentagon spent more than $626 million on average each year, the report showed. Over the 10-year period surveyed, the Department of Defense spent more money on PR than all other departments combined.
Government Accountability Office (GAO)
Additionally, the Pentagon has been paying hundreds of millions to outside contractors – such as the UK-based firm Bell Pottinger, which received $540 million between 2007 and 2011, and another $120 million in 2006. Among the services provided by the agency was the making and dissemination of fake terrorist videos attributed to Al-Qaeda.
The PR spending far outweighs the Pentagon’s share of the government’s overall budget, which official estimates put at 16 percent. For the fiscal year 2017, the Department of Defense has requested a budget of $582.7 billion.
There is no telling where all that public relations funding ends up, either. The military has had to deal with a number of embarrassments lately, from frisky generals to expensive futuristic weaponry that just doesn’t seem to work.
Major General Ron Lewis, the former senior military assistant to Secretary Ash Carter, was sacked in 2015 for inappropriately spending government money to pay for strippers and alcohol, a Pentagon inquiry announced last week. Nor was he the only one: Department of Defense employees, both civilian and military, reportedly racked up 5,000 charges at casinos and strip clubs, totaling more than $1 million over the course of a year.
Though the military has been heavily promoting the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter as the future of combat aviation, the Lockheed Martin jet not only costs a fortune but keeps suffering troublesome setbacks. No sooner did the US Air Force declare its version of the F-35 operational, it had to ground all the planes over concerns that poor insulation inside the fuel tanks was causing the jets to catch fire.
The US Navy’s futuristic designs for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and the guided missile destroyer (DDG) have also foundered recently. In August, commander of the Naval Surface Forces, Vice-Admiral Tom Rowden, had to order all LCS to “stand down” for engineering re-training, after a half-dozen ships broke down due to “seawater leaks” in their propulsion systems.
A similar problem was reported aboard the missile destroyer Zumwalt, as it prepared to conduct sea trials at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia on September 19.
Earlier this year, an Army PR stunt backfired when US tankers failed to place in the top three in the “Strong Europe Tank Challenge.” The first NATO competition of the kind since the Cold War took place at the Grafenwoehr training grounds in Germany this May, with two American tank platoons taking part alongside the crews from Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Slovenia.
German tankers took the top honors, with the Danes coming in second and the Poles bringing up the third place.
US, Britain and France now air force for terrorists in Syria
By Finian Cunningham | RT | October 9, 2016
For nearly six years, Washington and its allies have gotten away with playing a cynical double game in Syria’s war. But now the mask is slipping to reveal the ugly face of Western involvement – it is openly siding with terrorists.
Russia was correct to veto a French-sponsored draft resolution at the UN Security Council this weekend. Along with American and British vigorous support, the French proposal centered on halting military flights over the besieged northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
As Russia’s foreign ministry commented, the French initiative was tantamount to giving air cover for insurgents dominated by the internationally proscribed terrorist group Jabhat al Nusra. In short, a no-fly zone protecting terrorists would have been imposed in violation of Syrian sovereign rights, as well as international law.
An alternative draft resolution put forward by Russia was subsequently nixed by the US, Britain and France. The Russian proposal was aimed at reviving the ceasefire arrangement declared last month by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It reiterated the need for anti-government militants to dissociate from the proscribed terrorist groups affiliated with al Qaeda, including al Nusra and Daesh (ISIS).
Russia is calling for a general ceasefire, but it does not specify the condition of halting military flights over Aleppo.
If France and its Western allies were genuine about wanting to stop the violence, then why don’t they get behind the Kerry-Lavrov deal? They have evidently abandoned that ceasefire arrangement because it was exposing Western claims about supporting “moderate rebels” as distinct from “extremists” as a fallacy.
That the Kerry-Lavrov truce was immediately violated by the insurgents and that there was no separation of “moderates” and “extremists” showed once and for all that Western claims of supporting “legitimate rebels” are a farce. Washington, London and Paris are patently backing a terrorist army fighting for their objective of regime change in Syria.
Since Syria and its Russian ally resumed offensive operations to take the key battleground city of Aleppo on September 22, the Western sponsors of the terror proxies have become increasingly shrill in a media campaign to thwart that offensive.
America, Britain and France have decried “war crimes” allegedly committed by Syrian and Russian air strikes. John Kerry, ahead of the weekend spat at the UN, called for a probe into suspected war crimes attributed to Russia.
Western media have been saturated with unverified reports from the militant-held eastern Aleppo purporting to show Syrian and Russian air strikes on civilian centers, including hospitals. Much of the information coming out of eastern Aleppo is sourced from Western-funded“activists” who are embedded with the Nusra terrorists. Tellingly, Western media and governments are in effect peddling what is terrorist propaganda.
The Russian and Syrian governments deny Western claims. They say their military operations are targeting terrorist groups that are deliberately using the 250,000 civilian population in east Aleppo as human shields.
It is significant that the more the Syrian army and its allies among Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi militia, as well as Russian air support, make advances to retake Aleppo, the more hysterical Western governments and media become about “war crimes”.
If we start from the premise that the conflict in Syria has from the outset been a Western-orchestrated covert war for regime change involving the sponsoring of a terrorist mercenary army, then the Western hysteria over Aleppo is perfectly understandable.
A defeat for the insurgents in Aleppo means the end of the Western criminal enterprise to install a pro-Western puppet regime in Syria. That would mark a historic blow to the prestige of Washington and its European allies in the Middle East. It would also further expose their criminal complicity.
By contrast, Russian influence in the strategic region would be elevated. And for good reasons too. Moscow will be seen as having stood by a sovereign nation to vanquish Western powers who have wreaked havoc in the region with illegal wars and regime-change subterfuges.
Given the high stakes, this is why Western powers are evidently becoming more desperate to impede Syrian and Russian military success against the insurgents. Western emotive denunciations against Syria and Russia have nothing to do with concern for human suffering. It is all about contriving a moralistic political pressure to hamper the campaign against the West’s terrorist project.
Seen in this context, French calls at the UN for a no-fly zone around Aleppo is a startling admission by the Western powers that they are trying to protect terrorist al Qaeda-affiliated organizations. It is a stunning revelation of the fraudulent and criminal nature of Western governments. Their claims of “fighting terrorism” which have justified overseas wars over the past 15 years are self-evidently bogus. Their claims of supporting a “pro-democracy uprising” in Syria are grotesque.
This giant fraud has, of course, been made possible because Western media corporations have gone along with the vile charade. These media organizations are equally complicit. Giving succor to war crimes is in itself a war crime, as international attorney Christoper Black points out.
Meanwhile, away from Aleppo and the Western distortion of what is happening there, the alternative media report that the US-led military coalition is destroying bridges on the Euphrates in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor.
According to the Syrian Free Press and others, American air strikes have demolished seven major river crossings over the past week. The latest strike was on the al Syasia bridge north of the city of Deir ez-Zor, the largest bridge in the province.
Targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime. It will prevent humanitarian aid convoys reaching civilians in government-held Deir ez-Zor. But more significantly, the US, French and British coalition – which is operating illegally in Syria in the first place – is working to block the Syrian army and Russian offensive against the Daesh terror stronghold of Raqqa. The bridges knocked out were providing key linkages for the Syrian and Russian forces from Deir ez-Zor towards Raqqa.
The US-led air strikes also give full meaning to the deadly American attack on the Syrian army base at Deir ez-Zor on September 17. Over 60 Syrian troops and nearly 200 more were wounded when US, British and Australian warplanes blasted the base in a sustained attack. Washington claimed it was an “accident”.
But to many other observers, the massacre was no accident. It was a deliberate assault by the Western coalition to end the Kerry-Lavrov pact because the failing ceasefire was exposing the systematic terror connections of the Western governments in Syria.
Washington and its allies are not just trying to give air cover to the terrorists in Syria indirectly by setting up so-called no-fly zones. They are evidently now giving the terrorists air fire-power.
As in the NATO regime-change war in Libya in 2011, the Americans, French and British are riding shotgun in the air for terrorists on the ground.
And the truly disgusting thing about this criminal collusion is that the Western powers claim to be concerned about international law, war crimes and human suffering.
Read more:
Rival resolutions on Syria sponsored by Russia & France fail at UNSC
Syria no-fly zone would mean ‘killing a lot of Syrians’ – leaked Clinton speech
RT | October 9, 2016
Amid the increasingly hawkish approach the US government has taken towards the Syrian government, it has been clear for its strategists that a no-fly zone over Syria would mean mass civilian casualties, leaked quotes from a 2013 Hillary Clinton speech have shown.
One of the problems with the no-fly zone, which Western hawks have long insisted should be imposed over Syria, would be the need to “take out” the country’s “very sophisticated” air defenses, Hillary Clinton noted in a Wall Street speech posted by WikiLeaks in the latest trove of classified emails.
“To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defenses, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk— you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians,” Clinton admitted.
She then expressed concern that would make that “intervention that people talk about so glibly” a full-fledged “American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians.”
WikiLeaks on Friday opened a Pandora’s box of emails leaked from the account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, unleashing thousands of messages with excerpts of her paid speeches for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and others in between her job as secretary of state and the current presidential campaign.
Syria proved to be a hot topic for Clinton in 2013. During her speech for Deutsche Bank, she was asked by an audience member whether she would support US airstrike or boots on the ground in Syria, and if there was indisputable evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its people.
“Well, you’ve asked a very, very difficult question,” Clinton replied, “because we obviously talked about this at great length, and both the United States and Europe, as well as Israel, have said that’s a red line. And if there is indisputable evidence, then there is the stated commitment to take action.”
“What that action is and what would work is extremely difficult to plan and execute,” she added.
Clinton asserted the US had some “potential” interests in Syria, the leaked document shows.
“It depends upon how you define national interest. We certainly do with chemical weapons,” she said during her October 2013 speech at the Jewish United Fund Advance & Major Gifts Dinner.
Clinton then justified Syria being “a national interest” by what she claimed was a possibility of it becoming “a training ground for extremists, a launching pad for attacks on Turkey, Jordan, the non-tetarian[sic] elements in Lebanon and, eventually, even in Israel.”
Another challenge mentioned by Clinton was for the West to “develop covert connections with the Syrian opposition to gain insight,” she said during the 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs.
“So the problem for the US and the Europeans has been from the very beginning: What is it you – who is it you are going to try to arm? And you probably read in the papers my view was we should try to find some of the groups that were there that we thought we could build relationships with and develop some covert connections that might then at least give us some insight into what is going on inside Syria.”
Clinton said she actually favored “more robust, covert action trying to vet, identify, train and arm cadres of rebels” in Syria, adding that things have been “complicated by the fact that the Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons—and pretty indiscriminately.”
Clinton also said she has heard advice about Syria to “let them kill themselves until they get exhausted, and then we’ll figure out how to deal with what the remnants are,” according to another quote from the Jewish United Fund Advance & Major Gifts Dinner in 2013. She called it “a very hands-off approach.”
While journalists may still be combing through hundreds of the leaked emails, Clinton’s Republican rivals have already used leaks to hit out at her for hiding the transcripts of Wall Street speeches and running a “fraud” campaign.
“With today’s WikiLeaks revelations we are finding out who Hillary Clinton really is, and it’s not hard to see why she fought so hard to keep her transcripts of speeches to Wall Street banks paying her millions of dollars secret,” the Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus said in a statement. “The truth that has been exposed here is that the persona Hillary Clinton has adopted for her campaign is a complete and utter fraud. How can Bernie Sanders and many like-minded Democrats continue to support her candidacy in light of these revelations?”
Meanwhile, on Friday the Obama administration accused Moscow of being behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers in June.
“Earlier today the US government removed any reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has weaponized WikiLeaks to meddle in our election and benefit Donald Trump’s candidacy,” Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin said. “We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by Julian Assange, who has made no secret of his desire to damage Hillary Clinton.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry called the US allegations “nonsense.”
“This whipping up of emotions regarding ‘Russian hackers’ is used in the US election campaign, and the current [US] administration taking part in this fight is not averse to using dirty tricks,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Saturday in comments posted on the ministry’s website.
“There is no proof whatsoever for such grave accusations,” Ryabkov said. “They are fabricated by those who are now serving an obvious political order in Washington, continuing to whip up unprecedented anti-Russian hysteria,” he added.
On Assad and Syria: a Reply to a Reader
By Diana Johnstone | CounterPunch | October 6, 2016
A reader sent me the following short comment on my article about destroying Syria:
“Not a word about Assad’s crimes or Russia bombing civilians?”
Here is my reply to such objections:
Dear …
If you are in need of words about Assad’s crimes or Russia bombing civilians, just look around you. They are everywhere.
First of all, I am not concerned with displaying my disapproval of crimes or of bombing civilians, something that should be taken for granted. I am concerned with avoiding World War III – or even endless war in Syria.
As David Swanson insists, war is a crime. Once you are into a war, and especially a civil war with massive outside intervention, there are bound to be more and more crimes. But by the way, how are you so sure about Assad’s crimes or Russia bombing civilians? Surely you must realize that our media regard them as the enemy and readily believe every version of events that portrays them as villains. An example of obvious exaggeration is official U.S. insistence that Russia deliberately bombs hospitals, etc., where if we do it, it is of course an accident.
I am suspicious of all reports of crimes, knowing how much this war is a propaganda war and how easy it is to misrepresent events in other countries. But measuring how many crimes are committed by whom does not get to the root of the problem. The root of the problem, as I say in my article, is a longstanding ambition by the United States and its allies to replace the Syrian Arab nationalist state with an obedient pro-Western clique, friendly to Israel. Since that seems out of reach at the present, the strategy is simply to keep the war going as long as possible, deepening the chaos, until nobody much is left except the exiles in London being groomed by Western powers to win rigged elections.
By dragging out the war, more and more children will die, as well as adults, whose lives are also worth something. But it is interesting that humanitarian propaganda focuses only on children, as if realizing that most Westerners are totally indifferent to the massive deaths of Arabs – unless they are toddlers. Or kittens.
Best wishes,
Diana Johnstone
Clinton or Trump: Who is better for Africa?
By Yash Tandon | PAMBAZUKA NEWS | September 29, 2016
Clinton is part of the Establishment. It is part of her inheritance to provoke wars and control the world in league with global corporations. Nobody knows what lies behind Trump’s mask. May be he wants to “knock the shit” out of the Establishment. May be he is a “narcissist character” seeking reward in the short run. But no one who seriously cares about Africa’s liberation from Empire would support Clinton.
Sometimes it helps to start an essay with a quote that sums up one’s position. Here is one from the English philosopher Bertrand Russell that defines my position: “A man without a bias cannot write interesting history – if indeed such a man exists.”[i] Indeed, no such person exists in the field of human sciences. So let me declare my bias upfront. I have no love for either Clinton or Trump, but as a “biased” African I’d rather have Trump than Clinton.
The Establishment
The American historian Carroll Quigley wrote a little known but brilliant book in 1949 titled The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden.[ii] Quigley explains how men of the Empire like Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner, Lionel Curtis, Robert Brand and Adam Marris strategised to control the world; how they deliberately provoked wars – such as the Jameson Raid and the Boer War in South Africa leading to the British colonisation of South Africa. He also documented how they created the British Commonwealth of Nations, the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the US Council on Foreign Relations.
This is the “Establishment”. Rhodes died in 1902, but the Anglo-American Establishment lives on and has mutated over time. Now it is represented by the global corporations that effectively control the world’s major resources (gold, diamonds, oil, etc.), banks including financial services, and the institutions of global governance (such as the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation).
Clinton is part of the Establishment. It is part of her inheritance to provoke wars and control the system in league with global corporations. To date Clinton has raised a total of $446.4 million, and Trump of $137.3 million, of which Clinton has spent $349,6m and Trump $96.7m. Clinton’s money comes almost entirely from the Establishment whereas Trump’s largely from his own resources.[iii] Clinton is still refusing to release the transcripts of three paid speeches she gave in 2013 at a Goldman Sachs event. The speeches collectively netted her $675,000.[iv]
Clinton and Henry Kissinger
The Clintons are very close to Kissinger both in personal life and ideologically. They often spend vacations together. [v] But more than that Hillary regards Kissinger as her mentor, her Guru.
The person who defines Kissinger’s realpolitik ideology best is Bernard Lewis, the well-known “expert” on Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. His advice to the West, stripped of scholarly veneer, and in contemporary terms, is quite simple: fight proxy wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and the global South – employ agents instead of our own soldiers; manipulate the media to provide “truths” to the masses; use money to buy people, buy governments, buy entire nations; and keep the wolf (read Putin) out of the door.[vi]
Kissinger walked the talk of Lewis during the “Cold War” (by the way, always put the Cold War in inverted commas; it was “cold” for them; for Africa – Algeria, South Africa, Mozambique – it was hot). In 1975 during a conversation with the US ambassador to Turkey and two Turkish and Cypriot diplomats, Kissinger admitted of illegally supporting the military junta in Spain, Greece, and Brazil. He told his hosts that he “worked around” an official arms embargo then in effect. Also, the US exempted the military government in Brazil from crimes of torture to allow it to receive US aid. These post-facto revelations are now documented and released by whistleblowers Assange, Manning, and Snowden (check the internet). See the video Hillary Clinton does not want you to see.[vii]
It is not surprising therefore that in the US Democratic presidential debates Kissinger’s ghost sprung up like, in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, lurking behind Hillary Clinton (“Prince” Hamlet). During a debate on foreign policy, Bernie Sanders, the candidate contesting Clinton, referred to Clinton’s close relations with Kissinger. “I happen to believe”, he said, “that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.” He cited “the secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War as a Kissinger-orchestrated move that eventually led to genocide in that country.” [viii]
Clinton, following Kissinger, is an imperial jingoist. Under Clinton as Secretary of State the US and NATO went well beyond their UN Security Council mandate in the Libyan war. The end of the war was the gruesome death of Gaddafi cornered in a hell-hole. Clinton on viewing this remarked with characteristic cynicism: “We came, we saw, he died”. Here is another YouTube video Hillary would not want you to see.[ix] I was shocked when I saw this display of total cynicism and psychic lack of compassion. She is the “war candidate” of the Establishment, and has made her intentions amply clear in relation to Iran, Gaza/Palestine, Syria … and if she has her way, Russia and China.
Trump, the Ogre with a big mouth
In Trump, the Americans have a Presidential candidate who has gone out of his way to be distasteful. He is regularly depicted with a dog’s face in the American Establishment media. And for sure, he has said nasty things about the Muslims, immigrants, Mexicans, Africans – in fact, anybody who comes in his way. “I knocked the shit out of her on Twitter and she never said a thing about me after that”, he said of one of his detractors. “I really like Nelson Mandela”, he said on another occasion, “but South Africa is a crime ridden mess that is just waiting to explode – not a good situation for the people!” [x] On the Black Lives Matter Movement he said:
“There’s no such thing as racism anymore. We’ve had a black president so it’s not a question anymore. Are they saying black lives should matter more than white lives or Asian lives? If black lives matter, then go back to Africa. We’ll see how much they matter there.”[xi]
Trump is criticised for being neurotic. The American journal, The Atlantic (June, 2016) did an article on him by Dan McAdams titled “The Mind of Donald Trump”. Among other things, McAdams says that Trump is an extrovert, “exuberant, outgoing and socially dominant” narcissist character. The cardinal feature of extroversion is “reward-seeking in the short run”.[xii]
But, nobody can deny that he defeated 16 other Republican contenders. In the end he got nominated as the Republican Party candidate. The Party is now distancing itself from him and trying, instead, to focus on winning seats in the Congress rather than backing Trump. But Trump marches on regardless, with his controversial off-the-cuff and “politically incorrect” innuendos against the Establishment, galvanising the youth who are sick and tired of the yawning divide between the rich and the poor in America.
The British paper the Guardian explains the “great paradox” of American politics that holds the secret of Trump’s success:
Trump is an “emotions candidate”. More than any other presidential candidate in decades, Trump focuses on eliciting and praising emotional responses from his fans rather than on detailed policy prescriptions. His speeches – evoking dominance, bravado, clarity, national pride, and personal uplift – inspire an emotional transformation. Then he points to that transformation. Not only does Trump evoke emotion, he makes an object of it, presenting it back to his fans as a sign of collective success…. His supporters have been in mourning for a lost way of life. Many have become discouraged, others depressed. They yearn to feel pride but instead have felt shame. Their land no longer feels like their own. Joined together with others like themselves, they feel greatly elated at Trump’s promise to deliver them unto a state in which they are no longer strangers in their own land.”[xiii]
I’m waiting to buy “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” (to be published in October, 2016) in which the author, Arlie Hochschild, goes on a reflective expedition from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country – a stronghold of the conservative right – exposing America’s ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, the right and left.[xiv]
This is what probably explains why Trump is trouncing the Establishment.
Conclusion
The truth is that nobody knows what lies behind Trump’s mask. May be he wants to “knock the shit” out of the Establishment. May be he is a “narcissist character” seeking reward in the short run. Whatever he is, he has put the Establishment – both Republican as well as Democrats – in a quandary.
Trump has raised questions the people of America should have asked a long time ago. Why is the youth in America angry with the Establishment? Why is the American foreign policy such a disaster?
Trump might make peace with Russia and China. For Africa, this is good. The continent does not wish to be dragged into another proxy war like during the “Cold War”.
Trump shocked the Establishment when he said that if he were president, the US might not come to the defence of an attacked NATO ally that hadn’t fulfilled its “obligation to make payments.”[xv] Africa should urge him to go further – NATO should be dismantled like Russia did with the Warsaw Pact. NATO is a danger to world peace.
Trump has come out openly against trade and investment agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). On TPP he said, “The deal is insanity … That deal should not be supported and it should not be allowed to happen.”[xvi] Africa has, ALSO, come out against these mega-trade agreements, driven by American mega corporations.
Trump might scrape AGOA (African Growth and Opportunities Act) which is all about serving America’s, not Africa’s, interests. Trump could also scrape Obama’s “Power Africa” initiative. It is a $7 billion plan to facilitate American corporate investments in Africa. Africa needs to be liberated from these tools of the American empire.
Trump has criticised the notion of “exporting democracy” to the countries of the South saying it is not the business of America to tell Africa how to run their countries. Exactly.
Trump and Jeremy Corbyn – the Labour Party leader in the UK – though poles apart politically, have one very significant thing in common. They are both harangued by the mainstream media and the established order in their respective countries. Like Trump, Corbyn is under attack not only by the Conservatives but also by the Establishment in the Labour Party spearheaded by the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Africa has for centuries (during slave trade and later through colonisation) been victim of the Establishment. Both Corbyn and Trump have an impressive backing from the youth of their countries. Why? Because they too, like the masses in Africa, are bitter against the dominant global order. We may not connect with Trump, but he could open space for us to establish solidarity links with the people in America, especially the youth, who too are suffering from the oppression of the Establishment warlords.
Conventional wisdom holds that a known devil is better than an unknown angel. Of course, Trump is no angel. But in this instance, and from an African (and possibly third world) perspective, Trump as an unknown devil is far better than Hillary Clinton, the known devil.
* Yash Tandon is from Uganda and has worked at many different levels as an academic, teacher, political thinker, a rural development worker, a civil society activist, and an institution builder. His latest book is Trade is War.
END NOTES
[i] http://www.azquotes.com/quote/524658
[ii] Carroll Quigley (1981). The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden. New York: Books in Focus
[iii] http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fu…
[iv] http://africasacountry.com/2016/03/hillary-clinton-goldman-sachs-and-afr…
[v] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/hillary-clinton-kissinger-vacation-dominican-republic-de-la-renta
[vi] President Obama, who carries the Clinton flag, condemned Trump for admiring Putin and appearing on RT, the Russian television. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-trump-putin_us_57d84156e4b0fbd…
[vii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vczoazK1mxU
[viii] http://www.salon.com/2016/02/12/sanders_proudly_declaring_kissinger_is_n…
[ix] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5484y_Jythk
[x] https://www.google.co.uk/#q=Trump+on+Mandela
[xi] http://www.celebtricity.com/donald-trump-if-black-lives-dont-matter-then…
[xii] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/
[xiii] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/07/how-great-paradox-americ…
[xiv] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning/dp/1620972255
[xv] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/nato-trump-russ…
[xvi] http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/09/exclusive-donald-trum…
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US-led air raid kills 20 Iraqi pro-government fighters
Press TV – October 5, 2016
At least 20 Iraqi pro-government fighters have been killed when the US-led coalition targeted their position near the militant-held northern city of Mosul, media reports say.
A local source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US-led military aircraft struck a building in the Kharaeb village of the al-Qayyarah region, located approximately 300 kilometers north of the capital, Baghdad, on Wednesday morning, leaving 20 Iraqi tribal fighters dead and five others injured, Arabic-language Shafaq news agency reported.
The source added that the fighters were members of a clan led by a tribal elder identified as Sheikh Nazhan Lahibi.
The pro-government forces had reportedly gathered at the site when the aerial attack took place.
Last December, over 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 30 injured in an air strike carried out by the US military.
Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee, Hakim al-Zamili, said the incident took place near the town of al-Naimiya in the western province of Anbar after Iraqi government forces had liberated “a strategically important area” from Takfiri Daesh militants.
The United States and some its allies have been carrying out air strikes in Iraq since June 2014 allegedly targeting Daesh terrorists in the northern and western parts of the conflict-plagued Arab country.
Gruesome violence has beleaguered the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh extremists mounted an offensive there more than two years ago, and took control of portions of Iraqi territory.
Iraqi army soldiers and fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units are trying to win back militant-held regions in joint operations.
Why Deterring ‘Unprecedentedly Terrible Nuclear Attacks’ Is Now on the Pentagon’s Agenda
By Yuriy RUBTSOV | Strategic Culture Foundation | 05.10.2016
Speaking at Minot Air Force Base (North Dakota) on Monday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter accused Russia of «nuclear saber-rattling» and argued that even though the Cold War is long over, the US Army still needs nuclear weapons to deter Russia and other potential aggressors from thinking they could get away with a nuclear attack.
However, knowing it would be difficult to sell the image of «Russian aggressors» as suicidal, (everything will burn in a global nuclear war, including those who started it), the head of the Pentagon was quick to say that people should probably not expect a global conflict. «Today», he stated, «it’s a sobering fact that the most likely use of nuclear weapons is not the massive nuclear exchange of the classic Cold War-type, but rather the unwise resort to smaller but still unprecedentedly terrible attacks, for example, by Russia or North Korea».
The manner in which Ashton Carter frightened his audience could be considered a banal attempt to get even more money to modernise America’s nuclear weapons and their means of delivery. It seems that the $108 billion he mentioned, which will be used for this purpose over the next five years, is not enough for the Pentagon.
Carter’s speech in North Dakota was not limited to this, however. The head of the Pentagon also expressed attitudes of a political-military and international legal nature.
I would like to ask: what has Russia done, exactly, to justify the US Defense Secretary’s allegation that Moscow is preparing «unprecedentedly terrible attacks» involving the use of nuclear weapons? Has it issued the kind of threats that have made the world more volatile, perhaps? Or abandoned its international obligations? Or is it following America’s example and deploying nuclear weapons outside of its borders?
We can assume that our negative responses to all these questions are neither here nor there to Mr. Carter, but there is an expert who responds in the same vein that Carter cannot disregard so easily, and that is one of his predecessors at the US Department of Defense, former US Defense Secretary William Perry. When asked by journalists how much more volatile the world has become in recent years, Perry replied: «Fundamentally nothing has changed… The number of weapons are sufficient to destroy, obliterate all of civilization… It doesn’t take that many. We still have more than 1,000 nuclear weapons on alert ready to go».
In other words, neither Russia’s position as a nuclear power nor the status of America’s nuclear capabilities gives grounds for warmongering and the rapid modernisation of strategic nuclear forces (nuclear deterrents). In this regard, William Perry has unwittingly disarmed his successor.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that Carter ranked Russia alongside North Korea among the «potential aggressors» preparing «unprecedentedly terrible attacks». He is willing to admit that Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are very different countries, but they are seemingly distinguished by the fact that both are prepared to resort to a nuclear attack «to try to coerce a conventionally superior opponent to back off or abandon an ally during a crisis».
It is characteristic that, in unison with Carter, Theresa May also pointed to Russia and North Korea as potential threats in her first parliamentary speech as UK Prime Minister, when she justified the need to modernise the UK’s nuclear arsenal.
If Pyongyang is aspiring to become a fully-fledged member of the nuclear club in violation of UN sanctions, carrying out nuclear weapons testing, and stating its willingness to launch a nuclear strike against US and South Korean armed forces in the event of provocation in the Asia-Pacific Region, then how is any of this similar to Russia’s actions? It’s not. Yet the head of the Pentagon has brought Russia and North Korea together as nuclear threats and has undoubtedly made this sound significant. One must assume that Moscow is drawing conclusions from this.
There is another side to Ashton Carter naming Russia and North Korea as the main nuclear threats, however. While Russia, China, North Korea and Iran were identified in the US National Military Strategy, updated last year, as «revisionist states» that need to be countered, Iran and China have now (take note!) disappeared from the traditional group of ‘global villains’. Why Iran – following the closure of Iran’s nuclear dossier and the lifting of international sanctions – is understandable. But China? Or is it that against the backdrop of the «Russian danger», the US does not regard China’s nuclear weapons as a threat?
Hardly. It is simply that with such a curious selection of targets, Carter is aiming to divide Beijing and Moscow, which hold similar, and in some cases identical, positions on a number of key issues of strategic stability and the strengthening of the nuclear deterrent regime.
One merely has to consider the joint initiative of Russia and China to prevent the placement of weapons in space that was announced at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly last year and that was rejected by the United States, incidentally. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who spoke at the ongoing 71st Session of the UN General Assembly, «the start of substantial negotiations on… the Russian-Chinese draft Treaty on the Non-Deployment of Weapons in Space could end the impasse over the key component of the multilateral disarmament mechanism – the Disarmament Conference».
Ashton Carter’s lengthy speech at the military base in North Dakota did not contain a single concrete fact that would implicate Russia in attempts to undermine strategic stability, but the United States is undertaking such attempts. One need only think of America’s plans to deploy additional modernised nuclear weapons – ‘general-purpose’ B61-12 bombs – in Europe. There will be plenty of these US bombs in the Old World – estimates range from 250 to 400. And the fact that these new bombs are «more ethical», as the Pentagon puts it, i.e. they have a smaller yield, only exacerbates the situation. A smaller yield, but greater accuracy. This may suggest that they are going to be used against military targets, including in densely-populated areas.
Finally, the US is planning to give the right of control over the use of these nuclear weapons systems to its European allies and is already training military pilots in Poland and the Baltic States how to use the nuclear weapons. This is a direct violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as recently emphasised by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
By accusing Russia, without evidence, of intending to depart from the «long-established rules of using nuclear weapons» (to quote Carter’s speech once again), the US is using this accusation as a cover for its own actions, which are undermining the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Covert strikes on Assad back on US table to prevent ‘fall of Aleppo’ – report
RT | October 5, 2016
Top Washington officials are set to discuss striking positions of the Syrian military without a UN Security Council resolution. Bombing air force runways with missiles fired from coalition planes and ships is being considered, according to a report.
“One proposed way to get around the White House’s objection to striking the Assad regime without a UN Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment,” one administration official who is to take part in the discussions told the Washington Post.
A meeting of the Obama administration’s Principals Committee is scheduled for Wednesday, the newspaper reported, adding that a meeting of the National Security Council could follow this weekend.
The CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed support for “limited military strikes against the Syrian government,” last Wednesday, when the US discussed such “kinetic” options, the official told the Washington Post.
“There’s an increased mood in support of kinetic actions against the regime,” one senior administration official was quoted as saying.
“The CIA and the Joint Staff have said that the fall of Aleppo would undermine America’s counterterrorism goals in Syria,” he added.
After threatening to withdraw from the Syrian peace process for weeks, Washington finally announced the “suspension” of bilateral contact with Moscow concerning the crisis on Monday.
Although contact to “deconflict” encounters between the aircraft of the US and Russian militaries in Syrian skies will continue, the US is withdrawing personnel dispatched for the purpose of setting up a Joint Implementation Center (JIC) for the ceasefire. The JIC, which would have been located in Geneva, was to coordinate military cooperation and intelligence-sharing between Russia and the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.
There is “nothing more for the US and Russia to talk about” in Syria, White House spokesman Josh Earnest concluded on Monday.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it was “disappointed” by the decision, while accusing the US of trying to shift the blame for its own failure in Syria. Russia has made efforts to preserve the September 9 ceasefire agreement, repeatedly urging Washington to live up to its obligations, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said on Monday.
“It turns out that Washington has failed to fulfill the key condition of the agreement to ease humanitarian situation for the residents of Aleppo” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “And now, apparently, having failed to honor these agreements that they themselves worked out, [the US] is trying to shift the blame.”
Asked if the US had fulfilled its own long-standing obligation to separate the so-called moderate opposition from terrorists, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau replied, “We believe we did.”
When RT’s Gayane Chichakyan reminded Trudeau that several major rebel groups had refused to abide by the ceasefire outright, the spokeswoman hit back: “We expected good faith efforts, not only from rebel groups on the ground… but also Russia.
“If attacked, opposition groups have the right to defend themselves,” she added.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in a program that disposes of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads, citing “a radical change in the environment, a threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the US against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties.”
Washington deemed that decision “disappointing.”
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Aaron Siri’s Book: Vaccines, Amen
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
Aaron Siri makes it clear in Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines that the story we’ve been told about vaccine science rests far more on belief than proof.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
And he does. … continue
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