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Syrian army ‘will ignore’ US air force border fight threat

Morning Star | May 30, 2017

SYRIA’S armed forces made clear yesterday that they will not obey US air force instructions to halt military operations near the Tanf border crossing with Iraq.

An army officer told Al-Masdar News that, despite the US air force dropping leaflets over Syrian army positions in south-east Homs at the weekend, army units will continue fighting against Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Isis militants until the entire Iraqi border with south-east Syria is sealed.

“Any movements toward Tanf will be considered hostile and we will defend our forces,” the US-led coalition leaflet read.

The officer added that the Russian military is deeply embedded with the Syrian army and their allies in southeast Homs and is backing continued operations.

Government forces greatly outnumber the Western-backed FSA in the region and the US allies also do not have the backing of the Iraqi government or the Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation Units that operate both in Iraqi desert areas west of Mosul and alongside Syrian government forces in south-east Homs.

US warplanes hit pro-Syrian government Palestinian fighters on May 18 on the pretext that they posed a threat to US troops and allied rebels near the border with Jordan.

Syrian army and allied paramilitary forces continued their successful campaign in the eastern Aleppo countryside yesterday afternoon, breaking through Isis defences and capturing the Ras al-Ayn village and its surroundings, heightening the pressure on the Isis stronghold of Maskanah.

The last batch of jihadist insurgents and their family members were transported in government-provided buses from the Barzeh suburb of east Damascus to Idlib province yesterday.

Their departure means that the Syrian government has full control of this suburb for the first time since late 2011.

Several rebels opted to remain in Barzeh and will have six months to resolve their status with the government.

Four members of the pro-Syrian government Harakat al-Nujaba militia, together with two Syrian army soldiers, were freed from year-long captivity in jihadi-controlled province Idlib on Sunday night after Nujaba fighters launched a behind-the-enemy-lines raid.

May 30, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

South Korea’s new leader orders probe into ‘unauthorized’ US deployment

Press TV – May 30, 2017

South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-in has ordered an investigation into the “unauthorized” deployment of four additional THAAD missile launchers by the United States to the country’s soil.

Presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan said Moon was “shocked” to hear that the four additional launchers of the so-called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system were installed without being reported to the new government or to the public.

“President Moon was briefed on such facts by National Security Office (NSO) chief Chung Eui-yong and said it was very shocking,” the spokesman told a news briefing on Tuesday.

The system was initially deployed to South Korea in March with just two of its maximum load of six launchers with the declared aim of countering North Korean threats.

The South Korean official further said the president had “ordered his senior secretary for civil affairs and the NSO chief to find the truth behind the unauthorized entry of the four rocket launchers.”

The deployment of THAAD, which came amid tensions with North Korea, was met with strong opposition from people in South Korea, including the residents of Seongju County, where the missile system is installed.

The installation was agreed by the government of Moon’s predecessor Park ­Geun-hye, who was impeached and ousted over a corruption scandal.

During his election campaign prior to the May 9 election, Moon had urged a parliamentary review of the controversial deployment, which has angered Pyongyang.

Russia and China have also expressed deep concern over the controversial deployment of the American missile system on the Korean Peninsula.

Chinese officials argue that the US system would interfere with their radars and could pose a threat to Chinese security.

Moscow has also warned that the deployment would only fuel tensions in the region.

May 30, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Japan wants US parachute drills grounded amid Okinawa anger

RT | May 30, 2017

Japan is opposed to a two-day parachuting drill that the US plans to conduct near the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. Local residents have protested such drills in the past, and this would be the third in two months.

Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said the US military failed to notify the Japanese authorities seven days ahead of the exercise, as they are supposed to. In fact, Japan learned of the Americans’ plans from a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) filed with the aviation authorities, which is meant to keep civilian aircraft out of airspace where US military planes are flying during the exercise, NHK reported.

“We asked [the Americans] not to conduct the training and to delete the NOTAM. So far we have not received a response from the US site,” Inada told reporters on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting.

The parachuting exercises, which are planned for Wednesday and Thursday, would be conducted off the coast of the city of Uruma. Similar drills were conducted off the Kadena Airbase on the night of May 10 and on April 24.

The previous two drills sparked protest among Okinawans, who have not seen such exercises since 2011. After the second training, Deputy Okinawa Governor Moritake Tomikawa filed a protest with Japan’s Defense Ministry, expressing outrage and saying that such exercises cannot become routine.

Defense Minister Inada called the US move “regrettable,” saying the US should observe a 1996 bilateral agreement under which parachuting exercises should be conducted on the remote island of Iejima, off Okinawa’s main island, with the Kadena base used only as an exception.

“The United States did not offer sufficient explanation on why the exercise conducted (Wednesday) amounted to an exceptional case,” Inada said at a regular news conference. “It is extremely deplorable that it took place at Kadena Air Base without Japan and the United States able to share the same perception in advance,” she stressed.

The Kadena Airbase is one of several US military installations on Okinawa, a southern Japanese island that hosts some 70 percent of the US troops in Japan and is home to some 20,000 US service members, contractors, and their families.

During a parachuting drill in 1965, a trailer airdropped into a local village inadvertently landed on a schoolgirl, killing her.

The protest over the latest planned drill comes a day after Okinawa police arrested a US airman assigned to the Kadena base following a drunk hit-and-run. Staff Sergeant Miguel Angel Garza allegedly hit a car on Monday and fled the scene. The female driver of the second vehicle sustained minor injuries, Japanese authorities said.

May 30, 2017 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Things that Saudis can’t buy off

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | May 29, 2017

There is something obscene about anyone who held high positions in the government – for example, an Ambassador or an Army Chief – taking up a post-retirement job as employee of a foreign government. Pakistan’s former army chief General Raheel Sharif should not have accepted the offer made by Saudi king Salman to appoint him as the head of a newly-formed Islamic Military Alliance.

It is common sense that the assignment would effectively make the Pakistani general a vassal of the House of Saud. What was the need for it? A Pakistani general is almost certainly a very wealthy man who really doesn’t need more money. And if Gen. Sharif had an insatiable itch to continue to fight terrorism till the end of his life, Pakistan itself provided ample opportunities.

Why Saudi Arabia? The only plausible answer is — avarice. The Saudis’ capacity to lure foreign elites is a legion. According to reports, Salman gave away to US President Donald Trump personal gifts alone worth $1.2 billion. One heavy sword made of pure gold and studded with diamond stones weighing 25 kilograms alone was worth $200 million. Then, there is this 125 meter long yacht, which is apparently the world’s tallest personal yacht, with 80 rooms with 20 royal suites.

Maybe, the yacht is useful for Trump’s escapades, but what will he do with a 25 kg sword? Obviously, Salman was bribing Trump. As quid pro quo, Salman probably expects Trump to close the file on the 9/11 attacks and drop the idea of seeking compensation for the victims’ families under the US legislation known as Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act.

Of course, Saudis do not have to give away such lavish gifts to the elites in Pakistan (or India.) A Mont Blanc ballpoint pen, Rolex wrist watch, an odd job for the nephew or son-in-law – that generally does the trick. To be sure, by Pakistani standards, Gen. Sharif must be getting a fat salary.

However, the amazing part is that the Pakistani government gave him an exceptional ‘No Objection Certificate’ to take up such an assignment. The Pakistani leadership would have known that the Saudis had a certain agenda in creating the Islamic Military Alliance. The Saudi intention is to rally Sunni Muslim countries and create a phalanx against Shi’ite Iran. No matter the gloss put on the IMA being an anti-terror enterprise, the alliance’s Iran orientation was crystal clear.

The Pakistani press reported that Iran’s ambassador in Islamabad Mehdi Honardoost called on army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in Rawalpindi twice during the month of April alone to convey Tehran’s disquiet over Sharif’s appointment. But the government remained impassive.

The birds are now coming to roost. One outcome of Trump’s visit to Riyadh last week is that the Islamic Military Alliance now stands pretty naked as a Sunni Muslim alliance to fight Iran. Not only that, the alliance will fight Iran in secret collaboration with Israel. The Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has bragged in a media interview, “We will not wait for the war to be waged on Saudi soil. We will make sure that the war is waged in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia.”

Now, this is all spinning out of control. Imagine Gen. Sharif landing the IMA troops in Badar-e Bushehr and leading the charge of the light brigade to Shiraz and Esfahan and on to Tehran to overthrow the Iranian regime.  Therefore, it is not at all surprising that Gen. Sharif is reportedly developing cold feet and is contemplating to resign from his job and return to Pakistan.

Even if that is not the case, Pakistani leadership should order him to return home. It will be extremely damaging to Pakistan’s interests any which way one looks at it, if it gets entangled in the Saudi-Iranian tensions. As the African proverb says, ‘When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets hurt’.

The really bizarre part of it is that Trump’s rhetoric about Iran is all baloney. Trump is a bluff master. He will now walk away laughing with the sword and the yacht. Read a report in the New York Times – As Iran and U.S. Leaders Trade Barbs, Big Deals Proceed.

May 30, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Alleged Russia-Taliban Arms Link Disputed

By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | May 29, 2017

A tiny article from Reuters in late May quoted the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency as telling a Senate hearing, “I have not seen real physical evidence of weapons or money being transferred.” Marine Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart was addressing widespread claims by top Pentagon officials of Russian arms flowing to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

By conceding the reports have no real substance, Stewart quietly called the bluff of military hardliners who are invoking the Russian menace to justify prolonging and escalating the longest and second-most-costly war in U.S. history. Stories of Russian military shipments to Afghanistan began last December, with a typical headline from the Washington Post: “Russia begins supplying weapons to Afghanistan, sides with Taliban.”

Down in the body of the story, however, it emerged that Moscow had agreed to ship 10,000 assault rifles not to the Taliban but to the Afghan government’s police force in Kabul. A Russian Foreign Ministry official said, “Russia has been consistently pursuing the policy of providing comprehensive assistance to Afghanistan in the establishment of a peaceful, independent, stable and self-sufficient state, free from terrorism and drugs.” Russia previously supplied helicopters and pilot training to Afghan forces, under a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, which continued thanks to a special U.S. waiver on economic sanctions.

As to the Taliban, the Russian official said only that his government stood ready, in the interests of Afghanistan’s national reconciliation, to support “the possible weakening of the sanctions regime . . . against the Taliban, if it is not contrary to the national interests of Afghanistan.” He added that Russia shared the Taliban’s interest in defeating ISIS in Afghanistan.

Scapegoating the Russians

Starting in March, coincident with urgent requests by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan for thousands more troops to stem the Taliban’s military advances, senior Pentagon officers began blaming Russia for setbacks on the battlefield.

“I think it is fair to assume they may be providing some sort of support to [the Taliban] in terms of weapons or other things that may be there,” General Joseph Votel, chief of U.S. Central Command, told members of Congress.

Defense Secretary James Mattis chimed in with claims, paraphrased by NPR correspondent Tom Bowman, that “the Russians are providing some support, including maybe weapons to the Taliban.” Noting that the details were “murky,” Bowman added, “the commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, thinks this is a way for the Russians just to undermine the U.S. and NATO.”

Staying on message, a spokesman for the NATO coalition in Afghanistan told the Los Angeles Times days later, “We know that actions by Russia in Afghanistan are meant to undermine the work of the United States and NATO to support the Afghan government.” The reporters then stated as fact, “It . . . represents another effort by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to exert power globally while weakening the U.S.”

In late April, a “senior U.S. military official,” speaking on background, asserted that the Russians had “increased their supply of equipment and small arms to the Taliban over the past 18 months.” He said “the Russians have been sending weapons, including medium and heavy machine guns, to the Taliban under the guise that the materiel would be used to fight the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan.”

Secretary Mattis, quoted in the same article, said menacingly, “we’re going to have to confront Russia where what they’re doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries.”

Russian Denials

Russia, increasingly considered a “hostile power” by many Americans, won few converts by denying what it called “irresponsible accusations” based on “rumors and conjectures.” Its special envoy to Afghanistan branded the allegations of its arms transfers to the Taliban insurgents “absolute lies . . . aimed at justifying the failure of the U.S. military and politicians.”

But Russia’s credibility – even after months of strident and varied accusations from Western officials – could hardly have been lower than the Afghan sources quoted in U.S. news accounts to bolster the Pentagon’s claims. One notable example was the police chief of Uruzgan province, who spoke of Russian agents, “dressed in doctor’s uniforms,” infiltrating his region and “enticing people against the government, providing training and teaching how to assemble land mines.”

The rotten corruption of the Uruzgan provincial police has been attested to by no less than the commander of the Afghan army in that province. Police there abandoned the provincial capital last year, allowing Taliban forces to walk in unopposed — not because of Russian weapons but because senior officials had pocketed police pay for months at a time.

Similar claims against Russia came from the governor of Kunduz province, whose capital was overrun by Taliban forces last fall in what reporters described as a “seemingly easy re-entry” into the city after a similar Taliban incursion in 2015 was repelled by U.S. Special Forces. Other Afghan officials, and independent reporters, ascribed the Taliban’s easy victories to the local population’s grievances against the “mafia-like” elite who run the province.

Experts also blamed aid from Pakistan — not Russia — to the Taliban. Echoing their complaint, former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said last year, “The issue of the U.S. inability to deal effectively with Pakistan, and the [Taliban] sanctuary problem in Pakistan, has been the mother of all problems for U.S.-Afghan relations and of Afghanistan to some degree since 9/11.”

Another big supplier of the Taliban is Saudi Arabia. An exposé by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times revealed that as a longtime ally of Pakistan, “Saudi Arabia has backed Islamabad’s promotion of the Taliban. Over the years, wealthy Saudi sheikhs and rich philanthropists have also stoked the war by privately financing the insurgents.”

How US Arms Taliban

Perhaps the biggest arms supplier of all to the Taliban is the U.S. taxpayer. The Taliban rake off hundreds of millions of dollars from extortion of U.S.-funded projects in the country. They also fill their armories with U.S.-made weapons. A Taliban commander told Bloomberg News that when he needs more weapons and fuel, he simply buys or steals them from his foe. “It’s simple and cheaper,” he said.

As journalist and book author Douglas Wissing observed recently, “U.S-enabled corruption lost the Afghan War. . . Corruption funds the enemy, with hundreds of millions of dollars skimmed from U.S. logistics and aid money. . . . Empowered and financed by this corruption, Taliban strength has grown at double-digit rates annually since 2005. Insurgents now control about 40 percent of the countryside, and are pressuring government centers across country, including increasingly besieged Kabul.”

In the past, Donald Trump was correct when he tweeted that the war in Afghanistan was a “total disaster” – although as President, he is reportedly considering a Pentagon plan to escalate the U.S. role, again.

Blaming the Russians for the war’s latest reversals may let our Afghan allies and our own military off the hook for losing this long war in slow motion, but it won’t change the outcome.

May 29, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

JFK at 100: The War on Our Heroes Part 1

By Kit | OffGuardian | May 29, 2017

For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” John F. Kennedy – Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963

If the bullets hadn’t flown, John Fitzgerald Kennedy might have been one hundred years old today. Granted, it’s not likely, put definitely possible. If the parade route hadn’t been changed, and the roof taken off the limousine, and the secret service ordered to stand down, the world would likely be a very different place. If the man had safely negotiated the last 54 years, and was still breathing today, what would he make of this mess?

A war on heroes

The American conscience died with Robert, Martin and John” Perry White, Batman vs. Superman

America, a country on the rise in 1963, is now an Empire in decline. Not just a decline in prestige and power, but a decline in intelligence and quality. Even the thin patina of pretend values has tarnished, as America’s ruling class now lack the imagination to even play-act morality. Even their dreams are limited by their own smallness of mind.

Where once we had educated men giving speeches about the nature of peace (see above), about aspiration for the future, or citing Aeschylus to balm a nation’s grief. We now have freeze-dried harpies hurling abuse across the floor of the UN, knuckle-dragging cowboys staggering over basic idioms, entitled lunatics demanding recognition for qualities they barely understand, let alone possess. Semi-literate presidential addresses, in 140 characters or fewer.

Nixon, for all his paranoia and corruption, at least understood the world he lived in whilst Hillary Clinton was, and is, dangerously out-of-touch with reality. Ronald Reagan was a senile fool, a glorified advertising mascot for mega-corporations, but Trump makes even him seem a polished and educated statesman.

Is this decline deliberate? The acting out of a policy, by unspoken powers, to limit public intelligence, education and discourse? Are we deprived of political heroes to engender apathy? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s a simple byproduct of a corrupt system that encourages stupidity and stamps out individual thought. Where the worst among us are artificially raised above the level of their ability, character and intelligence.

The decline is not just in the people or character of politicians, but understanding and conversation. Political debates are now little more than slanging matches. Morality broken down from a societal set of concrete values, to a relative abstract. Acts are right or wrong depending on who does them, and how, rather than the act itself. Wars of words are fought across the internet, by volunteer forces armed with little more than labels.

The very nature of truth is under threat. The scientific method as a pursuit of truth is abandoned, as science is converted into a quasi-religion. A broad set of consensus truths, the public understanding of which is limited and flawed, but adherence to which is mandatory. Enforced under penalty of banishment.

An empire is falling, and under the weight of a collapsing tyrant, words themselves crumble. College campuses ban speakers in the name of freedom. We are lectured by paid propagandists on the “tyranny” of Free Speech, the “unfairness” of direct democracy. Fascist. Sexist. Racist. Words deprived of meaning and impact by overuse, while true fascism – the unimpeded cooperation of business and state – goes unchecked in practically every corner of the Western world.

This can all be traced back to the systematic removal of our heroes. That war is still carried out in attacks against every man, woman, party or group that tries to speak up for high-mindedness, encourage societal cooperation, or place people higher in priority than profit.

Empires Eat Themselves

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Martin Scorsese

In a sane world, a just world, psychopathic non-entities like Theresa May would never sniff high-office, and would be condemned to live out their days in middle-management positions at insurance companies. As severe and sadistic deputy head-teachers at private schools. Being traffic wardens. Venting their self-limiting malignity on any unfortunate people who happen into their tiny spheres of influence.

Sadly, this world is never sane and only rarely just.

I have written before about the temptation to view great power, and great evil, as a monolith. There is an assumption that direction and movement require cooperation, and that the corridors of power in Langley and the Pentagon hum with the activity of an ants’ nest. A million minds with one thought and one goal, working with unspoken bonds of purpose.

A less flattering, but more accurate, metaphor might be a swarm of rats in a sewer. Yes, they’re all headed in roughly the same direction, and yes they’re all making the same noises, but there’s no organization, no long-term thinking. Temporarily aligned self-interest is not the same as working together. Ruthless opportunism is not the same as a plan. To us it seems a collective, but to the rats it’s a race.

Psychopaths rise to the top of every power structure eventually. In a game with no rules, those with no morals will always have an edge. A man who will do anything to win has a decided advantage over a man with limitations. That is sadly true, and it’s been used to argue that psychopathy could be the next step in human evolution.

This glamorization of psychopathy is, ironically, a general symptom the degradation of society. We are encouraged to think of morality as “old-fashioned”, a vestigial remnant of the religion we’ve left behind and are likewise supposed to despise. That a free thinking man has no need for the false gods of good and evil.

But Psychopathy is more than a simple disregard for morality. Its lack of recognition of other people’s feelings carries with it a lack of understanding of their experience – meaning psychopaths expect to tell, and get away with, absurd lies. Their inherent narcissism makes them furious when people don’t believe their lies, but unable to learn from the experience. A pathological need to deceive translates into telling lies, when the truth might be more beneficial. They lack impulse control, cannot plan in the long-term and tend toward self-destructive behaviour (drinking, gambling, financial recklessness). They can be superficially charming, but give themselves away with inappropriate emotional reactions.

Think about that list. These are the kind of people in power positions. Barely-there souls driven by goals that aren’t even confinable to simple self-interest, pushed forward by a deranged internal drive toward chaos. Sociopaths and narcissists run the Western world, and have since the US deep-state took a rifle sight to the men that embodied the American conscience, if not before.

Put into this context, the decline of American Empire – both intellectually and morally – makes perfect sense.

Part 2 of this essay will be published tomorrow

May 29, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Trump’s visit to Israel: How Palestine disappeared from US media coverage

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 28, 2017

As if he has, overnight, been transformed into a master politician, Donald Trump’s 27-hour trip to Israel has left many analysts mystified.

Quoting former Israeli political adviser, Mitchell Barack, the New York Times referred to Trump as the “Liberace of world leaders”, in reference to flamboyant, piano player, Wladziu Valantino Liberace. The latter, known as “Mr. Showmanship”, was, at times, the highest paid entertainer in the world and his successful career lasted over four decades.

New York Magazine Online quoted former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, too, trying to decipher the supposedly complicated persona of Trump.

“Either Trump’s visit was substance-free – or he ‘is being uncharacteristically subtle’ in planting the seeds for new round of peace negotiations,” NYmag quoted and paraphrased Shapiro’s tweets.

“Liberal” US media, which has stooped to many lows in its attacks on Trump – including his family, his mannerism, his choice of words, even mere body language – became much more sober and quite respectful in the way they attempted to analyze his short trip to Israel, and the very brief detour to Bethlehem, where he met with Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

“Mr. Trump’s speech at the Israeli Museum was so friendly and considerate of Israeli emotions,” reported the New Your Times, “that one right-wing Israeli legislator described it as deeply expressive of the ‘Zionist narrative’.”

Palestinian emotions, however, were of no consequence, neither to the Trump entourage, nor, of course, to the New York Times or others in mainstream media.

The Washington Post, on the other hand, still found faults, but, certainly not because of Trump’s lack of balance and his failure to deride the Israeli occupation and Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians.

Despite the fact that Trump has, indeed, fully embraced a “Zionist narrative”, and a rightwing version of it (for example, he made no reference to a Palestinian state), he still fell short. His performance at Israel’s national Holocaust Memorial (Yad Vashem) did not impress.

Max Bearak wrote in the Post : “Trump’s entry in the guest book at Israel’s National Holocaust Memorial was strangely upbeat, self-referential and written in his signature all caps: ‘IT IS A GREAT HONOR TO BE HERE WITH ALL OF MY FRIENDS — SO AMAZING & WILL NEVER FORGET!’”

Bearak found such choice of words and the style in which it was written sort of offensive, especially if compared with the supposed thoughtfulness of former President Barack Obama.

In contrast, Obama wrote a significantly longer note, which partly read: “At a time of great peril and promise, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world.”

Neither then, nor now, did the Washington Post bother to examine the historical context in which this particular sentence was written and find the hypocrisy of the whole endeavour.

If they bothered to ask Palestinians, they would have found a whole different interpretation of Obama’s words.

Indeed, wherever occupied Palestinians look, they find “man’s potential for great evil”: a 400-mile Israeli Wall being mostly built over their land; hundreds of military checkpoints dotting their landscape; a suffocating military occupation, controlling every aspect of their lives. They see the holiest of their cities, Bethlehem and Al-Quds – occupied East Jerusalem – subdued by a massive military force; thousands of their leaders thrown into prison, many without charge or trial. They see siege; an endless war; daily deaths and senseless destruction.

But since none of this matters to the “Zionist narrative”, it subsequently matters so very little to mainstream American media, as well.

Trump’s trip to Israel, however short, was, indeed, a master stroke by the ever-unpredictable Liberace of world politics, although, it takes no particular genius to figure out why.

From an American mainstream media perspective, to be judged “presidential” enough, all US presidents would have to commit to three main policies. They are, in no particular order: privileging the economic business elites, war at will and unconditionally supporting Israel.

So far, US media, which has been otherwise polarized based on political allegiances, has taken a break from its raging conflict over Trump’s presidency, and rallied behind him on two separate occasions: when he randomly bombed Syria and during his visit to Israel.

Ironically, the man has been often judged for lacking substance on numerous occasions in the past. In fact, his trip to Israel was the most lacking and most divisive. However, the fact that he, time and again, reiterated Israeli priorities was all that the media needed to give the man a chance. Their collective verdict seems to rebrand his lack of substance as his unique “subtle” way of making politics.

Israeli media, which is often more critical of the Israeli government than US media ever dare, needed to keep up with its “democratic” tradition. But Trump’s groveling also gave them little room for criticism. The often-impulsive Trump, this time stuck to the script and followed his repeatedly rehearsed speech and media comments to the letter.

But Josefin Dolsten insisted on finding a way to nitpick, composing for the Times of Israel the “7 awkward moments from Trump’s Israel trip.”

One of these awkward moments, Dolsten wrote was “a White House statement listing Trump’s goals for the trip included a hilarious (and juicy!) typo: ‘Promote the possibility of lasting peach’ between Israel and the Palestinians. Yes, we get it — it meant to say peace, but who’s to say the two sides can’t bond over some delicious fruit?”

For Palestinians, it must not be easy to find the humour in these tough times. Hundreds of their prisoners, including their most popular leader, Marwan Barghouthi, were enduring a prolonged and life-threatening hunger strike in which they were making the most basic demands for better treatment, longer visitation hours with their families and ending of arbitrary detentions.

More telling, on the day Trump, along with rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lectured Palestinians on peace, a 17-year-old Tuqua Hammad was shot for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli military vehicles at the entrance of her village of Silwad, near Ramallah.

Tuqua “was shot in the lower extremities and Israeli troops prevented a Palestinian ambulance from accessing the victim to treat her,” Ma’an news agency reported.

Merely a few miles away, Trump was writing his remarks after visiting Israel’s Holocaust Museum. Regrettably, he failed to meet the expectations of the Washington Post, for unlike Obama, he was not poignant enough in his language and style.

The irony of the whole story is inescapable; but American media cannot see this, for it, too, seems to follow a script, in which Palestinian rights, dignity and freedom are hardly ever mentioned.

May 29, 2017 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Policymakers Openly Plot Against Venezuela

By Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer | May 24, 2017

The US media has been paying increasing attention to the unfolding crisis in the South American nation of Venezuela. As the US media has done elsewhere, it is attempting to portray the unfolding crisis as a result of a corrupt dictatorship fighting against a “pro-democracy” opposition.

In reality, it is simply a repeat of US-driven regime change aimed at toppling Venezuela’s independent state institutions and replacing them with institutions created by and for US special interests.

The “opposition” is comprised of US-backed political parties and US-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) many of which are listed on the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website.

The UK Independent in a 2016 article titled, “Venezuela accuses US of plotting coup as Washington warns of ‘imminent collapse’,” would even admit:

… observers of the region point out that the US has a long history of seeking to interfere in the politics of Venezuela, as well as elsewhere in Latin America.

In addition to supporting those who ousted Mr Chavez in 2002, the US poured hundreds of thousands of dollars to his opponents via the so-called National Endowment for Democracy.

To understand America’s actual role amid Venezuela’s unfolding crisis, one must read policy papers produced by organizations called “think tanks” which devise and promote US policy.

The Brookings Institution is a Fortune 500-funded policy think tank. It is populated by policymakers who represent the collective ambitions of some of the world’s most powerful corporate-financier interests including big-oil, defense, agricultural monopolies, pharmaceutical corporations, media interests, and more.

Some of the Brookings Institution’s corporate-financier sponsors

Brookings and think tanks similar to it, have regularly produced policy and media guidelines later disseminated across the Western media and Western legislatures through public relations firms and lobbyists. Think tanks are where the real agenda of the West is agreed upon and promoted from.

A recent piece featured upon the Brookings Institution’s website titled, “Venezuela: A path out of crisis,” lays out a 5-point plan toward escalating Venezuela’s already precarious situation (emphasis added):

1. The United States could expand its assistance to countries that until now have been dependent on Venezuelan oil, as a means to decrease regional support for and dependence on the Maduro government.

2. The United States could increase monetary assistance to credible civil society organizations and nongovernmental organizations able to deliver food and medicines to Venezuelans. By doing so, the United States should make clear that international pressure aims to support democracy, not punish the Venezuelan people.

3. The United States could support efforts by the opposition in Venezuela to build an “off-ramp” that would split moderate elements of the government away from hardliners, encouraging the former to acquiesce to a transition to democracy by lowering their costs of exiting government.

4. The United States could coordinate with international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to offer financial incentives for holding free and fair elections in 2018, and for the opposition to unify and compete in those elections. Such coordination would also involve developing and publicizing a credible plan to restart Venezuela’s economy.

5. As a last resort, the United States could consider raising economic costs to the government through an expanded sanctions regime that aims to limit Venezuelan earnings from oil exports and block further financing. This policy is risky, given that the Maduro government would be able to more credibly shift blame for the economic crisis onto the United States, and should be accompanied by well-publicized efforts to deliver humanitarian aid through credible civil society and nongovernmental organizations.

It is a prescription for further economic isolation, US-funded political subversion, and with its reference to “a transition to democracy,” an oblique call for regime change.

The US media – particularly organizations operating from under right cover – have portrayed Venezuela’s economic crisis as primarily related to “socialism” and corruption. In reality, factors that would have only impeded the full realization of Venezuela’s economic progress have been intentionally compounded through US sanctions, economic sabotage, and political subversion to precipitate the currently unfolding socioeconomic and humanitarian crisis.

Venezuela would not be the first nation the US targeted for economic implosion in South America.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its own online archives available to the public under a section titled, “CIA Activities in Chile,” would admit (emphasis added):

According to the Church Committee report, in their meeting with CIA Director Richard Helms and Attorney General John Mitchell on 15 September 1970 President Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, directed the CIA to prevent Allende from taking power. They were “not concerned [about the] risks involved,” according to Helms’ notes. In addition to political action, Nixon and Kissinger, according to Helms’s notes, ordered steps to “make the economy scream.”

These Cold War attitudes persisted into the Pinochet era. After Pinochet came to power, senior policymakers appeared reluctant to criticize human rights violations, taking to task US diplomats urging greater attention to the problem. US military assistance and sales grew significantly during the years of greatest human rights abuses. According to a previously released Memorandum of Conversation, Kissinger in June 1976 indicated to Pinochet that the US Government was sympathetic to his regime, although Kissinger advised some progress on human rights in order to improve Chile’s image in the US Congress.

With violence increasing in the streets of Venezuela and many of the rhetorical tactics used to set the stage for violent  regime change and humanitarian catastrophe in Libya and Syria are now being used to topple the government in Caracas – the world must get ahead of the propaganda and begin exposing this open conspiracy against yet another sovereign nation.

Venezuela’s political system is for the Venezuelan people themselves to decide – without US interference. A government dominated by US-backed opposition members will leave Venezuela as an extension of US corporate-financier special interests, not an alternative or check against them. This only serves in inviting further abuse by these interests not only in South America, but all around the world – Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Ukraine for example – where America’s unwarranted wealth and influence is sowing instability, conflict, and catastrophe.

May 28, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

First Amendment

By Eve Mykytyn | May 28, 2017

Partially in response to the polarizing presidency of Mr. Trump, and also, I think, in response to a desire to reach the “right” results, there has been an increasing tendency in the United States to try and limit free speech.  In earlier generations, the left was more in favour of free speech and the right was more willing to suppress it (eg, the flag burning and pornography cases).

Now this seems to be a tactic favoured by many without regard to political affiliation, although of course, the speech they would choose to suppress may be quite different. Two recent examples come to mind, the treatment of demonstrators at Trump rallies and the treatment of Charles Murray at Middlebury College. Why listen and engage when you can simply attribute words to the other side and then oppose them?

The edges of free speech have always been difficult, that is, commercial speech limitations (for instance commercial false advertising or ‘news’ articles that are really advertisements) or free speech that includes or directly incites prohibited actions (throwing a bottle at a policeman conveys speech, but is still prohibited).  But the opposition to free expression I’m trying to get at here is not a within such difficult categories.

My brilliant young friend, who has a PhD in physics, challenged me, “I am outcome driven,” she said. “I don’t want people to preach against vaccines when the outcome may be that children die.” I tend to agree with her about vaccines, but I would not attempt to silence those who disagree.

First. I would have no idea what would be a reasonable way to prohibit speech I don’t like. Should the police track down these people and arrest them? Do our jails need more prisoners who have committed a nonviolent crime? Should we hold internet sites responsible for all speech? This seems to lead inevitably into a discussion of anonymity and government intrusion.

Second.  Who should determine what is ok speech?  The government? Trump? Obama? The FBI? The NSA? Scientists? Or only scientists who opposed using their gifts to create nuclear weapons?

Third. The outliers are sometimes right. Dr Kevorkian forced this country to consider assisted suicide. He earned the name ‘Dr Death’ from his campaign to use death row prisoners as voluntary experiments for various medical procedures. By any standard he was an odd and unappealing character. But he managed to force us to confront a difficult issue and think about how we wanted to handle it.

The anti vaccine people funded scientific research  into vaccines and potential causes of autism and those studies disproved the link. Just because autism manifests itself around the time children are vaccinated does not mean vaccines cause autism, but it was not an unreasonable hypothesis. And the autism studies partially so-provoked found a surprising link to paternal and maternal age that proved more promising. So even if you disagree with them, they ultimately may have helped push us to forward.

Fourth. No reasonable person likes the idea of name calling or so-called hate speech.The problem is that hate speech is difficult to define, even if we knew how to enforce prohibitions. Can a pink person claim to hate all pink people? In a private conversation? In an e mail? On a sign at a demonstration? On the pink people’s website? On his own website? What if the pink person is criticizing other pink people in an attempt to improve them?  Do the same rules apply when a purple person criticizes pink people? Does it matter whether purple or pink people constitute the dominant culture?

This is not purely theoretical. The US government and New York State (among others) have, at various times, tried to prohibit speech against Israel as anti Semitic. (They did this by prohibiting state funding or business with any group thatadvocated boycotting Israel saying that such advocacy was “abusing Jewish students.”) Like many, but perhaps not most Americans, I do not see the two as the same. Israel is a foreign country and Jews are an ethnic group in the United States and elsewhere. In this case, by trying to prohibit constitutionally protected hate speech, New York is clearly denouncing political speech as well. And it does prompt the question, do we now attempt to stop ‘hate’ speech against all groups?  Why this group?

In the Netherlands, a country that attempts to limit ‘hate’ speech, Siegfried Verbeke was convicted for simply publishing Robert Faurisson’s 1978 work questioning the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank. The court stated that, “By raising doubts as to the authenticity of the diary within the context of REVISIONISM …the brochure far exceeds the limits of what is acceptable within the framework of freedom of expression.” The court did not dispute the truth of the research, the legal problem was the context of hate.

And how can it be otherwise? Speech occurs within a context, and often that context includes advocating a political position. This is different than a clerk who insists she is exercising her freedom by refusing to grant marriage licenses to gay people or election officials who try to make it difficult for Blacks to vote. The clerk and the election officials are free to say what they want (so long as what they say does not impede the ability of others trying to exercise their rights), but they are obliged to obey the laws whether they like them or not, as we all are.

I would hope that ‘the marketplace of ideas’ would ultimately serve to help us discard ideas that are dangerous or wrong. If not, to the extent that we are a democracy, we have agreed to live with the decisions of the majority BUT with the most important of protections, the bill of rights. It is worth reminding ourselves that the bill of rights was specifically designed to protect minorities from the will of majorities. There is a reason freedom of speech appears in the first amendment. There are limits to the extent we are allowed to police each other.

Americans are blessed that we have a first amendment. Although it has been imperfectly and sporadically protected, it is there at least as an aspiration.

“But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”  George Orwell, in his brilliant proposed preface to Animal Farm. Sadly, usually omitted from the book.

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go

May 28, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Who Controls the Information Space and Why

By Jean Perier – New Eastern Outlook – 28.05.2017

Recently behind-the-scenes rules and restrictions being used by Facebook have fallen into the hands of Guardian reporters. According to their report, moderators employed by the tech giant are entitled to decide what exactly the 2 billion users of this social network can or cannot publish on their pages. This report has provoked a massive discussion on the absence of any ethical norms that could prevent the tech giant from exercising censorship, along with disputes about the determination of US intelligence agencies to spy on their citizens in violation of the USA Freedom Act.

The fact that the US created the Internet as a tool of exercising control over information space, as a convenient environment for espionage, collecting dirty facts and spreading lies has been established long ago. For those naive few who refuse to believe the facts, one can only be reminded of the old saying: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. But who owns the allegedly free Internet? Who created it and why?

According to Reuters, last year alone the US National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted 151 million phone calls of American citizens, in spite of the fact that Congress has allegedly limited the ability to exercise surveillance for intelligence agencies by adopting the USA Freedom Act, according to which courts must decide when to allow intelligence agencies to collect information about a person suspected of criminal activity.

However, the all-encompassing control of US intelligence services over the world’s information space has been uncovered by an unending stream of publications in American and foreign media sources, showing that the United States is grossly violating even the most basic human rights, by creating a system of electronic interception and processing of all sorts of data about users on the Internet.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that every aspect of our day-to-day lives is being controlled: phone conversations, short text messages, everything we write on social media networks or send via email. Thus, the British Guardian confirmed the existing exchange of information about intercepted electronic messages of both US citizens and British citizens established by US intelligence agencies and the British Government Communications Headquarters. Even British courts recognized that such cooperation that existed for at least seven years is unlawful, since they were carried out in violation of international conventions on human rights.

In addition, the Guardian has also revealed that phone tapping that Mi-5 and Mi-6 authorized in order to intercept private consultations between UK citizens and their lawyers in a bid to guarantee the authorities an upper hand during trials, constitutes a violation of both national laws and international norms.

The Intercept has also revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British partners from the Government Communications Headquarters stole the encryption keys of the world’s largest SIM card manufacturer – Gemalto, situated in the Netherlands. This allowed intelligence agencies from both nations ever since to tap all sorts of phone conversations and intercept any data sent via a mobile device carrying a SIM card produced by Gemalto.

In late 2014, the Wall Street Journal has also revealed the practices that allowed US intelligence agencies to record information stored on millions of cell phones across the US through the use of special spyware. Additionally, Wikileaks released CIA documents that show this agency is capable of intercepting messages sent via encrypted message apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.

It should be noted that US intelligence agencies have been pretty methodical in the collection of information that in one way or another could be used not just against ordinary citizens, but even against leading political figures. When in October 2013 a scandal erupted with the National Security Agency’s wiretapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone, it turned out that the NSA had been carrying out such intrusions for more than ten years by that time. Back then, the scandal was downplayed and no actual changes in those malicious practices were pursued.

So how many more revelations about the total control that US intelligence agencies exercise over information space should be published before Washington’s open mockery of human rights and freedom of speech is finally challenged and stopped?

Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East.

May 28, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Trump Submits to Neocon Orthodoxy

By Daniel Lazare | Consortium News | May 28, 2017

With astounding precision, Donald Trump zeroed in on the worst possible Middle East policy option in his recent trip to Saudi Arabia and made it his own. He rebuffed the efforts of Iran’s newly elected moderate government to open up communications with the West and instead deepened America’s alliances with decrepit autocratic regimes across the Persian Gulf.

Turning up his nose at Iran — a rising young power — he embraced Saudi Arabia, which is plainly on its last legs. It was a remarkable display —  rather like visiting a butcher shop and passing up a fresh steak for one that’s rancid and smelly and buzzing with flies.

Saudi Arabia is not just any tired dictatorship with an abysmal human-rights record but one of the most spectacularly dysfunctional societies in history. It takes in half a billion dollars a day in oil revenue, yet is so profligate that it could run out of money in half a decade. It sits atop 18 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, yet is so wasteful that, at current rates, it will become a net importer by the year 2030.

Its king travels with a thousand-person retinue wherever he goes while his son, Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, plunked down $550 million not long ago when a 440-foot yacht caught his eye in the south of France. Yet this pair of royal kleptocrats dares preach austerity at a time when as much as 25 percent of the population lives on less than $17 a day in trash-strewn Third World slums.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s appetite for high-tech weaponry is such that in 2015 it became the largest arms importer in the world. Yet its military is so inept that it is unable to subdue ragtag Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen or even stop them from raiding deep inside Saudi territory and launching regular missile attacks.

The kingdom accuses Iran of sectarianism yet bans all religions other than Islam, arrests Christians for the “crime” of praying and possessing Bibles, equates atheism with terrorism, and has imposed a state of siege on Shi‘ite Muslims in its own Eastern Province. Although a bit restrained of late, its religious police are notorious for roaming the shopping malls and striking out with canes at anyone violating shari‘a law.

As the English novelist Hilary Mantel (of Wolf Hall fame) recalled of the four years she spent in the kingdom with her geologist husband, it was impossible to know what might arouse their ire: “it might be the flashing denim legs of a Filipina girl revealed for a second beneath an abaya gone adrift, or it might be the plate-glass shop front of a business that, as the evening prayer call spiraled through the damp air-conditioned halls, had failed to slam down its metal shutters fast enough. What were the rules? No one knew.” 

Saudi Arabia also denounces terrorism at every turn even though its funding groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS (also known as ISIL and Islamic State) is an open secret. In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton complained in a diplomatic memo made public by Wikileaks that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” In September 2014, she observed that “Qatar and Saudi Arabia … are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

A few days later, Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard audience that “the Saudis, the emirates, etc. … were so determined to take down [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war … [that] they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” (Quote starts at 53:30.)

Arming the Saudis

Rather than fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, the Saudis give them money so that they can wage jihad on religious minorities. Yet this is the country that Trump now calls upon to “drive out the terrorists and extremists,” which is as ludicrous as relying on the KKK to drive out racism. It’s also the country that he hopes will serve as the cornerstone of an “Arab NATO” so that he can sell it more jet fighters and Blackhawk helicopters.

But the Saudi military is already top-heavy with such gear while at the same time so short of infantry that it relies on ill-trained Sudanese mercenaries, scores of whom were reportedly killed in a recent battle in the Red Sea province of Midi in Yemen’s north. This is not surprising since no Saudi in his right mind wants to serve as a foot soldier so that the deputy crown prince can buy another yacht. But more such purchases will only add to the military imbalance while adding more fuel to the broader Middle East conflagration.

So how did this god-awful marriage come about? Is it all Trump’s fault? Or have others contributed to the mess? The answer, of course, is the latter.

Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has contributed to the catastrophe. Roosevelt declared Saudi Arabia a U.S. protectorate while Dwight Eisenhower got it into his head that a corrupt desert monarchy would somehow be useful in the fight against Communism. Worried that it might come under Soviet influence, Jimmy Carter commenced a military buildup in the Persian Gulf that, according to a 2009 Princeton University study, has now surpassed the $10-trillion mark.

Ronald Reagan relied on the Saudis to finance arms to the Nicaraguan Contras and to Jonas Savimbi’s pro-apartheid guerrillas in Angola. George H.W. Bush launched a major war to save the Saudis from the evil Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush and Barack Obama covered up the Saudi role in 9/11, while Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged them and other Gulf monarchies to fund anti-government rebels in Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring. Both Libya and Syria fell to ruin as a consequence as hundreds of millions of dollars flowed to pro-Al Qaeda forces and the flames of Wahhabist terrorism spread ever wider.

Indeed, Donald Trump for a while seemed to augur something different. Rather than praising the kingdom, he denounced it in 2011 as “the world’s biggest funder of terrorism” and asserted, not inaccurately, that it was using “our petro dollars – our very own money – to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people while the Saudis rely on us to protect them.” Once on the campaign trail, he upped the ante by declaring that the Saudis “blew up the World Trade Center” and threatened to block their oil if they didn’t do more to fight ISIS.

Even more disconcertingly – at least to Washington’s endlessly bellicose foreign-policy establishment – Trump dismissed the cherished U.S.-Saudi-neoconservative goal of overthrowing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, arguing that the U.S. should concentrate on fighting ISIS instead.

“I don’t like Assad at all,” Trump declared in his second presidential debate with Hillary Clinton. “But Assad is killing ISIS, Russia is killing ISIS, and Iran is killing ISIS.” If killing ISIS was the main goal, then it followed that checking the power of the other three could be safely put off to another day.

Prioritizing in this way made a modicum of sense. But it went counter to Official Washington’s self-serving orthodoxy that Assad was somehow in league with the terrorists and that weakening one would undermine the other. Trump’s “Assad is killing ISIS” line thus triggered a firestorm of protest from those “in the know.” Clinton shook her head sadly at Trump’s naiveté while the mainstream U.S. media agreed that Trump didn’t know what he was talking about.

CNN, a division of Time Warner, said the claim was false because “there has been no visible effort by Assad regime forces to go after ISIS.” The Huffington Post, owned by Verizon Communications, wrote that Syria’s “primary focus” was not to go after ISIS, but “to wipe out less radical Syrian rebel groups that pose a larger challenge to Assad because they could be a popular, internationally acceptable alternative to him.”

Another Groupthink

In other words, although it might look to an objective observer that Assad was fighting ISIS, the Washington groupthink held that he really wasn’t; he was somehow on ISIS’s side. Or so such mainstream outlets assured us.

But it was nonsense as IHS Markit, a London analytics firm with extensive aerospace and defense experience, made clear in a subsequent report. Beginning in April 2016, its study of actual field conditions in Syria found that government forces engaged Islamic State in battle two and a half times as often as U.S.-backed forces did. Damascus, for all its faults, was the one doing the heavy lifting, not the United States and its allies.

“Any further reduction in the capability of Syria’s already overstretched forces,” IHS Markit observed, “would reduce their ability to prevent the Islamic State from pushing out of the desert into the more heavily populated western Syria, threatening cities like Homs and Damascus.”

Added a Middle East analyst named Columb Strack: “It is an inconvenient reality that any US action taken to weaken the Syrian government will inadvertently benefit the Islamic State and other jihadist groups.”

Overthrowing Assad, in other words, means clearing a path for ISIS straight through to the presidential palace. This reality is obvious. Yet it is a reality that Official Washington prefers to ignore so it can continue selling Saudi Arabia more military goods.

As a result, Democrats, neocons and the liberal media opened up with a rhetorical artillery barrage when it became apparent that America had someone in the White House who might think differently. Trump, they cried, was a “Siberian candidate”! He was a Kremlin stooge!

The fact that Trump questioned whether overthrowing Assad should be the first priority of the U.S. strategy in Syria was proof that he was in league with Vladimir Putin! Reeling from the onslaught, Trump began to realize that he was in a no-win situation, just as Obama had eight years earlier when he gave Hillary Clinton and her neocon allies control of the State Department.

Bucking Washington’s foreign-policy establishment, a.k.a. “The Blob,” was a losing proposition. The neocons were too powerful. Resistance was pointless. So Trump surrendered to the “truisms” of Official Washington’s foreign-policy elite regarding the Middle East conflicts: Saudi Arabia and its allies: good; Russia, Syria, and Iran: baaaad.

Shoring up his right flank, Trump brought on board standard-issue hawks like Secretary of Defense James (“Mad Dog”) Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. He launched a raid inside Yemen and bombed a Syrian military air base, earning rave reviews from the press. He invited Saudi Defense Minister Muhammad bin Salman to a lavish White House lunch and then flew to Riyadh to cozy up with his dad, King Salman. Washington Officialdom was pleased. So was Israel.

Trump’s discordant comments on the campaign trail were forgotten as U.S.-Saudi relations settled back into their well-worn groove. The upshot was a record $110-billion arms deal, a sword dance, ritualistic denunciations of terrorists – Saudi-speak for anyone opposed to the royal family – and a good deal of incendiary rhetoric aimed at Tehran.

Where to Now?

The big question now is whether all this tough talk leads to something more substantial. If so, two flashpoints bear watching. One is the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, Yemen’s chief entry point for humanitarian aid and, according to the Saudis, for Iranian military aid to the Houthis. For months, the kingdom has been pushing for an all-out effort to wrest the port away from Houthi control, and the great danger now is that Trump, swept along by his own rhetoric, will go along.

But a frontal assault on a city of more than 300,000 is no easy matter. To the contrary, it would be a major undertaking requiring not only U.S. air and naval support but probably U.S. ground troops as well.

As the rightwing Jamestown Foundation noted: “Even with US assistance, the invasion will be costly and ineffective. The terrain to the east of Hodeidah is comprised of some of the most forbidding mountainous terrain in the world. The mountains, caves, and deep canyons are ideal for guerrilla warfare that would wear down even the finest and best disciplined military. The most capable units of what was the Yemeni Army and the Houthis themselves will inflict heavy losses on those forces that try to take Hodeidah and then, if necessary, move up into the mountains.”

It’s hard to imagine even Trump blundering into such a trap. This is why the second flashpoint is even more worrisome. Located some 1,800 miles to the north near the desert town of Al-Tanf, it is where the Baghdad-Damascus highway, a crucial supply route, crosses into Syria from Iraq. It is also where U.S. jets struck a pro-Syrian government convoy on May 18 as it neared a U.S.-British military outpost. It is an area where all sides – the Syrian army, Iraqi Shi‘ite militias, Iranian-backed forces plus U.S., U.K., and even Norwegian troops – are now beefing up their forces. With Trump’s “Arab NATO” vowing to contribute 34,000 troops to the struggle against both ISIS and Iran, the question is whether the U.S. and Saudis will push matters to the brink by attempting to sever a key Syrian supply link to the outside world.

If so, the upshot could well be a firefight that triggers a wider war. That will make the neocons and their Saudi allies very happy and no doubt please Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well. But it will scare the hell out of everybody else.

Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).

May 28, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

A rook exits the global chessboard

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | May 28, 2017

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who died Friday, Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright have been three foreign-born scholars who significantly influenced American policies and impacted global affairs through the past half century. For better or worse, Brzezinski and Kissinger were grand strategists too. Both left a trail of influence through their protégés.

Brzezinski was an indefatigable ‘Cold Warrior’ and was in danger of becoming an anachronism. The leitmotif of his “doctrine” was his virulent anti-Russian outlook, which could have been due to his Polish origin. (Albright, another hardliner on Russia, was Czech.) He and Albright – apart from Strobe Talbott, who served as deputy state secretary in Bill Clinton administration – were instrumental in burying whatever prospects existed for a historic rapprochement between the West and Boris Yeltsin’s Russia (which the latter was keenly seeking).

Clinton’s decision to expand NATO to the former Warsaw Pact territory was the turning point. (George Kennan, the architect of the Cold War, was prophetic in warning Clinton that such a move would be a catastrophic blunder and shut the door on any prospect of friendly ties with Russia.) Plainly put, Brzezinski and Albright ensured that Cold War flames were kept burning in the post-cold war era – although Ronald Reagan or George HW Bush were open to accommodating Russia.

Kissinger, who advocated détente, once described Brzezinski “a total whore”, someone who could be on every side of every argument. (Two years earlier, Brzezinski too gave a terse summary of Kissinger’s approach as Richard Nixon’s security advisor: “fascination with enemies and ennui with friends” – that is, supposedly Chinese and Russian enemies and Western European friends.) It has been said that for every book about international politics authored by Brzezinski, there is a corresponding book about Kissinger. Brzezinski published close to 20 books, but didn’t attempt any memoirs, and no one seems to have written his biography either. The two personalities were poles apart. Kissinger was terrific at self-promotion, while Brzezinski’s razor-sharp intellect that could be intimidating, provocative and combative (albeit unfailingly stimulating) created an aura of aloofness. As a thinker, he outstrips Kissinger.

On the other hand, his track record as a diplomatist in Jimmy Carter’s White House remains hugely controversial on two templates – during the tumultuous Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (1978-1980) and the aftermath of the historic Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979). Simply put, Brzezinski scripted the “Afghan jihad” – unabashedly deploying jihadi forces as geopolitical instrument to bleed the Red Army. (That was how the al-Qaeda – and later the ISIS – was born.) Brzezinski’s stunning memos to Carter, exulting over the tantalizing prospect of creating a “Soviet Vietnam”, are the stuff of throbbing history.

Brzezinski later admitted that the US set up a bear trap for the Russians in Afghanistan. In a frank interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, he said, “We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.” There is a riveting essay in the nature of a book review on that momentous slice of international politics written by an American historian entitled Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect.

Brzezinski was a cold-blooded strategist rooted in Halford Mackinder’s famous Heartland Theory regarding the Pivot Area of Central Eurasia. In his complex thought process, “The key point to bear in mind is that Russia cannot be in Europe without Ukraine also being in Europe, whereas Ukraine can be in Europe without Russia being in Europe.”

Where Brzezinski and Kissinger would agree and disagree is when it comes to China. Both advocated the need for a stable, strong, predictable Sino-American partnership as an imperative of our times and, of course, in the US’ core interests. However, whereas Kissinger envisions the desirability of a trilateral US-Russian-Chinese “balance” in the interests of global stability, Brzezinski differs. Although Brzezinski grudgingly came to accept US-Russia détente, he saw it nonetheless as a paradigm where the US must keep the upper hand. (He saw no future for Russia.) Brzezinski argued that US should focus on building up ties with China, leaving Russia out in the cold, which would inevitably pressure Moscow to compromise lest it got “isolated” in big-power politics.

The problem with Brzezinski’s logic is that it blithely assumes that China would gang up with the US to isolate Russia – or would relegate its ties with Russia to the back burner. This is delusional thinking. The Sino-Russian strategic understanding gives the partnership a raison d-etre of its own, creating more space for both to negotiate effectively with the US.

Brzezinski’s departure can be compared to the exit of a rook from the chessboard. No doubt, the rook is a “heavy piece” on a chessboard, especially in the “endgame”. Like a rook, Brzezinski also moved horizontally or vertically, but never diagonally. But then, Brzezinski’s “heaviness” can also be taken very far. Good diplomacy needs plodders.

A case in point will be Brzezinski’s disastrous advice to Carter to mount a rescue mission – code named Eagle Claw – in April 1980 to bring home the 52 American diplomats held hostage in Iran. It was a reckless move. Eagle Claw never got near the American prisoners. Helicopters that were the mainstay of the mission were disabled in an unanticipated sandstorm in the Iranian desert. Eight American servicemen died and eight aircraft were lost.

Imam Khomeini later said in a memorable message titled “The mistake of Carter and its consequences” that the Iranian nation got the ultimate confirmation from Carter’s “foolish mischief” that the big Satan should never be trusted. The Imam warned,

  • I admonish Carter if he repeats again such a foolish act it will be difficult for us and the government to control the Muslim fighters and youths who are guarding the (American) spies.

That tragic folly probably cost Carter his kingdom in the November 1980 election. Carter’s Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had advised against Eagle Claw. Vance was by no means a pacifist; nor had he any liking for the revolutionary government in Iran. Vance’s rival for Carter’s ear was Brzezinski who was brash, clever, ambitious and held Vance in contempt as a relic of the once-dominant WASPs. Vance was indeed a WASP, born to a prosperous family in West Virginia and expensively educated. He had a successful career as a lawyer and seemingly was without political ambition.

But Vance’s plodder’s advice was spot on: Give the revolution, like for any revolution, the time to settle down, while patiently negotiating the release of hostages. Vance eventually resigned in protest over Eagle Claw – indeed, the only American state secretary to do so over policy differences, after being outmaneuvered by Brzezinski.

May 28, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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