What is Empire but a colossal corporation whose sole mission is the hostile takeover of everything on earth?
What is Empire but a titanic shark charging forth and gobbling up all lifeforms in its path?
What is Empire but a gluttonous, gargantuan gut full of humanity’s tears and shredded corpses?
Addicted to bloodlust and war porn, and hooked to the bone on Vulture Capitalism, a rapacious Empire struts and swaggers across our globe: demanding other nations’ resources and servitude at gunpoint, while holding a plastic olive branch in its brute fist. Always speaking from both sides of its mouth, Empire plays a game of sadistic ownership with humanity.
… And it was always forever thus.
Our human history consists mainly of the rise and fall of some 70 empires of all sizes – and all of them have by now violently perished, all but one, that is. We call it, Pax Americana. Students of the rise and fall of empires observe how the lifespan of empires have tended to get shorter and shorter down the line of time, indicating poorer and poorer management by empire, coupled with an increased resistance to its dominion – resistance that’s due to humanity’s growing awareness of the insatiable brutality and nihilism of imperial power.
Humanity in the 21st century is no longer in awe of imperialism. It rejects it as a sole domineering power. It rejects it as a civilizing force. It sees no refinement or humanism in imperial behavior or ideology. The majority of people nowadays, regardless of their political bent, lean towards equitable independence of nation and equitable free trade. Being beholden to Empire’s caprice does not serve to fulfill these two aspirations that are fundamental to the progress of nations. Empire has bruised the face and body of the world and its punches keep coming. This is the very cause of rebellion against Empire.
Traditionally, Empires have flourished in longevity because they managed to establish and sustain local consent. There was some measure of give-and-take between Emperor and Satellite, even though the Emperor always landed the lion’s share. Today’s ruling Empire behaves in an opposite manner: it rules regardless of local consent and it demands to take-and-take from all its subjects. It demands that humanity gives in to it and just gives and gives. Give everything and get a conditional meager little in return. Since Perestroika, this gluttonous-mobster method has worked to fatten up Empire into obesity while the world went hungry. This wanton gangdom, this imperial Cosa Nostra is now full of cholesterol and drunk on the vinegar of power. Presently, Empire has become as if a foggy-headed, prehistoric beast: a giant carnivore snorting and slobbering over the world. In its wake lay many theaters of war, numerous bankruptcies and global, existential insecurity.
But who is this Pax Americana? Who is the Emperor?
Unlike any other empire before it, Pax Americana is not what it seems. It is not the Emperor himself, as is traditional with Empire’s visage. No bust of the Emperor is etched on contemporary market coins. No bronze busts of the Emperor litter our plazas and squares. Today’s Emperor is but a face from a catalogue, a sock puppet, a mouthpiece. Currently, he is an eccentric parrot with orange feathers, hostile and freakishly squawking down the ear whorl of the world. Today’s Emperor has been reduced to mouthing a sales pitch dictated to him by a shadowy entity practicing gruff ventriloquism through his mean lips.
And this very shifty entity working the puppetry from the shadows to create more shadows: it has a face, and it has a name too. Israel.
By a long and rusty chain of conspiracy and deception, Israel has hijacked both Empire and Emperor. Therefore it now owns the global domain. Shape-shifting, it has usurped the head of god. It has found entry into the halls of power through a sordid backdoor and it has wholesale kidnapped the Emperor and his family. It now possesses all his powers and is in the process of exploiting all and everyone at Empire’s disposal. The Emperor is but a hapless hostage to Israel’s relentless demands. Haughty demands that empower Israel but weaken the very spine and lifespan of Empire. One could say that Pax Americana is currently committing slow suicide with a dagger whose iron was cast in Tel Aviv. The Emperor knows all this only too well, but, pickled in vanity and the salts of narcissism, he is impervious and indifferent to this behemoth and life-threatening corruption. All Emperor cares about is keeping a crown on his elaborate coiffure – for as long as possible. This is all that matters to the current Emperor: the crown and its opulent prestige. Therefore, he is profoundly guilty of enabling the very destruction of his own Empire.
And destruction, as we all know, is the moon-shadow that perpetually stalks all empires.
Today, we see evidence of Empire hemorrhaging power and influence, especially in the Middle East, where, indeed, Israel is located. We see the stalking shadow of destruction grow taller at Empire’s feet right there. And we see Empire frantically trying to cover up its weaknesses with bluster and propaganda. We observe it unsuccessfully manufacturing fake realities it would like the world to believe. Fantasies composed by agents of Tel Aviv – delusions of excessive grandeur uttered by the Emperor before the cameras of the world, indeed upon instruction from Tel Aviv. Hubris galore. Empire’s image engine running on pure mythomania. All to hide the reality of its weakening status – and to hide especially the gnarly hands of its puppet master.
All to hide that Pax Americana no longer exists.
But, Pax Judaica does.
Yes, the Shadow Empire has successfully replaced Empire. In secret. Away from the eyes of most of humanity. The transition is now complete. For all intents and purposes, Pax Americana will now take the blame for Pax Judaica’s crimes. And Pax Judaica will benefit from the cover as well as the cover up: its elite agents being the only ones reaping the benefits of Empire’s grotesque plunder.
These are the games being played by a compromised Empire and Emperor right now. Games of mass deception, mass crime coverups, and the fleecing of the very heart and Mint of Empire and the world at large.
Mass warfare by the Shadow Empire now dominates the daily headlines around the globe. The practice of rabid usury by the predatory banks of the Shadow Empire have knee-capped and punched the empty gut of both friend and foe of Pax Americana. No one is spared. Agony, hunger and war destitution are now the norm under the clandestine and concealed management of Pax Judaica.
The world is under the mercy of Pax Judaica. An inherently criminal entity that scoffs at mercy and any other form of humanism. A Shadow Empire that assassinates or ruins all who expose it and all who challenge it. Resistors to Pax Judaica are singled out as legitimate targets. But, the heavier the hand of Pax Judaica, the more resistors are born and the more proactive resistance is conjured between them. History repeats itself, indeed. Resistance to Pax Judaica is now palpably felt on all the continents of the world. Momentum is growing, albeit in snips and snaps. Resistance is felt most in the Middle East, right at the doorstep of Israel, or Pax Judaica, as it should be more accurately called.
Pax Judaica: thief of Empires and murderer of the prophets of peace.
Pax Judaica: the eyeless leech that will eventually leech its own blood chambers once the veins of Pax Americana are finally drained.
This is the fate of all Empires: self-destruction.
And considering the frighteningly stupendous amount of amassed Weapons of Mass Destruction in our modern age, any death of any empire will also cause the colossal collateral death of perhaps a hundred million human lives – possibly even more. This is indeed a bleak but very plausible estimation.
And this is precisely the moral dilemma of the Axis of Resistance. How to shred Empire with least cost to humanity itself?
Pierce Empire with a thousand cuts and watch it drain of blood over time? Or, do as our cave ancestors did with giant beasts: confuse and drive the herd towards a cliff and over it.
Perhaps a combination of both tactics is what’s required.
Humanity braces itself for darker days to come. And in the meantime, the Shadow Empire, known otherwise as Pax Judaica, will continue in sure strides its covert assaults on Pax Americana and its overt assaults on both the Axis of Resistance and the peaceful world at large.
A maleficent and fiendish ghoul seeking humanity’s jugular.
But it will eventually be stopped by opposing forces that are currently gathering mass and momentum. The Axis of the East: Russia and China (and all their allies from Asia to South America) will eventually publicly and officially partner up with the Axis of Resistance: Iran and its Middle Eastern allies. Their multiple strategies will distill and assimilate into one. Their multitude of forces will find common platforms of cooperation on differing battlefields. The combined size of their power will be Empire’s reckoning. And we are already beginning to see clear signs of this opportune integration between the Axis of the East and the Axis of Resistance. Together, the two sanguine Axises will take on the immense and complex challenge of dislocating the hand and ankle joints of Empire, therefore, also the Shadow Empire’s clinging limbs will be splayed too. A seemingly impossible double-duty that targets a two-headed Empire. Their success is not assured but highly likely: considering the current ongoing self-inflicted hemorrhaging of Empire’s powers.
And the price for liberating the world from the murderous choke-hold of Empire? Here, I can only sigh…
And what of the nature of the force that will take Empire’s place? Is it trustworthy? Will it be more benevolent towards humanity than Empire was? Especially considering all that added and supreme power that will be in their victorious hands? I’ll answer these questions with a George Orwell quote: “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it”.
Therefore, for generational survival, a global paradigm shift in political thought is what’s pressingly needed for humanity. We will continue to witness further instability to our world, regardless of who the victor in the battle of Empires is. We, as one suffering humanity scattered across the world, we will not know peace, prosperity and enduring safety till the very ideology of imperialism is vanquished from the very mindset of modern times. Imperialism and all its supremacist sperm must be rejected and ejected from the womb of the future.
Therefore, it behooves humanity to begin unabashedly addressing the very imperialist ideology behind the woes of the world, present and historic. It is not sufficient rebellion to only criticize the foul words of the Emperor, or the daily mass crimes of the Shadow Empire. Imperialism itself is the very target question here.
The motto for our 21st century should read: In Empire we do not trust.
Regardless of the nationality of Empire.
January 11, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular | China, France, Israel, UK, United States, Zionism |
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Just like that, it was over. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called it ‘a kerfuffle’. A letter was sent to their Iraqi peers that the U.S was repositioning troops out of Iraq in accordance with legislation from Iraq ending the U.S military presence in the war-torn country, and suddenly then it was retracted by higher-ups. Running interference, Mark Esper backed Milley and said it was ‘an honest mistake’. It all went down within a day of the irrational assassination of Iran’s Soleimani.
The immediate termination of Chewning and Sweeney, at the same time as the assassination of Soleimani and Iran’s response raises some big questions. In the near future it will be of critical importance to get to the bottom of any possible relationship that Esper and his subordinates Chewning and Sweeney – who both served as Defense Secretary Esper’s Chiefs of Staff – had to the assassination of Soleimani. The assassination and any number of possible Iranian responses, can push the U.S into a broad and open military conflict with Iran. Such a war would also be Trump’s undoing.
We might otherwise be led to believe that Chewning and Sweeney’s sudden departure has something to do with Ukraine and the recent release of unredacted emails relating to L3Harris Technologies and funding in Ukraine. These of course also relate to the case against Trump and any possible impeachment. But the timing and symbolism of these as concurrent with the provocation against Iran and the blowback, as well as Esper’s backing of the ‘Kerfuffle theory’, lends strong credence to an Iran connection.
The connection to impeachment cannot be denied, but the necessity of uncovering its potential relation to Iran is tremendously important because it directly relates to larger constitutional and practical questions of the president’s ability to have a Department of Defense that works either for or against U.S strategy as formulated and executed by its democratically elected leadership, as opposed to its permanent bureaucratic administration. This is what Trump and his supporters quite rightfully refer to as the ‘Deep State’.
Were elements in the defense department working towards a heightened brinksmanship that the president did not really want? It would be far from the first time in history that such was the case.
Because the proverbial excrement rolls down-hill, was Esper involved in ordering Soleimani’s assassination which Trump was not informed of until it was too late, or until after? Chewning and Sweeney’s fate may be understood here. The ‘kerfuffle’ which was the withdrawal statement would then be a simple ruse to distract from the actual reasons that Chewning and Sweeney were terminated – acting without orders, insubordination, and even treason.
Trump’s Balancing Policy on Iran and America’s leadership crisis
One undeniable point is that a war with Iran works entirely against Trump’s middle-east policy and his prospects for re-election.
What the Trump administration seeks most now is a de-escalation with Iran. Given that Trump has fueled a rumor mill including the possible ending of sanctions if Iran doesn’t respond, or that there will be no further attacks if Iran’s response is ‘reasonable’, all exists in the unspoken framework that Trump inherently recognizes the ‘guilt’ of the U.S in its irrational act, while it is nevertheless politically impossible to frame it overtly as such.
Impeachment against Trump has now been used several times to push him to act aggressively in the middle-east, contrary to his policy and self-interest. On all the ‘impeachment threat – then strike’ occasions, Trump ordered strikes on predictable targets – targets so predictable and oddly executed, that Syrian and Iranian forces barely felt them. There appears to be at the very least an ‘unspoken communication’ at play, where strikes are made to assuage political needs but not to inflict serious damage. If Trump really wanted an excuse to strike Iran, he’s had it before.
There was precisely such an opportunity when subversives in government hatched a plan to push Trump into a war with Iran, when two planes were sent to violate Iranian airspace – one manned, the other unmanned – flying in close proximity. This created the chance that Iran’s downing of either plane could be used as a pretext for a major war-creating strike on Iran.
Despite Trump’s acting reasonably, government actors and media attempted to create a sensation where Trump was ridiculed for ‘calling off’ a planned retaliation in the aftermath of the downed drone. The same liberal media and Democratic Party establishment that attacked Trump’s de-escalation then from a hawkish perspective, today manifest as doves who suddenly oppose Trump’s reckless hawkishness.
Here, in the aftermath of the drone incident, a Trump policy was formulated – and it’s a policy that figures prominently in de-escalation in the aftermath of the assassination of Soleimani and Iran’s measured response.
The policy is this – if Iran kills Americans, then the U.S escalates. If the U.S does something provocative, then Iran is actually allowed to respond militarily, so long as American personnel are not killed.
Iran’s striking of the al-Asad airbase was predictable. That Trump has decided to officially declare that there were no U.S casualties has indicated his real stance. In all reality, the predictability of the target was such that American soldiers would have been repositioned out of that base, so that Iran could assuage its own popular-democratic needs in terms of legitimacy, without forcing the U.S. to respond again further.
Between an AIPAC rock and an Anti-War Hard-spot
A war with Iran would push the anti-war sentiments of independent voters away from Trump, and towards a more revitalized and mobilized Democrat Party anti-war base. Trump needs an anti-war base to be re-elected, and war with Iran pushes that base towards nearly any Democrat candidate.
At the same time, Trump also needs the continued support from America’s Christian Zionist evangelical ‘Israel Firsters’, as well as the infamous AIPAC, not only to be re-elected, but to maintain the support in the senate against impeachment.
That conflict between Trump’s two greatest populist strengths – between Trump’s anti-war base and his Christian Zionist base – largely defines his weakest political spot. That’s why it’s the best place to attack him.
Trump for his part, has a frenemy relationship with AIPAC, and has worked hard to build his profile with Christian Zionist voters even to the extent that this might limit AIPAC’s influence on them. He has purchased a lot of AIPAC support along the way by tearing up the JCPOA and recognizing the Golan Heights and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This is capital he will have to spend to maintain support in the Senate.
All together this means that while Trump may or may not have personally sought the assassination of Soleimani, he must take credit for it for any number of reasons. In brief, these relate again to the Zionist base and AIPAC, as well as needing to appear in control of the very country that he is nominally the president of. When Trump refused to go to war over the downing of the un-manned drone, the liberal media monopoly accused him of being soft on Iran and indecisive.
Israel for its part is not tremendously happy with either of the two competing U.S policies. They have been pushing a ‘bomb Iran’ line for years, so that Israel’s conquest of Iraq may come to be. They are also not happy that the U.S presence in the region will come to an end. Trump may or may not have green-lit Soleimani’s assassination, but in either event its result will be the purchase of political capital that he can use towards ending the anti-ISIS campaign in Iraq. The reality is that the U.S is being pushed out either way. Soleimani’s assassination has only strengthened that resolve.
Simultaneously, the anti-war sentiment in the U.S. is one that both led to Trump’s election and can lead to Trump’s undoing. Americans love sabre rattling and posturing. They also hate war.
To wit, in the immediate aftermath of the Soleimani assassination, the well-known American communist group – the PSL – and its anti-war front organization ‘ANSWER’ have already received incredible donations from deep-pocketed Democrat Party sponsors at the local party level, to stage the first significant anti-war demonstration since the Bush presidency. While PSL/ANSWER members and activists have been laudable in their consistent opposition to all American wars for capital and empire, they only seem to magically receive the funds for permits, advertising, organizing, and staging anti-war marches when a Republican is president. The secondary slogan of these mobilizations was ‘Dump Trump’. ‘Dump Obama’ was never a slogan seen at the non-existent mass mobilizations against the Libyan, Ukrainian, and Syrian wars. Trump’s refusal to take the Democrat-laid war bait, means he can pull off an end-run around the Democrat and deep-state plot.
Democrats also don’t want war with Iran, they only want that Trump loses the anti-war vote. They can force him into these compromised positions by coordinating with the ‘permanent administrative military-intelligence bureaucracy’, by coordinating with AIPAC. The Democrat’s plan is therefore pretty simple: use impeachment to force him to strike at Iran (or get Trump to take credit for a strike that the deep-state pulled off), and then use that entanglement to tank his re-election prospects. Then Democrats ride in on an anti-war ticket, restart JCPOA, and move towards integrating Iranian elites into the EU economy. Israel could ultimately guarantee its piece of Iraq and its Greek pipeline deal in due course, with a reformed and EU friendly Iran, ready to make major compromises with Israel. Maybe this is what Biden means by ‘restorationist’ – restoring the traditional left/right political divide which has empowered the Atlanticist status quo.
A Backroom deal? Iran’s Measured Response and Trump’s face-saving
The successful attack on the US’s al-Asad airbase in Iraq was characterized by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei has characterized as a ‘slap’.
Interestingly, Khamenei’s language used is strategic, and uses a sleight of hand to take the steam from possible opponents. It is clear that Khamenei has said today that while the attack on the airbase is just a slap, and that Iran’s full response will come in the future, he has in fact set up that the solution will be political and diplomatic. He did so in a creative way which appeals to hardliners, saying that any solution could not simply be political and diplomatic, but rather more than this. This sort of double-speak does not reflect any moral lapsus, but is necessary for Iran’s greater geopolitical aims and serves the greater good.
De-escalation requires that both parties save face, and can come away with tangible minor victories and agree that the real underlying dispute is resolved in the future.
This reluctance to engage militarily is beyond the mere politics of justifying American casualties, but points to broader considerations of U.S power projection in the region in the aftermath of the failure of the Obama administration policy of overthrowing the government of Syria.
To understand the events at play requires a multi-dimensional and realist understanding of motivations and relationships, and how relationships work at the level of statecraft. And so in a way that would be popularly understood – as in Game of Thrones – just because you’re invited to the banquet or receive a high-honored appointment, doesn’t mean that are you indispensable or even a friend. Trump’s ‘GoT’ relationship with Israel and even his own cabinet, needless to say any number of Pentagon bosses, is precisely this. Bolton and Pompeo are such frenemies, as have been any number of ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ members of the Trump administration, more or less foisted and forced upon the chief executive by Trump’s opponents in the permanent administration and his partisan opposition, and within the Republican Party itself.
Did Trump make a backroom deal with Iran? Probably not – there was a high public dimension to Trump’s offers, and a recent history where an unspoken language was developed. Iran has demonstrated a high level of intelligence, restraint, intuition, and strategic thinking in its several thousand year-old civilization. There is no reason to think that they wouldn’t have understood and inferred everything explained in this article, and much more, without needing a direct conversation with Trump which no doubt would have led to yet another impeachment fandango.
January 9, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Donald Trump, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism |
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If you squint really hard, it’s ALMOST like she’s in the Oval Office…
Social media sang praises of would-be US President Hillary Clinton as actual President Donald Trump seemed headed for all-out war with Iran – even though Clinton had been a much more enthusiastic participant in US wars.
After Iranian missiles struck several US bases Tuesday night, #Resistance twitter wasted no time disavowing the administration they blamed for the hostilities, running into the arms of his arch-rival with the #IVotedforHillaryClinton hashtag.
But claiming Clinton was the less warlike of the two candidates, or would have steered the country away from war with Iran, requires a serious divergence from history. The former Secretary of State once told an interviewer that “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran.”
That was during her 2008 campaign, and in the middle of a discussion about Iran possibly attacking Israel. Perhaps her stance on the Islamic republic had softened a bit by 2016, enough to justify viewing her as the lesser of two Iran hawks?
Nope. The months leading up to that election saw her parroting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-old talking points about Iran “racing toward a nuclear capability,” expanding “secret facilities,” and “defying their international obligations” before she swept in with the nuclear deal and solved all the problems.
Except the deal was negotiated after she was replaced as the top US diplomat by John Kerry. Clinton was on the same side as Trump, demanding ever more sanctions even as the nuclear deal took effect, this time as punishment for Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Beyond interventionist Democrats, she was courted by a bevy of neocons who couldn’t stomach Trump’s anti-interventionist rhetoric. Inveterate warmongers like Robert Kagan and Richard Armitage swooned over the ex-First Lady.
In short order, the infamous clip of Clinton mocking the brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi – “we came, we saw, he died” – resurfaced on twitter. The so-called “humanitarian” intervention in Libya was largely a creation of Clinton’s State Department, complete with risible wartime propaganda about Gaddafi handing out Viagra so his soldiers could better commit mass rapes, and the continued chaos in that once-advanced state remains a testament to what the region (or world) might look like under her watch.
She wanted a repeat performance in Syria, calling for – and thankfully not getting – a no-fly zone, even while admitting it would “kill a lot of Syrians.”
While Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton, he handily beat her in the Electoral College, which ultimately decides who occupies the White House. Despite her massive advantage in political experience, his promises to bring US troops home attracted significant support. Nearly four years later, however, the US is poised on the brink of a catastrophic expansion of its Forever War.
January 9, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Hillary Clinton, Iran, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism |
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A number of figures in the alt-media and extreme-left movement have surprised their audiences by rationalizing the Trump administration’s Israeli-directed push towards war with Iran.
The consensus between high profile voices on the Zionist “far-right” and anarcho-neocon “far-left” in America and Britain reflect the party line in Israel, where even Amir Peretz of the ostensibly left-wing “opposition” Labor party hailed the Pentagon’s decision to assassinate Maj. General Qassem Soleimani by luring him to Iraq under the false pretense of peace negotiations.
Spencer Sunshine, a self-proclaimed anarchist and prominent voice in the American “antifa” scene who has been accused of Zionist entryism in the past, took to twitter to reiterate Sean Hannity’s script on the killing: that the Iranians brought it upon themselves by “antagonizing” America and “meddling” in Iraq. It speaks to the state of the modern co-opted left that somebody like Sunshine can express the Israeli government’s line and still survive the scrutiny of his peers. Sunshine is very suspicious of anti-war sentiment due to the fact that Jews like Sheldon Adelson and Jared Kushner are responsible for our over-the-top Iran policy. He has spent much of his career fighting what he calls “left-wing anti-Semitism” (principled anti-Zionism).
Caroline Orr, another fanatical Jewish supporter of “antifa,” chastised “fellow” leftists for ignoring Soleimani’s supposed “slaughter” of Syrians during the fight to save the country from ISIS. After some pushback, Orr is backpedaling, but her initial approval shows the Jewish nexus between the virulent anti-white forces on the left and the appetite for war against Iran on the so-called right. She also has made a name for herself for promoting fake news about “Russiagate” and attacking anti-war presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.
While a branch of the left led by “tankies” (Workers World Party and Revolutionary Communist Party) behind the ANSWER coalition are adamantly against imperialism, many anarchists and “democratic socialists” support the CIA-led protest groups we have seen in recent months in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, which have largely subsided but were intended to purge pro-Iran political factions. These groups are meant to incite a civil war, so these left-wing voices basically support regime change as well, just not by a full US ground invasion.
The ANSWER coalition’s anti-war protests that erupted across America were small, showing that the left is not passionate about opposing this conflict. Figures like AOC and high ranking advisors in the Bernie Sanders campaign all attended the Zionist Dov Hikind’s march against black “anti-Semitism” yesterday, but not any of the anti-war rallies.
On the other side of the coin, Anne Marie Waters of the “For Britain” group has fully embraced an invasion of Iran. Waters, a remnant of the largely Jewish funded “counter-jihad” movement, does not bother to articulate what the West stands to gain from such a conflict. Her only argument is a neo-liberal desire to impose gay plutocracy on the unwilling Iranians so that Israel can safely continue its expansionist foreign policy.
Mike Cernovich, who made a name for himself in 2016 in part for his non-interventionist views on Syria, has been reduced to an Iraq-war era Toby Keith style jingo. He got so much push back that he too was forced to “clarify” his opposition to war overnight.
Alex Jones of InfoWars has released a new conspiracy theory claiming that the Jews who control Donald Trump’s government had to set off a chain-reaction that will lead to a regional conflagration in order to prevent World War III. According to Jones, the Obama administration is responsible for tensions with Iran by engaging with diplomacy with the country instead of attacking it. His audience isn’t buying it. Over half of the reactions on his Bitchute video on the topic are negative.
Nick Fuentes of the Youtube show “America First” has also come under fire for recent statements on Telegram. While he prefaces his statements by saying he technically opposes a full war with Iran, he followed this by cheerleading threats by Zionists in Washington to bomb ancient Persian cultural sites, calls Iran a “degenerate Muslim shithole,” celebrates “America bullying ppl and throwing around missiles”, and comes to the defense of the “American-led” globalist military order, which Trump himself repeatedly criticized throughout his life and, as Tucker Carlson has said, won the presidency in large part by running against it.
The mealy-mouthed Charlie Kirk of TPUSA, a libertarian-Zionist think-tank Trump has recently adopted to engage in outreach for his 2020 campaign, tepidly approved of Washington’s hit on Soleimani, but has also come out in support of full military withdrawal from Iraq.
Any military entanglement with Iran polls very poorly in America.
The latest opinion research finds that almost 70% of Americans believe heightened tensions with Iran are entirely the fault of the Trump administration. Even after Trump and Mike Pompeo accused Iran of attacking the oil fields of “ally” Saudi Arabia on September 14th, 75% of Americans responded that a war with Iran was completely unwarranted.
While a vocal minority of people are eager to see explosions and dead Arabs at any cost, the majority of Americans understand that a war with Iran will not be like Afghanistan or Iraq. Public support is also not anywhere near where it was for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Such a conflict will be felt at home, either through Iranian sleeper cells attacking US targets, large numbers of dead American soldiers in the Middle East, or exploding food and gas prices. The argument that killing Soleimani has made Americans safer was widely mocked after the State Department put out a subsequent statement telling US citizens to get out of Iraq immediately.
White workers have no stake in this Israeli-dictated war. The current failure of the left and right to hold a full-throated line against the coming catastrophe is why a third position is needed now more than ever.
January 9, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Middle East, UK, United States, Zionism |
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Israeli occupation forces have confiscated the only vehicle available to a medical team serving the needs of some 1,500 Palestinians in an isolated region of the southern West Bank, reported Haaretz.
According to the paper, this is the second time that the vehicle – which serves the residents of Masafer Yatta in the south Hebron hills – has been seized within a year, “cutting off healthcare to an isolated and impoverished population” living inside an Israeli military firing zone.
The medical team make weekly visits to the area’s Palestinian communities, which lie roughly one hour’s drive on dirt roads from the nearest town of Yatta. The jeep in question “is the only vehicle available for providing medical services to these communities”.
Last Thursday, Haaretz reported, Israeli occupation forces intercepted the medical team at Khirbet Al-Majaz, claiming that they were not allowed there “without prior coordination”. The patrol then impounded the jeep and held the medics for half an hour.
In February 2019 the vehicle was confiscated “under similar circumstances”, stated the paper, and only returned six months later after the medical team paid a 3,000 shekel ($865) fine. On that occasion, the team were unable to provide medical care for the entire six months.
The Israeli military commented that “the vehicle was impounded by supervisors at the Civil Administration since it was traveling in a fire zone, a forbidden area for vehicles by law”.
The Israeli military’s “Firing zone 918” was established in the 1980s, and the army has repeatedly sought to remove Palestinians from the area.
January 8, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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At long last, Fatou Bensouda, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has uttered the long-anticipated conclusion that “all the statutory criteria under the Rome statute for the opening of an investigation (into alleged war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) have been met”.
Bensouda’s verdict has been in the making for a long time and should, frankly, have arrived much earlier. The ICC preliminary investigations into Israeli war crimes began back in 2015. Since then, many more such war crimes have been committed, while the international community persisted in its moral inertia.
The ICC statement, issued on December 20, asserted that the court saw “no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice”.
But can the “interest of justice” be served while the United States government continues to wield a massive stick, using its diplomatic, political and financial clout to ensure Israel emerges unscathed from its latest legal scuffle?
There is little doubt that Michael Lynk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory, is absolutely right: A formal ICC criminal investigation into war crimes in Palestine is a “momentous step forward in the quest for accountability”.
He is also correct in his assessment, published in the United Nations Human Rights Officer of the High Commissioner website, that “accountability has, until now, been largely missing in action throughout the 52-year-old occupation.”
I would go even further and expand the timeline of the missing accountability to include the two decades prior to the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Otherwise, how is one to account for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-48, the numerous massacres and other wanton killings that accompanied and followed those defining years, or the fact that Israel was never held accountable for its violations of international and humanitarian laws between 1948 and 1967?
That issue notwithstanding, the Palestinian Authority and all political parties in Palestine should exploit this unprecedented opportunity of holding Israel accountable.
As soon as the ICC issued its statement, news reports surfaced conveying a sense of “panic” in Israel. The Times of Israel reported that an Israeli government meeting to discuss the ICC decision was held shortly after, with the aim of considering a proper response, including the possibility of preventing ICC investigators from reaching Israel.
This is eerily familiar. Israel has denied entry to – or refused to cooperate with – international investigators and observers on many occasions in the past.
Following a UN planned investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in 2002, the Israeli government quickly moved, and, sadly, succeeded in blocking the investigation altogether.
It has done so time and again, often demonizing the very individuals entrusted with the mission of examining the illegality of Israel’s behavior in the context of international law. Well-respected judges and international law experts, such as Richard Goldstone, Richard Falk, and John Dugard, were vehemently attacked by Israeli officials and media and, by extension, by the US government and media as well.
Israel has managed to survive dozens of United Nations Resolutions and countless legal reports and indictments by the UN and all UN-affiliated organizations, largely because of blind and unequivocal American support, which has shielded Israeli war criminals from ever answering to their horrific actions in Palestine.
“Remember, it was (then-Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton who took pride in the fact that she personally killed the Goldstone Report,” said US author, Norman Finkelstein, in a recent interview with the news website Mondoweiss.
The Goldstone report was issued in the wake of the Israeli war on Gaza in 2009, dubbed ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The campaign of intimidation and pressure on Goldstone, personally, has forced the once-respected judge to retract his accusations of Israeli war crimes and the deliberate targeting of civilians.
While Clinton did her part in torpedoing the Goldstone Report, former US President, Barack Obama, according to Finkelstein, went to great lengths to “neutralize international law against settlements and other Israeli crimes in the occupied territories”.
Worse still, on September 14, 2016, Obama handed Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself accused of carrying out numerous war crimes against Palestinians, the largest US aid package to a foreign country in modern history, a whopping $38 billion over the course of ten years.
This is not a new phenomenon, where the US enables Israeli crimes and simultaneously shields Tel Aviv from any accountability for these crimes before the international community. All US administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, have honored the same sinister maxim, thus ensuring Israel, literally, gets away with murder.
A particular case in point was in 2001, when 28 Palestinian and Lebanese survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre attempted to try, in a Belgian court, late Israeli leader and accused war criminal, Ariel Sharon. Intense American pressures and a brazen intimidation campaign, targeting the Belgian government and the judicial system, resulted in the dismissal of the case in 2003. To deny Israel’s victims the opportunity to seek justice everywhere in the country, Belgium revised its very law, to the satisfaction of Israel and the United States.
The high level of the ICC investigations places the legal push against Israel at a whole new level. This is uncharted territory for Israel, the United States, Palestine, the ICC and the international community as a whole. There is little doubt that some joint Israeli-American effort is already underway to develop strategies aimed at countering if not altogether dismissing, the ICC investigation.
It is clear that justice for Palestinians in the face of Israeli aggression, itself fueled by unconditional American support, is not at all possible if it is not accompanied by regional and international unity, and a clear and decisive decision by all parties concerned that Israel, once and for all, must pay for its military occupation, racist apartheid laws, protracted siege on Gaza, and the many massacres in between.
Without this kind of international will, the ICC investigation could become another sad case of justice denied, a non-acceptable option for any justice-seeking individual, organization, and government anywhere in the world.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU).
January 8, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Hillary Clinton, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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The silence is deafening. The lack of response from U.S. allies around the world to President Trump’s assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani tells you things have fundamentally changed.
Normally when something like this happens the US has all of its allies lined up with statements at the ready. A gaggle of the usual suspects behind lecterns pledging support replete with the requisite hand-wringing and virtue signaling.
That didn’t happen this time. Only arm-twisting by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cajoled a few lukewarm responses from European allies stunned by Trump’s violations of International Law and escalation of hostilities.
It’s clear Trump stunned them into silence.
Because they know the world is more dangerous today than it was a week ago.
Pompeo’s whining that no one believed the White House’s ludicrous talking point that this strike was done to prevent a war rather than start one, betray epic levels of fatuousness.
But, make no mistake, Miracle Whip Mike got everything he wanted here.
The strategic errors the Trump Administration has piled up over the past twenty months since abandoning the JCPOA have reached a breaking point, especially with Europe.
Europe has taken the brunt of Trump’s belligerence with Iran and Russia.
Their businesses have suffered. Their energy security is threatened. The neocons have humiliated them and treated them like chattle. And to this point Europe’s leadership has been up to the task playing the part.
It’s obvious the Necons’ policy is to leverage Trump’s America Uber Alles mentality to get everything they want to subjugate Russia, China and Iran.
Trump’s instincts are the right ones, avoiding open warfare. Substituting economic leverage for tanks in the streets is still war, however.
Just because you don’t define it as war doesn’t mean it isn’t war.
Trump’s mistakes come from his believing sanctions are legitimate tools of terror, while simultaneously holding that Soleimani’s tools are not.
And that can no longer be an excuse to absolve him of the strategic and tactical errors he’s manipulated into by his staff or takes upon himself.
Pompeo’s whining about Europe betrays a solipsism and narcissism that reflects Trump’s madness and frustration. No amount of pressure on Iran seems to get the desired results.
He sees their attacks on US troops as personal affronts and thinks raising his threats to existential levels will finally make people see he’s serious.
Iran knew he was serious three years ago. It didn’t deter them. If anything, their discretion in the face of open hostility only emboldened Trump to go farther.
But now he’s just a madman with nukes, being pulled by betrayal, frustration, anger and fear towards making even more dangerous decisions than the ones he’s already made.
Because, when you realize that Soleimani was in Baghdad to deliver Iran’s opening terms for a negotiated peace with Saudi Arabia, this attack was a blunder.
When you further realize that Soleimani was there at Trump’s behest with Iraqi Prime Minister Mahdi as broker, this attack looks like patently insane.
Soleimani was in Baghdad to begin the peace process, again, at Trump’s request. He was uniquely positioned within the Iranian government to handle said negotiations because of his position as head of the IRGC Quds Forces.
If he brought these terms to the table, the militias and proxies he trained and tacitly commands would take them far more seriously than if they were brought by President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani represents, to them, the failed diplomacy that led to the current crisis, thinking the US would honor their deals.
So, the meeting between Soleimani and the Iraqi Prime Minister would have been a major opportunity for peace.
But as we know, the US is Not Agreement Capable, in the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Remember what both Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have said about the US It is ‘not agreement capable.’ Any deal made with the US government or military will be broken at the earliest possible opportunity to further its goals.
So, now the question is why did this happen? What’s the rationale here?
A New York Times article detailed the situation in the White House in the days leading up to Trump’s decision. It reads like a Pentagon whitewash of its role in creating the atmosphere which led to Soleimani’s death.
It paints the picture of a president sinking into madness as the “attacks” on the US Embassy in Baghdad unfolded.
It tries to deflect all the blame onto Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were two of the most hawkish voices arguing for a response to Iranian aggression, according to administration officials. Mr. Pence’s office helped run herd on meetings and conference calls held by officials in the run-up to the strike.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and General Milley declined to comment for this article, but General Milley’s spokeswoman, Col. DeDe Halfhill, said, without elaborating, that “some of the characterizations being asserted by other sources are false” and that she would not discuss conversations between General Milley and the president.
But the big takeaway from this article isn’t just that the Pentagon is looking to deflect blame from Defense Secretary Mark Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel onto Trump.
The big takeaway from this article is the Pompeo/Pence narrative of Soleimani was imminently primed to attack US diplomatic targets was complete fiction.
Unwritten by the Times but lurking between the words is who was really behind this narrative, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s clear over the past six months Netanyahu couldn’t accept the idea of peace breaking out around him. He consistently pushed the envelope of Israel’s belligerence into Iraq over the opening of the Iraq/Syria border crossing.
Now the Saudis were wavering? This cannot stand. War with Iran must happen.
This is the most likely scenario that pushed Trump into this action with Pompeo, Esper, and Haspel feeding him a steady diet of, at best, misleading information. Trump then does what Trump does best when the game gets too hard to figure out.
He filps the table.
Netanyahu worked so hard to manipulate events and people to get to that point. He needs a win back home to show voters he is the man to bring Israel salvation through the studious application of American exceptionalism.
Now, that he’s done so, he is abandoning Trump after pushing him into the pit.
So, given all of this, is anyone surprised the leadership in Europe isn’t happy here? They were instrumental in getting Iran to the table to agree to the JCPOA, which Israel was livid about.
It was in everyone’s interest for the deal to work, especially Iran’s.
Iran got sanctions relief and much-needed investment. Its heavy water reactor became a strong source of revenue. Europe got access to cheap Iranian oil and gas through that investment, securing its energy needs.
Moreover, with the deal in place, the undoing of the US/Israeli/Saudi plan to atomize Syria by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah ended the flow of refugees into Europe and began stabilizing the region.
That only happens because of the JCPOA.
Trump’s entire foreign policy is based on antagonizing everyone and subjugating them through dollar weaponization and energy dominance. That’s been his modus operandi.
He aligned himself with Israeli interests from the outset because 1) he wanted to and 2) it was the path of least resistance for him to stay in power.
At every critical juncture of his presidency Trump has knuckled under to the neocons in his office.
The biggest effect of killing Soleimani isn’t Iran’s response or even Iraq’s. Yes, they will impose costs which will change the geopolitical game board. How? We don’t know.
What we do know is this big effect; the realization that everyone around the world is thinking, “Are we next?” So far Trump has accepted no limits on who he will attack with sanctions. There is no rule he’s [un]willing to breach.
The neocons in the Senate now have the ultimate leverage over him — Pelosi’s sham impeachment. The half-men in the Senate like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio have been at full mast so long thanks to Trump’s bombing they need to see a doctor.
They got him to kill Soleimani, ensuring there will be no peace with Iran.
They’ve begun the upward escalation of tensions which likely ends with an airstrike on Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Facility.
If you don’t think that’s what that tweet means, then have either your eyes or your reading comprehension checked.
Many of Trump’s tweets are nonsense, bluff, and bluster to misdirect and/or stir the pot. This has been a clear message he’s sent since the campaign trail.
And this attack on Soleimani was the next step in that process. He’s hoping it brings Iran to the bargaining table.
But it won’t.
And that’s why this only ends with bombing Fordow.
The Israelis and neocons have used Trump’s animus towards Obama and Europe to try to subjugate them as well. It’s not that Europe is praiseworthy or anything. The EU leadership deserves their comeuppance for trying to build an Empire to replace the US.
But regardless of whether the EU sucks or not, this incident is your point of no return in US/European relations. They have no choice but to slowly back away from the insane man in the White House and break bread with the sober one in the Kremlin.
Angela Merkel already arranged a meeting with Putin for next week.
This has cost the US whatever moral status it has with the rest of the world. It stands alone now.
The only deals Trump will get from here on out are ones that don’t matter. He’s set the US squarely on the path to its own destruction as the world realizes the cost of doing business in the dollar just rose immensely.
I’ve been looking for that moment where Europe makes the decision to move out of the US’s orbit and into Russia’s. Their silence tells me this was it.
January 8, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | European Union, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Russia, United States, Zionism |
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Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh addresses a massive crowd of mourners during a funeral procession for General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran January 6, 2020. (Photo by Leader.ir)
General Qassem Soleimani is a “martyr of Quds” for he devoted his life to supporting the Palestinian people’s struggle against Israel and his assassination by the United States is in many ways similar to crimes committed by the Israeli regime, says Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.
General Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), was assassinated in a US strike in Baghdad on Friday, alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s pro-government Hashd al-Sha’abi forces.
A huge sea of mourners, streaming from all the adjoining streets, descended on the iconic Engelab Square in central Tehran early Monday morning and rallied to Azadi Tower in the capital’s west as they chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei led the prayers over the general’s coffin and the remains of his companions at Tehran University, his voice cracking several times with emotion which caused the massive crowd to weep.
Speaking at the funeral procession in Tehran on Monday, Haniyeh condemned the US strike, which was personally authorized by President Donald Trump.
“We have come to Iran to condole with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian government and nation,” Haniyeh said.
“He [Gen. Soleimani] was the commander of the IRGC Quds Force and he is a martyr of Quds,” the Hamas official said.
Haniyeh also sent condolences to General Soleimani’s family and described him as one of the “flag-bearers of resistance against Zionist and American plots.”
Haniyeh said he was in Iran “to express our true and sincere feelings about a dear brother and a martyred commander – a commander who made many sacrifices for Palestine and the resistance until he achieved the position he has today.”
‘A crime similar to Zionist atrocities in Palestine’
Haniyeh said this “brutal crime” by the Americans is representative of the “criminal mentality” that is at work in the occupied Palestinian lands.
“The criminal mentality that led to Commander Soleimani’s assassination and martyrdom is the same mentality that drives the minds of the Zionist regime’s thugs, the same mentality and policy that assassinates and kills Palestinians every day,” he said.
He said Hamas owes its current prowess to General Soleimani’s wisdom. The Palestinian resistance, he said, won’t back away from combating Israel and the fight will continue “until we purge all enemies from the noble Quds.”
New Quds Force chief pledges vengeance
Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, who was named the new Quds commander by the Leader on Friday, said in a statement that Iran will no doubt avenge the assassination.
“Steps will be definitely taken” to avenge General Soleimani’s blood, which Qaani said has set in motion a series of steps that will lead to America’s expulsion from the region.
US ‘elimination’ from region only acceptable retribution
Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the IRGC’s Aerospace Division, echoed the remarks and said the only possible revenge for General Soleimani’s blood would be the total “elimination” of America from the region.
Launching a few missiles, destroying a base or even Trump’s death will not sufficiently avenge the blood of such a martyr, General Hajizadeh asserted, adding “the oppressed nations of the region will have to be rid of America’s evil.”
January 6, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Hamas, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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When things are as crazy as they are right now, it’s hard to see just how much progress has been made. 2019 had in it a number of watershed moments in geopolitics which signal just how close to radical change in the game board we are.
The neoconservatives within the Trump administration went for broke in 2019 and came a cropper every time. There’s no war with Iran. Nordstream 2 will be completed. Russia and Ukraine are on the path to solving their conflict. Iran is still selling oil. Turkey is still run by a madman. Israeli politics is more fractious than Spain’s. And Bashar al-Assad is still in charge in a slowly-rebuilding Syria.
The problem with these folks is they are relentless and still placed everywhere within the permanent bureaucracy of the U.S. government and Congress itself.
And President Trump has only been partially successful in fending them off from pulling off policy mistakes from which there is no turning back.
We are downstream from the neocon/Israeli push to withdraw the U.S. from the JCPOA, or Iran Nuclear Deal. That one event has dominated the geopolitical landscape for going on two years now. Trump thought he was gaining leverage over both Europe and Iran by withdrawing from the deal, when he actually unleashed a political and diplomatic quagmire.
The pull of the AIPAC crowd surrounding him, specifically Sheldon Adelson, Jared Kushner and Rudy Guiliani, put Trump on a path to confrontation with Iran which could only end in war, their desired outcome.
Trump, to his credit, has resisted this but only just barely. His refusal to go to war after Iran shot down a Global Hawk drone in June led to the firing of arch-neocon John Bolton as National Security Adviser and the subsequent impeachment fiasco we’re seeing today.
Trump, for his part, is reforming the NSC – National Security Council—by stripping it of more than two-thirds of its staff, to limit is ability to set policy outside of his purview. This will be reported by the MSM as him arrogating dictatorial powers and becoming insulated from reality.
It seems Trump is finally realizing that in Washington personnel is policy. Robert C. O’Brien is not John Bolton. It’s a good start. And if Trump wins a second term in November there may be hope that we’ll see foreign policy that is less schizophrenic and, frankly, dangerous.
Make no mistake, Trump not going to war overtly with Iran in June was a win. A small win, but a win, nonetheless.
But since that day it has been one non-stop neocon assault on his presidency and any kind of peace in the Middle East. I’m still of the opinion, tenuously so, that Trump wants to do the right thing in, at least, minimizing U.S. meddling in the region.
But the neocons are still dominant. They infest the NSC, the CIA, the State Dept. as well as major European governments and intelligence agencies. And it’s clear that Trump is fighting a rear-guard battle against them. They dominate the information flow to him.
I’m not absolving Trump of his mistakes by saying this. It’s clear he needs to be better at seeing through the misleading, if not outright false, data put in front of him about what’s happening on the ground in places like Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
But what’s also clear is that the neocons will not stop until they get a war with Iran. Theirs is an ideology of subjugation and permanent revolution. These people are the descendants of Trotsky and all that implies.
Israel has stepped up its aggression against Syria and Iraq while simultaneously backing down to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Airstrikes to the west get bolder and more aggressive, sometimes with the U.S.’s help while the mere threat of retaliation by Hezbollah sees IDF forces disappear from the earth for a week.
Israeli Prime Minister (for now) Benjamin Netanyahu will do anything to keep the U.S. engaged in Syria and Iraq. He and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are on the same page and it seems every time Pompeo shows up to talk with Bibi some escalation happens a week later.
The latest is this attack on the K1 base near Kirkuk which killed ‘an American contractor.’ That’s code for non-strategic personnel, most likely someone working the Iraqi oil fields there. The base was under the control of Iraqi PMU forces and likely attacked by either the local Kurds or ISIS.
The U.S. response was to bomb five PMU bases in Syria and Iraq nowhere near Kirkuk, all supporting the Iraqi government’s order to open up the Al Qaim/Al-Bukamai border crossing with Syria, which both the U.S. and Israel are vehemently opposed to.
It looks to me that Pompeo and Netanyahu cooked up yet another ‘incident’ to force President Trump into a confrontation with Iran by escalating tensions now in Iraq.
The result of the U.S. response was assaults on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad which brought in 100 marines and Apache helicopters to disperse the crowd.
And then Trump talks literally out of both sides of his mouth on Twitter.
Everything that happens in the Middle East that the U.S. and Israel doesn’t like is Iran’s fault. There can be no nuance for Iraqi people rising up organically against U.S. airstrikes taking out dozens of Iraqi patriots who liberated most of Iraq from ISIS and Al-Qaeda on the thinnest of pretexts.
Iraq is not going to rise up against Iran over this. If Trump has been advised that this is possible that is coming straight from a national security infrastructure intent on convincing him of staying it the Middle East forever. But Trump has shown no inclination to take this farther.
He’ll threaten fire and brimstone but that’s about it. And for this reason, the neocons are losing ground in the long run. What’s clear to me is that Trump lacks the political will to hold the line completely. He goes along with economic sanctions and tariffs in lieu of putting troops on the ground.
But at some point, he’s going to have to take a decisive stand and stop playing a game of attrition. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is slow-walking the impeachment articles to gain more leverage over him and force him from office with Republican support. For now, there is no appetite for this. But into this vacuum of power where Trump’s future rests on the votes of 17 Republican Senators, all rampant neocons, the worst legislation imaginable will come forth. This is how the NDAA got passed with additional sanctions on European allies working on Russian energy projects.
This is how Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will push the even worse DASKA through Congress now that he’s secured the vote of the Foreign Relations Committee. If Trump doesn’t toe the neocon line while the impeachment threat hangs over his neck, then, all of a sudden, conviction in the Senate will be the talk of the town.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that Trump keeps bringing in record money to fund his re-election. As long as Iran can keep a hold over its more militant factions and not escalate the situation in Iraq then all of these neocon provocations will peter out along with impeachment.
These moves by the neocons are desperation plays to retain control over U.S. foreign policy which the electorate is growing more tired of by the day. 2019 was the year they failed to secure victory. Most of 2020 will be dominated with them putting up one, last desperate offensive.
January 6, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | CIA, Iran, Iraq, Israel, United States, Zionism |
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Picture released by Iraqi Prime Minister’s Media Office shows Iraq’s caretaker prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (L) attending a parliamentary session on January 5, 2020. (Photo via AFP)
Iraq’s Caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi has said that Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani was set to deliver Tehran’s reply to an earlier Saudi message regarding de-escalation talks mediated by Baghdad when he was assassinated.
Abdul-Mahdi made the remarks during an extraordinary parliamentary session in the capital which led to the adoption of a law demanding the withdrawal of US forces from the country on Sunday, the National Iraqi News Agency reported.
The premier said that he was due to meet Soleimani at 8:30 am local time on Friday before the US assassinated the general a few hours earlier.
The revelations come as Baghdad has been mediating talks between Tehran and Riyadh following a recent uptick of tensions the region.
Sunday’s parliamentary vote was held in response to Washington’s Friday airstrikes targeting Soleimani and his comrades.
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) was also killed in the attack.
Iran’s judiciary has said that the attack took place despite Soleimani being a “formal” and “high profile” guest of the Iraqi government.
The Sunday vote comes as many Iraqi figures and parliamentary factions have been long demanding the withdrawal of US troops from the country, specifically following a series of unclaimed airstrikes on PMU forces.
Abdul-Mahdi also revealed in his Sunday remarks that Washington had confirmed to Baghdad that Tel Aviv was behind a number of the attacks.
“America informed us that Israel bombed the warehouses of the PMU last summer,” he said, calling on the parliament to take all measures to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq.
Rockets rock Baghdad’s Green Zone
Also on Sunday, the Iraqi military reported that three Katyusha rockets fell in Baghdad, two of which landed inside the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone housing government buildings and foreign missions.
Witnesses told AFP that the rockets had landed close to the US embassy without further elaborating on probable casualties.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
January 5, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Iraq, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism |
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Moath Amarneh lost his eye by a rubber bullet while covering a peaceful protest in Hebron (Al-Khalil). (Photo: via Social Media)
In 2019, Israeli forces committed 255 violations against journalists and media institutions working in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to The Palestine News and Information Agency (WAFA).
The agency released its annual report on Israeli violations against journalists on Sunday.
Israeli violations included the use of live fire, rubber-coated bullets and teargas canisters against journalists, in addition to physical beating and arrest.
The report added that 145 journalists were injured by live fire or rubber-coated rounds, suffocated by teargas or beaten by Israeli forces during the year, while 145 journalists were either arrested or targeted by Israeli gunfire but were not injured. A total of 27 assaults by Israeli forces on media institutions were also documented.
“These daily crimes and violations against journalists,” the report said, “require an urgent and immediate intervention to pressure the Israeli government to stop its systematic and deliberate targeting of photographers and field journalists”.
January 5, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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![Palestinian farmers separate wheat and straw bundles as they work on a farm land in Gaza City, Gaza on 16 May 2018 [Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018_5-18-IWheat-harvest-in-Gaza20180517_2_30419109_33819412.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
Palestinian farmers as they work on farm land in Gaza City, Gaza on 16 May 2018 [Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu Agency]
Israeli occupation forces raided the Palestinian village of Al-Malih in the occupied West Bank on Friday and confiscated five tractors, Safa News Agency reported.
Head of the Village Council of Al-Malih, Ahmad Daraghmeh, revealed that the Israeli occupation forced confiscated the tractors and claimed the tractors were working in a “closed military zone”.
The head of the Village Council stressed that the area is owned by the Palestinian farmers, noting that the Israeli occupation had recently confiscated tens of tractors from their owners while they were working in their farms in the same area.
He condemned the weak support for the farmers in the village, adding that these farmers are considered a shield protecting the Palestinian lands from being expropriated by the Israeli occupation.
“We hear remarks and receive statements of support, but we see nothing on the ground. The farmers are in the field alone,” he concluded.
January 4, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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