July 17, 2018 “Information Clearing House” – The American backlash against President Trump over his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been as ferocious as it was predictable.
Every possible vilification has been thrown at him. But it is the slur of Trump as “traitor” that puts this president in grave danger.
Democrats, Republicans, state intelligence pundits, hawkish media, liberal media — all have launched a torrent of attacks on Donald Trump for daring to meet with Putin in Helsinki this week.
The Washington Post accused Trump of “openly colluding with the criminal leader of a hostile power”. Let those extreme words sink in for a moment. The implication is as serious as it can get.
As with other politicians and media outlets, the Post said the president had “betrayed” American intelligence services by siding with President Putin in denying that Russia had interfered in US elections.
Former CIA chief John Brennan denounced Trump as a “traitor” who had “committed high crimes” in holding a friendly summit with Putin.
It can’t get more seditious than that. Trump is being denigrated by almost the entire political and media establishment in the US as a “treasonous” enemy of the state.
Following this logic, there is only one thing for it: the US establishment is calling for a coup to depose the 45th president. One Washington Post oped out of a total of five assailing the president gave the following stark ultimatum: “If you work for Trump, quit now”.
The US political class have cast their verdict that Trump is a state enemy, and are openly calling for a mutiny against the White House.
Trump’s political survival is the balance. Possibly the only thing staying the hands of his enemies for now is their wariness about how the ordinary American citizens would react to a deep state maneuver to overthrow the elected leader.
Despite the torrid hysteria in the US political elite over the meeting with Putin, the mass of American citizens seem rather sanguine about the development. It’s fair to say that many Americans would applaud the attempt by Trump to normalize relations with Moscow. After all, that was one of the main reasons why they voted him into the White House in 2016.
The American political class are agog to get rid of Trump, but they are apprehensive to make a decisive move just yet, because such a gambit to depose the president may engender a wider social revolt against the elites. There is a strong sense that US society is seething from numerous grievances. Poverty and abysmal social inequality as well as popular alienation from the Washington establishment are all too rife for a potential civil war or revolution if stoked too much.
One can anticipate that the media campaign to pillory Trump as a traitor will go into overdrive in the coming days, with the calculation by his powerful enemies within the deep state that public opinion can be turned decisively against him for “betraying America” to a “hostile enemy”. If that manipulation of public opinion is achieved, then Trump is a goner.
Admittedly, Trump has many flaws and much of his foreign policy is in keeping with the usual criminal conduct of American imperialism. But one thing that can be said in his favor is that he is not driven by an irrational Russophobia nor a hellbent determination to have a confrontation with Moscow — unlike many in the US establishment.
Trump is often guilty of peddling fake news himself. But one thing he gets right is his dismissal of the “Russia-gate” narrative as a hoax. The US establishment created that farce as a way to undermine Trump and overturn his intention of normalizing relations with Russia.
For two years, Trump’s political enemies have been flogging the “Russia interfered in our democracy” trope — to no avail. The latest wheeze was the unsubstantiated indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence personnel only days before the Helsinki summit.
To be fair to Trump, he wasn’t dissuaded by that effort to sabotage his summit with Putin. But the trap was set. As soon as the meeting was over in Helsinki, all hell has broken lose in the deep state-controlled US media and politicians, condemning Trump.
Russia’s Putin called the tedious allegations of Russian interference in US democracy “the biggest nonsense ever”. Trump said he agreed with that assessment. Probably many ordinary American citizens also agree that the whole affair has been cooked up by political elites who were never happy with the democratic mandate given to Trump.
Trump is right to reject the so-called US intelligence assessment claiming that Russia under Putin’s orders meddled in the presidential race. Putin told the Helsinki press conference that he wanted Trump to win the election in order to improve bilateral relations. So what? Are foreign leaders not entitled to have opinions on who comes to power in rival countries?
In any case, the US intelligence assessment is not conclusive nor a consensus of all 16 state agencies, as former American ambassador Jack Matlock recently pointed out. In other words, the claim is only partial and far from definitive. It was “politically motivated,” said Matlock, a veteran diplomat.
The American political class is sick. It is suffering from a psychosis that prevents any understanding of reality. It is living in abject denial of reality, convinced of its delusions about Russia being a hostile enemy, and Trump being a “Kremlin stooge”.
The problem for the American establishment is that it doesn’t like the way democracy worked out. The people voted for a candidate who wanted to restore relations with Russia. For the elite, that outcome is unacceptable, and they have tried every dirty trick in the book to overturn the democratic process. Ironically, they claim that Russia tried to subvert American democracy, when it is the effete elite in Washington and the deep state apparatus that are subverting the country’s constitution.
How ludicrous can these people get? An American president holds a long-overdue meeting with the leader of the world’s second nuclear power. The meeting was a success in terms of opening a friendly dialogue between the two leaders. And yet the US ruling class excoriate this event as a “disgrace” and “criminal collusion”.
The interests of ordinary American citizens, as with the mass of people around the world, are not served by irrational hostility towards Russia. It is in our interests to have peaceful dialogue and to develop mutual understanding between the US and Russia to avert confrontations.
It is only an unrepresentative elite who could possibly want hostility. War and conflict is profitable for a tiny few. But this cabal in the US, and among its European allies, driven by Russophobia and war profits, is nevertheless extremely powerful. They control the mainstream media and politicians with their money and intelligence assets.
When the interests of the ruling elite in the US are threatened anything is possible. Assassinations and coups are par for the course for these plutocrats and their agents.
The livid reaction to Trump’s eminently reasonable engagement with Putin this week — a reaction that is vicious and coordinated — is an ominous sign that powerful forces are moving against this president.
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
This article was originally published by “Sputnik“ –
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
NB Commentary: This is a well researched article with links. A must read for anyone who is interested in what is really going on with the Selection of Hillary Clinton for the next President of the US. I have included direct links listed in this article at the bottom along with pics and videos.
“God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.”— Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, during the US annexation of the Philippines, 1898.
A grotesque power-fest at the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia left me feeling about Hillary Clinton the way P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster felt about his Aunt Agatha—“the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.” There is something disquieting and secretively lascivious about her open-mouthed cackle. She doesn’t so much laugh as lusts. She reminded me, too, of the mythical basilisk in the bestiary at the convention—the queen among the serpents. The basilisk of legend, wearing a king’s crown on his head, is only twelve-fingers long, but his venom withers all living plants in his wake. His gaze is enough to kill, according to Pliny the Elder. Only the droppings of a weasel have the potent odor to kill him, but it didn’t work with this basilisk. Her weasel endorsed her, embraced her, kissed her. His odor and her venom neutralized each other and merged into the unity party of the Serpent and the Weasel.
Her party’s opponent is Charybdis, “a huge bladder of a creature whose face was all mouth and whose arms and legs were flippers” according to Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings (1957). As if that were not enough, this Charybdis is reputed to be the troll of a foreign monster, Mandrake, the Demon in the Kremlin. Neither the basilisk’s party nor Charybdis’ own party, a sort of mollusk like the Kraken, likes him. See here and here.
I’m raving, you say? This is the Age of Empire, and empire breeds monsters. We live with them now. Imperialism is our political and economic reality. Nothing material or substantial can be reformed within this colossal juggernaut. Yet, we continue to pretend that this has no bearing on our lives. In 2003 alone, the Iraq invasion cost $60 billion, three times the yearly budget for education, yet, we wonder why schools are starving for funds. When we clamor for reforms without mentioning imperialism, it is as if we were told we would be dead in three weeks and reacted by scheduling an appointment for a facelift.
A facelift is exactly what elections have produced in the last two decades. Bill Clinton’s Nero, saxophone in lieu of harp; George Bush’s Claudius, malapropisms for stutters; Obama’s Titus, fortunate son, charm and treachery—they are all faces of imperialism, exceptionalism, hegemony, capital penetration, globalization, neoliberal recolonization, “full spectrum dominance,” “rebalance.” They are the CEOs of international capitalism in the White House. Their charge is to do away with the sovereignty of nations, economically when possible, militarily when necessary. They destabilize and destroy whole countries through open, economic, proxy, or clandestine wars; they organize and train terrorist organizations; they foment regime change; they privatize the public wealth; they impose deadly economic reforms on countries they in debt in perpetuity; they launch economic sanctions, often in tandem or in the run-up to war. The goal they serve is the domination of the planet to extract resources, secure markets, and depress wages. In Haiti, workers are paid 62 cents per hour. Why would any sane investor hire an American worker for $7 per hour when a Haitian, whose dependent country has stripped him/her of all workers’ protection rights, works for pennies?
We are the Lotus Eaters, if we don’t know the cost and suffering of imperialism.
In this predatory process, the masters of the world—the economic elite—have amassed mountains of money over tree decades, and are desperate for “opportunities” for investment. They know that money must move, or it dies. At this stage of disinvestment in industrialization in the capitalist centers because of diminished returns, money becomes the chief export commodity. To secure astronomical returns, lands and resources that belong to other people must be seized and controlled. To achieve this goal, they need a strong, autocratic, and authoritarian state and an appointed dictator. An imperator, head of the army, whose rule is characterized by weak legislative and judicial branches.
Ruthless, ambitious, violent, and conniving, Hillary Clinton’s Roman imperial analog is Agrippina, Nero’s mother and Claudius’ niece and murderous wife. Her ferocious chemistry makes her kindred by choice to the ferocity of the empire. The two are bound by “elective affinities”– Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809) of Goethe’s third novel, which examines the possibility that human passions are ruled by chemical affinities , the preference of one substance for another. I am convinced that the imperial candidate with the most affinities with the ruling elite is Hillary Clinton. If Donald Trump is sincere in saying he wants peace with Russia, he would have to be a Titan to reverse a centenary robotic American foreign policy by 360 degrees. That would go against all the laws of political motion, including inertia, which were set down at the birth of the United States. The prize was always to be fabled Eurasia—“he who controls Eurasia controls the world,” wrote that other cobra-eyed basilisk, Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinsk, the veteran Zbiggus Dickus of foreign lunacy at the State Department and the NSA.
And so this woman, the Agrippina on the Potomac, will sit behind the “grand chessboard,” playing with human pawns. She will make a good empress, even though less than 40 percent of the country’s voters consider her “trustworthy.” But the people’s trust is irrelevant. They are themselves untrustworthy. Having come out from under the spell of “charming” Obama to realize that he was a magician’s trick, the people are spinning off center—the “extreme center,” as Tariq Ali wittily calls it. The people need whipping back into the herd. For that, a virago will do. She will ride rough-shod with Sin and Death, the moral allies of the empire, over hurdles of sovereignties and international law. She will further ravish the already enfeebled Constitution before eating it whole because the inevitable cost of an expansionist foreign policy is the loss of economic and political freedom at home.
They all trust her. She has affinities with them all.
The Financiers
The financial empire trusts Hillary Clinton. Top mega-financiers and hedge fund founders and managers who have contributed to her campaign since March 2015 include: George Soros, hedge-fund billionaire, $7 million; Haim Saban, Israeli hawk and entertainment mogul, $5 million; James Simon, founder, Renaissance Technologies, hedge fund billionaire and former code-breaker for the military, $ 3.5 million; Herbert Sandler, founder of Golden West Financial Corporation, the California savings and loan enterprise; Donald Sussman, hedge-fund manager, $2.5 million.
There was no way that the new world order of financial monopoly capitalism would consider for CEO of the neoliberal empire someone like Bernie Sanders, not because he was “progressive” but because he was “regressive,” and in their view no doubt an unrealistic fantasist. The idea of bringing back the New Deal, a liberal order they had been overthrowing since the 1980s, must have had them belly-laughing in private, but they saw no harm so long as the senator from Vermont fed the illusion in the people that capitalism could be reformed and become a good thing. Ditto for Donald Trump: his regression consists of offering the people another fantasy, a return to a long gone Fordist America, the industrial powerhouse of the planet, in which American workers were the “aristocrats” of labor. At one point in history, Detroit was the capital of this aristocracy, the best-paid white workers in the world. Thus, both candidates offer a spectacle to the voters of a quarrel with their respective parties, but not with their parties’ de-facto bi-partisan pursuit of economic world supremacy. All the same they were useful. They helped to deflect, diffuse, confuse, and veil that stark, existential reality that is the cause of our woes and those of the planet: American economic and military expansion—the weasel more so than Charybdis.
Hillary Clinton is not a retro-fantasist, apart from being a fantasist of the neoliberal order. Her fantasy is their fantasy. Thus they back her.
The Liberal Humanitarian Carnivores
The liberal humanitarians trust Hillary’s exemplary ability to sell a war crime as a service to humanity.
The modern idea of “humanitarian war” is as old as Columbus; as old as the conquistadores. White, civilized Europeans, arriving in the “New World,” killed “savages” in order to civilize whoever survived. And then worked them to death and took their lands. In that tradition, the modern liberal humanitarian must be a flesh-eater. “A liberal society cannot be defended by herbivores. We need carnivores to save us,” wrote Michael Ignatieff, former Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, in a New York Times magazine op-ed piece, May 2, 2004. There is no need to recite the litany of Hillary Clinton’s bloody deeds since 1990. Gary Leupp covers them comprehensively in a 2015 CounterPunch article but for carnivorism, who can forget her maenad-possessed laughter on watching the tearing apart of Qaddafi’s flesh on video—a scene reminiscent of Euripides’ tragedy, “The Bacchae”?
Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s disemboweled Yugoslavia on humanitarian grounds, after portraying it as the resurgence of the genocidal Third Reich and its president, Slobodan Milosevic, as the new Hitler. Milosevic, by the way, has just been exonerated of all crimes for which Clinton’s kangaroo International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia had formerly condemned him. In 2003, casting her vote for the invasion of Iraq, Hillary Clinton cited the persecution of Milosevic as the example to follow for removing Saddam Hussein. It’s worth listening to her self-assurance in demonizing a man she, and Bill Clinton’s administration, knew to be innocent of the charges—knew because they trumped them up:
“We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak.”
But Bill Clinton didn’t just scrap Yugoslavia; he junked international law by removing from the Security Council the legal monopoly on authorizing war. He set a precedent in the Kosovo War by claiming Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which gives humanitarian intervention the pseudo-legal means to overthrow a sovereign state. The UN Charter specifically disallows humanitarian intervention for a very good reason: it was that responsibility Hitler’s rogue regime claimed for invading Poland—the protection of German minorities—to start WW II.
Never mind. The Kosovo precedent opened the gates to all the “humanitarian” wars that followed, including Hillary Clinton’s war on Libya in 2009, consistent with her approval of her husband’s intervention in Kosovo. During a meeting with Code Pink on 6 March 2003 at the US Capitol, defending her vote in favor of attacking Iraq, Senator Clinton applauded her husband’s war in Kosovo, claiming that he saved Kosovar Albanian from ethnic cleansing—a lie—while commending his initiative to go it alone, without the “international community’s” consent:
“With respect to whose responsibility it is to disarm Saddam Hussein, I do not believe that given the attitudes of many people in the world community today that there would be a willingness to take on very difficult problems were it not for United States leadership. And I am talking specifically about what had to be done in Bosnia and Kosovo, where my husband could not get a Security Council resolution to save the Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing. And we did it alone as the United States, and we had to do it alone. It would have been far preferable if the Russians and others had agreed to do it through the United Nations — they would not. I’m happy that, in the face of such horrible suffering, we did act.”
She’s praising here her husband’s international crime, the interference with a country’s sovereignty for fictional humanitarian reasons. No, the goal of the war in Kosovo was not ethnic defense (Bill Clinton’s policy throughout the 90s in the former Yugoslavia was to foment and prey on ethnic anarchy) but the expansionist penetration of a foreign territory and the construction of one of the largest military bases in Europe, at Camp Bondsteel, costing the American people a good chunk of social services—possibly, his welfare “reform,” for example.
Liberal humanitarian warmongers peddle the ludicrous claim that “America is the essential country” (Madeleine Albright) for safeguarding liberal democracy throughout the world, sublimely indifferent to the evidence that the world can’t wait to get America’s essentialism off its back. Hillary Clinton’s belligerent foreign policy is notorious. She has promised to bomb Iran. She has managed and supervised the destruction of Libya. She has organized the coups in Paraguay and Honduras. Her neo-con team at the State Department funded and organized the coup in Ukraine, Nazified its political, military, and cultural life, triggering a civil war (while calling Putin “Hitler”).
HRC-Syria Policy
There’s no reason to believe that her carnivorous humanitarian resources have been depleted since then. While Secretary of State for Obama, she authorized the sale of weapons to Qatar that she knew would go to the Libyan rebels to topple Qaddafi and then go to Syria to arm al Qaeda to overthrow Assad. She denied any involvement under oath. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, her campaign foreign policy adviser, Jeremy Bash, former Chief of Staff at the Pentagon and CIA, said that she would work to get President Assad “out of there”:
Julian Assange says “1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection” proves she sold weapons to ISIS in Syria.
“A Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is. It is a murderous regime that violates human rights; that has violated international law; used chemical weapons against his own people; has killed hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children.
If Assad is as guilty as she was sure at the time Milosevic was, we’re in for another international crime.”
On Russia, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that she’s calling for strengthening NATO and “tougher measures against Putin to punish him for invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea as well as for supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” “I remain convinced,” they quote her, “that we need a concerted effort to really up the cost on Russia and, in particular, on Putin.” She considers that Russia’s intervention in Syria creates “chaos”:
“I think it’s important too that the United States make it very clear to Putin that it’s not acceptable for him to be in Syria creating more chaos, bombing people on behalf of Assad, and we can’t do that if we don’t take more of a leadership position, which is what I’m advocating.”
Russia Today blames Clinton’s outrageous Russophobia—“Hillary Clinton is the Bachman Turner Overdrive of US politics”–on Obama’s mistake for allowing the Neo-con contingent to dominate the State Department:
Obama’s other mistake was to allow Hillary, as Secretary of State, to retain neocon holdovers from the Bush administration on her Eastern Europe team. Even more incredibly, Kerry then inherited them for the second term. “Obama allowed US officials on the ground (in Ukraine and elsewhere) to pursue a grossly irresponsible and provocative anti-Russian policy,” Anatol Lieven recently told the Valdai Club. “What on earth, one may ask, was Victoria Nuland, a neo-conservative State Department official married to the arch neocon Robert Kagan, doing in the Obama administration at all, given that her attitudes run clearly counter to his?”Lieven also pointed out that “figures like Nuland are still favored by Hillary Clinton (Kagan is now moving into her political camp) and much of the US foreign and security establishment; and that with regard to Russia, that establishment is still conditioned to pursue what are in effect Cold War attitudes.”
The Neo-Cons and “New” Imperialists
Hillary Clinton represents the personification of rehabilitated imperialism, the overarching geopolitical focus of American politics. That is why she will be the establishment’s choice—tested and proven. She will press hard against the political independence of Russia and the economic rise of China, a pressure that encapsulates American foreign policy in the foreseeable future.
Neo-con and neo-liberal promoters of the “new imperialism” are Western regime intellectuals and historians such as Max Boot, Niall Ferguson, and Michael Ignatieff.
As a result, by 2003, the year of the invasion of Iraq, media pundits were busy domesticating the word “empire.” American propaganda had proscribed the word for decades on account of there being only one empire, which was “evil”: the USSR. With the Soviet Union gone, America congratulated itself on being #1, the sole super-power, the essential country, and, the old standby, the exceptional country. None of these brands resonated with the force that the scope of conquering the world required. To make matters worse, critics of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, were floating the un-American term “imperialism.” Something had to be done. With the evil empire dead, the good empire could re-emerge. Max Boot, Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at Council on Foreign Relations, proposed “an American might to promote American ideals”–messianic political morality at the point of a gun. He explained.
“In the early twentieth century, Americans talked of spreading Anglo-Saxon civilization and taking up the ‘white man’s burden’; today they talk of spreading democracy and defending human rights. Whatever you call it, this represents an idealistic impulse that has always been a big part in America’s impetus for going to war.”
Soon after 9/11, 2001, Boot had already invoked this impetuous idealism to respond to the lament of suffering nations pining for the . . . return of a British-style imperial ministration.
Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.
And in 2002, Boot wrote, “Imperialism used to be the white man’s burden. This gave it a bad reputation. But imperialism doesn’t stop being necessary because it is politically incorrect” (New York Times Magazine, July 28, 2002). Neoconservative William Kristol, of The Weekly Standard, said more tersely on Fox television at the time, “if people want to say we’re an imperial power, fine.”If there is a place on earth that is testy about Western imperialism, that place is China. If there is an American official who has sorely tested China’s anti-colonial sensibility, that person is Clinton. As First Lady, she rousingly declared that “women’s rights are human rights” in Beijing at the UN World Conference on Women in 1995. As
Secretary of State, in 2011, she denounced China’s “deplorable” record of human rights in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Again in 2011, she proposed a US policy toward China as one “of advancing democracy and human rights” in a Foreign Policy article, titled “America’s Pacific Century.”
To Chinese officials’ ear this aggressive insistence on human rights sounded suspiciously like a systematic call for color revolution in China. Her hostile intent, had already become apparent in 2010. At the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi, she confirmed China’s suspicion that she advocated a US policy of containment by intervening in the territorial disputes of the South China Sea. Recommending a “rebalance” of power in the disputed areas, she asserted that the US had “a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea.”
China’s Foreign Minister at the time, Yang Jiechi, at first walked out of the meeting, only to return an hour later with theominous reminderthat “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”
On the unpopular Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, a pact China correctly perceives as economic containment, she said in her debate with Bernie Sanders on 4 February 2016 that she now opposes it after having strenuously and enthusiastically supported it as Obama’s Secretary of State until 2012 and beyond. Her flip-flops on the TPT are well documented here.
These three affinities—with finance, war, and imperialism—make Hillary Clinton the perfect mate for president of the financial-imperial White House. Picture her in jodhpurs and pith helmet astride the financial bull, taking on the “white woman’s burden,” and riding the humanitarian “savage wars for peace.” Stop worrying about Donald Trump “Charybdis” and learn to avoid where the Basilisk treads, which will be difficult. You can prepare by reviewing her record as “empire-slayer” here.
“I urged him to bomb.” – Hillary Clinton
In choosing between presidential candidates today, it’s best to stick to Bertie Wooster’s advice about aunts: “It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.”
What gets me with all this is how they conveniently link folks in people’s families who are connected to other folks, yet, when it comes to pointing a finger at the Bush Family, mums the word. The Bush’s became presidents when their father/grandfather colluded with the Nazi’s. And I could state other examples of how, folks look the other way when it’s convenient and point fingers when it’s convenient.
Then it’s the, “we are non-profit” we don’t get direct funding from blah, blah, blah, but when they want to finger so-called terrorist groups and their funders, depending on who they are that is, they go down the rabbit hole, and anyone even remotely associated with them is suspect.
It’s hypocrisy, and double standards that is all pervasive. One rule for those in power and another rule for those in power and still another rule for those who are not part of the “in-crowd”
Can somebody tell me why my bullshit barometer went off? What’s up with this guy and his evasiveness?
Tim Johnson of McClatchy Newspapers refutes the accusation that the ICIJ has been targeting foreign adversaries of the United States in their reporting and examines how middlemen help funnel wealth offshore
The Panama Papers are out and the Panama Papers propaganda is out right along with it. So why does this new mega-leak seemingly only expose those in the State Department crosshairs or expendable others and not a single prominent American politician or businessman? And what does this have to do with the OECD’s plan for a global taxation grid? Find out more in today’s Thought For The Day with James Corbett.
When I first read this article on BeforeItsNews.com, I was very skeptical of the report. Particularly since it was taken from the website, WhatDoesItMean.com, a Sorcha Faal publication. I have watched this publication over the years starting with the big fail NESARA propaganda that had everyone thinking we were gonna be rich as soon as the Big Guys who are bigger than the other Big Guys make them change our monetary system to fair and equal. Well that rumor was going around since the 90’s and possibly before because I can remember how the internet looked back then, a far cry from what it looks like now. Most of the messages came in emails and from blogs. So, I reluctantly read this article.
The more I read it the more my inner sense started to tell me that there was more than a kernel of truth to it. I did what I always do and search it on Google along with reading the comments. BeforeItsNews.com gets a really bad rap because some of their articles are simply NOT worth the read. However, I strongly encourage everyone to read this one. What convinced me of its legitimacy was the “Boiling Frogs” podcast by Sibel Edmonds which I have linked in this post. This report is dated 2014 but the information is so current it is unbelievable. She does have a certain bias, being Turkish herself but she laid it out there, thus verifying a large portion if not all of this article.
SHOW NOTES AND MP3: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=8574 In this exclusive interview for the Boiling Frogs Post Eyeopener report, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds discusses her recent article, “Turkish PM Erdogan: The Speedy Transformation of an Imperial Puppet.” We talk about Erdogan’s falling out with Fethullah Gülen and the CIA, and how serviceable puppets are discarded by their shadow government masters when they reach their “expiration date.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAiAFqXPwZ8
THE STORY December 2, 2015 Putin Orders “Doomsday” Plane Into Air After Military Warns US-Turkey Plot Is “Beyond Staggering”
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) is reporting today that President Putin has ordered the Federation’s Ilyushin-80 giant command and control aircraft designated for use during nuclear war (otherwise known as the “Doomsday plane”) to prepare for worldwide war operations within a fortnight after military intelligence analysts discovered a “beyond staggering” plot by United States and Turkish government factions to bring down Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan and replace him with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “designated figurehead” Fethullah Gulen—while at the same time utilizing Islamic State terrorists as “leverage”.
According to this report, this “beyond staggering” plot by the CIA to overthrow the current government of Turkey was first started in 2008 by the US military-intelligence establishment supported think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) whose board members are a “whose who” of American military connected individuals, including former US Vice President Richard Cheney, and whose research papers advocated the United States creating what they call a “moderate Muslim” majority in the Middle East to battle Islamic extremists and whose target nation for this action was Turkey.
Aiding this CIA in this effort, this report continues, is the Turkish imam Fethullah Gulen who came to the United States in 1999 due to “health problems” and has stayed there since after gaining his visa with help from former CIA officials.
Shortly after the CIA got Gulen into the United States, this report further explains, President Erdogan established in Turkey the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001 as the “moderate Muslim” platform desired by the AEI to effectuate change throughout the entire Middle East using part of Gulen’s massive wealth estimated to be between $22-50 billion.
Fethullah Gulen (l) with Recep Erdogan (r) in 1998
Fearing their “moderate Muslim” project would be destroyed, this report grimly states, the CIA then transferred out of Turkey “selected” military and intelligence officers, before Erdogan could arrest them, to Iraq—and where on 8 April 2013 they declared themselves to be the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS/Daesh/Islamic State).
This is critical point to note, this report says, especially when viewed in the light of international law where Russia is the only military force currently to allowed to be operating in Syria, and which US Defense Secretary Ash Carter admitted to yesterday before the US Congress when he acknowledge that the claim of legal authority to make such a deployment under the terms of the 2001 legislation that authorized the use of military force (AUMF) in Afghanistan and Iraq (the only such congressional authorization on the books) did not exist to send American military forces into this war zone.
To what exact purpose the Obama regime has in secreting these over 14,000 Islamic refugees into the United States, this report concludes, can, perhaps, be seen more clearly in the massive military actions currently underway in America (specifically in the regions occupied by Gulen charter schools), and when combined with the actions currently being observed in the Middle East, shows a nation preparing for total global war.
You just gotta wonder what all the saber rattling is really all about. Is it about peace? Is it about war? Is it about oil? is it about Israeli Secret Intelligence Service? Is it about Islam? Ironically, they want to have stronger gun laws in Western countries while selling high power weaponry and armored vehicles to the so-called moderate rebels who are trying to overthrow their government by any means necessary and they ain’t peaceful means, by the way!
Think about that, what would be the US response if, say, Russia sold guns, munitions and armored trucks etc., to the anarchist enclave in the US, or maybe to the New Black Panther Party, or how about a few men who support the Bundy Ranch empire. Heck, sell some guns to the MOORS, or the Sovereignty movement. I quiver to think of the consequence of that kind of meddling in our movements on the ground against a corrupt government!
Then again, when there is buying, isn’t there some selling going on? So where are these rebels getting the money to purchase these munitions? Or is the US and the other 40 countries that are arming the so-called moderates, giving their millions of dollars in munitions away to these sorry fools who get a kick out of pretend cutting off heads while the other drugged up compatriots kill, rape women and children. Now how moderate is that? This is starting to sound like a big fat trumped up hoax to sell more weapons and kill and displace a few hundred thousand in the process.
One thing that is for certain, it has definitely fit into the depopulation agenda of the elite. Why not just get folks fighting each other and that will save us. We will have more space to stretch out and since we will have robotics to take care of our every whim, we won’t need humans at all after a while.
Maybe they are planning to come back like an Egyptian Pharaoh, and reap the benefits of today’s spoils, for surely it will not happen in their lifetime.
Or maybe they are trying to speed it up so it CAN happen in their life time.
Whatever the case may be, the carnage and destruction is not a pretty picture at all, and somebody needs to rewind the tape back to before Eve gave the apple to Adam.
The Pretend War: Why Bombing Isil Won’t Solve The Problem
The deployment of our military might in Syria will exacerbate regional disorder – and it will solve nothing
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Nov. 28, 2015
Not so long ago, David Cameron declared that he was not some ‘naive neocon who thinks you can drop democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet’. Just a few weeks after making that speech, Cameron authorised UK forces to join in the bombing of Libya — where the outcome reaffirmed this essential lesson.
Soon Cameron will ask parliament to share his ‘firm conviction’ that bombing Raqqa, the Syrian headquarters of the Islamic State, has become ‘imperative’. At first glance, the case for doing so appears compelling. The atrocities in Paris certainly warrant a response. With François Hollande having declared his intention to ‘lead a war which will be pitiless’, other western nations can hardly sit on their hands; as with 9/11 and 7/7, the moment calls for solidarity. And since the RAF is already targeting Isis in Iraq, why not extend the operation to the other side of the elided border? What could be easier?
But it’s harder to establish what expanding the existing bombing campaign further will actually accomplish. Is Britain engaged in what deserves to be called a war, a term that implies politically purposeful military action? Or is the Cameron government — and the Hollande government as well — merely venting its anger, and thereby concealing the absence of clear-eyed political purpose?
Britain and France each once claimed a place among the world’s great military powers. Whether either nation today retains the will (or the capacity) to undertake a ‘pitiless’ war — presumably suggesting a decisive outcome at the far end — is doubtful. The greater risk is that, by confusing war with punishment, they exacerbate the regional disorder to which previous western military interventions have contributed.
Even without Britain doing its bit, plenty of others are willing to drop bombs on Isis on either side of the Iraq-Syria frontier. With token assistance from Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, US forces have thus far flown some 57,000 sorties while completing 8,300 air strikes. United States Central Command keeps a running scorecard: 129 Isis tanks destroyed, 670 staging areas and 5,000 fighting positions plastered, and (in a newish development) 260 oil infrastructure facilities struck, with the numbers updated from one day to the next. The campaign that the Americans call Operation Inherent Resolve has been under way now for 17 months. It seems unlikely to end anytime soon.
In Westminster or the Elysée, the Pentagon’s carefully tabulated statistics are unlikely to garner much official attention, and for good reason. All these numbers make a rather depressing point: with plenty of sorties flown, munitions expended and targets hit, the results achieved, even when supplemented with commando raids, training missions and the generous distribution of arms to local forces, amount in sum to little more than military piddling. In the United States, the evident ineffectiveness of the air campaign has triggered calls for outright invasion. Pundits of a bellicose stripe, most of whom got the Iraq war of 2003 wrong, insist that a mere 10,000 or 20,000 ground troops — 50,000 tops! — will make short work of the Islamic State as a fighting force. Victory guaranteed.
And who knows? Notwithstanding their record of dubious military prognostications, the proponents of invade-and-occupy just might be right — in the short term. The West can evict Isis from Raqqa if it really wants to. But as we have seen in other recent conflicts, the real problems are likely to present themselves the day after victory. What then? Once in, how will we get out? Competition rather than collaboration describes relations between many of the countries opposing Isis. As Barack Obama pointed out this week, there are now two coalitions converging over Syria: a US-led one, and a Russia-led one that includes Iran. Looking for complications? With Turkey this week having shot down a Russian fighter jet — the first time a Nato member has downed a Kremlin military aircraft for half a century — the subsequent war of words between Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin gives the world a glimpse into how all this could spin out of control. The threat posed by terrorism is merely symptomatic of larger underlying problems. Crush Isis, whether by bombing or employing boots on the ground, and those problems will still persist. A new Isis, under a different name but probably flying the same banner, will appear in its place, much as Isis itself emerged from the ashes of al-Qaeda in Iraq…………..
On Tuesday, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that was carrying out military operations against jihadi groups in Northern Syria. The downing of the Su-24 fighter jet is part of a broader plan by the administration of Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan to topple the secular government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and to establish “safe zones” on the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border. Erdogan needs the safe zones to provide a sanctuary for the militant extremists who are the footsoldiers in his war against Syria. The downing of the Russian fighter is a desperate attempt by Erdogan to incite a reaction from Russia that will draw either NATO or the United States deeper into a conflict which has dragged on for 4 and a half years and killed 250,000 people.
Unlike the Obama administration, that has been willing to arm and train jihadi groups to conduct its proxy-war against Assad in Syria, Erdogan is a true believer, a committed Islamist who has done everything in his power to roll back democracy in Turkey, to establish one-man rule, to destroy the independent judiciary, to silence the free press, and to establish a conservative and intolerant Islamic state. Erdogan is what many would call a “Koolaid drinker”, a man who believes that his support for disparate and vicious terrorist groups that have decimated Syria, laid its civilian infrastructure to waste, and displaced more than half the population is “God’s work”. Make no mistake, the Turkish government is the modern-day Caliphate. The fact that its government officials dress in nicely-tailored suits rather than black pajamas, is merely a way to divert attention from their extreme fanaticism and their covert support for liver-eating fundamentalist savages.
In the seven weeks since Russia began military operations in Syria, nearly all of the gains of the US-Turkey-Saudi-Qatar jihadi coalition have been wiped out. The decisive battle took place more than a week ago at Kuweris airbase east of Aleppo. This was the tipping point for the war although the imminent fall of Aleppo is bound to attract more notoriety. It’s clear now that the Russian-led coalition is winning the war, has foiled US attempt to remove Assad, and that the bulk of the foreign mercenaries will either be killed or captured. The Obama administration realizes that the current phase of the war is hopeless and has started to implement a fallback plan to control territory in E Syria that is critical for future pipeline corridors. In contrast, the Turkish government is completely unwilling to accept the fact that its plan has failed which is why it has embarked on this risky strategy to draw either NATO or Washington deeper into the fray. Check this out from a Tuesday battlefield report from South Front:
“The Syrian forces backed up by the Russian warplanes, pushed back the militant groups from nearly 200 kilometers of land in the coastal province of Lattakia, military sources said Monday. On Sunday, the Syrian army and popular forces purged the terrorists and advanced to areas near the Turkish borders. The ground reports argue that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) took control of Zahia heights, 2km from the joint borders with Turkey.”
Can you see what’s going on? The Russian-led coalition is closing in on the Syria-Turkish border which will put an end to Erdogan’s dream of toppling Assad or continuing to fuel the war with terrorists that are provided a safe haven on Syrian soil. This is why the Su-24 fighter was shot down on Tuesday. It is a desperate attempt to salvage the failed strategy of toppling a secular government and replacing it with friendly Islamic extremists who hew to Erdogan’s twisted worldview.
By the way, readers should take a minute and review the video of the “moderate” headchoppers that the US supports in Syria paying special attention to their moderate treatment of prisoners. The Russian pilot was captured by these “freedom fighters”, shot twice in the chest and then his clothes were ripped off so he could be moderately photographed. These are the fine fellows that Uncle Sam would like to see in Damascus heading the government because, as we all know, “Assad has lost legitimacy.” (See here.)
For the last three days, I have been following a fast-evolving plan by the Turkish Terrorist Government (TTG) to create a false flag operation that would draw either the US or NATO deeper into the war in Syria reversing Obama’s recent commitment NOT to deploy ground troops to the warzone. On Saturday, Turkish newspapers reported that 1,500 Syrian Turkmen had fled to the Turkish border for safety. The reasons that were given were that the Russian warplanes were bombing areas where ISIS was not located. True, ISIS is not located in these Turkmen villages by the border; rather the barbarians that you see in the video are located there. These men belong to the jihadi groups that that have been funded, armed and trained by Turkey and the US and who are fighting to topple Assad. Reasonable people who would like to see an end to terrorism, should feel supportive of Putin’s efforts to annihilate these monsters. Instead, the Turkish government has been trying to make the case that Russia is bombing innocent civilians. Now check out this story (from Monday) in Turkey’s leading newspaper Hurriyet:
“Turkey has called for a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss attacks on Turkmens in neighboring Syria, according to Prime Ministry sources, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu saying his government will “not hesitate” to take the required measures on Syrian soil to protect the Turkmen people…
Turkey is in discussions with the United States and Russia over the bombing of the villages and has sent a letter to Britain, the current holder of the U.N. Security Council’s presidency, asking for the subject to be taken up, sources from Davutoğlu’s office told Reuters on Nov. 23…
Speaking to reporters late on Nov. 22, Davutoğlu recalled that he was engaged in constant contact with both Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chief Hakan Fidan over the weekend concerning alleged Russian air raids on Turkmen villages near the Syrian-Turkish border. Sources, meanwhile, told Reuters that Davutoğlu had consulted on the intelligence dimension of the issue with Akar and Fidan.
“Our security forces have been instructed to retaliate against any development that would threaten Turkey’s border security,” the prime minister said. “If there is an attack that would lead to an intense influx of refugees to Turkey, required measures would be taken both inside Syria and Turkey,” he added.
“Looking at background of these attacks, in a region where very clearly there is no element of Deash (ISIS), where there is no terrorist element, first Russian airplanes come and then with support from foreign fighters.
“We will also take the required measures diplomatically for the protection of our brothers and sisters in the place where they are located and for the protection of their human rights in the face of any threat,” he also stated.” (Turkey urges UN to act to protect Turkmens in Syria, Hurriyet)
So is the Turkish PM correct in saying the Russians are bombing the Turkmen civilians forcing them to flee from their homes. Not according to Turkmen leader Ali Türkmani. Here’s what he said:
“There is a perception operation that is being waged over the Turkmens. The regime will of course attempt to maintain its territorial integrity. As such, threats from al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army are being targeted [by Russian air strikes]. It’s not correct to say the Turkmens are being targeted.”
So civilians are not being targeted, but the Turkish government is supplying weapons and ammo to the terrorists as this article in the Turkish Daily Zaman proves:
“Several trucks bound for Syria were stopped at the beginning of last year by Turkish gendarmerie forces upon instructions by a prosecutor. It turned out they contained weapons.
The AK Party government claimed for months that the trucks only included humanitarian aid, but a report published by the Cumhuriyet daily in May last year revealed that the trucks contained weapons.
According to the daily’s report, a truck, which is thought to be one of many, contained 1,000 artillery shells, 50,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells.
The government was accused of sending the weapons to radical Islamist groups in Syria, but Davutoğlu swore in June that the trucks were bound for Turkmens. In contrast, Turkmens had earlier denied receiving any weapons from Turkey.” (Turkey calls on UN Security Council to convene for Turkmens in Syria, Today’s Zaman)
So what is the game-plan here? What is Turkey really up to?
Well, first of all, they are trying to set up a safe zone on sovereign Syrian territory so they can continue to spread terror across Syria. Check out this clip from the Daily Sabah and you’ll see how these Turkmen radicals who are allies of Ankara are seizing villages to create the safe zone:
“Syrian opposition groups supported by Turkish and US warplanes took control of two Turkmen towns in Northern Syria early Saturday, Anadolu Agency reported….The operation was supported by six Turkish F-16s, four US F-15s and an AC-130 joined the offensive along with three drones.
Security sources added that this success in the fight against DAESH that can be defined as the first step for the creation of a DAESH-free zone in Northern Syria….
Speaking about Turkey’s stance on the recent developments in Northern Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a live broadcast on Wednesday that declaring no-fly and safe zones is crucial to resolve the Syrian Crisis….Erdoğan further stated that Turkey will continue to carry out anti-terror operations until concrete results are achieved and peace is restored.” (First step for the safe zone in N. Syria: opposition groups take two Turkmen towns from DAESH, Daily Sabah)
Whether you call it an ISIS-free zone or not is irrelevant. The fact is, the Turkish government (with US air support) is trying to annex Syrian territory for its own nefarious purposes. That much is clear.
The downing of the Russian Su-24 fighter fits perfectly with the way in which the Turkish government has been ratcheting up tensions on the border, using its jihadi allies to seize Syrian territory, and trying to incite a violent reaction that will force greater NATO or US involvement. I seriously doubt that Putin is gullible enough to take the bait and overreact to this obvious and pathetic provocation in Ankara. He will exact his pound of flesh at some other time, a time of his own choosing.
Okay, so now it’s Daesh?? why? Because ISIS really stands for Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. So it got downgraded to IS, and now Daesh. I keep telling them, they don’t need to re-invent the wheel. And they keep trying to convince us that this thing, this quagmire can be won. and now they trying to get everybody scared, looking under their beds for terrorists.
What does Daesh mean? ISIS ‘threatens to cut out the tongues’ of anyone using this word
Excerpt: “In January this year, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that he would begin referring to the Islamic State group by this name, saying: “Daesh hates being referred to by this term, and what they don’t like has an instinctive appeal to me.”It seems that other world leaders have now followed suit, with French president Francois Hollande and the USA’s secretary of state John Kerry both using the term.According to NBC, ISIS has reportedly threatened to ‘cut out the tongues’ of anyone it hears using the term.Evan Kohlmann, a national security analyst, told NBC: “It’s a derogatory term and not something people should use even if you dislike them.”
Cognitive dissonance at the helm of this campaign or have the Psychopaths of the world been unleashed?
How is it that the dots are not being connected? When you bomb somebody’s home, town, city, country, infrastructure, where are they supposed to go? What are they supposed to do. Stay there and risk loosing their lives?
The War on Terror is waged on all people civilians and militants alike. No longer is it an army against another army or a country against another country, we are looking at what I would call, tribal wars, where people are fighting people simply because they have decided that the “PEOPLE” are the enemy.
And to legitimize this operation they arm the rebels so they rebels can have something to fight back with? It is pure insanity and beyond comprehension that any of this could make any sense to anyone except another Psychopath!
And while we are at it, let’s create an even worse crisis for the refugees fleeing Syria as Turkey outright bombs with western and US back ammo. Turkey, under the bidding of the US has further destabilized its own sovereignty wanting so desperately to be an EU member while endangering the very lives of its own citizens. So as a show of force and strength it will send 10 thousand troops to the border to keep the very people they disenfranchised out of Turkey. Can we scream TOTAL FAIL??
I would like to know who their military strategist is who comes up with these plans, do they have any clue about the “blowback” this can create? Had they even thought about the already looming refugee crisis happening as a result of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, where did they think the people of Syria who want to live their lives in peace where going to go when their lives and livelihoods have been totally usurped from them? Did they think they could kill off all the civilians and just have the issue of mass graves instead of mass tent cities lining their Turkish borders.
Turkey has geo-politically placed itself inside a cesspool with a bunch of folks who could care less about Turkish interests and are more concerned with their own hegemony in the so-called Middle East.
Commentary by NB, 11-14-2015 I was just thinking to myself the other day, it’s been pretty quiet. I felt a shift in my person and said, it’s time for something to happen. And s u r enough. Now Paris is under martial law. 1500 soldiers? ?? Really???
Yeah, the whole line of “its’ an attack on humanity” can somebody give me a break???!!! I couldn’t even watch BHO make that ridiculous announcement. How is it an attack on humanity but when drones strikes hit innocents in the Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, how is that NOT an attack on humanity. I am insensed at how they can blatantly favor one portion of humanity over another. What about the attacks that are caused by the so called terrorists in Africa!! Why issn’t that called an attack on humanity?
And we all know what solidarity means.
Even Russia is using this as part of their Agenda to support their acts against Terroristic threats, especially since Syria was not invited to the talks about what is going on in Syria, so Iran said, I ain’t going and Russia is like well dang, if the major players ain’t gonna be there what’s the sense of me going. So we will just keep duking it out until we kill all the bastards! And for some strange reason even the US will not be there. HUH???
The US got played when Russia took over the fight against ISIS and its affiliates. Now they have to garner their allies by calling for a human shield against ISIS or whomever they are gonna claim did it. It’s the solidarity they need! The joining of forces against the band. Like two gangs fighting another gang. Russia is smacking Saudi Arabia! Russia is gaining ground with Iran and Syria! Russia is pulling in Iraq who told the US to stop sending troops to their country, they are now working with the Russians. Folks do not want an endless war on Terror! People are tired, dead and homeless!
Unfortunately as the WHATEVER agenda ensues folks are actually gonna die! They know that we smell a rat, so they are gonna kill some folks to get their programs in place. To me that is the real attack on humanity!
Paris, France…. Strictest gun laws in the world and terrorists can come in armed to the teeth and take out some 160 folks in various attacks around the city??
World and regional powers will discuss the Syrian peace process in Vienna on Saturday, as the world struggles to cope with the terrorist attacks in Paris. Islamic State, one of the key players in the Syrian conflict, claims responsibility for the crime.
“Without a doubt, what happened in Paris last night, cannot fail to affect the present atmosphere, and the negotiation process,” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said.
*Syria Not Invited to Talks on Resolving Endless War* by Stephen Lendman On November 14, around 20 nations will meet in Vienna for more talks on resolving the long-running Syrian conflict – launched by Obama, intending to continue it until Assad is replaced by a US-controlled puppet. Late October talks accomplished nothing………..
*US Rejects Russia’s Syrian Peace Proposal* by Stephen Lendman Throughout four-and-a-half years of conflict, Russia has gone all-out to resolve it diplomatically – in stark contrast to Washington, wanting endless war continued, no matter the devastating human toll. Obama bears full responsibility for horrific carnage and mass displacement, using ISIS and other takfiri terrorists, imported foot soldiers from scores of countries, supplemented since September 2014 by US air attacks on Syrian infrastructure and other government targets, aiming to replace Assad with a Western-controlled..
*Hype Following Friday’s Likely Paris False Flag* by Stephen Lendman Unsurprisingly, Western media ignored what has all the earmarks of a well-planned false flag – Washington perhaps complicit with France. Maybe Israel was involved to justify its reign of terror on Palestine. The usual suspects were blamed (ISIS terrorists, of course) before the dust settled – the clearest indication of a Big Lie. A joint FBI/Department of Homeland Security statement said “(w)e will not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people.” Expect harsher police… more »
Obama claimed day before Paris attacks that he had “contained ISIS”.
“…through the Strong Cities Network that we have unveiled today, we are making the first systematic effort in history to bring together cities around the world to share experiences, to pool resources and to forge partnerships in order to build local cohesion and resilience on a global scale. Today we tell every city, every town and every community that has lost the flower of its youth to a sea of hatred – you are not alone. We stand together and we stand with you.
“By connecting municipal leaders, facilitating information-sharing and providing training and other assistance where appropriate, the Strong Cities Network will help to fashion a global response to a global issue, without losing sight of its inherently local roots….It will provide a platform for discussing community policing and prevention strategies that safeguard the individual rights of citizens.
“…the Obama Administration is deeply committed to ensuring that the Strong Cities Network is as strong, vibrant and resilient as the cities it unites…
“When the representatives of the Strong Cities Network join together for their first Annual Summit in Paris in Spring 2016, they will be making a strong and clear statement to their citizens and to the world: we stand united against violence, united against fear and united in the pursuit of a better and brighter future.” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch
The Islamic State terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks that killed at least 127 people in Paris. In an official statement the group said its fighters, armed with suicide bomb belts and machine guns, carried out the terror strikes at various locations they had pinpointed in the heart of the French capital.
By Sebastian O. [Originally published on April 12, 2012]
So, you’re thinking about moving to France, sitting under the Eiffel Tower, sipping a café au lait and contemplating the meaning of life. Come right across the big pond…but make sure to leave your artillery at home. Owning firearms in France and using them for sport, hunting, and self-defense makes New York City laws look tame in comparison and there is no second amendment to protect the rights of French gun owners. This post is meant as a basic introduction to the nonsensical jungle of French gun laws, sports shooting, and hunting and was inspired by last year’s TTAG break-down of German gun laws . .
LOL, it’s all about the war, the fighting, the blood and the gore that makes the stocks rise and the blood boil in delirium. Funny how war makes the cash registers ring and the banksters happy, they don’t care who does it, just do it!! what a mad, mad, mad world we live in.
Not to mention this has gone on far too long and those folks are jumping ship, thousands at a time and finding their way into Europe.
And the reality is, when the war comes home, somebody says, wth??? We thought they would just kill them all off there, and have mass graves to bury them in, why are they escaping and why the hell are they coming here, hey wait a minute, nobody told us this would be the “blowback”!!! What the f*****k? And we all know they ain’t gonna go live with the Queen, nor is she gonna provide them a sovereign land to live on, even though she is the biggest land owner in the world, and she ain’t gonna roll over Beethoven and open up the Taj Mahal for them to hang out in, and forget it, tent cities all over Europe is an eyesore.
Forget the xenophobia, the antisemitism, the urban blight, the destruction of our way of life….? Keep they arses over thar where they belong (misspelling for emphasis). Hahahahah, I can’t stop laughing at this debacle. But funnier than that is the next stupid nation that sides with these war criminals, thinking they are gonna get more than crumbs from the pie. SMDH, when will they ever learn……???
Syrians waiting to cross into Turkey
Russian military operation in Syria bolsters oil market, domestic stocks
Oil prices have risen 12 percent in October to a two-month high. Rising crude coincides with Russia’s airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria which began on September 30.
The price of Brent in London increased over one percent to $53 per barrel on Friday. US benchmark WTI is trading higher than $50 per barrel for the first time in three months after hitting six-year lows in late August. Other factors contributing to rising oil prices include a weakened dollar and shrinking US production.
Crude prices can be particularly responsive to unrest or violence in the Middle East, one of world’s biggest oil-producing regions. While Syria does not have significant oil reserves, crude prices rise over fears the conflict could spread to the broader region.
“Syria is not a crude oil producer—its real significance to the energy markets is not a heightening of its ongoing internal conflict but rather the risk of contagion within the region at large,”the Wall Street Journalquotes NUS Consulting Group as saying. Read More:https://www.rt.com/business/318097-russia-stocks-oil-ruble-syria/
Let’s be real. It’s one thing to say that Russia’s takeover of the Crimean Peninsula “cannot be allowed to stand,” as many foreign policy sages have proclaimed. It’s quite another to do something about it.
Is it just me, or does the rhetoric about the crisis in Ukraine sound as if all of Washington is suffering from amnesia? We’re supposed to be shocked—shocked!—that a great military power would cook up a pretext to invade a smaller, weaker nation? I’m sorry, but has everyone forgotten the unfortunate events in Iraq a few years ago?
My sentiments, to be clear, are with the legitimate Ukrainian government, not with the neo-imperialist regime in Russia. But the United States, frankly, has limited standing to insist on absolute respect for the territorial integrity of sovereign states.
Before Iraq there was Afghanistan, there was the Gulf War, there was Panama, there was Grenada. And even as we condemn Moscow for its outrageous aggression, we reserve the right to fire deadly missiles into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and who knows where else.
None of this gives Russian President Vladimir Putin the right to pluck Crimea from the rest of Ukraine and effectively reincorporate the historic peninsula into the Russian empire. But it’s hard to base U.S. objections on principle—even if Putin’s claim that Russian nationals in Crimea were somehow being threatened turn out to be as hollow as the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
The Obama administration has been clear in its condemnation of Putin’s operation. Critics who blame the Russian action on “weak” or “feckless” U.S. foreign policy are being either cynical or clueless.
It is meaningless to rattle sabers if the whole world knows you have no intention of using them. There is no credible military threat by the United States that could conceivably force Putin to surrender Crimea if he doesn’t want to. Russia is much diminished from the Soviet era but remains a superpower whose nuclear arsenal poses an existential threat to any adversary. There are only a few nations that cannot be coerced by, say, the sudden appearance of a U.S. aircraft carrier group on the horizon. Russia is one of them.
If the goal is to persuade Russia to give Crimea back—which may or may not be possible—the first necessary step is to try to understand why Putin grabbed it in the first place.
When Ukraine emerged as a sovereign state from the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was agreed that the Russian navy would retain its bases on the Crimean Peninsula. After Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, was deposed by a “people power” revolution, it was perhaps inevitable that Putin would believe the status of those bases was in question, if not under threat.
The new government in Kiev could offer formal reassurances about the Russian naval base in Sevastopol. More broadly, however, Putin may have decided that allowing Ukraine to escape Moscow’s orbit was too much to swallow. Seizing Crimea does more than secure a warm-water port for Russian ships. It implies the threat of further territorial incursions—unless the new government becomes more accommodating to its powerful neighbor.
This is not fair to Ukraine. But I don’t believe it helps the Ukrainians to pretend that there’s a way to make Putin surrender Crimea if he wants to keep it.
The question is whether there is any way to tip the balance of Putin’s cost-benefit analysis. The Russian leader has nothing to fear from the U.N. Security Council, since Russia can veto any proposed action. Kicking Russia out of the G-8 group of leading industrialized nations would be a blow to Moscow’s prestige, but probably would not cause Putin to lose much sleep.
Economic sanctions are more easily threatened than actually applied. The European Union depends on Russia for much of its natural gas—a fact that gives Putin considerable leverage. In a broader sense, there is zero enthusiasm in Europe for a reprise of the Cold War. Putin knows this.
If Putin really has lost touch with reality, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly speculated in a conversation with President Obama, then all bets are off. But if Putin is being smart, he will offer a solution: Russia gets sole or joint possession of Crimea. Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics remember that Moscow is watching, and we all settle down.
Sadly for Ukraine, but realistically, that may be a deal the world decides to accept.
By Eugene Robinson Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.
EUGENE ROBINSON uses his twice-weekly column in The Washington Post to pick American society apart and then put it back together again in unexpected, and revelatory, new ways. To do this job of demolition and reassembly, Robinson relies on a large and varied tool kit: energy, curiosity, elegant writing, and the wide-ranging experience of a life that took him from childhood in the segregated South—on what they called the “colored” side of the tracks—to the heights of American journalism. In a 25-year career at The Washington Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistantmanaging editor in charge of the paper’s award-winning Style section. He has writtenbooks about race in Brazil and music in Cuba, covered a heavyweightchampionship fight, witnessed riots in Philadelphia and a murder trial in the deepest Amazon, sat with presidents and dictators and the Queen of England, thrusted and parried with hair-proud politicians from sea to shining sea, handicapped all three editions of “American Idol,” acquired fluent Spanish and passable Portuguese, and even reached an uneasy truce with the noxious hip-hop lyrics that fester in his teenage son’s innocent-looking iPod. Eugene Robinson won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Judges complimented Robinson’s “eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture.
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