Not Another Article On Syria? Well, Yeah

“Just exactly how many articles on Syria and Iraq can you actually churn out?” a friend of mine asked me recently.  “You were only over in Damascus for five freaking days.  And you haven’t been to Iraq since 2008.  So what makes YOU such an expert on these two countries?”

Even after less than a week spent in Damascus and after only having been to Iraq four-and-a-half times, I apparently already know more about Syria and Baghdad and Al Ambar than all those dingbats in the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA combined.  Unfortunately.

Washington neo-cons and their neo-con counterparts in Tel Aviv have really gotten the Arab world totally wrong.

So, even though I would really rather be writing about almost anything else right now, it is still my civic duty to set these fools straight.  Sorry about that.

What I really want to be writing about this week is the exciting new Freedom Summer 50th-anniversary conference in Jackson, Mississippi, where a bunch of folks are getting together to celebrate having survived the heroic summer of 1964 when so many civil rights workers poured their hearts out in an attempt to finally bring justice to the Ol’ South — and some of them lost their lives while doing it too .

But apparently justice in the Ol’ South will have to wait a bit longer.  Right now we need to talk about justice in the Middle East first.

After the fall of the U.S.S.R., Washington neo-cons needed a new boogeyman to scare Americans into handing over our hard-earned tax dollars to the military-industrial complex.  And so the military-industrial complex came up with the idea of making Islam the bad guy.  But then apparently Washington neo-cons actually began to believe their own hype — and even went so far as to actually start creating and financing “Islamic Militants” where none had existed so far.

According to journalist Fenian Cunningham, “The biggest recruitment office for such groups [as ISIS] is the British government and its criminal militaristic foreign policy, which has been destroying countries for years, overtly and covertly.  That same destructive British state-sponsored terrorism, alongside that of its American and other NATO allies, is also why millions of Syrians and Iraqis are living in tents, unable to feed their families.”

The thumbscrews were not only put onto various Islamic countries until “militants” actually did start to emerge, but then Wall Street and War Street — bound and determined to sell as many weapons as possible — actually started creating “Islamic Militants” themselves (and of course all the while praying for another “Pearl Harbor”)

According to an article in Information Clearinghouse, “Key members of ISIS it now emerges were trained by US CIA and Special Forces command at a secret camp in Jordan in 2012, according to informed Jordanian officials…Former US State Department official Andrew Doran wrote in the conservative National Review magazine that some ISIS warriors also hold US passports.”

Neo-cons began manufacturing these Frankenstein monsters left and right, actually paying thousands of poor unfortunate souls in the Middle East to go on “jihad”.  https://veracityvoice.com/?p=20684

Even way back in the 1970s I could have warned the military-industrial complex that these acts of folly would eventually start leading to blow-back — not to mention the sky-rocketing cost of gasoline as a result of all this footsie-playing in the Middle East.

According to journalist Juan Cole, “During the past ten years, American drivers have seen their gasoline bill go up tremendously – though not as much as it by all rights should have – and stay there.”  

Apparently, The M-IC’s money-making scheme in the Middle East was that various U.S. and Israeli neo-cons would be constantly stirring up the pot there, turning Arab against Arab until they all freaking started to butcher each other like so many crabs in a barrel.  And then the U.S. and Israeli neo-cons would steal everything that wasn’t nailed down while no one over there was looking.  It sounded like a good plan.  Until the rest of us Americans and Israelis finally began to realize that there was nothing in this witches’ brew for the rest of us except danger to ourselves.

According to me, ISIS is nothing but a bunch of pirates, the Taliban are murdering wife-beaters, the idiots in charge of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Iraq are dictators and Libya is overrun by barbarians.  And who created all these proto-zombies?  Neo-cons in Israel and the U.S.  Of course.

According to Franklin Lamb, who seems to be legendary in Damascus for fabricating stories and mooching off of the Syrian government, ISIS, Syria’s arch enemy, is practically a freaking benevolent organization who succors the poor, has nukes of its own and whose goal is to unite all the downtrodden Arabs in the Middle East into one coherent version of the freaking Red Cross and then liberate Palestine and wash Israel into the sea. https://veracityvoice.com/?p=20664 .

However, Palestinians in Syria did not support ISIS’s brutality and refused to be drawn in — so ISIS bombed the crap out of them instead.  And the Palestinians in Israel already have neo-cons killing their kids — and don’t need any more neo-con-backed pirates adding even more “creative chaos” to the mix.

Huh?  No.  Forget about the sparkling clean Red Cross wannabe image.  These ISIS guys are down and dirty pirates.  And that’s “all she wrote” about that.  And apparently we American taxpayers are paying for all of ISIS’s new Toyotas, rocket-launchers and Nikes as well.

“You talk as though the military-industrial complex may finally be starting to get its comeuppance for generating such a devious plot — but, frankly, it is not,” you might comment at this point.

No, it is not.  Not yet.  But if Wall Street and War Street continue to play their cutesy little “Divide and Conquer” games in the Middle East, keep on messing with its political eco-system, breaking down its civil society in this bad way, and creating and financing even more Al Qaedas, Talibans and ISISs and driving world gas prices sky-high, then eventually it will suck to be you! 

Even against all odds and proof, I still have faith that the rest of us Americans, us average decent salt-of-the-earth types, will finally put a stop to all these nefarious neo-con schemes and finally start bringing our money and our troops home from the Middle East instead — and stop picking on all these poor Arabs before they end up going completely freaking nuts as they see their parents, wives and children constantly being blown to bits before their very eyes by these neo-con monsters.

Not sure why I keep holding out hope that this will happen.  But do I really have any other choice?

What Did The White House Know?

Did Obama Know that ISIS Planned to Invade Iraq?

“I think we have to understand first how we got here. We have been arming ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) in Syria.  ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, has been collaborating with the Syrian rebels whom the Obama administration has been arming in their efforts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”  – Senator Rand Paul, Interview CNN 

Today’s head-scratcher: How could a two-mile long column of jihadi-filled white Toyota Land rovers barrel across the Syrian border into Iraq–sending plumes of dust up into the atmosphere –without US spy satellites detecting their whereabouts when those same satellites can read a damn license plate from outer space? And why has the media failed to inquire about this massive Intelligence failure?

Barack Obama is a big proponent of “inclusive democracy” which is why he wants Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki to either include more Sunnis in the government or resign as PM. In an interview with CNN, Obama said, “We gave Iraq the chance to have an inclusive democracy, to work across sectarian lines to provide a better future for their children and unfortunately what we’ve seen is a breakdown of trust…There’s no doubt that there has been a suspicion for quite some time now amongst Sunnis that they have no access to using the political process to deal with their grievances, and that is in part the reason why a better-armed and larger number of Iraqi security forces melted away when an extremist group, Isis, started rolling through the western portions of Iraq.

“Part of the task now is to see whether Iraqi leaders are prepared to rise above sectarian motivations, come together, and compromise. If they can’t there’s not going to be a military solution to this problem … There’s no amount of American firepower that’s going to be able to hold the country together and I’ve made that very clear to Mr Maliki and all the other leadership inside of Iraq (that) they don’t have a lot of time.” (New York Times)

Anyone who thinks Obama  gives a rip about sectarian problems in Iraq needs his head examined. That’s the lamest excuse for a policy position since the Bush administration announced they were sending troops to Afghanistan to “liberate” women from having to wear headscarves.  If Obama was serious about “inclusive democracy” as he calls it, then he’d withhold the $1.3 billion from his new dictator buddy, Generalissimo al Sisi of Egypt who toppled the democratically-elected government in Cairo, installed himself as top-dog in conspicuously rigged elections, and is now planning to execute 200-plus Egyptians for being members of a party that was legal just a few months ago.   Do you think Obama is pestering al-Sisi to be “more inclusive”?  No way. He doesn’t care how many people are executed in Egypt, anymore than he cares whether al Maliki blocks Sunnis from a spot in the government. What matters to Obama and his deep-state puppetmasters is regime change, that is, getting rid of a nuisance who hasn’t followed Washington’s directives. That’s what this is all about. Obama and Co. want to give al Maliki the old heave-ho because he refused to let US troops stay in Iraq past the 2012 deadline and because he’s too close to Tehran. Two strikes and you’re out, at least that’s how Washington plays the game.

So Maliki has got to go, and all the hoopla over sectarian issues is just pabulum for the News Hour. It means nothing. The real goal is regime change. That, and the partitioning of Iraq. In fact, the de facto partitioning of Iraq has already taken place. The Sunnis have basically seized the part of the country where they plan to live. The Kurds have nailed down their own territory, and the Shia will get Baghdad and the rest, including Basra. So, the division of Iraq has already a done deal, just as long as al Maliki doesn’t  gum up the works by deploying his army to retake the parts of the country that are now occupied by ISIS. But the Obama team probably won’t allow that to happen, mainly because the bigshots in Washington like things the way they are now. They want an Iraq that is broken into smaller chunks and ruled by tribal leaders and warlords. That’s what this is all about, splitting up the country along the lines that were laid out in an Israeli plan authored by Oded Yinon 30 years ago.  That plan has already been implemented which means Iraq, as we traditionally think of it, no longer exists. It’s kaput. Obama and Co. made sure of that.  They weren’t satisfied with just killing a million Iraqis, polluting the environment, poisoning the water, destroying the schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and leaving them to scrape by on meager rations, foul water and a tattered electrical grid. They had to come back and annihilate the state itself, erase the lines on the map,  and remove any trace of a nation that was once a prosperous Middle East hub. Now the country is gone, vanished overnight. Poof. Now you see it, now you don’t.

Of course, al Maliki could try to reverse the situation, but he’s got his own problems to deal with. It’s going to be hard enough for him just to hold onto power, let alone launch a sustained attack on a disparate band of cutthroats who are bent on wreaking havoc on oil wells, critical infrastructure, pipelines, reservoirs, etc as well as killing as many infidels as humanly possible. No matter how you cut it, al Maliki is going to have his hands full.  Obama has already made it plain, that he’s gunning for him and won’t rest until he’s gone. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry is in the Middle East right now trying to drum up support for the “Dump Maliki” campaign. His first stopover was Cairo. Here’s a wrap-up form the Sunday Times:

“Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Cairo on Sunday morning on the first leg of a trip that is intended to hasten the formation of a cross-sectarian government in Iraq. In his swing through Middle East capitals, Mr. Kerry plans to send two messages on Iraq. One is that Arab states should use their influence with Iraqi politicians and prod them to quickly form an inclusive government. Another is that they should crack down on funding to the Sunni militants in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The group is largely self-sustaining because of success in extortion and its plundering of banks in Mosul, Iraq. But some funding “has flowed into Iraq from its neighbors,” said a senior official on Mr. Kerry’s plane.” (Kerry Arrives in Cairo on Trip to Push for New Iraqi Government, New York Times)

How’s that for priorities? First we get rid of al Maliki, says Kerry, then we move on to less important matters, like that  horde of jihadi desperados who are descending on Baghdad like a swarm of locusts. Doesn’t that seem a little backasswards to you, dear reader?

And why isn’t Obama worried about a jihadi attack on Baghdad?   Think of it: If they did attack Baghdad and the capital fell into jihadi hands, then what? Well, then the Dems would take the blame, they’d get their butts whooped in the upcoming midterms, and Madame Hillary would have to take up needlepoint because her chances of winning the 2014 presidential balloting would drop to zero.  So, the fallout would be quite grave. Still, Obama’s not sweating it, in fact, he’s not the least bit worried. Why?

Could it be that he knows something that we don’t know?  Could it be that US Intel agents have already made contact with these yahoos and gotten a commitment that they won’t attack Baghdad if they are allowed to remain in the predominantly Sunni areas which they already occupy? Is that it? Did Obama offer the Baathists and Takfiris a quid pro quo which they graciously accepted?

It’s very likely, mainly because it achieves Obama’s strategic objective of establishing a de facto partition that will remain in effect unless al Maliki can whip up an army to retake lost ground which looks doubtful at this point.

But, here’s the glitch;  al Maliki is not a quitter, and he’s not going anywhere. In fact he’s digging in his heels. He’s not going to be blackmailed by the likes of Obama. He’s going to this fight tooth and nail. And he’s going to have help too, because young Shia males are flocking to the recruiting offices to join the army and the militias. And then there’s Russia; in a surprise announcement  Russian president Vladimir Putin offered to assist al Maliki in the fight against the terrorists, a move that is bound to enrage Washington. Here’s a clip from the Daily Star:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday offered Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Moscow’s total backing for the fight against jihadist fighters who have swept across the Middle East country.

“Putin confirmed Russia’s complete support for the efforts of the Iraqi government to speedily liberate the territory of the republic from terrorists,” the Kremlin said in a statement following a phone call between the two leaders…
Russia is one of the staunchest allies of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and has helped prop up his regime during three years of fighting against a hotchpotch of rebel groups, including the ISIL.”  ( Putin offers Iraq’s Maliki ‘complete support’ against jihadists, Daily Star)

That makes a third front in which Russia and the US will be on opposite sides. It’s just like the good old days, right?  Putin seems to be resigned to the idea that Moscow and Washington are going to be at loggerheads in the future. He’s not only opposed to a “unitary world order”, he’s doing something about it, putting himself and his country’s future at risk in order to stop the empire’s relentless expansion and vicious wars of aggression.  Needless to say, proxy wars like this can lead to rapid escalation which is always a concern when both parties have nuclear weapons at their disposal.  Now check this out from the Oil Price website:

“Here’s why the threat goes beyond Iraq and Syria…Modern Syria is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan and Israel to the south and Lebanon to the west.

‘Greater Syria’ incorporates most of the territories of each.

This is what ‘Syria’ means in the mind of Middle Easterners, says Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and author of the respected blog SyriaComment.com

‘If we can teach people that so many Arabs still think of Syria as Greater Syria, they will begin to understand the extent to which Sykes-Picot remains challenged in the region,’ said Landis.

Sykes-Picot, of course refers to the secret agreement drawn up by two British and French diplomats — Sir Mark Sykes and Francois George-Picot — at the end of Word War I dividing the spoils of the Ottoman Empires between Britain and France by drawing straight lines in the sand.

To this day, many Arabs refuse to accept that division and think of ‘Syria’ as ‘Greater Syria.’ Some go so far as to include the Arab countries of North Africa – which from the Nile to the Euphrates forms ‘the Fertile Crescent,’ the symbol of many Muslim countries from Tunisia to Turkey. And some even go as far as including the island of Cyprus, saying it represents the star next to the crescent.

Given that, anyone who thinks ISIS will stop with Iraq is delusional.”  (Insiders reveal real US aims in redrawing map of ME: Greater Syria, oil price)

Interesting, eh? So, if Mr. Landis is right, then the fracas in Iraq and Syria might just be the tip of the iceberg. It could be that Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh –who we think are the driving force behind this current wave of violence–have a much more ambitious plan in mind for the future. If this new method of effecting regime change succeeds,  then the sky’s the limit. Maybe they’ll try the same stunt in other countries too, like Turkey, Tunisia, Cyprus, and all the way to North Africa. Why not? If the game plan is to Balkanize Arab countries wholesale and transform them into powerless fiefdoms overseen by US proconsuls and local warlords, why not go on a regime change spree?

By the way, according to the Telegraph, Obama and friends knew what ISIS was up to, and knew that the terrorist group was going to launch attacks on cities in the Sunni territories, just as they have. Get a load of this:

“Five months ago, a Kurdish intelligence “asset” walked into a base and said he had information to hand over. The capture by jihadists the month before of two Sunni cities in western Iraq was just the beginning, he said.
There would soon be a major onslaught on Sunni territories.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), a renegade offshoot of al-Qaeda, was about to take its well-known cooperation with leftovers of the regime of Saddam Hussein,  and his former deputy Izzat al-Douri, to a new level.

His handlers knew their source of old, and he had always proved reliable, officials told The Telegraph. So they listened carefully as he said a formal alliance was about to be signed that would lead to the takeover of Mosul, the biggest city north of Baghdad, home to two million people. …

‘We had this information then, and we passed it on to your (British) government and the US government,’ Rooz Bahjat, a senior lieutenant to Lahur Talabani, head of Kurdish intelligence, said. ‘We used our official liaisons.’

‘We knew exactly what strategy they were going to use, we knew the military planners. It fell on deaf ears.’  (How US and Britain were warned of Isis advance in Iraq but ‘turned a deaf ear, Telegraph)

“Deaf ears”?

I’m not buying it. I think the intelligence went straight to the top, where Obama and his neocon colleagues came up with the plan that is unfolding as we speak. They figured, if they just look the other way and let these homicidal madhatters seize a few cities and raise a little Hell, they’d be able to kill two birds with one stone, that is,  get rid of al Mailiki and partition the country at the same time. But, it’s not going to work out like Obama expects, mainly because this is just about the dumbest plan ever conjured up. I would give it an 80 percent chance blowing up in Obama’s face in less than a month’s time. This turkey has failure written all over it.

As for the sectarian issue, well, Iraq was never a sectarian society until the war.  The problems arose due to a deliberate policy to pit one sect against the other in order to change the narrative of what was really going on the ground. And what was really going on was a very successful guerilla war was being waged by opponents of the US occupation who were launching in excess of 100 attacks per day on US soldiers. To change the storyline–which was causing all kinds of problems at home where support for the war was rapidly eroding–US counterinsurgency masterminds concocted a goofy plan to blow up the Golden Dome Mosque, blame it on the Sunnis, and then unleash the most savage, genocidal counterinsurgency operation of all-time. The western media were instructed to characterize developments in Iraq as part of a bloody civil war between Shia and Sunnis. But it was all a lie. The bloodletting was inevitable result of US policy which the Guardian effectively chronicled in a shocking, but indispensable hour-long video which can be seen here. James Steele: America’s mystery man in Iraq – video

The US made every effort to fuel sectarian animosities to divert attention from the attacks on US soldiers. And due to a savage and deceptive counterinsurgency plan that employed death squads, torture, assassinations, and massive ethnic cleansing,  they succeeded in confusing Iraqis as to who was really behind the daily atrocities, the human rights violations and the mountain of carnage.

You’d have to be a fool to blame al-Maliki for any of this. As brutal as he may be, he’s not responsible for the divisions in Iraqi society. That’s all Washington’s doing.  Just as Washington is entirely responsible for the current condition of the country and for the million or so people who were killed in the war.

The ISIS Fiasco: It’s Really An Attack On Iran

There’s something that doesn’t ring-true about the coverage of crisis in Iraq. Maybe it’s the way the media reiterates the same, tedious storyline over and over again with only the slightest changes in the narrative. For example, I was reading an article in the Financial Times by Council on Foreign Relations president, Richard Haass, where he says that Maliki’s military forces in Mosul “melted away”. Interestingly, the Haass op-ed was followed by a piece by David Gardener who used almost the very same language. He said the “army melts away.” So, I decided to thumb through the news a bit and see how many other journalists were stung by the “melted away” bug. And, as it happens, there were quite a few, including Politico, NBC News, News Sentinel, Global Post, the National Interest, ABC News etc. Now, the only way an unusual expression like that would pop up with such frequency would be if the authors were getting their talking points from a central authority. (which they probably do.) But the effect, of course, is the exact opposite than what the authors intend, that is, these cookie cutter stories leave readers scratching their heads and feeling like something fishy is going on.

And something fishy IS going on. The whole fable about 1,500 jihadis scaring the pants off 30,000 Iraqi security guards to the point where they threw away their rifles, changed their clothes and headed for the hills, is just not believable. I don’t know what happened in Mosul, but, I’ll tell you one thing, it wasn’t that. That story just doesn’t pass the smell test.

And what happened in Mosul matters too, because nearly every journalist and pundit in the MSM is using the story to discredit Maliki and suggest that maybe Iraq would be better off without him. Haass says that it shows that the army’s “allegiance to the government is paper thin”. Gardener says its a sign of “a fast failing state.” Other op-ed writers like Nicolas Kristof attack Maliki for other reasons, like being too sectarian. Here’s Kristof:

“The debacle in Iraq isn’t President Obama’s fault. It’s not the Republicans’ fault. Both bear some responsibility, but, overwhelmingly, it’s the fault of the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.”

Of course, Kristof is no match for the imperial mouthpiece, Tom Friedman. When it comes to pure boneheaded bluster, Friedman is still numero uno. Here’s how the jowly pundit summed it up in an article in the Sunday Times titled “Five Principles for Iraq”:

“Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has proved himself not to be a friend of a democratic, pluralistic Iraq either. From Day 1, he has used his office to install Shiites in key security posts, drive out Sunni politicians and generals and direct money to Shiite communities. In a word, Maliki has been a total jerk. Besides being prime minister, he made himself acting minister of defense, minister of the interior and national security adviser, and his cronies also control the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry.

Maliki had a choice — to rule in a sectarian way or in an inclusive way — and he chose sectarianism. We owe him nothing.” (Five Principles for Iraq, Tom Freidman, New York Times)

Leave it to Friedman, eh? In other words, the reason Iraq is such a mess, has nothing to do with the invasion, the occupation, the death squads, Abu Ghraib, the Salvador Option, the decimated infrastructure, the polluted environment, or the vicious sectarian war the US ignited with its demented counterinsurgency program. Oh, no. The reason Iraq is a basketcase is because Maliki is a jerk. Maliki is sectarian. Bad Maliki.

Sound familiar? Putin last week. Maliki this week. Who’s next?

In any event, there is a rational explanation for what happened in Mosul although I cannot verify its authenticity. Check out this post at Syria Perspectives blog:

“…the Iraqi Ba’ath Party’s primary theoretician and Saddam’s right-hand man, ‘Izzaat Ibraaheem Al-Douri, himself a native of Mosul…was searching out allies in a very hostile post-Saddam Iraq … Still on the run and wanted for execution by the Al-Maliki government, Al-Douri still controlled a vast network of Iraqi Sunni Ba’athists who operated in a manner similar to the old Odessa organization that helped escaped Nazis after WWII … he did not have the support structure needed to oust Al-Maliki, so, he found an odd alliance in ISIS through the offices of Erdoghan and Bandar. Our readers should note that the taking of Mosul was accomplished by former Iraqi Ba’athist officers suspiciously abandoning their posts and leaving a 52,000 man military force without any leadership thereby forcing a complete collapse of the city’s defenses. The planning and collaboration cannot be coincidental.” (THE INNER CORE OF ISIS – THE INVASIVE SPECIES, Ziad Fadel, Syrian Perspectives)

I’ve read variations of this same explanation on other blogs, but I have no way of knowing whether they’re true or not. But what I do know, is that it’s a heckuva a lot more believable than the other explanation mainly because it provides enough background and detail to make the scenario seem plausible. The official version–the “melts away” version– doesn’t do that at all. It just lays out this big bogus story expecting people to believe it on faith alone. Why? Because it appeared in all the papers?

That seems like a particularly bad reason for believing anything.

And the “army melting away” story is just one of many inconsistencies in the official media version of events. Another puzzler is why Obama allowed the jihadis to rampage across Iraq without lifting a finger to help. Does that strike anyone else as a bit odd?

When was the last time an acting president failed to respond immediately and forcefully to a similar act of aggression?

Never. The US always responds. And the pattern is always the same. “Stop what you are doing now or we’re going to bomb you to smithereens.” Isn’t that the typical response?

Sure it is. But Obama delivered no such threat this time. Instead, he’s qualified his support for al-Maliki saying that the beleaguered president must “begin accommodating Sunni participation in his government” before the US will lend a hand. What kind of lame response is that? Check out this blurb from MNI News:

“President Barack Obama Friday warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the United States wants him to begin accommodating Sunni participation in his government, or see the United States withhold the help he needs, short of U.S. troops on the ground, to ward off an attack on Baghdad.

Obama added the emphasis of an appearance before TV cameras to his midday message, that while he will be considering options for some military intervention in the days ahead, the next move is up to Maliki.”
(Obama Warns Iraq’s Maliki,Looking for Sunni-Shia Accommodation, MNI)

Have you ever read such nonsense in your life? Imagine if , let’s say, the jihadi hordes had gathered just 50 miles outside of London and were threatening to invade at any minute. Do you think Obama would deliver the same message to UK Prime Minister David Cameron?

“Gee, Dave, we’d really like to help out, but you need to put a couple of these guys in your government first. Would that be okay, Dave? Just think of it as affirmative action for terrorists.”

It might sound crazy, but that’s what Obama wants Maliki to do. So, what’s going on here? Why is Obama delivering ultimatums when he should be helping out? Could it be that Obama has a different agenda than Maliki’s and that the present situation actually works to his benefit?

It sure looks that way. Just take a look at what Friedman says further on in the same article. It helps to clarify the point. He says:

“Maybe Iran, and its wily Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, aren’t so smart after all. It was Iran that armed its Iraqi Shiite allies with the specially shaped bombs that killed and wounded many American soldiers. Iran wanted us out. It was Iran that pressured Maliki into not signing an agreement with the U.S. to give our troops legal cover to stay in Iraq. Iran wanted to be the regional hegemon. Well, Suleimani: “This Bud’s for you.” Now your forces are overextended in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and ours are back home. Have a nice day.” (5 Principles for Iraq, Tom Friedman, New York Times)

Interesting, eh? Friedman basically admits that this whole fiasco is about Iran who turned out to be the biggest winner in the Iraq War sweepstakes. Naturally, that pisses off people in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh to no end, so they’ve cooked up this goofy plan to either remove Maliki altogether or significantly trim his wings. Isn’t that what’s going on? And that’s why Obama is holding a gun to Maliki’s head and telling him what hoops he has to jump through in order to get US help. Because he’s determined to weaken Iran’s hegemonic grip on Baghdad.

Friedman also notes the Status of Forces agreement which would have allowed U.S. troops to stay in Iraq. Al Maliki rejected the deal which enraged Washington setting the stage for this latest terrorist farce. Obama intends to reverse that decision by hook or crook. This is just the way Washington does business, by twisting arms and breaking legs. Everybody knows this.

To understand what’s going on today in Iraq, we need to know a little history. In 2002, The Bush administration commissioned the Rand Corporation “to develop a Shaping Strategy for pacifying Muslim populations where the US has commercial or strategic interests.” The plan they came up with–which was called “US Strategy in the Muslim World after 9-11”– recommended that the US, “Align its policy with Shiite groups who aspire to have more participation in government and greater freedoms of political and religious expression. If this alignment can be brought about, it could erect a barrier against radical Islamic movements and may create a foundation for a stable U.S. position in the Middle East.”

The Bushies decided to follow this wacky plan which proved to be a huge tactical error. By throwing their weight behind the Shia, they triggered a massive Sunni rebellion that initiated as many as 100 attacks per day on US soldiers. That, in turn, led to a savage US counterinsurgency that wound up killing tens of thousands of Sunnis while reducing much of the country to ruins. Petraeus’ vicious onslaught was concealed behind the misleading PR smokescreen of sectarian civil war. It was actually a genocidal war against the people who Obama now tacitly supports in Mosul and Tikrit.

So there’s been a huge change of policy, right? And the fact that the US has taken a hands-off approach to Isis suggests that the Obama administration has abandoned the Rand strategy altogether and is looking for ways to support Sunni-led groups in their effort to topple the Al Assad regime in Damascus, weaken Hezbollah, and curtail Iran’s power in the region. While the strategy is ruthless and despicable, at least it makes sense in the perverted logic of imperial expansion, which the Rand plan never did.

What is happening in Iraq today was anticipated in a 2007 Seymour Hersh article titled “The Redirection.” Author Tony Cartalucci gives a great summary of the piece in his own article. He says:

“The Redirection,” documents…US, Saudi, and Israeli intentions to create and deploy sectarian extremists region-wide to confront Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hersh would note that these “sectarian extremists” were either tied to Al Qaeda, or Al Qaeda itself. The ISIS army moving toward Baghdad is the final manifestation of this conspiracy, a standing army operating with impunity, threatening to topple the Syrian government, purge pro-Iranian forces in Iraq, and even threatening Iran itself by building a bridge from Al Qaeda’s NATO safe havens in Turkey, across northern Iraq, and up to Iran’s borders directly…

It is a defacto re-invasion of Iraq by Western interests – but this time without Western forces directly participating – rather a proxy force the West is desperately attempting to disavow any knowledge of or any connection to.” (America’s Covert Re-Invasion of Iraq, Tony Cartalucci, Information Clearinghouse)

So, now we’re getting to the crux of the matter, right? Now we should be able to identify the policy that is guiding events. What we know for sure is that the US wants to break Iran’s grip on Iraq. But how do they plan to achieve that; that’s the question?

Well, they could use their old friends the Baathists who they’ve been in touch with since 2007. That might work. But then they’d have to add a few jihadis to the mix to make it look believable.

Okay. But does that mean that Obama is actively supporting Isis?

No, not necessarily. Isis is already connected to other Intel agencies and might not need direct support from the US. (Note: Many analysts have stated that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) receives generous donations from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of whom are staunch US allies. According to London’s Daily Express: “through allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the West (has) supported militant rebel groups which have since mutated into ISIS and other al‑Qaeda connected militias. ( Daily Telegraph, June 12, 2014)

What’s important as far as Obama is concerned, is that the strategic objectives of Isis and those of the United States coincide. Both entities seek greater political representation for Sunnis, both want to minimize Iranian influence in Iraq, and both support a soft partition plan that former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie H. Gelb, called “The only viable strategy to correct (Iraq ‘s) historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” This is why Obama hasn’t attacked the militia even though it has marched to within 50 miles of Baghdad. It’s because the US benefits from these developments.

Let’s summarize:

Does the US Government “support” or “not support” terrorism depending on the situation?
Yes.

Have foreign Intel agencies supplied terrorist organizations in Syria with weapons and logistical support?
Yes.

Has the CIA?
Yes.

Has the Obama administration signaled that they would like to get rid of al Maliki or greatly reduce his power?
Yes.

Is this because they think the present arrangement strengthens Iran’s regional influence?
Yes.

Will Isis invade Baghdad?
No. (This is just a guess, but I expect that something has been already worked out between the Obama team and the Baathist leaders. If Baghdad was really in danger, Obama would probably be acting with greater earnestness.)

Will Syria and Iraq be partitioned?
Yes.

Is Isis a CIA creation?
No. According to Ziad Fadel, “ISIS is the creation of the one man who played Alqaeda like a yo-yo. Bandar bin Sultan.”

Does Isis take orders from Washington or the CIA?
Probably not, although their actions appear to coincide with US strategic objectives. (which is the point!)

Is Obama’s reluctance to launch an attack on Isis indicate that he wants to diminish Iran’s power in Iraq, redraw the map of the Middle East, and create politically powerless regions run by warlords and tribal leaders?

Yes, yes and yes.

The Fateful Triangle: Russia, Ukraine And The Jews

The erotic reliefs of Hindu temples with their gravity-defying and anatomy-challenging positions have found a new modern competitor in the Ukrainian crisis. Each party wants to get the Jews on their side, while claiming that the other side is anti-Jewish and a Jewish puppet at once. This impossible, Kama-Sutraesque position is the result of extremely confusing alliances: the Kiev regime lists devout Jews and fiery antisemites among its mainstays. The leading figures of the regime (including the president-elect) are of Jewish origin; strongman and chief financier Mr. Igor (Benya) Kolomoysky is a prominent Jewish public figure, the builder of many synagogues and a supporter of Israel. The most derring-do and pro-active force of the regime, the ultra-nationalists of the Svoboda party and the Right Sector, admire Hitler and his Ukrainian Quisling, Stepan Bandera, “liberators of Ukraine from the Judeo-Muscovite yoke”. Jews are ambivalent, and the sides are ambivalent about them, and a most entertaining intrigue has been hatched.

The Russians tried to pull Israel and American Jews to their side, with little success. President Putin condemned the antisemitism of the Svoboda party; he mentioned the desecration of the Odessa Jewish cemetery in his important talk. The Russians re-vitalised the World War Two narrative, fully identifying the Kiev regime with the Bandera gangs and the Nazi enemy. Still, this rhetoric is not taken seriously by Jews who refuse to feel threatened by cuddly Kolomoysky. “These Nazis are not against Jews, they are against Russians, so it is not a Jewish problem”, they say.

The Kiev regime mirrored the Russian attitude, if not Russia’s tactics. Being rather short of facts to brandish, they faked a leaflet from Donetsk rebels to local Jews calling upon them to register and pay a special poll tax “for the Jews support the Kiev regime”. This rude and improbable hoax was immediately and convincingly disproved, but not before it was used by, no less, Barak Obama and John Kerry. The American Jewish newspaper of record, The Forward, obfuscated the issue by saying that Russians and Ukrainians are antisemites by birth and their denials are to be taken with a grain of salt. This mud-slinging was effective – the hoax has made the front pages, while its debunking was published on the back pages.

The Russians had the facts on their side, and the West knew that: the US refused entry to Oleg Tyagnibok and other Svoboda leaders (now members of Kiev government) because of their antisemitism as recently as in 2013. But Russian appeals to Jewish and American sensitivities failed to make an impact. They know when to feign indignation and when to hush. Pro-Hitler commemorations are frequent in Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, and cause no lifting of a censorious brow, for these countries are solidly anti-Russian. In March of this year, the Obama administration’s special envoy on anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, flatly denied everything and said to the Forward that Putin’s assertions of Svoboda’s antisemitism “were not credible”. The US wants to decide who is an antisemite and who is not; like Hermann Goering wanted to decide who is a Jew and who is not in the Luftwaffe. In the Ukrainian crisis, the Jews remain divided, and follow their countries’ preferences.

Israel is neutral

Recently Prime Minister Netanyahu called President Putin. Putin is always available for and always courteous to Netanyahu, as opposed to President Obama, who shows signs of irritation. (Admittedly Obama has to listen to Netanyahu much more often and for hours.) Netanyahu apologised that he wouldn’t be able to come to St Petersburg for Israeli Culture Week; instead, old reliable Shimon Peres, Israel’s President, will make the trip. He apologised for leaking the news of this visit cancellation to the media, as well.

This is quite typical for the Israeli PM: at first, he asks for an invitation, Russia extends it, then he cancels his visit and leaks it to the press, thus earning brownie points with the Americans. He did it at the Sochi Olympic games, and now again, in St Petersburg. This is his way of expressing Israeli neutrality.

Israel is explicitly neutral in the Ukrainian crisis. Israelis walked out and did not vote on the UN GA Crimea resolution at all, annoying its American sponsors. The Israelis had a flimsy excuse: their Foreign Office was on strike. The Americans weren’t satisfied with this explanation. Strike or not, vote you must!

We learned from our Israeli colleagues the details of the Putin-Netanyahu phone conversation, which elaborated the reasons for Israeli neutrality. Israel is worried that as an asymmetric response to the US sanctions, Russia would deliver its potent air defence systems to Iran and Syria. Iran and Russia had signed a weapons supply contract a few years ago, Iran duly paid; then the shipment was suspended. Iran went to court demanding a massive compensation for the breach of contract. Likewise, the Syrians were supposed to get the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, able to protect its skies from Israeli raids. The deliveries commenced; PM Netanyahu beseeched Putin to put it on hold. Initially Putin objected, stressing the defensive nature of the system. Netanyahu told the Russian president that the S-300 would allow the Syrians to cover the whole North of Israel, at least all the way to Haifa, rendering important airfields unusable and endangering civil aviation as well. Putin agreed to stop the deliveries.

Vladimir Putin is friendly to Israel. He promised he would not allow the destruction of Israel; he promised to save its population if the situation should become truly dangerous. During the recent visit of PM Netanyahu to Moscow, Putin was not carried away by Netanyahu and Liberman’s hints of possible Israeli re-alliance with Moscow instead of Washington. He told the Israelis that their ties with the US are too strong for such a re-alliance being conceivable. Putin said that Russia is satisfied with the present level of friendship and does not demand that Tel Aviv weaken its ties with Washington. Putin visited Israel a few times, he received the Israeli PM in Kremlin. The Israeli ambassador Mme Golender sees Putin more often than do her American or French counterparts.

This friendly attitude has a down-to-earth reason: Putin is not fluent in English or French, while Mme Ambassador speaks Russian to him, eliminating the bothersome need of an interpreter. A deeper reason is Putin’s background: a scion of liberal elites, brought up in St Petersburg, schooled by ultra-liberal Mayor Sobchack, anointed by Boris Yeltsin, Putin is naturally friendly to Jews and to Israel. This friendly attitude annoyed some Russian ultra-patriots, who excitedly circulated his photo taken in the obligatory kippahnear the Wailing Wall. They also counted and recounted the names of Jewish oligarchs in Moscow.

True, some of them – Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Hodorkovsky – had to flee their Russian homeland, but the Russian president is surely not the Jewish-tycoons-Nemesis and the-new-Hitler he is sometimes made out to be. Abramovich and Friedman, to name just two, retain his trust and access. Putin does not mind any oligarch (Jewish or Gentile) – as long as he stays out of politics.

Putin is also friendly with Jewish intellectuals and gentlemen-of-the-media, even if they are outright hostile to him. Masha Gessen, Jewish Lesbian Putin-hater and magazine editor; Alexey Venediktov, Jewish chief editor of Echo Moskvy, a popular liberal medium that attacks Putin every day; many others enjoy access to Putin, – while no Russian nationalist including Dr Alexander Dugin can boast of having met with the president privately.

Putin’s affability does not turn him into a bountiful source for every Jewish initiative. He stopped S-300 deliveries to Iran, but rejected all Israeli overtures asking him to ditch Iran, or Syria, or Hamas. In the course of their last phone conversation, Netanyahu claimed the Israelis discovered proofs of Iranian nukes. Putin politely expressed his doubts and re-addressed him to IAEA. He agreed to receive the Israeli “experts” with their proofs in Moscow, but nothing came of it. Russia’s support for Palestine is unwavering, – there is a Palestinian embassy in Moscow, too.

Putin supported building of a spacious Jewish museum in Moscow and personally contributed to its budget – but Russian street advertising proclaims the Resurrection of Christ, Eastertide, and His Nativity at Christmas. No “season’s greetings”, but open affirmation of Christianity. Russia is not like the US or EU, where external signs of Christian faith are forbidden, Easter and Christmas can’t be mentioned and whatever Jews request must be done immediately. Western Jews are annoyed (so their organisations claim) by public displays of Christian faith, but Russian Jews do not mind; moreover, they intermarry, convert and enter the Church in previously unheard of numbers. They are not strongly pro-Israeli, those that were already left for Israel.

So the Jews of Russia are not an influential factor to the Russian President. Putin will do what is right according to the Christian faith, and what is good for Russia, as he understands it — and he can’t be convinced to give up really important points. Other considerations – such as friendship with Israel – would normally take a much lower place in his priorities. However, in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis, as the Russians are worried by sanctions and by threats of isolation, they try to pull Jews to their side. This makes them increasingly susceptible to Israeli manipulation, whether state-authorised or a private venture.

Last week, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld visited Moscow. In 2003, he famously threatened Europe with nuclear destruction (the “Samson Option”), saying “Israel has the capability to take the world down with us, and that will happen before Israel goes under”. Now he has explained to Russians Israel’s new policy: While the US enters the period of its decline, Israel must diversify and hedge its bets by drawing close to Moscow, Beijing and Delhi, he wrote in Izvestia daily. Perhaps, but without going too far. A flirt – yes, switching sides – not yet.

Israel prefers to stick to its neutrality. This is easy, as the Israeli populace (excepting its Russians) is not interested in Russian/Ukrainian affairs, does not know the difference between Russia and the Ukraine and is rather unfriendly to Russians/Ukrainians. This goes for both the Left and Right; the Israeli Left is even more pro-American than the Israeli Right. As for Russian Israelis, they are equally divided between supporters of Russia and supporters of Kiev regime. While observing niceties towards Russia, Israel does not intend to side with Moscow. The Jewish oligarchs of Ukraine – Kolomoysky, Pinchuk, Rabinovich – are integrated within the Kiev regime, and they support Israeli right-wing on a large scale. Israeli businessmen are invested in the Ukraine, and the oligarchs are invested in Israel. Kolomoysky controls YuzhMash, the famed missile construction complex in Dnepropetrovsk, and holds the secrets of the Satan ballistic missile, the most powerful Russian strategic weapon. He allegedly intends to share these secrets with the Israelis. If Israel were to side with Moscow regarding Ukraine, the breach with Washington would be unavoidable, and Israel does not intend to provoke it.

Some marginal Israeli right-wingers support Russia; they claim that they represent Israeli public opinion and government. They try to collect on their promises before they deliver. However, this is not an ordinary scam: they are trying to turn Russia into a supporter of right-wing Zionism.

Consider Russian-Israeli far right activist Avigdor Eskin. He impossibly claims that the Israeli government has already decided to jump from the US train to join the Russian one, that Israeli commandos are on their way to fight for the Russians in Donetsk, that Israeli authorities intend to strip Mr Kolomoysky of his Israeli citizenship. Naturally, all that is a load of bunkum, but Russians swallow it hook, line and sinker.

Avigdor Eskin is a colourful personality: a convert to Jewish faith (his mother is not Jewish), an observant Jew, an ex-Kahanist who was arrested in Israel for an alleged attempt to desecrate Al Aqsa mosque and a Muslim cemetery, and who served two or three years in Israeli jail; he styles himself a “Rabbi” and wears a full beard. After serving his time in jail, he moved to Russia and built a network of Israel supporters among the Russian far right. His message is “Israel is a true friend of Russia, while Muslims are Russia’s enemies”. He also adds that Israeli settlers are anti-American and pro-Russian. (If you believe that, the tooth fairy is the next step.)

Recently he claimed that the Aliya Battalion of “experienced Israeli commandos and sharpshooters” came to warring Donbass to fight on the Russian side against the Kiev regime troops. The Aliya Battalion is a battalion in the sense Salvation Army is an army. This is an Israeli NGO, established by Russian Israelis of far-right Zionist persuasion and of some Russian military background. It is not a part of Israeli Army. For a short while, the NGO provided guards for Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, but the settlements stopped using them as they were extremely unreliable. They boasted of murdering Palestinian civilians, of torturing and killing children, but this was just a sick sadist and racist fantasy, people say. Afterwards, the Battalion leaders turned its name into a profitable scam, roaming American Jewish communities and collecting donations for their supposedly secret activities. As this scam was exposed by Israeli TV (RTVI network; it is available on the ), they had disappeared from the public eye. Now Avigdor Eskin resurrected the old scam, and made a lot of headlines in the Russian media.

Eskin found a soulmate in prominent Russian media man Vladimir Solovyev. The Solovyev is of partly Jewish origin, lived abroad, then returned to Russia; he runs an important political show Sunday Eveningon Russian TV. The Saker (a well-known blogger) described him as follows: “This show is hosted by a famous personality, Vladimir Solovyev, who is a very interesting guy. Solovyev is a Jew, and he is not shy about reminding his audience about it, who was even elected as a member of the Russian Jewish Congress. He is also a Russian patriot, and he is an outspoken supporter of Putin and his policies. His position on the Ukraine is simple: he as a Jew and as a Russian has zero tolerance for Ukrainian nationalism, neo-Nazism or Banderism. He is a determined and total enemy of the new Kiev regime.”

It is possible Solovyev is going through some personal identity crisis: from celebrating his Russian roots, he moved to proclaiming his Jewish origin. Alternatively, it is possible (and more likely) that the Russian decision-makers want to pull Jews on their side, and Solovyev is acting with US Jews in mind. Stalin did it, so Putin could repeat the trick. In 1942, as Nazi onslaught threatened Russia, Stalin had sent some Russian Jews to the US, to speak Yiddish to Jewish communities and lobby for the USSR. The American Jewish community surely carries some clout… Now Solovyev and others are trying to influence Jews abroad; or at least to show to their superiors they are trying.

The price Eskin extracts for his fantasy stories is high. In Solovyev’s prime time programme, he called for the destruction of al Aqsa mosque and for the building of the Jewish temple on its place. He called Palestinians “the people of Antichrist”. Even in Israel such statements can’t be voiced on public TV. In confused Moscow, Eskin was feted and given a place in another important political programme, that of Arcady Mamontov. Who is conning whom: is Eskin conning his Russian hosts, or are his media hosts using him to con their superiors, or are their superiors trying to con the Russian people? Or is Israel hedging its bets? Who knows?

Ukrainian Jews beg to differ

Jews came to the Ukraine a thousand years ago, perhaps from Khazaria. This is not a homogeneous community; rather, they represent several communities. A lot of them emigrated to Israel; even more moved to Russia. They speak Russian and usually do not speak Ukrainian, though they picked up the vernacular over last twenty years. Normally, they wouldn’t care about Ukraine’s independence, as Jews  traditionally side with the strong, be it Poles under Polish rule, with Russians under Moscow rule, or with Germans under Vienna or Berlin. Now many of them have decided to side with the US or EU. One of the reasons why so many people of Jewish origin do well is that the ruling ethnic groups trust the Jews and rely upon their loyalty to the powerful and lack of compassion for their Gentile neighbours.

Another reason is the vague definitions. For last three or four generations, Jews have intermarried freely; children of these mixed marriages are often considered ‘Jews’. These are the ‘Jews’ to the present regime; often they have only one Jewish grandparent.

Ukraine, following its independence in 1991, moved into the Western sphere of influence, but Eastern Ukraine (Novorossia) retained its Russian character and links. Jews did well in both parts. Mr Kolomoysky is a prominent member of the Jewish community, and a mainstay of the Kiev regime.  He is a ruthless businessman, famous for his raiding of others’properties and for his Mafia connections. Rumours connect him with many killings of business adversaries.

On the other side, in Kharkov, the Mayor and the district Governor (nicknamed Dopah and Gepah) are Jewish, and they can be considered pro-Russian. It was thought that Kharkov would become the centre of rising Novorossia; president Yanukovich fled to Kharkov hoping to find allies and supporters. But Dopa and Gepa disabused him, so he continued his flight all the way to the Russian city of Rostov. Their decision to remain loyal to Kiev did not work well for them: one was shot, and the second one has been imprisoned and his attempt to run for president thwarted.

Kharkov is also home to Mr. Hodos, a wealthy and prominent Jew who fought most valiantly against Habad, the Jewish spiritual movement of which Mr Kolomoysky is a prominent member. The Jews of Novorossia apparently support the general pro-Russian trend, though there are exceptions. Practically all Ukrainian Jews have relatives in Russia, and had Russian education.

Israel has a strong network of agents in the Ukraine. They snatched a Palestinian engineer and flew him to an Israeli dungeon, and that could not be done without support of Ukrainian security services. However, the stories of Israeli soldiers fighting in Ukraine are somewhat exaggerated: these are individuals of dual citizenship who act at their own will, not a state representatives.

US Jews are divided

US Jews are divided on the Ukraine, as they were divided on Palestine. Friends of Palestine, people with a strong anti-imperialist record and sound knowledge of East European history – Noam Chomsky and Stephen F. Cohen — recognised and renounced the US attempt to sustain their hegemony by keeping brazen Russia down. A subset of people, Gilad Atzmon aptly called AZZ (anti-zionist zionists), Trots and other faux-Leftist shills for NATO like Louis Proyect – called for American intervention and brayed for Russian blood.

The notorious Israel Lobby is strictly anti-Russian. The State Dept. official Victoria (“Fuck EU”) Nuland personally directed the Kiev coup; she handpicked the government and the president of the new American colony on the Dnieper River. Her husband, Robert Kagan, is a founder of FPI, the successor of infamous PNAC, the extremist Zionist think tank which promoted wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and pushed for a war with Iran. Now they attack Russia, but they do not forget about their support for Israel.

Consider a young American gender activist and journalist, James Kirchick. He entered the Neocon network by shilling for the Lobby. He pink-washed Israel (“Israel as the best friend of gays on earth, while the Palestinians are homophobes who deserve to be bombed”). After doing the Israeli stint, he moved on to fighting Russia. He worked for the CIA-owned and US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe; stage-managed the sensational Liz Wahl’s on-air resignation from the RT and protested alleged mistreatment of gays in Russia. His dirty tricks were revealed by Max Blumenthal, a Jewish American journalist, a known anti-Zionist (working together with a Palestinian Rania Khalek).

While Israel is neutral re Ukraine, Israeli friends in EU and US are hostile to Russia and supportive of American hegemony, while friends of Palestine stand for Russia’s challenge to the Empire. The French Zionist media philosopher Bernard Henri Levy is an example of the former, while Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research is a representative of the latter. Leading critical (“anti-Zionist”) websites Counterpunch, Antiwar, Global Research sympathise with Russia, while pro-Israeli sites are hostile to Russia.

Zionists are nasty and vicious enemies, but they make even worse friends. Edward N. Luttwak is friendly to Russia; he called upon the US to make up with Russia. Strategic union of Russia and America is necessary, he says. Who cares about Ukraine? And here is his pitch line: Russia should fight China for the US benefit. Another Zionist friend, Tony Blair, also calls for peace with Russia – so Russia can fight the Muslim world for Israel. Quite similar to Eskin who offers his pathetic support to Russia in order to neutralise her positive influence and defence of Palestine.

The bottom line: Israel remains neutral for its own reasons. While Jews as individuals differ on Ukraine, there is a correlation with their stand on Palestine and on Syria. Enemies of Putin in Russia, Ukraine, Europe and US do support Israel and are hostile to Palestine, to Syria of Bashar, to Venezuela of Chavez. And the most dangerous lot are those who support Israel and Russia, as they are surely plotting some mischief.

A Second American Revolution Is Now Inevitable

“Stand your ground.  Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” – Militia Captain John Parker at the Battle Of Lexington

Just a couple days ago, two armed assailants, a married couple purported by the mainstream media to be “white supremacists” and “conspiracy theorists,” ambushed two police officers at a CiCi’s Pizza in Las Vegas, killing the officers after screaming, “This is a revolution!” The suspects then reportedly covered one officer’s body with a Gadsden Don’t Tread On Me flag and then fled to a Walmart, where they killed another man with a CCW who attempted to reason with them, then committed suicide. Yes, it reads like a Southern Poverty Law Center fantasy story; and in many ways, it is.

As we all predicted the MSM has followed the pattern they have always followed, which is to equate the actions of one or two psychotics with the beliefs and principles of the liberty movement in general.

I remember when Jared Loughner fired into a crowd of people near Tucson, Ariz., killing numerous Federal and State employees; the immediate response by the media was to attempt to tie him to the liberty movement. In the end, he turned out to be a raving leftist. I remember the Boston Marathon bombing and the automatic reflex by the media to accuse “right-wing extremists” of the crime. So far, we have seen NO hard evidence to implicate anyone specific in that atrocity, including the Tsarnaev brothers. Of all the violent crimes dumped in the lap of the liberty movement over the years, how many have actually been committed or endorsed by the liberty movement? I can’t think of any.

This has not prevented the establishment media from doing everything in their power to associate criminal action with political ideals.  Efforts to sully the success of the Bundy Ranch stand-off were swift, with Jared and Amanda Miller’s visit to Bunkerville splashed across the headlines.  Luckily, the sound judgement of organizations like Oath Keepers led founder Stewart Rhodes to personally ask the two future shooters to leave the property.  I can only imagine the weight of the slander if they had been allowed to stay.

When an activist movement holds the moral high ground against a repressive establishment power structure, the establishment’s primary recourse is to target the character of its principles. The secondary recourse is direct confrontation. If a dissenting organization is not mindlessly vicious in its methods, then simply make it APPEAR vicious. If it is not hateful in its rhetoric, then artificially tie it to people who are. And if a government really needs to kick-start a crackdown, it can engineer its own man-made calamities and blame the groups that most threaten its authority.

This was achieved to great effect in Europe from the 1950s until the 1990s by the CIA working in tandem with multiple European governments under a covert project called Operation Gladio.

 

Gladio was essentially a secret army of operatives and stooges, handlers and puppets, used to create false-flag terrorist shootings and bombings across Europe that were blamed on “left-wing extremists.” In reality, NATO alphabet agencies were behind the entire facade. The goal was to terrorize the citizenry through a nonstop campaign of indiscriminate death, blamed on a convenient scapegoat, so that individuals would hand over more freedom and more power to the central governments. The point is, whether real or staged, I believe such events are going to escalate within the U.S. today on an incredible scale and that, regardless of evidence, they will be blamed on “right-wing extremists.” In case you were wondering, that label will be foisted on most if not all of us.

That said, I think an important truth needs to be stated here: Whether the beliefs of the attackers in Las Vegas were actually liberty movement-oriented or not is ultimately irrelevant. To shoot random police and civilians and then commit suicide is an act of pure insanity, a product of mental instability that has nothing to do with political philosophy, and mental instability trumps belief and association anytime.  Mentally unstable people exist within ALL belief systems and political groups.

At bottom, I do not care what their beliefs were. Their actions do not represent the values I hold dear, nor do I think they represent the values most of us hold dear. The shooting is a tragedy, but in the grand scheme of things, it means nothing, and I have little doubt it will be forgotten within weeks.

I relate the story because I do, in fact, agree with one thing: that a “revolution,” a second American Revolution, is inevitable. But I think I speak for the vast majority of the movement when I say that this revolution will not begin with the deaths of innocents or random government employees on our hands, and it certainly won’t begin at the doorstep of a CiCi’s Pizza.

The Bundy ranch incident, which occurred only a short drive from Las Vegas, has been a revelation for many people. Mistakes were made, provocateurs reared their ugly heads, and lessons were learned. But overall, America has been fundamentally changed, even if the average person does not realize it yet. The information war came within a razor’s edge of evolving into a shooting war, with the establishment in retreat, licking its wounds while planning how it can gain back its composure and carefully crafted image of “invincibility”.

What frightens the establishment most, I think, is that the American people have become active participants in their own national environment once again. At Bundy ranch, they stopped asking for mercy, they stopped begging the system to police itself, they stopped waiting for the rigged elections, and they stopped relying on useless legal avenues to effect change. Rather, they took matters into their own hands and changed the situation on the ground on their own. For oligarchy, this development is unacceptable, because one success could lead to many.

Already, we are beginning to hear whispers of possible Federal retribution against those who participated in the confrontation.

This has been cemented within the efforts of a new task force against “domestic terrorism” organized by none other than Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder.

After the recent exposure of Barack Obama’s Department of Defense Directive 3025.18, we now know that since at least 2010, the White House has been setting the stage for the use of military force against “domestic threats.” That is to say, for at least the past four years our government has been quietly maneuvering toward martial law. It’s been happening for much longer if you count George W. Bush’s Presidential Decision Directive 51, which has yet to befully declassified.

The exposure of Directive 3025.18 also came with information that the Obama Administration considered using it as a way to activate military forces and drones against the Bundy ranch. The burning question is, of course, why didn’t it? The Federal government is not known for its diplomacy in the face of a defiant citizenry. Waco and Ruby Ridge made that clear. I believe that it was not necessarily the people on the ground at Bunkerville, Nev., that they were most worried about. The terrain is admittedly a terrible place to mount a defense against a mechanized horde of jackboots.

No, what the White House feared was a larger response to such an attack. It feared the millions of patriots who would swarm down from all sides if it committed to a Ruby Ridge-style siege. It feared the reality that this time, Americans were not going to sit back and watch another family be slaughtered on national television.  It feared the fact that it didn’t have the moral high ground in the public eye and that a kinetic failure on its part would be met with cheers, rather than tears, from much of the populace.

So where does this leave us? With the Bundy success besmirching the Feds, the next strategic program will likely include an unprecedented effort to demonize the liberty movement perhaps to the point of a Gladio-type false-flag campaign, leading to the eventual detention of activists as domestic security threats. It’s not going to end with shootings in pizzerias and slobbering hit pieces from the SPLC.  Expect a landslide of violent acts.  Expect another engineered large-scale calamity like the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Expect dozens of Timothy McVeighs to be trotted out in the media. Expect the Liberty Movement’s name to be buried in an avalanche of bullshit. Mark my words; it’s going to get much worse from here on.

And this is where I will add my warning.

Before the Bundy ranch became a possible battleground, I stated in my article “Real Americans Are Ready To Snap” that the liberty movement was going to draw a line in the sand over Bureau of Land Management abuses in Bunkerville, and I was right.

It seems to me that time is growing short. As tyrants become more bold, so too must the citizenry; otherwise, we shrivel up and die.  We cannot allow the movement’s momentum to be shattered and driven underground as the militia movement was after Oklahoma City.  We know what is coming, and we must drive forward.  We know we will be labeled as terrorists and villains, and ultimately, we must realize that such eventualities do not matter.  The Liberty Movement is not going away.  In fact, future clashes with our criminal government are only going to become more frequent.

The next family threatened, the next activist individual or group arrested or black-bagged without legitimate cause, the next major false flag, the next use of military forces as civil law enforcement, the next unConstitutional misstep, and I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that a revolt will erupt. It’s not about making grand predictions; it’s about examining the logical odds, and the odds are high. The knowledge that the establishment is considering using the full force of its military apparatus against the people has not dissuaded anyone. Bundy ranch was a very near miss. I do not expect a peaceful resolution the next time around. I also do not expect the government as it exists now to stop clamoring for more control or less corruption. If recent events have proven anything, they have proven that a second American Revolution is inevitable; and all we can do is ready ourselves.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Dispatching B-2 Stealth Bombers To Europe: Obama’s Attempt At Intimidating Russia

“This deployment of strategic bombers provides an invaluable opportunity to strengthen and improve interoperability with our allies and partners.”

– Admiral Cecil Haney, commander, US Strategic Command on the deployment of B-2 stealth bombers to Europe.

“Against stupidity, no amount of planning will prevail.” – Carl von Clausewitz

Less than 24 hours after Ukraine’s new president Petro Poroshenko announced his determination to retake Crimea from Russia, US Admiral Cecil Haney confirmed that the US Air Force had deployed two B-2 stealth bombers to Europe to conduct military exercises. The addition of the multipurpose B-2, which is capable of delivering nuclear weapons, is intended to send a message to Moscow that the United States is prepared to provide backup for Ukraine’s fledgling government and to protect its interests in Central Asia. News of the deployment was reported in the Russian media, but was excluded by all the western news outlets.

The B-2 announcement was preceded by an inflammatory speech by Poroshenko at the presidential “swearing in” ceremony in Kiev. In what some analysts have called a “declaration of war”, Poroshenko promised to wrest control of Crimea from Russia which annexed the region just months earlier following a public referendum that showed 90 percent support for the measure. Here’s part of what Poroshenko said:

“The issue of territorial integrity of Ukraine is not subject to discussion…I have just sworn ‘with all my deeds to protect the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,’ and I will always be faithful to this sacred promise…

“Russia occupied Crimea, which was, is and will be Ukrainian soil…Yesterday, in the course of the meeting in Normandy, I told this to President Putin: Crimea is Ukraine soil. Period. There can be no compromise on the issues of Crimea, European choice and state structure…” (New York Times)

On Thursday, the day before Poroshenko was sworn in, “President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron set a deadline for Russia to comply with its demands or face harsher economic sanctions that would be imposed by members of the G-7. Once again, the threat of new sanctions was largely ignored by the western media but was reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“To avoid even harsher sanctions.. Putin must meet three conditions: Recognize Petro Poroshenko’s election as the new leader in Kiev; stop arms from crossing the border; and cease support for pro-Russian separatist groups concentrated in eastern Ukraine.

“If these things don’t happen, then sectoral sanctions will follow…”

Obama said the G-7 leaders unanimously agree with the steps Cameron outlined.” (Haaretz)

The United States is ratcheting up the pressure in order to widen the conflict and force Russian president Vladimir Putin to meet their demands. It’s clear that the threat of sanctions, Poroshenko’s belligerent rhetoric, and the steady buildup of military assets and troops in the region, that Obama and Co. still think they can draw Putin into the conflict and make him look like a dangerous aggressor who can’t be trusted by his EU partners. Fortunately, Putin has not fallen into the trap. He’s resisted the temptation to send in the tanks to put an end to the violence in Donetsk, Lugansk and Slavyansk. This has undermined Washington’s plan to deploy NATO to Russia’s western border, assert control over the “bridgehead” between Europe and Asia, and stop the further economic integration between Russia and the EU. So far, Putin has out-witted his adversaries at every turn, but there are still big challenges ahead, particularly the new threats from Poroshenko.

If Poroshenko is determined to take Crimea back from Moscow, then there’s going to be a war. But there are indications that he is more pragmatic than his speeches would suggest. In a private meeting with Putin at the D-Day ceremonies in France, the Ukrainian president said he had a plan to “immediately stop the bloodshed”

Here’s how Putin summarized his meeting with Poroshenko:

“Poroshenko has a plan in this respect; it is up to him to say what kind of plan it is… I cannot say for sure how these plans will be implemented, but I liked the general attitude, it seemed right to me, so, if it happens this way, there will be conditions to develop our relations, in other areas, including economy.

“It’s important to stop the punitive actions in the southeast without a delay. That’s the only way to create conditions for the start of a real process of negotiations with the supporters of federalization. No one has yet said anything concrete to the people (living in the southeast of Ukraine) and nothing practical has been offered to them. People there simply don’t understand how they’ll live in the future and what the parameters of the new Constitution will look like.” (Poroshenko tells Putin of plan to immediately stop bloodshed in Ukraine, Itar-Tass)

If the report is accurate, then there’s reason to hope that Poroshenko is moving in Russia’s direction on most of the key issues which are; greater autonomy for the people in East Ukraine, Constitutional provisions that will protect them from future abuse by Kiev, and an immediate end to the violence. Putin has sought assurances on these issues from the very beginning of the crisis. Now it looks like he might get his way. Of course, it is impossible to know, since Poroshenko is sending mixed messages.

So why is Poroshenko sounding so conciliatory in his private meetings with Putin, but so belligerent in public?

It could be any number of things, but it probably has a lot to do with Monday’s scheduled tripartite meetings of representatives from the European Union, Ukraine and Russia. These meetings will have incalculable impact of Ukriane’s economic future. They will resolve the issues of price for future gas purchases as well as a plan for settling all previous claims. (Russia says that Ukraine owes $3.5 billion in back payments for natural gas.)

On April 1, Gazprom cancelled Ukraine’s discount and raised the price of gas to 485.5 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters nearly doubling the rate of payment. (It had been $268.5 per 1,000 cubic meters) It is impossible to overstate the impact this will have Ukraine’s economy. Even Ukrainian hardline Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was candid in his dire assessment of the situation. He said, “I could have made a populist statement but it is not true. We cannot refrain from using Russian gas.”

If Poroshenko sounds conciliatory, this is why.

Putin refused to discuss the gas issue with the media, but implied that political developments in Ukraine would factor heavily into any decision by Gazprom.

“Russia will be compelled to enact economic protection measures to defend its market if Ukraine signs the association agreement with the EU. “As soon as that accord is signed, we’ll start taking measures to defend our economy,” Putin said. (Itar-Tass)

In other words, if Ukraine doesn’t play ball, it’s going to have to go-it-alone. Kiev cannot expect “most favored trade partner-status”, gas discounts, or other perks if they’re going to stab Moscow in the back and jump into bed with the EU. That’s just not the way things work. Putin is merely warning Poroshenko to think about what he’s about to do before taking the plunge. ( “Average gas prices for Ukrainian households began rising by more than 50 percent in May, and heating prices are expected to climb by about 40 percent, starting in July.” World Socialist Web Site)

This is a much more important issue that most analysts seem to grasp. Many seem to think that IMF, EU and US loans and other assistance can buoy Ukraine’s sinking economy and restore it to health. But that’s a pipedream. In a “must read” report by the Brookings Institute, authors Clifford G. Gaddy and Barry W. Ickes spell it out in black and white, that is, that “Ukraine is a prize that neither Russia nor the West can afford to win.” Here’s a clip from the text:

“It is clear to most observers that the West would not be able to defend Ukraine economically from a hostile Russia…The simple fact is that Russia today supports the Ukrainian economy to the tune of at least $5 billion, perhaps as much as $10 billion, each year…

When we talk about subsidies, we usually think of Russia’s ability to offer Ukraine cheap gas — which it does when it wants to. But there are many more ways Russia supports Ukraine, only they are hidden. The main support comes in form of Russian orders to Ukrainian heavy manufacturing enterprises. This part of Ukrainian industry depends almost entirely on demand from Russia. They wouldn’t be able to sell to anyone else…

If the West were somehow able to wrest full control of Ukraine from Russia, could the United States, the other NATO nations, and the EU replace Russia’s role in eastern Ukraine? The IMF, of course, would never countenance supporting these dinosaurs the way the Russians have. So the support would have to come in the way of cash transfers to compensate for lost jobs. How much are we talking about? The only known parallel for the amount of transfer needed is the case of German reunification. The transfer amounted to 2 trillion euros, or $2.76 trillion, over 20 years. If Ukraine has per capita income equal to one-tenth of Germany’s, then a minimum estimate is $276 billion to buy off the east. (In fact, since the population size of eastern Ukraine is larger than East Germany’s, this is an underestimate.) It is unthinkable that the West would pay this amount.” (Ukraine: A Prize Neither Russia Nor the West Can Afford to Win, Brookings)

The authors go on to show that “a NATO-affiliated Ukraine — is simply impossible under any real-world conditions” because it assumes that Russia will either “become an enthusiastic EU and NATO member itself” (or) “will it return to being the bankrupt, dependent, and compliant Russia of the 1990s.” In other words, the Obama administration’s strategic objectives in Ukraine do not jibe with economic reality. The US cannot afford to win in Ukraine, that’s the bottom line. Even so, we are convinced the aggression will persist regardless of the presumed outcome. The train has already left the station.

At the D-Day ceremonies, Putin and Poroshenko also met briefly with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande although the content of their discussions was not revealed. Public support for the two leaders’ Ukraine policy is gradually withering as the fighting continues in the East without any end in sight. An article in the popular German newspaper Die Zeit indicates that elite opinion in Europe is gradually shifting and no longer sees Washington’s Ukraine policy as being in its interests.

Here’s a brief summary from the WSWS: “It goes on to argue that Washington’s aggression is laying the foundations for a Chinese-Russian-Iranian axis that “would force the West to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy to secure its access to important but dwindling raw materials such as oil.” In opposition to this, the commentary insists that Germany’s independent interests lie “with preserving and deepening Europe’s relations with Russia,” while pursuing similar ties with Iran.” (D-Day anniversary: Commemorating the Second World War and preparing the Third, World Socialist Web Site)

This is an important point and one that could put a swift end to US aggression in Ukraine. Washington’s objectives are at cross-purposes with those of the EU. The EU needs a reliable source of energy and one, like Russia, that will set its prices competitively without resorting to coercion or blackmail. Washington, on the other hand, intends to situate itself in this century’s most prosperous region, Eurasia, in order to control the flow of oil from East to West. This is not in Europe’s interests, but promises to be a source of conflict for the foreseeable future. Case in point: Just last week Bulgaria’s prime minister, Plamen Oresharski, “ordered a halt to work on Russia’s South Stream pipeline, on the recommendation of the EU. The decision was announced after his talks with US senators.”

According to RT News, Oresharski stopped construction after meeting with John McCain, Chris Murphy and Ron Johnson during their visit to Bulgaria on Sunday.

McCain, commenting on the situation, said that “Bulgaria should solve the South Stream problems in collaboration with European colleagues,” adding that in the current situation they would want “less Russian involvement” in the project.

“America has decided that it wants to put itself in a position where it excludes anybody it doesn’t like from countries where it thinks it might have an interest, and there is no economic rationality in this at all. Europeans are very pragmatic, they are looking for cheap energy resources – clean energy resources, and Russia can supply that. But the thing with the South Stream is that it doesn’t fit with the politics of the situation,” Ben Aris, editor of Business New Europe told RT.” (Bulgaria halts Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline project, RT)

Once again, we can see how US meddling is damaging to Europe’s interests.

Western elites want to control the flow of gas and oil from East to West. This is why they’ve installed their puppet in Kiev, threatened to levy more sanctions on Moscow, and moved B-2 stealth bombers into the European theater. They are determined to succeed in their plan even if it triggers a Third World War.

Obama, Global Warmonger

Thanatos hangs over America, a death-wish based on the inner rotting of conscience predicated on the constant need for supremacy in the world as a test, indeed validation, of the nation’s moral virtue, to be achieved through military power—a greatness no longer assumed and, because of inner decay setting in, cause for fatalistic entropic reaction. Circa 1950: Better dead than red. Circa 2014: Better dead than descend from the pinnacle of global hegemony—and why not bring everyone else with us? Paul Craig Roberts’s article in CounterPunch, Are You Ready For Nuclear War?, (June 3), may perhaps seem unduly alarmist to the uninitiated, but even without Obama-Team national security advisers thoroughly capable of and attuned to such planning, there are indications inhering in Obama’s studied moves aimed toward direct confrontation with Russia and China that carry intentionally the eventuality of a nuclear showdown.

Both on the Pacific Rim and European trips, closely integrated in time and purpose, Obama sounds like—and is scripted to be—the Avenger against a doubting world, not sufficiently appreciative of America the Land of Freedom (subtext throughout, of course, capitalism the sole legitimate world system replicating America’s own political-economic structure and ideological values). Comparing his statements wherever he appeared on those journeys of confidence-building, all to the end of confrontation with China and Russia, respectively, yet tacitly as though enemies-joined-at-the-hip, he sounded like nothing so much as a broken 78 rpm recording, stand shoulder to shoulder, stand shoulder to shoulder, stand shoulder… ad infinitum. Poland, South Korea, Latvia and Lithuania, Philippines—the more the merrier, coupled with checks (the monetary kind) for military hardware, promises of American protection, assurances, backed by military bases, training programs, joint exercises, membership in the extant alliance system (an attack on one is an attack on all), the foregoing packaged with the ascription of Russia and China as expansion-minded and out to do harm to its neighbors (i.e., our “friends and allies”). Chuck Hagel, interviewed on BBC, invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the one for all, all for one provision, stating that “Russia was a threat” to Europe (June 5). Nothing could be clearer.

And then we have Obama in Brussels, same day, demanding of Putin, in a time frame “over the next two, three, four weeks,” complete disengagement—in Peter Baker’s words, from his New York Times article, “With Group of 7 Backing, Obama Gives Russia One-Month Ukraine Deadline, “ (June 5)—from Ukraine, that is, “to reverse its intervention…and help quash a pro-Russian separatist uprising or else…it would face international sanctions far more severe than anything it had endured so far.” Beyond a time frame, actually an ultimatum, Obama stated that “if Russia’s provocations continue, it’s clear from our discussions here that the G-7 nations are ready to impose additional costs on Russia.” No compliance after the time period (“and if he remains on the current course”), watch out Putin, for “we’ve already indicated what kinds of actions that we’re prepared to take.”

G-7 on banners, rostrums, a deliberate flaunting of exclusion, along with D-Day Observance plans to prevent an Obama-Putin head-to-head, calculated further to enhance antagonism, this choreographed trip is a prelude to bolder demands directed to the EU itself to speak with one voice, that of America’s, in viewing Russia as an enemy bent on invasion of the West. Rather than hysteria, the mood favors an incremental rise in tensions, at each step, the concretization of war readiness, naval forces in the Black Sea, a larger US troop presence in Poland, the steady movement eastward to the Russian border of NATO troops, anti-ballistic missile installations ringing Russia, a hostile environment, to say the least, for a peaceful accommodation, one the US and the EU, by their actions, appears not to want.

I am tempted to explain these developments as the psychopathology of capitalism as a system, thanatos the upshot of the desensitization of human feeling when the commodity structure defines the individual as alienated from social relations of equality and justice, in favor of a pervasive solipsism, driven by fear, introjecting the values of ruling groups as compensation for empty lives, turning on one another to rise in the social hierarchy, in the last analysis, killing without compunction, as in Obama’s signature, drone assassination vaporizing a fellow human being so that no reminder of his/her existence remains. But such an explanation is too simple by half; policy trumps psychology, or rather invites a particular mental-set in order to reach fruition. Thanatos is consequence, not cause. Policy is about market penetration, market fundamentalism, market hegemony, to which must be appended the full-scale militarization of political economy, value system, how order is maintained and reinforced.

Mass surveillance in America is less if at all about counterterrorism than about the artificial props which are necessary to keep society from disintegrating in the face of animalistic greed (apologies to animals for the reference), ethnocentric and racial assumptions, the uneven structure of wealth, an underlying repression insinuated into the fabric of status, power, and wealth for purposes of the stabilization of privilege and recognition. America enjoyed world prestige for so long that a decline of any sort is catastrophic. My way or the highway works only so long; as this realization sinks in, America becomes more dangerous. These provocative moves to mount a massive counterrevolution are failing, whether Putin or Xi or both, the counterweight is fast forming its leadership coming from the people themselves with Russia and China the historical vanguard for creating a world system where no single power is able to dominate and unilaterally shape the destinies of humankind.

My New York Times Comment on the Baker article, same date, follows:

I am delighted by Obama’s rhetoric emanating out of Warsaw and Brussels. It confirms my sense of him as global WARMONGER No. 1. His threats, boasts, needling are an accurate reflection of his and the US’s character. We hear rumors now of a veritable cottage industry in Washington of policy wonks working out nuclear first-strike paradigms against Russia and China. Fitting, because the impulse for destruction is present. Obama is far more dangerous with or without preemptive war than any POTUS perhaps ever.

Does saying that make me a red-pinko-commie? No. Until America puts its own house in order, which may well be never again, criticism is justified without necessarily praising those declared to be adversaries and worse.
How square peace with massive domestic surveillance? with the largest military budget in the world? with the use of counterterrorism to violate civil liberties at home, mount unjustified aggression abroad?
Times readers may scream (one yesterday said of my post on Warsaw, Go back to Russia–I’ll donate to your travel)! That’s perfect, the ratcheting up of Reaction, frighteningly similar to McCarthyism–even more pervasive–that I remember in my youth.

As for a Putin-Poroshenko meeting, it will come about soon. As for Obama’s threat of sectoral sanctions, this will backfire, as Germany and France will not go along. It is fitting Obama has Cameron as his new pal–two peas in a pod. Others however will resent the crass bullying. We deserve Obama.

Norman Pollack has written on Populism. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at .

Source: Counterpunch

Zionists vs. Veterans: American Tragedy

Why do Zionists hate veterans?  That is the question many Americans are asking after witnessing the Israel lobby’s media mugging of released prisoner-of-war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Since 2001, American soldiers have been risking their lives in a crusade whose main beneficiary is the Israeli regime. Nearly 5,000 US troops have been killed in Iraq – almost 4,500 of them since Bush declared “mission accomplished.” Another 4,000 US troops and contractors have died in Afghanistan. An estimated 320,000 veterans have brain injuries, and about 18 commit suicide every day according to Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s head of Mental Health.

But as the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper admitted, only 0.64 percent of America’s “war on terror” casualties are Jewish Americans. That means that Zionists, the backbone of the Zionist lobby, who represent about 2.5% of America’s population, are massively underrepresented among those doing the bleeding, suffering, and dying in the Zionist-driven War on Islam for Israel.

Meanwhile, hard-core neoconservative Jewish Zionists are massively OVER-represented among the PNAC policy elite that set up the 9/11 “New Pearl Harbor” and launched America’s endless, futile war on the global Muslim population. And they are equally over-represented among big media owners and their pet presstitutes of the punditocracy.

One would think neocon-Zionist media voices would shower honor and gratitude on Sgt. Bergdahl, a good-hearted goy who suffered and sacrificed in a cause that was theirs, not his. Instead, they are showering him with abuse.

Fox News, the unofficial voice of the Netanyahu neocon nutball brigade, recently published the screaming headline: “EXCLUSIVE: Bergdahl declared jihad in captivity, secret documents show.” The story’s author is James Rosen, a Jewish Zionist neocon propagandist. Its source is a proven liar: CIA drug smuggler and convicted perjurer Dwayne “Dewey” Claridge, a notorious asset of the Bush crime family. And its thesis – that Bergdahl “declared jihad” – is an absurdity. (Only a legitimate Islamic head of state can declare jihad.)

Fox – Israel’s stealth beam weapon targeting the American mind – stooped to an even more disgusting low when it began persecuting Sgt. Bergdahl’s family. The rabid Zionist “news channel” ripped Obama for embracing Sgt. Bergdahl’s parents at the White House, and insulted Sgt. Bergdahl’s father for growing a beard and “looking like a member of the Taliban.”

Comedian Jon Stewart responded: “First of all, who the **** are you to judge what a guy does if he thinks it might help him get his son back? And I don’t want to complicate your hatred of facial hair there, friend, but my guess is if you gave Bob Bergdahl a bandana and a duck, you’d like him just-****ing-fine.”

The Islamophobe extremists behind Fox’s Orwellian theater of hate are ranting that Sgt. Bergdahl was a “deserter” and a “collaborator with the enemy.” Why? Because Sgt. Bergdahl, like the majority of Americans, knows that the 9/11 wars were launched on lies…and that the biggest liars were Fox News and the rest of the neocon-infested lamestream media.

It is Fox News and the whole Zio-con “mighty wurlitzer” who are deserters, collaborators, and traitors. By trumpeting the 9/11 big lie, and the endless Islamophobic little lies it spawned, they deserted from the USA to join the worst elements of Israel. They have collaborated in the destruction of the American Constitution.  As I told Sean Hannity on his show on July 10th, 2006, Fox should be taken off the air. I should have added that he and the other Fox traitors should be tried, convicted, and lined up against the wall.

On second thought, humane execution might be too gentle a fate for Hannity, media mouthpiece of 9/11 treason. His latest outrage: On June 3rd Hannity invited a friend of Sgt. Bergdahl on his show and brutally bullied the man for resisting Hannity’s sleazy attempts to label Bergdahl a traitor. No wonder so many people watch Fox News purely for the entertainment value of watching imbeciles like Hannity wallow in filth and degradation.

The day before Hannity’s disgusting attack on Bergdahls friend, Fox brought on one of the most maniacal Zionists in Congress, Sen. John McCain, to bolster its attacks on Obama’s prisoner swap. McCain’s father, Admiral John S. McCain, supervised the coverup of Israel’s slaughter of American sailors in the botched false flag attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. Surviving USS Liberty sailors were informed their families would be murdered if they spoke out about Israel’s deliberate butchery of the crew of the unarmed American spy ship. The man behind those threats was the treasonous Admiral McCain.

Senator John McCain has followed in his traitor father’s footsteps. Shot down in Vietnam, McCain’s enthusiastic cooperation with his North Vietnamese captors earned him the sobriquet “the Hanoi Songbird.” After his release, McCain launched a political career whose distinguishing characteristic has been its service to the Israeli flag and the Zionist crime syndicate behind it. McCain covered up the 9/11 inside job by endorsing and introducing the Popular Mechanics book attacking the truth movement – an act that, by itself, should get him hanged for treason. Senator McCain’s favorite post-9/11 refrain: the Beach Boys karaoke number “Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran.”

In his interview with the Fox News anti-Bergdahl witch hunters, McCain incoherently attacked General Martin Dempsey, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who reportedly backed the prisoner swap: “I won’t comment on General Dempsey. The point – because I – he has become irrelevant to me, and the whole scenario of talking about national security.”

Let’s be honest here. McCain doesn’t like General Dempsey because Dempsey is pro-American, while McCain is an agent of Israel. McCain and his AIPAC overlords have been lobbying frantically to drag America ever-deeper into the Middle East quagmire; Dempsey has been quietly but effectively blocking those efforts. McCain and his Zionist godfather, Sheldon Adelson, want to “bomb-bomb Iran,” while Dempsey says the era of US wars for Israel is over.

It is McCain and the rest of the neocon armchair-warriors-for-Israel – not Gen. Dempsey – who are becoming irrelevant.

Obama and Dempsey should have traded McCain for Sgt. Bergdahl. And they should have thrown in Hannity and a few dozen more chicken-hawks from Fox News. Five years in a Taliban compound in Eastern Afghanistan would give these cretins time to reflect on their role as genocide propagandists in service to a foreign power.

America’s veterans are gradually realizing how badly they have been misused by the Zionist architects of the 9/11 wars. They are beginning to see through the toxic smog of Fox News propaganda. More and more are turning to alternative media outlets like VeteransToday.com, the most-read veterans publication in America, which takes no prisoners in its unflinching critique of the Israel lobby’s mendacious and malignant crusade against the Muslim world.

For this growing throng of angry veterans, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is a hero in the mold of Gen. Smedley Butler, America’s all-time greatest military leader. Butler’s book War is a Racket exposed the fact that,  as Michael Rivero puts it, “all wars are bankers’ wars.” Sgt. Bergdahl, like Gen. Butler, has rejected the lying wars and coups of the banksters and Zionists. Like Pat Tillman, Bergdahl rejected a criminal war and paid a price. Now the same forces that assassinated Tillman are performing a character-assassination on Bergdahl.

The media lynching of Sgt. Bergdahl must stop. And if Rupert Murdoch and his genocidal propagandists are not prosecuted soon, America’s patriotic truth-loving veterans may decide to march on Fox News headquarters and give the phrase “media lynching” a new and literal meaning.

KB/NN

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is www.truthjihad.com. More articles by Dr. Barrett

Source: PressTV

Turkish False Flags And The Invasion That Almost Was

Turkey seems fond of so-called ‘false flag’ operations.  In 1955, for example, the Turkish government  bombed its own consulate in Thessaloniki, Greece and blamed it on Greeks.  The following day, Turkey stage-managed massive anti-Greek riots in Istanbul that killed over a dozen Christians and caused hundreds of millions in damage.

Fast forward to March 2014.   A leaked audiotape caught Turkish officials plotting to stage ‘false flag’ military attacks on their own territory and blame them on Syrians.   Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, General Yaşar Gürel, and Intelligence chief Hakan Fidan planned to use the attacks as an excuse to invade Syria.   The title of this article could easily apply to that plot.

To close observers of the Caucasus, however, it could also describe a failed covert Turkish plan to attack Armenia two decades ago and turn the geopolitics of the region upside down.

In October 1993, two years after the USSR had splintered, an ethnic Chechen Muslim named Ruslan Khasbulatov – the Speaker, believe it or not, of the Russian Parliament – led a coup against beleaguered Russian President Boris Yeltsin.  According to American, French, and Greek officials, Khasbulatov and Muslim Turkey had a secret agreement.

If his coup succeeded, Khasbulatov would order Russian troops to withdraw from Armenia, where they helped guard the latter’s border with Turkey.   That would pave the way for Turkey to invade the landlocked Christian nation of just three million inhabitants.

History tells us that Turkey has always wanted to overrun Armenia.   Doing so would create a path to Turkic-speaking Muslim Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, and, eventually, Central Asia.  It’s called pan-Turkism.

In 1993, of course, Azerbaijan was losing its war with Armenians over the ancient, majority-Armenian province of Karabagh.   Azerbaijan was, therefore, eager for Turkey to attack Armenia, and Turkey was ready to help Azerbaijan turn the tide.

The Plot Fails

Harkening back to the Armenian genocide, Turkish President Turgut Özal had threatened to teach Armenia “the lessons of 1915.”  Tansu Çiller, Turkey’s prime minister, warned Armenia that she wouldn’t “sit back and do nothing.”  Turkey was massing forces on Armenia’s western border and supplying Azerbaijan with weapons, military advisors, and paramilitary forces.  Chechen militants and Afghan Mujahideen were already fighting alongside Azeris.

A successful Turkish attack on Armenia – Russia’s only military partner in the Caucasus – would have all but destroyed Russian influence in the region.  That, in turn, would have increased the likelihood that Chechnya, and much of the Muslim North Caucasus, would eventually escape the Russian Bear’s grip.  For a native-born Chechen like Khasbulatov, it would all be a dream-come-true.

But bombarded by Russian tanks, Speaker Khasbulatov, V.P. Alexander Rutskoi, and hundreds of rebel parliamentarians and supporters surrendered the Parliament building on October 4, 1993.  The coup and the plot to invade Armenia had failed.

The Secret Pact

The Khasbulatov-Turkish pact was first revealed by Leonidas T. Chrysanthopoulos in his book  (London:  Gomidas, 2002).   He was Greece’s ambassador to Armenia from July 1993 to February 1994.   Chrysanthopoulos, now 68, has served as ambassador to Canada and Poland, and was recently Secretary General of the 12-country, Istanbul-based Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization.

France’s ambassador to Armenia, Mme. France de Harthing, told him that “French intelligence sources” confirmed that “the Turkish incursion into Armenia would take place immediately after Khasbulatov would have withdrawn the Russian troops from Armenia.”   “This information,” wrote Chrysanthopoulos, “was later confirmed to me by my United States colleague,” Ambassador Harry J. Gilmore.

As a “pretext,” Turkey would claim to be targeting Kurdish PKK militant bases, which in fact have never existed, in Armenia.  Such a “pretext” is similar, though not identical, to a ‘false flag.’

The Turkish strike would be “incursions of a limited nature,” though it’s unclear what “limited” meant.  More likely, as Turkey wouldn’t find any PKK, the aim was to forge a permanent corridor across Armenia, link up with Azeri forces, and cleanse Karabagh of Armenians.

The U.S. and France have never, as far as is known, publicly denied the existence of the Khasbulatov-Turkish plot.  Moreover, Chrysanthopoulos gives no indication that any country tried to talk Turkey out of its deal with Khasbulatov.

Is any of this relevant today?

NATO Ambitions

Yes, because current Turkish, American, and NATO policies in the Caucasus strongly echo the 1993 Khasbulatov-Turkish plot.  For two decades, the West has been trying to penetrate and dominate the Caucasus – Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia –and eventually cross the Caspian Sea into energy-rich Central Asia.

One piece of the plan has already been partially implemented: constructing oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Turkey.

NATO’s remaining goal: absorb the entire Caucasus.  NATO would thereby threaten Russia from the south, just as it now pressures Russia from the west with its absorption of much of Eastern Europe (and, NATO hopes, Ukraine).

Georgia and Azerbaijan are inclined to eventually join NATO.   Armenia, however, is not, though it has excellent relations with NATO and the West.  Armenia has little choice but to ally itself with Russia because the former faces an ongoing existential threat from NATO member Turkey, the 1993 plot being one example.

Armenia is the Caucasus’s linchpin.  Had the Khasbulatov – Turkish quasi-‘false flag’ operation against Armenia succeeded, Russia would probably have lost, and NATO would have gained, the entire Caucasus.   New provocations, including ‘false flags,’ by Turkey and NATO cannot, therefore, be ruled out.

Turkish, American, and NATO leaders must also be interrogated as to whether their policies in the Caucasus are leading to peace or war.

The Wealth Divide Never Wider

The Robber Barons of the 19th and 20th century had nothing over the elites of today’s globalist transnational financial conglomerates. The Richest Americans, listed in Forbes conceals the real power that controls the economy. Net worth is deficient in gauging dominance in financial commercialism and monetary preeminence. The Top 50 Highest-Paid CEOs as reported by ABC News ties into Michael Hiltzik’s account that CEO-to-worker pay gap is obscene, “The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2012 was about 350 to 1.” Yet the divide in pay does not exemplify the exact lose in a livable standard of living for the ordinary staffer.If corporate multinationals were really about creating actual wealth, the pay of inspirational leadership and senior management talent, that executes the business plan, would be incidental if the employees were sharing in affluence. Those who demand higher minimum wage compensation do not understand how business works. The inordinate wealth divide, cannot and will not be reduced, until genuine economic prosperity is achieved.

Analyze the idiocy of a naive Undergraduate Research Fellow, Brian Chesley in 3 Ways to Reduce the Wealth Gap.

1. Open higher education to everyone.

2. Increase the minimum wage.

3. Increase taxes on the rich.

Such ignorant and illiterate attitudes demonstrate that institutions of higher learning encourage an atmosphere of social collectivism that plays directly into the hands of the new tyrannical tycoons.

The New York Times OP-ED piece by Daniel Altman (an adjunct associate professor of economics at the New York University Stern School of Business and a former member of the New York Times editorial board), proposes a foolish mindset and proposal in To Reduce Inequality, Tax Wealth, Not Income.

“In 1992, the top tenth of the population controlled 20 times the wealth controlled by the bottom half. By 2010, it was 65 times. Our graduated income-tax system redistributes a small amount of money every year but does little to slow the polarization of wealth.”

American household wealth totaled more than $58 trillion in 2010. A flat wealth tax of just 1.5 percent on financial assets and other wealth like housing, cars and business ownership would have been more than enough to replace all the revenue of the income, estate and gift taxes, which amounted to about $833 billion after refunds. Brackets of, say, zero percent up to $500,000 in wealth, 1 percent for wealth between $500,000 and $1 million, and 2 percent for wealth above $1 million would probably have done the trick as well.”

Absent in redistribution of wealth schemes is that the method of authentic free enterprise is never understood. Nor is there ever an effort to reestablish the principles of real business competition. The marketplace of voluntary and mutually beneficial commercial transactions, destroyed by the systemic Corporatocracy model, is the ultimate reason why wealth disparity is so great. The literal legacy of the Robber Barons is the internationalist financial system of central banking that predetermines the outcomes of selective patrons from calculating crony capitalism.

Public companies, once established to develop, produce and sell innovative goods or services are rare in an environment where financial manipulation is the primary vehicle to riches. Equity exchanges, based upon raising capital for industrious and constructive ventures, seldom function for this utilitarian purpose. The global economy, in reality, has perfected an anti-free enterprise filter that stamps out initiative and penalties upstarts that are not part of the cartels.

With the insolvency of the world-banking system an inescapable fact, the prospects for even more concentration of real assets into the hands of the financial elites, posed for the final wealth confiscation, of resources not already in their hands, is upon us.

When the internationalist financial system implodes and business screeches to a halt, a populist movement to clawback century long fraudulent gains of the hidden stashes from the interlocked illuminati families is the only coherent alternative to establish a fiscally sound financial future.

“The 2014 Bilderberg meeting is another example of those “blurred lines” between government, big oil and the financial sector, the three pillars of war. According to some reports, the topics of discussion at this year’s meeting will include the situation in Ukraine and the Russia-NATO relationship, as well as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), an agreement which, according to Stop TTIP, “is in fact a corporate coup that will take us to a ‘corporatocracy’, a corporate-run world.”

The mental confusion that blocks out the way the world fundamentally functions prevents focusing upon any essential debate as to substitute economic parameters for an equitable stake and remuneration for productive contributions to the success of any commercial venture.

The term Robber Barons, should not be substituted for every prosperous risk taker or self-made entrepreneur. The corruption within the cabal economy is rooted in the very nature of the favorable treatment given to participants in the criminal corporatist syndicate.

As Ms. Lévesque correctly describes the methods and operations of this New World Order neo-feudalism, the only structure that offers any prospects for an economic renaissance must target and strip the political influence of the globalists as much as the confiscation of their vast holdings.

Do not be deceived, by communist or socialist newspeak. Sharing the wealth is not the objective. The goal is imposing an unconditionally surrender upon the banksters, which is serious business. Start with the elimination of the Rehypothecation of Collateral. Lawful business has no room for coexistence with derivatives and swaps.Holding the body politic accountable and committed to breaking up the banksters’ monopoly requires compliance regulatory resistance from within the business community. It is just as important as customer and buyer rejection of the corporate induced consumer society. Sadly, most people simply are uninformed about the principles of sound business.

Most CEO’s are not businesspersons, but are globalist enablers and often are outright thieves. The needed business revolution will not be lead by their ilk.

Real competition can never be encouraged until inventive and audacious risk-takers have practical alternatives to fund their enterprises. Only then, will the wealth ratio narrow as affluence, that is more tangible, expands and the fortunes of the oligarchy diminish.

The New World Order And The Rise Of The East

“Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge, which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible…” – George Orwell, 1984

Nations, cultures and populations are best controlled through the use of false paradigms. This is a historically proven tactic exploited for centuries by oligarchs around the world. Under the Hegelian dialectic (the very foundation of the Marxist and collectivist ideology), one could summarize the trap of false paradigms as follows:

If (A) my idea of freedom conflicts with (B) your idea of freedom, then (C) neither of us can be free until everyone agrees to be a slave.

In other words: problem, reaction, solution. Two sides are pitted against each other in an engineered contest. Each side is led to believe that its position is the good and right position. Neither side questions the legitimacy of the conflict, because each side fears this will lead to ideological weakness and disunity.

The two sides go to war, sometimes economically, sometimes militarily. Both governments demand that individuals relinquish freedom, independence and self-reliance, a sacrifice that “must be made” so that victory can be achieved. In the end, neither nation nor society has truly won. The only winners are the oligarchs, who sing words of loyalty to their respective camps, while acting in league from the very beginning. The oligarchs, who never intended to target each other in the first place. Their target, their ONLY target, was the citizenry itself — the dumbfounded masses now mesmerized with shock, awe and terror.

The false paradigm method and the Hegelian dialectic are in full force today. Only a few years ago, Russia, China and the United States were considered close economic and political allies. Today, those alliances are being quickly scrapped in order to make room for conflict, a conflict useful only to a select international elite. As I have outlined in numerous articles, includingRussia Is Dominated By Global Banks, Too and False East/West Paradigm Hides The Rise Of Global Currency, when one looks beyond all the theatrical rhetoric being thrown around between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, the ultimate reality is that the relationship of both governments to the global banking elite is the same.

During both of Obama’s Presidential terms, he has flooded his cabinet with current and formeremployees of Goldman Sachs, a longtime proving ground for elitist financiers with globalist aspirations.

And who is the primary economic adviser to Vladimir Putin and the Russian state? WhyGoldman Sachs, of course!

U.S. and European elites have been calling for a centralization of economic power under the control of the International Monetary Fund, as a well as a new global currency.

Not surprisingly, Putin also wants a new global currency under the control of the IMF.

Obama is closely advised by globalists like Zbigniew Brzezinski, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and cofounder of the Trilateral Commission, who in his book Between Two Ages: America’s Role In The Technetronic Era states:

“The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty …[F]urther progress will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position…”

As long as he has been in power, Putin has been closely advised by Henry Kissinger, yet another member of the CFR and proponent of the Trilateral Commission, who has said:

“In the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonized in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units. A new Bretton Woods kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome…”

Both Kissinger and Brzezinski refer to this harmonized global economic and political structure as the “New World Order.” The fact that the political leaders of Russia and the United States are clearly being directed by such men should not be taken lightly.

China, too, has made demands for a restructuring of the global monetary system into acentralized currency basket under the dominance of the IMF.

China’s ties to the banking elite of London are well documented.

The call on both sides for a new monetary system and the end of the dollar as world reserve seems to greatly contradict the fantasy that the East and West are fundamentally at odds.  The progression towards a world currency and/or economic governance also appears to be growing along with the consolidation of economic and military ties between Eastern nations. This would suggest that the rise of the East and the crippling of Western elements is actually advantageous to global bankers in the long term.

While disinformation agents and media shills have attempted to downplay any danger to the strength of America and the dollar, Eastern governments have been swiftly establishing alliances and decoupling from U.S. influence.

The historic 30-year Russia/China gas deal has, of course, been finalized. This deal is already eating up market space and influencing the way in which the energy trade traditionally behaves.

China and Russia have also expanded on their bilateral agreements made in 2010, which remove the dollar as the reserve currency in transactions between the two nations.

China’s thirst for gold continues, while the country is now building its own gold exchange to rival the U.S. Comex.

Russia has recently established what Putin calls the “Eurasian Economic Union,” a deal which includes Kazakhstan and Belarus, two countries that hold large, freshly discovered oil fields.

In response to the engineered conflict over Ukraine, as well as the “Asian-Pacific Pivot” by the U.S., China has openly called for a new security pact with Russia and Iran.

Let’s also not forget that China is set to surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2016, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

While the rise of the East is being painted in Western circles as a threat to U.S. and NATO dominance, the bigger picture is being hidden from view. Yes, indeed, the consolidation of the East is a considerable threat to the dollar and the U.S. economy — most importantly in the event that China refuses to accept dollars as payment on exports and debts. With the world’s largest exporter/importer refusing to take dollars as a reserve, most nations will inevitably follow their lead.  The argument against this development is, of course, that there is no rational trigger for such a violent fiscal attack. I would remind skeptics that there was no rational trigger for the current strengthened relations between Russia and China until the Ukraine crisis. Is anyone really foolish enough to bet against another direct or indirect conflict between NATO and the East? And is anyone really ignorant enough to assume that said event would not be used as an excuse to cut the legs out from under the dollar completely?

The New World Order players have positioned the East and West for just such a scenario. Why? In my article Who Is The New Secret Buyer Of U.S. Debt?, I give evidence indicating that the Bank of International Settlements and the IMF are preparing the financial world for a new global monetary system, brought into existence by a second Bretton Woods conference. The debasement of the dollar and the rise of the East are NOT obstacles to this plan.  Rather, they are required factors. There can be no truly global economic system without “harmonization”, the demise of the dollar’s world reserve status, and the end of sovereign economic governance.

For those who doubt this scenario, read Paul Volcker’s latest statement, as reported by Zero Hedge.

Volcker, the same man who was directly involved in the destruction of the first Bretton Woods agreement and the final death rattle of the gold standard, is now promoting a NEW Bretton Woods-style agreement in which currencies are pegged to a controlled market system — in essence, a centralized international monetary system. Volcker also suggests that a single nation-based reserve currency like the dollar may be a danger to overall fiscal health.

Volcker is right. The dollar-dominated forex casino and fiat fraud is a danger to the world. Volcker helped make it that way! And what a surprise, the former Federal Reserve chairman has a solution on a silver platter for the American people — all we need is GLOBALcentralization and bureaucratic oversight.

The propaganda is being carefully planted within the mainstream. Christine Lagarde of the IMF now spends the whole of her media interviews inserting the phrase “global economic reset” without explaining exactly what that would entail, while central banking elites like Volcker suggest a Bretton Woods II conference leading to a global monetary authority. In the meantime, Russian government-funded media outlets like RT produce pieces  while we Americans get to watch manipulative Hollywood films like “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” which depicts a Russian plot to collapse the U.S. economy.  China and U.S. representatives squabble with each other at geopolitical meetings fueling fears of diplomatic breakdown, while the Pentagon “suggests” they may have to revamp their military strategies in .  Just as in Orwell’s book, 1984, old enemies become allies and then enemies once again, and at the top of the pyramid, it’s all a farce.

The best lies contain elements of truth. The truth here is that the East is forming alliances in opposition to the West, the West is involved in underhanded covert operations all over the planet, and both “sides” are in fact on the verge of a catastrophic battle for supremacy. The great lie is that important details have been left out of our little story. Both sides are merely puppet pieces in a grand game of global chess, and any conflict will ultimately benefit the small group of men standing over the board. They include the international financiers who have influenced the very policy fabric of each government toward a climactic crisis which they hope will finally give them the “New World Order” they have always dreamed of.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

My Report From Syria: And Another Country Bites The Dust

I’m here in Syria right now, and one of the big questions that journalists are asking both here and in America seems to be, “Is President Bashar Assad a good guy or a bad guy?”

Hard to tell.

Some people love him and some people hate him. As for me? I have mixed feelings about Assad.

I’m over in Damascus this week to serve as an observer for Syria’s presidential election. And I have discovered a few things so far:

First, under Assad’s government, anyone can get free medical care, free cancer medicine and a free eduction up through college — and with no usurious student loans attached either. To paraphrase the famous Pussycat Dolls, “Dontcha wish America’s government was hot like that!”

Second, after American and NATO militarists spent billions of dollars on sponsoring Al Qaeda and various other Islamic inquisitionalist/terrorist groups and those responsible for 9-11, and then encouraging these creepy guys to terrorize, brutalize and butcher Syrian civilians, bomb 300 Syrian schools and seize Syrian oil fields, then guess what the logical result might be? “Now Syrians really really really do not like the American powers that be.” Got it in one.

And so yet another country that used to be friendly to the USA now bites the dust. Yet another country now joins a really really really long list of other countries all over the world who already hate hate hate the American military-industrial complex. Wall Street and War Street.

Assad used to go along to get along with Wall Street and War Street. But those days are now long gone.

Now Assad and the Syrian people are fighting for their lives against a well-armed and well-trained group of brutal and fanatical butchers who are (literally in some cases) cannibalizing Syria.

If you were a Syrian citizen, who would you vote for in this election? What would you do if it was your home, your family and your city being attacked? I think that the answer is obvious. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/06/03/365384/bombs-and-ballots-in-damascus/

So. Here I am in Damascus, being an official election observer — as compared to those other unofficial foreign-fighter/terrorist/fanatic election observers from 87 countries who are here as guests of the U.S., Britain, Turkey, France and Saudi Arabia. And these brutal unofficial election observers’ instructions are simple. “Off with their heads!”

But hopefully mine will still remain attached.

PS: I am so honored to be here now in this joyful time of the Syrian elections — but I don’t really have the time or technology to write about all the amazing things that I have seen and heard here. But after I have digested all the intake I’ve absorbed recently in this amazing country, I do plan to write about it in more depth — and after I can get access to a larger keyboard of course.

The Snowden Interview: Patriot, Honor, Citizen

During my youth, I grew up as a “Service Brat.” My dad served 27 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. I respected God, the Stars and Stripes, America and our presidents without question. I loved my mom’s apple pie!

However, credible researches discovered that President Franklin D. Roosevelt “let” Pearl Harbor occur to draw public support to jump the United States into World War II.

Our kids fought the Korean War because somebody in Harry S. Truman’s circle decided we needed to stop communism over 10,000 miles from our shores. The best bet on who started the Korean War: a banker, a corporation head or anyone hoping to make enormous gains off mass deaths.

By the time Vietnam conscripted and killed a lot of my friends, as well as my own time in the U.S. Army, I learned about lies, corruption, bankers and the real reason for Vietnam. I learned that presidents lie. They think nothing of sacrificing young men in ridiculous wars such as Lyndon Baines Johnson’s onslaught of Southeast Asia. He killed over 2.3 million Vietnamese and 58,319 of our young men. He ruined millions of lives, families and the environment with Agent Orange.

Years later, George W. Bush “created” the Iraq War on his lies and deceptions of “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” He destroyed an entire functioning civilization, brought endless death and misery to God knows how many people. We’re still fighting and dying in Afghanistan over a year since bin Laden died at the hands of Navy Seals.

Highly decorated U.S. General Smedley Butler, upon retiring, wrote a book that every American should read: War is a Racket. The only people who benefit from war: bankers, munitions manufacturers, clothing and food producers and corporations. They make a lot of money off death of our citizen soldiers.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about the “Military Industrial Complex” that engineers wars, global tensions and anything to shove our kids into uniform and battles. Congress and presidents shoved our noses into everybody else’s business for decades.

We didn’t listen to Butler. We “supported” all those wars via massive “advertising” that a “threat” awaited us. Those wars made a lot of CEOs filthy rich.

In 1971, defense expert Daniel Ellsberg presented the Pentagon Papers exposing the incredible corruption and widening of the Vietnam War by Nixon and Johnson before him—all based on lies.

Last week, NBC’s Brian Williams interviewed “whistleblower” intelligence officer Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency’s incredible spying on American citizens. I watched the entire interview: Snowden showed himself to be incredibly honest, forthright, concerned, all-American, he honors the U.S. Constitution and he is a man of principles. He chronicled his work in the government that opened him to the corruption at the highest offices in our government.

Secretary of State Kerry called Snowden a “Traitor, coward and should come home to face the music.”

Daniel Ellsberg responded, “Kerry’s remarks are despicable!”

I agree. We need 10,000 Edward Snowden’s. In America today, we face incredible corruption in our Congress and Mr. Obama himself. The list grows: Fast and Furious, won’t enforce our immigration laws, phony Social Security number, Benghazi killings, suing states from enforcing their own laws, continue to fund 10 year wars when they know they are futile, and on and on. The corruption in Congress runs wide, deep and sickening from 20 and 30 year career Senators and Congressmen swimming in lies, cheating and playing the American people. Insider military trading on the stock market, paid off by corporations to NOT enforce our immigration laws and another 100 crimes against the American people.

“So many things we are told are untrue,” said Snowden. “The Iraq War was launched on false premises. We were led by false statements to go into Iraq.”

I can stand with Snowden because I know we marched into Vietnam on the same false statements such as the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident.”

When he tried to notify superiors, they said, “You should stop asking questions.”

I faced the same thing when I served as an officer in the U.S. Army. I learned to never question orders. If I did, command officers ridiculed me. I learned quickly to follow the military protocol.

Snowden said, “I watched the government’s dishonesty. What was going on needed to be told to the public. I did nothing to harm the citizens or soldiers of America.”

Williams asked, “Why won’t you come home and face the music?”

“The Espionage Act states that you cannot have a defense,” said Snowden. “The music is not an open court or fair trail.”

“Are you blameless,” asked Williams.

“The most important idea is that what is right may not be legal,” said Snowden.

I can attest to that fact. Once the man or “group” who gained George Bush’s ear turned the crank to initiate the Iraq War, no sane, rational or reasoning man could stop it.

“We are seeing an erosion and obstruction of our rights as citizens under the NSA,” said Snowden. “I felt that I was/am serving my country and protecting my fellow citizens. Even one of the U.S. Senators said that bulk surveillance is unacceptable. We see senior officials taking powers they don’t warrant. In the end, I did the right thing.”

I applaud Snowden. If more Snowden’s stood up in the face of withering criticism or “following the power elites” that create wars or spy on our own citizens or recklessly endanger our country—none of our kids would have died in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Desert Storm or Afghanistan.

Look to career U.S. Senators like Feinstein, Boxer, Reid, Udall, Bennet, McCain, Kyle, Schumer, Levin, Kerry, Durbin, Kennedy, Hatch, Graham and dozens of other senators for their complicity in driving this country into needless wars, not defending our borders, slamming us into $18 trillion debt and putting all of us at risk. For example: the current S744, passed by the Senate last year, guarantees our country spirals into the demographic, cultural and linguistic toilet. Yet, the damned fools passed it. I recall Mark Twain’s sage words, “Suppose you are an idiot and suppose you are a member of Congress…ah but I repeat myself.”

We should welcome Edward Snowden home as a national hero, and, at the same time shouting out to Secretary of State John Kerry, “You’re despicable beyond measure.”

Obama’s West Point Address

President Barack Obama’s commencement address at West Point on May 28 managed to displease pretty much everyone in the nation’s commentariat. Before making an overall assessment of its significance, it is necessary to examine the validity and implications of Obama’s individual statements.

“[B]y most measures America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise – who suggest that America is in decline or has seen its global leadership slip away – are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.”

This key assertion, made at the beginning of the President’s address, does not stand to empirical scrutiny. In economic terms, America was far stronger vis-à-vis the rest of the world in 1945 than she is today. In more recent times, U.S. share of world GDP peaked in 1985 with just under 33 percent of global GDP (nominal). Between 2004 and 2014, United States’ share of global gross domestic product (GDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) has fallen from 22.5 percent to 18.5 percent, and it is expected to continue falling. By the end of this year China will overtake the United States in gross domestic product, which had originally been projected to happen by the end of this decade. Analysts concede will gradually shift the ability to confer advantages or disadvantages on other countries – in other words, power – in China’s favor.

In military terms, while America enjoyed the nuclear monopoly in 1945-49, her period of undisputed unipolar dominance was between 1991 (the collapse of the USSR) and 2008 (Russia’s counterattack in South Ossetia). Although the Pentagon budget will drop from $600 billion this year to $500 billion in 2015, it will continue to account for over a third of the global total. The unsatisfactory outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan and dented America’s image of military invincibility. As the Economist commented on May 3, “The yawning gap between Uncle Sam and his potential foes seems bound to shrink.” The prevailing view among most critical analysts is that over the past decade the U.S. has suffered military reverses, and now faces severe global competition.

As for the “global leadership,” it is unclear what exactly Obama had in mind. Russia and China are creating a powerful Eurasian counterweight to what they rightly perceive as Washington’s continuing bid for the global hegemony. India’s new prime minister is a potential partner at best, and certainly loath to acknowledge America’s “leadership.”  In the Islamic world, Obama’s attempts at appeasement – which started with the Cairo speech in 2009 – have not worked: The U.S. is now even more unpopular in the Muslim world than it was under George W. Bush. America is heartily disliked even in Turkey and Jordan, presumably our allies, not least because of the continuing drone strikes. American influence in Latin America is weaker now than at any time since Theodore Roosevelt, as manifested in the unanimous rejection of Washington’s efforts to effect a regime change in Venezuela. Members of the American elite class are . The NSA global spying network has infuriated even some otherwise reliable American friends in Western Europe. Most “Old Europeans” are remarkably resistant to U.S. pressure to agree to serious sanctions against Russia.

On balance it appears that Barack Obama is the one misreading history and engaging in partisan politics.

“Meanwhile, our economy remains the most dynamic on Earth, our businesses the most innovative.”

In reality, by most value-neutral parameters the American economy is chronically weak and insolvent:

• Far from growing, the economy contracted in the first three months of this year at the annualized rate of one per cent, and it is unclear where future growth would come from. Gross domestic income is also falling sharply, for the first time in years.
• There are fewer workers, they are less efficient than a decade ago, and new employment is mostly in low-paying part-time jobs. Labor force participation (the percentage of Americans at work) is low, at levels not seen since the stagnant economy of the 1970s. One-fifth of 80 million American families do not have a single employed member.
• Government dependence has reached epidemic levels: the number of Americans getting money or benefits from the federal government exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million. Welfare spending and entitlement payments account for 69 percent of the federal budget.
• One-third of all American households are living hand-to-mouth, one paycheck from poverty. The median annual income is 7.5 percent lower than in January 2008.
• The inflation-adjusted S&P500 is back to where it was in 2007. The single biggest buyer of stocks are the companies of the S&P500 itself. At $4 trillion, stock buybacks account for one-fifth of the total stock market value. The biggest buyback in market history added zero productive value to the companies concerned.
• The mountain of debt is nearing $17.5 trillion. The drivers of growing deficits and debt in the future are unfunded entitlement programs that are designed to transfer resources from working people to retirees. When the government pension and health care commitments which are missing from official budget figures are accounted for, the total national debt is nearly $95 trillion, more than seven times the published figure.
• The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is almost over. Russia and China have joined forces in “de-dollarization” of their mutual transactions and are looking for a more productive and safe use for their monetary reserves. Their recent gas deal is the beginning of the end for the petrodollar. Eventually Washington will have to choose between an outright default and hyperinflation, and the rest of the world is waking up to that fact.

Some “dynamism,” some “innovation”…

“America continues to attract striving immigrants.”

Obama’s statement is correct. It does not illustrate America’s alleged strength as was his intent, however; it underscores this country’s major weakness. Illegal immigration is spiraling out of control, the Border Patrol is overwhelmed. If the influx continues at current high levels, the U.S. population will increase to almost half a billion in 2060 – more than a 50 percent increase. New immigrants – mostly from the Third World, unskilled, uneducated, and a net drain on American resources – and their descendants will account for over one hundred million of that increase. On current form, English-speaking Americans of European origin will become a minority in their own country four decades from now. They will inhabit an increasingly overpopulated, polluted, lumpenproleterized, permanently impoverished country. America unfortunately does continue “to attract striving immigrants,” mostly illegal ones and of poor quality. This is far greater threat to the survival of the United States in a historically or culturally recognizable form than terrorism or any conceivable alliance of foreign powers. Barack Obama does not understand this, or does not care, or – just as likely – cherishes the prospect.

“The values of our founding inspire leaders in parliaments and new movements in public squares around the globe.”

By “public squares” Obama was probably alluding to Kiev’s Maidan. Indeed, it has propelled some “new movements” to global prominence, such as the Svoboda party and the Right Sector. The Founding Fathers would be horrified to learn that, in the opinion of the President of the United States, their values have inspired Messrs. Tyahnybok, Yarosh, and other blood-soaked heirs to Stepan Bandera. This is on par with Senator Joseph Lieberman saying, “The United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same values and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.”

“And when a typhoon hits the Philippines, or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help.”

Obama is mixing apples (natural disasters) and pears (man-made ones). The problem of Islamic terrorism in Nigeria was exacerbated by the refusal of the Department of State under Hillary Clinton to place Boko Haram (“Secular Education is Sinful”) on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen Senators and Congressmen. The de facto protection thus given to Boko Haram has enabled it to morph into a state-within-the-state with an estimated 300,000 followers.

It would be ironic if “the world” were to look to America for help in Ukraine (which in any event it does not), since the course of crisis there has been, overwhelmingly, of Washington’s own making, as manifested in Victoria Nuland’s famous phone call to Ambassador Pyatt. The new Drang nach Ostenmakes sense from the point of view of the liberal globalist-neoconservative duopoly: there is no better way to ensure U.S. dominance along the European rimland in perpetuity than drawing Europe back into NATO (i.e. U.S.) security orbit in general and subverting the Russo-German rapprochement in particular. The “masked men” in buildings are a direct consequence of American meddling.

“So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century past, and it will be true for the century to come.”

It has never been true, it is not true now, and it never will be true. Madeleine Albright’s famous dictum was an arrogant statement by an immigrant ignorant of American history and a sign of her well-attested instability. It was reiterated in Bill Clinton’s 1996 speech, where he explained why he intervened, disastrously, in Bosnia: “The fact is America remains the indispensable nation. There are times when America, and only America, can make a difference between war and peace, between freedom and repression, between hope and fear.” That Obama has chosen to recycle such rubbish is a sign of intellectual and moral bankruptcy. “Indispensable” to whom, exactly? It is unimaginable for the leader of any other country in the world – Vladimir Putin, say, or Xi Jinping – to advance such a claim. It is tasteless at best and psychotically grandomaniac at worst, a latter day “Manifest Destiny” on steroids. The problem is that such hubristic delusions easily translate into non-negotiable foreign policy objectives. Resisting the will of the “indispensable nation” is ipso facto evil: Susan Rice’s condemnation of Chinese and Russian vetoes of the U.S.-supported UN Security Council resolution on Syria as “disgusting,” “shameful” and “unforgivable” comes to mind.

“Russia’s aggression towards former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors.”

Quite apart from the genesis of the crisis in Ukraine, to which “Russia’s aggression” hardly applies, Obama’s use of the term “former Soviet states,” plural, implies that in his opinion Ukraine is not the only “victim of Russia’s aggression.” Presumably he means Georgia, the only “former Soviet state” with which Russia has had a conflict since the collapse of the Soviet Union. If so, and there is no other explanation for his turn of his phrase, Obama has a dangerously flawed understanding of the August 2008 Georgian crisis.

Georgian then-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s order to attack South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali, was a breathtakingly audacious challenge to Russia, to which she was bound to react forcefully. That response was promptly exploited, for the first time since Gorbachev, by the American mainstream media machine and the foreign-policy community in Washington to paint Russia as a rogue power that is not only dangerous but intrinsically malignant. The vehemence of that rhetoric exceeded anything ever said or written about jihad, before or after September 11. To be fair, Saakashvili was led to believe that he was tacitly authorized to act as he did. President George W. Bush had treated Georgia as a “strategic partner” ever since the Western-engineered “Rose Revolution” five years earlier, and in early 2008 he strongly advocated NATO membership for Georgia. Washington had repeatedly supported Georgia’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” which implied the right to use force to bring South Ossetia and Abkhazia to heel, just as it is supporting “resolute action” in Donetsk and Lugansk today. Saakashvili may be forgiven for imagining that the United States would have bailed him out if things went badly. It is noteworthy that he was not disabused of such notions. The calculus in Washington appears to have been based on a win-win scenario, not dissimilar to the current Ukrainian strategy. Had Georgian troops occupied South Ossetia in a blitzkrieg operation modeled after Croatia’s “Operation Storm,” while the Russians remained hesitant or ineffective, Moscow would have suffered a major strategic and (more importantly) psychological defeat after almost four years of sustained strategic recovery. If Russia intervened, however, she would be duly demonized and the U.S. would push for NATO consolidation with new vigor. “Old” Europeans – the Germans especially – would be pressed to abandon their détente with Moscow. A resentful Georgia would become chronically anti-Russian, thus ensuring a long-term American presence in the region.

In the event, like the Ukrainian army today, the Georgian army performed so poorly that a military fait accompli was out of its reach. Excesses against Ossetian civilians – just like the shelling of schools in Slavyansk today – made the “victim of aggression” narrative hard to sell, Obama’s “aggression” rhetoric notwithstanding.

“The question we face… is not whether America will lead but how we will lead, not just to secure our peace and prosperity but also extend peace and prosperity around the globe.”

It is unclear how, if at all, America will secure her own “peace and prosperity” in the years and decades to come, let alone how she can extend it “around the globe.” If this is a statement of Obama’s grand strategy, it is flawed in principle and unfeasible in detail. In this statement there is not a hint of an overall blueprint for action that matches our country’s resources to her vital interests. A sound grand strategy enables a state to deploy its political, military, economic, and moral resources in a balanced and proportionate manner, in order to protect and enhance its security and promote its well-being, never mind “the globe.” In Obama’s universe, however, there are no brains behind “indispensable,” heavy-handed diplomacy and military power. Obama creates a false dilemma (“the question we face”) unsupported by facts. China, India, Russia, the Muslim world and Latin America do not want to be “led,” quite the contrary. Old Europe is reluctant at best. Subsaharan Africa is an irrelevant mess. The question we face is not global leadership, but national survival.

“Regional aggression that goes unchecked, whether in southern Ukraine or the South China Sea or anywhere else in the world, will ultimately impact our allies, and could draw in our military. We can’t ignore what happens beyond our boundaries.”

This simultaneous dig at Russia and China reflects a hubristic world view that is unmatched by conflict-management resources. A sane American relationship with Moscow demands acceptance that Russia has legitimate interests in her “near-abroad.” Obama’ four-nation tour of East Asia last Aprilescalated existing U.S. military commitments to the region, created some new ones, deeply irritated China, and emboldened American allies and clients to play hardball with Beijing. Obama does not understand that it is extremely dangerous for a great power to alienate two of its nearest rivals simultaneously. The crisis in Ukraine is going on, but the situation in Asia is potentially more volatile. Dealing with both theaters from the position of presumed strength and trying to dictate the outcomes is perilous, as many would-be hegemons (Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler), blinded by arrogance, have learned to their peril. Obama has continued the hegemonist habit of instigating crises at different spots around the world, even though the resources are scarce and the strategy is fundamentally faulty. An overtly anti-U.S. alliance between Russia and China is now in the making. U.S. overreach led to the emergence of a de facto alliance in the Eurasian Heartland, embodied in the gas deal signed in Shanghai. Russia and China are not natural allies and they may have divergent long-term interests, especially in Central Asia, but they are on the same page when it comes to resisting U.S. hegemony, pardon, “leadership.” In the early 1970’s Dr. Henry Kissinger wisely understood the benefits of an opening to Beijing as a means of pressuring Moscow on the Cold War’s central front. Back then the USSR was far more powerful than the People’s Republic. Today, by contrast, China is much more economically and demographically powerful than Russia, and for the United States the optimal strategy would dictate being on good terms with the weaker party in the triangle. America does not have a policymaker of Kissinger’s stature today, who would understand the potential of a long-term understanding with Moscow as a tool of curtailing Chinese ambitions along the Pacific Rim.

“America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.”

The notion that “the world stage” demands a “leader” is flawed. It is at fundamental odds with the balance-of-power paradigm, which has historically secured the longest periods of peace and unprecedented prosperity to the civilized world. Today’s world is being multipolarized, whether Obama the Exceptionalist likes that or not. The very idea of the self-awarded “world leadership” would appear absurd in the days of Bismarck or Metternich. Washington has neither the resources nor the minds for such a role, even if it were called for.

“The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it — when our people are threatened; when our livelihoods are at stake; when the security of our allies is in danger.”

None of the above applied in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya… but enough of Obama. There was more rhetoric at West Point, including an ode to American exceptionalism and further references to America’s global leadership, but it just as tedious, vacuous and intellectually wanting as the first ten minutes of his address.

Overall, it is evident that the United States in Barack Obama’s final term has not given up the hegemonist habit of instigating crises at different spots around the world, even though the management resources are scarce and the strategy is fundamentally faulty. An overtly anti-U.S. alliance between Russia and China is now in the making. It will be a belated equivalent of the Franco-Russian alliance of 1893 – the predictable result of an earlier great power, Wilhelm’s Kaiserreich, basing its strategy on hubristic overestimation of its capabilities. U.S. overreach has led to the emergence of a de facto alliance in the Eurasian Heartland, embodied in last month’s energy agreement signed in Shanghai. Russia and China are not natural allies and they may have divergent long-term interests, especially in Central Asia, but they are on the same page when it comes to resisting U.S. hegemony.

In the early 1970’s Dr. Henry Kissinger wisely understood the benefits of an opening to Beijing as a means of pressuring Moscow on the Cold War’s central front. Back then the USSR was far more powerful than the People’s Republic. Today, by contrast, China is much more economically and demographically powerful than Russia, and for the United States the optimal strategy would dictate being on good terms with the weaker party in the triangle. It is unfortunate that America does not have a policymaker of Kissinger’s stature today, who would understand the potential of a long-term understanding with Moscow as a tool of curtailing Chinese ambitions along the Pacific Rim.

Judging by the West Point address, for the remaining two and a half years of Obama’s term U.S.-initiated global confrontations will continue as before. Instead of de-escalating the bloody mess to which she has made a hefty contribution, Victoria Nuland will continue encouraging her blood-soaked protégés in Kiev to seek a military end-game in the East. Instead of calming the South China Sea, Washington will continue encouraging its clients to be impertinent. And Putin and Xi will draw their conclusions: that they do have a powerful common enemy, a rogue regime not amenable to reason or rational calculus.

It cannot be otherwise, considering the Obama Administration’s 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, which is but a rehash of the strategic assumptions of the Bush era. In Obama’s words from two years ago, our “enduring national interest” is to maintain the unparalleled U.S. military superiority, “ready for the full range of contingencies and threats” amid “a complex and growing array of security challenges across the globe.” The Guidance itself asserts that the task of the United States is to “confront and defeat aggression anywhere in the world.” This is not a grand strategy but a blueprint for disaster—especially when combined with the interventionists’ urge to “confront and defeat” not only aggression as such but also “aggression” resulting from  internal conflicts irrelevant to the American interest (Syria, Ukraine) and putative threats to regional stability (Iran).

Obama is a more reluctant interventionist than McCain or Romney would have been, but he, too, does not recognize the limits of American power and does not correlate that power with this country’s security and prosperity. He fails to balance military and nonmilitary, short and long-term capabilities. He rejects the fact that the world is becoming multipolar again, while the relative power of the United States is in steady decline. Obama’s absence of a viable grand strategy produces policies that are disjointed, nonsensical, and self-defeating. He is prone, no less than his predecessor, to equate any stated political objective in some faraway land with America’s vital interests, without ever offering a coherent definition of those “vital” interests.

On both sides of the duopoly, the ideology of American exceptionalism and the doctrine of global dominance reign supreme. At a time of domestic economic weakness and cultural decline, foreign policy based on the American interest requires prudence, restraint, and a rational link between ends and means. Abroad, it demands disengagement from distant countries of which we know little; at home, a sane immigration policy.

It will not happen.

Syrians Working To Preserve Jewish Cultural Heritage

Jewish Quarter, the Old City, Damascus…

It’s always encouraging when one comes upon some inspiring human enterprise, here in Syria or elsewhere, that refutes the worn shibboleths and clichés about how this or that group, or this or that religion, hates others and won’t cease targeting them until they are destroyed and burning in Hell.

In Syria today there is much evidence to refute the claims, often politically motivated, that Jewish cultural heritage sites are being singled out for destruction by rabid anti-Semites. One example of this is the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue in the neighborhood of Jobar, on the outskirts of Damascus. For centuries, Jobar has been inhabited by a peaceful, mixed community of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, many of whom often attended events together at the synagogue.

Reports this week in Zionist media about the destruction of the 400-year-old (not 2000-year-old, as claimed, erroneously, by one report in Israeli media) synagogue, along with the loss of all its contents, are similar to reports over the past three years which turned out to be patently false. This observer has been waiting for clearance to visit the site, to learn exactly what happened there this week, to assess its current condition and inventory its religious artifacts, which comprise part of Syria’s, and humanity’s, collective heritage.

One of the more virulent charges to come forth this week, particularly from the colonial Zionist regime occupying Palestine, is the mantra of ‘see what the hatred of those Arabs for the Jewish people has done.’ Admittedly it’s an effective fund-raising mechanism—as well as a handy intimidation tool—for the Zionist lobby, as it scrabbles to retain control of the US government and American public sentiment, a public which seems to be growing increasingly vexed by the lobby’s actions and which are finally pulling back from rubber-stamping the crimes of the apartheid regime.

Jobar is a suburb of Damascus, and location-wise the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue (measuring approximately 17 meters long by 15.7 meters wide) sits undeniably at a crossroads, in an area that has been occupied by rebel forces since the beginning of the Syrian conflict—which means it was sure to get damaged. With each shelling of the district over the past three years, claims were made that the synagogue had been destroyed by government forces. One such report, published on April fool’s day in 2013 by the Times of Israel and widely circulated by Zionist media outlets, claimed that, “The 2,000-year-old Jobar Synagogue in the Syrian capital of Damascus—the country’s holiest Jewish site—was looted and burned to the ground by government forces.” The report was patently false but got spread far and wide, despite the fact that there have been no government forces in Jobar since the conflict began. Two copy-cat reports followed later in 2013, but they were equally false. Nearly a year later, however, in March of 2014, media reports conceded that the synagogue was still standing, with only minor damage, and that its contents appeared to be in good condition.

This observer has received credible reports about certain stolen artifacts, including gold chandeliers, from the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue being offered for sale. It is well known in Syria that certain militia and other opportunists have been financing themselves by selling this country’s cultural heritage whenever and wherever they get the opportunity. There is in fact a multi-million-dollar black market in this type of illicit trade. Security agencies in Syria, in coordination with INTERPOL, have been alerted to the thefts of Jewish property, just as with thefts of other antiquities, and they periodically issue what are referred to as “watch for and confiscate” lists of stolen artifacts.

It is not true…based upon this observer’s many personal experiences in Syria…that Arabs hate Jews, although they would have plenty of reasons to, or that animosities between the two peoples are irreversible and irretrievable, and the reason I say this is that increasingly, in the Middle East as well as globally, people are beginning to distinguish between Jews as individuals (as “people of the book” and basically more or less like the rest of us) and fascist Zionism—an ideology being exposed as the greatest enemy and threat to Jews everywhere.

The latest, but so far unverified, information received by this observer from rebel sources claiming to have “contacts” in the Jobar Synagogue indicate that some early 20^th century artifacts, including gold chandeliers and icons, were stolen early on in the conflict, and also that the area surrounding the synagogue has been shelled sporadically over the past nearly two years, resulting in modest damage to the exterior walls. This information was obtained as of last month. Conditions may well have changed this week. Other Syrian sources indicate that there has been interior damage with some scattered rubble in the nave and prayer rooms of the temple. But there has been no confirmation to claims of thousands of manuscripts, including Bibles, being looted from Jobar. On the contrary, many documents, including Bibles and other artifacts, were transferred by the local Jobar Council, with the full cooperation of the Syrian government, to an Ottoman-era synagogue in the Old City of Damascus for safe keeping. The location, which this observer has visited and where many Jobar Synagogue artifacts are today in storage, is one of six areas in Syria currently listed on the World Heritage List of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The site currently has round-the-clock government security that continues to guard the Old City of Damascus. It is also one of the 11 synagogues that President Assad had promised in 2011 to repair and restore, but alas that’s a project that the rebellion has put on hold.

In light of all the unverified claims about the synagogue in Jobar, one is reminded again of the decade-long US/UK War against Iraq and the false reporting about what happened at certain archaeological sites in that country. Specifically we might recall the Iraqi Jewish artifacts that Ahmad Chalabi claimed he was able to ‘rescue’ for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Chalabi, of the ill-fated Iraqi National Congress, along with the Bush administration’s Coalition Provisional Authority, sought to gain some much needed good press for himself and pals Richard Perle, Nathan Sharansky, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, this after April 2003 reports of thousands of priceless ancient artifacts being looted from Iraqi museums. The war planners were being castigated for their failure to protect Iraq’s cultural treasures, and it soon became clear that some of Chalabi’s pronouncements regarding the fate of Jewish artifacts were false and politically self-serving. Discredited, Chalabi’s party did not win any seats in the December 2005 election.

Some suspect similar political grandstanding motives in the current reports about Jobar, and it may be a while before credible eyewitness accounts from the scene are gathered. At that point we will we know the truth about the fate of the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue and the whole of Jobar. A delegation, including a Jewish representative from Damascus as well as this observer, has been trying to visit the area, but armed conflict and the continued occupation of the synagogue by rebels has prevented us so far from gaining entry.

What’s important to note, though, is that the people of Syria and their government have made herculean efforts to avoid what happened in Iraq, and to assure the preservation of their global cultural heritage, of which Jewish antiquities is an important pillar. One example of these efforts is the fascinating case of the Dura-Europos Synagogue, discovered in 1932.

The synagogue in Dura Europos had survived in such good condition because of its location, near a small Roman garrison on the Euphrates River. Parts of the building, which abutted the main city wall, were requisitioned by the Roman army and filled with sand as a defensive measure against northern and eastern marauders. The city was abandoned after Rome’s fall, never to be resettled, and the lower walls of the rooms remained buried and largely intact until excavated. The archaeological dig discovered many Jewish wall-paintings and also Christian texts written in Hebrew. Especially interesting perhaps was the discovery of paintings in the synagogue depicting limited aspects of Mithraism, a religion practiced in the Roman Empire between the first and 4^th centuries and that was especially popular within the ranks of the Roman legions. Named for the Persian god Mithra, many Syrians followed the cult, as did some Roman senators who resisted the ‘new’ Christianity.

Itemized in the list below are specific Jewish-Syrian antiquities, including Old-Testament-themed paintings, this observer has verified as being under protection. Keep in mind, these are only a few examples, among many thousands, that I have been advised appear to be in excellent condition as of late May 2014:

• The Torah niche from the ancient Synagogue of Dura Europos on which are drawings of the Prophet Abraham, including the scene of his offering his son. Also beside them a drawing of the candle stick and the temple façade.
• A drawing featuring the Prophet Ezra reading a papyrus, Prophet Moses in the flames of boxthorn, the Ark of the Covenant in the hands of Philistines, and David anointed as a king by Samuel.
• A number of paintings with themes from the Old Testament
• A drawing of the pharaoh and Moses as a child, and a beautiful painting of Abraham between the two symbols of the sun and the moon.
• A drawing representing the story of Mordechai and Esther and Elijah bringing life back to a baby.

Despite the current and legitimate focus on Jobar, the record of the Syrian people on preserving their cultural heritage, especially during the current crisis, is admirable. Two weeks ago this observer visited the old city of Homs, and spent a fair bit of time at the Um Al-Zenar Church of Saint Mary, Church of the Holy Belt, which dates from 52 AD. Tradition has it that this seat of the Syriac Orthodox archbishopric contains a venerated relic, and indeed the Bishop spoke to me about it one day as he shoveled rubble from around the altar. The relic is claimed to be a section of the belt of St. Mary, the mother of Jesus, and is said to be hidden near a below-ground spring. One arrives at the spring by walking down a long, very narrow, pitch black set of stone steps. The Holy Water that can be found there, a small pond in essence, is filled with fragments of stone and wood chunks from the fighting, yet supposedly this water has curative powers. I scooped up a couple of handfuls, and it was indeed very refreshing, but did nothing, so far, to cure my leg problem.

Be that as it may, this observer was struck by the number of parishioners, along with volunteers from the neighborhood, mostly Muslims, covered in dust and soot as they worked at cleaning out the rubble. In the courtyard in front of the church this observer stoked a still smoldering heap of burned bibles and other church documents and icons which I was told rebels had torched as they prepared to vacate the compound earlier this month. Two days after I departed Homs, the Um Al-Zenar Church, though a partially burned out shell devoid of pews and religious artifacts, held its first Holy Communion since the conflict began.

From my experience, Syrians, without exception, are deeply connected with their cultural heritage and do not distinguish all that much among its origins. Many Syrians are proud to help others protect and rebuild their damaged religious and cultural sites, and in fact it seems to be a unifying factor among this besieged population. People this observer speaks with as he travels around Syria to visit archeological sites seem to blame both sides for the damage, but they tend to focus more on the task of restoring their heritage sites. Space does not allow me to enumerate the countless examples of this, but I will mention one.

This observer was served tea one day by some members of the Jewish community in the old City of Damascus, including my friend Saul, who claims to be the last Jewish tailor in Syria, as well as the lovely elderly ladies known as ‘the Jewish sisters’ and whose apartment is near where St. Paul, according to tradition, converted to Christianity. The view expressed by my hosts that day—and I believe them—is that Jewish cultural heritage in Syria is being respected, protected and preserved with the same care as Muslim, Christian, and pagan antiquities.

Christians’ Love of The Warfare State Is Killing Other Christians

When Will Evangelical Christians Start To See Through This Charade?

Ever since the George W. Bush administration, evangelical pastors and churches have been America’s loudest cheerleaders for virtually every act of war the U.S. has waged against foreign countries. For pastors such as John Hagee, wars of aggression in the Middle East are predicated upon the notion of protecting Israel–even though military meddling by the United States has only served to make life more dangerous for Israel. But leaving Israel out of the equation, evangelicals are the first to trumpet U.S. wars of aggression. I would even suggest that the favorite hymn of most evangelical churches these days is no longer John Newton’s “Amazing Grace,” but John McCain’s “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

I would go even further to say that evangelical churches have become the very best friend that the military/industrial complex has ever had. It is congressmen and senators from districts and states heavily-laden with evangelical churches that continue to pump unlimited tax-dollars into the Warfare State. One could even make the argument that in most evangelical churches, Jesus’ adage “Blessed are the peacemakers” has been changed to “Blessed are the warmongers.”

Let’s set the record straight: perpetual war is a tool of elitists and globalists to enslave the U.S. citizenry. While we are killing thousands of people abroad (most of whom are innocents)–all in the name of “liberating” them–we are tightening the tyrannical noose around the necks of the American people. In the name of the “War on Terror,” the most sophisticated surveillance society in the history of mankind has been created right here in the continental United States. With the advent of the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under G.W. Bush, Washington, D.C., has constructed (and is continuing to construct) a burgeoning police state the likes of which Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Adolf Hitler could have only dreamed about. And for the most part, evangelicals are fine with it.

But what is really happening in those countries that these endless wars are supposedly “liberating?” And specifically, what is happening to the thousands and millions of Christians within those countries after having been “liberated” by Uncle Sam? After all, America’s evangelical churches of every denomination spend millions of dollars every year sending missionaries around the globe to evangelize folks. How many missionary slides have we seen? How many passionate, tearful sermons have we heard imploring us to get a burden for missions? One of the most sacred elements of any Christian church is its missions program.

So, on the one hand, evangelicals are weeping, praying, and giving millions of dollars to make Christians out of the peoples of the world and on the other hand, they are leading the charge for America’s efforts to rain death and destruction down upon those same people.

Aside from the utter inconsistency of the above, what are all of these endless wars accomplishing for the Christians who live inside the countries that we are “liberating?” What is all of these Christian-endorsed wars doing to the people of God around the world? The answer will shock most believers.

According to an Infowars.com report, “In areas where we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and where thousands of precious American lives were sacrificed, churches are regularly being bombed, Christians are being brutally beheaded, and laws have been passed to make it illegal for a Muslim to convert to Christianity.  If we were not even able to provide the most basic of liberties and freedoms to the people living in those nations, what in the world did we actually accomplish by ‘liberating’ them?

“Just look at what has happened in Afghanistan.  We have been at war in Afghanistan for more than a dozen years, and yet things are so bad for Christians in that country at this point that there is not a single church left . . .”

The report goes on to say, “We find a similar story in Iraq. It is estimated that before the invasion, there were up to 2 million Christians living in Iraq. Now that number is down to less than 450,000, and it is falling fast.

“In fact, things are so dire for Iraq’s Christian community that some Iraqi Christian leaders are warning that Christians may soon become ‘extinct’ in that nation…”

The report continues, “In Syria, the Obama administration is shamelessly allying with radical al-Qaeda jihadists in a desperate attempt to overthrow the Assad regime.

“As these jihadists torture, behead and even crucify Christian believers, the mainstream media in the United States is virtually silent about it.

“Why is the media being so quiet?

“Well, because exposing what is going on would make the Obama administration look bad.

Those carrying out this persecution of Christians in Syria are being directly funded and aided by the governments of the United States and Saudi Arabia.”

See the report at:

The same could be said for Christians in the country of Libya.

But remember that these wars of aggression began in earnest under the “Christian” George W. Bush administration and have been ongoing throughout the Barack Obama administration. In fact, Obama’s continuation of the Bush preemptive war policy is the one thing about the Obama administration that most evangelical Christians actually support.

And please understand that what has happened to Christians in Middle Eastern countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria has happened in every other country that U.S. government has chosen to pressure–either by military intervention or economic sanction–including Nigeria and The Sudan.

A report in National Review Online states, “Prominent indicators confirm that the U.S. is the chief facilitator of the persecution of Christians around the world today.

“According to the recently released 2014 World Watch List, which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted, Syria is the third worst nation in the world in which to be Christian, Iraq is fourth, Afghanistan fifth, and Libya 13th. All four countries receive the strongest designation, ‘extreme persecution’ (other designations are ‘severe,’ ‘moderate,’ and ‘sparse’ persecution).

“Aside from being so closely and harshly ranked, these four nations have something else in common: heavy U.S. involvement. Three–Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya–were ‘liberated’ thanks to U.S. forces, while in the fourth, Syria, the U.S. is actively sponsoring ‘freedom fighters’ against the regime, many of whom would be better labeled ‘terrorists.’”

The author of this report, Raymond Ibrahim, concludes by saying, “I am often asked, ‘How can we help persecuted Christians?’ At this point, one must respond: ‘How about starting with getting the U.S. government to stop being the chief facilitator of Christian persecution?’ Altruism aside, it would be in the interests of all freedom-loving people–and especially their descendants.”

See the report at:

I wonder what the vast majority of evangelical Christians would think if they realized that their support for all of these preemptive wars around the world–especially in the Middle East–are actually the major cause of much of the persecutions against their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. I shudder to think what America’s Christians will say to their fellow-believers in Heaven who were savagely martyred due to the wars of aggression that they, America’s Christians, so enthusiastically supported.

America’s Warfare State, complete with the military/industrial complex, is facilitating the most egregious persecution of Christians since the days of Stalin, Hitler, and Chairman Mao and is turning the land of the free into a giant police state. When will the American people start to see through this charade? When will America’s pastors and Christians start to see through this charade?

If America’s evangelical pastors and churches would end their constant support for all of these foreign wars, if they would recognize the danger–globally and domestically–that the military/industrial complex poses, and if they would start putting the interests of this country above their parochial preoccupations with favored foreign states and personal eschatological opinions and interpretations, the Warfare State would collapse.

The Church has always been the compass of the country; and right now, the compass is broken, and the ship of state is way off course.

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