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NSC --  a sinister organization that controls the President and foreign policy, and ensures  militarization of the USA foreign policy on behave of CIA and MIC

News Neofascism Recommended Links Viper nest of neocons in state department fuels Ukraingate John Bolton Was Eric Ciaramella a part of Obama/Brennan "Trump Task force" ? Fiona Hill as Nuland 2.0 H.R. McMaster
Michael Flynn Robert O’Brien, yet another neocon in Trump administration Alexander Vindman Mike "we killed up to 200 Russians" Pompeo: a liar, a killer, a war criminal, a lobbyist for MIC Rex Tillerson Nikki "Binomo" Haley -- yet another female neocon in best Madeleine Albright style Zbigniew Brzezinski -- an influencial anti-Russian bigot who helped to create Political Islam and modern jihadists Anatol Leiven on American Messianism
Disaster capitalism Predator state New American Militarism Hypocrisy and Pseudo-democracy Creepy neocon Joe Biden and fleecing of Ukraine Ukraine-gate as Russiagate 2.0 American Exceptionalism Blob attacks Trump: Viper nest of neocons in state department fuels Ukraingate
Ukrainian Security Services role in Spygate (aka Russiagate) USA-Russia Gas War "Fuck the EU": neocons show EU its real place  UA officials and security services  role in fueling Russiagate and Ukrainegate  FBI and CIA contractor Crowdstrike and very suspicious DNC leak saga Democracy as a universal opener for access to natural resources Diplomacy by deception Machiavellism
Neocolonialism as Financial Imperialism Media-Military-Industrial Complex Who Rules America The Iron Law of Oligarchy The Deep State Inside "democracy promotion" hypocrisy fair Elite [Dominance] Theory And the Revolt of the Elite Etc
 

The Rise of the American National Security State is about the militarization of U.S. foreign policy starting about midway through the 20th century, increasing during the Cold War era and, somewhat surprisingly, continuing in the post-Cold War period. Part I asserts that something called the Cold War consensus emerged quickly after the end of World War П, during the first few years of what became the Cold War. One result of the Cold War consensus was a critical piece of legislation that created the Defense Department, what became the intelligence community (beginning with the CIA) and the National Security Council (NSC) inside the executive branch — that is the presidency. From the very beginning NSC was designed  as the tool of such militarization:

Secret Wars, Forgotten Betrayals, Global Tyranny. Who Is Really in Charge of the U.S. Military – OffGuardian

Recall that there was an attempted military coup d’état, which was exposed by General Butler in a public address in 1933, against the Presidency of FDR who was only inaugurated that year. One could say that there was a very marked disapproval from shadowy corners for how Roosevelt would organise the government.

One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously existing foreign intelligence bureau that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared over. The OSS would be replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence purge and the internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows.

In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National Security Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended function was to serve as the President’s principal arm for coordinating national security, foreign policies and policies among various government agencies.

In Col. Prouty’s book he states:

In 1955, I was designated to establish an office of special operations in compliance with National Security Council (NSC) Directive #5412 of March 15, 1954. This NSC Directive for the first time in the history of the United States defined covert operations and assigned that role to the Central Intelligence Agency to perform such missions, provided they had been directed to do so by the NSC, and further ordered active-duty Armed Forces personnel to avoid such operations. At the same time, the Armed Forces were directed to “provide the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA” as an official function.

What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence bureau with the military, and that the foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the President, as we will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC’s policies.

 

The main thesis is that from the late 1940s through the entirety of the Cold War, US foreign policy increasingly militarized. Then the Cold War ended interestingly (and somewhat paradoxically), US foreign policy continued to militarize rather than return to the inward-looking nation that existed prior to World War П even after dissolution of the USSR. The question is why?

Some years ago, Charles Kegley and the late Eugene Wittkopf defined U.S. foreign policy conceptually as follows. Kegley and Wittkopf asserted that U.S. foreign policy was the goals and/or objectives that policy makers sought to achieve abroad, the values that shaped the said objectives (affected them, constrained them, etc.), and the instruments used to accomplish them. It is as good as any definition and had the virtue of simplicity.

The Kegley-Wittkopf definition, though simple, included three main concepts (think of them as indicators of the dependent variable, y). The three indicators are (1) goals or objectives (whatever word the reader prefers), (2) the values that affect those objectives over time (one may think of this as America's ethos), and (3) the instruments by which the objectives are carried out or put into motion.

Any nation-state (or other actor) has things external, events outside its borders to which it reacts and responds: invasions, economic crises, various kinds of wars, balances of power, and the like, which cause policy makers to respond. Additionally, the United States has huge foreign policy bureaucracy (or rather, competing bureaucracies) including the defense and state departments, the intelligence community (from CIA to NSA to Naval intelligence), as well as other players, such as commerce department, treasury ( read Wall Street), department of agriculture, so forth that all affect the USA foreign policy.

The foreign policy  behemoth of the United States probably implements foreign policy more often than makes it, but its influence is felt in many ways. Bureaucracy often constrains rapid or dramatic change, for instance.

 Think of these government inputs as bureaucracy conforming, largely, to the rules of bureaucracy everywhere. Bureaucracy can create an impetus for change or it can constrain foreign policy—mostly the latter.

In the United States, key members of the president's cabinet—as will be seen—secretaries of state and defense, the president's advisers for security and counterterrorism, and Joint Chiefs of Staff—regularly meet with the president to address foreign policy challenges.

The reader will soon see a set of these advisers is called the National Security Council principals and the NSC was created by something called the National Security Act of 1947, an important focus of the present study.

 Each presidential adviser has personality and management idiosyncrasies and those differences have the potential to affect U.S. foreign policy (particularly in the NSC setting but elsewhere too). These are individual inputs of U.S. foreign policy and they include, importantly, individual presidents and their idiosyncratic differences.

By contrast to individual inputs, however, each of the mentioned positions has role expectations also. The American people expect the president and secretary of defense (and others) to behave in certain ways and those roles come to shape the individual, often more than the individual shapes the office or role. In addition to role expectations by the public when a candidate becomes president and nominates cabinet and NSC advisers, several of these positions also have role expectations and role shapes the office holder as often as the office holder shapes the role. These constitute role inputs.

singe the end of the WWII the main goal of the USA foreign  policy was attaining and maining the world hegemony -- Full spectrum dominance.  While America did not start out as an empire as early as  1812 it was already militaristic and warmongering nation, always ready to start war of expansion at slightest opportunity.

Initially the USA was concerted with expanding within North American continent and has modest foreign policy ambitions that turned around laissez-faire economics, freedom of navigation (necessary for capitalism), and eventually the Monroe Doctrine (dividing the European Hemisphere from our own),

But already in the War of 1812 the USA acted as predatory state. 

The NSC consists of three main parts. The first part is the NSC principals (after 1991 called the principals committee. The principals committee includes the advisers and members articulated in the National Security Act of 1947 (president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, what has become the national security adviser but began as an executive secretary) and a few others, such as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) and the head of civilian intelligence (originally the DCI but today called the Director of National Intelligence [DNI]). Presidents are allowed by statute to include others as they deem necessary. Sometimes a president will include the attorney general, director of home land defense, and others. The NSC principals committee did not fully emerge until the 1990s. Though not called the NSC principals originally. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the "ExComm" or executive committee of the NSC met. The "ExComm" was essentially a meeting of the NSC principals along with some participation by others that we would today consider NSC deputies or ad hoc members (as opposed to statutory members) of the NSC. In each of the case studies in Part II, the same criteria or questions will be applied: whether the NSC (including the principals, deputies, and staff) have been used in a novel or unique way.

Most of the positions included in the NSC principals have deputies (e.g., the number two in Defense is the deputy secretary of defense) who run the day-to-day business of the department or bureaucracy. The NSC deputies committee meets more frequently than the NSC principals and tries to anticipate upcoming challenges to U.S. foreign policy. The deputies committee often will meet for preliminary discussion in order to prepare options to eventually be decided by the principals themselves.

The third and final part of the NSC is the NSC staff. NSC staffers are experts from various other executive agencies of the U.S. federal government such as Defense, State, the intelligence community (IC), Treasury, and others who are seconded to the NSC staff for limited time frames (two years or so). NSC staffers are invariably going to return to their home agency at some future point, but they often pass through the NSCs of different administrations for the sake of continuity.

It is important to note that these three entities have not always existed in the NSC. Rather, they evolved over time. Initially, the National Security Act of 1947 created a group of members and advisers who have evolved into the principals committee in modern times as well as an executive sec retary who evolved into the NSC adviser. The members were originally the president, the vice president, both secretaries of state and defense, and the NSC adviser.

The NSC adviser is actually called the special assistant to the president for national security affairs. When the position was the executive secretary of the NSC, it was a relatively weak paper pusher.

All three bureaucracies created by the National Security Act of 1947 (the NSC, department of defense, and today's intelligence community) evolved into rather autonomous from the executive branch  large bureaucracies. Given the laws of bureaucratic inertia and momentum, all three have try to hijack the foreign policy.

All three of the main creations of the National Security Act of 1947— Defense, the IC, and the NSC—have contributed in various ways to the militarization of U.S. foreign policy begun during World War П; each of the three continues to affect foreign policy today.

The NSC has become the apex of U.S. foreign policy making and the NSC is terribly understudied and underappreciated in academic and journalistic circles. Few foreign policy experts write about it or the power that has accrued to the presidency since its creation. Though the NSC was never considered a secret, and in fact Congress debated it in 1947, it has escaped proper scrutiny.


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[Jun 22, 2021] The Imperial Pottery Barn rule: "What cannot be owned must be broken"

Highly recommended!
Jun 22, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

robin , Jun 22 2021 19:33 utc | 14

Posted by: Down South | Jun 22 2021 18:01 utc |

They say madness is doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different result.

There's nothing mad about this strategy. If it doesn't make sense, your premise is probably wrong.


Think of it as the Imperial Pottery Barn rule :

"What cannot be owned must be broken"

Weaver , Jun 22 2021 19:50 utc | 18

Robin, "the Imperial Pottery Barn rule" is an extremely good analogy. I'm going to have a hard time citing you if I ever use that. I've also seen US foreign policy described as "rubblization," with regard to Syria especially.

[May 12, 2021] No doubt the US/UK deep state, now more than ever, are busy trying to sow conflict and division in Eurasia

May 12, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Canadian Cents , May 13 2021 0:38 utc | 76

An interesting read from Pepe Escobar at Saker's site, related to the comments by Max @24 and JB @25:
https://thesaker.is/insider-view-the-tragedy-of-the-us-deep-state/

No doubt the US/UK deep state, now more than ever, are busy trying to sow conflict and division in Eurasia, to divide-and-rule Mackinder's "World Island" and hence the world.

[Feb 25, 2021] As the unofficial voice of U.S. foreign policy, Foreign Affairs turns up in some interesting places. And, after maintaining a subscription for many years, I would argue that it provides a fairly reliable chart of where the U.S. elite plan to steer the American ship of state.

Feb 25, 2021 | www.unz.com

Spanky , says: February 22, 2021 at 10:49 pm GMT • 3.0 days ago

@Sirius e Council on Foreign Relations quest for a New World Order through global cooperation, ending borders of trade and immigration, and continuing America's military role: ready to intervene anywhere in the world if necessary.

https://freddonaldson.com/2020/12/08/biden-picks-kissingers-policy-stalwarts-to-direct-u-s-foreign-policy-another-vietnam/

Everyone keeps talking about the elites who rule over us -- do you want to know who they are?

[Jan 20, 2021] The differences between the two monopoly parties in the USA are entirely domestic and are nothing but the size of the crumbs given to the people who think they are free

Jan 20, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

gottlieb , Jan 20 2021 20:09 utc | 59

It's an Empire with a revolving-door Emperor called a President or Prime Minister. The facts are fixed around the policy. We're obviously headed back toward a more 'can't we all get along' empire, after four years of a guy who thought he was an actual emperor, instead of a bobble-head. The differences between the two monopoly parties in the USA are entirely domestic and are nothing but the size of the crumbs given to the people who think they are free.

[Jan 11, 2021] Clinton broke Reagan's promise and expanded NATO eastwards, he dismantled the Glass Steagall act which led to a malignant hypergrowth of the banking sector, and he was the who introduced the telecommunications act in 1996 which allowed for the concentration of corporate media in the hands of the few.

Notable quotes:
"... Clinton hollowed out his own country in order to completely remove all constraints (financial, mediatic, military). He doesn't get called out for it nearly enough in my opinion. ..."
"... Clinton was a particular type of low-class, sybaritic evil but he didn't have a strong USSR to contend with. Instead he had the drunken traitor Yeltsin dance for him like a bedraggled starving bear. ..."
Jan 11, 2021 | thesaker.is

Serbian girl on January 08, 2021 , · at 7:42 am EST/EDT

"So when was this golden age? Under Reagan? Well, this is when the dismantling of the inner core of the empire began."

Beg to differ. Reagan understood how to administer the US empire. He knew the risks of overstretching it. He made the promise to the Soviets not to encroach on their sphere of influence. He defended the high interest rates which strengthened the USD and which kept the banking sector in check.

All of that went to hell with Bill Clinton:
He broke Reagan's promise and expanded NATO eastwards, he dismantled the Glass Steagall act which led to a malignant hypergrowth of the banking sector, and he was the who introduced the telecommunications act in 1996 which allowed for the concentration of corporate media in the hands of the few.

Bill Clinton basically turned the empire into a rapacious and uncontrollable animal. (Funny how noone here is talking about imprisoning him )

There is a silver lining to Bill C's blood-soaked administration. It was while he was in power, that the Russians finally awoke from their 1990s stupor. They began to understand the mortal danger they were facing, and they patriotically chose Putin to lead them in 1999.

Ken Leslie on January 08, 2021 , · at 8:05 am EST/EDT

– Reagan was a disgusting Russophobe and Serbophobe who proclaimed 10th April (the founding of the Independent State of Croatia) a national holiday in California as governor. Not surprising given that his was the most RC government ever – he also colluded with the Polish anti-Christ to destroy the USSR. In the process he encouraged the German Nazis (see visit to Bitburg) who then destroyed Yugoslavia.

– He brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust that was prevented by a vigilant Russian officer (in 1983?).

– He turbo-charged the power of corporations and decimated social structures and the rights of the working class (the Americans are paying for this now).

This is not to say that the scumbag Clinton was good – after all he was trained at Georgetown – that seminary for American murderers.

Serbian girl on January 08, 2021 , · at 9:33 am EST/EDT

Thanks for this Ken. Good to know who Reagan really was!

To get back to your point about the "dismantling of the empire" Reagan, for all his personal awfulness and recklessness (and subversiveness) was still more restrained than Clinton. Clinton hollowed out his own country in order to completely remove all constraints (financial, mediatic, military). He doesn't get called out for it nearly enough in my opinion. I guess it's personal, after what he did to us.

Ken Leslie on January 08, 2021 , · at 11:07 am EST/EDT

Oh, I have nothing but hatred and contempt for that criminal, trust me.

Ken Leslie on January 08, 2021 , · at 11:49 am EST/EDT

Clinton was a particular type of low-class, sybaritic evil but he didn't have a strong USSR to contend with. Instead he had the drunken traitor Yeltsin dance for him like a bedraggled starving bear. Never again!

[Jan 11, 2021] "We are all Taiwanese now" stunt is Pompeo's act of petty spite for getting outfoxed in the Hong Kong colour revolution play.

Jan 11, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

LittleWhiteCabbage , Jan 11 2021 15:19 utc | 128

@84:
As sometimes said: don't sweat the small stuff.
This "We are all Taiwanese now" stunt is Pompeo's act of petty spite for getting outfoxed in the Hong Kong colour revolution play.
Empire's useful idiots were let loose to trash the hapless city, fired up by the Western propaganda machinery.
Now Beijing is putting the stock on those pompous minions with the National Security Law, and their foreign masters can't do nuffin' except squeal human rights and apply some nuisance sanctions.
The West fails because it looks at China through ideological lenses and sees Communists, who can fall back on 5000 years of statecraft to push back at interlopers.
Beijing's moves can be likened to two classic strategies.
1. Zhuge Liang fools the enemy to fire all their arrows at straw men, which become ammunition against them.
2. The Empty City strategy. Invaders take over an ostensibly abandoned city, only to be trapped inside.
Global Times is cantankerous and sometimes risible, but even a broken clock is right, twice a day.
So when it says that crossing Beijing's red line on the Taiwan issue is not in the island's best interests, the incoming BiMala administration should take note.

[Jan 09, 2021] American exceptionalism hurt by violent Capitol debacle, expect Biden to push aggressive foreign policy in bid to repair damage by Fyodor Lukyanov

Jan 09, 2021 | www.rt.com

Fyodor Lukyanov , the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club How could something like this happen in Washington? It was assumed that, despite all its social and political problems that have worsened in recent years, America was different and far more robust than we are now seeing. A habit of being special

The rule of thumb was, 'there is America and there are others'. With the others, shortcomings are natural and to be expected, even if many of them are well-established democracies. But America is a different story, because by default, the US is a role model that was supposed to remain the democratic icon forever.

Exceptionalism is foundational for America's political culture. This type of self-identification was the cornerstone on which the nation and society were built a couple of hundred years ago. That's how Americans are raised. And you will run into this phenomenon everywhere.

When asking his supporters gathered by the Capitol building to go home, President Donald Trump said, "You are special." People from the more liberal political camp have even deeper convictions about the US being exceptional and therefore under an obligation to bring light into the world, as they see it.

That's why everybody is shocked – how could this have happened? The reaction was followed by a wave of explanations as to why the clashes near and inside the Capitol building only looked like similar events in other countries, but in reality, they were something entirely different. Here is a comment from the CNN website, "Sure there are superficial similarities... but what's happening in America is uniquely American. It is that country's monster."

Such restlessness is understandable. If we look at exceptionalism in the context of the world order that we've had in recent decades, we see that after the end of the Cold War, the US has held the unique position of the sole global hegemon. No other power in world history has ever reached this level of dominance.

Besides massive military and economic resources, America's exceptionalism has also been relying on the idea that this nation sets the tone for the global worldview. This authorized America to certify systems of government in other countries and exert influence in situations that it believed required certain adjustments. As we all know, this influence took different forms, including direct military intervention.

We are not going to list the pros and cons of such a world order in this article. What's important is that one of the key aspects of this order is the belief in the infallibility of the global leader. That's why American commentators and experts are so worried about the Capitol Building events and Trump's presidency in general hurting the international status of the US.

Boomerang effect

Generally speaking, post-election turmoil is not a rare occurrence. After all, the US itself has encouraged the new political tradition that has emerged in the 21st century. In recent times, in certain places, election campaigns haven't ended after the votes were counted and the winner is announced. Instead, Washington often encouraged the losing side to at least try to challenge the results by taking to the streets. Indeed, resistance was part of the US Declaration of Independence after all.

Western capitals consistently emphasized the legitimacy of such actions in situations when people believed that their votes had been 'stolen'. Washington was usually the lead voice in these declarations. Granted, this mostly applied to immature democracies with unstable institutions, but where are all those unshakable, solid democratic countries today? The world is experiencing so much instability that nobody is exempt from major shocks and crises.

Information overload

There is another reason why traditional institutions are losing their footing. They were effective in a solidified informational environment. The sources of information were either controlled or perceived as trustworthy by the majority.

Today there are problems with both. Technological advances boost transparency, but they also create multiple realities and countless opportunities for manipulation. Institutions must be above reproach if they are to survive in the new conditions. It would be wrong to say that they are all crumbling. They are, however, experiencing tremendous pressure, and we can't expect them to be perfect.

Looking for a scapegoat

The US is not better or worse at facing the new challenges. Or, rather, it is better in some areas and worse in others. This would all be very normal if America's exceptionalism didn't always need affirmation.

Situations in which the US appears to be just like any other country, albeit with some unique characteristics, are a shock to the system. In order to stay special, America looks where to place the blame. Ideally, the guilty party should be someone acting in the interests of an outside power, someone un-American.

This mechanism is not unknown to Russians from the experience in our country – for a long time now, Russian elites have been keen to blame outsiders for their own failures. But America's motivation today is even stronger; there is more passion, because simply covering up the failures is no longer enough – America wants to prove that it is still perfect.

Russia says American system 'archaic' & not up to 'modern democratic standards' after rioters raid Washington's Capitol building

Democrats are taking back the American political landscape. For the next two years (until the 2022 mid-term elections), they will have all the power – in the White House and Congress. Trump's supporters have seriously scared the ruling class, and the Capitol building debacle during the last days of his presidency has created a perfect pretext for cleaning house. Big Tech companies are at their disposal (so far).

Internal targets

Target number one is Trump himself. They want to make an example out of him, so that others wouldn't dare challenge the sanctity of the political establishment. But Trump will not be enough, something must be done about his numerous supporters. The awkward finale of his presidency opens the door for labeling his fans as enemies of the republic and democracy.

The Democrats will do everything within their power to demoralize their earnest opponents. This won't be hard, since the Republican Party itself is a hot mess right now. Trump has alienated almost all his supporters from the party leadership, but he is still popular among regular voters.

Demonstrative restoration of order and democratic fundamentals will also be used to reclaim the role model status. The reasoning is clear – we successfully neutralized the terrible external and internal threats to our democracy, so now we have regained the right to show the world how one should deal with the enemies of said democracy. The 'summit of democracies' idea proposed by Joseph Biden is starting to look like an emergency meeting for closing the ranks in a fight against enemies of progress.

Foreign targets

And this brings us back to the foreign policy issue, because it's not difficult to predict who will be enemy number one. Putin as an almighty puppeteer of all undemocratic forces in the world (including Trump) has been part of the rhetoric for a few years now. Hillary Clinton said it when giving a campaign speech in Nevada in August 2016, and Nancy Pelosi echoed the sentiment after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building. Of course, China is a close second on the enemy list created by the Democratic leadership, but there are some economic restraints there.

America's inevitable strife to reclaim its exceptionalism will clash with the current tendencies in global development. All aspects of international affairs, from economy to security, to ideology and ethics, are diversifying. Attempts to divide the world along the old democracy vs. autocracy lines, i.e. go back to the agenda prevalent at the end of the 20th to the beginning of the 21st century, are doomed, because this is not the way the world is structured now.

But attempts will be made nevertheless, and we can't rule out some aggressive 'democracy promotion'. Even if it's just to prove that the embarrassing Trump episode was nothing more than an unfortunate accident. This, by the way, could become a short-term unifying factor for the diverse members of the Democratic Party, some of whom represent the old generation, while others are energetic young proponents of left-wing politics.

We can conclude that the world will not really benefit from the new presidency, even if respected foreign policy professionals return to the White House now that Trump is leaving. It might stabilize America's frenzy in international affairs that we are all used to by now, but a new wave of ideology will neutralize the potential advantage (if it even existed, which is debatable).

America's resolve to prove to the world that it's not like others will encounter the large-scale 'material resistance', which will make a dangerous situation even worse. At least with Trump we knew that he didn't like wars, and he didn't start any new ones. Biden's credit history is very different.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

[Jan 06, 2021] The whole point of US and Western MSM obsession with demonizing Russia is to divert public attention away from the crisis of neoliberalism at home

Jan 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 , Jan 6 2021 18:43 utc | 3

Point on! Trump was never 'the Russians' bitch'. He was the whore of the Russian émigrés mafia that had relocated to the US in south Queens in New York City. A major difference!


Jen , Jan 6 2021 20:01 utc | 17

Of course the whole point of US and Western MSM obsession with demonising Russia and China, and castigating those like Trump (for not going far enough to oppose either one or the other nation, or both), is to divert public attention away from govt failings at home and to push the public into supporting regime change against both Russia and China.

B's post should be read as a companion piece to his previous post on China as an existential threat to the US, as an example of a nation that achieved stability, peace and enough prosperity for most of its people by pursuing an alternate political and economic ideology in the space of 40 years. An ideology that moreover challenges the ideology that the West has followed for the past 500 years, and the assumptions on which that ideology is based. Despite Western attempts to destabilise, break up and impoverish Russia in the 1990s, in order to steal its energy and mineral resources, that nation managed to bounce back to some level of stability and economic security. In addition Russia and China signed a friendship treaty in 2001 and are committing to a closer political ans economic relationship.

All this serves to marginalise the Anglosphere nations and to deny the US, the UK and their elites the opportunity to plunder these nations and their allies for their natural resources.

uncle tungsten , Jan 6 2021 20:25 utc | 21

Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 #3

Point on! Trump was never 'the Russians' bitch'. He was the whore of the russian emigrée mafia that had relocatet to the US in south Quens in New York City. A maijor difference!

Exactly that, thank you. The mafia that manages the D party are of Mediterranean roots and are totally pi$$ed of with the Russians.

Enough of this polite avoidance of the reality of the USAi gangland - it is a mafia state. The D 'reformist' squad just blew their best chance to start the reformation. They will be neutered well before another chance arises.

Jackrabbit , Jan 6 2021 20:28 utc | 23

Trump appeased . . . NOT is only half the story.

AFAICT Russiagate's neo-McCarthyism and Trump's supposed friendliness toward Putin was a set up prior to Trump negotiations with Putin at Helsinki.

"I'm your only friend ... and your last best hope ..." is a powerful pitch - especially when it is accompanied by generous offers of aid and support. And perhaps it would've worked if it had come years before.

So now we have a new Cold War - with both Russia and China.

!!

[Jan 06, 2021] Americans Only Care About Themselves. Their Rulers Only Care About World Domination, by Caitlin Johnstone

Jan 06, 2021 | caitlinjohnstone.com

Ever since November third the American political/media class have been keeping Democrats fixated on Trump's post-election shenanigans with garment-rending urgency, now going so far as to call for yet another oxygen-sucking impeachment as he's on his way out the door while millions of Americans are struggling just to meet their basic needs.

You wouldn't know it from the dominant chatter, but Trump's impotent attempts to reverse the election results don't rank anywhere remotely near the top ten worst things this president has done while in office, which include vetoing attempts to end the world's worst mass atrocity in Yemen, escalating world-threatening cold wars with both Russia and China, murdering untold tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, pushing Iran to the brink of war by assassinating its top military commander, expanding the "war on terror" and rolling back airstrike regulations designed to protect civilians.

US political discourse hasn't reflected the fact that Trump's foreign policy has been far more atrocious than anything he's done domestically–and certainly anything he's done since November–because news media coverage does not reflect this fact. News media coverage does not reflect this fact because western news media regard imperialism and mass military slaughter as normal US presidential stuff, and do not regard brown-skinned foreigners as human.

I point this out because it's good to note, as Trump leaves office, that he spent his entire administration advancing murderous imperialist agendas which spilled very real blood from very real human beings while mainstream America barely even noticed. Their attention was drawn instead to endless narrative theater which had no impact whatsoever on the concrete actions taken by the US government's executive branch. Their gaze was kept fixated on meaningless political drama while the war machine marched on unseen.

Americans are famously uninterested in the rest of the world, to such an extent that you can only get them to watch a British sitcom if it's remade with American actors and they don't know that having your nation's flag flying all over your neighborhood isn't normal. The story of Kanye and Kim's divorce is going to generate more news media views than the entirety of the Yemen war since it began. This lack of interest in war and foreign policy is mighty peculiar, seeing how the people who run their country make it their primary focus.

Americans only care about America while their rulers only care about the rest of the world. This is entirely by design.

Americans fixate on America while ignoring the rest of the world not because they are genetically prone to self-obsessed navel gazing, but because their attention is being constantly and deliberately manipulated away from the stage upon which their government is perpetrating monstrous acts.

The nationless alliance of plutocrats and government agencies who drive the US government's foreign policy cannot have the common riff raff interfering in their affairs. Immense amounts of energy have gone into preventing the rise of an antiwar movement in the hub of the empire like the one which began shaking the earth in the sixties and seventies, with propaganda playing a leading role in this suppression. The US is far too important in the operation of the empire-like power alliance which sprawls across the earth to permit its inhabitants to interfere in its operations by using the power of their numbers to force their nation's wealth and resources to be used at home. So propaganda is used to hold their attention inside America's borders.

"The danger for American elites is not that the U.S. may become less able to accomplish geopolitical objectives. Rather, it is that more Americans might begin to question the logic of U.S. global hegemony," writes @RichardHanania>

In an excellent Palladium essay published last month titled "China's Real Threat Is to America's Ruling Ideology", Richard Hanania argues that the example China sets as a nation rising to superpower status by relatively peaceful and lawful means is deeply threatening to the orthodoxy promoted by western imperialists. If the world in general and Americans in particular were to become more conscious of how a civilization can succeed and thrive without waging endless wars in the name of "freedom" and "democracy", they might begin calling for such an order themselves.

"While most Americans will never experience a ride on a Chinese bullet train and remain oblivious in differences in areas like infrastructure quality, major accomplishments in highly visible frontiers like space travel or cancer treatment could drive home the extent to which the U.S. has fallen behind," Hanania concludes.

"Under such conditions, the best case scenario for most Americans would be a nightmare for many national security and bureaucratic elites: for the U.S. to give up on policing the world and instead turn inward and focus on finding out where exactly our institutions have gone wrong."

In other words, China's rise threatens to reverse the carefully-engineered dynamic which has Americans looking inward while their government points its attention outward. If Americans begin turning their gaze internationally and use the power of their numbers to force their government to heal and nurture their crumbling nation, it would spell the end for the imperialists. But it could also be the beginning of a peaceful and harmonious world.


CAROLYN L ZAREMBA / JANUARY 6, 2021

It is an erroneous generalization to say "Americans only care about America". Which Americans? If you are talking about the ruling class of the United States, even they don't care much about America, only their bank accounts and their stock portfolios. Witness their indifference to the thousands of deaths from Covid-19 through a lack of lockdowns, testing and contact tracing. Witness their demanding that schools and factories remain open, probably to kill as many of the working class as possible while these wealthy goniffs drink champagne on their private islands.

I am born and reared in the United States, and I hate the government of my country of birth. I have hated them since the 1960s. I am an internationalist. Nationalism is a 19th century idea that is past its prime. Ultra nationalism is fascism. All Americans do not support fascism. Many of us are Marxists.

And when you use the term "American", you should be clear that you mean the United States, and not Canada, Mexico, Panama, Brazil or Ecuador, among others.

STANLEY N LAHAM / JANUARY 6, 2021

When Vladimir Putin said that the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of post WWII was the dissolution of the USSR, he was right on the button. What unraveled next was story of unparalleled greed and hubris in the United States in believing the world was its spoils for winning the Cold War.

From Eastern Europe to Asia and South America it went on a rampage like an elephant in a tea house making and breaking governments, bombing and dismembering viable states, creating chaos in order to come in and establishing its new Pax Americana. From Yugoslavia to Libya to Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Honduras etc, it either promoted downright Coup d'États or mercilessly bombed destroying people and infrastructure to achieve its agenda unopposed by a weak Russia and a Warsaw Pact that had gone to its grave. And in so doing caused the greatest mass migration of refugees to Europe the likes of which the world had never seen since WWII.

Yet all this was conceived and effectuated not in secret rooms but openly declared as official policy. In the mid nineties a new political doctrine that would guide policy was announced in the form of "Project for a New American Century" which is nothing less than Manifest Destiny on steroids and on a global scale. This was soon followed by its military doctrine of "Full Spectrum Dominance" over all countries of the earth. Well when the drunk Boris Yeltsin realized belatedly what was afoot, he literally ceded control of the Russian Federation to Putin in 2000 who went about repairing the social, economic and military disaster his country had become,

Starting in Syria in 2014, Vladimir Putin started challenging the American Empire that can no longer project the military supremacy it enjoyed for nearly two decades and this has enraged its planners. The demonizing of Russia is for having stopped dead in its tract the military supremacy of the US and the demonizing of China for having stopped its economic one and challenging the supremacy of the dollar.

CAROLYN L ZAREMBA / JANUARY 6, 2021

Putin was quite right. The only brake on the brazen greed for power of the United States was the huge land mass of the Soviet Union. That brake was removed when Gorbachev waved the white hankie and surrendered. The rest is nightmare.

ROUNDBALL SHAMAN / JANUARY 6, 2021

"Americans are famously uninterested in the rest of the world Americans only care about America while their rulers only care about the rest of the world. This is entirely by design."

In a sense, you can't blame Americans for being so shallow-visioned. From birth, Americans are taught that they belong to "The Exceptional Nation". Well, if you are Exceptional, that must mean everyone else ISN'T Exceptional. So why in the world would Americans care about those unimportant outsiders?

Add to that the fact that most people are innately selfish anyway and just naturally don't care about anyone or anything much but themselves. The World beyond USA borders is just some kind of unimportant black hole that doesn't count for anything. Or so the belief goes. Generation to generation.

And add to that fact what does any of this have to do with big shiny pickup trucks, cold beer, and American football? Those are the three dominant religions in America and have been for a long time. Why would Americans care about anything else? There's only so many hours in the day, you know?

"The nationless alliance of plutocrats and government agencies who drive the US government's foreign policy cannot have the common riff raff interfering in their affairs."

Where things seem to headed the nationless alliance of plutocrats and government agencies who drive the US government's foreign policy cannot have the common riff raff AROUND AT ALL. Various scenarios in play for that outcome.

We need to live each day as if it is our last. Because one way or another, The Last One is getting closer. Do cattle at the stockyards realize that they are in a stockyards and their brothers and sisters go into that big building and don't seem to come out? Will we?

EDWARD HACKETT / JANUARY 6, 2021

You have completely summed up the central points of American thinking. Don't wear a mask or social distance because that interferes with my right to be an idiot.

We get the best government money can buy. When will we stop electing celebrities and old white men? Someday there will be a book called "The Decline and Fall of America". I hope someone is around to read it.

S.A. HOGAN / JANUARY 6, 2021

Dear Caitlin (with typos fixed),

I'm afraid I must take offense when you paint things with a broad brush–which is almost invariably a no-no, the stuff of which prejudice is made–and say "Americans care only about America."

While our media may encourage an ethnocentric, myopic viewpoint of the world, the cure is to A. explore the viewpoints of other countries, and B. get out there...

NEWTON FINN / JANUARY 6, 2021

"Americans fixate on America while ignoring the rest of the world not because they are genetically prone to self-obsessed navel gazing, but because their attention is being constantly and deliberately manipulated away from the stage upon which their government is perpetrating monstrous acts." Not entirely correct. Because of the basic decency of the American people, their imperial government is compelled to use its MSM mouthpiece to sell wars to them in explicitly moral terms.

First, their attention is relentlessly focused ON a specific foreign stage. Then, the leader of that foreign country is demonized as a new Hitler. Finally, the responsibility of the exceptional nation is asserted to protect the citizens of that foreign country from their demonic leader. This longstanding propaganda strategy of R2P (responsibility to protect), previously described by Caitlin and Diana (the other Johnstone), provides strong evidence that the character of the American people, as Caitlin indicates, is no worse than that of other nations.

Indeed, is it not precisely the morality and decency of American citizens which are manipulated by their government and MSM to provide sanction and support for evil deeds?

JOHN DAY / JANUARY 6, 2021

America got shot with an animal tranquilizer dart in November 1963. I'm praying for her to wake up and stand.

JWK / JANUARY 6, 2021

As is always the case, governments being the ideal environment for psychopaths, they eventually are saturated with them. The longer they are around, and the more resources they have, the worse they get. America is peaking, I wonder what nation takes their place?

FRED GROSSO / JANUARY 6, 2021

Good discussion Caitlin. I only add that America could never do the things you suggest it needs to do with Trump and his goons in charge. With the Democrats we have a slim chance. I did not support Clinton in 2016 as I saw her a a hawk, and I found Biden to be a weak choice, but at least one we could work with, just barely. We have a lot of work ahead of us.

KHATIKA / JANUARY 6, 2021

How could things be any worse than the US coming in and bomb you back to the stone age killing millions. Let people take care of their own problems or at least have them solved regionally. The number one problem today is people determined on telling others how to live their lives.

EDWARD HACKETT / JANUARY 6, 2021

Much of what you say about America's lack of involvement with foreign affairs is correct. If you asked the average American citizen where is Yemen? You would get a blank stare...

SOLLY / JANUARY 6, 2021

No need for a long essay on the subject. Americans are violent, egotistic, egoistic, ignorant and greedy.

EDWARD HACKETT / JANUARY 6, 2021

In many cases you are correct, but I think that analysis applies more to our governing class than to the man in the street. The average American is consumed with earning a living and watching TV. They have little knowledge of the world at large nor do they have any interest in learning about the greater world.

Many of your criticisms could be directed to people around the world. We Americans don't have a corner on your listed qualities but we are certainly in the top 10 of those that share our worst qualities.

MR OBVIOUS / JANUARY 6, 2021

We are a empire in decline riding on power and might derived from the WW2 victory and addicted to a system that is totally inadequate for the present. Like any dying behemoth do not get close as the thrashing around is extremely dangerous. We will change if modern civilization is so fortunate to survive.

ZARD / JANUARY 6, 2021

'A nation with a collective, room-temp IQ' : "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" ~ H.L. Mencken

left(ZOG)right =Divide and Conquer

STEPHEN MORRELL / JANUARY 6, 2021

Here is one of the most insightful recent conversations on the rise of China and the decline of the US empire which will never reach the mainstream, between Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IquO_TcMZIQ

JIMMY ROBERTS / JANUARY 6, 2021

I think Caitlin's post on the current state of American society was a Curate's egg : good in parts only. She is absolutely correct to draw attention to US capitalism's desire to impose its dominion over the entire world by ANY means, including war, if necessary.

Trump has confined himself to launching trade wars against US capitalism's rivals – Russia, China, and the EU trading bloc. But the US military has kept up its murderous blood-letting in the Middle East and in Yemen, where the prize is control over the region's oil and gas reserves.

Caitlin is, however, way off beam in her assessment of the "average" American, who, she believes, is only interested in American affairs, flag-waving, and TV. This pessimism simply does not correspond with reality. American cities have been ablaze with revolt for the last 2 years, in response to US police murders of innocent people, and especially black people. These mass demonstrations reflect a revolutionary state of mind amongst wide layers of American working class people, especially the youth of America who correctly see no future for themselves in capitalist America.

... ... ...

A Stalinist China is most definitely not to be admired, or emulated. I can assure Caitlin that she would not be allowed to run her platform in Beijing. On the contrary, she would probably be put in jail for "deviationism," which is Stalinist doublespeak for refusing to repeat, parrot fashion, every word that emanates from the mouths of the Chinese billionaire, fake "Communist" leaders...

ROBERT L PHILLIPS / JANUARY 6, 2021

I very much agree with most of what the author states, but I agree that holding China and it's authoritarian regime up as anything to emulate is wrong. But that nation is indeed racing past the United States in many technological areas.

I tend to agree with her assessment of 'most Americans,' however, as the vast majority could not pass a basic current events quiz, don't know who Julian Assange is, and readily welcome ever stricter controls over the populace due to their fears of – anything and everything, including CV19. Not all, but the majority.

KEITH HAYES (K-DOG) / JANUARY 6, 2021

j'accuse

Americans I am one but do you think I have a choice? Most of the people I know. Ok to be honest, all of them, consider themselves well informed... Dissing people who live in a cultural wasteland is not a good use of time. As a great man once said: 'Forgive them father, they know not what they do.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE (AUTHOR) / JANUARY 6, 2021

I made it clear that Americans are the victims of imperialist propaganda brainwashing. My American husband who co-wrote this article says stop being so precious about your nationality.

ANNA QUAY / JANUARY 6, 2021

As a Brit I hear you. This political ignorance is certainly not confined to America. I would go as far as to say it extends to all of the English speaking countries of the world. Oh, I would also suggest that you can throw in most of Europe, then add Asia into the mix. It is an affliction that affects humanity.

It is borne from years of being ruled by a hierarchy. We have a slave mentality and it is only individuals who are awake. Collective groups of people usually belong to some organisation and therefore by the nature of their organisation simply follow the doctrine/dogma or ideology of that organisation.

RON CAMPBELL / JANUARY 6, 2021

Once again Ms Johnstone hits it out of the park with an article that brings goosebumps to this old man. The United States government is completely corrupt and its world-wide killing sprees are way worse than anything that Mr. Hitler ever did. No morals and no ethics and no empathy are the hallmarks of its nature that need to be done away with ASAP. Thank You Ms Johnstone for you honest assessment of the United States Monster.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE (AUTHOR) / JANUARY 6, 2021

Prosecution of Child-Sex Traffickers Plummeted Under Trump https://www.courthousenews.com/prosecution-of-kiddie-traffickers-plummeted-under-trump/

[Jan 06, 2021] U.S. Foreign Policy Blob Knows The Real Threat From China - Has Ideas Of How To Defeat It

Jan 06, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

U.S. Foreign Policy Blob Knows The Real Threat From China - Has Ideas Of How To Defeat It

Andrew Bacevich points to an interesting essay by Richard Hanania about the "threat" from China as perceived by the U.S. establishment.

China's Real Threat Is to America's Ruling Ideology

The author says that China, even as it is growing and has passed the U.S. economically, is not an enemy of the U.S. and no danger to U.S. or others' security:

While China is not blameless, one could reasonably make the argument that, from an international perspective, it has had easily the most peaceful rise to great power status of any nation of the last several hundred years.
...
Perhaps, as the McMasters of the world claim, this is all because Beijing is biding its time in hopes of world domination. Alternatively, China may be an inwardly focused civilization that, while it may have disputes with its neighbors, is not on a mission to fundamentally remake the world. While it would naturally prefer rules that favor it and resists any principles that would legitimize regime change supported from abroad, Beijing does not seek to fundamentally replace the U.N. or rewrite international law. Its strategy has mostly sought stability and growth within the rules of the system developed by Western democracies in the aftermath of the Second World War. While its current position of strength is recent, it has not yet broken from this precedent.

Nor does it, as far as is known, plan to do so.

Various U.S. influenced political scientists have claimed that democratization and liberalization is a necessary precursor for peace and economic growth. That ideological argument was used to seek and kill various 'dictator' dragons abroad. China has proved them to be wrong. And therein lies the real danger to the U.S. establishment.

China's development over the last 40 years proves that it is not necessary to wage wars in foreign countries to be secure and to prosper. For U.S. ideologues that is a bad example that should not exist:

If universal democratization is not the ultimate endpoint of history -- or even an imperative for development, peace, and prosperity -- how can the American role in the world be justified? What will it say about the American system if the U.S. is no longer the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, having been surpassed by a country that became the dominant power in East Asia without even paying lip service to democratic ideals?

Ultimately, Americans themselves might begin asking themselves difficult questions about how well they have been served by their own system, including the sacrifices in blood and treasure they are regularly asked to make abroad.

That would be really bad as the monetary fodder in the trough the national security establishment is feasting from would suddenly be seen as an unnecessary waste. That is the real danger to the blob:

Ultimately, the danger for American elites is not that the U.S. may become less able to accomplish geopolitical objectives. Rather, it is that more Americans might begin to question the logic of U.S. global hegemony . Perhaps not every state is destined to become a liberal democracy, and nations with very different political systems can coexist peacefully, as many countries in East Asia do. Maybe the U.S. will not always be at the frontier of military and economic power, and the country that overtakes it may have completely different attitudes about the nature of the relationship between government and its citizens.

While most Americans will never experience a ride on a Chinese bullet train and remain oblivious in differences in areas like infrastructure quality, major accomplishments in highly visible frontiers like space travel or cancer treatment could drive home the extent to which the U.S. has fallen behind. Under such conditions, the best case scenario for most Americans would be a nightmare for many national security and bureaucratic elites: for the U.S. to give up on policing the world and instead turn inward and focus on finding out where exactly our institutions have gone wrong.

What then is the U.S. establishment going to do?

The U.S. rose to global supremacy on the back of two world wars which destroyed the industrial capacities of its main competitors while the wars hardly touched its own country. Could it arrange for a comparable event, by maybe instigating a conflict between Japan and China, that would again lead to a major destruction of global production capabilities while the U.S. stays on the sidelines?

Letting Japan, South Korea and Taiwan(!) have their own nuclear weapons , as another writer proposes, may be a way to get there:

What to do [about China]? There is one way to square the circle. The Biden administration should reconsider reflexive U.S. opposition to "friendly proliferation."
...
Taiwan is in greatest need of such a weapon, but developing one would be highly destabilizing, since Beijing would be tempted to preempt the process. The alternative would be for Washington to fill Taiwan's need, with a profound impact on Sino-American relations. Proliferation would not be a good solution -- but it might be the least bad one.

No doubt, a nuclear-armed China would react badly to better-armed neighbors, but it is no happier with a more involved United States.
...
It is easier to know what not to do with China than what to do. Don't go to war. Don't stage a new cold war. Don't sacrifice core values and basic interests. Don't make the issue all about Washington. Don't waste money and credibility on overambitious, unsustainable attempts at containment. Don't attempt to dictate to the PRC.

But what to do? The United States should think creatively about new approaches to old problems. One way to do so is to stop hectoring partners and preventing them from doing what they want to do. Including, perhaps, developing nuclear weapons.

I expect that this and other such ideas will soon proliferate.

Posted by b on January 5, 2021 at 19:19 UTC | Permalink


namulith , Jan 5 2021 19:30 utc | 1

Total madness!
Michael Droy , Jan 5 2021 19:32 utc | 2
Fortunately the Taiwanese are smart enough not to use nuclear weapons.

Seems to me that China threatens mostly Big American companies - Google Facebook etc, and therefore the US stock market valuations that depend on huge growth expectations remaining credible.

james , Jan 5 2021 19:40 utc | 3
thanks b... the idea to stop when digging a ditch for yourself is not something the usa has ever demonstrated in my memory.. it would be nice if the usa could change its approach on the world stage, but at this point i give it very low odds.. instead the usa will be forced to adjust to a different reality, much like all the innocent people in the usa left behind by a system that is broken.... the usa is becoming what it has failed to address and becoming a failed state... it seems like it is now on one of those china bullet trains to reach this failed state destination, as no other options are likely to be explored here forward...

i am presently reading a book by linda mcquaig given to me for christmas - the sport and prey of capitalists - .... essentially the capitalist template used in the usa the past 40 or more years is being pushed onto canada - privatization and allowing big finance firms like blackrock into the halls of canuck political power to decide the direction that we have to privatize our public institutions... again - we are back to the conversation that @pshycohistorian likes to focus on - public, verses private finance... these financial monoliths are dominating the landscape of the west... i don't know how we move forward and put them to rest... i suspect a financial collapse is the only way, and i am not convinced that the new system will be better then the last... the predators, although a small percentage on the planet, are especially focused on there desire for financial power and dominance.... is china headed in the same direction?? or russia?? i can't tell... as for canada, the future looks grim if one was to just read this book i refer to...

gottleb , Jan 5 2021 19:41 utc | 4
Agree 100%. We can't expect the USA to suffer its own Shock Doctrine can we? The American Fantasy of World Savior is too engrained in Establishment thought to give up its American Exceptionalist, Unitary Super Power, Plunder for Profit, in the name of FREEDOM all while doing Blankfein's God's Work without a fight.

Imagine the horror, the horror I tell you, of American Introspection at the nation's utter failure at everything it pretended at.

Mao Cheng Ji , Jan 5 2021 19:45 utc | 5
Isn't it going to be forbidden, in a couple of week, for any country to have nuclear weapons?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Weapons

As for China, I believe it's conclusively demonstrated the superiority of its sociopolitical model. Growing economy, growing prosperity, growing influence in the world, no wars.

Jackrabbit , Jan 5 2021 19:50 utc | 6
"... Has Ideas Of How To Defeat It [China] "

Just ideas? Or maybe they have plans that they are already implementing?

Seems like the latter to me. But then I've been saying (repeatedly) that everything changed in 2013-14 when USA realized that the Russia-China Alliance had teeth.

!!

vk , Jan 5 2021 20:00 utc | 7
Some Chinese commenter here please help me, but, if I'm not mistaken, China has a doctrine that in the US thinktankland they call "China's Peaceful Development Doctrine". In Chinese the call it the "Celestial Ascension" [Doctrine] or something like that. And yes, it requires socialism in order to make sense (the demonstration as to why the doctrine is socialist is too long to put it here, but it is).

So, the author from the Paladium Magazine is reinventing the wheel here, as China makes no secret of its global doctrine.

I maintain my opinion that nukes eliminate the prospect of another Kondratiev Cycle being forced on a world war. Nukes not only destroy infrastructure - it also destroy land and air themselves. It subtracts space from capitalism.

powerandpeople , Jan 5 2021 20:09 utc | 8
Funny how USA always has a geopolitical move or suggestion that invites death and destruction to two or more other countries very far from US shores.

Must be profitable.

Nuclear bombs are passe. There is no 'day after' first use.

Missiles, drones, precision muntions,advanced jamming etc are the new army, navy, and airforce rolled into one.

All that is left is peace and cooperation.

But in reference to China and Taiwan - or any other pairing, for that matter - who would benefit from it?

Putting it another way, who would no longer benefit from it?

Caliman , Jan 5 2021 20:12 utc | 9
"If universal democratization is not the ultimate endpoint of history -- or even an imperative for development, peace, and prosperity -- how can the American role in the world be justified?"

Good question; but note that the question itself assumes that "universal democratization" HAS in fact been the point of our imperial endeavors around the world. As can be seen from our close and personal relationships with the Gulf monarchies, the Egyptian tyrant, the SE Asia wars, and many many other examples to mention over the decades past, this is manifestly not true.

The truth is that "universal democratization" and the so-called "rules-based order" post ww2 have ever only been a narrative justifying (first) imperial anti-socialism and (now) anti-localism. The truth is that what they are deathly afraid of is losing the all-important NARRATIVE. Because, as the article points out, once the narrative of the savior nation is lost, how can the expense in lives and treasure and thereby the feeding of the Mil-Sec-Think Tan Complex) possibly be justified.

karlof1 , Jan 5 2021 20:23 utc | 10
Given the gigantic problems facing the Outlaw US Empire that are detailed in the links I've posted today on the week-in-review thread, I'll add this interview that mostly covers its current domestic turmoil. Furthermore, given the massive skewing of economic data over the past 30 years, those sitting in DC haven't a clue as to the severity of the domestic crisis. From the interview:

"Colin Cavell: Failing to address the massive problems of unemployment and lack of jobs, failing to address the massive wealth gap between rich and poor, failing to ensure adequate healthcare to millions, failing to protect the American public during the course of the current Covid-19 pandemic, failing to address the festering racial divisions, especially with regards to the criminal justice system, and failing to instill a unified trust in the governing apparatus and ruling economic class, then, yes, Biden will preside over a collapsing economy, a divided country, and a distrustful citizenry, and thus open the door to either another term for an older Trump or some other demagogue or outright fascist to 'restore order'."

And all that's primed to worsen more before it improves any. And the international situation vastly differs from that of the Great Depression years with Fascism rising in Europe and Asia. Hudson in his talk and the Keiser's guest both mention the chasm opening economically between China and the Empire--they're heading in opposite directions as we've been discussing here for months. If the mainland got any inkling that Taiwan was going to be given nukes, it would be occupied the next day. Japan and RoK both want to be rid of their occupier which is preventing them from gaining economically by further engaging with China. And the same can be said for the EU. The bottom line is no nation shares the interests of the Outlaw US Empire excepting perhaps Poland and Ukraine--not even Occupied Palestine.

The Parasite has almost devoured its Host, and in the process has disarmed it. Those sitting in DC can't see that fact because the Parasite controls their collective brains, so we get treated to idiotic essays like the one at Foreign Policy b linked above. Obama chose to feed the Parasite in 2009 instead of having it executed. And that's why we are in deep bantha pudu today.

Stonebird , Jan 5 2021 20:26 utc | 11
I think the main problem are the two different approaches taken by the US or Chinese, which are diametrically different. The Chinese seem to use a " Cumulative " approach, while the US is based on what I call " Winnowing " as a state. Take their respective attitudes towards the poor.

First the Chinese; Cumulative , we are all in this together . If everyone has a "job" be it ever-so lowly, selling food on a street corner for example, then for the Chinese this is a "plus". The person is more or less responsible for his own well being, is not a burden on the State for handouts, and could be (potentially) taxable etc. The object being that ALL Chinese then become positive factors in the society. They are also more motivated because they have a "place" in society. The recent case of Jack Ma and an IPO is not the opposite, but he was trying to get ahead by means that would have led to more unemployment - on the back of the Chinese Government. He was not adding to the cumulative good of the country. Only his own riches. (The Chinese do have billionaires and riches - but are constrained by Corporate credit ratings as explained on a previous - very interesting - thread. Thanks to: psychohistorian | Jan 5 2021 2:08 utc | 162. The MoA Week In Review - OT 2021-001)

The US. The attitude is to beat out the chaff leaving only the "kernel ". To " Winnow " the population leaving only the top. ie the poor are sidelined, they become a problem for the Government (needing support, food etc.). A net negative value to US society. (The Rich also get handouts from the Fed. as free money has become an habitude, but that is an another way of winnowing out the chaff - as others do NOT get the trillion dollar handouts) The poor have no "place" in a society that has rejected them and so are less motivated. They must fend for themselves and are expected to obey. If they do not there are always the police to enforce obedience.

"Cumulative = win-win", and "Winnowing = Only the top win".

Mike from Jersey , Jan 5 2021 20:41 utc | 12
It always gets me when the American press says that there can't be peace without "democracy" and "liberalization."

Huh ... try 20 million dead in America's wars since WW II.

And as for "democracy," living in America I would love to see some of it.

karlof1 , Jan 5 2021 20:45 utc | 13
Stonebird @10--

Your "Winnowing" differs little from Zero-sum. The big problem is the Outlaw US Empire's initial storyline is greatly at odds with Zero-sum. As I've written many times at MoA, The Constitution's Preamble that's taught to all citizens says the government's purpose is to "form a more perfect Union...," and what's happening now--for several decades in reality--is the exact opposite. US politicians and business magnates from the Guilded Age knew very well that the way to keep the peace was for everyone to perceive they had a stake in the system. Neoliberalism's Zero-sum throws that rationale under the bus, which in turn has generated the current domestic turmoil. The one thing Trump failed to do was to promise to all Americans they'd have a stake in the system, which is essentially what Hitler and Mussolini told their masses. Trump intoned and shouted MAGA, but did nothing to show that he was serious about doing so. That's why he failed. And that's why the D leg of the Duopoly will also break. It's that break we must act upon when it occurs.

uncle tungsten , Jan 5 2021 20:48 utc | 14
Caliman #8

I think the oligarchic death cult that manages USAi affairs is not the slightest bit interested in "universal democratization": just scan the homeland to see that. The death cult is only interested in wealth accumulating their way. Every year they go into a demented trance screaming about the evil of taxes. Whenever a crisis emerges or a bill goes to the House they scramble to append as many 'tax relief measures' as they can.

The USAi oligarchy and their death cult regulate as many US political candidates as possible to destroy any chance of a government introducing a universal education or universal health system that will need taxes to supply it. Look at what just happened with the #forcethevote attempt to get medicare for all to commence in the USAi. It was the best opportunity in a century to implement it and the only possible advocates totally ignored the initiative.

They became the FraudSquad instead: they used the M4All advocacy to get elected and then ignored their electorate.

Something like %70+ of the people approve of this and the best advocates bowed to the oligarchy death cult and have been since the day they were elected.

So what might the oligarchs think of Chinese people with their resounding support for the Communist Party of China? They will hate them with every bone in their body, they will be furious that this country resists and denies them a chance to plunder it - yet again. The oligarchic death cult will be extremely angry that a single country presents an excellent and achievable system of government and financial management and community betterment to all the other nations on earth.

The oligarchy death cult will do anything to destroy them. And they have the perfect compliant tool in the Biden Harris Presidency.

Paul Damascene , Jan 5 2021 20:50 utc | 15
b - insightful perspectives.
But while I'd agree that China's threat to US ruling ideologies features foreign relations as the leading edge of conflict, the danger of a good alternative may be even greater as it concerns domestic policies.

If a reckoning comes for US ruling elites, the prosecution may begin with the offshoring of US jobs, broad-based prosperity, manufacturing and strategic infrastructure development. Indeed Trump's greatest threat might have been drawing a dotted line if not a solid one to the culprits.

Exhibit B becomes the Chinese model's successes in poverty eradication, general rises in broad-based prosperity, stunning growth in STEM capacities and jobs with futures and now, obviously, competence in public-health crisis management.

The next phase may be litigating the hollowing out of the MIC itself through the corruption of the national defense by a revolving door of staff officers, lobbyists, tankies, bureaucrats and legislators for-profit, for-show, for-corruption.

An additional phase, should the human race survive it, may be tribunals -- such as those of the Reign of Terror, in the event of revolution, or, in the event of war, along the lines of war-crimes tribunals under Chinese / Russian direction, once a suitable city in the smoldering ruins of the continental US equivalent to Nuremberg in German can be found.

m , Jan 5 2021 20:51 utc | 16
It's not so much the American people but the people of the "blob" themselves who increasingly question American exceptionalism. That's why they become ever more crazy and aggressive. They compensate their (unconscious) self-doubts with fanatism.
Lucci , Jan 5 2021 20:55 utc | 17
USA upcoming false flag ?
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_89502.shtml
William Gruff , Jan 5 2021 20:58 utc | 18
The empire may be considering arming and provoking its vassals near China into nuclear war, but America would never consider anything so terrible as trying to cripple China with biological weapons! That would be just crazy!

Wouldn't it?

Prof K , Jan 5 2021 21:07 utc | 19
There are several levels of analysis here that are being muddled by theoretical ignorance.

The liberal theory says that political democracy and free markets create economic growth, responsible government, mutual gains from trade, economic interdependence, and a zone of peace, reinforced and cemented by multilateral institutions. The liberal zone of peace is threatened, though, by authoritarian regimes with state-run economies, and the former need to contain and overthrow the latter.

Realist theory starts with the state and the state-system, which is anarchic and thus produces conflicts over the balance of power. Defensive realists say that a prudent grand strategy would focus solely on territorial integrity and sovereignty, because any aggressive actions only produce balancing. Offensive realists say that hegemony is the only source of security and that great powers should go to war and wage the arms race to achieve it.

Marxists say that none of these dynamics are distant from the class relationships and competitive dynamics of capitalism and so both liberal and realist arguments turn out to be a crude apologia for imperialism -- for the class-based strategies of dominant states.

With this in mind, we can turn the US' China problem. As the article says, China poses no threat to the US state, nation and territory, so the defensive realist argument for containing China is groundless. Likewise, China's economic growth and stability in the absence of liberal democracy also undermines liberal arguments about the conditions of war and peace in the world. Finally, the balancing of China and Russia against US primacy strategies has undermined offensive realist fantasies of hegemony.

So, what is actually driving US aggression vis-a-vis China?

The only answer is that the long-term material interests of the American capitalist class are threatened by the emergence of a superior competitor, namely, China.

This is true in several respects, most of which I can't cover here.

But, China is building dense global relationships, and positioning itself as a central node of economic growth, technological prowess, social stability, manufacturing power, consumer demand, green innovation, and multilateral reliability.

The US is in deep trouble as a result. As the world becomes more China-centric, the major economic powers will stop funding US trade and government deficits. This will reduce the value of the dollar and diminish the global roles of the Treasury Dept and Federal Reserve, and of Wall Street. The US will fail to meet its debt obligations and the standard of living will plummet as debt-financed consumption winds down. The USG will face fiscal dilemmas, all of which pose serious problems: cut social programs and risk riots; cut the military and risk the empire; raise taxes and risk capital flight and economic stagnation. Given the dynamics of American domestic politics, these dilemmas will not be solved.

These are the underlying material fears of the US ruling class and they EXPLAIN the real drive to containment and war with China.

In short, Marxism is a better science of world politics than are liberalism and realism.

Hal Duell , Jan 5 2021 21:16 utc | 20
Nuclear Japan? Maybe. Nuclear South Korea? Maybe. It could be argued that both already are by virtue of the U.S. occupation of both.
Nuclear Taiwan? I don't see that happening, and any attempt to do so would offer China the perfect excuse to formally reabsorb that Chinese island.
Dork , Jan 5 2021 21:39 utc | 21
American paranoia over China (and Russia) seeking to usurp the US and take over as world hegemon is pure paranoia and projection. It's the western model of the world that considers it normal and desirable to have one country or ideology ruling the entire globe.

China has no history of using its power to force the world to accept it as sole ruler. The reason the US and the west are so paranoid about China et al is because they give themselves the "divine" right to force their ideology onto others, first with Christianity, a monotheistic religion that has converting the heathens, savages and infidels to its screed at the center of its philosophy, and then with liberalism + capitalism (now neoliberal rentier capitalism) and they, falsely, assume every country and ideology is like that.

American and western European foreign policy is a study in Psychological Projection 101. When imperialists like Porcine Pompeo and Lurch Kerry accuse other states of aggressive behavior, violating sovereignty and so forth, they are actually talking about their own country's actions.

psychohistorian , Jan 5 2021 21:49 utc | 22
In the US, now that corporations are people, and since the corporations and tools of finance are privately owned, the concept of democracy is a lie or myth if that offends you.

That is why I keep dragging the ideology discussion to the reality of public/private finance.

It comes down to risk management decisions about the allocation of scarce resources. In the West now those risk management decisions have a ROI skew which includes a profit component that does not exist in China risk management decisions.

We are in a civilization war because the West will not show well in a social system merit comparison...and the elite know this....hence the ongoing shit show to control the narrative.

rolland rouillard , Jan 5 2021 21:54 utc | 23
First off all....there is a difference between WAR and PIRACY
I did not see any bomb landing on US ground or soldier.
Second....free trade agreement is responsible for China economic succes.

Finally...bring back the production on US GROUND...that will kill China

WE are the one responsable...Stop blaming others.

steven t johnson , Jan 5 2021 22:10 utc | 24
Prof K@18 has a very optimistic scenario where China becomes the safe haven for capital and then other countries stop using the dollar as the world currency and t-bills are passed over in favor of the RMB and investors will prefer investing in Shanghai stock market because their money will be more liquid thereand something something will happen so that they (whoc?) won't finance US trade deficits. I don't understand this last, as it is entirely unclear in what sense US trade deficits are being financed. In fact, actual trade deficits aren't being financed. But then the balance of payments isn't just trade in goods, but financial services and US stock markets and yes, government treasuries are also part of that.

It is entirely unclear to me how socialist China, where as of now the ren min bi is not freely convertible, where the government has enormous influence on import and export of capital and capitalists are not only not guaranteed bailing out by the Reserve Bank but regulations are much more onerous than in the US especially with enforcement by prison sentences even for the wealthy...it is unclear to me how this China can replace the US as safe haven, at least while remaining some sort of socialist country at all, even in a NEP-is-the-road-to-socialism kind of way. Further, the US role as the safe haven was not just historically due to it's relative victory (as compared to its capitalist rivals,) in WWI and WWII, but due to its military power. The US pursues a policy of rule or ruin, and ruins selected easy targets on a regular basis (since Bush the senior at the latest,) just to keep the point vivid in everyone's minds. The dollar is not founded on US economic production/productivity but on blood. It is impossible to imagine today's China becoming a capitalist policeman guarding the gates of the bazaar and collecting backsheesh, so to speak. The Chinese capitalists would have to really take over and seriously re-organize Chinese society to do this.

This all sounds pie-in-the-sky at best, I think. Except that's prettifying the ideal, I think. I don't believe a reformed capitalist world system is even possible. Capitalists ultimately depend on their states in their rivalries. There inevitably comes a point when the states must resolve conflicts with wars. The pursuit of a multipolar world is a pursuit of a world safe for war, not a pursuit of peace.

Cyril , Jan 5 2021 22:31 utc | 25
@b

Letting Japan, South Korea and Taiwan(!) have their own nuclear weapons

The link is to an article by Doug Bandow, titled "America's Asian Allies Need Their Own Nukes". Bandow recommends "friendly nuclear proliferation".

This is how far the US has decayed: that a respected journal like Foreign Policy should publish such insanity.

And yes, it's totally insane. The US is not the only country capable of proliferation. The day after Taiwan gets nuclear weapons, so will Mexico and Hezbollah. The day after that , so will many other countries. It's impossible to foresee all the consequences of irresponsible proliferation, but one outcome is the most likely: doomsday for humanity.

Robert Browning , Jan 5 2021 22:36 utc | 26
It won't be the Muslims who destroy Israel, it will the Chinese and the Chinese will will do it without firing a shot.
blues , Jan 5 2021 22:42 utc | 27
-// Another veteran diplomat, Victoria Nuland, will be nominated [by Biden] for the role of under secretary of State for political affairs, one of the people said. //-

Politico

karlof1 , Jan 5 2021 22:57 utc | 28
Lets look at what China plans to do over the next 5 years . The article provides a very broad explanation then links to some specifics at the bottom, the item about the Yangtze River Economic Belt being most important. I found this bit of reporting highly important:

"More specifically, these days the government uses the five-year plans to reinforce and complement the market dynamic by providing regulation and guidance. That includes providing the legal and social framework, such as issuing monetary and fiscal policies, providing public goods and services, such as building high-speed rails, and correcting for market failures like pollution."

There's a vast difference in focus between China and the West--China's sharply focused on its development in ways the West isn't whatsoever, and it makes certain its citizenry knows that and everyone's working as a team--every job has its own value and is important. The best explanation I have is that China is doing while the West is watching and not doing; therefore, China continues to grow ahead of those standing watching with their jaws agape.

China outnumbers the Outlaw US Empire by more than one billion people. That's a huge team working together to advance their nation and themselves. Within the Empire, at least 30% of the labor force is idle and not even counted for unemployment purposes since they aren't actively looking for non-existent jobs while about 24% of the active labor force is unemployed. That's 54% of your human capital that's not being used at all to better themselves and their nation. Honestly, which one has the better outlook?

The enemies of the USA reside within it. Yeah, I've said that before and the evidence continues to prove I'm correct.

Leftraru , Jan 5 2021 23:05 utc | 29
All of this makes me think about the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century according to Vladimir Putin: The fall of the Soviet Union. Not because of the shrink of the Russian Empire, but for the loss of an equal to the USA in the international stage. That would make the remaining superpower to have some sort of delusional sense of destiny, as seen in Fukuyama's 'End of History'.
How the situation evolves in a timeframe of 5-10 years in the future is hard to evaluate given the many factors that will influence the outcome but IMO, the only thing that can be taken for granted is the further the USA gets weaker, the more dangerous it becomes for the future of Humanity.
My first post at MoA, keep on with the good work :)
c1ue , Jan 5 2021 23:14 utc | 30
I would add that the threat China poses isn't just ideological - it is operational.
The US derives enormous benefit from the US dollar as reserve currency; from the USD as alternative savings vehicle of choice by foreigners against their own currency; by all manner of favorable international institutions like the World Bank and IMF.
Secondly, China isn't some bare assed Middle Eastern terrorists or Central Asian mountain tribes. It has more people, it will or already has a larger economy and it is proceeding apace with technology development.
This is very different than Russia or even the Soviet Union, for example.
The West was always far bigger, wealthier and productive than the Soviet Union - this enabled all sorts of strategies like outspending on defense, buying job lots of puppet politicians in vassal states, etc.
This won't work with a China that is a bigger supplier as well as all of the other size-related advantages already noted.
Can the American oligarchs stand being 2nd fiddle in the medium term? Certainly in the long term? Would their domestic and foreign empires hold up?
karlof1 , Jan 5 2021 23:35 utc | 31
Sputnik publishes its own analysis , which relies rather heavily on Beijing-based American commentator Thomas Pauken who has his own credibility issues as readers will discover at the article's conclusion.
Dr. George W Oprisko , Jan 5 2021 23:41 utc | 32
Putin and Xi have made it very clear....

WWIII will last 20 minutes....

Russians will become martyrs... The population of the NATO countries will be fried and burnt to a crisp...

What is so difficult about understanding that???

As for Taiwan.....

Were it to begin a Nuke program, would be invested and occupied within 24 hours, while USN ships lay at the bottom of their berths. That is, sunk.

INDY

Clueless Joe , Jan 6 2021 0:04 utc | 33
"democratization and liberalization is a necessary precursor for peace and economic growth"
Well, anyone with any notion of history before 1800 knows this is absolute bullshit and those aren't linked at all.
spudski , Jan 6 2021 0:17 utc | 34
Bang on, Clueless Joe @31.
nocovery , Jan 6 2021 0:18 utc | 35
The affairs of humans are paltry compared to the vast changes that are taking place in nature: the Sixth Mass Extinction resulting from our destruction of habitat and the stability of the climate system. As methane has begun erupting from the enormous stores in the Arctic, accelerating the forcing and ice melt, we continue on our merry way oblivious to the fate that awaits us in the near future. Faster than expected, abrupt climate disruption is nature's revolution to clear the earth of the invasive species -- humans.
Paul , Jan 6 2021 0:32 utc | 36
Here is some constructive China/US analysis from Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and republished on John Menadue's Australian site:

https://johnmenadue.com/europe-and-chinas-year-end-breakthrough/


S , Jan 6 2021 0:58 utc | 37
The United States should think creatively about new approaches to old problems. One way to do so is to stop hectoring partners and preventing them from doing what they want to do.

Unless, of course, they want to become friends with China -- this should be prevented at all costs!

S , Jan 6 2021 1:04 utc | 38
America's fantasy that China will soon collapse like the Soviet Union did is based on arrogance and ideology, not facts and reason (RT, Tom Fowdy, January 4, 2021).
Debsisdead , Jan 6 2021 1:21 utc | 39
amerika's corrupt and undemocratic system of government will bring itself undone long before it could succeed in any attempt to disrupt China's system.
The stupid two party both the same just tell different lies farce is tearing the population apart, that's not going to get better it will get much much worse. In fact I suspect the 'prez-elect' is desperately hoping that the rethugs win both senate seats in Georgia as that provides him with a way to avoid following up on his vague minutely left of center campaign promises.

He may be outta luck cos at this stage with about 25% counted the Dems have a lead in both races. Still that's mostly urban electorates and as I understand 'urban' has become amerikan code for unwhite, so if the dems are trying to fluff this contest it will be by Dems failing to turn out the rural african american vote that saves creepy joe from embarrassment. We shall see cos the state dems may not agree to that.

Anyway the lack of a shared dialog between amerikans is getting worse as we see even here at moa where some of these fools come over all hysterical about quite minor issues. You get that when it is barely possible to pull a cigarette paper between dem & rethug policies on the big stuff, so all that is left are the same deliberately selected emotive issues such as abortion & capital punishment that both parties have been encouraging the citizens to obsess over for the last 60 years.

Those fools will go into a civil war over the emotive, totally irrelevant to living in a functioning society, issues which have been beaten up & propagandised for so long, and that will be the end of the threat to the rest of the world amerika poses.

S , Jan 6 2021 1:28 utc | 40
@steven t johnson #23:
I don't believe a reformed capitalist world system is even possible. Capitalists ultimately depend on their states in their rivalries. There inevitably comes a point when the states must resolve conflicts with wars. The pursuit of a multipolar world is a pursuit of a world safe for war, not a pursuit of peace.

Ergo, we must pursue a socialist multipolar world.

rico rose , Jan 6 2021 1:33 utc | 41
An USA wich is not leader of the world is not possible. This is the central myth. Growing toward that or beeing it. But without that there is no imaginable USA. I come for myself to the conclusion, a multipolar world will cause breakup. As unit of one country it is just not agreement capable.
Canadian Cents , Jan 6 2021 2:56 utc | 42
In 1941, during WWII, Harry Truman wanted a brutal and prolonged conflict in order to inflict as much death and destruction in Europe as possible, declaring:

"If we see Germany winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible."

The US - or at least its ruling elite as expressed by one of its key leaders and subsequent president - wanted the brutal war to continue for as long as possible, so that as many Russians and Germans as possible would be killed, (with other Europeans, including Jews, as inevitable collateral casualties in that process,) so that the US could then step in at the very end to dominate war-destroyed Europe.

Following the same playbook, the US warmongering/plundering elite would love it if they could pit Russia vs. China, Europe vs Russia, India vs. China, Japan vs. China, etc. So long as Eurasia is divided instead of cooperating with itself, the US remains the hegemon. Even better if a destructive war breaks out over there, that the US would sustain from over here, and step in as the noble saviours at the last minute to plunder the spoils.

-

The threat of the example that China happens to provide is not just about preserving America's ruling ideology ("universal democratization", "democracy", "freedom", etc.,) but also about preserving US-led geopolitical hegemony and US-led plutocracy.

The US-spouted ideology is a tool for its hegemony that in turn is a tool for its plutocracy to continue to enrich itself through plunder.

Any example of a country that serves its people, let alone one that does so without foreign wars and regime change subversion, cannot be allowed by a plutocracy that sustains itself through wars, subversion, parasitism, and plunder.

That means, unfortunately, we in the West will continue to be force-fed a barrage of propaganda from our establishment media so that people can't perceive that example, (and are even made to reject it as evil,) lest they start questioning the corrupt, plutocratic system they live in.

James joseph , Jan 6 2021 3:11 utc | 43
Been thinking about what u said, rr 39..
Canada waits with baited breath... the burned out remains of empire's creche, negotiating for commerlcial union with their long traditional north-south continental neighbors. Perhaps the midwest could share in monopolizing grains ...
Or the sea coasts with the fisheries..... otherwise, i don't see it.
I think we are going to collapse to local economy, and maybe build bacl to anational economy, after some time. I don't know when.
Blues guy , Jan 6 2021 3:16 utc | 44
@ nocovery | Jan 6 2021 0:18 utc | 33:

Your Brainwashing is complete, you have swallowed the green pill and happily pay your carbon taxes and live in the fear artificially inserted into your sub/conscious having trusted proven liars and and having failed to verify things for yourself or trust your own senses. All thinking is filtered through your gree-coloured glasses.

You have swallowed wholly the manufactured-for-the-masses groupthink propaganda and espouse it from the core of your very soul, shout it from the mountaintops. Be the chickenlittle that you are and just come out and say, it will be cathartic and will feel good - THE SKY IS FALLING!

You and your ilk are fools, and are dangerously fascistic, climate fatalist totalitarians and you will not be satisfied until any and all opposing views/data/freedom of thought are outlawed.

bystander04 , Jan 6 2021 3:53 utc | 45
many comments mention "oligarchs" - and their power, nationally and internationally. I see a serious danger of the "Oligarchic Internationale" (a wordplay on the marxist 19th. century "Workers Internationale" with their slogan "Workers of the world, Unite! I say that for the very few MoA readers who are too young or not educated in history or economy, apology to the most MoA readers). The Oligarchs of the world (be it USA, China, Russia, Israel, and from wherever they may creep) are de facto already in an "Internationale" type organization - they say silently "Oligarchs of the World - Unite!" and they don't want a big war , which would upset the status quo. They will try to keep it for themselves and their offspring with very forceful means - Internationally enforced. Smaller proxi-wars may happen, but no WW 3, in my laymen's opinion.
denk , Jan 6 2021 4:24 utc | 46
In a nutshell...
Chinese survival vs gringo hegemony.

pssst,
There's this dirty little secret,
FUKUS is very safe ! ;-)
https://apjjf.org/2014/12/36/Vince-Scappatura/4178/article.html

Grieved , Jan 6 2021 4:42 utc | 47
@39 rico rose and #41 James joseph - and others.

I've been pondering lately this one question: what is the point of even having a country if the advantages to the ordinary citizen of having a country are no longer maintained?

In the US, if we can't get the federal government to act on behalf of the people, maybe the only answer is to discard that government. In the USA, this can be done, lawfully and peacefully (although with high drama, for sure) by the States acting in agreement to dissolve the Union.

The United States acts under a certain hindrance by having two levels of government, but this is also a great treasure as well. The top layer of government can go away, and the people will still have a sovereignty-based government to live under, and to be represented by, and to engage with.

So here's a proposal from each State to the Federal establishment: you discorporate, we keep all our monies, and all federal properties within our borders convey to us. You fuck off: we'll get by without you somehow; don't worry about us - and adios .

~~

And rico rose, your point about the multi polar world is very important I think. When you say "a multipolar world will cause breakup" , I suggest that a multipolar world will better allow breakup. It's kind of the same thing, the same result from two different ends: from one end, the Demonstration Effect from the rest of the world including China showing to the US populace that there is a much better way to live, and from the US end, the general dissatisfaction growing among that populace as the federal government continues to be useless.

It could take a short decade at most, I reckon, for the rest of the world to be so impressive that US media can't hide it from the people any longer, and for US oligarchy to be so lawless and ravaging that the people simply can't take it anymore.

In a softer world that follows the example of Asia, and especially given the natural borders of North America anyway, there is no great threat from armed invasion to any of the States, even if each one were to stand alone. Many states would form new unions, but even so, the citizenry in place in each state possesses the firepower to resist any invasion, I suggest.

So if there's no defense to be provided for, all that's left is the welfare of the citizens to be provided for. And 2020 has shown dramatically that, while the federal government has abandoned that sense of provisioning, the States and their people still care passionately about this very thing.

~~

Apparently the calls for "secession" are arising again in the US, or so I've heard. It's a crude concept at the moment, and there is no right of secession. But there is every right to amend the Constitution, by a 3/4 majority of the States, and to dissolve the present Union, in order to create a "more perfect" arrangement.

Fnord13 , Jan 6 2021 4:57 utc | 48
@43 Bystander04

China has many billionaires, but I don't think they have the degree of power over the Chinese government and society implied by the term "oligarch". Jack Ma may be the richest man in China, but that hasn't stopped the Chinese government from quite effectively cutting him down to size.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7555623/jack-ma-alibaba-china-billionaire/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-launches-antitrust-investigation-tech-giant-alibaba-n1252325

VietnamVet , Jan 6 2021 5:02 utc | 49
The pandemic is the final nail into the coffin of the Western Empire. Asia and South Pacific nations functioned as they should and their public health systems are controlling the virus but must enforce quarantines on the infected world to continue their ascension.

It is now a multi-polar world. The exploitative capitalism of the West intentionally destroyed democracy and good governance to increase profits. Reality has bitten back. The remains of the former public health system are corrupt and incompetent as exemplified by Dr. Anthony Fauci. The virus basically spread unhindered in the USA and UK. The difficulty is that in times of stress human being revert to tribal beliefs. The reality of the change in power dynamics will be denied by Western decision makers. The truth is that if the West cannot control a virus, it will never address the existential crises; climate change, rising inequality and perpetual war.

Mankind will only survive if it learns how to live on a finite planet in peace.

Arch Bungle , Jan 6 2021 5:03 utc | 50

I expect that this and other such ideas will soon proliferate.

Nice pun.

So, in short, they've run out of ideas and decided to go full retard.

I can already see the shape of 2021 to come. It's going to be a shitshow on an interplanetary scale.

Bluedotterel , Jan 6 2021 5:18 utc | 51
Posted by: nocovery | Jan 6 2021 0:18 utc | 33

No worry, Nature will take care of itself after we humans have disposed of ourselves. I deplore our general destruction of the environment we live in and the misuse/abuse of resources, but humans are not as strong as we think we are. We may cause considerable damage to the mega fauna and flora, and severely damage ecosystems, but our current war against the planet is one we cannot win and should not even be trying to (capitalism and its God Mammon, again). Life will go on with or without us. Evolution is a fact of life, whether our religions, corporate board rooms, genetics manipulation corps or biological weapons departments understand that or not.

Adam , Jan 6 2021 6:25 utc | 52
@nocovery
Faster than expected, abrupt climate disruption is nature's revolution to clear the earth of the invasive species -- humans.

We're not an invasive species, but I broadly agree. The best thing to happen to the beautiful planet in the last million years would be the extinction of the smart pest, Homo S. Too bad I won't be around to enjoy a people free Earth.

KamMan , Jan 6 2021 6:41 utc | 53
I usually read MoA in the morning, yet today it late pm. Your article reminded me of an earlier article read this morning re USA and China Wages comparison. Here is the article pay particular attention to the graph. Pretty much sums it up in that China have an expansionist economy while the USA has (with exception to the Financial rubbish posing as assets) a contraction economy. Globalisation and Austerity from Reagan_nomics/Thatcher_nomics from the "70's have lead the west into the debt ridden marsh we are in now. Yet the lesson of an expansionist economy (which all western economies have done in the past) escapes the thinking of those who supposedly matter. Personally I think the world needs a lot more "Musk's (creating massive employment in making new tech cars and rockets plus solar) and a lot less Bezios's and Jack Maa's (Alibaba china) (Using others products and screwing them on margins to increase his wealth)
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2021/01/05/michael-pascoe-wages-graph-globalisation/
Stonebird , Jan 6 2021 8:51 utc | 54
karlof1 | Jan 5 2021 20:45 utc | 12


I agreee that the US is almost easier to define. Zero-sum or winnowing, both are reductive traits. ie the population gets sidelined.

However, I also think that part of "our" problem is that the comments and viewpoint, are generally all "western-centric" and not enough attention is paid to the fundamental differences in attitudes. Chinese are being "gifted" with US preoccupations to show that they are basically the same as those of the US itself. ie. The US is right-superior in its attitudes and so others STILL try to copy-steal-follow it. Something that is becoming visibly not true. Which is why my comment also mentioned the "cumulative" Chinese attitude. It being probably more important to understand why China is on the ascendant.

Note that "Democracy", "communism" or whatever, all have the same stated object of population input and therefore good for the masses. It is when their lofty ideals are no longer seen to be true, (and are not true in practice?) that the edifice cracks. (Ie, part of the USSR collapse corresponds with the rise of the Nomenklatura of only 750'000 people with the right to vote etc. It worked as long as it worked, but fell through when the mass realised they were NOT getting their part somewhere)

Sorry, Very short reply, as I have problems with internet to resolve, with a bit of luck and perseverance I may be able to continue later today.

Jams O'Donnell , Jan 6 2021 9:24 utc | 55
Posted by: Grieved | Jan 6 2021 4:42 utc | 47

Exactly right. The second largest problem in the world just now is the Government of the US. Breaking up the US would effectively get rid of the problem. Then we could deal with climate change more effectively.

The current hatred and division between red and blue, the lack of effective health services, the deterioration of infrastructure, the future demise of dollar power and thus lack of funding for the military all give me cause to hope that break up will happen. Lets all do our best to make it so.

c1ue , Jan 6 2021 9:26 utc | 56
@Canadian Cents #42
It shouldn't surprise you; Truman was closely associated with the Pendergast political machine (Kansas City mob).
His Attorney General was closely involved in serious corruption in the IRS and DOJ-Tax division.
He dropped the bomb and was a nasty person in general.
Aule , Jan 6 2021 11:57 utc | 57
Meanwhile, Assange is denied bail. Something tells me that, even if not extradite, they plan to hold him in prison indefinitely - if not American, British would do just as well.
BM , Jan 6 2021 12:41 utc | 58
Wow! When did MoA give up all rationality? The US has long since dug its own grave and long since guaranteed its unviability as a superpower. Everything from here is downward, as long as it clings to the mad idea of supremacy. And the longer it continues to deny reality the bigger and more brutal the bang when it finally collapses - or it disappears in its own nuclear conflagration.

The US produces virtually nothing, except over-priced and disfunctional weapons. Everything else that it has is stolen. It does not have the capability to reverse that trend - that horse has long since bolted and disappeared over the horizon. Unlike the US, countries like China and Russia create genuine wealth through their own productive efforts, and they have the military and economic means to ensure that the US cannot strangle them. The economic advantages of China and Russia will only increase compared to the US, and everything the US is doing to sabotage their efforts only makes them stronger and the US weaker.

Nuclear weapons to Taiwan??? Only SuperMorons could entertain the notion for more than 2 seconds (and there are plenty such supermorons at the Foreign Policy Institute, that's part of what got the US to this status in the first place). If the US gives nuclear weapons to Taiwan they will be giving nuclear weapons directly to China. China would know about it before it happens, and long before they could be operational Taiwan would cease to be Taiwan and would be a province of Mainland China. Not to see that China has that capability - and the resolution to carry it out - is sheer idiotic blindness.

Even if Taiwan could install such nuclear weapons before China takes over, where would they hide them? The stupidity of thinking a tiny one-point nation on China's borders can seriously threaten the entirety of nuclear-armed China - in alliance with Russia - defies fantasy. Doing so requires not "superior weapons" (which the US does not have anyway, that prize belongs to China's ally Russia) but superior idiocy and superior self-deception.

The US is on a bullet train to self-destruction. Stopping that train is impossible without making changes in the past that were not made - unless it gives up 100% of its ambitions to supremacy and becomes a minor self-sufficient village minding its own business. That is its only chance.

Instead of waffling about and navel-gazing over such tiresome fantasies of the US exceptionalists, MoA would do much better to concentrate on the serious issues that confront the world today - like confronting the damage wreaked on society worldwide by the hyper-unbalanced madness of covid policies; the direction of political changes in Europe; the ever continuing instability in the Middle East; signs of latent possible resurgence of society in Latin America (cf Bolivia etc); containment of the US madness; etc.

BM , Jan 6 2021 12:48 utc | 59
So here's a proposal from each State to the Federal establishment: you discorporate, we keep all our monies, and all federal properties within our borders convey to us. You fuck off: we'll get by without you somehow; don't worry about us - and adios.
Posted by: Grieved | Jan 6 2021 4:42 utc | 47

Sounds good to me! One specific form of the "village" alternative I mentioned above, in another name.

lizzie dw , Jan 6 2021 13:28 utc | 60
I have wondered how we can go to war with actual bombing and stuff like that with China because many many items that we use every day are purchased from factories in China, having been manufactured there by, it seems to me, "American" (now, of course, multinational) companies. Think apple. Or Ralph Loren. Or any item at the Dollar Store. Have you looked at the labels on your purchases? In addition, we buy all kinds of medicinal products from China. And socks. The US and China are intertwined in many ways.

I thought the MAGA theme of Pres. Trump was to lessen the immense difference in trade amounts - we buy tons of stuff from China but they do not buy that much from us - by imposing tariffs on good imported from China and demanding that "American" companies agree to manufacture in the US again. I thought, well, fat chance.

It is a problem. I am not a "better red than dead or dead than red" or whatever it is, but I cannot see the point of blowing up the world because we can't be the king of it.

Pres. Trump never struck me as a war monger although he has been surrounded by them.

BM , Jan 6 2021 13:33 utc | 61
Posted by: Prof K | Jan 5 2021 21:07 utc | 19

Well said Prof K, you hit the nail on its head.

BM , Jan 6 2021 14:26 utc | 62
A superlative article from Alistair Crooke:

America's Epiphany Moment

The big 'domino' has fallen: Red America; and Brexit is a second. Does anyone believe that this American epiphany; this exploding of American delusions, will leave Europe untouched? Or, that other states will not observe it too, and understand from it that the past need to submit their own cultures to European moral scrutiny is over?

Christian J. Chuba , Jan 6 2021 14:44 utc | 63
We claim our enemies fear us for the same reason that we actually fear China. Experts say, Russia 'invaded' Ukraine because Putin was terrified about having an example of a free and prosperous country on their border and Russians would ask themselves, why can't we have that?'

Talk about projection.

Even so, why can't we coexist?
Most Americans don't travel, Neocons can do what they do best, just lie about other countries and say that China is a starving mess and we are #1. Who in the U.S. would know, who in the MSM would bother to find out otherwise. No set of facts would convince us otherwise.

China could voluntarily decide to go to their own graduate schools and stop going to the U.S. because it's a waste of time and money.
Neocons: 'we banned Communist Chinese students protect our valuable IP'

China could surpass our economy to the point where hovercraft is commonplace.
Neocons: 'Communist China is destroying their environment, our kerosene scooters and trucks are the best thing in the world'

The average fool in the U.S. would never know how backward we had become (or maybe are, I don't travel either)
I guess that is too passive, Neocons have to justify their paycheck.

Mao , Jan 6 2021 14:48 utc | 64
The Degradation of American Democracy -- And the Court

Foreword by Michael J. Klarman

[...] Freedom House, which researches and advocates for democracy around the world, lowered the United States on the organization's scale of zero to 100 measuring political rights and civil liberties from ninety-four in 2010 to eighty-six in 2017. The decline in the United States' rating exceeded that of other Western democracies.

...

More than thirty years ago, political scientist Francis Fukuyama, reflecting on a wave of democratization that had swept the world beginning in the 1970s, concluded that liberal democracy had become inevitable -- the logical endpoint in the evolutionary trajectory of the modern state. However, over roughly the last fifteen years, Freedom House has recorded erosion in levels of freedom in once-strong democracies such as Hungary, India, the Philippines, Poland, and Turkey. Governments in these countries have shut down independent media, assailed and incarcerated independent journalists, packed courts and bureaucracies with their supporters, dismantled independent institutions of civil society, and vilified racial and religious minorities to distract attention from problems they cannot solve.

Many Americans cannot imagine the erosion of their own democracy. The United States has the longest-standing constitution in the world, a strong middle class, high levels of wealth and education, and deeply entrenched democratic institutions and mores. Yet the United States is not immune from world trends of declining democratization. In addition to the developments already noted, research shows that younger Americans are much less committed to democracy than their elders are. Among Americans born in the 1980s, only twenty-nine percent believe that living in a democracy is "essential," as compared with seventy-one percent of those born in the 1930s.

This Foreword examines the recent degradation of American democracy, seeks explanations for it, and canvasses the Supreme Court's contribution to it.

https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/134-Harv.-L.-Rev.-1.pdf

Arch Bungle , Jan 6 2021 15:49 utc | 65
Posted by: Mao | Jan 6 2021 14:48 utc | 64

The title


The Degradation of American Democracy -- And the Court

Could more honestly be written:


The Degradation of the American Illusion of Democracy -- And the Court

Unless by "American Democracy" we are referring to something defined more by its illusory nature than its reality.

Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 , Jan 6 2021 16:11 utc | 66
ANSWER TO: "vk | Jan 5 2021 20:00 utc | 7 ":

In Chinese the call it the "Celestial Ascension" [Doctrine] or something like that. And yes, it requires socialism in order to make sense (the demonstration as to why the doctrine is socialist is too long to put it here, but it is).

Having studied Chinese language and history in Europe and China for years since 1972 and practiced as a teacher, interpreter and guide, I have never come accross any Mainland or Táiwan Chinese text or person who have used the expression "Celestial Ascention" in the Chinese language to describe what's been goin on the last fourty years. WHere have You picked up this belief, Herr Jan?

vk , Jan 6 2021 16:22 utc | 67
@ Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 | Jan 6 2021 16:11 utc | 66

Heard it from a Brazilian scholar who once told me, a long time ago (don't even remember the exact term). Never heard it ever since.

But my point is: China's geopolitical doctrine is not secret/cryptic. You only have to know where to find it (and, preferably, know how to read Chinese). China never hid the fact it is socialist (Market Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is the official name of the system) and never hid the fact that it has a geopolitical doctrine that is in accordance with its system (i.e. also a socialist geopolitical doctrine).

Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 , Jan 6 2021 16:23 utc | 68
Dear Jan ;
As for the expression "Celestial ascention" (vk | Jan 5 2021 20:00 utc | 7), this mai be av mistranslation of various chinese expressions for "natural rise" ('tiānrán shēngqilai' or 'qiántiān-dìngde shēngzhǎng' both meaning "coming naturally". Many other possibilities, byt the semi.religious or semi-imperial associatons of "celestial" are definitely never heard in CHina nowadays. s
c1ue , Jan 6 2021 16:40 utc | 69
@Tolled As #68
You should be aware that black has many views which are literally unique.
It is also clear that few, if any, of them are based on first hand knowledge or experience.
"Socialism with market characteristics" is something Deng brought in - it certainly was not CCP ideology before that.
Having visited China many times as a fluent speaker starting in the early '80s, the difference between the present day ideology and the past is stark.
But not to someone who has never been there and doesn't have good discernment in secondary sources to boot.
vk , Jan 6 2021 16:43 utc | 70
@ Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 | Jan 6 2021 16:23 utc | 68

Maybe the Brazilian scholar was too creative.

Either way, the consecrated term in English is a surprisingly good translation ("China's Peaceful Development/Rise/Development Doctrine"), which is also colloquially called "win-win". But the doctrine is actually much more complex than that term suggests.

Gm , Jan 6 2021 17:07 utc | 71
One should google the background of that Richard Hanania person.

Supposedly he is currently a postdoc fellow at Columbia University, and alredy serves as President of some 4 letter institute/stink tank tere that was just set up in 2020[!!].

Before that he got a PhD (political sci) from UCLA (2017-2019?);

before that he got a JD from U. Chicago.

Quite the pedigree. Three top private or out-of-state high tuition schools in expensive cost of living places. Likely his education was *state-sponsored*.

But which State? CIA? Mossad? Who's paying his bills?

gm , Jan 6 2021 17:19 utc | 72
#71 was me [grrr. Cellphone auto-correct]
rico rose , Jan 6 2021 17:27 utc | 73
@47 grieved yes, I like federalism as the basic concept because it works in booth directions if needed. Towards unity but keeping the option of separation. Why not having California as member of the Paris declaration alone. It opens the door for development for problems to early to call. The negotiation process staying open for undecided parts. That is what multipolar means in the core and I guess the only hope for the USA as a nation.
Germany is similar structured. The central government is only allowed to work from own power in defence and foreign relations. For almost everything else it have to use the organs of 15 strong states. Also the source of statehood is coming from them. It is a bit covered right now by EU and covid but there are deep contradiction inside of Germany. If EU, also because of German influence a federation, fails maybe not the old country come up again. I see big chance of totally different structures.
karlof1 , Jan 6 2021 17:51 utc | 74
Stonebird @54--

Global Times article , "US politics in reality 'more interesting than House of Cards ,' entertains Chinese amid pandemic," is absolutely fascinating and revealing--essentially, Chinese are roaring with laughter at the Emperor without clothing. This long excerpt helps explain:

"'Nobody knows more about trending on Weibo better than me,' an internet user mocked Trump via a Weibo comment, adding that 'Weibo would face huge losses after Trump steps down' since the entertainment will largely subside .

"Chinese experts said Americans or other Westerners might not understand why Chinese people are just curious about but don't admire US democracy, but instead treat it as a variety show which is much more interesting than House of Cards . In fact, Chinese people are pretty familiar with the US election and most of them can objectively observe and compare it with the Chinese national conditions.

" House of Cards is the most famous US TV series viewed in China that has helped many Chinese people learn about how US politicians struggle and vie for power. Now Chinese people might learn that the scriptwriters of this TV series have actually underestimated how much drama really occurs in US politics.

"Some experts of US studies said that in House of Cards , Chinese audiences have learned that US politicians have a very vague bottom line. As long as they can make gains, they will betray anyone. In reality, Trump has just proven that there is no bottom line at all, as he empowers his family members in the White House as much as he wants, and uses presidential authority to pardon many people with close connections to him.

" House of Cards tells the audience that mainstream media outlets are influential and can impact politics, but in reality, Trump shows that he can use social media networks to undermine the influence of mainstream media and the conservative new media can even consolidate Trump's base by selling anti-intellectual information or conspiracy theories."

"Some experts of US studies said that in House of Cards , Chinese audiences have learned that US politicians have a very vague bottom line. As long as they can make gains, they will betray anyone. In reality, Trump has just proven that there is no bottom line at all, as he empowers his family members in the White House as much as he wants, and uses presidential authority to pardon many people with close connections to him.

" House of Cards tells the audience that mainstream media outlets are influential and can impact politics, but in reality, Trump shows that he can use social media networks to undermine the influence of mainstream media and the conservative new media can even consolidate Trump's base by selling anti-intellectual information or conspiracy theories." [My Emphasis]

So the longstanding rule that Truth is Stranger than Fiction is again being proven true in China. Most importantly, the chaos within the Outlaw US Empire is serving as education for Chinese and other people globally showing quite graphically the absolute dysfunction of its political system.

I haven't watched House of Cards or Game of Thrones , but I did just recently watch a considerable portion of The Hunger Games . Combine reality with their stories and we'll need to adjust our evaluation of Hollywood propaganda. Add the persecution of Julian Assange for revealing capital crimes--something he'd be rewarded for doing in China--into this mix and there's no way the Neoliberal West is ever going to win Chinese hearts and minds; rather, the opposite's occurring at a rapid pace.

michael , Jan 6 2021 18:35 utc | 75
Cool.
I hope Vlad is preparing diplomatic cables that in such a case he will friendly proliferate to Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Canadian Cents , Jan 6 2021 19:27 utc | 76
c1ue @56, thanks, knew that Truman unnecessarily dropped the atomic bomb on civilians twice, but didn't know those other details about him. The point is, given the foreignpolicy.com writer that suggests "creatively" encouraging seeding "friendly proliferation" of nuclear arms to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan with the expecation that that would induce China to "react badly to," it seems that the same sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies as Truman expressed are still very much present in the US ruling foreign policy elite.

Along with the WWII example, the US induced and sustained a brutal war in Afghanistan in 1979 for its own hegemonic/plutocratic interests:

In 1979, the US began to covertly foster Wahhabi extremism in Afghanistan (another case of "friendly proliferation") to, in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, "induce" a brutal war in order to inflict on "the USSR its Vietnam war," at the casual expense of thoroughly destroying the country and society of the people of Afghanistan for decades.

Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and former CIA director under George H. Bush and Ronald Reagan, stated in his 1996 memoirs "From the Shadows" that American intelligence services began to aid the opposing factions in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet deployment in 1979.

That confirms what Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter and also an adviser to Barack Obama, stated in a 1988 interview:

"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979."

"But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention."

"That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap [..] The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war [..]"

- Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama, in Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

There's a country run by sociopathic/psychopathic elements that has a pattern of inducing conflicts and brutally destructive wars to disrupt constructive cooperation and development.

Stonebird , Jan 6 2021 20:08 utc | 77
karlof1 | Jan 6 2021 17:51 utc | 74

The truth is out - Hollywood only makes "tele-reality shows" with a bit of extra gloss on them for export. The Chinese have the right idea.

I should have realised that since we have been living the "Twitter era", that variety has become our spice of life, and Shakespeare's "all the worlds a stage" was just a realistic appraisal that we would become a comedy skit. I like the idea, I never did appreciate melodramas or horror films either....

PS. Biden apparently doesn't "tweet", so will we regress to "silent movies"? He can at least do some of the actions. Keystone cops anyone?

Yeah, Right , Jan 6 2021 22:04 utc | 78
So it doesn't occur to this idiot that if the USA engages in "friendly proliferation" then both Russia and China will do the same?

This is the central problem with American foreign policy "experts" - they are so shallow that they never consider that every action they propose will lead to a reaction from those that they target.

Here, consider this vapid statement: "No doubt, a nuclear-armed China would react badly to better-armed neighbors, but it is no happier with a more involved United States."

F**k me.

Look, dude, this is very simple: if the USA gave nukes to (say) Taiwan then China would consider that all niceties are out the window and will look to give nukes to some country on the USA's doorstep.

You know: Cuba, or Venezuela. Or both.

How smart would that "least bad solution" look then?

[Jan 06, 2021] An Aggressive China Policy Is a Recipe for More Endless Wars by Daniel Larison

Jan 06, 2021 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Posted on January 2, 2021

From The American Conservative :

Robert Farley explains why the U.S. can't end endless wars if it pursues an aggressive China policy:

The problem is straightforward: Any effort to characterize China as an existential threat to the United States necessarily implies a level of conflict that will (as it did during the Cold War) provide justification for US intervention anywhere in the world. The solution for a less interventionist foreign policy is not to play up the threat of Beijing in the hopes the US will stop intervening elsewhere, but rather to carefully rethink what constitutes a threat to US core values, and what the United States must sacrifice to meet that threat.

The open-ended wars that the US has been fighting for the last two decades were the result of exaggerating a relatively small, manageable threat (i.e., terrorist attacks) into a major global menace that required massive resources and frequent military interventions in many different countries. One can only imagine how much worse things will be if the US replaces its militarized overreaction to terrorism with a militarized overreaction to the Chinese government. A hard-line China policy not only increases the likelihood of conflict between the US and China in East Asia, but it is also likely to encourage more interference in the affairs of other countries that have close relations with China.

If a U.S.-China rivalry follows the pattern of other great power rivalries, that would involve trying to subvert client governments through proxy wars and coups and sometimes intervening directly to overthrow those clients. Policymakers would predictably claim that peripheral countries are actually vitally important and must be "defended" or pulled into our orbit. Hawkish pundits would write articles about "who lost Malawi" and explain why it was absolutely "crucial" to American security that we prop up a dictator in Uzbekistan. The US would wage wars for "credibility" and refuse to end them for the same reason.

One could argue that rivalry with China need not be global and could be confined to East and Southeast Asia, but the tendency with these sorts of policies is towards expansion. Kennan's original idea of containment was never intended to justify waging wars of choice in Asia, but it was almost immediately expanded to apply everywhere even when no real U.S. interests were at stake. A China policy that sought to "contain" China would almost certainly expand in the same way. If someone thinks there can be an intense rivalry with another major power but that it won't become heavily militarized, I refer you to the record of U.S. foreign policy for the last seventy years. All of this has happened before, but it doesn't have to keep happening.

Constant meddling and interventionism are driven by an overly expansive definition of U.S. interests, threat inflation, and a strategy of pursuing global dominance. The meddling and interventionism won't lessen if Washington identifies a different adversary to obsess over. The only things that might change will be the names of the countries that the U.S. sanctions and bombs.

If we want a more peaceful and less interventionist foreign policy, we have to challenge and reject the assumptions that lead the U.S. to interfere in conflicts that have little or nothing to do with us. The first steps in doing that involve rightly identifying what our vital interests are and accurately assessing the threats to those interests. If we do that, we will recognize that China poses much less of a threat to the U.S. than China hawks claim, and we will see that increasing hostility towards China is not in the interests of our country or the interests of our major allies.

Bureaucrat 4 days ago • edited

Shocking how so few realize that the same people on the right and left think confronting China via a zero-sum approach can be consistent with their support for reducing U.S. military and foreign interventionism. These folks preaching withdrawal from Middle East, Pivot to Asia, or "Rebalancing" crowds are active foreign interventionists by any other definition.

On that note I'm curious which sources of foreign policy information/podcast/writers out their have a sensible approach to China. I do follow some leftist anti-imperialist voices for perspective, but unfortunately they are far too forgiving of Beijing (think Grayzone or the Qiao Collective), but everyone else to the right of these avowed Marxists are even worse, parroting the same hawkish anti-China narrative as Washington's foreign policy blob.

kouroi Bureaucrat 4 days ago

From my reading of things, China is a nationalist country with a formal communist ideology and the facto regular economy, with private and state ownership, but with a relatively muscular regulatory state (not captured by the Ownership class) that ultimately has the decisive power on things. Massive problems with corruption, which is a constant through Chinese history. The corruption is so apparent because the state actually tries to do something about it, whereas in the US the corruption is legalized and formalized.

As any country, China has its problems that should not be dismissed. Also not exaggerated either. If one dreams of democracy in China, one needs to be very realistic about it. The extremely long tradition (2000 years) of a bureaucratic/meritocratic state in China, from the beginning can take the air from any democratic attempts, never mind half backed ones like the US Polity). It is not the Communist Party Rule that is necessarily the biggest problem standing in the path of a more democratic China.

Another great problem on a greater opening and relaxing of China is the US imperialist attacks. China is under greater attacks and not because of Trump. That was coming. China is developing more and more and is reaching escape velocity. Also, it has consistently refused to relinquish a greater share of its economy profits to the US Oligarchy and US pension funds that will be tanking in the foreseeable future given the gap between their outlays and their returns... In the current climate, with the US the far greater evil, I am more than willing to cheer for China and its president (2019 saw about 140,000 corruption cases in China acted upon, from confiscations, firings, imprisonment, to the occasional death sentence... Go China! What is the tally in the US? just check on the suffering of whistleblowers...)

[Jan 03, 2021] Will Biden's Administration Simply Represent a Third Obama Term

Notable quotes:
"... The Biden administration, staffed with Obama veterans , may be in effect a third Obama term. Biden may seek a détente with China on some issues. But Democratic foreign policy elites as well as Republicans view China more harshly than they did four years ago. The most likely scenario, then, is an attempt to restore Obama's trilateral strategy of building the biggest possible coalition of allies against China. ..."
"... Democratic foreign policy elites are much more Europhile and Russophobic than their Republican counterparts. ..."
Jan 03, 2021 | nationalinterest.org

Under Barack Obama, the containment of China -- the "pivot to Asia" -- took the form of what might be called trilateralism, after the old Trilateral Commission of the 1970s. According to this strategy, while balancing China militarily, the United States would create trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade blocs with rules favorable to the United States that China would be forced to beg to join in the future. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was intended as an anti-Chinese, American-dominated Pacific trade bloc, while the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) sought to create a NATO for trade from which China would be excluded.

Obama's grand strategy collapsed even before the election of 2016. TTIP died, chiefly because of hostility from European economic interests. In the United States, the fact that the TPP treaty was little more than a wish-list of giveaways to U.S. finance and pharma interests and other special-interest lobbies made it so unpopular that both Hillary Clinton and Trump renounced it during the 2016 presidential election season.

Trump, like Obama, sought to contain China , but by unilateral rather than trilateral measures. The Trump administration emphasized reshoring strategic supply chains like that of steel in the United States, unwilling to offshore critical supplies even to allies in Asia and Europe and North America. This break with prior tradition would have been difficult to pull off even under a popular president who was a good bureaucratic operator, unlike the erratic and inconsistent Trump.

The Biden administration, staffed with Obama veterans , may be in effect a third Obama term. Biden may seek a détente with China on some issues. But Democratic foreign policy elites as well as Republicans view China more harshly than they did four years ago. The most likely scenario, then, is an attempt to restore Obama's trilateral strategy of building the biggest possible coalition of allies against China.

An emphasis by the Biden administration on alliances may succeed in the case of the U.S.-Japan-Australia-India "Quad" (Quadrilateral alliance). The UK may support America's East Asian policy as well. But Germany and France, the dominant powers in Europe, view China as a vast market, not a threat, so Biden will fail if he seeks to repeat Obama's grand strategy of trilateral containment of China.

Democratic foreign policy elites are much more Europhile and Russophobic than their Republican counterparts. In part this is a projection of domestic politics. In the demonology of the Democratic Party, Putin stands for nationalism, social conservatism, and everything that elite Democrats despise about the "deplorables" in the United States who live outside of major metro areas and vote for Republicans. The irrational hostility of America's Democratic establishment extends beyond Russia to socially-conservative democratic governments in Poland and Hungary, two countries that Biden has denounced as "totalitarian."

In the Middle East, unlike Eastern Europe, a Biden administration is likely to sacrifice left-liberal ideology to the project of maximizing American power and consolidating the U.S. military presence, with the help of autocracies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Any hint of retrenchment will be denounced by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that lined up behind Biden, so do not expect an end to any of the forever wars under Biden. Quite the contrary.

Michael Lind is Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The American Way of Strategy. His most recent book is The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite.

[Jan 02, 2021] Idea of 'exceptionalism' encouraged US to quit treaties makes Americans think they can ignore rules Russian foreign minis

Jan 02, 2021 | www.rt.com

Idea of 'exceptionalism' encouraged US to quit treaties & makes Americans think they can ignore rules – Russian foreign ministry 2 Jan, 2021 15:00 Get short URL Idea of 'exceptionalism' encouraged US to quit treaties & makes Americans think they can ignore rules – Russian foreign ministry © Sputnik / Russian Foreign Ministry 22 Follow RT on RT

By Jonny Tickle In recent years, the US has gone crazy with its idea of 'American exceptionalism' and Washington has taught its people that the country does not need to follow any rules and can disregard international agreements, Moscow claims.

Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the claim on Thursday to YouTube channel 'Izolenta live.'

"It's a nuclear power that has gone wild with the idea of its own exceptionalism, withdrawing from lots of documents, treaties, international organizations," she said.

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Zakharova also believes that Washington has "encouraged its population to think that they don't owe anybody anything" and "they should not obey anyone," up to and including international law.

However, she noted that the White House may one day decide to return to various deals sidelined in recent years, presumably referring to the incoming president, Joe Biden.

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Since the incumbent at the White House, Donald Trump, came to power in 2017, Washington has reduced its participation in international organizations. In 2018, the US withdrew from UNESCO and from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). A year later, Trump pulled his country out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and in 2020 the country left the Open Skies Treaty. Furthermore, on February 5, a fortnight after Biden is due to take office, the US will depart from the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty unless the Kremlin and the new president's team quickly come to an understanding.

Last month, at his annual press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin chided the US for pulling out of treaties that Russia is fully supportive of, noting that there could be an "arms race" if Biden doesn't agree to an extension of START.

"We heard the statement by the president-elect that it would be reasonable to extend the New START. We will wait and see what that will amount to in practical terms. The New START expires in February," Putin pointed out.

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[Jan 02, 2021] Senate Overrides Trump Veto Of Defense Bill - ZeroHedge

Jan 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Senate Overrides Trump Veto Of Defense Bill BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JAN 01, 2021 - 15:15

Meeting for a rare New Year's Day session, the Senate voted 81-13 on Friday to override President Trump's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Trump said "fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military's history, and contradicts efforts by my Administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions."

A two-thirds majority was needed to override the veto - which would mark the first in Trump's presidency. The NDAA authorizes over $740 billion in military programs and construction, as well as 3% pay raises for US troops. It also contains a provision to rename military bases named after Confederate generals .

Trump also wanted to force a repeal of Section 203 protections for social-media companies enjoy due to their constant editorializing of user content, however lawmakers refused to include the provision.

The rare January 1st session comes as the new Congress is set to be sworn in on Sunday.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 80-12 to begin an official debate on overriding the veto, proving that Congress can act with lightning speed when properly motivated.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Tuesday that the NDAA is crucial to national defense, and to "deter great power rivals like China and Russia." The bill "will cement our advantage on the seas, on land, in the air, in cyberspace and in space," he added.

During Trump's time in office, he has vetoed eight other bills - several of them focused on foreign policy and national security issues, according to the Wall Street Journal .

The fight over the NDAA also underscored broader tensions over national-security issues between congressional Republicans and Mr. Trump. On foreign policy and national-security issues, many Republicans have readily bucked Mr. Trump during his presidency even as they have stood by him on many other issues.

For instance, the Trump administration's recent effort to cut troop levels in Afghanistan in half , to roughly 2,500, by Jan. 15, has alarmed some Republicans. The NDAA requires the administration to submit to Congress a comprehensive assessment of the withdrawal before it can use funds to pull out troops. -WSJ

In addition to creating a commission to assess changes to bases, displays, monuments, symbols and other paraphernalia related to Confederate commanders, the bill limits the president's ability to use emergency military construction funds for other purposes . It also restricts employees or former employees from the military-industrial complex to work directly for the Chinese government or government-controlled companies.


Banned Banana 56 minutes ago

Dwight Eisenhower warned us about this 60 years ago, and we have done exactly nothing.

RasinResin 50 minutes ago

When you comb through who is doing what, you realize it's just politicians supporting monopolistic companies. Lawyers in essence, always have been, and always will be the problem. Just ask Shakespere.

Orange Man Rad 53 minutes ago (Edited) remove link

McConnell is on a suicide mission for the GOP as a political party. I'm guessing he could careless as he won't be running for reelection. I always knew he was a swamp creature that hated Trump. He never once publicly defended Trump in 4 years. I will be changing my party affiliation to Independent on January 7th. I'm waiting until then so it has maximum impact after the scumbags throw Trump under the bus. Good riddance GOP.

Right Wing-Nut 48 minutes ago

Excellent presentation on:

How Big Government Really Works

It fully explains why China Mitch is fine being Minority Leader. Follow the money!!

Obake158 40 minutes ago

Don't change your party affiliation, do what I did and go to your town hall and unregister to vote. There is absolutely no point in participating in this sham of a system. Voting for muppet A or muppet B is silly when both sides are played by the same interests. All you do by giving your consent to be ruled is create a mandate that the agent of corruption uses to lord over you. I am 100% done playing with their system and by their rules. Politicians are a verminous class of filth. They need to be purged, swapping a rat for a snake for a maggot is what voting results in. Think of a single politician that represents you and your interests and that you look up to. I haven't been able to say anything good about a politician since Ron Paul was active, they are all treason scum.

techengineer 15 minutes ago

The Republican Establishment is disgusting.. A damn disgrace.. We can't get rid of the rotten bastards without turning it over to even worse Democrats..

Bernout Sanders 43 minutes ago remove link

For those of you keep asking "but why doesn't Trump do more?" - this is your answer.

Could Trump have expanded the use of the Executive Order into clearly unconstitutional territory and hope the Supreme Court would support this? Perhaps.

When it comes to legislation, though, sadly there are less than 10 (and perhaps less than 5) Republican Senators worth a hill of beans.

I mean, look at Utah. Solidly Republican, elect the sorriest GOP Senator and carpetbagger Mittens, and even their decent Senator, Mike Lee, is militantly pro-immigration.

Until Republicans start primarying SOB RINO's like Democrats do in their caucus, there will never be any change.

AboveAverageIdiot 27 minutes ago

Senators who voted to sustain Trump's veto of defense bill:
Booker (D)
Braun (R)
Cotton (R)
Cruz (R)
Hawley (R)
Kennedy (R)
Lee (R)
Markey (D)
Merkley (D)
Paul (R)
Sanders (I)
Warren (D)
Wyden (D)

yerfej 27 minutes ago

The endless wars continue. What the phyuyk is wrong with a country that can't stop starting wars yet never has the balls to finish them? Oh its just a facade for ayssholes to line their pockets.

dustnwind 43 minutes ago

"Amazing how fast Congress can act when properly motivated..."

Yes motivated by special interests, lobbyists and perks. Someday R voters might realize that R politicians were just as involved in the voter scams to neuter(2018) and remove Trump as the democrats. Any appearances to the contrary are simply theater to retain the voter base Trump had.

vasilievich 21 minutes ago

The mood in this country seems to be poisonous. In this little county of ours, population about 220,000, the food bank is moving into larger premises. Also there will be a residence for those in need, available only to women and children.

I think it's doubtful that this sort of thing can go on without consequences, some of which may be dramatic.

I had family in Europe which lived through something similar, the result of which was a world war.

aliens is here 29 minutes ago

When comes to fudging over the people, congress wastes no time doing it.

GreatUncle 29 minutes ago

The politicians on all sides support the censorship and cancellation culture through big tech editing.

Handful of Dust 28 minutes ago

The Republicans had complete control of both houses during Trump's first two years and did ZERO for the working middle class American.

Jon_noDough 7 minutes ago

Can't give the citizens more than a pittance for Covid relief but no limits to military industrial swamp complex...

Baronneke 8 minutes ago

"National Offense Authorization Act " is a more appropriate name as the US was never attacked after ww2 so no need to Defend. The 5-6 last US presidents on the other hand are all war criminals and have attacked (including sanctions) countless countries since the end of ww2. Far over 700 Billion Dollars to the DOO. Just crazy !!

HoodRatKing 4 minutes ago (Edited)

The US is in BUSINESS, one of their top businesses is SELLING ARMS...

I can't of course discuss their other lucrative businesses in Asia & Afghanistan...

JaWS 5 minutes ago (Edited)

I understand that Cocaine Mitch will be visiting the spa in the near future.

[Nov 24, 2020] 'Manipulative BULLS--T'- Glenn Greenwald defends calling NBC a CIA mouthpiece, mocks accusation of 'endangering journalists'

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Greenwald earlier this week said NBC "has always existed to disseminate US government, CIA and corporate propaganda." ..."
"... NBC also helped the CIA sell the Iraq War on its Meet the Press program, and sister network MSNBC was "ground zero for mindless CIA stenography of the most unhinged Russiagate conspiracy theories," he said. ..."
"... The C.I.A. owns anyone of any significance in the media. -William Colby. Former Director of the CIA. In 1974, the Rockefeller Commission was established to investigate shennanigans carried out by the Agency. President Ford fired William Colby and replaced him with George Herbert Walker Bush. Why? Because Gerald Ford thought that Colby was being too honest with the Commission about CIA wrong doings. ..."
"... Interestingly, Gerald Ford was often referred to as "The CIA's Best Friend in The Senate", which would explain his old appointment to the Warren Commission. It was Ford who ordered JFK's bullet wound in the back to be raised six inches up to his neck, thus allowing Arlen Specter to float his "Magic bullet Theory" ..."
"... As is not generally known, Bush I was lifetime CIA and became I believe the first CIA President. There is a little known picture of a young Bush standing outside the Texas Book Depository on the day of the assassination. ..."
"... The CIA controls the media in subtle ways. Blacklists for instance. I have experience after one of my buddies fell for the spiel of an agent provocateur. Never trust anyone, always assume they could be CIA and assess what damage they can do to you (and your associates) before you interact with them. Misleading them would be best. ..."
"... As shocking as it may sound, Glenn is stating the obvious. Even AFP and Reuters are CIA mouthpieces. Look up Operation Mockingbird. Look up "propaganda multiplier" by the Swiss policy research. ..."
"... Interesting that nobody even tried to deny it, they just come up with the same line they used to attack Wikileaks for telling the truth: exposing this might put out operatives at risk. ..."
"... Perilous Environments because the CIA is probably manipulating another of its regimes change, to very undemocratically put someone they control into office. Surely you remember Poroshenko? ..."
"... Operation Mockingbird was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media. The first report of the program came in 1979 in the biography of Katharine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post, written by Deborah Davis. Davis wrote that the program was established by Frank Wisner, the director of the Office of Policy Coordination, a covert operations unit created under the National Security Council. ..."
"... Reporters who work for the CIA are not spies, because the CIA is a lying agency, not a spying agency. If a terrorist accuses you of being a CIA agent, you can honestly reply that the CIA is the terrorist's friend. ..."
"... The CIA wants the world to believe that China, Russia and Iran are the leading state sponsors of terrorism, and that those seeking the overthrow of Syria's Bashar al-Assad are freedom fighters, not terrorists... ..."
Nov 22, 2020 | www.rt.com

Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald torched accusations that he endangered reporters by saying NBC News spouts CIA propaganda, saying he only spoke of a well-known fact, and the effort to shame him was "manipulative bulls**t."

"Profoundly sorry for endangering the lives of NBC executives and TV personalities by spilling the extremely well-kept secret of their close working relationship with the CIA," Greenwald tweeted sarcastically on Saturday. His message showed a picture of a headline about NBC's 2018 hiring of ex-CIA chief John Brennan as an NBC and MSNBC contributor.

Greenwald's retort came in reply to reporter Sulome Anderson, who accused him of endangering journalists who work in places where any CIA affiliation is "life-threatening." Greenwald earlier this week said NBC "has always existed to disseminate US government, CIA and corporate propaganda."

"This crosses a line," Anderson said. "Like some of his proteges, Glenn is endangering journalists working in perilous environments by telling his massive following that they are mouthpieces for US intelligence."

Greenwald said on Saturday that NBC has a "long-standing role" in spouting CIA propaganda, as evidenced by its hiring of Ken Dilanian, who was accused of sharing stories with the CIA press office prior to publication while working as a Los Angeles Times reporter. NBC also helped the CIA sell the Iraq War on its Meet the Press program, and sister network MSNBC was "ground zero for mindless CIA stenography of the most unhinged Russiagate conspiracy theories," he said.

"If you don't want to be known as a CIA outpost, then don't be one," Greenwald tweeted. He added that NBC hired "John Brennan, Ken Dilanian and every other operative puked up by the security state. People already know."

Anderson has written at least two opinion pieces on Lebanon for NBC in recent months. She has been critical of Hezbollah, designated a terrorist group by the US government, but also has interviewed some of its fighters.

Anderson, who said she is "morally opposed" to journalists working as intelligence agents, may have good reason for her sensitivity about alleged CIA ties. Her parents were both journalists who covered Lebanon's 15-year civil war, and she said her father was kidnapped by terrorists.

"They tortured him again and again for years, calling him CIA," she said Saturday on Twitter. "'I am not a spy,' he would scream. 'I am a reporter.' It never stopped them."

Anderson acknowledged journalists being used as intelligence-agency assets, but said such cases are rare. "Time and again, American hostages – journalists and otherwise – have been falsely called spies, tortured and killed," she said. "I have been in many situations where I've had to convince the very dangerous men I am with that I am not a spy. My saving grace has always been that I am not."

Greenwald came to international fame by breaking the Edward Snowden NSA whistleblower story in 2013. He later co-founded the Intercept but quit the outlet last month after saying editors there suppressed his coverage of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.


fezzie035fezzm 19 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 11:52 PM

The C.I.A. owns anyone of any significance in the media. -William Colby. Former Director of the CIA. In 1974, the Rockefeller Commission was established to investigate shennanigans carried out by the Agency. President Ford fired William Colby and replaced him with George Herbert Walker Bush. Why? Because Gerald Ford thought that Colby was being too honest with the Commission about CIA wrong doings.

Bush, as the new Director, stonewalled the hearings and put the lid on any information coming out, which would explain why CIA Headquarters in Langley was named after Bush. Colby is no longer among the living. Let's just say that he didn't die from "natural causes".

Interestingly, Gerald Ford was often referred to as "The CIA's Best Friend in The Senate", which would explain his old appointment to the Warren Commission. It was Ford who ordered JFK's bullet wound in the back to be raised six inches up to his neck, thus allowing Arlen Specter to float his "Magic bullet Theory"

JOHNCHUCKMAN fezzie035fezzm 1 hour ago 22 Nov, 2020 05:48 PM
Yes, Colby was an unusually frank man at times. He also told us about the ghastly Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, a CIA run assassination scheme of village leaders and prominent men. They killed 30 or 40 thousand people by sending in belly-crawling special forces guys to enter villages at night and cut throats.

As is not generally known, Bush I was lifetime CIA and became I believe the first CIA President. There is a little known picture of a young Bush standing outside the Texas Book Depository on the day of the assassination. You'll find it on my site Chuckman's Words in Comments on Wordpress. Its title to search is: A REMARKABLE DULL LITTLE PHOTOGRAPH OF GEORGE H W BUSH WITH EXPLOSIVE SUGGESTIONS. Sorry, but RT doesn't like links.

Of course, Colby himself may have been assassinated. He had a very odd boating accident.

Ally Hauptmann-Gurski 20 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 11:14 PM
The CIA controls the media in subtle ways. Blacklists for instance. I have experience after one of my buddies fell for the spiel of an agent provocateur. Never trust anyone, always assume they could be CIA and assess what damage they can do to you (and your associates) before you interact with them. Misleading them would be best.
Enorm 22 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:01 PM
NBC operatives don't have an opinion. They follow da money,. I feel sorry for folks glued to propaganda TV.
Oregon Observer Enorm 21 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:41 PM
WikiLeaks and other investigative outfits have looked at the conglomerates over the years and over half of them are CIA "assets"...
Chris Cottrell 22 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 08:25 PM
Are they spies? Probably not. Are they tools of the CIA even if unwittingly, yes.
Oregon Observer Chris Cottrell 21 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:43 PM
Most ARE spies in every sense of the term. They look for specific information that they pass onto their handler(s). It bears noting that the FBI and the 10,000 or so outfits that contract with them and NSA and DHS and the pentagon and the various state Fusion programs are as bad or worse and every stinking one if those outfits recruits reporters.
fakiho2 21 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:28 PM
As shocking as it may sound, Glenn is stating the obvious. Even AFP and Reuters are CIA mouthpieces. Look up Operation Mockingbird. Look up "propaganda multiplier" by the Swiss policy research.
shadow1369 fakiho2 6 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 12:30 PM
Interesting that nobody even tried to deny it, they just come up with the same line they used to attack Wikileaks for telling the truth: exposing this might put out operatives at risk. My response to that is good, time to have these roaches taken out.
Edward698 18 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 01:43 AM
You can bet on Glenn to tell you the truth unlike the main stream media which fed us with lots of non sense on Syria. Read his interview with "Democracy now": .... Glenn Greenwald on "Submissive" Media's Drumbeat for War and "Despicable" Anti-Muslim Scapegoating By Democracy Now! ....

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, that clip is unbelievable. It is literally one of the three most important military officials of the entire war on terror, General Flynn, who was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He's saying that the U.S. government knew that by creating a vacuum in Syria and then flooding that region with arms and money, that it was likely to result in the establishment of a caliphate by Islamic extremists in eastern Syria -- which is, of course, exactly what happened.

They knew that that was going to happen, and they proceeded to do it anyway. So when the U.S. government starts trying to point the finger at other people for helping ISIS, they really need to have a mirror put in front of them, because, by their own documents, as that extraordinary clip demonstrates, they bear huge responsibility for that happening, to say nothing of the fact that, as I said, their closest allies in the region actually fund it.

Debra Edward698 14 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 05:37 AM
The US was not only counting on their ISIS creation to destabilize Syria in the hope of an Assad exit but also to decimate the Hezbollah. I credit the Hezbollah for saving Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, but they suffered heavy, heavy losses. "So when the U.S. government starts trying to point the finger at other people for helping ISIS, they really need to have a mirror put in front of them, because, by their own documents, as that extraordinary clip demonstrates, they bear huge responsibility for that happening, to say nothing of the fact that, as I said, their closest allies in the region actually fund it."
frankfalseflag 19 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 12:08 AM
** "Glenn is endangering journalists working in perilous environments by telling. . ." ** . . Perilous Environments because the CIA is probably manipulating another of its regimes change, to very undemocratically put someone they control into office. Surely you remember Poroshenko? ...
pogohere 21 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 10:16 PM
Operation Mockingbird was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media. The first report of the program came in 1979 in the biography of Katharine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post, written by Deborah Davis. Davis wrote that the program was established by Frank Wisner, the director of the Office of Policy Coordination, a covert operations unit created under the National Security Council.

According to Davis, Wisner recruited Philip Graham of the Washington Post to head the project within the media industry. Davis wrote that, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."

Davis also writes that Allen Dulles convinced Cord Meyer, who later became Mockingbird's "principal operative," to join the CIA in 1951.

The Taliban Won the War 7 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 12:28 PM
It is true and it is an undisputed fact that all Western governments use Journalists, aid workers and so called human relief organisations as cover for espionage, undercover and dark operations. Not just that, they also use exchange teachers and students, they use priests and pastors. They use anything and anyone that can hid
Isiah Steele 8 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 11:45 AM
The Motion Picture Industry of Hollywood, too are CIA! Propagates: war and constant US Military dominated narratives.
Sergio Weigel 16 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 03:31 AM
I'm pretty sure that most journalists don't know, or don't wanna know, the dirty open secret that editorial lines of most outlets are indeed determined or influenced by the CIA. The trouble is their working conditions. There are far more journalists than job openings, and they already earn badly. In order to keep the job, they just play ball, and as humans are, they make themselves believe that what they were doing was just right. Cognitive dissonance, and the result is outrage and defensive anger when someone points out their hypocrisy. That is also why they avoid to even read alternative media, they don't have their noses pointed to it. In a way, we can pity them. Then again, why become a journalist these days?
shadow1369 Sergio Weigel 7 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 12:43 PM
I used to think maybe 'journalists' were simply misled, but the narrative on too many stories, from 9/11 to Iraq, from Syria to the ukraine, from the Skripals to Navalny, was so ludicrous that a five year old could see through the lies. Nope, they know full well that they are lying, and do so regardless. A great example was when some bbc l!cksp!ttle was interviewing a general about events in Syria. Somehow they got the wrong guy, or he had not been properly briefed, because his responses were factual and balanced. After trying to challenge him, the interviewer finally said 'Don't you realise this is an informatioon war'.
Debra 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 03:11 PM
This is another warning for people: Over the last two years Facebook has been advertising for viewers to join Facebook groups. Many political groups on Facebook are set up by CIA and FBI agents. Facebook is full of agents, and that is why the ones in Michigan were caught in their attempted coup against the Michigan governor...
Quick Draw 22 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:46 PM
Just NBC?
imnotarobot22 16 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 03:05 AM
google 'Udo Ulfkotte' ex editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine - he'll tell you about it.
Richard Burden 2 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 05:07 PM
Reporters who work for the CIA are not spies, because the CIA is a lying agency, not a spying agency. If a terrorist accuses you of being a CIA agent, you can honestly reply that the CIA is the terrorist's friend.

The CIA wants the world to believe that China, Russia and Iran are the leading state sponsors of terrorism, and that those seeking the overthrow of Syria's Bashar al-Assad are freedom fighters, not terrorists...

[Nov 23, 2020] Neocon chickenhawks are back in power

Full spectrum dominance theorists are dusted off and put in key positions in new administration. Instead of punishment and jail terms Russiagaters got promotion.
Nov 23, 2020 | www.rt.com

Biden signals US return to full-on globalism and foreign meddling by picking interventionist Anthony Blinken as secretary of state

Joe Biden has named Anthony Blinken – an advocate for isolating Russia, cozying up to China and intervening in Syria – as secretary of state, cementing a foreign policy built on military forays and multi-national motivations.

Biden, the nominal president-elect, announced his selection of Blinken along with other members of his foreign-policy and national-security team, which is filled with such veteran Washington insiders as John Kerry, the new climate czar and formerly secretary of state in the Obama-Biden administration.

READ MORE: Biden supporters rush to defend reported Sec-of-State pick Antony Blinken, who 'got rich off corporate consulting'

Blinken, a long-time adviser to Biden and deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama, has been hailed by fellow Democrats and globalists, such as retired General Barry McCaffrey, as an experienced bureaucrat with "global contacts and respect." Enrico Letta, dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, called Biden's choice the "right step to relaunch transatlantic ties."

He was even praised for a 2016 appearance on the Sesame Street children's television program, where he explained to the show's 'Grover' character the benefits of accepting refugees.

While some critics focused on how Blinken " got rich working for corporate clients " during President Donald Trump's term in office, the new foreign-affairs chief's neoconservative policy recommendations might be cause for greater concern. He advocated for the Iraq War and the bombings of such countries as Libya and Yemen.

ALSO ON RT.COM Michele Flournoy might be breaking a glass ceiling as Pentagon chief, but even feminists aren't buying

Blinken is still arguing for a resurgence in Washington's military intervention in Syria. He lamented in a May interview that the Obama-Biden administration hadn't done enough to prevent a "horrific situation" in Syria, and he faulted Trump for squandering what remaining leverage the US had on the Bashar Assad regime by pulling troops out of the country.

"Our leverage is vastly even less than it was, but I think we do have points of leverage to try to effectuate some more positive developments," Blinken said. For instance, US special forces in northeast Syria are located near Syrian oil fields. "The Syrian government would love to have dominion over those resources. We should not give that up for free."

Blinken also sees Biden strengthening NATO, isolating Russia politically and " confronting Mr. [President Vladimir] Putin for his aggressions."

ALSO ON RT.COM The return of the Obama 'adults' in a Joe Biden administration is likely to spell ruin for America

As for China, Blinken has said Washington needs to look for ways to cooperate with Beijing. Reinvesting in international alliances that were weakened by Trump will help the Biden administration deal with China "from a position of strength" as it pushes back against the Chinese Communist Party's human-rights abuses, he said.

[Nov 23, 2020] Administrations change but Full Spectrum Dominance Doctine and the desire to portect and emand global neoliberal empire controlled from Washinton is intact. It will eventually banrupt the country much like was the case with the British Empire

Highly recommended!
Neocons still dominate both the State Department and NSC. That's bad.
Nov 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Top Biden Advisors Flournoy & Blinken Promise More Secretive 'Permanent War' Policy - Zero Hedge

Authored by Dan Cohen via TheGrayZone.com,

Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump's 'America First' foreign policy, claiming it weakened the United States and left the world in disarray. "Donald Trump's brand of America First has too often led to America alone," Biden proclaimed.

He pledged to reverse this decline and recover the damage Trump did to America's reputation. While Donald Trump called for making America Great Again, Biden seeks to Make the American Empire Great Again .

Joe Biden: "Tonight, the whole world is watching America. And I believe at our best, America is a beacon for the globe. We will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example."

Among the president-elect's pledges is to end the so-called forever wars – the decades-long imperial projects in Afghanistan and Iraq that began under the Bush administration.

"It's long past time we end the forever wars which have cost us untold blood and treasure," Biden has said.

Yet Biden – a fervent supporter of those wars – will delegate that duty to the most neoconservative elements of the Democratic Party and ideologues of permanent war .

Michele Flournoy and Tony Blinken sit atop Biden's thousands-strong foreign policy brain trust and have played central roles in every U.S. war dating back to the Bill Clinton administration.

During the Trump era, they've cashed in through WestExec Advisors – a corporate consulting firm that has become home for Obama administration officials awaiting a return to government.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

Flournoy is Biden's leading pick for Secretary of Defense and Blinken is expected to be the president's National Security Advisor.

Biden's foxes guard the henhouse

Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants.

Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military's doctrine of permanent war – what it called "full spectrum dominance."

Flournoy called for "unilateral use of military power" to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ivFFZ95EQvY

This video report was originally published at Behind The Headlines . Support the independent journalism initiative here .

As Bush administration officials lied to the world about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD's, Flournoy remarked that "In some cases, preemptive strikes against an adversary's [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities may be the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic attack against the United States."

Tony Blinken was a top advisor to then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Joe Biden, who played a key role in shoring up support among the Democrat-controlled Senate for Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq.

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Biden declared, "In my judgment, President Bush is right to be concerned about Saddam Hussein's relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction."

As Iraq was plunged into chaos and bloodshed, Flournoy was among the authors of a paper titled "Progressive Internationalism" that called for a "smarter and better" style of permanent war . The paper chastised the anti-war left and stated that "Democrats will maintain the world's most capable and technologically advanced military, and we will not flinch from using it to defend our interests anywhere in the world."

With Bush winning a second term, Flournoy advocated for more troop deployments from the sidelines.

In 2005, Flournoy signed onto a letter from the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century, asking Congress to "increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps (by) at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years."

In 2007, she leveraged her Pentagon experience and contacts to found what would become one of the premier Washington think tanks advocating endless war across the globe: the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). CNAS is funded by the U.S. government, arms manufacturers, oil giants, Silicon Valley tech giants, billionaire-funded foundations, and big banks.

Flournoy joined the Obama administration and was appointed as under secretary of defense for policy, the position considered the "brains" of the Pentagon. She was keenly aware that the public was wary of more quagmires. In the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, she crafted a new concept of warfare that would expand the permanent war state while giving the appearance of a drawdown.

Flournoy wrote that "unmanned systems hold great promise" – a reference to the CIA's drone assassination program. This was the Obama-era military doctrine of hybrid war. It called for the U.S. to be able to simultaneously wage war on numerous fronts through secret warfare, clandestine weapons transfers to proxies, drone strikes, and cyber-attacks – all buttressed with propaganda campaigns targeting the American public through the internet and corporate news media.

Architects of America's Hybrid wars

Flournoy continued to champion the endless wars that began in the Bush-era and was a key architect of Obama's disastrous troop surge in Afghanistan. As U.S. soldiers returned in body bags and insurgent attacks and suicide bombings increased some 65% from 2009 and 2010, she deceived the Senate Armed Services Committee, claiming that the U.S. was beginning to turn the tide against the Taliban: "We are beginning to regain the initiative and the insurgency is beginning to lose momentum."

Even with her lie that the U.S. and Afghan government were starting to beat the Taliban back, Flournoy assured the senate that the U.S. would have to remain in Afghanistan long into the future: "We are not leaving any time soon even though the nature and the complexion of the commitment may change over time."

Ten years later – as the Afghan death toll passed 150,000 – Flournoy continued to argue against a U.S. withdrawal: "I would certainly not advocate a US or NATO departure short of a political settlement being in place."

That's the person Joe Biden has tasked with ending the forever war in Afghanistan. But in Biden's own words, he'll "bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan" implying some number of American troops will remain, and the forever war will be just that. Michele Flournoy explained that even if a political settlement were reached, the U.S. would maintain a presence.

Michele Flournoy: "If we are fortunate enough to see a political settlement reached, it doesn't mean that the US role or the international community is over. Afghanistan without outside investment is not a society that is going to survive and thrive. In no case are we going to be able to wash our hands of Afghanistan and walk away nor should we want to. This is something where we're going to have to continue to be engaged, just the form of engagement may change."

In 2011, the Obama-era doctrine of smart and sophisticated warfare was unveiled in the NATO regime-change war on Libya.

Moammar Gaddafi – the former adversary who sought warm relations with the U.S. and had given up his nuclear weapons program – was deposed and sodomized with a bayonet.

Flournoy, Hillary Clinton's State Department, and corporate media were in lockstep as they waged an elaborate propaganda campaign to deceive the U.S. public that Gadaffi's soldiers were on a Viagra-fueled rape and murder spree that demanded a U.S. intervention.

Fox News: "Susan Rice reportedly told a security council meeting that Libyan troops are being given viagra and are engaging in sexual violence."

MSNBC jumped on the propaganda bandwagon, claiming: "New reports emerge that the LIbyan dictator gave soldiers viagra-type pills to rape women who are opposed to the government."

So did CNN.

As the Libyan ambassador to the US alleged "raping, killing, mass graves," ICC Chief Prosecutor Manuel Ocampo claimed: "It's like a machete. Viagra is a tool of massive rapes."

All of this was based on a report from Al Jazeera – the media outlet owned by the Qatari monarchy that was arming extremist militias in Libya to overthrow the government.

Yet an investigation by the United Nations called the rape claims "hysteria." Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found no credible evidence of even a single rape.

Even after Libya was descended into strife and the deception of Gadaffi's forces committing rape was debunked, Michele Flournoy stood by her support for the war: "I supported the intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds. I think we were right to do it."

Tony Blinken, then Obama's deputy national security advisor, also pushed for regime change in Libya. He became Obama's point man on Syria, pushed to arm the so-called "moderate rebels" that fought alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS, and designed the red line strategy to trigger a full-on U.S. intervention. Syria, he told the public, wasn't anything like the other wars the U.S. had waging for more than a decade.

Tony Blinken: "We are doing this in a very different way than in the past. We're not sending in hundreds of thousands of American troops. We're not spending trillions of American dollars. We're being smart about this. This is a sustainable way to get at the terrorists and it's also a more effective way."

Blinken added: "This is not open-ended, this is not boots on the ground, this is not Iraq, it's not Afghanistan, it's not even Libya. The more people understand that, the more they'll understand the need for us to take this limited but effective action ."

Despite Blinken's promises that it would be a short affair, the war on Syria is now in its ninth year. An estimated half a million people have been killed as a result and the country is facing famine.

Largely thanks to the policy of using "wheat to apply pressure" – a recommendation of Flournoy and Blinken's CNAS think tank.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1141440589143126021&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Ftop-biden-advisors-flournoy-blinken-promise-more-secretive-permanent-war-policy&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

When the Trump administration launched airstrikes on Syria based on mere accusations of a chemical attack, Tony Blinken praised the bombing, claiming Assad had used the weapon of mass destruction sarin. Yet there was no evidence for this claim, something even then-secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted: "So I can not tell you that we had evidence even though we had a lot of media and social media indicators that either chlorine or sarin were used ."

While jihadist mercenaries armed with U..S-supplied weapons took over large swaths of Syria, Tony Blinken played a central role in a coup d'etat in Ukraine that saw a pro-Russia government overthrown in a U.S.-orchestrated color revolution with neo-fascist elements agitating on the ground.

At the time, he was ambivalent about sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, instead opting for economic pressure.

Tony Blinken: "We're working, as I said, to make sure that there's a cost exacted of Russia and indeed that it feels the pressure. That's what we're working on. And when it comes to military assistance, we're looking at it. The facts are these: Even if assistance were to go to Ukraine that would be very unlikely to change Russia's calculus or prevent an invasion."

Since then, fascist militias have been incorporated into Ukraine's armed forces. And Tony Blinken urged Trump to send them deadly weapons – something Obama had declined to do.

But Trump obliged.

The Third Offset

While the U.S. fueled wars in Syria and Ukraine, the Pentagon announced a major shift called the Third Offset strategy – a reference to the cold war era strategies the U.S. used to maintain its military supremacy over the Soviet Union.

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The Third Offset strategy shifted the focus from counterinsurgency and the war on terror to great power competition against China and Russia. It called for a technological revolution in warfighting capabilities, development of futuristic and autonomous weapons, swarms of undersea and airborne drones, hypersonic weapons, cyber warfare, machine-enhanced soldiers, and artificial intelligence making unimaginably complex battlefield decisions at speeds incomprehensible to the human mind. All of this would be predicated on the Pentagon deepening its relationship with Silicon Valley giants that it birthed decades before: Google and Facebook.

The author of the Third Offset, former undersecretary of defense Robert Work, is a partner of Flournoy and Blinken's at WestExec Advisors. And Flournoy has been a leading proponent of this dangerous new escalation .

In June, Flournoy published a lengthy commentary laying out her strategy called " Sharpening the U.S. Military's Edge: Critical Steps for the Next Administration ."

She warned that the United States is losing its military technological advantage and reversing that must be the Pentagon's priority. Without it, Flournoy warned that the U.S. might not be able to defeat China in Asia: "That technological investment is still very important for the United States to be able to offset what will be quantitative advantages and home theater advantages for a country like China if we ever had to deal with a conflict in Asia, in their backyard."

While Flournoy has called for ramping up U.S. military presence and exercises with allied forces in the region, she went so far as to call for the U.S. to increase its destructive capabilities so much that it could launch a blitzkrieg style-attack that would wipe out the entire Chinese navy and all civilian merchant ships in the South China Sea . Not only a blatant war crime but a direct attack on a nuclear power that would spell the third world war.

At the same time, Biden has announced he'll take an even more aggressive and confrontational stance against Russia , a position Flournoy shares: "We need to invest to ensure that we maintain the military edge that we will need in certain critical areas like cyber and electronic warfare and precision strike, to again underwrite deterrence, to make sure Vladimir Putin does not miscalculate and think that he can cross a border into Europe or cross a border and threaten us militarily."

As for ending the forever wars, Tony Blinken says not so fast: "Large scale, open-ended deployment of large standing US forces in conflict zones with no clear strategy should end and will end under his watch . But we also need to distinguish between, for example, these endless wars with the large scale open ended deployment of US forces with, for example, discreet, small-scale sustainable operations, maybe led by special forces, to support local actors In ending the endless wars I think we have to be careful to not paint with too broad a brush stroke."

The end of forever wars?

So Biden will end the forever wars, but not really end them. Secret wars that the public doesn't even know the U.S. is involved in – those are here to stay.

In fact, leaving teams of special forces in place throughout the Middle East is part and parcel of the Pentagon's shift away from counterinsurgency and towards great power competition.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy explains that, "Long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities" and the U.S. will "consolidate gains in Iraq and Afghanistan while moving to a more resource-sustainable approach."

As for the catastrophic war on Yemen, Biden has said he'll end U.S. support; but in 2019, Michele Flournoy argued against ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia .

Biden pledged he will rejoin the Iran deal as a starting point for new negotiations. However, Trump's withdrawal from the deal discredited the Iranian reformists who seek engagement with the west and empowered the principlists who see the JCPOA as a deal with the devil.

In Latin America, Biden will revive the so-called anti-corruption campaigns that were used as a cover to oust the popular social democrat Brazilian president Lula da Silva.

His Venezuela policy appears little different from Trump's – sanctions and regime change.

In Central America, Biden has presided over a four billion dollar package to support corrupt right-wing governments and neoliberal privatization projects, fueling destabilization and sending vulnerable masses fleeing north to the United States.

Behind their rhetoric, Biden, Flournoy, and Blinken will seek nothing less than global supremacy , escalating a new and even more dangerous arms race that risks the destruction of humanity. That's what Joe Biden calls "decency" and "normalcy."

naughty.boy , 14 hours ago

deep state will bankrupt the USA with forever wars.

Distant_Star , 14 hours ago

Yes. As a bonus neither of these Deep State wretches has even seen a shot fired in anger. They are too "important" to be at risk.

[Nov 06, 2020] In 1940, the United States Decided To Rule the World - Antiwar.com Original

Nov 06, 2020 | original.antiwar.com

In 1940, the United States Decided To Rule the World

by David Swanson Posted on November 06, 2020

Stephen Wertheim's Tomorrow, The World examines a shift in elite U.S. foreign-policy thinking that took place in mid-1940. Why in that moment, a year and a half before the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Hawaii, and other outposts, did it become popular in foreign-policy circles to advocate for US military domination of the globe?

In school text book mythology, the United States was full of revoltingly backward creatures called isolationists at the time of World War I and right up through December 1941, after which the rational adult internationalists took command (or we'd all be speaking German and suffering through the rigged elections of fascistic yahoos, unlike this evening).

In fact, the term "isolationist" wasn't cooked up until the mid-1930s and then only as a misleading insult to be applied to people who wished for the US government to engage with the world in any number of ways from treaties to trade that didn't include militarism. Anti-isolationism was and is a means of ridiculously pretending that "doing something" means waging war, supporting NATO, and promoting the "responsibility to protect," while anything else means "doing nothing."

There were distinctions in the 1920s between those who favored the League of Nations and World Court and those who didn't. But neither group favored coating the planet with US military bases, or extending even the most vicious conception of the Monroe Doctrine to the other hemisphere, or replacing the League of Nations with an institution that would falsely appear to establish global governance while actually facilitating US domination. Pre-1940 internationalists were, in fact, imperfect US nationalists. They, as Wertheim writes, "had the capacity to see the United States as a potential aggressor requiring restraint." Some, indeed, didn't need the word "potential" there.

What changed? There was the rise of fascism and communism. There was the notion that the League of Nations had failed. There was the serious failure of disarmament efforts. There was the belief that whatever came out of WWII would be dramatically different. In September 1939, the Council on Foreign Relations began making plans to shape the postwar (yet permawar) world. The Roosevelt White House into 1940 was planning for a postwar world that held a balance of power with the Nazis. Ideas of disarmament, at least for others, were still very much a part of the thinking. "Weapons dealer to the world" was not a title that it was ever suggested that the United States strive for.

Wertheim sees a turning point in the German conquest of France. Change came swiftly in May-June, 1940. Congress funded the creation of the world's biggest navy and instituted a draft. Contrary to popular mythology, and propaganda pushed by President Roosevelt, nobody feared a Nazi invasion of the Americas. Nor was the United States dragged kicking and screaming into its moral responsibility to wage global permawar by the atrocious domestic policies of the Nazis or any mission to rescue potential victims from Nazi genocide. Rather, US foreign policy elites feared the impact on global trade and relations of a world containing a Nazi power. Roosevelt began talking about a world in which the United States dominated only one hemisphere as imprisonment.

The United States needed to dominate the globe in order to exist in the sort of global order it wanted. And the only global order it wanted was one it dominated. Did US planners become aware of this need as they watched events in Europe? Or did they become aware of its possibility as they watched the US government build weapons and the US president acquire new imperial bases? Probably some of each. Wertheim is right to call our attention to the fact that US officials didn't talk about militarily dominating the whole globe prior to 1940, but was there ever a time they talked about dominating anything less than what they had the weapons and troops to handle? Certainly the voices had not all been monolithic, and there was always an anti-imperialist tradition, but did it ever give much back to those it had dispossessed until after WWII when airplanes and radios developed a new sort of empire (and some colonies were made states but others more or less liberated)?

The US government and its advisers didn't just discover that they could rule the world and that they needed to rule the world, but also that -- in the words of General George V. Strong, chief of the Army's War Plans Division -- Germany had demonstrated the "tremendous advantage of the offense over the defense." The proper defensive war was an aggressive war, and an acceptable goal of that was what Henry Luce called living space and Hitler called Lebensraum . US elites came to believe that only through war could they engage in proper trade and relations. One can treat this as a rational observation based on the growth of fascism, although some of the same people making the observation had fascistic tendencies, the problem with Germany seems to have existed for them only once it had invaded other nations that were not Russia, and there is little doubt that had the United States lived sustainably, locally, egalitarianly, contentedly, and with respect for all humanity, it could not have observed a need for permawar in the world around it -- much less gone on observing it for 75 years.

In early 1941, a US political scientist named Harold Vinacke asked, "When the United States has its thousands of airplanes, its mass army, properly mechanized, and its two-ocean navy, what are they to be used for?" Officials have been asking the same right up through Madeline Albright and Donald Trump, with the answer generally being found to be as self-evident as other patriotic "truths." By summertime 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill had announced the future organization of the world in the Atlantic Charter.

If hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue, there remained some virtue in US society and its conception of foreign policy at the time of WWII, because a major focus of postwar planners was how to sell global domination to the US public (and incidentally the world, and perhaps most importantly themselves) as being something other than what it was. The answer, of course, was the United Nations (along with the World Bank, etc.). Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles described the design of the United Nations thus: "what we required was a sop for the smaller states: some organization in which they could be represented and made to feel themselves participants." In Roosevelt's words before the creation of the U.N., all nations but four, in a future global organization, would merely "blow off steam."

Roosevelt also proposed that the existence of such a phony organization would allow it to declare war instead of the US Congress, meaning that a US president would be able to launch wars at will -- something like what we've seen for the past 75 years with NATO occasionally having filled in for a malfunctioning United Nations.

Roosevelt believed that the United States signed up for global policeman when it defeated Hitler. Neither Roosevelt nor Wertheim mentions that the Soviet Union did 80% of defeating Hitler, after having done about 0% of creating him.

But surely the job of world cop can be resigned, no matter how one got into it. The question now is how. The financial and bureaucratic and media and campaign-corruption interests all work against dismantling the permawar military, just as does the ideology of anti-"isolationism." But it certainly cannot hurt to be aware of the dishonesty in the ideology and of the fact that it was not always with us.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org . Swanson's books include War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War . He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio . This originally appeared at WorldBeyondWar.org .

[Nov 02, 2020] What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change-

Nov 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change? worldblee , Oct 31 2020 17:02 utc | 1

Pepe Escobar is as pessimistic about a Harris (Biden) administration as I am. The incoming foreign policy team would be the return of the blob that waged seven wars during the Obama/Biden administration:

Taking a cue from [the Transition Integrity Project], let's game a Dem return to the White House – with the prospect of a President Kamala taking over sooner rather than later. That means, essentially, The Return of the Blob.

President Trump calls it "the swamp". Former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes – a mediocre hack – at least coined the funkier "Blob", applied to the incestuous Washington, DC foreign policy gang, think tanks, academia, newspapers (from the Washington Post to the New York Times), and that unofficial Bible, Foreign Affairs magazine.

A Dem presidency, right away, will need to confront the implications of two wars: Cold War 2.0 against China, and the interminable, trillion-dollar GWOT (Global War on Terror), renamed OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) by the Obama-Biden administration.

The Democratic White House team Escobar describes (Clinton, Blinken, Rice, Flournoy) would be an assembly of well known war mongers who all argue for hawkish policies. The main 'enemies', Russia and China, would be the same as under Trump. Syria, Venezuela, Iran and others would stay on the U.S. target list. U.S. foreign policy would thereby hardly change from Trump's version but would probably be handled with more deadly competence.

But Escobar sees two potential positive developments:

In contrast, two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia, not a new all-out Cold War, even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that Russia is the "biggest threat" to the US.

I believe that Harris (Biden) will disappoint on both of those issues. The neoconservatives have already infested the Harris (Biden) camp. They will make sure that JCPOA does not come back :

Last night on an official Biden campaign webinar led by "Jewish Americans for Biden", and moderated by Ann Lewis of Democratic Majority for Israel, two prominent neocon Republicans endorsed Biden, primarily because of Trump's character posing a danger to democracy. But both neocons emphasized that Biden would be more willing to use force in the Middle East and reassured Jewish viewers that Biden will seek to depoliticize Israel support, won't necessarily return to the Iran deal and will surround himself with advisers who support Israel and believe in American military intervention.

Eric Edelman, a former diplomat and adviser to Dick Cheney, said Trump's peace plan has fostered an open political divide in the U.S. over Israel, ...

Eliot Cohen, a Bush aide and academic, echoed the fear that Israel is being politicized. ...
...
Cohen and Edelman opposed Obama's Iran deal, and both predicted that Biden will be hawkish on Iran.
...
"There will be voices" in the Biden administration that seek a return to the Iran deal, but the clock has been running for four years, and we're in a different place, he said. And "it will be hard [for Biden] not to use the leverage that the sanctions provide in part because Iran is not abiding by a lot of the limits of the nuclear agreement They're about three, maybe four months away from having enough fissile material to actually develop a nuclear weapon."

For lifting the sanctions against Iran the Harris (Biden) administration will demand much more than Iran's return to the limits of the JCPOA. Iran will reject all new demands, be they about restricting its missile force or limiting its support for Syria. The conflict will thereby continue to fester.

The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's offer to unconditionally prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want more concessions from Russia than that country is willing to give. Currently it is Russia that has the upper hand in strategic weapons with already deployed hypersonic missiles and other new platforms. The U.S. will want to fill the new 'missile gap' and the military-industrial complex stands ready to profit from that. The New-START prolongation will eventually run out and I do not see the U.S. agreeing to new terms while Russia has a technological superiority.

Domestic policies under a democratic president will likewise see no substantial difference. As Krystal Ball remarked, here summarized from a Rolling Stone podcast:

But even with a Biden win, Ball doesn't think it will mean much for policy.

"My prediction for the Biden era is that very little actually happens," says Ball. "Democrats are very good at feigning impotence. We saw this in the SCOTUS hearings as well. They're very good for coming up with reasons why, 'oh those mean Republicans, like we want to do better healthcare and we want left wages, but oh gosh, Mitch McConnell, he's so wiley, we can't get it done.'"

'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change never came. The Harris (Biden) administration must be seen in similar light.

I therefore agree with the sentiment with which Escobar closes his piece :

In a nutshell, Biden-Harris would mean The Return of the Blob with a vengeance. Biden-Harris would be Obama-Biden 3.0. Remember those seven wars. Remember the surges. Remember the kill lists. Remember Libya. Remember Syria. Remember "soft coup" Brazil. Remember Maidan. You have all been warned.
Posted by b at 16:45 UTC | Comments (183) I have been trying to set the expectations for my deluded Democratic, pro-tech industry, pro-security state friends and colleagues who think they are forward-thinking progressives but actually just hate Trump as emblematic of non-college educated blue collar types they prefer not to associate with. Biden himself said it, "Nothing will change," and Obama deported many more people in his first term than Trump has to pick but one issue. There will be no M4A, little change in foreign policy, no major stimulus for workers, etc. But since the face in the White House will have changed, they will convince themselves that America has changed and it was all thanks to them...

One major change I expect to see is that BLM protests will fade into the background if Harris/Biden is elected. Without the need to pressure an administration the elites want to get rid of, there won't be the funding and energy to sustain it. But America will continue on the same downward trajectory and the same divisions will still exist with no remediation in sight.


Michael , Oct 31 2020 17:18 utc | 2

Great and accurate summary! Thank you.

Given our future circumstance I've been pondering bumper stickers that will help me get pulled over by the Stasi. Two come to mind immediately:

Wars R US! Biden 2020!
and from a photo on some recent web page

Defund the Elite!

Laguerre , Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 3
Really, so what? You have a choice between chaotic anarchic corruption, and organised professional corruption. Is it not better to have the calm, predictable, version - at least you know what you're getting. In any case I am not sure Biden would be able to go back to launching new wars so easily. The US gives the impression of being over-stretched as it is.
ToivoS , Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 4
It seems clear that Biden will win. This means that the possibility of a serious military confrontation with Russia is more likely than it would be with a Trump win. In any Biden cabinet Michelle Flournoy will have a major voice. She would have likely become Hillary's Secretary of Defense. In August of 2016 Flournoy wrote a major foreign policy article advocating a 'no fly' zone over Syria. That would have meant that the US military would have been obliged to prevent the Russia airforce from operating in Syrian skies (even though, the Syrian government had invited the Russians to be there). No one really knows if Flournoy would have been given authority to carry out such insanity had Hillary won, but the consequences of such insane policy are easy to imagine.

But without much doubt, a Biden administration will have Susan Rice and Michelle Flournoy in very high policy positions. Given that Biden is rapidly descending into dementia and Kamala Harris seems utterly clueless, US government foreign policy will very likely be led by a Rice/Flournoy collaboration in the coming years. Of course, China has become a much bigger player in the last four years. Maybe those fools around Biden will be distracted by China and they avoid war with with Russia. In either case it looks like very dangerous times ahead.

NemesisCalling , Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 5
Trump was always for me about controlled demolition of the empire.

Putin will not tolerate another ramping up of hostilities in the MENA.

I believe, just as in 2016, open military confrontation with Russia hangs in the balance.

It is believed here and elsewhere that Russia and China are working hand in hand and lockstep to thwart the empire.

They may be trade allies but they are not bed fellows.

Russia will always do what is in its own interest and will be beyond reproach from China come a last-minute attempt for it to talk down hostilities btw Ru and U.S.A.

I hope those peddling the narrative that all is theater and a mere globalist game to keep the peons entertained are correct.

But I fear the stupidity and egoism of man far more than I do their love of money and life of luxury.

steven t johnson , Oct 31 2020 17:31 utc | 6
The JCPOA's "snap back" provisions etc. prove that Obama never intended JCPOA as a long term agreement in the first place. The issue was always how long it would suit, not how long it would take for the US to. Nor is the US going to forego it's support for a colonial assault on the Middle East, aka Israel, any more than England will give up Gibraltar.

That said, there really is a policy debate between attacking Russia first or attacking China first or simultaneously attacking both. The thing is, the conflict will continue after any election. Since the Democratic Party isn't a programmatic party but a franchise operation of Outs, there will be zero unanimity within the Democratic Party and not even a clean sweep of the national government will resolve the dispute, which will be waged with exactly the same panic-mongering, paranoid cries of treason, barely subdued hysteria at the prospect of the lower races overtaking the God-given rights of the US government to exercise imperium (right to punish, particularly with death, originally) over humanity, and so on. The same ignorant vicious halfwits who were convinced Clinton Foundation was worse than the Comintern infiltrating innocent America made assholes of themselves. They'll just do it again over Biden, but with different made up excuses.

Domestically, there will be real differences, albeit some will still consider them entirely minor. There will be less emphasis on military officers masquerading as civilian officials; more emphasis on actually having competent officials who are even confirmed by the Senate; somewhat larger infrastructure investment; somewhat less deliberate destruction of government capacity to deliver services; slightly greater emphasis on keeping money valuable by limiting government spending, with smaller increases in military spending, slightly greater taxes, and only limited support to state governments going bankrupt, bankrupt unemployment and pension funds; a few restrictions on mass evictions; no separation of families in ICE prisons; open appeals to racism will cease. There will not however be any Medicare expansion, nor will there be a radically progressive federal income tax, not even a new bankruptcy law, nor will there be even political reforms like direct popular election of the president or even reform of the judiciary. There may be a minimum wage increase to $15 per hour.

One note: The idea that any president will honor any deal to step down or that a president can be forced down is refuted by history thus far. All theories that Biden is scheduled to be terminated are silly. Or worse, attempts to race bait Harris (note the ones who like to call her by her first name.) The influence exercised by Obama in getting Biden the nomination shows that if Biden is in any sense a puppet, he's Obama's puppet. Fixating on Harris instead is foolish even as some sort of amateur conspiracy mongering. No matter what Obama thinks, the inauguration will sever all puppet strings.

Laguerre , Oct 31 2020 17:36 utc | 7
Posted by: ToivoS | Oct 31 2020 17:25 utc | 4

Can't say I'm convinced by all these threats of wars. They didn't do a No-Fly Zone in Syria when they could, e.g. 2013. The reason it was not done is that it was too difficult to do, and required too vast a military investment. Situation remains true today. You'll find most of Biden's prospective wars fall in the same category.

Kiza , Oct 31 2020 17:40 utc | 8
The US self-declared "progressives" are horribly dumb people, no matter their degrees and "intellectual" professions. Stupidity is the illness (weakness) of the societal immunity system. The Blob of the parasitic class is the pestilence that thrives on the immune weakness of the US society. Not happy with mine, then find a better metaphor.

I repeat myself from before, US presidents change, US policy (Mayhem Inc.) does not. Nether on Russia, Syria, Iran, Venezuela ..., nor on China. If Trump loses, I will miss only the potential duel at the OK Corral between Trump and the Blob/Swamp. If Trmp wins, I am buying popcorn.

erik , Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 9
Just, oh my goodness to #6. What a turgid, contradiction filled ramble
c1ue , Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 10
@Laguerre #7
I would argue the failure of a "no-fly" zone in Syria was more due to united UN (Russia and China) opposition plus the Russia airbase in Tartus rather than any policy changes in the US.
Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 17:55 utc | 11
More pearl-clutching for Trump .

It's everywhere. And matched by Democratic Party ineptitude, fake "resistance", and generally lax attitude (spurred by a false sense of security due to polling numbers that can't be relied upon).

That's why I'm predicting a Trump landslide - including winning the popular vote.

The Deep State wants a 'Glorious Leader' type that can lead the country against Russia and China.

God help us.

!!

Laguerre , Oct 31 2020 17:56 utc | 12
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 10

Not a policy change, more that the military will have advised against it, the same problem that has always prevented an attack on Iran.

jo6pac , Oct 31 2020 17:59 utc | 13
KB has it right the demodogs will have better PR but nothing will change. The only thing I hope they do is fully throw the u.s. govt behind stopping the virus and even that will be hard do to many stupid people.

Trumpster and the swamp all he did was change the cruel animals in it and biden will change it back to the other cruel animals that were there before.

Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:00 utc | 14
It is hard to tell what will change if the Democrats win because they have flip flopped on policies so many times that you don't know what they really stand for.

Are they going to ban fracking or not?
Are they going to end the oil industry or not?
Are they going to pack the Supreme Court or not ?
Are they going to implement the Green New Deal or not ?
Are they going to encourage immigration or not ?
Are they going to tear down the Wall?
Are they going to defund the police or not?

Other than #OrangeManBad what do they actually stand for ?
Jonathan Pie lays it out quite nicely
https://youtu.be/IdnHfYbr1cQ

The one issue that is critical is that it is clear than Biden will not make it full term. His mental faculties are deteriorating rapidly. He might just make it over the goal post line but just barely.

Therefore the real question is what will Kamala Harris do?

Russia has a lead in strategic weapons that the US will not be able to catch up with. Hence the US emphasis on nuclear weapons to bridge the gap. Russia has successfully thwarted the empire on several occasions. How will the empire struck back ? (So as not to lose credibility with allies and vassals alike)

There are too many unknowns.

Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:06 utc | 15
Another look at what a Biden win may mean by Philip Giraldi.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/10/29/disappearing-america-progressives-want-a-revolution-not-just-change/

Malchik Ralf , Oct 31 2020 18:08 utc | 16
They are going to reduce government subsidies for fracking
And encourage the oil industry's ongoing retooling to other energies
They are going to expand the SCOTUS to 13 seats in keeping with the number of Circuit Courts
They are going to implement environmental legislation and policies
They will hopefully try to adopt a comprehensive policy on immigration and naturalization
They will abandon The Wall project as pointless
They will review the role of the police in dealing with situations where a social worker or a psychologist (with police escort) might better be able to handle the situation

Kamala Harris will keep an active and high profile as she is being groomed to run in 2024


ptb , Oct 31 2020 18:20 utc | 17
I agree that trajectory in foreign policy will be the same. I think a Trump administration would tend to entrench into the bureaucracy the xenophobic nationalists. This is in contrast to the neoliberal nationalists that make up the Democrat side of the foreign policy clique. In practice the latter ends up carrying water for the neocons, so the difference from the global perspective, the perspective of those on whom the bombs fall, is academic.

Domestically, however, I don't think we can say there's no significant difference. At some point far down the road, there will be a more meaningful internal political struggle in the US. Talking about when the $$ printing power runs out, so several presidential cycles from now at the very earliest, maybe many decades away.

The out-groups targeted by xenophobic nationalism will shift by then - either black or hispanic people will necessarily be included into the Republican party, and the divide may be more a matter of religion or nationality than race, but the overall idea will be the same.

No matter the details, it would be better to go into that conflict without giving the right-wingers a big head start. I think we should admit that Trump does accelerate the process. Maybe readers outside the US take some pleasure in the chaos produced by this, but for anyone actually planning to live within the US, who also objects to unrestrained nationalism, there actually is a pretty high price to pay for peeling off the mask of phony benevolence off of the de-facto imperialist foreign policy.

Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:25 utc | 18
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-30/biden-aides-see-warning-signs-in-black-latino-turnout-so-far
Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 18:29 utc | 19
'b' half the truth isn't the truth, no doubt you'l get round to the other half. It's conspicuous !
In these times focusing on what might happen if we get Biden, is biased.
What in your view might happen if we get trump ?
Given his track record.
Much more relevant I feel.
c1ue , Oct 31 2020 18:30 utc | 20
@Malchik #16
Well, kid, I will guarantee that 2/3rds of what you say will happen with a Biden win, won't happen.
I am particularly struck by your assertion that "super predator" Biden and "Lock 'em up" Harris will do anything to rein in police misbehavior. That is pure fantasy.
As for fracking: the subsidies were primarily by banksters in the form of loans and have long since ended. Nobody believes fracking is going to be a profitable business for at least a decade.
vk , Oct 31 2020 18:32 utc | 21
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly going to lose the popular vote. Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.

In my opinion, it's time for the non far-right of the USA to start thinking seriously (specially if you're one of the twelve socialists in the country) in Third Party vote. Yes, you won't pick up the fruits immediately, but at least you're build up a legacy for the generations to come to try to change the landscape.

Now, of course, very little will change with Biden-Harris. But this has a good side, too: it shows the American Empire has clearly reached an exhaustion point, where the POTUS is impotent to the obstacle posed by China-Russia. Putin has already publicly stated he doesn't care who's next POTUS; China has already stated what the USA does or decides won't mean shit. Maybe the rising irrelevance of the POTUS is good in the greater scheme of things - or, at least, it gives us new, very precious, information about the core of the Empire.

Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 18:35 utc | 22
Is b really suggesting Trump is more peaceful than Biden?

The notion that Trump is fundamentally different than Biden or Hillary or Obama or Bush is specious. They are all on Team Deep State, which serves the monied class.

And the pretense that the Deep State is divided or partisan is equally laughable.

Strange that so many smart people fall for the shell game behind the 'Illusion of Democracy'. Is it so difficult to see the reshuffling of deck chairs and entertaining diversions that pass for "US politics"?

!!

Bemildred , Oct 31 2020 18:35 utc | 23
Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch.

But seriously, things have been changing very rapidly all of my life, and accelerating as we go. I don't see that the political/managerial classes here are up to the job of managing that change, have shown any aptitude for it or understanding of it in the past either. They remain focussed on their depraved personal ambitions and demented interpersonal disputes. So no change in the midst of lots of change is what I expect, time to keep an eye out and consider ones options.

dh , Oct 31 2020 18:37 utc | 24
@14 Will they fund a task force to deliver a preliminary report on reparations?
Down South , Oct 31 2020 18:47 utc | 25
vk @ 21
By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.

Jesus but that is an ignorant comment. Michael Moore explained 4 years ago why Trump will win the election (2016)
https://youtu.be/vMm5HfxNXY4
div> @vk #21
You said:
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly going to lose the popular vote.

The United States has a Constitution and was designed as a Republic.
"Democracy" as in majoritarian rule was explicitly designed against by the Founding Fathers.
Thus your criticism is utterly irrelevant. Until the Electoral College system is changed by Constitutional Amendment, or the United States of America is overthrown by a revolution, all this talk about "majoritarian demos rule" is purely partisan nonsense.
Note also that the 48 states which are "first past the post" are all disenfranchising the minority views. I 100% guarantee that a European style ranked vote system would see far more minority votes be submitted than the present systems.
Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.
Wow, thanks for showing your "deplorables" views. Anyone against the "right" and "proper" Democrat sellouts to pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely this view that galvanized the vote against HRC in 2016.

Posted by: c1ue , Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26

@vk #21
You said:
The only objection I have with supporting Trump's reelection from a non far-right viewpoint is that you would essentially be supporting an anti-democratic process: Trump is certainly going to lose the popular vote.

The United States has a Constitution and was designed as a Republic.
"Democracy" as in majoritarian rule was explicitly designed against by the Founding Fathers.
Thus your criticism is utterly irrelevant. Until the Electoral College system is changed by Constitutional Amendment, or the United States of America is overthrown by a revolution, all this talk about "majoritarian demos rule" is purely partisan nonsense.
Note also that the 48 states which are "first past the post" are all disenfranchising the minority views. I 100% guarantee that a European style ranked vote system would see far more minority votes be submitted than the present systems.
Deserving or not, Biden does represent the absolute majority of adult America. By supporting Trump, you're essentially speaking in the name of the interests of a small redneck aristocracy (of circa 77,000 in size, according to the 2016 election results) in the Rust Belt and Western Pennsylvania. You are supporting white supremacy those rednecks undoubtedly support - wanting you or not.
Wow, thanks for showing your "deplorables" views. Anyone against the "right" and "proper" Democrat sellouts to pharma, tech and enviro must be rednecks. It is precisely this view that galvanized the vote against HRC in 2016.

Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26

c1ue , Oct 31 2020 18:55 utc | 27
@JackRabbit #22
You said
The notion that Trump is fundamentally different than Biden or Hillary or Obama or Bush is specious.

That's not actually true.
Biden has 47 years of track record to rely on.
HRC, ditto.
Bush is umpteenth generation Bush in government (100 years plus).
Obama was groomed through Harvard, community organization and Senate position as a servant of the oligarchy.
Trump is a billionaire and 2nd generation wealthy, but he neither shares the views of the oligarch classes - his historical behavior is clear proof of that - nor is he predictable as the other 4 are.
If presented with a neocon view - all 4 of the above would 100% agree.
Trump? 85%.
That is a difference albeit absolutely not world changing.
Hoyeru , Oct 31 2020 18:56 utc | 28
Pure BS.
Giving health care to 20 million poor Americans ain't nothing to sneeze at. Adding pre existing conditions save millions of lives. That's why the right despises Obama so much. How dare he give money to those free loaders!

lets show what the republicans have done for poor Americans besides taking more needex money from them and giving it to their rich buddies.
and No, Democrats cannot do anything if they don't control the Congress. They should have done it 2 years ago but since all they were doing was scream RUSSIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! at the top of their lungs,the people turned their backs on them.
Bullshit article.

David , Oct 31 2020 18:57 utc | 29

The Democrats are not going to end fracking. It is doomed to collapse without their help. A Wall Street Journal study revealed a remarkable fact that few Americans know; From 2000-2017 fracking companies spent $280 billion more to extract fracked oil and gas than they received in revenue. Fracking is nothing more than a massive Ponzi scheme predicated on the constant issuing of debt and stock. Fracking wells deplete quickly. There is a constant need for more expensive drilling. The remaining areas that will be fracked have less productive wells. Much of the debt fracking companies have issued is back loaded while the well's production is front loaded. There simply isn't going to be enough revenue generated to meet debt obligations. What made the scheme possible was the artificially low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve. There was a demand for yield that drove investment into debt of dubious quality. A crash is inevitable.
c1ue , Oct 31 2020 19:03 utc | 30
@Bemildred #23
You said:
Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch.

I am curious why you think so.
Biden is nothing, if not a creature of habit (of obedience to his corporate masters).
Biden likely NSC: Tony Blinken. Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy NSC under Obama.
Susan "Bomber" Rice?
John Kerry?
Sally Yates? The one who signed the FISA warrants based on the Steele Dossier (based on 2 drunkard Russians in Malta mad at being fired)
Michael Bloomberg?
Jamie Dimon?
The only "fresh blood" in this group is the teenage blood they inject to try and remain young.
Elizabeth Warren, were Biden to appoint her as Treasury Secretary, *would* constitute fresh blood.
The likelihood of the Senator from MBNA appointing her to that position is zero.
I would love to be wrong in that instance, but it ain't gonna happen.
Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 19:06 utc | 31
What is trumps legacy so far ?
Let's call that -- - 'The Crimes Of Donald Trump'
Well he has legitimised cold blooded murder.
Ditto racism.
Run roughshod over national laws and conventions. -- Invading an embassy. Assange, koshogie murder, white helmit chlorine attack false flag. Funding and arming by US of Isis.
Corporate mansloughter by virus.
Interference in numerous country's internal politics.
Allowing Israel to interfer take over US politics.
The above are a few that comes to mind.

Have we done away with law and order ?

Feel free to add to my 'Crimes of Donald Trump' list.
In a word normalisation.

ToivoS , Oct 31 2020 19:08 utc | 32
Laguerre | Oct 31 2020 17:36 utc | 7

I hope you are right that the US will avoid war in Syria because they would lose. I was, on the other hand, very impressed that Flournoy was advocating that no fly zone in August of 2016. It was on the basis of her article at that time I fled the US Democratic Party. I knew it was bad before, but it suddenly became clear how Hillary would lead us int WWIII.

Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 19:10 utc | 33
c1ue @Oct31 18:55 #27

We've talked at moa about how policy doesn't change much between Democrat and Republican Administrations. And we've talked about the Illusion of Democracy.

That each President has a different personality as well as different priorities and challenges during their time in office doesn't indicate any fundamental difference in how we are governed.

!!

Jackrabbit , Oct 31 2020 19:13 utc | 34
Mark2 @Oct31 19:06 #31

Yes, Trump is normalizing the 'Rules Based Order' in which financial and military power dictates what should be.

!!

circumspect , Oct 31 2020 19:16 utc | 35
And Hillary Clinton wants to be Secretary of Defense in a Biden administration. Not only would the world be in trouble I could see her using the DOD internal hit teams to go after her domestic enemies. They will make 8 years of Bush junior look like a Disneyland vacation. It will be similar to the many unsolved murders of Weimar Germany.
Bemildred , Oct 31 2020 19:17 utc | 36
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 19:03 utc | 30

That was sarcasm, I knew it was going to cause trouble, sarcasm never works on the web unless you add a /sarc tag or something, I guess I feel a bit perverse today.

But to be serious, any attempt to predict what comes next here must rely on the idea that the future will be like the past, we extrapolate in other words, from various trends that we pick out. We can expect Biden to remain who he has been in the past, politicfally he's a hack, what we know of Harris does not suggest any principles to speak of either, so I feel more like I want to pay attention to what's coming than trying to predict what they is going to do or not do. That likely depends on "contingencies" just as in the past.

jayc , Oct 31 2020 19:18 utc | 37
#23 - "I don't see that the political/managerial classes here are up to the job of managing that change, have shown any aptitude for it or understanding of it in the past either."

This is a highly relevant observation. For some time the character and intellectual scope of the political/managerial sectors in the West have been noticeably mediocre, and will likely continue as such for the foreseeable future. The necessary reforms of capitalism were vetoed decades ago, ensuring that productive energies would gradually dissipate. For the last decade all the West has had to offer the rest of humanity is neoliberal austerity, colour revolutions, and armament contracts. This is a journey towards an eventual hollowed-out self-imposed isolation, a process the political/managerial sectors are actively encouraging and supporting without realizing it at all.

Piero Colombo , Oct 31 2020 19:18 utc | 38
Interesting to see how the kayfabe vocabulary of Dim propaganda infects everyone's thought and speech. Including b's:

"'Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies."
Republican my eye. Democrat policies, period. A party founded, maintained and run to implement the ruling class empire and war agenda, just like the Repucrats.
As if Obama was some kind of exception. Ditch this language.

Piero Colombo , Oct 31 2020 19:20 utc | 39
Hoyeru @28

"Giving health care to 20 million poor Americans ain't nothing to sneeze at".

On the contrary, it would be a very good thing, to be applauded.
But when, o when, is it ever gonna happen? We've been waiting for it too long.

dfnslblty , Oct 31 2020 19:27 utc | 40
usa is the major unknown;
China and Russia don't need to physically war - they are winning at PR around the globe.
Even tiny Cuba has greatly better creds!
usa needs to be a people who truly and consistently respect their allies.
Which comes back to usa being the major unknown.
'Cept for warmongering.
Don Bacon , Oct 31 2020 19:30 utc | 41
The blob from the swamp wants to be heard with Why Those 780 Top National Security Leaders Support Biden . .think 'Get Russia.'
"All of us who spent careers in the military were raised on the notion that you lead by example, and President Trump has been the antithesis of that in dealing with this pandemic," said Charles "Steve" Abbot, former commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and deputy Homeland Security Adviser. "Instead of taking steps that I would call 'Crisis Management 101,' President Trump shirked his duty to the nation by failing to provide the central leadership necessary to get our arms around the problem, and he continues to mislead the entire nation about this terrible threat. The result of that failure of leadership was that his administration committed an unrelenting string of missteps, and the American public has lost trust in what the president tells them."

The sixth Fleet is Europe, so "this terrible threat" must be Russia, which is the natural enemy of the DNC/AtlanticCouncil/NATO unlike Trump the 'Putin-lover.'
And more on anti-Russia, from the article:
President Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton said earlier this year that Trump had repeatedly raised the issue of withdrawing the United States from NATO, and warned of "a very real risk" that Trump would actually follow through in a second term.

Nicholas Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and the number three official at the State Department, put it this way: "Every modern president since Harry Truman has viewed our commitment to democratic allies around the world as sacrosanct, because for half a century those alliances have been a key source of American power." He noted that a dissolution of NATO is at the top of Russian President Vladimir Putin's wish list. "Under President Trump we have walked away from that global leadership, and, as a result, trust in the United States has plummeted even among our closest friends. That's done enormous damage."

Bemildred , Oct 31 2020 19:35 utc | 42
This is a journey towards an eventual hollowed-out self-imposed isolation, a process the political/managerial sectors are actively encouraging and supporting without realizing it at all.

Posted by: jayc | Oct 31 2020 19:18 utc | 37

I've been sort of fascinated by that for some time, back when I was young we were still smart enough to know we had to compete with the USSR, and that we therefore had to develop our human capital. And we did pretty well for a couple decades, but then after VietNam they stopped doing that and choose the present "system" instead. Thus abandoning their long-term ability to compete, the source of their power in the first place. Banana republics do not compete well. Decadent.

But you have to give credit to the Russians and the Chinese too, their achievements are impressive by any standard. Our enemies, the ones who have survived, have all proved their mettle.

pnyx , Oct 31 2020 19:50 utc | 43
Can be, can be, no expectations in Biden / Harris. Nevertheless, Tronald is definitely not the lesser evil. His foreign policy is also heading for a clash with China, and things are not going well with Russia either. The warmongering anti-Iran axis has his support, the war in Yemen continues, he won't leave Syria alone, his extremely Israel-friendly attitude increases the danger of war. Everything that is suspected of being left-wing in South America is strangled.

In addition, he has an encouraging effect on all the fascists of the world, his disastrous ecological policy, his negative influence on the treatment of the Corona crisis, his general dislike of multilateral organizations and treaties on which the weaker states of the world are compulsorily dependent. Overall, he exerts an extremely negative influence on the entire globe. He should be disposed of.

He will lose the elections, but what happens then is open.

Maureen O , Oct 31 2020 19:57 utc | 44
In 2009, Biden tried very hard to convince Obama not to surge 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. Obama listened to the generals not his VP.
steven t johnson , Oct 31 2020 20:11 utc | 45
The claim that support for minority rule isn't purely partisan BS is yet another lie. The moral principle in countermajoritarianism like the Founders' is that democracy cannot be allowed to threaten property. Except of course property before democracy, before liberty, before humanity is a vile and disgusting tenet that shames everyone so lost to common decency. The defense that a piece of parchment, a law, makes things moral and righteous and that even opposition is somehow wrong is an offense against common sense. By that standard, the Thirteen, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were the end of freedom in America!

It's one thing to have a mind deranged by rabid hate of your perceived social superiors, but to openly uphold vulgarity is merely snobbery inverted. It is a mean and small minded vice, always, and never a virtue. The Access: Hollywood tape was proof of vulgarity but to defend it as not being proof of a crime but as a positive good is vicious. Vicious is not a synonym for "bad ass." Or if it news, then "bad ass" is a horrible insult.

And, speaking of deranged minds, Wilson was felled by a stroke and Reagan was felled by Alzheimer's, yet they did not fall from power. Quite aside from the question of how anyone could decide who is battier, Trump or Biden, Biden will never be replaced by Harris for incapacity short of a coma.

Linda Amick , Oct 31 2020 20:20 utc | 46
I agree wholeheartedly with the concluding paragraph
Oriental Voice , Oct 31 2020 20:31 utc | 47
A very cogent analysis by b. But I believe the return of the Blob may not be as ominous as feared.

The dangerous component of the Blob's collective fantasy is the confrontation against China and Russia. As late as 4, 5 years ago the prevailing sentiment among Americans, the masses and the elites alike, was one in which The Empire's might was still considered unquestionably dominant and unchallenged. There was penchant for dressing down both China and Russia, and the clumsy maneuvers of the Blob's operators (Obama/Clinton/Bolton/Rice et al) were wholeheartedly supported even if contemptuously regarded for their clumsiness. That sentiment has evaporated, especially after Chinese and Russian military parades as well as American's numerous own infrastructure project failures along with abject performances of Boeing jets and Zumwalt class destroyers. The COVID19 pandemic adds salt to injury.
There is an issue with self confidence now, up and down the hierarchy within the American society, perhaps with the lone exception of Trump's rednecks.

So, the Blob may return with a vengeance but their political capital may be rather meager. They will be all mouth and little substance, as would Trump's prospective second term.

Steve , Oct 31 2020 20:33 utc | 48
I've tuned out of thesilly circus of the US election since the day Biden became the Democratic Party flag bearer.
alaff , Oct 31 2020 20:48 utc | 49
I do not always agree with the opinion of the Saker, but in this matter I tend to support him and can only quote from one of his recent articles :

And, in truth, the biggest difference between Obama and Trump, is that Trump did not start any real wars. Yes, he did threaten a lot of countries with military attacks (itself a crime under international law), but he never actually gave the go ahead to meaningfully attack (he only tried some highly symbolic and totally ineffective strikes in Syria). I repeat – the man was one of the very few US Presidents who did not commit the crime of aggression, the highest possible crime under international law, above crimes against humanity or even genocide, because the crime of aggression "contains within itself the accumulated evil", to use the words of the chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Robert H. Jackson. I submit that just for this reason alone any decent person should choose him over Biden (who himself is just a front for "President" Harris and a puppet of the Clinton gang). Either that, or don't vote at all if your conscience does not allow you to vote for Trump. But voting Biden is unthinkable for any honest person , at least in my humble opinion.

I am surprised by people who are of the opinion that half-dead Biden, suffering from obvious dementia, is better. If only not Trump.
In 2016, Hilary, in fact, openly stated that she was going to use the so-called 'nuclear blackmail' against the Russian Federation. And there was no guarantee that this crazy old witch, having become president, would not have pressed the very button that launched nuclear missiles at Russia. Four years ago, the choice was between an insane sadistic misanthropist who could actually start a nuclear war, and a "dark horse" businessman with the illusory prospect of some improvement in relations between the two strongest nuclear powers. I do not want to drag in religion and the intervention of higher powers here, but it may not be at all accidental that Trump snatched victory from the witch. Maybe we avoided a nuclear war.

Yes, now both options are bad. But of the two evils, it is better to choose the lesser, which, of course, Trump is.


two near-certain redeeming features would be the return of the US to the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, which was Obama-Biden's only foreign policy achievement, and re-starting nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia. That would imply containment of Russia, not a new all-out Cold War , even as Biden has recently stressed, on the record, that Russia is the "biggest threat" to the US.

What? Funny. I thought it was Obama (read Democrats) who started this new Cold War. Just to remind - It was Obama who made the decision to deploy missiles in Poland and Romania, which are a direct threat to Russia. It is Obama & Co who are responsible for the Ukrainian coup, which, in fact, became a trigger for the total deterioration of relations between Russia and the West. It was Obama who began the unprecedented expropriation of Russian diplomatic property in the U.S. and the expulsion of russian diplomats. It was under Obama that "the doping scandal" was organized against Russia. And so on and so on...
Trump just continued what Obama had started. It is strange that Pepe Escobar does not understand this.

Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 20:50 utc | 50
Off topic
Boris Johnson announces Britain will be going into its second fake total lockdown this coming Thursday.
Mark Thomason , Oct 31 2020 20:52 utc | 51
If Iran and/or Venezuela get their oil back on the market, that will cause an oil price crash that would "end fracking." It can't survive oil much under $50/barrel over a long term.

An oil price crash would also effect the larger energy market, making solar and wind less competitive, even though their direct competition is really coal rather than oil.

Huge and powerful constituencies don't care about Iran or Venezuela, but care very much about oil prices staying high. They make common cause now, and will under Biden too.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 20:53 utc | 52
Well, having given deep consideration to the question and the current advanced state of malady in the USA - I will leave it to Vic as he has summarised the position with minimum fuss - here.

Enjoy this sharp witted, all encompassing 4 minute rant from inside the asylum. I would shout the bar for all with this one.

JohnH , Oct 31 2020 20:58 utc | 53
Biden is an old man. He is a tired man, if not now, then in six months. He has already told wealthy donors that nothing will change. He has no record of leadership. He has no record of achievement, unless you count floating to the top. He will be the establishment's model 'status quo, do-nothing Democrat.

Biden will preside as a figurehead legitimizing the shenanigans of the blob, Wall Street, and the US Chamber of Commerce, and Big Oil. Heck, I doubt that he will even override many of Trump's executive orders, except for the token bone thrown to his delusional supporters.

Harris will be as much a figurehead as Biden. She is utterly unprepared. While she is likable enough, she lacks gravitas and "credibility," which, she will be convinced, can be established only by bombing a few wogs back to the Stone Age.

Both will serve as placeholders until Trump 2.0 arrives in 2024. Elites will sufficiently sabotage the economy until then to assure that Trump 2.0 with neocon values is elected in 2024.

james , Oct 31 2020 21:11 utc | 54
thanks b... i appreciate you highlighting pepe's article... i enjoyed it.. terms like "Kaganate of Nulandistan", " The Three Harpies" and etc...

i still like the dynamic between joe rogan and glenn greenwald discussion on this same topic from the link debs left yesterday -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0rcLsoIKgA&feature=youtu.be

the usa is an approaching train wreck and no amount of persuading one side or the other is going to change any of this... the world is moving on and rightfully so... no one wants to get down into this... the swamp and fake news is permanent at this point...until the whole system implodes - this is what we have in store.. vote for trump or biden - it matters not... one is a slower motion move then the other - but the end result is the same... there is no way out... sorry... on the other hand it is beautiful and sunny here where i live... life goes on outside this political circus called the usa presidential election..

lysias , Oct 31 2020 21:17 utc | 55
77,000 voters may have decided the outcome of the 2016 election, but they were not the only ones who voted for Trump. 63 million voters did.
Per/Norway , Oct 31 2020 21:20 utc | 56
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26
I do not agree with you on 99.8% of wordly affairs BUT this comment you wrote is pure gold!!
Even on the other side of the Atlantic ocean @ the western edge of Europe us reading types know the difference.
And it annoys me just as much as it seems to annoy you how few people know that the US of terror is a republic and NOT a democracy😂🥴
steven t johnson , Oct 31 2020 21:27 utc | 57
By the way, people who are truly interested in seeing the Democratic Party removed as an obstacle to a true people's party (no one else here wants a workers' party) the very best way to split the national party would be a clean sweep of House, Senate and Presidency followed by enough treasonous shenanigans by Trump to arouse mass resistance. (Genuinely treasonous as in subverting the republic by force, fraud and violence, not in the half witted definition of dealings with foreigners so popular around here.) Biden et al. would split the Democrats rather than enact a popular program---which would be left because the when the masses begin to move they always march left.

Also by the way, Bloomberg is continuing his bid for a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party, aping the media version of Trump's hostile takeover of the Republic (NOT A DEMOCRACY!) Party.

Richard Steven Hack , Oct 31 2020 21:27 utc | 58
"Change' was an Obama marketing slogan to sell his Republican light policies. A real change never came."

I was calling Obama "Bush Lite" during his first campaign. Anyone who read his foreign policy platform would have to agree. And the *only* reason he negotiated the JCPOA was because he needed at least one foreign policy win for his eight years - and he knew it would be torn up by whoever came after him, either Clinton or Trump. But he needed it for his own narcissistic view of his "legacy".

People forget that Obama wrote the leaders of Brazil and Turkey in 2010 prior to their negotiation with Iran for a deal, listing the points of a deal he would accept. Clinton pooh-poohed the idea that those leaders could get a deal. After a marathon negotiation session, they got it. The US then dismissed the deal 24 hours later, prompting Brazil's leader to release the Obama letter to establish that Obama was a liar.

"Change You Can Believe In" - "Make America Great" - only morons believe in campaign slogans - or the people who utter them.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 21:28 utc | 59
Pardon me b !
"The other issue is arms control. While a Harris (Biden) administration may take up Putin's offer to unconditionally prolong the New-START agreement for a year it will certainly want more concessions from Russia than that country is willing to give."

Russia has made it abundantly and repetitively clear that they are not doing INCREMENTAL DEFEAT any more - there are no concessions to make - they no longer do supine acceptance of UKUSAi rights to dominate, subvert or belligerently mass arms at their advancing borders.

Why would any country concede to the incessant belligerence of the west? They must have lead in their drinking water to be that dumb!

The concession must come from the aggressor, the colour revolution fomenter, the incessant smearer and hate propagandist - the west.

A Harris/Biden Presidency lacks those attributes (perhaps lacks any attributes of goodwill) and a Trump Presidency is no different.

The narcissistic personality disorders run the USA - the asylum inmates are in charge, not the elected leaders. And the elected leaders are morons or wholly captive klutzes.

Richard Steven Hack , Oct 31 2020 21:34 utc | 60
Posted by: Laguerre | Oct 31 2020 17:36 utc | 7 They didn't do a No-Fly Zone in Syria when they could, e.g. 2013. The reason it was not done is that it was too difficult to do

Obama tried *six times* to start a war with Syria. First he submitted *three* UNSC Resolutions with Chapter 7 language in them. Russia and China - burned by the US over Libya - vetoed those. Then Obama was within hours of launching an attack on Syria in August, 2013. He only stopped when he got push-back from Congress and then Putin outmaneuvered him by getting Assad to give up his chemical weapons. Then in fall, 2015, Obama was talking no-fly zone yet again. Putin again outmaneuvered him by committing Russian forces to Syria. Then sometime in 2016 - I forget the exact month - there was a news article saying Obama was having a meeting on that Friday to discuss no-fly zone yet *again*. That Tuesday or Wednesday, the Russia Ministry of Defense issued a statement that anyone attacking Syrian military assets would be shot down by Russia. On Friday, Obama pulled back and said there wouldn't be a no-fly zone.

So it was Russia, primarily, that was the reason Obama didn't not succeed *six times* trying to start a war with Syria.

Richard Steven Hack , Oct 31 2020 21:36 utc | 61
Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 17:51 utc | 10

Correct (for once).

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 21:41 utc | 62
Bemildred #23

"Biden will bring fresh blood to the Presidency, just you watch."

YES. thank you for the clarifying statement, as that is exactly what I expect too. Harris /Biden blood spattered globe again. Or a Trump spattered equivalent. No socialism for the USA.

gottlieb , Oct 31 2020 21:42 utc | 63
We went from snarling Cheney Wars to shiny happy Obama wars to snarling Trump wars now back to shiny happy Biden wars to... Forever War is obviously bi-partisan.

But perhaps with Great Depression 2.0 coming this Dark Winter in order to stave off civil war and/or revolution they'll throw resources to much needed infrastructure projects, diminish to a slight degree the supremacy of the for-profit healthcare industry through a laughable but better than nothing 'public option' and make some baby steps toward avoiding climate catastrophic.

The change is marginal. And probably meaningless. Hope is just another word for nothing left to lose.

vk , Oct 31 2020 21:53 utc | 64
@ Posted by: lysias | Oct 31 2020 21:17 utc | 56

Those 77,000 - purely because of location - overcame 3 million+ votes. That's the equivalent of giving those 77 thousands the right to vote 40 times each.

Are you in favor of censitary vote?

--//--

@ Posted by: c1ue | Oct 31 2020 18:50 utc | 26

Yes, but at the end of the day, Hilary Clinton got 3.6 million votes more than Donald Trump.

You're telling everybody you're in favor of censitary vote in opposition to one person, one vote, just because you don't want an ideological enemy of yours to win. This is still liberal - but you would have to dig to the early liberal thinkers (Locke, Tocqueville etc.) to find such reactionary and elitist opinion.

Even by liberal standards today censitary vote is already considered outdated/reactionary. Concretely, you're defending the interests of a blue collar elite of the north-midwest, who number on the dozens of thousands, in detriment to more than half the voting population. It is what it is: you can't fight against mathematics.

--//--

@ Posted by: Down South | Oct 31 2020 18:47 utc | 25

So what? Fuck Michael Moore. If Michael Moore told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it? He's not the guardian of the absolute truth, he's just a random guy with an opinion.

Michael Moore can defend a mythical blue collar America how much he wants to - it doesn't change the fact this America doesn't exist anymore. America is, nowadays, the land of the petit-bourgeois, the land of the small-medium business-owners (a.k.a. zombie business-owners) , of the New York financial assets owning middle class "coastal elites", of the influencers, of Kim and Chloe Kardashian, of Starbucks, Amazon and Apple, of the billionaire tied to Wall Street. That's the true America, want it.

America will never be blue collar again. The insistence of turning America blue collar again will destroy the American Empire. They will be the Gorbachevs of the USA.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 22:11 utc | 65
Richard Steven Hack #61


Obama tried *six times* to start a war with Syria. First he submitted *three* UNSC Resolutions with Chapter 7 language in them. Russia and China - burned by the US over Libya - vetoed those. Then Obama was within hours of launching an attack on Syria in August, 2013. He only stopped when he got push-back from Congress and then Putin outmaneuvered him by getting Assad to give up his chemical weapons. Then in fall, 2015, Obama was talking no-fly zone yet again. Putin again outmaneuvered him by committing Russian forces to Syria. Then sometime in 2016 - I forget the exact month - there was a news article saying Obama was having a meeting on that Friday to discuss no-fly zone yet *again*. That Tuesday or Wednesday, the Russia Ministry of Defense issued a statement that anyone attacking Syrian military assets would be shot down by Russia. On Friday, Obama pulled back and said there wouldn't be a no-fly zone.

So it was Russia, primarily, that was the reason Obama didn't not succeed *six times* trying to start a war with Syria.

Thank you, it seems that your succinct statement should be included as an auto response macro to every laguerre post. They never stop their blathering those AI CPU's. My take is that they are a retro definition of the term interrupt .

MarkU , Oct 31 2020 22:16 utc | 66
@ Jackrabbit

I remember you as being a reasonably sane contributor but atm you have a serious case of TDS. Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected? I mean seriously? WTF? What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?


Mark2 , Oct 31 2020 22:19 utc | 67
Now I know I have been very very harsh on trump and his supporters of late. Please forgive me ! It's what we call 'tough love' I do have a heart, dispite all of America's crimes against the rest of the world. I did hope that the US at the last moment would come to it's senses and turn it's back on trump. Alas ! I fear not. Really sad, I'm sorry.
But for the rest of the world including myself, we can only watch with fascination and relief as America destroys itself from within. My heart goes out to the inocent.
I fear trump supporters are in for a -- --
Pyrrhic victory (spelt correctly) I recommend googling the word.

Adolph Hitler rose to power with similar glory and power unbridled. Just as trump now !! Then what ?
Dresden!!
Think on.

_K_C_ , Oct 31 2020 22:29 utc | 68
Posted by: MarkU | Oct 31 2020 22:16 utc | 67

Why is it so hard to believe? The media needs a heel and they actually prefer Trump to remain in office. Maybe on the ground level you have a lot of regular old liberals, but the upper echelons of the media (and holding companies) are all about keeping the ratings bonanza going. Another Trump term but with Democrat control of Congress would be like manna from heaven to them. Matt Taibbi is one writer who has chronicled the phenomenon since before Trump ever got elected. Here's a more recent piece. Let me know if it's paywalled and I can copy/paste.
CNN chief has an ethical problem.

Schmoe , Oct 31 2020 22:39 utc | 69
On JCPOA, The Nation had a quote from one of Biden's foreign policy advisers to a group of Jewish campaing donors saying all sanctions on Iran will remain intact unless they return to full compliance. I agree that it will not be as simple as that given political reality, but Biden was closely involved in its negotiation and likely has some ownership of it.

I expect there to be a false flag attack by "Iran" to throw sand in the gears if re-implementation looks likely, or perhaps an Israeli attack on Lebanon. Best plausible outcome is Iran keeps its current level of cooperation, and a Biden admin looks the other way on sanctions violationsw.

jinn , Oct 31 2020 22:40 utc | 70
Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected? I mean seriously? What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?
_____________________________________________
Of course it was all phony and designed to not ring true, which benefits Trump by giving him credibility with the voters.
The whole idea behind trump is the same as with Reagan he is portrayed as the outsider doing battle against the corrupt and powerful Washington swamp. Trump is Reagan on steroids. But it is all phony both Reagan and Trump are one of the powerful elites and their opposition by the left wing media is designed to give them credibility with voters.

Remember that half of the corporate controlled media loves Trump and sings his praises daily. It is only half the corporate media that is attacking Trump the other half is showing its viewers blacks that strongly support Trump and solid evidence that Russiagate is pure bullshit.

As for what the media would do if they really wanted to bring Trump down. They would attack him on real issues instead of phony ones that actually strengthen trump's credibility.

Josh , Oct 31 2020 22:45 utc | 71
What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?
This,
https://sputniknews.com/viral/202010311080939179-ukrainian-code-biden-has-netizens-in-stitches-as-he-pledges-to-mobilise-trunalimunumaprzure/
Nice,
dave , Oct 31 2020 22:59 utc | 72
"What Would A Democratic Presidency Really Change?"

The same thing it always changes, absolutely nothing except who accepts the bribes from the elite.

As long as the American people stay asleep they will continue with the "American DREAM" until they suddenly wake up inside their newly constructed corporate industrial zone. The prison industrial complex is the model society if you're an elite.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, don't get so caught up in this sham (s)election that you ruin what little freedom you have left.

S , Oct 31 2020 22:59 utc | 73
Berlin's Madame Tussauds has put Donald Trump's wax figure into a dumpster . Is this normal behavior by a museum? Is this not "an interference in the democratic processes of the United States"? Or is it okay because the Germans are doing it? (But God forbid if a Russian or an Iranian criticizes a U.S. presidential candidate publicly ahead of the election.) Have similar performances been staged against Bush, under whom the U.S. intelligence agencies manufactured claims of Saddam Hussein preparing to use weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. "free" media printed almost in unison without any criticism, leading to an invasion that killed 650,000 Iraqis ? When a visitor beheaded Adolf Hitler's figure in 2008, the same museum had this to say :
Madame Tussauds is non-political and makes no comment or value-judgement either on the persons who are exhibited in the Museum or on what they have done during their lifetime.

I guess starting a war that resulted in deaths of 26,000,000 million Soviets -- most of them Russians -- is not nearly as bad as being a rude person who has once recommended in private grabbing women by their genitals.

S , Oct 31 2020 23:01 utc | 74
*26,000,000 Soviets
MarkU , Oct 31 2020 23:18 utc | 75
@ jinn (71) and _K_C (69)

You are clearly over-thinking this, clutching at straws to justify supporting the other side. Remember the saying "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people". Whoever wins the election is going to be faced with major unrest, the worms are clearly not going back in the can. There are easier ways to get someone re-elected.

Trump is clearly at least as toxic as any of them wrt foreign policy, however he is not a globalist and that is his major sin in their eyes.

Don Bacon , Oct 31 2020 23:19 utc | 76
@ Maureen O # 45
In 2009, Biden tried very hard to convince Obama not to surge 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan.
Perhaps he was successful? . . . Obama actually surged 70,000 troops into Afghanistan, raising Bush's 30K to 100K+. That got Mr Hope & Change the Nobel Peace Prize.
arata , Oct 31 2020 23:21 utc | 77
Posted by: alaff | Oct 31 2020 20:48 utc | 50

What is JCPOA, in reality?

We should remember there were 6 UNSC against Iran, and one of them under Chapter 7 ( the most dangerous), before JCPOA. We should keep in mind there are gang of 5 + 1( 5 in UNSC + Germany) coalition behind 6 resolutions.

From Iran's eye, Imperialism was, combination of these 5 in the club, and their collateral and vassals ( Germany, Japan, etc). The master of JCPOA, caught the opportunity to put a wedge into the body of the club, and it worked perfectly. America is mad cutting her own arteries, out side the club. Trump or Biden are not different in this regard, America needs some one to understand the depth of the wound and retreat immediately, before too much hemorrhage. And such person ( or group ) is not in horizon. Let it die by her own wounding.

Going back to JCPOA is not so simple.

uncle tungsten , Oct 31 2020 23:34 utc | 78
Down South #15

Thank you for that Philip Giraldi report. The descent into madness from the raucus sounds of the echo chamber. Where does a revolution start?

First they need to dismantle their media concentration across the spectrum of "news" including all media forms.

Second they need to send their journalists through the same cultural revolution cycle as was done in the China and other countries where people go to different work supporting the growth of their communities for a five to ten year separation from the craft of journalism. Listen to the people and sweat alongside them in their labour to survive.

Sure there is much more but the echo chamber must surely be demolished at commencement.

Jen , Oct 31 2020 23:39 utc | 79
RSH @ 61:

I believe back in August 2013 after a CW attack in East Ghouta, east of Damascus, wrongly blamed on the Syrian govt that Obama was preparing to enforce his no-fly zone threat. Then the UK parliament voted not to support such a threat, Obama hesitated and then Putin saw his opportunity and posted an opinion in the New York Times. That ultimately stopped the US from going ahead with the attack.

I'm sure British MPs have since been forced to "come to their senses".

karlof1 , Oct 31 2020 23:43 utc | 80
I linked to and commented upon Pepe's article when it was published by Asia Times a few days ago, and I don't see any reason to add to it as b echoes much of my sentiment. What I will do is link to a brief item by Chinese scholar Zhang Weiwei, professor of International Relations at Fudan University, "How China elects their political leaders" , which seems very appropriate at this moment in time:

"China has established a system of meritocracy or what can be described as 'selection plus election'. Competent leaders are selected on the basis of performance and broad support, through a vigorous process of screening, opinion surveys, internal evaluations and various types of elections. This is much in line with the Confucian tradition of meritocracy. After all, China is the first country that invented civil service examination system or the 'Keju' system....

"Indeed, the Chinese system of meritocracy today, makes it inconceivable that anyone as weak as George W. Bush or Donald Trump could ever come close to the position of the top leadership. It's not far-fetched to claim that the China model is more about leadership rather than the showmanship as it is in the West. China's meritocratic governance challenges the stereotypical dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy. From Chinese point of view, the nature of the state including its legitimacy, has to be defined by its substance, that is, good governance, competent leadership and success in meeting the people's needs."

Zhang Weiwei is the author of a very important book some may have heard about and even read, The China Wave: Rise Of A Civilizational State , of which an open preview can be read here . Also, the professor gave a talk at the German Schiller Institute related to the above book and the BRI project, which can be read here .

I've commented several times that China's political-economic system is far superior to the Parasitic Neoliberalism that's destroying the West. China's success suggests very strongly that we listen and closely observe while not taking heed of what any Western source has to say about China.

Jen , Oct 31 2020 23:43 utc | 81
Uncle T @ 79:

I'm all for sending the entire Australian news media into a cave for 5 - 10 years. Maybe in 10,000 years archaeologists investigating the cave will be wondering whether fossil remains there denote a species of human more primitive than those found in Liang Bua cave on Flores Island in Indonesia. :-)

Hagbard Celine , Oct 31 2020 23:51 utc | 82
@worldblee #1

Can you elaborate on this funding you referred to for BLM protests? What is your evidence that it was actually funding street protests? Are you referring to the national corporate BLM? If so, what does that have to do with leaderless protests in the streets?

uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 0:09 utc | 83
Mark2 #68

Adolph Hitler rose to power with similar glory and power unbridled. Just as trump now !! Then what ?
Dresden!!
Think on.

Ahem, Think about this :

From February 13 to February 15, 1945, during the final months of World War II (1939-45), Allied forces bombed the historic city of Dresden, located in eastern Germany. The bombing was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians -- estimated between 22,700 to 25,000–were dead.

Dresden and other cities held magnificent collections of human posterity. Cities of science - of intellectual excellence and endeavour within europe. Cities of humans associated with brilliant minds doing the work of human understanding and progress.

Sure Hitler's imbecile adventures ably funded by global private finance capitalism and a hatred of communism led to war that ultimately led to the vengeful destruction of great cities and great store houses and museums of this earth of mankind.

Hitler did not bomb Dresden.

Germans were proud of their science and their knowledge and storehouses and museums.

Europe shared in that pride in excellence as did many throughout the world.

The UKUSA bombed Dresden in mid February 1945. They had no need to do so as Germany was crippled, Berlin was surrounded and doomed. On April 20, Hitler's birthday, the first Russian shells fell on Berlin. What followed was a brief but brutal fight.

Those first shells falling on Berlin TWO months after the demolition of cities of science and archeology and human history. NOT cities of military significance.

I think of Vietnam

I think of Iraq

I think of Korea

I think of China

I think of Japan

Bombed by UKUSA. So lets not obsess with a dead nazi comrade, lets open our eyes to the live nazis.

uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 0:12 utc | 84
Jen #82

++ :))

little hairy pens preserved in paperbark and beeswax perhaps

[email protected] , Nov 1 2020 0:34 utc | 85
I think Biden will win this presidency, and win it fairly easily. It will become apparent early on that the Biden Administration intends not only to turn the heat up on Russia, but will continue Trump's aggression towards China. There may be a feint towards renewing JCPOA, but it will not be fulfilled, and aggression towards Iran will not abate either.

The Mighty Wurlitzer of pro-war propaganda is again spinning up in anticipation. The Atlantic and the Economist have been busy comparing Chinese Policy towards it's Muslim citizens with the Holocaust...Russia, Russia, Russia!!! which never went away is again being amped up.

But, this isn't 2016. Four years has given China and Russia time to further modernize their militaries. Iran has developed its missile and drone programs to the point that a conflict with Israel will result in mutual destruction. In 2016 USA/NATO had the military advantage, but that is now gone, and the balance shifts further by the day. I almost feel sorry for Biden, as he will be the one taking the blame when the economy collapses and America gets their asses handed to them. Hopefully it doesn't go nuclear, but I am not very optimistic.

With the NeoCon infestation capturing the Democratic Party, the media, and a big chunk of the Republican, it is only a matter of time before they get their way. Short-sided parasites as they are, this time they will kill their host. If humanity survives, a new multi-polar era may emerge.

Mark2 , Nov 1 2020 0:56 utc | 86
Uncle tungsten @ 84
Please re-read my heart felt comment. It was sincerely ment. To many here think this is just fun and speculation.
But this is real, the USA have the same misguided sense of infalalabilty now, that the German public hand then.
Did we learn nothing from world war 2 ?
Please don't belittle my urgent warning.
This is not a game. Perhaps re read my comment. Respect
_K_C_ , Nov 1 2020 1:12 utc | 87
Posted by: MarkU | Oct 31 2020 23:18 utc | 76

Naw, you're not reading me right. Did you check out the Taibbi piece? He has numerous others over the past 4 years. Also see Les Moonves and other corporate media executives' statements on Trump during that same time period. I acknowledged that the rank and file among the media class is largely woke, liberal and pro-Biden (and very anti-Trump), but they don't call the shots and you're not looking at the situation with enough attention to details. It's the little things that give it away.

Ever heard the saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity"? A brand like Trump's has been clearly demonstrated to benefit immensely from the negative coverage. The media are hated by Trump's followers and the people who watch the media hate Trump. So what does that tell you? Compare CNN and MSNBC ratings during Trump's term to Obama's. They know that hate sells and they never call Trump out for his ACTUAL bad behaviors (other than COVID and ACB, I guess) while they focus on meaningless nonsense, thus distracting the public from the bi-partisan corporate dominated graft going on and the Empire's ongoing wars and sanctions programs abroad. Very rarely if ever will you read or hear about the hundreds of thousands of people who have died due to American sanctions on Iran or Venezuela. Why is that? Because top brass at the corporate media outlets support it. They cheered when he launched the missiles at Syria.

Someone did a study or analysis on the amount of air time given to Trump versus the Democrat primary and it wasn't even close. He plays them and his supporters like a fiddle, too. SNL had him on NBC when he was running against Hillary. Some argue that this might have been due to the same mindset that Hillary's team was alleged to have had. Namely, that Trump would be the EASIEST candidate for her to beat and he had no chance, so he was harmless as a threat. I don't think it's that complicated. They know what gets ratings.

Yeah, occasionally they'll make a peep about the environment or jobs, but like the Democrats in Congress and "Intelligence" Community's Russia and Ukraine witch hunts/impeachment they intentionally ignore the types of actions that DO justify investigations and impeachments. Do you honestly think that the Democrats thought Trump would be removed from office for the bogus "whistle blower" charges they ginned up? Of course not - the Senate was never going to go along with it and it wasn't exactly secret, even over here across the pond it was obvious.

As far as him not being a globalist - he's not exactly anti-globalist when it comes to policy, but why would that matter to the corporate media? Again, it's the corporate big wigs and majority shareholders who make the calls and the reporters, editors and personalities on TV know how to toe the line without being told explicitly. Now, if you want to talk Silicon Valley and the social media giants, I'm with you - they are actively trying to help Joe Biden. But take another example - the Hunter Biden laptop story. Social media giants censored it, but it isn't like it's not being talked about non-stop by the MSM and newspapers. They just don't talk about what was IN the emails or photos, leaving some of their viewers/readers curious to go find out for themselves.

I didn't read jinn's comment in detail, but I'm definitely not trying to make points that justify voting for Biden; but I stand by my points - I'm just pointing out what's REALLY going on with all of the "negative" coverage of Donald Trump in the corporate mainstream media. At the end of the day, the corporate MSM upper brass doesn't really care who gets elected, but they also understand that having a "heel" (from the pro wrestling world) and "bad guy" to always go after on crap that's ultimately meaningless, makes it easier to sell the hate and drive ratings and subscriptions.

David , Nov 1 2020 1:12 utc | 88

You summed it up beautifully tribolij. I believe it will play out just as you described. There is no basis for optimism.
uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 1:19 utc | 89
Mark2 #87
Uncle tungsten @ 84
Please re-read my heart felt comment. It was sincerely ment. To many here think this is just fun and speculation.
But this is real, the USA have the same misguided sense of infalalabilty now, that the German public hand then.
Did we learn nothing from world war 2 ?
Please don't belittle my urgent warning.
This is not a game. Perhaps re read my comment. Respect

Respect and apology in return Mark2. I jumped the gun.

Yes, the sense of infallibility infuses the bloodlust of the UKUSAi.

With any luck humanity will be spared their obscene and lunatic 'reprisal mania' that has rotted their minds. I somehow doubt that.

And I share your fear.

That said though - I am ever the optimist. There are many warrior clans of past decades that have made delightful blunders and ended up on the block instead of on the grog in the opponents bars. Time will tell.

I believe it is time for the great people of South America to shake off these barnacles on the arse of humanity once and for all.

_K_C_ , Nov 1 2020 1:30 utc | 90
@MarkU, #67 -

Sorry I got a little long winded in my last reply. I think this response will make my position easier to interpret.

You asked: " What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?"

The answer to that question is the same as the answer would be if you asked what the Democrats in Congress would (have) do(ne) if they really wanted to remove him from office. They would actually investigate and attempt to prosecute a litany of possible crimes rather than silly, simplistic accusations from a "whistleblower" that anyone with a IQ over 100 could see was not going to work.

Maybe you're right and I'm wrong, and Americans really are that stupid. It wouldn't necessarily conflict with what I've seen and heard from Democrat supporting relatives and social media contacts. A lot, if not most of them STILL believe that there was collusion between Trump and Russia. It was like my conservative friends and relatives for about a decade after the Iraq war - they were CONVINCED that we DID find WMDs and that the US media had somehow hidden it.

c1ue , Nov 1 2020 1:42 utc | 91
@vk #65
It is striking how you still refuse to acknowledge the reality of the law.
The United States is not a majoritarian democracy.
In fact, there is not one single country in the entire world that is a majoritarian democracy.
If the law were changed via the methods already written, tried and true, then I guarantee that there would be a lot more voters in the minorities of both red and blue states.
As it is, the only partisan here is your and the Democratic party's whining about how they have more popular votes, much as the talk about packing the Supreme Court, etc etc.
If ultimately the existing laws of the land are merely an impediments to anyone doing whatever they have the power to do, then there is no law.
Mark2 , Nov 1 2020 2:01 utc | 92
Uncle @ 90
Thanks for that. I feel we are in full agreement !
To perhaps clarify to those less astute than you.
My comment @ 68 points out the law of unintended consequence. The majority of Americans don't want war, riots, poverty and distruction. They want to keep there families safe.
The comparison being the same can be said for Germans prior to the war, they weren't evil as portrayed in history they simply made the same mistake the US is about to make. With the consequence of there country devistated. A dreadful mistake voting for the wrong man, whipped up by a false sense of superiority !
Don't do it.
Half of America won't tolerate it.
Free quarters of the rest of the world won't. By voting trump you vote for your own distruction.
I would rather vote for a donkey, never mind Biden.
jinn , Nov 1 2020 2:19 utc | 93
the moron wrote:

You are clearly over-thinking this, clutching at straws to justify supporting the other side.
__________________________________________
What other side???
I'm guessing you are accusing me of supporting trump but who knows maybe you think I'm supporting Biden. Either way it is stupid of you to project your "side" based logic onto others. Do you really think it is impossible to analyze without first taking a side?

uncle tungsten , Nov 1 2020 2:25 utc | 94
c1ue #92
response to vk #65
As it is, the only partisan here is your and the Democratic party's whining about how they have more popular votes, much as the talk about packing the Supreme Court, etc etc.


Thank you, I liked that retort to vk. Can I distort your point that while the Demonazis delude themselves in more popular votes - the Repugnents have more of the un-popular votes. The deeply corrosive nonsense being shouted into the demonazi echo chamber is truly dangerous to the point that they will generate a standing wave resonance and collapse the entire building. Trouble is we will then have to endure an 11/11 to compete with their absurd 9/11 and - we'll never hear the end of it. :))

james , Nov 1 2020 2:26 utc | 95
mark - serious question...have you been drinking?? cheers james who thinks you need to step away from the computer keyboard!
Mark2 , Nov 1 2020 2:39 utc | 96
James
I share one bottle of wine a month. I don't do drugs, but thanks for asking.
I note you don't ask the 'right wing' to step a way'
But if the truth is hurting you. Perhaps you ought ?
Have a peaceful night.
Jackrabbit , Nov 1 2020 2:41 utc | 97
MarkU @Oct31 22:16 #67

I remember you as being a reasonably sane contributor ...

Thanks!

=
... but atm you have a serious case of TDS.

No. I'm neither for nor against Trump. I see him as a symptom of the system who has joined (possibly long ago) Team Deep State (the managers of the Empire). If it wasn't Trump, it would be some other media-savvy guy that can con the people.

=
Are you seriously trying to tell us that the last 4 years of US media foaming at the mouth about Trump (Russia-gate, Trump supporters being 'white supremacists' and egging on a race war) were all a plot to get him re-elected?

IMO Trump's economic nationalism and zenophobia were very much planned. As was the failure of the Democrats to mount any effective resistance. They pretend to hate Trump so so much but shoot themselves in the foot all the time.

Russiagate was nothing more than a new McCarthyism. That works well for the Deep State both internationally and domestically. Any dissenter is called a "knowing or unknowing" Russian asset.

Background: I've written that Trump was meant to beat Hillary. The 2016 election was a farce. Sanders and Trump were friendly with the Clintons for a very long time. Sanders was a sheepdog (not a real candidate) and Hillary threw the race to Trump. Trump is much more capable at what he does than Hillary would've been.

I mean seriously? WTF? What the hell would they do if they wanted him removed?

If the Deep State wanted him removed (but they don't) they would find a reason to invoke the 25th Amendment. They have positioned people to do this, if necessary. For example: VP Pence was a friend of McCain (who was a 'NEVER TRUMP'-er); Atty General Barr is close to the Bushes and Mueller ('NEVER TRUMP'-ers); CIA Dir. Gina Haspel is an acolyte of John Brennan (you guessed it, a 'NEVER TRUMP'-er).

=

MarkU @Oct31 23:18 #76

...he is not a globalist and that is his major sin in their eyes.

He's not anti-globalist as you seem to suggest. He's even bragged about his business dealings with Chinese, Arabs, Russians - pretty much any group with money.

Trump and the Deep State - the true Deep State, not the pretended partisan off-shoot - are EMPIRE-FIRST (and have been for decades). You can see this in what Trump has done globally. USA just wants a bigger cut of the action because they have to do the 'heavy lifting' of taking on China and Russia.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

I know that my cynical perspective must generate a lot of cognitive dissonance in many readers. But I don't see any other way to rationally explain Deep State actions and the history that has brought us to where are today.

!!

Jackrabbit , Nov 1 2020 2:59 utc | 98
MarkU

You might be interested in my comment on the Greenwald thread .

!!

vk , Nov 1 2020 3:04 utc | 99
@ Posted by: c1ue | Nov 1 2020 1:42 utc | 92

The numbers are there for everybody to see: Trump won with 3 million + votes below Hilary Clinton. That is not democracy in any sense of the word unless you go back to the more traditional forms of liberalism of the 16th-19th centuries. Those are the numbers, not my opinion.

Besides, I think you're not getting the irony of your position: the situation in the USA has gotten so degenerated that you're hanging by a thread - a thread you put on a golden pedestal and claim is the salvation of the Empire (the electoral college). Where did I see this? Oh, yes - the War of Secession of 1861-1865, when the slave states were already outnumbered 6 to 1 by the northern states. They kept their parity artificially for decades, until the whole thing suddenly burst up in the war (a war where they were crushed; no chance of victory at all).

So, the problem isn't in the system per se, but the pressure the ossification of the system is building up. When they seceded, the confederates genuinely thought they were the true inheritors of the liberal thought, the slave states being the most perfect manifestation of freedom; the same situation is building up today, albeit, obviously, on a much milder scale (there's no California gold this time, just the good ol' race to the bottom).


--//--

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 1 2020 2:25 utc | 95

I agree with you: the end of the electoral college (with it, any form of district vote) will give a chance for the conservatives (Republicans) to win back, for example, California (which has 40-46% of the popular vote). But it will also give the Democrats Texas (Dallas + Houston regions already make almost 50% of the population of the state and are Democratic bastions). It will also open the gates for third parties to flourish (avoiding a situation like Bernie Sanders, who had to affiliate to the Democrats).

Either way, it will give the American people and government a more honest, precise picture of the state of the nation. Or are you willing to live a perpetual illusion of "coastal elites vs heartland deplorables" forever (which, by the way, only fuels up secession as the only solution)?

denk , Nov 1 2020 3:34 utc | 100
The myth of HIQ whitemen....
--------------------------------------

Caitlin[for prez]johnston

Russia gate morphes seamlessly into China gate without missing a beat.

One hiq white man opines, oh so innocently

IN Russia gate, they were quoting only anon, nameless witness.
This time its different, we've real witness testifying on teevee , in Tucker [fuck China] Carlson show, no less !

The poor dear was referring to an 'ex CIA' [see, an insider, wink wink ] telling Tucker [fuck CHINA] Carlson ....

Psssst, many dem were CCP trojans !

ROFLAMO

oR that HUnter BIden buddy whatshisname again, who told Tucker [fuck China] Carlson oh so solemnly,

'Yes , I think the BIdens were compromised by the chicoms'

OMFG !
BIden is CCP'S man !

What happen if Biden get into the WH and immediately bomb Shanghai.?

Well half of gringos , the Trumpsters, would scream,

'Why isnt BIden bombing Beijing already, well BCOS we all know he's Xi's man in Washington' !

The dems, eager to clear their potus name, would implore earnestly,

'Hey BIden, you should invade Beijing RIGHT now, show them repuc we are just as tough, no, even better in showing the chicoms who's the boss around here.

What a devious brilliant way to get a bi partisan support for more wars.

BI partisan ?
That practically cover 99% of HIQ gringos.
hehehhehehhe


Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me hundreds of times.........

[Oct 26, 2020] The goal of neoliberal globalism promoted by CIA and MI6 is ending nation states to end their influence, laws and regulations, and thus try to dynamite, through sowing divide ( and in this they are helped by alleged opponent Soros and his network of franchises mastering regime change, color revolutions

Oct 26, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Eric , Oct 24 2020 21:10 utc | 18

... ... ...

The goal of this movement is ending nation states to end their influence, laws and regulations, and thus try to dynamite, through sowing divide ( and in this they are helped by alleged opponent Soros and his network of franchises mastering regime change, color revolutions

Blunt coups d´etat and lately "peaceful transitions of power", being both, Soros and the NRx, connected to the CIA...)countries with which make what they call "The Mosaic" of regions resulting, at the head of which there will be a corporation CEO and their stakeholders in a hierarchical autocratic order. These people think that Democracy simply does not work and thus must be finished, and that there are people ( white, of course ) who have developed a higher IQ ( at this poin

t I guess some of you have noticed this creed sound very familiar to you, from our neighbors here by the side at SST, where "james" and Pat lately love each other so much...) and must rule over the rest.

To achieve their goals, these people, as geeks from Silicon Valley, are willing to cross the human frontier to transhumanism so as to enhance their human capabilities to submit the rest...

Wondering why this topic have never been treated at MoA...nor at the Valdai Discussion Club...

The Alt-Right and the Europe of the Regions. According to Wikipedia, Steve Bannon is inspired by the theorist Curtis Yarvin ( https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilustration_oscura), who states that countries should be divided into feudal areas in the hands of corporations (Patchwork).

https://twitter.com/andrei_kononov/status/1126684073009639425

The Moldbug Variations

H.Schmatz , Oct 24 2020 23:01 utc | 28

@

[Oct 23, 2020] Hating Russia is a full time and well paid job

Neocons do not want to fight Russia, they just want to profit from Russophobia while getting nice money from the US MIC.
Oct 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Mister Delicious , 7 hours ago

  1. Introduction
  2. The euphemisms
  3. Hostility to Putin's Russia is largely a Jewish phenomenon
  4. The media
  5. A de facto violation of free speech
  6. Shutting down an honest examination of Russian history
  7. The best alt-media journalists are neutered
  8. Much of what is written about Russian relations and history becomes meaningless and deceptive
  9. A lesson in relevance from the Alt-Right
  10. Malice towards none
  11. The problem extends to all areas of public life
  12. We need serious scholarship and analysis
  13. Low expectations from the existing alt-media
  14. A call for articles and support
  15. https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/hating-russia-is-a-full-time-job/
ebear , 6 hours ago

Has any nation on Earth suffered more destruction and loss of life in the 20th century? And yet, there they still are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btff8DmOg1k

John Hansen , 7 hours ago

I'd have more hope for Russia if the Russian ruling class weren't so obsessed with the West and didn't send their children to Western (woke) schools, etc.

theallseeinggod , 7 hours ago

They're not doing that well, but they're not repeating many of the west's mistakes.

Normal , 5 hours ago

Now the West has rules only for poor people.

Helg Saracen , 6 hours ago

Advice to Americans (for the sake of experiment): prohibit lobbying in US and the right of citizens with dual citizenship to hold public office in US. I assure - you will be surprised how quickly Russians go from non-kosher to kosher for Americans and how American politicians, the media will convince Americans of this at every intersection. :) Ha ha ha

Nayel , 5 hours ago

If the [Vichy] Left in America weren't so determined to project their own Bolshevik leanings on to a possible great ally that their ideology now fears, Russia would be just that: a great ally that could help America shake the Bolsheviks that have infiltrated the American government and plan the same program their Soviet forefathers once held over Russia...

Arising 2.0 , 1 hour ago

Western zionist controlled propaganda reminds me of Mohamed Ali- he used to talk up the ******** so much before a fight that when the time came to fight the opponent was usually traumatised or confused. Until Ali met with Joe Frazier (Russia) who didn't fall for all the pre-fight BS.

ThePinkHole , 39 minutes ago

Time for a pop quiz! Name the two countries below:

Country A - competency, attention to first principles, planning based on reality, consistency of purpose, and unity of execution.

Country B - incompetency, interfering in everything everywhere, planning based on hubris and sloppy assumptions, confusion, and disunity.

(Source: Adapted from Patrick Armstrong)

foxenburg , 3 hours ago

This one is always good for a laugh....the Daily Telegraph's Con Coughlin explaining in 2015 how Putin will fail in Syria...

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6990/russia-failure-syria

Money-Liberty , 6 hours ago

We have all this talk of the 'Ruskies' when in fact it is not the ordinary Russian people but rather a geopolitical power struggle. The ordinary US citizen or European just wants to maintain their liberty and be able to profit from their endeavours. The rich and powerful globalists who hide behind their military are the ones that play these games. I am no friend of Putin but equally I am no friend of our own political establishment that have been captured by Wall Street. I care about Main Street and as the US dollar loses its privilege there will be real pain to share amongst our economies. The last thing we need is for the elites of the Western alliance to profit with cold/hot wars on the backs of ourselves.

Having been behind the iron curtain as a young Merchant Navy Officer I found ordinary citizens fine and even organized football matches with the local communist parties. People have the same desires and aspirations and whether rich or poor we should respect each others cultures and territories. http://www.money-liberty.com/gallery/Predictions-2021.pdf

[Sep 27, 2020] PODCAST- Tribute to Andre Vltchek- "West's sadistic personality disorder" by Kevin Barrett

Sep 27, 2020 | www.unz.com

One of the most vibrantly alive people I met, André Vltchek, just died . Though he barely made it past his mid-fifties he got in a lot more living than a hundred average Americans who live to collect their pensions. Allah yarhamhu.

In honor of this great Truth Jihadi we're replaying this 2018 interview:

André Vltchek on West's sadistic personality disorder (originally broadcast May 2, 2018)

The West claims to be the "free world" -- the global leader in human rights, humanitarianism, and free expression. Globetrotting independent journalist André Vltchek , who joins us from Borneo, isn't buying it. His latest essay begins:

Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and punishment.

By now it is clear that the West is the least free society on Earth. In North America and Europe, almost everyone is under constant scrutiny: people are spied on, observed, their personal information is being continually extracted, and the surveillance cameras are used indiscriminately.

Life is synchronized and managed. There are hardly any surprises.

One can sleep with whomever he or she wishes (as long as it is done within the 'allowed protocol'). Homosexuality and bisexuality are allowed. But that is about all; that is how far 'freedom' usually stretches.

Rebellion is not only discouraged, it is fought against, brutally. For the tiniest misdemeanors or errors, people end up behind bars. As a result, the U.S. has more prisoners per capita than any other country on Earth, except the Seychelles.

Andre Vltchek's latest book is : The Great October Socialist Revolution: Impact on the World and Birth of Internationalism

Information on his other books and films


Luther Blisst , says: September 23, 2020 at 11:21 pm GMT

Andre taunted rightwing elites and illness – with a passion. I guess one of them caught up.

Living hard seems like a death-wish, maybe it was. Staring at darkness messes people up and he traveled again and again into the hearts of darkness across the planet because he wanted to be a modern Wilfred Burchett. He was one of the greats. My condolences to his family and friends.

Peace to Stephen Cohen too. You both will be missed.

PetrOldSack , says: September 24, 2020 at 11:00 am GMT

André Vltchek was not an intellectual heavyweight. What is fascinating about his life-story is how and who financed. That should be easy for insiders to fish out, and insiders there be.

As to my humble opinion, Chomsky was neither. From all angles, his pre-fabricated prestige, his in-group attitudes, his encrusted prestance, pettiness, pedantry, always within convention, his factoid approach, the channels of communication, the lack of any systemic approach, his "good guys bad guys" copper´ approach, did not warrant the few hours listening in on his tune and omni-presence. His numb personality, contrary to the combative Vltchek is noted as a minor.

Some "intellectuals" have half a page of original content in them over the course of a life-time (not the same as career (n´est ce pas Pinker?)), most have none. "History repeat itself", through the bull-horns of public intellectuals. They both practiced a sort of journalism that is superficial (accent on the superficial) agenda driven.

They both are within the K. B. range.

No Friend Of The Devil , says: September 24, 2020 at 9:07 pm GMT

@Robert Konrad,

Ex-CIA John Kiriakou stated that the CIA was attempting to recruit just about anyone that they were able to starting in the sixties ranging from Hollywood actors/actresses, musicians, writers, journalists, artists, business people, just about anyone. Operation Mockingbird is still widely used even if it is no longer regerred to it as Operation Mockingbird.

brabantian , says: September 26, 2020 at 11:14 am GMT

André Vltchek (1962-2020) was the son of a Czech nuclear physicist father, and a Russian-Chinese artist-architect mother, born in Soviet-era St Petersburg (then Leningrad). He spent part of his childhood as well in the famous Czech beer city of Pilsen.

Here, an article where Vltchek talked about his roots, and his nostalgia for life under Communism in eastern Europe
https://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/134280#How-we-sold-Soviet-Union-and-Czechoslovakia-for-plastic-shopping-bags

Eulogy for André Vltchek by China expert Jeff J Brown

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EmCFRyDLDJU?feature=oembed

Adûnâi , says: Website September 26, 2020 at 2:12 pm GMT

Western culture is clearly obsessed with rules, guilt, submissiveness and punishment.

What culture is not? Every single population on Earth wants to survive, Westerners want non-Aryans to survive, but the mechanism is always the same. The Stasi, the Gestapo, the CIA, the KGB – they all breathed air, and they all tortured dissenters. Turkey was almost overthrown in 2016. The Shah of Iran was, as were Hosni Mubarak and Gaddafi in Egypt and Libya. Bashar is facing quite a lot of criticism for being free – that critique comes in the form of bombs and jihadi freedom fighters. The Saudi Prince is wise for strangling and beheading Khashoggi. The USSR disintegrated after they had shut down the GULAG.

As a result, the U.S. has more prisoners per capita than any other country on Earth, except the Seychelles.

In 2012, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in [the DPR of Korea] estimated 150,000 to 200,000 are incarcerated, based on testimonies of defectors from the state police bureau, which roughly equals 600–800 people incarcerated per 100,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

The World Prison Brief puts the United States' incarceration rate at 655 per 100,000.

Anon [790] Disclaimer , says: September 26, 2020 at 5:27 pm GMT

Okay. If the West is the least free society on the planet, why the heck do all these third-world people keep trying to move there? It is plain that Vltchek's thinking flunks the real-world reality test.

The reality is, the rest of the world is worse off than the West, or people wouldn't keep trying to leave the third world for the West.

Robert Konrad , says: September 27, 2020 at 12:50 am GMT
@Anon ey want to have freedom of their stupid religious beliefs, not freedom from religion. They still don't know that freedom of religion is not worth anything if it also doesn't guarantee freedom from religion.

Thomas Jefferson tried very hard to explain this to them, but Yankee morons have never learned what Jefferson tried to teach them. (With some notable exceptions, though, who, however, have absolutely no political power.)

Vltchek is/was right: American/Western civilization [sic] (siphilization, rather) is bankrupt and inhuman. It can only offer an abundance of material goods and military weapons as if the only goals of human life were material things and warfare.

[Sep 26, 2020] The origin of Full Spectrum Dominance Doctrine

Sep 26, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Anatol Lieven's recent piece, How the west lost , describes this moral defeat of the 'west' after its dubious 'victory' in the cold war:

Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central message was:
...
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate, and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine" became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early 2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush declared in his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to the invasion of Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided into two armed camps now recognises one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America."

But that power has since failed in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, during the 2008 financial crisis and now again in the pandemic.

[Sep 25, 2020] Do a search on "Danchenko and Fiona Hill", the latter being one of those who testified with Marie Yovanovich and was sainted by the media.

Sep 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bart Hansen , Sep 25 2020 17:42 utc | 6

Do a search on "Danchenko and Fiona Hill", the latter being one of those who testified with Marie Yovanovich and was sainted by the media.


karlof1 , Sep 25 2020 17:48 utc | 7

If all the energy wasted on peddling Russiagate had instead been used to push real political alternatives to Trump's programs the Democrats and their voters would likely be in a better position.

The Ds defeated that possibility when they conspired to derail Sanders and promote Clinton. As a result, Obama's legacy is Trump. But there was a Deep State faction pulling Obama's strings that's likely supporting the attempt to foment a domestic Color Revolution, yet for the life of me I can't see why as all the grifters are getting billions--unless--it's perceived that Trump's stalled their imperialist projects or stopped what they hoped to accomplish via JCPOA. In other words, we need a better motive for Russiagate than the mere disruption of Trump's administration.

Red Ryder , Sep 25 2020 18:03 utc | 8
The Nexus is Ukraine, where the DNC, Obama and others were heavily involved with corruption, money into their pockets and money laundered for campaign uses, illegally brought back into the US.

It was never Russia or Russians. It was always the Podesta-Clinton-Obama operatives and their true believers in FBI and DOJ, working with the Russophobes in NGOs and the State Dept.

The desperation as Trump became a real possible President and then an actual elected President was to cover their crimes in Ukraine and the illegal actions to spy on Trump and set up Trump campaign associates.

The difficult call now is how high up do the present investigators have cover to save the institutions of the FBI and DOJ? A real take down would go to Obama, Biden, Clapper, Comey, Brennan, Podesta, Clinton and all their lieutenants. It would collapse the CIA, State, FBI, DOJ, and all the lying experts on Russia who perjured to Congress.

c , Sep 25 2020 18:12 utc | 9
Yes, this is pretty much beating a dead horse.
profk , Sep 25 2020 18:17 utc | 10
Red Ryder gets it -- Ukraine is the specific catalyst, linked to the New Cold War against Russia and the corruption of the Democrats involved in that conflict.

There is also Flynn and his dirt on Obama's Syria/ISIS policy -- remember his Al Jazeera interview about Obama's "wilful decision" to ignore DIA reports on ISIS. Flynn knows the US and its allies had some kind of links to ISIS and Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) in Syria.

And there is also the more general concern, raised by Karlof1, about the Presidency and the empire.

karlof1 , Sep 25 2020 18:45 utc | 12
I found this barb delivered by Lavrov during his presser with Zarif I linked to on the open thread to be very curious when thought about in the context of Russiagate:

"The fact that the United States has threatened to impose sanctions on those who defy the American interpretation of the current situation serves as further proof of Washington's desire to move like a bull in a china shop, putting ultimatums to everyone and punishing everyone indiscriminately because, in my view, the incumbent US administration has lost its diplomatic skills almost for good ." [My Emphasis]

Red Ryder @8 & profk @10 connect Ukraine and the outing of the Empire's role in the creation of Daesh. Yes, it seems much is related to Russia's Phoenix-like rise and outwitting the Empire's buffoons beginning in 2013 that's generated the above behavior noted by Lavrov. If TrumpCo does get a second term, unless the entire foreign policy team is dumped and replaced, its agenda will go nowhere other than further into the hole they've dug for themselves over the past 20 years--almost every nation is now against Bush's USA as many now know who the terrorists really are and where they live.

dan of steele , Sep 25 2020 19:44 utc | 13
David G | Sep 25 2020 17:36 utc | 3

here is the link to "excluded from the published analysis"

Old and Grumpy , Sep 25 2020 19:47 utc | 14
What if the goal of 2016 election was to set up the 2020 American color revolution? If so Trump needed to win. Obama and the FBI did the groundwork here at home. There is some debate if the first Trump dossier was actually the second one to cover for the Cody Shearer one that was given to Strobe Talbot to give to Christopher Steele. Still it had the same goal as to foster doubt about the legitimacy of 2016 that is currently culminating with the gun toting, fire bombing hissy fit of the children of liberal privilege. Now if those blasted supreme righties would just show up, and the whole thing can go really hot like it did in Ukraine, Libya, Egypt, almost Syria, and any country I might be forgetting. Notice the Trump administration is parroting the left's white supremacist conspiracy. Its all really bad theater, but does anyone really care the crumbing infrastructure and the looming economic collapse when you can instead root for your team. Yes, I am guilty of the later too. Added bonus we already have a twofer of enemies (Russian and China) for yet another elitist war.
H.Schmatz , Sep 25 2020 19:54 utc | 15
I very doubt that it was "Russiagate" who make it difficult for Trump to pursue the policies he had been advocating during his election campaign...In fact, "Russiagate" has long ago been debunked and we have not seen Trump worrying a bit about the average American Joe, most flagrant during this pandemic...I doubt he would had behaved different were the "Russiagate" to have never existed..

Simply, electoral "promises" almost never are fullfilled in the already dating decades neoliberal order, both from the right or the "alleged" liberal left...

On the same grounds, we could affirm then that conspiracy theories about Obama´s birth place made it difficult for Obama to pursue the policies he had been advocating during his election campaign....

That Trump has ties to Russian oligarchs is, to my view, out of doubt for anyone following a bit some writers who use to deeply research their analyses out there like John Helmer.... That these oligarchas had anything to do, in this respect, with the Kremlin, it is doubtful, but highly likely related to business shenanigans amongst them and Trump & Co...related to illegal bribes and money laundering...

What have been largely proved is that Trump and his administration have been using big data management corporations and social networks engineering to manipulate elections and give coups eveywhere ( as the thorough research I posted at the Week in Review leaves in evidence it happened in several countries in Latin America , which leads us to suspect that they would not resist the desire to use the same methods in the US...before...and after the 2016 elections...having Bannon ad chief of campaign and then as chief of staff in 2016 so as that does not add for tranquility, with what legal methods is respected for achieving whatever goal..as the last events have clearly showed...

It was during Trump´s mandate that the war on Yemen continued towards total erradication of Yemenis, especially of Shia belief, by indiscriminate bombing and blockade of essential goods...that Qasem Soleimani was murdered without any justified reason...that NATO started a cheeky build up in Russian borders who remained still free of it...that the US withdrew from most international agreements leaving US/Russia, US/Iran, US/LatinAmerican relations at its lowest levels, by underminig any remaining trust...Trump reinstated and made even harsher sanctions against everybody who was not already a "puppet regime", including Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Russia, Iran, China, and, even looping the loop, against puppet governments in the EU...

I very doubt it was Russiagate which kept him from releasing his tax records as requested by governance transparecny, returning the ammounts of money defrauded in the "University Loans" affair, clarifying his ties to Epstein network, stopping sowing hatred and divide amongst US population, build the most world wide network of far-right extremists since post WWII around the world but especially in Europe to undermine what of "democracy" remains left, labeled and declared as "terrorists" any political party abroad who does not go along and oppose his puppet government´s corrupt policies anywhere, lit the Middle East on fire by continuously provoking Iran, Lebanon, Syria, sent his regime envoys to the EU to twist arm so that the European countries dedicate more budget to buy provedly ineffective arms from the US when the money is most needed for socio-economic and health issues in the middle of a pandemic, not to mention the requisition of health supplies´ cargos in the very Chinese tarmac which had been previously ordered and bought by European countries which needed them urgently, criminalized, and tried to label them as second cathegory citizens, a great part of US population of non-white foreign descent through whose hard work and shameful labor conditions US thrived along all these decades, well, you name it, the list would be almost for a book...or two...

To blame all this mess on "Russiagate" is, well, in the best case, underestimating the readership here...

Ma Laoshi , Sep 25 2020 19:54 utc | 16
Oh please, b: "legal jeopardy", don't make me laugh. It's been four years . The whole political part of Trump's career he's been under the tutelage of mafia consigliere Roy Cohn. Even better known, he's flown on the Lolita Express, and the FBI has a trove of videos etc from Epstein's safe (hmm, what else does the latter have in common with Roy Cohn besides the Trump connection). Bottom line, he's a deeply compromised individual who's concluded long ago, and correctly, that he's in over his head and better off just playing along. He's had no reservations appointing professional Russophobes like Fiona Hill; in fact, which of his appointees has not been a Cold Warrior besides perhaps T-Rex, who was a mere Venezuela hawk because of some old Exxon bad blood, and who was quickly ditched anyway. Even now, his own FBI director spouts RussiaGate red meat, and the Donald is doing squat about it.

What does it all matter to Trump? He doesn't have a good name to clear. He didn't run for president expecting to win, let alone to carry out this or that specific program. This Vale Tudo carnival atmosphere clearly suits him: if his opponents can make baseless accusations, so can he. If they can expect to skate beyond some meaningless fall guys, so can he. To actually uphold the law--it's just not how he rolls.

Had he mostly contented himself with playing president on TV and enjoying the perks of the office, and understood you can't just let a pandemic kill off your own voters, all would've been dandy. But, predictably, his ego got the better of him, and he just had to be the statesman who was finally going to bring China to heel. Again, merely tweeting about it could've been ignored, but by appointing an array of rabid ideologues who went to work on "decoupling", he's sided with a Deep State which will hate him regardless, against Corporate America which went into China to, you know, make money. In this way, he's made himself enemies a Republican can ill afford; combine this with his personal style (or lack of it), and just about nobody has his back any more. So the machine goes about purging this alien body from its system.

snake , Sep 25 2020 19:56 utc | 17
when do the American people get to investigate Truman, Ike, John McCain, JFK, Johnson, Bush, Obama, FBI, Trump, 9/11, CIA, invasion of Iraq, wall street, the US Treasury, the military, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the like..?
,==He did it==> he did not do it, <=someone else did it, ==>avoids the basic problem:

America has a government that
a.) conducts wars to protect the economic interest of its favored few.
b.) uses law , to grant feudal lords wealth creating by extracting bits of wealth from Americans.
c.) conducts nearly all its affairs in classified secret..
d.) is un accountable for the money it spends.
e.) is un accountable for the genocides it conducts in foreign lands.
f.) has two crime families which divide and conquer the citizens to control all election outcomes
g.) has given to private bankers, its power to print money, control the economy, and tax the people.
h.) has not adhered to the Bill of Rights or the un amended constitution.
i.) refuses to require private media to speak only the truth.
j.) Refuses to comply with and orto enforce the 1st and 4th amendment<=papers and effects t/b secure
expand this list as you like

and

Americans have
a.) no access to the USA. <= 3 votes, insolation of state or voting district,
out 527 positions don't get it & none for the President
b.) must pay to the USA taxes and have no input as to how such taxes are collected or used,
c.) must register their presence to the USA with id numbers
d.) must obey USA laws which Americans had no say in writing, or passing.
e.) must endure foreign wars and domestic programs that serve no legitimate domestic interest.
expand this list as you like.

vk , Sep 25 2020 19:59 utc | 18
This kind of stuff have always happened in the USA.

The question to be made is this: why is this time more damaging to the social fabric of the USA?

H.Schmatz , Sep 25 2020 20:24 utc | 19
Because the US Deep State WANTED to initiate a new McCarthyism

@Posted by: Jackrabbit | Sep 25 2020 17:37 utc | 5

You are onto something there...I do not recall whose US think tank analyse I read about US youth tending ideologically to the left...the same could be said of any youth around the world after they have been left without future prospect and past opportunities to rise through the social ladder by rampant savage neoliberal capitalism...

I said at the time that the Ukrainian experiment of 2014 was a general dressed rehearsal for a future planned authoritarian fascist rule in most of the world, especially the West, once the prospects, already known by the elites, of collapsing capitalism are obvious for the general public and cause the consequent uprising..It is in this context that the pandemic and its sudden impoverishing outcome fits, along with the "orchestrated" violent riots at various locations, to justify martial law...

Notice that "rewritting of history of WWII" in favor of fascism is a feature of any US administration since the fall of the USSR...

Past days I read that Roger Stone, former Trump advisor, if i am not wrong also implied in a corruption case, advised Trump to declare martial law after winning in Novemeber...It is in that context that all the noise we have been hearing all these past months about the riots, militias, coups, and so on fit...What we have not heard about is about hundreds of thousands of evictions, inacabable line ups for food banks, and the total socio-economic disaster more than anything willingly built by TPTB...

Recal that they "built their own reality, and when you are catching up with that reality, they build another one"...

[Sep 25, 2020] Fiona Hill still pushes "Russian Meddling" narrative

It is difficult to teach old chickenhawk a new tricks. Looks like she is a real "national security parasite" and will stay is this role till the bitter end.
"America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit." took hit because of the crisis of neoliberalism not so much because of Russia resistance to the USA neoliberal domination and unwillingness to became a vassal state a la EU states, Japan and GB.
Her hostile remark confirms grave mistake of allowing immigrants to occupy high position in the US foreign policy hierarchy. They bring with themselves "ancient hatred"
Only a blind (or a highly indoctrinated/brainwashed) person is unable to see where all these neocon policies are leading...
Notable quotes:
"... America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit ..."
"... "They lost the entire US political class ..."
Sep 25, 2020 | newschant.com

Fiona Hill, the National Security Council's senior director for European and Russian affairs till 2019, says divisions are rising inside the Kremlin over the knowledge of persevering with a "dirty tricks" marketing campaign that's had combined outcomes and will now face diminishing returns.

On the one hand, Russia's 2016 affect operations succeeded past the Kremlin's wildest goals. The US-dominated, unipolar world that Putin has lengthy railed in opposition to is now not. America's world management, NATO, the European Union and the construction of establishments and alliances the US constructed after World War II have taken a hit. "On that ledger, wow, yes, basically over-fulfilled the plan," mentioned Hill.

At the identical time, getting caught in the act of making an attempt to sabotage US democracy has proved pricey. "They lost the entire US political class and politicized ties so that the whole future of US-Russia relations now depends on who wins in November," she mentioned.

[Sep 25, 2020] The End Of The 'Rules Based International Order'

Notable quotes:
"... Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby ..."
"... In the early 2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." ..."
"... Bhadrakumar describes how the 'west', through its own behavior, created a mighty block that now opposes its dictates. He concludes ..."
"... Quintessentially, Russia and China contest a set of neoliberal practices that have evolved in the post-World War 2 international order validating selective use of human rights as a universal value to legitimise western intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. On the other hand, they also accept and continuously affirm their commitment to a number of fundamental precepts of the international order -- in particular, the primacy of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the importance of international law, and the centrality of the United Nations and the key role of the Security Council. ..."
"... The rules are follow the dictates of our western neo-colonial institutions like the World Bank, the IMF et all. ..."
"... Its a pretty simple concept backed by the attack dog of the US military. ..."
"... 'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. The term was invented to avoid having to say 'rule of law', which invited criticism because even the most minimal amount of law (such as Geneva conventions, ICC etc) was rejected in practice and in policy by the leading members of the actually existing world order. ..."
"... Rumor says the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" also envisioned the balkanization of Russia (the document is still classified, but it leaked to a NYT journalist at the time, who published a report on it). ..."
"... It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world. But as the "exceptionalist" western countries decline, they will go even crazier and crazier and there will be full blown hysteria. ..."
"... In this sense, the rule based order will be over as there will be only disorder and animalistic, crazed western rage and bullying. The West is like a trapped animal. It will start pouncing, raging and snarling like a wild animal. This is the real nature of the West. A hungry wild animal that needs to feed. ..."
"... But behind the liberal mask, there are hateful eyes and gnashing teeth, and hunger and greed for other people's resources. ..."
"... Expressed in words, the West's face says "I'm the best and you are nothing! Give me your stuff! And this is how it will forever be!" ..."
"... As Putin has said, the US is no longer agreement capable. ..."
"... Instead of bringing Russia into the Western liberal democracies (with the threat of major nuclear war now drastically reduced) the now Anglo-Zionist Empire just looted it. ..."
"... Actually the Trump Administration has done far more against Russia than all US administrations from the last 30 years. Do not listen what they say, look at what they do. Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks ..."
"... Rules based international order .... the U.S. functions as the the Supreme Court for the U.N. , 'we have invoked snapback sanctions and extended the arms embargo on Iran indefinitely and are enforcing it'. UN, 'but your vote failed'. ..."
"... Rules based International Order is the dog whistle for global private finance controlled economies. It is sad that we are in a civilization war with China/Russia about who runs international finance going forward and yet there is no discussion of the subject but instead all sorts of proxy conflicts. ..."
"... The US is not just facing relative decline -- the fact that others are catching up in key ways. The US is also facing absolute decline -- the fact that it is suffering a degradation of capacities and is losing competitive battles in key areas. Examples of absolute decline include the Russian and Chinese military-technological revolutions based on anti-ship and hypersonic missiles and air defense systems; Chinese 5G; China's demonstrative success in suppressing COVID and its overall manufacturing power; the declining quality of life for most Americans; and the collapse of American institutional competence. ..."
"... Related to this, we can't separate these dynamics from the political economy of the states in question. China, in particular, is showing that an interventionist state, with high levels of public ownership, is essential to qualitative power, human security, and economic and social development. ..."
"... Psssst, learning Russian is easier than Chinese and we already know a few Russian words, such as novichok. ..."
"... Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world. [my emphasis] ..."
"... It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world. ..."
"... The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot. What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them despite threats and intimidation from the Empire. ..."
"... The Empire's power-elite KNOW that Russia, China, and allies of Russia-China don't want to be subject to their "rules-based order". The Empire is actively working to undermine, subvert, and divide the countries that oppose it. While also securing their own territories/population via intimidation and propaganda. ..."
"... On rules based disorder and the capitulation of Merkel and her BND lapdogs to the 'hate Russia' fulminations of the UKUSA morons. I see that the German Parliament has NOT TAKEN its red pills these days and is reluctant to swallow the BS. ..."
"... My late father as an army officer prosecuted Japanese war criminals for their atrocities now the Anglo-Zionists are the pre-eminent war criminals and their leaders loudly proclaim "our values" as a pathological and propagandistic form of projection. Is it possible they are unaware of their blatant hypocrisy ? ..."
"... There is no "international law" and no "international order." There is only relative power. And when those powers clash, as seems inevitable, the world is in for a major nuclear war, and probably preceded by several more regional wars. Meanwhile, the US internally is collapsing into economic disaster, social unrest, political and social oppression, infrastructure failure, and medical disasters. We'll probably be in martial law sometime between November 3 and January 21 if not beyond that period, just for starters. ..."
"... America's "Rules-Based International Order" is a Goebbelsian euphemism for a Lies-Based Imperial Order, led by the USA and its war criminal allies (aka the self-styled Free World). ..."
"... The true nature of this America-led order is exposed by the USA's war of aggression against Iraq (which violated international law and had no United Nations sanction) and its decades-long War on Terrorism, which have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and maimed, immiserated, or refugeed millions of more people. ..."
"... The Empire is very much alive and dangerous. Ask Iran, ask Syria, as the Palestinians, ask the Russians, ask the Chinese. Ask numerous African nations. Even Pangloss was not so stupidly naive. ..."
"... quite right. 'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. ie US and its "allies" is basically asking the rest of the world to finance their (the US et al) version of a welfare state. ..."
"... China and rest of the worlds foreign central banks stopped growing their foreign exchange reserves (on net) in 2014 leaving the US in a sort of limbo. ..."
"... "Major powers maintaining cooperation, at least not engaging in Cold War-style antagonism, is the important foundation of world peace. China is committed to maintaining cooperation among major powers, as well as being flexible in the balance of interests acceptable to all parties. The problem is the Trump administration is hysterically shaping decoupling and confrontation between Beijing and Washington, and has been mobilizing more forces to its side at home and abroad. Those US policymakers are deliberately splitting the world like during the Cold War. ..."
"... The first 'Cold War' was entirely contrived. The US knew the Soviet Union was weak and had no agenda beyond maintaining security and its own reconstruction after WW2. There was no threat of a Western European invasion, or of the USSR spreading revolution globally. All that Cold War ideology is a lie. And the same lying is taking place about China today. No difference. ..."
"... It's good to see discussion here of the nefarious role of the American far-right neocon warmongers in the State Department, intelligence services and military leadership just before the turn of the new century. What I have never seen clearly explained, however, is the connection between these very dangerous forces and the equally cynical and reactionary Israeli politicians and the Mossad, as well as Saudi Arabian officials. ..."
Sep 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

The 'western' countries, i.e. the United States and its 'allies', love to speak of a 'rules based international order' which they say everyone should follow. That 'rules based order' is a way more vague concept than the actual rule of law:

The G7 is united by its shared values and commitment to a rules based international order. That order is being challenged by authoritarianism, serious violations of human rights, exclusion and discrimination, humanitarian and security crises, and the defiance of international law and standards.

As members of the G7, we are convinced that our societies and the world have reaped remarkable benefits from a global order based on rules and underscore that this system must have at its heart the notions of inclusion, democracy and respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, diversity, and the rule of law.

That the 'rules based international order' is supposed to include vague concepts of 'democracy', 'human rights', 'fundamental freedoms', 'diversity' and more makes it easy to claim that this or that violation of the 'rules based international order' has occurred. Such violations can then be used to impose punishment in the form of sanctions or war.

That the above definition was given by a minority of a few rich nations makes it already clear that it can not be a global concept for a multilateral world. That would require a set of rules that everyone has agreed to. We already had and have such a system. It is called international law. But at the end of the cold war the 'west' began to ignore the actual international law and to replace it with its own rules which others were then supposed to follow. That hubris has come back to bite the 'west'.

Anatol Lieven's recent piece, How the west lost , describes this moral defeat of the 'west' after its dubious 'victory' in the cold war:

Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central message was:
...
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate, and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine" became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early 2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites would couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush declared in his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to the invasion of Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided into two armed camps now recognizes one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America."

But that power has since failed in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, during the 2008 financial crisis and now again in the pandemic. It also created new competition to its role due to its own behavior:

On the one hand, American moves to extend Nato to the Baltics and then (abortively) on to Ukraine and Georgia, and to abolish Russian influence and destroy Russian allies in the Middle East, inevitably produced a fierce and largely successful Russian nationalist reaction. ...

On the other hand, the benign and neglectful way in which Washington regarded the rise of China in the generation after the Cold War (for example, the blithe decision to allow China to join the World Trade Organisation) was also rooted in ideological arrogance.

Western triumphalism meant that most of the US elites were convinced that as a result of economic growth, the Chinese Communist state would either democratise or be overthrown; and that China would eventually have to adopt the western version of economics or fail economically. This was coupled with the belief that good relations with China could be predicated on China accepting a so-called "rules-based" international order in which the US set the rules while also being free to break them whenever it wished; something that nobody with the slightest knowledge of Chinese history should have believed.

The retired Indian ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar touches on the same points in an excellent series about the new Chinese-Russian alliance:

Bhadrakumar describes how the 'west', through its own behavior, created a mighty block that now opposes its dictates. He concludes:

Quintessentially, Russia and China contest a set of neoliberal practices that have evolved in the post-World War 2 international order validating selective use of human rights as a universal value to legitimise western intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. On the other hand, they also accept and continuously affirm their commitment to a number of fundamental precepts of the international order -- in particular, the primacy of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the importance of international law, and the centrality of the United Nations and the key role of the Security Council.

While the U.S. wants a vague 'rules based international order' China and Russia emphasize an international order that is based on the rule of law. Two recent comments by leaders from China and Russia underline this.

In a speech in honor of the UN's 75th anniversary China's President Xi Jinping emphasized law based multilateralism :

China firmly supports the United Nations' central role in global affairs and opposes any country acting like boss of the world, President Xi Jinping said on Monday.
...
"No country has the right to dominate global affairs, control the destiny of others or keep advantages in development all to itself," Xi said.

Noting that the UN must stand firm for justice, Xi said that mutual respect and equality among all countries, big or small, is the foremost principle of the UN Charter.

No country should be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemon or bully, Xi said. "Unilateralism is a dead end," he said.
...
International laws should not be distorted or used as a pretext to undermine other countries' legitimate rights and interests or world peace and stability, he added.

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov went even further by outright rejecting the 'western rules' that the 'rules based international order' implies:

Ideas that Russia and China will play by sets of Western rules under any circumstances are deeply flawed , Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with New York-based international Russian-language RTVI channel.

"I was reading our political scientists who are well known in the West. The following idea is becoming louder and more pronounced: it is time to stop applying Western metrics to our actions and stop trying to be liked by the West at any cost . These are very reputable people and a rather serious statement. It is clear to me that the West is wittingly or unwittingly pushing us towards this analysis. It is likely to be done unwittingly," Lavrov noted. "However, it is a big mistake to think that Russia will play by Western rules in any case, just like thinking this in terms of China."

As an alliance China and Russia have all the raw materials, energy, engineering and industrial capabilities, agriculture and populations needed to be completely independent from the 'west'. They have no need nor any desire to follow dubious rules dictated by other powers. There is no way to make them do so. As M.K. Bhadrakumar concludes :

The US cannot overwhelm that alliance unless it defeats both China and Russia together, simultaneously. The alliance, meanwhile, also happens to be on the right side of history. Time works in its favour, as the decline of the US in relative comprehensive national power and global influence keeps advancing and the world gets used to the "post-American century."

---
P.S.
On a lighter note: RT , Russia's state sponsored international TV station, has recently hired Donald Trump (vid). He will soon host his own reality show on RT . The working title is reportedly: "Putin's Apprentice". The apprenticeship might give him a chance to learn how a nation that has failed can be resurrected to its former glory.

Posted by b on September 22, 2020 at 17:59 UTC | Permalink


Kali , Sep 22 2020 18:18 utc | 1

The Liberal International Order or Pax Americana are synonyms for The Rules Based Order. The plan that was followed for years was the outline given by Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Trilateral Commission in The Grand Chessboard to "contain" the ambition of Russia, China, and Iran over their interest to expand into Central Asia and the Middle East. Brzezinski changed in 2016, so did Kissinger, Brzezinski wrote that it was time to make peace and to integrate with Russia, China and Iran. But the elites had changed by then, newer people had taken over and no longer followed Brzezinski.
circumspect , Sep 22 2020 18:27 utc | 2
The rules are follow the dictates of our western neo-colonial institutions like the World Bank, the IMF et all. We will own you and you will do what we say and those are the rules. Any challenge to our authority will lead to war, economic ruin or both.

Its a pretty simple concept backed by the attack dog of the US military.

ptb , Sep 22 2020 18:37 utc | 3
'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. The term was invented to avoid having to say 'rule of law', which invited criticism because even the most minimal amount of law (such as Geneva conventions, ICC etc) was rejected in practice and in policy by the leading members of the actually existing world order.
Patrick Armstrong , Sep 22 2020 18:52 utc | 4
Can't resist tooting my own horn.
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/04/29/the-west-actually-lost-the-cold-war-it-turned-victory-into-defeat/
vk , Sep 22 2020 19:05 utc | 5
Rumor says the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" also envisioned the balkanization of Russia (the document is still classified, but it leaked to a NYT journalist at the time, who published a report on it).

.. .. ..

Passer by , Sep 22 2020 19:43 utc | 9
It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world. But as the "exceptionalist" western countries decline, they will go even crazier and crazier and there will be full blown hysteria.

In this sense, the rule based order will be over as there will be only disorder and animalistic, crazed western rage and bullying. The West is like a trapped animal. It will start pouncing, raging and snarling like a wild animal. This is the real nature of the West. A hungry wild animal that needs to feed.

All the liberalism is just self-congratulation about how exceptionalist it is. It is born out of narcisism and self-obsession during the "good times" of the West.

But behind the liberal mask, there are hateful eyes and gnashing teeth, and hunger and greed for other people's resources.

The real face of it is hateful and snarling. And it will be fully exposed during the next 10 years, as the West goes crazy and it becomes a hungry wild animal that desperately needs to feed.

Expressed in words, the West's face says "I'm the best and you are nothing! Give me your stuff! And this is how it will forever be!"

Countries need to stay out from the wild animal and carry a big stick just in case, until it succumbs from its internal hatreds and contradictions.

gepay , Sep 22 2020 19:44 utc | 11

As Putin has said, the US is no longer agreement capable. As b. outlines. the US elites no longer follow the rule of law. This is even true within the US. The US inherited the role formerly played by the British Empire after WW2.

The national security apparatus of both the US and the Soviet Union kept the Cold War going. Notice how soon after JFK was assassinated Khrushchev was deposed. Gorbachev rightly stopped the Soviets superpower regime. As Dmitri Orlov points out - Empire hollowed out the Soviet Union and he sees it doing the same to the US.

Instead of bringing Russia into the Western liberal democracies (with the threat of major nuclear war now drastically reduced) the now Anglo-Zionist Empire just looted it. The life expectancy of Russians fell 7 years in a decade until rescued by Putin.

It can now be seen that the Nixon-Kissinger opening up to China was not to gain access to its large market potential but to gain access to hundreds of millions of cheap, disciplined, and educated workers. The elites starting in the 70s became greedier. Jet travel,electronic communication, and computers allowed the outsourcing of manufacture.

The spread of air conditioning allowed even the too hot south to be a location. First in the US as the factories began their march through the non union southern states onto Mexico. Management from the north could now live in air conditioned houses, drive air conditioned cars and work in air conditioned offices.

The 70s oil inflation led to stagnation as the unionized labor were powerful enough to get cost of living raises. With the globalization of labor union power in the US has been destroyed. As Eric X Li points out China's one party rule actually changes policies easier than the Western democracies.

So China's government hasn't joined in with the West in just creating wealth for the top 1% and debt for the real economy.

As b. pointed out, the Anglo Zionist policies created the mutual benefit partnership of Russia and China. The Chinese belt and road initiative appears to be intent on creating a large trading zone that could benefit those involved. The US is just using sanctions and the military to turn sovereign functioning countries that don't go along with it into failed states and their infrastructure turned to rubble

Roy G , Sep 22 2020 20:11 utc | 13
Now, the US is forced into puppeteering the UN in order to maintain the illusion of the 'rules based order,' even as it slides further and further away from any meaningful international cooperation:

Fortunately for the world, the United States took responsible action to stop this from happening. In accordance with our rights under UNSCR 2231, we initiated the snapback process to restore virtually all previously terminated UN sanctions, including the arms embargo. The world will be safer as a result.

The United States expects all UN Member States to fully comply with their obligations to implement these measures. In addition to the arms embargo, this includes restrictions such as the ban on Iran engaging in enrichment and reprocessing-related activities, the prohibition on ballistic missile testing and development by Iran, and sanctions on the transfer of nuclear- and missile-related technologies to Iran, among others. If UN Member States fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity.

https://www.state.gov/the-return-of-un-sanctions-on-the-islamic-republic-of-iran/

Passer by , Sep 22 2020 20:15 utc | 16
Any type of enmity btw the two countries under Trump is pure theater.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Sep 22 2020 20:07 utc | 10

Actually the Trump Administration has done far more against Russia than all US administrations from the last 30 years. Do not listen what they say, look at what they do. Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks.

foolisholdman , Sep 22 2020 20:22 utc | 17
Pompeo talks more or less continually about "China's bullying behaviour". To me it is wonderful that he can say this with a straight face. (Perhaps it is a result of his lessons in the CIA on "how to lie better".)All the countries that have engaged with China have benefitted from it, whether as salesmen or as recipients of aid or loans at advantageous rates. The countries that have engaged with America have mostly (All?) lost. (The fifty+ countries invaded and wrecked since WW2 or the NATO "allies" or the countries attacked with sanctions.) Either their economies were destroyed or billions upon billions of dollars were paid to the US MIC. The NATO member countries have got what from their membership? Formerly, they had "Protection" from an imaginary Soviet threat, more recently "Protection" from an equally imaginary Russian threat! Some bargain, that!
Christian J. Chuba , Sep 22 2020 20:38 utc | 18
Rules based international order .... the U.S. functions as the the Supreme Court for the U.N. , 'we have invoked snapback sanctions and extended the arms embargo on Iran indefinitely and are enforcing it'. UN, 'but your vote failed'.

U.S, 'we have the right to seize cargo between any two countries transported in international waters based on U.S. federal appeals court decision even though the transaction in no way involves the U.S. We call this Freedom of Navigation and why we need to have aircraft carriers in the South China Sea and Arabian Gulf'

We are completely and totally insane.

psychohistorian , Sep 22 2020 20:41 utc | 19
Rules based International Order is the dog whistle for global private finance controlled economies. It is sad that we are in a civilization war with China/Russia about who runs international finance going forward and yet there is no discussion of the subject but instead all sorts of proxy conflicts.

Thanks for the posting b as it gets to the core myths around the global private finance jackboot on the neck of countries in the West.

profk , Sep 22 2020 20:59 utc | 22
The US is not just facing relative decline -- the fact that others are catching up in key ways. The US is also facing absolute decline -- the fact that it is suffering a degradation of capacities and is losing competitive battles in key areas. Examples of absolute decline include the Russian and Chinese military-technological revolutions based on anti-ship and hypersonic missiles and air defense systems; Chinese 5G; China's demonstrative success in suppressing COVID and its overall manufacturing power; the declining quality of life for most Americans; and the collapse of American institutional competence.

Related to this, we can't separate these dynamics from the political economy of the states in question. China, in particular, is showing that an interventionist state, with high levels of public ownership, is essential to qualitative power, human security, and economic and social development.

Capitalism might enrich a few, but it is the primary cause of America's relative and absolute decline.

jayc , Sep 22 2020 21:01 utc | 23
US and allied military analysts have been talking over the last year or so of the need to enter a single focus and total "wartime" posture throughout our societies, with all financial and industrial output directed to the "war". This has influenced the information/ propaganda efforts, but also the uptick in military manoeuvres around Taiwan and renewed NATO pressure directed at Russia (including the recent provocative B52 flights). Don't think Russia/China can be tricked into over-reacting, but some kind of loss-of-life military confrontation may be what the rules-based side is looking for as the population at large will probably not accept a "wartime sacrifice" regimen without such.
Kiza , Sep 22 2020 21:26 utc | 26
Very well written article.

Whilst Russia and China are creating a truly new, unique and creative alliance and a market of everything, in Australia the "authorities" are sicking their police dogs on poor grannies sitting on park benches. This image of five brainless armed state goons in a show of force over two quiet little grannies really puts things into perspective. It must be that New World Order that Soros and puppets always talked about.

Psssst, learning Russian is easier than Chinese and we already know a few Russian words, such as novichok.

Leser , Sep 22 2020 21:42 utc | 29
Great analysis b and connecting the dots.

The post scriptum stopped the clock for me. Has our host slipped into our drink there a profound prophecy, disguised as jesting?

Many agree something big will happen (break?) soon, possibly with the elections. The other thing is the Americans' ability to change course, drop all baggage, and run off in a new, even the opposite direction with unfettered enthusiasm (and ferocity). No people has a greater capacity for almost instant renewal, once it chooses to.

I also notice that the spoof takes good aim at The Donald's peculiarities, though in a fair and human way. The proverbial Russian warmth, or a humorous invitation?

Meanwhile, I enjoy my newfound optimism in these dark times. Thanks b!

uncle tungsten , Sep 22 2020 21:59 utc | 32
Thanks b and on Anatol Lieven in the Prospect story (fairy story?)...
Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world. [my emphasis]

Lieven simply does not see it. Has it ever occurred to Lieven that colonialism just might be rejected by both Russia and China and that there might be no competition? Does Lieven watch too much football?

What is it that endangers the world in Lieven's petite cortex? This verbose Lieven tosh is littered with fancy sentences trawled from here and there but always presented to us from a narrow dimensional mind with limited analysis and seemingly zero interrogation.

again:- "then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world"...

So Lieven thinks the current behaviour of the US hegemon and its collaborator the UK is innocuous? These were the two nations that blithely squandered the "peace dividend" from the end of cold war as he describes and have led us to this time of perpetual war. A perpetual war that he does not mention, does not allude to, does not treat as an important driver behind the current global mistrust and disengagement from the USUK drive for global dominance.

Lieven is putting lipstick on his pig and screaming about losing the competition to the imagined wolf outside his prison.

Beneath contempt.

Jackrabbit , Sep 22 2020 22:09 utc | 33
Passer by @Sep22 19:43 #8
It is not over in the sense that the West hasn't given up in its attempts to take over the world.
I agree. The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot. What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them despite threats and intimidation from the Empire.

_________________________________

Passer by @Sep22 20:15 #14

Right now the US in a full blown Cold War with Russia with ever increasing attacks.
Yes. We still see the narratives like of Trump as Putin-lover despite the debunking of Russiagate and the clear evidence of Cold War tensions. The incessant propaganda reeks of desperation.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

Some seem to think that the Empire is cornered.

Aha! We've got you now, you scoundrels!

LOL.

The Empire's power-elite KNOW that Russia, China, and allies of Russia-China don't want to be subject to their "rules-based order". The Empire is actively working to undermine, subvert, and divide the countries that oppose it. While also securing their own territories/population via intimidation and propaganda.

!!

uncle tungsten , Sep 22 2020 22:53 utc | 36
On rules based disorder and the capitulation of Merkel and her BND lapdogs to the 'hate Russia' fulminations of the UKUSA morons. I see that the German Parliament has NOT TAKEN its red pills these days and is reluctant to swallow the BS. It would be satisfying to see the collective wisdom of the Parliament to exceed that of the BND. But then that is a low bar.
karlof1 , Sep 22 2020 22:55 utc | 37
An excellent look into the seemingly mundane but important business of negotiating arms control agreements is offered here: Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov's interview with the newspaper Kommersant, published on September 22, 2020 . Excerpt:

"For our part, we more than once described a balanced and mutually acceptable framework for future agreements in this sphere during our contacts with the American negotiators. Aware of the difficulties on the path forward in light of how widely different our approaches are, we proposed extending the New START as it was originally signed.

"We do not want any unilateral advantages, but we will not make any unilateral concessions either. A deal may be possible if the United States is ready to coordinate a new document on the basis of the balance of interests, parity and without expecting Russia to make unilateral concessions. But this will take time. We can have time to do this if the treaty is extended."

As predicted, the Outlaw US Empire makes an offer it knows will be refused so it can then blame Russia for being an unreliable negotiating partner--a trick we've all seen before.

Lavrov conducted a short interview with Sputnik mostly about Belarus and Ukraine and much of which is a rehash.

Passer by , Sep 22 2020 23:07 utc | 39
@Jackrabbit | Sep 22 2020 22:09 utc | 31

I agree. The contest between the Empire and the upstarts is not over by a long shot. What the West HAS lost is the "inevitability" argument. But for the upstarts to actually prevail in their "multi-lateral" vision, they have to actually entice countries to join them despite threats and intimidation from the Empire.

Yes, the big question remaining is to predict what will happen and when. This is what the real deal is. And I'm sure they are working on that in the Intel agencies. It can certainly be predicted that the US and the EU will be significantly weaker in 2030 that today. Will this be enough is the question.

We now have some new information about US long term health as published by CBO. Very interesting numbers.

They predict lower population growth and lower GDP growth for the US than previously estimated, as well as higher debt rates. US federal debt is to reach 195 % of GDP by 2050 under best case scenario.

http://www.crfb.org/papers/analysis-cbos-2020-long-term-budget-outlook

Analysts also seem to agree that the Covid 19 crisis further weakened the US vis a vis China, as the Chinese economy significantly outperformed almost everyone else this year, more than expected before the crisis.

I will also mention two important recent numbers. This year:

1. China, for the first time, became the biggest trading partner for the EU, beating the US.

2. China's retail market overtook the one of the US.

kiwiklown , Sep 22 2020 23:41 utc | 41
Posted by: vk | Sep 22 2020 19:05 utc | 4 -- "....Eurasia is where most of human civilization lives, it's the "World Island" - the world island not in the military sense, but in the economic sense. Every path to human prosperity passes through Eurasia - that's why the USA can't "let it alone" in the first place, while the reverse is not true, that is, Eurasia can give to the luxury of letting the Americas alone."

Excellent observation, VK.

Even if the World Island (thanks for your formulation) trades with itself, within itself, there is sufficient mass to last a century, during which the arrogantly exceptional West might just wake up from their Century of Humiliation.

Meanwhile, inertia alone will ensure that the West forgets that their vaunted "civilisation" was fed, watered, enriched by the Silk Route that came from the East -- from the Middle Kingdom (China) and from the Middle East (which is "middle", as you pointed out above, because all wealth passes through that region).

Paul , Sep 23 2020 0:02 utc | 43
Yes there are rules which are observed more by their breach than their observance: The Geneva Conventions. Just ask Julian Assange.

I find it incredible that the Anglo-Zionist captive nations can sign, ratify, incorporate into domestic law and then sign the additional protocol, making themselves high contracting parties, which requires them to report all and any breaches to Geneva, then ignore all the above commitments. One of these commitments includes educating their citizens on the basic provisions of the conventions. Again they haven't bothered, that could expose their hypocrisy to the public.

Even the bandit statelet signed but I am yet to see just one example of its application in the seventy plus years of its barbaric and bloodthirsty occupation of Palestine.

Interestingly, the conventions prohibit the occupied from signing away one iota of their territory to the occupier. So much for what Claude Pictet's Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention calls "alleged annexations." This book is available from the ICRC.

My late father as an army officer prosecuted Japanese war criminals for their atrocities now the Anglo-Zionists are the pre-eminent war criminals and their leaders loudly proclaim "our values" as a pathological and propagandistic form of projection. Is it possible they are unaware of their blatant hypocrisy ?

It seems the New World Order has some familiar and unsurprising antecedents:

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/452693/New-world-order-pledged-to-Jews-80-years-ago

Hold on tight, hubris is always fatal:

https://asiatimes.com/2020/09/pompeo-threatens-to-light-the-fuse-in-persian-gulf/

Jen , Sep 23 2020 0:09 utc | 44
Uncle Tungsten @ 30:

Anatol Lieven comes from an educated and cultured family in Britain's upper middle class layer. His older siblings - he is the youngest of five children - include a High Court judge (Dame Natalie Lieven), a Cambridge University professor / historian (Dominic Lieven) and a psychologist / linguistics researcher (Elena Lieven). They haven't done badly for a family from the old Baltic German aristocratic elite that used to serve the Russian empire as administrators for the Livonia governorate.

The British Lievens might see themselves as gatekeepers and interpreters of what the ruling classes desire (or appear to desire) and communicate that down to us. Hence their positions in intellectual and academic occupations - no engineers, technicians or academics in the physical or biological sciences among their number.

Anatol Lieven is right though about "competition", in the sense I believe he is using it: it is "competition" for supposed global leadership and influence as only the British and Americans understand it. Life as British and American elites understand it is the annual football competition writ large; there can only be one winner and the worst position to be in is second place and every other place below it. Never mind that what Russia and China have in mind is a vision of the world with multiple and overlapping leadership roles dispersed among nations according to various criteria: this ideal is simply too much for the Anglosphere elites to understand, let alone digest and accept.

Still, I wonder why Anatol Lieven is teaching in a university in Qatar of all places. Family influence and reputation must only go so far.

Richard Steven Hack , Sep 23 2020 0:54 utc | 47
Posted by: lizard | Sep 22 2020 21:59 utc | 29

if you aren't at least a little prepared for a disruption in critical supplies, and choose instead to waste time commenting on online forums, it won't matter how up to date you are on "rules based international order" vs. "international law". at that point the reality will be something like this: if you aren't holding it, you don't have it, and if you can't defend it, you won't be keeping it for long.

Got that absolutely right.

There is no "international law" and no "international order." There is only relative power. And when those powers clash, as seems inevitable, the world is in for a major nuclear war, and probably preceded by several more regional wars. Meanwhile, the US internally is collapsing into economic disaster, social unrest, political and social oppression, infrastructure failure, and medical disasters. We'll probably be in martial law sometime between November 3 and January 21 if not beyond that period, just for starters.

This month is National Preparedness Month. I recommend watching the following videos from well-known "preppers" who have been warning about this stuff for years.

78 Days Will Determine the Fate of America
5 Things You Need To Do Before the U.S. Election

A playlist of 23 videos for National Preparedness Month:
30 Days of Preparedness Collaboration - 2020

And this one from The Urban Prepper, an IT guy who is exceptionally well organized and logical in his videos. I recommend subscribing to his channel. He avoids most of the excessive "doom and gloom" hype that afflicts a lot of prepper channels and is oriented more about urban survival than "backwoods bushcraft" since most people live in cities.
Prepping 101: Prepping Architecture Diagram for Gear Organization

And if you don't watch anything else, watch this one from Canadian Prepper - he's absolutely right in this one and it specifically applies to the barflies here:
What is Really Going On? Its WORSE Than You Think

Jun , Sep 23 2020 1:06 utc | 48
Meanwhile, inertia alone will ensure that the West forgets that their vaunted "civilisation" was fed, watered, enriched by the Silk Route that came from the East -- from the Middle Kingdom (China) and from the Middle East (which is "middle", as you pointed out above, because all wealth passes through that region).
Posted by: kiwiklown | Sep 22 2020 23:41 utc | 39

============================================================================================

Thereby we have the answer to America's longest war:

https://twitter.com/danieldumbrill/status/1290456155286900737?lang=en

Richard Steven Hack , Sep 23 2020 1:19 utc | 50
Oh, and this one from Canadian Prepper in which he muses about whether and why we actually *want* the SHTF situation to occur. This one would resonate with a lot of the commentary here about the social malaise and the psychological reasons for it. Maybe nothing really new for some, but definitely relevant.

Society is Collapsing: Prepare for the Next Phase

uncle tungsten , Sep 23 2020 1:47 utc | 51
Jen #42
Still, I wonder why Anatol Lieven is teaching in a university in Qatar of all places. Family influence and reputation must only go so far.

Thank you that backgrounder explains a lot. Perhaps like Englanders before him he finds Qatar, safe and rewarding PLUS mounds of finest hashish and titillating company. From my understanding it is a grotesque abuser of human rights and everyone has a price.

ak74 , Sep 23 2020 2:15 utc | 52
America's "Rules-Based International Order" is a Goebbelsian euphemism for a Lies-Based Imperial Order, led by the USA and its war criminal allies (aka the self-styled Free World).

The true nature of this America-led order is exposed by the USA's war of aggression against Iraq (which violated international law and had no United Nations sanction) and its decades-long War on Terrorism, which have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and maimed, immiserated, or refugeed millions of more people. These crimes against humanity have been justified by Orwellian American lies about "Weapons of Mass Destruction," "fighting terrorism," or the curious events of Sept. 11th.

This America "Rules-Based" order is one drenched in the blood of millions of people--even as it sanctimoniously disguises itself behind endless propaganda about defending liberal democracy or the rule of law.

Truly, America and its allies can take their malignant Rules-Based Disorder back to Hell, where they all belong.

Two decades of US "war on terror" responsible for displacing at least 37 million people and killing up to 12 million
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/09/cost-s09.html?view=print

Erelis , Sep 23 2020 3:01 utc | 53
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 23 2020 0:50 utc | 44

"Thus your "side note" has no "relevance" whatsoever."

You sound like some podunk UN official from a podunk country trying to impress a waitress in a NYC bar. The Empire is very much alive and dangerous. Ask Iran, ask Syria, as the Palestinians, ask the Russians, ask the Chinese. Ask numerous African nations. Even Pangloss was not so stupidly naive.

uncle tungsten , Sep 23 2020 3:02 utc | 54
Jun #46

Thank you - YES that is the answer and always has been PLUS there will be no pipeline from Iran through Afghanistan to Pakistan and on to China. There will be NO overland pipeline or rail route to sound the death knell to the maritime mafia.

milomilo , Sep 23 2020 3:33 utc | 55
Please vote for trump 2020. no president destroy America from inside like what trump did. The goal is to accelerate American empire destruction and grip in this world. What better way to put such clown along his circus in white house. he will make a mess of everything and will definitely bring America down

i hope he win 2020 and America explode into civil war and chaos. With America destroyed internally , they wont have time to invade Venezuela or Iran

milomilo , Sep 23 2020 3:37 utc | 56
Remember , if Biden win 2020 , American foreign policy will revert into normalcy that means seeking alliance with EU and 5 eyes in a more meaningful way , aka giving them preferential treatment on trade..

all that to box in china and russia , reenable TPP , initiate the delayed venezuela overt invasion other than covert

this is dangerous for the whole world , not that it will save US in the long run but it will increase real shooting conflict with china and russia.. So focus on trump victory in 2020 , the more controversial the win the better , lets push america into chaos

defaultcitizen , Sep 23 2020 3:41 utc | 57
I appreciate the time and thought that goes into a post like this; all without a popup ad trying to sell me ANOTHER item I just bought via Amazon, in spite of the fact that I am among the least likely to want another right now. Voice of reason crying in the wilderness and all that.

The rule The Capitalist Ogres promote as the heart of Civilization is simply the age-old Golden Rule. Those with the gold, make the rules.

j. casey , Sep 23 2020 12:28 utc | 75
In the very short-term (3 months?) what is the outcome of US/Nato seizure of ships and cargo in international water?
chris m , Sep 23 2020 13:42 utc | 79
@ptb
quite right. 'Rules based order' was always a euphemism for exceptionalism of one kind or another. ie US and its "allies" is basically asking the rest of the world to finance their (the US et al) version of a welfare state.

as US et al can no longer fund their own unaffordable welfare promises made to their own electorates, they have to call on the rest of the world to do so (China has been effectively funding the US budget deficit since they entered the WTO.
and the EU (mainly Germany) was doing the same before China's entry into WTO)

China and rest of the worlds foreign central banks stopped growing their foreign exchange reserves (on net) in 2014
leaving the US in a sort of limbo.

chris m , Sep 23 2020 13:47 utc | 80
PS addendum: if you've ever wondered who has been financing the GWOT since 2001; it was the Chinese.
karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 15:21 utc | 82
chris m @80--

Well, you're sorta correct; it was all those nations including China that bought Outlaw US Empire debt. China certainly knows better now and for almost a decade now it's purchases--and those of the rest of the world -- of said debt have declined to the point where a huge crisis related to the debt pyramid threatens all those aside from the 1% living within the Outlaw US Empire. The Judo involved was very instructive.

karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 16:21 utc | 85
"Trump's UN address censured" headlines Global Times article that reviews yesterday's UNGA. Domestic BigLie Media didn't like what it heard from Trump:

"Commenting on the US' performance, many Western media tended to view US as being 'isolated,' and its unilateral efforts 'widely derided....'

"Some US media outlets cannot stand Trump's accusations. A WSJ report said many Democrats blamed Trump for "isolating the US and diluting American influence in the WHO or other bodies."

It went on to say Trump's threat of withdrawal is often used as leverage to "influence partner countries, or get allies to pay more for shared defense."

"Some US media linked Trump's address to his widely blamed effort to re-impose sanctions on Iran, saying his address came as 'UN members push back against Washington,' AP reported.

"Wednesday's Washington Post article reported that the Trump administration walked on a 'lonely path' at the UN where the US attacked WHO, and embarked on the 'widely derided' effort to snap back Iran sanctions.

"A week before the UN General Assembly, US media NPR predicted that the US 'appeared to be isolated' at this year's General Assembly, saying that Trump's 'America First' agenda left him out of sync with America's traditional allies as it has a long record of pulling out of international agreements, including one meant to tackle the world's climate crisis."

So, Trump's attack on China's environmental record was beyond hypocritical and ought to be termed psychopathic prevarication. The best comment from the article well describes the Trumptroll @53:

"'Trump's smears and attacks against China were apparently aimed at campaigning for his reelection. Only his die-hard fans - those who do not care about truth but support him - will buy his words ,' Ding Yifan, a researcher at the Institute of World Development of the Development Research Center of the State Council, told the Global Times." [My Emphasis]

And isn't that really the basic issue--the truth? 75 years of lies by the Outlaw US Empire to cover it's continuous illegalities and subversion of its own fundamental law while killing and displacing tens of millions of people. Guardian of the Free World my ass! More like Guardian of the Gates of Hell.

vk , Sep 23 2020 16:40 utc | 86
More on the situation of the "rules based international order":

The Eurozone economy stopped recovering and stagnated in September (PMI)

And here's a more general picture on the state of global capitalism today:

The 90% world economy (UNCTAD report)

karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 16:45 utc | 87
Yes, I'm biased, but anyone seeking truth and invoking the Rule of Law would find themselves at odds with the Outlaw US Empire. Today's Global Times Editorial makes the following key observations:

"Major powers maintaining cooperation, at least not engaging in Cold War-style antagonism, is the important foundation of world peace. China is committed to maintaining cooperation among major powers, as well as being flexible in the balance of interests acceptable to all parties. The problem is the Trump administration is hysterically shaping decoupling and confrontation between Beijing and Washington, and has been mobilizing more forces to its side at home and abroad. Those US policymakers are deliberately splitting the world like during the Cold War.

"The impulse to promote a cold war is the ultimate version of unilateralism, and shows dangerous and mistaken arrogance that the US is almighty. Everyone knows that the US is declining in its competitiveness under the rules-based international system the US itself initiated and created. It wants to build a new system more beneficial to itself, and allow the US to maintain its advantage without making any effort. This is simply impossible."

My research is pointing me to conclude the First Cold War was contrived so the Outlaw US Empire could impose privately owned finance and corporations and the political-economies connected to them upon the world lest the collective forces that were the ones to actually defeat Fascism gain control of their national governments and shape their political-economies into the public/collectively owned realm where the benefits would flow to all people instead of just the already powerful. That's also the intent of imposing a Second Cold War. Some seem to think there's no ideological divide at play, but as I've ceaselessly explained there most certainly is, thus the intense demonization of both Russia and China--the Strategic Competition also is occurring in the realm of Ideas. And the only tools available for the Outlaw US Empire to use are lies, since the truths involved would encourage any neutral nation to join the Win-Win vision of China and Russia, not the Zero-sum bankruptcy pushed by the Parasites controlling the Empire.

psychohistorian , Sep 23 2020 17:07 utc | 88
@ karlof1 | Sep 23 2020 15:56 utc | 84 and forward with the links and quotes...thanks

I do like the confirmation Pepe quote, thanks

It is sad to understand that much of the US population does not have the mental clarity to see that Trump is no different than Biden when it comes to fealty to the God of Mammon. Way too many Americans think that replacing Trump with Biden will make things all better.

The end of the rules based international order/global private finance cannot end soon enough, IMO

Timothy Hagios , Sep 23 2020 17:19 utc | 90
farm ecologist @ 89

Patrick Armstrong publishes the sitreps (and other content) at https://patrickarmstrong.ca/

karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 18:07 utc | 92
psychohistorian @88--

Thanks for your reply! As I discussed with the Missus last night, IMO only the people regaining control over the federal government can rescue themselves from the multiple dilemmas they face--the most pressing being the Debt Bomb and control of the monetary and fiscal systems by private entities as exemplified by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, both of which employ the Financial Parasites preying on the nation's body-politic. Undoing all the past wrongs requires both Congress and the Executive be captured by The People who can then write the laws to end the wrongs while arresting and prosecuting those responsible for the last 20+ years of massive fraud. The biggest components would be ending the Federal Reserve, Nationalizing all the fraudster banks, writing down the vast majority of debt, and disbanding NATO thus ending the overseas empire. Those are the most fundamental steps required for the USA to avoid the coming calamity brought about by the Neoliberals. I also have finally developed my thesis on where, why and how that philosophy was developed and put into motion.

profk , Sep 23 2020 18:16 utc | 94
karlof,

The first 'Cold War' was entirely contrived. The US knew the Soviet Union was weak and had no agenda beyond maintaining security and its own reconstruction after WW2. There was no threat of a Western European invasion, or of the USSR spreading revolution globally. All that Cold War ideology is a lie. And the same lying is taking place about China today. No difference.

The key issues for the US were:

1. it needed western european capitalist states to buy US manufactured exports. Those states had to remain capitalist and subordinate to the US, i.e. to avoid what Acheson called 'neutralism' in world politics.

2. the US wanted gradual decolonization of the British and French empires so that US firms could access markets and resources in those same territories. but the US feared revolutionary nationalism in the colonies and the potential loss of market access by the former colonial powers, which would need resources from the post-colonial world to rebuild after WW2.

The key event which cemented the 'Cold War' in Europe was the division of Germany, which Carolyn Eisenberg shows was entirely an American decision, in her important book, Drawing the Line.

The driving force of all this, though, was the economic imperatives of US capitalism. The US needed to restore and save capitalism in Western Europe and Japan, and the Cold War was the ideological framework for doing so. The Cold War ideology also allowed the US to frame its meddling in Korea, Guatemala, Iran, etc.

The late historian Gabriel Kolko wrote the best analyses of these issues. His work is much better than the New Left 'revisionist' US historians.

karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 20:01 utc | 96
profk @94--

I agree with your recap and second your appraisal of Gabriel Kolko. Eisenberg's work somehow escaped my view but will no longer thanks to your suggestion.

But I see more to it all as the First Cold War had to occur to promote the financialization of the USA's industrial Capitalism which began within the USA in 1913 and was abruptly interrupted by the various market crashes, the failure of the international payments system and subsequent massive deflation and Great Depression. A similar plan to outsource manufactures to its colonies and commonwealth and financialize its economy was began in the UK sometime after the end of the US Civil War. At the time in England, the school of Classical Political-Economists and their political allies (CPE) were attempting to rid the UK and the rest of Europe of the last vestiges of Feudalism that resided in the Rentier and Banking Classes, the former being mostly populated by Royalty and its retainers. Land Rent was the primary source of their income while it was the stated intent of the CPE to change the tax burden from individuals and businesses to that of Land Rent and other forms of Unearned Income. That movement came swiftly on the heels of the abolition of the Slave Trade which was a vast source of Royal income. Recognizing this threat to the basis of their wellbeing, the Royals needed to turn the tables but in such a manner where their manipulation was secret because of the vast popularity of the CPE's agenda. Thus began the movement to discredit the CPE and remove their ideas from discourse and later completely from the history of political-economy. And there was another problem--German Banks and their philosophy inspired by Bismarck to be totally supportive of German industry, which provided the impetus for its own colonial pursuits primarily in Africa.

Within that paragraph is my thesis for the rise of Neoliberalism, much of which Dr. Hudson documents but hasn't yet gotten to/revealed the root cause of the counter revolution against the CPE. IMO, that reactionary movement underlies far more, particularly the growing animosity between the UK and Germany from 1875 to 1914. As Eisenberg's research proves, there's much more past to be revealed that helps to resolve how we arrived at the times we now face.

karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 20:16 utc | 97
CitizenX @95--

Indeed, as Hudson and Max Keiser ask: Why pay taxes at all since the Fed can create all the credit required. I've written about the pros and cons of Secession here before which are quite similar to those existing in 1861. In Washington for example, how to deal with all the Federal property located there. Just as Ft. Sumter didn't belong to South Carolina, the many military bases there don't belong to Washington. Trying to seize it as the South Carolinians attempted in 1861 merely creates the casus belli sought by Trump. Now if you could get the vast majority of the military stationed in Washington to support your cause, your odds of resisting would greatly improve.

IMO, trying to regain public control over the Federal government would be much easier.

uncle tungsten , Sep 23 2020 21:21 utc | 98
karlof1 #85

Thank you brother karlof1, YES, the minotaur indeed but where is Theseus and Ariadne when we need them? Please don't tell me that Biden and Harris are the 'chosen ones' - that would mock the legend and prove that the gods are truly crazy :))

karlof1 , Sep 23 2020 22:48 utc | 101
ooops *elicit* uncle tungsten @98--

Well, they've clearly been chosen; they're just not THE CHOSEN and IMO would never qualify.

By contrast, here's Maduro's UNGA statement , a man clearly superior in all respects to either Biden or Trump or any of their vassals.

karlof1 , Sep 24 2020 0:31 utc | 103
It seems to me that a review is required, that we need to turn back the clock to an earlier analysis whose veracity has only been boosted by subsequent events. So here from 2011: "On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed me on KPFK's program, 'Building a Powerful Movement in the United States' in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in." Here's a brief excerpt to remind people what this is all about:

"Once people realize that they're being screwed, that's a pre-revolutionary situation. It's a situation where they can get a lot of sympathy and support, precisely by not doing what The New York Times and the other papers say they should do: come up with some neat solutions. They don't have to propose a solution because right now there isn't one – without changing the system with many, many changes. So many that it's like a new Constitution. Politics as well as the economy need to be restructured. What's developing now is how to think about the economic and political problems that are bothering people. It is not radical to realize that the economy isn't working. That is the first stage to realizing that a real alternative is needed. We've been under a radical right-wing attack – and need to respond in kind. The next half-year probably will be spent trying to spell out what the best structure would be."

Billosky , Sep 24 2020 6:19 utc | 104
It's good to see discussion here of the nefarious role of the American far-right neocon warmongers in the State Department, intelligence services and military leadership just before the turn of the new century. What I have never seen clearly explained, however, is the connection between these very dangerous forces and the equally cynical and reactionary Israeli politicians and the Mossad, as well as Saudi Arabian officials.

Like many others, I have been slowly won over to the position that the attacks of 9-11, and especially the totally unprecedented collapses of the three WTC towers, could only have been caused by the precisely timed explosion of previously installed demolition materials containing nanothermite. But if one accepts that position the immediately subsequent question is "Who planned and carried out the attacks?" Many people have claimed it was the Mossad, others that it was the Mossad in concert with the US neocons etc., -- many of whom were Israeli/US dual citizens -- but even now, so many years after the horrific events, I can find no coherent account of how such conspirators, or any others for that matter, might actually have carried out WTC building demotions. Do any of you know of sources on the matter that have made good progress on connecting the dots and explaining what precisely happened -- the easier part -- and how exactly it was carried out, by whom, and how they have managed to get away with it for all this time?

Piotr Berman , Sep 24 2020 14:04 utc | 106
Lieven: If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world.[my emphasis]

Uncle Tungsten: Lieven simply does not see it. Has it ever occurred to Lieven that colonialism just might be rejected by both Russia and China and that there might be no competition? Does Lieven watch too much football?

What is it that endangers the world in Lieven's petite cortex?
-------
It is clear to me that Tungsten does not understand Lieven because Lieven does not cross all t's and dot all i's. There can be two reasons for Lieven style: (1) a British style, leaving some conclusions to the reader, it is not elegant to belabor the obvious (2) Lieven works in a pro-Western feudal state and that particular piece appeared in a neo-liberal outfit where it is already a clear outlier toward (what I see as) common sense. Neo-liberals view themselves as liberals, "tolerating a wide spectrum of opinion", but with clear limits about the frequency and content for the outliers of their tolerance.

Back to "endangering the world", how "loosing competition to China" can result in huge mayhem? I guess that Tungsten is a little dense here. The sunset of Anglo-Saxon domination can seem like the end of the world for the "members" of that domination. But a longer historical perspective can offer a much darker vision of the future. First, there is a clash of two blocks, one with superior industrial production, domination of markets of assorted goods -- both as importer and exporter, etc, the other with still superior military technology and combative spirit.

Recall (or check) the situation in east Asia ca. 1240 AD. One of the major power was Song China, after a calamitous defeat roughly 300 years later, diminished Song China succeeded in developing all kinds of practical and beautiful goods and vibrant commerce while having quite inept military. The second major power was the Mongols. You can look up the rest.

USA stresses the military types of pressures, and seeing its position slipping too far, they may resort to a series of gigantic "provocations" -- from confiscation of property by fiat, like they did to Venezuela, to piracy on open seas, no cargoes can move without their approval and tribute, from there things can escalate toward nuclear war.

More generally, western decline leads to decrease of wealth affecting the lower classes first but gradually reaching higher, enmity toward competitors, then hatred, such processes can have dire consequences.

Importantly, these are speculations, so stopping short of spelling them out is reasonable. However, give some credit to Lieven for "the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War".

Noirette , Sep 24 2020 16:24 utc | 108
On the rule-based world order. Scattered thoughts.

The article by Lieven was good in one aspect: it at least mentioned the crazy economic template aka imho 'religion' that lead to a part of this mess. For the rest, hmm. The 'rules based international order' was always pretty much a phoney scaffold, used for presentation to hide, cover up, legitimised many goings on (after WW2 I mean.)

Like a power-point extolling xyz product, with invented or 'massaged' charts and all., with tick boxes for what it positive or followed. (Fairness, Democracy, etc. etc. as 'Natural' 'Organic' etc. Total BS.)

In these kinds of discussions I am always reminded of the 'rights of the child' which in CH are taught in grade 3-5, with a boiled down text, logo type pix, etc. It is very tough on teachers, and they often only pretend to push the content. There are many immigrant children in CH and the natives know that the 'rights' are not respected and not just in 'jungles' (anarchist / animalistic hot spots) as they say. The kids go nuts - as they still more or less believe that they 'have a voice' as it called -- the parents follow the kids, lotsa troubles. OK, these are aspirations - but 'democracy' (purposely used as a calling card following advice from a well-know ad agency..) is so as well. And presenting aspirations that can't possibly be achieved in any way, when not a smiley joke about meeting God or flying to Mars, and is socially important, is not well received.

Anyway, since the invasion of Iraq (totally illegal according to any standards) leading to the biggest demos in the world ever, a loud indignant cry, which invasion the UN condoned, ppl (in my experience, in CH, F, It) no longer have a shred of belief in 'international rules'. Which of course makes them more 'nationalist' in the sense of acting in the community, close at hand, as the Intl order is a shit-scene.

Passer by , Sep 24 2020 20:06 utc | 109
Do you have sources for the last two facts, about China overtaking the US as main trading partner to Europe and as retail market?

Posted by: fx | Sep 24 2020 11:41 utc | 105

China becomes EU's top trading partner from Jan-July: Eurostat

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202009/17/WS5f63070da31024ad0ba7a2fa.html

China retail market expected to overtake US this year

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-overtake-u-world-largest-135614391.html

https://www.asiatimesfinancial.com/we-will-be-top-economy-by-year-end-china-media-outlet-says

[Sep 18, 2020] September 14, 2001- The Day America Became Israel - Antiwar.com Original

Notable quotes:
"... Apocalypse Now- ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... War on the Rocks ..."
"... An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation ..."
"... a defense industry with a country ..."
Sep 18, 2020 | original.antiwar.com

September 14, 2001: The Day America Became Israel

by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.) Posted on September 18, 2020

This article is dedicated to the memory of an activist, inspiration, and recent friend: Kevin Zeese. Its scope, sweep, and ambition are meant to match that of Kevin's outsized influence. At that, it must inevitably fail – and its shortfalls are mine alone. That said, the piece's attempt at a holistic critique of 19 years worth of war and cultural militarization would, I hope, earn an approving nod from Kevin – if only at the attempt. He will be missed by so many; I count myself lucky to have gotten to know him. – Danny Sjursen

The rubble was still smoldering at Ground Zero when the U.S. House of Representatives voted to essentially transform itself into the Israeli Knesset , or parliament. It was 19 years ago, 11:17pm Washington D.C. time on September 14, 2001 when the People's Chamber approved House Joint Resolution 64, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) "against those responsible for the recent attacks." Naturally, that was before the precise identities, and full scope, of "those responsible" were yet known – so the resolution's rubber-stamp was obscenely open-ended by necessity, but also by design.

The Senate had passed their own version by roll call vote about 12 hours earlier. The combined congressional tally was 518 to one. Only Representative Barbara Lee of California cast a dissenting vote , and even delivered a brief, prescient speech on the House floor. It's almost hard to watch and listen all these years later as her voice cracks with emotion amidst all that truth-telling :

I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. This is a very complex and complicated matter

However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let's step back for a moment and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control

Now I have agonized over this vote. But I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful, yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."

For her lone stance – itself courageous, even had she not since been vindicated – Rep. Lee suffered insults and death threats so intense that she needed around-the-clock bodyguards for a time. It's hard to be right in a room full of the wrong – especially angry, scared, and jingoistic ones. Yet the tragedy is America has become many of the things we purport to deplore: the US now boasts a one-trick-pony foreign policy and a militarized society to boot.

Endless imperial interventions and perennial policing at home and abroad, counterproductive military adventurism, governance by permanent "emergency" fiat, and an ever more martial-society? We've seen this movie before; in fact it's still playing – in Israel. Without implying that Israel, as an entity, is somehow "evil," theirs was simply not a path the US need or ought to have gone down.

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It"

In the nearly two decades since its passing, the AUMF has been cited at least 41 times in some 17 countries and on the high seas . The specified nations-states included Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Turkey, Niger, Cameroon, and the broader African "Sahel Region" – which presumably also covers the unnamed, but real, US troop presence in Nigeria, Chad and Mali. That's a lot of unnecessary digressions – missions that haven't, and couldn't, have been won. All of that aggression abroad predictably boomeranged back home , in the guise of freedoms constrained, privacy surveilled, plus cops and culture militarized.

Inevitably, just a few days ago, every publication, big and small, carried obligatory and ubiquitous 9/11 commemoration pieces. Far fewer will even note the AUMF anniversary. Yet it was the US government's response – not the attacks themselves – which most altered American strategy and society. For in dutifully deciding on immediate military retaliation, a "global war," even, on a tactic ("terror") and a concept ("evil") at that, this republic fell prey to the Founders' great obsession . Unable to agree on much else, they shared fears that the nascent American experiment would suffer Rome's " ancestral curse " of ambition – and its subsequent path to empire. Hence, Benjamin Franklin's supposed retort to a crowd question upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, on just what they'd just framed: "A republic, if you can keep it!"

Yet perhaps a modern allegory is the more appropriate one: by signing on to an endless cycle of tit-for-tat terror retaliation on 9/14, We the People's representatives chose the Israeli path. Here was a state forged by the sword that it's consequently lived by ever since, and may well die by – though the cause of death, no doubt, would likely be self-inflicted. The first statutory step towards Washington transforming into Tel Aviv was that AUMF sanction 19 years ago tonight.

No doubt, some militarist fantasies came far closer on the heels of the September 11th suicide strikes: According to notes taken by aides, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld waited a whole five hours after Flight 77 impacted his Pentagon to instruct subordinates to gather the "best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit [Saddam Hussein] at same time Not only [Osama Bin Laden]." As for the responsive strike plans, "Go massive," the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Nonetheless, it was Congress' dutiful AUMF-acquiescence that made America's Israeli-metamorphosis official. The endgame that ain't even ended yet has been dreadful. It's almost impossible to fathom, in retrospect, but remember that as of September 14, 2001, 7,052 American troops and, very conservatively, at least 800,000 foreigners (335,000 of them civilians) hadn't yet – and need not have – died in the ensuing AUMF-sanctioned worldwide wars.

Now, US forces didn't directly kill all of them, but that's about 112 September 11ths-worth of dead civilians by the very lowest estimates – perishing in wars of (American) choice. That's worth reckoning with; and needn't imply a dismissive attitude to our 9/11 fallen. I, for one, certainly take that date rather seriously.

My 9/11s

There are more than a dozen t-shirts hanging in my closet right now that are each emblazoned with the phrase "Annual Marty Egan 5K Memorial Run/Walk." This event is held back in the old neighborhood, honoring a very close family friend – a New York City fire captain killed in the towers' collapse. As my Uncle Steve's best bud, he was in and out of my grandparents' seemingly communal Midland Beach, Staten Island bungalow – before Hurricane Sandy washed many of them away – throughout my childhood. When I was a teenager, just before leaving for West Point, Marty would tease me for being "too skinny for a soldier" in the local YMCA weight-room and broke-balls about my vague fear of heights as I shakily climbed a ladder in Steve's backyard just weeks before I left for cadet basic training. Always delivered with a smile, of course.

Marty was doing some in-service training on September 11th, and didn't have to head towards the flames, but he hopped on a passing truck and rode to his death anyway. I doubt anyone who knew him would've expected anything less. Mercifully, Marty's body was one of the first – and at the time, only – recovered , just two days after Congress chose war in his, and 2,976 others' name. He was found wearing borrowed gear from engine company he'd jumped in with.

I was a freshman cadet at West Point when I heard all of this news – left feeling so very distant from home, family, neighborhood, though I was just a 90 minute drive north. Frankly, I couldn't wait to get in the fights that followed. It's no excuse, really: but I was at that moment exactly 18 years and 41 days old. And indeed, I'd spend the next 18 training, prepping, and fighting the wars I then wanted – and, ( Apocalypse Now- style ) "for my sins" – "they gave me."

Anyway, Marty's family – and more so his memory – along with the general 9/11 fallout back home, have swirled in and out of my life ever since. In the immediate term, after the attacks my mother turned into a sort of wake&funeral-hopper, attending literally dozens over that first year. As soon as Marty had a headstone in Moravian Cemetery – where my Uncle Steve once dug graves – I draped a pair of my new dog tags over it on a weekend trip home. It was probably a silly and indulgent gesture, but it felt profound at the time. Then, soon enough, the local street signs started changing to honor fallen first responders – including the intersection outside my church, renamed "Martin J. Egan Jr. Corner." (Marty used to joke , after all, that he'd graduated from UCLA – that is, the University, corner of Lincoln Avenue, in the neighborhood.)

Five years later, while I was fighting a war in a country (Iraq) that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, Marty's mother Pat still worked at the post office from which my own mom shipped me countless care packages. They'd chat; have a few nostalgic laughs; then Pat would wish me well and pass on her regards. When some of my soldiers started getting killed, I remember my mother telling me it was sometimes hard to look Pat in the eye on the post office trips – perhaps she feared an impending kinship of lost sons. But it didn't go that way.

So, suffice it to say, I don't take the 9/11 attacks, or the victims, lightly. That doesn't mean the US responses, and their results, were felicitous or forgivable. They might even dishonor the dead. I don't pretend to precisely know, or speak for, the Egan family's feelings. Still, my own sense is that few among the lost or their loved ones left behind would've imagined or desired their deaths be used to justify all of the madness, futility, and liberties-suppression blowback that's ensued.

Nevertheless, my nineteen Septembers 11th have been experienced in oft-discomfiting ways, and my assessment of the annual commemorations, rather quickly began to change. By the tenth anniversary, a Reuters reporter spent a couple of days on the base I commanded in Afghanistan. At the time the outpost sported a flag gifted by my uncle, which had previously flown above a New York Fire Department house. I suppose headquarters sent the journalist my way because I was the only combat officer from New York City – but the brass got more than they'd bargained for. By then, amidst my second futile war "surge," and three more of the lives and several more of the limbs of my soldiers lost on this deployment, I wasn't feeling particularly sentimental. Besides, I'd already turned – ethically and intellectually – against what seemed to me demonstrably hopeless and counterproductive military exercises.

Much to the chagrin of my career-climbing lieutenant colonel, I waxed a bit (un)poetic on the war I was then fighting – "against farm boys with guns," I not-so-subtly styled it – and my hometown's late suffering that ostensibly justified it. "When I see this place, I don't see the towers," I said, sitting inside my sandbagged operations center near the Taliban's very birthplace in Kandahar province. Then added: "My family sees it more than I do. They see it dead-on, direct. I'm a professional soldier. It's not about writing the firehouse number on the bullet. I'm not one for gimmicks." It was coarse and a bit petulant, sure, but what I meant – what I felt – was that these wars, even this " good " Afghan one (per President Obama), no longer, and may never have, had much to do with 9/11, Marty, or all the other dead.

The global war on terrorism (GWOT, as it was once fashionable to say) was but a reflex for a sick society pre-disposed to violence, symptomatic of a militarist system led by a government absent other ideas or inclinations. Still, I flew that FDNY flag – even skeptical soldiers can be a paradoxical lot.

Origin Myths: Big Lies and Long Cons

Although the final approved AUMF declared that "such acts [as terrorism] continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States," that wasn't then, and isn't now, even true . The toppled towers, pummeled Pentagon, and flying suicide machines of 9/11 were no doubt an absolute horror; and such visions understandably clouded collective judgment. Still, more sober statistics demonstrate, and sensible strategy demands, the prudence of perspective.

From 1995 to 2016, a total of 3,277 Americans have been killed in terrorist acts on US soil. If we subtract the 9/11 anomaly, that's just 300 domestic deaths – or 14 per year. Which raises the impolite question: why don't policymakers talk about terrorism the same way they do shark attacks or lightning strikes? The latter, incidentally, kill an average of 49 Americans annually. Odd, then, that the US hasn't expended $6.4 trillion, or more than 15,000 soldier and contractor lives , responding to bolts from the blue. Nor has it kicked off or catalyzed global wars that have directly killed – by that conservative estimate – 335,000 civilians.

See, that's the thing: for Americans, like the Israelis, some lives matter more than others. We can just about calculate the macabre life-value ratios in each society. Take Israel's 2014 onslaught on the Gaza Strip. In its fifty-day onslaught of Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) killed 2,131 Palestinians – of whom 1,473 were identified as civilians, including 501 children. As for the wildly inaccurate and desperate Hamas rocket strikes that the IDF "edge" ostensibly "protected" against: those killed a whopping four civilians. To review: apparently one Israeli non-combatant is worth 368 Palestinian versions. Now, seeing as everything – including death-dealing is "bigger in Texas" – consider the macro American application. To wit, 3,277 US civilians versus 335,000 foreign innocents equals a cool 102-to-1 quotient of the macabre.

Such formulas become banal realities when one believes the big lies undergirding the entire enterprise. Here, Israel and America share origin myths that frame the long con of forever wars. That is, that acts of terror with stateless origins are best responded to with reflexive and aggressive military force. In my first ever published article – timed for Independence Day 2014 – I argued that America's post-9/11 "original sin" was framing its response as a war in the first place. As a result, I – then a serving US Army captain – concluded, "In place of sound strategy, we've been handed our own set of martyrs: more than 6,500 dead soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines." More than 500 American troopers have died since, along with who knows how many foreign civilians. It's staggering how rare such discussions remain in mainstream discourse.

Within that mainstream, often the conjoined Israeli-American twins even share the same cruelty cheerleaders. Take the man that author Belen Fernandez not inaccurately dubs "Harvard Law School's resident psychopath:" Alan Dershowitz. During Israel's brutal 2006 assault on Lebanon, this armchair-murderer took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal with a column titled " Arithmetic of Pain ."

Dershowitz argued for a collective "reassessment of the laws of war" in light of increasingly blurred distinctions between combatants and civilians. Thus, offering official "scholarly" sanction for the which-lives-matter calculus, he unveiled the concept of a "continuum of 'civilianality." Consider some of his cold and callous language:

Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents – babies, hostages at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the terrorists politically, or spiritually.

Got that? Leaving aside Dershowitz's absurd assumption that there are loads of Palestinians just itching to volunteer as "human shields," it's clear that when conflicts are thus framed – all manner of cruelties become permissible.

In Israel, it begins with stated policies of internationally- prohibited collective punishment. For example, during the 2006 Lebanon War that killed exponentially more innocent Lebanese than Israelis, the IDF chief of staff's announced intent was to deliver "a clear message to both greater Beirut and Lebanon that they've swallowed a cancer [Hezbollah] and have to vomit it up, because if they don't their country will pay a very high price." It ends with Tel Aviv's imposition of an abusive calorie-calculus on Palestinians.

In 2008, Israeli authorities actually drew up a document computing the minimum caloric intake necessary for Gaza's residents to suffer (until they yield), but avoid outright starvation. Two years earlier, that wonderful wordsmith Dov Weisglass, senior advisor to then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explained that Israeli policy was designed "to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."

Lest that sound beyond the pale for we Americans, recall that it was the first female secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who ten years earlier said of 500,000 Iraqi children's deaths under crippling U.S. sanctions: "we think, the price is worth it." Furthermore, it's unclear how the Trump administration's current sanctions- clampdown on Syrians unlucky enough to live in President Bashar al Assad-controlled territory is altogether different from the "Palestinian diet."

After all, even one of the Middle East Institute's resident regime-change-enthusiasts, Charles Lister, recently admitted that America's criminally-euphemized "Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act" may induce a "famine." In other words, according to two humanitarian experts writing on the national security website War on the Rocks , "hurting the very civilians it aims to protect while largely failing to affect the Syrian government itself."

It is, and has long been, thus: Israeli prime ministers and American presidents, Bibi and The Donald, Tel Aviv and Washington – are peas in a punishing pod.

Emergencies as Existences

In both Israel and America, frightened populations finagled by their uber-hawkish governments acquiesce to militarized states of "emergencies" as a way of life. In seemingly no time at all, the latest U.S. threshold got so low that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo matter-of-factly declared one to override a congressional-freeze and permit the $8.1 billion sale of munitions to Gulf Arab militaries. When some frustrated lawmakers asked the State Department's inspector general to investigate, the resultant report found that the agency failed to limit [Yemeni] civilian deaths from the sales – most bombed by the Saudi's subsequent arsenal of largesse. (As for the inspector general himself? He was " bullied ," then fired, by Machiavelli Mike).

Per the standard, Israel is the more surface-overt partner. As the IDF-veteran author Haim Bresheeth-Zabner writes in his new book , An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation , Israel is the "only country in which Emergency Regulations have been in force for every minute of its existence."

Perhaps more worryingly, such emergency existences boomerang back to militarized Minneapolis and Jerusalem streets alike. It's worth nothing that just five days after the killing of George Floyd, an Israeli police officer gunned down an unarmed, autistic, Palestinian man on his way to a school for the disabled. Even the 19-year-old killer's 21-year-old commander (instructive, that) admitted the cornered victim wasn't a threat. But here's the rub: when the scared and confused Palestinian man ran from approaching police at 6 a.m. , initial officers instinctually reported a potential "terrorist" on the loose.

Talk about global terror coming home to roost on local streets. And why not here in the States? It wasn't but two months back that President Trump labeled peaceful demonstrators in D.C., and nationwide protesters tearing down Confederate statues, as "terrorists." That's more than a tad troubling, since, as noted, almost anything is permissible against terrorists, thus tagged.

In other words, the Israeli-American, post-9/11 (or -9/14) militarized connections go beyond the cosmetic and past sloganeering. Then again, the latter can be instructive. In the wake of the latest Jerusalem police shooting, protesters in Israel's Occupied Territories held up placards declaring solidarity with Black Lives Matter (BLM). One read: "Palestinians support the black intifada." Yet the roots of shared systemic injustices run far deeper.

Though it remains impolitic to say so here in the US, both "BLM and the Palestinian rights movement are [by their own accounts] fighting settler-colonial states and structures of domination and supremacy that value, respectively, white and Jewish lives over black and Palestinian ones." They're hardly wrong. All-but-official apartheid reigns in Occupied Palestine, and a de-facto two-tier system favoring Jewish citizens, prevails within Israel itself. Similarly, the US grapples with chattel slavery's legacy, lingering effects institutional Jim Crow-apartheid, and its persistent system of gross, if unofficial, socio-economic racial disparity.

Though there are hopeful rumblings in post-Floyd America, neither society has much grappled with the immediacy and intransigency of their established and routine devaluation of (internal and external) Arab and African lives. Instead, in another gross similarity, Israelis and Americans prefer to laud any ruling elites who even pretend towards mildly reformist rhetoric (rather than action) as brave peacemakers.

In fact, two have won the Nobel Peace Prize. In America, there was the untested Obama: he the king of drones and free-press-suppression – whose main qualification for the award was not being named George W. Bush. In Israel, the prize went to late Prime Minister Shimon Peres. According to Bresheeth-Zabner, Peres was the "mind behind the military-industrial complex" in Israel, and also architect of the infamous 1996 massacre of 106 people sheltering at a United Nations compound in South Lebanon. In such societies as ours and Israel's, and amidst interminable wars, too often politeness passes for principle.

Military Mirrors

Predictably, social and cultural rot – and strategic delusions – first manifest in a nation's military. Neither Israel's nor America's has a particularly impressive record of late. The IDF won a few important wars in its first 25 years of existence, then came back from a near catastrophic defeat to prevail in the 1973 Yom Kippur War; but since then, it's at best muddled through near-permanent lower-intensity conflicts after invading Southern Lebanon in 1978. In fact, its 22-year continuous counter-guerilla campaign there – against Palestinian resistance groups and then Lebanese Hezbollah – slowly bled the IDF dry in a quagmire often called " Israel's Vietnam ." It was, in fact, proportionally more deadly for its troops than America's Southeast Asian debacle – and ended (in 2000) with an embarrassing unilateral withdrawal.

Additionally, Tel Aviv's perma-military-occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip hasn't just flagrantly violated International law and several UN resolutions – but blown up in the IDF's face. Ever since vast numbers of exasperated and largely abandoned (by Arab armies) Palestinians rose up in the 1987 Intifada – initially peaceful protests – and largely due to the IDF's counterproductively vicious suppression, Israel has been trapped in endless imperial policing and low-to-mid-level counterinsurgency.

None of its major named military operations in the West Bank and/or Gaza Strip – Operations Defensive Shield (2002), Days of Penitence (2004), Summer Rains (2006), Cast Lead (2008-09), Pillar of Defense (2012), Protective Edge (2014), among others – has defeated or removed Hamas, nor have they halted the launch of inaccurate but persistent Katyusha rockets.

In fact, the wildly disproportionate toll on Palestinian civilians in each and every operation, and the intransigence of Israel's ironclad occupation has only earned Tel Aviv increased international condemnation and fresh generations of resistors to combat. The IDF counts minor tactical successes and suffers broader strategic failure. As even a fairly sympathetic Rand report on the Gaza operations noted, "Israel's grand strategy became 'mowing the grass' – accepting its inability to permanently solve the problem and instead repeatedly targeting leadership of Palestinian militant organizations to keep violence manageable."

The American experience has grown increasingly similar over the last three-quarters of a century. Unless one counts modern trumped-up Banana Wars like those in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), or the lopsided 100-hour First Persian Gulf ground campaign (1991), the US military, too, hasn't won a meaningful victory since 1945. Korea (1950-53) was a grinding and costly draw; Vietnam (1965-72) a quixotic quagmire; Lebanon (1982-84) an unnecessary and muddled mess ; Somalia (1992-94) a mission-creeping fiasco; Bosnia/Kosovo (1992-) an over-hyped and unsatisfying diversion. Yet matters deteriorated considerably, and the Israeli-parallels grew considerably, after Congress chose endless war on September 14, 2001.

America's longest ever war, in Afghanistan, started as a seeming slam dunk but has turned out to be an intractable operational defeat. That lost cause has been a dead war walking for over a decade. Operations Iraqi Freedom (2003-11) and Inherent Resolve (2014-) may prove, respectively, America's most counterproductive and aimless missions ever. Operation Odyssey Dawn, the 2011 air campaign in pursuit of Libyan regime change, was a debacle – the entire region still grapples with its detritus of jihadi profusion, refugee dispersion, and ongoing proxy war.

US support for the Saudi-led terror war on Yemen hasn't made an iota of strategic sense, but has left America criminally complicit in immense civilian-suffering. Despite the hype, the relatively young US Africa Command (AFRICOM) was never really "about Africans," and its dozen years worth of far-flung campaigns have only further militarized a long-suffering continent and generated more terrorists. Like Israel's post-1973 operations, America's post-2001 combat missions have simply been needless, hopeless, and counterproductive.

Consider a few other regrettable U.S.-Israeli military connections over these last two decades:

The wear and tear from the South Lebanon occupation and from decades of beating up on downtrodden and trapped Palestinians damaged Israel's vaunted military. According to an after-action review, these operations"weakened the IDF's operational capabilities." Thus, when Israel's nose was more than a bit bloodied in the 2006 war with Hezbollah, IDF analysts and retired officers were quick – and not exactly incorrect – to blame the decaying effect of endless low-intensity warfare.

At the time, two general staff members, Major Generals Yishai Bar and Yiftach Ron-Tal, "warned that as a result of the preoccupation with missions in the territories, the IDF had lost its maneuverability and capability to fight in mountainous terrain." Van Creveld added that: "Among the commanders, the great majority can barely remember when they trained for and engaged in anything more dangerous than police-type operations."

Similar voices have sounded the alarm about the post-9/11 American military. Perhaps the loudest has been my fellow West Point History faculty alum, retired Colonel Gian Gentile. This former tank battalion commander and Iraq War vet described "America's deadly embrace of counterinsurgency" as a Wrong Turn . Specifically, he's argued that "counterinsurgency has perverted [the way of] American war," pushed the "defense establishment into fanciful thinking," and thus "atrophying [its] core fighting competencies."

Instructively, Gentile cited "The Israeli Defense Forces' recent [2006] experience in Lebanon There were many reasons for its failure, but one of them, is that its army had done almost nothing but [counterinsurgency] in the Palestinian territories, and its ability to fight against a strident enemy had atrophied." Maybe more salient was Gentile's other rejoinder that, historically, "nation-building operations conducted at gunpoint don't turn out well" and tend to be as (or more) bloody and brutal as other wars.

Fast forward a decade, and B?n Tre's ghost was born again in the matter-of-fact admission of the IDF's then chief of staff, General Mordecai Gur. Asked if, during its 1978 invasion of South Lebanon, Israel had bombed civilians "without discrimination," he fired back : "Since when has the population of South Lebanon been so sacred? They know very well what the terrorists were doing. . . . I had four villages in South Lebanon bombarded without discrimination." When pressed to confirm that he believed "the civilian population should be punished," Gur's retort was "And how!" Should it surprise us then, that 33 years later the concept was rebooted to flatten presumably (though this has been contested) booby-trapped villages in my old stomping grounds of Kandahar, Afghanistan?

In sum, Israel and America are senseless strategy-simpatico. It's a demonstrably disastrous two-way relationship. Our main exports have been guns – $142.3 billion worth since 1949 (significantly more than any other recipient) – and twin umbrellas of air defense and bottomless diplomatic top-cover for Israel's abuses. As to the top-cover export, it's not for nothing that after the U.S. House rubber-stamped – by a vote of 410-8 – a 2006 resolution (written by the Israel Lobby) justifying IDF attacks on Lebanese civilians, the "maverick" Republican Patrick Buchanan labeled the legislative body as " our Knesset ."

Naturally, Tel Aviv responds in kind by shipping America a how-to-guide for societal militarization, a built-in foreign policy script to their benefit, and the unending ire of most people in the Greater Middle East. It's a timeless and treasured trade – but it benefits neither party in the long run.

"Armies With Countries"

It was once said that Frederick the Great's 18th century Prussia, was "not a country with an army, but an army with a country." Israel has long been thus. It's probably still truer of them than us. The Israelis do, after all, have an immersive system of military conscription – whereas Americans leave the fighting, killing, and dying to a microscopic and unrepresentative Praetorian Guard of professionals. Nevertheless, since 9/11 – or, more accurately, 9/14/2001 – US politics, society, and culture have wildly militarized. To say the least, the outcomes have been unsatisfying: American troops haven't "won" a significant war 75 years. Now, the US has set appearances aside once and for all and " jumped the shark " towards the gimmick of full-throated imperialism.

There are, of course, real differences in scale and substance between America and Israel. The latter is the size of Massachusetts, with the population of New York City. Its "Defense Force" requires most of its of-age population to wage its offensive wars and perennial policing of illegally occupied Palestinians. Israeli society is more plainly " prussianized ." Yet in broader and bigger – if less blatant – ways, so is the post-AUMF United States. America-the-exceptional leads the world in legalized gunrunning and overseas military basing . Rather than the globe's self-styled " Arsenal of Democracy ," the US has become little more than the arsenal of arsenals. So, given the sway of the behemoth military-industrial-complex and recent Israelification of its political culture, perhaps it's more accurate to say America is a defense industry with a country – and not the other way around.

As for 17 year-old me, I didn't think I'd signed up for the Israeli Defense Force on that sunny West Point morning of July 2, 2001. And, for the first two months and 12 days of my military career – maybe I hadn't. I sure did serve in its farcical facsimile, though: fighting its wars for an ensuing 17 more years.

Yet everyone who entered the US military after September 14, 2001 signed up for just that. Which is a true tragedy.

This originally appeared at Popular Resistance .

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and contributing editor at Antiwar.com His work has appeared in the NY Times, LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Popular Resistance, and Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge . His forthcoming book, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War is now available for pre-order . Sjursen was recently selected as a 2019-20 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Fellow . Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet . Visit his professional website for contact info, to schedule speeches or media appearances, and access to his past work.

Copyright 2020 Danny Sjursen

[Sep 01, 2020] Are We Deliberately Trying to Provoke a Military Crisis With Russia by Ted Galen Carpenter

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... There has been a long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be unnecessarily provocative. ..."
"... Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that 11,900 troops would leave that country. ..."
"... Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian Su-27 jet fighter intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching the Russian coast. Yet another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still others have taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation. ..."
"... The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military presence along Russia's border, especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. ..."
"... I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring countries) aren't the best idea after all? ..."
"... they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please. ..."
"... the US leadership wants ether country to take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether country. ..."
"... The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When you stop they will stop. ..."
"... if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia. ..."
"... Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and aggression against Russia? ..."
"... The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all over the globe. ..."
"... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation - exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities). ..."
"... I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic, political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up. The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture them at scale quickly. ..."
"... Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed. ..."
"... Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties, accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners, etc, etc. ..."
"... I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too uncertain. ..."
"... We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself. ..."
"... Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy. ..."
"... The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael McFaul. ..."
Aug 28, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Tensions are becoming dangerous in Syria and on Russia's back doorstep. US soldiers stand near US and Russian military vehicles in the northeastern Syrian town of al-Malikiyah (Derik) at the border with Turkey, on June 3, 2020. (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

A dangerous vehicle collision between U.S and Russian soldiers in Northeastern Syria on Aug. 24 highlights the fragility of the relationship and the broader test of wills between the two major powers.

According to White House reports and a Russian video that went viral this week, it appeared that as the two sides were racing down a highway in armored vehicles, the Russians sideswiped the Americans, leaving four U.S. soldiers injured. It is but the latest clash as both sides continue their patrols in the volatile area. But it speaks of bigger problems with U.S. provocations on Russia's backdoor in Eastern Europe.

A sober examination of U.S. policy toward Russia since the disintegration of the Soviet Union leads to two possible conclusions. One is that U.S. leaders, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, have been utterly tone-deaf to how Washington's actions are perceived in Moscow. The other possibility is that those leaders adopted a policy of maximum jingoistic swagger intended to intimidate Russia, even if it meant obliterating a constructive bilateral relationship and eventually risking a dangerous showdown. Washington's latest military moves, especially in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, are stoking alarming tensions.

There has been a long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be unnecessarily provocative.

As if such steps were not antagonistic enough, both Bush and Obama sought to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The latter country is not only within what Russia regards as its legitimate sphere of influence, but within its core security zone. Even key European members of NATO, especially France and Germany, believed that such a move was unwise and blocked Washington's ambitions. That resistance, however, did not inhibit a Western effort to meddle in Ukraine's internal affairs to help demonstrators unseat Ukraine's elected, pro-Russia president and install a new, pro-NATO government in 2014.

Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that 11,900 troops would leave that country.

However, Esper made it clear that only 6,400 would return to the United States; the other nearly 5,600 would be redeployed to other NATO members in Europe. Indeed, of the 6,400 coming back to the United States, "many of these or similar units will begin conducting rotational deployments back to Europe." Worse, of the 5,600 staying in Europe, it turns out that at least 1,000 are going to Poland's eastern border with Russia.

Another result of the redeployment will be to boost U.S. military power in the Black Sea. Esper confirmed that various units would "begin continuous rotations farther east in the Black Sea region, giving us a more enduring presence to enhance deterrence and reassure allies along NATO's southeastern flank." Moscow is certain to regard that measure as another on a growing list of Black Sea provocations by the United States.

Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian Su-27 jet fighter intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching the Russian coast. Yet another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still others have taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation.

The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military presence along Russia's border, especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

The undeniable reality is that the United States and its NATO allies are crowding Russia; Russia is not crowding the United States. Washington's bumptious policies already have wrecked a once-promising bilateral relationship and created a needless new cold war with Moscow. If more prudent U.S. policies are not adopted soon, that cold war might well turn hot.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 850 articles on international affairs. His latest book is NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur (2019).


Tradcon 5 days ago • edited

I mean, I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring countries) aren't the best idea after all?

Mike P Tradcon 4 days ago

This is a very anti American article! Patriots know that where the U.S. gives political or economic ground Russia and other adversaries will fill the vacum with policies intended to destroy American peoeple. So no, it is not a bad idea to be involved in Syria and Ukraine in fact it is a very good idea.

northernobserver Mike P 4 days ago

The entire framing of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood as "pro American" and those who oppose them as "anti American" is delusional.
Russia is a weak state trying to maintain its natural spheres of influence along the Curzon line. Why has the State Department/ Pentagon decided to try and roll this back? How the F to they expect Russia to react. How would America react if a foreign power tried to turn Mexico into a strategic asset. So why is it ok to make Ukraine into a Nato member? It's reckless and ultimately it is pointless. Weakening Russia further serves little strategic purpose and potentially threatens to destabilize the Balkans and mid east with Turkish adventurism. What will America do if the Turks seize Rhodes under some pretext?

Syria is another case of State Department midwits not understanding the results of their regime change. What purpose does it serve to put a Sunni extremist government in Damascus. How hateful do you have to be to subject Syria's minorities to genocide at the hands of an ISIS sympathetic government? How do you delude yourself that such a regime will serve America's interests in the long run? So you can own Iran before the election? You are trading victory today for permanent loss tomorrow. It's insane.

Aen Elle northernobserver 4 days ago
How the F to they expect Russia to react.

Just like you, they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please. Also, since Turkey is a NATO member and as such an ally to the U.S. shouldn't you be cheering in good faith for Turkey and against Russia?

Bianca Aen Elle a day ago

You got that one. Because Turkey is a thorn in NATO side. It has massive economic interests in Russia, China and the rest of Asia. The "adventure" in Syria is coordinated with Russia to the last detail, while playacting tensions. US problem in Syria is not Russia or Turkey, but Russia AND Turkey.

As US is frowning at Egypt Al-Sisi , or Saudi MBS -- it is because they frown at Egypt AND Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia AND Russia.
Basically, countries nominally counted in OUR camp are frowned upon when collaborating with the ENEMY countries.
Our foreign policy is stuck in Middle East -- and cannot get unstuck. Cannot be better illustrated then Pompeo addressing Republican convention from Jerusalem.

The only way Russia can challenge encirclement is by challenging US in its home away from home -- Middle East. And creating new realities in the ground by collaborating with the countries in the region -- undermining monopoly.

And as the entire world is hurting from epidemic related economic setbacks, Russia and China are economies that are moving forward. And nobody in the Middle East can afford to ignore it.

J Villain northernobserver 4 days ago

I agree with you with the exception of Russia being weak. One day the US which has never seen any thing in advance will push Russia one time to many and find the Russian Army in Poland and Romania. That is if China doesn't take out some thing precious to the US in the mean time like a U2, aircraft carrier etc.

There are two things at play here. The first is the US leadership wants ether country to take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether country.

The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When you stop they will stop.

PJ London J Villain a day ago

I agree with your assessment except Russia will not put troops into any country without the express request from the legitimate government. They are not going into Poland and especially not Romania (Transnistria maybe) why would they? The countries do not have any resources that Russia wants. The only reason to put troops into Belarus is to maintain a distance between Poland and the borders.

Russia needs nothing from the rest of the world except trade. Un-coerced, free trade. This drives the US corporations crazy as no one will trade with the US anymore without coercion.

PS the same goes for China with the proviso that Taiwan is part of China and needs to be reabsorbed into the mainstream. It will take +20 years but China just keeps the pressure on until there will be no viable alternative.

Bianca northernobserver a day ago

It has never meant to serve American interests. Ever. Once you put it in perspective, it makes sense.

But if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia.

The problem for never satiated Zealots is the following -- regional powers in the Middle East are hitching their wagons to Eurasian economic engine. That is definitely true of Turkey, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia. The tales of Moslem Brotherhood are here to interpret something today from the iconography from the past. And to explain today what an entirely different set of leaders did -- be that few years ago or one hundred years ago. Same goes for iconography of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Communism, Socialism, authoritarianism, and other ISMS.

Those icons serve the same purpose as icons in religion or in cyber-space. You look at them, or you click -- and the story and explanation is ready made for your consumption. Time to watch actions -- not media iconography to tell us what is going on.

Tradcon Mike P 4 days ago

If we're being purely ideological here those with an overtly internationalist disposition (barring leftists) are those who want to be involved overseas, hardly ones to go on about national interest or pride. Its been a common stance associated with American Nationalism and Paleoconservatives to be anti-intervention, these people (of which I consider myself a part) can hardly be bashed for holding unpatriotic views.)

Russia has a declining population, and an economy smaller than that of Spain. Its hardly a threat and our involvement in Eastern Europe was relatively limited pre-2014 and even so the overall international balance of power hasn't shifted after Russian annexation of Crimea, and the Ukrainians proved quite capable of defending their nation (though not so capable as to end retake separatist strongholds.

Alexandr Kosenkov Mike P 3 days ago

Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and aggression against Russia? What ideological foundations does Russia have after 1991? Isn't Russia's actions a guerrilla war on the communications of the self-proclaimed "Empire of Good", which is pursuing a tough offensive policy? And is it not because the Russians support a significant part of Putin's initiatives (despite a number of Putin's obvious shortcomings) precisely because they have experience of cooperation with the "Empire of Good" in the 90s: give loans, corrupt officials and deputies, put Russian firms under control big American companies, and then just give orders from the White House.
PS. I beg your pardon my google english

Bianca Mike P a day ago

Another Zealot in Patriot garb. The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all over the globe.

kouroi 4 days ago • edited

It would be interesting to read the minds of the US pilots engaged in these activities. My guess is that the cognitive dissonance energy in those heads is equivalent to the biggest nuclear bomb ever exploded...

Vhailor 4 days ago

Hmmm... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation - exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities).

In a major crisis this could lead to a breaking point. What if some US adversary decides to double down and attack (directly or by proxy) US troops and the US will not be able to respond? A humiliating defeat combined with an exhausted public decidedly set against military adventures abroad could cause a rapid retrenchment and global withdrawal.

Kent Vhailor 4 days ago

I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic, political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up. The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture them at scale quickly.

The DOD today is only about personal political position, and grubbing tax-payer dollars for self-aggrandizement. In any real war with a real adversary, we wouldn't stand a chance.

Vhailor Kent 4 days ago

I wouldn't be so pessimistic regarding US military capabilities and I'm neither a US citizen or a fan of US global hegemony.

The US armed forces are made up of professionals. There are some universal advantages and disadvantages of such forces. A professional army is good at fighting wars but bad at controlling territory because of its limited size and higher costs-per-soldier. In order to control territory you need "boots on the ground" in great numbers, standing at checkpoints and patrolling the countryside. They didn't have to be trained to the level of Navy SEALS, for them it is enough if they can shoot straight and won't be scared from some fireworks and the US lacks such forces.

kouroi Vhailor 4 days ago

So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the Draft? Provide a pathway for US citizenship for any foreigner that joins, establishing a US Foreign Legion?

And then, how you'll have enough boots on the ground to pacify Russia or China. It took more than a month to establish and secure the beach heads in Bretagne in France in 1944. How do you think you can even get those boots to land in Russia or China, when you know that the ICBMs are going to start flying towards the continental US if something like this will ever happen?

Vhailor kouroi 4 days ago

So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the Draft?

It is no longer possible to introduce the draft in the US - even mentioning it would lead to social unrests.

Baruch Dreamstalker Vhailor 4 days ago

The idea of a soft-mandatory year of service with a military option has been floated. It generates neither unrest nor interest.

alan Vhailor 21 hours ago

Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed.

Scaathor Kent 4 days ago

In addition, those gold-plated weapon systems often do not work as advertised. Look how the multi-billion IADS of the Saudis couldn't protect their refinery complex from a cruise missile attack from Yemen. Look at the embarrassing failures of the LCS and Zumwalt ship classes, and the endless problems with the Ford CVN. The F35 is proving a ginormous boondoggle that will massively enrich LM shareholders but will do squat for US military capabilities.

kouroi Vhailor 4 days ago

It will go on as long as the US is able to benefit of its present ability to print money and have the world use that money...

Baruch Dreamstalker William Toffan 15 hours ago

The alternative is an incumbent who runs against the condition of his own country as an outsider. It take an idiot to support that.

PJ London Feral Finster a day ago

He already did and the Military ignored him.
He backtracked with endless excuses and conditionals.
https://www.nbcnews.com/new...
**
Bill Clinton once reportedly told senior White House reporter Sarah McClendon, "Sarah, there's a government inside the government, and I don't control it."
**
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
– Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
**
Do you really think that the adults with so much to lose would allow an idiot like Trump (or Clinton or Obama or Bush) to actually run things?

Feral Finster PJ London a day ago

And then, like the cuck he is, Trump knuckled under. "I like oil!"

Dan Greene bumbershoot 3 days ago

Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties, accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners, etc, etc.

I'll repeat: Focus on what Trump does, not what he says, and then total up the pro-Russia and anti-Russia actions of this administration and see what that reveals.

peter mcloughlin 4 days ago

A danger with this "new Cold War" is the assumption it will end like the first one – peacefully. If this is the thinking among policy-makers we are in a very perilous situation. History shows that fatal miscalculations contributed to the First World War, and as a consequence the second. Today there is no room for miscalculation, which will set off unstoppable escalation into a third.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...

I Don't Matter 4 days ago

Russians deliberately repeatedly ram an American vehicle, but I'm sure it's all our fault. Shouldn't have worn that skirt I guess.
Before y'all armchair Putin experts say all your loving things: you have nothing to contribute unless you speak fluent Russian. I watched the video taken and published by the Russians and it was pretty clear what they were doing.

Feral Finster I Don't Matter 4 days ago

The United States is not invited in Syria or wanted. Russian troops are in Syria at the invitation of the legitimate and recognized government.

Whatever happens to American troops there is deserved.

dba12123 . I Don't Matter 3 days ago • edited

Something critical is being missed entirely. The United States has invaded Syria without a mandate from the UN. Its' president has explicitly stated that it is the intention of the US to take Syria's oil. Both are violations of international law. Any hostile action taken against the illegal US presence in Syria is justifiable as self defense. While the US presence in Syria is illegal, Russia's presence is not. Russia was invited into Syria by the UN recognized Syrian government to assist it in defending against the US regime change by Al Qaeda proxy operation..

hooly 4 days ago

establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

What would happen if China or Russia established bases in the Caribbean and Latin America? Trump joked about selling Puerto Rico, what if the Chinese bought it?

L RNY 4 days ago

If the Israeli's have a problem with Russia being in Syria then Israel should deal with it. Its not our problem and Russia is not our enemy. Infact India is bringing closer relations between Russia and Japan. Which do you want? Russian antagonism because Israel doesn't want Russians in Syria or Russian partnership with India, Japan, Australia and the US dealing with China? Remember....you could spend 1000 years in the middle east and not make a dent in the animosities between peoples there...so one is a futile endeaver...while the other has great benefit.

Carlton Meyer 4 days ago

Note that Russian soldiers are in Syria at the request of its government to help fend off foreign invaders. The American troops are there illegally, with no UN or even Congressional authorization.

Also note the USA risks another Cuban missile crisis by withdrawing from the INF treaty after illegally building missile launch complexes in Romania and Poland that can hit Russia with nuclear cruise missiles.

The USA did much more than "meddle" in Ukraine. The Obama/Biden team openly organized a coup to overthrow its elected President because he didn't want to join NATO and the EU.

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FnW7lNABfDVk%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DnW7lNABfDVk&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FnW7lNABfDVk%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=21d07d84db7f4d66a55297735025d6d1&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

Hrant Carlton Meyer 4 days ago

Is that guy in the middle of the left seated Vlad Klitschko? I great boxer no doubt, but also known for his stunning stupidity. Is he part of the new Ukrainian political elite? Poor Ukraine.

Aen Elle Hrant 4 days ago

Klichko has been the mayor of Ukrainian capital city Kiev since the victory of Euromaidan in 2014 until present day.

longlance 4 days ago

Russia has been threatened & attacked by military powers to its West, East & South for 1000 years. Russia is now lean & mean, but still standing.

Baruch Dreamstalker 4 days ago • edited

A Russian vehicle sideswipes an American vehicle, injuring two US soldiers, and that's an American provocation? An American spy plane claims to be in international waters, and you tack in a "supposedly" in that sentence? "Violating" a tacit promise, really? Russia aggression against Georgia and Crimea is OK because Sphere of Influence? This article is loaded with Blame America First crap usually associated with the Left (much to this liberal's disgust). Never expected to find it here.

Yes, the expansion of NATO east must have looked to Russia like something coming at their borders entirely too fast. I thought it was a terrible idea at the time, and wrote it off to the wheels of a fifty-year-old bureaucracy not knowing how to slow down. Your eye-straining gaze at the tea-leaves for Deeper State motives is unpersuasive, even without your odious prejudices.

kouroi Baruch Dreamstalker 4 days ago

Maybe some play of Rashomon would be in order here. That is your perspective.

Now your honor, what I have seen is that Georgia attacked first and hoped to occupy a certain area that Russian Federation was protecting, As a side comment, I have to point to an Orwellian use of the word "aggressive" and "attack". It seems that anything that the US cannot wantonly control or bomb is inherently aggressive and attacking either directly or indirectly the "rules based order".

Crimea had Russian assets that became endangered. Crimea was part of Russia until 1954, when was donated in an unsanctioned manner to Ukraine. The majority Russian population in Crimea has been persecuted by the Ukrainian state since at least 1994. The Euromaidan would have exacerbated that. A referendum was carried on and just considering ethnic lines, Russians won in their desire to re-unite with the Russian Federation. There aren't many legal arguments against that referendum and that process, if one looks for them...

So the above perspectives have nothing to do with just "sphere of influence" but with direct core interests of the Russian state and its core security...

The deep state is a tool that is trying to fulfill one objective: integration of Russian economy under the control of US and its Oligarchy. Otherwise it will always be a threat. A Nationalist, democratic (but not oligarchic) and sovereign Russia will always be considered an enemy of the world hegemon...

And the provocation is the actual presence in Syria of US troops. Ramming the US military vehicle is not a provocation from Russians, it is a simple eviction notification. End of story!

Hannibal Jubal 4 days ago

Isn't it just amazing how this writer gets to turn an incident of provocation by Russian soldiers into a story of persistent provocation by America. That is remarkable dexterity even for this paper. I am used to them suggesting that we should leave the people of Eastern Europe to the tender mercies of the whims and wishes of a dictator in Moscow - because they are in his backyard. But to be able to switch from that incident to their regular theme is an achievement one can recognize, though not respect. The people of those countries should have a choice about who they associate, and they certainly have a right not to align with people they fear. Calling us for not respecting he rights of other people to decide their fates is right and proper. I enthusiastically support this paper when they do. But when they turn right around and castigate us for not respecting Russia's right to do it - I am flabbergasted.

Dan Greene Hannibal Jubal 3 days ago

"Isn't it just amazing how this writer gets to turn an incident of provocation by Russian soldiers into a story of persistent provocation by America."

How do you know it's an incident of provocation by Russian soldiers? It almost certainly is almost the exact opposite.

Dan Greene 3 days ago • edited

This piece spends too much time re-hashing everything Russia-US since 1990 and fails to focus on the key current issues.

The vehicle incidents in Syria are distinct from the European issue -- see below in this post -- that is generating some of the other tensions the author lists. Syria is really part of the larger Middle East issue.

His brief summary of the latest Syria mishap is inadequate to convey what actually happened.

If you actually look at the video, it does NOT appear to be the case that a Russian vehicle simply "sideswiped" a US vehicle. It appears that the US was maintaining a checkpoint on a road that in effect blocked Russian passage. Given the terrain, the Russians could of course bypass such a checkpoint, which is what they appear to have done. Then, however, other US vehicles left the checkpoint and attempted to block and turn back the Russian bypass movement, and this led to the collision. So the incident is part of a larger US policy to impede Russian operations in NE Syria.

Almost two years ago, Trump ordered US forces out of Syria, and Russia, in agreement with that plan, sent patrols to the NE to ensure that provisions of an stability agreement with Turkey and the Kurds were maintained. But then Trump was almost immediately convinced--by whom is not clear, but ultimately Israel in all probability--to do a 180 and keep US forces in NE Syria, the superficial rationale being to take control of oil, the kind of pirate operation that Trump likes. In fact, the goal of those who influence Trump is to keep Syria weak and unable to rebuild with the expectation that Assad can still be overthrown at some future point. This is the desire of Israel and its operatives in the US.

Trump's zag after the zig of planned withdrawal left the US-Russian understanding in chaos. Now both the US AND the Russians were operating in NE Syria. And over time the US has become more and more aggressive about impeding Russian operations. The Russians claim--credibly--that we are demanding that they, in moving their patrols up to the area of the Syria-Turkey border area not use the M4 highway, the main and direct route and instead follow a secondary route that circuitously follows the border. The Russians don't accept that demand. And the vehicle incidents that we are seeing are the outcome of that disagreement. The Russians are driving up Highway 4 and when they get to the US checkpoint are bypassing and then continuing up the highway. We are aggressively trying to deter them from that route choice.

Not sure why this article does not go into detail on this issue in order to clarify it.

Much of the other stuff the author is talking about here--intrusive air ops in the Black Sea, etc--is really a separate, European issue. The US is highly concerned about the economic interactions between Russia and Europe--especially the big economies of Western Europe and most especially Germany. We are worried that over time Russian-European economic integration will erode our strategic control and dominance over Europe in general.

Hence, we are making common cause with the anti-Russian elements in "the New Europe," i.e., Eastern Europe to try, in essence, to place a barrier between Russia and Western Europe, playing off Poland, the Baltics and Romania, among others, against Russia, Germany, France et al. Moving more US forces into Poland and the so-called "Black Sea Region"; impeding Nord Stream 2 and other Russian pipeline initiatives; indulging in recurrent anti-German propaganda for not maintaining a more robust anti-Russian military posture; fomenting (behind the scenes) the recent disturbances in Belarus; and promotion of the so-called "Three Seas Initiative" intended to weld Eastern and Central Europe together into a reliable tool of US policy are all part of this plan to retain US strategic control of Europe over the long term.

That's what the heightened tensions in Europe are about.

As I said, the Syria issue, part of the larger Middle East struggle, is separate from the parallel struggle for mastery in Europe.

It's all an important topic, but this article doesn't really capture the salient points.

Dan Greene Hannibal Jubal 3 days ago • edited

You're living in a dreamland.

And you're playing word games. Syria's oil is effectively under US control. Yes, we are deriving strategic benefit from it in that we are denying it to the Syrian government in order to further destabilize it. It's not a good policy, but the policy does benefit from denying Syria its oil.

The problem is that most of the oil is on Arab land, not Kurdish land, and the Arabs of the Northeast are now realigning themselves with Assad, so holding on to the oil is likely to get more difficult in the future.

I have no idea what you mean by "slander." Guess that means truths you find inconvenient. Sorry--not in the business of coddling the faint of heart. Trump likes the idea of taking resources which he imagines to be payment for services we have rendered--like leaving the country in a state of ruin. He talked about Iraqi oil that way too, but taking that would be much harder.

Time for you to stop dismissing every reality you don't like as unpatriotic.

dba12123 . Hannibal Jubal 3 days ago

The "Assad regime" is the UN recognized government of Syria. That is the only entity entitled to the country's resources. How is it "the property of the Syrian nation" if the Syrian government and its people no longer have access to it? To whom is the oil being sold? Who is receiving the proceeds of the oil sales?

Here are some of Trump's own words with respect to Syria's oil. "I like oil. We are keeping the oil." 4/11/2019. "The US is in Syria solely for the oil." "We are keeping the oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for oil." "The US military is in Syria only for oil." What part of Trump's public assertion that "We are keeping the oil" are you having difficulty in understanding? How can you say the US "did not take possession of the oil" when Trump could not have been more explicit in saying precisely the opposite? Do you not comprehend that the US presence in Syria has no mandate either from the UN or from the US Congress. Do you not understand that the US presence in Syria is illegal under international law? Do you not understand that "Keeping the oil" is a violation of international law? Your post is one of the most ridiculous I have even read.

Dan Greene Hannibal Jubal 2 days ago • edited

1. It's quite clear from the video that the US had set up a checkpoint on the road at left in the video. (Indeed, we are open about the fact that we are doing so in general in NE Syria.) And it's equally clear that Russian vehicles are seen bypassing those checkpoints. The encounter between US and Russian vehicles takes place off the road. There is only one logical interpretation of what happened. What is your alternative explanation?

2. "No one reading this can believe that Eastern Europeans have genuine cause to fear Russia, or that these countries continually request more military and political involvement than we are willing to provide or that we are not inducing them to do anything or manipulating them."

First of all, there are no current indications of any Russian intent to do anything in regard to Eastern Europe. Yes, one can understand the history, which is why there is anti-Russian sentiment in Eastern Europe, but aside perhaps from the Baltic states in their unique geographic position, there is no country that has any basis in reality to worry about Russian aggression in the present.

Of course, this does not stop the Poles from doing exactly that. And perhaps the Romanians to a much lesser extent. So yes, there is fear in a few key countries based on past history, Poland being the keystone of the whole thing, and yes, we are indeed manipulating that fear in an attempt to block/undermine any economic integration between Germany and Russia. We are also trying to use the "Three Seas Initiative" to block Chinese commercial and tech penetration of Eastern Europe--5G and their plan to rebuild the port of Trieste to service Central and NE Europe.

Do you actually believe Russia, which has lately been cutting its defense budget, is actually going to invade Europe? That really is a fantasy. The only military operations they will take are to prevent further expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Belarus. The real game today is commercial and tech competition. Putin knows it would be disastrous for Russia to start a war with NATO. Not sure why that's hard for you to see.

Your notion of the Russian threat--as it exists today--is wildly exaggerated.

Dr.Diprospan 3 days ago

Once President Putin remarked that there are forces in the United States trying to use Russia for internal political struggle. He added that we will nevertheless try not to be drawn into these confrontations.

A scene from a Hollywood action movie rises before my eyes, when two heroes of the film are fighting and a circular saw is spinning nearby, and each of the heroes is trying to shove a part of the enemy's body under this saw.

The relationship between Russian and American servicemen, I would compare with two hockey teams, when the tough behavior of the players on the ice does not mean that the players of one team would be happy with the death of the entire opposing team, say in some kind of plane crash, since the presence of a strong opponent is a necessary condition for getting a good salary.

Still, I would not completely deny the possibility of a "hot war".

Since the times of the Roman Empire, the West of Europe has been trying to take control of the territory of Europe, Eurasia, and Eurasia, in turn, dreams of mastering the technologies of the West.

The defeat of the 3rd Reich provided the Soviet Union with a breakthrough in the nuclear industry and space...

It's hard to imagine that Russia is capable of defeating NATO, but I can imagine that in the current situation, President Putin can offer China to build military bases in western Russia for a million Chinese servicemen, for 100 thousand on the Chukchi Peninsula, for 500 thousand on Sakhalin...

The extra money for renting military bases in a coronavirus crisis will not hurt anyone.

stevek9 3 days ago • edited

Of all the things about Hillary Clinton to despise, her selfish attempt to explain her loss, and to attack the President (to whom she never conceded the election!) by blaming Russia, is at the top of the list. To generate a completely unnecessary conflict with a nuclear super-power that could burn this country to ashes in minutes, out of personal vindictiveness, ... is lower than it can get.

Denmark002 3 days ago

We are totally messing with fire... we will need Europe but Russia as well to defeat the Chinese.

Dan Greene LostForWords 2 days ago • edited

I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too uncertain.

We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself.

We thought we were dealing with the main threats to our global hegemony sequentially--Russia "defeated" in the Cold War, and then on to a defeat of "militant Islam" in the Greater Middle East and finally to a showdown with China. But now, the sequencing has fallen apart, and we're trying to prosecute all three simultaneously.

We're in serious trouble.

Ram2017 LostForWords a day ago

Hizbollah arose as a defensive militia because of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It is not a terrorist group even though labelled so by the US.

William H Warrick III MD a day ago

You have inverted the facts. The video evidence shows the Americans side-swiped the Russian vehicle and claimed "American soldiers had 'concussions'". A concussion requires loss of consciousness or significant changes in mental function. In football, you have your "Bell rung". You can't add 2+2 correctly. There is no evidence to support that.

Mark Thomason a day ago

No, we are just trying to outdo each other with "Putin-under-the-bed" and all-powerful-Putin causing all the world's evils.

Jamie a day ago

Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy.

Along with Dems, I also blame Putin; he bribed Hillary millions for uranium -- that doesn't lend to good relations.

alan a day ago

The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael McFaul.

[Aug 31, 2020] US foreign policy elite wants Biden detests Trump because President failed to launch new NATO missions to justify its existence by George Szamuely

Notable quotes:
"... The "humanitarian intervention" in Libya having ended in debacle and war crimes (including the execution of Muammar Gaddafi) in which NATO was clearly involved, it was back to the old Cold War mission of "containment." ..."
Aug 31, 2020 | www.rt.com

US foreign policy elite wants Biden & detests Trump because President failed to launch new NATO missions to justify its existence

One reason for the extraordinary hostility of the foreign policy insiders' brigade toward President Trump is that he has not wasted his time conjuring up new missions to justify NATO's continued existence.

Instead, he has promised to withdraw 12,000 US troops from Germany and, to add insult to injury, he has demanded that NATO member states increase their financial contributions toward the upkeep of the military alliance ostensibly there to "protect" them.

This is sacrilege to a foreign policy elite that have spent the last 70 years worshipping at the altar of NATO.

"US troops aren't stationed around the world as traffic cops or welfare caseworkers -- they're restraining the expansionary aims of the world's worst regimes, chiefly China and Russia," Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., fumed.

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice expressed alarm about the "continued erosion of confidence in our leadership within NATO, and more efforts that call into question our commitment, and more signals to the authoritarians within NATO and Russia itself that this whole institution is vulnerable."

Trump, according to Nicholas Burns, former US ambassador to NATO and current adviser to Joe Biden, has cast America's military allies primarily as a drain on the US Treasury, and he has aggressively criticized Washington's true friends in Europe -- democratic leaders such as France's President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel -- even as he treats Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and other 'authoritarians' around the world with unusual tact.

Seventy former Republican national security officials recently issued a statement accusing Trump of having "disgraced America's global reputation and undermined our nation's moral and diplomatic influence." And -- horror of horrors! -- Trump "has called NATO 'obsolete.' "

https://platform.twitter.com

Not only has Trump failed to spell out a new mission for NATO, the one mission of sorts he has come up with -- extraction of more funds from NATO member-states -- is calculated to cause mutual recriminations within the alliance. Trump regularly boasts that he has cajoled NATO to cough up an additional $130 billion a year "and it's going to be $400 billion," he recently warned.

To the denizens of Washington's foreign policy think-tanks, pressuring NATO member states to come up with more money is a dangerous business. It could have the undesirable effect of forcing them to wonder whether devoting scarce resources to NATO -- particularly now following the Covid economic downturn -- is a sound investment.

ALSO ON RT.COM Caitlin Johnstone: The modern US war machine kills more like a python than a tiger NATO desperate to find reasons to justify its existence

It is no secret that ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, NATO has been desperately searching for a reason to justify its existence. The alliance has expanded its membership from 16 to 30 in 20 years, while failing to put forward a convincing reason, other than inertia, for staying in business.

To be sure, there were and are threats -- cybersecurity, mass migration, human trafficking, narcotics, nuclear proliferation, international terrorism -- but it was never clear how a narrowly-focused military alliance would be able to address them unilaterally. NATO has thus been forced to engage in some vigorous head-scratching.

READ MORE Let them eat yellowcake: As Powell backs Dems, warmongers seek to regain full control of US policy, regardless of what voters want

During the 1990s, we had the "humanitarian intervention" craze. This led to the NATO bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and 1995 and, more horrifically, to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Neither operation achieved anything that could not have been achieved years earlier -- and without the use of force.

In 2001, NATO got in on the Global War on Terror. After 9/11 NATO, for the first time in its history, invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, declaring that the terrorist attack on the US was an attack against every NATO member.

When the United States retaliated by invading Afghanistan in October 2001, NATO was on hand to assist. In December, it established something called the International Security Assistance Force, the nebulous mission of which was to "assist the Afghan Government in exercising and extending its authority and influence across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance."

Next came Iraq. Despite the vocal opposition of France and Germany to the 2003 invasion, NATO, in no time got involved. In 2004, it established NATO Training Mission-Iraq, the aim of which was supposedly to "assist in the development of Iraqi security forces training structures and institutions so that Iraq can build an effective and sustainable capability that addresses the needs of the nation." One of its tasks was to train the Iraqi police. However, as WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs disclosure revealed, Iraq's finely-trained police conducted horrific torture on detainees. Neither NATO's Afghanistan nor its Iraqi mission covered itself in glory.

With the Democrats returning to power in Washington in 2009, NATO was back in the "humanitarian intervention" business. Its bombing of Libya in 2011 destroyed government, law and public order, institutions that before the intervention had ensured that the people of Libya were able to go about their daily lives free from the fear of death, not to mention the spectacle of slave markets.

The "humanitarian intervention" in Libya having ended in debacle and war crimes (including the execution of Muammar Gaddafi) in which NATO was clearly involved, it was back to the old Cold War mission of "containment."

Following the February 21, 2014, coup in Kiev and the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia, NATO's new mission was very much like its old. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen promised that: "We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water, and more readiness on the land. For example, air policing aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region. Allied ships will deploy to the Baltic Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere."

Six years on, it's clear that there simply aren't enough armed conflicts in the world to justify the continued existence, not to mention huge expense, of such a gargantuan military organization. NATO has therefore resorted to seizing on the latest fashionable social and cultural issues to prove how up-to-date it is.

ALSO ON RT.COM NATO's appalling failure in Afghanistan has fuelled a drug explosion across Europe More NATO as solution to Climate change?

For example, NATO has added "climate change" to its repertoire. NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept declared that "Key environmental and resource constraints, including health risks, climate change, water scarcity and increasing energy needs will further shape the future security environment in areas of concern to NATO and have the potential to significantly affect NATO planning and operations."

One would have thought that the most effective way NATO could contribute to minimizing global warming would be to cut back on armaments, military exercises and naval and air patrols. But no, apparently the solution to "climate change" is more NATO, not less.

READ MORE Turkey will be the death of NATO – its recent clash with fellow member France off the coast of Libya is an early symptom

Then came the issue gender equality. "Achieving gender equality is our collective task. And NATO is doing its part," said Mari Skåre, the NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, in 2013. In March 2016, on International Women's Day, NATO held a so-called "Barbershop Conference" on gender equality. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg took the opportunity to declare that gender equality was a frightfully important issue for the alliance because "NATO is a values-based organization and none of its fundamental values -- individual liberties, democracy, human rights and the rule of law -- work without equality .We learned in Afghanistan and in the Balkans that by integrating gender within our operations, we make a tangible difference to the lives of women and children".

Definitely a "tangible difference to the lives of women and children" : As a result of NATO's bombing campaigns in Yugoslavia and Libya, thousands of women and children lost their lives. In Libya, for example, NATO helped deliver perhaps thousands of women into the hands of ISIS.

This is how Human Rights Watch in 2017 described the record of ISIS rule in Libya:

"In the first half of 2016, fighters loyal to ISIS controlled the central coastal town of Sirte and subjected residents to a rigid interpretation of Sharia law that included public floggings, amputation of limbs, and public lynchings, often leaving the victims' corpses on display."

Trump's failure to articulate a new mission for NATO, combined with his desire to extract more and more funds from the 29 member nations, puts the military alliance in a very vulnerable position. With no new mission and no obvious threats to Europe on the horizon -- or at least none that NATO seems capable of addressing -- its member states, sooner or later, are bound to question the value of belonging to an organization, with such high membership fees and so few benefits. No wonder the foreign-policy cognoscenti are fulminating and praying for a Biden presidency.

One of the reasons the foreign policy crowd detests Trump is that he hasn't wasted his time trying to invent some "new mission" for NATO. Where Trump differs from his predecessors is that he hasn't bothered trying to invent some new reason for NATO's continued existence: Clinton had Yugoslavia, Bush Afghanistan & Iraq, Obama Libya. Trump hasn't identified any "new mission" for NATO. Maybe because there isn't one.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! Michael Chan 3 hours ago Presidentials elections in the US are a joke. The voters are given two choices: either Trump or Biden. Both are bad. They can only choose between who they think is less bad, knowing full well that they will regret their choice the minute they leave the voting booth. So, half of the voters will choose not to vote. And it seems that one of the two candidates will be happy if more than 90% of the voters choose not to vote. Reply 2 CHEVI789 Michael Chan 2 hours ago You are lead to believe you have a choice, the fact is they are the same evil that both are controlled by the same group. Reply T. Agee Kaye 4 hours ago Good article. If true, NATO will want a doozy of a conflict to make up for lost time / earnings. Reply 2 MarkG1964 4 hours ago The problem is that the Trump administration has failed everywhere. Talks with North Korea have stalled, and even President Moon in South Korea is losing patience with US policy. Sanctions and tariffs against China have failed miserably, as it's left a record number of US farmers facing bankruptcy, has not helped to reduce the US trade deficit with China, or persuaded US manufacturers to relocate back to the US. In Venezuela, every attempt to replace President Maduro with Gaido has fallen short. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria continue unabated, with no end in sight. Whether it's Biden or Trump, the US can't afford another four years of the same. Reply Jeff_P 5 hours ago The purpose of NATOs existence is to provide the US with cannon fodder for its hegemonic designs. Nothing else. Reply 1 Bob 3 hours ago the USA should let Europe defend itself. Save us taxpayers billions of dollars Reply Krieger 3 hours ago NATO = Neocon America's Terrorist Organization Reply 1 CHEVI789 2 hours ago Now tell me if america is not the tyrant and dictator of the world. I really feel sorry for the good americans who's name is tainted by the evil running their country, being the you know who. Reply shadowlady 1 hour ago Clearly the old farts in Washington DC are still stuck in the Cold War era, the US taxpayers can't continue to police the world with US military.

George Szamuely is a senior research fellow at Global Policy Institute (London) and author of Bombs for Peace: NATO's Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Follow him on Twitter @GeorgeSzamuely

[Aug 09, 2020] NYT as an amplifier for the mislabeled US 'Intelligence' Agencies rumor and baseless claims about foreign interferences in US elections

The first and the most important fact that there will no elections in November -- both candidates represent the same oligarchy, just slightly different factions of it.
Look like NYT is controlled by Bolton faction of CIA. They really want to overturn the results of 2020 elections and using Russia as a bogeyman is a perfect opportunity to achieve this goal.
Neocons understand very well that it is MIC who better their bread, so amplifying rumors the simplify getting additional budget money for intelligence agencies (which are a part of MIC) is always the most desirable goal.
Notable quotes:
"... But a new assessment says China would prefer to see the president defeated, though it is not clear Beijing is doing much to meddle in the 2020 campaign to help Joseph R. Biden Jr. ..."
"... The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's confidence in our democratic process." ..."
"... But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences", "increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections? ..."
"... But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn? ..."
"... Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any evidence. ..."
"... Is there a secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S. people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China? ..."
"... If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them? ..."
"... Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off their budget. ..."
"... Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose. ..."
Aug 08, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
No Evidence Of Foreign Interference In U.S. Elections, U.S. Intelligence Says

Yesterday the mislabeled U.S. 'Intelligence' Agencies trotted out more nonsense claims about foreign interferences in U.S. elections.

The New York Times sensationally headlines:

Russia Continues Interfering in Election to Try to Help Trump, U.S. Intelligence Says
But a new assessment says China would prefer to see the president defeated, though it is not clear Beijing is doing much to meddle in the 2020 campaign to help Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But when one reads the piece itself one finds no fact that would support the 'Russia Continues Interfering' statement:

Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.

At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.

But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike Mr. Trump, the officials said.

The assessment, included in a statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading carefully, reflecting the political heat generated by previous findings.

The authors emphasize the scaremongering hearsay from "officials briefed on the intelligence" - i.e. Democratic congress members - about Russia but have nothing to back it up.

When one reads the statement by Evanina one finds nothing in it about Russian attempts to interfere in the U.S. elections. Here is the only 'evidence' that is noted:

For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption – including through publicizing leaked phone calls – to undermine former Vice President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social media and Russian television.

After a request from Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, a Ukrainian parliamentarian published Ukrainian evidence of Biden's very real interference in the Ukraine. Also: Some guest of a Russian TV show had an opinion. How is either of those two items 'evidence' of Russian interference in U.S. elections?

The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's confidence in our democratic process."

But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences", "increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections?

As a recent piece in Foreign Affairs noted :

The mainstream view in the U.S. media and government holds that the Kremlin is waging a long-haul campaign to undermine and destabilize American democracy. Putin wants to see the United States burn, and contentious elections offer a ready-made opportunity to fan the flames.

But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn?

Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any evidence.

Even the NYT writers have to admit that there is nothing there:

The release on Friday was short on specifics, ...

and

Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments, and steer clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.

How do 'intelligence' agencies know Russian, Chinese or Iranian 'intentions'. Is there a secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S. people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China?

If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them?

Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off their budget.

Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose.

Posted by b on August 8, 2020 at 18:08 UTC | Permalink

[Aug 08, 2020] -No Difference Between John Bolton, Brian Hook Or Elliott Abrams-- Iran FM -

Aug 08, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

"No Difference Between John Bolton, Brian Hook Or Elliott Abrams": Iran FM


by Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2020 - 22:45 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

"There's no difference between John Bolton, Brian Hook or Elliott Abrams," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet with the hashtag #BankruptUSPolicy on Friday.

"When U.S. policy concerns Iran, American officials have been biting off more than they can chew. This applies to Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump and their successors," Mousavi added.

Indeed in perhaps one of the greatest symbols or representations of the contradictions and absurdity inherent in US foreign policy of the past few decades, and a supreme irony that can't be emphasized enough: the new US envoy to Iran who will oversee Pompeo's 'maximum pressure' campaign remains the most publicly visible face of the 1980's Iran-Contra affair .

Elliott Abrams has been named to the position after Brian Hook stepping down. This means the man who will continue to push for the extension of a UN arms embargo against Iran once himself was deeply involved in illegally selling weapons to Iran and covering it up .

Most famously, or we should say infamously, Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in 1991 following years of the Iran-Contra scandal engulfing the Reagan administration; however, he was also pardoned by outgoing president George H.W. Bush at around the same time.

"Pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1992, Abrams was a pivotal figure in the foreign-policy scandal that shook the Reagan administration, lying to Congress about his knowledge of the plot to covertly sell weapons to the Khomeini government and use the proceeds to illegally fund the right-wing Contras rebel group in Nicaragua ," NY Mag reviews.

Some are noting this heightens the chances that Washington could get dragged into a war involving Israel and Iran.

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Recall too that Abrams has been Trump's point man for ousting Maduro from Venezuela, and it appears he'll remain in the post of special envoy for Venezuela as well.

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The Grayzone journalist, Anya Parampil, who has frequently reported from Venezuela, alleged this week that Abrams will "try and destroy Venezuela and Iran at the same time".

me name=

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Wild Bill Steamcock , 14 hours ago

Abrams is a disgrace. This Administration should be dying in it's own shame bringing this swine back into government.

He's a leach. He's about lining his own pockets. He can't even own a .22 single shot, yet he's shaping international policy.

This country is dead. And the fact Trump has democrat and zionist Kushner as advisor, bringing in guys like Bolton and Abrams, Reince Priebus, H.R. McMaster and that Ukranian pet goblin of his, in not firing Comey et. al day 1 means he's not the answer. Face it.

And to be fair, it doesn't matter anymore who is POTUS. It hasn't really mattered in quite some time. The Plan rolls along.

Kinskian , 15 hours ago

Trump is a clumsy and transparent Zionist stooge.

PT , 14 hours ago

Gotta admit, if you're going to have a Zionist stooge then you are better off having a clumsy and transparent one.

Dank fur Kopf , 14 hours ago

Elliott Abrams is a moron. He's been running the exact same stupid coup strategy for decades, and can't conceive of a world where the enemy has worked out how to defeat that.

Venezuela was set to be US foreign policies most embarrassing failure--but maybe Iran will be worse.

Dank fur Kopf , 14 hours ago

Let's predict what Abrams will attempt:

Running out of the US/UK embassies, Abrams will attempt to identify a potential alternative leader who is corrupt and controllable. They'll throw political support behind this false leader, and try and find enough military to support him. Then, protests in the streets, and the small faction of the military--supported by foreign forces--will attempt to establish control.

Counter: China and Russia will import anti-coup specialists. Individuals in the Iranian military will pretend to be on board claiming to have thousands at call, and when the false leader gives the call, they won't answer. All the conspirators will be caught out on the street, and have to flee to embassies for political asylum. Like what happened in Venezuela recently, and Turkey in 2016. This will allow Iran to do a purge of all the real threats (remembering that Iran has the death penalty for sedition), and give them enough justification to end diplomatic missions in the country that are being used as launch pads.

[Aug 01, 2020] This withdrawal of American troops and personnel from Germany points to the direction of European long-term decline in importance, as it seems the USA is opting for a more aggressive model against the Russian Federation. Either it believes the Russian Federation will fall soon (after Putin's death) or it is giving up Europe altogether

Aug 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jul 31 2020 18:08 utc | 16

AFRICOM confirms HQ is leaving Stuttgart, German defense minister says US withdrawal is 'regrettable'

USA's shift to the Western Pacific (Australia) is taking shape. This withdrawal of American troops and personnel from Germany points to the direction of European long-term decline in importance, as it seems the USA is opting for a more aggressive, less in-depth model against the Russian Federation. Either it believes the Russian Federation will fall soon (after Putin's death) or it is giving up Europe altogether. Both scenarios imply in Germany's (the EU) decline.

[Jul 30, 2020] Bolton is a typical crazy neocon who wants to dominate the world

Jul 30, 2020 | www.amazon.com

Pseudo D 3.0 out of 5 stars , June 24, 2020

superhawk

Ambassador John Bolton hinted that he doesn't like being called a hawk, since foreign policy labels are simplistic.

But first of all, he labeled libertarian Sen. Rand Paul an isolationist, rather than say, a non- interventionist. And after nearly 500 pages (all but the epilogue), what you will absorb is absolutely the worldview of a geopolitical hawk. He is not technically a neoconservative (like, say, Paul Wolfowitz) because the latter were more focused on nation building and spreading democracy. Bolton sees what he's promoting as defense, but it requires a constant offense.

Bolton is very bright, as Jim Baker noted decades ago, and very well-read, even endorsing his fellow Baltimorean and my teacher Steve Vicchio's book on Lincoln's faith. But his intelligence is all put into an ideological reading of situations. As Aristotle would put it, the problem is not lack of theoretical wisdom, but the deficiency in practical wisdom and prudential judgment. Certainly there are bad actors in the world, and vigilance is required. But when is aggressive action called for, and when is it better to go with diplomacy? In this book, I find few cases of such restraint. For Bolton, it seems that the goal of peace and security requires the constant threat of war and presence on every continent. All this intervention around the world requires troops, soldiers, real men and women and their lives and those of their families, requiring lots of sacrifice. At times, his theorizing seems distant from these realities on the ground.

So Bolton is critical of the "axis of adults" in the Trump administration, the "generals", but not Kelly and not much on his predecessor McMaster, much less the eccentric Flynn. So his beef is with Mattis, another fine student of history. Bolton says he went by the rules, as James Baker had said that Bush 41 was "the one who got the votes". He tried to influence Trump within the rules, while Mattis, Tillerson and Haley pursued their own foreign policy. I'm sure that Mattis was sometimes right and sometimes wrong, but I would trust his prudential judgment above that of the equally bright Bolton, because of his life experience, being the one on the ground and knowing what war is like.

When Bolton was considered for secretary state right after the 2016 election, I said, well I don't care for the guy, but at least I've heard of him and we know what we're dealing with. His opponent in GOP foreign policy is the libertarian and non-interventionist Sen. Rand Paul. What does Bolton say about the big players in the Trump administration? Nikki Haley is dismissed as a lightweight who was posing for her political future. Well, that's basically what Trump, "the one that got the votes", put her there for. But it's interesting that Bolton is so anti-Haley, when she was for Rubio and the more hawkish platform.

Tillerson's successor Mike Pompeo had sort of a love-hate relationship with Bolton.

Steve Mnuchin is the epitome of the globalist establishment, along with Javanka. Jared Kushner is dismissed as no Kissinger, but when it comes to China, his soft stance is blamed on Kissinger! While Bolton didn't testify in the impeachment, Fiona Hill is mentioned only with respect in this book.

Everybody's flaw, from Bolton's point of view, is being less belligerent than Bolton. (Even in the Bush administration, the only name I can think of would be Michael Ledeen). He even defends the concept of Middle Eastern "endless wars" on the grounds that we didn't start them and can't dictate when they end. Obama was a dove, but in 2016 the GOP marked a shift, with Trump, Paul, Ben Carson and even Ted Cruz opposing the "invade every country on earth" philosophy that this book promotes. It's true that Trump is not an ideologue and thinks in terms of individual transactions. But the movement I see is a dialectic of alternating between aggression and diplomacy, or as he sees it, friendly relationship among leaders.

Bolton is a superhawk on North Korea and Iran throughout, while China and Russia are our hostile rivals. Other matters are Syria, Iraq and ISIS, Venezuela, Afghanistan and finally Ukraine, which by the end of the book I had almost forgotten. If Bolton is dovish anywhere, it's on the Saudis, the rivals with Iran in the Sunni-Shiite dispute chronicled recently in the book "Black Wave".

You can learn a lot from this book, but just keep in mind that it's filtered through the mind of a strong ideologue, so other people's faults are seen through that lens. But he has great knowledge of the details of policy. Bolton would like to be an inter-generational guru like Henry Kissinger or Dean Acheson, but both parties have turned away from the "endless wars" philosophy.

If you are looking for anti-Trump material, I don't really see the point of investing this time and intellectual effort. The more sensational parts have been reported-the exchanges involving Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, and to a lesser extent Erdogan. As most reviewers have said, it's about 100 pages too long, but Bolton is looking for a scholarly work like Kissinger's Diplomacy or World Order, and this is the one that he hopes people will read.

C Wm (Andy) Anderson

Not Only is Bolton's Take on Trump Being Dangerous; Bolton Himself is a Danger to America

#1 HALL OF FAME TOP 10 REVIEWER 3.0 out of 5 stars Not Only is Bolton's Take on Trump Being Dangerous; Bolton Himself is a Danger to America Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2020 Verified Purchase Two reviewers did better at explaining why this book is not rated by me as a must-read. Linda Galella and gammyjill. Bolton laid out some truly explosive allegations but let his own ego cloud his message.

John Bolton, on some fundamental level, is a brilliant, dedicated conservative intent on improving the future of the country he and I love. THAT similarity is probably the only point we share.

I wanted to love this book, because I knew it would be jam-packed with juicy tidbits that justify me derision of the biggest failure ever to assume the office of POTUS. Instead, quite early on, I realized the reason Trump became President was the enormous ineptitude of those otherwise brilliant people who, in short, simply felt that somebody opposing those the person they despise, on principle, was better for America than the other guy or gal.

Throughout this book, Bolton reminds us of Trump's inability to focus attention on the information provided by his handlers. Yes, Trump is naive and intellectually lazy. Yes, so, too, are many of those aiding and abetting Mr. Trump. But, yes, Mr. Bolton also suffers from gross naïveté, and, is just plain foolish. His ego led him to join the Trump Administration, as he admits in "The Room Where It Happened."

Bolton's greatest error, however, was in refusing to tell the country what he chose to sell to the public through this book.

The writing is, mechanically, quite good. But, Bolton comes across as thinking he is the only person of intelligence. That becomes clear by page two, and never changes, except for his insight that he was wrong about Trump.

Unfortunately, Bolton also was wrong about Bolton.

Whoa. Hold on. Just about everyone in both political parties is no better than Bolton. A few exceptions would be Former governor John Kasick and Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Oh, and former Vice President Joe Biden, I believe. Yet, to be honest, I need to see him prove me right. I would hate to make the same mistake regarding Biden as Bolton did regarding Trump.

Americans need to take a good, hard look at how we are governed and at those whom we support.

BOTTOM LINE

Writing quality, passable. But don't expect to gain a great deal of new knowledge.

Three stars out of five.

[Jul 29, 2020] Russia and the next Presidential election in the US by The Saker

Jul 29, 2020 | www.unz.com

A quick look at Russia

Before looking into Russian options in relation to the US, we need to take a quick look at how Russia has been faring this year. The short of it would be: not too well. The Russian economy has shrunk by about 10% and the small businesses have been devastated by the combined effects of 1) the economic policies of the Russian government and Central Bank, and 2) the devastating economic impact of the COVID19 pandemic, and 3) the full-spectrum efforts of the West, mostly by the Anglosphere, to strangle Russia economically. Politically, the "Putin regime" is still popular, but there is a sense that it is getting stale and that most Russians would prefer to see more dynamic and proactive policies aimed, not only to help the Russian mega-corporations, but also to help the regular people. Many Russians definitely have a sense that the "little guy" is being completely ignored by fat cats in power and this resentment will probably grow until and unless Putin decides to finally get rid of all the Atlantic Integrationists aka the "Washington consensus" types which are still well represented in the Russian ruling circles, including the government. So far, Putin has remained faithful to his policy of compromises and small steps, but this might change in the future as the level of frustration in the general population is likely to only grow with time.

That is not to say that the Kremlin is not trying. Several of the recent constitutional amendments adopted in a national vote had a strongly expressed "social" and "patriotic" character and they absolutely horrified the "liberal" 5th columnists who tried their best two 1) call for a boycott, and 2) denounce thousands of (almost entirely) imaginary violations of the proper voting procedures, and to 3) de-legitimize the outcome by declaring the election a "fraud". None of that worked: the participation was high, very few actual violations were established (and those that were, had no impact on the outcome anyway) and most Russians accepted that this outcome was the result of the will of the people. Furthermore, Putin has made public the Russian strategic goals for 2030 ,which are heavily focused on improving the living and life conditions of average Russians (for details, see here ). It is impossible to predict what will happen next, but the most likely scenario is that Russia has several, shall we say, "bumpy" years ahead, both on the domestic and on the international front.


JasonT , says: July 28, 2020 at 10:53 pm GMT

Good analysis.

I would add that Russia should also start opening channels of communication with various organizations in Canada, especially those in the far north. While Canada is small politically, it is vastly bigger than the U.S. in natural resources, very strategically located and right next door to Russia.

Twilight Patriot , says: Website July 29, 2020 at 12:26 am GMT

I really agree with you that the "blame Russia" and "blame China" thing has gotten out of hand in US politics. Whether it will turn into a shooting war seems doubtful to me, as the government is still full of people who are looking out for their own interests and know that a full-sized war with Russia, China, Iran or whoever will not advance their interests.

But who would have guessed, a few years ago, that "Russian asset" would become the all-purpose insult for Democrats to use, not just against Republicans, but against other Democrats?

... ... ...

aandrews , says: July 29, 2020 at 3:22 am GMT

" at worst, the crisis will move to a new stage . "

Highly likely.

I think Trump can win, though, if he successfully hangs the escalating Antifa/BLM mayhem around the Democrat's necks. Normal, salt-of-the-earth-type Americans won't vote for the party of Maoist mayhem. I just hope their numbers are still sufficient. So, really, the mayhem needs to worsen and get ultra-bad, and Trump needs to carefully respond with just enough law enforcement to bait the Democrats into defending the insurrectionists and their tactics and loudly condemning Trump's "fascist" response. Normal people will see the true story and in the privacy of the voting booth, not vote Democrat. And if you think the other side lost their minds after the 2016 election .

GMC , says: July 29, 2020 at 7:54 am GMT

Thanks Saker – I would have loved it, had Alaska been able to hang on to the 90s relationship with Russia. It was a perfect match, except that Russian economy { as we were told} was just tanking, and they had no money to throw into the tourist trade. Not that us Alaskans, expected much more than what our bush villages had to offer. lol But , I'm afraid this will never happen again, with the Zio freaks in charge of the US. I recall when I was flying and living in McGrath in the 90s, that a womens Russian helicopter team dropped down to refuel and I was workin on my cessna about 50 yrds away. I saw about 6+ really good looking Russian chicks come out of those choppers, and us guys were floored ! We started to communicate with them, they told us that they were re -tracing the WW II lend lease route and were headed to the lower 48. Just about the time we started getting close tho, an old Lady colonel jumped out and put the girls in place – lol . I also remember the Magadan hockey team came over to play against our University teams Anchorage and Fairbanks. My neighbor here in Kryme, was on that Russian team – small world. Ya, Russia and Alaska would be a great match today – just gotta get rid of Washington. Thanks for the memories.

Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist , says: Website July 29, 2020 at 12:22 pm GMT

" until and unless Putin decides to finally get rid of all the Atlantic Integrationists aka the "Washington consensus" types which are still well represented in the Russian ruling circles, including the government."

Putin's regime is merely a less unbearable version of the Yeltsin regime, with open loot by oligarchs replaced by less overt loot by smaller scale actors. Putin is exactly as beholden to the neoliberal capitalist system as Yeltsin. To expect Putin to change sides as this point is ludicrous.

" Russia and the Empire have been at war since at least 2013, for no less than seven years (something which Russian 6th columnists and Neo-Marxists try very hard to ignore)."

I have no idea what a "neo" Marxist is (apart from a blatant made up term to taint us by association with the neo-Nazis), but as a Marxist, which the Saker obviously is not, it's obvious to me that the Imperialist States of America has been at war with Russia since the Yeltsinite attack on the Moscow parliament in 1993, and probably from the failed patriotic coup of 1991. If we ignore the Saker's idea of a war since 2013 it's only because we know it's twenty years out of date.

Things will never improve between Amerikastan and Russia and don't need to. Amerikastan is sinking and will sink; Putin will, if he continues on the neoliberal capitalist track, sink Russia as well in the end.

RoatanBill , says: July 29, 2020 at 12:32 pm GMT

The video link to Sahra Wagenknecht's report was the best part of this article although the article itself was spot on if one has any respect for reality.

I keep waiting for Germany to tell NATO and the US to get the hell out, but their political establishment is just as corrupt as the US's.

The amount of money the US Fed Gov steals from the population in taxes and regulation or causes loss of purchasing power by increasing debt could be much better put to use than shoveling it into the military to murder people around the globe. The entire Fed Gov will, I hope, disappear like fart gas as a result of the economic collapse in the making.

mark tapley , says: July 29, 2020 at 4:54 pm GMT
@Emily at was just a brutal form of monopoly capitalism that is the essence of the Zionist syndicate we all are up against. Today piratized not privatized Russia is suffering a less severe form but it is estimated that half Jew Putin and his oligarch cronies control ap. 30% of the Russian economy. all of this insider theft was "codified and Legalized" by Larry Summers and the Harvard Jews. Same thing is happening in Jewmerica and moving lots faster now with the theft under cover of the fake virus. Don't forget in 08-09 the bailout for billionaires cost the regular economy trillions then too. No problem, the Jews at Black Rock picked up some great bargains as they will this time.
Stanley Dundee , says: Website July 29, 2020 at 5:27 pm GMT

Per the Saker:

The real cause of the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot be conquered, subdued, subverted or destroyed.

I would add that Putin (a masterful statesman) tamed Russia's oligarchs. The greatest fear of America's oligarchs might well be a similar taming by a masterful American statesman. Hence the refusal to allow anyone other than corrupted mediocrities anywhere near nominal power in the US. And hence the entirely genuine hatred for Putin. He embodies their worst nightmare.

Harold Smith , says: July 29, 2020 at 5:50 pm GMT

"Russia will never attack first (which is a major cause of frustration for western russophobes)"

Now that team orange clown (with the full support of congress) has done away with the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, apparently replacing it with the concept of a "winnable" nuclear war (impliedly by way of a devastating first strike), the time may come when Russia may have to either strike first or be struck first.

Also, what about the case where the empire is finally successful in starting a war against Iran, for example, and the war goes badly for the empire (i.e. Iran is inflicting some serious damage), whereupon the empire resorts to nukes. Would Russia just sit back and watch, or would Russia then realize that the monster has to be put down?

"The real cause of the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot be conquered, subdued, subverted or destroyed."

In a sense that's true as far as it goes, but it really doesn't explain very much. Lots of countries are unable to subdue, subvert or conquer other countries but that in itself doesn't generally lead to "hatred." The simpler and more profound explanation is that the empire does what it does because it's evil. And the evil empire is analogous to an aggressive cancer: either the cancer wins and the patient dies, or the cancer is completely eradicated and the patient survives. There is no peaceful coexistence with the evil empire just like there is no peaceful coexistence with glioblastoma. You cannot negotiate with it to find some kind of a reasonable compromise.

AnonFromTN , says: July 29, 2020 at 6:53 pm GMT
@JVC

The US government and FRS seem to be hell-bent on destroying the value of the US $: when someone issues debt obligations (treasuries) and then buys them himself because there are no other takers, you cannot help smelling a rat.

The crash of the $ will hurt everyone, but some will recover faster than others. Euro and yen would be buried with the US $, but assets in less US-dependent countries that have real economies producing things other than hot air will likely fare better. Which leaves Russia, big China, South Korea, and some SE Asia countries.

Harold Smith , says: July 29, 2020 at 7:14 pm GMT
@Stanley Dundee

"And hence the entirely genuine hatred for Putin. He embodies their worst nightmare."

Evil hates a good example.

cassandra , says: July 29, 2020 at 7:27 pm GMT
@Jake t statistic for China is surprisingly better than I would have guessed. According to the CBO chart at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States ,

the US was at about the same level in 2013: "The top 10% of families held 76% of the wealth in 2013, while the bottom 50% of families held 1%. Inequality worsened from 1989 to 2013"

Indications are that the worsening has only continued since then, and with all the money being poured into the stock market by the Fed this year, 2020 is on track to be exceptionally iniquitously inequitable.

Xaxa , says: July 29, 2020 at 7:47 pm GMT

Trump 're-election' is certain. All roads are paved toward it. In fact and so far Trump is the best Neocon/Deep State's man they found. Stop pretending Saker!

Agent76 , says: July 29, 2020 at 7:50 pm GMT

June 17, 2020 America: An Empire Eating Itself

Empire has one trick – divide and conquer. When it runs out of territory, nations, and people abroad to consume, it turns inward on itself.

https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2020/06/america-empire-eating-itself.html

Jul 3, 2020 Independence Day Under Dictatorship

The US is under rule by decree, not by rule of law. Looking at the original list of grievances the Colonists had against King George, it looks like most of them are met – and then some – by our current system of government. Can we regain our independence?


Wally , says: July 29, 2020 at 7:53 pm GMT
@Herald

said:
"A Trump re-election will virtually guarantee civil war, but that is still a better option than a Biden hot war against Russia. Either way though, the country is totally fucked."

– We already have a civil war.

– Either way there will be no "hot war against Russia". That's just silly.

– And there is no "Biden" there.

– The US is much, much better off with Trump, it's not even close. Especially if you value free speech, fighting violence, and at least some semblance of a market economy devoid of the 'Green New Deal' scam.

Alfred , says: July 29, 2020 at 8:35 pm GMT
@Anon

after Vietnam war, Vietnam, ally of China , keep their regime in their own hand.

The ally of North Vietnam was Russia.

China blocked the transit of Russian weapons to North Vietnam. After North Vietnam defeated the Americans, with Russian help, China invaded North Vietnam and was defeated.

marryne , says: July 29, 2020 at 8:47 pm GMT

For Saker it is always about Russia, Russia, Russia Sure, Russia is a big world power, it used to be and it is now. It is so mostly because of its military, which draws its strength and know-how from the USSR (meaning it is not strictly Russian). However, Russia will never again be a superpower as the USSR had been. It was possible then only because of the (historically) unparalleled appeal of the communist ideology. Firstly and objectively, Russia does not have an economy necessary to support such a status. Secondly, Russia has no sufficient population which, again, is a limiting factor to its economy. Putin probably realized that although he did not realize that the Putin-inspired immigration from the former Muslim republic of the USSR will not alleviate the problem. But again, who would even want to go to today's Russia if not Asiatic muslims. It will slowly but surely make Russia not much different from the West. Muscovites, just like New Yorkers are already leaving the city, those who can afford.
And, subjectively, Russia or the Russians don't have the most important ingredient fort the superpower status – the MENTALITY. The recent (1990-2020) Russian history clearly displays that. It shows that in order to realize the centuries old dreams of the few (so called "elites") Russia as a nation and as country had put itself to the downward trajectory: As an empire it sold Alaska; as a civilization – it destroyed itself by dismantling the rest of the empire, the USSR. As an ally it abandoned and handed over the most Russophile german friend and ally E. Honecker and others to the "partners" in the west. And, as an orthodox and Slavic "brother" it betrayed and abandoned the only people that have always loved Russia – the Serbs. As an ally it behaved recklessly and treacherously. Russia will do the same again. So, hate Russia.

Ko , says: July 29, 2020 at 8:59 pm GMT

Since 2016 I've always believed Trump will be legally elected in 2020 but the DNC/Deep State will reject the result much more forcefully and violently than they've been doing since 2016. The DNC/Deep State will establish a shadow government minus the shadow. It will not be Joe Biden leading it but someone much younger, possibly Biden's VP choice – who was (will be) selected to replace Biden should Biden actually win. Hell, it may even be Hussein since he's such a treasonous pussy and easy to manipulate. The communists behind the scenes (aren't they always such cowards) currently coordinating BLM and Antifa riots all over America will again use rioting but with firearms and bombings. This must be met with a military response and the violence will be nationwide. At some point either Trump declares martial law and outright civil war ensues, or a military coup takes over with or without Trump as a figurehead and they crush the communists and leftists while right wing militias join in the hunt. The only wild-card is if race driven factionalism within lower ranks cause wide divisions and some officers break away – then the whole show is over and there will be no place safe from people with guns and bad intentions. We will be fighting over food and gasoline. At least, like in China, there will be plenty of dogs to satisfy hunger.

mark tapley , says: July 29, 2020 at 9:01 pm GMT
@Wally

To Wally and Herald: How many Presidential election circuses have you guys seen. Probably a lot of them like me...

cassandra , says: July 29, 2020 at 9:16 pm GMT

Putin's difficulty is that Russia is really too important for the West to ignore.

Western elites, and not just in the US, but in the EU and the western-hemisphere in general, are facing a problem: people are beginning to notice that human values are not universal. This had been one of the main pillars for the existence and credibility of a technocratic elite, specifically for the people to trust the elites to implement some unspecified but benevolent neo-enlightenment.

Putin became truly anathema first when he rejected western neoliberal criminality because

[Hide MORE] it was destroying his country, secondly, when he thwarted amputation of Crimea by color revolution, and thirdly, when he kept calling out NATO/EU expansionism for what it was. This made conversion of Russia to the neoliberal finance and 'universal value" system even less likely than the conversion to Roman Catholicism prophesied at Fatima. Putin decided that Russia would live by its own values, thank you very much. Russia could still have been an arms-length ally, but Anglo-Zionist geopolitical extremism forced him to make cause with a clearly adversarial China, and encouraged him to circumvent the western currency system as well.

But peoples within the west were also developing this NGTOW (Nations Going Their Own Way) attitude. Hungary and Poland were already becoming thorns in the side of the EU over the "human value" immigration, and the elections of Trump and Brexit were further assertions of populist preferences. Other politicians like Wagenknecht, LePen and Salvini are nurturing this movement elsewhere. It remains to be seen whether the neoliberal oligarchy, by dialing up propaganda and censorship, and by using Orwellian cancel terrorism, can quell this awakening rebellion.

alwayswrite , says: July 29, 2020 at 9:18 pm GMT
@marryne elves out

Capital flight is enormous,especially through London

Ask yourself why????

Because British intelligence knows absolutely the places all this money goes to

British intelligence aren't stupid, they've played this game for centuries

Which gives them enormous leverages over the Russians,who are trapped by this age old system

Putin knows this as do all Russian oligarchs

Money rules,not silly hypersonic weapons !!!!

Which doesn't come into the sakers evaluation

Basically,the saker doesn't understand power,money power!!!

AnonFromTN , says: July 29, 2020 at 9:59 pm GMT
@Wally licies.
6. Dramatically improve US education, from elementary school up.
7. Reform US healthcare, with a view of making it healthcare, rather than extortion racket it is today.

There are many other things, but anyone attempting to do even half of those listed would be promptly JFK'ed by the Deep State. That is why there is no one in the US politics decent enough to even talk about real problems, not to mention attempting to do what needs to be done to save the country. Hence, I can name no names.

As things stand, even Trump is better than senile and corrupt Biden. But being better than that piece of shit is not a big achievement.

hu_anon , says: July 29, 2020 at 10:07 pm GMT
@Alfred

China allowed Soviet arms through to North Vietnam and was herself giving weapons to them. The Soviets didn't trust the Chinese though, so they preferred to transport more advanced weapons on ships rather than by train through China, to prevent the Chinese from getting a close look on these.

China attacked Vietnam for invading Cambodia, but this war exposed the weakness of the Chinese Army. Deng Xiaoping was able to push through military reforms after the debacle.

mark tapley , says: July 29, 2020 at 10:30 pm GMT
@Ko e and destabilize western nations. These paid activists, opportunists and useful idiots could be taken care of by the local law enforcement as the constitution mandates if allowed to do so. The goal of the Zionist criminals is to create enough chaos and breakdown that people will demand that the national gov. step in with martial law. This is exactly what the Zionists want so they can get rid of the locally controlled police and implement a gestapo of thugs that are accountable only to the elite at the top.

The zionist politicians and their operatives from the mayors to the Governors on up need to be thrown out of office. That is the first step in restoring the Republic.

annamaria , says: July 29, 2020 at 10:49 pm GMT
@alwayswrite ernative media has excellent analysts) instead of immersing in the stinky products of presstituting MSM controlled by 6 zio-corporations.

Your hysterics about Russia's alleged attempts at destabilizing the EU are particularly entertaining. For starter, 1. learn about US bases in Europe and beyond, and 2. read about the consequences of the wars of aggression (also known as Wars for Israel) in the Middle East for the EU.

If you are in search of neonazi, turn your attentions to a great project run by ziocons and neonazi in Ukraine. See Grossman, Kolomojsky, Zelinsky, Nuland-Kagan, Pyatt, Carl Gershman (NED), and the whole Kagans' clan united with Banderites What can go wrong?

[Jul 26, 2020] Steele's Primary Subsource Was Alcoholic Russian National Who Worked With Fiona Hill At Brookings

Jul 26, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and "participate in a program of substance abuse therapy and counseling," as well as "mental health counseling," the records show. His lawyer asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow "as a condition of his employment." The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.

In 2006, Danchenko was arrested in Fairfax, Va., on similar offenses, including "public swearing and intoxication," criminal records show. The case was disposed after he paid a fine.

At the time, Danchenko worked as a research analyst for the Brookings Institution, where he became a protégé of Hill. He collaborated with her on at least two Russian policy papers during his five-year stint at the think tank and worked with another Brookings scholar on a project to uncover alleged plagiarism in Russian President Vladimir Putin's doctoral dissertation -- something Danchenko and his lawyer boasted about during their meeting with FBI agents. (Like Hill, the other scholar, Clifford Gaddy, was a Russia hawk. He and Hill in 2015 authored "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," a book strongly endorsed by Vice President Joe Biden at the time.)

"Igor is a highly accomplished analyst and researcher," Hill noted on his LinkedIn page in 2011.

"He is very creative in pursuing the most relevant of information and detail to support his research."

Strobe Talbott of Brookings with Hillary Clinton: He connected with Christopher Steele and passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Fiona Hill. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Hill also vouched for Steele, an old friend and British intelligence counterpart. The two reunited in 2016, sitting down for at least one meeting. Her boss at the time, Brookings President Strobe Talbott, also connected with Steele and passed along a copy of his anti-Trump dossier to Hill. A tough Trump critic, Talbott previously worked in the Clinton administration and rallied the think tank behind Hillary.

[Jul 25, 2020] Full Spectrum Dominance (FDS) will be very expensive for the US Evil Empire

Jul 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Vivekwhu , 1 hour ago

The violent US, run by greedy billionaires, has to be cut down to size before they start WW3. Full Spectrum Dominance (FDS) will be very expensive for the US Evil Empire. Did the deluded US elites really think RF and China will not respond to their quest for space dominance???

[Jul 20, 2020] The US military is defending US global hegemony, and is priced accordingly. What you think of US military spending depends on what you think of the US as a hegemon.

Jul 20, 2020 | crookedtimber.org

Ebenezer Scrooge 07.19.20 at 1:13 pm

US military spending is certainly much higher than it needs to be for US defense needs. But the US military is not primarily defending the US. It is defending Asia from China, NATO from Russia, and a number of countries from Iran, not to speak of Norkland.

IOW, the US military is defending US global hegemony, and is priced accordingly. What you think of US military spending depends on what you think of the US as a hegemon.


Alan White 07.19.20 at 2:15 pm ( 21 )

Thanks John that's very helpful -- I thought those two figures would be much closer together. Reading CT is always instructive in one way or another.

James Wimberley 07.19.20 at 5:02 pm ( 22 )

Long comment on the cross-post, on the cost of the energy transition part of the GND:
https://johnquiggin.com/2020/07/18/a-trillion-here-a-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money-creation/#comment-226012

Tom 07.20.20 at 1:37 pm ( 23 )

As a share of GDP, military spending today is half of what it was in 1986. Data here:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=US

I am not a fan of military spending – following an excellent post by John about Eisenhower's famous speech (more tanks or more hospitals), I often use it as an example opportunity cost when teaching. One can certainly claim that the budget should be lower but, as a share of overall economic resources, the budget has been cut substantially in the last 30 years.

[Jul 11, 2020] Pounding to nothing - Patrick Porter - The Critic Magazine

Jul 11, 2020 | thecritic.co.uk

Pounding to nothing

Patrick Porter reviews The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, by John Bolton ARTILLERY ROW BOOKS 4 July, 2020

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P resident Donald Trump's third National Security Advisor opens his memoir with this quote from the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo: 'Hard Pounding, this, gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest.' And pound for pound, that's the (nearly) 500 page memoir in a nutshell. Unremitting pounding is both the theme and the style. As John Bolton urged the White House to take a 'harder line" on Iran and North Korea, Trump's chief of staff "urged me to keep pounding away in public, which I assured him I would.' China 'pounded away during my tenure, sensing weakness at the top.' As with Bolton's mission, so too with America's statecraft, that must 'keep moving and keep firing, like a big grey battleship.'

From his infamous unsubtle moustache to his bellicosity, Bolton traffics on a self-image of straight shooter who sprints towards gunfire. He does not set out to offer a meditation on a complex inner life. This image is also slightly misleading. For all the barrage, Bolton turns out to be a more conflicted figure, especially when his supporting fire is most called upon.

The Room Where it Happened is Bolton's account of his part in the power struggles within Trump's almost medieval court, his attempt to steer the executive branch towards the right course, unmasked supremacy everywhere, and his failure and disillusion with Trump's chaotic, self-serving and showbiz-driven presidency.

The room where it happened: A White House memoir, by John Bolton

The memoir itself is a non-trivial political event. Other reviewers have assailed it for being turgid. Bolton, though, has at least done the state some service by habitually recording and recounting every meeting. This is an important record of an important eighteen months packed with the escalating brinksmanship with Iran, an impeachment inquest, the return of great power competition and a fierce struggle to control the policy levers in Washington itself. For that detail, especially when contrasted with the exhausting melodrama of the era, Bolton deserves a little credit. The Trump administration's determined effort to suppress it on the grounds of classified information suggests there is substance to Bolton's allegations of corruption and turmoil at the heart of government.

It is also, though, a work of self-vindication. Bolton's life is an adversarial one. A former attorney, he became a policy advocate and a Republican Party institution, consistently taking the hardest of lines. He was ever drawn to aggressive combatants – like Hillary Clinton, in his formative years he supported Barry Goldwater. He interned for Vice-President Spiro Agnew, the "number one hawk." As a measure of Bolton's faith that war works and that co-existence with "rogue states" is impossible, he advocated attacking a heavily (and nuclear)-armed North Korea in 2018, an adversary that lies in artillery range of Seoul and thousands of Americans as effective hostages, and offered up a best-case scenario in doing so.

Bolton brought to government a world view that was dug-in and entrenched. For Bolton, the world is hostile, and to survive America must be strong (wielding and brandishing overwhelming force) at all times. Enemy regimes cannot be bargained with or even co-existed with on anything less than maximalist terms dictated by Washington. The US never gives an inch, and must demand everything. And if those regimes do not capitulate, America must topple or destroy them: Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen and North Korea, and must combat them on multiple fronts at once. In doing so, America itself must remain unfettered with an absolutely free hand, not nodding even hypocritically to law or custom or bargaining.

If Bolton's thoughts add up to anything, it is a general hostility, if not to talking, certainly to diplomacy – the art of giving coherence and shape to different instruments and activities, above all through compromise and a recognition of limits. The final straw for Bolton was Trump's cancelling an airstrike on Iran after it shot down a drone. An odd hill to die on, given the graver acts of corruption he as witness alleges, but fitting that the failure to pull the trigger for him was Trump's most shocking misdemeanour.

What is intended to be personal strength and clarity comes over as unreflective bluster

This worldview is as personal as it is geopolitical. Importantly for Bolton, in the end he fights alone, bravely against the herd. He fights against other courtiers, even fellow hawks, who Bolton treats with dismissive contempt – Nikki Haley, Steve Mnuchin, Mike Pompeo, or James Mattis who like Bolton, champions strategic commitments and views Iran as a dangerous enemy, but is more selective about when to reach for the gun. The press is little more than an "hysterical" crowd. Allies like South Korea, who must live as neighbours with one of the regimes Bolton earmarks for execution, and who try conciliatory diplomacy occasionally, earn slight regard. Critics, opponents or those who disagree are 'lazy,' 'howling' or 'feckless.'

For a lengthy work that distils a lifetime's experience, it is remarkably thin regarding the big questions of security, power and order. The hostile world for him contains few real limits other than failures of will. He embraces every rivalry and every commitment, but explanations are few and banal. 'While foreign policy labels are unhelpful except to the intellectually lazy,' he says, 'if pressed, I like to say my policy was "pro-American".' Who is lazy, here?

The purpose of foreign policy, too, is largely absent. Armed supremacy abroad, and power-maximisation, seems to be the end in itself, regardless of what is has wrought at home. This makes his disdain for Trump's authoritarian ways especially obtuse: what does he think made possible an imperial presidency in the first place?

There's little room for principled or reasonable disagreement. What is intended to be personal strength and clarity comes over as unreflective bluster, in a town where horse-trading and agility matter. Unintentionally, it is a warning to anyone who seeks to be effective as well as right, and to those of us who debate these questions.

The most provocative part of the book comes at the end, and points to a man more conflicted than his self-image of the straight shooter. Bolton issues an extended, uneasy defence of his decision not to appear as a witness before the House impeachment inquiry against a president he believed to be corrupt. Having celebrated the need to "pound away" with inexhaustible energy, it turned out his ammunition was low. 'I was content to bide my time. I believed throughout, as the line in Hamilton goes, that "I am not throwing away my shot".' Drawing on a characteristic claim to certainty, 'it would have made no significant difference in the Senate outcome.' How can he know this? And even if the odds were long, was there not – for once – a compelling basis in civic virtue to be that relentless grey battleship, pounding away? He now hopes "history" will remember Trump as a one-term president. History needs willing agents.

Other reviews have honed in on Bolton's decision to delay his revelations for a book pay-day. But consider another theme – the war-hawk who is in fact torn and agonised around combat when it comes to himself. It echoes his retrospective rationale for not fighting in Vietnam, a war he supported, and (as he has recorded) the detailed efforts he made to avoid service in that tragic theatre after being drafted. It was, he decided, bound to fail given that the anti-war Democrats would undermine the cause, a justification he later sheepishly regretted.

So twice the advocate of forceful confrontation refused the call to show up, generously awarding to himself a rationale for non-intervention that relieves him of commitment. He refuses to extend that same exonerating, prudential logic to his country, when it debates whether to wade in to conflict abroad. Neither does he extend it to other Americans who think the nation, like Bolton, might be better off sometimes holding its fire, biding its time, dividing its enemies, and keeping its powder dry.

Given that Bolton failed in the end to attend the "room where it happened", his title is unwittingly ironic. In his favour, Bolton's testy defence of his absence at least suggests something. In contrast with the front cover of another forthcoming, Trump-era memoir , he retains a modest capacity for embarrassment.

[Jul 06, 2020] Bolton Changes Tune- Now Refuses To Answer 'Russian Bounties' Questions After Stoking The 'Scandal' -

Jul 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

By middle of last week we observed of the Russian bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan story that "at this point this non-story looks to be dead by the weekend as it's already unraveled."

Indeed by Thursday and Friday, as more Congressional leaders received closed door intelligence briefings on the allegations which originated with an anonymously sourced NY Times report claiming Trump supposedly ignored the Russian op to target Americans, the very Democrat and Republican lawmakers previously hyping it as a 'major scandal' went conspicuously silent .

Recall too that John Bolton, busy with a media blitz promoting his book, emerged to strongly suggest he had personal knowledge that Trump was briefed on the matter . The former national security adviser called the Trump denial of being briefed "remarkable". Well, look who is now appearing to sing a different tune. A week ago Bolton was all too wiling to voluntarily say Trump had "likely" been briefed and that was a big scandal. The whole story was indeed dead by the weekend:

NOW PLAYING

Other reports said Bolton has been telling people he had personally briefed the president :

Former national security adviser John Bolton told colleagues that he personally briefed President Donald Trump about intelligence that Russia offered Afghan militants bounties to kill American troops , U.S. officials told the Associated Press .

Bolton briefed Trump on the matter in March of 2019, according to the report, a year earlier than previously reported by The New York Times . The information was also included in at least one presidential Daily Brief, according to the AP, CNN and The Times . The AP earlier reported that it was also included in a second presidential Daily Brief earlier this year and that current national security adviser Robert O'Brien discussed the matter with Trump.

His Sunday refusal to even address the question - again after he was all too willing to speak to the issue a week ago when it was driving headlines - speaks volumes.

Via The Daily Mail

Now that even The Washington Post awkwardly walked back the substance of much of its reporting on the 'Russian bounties' story, Bolton has conveniently gone silent .


[Jul 06, 2020] US claim of 'Russian Bounty' plot in Afghanistan is dubious and dangerous - The Grayzone

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... the essential backdrop for the timing of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution, that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer. ..."
"... That took place in this case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped. ..."
"... They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable. ..."
"... And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant, has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden. ..."
"... the Carter Administration, at the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield. And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do. ..."
"... What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia. So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real. ..."
"... just kind of neocon resistance mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump. ..."
"... And then you have this and it, you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate. ..."
"... This is what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous, bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller. ..."
Jul 06, 2020 | thegrayzone.com

US claim of 'Russian Bounty' plot in Afghanistan is dubious and dangerous

Max Blumenthal breaks down the "Russian bounty" story's flaws and how it aims to prolong the war in Afghanistan -- and uses Russiagate tactics to continue pushing the Democratic Party to the right

Multiple US media outlets, citing anonymous intelligence officials, are claiming that Russia offered bounties to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan, and that President Trump has taken no action.

Others are contesting that claim. "Officials said there was disagreement among intelligence officials about the strength of the evidence about the suspected Russian plot," the New York Times reports. "Notably, the National Security Agency, which specializes in hacking and electronic surveillance, has been more skeptical."

"The constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party and its base is moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into this Cold War," Blumenthal says.

Guest: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone and author of several books, including his latest "The Management of Savagery."

TRANSCRIPT

AARON MATÉ: Welcome to Pushback, I'm Aaron Maté. There is a new supposed Trump-Russia bombshell. The New York Times and other outlets reporting that Russia has been paying bounties to Afghan militants to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump and the White House were allegedly briefed on this information but have taken no action.

Now, the story has obvious holes, like many other Russiagate bombshells. It is sourced to anonymous intelligence officials. The New York Times says that the claim comes from Afghan detainees. And it also has some logical holes. The Taliban have been fighting the US and Afghanistan for nearly two decades and never needed Russian payments before to kill the Americans that they were fighting; [this] amongst other questions are raised about this story. But that has not stopped the usual chorus from whipping up a frenzy.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: Vladimir Putin is offering bounties for the scalps of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Not only offering, offering money [to] the people who kill Americans, but some of the bounties that Putin has offered have been collected, meaning the Russians at least believe that their offering cash to kill Americans has actually worked to get some Americans killed.

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin. He had has [sic] this information according to The Times, and yet he offered to host Putin in the United States and sought to invite Russia to rejoin the G7. He's in his entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale.

CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?

SENATE MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: I was not briefed on the Russian military intelligence, but it shows that we need in this coming defense bill, which we're debating this week, tough sanctions against Russia, which thus far Mitch McConnell has resisted.

Joining me now is Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management of Savagery . Max, welcome to Pushback. What is your reaction to this story?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, it just feels like so many other episodes that we've witnessed over the past three or four years, where American intelligence officials basically plant a story in one outlet, The New York Times , which functions as the media wing of the Central Intelligence Agency. Then no reporting takes place whatsoever, but six reporters, or three to six reporters are assigned to the piece to make it look like it was some last-minute scramble to confirm this bombshell story. And then the story is confirmed again by The Washington Post because their reporters, their three to six reporters in, you know, capitals around the world with different beats spoke to the same intelligence officials, or they were furnished different officials who fed them the same story. And, of course, the story advances a narrative that the United States is under siege by Russia and that we have to escalate against Russia just ahead of another peace summit or some kind of international dialogue.

This has sort of been the general framework for these Russiagate bombshells, and of course they can there's always an anti-Trump angle. And because, you know, liberal pundits and the, you know, Democratic Party operatives see this as a means to undermine Trump as the election heats up. They don't care if it's true or not. They don't care what the consequences are. They're just gonna completely roll with it. And it's really changed, I think, not just US foreign policy, but it's changed the Democratic Party in an almost irreversible way, to have these constant "quote-unquote" bombshells that are really generated by the Central Intelligence Agency and by other US intelligence operations in order to turn up the heat to crank up the Cold War, to use these different media organs which no longer believe in reporting, which see Operation Mockingbird as a kind of blueprint for how to do journalism, to turn them into keys on the CIA's Mighty Wurlitzer. That's what happened here.

AARON MATÉ: What do you make of the logic of this story? This idea that the Taliban would need Russian money to kill Americans when the Taliban's been fighting the US for nearly two decades now. And the sourcing for the story, the same old playbook: anonymous intelligence officials who are citing vague claims about apparently what was said by Afghan detainees.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: This story has, as I said, it relies on zero reporting. The only source is anonymous American intelligence officials. And I tweeted out a clip of a former CIA operations officer who managed the CIA's operation in Angola, when the US was actually fighting on the side of apartheid South Africa against a Marxist government that was backed up by Cuban troops. His name was John Stockwell. And Stockwell talked about how one-third of his covert operations staff were propagandists, and that they would feed imaginary stories about Cuban barbarism that were completely false to reporters who were either CIA assets directly or who were just unwitting dupes who would hang on a line waiting for American intelligence officials to feed them stories. And one out of every five stories was completely false, as Stockwell said. We could play some of that clip now; it's pretty remarkable to watch it in light of this latest fake bombshell.

JOHN STOCKWELL: Another thing is to disseminate propaganda to influence people's minds, and this is a major function of the CIA. And unfortunately, of course, it overlaps into the gathering of information. You, you have contact with a journalist, you will give him true stories, you'll get information from him, you'll also give him false stories.

OFF-CAMERA REPORTER: Can you do this with responsible reporters?

JOHN STOCKWELL: Yes, the Church Committee brought it out in 1975. And then Woodward and Bernstein put an article in Rolling Stone a couple of years later. Four hundred journalists cooperating with the CIA, including some of the biggest names in the business.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, basically, I mean, you get the flavor of what someone who was in the CIA at the height of the Cold War I mean, he did the same thing in Vietnam. And the playbook is absolutely the same today. These this story was dumped on Friday in The New York Times by "quote-unquote" American intelligence officials, as a breakthrough had been made in Afghan peace talks and a conference was finally set for Doha, Qatar, that would involve the Taliban, which had been seizing massive amounts of territory.

Now, it's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the Taliban had been fighting one of the most epic examples of an occupying army in modern history, just absolutely chewing away at one of the most powerful militaries in human history in their country for the last 19 years, without bounties from Vladimir Putin or private-hotdog-salesman-and-Saint-Petersburg-troll-farm-owner Yevgeny Prigozhin , who always comes up in these stories. It's always the hotdog guy who's doing everything bad from, like, you know, fake Facebook ads to poisoning Sergei Skripal or whatever.

But I just don't see where the Taliban needs encouragement from Putin to do that. It's their country. They want the US out and they have succeeded in seizing large amounts of territory. Donald Trump has come into office with a pledge to remove US troops from Afghanistan and ink this deal. And along comes this story as the peace process begins to advance.

And what is the end-result? We haven't gotten into the domestic politics yet, but the end-result is you have supposedly progressive senators like Chris Murphy of Connecticut attacking Trump for not fighting Russia in Afghanistan. I mean, they want a straight-up proxy war for not escalating. You have Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, someone who's aligned with the Democratic Party, who supported the war in Iraq and, you know, supports just endless war, demanding that the US turn up the heat not just in Afghanistan but in Syria. So, you know, the escalatory rhetoric is at a fever pitch right now, and it's obviously going to impact that peace conference.

Let's remember that three days before Trump's summit with Putin was when Mueller chose to release the indictment of the GRU agents for supposedly hacking the DNC servers. Let's remember that a day before the UN the United Nations Geneva peace talks opened on Syria in 2014 was when US intelligence chose to feed these shady Caesar photos, supposedly showing industrial slaughter of Syrian prisoners, to The New York Times in an investigation that had been funded by Qatar. Like, so many shady intelligence dumps have taken place ahead of peace summits to disrupt them, because the US doesn't feel like it has enough skin in the game or it just simply doesn't want peace in these areas.

So, that's what happened here. That's really, I think, the essential backdrop for the timing of this story. It really reveals how completely decayed mainstream media is as an institution, that none of these reporters protested the story, didn't see fit to do any independent investigation into it. At best they would print a Russian denial which counts for nothing in the US, or a Taliban denial which counts for nothing in the US. And then and this gets into the domestic political angle because so much of Russiagate, while it's been crafted by former or current intelligence officials, depends on the Democratic Party and it punditocracy, MSNBC and mainstream media as a projection megaphone, as its Mighty Wurlitzer.

That took place in this case because, according to this story, Donald Trump had been briefed on Putin paying bounties to the Taliban and he chose to do nothing. Which, of course Trump denies, but that counts for nothing as well. But, again, there's been no independent confirmation of any of this. And now we get into the domestic part, which is that this new Republican anti-Trump operation, The Lincoln Project, had a flashy ad ready to go almost minutes after the story dropped.

THE LINCOLN PROJECT AD: Now we know Vladimir Putin pays a bounty for the murder of American soldiers. Donald Trump knows, too, and does nothing. Putin pays the Taliban cash to slaughter our men and women in uniform and Trump is silent, weak, controlled. Instead of condemnation he insists Russia be treated as our equal.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, maybe they're just really good editors and brilliant politicians who work overtime. They're just, like, on meth at Steve Schmidt's political Batcave, just churning this material out. But I feel like they had an inkling, like this story was coming. It just the coordination and timing was impeccable.

And The Lincoln Project is something that James Carville, the veteran Democratic consultant, has said is doing more than any Democrat or any Democratic consultant to elect Joe Biden. They're always out there doing the hard work. Who are they? Well, Steve Schmidt is a former campaign manager for John McCain 2008. And you look at the various personnel affiliated with it, they're all McCain former McCain aides or people who worked on the Jeb and George W. Bush campaigns, going back to Texas and Florida. This is sort of the corporate wing of the Republican Party, the white-glove-country-club-patrician Republicans who are very pro-war, who hate Donald Trump.

And by doing this, by them really taking the lead on this attack, as you pointed out, Aaron, number one, they are sucking the oxygen out of the more progressive anti-Trump initiatives that are taking place, including in the streets of American cities. They're taking the wind out of anti-Trump more progressive anti-Trump critiques. For example, I think it's actually more powerful to attack Trump over the fact that he used, basically, chemical weapons on American peaceful protesters to do a fascistic photo-op. I don't know why there wasn't some call for congressional investigations on that. And they are getting skin in the game on the Biden campaign. It really feels to me like this Lincoln campaign operation, this moderate Republican operation which is also sort of a venue for neocons, will have more influence after events like this than the Bernie Sanders campaign, which has an enormous amount of delegates.

So, that's what I think the domestic repercussion is. It's just this constant it's the constant flow of Russiagate disinformation into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party and its base that's moving that party constantly to the right, while pushing the US deeper into this Cold War that only serves, you know, people who are associated with the national security state who need to justify their paycheck and the budget of the institutions that employ them.

AARON MATÉ: Let's assume for a second that the allegation is true, although, you know, you've laid out some of the reasons why it's not. Can you talk about the history here, starting with Afghanistan, something you cover a lot in your book, The Management of Savagery, where the US aim was to kill Russians, going right on through to Syria, where just recently the US envoy for the coalition against ISIS, James Jeffery, who handles Syria, said that his job now is to basically put the Russians in a quagmire in Syria.

JAMES JEFFREY: This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, I mean, it feels like a giant act of psychological and political projection to accuse Russia of using an Islamist militia in Afghanistan as a proxy against the US to bleed the US into leaving, because that's been the US playbook in Central Asia and the Middle East since at least 1979. I just tweeted a photo of Dan Rather in Afghanistan, just crossing the Pakistani border and going to meet with some of the Mujahideen in 1980. Dan Rather was panned in The New York in The Washington Post by Tom Toles [Tom Shales], who was the media critic at the time, as "Gunga Dan," because he was so gung-ho for the Afghan mujahideen. In his reports he would complain about how weak their weaponry was, you know, how they needed more how they needed more funding. I mean, you could call it bounties, but it was really just CIA funding.

DAN RATHER: These are the best weapons you have, huh? They only have about twenty rounds for this?

TRANSLATOR: That's all. They have twenty rounds. Yes, and they know that these are all old weapons and they really aren't up to doing anything to the Russian weaponry that's around. But that's all they have, and this is why they want help. And he is saying that America seems to be asleep. It doesn't seem to realize that if Afghanistan goes and the Russians go over to the Gulf, that in a very short time it's going to be the turn of the United States as well.

DAN RATHER: But I'm sure he knows that in Vietnam we got our fingers burned. Indeed, we got our whole hands burned when we tried to help in this kind of situation.

TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: Your hands were burned in Vietnam, but if you don't agree to help us, if you don't ally yourself with us, then all of you, your whole body will be burnt eventually, because there is no one in the world who can really fight and resist as well as the as much and as well as the Afghans are.

DAN RATHER: But no American mother wants to send her son to Afghanistan.

TRANSLATOR [translating to the Afghan man and then his reply]: We don't need anybody's soldiers here to help us, but we are being constantly accused that the Americans are helping us with weapons. What we need, actually, are the American weapons. We don't need or want American soldiers. We can do the fighting ourselves.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: And a year or several months before, the Carter Administration, at the urging of national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had enacted what would become Operation Cyclone under Reagan, an arm-and-equip program to arm the Afghan mujahideen. The Saudis put up a matching fund which helped bring the so-called Services Bureau into the field where Osama bin Laden became a recruiter for international jihadists to join the battlefield. And, you know, the goal was, in the words of Brzezinski, as he later admitted to a French publication, was to force the Red Army, the Soviet Red Army, to intervene to protect the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, which they proceeded to do.

And then with the introduction of the Stinger missile, the Afghan mujahideen, hailed as freedom fighters in Washington, were able to destroy Russian supply lines, exact a heavy toll, and forced the Red Army to leave in retreat. They helped create what's considered the Soviet Union's Vietnam.

So that was really but the blueprint for what Russian for what Russia is being accused of now, and that same model was transferred over to Syria. It was also actually proposed for Iraq in the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. Then Senate Foreign Relations chair Jesse Helms actually said that the Afghan mujahideen should be our model for supporting the Iraqi resistance. So, this kind of proxy war was always on the table. Then the US did it in Syria, when one out of every $13 in the CIA budget went to arm the so-called "moderate rebels" in Syria, who we later found out were 31 flavors of jihadi, who were aligned with al-Qaeda's local affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and helped give rise to ISIS. Michael Morell, I tweeted some video of him on Charlie Rose back in, I think, 2016. He's the former acting director for the CIA, longtime deputy director. He said, you know, the reason that we're in Syria, what we should be doing is causing Iran and Russia, the two allies of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to pay a heavy price.

MICHAEL MORELL: We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a price. The other thing

CHARLIE ROSE: We make them pay the price by killing killing Russians?

MICHAEL MORELL: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And killing Iranians.

MICHAEL MORELL: Yes, covertly. You don't tell the world about it, right? You don't stand up at the Pentagon and say we did this, right? But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: What he means is by basically paying bounties, which the US was literally doing along with its Gulf allies, to exact the toll on the allies of Assad, Russia. So, let's just say it's true, according to your question, let's just say this is all true. It would be a retaliation for what the United States has done to Russia in areas where it was actually legally invited in by the governments in charge, either in Kabul or Damascus. And that's, I think, the kind of ironic subtext that can hardly be understated when you see someone like Dan Rather wag his finger at Putin for paying the Taliban as proxies. But, I mean, it's such a ridiculous story that it's just hard to even fathom that it's real.

AARON MATÉ: Let me read Dan Rather's tweet, because it's so it speaks to just how pervasive Russiagate culture is now. People have learned absolutely nothing from it.

Rather says, "Reporters are trained to look for patterns that are suspicious, and time and again one stands out with Donald Trump. Why is he so slavishly devoted to Putin? There is a spectrum of possible answers ranging from craven to treasonous. One day I hope and suspect we will find out."

It's like he forgot, perhaps, that Robert Mueller and his team spent three years investigating this very issue and came up with absolutely nothing. But the narrative has taken hold, and it's, as you talked about before, it's been the narrative we've been presented as the vehicle for understanding and opposing Donald Trump, so it cannot be questioned. And now it's like it's a matter of, what else is there to find out about Trump and Russia after Robert Mueller and the US intelligence agencies looked for everything they could and found nothing? They're still presented as if it's some kind of mystery that has to be unraveled.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: And it was after, like, a week of just kind of neocon resistance mind-explosion, where first John Bolton was hailed as this hero and truthteller about Trump. Then Dick Cheney was welcomed into the resistance, you know, because he said, "Wear a mask." I mean, you know, his mask was strangely not spattered with the blood of Iraqi children. But, you know, it was just amazing like that. Of course, it was the Lincoln project who hijacked the minds of the resistance, but basically people who used to work on Cheney's campaign said, "Dick Cheney, welcome to the resistance." I mean, that was remarkable. And then you have this and it, you know, today as you pointed out, Chuck Todd, "Chuck Toddler", welcomes on Meet the Press John Bolton as this wise voice to comment on Donald Trump's slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin and how we need to escalate.

CHUCK TODD, NBC: Let me ask you this. Do you think that part of the that the president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, just a few years ago, maybe it was two years ago, before Bolton was brought into the Trump NSC, he was considered just an absolute marginal crank who was a contributor to Fox News. He'd been forgotten. He was widely hated by Democrats. Now here he is as a sage voice to tell us how dangerous this moment is. And, you know, he's not being even brought on just to promote his book; he's being brought on as just a sober-minded foreign policy expert on Meet the Press . That's where we're at right now.

AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and when his critique of Trump is basically that Trump was not hawkish enough. Bolton's most the biggest critique Bolton has of Trump is, as he writes about in his book, is when Trump declined to bomb Iran after Iran shot down a drone over its territory. And Bolton said that to him was the most irrational thing he's ever seen a president do.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, Bolton was mad that Trump confused body bags with missiles, because he said Trump thought that there would be 150 dead Iranians, and I said, "No, Donald, you're confused. It will be 150 missiles that we're firing into Iran." Like that's better! Like, "Oh, okay, that makes everything all right," that we fire a hundred missiles for one drone and maybe that wouldn't that kill possibly more than 150 people?

Well, in Bolton's world this was just another stupid move by Trump. If Bolton were, I mean, just, just watch all the interviews with Bolton. Watch him on The View where the only pushback he received was from Meghan McCain complaining that he ripped off a Hamilton song for his book The Room Where It Happened , and she asked, "Don't you have any apology to offer to Hamilton fans?" That was the pushback that Bolton received. Just watch all of these interviews with Bolton and try to find the pushback. It's not there. This is what Russiagate has done. It's taken one of the most Strangelovian, psychotic, dangerous, bloodthirsty, sadistic monsters in US foreign policy circles and turned him into a sober-minded, even heroic, truthteller.

AARON MATÉ: And inevitably the only long-term consequence that I can see here is ultimately helping Trump, because, if history is a pattern, these Russiagate supposed bombshells always either go nowhere or they get debunked. So, if this one gets forcefully debunked, because I think it's quite possible, because Trump has said that he was never briefed on this and they'll have to prove that he's lying, you know. It should be easy to do. Someone could come out and say that. If they can't prove that he's lying, then this one, I think, will blow up in their face. And all they will have done is, at a time when Trump is vulnerable over the pandemic with over a hundred thousand people dead on his watch, all these people did was ultimately try to bring the focus back to the same thing that failed for basically the entirety of Trump's presidency, which is Russiagate and Trump's supposed―and non-existent in reality―subservience to Vladimir Putin.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: But have you ever really confronted one of your liberal friends who maybe doesn't follow these stories as closely as you do? You know, well-intentioned liberal friend who just has this sense that Russia controls Trump, and asked them to really defend that and provide the receipts and really explain where the Trump administration has just handed the store to Russia? Because what we've seen is unprecedented since the height of the Cold War, an unprecedented deterioration of US-Russia relations with new sanctions on Russia every few months. You ask them to do that. They can't do it. It's just a sense they get, it's a feeling they get. And that's because these bombshells drop, they get reported on the front pages under banners of papers that declare that "democracy dies in darkness," whose brand is something that everybody trusts, The New York Times , The Washington Post , Woodward and Bernstein, and everybody repeats the story again and again and again. And then, if and when it gets debunked, discredited or just sort of disappears, a few days later everybody forgets about it. And those people who are not just, like, 24/7 media consumers but critical-minded media consumers, they're left with that sense that Russia actually controls us and that we must do something to escalate with Russia. So, that's the point of these: by the time the disinformation is discredited, the damage has already been done. And that same tactic was employed against Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, to the point where so many people were left with the sense that he must be an antisemite, although not one allegation was ever proven.

AARON MATÉ: Yeah, and now to the point where, in the Labour Party―we should touch on this for a second―where you had a Labour Party member retweet an article recently that mentioned some criticism of Israel and for that she was expelled from her position in the shadow cabinet.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, well, you know, as a Jew I was really threatened by that retweet [laughter]. I don't know about you.

I mean, this is Rebecca Long Bailey. She's one of the few Corbynites left in a high position in Labour who hasn't been effectively burned at the stake for being a, you know, Jew hater who wants to throw us all in gas chambers because she retweets an interview with some celebrity I'd never heard of before, who didn't even say anything that extreme. But it really shows how the Thought Police have taken control of the Labour Party through Sir Keir Starmer, who is someone who has deep links to the national security state through the Crown Prosecution Service, which he used to head, where he was involved in the prosecution of Julian Assange. And he has worked with The Times of London, which is a, you know, favorite paper of the national security state and the MI5 in the UK, for planting stories against Jeremy Corbyn. He was intimately involved in that campaign, and now he's at the head of the Labour Party for a very good reason. I really would recommend everyone watching this, if you're interested more in who Keir Starmer really is, read "Five Questions for [New Labour Leader] Sir Keir Starmer" by Matt Kennard at The Grayzone. It really lays it out and shows you what's happening.

We're just in this kind of hyper-managed atmosphere, where everything feels so much more controlled than it's ever been. And even though every sane rational person that I know seems to understand what's happening, they feel like they're not allowed to say it, at least not in any official capacity.

AARON MATÉ: From the US to Britain, everything is being co-opted. In the US it's, you know, genuine resistance to Trump, in opposition to Trump, it gets co-opted by the right. Same thing in Britain. People get manipulated into believing that Jeremy Corbyn, this lifelong anti-racist is somehow an antisemite. It's all in the service of the same agenda, and I have to say we're one of the few outlets that are pushing back on it. Everyone else is getting swept up on it and it's a scary time.

We're gonna wrap. Max, your final comment.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, yeah, we're pushing back. And I saw today Mint Press [News], which is another outlet that has pushed back, their Twitter account was just briefly removed for no reason, without explanation. Ollie Vargas, who's an independent journalist who's doing some of the most important work in the English language from Bolivia, reporting on the post-coup landscape and the repressive environment that's been created by the junta installed with US help under Jeanine Áñez, his account has been taken away on Twitter. The social media platforms are basically under the control of the national security state. There's been a merger between the national security state and Silicon Valley, and the space for these kinds of discussions is rapidly shrinking. So, I think, you know, it's more important than ever to support alternative media and also to really have a clear understanding of what's taking place. I'm really worried there just won't be any space for us to have these conversations in the near future.

AARON MATÉ: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, author of The Management of Savagery , thanks a lot.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Thanks for having me.

[Jul 03, 2020] Podcast- Empire Has No Clothes, Episode 9, Foreign Policy Dissent Is Patriotic by DANIEL LARISON

Bolton is just "yet another MIC puppet", who has complete vacuum in his head as for morality and decency. In other words he is a typical Washington psychopath. Like many sociopaths he is a compulsive liar, undeniable careerist and self-promoter.
Jul 02, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

This week on Empire Has No Clothes, we spoke with Elizabeth Shackelford, a former Foreign Service Officer and author of The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age . Kelley Vlahos, Matt Purple and I talked about demoralization in the department, the reasons for her resignation, U.S. policy in South Sudan and Africa, and the need for greater accountability in our foreign policy. We also covered John Bolton's new book, his outdated foreign policy views, and whether anything he says can be trusted.

Listen to the episode in the player below, or click the links beneath it to subscribe using your favorite podcast app. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating or review on iTunes or Stitcher, which will really help us climb the rankings, allowing more people to find the show.

[Jul 03, 2020] The Iran Obsession Has Isolated the US

So former tank repairman decided again managed to make a make a mark in world diplomacy :-).
Notable quotes:
"... Mike Pompeo delivered an embarrassing, clownish performance at the U.N. on Tuesday, and his attempt to gain support for an open-ended conventional arms embargo on Iran was rejected the rest of the old P5+1: ..."
"... The Trump administration has abused our major European allies for years in its push to destroy the nuclear deal, and their governments have no patience with any more unilateral U.S. stunts. This is the result of two years of a destructive policy aimed solely at punishing Iran and its people. The administration's open contempt for international law and the interests of its allies has cost the U.S. their cooperation. ..."
"... Underscoring the absurdity of the Trump administration's arms embargo appeal were Pompeo's alarmist warnings that an end to the arms embargo would allow Iran to purchase advanced fighters that it would use to threaten Europe and India: ..."
"... This is a laughably unrealistic scenario. Even if Iran purchased advanced fighters, the last thing it would do is send them off on a suicide mission to bomb Italy or India. This shows how deeply irrational the Iran hawks' fearmongering is. Iran has already demonstrated an ability to launch precise attacks with drones and missiles in its immediate neighborhood, and it developed these capabilities while under the current embargo. ..."
"... The Secretary of State called on the U.N. to reject "extortion diplomacy." The best way to reject extortion diplomacy would be for them to reject the administration's desperate attempt to use America's position at the U.N. to attack international law. ..."
Jul 03, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Mike Pompeo delivered an embarrassing, clownish performance at the U.N. on Tuesday, and his attempt to gain support for an open-ended conventional arms embargo on Iran was rejected the rest of the old P5+1:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Tuesday for an arms embargo on Iran to be extended indefinitely, but his appeal fell flat at the United Nations Security Council, where Russia and China rejected it outright and close allies of the United States were ambivalent.

The Trump administration is more isolated than ever in its Iran obsession. The ridiculous effort to invoke the so-called "snapback" provision of the JCPOA more than two years after reneging on the agreement met with failure, just as most observers predicted months ago when it was first floated as a possibility. As I said at the time, "The administration's latest destructive ploy won't find any support on the Security Council. There is nothing "intricate" about this idea. It is a crude, heavy-handed attempt to employ the JCPOA's own provisions to destroy it." It was never going to work because all of the other parties to the agreement want nothing to do with the administration's punitive approach, and U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA meant that it forfeited any rights it had when it was still part of the deal.

Opposition from Russia and China was a given, but the striking thing about the scene at the U.N. this week was that major U.S. allies joined them in rebuking the administration's obvious bad faith maneuver:

The pointedly critical tone of the debate saw Germany accusing Washington of violating international law by withdrawing from the nuclear pact, while Berlin aligned itself with China's claim that the United States has no right to reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran.

The Trump administration has abused our major European allies for years in its push to destroy the nuclear deal, and their governments have no patience with any more unilateral U.S. stunts. This is the result of two years of a destructive policy aimed solely at punishing Iran and its people. The administration's open contempt for international law and the interests of its allies has cost the U.S. their cooperation.

Underscoring the absurdity of the Trump administration's arms embargo appeal were Pompeo's alarmist warnings that an end to the arms embargo would allow Iran to purchase advanced fighters that it would use to threaten Europe and India:

If you fail to act, Iran will be free to purchase Russian-made fighter jets that can strike up to a 3,000 kilometer radius, putting cities like Riyadh, New Delhi, Rome, and Warsaw in Iranian crosshairs.

This is a laughably unrealistic scenario. Even if Iran purchased advanced fighters, the last thing it would do is send them off on a suicide mission to bomb Italy or India. This shows how deeply irrational the Iran hawks' fearmongering is. Iran has already demonstrated an ability to launch precise attacks with drones and missiles in its immediate neighborhood, and it developed these capabilities while under the current embargo.

It has no need for expensive fighters, and it is not at all certain that their government would even be interested in acquiring them. Pompeo's presentation was a weak attempt to exaggerate the potential threat from a state that has very limited power projection, and he found no support because his serial fabrications about Iran have rendered everything he says to be worthless.

The same administration that wants to keep an arms embargo on Iran forever has no problem flooding the region with U.S.-made weapons and providing them to some of the worst governments in the world. It is these client states that are doing the most to destabilize other countries in the region right now. If the U.N. should be putting arms embargoes on any country, it should consider imposing them on Saudi Arabia and the UAE to limit their ability to wreak havoc on Yemen and Libya.

The Secretary of State called on the U.N. to reject "extortion diplomacy." The best way to reject extortion diplomacy would be for them to reject the administration's desperate attempt to use America's position at the U.N. to attack international law.

[Jul 01, 2020] Three Glaring Problems with the Russian Taliban Bounty Story by Barbara Boland

Highly recommended!
This is an attempt to move Trump in the direction of more harsher politics toward Russia. So not Bolton's but Obama ears are protruding above this dirty provocation.
Notable quotes:
"... According to the anonymous sources that spoke with the paper's reporters, the White House and President Trump were briefed on a range of potential responses to Moscow's provocations, including sanctions, but the White House had authorized no further action. ..."
"... Bolton is one of the only sources named in the New York Times article. Currently on a book tour, Bolton has said that he witnessed foreign policy malfeasance by Trump that dwarfs the Ukraine scandal that was the subject of the House impeachment hearings. But Bolton's credibility has been called into question since he declined to appear before the House committee. ..."
"... "Who can forget how 'successful' interrogators can be in getting desired answers?" writes Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Under the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," Khalid Sheik Mohammed famously made at least 31 confessions, many of which were completely false. ..."
"... This story is "WMD [all over] again," said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe. ..."
"... The bungled media response and resulting negative press could also lead Trump to contemplate harsher steps towards Russia in order to prove that he is "tough," which may have motivated the leakers. It's certainly a policy goal with which Bolton, one of the only named sources in the New York Times piece, wholeheartedly approves. ..."
"... Not only did CIA et al.'s leak get even with Trump for years of insults and ignoring their reports (Trump is politically wounded by this story), but it also achieved their primary objective of keeping Putin out of the G7 and muzzling Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO because Russia is our friend (well his, anyway). ..."
"... Point 4: the whole point of the Talibans is to fight to the death whichever country tries to control and invade Afghanistan. They didn't need the Russians to tell them to fight the US Army, did they? ..."
"... Point 5: Russia tried to organise a mediation process between the Afghan government and the Talibans already in 2018 - so why would they be at the same time trying to fuel the conflict? A stable Afghanistan is more convenient to them, given the geographical position of the country. ..."
"... As much as I love to see everyone pile on trump, this is another example of a really awful policy having bad outcomes. If Bush, Obama, trump, or anyone at the pentagon gave a crap about the troops, they wouldn't have kept them in Afghanistan and lied about the fact they were losing the whole time. ..."
"... the idea is stupid. Russia doesn't need to do anything to motivate Afghans to want to boot the invaders out of their country, and would want to attract negative attention in doing so. ..."
"... Contrast with the CIA motivations for this absurd narrative. Chuck Schumer famously commented that the intelligence agencies had ways of getting back at you, and it looks like you took the bait, hook, line and sinker. ..."
"... And a fourth CIA goal: it undermines Trump's relationship with the military. ..."
"... Having failed in its Russia "collusion" and "Russia stole the election" campaigns to oust Trump, this is just the latest effort by the Deep State and mass media to use unhinged Russophobia to try to boost Biden and damage Trump. ..."
"... The contemporary left hate Russia , because Russia is carving out it own sphere of influence and keeping the Americans out, because it saved Assad from the western backed sunni head choppers (that the left cheered on, as they killed native Orthodox, and Catholic Christians). The Contempary left hate Russia because it cracks down on LGBT propaganda, banned porn hub, and return property to the Church , which the leftist Bolsheviks stole, the Contempaty left hate Russia because it cracked down on it western backed oligarchs who plundered Russia in the 90's. ..."
Jul 01, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Bombshell report published by The New York Times Friday alleges that Russia paid dollar bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill U.S troops. Obscured by an extremely bungled White House press response, there are at least three serious flaws with the reporting.

The article alleges that GRU, a top-secret unit of Russian military intelligence, offered the bounty in payment for every U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan, and that at least one member of the U.S. military was alleged to have been killed in exchange for the bounties. According to the paper, U.S. intelligence concluded months ago that the Russian unit involved in the bounties was also linked to poisonings, assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe. The Times reports that United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan came to this conclusion about Russian bounties some time in 2019.

According to the anonymous sources that spoke with the paper's reporters, the White House and President Trump were briefed on a range of potential responses to Moscow's provocations, including sanctions, but the White House had authorized no further action.

Immediately after the news broke Friday, the Trump administration denied the report -- or rather, they denied that the President was briefed, depending on which of the frenetic, contradictory White House responses you read.

Traditionally, the President of the United States receives unconfirmed, and sometimes even raw intelligence, in the President's Daily Brief, or PDB. Trump notoriously does not read his PDB, according to reports.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a statement Saturday night that neither Trump nor Vice President Pence "were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting yesterday."

On Sunday night, Trump tweeted that not only was he not told about the alleged intelligence, but that it was not credible."Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP" Pence, Trump wrote Sunday night on Twitter.

Ousted National Security Advisor John Bolton said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that Trump was probably claiming ignorance in order to justify his administration's lack of response.

"He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it," said Bolton.

Bolton is one of the only sources named in the New York Times article. Currently on a book tour, Bolton has said that he witnessed foreign policy malfeasance by Trump that dwarfs the Ukraine scandal that was the subject of the House impeachment hearings. But Bolton's credibility has been called into question since he declined to appear before the House committee.

The explanations for what exactly happened, and who was briefed, continued to shift Monday.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany followed Trump's blanket denial with a statement that the intelligence concerning Russian bounty information was "unconfirmed." She didn't say the intelligence wasn't credible, like Trump had said the day before, only that there was "no consensus" and that the "veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated," which happens to almost completely match the Sunday night statement from the White House's National Security Council.

Instead of saying that the sources for the Russian bounty story were not credible and the story was false, or likely false, McEnany then said that Trump had "not been briefed on the matter."

"He was not personally briefed on the matter," she said. "That is all I can share with you today."

It's difficult to see how the White House thought McEnany's statement would help, and a bungled press response like this is communications malpractice, according to sources who spoke to The American Conservative.

Let's take a deeper dive into some of the problems with the reporting here:

1. Anonymous U.S. and Taliban sources?

The Times article repeatedly cites unnamed "American intelligence officials." The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal articles "confirming" the original Times story merely restate the allegations of the anonymous officials, along with caveats like "if true" or "if confirmed."

Furthermore, the unnamed intelligence sources who spoke with the Times say that their assessment is based "on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals."

That's a red flag, said John Kiriakou, a former analyst and case officer for the CIA who led the team that captured senior al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002. "When you capture a prisoner, and you're interrogating him, the prisoner is going to tell you what he thinks you want to hear," he said in an interview with The American Conservative . "There's no evidence here, there's no proof."

"Who can forget how 'successful' interrogators can be in getting desired answers?" writes Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Under the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," Khalid Sheik Mohammed famously made at least 31 confessions, many of which were completely false.

Kiriakou believes that the sources behind the report hold important clues on how the government viewed its credibility.

"We don't know who the source is for this. We don't know if they've been vetted, polygraphed; were they a walk-in; were they a captured prisoner?"

If the sources were suspect, as they appear to be here, then Trump would not have been briefed on this at all.

With this story, it's important to start at the "intelligence collection," said Kiriakou. "This information appeared in the [CIA World Intelligence Review] Wire, which goes to hundreds of people inside the government, mostly at the State Department and the Pentagon. The most sensitive information isn't put in the Wire; it goes only in the PDB."

"If this was from a single source intelligence, it wouldn't have been briefed to Trump. It's not vetted, and it's not important enough. If you caught a Russian who said this, for example, that would make it important enough. But some Taliban detainees saying it to an interrogator, that does not rise to the threshold."

2. What purpose would bounties serve?

Everyone and their mother knows Trump wants to pull the troops out of Afghanistan, said Kiriakou.

"He ran on it and he has said it hundreds of times," he said. "So why would the Russians bother putting a bounty on U.S. troops if we're about to leave Afghanistan shortly anyway?"

That's leaving aside Russia's own experience with the futility of Afghanistan campaigns, learned during its grueling 9-year war there in the 1980s.

If this bounty campaign is real, it would not appear to be very effective, as only eight U.S. military members were killed in Afghanistan in 2020. The New York Times could not verify that even one U.S. military member was killed due to an alleged Russian bounty.

The Taliban denies it accepted bounties from Russian intelligence.

"These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless -- our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources," Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, told The New York Times . "That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure and we don't attack them."

The Russian Embassy in the United States called the reporting "fake news."

While the Russians are ruthless, "it's hard to fathom what their motivations could be" here, said Paul Pillar, an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an interview with The American Conservative. "What would they be retaliating for? Some use of force in Syria recently? I don't know. I can't string together a particular sequence that makes sense at this time. I'm not saying that to cast doubt on reports the Russians were doing this sort of thing."

3. Why is this story being leaked now?

According to U.S. officials quoted by the AP, top officials in the White House "were aware of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans" in early 2019. So why is this story just coming out now?

This story is "WMD [all over] again," said McGovern, who in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief. He believes the stories seek to preempt DOJ findings on the origins of the Russiagate probe.

The NYT story serves to bolster the narrative that Trump sides with Russia, and against our intelligence community estimates and our own soldiers lives.

The stories "are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans -- which seems to have been the main objective," writes McGovern. "There [Trump] goes again -- not believing our 'intelligence community; siding, rather, with Putin.'"

"I don't believe this story and I think it was leaked to embarrass the President," said Kiriakou. "Trump is on the ropes in the polls; Biden is ahead in all the battleground states."

If these anonymous sources had spoken up during the impeachment hearings, their statements could have changed history.

But the timing here, "kicking a man when he is down, is extremely like the Washington establishment. A leaked story like this now, embarrasses and weakens Trump," he said. "It was obvious that Trump would blow the media response, which he did."

The bungled media response and resulting negative press could also lead Trump to contemplate harsher steps towards Russia in order to prove that he is "tough," which may have motivated the leakers. It's certainly a policy goal with which Bolton, one of the only named sources in the New York Times piece, wholeheartedly approves.

Barbara Boland is TAC's foreign policy and national security reporter. Previously, she worked as an editor for the Washington Examiner and for CNS News. She is the author of Patton Uncovered , a book about General George Patton in World War II, and her work has appeared on Fox News, The Hill , UK Spectator , and elsewhere. Boland is a graduate from Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC .


Tomonthebeach 9 hours ago • edited

Caitlin Johnstone was the first journalist to question this NYT expose' several days ago in her blog. After looking into it, I had to agree with her that the story was junk reporting by a news source eager to stick it to Trump for his daily insults. NYT must love the irony of a "fake news" story catching fire and burning Trump politically. After all, paying people to kill their own enemies? That is a "tip," not a bounty. It is more of an intel footnote than the game-changer in international relations as asserted by Speaker Pelosi on TV as she grabbed her pearls beneath her stylish COVID mask.

I was surprised that Ms. Boland could not think of any motivation for leaking the story right now given recent grousing on the Hill about Trump's inviting Putin to G7 over the objections of Merkel and several other NATO heads of state. I even posted a congratulatory message in Defense One yesterday to the US Intel community for mission accomplished.

Not only did CIA et al.'s leak get even with Trump for years of insults and ignoring their reports (Trump is politically wounded by this story), but it also achieved their primary objective of keeping Putin out of the G7 and muzzling Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO because Russia is our friend (well his, anyway).

Connecticut Farmer Tomonthebeach 3 hours ago

That "bounty" story never passed the smell test, even to my admittedly untrained nose. My real problem is that it's a story in the first place, given that Trump campaigned on a platform that included bringing the boys home from sand hills like Afghanistan; yet here we are, four years later, and we're still there.

Lavinia 6 hours ago

Point 4: the whole point of the Talibans is to fight to the death whichever country tries to control and invade Afghanistan. They didn't need the Russians to tell them to fight the US Army, did they?

Point 5: Russia tried to organise a mediation process between the Afghan government and the Talibans already in 2018 - so why would they be at the same time trying to fuel the conflict? A stable Afghanistan is more convenient to them, given the geographical position of the country.

This whole story is completely ridiculous. Totally bogus.

Wally 5 hours ago

As much as I love to see everyone pile on trump, this is another example of a really awful policy having bad outcomes. If Bush, Obama, trump, or anyone at the pentagon gave a crap about the troops, they wouldn't have kept them in Afghanistan and lied about the fact they were losing the whole time.

Of course people are trying to kill US military in Afghanistan. If I lived in Afghanistan, I'd probably hate them too. And let's not forget that just a few weeks ago the 82nd airborne was ready to kill American civilians in DC. The military is our enemy too!

If you are in the US military today, please quit.

https://www.washingtonpost....

Don't ever forget how they lied to us.

Feral Finster 4 hours ago

Moreover, the idea is stupid. Russia doesn't need to do anything to motivate Afghans to want to boot the invaders out of their country, and would want to attract negative attention in doing so.

The purported bounty program doesn't help Russia, but the anonymous narrative does conveniently serve several CIA purposes:
1. It makes it harder to leave Afghanistan.
2. It keeps the cold war with Russia going along.
3. It damages Trump (whose relationship with the CIA is testy at best).

Then there's the question of how this supposed intelligence was gathered. The CIA tortures people, and there's no reason to believe that this was any different.

Feral Finster Sidney Caesar 2 hours ago

1. Russia wants a stable Afghanistan. Not a base for jihadis.

2. The idea that Russia has to encourage Afghans to kill Invaders is a hoot. They don't ever do that on their own.

3. Not only do Afghans traditionally need no motivation to kill infidel foreign Invaders, but Russia would have to be incredibly stupid to bring more American enmity on itself.

Contrast with the CIA motivations for this absurd narrative. Chuck Schumer famously commented that the intelligence agencies had ways of getting back at you, and it looks like you took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Either that, or you're just cynical. You'll espouse anything, however absurd and full of lies, as long as it damages Trump.

I detest Trump, but I am not a list.

Wally Feral Finster 3 hours ago

I don't have a clue if this bounty story is correct, but I can imagine plenty of reasons why the Russians would do it. It's easy enough to believe it or believe it was cooked up by CIA as you suggest.

Feral Finster Feral Finster 2 hours ago

And a fourth CIA goal: it undermines Trump's relationship with the military.

FND 4 hours ago

There will be one of these BS blockbusters every few weeks until the election. There are legions of buried-in democrat political appointees that will continue to feed the DNC press. It will be non-stop. The DNC press is shredding the 1st amendment.

former-vet FND 2 hours ago

Not shredding the First Amendment, just shining light on the pitfalls of a right to freedom of speech. There are others ramifications to free speech we consider social goods.

Kent FND 2 hours ago

These aren't buried-in democrats. These people could care less which political party the President is a member of. They only care that the President does what they say. Political parties are just to bamboozle the rubes. They are the real power.

Connecticut Farmer 4 hours ago

"U.S. Intelligence"-lol--a contradiction in terms. Just repeat three times: "George 'Slam Dunk' Tenet."

Sidney Caesar Connecticut Farmer 3 hours ago

Tenet knew his role- he said what his superiors wanted to hear: https://www.motherjones.com... The Iraq debacle was a top-down con job.

Stephen R Gould 3 hours ago • edited

The best defence that the WSJ and Fox News could muster was that the story wasn't confirmed as the NSA didn't have the same confidence in the assessment as the CIA. "Is there anything else to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the denial from the White House", "There was no denial from the White House". "That was the curious incident".

I note that Fox News had buried the story "below the scroll" on their home page - if they had though the story was fake, the headlines would be screaming at MSM.

maxsnafu 3 hours ago

I was suspicious when I saw it originated in Walter Duranty's newspaper.

The Derp State 3 hours ago

"What if Obama...." #4,267

former-vet 2 hours ago • edited

Pravda was a far more honest and objective news source than The New York Times is. I say that as someone who read both for long periods of time. The Times is on par with the National Enquirer for credibility, with the latter at least being less propagandistic and agenda-driven.

SatirevFlesti 2 hours ago

Having failed in its Russia "collusion" and "Russia stole the election" campaigns to oust Trump, this is just the latest effort by the Deep State and mass media to use unhinged Russophobia to try to boost Biden and damage Trump.

The extent to which the contemporary Left is driven by a level of Russophobia unseen even by the most stalwart anti-Communists on the Right during the Cold War is truly something to behold. I think at bottom it comes down to not liking Putin or Russia because they refuse to get on board with the Left's social agenda.

James SatirevFlesti 2 hours ago • edited

The contemporary left hate Russia , because Russia is carving out it own sphere of influence and keeping the Americans out, because it saved Assad from the western backed sunni head choppers (that the left cheered on, as they killed native Orthodox, and Catholic Christians). The Contempary left hate Russia because it cracks down on LGBT propaganda, banned porn hub, and return property to the Church , which the leftist Bolsheviks stole, the Contempaty left hate Russia because it cracked down on it western backed oligarchs who plundered Russia in the 90's.

The Contempary left wants Russia to be Woke, Broke, Godless, and Gay.

The democrats are now the cheerleaders of the warfare -welfare state,, the marriage between the neolibs-neocons under the Democrat party to ensure that President Trump is defeated by the invade the world, invite the world crowd.

WilliamRD TheSnark 44 minutes ago

"The Trumpies are right in that this was obviously a leak by the intel community designed to hurt Trump. But what do you expect...he has spent 4 years insulting and belittling them. They are going to get their pound of flesh."

Intel community was behind an attempted coup of Trump. He has good reason not to trust them and insulting is only natural. Hopefully John Durham will indict several of them

Kent an hour ago

I honestly don't find "unnamed officials", the CIA, the NSA, the NYT, John Bolton, or President Trump to be credible sources.

Sidney Caesar Kent an hour ago • edited

I've found myself to be the only honest and trustworthy person- everyone should just listen to me.

WilliamRD 42 minutes ago • edited

Montage: Mainstream Media Hype About Russia Collusion https://twitter.com/ggreenw...

WilliamRD 36 minutes ago

Russiagate's Last Gasp https://consortiumnews.com/...

phreethink 20 minutes ago • edited

Interesting take. I certainly take anything anyone publishes based on anonymous sources with a big grain of salt, especially when it comes from the NYT...

[Jul 01, 2020] Control freaks that cannot even control their own criminal impulses!

Highly recommended!
Jul 01, 2020 | www.unz.com

No Friend Of The Devil , says:

Control freaks that cannot even control their own criminal impulses!

...They suffer from god-complexes, since they do not believe in God, they feel an obligation to act as God, and decide the fates of over 7 billion people, who would obviously be better off if the PICs were sent to the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants!

[Jun 28, 2020] Russian position for Start talks: "We don't believe the US in its current shape is a counterpart that is reliable, so we have no confidence, no trust whatsoever".

Highly recommended!
Jun 28, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

START. Talks began in Vienna with a childish stunt by the American side . I wouldn't expect any results: the Americans are fatally deluded . As for the Russians: " We don't believe the U.S. in its current shape is a counterpart that is reliable, so we have no confidence, no trust whatsoever ".Russian has a word for that: недоговороспособны and it's characterised US behaviour since at least this event (in Obama's time). Can't make an agreement with them and, even if you do, they won't keep it.

[Jun 23, 2020] John Bolton's Mission was to Destroy Donald Trump's Detente with North Korea

Jun 23, 2020 | nationalinterest.org

Bolton, of course, dismissed the entire concept of diplomacy from the very start. He never bought into the notion that North Korean officials could be talked to sensibly because they were, well, insane. Bolton's version of North Korea diplomacy was to tighten the economic screws, brandish the U.S. military, and wait until one of two things happened: 1) the Kim regime surrendered its entire nuclear weapons program like Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, or 2) the Kim regime continued to spur Washington's demands, in which the White House would have no option but to use U.S. military force. Bolton's record is analogous to a stereotypical linebacker on an obscene amount of steroids -- smash your opponent to pieces and don't think twice about it. Top Beauty Surgeon Says "Forget Facelifts, This at Home Tip is My #1 Wrinkle Red Del Mar Laboratories Dr: This May Be the Best CBD Ever for Arthritis, Aching Joints & Inflammation Mirror News Online Enlarged Prostate Gone - Just Do This Before Bed (Watch) Newhealthylife 3 Ways Your Cat Asks for Help Dr. Marty The content you see here is paid for by the advertiser or content provider whose link you click on, and is recommended to you by Revcontent. As the leading platform for native advertising and content recommendation, Revcontent uses interest based targeting to select content that we think will be of particular interest to you. We encourage you to view our Privacy Policy and your opt out options here . Got it, thanks! Remove Content Link?

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The only problem: North Korea isn't some helpless punter with string bean arms and a lanky midsection. It's a nuclear weapons state fiercely proud of its independence and sovereignty, constantly on guard for the slightest threat from a foreign power, and cognizant of its weakened position relative to its neighbors. This is one of the prime reasons Bolton's obsession with the Libya-style North Korea deal, in which Pyongyang would theoretically discard its entire nuclear apparatus and allow U.S. weapons inspectors to take custody of its nuclear warheads before flying them back to the U.S. for destruction, was unworkable from the start. The Libya-model trumpeted by Bolton was a politically correct way of demanding Pyongyang's total surrender -- an extremely naive goal if there ever was one. When one remembers the fate of Qaddafi 8 years after he traded sanctions relief for his weapons of mass destruction -- the dictator was assaulted and humiliated before being executed in the desert -- even the word "Libya" is treated by the Kim dynasty as a threat to its existence. As Paul Pillar wrote in these pages more than two years ago, "Libya's experience does indeed weigh heavily on the thinking of North Korean officials, who have taken explicit notice of that experience, as a disincentive to reaching any deals with the United States about dismantling weapons programs."

One can certainly take issue with Trump's North Korea policy. Two years of personal diplomacy with Kim Jong-un have yet to result in the denuclearization Washington seeks (denuclearization is more of a slogan than a realistic objective at this point, anyway). But Trump's strategy aside, Bolton's alternative was worse. The president knew his former national security adviser's public insistence on the Libya model was dangerously inept. He had to walk back Bolton's comments weeks later to ensure the North Koreans didn't pull out of diplomacy before it got off the ground. Trump hasn't forgotten about the experience; on June 18, Trump tweeted that "Bolton's dumbest of all statements set us back very badly with North Korea, even now. I asked him, "what the hell were you thinking?"

[Jun 23, 2020] Chickenhawk B olton May Be a Beast, But He's Washington's Creature by Richard Hanania

Personally he is a bully and as such a coward: he can attack only a weaker opponent. His new book shows that however discredited and intellectually thin his foreign policy views are, they always rise to the top. To Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies abroad.
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton's hawkishness is combined with an equally striking lack of originality. It is possible to be an unorthodox or partisan hawk, as we see in populists who want to get out of the Middle East but ramp up pressure on China, or Democrats who have a particular obsession with Russia. Bolton takes the most belligerent position on every issue without regards for partisanship or popularity, a level of consistency that would almost be honorable if it wasn't so frightening. No alliance or commitment is ever questioned, and neither, for that matter, is any rivalry. ..."
"... Bolton lacks any intellectual tradition or popular support base that he can call his own. Domestic political concerns are almost completely missing from his book, although we learn that he follows "Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society," is happy with Trump's judicial appointments, and favors legal, but not illegal, immigration. Other than these GOP clichés, there is virtually no commentary or concern about the state of American society or its trajectory. Unlike those who worry about how global empire affects the United States at home, to Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies abroad. While Bolton's views have been called "nationalist" because he doesn't care about multilateralism, nation-building, or international law, I have never seen a nationalist that gives so little thought to his nation. ..."
"... Bolton recounts how his two top aides, Charles Kupperman and Mira Ricardel, had extensive experience working for Boeing. Patrick Shanahan similarly became acting Secretary of Defense after spending thirty years at that company, until he was replaced by Mark Esper, a Raytheon lobbyist. Why working for a company that manufactures aircraft and weapons prepares one for a job in foreign policy, the establishment has never felt the need to explain, any more than it needs to explain continuing Cold War-era military commitments three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The most important question raised by the career of John Bolton is how someone with his views has been able to achieve so much power. While Bolton gets much worse press and always goes a step too far even for most of the foreign policy establishment, in other ways he is all too typical. Take James Mattis, a foil for Bolton throughout much of the first half of the book. Although more popular in the media, the "warrior monk" slow-walked and obstructed attempts by the president to pull out of the Middle East, and after a career supporting many of the same wars and commitments as Bolton, now makes big bucks in the private sector, profiting off of his time in government. ..."
Jun 23, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, John Bolton, Simon & Schuster, 592 pages

The release of John Bolton's book today has become a Washington cultural event, because he is, by all measures, Washington's creature.

Those who dislike the Trump administration have been pleased to find in The Room Where It Happened confirmation in much of what they already believed about the Ukraine scandal and the president's lack of capacity for the job. Some accusations in the book, such as the story about Trump seeking reelection help from China through American farm purchases, are new, and in an alternative universe could have formed the basis of a different, or if Bolton had his way, more comprehensive, impeachment inquiry.

While Bolton's book has been found politically useful by the president's detractors, the work is also important as a first-hand account from the top of the executive branch over a 19-month period, from April 2018 to September 2019. It also, mostly inadvertently, reveals much about official Washington, the incentive structures that politicians face, and the kind of person that is likely to succeed in that system. Bolton may be a biased self-promoter, but he is nonetheless a credible source, as his stories mostly involve conversations with other people who are free to eventually tell their own side. Moreover, the John Bolton of The Room Where It Happened is no different from the man we know from his three-decade career as a government official and public personality. No surprises here.

There are three ways to understand John Bolton. In increasing order of importance, they are intellectually, psychologically, and politically -- that is, as someone who is both a product of and antagonist to the foreign-policy establishment -- in many ways typical, and in others a detested outlier.

On the first of these, there simply isn't much there. Bolton takes the most hawkish position on every issue. He wants war with North Korea and Iran, and if he can't have that, he'll settle for destroying their economies and sabotaging any attempts by Trump to reach a deal with either country. He takes the maximalist positions on great powers like China and Russia, and third world states that pose no plausible threat like Cuba and Venezuela. At one point, he brags about State reversing "Obama's absurd conclusion that Cuban baseball was somehow independent of its government, thus in turn allowing Treasury to revoke the license allowing Major League Baseball to traffic in Cuban players." How this helps Americans or Cubans is left unexplained.

Bolton's hawkishness is combined with an equally striking lack of originality. It is possible to be an unorthodox or partisan hawk, as we see in populists who want to get out of the Middle East but ramp up pressure on China, or Democrats who have a particular obsession with Russia. Bolton takes the most belligerent position on every issue without regards for partisanship or popularity, a level of consistency that would almost be honorable if it wasn't so frightening. No alliance or commitment is ever questioned, and neither, for that matter, is any rivalry.

Anyone who picks up Bolton's over 500-page memoir hoping to find serious reflection on the philosophical basis of American foreign policy will be disappointed. The chapters are broken up by topic area, most beginning with a short background explainer on Bolton's views of the issue. In the chapter on Venezuela, we are told that overthrowing the government of that country is important because of "its Cuba connection and the openings it afforded Russia, China, and Iran." The continuing occupation of Afghanistan is necessary for preventing terrorists from establishing a base, and, in an argument I had not heard anywhere before, for "remaining vigilant against the nuclear-weapons programs in Iran on the west and Pakistan on the east." Iran needs to be deterred, though from what we are never told.

Bolton lacks any intellectual tradition or popular support base that he can call his own. Domestic political concerns are almost completely missing from his book, although we learn that he follows "Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society," is happy with Trump's judicial appointments, and favors legal, but not illegal, immigration. Other than these GOP clichés, there is virtually no commentary or concern about the state of American society or its trajectory. Unlike those who worry about how global empire affects the United States at home, to Bolton the country is simply a vehicle for smiting his enemies abroad. While Bolton's views have been called "nationalist" because he doesn't care about multilateralism, nation-building, or international law, I have never seen a nationalist that gives so little thought to his nation.

The more time one spends reading Bolton, the more one comes to the conclusion that the guy just likes to fight. In addition to seeking out and escalating foreign policy conflicts, he seems to relish going to war with the media and the rest of the Washington bureaucracy. His book begins with a quote from the Duke of Wellington rallying his troops at Waterloo: "Hard pounding, this, gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest." The back cover quotes the epilogue on his fight with the Trump administration, responding "game on" to attempts to stop publication. He takes a mischievous pride in recounting attacks from the media or foreign governments, such as when he was honored to hear that North Korea worried about his influence over the President. Bolton is too busy enjoying the fight, and as will be seen below, profiting from it, to reflect too carefully on what it's all for.

Bolton could be ignored if he were simply an odd figure without much power. Yet the man has been at the pinnacle of the GOP establishment for thirty years, serving appointed roles in every Republican president since Reagan. The story of how he got his job in the Trump administration is telling. According to Bolton's account, he was courted throughout the transition process and the early days of the administration by Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner, ironic considering the reputation of the former as a populist opposed to forever wars and the latter as a more liberal figure within the White House. Happy with his life outside government, Bolton would accept a position no lower than Secretary of State or National Security Advisor. Explaining his reluctance to enter government in a lower capacity, Bolton provides a list of his commitments at the time, including "Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Fox News contributor; a regular on the speaking circuit; of counsel at a major law firm; member of corporate boards; senior advisor to a global private-equity firm."

Clearly, being an advocate for policies that can destroy the lives of millions abroad, and a complete lack of experience in business, have proved no hindrance to Bolton's success in corporate America.

Bolton recounts how his two top aides, Charles Kupperman and Mira Ricardel, had extensive experience working for Boeing. Patrick Shanahan similarly became acting Secretary of Defense after spending thirty years at that company, until he was replaced by Mark Esper, a Raytheon lobbyist. Why working for a company that manufactures aircraft and weapons prepares one for a job in foreign policy, the establishment has never felt the need to explain, any more than it needs to explain continuing Cold War-era military commitments three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ricardel resigned after a dispute over preparations for the First Lady's trip to Africa, an example of how too often in the Trump administration, nepotism and self-interest have been the only checks on bad policy or even greater corruption ("Melania's people are on the warpath," Trump is quoted as saying). Another is when Trump, according to Bolton, was less than vigorous in pursing destructive Iranian sanctions due to personal relationships with the leaders of China and Turkey. At the 2019 G7 summit, when Pompeo and Bolton try to get Benjamin Netanyahu to reach out to Trump to talk him out of meeting with the Iranian foreign minister, Jared prevents his call from going through on the grounds that a foreign government shouldn't be telling the President of the United States who to meet with.

The most important question raised by the career of John Bolton is how someone with his views has been able to achieve so much power. While Bolton gets much worse press and always goes a step too far even for most of the foreign policy establishment, in other ways he is all too typical. Take James Mattis, a foil for Bolton throughout much of the first half of the book. Although more popular in the media, the "warrior monk" slow-walked and obstructed attempts by the president to pull out of the Middle East, and after a career supporting many of the same wars and commitments as Bolton, now makes big bucks in the private sector, profiting off of his time in government.

In the coverage of Bolton, this is what should not be lost. The former National Security Advisor is the product of a system with its own internal logic. Largely discredited and intellectually hollow, and without broad popular support, it persists in its practices and beliefs because it has been extremely profitable for those involved. The most extreme hawks are simply symptoms of larger problems, with the flamboyant Bolton being much more like mainstream members of the foreign policy establishment than either side would like to admit.

Richard Hanania is a research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.

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[Jun 23, 2020] John Bolton Tells How Iran Hawks Set Up Trump's Syrian Kurdish Disaster

Notable quotes:
"... Bolton's account sheds light on how it happened: hawks in the administration, including Bolton himself, wanted U.S. forces in Syria fighting Russia and Iran. They saw the U.S.-Kurdish alliance against ISIS as a distraction -- and let the Turkish-Kurdish conflict fester until it spiralled out of control. ..."
Jun 23, 2020 | nationalinterest.org

The drama eventually ended with President Donald Trump pulling U.S. peacekeepers out of Syria -- and then sending them back in . One hundred thousand Syrian civilians were displaced by an advancing Turkish army, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces turned to Russia for help. But U.S. forces never fully withdrew -- they are still stuck in Syria defending oil wells .

Bolton's account sheds light on how it happened: hawks in the administration, including Bolton himself, wanted U.S. forces in Syria fighting Russia and Iran. They saw the U.S.-Kurdish alliance against ISIS as a distraction -- and let the Turkish-Kurdish conflict fester until it spiralled out of control.

Pompeo issued a statement on Thursday night denouncing Bolton's entire book as "a number of lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods."

[Jun 22, 2020] MoA community discussion of Bolton book

Notable quotes:
"... let us not forget that bolton threatened a un officials kids because they guy wasn't going along with the iraq war propaganda. ..."
"... Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five years. ..."
"... Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would have required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons. ..."
"... The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those nations, and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's adult children. ..."
Jun 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

pretzelattack , Jun 17 2020 21:49 utc | 14

let us not forget that bolton threatened a un officials kids because they guy wasn't going along with the iraq war propaganda.

Duncan Idaho , Jun 17 2020 22:03 utc | 15

Only with Late Stage Capitalism could we have a vicious war criminal write a book criticizing a psychopathic sociopath.
Anonymous , Jun 17 2020 22:06 utc | 16
The political establishment in Canada appeared dismayed at the prospect of Bolton as National Security Adviser. See these interviews with Hill + Knowlton strategies Vice-chairman, Peter Donolo, from 2018:

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/there-s-risk-trump-s-actions-are-driving-the-u-s-into-a-recession-peter-donolo~1342264
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/trade-wars-easy-to-start-not-so-easy-to-finish-peter-donolo~1365104

So Bolton gets in, Meng Wangzhou is detained in Vancouver on the US request (that's another story), and in time, Canada appoints a new Ambassador to China - Mr. Dominic Barton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Barton

Then Bolton gets fired. 'Nuff said. Just to let everyone know that Bolton is well and truly hated, as a government official, in certain circles.

AntiSpin , Jun 17 2020 22:07 utc | 17
@ pretzelattack | Jun 17 2020 21:49 utc | 14

Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five years.

Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would have required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons.

The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those nations, and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's adult children.

Jpc , Jun 17 2020 22:32 utc | 18
Why was he appointment made in the first place anyone,?
Ian2 , Jun 17 2020 23:08 utc | 19
Jpc | Jun 17 2020 22:32 utc | 18:

My guess Trump went along with the tough guy image that Bolton projected in media and recommendations by others.

james , Jun 17 2020 23:13 utc | 20
let the lobbyists with the most money win... that's what defines the usa system, leadership and decision making process... no one in their right mind would support this doofus..
Jen , Jun 17 2020 23:40 utc | 21
At least the one saving grace about John Bolton's memoir is that it might be a tad closer to reality than Christopher Steele's infamous dossier and might prove valuable as a source of evidence in a court of law. Maybe Yosemite Sam himself should start quaking in his boots.
jen , Jun 17 2020 23:42 utc | 22
Jpc @ 18, Ian2 @ 19:

Personal interest on DJT's part? :-)

JC , Jun 17 2020 23:43 utc | 23
Posted by: Tower | Jun 17 2020 21:43 utc | 13

This is the most intelligent post so far.

Yes why not? If Obama awarded the Noble prize even before he begins serving his first term I can't see why Bolton not nominated now. America is a joke, not a banana republic. It deserves Obama, Trump, Bolton or Biden another stoopid joker.

Stoopid president elected by stoopid citizens

Don Bacon , Jun 17 2020 23:44 utc | 24
@ Jpc
When faced with Trump's behavior of employing warmongers, including several generals, some observers opined that Trump wanted people with contrasting opinions so that he could consider them and then say "no." He did more with Bolton eventually, sending him to Mongolia while he (Trump) went to Singapore (or somewhere over there).
A User , Jun 17 2020 23:47 utc | 25
re Ian2 | Jun 17 2020 23:08 utc | 19
who hazarded : My guess Trump went along with the tough guy image that Bolton projected in media and recommendations by others.
Not at all, if you go back to the earliest days of the orangeman's prezdency, you will see Trump resisted the efforts by Mercer & the zionist casino owner to give Bolton a gig.
He knew that shrub had problems with the boasts of Bolton and as his reputation was as an arsehole who sounded his own trumpet at his boss's expense orangeman refused for a long time. Trump believes the trump prezdency is about trump no one else.
Thing was at the time he was running for the prez gig trump was on his uppers, making a few dollars from his tv show, plus licensing other people's buildings by selling his name to be stuck on them. trump tower azerbnajan etc.
He put virtually none of his own money into the 'race' so when he won the people who had put up the dosh had power over him.
Bolton has always been an arse kisser to any zionist cause he suspects he can claw a penny outta, so he used the extreme loony end of the totally looney zionist spectrum to hook him (Bolton) up with a gig by pushing for him with trump.

It was always gonna end the way it did as Bolton is forever briefing the media against anyone who tried to resist his murderous fantasies. Trump is never gonna argue for any scheme that doesn't have lotsa dollars for him in it so he had plenty of run ins with Bolton who then went to his media mates & told tales.
When bolton was appointed orangey's stakes were at a really low ebb among DC warmongers, so he reluctantly took him on then spent the next 18 months getting rid of the grubby parasite.

div> Yosemite Sam did it better. I would prefer a Foghorn Leghorn-type character, for US diplomacy.

Posted by: Ribbit , Jun 18 2020 0:20 utc | 26

Yosemite Sam did it better. I would prefer a Foghorn Leghorn-type character, for US diplomacy.

Posted by: Ribbit | Jun 18 2020 0:20 utc | 26

Kristan hinton , Jun 18 2020 0:46 utc | 27
Real History: Candidate Trump praised Bolton and named him as THE number one Foreign Policy expert he (Trump) respected.

Imagine the mustachioed Mister Potatoe (sic) Head and zany highjinks!

Bolton and one of his first wives were regulars at Plato's Retreat for wife swapping orgies. The wife was not real keen on the behavior, but she allegedly found herself verbally and physically abused for objecting.

DannyC , Jun 18 2020 1:17 utc | 28
Trump is at fault for hiring him to appease the Zionist lobby. We all knew the guy was a warmonger and a scumbag. It's not a surprise. Trump surrounds himself with the worst people
jadan , Jun 18 2020 1:30 utc | 29
Did John Bolton put his personal interests above the will of congress in an attempt to extort the Ukrainian government? You're making a false equivalence. You seem to have a soft spot for Trump. Bolton is an in-your-face son of a bitch, but Trump, Trump is just human garbage.
Kay Fabe , Jun 18 2020 2:27 utc | 30
Pretty much a nothing burger if thats all he has got. Just a distraction. Trumps outrage just meant help Bolton sell some books. Lol. People are so easy to fool.

I still think Bolton managing the operations as COG in Cheneys old bunker. Coming out for a vacation while next phase is planned

Jackrabbit , Jun 18 2020 2:56 utc | 31
Kay Fabe @Jun18 2:27 #29
Pretty much a nothing burger if thats all he has got.

You underestimate the craftiness of this kayfabe.

The tiff with Bolton makes Trump look like a peace-loving moderate so that he's acceptable to Independent voters.

!!

Den lille abe , Jun 18 2020 3:03 utc | 32
Bolton is just another American arsehole. Nothing new. When they do not get their way, the y always turn on their superiors, or those in charge. Bolton is just another "Anhänger" personal gain is what motivates him.
He should have been a blot on his parents bedsheets or at least a forced abortion, but unfortunately that did not happen...
Piotr Berman , Jun 18 2020 3:53 utc | 33
The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him (Trump) and his voters.

Posted by: bob sykes | Jun 17 2020 20:55 utc | 11

Trump thwarted Trump. Before he got elected, Trump mentioned his admiration of Bolton more than once. Voters of Trump elected a liar and an incoherent person -- at time, incomprehensible, a nice bonus. But it is worth noticing that Trump never liked being binded by agreement, like, say, an agreement to pay money back to creditors, or whatever international agreement would restrict USA from doing what they damn please.

Superficially, it is mysterious why Trump made an impression that he wants to negotiate with North Korea with some agreement at the end. Was he forced to make a mockery from the negotiation by someone sticking knife to his back?

Some may remember that Trump promised to abolish Affordable Care Act and replace it with "something marvelous". The latest version is that he will start thinking about it again after re-election. If you believe that...

Granted, Trump is more sane than Bolton, but just a bit, unlike Bolton he has some moments of lucidity.

In conclusion, I would advocate to vote for Biden. If you need a reason, that would be that Biden never tweets, or if he does, it is forgettable before the typing is done. Unlike the hideous Trumpian productions.

jason , Jun 18 2020 3:55 utc | 34
"men fit to be shaved," Tiberius, on Bolton and Friedman.

he is the best & brightest we have. when a dreadful mouth is called for. his insights into the Trump WH are probably as deep as his knowledge of VZ, Iran, Cuba, etc. he's a useful idiot, a willing fool. like Trump, he's the verbal equivalent of the cops on the street, in foreign "policy." another abusive father figure

reading the imperial steak turds - an American form of reading the tea leaves or goat livers or chicken flight or celestial what have you. an emperor craps out a big hairy one like Bolton and the priests and hierophants and lawyers and scribes come for a long, close up inspection and fact-gathering smell of another steaming pile of gmo-corn-and-downer-cow-fed, colon cancer causing, Kansas feed-lot raised, grade A Murkin BEEF. guess what they in their wisdom find? Trump stinks.

kiwiklown , Jun 18 2020 4:20 utc | 35
Scotch Bingeington @ 6 -- "Take a look at his face. It's obvious to me that even John Bolton does not enjoy being John Bolton. That mouth, it's drooping to an absurd degree. Comparable to Merkel's face, come to think of it.

At last, someone who notices physionomy!

That face drips with false modesty, kind of trying to make his face say, "... look at harmless old me..."

That walrus bushiness points at an attempt to hide, to camouflage his true thoughts, his malevolence.

That pretended stoop, with one hand clutching a sheaf of briefing papers, emulating the posture of deferential court clerks, speaks to a lifetime of a snake in the grass "fighting" from below for things important to himself.

But those of us who have been around the block a couple times will know to watch our backs around this type. Poisoned-tipped daggers are their fave weapons, and your backs are their fave "battle space". LOL

This statement by Jeffrey Sachs may as well also describe America's leadership crisis: "At the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite."

kiwiklown , Jun 18 2020 5:29 utc | 36
GeorgeV @ 8 -- "It's like standing on a street corner watching two prostitutes calling each other a whore! How low has the US sunk."

And the US "leadeship" sends these types out to lecture other peoples on "values"? on how to become "normal nations"? on how to "contain" old civilisations such as Iran, Russia, China?

It is axiomatic that the stupid do not know they are stupid. Same goes for morals. The immoral do not know they are immoral. Or, perhaps, as Phat Pomp-arse shows, they know they are immoral, but do not care. Which makes one rightly guess that people like Bolt-On and him must be depraved.

Yes, it may take centuries before the leadership in this depraved Exceptionally Indispensable Nation to become truly normal again.

snake , Jun 18 2020 5:38 utc | 37
Of course, Trump actually campaigned to leave Afghanistan and Syria, and he was elected to do so. The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him and his voters. by: bob sykes 11

I wondered about He King claims that Trump actually attempted to do those awful things, . .. , I looked for evidence to prove the claim.. I asked just about every librarian I could find to please show me evidence that confirms the deep state over rode Mr. Trump's actual attempt to remove USA anything from Afghanistan and Syria. thus far, no confirming or supporting facts have been produced. to support such a claim. Mr. Trump could easily have tweeted to his supporters something to the effect that the damn military, CIA, homeland security, state department, foreign service, federal reserve, women's underwear association and smiley Joe's hamburger stand in fact every militant in the USA governed America were holding hands, locked in a conspiracy to block President Trumps attempt to remove USA anything from Afghanistan or Syria.. If Mr. Trump has asked for those things, they would have happened. The next day there would have been parties in the streets as the militant agency heads began rolling as Mr. Trump fired them each and everyone.. No firings happened, the party providers were disappointed, no troops, USA contractors or privatization pirates left any foreign place.. as far as I can tell. 500 + military bases still remain in Europe none have been abandoned.. and one was added in Israel. BTW i heard that Mr. Trump managed to get 17 trillion dollars into the hands of many who are contractors or suppliers to those foreign operations. I can't say I am against Trump, but i can ask you to show me some evidence to prove your claim.

Jackrabbit , Jun 18 2020 5:50 utc | 38
snake @Jun18 5:38 #36

As always, watch what they do, not what they say.

Trump is the Republican Obama. A faux populist 'insider' who pretends to be an 'outsider'.

Trump was selected to be the nationalist President that meets the challenge from Russia and China. And serves all the usual interests while doing so.

Americans fools keep electing these establishment stooges and then wonder why nothing seems to get any better.

!!

Mao , Jun 18 2020 6:25 utc | 39
Sack cartoon: Trump's 'swamp'

https://www.startribune.com/sack-cartoon-trump-s-swamp/401964365/

https://www.startribune.com/sack-cartoon-the-swamp/420668223/

Mao , Jun 18 2020 6:39 utc | 40
Trump searches for new slogan as he abandons Keep America Great amid George Floyd and covid turmoil

The president has taken to inserting the term 'Transition to Greatness' into his remarks. His 2016 slogan was 'Make America Great Again'. After election he polled audiences on whether to go with 'Keep America Great'. He told CPAC this year and said at the State of the Union 'The Best is Yet to Come'. Tweaks come as he trails Biden in new NBC and CNN polls, as the nation struggles with the coronavirus and protests over police violence.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8398993/Donald-Trump-searches-new-slogan-amid-cratering-polls-against-Joe-Biden.html

Mao , Jun 18 2020 6:44 utc | 41
Rudy W. Giuliani @RudyGiuliani

Ukrainian police seize $6 Million in bribes paid to kill the new case into crooked Burisma.

This money is a Followup to the multi-millions in bribes Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and President Poroshenko earned to leverage their offices to kill the original case.

All covered up!

https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1273298170966159366

Ghost Ship , Jun 18 2020 7:28 utc | 42
Christian J. Chuba @ 3
goals that you consider important are different from personal interests.

What personal interests has Trump actually advanced during his time as president. Leaving out the fake allegations, I'm hard put to think of any. If you look at Trump's actual behaviour rather than his bullshit or the bullshit aimed at him, I'm also hard put to think of anything illegal he's done while in office that wasn't done by previous administrations.
Mao , Jun 18 2020 7:41 utc | 43
US President Donald Trump sought help from Xi Jinping to win the upcoming 2020 election, "pleading" with the Chinese president to boost imports of American agricultural products, according to a new book by former national security adviser John Bolton. The accusations were included in an excerpt from The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, which is set to be released on June 23. Bolton also wrote that Trump demonstrated other "fundamentally unacceptable behaviour", including privately expressing support for China's mass interment of Uygur Muslims and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang.*This video has been updated to fix a spelling mistake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agk61kyDS1k

Yeah, Right , Jun 18 2020 8:35 utc | 44
@42 Mao I'm struggling to see how "pleading" with any country for it to purchase more US goods is "fundamentally unacceptable behaviour" from a US President.

Pleading to Xi for China to give, say, Israel preferential access to markets, sure.

Down South , Jun 18 2020 9:56 utc | 45
The Saker takes an interesting look at this "spontaneous or popular" revolt taking place in America

https://thesaker.is/what-kind-of-popular-revolution-is-this/#comments

Mao , Jun 18 2020 10:35 utc | 46
The Saker:

I have lived in the United States for a total of 24 years and I have witnessed many crises over this long period, but what is taking place today is truly unique and much more serious than any previous crisis I can recall. And to explain my point, I would like to begin by saying what I believe the riots we are seeing taking place in hundreds of US cities are not about. They are not about:

* Racism or "White privilege"
* Police violence
* Social alienation and despair
* Poverty
* Trump
* The liberals pouring fuel on social fires
* The infighting of the US elites/deep state

They are not about any of these because they encompass all of these issues, and more.

It is important to always keep in mind the distinction between the concepts of "cause" and "pretext". And while it is true that all the factors listed above are real (at least to some degree, and without looking at the distinction between cause and effect), none of them are the true cause of what we are witnessing. At most, the above are pretexts, triggers if you want, but the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US society.

https://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-systemic-collapse-of-the-us-society-has-begun/

Steve , Jun 18 2020 10:57 utc | 47
The only time I'd be interested in anything Bolton had to say is if he were saying it from the docket at The Hague
Matt , Jun 18 2020 11:40 utc | 48
Don't really want to take sides between those two odious characters, but I think there's a difference in what the paper is saying.

One is about someone pursuing policy goals they favour, the other "personal interest". From what I have seen so far, Bolton's main definition of Trump's "personal interest" is his chances for re-election (rather than any personal business interest).

I think Bolton was happy for Trump to pursue the policy goals he favoured, at least when they coincided with Bolton's!

Tadlak Davidovitsh , Jun 18 2020 12:04 utc | 49
In modern Italy, mentioning Jupiter (Jove) and the ox (Bove) in the same sentence usually implies a demand that the two be treated the same.
450.org , Jun 18 2020 12:07 utc | 50
How many people have cashed in on Trump so far? Countless numbers of them. An ocean of them. Scathing books about Trump is one way to cash in on thr Trump effect, and the authors, many of whom don't even write the book themselves, get promoted and their books promoted in the mainstream media and elsewhere.

There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to Trump. We know everything there is to know about Trump. Some of us knew everything there was to know about him before he became POTUS. And yet, there he is, sitting like the Cheshire Cat in the Oval Office, untouchable and beyond reproach. Meanwhile, even more scathing books are in the pipeline because there's money, so much money, to be made don't you know.

Bolton is a shitbird every bit as much as Trump is and in fact an argument can be made Bolton is even worse and even more dangerous than Trump because if Bolton had his druthers, Iran would be a failed state right about now and America would be bogged down in a senseless money-making (for the defense contractors owned by the extractive wealthy elite) quagmire in Iran just as it was in Iraq and still is in Afghanistan.

Colbert is all into the Bolton book because he and his staff managed to secure an interview with Bolton. Bolton, of course, has agreed to this because it's a great way to promote his book to the likes of Cher who is the perfect example of the demographic Colbert caters to with his show. Some of the commercials during Colbert's show last night? One was an Old Navy commercial where they bragged about how they're giving to the poor. The family they used for the commercial, the recipients of this beneficence, was a black family. Biden is proud of Old Navy because don't you know, poor and black are one and the same. In otherwords, there are no poor people except black people. No, that's not racist. Not at all. Also, another commercial during Colbert's show was for the reopening of Las Vegas amidst the spreading pandemic. This is immediately after a segment where Colbert is decrying Republican governors for opening southern states too early. The hypocritical irony is so stark, you can cut it with a chainsaw.

kiwiklown , Jun 18 2020 12:24 utc | 51
Mao @ 45 quoting The Saker -- ".... the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US society."

And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.

In my 50 years of studying American society, I have learned to watch what US leaders do, not what they preach. More profitable is to look at what declassified US documents tell us about the truth, not what the presstitudes of the day pretend to dish up. Also, what other world leaders might, in a candid moment, tell us about America.

450.org , Jun 18 2020 12:30 utc | 52
@50
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.

I would argue that this is a symptom or a feature versus the root of the problem. Afterall, a system that allows for creeping entrenched endemic corruption, is a crappy system. It's the system that's the root of this and it's not just isolated to the United States. It's civilization itself that's the root and what enabled civilization -- the spirit in our genes as Reg asserts.

450.org , Jun 18 2020 12:47 utc | 53
@4
I'm fully expecting the Dem "left" to try and praise the monsterous Bolton for "going against Trump", as they did with war criminal Mad Dog Matis and Bush. Bolton has to be one of the most evil mass murders on the face of the Earth. The world will be an infinitely better place when he and his ilk like Netanyahu, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Chertoff..etc finally go back to hell.

I agree. They would, because they already have and continue to do so, coddle and provide apologia for any and all monsters who decry Trump. Hell, I'm convinced they would clamor for Derek Chauvin's exoneration if he vocally decried Trump. Chauvin would make the rounds on the media circuit excoriating Trump and telling the world, contritely of course, that it was Trump who made him do it and now he sees the error of his ways. He'd be on Morning Joe and Chris Cuomo's and Don Lemon's shows not to mention Ari Melber and Anderson Cooper and Lawrence O'Donnell. The conservatives and their networks, who have provided apologia for Chauvin thus far, would now be his worst enemy. Colbert and Kimmel would have him on and guffawing with him asking him how it felt to choke the life out of someone, laughing all the way so long as he hates Trump and tells the world how much he hates Trump.

This world is an insane asylum, especially America. All under the banner and aegis of progress. And to think, humanity wants to export this madness to space and the universe at large. Any intelligent life that would ever make its way to Planet Earth, if ever, would be well-advised to exterminate the species human before it spread its poison to the universe at large. Not that that is possible, but just in case the .000000000001% chance of that does miraculously manifest.

kiwiklown , Jun 18 2020 12:48 utc | 54
Mao @ 42

Concerning Trump "pleading" with Xi, it is only right for a leader to request others to buy more US farm produce. We have only Bolton's word that the request was a plea. We also have only Bolton's word that the request / plea was to seek "help from Xi Jinping to win the upcoming 2020 election". Too early to believe Bolton. Wait till we see the meeting transcripts.

Bolton also alleged that Trump exhibited "fundamentally unacceptable behaviour" concerning the Uygurs. Again, only Bolton's word. Even so, saying it is "unacceptable behavior" presumes that China does wrong to incarcerate Uygurs. If not, ie, China either does not incarcerate them, or if China has good moral grounds to do so, then Bolton is wrong to disagree with his boss for uttering the right sentiment. Judging by how the anglo-zios shout about China's "crime", I tend to think the opposite just might be the truth, and that says that Bolton is simply mudslinging to sell books; score brownie points with the anglo-zios, virtue-signalling for his next gig.

Sabine , Jun 18 2020 12:56 utc | 55
so is Trump or Biden the Yeltsin of the US? And who is gonna be the US version of Putin? Mr. Cotton from Arkansas?
vk , Jun 18 2020 13:00 utc | 56
The American people must decide if Trump is anti-China or Xi's bff. He can't be both at the same time.
murgen23 , Jun 18 2020 13:04 utc | 57
I don't see a contradiction with both sentences.

NYT writes Bolton direct US policy to fit his own political agenda,
while Bolton emphasizes Trump direct US policy in the way that pocket him most money.

Politician Bolton is consistent with his politician job (like it or not), Trump is corrupted.

This is how I understand.

450.org , Jun 18 2020 13:14 utc | 58
@56, I would argue that if one person could be both at the same time, that one person would be Donald Trump. He's already proven, like Chauncey Gardner, he can walk on water. Seriously, that excellent movie, Being There , starring the incomparable Peter Sellers, was about Donald Trump's ascension to the Oval Office.

There Are No Limits Except The Limits We Invent And Impose

augusto , Jun 18 2020 13:44 utc | 59
Using this 'quod licet jovi ...' the author apparently knows quite a bit of Latin, the dead language!
But seriously, the nomination of Bolton who had always behaved like 2nd rate advisor, a 3rd rate mcarthist cold warrior was a surprise to me. Such a short sighted heavily biased person could be, yes, chosen a Minister or advisor in a banana Republic but was picked up by the United states.
One can only conclude such a choice was driven by very specific interests of the deep state.They needed a bulldog and got it for one year and half and threw the stinky perro soon as the job was done.
BM , Jun 18 2020 14:05 utc | 60
And the cause of American societal collapse has been corrupt US leadership.
I would argue that this is a symptom or a feature versus the root of the problem.
Posted by: 450.org | Jun 18 2020 12:30 utc | 52

The primary cause of corrupt leadership is corrupt and corruption-accepting population.

Without a population that is fundamentally corrupt and immoral, corrupt leadership is unstable. Conversely - and this is important to recognise as the same phenomenon - democracy cannot exist if the population accepts and takes for granted corruption, as the two are mutually exclusive. In other words if you root out the corrupt leadership without dealing with the mentality of the population, the corruption will quickly come back and any democratic experiment will collapse very quickly.

There is one important qualifier - an overwhelming external influence (since WWII always the USA, either directly or as secondary effect) can leverage latent corruption so that it becomes more exaggerated than it normally would be.

Down South , Jun 18 2020 14:48 utc | 61
What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America. The role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest.

https://m.journal-neo.org/2020/06/16/america-s-own-color-revolution/

michael888 , Jun 18 2020 15:53 utc | 62
Bolton pretended to be President, screwing up negotiations with his Libya Model talk, threatening Venezuela (and anywhere generally) and directing fleets all over the world (including Britain's to capture that Iranian oil tanker). Vindman revered "Ambassador" Bolton because he was keeping the Ukraine corruption in Americans (and Ukrainian Americans') hands, and daring the Russians to "start" WWIII. Bolton might have been a bit more bearable if he had ever been elected, but was happy to see him go. Trump seemed mystified by him.
juliania , Jun 18 2020 16:29 utc | 63
b has presented us (knowingly or not, but I wouldn't put it past him) with the Socratic question of the presumed identity between the morality of the State and personal morality, as best encountered in Plato's dialogue, 'The Republic' ['Politeia' in the Greek] That dialogue begins by examining personal morality, but changes to an examination of what would bring into being a perfect state. In doing the latter, however, it is how to create public spirited persons, in the best sense, which is the actual concern, and the conversation ranges far and wide, becoming more and more complex.

I've always thought that to consider the perfect state had to be an impossibility if the individual, the person him or herself isn't up to the task - and that is the point of the Politeia enterprise. Like the ongoing relay race on horseback that is happening at the same time in the Piraeus, the passing of the argument one person to another that happens in the dialogue demonstrates that what is most crucial for the state as well as for the individual is personal integrity.

I take as an example the message of Saker's essay, linked by Down South and commented on above by others. Saker is pointing out that the protests have been seized upon by the anti-Trumpists who have been disrupting things from the beginning of his administration. But he also says:

"My personal feeling is that Trump is too weak and too much of a coward to fight his political enemies"

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The discussion of different kinds of states, which we often have here pursued, or the discussion of what makes a person able to function in one or another state? I don't think Plato was saying that Greece had it made, that Greece needed to throw its weight around more to be great. He's pointing out that it had lost greatness, the same way every empire loses when it forgets that individual spark that is in a single person, his virtue. And the sad thing is it all comes down to the education of our young people in the values, the virtues that apply both to his own personal life and to the life of the state.

At its heart, the protests which are beginning, only beginning, and which are peaceful, may be politeia vs. republic, the 'polis' itself against 'things political'. A new and true enlightenment, multipolar.

karlof1 , Jun 18 2020 16:39 utc | 64
BM @60--

Corruption's been a fact of life in North America ever since it was "discovered." Bernard Bailyn captured it quite well in his The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century , that is during the very first stages of plantation, with most corruption taking place in Old England then exported to the West. Even the Founders were corrupt, although they didn't see themselves as such. Isn't Adam & Eve's corruption detailed in Genesis merely an indicator of a general human trait that needs to be managed via culture? That human culture has generally failed to contain and discipline corruption speaks volumes about both. John Dos Passos in his opus USA noted that everyone everywhere was on the "hustle"--from the hobo to the banker. "Every child gots to have its own" are some of the truest lyrics ever written. Will humanity ever transcend this major failure in its nature?

Allen Edmundson , Jun 18 2020 23:30 utc | 65
Who is behind the claim that China is imprisoning vast numbers of Uighurs in concentration camps and what evidence has been presented? See the Greyzone for its recent report on this.

Edmundson

Jpc , Jun 18 2020 23:39 utc | 66
Thanks to all of you for your insights on Bolton.
I still don't see anything to explain why he got a second gig in the Whitehouse.
Or anything that he did that enhanced US security long term.
And another guy who dodged active service.
Strange angry dude,!
Hoarsewhisperer , Jun 19 2020 14:47 utc | 67
Pat Lang believes that Bolton has breached a law requiring US Officials with access to Top Secret Stuff to submit personal memoirs for scrutiny before publishing. Col Lang is awaiting similar approval for a memoir of his own and thinks Bolton didn't bother waiting for the Official OK.
There's a diverse range of comments. Most commentators like the idea of Bolton being tossed in the slammer. Others speculate that as a Swamp Creature, Bolton will escape prosecution. It's interesting that no-one has asked to see the publisher's copy of the USG's signed & dated Approval To Publish document, relevant to Bolton's book.
arby , Jun 19 2020 19:34 utc | 68
Jut a little thread on Bolton and his book.

It is amazing the way these clowns sit around and talk about countries and people as if they were so much dirt. The arrogance and power is disgusting.

link

[Jun 22, 2020] Does John Bolton deserves a Nobel peace Price? In our perverted world why not.

Jun 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Tower , Jun 17 2020 21:43 utc | 13

It's just about time. John Bolton deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. At this point, why not?

JC , Jun 17 2020 23:43 utc | 23

Posted by: Tower | Jun 17 2020 21:43 utc | 13

This is the most intelligent post so far.

Yes why not? If Obama awarded the Noble prize even before he begins serving his first term I can't see why Bolton not nominated now. America is a joke, not a banana republic. It deserves Obama, Trump, Bolton or Biden another stoopid joker.

Stoopid president elected by stoopid citizens

[Jun 21, 2020] Leaker fell victim of the leak: The neocon-warhawk may not see a penny for his book as the PDf was leaked online

MIC eventually will pay this neocon prostitute for services, anyway
Jun 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
As Ben Garrison recent noted, in an interview Bolton stated that it was OK for the government agencies to lie to the American people if national security is at stake. And it always seems to be at stake for dominant men who want secrecy and power. Bolton is a dangerous liar and his anti-Trump screed cannot be trusted.

It's time to slam the book shut on Bolton.

[Jun 21, 2020] Paul R. Pillar who pointed out that U.S. sanctions are frequently peddled as a peaceful alternative to war fit the definition of 'crimes against peace'.

Highly recommended!
Jun 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Christian J. Chuba , Jun 21 2020 14:18 utc | 78

Re: the Nuremberg trials , I became fascinated by the writings of Paul R. Pillar who pointed out that U.S. sanctions are frequently peddled as a peaceful alternative to war fit the definition of 'crimes against peace' . This is when one country sets up an environment for war against another country. I'll grant you that this is vague but if this is applicable at all how is this not an accurate description of what we are doing against Iran and Venezuela?

In both cases, we are imposing a full trade embargo (not sanctions) on basic civilian necessities and infrastructures and threatening the use of military force. As for Iran, the sustained and unfair demonization of Iranians is preparing the U.S. public to accept a ruthless bombing campaign against them as long overdue. We are already attacking the civilian population of their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.

How Ironic that the country that boasts that it won WW2 is now guilty of the very crimes that it condemned publicly in court.

[Jun 19, 2020] Bolton should be arrested and charged with any of a number of possible crimes

Jun 19, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Security screening of manuscripts I t is the law in the United States that those who have had legal access to the secrets of the government must submit private manuscripts for removal of such secrets BEFORE they are published or even presented to a potential publisher. Every department of government has an office charged with such work.

I know this process well because my memoir "Tattoo" has been in the hands of the appropriate Defense Department office for nigh on six months. The book is long, and I was so unlucky as to have DoD shut down its auxiliary services during my wait. I have thought of withdrawing it from screening but, surprisingly, the screeners tell me it has some worth for those who will come after. So, I will wait.

All this applies to John Bolton, a career State Department man whose adult life has been soaked in government secrets. I first noticed Bolton as a glowering presence at briefings I gave to selected State Department people with regard to national command authority projects I was running. His attitude was consistent. If the idea was not his, it was simply wrong.

Bolton's "kiss and tell" book about Trump is IMO as much caused by wounded ego as a desire to make money. He submitted the book for security review to DoD and the CIA. Why not State? Ah, Pompeo would tear it to pieces. Bolton evidently grew impatient with the pace of clearance and decided to go ahead with publication without clearance

To do this is a felony. The release of the book today completes the elements of proof for the crime.

Bolton should be arrested and charged with any of a number of possible crimes. pl


Jack , 18 June 2020 at 11:56 AM

Sir,

Let's see what Trump does with Bolton now that he has committed a felony.

My bet is that other than crying on Twitter, he'll not do much. His previous actions/inactions on these matters show weakness.

In any case bitching on Twitter makes him look like an executive with poor hiring judgement as he was the one that hired him. Just like he hired Mattis and Kelly as well as Rosenstein and Wray.

Barbara Ann , 18 June 2020 at 12:03 PM
Bolton being successfully charged with violations associated with his sour grapes hit piece memoir is analogous to Al Capone finally going down for tax evasion. But if that's the way it goes I will not be sad.

Re "Tattoo", your Memorial Day "Ap Bu Nho" extract alone makes "some worth" an amusingly ludicrous understatement. I wish you luck with the censors & very much look forward to one day reading "Tattoo".

eakens , 18 June 2020 at 12:05 PM
Who can we rely on to uphold the rule of law anymore? It's starting to appear we are living in a failed state.
Artemesia , 18 June 2020 at 01:22 PM
AIS

He was a convert to the neocon faith early in life and all else was mischief.

Posted by: turcopolier | 18 June 2020 at 12:21 PM

"He was a convert - - -"
I was going to ask what went wrong with Bolton: was he dropped on his head as an infant? No father in the home? The Dulles brothers spent their childhoods being harangued by their bible-thumping Calvinist grandfather (reports Kinzer in his useful bio on the brothers).

In Jeff Engel's book about the decision-making behind G H W Bush's decision to wage war against Saddam re Kuwait, he recounts that an argument by Brent Scowcroft was significant, AND that "Scowcroft, who was very short," confronted taller-than-average Bush while knees-to-knees in an airplane.
Bolton is shorter than the average American male. Does he have 'short-person' compulsion to compensate?

People psychologize Trump constantly, usually from ignorance and malice. But something is very wrong with Bolton. Pompeo as well. What is it?
"What huge imago made a psychopathic god?" (Auden, Sept. 1939)

Polish Janitor , 18 June 2020 at 04:11 PM
Col Lang,

#1 I read this WaPo article that argued because the recent DOJ's lawsuit against the release of the book is based on "prior restraint on speech before it occurs", meaning the Trump administration cannot censor speech before it happens, therefore there is no 1st amendment breach against the Trump admin by Bolton. As the court elaborated in Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, prior restraints are "the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights" and "one of the most extraordinary remedies known to our jurisprudence."

#2 Bolton took all of his notes containing classified intelligence with him after he was fired and nobody took an issue. How is that possible?

#3 The Wapo article says his manuscript was reviewed for four months by one Ellen Knight, an official (doesn't mention which department) responsible for reviewing publishing material and she gave it the green light for publication on April 27th.

#4 During a press conference, Bill Barr gave an unusual take on Bolton's book as if he was giving publicity to the book. He said he had never seen a book being written on Trump with such pace and in such quick time and that it had a lot of sensitive information and stuff. It sounded really odd what Bill Barr said. I dunno maybe I am reading to much between the lines...

#5 With regards to Pompeo, back in September during a press conference at the State, when asked by a reporter about Bolton's firing I specifically remember watching him on TV giving a big meaningful chuckle and a smile... it was revealed later that they clearly did not get along with each other and Pompeo had complained on numerous times that Bolton as NSA, who does not have executive authorities, had been doing a lot of policy stuff and running his own show in shadow.

On a final note, I don't think Bolton is a neocon in the mold of Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Kagan, Kristol etc...There is this long piece by New Yorker published last year that really gets into detail of how and why Bolton is not a neocon, but adheres to a more hawkish Jacksonian nationalism approach rather than the liberal idealism of arch neocons I mentioned above. However, he does have quite similar F.P. views with neocon oldies such as Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.

JohnH , 18 June 2020 at 04:39 PM
If Bolton does NOT get the book thrown at him, it will be pretty good evidence of the existence of the Deep State allowing those it favors to write their own rules. Of course, we already knew that after Clapper lied with impunity to Wyden when he was under oath.
TV , 18 June 2020 at 04:49 PM
He'll never be prosecuted and neither will Comey, Clapper and the rest of the swamp scum.
Strozk (lower on the food chain) might be the human sacrifice (with a sentence of "community service") but no one of any significance (or "royal" title) is ever prosecuted in the swamp.
Trump has tried, but his miserable lack of hiring experience and skill has not made a dent
Polish Janitor , 18 June 2020 at 04:53 PM
Artemisia,

I feel like I have a few words to say about Bolton if I may,

IMHO Bolton's view of the world is very dark and extremely Hobbesian. He is no slouch by any stretch of imagination, in fact he is extremely knowledgeable and masterful when it comes to policy-making and that basically how things are done in D.C. He has made a brand for himself as the most hawkish national security expert in all of America in my opinion. Honestly I cannot think of anyone else who espouses more hawkishness and zero diplomacy than Bolton, ever... maybe Tom Cotton or Liz Cheney but still not close. This is the reason why Trump hired him. In fact Trump did not want to hire him as the top brass in first place, citing his mustache as one reason that would not look good on TV and wanted to give him 2nd tier jobs at the State or as NSA early on, but Bolton refused. Trump, wanted to hire Bolton's "brand" not his policies or hawkishness to intimidate Nkorea, Iran, and China to force them come into making deals with him and him personally.

IMO Trump found out after the first Kim summit that Bolton was
such an ambitious and counterproductive foreign policy maker and one-man-team that if he allowed Bolton to get his way, there would be world war III (Trump's own words) and his most important promise to keep America out of forever wars which was his wining platform over neocons such as Hilary, Jeb and Rubio during 2016 election would disappear into thin air.

So, Trump found ways to check Bolton and keep him out of the loop in sensitive and crucial moments by Mattis, Kelly, Joe Dunford, Pompeo and even Melania (in the case of getting rid of Bolton's close confidant and neocon Mira Ricardel when she called for bombing Iranian forces back in September 2018 in respone to several rockets by iraqi militias hitting the ground close to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad), and even sent him to Mongolia last year on a goose chase to make an embarrassing example of him for undermining him (i.e. Trump's) authority in the case of sitting down with the Taliban in Camp David to discuss military pullout from Afghanistan back in Sep. whereas at the same time Pompeo was smart enough to tow the same line as Trump and survive.

I few years ago I came across this interesting but odd piece by B on the Moon of Alabama on Bolton. I honestly dunno what to make of it.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2006/02/a_glasshouse_in.html

ked , 18 June 2020 at 05:11 PM
The book is already released in the hundreds. It will be on-line soon enough regardless of the niceties of Barr's attempt to slam shut the barn door, or what the legal system does with Bolton going fwd.
Those close to Trump know his emotional state must be appeased or they will soon be departing - unless there's a DNA match.
Reaction to it will be a test of one's ability to distinguish Bolton from the events he describes & their veracity. Is there anything of Trump's statements & acts (released so far) that surprises anyone... that rings untrue?
Those ideologically (or religiously) dependent upon the Trump Phenomenon for validating their core beliefs will demonstrate how creative true believers can be when attached to a personality.
A.I.S. , 18 June 2020 at 05:34 PM
For what its worth I am looking forward to buying it, should scratch that Peter Scholl Latour itch.

Another thing is that I just dont get the Neocons.
Their politics are bad both from a Machieavellian (dilutes US forces, creates enemies, considerably restricts creative ways in which US power could be employed) and from a moral (obviously) point of view. I also dont get their power, stupid/evil tends to be competed out. Heck, even if they are stupid/evil but very good at beurocratic backbiting stuff, they are still supposedly disadvantadged against skilled beurocratic backbiters that arent stupid/evil (or at least only evil and not stupid).
Is it internal cohesion or a much higher degree of ruthlessness that maintains their position?

PB , 18 June 2020 at 07:05 PM
I've for many years thought that the Bolton problem was best solved with a speedy trial and a swift execution, with remains thrown overboard somewhere in the Indian ocean.
turcopolier , 18 June 2020 at 07:13 PM
polish janitor

He signed an oath to safeguard the secrecy of the information when "read on" for it and another such when he was "read off." The 1st Amendment does not come into it at all

[Jun 18, 2020] Poor Johnny! What's sadder than being a crook, but an ineffective one? I think that's what he is. He may be infamous enough to be a household name, but he never really managed to make a career. Hardly ever did he stay on a job for more than 2 years

Jun 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

John , Jun 17 2020 19:24 utc | 4

I'm fully expecting the Dem "left" to try and praise the monsterous Bolton for "going against Trump", as they did with war criminal Mad Dog Matis and Bush. Bolton has to be one of the most evil mass murders on the face of the Earth. The world will be an infinitely better place when he and his ilk like Netanyahu, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Chertoff..etc finally go back to hell.

karlof1 , Jun 17 2020 19:33 utc | 5

Bolton deserves having a parasite named after him, if that.
Scotch Bingeington , Jun 17 2020 19:57 utc | 6
Poor Johnny! What's sadder than being a crook, but an ineffective one? I think that's what he is. He may be infamous enough to be a household name, but he never really managed to make a career. Hardly ever did he stay on a job for more than 2 years, before his fellow crooks deemed him unfit for his position, again and again. Says a lot.

I hope they will confiscate his book on some flimsy pretext, only to lose the piles of copies in storage, so they cannot possibly be released to bookstores again. Maybe some mice will make use of it to furnish their nests?

Take a look at his face. It's obvious to me that even John Bolton does not enjoy being John Bolton. That mouth, it's drooping to an absurd degree. Comparable to Merkel's face, come to think of it.

GeorgeV , Jun 17 2020 20:25 utc | 8
John Bolton's tell all book about his tenure with the Trump administration is a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle burned. It is a fitting description of the leadership of the US government and it's capitol city as a den of backstabbing, corkscrewing and double dealing vipers. It's like standing on a street corner watching two prostitutes calling each other a whore! How low has the US sunk.
bob sykes , Jun 17 2020 20:55 utc | 11
Of course, Trump actually campaigned to leave Afghanistan and Syria, and he was elected to do so. The self-appointed Deep State has pretty much thwarted him and his voters.
uncle tungsten , Jun 17 2020 21:00 utc | 12
karlof1 #5
Blastocystis hominis could be renamed easily enough. It is a pain in the gut and arse.

I will not bother to read any more on Bolton the man is beneath contempt. b has said more than enough.

Tower , Jun 17 2020 21:43 utc | 13
It's just about time. John Bolton deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. At this point, why not?
pretzelattack , Jun 17 2020 21:49 utc | 14
let us not forget that bolton threatened a un officials kids because they guy wasn't going along with the iraq war propaganda.
Duncan Idaho , Jun 17 2020 22:03 utc | 15
Only with Late Stage Capitalism could we have a vicious war criminal write a book criticizing a psychopathic sociopath.
Anonymous , Jun 17 2020 22:06 utc | 16
The political establishment in Canada appeared dismayed at the prospect of Bolton as National Security Adviser. See these interviews with Hill + Knowlton strategies Vice-chairman, Peter Donolo, from 2018:

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/there-s-risk-trump-s-actions-are-driving-the-u-s-into-a-recession-peter-donolo~1342264
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/trade-wars-easy-to-start-not-so-easy-to-finish-peter-donolo~1365104

So Bolton gets in, Meng Wangzhou is detained in Vancouver on the US request (that's another story), and in time, Canada appoints a new Ambassador to China - Mr. Dominic Barton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Barton
Then Bolton gets fired. 'Nuff said. Just to let everyone know that Bolton is well and truly hated, as a government official, in certain circles.

AntiSpin , Jun 17 2020 22:07 utc | 17
@ pretzelattack | Jun 17 2020 21:49 utc | 14

Close -- the threatened official was Jose Bustani, at that time (2002) the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)as he had been for five years.

Bustani had been working to bring Iraq and Libya into the organization, which would have required those two countries to eliminate all of their chemical weapons.

The US, though, had other ideas -- chiefly invading and destroying both of those nations, and when Bustani insisted on continuing his efforts then Bolton threatened Bustani's adult children.

james , Jun 17 2020 23:13 utc | 20
let the lobbyists with the most money win... that's what defines the usa system, leadership and decision making process... no one in their right mind would support this doofus..
Jen , Jun 17 2020 23:40 utc | 21
At least the one saving grace about John Bolton's memoir is that it might be a tad closer to reality than Christopher Steele's infamous dossier and might prove valuable as a source of evidence in a court of law. Maybe Yosemite Sam himself should start quaking in his boots.
Don Bacon , Jun 17 2020 23:44 utc | 24
@ Jpc
When faced with Trump's behavior of employing warmongers, including several generals, some observers opined that Trump wanted people with contrasting opinions so that he could consider them and then say "no." He did more with Bolton eventually, sending him to Mongolia while he (Trump) went to Singapore (or somewhere over there).
A User , Jun 17 2020 23:47 utc | 25
re Ian2 | Jun 17 2020 23:08 utc | 19
who hazarded : My guess Trump went along with the tough guy image that Bolton projected in media and recommendations by others.
Not at all, if you go back to the earliest days of the orangeman's prezdency, you will see Trump resisted the efforts by Mercer & the zionist casino owner to give Bolton a gig.
He knew that shrub had problems with the boasts of Bolton and as his reputation was as an arsehole who sounded his own trumpet at his boss's expense orangeman refused for a long time. Trump believes the trump prezdency is about trump no one else.
Thing was at the time he was running for the prez gig trump was on his uppers, making a few dollars from his tv show, plus licensing other people's buildings by selling his name to be stuck on them. trump tower azerbnajan etc.
He put virtually none of his own money into the 'race' so when he won the people who had put up the dosh had power over him.
Bolton has always been an arse kisser to any zionist cause he suspects he can claw a penny outta, so he used the extreme loony end of the totally looney zionist spectrum to hook him (Bolton) up with a gig by pushing for him with trump.

It was always gonna end the way it did as Bolton is forever briefing the media against anyone who tried to resist his murderous fantasies. Trump is never gonna argue for any scheme that doesn't have lotsa dollars for him in it so he had plenty of run ins with Bolton who then went to his media mates & told tales.
When bolton was appointed orangey's stakes were at a really low ebb among DC warmongers, so he reluctantly took him on then spent the next 18 months getting rid of the grubby parasite.

Kristan hinton , Jun 18 2020 0:46 utc | 26
Real History: Candidate Trump praised Bolton and named him as THE number one Foreign Policy expert he (Trump) respected.

Imagine the mustachioed Mister Potatoe (sic) Head and zany highjinks!

Bolton and one of his first wives were regulars at Plato's Retreat for wife swapping orgies. The wife was not real keen on the behavior, but she allegedly found herself verbally and physically abused for objecting.

DannyC , Jun 18 2020 1:17 utc | 27
Trump is at fault for hiring him to appease the Zionist lobby. We all knew the guy was a warmonger and a scumbag. It's not a surprise. Trump surrounds himself with the worst people

[Jun 17, 2020] Collusion with China, wanting to stay in office forever Leaked Bolton book excerpts cash in on anti-Trump frenzy

If we view Bolton as Adelson puppet, such a behaviour clearly does not make much sense. Or this is a single from Israel lobby to Trump "moor did his duty, moor can go"?
Notable quotes:
"... "a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons." ..."
"... "in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked," ..."
"... "The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn't accept," ..."
"... "bombshells" ..."
"... "exactly the right thing to do." ..."
"... "systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities in China." ..."
"... "Panda Hugger." ..."
"... The mustachioed warhawk had served as Trump's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. While the exact reason for his firing was never revealed, Trump has since commented that Bolton was interfering with his peace initiatives and had "never seen a war he didn't like." ..."
"... Indeed, the "most irrational thing" Bolton accuses Trump of was to refuse to bomb Iran in June 2019, according to the New York Times excerpt. ..."
"... "soft on China" ..."
"... As for Trump supporters, many were indifferent about Bolton's betrayal, noting that Trump hired the neocon in the first place and kept him on for over a year, while ditching the faithful General Michael Flynn after less than two weeks on the job, following a FBI ambush and a Washington Post hit job. ..."
Jun 17, 2020 | www.rt.com
Former national security adviser John Bolton has leaked excerpts of his book to major newspapers, accusing President Donald Trump of colluding with leaders in China and Turkey, and obstruction of justice "as a way of life." Facing a DOJ lawsuit seeking to block the publication of his memoir for containing classified information, Bolton decided to go to the press, leaking parts of the book to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Breaking News: John Bolton says in his new book that the House should have investigated President Trump for potentially impeachable actions beyond Ukraine https://t.co/8lpd4xAzYu

-- The New York Times (@nytimes) June 17, 2020

Bolton famously refused to testify before the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings against Trump over his alleged abuse of power regarding Ukraine, but now claims that they should have expanded the probe to "a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons."

He accuses Trump of wanting to "in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked," bringing up companies in China and Turkey as examples, according to the Times. "The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn't accept," the Times quotes him as saying.

One of the Bolton "bombshells" is that he sought China's purchase of US soybeans in order to get re-elected, during trade negotiations with President Xi Jinping.

SOYBEAN DIPLOMACY: The WSJ has published an excerpt of @AmbJohnBolton 's forthcoming book, revealing Trump-Xi conversation and how the American president pleaded his Chinese counterpart to buy U.S. soybeans so he could win farm states in the 2020 presidential elections | #OATT pic.twitter.com/XKAogLCCtN

-- Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) June 17, 2020

An excerpt in the Wall Street Journal has Trump telling Xi that – alleged – concentration camps for Uighur Muslims in China's Xinjiang province were "exactly the right thing to do." It also alleges that Trump did Xi a favor by relaxing US sanctions on ZTE, a Chinese telecom company.

WSJ excerpt of Bolton book has Trump & China bombshells. Trump told Xi building concentration camps for Muslims "was exactly the right thing to do." Trump pleaded w/ Xi to help him w/ re-election by making US farm product buys. And Trump helped Xi w/ ZTE. https://t.co/4CSflQQqcL

-- Edward Wong (@ewong) June 17, 2020

This comes as Trump signed into law the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which mandates US sanctions against Chinese officials over "systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities in China."

Another excerpt has Bolton referring to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as a "Panda Hugger."

According to Bolton, Trump told Xi to "go ahead with building the camps" for imprisoned Uighurs.

-- Philip Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) June 17, 2020

As another proof of Trump's perfidy, Bolton writes that the president told Xi that he would like to stay in office beyond the two terms the US Constitution would allow him. Bolton's one-time colleague Dinesh D'Souza commented that Bolton was unable to recognize a clear joke.

Really? This is it? John Bolton's smoking gun? Trump has been jokingly putting out memes about this for four years. This conversation, if it occurred at all, seems obviously jocular. Bolton, however, whom I knew quite well from AEI, doesn't have a jocular bone in his body pic.twitter.com/Qe8sXCAT58

-- Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) June 17, 2020

Trump has on more than one occasion shared a meme showing him staying in power forever, triggering Democrats into denouncing him as an aspiring dictator. Apparently, Bolton thought the same.

According to John Bolton posting this meme was an impeachable offense https://t.co/q2BHlfVTEu

-- Will Chamberlain 🇺🇸 (@willchamberlain) June 17, 2020

The mustachioed warhawk had served as Trump's national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. While the exact reason for his firing was never revealed, Trump has since commented that Bolton was interfering with his peace initiatives and had "never seen a war he didn't like."

Indeed, the "most irrational thing" Bolton accuses Trump of was to refuse to bomb Iran in June 2019, according to the New York Times excerpt.

Pretty telling that the episode which pissed off Bolton the most during his tenure was Trump calling off airstrikes which would have killed dozens of Iranian soldiers in June 2019 https://t.co/ruFSInj2Mu pic.twitter.com/5zO7UrxMTM

-- Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) June 17, 2020

Arguing that Trump is being "soft on China" and colluding with Xi also happens to be a Democratic Party strategy for the 2020 presidential election, outlined in April and reported by Axios.

While Democrats and the mainstream media welcomed Bolton's bombshells as validating their position on Trump, he is unlikely to become a #Resistance hero, simply because they still remember he refused to say these things under oath during the impeachment hearings, when they – in theory – could have bolstered their case for getting Trump out of office.

As for Trump supporters, many were indifferent about Bolton's betrayal, noting that Trump hired the neocon in the first place and kept him on for over a year, while ditching the faithful General Michael Flynn after less than two weeks on the job, following a FBI ambush and a Washington Post hit job.

Do I care that Bolton is stabbing Trump in the back? Not at all. General Flynn was NSA and Trump made his choices. Being outraged on behalf of a 70+ year old man who makes poor choices is well beyond my job description.

-- Blue Flu Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 17, 2020

[Jun 13, 2020] Korea is just another distraction: false conflicts with China, North Korea, Russia and Iran are needed to keep support for MIC and Security State which cost 1.2 trillion a year

Highly recommended!
The saying "War is racket" means not only that conquered nations are loots, but the the USA taxpayers will be looted as well
Jun 13, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Kay Fabe , Jun 13 2020 0:10 utc | 35
Just another distraction.

Heck US aircraft carriers used to visit HK quite often until recently, even after the hand over. They anchored in the harbor while thousands of sailors headed to the Wanchai bars, although after the hand over they anchored in a less visible part of the harbor. China didn't have a problem.

I doubt China sweats a couple of aircraft carriers when we have large bases in Japan and South Korea, not to mention Guam.

False conflicts with China, North Korea, Russia and Iran are needed to keep support for MIC and Security State which cost 1.2 trillion a year.

If the US were serious about confronting China there would be sanctions and not tariffs. China and US are partners. We sell them chips that they put in our electronics and sell to us, so we can spy on our people, and they test out our social control technology on their own people. They clothe us, sell cheap API's for drugs and they invest in treasuries and other US assets and we educate their young talent and give them access to our research and technology and fund some of their own research and share numerous patents

[Jun 11, 2020] Brzezinski and the USA startagy of full spectrum dominance

Jun 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Vintage Red , Jun 11 2020 6:46 utc | 93

@occupatio | Jun 11 2020 5:19 utc | 89

Agree with your post but hope to deepen it -- this "geostrategy" goes way back before Brzezinski wrote about it in his The Grand Chessboard, or for that matter before Nixon's The Real War as well. Both followed in the footsteps of the US Admiral Alfred Mahan and the British strategist Halford Mackinder who laid the basis for this imperialist strategic vision of world domination over a century ago.

Mahan, author of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, in the late 1800s developed the worldview of seeing history as a series of confrontations between a Sea Power and a Land Power (Athens-Sparta, Rome-Carthage, Britain vs. a series of European Land Powers, etc.), paving the way for US "manifest destiny" to transcend North America to become truly global imperialism. One of Mahan's most famous concepts is that either the Land Power or Sea Power could win at any time, but that time was on the side of the Land Power since with more people and resources it could eventually just build a bigger navy than the Sea Power could match -- therefore the Sea Power had to go on an especially aggressive offensive early on to prevent this.

Mackinder in his 1904 presentation of The Geographical Pivot of History first developed the concept of the "world island" or "world continent" with its concentric "crescents". His most famous quote: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World."

With the beginning of the "special relationship" between the US and UK after WW1 it was the easiest of mergers for these two imperialist strategic visions to join together. They've had various interpretations and refinements ever since, but Mahan and Mackinder are the originators of this "geostrategy" that predates the Cold War, WW2 and even WW1. That it predates the Russian and Chinese Revolutions indicates that it exists irrespective of ideology (thus the US's continued hostility to a non-subservient capitalist Russia), though anti-communism lends it an especially fevered tone, especially focused on China now.

At its outset this geostrategy was oriented toward European empires attempting to conquer the "heartland" or "pivot" to obtain the sheer imperial mass that would be needed for world conquest. But the Russian Revolution allowed the "heartland" to stand up as a Land Power in its own right, rapidly industrializing. Toward the end of his life Mackinder attempted to update his work, observing that if ever Eurasia were economically developed and spanned by rail and telecommunications lines from East Europe to the Pacific, this would result in a Land Power so vast -- with the majority of the world's people and resources -- that no Sea Power could conquer or even blockade it.

Sound familiar? For a number of reasons beyond our scope here the USSR fell and broke apart, but not before China could pick up that torch, rapidly industrialize itself and now bring forth the Belt and Road Initiative. Russia joining China in a strategic relationship that is for all intents and purposes an alliance (that the US brought on itself -- both Beijing and Moscow have read Mahan and Mackinder very thoroughly) is effectively Mackinder's nightmare made manifest. The antithesis of Manifest Destiny, LOL.

Nixon, Brzezinski and their wannabe successor Bannon are all simply continuing this more-than-century-old strategic tradition. But no "geostrategy" will save global capitalism from its own inner rot and sharpening contradictions, as the events of recent years have shown. This year especially recalls Lenin's observation that "There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen."


[May 24, 2020] As its own infrastructure has been laid waste by the COLLASSAL MONEY PIT that is the Pentagon, its flagrant use of the most valuable energy commodity, oil, to maintain some 4000 bases worldwide, this rickety over-extended upside down version of old Anglo-Dutch trading empires, will finally collapse

Kissinger laid out the transition plan in 2014 in his WSJ Op-Ed: Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order . USA Deep State are not the complete idiots that some want to make them seem.
China is still very vulnerable and the USA has multiple levers to force it to suffer.
May 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Kurt Zumdieck , May 22 2020 18:24 utc | 4
If Washington lured the Soviet Union into it's demise in Afghanistan, which left that minor empire in shambles - socially, militarily, economically - it was the nuclear conflagration at Chernobyl that put the corpse in the ground.....

(Watch the GREAT HBO five-part tragedy on it and you will see that the brutally heroic response of the Soviets, that saved the Western World at least temporarily, but is the portrait of self-sacrifice)

What was lost in the Soviets fumbling immediate post-explosion cover-up was the trust of their Eastern European satellite countries. That doomed that empire. So much military might was given up in Afghanistan, then on Chernobyl, it was not clear if the Soviets had the wherewithal to put down the rebellions that spread from Czechoslovakia to East Germany and beyond.

Covid-19 will do the same to the American Empire.

As its own infrastructure has been laid waste by the COLLASSAL MONEY PIT that is the Pentagon, its flagrant use of the most valuable energy commodity, oil, to maintain some 4000 bases worldwide, this rickety over-extended upside down version of old Anglo-Dutch trading empires, will finally collapse.

Loss of trust by the many craven satellites, in America's fractured response, to Covid-19 will put the final nail in its coffin.

A hot-shooting War may come next, but the empire cannot win it.


William Gruff , May 23 2020 14:25 utc | 79

"I will believe my eyes." --oldhippie @76

It would be nice if that were so, but it is very unlikely.

"So tired of reading propaganda."

Is that why you regurgitate it onto forums? Kinda like purging the system, eh?

If you are going to be judging China's economic health by their pollution levels then in the future you will find yourself convinced that they have never recovered, even when it becomes inescapably obvious that they have. The fact is that China's pollution levels are never going back to 2019 levels, but that has nothing to do with their economic health.

It really never ceases to amaze me how deeply rooted and pervasive the delusions and sense of exceptionality is in America. It is woven into the thinking, from the lowest levels to the very top of their thoughts, of even the very most intelligent Americans. It is apparently a phenomenon that operates at an even deeper level than mass media brainwashing, as it seems it was just as much a problem in every empire in history. That is, I am sure citizens of the Roman Empire had the same blinding biases embedded deep below their consciousness. I guess Marx was entirely correct to say that consciousness arises from material conditions, and being citizen of an empire must be one of those material conditions that gives rise to this all-pervasive and unconscious sense of exceptionality.

oldhippie , May 23 2020 11:47 utc | 71
Go over to EOSDIS Worldview and take a look at satellite photos of China. Simple toggle in lower left hand corner will take you to photos of same day, earlier years. Or any day in satellite record.

The skies over China are clear. Chinese industry is not back at work. It may be that China at 50% or even at 20% is a manufacturing powerhouse compared to a crumbling US. But until China is back at work the thread so far is about the historical situation six months ago.

Xi used to do elaborately staged state appearances with well planned camera angles, fabulous lighting, pomp and circumstance. He enjoyed the trappings of power and knew how to use the trappings of power. Hasn't done that kind of state appearance since January.

Paul , May 23 2020 12:47 utc | 72
The Empire has no respect for international agreements, laws or anything that interferes with maintaining US global hegemony.
lizzie dw , May 23 2020 12:55 utc | 73
China and the US are so different. The citizens of China cannot vote. The population's movements are micromanaged by the government. This is not the case here (yet). And I hope it is never the case. I agree with the premise that there are those in our government who are living in a dream of the past and that is over, unless we want to destroy the world. But China's government is so repressive. The rules must be obeyed. We seem to be compliant so far of some of our government officials stepping over the bounds allowed by our Constitution, due to the fear of C-19 engendered by the deep state (aka the bsmsm). But we will not do that forever and our government cannot just start shooting big crowds of us as they can and have done in China. Theirs is all top down rule, which is not the case here. Also, although it is probably heretical to say this I am glad that the US has many cases of C-19. We will eventually get herd immunity. IMO, China can lock down as many millions of citizens as they wish; they cannot stop this virus and as time goes by they will have as many deaths and as many cases as everybody else. Well, that is off the topic of the article. In the end I agree that we are fighting weird battles we can never win and we citizens need to keep informing our government employees that we just want to trade and make money, not threaten companies and countries and lose money.

[May 23, 2020] With a national election lurking on the horizon we will no doubt be hearing more about Exceptionalism from various candidates seeking to support the premise that the United States can interfere in every country on the planet because it is, as the expression goes, exceptional.

May 23, 2020 | www.unz.com

Realist , says: Show Comment May 23, 2020 at 12: 22 pm GMT

With a national election lurking on the horizon we will no doubt be hearing more about Exceptionalism from various candidates seeking to support the premise that the United States can interfere in every country on the planet because it is, as the expression goes, exceptional.

That is correct and that is because it works the majority of Americans are stupid.
Do you see a solution suggested here?

Realist , says: Show Comment May 23, 2020 at 12:27 pm GMT

It is also an unfortunate indication that the neoconservatives, pronounced dead after the election of Trump, are back and resuming their drive to obtain the positions of power that will permit endless war, starting with Iran.

The neocons never went anywhere. Trump is a minion of the Deep State and staffs his administration accordingly.

Realist , says: Show Comment May 23, 2020 at 12:32 pm GMT
@BL

My point is simple and ineluctable, whatever our demerits, our great republic is supposed to weed out psychopaths like Brennan long before they get as close as he has to destroying the whole shebang.

Never happens all administrations are full of psychopaths.

Hiram of Tyre , says: Show Comment May 23, 2020 at 1:19 pm GMT
Frankly nothing new. Every Empire sought to rule the world and committed a long list of atrocities in the process. "The empire on which the sun never sets", in reference to the British Empire (the one currently still ruling the world), comes from Xerxes' "We shall extend the Persian territory as far as God's heaven reaches. The sun will then shine on no land beyond our borders." as he invaded Greece.

That said, a word on the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski Doctrine and their Pentagon world map would be on point here

[May 22, 2020] No US president who can withdraw the USA from the Forever Wars

Highly recommended!
But may be coronavirus can. Although Perfumed Princes of Pentagon and MIC with it neocon fifth column will fiercely resist.
May 22, 2020 | www.unz.com

Nikolai Vladivostok , says: Website Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 6:21 am GMT

I've long since concluded, there is no president who can withdraw the US from the Forever Wars. Obama couldn't. Trump can't. Biden/Harris/Oprah/Gabbard/Pence won't.

There are a half-dozen permanent US policies that Americans don't get to vote on, and the Permawar is one of them.

Anon [151] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 6:36 am GMT
My God, Buchanan, I am staggered by the arrogance of this column. Where in the name of all that's holy did you ever get the idea that America has the right to impose on anyone, from Afghans through to Venezuelans, your (perceived) systems of thought, values and democracy? How many American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan can even speak the local language? Understand the local customs? None!!! They swan around in their sunglasses and battle gear thinking that they are they return of the Terminator and wander why the locals absolutely hate their collective guts! It's time that you collectively learned that America is NOT the world's sheriff and that, as Benjamin Franklin said "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still".
animalogic , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 7:00 am GMT
Pat is not entirely wrong -- he hints at the explanation for failure:
"As imperialists, we Americans are conspicuous failures.

Moreover, with us, the national interest inevitably asserts itself."
As Imperialists there has never been anything but the (Elite) "national interest".
In short, these so called "losing" wars have been wars of aggression -- ie "bad" wars. All Pat's talk of conversion, democracy etc is just so much nonsense.

swamped , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 8:14 am GMT
"While we can defeat our enemies in the air and on the seas and in cyberspace, we cannot persuade them to embrace secular democracy and its values any more than we can convert them to Christianity" although they might be better persuaded to convert to Christianity – traditional Christianity – than to embrace secular democracy and its "values".

Why would anyone want to embrace homosexuality, transgenderism, rad-feminism, opioids, prozac, inequality, broken homes, mass shootings, mountainous debt, corrupt media, puppet politicians & the rest of the filth & perversion that passes for "values" in secular democracies like America or Western Europe?

Indeed, why would anyone in these decadent countries even want to defend these venal "values", let alone try to spread them around the world like the Chinese plague?
No, "they are not trying to change us" but maybe they should.

Donald Duck , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 10:07 am GMT
As the British and French ultimately found out it costs more to run an empire than to loot it. So the long retreat ensues. One would have thought that the Americans might have learned this from history, but no! After all they were "the exceptional people, they stood taller than the others and saw further." Errrm, no they didn't. Like their forbears they got bogged down as well getting into debt which was only bailed out by their insistence that they would not convert the dollar into gold.

Human nature and stupidity has got a long track-record and it isn't going to end anytime soon.

paranoid goy , says: Website Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 12:30 pm GMT
The writer, and most commenters' are still under the erroneous belief that AMerica goes to war in places then AMerica wins or loses or wastes lives or kill children. This is the saddest part of the Yankee war machine: Americans joining the Army because they think theya re joining the fight to defend the American Dream.

You-all are corporate gunmonkeys, fighting and killing and burning and bombing, not in the name of freedom or apple pie, but in the name of Gulf Oil, Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, JPMorgan, Monsanto, PHBBillington, whatever Devil Rumsfeld calls his sack of shit these days .

America has not won any war anywhere, even their civil war was mostly just clearing the land for the banks. That is because it is not America at war, she just supplies the cannon fodder. And cannons. And radiactive scrapmetal to make bullets to mow down women and children in the name of Investor Confidence.
But then, that is what your Zionist bible tells you to do, isn't it?

Realist , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 1:26 pm GMT

What Does Winning Mean in a Forever War?

Winning a war is not in the interest of the Deep State. Being at war makes the Deep State more wealthy and powerful not winning at war.

Realist , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 1:30 pm GMT
@Anon

I just don't think the US has the immoral fortitude to engage in genocide, so it's hopeless trying to "win."

If by the US you mean most of the people you may be right. But the people in the US have no say in the actions of the US government which is controlled by psychopaths.

anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 1:49 pm GMT
Afghanistan is hardly even a country as the average American might define one. There's really nothing to "win"; we only occupy. The infrastructure is primitive so it's not cost effective to try to take whatever natural resources they may have, if any, so there's nothing they have that we want. The Taliban were not "ousted". In the face of massive firepower they split up and scattered; they're still there. After all, the US has been negotiating with them for a peace deal of some sort hasn't it? "Democracy crusades" is just a propaganda fig leaf to bamboozle stupid Americans. It's amazing that there's people who actually believe stuff like that but PT Barnum had it right. "Eventually, we give up and go home". That's because they live there and we don't. "They apparently have an inexhaustible supply of volunteers" willing to fight and die. They don't want foreign robo-soldiers pointing guns at them in their own country. We have our own version, it's called "Remember the Alamo", men who stood their ground against the odds.
Amerimutt Golems , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 2:03 pm GMT
@Anon

If a country is not willing to do that, and I would hope the United States is not willing to do that, then they (we) should go home and leave the Afghans to murder each other without our assistance. If they return to supporting terrorism or go whole hog in producing opium, perhaps the US should decapitate their entire government and let the next batch of losers give governing a try. I just don't think the US has the immoral fortitude to engage in genocide, so it's hopeless trying to "win."

The growth in opium cultivation correlates with CIA activities in the area and the $3 billion from American taxpayers which financed Mujahideen 'terrorism' against the Russians and their local proxies just to avenge the fall of Saigon.

In 1980 Afghanistan accounted for about only 5% of total world heroin production. This was mainly for the local market and neighbor Iran.

That is how you get forever wars.

Rurik , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 3:04 pm GMT

They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not ours.

If I may..

another way of looking at this, and I feel a profound respect for the Afghans, and only wish we were made of the same mettle. If only ((they)) could say of us..

They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not (((ours)))).

They are not trying to change ((((us. We))) are trying to change them. And they wish to remain who they are.

IOW, we white Westerners, have proved willing to surrender and submit to all of it. Without nary a peep of protest. Even as ((they)) send us around the globe to kill people like these Afghans, for being slightly inconvenient to their agenda. [And so the CIA can reconstitute its global heroin trafficking operation$.]

If only history would look back on this epic moment, at the last Death throes of the West, and say of whitey, that he refused to surrender his values and faith and traditions and tribe and God, and culture and civilization and honor.. to ((those)) who would pervert his values, and mock his faith, and trash his traditions, and exterminate his tribe, while mocking his God, and poisoning his culture, and destroying his civilization and all because at the end of the day, he had no honor.

These men may be backwater, illiterate villagers,

but at least they have enough mettle and honor, to tell the Beast that they would rather die killing as many of the Beast's stupid goons as they're able, than ever sacrifice their sacred honor- or lands or sovereignty, or the destinies of their children – over to the fiend, which is more than I can say for Western "man".

They are not trying to change us. We are trying to change them. And they wish to remain who they are.

Would that the Swedish people had a Nano-shred of the blood-honor of an Afghan, Barbara Spectre would be pounding sand.

Historically, the Afghans are fundamentalist, tribal and impervious to foreign intervention.

Obviously, there is a great deal we need to learn from them.

What will the Taliban do when we leave?

They will not give up their dream of again ruling the Afghan nation and people. And they will fight until they have achieved that goal and their idea of victory: dominance.

Um.. Pat. Whose land is it anyways? Is it such a horror that Afghans should be dominant in Afghanistan ?

The Taliban was welcomed into most of the regions it governed, because they drove out local war lords who often treated the villager's children as their sex toys, and the foreign (CIA) opioid growers and traffickers. And it was the Taliban that put an end to all of that. They're harsh, but they're effective, and that is their land, not ours.

Also, the Taliban offered to turn over Osama Bin Laden, if the West could provide a shred of proof that he had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11. (he didn't ; ) But the West had zero proof, (as the FBI admits to this day), that they have zero proof that ties Bin Laden to 9/11.

And n0w that we all know 9/11 was an Israeli false flag, intended to use the American military as their bitch, to burn down 'seven nations in five years' .. that the Jewish supremacists wanted destroyed, our whole pretext for being over there has been a sham from day one. Duh.
.
.
.
.
I remember long ago when I had a subscription to National Geographic and this photo came out, I cut the picture out, and stuck it somewhere to look at- it was so visceral and haunting.

Leave them alone. I don't care how many Jews at the WSJ demand whitey has to stay and die for Israel. (Afghanistan is on Iran's border, and that's why we have to stay, to menace all those anti-Semites over there, trying to gas all the Jews and make soap).

Good on Trump for calling out the ((WSJ)).

follyofwar , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 3:42 pm GMT
@paranoid goy I very much doubt if many are joining the military to "defend the American Dream." Most are more practical and are joining to escape poverty, even if it might cost them their lives. Recruiters will now be inundated with volunteers since there are no jobs in the covid depression.
Exile , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 4:15 pm GMT
If the neo-con clown car Trump has permitted to run foreign policy since his election gets us into a war with Iran and/or Venezuela before November, will Pat still be stumping for him, or will we see the return of non-election-year Pat?
VinnyVette , says: Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 4:46 pm GMT
Excellent question Pat! Unfortunately there is no answer, we've been at "forever war" seemingly forever, and the whole point as Eisenhower so preciently warned us is THE objective.
Priss Factor , says: Website Show Comment May 22, 2020 at 5:36 pm GMT
It's not 'forever war'. It is Empire. Empire exists to continue and expand. War is about win or lose. Empire is about keep and dominate.

US wars are not to win and then depart. It is to keep occupying and controlling.

And US is rich enough to buy off the local elites as collaborators forever.

Marshal Marlow , says: Show Comment May 23, 2020 at 1:56 am GMT
@Anon

If they return to supporting terrorism

The thing is that the Afghan government wasn't supporting terrorism. Rather, it had no on-going control anywhere except the cities, which made the tribal areas useful hideouts / bases for a raft of groups.

I well remember the prelude to the invasion where the US was demanding that its government (which merely happened to be Taliban that year) hand over OBL in 72hrs. The truth was that the US knew Afghanistan didn't have the capability to do that and it merely wanted to use OBL as an excuse to invade and continue the encirclement of the old soviet states.

[May 07, 2020] Bolton and the culture of corruption and intimidation

May 07, 2020 | www.unz.com

Sam 12123 , says: Show Comment May 6, 2020 at 8:39 pm GMT

The OPCW is claimed to be an independent agency but we know that it suppressed the results of its own engineers when it reported that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged chemical attack in Douma. The former head of the agency has publicly asserted that when John Bolton demanded that he step down, he added, "We know where your children live." The US has a history of corruption and intimidation. Any investigation would result in finding China responsible just as Russia was found to be responsible for the airliner that was shot down over Ukraine.

[May 03, 2020] Never in my country: COVID-19 and American exceptionalism by Jeanne Morefield

Notable quotes:
"... Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the "Third World." ..."
"... In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations – more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases, listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and security apparatus organized into regional commands that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy. ..."
"... The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300 years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization. ..."
"... In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget and over half of all discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit. ..."
"... Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness. ..."
"... The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy. And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America, $17.5 billion is set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace. ..."
"... To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over. ..."
Apr 07, 2020 | responsiblestatecraft.org

This March, as COVID-19's capacity to overwhelm the American healthcare system was becoming obvious, experts marveled at the scenario unfolding before their eyes. "We have Third World countries who are better equipped than we are now in Seattle," noted one healthcare professional, her words echoed just a few days later by a shocked doctor in New York who described "a third-world country type of scenario." Donald Trump could similarly only grasp what was happening through the same comparison. "I have seen things that I've never seen before," he said . "I mean I've seen them, but I've seen them on television and faraway lands, never in my country."

At the same time, regardless of the fact that "Third World" terminology is outdated and confusing, Trump's inept handling of the pandemic has itself elicited more than one "banana republic" analogy, reflecting already well-worn, bipartisan comparisons of Trump to a " third world dictator " (never mind that dictators and authoritarians have never been confined solely to lower income countries).

And yet, while such comparisons provoke predictably nativist outrage from the right, what is absent from any of these responses to the situation is a sense of reflection or humility about the "Third World" comparison itself. The doctor in New York who finds himself caught in a "third world" scenario and the political commentators outraged when Trump behaves "like a third world dictator" uniformly express themselves in terms of incredulous wonderment. One never hears the potential second half of this comparison: "I am now experiencing what it is like to live in a country that resembles the kind of nation upon whom the United States regularly imposes broken economies and corrupt leaders."

Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the "Third World."

In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations – more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases, listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and security apparatus organized into regional commands that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy.

The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300 years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization.

Since then, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries, many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq).

In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget and over half of all discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit.

Trump's claim that Obama had "hollowed out" defense spending was not only grossly untrue, it masked the consistency of the security budget's metastasizing growth since the Vietnam War, regardless of who sits in the White House. At $738 billion dollars, Trump's security budget was passed in December with the overwhelming support of House Democrats.

And yet, from the perspective of public discourse in this country, our globe-spanning, resource-draining military and security apparatus exists in an entirely parallel universe to the one most Americans experience on a daily level. Occasionally, we wake up to the idea of this parallel universe but only when the United States is involved in visible military actions. The rest of the time, Americans leave thinking about international politics – and the deaths, for instance, of 2.5 million Iraqis since 2003 – to the legions of policy analysts and Pentagon employees who largely accept American military primacy as an "article of faith," as Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham Patrick Porter has said .

Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness.

Why is our avoidance of the U.S.'s weighty impact on the world a problem in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic? Most obviously, the fact that our massive security budget has gone so long without being widely questioned means that one of the soundest courses of action for the U.S. during this crisis remains resolutely out of sight.

The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy. And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America, $17.5 billion is set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace.

To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over.

On a more existential level, a country that is collectively engaged in unseeing its own global power cannot help but fail to make connections between that power and domestic politics, particularly when a little of the outside world seeps in. For instance, because most Americans are unaware of their government's sponsorship of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Middle East throughout the Cold War, 9/11 can only ever appear to have come from nowhere, or because Muslims hate our way of life.

This "how did we get here?" attitude replicates itself at every level of political life making it profoundly difficult for Americans to see the impact of their nation on the rest of the world, and the blowback from that impact on the United States itself. Right now, the outsized influence of American foreign policy is already encouraging the spread of coronavirus itself as U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran severely hamper that country's ability to respond to the virus at home and virtually guarantee its spread throughout the region.

Closer to home, our shock at the healthcare system's inept response to the pandemic masks the relationship between the U.S.'s imposition of free-market totalitarianism on countries throughout the Global South and the impact of free-market totalitarianism on our own welfare state .

Likewise, it is more than karmic comeuppance that the President of the United States now resembles the self-serving authoritarians the U.S. forced on so many formerly colonized nations. The modes of militarized policing American security experts exported to those authoritarian regimes also contributed , on a policy level, to both the rise of militarized policing in American cities and the rise of mass incarceration in the 1980s and 90s. Both of these phenomena played a significant role in radicalizing Trump's white nationalist base and decreasing their tolerance for democracy.

Most importantly, because the U.S. is blind to its power abroad, it cannot help but turn that blindness on itself. This means that even during a pandemic when America's exceptionalism – our lack of national healthcare – has profoundly negative consequences on the population, the idea of looking to the rest of the world for solutions remains unthinkable.

Senator Bernie Sanders' reasonable suggestion that the U.S., like Denmark, should nationalize its healthcare system is dismissed as the fanciful pipe dream of an aging socialist rather than an obvious solution to a human problem embraced by nearly every other nation in the world. The Seattle healthcare professional who expressed shock that even "Third World countries" are "better equipped" than we are to confront COVID-19 betrays a stunning ignorance of the diversity of healthcare systems within developing countries. Cuba, for instance, has responded to this crisis with an efficiency and humanity that puts the U.S. to shame.

Indeed, the U.S. is only beginning to feel the full impact of COVID-19's explosive confrontation with our exceptionalism: if the unemployment rate really does reach 32 percent, as has been predicted, millions of people will not only lose their jobs but their health insurance as well. In the middle of a pandemic.

Over 150 years apart, political commentators Edmund Burke and Aimé Césaire referred to this blindness as the byproduct of imperialism. Both used the exact same language to describe it; as a "gangrene" that "poisons" the colonizing body politic. From their different historical perspectives, Burke and Césaire observed how colonization boomerangs back on colonial society itself, causing irreversible damage to nations that consider themselves humane and enlightened, drawing them deeper into denial and self-delusion.

Perhaps right now there is a chance that COVID-19 – an actual, not metaphorical contagion – can have the opposite effect on the U.S. by opening our eyes to the things that go unseen. Perhaps the shock of recognizing the U.S. itself is less developed than our imagined "Third World" might prompt Americans to tear our eyes away from ourselves and look toward the actual world outside our borders for examples of the kinds of political, economic, and social solidarity necessary to fight the spread of Coronavirus. And perhaps moving beyond shock and incredulity to genuine recognition and empathy with people whose economies and democracies have been decimated by American hegemony might begin the process of reckoning with the costs of that hegemony, not just in "faraway lands" but at home. In our country.

[May 01, 2020] 22 years ago Madeleine Albright declared the United States to be the "indispensable nation": "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."

Notable quotes:
"... Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was both extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S. recourse to using force. ..."
"... After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further" into the future than others. ..."
Apr 30, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Originally from: It Took COVID To Expose the Fraud of 'American Exceptionalism' The American Conservative by Daniel Larison

... ... ...

It was 22 years ago when then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly declared the United States to be the "indispensable nation": "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."

In a recent interview with The New York T imes, Albright sounded much less sure of her old position: "There's nothing in the definition of indispensable that says "alone." It means that the United States needs to be engaged with its partners. And people's backgrounds make a difference." Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was both extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S. recourse to using force.

After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further" into the future than others. Not only are we no better than other countries at anticipating and preparing for future dangers, but judging from the country's lack of preparedness for a pandemic we are actually far behind many of the countries that we have presumed to "lead." It is impossible to square our official self-congratulatory rhetoric with the reality of a government that is incapable of protecting its citizens from disaster.

[May 01, 2020] American exceptionalism marriage to "Full spectrum Dominance" doctrine proved to be especially toxic: neocons were so preoccupied with remaking the world they failed to see that our country was falling apart

May 01, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The heart of the American exceptionalism in question is American hubris. It is based on the assumption that we are better than the rest of the world, and that this superiority both entitles and obligates us to take on an outsized role in the world.

In our current foreign policy debates, the phrase "American exceptionalism" has served as a shorthand for justifying and celebrating U.S. dominance, and when necessary it has served as a blanket excuse for U.S. wrongdoing. Seongjong Song defined it in an 2015 article for The Korean Journal of International Studies this way: "American exceptionalism is the belief that the US is "qualitatively different" from all other nations." In practice, that has meant that the U.S. does not consider itself to be bound by the same rules that apply to other states, and it reserves the right to interfere whenever and wherever it wishes.

American exceptionalism has been used in our political debates as an ideological purity test to determine whether certain political leaders are sufficiently supportive of an activist and interventionist foreign policy. The main purpose of invoking American exceptionalism in foreign policy debate has been to denigrate less hawkish policy views as unpatriotic and beyond the pale. The phrase was often used as a partisan cudgel in the previous decade as the Obama administration's critics tried to cast doubt on the former president's acceptance of this idea, but in the years since then it has become a rallying point for devotees of U.S. primacy regardless of party. There was an explosion in the use of the phrase in just the first few years of the 2010s compared with the previous decades. Song cited a study that showed this massive increase:

Exceptionalist discourse is on the rise in American politics. Terrence McCoy (2012) found that the term "American exceptionalism" appeared in US publications 457 times between 1980 and 2000, climbing to 2,558 times in the 2000s and 4,172 times in 2010-12.

The more that U.S. policies have proved "American exceptionalism" to be a pernicious myth at odds with reality, the more we have heard the phrase used to defend those policies. Republican hawks began the decade by accusing Obama of not believing in this "exceptionalism," and some Democratic hawks closed it out by "reclaiming" the idea on behalf of their own discredited foreign policy vision. There may be differences in emphasis between the two camps, but there is a consensus that the U.S. has special rights and privileges that other nations cannot have. That has translated into waging unnecessary wars, assuming excessive overseas burdens, and trampling on the rights of other states, and all the while congratulating ourselves on how virtuous we are for doing all of it.

The contemporary version of American exceptionalism is tied up inextricably with the belief that the U.S. is the "indispensable nation." According to this view, without U.S. "leadership" other countries will be unable or unwilling to respond to major international problems and threats. We have seen just how divorced from reality that belief is in just the last few months. There has been no meaningful U.S. leadership in response to the pandemic, but for the most part our allies have managed on their own fairly well. In the absence of U.S. "leadership," many other countries have demonstrated that they haven't really needed the U.S. Our "indispensability" is a story that we like to tell ourselves, but it isn't true. Not only are we no longer indispensable, but as Micah Zenko pointed out many years ago, we never were.


Vhailor 2 days ago

We would do well if we put away this boastful fantasy and learned how to live like a normal nation.

You won't. It always takes a humiliating military defeat or a societal collapse to reevalute such myths.

Megan S Vhailor a day ago
What has been the history of this country since the end of the cold war aside from humiliating military defeats and societal collapse?
Vhailor Megan S a day ago
The numerous foreign misadventures of the US military since 1989 are far from a humiliating military defeat, they are more of an embarassment for the ruling elites. Take for example Afganistan - how many soldiers did the US army lose there in 18 years? 2500? That's nothing compared to the strength and resources available to the Pentagon.

Societal collapse? I admit the living standards of the average working class Joe fell dramatically compared to the 90's, but you are far from a societal collapse. It won't happen as long as the US Dollar is the world currency. Believe me :)

Gary Sellars Vhailor a day ago • edited
The dollars days are numbered. You can't degrade a fiat currency by endless printing with reckless abandon and expect that the other nations of the planet will retain any trust that the scrip will remain a reliable store of value.

BTW Afghanistan is an unmitigated DISASTER. The "hyperpower" cannot impose its will on one of the most backward and impoverised nations on the planet. Heck the Soviets did better in their day, and they had to face a billion-dollar-a-year foreign-backed insurgency funded by US & Saudi, and backed to the hilt by Pakistan. By comparison, the Taliban have NO allies and no foreign funding, yet try as they might, neither the US nor its feckless puppet regime in Kabul can succeed in grinding them down.

Feral Finster Gary Sellars a day ago
Were to God that you are correct.
Inn caritas Vhailor a day ago
If I were a statistical man, I'd wager that civil war within the decade is highly unlikely if the current trajectory of US society continues
Inn caritas Inn caritas a day ago
Highly likely*
Vhailor Inn caritas a day ago
Hmmm... I wouldn't. Who would fight whom? Or would it be a free for all Mad Max style?

You Americans have this weird fascination with the apocalyptic. Seriously, just look at your movies - each year Hollywood dishes out at least half a dozen blockbusters dealing with societal collapse - be it due to an alien invasion, zombie plague, impact event or something else...

I admit, you have problems. The middle class is getting poorer each year, mass imigration from the southern side of your continent is tearing apart the social fabric and your elite got richer and more arrogant sice they embraced globalisation in the 90's. But this doesn't mean that the country is heading towards a civil war.

Inn caritas Vhailor a day ago
Well .... I'm not even American so I feel I can look at this somewhat More objectively than a hardcore blue or red stater. Still hard to tell whether covid will put a wrench in the trajectory or accelerate it. And if you want apocalypticism, go see Rod.
Gio Con Vhailor a day ago
Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan -- how many more humiliating military defeats will it take for Americans to realize that they are anything but exceptional?
ZizaNiam Gio Con a day ago • edited
Americans view killing foreign men, women, and children as a successful endeavor of their efforts to fight for freedom. American also are not bothered if their soldiers torture and rape foreign men, women and children. So these wars are not seen as failures but successes, even if actual geopolitical goals are not realized.
Gutbomb Vhailor a day ago
"You won't. It always takes a humiliating military defeat or a societal collapse to reevalute such myths."

I would go a bit further and say that Americans won't reevaluate those myths until they personally feel the pain from those things and they blame their pain on the government that caused them. So much of our current policies are guided by the principal of making sure that Americans do not feel the pain of their government's actions. We eliminated the draft so most Americans have no skin in the game regarding military conflicts (not to mention no war taxes, no goods rationing, etc.). We have come to expect bottomless economic "stimulus," borrowed from our children's future labor, so we feel minimal pain from the poor preparation for the pandemic. Bread and circuses have proven to be powerful manipulation tools indeed.

Fazal Majid 2 days ago • edited
The US is remarkably insular, in large part because it is a mostly self-sufficient (or used to be) nation-continent, but the hubristic idea of exceptionalism also makes us resistant to good ideas invented elsewhere.

As concerns COVID-19, I have a number of physicians in my family, and it's only on March 16th that they awakened to the crisis, a week after France officially announced it was going into lockdown or after London basically became a ghost town. One of them even took her kids to Disneyland around that time, something that seemed the height of irresponsibility to us at the time. Thus obliviousness is not just a feature of the Trump administration. The lone exception is tech companies, perhaps because they are more globalized than most, but the Washington policy navel-gazing circle-jerk is mostly oblivious to the West Coast.

Now the idea that some crises can only be solved with US leadership is not without merit. Just because we cannot solve all doesn't mean there aren't some important categories where our military might and logistic prowess carry the day. That COVID-19 would prove to be an especially tough challenge for the US was entirely predictable. From our fractured decision-making due to federalism, our abysmally inefficient health-care system with its huge swathes of uninsured, our ideology of free market solutions to everything, and our polarized and ineffectual legislature, made this crisis almost tailor-made to expose the fault-lines in our brittle society in the worst possible light.

I don't think we need to ape the Chinese, but certainly we need to look outward for a change, shed our not-invented-here mentality and look at how South Korea or New Zealand succeeded where we failed, despite having a fraction of our resources.

Augustine Fazal Majid 9 hours ago • edited
What military might which has not been able to win any war that it started ever? What logistic prowess that cannot make PPEs for at least the healthcare workers, not to mention toilet paper for the people?
t44s 2 days ago
excellent article Daniel! My thoughts exactly!
Jeffrey Groom 2 days ago
Great article Daniel.
Wally 2 days ago
I would love to see all our political leaders (and their media friends) respond to the observations by Mr. Bacevich and Mr. Larison. Of course, I agree with both of them. Perhaps this economic crisis combined with the pandemic will finally break america. It's a shame it has come to this. Must we endure economic collapse, starvation, and the corruption / looting by the wealthy in order to finally stop caring about imaginary threats half way around the world? I suspect the answer is yes. Americans will never abandon their arrogance until they are laid low by something.
Feral Finster Wally a day ago
"A wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf's right to eat him. He thus addressed him: "Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me."

"Indeed," bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, "I was not then born."

Then said the Wolf, "You feed in my pasture."

"No, good sir," replied the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted grass."

Again said the Wolf, "You drink of my well."

"No," exclaimed the Lamb, "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me."
Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, "Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations."

Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny."

**************************

For a few more years, the US will have absolute power over other people and we will use that power in an absolutely corrupt way at the behest of our overlords in Riyadh and Jerusalem. When retribution finally comes our way, no one will shed a tear for us.

Nor should they, for we do evil.

Sidney Caesar Wally a day ago
I'd endorse restoring civics classes in American schools, with a reading list comprised of Daniel Larison, Andrew Bacevich, and Noam Chomsky.
JoeBu 2 days ago • edited
How long will it take and how bad will it get?

The Qianlong Emperor dismissed Lord Macartney's trade mission in 1792 because the celestial kingdom had no need for the manufacturers of barbarians.

China then got whooped in the first Opium War in 1841. It continued to rot for +100 years.

China had a major exceptionalism problem which hamstrung reform efforts for a century. Some of it is still ongoing (another topic).

I'm trying to figure out what psychological decompensation will look like and how long it will last.

Kent JoeBu 2 days ago
The US has long been a myth-making factory for the population. The average American has a pretty rough life. Generally strapped with debt (mortgage, cars), working a dead-end job with little protection should you lose it. But people are tribal and can get their sense of self-worth from the tribe. So to be constantly told you are "exceptional" and part of the "greatest nation the world has ever known" can cover up a lot of pain in real life. See New England Patriots fans or LSU Tigers fans.

So while being so exceptional, you get to spend hours trying to figure out which Obamacare policy won't cost so much that it takes up all of your extra monthly cash while simultaneously leaving you thousands in debt if you actually needed to use it.

JoeBu Kent 2 days ago • edited
Agree. So decompensation. Is it an opportunity to right the ship or does it get real ugly?
Kent JoeBu a day ago • edited
I tend to think the psychological decomposition is on-going. Americans know that something is terribly wrong, but they can't seem to put their collective finger on it. The Trump vote was a big signal that folks know something is wrong. The hope was that Trump could fix it, but he just knew something was wrong too. He didn't know how to fix it, but at least he is willing to talk about it.

But I don't see how you right the ship. What's wrong is that what got us to be a wealthy powerful country today isn't what is going to keep us that way going forward. That's very hard for people at all levels of society to understand and accept.

So I expect a continued devolution. Where it gets increasingly "real ugly" for a lot of people, while a lot of us continue to do fairly well. You have to have a lot of hope your kids can make it too.

Feral Finster Kent a day ago
Americans know that something is terribly wrong and getting worse by the day and by the crisis, but they seems to think that tribal solutions are the answer.
JoeBu Feral Finster a day ago
Agree.

America, as a society, has high functioning autism.

Something is wrong but in good times, it can really outperform and faults can be overlooked.

But when its routine is disrupted, it will have meltdowns and tantrums.

Feral Finster JoeBu 9 hours ago
Empires tend to do that, especially as they find that they are no longer as omnipotent as they think they are, or as they once were.
JoeBu Kent a day ago
Decompensation cratered China for over a century.

Modernity should speed up this cycle, no?

Russia cratered for a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has moderately recovered. Not so great but not 100 years.

kouroi Kent a day ago
So true. An eye opening set of essays goes to the hart of this: Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War Paperback by Joe Bageant.

However, that book hasn't received the same fame and traction as this other one (and I am looking at you TAC and Rod Dreher as well): Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance and this is because in the first the author focuses on the system as the one that produces certain results while on the other the author puts more weight on individual choices, the darling idea of conservatives, the lifting oneself by bootstraps, the American success story of rags to riches...

Feral Finster JoeBu a day ago
Opium is not native to China. The reason that the British pushed opium on China, in spite of the strenuous objections of the Chinese governments and officials of the time, is because before the Opium Wars, trade with China was causing a worldwide shortage of silver. Silver was about the only thing that non-Chinese had that Chinese wanted. Until opium.

In fact, at least one Chinse official wrote Queen Victoria a letter to the effect that opium is forbidden in Great Britain, so why are you trying to push it on us here?

EliteCommInc. 2 days ago
"The coronavirus pandemic is a curse. It should also serve as an opportunity, Americans at long last realizing that they are not God's agents. Out of suffering and loss, humility and self-awareness might emerge. We can only hope."

Laugh. ohhh you guys need to stop. The virus is not an indication that God is denying an exceptional role for the US. A star athlete is exceptional and may even be fascinating. However,

the reality remains that in order to stay exceptional, fascinating and "indispensable" ---- there are things that athelete must do and and there are things that athelete must avoid doing.

We have engaged in a lot of things we should avoid and neglected some matters that would be helpful in maintaining our own health and care --- damaging our exceptional performance.

Jesse Owens and the Bolt, Usain bolt don't participate in every event and they don't run in every race all the time . . .

It simply is unsustainable.

I of course reject all the whining bout how we, the US, are not exceptional --- and while dispensable, or value on the planet remains vital.

kouroi EliteCommInc. a day ago
"value"? more like "impact"... and "vital"? For about 100 years China was an object of history rather than subject, no biggie. The World would need a breather with a bit of hiatus concerning the US.
Wally EliteCommInc. a day ago
If the virus is not gods curse then the equally foolish notion that Americans are gods agents ought to be rejected as well. I think you have misunderstood the context of the reference to gods.
=marco01= EliteCommInc. a day ago
The virus is not an indication that God is denying an exceptional role for the US.

But a natural disaster striking a blue state, that totally is an indication God is punishing them for their degeneracy.

EmpireLoyalist 2 days ago
Two constitutional amendment movements must come out of this crisis:
1) Large metropolitan areas must be detached from the states in which they reside. It is beyond tragic to see civilised people, with deep roots and traditional values, come under the tyranny of brutal marxist regimes - as we see in so many places from Virginia to NY to Pennsylvania to Illinois. We have giant colonies of government dependents and cube-dwellers, which are being used by the Left as vote plantations. The governments they produce are then inflicted on normal decent innocent people who just happen to live within the same state lines. This can't be allowed to continue.
2) Anybody (like Bill Gates) who engages in planning or promoting policies that would treat humans as livestock (e.g., by tracking them with implanted micro-chips) should be charged with crimes against humanity.
It would be an uphill battle to achieve these goals, but if we do not start right away, the next crisis could be used by the Left to impose their sick vicious perverted social engineering programme - which would mean the end of human civilisation and of the human race as we know it.
Doug Fister EmpireLoyalist a day ago
wow, what a deranged, reality-free comment.
Freespeak EmpireLoyalist a day ago
Whoa amazing, this is like unreasoning.
gnt EmpireLoyalist a day ago
Who would want to implant chips in people who willingly pay hundreds of dollars for a portable device that facilitates tracking the owner?

As far as separating metropolitan areas from surrounding rural areas, it would exacerbate a problem that is already developing. The structure of Congress is already weighted toward rural states. Anything that increases that advantage will mean that more people are governed by fewer people. That's not going to make the US a more stable country.

Awake and Uttering a Song EmpireLoyalist a day ago
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EmpireLoyalist EmpireLoyalist a day ago • edited
The readership of TAC are predominantly committed Leftists.
This comment appears to have touched a nerve.
These measures would impede implementation of The Agenda.
Excellent.
Sidney Caesar EmpireLoyalist a day ago
While there are certainly leftists (like myself) among TAC readership, the thing that distinguishes most TAC readers from folks like yourself is that we reside on the left side of the sanity/insanity divide.
EmpireLoyalist Sidney Caesar a day ago
The commenters here seem to feel these two ideas are crazy:
1) Civilised people should not be placed under the power of people they view as primitive bloodthirsty degenerates.
2) Human beings should not be treated as livestock - tracked and managed by a post-human ruling class.
If The Left believes these ideas are insane, we have a big problem.
That is confirmation that the chasm between Western Civilisation and the marxist ideology is absolutely unbridgeable. There is zero overlap - zero common ground. [In fact, the two are so far apart that one can't see the other with a telescope on a clear day.]
We need to be moving toward some form of separation - whether that means a peaceful partition like the Soviet Union in the early nineties, a loose confederation like the British Commonwealth, or maybe a defence/foreign policy alliance based on the NATO model.
Sidney Caesar EmpireLoyalist a day ago
Ideas are just ideas.
It's the people with those ideas who are crazy.
EmpireLoyalist Sidney Caesar a day ago
"Sane people have crazy ideas. Crazy people have sane ideas."
It's gonna be tough to sell that one.
Are you really just saying that we should submit to an insane ideology because the people promoting it are just the coolest, most fabulous people ever?
The normal humans are not buying that garbage.
That's why marxism always turns to extreme violence.
Socialism cannot compete, so it must conquer. It cannot persuade, so it must coerce and terrorise.
gnt EmpireLoyalist a day ago
Have you not noticed that we seem to be doing our fair share of conquering, coercing and terrorizing in the last 40 years?
Ruth Harris EmpireLoyalist a day ago
Probably the difference is in who either side defines as "primitive bloodthirsty degenerates" and "a post-human ruling class."
gnt EmpireLoyalist a day ago
Every time I see the "the Left" used as the subject of a sentence, it always seems to follow that the writer does not know what he's talking about, and probably does not know any actual leftists who think or do what the writer is claiming they think or do. When you build straw men from information you get on Fox News, you're not likely to get much more than ill-founded generalizations.
Gutbomb gnt a day ago
Any time you see a comment that repeats "the Left/Liberals/Democrats believe X" and "the Right/Conservatives/Republicans believe Y" you can bet that it will not be insightful.

[Apr 24, 2020] Please Tell the Establishment That U.S. Hegemony is Over by Daniel Larison

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The truth is that decline was never a choice, but the U.S. can decide how it can respond to it. We can continue chasing after the vanished, empty glory of the "unipolar moment" with bromides of American exceptionalism. We can continue to delude ourselves into thinking that military might can make up for all our other weaknesses. Or we can choose to adapt to a changed world by prudently husbanding our resources and putting them to uses more productive than policing the world. ..."
"... Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order ..."
Apr 23, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
|

More than 10 years ago, the columnist Charles Krauthammer asserted that American "decline is a choice," and argued tendentiously that Barack Obama had chosen it. Yet looking back over the last decade, it has become increasingly obvious that this decline has occurred irrespective of what political leaders in Washington want.

The truth is that decline was never a choice, but the U.S. can decide how it can respond to it. We can continue chasing after the vanished, empty glory of the "unipolar moment" with bromides of American exceptionalism. We can continue to delude ourselves into thinking that military might can make up for all our other weaknesses. Or we can choose to adapt to a changed world by prudently husbanding our resources and putting them to uses more productive than policing the world.

There was a brief period during the 1990s and early 2000s when the U.S. could claim to be the world's hegemonic power. America had no near-peer rivals; it was at the height of its influence across most of the globe. That status, however, was always a transitory one, and was lost quickly thanks to self-inflicted wounds in Iraq and the natural growth of other powers that began to compete for influence. While America remains the most powerful state in the world, it no longer dominates as it did 20 years ago. And there can be no recapturing what was lost.

Alexander Cooley and Dan Nexon explore these matters in their new book, Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order . They make a strong case for distinguishing between the old hegemonic order and the larger international order of which it is a part. As they put it, "global international order is not synonymous with American hegemony." They also make careful distinctions between the different components of what is often simply called the "liberal international order": political liberalism, economic liberalism, and liberal intergovernmentalism. The first involves the protection of rights, the second open economic exchange, and the third the form of international order that recognizes legally equal sovereign states. Cooley and Nexon note that both critics and defenders of the "liberal international order" tend to assume that all three come as a "package deal," but point out that these parts do not necessarily reinforce each other and do not have to coexist.

While the authors are quite critical of Trump's foreign policy, they don't pin the decline of the old order solely on him. They argue that hegemonic unraveling takes place when the hegemon loses its monopoly over patronage and "more states can compete when it comes to providing economic, security, diplomatic, and other goods." The U.S. has been losing ground for the better part of the last 20 years, much of it unavoidable as other states grew wealthier and sought to wield greater influence. The authors make a persuasive case that the "exit" from hegemony is already taking place and has been for some time.

Many defenders of U.S. hegemony insist that the "liberal international order" depends on it. That has never made much sense. For one, the continued maintenance of American hegemony frequently conflicts with the rules of international order. The hegemon reserves the right to interfere anywhere it wants, and tramples on the sovereignty and legal rights of other states as it sees fit. In practice, the U.S. has frequently acted as more of a rogue in its efforts to "enforce" order than many of the states it likes to condemn. The most vocal defenders of U.S. hegemony are unsurprisingly some of the biggest opponents of international law -- at least when it gets in their way. Cooley and Nexon make a very important observation related to this in their discussion of the role of revisionist powers in the world today:

But the key point is that we need to be extremely careful that we don't conflate "revisionism" with opposition to the United States. The desire to undermine hegemony and replace it with a multipolar system entails revisionism with respect to the distribution of power, but it may or may not be revisionist with respect to various elements of international architecture or infrastructure.

The core of the book is a survey of three different sources for the unraveling of U.S. hegemony: major powers, weaker states, and transnational "counter-order" movements. Cooley and Nexon trace how Russia and China have become increasingly effective at wielding influence over many smaller states through patronage and the creation of parallel institutions and projects such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). They discuss a number of weaker states that have begun hedging their bets by seeking patronage from these major powers as well as the U.S. Where once America had a "near monopoly" on such patronage, this has ceased to be the case. They also track the role of "counter-order" movements, especially nationalist and populist groups, in bringing pressure to bear on their national governments and cooperating across borders to challenge international institutions. Finally, they spell out how the U.S. itself has contributed to the erosion of its own position through reckless policies dating back at least to the invasion of Iraq.

The conventional response to the unraveling of America's hegemony here at home has been either a retreat into nostalgia with simplistic paeans to the wonders of the "liberal international order" that ignore the failures of that earlier era or an intensified commitment to hard-power dominance in the form of ever-increasing military budgets (or some combination of the two). Cooley and Nexon contend that the Trump administration has opted for the second of these responses. Citing the president's emphasis on maintaining military dominance and his support for exorbitant military spending, they say "it suggests an approach to hegemony more dependent upon military instruments, and thus on the ability (and willingness) of the United States to continue extremely high defense spending. It depends on the wager that the United States both can and should substitute raw military power for its hegemonic infrastructure." That not only points to what Barry Posen has called "illiberal hegemony," but also leads to a foreign policy that is even more militarized and unchecked by international law.

Cooley and Nexon make a compelling observation about how Trump's demand for more allied military spending differs from normal calls for burden-sharing. Normally, burden-sharing advocates call on allies to spend more so the U.S. can spend less. But that isn't Trump's position at all. His administration pressures allied governments to increase their spending, while showing no desire to curtail the Pentagon budget:

Retrenchment entails some combination of shedding international security commitments and shifting defense burdens onto allies and partners. This allows the retrenching power, in principle, to redirect military spending toward domestic priorities, particularly those critical to long-term productivity and economic growth. In the current American context, this means making long-overdue investments in transportation infrastructure, increasing educational spending to develop human capital, and ramping up support for research and development. This rationale makes substantially less sense if retrenchment policies do not produce reductions in defense spending–which is why Trump's aggressive, public, and coercive push for burden sharing seems odd. Recall that Trump and his supporters want, and have already implemented, increases in the military budget. There is no indication that the Trump administration would change defense spending if, for example, Germany or South Korea increased their own military spending or more heavily subsidized American bases.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed how misguided our priorities as a nation have been. There is now a chance to change course, but that will require our leaders to shift their thinking. U.S. hegemony is already on its way out; now Americans need to decide what our role in the world will look like afterwards. Warmed-over platitudes about "leadership" won't suffice and throwing more money at the Pentagon is a dead end. The way forward is a strategy of retrenchment, restraint, and renewal.


Tradcon 2 days ago

They can't possibly grapple with the fact that they were wrong and that their policies were catastrophic failures in almost every regard.
Kessler Tradcon 2 days ago
Yeah. US just happened to decline, a completely natural process, some universal constant, like gravity of which we have no control.

No. A decadent US population, informed by clueless media, put in charge incompetent and self-serving leaders, who made a series of very poor choices for the nation, but financially beneficial for themselves.

HenionJD Kessler a day ago • edited
And thus our betrayed America's version of the White Man's Burden. It's sad to think our children having to endure living in a world where they aren't called to die in God-forsaken hellholes for reasons that have nothing to do with this nation's core principles. Sad!
AlexanderHistory X Kessler a day ago
Lol. Sort of. Except the very oligarchs you speak of, on both sides, set the stage for all of it.
This is the inevitable result of voting as a right, ans they knew it. Universal suffrage is a tool of control, not liberty.
MPC AlexanderHistory X a day ago
The oligarchs are really just like other Americans, who got their hands on a whole lot of money. I have no doubt the rest of the population would behave like oligarchs if given the same resources.
JonF311 AlexanderHistory X a day ago
We don't have universal suffrage and voting is no where named as a right in the Constitution. The most it has to say is that voting can not be denied to people based on their membership in certain classes, nor limited based on the payment of a tax.
Meddersville 2 days ago
"it has become increasingly obvious that this decline has occurred irrespective of what political leaders in Washington want."

It isn't "irrespective of". It is because of what they wanted. They wanted and aggressively pushed for US foreign policy to serve the narrow regional interests of client states like Israel and Saudi Arabia. They got what they wanted, in spades, and now America's geopolitical and economic fortunes are in a tail-spin.

If America had ignored these people, with their stupid interventionism, their almost blatant service of foreign interests by demanding "no daylight" with "allies" who did nothing but suck our blood, we would have been far better off. We would have been far better able to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the pandemic. It's impossible not to think ruefully of the trillions we wasted on Middle East wars and other interventions, money now so badly needed here at home.

Jason Kennedy 2 days ago
The US will pursue a similar path to Israel. Advantage is relative. Rather than repair the US economy it is simpler to destroy those of one's rivals. I see war as the only attractive option for the US elite as that is the only area where they still enjoy clear superiority (or believe they do, same thing policy-wise.)
Kathleen King a day ago
Cooley and Nevon's book appears to be a good read - I will put it on my 'to read so buy' book list. China is the next hegemon - this is inevitable due to design. As time goes by during this 'coronavirus pandemic' I have been waiting to hear a politician, any politician, assert that they will support legislation to require 'essential supply lines' to be returned to the U.S. Aside from 'murmurs', not a 'lucid' peep. Just 'sue china' legislation, or smoke and mirrors blame on those within the U.S. via the media or politicians. This is just embarrassing and surreal.

The priority should be to bring these supply lines back to the U.S. [i.e., medical]. Too hell if I am going to be forced to pay for 'Obamacare' or 'Medicare For All' like a Russian Serf, to the Corporations [vassals] of China [Tatars] - enforced by their 'Eunuchs', greedy politicians in Washington. {Eunuchs were castrated lackies of Emperors]. Yet Chinese slave labour on these medical products, including pharmaceutical ingredients, and precious metals for parts for the Department of Defense, keep profit margins very high.

Because of their cowardice one must ask: Why increase defense spending on any project - or be concerned with Iran or Venezuela or Russia or keeping NATO afloat? Allowing China to continue to be the 'sole source' provider of essential goods is just asking for another scenario like the one before us. If so, I am convinced that my country is nothing more than a 'dead carcass' being ripped apart by 'Corporate Vassals of China'. This, of course, includes the Tech Companies as well.

Bankotsu Kathleen King a day ago • edited
China won't be next hegemon. It has no ambition to be one.
joeo Bankotsu a day ago
Are Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia and India aware of this?
Bankotsu joeo a day ago
Time will tell.
Feral Finster joeo a day ago • edited
China does not have ideal geography to be world hegemon.

For one thing, it is too easy to prevent any ships from leaving the South China Sea.

The fact that China has not gone to war with anyone since 1953, except for two sharp but short border conflicts in 1962 and 1979, should tell you something. Contrast with the peace-loving liberal democracy of the United States.

J Villain joeo a day ago
You mean the counties that have signed numerous trade and defence agreements with China?
Comicus Bankotsu 20 hours ago
China has seen the cost we've paid. I don't think they see the value.
dstraws Kathleen King a day ago
The answer of course is a functional international system--environmental protection, world health, a transparent financial system, world court, and policing. All agreed on by at least the major players which makes it costly for others not to participate.
Kathleen King dstraws a day ago
With good reason many 'mistrust' this int'l system given the threat to sovereignty of a country, most importantly the freedom of its citizens. An int'l system is asymmetrical, a radical 're-distribution' program that preys on citizens of the 'pseudo-wealthy' west. The United States will be, post-Corona Virus, potentially $30T in debt. Yet they contribute the most to the WHO. The largest contribution to the UN comes from the United States. This fact seems to rebut your 'costly for others not to participate'.

The Paris Agreement, like the UN and WHO, will rely on most of the funds coming from the U.S. and redistributed to other countries. And this will further destroy the standard of living in this country to the degree of crashing the economy. The expected Utopian Outcome for this so-called 'One-World' order will be a great disappointment to those that advocate for it. Because, after all, it is nothing more than a Utopian dream gambling on the cohesive nature of different demographic groups combined with significant reduction in freedoms for all - based on flawed models, including so-called 'man made global warming' models. To define the Demographic is use in the context of my response: does not = race; it equals culture. Right now this is being demonstrated in the super state of the EU. There can be no harmony in a world like this. It is like forcing a 'square peg' into a 'round hole'.

And who are these major players? The Eunuch Politicians in Washington and Western Europe? What are their priorities? Their wallets or their constituents? And I do not mean in a parental way. That is not the role of government.

Jim Chilton a day ago
Viewed from a global perspective at this time, there is a decline in American power and influence, but the vanity of politicians prevents them from seeing it and they don't want to let go.

The British government makes the same mistakes as it clings to an imaginary "prestige" as a world power - a power that vanished in 1914.

Lars a day ago
We don't have to collapse like the Western Roman Empire; we can adjust like the Byzantine Empire and stay around a thousand years longer.
Lee a day ago
After Eden was removed as PM post-Suez the new PM Harold McMillan came in and was honest with the British ppl in explaining their new role in the world, just 10-15 years after the triumph of WW2 a UK Prime Minister had the courage to tell the British people that they were no longer at the top table, that the age of Empire was over and to put in place the policies required to remove the burden of empire from Britain and adjust to its new role in the world. Do you see an American politician with the capability to tell some uncomfortable home truths to the American people and still win an election?
joeo Lee a day ago
i think that is why voters elected Trump. The citizens of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin have lived the decline of the United States. At least under trump there have been no new wars but the withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan NATO, Japan, Korea needs to occur with the Military-Industrial-Media Complex kicking and screaming.with each step. Also ending sanctions on Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.
WolfNippleChips joeo a day ago
We are in Japan because it allows us to patrol the sea lanes which is vital for our economy and it gives us a large force ready to respond in case of Chinese or North Korean aggression. The Status of Forces Agreement and other treaties with Japan stipulate what percentage of costs are born by Japan.
joeo WolfNippleChips a day ago
Allowing Japan to destroy consumer electronics, damage steel and automotive is vital to our economy? Could we not patrol the sea lanes if we wanted to from Guam? Is not freedom of the sea just as vital to Japan, Europe and India? How is China or North Korea the aggressor when Japan, Korea and Taiwan have been client states of China with the US thousands of miles away?
Imperialism has bankrupt the United States just as it did Europe. The time has come to end these treaties.
MPC joeo a day ago
Ultra protectionism, retreat to our island and no one can find us, 'make America great again' I dare say, thinking is naive and unrealistic.

America wil be poorer, weaker, and more vulnerable if it tried to only make its own goods and had to rely on only its own labor. Trade is profit and profit is the ability to develop, build, and defend what we have. Where do the profits go is the question. Who loses in the trade is another question. Does the benefit from the former outweigh the latter?

I don't see Japanese trade as making much of a dent in employment rates. The profits go to the Japanese state and industry, who are important counterweights to Chinese ambitions in Asia, a mutual interest. So, the costs are few, and the profits are used in significant measure to mutual benefit.

The liberal hegemon is dead, yes our imperialism is dead even if it doesn't know it, but it is essential to remain strategically involved in the world around us. Even if we stop playing the game, the world around us does not. Did Russia have the luxury of turning into a turtle after the Cold War? No. Nations, which are all wolves, smell weakness. Yet the Trumpian right wants to hide, put its finger in its ear, and pretend that everything will be fine it seems.

Lee joeo 16 hours ago
What are these withdrawals from Iraq & Afghanistan you speak of? They just have not happened, like not even a little bit, so tired of people pushing this completely false narrative as if it is true, just maddening. A democracy cannot function if people exist in their own worlds with their own facts that are just not true
David Naas a day ago
The Brits after WW2 offer a lesson here. Hurt badly by WW1, their whole system began teetering as that illusion of the "natural superiority" of the British took massive hits in the various colonies of the Empire. By exposing the ordinariness of the administrators and soldiers, it encouraged revolt (see Gandhi in India). But WW2 arguably devastated the UK. It's "win" over Germany was Pyrrhic, as it needed both the USSR and the USA , and each took a chunk of prestige and of the "hegemon". George VI recognized this, and British politicians encouraged the shift from Empire to Commonwealth. (Which, if they had never involved themselves in the EU beyond trade and had kept up the Commonwealth as it was intended, would have been a better path than what they did, IMHO.) Nevertheless, they handled it better than I think we will.

As Jefferson said, "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."

But to get there, we have a lot of nonsense -- damned nonsense - - to overcome.

John Achterhof a day ago
Excellent review and outlook on an encouraging transition from the compulsion of hegemony within a generally agreeable paradigm of economic liberalism (rules-based international markets).
john a day ago
Well this present regime is actively smashing "international organizations" constructed largely by the Americans after WW2. This makes it even easier for the Chinese to fill the vacuum we have created. It would be better to hold them in a Western biased "international organization"
engineerscotty a day ago
Would be nice if there were no global hegemon, actually.
NoNonsensingPlease engineerscotty a day ago
All indications are that ship has sailed. Will there be hegemons? Yes, but more than one. The US will not be the only hegemon and the COVID-19 helped the world see the emperor has no clothes.
MPC engineerscotty a day ago
I think that's the likely course, unless the US remains especially incompetent in ensuring that China isn't the one cleaning up at all the empire liquidation sales.

No nation should be entrusted with anything like the power the US has had.

WolfNippleChips a day ago
Until they start shooting down our airliners, sinking our cruise ships, attacking our Naval Bases, and invading their neighbors and committing genocide against people of other races and religions.

Then, the doves will wake up and realize that the Big Stick is what kept us safe afterall.

MPC WolfNippleChips a day ago
Yes, we need the Big Stick.

We just need a rethinking of strategy, since we're just hitting ourselves with it right now.

Some people feel inclined to toss away the stick to prevent the foolish use of it.

chris chuba WolfNippleChips a day ago
You mean fight people who actually threaten us rather than attack people because we dream up scenarios where it's possible or we just don't like them? I'll take that over preemptive genocide.

If we focused on actual defense 9/11 would not have happened. We ignored Al Qaeda despite the fact the bombed us multiple times because we were too busy bombing Serbia, blowing up their TV stations and expanding NATO to gobble up former Russian Republics.

Feral Finster a day ago
"Liberal international order" my royal Irish @ss.

The United States routinely ignores any international laws, whenever it sees fit. Anyway, the idea that United States hegemony is obligatory because muh international order is an argument from consequences.

AlexanderHistory X a day ago
Lol, America Is what's in the rear view, not just our status as the sole superpower.
People better get ready, this empire is getting ready to collapse.
NoNonsensingPlease AlexanderHistory X a day ago
Surely the shortest live empire in history.
JonF311 NoNonsensingPlease a day ago
Alexander's barely outlived his brief life.
M Orban AlexanderHistory X a day ago
You wouldn't be the first one to say that...
MPC AlexanderHistory X a day ago
Meh, people better get ready, we're getting ready to muddle along for the next several decades.

The American state is way too tasty a prize. No one is going to dismantle it, and people will unite against any threat that has the potential to. Eventually someone will figure out a Bernie/Trump fusion and that person will be our Peron or Putin. Radical leftists will be crushed by the police if they try anything, and the white nationalists will all be in prison.

We're somewhere between Argentina and Russia heading forward.

MPC a day ago
Sell the empire. Ignore the Middle East outside of the oil trade lanes. Reorient our trade networks on SE Asia, India, and Latin America - no more feeding China. End of hostile moves towards Russia - let Europe reconcile with Russia. Fully support multipolar world order.

Militarily we don't need the plodding battleship of a force we have now. No need to occupy whole countries with 'boots on the ground'. Maintain top notch special forces, advisor and coordination programs with allies, and anything useful for blowing up Chinese force projection especially the PLA navy. Subs and missiles.

Platonist_82 MPC 21 hours ago • edited
Lots of good ideas here. Would trading with India involve a "reorient[ation]?" (I don't know.) That is to say, would still trading with India mean that we have to maintain our current naval position, or would that still be consistent with some sort of drawdown? Or are you saying that since India is not a hostile force, we would not have to worry about it? Or does is that problem met with the "anything useful for blowing up Chinese force projection especially the PLA navy. Subs and missiles." Conceivably, China could increase its presence in the Indian Ocean to create problems, no? Overall, agree with a lot of it--I'm just curious about the logistics.
MPC Platonist_82 15 hours ago
India in the longer term could ostensibly do much of what China does for us now trade wise. Needs to finish developing its infrastructure and its manufacturing tech. SE Asia and Mexico are closer short term.

I think due to the commercial value of the seas our navy is our most cost effective means of force projection. Patrolling the Persian Gulf means we have our thumb on the number one petroleum artery. I would focus more on cost effective means to deny China (and Chinese trade) access to the seas in the event of tension. Carriers are expensive targets when subs and strategic missile emplacements can inspire even more fear due to unpredictability. But yes we still need bases and partnerships throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans. China can roam around in peacetime as it wishes, what matters is that it stays totally bottled up in port, along with its maritime trade, in a conflict.

Allow these places to run up trade surpluses with us rather than China.

Platonist_82 a day ago • edited
I think Mr. Larison is on the right track. However, even if the logic of abandoning the Liberal International Order (LIO) is accepted--and the LIO most certainly should be abandoned--the entire story or narrative of post-World War II America narrative must be either abandoned or refashioned. It seems that the LIO functions as some sort of purpose for American citizens, and a higher-level theology for those who work in the United States Government, especially those who are involved in foreign policy making. Countering or reshaping the narrative of United States foreign policy and its link with domestic policy will be a challenge, but one that needs to be taken up, and taken up successfully. In personal conversations with those who support the LIO, they seem to take [my] criticisms of the LIO as some sort of ad hominem attack. This reaction is obviously illogical, but it is one that those who see the wisdom of abandoning the LIO must tactically and tactfully counter. Regrettably, supporting the LIO is conflated with being an American, or conflated with the raison d'etre of the existence of the United States. Many think the abandonment of the LIO cannot rationally be replaced and will necessarily be replaced with some sort of nihilism or the most cynical form of "realism," of which they mistakenly believe they possess understanding. For a start, reforming the educational system, insofar as it not already dominated by incorrect-but-fashionable far-leftist ideas that advocate a narrative of American history and purpose as false as it is pernicious, would seem to necessary. Many children grow into adulthood falsely thinking maintaining the LIO is their responsibility. It is, at root, a theological sickness.
MidnightDancer 9 hours ago
It is very difficult for me to see the U.S. changing course anytime soon. Neoliberal globalists, political, and financial, are in control.
Tony 7 hours ago
I hope it is over. To hell with the Europeans who have made a national sport of mocking Americans and all things America, while we risk nuclear war on their behalf. Let them face Putin and the Islamic invasion on their own - those problems are Europe's, not ours.
Frank Blangeard 7 hours ago
The United States is ramping up for the "Great Final War' with both Russia and China. Throw in Iran, Syria, North Korea etc. as an afterthought. The U.S. will bring the temple down on itself rather than give up the goal of 'Full Spectrum Dominance'.that it has been pursuing since the end of WWII.
Anti_Govt_Rebel 5 hours ago
Alexander Cooley and Dan Nexon may think the glory days are coming to an end, but I don't think Trump and the neocons got the memo yet. I see no evidence of any intent to change.
Matthew W. Hall 13 minutes ago
There is no "international order." That's just rhetoric that is useful for certain economic interests. A world without american hegemony will be divided and filled with conflict. Globalization can't work politically.

[Apr 21, 2020] What Will Be America's Mission in the World by Patrick J. Buchanan

Patrick forgot that Full spectrum Dominance is still the driving force of the USA foreign policy. And that will not change. So this is just a wishful thinking.
Apr 21, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

And after persevering for four decades, we prevailed.

What, then, did we do with our epochal victory?

We alienated Russia by moving our NATO military alliance into the Baltic and Black Seas. We launched bloody, costly crusades for democracy in the Middle East that, invariably, failed. We exported a huge slice of our manufacturing capacity and economic independence to a coddled China.

Historically, blunders of such magnitude have undone great powers.

Even before COVID-19, Americans had begun to realize the folly of decades of mindless interventionism over matters irrelevant to our vital interests. "Unsustainable" was the word commonly associated with our foreign policy.

But if our foreign policy was unsustainable during President Trump's economic boom, with unemployment at record lows and a bull market to rival the Roaring '20s, can an interventionist foreign policy be sustained after the losses of this major depression we have induced to kill the pandemic?

If the Democrats win in November, we know their priorities: national health insurance, carbon taxes, the Green New Deal, open borders, amnesty, reparations and wealth redistribution to reduce social and economic inequality -- an agenda costing trillions of dollars.

And Democrats will be looking at the defense budget as a slush fund to finance this new progressive era.

If the Republicans win, given the influence of hawks and neocons among the party elite, interventionism may get another run in the yard.

Having been exposed as naive beyond belief for their indulgence of China from the Bush I days to 2016, some Republicans are looking to make amends by casting China in the Soviet role in Cold War II.

There is talk on Capitol Hill of refusing to pay off U.S. bonds that Beijing holds and of suing China for the damages done by the coronavirus, as China failed to alert the world the pathogen was loose.

Americans should think long and hard before defaulting on U.S. government debt and consider the consequences if we open a door to claims against sovereign nations for past sins.

Iraq was invaded in 2003 to force it to give up illicit weapons of mass destruction it did not have. Baghdad could have a case in international court against America for the unprovoked war waged against that country.

While the U.S. appears determined to bring back manufacturing -- especially of products critical to the health, safety and defense of our nation -- there seems to be no stomach among the public for a war with China.

But again, with the democracy crusades now repudiated, what is America's cause, what is America's mission in the world?

... ... ...

To borrow from the title of historian Walter A. McDougall's classic work, America's future is as a promised land, not a crusader state.

Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder of TAC and the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.

[Apr 19, 2020] Who Is Really in Control of US Foreign Policy by Timothy Alexander Guzman

Notable quotes:
"... Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild once said "I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the British Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply." ..."
"... Unfortunately that system of control is evident in today's society. Special interests have been behind every US president including Trump. ..."
"... Trump is following his marching orders to big oil interests including his authorized theft of Syrian oil. ..."
"... Trump has given more support to Israel than any of his predecessors, which to the Pentagon is another important agenda. Israel is an important US ally in the Middle East besides Saudi Arabia. ..."
"... Trump first trip as President was to Saudi Arabia to sell more weapons, which is business as usual for the arms industry. ..."
"... "We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with" ..."
"... "these events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail." ..."
"... 'War is a Racket.' ..."
"... "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents" ..."
"... "This conjunction, of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry, is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognise the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." ..."
"... (who was the emperor's private army by default is similar to Presidents relationship with the Military-Industrial Complex) ..."
"... "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces" ..."
"... "For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. ..."
"... Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match." ..."
"... " tightly knit, highly efficient machine " ..."
"... 'The World According to Jesse' ..."
"... TruTV's 'Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura' ..."
"... "About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the capital to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, they were very formal, there was governor, sir and all that, but they put me in a chair and they were in a big half-moon around me, and I said to them, look before I answer any of your questions, I want to know what are you doing here? because in the CIA mission statement, it says that they are not operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn't really give me an answer on that and then I said I want to go around the room and I want each one of you to tell me your name and what you do, half of them wouldn't. Now isn't that bizarre, I'm the governor and these guys wouldn't answer questions from me. Then they started questioning me and it was all about how I got elected. You know what was the most bizarre thing about it was? There was every array of person you could imagine, young people, old people, all nationalities and that's what really got to me. These were people you would see every day. They look like your neighbors." ..."
"... Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change, That's why, in the grand scheme of things, we don't care who's the head of the United States, we know more or less what's going to happen. And so, in this regard, even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense for us to interfere ..."
"... Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. ..."
Feb 22, 2020 | www.globalresearch.ca
First published on January 2, 2020

Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild once said "I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the British Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply."

Unfortunately that system of control is evident in today's society. Special interests have been behind every US president including Trump.

Trump is following his marching orders to big oil interests including his authorized theft of Syrian oil.

Trump has given more support to Israel than any of his predecessors, which to the Pentagon is another important agenda. Israel is an important US ally in the Middle East besides Saudi Arabia.

Trump first trip as President was to Saudi Arabia to sell more weapons, which is business as usual for the arms industry.

There is a power structure that sets the rules of the game in Washington. The Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) has an agenda and that is war. A US led war in the Middle East with Iran is increasingly coming close to reality. It would affect Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians.

At some point, the war will reach Latin America targeting Venezuela because of its oil reserves since Trump likes the "oil". As of now, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador are in chaos due to new US-backed fascistic governments that re-established neoliberal economic policies which will lead to the impoverishment of the masses.

The U.S. military has over 800 bases ranging from torture sites to drone hubs in over 70 countries. US tensions are more intense that in any period of time with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah as Trump signed off on a new defense budget worth $738 billion including funds for his new Space Force. Despite the fact that the Democrats are still angry over their election defeat to Trump and are still pushing the Russia collusion hoax and now the farcical impeachment scandal, but when it comes to foreign policy, both Democrats and Republicans are unified with the same war agenda. The Trump administration continues its regime change operations despite the fact that Trump said no more regime change wars when he was a candidate in 2016. "We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with"

Fast-forward to 2019, Trump's CIA and others from his administration such as Eliot Abrams, a Reagan-era neocon was given the green-light to conduct another regime change operation with a nobody named Juan Guaido leading the Venezuelan opposition against the Maduro government which failed. Bolivia on the other hand was a success for Washington which was planned the day Evo Morales was elected President of Bolivia and was allied with Washington's adversaries in Latin America including Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Brazil (before Balsonaro of course). Trump continued the pentagon's agenda when he praised the new fascist Bolivian regime who forced Morales from power with Washington's approval of course. Trump even threatened Nicaragua and Venezuela with new attempts of regime change when he said that "these events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail." In other words, Trump is not in charge.

US Presidents do have some room to make decisions concerning domestic issues such as taxes or healthcare, but when it comes to foreign policy, its a different story. It's not a conspiracy theory.

Soleimani's Assassination: An Act of Psychological Warfare

Many people in power has told the world who is really in charge from politicians, Wall Street bankers to military generals. In a 1935 speech by a Marine General Smedley titled 'War is a Racket.'

A veteran in the Spanish-American War who rose through the ranks during the course of his career. From 1898 until his retirement in 1931 he was part of numerous interventions all around the world. Butler was also the most decorated Marine ever with two Medals of Honor added to his resume. He said the following:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents"

He was correct. General Butler could have given notorious gangsters such as Al Capone a few lessons in how to run a business empire. Then in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made it clear who had the real power inside Washington in a farewell address he gave to the American public. Eisenhower issued a stark warning on the dangers of the MIC posed to humanity.

Here is a part of the speech:

"This conjunction, of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry, is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognise the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

Eisenhower seemed like he was not in agreement with the deep state's decision to drop the atomic bombs during World War II, perhaps he was cornered by the growing power of the deep state. A comparison between the Roman Empire and America today is uncanny. In Rome for example, choosing an emperor was made difficult by the ruling elite, political debates dominated how new emperors were selected by old emperors, the senate, those who were influential and the Praetorian Guard which is today's version of the Military-Industrial Complex. The political and industrial heavyweights and its intelligence agencies select the best two candidates from the only two political parties who are bought and paid for by corporate and political interests make the important decisions. The Praetorian Guard (who was the emperor's private army by default is similar to Presidents relationship with the Military-Industrial Complex) had dominated the election process for the next century or so resulting in targeted assassinations of several emperors they did not want in power before Rome's collapse. They were assassinations and attempted assassinations on US presidents resulting in four deaths, the most notable assassination in the 20th century was President John F. Kennedy who wanted to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces" gave a speech on April 27th, 1961 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, many believe, including myself, that it was the speech that eventually got him killed:

"For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match."

The " tightly knit, highly efficient machine " Kennedy spoke about directs U.S. presidents to authorize wars or a covert operations to topple foreign governments. Kennedy exposed that fact and followed that same fate as those emperors in Rome. Even in Domestic politics, the U.S. government deep state apparatus is in control as the former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura , who is also a former Navy Seal, actor and professional wrestler who now has his own show on RT news called 'The World According to Jesse' admitted on TruTV's 'Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura' on how the CIA interrogated him shortly after he became governor:

"About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the capital to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, they were very formal, there was governor, sir and all that, but they put me in a chair and they were in a big half-moon around me, and I said to them, look before I answer any of your questions, I want to know what are you doing here? because in the CIA mission statement, it says that they are not operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn't really give me an answer on that and then I said I want to go around the room and I want each one of you to tell me your name and what you do, half of them wouldn't. Now isn't that bizarre, I'm the governor and these guys wouldn't answer questions from me. Then they started questioning me and it was all about how I got elected. You know what was the most bizarre thing about it was? There was every array of person you could imagine, young people, old people, all nationalities and that's what really got to me. These were people you would see every day. They look like your neighbors."

The US president including all elected congress members are all bought and paid for by the arms industry, major corporations, bankers, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the media and a handful of lobbyists with the Israel lobby being the most powerful. Trump is no exception. He will follow the road given to him by those who are in charge and he will continue the path to a world war, an agenda that been long in the making. One of America's favorite enemies, Russian President Vladimir Putin was interviewed by Megan Kelly of NBC news in 2017 and was asked about the so-called Russian collusion conspiracy theory and he said the following:

Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change, That's why, in the grand scheme of things, we don't care who's the head of the United States, we know more or less what's going to happen. And so, in this regard, even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense for us to interfere

Whether Trump wants war or even peace, it won't matter, he will do the right thing, for the deep state that is.

*

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

[Apr 19, 2020] Will COVID-19 Retire the World's Policeman

Looks like wishful thinking... The neoliberal elite is desperate, and when they get desperate they play dirty
Apr 19, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
The Roosevelt has been ravaged by the coronavirus. As of Tuesday, 589 cases of COVID-19 were reported from a crew of 4,800. Four thousand sailors in Guam are in various stages of a 14-day isolation period in hotels and spare rooms across the island.

But it is not just the Roosevelt. Every U.S. warship -- carriers, cruisers, frigates, destroyers, subs -- has cramped quarters conducive to the spread of the coronavirus.

How many of these vessels will soon be doubling as hospital ships?

The same question might also be asked of the U.S. Army and Marine barracks in South Korea, Japan, Australia and Okinawa.

There are allegations that the coronavirus did not originate in the Wuhan "wet market" where bats are sold for food but instead escaped through a horrible blunder in a Chinese bioweapons laboratory a few miles away.

Whatever the truth, the Wuhan virus appears to have become the most effective means of disabling U.S. hard and soft power that we have encountered in many a decade.

Of those 10,000 Peace Corp volunteers, and scores of thousands of other Americans who have been repatriated home, how many of these "soft power" soldiers will be going back after they have been out of their host country for 18 months?

Will this pandemic prove the decisive factor in America's retreat from global hegemony?

With the U.S. budget deficit for 2020 originally set at $1 trillion, now triple that, there is going to be a hard reckoning for the allocation of our diminished resources after the nation reopens.

And policing the planet is likely to be seen as yesterday's priority, and a primary candidate for discard.

Clyde Schechter a day ago

Well, if the epidemic does lead to a more restrained foreign policy, that would be the silver lining in this awfully dark cloud. It might well end up saving more lives than are lost in the epidemic, too.

[Apr 01, 2020] For just $27K USD you can see John Bolton's relatives in natural environment

Apr 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Piotr Berman , Mar 31 2020 17:22 utc | 151

Given some time and currency, I guess Morocco would offer more value for money if you want some exotic customs and landscapes. If you have more money, you could spend them on a carbon-free cruise with stunning vistas and off-the-beaten route: North Pole on board of nuclear-powered ice breaker! It is wise to have swimming costume (a pool is on board, heated, I presume) and sensible apparel -- enough for normal winter (in Moscow). The number of places is below 150, with a little hospital on board too. In the latest ads I read about discounts, but the deal was that you can pay in rubbles with prices below the rubble plunged by 25%, still, for 27 k USD you can see John Bolton's relatives in natural environment (like mommy walrus taking care of youngsters), polar bears, seals, and landscapes of Franz Josef Land. Helicopter rides included. You can also take a plunge into the arctic water -- with safety precautions .

[Mar 20, 2020] On the psychology of Full Spectrum Dominance

Mar 20, 2020 | www.unz.com

Richard B says: Show Comment March 20, 2020 at 2:06 am GMT 700 Words @Kevin Barrett Does anyone ever really win a trade war?

I don't mean Argentina vs China, or anything like that.

I mean where both sides have a lot of money, or power, or both.

Today's coronavirus black swan, like 9/11, has all the characteristics of a trauma-based mass-mind-control op.

Not only do I agree, but I think it's so obvious that it's exasperating that, after all we've been through, it even needs to be pointed out. But it does.

It has already been used to demonize China in the same way 9/11 was used to demonize Islam: Just as we were supposed to hate the crazy suicidal Muslims yearning for harems of afterlife virgins, we are now supposed to feel disgust for Chinese slurpers of bat soup.

Here I respectfully disagree.

What Jewish Supremacy Inc. did after September 11th was,

1. Blame Islam
2. Shame Americans* for Blaming Islam

A better example of control through crazy-making would be impossible to imagine.

And it's exactly what they're doing now.

1. Blame China
2. Shame Americans for Blaming China

*or anyone else who refused or refuses to bow before the alter of Politically Correct Identity Politics (two tools essential to Full Spectrum Dominance).

As we have already seen, the consequences are immense.

Because if that kind of crazy-making is effective it's totally demoralizing. As learned helplessness sets in people won't even defend themselves. As happened in Italy, and not just Italy.

But there are other discernible patterns well worth pointing out.

1. Destroy The Evidence
2. Control The Narrative
3. Enforce The Law (on anyone looking for evidence to question the narrative)

Victimize – Blame Victim – Play Victim

Demonize Dissent and Pathologize Opposition

And all ending in what I've come to call the Supremacist Waltz

What makes a supremacist is not just making claims ("Our Superiority Is Absolute", or "We are the Chosen") or demands. No. It's that they have the power to effectuate the demands that support their claims.

And what are the demands they have the power to effectuate?

1. to be placed above criticism
2. loved unconditionally
3. blindly obeyed

It's The Rule of Man over The Rule of Law

It's a Culture of Blind Obedience over a Culture of Individual Conscience

It's Tyranny over Freedom

Hence The Great Replacement, accompanied by chants and taunts like "We Will Replace You!"

In other words, Full Spectrum Dominance.

But, there's a snake in this garden.

The kind of power they're interested in is fundamentally destablizing.

All top down authoritarian power destablizes social-institutions.

From the point of view of cultural history this is exactly why cultures emerged in the Western world that promoted democratic forms of governance. Because authoritarians cultures are ultimately so extraordinarily destructive and unsustainable. Like this one is. Isn't it obvious?

And, from the point of view of the bottom line, prolonged and profound social instability disrupts and even halts economic activity.

When that happens there's no alternative.

This is why civilization itself was created. Because any civilization's primary objective is and must be the circumnavigation of the use of force.

This is why what we're really witnessing is nothing less than

The Pyrrhic Victory of Jewish Supremacy Inc.

Because JSI's rise to power has been in direct proportion to the collapse of the very social-institutions that power controls. Pride Before The Fall, indeed.

And the reason is easy to see and devoid of any complexity or glamour.

JSI is no good at social-management.

And make no mistake about it, social-management is at its core an adaptational strategy, as are our social-institutions.

So, if we blow this, we're in no position to laugh at the dinosaurs for getting themselves extinct.

After all, they lasted a lot longer than we have so far.

Assuming the human race has a chance (in itself rather doubtful) perhaps its time to turn their words against them and say,

Treason Against Jewish Supremacy Inc. Is Loyalty To Humanity

Do we really need to ask them for permission to care about our children's future?

[Mar 01, 2020] That the whistleblower works for the CIA is a matter of public record, not some conspiracy theory

Notable quotes:
"... The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower, and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump. ..."
"... The whole point of having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA. ..."
"... What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case, in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot. ..."
"... People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially; that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path. ..."
"... The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset. ..."
"... Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were, lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the world to see. This cannot be undone. ..."
Mar 01, 2020 | off-guardian.org

First , the whistleblower was ruled out as a possible witness -- this was essentially done behind the scenes, and in reality can be called a Deep State operation, though one exposed to some extent by Rand Paul. This has nothing to do with protecting the whistleblower or upholding the whistleblower statute, but instead with the fact that the whistleblower was a CIA plant in the White House.

That the whistleblower works for the CIA is a matter of public record, not some conspiracy theory. Furthermore, for some time before the impeachment proceedings began, the whistleblower had been coordinating his efforts to undermine Trump with the head of the House Intelligence Committee, who happens to be Adam Schiff. It is possible that the connections with Schiff go even further or deeper. Obviously the Democrats do not want these things exposed.

... ... ...

In this regard, there was a very special moment on January 29, when Chief Justice John Roberts refused to allow the reading of a question from Sen. Rand Paul that identified the alleged whistleblower. Paul then held a press conference in which he read his question.

The question was directed at Adam Schiff, who claims not to have communicated with the whistleblower, despite much evidence to the contrary. (Further details can be read at here .) A propos of what I was just saying, Paul is described in the Politico article as "a longtime antagonist of Republican leaders." Excellent, good on you, Rand Paul.

Whether this was a case of unintended consequences or not, one could say that this episode fed into the case against calling witnesses -- certainly the Democrats should not have been allowed to call witnesses if the Republicans could not call the whistleblower. But clearly this point is completely lost on those working in terms of the moving line of bullshit.

One would think that Democrats would be happy with a Republican Senator who antagonizes leaders of his own party, but of course Rand Paul's effort only led to further "outrage" on the part of Democratic leaders in the House and Senate.

The Democrats did not want Adam Schiff to have to answer questions about the whistleblower, and they don't want the whistleblower's identity to be officially revealed. Such things do not contribute to the greatest cause of our time, the destruction of Donald Trump.

However, you see, there is a complementary purpose at work here, too. The whole point of having the House impeachment investigation proceed from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Adam Schiff, was to send the signal that Trump is unacceptable to the nefarious powers that make up the Deep State, especially the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA.

The only way these machinations can be combatted is to pull the curtain back further -- but the Republicans do not want this any more than the Democrats do, with a few possible exceptions such as Rand Paul. (As the Politico article states, Paul was chastised publicly by McConnell for submitting his question in the first place, and for criticizing Roberts in the press conference.)

What a world, then, when OP Democrats are cheering on John Bolton, hoping again for a savior to their sacred resistance cause, and meanwhile they aren't too excited about Rand Paul's intervention. For sure, it is a sign that a "resistance" isn't real when it needs a savior; it's not as if the French Resistance sat back waiting for Gen. de Gaulle. In any case, in the procession of horrible reactionary figures that Democrats have embraced, Bolton is probably the worst, and that's saying quite a lot.

... ... ...

Now we are at a moment when "the Left" is recognizing the role that the CIA and the rest of the "intelligence community" is played in the impeachment nonsense. This "Left" was already on board for the "impeachment process" itself, perhaps at moments with caveats about "not leaving everything up to the Democrats," "not just relying on the Democrats," but still accepting their assigned role as cheerleaders and self-important internet commentators. (And, sure, maybe that's all I am, too -- but the inability to distinguish form from content is one of the main problems of the existing Left.)

Now, though, people on the Left are trying to get comfortable with, and trying to explain to themselves how they can get comfortable with, the obvious role of the "intelligence community" (with, in my view, the CIA in the leading role, but of course I'm not privy to the inner workings of this scene) in the impeachment process and other efforts to take down Trump's presidency.

People are even talking about "getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the impeachment," and the like. (I realize I'm being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality -- at least partially; that's something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic levels of TDS -- and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path.

They might think about the "help" that the CIA gave to the military in Bolivia to remove Evo Morales from office. They might think about the picture of Donald Trump that they find necessary to paint to justify what they are willing to swallow to remove him from office. They might think about the fact that ordinary Democrats are fine with this role for the CIA, and that Adam Schiff and others routinely offer the criticism/condemnation of Donald Trump that he doesn't accept the findings of the CIA or the rest of the intelligence agencies at face value.

The moment for the Left, what calls itself and thinks of itself as that, to break with this lunacy has passed some time ago, but let us take this moment, of "accepting the help of the CIA, because Trump," as truly marking a point of no return.

MASTER OF UNIVE ,

The USA Deep State is a Five Eyes partner and as such Trump must be given the proverbial boot for being an uneducated boor lacking political gravitas & business gravitas with his narcissistic Smoot-Hawley II 2019 trade wars. Screw the confidence man-in-chief. He is a liability for the USA and global business. Trump is not an asset.

paul ,

Trump, Sanders and Corbyn were all in their own way agents of creative destruction. Trump tapped into the popular discontent of millions of Americans who realised that the system no longer even pretended to work in their interests, and were not prepared to be diverted down the Identity Politics Rabbit Hole.

The Deep State was outraged that he had disrupted their programme by stealing Clinton's seat in the game of Musical Chairs. Being the most corrupt, dishonest and mendacious political candidate in all US history (despite some pretty stiff opposition) was supposed to be outweighed by her having a vagina. The Deplorables failed to sign up for the programme.

Almost as a by product of his 2016 victory, Trump showed up the MSM hacks for what they were, lying, partisan shills utterly lacking in any integrity and credibility. The same applies to the intrigues and corruption of the Dirty Cops and Spookocracy. They had to come out from behind the curtain and reveal themselves as the dirty, lying, seditious, treasonous, rabid criminal scum they are. The true nature of the State standing in the spotlight for all the world to see. This cannot be undone.

For all his pandering to Adelson and the Zionist Mafia, for all his Gives to Netanyahu, Trump has failed to deliver on the Big Ticket Items. Syria was supposed to have been invaded by now, with Hillary cackling demonically over Assad's death as she did over Gaddafi, and rapidly moving on to the main event with Iran. They will not forgive him for this.

They realise they are under severe time pressure. It took them a century to gain their stranglehold over America, and this is a wasting asset. America is in terminal decline, and may soon be unable to fulfil its ordained role as dumb goy muscle serving Zionist interests. And the parasite will find it difficult to find a replacement host.

George Mc ,

Haven't you just agreed with him here?

He thinks the left died in the 1960s, over a half century ago. It's pretty simple to identify a leftist: anti-imperialist/ anti-capitalist. The Democrats are imperialists. People who vote for the Democrats and Republicans are imperialists. This article is a confused mess, that's my whole point;)

If the Democrats and Republicans (and those who vote for them) are imperialists (which they are) then the left are indeed dead – at least as far as political representation goes.

Koba ,

He's sent more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan he staged several coups in Latin America and wanted to take out the dprk and thier nukes and wants to bomb Iran! Winding down?!

sharon marlowe ,

First, an attempted assassination-by-drone on President Maduro of Venezuela happened. Then Trump dropped the largest conventional bomb on Afghanistan, with a mile-wide radius. Then Trump named Juan Guido as the new President of Venezuela in an overt coup. Then he bombed Syria over a fake chemical weapons claim. He bombed it before even an investigation was launched. Then the Trump regime orchestrated a military coup in Bolivia. Then he claimed that he was pulling out of Syria, but instead sent U.S. troops to take over Syrian oil fields. trump then assassinated Gen. Solemeni. Then he claimed that he will leave Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government, the Iraqi government asked the U.S. to leave, and Trump rejected the request. The Trump regime has tried orchestrating a coup in Iran, and a coup in Hong Kong. He expelled Russian diplomats en masse for the Skripal incident in England, before an investigation. He has sanctioned Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, and Venezuela. He has bombed Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Those are the things I'm aware of, but what else Trump has done in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America you can research if you wish. And now, the claim of leaving Afghanistan is as ridiculous as when he claimed to be leaving Syria and Iraq.

Dungroanin ,

Yeah yeah and 'he' gave Maduro 7 days to let their kid takeover in Venezuela! And built a wall. And got rid of obamacare and started a nuke war with Rocketman and and and ...

sharon marlowe ,

There were at least nine people killed when Trump bombed Douma.

Only a psychopath would kill people because one of its spy drones was shot down. You don't get points for considering killing people for it and then changing your mind.

People should get over Hillary and pay attention to what Trump has been doing. Why even mention what Hillary would have done in Syria, then proceed to be an apologist for what Trump has done around the world in just three years? Trump has been quite a prolific imperialist in such a short time. A second term could well put him above Bush and Obama as the 21st century's most horrible leaders on earth.

Dungroanin ,

...If you think that the potus is the omnipotent ruler of everything he certainly seems to be having some problems with his minions in the CIA, NSA, FBI..State Dept etc.

Savorywill ,

Yes, what you say is right. However, he did warn both the Syrian and Russian military of the attack in the first instance, so no casualties, and in the second attack, he announced that the missiles had been launched before they hit the target, again resulting in no casualties. When the US drone was shot down by an Iranian missile, he considered retaliation. But, when advised of likely casualties, he called it off saying that human lives are more valuable than the cost of the drone. Yes, he did authorize the assassination of the Iranian general, and that was very bad. His claims that the general had organized the placement of roadside bombs that had killed US soldiers rings rather hollow, considering those shouldn't have been in Iraq in the first place.

I am definitely not stating that he is perfect and doesn't do objectionable things. And he has authorized US forces to control the oil wells, which is against international law, but at least US soldiers are not actively engaged in fighting the Syrian government, something Hillary set in motion. However, the military does comprise a huge percentage of the US economy and there have to be reasons, and enemies, to justify its existence, so his situation as president must be very difficult, not a job I would want, that is for sure.

The potus is best described (by Assad actually) as a CEO of a board of directors appointed by the shareholders who collectively determine their OWN interests.

Your gaslighting ain't succeeding round here – Regime! So desperate, so so sad 🤣

[Feb 29, 2020] Rand Paul says he will oppose John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani for Secretary of State

Notable quotes:
"... "Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president," ..."
"... "It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was ..."
Nov 20, 2016 | rare.us

Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday in an op-ed for Rare that he would oppose President-elect Donald Trump's rumored selection of former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton as Secretary of State.

"Bolton is a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose, hell-bent on repeating virtually every foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in the last 15 years - particularly those Trump promised to avoid as president,"

Paul wrote citing U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya that Trump has criticized but that Bolton strongly advocated.

Reports since have indicated that former New York City mayor and loyal Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani is being considered for the post.

The Washington Post's David Weigel reports , "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a newly reelected member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this morning that he was inclined to oppose either former U.N. ambassador John Bolton or former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani if they were nominated for secretary of state."

"It's important that someone who was an unrepentant advocate for the Iraq War, who didn't learn the lessons of the Iraq War, shouldn't be the secretary of state for a president who says Iraq was a big lesson," Paul told the Post. "Trump said that a thousand times. It would be a huge mistake for him to give over his foreign policy to someone who [supported the war]. I mean, you could not find more unrepentant advocates of regime change."

Related: Rand Paul: Will Donald Trump betray voters by hiring John Bolton?

[Feb 28, 2020] Russia s Relationship With China Is Growing Despite Setbacks by Lyle J. Goldstein ,

Highly recommended!
Feb 23, 2020 | nationalinterest.org

Russia has closed major border crossings with China across the Far East due to the rapid spread of coronavirus. That constitutes a significant blow to a trading relationship that had only just begun to fully blossom. The closures come just as new auto and rail bridges spanning the Amur River are finally reaching completion.

The primary line of debate among Russia-China relations analysts is whether the "rapprochement" is robust and tending toward even a genuine alliance or whether it is weak and has little to show for decades of cooperation other than a few rhetorical flourishes. After all, the skeptics note, if this bilateral relationship is so robust, then why did it take so long to get those bridges built?

The China-Russia trading relationship does indeed remain underdeveloped and will evidently face additional headwinds in the near future (along with all of China's trading relationships, so it seems). But the importance of security ties can hardly be disputed, especially if one takes the long view. Could China have fought the United States to a stalemate in the Korean War without Soviet military assistance? Not a chance. More recently, Russia's sale of high-tech air and naval weaponry during the 1990s and 2000s created a solid foundation for today's muscle-bound dragon with both claws (DF-26) and sharp fangs (e.g. YJ-18). But will it go further?

A tantalizing hint was offered by Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Valdai Conference in early October 2019. During his remarks, he dropped the following bombshell: "I probably won't open a big secret. It'll become clear anyhow. We are now helping our Chinese partners to create a missile attack warning system. This is a very serious thing, which will increase the defense capability of the People's Republic of China in a fundamental way. Because now only the USA and Russia have such a system [Большой тайны, наверно, не открою. Все равно это станет ясно. Мы сейчас помогаем нашим китайским партнерам создать систему СПРН – систему предупреждения о ракетном нападении. Это очень серьезная вещь, которая капитальным, кардинальным образом повысит обороноспособность Китайской Народной Республики. Потому что сейчас такую систему имеют только США и Россия]." This seemingly major step forward in Russia-China military cooperation demands greater scrutiny. It also provides an interesting opportunity to gauge opinion among Russian strategists regarding the long-term viability of a close military partnership with the Middle Kingdom.

One impressively comprehensive Russian appraisal begins by stating that "Russia had to look for various options for answering Washington's actions" to withdraw from the INF Treaty. The same article notes somewhat ominously that the United States is preparing in case of "accidental nuclear war with Russia." Employing the Russian acronym "SPRN" literally "warning systems against rocket attack [системы предупреждения о ракетном нападении]" for early warning system, this assessment also makes the important point that Russia's SPRN has only recently completed a long process of upgrades meant to fill "gaps [разрывы]" caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, when key facilities for early warning were located in non-Russian parts of the USSR.

The article quotes one Moscow defense expert, Igor Korotchenko [Игор Коротченко], as offering the following assessment: "This is really a huge contribution of Russia to strategic stability, since China receives a powerful tool in order not to become a victim of the first disarming blow from the United States." Another Russian expert, Konstantin Sivkov [Константин Сивков], maintained that this move would enhance "global stability" but also articulated some concern with respect to Russia's long-term interests. "When China has at its disposal all the technologies that Russia has at its disposal, or creates similar ones, it will cease to need Russia as a defender," Sivkov said. "And this could adversely affect Russian-Chinese relations." Korotchenko, however, is more bullish on the long-term prospects for the defense relationship with Beijing. He underlined the commercial prospects for Russian companies, and added that the early warning initiative will "contribute to the further rapprochement of Russia and China, building a common security policy [поспособствует дальнейшему сближению России и Китая, выстраиванию общей политики в области безопасности]."

That's an interesting disagreement among Russian security specialists, for sure, but another rather significant observation regarding these developments was offered in this same article by the former deputy commander of Russia's air defense command, Alexander Luzan [Александр Лузан]. He contends that Russia will benefit from the enhanced cooperation with Beijing on an early warning. Luzan explains that the ground components of Russia's SPRN are comprised of []long range "Voronezh" [Воронеж] radars that can see out four thousand to six thousand kilometers to detect ICBM launches. Short-range "Sunflower [Подсолнухи]" radars are more suitable for warning of short-range launches, but also offer ship-detection capabilities. Directly reflecting on operational advantages for the Russian military, Luzan observes: "Vladivostok and Primorye are protected here, but there is nothing 'in depth.' We once tried to deploy our facilities in Mongolia, but it didn't work out very well. Therefore, if the Chinese close this 'tongue,' it will be very important for Russia [Владивосток и Приморье у нас защищены, а 'в глубину' там ничего нет. Мы когда-то в Монголии пытались разместить свои комплексы, но не очень получилось. Потому если китайцы этот 'язычок' закроют, то для России это будет очень важно]." Again citing this Russian general, the article states that "a unified information space is created and data is exchanged with Chinese radars, [and therefore] 'the security of our country from the east will be even better.'"

Such interpretations are generally in accord with the analysis of Vladimir Petrovsky [Владимир Петровский,], a senior fellow and military specialist at Moscow's Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This analyst writes that many believe that Putin's announcement of this strategic cooperation initiative at Valdai signals that "the military alliance between Russia and China . . . has finally become real." Petrovsky also notes that other specialists have begun to speculate on the meaning of a "retaliatory strike" under such circumstances, wherein the early warning is relayed by a third country. He quotes the Russian president (speaking at Valdai) further on the matter of motives for new missile deployments in the Asia-Pacific region: "we suddenly heard from the American military that the first step in this direction would be taken just in Asia. But that step also impacts on us, because we need to understand: where in Asia, will Russian territory be endangered or not? By the way, it's immediately clear what was the root cause of the exit: not Russia and not mythical violations of the [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty by us. If they are going to put [U.S. missiles] in Asia, then Asia is the primary reason for withdrawing from this Treaty [вдруг услышали от американских военных, что первый шаг в этом направлении будет сделан как раз в Азии. Но он и нас затрагивает, потому что надо понять: где в Азии, будет доставать это российскую территорию или нет? Кстати говоря, сразу понятно, что было первопричиной выхода: не Россия и не мифические нарушения нами Договора. Если они собираются ставить в Азии, то Азия и является первопричиной выхода из этого Договора]." In other words, Putin's announcement of this initiative to accelerate military cooperation with China is intended, in part, as a response to the United States' move to exit the INF accord.

Strongly hinting that Beijing might well gain access to Russian early-warning radars based in the Arctic, Petrovsky observes, "Taking into account geography, it is quite possible to develop protocols for the exchange of data between national SPRN." He further contends that this early warning cooperation will be "mutually beneficial and not without compensation [эта помощь -- взаимовыгодная и небезвозмездная]." This military expert explains that China still can learn from Russian radar proficiency, but also implies that the Russian side may gain some advantages from China's evident prowess in microelectronics, for example. Moreover, he suggests, "a possible Chinese satellite constellation could be a good addition to Russian orbital facilities." Still, Petrovsky concludes that Russia and China "are not creating a military-political alliance. It is rather a matter of coordinating the military policies." Playing down the significance of this new initiative, this specialist also notes that Russia and China have been holding annual ballistic missile defense command and staff exercises for about a decade already.

[Feb 27, 2020] A Foreign Policy 'Consensus' Imposed from Above by Daniel Larison

Feb 27, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

ark Hannah observes that a bipartisan foreign policy consensus stifles legitimate debate and that it is antithetical to democratic politics:

In 1948, after bowing out of a bid to defeat Democratic President Harry Truman, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.) declared, "We must stop politics at the water's edge." In other words, we should confine our disagreements to domestic policy and project unity to our foreign friends and foes. But that unity was merely a product of the geopolitical realities at the dawn of the Cold War. More often, an elite consensus feeds stale policy, allows bad ideas to go unchallenged and narrows the range of new proposals welcomed as legitimate. There's a word that describes a politically powerful person making a high-minded exhortation to "stop politics." That word is not "democracy."

There is no tradition of -- nor enduring allegiance to -- bipartisan consensus in America's international relations. Nor should there be.

Americans have always been divided on foreign policy questions, and it is only when there is a sufficiently grave external threat or there is a concerted effort to impose a particular view that those divisions recede temporarily. These divisions will always resurface because our country is too large and too diverse for our population to reach a settled consensus for very long. When there is a consensus among politicians and foreign policy professionals, it masks these divisions and frequently fails to represent the views of large numbers of Americans. The existence of such a consensus is not a case of politics "stopping at the water's edge." It is the establishment of a particular set of assumptions about U.S. power and its role in the world that define the boundaries of what is acceptable in foreign policy debate.

The bipartisan consensus that most of our political leaders subscribe to and reinforce is made first in Washington and then handed down to the country. It has been and continues to be very much a top-down process in which the public is offered a limited menu of options, and they are then told that even most of those options are unworkable. Once they are created, consensus views become excessively rigid, and the policies informed by them lag behind changing circumstances. That produces inadequate and unrealistic policies because new and unconventional ideas are discouraged or dismissed out of hand because they do not follow consensus assumptions. Like any working set of ideas, consensus views may start out being timely and appropriate for their circumstances, but when they settle and harden into an idol they become an impediment to informed and effective policymaking.

For example, the goal of North Korea policy across multiple administrations was to prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons and then to pressure North Korea into giving up the weapons that it had obtained. Perversely, the first policy contributed directly to its own failure by driving North Korea to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to test its first nuclear device, and then the last two administrations have tried in vain to reverse that outcome. North Korea's denuclearization has been a consistent U.S. goal under presidents from both parties, but repeated failure has not yet forced our leaders to adapt and try something else. Everything else related to North Korea has been held hostage to this wild goose chase of seeking complete denuclearization that will never happen. The bipartisan consensus doesn't just enshrine mistaken assumptions as wisdom, but it actively fights against those that try to make the consensus more responsive to contemporary realities.

Defenders of the bipartisan consensus discourage and penalize analysts and writers that diverge too much from it on the assumption that the consensus is somehow integral to maintaining U.S. security. Instead of recognizing the rigidity of the consensus as a weakness that leads to repeated failures, defenders of the consensus see rejection of consensus assumptions as the real danger. This is what leads to ritual denunciations of "isolationists" and "appeasement" and "being soft" on this or that government. Adherence to consensus assumptions also means never having to say you're sorry for any costly policy failures that they produce. One reason why there is no real accountability in foreign policy is that adherents of the bipartisan consensus never penalize their own for causing debacles overseas, so that even the authors of the greatest crimes and blunders are gradually rehabilitated and feted as wise men and women. When so many of the same people with the same assumptions are permitted to set policy, we should expect to see one failure after another, and sure enough that is what we have had for decades.

One of the things that many advocates of restraint have talked about in recent years is the need to democratize U.S. foreign policy. That not only means holding the government accountable for what it does and insisting on Congress' role in matters of war, but it also means accepting a much wider range of views on how the U.S. should be acting in the world. It would mean actually forging a consensus that is much more representative of what Americans want our government to be doing in the world.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .

[Feb 25, 2020] How John Bolton and a Phony Script Brought Us to the Brink of War by Scott Ritter

Bolton is a typical "Full Spectrum Dominance" hawk, a breed of chickenhawks that recently proliferated in Washinton corridors of power and which are fed by MIC.
Notable quotes:
"... the way the IRGC came to be designated as an FTO is itself predicated on a lie. ..."
"... The person responsible for this lie is President Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, who while in that position oversaw National Security Council (NSC) interagency policy coordination meetings at the White House for the purpose of formulating a unified government position on Iran. Bolton had stacked the NSC staff with hardliners who were pushing for a strong stance. But representatives from the Department of Defense often pushed back . During such meetings, the Pentagon officials argued that the IRGC was "a state entity" (albeit a "bad" one), and that if the U.S. were to designate it as a terrorist group, there was nothing to stop Iran from responding by designating U.S. military personnel or CIA officers as terrorists. ..."
"... The memoranda on these meetings, consisting of summaries of the various positions put forward, were doctored by the NSC to make it appear as if the Pentagon agreed with its proposed policy. The Defense Department complained to the NSC that the memoranda produced from these meetings were "largely incorrect and inaccurate" -- "essentially fiction," a former Pentagon official claimed. ..."
"... This was a direct result of the bureaucratic dishonesty of John Bolton. Such dishonesty led to a series of policy decisions that gave a green light to use military force against IRGC targets throughout the Middle East. ..."
Feb 25, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
President Trump's decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani back in January took the United States to the brink of war with Iran.

Trump and his advisors contend that Soleimani's death was necessary to protect American lives, pointing to a continuum of events that began on December 27, when a rocket attack on an American base in Iraq killed a civilian translator. That in turn prompted U.S. airstrikes against a pro-Iranian militia, Khati'ab Hezbollah, which America blamed for the attack. Khati'ab Hezbollah then stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in protest. This reportedly triggered the assassination of Soleimani and a subsequent Iranian retaliatory missile strike on an American base in Iraq. The logic of this continuum appears consistent except for one important fact -- it is all predicated on a lie.

On the night of December 27, a pickup truck modified to carry a launchpad capable of firing 36 107mm Russian-made rockets was used in an attack on a U.S. military compound located at the K-1 Airbase in Iraq's Kirkuk Province. A total of 20 rockets were loaded onto the vehicle, but only 14 were fired. Some of the rockets struck an ammunition dump on the base, setting off a series of secondary explosions. When the smoke and dust cleared, a civilian interpreter was dead and several other personnel , including four American servicemen and two Iraqi military, were wounded. The attack appeared timed to disrupt a major Iraqi military operation targeting insurgents affiliated with ISIS.

The area around K-1 is populated by Sunni Arabs, and has long been considered a bastion of ISIS ideology, even if the organization itself was declared defeated inside Iraq back in 2017 by then-prime minister Haider al Abadi. The Iraqi counterterrorism forces based at K-1 consider the area around the base an ISIS sanctuary so dangerous that they only enter in large numbers.

For their part, the Iraqis had been warning their U.S. counterparts for more than a month that ISIS was planning attacks on K-1. One such report, delivered on November 6, using intelligence dating back to October, was quite specific: "ISIS terrorists have endeavored to target K-1 base in Kirkuk district by indirect fire (Katyusha rockets)."

Another report, dated December 25, warned that ISIS was attempting to seize territory to the northeast of K-1. The Iraqis were so concerned that on December 27, the day of the attack, they requested that the U.S. keep functional its tethered aerostat-based Persistent Threat Detection System (PTSD) -- a high-tech reconnaissance balloon equipped with multi-mission sensors to provide long endurance intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and communications in support of U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Instead, the U.S. took the PTSD down for maintenance, allowing the attackers to approach unobserved.

The Iraqi military officials at K-1 immediately suspected ISIS as the culprit behind the attack. Their logic was twofold. First, ISIS had been engaged in nearly daily attacks in the area for over a year, launching rockets, firing small arms, and planting roadside bombs. Second, according to the Iraqis , "The villages near here are Turkmen and Arab. There is sympathy with Daesh [i.e., ISIS] there."

As transparent as the Iraqis had been with the U.S. about their belief that ISIS was behind the attack, the U.S. was equally opaque with the Iraqis regarding whom it believed was the culprit. The U.S. took custody of the rocket launcher, all surviving ordnance, and all warhead fragments from the scene.

U.S. intelligence analysts viewed the attack on K-1 as part of a continuum of attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq since early November 2019. The first attack took place on November 9, against the joint U.S.-Iraqi base at Qayarrah , and was very similar to the one that occurred against K-1 -- some 31 107mm rockets were fired from a pickup truck modified to carry a rocket launchpad. As with K-1, the forces located in Qayarrah were engaged in ongoing operations targeting ISIS, and the territory around the base was considered sympathetic to ISIS. The Iraqi government attributed the attack to unspecified "terrorist" groups.

The U.S., however, attributed the attacks to Khati'ab Hezbollah, a Shia militia incorporated with the Popular Mobilization Organization (PMO), a pro-Iranian umbrella organization that had been incorporated into the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The PMO blamed the U.S. for a series of drone strikes against its facilities throughout the summer of 2019. The feeling among the American analysts was that the PMO attacked the bases as a form of retaliation.

The U.S. launched a series of airstrikes against Khati'ab Hezbollah bases and command posts in Iraq and Syria on December 29, near the Iraqi city of al-Qaim. These attacks were carried out unilaterally, without any effort to coordinate with America's Iraqi counterparts or seek approval from the Iraqi government.

Khati'ab Hezbollah units had seized al-Qaim from ISIS in November 2017, and then crossed into Syria, where they defeated ISIS fighters dug in around the Syrian town of al-Bukamal. They were continuing to secure this strategic border crossing when they were bombed on December 29.

Left unsaid by the U.S. was the fact that the al-Bukamal-al Qaim border crossing was seen as a crucial "land bridge," connecting Iran with Syria via Iraq. Throughout the summer of 2019, the U.S. had been watching as Iranian engineers, working with Khati'ab Hezbollah, constructed a sprawling base that straddled both Iraq and Syria. It was this base, and not Khati'ab Hezbollah per se, that was the reason for the American airstrike. The objective in this attack was to degrade Iranian capability in the region; the K-1 attack was just an excuse, one based on the lie that Khati'ab Hezbollah, and not ISIS, had carried it out.

The U.S. had long condemned what it called Iran's "malign intentions" when it came to its activities in Iraq and Syria. But there is a world of difference between employing tools of diplomacy to counter Iranian regional actions and going kinetic. One of the reasons the U.S. has been able to justify attacking Iranian-affiliated targets, such as the al-Bukamal-al-Qaim complex and Qassem Soleimani, is that the Iranian entity associated with both -- the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC -- has been designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and as such military attacks against it are seen as an extension of the ongoing war on terror. Yet the way the IRGC came to be designated as an FTO is itself predicated on a lie.

The person responsible for this lie is President Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, who while in that position oversaw National Security Council (NSC) interagency policy coordination meetings at the White House for the purpose of formulating a unified government position on Iran. Bolton had stacked the NSC staff with hardliners who were pushing for a strong stance. But representatives from the Department of Defense often pushed back . During such meetings, the Pentagon officials argued that the IRGC was "a state entity" (albeit a "bad" one), and that if the U.S. were to designate it as a terrorist group, there was nothing to stop Iran from responding by designating U.S. military personnel or CIA officers as terrorists.

The memoranda on these meetings, consisting of summaries of the various positions put forward, were doctored by the NSC to make it appear as if the Pentagon agreed with its proposed policy. The Defense Department complained to the NSC that the memoranda produced from these meetings were "largely incorrect and inaccurate" -- "essentially fiction," a former Pentagon official claimed.

After the Pentagon "informally" requested that the NSC change the memoranda to accurately reflect its position, and were denied, the issue was bumped up to Undersecretary of Defense John Rood. He then formally requested that the memoranda be corrected. Such a request was unprecedented in recent memory, a former official noted. Regardless, the NSC did not budge, and the original memoranda remained as the official records of the meetings in question.

President Trump designated the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in April 2018.

This was a direct result of the bureaucratic dishonesty of John Bolton. Such dishonesty led to a series of policy decisions that gave a green light to use military force against IRGC targets throughout the Middle East. The rocket attack against K-1 was attributed to an Iranian proxy -- Khati'ab Hezbollah -- even though there was reason to believe the attack was carried out by ISIS. This was a cover so IRGC-affiliated facilities in al-Bakumal and al-Qaim, which had nothing to do with the attack, could be bombed. Everything to do with Iran's alleged "malign intent." The U.S. embassy was then attacked. Soleimani killed. The American base at al-Assad was bombarded by Iranian missiles. America and Iran were on the brink of war.

All because of a lie.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to War (2018).

[Feb 23, 2020] Welcome to the American Regime

Highly recommended!
Feb 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

4 hours ago

Is America a 'regime'?

In the language of the American Oligarchy and it's tame and owned presstitutes on the MSM, any country targeted for destabilisation, destruction and rape – either because it doesn't do what America tells it do (Russia), because it has rich natural resources or has a 'socialist' state (Venezuela) or because lunatic neo-cons and even more lunatic Christian Evangelicals (hoping to provoke The End Times ) want it to happen (Syria and Iran) – is first labelled as a 'regime'.

That's because the word 'regime' is associated with dictatorships and human rights abuses and establishing a non-compliant country as a 'regime' is the US government's and MSM's first step at manufacturing public consent for that country's destruction.

Unfortunately if you sit back and talk a cool-headed, factual look at actions and attitudes that we're told constitute a regime then you have to conclude that America itself is 'a regime'.

So, here's why America is a regime:

4 hours ago

America's Military is Killing – Americans!

In 2018, Republicans (AND Democrats) voted to cut $23 billion dollars from the budget for food stamps (42 million Americans currently receive them).

Fats forward to 21 December 2019 and Donald Trump signed off on a US defense budget of a mind boggling $738 billion dollars.

To put that in context  --  the annual US government Education budget is sround $68 billion dollars.

Did you get that  --  $738 billion on defense, $68 billion on education?

That means the government spends more than ten times on preparations to kill people than it does on preparing children for life in the adult world.

Wow!

How ******* psychotic and death-affirming is that? It gets even worse when you consider that that $716 billion dollars is only the headline figure – it doesn't include whatever the Deep State siphons away into black-ops and kick backs. And .America's military isn't even very good – it's hasn't 'won' a conflict since the second world war, it's proud (and horrifically expensive) aircraft carriers have been rendered obsolete by Chinese and Russian hypersonic missiles and its 'cutting edge' weapons are so good (not) that everyone wants to buy the cheaper and better Russian versions: classic example – the F-35 jet program will screw $1.5 TRILLION (yes, TRILLION) dollars out of US taxpayers but but it's a piece of **** plane that doesn't work properly which the Russians laughingly refer to as 'a flying piano'.

In contrast to America's free money for the military industrial complex defense budget, China spends $165 billion and Russia spends $61 billion on defense and I don't see anyone attacking them (well, except America, that is be it only by proxy for now).

Or, put things another way. The United Kingdom spent £110 billion on it's National Health Service in 2017. That means, if you get sick in England, you can see a doctor for free. If you need drugs you pay a prescription charge of around $11.50(nothing, if unemployed, a child or elderly), whatever the market price of the drugs. If you need to see a consultant or medical specialist, you'll see one for free. If you need an operation, you'll get one for free. If you need on-going care for a chronic illness, you'll get it for free.

Fully socialised, free at the point of access, healthcare for all. How good is that?

US citizens could have that, too.

Allowing for the US's larger population, the UK National Health Service transplanted to America could cost about $650 billion a year. That would still leave $66 billion dollars left over from the proposed defense budget of $716 billion to finance weapons of death and destruction   --  more than those 'evil Ruskies' spend.

The US has now been at war, somewhere in the world (i.e in someone elses' country where the US doesn't have any business being) continuously for 28 years. Those 28 years have coincided with (for the 'ordinary people', anyway) declining living standards, declining real wages, increased police violence, more repression and surveillance, declining lifespans, declining educational and health outcomes, more every day misery in other words, America's military is killing Americans. Oh, and millions of people in far away countries (although, obviously, those deaths are in far away countries and they are of brown-skinned people so they don't really count, do they?).

Time for a change, perhaps?

[Feb 23, 2020] Where Have You Gone, Smedley Butler The Last General To Criticize US Imperialism by Danny Sjursen

Here's a link to a free online copy of War is a Racket if anyone wants to read it. It's a short read. Pretty good too. https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
From comments (Is the USA government now a "regime"): In 2018, Republicans (AND Democrats) voted to cut $23 billion dollars from the budget for food stamps (42 million Americans currently receive them). Regimes disobey international law. Like America's habit of blowing up wedding parties with drones or the illegal presence of its troops in Syria, Iraq and God knows where else. Regimes carry out illegal assassination programs – I need say no more here than Qasem Soleimani. Regimes use their economic power to bully and impose their will – sanctioning countries even when they know those sanctions will, for example, be responsible for the death of 500,000 Iraqi children (the 'price worth paying', remember?). Regimes renege on international treaties – like Iran nuclear treaty, for example. Regimes imprison and hound whistle-blowers – like Chelsea manning and Julian Assange. Regimes imprison people. America is the world leader in incarceration. It has 2.2 million people in its prisons (more than China which has 5 times the US's population), that's 25% of the world's prison population for 5% of the world's population, Why does America need so many prisoners? Because it has a massive, prison-based, slave labour business that is hugely profitable for the oligarchy.
Regimes censor free speech. Just recently, we've seen numerous non-narrative following journalists and organisations kicked off numerous social media platforms. I didn't see lots of US senators standing up and saying 'I disagree completely with what you say but I will fight to the death to preserve your right to say it'. Did you?
Regimes are ruled by cliques. I don't need to tell you that America is kakistocratic Oligarchy ruled by a tiny group of evil, rich, Old Men, do I?
Regimes keep bad company. Their allies are other 'regimes', and they're often lumped together by using another favourite presstitute term – 'axis of evil'. America has its own little axis of evil. It's two main allies are Saudi Arabia – a homophobic, women hating, head chopping, terrorist financing state currently engaged in a war of genocide (assisted by the US) in Yemen – and the racist, genocidal undeclared nuclear power state of Israel.
Regimes commit human rights abuses. Here we could talk about…ooh…let's think. Last year's treatment of child refugees from Latin America, the execution of African Americans for 'walking whilst black' by America's militarized, criminal police force or the millions of dollars in cash and property seized from entirely innocent Americans by that same police force under 'civil forfeiture' laws or maybe we could mention huge American corporations getting tax refunds whilst ordinary Americans can't afford decent, effective healthcare.
Regimes finance terrorism. Mmmm….just like America financed terrorists to help destroy Syria and Libya and invested $5 billion dollars to install another regime – the one of anti-Semites and Nazis in Ukraine…
Highly recommended!
Some comments edited for clarity...
Notable quotes:
"... But after retirement, Smedley Butler changed his tune. ..."
"... "I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service... And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers." ..."
"... Smedley Butler's Marine Corps and the military of his day was, in certain ways, a different sort of organization than today's highly professionalized armed forces. History rarely repeats itself, not in a literal sense anyway. Still, there are some disturbing similarities between the careers of Butler and today's generation of forever-war fighters. All of them served repeated tours of duty in (mostly) unsanctioned wars around the world. Butler's conflicts may have stretched west from Haiti across the oceans to China, whereas today's generals mostly lead missions from West Africa east to Central Asia, but both sets of conflicts seemed perpetual in their day and were motivated by barely concealed economic and imperial interests. ..."
"... When Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps major generals holding a rank just below that of only the Marine commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with about 900 generals and admirals currently serving on active duty, including 24 major generals in the Marine Corps alone, and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a single one has offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars . As for the most senior officers, the 40 four-star generals and admirals whose vocal antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are more of them today than there were even at the height of the Vietnam War, although the active military is now about half the size it was then. Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a public critic of today's failing wars. ..."
"... The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson ; Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich ; and Iraq veteran and Afghan War whistleblower , retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis . All three have proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices, and -- on some level -- cherished personal mentors. For better or worse, however, none carry the potential clout of a retired senior theater commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques. ..."
"... Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the highly publicized " surge " in Iraq, had to leave that theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted to ensure that a twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star. ..."
"... At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with " professionalization " after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft, and create an "all-volunteer force." The elimination of conscription, as predicted by critics at the time, created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding America's wars by erasing whatever " skin in the game " most citizens had. ..."
"... One group of generals, however, reportedly now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they're opposed to endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald doesn't "listen enough to military advice" on, you know, how to wage war forever and a day. ..."
"... That beast, first identified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is now on steroids as American commanders in retirement regularly move directly from the military onto the boards of the giant defense contractors, a reality which only contributes to the dearth of Butlers in the military retiree community. For all the corruption of his time, the Pentagon didn't yet exist and the path from the military to, say, United Fruit Company, Standard Oil, or other typical corporate giants of that moment had yet to be normalized for retiring generals and admirals. Imagine what Butler would have had to say about the modern phenomenon of the " revolving door " in Washington. ..."
"... Today, generals don't seem to have a thought of their own even in retirement. And more's the pity... ..."
"... Am I the only one to notice that Hollywood and it's film distributors have gone full bore on "war" productions, glorifying these historical events while using poetic license to rewrite history. Prepping the numbheads. ..."
"... Forget rank. As Mr Sjursen implies, dissidents are no longer allowed in the higher ranks. "They" made sure to fix this as Mr Butler had too much of a mind of his own (US education system also programmed against creative, charismatic thinkers, btw). ..."
"... Today, the "Masters of the Permawars" refer to the international extortion, MIC, racket as "Defending American Interests"! .....With never any explanation to the public/American taxpayer just what "American Interests" the incredible expenditures of American lives, blood, and treasure are being defended! ..."
"... "The Americans follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous." - Jospeh Goebbels ..."
"... The greatest anti-imperialist of our times is Michael Parenti: ..."
"... The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. ..."
"... If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. ..."
Feb 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Danny Sjursen via TomDispatch.com,

There once lived an odd little man - five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet - who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction of a man would become a national war hero, celebrated in pulp adventure novels, and then, 30 years later, as one of this country's most prominent antiwar and anti-imperialist dissidents.

Raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and educated in Quaker (pacifist) schools, the son of an influential congressman, he would end up serving in nearly all of America's " Banana Wars " from 1898 to 1931. Wounded in combat and a rare recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, he would retire as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.

A teenage officer and a certified hero during an international intervention in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1900, he would later become a constabulary leader of the Haitian gendarme, the police chief of Philadelphia (while on an approved absence from the military), and a proponent of Marine Corps football. In more standard fashion, he would serve in battle as well as in what might today be labeled peacekeeping , counterinsurgency , and advise-and-assist missions in Cuba, China, the Philippines, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, France, and China (again). While he showed early signs of skepticism about some of those imperial campaigns or, as they were sardonically called by critics at the time, " Dollar Diplomacy " operations -- that is, military campaigns waged on behalf of U.S. corporate business interests -- until he retired he remained the prototypical loyal Marine.

But after retirement, Smedley Butler changed his tune. He began to blast the imperialist foreign policy and interventionist bullying in which he'd only recently played such a prominent part. Eventually, in 1935 during the Great Depression, in what became a classic passage in his memoir, which he titled "War Is a Racket," he wrote:

"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service... And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers."

Seemingly overnight, the famous war hero transformed himself into an equally acclaimed antiwar speaker and activist in a politically turbulent era. Those were, admittedly, uncommonly anti-interventionist years, in which veterans and politicians alike promoted what (for America, at least) had been fringe ideas. This was, after all, the height of what later pro-war interventionists would pejoratively label American " isolationism ."

Nonetheless, Butler was unique (for that moment and certainly for our own) in his unapologetic amenability to left-wing domestic politics and materialist critiques of American militarism. In the last years of his life, he would face increasing criticism from his former admirer, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the military establishment, and the interventionist press. This was particularly true after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany invaded Poland and later France. Given the severity of the Nazi threat to mankind, hindsight undoubtedly proved Butler's virulent opposition to U.S. intervention in World War II wrong.

Nevertheless, the long-term erasure of his decade of antiwar and anti-imperialist activism and the assumption that all his assertions were irrelevant has proven historically deeply misguided. In the wake of America's brief but bloody entry into the First World War, the skepticism of Butler (and a significant part of an entire generation of veterans) about intervention in a new European bloodbath should have been understandable. Above all, however, his critique of American militarism of an earlier imperial era in the Pacific and in Latin America remains prescient and all too timely today, especially coming as it did from one of the most decorated and high-ranking general officers of his time. (In the era of the never-ending war on terror, such a phenomenon is quite literally inconceivable.)

Smedley Butler's Marine Corps and the military of his day was, in certain ways, a different sort of organization than today's highly professionalized armed forces. History rarely repeats itself, not in a literal sense anyway. Still, there are some disturbing similarities between the careers of Butler and today's generation of forever-war fighters. All of them served repeated tours of duty in (mostly) unsanctioned wars around the world. Butler's conflicts may have stretched west from Haiti across the oceans to China, whereas today's generals mostly lead missions from West Africa east to Central Asia, but both sets of conflicts seemed perpetual in their day and were motivated by barely concealed economic and imperial interests.

Nonetheless, whereas this country's imperial campaigns of the first third of the twentieth century generated a Smedley Butler, the hyper-interventionism of the first decades of this century hasn't produced a single even faintly comparable figure. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Why that is matters and illustrates much about the U.S. military establishment and contemporary national culture, none of it particularly encouraging.

Why No Antiwar Generals

When Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps major generals holding a rank just below that of only the Marine commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with about 900 generals and admirals currently serving on active duty, including 24 major generals in the Marine Corps alone, and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a single one has offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars . As for the most senior officers, the 40 four-star generals and admirals whose vocal antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are more of them today than there were even at the height of the Vietnam War, although the active military is now about half the size it was then. Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a public critic of today's failing wars.

Instead, the principal patriotic dissent against those terror wars has come from retired colonels, lieutenant colonels, and occasionally more junior officers (like me), as well as enlisted service members. Not that there are many of us to speak of either. I consider it disturbing (and so should you) that I personally know just about every one of the retired military figures who has spoken out against America's forever wars.

The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson ; Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich ; and Iraq veteran and Afghan War whistleblower , retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis . All three have proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices, and -- on some level -- cherished personal mentors. For better or worse, however, none carry the potential clout of a retired senior theater commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques.

Something must account for veteran dissenters topping out at the level of colonel. Obviously, there are personal reasons why individual officers chose early retirement or didn't make general or admiral. Still, the system for selecting flag officers should raise at least a few questions when it comes to the lack of antiwar voices among retired commanders. In fact, a selection committee of top generals and admirals is appointed each year to choose the next colonels to earn their first star. And perhaps you won't be surprised to learn that, according to numerous reports , "the members of this board are inclined, if not explicitly motivated, to seek candidates in their own image -- officers whose careers look like theirs." At a minimal level, such a system is hardly built to foster free thinkers, no less breed potential dissidents.

Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the highly publicized " surge " in Iraq, had to leave that theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted to ensure that a twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star.

Mainstream national security analysts reported on this affair at the time as if it were a major scandal, since most of them were convinced that Petraeus and his vaunted counterinsurgency or " COINdinista " protégés and their " new " war-fighting doctrine had the magic touch that would turn around the failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Petraeus tried to apply those very tactics twice -- once in each country -- as did acolytes of his later, and you know the results of that.

But here's the point: it took an eleventh-hour intervention by America's most acclaimed general of that moment to get new stars handed out to prominent colonels who had, until then, been stonewalled by Cold War-bred flag officers because they were promoting different (but also strangely familiar) tactics in this country's wars. Imagine, then, how likely it would be for such a leadership system to produce genuine dissenters with stars of any serious sort, no less a crew of future Smedley Butlers.

At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with " professionalization " after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft, and create an "all-volunteer force." The elimination of conscription, as predicted by critics at the time, created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding America's wars by erasing whatever " skin in the game " most citizens had.

More than just helping to squelch civilian antiwar activism, though, the professionalization of the military, and of the officer corps in particular, ensured that any future Smedley Butlers would be left in the dust (or in retirement at the level of lieutenant colonel or colonel) by a system geared to producing faux warrior-monks. Typical of such figures is current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Mark Milley. He may speak gruffly and look like a man with a head of his own, but typically he's turned out to be just another yes-man for another war-power -hungry president.

One group of generals, however, reportedly now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they're opposed to endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald doesn't "listen enough to military advice" on, you know, how to wage war forever and a day.

What Would Smedley Butler Think Today?

In his years of retirement, Smedley Butler regularly focused on the economic component of America's imperial war policies. He saw clearly that the conflicts he had fought in, the elections he had helped rig, the coups he had supported, and the constabularies he had formed and empowered in faraway lands had all served the interests of U.S. corporate investors. Though less overtly the case today, this still remains a reality in America's post-9/11 conflicts, even on occasion embarrassingly so (as when the Iraqi ministry of oil was essentially the only public building protected by American troops as looters tore apart the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in the post-invasion chaos of April 2003). Mostly, however, such influence plays out far more subtly than that, both abroad and here at home where those wars help maintain the record profits of the top weapons makers of the military-industrial complex.

That beast, first identified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is now on steroids as American commanders in retirement regularly move directly from the military onto the boards of the giant defense contractors, a reality which only contributes to the dearth of Butlers in the military retiree community. For all the corruption of his time, the Pentagon didn't yet exist and the path from the military to, say, United Fruit Company, Standard Oil, or other typical corporate giants of that moment had yet to be normalized for retiring generals and admirals. Imagine what Butler would have had to say about the modern phenomenon of the " revolving door " in Washington.

Of course, he served in a very different moment, one in which military funding and troop levels were still contested in Congress. As a longtime critic of capitalist excesses who wrote for leftist publications and supported the Socialist Party candidate in the 1936 presidential elections, Butler would have found today's nearly trillion-dollar annual defense budgets beyond belief. What the grizzled former Marine long ago identified as a treacherous nexus between warfare and capital "in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives" seems to have reached its natural end point in the twenty-first century. Case in point: the record (and still rising ) "defense" spending of the present moment, including -- to please a president -- the creation of a whole new military service aimed at the full-scale militarization of space .

Sadly enough, in the age of Trump, as numerous polls demonstrate, the U.S. military is the only public institution Americans still truly trust. Under the circumstances, how useful it would be to have a high-ranking, highly decorated, charismatic retired general in the Butler mold galvanize an apathetic public around those forever wars of ours. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that is practically nil, given the military system of our moment.

Of course, Butler didn't exactly end his life triumphantly. In late May 1940, having lost 25 pounds due to illness and exhaustion -- and demonized as a leftist, isolationist crank but still maintaining a whirlwind speaking schedule -- he checked himself into the Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital for a "rest." He died there, probably of some sort of cancer, four weeks later. Working himself to death in his 10-year retirement and second career as a born-again antiwar activist, however, might just have constituted the very best service that the two-time Medal of Honor winner could have given the nation he loved to the very end.

Someone of his credibility, character, and candor is needed more than ever today. Unfortunately, this military generation is unlikely to produce such a figure. In retirement, Butler himself boldly confessed that, "like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical..."

Today, generals don't seem to have a thought of their own even in retirement. And more's the pity...

2 minutes ago
Am I the only one to notice that Hollywood and it's film distributors have gone full bore on "war" productions, glorifying these historical events while using poetic license to rewrite history. Prepping the numbheads.
14 minutes ago
TULSI GABBARD.

Forget rank. As Mr Sjursen implies, dissidents are no longer allowed in the higher ranks. "They" made sure to fix this as Mr Butler had too much of a mind of his own (US education system also programmed against creative, charismatic thinkers, btw).

The US Space Force has been created as part of a plan to disclose the deep state's Secret Space Program (SSP), which has been active for decades, and which has utilized, and repressed, advanced technologies that would provide free, unlimited renewable energy, and thus eliminate hunger and poverty on a planetary scale.

14 minutes ago
14 minutes ago

ALL wars are EVIL. Period .

29 minutes ago

Sadly enough, in the age of Trump, as numerous polls demonstrate, the U.S. military is the only public institution Americans still truly trust. Under the circumstances, how useful it would be to have a high-ranking, highly decorated, charismatic retired general in the Butler mold galvanize an apathetic public around those forever wars of ours. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that is practically nil, given the military system of our moment.

This is why I feel an oath keeping constitutionally oriented American general is what we need in power, clear out all 545 criminals in office now, review their finances (and most of them will roll over on the others) and punish accordingly, then the lobbyist, how many of them worked against the country? You know what we do with those.

And then, finally, Hollywood, oh yes I long to see that **** hole burn with everyone in it.

30 minutes ago
Republicrat: the two faces of the moar war whore.
32 minutes ago

Given the severity of the Nazi threat to mankind

Do tell, from what I've read the Nazis were really only a threat to a few groups, the rest of us didn't need to worry.

35 minutes ago
Today, the "Masters of the Permawars" refer to the international extortion, MIC, racket as "Defending American Interests"! .....With never any explanation to the public/American taxpayer just what "American Interests" the incredible expenditures of American lives, blood, and treasure are being defended!

Why are we sending our children out into the hellholes of the world to be maimed and killed in the fauxjew banksters' quest for world domination.

How stupid can we be!

41 minutes ago
(Edited) "Smedley Butler"... The last time the UCMJ was actually used before being permanently turned into a "door stop"!
49 minutes ago
He was correct about our staying out of WWII. Which, BTW, would have never happened if we had stayed out of WWI.
22 minutes ago
(Edited) Both wars were about the international fauxjew imposition of debt-money central bankstering.

Both wars were promulgated by the Financial oligarchyof New York. The communist Red Army of Russia was funded and supplied by the Financial oligarchyof New York. It was American Financial oligarchythat built the Russian Red Army that vexed the world and created the Cold War. How many hundreds of millions of goyim were sacrificed to create both the Russian and the Chinese Satanic behemoths.......and the communist horror that is now embedded in American academia, publishing, American politics, so-called news, entertainment, The worldwide Catholic religion, the Pentagon, and the American deep state.......and more!

How stupid can we be. Every generation has the be dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the eternal maw of historical ignorance to avoid falling back into the myriad dark hellholes of history. As we all should know, people who forget their own history are doomed to repeat it.

53 minutes ago
Today's General is a robot with with a DNA.
54 minutes ago
All the General Staff is a bunch of #asskissinglittlechickenshits
57 minutes ago
want to stop senseless Empire wars>>well do this

War = jobs and profit..we get work "THEY" get the profit.. If we taxed all war related profit at 99% how many wars would our rulers start? 1 hour ago

Here is a simple straightforward trading maxim that might apply here: if it works or is working keep doing it, but if it doesn't work or stops working, then STOP doing it. There are plenty of people, now poorer, for not adhering to that simple principle. Where is the Taxpayer's return on investment from the Combat taking place on their behalf around the globe? 'Nuff said - it isn't working. It is making a microscopic few richer & all others poorer so STOP doing it. 36 seconds ago We don't have to look far to figure out who they are that are getting rich off the fauxjew permawars.

How can we be so stupid???

1 hour ago

See also:

TULSI GABBARD

1 hour ago

The main reason you don't see the generals criticizing is that the current crop have not been in actual long term direct combat with the enemy and have mostly been bureaucratic paper pushers.

Take the Marine Major General who is the current commander of CENTCOM. By the time he got into the Iraq/Afghanistan war he was already a Lieutenant Colonel and far removed from direct action.

He was only there on and off for a few years. Here are some of his other career highlights aft as they appear on his official bio:

In short, these top guys aren't warriors they're bureaucrats so why would we expect them to be honest brokers of the truth?

51 minutes ago

are U saying Chesty Puller he's NOT? 1 hour ago
(Edited) The purpose of war is to ensure that the Federal Reserve Note remains the world reserve paper currency of choice by keeping it relevant and in demand across the globe by forcing pesky energy producing nations to trade with it exclusively.

It is a 49 year old policy created by the private owners of quasi public institutions called central banks to ensure they remain the Wizards of Oz doing gods work conjuring magic paper into existence with a secret spell known as issuing credit.

How else is a technologically advanced society of billions of people supposed to function w/out this divinely inspired paper?

1 hour ago

Goebbels in "Churchill's Lie Factory" where he said: "The Americans follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous." - Jospeh Goebbels, "Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik," 12. january 1941, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel

1 hour ago

The greatest anti-imperialist of our times is Michael Parenti:

Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Yet, it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political leaders. When not ignored outright, the subject of imperialism has been sanitized, so that empires become "commonwealths," and colonies become "territories" or "dominions" (or, as in the case of Puerto Rico, "commonwealths" too). Imperialist military interventions become matters of "national defense," "national security," and maintaining "stability" in one or another region. In this book I want to look at imperialism for what it really is.

https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/imperialism.html

49 minutes ago
"Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Yet, it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics, media commentators, and political leaders."

Why would it when they who control academia, media and most of our politicians are our enemies.

1 hour ago

"The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson ; ..."

Yep, Wilkerson, who leaked Valerie Plame's name, not that it was a leak, to Novak, and then stood by to watch the grand jury fry Scooter Libby. Wilkerson, that paragon of moral rectitude. Wilkerson the silent, that *******.

sheesh,

1 hour ago
(Edited)

" A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."

James Madison Friday June 29, 1787

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_629.asp

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment [I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789])

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendIIs6.html

1 hour ago

A particularly pernicious example of intra-European imperialism was the Nazi aggression during World War II, which gave the German business cartels and the Nazi state an opportunity to plunder the resources and exploit the labor of occupied Europe, including the slave labor of concentration camps. - M. PARENTI, Against empire

See Alexander Parvus

1 hour ago

Collapse is the cure. It's too far gone.

1 hour ago

Russia Wants to 'Jam' F-22 and F-35s in the Middle East: Report

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-wants-jam-f-22-and-f-35s-middle-east-report-121041

1 hour ago

ZH retards think that the American mic is bad and all other mics are good or don't exist. That's the power of brainwashing. Humans understand that war in general is bad, but humans are becoming increasingly rare in this world.

1 hour ago

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort.

https://truthout.org/articles/the-dangers-of-american-fascism/

2 hours ago
The swamp is bigger than the military alone. Substitute Bureaucrat, Statesman, or Beltway Bandit for General and Colonel in your writing above and you've got a whole new article to post that is just as true.
2 hours ago
(Edited) War = jobs and profit..we get work "THEY" get the profit..If we taxed all war related profit at 99% how many wars would our rulers start?
2 hours ago [edited for clarity]
War is a racket. And nobody loves a racket more than Financial oligarchy. Americans come close though, that's why Financial oligarchy use them to project their own rackets and provide protection reprisals.

[Feb 20, 2020] Will the 2020 Candidates End Our Pointless Wars by Doug Bandow

Notable quotes:
"... We are imperially overstretched and The Blob refuses to see it. Will the next president? ..."
"... The cost of Washington's endless wars fall most heavily on those who suffer under American bombs and drones. Yet the plight of foreigners is rarely mentioned. When asked about a half million Iraqi babies killed by American economic sanctions, then-UN ambassador Madeleine Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it." ..."
"... That was characteristic of Washington's overwhelming hubris. Members of "the Blob," as America's foreign policy elite has been called, believe they are uniquely qualified to run the world. Only they can predict the future, assess humanity's needs, develop solutions. And anyone who resists their dictates deserves his or her terrible fate. ..."
"... The Iraq Body Count has documented between 184,868 and 207,759 deaths in Iraq, but many killings in such a conflict go unreported. IBC suggested doubling its estimate to get a more accurate figure. Even that may be too few. A couple respected though contested surveys figure civilian deaths could top a million. The University of Michigan's Juan Cole defended the methodology: "I believe very large numbers of Iraqi families quietly bury their dead without telling the government of all people anything about it. Another large number of those killed is dumped in the Tigris river by their killers. Not to mention that for substantial periods of time since 2003 it has been dangerous in about half the country just to move around, much less to move around with dead bodies." ..."
"... Nor do casualties stop there. On top of those killed directly, noted the Watson Institute, "War deaths from malnutrition, and a damaged health system and environment likely far outnumber deaths from combat." For instance, in Yemen, the number of civilian dead due to famine, 85,000 by one count, vastly exceeds the number killed in the conflict, perhaps 12,000. A million people are thought to have suffered from cholera, resulting from the destruction of the country's commercial, health, social, and transportation infrastructure. Most of the damage has come from airstrikes by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which are backed by U.S. intelligence, munitions, and formerly refueling. ..."
Feb 20, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

We are imperially overstretched and The Blob refuses to see it. Will the next president?

The cost of Washington's endless wars fall most heavily on those who suffer under American bombs and drones. Yet the plight of foreigners is rarely mentioned. When asked about a half million Iraqi babies killed by American economic sanctions, then-UN ambassador Madeleine Albright famously replied: "We think the price is worth it."

That was characteristic of Washington's overwhelming hubris. Members of "the Blob," as America's foreign policy elite has been called, believe they are uniquely qualified to run the world. Only they can predict the future, assess humanity's needs, develop solutions. And anyone who resists their dictates deserves his or her terrible fate.

No doubt, foreign policy sometimes presents difficult choices. For instance, in World War II, the U.S. backed tyrannical Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union against monstrous Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. During the Cold War, Washington allied with a variety of authoritarian regimes.

There was a logic to such decisions. However, those choices also left many policymakers with moral qualms. Such self-doubt seems to be almost completely absent from the Blob today. Who among advocates of the Iraq War have acknowledged the horrors they loosed upon the people of Iraq and its surrounding nations? Most resist taking any responsibility.

First, they simply deny that America is at war. President Barack Obama tried to avoid invoking the War Powers Act in Libya by arguing that the conflict did not qualify since Americans weren't doing the shooting. However, Defense Secretary Bob Gates admitted that the Libyans being targeted probably thought Washington was at war. And the consequences of that conflict were significant: violent chaos that continues to this day. Moreover, the precedent of taking out a leader who voluntarily surrendered his missile and nuclear programs could discourage future dictators from disarming.

Today some war enthusiasts deny that Americans are really fighting in the multiple conflicts in which they are engaged. Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose tenures were defined by the disastrous Iraq War, denounced the very concept of endless wars as a "canard." Yet casualties, though lower than before, continue with regularity in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

More importantly, the risks of much larger conflict are real. American troops in Iraq have to confront Iranian-backed militias, and a recent round of mutual retaliation risked a full-blown conflict. The Pentagon has maintained forces in Syria for potential use against -- depending on who claims to be directing U.S. policy -- the Islamic State, and, without legal authority, the Damascus government, Iran, Turkey, and even Moscow. American and Russian troops recently confronted each other over Syrian oilfields that President Donald Trump ordered seized -- illegally. The potential for a much broader conflict remains serious.

Second, Washington's permanent War Party dismisses the harm their wars have caused. After the Obama administration headed to Libya and joined Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen, Samantha Power, perhaps the most visible advocate of supposedly humanitarian war-making, complained that Americans were discouraged by the Iraqi imbroglio: "I think there is too much of, 'Oh, look, this is what intervention has wrought' one has to be careful about overdrawing lessons."

The last two decades of war have had catastrophic consequences. The official costs are high enough, with the Pentagon having spent $1.55 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service. A few billion dollars have gone into the anti-ISIS campaign in Iraq and Syria. Over $113 billion more has been spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan alone, though with little success, according to multiple reports from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

And these figures dramatically underestimate the total financial cost. Noted Brown University's Watson Institute: "Through Fiscal Year 2020, the United States federal government has spent or obligated $6.4 trillion dollars on the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. This figure includes: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans' care." Not included are macroeconomic costs due to the massive misallocation of valuable resources.

More important has been the human cost. CRS reported about 7,000 dead and 53,000 wounded among U.S. service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. The split by conflict was 38 percent/62 percent, respectively. Nearly 400 American military members have died elsewhere since 9/11. A million or more -- the latest available figures are years out of date -- disability claims have been filed by U.S. personnel. Suicide rates among the 2.7 million who have served in either Afghanistan or Iran are higher than among the civilian population.

Also significant are casualties among U.S. contractors: 3,400 dead and 39,000 wounded. However, the Pentagon's figures may be incomplete: the Watson Institute, with its Cost of War Project, figures the number of contractor deaths to be more than 8,000, higher than the number of dead uniformed personnel. Reliance on contractors may be controversial, but they essentially represent the U.S. government. The death of a contractor in Iraq triggered Washington's strike on an Iranian-backed militia, which almost sparked war between Tehran and Washington. Several hundred allied military personnel also have died, along with an estimated 110,000 local military and police.

Worse has been the civilian toll in those nations that Washington purports to be saving. American policymakers rarely speak of this cost. After all, they believe "the price is worth it," to quote Albright. As of November, figured the Watson Institute, 335,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen had died in conflicts featuring U.S. military operations. Unfortunately, these numbers are low, perhaps dramatically so.

The Iraq Body Count has documented between 184,868 and 207,759 deaths in Iraq, but many killings in such a conflict go unreported. IBC suggested doubling its estimate to get a more accurate figure. Even that may be too few. A couple respected though contested surveys figure civilian deaths could top a million. The University of Michigan's Juan Cole defended the methodology: "I believe very large numbers of Iraqi families quietly bury their dead without telling the government of all people anything about it. Another large number of those killed is dumped in the Tigris river by their killers. Not to mention that for substantial periods of time since 2003 it has been dangerous in about half the country just to move around, much less to move around with dead bodies."

Nor do casualties stop there. On top of those killed directly, noted the Watson Institute, "War deaths from malnutrition, and a damaged health system and environment likely far outnumber deaths from combat." For instance, in Yemen, the number of civilian dead due to famine, 85,000 by one count, vastly exceeds the number killed in the conflict, perhaps 12,000. A million people are thought to have suffered from cholera, resulting from the destruction of the country's commercial, health, social, and transportation infrastructure. Most of the damage has come from airstrikes by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which are backed by U.S. intelligence, munitions, and formerly refueling.

Explained the Watson Institute: "People living in the war zones have been killed in their homes, in markets, and on roadways. They have been killed by bombs, bullets, fire, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and drones. Civilians die at checkpoints, as they are run off the road by military vehicles, when they step on a mine or cluster bomb, as they collect wood or tend to their fields, and when they are kidnapped and executed for purposes of revenge or intimidation. They are killed by the United States, by its allies, and by insurgents and sectarians in the civil wars spawned by the invasions."

War is not always avoidable. But since the end of the Cold War, every conflict started by the U.S. has been one of choice. America only ever had a serious interest at stake in Afghanistan -- to destroy al-Qaeda after 9/11 and punish the Taliban government. In that case, however, the U.S. mission should have ended by early 2002, not carried on for nearly two decades.

American policymakers should stop treating war as a first resort, a panacea for international conflict and tragedy. Washington is filled with ivory tower warriors. Their supposedly best intentions have spread chaos and death around the globe. What think this year's presidential candidates?

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire . He is currently scholar-in-residence with the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.

[Feb 20, 2020] NSC Official Moved To Energy Department; White House Rejects Rumors She s Anonymous Anti-Trump Author

Feb 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The White House has denied rumors that Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates is the author of an anonymous New York Times op-ed and subsequent book criticizing the Trump administration, after Coates was abruptly moved to the Energy Department.

... ... ...

On Monday, Axios reported that Coates role at the NSC was on the chopping block amid rumors she was the author.

A statement from the NSC also said that Coates' move will help "ensure the continued close alignment of energy policy with national security objectives," and that her new position in the Energy Department will be as a senior adviser to the secretary. Her new assignment is effective Monday, they said.

"We are enthusiastic about adding Dr. Coates to DOE, where her expertise on the Middle East and national security policy will be helpful," said Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette. "She will play an important role on our team."

National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien said that he is "sad to lose an important member of our team," but said Coates "will be a big asset to Secretary Brouillette as he executes the president's energy security policy priorities." - Fox News

On Tuesday, President Trump said "I know who it is," after a reporter questioned him on anonymous, adding that he won't reveal the name publicly. 38 minutes ago What was your haftarah, ****?

1 hour ago

By their very natures, homosexuals, and heterosexual females are security risks.

I would sleep better at night knowing they weren't in positions related to the defense of my country.

By all means, y'all keep on spreading that social engineering ********. Eventually, it will kill a whole bunch of people.

1 hour ago

So she keeps her pay grade and pension? **** That.

1 hour ago

So who's spreading the rumor that Coates is Anonymous and why?

1 hour ago

In corporate America they just let you go. It is time that all bureaucrats get the same treatment that the taxpayers get. Pensions? What at those?

1 hour ago

and "let you go" is defined as a large Security guard walking you back to your office to get your coat and keys and then watches you drive off the property. not offers you a no show job in the backoffice with full pension and benefits.

2 hours ago

Not sure that having a queer in charge of intelligence is the right way to go. Plenty of fodder for blackmail. History shows that homos (or fags if that's the preferred name) have more skeletons in their collective closets than 99.9% of normal people. Most of them are perverts with dark and sordid pasts.

[Feb 16, 2020] Looking at various indices like median household income and average wage, it seems as if living standards in Russia are substantially below western European levels and even slightly below central Europe

Feb 16, 2020 | www.quora.com

Likbez,

Looking at various indices like median household income and average wage, it seems as if living standards in Russia are substantially below western European levels and even slightly below central Europe. (Estonia and Poland are consistently slightly higher, Hungary often a bit lower.) Compared to China, going by the same sources and others, Russian wages are roughly twice as high as China's

That creates separatist movements within the country, including Islamist movements in Muslim-dominated regions.

So their posture is strictly defensive, and probably is not much more than a mild defensive reaction to "Full-spectrum Dominance" doctrine and the aggressive foreign policy conducted by the USA neocons (which totally dominate NSC and the State Department, as we saw from Ukrainegate testimonies)

The USA coup d'état in Ukraine actually have a blowback for the USA -- it neutralized influence and political status of Russia neoliberal fifth column (neoliberal compradors), and if not Putin (who is paradoxically a pro-Western neoliberal; although of "national neoliberalism" flavor similar to Trumpism ) some of them probably would be now hanging from the lamp posts. They are really hated by population after hardships, comparable with WWII hardships, imposed on ordinary Russian during Western-enforced neoliberalization under marionette Yeltsin government and attempt to grab Russian resources for pennies on a dollar. "Marshall plan" for Russia instead of economic rape would be a much better policy.

I think Obama-Nuland plot to turn Ukraine into the USA vassal state was yet another very dangerous move, which hurts the USA national security and greatly increased chances of military confrontation with Russia (aka mutual annihilation)

It was worse then a crime, it was a blunder. And now the USA needs to support this vassal with money we do not have.

The role of NSC in militarizing the USA foreign policy is such that it neutralizes any impulses of any US administration (if we assume they exist) to improve relations with Russia.

Neoliberal Dems now is a second war party which bet on neo-McCarthyism to weaken Trump. They went into the complete status of psychosis in this area. I view it as a psychotic reaction to the first signs of the collapse of the USA-centered global neoliberal empire (which will happen anyway independently of Russian moves)

That's actually a very dangerous situation indeed, and I am really afraid that the person who will replace Putin will not have Putin steel nerves, diplomatic talent, and the affinity with the West. Then what ? another Sarajevo and another war?

With warmongering "raptured" crazies like Mike, "we killed up to 200 Russians" Pompeo, the situation can really become explosive like before WWI. Again, after Putin leaves the political scene, the Sarajevo incident is easy to stage, especially with such incompetent marionette of the military-industrial complex like Trump at the helm.

I believe antagonizing Russia was a reckless, very damaging to the USA interest move, the move initiated by Clinton administration and supported by all subsequent administration as weakening and possibly dismembering Russia is one of the key aspect of Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine. . And we will pay a huge price for this policy.

See also Professor Stephen Cohen books on the subject.

Barkley Rosser February 16, 2020 9:19 pm

JimH,

Why do you pose this as antagonizing either Russsia or Iran? They are somewhat allied, so in fact antagonizing Iran as we are doing also antagonizes Russia.

Likbez,

The relative economic position of Russia in terms of median income is no different today than it was 30 years ago before Yeltsin, except for the rise of China. It was behind the European nations to its west, both those that were under its domination and those that were not, and it still is. So no big deal.

And somehow you have this fantasy that if it were not for Obama-Nuland, Ukrainians would just loooove to be under Russian domination. f you think this, you ser both foolish and very ignorant.

likbez February 16, 2020 10:30 pm

And somehow you have this fantasy that if it were not for Obama-Nuland, Ukrainians would just loooove to be under Russian domination. f you think this, you ser both foolish and very ignorant.

I might well be foolish and ignorant (I am far from being the specialist in the region), but I suspect Ukrainians do prefer the exchange rate ~8.5 hrivnas to a dollar (before the coup) to the current 25 hrivnas to a dollar.

Especially taking into account stagnant salaries and actual parity of prices in dollars for many types of food (especially meat), industrial products, and services between the USA and Ukraine.

I recently talked with one Ukrainian woman who told me that the "bribe" (unofficial payments due to low salaries for doctors and nurses in state clinics) for the child delivery was $1000 in Kiev in 2014 and she gave birth exactly at the time when hrivna jumped from 8.5 to over 20 per dollar. That was a tragedy for her and her family.

And please remember that the average SS pension in Ukraine is around 1500 hrivna a month (~ $60). So to me, it is completely unclear how pensioners can survive at all while the government is buying super expensive American weapons "to defend the country from Russian aggression."

I would strongly recommend you to read the recent Consortium news story https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/14/understanding-the-ukraine-story/

[Feb 16, 2020] On American exceptionalism : America IS exceptional in many ways -- but exceptional does NOT always mean better

Feb 16, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

jackiebass , February 11, 2020 at 7:40 am

This isn't something new. The American people have been fed propaganda for decades to make them believe America was exceptional. It was the bed rock of our Imperialism. If you lookout at measures of well being, America was always down on the list in every category. About the only thing we led in was military spending. American exceptionalism was used as a tool to justify our bad behavior all over the planet. Our government is the biggest terror organization on the planet. We have killed or injured millions of people. All in the name of spreading democracy, something we actually don't have.

eg , February 11, 2020 at 1:21 pm

America IS exceptional in many ways -- but exceptional does NOT always mean better

[Feb 15, 2020] Escobar The Siren Call Of A System Leader by Pepe Escobar

Feb 14, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

A considerable spectrum of the liberal West takes the American interpretation of what civilization consists of to be something like an immutable law of nature. But what if this interpretation is on the verge of an irreparable breakdown?

Michael Vlahos has argued that the US is not a mere nation-state but a "system leader" – "a civilizational power like Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire." And, we should add, China – which he did not mention. The system leader is "a universalistic identity framework tied to a state. This vantage is helpful because the United States clearly owns this identity framework today."

Intel stalwart Alastair Crooke, in a searing essay, digs deeper into how this "civilizational vision" was "forcefully unfurled across the globe" as the inevitable, American manifest destiny: not only politically – including all the accouterments of Western individualism and neo-liberalism, but coupled with "the metaphysics of Judeo-Christianity, too".

Crooke also notes how deeply ingrained the notion that victory in the Cold War "spectacularly affirmed" the superiority of the US civilizational vision among the US elite.

Well, the post-modern tragedy – from the point of view of US elites – is that soon this may not be the case anymore. The vicious civil war engulfing Washington for the past three years – with the whole world as stunned spectators – has just accelerated the malaise.

Remember Pax Mongolica

It's sobering to consider that Pax Americana may be destined to a shorter historical existence than Pax Mongolica – established after Genghis Khan, the head of a nomad nation, went about conquering the world.

Genghis first invested in a trade offensive to take over the Silk Roads, crushing the Kara-Kitais in Eastern Turkestan, conquering Islamic Khorezm, and annexing Bukhara, Samarkand, Bactria, Khorasan and Afghanistan. The Mongols reached the outskirts of Vienna in 1241 and the Adriatic Sea one year after.

The superpower of the time extended from the Pacific to the Adriatic. We can barely imagine the shock for Western Christendom. Pope Gregory X was itching to know who these conquerors of the world were, and could be Christianized?

In parallel, only a victory by the Egyptian Mamluks in Galilee in 1260 saved Islam from being annexed to Pax Mongolica.

Pax Mongolica – a single, organized, efficient, tolerant power – coincided historically with the Golden Age of the Silk Roads. Kublai Khan – who lorded over Marco Polo – wanted to be more Chinese than the Chinese themselves. He wanted to prove that nomad conquerors turned sedentary could learn the rules of administration, commerce, literature and even navigation.

Yet when Kublai Khan died, the empire fragmented into rival khanates. Islam profited. Everything changed. A century later, the Mongols from China, Persia, Russia and Central Asia had nothing to do with their ancestors on horseback.

A jump cut to the young 21st century shows that the initiative, historically, is once again on the side of China, across the Heartland and lining up the Rimland. World-changing, game-changing enterprises don't originate in the West anymore – as has been the case from the 16th century up to the late 20th century.

For all the vicious wishful thinking that coronavirus will derail the "Chinese century", which will actually be the Eurasian Century, and amid the myopic tsunami of New Silk Roads demonization, it's always easy to forget that implementation of myriad projects has not even started.

It should be in 2021 that all those corridors and axes of continental development pick up speed across Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, Southwest Asia, Russia and Europe, in parallel with the Maritime Silk Road configuring a true Eurasian string of pearls from Dalian to Piraeus, Trieste, Venice, Genoa, Hamburg and Rotterdam.

For the first time in two millennia, China is able to combine the dynamism of political and economic expansion both on the continental and maritime realms, something that the state did not experience since the short expeditionary stretch led by Admiral Zheng He in the Indian Ocean in the early 15th century. Eurasia, in the recent past, was under Western and Soviet colonization. Now it's going all-out multipolar – a series of complex, evolving permutations led by Russia-China-Iran-Turkey-India-Pakistan-Kazakhstan.

Every player has no illusions about the "system leader" obsessions: to prevent Eurasia from uniting under one power – or coalition such as the Russia-China strategic partnership; ensure that Europe remains under US hegemony; prevent Southwest Asia – or the "Greater Middle East" – from being linked to Eurasian powers; and prevent by all means that Russia-China have unimpeded access to maritime lanes and trade corridors.

The message from Iran

In the meantime, a sneaking suspicion creeps in – that Iran's game plan, in an echo of Donbass in 2014, may be about sucking US neocons into a trademark Russian cauldron in case the regime-change obsession is turbocharged.

There is a serious possibility that under maximum pressure Tehran might eventually abandon the JCPOA for good, as well as the NPT, thus openly inviting a US attack.

As it stands, Tehran has sent two very clear messages. The accuracy of the missile attack on the US Ayn Al-Asad base in Iraq, replying to the targeted assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, means that any branch of the vast US network of bases is now vulnerable.

And the fog of non-denial denials surrounding the downing of the CIA Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) – essentially an aerial spook shop – in Ghazni, Afghanistan also carries a message.

CIA icon Mike d'Andrea, known as 'Ayatollah Mike', The Undertaker, the Dark Prince, or all of the above, may or may not have been on board. Irrespective of the fact that no US government source will ever confirm or deny that Ayatollah Mike is dead or alive, or even that he exists at all, the message remains the same: your soldiers and spooks are also vulnerable.

Since Pearl Harbor, no nation has dared to stare down the system leader so blatantly, as Iran did in Iraq. Vlahos mentioned something I saw for myself in 2003, how "young American soldiers referred to Iraqis as 'Indians', as though Mesopotamia were the Wild West". Mesopotamia was one the crucial cradles of civilization as we know it. Well, in the end, that $2 trillion spent to bomb Iraq into democracy did no favors to the civilizational vision of the 'system leader'.

The Sirens and La Dolce Vita

Now let's add aesthetics to our "civilizational" politics. Every time I visit Venice – which in itself is a living metaphor for both the flimsiness of empires and the Decline of the West – I retrace selected steps in The Cantos , Ezra Pound's epic masterpiece.

Last December, after many years, I went back to the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, also known as "The jewel box", which plays a starring role in The Cantos. As I arrived I told the custodian signora that I had come for "The Sirens". With a knowing smirk, she lighted my way along the nave to the central staircase. And there they were, sculpted on pillars on both sides of a balcony: "Crystal columns, acanthus, sirens in the pillar head", as we read in Canto 20.

These sirens were sculpted by Tullio and Antonio Lombardo, sons of Pietro Lombardo, Venetian masters of the late 15th and early 16th century – "and Tullio Romano carved the sirens, as the old custode says: so that since then no one has been able to carve them for the jewel box, Santa Maria dei Miracoli", as we read in Canto 76.

Well, Pound misnamed the creator of the sirens, but, that's not the point. The point is how Pound saw the sirens as the epitome of a strong culture – "the perception of a whole age, of whole congeries and sequence of causes, went into an assemblage of detail, whereof it would be impossible to speak in terms of magnitude", as Pound wrote in Guide to Kulchur .

As much as his beloved masterpieces by Giovanni Bellini and Piero della Francesca, Pound fully grasped how these sirens were the antithesis of usura – or the "art" of lending money at exorbitant interest rates, which not only deprives a culture of the best of art, as Pound describes it, but is also one of the pillars for the total financialization and marketization of life itself, a process that Pound brilliantly foresaw, when he wrote in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley that, "all things are a flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry cheapness, shall reign throughout our days."

La Dolce Vita will turn 60 in 2020. Much as Pound's sirens, Fellini's now mythological tour de force in Rome is like a black and white celluloid palimpsest of a bygone era, the birth of the Swingin' Sixties. Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) and Maddalena (Anouk Aimee), impossibly cool and chic, are like the Last Woman and the Last Man before the deluge of "tawdry cheapness". In the end, Fellini shows us Marcello despairing at the ugliness and, yes, cheapness intruding in his beautiful mini-universe – the lineaments of the trash culture fabricated and sold by the 'system leader' about to engulf us all.

Pound was a human, all too human American maverick of unbridled classical genius. The 'system leader' misinterpreted him; treated him as a traitor; caged him in Pisa; and dispatched him to a mental hospital in the US. I still wonder whether he may have seen and appreciated La Dolce Vita during the 1960s, before he died in Venice in 1972. After all, there was a little cinema within walking distance of the house in Calle Querini where he lived with Olga Rudge.

"Marcello!" We're still haunted by Anita Ekberg's iconic siren call, half-immersed in the Fontana di Trevi. Today, still hostages of the crumbling civilizational vision of the 'system leader', at best we barely muster, as TS Eliot memorably wrote, a "backward half-look, over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror."

[Feb 14, 2020] Damage: The Democrats on Russia

Full spectrum Dominance doctrine leaves no space for Russia. It needs to become a vassal or disappear in timi, dependents of the West statelests.
Feb 05, 2020 | responsiblestatecraft.org

Extracted from Presidential Election Politics are Damaging U.S. Foreign Policy Written by
Robert E. Hunter

It's not just the White House that is doing serious damage to U.S. interests abroad during this year's election campaign. Of even greater consequence (absent a new Middle East war) is the U.S. relationship with Russia. It's currently unthinkable that Washington will try to move beyond the status quo, even if Russian President Vladimir Putin were prepared to do so. Even before Trump was inaugurated, many Democrats began calling for his impeachment . Leading Democrats laid Hillary Clinton ' s defeat at the feet of Russian interference in the U.S. election -- a claim that stretched credulity past the breaking point. Further, as Democrats looked for grounds to impeach Trump (or at least terminally to reduce his reelection chances), the " Russia factor" was the best cudgel available. Charges included the notion that " Putin has something on Trump," which presumes he would sell out the nation ' s security for a mess of pottage.

All this domestic politicking ignores a geopolitical fact: while the Soviet Union lost the Cold War and, for some time thereafter, Russia could be dismissed, it was always certain that it would again become a significant power, at least in Europe. Thus, even before the Berlin Wall fell, President George H. W. Bush proposed creating a " Europe whole and free" and at peace. Bill Clinton built on what Bush began. Both understood that a renascent Russia could embrace revanchism, and for several years their efforts seemed to have a chance of succeeding.

Then the effort went off the rails. Putin took power in Russia, which made cooperation with the West difficult if not impossible. He worked to consolidate his domestic position, in part by alleging that the West was " disrespecting" Russia and trying to encircle it. For its part, the U.S. played into the Putin narrative by abandoning the Bush-Clinton vision of taking legitimate Russian interests into account in fashioning European security arrangements. The breaking point came in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and sent " little green men" to fight in some other parts of Ukraine. The West necessarily responded, with economic sanctions and NATO's buildup of " trip wire" forces in Central Europe.

But despite the ensuing standoff, the critical requirement remains: the United States has to acknowledge Russia's inevitable rise as a major power while also impressing on Putin the need to trim his ambitions, if he is to avoid a new era of Russian isolation. There is also serious business that the two countries need to pursue, including strategic arms control, the Middle East (especially Iran), and climate change. Despite deep disagreements, including over Ukraine and parts of Central Europe, the U.S. needs to engage in serious discussions with Russia, which means the renewal of diplomacy which has been in the deep freeze for years.

All of this has been put in pawn by the role that the "Russia factor" has been permitted to play in American presidential politics, especially by Democrats. Longer-term U.S. interests are suffering, along with those of the European allies and Middle East partners. The task has been made even more difficult by those U.S. politicians, think tanks , and journalists who prefer to resurrect the term "cold war" rather than clearly examining the nation's strategic needs because of the blinkers imposed by domestic politics. Open discussion about alternatives in dealing with Russia is thus stifled, at serious cost to the United States and others.

In all three of these areas, the U.S. is paying a high price in terms of its national interests to the games political leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, are playing. Great efforts will be needed to dig out of this mess, beginning with U.S. willingness to do so. Leaders elsewhere must also be prepared to join in -- far from a sure thing! Unfortunately, there is currently little hope that, at least in the three critical areas discussed above, pursuit of U.S. interests abroad will prevail over today's parochial domestic politics.

[Feb 14, 2020] NSC Chief O'Brien on Vindmans: We're not a banana republic where a group of Lt. Colonels get together and decide what the policy is or should be

Are we? NSC hijecked functions of the Department of State and is a clear parallel structure, that functions in a way completely different from its initial role. They no longer serve they serve as the president's personal staff. NSC clearly strives to control foreign policy and thus control the President in this area.
And with people like Pompeo at the helm what are the benefits of expelling Vindmans
Feb 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
National Security Adviser told a room full of Atlantic Council attendees on Tuesday that significant cuts were under way at the leak-prone White House National Security Council, confirming a Monday report in the Washington Examiner that up to 70 positions would be cut.

Robert O'Brien says the NSC will be down between 115 to 120 staffers by the end of this week. pic.twitter.com/FpleaBFh85

-- Josh Cremeans "DirtyTruth" (@AKA_RealDirty) February 12, 2020

While O'Brien pitched it as a return to "a manageable size," he didn't mention what the Examiner reported - namely, that most of the cuts would be Obama-era holdovers such as anti-Trump impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, 44, and his twin brother Yevgeny, who were fired from the NSC last week and escorted out of the White House by security.

O'Brian noted that the Vindmans "weren't fired," according to the Epoch Times , rather "Their services were no longer needed."

"It's really a privilege to work in the White House. It's not a right," he continued. "At the end of the day, the president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policy, that he has confidence in, and I think every president's entitled to that."

" We're not a banana republic where a group of Lt. Colonels get together and decide what the policy is or should be ," he added.

The reorganization was consistent with the "Scowcroft model" used by Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser for Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, according to O'Brien. The model emphasizes that the national security adviser shouldn't "be an advocate for one policy or another." Instead, the adviser should "ensure that the president is well served by the cabinet, departments, and agencies in obtaining counsel and formulating his policies."

The policies are then decided on by the president and the adviser makes sure they're carried out.

Most of the staff on the council actually work for other departments and agencies and are part of the council for a certain length of time. O'Brien suggested that some might not be serving in the way that top officials think they should. - Epoch Times

" When they come to the White House, they serve as the president's personal staff and it is our view that while they are at the National Security Council, they should not represent the views of their parent agencies or departments," said O'Brien. " They're not there as liaison officers, and they certainly shouldn't represent their own personal views. "

"The president has to have confidence in the folks on his National Security Council staff to ensure that they are committed to executing the agenda that he was elected by the American people to deliver," not a "mini State Department, a mini Pentagon, a mini Department of Homeland Security."

[Feb 09, 2020] The Deeper Story Behind The Assassination Of Soleimani

Highly recommended!
Looks like the end of Full Spectrum Dominance the the USA enjoyed since 1991. Alliance of Iran, Russia and China (with Turkey and Pakistan as two possible members) is serious military competitor and while the USA has its set of trump cards, the military victory against such an alliance no longer guaranteed.
Jan 09, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Days after the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, new and important information is coming to light from a speech given by the Iraqi prime minister. The story behind Soleimani's assassination seems to go much deeper than what has thus far been reported, involving Saudi Arabia and China as well the US dollar's role as the global reserve currency .

The Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, has revealed details of his interactions with Trump in the weeks leading up to Soleimani's assassination in a speech to the Iraqi parliament. He tried to explain several times on live television how Washington had been browbeating him and other Iraqi members of parliament to toe the American line, even threatening to engage in false-flag sniper shootings of both protesters and security personnel in order to inflame the situation, recalling similar modi operandi seen in Cairo in 2009, Libya in 2011, and Maidan in 2014. The purpose of such cynicism was to throw Iraq into chaos.

Here is the reconstruction of the story:

[Speaker of the Council of Representatives of Iraq] Halbousi attended the parliamentary session while almost none of the Sunni members did. This was because the Americans had learned that Abdul-Mehdi was planning to reveal sensitive secrets in the session and sent Halbousi to prevent this. Halbousi cut Abdul-Mehdi off at the commencement of his speech and then asked for the live airing of the session to be stopped. After this, Halbousi together with other members, sat next to Abdul-Mehdi, speaking openly with him but without it being recorded. This is what was discussed in that session that was not broadcast:

Abdul-Mehdi spoke angrily about how the Americans had ruined the country and now refused to complete infrastructure and electricity grid projects unless they were promised 50% of oil revenues, which Abdul-Mehdi refused.

The complete (translated) words of Abdul-Mahdi's speech to parliament:

This is why I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the construction instead. Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement. When I refused, he threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my premiership.

Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings target protesters and security personnel alike in order to pressure me.

I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal with the Chinese.

After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting both protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened he would do), I received a new call from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we kept on talking about this "third party".

Nobody imagined that the threat was to be applied to General Soleimani, but it was difficult for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to reveal the weekslong backstory behind the terrorist attack.

I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when he was killed. He came to deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered to the Iranians from the Saudis.

We can surmise, judging by Saudi Arabia's reaction , that some kind of negotiation was going on between Tehran and Riyadh:

The Kingdom's statement regarding the events in Iraq stresses the Kingdom's view of the importance of de-escalation to save the countries of the region and their people from the risks of any escalation.

Above all, the Saudi Royal family wanted to let people know immediately that they had not been informed of the US operation:

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not consulted regarding the US strike. In light of the rapid developments, the Kingdom stresses the importance of exercising restraint to guard against all acts that may lead to escalation, with severe consequences.

And to emphasize his reluctance for war, Mohammad bin Salman sent a delegation to the United States. Liz Sly , the Washington Post Beirut bureau chief, tweated:

Saudi Arabia is sending a delegation to Washington to urge restraint with Iran on behalf of [Persian] Gulf states. The message will be: 'Please spare us the pain of going through another war'.

What clearly emerges is that the success of the operation against Soleimani had nothing to do with the intelligence gathering of the US or Israel. It was known to all and sundry that Soleimani was heading to Baghdad in a diplomatic capacity that acknowledged Iraq's efforts to mediate a solution to the regional crisis with Saudi Arabia.

It would seem that the Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis were well on the way towards averting a regional conflict involving Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Riyadh's reaction to the American strike evinced no public joy or celebration. Qatar, while not seeing eye to eye with Riyadh on many issues, also immediately expressed solidarity with Tehran, hosting a meeting at a senior government level with Mohammad Zarif Jarif, the Iranian foreign minister. Even Turkey and Egypt , when commenting on the asassination, employed moderating language.

This could reflect a fear of being on the receiving end of Iran's retaliation. Qatar, the country from which the drone that killed Soleimani took off, is only a stone's throw away from Iran, situated on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh and Tel Aviv, Tehran's regional enemies, both know that a military conflict with Iran would mean the end of the Saudi royal family.

When the words of the Iraqi prime minister are linked back to the geopolitical and energy agreements in the region, then the worrying picture starts to emerge of a desperate US lashing out at a world turning its back on a unipolar world order in favor of the emerging multipolar about which I have long written .

The US, now considering itself a net energy exporter as a result of the shale-oil revolution (on which the jury is still out), no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East. However, this does not mean that oil can now be traded in any other currency other than the US dollar.

The petrodollar is what ensures that the US dollar retains its status as the global reserve currency, granting the US a monopolistic position from which it derives enormous benefits from playing the role of regional hegemon.

This privileged position of holding the global reserve currency also ensures that the US can easily fund its war machine by virtue of the fact that much of the world is obliged to buy its treasury bonds that it is simply able to conjure out of thin air. To threaten this comfortable arrangement is to threaten Washington's global power.

Even so, the geopolitical and economic trend is inexorably towards a multipolar world order, with China increasingly playing a leading role, especially in the Middle East and South America.

Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia together make up the overwhelming majority of oil and gas reserves in the world. The first three have an elevated relationship with Beijing and are very much in the multipolar camp, something that China and Russia are keen to further consolidate in order to ensure the future growth for the Eurasian supercontinent without war and conflict.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is pro-US but could gravitate towards the Sino-Russian camp both militarily and in terms of energy. The same process is going on with Iraq and Qatar thanks to Washington's numerous strategic errors in the region starting from Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria and Yemen in recent years.

The agreement between Iraq and China is a prime example of how Beijing intends to use the Iraq-Iran-Syria troika to revive the Middle East and and link it to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

While Doha and Riyadh would be the first to suffer economically from such an agreement, Beijing's economic power is such that, with its win-win approach, there is room for everyone.

Saudi Arabia provides China with most of its oil and Qatar, together with the Russian Federation, supply China with most of its LNG needs, which lines up with Xi Jinping's 2030 vision that aims to greatly reduce polluting emissions.

The US is absent in this picture, with little ability to influence events or offer any appealing economic alternatives.

Washington would like to prevent any Eurasian integration by unleashing chaos and destruction in the region, and killing Soleimani served this purpose. The US cannot contemplate the idea of the dollar losing its status as the global reserve currency. Trump is engaging in a desperate gamble that could have disastrous consequences.

The region, in a worst-case scenario, could be engulfed in a devastating war involving multiple countries. Oil refineries could be destroyed all across the region, a quarter of the world's oil transit could be blocked, oil prices would skyrocket ($200-$300 a barrel) and dozens of countries would be plunged into a global financial crisis. The blame would be laid squarely at Trump's feet, ending his chances for re-election.

To try and keep everyone in line, Washington is left to resort to terrorism, lies and unspecified threats of visiting destruction on friends and enemies alike.

Trump has evidently been convinced by someone that the US can do without the Middle East, that it can do without allies in the region, and that nobody would ever dare to sell oil in any other currency than the US dollar.

Soleimani's death is the result of a convergence of US and Israeli interests. With no other way of halting Eurasian integration, Washington can only throw the region into chaos by targeting countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria that are central to the Eurasian project. While Israel has never had the ability or audacity to carry out such an assassination itself, the importance of the Israel Lobby to Trump's electoral success would have influenced his decision, all the more so in an election year .

Trump believed his drone attack could solve all his problems by frightening his opponents, winning the support of his voters (by equating Soleimani's assassination to Osama bin Laden's), and sending a warning to Arab countries of the dangers of deepening their ties with China.

The assassination of Soleimani is the US lashing out at its steady loss of influence in the region. The Iraqi attempt to mediate a lasting peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been scuppered by the US and Israel's determination to prevent peace in the region and instead increase chaos and instability.

Washington has not achieved its hegemonic status through a preference for diplomacy and calm dialogue, and Trump has no intention of departing from this approach.

Washington's friends and enemies alike must acknowledge this reality and implement the countermeasures necessary to contain the madness.


Boundless Energy , 1 minute ago link

Very good article, straight to the point. In fact its much worse. I know is hard to swallow for my US american brother and sisters.

But as sooner you wake up and see the reality as it is, as better chances the US has to survive with honor. Stop the wars around the globe and do not look for excuses. Isnt it already obvious what is going on with the US war machine? How many more examples some people need to wake up?

Noob678 , 8 minutes ago link

For those who love to connect the dots:

Iran Situation from Someone Who Knows Something

Not all said in video above is accurate but the recent events in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa are all related to prevent China from overtaking the zionist hegemonic world and to recolonize China (at least the parasite is trying to hop to China as new host).

Trade war, Huawei, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet ..... the concerted efforts from all zionist controlled media (ZeroHedge included) to slander, smearing, fake news against China should tell you what the Zionists agenda are :)

............

Trump Threatens to Kill Iraqi PM if He Doesn't Cancel China Oil Deal - MoA

The American President's threatened the Iraqi Prime Minister to liquidate him directly with the Minister of Defense. The Marines are the third party that sniped the demonstrators and the security men:

Abdul Mahdi continued:

"After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel the agreement, so I also refused, and he threatened me with massive demonstrations that would topple me. Indeed, the demonstrations started and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event of non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, so that the third party (Marines snipers) would target the demonstrators and security forces and kill them from the highest structures and the US embassy in an attempt to pressure me and submit to his wishes and cancel the China agreement, so I did not respond and submitted my resignation and the Americans still insist to this day on canceling the China agreement and when the defense minister said that who kills the demonstrators is a third party, Trump called me immediately and physically threatened me and defense minister in the event of talk about the third party."

.........


The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission found George W. Bush guilty of war crimes in absentia for the illegal invasion of Iraq. Bush, **** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.

... ... ..

Thom Paine , 9 minutes ago link

When Iran has nukes, what then Trump?

I think Israel's fear is loss of regional goals if Iran becomes untouchable

TupacShakur , 13 minutes ago link

Empire is lashing out of desperation because we've crossed peak Empire.

Things are going downhill and will get more volatile as we go.

Buckle up folks because the final act will be very nasty.

Stalking Wolf , 12 minutes ago link

Unfortunately, this article makes a lot of sense. The US is losing influence and lashing out carelessly. I hope the rest of the world realizes how detached majority of the citizens within the states are from the federal government. The Federal government brings no good to our nation. None. From the mis management of our once tax revenues to the corrupt Congress who accepts bribes from the highest bidder, it's a rats best that is not only harmful to its own people, but the world at large. USD won't go down without a fight it seems... All empires end with a bang. Be ready

[Feb 08, 2020] Is Iraq About To Switch From US to Russia

Highly recommended!
Feb 08, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

likbez , February 8, 2020 8:56 pm

NSC Russia expert freshly appointed Andrew Peek, who was walked out like Vindman, with him only freshly appointed after Fiona Hill and the Tim Morrioson resigned.

There is a big problems with "experts" in NSC -- often they represent interests of the particular agency, or a think tank, not that of the country.

Look at former NSC staffer Fiona Hill. She can be called "threat inflation" specialist.

NSC tries to usurp the role of the State Department and overly militarize the USA foreign policy, while having much lower class specialists. It is a kind of CIA backdoor into defining the USA foreign policy.

I would advocate creating "shadow NSC" by the party who is in opposition, so that it can somehow provide countervailing opinions. But with both parties being now war parties, this is no that effective.

Cutting NSC staff to the bones, so that such second rate personalities like Fiona Hill and Vindman are automatically excluded might also help a little bit.

The size above a dozen or two is probably excessive, as like any bureaucracy, it will try to control the President, not so much help him/her.
( https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA00/20160908/105276/HHRG-114-FA00-Transcript-20160908.pdf ):

One common explanation is that the NSC mission creep results from the NSC staff growing too large and the easy solution is to limit the size of the staff. I am sympathetic to that feeling because we don't want it to
be too large and we don't want it to be usurping things that the State Department or the Agency should do.

[Feb 05, 2020] Flynn was a friend of neocon Leeden, who essentially formulated the neocon foreign policy in his famous quote "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business".

Feb 05, 2020 | off-guardian.org

Louis N. Proyect ,

"It does not take a poli sci major to figure out that Flynn's immediate removal from the Administration was essential to undermining Trump's entire foreign policy initiatives including no new interventionist wars, peace with Russia and US withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan."

This is baloney, as I pointed out here: https://louisproyect.org/2017/02/19/deep-state-deep-confusion/

I always get a chuckle out of the notion that Trump and the neocons are mortal enemies. Do you know who co-wrote Michael Flynn's "The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies"? Does the name Michael Ledeen ring a bell? A profile on Flynn in the New Yorker Magazine revealed that much of the book is practically plagiarized from Ledeen's sorry body of books and articles. Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. This is about as neocon as you can get with founder Clifford D. May now serving as President, who is also a member of the Henry Jackson Society, an outfit that is infamous for supporting the war in Iraq. Here is Ledeen on the countries posing the greatest threat to the USA:

It's no coincidence. Russia, Iran and North Korea are in active cahoots. They are pooling resources, including banking systems (the better to bust sanctions), intelligence and military technology, as part of an ongoing war against the West, of which the most melodramatic battlefields are in Syria/Iraq and Ukraine.

To judge by their language, the leaders of the three countries think the tide of world events is flowing in their favor. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered an ultimatum to the West, saying that Iran's war against "evil" would only end with the removal of America. Russian President Vladimir Putin marches on in Ukraine, blaming the West for all the trouble, and the North Koreans are similarly bellicose.

They are singing from the same hymnal. And they aim to do us in.

Right, they aim to do us in. So it turns out that the guy that Flynn is most closely allied to ideologically is ten times scarier than Hillary Clinton. If you still have doubts about Flynn's close ties to Ledeen, I recommend The New Yorker profile linked to above. It states:

Flynn and Ledeen became close friends; in their shared view of the world, Ledeen supplied an intellectual and historical perspective, Flynn a tactical one. "I've spent my professional life studying evil," Ledeen told me. Flynn said, in a recent speech, "I've sat down with really, really evil people" -- he cited Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Russians, Chinese generals -- "and all I want to do is punch the guy in the nose."

Get that, people? Flynn said he'd like to punch a Russian in the nose. People get confused over Flynn's ideological core beliefs by missing that his interest in Russia is solely based on its usefulness against ISIS. Just because he favored a united military front against ISIS, it does not mean that he has the same affinity for the Kremlin that someone like Stephen F. Cohen has. Just remember that the USA and Stalin were allied against Hitler. You know how far that went.

lundiel ,

Funny you should bring up Ledeen, just after I posted a comment about him, eh Louis?
For whatever reason, Flynn decided to work with Trump and his removal, by his compatriots, is testament to his problematic policy shift. Who knows if he had a paradigm shift or thought he knew which side his bread was buttered. The thing is, as Renee says, the FBI are very much involved in internal politics.

[Feb 03, 2020] White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War

Highly recommended!
This book sheds some light into the story of how Administrative assistants to Present became independent heavily influenced by CIA body controlling the USA foreign policy and to a large extent controlling the President. Recent revolt of NSC (Aka Ukrainegate) shows that the servant became the master
The books contains some interesting information about forming NSC by Truman --- the father of the US National Security State. And bureaucratic turf war the preceded it. It wwas actually Eisenhower who created forma position of a "special assistant to the president for national security affairs"
The author also cover a little bit disastrous decision to launch a "surge" (ironically by the female chickenhawk Meghan O'Sullivan), -- which attests neocon nature of current NSC and level of indoctrination of staffers in "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine quite clearly. That's why a faction of NSC launched a coup d'état against Trump in t he form of Ukrainegate and probably was instrumental in Russiagate as well.
Notable quotes:
"... Starting in the 1960s, the NSC dethroned the State Department in providing analysis, intelligence, and even some diplomacy to the diplomat in chief. In the years after September 11th, the staff also began to take greater responsibility, especially for planning, from the military and the rest of the Pentagon. Both departments have struggled and often failed to reclaim lost ground and influence in Washington. ..."
"... Yet war is a hard thing to try to manage from the Executive Office Building. Thousands of miles from the frontlines and far from harm, the NSC make recommendations based on what they come to know from intelligence reports, news sources, phone calls, video-teleconferences, and visits to the front. Even with advice based only on this limited and limiting view, the NSC staff has transformed how the United States fights its wars. ..."
"... Although presidents bear the ultimate responsibilities for these decisions, the NSC staff played an essential, and increasing, role in the thinking behind each bold move. In conflict after conflict, a more powerful NSC staff has fundamentally altered the American way of war. It is now far less informed by the perspective of the military and the view from the frontlines. It is less patient for progress and more dependent on the clocks in the Executive Office Building and Washington than those in theater. It is far more combative, less able to accept defeat, and more willing to risk a change of course. ..."
"... The NSC common law's kept the peace in Washington for years after Iran-Contra. The restrictions against outright advocacy and outsized operational responsibilities were accepted by those at the White House as well as in the agencies during Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet as many in Washington believed the world grew more interconnected and the national security stakes increased, especially after September 11th, a more powerful NSC has given staffers the opportunity to bend, and occasionally break, the common laws, as they have been expected to and allowed to take on more responsibilities for developing strategies and new r ideas from those in the bureaucracy and military. ..."
"... ...Meanwhile, others, including the anonymous author of the infamous September 2018 New York Times opinion piece, believe government officials who comprise a "steady state" amid Trump's chaotic presidency are "unsung heroes" resisting his worst instincts and overreaches. 13 Thus, it is no surprise that more and more Americans are concerned: a 2018 poll found that 74 percent of Americans feel a group of officials arc able to control government policy without accountability. ..."
"... it is no wonder some Americans have taken to assuming the worst of their public servants. ..."
"... Each member of the NSC staff needs to remember that their growing, unaccountable power has helped give evidence to the worries about a deep state. Although no one in Washington gives up influence voluntarily, the staff, even its warriors, need to remember it is not just what they fight for but whether a fight is necessary at all. ..."
"... ... Too many in Washington, including at the Executive Office Building, have forgotten that public service is a privilege that bestows on them great responsibility. Although the NSC has long justified its actions in the name of national security, the means with which its members have pursued that objective have made for a more aggressive American way of war, a more fractious Washington, and more conspiracies about government. ..."
"... The question is for what and for whom they will fight in the years and wars ahead. ..."
Feb 03, 2020 | www.amazon.com

The men and women walking the hushed corridors of the Executive Office Building do not look like warriors. Most are middle-aged professionals with penchants for dark business suits and prestigious graduate degrees, who have spent their lives serving their country in windowless offices, on far-off battle-fields, or at embassies abroad. Before arriving at the NSC, many joined the military or the nation's diplomatic corps, some dedicated themselves to teaching and writing about national security, and others spent their days working for the types of politicians who become presidents. By the time they joined the staff, each had shown the pluck -- and the good fortune -- required to end up staffing a president.

When each NSC staffer first walks up the steps to the Executive Office Building, he or she joins an institution like no other in government. Compared to the Pentagon and other bureaucracies, the staff is small, hierarchically flat with only a few titles like directors and senior directors reporting to the national security advisor and his or her deputies. Compared to all those at the agencies, even most cabinet secretaries, the staff are also given unparalleled access to the president and the discussions about the biggest decisions in national security.

Yet despite their access, the NSC staff was created as a political, legal, and bureaucratic afterthought. The National Security Council was established both
to better coordinate foreign policy after World War II and as part of a deal to create what became known as the Defense Department. Since the army and navy only agreed to be unified under a single department and a civilian cabinet secretary if each still had a seat at the table where decisions about war were expected to be made, establishing the National Security Council was critical to ensuring passage of the National Security Act of 1947. The law, as well as its amendments two years later, unified the armed forces while also establishing the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as the CIA.

... ... ...

Fans of television's the West Wing would be forgiven for expecting that once in the Oval Office, all a staffer needs to do to change policy is to deliver a well-timed whisper in the president's car or a rousing speech in his company. It is not that such dramatic moments never occur, but real change in government requires not just speaking up but the grinding policy work required to have something new to say.

A staffer, alone or with NSC and agency colleagues, must develop an idea until feasible and defend it from opposition driven by personal pique, bureaucratic jealousy, or substantive disagreement, and often all three.

Granted none of these fights are over particularly new ideas, as few proposals in war are truly novel. If anything, the staffs history is a reminder of how little new there is under the guise of national security. Alter all, escalations, ultimatums, and counterinsurgency are only innovative in the context of the latest conflicts. The NSC staff is usually proposing old ideas, some as old as war itself like a surge of troops, to new circumstances and a critical moment.

Yet even an old idea can have real power in the right hands at the right time, so it is worth considering how much more influence the NSC brings to its fights today.

... ... ...

A larger staff can do even more thanks to technology. With the establishment of the Situation Room in 1961 and its subsequent upgrades, as well as the widespread adoption of email in the 1980s, the classified email system during the 2000s, and desktop video teleconferencing systems in the 2010s, White House technology upgrades have been justified because the president deserves the latest and the fastest. These same advances give each member of the staff global reach, including to war zones half a world away, from the safety of the Executive Office Building.

The NSC has also grown more powerful along with the presidency it serves. The White House, even in the hands of an inexperienced and disorganized president like Trump, drives the government's agenda, the news media's coverage, and the American public's attention. The NSC staff can, if skilled enough, leverage the office's influence for their own ideas and purposes. Presidents have also explicitly empowered the staff in big ways -- like putting them in the middle of the policymaking process -- and small -- like granting them ranks that put them on the same level as other agency officials.

Recent staffers have also had the president's ear nearly every day, and sometimes more often, while secretaries of state and defense rarely have that much face time in the Oval Office. Each has a department with tens of thousands (and in the Pentagon's case millions) of employees to manage. Most significantly, both also answer not just to the president but to Congress, which has oversight authority for their departments and an expectation for regular updates. There are few more consequential power differences between the NSC and the departments than to whom each must answer.

Even more, the NSC staff get to work and fight in anonymity. Members of Congress, journalists, and historians are usually too busy keeping track of the National Security Council principals to focus on the guys and gals behind the national security advisors, who are themselves behind the president. Few in Washington, and fewer still across the country, know the names of the staff advising the president let alone what they arc saying in their memos and moments with him.

Today, there arc too many unnamed NSC staffers for anyone's good, including their own. Even with the recent congressional limit on policy staffers, the NSC is too big to be thoroughly managed or effective. National security advisors and their deputies are so busy during their days that it is hard to keep up with all their own emails, calls, and reading, let alone ensure each member of the staff is doing their own work or doing it well. The common law and a de tacto honor system has also struggled to keep staff in check as they try to handle every issue from war to women's rights and every to-do list item from drafting talking points to doing secret diplomacy.

Although many factors contribute to the NSC's success, history suggests they do best with the right-size job. The answer to better national security policy and process is not a bigger staff but smaller writs. The NSC should focus on fewer issues, and then only on the smaller stuff, like what the president needs for calls and meetings, and the big, what some call grand strategic, questions about the nation's interests, ambitions, and capacities that should be asked and answered before any major decision.

... ... ...

Along the way, the staff has taken on greater responsibilities from agencies like the departments of state and defense as each has grown more bureaucratic and sclerotic. Starting in the 1960s, the NSC dethroned the State Department in providing analysis, intelligence, and even some diplomacy to the diplomat in chief. In the years after September 11th, the staff also began to take greater responsibility, especially for planning, from the military and the rest of the Pentagon. Both departments have struggled and often failed to reclaim lost ground and influence in Washington.

As a result, today the NSC has, regretfully, become the strategic engine of the government's national security policymaking. The staff, along with the national security advisor, determine which issues -- large and small -- require attention, develop the plans for most of them, and try to manage day-to-day the implementation of each strategy. That is too sweeping a remit for a couple hundred unaccountable staffers sitting at the Executive Office Building thousands of miles from war zones and foreign capitals. Such immense responsibility also docs not make the best use of talent in government, leaving the military and the nation's diplomats fighting with the White House over policies while trying to execute plans they have less and less ownership over.

... ... ...

Although protocol still requires members of the NSC to sit on the backbench in National Security Council meetings, the staff s voice and advice can carry as much weight as those of the principals sitting at the table, just as the staff has taken on more of each department's responsibilities, the NSC arc expected to be advisors to the president, even on military strategy. With that charge, the staff has taken to spending more time and effort developing their own policy ideas -- and fighting for them.

Yet war is a hard thing to try to manage from the Executive Office Building. Thousands of miles from the frontlines and far from harm, the NSC make recommendations based on what they come to know from intelligence reports, news sources, phone calls, video-teleconferences, and visits to the front. Even with advice based only on this limited and limiting view, the NSC staff has transformed how the United States fights its wars.

The American way of war, developed over decades of thinking and fighting, informs how and why the nation goes to battle. Over the course of American history and, most relevantly, since the end of World War II, the US military and other national security professionals have developed, often through great turmoil, strategic preferences and habits, like deploying the latest technology possible instead of the largest number of troops. Despite the tremendous planning that goes into these most serious of undertakings, each new conflict tests the prevailing way of war and often finds it wanting.

Even knowing how dangerous it is to relight the last war, it is still not easy to find the right course for a new one. Government in general and national security specifically are risk-averse enterprises where it is often simpler to rely on standard operating procedures and stay on a chosen course, regardless of whether progress is slow and the sense of drift is severe. Even then, many in the military, who often react to even the mildest of suggestions and inquiries as unnecessary or even dangerous micromanagement, defend the prevailing approach with its defining doctrine and syndrome.

As Machiavelli recommended long ago, there is a need for hard questions in government and war in particular. He wrote that a leader "ought to be a great askcr, and a patient hearer of the truth." 7 From the Executive Office Building, the NSC staff, who are more distanced from the action as well as the fog of war, have tried to fill this role for a busy and often distracted president. They are, however, not nearly as patient as Machiavelli recommended: they have proven more willing, indeed too willing at times, to ask about what is working and what is not.

Warfighters are not alone in being frustrated by questions: everyone from architects to zookeepers believes they know how best to do their job and that with a bit more time, they will get it right. Without any of the responsibility for the doing, the NSC staff not only asks hard questions but, by avoiding implementation bias, is willing to admit, often long before those in the field, that the current plan is failing. A more technologically advanced NSC, with the ability to reach deep into the chain of command and war zones for updates, has also given the staff the intelligence to back up its impatience.

Most times in history, the NSC staff has correctly predicted that time is running against a chosen strategy. Halperin. and others on the Nixon NSC, were accurate in their assessments of Vietnam. Dur and his Reagan NSC colleagues were right to worry that diplomacy was moving too slowly in Lebanon. Haass and Vershbow were correct when they were concerned with how windows of opportunity for action were shrinking in the Gulf and Balkans respectively, just as O'Sullivan was right that things needed to change relatively soon in Iraq.

Yet an impatient NSC staff has a worse track record giving the president answers to what should come next. The NSC staff naturally have opinions and ideas about what can be done when events and war feel out of control, but ideas about what can be done when events and war feel out of control, but the very distance and disengagement that allow' the NSC to be so effective at measuring progress make its ideas less grounded in operational realities and more clouded by the fog of Washington. The NSC, often stridently, wants to do something more, to "go big when wc can," as one recent staffer encouraged his president, to fix a failing policy or win a w r ar, but that is not a strategy, nor does that ambition make the staff the best equipped to figure out the next steps."

With their proposals for a new plan, deployment, or initiative, the staff has made more bad recommendations than good. The Diem coup and the Beirut mission are two examples, and particularly tragic ones at that, of NSC staff recommendations gone awry. The Iraq surge was certainly a courageous decision, but by committing so many troops to that country, the manpower w r as not available for a war in Afghanistan that was falling off track. Even the more successful NSC recommendations for changes in US strategy in the Gulf War and in Bosnia did not end up exactly as planned, in part because even good ideas in war rarely do.

Although presidents bear the ultimate responsibilities for these decisions, the NSC staff played an essential, and increasing, role in the thinking behind each bold move. In conflict after conflict, a more powerful NSC staff has fundamentally altered the American way of war. It is now far less informed by the perspective of the military and the view from the frontlines. It is less patient for progress and more dependent on the clocks in the Executive Office Building and Washington than those in theater. It is far more combative, less able to accept defeat, and more willing to risk a change of course.

And it is characterized by more frequent and counterproductive friction between the civilian and military leaders.

... ... ...

Through it all, as the NSC's voice has grown louder in the nation's war rooms, the staff has transformed how Washington works, and more often does not work. The NSC's fights to change course have had another casualty: the ugly collapse of the common law' that has governed Washington policymaking for more than a generation. The result today is a government that trusts less, fights more, and decides much slower.

National security policy- and decision-making was never supposed to be a fair fight. Eliot Cohen, a civil-military scholar with high-level government experience, has called the give-and-take of the interagency process an "unequal" dialogue -- one in which presidents are entitled to not just make the ultimate decision but also to ask questions, often with the NSC's help, at any time and about any topic.* Everyone else, from the secretaries of state and defense in Washington dow r n to the commanders and ambassadors abroad, has to expect and tolerate such presidential interventions and then carry out his orders.

Even an unfair fight can have rules, however. The NSC common law's kept the peace in Washington for years after Iran-Contra. The restrictions against outright advocacy and outsized operational responsibilities were accepted by those at the White House as well as in the agencies during Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet as many in Washington believed the world grew more interconnected and the national security stakes increased, especially after September 11th, a more powerful NSC has given staffers the opportunity to bend, and occasionally break, the common laws, as they have been expected to and allowed to take on more responsibilities for developing strategies and new r ideas from those in the bureaucracy and military.

... ... ...

...Meanwhile, others, including the anonymous author of the infamous September 2018 New York Times opinion piece, believe government officials who comprise a "steady state" amid Trump's chaotic presidency are "unsung heroes" resisting his worst instincts and overreaches. 13 Thus, it is no surprise that more and more Americans are concerned: a 2018 poll found that 74 percent of Americans feel a group of officials arc able to control government policy without accountability.

In an era when Americans can see on reality television how their fish are caught, meals arc cooked, and businesses are financed, it is strange that few have ever heard the voice of an NSC staffer. The Executive Office Building is not the only building out of reach: most of the government taxpayers' fund is hard, and getting harder, to see. With bigger security blockades, longer waits on declassification, and more severe crackdowns on leaks, it is no wonder some Americans have taken to assuming the worst of their public servants.

The American people need to know the NSC's war stories if for no other reason than each makes clear that there is no organized deep state in Washington. If one existed, there would be little need for the NSC to fight so hard to coordinate the government's various players and parts. However, this history also makes plain that though the United States can overcome bad decisions and survive military disasters, a belief in a deep state is a threat to the NSC and so much more.

... ... ...

Each member of the NSC staff needs to remember that their growing, unaccountable power has helped give evidence to the worries about a deep state. Although no one in Washington gives up influence voluntarily, the staff, even its warriors, need to remember it is not just what they fight for but whether a fight is necessary at all. Shortcuts and squabbles may make sense when every second feels like it counts, but the best public servants do what is necessary for the president even as they protect, for years to come, the health of the institutions and the very democracy in which they serve. As hard as that can be to remember when the clock in the Oval Office is ticking, doing things the right way is even more important than the latest crises, war, or meeting with the president.

... ... ...

... Too many in Washington, including at the Executive Office Building, have forgotten that public service is a privilege that bestows on them great responsibility. Although the NSC has long justified its actions in the name of national security, the means with which its members have pursued that objective have made for a more aggressive American way of war, a more fractious Washington, and more conspiracies about government.

Centuries ago, Plato argued that civilians must hope for warriors who could be trusted to be both "gentle to their own and cruel to their enemies." At a time when many doubt government and those who serve in it, the NSC staff s history demonstrates just what White House warriors arc capable of. The question is for what and for whom they will fight in the years and wars ahead.

... ... ...

The legendary British double agent Kim Philby wrote: "just because a document is a document it has a glamour which tempts the reader to give it more weight than it deserves An hour of a serious discussion with a trustworthy informant is often more valuable than any number of original documents. Of course, it is best to have both."

Alexandra Jones , September 15, 2019

The Untold History of the NSC

A must-read for anyone interested in history or foreign policy. Gans pulls back the curtain on arguably the most powerful yet opaque body in foreign policy decision-making, the National Security Council. Each chapter recounts a different administration -- as told through the work of an NSC staffer. Through these beautifully-written portraits of largely unknown staffers, Gans reveals the chilling, outsized influence of this small, unelected institution on American war and peace. From this perspective, even the policy success stories seem more luck than skill -- leaving readers concerned about the NSC's continued unchecked power.

[Feb 03, 2020] Running the World The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of Americ

Feb 03, 2020 | www.amazon.com

>


Newton Ooi , July 22, 2017

Too much focus on the big names.

When it comes to US foreign policy, the names in the news usually include our President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and a couple big name generals depending on the war. Of course, there are many more people involved, and the entire process is supposed to run through the National Security Council. Hence I bought this book with the intention of learning more about the decision making process from someone who has served in government and dealt with the NSC. The book is a chronological history of the NSC from its inception to the administration of George W. Bush post 9/11. It focuses on the major personalities that have served on the NSC, and how its functioning have changed with each administration under the guidance or negligence of the President. Some Presidents, like Eisenhower, made sure the NSC ran like a well-oiled machine that harnessed the wisdom, skills and opinions of all its members and their agencies. Other Presidents, like Nixon and W. Bush used it essentially as a committee to bottleneck ideas while they worked with their favorites on major decisions. The book does a great job showing how individuals as disparate as Henry Kissinger and Condoleeza Rice have utilized the NSC.

However, what I found lacking in this book is its complete minimization of the role of big corporations in affecting US foreign policy. A quick google search will show that every member of the NSC has sat on the boards of multiple corporations prior to joining the NSC. It is safe to assume that these corporations chose these board members due in large part to their ability to influence US foreign policy. And so the book covers very little in terms of tariffs and economic treaties. The biggest economic item covered by the book are trade sanctions, and even then focuses mainly on the sanctions applied to Iraq after the first Gulf War.

Also lacking in the book was any significant discussion on US efforts in combating the international trade in narcotics, weapons and slaves. Wars are a big issue, but I doubt they take up all the time of the NSC. Looking up the NSC in Wikipedia, one sees that it includes members tasked with fighting America's drug wars; and our drug wars are probably the big ticket item in dealing with Latin America. Yet narcotics, heroine, and cocaine do not even show up in the book's index. Overall, I consider this book an interesting read for those new to foreign policy, but it misses out on a lot.

Jack Lechelt , July 31, 2005
Interesting, important, and poorly edited

Why the rush? There are a surprising number of little mistakes that should have been picked up in the editing process. Granted, the topic is timely and important, but would the world have collapsed if the publishers held on to the book for an extra month for another round of read-throughs? Also, there is just too much writing. Editors should have crossed out a lot of unnecessary stuff.

There are two reasons I point out one factual error I came across. First, it makes me feel smarter. That is less important to everyone else, but it makes me feel good. Second, if I found one error, people who specialize in other areas may have noticed other errors, and those should be pointed out. Anyway, on pages 218-219, Rothkopf describes Reagan's National Security Planning Group (NSPG) as having been "chaired by Bush and [it] ended up dealing with issues like the spate of terrorist attacks and other crises that confronted the administration." The NSPG did indeed deal with important issues, and in some sense it probably dealt with the issues he pointed out, but Rothkopf is confusing the NSPG with the Crisis Management Team, which later became the Special Situations Group, both of which were chaired by VP Bush. The NSPG, however, was more accurately described by Bush's VP chief of staff, Craig Fuller: "The [NSPG] is the most restricted national security council meeting that is called. It is usually confined to the principals, meaning the Secretaries of State, Defense, Vice President, ... the Director of Central Intelligence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the President's Chief of Staff, [the National Security Adviser and deputy NSA] and ... usually the Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury, but it can be expanded depending on the topic." No more than a dozen people usually attended, and only the President and Vice President brought their chiefs of staff (p. 923). There were usually two NSPG meetings per month. The Tower Commission report noted that the NSC meetings were becoming a bit too big for productive discussions among the principals, so the President turned to the NSPG. And from everything I have read, Reagan was at most of the meetings. This is not a major error, but at the same time, the NSPG was an incredibly important component of Reagan Administration foreign/national security policy. Perhaps there are other errors.

One of the funnier errors: the Washington Post Book World review pointed out that the picture on the cover is more likely from a Cabinet meeting. Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor, who is not on the NSC, is clearly visible in the picture. Was it really that difficult to come up with a better, more accurate picture? If people do judge books by the cover, this one has not put its best foot forward.

The good stuff: Rothkopf's description of policy viewpoints is interesting. Rather than the constant chatter about the personal spats between major members of foreign policy (although those are included in the book too), we should hear more about what these people think. This important stuff is shaping the world. Another great aspect of the book is that Rothkopf got an amazing amount of access to the key players through interviews. These are the people who have shaped the world over the past four or so decades. The quotations, although a bit long, are practically a primary source of data for other researchers. Hopefully someday Rothkopf will make his interview transcripts available to other researchers. Great stuff there.

William Podmore , November 1, 2007
Useful, if over-enthusiastic, study of USA's ruling class

David J. Rothkopf was a junior member of the Clinton administration. In this fascinating book, he studies the post-1947 record of the American foreign policy élite, the National Security Council and its staff, about 200 people. This exclusive establishment, which he actually calls an `aristocracy', is the part of the US ruling class that runs national policy across Republican and Democrat administrations.

He contrasts 1947 with post-2001, finding `a stunningly different set of conclusions about what to do with American power and prestige'. He supports the multilateralism of NATO, the Marshall Plan, the IMF, the World Bank and the UN, under the slogan of globalisation, and argues against Bush's unilateralism, which puts the USA `above and beyond the influence of global institutions or the rule of law'. He agrees with Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, that terrorism is a tactic not an enemy.

He notes `the debacle in Iraq', yet misunderstands the region completely when he writes, "it is the decay of Middle Eastern civilisation that is the threat to us." Not the US state's unpopular alliances with the Saudi and Israeli states then!

He describes the USA's whole political system as suffering "an irresponsible separation between the will of the majority of America and the will of the representatives of the American people." But if the people's supposed representatives do not represent them, how can this be a democracy?

Finally, Rothkopf warns, "The real strategic threats come from those who would offer an alternative to our leadership." These "will argue that our system has exacerbated rather than resolved basic problems of inequity in the world." With some justice, since, as he admits, "the majority of the world's population are today effectively disenfranchised from reaping the benefit of the world we have been leading." If this US leadership, exercised through the institutions which he so admires, has not benefited the majority of the world's people, what good is it?

Izaak VanGaalen , September 18, 2005
Global Crisis Management

David J Rothkopf has written a valuable book about a government agency that one hears very little about in the daily news. "Running the World" is an insider's account of the inner workings of the National Security Council (created by the National Security Act of 1947). The National Security Council is an executive body within the White House that includes cabinet level officials involved in diplomacy and defense. Rothkopf's account is about the key players that were responsible for the successes and failures of the National Security Council's management of America's foreign policy since the end of World War II.

Rothkopf's insider credentials are impressive: he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was under-secretary of commerce during the Clinton Administration, he served as managing director of Kissinger and Associates, he also served as Chairman and CEO of Intellibridge, and he is currently visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

There is an interesting section in this book called "Two Degrees of Henry Kissinger," which shows that the 13 national security advisors (NSAs) that followed Kissinger have either worked with him, for him, or worked with or for one of the members of his staff.

After Nixon was elected President, Kissinger was appointed NSA. Kissinger not only assembled one of the most talented teams in the history of the NSC (Lawrence Eagleberger, Anthony Lake, Alexander Haig, Brent Scowcroft, and Robert MacFarlane), he also took control, either directly or indirectly, of all the interagency policy groups. Kissinger was Nixon's entire inner circle in matters of foreign policy.

When the Watergate scandel broke, Nixon became distracted and virtually left Kissinger to his own devices. As a result, Kissinger may have been the most powerful non-elected official in American history and certainly every NSA since has operated in his shadow.

The title of this book "Running the World" is more than a little pretentious. As has been noted by other reviewers, it is an account of the old boys network written by an old boy and tends toward self-importance. A more accurate and humble title would have been the one I chose for this review: "Global Crisis Management." The NSC does not run the world. The NSC, which consists of the senior cabinet members and White House staff members, is more than likely trying to control crises as they occur than trying to direct the course of events. And as Rothkopf makes clear, the response to a given crisis depends very much on the personalities of the members who are in the president's favor at the given moment.

Rothkopf is very critical of the current Bush Administration's track record. He argues that they have lost sight of the liberal internationalist values set forth by Truman at the end of World War II when the council was founded. At the time, the US enjoyed a position of power that was not unlike its position after 9/11. The Truman Adminsistration established international institutions that deferred America's power to the good of international system. The Bush Administration, under the sway of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other neoconservatives, decided to reassert American national interest through the use of military force, the consequences of which we are still suffering today.

Critics of this book have called Rothkopf an apologist for the Clinton administration. Far from it, Rothkopf has enumerated the foreign policy disasters that occured during Clinton's watch: namely, the failures in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Rwanda. The picture that Rothkopf paints of the NSC is not one that runs the world but rather one that tries to maintain the status quo in the face of an ever-changing world.

J. Adams , July 24, 2005
A report from a blind fly on the wall

I read the reviews of this book and made the mistake of buying it based upon them, but this is really a very superficial book. From a historical point of view, it shows us how the NSC was created by Truman, primarily because he was so out of the loop while Vice President that he didn't even know about the Manhattan project to build the atom bomb, but as the book moves into more current events, political slants take over the turn the book into a very one-sided view of the US options available in today's world. Rothkopf is a "pragmatist" in the Kissinger mold, which I guess he would have to be since he ran Kissinger's shop, but his opinions really show very little depth, and really no historical perspective of options available in dealing with bin Laden and terrorism back when it could have been much more easily dealt with. There are some insights about how Clinton seldom attended NSC meetings when tectonic changes were taking place as he dallied with Monica, but this book isn't really a very sophisticated examination of the world today and how we got here, other than to criticize W Bush for the state of the world today without looking at the limited hand he was dealt by his predecessors when it came to Islamic terrorism. I would have given the book one star but the book's history of the NSC gives it some redeeming social value, but the last half of the book is really pretty worthless because it is so unbalanced and political.

[Feb 02, 2020] The most interesting issue is the role of NSC in this impeachment story

Highly recommended!
Edited for clarity
Notable quotes:
"... Currently they can wrap themselves into constitution defenders flag and be pretty safe from any criticism. Because charges that Schiff brought to the floor are bogus, and probably were created out of thin air by NSC plotters. Senators on both sides understand this, creating a classic Kabuki theater environment. ..."
"... In any case, it is clear that Trump is just a marionette of more powerful forces behind him, and his impeachment does not means much, if those forces are untouchable. Impeachment Kabuki theatre is an attempt of restoration of NSC (read neocons) favored foreign policy from which Trump slightly deviated. ..."
Feb 02, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

likbez , February 2, 2020 10:40 pm

Far more interesting issue is the role of NSC in this impeachment story.

Potential whistleblower (actually CIA informant) was from NSC as were Fiona Hill, Alex Vindman and a couple of other major Ukrainegate players.

In this NSC coup d'état against the President or what ? About earlier role of NSC see

https://off-guardian.org/2020/02/01/secret-wars-forgotten-betrayals-global-tyranny-who-is-really-in-charge-of-the-u-s-military/

As for "evil republican senators", they would be viewed as evil by electorate if and only only if actual crimes of Trump regime like Douma false flag, Suleimani assassination (actually here Trump was set up By Bolton and Pompeo) and other were discussed.

Currently they can wrap themselves into constitution defenders flag and be pretty safe from any criticism. Because charges that Schiff brought to the floor are bogus, and probably were created out of thin air by NSC plotters. Senators on both sides understand this, creating a classic Kabuki theater environment.

Both sides are afraid to discuss real issues, real Trump regime crimes.

Schiff proved to be patently inept in this whole story even taking into account limitations put by Kabuki theater on him, and in case of Trump acquittal *which is "highly probable" borrowing May government terminology in Skripals case :-) to resign would be a honest thing for him to do.

Assuming that he has some honestly left. Which is highly doubtful with statements like:

"The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there so we don't have to fight Russia here."

And

"More than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies. 15,000."

Actually it was the USA interference in Ukraine (aka Nulandgate) that killed 15K Ukrainians, mainly Donbas residents and badly trained recruits of the Ukrainian army sent to fight them, as well as volunteers of paramilitary "death squads" like Asov battalion financed by oligarch Igor Kolomyskiy

In any case, it is clear that Trump is just a marionette of more powerful forces behind him, and his impeachment does not means much, if those forces are untouchable. Impeachment Kabuki theatre is an attempt of restoration of NSC (read neocons) favored foreign policy from which Trump slightly deviated.

[Feb 02, 2020] Secret Wars, Forgotten Betrayals, Global Tyranny. Who Is Really in Charge of the U.S. Military by Cynthia Chung

Notable quotes:
"... One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously existing foreign intelligence bureau that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared over. The OSS would be replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence purge and the internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows. ..."
"... In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National Security Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended function was to serve as the President's principal arm for coordinating national security, foreign policies and policies among various government agencies. ..."
"... What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence bureau with the military, and that the foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the President, as we will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC's policies. ..."
"... Kennedy would inherit the CIA secret operation against Cuba, which Prouty confirms in his book, was quietly upgraded by the CIA from the Eisenhower administration's March 1960 approval of a modest Cuban-exile support program (which included small air drop and over-the-beach operations) to a 3,000 man invasion brigade just before Kennedy entered office. ..."
"... Humiliatingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was part of formulating the conclusion that the Bay of Pigs op was a failure because of the CIA's intervention into the President's orders. This allowed for Kennedy to issue the National Security Action Memorandum #55 on June 28th, 1961, which began the process of changing the responsibility from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ..."
"... As Prouty states, "When fully implemented, as Kennedy had planned, after his reelection in 1964, it would have taken the CIA out of the covert operation business. This proved to be one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy's coffin." ..."
"... Rumours started to abound that JFK had cut a secret deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev, which was that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Criticisms of JFK being soft on communism began to stir. ..."
"... This was to be the final nail in Kennedy's coffin. ..."
"... Kennedy was brutally shot down only one month later, on Nov, 22nd 1963. His death should not just be seen as a tragic loss but, more importantly, it should be recognised for the successful military coup d'état that it was and is. The CIA showed what lengths it was ready to go to if a President stood in its way. (For more information on this coup refer to District Attorney of New Orleans at the time, Jim Garrison's book . And the excellently researched Oliver Stone movie "JFK") ..."
"... Scattered black ops wars continued, but the next large scale-never ending war that would involve the world would begin full force on Sept 11, 2001 under the laughable title War on Terror, which is basically another Iron Curtain, a continuation of a 74 year Cold War. A war that is not meant to end until the ultimate regime changes are accomplished and the world sees the toppling of Russia and China. ..."
"... Iraq was destined for invasion long before the vague Gulf War of 1990 and even before Saddam Hussein was being backed by the Americans in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979. ..."
"... Former CIA Deputy Director (2010-2013) Michael Morell, who was supporting Hillary Clinton during the presidential election campaign and vehemently against the election of Trump, whom he claimed was being manipulated by Putin, said in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly to 'pay the price' . ..."
"... I would also not be quick to dismiss the timely release, or better described as leaked, draft letter from the US Command in Baghdad to the Iraqi government that suggests a removal of American forces from the country. Its timing certainly puts the President in a compromised situation. Though the decision to keep the American forces within Iraq or not is hardly a simple matter that the President alone can determine. In fact there is no reason why, after reviewing the case of JFK, we should think such a thing. ..."
"... Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently , but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating: ..."
"... "Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979." Ahem. Somehow I doubt the CIA had to do with THAT regime change 🙂 Try 1953? ..."
"... Reminiscent of Karl Rove's :"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and thats how things will sort out." ..."
"... It should be noted, that in 1963 shortly following JFK's assassination Truman stated in the Washington Post regret about establishing the CIA: "I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency . For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas." ..."
"... The entire bureaucratic leadership of the Nazis. And it proved to be a smashing success – transforming the U.S. into the fourth Reich. ..."
"... You see the same price gouging in the drug and insurance monopolies. A gigantic slush fund to buy foreign and domestic politicians and journalists like so many street corner whores. ..."
"... There is also a $100 billion "Intelligence" empire. ..."
"... That is why Oceania will always be at war with Eastasia, and why that war will never be won. Wars are not intended to be won, just to carry on for ever, making more and more money and providing more and more opportunities for graft for the people who matter. Weapons are not intended to work, just to make money. ..."
"... That's why flying turkeys like the F22 and F35 are produced. Like the cargo planes full of pallets of shrink wrapped $100 bills that were flown into Iraq that promptly disappeared. ..."
"... But JFK was not shot down like a dog in broad daylight with millions of people watching because he challenged these interests. It was because he was trying to stop the nuclear weapons programme of the Zionist Regime. That was what cost him his life. ..."
"... JFK also wanted to end the control of the US economy of the Federal Reserve, a coalition of private banks, nearly all controlled by Jewish interests. He really wanted to be hit, that fella. ..."
Feb 01, 2020 | off-guardian.org

There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully unfold."
William Shakespeare

Once again we find ourselves in a situation of crisis, where the entire world holds its breath all at once and can only wait to see whether this volatile black cloud floating amongst us will breakout into a thunderstorm of nuclear war or harmlessly pass us by.

The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man. It is only normal then, that during such times of crisis, we find ourselves trying to analyze and predict the thoughts and motives of just this one person.

The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a true hero for his fellow countrymen and undeniably an essential key figure in combating terrorism in Southwest Asia, was a terrible crime, an abhorrently repugnant provocation. It was meant to cause an apoplectic fervour, it was meant to make us who desire peace, lose our minds in indignation. And therefore, that is exactly what we should not do.

In order to assess such situations, we cannot lose sight of the whole picture, and righteous indignation, unfortunately, causes the opposite to occur. Our focus becomes narrower and narrower to the point where we can only see or react moment to moment with what is right in front of our face. We are reduced to an obsession of twitter feeds, news blips and the doublespeak of 'official government statements'.

Thus, before we may find firm ground to stand on regarding the situation of today, we must first have an understanding as to what caused the United States to enter into an endless campaign of regime-change warfare after WWII, or as former Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Col. Prouty stated, three decades of the Indochina war.

An Internal Shifting of Chess Pieces in the Shadows

It is interesting timing that on Sept 2, 1945, the very day that WWII ended, Ho Chi Minh would announce the independence of Indochina. That on the very day that one of the most destructive wars to ever occur in history ended, another long war was declared at its doorstep.

Churchill would announce his "Iron Curtain" against communism on March 5th, 1946, and there was no turning back at that point. The world had a mere 6 months to recover before it would be embroiled in another terrible war, except for the French, who would go to war against the Viet Minh opponents in French Indochina only days after WWII was over.

In a previous paper I wrote titled "On Churchill's Sinews of Peace" , I went over a major re-organisation of the American government and its foreign intelligence bureau on the onset of Truman's de facto presidency.

Recall that there was an attempted military coup d'état, which was exposed by General Butler in a public address in 1933 , against the Presidency of FDR who was only inaugurated that year. One could say that there was a very marked disapproval from shadowy corners for how Roosevelt would organise the government.

One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously existing foreign intelligence bureau that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared over. The OSS would be replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence purge and the internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows.

In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National Security Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended function was to serve as the President's principal arm for coordinating national security, foreign policies and policies among various government agencies.

In Col. Prouty's book he states:

In 1955, I was designated to establish an office of special operations in compliance with National Security Council (NSC) Directive #5412 of March 15, 1954. This NSC Directive for the first time in the history of the United States defined covert operations and assigned that role to the Central Intelligence Agency to perform such missions, provided they had been directed to do so by the NSC , and further ordered active-duty Armed Forces personnel to avoid such operations. At the same time, the Armed Forces were directed to "provide the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA" as an official function .

What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence bureau with the military, and that the foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the President, as we will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC's policies.

An Inheritance of Secret Wars

There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare."
Sun Tzu

On January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States. Along with inheriting the responsibility of the welfare of the country and its people, he was to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.

JFK was disliked from the onset by the CIA and certain corridors of the Pentagon, they knew where he stood on foreign matters and that it would be in direct conflict for what they had been working towards for nearly 15 years.

Kennedy would inherit the CIA secret operation against Cuba, which Prouty confirms in his book, was quietly upgraded by the CIA from the Eisenhower administration's March 1960 approval of a modest Cuban-exile support program (which included small air drop and over-the-beach operations) to a 3,000 man invasion brigade just before Kennedy entered office.

This was a massive change in plans that was determined by neither President Eisenhower, who warned at the end of his term of the military industrial complex as a loose cannon, nor President Kennedy, but rather the foreign intelligence bureau who has never been subject to election or judgement by the people.

It shows the level of hostility that Kennedy encountered as soon as he entered office, and the limitations of a President's power when he does not hold support from these intelligence and military quarters.

Within three months into JFK's term, Operation Bay of Pigs (April 17th to 20th 1961) was scheduled. As the popular revisionist history goes; JFK refused to provide air cover for the exiled Cuban brigade and the land invasion was a calamitous failure and a decisive victory for Castro's Cuba.

It was indeed an embarrassment for President Kennedy who had to take public responsibility for the failure, however, it was not an embarrassment because of his questionable competence as a leader. It was an embarrassment because, had he not taken public responsibility, he would have had to explain the real reason why it failed.

That the CIA and military were against him and that he did not have control over them.

If Kennedy were to admit such a thing, he would have lost all credibility as a President in his own country and internationally, and would have put the people of the United States in immediate danger amidst a Cold War.

What really occurred was that there was a cancellation of the essential pre-dawn airstrike, by the Cuban Exile Brigade bombers from Nicaragua, to destroy Castro's last three combat jets. This airstrike was ordered by Kennedy himself.

Kennedy was always against an American invasion of Cuba, and striking Castro's last jets by the Cuban Exile Brigade would have limited Castro's threat, without the U.S. directly supporting a regime change operation within Cuba. This went fully against the CIA's plan for Cuba.

Kennedy's order for the airstrike on Castro's jets would be cancelled by Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, four hours before the Exile Brigade's B-26s were to take off from Nicaragua, Kennedy was not brought into this decision.

In addition, the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, the man in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation was unbelievably out of the country on the day of the landings.

Col. Prouty, who was Chief of Special Operations during this time, elaborates on this situation:

Everyone connected with the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion knew that the policy dictated by NSC 5412, positively prohibited the utilization of active-duty military personnel in covert operations. At no time was an "air cover" position written into the official invasion plan The "air cover" story that has been created is incorrect."

As a result, JFK who well understood the source of this fiasco, set up a Cuban Study Group the day after and charged it with the responsibility of determining the cause for the failure of the operation. The study group, consisting of Allen Dulles, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Adm. Arleigh Burke and Attorney General Robert Kennedy (the only member JFK could trust), concluded that the failure was due to Bundy's telephone call to General Cabell (who was also CIA Deputy Director) that cancelled the President's air strike order.

Kennedy had them.

Humiliatingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was part of formulating the conclusion that the Bay of Pigs op was a failure because of the CIA's intervention into the President's orders. This allowed for Kennedy to issue the National Security Action Memorandum #55 on June 28th, 1961, which began the process of changing the responsibility from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As Prouty states, "When fully implemented, as Kennedy had planned, after his reelection in 1964, it would have taken the CIA out of the covert operation business. This proved to be one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy's coffin."

If this was not enough of a slap in the face to the CIA, Kennedy forced the resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles, CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr. and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell.

In Oct 1962, Kennedy was informed that Cuba had offensive Soviet missiles 90 miles from American shores. Soviet ships with more missiles were on their way towards Cuba but ended up turning around last minute.

Rumours started to abound that JFK had cut a secret deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev, which was that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Criticisms of JFK being soft on communism began to stir.

NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy, was released on Oct 11th, 1963, and outlined a policy decision "to withdraw 1,000 military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963" and further stated that "It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel [including the CIA and military] by 1965." The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY '65. Kennedy was winning the game and the American people.

This was to be the final nail in Kennedy's coffin.

Kennedy was brutally shot down only one month later, on Nov, 22nd 1963. His death should not just be seen as a tragic loss but, more importantly, it should be recognised for the successful military coup d'état that it was and is. The CIA showed what lengths it was ready to go to if a President stood in its way. (For more information on this coup refer to District Attorney of New Orleans at the time, Jim Garrison's book . And the excellently researched Oliver Stone movie "JFK")

Through the Looking Glass

On Nov. 26th 1963, a full four days after Kennedy's murder, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of Kennedy's policy under #263. And on March 4th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.

The Vietnam War, or more accurately the Indochina War, would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy's death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans.

Scattered black ops wars continued, but the next large scale-never ending war that would involve the world would begin full force on Sept 11, 2001 under the laughable title War on Terror, which is basically another Iron Curtain, a continuation of a 74 year Cold War. A war that is not meant to end until the ultimate regime changes are accomplished and the world sees the toppling of Russia and China.

Iraq was destined for invasion long before the vague Gulf War of 1990 and even before Saddam Hussein was being backed by the Americans in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979.

It had been understood far in advance by the CIA and US military that the toppling of sovereignty in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran needed to occur before Russia and China could be taken over. Such war tactics were formulaic after 3 decades of counterinsurgency against the CIA fueled "communist-insurgency" of Indochina.

This is how today's terrorist-inspired insurgency functions, as a perfect CIA formula for an endless bloodbath.

Former CIA Deputy Director (2010-2013) Michael Morell, who was supporting Hillary Clinton during the presidential election campaign and vehemently against the election of Trump, whom he claimed was being manipulated by Putin, said in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly to 'pay the price' .

Therefore, when a drone stroke occurs assassinating an Iranian Maj. Gen., even if the U.S. President takes onus on it, I would not be so quick as to believe that that is necessarily the case, or the full story.

Just as I would not take the statements of President Rouhani accepting responsibility for the Iranian military shooting down 'by accident' the Boeing 737-800 plane which contained 176 civilians, who were mostly Iranian, as something that can be relegated to criminal negligence, but rather that there is very likely something else going on here.

I would also not be quick to dismiss the timely release, or better described as leaked, draft letter from the US Command in Baghdad to the Iraqi government that suggests a removal of American forces from the country. Its timing certainly puts the President in a compromised situation. Though the decision to keep the American forces within Iraq or not is hardly a simple matter that the President alone can determine. In fact there is no reason why, after reviewing the case of JFK, we should think such a thing.

One could speculate that the President was set up, with the official designation of the IRGC as "terrorist" occurring in April 2019 by the US State Department, a decision that was strongly supported by both Bolton and Pompeo, who were both members of the NSC at the time.

This made it legal for a US military drone strike to occur against Soleimani under the 2001 AUMF, where the US military can attack any armed group deemed to be a terrorist threat. Both Bolton and Pompeo made no secret that they were overjoyed by Soleimani's assassination and Bolton went so far as to tweet "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran." Bolton has also made it no secret that he is eager to testify against Trump in his possible impeachment trial.

Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently , but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating:

I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. (long pause) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."

Thus, it should be no surprise to anyone in the world at this point in history, that the CIA holds no allegiance to any country. And it can be hardly expected that a President, who is actively under attack from all sides within his own country, is in a position to hold the CIA accountable for its past and future crimes.

Originally published at Strategic Culture

Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada).


Gerda Halvorsen ,

"Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979." Ahem. Somehow I doubt the CIA had to do with THAT regime change 🙂 Try 1953?

Doctortrinate ,

Is just another work of Theatre ..for all the world, a Staged play – along with legion of dramatic action to arouse spectator participation – its a merge inducing show – and each time the curtain falls, the crowd screams "more" so, extending its run.

Hugh O'Neill ,

Reminiscent of Karl Rove's :"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and thats how things will sort out."

George Cornell ,

Ah yes, the Roveing Lunatic.

Doctortrinate ,

" We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do "

Suskind/Rove.

and so it continues .. 🙂

Vierotchka ,

The actual quote:

The aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Charlotte Russe ,

It should be noted, that in 1963 shortly following JFK's assassination Truman stated in the Washington Post regret about establishing the CIA: "I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency . For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."

Well, NO president after Kennedy tried to put that Genie back in the bottle. In fact, the Genie has taken total control and has mushroomed into thousands of bottles planted throughout the planet hatching multiple schemes designed to undermine and overthrow numerous nation-states.

What many don't know is that "decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants (this was known as Operation Paperclip) ..At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet "assets," declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis' intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called "moral lapses" in their service to the Third Reich. The CIA hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of minor war crimes.

And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis' massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania, according to a government official."

Is there no wonder, the CIA is so proficient at torture techniques, they learned from the very best–the Nazis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html

Richard Le sarc ,

They 'hired' Klaus Barbie, a in no ways 'minor' war criminal. The US took over the surviving Nazi terror apparatus, lock, stock and barrel.

nottheonly1 ,

The entire bureaucratic leadership of the Nazis. And it proved to be a smashing success – transforming the U.S. into the fourth Reich.

paul ,

You just have to look at existing realities. There is a military budget of $1,134 billion, greater than the rest of the world combined. This is the true figure, not the bogus official one.

There is a secret black budget of over $50 billion, with zero accountability to anyone.

$21 trillion, $21,000,000,000,000, has officially "gone missing" from the military budget. This sum is nearly as large as the official National Debt.

This represents a cornucopia of waste, graft, theft, corruption, and wholesale looting on an unimaginable scale.

A single screw can cost $500. You see the same price gouging in the drug and insurance monopolies. A gigantic slush fund to buy foreign and domestic politicians and journalists like so many street corner whores.

There is also a $100 billion "Intelligence" empire.

That is why Oceania will always be at war with Eastasia, and why that war will never be won. Wars are not intended to be won, just to carry on for ever, making more and more money and providing more and more opportunities for graft for the people who matter. Weapons are not intended to work, just to make money.

That's why flying turkeys like the F22 and F35 are produced. Like the cargo planes full of pallets of shrink wrapped $100 bills that were flown into Iraq that promptly disappeared.

Even with the best will in the world, even if all the people involved were persons of outstanding integrity, it would probably simply be impossible to control this vast sprawling octopus of mega arms corporations and competing military and spook and administrative fiefdoms. So you get different players and actors who are a law unto themselves, beyond any real control, pursuing their own agendas with little regard for their own government and its policies, and often blatantly opposing it.

Obama and Trump tried to make limited agreements with Russia over what was happening on the ground in Syria. These agreements were deliberately sabotaged by people like Ashton Carter in less than 24 hours. With complete impunity. Sensitive negotiations with North Korea were deliberately sabotaged by Bolton.

A great deal of the economic and military power of America is dissipated in this way. The same destructive turf wars between competing agencies were a characteristic feature of the Third Reich. A model of waste, corruption, muddle and inefficiency.

But JFK was not shot down like a dog in broad daylight with millions of people watching because he challenged these interests. It was because he was trying to stop the nuclear weapons programme of the Zionist Regime. That was what cost him his life.

Richard Le Sarc ,

JFK also wanted to end the control of the US economy of the Federal Reserve, a coalition of private banks, nearly all controlled by Jewish interests. He really wanted to be hit, that fella.

paul ,

Yes, any goys who threaten Chosen interests would do well to steer clear of grassy knolls.
JFK, Bernadotte, Arafat, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Chavez, Soleimani, it's all the same story.
Corbyn could well have gone the same way if rigging the election against him had failed.

Antonym ,

Nice example of Richard Le Sarc's non-sensical anti Israelism: Here he writes that Lower Manhattan is run by Jews, while scrolling one page up he is telling that the US (=Fairfax county) took over the Nazi terror apparatus. Some combination!

Both places are run mainly by ex-Christian/ secular Americans, with only money/power as their God.

Richard Le Sarc ,

Leading Zionassties like Jabotinsky ('We'll kill anyone who gets in our way')were outright fascists, an, in his case, admirers of Mussolini. Yitzhak Shamir (I have an image of Shamir in my mind when I read your contributions)offered Jewish 'fighters' to work with the Nazis. German Zionists actively worked with the Nazis to transfer Jews and German investment to Palestine. And the similarities hardly end there. The Zionassties and the German Nazis both see themselves as Herrenvolk. They both desire lebensraum for their people, at the expense of Slavic or Palestinian and other Arab untermenschen. Both hold International Law in open contempt. However, the Zionassties have far more political power than the German Nazis ever dreamed of. And the German Nazis never had nukes, or only very primitive ones.

Harry Stotle ,

"The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that THERE IS NO SECRET. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world, for which end it is prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War II the United States has:
1) Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected;
2) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries;
3) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders;
4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries;
5) Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries."
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

Brian Harry ,

The older I get, the more I believe that it was the USA/CIA?MIC who made Australia's Prime Minister, Harold Holt, "disappear" in heavy surf off a Victorian beach on 17th, December 1967. His body was never found. I think he was getting "cold feet" about the "American War" in Vietnam as it was getting going, and possibly wanted 'out'.
It was said that a Chinese submarine took him, but, I don't think submarines are designed to operate in relatively shallow water and heavy surf.
Another Australian PM(Gough Whitlam) was "removed" in a Coup in 1975 which was heavily influenced by the British and American secret services

Richard Le Sarc ,

And Kevin Rudd was offed by a gang of hard Right Labor rats, led by US 'protected source' (as outlined in the Wikileaks from Manning)Bill Shorten. Principal among Rudd's crimes was a lack of enthusiasm for the anti-China campaign (his successor, the Clinton-loving Julia Gillard, was very happy to join the Crusade)and changes to Australia's votes re. Occupied Palestine in the UN. And he expelled a MOSSAD agent from the Israeli 'Embassy', after the MOSSAD stole Australian passport identities for operations like the ritual killing of a Hamas operative in Dubai. They had done it before, and 'promised' not to do it again. Rudd was advised by our 'intelligence', stooges of the USA one and all, to do this, which I suspect was a set-up to mobilise the local Sabbat Goyim.

Binra ,

Who is in control is the idea of Notional Security within a world of 'Threat' that is pre-emptively struck before it can speak – and analysed and engineered in all it is, does or says, for assets, allies, ammunition and narrative reinforcement. (Possession and control as marketising and weaponising – as the drive rising from fear of pain of loss).

Insanity is given 'control' by the fear-threat of an unowned projected mind of intention. The devil is cast out in illusion that is then underpinned by shadow forces that operate 'negatively' as the illusion of victory in subjugation or eradication of evils – that simply change form within a limiting and limited narrative account. This short term override has become set as our long term default consciousness and given allegiance and identity as our source of self-protection.

Imagination is Creative – and fear-framed imagination is the attempt to control an 'evil' imagination CAST OUTSIDE a notional self exceptionalism.

There is a pattern here that CAN be recognised but that the invested identity under fear of pain of loss does NOT WANT to allow and so refuses and includes the revealing of heart-felt truth as THREAT to established or surviving order – hence its association and demonisation with fear, treachery, heresy and evil power that must be denied Voice at ANY cost – because 'survival' depends on NOT hearing the Voice for truth – when survival is equated with separated or split minds – set apart from the living and over them – while struggling within a hateful world that fails the judging imagination of a private self-gratification.

Fascination with evil and the 'dynamic' of conflict is the willing investment of identity in its frame – as if THIS TIME – a meaningful result will follow from insane premises. And THIS TIME is repeated over and over – through millennia.

The 'dynamic' of conflict is the device by which Peace or Wholeness of being is denied awareness. A polarised play of shifting mutually exclusive and contradictory 'meanings' as a 'doublethink' by which to COVER over lack of substance and SEEM to be in control. Reactive resistance and opposition provides 'proof' or reinforcement to the narrative frame of the control. Such is the manipulative power struggle for dominance over the other' subjection or loss.

A world of sock puppets enacts the script given them.
The living dead willingly give themselves to the specialness that excepts them from feared lack and loss of validity as the claim to moral outrage or alignment in compliance with its dictate.

The realm of a phishing ruse is that of a mis-taken identity. At this level a simple error can set in motion the most complex deceit. Its signature is in the pride or self-inflation that sets up the 'fall' – and the fool.

Problems are set in forms that persist through apparent resolving. To truly resolve, heal or undo a problem, we have to go upstream to the level in which it was set up as a conflict-block – perhaps as an unseen consequence of a false sense of possession or attempt to control. At some point there will be no other option BUT to yield to truth – because there is a limit to our tolerance for pain of conflict, protected and worshipped as power over Life, and sustained as a bubble reality of exclusive and inverted 'meanings' while Infinity is all about you.

If a mistaken identity is the 'stealing of the mind of the king, and the realm and all it oversees, then the 'Naked Emperor' story is speaking to your ongoing and persistent loss of Sovereign will to a fear of being exposed invalid, revealed as without substance, and utterly undone of not only your self-presentations – but your right to be. IN the story it was visiting courtiers who insinuated a sense of lack in the Emperor's thought to then offer the means to cover over it with special and impressive presentation – as a masking that demanded sacrifice of truth in order to seem to be real.

This inversion operates from lack-based thinking that splits or disconnects from currently felt and shared presence to seek OUTSIDE itself for what it's thought frames it in being denied or deprived of.

How does one deal with a dissociated madman massively armed and beset with fears, grievance, betrayal, and a deep sense of being cornered with no where else to go?
This is our human predicament at this time.
For every instance of its manifestation will be a fear-framed narrative of struggle in ancient hate.

Willingness to open to that we may be wrong, is the release of the assertion of belief as 'knowing' and the opportunity to re-evaluate the belief in the light of a current relational honesty. 'Acceptance of 'not knowing' is the condition in which an innocence of being spontaneously moves us to recognise and release error from its presenting as true.

A false idea of power is being played out as a world of the corruption of the true.

I met this on a random find for a search yesterday:

FIRST RAY:

Pure qualities:
Traditionally as the ray of power and will, yet from a deeper understanding the first ray represents the creative drive. This is the desire for self-expression, a willingness to experiment, even when the outcome of the experiment cannot be known ahead of time. Also a willingness to flow with life and learn from every experience. The first ray gives rise to the sense that everything matters, that life is exciting and that the individual truly can make a positive difference. The first ray is also the key to your willingness to work for raising the whole, instead of raising only yourself.

Perversions:
The perversion of the creative will is a fear of the unknown, which is expressed as an ability to abuse power in order to control one's circumstances, including other people. There is a fear of engaging in activities where the outcome cannot be predicted or guaranteed, which obviously stifles creativity. People with perverted first ray qualities are often engaged in a variety of power games with other people, all based on the desire to control the outcome. This is an attempt to quell the very life force itself, which always points towards self-transcendence, and instead protect the separate self and what it thinks it can own in this world. This can lead to a sense of ownership over other people, which is one of the major sources of conflict on this planet. In milder cases, people have a fear of being creative and a sense of powerlessness, feeling that nothing really matters and that an individual cannot make a difference -- thus, why even bother trying.

From
http://www.ascendedmasteranswers.com/teachings/676-an-overview-of-the-seven-rays
(I was checking a reminder on the seven primary qualities of being).
The idea of a pure intent and it corrupted or perverted distortion is real to me.

I also like the pages opening three para:

Everything you do is done with the energy of one or several of the spiritual rays. The entire material world is made from the seven rays.
• Every limitation you face is created out of a perversion of one or more of the seven spiritual rays.
• The ONLY way to transcend a given limitation is to free yourself from a): the belief that created the limitation and b): the low-frequency energy that has been generated.
• The ONLY way to transform the low-frequency energy that is created by perverting a given ray is to invoke the pure energy of that ray. Any ray is the anti-dote to the perverted energy from that ray.

George Cornell ,

Pompeo's epic statement "we lied we cheated we stole" will be be an American catchphrase or hashtag for the ages.
In most of the world it would be a confession. In the US it is a boast.

wardropper ,

And after a short while it will no longer be considered to be worth a second thought.
Came, saw, conquered . . . might as well add lied, cheated, stole
Morality is stone dead in Washington. Might as well face it, then perhaps a serious search for ways of bringing it back to life can begin.

Richard Le Sarc ,

Lying is now the lingua franca of all Western kakistocracies. Here in Australia, not long ago, to be caught lying ended a political career. Now it is ubiquitous, inescapable and attended by a smug arrogance that says, 'You can do NOTHING about my personal and group moral insanity. WE have the power, and we will use it ANY way we, and our Masters in Washington and Tel Aviv wish to!' It is best and most suicidally seen in this denialist regime's utter contempt for science and facts, as the country alternatively burns down, or is pummeled by giant hail-stones and violent tempests, or inundated by record, unprecedented, deluges.

George Cornell ,

Sad but true

Antonym ,

Hear, hear!

An expert on lying opens his mouth again, and again, and again, and again, ..

lundiel ,

Very interesting article.

Hugh O'Neill ,

"Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently, but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating: I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole".

Cynthia. The "unknown conference" you refer to was an address to Texas A&M University, which had former CIA director Robert Gates as President. Another former CIA spook teaches espionage for wannabe spooks. These are scoundrel patriots, devoid of any moral compass, self awareness or intelligence. Academics need not apply but liars, thieves, cheats, torturers and assassins are welcome.

The CIA has a stranglehold upon the American psyche. The oft quoted Bill Casey "Our work will be complete when everything Americans believe is false" cannot bode well for the glory of the American Experiment. If fat mafiosi thugs like Pompeo and ghouls devoid of any humanity like Bolton, Clinton, Allbright run the show, then the question must be asked: how can such amoral stupidity hold the world to ransom? That the CIA were able to assassinate JFK, MLK, RFK in broad daylight, aided and abetted by the MSM, means their masks have long fallen and demons boldly walk among us.

"Who is in charge of the US Military?" Well it certainly isn't the president. There is no doubt that both the military and the CIA are controlled by unelected faceless money men, which presumably is the MIC that Eisenhower warned about (as did Teddy Roosevelt). Perhaps "skull and bones" is indeed a satanic cult?

Gall ,

Yes the National Security Act sent the nation to hell from purgatory. The most insidious and Orwellian bill ever passed until the oxymoronic "Patriot Act" that is.

George Cornell ,

The West Point oath should be modified to " we will not lie, cheat or steal . as long as we have the CIA, the FBI, the Secretary of State, Congress, the MSM, and the DNC to do it for us. We're not stoopid."

George Mc ,

The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man.

Yes this magical thinking is still pretty widespread – although it's difficult to figure out how many think this way. The MSM project this magical view themselves and thereby project the notion that everyone believes it. Nevertheless, going by the talk I have with others, a lot do swallow this. It's a bit like the world fundamentalist Bible believers live in.

Richard Le Sarc ,

The really salient feature of the murder of Soliemani was the sheer treachery of inviting him to Iraq on a peace mission, only to set him up for butchery. It has the Zionasties blood-soaked paw-prints all over it.

Mike Ellwood ,

Ironically, it's the sort of stunt the Nazi's might have pulled, back in their day.

Brian Harry ,

I have asked the same question on other platforms and no one seems to know the Answer. "Who are the CIA, and the Pentagon answerable to?" They seem to operate outside of the control of the American Government. The CIA seemingly involved in "False Flags" at any point around the globe, like the attack on the American Warship, in the gulf of Tonkin which was the excuse for "The American War, in Vietnam(as it is known to the Vietnamese).
And, of course, the attack on Iraq, because Sadam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, which, to this day have never been found(whilst Hussein was hung) after being found guilty of 'something' by an American "military Court'.
The Pentagon has "lost TRILLIONS of dollars which it cannot account for, and nobody is even investigating the matter, seemingly the American President cannot demand it.
And, of course, the Israeli Airforce attack on the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean Sea in 1967, killing and wounding over 200 sailors, brought NO response whatsoever from the American Military.
President Eisenhower warned the USA(and the World) about the Military Industrial Complex when he left office, and it has been completely ignored.
It seems that Mossad("By deception, we will make War") are heavily involved in the CIA(and the MIC of course), so, WHO is in control of the USA?

Antonym ,

Follow the money. The CIA – military have unlimited funds -> the FED can print unlimited paper dollars -> oil and gas are traded in US dollars only via the New York FED -> Sunni Arab royals own a lot of oil and gas reserves but need body guards -> Anglo- Arab oil dollar protection pact made long ago.
A similar deal was not possible with the USSR before or with Iran now. Canada is the US back garden as is Venezuela.

The Israelis hitched on after 1974 and their job is to be punch ball to distract from the above in exchange for US & hidden Arab royals support.

So who are in charge of the US? A few dozen characters in Fairfax county, lower Manhattan and Riyadh with inputs from Caribbean tax heavens.

Richard Le Sarc ,

Silly stuff. The Zionasties and Judeofascists have taken charge in the USA since they bank-rolled Truman, got away with the USS Liberty atrocity and took over US politics through straight bribery. US Congress critters don't throw themselves to the floor in ecstasies of subservience, as they do for Bibi, when any Saudi potentate addresses the Congress. Come to think of it-has any Saudi ever had that 'honour'? Come to think of it, we'd better go back to 1913 when a coalition of private banks, nearly all Jewish-controlled took over the US economy as the so-called Federal Reserve.

Antonym ,

Israeli sand vs Saudi/ Kuwaiti/ UAE oil & gas: easy choice for American predators.

Richard Le Sarc ,

You keep forgetting the 'Binyamins', Antsie. What would you rather control-an inevitably diminishing pool of hydrocarbons, or the Federal Reserve that creates US dollars, ex nihilo, by the trillions?

Richard Le Sarc ,

The CIA is the US ruling class, armed and in love with murder and destruction. The nature and extent of US global power is the pre-eminent cause of the global Holocaust that is about to consume humanity.

Gal ,

What Fletcher Prouty mentioned in the above article called "Capitalism's Invisible Army".

Norn ,

Here is a list of what the CIA include: The FIVE-EYES branches operate as CIA branches (I think this is undisputable). The FIVE-EYES is a White Christian Fundementalist organisation, and they share their intelligence (surveillance data) with the Israelis. Their Israelis set many actions on the FIVE-EYES agenda.
Murdoch's press operate as a CIA shopfront, and so many of (maybe all of them?) the NGOs scattered around third world countries. Evangelists fully support the CIA agenda. What is the hell South Korean Evangelists doing in Syria as the war rages on?
Many Jihadist groups as well as unhinged Muslim preachers/Imams serve the CIA agenda very very well and receive considerable support from both Saudi Arabia and the US. Remember, the first Jihadist posters were printed by the CIA?. Of course, now the posters would have their brainwashing digital equivalent. And of course, there are full-timers and part-timers.
That's what we know from just reading the news. There are definitely large amounts of unkowns to humble folks. Who else would you think, make part of the list? 50% of politicians in Western so-called Democracies?

Barovsky ,

Outside the government? Are you that naive? This is a fantasy that was promoted as long ago as the time of Iran-Contra; the idea that the CIA is composed of a bunch of 'loose cannons', operating beyond the control of the capitalist state. Whilst it is true that the US security state has different tactics from different elements within it, the objectives are unvarying, achieving hegemony. What differs is the route chosen to achieve that end. Of course, competence (or otherwise) is involved, they're not omnipotent and quite obviously have no long term vision. I think the correct word is HUBRIS that leads them astray. We saw this in Vietnam; we see it Afghanistan; we see it in Syria.

The US empire is no British Empire of yore. When the leaders of the two dominant Imperialist powers of the 19th century, the UK and the US met in the 1890s, they drew up a plan for the next 100 years, that between them they could conquer the world for capitalism using the UK's control of the oceans and the industrial might of the US economy.

Surely the fact that the US is now 'led' by an ignoramus reveals the bankrupt nature of late capitalism?

milosevic ,

WHO is in control of the USA?

here's an informative article about that question:

Joël van der Reijden -- Four Establishment Model of western politics

also have a look at the rest of that website; it's rather eye-opening.

Vierotchka ,

There it this article too:

https://worldbeyondwar.org/shadow-government-controls-america-notes/

Richard Le Sarc ,

The 'Deep State' IS the State. The surface pantomime is a puppet play, perhaps a shadow play, where the real rulers manipulate the political marionettes to do their bidding, NOT that of the 'useless eaters'. Under capitalism politics is the shadow cast on society by Big Business, as John Dewey observed.

MASTER OF UNIVE ,

Every single solitary individual Central Intelligence Agency Civil Servant of the United States of America does indeed hold allegiance to the flag & country I assure you. Not only do they hold allegiance for their country but they most assuredly hold allegiance to their government paycheques too. Without their paycheques they would likely constitute further troubles systemically.

Governments hire skilled personnel in Intel. They are by & large likely normal people that work for bad governance. The CIA is headed by Bloody Gina Haspel. Read Jane Mayer's _The Dark Side_ to get Haspel's role.

Haspel epitomizes allegiance to CIA secrecy.

She is a bot.

MOU

Brian Harry ,

"Every single solitary individual Central Intelligence Agency Civil Servant of the United States of America does indeed hold allegiance to the flag & country I assure you".

You sound very naïve. How can you be so sure. There's no real evidence to back up your assurance. How can the Pentagon be allowed to get away with "losing" TRILLIONS of dollars, and no one's head has rolled? It is a ludicrous situation, and there's no investigation .WTF!

milosevic ,

How can you be so sure.

personal experience?

Authoritative pronouncements of this sort are typical of the disinfo troll personae. Apparently, they're supposed to impress the audience, as evidence of direct knowledge and expertise, to preclude any further doubts or questions about the Official Story.

MASTER OF UNIVE ,

I'm an unemployed Social Assistance recipient and have not had a full time job since 1985. If I had two nickels to scrape together I would not even be on Internet, frankly.
If I worked Intel I would not be on Off-G at all.

I guess life is more interesting for you when you fantasize about losers like moi being Intel operatives but I can assure you that I have never worked government Intel for even one hour in my lifetime.

When I applied to work Intel upon graduation I was flatly denied & turned down back in the late 90s. Today, I would have to get false teeth to be presentable for employment and as a welfare recipient I cannot afford dental work at all.

Stop being an accusatory jerk off, Milosevic.

MOU

George Cornell ,

Well I for one am saddened to hear of your circumstances. Your mind certainly seems sharp.

MASTER OF UNIVE ,

I am a Marxist by circumstance. In CANADA Marxist proponents are marginalized by the state & corporatocracy to the extent of abject poverty.
My professors at university made sure I was blacklisted so that I would never get any money or employment because of my political ethos & cosmology. Instead of promoting my career advancement they chose to excommunicate my membership in the cartel.

Being excluded from the work world & employment by the establishment is the reason why the establishment was taken down in 08. Excluding myself from employment & career opportunity only sufficed to annihilate the USA, EU, & Neoliberalism.

The end game is Zero Sum.

MOU

John Thatcher ,

Or in MoUs case ,a common or garden nutter.

George Cornell ,

He sounds like he is down on his luck and you find it in your heart to call him crazy? Is this what they call subhuman empathy?

milosevic ,

yes, down on his luck, and controlling the world:

Being excluded from the work world & employment by the establishment is the reason why the establishment was taken down in 08. Excluding myself from employment & career opportunity only sufficed to annihilate the USA, EU, & Neoliberalism. -- MASTER OF UNIVE

common nutter, or disinfo persona?

MASTER OF UNIVE ,

I was raised by a Chartered Accountant Civil Servant. The Pentagon accountants were assassinated by their bosses in the Pentagon as a warning to any & all that want to forensically investigate their double sets of books. The GAO-General Accountability Office gets to do the forensic accounting from a distance now.

No investigation is forthcoming because Congress has not initiated discovery yet.

MOU

Fair dinkum ,

'Who's in charge of the US military?' C'mon Cynthia, you know the answer to that. It's the owners, shareholders, directors and CEOs of the MIC. Nothing or no one, will stand in their way.

MASTER OF UNIVE ,

The 08 Great Financial Crisis not only stood in the way of the USA MIC & NATO but it forced BREXIT, TARP, & end to the Fractional Reserve Banking empire of the Western world.

Empiricism destroyed the USA & Capitalism hands down to leave it insolvent, destitute, & poised for global bankruptcy as the third world banana republic it really is helmed by a tin pot dictator like Trump stumping for Deutsche Bank so that his loans don't get called.

MOU

[Feb 02, 2020] JFK tried to put CIA under contol and was killed. NO president after Kennedy tried to put that Genie back in the bottle

Feb 02, 2020 | off-guardian.org

Charlotte Russe ,

It should be noted, that in 1963 shortly following JFK's assassination Truman stated in the Washington Post regret about establishing the CIA: "I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency .
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."

Well, NO president after Kennedy tried to put that Genie back in the bottle. In fact, the Genie has taken total control and has mushroomed into thousands of bottles planted throughout the planet hatching multiple schemes designed to undermine and overthrow numerous nation-states.

What many don't know is that "decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants (this was known as Operation Paperclip) ..At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet "assets," declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis' intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called "moral lapses" in their service to the Third Reich. The CIA hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of minor war crimes.
And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis' massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania, according to a government official."

Is there no wonder, the CIA is so proficient at torture techniques, they learned from the very best–the Nazis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html

[Feb 01, 2020] The Real John Bolton - CounterPunch.org

Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post, ..."
"... Bolton targeted every arms control and disarmament agreement over the past several decades, and played a major role in abrogating two of the most significant ones. As an arms control official in the Bush administration, he lobbied successfully for the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. As soon as he joined the Trump administration, he went after the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was abrogated in 2018. He criticized the Nunn-Lugar agreement in the 1990s, which played a key role in the denuclearization of former Soviet republics, and maligned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well as the Iran nuclear accord. He helped to derail the Biological Weapons Conference in Geneva in 2001. ..."
Feb 01, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org

It isn't enough for the corporate media to praise John Bolton for his timely manuscript that confirms Donald Trump's explicit linkage between military aid to Ukraine and investigations into his political foe Joe Biden. As a result, the media have made John Bolton a "man of principle," according to the Washington Post, and a fearless infighter for the "sovereignty of the United States." Writing in the Post , Kathleen Parker notes that Bolton isn't motivated by the money he will earn from his book (in the neighborhood of $2 million), but that he is far more interested in "saving his legacy." Perhaps this is a good time to examine that legacy.

Bolton, who used student deferments and service in the Maryland National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam, is a classic Chicken Hawk. He supported the Vietnam War and continues to support the war in Iraq. Bolton endorsed preemptive military strikes in North Korea and Iran in recent years, and lobbied for regime change in Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. When George W. Bush declared an "axis of evil" in 2002 consisting of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, Bolton added an equally bizarre axis of Cuba, Libya, and Syria.

When Bolton occupied official positions at the Department of State and the United Nations, he regularly ignored assessments of the intelligence community in order to make false arguments regarding weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Cuba and Syria in order to promote the use of force. When serving as President Bush's Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and Disarmament, Bolton ran his own intelligence program, issuing white papers on WMD that lacked support within the intelligence community. He used his own reports to testify to congressional committees in 2002 in effort to justify the use of military force against Iraq.

Bolton presented misinformation to the Congress on a Cuban biological weapons program. When the Central Intelligence Agency challenged the accuracy of Bolton's information in 2003, he was forced to cancel a similar briefing on Syria. In a briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2005, the former chief of intelligence at the Department of State, Carl Ford, referred to Bolton as a "serial abuser" in his efforts to pressure intelligence analysts. Ford testified that he had "never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton in terms of the way he abuses his power and authority with little people."

The hearings in 2005 included a statement from a whistleblower, a former contractor at the Agency for International Development, who accused Bolton of using inflammatory language and even throwing objects at her. The whistleblower told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff that Bolton made derogatory remarks about her sexual orientation and weight among other improprieties. The critical testimony against Bolton meant that the Republican-led Foreign Relations Committee couldn't confirm his appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. President Bush made Bolton a recess appointment, which he later regretted.

The United Nations, after all, was an ironic assignment for Bolton, who has been a strong critic of the UN and most international organizations throughout his career because they infringed on the "sovereignty of the United States." In 1994, he stated there was no such thing as the United Nations, but there is an international community that "can be led by the only real power left in the world," the United States. Bolton stated that the "Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories," and that if it "lost ten stories, it wouldn't make any difference."

Bolton said the "happiest moment" in his political career was when the United States pulled out of the International Criminal Court. Years later, he told the Federalist Society that Bush's withdrawal from the UN's Rome Statute, which created the ICC, was "one of my proudest achievements."

Bolton targeted every arms control and disarmament agreement over the past several decades, and played a major role in abrogating two of the most significant ones. As an arms control official in the Bush administration, he lobbied successfully for the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. As soon as he joined the Trump administration, he went after the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was abrogated in 2018. He criticized the Nunn-Lugar agreement in the 1990s, which played a key role in the denuclearization of former Soviet republics, and maligned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well as the Iran nuclear accord. He helped to derail the Biological Weapons Conference in Geneva in 2001.

U.S. efforts at diplomatic reconciliation have drawn Bolton's ire. The two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian situation as well as Richard Nixon's one-China policy have been particular targets. He is also a frequent critic of the European Union, and a passionate supporter of Brexit. From 2013 to 2018, he was the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a well-known anti-Muslim organization. He was the director of the Project for the New American Century, which led the campaign for the use of force against Iraq. The fact that he was a protege of former senator Jesse Helms should come as no surprise.

It is useful to have Bolton's testimony at the climactic moment in the current impeachment trial, but it should't blind us to his deceit and disinformation over his thirty years of opposition to U.S. international diplomacy. As an assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, he fought against reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been held in internment camps during World War II. Two secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, have accused Bolton with holding back important information on important international issues, and Bolton did his best to sabotage Powell's efforts to pursue negotiations with North Korea. Bolton had a hand in the disinformation campaign against Iraq in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of 2003. The legacy of John Bolton is well established; his manuscript will not alter this legacy. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Melvin Goodman Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism . and A Whistleblower at the CIA . His most recent book is "American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump" (Opus Publishing), and he is the author of the forthcoming "The Dangerous National Security State" (2020)." Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org .

[Feb 01, 2020] Bolton's mustache is trying to impeach his face: Trump tweets 'game over' after Bolton, Schiff videos resurface

Feb 01, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Matthew Rand , 22 hours ago

Bolton's mustache is trying to impeach his face.

G Blizzard , 1 day ago

Well, if his credibility is done, Michael Bolton can always go back to singing.


Curt Stolpe
, 1 day ago

"We can't beat him so we have to impeach him" no truer words were ever spoken. Too bad they couldn't come up with a reason. I think November will be a Democrat Slaughter.

IJJ , 1 day ago

Bolton & Schiff - Bozo 1 and Bozo 2 😂


MoralHi
, 1 day ago

That old man Bolton would sell his Gandma to sell his book !

[Jan 31, 2020] Tucker John Bolton has always been a snake

Bolton was appointed by Adelson.
Jan 27, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Bolton's tell-all book leaks during Senate trial. #FoxNews


Yamaha Venture , 3 days ago

Mitt Romney is a joke.

Michael Harvey , 2 days ago

John Bolton wants war everywhere to line his pockets with money.

Stephen C , 1 day ago

The "right" gets the left, but doesn't agree with them. The "left" doesn't understand the "right".

Citizen Se7en , 2 days ago

"Bolton's resignation was one of the highlights of the president's first term." Truer words have never been spoken.

Jack Albright , 2 days ago

This story is also called "the scorpion and the frog".

Ragnar Lothbrok , 3 days ago

John Bolton should be given a helmet and a gun and sent to the next war. Let's see how he likes it.

Stratchona , 1 day ago

Trump.." I don't know John Bolton,never met him,don't know what he does."

Jaret Glenn , 2 days ago

Time to investigate Romney's son working for the oil company in the Ukraine.

Regan Orr , 2 days ago

Romney's Holy Underwear is Cutting off the Blood Supply to his Deep St Brain!

Marjo , 2 days ago (edited)

I never liked Bolton. I sensed he was out for himself, at anyone's expense. War monger too. He had many people fooled.

Shara Kirkby , 3 days ago

Bolton wants war anywhere and forever!

David Dorrell , 1 day ago (edited)

Frickin' Globalist peckerwoods. John Bolton and his pal, Mitt Romney.

Olivier Bolton , 2 days ago

Bolton wanted war so he got the boot...the fact he brings out his book now just looks like vengean$$

Max Liftoff , 2 days ago

2:30 Because Bolton never served in the military he truly passionately loved war :)) LMAO Tucker nailed it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , 1 day ago

The left's championing of John Bolton is further proof that TDS has made their minds turn to sludge.

j abe , 3 days ago

Can someone expaine to me how mit romney is still geting votes from ppl

Mark Whitley , 2 days ago

Bolton is a war mongering narcissist that wanted his war, didn't get it, & is now acting like a spoilt child that didn't get his way & is laying on the floor kicking & screaming!

Tim Fronimos , 2 days ago

Regarding John Bolton's book, is this the first book that he's colored. just curious

newuserandhiscrew 22 , 2 days ago

Everyone: Bolton: "take me in oh tender woman, take me in for heaven's sake"

Brittany Ward , 1 day ago

I can't fathom that people actually believe everything the media says!

[Jan 31, 2020] Trump excoriates Bolton in tweets this morning

Highly recommended!
Trump is lying. Bolton was appointed by Adelson and Trump can't refuse Adelson protégé.
Jan 31, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Trump excoriates Bolton in tweets this morning:
"For a guy who couldn't get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn't get approved for anything since, 'begged' me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying 'Don't do it, sir,' takes the job, mistakenly says 'Libyan Model' on T.V., and ... many more mistakes of judgement [sic], gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?"

IMO, Trump is a fantastic POTUS for this day and age, but he wasn't on his A game when he brought Bolton onboard. He should have known better and, was, apparently, warned. Maybe Trump thought he could control him and use him as a threatening pit bull. Mistake. Bolton is greedy as well as vindictive.

Posted by: Eric Newhill | 29 January 2020 at 09:30 AM

[Jan 27, 2020] The Dangers of Conflating and Inflating Interests

Notable quotes:
"... Taylor exaggerates what the conflict is about by saying that Ukraine is defending "the West." That's not true. Ukraine is defending itself. The U.S. does not have a vital interest in this conflict, but Taylor talks about it as if we do. He says that the relationship with Ukraine is "key" to our national security, but that is simply false. To say that it is key to our national security means that we are supposed to believe that it is crucially important to our national security. That suggests that U.S. national security would seriously compromised if that relationship weakened, but that doesn't make any sense. We usually don't even talk about our major treaty allies this way, so what justification is there for describing a relationship with a weak partner government like this? ..."
"... The op-ed reads like a textbook case of clientitis, in which a former U.S. envoy ends up making the Ukrainian government's argument for them ..."
"... To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that enabled major powers in Europe to avoid war for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy. It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do. ..."
"... These make for catchy slogans, but they are lousy policy arguments. This rhetoric veers awfully close to saying that you aren't on the side of freedom if you don't support a particular policy option. In my experience, advocates for more aggressive measures use rhetoric like this because the rest of their argument isn't very strong. It is possible to reject illegal military interventions of all governments without wanting to throw weapons at the problem. ..."
"... Taylor has set up the policy argument in such a way that there seems to be no choice, but the U.S. doesn't have to support Ukraine's war effort. He oversells Ukraine's importance to the U.S. to justify U.S. support, because an accurate assessment would make the current policy of arming their government much harder to defend. Ukraine isn't really that important to U.S. security and our security doesn't require us to provide military assistance to them. Of course, our government has chosen to do it anyway, but this is just one more optional entanglement that the U.S. could have avoided without jeopardizing American or allied security. ..."
Jan 27, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

ormer ambassador William Taylor wrote an op-ed on Ukraine in an attempt to answer Pompeo's question about whether Americans care about Ukraine. It is not very persuasive. For one thing, he starts off by exaggerating the importance of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to make it seem as if the U.S. has a major stake in the outcome:

Here's why the answer should be yes: Ukraine is defending itself and the West against Russian attack. If Ukraine succeeds, we succeed. The relationship between the United States and Ukraine is key to our national security, and Americans should care about Ukraine.

Taylor exaggerates what the conflict is about by saying that Ukraine is defending "the West." That's not true. Ukraine is defending itself. The U.S. does not have a vital interest in this conflict, but Taylor talks about it as if we do. He says that the relationship with Ukraine is "key" to our national security, but that is simply false. To say that it is key to our national security means that we are supposed to believe that it is crucially important to our national security. That suggests that U.S. national security would seriously compromised if that relationship weakened, but that doesn't make any sense. We usually don't even talk about our major treaty allies this way, so what justification is there for describing a relationship with a weak partner government like this?

The op-ed reads like a textbook case of clientitis, in which a former U.S. envoy ends up making the Ukrainian government's argument for them. The danger of exaggerating U.S. interests and conflating them with Ukraine's is that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are acting out of necessity and in our own defense when we are really choosing to take sides in a conflict that does not affect our security. This is the kind of thinking that encourages people to spout nonsense about "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." If we view Ukraine as "the front line" of a larger struggle, that will also make it more difficult to resolve the conflict. When a local conflict is turned into a proxy fight between great powers, the local people will be the ones made to suffer to serve the ambitions of the patrons. Once the U.S. insists that its own security is bound up with the outcome of this conflict, there is an incentive to be considered the "winner," but the reality is that Ukraine will always matter less to the U.S. than it does to Russia.

If this relationship were so important to U.S. security, how is it that the U.S. managed to get along just fine for decades after the end of the Cold War when that relationship was not particularly strong? As recently as the Obama administration, our government did not consider Ukraine to be important enough to supply with weapons. Ukraine was viewed correctly as being of peripheral interest to the U.S., and nothing has changed in the years since then to make it more important.

Taylor keeps repeating that "Ukraine is the front line" in a larger conflict between Russia and the West, but that becomes true only if Western governments choose to treat it as one. He concludes his op-ed with a series of ideological assertions:

To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that enabled major powers in Europe to avoid war for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy. It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do.

These make for catchy slogans, but they are lousy policy arguments. This rhetoric veers awfully close to saying that you aren't on the side of freedom if you don't support a particular policy option. In my experience, advocates for more aggressive measures use rhetoric like this because the rest of their argument isn't very strong. It is possible to reject illegal military interventions of all governments without wanting to throw weapons at the problem.

Taylor has set up the policy argument in such a way that there seems to be no choice, but the U.S. doesn't have to support Ukraine's war effort. He oversells Ukraine's importance to the U.S. to justify U.S. support, because an accurate assessment would make the current policy of arming their government much harder to defend. Ukraine isn't really that important to U.S. security and our security doesn't require us to provide military assistance to them. Of course, our government has chosen to do it anyway, but this is just one more optional entanglement that the U.S. could have avoided without jeopardizing American or allied security.

[Jan 22, 2020] Trump is Right Afghanistan is a 'Loser War'

Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America ..."
"... But it was and is true. Indeed, when I visited Afghanistan back when U.S. troop levels were near their highest, "off camera," so to speak, military folks were quite skeptical of the war. So were Afghans, who had little good to say about their Washington-created and -supported government unless they were collecting a paycheck from it. An incoming president could be forgiven for suspecting that his predecessor had poured more troops into the conflict only to put off its failure until after he'd left office. ..."
"... Accounts like that from Rucker and Leonnig are beloved by the Blob. America's role is to dominate the globe, irrespective of cost. Those officials pursuing this objective, no matter how poorly, are lauded. Any politician challenging Washington's global mission is derided. ..."
"... President Trump has done much wrong. However, he deserves credit for challenging a failed foreign policy that's been paid for by so many while benefiting so few. It is "crazy" and "stupid," as he reportedly said. Why should Americans keep dying for causes that their leaders cannot adequately explain, let alone justify? Let us hope that one day Americans elect a president who will act and not just talk. ..."
Jan 22, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

fter three years of the Trump presidency, the Washington Post is breathlessly reporting that Donald Trump is a boor who insults everyone, including generals used to respect and even veneration. He's had the impertinence to ask critical questions of his military briefers. For shame!

President Trump's limitations have been long evident. The Post 's discussion, adapted by Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker from their upcoming book, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America , adds color, not substance, to this concern. It seems that in the summer of 2017, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and others were concerned about the president's international ignorance and organized a briefing at the Pentagon to enlighten him.

Was that a worthwhile mission? Sure. Everyone in the policy world marvels at the president's lack of curiosity, absent knowledge, bizarre assumptions, and perverse conclusions. He doesn't get trade, bizarrely celebrates dictatorship, fixates on Iran, doesn't understand agreements, acts on impulse, and exudes absolute certainty. Yet he also captures the essence of issues and shares a set of inchoate beliefs held by millions of Americans, especially those who feel ignored, insulted, disparaged, and dismissed. Most important, he was elected with a mandate to move policy away from the bipartisan globalist conventional wisdom.

The latter was evidently the main concern of these briefers. The presentation as described by the article exuded condescension. That attitude very likely was evident to Trump. The briefing was intended to inform, but even more so to establish his aides' control over him. While they bridled at Trump's manners, they were even more opposed to his substantive opinions. And that made the briefing sound like a carefully choreographed attack on his worldview.

For instance, Mattis used charts with lots of dollar signs "to impress upon [the president] the value of U.S. investments abroad. [Mattis] sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America's safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe." Notably, Mattis "then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe."

No doubt Secretary Mattis sincerely believed all that. However, it was an argument more appropriately made in 1950 or 1960. The world has since changed dramatically.

Of course, this is also the position of the Blob, Ben Rhodes' wonderful label for the Washington foreign policymaking community. What has ever been must ever be, is the Blob's informal mantra. America's lot in life, no matter how many average folks must die, is to litter the globe with bases, ships, planes, and troops to fight endless wars, some big, some small, to make the world safe for democracy, sometimes, and autocracy, otherwise. If America ever stops fulfilling what seems to be the modern equivalent of Rudyard Kipling's infamous "white man's burden," order will collapse, authoritarianism will advance, trade will disappear, conflict will multiply, countries will be conquered, friends will become enemies, allies will defect, terrorists will strike, liberal values will be discarded, all that is good and wonderful will disappear, and a new dark age will envelope the earth.

Trump is remarkably ignorant of the facts, but he does possess a commonsensical skepticism of the utter nonsense that gets promoted as unchallengeable conventional wisdom. As a result, he understood that this weltanschauung, a word he would never use, was an absolute fantasy. And he showed it by the questions he asked.

For instance, he challenged the defense guarantee for South Korea. "We should charge them rent," he blurted out. "We should make them pay for our soldiers." Although treating American military personnel like mercenaries is the wrong approach, he is right that there is no need to protect the Republic of Korea. The Korean War ended 67 years ago. The South has twice the population and, by the latest estimate, 54 times the economy of the North. Why is Seoul still dependent on America?

If the Blob has its way, the U.S. will pay to defend the ROK forever. Analysts speak of the need for Americans to stick around even after reunification. It seems there is no circumstance under which they imagine Washington not garrisoning the peninsula. Why is America, born of revolution, now acting like an imperial power that must impose its military might everywhere?

Even more forcefully, it appeared, did Trump express his hostile views of Europe and NATO. Sure, he appeared to mistakenly believe that there was an alliance budget that European governments had failed to fund. But World War II ended 70 years ago. The Europeans recovered, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Eastern Europeans joined NATO. Why is Washington expected to subsidize a continent with a larger population than, and economy equivalent to, America's, and far larger than Russia's? Mattis apparently offered the standard bromides, such as "This is what keeps us safe."

How? Does he imagine that without Washington's European presence, Russia would roll its tanks and march to the Atlantic Ocean? And from there launch a global pincer movement to invade North America? How does adding such behemoths as Montenegro keep the U.S. "safe"? What does initiating a military confrontation with Moscow over Ukraine, historically part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, have to do with keeping Americans "safe"? The argument is self-evidently not just false but ridiculous.

Justifying endless wars is even tougher. Rucker and Leonnig do not report what the president said about Syria, which apparently was part of Mattis's brief. However, Trump's skepticism is evident from his later policy gyrations. Why would any sane Washington policymaker insist that America intervene militarily in a multi-sided civil war in a country of no significant security interest to the U.S. on the side of jihadists and affiliates of al-Qaeda? And stick around illegally as the conflict wound down? To call this policy stupid is too polite.

Even more explosive was the question of Afghanistan, to which the president did speak, apparently quite dismissively. Unsurprisingly, he asked why the U.S. had not won after 16 years -- which is longer than the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War combined. He also termed Afghanistan a "loser war." By Rucker's and Leonnig's telling, this did not go over well: "That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief's commands, and here he was calling the way they had been fighting a loser war."

But it was and is true. Indeed, when I visited Afghanistan back when U.S. troop levels were near their highest, "off camera," so to speak, military folks were quite skeptical of the war. So were Afghans, who had little good to say about their Washington-created and -supported government unless they were collecting a paycheck from it. An incoming president could be forgiven for suspecting that his predecessor had poured more troops into the conflict only to put off its failure until after he'd left office.

The fault does not belong to combat personnel, but to political leaders and complicit generals, who have misled if not lied in presenting a fairy tale perspective on the conflict's progress and prognosis. And for what? Central Asia is not and never will be a vital issue of American security. Afghanistan has nothing to do with terrorism other than its having hosting al-Qaeda two decades ago. Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. In recent years, it's Yemen that's hosted the most dangerous national affiliate of al-Qaeda. So why are U.S. troops still in Afghanistan?

Accounts like that from Rucker and Leonnig are beloved by the Blob. America's role is to dominate the globe, irrespective of cost. Those officials pursuing this objective, no matter how poorly, are lauded. Any politician challenging Washington's global mission is derided.

President Trump has done much wrong. However, he deserves credit for challenging a failed foreign policy that's been paid for by so many while benefiting so few. It is "crazy" and "stupid," as he reportedly said. Why should Americans keep dying for causes that their leaders cannot adequately explain, let alone justify? Let us hope that one day Americans elect a president who will act and not just talk.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire .

[Jan 21, 2020] Neocon foreign policy based on Full spectrum Dominance doctrine does not proceed well. Americans have been deceived by this militaristic doctrine, gangsterism in forign policy is not going to work

Jan 21, 2020 | www.unz.com

UncommonGround , says: Show Comment January 19, 2020 at 12:54 pm GMT

There were brutal sanctions against Iraq in the 90s. After that the country was devastated by the invasion of 2003. Hostility against Iran has been continuous. It's no suprise that things are not going well in the region and that American politics failed. But this was to be expected.

Good relations with Iran were possible. Even recently Iran thought that the nuclear agreement could lead to better relations with the West. Iran should be our best ally in the region because the middle classes there feel close to the West and are very friendly with Westerners who visit the country. We could have had better results if we had tryed a more reasonable politics. But it seems that there were other forces that wanted conflict with Iran and the destruction of Iraq independently of the interests of the US which would have gained from a more reasonable position. We can say the same about Russia.

After wars and sanctions the only way to hold everything together is through military means. There was as doctrine which promoted unbridled militarism and the use of force (wasn't there a saying that "Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus"?). Everybody who didn't submit to our rules and interests was viewed as an enemy, military force was seen as the solution to everything.

This is not functioning well. Americans have been decieved by this militaristic doctrine, this is not going to work. Russia has challenged this, a part of Europe isn't very happy, in South America you can only run the system ressorting to radical politicians like Bolsonaro who destroy the environment and create more poverty, in other places this politics created instability and enemies. I think it should be the time for the American elites to discuss seriously the ways that the country has been following simply because there are better ways to have better results.

Franklin Ryckaert , says: Show Comment January 20, 2020 at 7:10 am GMT
@anonymous Yes, for the American Empire to exist (and expand) it needs the Petro-dollar, because only if it is widely used in the world can its collapse be prevented. But why is the dollar so shaky? Because it is no real money, based on real value, but created out of thin air as debt and it can only function in an ever expanding pyramid scheme.

The origin of this fraud is the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. And yes that was mainly a Jewish creation. Nobody, not even Ron Paul, dares to mention that.

Miro23 , says: Show Comment January 20, 2020 at 8:11 am GMT

Iraq's decision to dramatically increase its oil exports to China came just one day after the U.S. government threatened to cut off Iraq's access to its central bank account, currently held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an account that currently holds $35 billion in Iraqi oil revenue. The account was set up after the U.S. invaded and began occupying Iraq in 2003 and Iraq currently removes between $1-2 billion per month to cover essential government expenses. Losing access to its oil revenue stored in that account would lead to the "collapse" of Iraq's government, according to Iraqi government officials who spoke to AFP.

A very revealing article.

It doesn't make sense for any country to hold reserves in the US. The Zio-Glob CIA gangsters are ready to defraud or smash up any country that challenges their petrodollar system. Witness Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, Iran and their hostility to Russia and China.

Truth Jihad , says: Show Comment January 20, 2020 at 1:43 pm GMT
Iraqi officials say around $35 billion of the country's oil revenues are held at the US Federal Reserve, which means Washington's threat to restrict access could be a major problem
https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/iraq-warns-collapse-if-trump-blocks-oil-cash-doc-1nn3l14
Greg Bacon , says: Website Show Comment January 20, 2020 at 1:55 pm GMT
Hidden? Revealed?

You don't need to twist yourself into a pretzel to figure out why Trump whacked –the Mafia term–Soleimani.
Jared the Snake's Tel Aviv masters told him they wanted Zion Don to pull the trigger and their will was done.

I voted for a President Trump and instead, got President Shecky, beholden to Jew and Israeli interests who has bent over backwards to please the Israeli terrorists, but who will now go back to his old shtick; pretending to be MAGA or KAG until he gets re-elected, then it will be gloves off and most likely, another War for Israel and Wall Street in 2021.

Having an Israeli-Firster in the WH isn't unusual, but when you have a vain simpleton who doesn't understand foreign policy or is so damned lazy, he lets a slumlord take care of it is a prescription for a major disaster.

[Jan 21, 2020] The Geopolitics Of Epistemological Warfare From Babylon To Neocon

Jan 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The Geopolitics Of Epistemological Warfare: From Babylon To Neocon by Tyler Durden Tue, 01/21/2020 - 00:00 0 SHARES

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

I think any sane human being can agree that while war was never a good idea, war in the 21st century is an absolutely intolerable one. The problem we currently face is that many of the forces driving world events towards an all-out war of "Mutually Assured Annihilation" are anything but sane.

While I'm obviously referring here to a certain category of people who fall under a particularly virulent strain of imperial thinking which can be labelled "neo-conservative" and while many of these disturbing figures honestly believe that a total war of annihilation is a risk worth taking in order to achieve their goals of total global hegemony, I would like to make one subtle yet very important distinction which is often overlooked.

What is this distinction?

Under the broad umbrella of "neo-conservative" one should properly differentiate those who really believe in their ideology and are trapped under the invisible cage of its unexamined assumptions vs. that smaller yet more important segment that created and manages the ideology from the top. I brushed on this grouping in a recent 3 part study called Origins of the Deep State and Myth of the Jewish Conspiracy .

To re-state my meaning: This group doesn't necessarily believe in the ideological group they manage any more than a parent believes in that tooth fairy which they promote in order to achieve certain behavioral patterns in their children.

While belief in the tooth fairy is slightly less destructive than belief in a misanthropic neocon worldview of a Bolton, Pompeo or Cheney, the analogy is useful to communicate the point.

Cult Managers: Ancient Babylon and Now

Modern ideology-shapers serve the same role as those ancient high priests of Babylon, Persia and Rome who managed the many cults and countless pagan mystery religions recorded throughout the ages. It is well documented that any cult could comfortably exist under Rome's control, as long as said cult denied any claim to objective truthfulness- making the rise of Abrahamic monotheistic faiths more than a little antagonistic to empire.

Did the high priests necessarily BELIEVE in those dogmas which they created and managed?

Hell no.

Was it politically necessary to create them?

Of course.

Why?

Because an Empire, like everything in the world, exist as a whole with parts but since they deny any principle of natural law (justice, love, goodness, etc) , empires are merely a sum of parts and their rules of organization can be nothing but zero sum. Each cultish group may coexist as an echo chamber alongside other groups sacrificing to whatever deity they wish without judgement of moral right or wrong bounded only by a common blind faith in their group's beliefs- but nothing universal about justice, creative reason, or human nature is otherwise permitted. Here the a-moral "peace" of "equilibrium" can be achieved by an oligarchy which wishes to lord over the slaves. Whether we are dealing with Caesar Augustus, Lord Metternich's Congress of Vienna, Aldous Huxley, Sir Henry Kissinger, or Leo Strauss (father of modern neo-conservativism), "Peace" can never be anything more than a mathematical "balancing of parts".

Now it is a good moment to ask: What does this phenomenon look like in our modern age?

To answer this, let us leap over a couple of millennia and take a look at something a bit more personal: Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.

Smith at Her Majesty's Service

Do Smith's modern followers sincerely believe in the "self-regulating forces of the free market"?

Sure they do.

Did Adam Smith actually believe in his own system?

Whether he did or not, according to recent research conducted by historian Jeffrey Steinberg, Smith received his commission to compose his seminal book Wealth of Nations (published 1776) while riding with Lord Shelburne himself in a carriage ride from Edinburgh to London in 1763. The date 1776 is not a coincidence as this was the same Lord Shelburne who essentially managed the British Empire during the American Revolution and who always despised all colonial aspirations to use protective tariffs, emit productive credit or channel said credit towards internal improvements as Benjamin Franklin had championed in his 1729 Necessity of Paper Currency and Colonial Script.

Why develop Industry, asked Smith, when the new "Law" of "absolute advantage" demanded that everyone just do what they are good at for the best price possible? America has a lot of land, so they should stick with agriculture and slave-driven cotton. Britain had a lot of industry (don't ask how that happened because it wasn't through free trade), so they should stick with that! India had advanced textiles, but Britain had to destroy that so that India could then have a lot of opium fields so she could do that which China could then smoke to death under the watch of British Gunships. "Free Trade" demanded it so.

Let's look at another example: Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection

A Not-too-Natural Selection

Darwin's theory published in his Origins of Species (1859) was based on the assumption that all changes in the biosphere are driven by "laws" of "survival of the fittest" within an assumed closed ecosystem of diminishing returns. Just as Smith asserted that an "invisible hand" brought creative order to the chaos of unregulated vice and self-interest, Darwin asserted that creative order on the large scale evolution of species could be explained by chaotic mutations on the micro level beyond a wall that no power of reason, free will or God could pass.

Did Charles Darwin believe his system? Probably.

But how about Thomas Huxley (aka: "Darwin's Bulldog") whose efforts to destroy all competing theories which included "purpose", "meaning", or "design" were crushed and ridiculed into obscurity? Huxley himself was on record saying he did not believe in Darwin's system. So why was this theory promoted by forces (like Huxley's X Club ) who recognized its many flaws? Well, here again it helps to refer to Darwin's own account of his discovery from his autobiography where he wrote:

"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then, I had at last got a theory by which to work".

Malthus's 'Dismal Science'

And here we have it! Reverend Thomas Malthus (the cold hearted "Man of God" who taught economics at the British East India Company's Haileybury College) provided the very foundation upon which Darwin's system stood! Thomas Huxley and the other "high priests" of Huxley's X Club were always Malthusian (even before there was Malthus) since empires have always been more focused on monopolizing the finite resources of an age, rather than encouraging creative discoveries and new inventions which would bring new resources into being- overcoming nature's "limits to growth" (a dis-equilibrium not to be tolerated). Whether Malthus actually believed in the system which bears his name, as generations of his adherents sincerely do, remains to be seen. However his own awareness of the needed extermination of the "unfit" by the Ubermenschen of the British Aristocracy preceded Social Darwinism by a full century when he coldly called for the encouragement of the plague and other "natural forms of destruction" to cull the herd of the unfit in his Essay on the Principle of Population ( 1799):

"We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague."

A little later, Malthus even argued for the early extermination of poor babies who were of low value to society when he said:

"I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring that no child born from any marriage taking place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child born two years from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance The infant is, comparatively speaking, of little value to society, as others will immediately supply its place."

The neo-Malthusian revivalists such as Princes Bernhardt, Philip Mountbatten and Huxley's own grandson Sir Julian who birthed the misanthropic deformity today called the Green New Deal were not ignorant to this tradition. The disastrous effect of this worldview upon races deemed "unfit" in the global south should also not be ignored. It is no coincidence that those three neo-Malthusian oligarchs founded the World Wildlife Fund, 1001 Nature Trust and Club of Rome which imposed a technological apartheid upon the third world over the bodies of countless statesmen during the Cold War.

The Danger of Creative Thought to an Empire

Encouraging creative thought and cooperation among diverse nations, linguistic, religious and ethnic groups tends to result in new uncontrolled systems of potential as humanity increases its capacity to sustain itself while imperial systems lose their ability to parasitically drain their host. In Lincoln's great 1859 speech , the martyred leader stood up against this Malthusian paradigm endemic of the British Empire when he said:

"All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions."

Lincoln's economic commitments to protective tariffs, state credit (greenbacks) and internal improvements are inextricably linked to this view of man also shared by the earlier Ben Franklin.

Today, the positive paradigm which Lincoln died to defend is most clearly represented by the leaders of such nations as Russia and China- both of whom have come out repeatedly attacking the post-truth neo-liberal order and also the win-lose philosophy of Hobbesian geopolitics. The folly of America's new dance with impeachment and the neocon hand shaping Trump's disastrous foreign policy agenda is tied to the oligarchy's absolute fear of losing America to a new Eurasian partnership which Trump has promoted repeatedly since entering office in 2017.

Xi Jinping and Putin have not only responded to this obsolete system by creating an alternative system of win-win cooperation driven by unbounded scientific and technological progress but they have also managed to expose the Achilles heal of the empire. These statesmen have demonstrated a clear recognition that those ideologies ranging from neo-liberalism to neo-conservativism are entirely unsustainable, and defeatable (but not militarily) . Xi expressed this insight most clearly during his recent trip to Greece.

Even though leaders like Putin and Xi understand this, citizens of the west will continue to be woefully unequipped to either make sense of these chaotic systems of belief, extract them from their own hearts if they are so contaminated or resist them effectively, without understanding that those who fabricated and manage these belief structures never truly believed in them.

Neoconservative founding fathers such as Leo Strauss, Sir Henry Kissinger and Sir Bernard Lewis absolutely never believed in the ideologies their cultish golems like Bolton, Cheney or Kristol have adhered to so religiously. Their belief was only that the sum-of-parts called humanity must ultimately be governed by a Hobbesian Leviathan (aka: a new globalized Roman Empire), and that Leviathan could only be created in response to an intolerably painful period of chaos which their twisted tooth fairies would usher into this world.

[Jan 19, 2020] Anyone who has studied the history of the Third Reich would note a curious similarity between Germany s behaviour under Hitler and the current behaviour of the US both internally and externally

Highly recommended!
Looks like Trump engaged his chances for reelection by killing Soleimani: he lost part of military votes and all anti-war-republican votes in one broad stroke. The core voters will remain but the question is whether there are enough of them. Please remember that part of sunders supports also voted for Trump. This will never happen again. Add to this desgrunted famers and Trump chances are considerably lower then in 2016, when his victory was a big surprise.
Due to impeachment his chances will increase, as impeachment definitely mobilize his base and he might even manage to get back some anti-war republican s and independents, but still his situation is rather complex. The impartment charged produced by the Schiff-Pelosi gang are fake and people understand that. The real impeachment ground -- killing high level Iran military officer on diplomatic mission as well as Douma false flag bombing of Syrian objects -- exists, but Dems are too complicit to use it.
Impeachment and Trump 2020 Will it destroy or boost re-election chances
Notable quotes:
"... Anyone who has studied the history of the Third Reich would note a curious similarity between Germany's behaviour under Hitler and the current behaviour of the US both internally and externally. ..."
"... The argument is correct. (Although the mafia label bespeaks a limited frame of reference and it's inappropriate in any event -- crime families do not have the reach or power of state assassination squads.) ..."
"... The truth of it is Trump murdered General Soleimani because the general was very effective in defeating ISIS - the U.S. created and funded - terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The neocons were none too pleased. ..."
"... In short, President Trump was engaged in months of what can best be described as gangsternomics in directing the course of Iraq's future economic and political development.[/] ..."
"... Iraq's importance goes much farther than just protecting the petrodollar to the U.S. It is the fulcrum now on which the entire U.S. defense against Eurasian integration rests. The entire region is slipping out of the grasp of the U.S. ..."
"... Trump's crude gangster tactics in Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia and to a lesser extent in Syria cannot be hidden behind the false veil of moral preening and virtue signaling about bringing democracy to these benighted places.[/] ..."
"... Gangsternomics seems a good term for Trump's vision of US world power. Trump is pragmatic or realist in that he knows there is no court or authority to hold the US to account. ..."
"... This demonstrates that US attacks in Iraq over the last 30-40 years was mostly about the control (including transportation routes) and than profiting from its oil and gas reserves. ..."
"... A secondary reason is to put troop on the border with Iran to further destabilize it via state terrorism to overthrow the government and then take its oil and gas too. ..."
"... The Kurdish President of Iraq has stated that "Out of an eagerness to spare blood and preserve civil peace, I apologize for not naming Edani prime minister," the letter continued. "I am ready to submit my resignation to parliament." ..."
"... "Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded that Iraqis stage a "million-man march" against the continued US military presence in the country" ..."
"... I believe Trump needs to be thought of as a CEO brought in to pull a company back from the edge of bankruptcy. I think that is the way he sees himself, and as I have put in previous comments, there are no rules. ..."
"... Basically, the value of the dollar that is low enough to re-industrialize America is far below the tipping point that would trigger a global sell-off of dollars. How could that mass sell-off be prevented? Threatening to nuke any country whose central bank sells their dollar reserves? ..."
"... the Gangsternomics have been going on for some time as chronicled in 'Shock Doctrine' and 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman'. ..."
"... the assassination plans and techniques by the exceptionalists... just ask the Cuban aides of Fidel Castro. Most of them alive today. They have a a helluva expertise on this business having foiled them for over 45 years. Against all odds cause at 90 miles from the enemy, the logistics were vastly against the cubans. ..."
Jan 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Dick , Jan 18 2020 23:25 utc | 44

Anyone who has studied the history of the Third Reich would note a curious similarity between Germany's behaviour under Hitler and the current behaviour of the US both internally and externally. Is it just me, or have other's noted the similarity of Pompeo to Herman Goering in looks and behaviour?

Likklemore , Jan 19 2020 0:10 utc | 49

I recall RT reported on December 31. 19 Trump warned

LINK

"This is not a Warning, it is a Threat," Trump declared in a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, adding that Iran will "pay a very BIG PRICE" for the embassy siege earlier in the day."

They sure did. So who is next? Yesterday Trump warned the supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khameni:

'Be very careful with your words': Trump warns Iran's Khamenei after ayatollah delivers fiery sermon slamming 'American clowns'

US President Donald Trump has warned the supreme leader of Iran to watch his language, following a heated sermon in which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed American leaders as "clowns."

Leading a prayer in Tehran on Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei boasted that Iran had the "spirit to slap an arrogant, aggressive global power" in its retaliation to the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, which he said struck a "serious blow" to Washington's "dignity" – triggering a response from the US president.

"The so-called 'Supreme Leader' of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some nasty things to say about the United States and Europe," Trump tweeted. "Their economy is crashing, and their people are suffering. He should be very careful with his words!"

In his sermon, Khamenei blasted "American clowns," who he said "lie in utter viciousness that they stand with the Iranian people," referring to recent comments by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

How dare he?

Pft , Jan 19 2020 0:28 utc | 50
Lets face it, assassinations are not a new thing. It became more organized with Lord Palmerstons gangs of thugs in the mid 19th century (one of which took out Lincoln) . Since the end of WWII the global mafia jumped across the pond and assassinations have been covert actions arranged by the CIA , with operations having a high degree of plausible deniability. But most higher ups had a pretty good idea who was behind it . Trumps just continued this but like Bush and Obama have made clear its their right to do so against terrorists . Of course the definition of terrorist has become rather broad. Trump recently said he authorized the hit because he said bad things about America. Maybe saying bad things about Trump can get you labelled the same. Watch out for those drones barflies.

So basically the main change is they no longer care about plausible deniability . They are proud to admit it. And nobody seems to care enough to express any outrage. Name any countries leader who has except in muted terms. Europe, Russia, China, etc everyone quiet as a mouse. China so outraged they signed a trade deal giving them nothing. UN? Might as well move it to Cuba , Iran or Venezuela for all the clout it has.

So you know, maybe the deterrence is working. Terrorism works both ways. The world seems terrorized and hardly anyone in the US dares criticize Trumps action without saying the general was evil and deserved it. Its not just drones they fear as financial terrorism (sanctions, denied access to USD) works quite well also (except in Irans case).

ChasMark , Jan 19 2020 0:30 utc | 51
james | Jan 18 2020 20:28 utc | 17

The argument is correct. (Although the mafia label bespeaks a limited frame of reference and it's inappropriate in any event -- crime families do not have the reach or power of state assassination squads.)

Ferencz does not have the moral standing to make the argument. It's like granting Ted Bundy credibility for criticizing police brutality.

Likklemore , Jan 19 2020 0:44 utc | 56

The truth of it is Trump murdered General Soleimani because the general was very effective in defeating ISIS - the U.S. created and funded - terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The neocons were none too pleased.

Release Jan.18 2020 21st centurywire audio Interview with Dr. Mohammad Marandi, Tehran University

America's Miscalculation with Iran

LINK

@ ChasMark 7 - not an ounce of integrity! Trump or Ferencz?

How is it I posted days ago that link to Ferencz's letter to New York Times and not a pips. Are you defending Trump's war crimes as against bringing the Nazis to justice?

How about the U.S. waterboarding and torturing Muslims at Gitmo? 19 years on with NO TRIALS!!! That's OK, right?

karlof1 , Jan 19 2020 0:58 utc | 57
As far as b's premise goes, he's proven it IMO. Looks like the CIA made the next move in Lebanon. IMO, Asia plus Russia & Belarus hold the geoeconomic and geopolitical deterrence cards. The Financial Parasite continues hollowing out what remains of US industry and retail helped along by Trump's Trade War. I presented the fundamental economic info and arguments on the prior threads, so I don't have anything to add.
pretzelattack , Jan 19 2020 1:08 utc | 58
the price of fake freedom is remaining ever vigilant to prevent peace breaking out. trump's as much a warmonger as any of them (which is to say impeachment won't make a bit of difference).
Likklemore , Jan 19 2020 1:27 utc | 59
F. William Engdahl asks,

Unintended Consequences: Did Trump just give the Middle East to China and Russia?

[Before] the US assassination of Soleimani, there were numerous back-channel efforts for détente in the costly wars that have raged across the region since the US-instigated Arab Spring between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran and Iraq. Russia and China have both in different ways been playing a key role in changing the geopolitical tensions. At this juncture the credibility of Washington as any honest partner is effectively zero if not minus.

[.] The US president just tweeted his support for renewed anti-government Iran protests, in Farsi. We are clearly in for some very nasty trouble in the Middle East as Washington tries to deal with the unintended consequences of its recent Middle East actions.[.]

Run home as fast as you can. In this election year, an observation; 10% of companies are losing money but thanks to the Feds, the Markets are making ATH ...all time highs. On main street Joe and Jane are in a well of hurt "it's the economy, stupid."

Copeland , Jan 19 2020 1:28 utc | 60
There is nothing ambiguous about Pompeo's statement. It is evidence of a profound psychotic break. It is a megalomaniac delusion of godlike power, a deterance not attainable on a human scale. "In all cases, we have to do this."

The masters of the universe will kill those who do not comply. The projection of their psychic power to intimidate the world goes well beyond Iraq and Iran, brushing aside all the little insubstantial nations that are constantly underfoot. Russia and China are to take heed now, it is they too who must sleep with one eye open. The deterrence necessary to keep us all safe means to go ahead and challenge those islands China built in the South China Sea.

The smiling villains do not accept that Crimea is part of Russia. Pompeo compares Soleimani to bin Laden. There are so many departures from reality in the speech amidst all the levity that it seems like someone has opened the doors of the Asylum.

ak74 , Jan 19 2020 2:13 utc | 62
In the Orwellian value system of America, Mike Pompeo's idea of "deterrence" is really NewSpeak for America's brazen war crimes, wars of aggression, and shredding of international law.

America is a mafia nation masquerading as a democracy.

And Donald Trump is a two-bit New York mafioso don in charge of this America Mafia state.

Circe , Jan 19 2020 3:03 utc | 67
Trump recounts minute by minute details of Soleimani assassination at a fundraiser held at his Florida resort. Cause that's what normal people do; brag about murdering someone. I'll bet his fat cat Zionist friends emptied their coffers. SICK.

trump-brags-killed-2-for-price-of-1

Jackrabbit , Jan 19 2020 3:09 utc | 68
ak74 @62: Mike Pompeo's idea of "deterrence" is really NewSpeak ...

Exactly. And we might add:

"America First" means America is the Empire's Fist;

"Stand with the people of " is 'New World Order' psyop;

"Economic sanctions" is the economic part of hybrid warfare;

"War on terror" is the war on ALL enemies of the empire via terrorist destabilization;

"Russiagate" is McCarthyist war on dissent;

"Trump" is the latest dear leader whose flaws are blessings and whose 'gut instinct' is God's will. We know this because his fake enemies (like the Democrats, "fake news", and ISIS) always fail when they confront him.


!!
tjfxh , Jan 19 2020 3:54 utc | 76 Why does anyone gives either the president or US officials credence regarding what they say, especially Secretary Pompeo, not to mention POTUS? Taking Pompeo at this word and responding to it strikes me as a waste of time. These people are never going to say publicly what they are up to, which is world domination. Nor is it their own ideal. This has been the policy of the US elite at least since WWII, which was simply a transfer of the seat of power from London to Washington as the British Empire morphed into the Anglo-American Empire. Global domination through sea power was British policy for centuries and the US just recently joining the game, especially when the game expanded to air power as well. Arguably, this goes back to the end of WWI, if not the Spanish-American war that embarked the US on empire.
Peter AU1 , Jan 19 2020 4:39 utc | 78
Deterrence, I guess is the politically correct term for what Trump is doing. He sees that the Dollar hegemonic empire was crumbling same as most who don't rely on MSM for their news. Trump believes US can hold its position in the world through pure military power, or the threat of military power.

He wants to regain what he calls importance from early 90s when US was sole undisputed superpower. Iran though, he believes is a blot on USA's past that needs erasing. Throughout the election campaign, Trump's big thing was rebuilding US military. He believes this will restore US power in the world. Ruling through the world fear rather than soft power and blackmail.

ak74 , Jan 19 2020 5:09 utc | 81
The basis of the American Empire and its parasitic economy and Way of Life(TM) itself are premised on what should be called America's Dollar Dictatorship.

Because of the US Dollar, America is able to wage economic siege warfare (aka economic sanctions) on multiple nations around the planet--all in order to impose the Land of the Free's imperial dictates on them.

This is American global gangsterism in everything but name--and disguised behind the founding American deceptions of "Freedom and Democracy."

The vast majority Americans--including some fake "alternative media" shills--will attempt to spindoctor this issue by avoiding such blunt description of this system.

Instead, they prefer to employ Orwellian euphemisms about the "US PetroDollar" or the "US Dollar Reserve Currency" or how America's superpower status is dependent on this dollar syistem.

But former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accurately calls out this system for what it is: America's global dictatorship of the Dollar.

This is another reason why America has such hatred for Iran:

Dollar dictatorship the foundation of American empire - Iran's Ahmadinejad
https://www.rt.com/business/435310-dollar-us-empire-reorder-ahmadinejad/

America Escalates its "Democratic" Oil War in the Near East
https://michael-hudson.com/2020/01/america-escalates-its-democratic-oil-war-in-the-near-east/

Likklemore , Jan 19 2020 5:20 utc | 83
@ Peter AU1 78

Tom Luongo, who frequently cites b, has coined a new word for Trump's and his minions tactics. Tom asks:

Does Gangsternomics Meet its End in the Iraqi Desert?

In the aftermath of the killing of Iranian IRGC General Qassem Soleimani a lot of questions hung in the air. The big one was, in my mind, "Why now?"

There are a lot of angles to answer that question. Many of them were supplied by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi who tried to let the world know through official (and unofficial) channels of the extent of the pressure he was under by the U.S.

In short, President Trump was engaged in months of what can best be described as gangsternomics in directing the course of Iraq's future economic and political development.[/]

Iraq's importance goes much farther than just protecting the petrodollar to the U.S. It is the fulcrum now on which the entire U.S. defense against Eurasian integration rests. The entire region is slipping out of the grasp of the U.S.

And this started with Russia moving into Syria in 2015 successfully. We are downstream of this as it has blown open the playbook and revealed it for how ugly it is.

Trump's crude gangster tactics in Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia and to a lesser extent in Syria cannot be hidden behind the false veil of moral preening and virtue signaling about bringing democracy to these benighted places.[/]

What began in Syria with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and China standing up together and saying, "No," continues today in Iraq. To this point Iran has been the major actor. Tomorrow it will be Russia, China and India.

And that is what is ultimately at stake here, the ability of the U.S. to employ gangsternomics in the Middle East and make it stick.[.]

By the time Trump is done threatening people over S-400's and pipelines the entire world will be happy to trade in yuan and/or rubles rather than dollars.[.]

full article here

Peter AU1 , Jan 19 2020 6:05 utc | 88
Likklemore 83

Thanks. Gangsternomics seems a good term for Trump's vision of US world power. Trump is pragmatic or realist in that he knows there is no court or authority to hold the US to account.

As to US holding power purely through military power, that can only happen long term if he gets hold of a good chunk of the worlds energy reserves (as in Persian gulf and Venezuela oil). If he doesn't achieve that, then the US goes down. Iran needs to ensure it stays under Russia's nuclear umbrella as there are no rules.

krollchem , Jan 19 2020 6:27 utc | 90
Sickening series of Trump interviews and speeches demanding that Iraq pay America and its allies over a trillion dollars for liberating Iraq (time stamp 8:20 to 12:00).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWZfDJerI0o

This demonstrates that US attacks in Iraq over the last 30-40 years was mostly about the control (including transportation routes) and than profiting from its oil and gas reserves.

A secondary reason is to put troop on the border with Iran to further destabilize it via state terrorism to overthrow the government and then take its oil and gas too.

It will get interesting when a pro Iranian new Prime minister takes office and China offers Iraq a line of credit equivalent to the funds that would be frozen in Western bank accounts if Iraq actually demands the troops to leave.

"The Iran-linked Binaa parliamentary voting bloc has nominated Asaad al-Edani, a former minister and governor of oil-rich Basra province. Binaa's bloc is mostly made up of the Fatah party led by militia leader turned politician Hadi al-Ameri, who is close to Tehran."

The Kurdish President of Iraq has stated that "Out of an eagerness to spare blood and preserve civil peace, I apologize for not naming Edani prime minister," the letter continued. "I am ready to submit my resignation to parliament."

https://time.com/5755588/iraq-president-resignation/

Currently, the rival Sairoon bloc, headed by populist Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said it would not participate in the process of nominating a new premier."

https://www.ft.com/content/50f09fe4-27f4-11ea-9a4f-963f0ec7e134

However, "Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded that Iraqis stage a "million-man march" against the continued US military presence in the country"

https://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13981025000319

I close with a visionary French rock opera Starmania "story of an alternate reality where a fascist millionaire (read Trump) famous for building skyscrapers is running for president on an anti-immigration policy, and where the poor are getting more and more desperate for their voices to be heard."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78LytR-6Xmk

Patroklos , Jan 19 2020 6:39 utc | 91
@hopehely | Jan 19 2020 6:00 utc | 85

... ... ...

2. Lebensraum was indeed a specific war aim of Hitler;
3. Under the Shah Anglo-American (not mention Dutch, French and other) interests skimmed all Iranian energy resources, kept the USSR under pressure on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and provided a key friendly power in the most important region of central Asia. Petro-dollar supremacy could not have been established without control of the Persian Gulf. The Persian elite were given wonderful opportunities while the rest... well we know what the rest get.

hopehely , Jan 19 2020 7:08 utc | 93

... ... ...

The Persian elite were given wonderful opportunities while the rest... well we know what the rest get.

Not just the elite. Persian middle class was pretty well off too. Spending vacation in Europe was easy, quite affordable. Not any more. I know I know, those dang sanctions... well that is what you get when you piss off the big dawg.

Peter AU1 , Jan 19 2020 9:32 utc | 99
psychedelicatessen "Thinking he's successfully rebuilt the U.S. military could be the single most critical failure of his presidency."

I would be in agreement on the overall gist of your reply, but on Trump thinking he's successfully rebuilt the US military, I'm not so sure. He is a pragmatic gangster when it comes to world affairs which is why his Nuclear Posture Review lowered the threshold of first use of nukes. b's previous post on 'How Trump rebelled against the generals' also fits in with this line of thought.

I believe Trump needs to be thought of as a CEO brought in to pull a company back from the edge of bankruptcy. I think that is the way he sees himself, and as I have put in previous comments, there are no rules.

I had thought Trump may be adverse to pure terrorism but depending on what comes of the Ukie airliner shootdown in Iran, there may be absolutely no rules as far as Trump is concerned.

ralphieboy , Jan 19 2020 12:59 utc | 111
The attack on Solemani had little or nothing to do with policy, it was an attempt to distract from the other scandals coming to light with the opening of his Senate trial by provoking hostilities with Iran.
William Gruff , Jan 19 2020 13:00 utc | 112
Peter AU1 @103: "Monetary collapse as in low US$ but not US economic collapse"

I wonder how that could be arranged? There are far more US$ sitting in bank vaults as reserves and investment hedges than there are in circulation. If the dollar goes low enough to bring manufacturing home then it will also be low enough to no longer be a sound or wise investment in and of itself. Wise bankers and investors will attempt to realign their portfolios if the dollar shows signs of dropping like that.

Basically, the value of the dollar that is low enough to re-industrialize America is far below the tipping point that would trigger a global sell-off of dollars. How could that mass sell-off be prevented? Threatening to nuke any country whose central bank sells their dollar reserves?

As I see it, the dollar's value stays high or it tanks totally. I don't see how there could be a moderate balance point in between these extremes. There are just too many dollars in the world.

financial matters , Jan 19 2020 13:51 utc | 121
Likklemore @ 83. thanks for the great article by Tom Luongo.

Of course the Gangsternomics have been going on for some time as chronicled in 'Shock Doctrine' and 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman'.

But as Trump has often done, probably mostly by mistake, he has brought these actions more clearly into the public eye. This in combination with the new power dominance of Russia, China and Iran is definitely leading to a new reality.
---------

I like this quote from Perkins' 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman'

""Nearly every culture I know prophesies that in the late 1990s we entered a period of remarkable transition. At monasteries in the Himalayas, ceremonial sites in Indonesia, and the indigenous reservations in North America, from the depths of the Amazon to the peaks of the Andes and into the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, I have heard that ours is a special moment in human history, and that each of us was born at this time because we have a mission to accomplish.

The titles and words of the prophecies differ slightly. They tell variously of a New Age, the Third Millennium, the Age of Aquarius, the Beginning of the Fifth Sun, or the end of old calendars and the commencement of new ones. Despite the varying terminologies, however; they have a great deal in common, and "The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle" is typical. It states that back in the mists of history; human societies divided and took two different paths: that of the condor (representing the heart, intuitive and mystical) and that of the eagle (representing the brain, rational and material). In the 1490s, the prophecy said, the two paths would converge and the eagle would drive the condor to the verge of extinction. Then, five hundred years later, in the 1990s, a new epoch would begin, one in which the condor and the eagle will have the opportunity to reunite and fly together in the same sky, along the same path. If the condor and eagle accept this opportunity, they will create a most remarkable offspring, unlike any ever seen before.

"The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle" can be taken at many levels - the standard interpretation is that it foretells the sharing of indigenous knowledge with the technologies of science, the balancing of yin and yang, and the bridging of northern and southern cultures. However, most powerful is the message if offers about consciousness; it says that we have entered a time when we can benefit from the many diverse ways of seeing ourselves and the world, and that we can use these as a springboard to higher levels of awareness. As human beings, we can truly wake up and evolve into a more conscious species.

The condor people of the Amazon make it seem so obvious that if we are to address questions about the nature of what it is to be human in this new millennium, and about our commitment to evaluating our intentions for the next several decades, then we need to open our eyes and see the consequences of our actions - the actions of the eagle - in places like Iraq and Ecuador. We must shake ourselves awake. We who live in the most powerful nation history has ever known must stop worrying so much about the outcome of soap operas, quarterly balance sheets, and the daily Dow Jones average, and must instead reevaluate who we are and where we want our children to end up. The alternative to stopping to ask ourselves the important questions is simply too dangerous.""

---------------------

Now that Trump has, probably inadvertently, helped open our eyes I see Tulsi Gabbard as the best person to help us fit in to a more multipolar world in a more responsible manner.

augusto , Jan 19 2020 14:07 utc | 122
Damascene, as to the assassination plans and techniques by the exceptionalists... just ask the Cuban aides of Fidel Castro. Most of them alive today. They have a a helluva expertise on this business having foiled them for over 45 years. Against all odds cause at 90 miles from the enemy, the logistics were vastly against the cubans.

As to the purposeful intent of bringing more pressure to foes in the future... just recall what happened to Muammar Khadafi. After the attempt to blow up his family tent in the desert he fairly but surely managed to build up FRIENDSHIP with the bosses of France, Italy and UK.

To no avail, since the rest if history. The lesson has been learned.

Sasha , Jan 19 2020 14:08 utc | 123
Why was US so mad with General #Soleimani?

https://twitter.com/PressTV/status/1218882845902626816

Condoleeza Rice on the 2006 War on Lebanon ( quoted by Qassem Soleimani in the interview posted above..): "These are the "birth pangs" of the Middle East"....

Sasha , Jan 19 2020 14:27 utc | 124
You can agree...may be in part...or not....Uncertainty is the plate of the day...I hope the ME players will change this forecast to their benefit...

2020 Forecast: Revealing the Future of the #MiddleEast by María and Shehab Makahleh for Russian Council ...

[Jan 19, 2020] Friedman s Hapless Fear-mongering

Notable quotes:
"... They have promoted dishonest claims about the JCPOA and made unfounded claims about Iran's so-called "nuclear ambitions" in order to make it seem as if the Iranian government is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. They have done this to justify their hard-line policies and to lay the groundwork for pursuing regime change and war. Every time that someone repeats false claims about a non-existent "nuclear weapons program" in Iran, it creates unnecessary fear and plays into the administration's hands. ..."
"... The administration is already working overtime to propagandize the public and scare Americans into supporting aggressive and destructive policies against Iran, and no one should be giving them extra help. ..."
"... "Friedman's claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did, and it is irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue." ..."
"... Friedman isn't usually thought of as a devotee of Truth, and the chance of him correcting even the most egregious falsehoods you point out is approximately zero. At heart he's a propaganda guy, not a fact-based analyst. ..."
"... Friedman does it for Israel. It is their line, their constant foreign policy push. The NYT lets him, seems to encourage it, due to its own complex ties to Israel. ..."
"... The Israel Lobby is behind vast wars, killing, and waste. It has become an endless evil. ..."
"... Friedman seems to forget that Iran is a signatory of the NPT and inspectors come and monitor activities, all outside JPCOA. But hey, Iraq had WMD at the time the international inspectors were saying that it didn't and their message and activities were obstructed and blocked by the US. Same as with the alleged gas attacks in Syria and the OPCW "mishandling" the reporting... US has learned since Iraq and wanted compliance from these types of organizations. ..."
theamericanconservative.com

Friedman's latest column obviously wasn't fact-checked before it was published:

And then, a few weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Suleimani, an action that required him to shift more troops into the region and tell Iraqis that we're not leaving their territory, even though their Parliament voted to evict us. It also prompted Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program [bold mine-DL], which could well necessitate U.S. military action. And then, a few weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Suleimani, an action that required him to shift more troops into the region and tell Iraqis that we're not leaving their territory, even though their Parliament voted to evict us. It also prompted Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program [bold mine-DL], which could well necessitate U.S. military action.
Friedman's claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did, and it is irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue. Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and it hasn't had anything like that for more than sixteen years. The Iranian government took another step in reducing its compliance with the JCPOA in the days following the assassination, but contrary to other misleading headlines their government did not abandon the nuclear deal. Iran has not repudiated its commitment to keep its nuclear program peaceful, and it doesn't help in reducing tensions to suggest that they have. Trump's recent actions are reckless and dangerous, but it is wrong to say that those actions have caused Iran to start up a nuclear weapons program. That isn't the case, and engaging in more threat inflation when tensions are already so high is foolish.

Friedman is not the only one to make this blunder, but it is the sort of sloppy mistake we expect from him. If this were just another error from Friedman, it would be annoying but it wouldn't matter very much. This has to do with the nature of our debate over Iran policy and the nuclear issue in particular. This matters because there is a great deal of confusion in this country about Iran's nuclear program that the Trump administration has deliberately encouraged. They have promoted dishonest claims about the JCPOA and made unfounded claims about Iran's so-called "nuclear ambitions" in order to make it seem as if the Iranian government is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. They have done this to justify their hard-line policies and to lay the groundwork for pursuing regime change and war. Every time that someone repeats false claims about a non-existent "nuclear weapons program" in Iran, it creates unnecessary fear and plays into the administration's hands.

The administration is already working overtime to propagandize the public and scare Americans into supporting aggressive and destructive policies against Iran, and no one should be giving them extra help. The second part of Friedman's sentence is also quite dangerous, because it encourages his readers to think that the U.S. would somehow be justified in attacking Iran in the unlikely event that they started developing a nuclear weapon. He suggests that an Iranian nuclear weapons program might "necessitate" military action, but any attack on Iran under those circumstances would be illegal and a war of choice just like the invasion of Iraq that Friedman supported almost 17 years ago. Even when Friedman seems to be skeptical of something that the government has done, he can't help but indulge in threat inflation and lend support to the idea of preventive war.

Friedman's claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did, and it is irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue. Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and it hasn't had anything like that for more than sixteen years. The Iranian government took another step in reducing its compliance with the JCPOA in the days following the assassination, but contrary to other misleading headlines their government did not abandon the nuclear deal. Iran has not repudiated its commitment to keep its nuclear program peaceful, and it doesn't help in reducing tensions to suggest that they have. Trump's recent actions are reckless and dangerous, but it is wrong to say that those actions have caused Iran to start up a nuclear weapons program. That isn't the case, and engaging in more threat inflation when tensions are already so high is foolish.

... ... ...

He suggests that an Iranian nuclear weapons program might "necessitate" military action, but any attack on Iran under those circumstances would be illegal and a war of choice just like the invasion of Iraq that Friedman supported almost 17 years ago. Even when Friedman seems to be skeptical of something that the government has done, he can't help but indulge in threat inflation and lend support to the idea of preventive war. The second part of Friedman's sentence is also quite dangerous, because it encourages his readers to think that the U.S. would somehow be justified in attacking Iran in the unlikely event that they started developing a nuclear weapon. He suggests that an Iranian nuclear weapons program might "necessitate" military action, but any attack on Iran under those circumstances would be illegal and a war of choice just like the invasion of Iraq that Friedman supported almost 17 years ago. Even when Friedman seems to be skeptical of something that the government has done, he can't help but indulge in threat inflation and lend support to the idea of preventive war.


Gospel Free3 days ago

"Friedman's claim that Iran restarted a "nuclear weapons program" is completely false. That isn't what the Iranian government did, and it is irresponsible to say this when it is clearly untrue."

Friedman isn't usually thought of as a devotee of Truth, and the chance of him correcting even the most egregious falsehoods you point out is approximately zero. At heart he's a propaganda guy, not a fact-based analyst.

Mark Thomason2 days ago
Friedman does it for Israel. It is their line, their constant foreign policy push. The NYT lets him, seems to encourage it, due to its own complex ties to Israel.

The Israel Lobby is behind vast wars, killing, and waste. It has become an endless evil.

Donna2 days ago
Friedman's readers are the choir, and he's just singing to them. People who have seen through his fabrications stopped reading him years ago. Friedman will always have his little clique of deluded pseudo-intellectuals, but truly intelligent people don't waste their time with him.
blimbax2 days ago
I think the picture of Friedman that accompanies this article tells a big part of the story. His furrowed brow, the intensity of his studied gaze, his penetrating and knowing look into the the complexities that only someone of his intelligence can unravel. It is really the picture of a stuffed shirt.

Friedman represents something really wrong with our society and culture: The incompetent, the ignorant, and the arrogant ones are given positions of power and influence, and the wise and knowledgeable are marginalized.

Taras772 days ago
It is difficult to name a more odious shill for Israel war mongering than friedman but than he does have competition in the NYT staff. NYT is a bugle for Israel.
FL_Cottonmouth2 days ago • edited
Mr. Friedman recently called Gen. Soleimani "the dumbest man in Iran" for sponsoring terrorist forces in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen backing paramilitary forces fighting terrorism in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

Mr. Friedman is one of the dumbest pundits in the media class and almost certainly the dumbest ever to work for The New York Times. He just can't help himself...

kouroia day ago
Friedman seems to forget that Iran is a signatory of the NPT and inspectors come and monitor activities, all outside JPCOA. But hey, Iraq had WMD at the time the international inspectors were saying that it didn't and their message and activities were obstructed and blocked by the US. Same as with the alleged gas attacks in Syria and the OPCW "mishandling" the reporting... US has learned since Iraq and wanted compliance from these types of organizations.

[Jan 18, 2020] The joke is on us: Without the USSR the USA oligarchy resorted to cannibalism and devour the American people

Highly recommended!
Jan 18, 2020 | www.theguardian.com

In another sense, however, the passing of the cold war could not have been more disorienting. In 1987, Georgi Arbatov, a senior adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev , had warned: "We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy."

...Winning the cold war brought Americans face-to-face with a predicament comparable to that confronting the lucky person who wins the lottery: hidden within a windfall is the potential for monumental disaster.

[Jan 03, 2020] "It remains to figure out how to save the current US administration, while avoiding a world war

Евгений Крутиков Последний шанс
Jul 30, 2014 | topwar.ru

"It remains to figure out how to save the current US administration, while avoiding a world war

"the Plane was shot down by Ukrainians, shot down by accident, there will be no investigation, no one needs it

in the blog print version

The expert debate about Boeing will now be about how many demons can fit on the tip of a needle. Everyone is already clear, it remains to figure out how to save the current US administration, while avoiding a world war.

All the latest news about the investigation of the disaster over the Donbass say only one thing: everything is clear, but the problems are still ahead.
The main theses are as follows: the plane was shot down by Ukrainians, shot down by accident, there will be no investigation, no one needs it. I'll explain in more detail.

A lot has been said about the information war: the Americans started it, and they are now out of it, sadly. There is no point in sorting through the array of objective evidence – we must give the American side the opportunity to get out of all this with honor, because if the United States does not succeed, we will all again face the threat of total war.

One

Never and under no circumstances will the Ukrainian side make public its means of objective control, if they exist at all. Most likely, they have already been destroyed. Recognition of the randomness of the shot – however it may be classified-is the last chance for the US to get out of the dirty Ukrainian swamp. Yes, an accident, it happens in war. But it needs to be explained to a Western audience.

And if it is impossible to understand, then you just have to remember: the Ukrainian army shoots where it wants and what it wants to objects. And sometimes nowhere at all.

Let me remind you that in old Yugoslavia for a long time hunted for the officers of the Serbian artillery, which with a rare drunk once (!) shot in the direction of Croatian Dubrovnik. They were found ten years later and sent to the Hague. Why? Because the Croatian side in time declared everywhere where reached, including UNESCO in which list the city-monument Dubrovnik is entered, about atrocities of the Serbian artillery.
Two
Yes, we are all here at the level of unfunny jokes know that the Ukrainian rocket, if you send it to the plane, will definitely fly to the tree. And vice versa. For those who were born and raised in the Soviet Union, this is a given. But the Westerner has to prove it and explain it. He, a Westerner, used to think that if a guy could speak APE English fluently, even if he had a strong accent, he was still our local guy. So it was with Saakashvili and Yushchenko. They were also married to Western ladies. And then with Yatsenyuk Turchynov, tied to both the American sect. They're twice their own.
The guy from the West used to think that if the missile system is put on combat duty, it is worth something. He can not explain that for twenty-three years, the Ukrainian army conducted only one air defense exercise – in 2001. And it ended up being shot down over the Black sea by a Russian plane. After that, no (!) and never (!) there were no exercises in Ukraine.
Three
References to the war in South Ossetia, in which it was the Ukrainian crews of "Buks" perfectly proved themselves by shooting down four Russian objects under the Georgian obscene hooting, also do not work. Georgians with great difficulty found across Ukraine two crews for all the same "Buks", whose commanders of calculations were Americans of Polish origin.
Most of these brave Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners after the war 08.08.08 died under unclear circumstances, and the survivors were drunk (the city of Stryi, Lviv region, the former air defense base of the Carpathian military district of the USSR armed forces). And no one has tried to train the new crews as unnecessary.
Inventory of missiles, by the way, no one held, and it did not make sense, because the missiles were sold right and left, and that is especially sinful-it is to the left, that is, to countries that the same US declare "outcasts". Target capture guidance system-a complex thing, " Buk " is able to simultaneously conduct up to 24 goals, and it is not clear what exactly saw on the radar specific lad.
Four
The Boeing could give additional signals. It could be untried equipment, which will now be difficult to admit to the Malaysian airline.
Even if the "Boeing" shone an additional beacon-it could cause the launch of the rocket. And there were several objects on the radar that were moving towards the war zone – here a spontaneous launch of a missile is more than possible. During the cold war, passenger planes were very often used for reconnaissance purposes, loading them with photographic equipment. This, of course, is not our case, and the times are quite different – satellites fly with impunity, but still no one has yet shown how perfect was the plane itself, its crew and strange course.
Five
By the way, the base of American drones working for the Kiev government is located in Kanatovo near Dnepropetrovsk, just in the area of the flight of the "Boeing". This is an old abandoned Soviet air force base of those that grew sunflowers by the end of the 90's.
But recently there arrived Americans, all rebuilt, and now this former collective farm field is called the 66th separate brigade of the air force of Ukraine, although from the Ukrainian there are only signs and dogs. Live there American military, and are based only American drones, of which two have already been shot down. The first – in the spring on Perekop Russian fighter, the second-over Donetsk militia, and it almost entirely fell into their hands.
For the United States, the explanation of all that has happened is a kind of unintentional accident, or even better-the synergy of many accidents-almost the only way to calmly and technically get out of the game.
Technically, you just need to "chat" for a couple of weeks. And then the evidence from the "black boxes" will not be so relevant, and in General the whole story will be erased from memory, perhaps against the background of other circumstances.
Six
But it will not be possible to talk about the circumstances of what is happening in Novorossiya at all. Many found this place on the map. Many began to watch the news. And there, for example, the tone of CNN correspondents radically changed after they got access to Lugansk and Donetsk on the tail of Malaysian representatives.
No Western journalist had been in the combat zone for three months, and now they were impartially reporting live that civilians were being killed, that heavy artillery fire was being fired from Ukrainian positions on residential areas, and, most interestingly, the presenters in the Studio never interrupted them. And this on CNN and Foxnews do at times. But now the words are accompanied by a picture of the bodies of apparently civilians torn apart. And just like that, even Christian Amanpour won't interrupt anyone.
Seven
Most likely, it is the discussion of the set of accidents that led to the missile salvo that will soon become dominant. A half-trained or even never-learned APE with a grenade sat at the controls. She didn't identify the objects.
The fighter that accompanied (or whatever he was doing with this "Boeing", did not push out of the track?), seeing the rocket, was forced to make the same emergency evasion maneuver, which indicates the objective data of Russian surveillance-he abruptly went up to the limit and even beyond the height.
Something on several radars, presumably defined as a "small-sized, high-speed flying object", that is, a fighter, not a UFO, made a routine maneuver to evade a missile salvo from the ground. So taught in the Soviet flight schools. All Ukrainian pilots came out of the same greatcoat.
Scholastic dispute about whether it was exactly " Buk " or the old C-200, which is also the same 25 years of vodka brewed, does not make sense. Good people who are leading this highly professional dispute, come from some ideal circumstances, forgetting that all this-Ukraine.
The salvo was obviously spontaneous, and this-again-is the only thing that will save the West now.
* * *
But we will never hear or see this, because no one will drown Poroshenko now, he will drown himself in two or three months. The American security service is forced to "keep a face", because Barack Obama first said, and then there was objective tracking data, and how to get out of this – no one knows.
Further expert debate will be about how many demons can fit on the tip of the needle. Everyone is already clear, it remains to figure out how to save the current US administration, while avoiding a world war.
It is in the interest of world peace to ensure that the investigation into the deaths of nearly 300 people is delayed as long as possible. And then it was forgotten.
Is it possible? Yes, perhaps. We did not see the unfortunate relatives storming the building of Schiphol airport, although relatively recently the same crowd almost demolished the government of Malaysia because of the unknown where the disappeared similar "Boeing".
European governments can make sure that the relatives of the victims stop asking questions. Although they, those who lost loved ones, could be the driving force of the entire investigation. It's very cynical, Yes. But what other choice is there?."It remains to figure out how to save the current US administration, while avoiding a world war "the Plane was shot down by Ukrainians, shot down by accident, there will be no investigation, no one needs it

in the blog print version

The expert debate about Boeing will now be about how many demons can fit on the tip of a needle. Everyone is already clear, it remains to figure out how to save the current US administration, while avoiding a world war.
All the latest news about the investigation of the disaster over the Donbass say only one thing: everything is clear, but the problems are still ahead.
The main theses are as follows: the plane was shot down by Ukrainians, shot down by accident, there will be no investigation, no one needs it. I'll explain in more detail.
A lot has been said about the information war: the Americans started it, and they are now out of it, sadly. There is no point in sorting through the array of objective evidence – we must give the American side the opportunity to get out of all this with honor, because if the United States does not succeed, we will all again face the threat of total war.
One
Never and under no circumstances will the Ukrainian side make public its means of objective control, if they exist at all. Most likely, they have already been destroyed. Recognition of the randomness of the shot – however it may be classified-is the last chance for the US to get out of the dirty Ukrainian swamp. Yes, an accident, it happens in war. But it needs to be explained to a Western audience.
And if it is impossible to understand, then you just have to remember: the Ukrainian army shoots where it wants and what it wants to objects. And sometimes nowhere at all.
Let me remind you that in old Yugoslavia for a long time hunted for the officers of the Serbian artillery, which with a rare drunk once (!) shot in the direction of Croatian Dubrovnik. They were found ten years later and sent to the Hague. Why? Because the Croatian side in time declared everywhere where reached, including UNESCO in which list the city-monument Dubrovnik is entered, about atrocities of the Serbian artillery.
Two
Yes, we are all here at the level of unfunny jokes know that the Ukrainian rocket, if you send it to the plane, will definitely fly to the tree. And vice versa. For those who were born and raised in the Soviet Union, this is a given. But the Westerner has to prove it and explain it. He, a Westerner, used to think that if a guy could speak APE English fluently, even if he had a strong accent, he was still our local guy. So it was with Saakashvili and Yushchenko. They were also married to Western ladies. And then with Yatsenyuk Turchynov, tied to both the American sect. They're twice their own.
The guy from the West used to think that if the missile system is put on combat duty, it is worth something. He can not explain that for twenty-three years, the Ukrainian army conducted only one air defense exercise – in 2001. And it ended up being shot down over the Black sea by a Russian plane. After that, no (!) and never (!) there were no exercises in Ukraine.
Three
References to the war in South Ossetia, in which it was the Ukrainian crews of "Buks" perfectly proved themselves by shooting down four Russian objects under the Georgian obscene hooting, also do not work. Georgians with great difficulty found across Ukraine two crews for all the same "Buks", whose commanders of calculations were Americans of Polish origin.
Most of these brave Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners after the war 08.08.08 died under unclear circumstances, and the survivors were drunk (the city of Stryi, Lviv region, the former air defense base of the Carpathian military district of the USSR armed forces). And no one has tried to train the new crews as unnecessary.
Inventory of missiles, by the way, no one held, and it did not make sense, because the missiles were sold right and left, and that is especially sinful-it is to the left, that is, to countries that the same US declare "outcasts". Target capture guidance system-a complex thing, " Buk " is able to simultaneously conduct up to 24 goals, and it is not clear what exactly saw on the radar specific lad.
Four
The Boeing could give additional signals. It could be untried equipment, which will now be difficult to admit to the Malaysian airline.
Even if the "Boeing" shone an additional beacon-it could cause the launch of the rocket. And there were several objects on the radar that were moving towards the war zone – here a spontaneous launch of a missile is more than possible. During the cold war, passenger planes were very often used for reconnaissance purposes, loading them with photographic equipment. This, of course, is not our case, and the times are quite different – satellites fly with impunity, but still no one has yet shown how perfect was the plane itself, its crew and strange course.
Five
By the way, the base of American drones working for the Kiev government is located in Kanatovo near Dnepropetrovsk, just in the area of the flight of the "Boeing". This is an old abandoned Soviet air force base of those that grew sunflowers by the end of the 90's.
But recently there arrived Americans, all rebuilt, and now this former collective farm field is called the 66th separate brigade of the air force of Ukraine, although from the Ukrainian there are only signs and dogs. Live there American military, and are based only American drones, of which two have already been shot down. The first – in the spring on Perekop Russian fighter, the second-over Donetsk militia, and it almost entirely fell into their hands.
For the United States, the explanation of all that has happened is a kind of unintentional accident, or even better-the synergy of many accidents-almost the only way to calmly and technically get out of the game.
Technically, you just need to "chat" for a couple of weeks. And then the evidence from the "black boxes" will not be so relevant, and in General the whole story will be erased from memory, perhaps against the background of other circumstances.
Six
But it will not be possible to talk about the circumstances of what is happening in Novorossiya at all. Many found this place on the map. Many began to watch the news. And there, for example, the tone of CNN correspondents radically changed after they got access to Lugansk and Donetsk on the tail of Malaysian representatives.
No Western journalist had been in the combat zone for three months, and now they were impartially reporting live that civilians were being killed, that heavy artillery fire was being fired from Ukrainian positions on residential areas, and, most interestingly, the presenters in the Studio never interrupted them. And this on CNN and Foxnews do at times. But now the words are accompanied by a picture of the bodies of apparently civilians torn apart. And just like that, even Christian Amanpour won't interrupt anyone.
Seven
Most likely, it is the discussion of the set of accidents that led to the missile salvo that will soon become dominant. A half-trained or even never-learned APE with a grenade sat at the controls. She didn't identify the objects.
The fighter that accompanied (or whatever he was doing with this "Boeing", did not push out of the track?), seeing the rocket, was forced to make the same emergency evasion maneuver, which indicates the objective data of Russian surveillance-he abruptly went up to the limit and even beyond the height.
Something on several radars, presumably defined as a "small-sized, high-speed flying object", that is, a fighter, not a UFO, made a routine maneuver to evade a missile salvo from the ground. So taught in the Soviet flight schools. All Ukrainian pilots came out of the same greatcoat.
Scholastic dispute about whether it was exactly " Buk " or the old C-200, which is also the same 25 years of vodka brewed, does not make sense. Good people who are leading this highly professional dispute, come from some ideal circumstances, forgetting that all this-Ukraine.
The salvo was obviously spontaneous, and this-again-is the only thing that will save the West now.
* * *
But we will never hear or see this, because no one will drown Poroshenko now, he will drown himself in two or three months. The American security service is forced to "keep a face", because Barack Obama first said, and then there was objective tracking data, and how to get out of this – no one knows.
Further expert debate will be about how many demons can fit on the tip of the needle. Everyone is already clear, it remains to figure out how to save the current US administration, while avoiding a world war.
It is in the interest of world peace to ensure that the investigation into the deaths of nearly 300 people is delayed as long as possible. And then it was forgotten.
Is it possible? Yes, perhaps. We did not see the unfortunate relatives storming the building of Schiphol airport, although relatively recently the same crowd almost demolished the government of Malaysia because of the unknown where the disappeared similar "Boeing".
European governments can make sure that the relatives of the victims stop asking questions. Although they, those who lost loved ones, could be the driving force of the entire investigation. It's very cynical, Yes. But what other choice is there?

[Dec 21, 2019] Government Warmongering Criminals Where Are They Now

Notable quotes:
"... The American people and most of the world bought into the lies and half-truths because they wanted to believe the fiction they were being spoon fed by the White House, but is there a whole lot of difference between what the US government did against Iraq in 2003 and what Hitler's government did in 1939 when it falsely claimed that Polish troops had attacked Germany? Was subsequent torture by the Gestapo any different than torture by a contractor working for Washington? ..."
"... A friend of mine recently commented that honest men who were formerly part of the United States government do not subsequently get hired by lobbying firms or obtain television contracts and "teaching" positions at prestigious universities. ..."
"... If the marketplace is anything to go by Feith and Tenet are running neck-and-neck on secondary book exchanges as George also can be had for $.01. ..."
"... The historian Livy summed up the significance of his act, writing "It is worthwhile for those who disdain all human things for money, and who suppose that there is no room either for great honor or virtue, except where wealth is found, to listen to his story." ..."
"... "Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best." ..."
"... senior government officials and politicians routinely expect to be generously rewarded for their service and never held accountable for their failures and misdeeds ..."
"... One thing for sure about the Washington elite, you never have to say you're sorry. ..."
Jul 08, 2015 | The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

The United States already has by far the per capita largest prison population of any developed country but I am probably one of the few Americans who on this Independence Day would like to see a lot more people in prison, mostly drawn from politicians and senior bureaucrats who have long believed that their status makes them untouchable, giving them license to steal and even to kill. The sad fact is that while whistleblowers have been imprisoned for revealing government criminality, no one in the federal bureaucracy has ever actually been punished for the crimes of torture, kidnapping and assassination committed during the George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama presidencies.

Why is accountability important? After the Second World War, the victorious allies believed it was important to establish responsibility for the crimes that had been committed by officials of the Axis powers. The judges at the Nuremberg Trials called the initiation of a war of aggression the ultimate war crime because it inevitably unleashed so many other evils. Ten leading Nazis were executed at Nuremberg and ninety-three Japanese officials at similar trials staged in Asia, including several guilty of waterboarding. Those who were not executed for being complicit in the actual launching of war were tried for torture of both military personnel and civilians and crimes against humanity, including the mass killing of civilians as well as of soldiers who had surrendered or been captured.

No matter how one tries to avoid making comparisons between 1939 and 2015, the American invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, precisely the type of conflict that the framework of accountability provided by Nuremberg was supposed to prevent in the years after 1946. High level US government officials knew that Iraq represented no threat to the United States but they nevertheless described an imminent danger posed by Saddam Hussein in the most graphic terms, replete with weapons of mass destruction, armed drones flying across the Atlantic, terrorists being unleashed against the homeland, and mushroom clouds on the horizon. The precedent of Iraq, even though it was an abject failure, has led to further military action against Libya and Syria to bring about "regime change" as well as a continuing conflict in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the US has been waging a largely secret "long war" against terrorists employing torture and secret prisons. The American people and most of the world bought into the lies and half-truths because they wanted to believe the fiction they were being spoon fed by the White House, but is there a whole lot of difference between what the US government did against Iraq in 2003 and what Hitler's government did in 1939 when it falsely claimed that Polish troops had attacked Germany? Was subsequent torture by the Gestapo any different than torture by a contractor working for Washington?

Many Americans would now consider the leading figures in the Bush Administration aided and abetted by many enablers in congress from both political parties to be unindicted war criminals. Together they ignited a global conflict that is still running strong fourteen years later with a tally of more than 7,000 dead Americans and a minimum of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Somalis and Syrians.

War breeds more war, due largely to the fact that guilty parties in Washington who piggyback on the prevailing narrative move onward and upward, rewarded in this life even if not necessarily so in the hereafter. A friend of mine recently commented that honest men who were formerly part of the United States government do not subsequently get hired by lobbying firms or obtain television contracts and "teaching" positions at prestigious universities. Though not 100% accurate as I know at least a couple of honorable former senior officials who wound up teaching, it would seem to be a generalization that has considerable validity. The implication is that many senior government officials ascend to their positions based on being accommodating and "political" rather than being honest and they continue to do the same when they switch over to corporate America or the equally corrupted world of academia.

I thought of my friend's comment when I turned on the television a week ago to be confronted by the serious, somewhat intense gaze of Michael Morell, warning about the danger that ISIS will strike the US over the Fourth of July weekend. Morell, a former senior CIA official, is in the terror business. He had no evidence whatsoever that terrorists were planning an attack and should have realized that maneuvering the United States into constantly going on alert based on empty threats is precisely what militant groups tend to do.

When not fronting as a handsomely paid national security consultant for the CBS television network Morell is employed by Beacon Global Strategies as a Senior Counselor, presumably warning well-heeled clients to watch out for terrorists. His lifestyle and substantial emoluments depend on people being afraid of terrorism so they will turn to an expert like him and ask serious questions that he will answer in a serious way suggesting that Islamic militants could potentially bring about some kind of global apocalypse.

Morell, a torture apologist, also has a book out that he wants to sell, positing somewhat ridiculously that he and his former employer had been fighting The Great War of Our Time against Islamic terrorists, something comparable to the World Wars of the past century, hence the title. Morell needs to take some valium and relax. He would also benefit from a little introspection regarding the bad guys versus good guys narrative that he is peddling. His credentials as a warrior are somewhat suspect in any event as he never did any military service and his combat in the world of intelligence consisted largely of sitting behind a desk in Washington and providing briefings to George W. Bush and Barack Obama in which he presumably told them what they wanted to hear.

Morell is one of a host of pundits who are successful in selling the military-industrial-lobbyist-congressional-intelligence community line of BS on the war on terror. Throw in the neocons as the in-your-face agents provocateurs who provide instant intellectual and media credibility for developments and you have large groups of engaged individuals with good access who are on the receiving end of the seemingly unending cash pipeline that began with 9/11. Frances Townsend, who was the Bush Homeland Security adviser and who is now a consultant with CNN, is another such creature as is Michael Chertoff, formerly Director of the Department of Homeland Security, who has successfully marketed his defective airport scanners to his former employer.

But the guys and gals who are out feathering their own nests are at least comprehensible given our predatory capitalist system of government. More to the point, the gang that ordered or carried out torture and assassination are the ones who should be doing some hard time in the slammer but instead they too are riding the gravy train and cashing in. To name only a few of those who knew about the torture and ordered it carried out I would cite George Tenet, James Pavitt, Cofer Black and Jose Rodriguez from the intelligence community. The assassination program meanwhile is accredited to John Brennan, currently CIA Director, during his tenure as Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor. And then there are Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon together with John Yoo at Justice and Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and Condi Rice at the White House, all of whom outright lied, dissimulated and conspired their way to bring about a war of aggression against Iraq.

There are plenty of nameless others who were "only carrying out orders" and who should be included in any reckoning of America's crimes over the past fifteen years, particularly if one also considers the illegal NSA spying program headed by Michael Hayden, who defended the practice and has also referred to those who oppose enhanced interrogation torture as "interrogation deniers." And then there are Presidents Bush and Obama who certainly knew what was going on in the name of the American people as well as John Brennan, who was involved in both the torture and renditions programs as well as the more recent assassinations by drone.

So where are they now? Living in obscurity ashamed of what they did? Hardly. Not only have they not been vilified or marginalized, they have, in most cases, been rewarded. George W. Bush lives in Dallas near his Presidential Library and eponymous Think (sic) Tank. Cheney lives in semi-retirement in McLean Virginia with a multi-million dollar waterfront weekend retreat in St. Michaels Maryland, not too far from Donald Rumsfeld's similar digs.

George Tenet, the CIA Director notorious for his "slam-dunk" comment, a man who cooked the intelligence to make the Iraq war possible to curry favor with the White House, has generously remunerated positions on the boards of Allen & Company merchant bank, QinetiQ, and L-1 Identity Solutions. He sold his memoir At the Center of the Storm, which has been described as a "self-justifying apologia," in 2007 for a reported advance of $4 million. His book, ironically, admits that the US invaded Iraq for no good reason.

James Pavitt, who was the point man responsible for the "enhanced interrogation" program as Tenet's Deputy Director for Operations, is currently a principal with The Scowcroft Group and also serves on several boards. Cofer Black, who headed the Counter-Terrorism Center, which actually carried out renditions and "enhanced interrogations," was vice chairman of Blackwater Worldwide (now called Xe) and chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions, a Blackwater spin-off. He is now vice president of Blackbird Technologies, a defense and intelligence contractor. Rodriguez, who succeeded Black and in 2005 illegally destroyed video tapes made of Agency interrogations to avoid possible repercussions, is a senior vice president with Edge Consulting, a defense contractor currently owned by IBM that is located in Virginia.

John Yoo is a Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley while Condoleezza Rice, who spoke of mushroom clouds and is widely regarded as the worst National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in history, has returned to Stanford University. She is a professor at the Graduate School of Business and a director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy as well as a fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is occasionally spoken of as either a possible GOP presidential candidate or as a future Commissioner of the National Football League. Her interaction with students is limited, but when challenged on her record she has responded that it was a difficult situation post 9/11, something that everyone understands, though few would have come to her conclusion that attacking Iraq might be a good way to destroy al-Qaeda.

Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush Deputy Secretary of Defense, is seen by many as the "intellectual" driving force behind the invasion of Iraq. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and advises Jeb Bush on foreign policy. A bid to reward Wolfie for his zeal by giving him a huge golden parachute as President of the World Bank at a salary of $391,000 tax free failed when, after 23 months in the position, he was ousted over promoting a subordinate with whom he was having an affair. His chief deputy at the Pentagon Doug Feith left the Defense Department to take up a visiting professorship at the school of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, which was subsequently not renewed. He is reported to be again practicing law and thinking deep thoughts about his hero Edmund Burke, who no doubt would have been appalled to make Feith's acquaintance. Feith is a senior fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute and the Director of the Center for National Security Strategies. His memoir War and Decision did not make the best seller list and is now available used on Amazon for $.01 plus shipping. If the marketplace is anything to go by Feith and Tenet are running neck-and-neck on secondary book exchanges as George also can be had for $.01.

The over-rewarding of former officials who have in reality done great harm to the United States and its interests might well seem inexplicable, but it is all part of a style of bureaucracy that cannot admit failure and truly believes that all its actions are ipso facto legitimate because the executive and its minions can do no wrong. It is also a symptom of the classic American character flaw that all things are of necessity measured by money. Does anyone remember the ancient Roman symbol of republican virtue Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who left his farm after being named Dictator in order to defeat Rome's enemies? He then handed power back to the Senate before returning to his plowing after the job was done. The historian Livy summed up the significance of his act, writing "It is worthwhile for those who disdain all human things for money, and who suppose that there is no room either for great honor or virtue, except where wealth is found, to listen to his story." George Washington was America's Cincinnatus and it is not a coincidence that officers of the continental army founded the Cincinnati Society, the nation's oldest patriotic organization, in 1783. It is also reported that Edward Snowden used the alias "Cincinnatus."

Lord Acton once observed that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." More recently essayist Edward Abbey put it in an American context, noting "Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best." That senior government officials and politicians routinely expect to be generously rewarded for their service and never held accountable for their failures and misdeeds is a fault that is perhaps not unique to the United States but it is nevertheless unacceptable. Handing out a couple of exemplary prison sentences for the caste that believes itself untouchable would be a good place to start. An opportunity was missed with David Petraeus, who was fined and avoided jail time, and it will be interesting to see how the Dennis Hastert case develops. Hastert will no doubt be slapped on the wrist for the crime of moving around his own money while the corruption that was the source of that money, both as a legislator and lobbyist, will be ignored. As will his molestation of at least one and possibly several young boys. One thing for sure about the Washington elite, you never have to say you're sorry.

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

[Dec 21, 2019] Bill Clinton began humanitarian wars but it was Bush II and Obama who turned resource wars into routine practice and the USA into malignant overlords who decided when it is time to take it all.

Notable quotes:
"... oligarchic greed; a military dedicated to protecting the wealth of oligarchs; and, wars over resources. Granted Bill Clinton began the current charade about 'humanitarian wars' but it was Bush II and Obama who turned our focus into resource wars and the hegemons (Malignant Overlords) who decided it was time to take it all. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com

rg the lg | Oct 22, 2016 8:25:27 PM | 33

http://empireexposed.blogspot.com/

Long ago (1968) after returning from Vietnam with a bullet hole in my leg (my 90 wonder, post-ROTC officer shot me when he panicked) I wondered off to a down-at-the-heel cow college. There I took a class and C Wright Mills 'The Power Elite' was required reading.

I had just finished 'War is a fraud' and read an article by Paul Ehrlich an then 'The Population Bomb' shortly thereafter. The three books created an interesting fusion in my mind:

  1. More or less after the year 2000 the world would be plagued by resource wars;
  2. The primary role of the military is to enforce what capitalists want; and
  3. Behind the alleged scenes of our form of government hovered oligarchs who would demand more and more.

I recently found a paper I had written long ago. It wasn't very well written, but even then the handwriting was on the wall: oligarchic greed; a military dedicated to protecting the wealth of oligarchs; and, wars over resources. Granted Bill Clinton began the current charade about 'humanitarian wars' but it was Bush II and Obama who turned our focus into resource wars and the hegemons (Malignant Overlords) who decided it was time to take it all.

I guess the point of all of this is (except for the details) Ehrlich, Mills and Butler warned us. As did Huxley and Orwell ... we were just too damned dumb (or distracted) to see it.

Maybe with the Queen of Chaos, the above will result in either annihilation or in a severe reduction in the numbers of people ... (hopefully including all of the oligarchic class) and the chance to start over?

Nah ... we'll just fuck it up again ... as a species we refuse to learn. Sigh ...

[Dec 21, 2019] America will always pick and choose the leaders it props up and tears down. It never was and never will be for humanitarian reasons -- that is a clever veil.

Notable quotes:
"... Why have we supported Nguema, Karimov, and Kagame but not the ones who are thorns in our sides? The reasons are obvious. It's not the lives of their citizens - it's power for the elite class. We intervene abroad because we want to further the interest of the wealthy. ..."
"... America will always pick and choose the leaders it props up and tears down. It never was and never will be for humanitarian reasons -- that is a clever veil. We denounce ethnic cleansing and then fund it. We call for free elections and then support Pinochet, Stroessner, and Videla. ..."
"... Opposing war is a noble and courageous act, and there will always be smears. Opposing war isn't supporting dictators; it's opposing death and destruction in the service of the wealthy. Never believe what they tell you about why they're sending your kids to die. Never. ..."
Apr 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Idealistic Realist , Apr 27, 2019 1:24:45 PM | link

Best analysis by a candidate for POTUS ever:

American foreign policy is not a failure. To comfort themselves, observers often say that our leaders -- presidents, advisors, generals -- don't know what they're doing. They do know. Their agenda just isn't what we like to imagine it is.

To quote Michael Parenti: "US policy is not filled with contradictions and inconsistencies. It has performed brilliantly and steadily in the service of those who own most of the world and who want to own all of it."

The vision of our leaders as bunglers, while more accurate than the image of them as valiant public servants, is less accurate and more rose-tinted than the closest approximation of the truth, which is that they are servants of their class interest. That is why we go to war.

Those who buy the elite class's foreign policy BS, about the Emmanuel Goldsteins they conjure up every three years, are fools. Obviously Hussein and Milošević were bad; but "government bad" does not mean we must invade. Wars occur for economic, not humanitarian, reasons.

  • Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea, is a kleptocrat, murderer, and alleged cannibal. This is him and his wife with Barack and Michelle Obama.
  • Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, was said to have boiled political prisoners to death, massacred hundreds of prisoners, and made torture an institution. This is him with John Kerry.
  • Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, has been involved in the assassination of political opponents, perpetrated obvious election fraud, and had his term extended until 2034. This is him with Barack and Michelle Obama.

Why have we supported Nguema, Karimov, and Kagame but not the ones who are thorns in our sides? The reasons are obvious. It's not the lives of their citizens - it's power for the elite class. We intervene abroad because we want to further the interest of the wealthy.

America will always pick and choose the leaders it props up and tears down. It never was and never will be for humanitarian reasons -- that is a clever veil. We denounce ethnic cleansing and then fund it. We call for free elections and then support Pinochet, Stroessner, and Videla.

Opposing war is a noble and courageous act, and there will always be smears. Opposing war isn't supporting dictators; it's opposing death and destruction in the service of the wealthy. Never believe what they tell you about why they're sending your kids to die. Never.

Mike Gravel

[Dec 19, 2019] Fiona Hill reveals herself as primitive and greedy neocon hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly to sustain her own well being as a rabid warmonger for MIC

Notable quotes:
"... Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones. ..."
"... In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US. Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp the working parallels. In general, I can recommend this book as a good introduction on Vladimir Putin, but it's hardly the last word and certainly not the definitive narrative. ..."
Dec 19, 2019 | www.amazon.com

karenann , August 8, 2015

A deeply biased book

Hill and Gaddy are pretty good scholars. They do a good job of providing a psychological profile of Vladimir Putin and the way he operates in the Kremlin. But they have their limitations. One of the more annoying aspects of the book is that the authors return again and again both to Putin's graduate thesis on an American management book and his 1999 manifesto on his millenial goals for Russia. A better set of writers would have covered both subjects in one section and then moved on. But Hill and Gaddy sprinkle references to these documents about five times each throughout the book, which leads me to suspect that they are padding what would otherwise be a much shorter book.

As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the authors, but I couldn't quite pinpoint their slant until the last sentence, which is a doozy:

"The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare."

For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong. They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly. And in their analysis, they ignore the fact that Russia as a country is in fact deeply defensive country far more concerned with its internal boundaries and control than some aggressive Soviet power after World War II. To be sure, Mr. Putin is no choir boy. Interestingly enough, the authors do not fully investigate the potentially criminal behavior that Putin performed with Russia's war on Chechnya. Hill and Gaddy could have strengthened their case if they had included some deeper analysis of Putin's behavior on this troublesome part of the Russian Empire. But instead they were intent on plowing their own rut, which while somewhat interesting -- ultimately becomes a little bit too pedantic.

I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days. But in ignoring what Cohen has to say, the predominant attitude of the American and European foreign policy establishment is in lock step with Hill and Gaddy, which is why the book has been so heavily publicized.

The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen than they are to Hill and Gaddy.

Yes, this book is all about sticking to the Rooskies, unfortunately. And the hidden motivator are all of the defense contracts that NATO can suck up, as well as all the bankers' books in reaming the Ukrainian economy as badly as they've reamed Greece. But the authors never tell you that this is their motivation, until the last paragraph.

Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying work.

karenann, 2 years ago (Edited)

Kissinger has had the good sense to state that the best hope for peace in the region is to have Ukraine as a totally neutral country, similar to Finland before the USSR collapsed. The Budapest Memorandum of NATO calls for the full military integration of Ukraine and Georgia.

As a thought experiment, what if the Soviets undermined the provincial governments of Alberta and British Columbia, and then wanted to include these governments in the Warsaw Pact? What do you think the reaction of the US would be?

R. L. Huff , April 23, 2015
OK but blinkered

- look at Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin's Russia. The book is based on intensive research and interviews with Putin, but I find it skewed by the Western biases it brings to the table. Yet it's not a demonization, as is so much of the Western Putin literature. It gives him credit for standing by the multi-racial and cultural realities of post-Soviet Russia. Compared to the real hardcore nationalists, Putin in fact has come across as a domestic liberal. The rising tide of Russian arch-nationalism, however, has taken its toll. Authors Hill and Gaddy correctly assess Putin's playing the nationalist card as a political manouver to keep one step ahead of his opponents - most of whom are not pro-Western liberal dissidents by any means. Courting the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years was one such strategy.

Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for the same.

The authors also lecture us on Putin's inability to grasp "Western values" as the root of his refusal to take the West on its own terms; on "how little Putin understands about us - our motives, our mentality, and, also, our values" (p.385) I rather think Putin grasps these "motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking but tragically familiar. It's rather the West's (and the authors') failure to grasp regional history, and Putin's actions based on it, that fuel the "misunderstanding." Ukraine, for instance, had strong nationalist animosity toward the "Moskali" long before the 1930s holodomor/famine. Crimea was not transferred to Ukraine out of any degree of recognition of said suffering, as the authors allege on p. 367; but as part of a geo-political manouver to Russify east Ukraine with more "loyal" ethnic Russians, exactly as in the Baltic states.

His aggressive handling of terrorists within Chechnya is "decried" by the West, the authors note. Yet within a decade the US and its NATO partners would be pursuing an aggressive course in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen that make Russia look the provincial amateur. Putin in fact is *not* trying to recreate the USSR, as so often charged by Western pundits with an axe to grind, nor even the old Russian empire. His strategic thinking is dominated by security rationales. A wider invasive course would only threaten Russian security. At all times he sees his actions as defensive responses. If this is self-serving, it only puts him in good company: recall the American angst over the "dissident" Dixie Chicks; the livid anger over Edward Snowden.

In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US. Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp the working parallels. In general, I can recommend this book as a good introduction on Vladimir Putin, but it's hardly the last word and certainly not the definitive narrative.

Anon II, 4 years ago (Edited)

It is refreshing to read something on Russia written by a reviewer who knows what he is talking about. This book is full of data, but the authors lack any intellectual basis on which to organize it. They are trying to publish a book in which there will be reader interest, but they really have nothing to say. If you are eager to make an enemy of Russia, this book will be useful to you. If you are simply trying to understand what is happening, it won't be.

D.B.4 years ago

Thank you for an excellent countervailing perspective!

[Dec 13, 2019] Women have proven over the centuries that they can be just as bloodthirsty when in power

Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Marygoal , 10 Dec 2019 14:03

... Women have proven over the centuries that they can be just as bloodthirsty when in power. Indeed one of them is busy in The Hague as we speak.

[Dec 09, 2019] The Interagency Isn t Supposed to Rule in Foreign Policy

Notable quotes:
"... I first heard of the interagency in Baghdad in 2009. I was there as part of a Council on Foreign Relations delegation to Iraq. As a U.S. Army general briefed us on how the war was being fought, he spoke of the interagency as the source of the strategy he was executing. Naively, I asked why he wasn't operating according to orders from his military superiors or the secretary of defense. ..."
"... He explained that American war-fighting was being guided by a "whole of government" philosophy. Incredibly, he explained that the war couldn't be won without, among other agencies, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Justice and Labor. Iraq needed economic expansion, modern farming, business statistics, new hospitals, a working court system and workplace regulations. The strategy framed by the interagency was nothing less than a yearslong engagement in nation building -- precisely what President George W. Bush had rejected in his 2000 campaign. ..."
"... When the war on terror opened, with all the secret activity it required, professional cadres in the diplomatic corps, the military and the nation's many intelligence agencies were able to transform interagency cooperative agreements that had existed since the Cold War into a de facto agency -- a largely informal and virtual bureaucracy -- with the assumed power, if need be, to determine and execute a foreign policy at odds with the intent of the president and Congress. ..."
"... Last month's testimony before the Intelligence Committee shed light on this club whose members are a permanent shadow government credentialed by family histories, elite schools and unique career experiences. This common pedigree informs their perspective of how America should relate to the world. The dogmatists of the interagency seem to share a common discomfort with a president who probably couldn't describe the doctrine of soft power, doesn't desire to be the center of attention at Davos, and wouldn't know that Francis Fukuyama once decided that history was over. ..."
Dec 09, 2019 | www.wsj.com

Enthusiasm over entrepreneurship is now found in every corner of society -- even, apparently, within the federal bureaucracy. Witness after witness in last month's House impeachment inquiry hearings referred to "the interagency," an off-the-books informal government organization that we now know has enormous power to set and execute American foreign policy.

The first to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, State Department official George Kent, seemed to conceive of the interagency as the definitive source of foreign-policy consensus. That Mr. Trump's alleged decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine deviated from that consensus was, for Mr. Kent, prima facie evidence that it was misguided.

Next up, Ambassador William Taylor told the committee that it was the "unanimous opinion of every level of interagency discussion" that the aid should be resumed without delay. Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official, gave the game away by admitting how upset she was that Gordon Sondland, President Trump's ambassador to the European Union, had established an "alternative" approach to helping Kyiv. "We have a robust interagency process that deals with Ukraine," she said.

What is the interagency, and why should its views guide the conduct of American diplomatic and national-security professionals? The Constitution grants the president the power to set defense and diplomatic policy. Where did this interagency come from?

I first heard of the interagency in Baghdad in 2009. I was there as part of a Council on Foreign Relations delegation to Iraq. As a U.S. Army general briefed us on how the war was being fought, he spoke of the interagency as the source of the strategy he was executing. Naively, I asked why he wasn't operating according to orders from his military superiors or the secretary of defense.

How Did Adam Schiff Get Devin Nunes's Phone Records? How did Adam Schiff get Devin Nunes's phone records? bb0282a3-e4cb-42ba-9988-2f3df57fd912@1.00x Created with sketchtool.

He explained that American war-fighting was being guided by a "whole of government" philosophy. Incredibly, he explained that the war couldn't be won without, among other agencies, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Justice and Labor. Iraq needed economic expansion, modern farming, business statistics, new hospitals, a working court system and workplace regulations. The strategy framed by the interagency was nothing less than a yearslong engagement in nation building -- precisely what President George W. Bush had rejected in his 2000 campaign.

Interagency cooperative agreements have been around for decades. The Justice Department, for example, has opioid-interdiction programs that require it to work with the Department of Homeland Security. Today a dictionary of more than 12,500 official terms exists to guide bureaucrats in writing interagency contracts that repurpose federal funds appropriated to various executive departments. Often these interdepartmental initiatives devised by bureaucrats are unknown to Congress. It's hard to imagine that the legislative branch wouldn't object to these arrangements, if only it were aware of them.

When the war on terror opened, with all the secret activity it required, professional cadres in the diplomatic corps, the military and the nation's many intelligence agencies were able to transform interagency cooperative agreements that had existed since the Cold War into a de facto agency -- a largely informal and virtual bureaucracy -- with the assumed power, if need be, to determine and execute a foreign policy at odds with the intent of the president and Congress.

Last month's testimony before the Intelligence Committee shed light on this club whose members are a permanent shadow government credentialed by family histories, elite schools and unique career experiences. This common pedigree informs their perspective of how America should relate to the world. The dogmatists of the interagency seem to share a common discomfort with a president who probably couldn't describe the doctrine of soft power, doesn't desire to be the center of attention at Davos, and wouldn't know that Francis Fukuyama once decided that history was over.

The impeachment hearings will have served a useful purpose if all they do is demonstrate that a cabal of unelected officials are fashioning profound aspects of U.S. foreign policy on their own motion. No statutes anticipate that the president or Congress will delegate such authority to a secret working group formed largely at the initiation of entrepreneurial bureaucrats, notwithstanding that they may be area experts, experienced in diplomatic and military affairs, and motivated by what they see as the best interests of the country.

However the impeachment drama plays out, Congress has cause to enact comprehensive legislation akin to the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which created more-efficient structures and transparent processes in the Defense Department. Americans deserve to know who really is responsible for making the nation's foreign policy. The interagency, if it is to exist, should have a chairman appointed by the president, and its decisions, much like the once-secret minutes of the Federal Reserve, should be published, with limited and necessary exceptions, for all to see.

Mr. Schramm is a university professor at Syracuse. His most recent book is "Burn the Business Plan."

[Dec 07, 2019] I wasn't sure how to characterize McMaster and Kelly. My sense was that they represented the foreign policy establishment consensus, ergo neocon by default.

Notable quotes:
"... It may be as simple as Trump does not really know what he's doing. He doesn't seem to understand the complexity and dynamics of foreign policy. The way he handled Israel is an example as well as some of the bombs he ordered dropped on Afghanistan and Syria. Was he behind that or was someone else? ..."
"... After Bolton came onboard, and then Eliot Abrams, the 24/7 Russia-gate suddenly stopped. That was also around the time USA was fomenting a Venezuelan coup. Was obvious that Russia-Gate was designed to control Trump. ..."
"... The US had power, and no-one else had any. That's all they needed to know, and set about creating new, wonderfully intoxicating realities. As Rove famously inverted the MO they'll act first, creating realities and the analysis and calculation can come later. In awe of their creations, they failed to notice that while history may have ended in Washington, elsewhere it moved on to surround them with a reality where they found themselves in zugzwang, with no understanding how they got there. Flailing (and wailing) like a Mastodon in a tar pit, they've managed only to attract an unhelpful crowd of onlookers, fascinated by the abomination. ..."
"... If that's so, his is the most extraordinary political performance I thought I'd ever see. Even though I can't imagine a more effective single handed way to accomplish what he promised to do, that he's lasted this long and has been so effective is astonishing. I guess we'll see if he abandons buffoonery when his opponents finally sink into the tar. ..."
Dec 07, 2019 | www.unz.com

gsjackson , says: Next New Comment December 7, 2019 at 3:44 am GMT

@Z-man I wasn't sure how to characterize McMaster and Kelly. My sense was that they represented the foreign policy establishment consensus, ergo neocon by default.

I share your optimism about Trump -- because it's the only strand of hope out there, and his enemies are so impeccably loathsome -- but am fully prepared to be proved wrong.

TellTheTruth-2 , says: Website Next New Comment December 7, 2019 at 3:50 am GMT
The neocon communist warmongers have Trump all tied up. Trumping Trump: A Gulliver Strategy (right click) https://medium.com/everyvote/trumping-trump-a-gulliver-strategy-3fc96e4d5d93
renfro , says: Next New Comment December 7, 2019 at 4:53 am GMT

"How did this unusual and dysfunctional situation come about? One possibility is that it was the doing and legacy of the neocon John Bolton, briefly Trump's national security adviser. But this doesn't explain why the president would accept or long tolerate such appointees."

It started before Bolton came on board.

Believe Trump when he says "Loyalty to me first". And that begins with his son in law Jared .his former personal attorney Jason Greenblatt .his former bankruptcy attorney David Friedman and his largest donor Sheldon Adelson .

Trump is too stupid to see that his Zios have no loyalty to him. Trump doesn't appoint anyone, doesn't even know anyone to appoint to national security or foreign policy. He never had any associations or confidents in his business life in NY except the above Jews .

Ask yourself how a 29 year old Jewish boy (now gone) with zero experience got brought onto the WH NSC. He was recommended by Gen. Flynn who did it as a favor to Zio Frank Gaffney of Iraq fame, and Jared because he was a friend of Jared and Gaffney was a friend Ezra's family. ..getting the picture?

All Trumps appointments look like a chain letter started by Kushner and his Zio connections.

freedom-cat , says: Next New Comment December 7, 2019 at 5:51 am GMT
It may be as simple as Trump does not really know what he's doing. He doesn't seem to understand the complexity and dynamics of foreign policy. The way he handled Israel is an example as well as some of the bombs he ordered dropped on Afghanistan and Syria. Was he behind that or was someone else?

He's a walking contradiction.

After Bolton came onboard, and then Eliot Abrams, the 24/7 Russia-gate suddenly stopped. That was also around the time USA was fomenting a Venezuelan coup. Was obvious that Russia-Gate was designed to control Trump.

There was a lull in the attacks on Trump between the time they stopped the 24/7 Russia-gate garbage and start of Impeachment inquiry.

He did something else to tick them all off, so now impeachment is on front burner.

Erebus , says: Next New Comment December 7, 2019 at 10:34 am GMT
@FB

the 'permanent foreign policy establishment'

AKA, the Imperial Staff.

In the days of Kissinger, Baker, et al the Imperial Staff were well coached in the Calculus of Power, knew the limits to Empire and thrived within them. Since the end of history, and the apparent end of limits, policy makers had no more need of realists and their confusing calculations and analyses.

The US had power, and no-one else had any. That's all they needed to know, and set about creating new, wonderfully intoxicating realities. As Rove famously inverted the MO they'll act first, creating realities and the analysis and calculation can come later. In awe of their creations, they failed to notice that while history may have ended in Washington, elsewhere it moved on to surround them with a reality where they found themselves in zugzwang, with no understanding how they got there. Flailing (and wailing) like a Mastodon in a tar pit, they've managed only to attract an unhelpful crowd of onlookers, fascinated by the abomination.

In the second term watch out Trump is not as dumb as they think

I too believe he isn't dumb, but the real question is whether he's playing the fool in furtherance of a plan, or whether it's just who he is and his successes are accidental.

The Deep State's (aka: PFPE's) ongoing behaviour indicates that Trump's using buffoonery to work a plan that's anathema to their created realities, and their increasing shrillness indicates it's working. At every turn, he's managed to make unavailable the resources their reality called for. From the M.E., to the Ukraine to N. Korea to Venezuela, things just aren't working the way they're supposed to. In fact, they're invariably working out in a way that exposes the Deep State's ineptitude and malevolence, and maximizes its embarrassment.

If that's so, his is the most extraordinary political performance I thought I'd ever see. Even though I can't imagine a more effective single handed way to accomplish what he promised to do, that he's lasted this long and has been so effective is astonishing. I guess we'll see if he abandons buffoonery when his opponents finally sink into the tar.

Fascinating.

Pandour , says: Website Next New Comment December 7, 2019 at 1:37 pm GMT
Decades old rhetorical question and answer-the indolent, indoctrinated and illiterate masses who only care about the Super Bowl and other sports,Disneyland and burgers. Twelve per cent of Americans have never heard of the Vice President Mike Pence - that is 30,870,000 American adults.
Johnny Walker Read , says: Next New Comment December 7, 2019 at 2:11 pm GMT
Who Is Making US Foreign Policy?

It is the same people who have been making it since the creation of central banks in America (all three of them).

Never in the history of America, probably never in the history of any country, had there been such open and direct control of governmental activities by the very rich. So long as a handful of men in Wall Street control the credit and industrial processes of the country, they will continue to control the press, the government, and, by deception, the people. They will not only compel the public to work for them in peace, but to fight for them in war. – John Turner, 1922

[Dec 06, 2019] For whom Fiona Hill really work?

Col. Lang wrote an excellent post on 'Who "debunked" the Biden conspiracy theories?' . I would like to suggest a companion post on 'Who defines "the national interests of the United States" '.
Dec 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

J , 26 November 2019 at 08:08 PM

Colonel,

Fiona Hill appears to be part of the Borg, not really sure which part she's affiliated. Some have called her a 'sleeper agent', but a sleeper for whom? British Intelligence agent of influence? Or an Israeli agent of influence, or maybe a Daniel Pipes trained NEOCON agent of influence? Any way one spins it, Fiona Hill has been undermining POTUS Trump while she was part of his NSC and his advisory team. Why her intense hatred of Putin? Does he happen to know through his nation's intelligence exactly who she is and whom she may be working on behalf of? The Skripal incident showed just how much that the British Government and Crown hate Russia. But why the intense British hatred of Russia, why?

Questions, so many questions regarding Ms. Hill and who she really works for.

[Dec 06, 2019] The USA is an occupied by neocon country

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Wellsir, I'm old enough to remember 2002, when the Bush administration and its allies built a case for the Iraq War, using the often-heard line, "We fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here." Seriously, young folks, look it up online. ..."
"... And now comes Prof. Karlan, using the same rhetoric to characterize the conflict between the US and Russia in Ukraine. She was there to talk about the legal aspects of impeachment, but she bizarrely tipped her hand by trashing Trump because he failed to play his part as a warmonger ..."
"... The American elites didn't learn a damn thing from Iraq ..."
"... On the contrary. They learned that, via deceptive rhetoric and on false pretenses, they could easily manoeuver the U.S. into fighting a war on behalf of another nation's interests rather than its own, and face no repercussions for committing such treason, no matter how many lives it costs and how much it impoverishes the U.S. (to say nothing of what bloodshed and chaos it will cause in the targeted nation -- because after all, destabilization is the point). ..."
"... Trump will never beat an actually decent candidate, he occupies the White House because Clinton was the worst candidate in American history. He's (probably) going to win again because his opponents are even more unpopular and incompetent than he is. ..."
"... No, they are only using the mendacious phrase "spreading democracy" as a cover for what they really want to spread: globalist neoliberalism. ..."
"... The left is shameless, duplicitous and disingenous in the extreme when it comes to Russia (and frankly anything else). To be honest it was my collegiate experiences in the 1980s, comparing the handwaving garbage with what my own eyes saw in the East Bloc, that made me a lifetime, permanent rightist. The left is bankrupt, full of liars and dissemblers and needs to be stopped at any cost. ..."
"... I'd highly recommend the films "Ukraine on Fire" and "Revealing Ukraine" (available on Amazon Prime w/o extra rental $) for a good basic primer on the Ukraine over the last 15 years, particularly of US interference and malfeasance in promoting the coup in 2014. And if anyone "interfered" in the 2016 election it wasn't Russia, but the Ukraine, particularly its very pro-Hilary President Poroshenko (illegitimate though he was and remains after the unconstitutional US-backed coup in against Yanukovich in 2014). ..."
"... NATO should have been moth-balled c. 1992. Instead it is hell-bent on aggressive expansion and antagonizing Russia, for no reason (other than to line the pockets of corrupt US and other officials, "business-men" i.e. oligarchs, etc.). ..."
"... The whole conflict was completely avoidable and is 100% due to America's and Western Europe's dumb actions since the fall of the USSR. ..."
Dec 06, 2019 | theamericanconservative.com

In the Year of Our Lord 2019, sixteen years after this nation launched the catastrophic Iraq War, the following words were spoken on Capitol Hill this week:

We have become the shining city on a hill. We have become the nation that leads the world in understanding what democracy is. And one of the things we understand most profoundly is it's not a real democracy, it's not a mature democracy, if the party in power uses the criminal process to go after its enemies. And I think you heard testimony - the Intelligence Committee heard testimony about how it isn't just our national interest in protecting our own elections. It's not just our national interest in making sure that the Ukraine remains strong and on the front line so they fight the Russians there and we don't have to fight them here, but it's also our national interest in promoting democracy worldwide.

This was not the second coming of the Wolfowitz-Cheney-Bolton brigade. This was Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor and Democrat called by her party to testify in this week's House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing.

Wellsir, I'm old enough to remember 2002, when the Bush administration and its allies built a case for the Iraq War, using the often-heard line, "We fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here." Seriously, young folks, look it up online.

And I'm old enough to remember these lines from President Bush's second inaugural address, in 2005:

There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

That didn't work out too well for us, for Iraq, or for the Middle East.

And now comes Prof. Karlan, using the same rhetoric to characterize the conflict between the US and Russia in Ukraine. She was there to talk about the legal aspects of impeachment, but she bizarrely tipped her hand by trashing Trump because he failed to play his part as a warmonger.


Loetzen 9 hours ago • edited ,
The American elites didn't learn a damn thing from Iraq

On the contrary. They learned that, via deceptive rhetoric and on false pretenses, they could easily manoeuver the U.S. into fighting a war on behalf of another nation's interests rather than its own, and face no repercussions for committing such treason, no matter how many lives it costs and how much it impoverishes the U.S. (to say nothing of what bloodshed and chaos it will cause in the targeted nation -- because after all, destabilization is the point).

The same thing will happen here. Lesson learned.

Fran Macadam Rod Dreher 8 hours ago ,

There are, as Victoria Nuland put it, 5 billion reasons for backing the CIA-led coup that overthrew an elected government and replaced it with leaders that the she and the rest of the Obama/Clinton State Department chose. It was the Democrats, since the nineties under another Clinton, that decided to move the American military right up to Russia's borders, interfere in the 1996 election to keep the puppet Yeltsin in power, and with Wall Street leaders to pillage the Russian economy with the stated end to break up Russia into smaller satrapies with governments appointed by the IMF.

Did Joe Biden brag about a quid proof not releasing funds to the Ukraine until it ended the probe into Burisma, which was paying son Hunter millions, and dismiss the investigators altogether? Does it turn out Ukrainian power brokers favored under Obama then sought to influence the American elections against Trump, viewed as wanting to make peace with Russia? Yes, and yes.

Augustine 9 hours ago ,

The US are not a democracy, since the people do not rule. Rather, it's an oligarchy, since a few influential groups do get their way all the time. Pamela is just shilling for one of these groups, the war party.

It does not matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain.

GoDawgs912 Rod Dreher 6 hours ago ,

Agreed, I hope the Republicans agree to impeach him immediately after Election Day if he does win (which I think he will due to the opposition candidates). I'd much prefer Mike Pence to represent us than freaking Trump. I voted third party last time, but even as bad as Trump is, he's not nearly as bad as every democratic front runner.

Why the Democratic Party doesn't back Tulsi Gabard is insane, she's the only candidate who everyone could be somewhat happy with.

Taking a "Unity-Party" angle this election and nominating an anti-war military Veteran who's also a super patriotic minority women would absolutely destroy Trump. She's also a religious conservative while simultaneously being a sane social liberal, she satisfies some of the concerns of literally every part of the electorate. A Tulsi Gabard/ Joe Manchin ticket would be an 84 level blowout. A Joe Biden/ Kamala Harris ticket is literally the best thing that has ever happened to Trump. Trump will never beat an actually decent candidate, he occupies the White House because Clinton was the worst candidate in American history. He's (probably) going to win again because his opponents are even more unpopular and incompetent than he is.

ask zippy Rod Dreher 5 hours ago ,

An article from someone I trust on that evidence which is not hearsay would be useful, any chance you would write one? I ask because impeachment is either political or legal. If it's political then it's just the normal noise from D.C., if it's legal then I want legal standards of evidence. The times I've paid attention the "evidence" has been at the level of someone told me they overhead a phone conversation or we all believed this, but Trump directly told me the opposite of what we all believed.

I'm looking for something like saying "I did not have sex with that woman" under oath as evidence of committing perjury.

TomD Rabiner 7 hours ago • edited ,

...OTOH, Trump's move against Hunter Biden could possibly be a "high crime and misdemeanor" worthy of impeachment, but given the existence of Acts of Congress against foreign corrupt practices and the New York Times investigation of Hunter Biden, it becomes hard to untangle Trump's motives. It would seem to be difficult to prove that an impeachable "high crime and misdemeanor" occurred if probable cause for a Hunter Biden investigation existed. If we prove (NOT assume, as the Dems currently are doing) that probable cause did not exist then impeachment would be a slam dunk. If we don't prove that then Trump's impeachment will not be seen as legitimate by large segments of the public. We really are teetering on the edge of something deep here.

Mitch Young Rabiner 6 hours ago ,

You think that finding out what the son of a sitting vice President, a VP who was also 'point man' for Ukraine, was doing getting millions from a corrupt Ukrainian entity is strictly 'personal gain'? You think that looking into Ukrainian influence into our election is 'personal gain'?

Max Rockatansky 9 hours ago ,

Oh the spreading of democracy worldwide nonsense again! Democracies are earned not given, that lesson cost us trillions and in blood! This sycophant also brought up Pres. Trumps son Baron into the proceedings for no good reason but to score points at tea time back at Stanford. What a demagogue.

Loetzen Max Rockatansky 7 hours ago • edited ,

It's always such a lie too, because it's never really about spreading "democracy" -- that is, they don't at all like the spread of true democracy when the people genuinely prefer and vote for Putin, Assad, Orban, etc., to say nothing of when democracy demonstrates the true will of the people in cases such as Brexit.

No, they are only using the mendacious phrase "spreading democracy" as a cover for what they really want to spread: globalist neoliberalism.

Seoulite Max Rockatansky 6 hours ago ,

Democracies are earned not given, that lesson cost us trillions and in blood!

Yes please give us more democracy, so the uniparty can sell our jobs to global capital and our children's future to foreigners. Nations have survived tyranny, despots, and brutal civil wars. It is not at all clear whether the nations of the West will survive your beloved democracy.

Jerry 8 hours ago ,

...Of course, anyone with a brain knows it's not about Ukraine, a country having no bearing at all on the vital interests of the United States. Rather, Ukraine is a handy pretext serving the interests of America's military-industrial complex and the enrichment of our Ruling Class.

... ... ...

sb • 8 hours ago ,

If Trump wanted to prove a really great president, he could forge a peace with Russia (which would entail getting a settlement with Ukraine). It is insane, and only to the benefit of woke liberal capitalists to frame Russia as a permanent enemy. Carving developed nations into 'us vs them', so the liberal elite can divide and rule us. They use this strategy on multiple fronts, to ensure success:

Pragmatically, we will need an alliance with Russia (and possibly with a post-communist China) to stave off the invading colonisers looking to grift a free lunch in the 'rich' west (its only the 1% wealthy in the west who are really rich, not the >90% peasant class), not to mention the ideologically/religiously motivated muslims planning to implement the global sharia subjugation of the pseudo-Christian west demanded in the Koran.

Sadly, Trump does seem to be proving he lacks the organisational skills to drain the swamp - a virtually impossible task for any one person. A 'friendship pact' with Russia (perhaps swapping trade access to US for human rights, democratic and media freedoms in Russia) would be a big step forward to building a united free west. Perhaps bring Poland and Hungary in to to reassure Russia, and strengthen the protections for Christians and traditional family life. But for this to happen Trump needs to have a Secretary of State he trusts heavily.

Fun times to look forward to anyway...

Stefan • 8 hours ago ,

... Signify... whatever, anything, but please not too much thinking. Same with Washington's foreign policy blob. What matters is that the world's is forced to take America's opinions into account, no matter how bone-headed they are. If they put the world on fire that's called collateral damage (Ledeen Doctrine).

jeremyjanson 7 hours ago ,

What I find funniest about this whole "impeachment" shenanigan is how the Democrats honestly think anyone doesn't believe they're guilty of exactly what they're accusing Trump of. All Trump has to do is reveal seven such cases to the American people after this whole shenanigan is over and turn their own words against them and they are THROUGH! This might honestly be the biggest political mistake in the history of our Republic.

Brendan • 7 hours ago ,

The whole thing is nonsense. Democracy is particular to the West, and is frankly innately fragile and dying a proper death -- slowly, mind you, but dying it is, and thankfully so.

The whole Russia situation is hilarious and a thousand percent ideological. I sat next to these same assholes in college in the 1980s as they blithely handwaved "no true Scotsman" type arguments about the Soviet Union, and moral equivalency and so on, and then of course without their precious hearts skipping one single beat, they switched immediately to "Russia is evil and must be stopped at all costs" when Russia emerged with a nationalist/rightist government.

The left is shameless, duplicitous and disingenous in the extreme when it comes to Russia (and frankly anything else). To be honest it was my collegiate experiences in the 1980s, comparing the handwaving garbage with what my own eyes saw in the East Bloc, that made me a lifetime, permanent rightist. The left is bankrupt, full of liars and dissemblers and needs to be stopped at any cost.

Disqus10021 7 hours ago ,

My guess is that Russia has enough nuclear weapons and the capability to launch them at every major city in the US. Vladimir is no drunkard like Boris Yeltsin was. We should not provoke the Russian bear into lashing out at the US. The old Soviet Union lost some 20 million of its citizens in WWII and did the heavy lifting in defeating the Nazis. Hands up if you want to send your 19 year old son to fight the Russians in Sevastopol. Does the average American even know where Sevastopol is? More than likely, a war with Russia would result in the nuclear bombing of New York, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Houston for starters.

SatirevFlesti 7 hours ago ,

I'd highly recommend the films "Ukraine on Fire" and "Revealing Ukraine" (available on Amazon Prime w/o extra rental $) for a good basic primer on the Ukraine over the last 15 years, particularly of US interference and malfeasance in promoting the coup in 2014. And if anyone "interfered" in the 2016 election it wasn't Russia, but the Ukraine, particularly its very pro-Hilary President Poroshenko (illegitimate though he was and remains after the unconstitutional US-backed coup in against Yanukovich in 2014).

NATO should have been moth-balled c. 1992. Instead it is hell-bent on aggressive expansion and antagonizing Russia, for no reason (other than to line the pockets of corrupt US and other officials, "business-men" i.e. oligarchs, etc.).

GoDawgs912 7 hours ago ,

I'm halfway cheering for Russia in their conflict with Ukraine. That's Russia's sphere of influence, Ukraine has no business in the EU or in NATO. Any sane American government would be courting Russia in the new Cold War that's obviously coming with The Chinese Communist Party. Instead we pulled all of the former European countries in the USSR into our sphere of influence. The whole conflict was completely avoidable and is 100% due to America's and Western Europe's dumb actions since the fall of the USSR.

[Dec 06, 2019] Who Is Making US Foreign Policy by Stephen F. Cohen

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... A more plausible explanation is that Trump thought that by appointing such anti-Russian hard-liners he could lay to rest the Russiagate allegations that had hung over him for three years and still did: that for some secret nefarious reason he was and remained a "Kremlin puppet." Despite the largely exculpatory Mueller report, Trump's political enemies, mostly Democrats but not only, have kept the allegations alive. ..."
"... The larger question is who should make American foreign policy: an elected president or Washington's permanent foreign policy establishment? (It is scarcely a "deep" or "secret" state, since its representatives appear on CNN and MSNBC almost daily.) Today, Democrats seem to think that it should be the foreign policy establishment, not President Trump. But having heard the cold-war views of much of that establishment, how will they feel when a Democrat occupies the White House? After all, eventually Trump will leave power, but Washington's foreign-policy "blob," as even an Obama aide termed it , will remain. ..."
"... Listen to the podcast here ..."
"... War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate ..."
"... The John Batchelor Show ..."
"... Trump's anti-Iranian fever is every bit as ludicrous as the DNC's anti-Russian fever. There is absolutely nothing to support the anti-Iranian policy argument or the anti JCPOA argument. The only thing that is missing from all of this is Iranian hookers, and that would certainly be an explosive headline! ..."
"... You know why Rhodes called it the blob, right? Why he made it sound so formless and squishy? Ask yourself, how does a failed novelist with zilch for foreign-affairs credentials get the big job of Obama's ventriloquist? That's a CIA billet. It so happens that Rhodes' brother has a big job of his own with CBS News, the most servile of the Mockingbird media propaganda mills. ..."
"... It's not a blob, it's a precisely-articulated hierarchy. And the top of it is CIA. So please for once somebody answer this blindingly obvious question, Who is making US foreign policy? CIA, that's who. For the CIA show trial run by Iran/Contra nomenklatura Bill Barr and his blackmailed flunky Durham, Trump's high crime and misdemeanor is conducting diplomacy without CIA supervision. They come out and say so, pointing to the National Security Act's mousetrap bureaucracy. ..."
"... CIA runs your country. They've got impunity, they do what they want. We've got 400,000 academics paid to overthink it. ..."
"... We cannot trust that the people that destroyed the country will repair it. It is run by a Cult of Hedonistic Satanic Psychopaths. If they were limited to just the CIA, America would be in far better shape than its in. The CIA is not capable of thinking or intelligence, so we should stop paying them. ..."
"... Drumpf has been a tool of the Wall Street/Las Vegas Zionist billionaires for many, many years. so his selection of warmongering Zio neo-con advisors should be no surprise. ..."
"... Perhaps part of the reason that Trump often seems to be surrounded by people who don't support his policies or values is, as Paul Craig Roberts suggested in 2016, that Trump would have real problems simply because he was an outsider. An outsider to the Washington swamp, a swamp that Clinton had been swimming in for decades. In short he didn't know who to trust, who to keep "in the tent" & who to shut out. Thus, we have had this huge churn in Secretaries & on so on downwards. ..."
"... Sociopaths are the ones that do the worst because they lack any concern or "Empathy", like robots. So I read that the socio's are some of the brightest people who often are very successful in business etc. and can hide the fact that they would soon as kill as look at ya, but cool as ice, all they want is to get what the hell they want! They don't give a rats petoot who likes likes it or not, except as . ..."
"... Trump hasn't fired any of the neocons, but he proved that he CAN fire defense executives. He fired the Sec of Navy for disagreeing with some ridiculous personal thing that Trump wanted to do. Since Trump hasn't fired any neocons, we have to conclude that he's fully on board. ..."
"... There are so many security holes in the constitution of the USA including that it was ratified by those who invented it, not by a vote put to the people that would be made to suffer being governed by it. Basically the USA is useless as a defender of human rights (one of which is the right to self determination). The so called bill of rights (1st 10 amendments) are contractual promises, but like all clauses in contracts if there is no way to enforce them, then there is no use for the clause except maybe propaganda value. ..."
"... In a normally functioning world you simply can't simultaneously argue that in one case West can bomb a country to force self-determination as in Kosovo, and also denounce exactly the same thing in Crimea. On to Catalonia and more self-determination ..."
"... Trump, among his other occupations, used to engage with the professional wrestling circuit. In that well-staged entertainment there is always a bad guy – or a ' heel ' – who is used to stir up the crowds, the Evil Sheik or Rocky's hapless movie enemies. It makes it ' real '. The ' heel ' is sometimes allowed to win to better manage the audience. But the narrative never changes. Our rational judgments should focus on what happens, and on outcomes – not on talk, slogans, speeches, etc Based on that, Trump is a classical ' heel ' character. He might even be playing it consciously, or he has no choice. ..."
"... To answer the question who runs ' foreign policy ', let's ignore the stadium speeches, and simply look at what happens. In a world bereft of enough profitable consumer things to do, and enough justifiable careers for unemployable geo-political security 'experts' of all kinds, having enemies and maybe even a small war occasionally is not such an irrational thing to want. Plus there are the deep ethnic hatreds and traumas going back generations that were naively imported into the heart of the Western world. (Washington warned against that 200+ years ago.) ..."
"... or maybe trump was a lying neocon, war-loving, immigration-loving neoliberal all along, and you and the trumptards somehow continue to believe his campaign rhetoric? ..."
"... The fact is Trump is not an anti-neocon (Deep State) president he only talks that way. The fact that he surrounded himself with Deep State denizens gives lie to the thought that he is anti-Deep State no one can be that god damn stupid. ..."
"... "TRUMP SUPPORTERS WERE DUPED – Trump supporters are going to find out soon enough that they were duped by Donald Trump. Trump was given the script to run as the "Chaos Candidate" .He is just a pawn of the ruling elite .It is a tactic known as 'CONTROLLED OPPOSITION' ". Wasn't it FDR who said "Presidents are selected , they are not elected " ? ..."
"... Trump selected the Neocons he is surrounded with. And he's given away all kinds of property that he has absolutely no legal authority to give. He was seeking to please American Oligarchs the likes of Adelson. That's American politics. "Money is free speech." Of course, there is another connection with foreign policy beyond the truly total corruption of American domestic politics, and that's through America's brutal empire abroad. ..."
"... Obama or Trump, on the main matters of importance abroad – NATO, Russia, Israel/Palestine, China – there has been no difference, except Trump is more openly bellicose and given to saying really stupid things. ..."
Dec 06, 2019 | www.unz.com
President Trump campaigned and was elected on an anti-neocon platform: he promised to reduce direct US involvement in areas where, he believed, America had no vital strategic interest, including in Ukraine. He also promised a new détente ("cooperation") with Moscow.

And yet, as we have learned from their recent congressional testimony, key members of his own National Security Council did not share his views and indeed were opposed to them. Certainly, this was true of Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Both of them seemed prepared for a highly risky confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, though whether retroactively because of Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea or for more general reasons was not entirely clear.

Similarly, Trump was slow in withdrawing Marie Yovanovitch, a career foreign service officer appointed by President Obama as ambassador to Kiev, who had made clear, despite her official position in Kiev, that she did not share the new American president's thinking about Ukraine or Russia. In short, the president was surrounded in his own administration, even in the White House, by opponents of his foreign policy and presumably not only in regard to Ukraine.

How did this unusual and dysfunctional situation come about? One possibility is that it was the doing and legacy of the neocon John Bolton, briefly Trump's national security adviser. But this doesn't explain why the president would accept or long tolerate such appointees.

A more plausible explanation is that Trump thought that by appointing such anti-Russian hard-liners he could lay to rest the Russiagate allegations that had hung over him for three years and still did: that for some secret nefarious reason he was and remained a "Kremlin puppet." Despite the largely exculpatory Mueller report, Trump's political enemies, mostly Democrats but not only, have kept the allegations alive.

The larger question is who should make American foreign policy: an elected president or Washington's permanent foreign policy establishment? (It is scarcely a "deep" or "secret" state, since its representatives appear on CNN and MSNBC almost daily.) Today, Democrats seem to think that it should be the foreign policy establishment, not President Trump. But having heard the cold-war views of much of that establishment, how will they feel when a Democrat occupies the White House? After all, eventually Trump will leave power, but Washington's foreign-policy "blob," as even an Obama aide termed it , will remain.

Listen to the podcast here . Stephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate , is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show , now in their sixth year, are available at www.thenation.com .


Curmudgeon , says: December 5, 2019 at 8:49 pm GMT

because of Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea or for more general reasons was not entirely clear.

In an otherwise decent overview, this sticks out like a sore thumb. It would be helpful to stop using the word annexation. While correct in a technical sense – that Crimea was added to the Russian Federation – the word comes with all kinds of connotations, that imply illegality and or force. Given Crimea was given special status when gifted to Ukraine for administration by the USSR, one could just as easily apply "annexation" of Crimea to Ukraine. After Ukraine voted to "leave" the USSR, Crimea voted to join Ukraine. Obviously the "Ukrainian" vote did not include Crimea. Even after voting to join Ukraine, Crimea had special status within Ukraine, and was semi autonomous. If you can vote to join, you can vote to leave. Either you have the right to self determination, or you don't.

Rebel0007 , says: December 5, 2019 at 10:38 pm GMT
This is what is so infuriating, Stephen! These silent coups of the executive branch have been taking place for my entire life! Both parties are guilty of refusing to appoint cabinet members that the elected presidents would have chosen for themselves, because both parties are more interested in making the president of the opposing party look bad, make him ineffective, and incapable of carrying out policies that he was elected to carry out. That is the very definition of treason!

Things are a disaster. The JCPOA is at the heart of the issue and Trump and his advisors stubborn refusal to capitulate on this issue very well may cause Trump to lose the 2020 election. Trump's anti-Iranian fever is every bit as ludicrous as the DNC's anti-Russian fever. There is absolutely nothing to support the anti-Iranian policy argument or the anti JCPOA argument. The only thing that is missing from all of this is Iranian hookers, and that would certainly be an explosive headline!

The anti-Iranian fever has created so much havoc not only with Iran, but with every country on earth other than Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Germany announced that it is seeking to unite with Russia, not only for Gazprom, but is now considering purchasing defense systems from Russia, and Germany is dictating EU policy, by and large. Germany has said that Europe must be able to defend itself independent of America and is requesting an EU military and Italy is on board with this idea, seeking to create jobs and weapons for its economy and defense.

The EU is fed up with the economic sanctions placed on countries that the U.S. has black-listed, particularly Russia and Iran, and China as well for Huwaei 5G.

Nobody in their right mind could ever claim this to be the free market capitalism that Larry Kudlow espouses!

National Institute for Study of the O... , says: December 5, 2019 at 11:00 pm GMT
You know why Rhodes called it the blob, right? Why he made it sound so formless and squishy? Ask yourself, how does a failed novelist with zilch for foreign-affairs credentials get the big job of Obama's ventriloquist? That's a CIA billet. It so happens that Rhodes' brother has a big job of his own with CBS News, the most servile of the Mockingbird media propaganda mills.

It's not a blob, it's a precisely-articulated hierarchy. And the top of it is CIA. So please for once somebody answer this blindingly obvious question, Who is making US foreign policy? CIA, that's who. For the CIA show trial run by Iran/Contra nomenklatura Bill Barr and his blackmailed flunky Durham, Trump's high crime and misdemeanor is conducting diplomacy without CIA supervision. They come out and say so, pointing to the National Security Act's mousetrap bureaucracy.

CIA runs your country. They've got impunity, they do what they want. We've got 400,000 academics paid to overthink it.

follyofwar , says: December 5, 2019 at 11:53 pm GMT
@Curmudgeon Pat Buchanan also uses the word "annexation" all the time.
Rebel0007 , says: December 6, 2019 at 4:31 am GMT
National Institute for the study of the obvious,

The CIA has no authority what so ever as defined by the supreme law of the land, the constitution. That would make them guilty of a coup which would be an act of treason, so if what you claim is true, why have they not been prosecuted.

It is a political game between to competing kleptocratic cults. The DNC and RNC are whores and will do what ever their donors tell them to do. That is also treason. This country is just a total wasteland.

Everyone has pledged allegiance to fraud.

Too big to fail, like the Titanic and the Hindenberg.

We cannot trust that the people that destroyed the country will repair it. It is run by a Cult of Hedonistic Satanic Psychopaths. If they were limited to just the CIA, America would be in far better shape than its in. The CIA is not capable of thinking or intelligence, so we should stop paying them.

Haxo Angmark , says: Website December 6, 2019 at 6:01 am GMT
Drumpf has been a tool of the Wall Street/Las Vegas Zionist billionaires for many, many years. so his selection of warmongering Zio neo-con advisors should be no surprise.
Monty Ahwazi , says: December 6, 2019 at 6:03 am GMT
What kind of stupid question is this? You mean you don't know or asking us for confirmation? If you really don't know then why are you writing an article about it? If you do know then why are you asking the UNZ readers?
animalogic , says: December 6, 2019 at 6:21 am GMT
Perhaps part of the reason that Trump often seems to be surrounded by people who don't support his policies or values is, as Paul Craig Roberts suggested in 2016, that Trump would have real problems simply because he was an outsider. An outsider to the Washington swamp, a swamp that Clinton had been swimming in for decades. In short he didn't know who to trust, who to keep "in the tent" & who to shut out. Thus, we have had this huge churn in Secretaries & on so on downwards.
EdNels , says: December 6, 2019 at 6:49 am GMT
@Rebel0007

It is run by a Cult of Hedonistic Satanic Psychopaths.

That's ok but it's a bit unfair to Hedonistic Satanic Psychopaths After all most of the country is Hedonistic as hell, it sells commercials or wtf. Satanic is philosophical and way over the heads of these clowns, though if the be a Satan, then they are in the plan for sure, and right on the mark. As for psychopaths, those are criminals who are insane, but they can have remorse and be their own worst enemies, often they just go off and go psycho and bad things happen, but can be unplanned off the wall stuff, not diabolic.

Sociopaths are the ones that do the worst because they lack any concern or "Empathy", like robots. So I read that the socio's are some of the brightest people who often are very successful in business etc. and can hide the fact that they would soon as kill as look at ya, but cool as ice, all they want is to get what the hell they want! They don't give a rats petoot who likes likes it or not, except as .

So, once upon a time, a people got so hedonistic and they didn't watch the game and theier leaders were low quality (especially religeous/morals ) and long story short Satan unleashed the Socio's , Things seem to be heading disastrously, so will bit coin save the day? Green nudeal?

Jon Baptist , says: December 6, 2019 at 6:54 am GMT
The simple questions that beg to be asked are who are the accusers and what media agencies are providing the amplification to transmit these accusations?
https://forward.com/news/national/434664/impeachment-trump-democrats-jewish/
https://www.jta.org/2019/11/15/politics/the-tell-the-jewish-players-in-impeachment

There is also this link courtesy of Haass' CFR – https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/russia-trump-and-2016-us-election

While massive attention is directed towards Russia and the Ukraine, the majority of the public are shown the slight of hand and their attention is never brought near to the real perpetrators of subverting American and British foreign policy.

https://electronicintifada.net/content/watch-film-israel-lobby-didnt-want-you-see/25876
http://joshdlindsay.com/2019/04/the-israel-lobby-in-the-u-s-al-jazeera-documentary/
The Truth Archive
2K subscribers
The Israeli Lobby in the United States of America (2017) – Full Documentary HD

polistra , says: December 6, 2019 at 7:49 am GMT
Doesn't matter if he's surrounded. A president CAN make foreign policy, and a president CAN fire people who disagree with his policy. Trump hasn't fired any of the neocons, but he proved that he CAN fire defense executives. He fired the Sec of Navy for disagreeing with some ridiculous personal thing that Trump wanted to do. Since Trump hasn't fired any neocons, we have to conclude that he's fully on board.
sally , says: December 6, 2019 at 8:51 am GMT
@Rebel0007

The CIA has no authority what so ever as defined by the supreme law of the land, the constitution. That would make them guilty of a coup which would be an act of treason, so if what you claim is true, why have they not been prosecuted.

--
first off the supreme law of the land maybe the Constitution and to oppose it may be Treason, but the Law that is supreme to the Law of the land is Human rights law.. it is far superior to, and it is the TLD of all laws of the land of all of the Nation States that mankind has allowed the greedy among its masses, to impose.

There are so many security holes in the constitution of the USA including that it was ratified by those who invented it, not by a vote put to the people that would be made to suffer being governed by it. Basically the USA is useless as a defender of human rights (one of which is the right to self determination). The so called bill of rights (1st 10 amendments) are contractual promises, but like all clauses in contracts if there is no way to enforce them, then there is no use for the clause except maybe propaganda value.

If you note the USA constitution has seven articles..

Article 1 is about 525 elected members of congress and their very limited powers to control
foreign activities. Each qualified to vote member of the governed (a citizen so to speak) is allowed to
vote for only 3 of the 525 persons. so basically there is no real national election anywhere .

Article II grants the electoral college the power to appoint two persons full control of the assets,
resources and manpower of America to conquer the entire world or to make peace in the entire world.
Either way: the governed are not allowed to vote for either; the EC vote determines the P or VP.

Article III allows the Article II person to appoint yes men to the judiciary

Where exist the power of the governed to deny USA governors the ability to the use the powers the constitution claims the governors are to have, against the governed? <==No where I can find? Theoretically, the governed are protected from abuse for as long as it takes to conduct due process?

One person, the Article II person, is basically the king when in comes to constitutional authority to establish, conduct, prosecute or defend USA involvement in foreign affairs.

No where does the constitution of the USA deny its President the use of American resources or USA military power, to make and use diplomat appointments, or to use the USA to use the wealth of America and the hegemonic powers of the USA to make a private or public profit in a foreign land. <= d/n matter if the profit is personal to the President or if it assigned by appointment (like the feudal powers granted by the feudal kings to the feudal lords) to corporate feudal lords or oligarch personal interest.

AFAICT, the president can USE the USA to conduct war, invade or otherwise infringe on, even destroy, the territory, or a private or public interest, within a foreign sovereign more or less at will. So if the President wants to command a private or secret Army like the CIA, he can as far as I can tell, obviously this president does, because he could with his pen alone shut it down.

Seems to me the "NO" from Wilson's four points

  1. no more secret diplomacy peace settlement must not lead the way to new wars
  2. no retribution, unjust claims, and huge fines <basically indemnities paid by the losers to the winners.
  3. no more war; includes controls on armaments and arming of nations.
  4. no more Trade Barriers so the nations of the world would become more interdependent.

have been made the essence of nation state operations world wide.

IMO, The CIA exists at the pleasure of the President.

Beckow , says: December 6, 2019 at 9:29 am GMT
@Curmudgeon all of that, plus the Kosovo precedent.

In a normally functioning world you simply can't simultaneously argue that in one case West can bomb a country to force self-determination as in Kosovo, and also denounce exactly the same thing in Crimea. On to Catalonia and more self-determination

Beckow , says: December 6, 2019 at 9:52 am GMT
Trump, among his other occupations, used to engage with the professional wrestling circuit. In that well-staged entertainment there is always a bad guy – or a ' heel ' – who is used to stir up the crowds, the Evil Sheik or Rocky's hapless movie enemies. It makes it ' real '. The 'heel ' is sometimes allowed to win to better manage the audience. But the narrative never changes. Our rational judgments should focus on what happens, and on outcomes – not on talk, slogans, speeches, etc Based on that, Trump is a classical ' heel ' character. He might even be playing it consciously, or he has no choice.

To answer the question who runs ' foreign policy ', let's ignore the stadium speeches, and simply look at what happens. In a world bereft of enough profitable consumer things to do, and enough justifiable careers for unemployable geo-political security 'experts' of all kinds, having enemies and maybe even a small war occasionally is not such an irrational thing to want. Plus there are the deep ethnic hatreds and traumas going back generations that were naively imported into the heart of the Western world. (Washington warned against that 200+ years ago.)

Anon [424] Disclaimer , says: December 6, 2019 at 10:47 am GMT
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/majority-germans-wants-less-reliance-us-more-engagement-russia/ri27985

Macron said that NATO is " brain dead " :

https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-warns-europe-nato-is-becoming-brain-dead

The more the US sanctions so many countries around the world , the more the US generate an anti US reaction around the world .

gotmituns , says: December 6, 2019 at 11:09 am GMT
Who Is Making US Foreign Policy?
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Could it be israel?
DrWatson , says: December 6, 2019 at 11:20 am GMT
Trump should have kept Steve Bannon as his advisor and should have fired instead his son-in-law. Perhaps "they" are blackmailing Trump with photos like here: https://www.pinterest.com/richarddesjarla/creepy/

That would explain why Trump is so ineffective at making a reality anything he campaigned for.

Marshall Lentini , says: December 6, 2019 at 11:28 am GMT
@melpol Betas in power -- an underappreciated dimension of this morass.
propagandist hacker , says: Website December 6, 2019 at 11:29 am GMT
or maybe trump was a lying neocon, war-loving, immigration-loving neoliberal all along, and you and the trumptards somehow continue to believe his campaign rhetoric?
Realist , says: December 6, 2019 at 11:52 am GMT

An anti-neocon president appears to have been surrounded by neocons in his own administration.

The fact is Trump is not an anti-neocon (Deep State) president he only talks that way. The fact that he surrounded himself with Deep State denizens gives lie to the thought that he is anti-Deep State no one can be that god damn stupid.

Realist , says: December 6, 2019 at 12:00 pm GMT
@sally

IMO, The CIA exists at the pleasure of the President.

The CIA sees it differently; and they are part of the Deep State.

Realist , says: December 6, 2019 at 12:03 pm GMT
@propagandist hacker

or maybe trump was a lying neocon, war-loving, immigration-loving neoliberal all along, and you and the trumptards somehow continue to believe his campaign rhetoric?

That is my contention.

Sean , says: December 6, 2019 at 12:11 pm GMT
MICHAEL CARPENTER Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 2015 to 2017.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2019-11-26/oligarchs-who-lost-ukraine-and-won-washington

Halfway around the world from Washington's halls of power, Ukraine sits along a civilizational and geopolitical fault line. To Ukraine's west are the liberal democracies of Europe, governed by rule of law and democratic principles. To its east are Russia and its client states in Eurasia, almost all of which are corrupt oligarchies. [ ] In this war on democratic movements and democratic principles, Russia's biggest prize and chief adversary has always been the United States. Until now, however, Russia has always had to contend with bipartisan resolve to counter

No mention of China, and this is the problem with the whole foreign policy establishment not just the neocons. Russia is more of an annoyance than anything, but they are still operating assumptions on what is the Geographical Pivot of History , so they want to talk about Russia. Like an Edwardian sea cadet we are supposed to care about Russia getting (back) a water port in Crimea. Mahan's definition of sea power included a strong commercial fleet. After tearing their own environment apart like a car in a wrecking yard and heating up the planet China has taken time out from deforestation and colonising Tibet, to send huge container vessels full of cheap goods through the melting Arctic round the top of Russia all the better to get to Europe and deindustrialise it.

Western elites have sold out to China, seen as the future, so we hear about Russia rather than the three million Uyghurs in concentration camps complete with constantly smoking crematoria, and harvesting of organs for rich foreigners.

Who poses a greater threat to the West: China or Russia?
By the time the West finds itself in open conflict with Beijing, we will have lost our relative advantage. Brendan Simms and K.C. Lin [ ] The concept of China being a threat is harder to comprehend. In what way? Yes, its hacking and intellectual property theft is a headache. But is it worse than what Russia is up to? And don't we need Chinese investment, so does it really matter if China builds our 5G mobile networks? In London, ministers agonise over these issues -- not knowing whether to pity China (we still send foreign aid there), beg for its money and contracts (with prime ministerial trade trips), or treat it as a potential antagonist.

Aid ! They sent robots to the far side of the Moon

Beijing has been the beneficiary of liberal revulsion at the Trump presidency: if the Donald is against the Chinese, who cannot be for them? As a result, Trump's efforts to address China's unfair trade practices have so far missed the mark with the domestic and international audience. As Trump declares war on free trade, China -- one of the most protectionist economies in the world -- is now celebrated at Davos as the avatar of free trade. Later this month, China's Vice-President is likely to be in attendance at Davos -- and there is even talk of him meeting with Trump. Similarly, the messiness of American politics has made China's one-party state an apparent poster boy of political stability and governability.

9/11 Inside job , says: December 6, 2019 at 12:14 pm GMT
911endofdays.blogspot.com : "Sackcloth&Ashes – The 16th Trump of Arcana " :

"TRUMP SUPPORTERS WERE DUPED – Trump supporters are going to find out soon enough that they were duped by Donald Trump. Trump was given the script to run as the "Chaos Candidate" .He is just a pawn of the ruling elite .It is a tactic known as 'CONTROLLED OPPOSITION' ".
Wasn't it FDR who said "Presidents are selected , they are not elected " ?

JOHN CHUCKMAN , says: Website December 6, 2019 at 12:25 pm GMT

Trump selected the Neocons he is surrounded with. And he's given away all kinds of property that he has absolutely no legal authority to give. He was seeking to please American Oligarchs the likes of Adelson. That's American politics. "Money is free speech." Of course, there is another connection with foreign policy beyond the truly total corruption of American domestic politics, and that's through America's brutal empire abroad.

The military/intelligence imperial establishment definitely see Israel as a kind of American colony in the Mideast, and they make sure that it's well provided for. That's what the Neocon Wars have been about. Paving over large parts of Israel's noisy neighborhood. And that includes matters like keeping Syria off-balance with occupation in its northeast. And constantly threatening Iran.

Obama or Trump, on the main matters of importance abroad – NATO, Russia, Israel/Palestine, China – there has been no difference, except Trump is more openly bellicose and given to saying really stupid things.

By the way, the last President who tried seriously to make foreign policy as the elected head of government left half of his head splattered on thec streets of Dallas.

Sick of Orcs , says: December 6, 2019 at 12:36 pm GMT
@propagandist hacker Or he was fooled, tricked, bribed, coerced by The HoloNose.

Don't get me wrong, the Orange Sellout is to blame regardless.

9/11 Inside job , says: December 6, 2019 at 12:37 pm GMT
@Jon Baptist We have all been brainwashed by the propaganda screened by the massmedia ,whether it be FOX , MSNBC , CBS ,etc.. SeptemberClues.info has a good article entitled "The central role of the news media on 9/11 " :

"The 9/11 psyop relied foremostly on that weakspot of ours .We all fell for the images we saw on TV at the time we can only wonder why so many never questioned the absurd TV coverage proposed by all the major networks The 9/11 TV imagery of the crucial morning events was just a computer-animated, pre-fabricated movie."

Was "The Harley Guy" a crisis actor ?

geokat62 , says: December 6, 2019 at 1:00 pm GMT
@National Institute for Study of the Obvious

So please for once somebody answer this blindingly obvious question, Who is making US foreign policy? CIA, that's who.

Close. You got 4 of the correct letters, AIPAC. You were just missing the P.

CIA runs your country.

No, Jewish Supremacist oligarchs run America.

Herald , says: December 6, 2019 at 1:05 pm GMT
@follyofwar Pat inhabits a strange Hollywood type world, where the US is always the good guy. He believes that, although the US may make foreign policy mistakes, its aims and ambitions are nevertheless noble and well intentioned.

In Pat's world it's still circa 1955, but even then, his take on US foreign policy would have been hopelessly unrealistic.

[Dec 06, 2019] Th ey think they are the people who set national policy and the president is this figurehead who is guided by all these people around him who agree on everything," he said. "The president doesn't need to use the State Department at all to conduct foreign policy

24 November 2019
Dec 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Punch foresaw The Borg

Punch

"Foreign Policy"

"This was a debate over policy. Trump's critics may not have liked the policy he was pushing. But as former Defense Intelligence Agency official Pat Lang noted on his blog last week, the statute in question applies only to "intelligence activities" but "does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters."

That's what this fight is about, said Lang . Speaker after speaker at the hearings asserted that Trump's views did not comport with official national policy. But the president sets that policy, Lang said, not the diplomats.

"They think they are the people who set national policy and the president is this figurehead who is guided by all these people around him who agree on everything," he said. "The president doesn't need to use the State Department at all to conduct foreign policy." ' Paul Mulshine

-------------

Actually, I was too minimal in speaking of "diplomats." Vindman is not a diplomat and there are many other actors in this drama of Borgist angst (foreign policy establishment ) who are not diplomats.

For one thing a large percentage of the Drones at the State Department are civil service employees rather than Foreign Service Officers, and although they do not play well together they agree on the ultimate authority of the Supremacy Clause (non-existent) in the US Constitution that gives the State Department dominion over all the Lord created. A career ambassador's wife once lectured me that the US Army should change the cap badge that officers wear because it looks too much like the Great Seal of the United States which in the State Department can only be displayed by Ambassadors. I told her that she should petition the Secretary of the Army in this matter.

Various departments of government, media, academia, thinktankeries, etc., all have heavy infestations of folks who went to graduate school together in poly sci in all its branches, or who wish to be thought worthy of such attendance. They specialize in group think, conformity, and conformism, even to the solemn dress they affect. The four in hand tie knot is pretty much mandatory for serious consideration for inclusion in the Borg. It indicates a certain preppy insouciance and faux disregard for details of dress.

Trump's casual disregard for all that enrages the Borg who thought they had "won it all" long ago and that they would have a Borgist neocon to deal with in Hillary.

Hell hath no fury like The Borg scorned. pl

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/11/the-trump-impeachment-hearing-whistle-blower-blew-up-a-non-story-mulshine.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_(magazine)

Posted at 12:28 PM in As The Borg Turns , Current Affairs , Media , Mulshine | Permalink

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J , 24 November 2019 at 12:56 PM

Hillary's Foundation has lost millions recently, which has Hillary pursing her lips like she's been using a lemon for her lipstick. I mean, worse than fish-lips, Hillary's pursing expression.

Too bad that we can't form some cement shoes for the Borg and toss them into the east river AKA the Atlantic, or send them back to hell from where they originated!

Hank H. , 24 November 2019 at 06:44 PM
OT:
This afternoon my wife and I turned on the TV to watch football. We were flipping through channels and came upon some local ABC affiliate (WMUR) which had on a documentary which mentioned the Medal of Honor and a Catholic chaplain in Vietnam. Needless to say we stayed on that channel. Long story short, it was one of the most powerful things we've ever watched. We were both in tears by the end (nb: I don't cry easily) and we were changed from having watched it. We immediately went online to purchase copies for family members. It was recently released.
The Field Afar: The Life of Fr. Vincent Capodanno

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Afar-Life-Vincent-Capodanno/dp/B081KPTT3R/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=A+field+afar&qid=1574638098&sr=8-1

JMH , 25 November 2019 at 04:22 AM
As the Borg like to say "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own." They have done this with the four in hand tie knot which was previously worn by giants like George Kennon and Chip Bohlen. Yet now, the midgetry prevails.
Ghost Ship , 25 November 2019 at 11:34 AM
The four in hand tie knot is pretty much mandatory for serious consideration for inclusion in the Borg.
I'm surprised, given some of the more outlandish claims about the British Royal Family, that the Windsor knot isn't mandatory.
Jim Ticehurst , 25 November 2019 at 07:21 PM
Colonel...This is another Reason why I appreciate your levels of Experience and knowledge with SST..Thank you for doing that...I always come away with New Insight..and Understanding of Real Dynamics..what has Progressively Developed inside the State.Department.with its Influence On so Much POLICY...and .is as You say...The BORG..and Their Own Culture.your Article put that all into a Big Picture for Me..(Connecting the Data..) .It.as you aptly Described. is a Universal.Sect..and...At The National Level...They are Cyber Borgs..Shciff Shapers..and that Whole Colony has Been Exposed.,,, Bad Products and All....
J , 26 November 2019 at 08:08 PM
Colonel,

Fiona Hill appears to be part of the Borg, not really sure which part she's affiliated. Some have called her a 'sleeper agent', but a sleeper for whom? British Intelligence agent of influence? Or an Israeli agent of influence, or maybe a Daniel Pipes trained NEOCON agent of influence? Any way one spins it, Fiona Hill has been undermining POTUS Trump while she was part of his NSC and his advisory team. Why her intense hatred of Putin? Does he happen to know through his nation's intelligence exactly who she is and whom she may be working on behalf of? The Skripal incident showed just how much that the British Government and Crown hate Russia. But why the intense British hatred of Russia, why?

Questions, so many questions regarding Ms. Hill and who she really works for.


[Dec 04, 2019] Looks like the Blob and Ds are concerned that their narrative on Ukraine is being undermined by Solomon's reporting.

Dec 04, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

integer , December 3, 2019 at 11:26 pm

Looks like the Blob and Ds are concerned that their narrative on Ukraine is being undermined by Solomon's reporting.

Responding to Lt. Col. Vindman about my Ukraine columns with the facts John Solomon

Perhaps you could point out any inaccuracies in the comprehensively-sourced article above oh, wait you won't read it lol.

Lambert Strether Post author , December 4, 2019 at 7:13 am

The fraction of RussiaGate/UkraineGate that can be taken seriously is quite small. An enormous amount of it is "it's ok when we do it"-level material. Difficult to sort without presenting a range encompassing all factions.

It's possible I'm too jaded, but "reporters presents material derived from his political faction" isn't all that exciting, since I don't belong to either of the factions engaged in this battle. I remember the Lewinsky Matter, WMDs, and (see today's Links), being smeared by Prop0rNot, and UkraineGate just a little too well.

[Dec 04, 2019] Responding to Lt. Col. Vindman about my Ukraine columns with the facts John Solomon Reports

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Fact 10 : Shokin stated in interviews with me and ABC News that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy the Burisma investigation wasn't shut down. He made that claim anew in this sworn deposition prepared for a court in Europe. You can read that here . ..."
"... Fact 11 : The day Shokin's firing was announced in March 2016, Burisma's legal representatives sought an immediate meeting with his temporary replacement to address the ongoing investigation. You can read the text of their emails here . ..."
"... Fact 13 : Burisma officials eventually settled the Ukraine investigations in late 2016 and early 2017, paying a multimillion dollar fine for tax issues. You can read their lawyer's February 2017 announcement of the end of the investigations here . ..."
"... Fact 15 : The Ukraine embassy in Washington issued a statement in April 2019 admitting that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa solicited Ukrainian officials in spring 2016 for dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in hopes of staging a congressional hearing close to the 2016 election that would damage Trump's election chances. You can read the embassy's statement here and here . Your colleague, Dr. Fiona Hill, confirmed this episode, testifying "Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary Clinton winning." You can read her testimony here . ..."
"... Fact 18 : A Ukrainian district court ruled in December 2018 that the summer 2016 release of information by Ukrainian Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko and NABU director Artem Sytnyk about an ongoing investigation of Manafort amounted to an improper interference by Ukraine's government in the 2016 U.S. election. You can read the court ruling here . Leschenko and Sytnyk deny the allegations, and have won an appeal to suspend that ruling on a jurisdictional technicality. ..."
"... Fact 21 : In April 2016, US embassy charge d'affaires George Kent sent a letter to the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office demanding that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down a series of investigations into how Ukrainian nonprofits spent U.S. aid dollars, including the Anti-Corruption Actions Centre. You can read that letter here . Kent testified he signed the letter here . ..."
"... Fact 22 : Then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a televised interview with me that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2016 meeting provided the lists of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups she did want to see prosecuted. You can see I accurately quoted him by watching the video here . ..."
"... Fact 27 : In May 2016, one of George Soros' top aides secured a meeting with the top Eurasia policy official in the State Department to discuss Russian bond issues. You can read the State memos on that meeting here . ..."
"... Fact 28 : In June 2016, Soros himself secured a telephonic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to discuss Ukraine policy. You can read the State memos on that meeting here . ..."
Dec 04, 2019 | johnsolomonreports.com

honor and applaud Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's service to his country. He's a hero. I also respect his decision to testify at the impeachment proceedings. I suspect neither his service nor his testimony was easy.

But I also know the liberties that Lt. Col. Vindman fought on the battlefield to preserve permit for a free and honest debate in America, one that can't be muted by the color of uniform or the crushing power of the state.

So I want to exercise my right to debate Lt. Col. Vindman about the testimony he gave about me. You see, under oath to Congress, he asserted all the factual elements in my columns at The Hill about Ukraine were false, except maybe my grammar

Here are his exact words:

"I think all the key elements were false," Vindman testified.

Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y, pressed him about what he meant. "Just so I understand what you mean when you say key elements, are you referring to everything John Solomon stated or just some of it?"

"All the elements that I just laid out for you. The criticisms of corruption were false . Were there more items in there, frankly, congressman? I don't recall. I haven't looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right."

Such testimony has been injurious to my reputation, one earned during 30 years of impactful reporting for news organizations that included The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Daily Beast/Newsweek.

And so Lt. Col. Vindman, here are the 28 primary factual elements in my Ukraine columns, complete with attribution and links to sourcing. Please tell me which, if any, was factually wrong.

Lt. Col. Vindman, if you have information that contradicts any of these 28 factual elements in my columns I ask that you make it publicly available. Your testimony did not.

If you don't have evidence these 28 facts are wrong, I ask that you correct your testimony because any effort to call factually accurate reporting false only misleads America and chills the free debate our Constitutional framers so cherished to protect.

[Nov 30, 2019] Hill denied her close links to Soros

Nov 30, 2019 | www.infowars.com

During her testimony in the impeachment hearings this week, Fiona Hill dismissed charges she was a "globalist" by referring to the term as an "anti-Semitic" conspiracy theory, despite the fact that she writes for a publication literally called 'The Globalist'.

Hill was responding to a question by Democratic Representative for Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi, who quoted Hill's earlier deposition in which she complained about Roger Stone labeling her "the globalist leftist [George] Soros insider."

Hill claimed that "a conspiracy" had been launched against her and that 'globalist' was an anti-Semitic trope, while admitting that she was a "leftist maybe," but implying she was not a globalist.

"This is the longest-running anti-Semitic trope that we have in history, and a trope against Mr. Soros was also created for political purposes, and this is the new Protocols of The Elders of Zion," Hill said.

This statement is somewhat at odds with Hill literally being a contributing writer for a publication called 'The Globalist'.

Stone also previously asserted that Hill was serving as George Soros' "mole" under the supervision of former NSA adviser H.R. McMaster.

Hill is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is considered to be one of the pre-eminent globalist institutions in the United States.

[Nov 30, 2019] Eric Ciaramella, Brennan protege, more coup plotter than "whistleblower"

Notable quotes:
"... Ciaramella invited Chalupa to meetings and events at the Obama White House. She also visits the Obama White House with Ukrainian lobbyists seeking aid from Obama. Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in 2017, " ..."
"... According to Fox News, the complaint alleges that the DNC specifically "tasked Chalupa with obtaining incriminating or derogatory information about Donald Trump [and] Paul Manfort," ..."
"... Remarkably, despite his clear connections to Rice and Brennan, he was brought back into the inner circle of the Trump NSC by HR McMaster. McMaster appointed him to be his personal aide. ..."
"... He was fired in June of 2017 after being directly implicated in a series of serious national security leaks from the White House calculated to be damaging to President Trump. ..."
"... Vindman also leaked the classified information about the President's call with a foreign head of state to a number of other people. These unauthorized leaks are criminal. Both illegal, unethical and unconscionable. ..."
"... Ciaramella worked with both Grace and Misko in the NSC at the Obama White House. Misko and Grace joined Schiff's committee in early August of 2019, just in time to coordinate the "whistleblower" complaint. ..."
"... Both Vindman and Ciaramella do not qualify for "whistleblower" status. They were reporting on a diplomatic conversation, not an intelligence matter. They were not reporting on a member of the Intelligence committee. ..."
"... IC IG Michael Atkinson surreptitiously changed the rules for whistleblower complaints to allow second-hand testimony in September of 2019. He then backdated the changes to allow the Ciaramella complaint, initially filed in early August, to be included under the new "interpretive" guidelines. ..."
"... The playbook is the same as the Mueller Inquisition and the Russia Hoax, the same as the Kavanaugh smear campaign. With the same co-conspirators of the left-wing mainstream media. Not only carrying water for the coup plotters but being actual participants in the scheme. Paid mouthpieces for the Deep State. ..."
"... Sperry's devastating expose makes clear that Ciaramella is another cog in the Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rice, Obama conspiracy to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States. As Chuck Schumer said in January of 2017, ..."
"... Ciaramella helped generate the "Putin fired Comey" narrative. Sperry reports, "In the days after Comey's firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup of the special counsel to investigate 'Russia collusion.'" ..."
Nov 03, 2019 | www.greanvillepost.com
WASHINGTON, DC : Adam Schiff "whistleblower" Eric Ciaramella has been exposed as a John Brennan ally. An ally who actively worked to defame, target, and destroy President Donald Trump during both the Obama and Trump administrations. He was fired from the Trump White House for leaking confidential if not classified information detrimental to the President. ( The Pajama Boy Whistleblower Revealed – Rush Limbaugh )

The 33-year-old Ciaramella, a former Susan Rice protege, currently works for the CIA as an analyst.

Eric Ciaramella: The Deep State non-whistleblower

During his time in the Obama White House, NSC Ciaramella worked under both Vice President Joe Biden and CIA director John Brennan. He reported directly to NSC advisor Susan Rice through his immediate boss, Charles Kupchan. Kupchan had extensive ties with Clinton crony Sydney Blumenthal. Large portions of Blumenthal's disinformation from Ukrainian sources in 2016 was used in the nefarious Steele Dossier.


Eric Ciaramella, Schiff's "whistleblower", has ties to Susan Rice and Joe Biden

Ciaramella also worked extensively with DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa. Chalupa led the effort at the DNC to fabricate a link between the Trump Campaign to Vladimir Putin and Russia. According to Politico, Chalupa "met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia."


The DNC paid Chalupa $412,000 between 2004 and 2016.

DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa: Ciaramella co-conspirator

Chalupa shared her findings with both the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign. Politico reporting ( Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire – Politico – 01/11/2017)

"Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump's campaign, 'I felt there was a Russia connection.'"

Apparently without any evidence. So she set out to concoct it.

Chalupa (left) also says that the Ukrainian embassy was working directly with reporters digging for Trump-Russia ties. How convenient, and unethical.

Ciaramella invited Chalupa to meetings and events at the Obama White House. She also visits the Obama White House with Ukrainian lobbyists seeking aid from Obama. Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in 2017, "

"Chalupa's actions appear to show that she was simultaneously working on behalf of a foreign government, Ukraine, and on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign, in an effort to influence not only the U.S voting population but U.S. government officials."
The FEC complaint against the DNC and Chalupa

In September 2019 a complaint was filed with the Federal Elections Commission against the DNC naming Alexandra Chalupa. The complaint alleges that Chalupa acted "improperly to gather information on Paul Manafort and Donald Trump in the 2016 election".


Joe Biden's Corruption: Ukraine, bribery, and Burisma Holdings

According to Fox News, the complaint alleges that the DNC specifically "tasked Chalupa with obtaining incriminating or derogatory information about Donald Trump [and] Paul Manfort,"

Fox News reporting, that Chalupa allegedly

"Pushed for Ukrainian officials to publicly mention Manafort's financial and political ties to" Ukraine and "sought to have the Ukrainian government provide her information about Manafort's work in the country."
John Solomon and Wikileaks both expose Chalupa as DNC operative

Wikileaks also exposed Chalupa's role in digging up dirt in Ukraine on Manafort and Trump. One email stated that Chalupa was "digging into Manafort". "A lot more coming down the pipe," the email to then DNC Comms Director Luis Miranda states. ( Former Obama official Luis Miranda is latest casualty of DNC email scandal – Fox News – August 3, 2016 )

John Solomon of The Hill reporting:

"Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort's dealings inside the country. Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort's Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign."
Ciaramella's connection with John Brennan and Susan Rice

Eric Ciaramella had been working with John Brennan, Susan Rice, the Obama White House, and Alexandra Chalupa to target and destroy Donald Trump well before he was elected. He was initially brought into the NSC and the White House inner circle by John Brennan himself.


Schiff witness Taylor has ties to Burisma think tank, Soros, McCain leaker

Remarkably, despite his clear connections to Rice and Brennan, he was brought back into the inner circle of the Trump NSC by HR McMaster. McMaster appointed him to be his personal aide.

He was fired in June of 2017 after being directly implicated in a series of serious national security leaks from the White House calculated to be damaging to President Trump.

Ciaramella and Alexander Vindman: the second "whistleblower"

Ciaramella's title at the White House was NSC Director for Ukraine. That position is now held by the newest Schiff star witness and Trump hater Lt. Col Alexander Vindman. Vindman is apparently the "2nd whistleblower" to leak his concerns about the call between Trump and President Zelensky to Ciaramella.

Vindman also leaked the classified information about the President's call with a foreign head of state to a number of other people. These unauthorized leaks are criminal. Both illegal, unethical and unconscionable.

Violating clear national security guidelines for classified information.

Republicans, on cross-examination of Vindman was asked by Republicans cross-examining him during the closed-door secret police hearings conducted by Adam Schiff, asking who Vindman had contact with. Schiff cut off the questioning, coaching the witness while refusing to let him answer the questions.

Schiff coordinated with Ciaramella and Vindman

It is now clear that Ciaramella and Vindman coordinated the entire whistleblower affair with Schiff and his staff in violation of the "whistleblower" statute. That Ciaramella has been coordinating his complaint with Schiff committee staffers Abigail Grace and Sean Misko.


Durham opens criminal probe, IG report due, Brennan, Clapper lawyer up

Ciaramella worked with both Grace and Misko in the NSC at the Obama White House. Misko and Grace joined Schiff's committee in early August of 2019, just in time to coordinate the "whistleblower" complaint.

Both Vindman and Ciaramella do not qualify for "whistleblower" status. They were reporting on a diplomatic conversation, not an intelligence matter. They were not reporting on a member of the Intelligence committee.

The suspicious case of IC IG Michael Atkinson

IC IG Michael Atkinson surreptitiously changed the rules for whistleblower complaints to allow second-hand testimony in September of 2019. He then backdated the changes to allow the Ciaramella complaint, initially filed in early August, to be included under the new "interpretive" guidelines.

The level of subterfuge and coordination between Schiff, Ciaramella, Vindman, Abigail Grace, Sean Misko, and IG Atkinson is more than suspicious. It reeks of yet another episode of a Deep State coordinated coup attempt.


Pelosi Star Chamber impeachment farce blows up in Adam Schiff's face

The whole impeachment affair is a brazen sequel to the Russia Hoax involving many of the same key players. Susan Rice, John Brennan, Adam Schiff. Designed to target, destroy, and in this case, fabricate grounds for the impeachment of the President.

The playbook is the same as the Mueller Inquisition and the Russia Hoax, the same as the Kavanaugh smear campaign. With the same co-conspirators of the left-wing mainstream media. Not only carrying water for the coup plotters but being actual participants in the scheme. Paid mouthpieces for the Deep State.

Paul Sperry and Real Clear Investigations

The most comprehensive expose on Ciaramella, that has forced even the mainstream media to take notice, was the Real Clear Investigations reporting of Paul Sperry. Only Sperry, the Federalist, and CDN have exposed the whistleblowers' identity. But his name and transparent partisan actions are the worst kept secret in Washington.

As CIA analyst Fred Fleitz has said:

"Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is."

Sperry's devastating expose makes clear that Ciaramella is another cog in the Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rice, Obama conspiracy to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States. As Chuck Schumer said in January of 2017,

"If you take on the intelligence community, they have nines ways to Sunday of getting back at you."
The never-ending coup attempt against Trump

The reality is that Trump was targeted by the Obama White House well before he was President. The ongoing coup against him started as soon as he was elected. It morphed into the Mueller Weissman inquisition and the Peter Strzok insurance policy.


Obama WH corruption: Rampant pay to play by Clinton, Kerry, and Biden

When that fizzled into oblivion it was time for plan B, or in this case plan C or D. The Deep State and their paid minions in the left-wing press have been unrelenting in their ongoing anti-constitutional putsch against the President.

The impeachment farce, with its calculated rollout reminiscent of the Kavanaugh smear campaign, is yet another extension of a never-ending East German Stassi coup (sic) attempt against the constitution, the Republic, and the people of the United States.

Sperry lays out the trail of evidence against Ciaramella

Paul Sperry's excellent investigative reporting makes clear that Ciaramella "previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan. (He) left his National Security Council posting in the White House's West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media." As Sperry reports, "He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump," said a former NSC official.

Sperry reports that "a handful of former colleagues have compiled a roughly 40-page research dossier on him. A classified version of the document is circulating on Capitol Hill". The dossier documents Ciaramella's bias against Trump. His relationships with Brennan, Rice, the Obama White House, and DNC operative Chalupa. As well as his coordination with Vindman, Schiff and his committee staff.

Chuck Schumer: "Eight ways to Sunday of getting back at you"

It questions both Ciaramella's and Vindman's veracity as a legitimate whistleblower. It makes clear that Ciaramella and his co-conspirators are part of a Deep State coup attempt. A calculated, coordinated, illegal, seditious, and illegitimate putsch.


"Whistleblower" Hoax: Ties to Biden, Deep State ICIG, rogue Ambassador

As CIA analyst Fred Fleitz makes clear, " They're hiding him ." Fleitz was emphatic, " They're hiding him because of his political bias."

Ciaramella helped generate the "Putin fired Comey" narrative. Sperry reports, "In the days after Comey's firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup of the special counsel to investigate 'Russia collusion.'"

How IC Inspector General Atkinson found the whistleblower complaint "credible" and "urgent" at the same time he was backdating the change in regulations to allow the complaint to be filed is more than highly suspicious. How the 'whistleblower" coordinated with Schiff, Grace, Misko, and Atkinson to stager the start of impeachment farce is criminal.

Adam Schiff: Constantly lying while moving the goalposts

... ... ...

Schiff: Outstanding scoundrel in a cesspit filled to the brim with similar criminals.

Now Eric Ciaramella is apparently backing away from testifying. Schiff says he no longer needs his testimony. But Ciaramella should be subpoenaed and called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He should not be allowed to escape accountability for his role in this calculated charade of a conspiracy.


The Russia Hoax: James Clapper throws Barack Obama under the bus

He would then have to testify to his coordination with Schiff and the committee staff. He would have to expose how Vindmann leaked national security information illegally. How the entire 'whistleblower" farce was a calculated effort to again derail the Trump Presidency.

A lot has come out about Eric Ciaramella, the Adam Schiff 'Whistleblower", in recent days. It is the tip of the iceberg. Any legitimate investigation of the circumstances surrounding the entire Ukraine affair will reveal the extensive criminality of the Obama White House and the coup plotters.

Exposing the dark underbelly of the Obama White House

It stretches back to the Steele Dossier and the clear efforts of the DNC and the Deep State to use to a foreign power to interfere in the 2016 election. He exposes the corruption of Vice President Biden to enrich his family at the expense of the American taxpayer. Details the $6 million dollar bribery scheme of Hunter and Joe Biden by Burisma Holdings.

Lays out the corrupt dealings of Ambassador Yovanovich.

It will lay open the devious underbelly of all the so-called hero witnesses of the Schiff impeachment Star Chamber inquisition. Of the criminal actions of the coup plotters. Of Ambassador Yovanovich, Ambassador Taylor, Alexandra Chalupa, and Alexander Vindman.

As well as the so-called whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella.

Calling the Fourth Estate back

It is the tip of the iceberg that only a truly free and independent press will have to take the reins to fearlessly expose. Like brilliant investigative reporter Paul Sperry at Real Clear Investigations. Like the Federalist, NOQ Report, and here at CommDigiNews, who broke the Ciaramella story a full two days before Real Clear Investigations.

No one else in the corrupt media establishment seems willing to rise to the challenge.

[Nov 29, 2019] Customer reviews Mr. Putin Operative in the Kremlin (Geopolitics in the 21st Century)

Fiona Hill books does not worth even 5% of any book written by Professor Stephen Cohen. In other words they are pathetic junk. Of the class that in UK(ream MI6) writes Luke Harding. may be they both have the same handlers. She is just a regular MIC prostitute, like all neocons.
And Putin is a KGB thug is a terrible. simplistic argument. Pure propaganda. This isn't about either Putin (or Trump) really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred.
Notable quotes:
"... As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the authors ..."
"... "The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare." ..."
"... For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong. They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly. ..."
"... I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days. ..."
"... The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen than they are to Hill and Gaddy. ..."
"... Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for the same. ..."
"... I rather think Putin grasps these "motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones. ..."
"... A poorly written smear that would make McCarthy blush. Recycled fear for the gullible citizens so desperately uneducated and unread. The Military Industrial Corporatists will pass it around as Bible ..."
Nov 29, 2019 | www.amazon.com

karenann , August 8, 2015

A deeply biased book

Hill and Gaddy are pretty good scholars. They do a good job of providing a psychological profile of Vladimir Putin and the way he operates in the Kremlin. But they have their limitations. One of the more annoying aspects of the book is that the authors return again and again both to Putin's graduate thesis on an American management book and his 1999 manifesto on his millennial goals for Russia. A better set of writers would have covered both subjects in one section and then moved on. But Hill and Gaddy sprinkle references to these documents about five times each throughout the book, which leads me to suspect that they are padding what would otherwise be a much shorter book.

As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the authors, but I couldn't quite pinpoint their slant until the last sentence, which is a doozy:

"The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare."

For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong. They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly. And in their analysis, they ignore the fact that Russia as a country is in fact deeply defensive country far more concerned with its internal boundaries and control than some aggressive Soviet power after World War II.

To be sure, Mr. Putin is no choir boy. Interestingly enough, the authors do not fully investigate the potentially criminal behavior that Putin performed with Russia's war on Chechnya. Hill and Gaddy could have strengthened their case if they had included some deeper analysis of Putin's behavior on this troublesome part of the Russian Empire. But instead they were intent on plowing their own rut, which while somewhat interesting -- ultimately becomes a little bit too pedantic.

I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days.

But in ignoring what Cohen has to say, the predominant attitude of the American and European foreign policy establishment is in lock step with Hill and Gaddy, which is why the book has been so heavily publicized.

The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen than they are to Hill and Gaddy.

Yes, this book is all about sticking to the Rooskies, unfortunately. And the hidden motivator are all of the defense contracts that NATO can suck up, as well as all the bankers' books in reaming the Ukrainian economy as badly as they've reamed Greece. But the authors never tell you that this is their motivation, until the last paragraph.

Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying work.

corkpuller , July 22, 2018
Unprofessional writing, a high school level polemic, sad to say

Unprofessional writing, a profound disappointment. Reads like a high school essay - one that repeats a single thought over and over, even re-using the same phrases - than a proper biography. The content feels like it has been skimmed only from public sources. There is no sign of insight among the authors, nor even a curiosity as to what makes this important figure unique. One wonders where the interests lie in those who wrote laudative reviews. I am sad to say that this book is nothing more than a polemic, and moreover one that is repetitive and boring.

R. L. Huff , April 23, 2015
OK but blinkered

- look at Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin's Russia. The book is based on intensive research and interviews with Putin, but I find it skewed by the Western biases it brings to the table. Yet it's not a demonization, as is so much of the Western Putin literature. It gives him credit for standing by the multi-racial and cultural realities of post-Soviet Russia. Compared to the real hardcore nationalists, Putin in fact has come across as a domestic liberal. The rising tide of Russian arch-nationalism, however, has taken its toll. Authors Hill and Gaddy correctly assess Putin's playing the nationalist card as a political manouver to keep one step ahead of his opponents - most of whom are not pro-Western liberal dissidents by any means. Courting the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years was one such strategy.

Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for the same.

The authors also lecture us on Putin's inability to grasp "Western values" as the root of his refusal to take the West on its own terms; on "how little Putin understands about us - our motives, our mentality, and, also, our values" (p.385) I rather think Putin grasps these "motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking but tragically familiar. It's rather the West's (and the authors') failure to grasp regional history, and Putin's actions based on it, that fuel the "misunderstanding." Ukraine, for instance, had strong nationalist animosity toward the "Moskali" long before the 1930s holodomor/famine. Crimea was not transferred to Ukraine out of any degree of recognition of said suffering, as the authors allege on p. 367; but as part of a geo-political maneuver to Russify east Ukraine with more "loyal" ethnic Russians, exactly as in the Baltic states.

His aggressive handling of terrorists within Chechnya is "decried" by the West, the authors note. Yet within a decade the US and its NATO partners would be pursuing an aggressive course in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen that make Russia look the provincial amateur. Putin in fact is *not* trying to recreate the USSR, as so often charged by Western pundits with an axe to grind, nor even the old Russian empire. His strategic thinking is dominated by security rationales. A wider invasive course would only threaten Russian security. At all times he sees his actions as defensive responses. If this is self-serving, it only puts him in good company: recall the American angst over the "dissident" Dixie Chicks; the livid anger over Edward Snowden.

In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US. Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp

WooDog , November 22, 2019
PROPOGANDA , CIA DRIVEL,

A poorly written smear that would make McCarthy blush. Recycled fear for the gullible citizens so desperately uneducated and unread. The Military Industrial Corporatists will pass it around as Bible

Kindle Customer , April 28, 2017
The motto of the respected authors is "Russia is devil, West are angels". Conclusions made in the book are easy to predict.

The book gives advices what the US officials should say about Russia to advocate their (US's) dishonest and aggressive policy. See examples of such policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Lybia.

Alexey Tuzikov , July 16, 2017
poor

The book has absolutely no connection to reality. The authors use their sick propaganda fantasies to maintain oppression of Russia.

X. Z. , August 8, 2015
"Putin is a thug and we are great! "

More facts than your usual MSM, but along the same line: "Putin is a thug and we are great!"

[Nov 29, 2019] Is Ukraine Vital to US Security? by Edward Lozansky

Notable quotes:
"... Rep. Tom Lantos of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who chaired this meeting, said that had Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told us in 1989 that he was prepared to dissolve the USSR and the Warsaw Pact – and requested $1 trillion to do it – Congress would most likely agree to authorize $100 billion annually for 10 years. ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

Posted on November 28, 2019 November 28, 2019 The ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Trump can certainly compete with Hollywood's most successful drama or comedy shows. However, when we deal with national security issues one expects the actors, in this case members of Congress and witnesses, to tell the truth. In this case, some do, but some regrettably do not. The whole picture, said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, looks like a "Soviet-style" event.

As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I tend to agree with Mr. Scalise. When I listen to Adam B. Schiff and Co. they indeed remind me of Soviet apparatchiks who knew they were telling lies, contemptuous of the fact that their hearers didn't believe a single word they said. These were the unspoken rules everyone had to accept – or else. But for God's sake, we are in America, aren't we?

When Ukraine and all other Soviet republics, including Russia, became independent states, I organized with the help of Paul Weyrich, the late leader of the Free Congress Foundation, a trilateral meeting on Capitol Hill of legislators from the U.S. Congress, Russia's Duma and Ukraine's Rada.

The goal was to discuss what the US was prepared to do to help Russia and Ukraine in their difficult transition from communism to democracy.

Rep. Tom Lantos of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who chaired this meeting, said that had Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told us in 1989 that he was prepared to dissolve the USSR and the Warsaw Pact – and requested $1 trillion to do it – Congress would most likely agree to authorize $100 billion annually for 10 years.

As it turned out, Gorby and his successor, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, did it by themselves. So why spend US taxpayers' money when the job is already being done? "You are on your own, guys," Mr. Lantos said.

If that message sounded cynical, well, politics always is. But it was also a bit misleading because the US did not leave Russia and Ukraine alone.

The story of how the Clinton administration helped destroy the Russian economy is described in some detail in a US congressional report titled "Russia's Road to Corruption: How the Clinton Administration Exported Government Instead of Free Enterprise and Failed the Russian People." The report outlines in detail why America, which was very popular in Russia in the late 1980s and early '90s, is now regarded by Russians as one of the most unfriendly countries.

As for Ukraine, billions of American tax dollars were and still are readily available, but for a different purpose. It was Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, who said: "The United States has supported Ukraine's European aspirations. We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine."

Others say the purpose is to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine by breaking centuries-old family, religious and economic ties between the Slavic nations.

How all this corresponds to Western or in broader terms Judeo-Christian values is hard to explain.

Former senior CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, who was responsible for daily briefings on the USSR for President Reagan and knows the region well, reminds us that Mr. Putin made it immediately clear that Ms. Nuland's choice for Ukraine's post-coup d'etat pro-NATO government in 2014 and U.S.-NATO plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems around Russia's periphery and in the Black Sea were the prime motivating forces behind returning Crimea to Russia.

I'd like to remind that it was Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev who transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, emulating 19th century monarchs who at their pleasure shifted real estate together with its people from one noble house to another, no questions asked.

Those familiar with the history of this region know that America was on the Russian side against the Ottoman, British and French empires during the 1853-1856 Crimean War.

Mr. McGovern is right when he says that no one with a rudimentary knowledge of Russian history should have been surprised that Moscow would take no chances of letting NATO grab Crimea and Russia's only warm-water naval base.

Space does not allow mentioning all of the inconsistencies and outright lies presented by impeachment witnesses, but the statement by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent deserves the top prize. Mr. Kent went so far as to draw analogies between the American Revolution and the 2014 coup d'etat in Ukraine. According to him, Ukrainian battalions are equivalent to American Minutemen in 1776 fighting for independence from the British Empire.

It looks like Mr. Kent missed the recent letter from 40 members of Congress, including Rep. Eliot L. Engel, New York Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to his boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, describing the neo-Nazi Ukrainian Azov Battalion as a terrorist organization.
Do not look for logic here because the hatred of Mr. Trump made his enemies' behavior irrational.

Despite its pandemic corruption, Ukraine is now pronounced to be vital to the security of the United States and is being used as a pawn by Democrats and the swamp in attempts to orchestrate another coup – this time to overthrow the president of United States.

I and many other Americans believe that security of the US, and for that matter Ukraine or any other European country, would be much better served if we rethought American foreign policy and accepted the sad fact that under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama it was a total disaster and imposed huge human and material costs on America and the world.

I agree with President Trump that "getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing." Since 63 million Americans voted for him, I assume that many of them share his opinion.

In fact, polls show that close to 60% of Americans think the same way, which means that not only "deplorables" understand what is best for their country. This is despite 24/7 anti-Russia hysteria in the fake news media and Congress, whose approval ratings are below 20% versus 80% disapproval.

In this political atmosphere, anyone who calls for resumption of U.S.-Russian dialogue is labeled as Mr. Putin's bootlicker or useful idiot at best. It was French President Macron who pronounced NATO's brain to be dead and has come up with some ideas on how to avoid, in the words of former Sen. Sam Nunn and many other serious analysts, the process of "sleepwalking into nuclear catastrophe."

Will Washington listen? Chances are not good, but what is the alternative?

Edward Lozansky is president of the American University in Moscow. Reprinted from the Washington Times with permission from the author.

[Nov 29, 2019] READ Transcript Of Fiona Hill's Opening Statement

How this Bush holdover got to the Trump administrating? She sounds like McCain and or Brennan relative ;-) I wonder was she a member of the 17 Intelligence agencies security assessment team. Looks like she would fit perfectly well among handpicked by Brennan "analysts", who wrote this document.
In her opening statement she lied about Russian interference, she lied about the role of intelligence services in 2016 elections, she lied about the role of Ukraine.
While being a chickenhawk with zero military experience and some questionable qualifications, she positioned herself as uberhawk. Actually to the right of Schiff and Hillary. Her position correlated perfectly well with the position of Her Majesty government. I do not know whether this is accidental of not. MI6 did play an important role in 2016 elections, so why not.
One thing is clear. This woman knows very well from which side her bread is buttered.
Notable quotes:
"... I -- and they -- thought I could help them with President Trump's stated goal of improving relations with Russia, while still implementing policies designed to deter Russian conduct that threatens the United States, including the unprecedented and successful Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. ..."
"... As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine -- not Russia -- attacked us in 2016. ..."
Nov 21, 2019 | www.wgbh.org

Opening Statement of Dr. Fiona Hill to the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence November 21, 2019

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Nunes, and members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. I have a short opening statement.

I appreciate the importance of the Congress’s impeachment inquiry.

I am appearing today as a fact witness, as I did during my deposition on October 14 th , in order to answer your questions about what I saw, what I did, what I knew, and what I know with regard to the subjects of your inquiry. I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and moral obligation to provide it.

I take great pride in the fact that I am a nonpartisan foreign policy expert, who has served under three different Republican and Democratic presidents. I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth.

I will not provide a long narrative statement, because I believe that the interest of Congress and the American people is best served by allowing you to ask me your questions. I am happy to expand upon my October 14 th deposition testimony in response to your questions today.

But before I do so, I would like to communicate two things.

First, I'd like to share a bit about who I am. I am an American by choice, having become a citizen in 2002. I was born in the northeast of England, in the same region George Washington's ancestors came from. Both the region and my family have deep ties to the United States.

My paternal grandfather fought through World War I in the Royal Field Artillery, surviving being shot, shelled, and gassed before American troops intervened to end the war in 1918.

During the Second World War, other members of my family fought to defend the free world fro m fascism alongside American soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

The men in my father's family were coalminers whose families always struggled with poverty.

When my father, Alfred, was 14, he joined his father, brother, uncles and cousins in the coal mines to help put food on the table.

When the last of the local mines closed in the 1960s, my father wanted to emigrate to the United States to work in the coal mines in West Virginia, or in Pennsylvania. But his mother, my grandmother, had been crippled from hard labor. My father couldn't leave, so he stayed in northern England until he died in 2012. My mother still lives in my hometown today.

While his dream of emigrating to America was thwarted, my father loved America, its culture, its history and its role as a beacon of hope in the world. He always wanted someone in the family to make it to the United States.

I began my University studies in 1984, and in 1987 I won a place on an academic exchange to the Soviet Union. I was there for the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and when President Ronald Reagan met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. This was a turning point for me. An American professor who I met there told me about graduate student scholarships to the United States, and the very next year, thanks to h is advice, I arrived in America to start my advanced studies at Harvard.

Years later, I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I never would have had in England. I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement.

This background has never set me back in America. For the better part of three decades, I have built a career as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical national security professional focusing on Europe and Eurasia and especially the former Soviet Union. I have served our country under three presidents: in my most recent capacity under President Trump, as well as in my former position of National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In that role, I was the Intelligence Community's senior expert on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine.

It was because of my background and experience that I was asked to join the National Security Council in 2017. At the NSC, Russia was a part of my por tfolio, but I was also responsible for coordinating U.S. policy for all of Western Europe, all of Eastern Europe (including Ukraine) and Turkey, along with NATO and the European Union. I was hired initially by General Michael 5 Flynn, K.T. McFarland, and General Keith Kellogg, but then started work in April 2017 when General McMaster was the National Security Advisor.

I -- and they -- thought I could help them with President Trump's stated goal of improving relations with Russia, while still implementing policies designed to deter Russian conduct that threatens the United States, including the unprecedented and successful Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

This relates to the second thing I want to communicate.

Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country -- and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.

The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined. U.S. support for Ukraine -- which continues to face armed Russian aggression -- has been politicized.

The Russian government's goal is to weaken our country -- to diminish America's global role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and economic dominance.

I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we counter their efforts to harm us. Right now, Russia's security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven false hoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.

As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine -- not Russia -- attacked us in 2016.

These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy. I respect the work that this Congress does in carrying out its constitutional responsibilities, including in this inquiry, and I am here to help you to the best of my ability. If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must no t let domestic 8 politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm.

I am ready to answer your questions.

[Nov 29, 2019] Opinion I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

The following line of thinking closely resembles Fiona Hill Testimony: "Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations."
Also can be signed by Ms Hill: "On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better -- such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable."
Notable quotes:
"... I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. ..."
"... Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations. ..."
Sep 05, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

The Times is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here . [Update: Our answers to some of those questions are published here .]


President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It's not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump's leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

[The author of this Op-Ed will publish a book in November 2019 titled "A Warning."]

The dilemma -- which he does not fully grasp -- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular "resistance" of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president's amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the "enemy of the people," President Trump's impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don't get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite -- not because of -- the president's leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief's comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

"There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next," a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he'd made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren't for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better -- such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn't the work of the so-called deep state. It's the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until -- one way or another -- it's over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter . All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example -- a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion) .

[Nov 28, 2019] Soros girl Fiona Hill continues to amaze and astound; one of her latest wheezes is that the Russians fed disinformation to a naive Christopher Steele

Female neocon are more aggressive and bloodthirsty than man neocons. That's happens in animal world too.
Nov 28, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Mark Chapman November 23, 2019 at 11:44 pm

Fiona Hill continues to amaze and astound; one of her latest wheezes is that the Russians fed disinformation to a naive Christopher Steele so that they could frame themselves for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election.

https://www.checkpointasia.net/russia-framed-itself-for-russiagate-former-top-russia-expert-at-the-white-house/

As the subheading suggests: yeah – that makes sense.

Moscow Exile November 24, 2019 at 1:21 am
Yeah, the Russian expert Fiona, daughter of a Durham coalfield miner, whose expertise here was acquired whilst studying in the USSR for 1 academic year in 1987 on a Russian studies degree course. And, curiously enough, as an undergraduate here, she interned for NBC News.

Now how did she manage to do that, I wonder?

By a strange parallel, I too arrived in the USSR at the same time in order to study Russian, and furthermore, until 1985 I had been a Lancashire coal miner.

After having graduated, however, I came back here in 1993 and stayed; she, on the other hand, having graduated from St. Andrew's University, Scotland, on the advice of an American academic, applied for a postgraduate course of studies at Harvard, where, in 1991, she got a master's in Russian and history.

After that, it seems the world has been her lobster as regards getting paid for her expertise on matters Russian.

Now, where did I go wrong?


above: Hill, seated to the left of Scumbag Bolton at a meeting with "Vlad", Leader of the Orcs, June 27, 2018, Mordor..

[Nov 28, 2019] Sherlock, super hearing' Holmes 'Russia Did It' Hill testimony reveals deep state panic

Notable quotes:
"... While their testimony was unable to prove a quid pro quo or machiavellian Trump bribery, it did reveal the extent to which the Democrat party and the Deep State are in panic mode, as Obama White House corruption investigations into loans provided to Ukraine ramp up, and Ukraine election meddling in 2016 have now taken center stage. ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Warren November 25, 2019 at 11:56 am

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nqb7l2wICBE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

'Sherlock, super hearing' Holmes & 'Russia Did It' Hill testimony reveals deep state panic
24 Nov 2019

The Duran

The Duran Quick Take: Episode 382.

The Duran's Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss Adam Schiff's decision to call up a super hearing, lip-reading David Holmes and Russia hating bureaucrat Fiona Hill to close out the impeachment inquiry clown show.

While their testimony was unable to prove a quid pro quo or machiavellian Trump bribery, it did reveal the extent to which the Democrat party and the Deep State are in panic mode, as Obama White House corruption investigations into loans provided to Ukraine ramp up, and Ukraine election meddling in 2016 have now taken center stage.

[Nov 28, 2019] Fiona Hill links to Soros by Julian Borger

Looks like both Yovanovich and Hill are connected to Soros and did his bidding instead of pursuing Trump policies as for Ukraine. Yovanovich was clearly dismiied due to her role in channeling damaging to Trump information during 2016 elections, the fact that she denies (as she denied the exostance of "do not procecute list"). And nothing can be taken serious from a government official until she denied it.
Notable quotes:
"... Fiona Hill, who was the senior director for Europe and Russia in the National Security Council (NSC) said other NSC staff had been "hounded out" by threats against them, including antisemitic smears linking them to the liberal financier and philanthropist, George Soros, a hate figure on the far right. ..."
"... This was a mishmash of conspiracy theories that I believe firmly to be baseless, an idea of an association between her and George Soros." ..."
"... "My entire first year of my tenure at the National Security Council was filled with hateful calls, conspiracy theories, which has started again, frankly, as it's been announced that I've been giving this deposition, accusing me of being a Soros mole in the White House, of colluding with all kinds of enemies of the president, and of various improprieties." ..."
"... "When I saw this happening to Ambassador Yovanovitch, I was furious," she said, pointing to "this whipping up of what is frankly an antisemitic conspiracy theory about George Soros to basically target nonpartisan career officials, and also some political appointees as well." ..."
"... Hill dismissed the suggestion that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election was a "conspiracy theory" intended to distract attention from Russia's well-documented role. ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | 112.international

Trump's ex-Russia adviser received death threats after testifying in impeachment hearings, - The Guardian

Fiona Hill has been subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation 16:22, 9 November 2019 Open source

The former top Russia expert at the White House has said she has been subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation, including death threats, which reached a new peak after she agreed to testify in congressional impeachment hearings, The Guardian reports.

Fiona Hill, who was the senior director for Europe and Russia in the National Security Council (NSC) said other NSC staff had been "hounded out" by threats against them, including antisemitic smears linking them to the liberal financier and philanthropist, George Soros, a hate figure on the far right.

In her testimony to Congress, Hill described a climate of fear among administration staff.

The UK-born academic and biographer of Vladimir Putin said that the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was the target of a hate campaign, with the aim of driving her from her post in Kyiv, where she was seen as an obstacle to some corrupt business interests.

Yovanovitch was recalled from Ukraine in May on Trump's orders. In a 25 July conversation with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump described Yovanovitch as "bad news" and predicted she was "going to go through some things". The former ambassador has testified she felt threatened by the remarks.

Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, led calls for Yovanovitch's dismissal, as did two of Giuliani business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. All three are under scrutiny in hearings being held by House committees looking at Trump's use of his office to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponents.

"There was no basis for her removal," Hill testified. "The accusations against her had no merit whatsoever. This was a mishmash of conspiracy theories that I believe firmly to be baseless, an idea of an association between her and George Soros."

"I had had accusations similar to this being made against me as well," Hill testified. "My entire first year of my tenure at the National Security Council was filled with hateful calls, conspiracy theories, which has started again, frankly, as it's been announced that I've been giving this deposition, accusing me of being a Soros mole in the White House, of colluding with all kinds of enemies of the president, and of various improprieties."

She added that the former national security adviser, HR McMaster "and many other members of staff were targeted as well, and many people were hounded out of the National Security Council because they became frightened about their own security."

"I received, I just have to tell you, death threats, calls at my home. My neighbours reported somebody coming and hammering on my door," Hill said, adding that she had also been targeted by obscene phone calls. "Now, I'm not easily intimidated, but that made me mad."

"When I saw this happening to Ambassador Yovanovitch, I was furious," she said, pointing to "this whipping up of what is frankly an antisemitic conspiracy theory about George Soros to basically target nonpartisan career officials, and also some political appointees as well."

In Yovanovitch's case, Hill said: "the most obvious explanation [for the smear campaign] seemed to be business dealings of individuals who wanted to improve their investment positions inside of Ukraine itself, and also to deflect away from the findings of not just the Mueller report on Russian interference but what's also been confirmed by your own Senate report, and what I know myself to be true as a former intelligence analyst and somebody who has been working on Russia for more than 30 years."

Hill dismissed the suggestion that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election was a "conspiracy theory" intended to distract attention from Russia's well-documented role.

... ... ...

[Nov 26, 2019] The Illiberal World Order

Notable quotes:
"... Despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, such people now enthusiastically whitewash the decades preceding Trump to turn it into a paragon of human liberty, justice and economic wonder. You don't have to look deep to understand that resistance liberals are now actually conservatives, brimming with nostalgia for the days before significant numbers of people became wise to what's been happening all along. ..."
"... Lying to yourself about history is one of the most dangerous things you can do. If you can't accept where we've been, and that Trump's election is a symptom of decades of rot as opposed to year zero of a dangerous new world, you'll never come to any useful conclusions ..."
"... Irrespective of what you think of Bernie Sanders and his policies, you can at least appreciate the fact his supporters focus on policy and real issues ..."
"... An illiberal democracy, also called a partial democracy, low intensity democracy, empty democracy, hybrid regime or guided democracy, is a governing system in which although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it is not an "open society". There are many countries "that are categorized as neither 'free' nor 'not free', but as 'probably free', falling somewhere between democratic and nondemocratic regimes". This may be because a constitution limiting government powers exists, but those in power ignore its liberties, or because an adequate legal constitutional framework of liberties does not exist. ..."
Nov 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

The Illiberal World Order by Tyler Durden Mon, 11/25/2019 - 21:45 0 SHARES

Authored by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

From a big picture perspective, the largest rift in American politics is between those willing to admit reality and those clinging to a dishonest perception of a past that never actually existed. Ironically, those who most frequently use "post-truth" to describe our current era tend to be those with the most distorted view of what was really happening during the Clinton/Bush/Obama reign.

Despite massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, such people now enthusiastically whitewash the decades preceding Trump to turn it into a paragon of human liberty, justice and economic wonder. You don't have to look deep to understand that resistance liberals are now actually conservatives, brimming with nostalgia for the days before significant numbers of people became wise to what's been happening all along.

They want to forget about the bipartisan coverup of Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11, all the wars based on lies, and the indisputable imperial crimes disclosed by Wikileaks, Snowden and others. They want to pretend Wall Street crooks weren't bailed out and made even more powerful by the Bush/Obama tag team, despite ostensible ideological differences between the two. They want to forget Epstein Didn't Kill Himself.

Lying to yourself about history is one of the most dangerous things you can do. If you can't accept where we've been, and that Trump's election is a symptom of decades of rot as opposed to year zero of a dangerous new world, you'll never come to any useful conclusions. As such, the most meaningful fracture in American society today is between those who've accepted that we've been lied to for a very long time, and those who think everything was perfectly fine before Trump. There's no real room for a productive discussion between such groups because one of them just wants to get rid of orange man, while the other is focused on what's to come. One side actually believes a liberal world order existed in the recent past, while the other fundamentally recognizes this was mostly propaganda based on myth.

Irrespective of what you think of Bernie Sanders and his policies, you can at least appreciate the fact his supporters focus on policy and real issues. In contrast, resistance liberals just desperately scramble to put up whoever they think can take us back to a make-believe world of the recent past. This distinction is actually everything. It's the difference between people who've at least rejected the status quo and those who want to rewind history and perform a do-over of the past forty years.

A meaningful understanding that unites populists across the ideological spectrum is the basic acceptance that the status quo is pernicious and unsalvageable, while the status quo-promoting opposition focuses on Trump the man while conveniently ignoring the worst of his policies because they're essentially just a continuation of Bush/Clinton/Obama. It's the most shortsighted and destructive response to Trump imaginable. It's also why the Trump-era alliance of corporate, imperialist Democrats and rightwing Bush-era neoconservatives makes perfect sense, as twisted and deranged as it might seem at first. With some minor distinctions, these people share nostalgia for the same thing.

This sort of political environment is extremely unhealthy because it places an intentional and enormous pressure on everyone to choose between dedicating every fiber of your being to removing Trump at all costs or supporting him. This anti-intellectualism promotes an ends justifies the means attitude on all sides. In other words, it turns more and more people into rhinoceroses.

Eugène Ionesco's masterpiece, Rhinoceros, is about a central European town where the citizens turn, one by one, into rhinoceroses. Once changed, they do what rhinoceroses do, which is rampage through the town, destroying everything in their path. People are a little puzzled at first, what with their fellow citizens just turning into rampaging rhinos out of the blue, but even that slight puzzlement fades quickly enough. Soon it's just the New Normal. Soon it's just the way things are a good thing, even. Only one man resists the siren call of rhinocerosness, and that choice brings nothing but pain and existential doubt, as he is utterly profoundly alone.

– Ben Hunt, The Long Now, Pt. 2 – Make, Protect, Teach

A political environment where you're pressured to choose between some ridiculous binary of "we must remove Trump at all costs" or go gung-ho MAGA, is a rhinoceros generating machine. The only thing that happens when you channel your inner rhinoceros to defeat rhinoceroses, is you get more rhinoceroses. And that's exactly what's happening.

The truth of the matter is the U.S. is an illiberal democracy in practice, despite various myths to the contrary.

An illiberal democracy, also called a partial democracy, low intensity democracy, empty democracy, hybrid regime or guided democracy, is a governing system in which although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it is not an "open society". There are many countries "that are categorized as neither 'free' nor 'not free', but as 'probably free', falling somewhere between democratic and nondemocratic regimes". This may be because a constitution limiting government powers exists, but those in power ignore its liberties, or because an adequate legal constitutional framework of liberties does not exist.

It's not a new thing by any means, but it's getting worse by the day. Though many of us remain in denial, the American response to various crises throughout the 21st century was completely illiberal. As devastating as they were, the attacks of September 11, 2001 did limited damage compared to the destruction caused by our insane response to them. Similarly, any direct damage caused by the election and policies of Donald Trump pales in comparison to the damage being done by the intelligence agency-led "resistance" to him.

So are we all rhinoceroses now?

We don't have to be. Turning into a rhinoceros happens easily if you're unaware of what's happening and not grounded in principles, but ultimately it is a choice. The decision to discard ethics and embrace dishonesty in order to achieve political ends is always a choice. As such, the most daunting challenge we face now and in the chaotic years ahead is to become better as others become worse. A new world is undoubtably on the horizon, but we don't yet know what sort of world it'll be. It's either going to be a major improvement, or it'll go the other way, but one thing's for certain -- it can't stay the way it is much longer.

If we embrace an ends justifies the means philosophy, it's going to be game over for a generation. The moment you accept this tactic is the moment you stoop down to the level of your adversaries and become just like them. It then becomes a free-for-all for tyrants where everything is suddenly on the table and no deed is beyond the pale. It's happened many times before and it can happen again. It's what happens when everyone turns into rhinoceroses.

* * *

If you enjoyed this, I suggest you check out the following 2017 posts. It's never been more important to stay conscious and maintain a strong ethical framework.

Do Ends Justify the Means?

[Nov 26, 2019] Democrats Empower a Pack of Paranoid Neocon Morons both in State Department and Pentagon by David Stockman

Images removes. See the original via provided link. Images removes. See the original via provided link.
They are not morons. They are lackeys (or in more uncharitable terms, political prostitutes) of the military industrial complex
Nov 22, 2019 | original.antiwar.com
Part 1

Sometimes you need to call a spade a spade, and Tuesday's testimony before Adam's Schiff Show by former NSC official Tim Morrison is just such an occasion. In spades!

In his opening statement, this paranoid moron uttered the following lunacy, and it's all you need to know about what is really going on down in the Imperial City.

"I continue to believe Ukraine is on the front lines of a strategic competition between the West and Vladimir Putin's revanchist Russia. Russia is a failing power, but it is still a dangerous one. The United States aids Ukraine and her people so they can fight Russia over there and we don't have to fight Russia here.

Folks, that just plain whacko. The Trump-hating Dems are so feverishly set on a POTUS kill that they have enlisted a veritable posse of Russophobic, right-wing neocon cretins – Morrison, Taylor, Kent, Vindman, among others – to finish off the Donald.

But in so doing they have made official Washington's real beef against Trump crystal clear; and it's not about the rule of law or abuse of presidential power or an impeachable dereliction of duty.

To be sure, foolish politicians like Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and the Clintonista apparatus at the center of the Dem party are so overcome with inconsolable grief and anger about losing the 2016 election to Trump that their sole purpose in life is to drive the Donald from office. But that just makes them "useful idiots" or compliant handmaids of the Deep State, which has a far more encompassing and consequential motivation.

To wit, whether out of naiveté, contrariness or just plain common sense, the Donald has declined to embrace the War Party's Russian bogeyman and demonization of Putin. He thereby threatens the Empire's raison d'être to the very core.

Indeed, that's the real reason for the whole concerted attack on Trump from the Russian Collusion hoax, through the Mueller Investigation farce to the present UkraineGate and impeachment inquisition. The Deep State deeply and profoundly fears that if Trump remains in office – and especially if he is elected with a new mandate in 2020 – he might actually make peace with Russia and Putin.

So in Part 1 we advert to the basics. Without the demonization of Russia, Ukraine would be the no count failed state and cesspool of corruption it actually is, and not a purported "front line" buffer against Russian aggression.

Likewise, it would not have been a recipient of vast US and western military and economic aid – a condition that turned it into a honeypot for the kind of Washington influence peddling which ensnared the Bidens, induced its officials to meddle in the 2016 US election, and, in return, incited Trump's justifiable quest to get to the bottom of the malignancy that has ensued.

So the starting point is to identify Russia for what it actually is: Namely, a kleptocratic state sitting atop an aging, Vodka-chugging population and third-rate economy with virtually zero capacity to project 21st century offensive military power beyond its own borders.

That truth, of course, shatters the whole foundation of the Warfare State. It renders NATO an obsolete relic and eviscerates the case for America's absurd $900 billion defense and national security budget. And with the latter's demise, the fairest part of Washington's imperial self-importance and unseemly national security spending-based prosperity would also crumble.

But in their frenzied pursuit of the Donald's political scalp, the Dems may be inadvertently sabotaging their Deep State masters. That's because the neocon knuckleheads they are dragging out of the NSC and State Department woodwork are such bellicose simpletons – just maybe their utterly preposterous testimony about the Russkie threat and Ukrainian "front line" will wake up the somnolent American public to the absurdity of the entire Cold War 2.0 campaign.

Indeed, you almost have to ask whether the bit about fighting the Russkies in the Donbas rather than on the shores of New Jersey from Morrison's opening statement quoted above was reprinted in the New York Times or The Onion ?

The fact is, the fearsome Russian bogeyman cited by Morrison yesterday – and Ambassador Taylor, George Kent and Lt. Colonel Vindman previously – is a complete chimera; and the notion that the cesspool of corruption in Ukraine is a strategic buffer against Russian aggression is just plain idiocy.

Russia is actually an economic and industrial midget transformed beyond recognition by relentless Warfare State propaganda. It is actually no more threatening to America's homeland security than the Siberian land mass that Sarah Palin once espied from her front porch in Alaska a decade ago.

After all, how could it be? The GDP of the New York City metro area alone is about $1.8 trillion, which is well more than Russia's 2018 GDP of $1.66 trillion. And that, in turn, is just 8% of America's total GDP of $21.5 trillion.

Moreover, Russia' dwarf economy is composed largely of a vast oil and gas patch; a multitude of nickel, copper, bauxite and vanadium mines; and some very large swatches of wheat fields. That's not exactly the kind of high tech industrial platform on which a war machine capable of threatening the good folks in Lincoln NE or Worchester MA is likely to be erected.

And especially not when the Russian economy has been heading sharply south in dollar purchasing terms for several years running.

GDP of Russia In Millions of USD

Indeed, in terms of manufacturing output, the comparison is just as stark. Russia's annual manufacturing value added is currently about $200 billion compared to $2.2 trillion for the US economy.

And that's not the half of it. Not only are Russia's vast hydrocarbon deposits and mines likely to give out in the years ahead, but so are the livers of its Vodka-chugging work force. That's a problem because according to a recent Brookings study, Russia's working age population – even supplemented by substantial in-migration and guest worker programs – is heading south as far into the future as the eye can see.

Even in the Brookings medium case projection shown below, Russia's working age population will be nearly 20% smaller than today by 2050. Yet today's figure of about 85 million is already just a fraction of the US working age population of 255 million.

Russia's Shrinking Work Force

Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $61 billion of military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington's current $750 billion of expenditures for defense.

Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.

That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the military.

By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the country's anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian "stans" among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?

Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he's got. That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts and nothing.

For example, in today's world you do not invade any foreign continent without massive sea power projection capacity in the form of aircraft carrier strike groups. These units consist of an armada of lethal escort ships, a fleet of aircraft, massive suites of electronics warfare capability and the ability to launch hundreds of cruise missiles and other smart weapons.

Each US aircraft carrier based strike group, in fact, is composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, at least one cruiser, a squadron of destroyers and/or frigates, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft. A carrier strike group also sometimes includes submarines and attached logistics ships.

The US has eleven such carrier strike groups. Russia has zero modern carrier strike groups and one beat-up, smoky old (diesel) aircraft carrier that the Israeli paper, Haaretz, described as follows when it recently entered the Mediterranean:

Russia's only aircraft carrier, a leftover from the days of Soviet power, carries a long history of mishaps, at sea and in port, and diesel engines which were built for Russia's cold waters – as shown by the column of black smoke raising above it. It needs frequent refueling and resupplies and has never been operationally tested.

Indeed, from our 19th floor apartment on the East River in NYC, even we could see this smoke belcher coming up Long Island Sound with an unaided eye – with no help needed at all from the high tech spyware of the nation's $80 billion intelligence apparatus.

Yet Morrison had the audacity to say before a committee of the U.S. House that we are aiding Ukraine so we don't have to fight Russians on the banks of the East River or the Potomac!

For want of doubt, just compare the above image of the Admiral Kuznetsov belching smoke in the Mediterranean with that of the Gerald R. Ford CVN 48 next below.

The latter is the US Navy's new $13 billion aircraft carrier and is the most technologically advanced warship ever built.

The contrast shown below serves as a proxy for the vastly inferior capability of the limited number of ships and planes in Russia's conventional force. What it does have numerical superiority in is tanks – but alas they are not amphibious nor ocean-capable!

Likewise, nobody invades anybody without massive airpower and the ability to project it across thousands of miles of oceans via vast logistics and air-refueling capabilities.

On that score, the US has 6,100 helicopters to Russia's 1,200 and 6,000 fixed wing fighter and attack aircraft versus Russia's 2,100. More importantly, the US has 5,700 transport and airlift aircraft compared to just 1,100 for Russia.

In short, the idea that Russia is a military threat to the US homeland is ludicrous. Russia is essentially a landlocked military shadow of the former Soviet war machine. Indeed, for the world's only globe-spanning imperial power to remonstrate about an aggressive threat from Moscow is a prime facie case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Moreover, the canard that Washington's massive conventional armada is needed to defend Europe is risible nonsense. Europe can and should take care of its own security and relationship with its neighbor on the Eurasian continent.

After all, the GDP of NATO Europe is $18 trillion or 12X greater than that of Russia, and the current military budgets of European NATO members total about $280 billion or 4X more than that of Russia.

More importantly, the European nations and people really do not have any quarrel with Putin's Russia, nor is their security and safety threatened by the latter. All of the tensions that do exist and have come to a head since the illegal coup in Kiev in February 2014 were fomented by Imperial Washington and its European subalterns in the NATO machinery.

Then again, the latter is absolutely the most useless, obsolete, wasteful and dangerous multilateral institution in the present world. But like the proverbial clothes-less emperor, NATO doesn't dare risk having the purportedly "uninformed" amateur in the Oval Office pointing out its buck naked behind.

So the NATO subservient think tanks and establishment policy apparatchiks are harrumphing up a storm, but for crying out loud most of Europe's elected politicians are in on the joke. They are fiscally swamped paying for their Welfare States and are not about to squeeze their budgets or taxpayers to fund military muscle against a nonexistent threat.

As the late, great Justin Raimondo aptly noted ,

Finally an American president has woken up to the fact that World War II, not to mention the cold war, is over: there's no need for US troops to occupy Germany. Vladimir Putin isn't going to march into Berlin in a reenactment of the Red Army taking the Fuehrer-bunker – but even if he were so inclined, why won't Germany defend itself?

Exactly. If their history proves anything, Germans are not a nation of pacifists, meekly willing to bend-over in the face of real aggressors. Yet they spent the paltry sum of $43 billion on defense during 2018, or barely 1.1% of Germany's $4.0 trillion GDP, which happens to be roughly three times bigger than Russia's.

In short, the policy action of the German government tells you they don't think Putin is about to invade the Rhineland or retake the Brandenburg Gate.

And this live action testimonial also trumps, as it were, all of the risible alarms that have emanated from the beltway think tanks and the 4,000 NATO bureaucrats talking their own book in behalf of their plush Brussels sinecures.

And as we will outline in Part 2, that's what Washington's Ukraine intervention is all about, and why the Donald's efforts to get to the bottom of that cesspool has brought on the final Deep State assault against his presidency.

Part 2

In Part 1 we dispatched UkraineGater Tim Morrison's preposterous suggestion that Washington is helping Kiev subdue the Donbas so we won't have Russkies coming up the East River.

Yet his related claim that Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression is even more ludicrous. The actual aggression in that godforsaken corner of the planet came from Washington when it instigated, funded, engineered and recognized the putsch on the streets of Kiev during February 2014, which illegally overthrew the duly elected President of Ukraine on the grounds that he was too friendly with Moscow.

Thus, Morrison risibly asserted that,

Support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty has been a bipartisan objective since Russia's military invasion in 2014. It must continue to be.

The fact is, when the Maidan uprising occurred in February that year there were no uninvited Russian troops anywhere in Ukraine. Putin was actually sitting in his box on the viewing stand, presiding over the Winter Olympics in Sochi and basking in the limelight of global attention that they commanded .

It was only weeks later – when the Washington-installed ultra-nationalist government with its neo-Nazi vanguard threatened the Russian-speaking populations of Crimea and the Donbas – that Putin moved to defend Russian interests on his own doorstep. And those interests included Russia's primary national security asset – the naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea which had been the homeport of the Russian Black Sea Fleet for centuries under czars and commissars alike, and on which Russia had a long-term lease.

We untangle the truth of the crucial events which surrounded the Kiev putsch in greater detail below, but suffice it here to note the whole gang of neocon apparatchiks which have been paraded before the Schiff Show have proffered the same Big Lie as did Morrison in the "invasion" quote cited above.

As the ever perspicacious Robert Merry observed regarding the previous testimony of Ambassador Bill Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, the Washington rendition of the Maidan coup and its aftermath amounts to a blatant falsehood:

The Taylor/Kent outlook stems from the widespread demonization of Russia that dominates thinking within elite circles. Taylor's rendition of recent events in Ukraine was so one-sided and selective as to amount to a falsehood.

As he had it, Ukraine's turn to the West after 2009 (when he left the country after his first diplomatic tour there) threatened Russia's Vladimir Putin to such an extent that he tried to "bribe" Ukraine's president with inducements to resist Western influence, whereupon protests emerged in Kyiv that drove the Ukrainian president to flee the country in 2014. Then Putin invaded Crimea, holding a "sham referendum at the point of Russian army rifles." Putin sent military forces into eastern Ukraine "to generate illegal armed formations and puppet governments." And so the West extended military assistance to Ukraine.

"It is this security assistance," he said, "that is at the heart of the [impeachment] controversy that we are discussing today."

Taylor's right that this narrative is at the center of UkraineGate, but there is not a shred of truth to it. Nevertheless, defense of this false narrative, and the inappropriate military and economic aid to Ukraine which flowed from it, is the real reason this posse of neocon stooges took exception to the Donald's legitimate interest in investigating the Bidens and the events of 2016.

As Morrison put it Tuesday and Vindman said last week, their interest was in protecting not the constitution and the rule of law, but the bipartisan political consensus on Capitol Hill in favor of their proxy war on Putin and the Ukraine aid package through which it was being prosecuted.

As I stated during my deposition, I feared at the time of the call on July 25 how its disclosure would play in Washington's political climate. My fears have been realized.

Not surprisingly, the entire Washington establishment has been sucked into this scam. For instance, the insufferably sanctimonious Peggy Noonan used her Wall Street Journal platform to idolize these liars.

As she portrayed it, bow-tie bedecked George P. Kent appeared to be the very picture of the old-school American foreign service official. And West Pointer Bill Taylor – with a military career going back to (dubious) Vietnam heroism – was redolent of the blunt-spoken American military men who won WW II and the cold war which followed.

As Robert Merry further noted,

She saw them as "the old America reasserting itself." They demonstrated "stature and command of their subject matter." They evinced "capability and integrity."

Oh, puleeze!

What they evinced was nothing more than the self-serving groupthink that has turned Ukraine into a beltway goldmine. That is, a cornucopia of funding for all the think tanks, NGOs, foreign policy experts, national security contractors and Warfare State agencies – from DOD through the State Department, AID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Board for International Broadcasting and countless more – which ply their trade in the Imperial City.

But Robert Merry got it right. These cats are not noble public servants and heroes; they're apparatchiks and payrollers aggrandizing their own power and pelf – even as they lead the nation to the brink of disaster:

But these men embrace a geopolitical outlook that is simplistic, foolhardy, and dangerous. Perhaps no serious blame should accrue to them, since it is the same geopolitical outlook embraced and enforced by pretty much the entire foreign policy establishment, of which these men are mere loyal apparatchiks. And yet they are playing their part in pushing a foreign policy that is directing America towards a very possible disaster.

Neither man manifested even an inkling of an understanding of what kind of game the United States in playing with Ukraine. Neither gave even a nod to the long, complex relationship between Ukraine and Russia. Neither seemed to understand either the substance or the intensity of Russia's geopolitical interests along its own borders or the likely consequences of increasing U.S. meddling in what for centuries has been part of Russia's sphere of influence.

They obviously didn't get it, but we must. So let us summarize the true Ukraine story, starting with the utterly stupid and historically ignorant reason for Washington's February 2014 coup.

Namely, it objected to the decision of Ukraine's prior government in late 2013 to align itself economically and politically with its historic hegemon in Moscow rather than the European Union and NATO. Yet the fairly elected and constitutionally legitimate government of Ukraine then led by Viktor Yanukovych had gone that route mainly because it got a better deal from Moscow than was being demanded by the fiscal torture artists of the IMF.

Needless to say, the ensuing US sponsored putsch arising from the mobs on the street of Kiev reopened deep national wounds. Ukraine's bitter divide between Russian-speakers in the east and Ukrainian nationalists elsewhere dates back to Stalin's brutal rein in Ukraine during the 1930s and Ukrainian collusion with Hitler's Wehrmacht on its way to Stalingrad and back during the 1940s.

It was the memory of the latter nightmare, in fact, which triggered the fear-driven outbreak of Russian separatism in the Donbas and the 96% referendum vote in Crimea in March 2014 to formally re-affiliate with Mother Russia.

In this context, even a passing familiarity with Russian history and geography would remind that Ukraine and Crimea are Moscow's business, not Washington's.

In the first place, there is nothing at stake in the Ukraine that matters. During the last 800 years it has been a meandering set of borders in search of a country.

In fact, the intervals in which the Ukraine existed as an independent nation have been few and far between. Invariably, its rulers, petty potentates and corrupt politicians made deals with or surrendered to every outside power that came along.

These included the Lithuanians, Poles, Ruthenians (eastern Slavs), Tartars, Turks, Muscovites, Austrians and Czars, among manifold others.

At the beginning of the 16th century, for instance, the territory of today's Ukraine was scattered largely among the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia (light brown area), the Kingdom of Poland (dark brown area), Muscovy (bright yellow area) the Crimean Khanate (light yellow area).

The latter was the entity which emerged when some clans of the Golden Horde (Tartars) ceased their nomadic life on the Asian steppes and occupied the light yellow stripped areas of the map north of the Black Sea as their Yurt (homeland).

From that cold start, the tiny Cossack principality of Ukraine (blue area below), which had emerged by 1654, grew significantly over the subsequent three centuries. But as the map also makes clear, this did not reflect the organic congealment of a nation of kindred volk sharing common linguistic and ethnic roots, but the machinations of Czars and Commissars for the administrative convenience of efficiently ruling their conquests and vassals.

Thus, much of modern Ukraine was incorporated by the Russian Czars between 1654 and 1917 per the yellow area of the map and functioned as vassal states. These territories were amalgamated by absolute monarchs who ruled by the mandate of God and the often brutal sword of their own armies.

In particular, much of the purple area was known as "Novo Russia" (Novorossiya) during the 18th and 19th century owing to the Czarist policy of relocating Russian populations to the north of the Black Sea as a bulwark against the Ottomans. But after Lenin seized power in St. Petersburg in November 1917 amidst the wreckage of Czarist Russia, an ensuing civil war between the so-called White Russians and the Red Bolsheviks raged for several years in these territories and elsewhere in the chaotic regions of the former western Russian Empire.

At length, Lenin won the civil war as the French, British, Polish and American contingents vacated the postwar struggle for power in Russia. Accordingly, in 1922 the new Communist rulers proclaimed the Union of Soviet Social Republics (USSR) and incorporated Novo Russia into one of its four constituent units as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) – along with the Russian, Belarus and Transcaucasian SSRs.

Thereafter the border and political status of Ukraine remained unchanged until the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Pursuant thereto the Red Army and Nazi Germany invaded and dismembered Poland, with Stalin getting the blue areas (Volhynia and parts of Galicia) as consolation prizes, which where then incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR.

Finally, when Uncle Joe Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev won the bloody succession struggle in 1954, he transferred Crimea (red area) to the Ukraine SSR as a reward to his supporters in Kiev. That, of course, was the arbitrary writ of the Soviet Presidium, given that precious few Ukrainians actually lived in what had been a integral part of Czarist Russia after it was purchased by Catherine the Great from the Turks in 1783.

In a word, the borders of modern Ukraine are the handiwork of Czarist emperors and Communist butchers. The so-called international rule of law had absolutely nothing to do with its gestation and upbringing.

It's a pity, therefore, that none of the so-called conservative Republicans attending Adam's Schiff Show saw fit to ask young Tim Morrison the obvious question.

To wit, exactly why is he (and most of the Washington foreign policy establishment) so keen on expending American treasure, weapons and even blood in behalf of the "territorial integrity and sovereignty" of this happenstance amalgamation of people subdued by some of history's most despicable tyrants?

Needless to say, owing to this very history, the linguistic/ethnic composition of today's Ukraine does not reflect the congealment of a "nation" in the historic sense.

To the contrary, central and western Ukraine is populated by ethnic Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian (dark red area), whereas the two parts of the country allegedly the victim of Russian aggression and occupation – Crimea (brown area) and the eastern Donbas region (yellow area with brown strips) – are comprised of ethnic Russians who speak Russian and ethnic Ukrainians who predominately speak-Russian, respectively.

And much of the rest of the territory consists of admixtures and various Romanian, Moldovan, Hungarian and Bulgarian minorities.

Did the Washington neocons – led by Senator McCain and Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland – who triggered the Ukrainian civil war with their coup on the streets of Kiev in February 2014 consider the implications of the map below and its embedded, and often bloody, history?

Quite surely, they did not.

Nor did they consider the rest of the map. That is, the enveloping Russian state all around to which the parts and pieces of Ukraine – especially the Donbas and Crimea – have been intimately connected for centuries. Robert Merry thus further noted,

As Nikolas K. Gvosdev of the US Naval War College has written, Russia and Ukraine share a 1,500-mile border where Ukraine "nestles up against the soft underbelly of the Russian Federation." Gvosdev elaborates: "The worst nightmare of the Russian General Staff would be NATO forces deployed all along this frontier, which would put the core of Russia's population and industrial capacity at risk of being quickly and suddenly overrun in the event of any conflict." Beyond that crucial strategic concern, the two countries share strong economic, trade, cultural, ethnic, and language ties going back centuries. No Russian leader of any stripe would survive as leader if he or she were to allow Ukraine to be wrested fully from Russia's sphere of influence.

And yet America, in furtherance of the ultimate aim of pulling Ukraine away from Russia, spent some $5 billion in a campaign to gin up pro-Western sentiment there, according to former assistant secretary of state for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who spearheaded much of this effort during the Obama administration. It was clearly a blatant effort to interfere in the domestic politics of a foreign nation – and a nation residing in a delicate and easily inflamed part of the world.

Indeed, Ukraine is a tragically divided country and fissured simulacrum of a nation. Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard called Ukraine "a cleft country, with two distinct cultures" causing Robert Merry to rightly observe that,

Contrary to Taylor's false portrayal of an aggressive Russia trampling on eastern Ukrainians by setting up puppet governments and manufacturing a bogus referendum in Crimea, the reality is that large numbers of Ukrainians there favor Russia and feel loyalty to what they consider their Russian heritage. The Crimean public is 70 percent Russian, and its Parliament in 1992 actually voted to declare independence from Ukraine for fear that the national leadership would nudge the country toward the West. (The vote was later rescinded to avoid a violent national confrontation.) In 1994, Crimea elected a president who had campaigned on a platform of "unity with Russia."

In short, in modern times Ukraine largely functioned as an integral part of Mother Russia, serving as its breadbasket and iron and steel crucible under czars and commissars alike. Given this history, the idea that Ukraine should be actively and aggressively induced to join NATO was just plain nuts, as we will amplify further in Part 3 (to come).

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He's the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed , The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin And How to Bring It Back . He also is founder of David Stockman's Contra Corner and David Stockman's Bubble Finance Trader .

[Nov 25, 2019] Impeaching Trump and Demonizing Russia Birds of a Feather

Notable quotes:
"... It could be argued, perhaps, that an expansion of Russian influence in Ukraine could affect the vital interests of the rest of Europe, though that would hardly be inevitable. But cannot Europe handle any such threat vis-a-vis Russia, given that the EU has a population of 512 million and a GDP of $18 trillion -- compared to Russia's population of 145 million and GDP of $1.6 trillion? ..."
"... The Taylor/Kent outlook stems from the widespread demonization of Russia that dominates thinking within elite circles. Taylor's rendition of recent events in Ukraine was so one-sided and selective as to amount to a falsehood. As he had it, Ukraine's turn to the West after 2009 (when he left the country after his first diplomatic tour there) threatened Russia's Vladimir Putin to such an extent that he tried to "bribe" Ukraine's president with inducements to resist Western influence, whereupon protests emerged in Kyiv that drove the Ukrainian president to flee the country in 2014. Then Putin invaded Crimea, holding a "sham referendum at the point of Russian army rifles." Putin sent military forces into eastern Ukraine "to generate illegal armed formations and puppet governments." And so the West extended military assistance to Ukraine. ..."
"... Thumbs up on the article - the valiant Ukraine facing perfidious Russia is a gross oversimplification. And as noted, the US is involved in this mess up to its eyeballs. ..."
"... Russia is associated with the image of the USSR which developed an alternative model to financial capitalism. Financial capitalism is collapsing for objective and totally unavoidable reasons. The search for an alternative will continue drawing more attention to Russia as a country that is, in principle, capable of offering an alternative development model. ..."
"... The disagreement IS over Ukraine policy, not this argument about what Trump may or may not have done. DC is full of corruption of all kinds, including in foreign policy, but no one is ever punished. So we know that is not the issue. ..."
"... I believe Stratfor, no friend of Russia and close to the neocon faction in American politics, described the 2014 coup as "the most blatant coup in history". ..."
"... This article is very good in detail, but they could also add that the first Minister of Finance in Ukraine's post-Maidan government was a literal US State Department official who was only then granted Ukrainian citizenship. Not surprisingly she also made Ukraine accept IMF loans, getting Ukraine into the IMF predatory lending/austerity scam. ..."
"... This is the legacy of careerism within the Foreign Service. People get positions in which they live comfortably, attending all the right parties and getting a sophisticated world view and seldom have any loyalty or accountability to the Commander in Chief. ..."
"... When Vindman claimed he was disturbed by what he heard, instead of following the chain of command, which he invokes almost as often as his rank, he lawyers up. ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

he Wall Street Journal 's Peggy Noonan liked what she saw when U.S. diplomats George Kent and William B. Taylor Jr. went before the House Intelligence Committee to give testimony as part of the ongoing impeachment drama. She saw them as "the old America reasserting itself." They demonstrated "stature and command of their subject matter." They evinced "capability and integrity."

All true. Kent, with his bow tie and his family tradition of public service, appeared to be the very picture of the old-school American foreign service official. And Taylor, with his exemplary West Point career, his Vietnam heroism, and his longtime national service, seemed a throwback to the blunt-spoken American military men who gave us our World War II triumph and our rise to global dominance.

But these men embrace a geopolitical outlook that is simplistic, foolhardy, and dangerous. Perhaps no serious blame should accrue to them, since it is the same geopolitical outlook embraced and enforced by pretty much the entire foreign policy establishment, of which these men are mere loyal apparatchiks. And yet they are playing their part in pushing a foreign policy that is directing America towards a very possible disaster.

Neither man manifested even an inkling of an understanding of what kind of game the United States in playing with Ukraine. Neither gave even a nod to the long, complex relationship between Ukraine and Russia. Neither seemed to understand either the substance or the intensity of Russia's geopolitical interests along its own borders or the likely consequences of increasing U.S. meddling in what for centuries has been part of Russia's sphere of influence.

Both Taylor and Kent declared that America's vital national interest is wrapped up in Ukraine, though neither sought to explain why in any substantive way. Spin out all the potential scenarios of Ukraine's fate and then ask whether any of them would materially affect America's vital interests. Any affirmative answer would require elaborate contortions.

It could be argued, perhaps, that an expansion of Russian influence in Ukraine could affect the vital interests of the rest of Europe, though that would hardly be inevitable. But cannot Europe handle any such threat vis-a-vis Russia, given that the EU has a population of 512 million and a GDP of $18 trillion -- compared to Russia's population of 145 million and GDP of $1.6 trillion?

The Taylor/Kent outlook stems from the widespread demonization of Russia that dominates thinking within elite circles. Taylor's rendition of recent events in Ukraine was so one-sided and selective as to amount to a falsehood. As he had it, Ukraine's turn to the West after 2009 (when he left the country after his first diplomatic tour there) threatened Russia's Vladimir Putin to such an extent that he tried to "bribe" Ukraine's president with inducements to resist Western influence, whereupon protests emerged in Kyiv that drove the Ukrainian president to flee the country in 2014. Then Putin invaded Crimea, holding a "sham referendum at the point of Russian army rifles." Putin sent military forces into eastern Ukraine "to generate illegal armed formations and puppet governments." And so the West extended military assistance to Ukraine.

"It is this security assistance," he said, "that is at the heart of the [impeachment] controversy that we are discussing today."

In contrast to this misleading rendition, here are the facts, with appropriate context.

In 1989 and 1990, the George H. W. Bush administration assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if he accepted German unification, the West would not seek to exploit the situation through any eastward expansion -- not even by "one inch," as then-secretary of state James Baker assured Gorbachev. But Bill Clinton reneged on that commitment, moving to expand NATO on an eastward path that eventually led right up to the Russian border.

NATO, with just 16 members in 1990, now includes 29 European states, with all of the expansion countries lying east of Germany. As this was unfolding, Russian leaders issued stern warnings about the consequences if America and the West sought to include in NATO either Ukraine or Georgia. Both are considered as fundamental to Russian security.

As Nikolas K. Gvosdev of the U.S. Naval War College has written, Russia and Ukraine share a 1,500-mile border where Ukraine "nestles up against the soft underbelly of the Russian Federation." Gvosdev elaborates: "The worst nightmare of the Russian General Staff would be NATO forces deployed all along this frontier, which would put the core of Russia's population and industrial capacity at risk of being quickly and suddenly overrun in the event of any conflict." Beyond that crucial strategic concern, the two countries share strong economic, trade, cultural, ethnic, and language ties going back centuries. No Russian leader of any stripe would survive as leader if he or she were to allow Ukraine to be wrested fully from Russia's sphere of influence.

And yet America, in furtherance of the ultimate aim of pulling Ukraine away from Russia, spent some $5 billion in a campaign to gin up pro-Western sentiment there, according to former assistant secretary of state for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who spearheaded much of this effort during the Obama administration. It was clearly a blatant effort to interfere in the domestic politics of a foreign nation -- and a nation residing in a delicate and easily inflamed part of the world.

But Ukraine is a tragically divided nation, with many of its people drawn to the West while others feel greater ties to Russia. The late Samuel Huntington of Harvard called Ukraine "a cleft country, with two distinct cultures." Contrary to Taylor's false portrayal of an aggressive Russia trampling on eastern Ukrainians by setting up puppet governments and manufacturing a bogus referendum in Crimea, the reality is that large numbers of Ukrainians there favor Russia and feel loyalty to what they consider their Russian heritage. The Crimean public is 70 percent Russian, and its Parliament in 1992 actually voted to declare independence from Ukraine for fear that the national leadership would nudge the country toward the West. (The vote was later rescinded to avoid a violent national confrontation.) In 1994, Crimea elected a president who had campaigned on a platform of "unity with Russia."

True, many in western Ukraine have pushed for greater ties to the West and wanted their elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, to respond favorably to Western financial blandishments. But Yanukovych, tilting toward Russia, eschewed NATO membership for Ukraine, renewed a long-term lease for the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, and gave official status to the Russian language. These actions eased tensions between Ukraine and Russia, but they inflamed Ukraine's internal politics. And when Yanukovych abandoned negotiations aimed at an association and free-trade agreement with the European Union in favor of greater economic ties to Russia, pro-Western Ukrainians, including far-right provocateurs, staged street protests that ultimately brought down Yanukovych's government. Victoria Nuland gleefully egged on the protesters. The deposed president fled to Russia.

Nuland then set about determining who would be Ukraine's next prime minister, namely Arseniy Yatsenyuk. "Yats is our guy," she declared to U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. When Pyatt warned that many EU countries were uncomfortable with a Ukrainian coup, she shot back, "Fuck the EU." She then got her man Yats into the prime minister position, demonstrating the influence that enables U.S. meddling in foreign countries.

That's when Putin rushed back to Moscow from the Winter Olympic Games at Sochi to protect the more Russian-oriented areas of Ukraine (the so-called Donbass in the country's east and Crimea in the south) from being swallowed up in this new drama. He orchestrated a plebiscite in Crimea, which revealed strong sentiment for reunification with Russia (hardly the "sham referendum" described by Taylor) and sent significant military support to Donbass Ukrainians who didn't want to be pulled westward.

The West and America have always been, and must remain, wary of Russia. Its position in the center of Eurasia -- the global "heartland," in the view of the famous British geographic scholar Halford Mackinder -- renders it always a potential threat. Its vulnerability to invasion stirs in Russian leaders an inevitable hunger for protective lands. Its national temperament seems to include a natural tendency towards authoritarianism. Any sound American foreign policy must keep these things in mind.

But in the increasingly tense relationship between the Atlantic Alliance and Russia, the Alliance has been the more aggressive player -- aggressive when it pushed for NATO's eastward expansion despite promises to the contrary from the highest levels of the U.S. government; aggressive when it turned that policy into an even more provocative plan for the encirclement of Russia; aggressive when it dangled the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia; aggressive when it sought to lure Ukraine out of the Russian orbit with economic incentives; aggressive when it helped foster the street coup against a duly elected Ukrainian government; and aggressive in its continued refusal to appreciate or acknowledge Russia's legitimate geopolitical interests in its own neighborhood.

George Kent and William B. Taylor Jr., in their testimony last week, personified this aggressive outlook, designed to squeeze Russia into a geopolitical corner and trample upon its regional interests in the name of Western universalism. If that outlook continues and leads to ever greater tensions with Russia, it can't end well.

Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the author most recently of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century .


minsredmash 7 days ago

Well written article. American diplomacy (if you can even call it that) is one-dimensional and myopic.
John Reece minsredmash 6 days ago
American diplomacy is rather reminiscent of German diplomacy in 1917, in that expanding NATO into Ukraine and the Baltics is as stupidly provocative to Moscow as the Zimmerman Telegram was to the US. Zimmerman's offer was incredibly stupid since it provoked a US declaration of war but Germany had absolutely no way to provide Mexico any material assistance. Neither will NATO be providing any real assistance to Ukraine or the Baltic states if the balloon goes up -- today's Bundeswehr is not your grandfathers Wehrmacht.
minsredmash John Reece a day ago
True. The stupidity of US policy toward Russia can only be defeated by stupidity of the limitrophus of Eastern Europe, like Poland or the Baltic states. If "balloon goes up" they will be first to evaporate.
ebergerud 7 days ago
Thumbs up on the article - the valiant Ukraine facing perfidious Russia is a gross oversimplification. And as noted, the US is involved in this mess up to its eyeballs. The first person to speak out publicly was the former diplomat (and godfather of "Containment") George Kennan. In his last public comment, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times warning against pushing NATO to the East as a policy guaranteed to cause Russian fear and resentment. In the early years of the century, Mikhail Gorbachev - no friend of Putin's - accused the West of trying to treat Russia like a third rate nation. It is sad that the "deep state" maneuvers against Trump (up and running early enough to destroy Paul Manafort) derailed Trump's plans to talk openly with Putin and thus earn him the blind hatred of John Brennan. The rest is history.
Affluent_White_Progs_Suck Not Kent 5 days ago
You need a foreign policy update. Ukraine and Europe are not longer our problems. They have grown ideologically distant and opposed to US interests, which is self interest and transactional foreign policy now. The days of "altruistic" foreign policy are over with. Marshall died long ago.
Bjorn Andresen princess kenyetta 6 days ago
This is totally inaccurate. The current Russian system is not socialist, and it certainly has problems with corruption, but it is opposed to the Western establishment and it is promoting a traditional Christian and nationalist outlook as opposed to the liberal globalism of the Western elites. It is better than the alternative at the moment, and in a sense Putin, especially his foreign policy , is executing the will of the people in Russia. Conservatives opposed Russia up until Trump because both sides are controlled by the same Western establishment, which has been pursuing an anti-Russian agenda for a long time. They do not want any resistance to their liberal world order.

"Democracy" is a lie and a fraud, Plato knew this 4,000 years ago, and "class consciousness" is only real in the sense that the current situation in the West has an elite that is going against the interests of the people. I don't see how defending Russia is "undermining class conscientious," actually arguing against the anti-Russian warmongering is a good thing. What "Russian state attacks" are you talking about?

"To see US conservatives defending an autocracy reflects they have embraced those fascistic principles."

Do you even know how conservatism and the terms right and left wing originated? Conservatism and the right wing are terms that are from the French Revolution, used to describe supporters of the Catholic French Monarchy of the Bourbons while the liberals or the left were the revolutionaries. Historically Conservatives defended European Christian monarchies while the liberals always wanted to overthrow throne and altar to replace them with secular democratic republics. In fact there is nothing more conservative than autocracy, namely a Church-anointed monarchy. Americanism, or the ideology of the American founding fathers, was inherently liberal. They were in revolt against the monarchy of their time. There is nothing conservative about democracy, it's quite to the contrary. Autocracy is not "fascistic," that term is completely irrelevant in this historical context.

"Seeing similar headlines from opposite political poles exposes a 'horseshoe' phenomenon of left/right ideologies in which the two poles are close together in significant contexts."

Are you really going to be so grug brained as to unironically bring up the horseshoe theory? Looks like we have a big brained intellectual centrist over here. Not even worth giving an in depth analysis on this one.

par4 Bjorn Andresen 6 days ago
Good comment. The Monarchists sat on the right side of the French assembly and the revolutionaries sat on the left. That is how the modern spectrum morphed into Fascism (corporate state) on the right and Communism (revolutionary) on the left.
blimbax Sactoman 5 days ago
I've actually been to Russia, twice in the last year and a half, and I had a chance to meet and to converse with, and to hear from, Russians of all sorts: academics, students, politicians, government employees, businessmen, environmentalists, scientists, and journalists.

Based on what I saw and heard, I categorically reject your statement that Russians "are not all that free to express their opinion."

I heard from people who are well known in Russia who disagree with Putin. I heard criticisms of the government from people who are not well known, or who are just average people. People note that corruption is still a problem, at many levels of society and government, but they did not seem at all reticent to make that point.

No one displayed any fear or reluctance to express his views. At the same time, Russians acknowledge a great deal of improvement since the tragedy of the Yeltsin years.

And while there are people who criticize the government's domestic policies, they tend to be much more in support of what the government under Putin has accomplished in terms of foreign policy. And that seems to me to be a very rational reaction.

Bjorn Andresen Sactoman 5 days ago
First off I am Russian myself. Most people are in favour of an authoritarian government, nobody cares about or wants democracy. Monarchist restoration would be ideal but Putin is good enough for now. Free press and elections are a fraud and a lie, as I said.
Alex (the one that likes Ike) princess kenyetta 6 days ago
First of all, show me one single state on the planet today which is pro working class. Secondly, juxtaposing the concepts of working class and fascism is just a demonstration of how badly you know the history. Suffice it to say that the set of political views deriving from the ideas of Mussolini are called right-wing socialism. Hence, your ignorance of history logically begets that of today's politics. No, Trump and Putin cannot be called truly pro working class. But they're at least are not so blatantly anti working class as neolibs who oppose them.
TooTall7 princess kenyetta 6 days ago
Perhaps neither end of the horseshoe is game for negotiating a storm of mushroom clouds as I'm sure you are.
Летописец princess kenyetta 6 days ago • edited
Russia is associated with the image of the USSR which developed an alternative model to financial capitalism. Financial capitalism is collapsing for objective and totally unavoidable reasons. The search for an alternative will continue drawing more attention to Russia as a country that is, in principle, capable of offering an alternative development model.
Bjorn Andresen Adriana Pena 6 days ago • edited
Except that isn't what this is about. The disagreement IS over Ukraine policy, not this argument about what Trump may or may not have done. DC is full of corruption of all kinds, including in foreign policy, but no one is ever punished. So we know that is not the issue.

But we do know from the testimonies that they oppose Trump BECAUSE he changed Ukraine policy away from the policy of confrontation with Russia, or tried to. They are all against that and against Trump doing that, as they said. The entire establishment has opposed Trump on this since he got elected. So let's not be disingenuous. This charade has gone on long enough. The elites want their proxy war with Russia.

Sid Finster Adriana Pena 6 days ago • edited
1. From my perspective, the article is saying that our Ukraine policy is immoral, not that the impeachment is not founded.

2. Further to 1. above, your pizza analogy doesn't hold up. If pizza is bad for you, eating pizza harm nobody but the eater and the eater's insurers.

By contrast, our Ukraine policy is the support of actual live Nazis and has resulted in the deaths of numerous innocents, not to mention the economic destruction of Ukraine.

This is more like providing one pizza company weapons and support, knowing full well that they will use those weapons and cash to murder rivals and customers who order from those rivals.

former-vet 6 days ago
The good news is that the influence of apparatchiks like Mr. Kent and Mr. Taylor will be at an end within a few years. America thought the blood of hundreds of thousands of foreign children was a "fair price" to pay for the dollar's continued role as a reserve currency (Madeleine Albright's words) and cheaper gas at the pump. The effort was a bust. Endless trillion-dollar-a-year deficits will come to an end quickly. There isn't that much liquidity in the private sphere to sop up at the price the U.S. Gov can afford.

Americans have forgotten how much money a billion dollars is, much less a trillion: to wit, the Democrats future plans are priced in dozens of trillions of dollars. Is it even possible to count that high (given that no one has any real idea how the economy will react)?

Boomers destroyed the country. It only took one "me" generation to introduce such deep structural instability that there is no recovery. Really, does anyone think a trillion dollars a year of demand can ever be pulled out of the economy? No. Does anyone really think a trillion dollars a year will magically appear for free, from nowhere, for a decade or more? The intelligentsia will reap the fruit of its effort within a few years. And it will be dried cat food for dinner. Bless them!

Sid Finster bumbershoot 6 days ago • edited
What "actual bloody invasion" of Ukraine and Georgia. Georgia attacked South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, and got a bloody nose for their trouble. They didn't lose any territory however, which is odd, if Russia were the attacker.

If Russia had actually invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainian clown army would be obliterated in days or hours. Note how there are some 500 miles of open border between Donbass and Sumskaya Oblast - but no fighting? Do you think that the Russian military doesn't know the geography of their own border?

Natalia Karlik kalendjay 5 days ago
Ukraine was already devided before it separated from USSR. People from western Ukraine called Russians and eastern Ukrainians moskali. Eastern Ukraine spoke mostly Russian, western Ukraine spoke mostly Ukrainian. I believe tension escalated after Russia was about to loose access to the Black Sea and its navy there. Sorry. That was a big mistake to even think that it would happen easy. Russia annexed Crimea from Ottoman Empire in 18th century. Since then it was part of Russia. Khrushchev transferred it to Ukrainian republic in 1954. You seriously believe that Russia would easy let it go after almost 2 centuries of its presence there? Big chunk of Russian history associated with Black Sea Fleet.
Bjorn Andresen bumbershoot 6 days ago
The invasions were in response to them trying to acquire NATO memberships and NATO egging then on to do this and provoke Russia. If they remain in the Russian sphere than that would not be a problem.

NATO goes where it was warned not to go, provokes the response it knew it would get, and claims that this is "aggression." What a joke.

There was no "Russian meddling", that was debunked. There is no evidence that the DNC was hacked and the so called troll farm had no connection to the Russian government and was merely a business marketing firm selling advertising space on their social media pages.

Russia doesn't poison dissidents in foreign countries, if you are referring to the Skripal case, that narrative has fallen apart, multiple journalists have written lengthy pieces about all of the inconsistencies and contradictions in the UK government's narrative. Not to mention Yulia Skripal said she's still wants to go back to Russia, so clearly she doesn't think Russia poisoned her.

Bjorn Andresen kalendjay 5 days ago
We do have evidence to the show the opposite. The only ones who examined the DNC servers are a firm that was caught lying about Russian hacking before and is owned by a Ukrainian millionaire that donated to the Clinton Foundation. Can't get more damning than that.
Bjorn Andresen kalendjay 3 days ago
What are you even talking about? The DNC refused to allow the server to be examined because they know there was no Russian hacking, and why would Trump privately ask Zelensky to investigate Ukraine's role in all of this if he knew he were guilty? The point is there is no evidence to prove Russian hacking, and the only claims come from a firm that is owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who has been caught lying about Russian hacking before and donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.

How much mental gymnastics are you going to use to try to pretend like you don't understand?

Begemot bumbershoot 6 days ago
Which is more aggressive, do you think -- invading one's neighbors, or "dangling the prospect of NATO membership" for them?

The US engineered and supported a coup in Ukraine to overthrow the constitutional government. Is this aggression? It seems so to me. It certainly preceded any Russian response. As far as NATO membership for Ukraine, polls of Ukrainian opinion long before the Maidan showed very strong feeling against Ukraine joining NATO.

Zoran Aleksic Sid Finster 6 days ago
I believe, when all facts fail, that the way through to some would be pointing out the absurdities of what they hear therefore think. It might make them think twice before publicly embarassing themselves.
Brady bumbershoot 6 days ago
The Western actions are more aggressive, because they actually happened... Russia's annexation of the Crimea was bloodless, and doubtless spared it the carnage that the regime in Kiev wrought in Donbass.
MPC bumbershoot 6 days ago • edited
America's movements since the end of the Cold War have been consistently offensive in nature, and Russia's consistently defensive in nature. That defense has included counterattacks, feints, and opportunistic thrusts. In every 'attack' it made, Russia was reacting, not taking the initiative.For their part the liberal hegemonists know what they're doing. Good PR is priceless, and they know it's essential for offensive movements to not appear that way.
Alex (the one that likes Ike) bumbershoot 6 days ago • edited
Problem is, you liberals are still unable to prove a single allegation of those you uttered in your comment.

How come the previous Ukrainian government didn't manage to beg one single satellite pic of, say, Russian tanks crossing their border from the CIA or the DIA, given the purported "bloody invasion"? Russian armored vehicles have some cloaking devices or what?

How come the Mueller's so-called "investigation" turned out to be such a pathetic juridical failure, given the purported "direct meddling"?

What a naive poor dear one has to be to believe in poisonings with radioactive substances (as dangerous to the poisoner as to his victim) in a world where poisons causing deaths looking like those from natural causes exist and are available to all secret services (and even to private citizens having talents in chemistry)?

Plus, careful with (ab)using upper case. "Democratical countries" with a capital "D" reads like "countries, whose governments are proxies of the Democratic Party". Blame Freud and his slips.

TooTall7 bumbershoot 6 days ago • edited
I love people like you. I mean since we were invaded by Germany, Napoleon, Charles the Tenth of Sweden, the Teutonic Knights, the Golden Horde (Ghengis Khan started this), at the cost of countless millions of lives lost, I sense that we- as Americans- have every need to push our frontiers to Russia's doorstep.

You demonstrate a phenomenal ignorance of Historical perspective: exactly the cannon fodder the establishment's looking for.

Alex (the one that likes Ike) FJR Atlanta 6 days ago
At least Trump isn't pushing the country into yet another Middle Eastern swamp. Given that, his wordings may be as unclear as he likes.
morning_in_america FJR Atlanta 6 days ago
Taylor should not be pushing any foreign policy. He should be executing Trumps policy or retiring
kouroi 6 days ago
Nice and sober account. One detail that might be significant. Until 1954, Crimea was part of the Russian Federation (the Russian State has wrestled that territory from the Tatars/Mongols and Ottomans more than 200 years before and fought for it against the united Europe in 1850s). And Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, had bestowed Crimea in an unsanctioned administrative decision to the then Ukrainian Socialist Republic in 1954.

Ukraine as a state is pretty much a creation of Russia and instead of being grateful for their extensive statehood, elements in Ukraine would rather bite the hand that made them.

Sid Finster Affluent_White_Progs_Suck 5 days ago
Lots of people all over the world get up and go to work. They do it in democracies, autocracies, and countries that are somewhere in between. In fact, the United States is losing its position as global economic hegemon in large part because the Chinese (no democracy there) are harder working than Americans.

The United States currency has value for two reasons - inside the United States, it's the only way you can pay taxes. Outside the United States, the gulfie tyrannies only accept dollars for international sales of oil.

Disqus10021 6 days ago
$5 billion thrown down the Ukraine rat hole. It is too bad that the money wasn't spent providing better care for our wounded veterans. Watch the video "Delay, Deny, Hope They Die". As one of the very few, perhaps only, commentater who has criticized Victoria Nuland's role in the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, I have made many of the same points in recent days.
Bjorn Andresen Jonathan Marcus 6 days ago
You know that is dishonest. This has nothing to do with what Trump tried to tell Zelensky, and anyway the US and Ukraine do in fact have a treaty from 1998 that mandates them to cooperate on law enforcement matters. DC is full of corruption but none of it is ever punished, so we know that is not the issue.

This is all about Trump's desire to end the proxy war with Russia. That is all this is about ultimately. Looking at the big picture, that is a large part of the reason why the establishment wants to delegitimization him or remove Trump from office. This phone call scandal is nothing more than the latest tactical move to get there. If you don't see that, and you genuinely think that this is merely about Trump asking Zelensky to investigate something and get caught up in the minutiae of that, you are simply naive and don't understand the true nature of politics. Think about the big picture.

Ellen K Bjorn Andresen 6 days ago
A proxy war is nice cover for weapons smuggling. I've postulated for awhile now that Benghazi is the key to Deep State. Ask yourself why the Obama administration allowed Stevens and his cohorts to die when there was ample air and naval power nearby. What did he stumble upon? I think it was a vast smuggling operation designed to support Muslim Bros. and Al Shabbab-both of whom later attacked US assets and who continue to worry the region with their raids of kidnappings, rapes and mass murders that go largely unreported in the US press. There's a reason why so many liberals her and abroad claim to support open borders and it has nothing to do with humanitarian goals and everything to do with an organized global crime group who is using sievelike borders to allow drugs, fake licensed products, fake pharmaceuticals, weapons and even humans to become trade goods. People should really ask why Democrats refuse to stop this. Europeans should ask who is getting rich off of unchecked migration of indigent people.
APPPS Jonathan Marcus 6 days ago
The President sets the policy. These dipsticks implement it or quit. Nobody elected them.
Sid Finster 6 days ago
1. The military industrial complex needs a Big Enemy to justify their exorbitant budgets.

2. The spooks need a Big Enemy to justify Big Brother and also their increasingly open interference in domestic politics.

3. The people who run things need a distraction, lest the masses start to demand the sorts of reforms that would take money out of rich people's pockets. A Big Enemy does this just fine.

Russia makes a better Big Enemy than does China, for US business is already too intertwined with China and its supply chains reach deeply into that country. Any disruption to those links would cost a lot of money.

invention13 Sid Finster 6 days ago
Another possible reason is that Russia is a relatively weak country with enormous natural resources.
Alex (the one that likes Ike) invention13 6 days ago
Well, comparing to China, its military is much stronger. China is not even in the same league as the US and Russia.
Sid Finster invention13 5 days ago
Except that Russia has a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it.
SatirevFlesti 6 days ago
TAC has been doing great work covering the Ukraine.

Even so-called conservatives play along with the mainstream media's and establishment's narrative, with the likes of NRO's warmongering neocons, such as the Jay Nordlinger, constantly banging-on about poor little Ukraine being a "struggling democracy" in need, rather than a deeply divided and failed state that perhaps should never have existed in its present borders as a "sovereign nation." The best solution for the Ukraine would probably be to split it into two, with Eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula perhaps just becoming part of Greater Russia.

Sid Finster 6 days ago
I believe Stratfor, no friend of Russia and close to the neocon faction in American politics, described the 2014 coup as "the most blatant coup in history".
Bjorn Andresen Sid Finster 6 days ago • edited
Exactly. This article is very good in detail, but they could also add that the first Minister of Finance in Ukraine's post-Maidan government was a literal US State Department official who was only then granted Ukrainian citizenship. Not surprisingly she also made Ukraine accept IMF loans, getting Ukraine into the IMF predatory lending/austerity scam.
EliteCommInc. TheSnark 6 days ago
FYI, the advocates for intervening in the Ukraine are the ones accusing Pres Putin

1. with invading Crimea -- false
2. interfering with US elections -- sabotage an offense that certainly means war -- unfounded
3. that the Russians and the President operated in as collaborators in sabotaging US election also false

this president in response signed a document that the Russians did spy and further implemented the worst sanctions to date against Russia despite the lack of evidence

as it is that Pres. Putin is certainly not being excused -- ;laugh - not even from things he has not been proved to have done

:Laugh ---

It's like when the police say you did something but can't prove it so they get some others to say you did it because they know you did it

-even there's no evidence you did.

If you don't understand just review the SP Mueller investigation and the subsequent impeachment inquiry -- this is not new game for anyone familiar with prosecutor methods.

If you still don't get read Kafka

Bjorn Andresen 6 days ago
This is true, all of this could have easily been avoided if the US stopped meddling and withdrew its troops from the former USSR. People like Taylor and Kent show there is an agenda to start a war with Russia. Hopefully the upcoming Ukraine-Russia peace summit can settle this conflict.
Sid Finster 6 days ago
1. The military industrial complex needs a Big Enemy to justify their exorbitant budgets.

2. The spooks need a Big Enemy to justify Big Brother and also their increasingly open interference in domestic politics.

3. The people who run things need a distraction, lest the masses start to demand the sorts of reforms that would take money out of rich people's pockets. A Big Enemy does this just fine.

Russia makes a better Big Enemy than does China, for US business is already too intertwined with China and its supply chains reach deeply into that country. Any disruption to those links would cost a lot of money.

SatirevFlesti 6 days ago
TAC has been doing great work covering the Ukraine.

Even so-called conservatives play along with the mainstream media's and establishment's narrative, with the likes of NRO's warmongering neocons, such as the Jay Nordlinger, constantly banging-on about poor little Ukraine being a "struggling democracy" in need, rather than a deeply divided and failed state that perhaps should never have existed in its present borders as a "sovereign nation." The best solution for the Ukraine would probably be to split it into two, with Eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula perhaps just becoming part of Greater Russia.

EliteCommInc. TheSnark 6 days ago
FYI, the advocates for intervening in the Ukraine are the ones accusing Pres Putin

1. with invading Crimea -- false
2. interfering with US elections -- sabotage an offense that certainly means war -- unfounded
3. that the Russians and the President operated in as collaborators in sabotaging US election also false

this president in response signed a document that the Russians did spy and further implemented the worst sanctions to date against Russia despite the lack of evidence

as it is that Pres. Putin is certainly not being excused -- ;laugh - not even from things he has not been proved to have done

:Laugh ---

It's like when the police say you did something but can't prove it so they get some others to say you did it because they know you did it

-even there's no evidence you did.

If you don't understand just review the SP Mueller investigation and the subsequent impeachment inquiry -- this is not new game for anyone familiar with prosecutor methods.

If you still don't get read Kafka

Bjorn Andresen ben benis 5 days ago
That's a strawman and there's nothing to refute, the article is correct. Because the US government and CFR globalist thinkers like Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Friedman, and George Soros have talked about the geopolitical importance of Ukraine since the 1990s -- read Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard from 1996, where talks about the need for the US to take control of Ukraine from Russia to prevent Russia from becoming a great power that can challenge US global hegemony, or Soros' admission on a 60 Minutes interview from 1998 that he has invested billions in Ukraine, particularly in the Ukrainian military. As Brzezinski says, the US was quick to recognise the geopolitical importance of an independent Ukrainian state, and became one of Ukraine's strongest backers in the 1990s for this reason. Globalist plans for Ukraine go back many years.

Polls before the Maidan show most Ukrainians had a very positive image of Russia as well, and increasingly people in Ukraine are getting tired of the war, which is why they voted massively for Zelensky over Poroshenko.

alex renk 6 days ago
When I look at our foreign policy, before Trump, you have to go back to Reagan to have any semblance of policy based in reality. While Trump is kinda of a bull in a china shop, at least he highlights some of the asinine policies the 'experts' have been pursuing.
TISO_AX2 6 days ago
Hat tip to Patrick Buchanan.
Lynn 6 days ago
Russia's objection to US and EU interference into Ukrainian politics makes as much sense as US objection. would if Russia were in Mexico attempting to draw them into a confederation with Moscow.
Alex (the one that likes Ike) =marco01= 5 days ago
He may be as immoral as hell. Most of them, R or D, are, in case you haven't noticed. The fact is, there's still no factual evidence he committed any impeachable in this specific case.
Harry Taft 6 days ago
So, if the employees of the government who are involved in international affairs do not agree with the President, the President is accused of an impeachable offense? These two are not patriots in the usual sense. Nor are they public servants. They see themselves as somehow above the Law. Above the Constitution. Applauded by those trying ever since the election to bring down a President. Seditionists.
doug masnaghetti 6 days ago
The last 30 years has been a complete disaster for US foreign diplomacy. We are being led by complete morons! Trump is a big step in the right direction.
J House 6 days ago
The fact is, it was a U.S. sponsored coup by the Obama administration that overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine. Here is the Feb 2015 Obama CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria...note that Obama says 'Yanukovich fleeing AFTER we brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine'...incredible. Play Hide
Bjorn Andresen john 5 days ago
Why is it wrong and improper to know whether or not a presidential candidate's family was involved in corrupt dealings abroad? But that's not even the question, because the issue of what Trump may or may not have done is not the real issue. DC is full of corruption and none of it is ever punished, so we know that's not what they care about. What this is about is Trump's disagreement with the establishment on Russia-Ukraine policy and the greater geopolitical picture. Thinking this is about some minutiae over who said what on a phone call and what he mayor may not have really meant is naive and ignorant of the true nature of politics. These situations are not compartmentalised, these have to be seen from the the big picture of geopolitics.
morning_in_america 6 days ago
He sensible policy would be to Finlandize Ukraine and Byelorus. NATO would not have them as members and Russia would let them pursue economic ties with Europe. This worked for Finland through put the Cold War and kept the region peaceful
Ellen K 6 days ago
This is the legacy of careerism within the Foreign Service. People get positions in which they live comfortably, attending all the right parties and getting a sophisticated world view and seldom have any loyalty or accountability to the Commander in Chief. That's a problem.

When Vindman claimed he was disturbed by what he heard, instead of following the chain of command, which he invokes almost as often as his rank, he lawyers up. Why? Who is Vindman reporting to if not the President? Too many of these folks act as if the change in administrations is merely a formality to which they can choose to embrace or not. Almost without exception, we have seen testimony from people whose personal history is in the Russian/Ukraine theater and who have family and history there. This is problematic. If anyone ever looked and sounded the part of a mole, it was Vindman today.

Reggie 6 days ago
These maniacs are provoking nuclear war. They fail to understand that, unlike 50 years ago when America had a decentralized industrial economy and banking system, 2 large nukes aimed at NYC and DC would destroy the country.
john 6 days ago
This is the only conservative site worth reading. I do love me some serious and deep analysis from Conservatives in important geopolitical issues. God for a return to the days of Buckley. It would be glorious.
Hey now 6 days ago
Fantastic analysis of the 3D chess game. But we are talking about Biden and Clinton so we need not overthink this. Obama gave 1 billion of taxpayer money to Ukraine. Ukraine gave Burisma some of that according the government of the UK. And once Burisma was in receipt of our aid funds, millions flow through right back to the very same bad actors like Biden who directly controlled the one billion in foreign aid. I wish this was more complicated. I wish it made Americans seem smarter. But to this old guy it seems like a good old fashioned and very simple run of the mill scam . And in this scam the only person we know for fact cashed the checks is Biden.

Come on Barr. It's time to do what we all know what needs to be done.

Disgruntled2012 6 days ago
"But cannot Europe handle any such threat vis-a-vis Russia, given that the EU has a population of 512 million and a GDP of $18 trillion -- compared to Russia's population of 145 million and GDP of $1.6 trillion?"

An excellent question. The cold war is over. We won. We don't need to keep fighting it. Russia is not that much of a threat to us.

Jonathan Galt 5 days ago
Think about it. Our State Department has been in operation for well over 100 years in some form or another. Are we ANY safer? Fire them all. No pension for failure.
MPNavrozjee 5 days ago • edited
For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.

Putin is a serious strategist – on the premises of Russian history. Understanding US values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point among US policymakers.

-- Henry A. Kissinger in 2014 at the start of the Ukraine crisis (writing in the Washington Post.)

PierrePendre 5 days ago
I cannot believe that the State Department was unaware of the intertwined history of Russia and the Ukraine or rather given State's rigid worldview I can believe it. The Russians knew perfectly well that the United States was pulling the strings of the so-called Maidan revolution and that the end would be to plant Nato and the EU right on Russia's doorstep.

Previous attempts to push Nato into parts of the south of the former Soviet empire had been fought off. Nothing could be more predictable than that the Kremlin would do everything it could to oppose what it saw as hostile interference in the Ukraine on behalf of "reformers". The US plays by the same rules. Cuba and the earlier Monroe doctrine are prize exhibits.

Obama slotted temperamentally into the State Department worldview or maybe it was the other way round. It was a worldview that got the Middle East profoundly wrong at every turn including misundertanding the Arab Spring, support for the deeply anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood, the appeasement and promotion of Iran, the abandonment of the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran, the destruction of Libya as a going concern and how to tackle Syria. If there was an opportunity to get something wrong, Obama and the bow ties managed it. They left behind a trail of wreckage.

Worst of all, Obama, the great opponent of nuclear proliferation, turned out to be its greatest enabler but ensured that he would be long out of office when it happened and the media started asking "who lost Iran?" If Obama achieved one thing, it was finally to kill off nuclear non-proliferation as a viable ambition. A nuclear Iran isn't just a threat to its neighours. It is a direct missile threat to the EU which has happily collaborated in advancing Iranian power.

Unsurprisingiy, Trump rejected all this and it is for this that he is vilified by the foreign police dinosaurs who try to delude the nation into believing that even when what they do ends in manifest disaster, there is no alternative. There is hardly a word leaked by the foreign policy to the willingly ignorant media that is not a lie. The mess is theirs and they hate Trump for wakening Americans up to their self-serving, somnolent incompetence.

The usual response to posts like this is to accuse the writer of being a traitrous Putin lover. On the contrary, know thy enemy. The maxim doesn't mean have a beer with him. It means understand him.

MFH 5 days ago
Excellent statement of the "Thucydides trap" argument for caution regarding Russia and its traditional sphere of concern. But Merry leaves us with a cliffhanger: what is the sound US Russian policy given his concerns and cautions? Moreover, his rendition is vulnerable to a counterargument, namely, that Putin's Russia has gone far beyond the seizure or control of "protective lands" towards an encirclement or menacing of Europe. This can be seen unfolding in Russia's military presence on Syria's (and potentially Libya's) Mediterranean coast, its sale of weapons to Turkey, its connivance with Iran's Middle Eastern proxy wars, and the potential for petro-blackmail of its energy customers. Add to this the affirmative case for European interest in Poland, whose capital Warsaw is exposed to attack from its eastern and southern flanks just as Moscow is immediately threatened from its western and southern flanks. Perhaps all this just confirms how far down the path to the "Thucydides trap" the principal parties have traveled. Yet, all the same, on what grounds do we rationalize Russian inroads into the Mediterranean? Free navigation of the seas?
D Gamboa 5 days ago
I like this article but Russia is no longer a declining power technically. It's GDP is slowly rising again in the last few years. They did take a hit from sanctions and low oil prices but they are staring to recover to some degree.

Russians like Putin because their economy is much better now than it was during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The problem this country has with Russia is that they were a declining power and now are back on the rise. China is more of a threat but the imbeciles in the establishment keep focusing on trying to undermine Russian security. They seem to really believe Putin is their enemy without realizing the overwhelming majority of Russians have issues with our stupid foreign policy.

Google Russian GDP, especially through time, and you'll see what I mean.

kuddels 5 days ago
Is it any wonder that the old foreign service establishment "embrace a geopolitical outlook that is simplistic, foolhardy, and dangerous"?
The foreign service exam of that era (probably no better today) tested substantially on ones knowledge of fiction: novels and such. Rather like choosing career foreign service officers based on a person's performance in the entertainment trivia night at the local watering hole. It was a test of memory not logic or insightfulness or historical perspective. These folks are not latter-day De Toquevilles or great historians, even if many came from colleges viewed as top drawer.
Kelly Wright 5 days ago
One thing that few appreciate is that US actions in the Ukraine in 2013/14 prompted Russian retaliation in the 2016 election. The Russians had been playing by our rules. (Party of the Regions won a free and fair election in the Ukraine) and then we supported a violent extra-constitutional takeover.The Obama administration wanted to see a repeat of the performance in Kiev, in Moscow with Putin playing the part of Yanukovych. The Russian response was to attack the fault lines in American Society. Their ultimate goal is to see the kind of rioting in the US that we had supported in Kiev in the Winter of 14.
Jonathan Gillispie 5 days ago
American diplomacy has become dangerously simplistic and one-dimensional in outlook. Turkey bad, Kurds good. Iran bad, Israel good. Russia bad, Ukraine and NATO good. You try talking with Russia, Iran or Turkey you'll be crucified in domestic politics. Russia on the other hand doesn't have this simplistic view. They wisely recognize that the world is varying shades of gray.
Connecticut Farmer 2 days ago
Excellent piece. Bottom line: the Ukraine is within Russia's "sphere of influence", not ours. Not our problem. The last time a major power attempted to insert itself within another country's sphere of influence was in 1962. Anybody remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?
James Schumaker a day ago • edited
Mr. Merry is entitled to his point of view, but I find his remarks to be out of touch -- sort of like another "Chicken Kiev" speech with the date "2019" slapped on it. Perhaps he would benefit from a couple of tours of duty in Kyiv, like George Kent and Bill Taylor. Then he would appreciate the fact that the United States does have real interests in preserving Ukrainian sovereignty, along with the independence of all the former Soviet states who have split off from Russia. He should also not be so quick to characterize Kent's and Taylor's testimony. They were in Congress not to express a policy position on Russia, but to act as fact witnesses to the potentially impeachable actions of the President and his circle. So, let's not get into conspiracy theories about what "elites" believe. It's one short step from that to muttering darkly about the 'Deep State" and Comet Pizza.

[Nov 25, 2019] These folks are not latter-day De Toquevilles or great historians, even if many came from colleges viewed as top drawer

Nov 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

kuddels 5 days ago

Is it any wonder that the old foreign service establishment "embrace a geopolitical outlook that is simplistic, foolhardy, and dangerous"?

The foreign service exam of that era (probably no better today) tested substantially on ones knowledge of fiction: novels and such.

Rather like choosing career foreign service officers based on a person's performance in the entertainment trivia night at the local watering hole. It was a test of memory not logic or insightfulness or historical perspective. These folks are not latter-day De Toquevilles or great historians, even if many came from colleges viewed as top drawer.

[Nov 25, 2019] WSWS: This utterly reactionary, pro-imperialist role played by the USA was demonstrated Friday in the tribute that Yovanovitch paid, in the course of her testimony, to Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian interior minister

This is a replay of Vietnam Communist Domino Theory. May all those neocons rest in Eternal Hell.
Notable quotes:
"... Now is not the time to retreat from our relationship with Ukraine, but rather to double down on it. As we sit here, Ukrainians are fighting a hot war on Ukrainian territory against Russian aggression. ..."
"... I went to the front line approximately 10 times during a hot war sometimes literally as we heard the impact of artillery, and to see how our assistance dollars were being put to use. ..."
"... Ukraine, with an enormous land mass and a large population, has the potential to be a significant force multiplier on the security side And now Ukraine is a battleground for great power competition with a hot war for the control of territory and a hybrid war to control Ukraine's leadership. ..."
"... She explained that the US-funded and fascist-led "Maidan Revolution" of 2014, which she and other State Department officials absurdly called the "Revolution of Dignity," was part of this conflict. "That's why they launched the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, demanding to be a part of Europe," she declared. ..."
"... Diplomat George Kent invoked the same theme in his testimony last Wednesday, saying: ..."
"... Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States ..."
"... Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in Ukraine's own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard. ..."
"... Kent subsequently compared the role of the United States in the Ukrainian civil war to that of Spain and France in the American War of Independence. In that conflict, Spain and France were officially at war with Great Britain, including formal declarations of war in 1778 and 1779. ..."
"... If Kent's analogy is true, then the United States is in an undeclared war with Russia. ..."
"... But when has this war ever been discussed with the American people? Was there ever a congressional vote to authorize it? ..."
"... When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces," she said, threatening the "president, or anyone else, [who] impedes or subverts the national security of the United States. ..."
"... "In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years " ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @jim p ..."
"... @lotlizard ..."
"... Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council ..."
"... @lotlizard ..."
"... @Linda Wood ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... @Linda Wood ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

' Who decided the US should fight a "hot war" with Russia? ', 23 November 2019 . Andre Damon, wsws

"There is a saying attributed to the banker J.P. Morgan: " A man always has two reasons for what he does -- a good one and the real one ."

If the alleged "organized crime shakedown" by Trump was the "good" reason for the impeachment inquiry, the "real" reason has emerged over two weeks of public congressional hearings. The hearings have lifted the lid on a massive US conspiracy to spend billions of dollars to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014 and foment a civil war that has led to the deaths of thousands of people.

The impeachment drive is itself the product of efforts by sections of the intelligence agencies and elements within the State Department to escalate Washington's conflict with Russia, with potentially world-catastrophic consequences.

(the photo)
https://www.wsws.org/asset/b1b0532e-c1c2-4265-851c-7585d61378ab?renditio...

On Thursday, Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell showed a photo of Ukrainian President Zelensky in body armor on the "front lines" of the civil war in eastern Ukraine. He asked the State Department witnesses "why it's so important that our hard-earned tax dollars help President Zelensky and the men standing beside him fight Russia in this hot war?"

David Holmes, political counselor at the US embassy in Kiev, replied:

Now is not the time to retreat from our relationship with Ukraine, but rather to double down on it. As we sit here, Ukrainians are fighting a hot war on Ukrainian territory against Russian aggression.

Later in his testimony, Holmes pointed to the massive sums expended by the United States and its European allies to fight this "hot war," saying the US had provided $5 billion and its European allies $12 billion since 2014.
In her testimony last week, the former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich recalled that as ambassador:

I went to the front line approximately 10 times during a hot war sometimes literally as we heard the impact of artillery, and to see how our assistance dollars were being put to use.

She added:

Ukraine, with an enormous land mass and a large population, has the potential to be a significant force multiplier on the security side And now Ukraine is a battleground for great power competition with a hot war for the control of territory and a hybrid war to control Ukraine's leadership.

She explained that the US-funded and fascist-led "Maidan Revolution" of 2014, which she and other State Department officials absurdly called the "Revolution of Dignity," was part of this conflict. "That's why they launched the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, demanding to be a part of Europe," she declared.

Diplomat George Kent invoked the same theme in his testimony last Wednesday, saying:

Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States

Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in Ukraine's own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard.

Kent subsequently compared the role of the United States in the Ukrainian civil war to that of Spain and France in the American War of Independence. In that conflict, Spain and France were officially at war with Great Britain, including formal declarations of war in 1778 and 1779.

If Kent's analogy is true, then the United States is in an undeclared war with Russia.

But when has this war ever been discussed with the American people? Was there ever a congressional vote to authorize it? Does anyone believe that if the question, "Do you want to spend billions of dollars to help Ukraine fight a war with Russia," were posed to the American public, the percentage answering yes would be anything more than minuscule? Of course, that question was never asked." [snip]

"But in the congressional hearings this week, government officials declared that any questioning of this aid is virtually treasonous. In her testimony on Thursday, former National Security Council officer Fiona Hill accused anyone who questions that "Ukraine is a valued partner" of the United States of advancing "Russian interests. "

" When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces," she said, threatening the "president, or anyone else, [who] impedes or subverts the national security of the United States. "

In 2017, Hill penned a blog post for the Brookings Institution calling Trump a "Bolshevik," echoing statements made more than 60 years ago by John Birch Society leader Robert W. Welch, who declared that President Eisenhower was a "communist."

Underlying the mad allegations of the Democrats that Trump is functioning as a "Russian asset" is a very real content: The extremely dangerous drive by factions within the state for a military confrontation between the United States and Russia, whose combined nuclear weapons arsenals are capable of destroying all of humanity many times over.

There is no "peace" faction within the American political establishment. No credence can be given to either one of the parties of US imperialism, which have, over the course of decades, presided over the toppling of dozens of governments, the launching of countless wars and the deaths of millions of people."

Patrick Martin from his Oct. 16, 2019 ' The Trump impeachment and US policy in Ukraine '

"This utterly reactionary, pro-imperialist role was demonstrated Friday in the tribute that Yovanovitch paid, in the course of her testimony, to Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian interior minister (head of the domestic police) under both the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. Avakov is a principal sponsor of fascist militias such as the Azov Battalion , which glorify the Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II against the Soviet Union. In other words, the State Department officials being celebrated in the media for defending American democracy are actually working with the fascists in Ukraine .

While Yovanovitch hailed Avakov, Kent cited as his heroes among immigrants who have rallied to the defense of the United States Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, two of the biggest war criminals of the second half of the twentieth century ." [snip]
""The connection between the impeachment drive and differences on foreign policy was spelled out Friday on the front page of the New York Times, in an analysis by the newspaper's senior foreign policy specialist, David Sanger, a frequent mouthpiece for the concerns of the CIA, State Department and Pentagon, under the headline, " For President, Case of Policy vs. Obsession." [snip]

But Sanger goes on to spell out, in remarkably blunt terms, the real foreign policy issues at stake in the Trump impeachment. He writes,

"In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years "

Trump, according to Sanger, has betrayed the anti-Russia policy outlined by his own administration in a Pentagon strategic assessment which declared that the "war on terror" had been superseded as the top US priority by "great-power competition," particularly directed at China and Russia. He sacrificed this policy to his own personal, electoral interests, as expressed in the comment by the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland: "President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden" than about the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia."


edg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 12:12pm

Don't mess with the Deep State.

They'll bust both your kneecaps and then fit you with cement overshoes and toss you into the ocean. Trump is finding out the hard way that entrenched interests in the US government wield vast veto power over anything a president wants to do.

edg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:05pm
I wonder if Trump gets anything.

@wendy davis

He's his own worst enemy with his self-sabotaging Twitter rants, endless character assassinations, hastily burnt bridges, and conflicting statements that change based upon the last person he talked to. Trump doesn't inspire loyalty in those who work for him and around him. OTOH, that doesn't excuse the Deep State, an unelected cabal secretly running our government and risking our lives with endless wars and Russia baiting. If impeachment has shown nothing else, it's that the Deep State is real and usually gets its way.

jim p on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 1:59pm
They forget to mention

almost all the casualties are Russian speakers in the East. Back in the early coup days there were 37 claims that Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Which turned out to be none. I still remember when Pravda in New York had a blurred photo they claimed to be a Russ officer (and how do you get blurring in the digital age) which turned out to be a Ukranian officer facebook photo. They never explained how that happened.

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 9:59pm
'failed to mention'...

@jim p

great context. kent's number 13,000, and yes, they were likely all Novoroosians , if he hadn't pulled that figure out of his ass, anyway. photos of 'little green men' in ancient soviet uniforms, old tanks left over from the days of yore.

was kent counting the dead inside the trade unions massacre in odessa petrol-bombed by the neo-nazis?

lotlizard on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 2:03pm
David Stockman probes recent events in the Ukraine,

putting them in the context of the region's deeper past. The first two parts of a series.

Links are also given for the same articles at Antiwar.com (though for me at the moment that website times out without responding):

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 4:39pm
they look like fascinating

@lotlizard

in depth reads for later, and thank you, miz lizard. funny that the Atlantic council (at least one version) had chosen Zelenskiy based on promises to end corruption (read: so ukraine could have the lucre to enter Nato). and yet, he'd kept 9as per the photo caption) Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council in hi cabinet, isn't it?

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 8:36am
so that others might

@lotlizard

be encouraged to read your stockman links to his 'The Ukrainian Influence Peddling Rings – A Microcosm of How Imperial Washington Rolls', David Stockman, November 13, 2019 , i'll offer a few excerpts. i rarely (if ever) call anything a 'must read', but even you, voice, might want to dig into this one (part I of II, if i get his drift).

i'm assumming his historical narrative is correct, as all the pieces i do know about are there are well, but what he writes i hadn't known is key, of course. his language is also colorful as all giddy-up, which i like, and good on him. he's lost me a bit in some sections, as he names names, lobbying firms, and so on, but that's on me, not stockman.

"The latest dispatch from the Wall Street Journal on the stench wafting westward from Kiev reveals more about the rotten foundation of UkraineGate than its authors probably understood.

Burisma Holdings' campaign to clean up its image in the West reached beyond the 2014 hiring of Hunter Biden, son of the then-U.S. vice president, to include other well-connected operatives in Washington, according to officials in both countries and government records.

The Ukrainian company, owned by tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky, also hired a lobbyist with close ties to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as a consulting group founded by top officials in the Clinton administration that specialized in preparing former Soviet-bloc countries to join NATO (Blue Star Strategies).

Soon the efforts bore fruit. With the help of a New York-based lawyer, Mr. Zlochevsky's U.S. consultants argued to Ukrainian prosecutors that criminal cases against the company should be closed because no laws had been broken.

Burisma later became a sponsor of a Washington think tank, the Atlantic Council, whose experts are often cited on energy and security policy in the former Soviet Union.

Simple translation: Zlochevsky was an ally, officeholder (minister of ecology and natural resources) and inner-circle thief in the ousted government of Viktor Yanukovych. He therefore needed to powder the pig fast and thoroughly in order to hold onto his ill-gotten billions.""
[longish snip of a who's who involvement]...................

"Finally, the Clinton wing of the Washington racketeering system had to be covered, too – hence the above mentioned Blue Star Strategies. And the bolded sentence from the WSJ story quoted below tells you all you need to know about its business, which was to " .help former Soviet countries prepare for NATO consideration".

That's right. With the Soviet Union gone, its 50,000 tanks on the central front melted-down for scrap and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, the rational order of the day was to declare "mission accomplished" for NATO and effect its own disbandment.

The great parachuter and then US president, George Bush the Elder, could have actually made a jump right into the giant Ramstein Air Base in Germany to effect its closure. At that point there was no justification for NATO's continued existence whatsoever.

But the Clinton Administration, under the baleful influence of Washington busybodies like Strobe Talbot and Madeleine Albright, went in just the opposite direction. In pursuit of Washington's post-1991 quest for global hegemony as the world's only superpower and putative keeper of the peace, they prepared the way for the entirety of the old Warsaw Pact to join NATO.

So doing, however, they also laid the planking for a revival of the cold war with the Kremlin. As the father of containment and NATO during the late 1940s, Ambassador George Kennan, observed at the time, the Clinton Administration's policy of expanding NATO to the very doorstep of Russia was a colossal mistake." [longish snip]
...............................
"So that's how the Imperial City rolls. People make policies which extend the Empire while in office – as did these Clintonistas with the NATO expansion project – and then cash-in afterwards by peddling influence in the corridors of the beltway on behalf of Washington's newly acquired vassals and supplicants.

In this case, all roads lead to the Atlantic Council, which is the semi-official "think tank" of NATO in Washington and is infested with Russophobes and Clinton/Biden operatives. The latter, of course, make a handsome living peddling anti-Putin propaganda – the better to grease the Washington purse strings for unneeded military spending and foreign aid, security assistance and weapons sales to the "front line" states allegedly in the path of Kremlin aggression."

thank you, miz lizard. love this title of his on the sidebar: ' Democrats Empower a Pack of Paranoid Neocon Morons '. ; )

i'll grab part II and read it greedily when i have more time.

putting them in the context of the region's deeper past. The first two parts of a series.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

Links are also given for the same articles at Antiwar.com (though for me at the moment that website times out without responding):

https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2019/11/12/the-ukrainian-inf...

https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2019/11/21/democrats-empower...

Linda Wood on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 2:12pm
Azov Battallion

and U.S. support:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

The Special Operations Detachment "Azov", often known as Azov Battalion, Azov Regiment, or Azov Detachment, (Ukrainian: Полк Азов) is a Ukrainian National Guard regiment,[1][2][3][4] based in Mariupol in the Azov Sea coastal region.

In 2014, it gained notoriety after allegations emerged of torture and war crimes, as well as neo-Nazi sympathies and usage of associated symbols by the regiment itself, as seen in their logo featuring the Wolfsangel, one of the original symbols used by the German Nazi Party. In 2014, around 10-20% of the unit were neo-Nazis.[9] In 2018, a provision in an appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Congress blocked military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology. [10] Members of the regiment come from 22 countries and are of various backgrounds.[11]

On 13 April 2014 Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov [nb 1] issued a decree authorizing creating new paramilitary forces from civilians up to 12,000.[22] The Azov Battalion (using "Eastern Corps" as its backbone[20]) was formed on 5 May 2014 in Berdiansk[23] by a white nationalist.[24] Many members of Patriot of Ukraine joined the battalion.[20] Among the early patrons of the battalion were a member of the Verkhovna Rada Oleh Lyashko, and an ultra-nationalist Dmytro Korchynsky and businessman Serhiy Taruta and Avakov.[25][20] The battalion then received training near Kiev by instructors with experience in the Georgian Armed Forces.[

In September 2014, the Azov battalion was expanded from a battalion to a regiment and enrolled into the National Guard of Ukraine.[23][33] At about this time it started receiving increased supplies of heavy arms.[33] The Azov battalion received funding from the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and other sources (believed to be Ukrainian oligarchs).

As of late March 2015, despite a second ceasefire agreement (Minsk II), the Azov Battalion continued to prepare for war, with the group's leader seeing the ceasefire as "appeasement".[33] In March 2015 Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.[44][45] US training however was withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as US House of Representatives passed an amendment blocking any aid (including arms and training) to the battalion due to its Neo-Nazi background.[46] After the vote Congressman John Conyers thanked the House saying "I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions."[45]

Since 2015 Azov is organising summer camps where children and teenagers receive practice in civil defense and military tactics mixed with lectures on Ukrainian nationalism.[48][20]

Since 2015 the Battalion has been upgraded to Regimental status and "Azov" is now officially called "Special Operations Regiment" , with combat duties focused on reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, EOD disposal, interdiction and special weapons operations.

Foreign membership [edit]
According to The Daily Telegraph, the Azov Battalion's extremist politics and professional English social media pages have attracted foreign fighters,[30] including people from Brazil, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, America, Greece, Scandinavia,[2][30] Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia. [2][56][57] About 50 Russian nationals are members of the Azov regiment.[58]

According to Minsk Ceasefire Agreements, foreign fighters are not allowed to serve in Ukraine's military:[66] since "Azov" Regiment was granted full military status, its foreign volunteers were compelled either to take Ukrainian citizenship, or to leave the Regiment.

Human rights violations and war crimes[edit]
Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful detention, and torture.[68][69] An OHCHR report from March 2016 stated that the organisation had "collected detailed information about the conduct of hostilities by Ukrainian armed forces and the Azov regiment in and around Shyrokyne (31km east of Mariupol), from the summer of 2014 to date. Mass looting of civilian homes was documented, as well as targeting of civilian areas between September 2014 and February 2015".[68] Another OHCHR report documented an instance of rape and torture

Rodnovery, symbolism and neo-Nazism [edit]

Emblem featuring a Wolfsangel and Black Sun
Most soldiers of Azov are followers of a Ukrainian nationalist type of Rodnovery (Slavic Native Faith), wherefrom they derive some of their symbolism (such as a variation of the swastika symbol kolovrat). They have also established Rodnover shrines for their religious rites, including one in Mariupol dedicated to Perun.[70][71][72][unreliable source] German ZDF television showed images of Azov fighters wearing helmets with swastika symbols and "the SS runes of Hitler's infamous black-uniformed elite corps".[73] Due to the use of such symbols, Azov has been considered to have connections with neo-Nazism, with members wearing neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia and expressing Neo-Nazi views.

The group's insignia features the Wolfsangel[78][79][80] and the Black Sun,[78][81][82] two Nazi-era symbols adopted by neo-Nazi groups.

In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi background. In previous years, between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed amendments banning support of Azov, but due to pressure from the Pentagon, the amendments were quietly lifted.[87][88][89] This move has been protested by Simon Wiesenthal Center which stated that the move highlights danger of Holocaust distortion in Ukraine.[89] On 26 June 2015, the Canadian defence minister declared as well, that training by Canadian forces or support would not be provided to Azov. [90]
While Azov Battalion troops have denied that the organization has any neo-Nazi or white supremacist beliefs, journalists stated that "numerous swastika tattoos of different members and their tendency to go into battle with swastikas or SS insignias drawn on their helmets make it very difficult for other members of the group to plausibly deny any neo-Nazi affiliations" .[85]

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:02pm
great info, amiga.

@Linda Wood

no more US training? dunno what to say to that. but i plugged '2018' into a bing search of azov torchlight parades and found this from 2016 instead (although there were some later, as well):

Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Azov battalion [as well as Right Sector' stages torch-lit march in Kharkov (VIDEOS)], 12 Dec, 2016 , RT.com

really according to Eva Bartlett who'd committed journalism in the donbass independent republics, zelenskiy hasn't been able to control them (as promised) either.

it's a good time to remember all who'd invested in the ukraine who had interest in the Maidan putsch, isn't it?

and U.S. support:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

The Special Operations Detachment "Azov", often known as Azov Battalion, Azov Regiment, or Azov Detachment, (Ukrainian: Полк Азов) is a Ukrainian National Guard regiment,[1][2][3][4] based in Mariupol in the Azov Sea coastal region.

In 2014, it gained notoriety after allegations emerged of torture and war crimes, as well as neo-Nazi sympathies and usage of associated symbols by the regiment itself, as seen in their logo featuring the Wolfsangel, one of the original symbols used by the German Nazi Party. In 2014, around 10-20% of the unit were neo-Nazis.[9] In 2018, a provision in an appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Congress blocked military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology. [10] Members of the regiment come from 22 countries and are of various backgrounds.[11]

On 13 April 2014 Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov [nb 1] issued a decree authorizing creating new paramilitary forces from civilians up to 12,000.[22] The Azov Battalion (using "Eastern Corps" as its backbone[20]) was formed on 5 May 2014 in Berdiansk[23] by a white nationalist.[24] Many members of Patriot of Ukraine joined the battalion.[20] Among the early patrons of the battalion were a member of the Verkhovna Rada Oleh Lyashko, and an ultra-nationalist Dmytro Korchynsky and businessman Serhiy Taruta and Avakov.[25][20] The battalion then received training near Kiev by instructors with experience in the Georgian Armed Forces.[

In September 2014, the Azov battalion was expanded from a battalion to a regiment and enrolled into the National Guard of Ukraine.[23][33] At about this time it started receiving increased supplies of heavy arms.[33] The Azov battalion received funding from the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and other sources (believed to be Ukrainian oligarchs).

As of late March 2015, despite a second ceasefire agreement (Minsk II), the Azov Battalion continued to prepare for war, with the group's leader seeing the ceasefire as "appeasement".[33] In March 2015 Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.[44][45] US training however was withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as US House of Representatives passed an amendment blocking any aid (including arms and training) to the battalion due to its Neo-Nazi background.[46] After the vote Congressman John Conyers thanked the House saying "I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions."[45]

Since 2015 Azov is organising summer camps where children and teenagers receive practice in civil defense and military tactics mixed with lectures on Ukrainian nationalism.[48][20]

Since 2015 the Battalion has been upgraded to Regimental status and "Azov" is now officially called "Special Operations Regiment" , with combat duties focused on reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, EOD disposal, interdiction and special weapons operations.

Foreign membership [edit]
According to The Daily Telegraph, the Azov Battalion's extremist politics and professional English social media pages have attracted foreign fighters,[30] including people from Brazil, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, America, Greece, Scandinavia,[2][30] Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia. [2][56][57] About 50 Russian nationals are members of the Azov regiment.[58]

According to Minsk Ceasefire Agreements, foreign fighters are not allowed to serve in Ukraine's military:[66] since "Azov" Regiment was granted full military status, its foreign volunteers were compelled either to take Ukrainian citizenship, or to leave the Regiment.

Human rights violations and war crimes[edit]
Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful detention, and torture.[68][69] An OHCHR report from March 2016 stated that the organisation had "collected detailed information about the conduct of hostilities by Ukrainian armed forces and the Azov regiment in and around Shyrokyne (31km east of Mariupol), from the summer of 2014 to date. Mass looting of civilian homes was documented, as well as targeting of civilian areas between September 2014 and February 2015".[68] Another OHCHR report documented an instance of rape and torture

Rodnovery, symbolism and neo-Nazism [edit]

Emblem featuring a Wolfsangel and Black Sun
Most soldiers of Azov are followers of a Ukrainian nationalist type of Rodnovery (Slavic Native Faith), wherefrom they derive some of their symbolism (such as a variation of the swastika symbol kolovrat). They have also established Rodnover shrines for their religious rites, including one in Mariupol dedicated to Perun.[70][71][72][unreliable source] German ZDF television showed images of Azov fighters wearing helmets with swastika symbols and "the SS runes of Hitler's infamous black-uniformed elite corps".[73] Due to the use of such symbols, Azov has been considered to have connections with neo-Nazism, with members wearing neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia and expressing Neo-Nazi views.

The group's insignia features the Wolfsangel[78][79][80] and the Black Sun,[78][81][82] two Nazi-era symbols adopted by neo-Nazi groups.

In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi background. In previous years, between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed amendments banning support of Azov, but due to pressure from the Pentagon, the amendments were quietly lifted.[87][88][89] This move has been protested by Simon Wiesenthal Center which stated that the move highlights danger of Holocaust distortion in Ukraine.[89] On 26 June 2015, the Canadian defence minister declared as well, that training by Canadian forces or support would not be provided to Azov. [90]
While Azov Battalion troops have denied that the organization has any neo-Nazi or white supremacist beliefs, journalists stated that "numerous swastika tattoos of different members and their tendency to go into battle with swastikas or SS insignias drawn on their helmets make it very difficult for other members of the group to plausibly deny any neo-Nazi affiliations" .[85]

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 3:23pm
CIA honoring the Nazis in Ukraine

Despite a Jewish President, Ukraine keeps honoring Nazi collabos (with a bit of help from America)

It's great that Ukraine's revisionist far-right politics are at least getting some attention in the press. But what you won't read in these reports is that the U.S. government had recently sponsored a "cultural" exhibit that celebrated the Nazi collaborator who is now getting his own street in Kiev. You can't make this stuff up!

But we have to help the Nazis because Putin's Russia is invading and we owe it to them to.... blehh!

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:24pm
holy hell and christ

@snoopydawg

in a canoe!

yasha levine commits good journalism, there too! i'd never even heard of Nil Khasevych nor his Kil the Jews wood block prints. zelenskiy is not only jewish, but russian speaking, ukrainian is his second language as i understand it.

imagine now living on Khasevych; wouldn't you be proud? i'd been on yasha's account recently looking for his take (if any) on the intercept/NYT collaboration on the Iranaian leaks. i'd figured his link to the history if U S meddling at the bottom would speak at length about Pierre Omidyar's investments (centre UA, USAID, etc.) and maybe (then) monsanto/billy gates.

thank you; a whoosh -worthy exposé. do you get his newsletter, snoop?

p.s. on edit: i tried to subscribe, but it costs money. oh, well...

Despite a Jewish President, Ukraine keeps honoring Nazi collabos (with a bit of help from America)

It's great that Ukraine's revisionist far-right politics are at least getting some attention in the press. But what you won't read in these reports is that the U.S. government had recently sponsored a "cultural" exhibit that celebrated the Nazi collaborator who is now getting his own street in Kiev. You can't make this stuff up!

But we have to help the Nazis because Putin's Russia is invading and we owe it to them to.... blehh!

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:48pm
Followed a Twitter link

@wendy davis

There is lots of good info on Twitter about the Ukraine system and corruption. Bibi didn't have any problems dealing with the neo Nazis there either which threw me for a loop. But then it was people in our country that made Hitler's war chest. Bush Sr., Ford and lots of others thought Hitler's system should be implemented here. Oh yeah and of course the banks..

Nunes sums it up perfectly.

Must watch: Low rent Ukrainian Sequel pic.twitter.com/URXgy8ush8

-- Devin Nunes (@DevinNunes) November 22, 2019

I don't know how many witnesses have admitted that there is no there there, but people hear what they want to hear Schiff just keeps rolling on.

#6

in a canoe!

Yasha Levine commits good journalism, there too! i'd never even heard of Nil Khasevych nor his Kil the Jews wood block prints. zelenskiy is not only jewish, but russian speaking, ukrainian is his second language as i understand it.

imagine now living on Khasevych; wouldn't you be proud? i'd been on yasha's account recently looking for his take (if any) on the intercept/NYT collaboration on the Iranaian leaks. i'd figured his link to the history if U S meddling at the bottom would speak at length about Pierre Omidyar's investments (centre UA, USAID, etc.) and maybe (then) monsanto/billy gates.

thank you; a whoosh -worthy exposé. do you get his newsletter, snoop?

p.s. on edit: i tried to subscribe, but it costs money. oh, well...

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 8:31pm
lol; great,

@snoopydawg

especially with the editing. but it' like the game of telephone, isn't it? 'he told me he overheard...', and someone told me s he heard..., yada, yada,

but just think if Pelosi hadn't limited the inquiry to One Phone call? 'as trump's puppet, is zelenskiy's claiming 'no quid pro quo worth anything?'

#WhataZoo.

#7

There is lots of good info on Twitter about the Ukraine system and corruption. Bibi didn't have any problems dealing with the neo Nazis there either which threw me for a loop. But then it was people in our country that made Hitler's war chest. Bush Sr., Ford and lots of others thought Hitler's system should be implemented here. Oh yeah and of course the banks..

Nunes sums it up perfectly.

Must watch: Low rent Ukrainian Sequel pic.twitter.com/URXgy8ush8

-- Devin Nunes (@DevinNunes) November 22, 2019

I don't know how many witnesses have admitted that there is no there there, but people hear what they want to hear Schiff just keeps rolling on.

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 7:48pm
Ukraine tried to get Hillary elected is just CT right?

Nah not so much. Numerous websites wrote about it back when it happened just like they wrote about Hunter Biden and Burisma. But now I'm seeing the main stream media trying to tell us that it didn't happen that way. Well here's one article that hasn't been scrubbed yet.

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire

01/11/2017 05:05 AM EST

Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.

Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Ahh that good ole but. Yes what people in Ukraine did was bad, but.... and here's the but.

Russia's effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country's military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said " I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case."

There's little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country -- not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia -- would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country's election. And President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.

Yet Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another's elections.

Well there you have it. People in Ukraine were digging up dirt on people in Trump's campaign whilst Vlad only placed a few ads on FB and most of them were placed after the election was over. Badder Russia.

That Ukraine was trying to get Hillary elected was well known in the Ukraine government, but sure let's just say it never happened like that. Then of course there was Hillary hiring people in another country to dig up dirt too, but that doesn't count. Why? Reasons of course and because it was Hillary and the DNC doing it. See? Reasons.

Next paragraph starts with this.

Russia's meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. Lots of words about how that outraged people here...and more blah blah blah stuff.

Next paragrap

Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko's regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin's regime.

Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials "to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations."

Hmm hint of a quid pro quo there?

BTW. Lindsay Graham wants to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe says that he will regret doing that for the rest of his life. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 8:06pm
Okay now that we have settled the facts here...

@snoopydawg

there has to be an effort to discredit what happened back then even though it's true.

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

Ahh yes Russia was the one that started that propaganda. Burisma and Biden was always on the up and up so don't even think that they weren't. I really don't know how people who believe everything about Russia Gate and now Ukraine Gate can keep their beliefs intact when there is so much information showing that what they believe is wrong or didn't happen the way they think it did.

Read more about this on Moon of Alabama

Nah not so much. Numerous websites wrote about it back when it happened just like they wrote about Hunter Biden and Burisma. But now I'm seeing the main stream media trying to tell us that it didn't happen that way. Well here's one article that hasn't been scrubbed yet.

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire

01/11/2017 05:05 AM EST

Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.

Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Ahh that good ole but. Yes what people in Ukraine did was bad, but.... and here's the but.

Russia's effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country's military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said " I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case."

There's little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country -- not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia -- would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country's election. And President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.

Yet Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another's elections.

Well there you have it. People in Ukraine were digging up dirt on people in Trump's campaign whilst Vlad only placed a few ads on FB and most of them were placed after the election was over. Badder Russia.

That Ukraine was trying to get Hillary elected was well known in the Ukraine government, but sure let's just say it never happened like that. Then of course there was Hillary hiring people in another country to dig up dirt too, but that doesn't count. Why? Reasons of course and because it was Hillary and the DNC doing it. See? Reasons.

Next paragraph starts with this.

Russia's meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. Lots of words about how that outraged people here...and more blah blah blah stuff.

Next paragrap

Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko's regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin's regime.

Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials "to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations."

Hmm hint of a quid pro quo there?

BTW. Lindsay Graham wants to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe says that he will regret doing that for the rest of his life. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 10:16am
ha, i'd run into that

@snoopydawg

this morning intending to grab some of his quotes and links here: ' November 20, 2019 , Impeachment Circus - Today's Bombshell Is Another Dud one chris cilizza link i'd given to linda wood to see if she or others might parse for me/us.

"The impeachment circus continued today with a refreshingly candid opening statement from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU. Sondland was involved in diplomatic efforts in Ukraine. Instead of stonewalling Sondland just let it all out:

'Gordon D. Sondland testified that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on the pressure campaign, and that he told Vice President Mike Pence about an apparent link between military aid for Ukraine and investigations of Democrats. Mr. Sondland confirmed there was a "clear quid pro quo" for a White House meeting between President Trump and Ukraine's president.'
The anti-Trump media see this as another "bombshell" that will hurt him.

But it is more likely that Sondland's testimony will help President Trump and those involved on his side.

#8

there has to be an effort to discredit what happened back then even though it's true.

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

Ahh yes Russia was the one that started that propaganda. Burisma and Biden was always on the up and up so don't even think that they weren't. I really don't know how people who believe everything about Russia Gate and now Ukraine Gate can keep their beliefs intact when there is so much information showing that what they believe is wrong or didn't happen the way they think it did.

Read more about this on Moon of Alabama

Pluto's Republic on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 3:38pm
Today, Eric Zuesse dropped the most important document

@wendy davis

...I've ever read about Ukraine.

Ukraine, Trump, & Biden - The Real Story Behind "Ukrainegate"

Almost everything Americans have ever been told about US foreign policy is a lie. Almost everything we think we know is still a lie.

The Democrat's immediate goal is to install Mike Pence as President as soon as possible.

Everything depends on this. Pence is the continuation of Obama's Neocon policies in Ukraine and throughout the world. Biden is the premier Neocon on the 2020 ticket. His job is to lie himself into the nomination and pick-up a Neocon Vice President. If he loses to Pence, it doesn't matter. The CFR wins either way. And we're off to war with Russia.

This is a must read for those who want to know what is happening to them. And happening fast.

It will be hard to see the world the same way again.

#9.1

as with a hella busy 3-day weekend, i hadn't intended to, but what with the smoke coming out of my ears and all...

i'd long claimed that i'd want to go out in a first strike as well, and here we are just east of the shit-head capital of bumfuck, CO (h/t ed abbey).

now there are a number of NORAD sites , but most nations as i understand it still have No First Strike Rules, but the US no longer does, iirc (meaning: don't count on it). our daughter and her family live in el paso county, CO home of one or two, one an alt-site under cheyenne mountain.

i've often been a bit glib as to: 'Who will stop the US Empire? Those who can...and must.'
but i dunno who that might end up being, nor how including with nukes. but at this point, i guess it's all philosophical to me, as we're all living on borrowed time, and Live in the Moment when possible.

i do so wish i could help you ease your fears, my friend.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==

snoopydawg on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 3:59pm
Yep that is a must read

@Pluto's Republic

This video goes back to what was described in the article I posted above. The Nazis in Ukraine have ties to Hitler and we knew it.

//www.youtube.com/embed/fWkfpGCAAuw?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 7:15pm
sigh; kill me now.

@Pluto's Republic

there's no way i can read anything that long, especially in the zero-hedge format. but i found it at the duran, and an easier read on my eye-brain configuration at the saker . strategic culture usually carries his columns, but not this one...yet.

even scanning at the zero hedge version, i hadn't spotted pence's name. in which part (I-IV) was it? zuesse has always needed a good editor, imo. but yeah, Pentecostal Pence gives me the shivers.

#9.1.1

...I've ever read about Ukraine.

Ukraine, Trump, & Biden - The Real Story Behind "Ukrainegate"

Almost everything Americans have ever been told about US foreign policy is a lie. Almost everything we think we know is still a lie.

The Democrat's immediate goal is to install Mike Pence as President as soon as possible.

Everything depends on this. Pence is the continuation of Obama's Neocon policies in Ukraine and throughout the world. Biden is the premier Neocon on the 2020 ticket. His job is to lie himself into the nomination and pick-up a Neocon Vice President. If he loses to Pence, it doesn't matter. The CFR wins either way. And we're off to war with Russia.

This is a must read for those who want to know what is happening to them. And happening fast.

It will be hard to see the world the same way again.

wendy davis on Mon, 11/25/2019 - 10:09am
never mind;

@wendy davis

i read the comments on the saker version, what was key was what zuesse hadn't written (i.e. any mention of the CIA), and part IV at the duran,, withut elaborating, much of which i disagreed with.

#9.1.1.1

there's no way i can read anything that long, especially in the zero-hedge format. but i found it at the duran, and an easier read on my eye-brain configuration at the saker . strategic culture usually carries his columns, but not this one...yet.

even scanning at the zero hedge version, i hadn't spotted pence's name. in which part (I-IV) was it? zuesse has always needed a good editor, imo. but yeah, Pentecostal Pence gives me the shivers.

aliasalias on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 8:20pm
If someone wants to get vaporised right away be in DC

@Pluto's Republic or New York for sure. There are a lot of other target rich areas like Langley, the Silicon Valley area and certainly that big base in San Diego in California, the possible list is long because this Country is littered with military installations.

But I'd expect that if Russia had only two nukes to fire Washington DC and NY would be the instant decision. DC is 'evil Central' to most of the world, and NY City's Wall Street is its oxygen supply and without those two cities it's like chopping off the head of the snake. (no offense to snakes intended)

#9

It fills the soul with dread. There is no one left to fight the poisonous empire from the inside. All have succumbed. They will be along soon enough to clean up these fragments and send them down the memory hole. I'm going to dwell in the large-target cities from now on. I intend to be vaporized in the first strike.

Linda Wood on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 5:31pm
David Stockman's articles

are brilliant and vital to understanding the Ukraine situation. I think Part 2 is most important, even though I disagree with him on one point. He establishes how stupid and moronic the Democrats' impeachment witnesses are to suggest we have to fight Russia in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here. He shows how minuscule Russia's conventional weapons systems are compared to ours, especially with respect to sea and air power, and then he states,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

... Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $61 billion of military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington's current $750 billion of expenditures for defense.

Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.

That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the military.

By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the country's anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian "stans" among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?

Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he's got. That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts and nothing.

I agree with Stockman that in a conventional war with the U.S., we win. But that's just exactly the problem. Russia can't have a conventional war with us or with NATO. It's defense from us is ONLY nuclear assured destruction. So the problem is not whether or not he's nuts. The problem is that we are nuts. Our government is nuts. Our government has a first strike policy, meaning our government considers it rational to eliminate a portion of the American people, which in our Nuclear Posture Review would be catastrophic, in order to win a war with Russia.

https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2018-02/new-us-nuclear-strategy...

... The NPR argues that additional low-yield options are "not intended to enable" nuclear war-fighting "[n]or will it lower the nuclear threshold" (p. 54). But this assertion ignores the fact that the stated purpose is to make their use "more credible" in the eyes of U.S. adversaries , which means that they are meant to be seen as "more usable."

The belief that a nuclear conflict could be controlled is dangerous thinking. The fog of war is thick, the fog of nuclear war would be even thicker. Such thinking could also have the perverse effect of convincing Russia that it could get away with limited nuclear use without putting its survival at risk.

Many military targets are in or near urban areas. It has been estimated that the use of even a fraction of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces could lead to the death of tens of millions of people in each country. An all-out exchange would kill hundreds of millions and produce catastrophic global consequences with adverse agricultural, economic, health, and environmental consequences for billions of people.

No country should be preparing to wage a "limited nuclear war" that neither side can guarantee would remain "limited." Rather, as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev declared in 1985, today's Russian and U.S. leaders should recognize that "a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 8:55pm
thank you, amiga.

@Linda Wood

and i agree: it's not the defense budget that matters. in this nation, the defense industries are allowed to do 'cost over-runs', and russia's weapons of war and defensive war are clearly superior. see how many are wanting russian man-pads missile defense, for instance.

i'll take part two, but at anti-war.com to the café. commenter juliania loved part I witless! i was sad to read that justin raimondo has already crossed over, may he rest in power. one place i'd blogged for a time were outraged i tell you, Outraged, that a libertarian wrote for antiwar.com. needless to say, i didn't last long at the accursed dagblog.com.

are brilliant and vital to understanding the Ukraine situation. I think Part 2 is most important, even though I disagree with him on one point. He establishes how stupid and moronic the Democrats' impeachment witnesses are to suggest we have to fight Russia in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here. He shows how minuscule Russia's conventional weapons systems are compared to ours, especially with respect to sea and air power, and then he states,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

... Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $61 billion of military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington's current $750 billion of expenditures for defense.

Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.

That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the military.

By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the country's anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian "stans" among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?

Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he's got. That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts and nothing.

I agree with Stockman that in a conventional war with the U.S., we win. But that's just exactly the problem. Russia can't have a conventional war with us or with NATO. It's defense from us is ONLY nuclear assured destruction. So the problem is not whether or not he's nuts. The problem is that we are nuts. Our government is nuts. Our government has a first strike policy, meaning our government considers it rational to eliminate a portion of the American people, which in our Nuclear Posture Review would be catastrophic, in order to win a war with Russia.

https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2018-02/new-us-nuclear-strategy...

... The NPR argues that additional low-yield options are "not intended to enable" nuclear war-fighting "[n]or will it lower the nuclear threshold" (p. 54). But this assertion ignores the fact that the stated purpose is to make their use "more credible" in the eyes of U.S. adversaries , which means that they are meant to be seen as "more usable."

The belief that a nuclear conflict could be controlled is dangerous thinking. The fog of war is thick, the fog of nuclear war would be even thicker. Such thinking could also have the perverse effect of convincing Russia that it could get away with limited nuclear use without putting its survival at risk.

Many military targets are in or near urban areas. It has been estimated that the use of even a fraction of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces could lead to the death of tens of millions of people in each country. An all-out exchange would kill hundreds of millions and produce catastrophic global consequences with adverse agricultural, economic, health, and environmental consequences for billions of people.

No country should be preparing to wage a "limited nuclear war" that neither side can guarantee would remain "limited." Rather, as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev declared in 1985, today's Russian and U.S. leaders should recognize that "a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."

[Nov 23, 2019] Fiona Hill a rabid neocon promoting UK foreign policy within the USA government, a book writer of Luke Harding mold, was appointed by Trump in 2017 when Russiagate was in full broom

This is another remnant for Bush neocon team, a protégé of Bolton. Trump probably voluntarily appointed this rabid neocon, a chickenhawk who would shine in Hillary State Department. Interestingly she came from working class background. So much about Marx theory of class struggle. Brown, David (March 4, 2017). "Miner's daughter tipped as Trump adviser on Russia" . The Times. She also illustrate level pf corruption of academic science, because she got PhD in history from Harvard in 1998 under Richard Pipes, Akira Iriye, and Roman Szporluk. But at least this was history, not languages like in case of Ciaramella.
Such appointment by Trump is difficult to describe with normal words as he understood what he is buying. So he is himself to blame for his current troubles and his inability to behave in a diplomatic way when there was important to him question about role of CrowdStrike in 2016 election and creation of Russiagate witch hunt.
There is something in the USA that creates conditions for producing rabid female neocons, some elevator that brings ruthless female careerists with sharp elbows them to the establishment. She sounds like a person to the right of Madeline Albright, which is an achievement
With such books It is unclear whether she is different from Max Boot. She buys official Skripal story like hook and sinker. The list of her book looks like produced in UK by Luke Harding
Being miner daughter raised in poverty we can also talk about betrayal of her class and upbringing.
This also rises wisdom of appointing emigrants to the Administration and the extent they pursue policies beneficial for their native countries.
Nov 23, 2019 | en.wikipedia.org

Impeachment testimony

On October 14, 2019, responding to a subpoena , Hill testified in a closed-door deposition for ten hours before special committees of the United States Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump . [9] [10] [11]

Testimony to the House Intelligence Committee by Hill and David Holmes, November 21, 2019 , C-SPAN

She testified in public before the same body on November 21, 2019. [12] While being questioned by Steve Castor , the counsel for the House Intelligence Committee's Republican minority, Hill commented on Gordon Sondland 's involvement in the Ukraine matter: "It struck me when (Wednesday), when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland's emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right," she said. "Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged." [13] In response to a question from that committee's chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff , Hill stated: "The Russians' interests are frankly to delegitimize our entire presidency. The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president -- by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale -- under a cloud." [

Hill's books include:

[Nov 23, 2019] Soros and Clinton Connections of Extreme Neocon Globalist Fiona Hill who committed Perjury at the Ukrainegate Impeachment

Nov 23, 2019 | www.investmentwatchblog.com

Soros and Clinton Connections of Extreme Neocon Globalist Fiona Hill who committed Perjury at the Ukrainegate Impeachment Hearings the other day November 23, 2019 by IWB Facebook 0 Twitter Email RSS feed - Syndicate IWB Subscribe To Our Newsletter

by Ian56

Fiona Hill committed perjury by deliberately lying under oath to Congress that there was no Ukraine interference in the 2016 election, when this is a documented fact with multiple sources and witnesses.

She should be immediately prosecuted for perjury and sentenced to the maximum sentence of 5 years in jail.

She should also be prosecuted for failing to uphold her Oath of Office to protect the U.S. from all enemies, both foreign and domestic, of which she is undoubtedly one along with all of her close associates. Bribery by Foreign Despots such as the Saudis would certainly come under "working for a Foreign Power". And so would working on behalf of international banking cartels.

Ideally she should be prosecuted for Treason and spend the rest of her life in jail, but this would be harder to prove. I am sure lots of other crimes could be found to keep her in jail for a VERY long time if a suitable patriotic and honest investigator and prosecutor, working in the interests of ordinary Americans were to be found to pursue the cases against her.

Ukraine Interference in the 2016 election for the benefit of Hillary Clinton

DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa went to Ukraine's Embassy in Washington DC in early 2016 asking them to find dirt on Paul Manafort and Trump.

Poroshenko's regime in Ukraine complied with the request and sent whatever information they could find. These included the payments made to Manafort by the previous President Yanukovych for Manafort's lobbying work to improve Ukraine's relations with the EU between circa 2006 and February 2014. (Both the Podesta's also worked on this same lobbying contract to improve EU relations, but for some reason this hasn't been widely reported!)

This information resulted in the firing of Paul Manafort soon after the Republican Convention in 2016.

This has been confirmed by multiple members of Poroshenko's regime, Ukraine MPs and other witnesses, and was fairly widely reported in the mainstream media in late 2016 and 2017.

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire. Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.
www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446

George Soros also played a significant role in financing Obama and Neocon Victoria Nuland's February 2014 Coup D'Etat in Ukraine which used Nazi thugs and snipers to murder both protesters and police.Victoria Nuland is the wife of extreme Neocon Robert Kagan who co-found PNAC to push the Neocon agenda with Bill Kristol in 1997.

Neocon Nuland's Coup in Ukraine installed a far right regime in Kiev which was designed to start a civil war against the more pro Russian east of Ukraine, wreck Ukraine's economy, further impoverish already poor Ukrainians and destabilize Europe.

It was also designed to loot Ukraine's remaining assets by U.S. multinationals and embezzle billions of dollars of IMF loans – see Joe and Hunter Biden corruption.
Ukrainian Oligarch Viktor Pinchuk had previously bribed the Clintons with $10m to engineer Regime Change in Ukraine.

The Pinchuk-Clinton Connection and the Coup in Ukraine: ian56.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-february-coup-in-kiev-was-plotted.html

Fiona Hill is an extreme Neocon Globalist , an enemy of Freedom and Democracy and all decent and honest Americans, and everyone else on the entire planet.

Fiona Hill worked for 6 years (2001-2006) at George Soros' anti Democracy "Open Society" which seeks to impoverish and enslave the 99%, and set up an authoritarian one world government ruled by a cabal of Oligarchs and Corporate CEOs.

Soros link found to Democrats' latest impeachment witness
www.lifesitenews.com/news/soros-link-found-to-democrats-latest-impeachment-witness

Fiona Hill is a George Soros Mole
aim4truth.org/2019/11/21/fiona-hill-is-a-george-soros-mole/

Fiona Hill is a member of the CFR. The Council on Foreign Relations is the main "Think Tank" and Lobbying Group for Globalism. It is funded by Oligarchs, the Big Banks, major multinationals and other major Corporations to pursue Corporatist policies which are directly against the interests of all ordinary people.
As above it seeks to impoverish and enslave the 99% and set up an authoritarian anti democracy one world government (the "New World Order").
George Soros is a senior member of the CFR.

Fiona Hill was hired by Neocon Globalist and George Soros puppet, General H.R McMaster as his top adviser on March 3, 2017. Hill was appointed as a Deputy Assistant to President Trump and his Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs.

Anti America, Neocon PNAC co-founder, Bill Kristol thoroughly approved of Neocon General McMaster's appointment as NSA, to replace General Michael Flynn.
twitter.com/BillKristol/status/833774627788881922

Who the hell was making all these Treasonous Globalist appointments within the Trump admin? Pretty much Trump's first appointment was extreme Neocon Globalist, religious extremist and enemy of all decent and honest Americans Mike Pompeo. Totally corrupt Neocon Globalist Corporatist, chair of the RNC, and America's enemy, Reince Priebus was appointed as Trump's Chief of Staff soon after.
Loads of treasonous extreme Neocon / Neoliberal Globalists followed soon after.

Fiona Hill's previous jobs include:

https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=3387

2009-2017 Brookings Institute.

The Brookings Institute is an extreme Neoliberal Globalist organisation, funded by major Corporations, Oligarchs and Foreign Despots to push for Globalism and more war.
Brookings was headed up by Strobe Talbott between 2002 and October 2017.

Strobe Talbott is an extreme Neoliberal Globalist, anti democracy, ...long term (since 1968) Clinton crony. Strobe Talbott was Bill Clinton's room mate at Oxford where they were both Rhodes Scholars. The Rhodes Scholarships, set up in Globalist Oligarch Cecil Rhodes' will, are grooming grounds for future Technocrats to pursue the Globalist agenda of anti democracy, authoritarian one world government.

List of Rhodes Scholars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rhodes_Scholars

Strobe Talbott was Bill Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001.
He was favorite to be Hillary Clinton's Secretary of State if she had been "elected" in 2016.

Q: Who the hell appoints ANYONE who has worked for George Soros and the Brookings Institute for years?
A: NOBODY who has the best interests of America or ordinary Americans at heart.

The appointments of extreme Globalist Soros puppets, H.R. McMaster and Fiona Hill were both Treason by whoever promoted or approved them within the Trump admin.

2006-2009 National Intelligence Council for the War Criminal, totally Corrupt and Treasonous Bush Regime.

NOBODY who was pro America would even consider working for the criminal Neocon Bush regime who worked directly against America's best interests.

Q: Why would anyone in the so called "Conservative" admin of GW Bush even think of hiring someone who had just spent 6 years working for Conservatives' (and everybody else's) worst enemy, George Soros?

A: Neocons and Neoliberals are all working together for the Corporate Oligarchy to enslave the people.
There is very little difference between Neocons and Neoliberals, except for social policies which don't affect Corporate profits that are used as a smokescreen and "Divide and Conquer" Strategy to hide the fact there's no significant differences between Establishment GOP and Dems, Neocons and Neoliberals.
The Neocons and Neoliberals are both anti democracy, anti freedom, Globalists.

1991-1999 "John F. Kennedy School of Government" .

Both the "JFK" school, and Harvard which hosts it, are extreme Neoliberal Globalist indoctrination centers, which aim to produce anti democracy technocrats working for Corporate and Oligarch interests, directly against America's and ordinary Americans' interests. Lots and lots of extreme Globalists have come out of the Kennedy school.

See this Globalist lobbying paper campaigning against democracy, co-written by notorious Banking Gangster and Globalist Larry Summers.
www.hks.harvard.edu/courses/political-economy-globalization

Larry Summers, as Bill Clinton's Treasury Sec helped to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which directly led to wild speculative excess, the exponential increase of tens of trillions of dollars of Derivatives, and the massive growth of the Shadow Banking Industry for money laundering, tax evasion and avoidance of any and all financial rules and regulations by protected insiders.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall led directly to the massive financial excesses and speculative asset bubbles of the early 2000's and the 2008 Financial Crash and worldwide depression.

Larry Summers & The Confidential Memo at the Heart of the Global Financial Crisis
www.vice.com/en_uk/article/gq8xww/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo

1991 Harvard
Fiona Hill was "taught", aka indoctrinated with, the Harvard Globalist view of "Russian History" by extreme Neocon, CFR member, Bilderberg attendee, "adviser" to Henry Scoop Jackson, and completely delusional "wrong on every count" Richard Pipes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pipes

Extreme Neocon Daniel Pipes is the son of Richard Pipes.

I bet Harvard didn't teach Fiona Hill that the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was funded by Wall Street and Berlin Bankers, or that Hitler was funded and supplied by American Banks, Major Corporations and Oligarchs like the Rockefellers.
They don't teach any real history about anything at all, at Harvard.

The works of Stanford History Professor Antony Sutton
www.amazon.co.uk/l/B001K1S1ZE?_encoding=UTF8&redirectedFromKindleDbs=true&rfkd=1&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

In a superficial sense what Fiona Hill said at the impeachment hearings, that she is "non-partisan", was true. There is NO difference between Establishment GOP and Dems, Neocons and Neoliberals and she works for all of them.

In every meaningful sense she was totally lying.
She is on the side of the Oligarchs and major Corporations, for Corporatism and Globalism; and against the people, freedom, prosperity, and human rights.
Fiona Hill is the absolute enemy of every decent and honest human being on the entire planet.

Previous related article:

The REAL reasons why Ukrainegate is happening: The CIA's Neocon Plants Eric Ciamarella and Alexander Vindman, Joe Biden and Clinton Ukraine Corruption, Obama's Coup in Ukraine, and the Neocons push for WW3 With Russia
ian56.blogspot.com/2019/11/information-on-so-called-ukrainegate.html

[Nov 23, 2019] Fiona Hill British-born Russia expert drawn into impeachment storm US news

Notable quotes:
"... "She went in out of a sense of duty," a friend said. "Once she was in the White House, she tried to impose some sense of order and process on the chaos over Russia policy. When there was a State Department translator in meetings Trump meetings with Putin, that didn't happen by accident." ..."
"... She handed responsibilities to her successor, Tim Morrison, on 15 July, and actually left the White House on 19 July, six days before Trump's infamous call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which the US president asked for "a favour" in carrying out certain targeted investigations. ..."
"... It is unclear whether Trump's efforts to use Ukrainian reliance on the US to his political advantage affected the timing of Hill's departure ..."
"... The American chapter in her life opened quite by chance. After winning a scholarship to St Andrews University, she was in Moscow during the 1988 Reagan-Gorbachev summit and got an internship making coffee for the NBC Today Show. There, she met an American professor who suggested she apply for postgraduate studies at Harvard. ..."
"... some pointing to the fact that she knows Christopher Steele , the author of the famous 2016 dossier alleging Trump's collusion with the Kremlin, from a previous stint in government, in the National Intelligence Council. ..."
Oct 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

Fiona Hill, a coalminer's daughter from County Durham who became the top Russia expert in the White House, is the latest official to find herself at the eye of the impeachment storm engulfing Donald Trump .

British-born Hill arrived on Capitol Hill on Monday morning to give testimony behind closed doors to congressional committees investigating Trump's conduct in his relations with his Ukrainian counterpart.

The committees are looking for evidence on whether Trump abused his office to try to persuade the government in Kyiv to provide compromising material on a political opponent, former vice-president Joe Biden.

Hill is likely to be interviewed on a much broader range of subjects, however. She was senior director for Europe and Russia in the National Security Council (NSC) for more than two years, giving her a front seat at the struggle over US policy towards Moscow and Trump's peculiar personal attachment to Vladimir Putin.

Hill was brought into the White House by Trump's second national security adviser, HR McMaster, plucking her out of the Washington thinktank world, because of her expertise on Putin and Russia. She had co-written a book on the Russian autocrat, titled Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin , that stressed the extent that his KGB career had shaped his worldview.

"She went in out of a sense of duty," a friend said. "Once she was in the White House, she tried to impose some sense of order and process on the chaos over Russia policy. When there was a State Department translator in meetings Trump meetings with Putin, that didn't happen by accident."

Hill planned to work at the NSC for a year but was asked to stay on by McMaster's successor, John Bolton, despite calls to get rid of her from Trump acolytes, aware Hill was not a political loyalist.

She handed responsibilities to her successor, Tim Morrison, on 15 July, and actually left the White House on 19 July, six days before Trump's infamous call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which the US president asked for "a favour" in carrying out certain targeted investigations.

It is unclear whether Trump's efforts to use Ukrainian reliance on the US to his political advantage affected the timing of Hill's departure , but she is expected to testify about the emergence of a parallel Ukraine policy run by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is commonly described as Trump's personal lawyer.

Giuliani clearly thought his channel, focusing on digging dirt on the Bidens, had priority, and has sought to portray Hill as being out of the loop.

"Maybe she was engaged in secondary foreign policy if she didn't know I was asked to take a call from President Zelenskiy's very close friend," he told NBC News .

Texts released by Congress between two diplomats working with Giuliani, the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and Kurt Volker, formerly special envoy for Ukraine, suggest that they expected more flexibility from Morrison, Hill's replacement.

Hill was born in Bishop Auckland, Durham, the daughter of a miner and a nurse, and became a dual national after marrying an American she met at Harvard. She still speaks with flat northern English vowels.

The American chapter in her life opened quite by chance. After winning a scholarship to St Andrews University, she was in Moscow during the 1988 Reagan-Gorbachev summit and got an internship making coffee for the NBC Today Show. There, she met an American professor who suggested she apply for postgraduate studies at Harvard.

Fusion GPS founders to release book on Trump's ties with Russia by Luke Harding

Since it became clear Hill would be an important witness in the House impeachment hearings, she has been subjected to furious attack on hard-right talkshows and conspiracy theories on social media, some pointing to the fact that she knows Christopher Steele , the author of the famous 2016 dossier alleging Trump's collusion with the Kremlin, from a previous stint in government, in the National Intelligence Council.

Such attacks have become a routine form of intimidation aimed at stopping officials like Hill saying what they know about the inner workings of the Trump White House.

Hill's manner is understated, precise and discreet. Since entering the White House, she has hardly talked to the press and not made appearances in the thinktank world. Her deposition to Congress puts her into an unaccustomed limelight.

"She was not looking forward to it but she knew she was going to testify. She will answer the questions and says what she knows, but she is not going to give some sweeping denunciation of the -> Trump administration ," her friend said.

"She has respect for the people she worked for, even if she didn't necessarily agree with them. They have all been in the same foxhole together."

[Nov 23, 2019] Is Fiona Hill a Sleeper Agent

Highly recommended!
She is a dual national... So it is possible that she has contacts with MI6 and other UK government agencies. The fact that she known Steele is really troubling.
"Fiona Hill is British-American so what if any connections are there back to UK Neocon think tanks and possible intelligence links?"
Notable quotes:
"... "What is sure is that you will never see a Neocon in frontline combat. Neither they nor their kids will die no matter what they do. Or so they think. This is one of the main reasons why these Neocons are the single biggest danger for the United States and the American people: they despise the real American people and they won't hesitate to sacrifice them, in large numbers if needed (9/11 anybody?) ." ..."
"... One of the more notorious Neocons is Robert Kagan who is married to Victoria Nuland who was at the US State Department. Russia's Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov, was well aware of what the Neocons were doing in Ukraine under Nuland, that when Sergey Lavrov entered a conference room where John Kerry and Victoria Nuland were, Lavrov curtly dismissed Nuland completely ignoring her . Fiona Hill and Robert Kagan along with other well known Neocons, work closely together at the Brookings Institute . ..."
"... The Neocons clearly do not like being referred to as Neocons, otherwise The Chicago Tribune wouldn't have ran the article with the title: " It's time to retire the 'neocon' label ." Adam Schiff is their front man in the senate who is " An Evil Bug-Eyed Fascist " leading this constant Trump-destroying Russia-hating as an " unbalanced hack ." ..."
"... Fiona Hill obtained her PhD under Richard Pipes who mentored her. Richard Pipes was the father of American historian and expert on American foreign policy and the Middle East, Daniel Pipes . If there ever was a hardcore ultra Neocon and Zionist it is Daniel Pipes despite being a trained scholar. ..."
"... We can see the ultra Neocon Daniel Pipes is not going to allow the US military to withdraw from Syria despite what President Trump announces ..."
"... When it first appeared in Washington in December 2013, the semi-thousand page biography of Vladimir Putin by two minor American think-tank researchers, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, was judged to be a valuable compilation of everything the US news media and other government-funded think-tanks had already reported, suspected or believed about the Russian president for the previous decade. No more, no less. In Russia, since no knowledgeable or politically significant Russian contributed evidence to the book, much less ..."
"... But had Hill not been appointed a few weeks ago as President Donald Trump's (lead image, right) director of Russia at the National Security Council (lead left), the principal foreign policy advisor serving the President, Hill's book, with its one thousand and one footnotes, and fifteen single-spaced pages of references, led by Hill and Gaddy themselves, The Economist, and extracts from the Voice of America, would have been as inconsequential as they have already proved to be for years. However, Trump's confidence in, and dependence on Hill's advice on Putin, and the campaign to impeach Trump himself for high crimes and misdemeanours in association with Putin, change the way the book must now be interpreted. ..."
"... The Daily Beast reported that Trump's aides wanted top NSC Russia expert Fiona Hill in the meeting between the presidents ..."
Nov 23, 2019 | www.abeldanger.org

"What is sure is that you will never see a Neocon in frontline combat. Neither they nor their kids will die no matter what they do. Or so they think. This is one of the main reasons why these Neocons are the single biggest danger for the United States and the American people: they despise the real American people and they won't hesitate to sacrifice them, in large numbers if needed (9/11 anybody?) ."

https://thesaker.is/the-trump-administration-goes-neocon-crazy/

Dems Kept Cheerleading Bush-Era Neocons – Now There's One In The White House

The question to be asking concerning Fiona Hill is, do her activities and policy decisions favor the Neocons? Fiona Hill is presently on a leave of absence from the Brookings Institute and this think tank is a major bastion of Neocon policies and networking with other Neocon-related think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. Contrary to the Heritage Foundation writing the Neocons are an " endangered species ", don't believe it, the Heritage Foundation remains whoring for Neocons.

One of the more notorious Neocons is Robert Kagan who is married to Victoria Nuland who was at the US State Department. Russia's Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov, was well aware of what the Neocons were doing in Ukraine under Nuland, that when Sergey Lavrov entered a conference room where John Kerry and Victoria Nuland were, Lavrov curtly dismissed Nuland completely ignoring her . Fiona Hill and Robert Kagan along with other well known Neocons, work closely together at the Brookings Institute .

American Wars Are off the Charts Under Donald Trump

The Neocons clearly do not like being referred to as Neocons, otherwise The Chicago Tribune wouldn't have ran the article with the title: " It's time to retire the 'neocon' label ." Adam Schiff is their front man in the senate who is " An Evil Bug-Eyed Fascist " leading this constant Trump-destroying Russia-hating as an " unbalanced hack ."

Adam Schiff-ting: Trump is unpatriotic – Doesn't matter If he's innocent

Fiona Hill obtained her PhD under Richard Pipes who mentored her. Richard Pipes was the father of American historian and expert on American foreign policy and the Middle East, Daniel Pipes . If there ever was a hardcore ultra Neocon and Zionist it is Daniel Pipes despite being a trained scholar. It is Daniel Pipes, Jared Kushner, David Friedman (US Ambassador to Israel), Ron Dermer (Israeli Ambassador to US) and Jason Dov Greenblatt, Trump special aide who are behind the "peace deal" for Palestine . According to Daniel Pipes, there can only be one victor in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the loser isn't going to be Israel.

The Neocons are already fully aware of just how dysfunctional America's government is and have clearly stepped in to take control under Trump . Look who was brought in to go after Venezuela, the most treacherous Neocon provocateur in Washington, Elliott Abrams. Donald Trump has been completely captured by the Neocons. And as far as Steve Bannon getting kicked out of the White House , the Neocons were behind his dismissal.

New Book: Deeply Corrupt Kushner Family Is Co-opting the White House – Excellent and Important Podcast (Fash the Nation)

The Prodigal Son-in-Law: Jared Kushner And The Rise Of The Neo-Cons In The Trump Admin

Thirty years a neocon provocateur

We can see the ultra Neocon Daniel Pipes is not going to allow the US military to withdraw from Syria despite what President Trump announces. When the record is considered it is pretty much easily observed Trump is being undermined when necessary and provided false intelligence when Neocon goals are revealed or compromised.

Daniel Pipes on Trump's Foreign Policy and Turkey's Erdoğan

Fiona Hill is British-American so what if any connections are there back to UK Neocon think tanks and possible intelligence links? Judging how much the British despise Russia, just look at the Skripal case as an example of what kinds of operations are deployed against Moscow.

Oops! NY Times Accidentally Unravels UK Government's Official Skripal Fairy Tale

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EWSp2QMzKv8

________

Source: Fort Russ

COLLUSION OR DIPLOMACY? A Trump 'Hawk' makes Surprise visit to Moscow

MOSCOW – The Russian media reported on the surprise trip of the adviser to President Donald Trump and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs of the National Security Council of the USA, Fiona Hill, to Moscow.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, a delegation from the White House led by Hill arrived in Moscow.

Neither the US nor the Russian authorities publicly reported on this visit.

During her trip, Hill met with representatives of the Security Council of Russia and the Russian Foreign Minister.

According to Kommersant, this is not Fiona Hill's first visit to Moscow as an adviser to the US president, but her previous visits were not known either .

Prior to joining the Trump Administration, Hill was part of the board of the Brookings Institution in Washington . As author of the biographical book 'Putin: an agent of the Kremlin' and former specialist of the National Intelligence Council, she has spoken publicly about the Russian authorities.

During a meeting held in 2018 Hill with the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoli Antonov, the senior official commented that in the relations between Moscow and Washington "it is likely that everything will get worse before it improves."

Please go to Fort Russ to read the entire article.

________

Source: Russia Insider

Vladimir Putin Is Safe If Donald Trump's Expert on Russia Is Fiona Hill, But Is Trump?

Trump is getting bad advice on Russia from his National Security Council

by John Helmer | Tuesday, May 16, 2017

When it first appeared in Washington in December 2013, the semi-thousand page biography of Vladimir Putin by two minor American think-tank researchers, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, was judged to be a valuable compilation of everything the US news media and other government-funded think-tanks had already reported, suspected or believed about the Russian president for the previous decade. No more, no less. In Russia, since no knowledgeable or politically significant Russian contributed evidence to the book, much less.

The subsequent publication of chapters on the putsch in Ukraine in February 2014, the accession of Crimea, Russian military intervention in Syria in 2015, and the US war to overthrow Putin and fight Russia everywhere in cyberspace, added nothing more remarkable in Washington, and nothing novel (non-fictional sense) in Moscow.

<

But had Hill not been appointed a few weeks ago as President Donald Trump's (lead image, right) director of Russia at the National Security Council (lead left), the principal foreign policy advisor serving the President, Hill's book, with its one thousand and one footnotes, and fifteen single-spaced pages of references, led by Hill and Gaddy themselves, The Economist, and extracts from the Voice of America, would have been as inconsequential as they have already proved to be for years. However, Trump's confidence in, and dependence on Hill's advice on Putin, and the campaign to impeach Trump himself for high crimes and misdemeanours in association with Putin, change the way the book must now be interpreted.

Does the evidence that Hill spent two formative years as a student at an institute in Moscow where she rubbed shoulders with Russians bound for, and already bound to, the two state intelligence services, GRU (military intelligence) and SVR (foreign intelligence), require a counter-intelligence assessment because of the risk which was unforeseen until now?

Hill's Moscow time is a detail of her resume which has yet to be identified in US media reporting and Congressional committee vetting. But as a Russian source from the institute points out, " this is especially curious if we take into account the fact that the Moscow State Linguistic University is a source of supply of employees for GRU and SVR. It was during the Soviet period, and it remains the same nowadays ." As another Russian source familiar with the secret services points out, by the standard of investigation the CIA, FBI and the US media now apply to Trump, his appointees, business associates, advisers, family, and friends, does this detail require special scrutiny for Hill? " Her book ," claims the source, " is so full of false leads and dead-ends , don't the Americans wonder if Hill is a sleeper agent, recruited long ago with the mission to keep the Americans as ignorant of Russia as her book on Putin demonstrates?"

If Hill is a continuing Russian penetration risk at the White House , then is there also the risk that the potentially culpable General Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser between January 20 and February 13, 2017, and his successor General H.R. McMaster, have failed to protect Trump himself ?

In her book, Hill makes much of her Russian language and translation skills, including her own translation of Putin's campaign biography of 2000. She doesn't reveal that she got her skills from two years of study at the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages .

The Thorez Institute was the Soviet-period name, commencing in 1935 to honour the French Communist Party leader from 1930, who spent the war years in the USSR before a brief term as Vice Premier of France. The institute operates at a converted 19 th century mansion on Ostozhenka Street, in Moscow's old city. Thorez's name was removed in 1990, but it sticks to the school as durably as the new acronym, MSLU. The institute itself says it cannot confirm the years Hill was a student there until it searches its old paper archives, and that may take weeks.

Please go to Russia Insider to read the entire article.

________

Source: emptywheel

Trump Was Worried HR McMaster or Fiona Hill Would Spy on His Conversation with Putin

July 7, 2017 |42 Comments |in Foreign Policy | by emptywheel

There were two infuriating stories earlier this week in preparation of today's meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The Daily Beast reported that Trump's aides wanted top NSC Russia expert Fiona Hill in the meeting between the presidents .

According to two White House aides, senior Trump administration officials have pressed for Hill -- the National Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia and the author of critical psychological biography of Putin -- to be in the room during the president's highly anticipated meeting with Putin.

If Hill is there, these officials believe, it will help the White House avoid the perception that the president is too eager to cozy up to the Kremlin. The hope is to avoid a repeat of Trump's last meeting with top Russian officials, during which he disclosed classified intelligence to two of the country's top diplomats -- and was pictured by Russian state media looking particularly friendly with them.

But it used linguistic gymnastics to avoid stating who might decide to keep Hill out of the meeting. Then Axios reported that just Trump, Rex Tillerson, and a translator would represent the US.

There will likely only be six people in the room when President Trump meets President Putin on Friday at the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

According to an official familiar with the meeting's planning, it will be Trump, Putin, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, and translators.

But it, too, remained silent about who decided to keep the attendee list so small (though admittedly, that detail was a less crucial part of their story).

Thankfully, the NYT has finally revealed that it was Trump, not Putin, who chose to limit attendees.

Only six people attended the meeting itself: Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson; Mr. Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov; and two interpreters.

The Russians had agitated to include several more staff members in the meeting, but Mr. Trump's team had insisted that the meeting be kept small to avoid leaks and competing accounts later, according to an administration official with direct knowledge of the carefully choreographed meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity around the matter.

And he did so specifically to avoid leaks about what would transpire.

This means that Trump (personally, given the NYT portrayal) decided to exclude his National Security Advisor and top Russian advisor. And he did so, again, based on the NYT reporting, because he didn't want a competing account from coming out. He basically excluded the key staffers who should have been in the meeting, in spite of the wishes of aides, to avoid having Russian critics describing what really happened in his meeting with Putin.

Remember, this is not the first time Trump has excluded McMaster from a key meeting: he also left McMaster sitting outside his meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, after belatedly inviting Tillerson in.

________

Related:

[Nov 23, 2019] The Pitfalls of a Pit Bull Russophobe by Ray McGovern

Ray raised interesting question: was Fiona Hill on the list on Brennan experts who created 17 intelligence agencies.
Notable quotes:
"... Fiona Hill's "Russian-expert" testimony Thursday and her deposition on Oct. 14 to the impeachment inquiry showed that her antennae are acutely tuned to what Russian intelligence services may be up to but, sadly, also displayed a striking naiveté about the machinations of U.S. intelligence. ..."
"... Hill's education on Russia came at the knee of the late Professor Richard Pipes, her Harvard mentor and archdeacon of Russophobia. I do not dispute her sincerity in attributing all manner of evil to what President Ronald Reagan called the "Evil Empire." But, like so many other glib "Russia experts" with access to Establishment media, she seems three decades out of date. ..."
"... I have been studying the U.S.S.R. and Russia for twice as long as Hill, was chief of CIA's Soviet Foreign Policy Branch during the 1970s, and watched the "Evil Empire" fall apart. She seems to have missed the falling apart part. ..."
"... Hill has been conditioned to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin and especially his security services are capable of anything, and thus sees a Russian under every rock -- as we used to say of smart know-nothings like former CIA Director William Casey and the malleable "Soviet experts" who bubbled up to the top during his reign (1981 – 1987). Recall that at the very first meeting of Reagan's cabinet, Casey openly told the president and other cabinet officials: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." Were Casey still alive, he would be very pleased and proud of Hill's performance. ..."
"... "The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified." [Emphasis added.] ..."
"... A modicum of intellectual curiosity and rudimentary due diligence would have prompted her to look into who was in charge of preparing the (misnomered) "Intelligence Community Assessment" published on Jan. 6, 2017, which provided the lusted-after fodder for the "mainstream" media and others wanting to blame Hillary Clinton's defeat on the Russians. ..."
"... President Barack Obama gave the task to his National Intelligence Director James Clapper, whom he had allowed to stay in that job for three and a half years after he had to apologize to Congress for what he later admitted was a "clearly erroneous" response, under oath, to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) on NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens. ..."
"... Just eight weeks after she joined the National Security Council staff, Clapper, during an NBC interview on May 28, 2017, recalled "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." Later he added, "It's in their DNA." Clapper has claimed that "what the Russians did had a profound impact on the outcome of the election." ..."
"... As for the "Intelligence Community Assessment," the banner headline atop The New York Times on Jan. 7, 2017 set the tone for the next couple of years: "Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says." During my career as a CIA analyst, as deputy national intelligence officer chairing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), and working on the Intelligence Production Review Board, I had not seen so shabby a piece of faux analysis as the ICA. The writers themselves seemed to be holding their noses. They saw fit to embed in the ICA itself this derriere-covering note : "High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong ..."
"... "According to several current and former intelligence officers who must remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue," as the Times says when it prints made-up stuff, there were only two "handpicked analysts." Clapper picked Brennan; and Brennan picked Clapper. That would help explain the grossly subpar quality of the ICA. ..."
"... The general problem IMHO, to state obvious, is that there is no truth in the public discourse, only lies which support the narrative. And there is no penalty for the continuous lies, certainly not from what is called the press these days. ..."
"... I remember Phil Giraldi's comment months ago. He had worked for the CIA and now heads the Council for the National interest. He noted his surprise at how many within the CIA still clung to the cold war view of the Russians, ready to accept almost anything bad about the evil Russians. ..."
"... And it does seem the Russian haters still are living in the past and many have a huge impact on public policy and public opinion. It is a very dangerous affliction for the rest of the world. ..."
"... The greatest nation ever's permanent war system requires much deception & permanent enemies to keep the our economy going strong & the people distracted from the real issues. If everyone knew the truth, the world's biggest racket ever would fall apart and world peace would break out. ..."
"... American "intelligence" agencies will do exactly what "intelligence" agencies have done since time immemorial – they will perpetuate their position and power. The fact that that strips you of some of your freedom is a feature, not a bug. ..."
"... Hill's career advancement and access to the MSM depends on her faith in our "intelligence" agencies. And I doubt very much that Durham will be allowed to do his job probing the origins of RussiaGate. The evil ones will stop at nothing to keep control of the narrative. ..."
"... "It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." Mark Twain ..."
Nov 22, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

7 Comments

Like so many other glib "Russia experts" with access to Establishment media, Fiona Hill, who testified Thursday in the impeachment probe, seems three decades out of date.

Special to Consortium News

Fiona Hill's "Russian-expert" testimony Thursday and her deposition on Oct. 14 to the impeachment inquiry showed that her antennae are acutely tuned to what Russian intelligence services may be up to but, sadly, also displayed a striking naiveté about the machinations of U.S. intelligence.

Hill's education on Russia came at the knee of the late Professor Richard Pipes, her Harvard mentor and archdeacon of Russophobia. I do not dispute her sincerity in attributing all manner of evil to what President Ronald Reagan called the "Evil Empire." But, like so many other glib "Russia experts" with access to Establishment media, she seems three decades out of date.

I have been studying the U.S.S.R. and Russia for twice as long as Hill, was chief of CIA's Soviet Foreign Policy Branch during the 1970s, and watched the "Evil Empire" fall apart. She seems to have missed the falling apart part.

Selective Suspicion

Are the Russian intelligence services still very active? Of course. But there is no evidence -- other than Hill's bias -- for her extraordinary claim that they were behind the infamous "Steele Dossier," for example, or that they were the prime mover of Ukraine-gate in an attempt to shift the blame for Russian "meddling" in the 2016 U.S. election onto Ukraine. In recent weeks U.S. intelligence officials were spreading this same tale, lapped up and faithfully reported Friday by The New York Times.

Hill has been conditioned to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin and especially his security services are capable of anything, and thus sees a Russian under every rock -- as we used to say of smart know-nothings like former CIA Director William Casey and the malleable "Soviet experts" who bubbled up to the top during his reign (1981 – 1987). Recall that at the very first meeting of Reagan's cabinet, Casey openly told the president and other cabinet officials: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." Were Casey still alive, he would be very pleased and proud of Hill's performance.

Beyond Dispute?

On Thursday Hill testified:

"The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified." [Emphasis added.]

Ah, yes. "The public conclusion of our intelligence agencies": the same ones who reported that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would never surrender power peaceably; the same ones who told Secretary of State Colin Powell he could assure the UN Security Council that the WMD evidence given him by our intelligence agencies was "irrefutable and undeniable." Only Richard-Pipeline-type Russophobia can account for the blinders on someone as smart as Hill and prompt her to take as gospel "the public conclusions of our intelligence agencies."

A modicum of intellectual curiosity and rudimentary due diligence would have prompted her to look into who was in charge of preparing the (misnomered) "Intelligence Community Assessment" published on Jan. 6, 2017, which provided the lusted-after fodder for the "mainstream" media and others wanting to blame Hillary Clinton's defeat on the Russians.

Jim, Do a Job on the Russians

President Barack Obama with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, 2011. (White House/ Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama gave the task to his National Intelligence Director James Clapper, whom he had allowed to stay in that job for three and a half years after he had to apologize to Congress for what he later admitted was a "clearly erroneous" response, under oath, to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) on NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens.

And when Clapper published his memoir last year, Hill would have learned that, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's handpicked appointee to run satellite imagery analysis, Clapper places the blame for the consequential "failure" to find the (non-existent) WMD "where it belongs -- squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't really there." [Emphasis added.]

But for Hill, Clapper was a kindred soul: Just eight weeks after she joined the National Security Council staff, Clapper, during an NBC interview on May 28, 2017, recalled "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." Later he added, "It's in their DNA." Clapper has claimed that "what the Russians did had a profound impact on the outcome of the election."

As for the "Intelligence Community Assessment," the banner headline atop The New York Times on Jan. 7, 2017 set the tone for the next couple of years: "Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says." During my career as a CIA analyst, as deputy national intelligence officer chairing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), and working on the Intelligence Production Review Board, I had not seen so shabby a piece of faux analysis as the ICA. The writers themselves seemed to be holding their noses. They saw fit to embed in the ICA itself this derriere-covering note : "High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."

Not a Problem

With the help of the Establishment media, Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, were able to pretend that the ICA had been approved by "all 17 intelligence agencies" (as first claimed by Clinton, with Rep. Jim Himes, D-CT, repeating that canard Thursday, alas "without objection)." Himes, too should do his homework. The bogus "all 17 intelligence agencies" claim lasted only a few months before Clapper decided to fess up. With striking naiveté, Clapper asserted that ICA preparers were "handpicked analysts" from only the FBI, CIA and NSA. The criteria Clapper et al. used are not hard to divine. In government as in industry, when you can handpick the analysts, you can handpick the conclusions.

Maybe a Problem After All

"According to several current and former intelligence officers who must remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue," as the Times says when it prints made-up stuff, there were only two "handpicked analysts." Clapper picked Brennan; and Brennan picked Clapper. That would help explain the grossly subpar quality of the ICA.

If U.S. Attorney John Durham is allowed to do his job probing the origins of Russiagate, and succeeds in getting access to the "handpicked analysts" -- whether there were just two, or more -- Hill's faith in "our intelligence agencies," may well be dented if not altogether shattered.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word , a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. After earning an M.A. in Russian Studies and serving as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer, he worked as a CIA analyst, then branch chief, of Soviet foreign policy; then as a Deputy National Intelligence Officer, and finally as a morning briefer of the President's Daily Brief .

Tags: Fiona Hill Impeachment Ray McGovern Richard Pipes Russophobia


Tarus 77 , November 23, 2019 at 16:10

The general problem IMHO, to state obvious, is that there is no truth in the public discourse, only lies which support the narrative. And there is no penalty for the continuous lies, certainly not from what is called the press these days.

Susan J Leslie , November 23, 2019 at 10:49

Truth be told – the US is the real "Evil Empire"!

John Lamenzo , November 22, 2019 at 22:24

Great takedown Ray I managed a few minutes listening to her bloviation, even that was too much! Fascists always need an enemy even if they have to fictionalize one.

Herman , November 22, 2019 at 20:47

I remember Phil Giraldi's comment months ago. He had worked for the CIA and now heads the Council for the National interest. He noted his surprise at how many within the CIA still clung to the cold war view of the Russians, ready to accept almost anything bad about the evil Russians. Given the history since the dissolution of the USSR, it surprised Mister Giraldi as I recall. And it does seem the Russian haters still are living in the past and many have a huge impact on public policy and public opinion. It is a very dangerous affliction for the rest of the world.

Hard to forget Mueller (not a spook) when he announced that there was no collusion but vehemently stated that the Russians had interfered in the 2016 election and are a threat to do so in the future. That Russian might have interfered is not surprising since others countries do it far more and more effectively. That we do it far, far more often would seem to put a damper on the Russian narrative but it doesn't because the whole thing about Russia is crazy.

Another John , November 22, 2019 at 20:27

The greatest nation ever's permanent war system requires much deception & permanent enemies to keep the our economy going strong & the people distracted from the real issues. If everyone knew the truth, the world's biggest racket ever would fall apart and world peace would break out.

Jeff Harrison , November 22, 2019 at 20:08

American "intelligence" agencies will do exactly what "intelligence" agencies have done since time immemorial – they will perpetuate their position and power. The fact that that strips you of some of your freedom is a feature, not a bug.

Skip Scott , November 22, 2019 at 17:44

Hill's career advancement and access to the MSM depends on her faith in our "intelligence" agencies. And I doubt very much that Durham will be allowed to do his job probing the origins of RussiaGate. The evil ones will stop at nothing to keep control of the narrative.

"It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." Mark Twain

[Nov 23, 2019] Fiona Hill a rabid neocon, a book writer of Luke Harding mold, was appointed by Trump in 2017 when Russiagate was in full broom

Trump probably voluntarily appointed this rabid neocon, who would shine in Obama administration with such figures as Hillary. Brown, David (March 4, 2017). "Miner's daughter tipped as Trump adviser on Russia" . The Times. Such actions are difficult to describe with normal words. So he is himself to blame for his current troubles and his inability to behave in a diplomatic way when there was important to him question about role of CrowdStrike in 2016 election and creation of Russiagate witch hunt.
There is something in the USA that creates conditions for producing rabid female neocons, some elevator that brings ruthless female careerists with sharp elbows them to the establishment. She sounds like a person to the right of Madeline Albright, which is an achievement
With such books It is unclear whether she is different from Max Boot. She buys official Skripal story like hook and sinker. The list of her book looks like produced in UK by Luke Harding
Being miner daughter raised in poverty we can also talk about betrayal of her class and upbringing.
This also rises wisdom of appointing emigrants to the Administration and the extent they pursue policies beneficial for their native countries.
Nov 23, 2019 | en.wikipedia.org

Impeachment testimony

On October 14, 2019, responding to a subpoena , Hill testified in a closed-door deposition for ten hours before special committees of the United States Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump . [9] [10] [11]

Testimony to the House Intelligence Committee by Hill and David Holmes, November 21, 2019 , C-SPAN

She testified in public before the same body on November 21, 2019. [12] While being questioned by Steve Castor , the counsel for the House Intelligence Committee's Republican minority, Hill commented on Gordon Sondland 's involvement in the Ukraine matter: "It struck me when (Wednesday), when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland's emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right," she said. "Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged." [13] In response to a question from that committee's chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff , Hill stated: "The Russians' interests are frankly to delegitimize our entire presidency. The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president -- by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale -- under a cloud." [

Hill's books include:

[Nov 16, 2019] Devin Nunes begins Republican questioning of Taylor and Kent

Taylor is a neocon and he is against detente with Russia. So he is part of State Department nest of neocon vipers.
Taylor was very evasive. but he is a trained diplomat. Taylor will definitely regret his role ( and may be already started to regret ) but he has nothing to lose; he is old enough to retire.
Notable quotes:
"... I love how CBS completely edited out Nunes first part of his speech about all the lowlife activities the left pulled. ..."
"... My favorite part was at 25:40 where Castro says "And at the heart of this corruption is this oligarchical system." .... for a second, I thought he was talking about the United States. ..."
Nov 13, 2019 | www.youtube.com

october71777 , 1 day ago

Why did Rick Perry resign his cabinet position after the Ukrainian Cabal was exposed? Just wondering.

High Velocity , 14 hours ago

Ambassador Taylor do you know anything? -- I'm not sure, I don't recall.

jack epperson , 7 hours ago (edited)

I think Schiff overdosed on his meds. Look at his eyes they tell the story eyes don't lie

Bryochemical Intuition , 1 hour ago

Nunes is extremely impressive I must admit. He's been handing the democrats their own @$$'$ for 3 years

Wesley Kline , 4 hours ago

I love how CBS completely edited out Nunes first part of his speech about all the lowlife activities the left pulled.

Sue Osborne , 1 day ago

Taylor is a Buffoon...who is trying to make something out of nothing

rek131 , 6 hours ago

My favorite part was at 25:40 where Castro says "And at the heart of this corruption is this oligarchical system." .... for a second, I thought he was talking about the United States.

American Argonaut , 37 minutes ago

Schiffs a freaking sociopath!

D Chase , 1 day ago

I have learned to HATE everything the Democrats, their deep state and MSM stand for. It's beyond comprehension that they have hijacked the greatest nation on earth and subverted the constitution for personal power and gain! A government takeover by the citizens is not far off, and the only people who will be safe are a few Republicans in government.

D Chase , 1 day ago

KENT = C.I.A. Pay close attention. These clowns have infiltrated the state department in order to control foreign policy and rob nations!!!!!

rtrouthouse , 1 day ago

Now this amounts to the impeachment of The President of the United States, for "shaking the confidence of a close partner for our reliability" Ambassador Taylor. 21:21

speedoflite1 , 1 day ago

18:40 - 19:50 Turner gives a confused explanation of the "6th Amendment" - right of criminal defendant to “to be confronted with the witnesses against him” versus The Hearsay Rule - which is evidence (statements made outside court setting) that may or may not be admissible at trial. Which, in part, why Judges are present to rule on whether exceptions, exclusions to the Hearsay Rule apply.

Larry Smith , 1 day ago

He obviously had his script written before this hearing and didn't listen to what was actually said. He referenced things that were never even brought up but were talking points for the Democrats.

Klaus Klaus , 1 day ago

...What a blinder and hypocrisy in the highest echelons of power. What a little petty thinking....Democrats are clearly communists. Do you Americans know what this mean? Obviously not.

jlc , 7 hours ago

Democrat lunacy on parade Taylor was about as clear as mud and so where his he said, they said, or i heard someone say something, are we really taking these people seriously.?

Mark Merithew , 2 days ago

Do these republicans not realize that the Ukrainian President is going to say whatever trump tells him to say so he gets his money and weapons....he’s got a war going on and must have those resources...what else is he going to say?

sjcthrn5 , 1 day ago

If Giuliani seeking information in Ukraine is such an abnormal thing as to cause alarm then please explain DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa and the years she has spent in Ukraine performing opposition research along with maintaining close ties with the NSCand the Obama whitehouse.

Christine Morris , 1 day ago

There is no evidence against Trump and Taylor was so tongue-tied that he couldn't answer some of those questions. I loved Jordan asking all those questions and putting those two witnesses in place. In the court of law they WILL NOT TAKE HEARSAY because I worked for the courts and lawyers so I know what the Judge would say. this is nothing but a scham and when Trump gets to be President again I hope he puts Schiff in prison!!!!!!!

[Nov 15, 2019] Understanding the Foreign Service Officer Nerd Behavior by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... To become a Foreign Service Officer you must take a written and an oral exam. If you pass these exams then you win the golden ticket granting you entrance into the FSO club. FSOs have convinced themselves that only the smartest, the brightest, the most able can pass this exam. If you have not taken the exam and passed it then you are by definition not a very smart person. ..."
"... Many FSOs looked down their nose at these knuckle dragging gorillas masquerading as Special Operations forces at U.S. They assumed they were barely literate. Imagine their shock when the FSOs discovered that a member of the elite U.S. Army CT unit or a member of the SEALS could actually speak a foreign language, had read some real literature and held an advanced college degree. Not making this up. ..."
"... The Foreign Service contains many officers who take arrogance and prickishness to new heights. You make a fatal error if you believe that because they tend to be soft spoken and non-confrontational that they are not dangerous and devious. Au contraire. Many that rise in the Foreign Service have a knack for sticking a knife in the back of a perceived rival. ..."
"... Just another day in the life of a Pomposity. From what I have seen of tomorrow's witness, Marie Yovanovitch, an FSO, is the same kind of person I encountered in the Office of Counter Terrorism. Arrogant and aggrieved and convinced that she is so much smarter than the troglodytes who will be asking her questions. ..."
"... You get to the point of not caring if you don't get the credit. You just want to be able to do your job better and go home each night ..."
"... It's common for females in almost every work situation I held. Pompous men getting the credit for what a whole office of females actually did -- sometimes doing things and making decisions they just didn't ask the boss to "approve." ..."
Nov 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

by a state grand jury | Main

14 November 2019 Understanding the Foreign Service Officer Nerd Behavior by Larry C Johnson

A group of lions is called a "pride." A group of crows is called a "murder." A group of geese is called a "gaggle." So what do you call a group of Ambassadors? A pomposity (that term was coined by Colonel Lang when the two of us were working on an exercise on Iran and there were three Ambassadors huddled in a corner scheming--brilliant).

There are two types of Ambassadors--political appointees and Foreign Service Officers who have made their way to the top of the Foreign Service mountain. The two fellows testifying at the opening of the House Impeachment inquiry -- Kent and Taylor -- are Foreign Service Officers. They are a strange lot. There are some exceptions who are normal people, such as Ambassador Morris (Buzz) Busby and Ambassador Anthony Quainton. I worked for Buzz and dealt with Ambassador Quainton on a variety of policy issues.

I conducted training for U.S. military Special Ops forces for several years in the aftermath of 9-11. My task was to teach them how to understand the culture of the Foreign Service Officers and offer tips on how to interact. In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, U.S. SpecOps personnel were deployed to U.S. Embassies around the world and were having some trouble interacting with the so-called diplomats.

To become a Foreign Service Officer you must take a written and an oral exam. If you pass these exams then you win the golden ticket granting you entrance into the FSO club. FSOs have convinced themselves that only the smartest, the brightest, the most able can pass this exam. If you have not taken the exam and passed it then you are by definition not a very smart person.

Many FSOs looked down their nose at these knuckle dragging gorillas masquerading as Special Operations forces at U.S. They assumed they were barely literate. Imagine their shock when the FSOs discovered that a member of the elite U.S. Army CT unit or a member of the SEALS could actually speak a foreign language, had read some real literature and held an advanced college degree. Not making this up.

The Foreign Service contains many officers who take arrogance and prickishness to new heights. You make a fatal error if you believe that because they tend to be soft spoken and non-confrontational that they are not dangerous and devious. Au contraire. Many that rise in the Foreign Service have a knack for sticking a knife in the back of a perceived rival.

Let me give you a personal example. A female Ambassador who was a Deputy in the Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism had a blow up when I helped a Navy SEAL Commander, who was detailed to State, revamp a memo she had already approved because an important overseas asset deployed for responding to a international terrorist incident had been inadvertently left out of the memo. When my SEAL buddy went in to brief her on the change she started screaming at him, broke her lamp and threw a bottle of hand lotion at him. If she had been a man my friend would have physically retaliated. Instead, my SEAL buddy walked out of the office and recounted the incident to a Civil Service employee in the office. That employee happened to be the neighbor of Ambassador A. Peter Burleigh, who was in charge of S/CT during that time.

When Ambassador Burleigh learned of her outburst he called her to his office and read her the riot act. What did she do? She assumed I was the one (I was not) who had ratted on her to Ambassador Burleigh. She set out to destroy me. My boss at the time was a retired Marine Corps Colonel, Dominick "Dick" Gannon. What a gentleman. I counted him as a mentor and a second father. Hard as woodpecker lips and a man who lived by a code of honor.

Dick prepared my fitness report and submitted it to his supervisor, the crazy female FSO. She demanded he change it to trash me and he refused. So she waited. Dick went overseas on a diplomatic mission and the female Ambassador snuck upstairs to the 7th floor (i.e., the Secretary of State's suite). She filed a complaint against Dick accusing him of failing to do the evaluation in a timely manner. Fortunately, the admin person she talked to, Joanne Graves, looked it over, saw that Dick had signed and informed the female FSO that the person who had failed to act in a timely manner was her. She was furious but beaten.

Just another day in the life of a Pomposity. From what I have seen of tomorrow's witness, Marie Yovanovitch, an FSO, is the same kind of person I encountered in the Office of Counter Terrorism. Arrogant and aggrieved and convinced that she is so much smarter than the troglodytes who will be asking her questions.

I am not saying that all FSOs are like this. But a large number are. You will be seeing another one of these critters in Friday's testimony.

Posted at 08:47 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink


Factotum , 15 November 2019 at 12:32 AM
Sounds like Peter Strozk has a perfect new career for himself - FSO.
confusedponderer , 15 November 2019 at 03:05 AM
Ah, troglodytes ... a decade ago I was told that I was one too. Because I can ... count.

As a student I worked in a marketing company that sold US credit cards. My part of the job was more honourable: I was tasked with administering the phone numbers called to do that.

It's like that with these numbers: You call someone and he sais " Never ever call me again, never ever, you a**hole " the number is blocked to be recalled for 6 weeks and was then called again. If the person agrees to appointment with a seller, the number is blocked for a year etc pp.

The point is, the more you call the less numbers you have left. Call in a city for a week, starting with 5000 numbers - after a week you're left with, say, 300 (mostly crap).

To make after that many or any more appointments then is simply impossible or requires a lot of luck or, much worse, to re-use the numbers by nullifying all blockings (= burning resources).

It's that simple: To make fried eggs you need eggs, a stove and a pan (or a really hot engine hood), to make bricks you need clay, if you want to drive from Europe to Vladivostok you need ... a visum, money, time, food, good weather, a warm jacket, to know russian, have a robust car and a lot of fuel etc pp.

One day another employee (nice ties, glued hair and IMO seriously business study damaged) negotiated a new contract with the credit card company with very ambitious goals, without asking whether we had the resources (phone numbers) to achieve that.

And we didn't have what was needed and the bosses decided and chose not to buy more numbers. So I told the unfortunate guy tasked with achieving the demanded sales that, with the numbers left, we simply couldn't do it.

I was then wildly insulted to be a ... troglodyte, wicked, mean, illoyal, evil, that I would lie and some more of that sort. I was fired 15 minutes later, which annoyed as hell but, on the plus side, with luck led me to a three times better paid much better job elsewhere.

The part more entertaining me was that I was absolutely correct, which I learned a few months later from a former colleague:

The company was bankrupt eight weeks later, and the guy who fired me had a burnout or mental breakdown three weeks later. One of the bosses went from having been a millionaire to work as a waiter. The contract partner simply chose another "executor" (who was amusingly employing the same salesmen).

So, I was right, and what did it give me? Not much but a bad experience and, with luck, something much better elsewhere. Alas, and good riddance.

Diana C said in reply to confusedponderer... , 15 November 2019 at 01:06 PM
Yes, it's not often that someone who is right first gets the credit. It's true in business, educational organizations--well everywhere I ever worked. I just got used to someone else getting credit for things I had put in place first.

You get to the point of not caring if you don't get the credit. You just want to be able to do your job better and go home each night.

It's common for females in almost every work situation I held. Pompous men getting the credit for what a whole office of females actually did -- sometimes doing things and making decisions they just didn't ask the boss to "approve."

Turcopolier , 15 November 2019 at 09:16 AM
All

I am struck by the fact that a woman mentioned above actually threw a bottle of hand lotion at a SEAL who came to Main State to brief her. Much the same thing happened to me with a male FSO who was DCM in an embassy in which I was DATT.

I had drafted a lengthy report to DIA that described the local armed forces as inept and difficult to train. The embassy had the right to append remarks to my report but not to change it or block it without my agreement. The DCM tried for half an hour to pressure me into changing my report to make it more favorable to the local forces.

When I refused repeatedly to do so he threw the fifteen page message form across the room at me. I got up and left, leaving it where it fell. After talking to the ambassador the man apologized and the embassy sent my message.

Terence Gore , 15 November 2019 at 11:04 AM
https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-real-ukraine-controversy-an-activist-u-s-embassy-and-its-adherence-to-the-geneva-convention/
edding said in reply to Terence Gore ... , 15 November 2019 at 02:04 PM
And, see also John Solomon's latest directed at Yovanovich at: https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-15-essential-questions-for-marie-yovanovitch-americas-former-ambassador-to-ukraine/

Someone's ox is getting slowly and methodically gored. Solomon's reporting on Ukraine and the State Department has been spot on and backed up by solid evidence.

akaPatience , 15 November 2019 at 02:04 PM
What??? The EXCELLENT Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is not being permitted to question today's [self-important bureaucrat] witness. Why???

[Nov 13, 2019] Neocon vipers nest in the State Department wants to destory Trump

Our wonderful "pro-democracy" diplomats and Ukrainian far right. An interesting alliance...
Nov 13, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

The ambassadors' testimony:

"Meet the witnesses: Diplomats start off impeachment hearings" [Associated Press]. "Diplomats and career government officials, they're little known outside professional circles, but they're about to become household names testifying in the House impeachment inquiry . The witnesses will tell House investigators -- and Americans tuning into the live public hearings -- what they know about President Donald Trump's actions toward Ukraine First up will be William Taylor, the charge d'affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy Assistant Secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau, both testifying on Wednesday." • You can read the full article for the bios. First, William Taylor:

"Op-Ed in Novoye Vremya by CDA Taylor: Ukraine's Committed Partner" [ U.S. Embassy in Ukraine ]. From November 10, 2019, the penultimate paragraph. I've helpfully underlined the dogwhistles:

But as everyone who promotes democracy knows, strengthening and protecting democratic values is a constant process, requiring persistence and steady work by both officials and ordinary citizens. As in all democracies, including the United States, work remains in Ukraine, especially to strengthen rule of law and to hold accountable those who try to subvert Ukraine's structures to serve their personal aims, rather than the nation's interests .

It's kind of Taylor to let the Ukrainians know who's really in charge of foreign policy, isn't it? Now, Kent–

"George Kent Opening Statement At Impeachment Hearing: Concerned About "Politically-Motivated Investigations" [ RealClearPolitics ]. From the full text as prepare for delivery:

Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow.

By analogy, the American colonies may not have prevailed against British imperial might without help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of Lafayette's organized assistance to General George Washington's army and Admiral John Paul Jones' navy , Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five years in desperately needed train and equip security assistance to Ukraine.

Similar to von Steuben training colonials at Valley Forge, U.S. and NATO allied trainers develop the skills of Ukrainian units at Yavoriv near the Polish border, and elsewhere.

Are these people out of their minds? See, e.g., "America's Collusion With Neo-Nazis" [ The Nation ]:

Not even many Americans who follow international news know the following, for example:

That the snipers who killed scores of protestors and policemen on Kiev's Maidan Square in February 2014, thereby triggering a "democratic revolution" that overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought to power a virulent anti-Russian, pro-American regime -- it was neither democratic nor a revolution, but a violent coup unfolding in the streets with high-level support -- were sent not by Yanukovych, as is still widely reported, but instead almost certainly by the neofascist organization Right Sector and its co-conspirators.

§ That the pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa shortly later in 2014 reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during World War II has been all but deleted from the American mainstream narrative even though it remains a painful and revelatory experience for many Ukrainians.

(To be fair, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis we supported weren't slaveholders, unlike to many of our own Founders. So there's that.)

Off The Street , November 13, 2019 at 2:26 pm

The Hearings should be in a room that lets in sunlight, that universal disinfectant. Make the Front Row Kid Careerists sit by the windows.

Thus far, my main reaction is that the State Department needs to be shaken up to get rid of those entrenched FRK'ing Careerists and to bring in some accountability. Inspector General positions and functions should not be optional at the whim of some SoS or other.

Not change for its own sake, just bringing things out of the shadows. In keeping with my light theme, a Sunset Provision would help, too. That is one step toward eliminating the hearsay, innuendo and nonsense suppression of Due Process as that is anti-Constitutional. The people, including back-row, dropouts and all, deserve better from their government.

[Nov 13, 2019] I don't believe I've seen any attempts to emulate 9/11 though. Certainly some other aircraft terrorism, like in Ukraine.

Nov 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bemildred , Nov 11 2019 15:45 utc | 122

Walter @117:

Well, I noticed the point you raised. I was a software engineer, not a real engineer, so I have steadfastly stayed out of arguments about 9/11 and what really happened.

I have always found the whole 9/11 thing implausible, and still do, but I've been used to that sort of thing since the 60s. Three new impossible things every day. I considered the uses of passenger jets as weapons on more than one occasion while riding around in one, seeing the buildings go by as you glide to the runway, so I wasn't surprised.

And then I realized, like the next day, that our leaders, whomever they might be, intended to make it a military affair, and since then I've been waiting for our collapse.

I don't believe I've seen any attempts to emulate 9/11 though. Certainly some other aircraft terrorism, like in Ukraine.

It was kind of obvious that the Bushites were all ready at the gate when 9/11 happened, Patriot Act Mighty Wurlitzer and all, so I don't doubt their complicity, but other than that I don't want to fight.

[Nov 06, 2019] Impeachment Inquiry Transcripts: Read Excerpts of Sondland's and Volker's Testimonies

Nov 06, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , November 05, 2019 at 01:34 PM

Impeachment Inquiry Transcripts: Read Excerpts of Sondland's and Volker's Testimonies

House investigators on Tuesday released transcripts from two more closed-door depositions.

Gordon Sondland's Testimony
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/05/us/politics/sondland-testimony-transcript-impeachment.html

Kurt Volker's Testimony
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/05/us/politics/volker-testimony-transcript-impeachment.html

[Nov 06, 2019] US foreign policy is driven by "diaspora politics"

Nov 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Petri Krohn , Nov 5 2019 22:40 utc | 14

A SPY AND A TRAITOR

A week ago I commented on the Vindman story:

US foreign policy is driven by "diaspora politics" - double traitors who first betrayed their home country and are now betraying the US in the name of their nationalist Nazi ideology and their desire to wage war on Russia.

My friend George Eliason has expanded on the topic.

Alexander Vindman – Why Diaspora Ukrainians are Driving Sedition

Was it Vindman's American patriotism or Diaspora nationalism that led him to share the Oval Office transcript with Ukraine's president?

[Nov 05, 2019] Where Will Ukraine Go from Here

Notable quotes:
"... As for the rest of Ukraine, even though they lost something, they get something valuable in return: it's called neutral status between east and west. A subdued, federalized Ukraine led by Zelensky, in many ways, makes Ukraine "Finlandized." That is good for the Ukrainian people. It means they retain their independence, but peacefully accept that Russia controls their foreign policy. That position benefited Finland between 1945 and 1991. Finland is now a peaceful and prosperous country, and it is no longer living under influence of Russia or the Soviets. If "Finlandization" led to happiness for the Finns, it can do the same for Ukraine. ..."
"... Finland did not fight against Swedish language and peacefully uses it, while it is "legacy of Swedish occupation" and less than 10% of Finnish people can speak it. Ukrainian Nazis are deprived of wisdom, they are fighting with Russian language and own people. So, if you haven't brain, nothing will help you. ..."
"... after Maidan, Nuland directly stated that the United States spent 5 billion on "building democracy in Ukraine." The United States invested 5 billion in a coup, but is Poland to blame? why? if Poland had really done that, then western Ukraine would have become part of Poland immediately after the Maidan, but this did not happen. After the Maidan, Biden was photographed in a pride chair, but not the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland;) ..."
Nov 05, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

Sean.McGivens19 days ago ,

When Russia is led by truly capable leaders, it can beat any foreign power in war or geostrategic conflict. Today Russia is led by a great man who is starting to look more and more like another Suvorov.

And everyone knows who Suvorov was.

Just read today's headlines concerning Syria. Russia ordered Turkey to stand down its offensive. Russian troops are now functioning as peacekeepers in-between the Turkish and Syrian armies. The Kurds have signed allied themselves with Russia and Assad.

What a huge and great victory for Russia.

Gary Sellars Sean.McGivens19 days ago ,

..while Americans of all stripes scratch their heads wondering what went wrong, and then check CNN and their FB feeds in a hopeless bid to understand what's going down. Just.... hilarious....

Sean.McGivens Gary Sellars19 days ago • edited ,

What disturbs me the most is that Americans are being misled into believing that they "lost" something in Syria. In reality, America "lost" nothing in Syria. That's because the US was never established in Syria to begin with. America has long been established in Syria's neighbors, Israel, SA, Turkey, and to a lesser degree Iraq. But not Syria.

Basically, America got involved in Syria for aggressive, illegitimate, and unnecessary reasons. We were there to further the over-ambitious geopolitical ambitions of our ME allies. That's why America launched a minor invasion of eastern Syria, and armed and funded rebels, jihadis to try to violently overthrow Assad. And when that didn't work, the US POTUS justifiably pulled out US troops and stopped supporting the rebels.

So, America didn't ever have anything to gain or to lose in Syria. Nothing at all.

Meanwhile, all the hawkish American newspapers -- which includes much of MSM -- are now complaining that Trump allowed Russia to "take" Syria, and to "humiliate" and "drive out" America from that country. What hogwash! What propaganda and lies!

Russia has been in Syria for nearly 50 years. That means Russia's the chief ally of Syria, and as such, is a guarantor peace and stability in the country. Also, Russia definitely has something to lose in Syria if Assad gets overthrown. So, in the end, Russia wasn't trying to "take over Syria," as lying US media suggests. Russia was just protecting itself, protecting Assad, and trying to impose peace on the region.

Check out Newsweek's totally dishonest story on this is subject. The article was published today. It's a shame so many naive Americans believe these lies about America's alleged "role" in Syria.

SergioMeira Sean.McGivens17 days ago ,

Sir, we got involved in Syria because of Assad, who is a monster to his own people. If you're talking about Butinterests in terms of money, no -- we don't have any. But in terms of principles, yes, we were justified in entering that area of the country.

And we made a difference. Or else the Russians wouldn't be rushing in to take the place we left. We were getting a lot out of very little engagement.

Russia has never been a guarantee for peace and stability anywhere; it has always been a guarantee of more support for Russia. Whenever necessary, instabillity was sown, and inconvenient parties, whether or not former allies, were abandoned.

Plus, there is the nagging issue of the Kurds having helped us in the fight against ISIS. Letting this out of the picture is as dishonest as you try to make parts of the MSM be.

But hey -- have your own opinions. Write a book about them while you're at it.

FromRussiaWithLove SergioMeira11 days ago ,
Sir, we got involved in Syria because of Assad, who is a monster to his own people. If you're talking about Butinterests in terms of money, no -- we don't have any. But in terms of principles, yes, we were justified in entering that area of the country.

sorry what???

In fact, Assad is the legitimate, democratically elected president of Syria. have you decided in the USA that you have the right to decide who is bad and who is good?
The United States has worked hard to overthrow legitimate power in Syria. for 7 years of NATO's joint operation in Syria, ISIS captured 70% of the territory of this country. Of course, with the active support of the United States, it supplied weapons to everyone who was ready to fight against the Syrian army. but the "evil" Russia came and ruined everything. for 5 years of military operations in Syria, ISIS were defeated and switched to guerrilla warfare. solved the problem between the Kurds, Turks and Syrians. US plans have completely collapsed. or not?

Congress is currently making a decision to bring tanks into Syria to protect oil fields from terrorists. Really??? it looks like American democracy is black and actually called oil! all these hundreds of thousands of murdered women and children in Syria just so that the United States could continue to steal oil from Syria!

"the greatest power in the world" turns out to be an ordinary thief! do not you disgust?

Sean.McGivens SergioMeira17 days ago • edited ,

Sir, we got involved in Syria because of Assad, who is a monster to his own people.

Define what you mean by "monster to his own people." And explain to me why 30% of Syrians -- a huge chunk of whole -- have always been solidly behind Assad.

If you're talking about the Assad regime's barrel bombing, yes, that's monstrous. But Assad didn't start doing that until the civil war was fulling raging. That war, mind you, didn't broaden and deepen until America stepped in to fund and arm Assad's enemies.

Had America had stayed out of Syria and allowed Assad to stamp out the initial protests and acts of rebellion, then there would have been no civil war. Therefore, America's involved escalated Syria's civil disorder all the way up to the level of a full fledged war, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.

I really don't understand how American Triumphalists and messianic spreaders of American democracy can justify what they did in Syria. Essentially, America consciously took a chance in Syria, choosing to support the rebels on the off chance that they might topple Assad. America knew that the price of failure in this reckless gambit would be the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

Why did America do this? America's action in Syria were driven by the desire to turn the country into a strategic asset. America chose to pursue this goal on behalf of its regional allies (all Syrian enemies), Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. That's all. Never mind "principles." We're talking geopolitical ambitions here. Blind ambitions.

It's a mysterious to me as to why you blame the war on Russia. After all, Russia's been in Syria for nearly 50 years. During that time, Syria was stable, and experienced no civil war. But as soon as America began meddling in Syria, war broke out. Russia worked with Assad to try to stomp out that war. America worked with the rebels to expand it.

I cannot fathom the views of people like you.

Vladdy20 days ago ,

Ukraine power captured it's country in own trap. They can't stop civil war in Donbass because then they will need to explain somehow why they killed Donbass people (Ukraine Nazis power hate Donbassians, but at the same time pretends to call them their own citizens) for so many years. Admit truth means acknowledge own crimes. So, the only way they have is continuing lying about "liberation" (means genociding) of Donbass.

Sean.McGivens Vladdy17 days ago ,

But rest assured: Ukraine is beaten and the Ukrainians know it. They can feel it. That's why they elected Zelensky, who may be a sensible guy.

Implementation of the peace plan in Donbass will turn the region into a virtually independent part of Ukraine. Russia will be able to influence Ukrainian politics through its connections in Donbass. That means Russia will have gained exactly what it fought for: veto power over Ukraine's attempts to join the EU and NATO.

As for the rest of Ukraine, even though they lost something, they get something valuable in return: it's called neutral status between east and west. A subdued, federalized Ukraine led by Zelensky, in many ways, makes Ukraine "Finlandized." That is good for the Ukrainian people. It means they retain their independence, but peacefully accept that Russia controls their foreign policy. That position benefited Finland between 1945 and 1991. Finland is now a peaceful and prosperous country, and it is no longer living under influence of Russia or the Soviets. If "Finlandization" led to happiness for the Finns, it can do the same for Ukraine.

Vladdy Sean.McGivens7 days ago ,

Finland did not fight against Swedish language and peacefully uses it, while it is "legacy of Swedish occupation" and less than 10% of Finnish people can speak it. Ukrainian Nazis are deprived of wisdom, they are fighting with Russian language and own people. So, if you haven't brain, nothing will help you.

FromRussiaWithLove Sean.McGivens11 days ago ,
But rest assured: Ukraine is beaten and the Ukrainians know it. They can feel it. That's why they elected Zelensky, who may be a sensible guy.

your optimism is due to ignorance of the peculiarities of Ukrainian political life;) Let's start with a short introduction to Ukrainian political life. Who is Zelensky? this is a representative of the oligarch Kolomoisky. exactly the same oligarch as Parashenko has ruled Ukraine for the past 5 years. For 5 years, Parashenko has robbed banks and enterprises of other oligarchs in Ukraine, now Kolomoisky will do the same through his representative Zelensky.

Now about the peace process in the Donbas ... The armed coup in 2014 was carried out by the forces of Ukrainian Nazis and over the past 5 years, the Ukrainian Nazis have firmly established themselves in the Verkhovna Rada and, most importantly, in the army and law enforcement agencies. these structures are controlled by Avakov, not Zelensky. Zelensky cannot withdraw troops, and even more so "Ukrainian volunteers" from punitive battalions Aidar, Azov, etc. Zelensky does not control these formations and has no leverage over them. all he can do is put forward an additional requirement of 7 days without shelling. Naturally, the shelling is not embellished and no one withdraws the troops. Even if Zelensky really wanted to end the war, there simply isn't any opportunity for this. all that he can do is populism and tell that he will return Crimea :))))

adammska20 days ago ,

Mr Gvosdev sounds like one of those Eastern European svidomites . They combine this unwavering faith in the power of Washington on top of a deep, irrational hostility to Russia.

How is "collapse of Russian economy" going to happen exactly? Judging by the casual manner in which Gvosdev talks about it, I think he imagines president Biden flipping some switch in his cabinet, and the economy of vast country shutting down in an instant.

How does a Western economic war on Russia can help its proxies seize power? It didn't work like this in Iran or Venezuela, it's even less likely to happen in Russia. If anything the opposite is likely to happen: pro-Western 5th column in Russia will be eradicated.

You know that the Ukraine is doomed when your "optimistic scenario" requires Russia to drop dead essentially.

Sean.McGivens SergioMeira17 days ago ,

Russia's economy is functioning very close to autarky. That means Russia could survive expulsion from SWIFT.

As for for your reference to China, your point is anything but clear. China is forming a strategic alliance with Russia pointed directly at the US. If you don't realize this, you haven't been reading the news. It would behoove you to know that China and the US have long been drifting in the direction of a conflict for supremacy in Pan-Pacific affairs. The US has lots of weapons systems set up in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Beijing is determined to make the US withdraw those military assets from China's borders. China is also wary of the US's messianic impulse to spread democracy anywhere it can. China blames America for the Hong Kong disturbances, which Beijing thinks of as America's latest attempt at a "color revolution."

Meanwhile, Russia poses no such threat to China. If anything, Russia makes an ideal junior ally for China in the latter's growing tendency to constantly subvert the US as the world's superpower. So, I am confused as to what kind of threat you think China poses to Russia?

Perhaps you believe that China wants to take Siberia from Russia. Do you really believe China has the ability to do so? If that's what you're thinking, you are willfully blind to the fact that Russia remains a nuclear weapons superpower. If war broke out between China and Russia (which is very unlikely), which country would do more damage to the other? Think about it: Russia is a massive open land mass that is not densely populated, and it is full of nuclear missile launch sites. China is a population dense nation consisting of far less territory than Russia. Who would suffer more in an exchange of nuclear missiles? I think the answer is clear. For this reason, Beijing is not thinking about war with Russia, or making Russia "collapse," as you say.

How much have you read about Russia, anyway?

Сергей Ерохин20 days ago ,

Wow, I can write comments here. I am russian, so I can tell the Mordor's version. The article is generally objective, but the author was cunning in a few points

1) The principal reason why Yanukovich refused to sign the agreement with Europe was the duty free zone with Russia. Russians sad: ok, You will sign the agreement with Europe, but we have high customs duties with europeneans, so we will break our free trade zone agreement. Russia was the biggest export market for Ukraine and ukranians understood that they will lose a lot of money. But Maidan decided differently.

2) Today the Russian primary strategy for Ukraine is do nothing and wait, we have no any influence in this country. We understand that Europe and USA will not feed this country a lot of time. Internal contradictions will ruin this country before our intervention

3) But we support new government of Zelensky because he has an opportunity to implement Minsk agreements (may be). It will be enough to close this deal and move on

FromRussiaWithLove Сергей Ерохин11 days ago ,

greetings to you a colleague from Mordor :)))

But we support new goverment of Zelensky because he has an oportunity to implement Minsk aggreements (may be). It will be enough to close this deal and move on

I do not agree with this. how Zelensky can end the war when the security forces and the army are controlled by Avakov and the punitive battalions do not even know who controls?
the support of any government in Ukraine is due to the fact that our countries still have a fairly large turnover. while we trade with ukraine will cooperate ..

Sean.McGivens21 days ago ,

But now Poland and other Central European states were similarly interested in changing their position -- from being Euro-Atlantic frontline states to shifting that line further east

I believe that this is a big reason why Maidan occured. It is also a big reason for the war in Ukraine today. The Poles have had a hand in this issue from the very beginning. Poland is literally an aggressor state at this point, stoking trouble in Ukraine.

America's greatest sin in all of this has been to allow itself to be influenced by Poland and the Baltic states. Just like America allowed itself to be led by the nose by its "allies" in the Syrian War. We're talking about two conflicts that have very little to do with America's best interests, and which could result in disaster (nuclear exchange with Russia) if something goes wrong.

It's absolutely nuts for anyone to think that nuclear equipped Russia would allow Poland and America to have their way in Ukraine, which is virtually Russia's front porch. By supporting our Polish "ally," the US has come close to creating a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. In 1963 the Russians provoked America. Since 2014, America has been provoking Russia. It could get much worse.

FromRussiaWithLove Sean.McGivens11 days ago ,
I believe that this is a big reason why Maidan occured. It is also a big reason for the war in Ukraine today. The Poles have had a hand in this issue from the very beginning. Poland is literally an aggressor state at this point, stoking trouble in Ukraine.

but after Maidan, Nuland directly stated that the United States spent 5 billion on "building democracy in Ukraine." The United States invested 5 billion in a coup, but is Poland to blame? why? if Poland had really done that, then western Ukraine would have become part of Poland immediately after the Maidan, but this did not happen. After the Maidan, Biden was photographed in a pride chair, but not the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland;)

Gary Sellars Sean.McGivens21 days ago ,

"In 1963 the Russians provoked America."

Actually the Soviets were mainly responding to secret US basing of missiles in Turkey.

Sean.McGivens Gary Sellars21 days ago ,

Okay, I can see where you're coming from. But still, the Russians were readying to station missiles in Cuba, just miles from America's borders. That means the Russians must have known -- or should have known -- that they were risking war with the US. That's my point.

Now America's doing the same thing as the USSR did in 1963. America is setting the stage to establish bases, radars, and missiles in Ukraine. That's what preparing Ukraine for NATO membership is all about. Therefore, America must know -- or should know -- that it is risking war with Russia. In a major way.

Gary Sellars Sean.McGivens20 days ago • edited ,

Agree with the thrust of your agrument. The US knows it is stoking conflict with their actions (ie Donbass), but since they are not directly in the firing line (barring major escalations) they simply don't care. They want to discomfort and undermine Russia, drive a wedge between Russia and Germany/France, and force the Eurotrash into compliance with US diktat as a demonstration of US power over its minions.

Re the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the balance it wasn't really a climb-down by the Soviets, but it is usually interpreted that way, especially as anti-Krushchev factions in the USSR were succesful in portraying it that way as part of their palace coup. The US remoived its misiles from Turkey, promised not to update them with new ones, and undertook not to repeat any more "Bay of Pigs" attempts at overthrowing Castro by force of arms. All the Soviets needed to do was halt their mobilisation and similarly agree not to base missiles. On the balance, the Soviets played brinkmanship well and won real concessions in exchange for very little. Krushchevs problem was really that he marketted the ploy very poorly and was able to be portrayed as a loser by his political enemies, and Westeners have happily repeated the narratives ever since.

Vladdy Sean.McGivens21 days ago ,

And what? US placed their missiles in every corner of the Globe, including Soviet/Russian borders. Why USSR can't place it's missiles in Cuba?
BTW, what Gary Powers did in his U-2 in the sky above Ekaterinburg 01.05.1960? https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Sean.McGivens Vladdy20 days ago ,

My point is that each power is expected to respect the other's buffer zones. That's how the powers have gotten along historically. If and when one side disrespects the other's buffer zone, major trouble is right around the corner.

Generally, in these confrontations between the nuclear superpowers, the side with the less to lose is the first to back down. That side is always the one that has overreached. In 1963 it was the Soviets who overreached. It's looking increasingly clear that since 2014, it's the US that's overreached.

The US will find a graceful way to end the Ukraine-NATO expansion issue, something amounting to a face-saving American retreat from the region. Putin will likely make it easy for America to pull out without loss of prestige.

Vladdy Sean.McGivens20 days ago • edited ,

In general, you are right, but in 60's it was not Soviets, who overreached. It was US planes intervened in Soviet airspace, not vice versa. It was US, who firstly placed missiles in Turkey in 1961, not USSR in Cuba in 1963.

Allalin22 days ago ,

Ukraine is not going anywhere, because of 115 Mrd. outstanding Debt. Ukraine lost 85% of their Industrial Base in the last 5 Years. Most of them working for Russian Companies. Those Companies get Advanced Payments from Russia till 2014 worth about 10 Mrd. for Material and Salaries. That Money is not coming again. Russian Companies replace 90% of all Ukraine deliveries during the last 5 Years - more modern and especially with far better time frames. Ukraine has a minor Cash Reserve of 7 Billion USD.

Emidio Borg22 days ago • edited ,

Whatever happens to Ukraine we can be sure of one thing, through our contributions via the World Bank, the IMF and Obama's loan guarantees, the one million dollars a day paid by U.S taxpayers directly into the pockets of Ukrainian Oligarchs will continue in perpetuity.

I doubt Putin is in any hurry to relieve us of that 'honor' the man is a master of playing the U.S for a sucker.

Sean.McGivens Emidio Borg22 days ago • edited ,

You are correct on most counts. However, I think that Putin wants the US to scale down its Ukraine involvement ASAP. That's because Russia's nightmare is NATO expansion into Ukraine. Therefore, the sooner the US backs away, the less likely Russia will have to fight a future war in order to keep NATO off of its front yard. Nobody, including Putin, wants war.

Ivo22 days ago ,

Ukraine needs internal stability, this means peace treaty with rebels and some kind of minimal agreement with Russia. Country needs to buy time, it is too much to expect to fight war, to do reforms and fight corruption and to develop all at the same time.

NATO expansion to East proved to be big destabilizing factor for Ukraine, its geopolitical situation is difficult. It will always need to balance and make concessions between Eastern and Western interests.

New president looks very promising, hopefully he will be able to bring country back to stability and push it more toward faster economical development and national reconciliation.

J Urie Ivo21 days ago • edited ,

You make some good points regarding stability within the country. The amount now spent on fighting the war in Donbas will not go down as Ukraine will need to continue to rebuild their military to include new fighters and new ships for the navy however the killing will stop. Any agreement made with Putin should be made with eyes wide open as Russia has no honor so agreements are worthless only a potent enough military will guarantee Ukraine's peace.

Peace at any cost is not acceptable and any plan that allows complete autonomy should be a no go, it would be better to just build a wall along the existing line and rid the country of a fifth columnist element. If the plan allows for local elections, local use of Russian, local police forces not military but police that is acceptable. These elections must allow for all residents who resided in the area prior to the war to vote and for all Ukrainian political parties to participate.

Zelenskiy has made corruption a key to his election and it is imperative that he takes some bold action(s) soon to set the tone. I am a little concerned that he has selected some less than pure individuals to be part of his presidential team, apparently he hasn't picked up on how bad the optics are by having a lawyer that worked for Kolomosky as your chief of staff?
Cracking down on the oligarchs would allow Ukraine to have a standard of living like Poland within a very few years and many of the Ukrainians that now work in Poland could come home an make as much money.

The presidential vote proved that at least 73% of Ukrainians agreed that a new beginning was needed hence Zelnskiy being elected. The reason IMHO that "national reconciliation" hasn't been achieved is the continued Russian interference/influence in Ukraine. It hasn't been long enough for Ukraine as an independent nation to come to terms with the past history. This part of the world has seen millions killed over the past 100+ years, the country hasn't come to grips with that there is still finger pointing and until that is dealt with the reconciliation will be difficult.

The desire to join NATO is all on Russia and it's continuous interference in Ukraine. In all reality NATO is a long way off as Ukraine needs to do a lot to bring the country up to NATO standards including in the corruption realm.

Sean.McGivens J Urie21 days ago ,

This part of the world has seen millions killed over the past 100+ years

Ukraine has been used an invasion route by Western aggressors who want to conquer Russia. That's resulted in Russia suffering millions killed in the 20th century, and hundreds of thousands more killed in earlier wars.

You keep failing to see matters from Russia's perspective. You only think about Ukraine's most selfish national interests. You've got to understand that any security arrangement in that part of the world will have to be a shared security plan. It will have to consider and respect Russia's concerns. NATO is not the answer here. Militarization of a Ukraine led by far-right wing nationalists is not the answer either.

Ukraine's only path to peace and security is to accept the status of Finlandization.

Sean.McGivens J Urie21 days ago ,

If the plan allows for local elections, local use of Russian, local police forces not military but police that is acceptable.

It's too late for that. Remember, the Ukrainian ATO invaded Donbass and killed many thousands of innocent local people. For this reason, Donbass will never allow the Ukrainian military onto its soil.

J Urie Sean.McGivens21 days ago ,

Did you read what I said? A police force yes a military force no.

Sean.McGivens J Urie21 days ago ,

Yes, I read what you said. That's why I highlighted "military" in my quote. You are saying that Donbass Russians are expected to allow themselves to be occupied by the Ukrainian military, as if they are conquered, humiliated people. I am saying that Russia and Donbass will never let that happen.

Let's not overlook that it appears very much like the war is ending now, with Ukraine submitting to the terms set by Donbass and Russia. That means Zelensky will have to drink his poison soup and allow the Donbass militia to have exclusive and unrestricted military rights within Donbass, and along the region's borders. That's unavoidable.

J Urie Sean.McGivens21 days ago ,

Even if you go by Minsk II which plainly does not allow for a Separatist Military there is zero chance that Ukraine will agree to anything resembling a "military". This territory will be under Ukrainian sovereignty and the border will be under Ukrainian sovereignty. The autonomy will be for language, education, elections of local councils, cultural endeavors etc...

It is the thugs in charge who are supported by the Kremlin are the ones that envision some quasi country within Ukraine. If you were to go out into the villages the average person wants the war to end and life to go back to as close to what it was before this all started. The thugs in charge know that their power and authority will go away if truly free and fair elections are to be held without Russian and mercenary gun toting thugs walking the streets. They are the ones that are worried as their world will come to an end if real peace comes to past.

Sean.McGivens J Urie20 days ago ,

If you were to go out into the villages the average person wants the war to end and life to go back to as close to what it was before this all started. The thugs in charge know that their power and authority will go away if truly free and fair elections are to be held...

You are in denial of the facts. Respected international polling agencies have taken polls inside the rebel held portion of Donbass. The results confirm that the people there want nothing to do with the Ukrainian government, and that they identify themselves as an extension of Russia.

The only open question among the Donbass people is whether they want to be annexed by Russia (many do), or whether they want to remain in Ukraine as a completely autonomous region, running all of their own affairs (many like this idea too).

But under no circumstances do the Donbass people want the Ukrainian army to enter their territory, establish bases or outposts, and then garrison the border with Russia. Why would the Donbass people have fought for five hard, victorious years only to accept this ignominious outcome? It makes no sense. Donbass and Russia won. Ukraine lost. The winners will not let the losers take military control of their homeland. No possible way.

From the way your posts read, it's obvious you are way, way oversold on anti-Russian propaganda.

J Urie Sean.McGivens20 days ago ,

Who says that the Ukrainian Army is going to go into this area of Donbas? Th border will be secured by Ukrainian Border personnel as it is on every other part of the border. Ukraine is currently decentralizing services and responsibility in the rest of the country withheld control coming from Kyiv. A modified version of that for occupied Donbas to include local elections, language, education and local law enforcement is what they should expect. In exchange Kyiv promises to rebuild destroyed infrastructure and provide economic assistance to the area.
If that isn't good enough then as I said build a wall and cut them lose and let Putin take on the burden which he doesn't want. Money coming form Russia to rebuild will be a long time in coming and what they have now is pretty much what they can expect for the future. Of course the educate and most of the young have left the area an only the poor pensioners who had no where to go are left.

Sean.McGivens J Urie20 days ago ,

Even if you go by Minsk II which plainly does not allow for a Separatist Military there is zero chance that Ukraine will agree to anything resembling a "military"

You're living in a dream world if you think this. The reality is that Ukraine has lost the war. Zelensky wouldn't dare to implement Minsk II unless he were leading a defeated nation, a nation that was throwing in the towel. We're talking about a complete capitulation. That's what Minsk II means.

I am certain that Zelensky fully expects that once Minsk II is implemented, Ukraine will be somehow be maneuvered into accepting that the Donbass military is in charge of Donbass and the abutting section of the Russian-Ukraine frontier.

Most likely, after Donbass holds internationally ratified elections per Minsk II, the newly elected officials will claim that they are officially part of Ukraine's government. From there, they will claim that the Donbass rebel militia, therefore, is officially an extension of Ukraine's national army. Then, finally, the Donbass leaders and Russia will say that "returning control of the border to Ukraine" means, in reality, putting the border under the control of the Donbass militia.

Possibly the Donbass militia will wear Ukrainian army uniforms, just for show. But believe me: there's no way the victors in this war are going to settle for surrendering military control of their territory to a despised, alien military force (i.e., the Ukrainian army).

There's no possible way that Putin, Russia, or the Donbass rebels would have pushed the Minsk II Accords on Ukraine unless it one of the treaty's unstated implications is that the Ukrainian military is ejected from the region permanently. That's what Russia and Donbass fought to achieve. It's unthinkable that they would settle for anything less.

I'm certain that Zelensky and everyone else understands this.

J Urie Sean.McGivens20 days ago ,

It will not happen Minsk II will not be implemented. Th eUkrainian foreign minister already stated what will be the approach in the Normandy talks an edit isn't Minsk II.

Gary Sellars J Urie20 days ago • edited ,

"The thugs in charge know that their power and authority will go away if truly free and fair elections are to be held without Russian and mercenary gun toting thugs walking the streets."

What nonsense. You really think that voters in Donetsk & Lugansk would to reward Kiev authorities with their support in light of the atrocities the "volunteer" battalions have dished out to civilians over the last 5 years???

You can cry about "thugs" or "mercenaries" all you like (in a futile attempt to de-legitimise the views of the seperatists) but your bias is clear when you whitewash the crimes of Banderites and Neo-Nazis. Or maybe you would prefer to adopt the US MSM ploy and simply pretend that these factions don't exist, or that no warcrimes have been committed?

Sean.McGivens Gary Sellars20 days ago ,

You really think that voters in Donetsk & Lugansk would to reward Kiev authorities...

You make a valid point. I'd add also that the rebel controlled areas are the parts of Donetsk and Lugansk where the ethnic Russian demographic majorities are heaviest. That means there's virtually zero chance that any elections held in that zone will favor Kiev.

Sean.McGivens J Urie21 days ago ,

...as Ukraine will need to continue to rebuild their military to include new fighters and new ships for the navy...

Impossible. That's because there aren't enough Ukrainians who feel nationalistic enough to be willing to lay down their lives in war for Ukraine. The reason for this problem is that a huge minority of Ukrainians are ethnic Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians who won't fight Russia. Many other Ukrainian people are ambivalent about national identity, and will not honor their military obligations.

In some ways, Ukraine's military problem today is akin to that suffered by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WW1. The Austro-Hungarian state was multi-national, and much of its population did not share the political and national values of the rulers in Vienna and Budapest.

Multi-national countries always have trouble fielding political reliable militaries. Even the Soviet Union, a superpower, had a bottom one-third of military recruits (most from Cental Asia) that simply weren't politically reliable.

Ukraine's military future looks very grim. Only if Kiev grants independence to the non-Ukrainian regions will the country finally have a population of people who share the same national and political values. That will have to precede Ukraine building any kind of competent army.

Sean.McGivens J Urie21 days ago ,

The presidential vote proved that at least 73% of Ukrainians agreed that a new beginning was needed hence Zelnskiy being elected.

That Ukrainian majority is exhausted and demoralized by the Donbass War. They want peace at any cost, even if that means granting virtual independence to Donbass. Even if that means allowing Russia to use Donbass as an agent through which it can influence Ukraine's domestic political situation. That's the "new beginning" that Ukrainians have in mind.

There's no way Zelensky can be in power while simultaneously continuing the Donbass War. Ukrainians elected him to get the country out of that agony.

J Urie Sean.McGivens21 days ago ,

My wife is Ukrainian and they will not accept Russia running things through a Fifth column in Donbas. They might as well just wall it off and be done with it makes zero sense to allow your rendition.

[Nov 04, 2019] Nunes: Fired Ukrainian ambassador might have been spying on reporters by Ed Morrissey

Nov 04, 2019 | hotair.com

As Bette Davis said in All About Eve , "Fasten your seatbelts -- it's going to be a bumpy night."

The ride started last night with Rep. Devin Nunes' appearance on Hannity , escalated with arrests of figures tied to Rudy Giuliani, and will possibly come to a complete halt when former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch meets with three House committees tomorrow -- assuming the State Department allows the testimony to take place at all.

Kicking this off, Kicking this off, Kicking this off, Nunes went on Hannity last night to claim that Yavonovitch may have been spying on Americans -- including journalists.

Sean Hannity expresses his anger over what his own sources are telling him about surveillance of John Solomon among others, although Nunes more cautiously advises patience:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SL6Y4wu5578?feature=oembed

"What I can tell you is that we know what Pete Sessions, congressman from Texas now retired, we know what he had to say. We know that there are people within that were not only Ukrainians but also Americans that worked at the State Department who have raised concerns about this ambassador, that's why she was ultimately removed," Nunes said.

"We also have concerns that possibly they were monitoring press from different journalists and others," he continued. "That we don't know, but, you know, we have people who have given us this information and we're going to ask these questions to the State Department and hopefully they'll get the answers before she comes in on Friday."

Hannity then said three sources have told him there "is evidence that shows government resources were used to monitor communications" of a journalist, The Hill's John Solomon.

"Well, what I have heard, and I want to be clear. I think there is a difference. What I've heard is that there were strange requests, irregular requests to monitor, not just one journalist, but multiple journalists," Nunes said. "Now perhaps that was okay. Perhaps there was some reason for that, that it can be explained away. But that's what we know and that's what we are going to be looking into."

Keep Pete Sessions in mind as our ride progresses to its next sharp turn. Earlier today, two of Rudy Giuliani's clients -- and donors to a PAC funding Giuliani's investigation of the Bidens -- got arrested for criminal campaign finance violations . Among the allegations are that those violations intended to mask foreign influence on US elections:

Two Soviet-born donors to a pro-Trump fundraising committee who helped Rudy Giuliani's efforts to investigate Democrat Joe Biden were arrested late Wednesday on criminal charges of violating campaign finance rules, including funneling Russian money into President Trump's campaign.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Florida businessmen, have been under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, and are expected to appear in federal court in Virginia later on Thursday, the people said. Both men were born in former Soviet republics.

Mr. Giuliani, President Trump's private lawyer, identified the two men in May as his clients. Both men have donated to Republican campaigns including Mr. Trump's, and in May 2018 gave $325,000 to the primary pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action, through an LLC called Global Energy Producers, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The men were charged with four counts, including conspiracy, falsification of records and lying to the FEC about their political donations, according to the indictment that outlines a conspiracy to funnel a Russian donor's money into U.S. elections.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the two have been instrumental in helping Giuliani make contacts in Ukraine. One of them happened to be part of a meeting Giuliani had with the now-unemployed envoy Kurt Volker:

Since late 2018, Mr. Fruman and Mr. Parnas have introduced Mr. Giuliani to several current and former senior Ukrainian prosecutors to discuss the Biden case.

Mr. Parnas in July accompanied Mr. Giuliani to a breakfast meeting with Kurt Volker, then the U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations. "We had a long conversation about Ukraine," Mr. Volker wrote in his testimony to House committees last week. During that breakfast, Mr. Giuliani mentioned the investigations he was pursuing into Mr. Biden and 2016 election interference.

The indictment released today has a very telling reference to a former US congressman who involved himself in the effort to oust Yovanovitch:

And now let's go back to the WSJ for some dot-connecting:

In May 2018, Pete Sessions, at the time a GOP congressman from Texas, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking for her removal, saying he had been told Ms. Yovanovitch was displaying a bias against the president in private conversations.

The indictment references a congressman, identifiable as Mr. Sessions, whose assistance Mr. Parnas sought in "causing the U.S. government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine." The indictment says those efforts were conducted "at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials." Mr. Sessions didn't respond to a request for comment.

Hoo boy . If nothing else, this certainly looks bad, which makes Nunes' citation of Session suspect on its face. The Department of Justice is essentially accusing Sessions of being bought by foreign influence in going after Yovanovitch, and clearly intends to press that case against Giuliani's associates on that basis.

Bear in mind that this is William Barr's DoJ, too. Barr got read into the case soon after taking over the Attorney General job in February, and apparently found it convincing enough to proceed to indictment. The arrest also made it very convenient for House Democrats to issue subpoenas for testimony from the pair , although it likely complicates how cooperative they're willing to be. At the very least, they'll be easy to find.

Giuliani responded by attacking the DoJ for its "extremely suspect" timing in unsealing the indictment and arresting his associates. He promised Fox News' Catherine Herridge that he would shortly reveal how all of this is connected to his investigation into the Bidens:

What about the "extremely suspect" timing? It turns out that the pair were trying to leave the country , which forced the DoJ to make the arrests now:

The two Giuliani-linked defendants, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, were detained at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington on Wednesday and are scheduled to appear in court in Virginia at 2 p.m. ET Thursday.

Meanwhile, Yovanovitch continues to prepare for her own testimony, which is still scheduled to take place tomorrow . The Washington Post reported late last night that she's "on board" for cooperating with the committees, and perhaps now even more so after Nunes' allegations on Hannity last night. The State Department could still bar her from discussing her work with Congress (she remains employed by State), but ABC reports today that Mike Pompeo is already facing a rising level of discontent over Yovanovitch's treatment and Pompeo's lack of a public defense for her:

Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled early from her post this spring, is scheduled for a deposition Friday with three committees in the House of Representatives, but it is unclear whether she will be allowed to show up after the U.S. ambassador to the European Union was blocked by the Trump administration from testifying on Tuesday.

Either way, the manner in which Yovanovitch has been treated by Trump and the silence from Pompeo has already rankled many rank and file at the State Department, according to half a dozen current and former officials, who are also upset by the administration's use of career diplomats in the president's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents.

So where does this ride come to a stop? How much of this is true -- all of it, none of it, or only some of it? Trump loyalists will surely consider all of this as more evidence of a Deep State plot that now involves both the State and Justice Departments. Trump haters will see this as another case of foreign influence on the administration and a plot to smear Trump's opponents, both electoral and otherwise. The rest of America might just be hoping that the [expletive deleted] ride would come to an end, period .

At this point, the mess is too complicated to suss out which conclusion reflects the truth. What does appear to true is that we're not going to know for sure what's true for a long, long time -- and it might turn out, ironically, that the DoJ could end up as the most credible player in Ukraine-Gate.

[Nov 04, 2019] Right-wing media tries to smear former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Media Matters for America

Nov 04, 2019 | www.mediamatters.org

Right-wing media tries to smear former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch

Despite grave Judicial Watch allegations about a "surveillance" campaign from right-wing figures, the facts so far point to mere tracking of a pro-Trump disinformation campaign

Written by Courtney Hagle

Research contributions from Brendan Karet & Andrew Lawrence

Published 10/17/19 10:31 AM EDT

Updated 10/24/19 4:07 PM EDT

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UPDATE (10/24/19) : It turns out that the list Marie Yovanovitch allegedly used to "spy" on conservatives was really a basic Facebook search on CrowdTangle, a mundane and widely-used social media tool that tracks public social media activity. Judicial Watch described CrowdTangle as a "Soros-linked media tracking tool."

Representatives of right-wing group Judicial Watch have been claiming during appearances on conservative media shows that former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was "spying" on media figures close to President Donald Trump by monitoring public statements they made on social media regarding Ukraine.

Judicial Watch is alleging that Yovanovitch -- who recently testified to House impeachment investigators that Trump pressured the State Department to remove her over baseless allegations -- was "basically running a war room" by monitoring public statements regarding Ukraine made by figures in right-wing media like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump, Jr. The list also includes former Obama ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. Judicial Watch also claims that the searches were looking for the following keywords: "Biden," "Giuliani," "Soros," and "Yovanovitch."

That Yovanovich would monitor public statements made by public figures is unsurprising given her recent testimony claiming that Giuliani had been criticizing her in the months before her ousting, and the people she allegedly monitored are connected to the smear campaign Giuliani was waging. He had accused her of privately criticizing the president and trying to protect the interests of Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The smear included accusations that Soros was funding a conspiracy to hurt Trump's presidency and elect Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Yovanovich said she was "incredulous" about her removal and that it was based on "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives" -- claims that have been promoted publicly by conservative media figures.

The Washington Post reported that George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, became concerned around October 2018 that Yovanovitch was the target of a "classic disinformation operation." NBC News indicated that the State Department was concerned over the effort to oust Yovanovich, reporting that the agency "attempted to ring alarm bells" regarding Giuliani's efforts to smear her:

The documents also show that Giuliani, through conservative writer John Solomon's columns in The Hill, attempted to tie former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to the liberal donor George Soros as part of a massive conspiracy to take down Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.

...

When State Department officials saw the disinformation campaign, they attempted to ring alarm bells and strategized to correct the record, the documents show.

Yovanovitch, who has over 30 years of experience in foreign diplomacy, further testified that, as The Washington Post put it, "under Trump's leadership, U.S. foreign policy has been compromised by self-interested actors who have badly demoralized and depleted America's diplomatic corps." The testimony of White House aide Fiona Hill confirmed Yovanovitch's depiction of foreign policy under the Trump administration.

Still, Judicial Watch is attempting to push the narrative that Yovanovitch nefariously spied on Trump allies among right-wing media, appearing on the radio shows of Sebastian Gorka and Sean Hannity and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs' prime-time show to spread the message. Some Fox News figures responded with paranoia regarding their own conversations.

Judicial Watch also shared its report on Twitter, announcing that it is "investigating if prominent conservative figures/journalists & persons [with ties] to @realDonaldTrump were unlawfully monitored by the State Dept in Ukraine at the request of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama appointee." Fox & Friends hosted Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who repeated that his "sourcing tells us that she was asking that folks like Rudy Giuliani, Don Trump Jr., a whole list of your colleagues there at Fox, be monitored on certain phrases." Co-host Steve Doocy invited Fitton to "go ahead and speculate for a second" about Yovanovitch's motives, to which Fitton replied, "It looks an awful lot like an enemy's list to me." Doocy noted that Yovanovitch is "keeping an eye on television, of all things," and he called it "particularly disturbing that, you know, somebody in the federal government would be tracking people on TV."

[Nov 01, 2019] Borg and symbolic importance of Ukraine for the neocon foreign policy

Notable quotes:
"... The anti-Russian/pro-Ukrainian fanatics in the Borg, to which Lt.Col. Vindman belongs, are trying to prevent Trump from achieving his large picture vision of U.S. strategic interest and from defining U.S. foreign policy goals. They want to implement their own polices independent of what the president thinks or believes. ..."
"... If the deep state is allowed to make its own policies against the will of the elected officials why should we bother with holding elections? ..."
"... The Democrats are stupid to applaud this and to even further these schemes. They are likely to regain the presidency in 2024. What will they do when all the Civil Service functionaries Trump will have installed by then organize to ruin their policies? ..."
"... I surmise he is reflecting Israeli disquiet with the idea of a peace in Syria that leaves Assad in power. ..."
"... I first heard this idea that Trump is supposed to implement the foreign policy of the "government policy community" just a few days ago on the PBS Snooze Hour. It was startling to hear such a blatant admission of the existence of the "Deep State", and that Trump is supposed to obey it. I wonder who wrote the memo that says its now OK to publicly criticize Trump for not following the orders of the "government policy community". ..."
"... Trump is truly a horrible excuse for a human being, but apparently that is what is required to successfully rip the facade off the Deep State, however one wants to define it. Brain-dead Dummycrats will nod and exclaim that of course Trump is supposed to follow policy established by "knowledgeable experts". But I speculate that this new public attitude of the stink tank talking heads will enrage Trump supporters. ..."
"... Our foreign policies have, IMO, long been tailored to the needs and expectations of our major corporations. Notably, the fossil fuel corporations and their allies on Wall street. ..."
"... Our corporate empire wishes to export predatory capitalism around the globe, and pity any nation who stands in our way.. ..."
"... Isn't it something, b. Could you imagine ever reading a headline out of Russia or Germany where a subordinate went on record declaring he made attempts to edit Putin or Merkel's classified phone transcript, he then admits to sharing this classified information with a group of peers OUTSIDE classified channels and ended his 15 mins of fame by declaring Putin nor Merkel's policies on Ukraine fit the consensus of a national security bureaucratic group of nobodies. It's simply unimaginable! ..."
"... Which tells me they are fighting for something else entirely. Maybe more light will be shed following the release of the IG's FISA report. Then again, maybe they are motivated by fear that their lining their pockets with taxpayers gazillions has finally caught up to them. ..."
"... When Vindman admitted his crime, the Sergeant at Arms should have arrested him immediately after his testimony, but he was allowed to walk--yet another perversion of justice! By cutting off the line of questioning, Schiff was engaging in the obstruction of justice--the very crime he accuses Trump of committing! IMO, the application of the law must be depoliticized and all offenders arrested regardless of their station in life. ..."
"... A guy like this Vindman character, a walking identity problem first and foremost, given his background, should never have made it through the ranks of the US forces, let alone be given a job at the Security Council. A loyalty issue waiting to get worse. It's just wrong, a ridiculous notion. ..."
"... If you want to join the British forces e.g. you are required to have parents who were already born in Britain. Kept me from applying to join their navy back when I tried to. I was disappointed then, but it makes sense to handle the nationality question just like that. I can see that now. ..."
"... Regarding Washington, seems like the Beast, aka the Deep State, is finally coming out of its lair. Trump is way too salacious as bait for them to be careful and keep in hiding. Before they realize that trying to snatch Trump will be their own undoing, things will have way too much momentum for them to stop. Just look at Rep. Schiff moving from blunder to blunder. He'd be so much better off just doing nothing for half a year and keeping his mouth shut, but he somehow cannot do that. Neither can the Times. ..."
"... American citizens lost their voice in foreign policy a long time ago. It's a question I ask when the party politicians meet with lobbyists or attend events like Bilderberg. I am thankful for the alt media. Americans should be disgusted by their politicians and political parties. ..."
Nov 01, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

President Trump and many other people believe that it would be better for the United States to ally with Russia against an ever growing China than to push Russia and China into an undefeatable alliance against the United States. Trump often alluded to this during his campaign. The voters seem to have liked that view.

The U.S. coup in the Ukraine made that policy more difficult to achieve. But within the big picture the Ukraine is just a bankrupt and corrupt state that has little strategic value and can be ignored.

One can disagree with that view and with other foreign policy priorities Trump set out and pursues. I certainly disagree with most of them. But for those who work "at the pleasure of the President" his views are the guidelines that set the direction of their duties.

The anti-Russian/pro-Ukrainian fanatics in the Borg, to which Lt.Col. Vindman belongs, are trying to prevent Trump from achieving his large picture vision of U.S. strategic interest and from defining U.S. foreign policy goals. They want to implement their own polices independent of what the president thinks or believes.

We have warned that such interference by the Borg, the 'deep state' or 'swamp', is a danger to democracy :

If the deep state is allowed to make its own policies against the will of the elected officials why should we bother with holding elections?

The Democrats are stupid to applaud this and to even further these schemes. They are likely to regain the presidency in 2024. What will they do when all the Civil Service functionaries Trump will have installed by then organize to ruin their policies?

It is unfortunate that the above points have to be repeated again and again. But when powerful media try to sell the lies about the Ukrainian interferences by repeating the same falsehoods over and over again the truth has only a chance to win when it is likewise spread repeatedly.


lysias , Oct 30 2019 19:43 utc | 2

Vindman is a Jew born in Ukraine and brought up in the Little Odessa neighborhood of Brooklyn. I surmise he is reflecting Israeli disquiet with the idea of a peace in Syria that leaves Assad in power.

Trailer Trash , Oct 30 2019 20:08 utc | 6

I first heard this idea that Trump is supposed to implement the foreign policy of the "government policy community" just a few days ago on the PBS Snooze Hour. It was startling to hear such a blatant admission of the existence of the "Deep State", and that Trump is supposed to obey it. I wonder who wrote the memo that says its now OK to publicly criticize Trump for not following the orders of the "government policy community".

Everyone was shocked when Trump won the election, especially Trump and the "government policy community". He is the proverbial dog that caught the speeding car. It's quaint that Trump thinks he can make real policy changes. His failures in medical insurance, controlling the FED, etc. underscore the point that being the leader is useless if underlings don't obey. The "government policy community" will never follow Trump and it won't stop until Trump is gone one way or another.

Trump is truly a horrible excuse for a human being, but apparently that is what is required to successfully rip the facade off the Deep State, however one wants to define it. Brain-dead Dummycrats will nod and exclaim that of course Trump is supposed to follow policy established by "knowledgeable experts". But I speculate that this new public attitude of the stink tank talking heads will enrage Trump supporters.

I'm starting to think that things may get really ugly in the "Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free".

ben , Oct 30 2019 20:59 utc | 15
Our foreign policies have, IMO, long been tailored to the needs and expectations of our major corporations. Notably, the fossil fuel corporations and their allies on Wall street.

Our corporate empire wishes to export predatory capitalism around the globe, and pity any nation who stands in our way..

h , Oct 30 2019 21:01 utc | 16
Isn't it something, b. Could you imagine ever reading a headline out of Russia or Germany where a subordinate went on record declaring he made attempts to edit Putin or Merkel's classified phone transcript, he then admits to sharing this classified information with a group of peers OUTSIDE classified channels and ended his 15 mins of fame by declaring Putin nor Merkel's policies on Ukraine fit the consensus of a national security bureaucratic group of nobodies. It's simply unimaginable!

Last night I watched a report by Catherine Herrhidge of Fox state that in Vindman's statement he admits to sharing POTUS' classified transcripts and other readouts to a small group of others outside the NSC. In essence he admitted to leaking classified information. When Rep Jim Jordan started to drill down into that line of questioning, Schiff cut him off.

Here's a link for those interested in watching the 1:30 clip - https://twitter.com/i/status/1189331134443917312

This entire shitshow honestly tells any w/an open mind that the D's and their leadership are desperate. Imagine a committee chairman not allowing members to question a witness about who he shared the President's classified information with. That's not the rascally Dem Party I know. It's painfully obvious these radicals will walk on hot coals, climb the Himalayans and swim across the Atlantic to pin anything and I mean anything on Trump. They do not care about downstream impacts, catastrophic as they may turn out to be.

Which tells me they are fighting for something else entirely. Maybe more light will be shed following the release of the IG's FISA report. Then again, maybe they are motivated by fear that their lining their pockets with taxpayers gazillions has finally caught up to them.

karlof1 , Oct 30 2019 21:25 utc | 20
h @16--

When Vindman admitted his crime, the Sergeant at Arms should have arrested him immediately after his testimony, but he was allowed to walk--yet another perversion of justice! By cutting off the line of questioning, Schiff was engaging in the obstruction of justice--the very crime he accuses Trump of committing! IMO, the application of the law must be depoliticized and all offenders arrested regardless of their station in life.

Scotch Bingeington , Oct 30 2019 22:18 utc | 25
Great piece, b, many thanks! Really meticulous.

A guy like this Vindman character, a walking identity problem first and foremost, given his background, should never have made it through the ranks of the US forces, let alone be given a job at the Security Council. A loyalty issue waiting to get worse. It's just wrong, a ridiculous notion.

If you want to join the British forces e.g. you are required to have parents who were already born in Britain. Kept me from applying to join their navy back when I tried to. I was disappointed then, but it makes sense to handle the nationality question just like that. I can see that now.

And nothing good ever comes from Ukraine. It's a psyched country, or would-be country, just there to give the world trouble.

Regarding Washington, seems like the Beast, aka the Deep State, is finally coming out of its lair. Trump is way too salacious as bait for them to be careful and keep in hiding. Before they realize that trying to snatch Trump will be their own undoing, things will have way too much momentum for them to stop. Just look at Rep. Schiff moving from blunder to blunder. He'd be so much better off just doing nothing for half a year and keeping his mouth shut, but he somehow cannot do that. Neither can the Times.

S.O. , Oct 30 2019 22:32 utc | 27
> Will lock in Ukraine's Western-leaning trajectory, and allow Ukraine to realize its dream of a vibrant democracy and economic prosperity.

Take a look at that statement and realise how diseased it is.

Ghost Ship , Oct 30 2019 22:38 utc | 29
Looks like Real Clear Investigations is suggesting a certain Eric Ciaramella is the "whistleblower", which might upset Schiff since the Democrats want he name and political attachments kept a secret. Anyway the article provides some more pieces for the Russiagate/Ukrainegate jigsaw puzzle.
Curtis , Oct 30 2019 22:44 utc | 30
American citizens lost their voice in foreign policy a long time ago. It's a question I ask when the party politicians meet with lobbyists or attend events like Bilderberg. I am thankful for the alt media. Americans should be disgusted by their politicians and political parties.

How The Obama Administration Set In Motion Democrats' Coup Against Trump

karlof1 , Oct 30 2019 23:29 utc | 32
Okay, so just what is the Outlaw US Empire's Foreign/Imperial Policy? I'm glad I asked!

The overarching #1 policy goal of the Outlaw US Empire is to establish Full Spectrum Domination over the planet and its people as enunciated publicly in 1996 policy paper Joint Vision 2010 which was modified and republished as Joint Vision 2020 , both of which are essentially military policies, not National Defense as they're espousing 100% offensive doctrines. In tandem is the much older economic policy plot known as the Washington Consensus, which I've referenced many times and is best explained by Dr. Hudson's book Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire , and began at the end of WW2 but was greatly expanded/escalated in 1978.

Now it's obvious that Trump's trying to implement his own policies since he's getting so much resistance. On the previous thread having this topic, I noted that Pepe Escobar had written several pieces citing members of the Current Oligarchy who are Trump supporters who provided him with info as to the likely directions of Trump's policies if he became POTUS. In response to a request by Evelyn, I went and looked for those old items and found several. This one IMO is worthy of close scrutiny. Pepe opens:

"And for all the 24/7 scandal time of non-stop groping and kissing and lewd locker room misbehaving, Trump seems to be ready to limp toward the finish line just as he began; an all-out populist/nativist/nationalist fighting open borders (a Clinton mantra, as revealed by the latest WikiLeaks Podesta email dump); 'free' trade; neoliberal globalization; and regime change/bomb them into democracy/'humanitarian' imperialism."

Yes, there's more, but the above's more than enough to show that Trump's 100% against the two major policies of the Outlaw US Empire--and--he's actually done what the above suggests he might do. I remember reading that just a little more than 3 years ago and thought Pepe was fed a line of bull from his sources--he wasn't.

Really?? , Oct 30 2019 23:35 utc | 33
S.O. 2
"> Will lock in Ukraine's Western-leaning trajectory, and allow Ukraine to realize its dream of a vibrant democracy and economic prosperity.

Take a look at that statement and realise how diseased it is."

I totally agree. It is diseased on multiple levels. "lock in"? he says? What if Ukrainians change their minds??? Say, by electing a Russia-leaning politico?
Oh, right, that's what happened back in 2014. Hence, the Maidan "lock-in." to me this "lock in" comment is an open confession of ongoing meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs.

That is quite apart from the sick joke that is reference to "a dream of vibrant democracy and economic development" brought about by the "West-leaning trajectory."

From what I have heard, Ukraine is an unmitigated disaster since "the West" decided to determine and "lock in" its political trajectory. Not to mention thousands dead in the Donbass and Lukansk.

karlof1 , Oct 30 2019 23:52 utc | 35
32 Cont'd--

And here's Pepe from 10 Nov 2016 :

"Donald Trump's red wave on Election Day was an unprecedented body blow against neoliberalism. The stupid early-1990s prediction about the 'end of history' turned into a – possible – shock of the new....

"Once again. A body blow, not a death blow. Like the cast of The Walking Dead, the zombie neoliberal elite simply won't quit. For the Powers That Be/Deep State/Wall Street axis, there's only one game in town, and that is to win, at all costs . Failing that, to knock over the whole chessboard, as in hot war...

"The angry, white, blue collar Western uprising is the ultimate backlash against neoliberalism – an instinctive reaction against the rigged economic casino capitalism game and its subservient political arms. That's at the core of Trump winning non-college white voters in Wisconsin by 28 points. Blaming 'whitelash', racism, WikiLeaks or Russia is no more than childish diversionary tactics." [My Emphasis]

No, they didn't quit but immediately put their very improvised "insurance policy" into play based on the lies and contrivances concocted during the campaign and put into play by Obama in the most unprecedented fashion ever as a sitting POTUS had never before sought to undermine/sabotage the incoming POTUS in the manner being devised--essentially in my book, Obama committed treason: again .

juliania , Oct 31 2019 0:22 utc | 37
In his written testimony (from the Stars and Stripes account in Don Bacon's link at 146 in the previous 'Deep State' thread) Lt. Colonel Vindman wrote:"...I am a patriot, and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend OUR country, irrespective of party or politics."

Thanks so much b, for elaborating on that first part - "...sacred duty and honor to advance.."

It does seem the Constitutional duties and limitations got lost in the shuffle back when George Bush (I think it was) joked the Constitution was 'just a piece of paper.' Still, even he too thought foreign policy was his to dictate. I am remembering the 'first strike' doctrine that he propounded and Al Gore gave a speech decrying back in the day.

That "advance" stuck in my craw - thanks for shining the light.

oldhippie , Oct 31 2019 0:24 utc | 38
Leonid Vindman. With a brother like that how do you get a security clearance at all, much less a desk in the West Wing?

Helps a lot if you're a pal of Firtash and Kolomoisky.

This is just beginning.

ptb , Oct 31 2019 1:05 utc | 44
@29 Ghost Ship
fascinating... didn't realize how much the Trump Admin's seemingly simple retaliation-for-Russiagate investigation of Biden really struck a nerve among the Obama era CIA/NSC Ukraine team. Wonder what they know.

[Nov 01, 2019] Russia, Ukraine, and Donald Trump by Stephen F. Cohen

Nov 01, 2019 | www.unz.com

Cohen notes that the Russian press, which follows American politics closely, has resulted in a consensus that all of this -- Russiagate, Ukrainegate -- was created to stop Trump from having better relations with Russia. Thus, it is important that Putin had been told the reason Trump cannot engage in détente is because of Trump being shackled.

Cohen noted that expert opinion in Russia -- which informs the Kremlin leadership, including Putin -- has soured on the United States; the older generation of Russian America specialists who like America, who visit regularly and appreciate American culture, have become utterly disillusioned and cannot promote a Russian-American partnership given what has happened to Trump.

Regarding Ukraine, Cohen notes it shares a very large border with Russia, tens of millions of intermarriages, language, culture and history, and although the United States shares none of this with Ukraine, the United States has declared Ukraine is a strategic ally, and this would be equivalent to Russia stating that Mexico is its strategic ally, which is preposterous; the term "strategic" clearly has military implications.


renfro , says: November 1, 2019 at 4:49 am GMT

I agree with Cohen.

Congress (and the Jewish groups) ruined Nixon's effort with Russia.
Now congress and the eternally stupid Dems are ruining Trump's efforts.

I have argued for years that we should have taken Russia in as an ally affter WWII.

Alfred , says: November 1, 2019 at 5:14 am GMT
Your line of thinking might reflect the way some people in the US Establishment look on the matter. However, this is militarily a non-starter. Attacking Russia with nuclear weapons would immediately result in the disappearance of the USA.

IMHO, Ukraine and other countries has been a gift to corrupt US politicians. The money they send to Ukraine never ends in the hands of those who are supposed to get it -- the Ukrainian peoples (it is de facto several countries). The money is redirected into the hands of US and Ukrainian politicians and Jewish oligarchs.

The weapons that are sent to Ukraine are largely sold off to countries in the Middle East -- countries which in turn give them to terrorists on their payrolls. This money largely benefits the upper echelons of the army of Ukraine.

S , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:01 am GMT
Powerful elements amongst the US power elites and their hangers on wish to provoke a war with Russia. The obtainment of total world power would seem to be the ultimate objective.

Z Brzizinski in his late 1990's book The Grand Chessboard specifically points out the importance of Ukraine to US ambitions in Eurasia.

Excerpts below from an 1853 US geo-political book called The New Rome elaborate further. I see the mid 19th century book and it's contents potentially as 'a suggestion' being put into the US public's mind to let them know what was expected of them in the future, and why, as most people in the US, then and now, are rather indifferent about Russia, just as most Russians are probably indifferent about the United States.

Similarly, Russia could be being manipulated into a war with the US, a war which potentially could largely destroy both the US and Russia, which indeed may be the idea as part of a larger picture.

People have their refusal.

Has Mr Cohen read this generally unknown 1853 book, The New Rome ?

Some excerpts from The New Rome linked below:

US and UK are free, Russia is not.

pg 155

'Freedom is now limited to the oceanic world, to England and America; Russia, with its continental dependencies, is despotic..'

After US and UK form a united front and conquer Germany (the center of power upon continental Europe) and consolidate control over it, the US and Russia will then square off.

pg 109

'Thus the lines are drawn. The choirs are marshalled on each wing of the world's stage, Russia leading the one, the United States the other. Yet the world is too small for both, and the contest must end in the downfall of the one and the victory of the other.'

Global projection of US air power is to be the key for final US victory over Russia.

pg.155-156

'It [air power] will give us the victory over Russian continentalism. American air-privateers will be down upon the Russian garrisons, to use our own expressive slang, 'like a parcel of bricks'

https://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_new_rome_or_the_united_states_of_the_world_1853

https://archive.org/details/politicalprophec00goeb/page/n3

Erebus , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:05 am GMT
There's a treaty obliging the USA and Ukraine to cooperate in the prosecution of criminal matters. One wonders why it seems to have escaped notice.
Dan Hayes , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:25 am GMT
Who transcribed the broadcast (Giraldi?). BTW, I regard the transcription as very fair and accurate.

Listening to the very last stages of the broadcast I felt that Batchelor became somewhat confrontational towards Cohen. As a matter of fact Cohen remarked that Batchelor will be getting a lot of phone calls and emails over that!

Franz , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:32 am GMT

Here is the obvious explanation.
Zio-Globalist led by Rothschild are dead set to destroy, or at least neutralize Russia.

Keep in mind another clear and obvious point: The Zio-Globalists now see the USA as totally expendable. There is some sign they are throwing it to the curb right now.

To be fair, Netanyahu said as much years ago. America would be tossed when no longer needed. Well, that day is coming close. Productive facilities leaving the nation is nearing its half-century mark, and now even films and TV shows mostly film in Canada, the UK, etc., even though they are sold as US products, which they are mostly not.

Destroy and Russia and USA, part one. Get them to blame each other, part two. Three? They'll both still have lots of bombs

Jake , says: November 1, 2019 at 1:03 pm GMT

@Ilyana_Rozumova “Russia now is last resistance to Globalist control of all world.
China for Globalists is not really a problem. When Globalists will control Russia than China will like it not, will be controlled by flow of energy.”

That is essentially the situation. If Russia is forced to be something close to a vassal of the Anglo-Zionist Empire, then China will be faced with being forced into the same boat. The Chinese might well prefer nuclear war, and unleashing 5 million men at arms, with another 5 million in training camps.

The leaders of the Anglo-Zionist Empire would not care a teeny tiny bit if Korea, southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Japan were to be decimated. They would be tickled pink to fill those lands with black Africans and Sunni Arabs, with Jews running the local shows

Emslander , says: November 1, 2019 at 1:20 pm GMT
@Baron Ukraine is lebensraum . It has had little importance in geopolitical affairs until Russia stupidly gave it its independence upon the breakup of the Soviet Union. Now it’s a slush fund for the most prominent Democrat politicians. It’s also become another conveniently remote shithole for justifying insane military spending.

[Oct 31, 2019] WhistleBlower Ciaramella - IPOT

Eric Ciaramella is connected to Victoria Nuland. IIf this information is true, the entire Impeachment thing is a another phase of Russiagate. It's the Democrats attempt at a coup d'etat
Ciaramella, who was a Susan Rice protégé and was brought into the White House by H. R. McMaster. Looks like McMaster was a neocon zealot.
Oct 23, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Cajun Jim , 1 week ago

Great piece! I love that the reporter called the "whistle blower" the "whistle leaker" , much more accurate.

Diane Smith , 1 week ago

I'm so sick of this these snakes need there heads of there has to be justice

Ellen Jackson , 1 week ago

And Adam Schiff's sister is married to George Soros's son!

[Oct 26, 2019] The Blob Strikes Back by Hunter DeRensis

The State Department is a neoliberal Trojan horse in the USA government, with strong globalist ethos. They will sabotage any change of foreign policy. and they intend to kick the neoliberal can down the road as long as possible. They are the same type of neoliberals as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Probably less corrupt them those two, but still.
They are imperial soldiers par excellence; these whole life concentrated on serving the imperial interests, and strive for the strengthening and expansion of neoliberal empire via opening new markets for the expansions of US based multinationals, staging wars and color revolutions to overthrows the governments which resists Washington Consensus, etc.
They probably can't be reformed, only fired, or forced into retirement. 72 years old neocon stooge Taylor is just the tip of the iceberg.
From Wikipedia: He directed a Defense Department think tank at Fort Lesley J. McNair . Following that assignment, he went to Brussels for a five year assignment as the Special Deputy Defense Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO From 1992 until 2002 Taylor served with the rank of ambassador coordinating assistance to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union , followed by an assignment in Kabul coordinating U.S. and international assistance to Afghanistan . In 2004 he was transferred to Baghdad as Director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office
Taylor was nominated by President George W. Bush to be United States ambassador to Ukraine while he was serving as Senior Consultant to the Coordinator of Reconstruction and Stabilization at the Department of State. [10] He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 26, 2006, and was sworn in on June 5, 2006. At the time Taylor assumed responsibilities at the embassy it was, with over 650 employees from nine U.S. government departments and agencies, the fifth-largest bilateral mission in Europe
Notable quotes:
"... As William Taylor's testimony about Ukraine creates shock waves in Washington, a self-anointed mandarin class or, if you prefer, deep state, that has largely operated unmolested until the advent of Trump now appears to believe that it can foil, or even subvert, the policies of a president it deems unfit for office, a development that should worry Democrats and Republicans alike. ..."
"... One reason is that those who seek to repair the damage caused by a thirty-year deterioration in trust and cooperation face an uphill battle against what recently has been given the colloquial name, "the Blob." The term, coined by Obama White House staffer Ben Rhodes, refers to the foreign-policy establishment, mostly located in Washington, DC and constantly focused on the putative decline of American influence abroad. It has been distinguished by its unwillingness, or inability, to reconsider or reprioritize national interests that were first defined after World War II, and then continued, by and large, on auto-pilot after the end of the Cold War. ..."
"... Another reason is that Trump himself has been largely indifferent to who assumes positions in his administration, calculating that by sheer force of will he, and he alone, can be the decider. In September, Trump referred to his search for a fresh national security adviser in the following terms: "It's great because it's a lot of fun to work with Donald Trump, and it's very easy, actually, to work with me. You know why it's easy? Because I make all the decisions. They don't have to work." This insouciant approach has now boomeranged on Trump. ..."
"... Taylor, as his testimony made clear, was able to observe first-hand many of the Trump administration's ham-fisted moves to extract, in one form another, concessions from Ukraine. But however clumsy and counterproductive Trump's moves may have been, Taylor offered an overly simplistic survey of events in the region. Indeed, his Manichean introductory and concluding remarks suggested that he views Russia as an inveterate enemy of America and Ukraine as a white knight. ..."
"... Foreign policy is rarely a morality play and the fairy-tale that Taylor presented was more redolent of a post–Cold War cold warrior who, like too many of his colleagues at the foreign desk, are committed to retrograde thinking, than of an official offering an incisive look at a complex and troubled region. It is not as though Ukraine, where Taylor served as ambassador during the George W. Bush administration, has ever been free from the plague of corruption or murky machinations by local competing factions. Reflexively taking the side of Ukraine does not serve American interests any more than trying to pummel it for political favors. The testimony of Taylor and other State Department witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee is a case in point. ..."
"... ow that the fight between Trump and the permanent bureaucracy is now in the open? ..."
"... Vice President Mike Pence told Laura Ingraham , host of Fox's The Ingraham Angle , "There is no question when President Trump said we were going to drain the swamp, but an awful lot of the swamp has been caught up in the State Department bureaucracy and we're just going to keep fighting it. And we are going to fight it with the truth." For his part, Evans thinks that there is a modicum of hope for improved relations with Moscow. "Taylor will have to resign now," he says. "We might even see a moderation of the uncritical support for Ukraine, as some of the ugly underside starts to emerge, although anti-Russian sentiment is the mother's milk of Congress." ..."
Oct 23, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

As William Taylor's testimony about Ukraine creates shock waves in Washington, a self-anointed mandarin class or, if you prefer, deep state, that has largely operated unmolested until the advent of Trump now appears to believe that it can foil, or even subvert, the policies of a president it deems unfit for office, a development that should worry Democrats and Republicans alike.

President Donald Trump campaigned and was elected on a platform of improved relations with Russia. Yet, three years after his election, no real improvement has materialized and, if anything, they have deteriorated. Why?

One reason is that those who seek to repair the damage caused by a thirty-year deterioration in trust and cooperation face an uphill battle against what recently has been given the colloquial name, "the Blob." The term, coined by Obama White House staffer Ben Rhodes, refers to the foreign-policy establishment, mostly located in Washington, DC and constantly focused on the putative decline of American influence abroad. It has been distinguished by its unwillingness, or inability, to reconsider or reprioritize national interests that were first defined after World War II, and then continued, by and large, on auto-pilot after the end of the Cold War. Now Trump is taking a wrecking ball to this world order. But a self-anointed mandarin class or, if you prefer, deep state, that has largely operated unmolested until the advent of Trump now appears to believe that it can foil, or even subvert, the policies of a president it deems unfit for office, a development that should worry Democrats and Republicans alike.

Another reason is that Trump himself has been largely indifferent to who assumes positions in his administration, calculating that by sheer force of will he, and he alone, can be the decider. In September, Trump referred to his search for a fresh national security adviser in the following terms: "It's great because it's a lot of fun to work with Donald Trump, and it's very easy, actually, to work with me. You know why it's easy? Because I make all the decisions. They don't have to work." This insouciant approach has now boomeranged on Trump.

Enter William B. Taylor, Jr. Taylor has been the U.S. Chargé d 'Affaires Ukraine since June of this year (having previously held the position of ambassador 2006–2009), and yesterday he testified behind-closed-doors as part of the House impeachment inquiry into Trump. Taylor, as his testimony made clear, was able to observe first-hand many of the Trump administration's ham-fisted moves to extract, in one form another, concessions from Ukraine. But however clumsy and counterproductive Trump's moves may have been, Taylor offered an overly simplistic survey of events in the region. Indeed, his Manichean introductory and concluding remarks suggested that he views Russia as an inveterate enemy of America and Ukraine as a white knight.

In his opening statement, Taylor emphasized that Ukraine is a strategic partner of the United States that is "important for the security of our country as well as Europe," as well as a country that is "under armed attack from Russia." Well, yes. But this sweeping description occludes more than it reveals. Foreign policy is rarely a morality play and the fairy-tale that Taylor presented was more redolent of a post–Cold War cold warrior who, like too many of his colleagues at the foreign desk, are committed to retrograde thinking, than of an official offering an incisive look at a complex and troubled region. It is not as though Ukraine, where Taylor served as ambassador during the George W. Bush administration, has ever been free from the plague of corruption or murky machinations by local competing factions. Reflexively taking the side of Ukraine does not serve American interests any more than trying to pummel it for political favors. The testimony of Taylor and other State Department witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee is a case in point.

Will anything change n ow that the fight between Trump and the permanent bureaucracy is now in the open? On Tuesday night, Vice President Mike Pence told Laura Ingraham , host of Fox's The Ingraham Angle , "There is no question when President Trump said we were going to drain the swamp, but an awful lot of the swamp has been caught up in the State Department bureaucracy and we're just going to keep fighting it. And we are going to fight it with the truth." For his part, Evans thinks that there is a modicum of hope for improved relations with Moscow. "Taylor will have to resign now," he says. "We might even see a moderation of the uncritical support for Ukraine, as some of the ugly underside starts to emerge, although anti-Russian sentiment is the mother's milk of Congress."

Hunter DeRensis is a reporter at the National Interest .

[Oct 25, 2019] Is not only a the coup against Trump, it is also an attempt to cover up the crimes against humanity that America's Ruling Class has been committing

Notable quotes:
"... As for impeachment, ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff is surely steaming straight into his own historic Joe McCarthy moment when somebody of incontestable standing denounces him as a fraud and a scoundrel and the mysterious workings of nonlinear behavior tips the political mob past a criticality threshold, shifting the weight of consensus out of darkness and madness. It has happened before in history. ..."
Oct 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

10/25/2019 - 16:12 0 SHARES

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

It was interesting to watch the Cable News divas go incandescent under the glare of their own gaslight late yesterday when they received the unpleasant news that the Barr & Durham "review" of RussiaGate had been officially upgraded to a "criminal investigation."

Rachel Maddow's trademark pouty-face got a workout as she strained to imagine " what the thing is that Durham might be looking into." Yes, that's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, all right with a sputtering fuse sticking out of it. Welcome to the Wile E. Coyote Lookalike Club, Rache. You'll have a lot of competition when the Sunday morning news-chat shows rev up.

Minutes later, the answer dawned on her:

"It [ the thing ] follows the wildest conspiracy theories from Fox News!"

You'd think that someone who invested two-plus years of her life in the Mueller report, which blew up in her pouty-face last spring, might have felt a twinge of journalistic curiosity as to the sum-and-substance of the thing. But no, she just hauled on-screen RussiaGate intriguer David Laufman, a former DOJ lawyer who ran the agency's CounterIntel and Export Control desk during the RussiaGate years, and also helped oversee the botched Hillary Clinton private email server probe.

"They have this theory," Rachel said, "that maybe Russia didn't interfere in the election ."

"It's preposterous," said Laufman, all lawyered up and ready to draw a number and take a seat for his own grand jury testimony.

Over in the locked ward of CNN, Andy Cooper and Jeff Toobin attempted to digest the criminal investigation news as if someone had ordered in a platter of shit sandwiches for the green room just before air-time. Toobin pretended to not know exactly who the mysterious Joseph Misfud was, and struggled to even pronounce his name: " Mifsood? Misfood ? You mean the Italian professor?" No Jeff, the guy employed by several "friendly" foreign intelligence agencies, and the CIA, to sandbag Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, and failed. I guess when you're at the beating heart of TV news, you don't have to actually follow any of the stories reported outside your locked ward, and maybe entertain a few angles outside your purview , i.e. your range of thought and experience.

Next Andy hauled onscreen former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (now a paid CNN "contributor") to finesse a distinction between the "overall investigation of the Russian interference" or "the counterintelligence investigation that was launched by the FBI." Consider that Mr. Clapper was right in the middle between the CIA and the FBI. Since he is known to be a friend of Mr. Comey's and a not-friend of Mr. Brennan's one can easily see which way Mr. Clapper is tilting. One can also see the circular firing squad that this is a setup for. And, of course, Mr. Clapper himself will be a subject in Mr. Durham's criminal case proceedings. I predict October will be the last month that Mr. Clapper draws a CNN paycheck -- as he hunkers down with his attorneys awaiting the subpoena with his name on it.

The New York Times story on this turn of events Friday morning is a lame attempt to rescue former FBI Director Jim Comey by pinning the blame for RussiaGate on the CIA, shoving CIA John Brennan under the bus. The Times report says: "Mr. Durham has also asked whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation." There's the next narrative for you. Expect to hear this incessantly well into 2020.

I wonder if there is any way to hold the errand boys-and-girls in the news media accountable for their roles as handmaidens in what will be eventually known as a seditious coup to overthrow a president. We do enjoy freedom of the press in this land, but I can see how these birds merit charges as unindicted co-conspirators in the affair. One wonders if the various boards of directors of the newspaper and cable news outfits might seek to salvage their self-respect by firing the executives who allowed it happen. If anything might be salutary in the outcome of this hot mess, it would be a return to respectability of the news media.

As for impeachment, ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff is surely steaming straight into his own historic Joe McCarthy moment when somebody of incontestable standing denounces him as a fraud and a scoundrel and the mysterious workings of nonlinear behavior tips the political mob past a criticality threshold, shifting the weight of consensus out of darkness and madness. It has happened before in history. Two centuries before Joe McCarthy, the French national assembly suddenly turned on the Jacobins Robespierre and St. Just after their orgy of beheading 17,000 enemies. The two were quickly dispatched themselves to the awe of their beloved guillotine and the Jacobin faction was not heard of again -- until recently in America, where it first infected the Universities and then sickened the polity at large almost unto death

[Oct 23, 2019] Retired imperial soldiers still dream about the glory of empire

Oct 23, 2019 | peakoilbarrel.com

Dennis Coyne x Ignored says: 10/09/2019 at 9:55 am

Interesting piece.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-national-security-officials-fight-back-as-trump-attacks-impeachment-as-deep-state-conspiracy/ar-AAIu7Ju?ocid=spartanntp

Former national security officials fight back as Trump attacks impeachment as 'deep state' conspiracy

"What is happening currently is not normal," said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who served as a U.S. intelligence officer on Russia and Eurasia before stepping down in 2018. "This represents a deviation from the way that these institutions regularly function. And when the institutions don't work, that is a national security threat."

She was among 90 national security veterans who signed an open letter published Sunday in support of the anonymous whistleblower who filed a complaint that Trump had acted improperly in asking the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden in a July phone call.

Trump has attempted to intimidate other government officials into not cooperating by casting those who offered information to the whistleblower as "close to spies." The open letter emphasized that the whistleblower "is protected from certain egregious forms of retaliation."

[Oct 23, 2019] Neoconservatism Is An Omnicidal Death Cult, And It Must Be Stopped by Caitlin Johnstone

Highly recommended!
Neocons are lobbyists for MIC, the it is MIC that is the center of this this cult. People like Kriston, Kagan and Max Boot are just well paid prostituttes on MIC, which includes intelligence agencies as a very important part -- the bridge to Wall Street so to speak.
Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are traitors to humanity, and their ideology needs to be purged from the face of the earth forever. I'm not advocating violence of any kind here, but let's stop pretending that this is okay. Let's start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us. ..."
Jul 18, 2017 | medium.com

Glenn Greenwald has just published a very important article in The Intercept that I would have everyone in America read if I could. Titled "With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons", Greenwald's excellent piece details the frustratingly under-reported way that the leaders of the neoconservative death cult have been realigning with the Democratic party.

This pivot back to the party of neoconservatism's origin is one of the most significant political events of the new millennium, but aside from a handful of sharp political analysts like Greenwald it's been going largely undiscussed. This is weird, and we need to start talking about it. A lot. Their willful alignment with neoconservatism should be the very first thing anyone ever talks about when discussing the Democratic party.

When you hear someone complaining that the Democratic party has no platform besides being anti-Trump, your response should be, "Yeah it does. Their platform is the omnicidal death cult of neoconservatism."

It's absolutely insane that neoconservatism is still a thing, let alone still a thing that mainstream America tends to regard as a perfectly legitimate set of opinions for a human being to have. As what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts rightly calls "the most dangerous ideology that has ever existed," neoconservatism has used its nonpartisan bloodlust to work with the Democratic party for the purpose of escalating tensions with Russia on multiple fronts, bringing our species to the brink of what could very well end up being a world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies.

This is not okay. Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives. Check out leading neoconservative Bill Kristol's response to the aforementioned Intercept article:

... ... ...

Okay, leaving aside the fact that this bloodthirsty psychopath is saying neocons "won" a Cold War that neocons have deliberately reignited by fanning the flames of the Russia hysteria and pushing for more escalations , how insane is it that we live in a society where a public figure can just be like, "Yeah, I'm a neocon, I advocate for using military aggression to maintain US hegemony and I think it's great," and have that be okay? These people kill children. Neoconservatism means piles upon piles of child corpses. It means devoting the resources of a nation that won't even provide its citizens with a real healthcare system to widespread warfare and all the death, destruction, chaos, terrorism, rape and suffering that necessarily comes with war. The only way that you can possibly regard neoconservatism as just one more set of political opinions is if you completely compartmentalize away from the reality of everything that it is.

This should not happen. The tensions with Russia that these monsters have worked so hard to escalate could blow up at any moment; there are too many moving parts, too many things that could go wrong. The last Cold War brought our species within a hair's breadth of total annihilation due to our inability to foresee all possible complications which can arise from such a contest, and these depraved death cultists are trying to drag us back into another one. Nothing is worth that. Nothing is worth risking the life of every organism on earth, but they're risking it all for geopolitical influence.

... ... ...

I've had a very interesting last 24 hours. My article about Senator John McCain (which I titled "Please Just Fucking Die Already" because the title I really wanted to use seemed a bit crass) has received an amount of attention that I'm not accustomed to, from CNN to USA Today to the Washington Post . I watched Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar talking about me on The View . They called me a "Bernie Sanders person." It was a trip. Apparently some very low-level Republican with a few hundred Twitter followers went and retweeted my article with an approving caption, and that sort of thing is worthy of coast-to-coast mainstream coverage in today's America.

This has of course brought in a deluge of angry comments, mostly from people whose social media pages are full of Russiagate nonsense , showing where McCain's current support base comes from. Some call him a war hero, some talk about him like he's a perfectly fine politician, some defend him as just a normal person whose politics I happen to disagree with.

This is insane. This man has actively and enthusiastically pushed for every single act of military aggression that America has engaged in, and some that it hasn't , throughout his entire career. He makes Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton look like a dove. When you look at John McCain, the very first thing you see should not be a former presidential candidate, a former POW or an Arizona Senator; the first thing you see should be the piles of human corpses that he has helped to create. This is not a normal kind of person, and I still do sincerely hope that he dies of natural causes before he can do any more harm.

Can we change this about ourselves, please? None of us should have to live in a world where pushing for more bombing campaigns at every opportunity is an acceptable agenda for a public figure to have. Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are traitors to humanity, and their ideology needs to be purged from the face of the earth forever. I'm not advocating violence of any kind here, but let's stop pretending that this is okay. Let's start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us.

-- -- --

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[Oct 20, 2019] The Deep State Goes Shallow 2.0 by Edward Curtin

Notable quotes:
"... It was the Obama administration who engineered the 2014 right-wing, Neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine as part of its agenda to undermine Russia. A neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda. This is, or should be, common knowledge. Obama put it in his typically slick way in a 2015 interview with CNN's Fareed Zakiria, saying that the United States "had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine." ..."
"... This is Orwellian language at its finest, from a warmonger who received the Nobel Prize for Peace while declaring he was in support of war. That the forces that have initiated a new and highly dangerous Cold War, a nuclear confrontation with Russia, demonized Vladimir Putin, and have overthrown the elected leader of a country allied with Russia on its western border, dares from the day he was elected in 2016 to remove its own president in the most obvious ways imaginable seems like bad fiction. But it is fact, and the fact that so many Americans approve of it is even more fantastic. ..."
"... It is well known that the United States is infamous for engineering coups against democratically elected governments worldwide. Voters' preferences are considered beside the point. Iran and Mosaddegh in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Indonesia and Sukarno in 1965-7, Allende in Chile in 1973, to name a few from the relatively distant past. ..."
"... Recently the Obama administration worked their handiwork in Honduras and Ukraine. It would not be hyperbolic to say that overthrowing democratic governments is as American as apple pie. It's our "democratic" tradition – like waging war. ..."
"... What is less well known is that elements within the U.S. ruling power elites have also overthrown democratically elected governments in the United States. One U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated because he had turned toward peace and opposed the forces of war within his own government. He is the lone example of a president who therefore was opposed by all the forces of imperial conquest within the ruling elites. ..."
"... Others, despite their backing for the elite deep state's imperial wars, were taken out for various reasons by competing factions within the shadow government. Nixon waged the war against Vietnam for so long on behalf of the military-industrial complex, but he was still taken down by the CIA, contrary to popular mythology about Watergate. ..."
"... Jimmy Carter was front man for the Tri-Lateral Commission's deep-state faction, but was removed by the group represented by George H. Bush, William Casey, and Reagan through their traitorous actions involving the Iran hostages. ..."
"... Obama, CIA groomed, was smoothly moved into power by the faction that felt Bush needed to be succeeded by a slick smiling assassin who symbolized "diversity," could speak well, and played hoops. ..."
"... Take your pick – heads or tails. Hillary Clinton was expected to complete the trinity. ..."
"... The day after his surprise election, the interlocking circles of power that run the show in sun and shadows – what C. Wright Mills long ago termed the Power Elite – met to overthrow him, or at least to render him more controllable. ..."
"... Trump, probably never having expected to win and as shocked as most people when he did, made some crucial mistakes before the election and before taking office. Some of those mistakes have continued since his inauguration ..."
"... Trump's fatal mistake was saying that he wanted to get along with Russia, that Putin was a good leader, and that he wanted to end the war against Syria and pull the U.S. back from foreign wars ..."
"... This was verboten. And when he said nuclear war was absurd and would only result in nuclear conflagration, he had crossed the Rubicon. That sealed his fate ..."
"... "Only the shallow know themselves," said Oscar Wilde. ..."
"... ...The first step in dealing with this is to combat ignorance and misinformation. There may not be one undeniable truth but we can certainly squash blatant mis-truths. ..."
"... If you read Professor Antony C Sutton's books about Wall Street, the Bolshevik Revolution and Hitlers rise to power, it is possible, as Sutton did, to examine the methodology, ideology and psychology of the string pullers in depth. For exposing them, Hutton was as he said " persecuted but not prosecuted ". ..."
Oct 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org

This article was first published on February 21, 2017, one month after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, more than two-and-a half years ago. What was true then is even truer now, and so I am reprinting it with this brief introduction since I think it describes what is happening in plain sight today.

Now that years of Russia-gate accusations have finally fallen apart, those forces intent on driving Trump from office have had to find another pretext. Now it is Ukraine-gate, an issue similar in many ways to Russia-gate in that both were set into motion by the same forces aligned with the Democratic Party and the CIA-led Obama administration.

It was the Obama administration who engineered the 2014 right-wing, Neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine as part of its agenda to undermine Russia. A neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda. This is, or should be, common knowledge. Obama put it in his typically slick way in a 2015 interview with CNN's Fareed Zakiria, saying that the United States "had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."

This is Orwellian language at its finest, from a warmonger who received the Nobel Prize for Peace while declaring he was in support of war. That the forces that have initiated a new and highly dangerous Cold War, a nuclear confrontation with Russia, demonized Vladimir Putin, and have overthrown the elected leader of a country allied with Russia on its western border, dares from the day he was elected in 2016 to remove its own president in the most obvious ways imaginable seems like bad fiction. But it is fact, and the fact that so many Americans approve of it is even more fantastic.

Over the past few years the public has heard even more about the so-called "deep state," only to see its methods of propaganda become even more perversely cynical in their shallowness.

No one needs to support the vile Trump to understand that the United States is undergoing a fundamental shift wherein tens of millions of Americans who say they believe in democracy support the activities of gangsters who operate out in the open with their efforts to oust an elected president.

We have crossed the Rubicon and there will be no going back.

In irony a man annihilates what he posits within one and the same act; he leads us to believe in order not to be believed; he affirms to deny and denies to affirm; he creates a positive object but it has no being other than its nothingness."
Jean-Paul Sartre

It is well known that the United States is infamous for engineering coups against democratically elected governments worldwide. Voters' preferences are considered beside the point. Iran and Mosaddegh in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Indonesia and Sukarno in 1965-7, Allende in Chile in 1973, to name a few from the relatively distant past.

Recently the Obama administration worked their handiwork in Honduras and Ukraine. It would not be hyperbolic to say that overthrowing democratic governments is as American as apple pie. It's our "democratic" tradition – like waging war.

What is less well known is that elements within the U.S. ruling power elites have also overthrown democratically elected governments in the United States. One U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated because he had turned toward peace and opposed the forces of war within his own government. He is the lone example of a president who therefore was opposed by all the forces of imperial conquest within the ruling elites.

Others, despite their backing for the elite deep state's imperial wars, were taken out for various reasons by competing factions within the shadow government. Nixon waged the war against Vietnam for so long on behalf of the military-industrial complex, but he was still taken down by the CIA, contrary to popular mythology about Watergate.

Jimmy Carter was front man for the Tri-Lateral Commission's deep-state faction, but was removed by the group represented by George H. Bush, William Casey, and Reagan through their traitorous actions involving the Iran hostages.

The emcee for the neo-liberal agenda, Bill Clinton, was rendered politically impotent via the Lewinsky affair, a matter never fully investigated by any media.

Obama, CIA groomed, was smoothly moved into power by the faction that felt Bush needed to be succeeded by a slick smiling assassin who symbolized "diversity," could speak well, and played hoops. Hit them with the right hand; hit them with the left. Same coin: Take your pick – heads or tails. Hillary Clinton was expected to complete the trinity.

But surprises happen, and now we have Trump, who is suffering the same fate – albeit at an exponentially faster rate – as his predecessors that failed to follow the complete script. The day after his surprise election, the interlocking circles of power that run the show in sun and shadows – what C. Wright Mills long ago termed the Power Elite – met to overthrow him, or at least to render him more controllable.

These efforts, run out of interconnected power centers, including the liberal corporate legal boardrooms that were the backers of Obama and Hillary Clinton, had no compunction in planning the overthrow of a legally elected president.

Soon they were joined by their conservative conspirators in doing the necessary work of "democracy" – making certain that only one of their hand-picked and anointed henchmen was at the helm of state. Of course, the intelligence agencies coordinated their efforts and their media scribes wrote the cover stories. The pink Pussyhats took to the streets. The deep state was working overtime.

Trump, probably never having expected to win and as shocked as most people when he did, made some crucial mistakes before the election and before taking office. Some of those mistakes have continued since his inauguration.

Not his derogatory remarks about minorities, immigrants, or women. Not his promise to cut corporate taxes, support energy companies, oppose strict environmental standards. Not his slogan to "make America great again." Not his promise to build a "wall" along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. Not his vow to deport immigrants. Not his anti-Muslim pledges. Not his insistence that NATO countries contribute more to NATO's "defense" of their own countries. Not even his crude rantings and Tweets and his hypersensitive defensiveness. Not his reality-TV celebrity status, his eponymous golden tower and palatial hotels and sundry real estate holdings. Not his orange hair and often comical and disturbing demeanor, accentuated by his off the cuff speaking style.

Surely not his massive wealth.

While much of this was viewed with dismay, it was generally acceptable to the power elites who transcend party lines and run the country. Offensive to hysterical liberal Democrats and traditional Republicans, all this about Trump could be tolerated, if only he would cooperate on the key issue.

Trump's fatal mistake was saying that he wanted to get along with Russia, that Putin was a good leader, and that he wanted to end the war against Syria and pull the U.S. back from foreign wars.

This was verboten. And when he said nuclear war was absurd and would only result in nuclear conflagration, he had crossed the Rubicon. That sealed his fate.

Misogyny, racism, support for Republican conservative positions on a host of issues – all fine. Opposing foreign wars, especially with Russia – not fine.

Now we have a reality-TV president and a reality-TV coup d'etat in prime time. Hidden in plain sight, the deep-state has gone shallow. What was once covert is now overt. Once it was necessary to blame a coup on a secretive "crazy lone assassin," Lee Harvey Oswald. But in this "post-modern" society of the spectacle, the manifest is latent; the obvious, non-obvious; what you see you don't see. Everyone knows those reality-TV shows aren't real, right?

It may seem like it is a coup against Trump in plain sight, but these shows are tricky, aren't they? He's the TV guy. He runs the show. He's the sorcerer's apprentice. He wants you to believe in the illusion of the obvious. He's the master media manipulator. You see it but don't believe it because you are so astute, while he is so blatant. He's brought it upon himself. He's bringing himself down. Everyone who knows, knows that.

I am reminded of being in a movie theatre in 1998, watching The Truman Show, about a guy who slowly "discovers" that he has been living in the bubble of a television show his whole life. At the end of the film he makes his "escape" through a door in the constructed dome that is the studio set.

The liberal audience in a very liberal town stood up and applauded Truman's dash to freedom. I was startled since I had never before heard an audience applaud in a movie theatre – and a standing ovation at that. I wondered what they were applauding. I quickly realized they were applauding themselves, their knowingness, their insider astuteness that Truman had finally caught on to what they already thought they knew. Now he would be free like they were. They couldn't be taken in; now he couldn't.

Except, of course, they were applauding an illusion, a film about being trapped in a reality-TV world, a world in which they stood in that theatre – their world, their frame. Frames within frames. Truman escapes from one fake frame into another – the movie. The joke was on them. The film had done its magic as its obvious content concealed its deeper truth: the spectator and the spectacle were wed. McLuhan was here right: the medium was the message.

This is what George Trow in 1980 called "the context of no context."

Candor as concealment, truth as lies, knowingness as stupidity. Making reality unreal in the service of an agenda that is so obvious it isn't, even as the cognoscenti applaud themselves for being so smart and in the know.

The more we hear about "the deep state" and begin to grasp its definition, the more we will have descended down the rabbit hole. Soon this "deep state" will be offering courses on what it is, how it operates, and why it must stay hidden while it "exposes" itself. Right-wing pundit Bill Kristol tweets:

Liberal CIA critic and JFK assassination researcher, Jefferson Morley, after defining the deep state, writes:

With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most – perhaps the only – credible check in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump's "wrecking ball presidency."

These are men who ostensibly share different ideologies, yet agree, and state it publically, that the "deep state" should take out Trump. Both believe, without evidence, that the Russians intervened to try to get Trump elected. Therefore, both no doubt feel justified in openly espousing a coup d'etat. They match Trump's blatancy with their own. Nothing deep about this.

Liberals and conservatives are now publically allied in demonizing Putin and Russia, and supporting a very dangerous military confrontation initiated by Obama and championed by the defeated Hillary Clinton. In the past these opposed political factions accepted that they would rotate their titular leaders into and out of the White House, and whenever the need arose to depose one or the other, that business would be left to deep state forces to effect in secret and everyone would play dumb.

Now the game has changed. It's all "obvious." The deep state has seemingly gone shallow. Its supporters say so. All the smart people can see what's happening. Even when what's happening isn't really happening.

"Only the shallow know themselves," said Oscar Wilde.

Edward Curtin Edward Curtin writes, and his writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He writes as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. He believes a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore sees all his work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding. His website is edwardcurtin.com


Frank Speaker

I remember this excellent piece the first time around. It's indeed even more pertinent today,
Martin Usher

...The first step in dealing with this is to combat ignorance and misinformation. There may not be one undeniable truth but we can certainly squash blatant mis-truths. This arena isn't just political -- our culture has a habit of reworking our past in a contemporary image and so subtly warping the lessons of history. Hollywood is a prime offender but then its no surprise to discover that the original master of propaganda, Goebbels, recognized that entertainment that pushed cultural values was a far more powerful tool for propaganda than the media that was, and still is, traditionally associated with propaganda.

John Deehan
If you read Professor Antony C Sutton's books about Wall Street, the Bolshevik Revolution and Hitlers rise to power, it is possible, as Sutton did, to examine the methodology, ideology and psychology of the string pullers in depth. For exposing them, Hutton was as he said " persecuted but not prosecuted ".
nottheonly1
Sadly though, an old wisdom brings itself into this ludicrous scenery. It also makes the comparison with the Truman show so apt. You can't fix stupid.

[Oct 19, 2019] How did the United States become so involved in Ukraine's torturous and famously corrupt politics? The short answer is NATO expansion

Notable quotes:
"... As it is right now, the most likely outcome of the Western initiative in Ukraine will be substantially lower living standards than there would be otherwise for most Ukrainians. ..."
"... The US actions in Ukraine are typical, not exceptional. Acting as an Empire, the US always installs the worst possible scum in power in its vassals, particularly in newly acquired ones. ..."
"... Has he forgotten the historical conversation of Nuland and Payatt picking the next president of Ukraine "Yats is our guy" and "Yats" actually emerging as the president a week later ? None of these facts are in any way remotely compatible with passive role professor Cohen ascribes to the US. ..."
"... We don't know what happens next, but we know the following: Ukraine will not be in EU, or Nato. It will not be a unified, prosperous country. It will continue losing a large part of its population. And oligarchy and 'corruption' is going to stay. ..."
"... Another Maidan would most likely make things even worse and trigger a complete disintegration. Those are the wages of stupidity and desperation – one can see an individual example with AP, but they all seem like that. ..."
Oct 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

Dan Hayes says:

October 4, 2019 at 4:46 am GMT • 100 Words @Ron Unz Proprietor Ron,

Thanks for your sharing you views about Prof Cohen, a most interesting and principled man.

Only after reading the article did I realize that the UR (that's you) also provided the Batchelor Show podcast. Thanks.

I've been listening to these broadcasts over their entirety, now going on for six or so years. What's always struck me is Cohen's level-headeness and equanimity. I've also detected affection for Kentucky, his native state. Not something to be expected from a Princeton / NYU academic nor an Upper West Side resident.

And once again expressing appreciation for the UR!

Read More • Replies: @Mikhail Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

sally , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:47 am GMT

How did the United States become so involved in Ukraine's torturous and famously corrupt politics?

The short answer is NATO expansion <= maybe something different? I like pocketbook expansion..
NATO Expansion provides cover and legalizes the private use of Presidential directed USA resources to enable a few to make massively big profits at the expense of the governed in the target area.

Behind NATO lies the reason for Bexit, the Yellow Jackets, the unrest in Iraq and Egypt, Yemen etc.

Hypothesis 1: NATO supporters are more corrupt than Ukraine officials.
Hypothesis 2: NATO expansion is a euphemism for USA/EU/ backed private party plunder to follow invade and destroy regime change activities designed to dispossess local Oligarchs of the wealth in NATO targeted nations? Private use of public force for private gain comes to mind.

I think [private use of public force for private gain] is what Trump meant when Trump said to impeach Trump for investigating the Ukraine matter amounts to Treason.. but it is the exactly the activity type that Hallmarks CIA instigated regime change.

A lot of intelligence agency manipulation and private pocketbook expanding corruption can be hidden behind NATO expansion.. Please prove to me that Biden and the hundreds of other plunders became so deeply involved in Ukraine because of NATO expansion?

Beckow , says: October 4, 2019 at 8:16 am GMT
The key question is what is the gain in separating Ukraine from Russia, adding it to NATO, and turning Russia and Ukraine into enemies. And what are the most likely results, e.g. can it ever work without risking a catastrophic event?

There are the usual empire-building and weapons business reasons, but those should function within a rational framework. As it is right now, the most likely outcome of the Western initiative in Ukraine will be substantially lower living standards than there would be otherwise for most Ukrainians. And an increase in tensions in the region with inevitable impact on the business there. So what exactly is the gain and for whom?

eah , says: October 4, 2019 at 11:55 am GMT
The Washington-led attempt to fast-track Ukraine into NATO in 2013–14 resulted in the Maidan crisis, the overthrow of the country's constitutionally elected president Viktor Yanukovych, and to the still ongoing proxy civil war in Donbass.

Which exemplifies the stupidity and arrogance of the American military/industrial/political Establishment -- none of that had anything to do with US national security (least of all antagonizing Russia) -- how fucking hypocritical is it to presume the Monroe Doctrine, and then try to get the Ukraine into NATO? -- none of it would have been of any benefit whatsoever to the average American.

Roberto Masioni , says: October 4, 2019 at 12:09 pm GMT
According to a recent govt study, only 12% of Americans can read above a 9th grade level. This effectively mean (((whoever))) controls the MSM controls the world. NOTHING will change for the better while the (((enemy))) owns our money supply.
Pamela , says: October 4, 2019 at 3:41 pm GMT
There was NO "annexation" of Crimea by Russia. Crimea WAS annexed, but by Ukraine.
Russia and Crimea re-unified. Crimea has been part of Russia for long than America has existed – since it was taken from the Ottoman Empire over 350 yrs ago. The vast majority of the people identify as Russian, and speak only Russian.

To annex, the verb, means to use armed force to seize sovereign territory and put it under the control of the invading forces government. Pretty much as the early Americans did to Northern Mexico, Hawaii, etc. Russia used no force, the Governors of Crimea applied for re-unification with Russia, Russia advised a referendum, which was held, and with a 96% turnout, 97% voted for re-unification. This was done formally and legally, conforming with all the international mandates.

It is very damaging for anyone to say that Russia "annexed" Crimea, because when people read, quickly moving past the world, they subliminally match the word to their held perception of the concept and move on. Thus they match the word "annex" to their conception of the use of Armed Force against a resistant population, without checking.

All Cohen is doing here is reinforcing the pushed, lying Empire narrative, that Russia invaded and used force, when the exact opposite is true!!

follyofwar , says: October 4, 2019 at 3:56 pm GMT
@Carlton Meyer One wonders if Mr. Putin, as he puts his head on the pillow at night, fancies that he should have rolled the Russian tanks into Kiev, right after the 2014 US-financed coup of Ukraine's elected president, which was accomplished while he was pre-occupied with the Sochi Olympics, and been done with it. He had every justification to do so, but perhaps feared Western blowback. Well, the blowback happened anyway, so maybe Putin was too cautious.

The new Trump Admin threw him under the bus when it installed the idiot Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador, whose first words were that Russia must give Crimea back. With its only major warm water port located at Sevastopol, that wasn't about to happen, and the US Deep State knew it.

Given how he has been so unfairly treated by the media, and never given a chance to enact his Russian agenda, anyone who thinks that Trump was 'selected' by the deep state has rocks for brains. The other night, on Rick Sanchez's RT America show, former US diplomat, and frequent guest Jim Jatras said that he would not be too surprised if 20 GOP Senators flipped and voted to convict Trump if the House votes to impeach.

The deep state can't abide four more years of the bombastic, Twitter-obsessed Trump, hence this Special Ops Ukraine false flag, designed to fool a majority of the people. The smooth talking, more warlike Pence is one of them. The night of the long knives is approaching.

AnonFromTN , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:02 pm GMT
The US actions in Ukraine are typical, not exceptional. Acting as an Empire, the US always installs the worst possible scum in power in its vassals, particularly in newly acquired ones.

The "logic" of the Dem party is remarkable. Dems don't even deny that Biden is corrupt, that he blatantly abused the office of Vice-President for personal gain. What's more, he was dumb enough to boast about it publicly. Therefore, let's impeach Trump.

These people don't give a hoot about the interests of the US as a country, or even as an Empire. Their insatiable greed for money and power blinds them to everything. By rights, those who orchestrated totally fake Russiagate and now push for impeachment, when Russiagate flopped miserably, should be hanged on lampposts for high treason. Unfortunately, justice won't be served. So, we have to be satisfied with an almost assured prospect of this impeachment thing to flop, just like Russiagate before it. But in the process incalculable damage will be done to our country and its institutions.

AnonFromTN , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:07 pm GMT
@Pamela In fact, several Western sources reluctantly confirmed the results of Crimean referendum of 2014:
German polling company GFK
http://www.gfk.com/ua/Documents/Presentations/GFK_report_FreeCrimea.pdf
Gallup
http://www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2014/06/Ukraine-slide-deck.pdf

Those who support the separation of Kosovo from Serbia without Serbian consent cannot argue against separation of Crimea from Ukraine without the consent of Kiev regime.

On the other hand, those who believe that post-WWII borders are sacrosanct have to acknowledge that Crimea belongs to Russia (illegally even by loose Soviet standards transferred to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1956), Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Soviet Union should be restored, and Germany should be re-divided.

Alden , says: October 4, 2019 at 5:35 pm GMT
At least now I know why Ukraine is so essential to American national security. It's so even more of my and my families' taxes can pay for a massive expansion of Nato, which means American military bases in Ukraine. Greenland to the borders of China.

We're encircling the earth, like those old cartoons about bankers.

chris , says: October 4, 2019 at 9:11 pm GMT
@Ron Unz I had to stop listening after the 10th min. where the good professor (without any push-back from the interviewer) says:

Victor Yanukovich was overthrown by a street coup . at that moment, the United States and not only the United States but the Western European Governments had to make a decision would they acknowledge the overthrow of Yannukovic as having been legitimate, and therefore accept whatever government emerged, and that was a fateful moment within 24hours, the governments, including the government of president Obama endorsed what was essentially a coup d'etat against Yanukovich.

Has the good Professor so quickly forgotten about Victoria Nuland distributing cookies with John McCain in the Maidan as the coup was still unfolding? Her claim at the think tank in DC where she discusses having spent $30million (if I remember correctly) for foisting the Ukraine coup ?

Has he forgotten the historical conversation of Nuland and Payatt picking the next president of Ukraine "Yats is our guy" and "Yats" actually emerging as the president a week later ? None of these facts are in any way remotely compatible with passive role professor Cohen ascribes to the US.

These are not simple omissions but willful acts of misleading of fools. The good professor's little discussed career as a resource for the secret services has reemerged after seemingly having been left out in the cold during the 1st attempted coup against Trump.

No, the real story is more than just a little NATO expansion as the professor does suggest, but more directly, the attempted coup that the US is still trying to stage in Russia itself, in order to regain control of Russia's vast energy resources which Putin forced the oligarchs to disgorge. The US desperately wants to achieve this in order to be able to ultimately also control China's access to those resources as well.

In the way that Iraq was supposed to be a staging post for an attack on Iran, Ukraine is the staging post for an attack on Russia.

The great Russian expert stirred miles very clear of even hinting at such scenarios, even though anyone who's thought about US world policies will easily arrive at this logical conclusion.

Anonymous [855] • Disclaimer , says: October 4, 2019 at 10:11 pm GMT
What about the theft of Ukraine's farmland and the enserfing of its rural population? Isn't this theft and enserfing of Ukrainians at least one major reason the US government got involved, overseeing the transfer of this land into the hands of the transnational banking crime syndicate? The Ukraine, with its rich, black soil, used to be called the breadbasket of Europe.

Consider the fanatical intervention on the part of Victoria Nuland and the Kagans under the guise of working for the State Dept to facilitate the theft. In a similar fashion, according to Wayne Madsen, the State Dept. has a Dept of Foreign Asset Management, or some similar name, that exists to protect the Chabad stranglehold on the world diamond trade, and, according to Madsen, the language spoken and posters around the offices are in Hebrew, which as a practical matter might as well be the case at the State Dept itself.

According to an article a few years ago at Oakland Institute, George Rohr's NCH Capital, which latter organization has funded over 100 Chabad Houses on US campuses, owns over 1 million acres of Ukraine farmland. Other ownership interests of similarly vast tracts of Ukraine farmland show a similar pattern of predation. At one point, it was suggested that the Yinon Plan should be understood to include the Ukraine as the newly acquired breadbasket of Eretz Israel. It may also be worth pointing out that now kosher Ivy League schools' endowments are among the worst pillagers of native farmland and enserfers of the indigenous populations they claim to protect.

AnonFromTN , says: October 5, 2019 at 3:04 pm GMT
@Mikhail Well, if we really go into it, things become complicated. What Khmelnitsky united with Russia was maybe 1/6th or 1/8th of current Ukraine. Huge (4-5 times greater) areas in the North and West were added by Russian Tsars, almost as great areas in the South and East taken by Tsars from Turkey and affiliated Crimean Khanate were added by Lenin, a big chunk in the West was added by Stalin, and then in 1956 moron Khrushchev "gifted" Crimea (which he had no right to do even by Soviet law). So, about 4/6th of "Ukraine" is Southern Russia, 1/6th is Eastern Poland, some chunks are Hungary and Romania, and the remaining little stub is Ukraine proper.
AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 3:27 pm GMT
@anon American view always was: "yes, he is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch". That historically applied to many obnoxious regimes, now fully applies to Ukraine. In that Dems and Reps always were essentially identical, revealing that they are two different puppets run by the same puppet master.

Trump is hardly very intelligent, but he has some street smarts that degenerate elites have lost. Hence their hatred of him. It is particularly galling for the elites that Trump won in 2016, and has every chance of winning again in 2020 (unless they decide to murder him, like JFK; but that would be a real giveaway, even the dumbest sheeple would smell the rat).

Skeptikal , says: October 6, 2019 at 7:10 pm GMT
@follyofwar The only reason I can imagine that Putin/Russia would want to "take over" Ukraine and have this political problem child back in the family might be because of Ukraine's black soil.

But it is probably not worth the aggravation.

Russia is building up its agricultural sector via major greenhouse installations and other innovations.

Beckow , says: October 6, 2019 at 7:21 pm GMT
@AP Well, you are a true simpleton who repeats shallow conventional views. You don't ever seem to think deeper about what you write, e.g. if Yanukovitch could beat anyone in a 1-on-1 election than he obviously wasn't that unpopular and that makes Maidan illegal by any standard. You say he could beat Tiahnybok, who was one of the leaders of Maidan, how was then Maidan democratic? Or you don't care for democracy if people vote against your preferences?

Trade with Russia is way down and it is not coming back. That is my point – there was definitely a way to do this better. It wasn't a choice of 'one or the other' – actually EU was under the impression that Ukraine would help open up the Russian market. Your either-or wasn't the plan, so did Kiev lie to EU? No wonder Ukraine has a snowball chance in hell of joining EU.

AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 8:09 pm GMT
@Skeptikal Russia moved to the first place in the world in wheat exports, while greatly increasing its production of meat, fowl, and fish. Those who supplied these commodities lost Russian market for good. In fact, with sanctions, food in Russia got a lot better, and food in Moscow got immeasurably better: now it's local staff instead of crap shipped from half-a-world away. Funny thing is, Russian production of really good fancy cheeses has soared (partially with the help of French and Italian producers who moved in to avoid any stupid sanctions).

So, there is no reason for Russia to take Ukraine on any conditions, especially considering Ukraine's exorbitant external debt. If one calculates European demand for transplantation kidneys and prostitutes, two of the most successful Ukrainian exports, Ukraine will pay off its debt – never. Besides, the majority of Russians learned to despise Ukraine due to its subservient vassalage to the US (confirmed yet again by the transcript of the conversation between Trump and Ze), so the emotional factor is also virtually gone. Now the EU and the US face the standard rule of retail: you broke it, you own it. That infuriates Americans and EU bureaucrats more than anything.

annamaria , says: October 6, 2019 at 8:10 pm GMT
@Sergey Krieger "Demography statistic won't support fairy tales by solzhenicin and his kind."

-- What's your point? Your post reads like an attempt at saying that Kaganovitch was white like snow and that it does not matter what crimes were committed in the Soviet Union because of the "demography statistic" and because you, Sergey Krieger, are a grander person next to Solzhenitsyn and "his kind." By the way, had not A. I. S. returned to Russia, away from the coziness of western life?

S.K.: "You should start research onto mass dying of population after 1991 and subsequent and ongoing demographic catastroph in Russia under current not as "brutal " as soviet regime."

-- If you wish: "The Rape of Russia: Testimony of Anne Williamson Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the United States House of Representatives, September 21, 1999:" http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/Harvard_mafia/testimony_of_anne_williamson_before_the_house_banking_committee.shtml

"Economic rape of post-USSR economic space was by design not by accident:"
http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/harvard_mafia.shtml#Economic_rape_of_post_USSR_economic_space_was_by_design_not_by_accident

"MI6 role in economic rape of Russia, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet republics:" http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/harvard_mafia.shtml#MI6_role_

AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 11:39 pm GMT
@AP Maidan was an illegal coup that violated Ukrainian constitution (I should say all of them, there were too many) and lots of other laws. And that's not the worst part of it. But it already happened, there is no going back for Ukraine. It's a "yes or no" thing, you can't be a little bit pregnant. We can either commiserate with Ukraine or gloat, but it committed suicide. Some say this project was doomed from the start. I think Ukraine had a chance and blew it.
AP , says: October 7, 2019 at 4:39 am GMT
@AnonFromTN

Maidan was an illegal coup that violated Ukrainian constitution (I should say all of them, there were too many) a

Illegal revolution (are there any legal ones? – was American one legal?) rather than coup. Violations of Constitution began under Yanukovich.

We can either commiserate with Ukraine or gloat, but it committed suicide.

LOL. Were you the one comparing it to Somalia?

Here is "dead" Ukraine:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/DDWAobR8U0c?start=3017&feature=oembed

What a nightmare.

Compare Ukraine 2019 to Ukraine 2013 (before revolution):

GDP per capita PPP:

$9233 (2018) vs. $8648 (2013)

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=UA-AM-GE-MN-AL&name_desc=false

GDP per capita nominal:

$3110 (2018) vs. $3160 (2013)

Given 3% growth in 2019, it will be higher.

Forex reserves:

$20 billion end of 2013, $23 billion currently

Debt to GDP ratio:

40% in 2013, 61% in 2018. Okay, this is worse. But it is a decline from 2016 when it was 81%.

Compare Ukraine's current 61% to Greece's 150%.

Military: from ~15,000 usable troops to 200,000.

Overall, not exactly a "suicide."

Beckow , says: October 7, 2019 at 7:49 am GMT
@AnonFromTN I usually refrain from labelling off-cycle changes in government as revolutions or coups – it clearly depends on one's views and can't be determined.

In general, when violence or military is involved, it is more likely it was a coup. If a country has a reasonably open election process, violently overthrowing the current government would also seem like a coup, since it is unnecessary. Ukraine had both violence and a coming election that was democratic. If Yanukovitch would prevent or manipulate the elections, one could make a case that at that point – after the election – the population could stage a ' revolution '.

AP is a simpleton who repeats badly thought out slogans and desperately tries to save some face for the Maidan fiasco – so we will not change his mind, his mind is done with changes, it is all about avoiding regrets even if it means living in a lie. One can almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn't so obnoxious.

Ukraine has destroyed its own future gradually after 1991, all the elites there failed, Yanukovitch was just the last in a long line of failures, the guy before him (Yushenko?) left office with a 5% approval. Why wasn't there a revolution against him? Maidan put a cherry on that rotting cake – a desperate scream of pain by people who had lost all hope and so blindly fell for cheap promises by the new-old hustlers.

We don't know what happens next, but we know the following: Ukraine will not be in EU, or Nato. It will not be a unified, prosperous country. It will continue losing a large part of its population. And oligarchy and 'corruption' is going to stay.

Another Maidan would most likely make things even worse and trigger a complete disintegration. Those are the wages of stupidity and desperation – one can see an individual example with AP, but they all seem like that.

Beckow , says: October 7, 2019 at 1:31 pm GMT
@AP You intentionally omitted the second part of what I wrote: 'a reasonably democratic elections', neither 18th century American colonies, nor Russia in 1917 or Romania in 1989, had them. Ukraine in 2014 did.

So all your belly-aching is for nothing. The talk about 'subverting' and doing a preventive 'revolution' on Maidan to prevent 'subversion' has a very Stalinist ring to it. If you start revolutionary violence because you claim to anticipate that something bad might happen, well, the sky is the limit and you have no rules.

You are desperately trying to justify a stupid and unworkable act. As we watch the unfolding disaster and millions leaving Ukraine, this "Maidan was great!!!" mantra will sound even more silly. But enjoy it, it is not Somalia, wow, I guess as long as a country is not Somalia it is ok. Ukraine is by far the poorest large country in Europe. How is that a success?

AnonFromTN , says: October 7, 2019 at 3:11 pm GMT
@Beckow True believers are called that because they willfully ignore facts and logic. AP is a true believer Ukie. Ukie faith is their main undoing. Unfortunately, they are ruining the country with their insane dreams. But that cannot be helped now. The position of a large fraction of Ukrainian population is best described by a cruel American saying: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Beckow , says: October 7, 2019 at 4:07 pm GMT
@AnonFromTN You are right, it can't be helped. Another saying is that it takes two to lie: one who lies, and one to lie to. The receiver of lies is also responsible.

What happened in Ukraine was: Nuland&Co. went to Ukraine and lied to them about ' EU, 'Marshall plan', aid, 'you will be Western ', etc,,,'. Maidanistas swallowed it because they wanted to believe – it is easy to lie to desperate people. Making promises is very easy. US soft power is all based on making promises.

What Nuland&Co. really wanted was to create a deep Ukraine-Russia hostility and to grab Crimea, so they could get Russian Navy out and move Nato in. It didn't work very well, all we have is useless hostility, and a dysfunctional state. But as long as they serve espresso in Lviv, AP will scream that it was all worth it, 'no Somalia', it is 'all normal', almost as good as 2013 . Right.

Robjil , says: October 5, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT
Ukraine is an overseas US territory.

It is not a foreign nation at all.

Trump dealt with one of our overseas territories.

Nuland said that US invested 5 billion dollars to get Ukraine.

She got Ukraine without balls that is Crimea. Russia took back the balls.

US cried, cried a Crimea river about this. They are still crying over this.

DESERT FOX , says: October 5, 2019 at 6:53 pm GMT
@Robjil Agree, and like Israel the Ukraine will be a welfare drain on the America taxpayers as long as Israel and the Ukraine exist.
Beckow , says: October 5, 2019 at 6:54 pm GMT
@AP I don't disagree with what you said, but my point was different:

lower living standards than there would be otherwise for most Ukrainians

Without the unnecessary hostility and the break in business relations with Russia the living standards in Ukraine would be higher. That, I think, noone would dispute. One can trace that directly to the so-far failed attempt to get Ukraine into Nato and Russia out of its Crimea bases. There has been a high cost for that policy, so it is appropriate to ask: why? did the authors of that policy think it through?

Beckow , says: October 5, 2019 at 10:11 pm GMT
@AP I don't give a flying f k about Yanukovitch and your projections about what 'would be growth' under him. He was history by 2014 in any case.

One simple point that you don't seem to grasp: it was Yanuk who negotiated the association treaty with EU that inevitably meant Ukraine in Nato and Russia bases out of Crimea (after a decent interval). For anyone to call Yanuk a 'pro-Russian' is idiotic – what we see today are the results of Yanukovitch's policies. By the way, the first custom restrictions on Ukraine's exports to Russia happened in summer 2013 under Y.

If you still think that Yanukovitch was in spite of all of that somehow a 'Russian puppet', you must have a very low opinion of Kremlin skills in puppetry. He was not, he was fully onboard with the EU-Nato-Crimea policy – he implemented it until he got outflanked by even more radical forces on Maidan.

AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 1:42 am GMT
@Beckow Well, exactly like all Ukrainian presidents before and after him, Yanuk was a thief. He might have been a more intelligent and/or more cautious thief that Porky, but a thief he was.

Anyway, there is no point in crying over spilled milk: history has no subjunctive mood. Ukraine has dug a hole for itself, and it still keeps digging, albeit slower, after a clown in whole socks replaced a clown in socks with holes. By now this new clown is also a murderer, as he did not stop shelling Donbass, although so far he has committed fewer crimes than Porky.

There is no turning back. Regardless of Ukrainian policies, many things it used to sell Russia won't be bought any more: Russia developed its own shipbuilding (subcontracted some to South Korea), is making its own helicopter and ship engines, all stages of space rockets, etc. Russia won't return any military or high-tech production to Ukraine, ever. What's more, most Russians are now disgusted with Ukraine, which would impede improving relations even if Ukraine gets a sane government (which is extremely unlikely in the next 5 years).

Ukraine's situation is best described by Russian black humor saying: "what we fought for has befallen us". End of story.

Sergey Krieger , says: October 6, 2019 at 4:15 am GMT
@Peter Akuleyev How many millions? It is same story. Ukraine claims more and more millions dead from so called Hilodomor when in Russia liberals have been screaming about 100 million deaths in russia from bolsheviks. Both are fairy tales. Now you better answer what is current population of ukraine. The last soviet time 1992 level was 52 million. I doubt you got even 40 million now. Under soviet power both ukraine and russia population were steadily growing. Now, under whose music you are dancing along with those in Russia that share your views when die off very real one is going right under your nose.
anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 6, 2019 at 7:03 am GMT
@AnonFromTN

By now this new clown is also a murderer, as he did not stop shelling Donbass, although so far he has committed fewer crimes than Porky.

Have you noticed that the Republicans, while seeming to defend Trump, never challenge the specious assertion that delaying arms to Ukraine was a threat to US security? At first I thought this was oversight. Silly me. Keeping the New Cold War smoldering is more important to those hawks.

Tulsi Gabbard flipping to support the impeachment enquiry was especially disappointing. I'm guessing she was under lots of pressure, because she can't possibly believe that arming the Ukies is good for our security. If I could get to one of her events, I'd ask her direct, what's up with that. Obama didn't give them arms at all, even made some remarks about not inflaming the situation. (A small token, after his people managed the coup, spent 8 years demonizing Putin, and presided over origins of Russiagate to make Trump's [stated] goal of better relations impossible.)

AnonFromTN , says: October 7, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT
@Per/Norway

The ukrops are pureblooded nazis

Not really. Ukies are wonnabe Nazis, but they fall way short of their ideal. The original German Nazis were organized, capable, brave, sober, and mostly honest. Ukie scum is disorganized, ham-handed, cowardly, drunk (or under drugs), and corrupt to the core. They are heroes only against unarmed civilians, good only for theft, torture, and rape. When it comes to the real fight with armed opponents, they run away under various pretexts or surrender. Nazis should sue these impostors for defamation.

Mikhail , says: • Website October 7, 2019 at 6:28 pm GMT
@AP

So uprising by American colonists was a coup?

How about what happened in Russia in 1917?

Or Romania when Communism fell?

Talk about false equivalencies.

Yanukovych signed an internationally brokered power sharing agreement with his main rivals, who then violated it. Yanukovych up to that point was the democratically elected president of Ukraine.

Since his being violently overthrown, people have been unjustly jailed, beaten and killed for politically motivated reasons having to do with a stated opposition to the Euromaidan.

Yanukovych refrained from using from using considerably greater force, when compared to others if put in the same situation, against a mob element that included property damage and the deaths of law enforcement personnel.

In the technical legal sense, there was a legit basis to jail the likes of Tymoshenko. If I correctly recall Yushchenko offered testimony against Tymoshenko. Rather laughable that Poroshenko appointed the non-lawyer Lutsenko into a key legal position.

Mikhail , says: • Website October 7, 2019 at 6:35 pm GMT
@Beckow The undemocratic aspect involving Yanukovych's overthrow included the disproportionate number of Svoboda members appointed to key cabinet positions. At the time, Svoboda was on record for favoring the dissolution of Crimea's autonomous status
anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 2:17 am GMT
@AP Grest comment #159 by Beckow. Really, I'm more concerned with the coup against POTUS that's happening right now, since before he took office. The Ukraine is pivotal, from the Kiev putschists collaborating with the DNC, to the CIA [pretend] whistleblowers who now subvert Trump's investigation of those crimes.

Tragic and pitiful, the Ukrainians jumped from a rock to a hard place. Used and abandoned by the Clinton-Soros gang, they appeal to the next abusive Sugar-Daddy. Isn't this FRANCE 24 report fairly objective?

Revisited: Five years on, what has Ukraine's Maidan Revolution achieved?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/RtUrPKK73rE?feature=oembed

anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 2:24 am GMT
@AP This from BBC is less current. (That magnificent bridge -the one the Ukies tried to sabotage- is now in operation, of course.) I'm just trying to use sources that might not trigger you.

Crimea: Three years after annexation – BBC News

anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 3:55 am GMT
@AP Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 4:57 am GMT
@AP "Whenever people ask me how to figure out the truth about Ukraine, I always recommend they watch the film Ukraine on Fire by director @lopatonok and executive produced by @TheOliverStone. The sequel Revealing Ukraine will be out soon proud to be in it."
– Lee Sranahan (Follow @stranahan for Ukrainegate in depth.)
" .what has really changed in the life of Ukrainians?"

REVEALING UKRAINE OFFICIAL TEASER TRAILER #1 (2019)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Nj_bdtO0SI0

Robjil , says: October 15, 2019 at 12:16 am GMT
@Malacaay Baltics, Ukrainians and Poles were part of the Polish Kingdom from 1025-1569 and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1569-1764.

This probably explains their differences with Russia.

Russia had this area in the Russian Empire from 1764-1917. Russia called this area the Pale of Settlement. Why? This Polish Kingdom since 1025 welcomed 25000 Jews in, who later grew to millions by the 19th century. They are the Ashkenazis who are all over the world these days. The name Pale was for Ashkenazis to stay in that area and not immigrate to the rest of Russia.

The reasoning for this was not religious prejudice but the way the Ashkenazis treated the peasants of the Pale. It was to protect the Russian peasants. This did not help after 1917. A huge invasion of Ashkenazis descended all over Russia to take up positions all over the Soviet Union.

Ukraine US is like the Pale again. It has a Jewish President and a Jewish Prime Minister.

Ukraine and Poland were both controlled by Tartars too. Ukraine longer than Russia. Russia ended the Tartar rule of Crimea in 1783. The Crimean Tartars lived off raiding Ukraine, Poland, and parts of Russia for Slav slaves. Russia ended this Slav slave trade in 1783.

[Oct 19, 2019] The United States formented an armed coup in Ukraine spearheaded by Nazis.

Notable quotes:
"... For the love of Pete, will TAC quit with offering limited concessions to the neocon position in an attempt to appear "serious" and "reasonable". ..."
"... I counted only once the word "aggressive" attributed to Washington. And no peep about the oversees Ukrainians as most likely descendants of individuals (maybe I am exaggerating a bit, there was quite some emigration at the end of 1800 beginning of 1900 from that area in Canada and US) that probably fought along the Nazi Germany, see current Canadian Foreign Minister. ..."
"... I am sure you're right about this. Diana Johnstone covered the role of the children of Croatian fascist exiles in the break-up of Yugoslavia and the US/NATO bombing campaign in her book, "Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions." ..."
"... The US supports democracy? Depends on who got elected, apparently. ..."
Oct 19, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Sid Finster2 days ago

"This explains (though does not justify) Russia's hostile response."

For the love of Pete, will TAC quit with offering limited concessions to the neocon position in an attempt to appear "serious" and "reasonable".

The United States formented an armed coup in Ukraine spearheaded by Nazis.

kouroi Sid Finster2 days ago
Isn't that right!. I counted only once the word "aggressive" attributed to Washington. And no peep about the oversees Ukrainians as most likely descendants of individuals (maybe I am exaggerating a bit, there was quite some emigration at the end of 1800 beginning of 1900 from that area in Canada and US) that probably fought along the Nazi Germany, see current Canadian Foreign Minister.
cka2nd kouroia day ago
I am sure you're right about this. Diana Johnstone covered the role of the children of Croatian fascist exiles in the break-up of Yugoslavia and the US/NATO bombing campaign in her book, "Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions."
Sid Finster kouroi16 hours ago
Apparently pro-Soviet (from the earlier emigration) and Nazi Ukrainian emigres used to fight quite regularly in Canada.
cka2nd Sid Finster11 hours ago
Like the Pro-PRC vs. Pro-ROC folks in the nation's Chinatown's used to go at each other.
William Toffan Sid Finster10 hours ago
We still do!
Per kouroi15 hours ago
http://thesaker.is/why-2019...
here is part 2 of a series about ukrop nazis and their heirs in the murcan politics and canadian politics.
marku52 Sid Finster2 days ago • edited
To overthrow an elected head of state.

The US supports democracy? Depends on who got elected, apparently.

Tecumseh1768 marku5214 hours ago
Very much so.

[Oct 19, 2019] How did the United States become so involved in Ukraine's torturous and famously corrupt politics? The short answer is NATO expansion

Notable quotes:
"... As it is right now, the most likely outcome of the Western initiative in Ukraine will be substantially lower living standards than there would be otherwise for most Ukrainians. ..."
"... The US actions in Ukraine are typical, not exceptional. Acting as an Empire, the US always installs the worst possible scum in power in its vassals, particularly in newly acquired ones. ..."
"... Has he forgotten the historical conversation of Nuland and Payatt picking the next president of Ukraine "Yats is our guy" and "Yats" actually emerging as the president a week later ? None of these facts are in any way remotely compatible with passive role professor Cohen ascribes to the US. ..."
"... We don't know what happens next, but we know the following: Ukraine will not be in EU, or Nato. It will not be a unified, prosperous country. It will continue losing a large part of its population. And oligarchy and 'corruption' is going to stay. ..."
"... Another Maidan would most likely make things even worse and trigger a complete disintegration. Those are the wages of stupidity and desperation – one can see an individual example with AP, but they all seem like that. ..."
Oct 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

Dan Hayes says:

October 4, 2019 at 4:46 am GMT • 100 Words @Ron Unz Proprietor Ron,

Thanks for your sharing you views about Prof Cohen, a most interesting and principled man.

Only after reading the article did I realize that the UR (that's you) also provided the Batchelor Show podcast. Thanks.

I've been listening to these broadcasts over their entirety, now going on for six or so years. What's always struck me is Cohen's level-headeness and equanimity. I've also detected affection for Kentucky, his native state. Not something to be expected from a Princeton / NYU academic nor an Upper West Side resident.

And once again expressing appreciation for the UR!

Read More • Replies: @Mikhail Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

sally , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:47 am GMT

How did the United States become so involved in Ukraine's torturous and famously corrupt politics?

The short answer is NATO expansion <= maybe something different? I like pocketbook expansion..
NATO Expansion provides cover and legalizes the private use of Presidential directed USA resources to enable a few to make massively big profits at the expense of the governed in the target area.

Behind NATO lies the reason for Bexit, the Yellow Jackets, the unrest in Iraq and Egypt, Yemen etc.

Hypothesis 1: NATO supporters are more corrupt than Ukraine officials.
Hypothesis 2: NATO expansion is a euphemism for USA/EU/ backed private party plunder to follow invade and destroy regime change activities designed to dispossess local Oligarchs of the wealth in NATO targeted nations? Private use of public force for private gain comes to mind.

I think [private use of public force for private gain] is what Trump meant when Trump said to impeach Trump for investigating the Ukraine matter amounts to Treason.. but it is the exactly the activity type that Hallmarks CIA instigated regime change.

A lot of intelligence agency manipulation and private pocketbook expanding corruption can be hidden behind NATO expansion.. Please prove to me that Biden and the hundreds of other plunders became so deeply involved in Ukraine because of NATO expansion?

Beckow , says: October 4, 2019 at 8:16 am GMT
The key question is what is the gain in separating Ukraine from Russia, adding it to NATO, and turning Russia and Ukraine into enemies. And what are the most likely results, e.g. can it ever work without risking a catastrophic event?

There are the usual empire-building and weapons business reasons, but those should function within a rational framework. As it is right now, the most likely outcome of the Western initiative in Ukraine will be substantially lower living standards than there would be otherwise for most Ukrainians. And an increase in tensions in the region with inevitable impact on the business there. So what exactly is the gain and for whom?

eah , says: October 4, 2019 at 11:55 am GMT
The Washington-led attempt to fast-track Ukraine into NATO in 2013–14 resulted in the Maidan crisis, the overthrow of the country's constitutionally elected president Viktor Yanukovych, and to the still ongoing proxy civil war in Donbass.

Which exemplifies the stupidity and arrogance of the American military/industrial/political Establishment -- none of that had anything to do with US national security (least of all antagonizing Russia) -- how fucking hypocritical is it to presume the Monroe Doctrine, and then try to get the Ukraine into NATO? -- none of it would have been of any benefit whatsoever to the average American.

Roberto Masioni , says: October 4, 2019 at 12:09 pm GMT
According to a recent govt study, only 12% of Americans can read above a 9th grade level. This effectively mean (((whoever))) controls the MSM controls the world. NOTHING will change for the better while the (((enemy))) owns our money supply.
Pamela , says: October 4, 2019 at 3:41 pm GMT
There was NO "annexation" of Crimea by Russia. Crimea WAS annexed, but by Ukraine.
Russia and Crimea re-unified. Crimea has been part of Russia for long than America has existed – since it was taken from the Ottoman Empire over 350 yrs ago. The vast majority of the people identify as Russian, and speak only Russian.

To annex, the verb, means to use armed force to seize sovereign territory and put it under the control of the invading forces government. Pretty much as the early Americans did to Northern Mexico, Hawaii, etc. Russia used no force, the Governors of Crimea applied for re-unification with Russia, Russia advised a referendum, which was held, and with a 96% turnout, 97% voted for re-unification. This was done formally and legally, conforming with all the international mandates.

It is very damaging for anyone to say that Russia "annexed" Crimea, because when people read, quickly moving past the world, they subliminally match the word to their held perception of the concept and move on. Thus they match the word "annex" to their conception of the use of Armed Force against a resistant population, without checking.

All Cohen is doing here is reinforcing the pushed, lying Empire narrative, that Russia invaded and used force, when the exact opposite is true!!

follyofwar , says: October 4, 2019 at 3:56 pm GMT
@Carlton Meyer One wonders if Mr. Putin, as he puts his head on the pillow at night, fancies that he should have rolled the Russian tanks into Kiev, right after the 2014 US-financed coup of Ukraine's elected president, which was accomplished while he was pre-occupied with the Sochi Olympics, and been done with it. He had every justification to do so, but perhaps feared Western blowback. Well, the blowback happened anyway, so maybe Putin was too cautious.

The new Trump Admin threw him under the bus when it installed the idiot Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador, whose first words were that Russia must give Crimea back. With its only major warm water port located at Sevastopol, that wasn't about to happen, and the US Deep State knew it.

Given how he has been so unfairly treated by the media, and never given a chance to enact his Russian agenda, anyone who thinks that Trump was 'selected' by the deep state has rocks for brains. The other night, on Rick Sanchez's RT America show, former US diplomat, and frequent guest Jim Jatras said that he would not be too surprised if 20 GOP Senators flipped and voted to convict Trump if the House votes to impeach.

The deep state can't abide four more years of the bombastic, Twitter-obsessed Trump, hence this Special Ops Ukraine false flag, designed to fool a majority of the people. The smooth talking, more warlike Pence is one of them. The night of the long knives is approaching.

AnonFromTN , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:02 pm GMT
The US actions in Ukraine are typical, not exceptional. Acting as an Empire, the US always installs the worst possible scum in power in its vassals, particularly in newly acquired ones.

The "logic" of the Dem party is remarkable. Dems don't even deny that Biden is corrupt, that he blatantly abused the office of Vice-President for personal gain. What's more, he was dumb enough to boast about it publicly. Therefore, let's impeach Trump.

These people don't give a hoot about the interests of the US as a country, or even as an Empire. Their insatiable greed for money and power blinds them to everything. By rights, those who orchestrated totally fake Russiagate and now push for impeachment, when Russiagate flopped miserably, should be hanged on lampposts for high treason. Unfortunately, justice won't be served. So, we have to be satisfied with an almost assured prospect of this impeachment thing to flop, just like Russiagate before it. But in the process incalculable damage will be done to our country and its institutions.

AnonFromTN , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:07 pm GMT
@Pamela In fact, several Western sources reluctantly confirmed the results of Crimean referendum of 2014:
German polling company GFK
http://www.gfk.com/ua/Documents/Presentations/GFK_report_FreeCrimea.pdf
Gallup
http://www.bbg.gov/wp-content/media/2014/06/Ukraine-slide-deck.pdf

Those who support the separation of Kosovo from Serbia without Serbian consent cannot argue against separation of Crimea from Ukraine without the consent of Kiev regime.

On the other hand, those who believe that post-WWII borders are sacrosanct have to acknowledge that Crimea belongs to Russia (illegally even by loose Soviet standards transferred to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1956), Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Soviet Union should be restored, and Germany should be re-divided.

Alden , says: October 4, 2019 at 5:35 pm GMT
At least now I know why Ukraine is so essential to American national security. It's so even more of my and my families' taxes can pay for a massive expansion of Nato, which means American military bases in Ukraine. Greenland to the borders of China.

We're encircling the earth, like those old cartoons about bankers.

chris , says: October 4, 2019 at 9:11 pm GMT
@Ron Unz I had to stop listening after the 10th min. where the good professor (without any push-back from the interviewer) says:

Victor Yanukovich was overthrown by a street coup . at that moment, the United States and not only the United States but the Western European Governments had to make a decision would they acknowledge the overthrow of Yannukovic as having been legitimate, and therefore accept whatever government emerged, and that was a fateful moment within 24hours, the governments, including the government of president Obama endorsed what was essentially a coup d'etat against Yanukovich.

Has the good Professor so quickly forgotten about Victoria Nuland distributing cookies with John McCain in the Maidan as the coup was still unfolding? Her claim at the think tank in DC where she discusses having spent $30million (if I remember correctly) for foisting the Ukraine coup ?

Has he forgotten the historical conversation of Nuland and Payatt picking the next president of Ukraine "Yats is our guy" and "Yats" actually emerging as the president a week later ? None of these facts are in any way remotely compatible with passive role professor Cohen ascribes to the US.

These are not simple omissions but willful acts of misleading of fools. The good professor's little discussed career as a resource for the secret services has reemerged after seemingly having been left out in the cold during the 1st attempted coup against Trump.

No, the real story is more than just a little NATO expansion as the professor does suggest, but more directly, the attempted coup that the US is still trying to stage in Russia itself, in order to regain control of Russia's vast energy resources which Putin forced the oligarchs to disgorge. The US desperately wants to achieve this in order to be able to ultimately also control China's access to those resources as well.

In the way that Iraq was supposed to be a staging post for an attack on Iran, Ukraine is the staging post for an attack on Russia.

The great Russian expert stirred miles very clear of even hinting at such scenarios, even though anyone who's thought about US world policies will easily arrive at this logical conclusion.

Anonymous [855] • Disclaimer , says: October 4, 2019 at 10:11 pm GMT
What about the theft of Ukraine's farmland and the enserfing of its rural population? Isn't this theft and enserfing of Ukrainians at least one major reason the US government got involved, overseeing the transfer of this land into the hands of the transnational banking crime syndicate? The Ukraine, with its rich, black soil, used to be called the breadbasket of Europe.

Consider the fanatical intervention on the part of Victoria Nuland and the Kagans under the guise of working for the State Dept to facilitate the theft. In a similar fashion, according to Wayne Madsen, the State Dept. has a Dept of Foreign Asset Management, or some similar name, that exists to protect the Chabad stranglehold on the world diamond trade, and, according to Madsen, the language spoken and posters around the offices are in Hebrew, which as a practical matter might as well be the case at the State Dept itself.

According to an article a few years ago at Oakland Institute, George Rohr's NCH Capital, which latter organization has funded over 100 Chabad Houses on US campuses, owns over 1 million acres of Ukraine farmland. Other ownership interests of similarly vast tracts of Ukraine farmland show a similar pattern of predation. At one point, it was suggested that the Yinon Plan should be understood to include the Ukraine as the newly acquired breadbasket of Eretz Israel. It may also be worth pointing out that now kosher Ivy League schools' endowments are among the worst pillagers of native farmland and enserfers of the indigenous populations they claim to protect.

AnonFromTN , says: October 5, 2019 at 3:04 pm GMT
@Mikhail Well, if we really go into it, things become complicated. What Khmelnitsky united with Russia was maybe 1/6th or 1/8th of current Ukraine. Huge (4-5 times greater) areas in the North and West were added by Russian Tsars, almost as great areas in the South and East taken by Tsars from Turkey and affiliated Crimean Khanate were added by Lenin, a big chunk in the West was added by Stalin, and then in 1956 moron Khrushchev "gifted" Crimea (which he had no right to do even by Soviet law). So, about 4/6th of "Ukraine" is Southern Russia, 1/6th is Eastern Poland, some chunks are Hungary and Romania, and the remaining little stub is Ukraine proper.
AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 3:27 pm GMT
@anon American view always was: "yes, he is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch". That historically applied to many obnoxious regimes, now fully applies to Ukraine. In that Dems and Reps always were essentially identical, revealing that they are two different puppets run by the same puppet master.

Trump is hardly very intelligent, but he has some street smarts that degenerate elites have lost. Hence their hatred of him. It is particularly galling for the elites that Trump won in 2016, and has every chance of winning again in 2020 (unless they decide to murder him, like JFK; but that would be a real giveaway, even the dumbest sheeple would smell the rat).

Skeptikal , says: October 6, 2019 at 7:10 pm GMT
@follyofwar The only reason I can imagine that Putin/Russia would want to "take over" Ukraine and have this political problem child back in the family might be because of Ukraine's black soil.

But it is probably not worth the aggravation.

Russia is building up its agricultural sector via major greenhouse installations and other innovations.

Beckow , says: October 6, 2019 at 7:21 pm GMT
@AP Well, you are a true simpleton who repeats shallow conventional views. You don't ever seem to think deeper about what you write, e.g. if Yanukovitch could beat anyone in a 1-on-1 election than he obviously wasn't that unpopular and that makes Maidan illegal by any standard. You say he could beat Tiahnybok, who was one of the leaders of Maidan, how was then Maidan democratic? Or you don't care for democracy if people vote against your preferences?

Trade with Russia is way down and it is not coming back. That is my point – there was definitely a way to do this better. It wasn't a choice of 'one or the other' – actually EU was under the impression that Ukraine would help open up the Russian market. Your either-or wasn't the plan, so did Kiev lie to EU? No wonder Ukraine has a snowball chance in hell of joining EU.

AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 8:09 pm GMT
@Skeptikal Russia moved to the first place in the world in wheat exports, while greatly increasing its production of meat, fowl, and fish. Those who supplied these commodities lost Russian market for good. In fact, with sanctions, food in Russia got a lot better, and food in Moscow got immeasurably better: now it's local staff instead of crap shipped from half-a-world away. Funny thing is, Russian production of really good fancy cheeses has soared (partially with the help of French and Italian producers who moved in to avoid any stupid sanctions).

So, there is no reason for Russia to take Ukraine on any conditions, especially considering Ukraine's exorbitant external debt. If one calculates European demand for transplantation kidneys and prostitutes, two of the most successful Ukrainian exports, Ukraine will pay off its debt – never. Besides, the majority of Russians learned to despise Ukraine due to its subservient vassalage to the US (confirmed yet again by the transcript of the conversation between Trump and Ze), so the emotional factor is also virtually gone. Now the EU and the US face the standard rule of retail: you broke it, you own it. That infuriates Americans and EU bureaucrats more than anything.

annamaria , says: October 6, 2019 at 8:10 pm GMT
@Sergey Krieger "Demography statistic won't support fairy tales by solzhenicin and his kind."

-- What's your point? Your post reads like an attempt at saying that Kaganovitch was white like snow and that it does not matter what crimes were committed in the Soviet Union because of the "demography statistic" and because you, Sergey Krieger, are a grander person next to Solzhenitsyn and "his kind." By the way, had not A. I. S. returned to Russia, away from the coziness of western life?

S.K.: "You should start research onto mass dying of population after 1991 and subsequent and ongoing demographic catastroph in Russia under current not as "brutal " as soviet regime."

-- If you wish: "The Rape of Russia: Testimony of Anne Williamson Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the United States House of Representatives, September 21, 1999:" http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/Harvard_mafia/testimony_of_anne_williamson_before_the_house_banking_committee.shtml

"Economic rape of post-USSR economic space was by design not by accident:"
http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/harvard_mafia.shtml#Economic_rape_of_post_USSR_economic_space_was_by_design_not_by_accident

"MI6 role in economic rape of Russia, Ukraine, and other post-Soviet republics:" http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Pseudoscience/harvard_mafia.shtml#MI6_role_

AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 11:39 pm GMT
@AP Maidan was an illegal coup that violated Ukrainian constitution (I should say all of them, there were too many) and lots of other laws. And that's not the worst part of it. But it already happened, there is no going back for Ukraine. It's a "yes or no" thing, you can't be a little bit pregnant. We can either commiserate with Ukraine or gloat, but it committed suicide. Some say this project was doomed from the start. I think Ukraine had a chance and blew it.
AP , says: October 7, 2019 at 4:39 am GMT
@AnonFromTN

Maidan was an illegal coup that violated Ukrainian constitution (I should say all of them, there were too many) a

Illegal revolution (are there any legal ones? – was American one legal?) rather than coup. Violations of Constitution began under Yanukovich.

We can either commiserate with Ukraine or gloat, but it committed suicide.

LOL. Were you the one comparing it to Somalia?

Here is "dead" Ukraine:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/DDWAobR8U0c?start=3017&feature=oembed

What a nightmare.

Compare Ukraine 2019 to Ukraine 2013 (before revolution):

GDP per capita PPP:

$9233 (2018) vs. $8648 (2013)

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=UA-AM-GE-MN-AL&name_desc=false

GDP per capita nominal:

$3110 (2018) vs. $3160 (2013)

Given 3% growth in 2019, it will be higher.

Forex reserves:

$20 billion end of 2013, $23 billion currently

Debt to GDP ratio:

40% in 2013, 61% in 2018. Okay, this is worse. But it is a decline from 2016 when it was 81%.

Compare Ukraine's current 61% to Greece's 150%.

Military: from ~15,000 usable troops to 200,000.

Overall, not exactly a "suicide."

Beckow , says: October 7, 2019 at 7:49 am GMT
@AnonFromTN I usually refrain from labelling off-cycle changes in government as revolutions or coups – it clearly depends on one's views and can't be determined.

In general, when violence or military is involved, it is more likely it was a coup. If a country has a reasonably open election process, violently overthrowing the current government would also seem like a coup, since it is unnecessary. Ukraine had both violence and a coming election that was democratic. If Yanukovitch would prevent or manipulate the elections, one could make a case that at that point – after the election – the population could stage a ' revolution '.

AP is a simpleton who repeats badly thought out slogans and desperately tries to save some face for the Maidan fiasco – so we will not change his mind, his mind is done with changes, it is all about avoiding regrets even if it means living in a lie. One can almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn't so obnoxious.

Ukraine has destroyed its own future gradually after 1991, all the elites there failed, Yanukovitch was just the last in a long line of failures, the guy before him (Yushenko?) left office with a 5% approval. Why wasn't there a revolution against him? Maidan put a cherry on that rotting cake – a desperate scream of pain by people who had lost all hope and so blindly fell for cheap promises by the new-old hustlers.

We don't know what happens next, but we know the following: Ukraine will not be in EU, or Nato. It will not be a unified, prosperous country. It will continue losing a large part of its population. And oligarchy and 'corruption' is going to stay.

Another Maidan would most likely make things even worse and trigger a complete disintegration. Those are the wages of stupidity and desperation – one can see an individual example with AP, but they all seem like that.

Beckow , says: October 7, 2019 at 1:31 pm GMT
@AP You intentionally omitted the second part of what I wrote: 'a reasonably democratic elections', neither 18th century American colonies, nor Russia in 1917 or Romania in 1989, had them. Ukraine in 2014 did.

So all your belly-aching is for nothing. The talk about 'subverting' and doing a preventive 'revolution' on Maidan to prevent 'subversion' has a very Stalinist ring to it. If you start revolutionary violence because you claim to anticipate that something bad might happen, well, the sky is the limit and you have no rules.

You are desperately trying to justify a stupid and unworkable act. As we watch the unfolding disaster and millions leaving Ukraine, this "Maidan was great!!!" mantra will sound even more silly. But enjoy it, it is not Somalia, wow, I guess as long as a country is not Somalia it is ok. Ukraine is by far the poorest large country in Europe. How is that a success?

AnonFromTN , says: October 7, 2019 at 3:11 pm GMT
@Beckow True believers are called that because they willfully ignore facts and logic. AP is a true believer Ukie. Ukie faith is their main undoing. Unfortunately, they are ruining the country with their insane dreams. But that cannot be helped now. The position of a large fraction of Ukrainian population is best described by a cruel American saying: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Beckow , says: October 7, 2019 at 4:07 pm GMT
@AnonFromTN You are right, it can't be helped. Another saying is that it takes two to lie: one who lies, and one to lie to. The receiver of lies is also responsible.

What happened in Ukraine was: Nuland&Co. went to Ukraine and lied to them about ' EU, 'Marshall plan', aid, 'you will be Western ', etc,,,'. Maidanistas swallowed it because they wanted to believe – it is easy to lie to desperate people. Making promises is very easy. US soft power is all based on making promises.

What Nuland&Co. really wanted was to create a deep Ukraine-Russia hostility and to grab Crimea, so they could get Russian Navy out and move Nato in. It didn't work very well, all we have is useless hostility, and a dysfunctional state. But as long as they serve espresso in Lviv, AP will scream that it was all worth it, 'no Somalia', it is 'all normal', almost as good as 2013 . Right.

Robjil , says: October 5, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT
Ukraine is an overseas US territory.

It is not a foreign nation at all.

Trump dealt with one of our overseas territories.

Nuland said that US invested 5 billion dollars to get Ukraine.

She got Ukraine without balls that is Crimea. Russia took back the balls.

US cried, cried a Crimea river about this. They are still crying over this.

DESERT FOX , says: October 5, 2019 at 6:53 pm GMT
@Robjil Agree, and like Israel the Ukraine will be a welfare drain on the America taxpayers as long as Israel and the Ukraine exist.
Beckow , says: October 5, 2019 at 6:54 pm GMT
@AP I don't disagree with what you said, but my point was different:

lower living standards than there would be otherwise for most Ukrainians

Without the unnecessary hostility and the break in business relations with Russia the living standards in Ukraine would be higher. That, I think, noone would dispute. One can trace that directly to the so-far failed attempt to get Ukraine into Nato and Russia out of its Crimea bases. There has been a high cost for that policy, so it is appropriate to ask: why? did the authors of that policy think it through?

Beckow , says: October 5, 2019 at 10:11 pm GMT
@AP I don't give a flying f k about Yanukovitch and your projections about what 'would be growth' under him. He was history by 2014 in any case.

One simple point that you don't seem to grasp: it was Yanuk who negotiated the association treaty with EU that inevitably meant Ukraine in Nato and Russia bases out of Crimea (after a decent interval). For anyone to call Yanuk a 'pro-Russian' is idiotic – what we see today are the results of Yanukovitch's policies. By the way, the first custom restrictions on Ukraine's exports to Russia happened in summer 2013 under Y.

If you still think that Yanukovitch was in spite of all of that somehow a 'Russian puppet', you must have a very low opinion of Kremlin skills in puppetry. He was not, he was fully onboard with the EU-Nato-Crimea policy – he implemented it until he got outflanked by even more radical forces on Maidan.

AnonFromTN , says: October 6, 2019 at 1:42 am GMT
@Beckow Well, exactly like all Ukrainian presidents before and after him, Yanuk was a thief. He might have been a more intelligent and/or more cautious thief that Porky, but a thief he was.

Anyway, there is no point in crying over spilled milk: history has no subjunctive mood. Ukraine has dug a hole for itself, and it still keeps digging, albeit slower, after a clown in whole socks replaced a clown in socks with holes. By now this new clown is also a murderer, as he did not stop shelling Donbass, although so far he has committed fewer crimes than Porky.

There is no turning back. Regardless of Ukrainian policies, many things it used to sell Russia won't be bought any more: Russia developed its own shipbuilding (subcontracted some to South Korea), is making its own helicopter and ship engines, all stages of space rockets, etc. Russia won't return any military or high-tech production to Ukraine, ever. What's more, most Russians are now disgusted with Ukraine, which would impede improving relations even if Ukraine gets a sane government (which is extremely unlikely in the next 5 years).

Ukraine's situation is best described by Russian black humor saying: "what we fought for has befallen us". End of story.

Sergey Krieger , says: October 6, 2019 at 4:15 am GMT
@Peter Akuleyev How many millions? It is same story. Ukraine claims more and more millions dead from so called Hilodomor when in Russia liberals have been screaming about 100 million deaths in russia from bolsheviks. Both are fairy tales. Now you better answer what is current population of ukraine. The last soviet time 1992 level was 52 million. I doubt you got even 40 million now. Under soviet power both ukraine and russia population were steadily growing. Now, under whose music you are dancing along with those in Russia that share your views when die off very real one is going right under your nose.
anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 6, 2019 at 7:03 am GMT
@AnonFromTN

By now this new clown is also a murderer, as he did not stop shelling Donbass, although so far he has committed fewer crimes than Porky.

Have you noticed that the Republicans, while seeming to defend Trump, never challenge the specious assertion that delaying arms to Ukraine was a threat to US security? At first I thought this was oversight. Silly me. Keeping the New Cold War smoldering is more important to those hawks.

Tulsi Gabbard flipping to support the impeachment enquiry was especially disappointing. I'm guessing she was under lots of pressure, because she can't possibly believe that arming the Ukies is good for our security. If I could get to one of her events, I'd ask her direct, what's up with that. Obama didn't give them arms at all, even made some remarks about not inflaming the situation. (A small token, after his people managed the coup, spent 8 years demonizing Putin, and presided over origins of Russiagate to make Trump's [stated] goal of better relations impossible.)

AnonFromTN , says: October 7, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT
@Per/Norway

The ukrops are pureblooded nazis

Not really. Ukies are wonnabe Nazis, but they fall way short of their ideal. The original German Nazis were organized, capable, brave, sober, and mostly honest. Ukie scum is disorganized, ham-handed, cowardly, drunk (or under drugs), and corrupt to the core. They are heroes only against unarmed civilians, good only for theft, torture, and rape. When it comes to the real fight with armed opponents, they run away under various pretexts or surrender. Nazis should sue these impostors for defamation.

Mikhail , says: • Website October 7, 2019 at 6:28 pm GMT
@AP

So uprising by American colonists was a coup?

How about what happened in Russia in 1917?

Or Romania when Communism fell?

Talk about false equivalencies.

Yanukovych signed an internationally brokered power sharing agreement with his main rivals, who then violated it. Yanukovych up to that point was the democratically elected president of Ukraine.

Since his being violently overthrown, people have been unjustly jailed, beaten and killed for politically motivated reasons having to do with a stated opposition to the Euromaidan.

Yanukovych refrained from using from using considerably greater force, when compared to others if put in the same situation, against a mob element that included property damage and the deaths of law enforcement personnel.

In the technical legal sense, there was a legit basis to jail the likes of Tymoshenko. If I correctly recall Yushchenko offered testimony against Tymoshenko. Rather laughable that Poroshenko appointed the non-lawyer Lutsenko into a key legal position.

Mikhail , says: • Website October 7, 2019 at 6:35 pm GMT
@Beckow The undemocratic aspect involving Yanukovych's overthrow included the disproportionate number of Svoboda members appointed to key cabinet positions. At the time, Svoboda was on record for favoring the dissolution of Crimea's autonomous status
anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 2:17 am GMT
@AP Grest comment #159 by Beckow. Really, I'm more concerned with the coup against POTUS that's happening right now, since before he took office. The Ukraine is pivotal, from the Kiev putschists collaborating with the DNC, to the CIA [pretend] whistleblowers who now subvert Trump's investigation of those crimes.

Tragic and pitiful, the Ukrainians jumped from a rock to a hard place. Used and abandoned by the Clinton-Soros gang, they appeal to the next abusive Sugar-Daddy. Isn't this FRANCE 24 report fairly objective?

Revisited: Five years on, what has Ukraine's Maidan Revolution achieved?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/RtUrPKK73rE?feature=oembed

anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 2:24 am GMT
@AP This from BBC is less current. (That magnificent bridge -the one the Ukies tried to sabotage- is now in operation, of course.) I'm just trying to use sources that might not trigger you.

Crimea: Three years after annexation – BBC News

anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 3:55 am GMT
@AP Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
anon [113] • Disclaimer , says: October 8, 2019 at 4:57 am GMT
@AP "Whenever people ask me how to figure out the truth about Ukraine, I always recommend they watch the film Ukraine on Fire by director @lopatonok and executive produced by @TheOliverStone. The sequel Revealing Ukraine will be out soon proud to be in it."
– Lee Sranahan (Follow @stranahan for Ukrainegate in depth.)
" .what has really changed in the life of Ukrainians?"

REVEALING UKRAINE OFFICIAL TEASER TRAILER #1 (2019)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Nj_bdtO0SI0

Robjil , says: October 15, 2019 at 12:16 am GMT
@Malacaay Baltics, Ukrainians and Poles were part of the Polish Kingdom from 1025-1569 and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1569-1764.

This probably explains their differences with Russia.

Russia had this area in the Russian Empire from 1764-1917. Russia called this area the Pale of Settlement. Why? This Polish Kingdom since 1025 welcomed 25000 Jews in, who later grew to millions by the 19th century. They are the Ashkenazis who are all over the world these days. The name Pale was for Ashkenazis to stay in that area and not immigrate to the rest of Russia.

The reasoning for this was not religious prejudice but the way the Ashkenazis treated the peasants of the Pale. It was to protect the Russian peasants. This did not help after 1917. A huge invasion of Ashkenazis descended all over Russia to take up positions all over the Soviet Union.

Ukraine US is like the Pale again. It has a Jewish President and a Jewish Prime Minister.

Ukraine and Poland were both controlled by Tartars too. Ukraine longer than Russia. Russia ended the Tartar rule of Crimea in 1783. The Crimean Tartars lived off raiding Ukraine, Poland, and parts of Russia for Slav slaves. Russia ended this Slav slave trade in 1783.

[Oct 17, 2019] Time to Extricate From Ukraine The American Conservative

Notable quotes:
"... Even though the overall idea of ending the sponsoring of the conflict by Washington is plausible there are a number of shortcomings in the article to put it mildly. I realize though that the author has to make Washington look innocent and Russia look bad to escape the danger of being stigmatized as a pro-Russian traitor. ..."
"... I understand why you want to thread the needle. After the invasions, having to add more failure or at the very least recognition of dysfunction to our foreign policy choices and consequences is a bitter pill. But as you note had the US and the EU seriously had the desire to add the Ukraine into the western European sphere of influence, they could have offered a better deal on oil - they didn't. ..."
"... I think we have got to stop accusing the then existing government of corruption. As your own article states, the history of unstable governance with accompanying "corruption" seems a staple and nonunique. ..."
"... And as is the case in developing countries, what we call corruption is a cultural staple of how business and affairs are conducted. Whatever the issues, the Ukrainian public was not overly beset by the results so as to spontaneously riot. ..."
"... How the civil unrest spun out of control the second time in ten years, can be linked directly to US and EU involvement. ..."
Oct 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Time to Extricate From Ukraine Kiev has become a drag on Trump, but if we don't watch out, it could turn into a geopolitical threat to everyone. By Doug Bandow October 17, 2019

Capt. Matthew McCoy, commander of Company A, 1st Battalion, 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team during international weapons training near Yavoriv, Ukraine, in 2017. (Photo by Sgt. Anthony Jones, 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team)/U.S. Army

Recently Ukraine has been thrown into the spotlight as Democrats gear up to impeach President Donald Trump. More important, though, is its role in damaging America's relations with Russia, which has resulted in a mini-Cold War that the U.S. needs to end.

Ukraine is in a bad neighborhood. During the 17th century, the country was divided between Poland and Russia, and eventually ended up as part of the Russian Empire. Kiev then enjoyed only the briefest of liberations after the 1917 Russian Revolution, before being reabsorbed by the Soviet Union. It later suffered from a devastating famine as Moscow confiscated food and collectivized agriculture. Ukraine was ravaged during Germany's World War II invasion, and guerrilla resistance to renewed Soviet control continued for years afterwards.

In 1991, the collapse of the U.S.S.R. gave Ukraine another, more enduring chance for independence. However, the new nation's development was fraught: GDP dropped by 60 percent and corruption burgeoned. Ukraine suffered under a succession of corrupt, self-serving, and ineffective leaders, as the U.S., Europe, and Russia battled for influence.

In 2014, Washington and European governments backed a street putsch against the elected, though highly corrupt, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. The Putin government responded by annexing Crimea and backing separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine's Donbass region. Washington and Brussels imposed economic sanctions on Russia and provided military aid to Kiev.

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The West versus Russia quickly became a "frozen" conflict. Moscow reincorporated Crimea into Russia, from which it had been detached in 1954 as part of internal Soviet politics. In the Donbass, more than a score of ceasefires came and went. Both Ukraine and Russia failed to fulfill the 2016 Minsk agreements, which sought to end the conflict.

In excess of 13,000 people, mostly Ukrainians, are known to have died in this war, and some two million have been forced from their homes. The economy of eastern Ukraine has collapsed. Ukraine has suffered through painful economic dislocation and political division. Meanwhile, several hundred Russians are believed to have been killed fighting in the Donbass. Western sanctions have damaged Russia's weak economy. And although the majority of Crimeans probably wanted to join Russia, opposition activists and journalists have been abducted, brutalized, and/or imprisoned. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been closed and Tartars have been persecuted.

The most important geopolitical impact has been to poison Russia's relations with the West. Moscow's aggressions against Ukraine cannot be justified, but the U.S. and Europe did much to create the underlying suspicion and hostility. Recently declassified documents reveal the degree to which Western officials misled Moscow about their intention to expand NATO. Allied support for adding Georgia and Ukraine, which would have greatly expanded Russian vulnerability, generated a particularly strong reaction in Moscow. The dismemberment of Serbia with no consideration of Russia's interests was another irritant, along with Western support for "color revolutions" elsewhere, including in Tbilisi. The ouster of Yanukovych finally triggered Putin's brutal response.

Washington and Brussels apparently did not view their policies as threatening to Russia. However, had Moscow ousted an elected Mexican president friendly to America, while inviting the new government to join the Warsaw Pact, and worked with a coalition of Central American states to divert Mexican trade from the U.S., officials in Washington would not have been pleased. They certainly wouldn't have been overly concerned about juridical niceties in responding.

This explains (though does not justify) Russia's hostile response. Subsequent allied policies then turned the breach in relations into a gulf. The U.S. and European Union imposed a series of economic sanctions. Moreover, Washington edged closer to military confrontation with its provision of security assistance to Kiev. Moscow responded by challenging America from Syria to Venezuela.

It also began moving towards China. The two nations' differences are many and their relationship is unstable. However, as long as their antagonism towards Washington exceeds their discomfort with each other, they will cooperate to block what they see as America's pursuit of global hegemony.

Why is the U.S. entangled in the Ukrainian imbroglio? During the Cold War, Ukraine was one of the fabled "captive nations," backed by vigorous advocacy from Ukrainian Americans. After the Soviet Union collapsed, they joined other groups lobbying on behalf of ethnic brethren to speed NATO's expansion eastward. Security policy turned into a matter of ethnic solidarity, to be pursued irrespective of cost and risk.

To more traditional hawks who are always seeking an enemy, the issue is less pro-Ukraine than anti-Russia. Mitt Romney, the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nominee, improbably attacked Russia as America's most dangerous adversary. Hence the GOP's counterproductive determination to bring Kiev into NATO. Originally Washington saw the transatlantic alliance as a means to confront the Soviet menace; now it views the pact as a form of charity.

After the Soviet collapse, the U.S. pushed NATO eastward into nations that neither mattered strategically nor could be easily protected, most notably in the Balkans and Baltics. Even worse were Georgia and Ukraine, security black holes that would bring with them ongoing conflicts with Russia, possibly triggering a larger war between NATO and Moscow.

Ukraine never had been a matter of U.S. security. For most of America's history, the territory was controlled by either the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. Washington's Cold War sympathies represented fraternal concerns, not security essentials. Today, without Kiev's aid, the U.S. and Europe would still have overwhelming conventional forces to be brought into any conflict with Moscow. However, adding Ukraine to NATO would increase the risk of a confrontation with a nuclear armed power. Russia's limitations when it comes to its conventional military would make a resort to nuclear weapons more likely in any conflict.

Nevertheless, George W. Bush's aggressively neoconservative administration won backing for Georgian and Ukrainian membership in NATO and considered intervening militarily in the Russo-Georgian war. However, European nations that feared conflict with Moscow blocked plans for NATO expansion, which went into cold storage. Although alliance officials still officially backed membership for Ukraine, it remains unattainable so long as conflict burns hot with Russia.

In the meantime, Washington has treated Ukraine as a de facto military ally, offering economic and security assistance. The U.S. has provided $1.5 billion for Ukrainian training and weapons, including anti-tank Javelin missiles. Explained Obama administration defense secretary Ashton Carter: "Ukraine would never be where it is without that support from the United States."

Equally important, the perception of U.S. backing made the Kiev government, headed by President Petro Poroshenko, less willing to pursue a diplomatic settlement with Russia. Thus did Ukraine, no less than Russia, almost immediately violate the internationally backed Minsk accord.

Kiev's role as a political football highlights the need for Washington to pursue an enduring political settlement with Russia. European governments are growing restless; France has taken the lead in seeking better relations with Moscow. Germany is unhappy with U.S. attempts to block the planned Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky has campaigned to end the conflict.

Negotiators for Russia, Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe recently met in Minsk to revive the agreement previously reached in the Belarus capital. They set an election schedule in the contested east, to be followed by passage of Ukrainian legislation to grant the region greater autonomy and separatists legal immunity. Despite strong opposition from nationalists, passage is likely since Zelensky's party holds a solid legislative majority.

Many challenges remain, but the West could aid this process by respecting Russian security concerns. The U.S. and its allies should formally foreclose Ukraine's membership in the transatlantic alliance and end lethal military aid. After receiving those assurances, Moscow would be expected to resolve the Donbass conflict, presumably along the lines of Minsk: Ukraine protects local autonomy while Russia exits the fight. Sanctions against Russia would be lifted. Ukrainians would be left to choose their economic orientation, since the country would likely be split between east and west for some time to come. The West would accept Russia's control of Crimea while refusing to formally recognize the conquest -- absent a genuinely independent referendum with independent monitors.

Such a compromise would be controversial. Washington's permanent war lobby would object. Hyper-nationalistic Ukrainians would double down on calling Zelensky a traitor. Eastern Europeans would complain about appeasing Russia. However, such a compromise would certainly be better than endless conflict.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire.


cka2nd 12 hours ago

I credit Mr. Bandow for his largely fair and accurate description of the events in Ukraine of five years ago, and for his ultimate policy proposal for the US to extricate itself from its close involvement in the area. However, I'm a little confused by what exactly the author means by "Moscow's aggressions against Ukraine" and "Putin's brutal response" (aside from the treatment of dissidents and journalists as he specifically mentioned) to the Maidan Revolution.

Was it aggressive and brutal for Russia to support separatists in the Donbass who were facing the prospect of legal discrimination and violence by a criminal, neo-fascist government in Kiev, not to mention de-industrialization, the gutting of the agriculture sector and the forced economic migration of an enormous number of its young workers (assuming that Ukraine's economic deal with the EU followed the script of every other Easter European's country's deal with the EU)? If Yanukovych had fled to the Donbass and proclaimed himself still the freely elected (though certainly corrupt) President of the nation, Russia's support for the region would have even had a shiny brass legal fig leaf, wouldn't it?

As for the supposed "conquest" of Crimea, that's a rather strong word to use considering that all of two members of the Ukrainian military were killed, and 60-80 of them detained, while 15,000 defected to Russia. Compared to the violence in Kiev and Odessa, what happened in Crimea almost qualifies as a bloodless coup. But then Mr. Bandow shies away from using the word "hegemony" to describe the foreign policy of the United States, figuratively putting the word in the mouths of those bad men (which they are) in Moscow and Beijing. It's a pity that Mr. Bandow felt the need to make linguistic concessions to the foreign policy establishment in what was otherwise a useful and balanced piece.

minsredmash 9 hours ago
Even though the overall idea of ending the sponsoring of the conflict by Washington is plausible there are a number of shortcomings in the article to put it mildly. I realize though that the author has to make Washington look innocent and Russia look bad to escape the danger of being stigmatized as a pro-Russian traitor.
EliteCommInc. 8 hours ago
I understand why you want to thread the needle. After the invasions, having to add more failure or at the very least recognition of dysfunction to our foreign policy choices and consequences is a bitter pill. But as you note had the US and the EU seriously had the desire to add the Ukraine into the western European sphere of influence, they could have offered a better deal on oil - they didn't.

I think we have got to stop accusing the then existing government of corruption. As your own article states, the history of unstable governance with accompanying "corruption" seems a staple and nonunique.

And as is the case in developing countries, what we call corruption is a cultural staple of how business and affairs are conducted. Whatever the issues, the Ukrainian public was not overly beset by the results so as to spontaneously riot.

How the civil unrest spun out of control the second time in ten years, can be linked directly to US and EU involvement.

https://washingtonsblog.com...

https://thewashingtonstanda...

It is a deeply held belief that democracy is a system that by definition a generally acceptable path forward. That belief is false as democracy is still comprised of human beings. And democracy in their hands is no "cure all". It can be a turbulent and jerky bureaucratic maze process that pleases no one and works over time.

The US didn't accomplish it without violence until after more than 130 years, when the native populations were finally subdued. And as for a system that embodied equal treatment to similar circumstance -- we are still at it. But a violent revolution every ten years certainly isn't the most effective road to take.
-----------------

Why we insistent on restarting the cold war is unclear to me save that it served to create a kind of strategic global clarity Though what that means would troublesome because Russia's ole would now be as a developing democratic state as opposed to a communist monolith. And that means unfettered from her satellites and empowered by more capital markets her role as adversary would be more adroit. As time after time, Ores Putin has appeared the premier diplomat for peace and stability in situations in which the US was engaged or encouraging violence.(the Ukraine). I certainly don't think that our relations with Russia or China are a to be kumbaya love fests, there is still global competition and there's no reason to pretend it would be without tensions. But seriously, as a democratic/capital market player -- there really was no way to contain Russia.
----------------------

Given what we experienced during 2007 --- corruption comes in a mryiad of guises.

timoth3y 7 hours ago • edited
The Ukraine situation is complex to be certain, but ending military aid and letting Russia clean up seems like a bad idea.

This week we saw Russian forces occupy US bases abandoned when Trump ordered our troops to withdraw from the Turkish border. And now the author is arguing we should do something similar in the Ukraine.

When did Russian appeasement become so important to conservative foreign policy?

kouroi timoth3y 3 hours ago
Mate, Russians were in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government. US troops are there illegally (no Congress mandate, no international mandate, no invitation). US is an occupying, destabilizing, terrorist protecting force in Syria and Americans should look beyond their self esteem before commenting on this "shameful" retreat. US does not have the right to put its troops wherever it fancies.

This win or loose mentality will be the death of you. Who do you think is threatening the US, when it has the biggest moats protecting its shores? The only thing that is happening is that the hegemonic role, that of controlling everyone's economy for its own elites benefit is being denied.

This is what you are complaining mate, the the rich Americans cannot get richer? Do you think they will share with you, or that, like the good English boys of the past, you will not be able to land a job with East India Co. and despoil the natives for a while?

Doug Wallis 6 hours ago
If the US were smart then they would lead some sort of negotiation where eastern Europe and Ukraine and Russia were allowed only mutually agreed defensive weapons systems. A demilitarization of say 200 miles on each side of the Russia border. The strategy should be to encourage trade between Eastern Europe and Russia where Russia has influence but is not threatening. It may be slow to build that trust but the real question is whether the US and Europe and NATO want peace with Russia or whether they are using fear of Russia to keep eastern Europe united with the US and Europe. This may be the case but the future will have China as a greater threat than Russia (China will even be a threat to Russia). Any shift in Russian relations will take decades of building trust on both sides.
tweets21 6 hours ago
Good article and excellent history of facts. If I recall during the last Bush administration W hosted a Putin and his then spouse, at a visit at his ranch. Putin informed W," the Ukraine belongs to Russia. end of sentence.
Disqus10021 5 hours ago
The author forgot the critical role of Sevastopol in the Crimea. It is Russia's only warm water port and there was no way that it was going to allow this area to become a NATO naval base. Secretary of State Clinton and her sidekick for Ukraine, Victoria Nuland should have known this before they started supporting the overthrow of the pro-Russia government in Kiev.

If you look at a historical atlas, you won't find an independent country called Ukraine before 1991. When my parents were born, near what is now called Lviv, the area was called Galicia and Lemberg was its provincial capital. A gold medal issued in 1916 in honor of Franz Josef's 85th birthday noted that he was the Kaiser of Austria, Hungary, Galicia and Lodomeria.

When the old Soviet Union agreed to allow East and West Germany to reunify, it was with the understanding that NATO would not extend membership to former Soviet block countries and that there would be no NATO bases in these areas either. NATO and the US broke their oral commitment to Russia a few years later.

The US should get out of the business of trying to spread democracy in third world countries and interfering in the affairs of foreign governments. We can't afford to be the policeman of the world. We don't even have the ability to make many of our own central cities safe for Americans. Think Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans and Detroit, all four of which appear on Wikipedia's list of the 50 murder capitals of the world (per thousand population).

kouroi Disqus10021 3 hours ago
It is not for the sake of spreading democracy mate, but to control those economies for the benefit of US economic elite.
Sid Finster 4 hours ago
"This explains (though does not justify) Russia's hostile response."

For the love of Pete, will TAC quit with offering limited concessions to the neocon position in an attempt to appear "serious" and "reasonable".

The United States formented an armed coup in Ukraine spearheaded by Nazis.

[Oct 15, 2019] Bolton Opposed Ukraine Investigations; Called Giuliani A Hand Grenade

Oct 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Bolton Opposed Ukraine Investigations; Called Giuliani "A Hand Grenade" by Tyler Durden Tue, 10/15/2019 - 12:25 0 SHARES

Former national security adviser John Bolton was 'so alarmed' by efforts to encourage Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and 2016 election meddling that he told an aide, Fiona Hill, to alert White House lawyers, according to the New York Times .

On Monday, Hill told House investigators that Bolton got into a heated confrontation on July 10 with Trump's EU ambassador, Gordon D. Sondland, who was working with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate Democrats. Hill said that Bolton told her to notify the top attorney for the National Security Council about the 'rogue' effort by Sondland, Giuliani and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

"I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up," Bolton apparently told Hill to tell the lawyers.

It was not the first time Mr. Bolton expressed grave concerns to Ms. Hill about the campaign being run by Mr. Giuliani. " Giuliani's a hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up, " Ms. Hill quoted Mr. Bolton as saying during an earlier conversation.

The testimony revealed in a powerful way just how divisive Mr. Giuliani's efforts to extract damaging information about Democrats from Ukraine on President Trump's behalf were within the White House. Ms. Hill, the senior director for European and Russian affairs, testified that Mr. Giuliani and his allies circumvented the usual national security process to run their own foreign policy efforts, leaving the president's official advisers aware of the rogue operation yet powerless to stop it. - NYT

When Hill confronted Sondland, he told her that he was 'in charge' of Ukraine, "a moment she compared to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.'s declaration that he was in charge after the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt, according to those who heard the testimony," according to the Times.

Hill says she asked Sondland on whose authority he was in charge of Ukraine, to which he replied 'the president.' She would later leave her post shortly before a July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president which is currently at the heart of an impeachment inquiry.

Meanwhile, the Times also notes that "House Democrats widened their net in the fast-paced inquiry by summoning Michael McKinley, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who abruptly resigned last week, to testify Wednesday."

Career diplomats have expressed outrage at the unceremonious removal of Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch from Ukraine after she came under attack by Mr. Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr. and two associates who have since been arrested on charges of campaign violations.

The interviews indicated that House Democrats were proceeding full tilt with their inquiry despite the administration's declaration last week that it would refuse to cooperate with what it called an invalid and unconstitutional impeachment effort. - NYT

Three other Trump admin officials are scheduled to speak with House investigators this week, including Sondland - who is now set to appear on Thursday. On Tuesday, deputy assistant secretary of state George Kent will testify, while on Friday, Laura K. Cooper - a a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia policy, will speak with lawmakers as well.


Et Tu Brute , 20 minutes ago link

Why are we still even hearing from that human excrement?

janus , 22 minutes ago link

Looks like we have our whistleblower. My only question is, how does one whistle with such a bristly moustache draping their hairlip?

So now we have Mr. Neocon and Mr. Liddle Kidz conjugating as the strangest of bedfellows? How will this play to their respective bases? Are we to assume these people think this nations top law enforcement agent (POTUS) is to abdicate his duties therewith just because the criminal is (at least according to our two tiered justice system) supposed to be beyond reproach?

Mr. Bolton, bright and determined as he is, has hitched his wagon to mad mare galloping full tilt over a precipice.

Looking for a return of uranium one to the headlines soon. In due time we will stich this Russia/Ukraine narrative back together from a patchwork of facts. You traitors are fucked...royally fucked...and you know it.

So, Mr bolton, explain to us in simple terms how you appraise America's security and her related interests. Your camp is in eclipse.

John Bolton:

"I was appauled...just flabbergasted...that the president was concerned that our intelligence apparatus was politicized to the extent that its highest echelons were arrayed in an attempt to subvert a lawful and legitimate election. Never mind that six other nations were tasked with abetting this treasonous plot...this is an outrage!!! The whole point of intelligence agencies is to skirt the law with impunity, and once we (the unelected permanent breacracy) tell one of our minions like Biden or Hillary that they're permanently immune from prosecution, we can't have some earnest pact of Patriots running around demanding law and order."

What a sorry bunch of cretians.

We were so close...so close...to losing it all. But since the enemy is making clear we're playing zero sum, we're going to end up with everything.

Brace yourself, California. If I were you, I'd study the legal framework of Reconstruction. Your plight will be of a kind. Your state has been engaged in a systematic attempt to overthrow the government. Your leaders will be appointed for a generation after this all comes out. Don't look to Beijing to save you...they kinda have their hands full.

Janus

Treavor , 17 minutes ago link

He is a criminal involved in Ukraine weapons deals the yal get the piece that is why they are mad lost $$$$$$

Mimir , 2 minutes ago link

Clearly a criminal among criminals.

MrAToZ , 26 minutes ago link

Deep state arms skim meister Bolton. Never enough bodies for this "patroit."

Infinityx2 , 26 minutes ago link

So, I guess Bolton is no longer collecting free money like Hunter Biden was. I get it now how all these politicians have kids overseas and open foreign corporations which our tax money goes in to by way of cutting deals overseas public officials to line their pockets with our money. This how they get into government poor and become very rich! Giuliani is pointing this fact out to the public with Trump and the swamp HATES IT!

The public now knows how these corrupt PUBLIC OFFICIALS in America have been fleecing the tax payers. This is a major hit on the swamp.

Trump & Giuliani we're behind you thank you for showing us how the swamp has been ******* us for all these years.

One-Hung-Lo , 30 minutes ago link

Bolton should have never been allowed to enter the White House and I am not sure about Giuliani either as I kinda feel like he is borderline senile.

moe_reeves , 32 minutes ago link

If Biden is guilty, Giuliani is not.

frankthecrank , 34 minutes ago link

Understand that the reason Schitt head won't allow public hearings is because the former Ambassador to Ukraine--Volker, shot this whole **** fest down when he testified. There is no "there" there.

Bolton and the others are crying because of Trump's pull out. The left jumped on the war bandwagon under Billary a long time ago. Necons work both parties.

John_Coltrane , 37 minutes ago link

If Bolton dislikes Guiliani that's the best endorsement of Rudy I can imagine. Bolton is a complete warmongering traitor who, like McShitstain, desires a nice case of brain cancer.

Go Rudy, expose the corrupt Demonrats! We deplorables love human hand grenades. That's why we elected the Donald, and you apparently are the perfect lawyer for our great God emperor.

Archeofuturist , 15 minutes ago link

You can bet that the piggies are squealing because it's more than just the Dems who are neck deep in the ****. Lotta funky stuff went down in Ukraine.

Buster84 , 55 minutes ago link

Sounds like Bolton may have some dirty laundry he is wanting to cover up.

AnnimaTday , 50 minutes ago link

"Schiff simply does not have the gravitas that a weighty procedure such as impeachment requires," Biggs wrote in an opinion piece for Fox News. "He has repeatedly shown incredibly poor judgment. He has persistently and consistently demonstrated that he has such a tremendous bias and animus against Trump that he will say anything and accept any proffer of even bogus evidence to try to remove the president from office."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/125-house-republicans-co-sponsor-resolution-to-censure-schiff-over-parody-reading-of-trump-zelensky-call

[Oct 15, 2019] DC's Atlantic Council Raked in Funding from Hunter Biden's Corruption-Stained Ukrainian Employer While Courting His VP Father

Both EuroMaydan cope d'état and the civil war in Ukraine was unleashed with the help and encouragement from Washington, DC because it suits geopolitical goals of the USA in the region.
Notable quotes:
"... As the furor over "Ukrainegate" continues, Biden and his allies are soldiering ahead, insisting that scrutiny of his activities in Ukraine constitute nothing more than a vast right-wing conspiracy. ..."
"... So the Russiagate claims against Russia were generated by cold warriors to justify a warmer war against Russia. Poor Hunter was caught in the graft that surrounds the US's relationship with Ukraine. ..."
"... Burisma has been described at Moon Of Alabama as a money-laundering entity. ..."
"... I suspect that these NGO non-profits such as the Atlantic Council are simply fronts for the U.S. intelligence community. ..."
"... The "King of Orange" is still publicly boring holes in the hull of the Ship of State and nothing happens except Dims and Repugs claim some honor in joining to condemn a foreign EU allied country for doing what "The King of Orange" approved that he do. ..."
"... The whole Ukraine story is an enormous blunder for the West . not only did it give Russia the opportunity to reclaim Crimea but the West now also has to finance a corrupt, unstable and bankrupt country. Not funny ! ..."
"... Excellent research. The deep state is indeed international and takes care of its own. Christopher Hunter, who, after Trump's election, resigned from the DOJ, then ran unsuccessfully as a Democratic candidate for Congress, was then parachuted into the Atlantic Council as senior fellow. He then proceeded to provide expert advice to Al Jazeera about why Trump should be impeached. So you now have the US State Department paying $1 million tax dollars to the Atlantic Council, at least one member of which is using his "expertise" to impeach President Trump. ..."
"... Dmitri Alperovitch, Hillary's own Russian Head of Crowdstrike and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, went to great lengths to prove that RUSSIANS!!! had hacked into Ukrainian artillery, and claimed the same methodology was used to prove that RUSSIANS!!! had hacked into the DNC ..."
"... These were Crowdstrike's bonafides (and thus no reason to look closely at the DNC servers). Of course, it later turned out that the Russians had NOT hacked Ukrainian artillery, Crowdstrike had lied, and hacking of the DNC was more likely initially done by Crowdstrike/ New Knowledge and the Atlantic Council, not the Russians. ..."
"... Think tanks should be responsible, with jail times and fines, for the discord they sow. ..."
"... The UK seizure of the 23mil was not accidental, i expect the US had all the banks of Europe watching this guys asset for this leverage. So they freeze his money, open a criminal investigation and put him on a wanted list. ..."
"... Just a couple weeks later Biden joins the board. This was a State Dept/CIA play. ..."
"... They went to Zlochevsky or the oligarch behind him and presented them with the only way out of ruin. Several months later, UK unfreezes 23mil and closes the case. USAID comes calling on Burisma, Atlantic Council attaches themselves. This was a well planned takeover and Biden was a beneficiary, but doing the bidding of the hidden hands. ..."
Oct 14, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

W ith its relentless focus on corruption in Russia and Ukraine, the Atlantic Council has distinguished itself from other top-flight think tanks in Washington. Over the past several years, it has held innumerable conferences and panel discussions, issued a string of reports, and published literally hundreds of essays on Russia's "kleptocracy" and the scourge of Kremlin disinformation.

At the same time, this institution has posed as a faithful partner to Ukraine's imperiled democracy, organizing countless programs on the urgency of economic reforms to tamp down on corruption in the country.

But behind the curtain, the Atlantic Council has initiated a lucrative relationship with a corruption-tainted Ukrainian gas company, the Burisma Group, that is worth as much as $250,000 a year. The partnership has paid for lavish conferences in Monaco and helped bring Burisma's oligarchic founder out of the cold.

This alliance has remained stable even as official Washington goes to war over allegations by President Donald Trump and his allies that former Vice President Joseph Biden fired a Ukrainian prosecutor to defend his son's handsomely compensated position on Burisma's board.

As Biden parries Trump's accusations, some of the former vice president's most ardent defenders are emerging from the halls of the Atlantic Council, which featured Biden as a star speaker at its awards ceremonies over the years. These advocates include Michael Carpenter , Biden's longtime foreign policy advisor and specialist on Ukraine, who has taken to the national media to support his embattled boss.

Even as Burisma's trail of influence-buying finds its way into front page headlines, the Atlantic Council's partnership with the company is scarcely mentioned. Homing in on the partisan theater of "Ukrainegate" and tuning out the wider landscape of corruption, the Beltway press routinely runs quotes from Atlantic Council experts on the scandal without acknowledging their employer's relationship with Hunter Biden's former employer.

This case of obvious cronyism has not been overlooked because the Atlantic Council is a bit player, but because of its success in leveraging millions from foreign governments, the arms and energy industries, and Western-friendly oligarchs to bring its influence to bear in the nation's capital.

NATO's Think Tank in Washington

The Atlantic Council functions as the semi-official think tank of NATO in Washington. As such, it cultivates relationships with well-established policymakers who take a hard line against Russia and support the treaty organization's perpetual expansion.

Biden has been among the think tank's most enthusiastic and well-placed allies.

In 2011, then-Vice President Biden delivered the keynote address at the Atlantic Council's distinguished leadership awards. He returned to the think tank again in 2014 for another keynote at its "Toward A Europe Whole and Free" conference, which was dedicated to expanding NATO's influence and countering "Russian aggression." Throughout the event, speakers like Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser, sniped at President Barack Obama for his insufficiently bellicose posture toward Russia, while former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright fretted over polls showing low public support for U.S. interventionism overseas.

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In his own comments , Biden emphasized the need to power Europe with non-Russian sources of natural gas. This provided a prime opportunity to Ukrainian suppliers like Burisma and U.S. energy titans. Many of these energy companies, from Chevron to Noble Energy, also happen to be top donors to the Atlantic Council.

"This would be a game-changer for Europe, in my view, and we're ready to do everything in our power to help it happen," Biden promised his audience.

Joe Biden, second from right, while U.S. vice president, at 2011 Atlantic Council distinguished leadership awards ceremony.

At the time, the Atlantic Council was pushing to ramp up the proxy war against pro-Russian forces in Ukraine. In 2015, for instance, the think tank helped prepare a proposal for arming the Ukrainian military with offensive weaponry like Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Given that the Atlantic Council has been funded by the two manufacturers of the Javelin system, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, this created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. In fact, the think tank presented its Distinguished Business Leadership Award to Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson that same year.

Dubious arrangements like these are not limited to arms manufacturers. Anders Aslund, a neoliberal economist who helps oversee the Atlantic Council's programming on Russia and Eastern Europe, was quietly paid by a consortium of Latvian banks to write an October 2017 paper highlighting the supposed progress they had made in battling corruption.

Aslund was asked to write the piece by Sally Painter, a longtime lobbyist for Latvian financial institutions who was appointed to the Atlantic Council board in 2017. At the time, one of those banks was seeking access to the U.S. market and facing allegations that it had engaged in money laundering.

Pay-for-play collaborations have helped grow the Atlantic Council's annual revenue from $2 million to over $20 million in the past decade. In almost every case, the think tank has churned out policy prescriptions that seem suited to its donors' interests.

Government contributors to the Atlantic Council include Gulf monarchies, the U.S. State Department and various Turkish interests.

... ... ...

Among the think tank's top individual contributors is Victor Pinchuk, one of the wealthiest people in Ukraine and a prolific donor to the Clinton Foundation. Pinchuk donated $8.6 million to the Clintons' non-profit throughout Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

Asked if Pinchuk was lobbying the State Department on Ukraine, his personal foundation told The Wall Street Journal , "this cannot be seen as anything but a good thing."

Obama's 'Point Person' on Ukraine

In mainstream media reports about the Bidens, scarcely any attention is given to the critical role that Joe Biden and other Obama administration officials played in the 2013-2014 Maidan revolt that replaced a fairly elected , Russian-oriented government with a Western vassal. In a relatively sympathetic New Yorker profile of Hunter Biden, for example, the regime change operation was described by reporter Adam Entous as merely "public protests."

During the height of the "Revolution of Dignity" that played out in Kiev's Maidan Square, then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland boasted that the U.S. had "invested $5 billion" since 1991 into Ukrainian civil society. On a December 2013 tour of the Maidan, Nuland personally handed out cookies to protesters alongside Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time.

In a phone conversation that leaked two months later, the two U.S. diplomats could be heard plotting out the future government of the country, discussing Ukrainian politicians as though they were chess pieces. "I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience," Nuland said, essentially declaring Arseniy Yatsenyuk the next prime minister. Frustrated with the European Union's reluctance to inflame tensions with Moscow, Nuland exclaimed, "Fuck the EU."

By February 2014, the Maidan revolt had succeeded in overthrowing President Viktor Yanukovich with the help of far-right ultra-nationalist street muscle. With a new, U.S.-approved government in power, Biden assumed a personal role in dictating Ukraine's day-to-day affairs.

"No one in the U.S. government has wielded more influence over Ukraine than Vice President Joe Biden," Foreign Policy noted . The Atlantic Council also described Biden as "the point person on Ukraine in the Obama administration."

"Ukraine was the top, or one of the top three, foreign policy issues we were concentrating on," said Carpenter, Biden's foreign policy adviser. "[Biden] was front and center."

Biden made his first visit to the post-Maidan government of Ukraine in April 2014, just as Kiev was launching its "anti-terrorist operation" against separatists who broke off from the new, NATO-oriented Ukraine and its nationalist government and formed so-called people's republics in the Russophone Donbass region. The fragmentation of the country and its grinding proxy war flowed directly from the regime-change operation that Biden helped oversee.

Addressing the parliament in Kiev, Biden declared that "corruption can have no place in the new Ukraine," stating that the "United States has also been a driving force behind the IMF, working to provide a multi-billion package to help Ukraine."

That same month, Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Burisma. Hunter Biden starred at one of Burisma's energy conferences in Monaco, which are today sponsored by the Atlantic Council.

Burisma Recruits Hunter Biden

The ouster of Yanukovych put the founder and president of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, in a delicate spot. Zlochevsky had served as the environment minister under Yanukovych, handing out gas licenses to cronies. Having watched the president flee Ukraine for his life, currying favor with the Obama administration was paramount for Zlochevsky.

He was also desperate to get out of legal trouble. At the time, a corruption investigation in the U.K. had resulted in the freezing of $23 million of Zlochevsky's assets. Then, in August 2014, the oligarch was forced to follow Yanukovych into exile after being accused of illegally enriching himself.

The need to refurbish Burisma's tattered image, as well as his own, prompted Zlochevsky to resort to a tried and true tactic for shadowy foreign entities: forking over large sums of money to win friends in Washington. Hunter Biden and the Atlantic Council were soon to become two of his best friends.

Hunter Biden was no stranger to trading on his father's name for influence. He had served on the board of Amtrak, the train line his father famously rode more than 8,000 times, earning himself the nickname "Amtrak Joe." Somehow, he also rose to senior vice president at MBNA, the bank that was the top contributor to Joe Biden's Senate campaigns.

Moreover, the vice president's son reaped a board position at the National Democratic Institute, a U.S.-funded "democracy promotion" organization that was heavily involved in pushing regime change in Ukraine. And then there was Burisma, which handed him a position on its board despite his total lack of experience in the energy industry and in Ukrainian affairs.

Hunter Biden tried to repay the $50,000-a-month gig Zlochevsky had handed him by enlisting a top D.C. law firm, Boies, Schiller, and Flexner, where he served as co-counsel, to help "improve [Burisma's] corporate governance." By the following January, Zlochevsky's assets were unfrozen by the U.K.

Back in Washington, the arrangement between the son of the vice president and a less than scrupulous Ukrainian oligarch was raising eyebrows. During a May 13, 2014, press conference, Matt Lee of the Associated Press grilled State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki about Hunter Biden's role on Burisma's board.

"Does this building diplomatically have any concerns about potential perceptions of conflict or cronyism – which is what you've often accused the Russians of doing?" Lee asked Psaki.

"No, he's a private citizen," Psaki responded, referring to Hunter Biden.

In a December 2015 op-ed, the editorial board of The New York Times took both Bidens to task for the unseemly business arrangement: "It should be plain to Hunter Biden that any connection with a Ukrainian oligarch damages his father's efforts to help Ukraine. This is not a board he should be sitting on."

For a paper that had firmly supported the installation of a U.S.-aligned government in Kiev, this was a striking statement.

Hunter Biden maintained that he had only a brief conversation with his father about his work at Burisma. "Dad said, 'I hope you know what you are doing,' and I said, 'I do,'" Hunter recalled to The New Yorker .

Despite his constant focus on Ukraine, the elder Biden claimed this September that he never spoke to his son about his business dealings in the country.

Disaster for Ukrainians, Boon for the Bidens

On Jan. 12, 2017, the criminal probes of Zlochevsky and Burisma were officially closed under the watch of a new Ukrainian prosecutor.

Less than a week later, Biden returned to Ukraine to make his final speech as vice president. By this point, three years after the Maidan uprising overthrew Yanukovych, it was clear that the national project the vice president personally had presided over was a calamitous failure.

As even the Atlantic Council's Aslund was willing to admit , Ukraine had become the poorest country in Europe. The country had also become the top recipient of remittances in Europe, with a staggering percentage of its population migrating abroad in search of work.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International stated : "Ukraine is descending into chaos of uncontrolled use of force by radical [far-right] groups. Under these conditions, no person in Ukraine may feel safe." As the country's proxy conflict with pro-Russian separatists dragged on, it transformed into a supermarket for the international arms trade.

Meanwhile, Biden's son Hunter was making a small fortune by simply warming a seat on Burisma's board of directors.

During his 2017 press conference in Kiev, Biden seemed oblivious to the trends that were driving Ukraine into ruin. He encouraged Ukraine's leadership to continue on an IMF-led path of privatization and austerity.

He then urged Kiev to "press forward with energy reforms that are eliminating Ukraine's dependence on Russian gas," once again advancing policy that would serve as a boon to the energy firms plowing their cash into the Atlantic Council.

Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council.

Burisma Recruits the Atlantic Council

Even with Hunter Biden on his company's board, Zlochevsky was still seeking influential allies in Washington. He found them at the Atlantic Council in 2017, literally hours after he was cleared of corruption charges in Ukraine.

On Jan. 19, 2017 -- just two days after the investigation of Zlochevsky ended -- Burisma announced a major "cooperative agreement" with the Atlantic Council. "It became possible to sign a cooperative agreement between Burisma and the Atlantic Council after all charges against Burisma Group companies and its owner [Mykola] Zlochevskyi were withdrawn," the Kyiv Post reported at the time.

The deal was inked by the director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia program, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine named John Herbst.

Since then, Burisma helped bankroll Atlantic Council programming, including an energy security conference held this May in Monaco, where Zlochevsky currently lives.

"[Zlochevsky] invited them purely for whitewashing purposes, to put them on the façade and make this company look nice," Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Action Center, said of the Monaco event to The Financial Times .

At one such conference in Monaco, then-Burisma board member Hunter Biden declared, "One of the reasons that I am proud to be a member of the board at Burisma is that I believe we are trying to figure out the way to create a radical change in the way we look at energy." (Hunter Biden left Burisma with $850,000 in earnings when his father launched his presidential campaign this year).

While the Atlantic Council was bringing Burisma in from the cold, the company was still too toxic for much of the business world to touch.

As The Financial Times noted , the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine had rejected Burisma's application for membership. "We've never worked with them for integrity reasons. Never passed our due diligence," a Western financial institution told the newspaper.

"The company just does not pass the smell test," a businessman in Ukraine told The Financial Times . "Their reputation is far from squeaky clean because of their baggage, the background and attempts to whitewash by bringing in recognizable Western names on to the board."

In fact, a year before the Atlantic Council initiated its partnership with Burisma, the think tank published a paper describing Zlochevsky as "openly on the take" and deriding board members Hunter Biden and former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski as his "trophy foreigners." (Kwasniewski is today a member of the Atlantic Council's international advisory board).

For Herbst, however, Burisma's generosity seemed too hard to resist.

"If there are companies that want to support my work, if those companies are not doing anything that I know to be illegal or unethical, I'll consider their support," Herbst stated in reply to questions about the Burisma partnership from the Ukrainian news site, Hromadske .

"They've been good partners," he added.

Men of Integrity

The Atlantic Council has provided more than just a web of influence for figures like Biden and Zlochevsky. It extended into the Trump administration, through a former employee who served as the president's lead envoy to Ukraine.

On the sidelines of a September 2018 Atlantic Council event in New York City, Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi held a meeting with Kurt Volker, then the State Department's special liaison to Ukraine. A former senior adviser to the Atlantic Council and national security hardliner, Volker had earned praise from Biden as a "solid guy."

At the time, Volker also served as the executive director of the McCain Institute, named for the senator, John McCain, who authored the congressional provision requiring the U.S. to budget 20 percent of all aid to Ukraine for offensive weapons. As I reported in 2017, the McCain Institute's financial backers included the BGR group, whose designated lobbyist, Ed Rogers, was a lobbyist for Raytheon – the company that produced the Javelin missiles that both Volker and the Atlantic Council wanted sold to Ukraine.

Following his abrupt resignation this September, Volker was called to testify before the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on the so-called Ukrainegate affair. There, he defended Biden as "a man of integrity and dedication to our country" who would never be "influenced in his duties as Vice President by money for his son "

Key Biden Adviser Joins Atlantic Council

Throughout Biden's tenure as the "point person" on Ukraine, one figure was constantly by his side: Michael Carpenter, a former Pentagon specialist on Eastern Europe who became a key adviser to Biden on the National Security Council. When Carpenter traveled with Biden to Ukraine in 2015, he helped provide the vice president with talking points throughout his trip.

Once Trump was inaugurated, Carpenter followed fellow members of the Democratic foreign policy apparatus into the think tank world. He accepted a fellowship at the Atlantic Council, and assumed a position as senior director of newly founded Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which provided office space to Biden when he was in Washington.

At the Jan. 23, 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event where Biden made his now-notorious comments about threatening the Ukrainian government with the withdrawal of a one billion dollar loan if it did not fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin – "well son of a bitch, he got fired!" Biden exclaimed – Carpenter was by his side, rattling off tough talking points about Russian interference. [Shokin testified under oath that Biden had him fired because he was investigating Burisma.]

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Since then, Carpenter has remained engaged in Ukrainian politics, throwing his weight behind some of the country's most hardline elements. In July 2018, for instance, he helped welcome Andriy Parubiy , the speaker of the Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), to a series of meetings on Capitol Hill.

Parubiy is the founder of the Social-National Party, which The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson described as "openly neo-fascist." In fact, Parubiy appeared in a Nazi-style uniform, packing a pistol beneath a Wolfsangel symbol on the cover of his Mein Kampf-style memoir, "A View From The Right."

After the Senate meeting with Parubiy, I challenged Carpenter over bringing the far-right politician to Capitol Hill. "Andriy Parubiy is a conservative nationalist who is also a patriot who cares about his country," Carpenter told me. "I don't think he has any neo-Nazi inclinations, nor background." He went on to dismiss the basis of my question as "mostly Russian propaganda."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/bjK1yv-1IO8?feature=oembed

Months later, Carpenter staged a meltdown on Twitter over the incident, fabricating quotes by me, branding me as a "sleeze" [sic] and "pro-Asad and pro-Putin scumbag," while falsely and baselessly claiming I "enlist[ed] RT," the Russian-backed news network, "to do an exposé on him."

Asked by The Grayzone about Carpenter's work for a think tank funded by Burisma while simultaneously involving himself in Biden's political machine, Atlantic Council media relations deputy director Alex Kisling stated, "Council staff and fellows are free to participate in election activity as individuals and on their own time, provided they do so in a way that could not be seen as acting as a representative of the Council or implying Council endorsement of their activity or views. Michael's affiliations and previous service are on our website. (He is not part of our full time staff)."

The Penn Biden Center did not respond to a question on whether it supported Carpenter's work at the Burisma-backed Atlantic Council.

Beltway Press Scrubs Burisma's Ongoing Influence-Buying

As the scrutiny of Biden's dealings in Ukraine intensifies, Carpenter has thrust himself into the media limelight to defend his longtime boss.

In an Oct. 7 Washington Post op-ed denouncing Trump's "smear campaign" against Biden, Carpenter insisted that Biden had gone to great lengths to remove the Ukrainian prosecutor, Shokin, for his failure to take action against Burisma. That evening, Carpenter took to Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC to reinforce the message that Biden moved against "corrupt players" in Ukraine, presumably referring to Burisma.

At no point did he mention that Burisma was funding the think tank that hosted him as a senior fellow.

In publishing an "explainer" purporting to debunk the charges against Biden, the Atlantic Council also failed to mention its ongoing relationship with Burisma. Atlantic Council media relations deputy director Kisling dismissed the non-disclosure, telling The Grayzone , "The Council discloses its funding from Burisma on its website and whenever asked." (Ironically, the Atlantic Council has pushed for greater transparency in political advertising on Facebook, one of the top donors to the think tank).

Perhaps the most absurd omission took place in a GQ article about Ukrainegate by reporter and Russia-watcher Julia Ioffe. In painting Ukraine -- the largest nation entirely located in Europe -- as a "small country" drowning in corruption, Ioffe noted, "the best way to launder one's shady reputation and shine for international investors is to hire big-name Western consultants – as Burisma did."

In the very next paragraph, Ioffe quoted Daniel Fried, a former State Department official now serving as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "It's a country where there's a lot of freelance money and a lot of competing interests," Fried remarked.

Revealingly, Ioffe failed to acknowledge that Fried was one of those "big-named Western consultants" helping to launder Zlochevsky and Burisma's "shady reputation" through the Atlantic Council.

In fact, Fried was photographed in a one-on-one meeting with Burisma advisor Vadim Pozharskyi at a September 2018 Atlantic Council conference in New York City.

As the furor over "Ukrainegate" continues, Biden and his allies are soldiering ahead, insisting that scrutiny of his activities in Ukraine constitute nothing more than a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Meanwhile, the Beltway press shrugs at Burisma's buying of influence at a powerful think tank intertwined with Biden's political operation.

Russia might be a "kleptocracy" and Ukraine might endemically corrupt, but in Washington, this is all business as usual.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling " Republican Gomorrah ," " Goliath ," " The Fifty One Day War " and " The Management of Savagery ." He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including " Killing Gaza " and " Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie ." Blumenthal founded the Grayzone Project in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.


Robert , October 15, 2019 at 13:50

Thank you for the excellent research. I'll add that the Department of State's contribution to Atlantic Council is $1 million annually of US taxpayer dollars. Christopher Hunter, a lawyer with the DOJ when Trump was elected, resigned and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat, then parachuted into Atlantic Council as a Senior Fellow. Several weeks ago, in an interview with Al Jazeera, he affirmed that Trump should definitely be impeached. Although introduced as a Fellow of the Atlantic Council, he did nothing to indicate that he was in a conflict of interest position because of Burisma donations to the Council or that his opinions were not those of the Atlantic Council. Essentially, US tax $$ are being used to promote the impeachment of the President of the United States.

Karl Brantz , October 15, 2019 at 12:27

Excellent investigative journalism from Max Blumenthal and Grayzone! The death and destruction wrought in Ukraine by both U.S. political party operatives is appalling, as is their horrendous murders of civilians and combatants alike throughout the world today. That journalists go forth every day to document this atrocious conduct, risking their freedom and their lives to uncover the truth is an amazing and courageous service to the citizens of our world. I have nothing but praise for them. I only wish that some one would turn their piercing perception and integrity upon the apparently untouchable yet still festering account of the truth of the 9/11 events. All the facts are available and many of the perps are still walking around. I'm dying to know just what was going on as Dick Cheney commandeered the PEOC on that fateful morning. Or what took place at Offutt AFB as the towers were blown to dust in NYC. We've got a fairly good idea thanks to the last 19 years of research and reporting, but this story never seems to rise above the traditional scandal/bribery/corruption/war news that daily rains down upon the hapless plebes.

Bob in Portland , October 15, 2019 at 12:15

More inconvenience for the Atlantic Council: When the DNC claimed that Russia hacked its computers, it never allowed the FBI or any other intelligence agency to examine the computers. Instead, they used a private company, Crowdstrike. CrowdStrike, owned by Dmitri Alperovitch, still is the only known entity to have examined those computers. Dmitri Alperovitch has a chair at the Atlantic Council. Readers here at ConsortiumNews know all the flaws, okay, lies that William Binney uncovered.

So the Russiagate claims against Russia were generated by cold warriors to justify a warmer war against Russia. Poor Hunter was caught in the graft that surrounds the US's relationship with Ukraine.

In World War Two the Nazis ran the fascists in Ukraine who in turn ran Operation Nightingale, the genocidal program to kill the Jews and other ethnic enemies of Berlin's thinkers. After WWII the US, very soon represented by the CIA, supported a rebel force in Ukraine against the USSR. The US also embraced the Ukrainian fascists, being a part of the Republican Heritage Council. Members were imported into the US under the CIA's Crusade For Freedom. Ronald Reagan, the spokesman for CFF, first used his "freedom fighter" describing these Ukrainian fascists with the term later resurrected for the death squads and anti-democratic forces in Latin America.

Burisma has been described at Moon Of Alabama as a money-laundering entity.

Poor Hunter. Welcome to the working week.

Skip Scott , October 15, 2019 at 12:09

This is a great article that gets into the nitty-gritty of UkraineGate. There is no doubt in this day and age that "the Mighty Wurlitzer" will drown out the facts presented here. If Biden becomes too difficult of a sell for the Oligarchy, they have plenty of other servants to choose from.

robert e williamson jr , October 15, 2019 at 11:57

I'm no religious zealot. After 70 years on the planet I'm firmly agnostic and view too many organized religions with great dread., that said I suspect that these NGO non-profits such as the Atlantic Council are simply fronts for the U.S. intelligence community.

If churches tried to get away with what these think tanks do going through millions of dollars to lobby for special interest groups they would surely lose the their tax exempt status. Something I feel very strongly the IRS should investigate also.

Or would they. I suspect the IRS could care less about either type of entity considering that the Service is so under funded it cannot enforce the tax laws on the books, but that story is for a different time.

I keep reading these headlines which seem to cry "surprise, we found corruption here"! Give me a break by now everyone should see it coming.

The "King of Orange" is still publicly boring holes in the hull of the Ship of State and nothing happens except Dims and Repugs claim some honor in joining to condemn a foreign EU allied country for doing what "The King of Orange" approved that he do.

The problem here is not Turkey, my friends, the problem is the U.S. intelligence community and the corrupt think tanks fronts that facilitate their evil machinations.

Thank you Max for the expose' obviously far too many American are fooled by this B.S. stuff that goes on in D.C.

Drew Hunkins , October 15, 2019 at 11:15

The AC is arguably the most potentially dangerous organization in the world today. It's essentially a Bill Kristol neo-conservative outfit that's set on destroying any semblance of an independent Russia. It's closely connected to the Atlanticist Integrationists in Moscow.

The AC's a de facto NATO think [sic] tank that could possibly lead the world to nuclear war. It also totally belies the notion that Putin is somehow under the thumb of Netanyahu.

Eugenie Basile , October 15, 2019 at 11:13

The whole Ukraine story is an enormous blunder for the West . not only did it give Russia the opportunity to reclaim Crimea but the West now also has to finance a corrupt, unstable and bankrupt country. Not funny !

Robert , October 15, 2019 at 11:06

Excellent research. The deep state is indeed international and takes care of its own. Christopher Hunter, who, after Trump's election, resigned from the DOJ, then ran unsuccessfully as a Democratic candidate for Congress, was then parachuted into the Atlantic Council as senior fellow. He then proceeded to provide expert advice to Al Jazeera about why Trump should be impeached. So you now have the US State Department paying $1 million tax dollars to the Atlantic Council, at least one member of which is using his "expertise" to impeach President Trump.

Herman , October 15, 2019 at 10:28

The article notes that Hunter Biden left Ukraine with $850K. Does that include any fees he might have collected as co-counsel noted below?

"Hunter Biden tried to repay the $50,000-a-month gig Zlochevsky had handed him by enlisting a top D.C. law firm, Boies, Schiller, and Flexner, where he served as co-counsel, to help "improve [Burisma's] corporate governance." By the following January, Zlochevsky's assets were unfrozen by the U.K."

Curious.

michael , October 15, 2019 at 07:48

Dmitri Alperovitch, Hillary's own Russian Head of Crowdstrike and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, went to great lengths to prove that RUSSIANS!!! had hacked into Ukrainian artillery, and claimed the same methodology was used to prove that RUSSIANS!!! had hacked into the DNC.

These were Crowdstrike's bonafides (and thus no reason to look closely at the DNC servers). Of course, it later turned out that the Russians had NOT hacked Ukrainian artillery, Crowdstrike had lied, and hacking of the DNC was more likely initially done by Crowdstrike/ New Knowledge and the Atlantic Council, not the Russians.

Think tanks should be responsible, with jail times and fines, for the discord they sow.

Sally Snyder , October 15, 2019 at 07:15

There is a binding treaty between the United States and Ukraine that would serve as a precedent for Donald Trump's request.

Interestingly, the mainstream media in the United States has almost completely ignored this reality their haste to impeach the current president.

Daryl , October 15, 2019 at 04:51

My take is that this Zlochevsky and his energy co. was identified and targeted while he was part of the govt the US helped to overthrow. Rather than the story of a Ukrainian seeking western favor, i suspect he was made an offer he could not refuse.

The UK seizure of the 23mil was not accidental, i expect the US had all the banks of Europe watching this guys asset for this leverage. So they freeze his money, open a criminal investigation and put him on a wanted list.

Just a couple weeks later Biden joins the board. This was a State Dept/CIA play.

They went to Zlochevsky or the oligarch behind him and presented them with the only way out of ruin. Several months later, UK unfreezes 23mil and closes the case. USAID comes calling on Burisma, Atlantic Council attaches themselves. This was a well planned takeover and Biden was a beneficiary, but doing the bidding of the hidden hands.

Jeff Harrison , October 15, 2019 at 00:02

The sarcasm at the end is great. I have only one comment. This piece, like so many others about Ukraine uses the phrase "pro-Russian forces in Ukraine". That's crap. Yeah, they are pro Russian, but more importantly, they are ethnically Russian and when you have a regime in Kiev that is trying to suck up to the US and passing anti Russian and Russian language legislation and breaking all ties to Russia to please their masters in Washington, is it a surprise that those ethnic Russian Ukrainians might look for a champion?

Abby , October 14, 2019 at 23:11

Wow. This article is a must read for people to get up to date on the Ukraine coup. On Hunter and Joe ByeDone's actions after it and the many players involved. Well done, Max!
But Russia right?

[Oct 07, 2019] When it comes to US foreign policy, the unchallenged world record holders for 'second chances' and 'failing upward' are America's neoconservatives.

Oct 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Replying to @BrankoMilan

"When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, the unchallenged world record holders for 'second chances' and 'failing upward' are America's neoconservatives.", Stephen Walt

Actually, many of them should have been considered candidates for war criminals. "Waging the war of agression" was part of the Nuremberg trials. This was the media called euphemistically "the war of choice"!

"When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, the unchallenged world record holders for 'second chances' and 'failing upward' are America's neoconservatives. Beginning in the mid-1990s, this influential network of hard-line pundits, journalists, think tank analysts, and government officials developed, purveyed, and promoted an expansive vision of American power as a positive force in world affairs.

They conceived and sold the idea of invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein and insisted that this bold move would enable the United States to transform much of the Middle East into a sea of pro-American democracies.

What has become of the brilliant strategists who led the nation into such a disastrous debacle? None of their rosy visions have come to pass, and if holding people to account were a guiding principle inside the foreign policy community, these individuals would now be marginal figures commanding roughly the same influence that Charles Lindbergh enjoyed after making naive and somewhat sympathetic statements about Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.",

Walt, S. (2018). The Hell of good intentions: America's foreign policy elite and the decline of US primacy. Straus and Giroux, p. 190.

anne , October 06, 2019 at 07:20 PM

https://twitter.com/BrankoMilan/status/1180792968598474752

Branko Milanovic‏ @BrankoMilan

You would have thought that these cheerleaders of invasion of Iraq and violation of the UN charter would have run far, far away so that we never hear from them again--but no, they are back explaining the world for us and making money doing that.

[ Milanovic was referring to a new column in Project Syndicate that I was confused by before I noticed this reference to the column. Among the points of Milanovic, we find the same self-defeating foreign policy being pushed by the same elite opinion-makers who hurt us so much by taking us to war in Iraq and beyond.

I am thinking this through. ]

[Sep 30, 2019] Looks like Trump at odds with rabid neocons in State, CIA and FBI.

Sep 30, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , September 28, 2019 at 07:20 PM

Outraged, I tell you. Outraged!!

Seems that the opposition press wants us to display mob outrage to make Trump foreign policy for him.

The democrats are painting a picture aimed at handcuffing any attempt to determine if the regime in Kyiv [Saudi ARAMCO, UAE,....]is worth tilting world war over.

A novel approach while Trump at odds with the neocon currents in State, CIA and FBI.

It takes a lot more than some good at grammar NYTimes writer to substantiate claims that allegations against the former VP and his son's cushy Ukraine oligarch job are unsubstantiated. That is work for prosecutors and defense attorneys.

The Biden oligarch links go back to before the Obama neocon [Nuland] coup in 2014 when Biden was VP. Out of context is no reason to make a conclusion.

Why I support impeachment. The evidence will be put out and the solicitors will argue on complete evidentiary lines. It is getting to be anything Trump wants to do they find some phony reason to be outraged.

I did a 20 minute telephone poll today. They called me! You can count on one respondent "strongly opposed" to impeachment for trying to get to the bottom of Biden family corruption.

likbez -> ilsm... , September 28, 2019 at 07:38 PM
ilsm,

Good points.

"A novel approach while Trump at odds with the neocon currents in State, CIA and FBI."

No. Nothing new here. This is just Russiagate II. Same actors, same methods.

But it is unclear to me why they even bothered? Trump folded long ago, In April 2017 to be exact. And before impeachment, his chances in 2020 were far from certain. Especially against Warren.

Also Biden should not even be discussed anymore. At this point he is history.

Warren now is the official frontrunner. Which is probably the only good thing emerging out of this CIA-inspired mess.

ilsm -> likbez... , September 29, 2019 at 05:59 AM
The democrats are in the midst (started when Obama ignored the source of the fallacious dossier which started the FISA spying on a campaign) of a strategic blunder. The polling on Ukrainegate show it is libelously political. Democrat respondents largely see it serious, independents are about 40% and GOP about 30%. This nugatory+, political ambush is not playing well to independents!

No one is asking if this nugatory, political ambush the CIA/democrats are using to run a circus in congress is troubling about Biden. As you say Biden is history, as are the democrats' chances in 2020 for every national office.

+U S Grant used the word nugatory in his memoir.

[Sep 29, 2019] How a Shadow Foreign Policy in Ukraine Prompted an Impeachment Inquiry

This is a classic example of "full of Schiff" jornalism.
Sep 29, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs , September 28, 2019 at 03:22 PM

How a Shadow Foreign Policy in Ukraine Prompted
an Impeachment Inquiry https://nyti.ms/2m0n5aY
NYT - Kenneth P. Vogel, Andrew E. Kramer
and David E. Sanger - September 28

WASHINGTON -- Petro O. Poroshenko was still the president of Ukraine earlier this year when his team sought a lifeline. With the polls showing him in clear danger of losing his re-election campaign, some of his associates, eager to hold on to their own jobs and influence, took steps that could have yielded a signal of public support from a vital ally: President Trump.

Over several weeks in March, the office of Ukraine's top prosecutor moved ahead on two investigations of intense interest to Mr. Trump. One was focused on an oligarch -- previously cleared of wrongdoing by the same prosecutor -- whose company employed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s son. The other dealt with the release by a separate Ukrainian law enforcement agency to the media of information that hurt Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign.

The actions by the prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, did not come out of thin air. They were the first visible results of a remarkable behind-the-scenes campaign to gather and disseminate political dirt from a foreign country, encouraged by Mr. Trump and carried out by his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. In the last week their engagement with Ukraine has prompted a formal impeachment inquiry into whether the president courted foreign interference to hurt a leading political rival.

The story of how Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani operated in Ukraine has emerged gradually in recent months. It was laid out in further detail in the past week in a reconstructed transcript of Mr. Trump's phone call this summer with a new Ukrainian president and in a complaint filed by a whistle-blower inside the United States government.

Along with documents and interviews with a wide variety of people in Ukraine and the United States, the latest revelations show that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani ran what amounted to a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that unfolded against the backdrop of three elections -- this year's vote in Ukraine and the 2016 and 2020 presidential races in the United States.

Despite the findings of United States intelligence agencies and the Justice Department that Russia was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump was driven to seek proof that the meddling was linked to Ukraine and forces hostile to him, even fixating on a fringe conspiracy theory suggesting that Hillary Clinton's missing emails might be found there.

Backed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani, who once aspired to be secretary of state, sought to tar Mr. Biden with unsubstantiated accusations of impropriety, while he and associates working with him in Ukraine on the president's agenda pursued their own personal business interests.

With the political landscape scrambled by Mr. Poroshenko's defeat in April and the arrival of a new cast of Ukrainian officials, the approach pursued by Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump undercut official United States diplomacy.

And the signals sent by Mr. Trump -- long skeptical of the strategic value of backing Ukraine against Russia, its menacing neighbor to the east -- complicated efforts by the new Ukrainian government to fortify itself against Moscow.

The intensifying overlap this summer between Mr. Trump's political agenda in Ukraine and his official foreign policy apparatus is now at the center of an impeachment inquiry that will examine whether the president of the United States directed or encouraged his subordinates to lean on a vulnerable ally for personal political gain.

Among the subjects covered in a subpoena sent Friday by House Democrats to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and demands for depositions from American diplomats was Mr. Trump's decision to freeze a $391 million military aid package to Ukraine this summer not long before his July 25 call with Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who defeated Mr. Poroshenko this spring.

Democrats are also looking into the recall in the spring of the United States ambassador to Kiev, Marie L. Yovanovitch, a career foreign service officer who was seen as insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump by some of his conservative allies. On Friday evening, the State Department's special envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, abruptly resigned, not long after receiving a summons from House Democrats to sit for a deposition in the coming week.

Mr. Trump has dismissed the impeachment investigation as another "witch hunt."

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Giuliani defended his efforts to push the Ukrainians to investigate Mr. Biden, his son, Hunter Biden, and others. He asserted that he was not doing it to try to influence the 2020 presidential election, though Mr. Biden is a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to challenge Mr. Trump.

"I was doing it to dig out information that exculpates my client, which is the role of a defense lawyer," he said.

Mixing Business and Politics

In the months before the steps taken in March on the politically explosive investigations sought by Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani had met at least twice with the man who would become a central figure in his efforts and a target of criticism in both countries: Mr. Lutsenko, 54, Ukraine's top prosecutor.

First at a meeting in New York and later in Warsaw, Mr. Giuliani pushed Mr. Lutsenko for information about -- and investigations into -- a pair of cases of keen interest to his client.

They included the Bidens' activities in Ukraine and the release during the 2016 campaign of incriminating records about Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's campaign chairman. Mr. Giuliani said early this year he had become increasingly convinced that the Manafort records were doctored and disseminated by critics of Mr. Trump to sabotage his campaign, and later used to spur the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

No evidence supports this idea and Mr. Manafort's own retroactive filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act corroborated the Ukrainian documents, which also matched financial records in the United States.

Still, it was not long before Mr. Trump, sensitive to any questions about the legitimacy of his 2016 victory, began echoing Mr. Giuliani's language about what they viewed as the Ukrainian origins of the Russia investigation.

But Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani had also taken a growing interest in the role played by Mr. Biden, as vice president, in the dismissal of a previous Ukrainian prosecutor who had oversight of investigations into an oligarch who had served in a previous Ukrainian government and whose company had employed Hunter Biden. No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the dismissal of that prosecutor, whose ouster was being sought by other Western governments and institutions concerned about corruption in the Ukrainian government.

In their first meeting, in January, Mr. Lutsenko later told people, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Trump and excitedly briefed him on the discussions. And once Mr. Lutsenko's office took procedural steps to advance investigations involving the Manafort records and the oligarch linked to Hunter Biden, Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump and their allies aggressively promoted stories about the developments to conservative journalists at home, further turning a foreign government's action to the president's advantage.

"As Russia Collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter in March, echoing the headline of one of the first such pieces by a Trump-friendly journalist.

Mr. Giuliani had seemed to slide eagerly into his new role. After his hopes of becoming secretary of state were dashed -- in part, former administration officials said, because of his extensive foreign business ties -- he became a personal lawyer for Mr. Trump when the president came under scrutiny by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Mr. Trump was publicly lobbying his own Justice Department for an investigation of Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats. When he got no satisfaction on that score, Mr. Giuliani volunteered to take on the role of independent investigator, empowered by nothing other than Mr. Trump's blessing.

Mr. Giuliani rejected the suggestion that he was interfering in the execution of American foreign policy, noting that Mr. Volker and the State Department eventually helped connect him with a top aide to Mr. Zelensky.

"If they were concerned, I don't think they would ask me to handle a mission like this that's sensitive," he said. "I feel perfectly comfortable with what we did in Ukraine."

Ukraine was familiar ground to Mr. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and presidential candidate who had built a thriving consulting and security business.

Mr. Giuliani's activity on behalf of Mr. Trump allowed him to maintain, and increase, his marketability to prospective clients around the world. Hiring him came to be seen as a way to curry favor with the Trump administration. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , September 28, 2019 at 03:33 PM
(Vaguely related?)

Kurt Volker, Trump's Envoy for Ukraine,
Resigns https://nyti.ms/2mex0tH
NYT - Peter Baker -September 27

WASHINGTON -- Kurt D. Volker, the State Department's special envoy for Ukraine who got caught in the middle of the pressure campaign by President Trump and his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to find damaging information about Democrats, abruptly resigned his post on Friday.

Mr. Volker, who told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday that he was stepping down, offered no public explanation, but a person informed about his decision said he concluded that it was impossible to be effective in his assignment given the developments of recent days.

His departure was the first resignation since revelations about Mr. Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine's president to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats. The disclosures have triggered a full-blown House impeachment inquiry, and House leaders announced on Friday that they planned to interview Mr. Volker in a deposition on Thursday.

Mr. Volker, a widely respected former ambassador to NATO, served in the part-time, unpaid position of special envoy to help Ukraine resolve its armed confrontation with Russia-sponsored separatists. He was among the government officials who found themselves in an awkward position because of the search for dirt on Democrats, reluctant to cross the president or Mr. Giuliani yet wary of getting drawn into politics outside their purview.

The unidentified intelligence official who filed the whistle-blower complaint that brought the president's actions to light identified Mr. Volker as one of the officials trying to "contain the damage" by advising Ukrainians how to navigate Mr. Giuliani's campaign.

Mr. Volker facilitated an entree for Mr. Giuliani with the newly elected government in Ukraine, acting not at the instruction of Mr. Trump or Mr. Pompeo, but at the request of the Ukrainians, who were worried because Mr. Giuliani was seeking information about Mr. Biden and other Democrats and had denounced top Ukrainian officials as "enemies of the president." ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , September 28, 2019 at 03:37 PM
Volker to appear before House
Foreign Affairs committee next week

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/28/politics/kurt-volker-house-foreign-affairs-committee/index.html

(CNN) -- Former US Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker plans to appear at his deposition next Thursday in front of the House Foreign Affairs committee, according to a source familiar with his plans.

The source would not say if the White House is seeking to use executive privilege to constrict Volker in terms of what he can say or provide.

Volker's appearance before the committee was announced just hours before the news broke Friday evening that he had resigned.

Volker didn't offer a comment when contacted Saturday by CNN.

The former US special envoy is expected to face tough questioning after finding himself in the middle of the controversy surrounding the intelligence whistleblower who had alleged a coverup by the White House over a call made by President Donald Trump to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That whistleblower also mentioned Volker's name in his complaint when discussing interactions between himself and Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, concerning pushing Ukraine to look into activities of Joe Biden's son, Hunter.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden. ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , September 28, 2019 at 03:44 PM
NYT: ... the United States Embassy in Kiev (Ukraine) is still without an ambassador after the administration yanked home Marie L. Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who was targeted by the president and Mr. Giuliani for ostensibly being insufficiently loyal, a charge heatedly disputed by her colleagues. ...
JohnH -> Fred C. Dobbs... , September 28, 2019 at 06:17 PM
Ukraine is the place where US politicians, like the bear in Winne the Pooh, get their heads caught in the honey jar.

As Andrew Higgins writes today: "Ukraine's allure for American carpetbaggers, political consultants and adventurers has put it at the center of not just one but now two presidential elections in the United States and a host of second-tier scandals...

Caught between the clashing geopolitical ambitions of Russia and the West, Ukraine has for years had to balance competing outside interests and worked hard to cultivate all sides, and also rival groups on the same side -- no matter how incompatible their agendas -- with offers of money, favors and prospects for career advancement."

For Democrats and Republicans alike, Ukraine is a place where dirt on opponents can be fabricated and distributed, free from the prying eyes of fact checkers. Biden swears that any corruption on his part has been firmly debunked by Ukrainians who are part of a regime he brought into existence and whose careers he helps determine. Right!

All we know for certain is, like Mark Twain once said, "An honest politician is somebody who, when he is bought, stays bought." IMO, this is how we need to interpret any story that is sourced from the Ukraine.

Trump is trying to get to the bottom of that story by making it clear that the success of the regime now depends on him. He wants reliable source information to create a narrative about how Democrats tried to delegitimize him. Good Luck!

Meanwhile, Democrats and top figures in the intelligence services are pushing back, trying to preserve their original, Trump-Putin conspiracy narrative, created in part from dubious Ukranian sources.

So now the world is going to be subjected to these dueling narratives, neither of which can ever be verified or confirmed because they originated in the shadowy world of the Ukraine.

Ulimately, it will be up to Congress and the American people to decide which narrative they prefer: Trump's or the one pushed by Biden, Team Pelosi and their allies in the intelligence services.

Personally, I hope they both embarrass themselves to the point where we can finally be rid of both sides.

[Sep 29, 2019] Read the Whistle-Blower Complaint

Concerns about Biden are all false narrative specifically injected to generate hysteria: Biden is a dream opponent for Trump. The best he can expect.
Ukraine is a client state in which intelligence services are controlled by CIA, who has their people on the floor. So the leaker invents the risks: "I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections."
The document also looks like an attempt of cover-up of Crowdstrike efforts and DNC (and the make the the key to the document -- Brennan people smelled something) : "assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike,3 which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC's networks in 2016; and"
The leaker also overplay the natural efforts of WH to hide Trump lack of diplomatic skills and bulling of Zelensky: "In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to "lock down" all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced -- as is customary -- by the White House Situation Room"
The key new question is "did Crowdstrike transferred images of DNC servers to Ukraine for the analysis? "
Also document dances around the fact that Poroshenko government in tandem in Us embassy was trying to undermine Trump
Notable quotes:
"... that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv -- specifically, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had criticized Mr. Lutsenko's organization for its poor record on fighting corruption -- had allegedly obstructed Ukrainian law enforcement agencies' pursuit of corruption cases, including by providing a "do not prosecute" list, and had blocked Ukrainian prosecutors from traveling to the United States expressly to prevent them from delivering their "evidence" about the 2016 U.S. election; ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
Sep 27, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

I am deeply concerned that the actions described below constitute "a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order" that "does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters," consistent with the definition of an "urgent concern" in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(G). I am therefore fulfilling my duty to report this information, through proper legal channels, to the relevant authorities.

I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine theU.S. Government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.

... ... ...

Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, after an initial exchange of pleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President's 2020 reelection bid. According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to, inter alia:

initiate or continue an investigation 2 into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden; assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike,3 which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC's networks in 2016; and meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.

The President also praised Ukraine's Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to keep him in his position. (Note: Starting in March 2019, Mr. Lutsenko made a series of public allegations -- many of which he later walked back -- about the Biden family's activities in Ukraine, Ukrainian officials' purported involvement in the 2016 U.S. election, and the activities of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. See Part IV for additional context.)

The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. 2 They told me that there was already a "discussion ongoing" with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials' retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.

The Ukrainian side was the first to publicly acknowledge the phone call. On the evening of 25 July, a readout was posted on the website of the Ukrainian President that contained the following line (translation from original Russian-language readout):

"Donald Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve Ukraine's image and complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States."

Aside from the above-mentioned "cases" purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other "cases" were discussed.

Based on my understanding, there were approximately a dozen White House officials who listened to the call -- a mixture of policy officials and duty officers in the White House Situation Room, as is customary. The officials I spoke with told me that participation in the call had not been restricted in advance because everyone expected it would be a "routine" call with a foreign leader. I do not know whether anyone was physically present with the President during the call.

In addition to White House personnel, I was told that a State Department official, Mr. T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, also listened in on the call. I was not the only non-White House official to receive a readout of the call. Based on my understanding, multiple State Department and Intelligence Community officials were also briefed on the contents of the call as outlined above. IV. Circumstances leading up to the 25 July Presidential phone call

Beginning in late March 2019, a series of articles appeared in an online publication called The Hill. In these articles, several Ukrainian officials -- most notably, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko -- made a series of allegations against other Ukrainian officials and current and former U.S. officials. Mr. Lutsenko and his colleagues alleged, inter alia:

In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019, and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelenskyy adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

that they possessed evidence that Ukrainian officials -- namely, Head of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnyk and Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko -- had "interfered" in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, allegedly in collaboration with the DNC and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv

that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv -- specifically, U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had criticized Mr. Lutsenko's organization for its poor record on fighting corruption -- had allegedly obstructed Ukrainian law enforcement agencies' pursuit of corruption cases, including by providing a "do not prosecute" list, and had blocked Ukrainian prosecutors from traveling to the United States expressly to prevent them from delivering their "evidence" about the 2016 U.S. election; and that former Vice President Biden had pressured former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016 to fire then Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in order to quash a purported criminal probe into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board the former Vice President's son, Hunter, sat. In several public comments, Mr. Lutsenko also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters. The allegations by Mr. Lutsenko came on the eve of the first round of Ukraine's presidential election on 31 March. By that time, Mr. Lutsenko's political patron, President Poroshenko, was trailing Mr. Zelenskyy in the polls and appeared likely to be defeated. Mr. Zelenskyy had made known his desire to replace Mr. Lutsenko as Prosecutor General.

On 21 April, Mr. Poroshenko lost the runoff to Mr. Zelenskyy by a landslide. See Enclosure for additional information.

Mr. Sytnyk and Mr. Leshchenko are two of Mr. Lutsenko's main domestic rivals. Mr. Lutsenko has no legal training and has been widely criticized in Ukraine for politicizing criminal probes and using his tenure as Prosecutor General to protect corrupt Ukrainian officials. He has publicly feuded with Mr. Sytnyk, who heads Ukraine's only competent anticorruption body, and with Mr. Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist who has repeatedly criticized Mr. Lutsenko's record. In December 2018, a Ukrainian court upheld a complaint by a Member of Parliament, Mr. Boryslav Rozenblat, who alleged that Mr. Sytnyk and Mr. Leshchenko had "interfered" in the 2016 U.S. election by publicizing a document detailing corrupt payments made by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych before his ouster in 2014. Mr. Rozenblat had originally filed the motion in late 2017 after attempting to flee Ukraine amid an investigation into his taking of a large bribe. On 16 July 2019, Mr. Leshchenko publicly stated that a Ukrainian court had overturned the lower court's decision.

Mr. Lutsenko later told Ukrainian news outlet The Babel on 17 April that Ambassador Yovanovitch had never provided such a list, and that he was, in fact, the one who requested such a list.

Mr. Lutsenko later told Bloomberg on 16 May that former Vice President Biden and his son were not subject to any current Ukrainian investigations, and that he had no evidence against them. Other senior Ukrainian officials also contested his original allegations; one former senior Ukrainian prosecutor told Bloomberg on 7 May that Mr. Shokin in fact was not investigating Burisma at the time of his removal in 2016.

See, for example, Mr. Lutsenko's comments to The Hill on 1 and 7 April and his interview with The Babel on 17 April, in which he stated that he had spoken with Mr. Giuliani about arranging contact with Attorney General Barr.

In May, Attorney General Barr announced that he was initiating a probe into the "origins" of the Russia investigation. According to the above-referenced OCCRP report (22 July), two associates of Mr. Giuliani claimed to be working with Ukrainian officials to uncover information that would become part of this inquiry. In an interview with Fox News on 8 August, Mr. Giuliani claimed that Mr. John Durham, whom Attorney General Barr designated to lead this probe, was "spending a lot of time in Europe" because he was "investigating Ukraine." I do not know the extent to which, if at all, Mr. Giuliani is directly coordinating his efforts on Ukraine with Attorney General Barr or Mr. Durham.

A widely criticized Ukrainian prosecutor piqued Mr. Trump's and Mr. Giuliani's interest by floating allegations to The Hill -- but then backtracked. In the July 25 phone call, Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Mr. Lutsenko when he told the Ukrainian president that, "I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair." It was also publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had met on at least two occasions with Mr. Lutsenko: once in New York in late January and again in Warsaw in mid-February. In addition, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani. On 25 April in an interview with Fox News , the President called Mr. Lutsenko's claims "big" and "incredible" and stated that the Attorney General "would want to see this."

On or about 29 April, I learned from U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the situation that Ambassador Yovanovitch had been suddenly recalled to Washington by senior State Department officials for "consultations" and would most likely be removed from her position.

Around the same time, I also learned from a U.S. official that "associates" of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team. On 6 May, the State Department announced that Ambassador Yovanovitch would be ending her assignment in Kyiv "as planned." However, several U.S. officials told me that, in fact, her tour was curtailed because of pressure stemming from Mr. Lutsenko's allegations. Mr. Giuliani subsequently stated in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist published on 14 May that Ambassador Yovanovitch was "removed...because she was part of the efforts against the President."

On 9 May, The New York Times reported that Mr. Giuliani planned to travel to Ukraine to press the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations that would help the President in his 2020 reelection bid.

In his multitude of public statements leading up to and in the wake of the publication of this article, Mr. Giuliani confirmed that he was focused on encouraging Ukrainian authorities to pursue investigations into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family. On the afternoon of 10 May, the President stated in an interview with Politico that he planned to speak with Mr. Giuliani about the trip. A few hours later, Mr. Giuliani publicly canceled his trip, claiming that Mr. Zelenskyy was "surrounded by enemies of the [U.S.] President...and of the United States."

On 11 May, Mr. Lutsenko met for two hours with President-elect Zelenskyy, according to a public account given several days later by Mr. Lutsenko. Mr. Lutsenko publicly stated that he had told Mr. Zelenskyy that he wished to remain as Prosecutor General.

See, for example, the above-referenced articles in Bloomberg (16 May) and OCCRP (22 July).

I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.

See, for example, Mr. Giuliani's appearance on Fox News on 6 April and his tweets on 23 April and 10 May. In his interview with The New York Times , Mr. Giuliani stated that the President "basically knows what I'm doing, sure, as his lawyer." Mr. Giuliani also stated: "We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do... There's nothing illegal about it... Somebody could say it's improper. And this isn't foreign policy -- I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I'm going to give them reasons why they shouldn't stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."

Starting in mid-May, I heard from multiple U.S. officials that they were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decision making processes to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kyiv and the President.

These officials also told me:

that State Department officials, including Ambassadors Volker and Sondland, had spoken with Mr. Giuliani in an attempt to "contain the damage" to U.S. national security; and that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland during this time period met with members of the new Ukrainian administration and, in addition to discussing policy matters, sought to help Ukrainian leaders understand and respond to the differing messages they were receiving from official U.S. channels on the one hand, and from Mr. Giuliani on the other.

During this same timeframe, multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the President and President Zelenskyy would depend on whether Zelenskyy showed willingness to "play ball" on the issues that had been publicly aired by Mr. Lutsenko and Mr. Giuliani. (Note: This was the general understanding of the state of affairs as conveyed to me by U.S. officials from late May into early July. I do not know who delivered this message to the Ukrainian leadership, or when.) See Enclosure for additional information.

Shortly after President Zelenskyy's inauguration, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani met with two other Ukrainian officials: Ukraine's Special Anticorruption Prosecutor, Mr. Nazar Kholodnytskyy, and a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andriy Telizhenko. Both Mr. Kholodnytskyy and Mr. Telizhenko are allies of Mr. Lutsenko and made similar allegations in the above-mentioned series of articles in The Hill .

On 13 June, the President told ABC 's George Stephanopoulos that he would accept damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government.

On 21 June, Mr. Giuliani tweeted: "New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 and alleged Biden bribery of Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Clinton people."

In mid-July, I learned of a sudden change of policy with respect to U.S. assistance for Ukraine. See Enclosure for additional information.

ENCLOSURE: Classified appendix

[Sep 27, 2019] Christopher Steele's connection to Ukraine

Notable quotes:
"... "During the Ukraine cries in 2014-15, Chris Steele had a number of commercial clients who were asking him for reports on what was going on in Russia, what was going on in Ukraine, what was going on between them." --Victoria Nuland. ..."
"... More information on Hunter Biden. He served on the President's Advisory Council of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up after Congress banned the CIA from pursuing regime change. A lot of the coordination and assistance for the Ukraine coup probably passed through that 'non-profit.' Joe Biden was Obama's point person, and Hunter Biden was probably Joe's eyes, ears, and gopher at NDI. ..."
"... As a side benefit, Hunter Biden would have been in an excellent position, both from his work at NDI and at Burisma, to meet the movers and shakers in post-coup Ukraine and coordinate disinformation campaigns as needed. The Ukrainians would have been eager to help as the solvency of the country depended on US loans. ..."
Sep 27, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH -> JohnH... , September 26, 2019 at 01:02 PM

Christopher Steele's connection to Ukraine:

"During the Ukraine cries in 2014-15, Chris Steele had a number of commercial clients who were asking him for reports on what was going on in Russia, what was going on in Ukraine, what was going on between them." --Victoria Nuland.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/04/former_assistant_secretary_of_state_victoria_nuland_christopher_steele_also_shared_information_with_state_department.html

By commercial clients, you should read oligarchs who were still in business because they had sworn fealty to the US owned regime.

JohnH -> JohnH... , September 26, 2019 at 07:09 PM
More information on Hunter Biden. He served on the President's Advisory Council of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up after Congress banned the CIA from pursuing regime change. A lot of the coordination and assistance for the Ukraine coup probably passed through that 'non-profit.' Joe Biden was Obama's point person, and Hunter Biden was probably Joe's eyes, ears, and gopher at NDI.

Immediately after the coup, Hunter was appointed to the board of the strategically critical Burisma energy company, Ukraine's largest producer of natural gas. From what I have seen, the US likes to have its assets sit on the Board of strategically critically energy companies.

And is Ukraine ever strategically important!!! Apart from the fact the Russian pipelines pass through the country, "Ukraine has an estimated 42 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of technically recoverable shale gas reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), ranking its deposits as the fourth largest in Europe."
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ukraine_and_fracking

Again, Hunter Biden's appointment would not have been by chance. He would have been put there to once again to be Joe Biden's eyes, ears, and gopher.

As a side benefit, Hunter Biden would have been in an excellent position, both from his work at NDI and at Burisma, to meet the movers and shakers in post-coup Ukraine and coordinate disinformation campaigns as needed. The Ukrainians would have been eager to help as the solvency of the country depended on US loans.

So are we about to witness the first color revolution on US soil? Could be

[Sep 17, 2019] The Devolution of US-Russia Relations by Tony Kevin

Highly recommended!
Sep 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

A retired Australian diplomat who served in Moscow dissects the emergence of the new Cold War and its dire consequences.

I n 2014, we saw violent U.S.-supported regime change and civil war in Ukraine. In February, after months of increasing tension from the anti-Russian protest movement's sitdown strike in Kiev's Maidan Square, there was a murderous clash between protesters and Ukrainian police, sparked off by hidden shooters (we now know that were expert Georgian snipers) , aiming at police. The elected government collapsed and President Yanukevich fled to Russia, pursued by murder squads.

The new Poroshenko government pledged harsh anti-Russian language laws. Rebels in two Russophone regions in Eastern Ukraine took local control, and appealed for Russian military help. In March, a referendum took place in Russian-speaking Crimea on leaving Ukraine, under Russian military protection. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, a request promptly granted by the Russian Parliament and President. Crimea's border with Ukraine was secured against saboteurs. Crimea is prospering under its pro-Russian government, with the economy kick-started by Russian transport infrastructure investment.

In April, Poroshenko ordered full military attack on the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine. A brutal civil war ensued, with aerial and artillery bombardment bringing massive civilian death and destruction to the separatist region. There was major refugee outflow into Russia and other parts of Ukraine. The shootdown of MH17 took place in July 2014.

Poroshenko: Ordered military attack.

By August 2015, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates, 13,000 people had been killed and 30,000 wounded. 1.4 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced, and 925,000 had fled to neighbouring countries, mostly Russia and to a lesser extent Poland.

There is now a military stalemate, under the stalled Minsk peace process. But random fatal clashes continue, with the Ukrainian Army mostly blamed by UN observers. The UN reported last month that the ongoing war has affected 5.2 million people, leaving 3.5 million of them in need of relief, including 500,000 children. Most Russians blame the West for fomenting Ukrainian enmity towards Russia. This war brings back for older Russians horrible memories of the Nazi invasion in 1941. The Russia-Ukraine border is only 550 kilometres from Moscow.

Flashpoint Syria

Russian forces joined the civil war in Syria in September 2015, at the request of the Syrian Government, faltering under the attacks of Islamist extremist rebel forces reinforced by foreign fighters and advanced weapons. With Russian air and ground support, the tide of war turned. Palmyra and Aleppo were recaptured in 2016. An alleged Syrian Government chemical attack at Khan Shaykhun in April 2017 resulted in a token U.S. missile attack on a Syrian Government airbase: an early decision by President Trump.

NATO, Strategic Balance, Sanctions

An F-15C Eagle from the 493rd Fighter Squadron takes off from Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, March 6, 2014. The 48th Fighter Wing sent an additional six aircraft and more than 50 personnel to support NATO's air policing mission in Lithuania, at the request of U.S. allies in the Baltics. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Emerson Nunez/Released)

Tensions have risen in the Baltic as NATO moves ground forces and battlefield missiles up to the Baltic states' borders with Russia. Both sides' naval and air forces play dangerous brinksmanship games in the Baltic. U.S. short-range, non-nuclear-armed anti-ballistic missiles were stationed in Poland and Romania, allegedly against threat of Iranian attack. They are easily convertible to nuclear-armed missiles aimed at nearby Russia.

Nuclear arms control talks have stalled. The INF intermediate nuclear forces treaty expired in 2019, after both sides accused the other of cheating. In March 2018, Putin announced that Russia has developed new types of intercontinental nuclear missiles using technologies that render U.S. defence systems useless. The West has pretended to ignore this announcement, but we can be sure Western defence ministries have noted it. Nuclear second-strike deterrence has returned, though most people in the West have forgotten what this means. Russians know exactly what it means.

Western economic sanctions against Russia continue to tighten after the 2014 events in Ukraine. The U.S. is still trying to block the nearly completed Nordstream Baltic Sea underwater gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Sanctions are accelerating the division of the world into two trade and payments systems: the old NATO-led world, and the rest of the world led by China, with full Russian support and increasing interest from India, Japan, ROK and ASEAN.

Return to Moscow

In 2013, my children gave me an Ipad. I began to spend several hours a day reading well beyond traditional mainstream Western sources: British and American dissident sites, writers like Craig Murray in UK and in the U.S. Stephen Cohen, and some Russian sites – rt.com, Sputnik, TASS, and the official Foreign Ministry site mid.ru. in English.

In late 2015 I decided to visit Russia independently to write Return to Moscow , a literary travel memoir. I planned to compare my impressions of the Soviet Union, where I had lived and worked as an Australian diplomat in 1969-71, with Russia today. I knew there had been huge changes. I wanted to experience 'Putin's Russia' for myself, to see how it felt to be there as an anonymous visitor in the quiet winter season. I wanted to break out of the familiar one-dimensional hostile political view of Russia that Western mainstream media offer: to take my readers with me on a cultural pilgrimage through the tragedy and grandeur and inspiration of Russian history. As with my earlier book on Spain 'Walking the Camino' , this was not intended to be a political book, and yet somehow it became one.

I was still uncommitted on contemporary Russian politics before going to Russia in January 2016. Using the metaphor of a seesaw, I was still sitting somewhere around the middle.

My book was written in late 2015 – early 2016, expertly edited by UWA Publishing. It was launched in March 2017. By this time my political opinions had moved decisively to the Russian end of the seesaw, on the basis of what I had seen in Russia, and what I had read and thought during the year.

I have been back again twice, in winter 2018 and 2019. My 2018 visit included Crimea, and I happened to see a Navalny-led Sunday demonstration in Moscow. I thoroughly enjoyed all three independent visits: in my opinion, they give my judgements on Russia some depth and authenticity.

Russophobia Becomes Entrenched

Russia was a big talking point in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the initially unlikely Republican candidate Donald Trump's chances improved, anti-Putin and anti-Russian positions hardened in the outgoing Obama administration and in the Democratic Party establishment which backed candidate Hillary Clinton.

Russia and Putin became caught up in the Democratic Party's increasingly obsessive rage and hatred against the victorious Trump. Russophobia became entrenched in Washington and London U.S. and UK political and strategic elites, especially in intelligence circles: think of Pompeo, Brennan, Comey and Clapper. All sense of international protocol and diplomatic propriety towards Russia and its President was abandoned, as this appalling Economist cover from October 2016 shows.

My experience of undeclared political censorship in Australia since four months after publication of 'Return to Moscow' supports the thesis that:

We are now in the thick of a ruthless but mostly covert Anglo-American alliance information war against Russia. In this war, individuals who speak up publicly in the cause of detente with Russia will be discouraged from public discourse.

In the Thick of Information War

When I spoke to you two years ago, I had no idea how far-reaching and ruthless this information war is becoming. I knew that a false negative image of Russia was taking hold in the West, even as Russia was becoming a more admirable and self-confident civil society, moving forward towards greater democracy and higher living standards, while maintaining essential national security. I did not then know why, or how.

I had just had time to add a few final paragraphs in my book about the possible consequences for Russia-West relations of Trump's surprise election victory in November 2016. I was right to be cautious, because since Trump's inauguration we have seen the step-by-step elimination of any serious pro-detente voices in Washington, and the reassertion of control over this haphazard president by the bipartisan imperial U.S. deep state, as personified from April 2018 by Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Adviser Bolton. Bolton has now been thrown from the sleigh as decoy for the wolves: under the smooth-talking Pompeo, the imperial policies remain.

Truth, Trust and False Narratives

Let me now turn to some theory about political reality and perception, and how national communities are persuaded to accept false narratives. Let me acknowledge my debt to the fearless and brilliant Australian independent online journalist, Caitlin Johnstone.

Behavioural scientists have worked in the field of what used to be called propaganda since WW1. England has always excelled in this field. Modern wars are won or lost not just on the battlefield, but in people's minds. Propaganda, or as we now call it information warfare, is as much about influencing people's beliefs within your own national community as it is about trying to demoralise and subvert the enemy population.

The IT revolution of the past few years has exponentially magnified the effectiveness of information warfare. Already in the 1940s, George Orwell understood how easily governments are able to control and shape public perceptions of reality and to suppress dissent. His brilliant books 1984 and Animal Farm are still instruction manuals in principles of information warfare. Their plots tell of the creation by the state of false narratives, with which to control their gullible populations.

The disillusioned Orwell wrote from his experience of real politics. As a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War, he saw how both Spanish sides used false news and propaganda narratives to demonise the enemy. He also saw how the Nazi and Stalinist systems in Germany and Russia used propaganda to support show trials and purges, the concentration camps and the Gulag, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, German master race and Stalinist class enemy ideologies; and hows dissident thought was suppressed in these controlled societies. Orwell tried to warn his readers: all this could happen here too, in our familiar old England. But because the good guys won the war against fascism, his warnings were ignored.

We are now in Britain, U.S. and Australia actually living in an information warfare world that has disturbing echoes of the world that Orwell wrote about. The essence of information control is the effective state management of two elements, trust and fear , to generate and uphold a particular view of truth. Truth, trust and fear : these are the three key elements, now as 100 years ago in WWI Britain.

People who work or have worked close to government – in departments, politics, the armed forces, or top universities – mostly accept whatever they understand at the time to be 'the government view' of truth. Whether for reasons of organisational loyalty, career prudence or intellectual inertia, it is usually this way around governments. It is why moral issues like the Vietnam War and the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq were so distressing for people of conscience working in or close to government and military jobs in Canberra. They were expected to engage in 'doublethink' as Orwell had described it:

Even in Winston's nightmare world, there were still choices – to retreat into the non-political world of the proles, or to think forbidden thoughts and read forbidden books. These choices involved large risks and punishments. It was easier and safer for most people to acquiesce in the fake news they were fed by state-controlled media.

'Trust, Truth and False Narratives'

Fairfax journalist Andrew Clark, in the Australian Financial Review , in an essay optimistically titled "Not fake news: Why truth and trust are still in good shape in Australia", (AFR Dec. 22, 2018), cited Professor William Davies thus:

"Most of the time, the edifice that we refer to as "truth" is really an investment of trust in our structures of politics and public life' 'When trust sinks below a certain point, many people come to view the entire spectacle of politics and public life as a sham."

Here is my main point: Effective information warfare requires the creation of enough public trust to make the public believe that state-supported lies are true.

The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted voices. Once a critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks in: its dissemination becomes self-sustaining.

Caitlin Johnstone a few days ago put it this way:

" Power is being able to control what happens. Absolute power is being able to control what people think about what happens. If you can control what happens, you can have power until the public gets sick of your BS and tosses you out on your ass. If you can control what people think about what happens, you can have power forever. As long as you can control how people are interpreting circumstances and events, there's no limit to the evils you can get away with."

The Internet has made propaganda campaigns that used to take weeks or months a matter of hours or even minutes to accomplish. It is about getting in quickly, using large enough clusters of trusted and diverse sources, in order to cement lies in place, to make the lies seem true, to magnify them through social messaging: in other words, to create credible false narratives that will quickly get into the public's bloodstream.

Over the past two years, I have seen this work many times: on issues like framing Russia for the MH17 tragedy; with false allegations of Assad mounting poison gas attacks in Syria; with false allegations of Russian agents using lethal Novichok to try to kill the Skripals in Salisbury; and with the multiple lies of Russiagate.

It is the mind-numbing effect of constant repetition of disinformation by many eminent people and agencies, in hitherto trusted channels like the BBC or ABC or liberal Anglophone print media that gives the system its power to persuade the credulous. For if so many diverse and reputable people repeatedly report such negative news and express such negative judgements about Russia or China or Iran or Syria, surely they must be right?

We have become used to reading in our quality newspapers and hearing on the BBC and ABC and SBS gross assaults on truth, calmly presented as accepted facts. There is no real public debate on important facts in contention any more. There are no venues for dissent outside contrarian social media sites.

Sometimes, false narratives inter-connect. Often a disinformation narrative in one area is used to influence perceptions in other areas. For example, the false Skripals poisoning story was launched by British intelligence in March 2018, just in time to frame Syrian President Assad as the guilty party in a faked chemical weapons attack in Douma the following month.

The Skripals Gambit

The Skripals gambit was also a failed British attempt to blight the Russia –hosted Football World Cup in June 2018. In the event, hundreds of thousands of Western sports fans returned home with the warmest memories of Russian good sportsmanship and hospitality.

How do I know the British Skripals narrative is false? For a start, it is illogical, incoherent, and constantly changes. Allegedly, two visiting Russian FSB agents in March 2018 sprayed or smeared Novichok, a deadly toxin instantly lethal in the most microscopic quantities, on the Skripals' house front doorknob. There is no video footage of the Skripals at their front door on the day. We are told they were found slumped on a park bench, and that is maybe where they had been sprayed with nerve gas? Shortly afterwards, Britain's Head of Army Nursing who happened to be passing by found them, and supervised their hospitalisation and emergency treatment.

Allegedly, much of Salisbury was contaminated by Novichok, and one unfortunate woman mysteriously died weeks later, yet the Skripals somehow did not die, as we are told. But where are they now? We saw a healthy Yulia in a carefully scripted video interview released in May 2018, after an alleged 'one in a million' recovery. We were assured her father had recovered too, but nobody has seen him at all. The Skripals have simply disappeared from sight since 16 months ago. Are they now alive or dead? Are they in voluntary or involuntary British custody?

A month after the poisoning, the UK Government sent biological samples from the Skripals to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons , for testing. The OPCW sent the samples to a trusted OPCW laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland.

Lavrov Spiez BZ claims, April 2018

A few days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dramatically announced in Moscow that the Spiez lab had found in the samples a temporary-effect nerve agent BZ, used by U.S. and UK but not by Russia, that would have disabled the Skripals for a few days without killing them. He also revealed the Spiez lab had found that the Skripal samples had been twice tampered with while still in UK custody: first soon after the poisoning, and again shortly before passing them to the OPCW. He said the Spiez lab had found a high concentration of Novichok, which he called A- 234, in its original form. This was extremely suspicious as A-234 has high volatility and could not have retained its purity over a two weeks period. The dosage the Spiez lab found in the samples would have surely killed the Skripals. The OPCW under British pressure rejected Lavrov's claim, and suppressed the Spiez lab report.

Let's look finally at the alleged assassins.

'Boshirov and Petrov'

These two FSB operatives who visited Salisbury under the false identities of 'Boshirov' and 'Petrov' did not look or behave like credible assassins. It is more likely that they were sent to negotiate with Sergey Skripal about his rumoured interest in returning to Russia. They needed to apply for UK visas a month in advance of travel: ample time for the British agencies to identify them as FSB operatives, and to construct a false attempted assassination narrative around their visit. This false narrative repeatedly trips over its own lies and contradictions. British social media are full of alternative theories and rebuttals. Russians find the whole British Government Skripal narrative laughable. They have invented comedy skits and video games based on it. Yet it had major impact on Russia-West relations.

The Douma False Narrative

I turn now to the claimed Assad chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018.This falsely alleged attack triggered a major NATO air attack on Syrian targets, ordered by Trump. We came close to WWIII in these dangerous days. Thanks to the restraint of the then Secretary of Defence James Mattis and his Russian counterparts, the risk was contained.

The allegation that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used outlawed chemical weapons against his own people was based solely on the evidence of faked video images of child victims, made by the discredited White Helmets, a UK-sponsored rebel-linked 'humanitarian' propaganda organisation with much blood on its hands. Founded in 2013 by a British private security specialist of intelligence background, James Le Mesurier, the White Helmets specialised in making fake videos of alleged Assad regime war crimes against Syrian civilians. It is by now a thoroughly discredited organisation that was prepared to kill its prisoners and then film their bodies as alleged victims of government chemical attacks.

White Helmets

As the town of Douma was about to fall to advancing Syrian Government forces, the White Helmets filled a room with stacked corpses of murdered prisoners, and photographed them as alleged victims of aerial gas attack. They also made a video alleging child victims of this attack being hosed down by White Helmets. A video of a child named Hassan Diab went viral all over the Western world.

Hassan Diab later testified publicly in The Hague that he had been dragged terrified from his family by force, smeared with some sort of grease, and hosed down with water as part of a fake video. He went from hero to zero overnight, as Western governments and media rejected his testimony as Russian and Syrian propaganda.

In a late development, there is proof that the OPCW suppressed its own engineers' report from Douma that the alleged poison gas cylinders could not have possibly been dropped from the air through the roof of the house where one was found, resting on a bed under a convenient hole in the roof.

I could go on discussing the detail of such false narratives all day. No matter how often they are exposed by critics, our politicians and mainstream media go on referencing them as if they are true. Once people have come to believe false narratives, it is hard to refute them.

So it is with the false narrative that Russian internet interference enabled Trump to win the 2016 U.S. presidential elections: a thesis for which no evidence was found by [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller, yet continues to be cited by many U.S. liberal Democratic media as if it were true. So, even, with MH17.

Managing Mass Opinion

This mounting climate of Western Russophobia is not accidental: it is strategically directed, and it is nourished with regular maintenance doses of fresh lies. Each round of lies provides a credible platform for the next round somewhere else. The common thread is a claimed malign Russian origin for whatever goes wrong.

So where is all this disinformation originating? Information technology firms in Washington and London that are closely networked into government elites, often through attending the same establishment schools or colleges like Eton and Yale, have closely studied and tested the science of influencing crowd opinions through mainstream media and online. They know, in a way that Orwell or Goebbels could hardly have dreamt, how to put out and repeat desired media messages. They know what sizes of 'internet attraction nodes' need to be established online, in order to create diverse critical masses of credible Russophobic messaging, which then attracts enough credulous and loyal followers to become self-propagating.

Firms like the SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) and the now defunct Cambridge Analytica pioneered such work in the UK. There are many similar firms in Washington, all in the business of monitoring, generating and managing mass opinion. It is big business, and it works closely with the national security state.

Starting in November 2018, an enterprising group of unknown hackers in the UK , who go by the name 'Anonymous', opened a remarkable window into this secret world. Over a few weeks, they hacked and dumped online a huge volume of original documents issued by and detailing the activities of the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) and the Integrity initiative (II). Here is the first page of one of their dumps, exposing propaganda against Jeremy Corbyn.

We know from this material that the IfS and II are two secret British disinformation networks operating at arms' length from but funded by the UK security services and broader UK government establishment. They bring together high-ranking military and intelligence personnel, often nominally retired, journalists and academics, to produce and disseminate propaganda that serves the agendas of the UK and its allies.

Stung by these massive leaks, Chris Donnelly, a key figure in IfS and II and a former British Army intelligence officer, made a now famous seven-minute YouTube video in December 2018, artfully filmed in a London kitchen, defending their work.

He argued – quite unconvincingly in my opinion – that IfS and II are simply defending Western societies against disinformation and malign influence, primarily from Russia. He boasted how they have set up in numerous targeted European countries, claimed to be under attack from Russian disinformation, what he called 'clusters of influence' , to 'educate' public opinion and decision-makers in pro-NATO and anti-Russian directions.

Donnelly spoke frankly on how the West is already at war with Russia, a 'new kind of warfare', in which he said 'everything becomes a weapon'. He said that 'disinformation is the issue which unites all the other weapons in this conflict and gives them a third dimension'.

He said the West has to fight back, if it is to defend itself and to prevail.

We can confirm from the Anonymous leaked files the names of many people in Europe being recruited into these clusters of influence. They tend to be significant people in journalism, publishing, universities and foreign policy think-tanks: opinion-shapers. The leaked documents suggest how ideologically suitable candidates are identified: approached for initial screening interviews; and, if invited to join a cluster of influence, sworn to secrecy.

Remarkably, neither the Anonymous disclosures nor the Donnelly response have ever been reported in Australian media. Even in Britain – where evidence that the Integrity Initiative was mounting a campaign against [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn provoked brief media interest. The story quickly disappeared from mainstream media and the BBC. A British under-foreign secretary admitted in Parliamentary Estimates that the UK Foreign Office subsidises the Institute of Statecraft to the tune of nearly 3 million pounds per year. It also gives various other kinds of non-monetary assistance, e.g. providing personnel and office support in Britain's overseas embassies.

This is not about traditional spying or seeking agents of influence close to governments. It is about generating mass disinformation, in order to create mass climates of belief.

In my opinion, such British and American disinformation efforts, using undeclared clusters of influence, through Five Eyes intelligence-sharing, and possibly with the help of British and American diplomatic missions, may have been in operation in Australia for many years.

Such networks may have been used against me since around mid-2017, to limit the commercial outreach of my book and the impact of its dangerous ideas on the need for East-West detente; and efficiently to suppress my voice in Australian public discourse about Russia and the West. Do I have evidence for this? Yes.

It is not coincidence that the Melbourne Writers Festival in August 2017 somehow lost all my sign-and-sell books from my sold-out scheduled speaking event; that a major debate with [Australian writer and foreign policy analyst] Bobo Lo at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne was cancelled by his Australian sponsor, the Lowy institute, two weeks before the advertised date; that my last invitation to any writers festival was 15 months ago, in May 2018; that Return to Moscow was not shortlisted for any Australian book prize, though I entered it in all of them ; that since my book's early promotion ended around August 2017, I have not been invited to join any ABC discussion panels, or to give any talks on Russia in any universities or institutes, apart from the admirable Australian Institute of International Affairs and the ISAA.

My articles and shorter opinion commentaries on Russia and the West have not been published in mainstream media or in reputable online journals like Eureka Street, The Conversation, Inside Story or Australian Book Review . Despite being an ANU Emeritus Fellow, I have not been invited to give a public talk or join any panel in ANU (Australian National University) or any Canberra think tank. In early 2018, I was invited to give a private briefing to a group of senior students travelling on an immersion course to Russia. I was not invited back in 2019, after high-level private advice within ANU that I was regarded as too pro-Putin.

In all these ways – none overt or acknowledged – my voice as an open-minded writer and speaker on Russia-West relations seems to have been quietly but effectively suppressed in Australia. I would like to be proved wrong on this, but the evidence is there.

This may be about "velvet-glove deterrence" of my Russia-sympathetic voice and pen, in order to discourage others, especially those working in or close to government. Nobody is going to put me in jail, unless I am stupid enough to violate Australia's now strict foreign influence laws. This deterrence is about generating fear of consequences for people still in their careers, paying their mortgages, putting kids through school. Nobody wants to miss their next promotion.

There are other indications that Australian national security elite opinion has been indoctrinated prudently to fear and avoid any kind of public discussion of positive engagement with Russia (or indeed, with China).

There are only two kinds of news about Russia now permitted in our mainstream media, including the ABC and SBS: negative news and comment, or silence. Unless a story can be given an anti-Russian sting, it will not be carried at all. Important stories are simply spiked, like last week's Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivistok, chaired by President Putin and attended by Prime Ministers Abe, Mahathir and Modi, among 8500 participants from 65 countries.

The ABC idea of a balanced panel to discuss any Russian political topic was exemplified in an ABC Sunday Extra Roundtable panel chaired by Eleanor Hall on July, 22 2018, soon after the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki. The panel – a former ONA Russia analyst, a professor of Soviet and Russian History at Melbourne University, and a Russian émigré dissident journalist introduced as the 'Washington correspondent for Echo of Moscow radio' spent most of their time sneering at Putin and Trump. There were no other views.

A powerful anti-Russian news narrative is now firmly in place in Australia, on every topic in contention: Ukraine, MH17, Crimea, Syria, the Skripals, Navalny and public protest in Russia. There is ill-informed criticism of Russia, or silence, on the crucial issues of arms control and Russia-China strategic and economic relations as they affect Australia's national security or economy. There is no analysis of the negative impact on Australia of economic sanctions against Russia. There is almost no discussion of how improved relations with China and Russia might contribute to Australia's national security and economic welfare, as American influence in the world and our region declines, and as American reliability as an ally comes more into question. Silence on inconvenient truths is an important part of the disinformation tool kit.

I see two overall conflicting narratives – the prevailing Anglo-American false narrative; and valiant efforts by small groups of dissenters, drawing on sources outside the Anglo-American official narrative, to present another narrative much closer to truth. And this is how most Russians now see it too.

The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in July 2018 was damaged by the Skripal and Syria fabrications. Trump left that summit friendless, frightened and humiliated. He soon surrendered to the power of the U.S. imperial state as then represented by [Mike] Pompeo and [John] Bolton, who had both been appointed as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser in April 2018 and who really got into their stride after the Helsinki Summit. Pompeo now smoothly dominates Trump's foreign policy.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Gage Skidmore)

Finally, let me review the American political casualties over the past two years – self-inflicted wounds – arising from this secret information war against Russia. Let me list them without prejudging guilt or innocence. Slide 20 – Self-inflicted wounds: casualties of anti-Russian information warfare.

Trump's first National Security Adviser, the highly decorated Michael Flynn lost his job after only three weeks, and soon went to jail. His successor H R McMaster lasted 13 months until replaced by John Bolton. Trump's first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lasted just 14 months until his replacement by Trump's appointed CIA chief (in January 2017) Mike Pompeo. Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon lasted only seven months. Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is now in jail.

Defence Secretary James Mattis lasted nearly two years as Secretary of Defence, and was an invaluable source of strategic stability. He resigned in December 2018. The highly capable Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman lasted just two years: he is resigning next month. John Kelly lasted 18 months as White House Chief of Staff. Less senior figures like George Papadopoulos and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen both served jail time. The pattern I see here is that people who may have been trying responsibly as senior U.S. officials to advance Trump's initial wish to explore possibilities for detente with Russia – policies that he had advocated as a candidate – were progressively purged, one after another . The anti-Russian U.S. bipartisan imperial state is now firmly back in control. Trump is safely contained as far as Russia is concerned .

Russians do not believe that any serious detente or arms control negotiations can get under way while cold warriors like Pompeo continue effectively to control Trump. There have been other casualties over the past two years of tightening American Russophobia. Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning come to mind. The naive Maria Butina is a pathetic victim of American judicial rigidity and deep state vindictiveness.

False anti-Russian Government narratives emanating from London and Washington may be laughed at in Moscow , but they are unquestioningly accepted in Canberra. We are the most gullible of audiences. There is no critical review. Important contrary factual information and analysis from and about Russia just does not reach Australian news reporting and commentary, nor – I fear – Australian intelligence assessment. We are prisoners of the false narratives fed to us by our senior Five Eyes partners U.S. and UK.

To conclude: Some people may find what I am saying today difficult to accept. I understand this. I now work off open-source information about Russia with which many people here are unfamiliar, because they prefer not to read the diverse online information sources that I choose to read. The seesaw has tilted for me: I have clearly moved a long way from mainstream Western perceptions on Russia-West relations.

Under Trump and Pompeo, as the Syria and Iran crises show, the present risk of global nuclear war by accident or incompetent Western decision-making is as high as it ever was in the Cold War. The West needs to learn again how to dialogue usefully and in mutually respectful ways with Russia and China. This expert knowledge is dying with our older and wiser former public servants and ex-military chiefs.

These remarks were delivered by Tony Kevin at the Independent Scholars Association of Australia in Canberra, Australia on Wednesday.

Watch Tony Kevin interviewed Friday night on CN Live!

Tony Kevin is a retired Australian diplomat who was posted to Moscow from 1969 to 1971, and was later Australia's ambassador to Poland and Cambodia. His latest book is Return to Moscow, published by UWA Publishing.


Bruce , September 17, 2019 at 08:58

Excellent article. It's very interesting to see how the state and its media lackey set the narrative.

Most of this comment relates to the Skripals but also applies to other matters (the Skripals writing was some of Craig Murray's finest work in my opinion). One of the hallmarks of a hoax is a constantly evolving storyline. I think governments have learned from past "mistakes" with their hoaxes/deception where they've given a description of events and then scientists/engineers/chemists etc have come in and criticised their version of events with details and scientific arguments. Nowadays, governments are very reluctant to commit to a version of events, and instead rely on the media (their propaganda assets) to provide a scattergun set of information to muddy the waters and thoroughly confuse the population. The government is then insulated from some of the more bizarre allegations (the headlines of which are absorbed nonetheless), and can blame it on the media (who would use an anonymous government source naturally). Together with classifying just about everything on national security grounds, they can stonewall for as long as they want.

The British are masters of propaganda. They maintained a global empire for a very long time, and the prevailing view (in the west at least) was probably one of tea-drinking cricket playing colonials/gentlemen. But you don't maintain an empire without being absolutely ruthless and brutal. They've been doing this for a very long time.

When we hear something from the BBC or ABC, we should think "State Media".
That's probably why its got a nice folksy nickname of "aunty" .build up the trust.

Leslie Louis , September 17, 2019 at 04:00

Society is suffering the extreme paradox; there is the potential for everyone to have a voice, but the last vestiges of free speech have been whittled away. Fake news is universal, assisted by the fake "left". It is impossible to get published any challenge to even the most outlandish versions of identity politics. As the experience of Tony Kevin exemplifies, all avenues for dissent against hegemonic orthodoxies are closed off.
Disinformation is now an essential weapon in waging hot and cold wars. Cold War historians are well informed on false flags, "black ops", and other organised dirty tactics. I do not know what happened to the Skripals, and while it is legitimate to bear in mind KGB assassinations, despite the enormous resources at its disposal, the English security state has been unable to construct a credible case. Surely scepticism is provoked by the leading role being played by the notorious Bellingcat outfit.

Zenobia van Dongen , September 17, 2019 at 00:29

Here is part of an eyewitness account:
"After the Orange Revolution which began in Kiev, the country was divided literally into two parts -- the supporters of integration with Russia and the supporters of an independent Ukraine. For almost 100 years belonging to the Soviet Union, the propaganda about the assistance and care from our "big brother" Russia, in Ukraine as a whole and the Donbass in particular has borne fruit. At the end of February 2014, some cities of the Southeast part were boiling with mass social and political protest against the new Ukrainian government in defense of the status of the Russian language, voicing separatist and pro-Russian slogans. The division took place in our city of Sloviansk too. Some people stood for separation from Ukraine, while Ukrainian patriots stood for the unity of our country.
On April 12, 2014 our city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region was seized by Russian mercenaries and local volunteers. From that moment onward, armed assaults on state institutions began. The city police department, the Sloviansk City Hall, the building of the Ukraine Security Service was occupied. Armed militants seized state institutions and confiscated private property. They threatened and beat people, and those who refused to obey were taken away to an unknown destination and people started disappearing. The persecution and abduction of patriotic citizens began."

Michael McNulty , September 16, 2019 at 11:36

Watching Vietnam news coverage as a kid in the '60s I noticed the planes carpet-bombing South East Asia were American, not Russian. And as I only watched the footage and never listened to the commentary (I was waiting for the kids programs that followed) the BS they came out with to explain it all never reached me. I saw with my own eyes what the US really was and is, and always believed growing up they were the belligerent side not Russia. Once the USSR fell it was clear there were no longer any constraints on US excesses.

dean 1000 , September 15, 2019 at 18:17

Doublethink, not to mention doublespeak, is so apt to describe what is happening. If Orwell was writing today it would have to be classified as non-fiction.

Free speech is impossible unless every election district has a radio/TV station where candidates, constituents, and others can debate, discuss and speak to the issues without bending a knee to large campaign contributors or the controllers of corporate or government media. It may start with low-power pirate radio/TV broadcasts. No, the pirate speakers will not have to climb a cell tower to broadcast an opinion to the neighborhood or precinct.
If genuine free speech is going to exist it will start as something unauthorized and unlawful. If it sticks to the facts it will quickly prove its value.

Download a free pdf copy of '1984.' https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/1984.pdf

Njegos , September 15, 2019 at 03:39

Excellent article. The only exhibit missing was reference to Bill Browder's lies. Browder's rubbish has been exposed by intrepid journalists and documentary makers such as Andrei Nekrasov, Sasha Krainer and Lucy Komisar but to read or listen to our media, you'd think BB was some sort of human rights hero. That's because BB's fairy tale fits nicely into the MSM's hatred of Putin and Russia. Debunk Browder and a major pillar of anti-Russia prejudice collapses. Therefore, Browder will never face any serious questions by the MSM.

John A , September 16, 2019 at 09:18

judges of the European Court of Human Rights published a judgement a fortnight ago which utterly exploded the version of events promulgated by Western governments and media in the case of the late Mr Magnitskiy. Yet I can find no truthful report of the judgement in the mainstream media at all.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/09/the-magnitskiy-myth-exploded/

MSM propaganda by omission. Anything that doesn't fit the government narrative gets zero publicity.

Jim Ingram , September 14, 2019 at 21:12

Well said and needing to be said Tony.

Mr. Dan , September 14, 2019 at 19:41

I have stopped following australian mainstream media including the darlings of the 'left' ABC/SBS over a decade ago, completely. My disgust with their 'coverage' of the 2008 GFC was more than enough. Since 2008-9 things have deteriorated drastically into conspiracy theory propaganda by omission la-la land *it seems*, given I don't tune in at all.

The author has a well supported view. I find it a little naive in him thinking that the MSM has that much power over shaping public opinion in australia.

People who want to be informed do so. The half intelligent conformists on hamster wheel of lifetime mortgage debt have 'careers' to hold onto, so parroting the group think or living in ignorance is much easier. The massive portion of australian racists, inbred bogans and idiots that make up the large LNP, One Nation etc. voting block are completely beyond salvation or ability to process, and critically evaluate any information. The smarter ones drool on about the 'UN Agenda 21' conspiracy at best. Utterly hopeless.

I don't expect things to change as the australian economy is slowly hollowed out by the rich, and the education system (that has always been about conforming, wearing school uniform and regurgitating what the teacher/lecturer says at best) is gutted completely. Welcome to australistan.

Fran Macadam , September 14, 2019 at 19:21

Note that the prohibition against false propaganda to indoctrinate the domestic population by the American government was lifted by President Obama at the tail end of his administration. The Executive Order legalizes all the deceptive behavior Tony itemizes in his article.

Josep , September 17, 2019 at 04:10

I thought it was Reagan who did that by abolishing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. At least in terms of television and radio (?) broadcasts.

Stephen Morrell , September 14, 2019 at 19:02

Thank you Tony for your thoughtful talk (and interview on CN Live! too).

What's encouraging is this cohort of what might be called 'millennial journalists' coming through willing to do 'shoe-leather' journalism and stand up to smears and flack for revealing uncomfortable facts and truth. They're the online 5th estate holding the 4th to account (to steal Ray McGovern's apt view), and they're congealing against the onslaught.

Some include Max Blumenthal and Rania Kahlek (both now being pilloried by MSM and others for visiting Syrian government held areas and reporting that life isn't hellish as MSM would have everyone believe heaven forbid); Vanessa Bealey who's exposed a lot of White Helmet horrors and false-flag attacks in Syria (and being attacked by all and sundry for exposing the White Helmets in particular); Abby Martin whose Empire Files are excellent and always edifying; Dan Cohen who has written the best expose of the actors behind the Hong Kong rioting and co-authored the best expose of the background of Guaido et al.; Whitney Webb of Mint Press whose series on Epstein is overwhelming and likely a ticking timebomb; Caitlin Johnstone of course; and Aaron 'Buzzsaw' Mate who made his first mark with a wonderful takedown interview of Russiaphobe MI6 shill Luke Harding. Others too of course, with most appearing or having written pieces on CN. John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Greg Palast, et al. won't drop off their twigs disappointed.

This, along with the fact that MSM -- that cowed and compromised fourth estate -- increasingly is held in such laughable contempt by most people under about 50 yr, is highly encouraging indeed. Truth is the new black.

nwwoods , September 15, 2019 at 11:49

The Blogmire is an excellent resource for detailed analysis of the Skripal hoax. The author happens to be a long-time resident of Salisbury, and is intimately familiar with the topography, public services, etc., and a very thorough investigator.

John Wright , September 14, 2019 at 18:35

I'm not surprised that Mr. Kevin is being isolated and shunned by the Australian establishment. Truth and truth tellers are always the first casualties of war. I do hope that his experience will encourage him to increase his resistance to the corrosiveness of mendacious propaganda and those who promulgate it.

Truth is the single best weapon when fighting for a peaceful future.

If Australia is to flourish in the 21st century, it really needs to understand Russia and China, how they relate to each other, and how this key alliance will interface with the rest of the world. Australia and Australians simply cannot afford to get sucked down further by facilitating the machinations of the collapsing Anglo-American Empire. They have served the empire ably and faithfully, but now need to take a cold hard look at reality and realign their long-term interests with the coming global power shift. If not, they could literally find themselves in the middle of an unwinnable and devastating war.

* * *

The first Anglo-American Russian cold war began with the Russian revolution and was only briefly suspended when the West needed the Soviet people to throw themselves in front of the Nazi blitzkrieg in order to save Western Europe. Following their catastrophically costly contribution to the victory on the Continent, the Russians were greeted with an American nuclear salute on their eastern periphery, signalling their return to the diplomatic and economic deep freeze.

While the Anglo-American Empire solidified and extended its hold on the globe, the enlarged but war-ravaged and isolated Soviet Union hunkered down and survived on scraps and sheer will until its collapse in 1989. Declaring the cold war over, and with promises to help their new Russian friends build a prosperous future, the duplicitous West then ransacked their neighbors resources and sold them into debt peonage. The Russians cried foul, the West shrugged and Putin pushed back. Unable to declaw the bear, the west closed the cage door again and the second cold war commenced.

* * *

The first cold war was essentially an offensive war disguised as a defensive war. It enabled the Anglo-American Empire to leverage its post-war advantage and establish near total dominance around the globe through naked violence and monetary hegemony.

Today, with its dominance rapidly slipping away, the Anglo-American Empire is waging a truly defensive cold war. On the home front, they fight to convince their subjects of their eternal exceptionalism with ever more absurd and vile propaganda denigrating their adversaries . Abroad, they disrupt and defraud in a desperate attempt to delay the demise of the PetroDollar ponzi.

The Russians and the Chinese, having both been brutally burned by the Western elites, will not be fooled into abandoning their natural geographic partnership. They are no longer content to sit quietly at the kids' table taking notes. While they may not demand to sit at the head of the table, it is clear that they will insist on a round table, and one that is large enough to include their growing list of friends.

If the Americans don't smash the table, it could be the first of many peaceful pot lucks.

John Read , September 15, 2019 at 02:11

Well said. Great comments. Thanks to Tony Kevin.

Mia , September 14, 2019 at 18:33

Thank you Tony for continuing to shine light on the pathetic propaganda information bubble Australians have been immersed in .. you demonstrate great courage and you are not alone ??

Peter Loeb , September 14, 2019 at 12:58

WITH THANKS TO TONY KEVIN

An excellent article.

There is a lack of comments from some of the common writers upon whose views I often rely.

Personally, I often avoid the very individual responses from websites as I have no way
of checking out previous ideas of theirs. Who funds them? With which organizations are they
affiliated? And so forth and so on.

Peter Loeb, Boston, Massachusetts

Peter Sapo , September 14, 2019 at 10:24

As a fellow Australian, everything Tony Kevin said makes perfect sense. Our mainstream media landscape is designed to distribute propaganda to folk accross the political spectrum. Have you noticed that the ABC regurgitates stories from the BBC? The BBC has a long history (at least since WW2) of supporting government propaganda initiatives. Based on this fact, it is hard to see how ABC and SBS don't do the same when called upon by their minders.

Francis Lee , September 14, 2019 at 09:48

I just wonder where the Anglo-Zionist empire thinks it is going. It should be obvious that any NATO war against Russia involving a nuclear exchange is unwinnable. It seems equally likely the even a conventional war will not necessarily bring the result expected by the assorted 'experts' – nincompoops living in their own fantasy world. The idea that the US can fight a war without the US homeland becoming very much involved basically ended when Putin announced the creation of Russia's set of advanced hypersonic missile system. But this was apparently ignored by the 'defence' establishment. It was not true, it could not possibly be true, or so we were told.

Moreover the cost of such wars involving hundreds of thousands of troops and military hardware are massively expensive and would occasion a massive resistance from the populations affected. It was the wests wars in Korea, and Indo-China that bankrupted the US and led to the US$ being removed from the gold standard. The American military is rapidly consuming the American economy, or at least what is left of it. From a realist foreign policy perspective this is simply madness. Great powers end wars, they don't start them. Great powers are creditor nations, not debtor nations. Such is the realist foreign policy view. But foreign policy realists are few and far between in the Washington Beltway and MIC/NSA Pentagon and US/UK/AUSTRALIAN MSM.

Thus the neo-hubris of the English speaking world is such that if it is followed to its logical conclusion then total annihilation would be the logical outcome. A sad example of not very bright people who face no domestic opposition, believing in their own bullshit:

"American elites proved themselves to be master manipulators of propaganda constructs But the real danger from such manipulations arises not when those manipulations are done out of knowledge of reality, which is distorted for propaganda purposes, but when those who manipulation begin to sincerely believe in their own falsifications and when they buy into their own narrative. They stop being manipulators and they become believers in a narrative. They become manipulated themselves." (Losing Military Supremacy – Andrei, Martyanov)

Or maybe just the whole thing is a bluff. Those policy elites maybe just want to loot the US Treasury for more cash to be put their way.

John Wright , September 15, 2019 at 19:15

The self-serving Israeli Zionists know that the American cow is running dry and their days of freely milking it are coming to an end. They have an historic relationship with Russia and, leveraging their nuclear arsenal, know they can make a deal with the emerging China-Russia-centric global paradigm to extort enough protection to maintain their armed enclave for the foreseeable future. Their no so hidden alliance with the equally sociopathic Saudis will become even more obvious for all to see.

Israel, like China and Russia, knows how to play a long game. Thus, Israel will consolidate its land grab with the just announced expansion into the Jordan Valley and quietly continue as much ethnic cleansing as possible while the rest of the world is preoccupied with the incipient global power shift (True victims of history, the Palestinians have no real friends). While they will bemoan the loss of their muscular American stooge, Israel enjoyed a very lucrative 70 year run and will part with a pile of useful and deadly toys. They're also fully aware that no one else will ever let them take advantage to the degree they've been able to with the U.S.A. (Unlimited Stupidity of Arrogance?)

Eventually, the social schizophrenia that is the state of Israel will catch up with them and they will implode. Let's hope that breakdown doesn't involve the use of their nuclear arsenal.

Yes, the U.S. Treasury will continue to be looted until the last teller turns the lights out or the electricity is shut off, whichever comes first.

The Western transnational financial elites will accept their losses, regroup and make deals with the new bosses where they can; but their days of running the game unopposed are over.

Today is a good day to learn Mandarin (or Russian, if you prefer to live in Europe).

Bill , September 16, 2019 at 03:36

Very well said and I agree with a lot of what you say.

Tiu , September 14, 2019 at 06:01

Won't be too long before writing articles like this will get you busted for "hate-speech" (e.g. anything that is contrary to the official version prescribed by the "democratically elected" government)
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/uk-tony-blair-think-tank-proposes-end-free-speech
Personally I always encourage people to read George Orwell, especially 1984. We're there, and have been for a long time.

geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 01:15

Tony Kevin – Nice rundown of what ails society. You have a fine writing style that gets the point across to the reader. Kudos and cheers.

Michael , September 13, 2019 at 22:34

The 'modernization' of the Smith Mundt Act in 2013 "to authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material [PROPAGANDA] about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences" was a major nail in the Democracy coffin, consolidating the blatant ruling of the US Police State by our 17 Intelligence Agencies (our betters). The Telecommunications Act of 1996 lead to ownership of (>80%) of our media (the MSM by a handful of owners, all disseminating the same narratives from above (CIA, State Department, FBI etc) and squelching any dissenting views, particularly related to foreign policies.
Tony's article sadly just confirms the depth and breadth of our Global Stasi, with improved, innovative and (mostly) subtle surveillance, and the controlling constant interference with alternate viewpoints and discussions, the real basis for free societies. It is bad enough to be ruled by neoliberal psychopathic hyenas and jackals, soon we won't be able to even bitch about what they are doing.

Tom Kath , September 13, 2019 at 21:42

The most impressive article I have read in a very long time. I congratulate and thank Tony.
I have myself recently addressed the issue of whether it is a virtue to have an "open mind". – The ability to be converted or have your mind changed, or is it the ability to change your own mind ?
Tony Kevin clearly illustrates the difference.

Litchfield , September 13, 2019 at 16:11

Great article.
Please keep writing.
Do start a website, a la Craig Murray.
There are people who are proactively looking for alternative viewpoints and informed analysis.
How about starting a website and publishing some excerpts of your book there?

Or, sell chapters separately by download from your website?
You could also have a discussion blog/forum there.

John Zimmermann , September 13, 2019 at 16:02

Excellent essay. Thanks Mr. Kevin.

rosemerry , September 13, 2019 at 15:37

At least Tony Kevin was an Australian ambassador, not like Mike Morrell and the chosen russop?obes the USA assumes are needed as diplomats!! Now he is treated as Stephen Cohen is- a true expert called "controversial" as he dares to go by real facts and evidence, not prejudice.

If instead of enemies, the West could consider getting to understand those they are wary of, and give them a chance to explain their point of view and actually listen and reflect on it.
(Dmitri Peskov valiantly explained the Russian official response as soon as the "Skripal poisoning" story broke, but it was fully ignored by UK/US media, while all of Theresa May's fanciful imaginings were respectfully relayed to the public).

geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 23:26

As you usually are with your comments, you are spot on again, rosemerry.

Martin - Swedish citizen , September 13, 2019 at 14:46

Excellent article!
I find the mechanics of how the propaganda is spread and the illusion upheld the most important part of this article, since this knowledge is required to counter it.
When (not if) the fraud becomes more common knowledge, our societies are likely to tumble.

Pablo Diablo , September 13, 2019 at 14:45

Whoever controls the media, controls the dialogue.
Whoever controls the dialogue, controls the agenda.

peter mcloughlin , September 13, 2019 at 13:40

' The present risk of global nuclear war is as high as it ever was in the Cold War.' And possibly higher. The Cold War, though dangerous, was the peace. The world has experienced periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not prevent a third world war. The powers that are leading us towards conflagration see this as a re-run of the first Cold War. They are dangerously mistaken.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/

Guy , September 13, 2019 at 13:21

With so many believing the lies ,how will this mess ever come to light . I don't reside in Australia but anywhere in the Western world the shakedown is the same .In my own house ,the discussion on world politics descends into absolute stupidity . As one can't get past the constant programming that has settled in the minds of the comfortable with the status quo of lies by our media. There are intelligent sources of news sources but none get past the absolutely complete control of MSM.So the bottom line is ,for now ,the lies and liars are winning the propaganda war.

Anton Antonovich , September 13, 2019 at 13:16

He speaks the truth. Liars and dissemblers have won over the minds and hearts of so many lazy shameful citizens who will not accept the truth Tony Kevin wants to share with the world.

junaid , September 13, 2019 at 13:08

Washington resumes military assistance to Kyiv. According to American lawmakers, Ukraine is fighting one of the main enemies. "Contain Russia": what the US pays for Ukraine

"Contain Russia": what the US pays for Ukraine

Lily , September 13, 2019 at 23:42

The Pentagon is using the Ukrainian territory for experiments on chemical weapons.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3T9ktfz_FfA

John A , September 14, 2019 at 06:55

Anyone or article who spells Kiev as Kyiv can be safely ignored as western anti-Russia propaganda. It's a true tell.

Robert Edwards , September 13, 2019 at 12:53

The Cold war is totally manufacture to keep the dollars flowing into the MIC – what a sham . and a disgrace to humanity.

Cavaleiro Marginal , September 13, 2019 at 12:52

"The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted voices. Once a critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks in: its dissemination becomes self-sustaining."

This had occurred in Brazil since the very first day of Lula's presidency. Eleven years late, 2013, a color revolution began. Nobody (and I mean REALLY nobody) could realize a color revolution was happening at that time. In 2016, Dilma Rousseff was kicked from power throughout a ridiculous and illegal coup perpetrated by the parliament. In 2018 Lula was imprisoned in an Orwellian process; illegal, unconstitutional, with nothing (REALLY nothing) proved against him. Then a liar clown was elected to suppress democracy

I knew on the news that in Canada and Australia the police politely (how civilized ) went to some journalist's homes to have a chat this year. Canadians and Aussies, be aware. The fascism's dog is a policial state very well informed by the propaganda they call news.

Robert Fearn , September 13, 2019 at 12:48

As a Canadian author who wrote a book about various tragic American government actions, like Vietnam, I can relate to the difficulties Tony has had with his book. I would mail my book, Amoral America, from Canada to other countries, like the US, and it would never arrive. Book stores would not handle it, etc. etc.

Josep , September 17, 2019 at 05:21

Not to disagree, but some years ago I read about anecdotes of anti-Americanism in Canada, coming from both USians and Canadians, whether it be playful banter or legitimate criticism. I believe it is more concentrated among the people than among the governmental elites (with the exception of the Iraq War era when both the people and the government were against it). And considering what you describe in your book and the difficulty you've faced in distributing it abroad, maybe the said people are on to something.

Stephen , September 13, 2019 at 11:44

This interview by Abby Martin with Mark Ames is a little dated but is a fairly accurate history. I post it to try and counter the nonsense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7HwvFyMg7A

All the empire wants is to do it all again.

Jeremy Kuzmarov , September 13, 2019 at 10:33

Outstanding article and analysis. Thank you Sir! Jeremy Kuzmarov

Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2019 at 10:17

Thank you, sir. A far better peroration than I could have produced but what I have concluded nonetheless.

Skip Scott , September 13, 2019 at 10:10

Fantastic article. Left unmentioned is the origin of the west's anti-Russia narrative. Russia was being pillaged by the west under Yeltsin, and Russia was to become our newest vassal. Life expectancy dropped a full decade for the average Russian under Yeltsin. The average standard of living dropped dramatically as well. Putin reversed all that, and enjoys massive popular support as a result. The Empire will never tolerate a national leader who works for the benefit of the average citizen. It must be full-on rape, pillage and plunder- OR ELSE. Keep that in mind as we watch the latest theatrical performances by our DNC controlled "Commander in Chief" wannabes.

Realist , September 17, 2019 at 05:48

?The ongoing success of the "Great Lie" (that Washington is protecting the entire world from
anarchy perpetrated by a few bad actors on the global stage) and all of its false narrative subtexts
(including but far from limited to the Maidan, Crimea, Donbass, MH-17, the Skripals, gassing
"one's own people," piracy on the high Mediterranean, etc) just underscores how successful was
the false flag operation known as 9-11, even as the truth of that travesty is slowly being
unraveled by relentless truth-seekers applying logic and the scientific method to the problem.
Most Americans today would gladly concur, if queried, that Osama bin Laden was most certainly
a perfidious tool of Russia and its diabolical leader, Mr. Putin (be sure to call him "Vlad," to
conjure up images of Dracula for effect). The Winston Smith's are rare birds in America or in
any of its reliable vassal states. Never mind that the spooks from Langley (and the late
"chessmaster") concocted and orchestrated all these tales from the crypt.

Lily , September 13, 2019 at 07:54

Great summary of the developement of a new cold war. The narrative of the Mainstream Media is dangerous as well as laughable. I am glad to hear the Russian reaction to this bullshit propaganda. As often the people are so much wiser than their government – at least in the West.

During the Football WM a famous broadcaster of the German State TV channel ARD, who is a giftet propagandist, regrettet publicly the difficulty to convince the stubborn Germans to look at Russia as an enemy because they have started to look at Russia as a friend long ago.

Contrary to the people and the big firms who are completely against the sanctions against Russia and 100 % pro Northstream the German government with Chancelor Merkel is one of the top US vassalles. Even the Green Party which started as an environmental and peace party are now against North Stream and in favour of the filthy US fracking gas thanks to NATO propaganda although Russia has never let them down. Most of "Die Grünen" party have been turned into fervent friends of our American occupants which is very sad.

Thank you Tony Kevin. It has been great to read your article. I cant wait to read your book 'Return to Moscow' and to watch your interview on CN Live.

Godfree Roberts , September 13, 2019 at 07:37

Good summary of the status quo. From my experience of writing similarly about China, precisely the same policies and forces are at work.

The good news is that they are failing.

junaid , September 13, 2019 at 07:15

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the end of the war in Syria and the country's return to a state of peace. "Syria is returning to normal life": Lavrov announced the end of the war

"Syria is returning to normal life": Lavrov announced the end of the war

Gezzah Potts , September 13, 2019 at 05:47

You hit several nails squarely on the head with your excellent article Tony. Thank you for the truth of how the media is in Australia. It is indeed chilling where all this is leading. The blatant lies just spewed out as fact by both ABC and SBS. They, in my opinion are nothing but stenographers for the Empire, of which Australia is a fully subservient vassal state, with no independence.
I try to boycott all Australian presstitutes . Oops, I mean 'media' now. Occasionally, I do slip up and watch SBS or The Drum or News on ABC.
Virtually all my news comes from independent news sites like this one.
I have been accused of being a 'Putin lover', a Russian troll, a conspiracy theorist, while people I know have claimed that "Putin is a monster whose murdered millions of people".
On and on this crap goes. And the end result? Ask Stephen Cohen. Things are very surreal now. Sadly, you've been made an Unperson Tony.

Robyn , September 13, 2019 at 04:08

Bravo, Tony, great article. I enjoyed your book and recommend it to CN readers who haven't yet read it.

The world looks entirely different when one stops reading/watching the MSM and turns to CN, Caitlin Johnstone and many others who are doing a sterling job.

Cascadian , September 13, 2019 at 03:52

I don't know which is worse, to not know what you are (reliably uninformed) and be happy, or to become what you've always wanted to be (reliably informed) and feel alone.

Realist , September 14, 2019 at 00:19

Knowing the truth has always seemed paramount to me, even if it means realising that the entire world and all in it are damned, and deliberately by our own actions. Hope is always the last part of our essence to die, or so they say: maybe we will somehow be redeemed through our own self-immolation as a species.

Deb , September 13, 2019 at 02:54

As an Australian I have no difficulty accepting what Tony Kevin has said here. He should do what Craig Murray has done start a website.

[Sep 13, 2019] The Sacking of John Bolton by Binoy Kampmark

The key question is why Trump hired Bolton in the first place, not why he was sucked...
This guy is a reckless imperialist, staunch neocon and a war criminal. No person who promoted or voted in the Congress for Iraq war can held government or elected position. They are compromised for the rest of their miserable lifes.
Sep 13, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

"Every time the president, or Pompeo, or anyone in the [Trump] administration came up with an idea, they had to face Dr No."

– Cliff Kupchan, Chairman of the Eurasia Group, The Washington Post , Sep 11, 2011.

[Sep 13, 2019] Tucker Carlson Pushes for End of the Neo-cons Reuters and Haaretz

Notable quotes:
"... Yes, people tend to forget that Bolton and all the other neocons are worshipers at the altar of a secular religion imported to the US by members of the Frankfurt School of Trotskyite German professors in the 1930s. These people had attempted get the Nazis to consider them allies in a quest for an ordered world. Alas for them they found that the Nazi scum would not accept them and in fact began preparations to hunt them down. ..."
"... Thus the migration to America and in particular to the University of Chicago where they developed their credo of world revolution under that guidance of a few philosopher kings like Leo Strauss, the Wohlstetters and other academic "geniuses" They also began an enthusiastic campaign of recruitment of enthusiastic graduate students who carefully disguised themselves as whatever was most useful politically. ..."
Sep 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"Carlson concluded by warning about the many other Boltons in the federal bureaucracy, saying that "war may be a disaster for America, but for John Bolton and his fellow neocons, it's always good business."

He went on to slam Trump's special representative for Iran and contender to replace Bolton, Brian Hook, as an "unapologetic neocon" who "has undisguised contempt for President Trump, and he particularly dislikes the president's nationalist foreign policy." Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif echoed Carlson hours later in a tweet, arguing that "Thirst for war – maximum pressure – should go with the warmonger-in-chief." Reuters and Haaretz

-------------

Yes, people tend to forget that Bolton and all the other neocons are worshipers at the altar of a secular religion imported to the US by members of the Frankfurt School of Trotskyite German professors in the 1930s. These people had attempted get the Nazis to consider them allies in a quest for an ordered world. Alas for them they found that the Nazi scum would not accept them and in fact began preparations to hunt them down.

Thus the migration to America and in particular to the University of Chicago where they developed their credo of world revolution under that guidance of a few philosopher kings like Leo Strauss, the Wohlstetters and other academic "geniuses" They also began an enthusiastic campaign of recruitment of enthusiastic graduate students who carefully disguised themselves as whatever was most useful politically.

They are not conservative at all, not one bit. Carlson was absolutely right about that.

They despise nationalism. They despise the idea of countries. In that regard they are like all groups who aspire to globalist dominion for their particular ideas.

They should all be driven from government. pl

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-trump-bolton-neo-cons-iran-fox-news-tucker-carlson-1.7833399?=&ts=_1568393219979b

[Sep 13, 2019] The War in Eastern Ukraine May be Coming to an End But Do Any Americans Care? by Jeremy Kuzmaro

Ukraine is mainly the result of attempt of the USA to encircle Russia well as EU design for economic Drang nach Osten -- attempt to displace Russia in xUSSR republics.
So they pushed Ukraine into the pat that Baltic republic were already known for.
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine's newly elected comedian president Volodymyr Zelensky called the prisoner exchange a "first step" in ending the war in Eastern Ukraine, which has killed an estimated 13,000 civilians. ..."
"... In a subsequent referendum, 89% in Donetsk and 96% in Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine voted for independence, which the new government of Petro Poroshenko government did not accept. ..."
"... She told U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in a telephone conversation that was tapped and later leaked that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, neoliberal head of the "Fatherland" Party, should be Prime Minister as he was thought to have the "economic" and "governing experience." ..."
"... Nuland further revealed that the U.S. had invested over $5 billion in "democracy promotion" in Ukraine since 1991 through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was carrying on the kind of work previously undertaken by the CIA during the Cold War. ..."
"... NED president Carl Gershman called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step towards toppling [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself." ..."
"... To help achieve this end, the Obama administration pledged $1 billion in loan guarantees to the post-coup government in Ukraine, which Putin considered as the "ideological heirs of [Stephen] Bandera, Hitler's accomplice in World War II." ..."
"... Swayed by a slick lobbying campaign backed by supporters of the Afghan mujahidin in the 1980s looking for a new cause and by the Senate's Ukraine Caucus, the Obama administration further provided nearly $600 million in security assistance to the Ukrainian military. ..."
"... American military advisers embedded in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry provided rocket propelled grenades, carried out training exercises and planned military operations including with members of the fascist Azov battalion, which had Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves. ..."
Sep 13, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

On Saturday September 7, Russia and Ukraine agreed to a prisoner swap which has brought hope of improved relations between the two countries and an end to the 5-year long conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

A peace accord is being planned for later this month in Normandy involving Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany.

Ukraine's newly elected comedian president Volodymyr Zelensky called the prisoner exchange a "first step" in ending the war in Eastern Ukraine, which has killed an estimated 13,000 civilians.

The Ukraine War remains largely unknown to the American public even though the United States has had a great stake in it.

The war started after a coup d'états in Ukraine in February 2014, which overthrew the democratically elected pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovuch.

In a subsequent referendum, 89% in Donetsk and 96% in Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine voted for independence, which the new government of Petro Poroshenko government did not accept.

The United States was a heavy backer of the coup and dirty war that unfolded in the East.

Victoria Nuland, the head of the State Department's European desk, traveled to Ukraine three times during the protests that triggered the coup, handing out cookies to demonstrators.

She told U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in a telephone conversation that was tapped and later leaked that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, neoliberal head of the "Fatherland" Party, should be Prime Minister as he was thought to have the "economic" and "governing experience."

Nuland further revealed that the U.S. had invested over $5 billion in "democracy promotion" in Ukraine since 1991 through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was carrying on the kind of work previously undertaken by the CIA during the Cold War.

Ukraine has long been considered an important bridge between Eastern and Western Europe and holds lucrative oil and gas deposits.

NED president Carl Gershman called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step towards toppling [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."

To help achieve this end, the Obama administration pledged $1 billion in loan guarantees to the post-coup government in Ukraine, which Putin considered as the "ideological heirs of [Stephen] Bandera, Hitler's accomplice in World War II."

Swayed by a slick lobbying campaign backed by supporters of the Afghan mujahidin in the 1980s looking for a new cause and by the Senate's Ukraine Caucus, the Obama administration further provided nearly $600 million in security assistance to the Ukrainian military.

It was supplied with counter-artillery radars, anti-tank systems, armored vehicles and drones in a policy expanded upon by Trump.

Before and after the Ukrainian military's campaign began, Secretary of State John Kerry, CIA Director John Brennan, and Vice President Joe Biden visited Kiev, followed by a flow of senior Pentagon officials.

A back-door arms pipeline was set up through the United Arab Emirates and Blackwater mercenaries were allegedly deployed.

American military advisers embedded in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry provided rocket propelled grenades, carried out training exercises and planned military operations including with members of the fascist Azov battalion, which had Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves.

Obama's National Security adviser, Samantha Power, claimed that the [Ukrainian] governments "response [to alleged provocations by eastern rebels] [was] reasonable, it is proportional, and frankly it is what any of our countries would have done."

The Ukrainian military and allied warlord and neo-Nazi militias were not acting reasonably or proportionally, however, when they carried out artillery and air attacks on cities and struck residential buildings, shopping malls, parks, schools, hospitals and orphanages in Eastern Ukraine, and tortured and executed POWs in what amounted to clear war crimes.

NYU Professor Stephen Cohen notes that even The New York Times , which mainly deleted atrocities from its coverage, described survivors in Slovyansk living "as if in the Middle Ages."

That the American public knows nothing of these events is a sad reflection of the superficiality of our media and decline in the quality of international news coverage.

It is also a testament to the failing of the political left, which has embraced the cause of immigrant and Palestinian rights and fighting climate change, legitimately, but neglected the plight of the Eastern Ukrainian people. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jeremy Kuzmarov

Jeremy Kuzmarov is the author of The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (Monthly Review Press, 2018).

[Sep 12, 2019] The Ukraine had the means and a motive, they should have been treated as a criminal suspect, yet without further investigation they were promoted to member of the JIT that does the criminal investigation

Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al September 9, 2019 at 1:25 am

Over at MoA, not 'Stef Blok' writes:

If you read the accident investigation report, on page 239 it clearly states that the Ukrainian army was active with heavy anti-aircraft installations in the eastern part of the Ukraine. The Ukrainian army has BUK rockets of the type that downed MH17.

The Ukraine had the means and a motive, they should have been treated as a criminal suspect, yet without further investigation they were promoted to member of the JIT that does the criminal investigation

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/09/ukraine-reuters-cnn-and-hrw-make-false-russian-prisoners-claims.html?cid=6a00d8341c640e53ef0240a480da79200c#comment-6a00d8341c640e53ef0240a480da79200c

####

More at the link, obvs.

Not to mention that Ukranian TV itself showed Ukranian air defense BUKs on manoeuvers in Eastern Ukraine.

[Sep 11, 2019] Better late than never Bolton's firing gives Trump a chance to heed his instincts Ron Paul

This is a bit like rearranging the chairs on the deck of Titanic.
The problem is we do not know who pressed Trump to appoint Bolton., Rumors were that it was Abelson. In this case nothing changed.
The other problem with making Bolton firing a significant move is the presence in White House other neocon warmongers. So one less doe not change the picture. For example Pompeo remains and he is no less warmongering neocon, MIC stooge, and no less subservant to Israel then Bolton.
Notable quotes:
"... Firing National Security Advisor John Bolton gives US President Donald Trump a chance to move foreign policy in a more peaceful direction – as long as he's not replaced with another hawk, former congressman Ron Paul told RT ..."
"... Bolton has "been a monkey-wrench in Donald Trump's policies of trying to back away from some of these conflicts around the world," Paul observed on Tuesday ..."
"... "Every time I think Trump is making progress, Bolton butts in and ruins it," Paul added. Negotiations with Afghanistan and talks with North Korea and Iran have reportedly been scuttled by his aggressive tendencies, with Pyongyang declaring him a "defective human product." ..."
"... "A lot of people here didn't even want his appointment, because he was only able to take a position that did not require Senate approval," Paul said, suggesting that perhaps the "Deep State" pressure had forced the president to keep Bolton around long past his sell-by date. ..."
"... As for whether Bolton's departure would change the White House's policy line significantly, though, Paul was less certain. "I don't think it will change a whole lot," he said, pointing out that "we have no idea" who will replace Bolton. Trump said he would make an announcement next week. ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | www.rt.com

Firing National Security Advisor John Bolton gives US President Donald Trump a chance to move foreign policy in a more peaceful direction – as long as he's not replaced with another hawk, former congressman Ron Paul told RT.

Bolton has "been a monkey-wrench in Donald Trump's policies of trying to back away from some of these conflicts around the world," Paul observed on Tuesday, after news of Bolton's dismissal from the White House. Also on rt.com Bolton out: Trump ditches hawkish adviser he kept for 18 months despite 'disagreements'

"Every time I think Trump is making progress, Bolton butts in and ruins it," Paul added. Negotiations with Afghanistan and talks with North Korea and Iran have reportedly been scuttled by his aggressive tendencies, with Pyongyang declaring him a "defective human product."

Foreign leaders weren't the only ones who had a problem with Trump's notoriously belligerent advisor, either.

"A lot of people here didn't even want his appointment, because he was only able to take a position that did not require Senate approval," Paul said, suggesting that perhaps the "Deep State" pressure had forced the president to keep Bolton around long past his sell-by date.

While the uber-hawk's firing came "later than it should be," Paul hoped it would clear the way for Trump to follow through on the America First, end-the-wars promises that won him so much support in 2016. "Those of us who would like less intervention, we're very happy with it."

Also on rt.com War and whiskers: Freshly-resigned John Bolton gets meme-roasting

As for whether Bolton's departure would change the White House's policy line significantly, though, Paul was less certain. "I don't think it will change a whole lot," he said, pointing out that "we have no idea" who will replace Bolton. Trump said he would make an announcement next week.

[Sep 11, 2019] The Guardian view on John Bolton: good riddance, but the problem is his boss

Notable quotes:
"... However satisfying it may be to see him leave, whoever is picked to succeed him may not be much of an improvement. No one should cheer the chaotic and dysfunctional nature of this administration. Its boss revels in divisions and factionalism among his staff, which allows him to continue governing by his whims, kneejerk reactions and vanity. ..."
"... It is more likely that he was fired because he dented his boss's ego than because his advice was so bad: Mr Trump liked Mr Bolton's bellicose style when he saw it on Fox News, not when it clashed with his own intentions. ..."
"... The national security adviser may have been the most ferocious of the voices urging Mr Trump to turn up the pressure on Iran, but he was certainly not alone . Mr Bolton's presence in the White House was frightening. But its continued occupation by the man who hired him is much more so. ..."
"... As far as Pompeo's "moderation" goes, don't expect anything moderate. But general mailiciousness and opportunism aside, as an evangelical he'll certainly get along perfectly with Pence. ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

confusedponderer , 11 September 2019 at 07:11 AM

There is an nice article about his "Being fired by Don Donald / Nope, actually I quit myself" story:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/10/the-guardian-view-on-john-bolton-good-riddance-but-the-problem-is-his-boss

The Guardian view on John Bolton: good riddance, but the problem is his boss

Many will rightly celebrate the departure of the US national security adviser. But however welcome the news, it reflects the deeper problems with this administration

...

However satisfying it may be to see him leave, whoever is picked to succeed him may not be much of an improvement. No one should cheer the chaotic and dysfunctional nature of this administration. Its boss revels in divisions and factionalism among his staff, which allows him to continue governing by his whims, kneejerk reactions and vanity.

It is neither normal nor desirable for the national security adviser to be excluded from meetings about Afghanistan – even if it is a relief, when the individual concerned is (or was) Mr Bolton. It is more likely that he was fired because he dented his boss's ego than because his advice was so bad: Mr Trump liked Mr Bolton's bellicose style when he saw it on Fox News, not when it clashed with his own intentions.

The national security adviser may have been the most ferocious of the voices urging Mr Trump to turn up the pressure on Iran, but he was certainly not alone . Mr Bolton's presence in the White House was frightening. But its continued occupation by the man who hired him is much more so.

I read that the main drivers of getting him kicked or retire himself were Mnuchin and Pompeo, both afflicted by that nasty goofy smile disease. I am always happy when I see Mnuchin's hands on the table, eliminating one explanation for the smile.

There is that reported sentence about Bolton - that there is no problem for which war was not his solution. I read about similar sentence about Pompeo - that he has an IR seeker for Donald's ass.

That written, good riddance indeed. Likely, if Bolton had his way, the US would likely be at war with North Korea and Iran.

When I studied I was at the UNFCCC for a time during Bush Jr. presidency and talked about what Bolton did at the UN with my superior, a 20 year UN veteran.

A 'malicious saboteur arsonist' is a polite summary of what he did there directly and indirectly, and with given his flirt with MEK and regime change in Iran he has likely not changed at all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/world/middleeast/john-bolton-regime-change-iran.html

As far as Pompeo's "moderation" goes, don't expect anything moderate. But general mailiciousness and opportunism aside, as an evangelical he'll certainly get along perfectly with Pence.

[Sep 11, 2019] Let us hope Pence is not consulted on Bolton's successor

Sep 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

catherine , 10 September 2019 at 08:48 PM

I don't usually find much value at the Atlantic but this article (written before Trump even fired Bolton) about Trump's FP timeline (and flip flops) and Bolton who was acting like he was President is very, very good.
It will allow Trump loyalist to more easily support Trump and give everyone else a tad bit of hope that Trump really won't go bonkers and start any wars.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/trump-tries-to-fix-his-foreign-policy-without-bolton/593284/

different clue , 11 September 2019 at 01:08 AM
Since President Trump appears to talk about things and stuff with Tucker Carlson, perhaps he should ask Tucker Carlson to spend a week thinking . . . and then offer the President some names and the reasoning for offering those names.

If the President asks the same Establishment who gave him Bolton, he will just be handed another Bolton. "Establishment" include Pence, who certainly supported Bolton's outlook on things and would certainly recommend another "Bolton" figure if asked. Let us hope Pence is not consulted on Bolton's successor.

confusedponderer said in reply to different clue... , 11 September 2019 at 09:10 AM
different clue,
re "Let us hope Pence is not consulted on Bolton's successor."

Understandable point of view but then, Trump still is Trump. He can just by himself and beyond advice easily find suboptimal solutions of his own.

Today I read that Richard Grenell was mentioned as a potential sucessor.

As far as that goes, go for it. Many people here will be happy when he "who always only sais what the Whitehouse sais" is finally gone.

And with Trump's biggest military budget in the world he can just continue the arms sale pitches that are and were such a substantial part of his job as a US ambassador in Germany.

That said, they were that after blathering a lot about that we should increase our military budget by 2%, 4%, 6% or 10%, buy US arms, now, and of course the blathering about Northstream 1 & 2 and "slavedom to russian oil & gas" and rather buy US frack gas of course.

He could then also take a side job for the fracking industry in that context. And buy frack gas and arms company stocks. Opportunities, opportunities ...

[Sep 10, 2019] Is John Bolton's Time Up

Notable quotes:
"... But Bolton coupled the Fox and AEI sinecures with gnarlier associations -- for one, the Gatestone Institute, a, let's say Islam-hostile outfit, associated with the secretive, influential Mercer billionaires. ..."
"... Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't. ..."
"... It doesn't matter whether Bolton's "time is up" or not, because his departure wouldn't change anything. If he goes, Trump will replace him with some equally slimy neocon interventionist. ..."
"... It won't end until we muck out the White House next year. Dumping Trump is Job One. ..."
"... Oh. Yes. You want to get rid of Trump's partially neocon administration, so that you could replace it with your own, entirely neocon one. Wake me up when the DNC starts allowing people like Tulsi Gabbard to get nominated. But they won't. So your party will just repeat its merry salsa on the same set of rakes as in 2016. ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

No major politician, not even Barack Obama, excoriated the Iraq war more fiercely than did Trump during the primaries. He did this in front of a scion of the house of Bush and in the deep red state of South Carolina. He nevertheless went on to win that primary, the Republican nomination and the presidency on that antiwar message.

And so, to see Bolton ascend to the commanding heights of the Trump White House shocked many from the time it was first rumored. "I shudder to think what would happen if we had a failed presidency," Scott McConnell, TAC' s founding editor, said in late 2016 at our foreign policy conference, held, opportunely, during the presidential transition. "I mean, John Bolton?"

At the time, Bolton was a candidate for secretary of state, a consideration scuttled in no small part because of the opposition of Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul. As McConnell wrote in November of that year: "Most of the upper-middle-level officials who plotted the Iraq War have retreated quietly into private life, but Bolton has kept their flame alive." Bolton had already been passed over for NSA, losing out early to the doomed Michael Flynn. Rex Tillerson beat him for secretary of state. Bolton was then passed over for the role of Tillerson's deputy. When Flynn flamed out of the White House the following February, Trump chose a general he didn't know at all, H.R. McMaster, to replace him.

Bolton had been trying to make a comeback since late 2006, after failing to hold his job as U.N. ambassador (he had only been a recess appointment). His landing spots including a Fox News contributorship and a post at the vaunted American Enterprise Institute. Even in the early days of the Trump administration, Bolton was around, and accessible. I remember seeing him multiple times in Washington's Connecticut Avenue corridor, decked out in the seersucker he notoriously favors during the summer months. Paired with the familiar mustache, the man is the Mark Twain of regime change.

But Bolton coupled the Fox and AEI sinecures with gnarlier associations -- for one, the Gatestone Institute, a, let's say Islam-hostile outfit, associated with the secretive, influential Mercer billionaires. He also struck a ferocious alliance with the Center for Security Policy, helmed by the infamous Frank Gaffney, and gave paid remarks to the National Council for the Resistance of Iran, the lynchpin organization of the People's Mujahideen of Iran, or MEK. The latter two associations have imbued the spirit of this White House, with Gaffney now one of the most underrated power players in Washington, and the MEK's "peaceful" regime change mantra all but the official line of the administration.

More than any of these gigs, Bolton benefited from two associations that greased the wheels for his joining the Trump administration.

The first was Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist. If you want to understand the administration's Iran policy under Bolton to date, look no further than a piece by the then-retired diplomat in conservative mainstay National Review in August 2017, days after Bannon's departure from the White House: "How to Get Out of the Iran Deal." Bolton wrote the piece at Bannon's urging. Even out of the administration, the former Breitbart honcho was an influential figure.

"We must explain the grave threat to the U.S. and our allies, particularly Israel," said Bolton. "The [Iran Deal's] vague and ambiguous wording; its manifest imbalance in Iran's direction; Iran's significant violations; and its continued, indeed, increasingly, unacceptable conduct at the strategic level internationally demonstrate convincingly that [the Iran deal] is not in the national-security interests of the United States."

Then Bolton, as I documented , embarked on a campaign of a media saturation to make a TV-happy president proud. By May Day the next year, he would have a job, a big one, and one that Senator Paul couldn't deny him: national security advisor. That wasn't the whole story, of course. Bolton's ace in the hole was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has helped drive Trump's Israel policy. If Trump finally moves against Bolton, it will likely be because Adelson failed to strenuously object.

So will Trump finally do it? Other than White House chief of staff, a position Mick Mulvaney has filled in an acting capacity for the entire calendar year, national security advisor is the easiest, most senior role to change horses.

A bombshell Washington Post story lays out the dire truth: Bolton is so distrusted on the president's central prerogatives, for instance Afghanistan, that he's not even allowed to see sensitive plans unsupervised.

Bolton has also come into conflict with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to three senior State Department officials. Pompeo is the consummate politician. Though an inveterate hawk, the putative Trump successor does not want to be the Paul Wolfowitz of the Iran war. Bolton is a bureaucratic arsonist, agnostic on the necessity of two of the institutions he served in -- Foggy Bottom and the United Nations. Pompeo, say those around him, is keen to be beloved, or at least tolerated, by career officials in his department, in contrast with Bolton and even Tillerson.

The real danger Bolton poses is to the twin gambit Trump hopes to pull off ahead of, perhaps just ahead of, next November -- a detente deal with China to calm the markets and ending the war in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, the president announced a scuttled meeting with the Taliban at Camp David, which would have been an historic, stunning summit. Bolton was reportedly instrumental in quashing the meet. Still, there is a lot of time between now and next autumn, and the cancellation is likely the latest iteration of the president's showman diplomacy.

Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor, Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired General Jack Keane.

Bolton seems to be following the well-worn trajectory of dumped Trump deputies. Jeff Sessions, a proto-Trump and the first senator to endorse the mogul, became attorney general and ideological incubator of the new Right's agenda only to become persona non grata in the administration. The formal execution came later. Bannon followed a less dramatic, but no less explosive ebb and flow. James Mattis walked on water until he didn't.

And Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't.

Curt Mills is senior writer


Laurelite a day ago
"Pompeo is the consummate politician."

You confuse "politician" and "liar" here, whereas he is "consummate" at neither politics nor lying. His politicking has been as botched as his diplomacy; his lying has been prodigious but transparent.

Taras77 a day ago
Bolton has been on the way out now for how many months? I will believe this welcome news when I see his sorry ___ out the door.
I think much of America and the world will feel the same way.
Bordentown a day ago
It doesn't matter whether Bolton's "time is up" or not, because his departure wouldn't change anything. If he goes, Trump will replace him with some equally slimy neocon interventionist.

It won't end until we muck out the White House next year. Dumping Trump is Job One.

Alex (the one that likes Ike) Bordentown 19 hours ago • edited
Oh. Yes. You want to get rid of Trump's partially neocon administration, so that you could replace it with your own, entirely neocon one. Wake me up when the DNC starts allowing people like Tulsi Gabbard to get nominated. But they won't. So your party will just repeat its merry salsa on the same set of rakes as in 2016.

[Sep 10, 2019] Trump Fires John Bolton After Disagreeing Strongly With His Suggestions

Trump whole administration is just a bunch of rabid neocons who will be perfectly at home (and some were) in Bush II administration. So firing of Bolton while a step in the right direction is too little, too late.
Notable quotes:
"... Whatever the reason for Bolton's departure, this means one less warmongering neocon is left in the DC swamp, and is a prudent and long overdue move by Trump, one which even Trump's liberals enemies will have no choice but to applaud. ..."
"... Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor, Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired General Jack Keane. ..."
"... War-mongering Ziocons - 0; Peace-loving Humanity - 1 ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

While there was some feverish speculation as to what an impromptu presser at 1:30pm with US Secretary of State Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and National Security Adviser Bolton would deliver, that was quickly swept aside moments later when Trump unexpectedly announced that he had effectively fired Bolton as National Security Advisor, tweeting that he informed John Bolton "last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House" after " disagreeing strongly with many of his suggestions. "

... ... ...

Whatever the reason for Bolton's departure, this means one less warmongering neocon is left in the DC swamp, and is a prudent and long overdue move by Trump, one which even Trump's liberals enemies will have no choice but to applaud.

While we await more details on this strike by Trump against the military-industrial complex-enabling Deep State, here is a fitting closer from Curt Mills via the American Conservative:

Ending America's longest war would be a welcome rebuttal to Democrats who will, day in and day out, charge that Trump is a fraud. But to do so, he will likely need a national security advisor more in sync with the vision. Among them: Tucker Carlson favorite Douglas Macgregor, Stephen Biegun, the runner-up previously, or the hawkish, but relatively pragmatic retired General Jack Keane.

Bolton seems to be following the well-worn trajectory of dumped Trump deputies. Jeff Sessions, a proto-Trump and the first senator to endorse the mogul, became attorney general and ideological incubator of the new Right's agenda only to become persona non grata in the administration. The formal execution came later. Bannon followed a less dramatic, but no less explosive ebb and flow. James Mattis walked on water until he didn't.

And Bolton appeared the leading light of a neoconservative revival, of sorts, until he didn't.

White Nat , 9 minutes ago link

War-mongering Ziocons - 0; Peace-loving Humanity - 1

[Sep 10, 2019] Bolton mioght be consistent and sincere. But he remains a rabid warmonger, who serves Israeli interests.

Notable quotes:
"... Yeah, consistency may be nice, but what about the actual substance of what Bolton believes and does? ..."
"... Personally, I'm not interested in trying to starve Iran into submission or attack it on behalf of Israel. And I would be interested in actually pursuing a meaningful attempt to resolve the Korea issue. Bolton is not only on the wrong side of these issues, he is in general the principal malign force pushing foreign policy insanity in this administration (as opposed to Adelson et all pushing policy insanity from outside the administration.) ..."
"... Heinrich Himmler also was consistent and sincere. By your logic, that must mean that Himmler was a credit to the Nazi regime. ..."
"... You can't serve a president well if you're constantly at odds with him. The Commander-in-Chief has to have his or her own mind about things, advisors are there to advise. If you want to do one thing but you're being counseled to do otherwise, what purpose does such a relationship serve? ..."
"... It was clearly Adelson and his ilk who got Bolton hired in the first place when Trump had initially been unimpressed. In "Fire and Fury," Steve Bannon allegedly says that Trump didn't think Bolton looked the part of NSA. And it's even more significant that Adelson and others of a similar cast--e.g., Safra Catz, the dual-national CEO of Oracle-- engineered a whispering campaign against McMaster that paved the way for what was effectively his firing. ..."
"... Bolton's ace in the hole was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has helped drive Trump's Israel policy ..."
"... Besides, it's not like Bolton was a military man, he openly acknowledges that he didn't want to go and 'die on some rice paddy' in Vietnam. But, he's willing to send other people's kids to fight and die in some pointless show of geopolitical power, If he goes, good riddance. ..."
"... Israel and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia drive Trump's Iran policy, and Pompeo is their messenger. ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Steve Smith EliteCommInc. 19 hours ago • edited

"I have to think that NSA Bolton actually believes what he advocates."

There are and have been lots of people who believe what they advocate--Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Robespierre, and the Neoconservatives in general among them.

Yeah, consistency may be nice, but what about the actual substance of what Bolton believes and does?

Personally, I'm not interested in trying to starve Iran into submission or attack it on behalf of Israel. And I would be interested in actually pursuing a meaningful attempt to resolve the Korea issue. Bolton is not only on the wrong side of these issues, he is in general the principal malign force pushing foreign policy insanity in this administration (as opposed to Adelson et all pushing policy insanity from outside the administration.)

Sorry, but Bolton's "service" sure ain't appreciated by me!

Sid Finster EliteCommInc. 19 hours ago
"He's consistent and sincere!" in that cause of evil, yes.

Heinrich Himmler also was consistent and sincere. By your logic, that must mean that Himmler was a credit to the Nazi regime.

Steve Smith Sid Finster 19 hours ago
We are obviously thinking along the same lines.
EliteCommInc. Sid Finster 8 hours ago
Hyperbole much I see. If you want to honestly assess someone, you might want to avoid that tact. To my knowledge NSA Bolton is not building concentration camps to send undesirables to an early grave.

I would be curious what you know about what his agenda is or why.

EdMan EliteCommInc. 18 hours ago
You can't serve a president well if you're constantly at odds with him. The Commander-in-Chief has to have his or her own mind about things, advisors are there to advise. If you want to do one thing but you're being counseled to do otherwise, what purpose does such a relationship serve?

Bolton was the wrong man for the job.

gdpbull 20 hours ago • edited
Nah, they (Bolton and all the neocons) are celebrating the death of another American soldier killed in a suicide attack just prior to a planned peace summit with the Taliban. The Taliban and the neocons are two sides that deserve each other, but at the cost of many innocents.

Its easy to depose any third world government with our military, but one cannot eradicate an ideology with today's humanitarian standards. So we should just leave and tell the Taliban they can even take power in Afghanistan again, but if they harbor any groups that want to attack our country, we'll be back. It only takes a month or so to depose a third world government. Then we leave again. We can do this over and over again and it'll be way cheaper than leaving troops there and many fewer casualties.

The Rocket Man gdpbull 15 hours ago
I don't think Bolton will be in there for the rest of Trump's presidency. Presidential appointments rarely ever last through the whole administration. Now I'm not when he goes cause anyone's guess is as good as mine. And will policy actually change for the better or remain the same?
Sid Finster 19 hours ago
" If only the Tsar knew how wicked his advisers are! "

We've been hearing of Bolton's imminent demise since the time Trump appointed the unindicted criminal, and to a position that isn't subject to Congressional advice and consent.

Bolton is still in office, still making policy, still stovepiping "intelligence" to Trump, still plotting away like Grima Wormtongue.

If Trump wasn't so close to Bolton, why was he in regular contact with the man before appointing him, and why does he allow Bolton to control what information Trump gets?

And if you read the latest news, it seems that the occupation of Afghanistan isn't going anywhere either. Bolton wins again, but some writers at TAC keep holding out hope for Trump.

Steve Smith 19 hours ago
"If Trump finally moves against Bolton, it will likely be because Adelson failed to strenuously object."

Well, isn't that nice? Trump's decision on whether to keep or fire his national security advisor depends on the whim of the hideous, Israel-uber-alles ideologue Adelson. That sure makes me feel good. (And by the way, Curt Mills, this is called burying the lede.)

Of course it's only logical. It was clearly Adelson and his ilk who got Bolton hired in the first place when Trump had initially been unimpressed. In "Fire and Fury," Steve Bannon allegedly says that Trump didn't think Bolton looked the part of NSA. And it's even more significant that Adelson and others of a similar cast--e.g., Safra Catz, the dual-national CEO of Oracle-- engineered a whispering campaign against McMaster that paved the way for what was effectively his firing.

This piece misses what's important about the Trump administration's foreign/security policy saga and reduces it to a mere matter of personalities and petty politics. File this under the heading of discretion being the better part of valor.

Countee Cullen 18 hours ago
"Bolton's ace in the hole was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who has helped drive Trump's Israel policy. If Trump finally moves against Bolton, it will likely be because Adelson failed to strenuously object."

So -- Ilhan Omar was right??? I thought she was a vile anti-Semite echoing an ancient slur!!

Carl Jacobson 8 hours ago
If Bolton does leave, I won't be sorry to see him go. Bolton's Hawkish opinions are dangerous to the US' economic health.

Want to go into a deep Recession? Start another long-term foreign war that goes on for decades - and do it on credit, AGAIN.

Besides, it's not like Bolton was a military man, he openly acknowledges that he didn't want to go and 'die on some rice paddy' in Vietnam. But, he's willing to send other people's kids to fight and die in some pointless show of geopolitical power, If he goes, good riddance.

Into Night 6 hours ago
The photo accompanying the article sums it up. Pompeo flanked by an American flag, and both of them dwarfed by a huge projection of the flag of Israel.

Israel and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia drive Trump's Iran policy, and Pompeo is their messenger.

[Sep 10, 2019] Consistency may be nice, but what about the actual substance of what Bolton believes and does?

Sep 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Steve Smith EliteCommInc. 19 hours ago • edited

"I have to think that NSA Bolton actually believes what he advocates."

There are and have been lots of people who believe what they advocate--Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Robespierre, and the Neoconservatives in general among them.

Yeah, consistency may be nice, but what about the actual substance of what Bolton believes and does?

... ... ...

Sid Finster EliteCommInc. 19 hours ago
"He's consistent and sincere!" in that cause of evil, yes.

Heinrich Himmler also was a. consistent. and sincere. By your logic, that must mean that Himmler was a credit to the Nazi regime.

[Sep 10, 2019] It s all about Gene Sharp and seeping neoliberal regime change using Western logistical support, money, NGO and intelligence agencies and MSM as the leverage

Highly recommended!
What democracy they are talking about? Democracy for whom? This Harvard political prostitutes are talking about democracy for oligarchs which was the nest result of EuroMaydan and the ability of Western companies to buy assets for pennies on the dollar without the control of national government like happen in xUSSR space after dissolution of the USSR, which in retrospect can be classified as a color revolution too, supported by financial injection, logistical support and propaganda campaign in major Western MSM.
What Harvard honchos probably does not understand or does not wish to understand is that neoliberalism as a social system lost its attraction and is in irreversible decline. The ideology of neoliberalism collapsed much like Bolsheviks' ideology. As Politician like Joe Boden which still preach neoliberalism are widely viewed as corrupt or senile (or both) hypocrites.
The "Collective West" still demonstrates formidable intelligence agencies skills (especially the USA and GB), but the key question is: "What they are fighting for?"
They are fighting for neoliberalism which is a lost case. Which looks like KGB successes after WWIII. They won many battles and lost the Cold war.
Not that Bolsheviks in the USSR was healthy or vibrant. Economics was a deep stagnation, alcoholism among working class was rampant, the standard of living of the majority of population slides each year, much like is the case with neoliberalism after, say, 1991. Hidden unemployment in the USSR was high -- at least in high teens if not higher. Like in the USA now good jobs were almost impossible to obtain without "extra help". Medical services while free were dismal, especially dental -- which were horrible. Hospitals were poor as church rats as most money went to MIC. Actually, like in the USA now, MIC helped to strangulate the economy and contributed to the collapse. It was co a corrupt and decaying , led by completely degenerated leadership. To put the person of the level of Gorbachov level of political talent lead such a huge and complex country was an obvious suicide.
But the facts speak for themselves: what people usually get as the result of any color revolution is the typical for any county which lost the war: dramatic drop of the standard of living due to economic rape of the country.
While far form being perfect the Chinese regime at least managed to lift the standard of living of the majority of the population and provide employment. After regime change China will experience the same economic rape as the USSR under Yeltsin regime. So in no way Hong Cong revolution can be viewed a progressive phenomenon despite all the warts of neoliberalism with Chenese characteristics in mainland China (actually this is a variant of NEP that Gorbachov tried to implement in the USSR, but was to politically incompetent to succeed)
Aug 31, 2019 | Chris Fraser @ChrisFraser_HKU • Aug 27 \z

Replying to @edennnnnn_ @AMFChina @lihkg_forum

A related resource that deserves wide circulation:

Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force in effecting social, political change – Harvard Gazette

CHENOWETH: I think it really boils down to four different things. The first is a large and diverse participation that's sustained.

The second thing is that [the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites. Security forces are important because they ultimately are the agents of repression, and their actions largely decide how violent the confrontation with -- and reaction to -- the nonviolent campaign is going to be in the end. But there are other security elites, economic and business elites, state media. There are lots of different pillars that support the status quo, and if they can be disrupted or coerced into noncooperation, then that's a decisive factor.

The third thing is that the campaigns need to be able to have more than just protests; there needs to be a lot of variation in the methods they use.

The fourth thing is that when campaigns are repressed -- which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes -- they don't either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves. If campaigns allow their repression to throw the movement into total disarray or they use it as a pretext to militarize their campaign, then they're essentially co-signing what the regime wants -- for the resisters to play on its own playing field. And they're probably going to get totally crushed.

Wai Sing-Rin @waisingrin • Aug 27

Replying to @ChrisFraser_HKU @edennnnnn_ and 2 others

Anyone who watched the lone frontliner (w translator) sees the frontliners are headed for disaster. They're fighting just to fight with no plans nor objectives.
They see themselves as heroes protecting the HK they love. No doubt their sincerity, but there are 300 of them left.

[Aug 31, 2019] Clever Tactics "Add Oil" to Hong Kong Protests (and not "Hidden Hands" by Lambert Strether

Notable quotes:
"... So, a well-meaning Westerner suggests Gene Sharp's well-known 198 Methods of Non-Violent Action to a HKer, who politely informs him that Sharp's work is already available in Chinese ..."
"... You don't have to wait for your CIA handler to vouchsafe The Sacred Texts. Very sophisticated and tested protest tactics are all available on the Internet, if you research the media coverage of Tahrir Square, los indignados in Spain, the state capital occupations in the United States, Occupy proper, the Carré Rouge in Quebec, and many, many other examples (including the Umbrella movement organic to Hong Kong). It's not all Maidan -- which is on the Internet too, and I don't regard it was useful to forcefit all protests into that model. ..."
"... If they have factories in China now, and they are the invisible hands, I think they (and their factories) would be in trouble already, as in 'now,' and they don't have to worry about being extradited in the future. ..."
"... Me neither. That's a concern. However, there is the idea that "you taught me" that non-violence doesn't work (in 2014), "you" being the Chinese government. There is also the idea that the Mainland is no more agreement-capable than the United States," since they have no intention of adhering to the Basic Law on matters like universal suffrage . If the attitude among a great mass of the protestors is that they have nothing to lose, some sort of Masada-like scenario seems likely. ..."
"... And exactly whose interests would that serve? The interests of the students? The interests of Hong Kong generally? Answering that question will begin to take you down the rabbit hole. ..."
"... Now, it is true that "color revolution" in strong form seems to have lost some credibility, and that, if I may characterize the discourse collectively, we see a strategic retreat to formulations like "I'm sure the protestors have legitimacy," but they're still "manipulated," because, by gawd, that's what the US does. ..."
"... And then we get NGOs (been around for years) and Jimmy Lai (been around for years). Constants, that is, where the protests are a variable (which is why the heavy-breathing GrayZone post about xenohobia doesn't impress me all that much). ..."
"... So will this protest end the way Occupy ended here in "democratic" USA? One has to suspect the secessionist aim that is one of the apparent motives will not be rewarded. ..."
"... US funding and influence was quite well-attested then, for those who were paying attention. Oddly, or not, there seems to be no Victoria Nuland-equivalent for HK. One could argue, of course, that there's an invisible Nuland, but Occam's Razor eliminates that. I never followed Ukraine closely, I admit, partly because Ukraine is fabulously corrupt, and partly because (like Syria) it seemed impossible to separate fact from fiction on the ground. (The only rooting interest I have in Ukraine is their wonderful enormous airplanes.) I think for HK we have a lot more well-attested information. That's what the post is about, in fact. ..."
"... There is video of HKers using 3-person surgical tubing catapults to return to sender tear gas cannisters. I've seen pranksters use these "slingshots" to lob water balloons into unsuspecting civilians, but they are much better suited to return cannisters to the police. ..."
"... I know enough about HK to be a little suspicious of the motives of *some* protestors, but I'm in awe of their inventiveness and raw courage. And believe me, to protest publicly in HK/China requires real physical courage that is not required anywhere in the west, anyone who thinks otherwise is entirely clueless about the nature of the Chinese government and what it is capable of. ..."
"... The fact that neo-con elements in the US are happy about the protests is entirely irrelevant, it really is. Its like saying that when RT had approving articles about Occupy or Black Lives Matter that this proves the Russians were behind it. It really is that stupid and US centric an opinion. ..."
"... But here's the rub. Can you imagine what would happen if this all happened in a western country? Imagine this happening in New York for example. Actually we don't. The authorities came down on the Occupy Wall Street movement like a ton of bricks so we had a taste of what would happen. ..."
"... I am not saying that the Chinese government is right but I can understand their position here. They give Hong Kong a 'special deal' and the rest of China will want their own special deals. ..."
"... Just like the Chinese elites, the U.S. elites don't want to deal with the citizenry, and protest is something that shocks them. ..."
"... What really makes most HK skeptics suspicious is the way the media and the political establishment in the West are constantly slathering the students there with pure, unadulturated praise, while lambasting us skeptics as 'conspiracy theorists'. So comparisons of HK to Maidan are indeed apt. And please contrast the media's treatment of this protest with their (non-)treatment of the gilets jaunes movement in France. On that rare occasion when the MSM did deign to mention the gilets jaunes , they always faithfully accused them of 'racism' and 'anti-semitism'. But note how the HK protesters get pass for using Pepe the Frog as their symbol! ..."
"... The idea of protest is to disrupt the system and generally gum up the works, raising the costs of the offending campaign, hopefully to the point where the material and reputational damage makes the whole thing no longer worth pursuing. This is the end game. ..."
"... To paraphrase Noam Chomsky: Elites want a smoothly-running system of oppression. There is no reason to give them this gift. ..."
"... In general, the techniques described here seem unreliable and dangerous if masking your identity from surveillance is vital. The idea that you are going to identify and precisely target every video camera that can see you, 100% of the time, esp. in a moving and rapidly changing environment, seems extremely naive. Video cameras are small, cheap, inconspicuous, and easy to disguise. All that's needed by the opponent is a single video frame that shows your face clearly. ..."
Aug 30, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Let me start out with a sidebar on "add oil" (加油), which you see all over the coverage of the Hong Kong protests: It originated, says the OED , as a cheer at the Macau Grand Prix in the 1960s, meaning "step on the gas" (which is good to know, because I thought that the underlying metaphor was adding cooking oil to a wok preparatory to frying). It translates roughly to " go for it !" Here, an apartment block encourages the protesters by chanting it:

Interestingly, "add oil!" was also used as a cheer by the 2014 Umbrella movement , which should tell you that Hong Kong has considerable experience in running a protest.

Sidebar completed, this post will have a simple thesis: The people of Hong Kong have considerable experience in running protests, and we don't need to multiply invisible entities ("hidden hands") to give an account of what they're doing. For example, it's not necessary to postulate that the participants in the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests consulted CIA handlers on tactics; their tactics are often available, in open source , on the Internet; other tactics are based on Hong Kong material culture , things and situations that come readily to hand and can be adapted by creative people (which the protesters clearly are).

I started thinking about this post when I read this tweet:

Andreas Fulda ‏ @ AMFChina Aug 27 More Copy link to Tweet Embed Tweet

Wow, amazing! This campaign is on fire I was wondering if someone could volunteer and translate the attached 198 methods of nonviolent action into Cantonese? It would be great to share a Cantonese version with @ lihkg_forum Link below is safe! https://www. aeinstein.org/nonviolentacti on/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/ pic.twitter.com/4kh6ORUnai

So, a well-meaning Westerner suggests Gene Sharp's well-known 198 Methods of Non-Violent Action to a HKer, who politely informs him that Sharp's work is already available in Chinese .

Clearly, #genesharptaughtme is alive and well! (In fact, I remember Black Lives Matter using the same hashtag.)

I am well-aware of Gene Sharp's equivocal role as a defense intellectual -- in strong form, the Godfather of "color revolutions" -- but at this point Sharp's influence is attenuated. Out here in reality, information on non-violent strategy and tactics has gone global, like everything else.

You don't have to wait for your CIA handler to vouchsafe The Sacred Texts. Very sophisticated and tested protest tactics are all available on the Internet, if you research the media coverage of Tahrir Square, los indignados in Spain, the state capital occupations in the United States, Occupy proper, the Carré Rouge in Quebec, and many, many other examples (including the Umbrella movement organic to Hong Kong). It's not all Maidan -- which is on the Internet too, and I don't regard it was useful to forcefit all protests into that model.

So, I'm going to go through a few of the tactics used in the 2019 Hong Kong protests: Umbrellas, Laser Pointers, Lennon Walls, and a Human Chain. For each tactic, I will throw it into the open source bucket, or the material culture bucket; in either case, there need be no "hidden hand." Also, I find protest tactics fascinating in and of themselves; I think a movement is healthy if its tactics are creative, and when they are so no longer, the movement has not long to live. (For example, Black Lives Matter started to disintegrate as a national movement when the college die-ins stopped (and when the liberal Democrats co-opted it by elevating Deray.) To the tactics!

Umbrellas

Umbrellas were already a symbol of protest in Hong Kong, from the Umbrella Movement of 2014. Here we see umbrellas being used to shield protestors from surveillance cameras (although they can also be used as shields against kinetic effects).

In concept, the testudo (tortoise) formation dates to Roman times:

One can indeed see that Maidan protestors using literal shields:

However, I would classify umbrella tactics as deriving from Hong Kong's material culture ; Hong Kong is sub-tropical ; there are typhoons; there is rain, fog, drizzle; and there is also the sun. Massed umbrellas scale easily from the tens to the hundreds; they create a splendid visual effect en masse ; and they are available in any corner shop. So, it is not necessary to postulate an entity translating Maidan's heavy medieval shields to Hong Kong umbrellas; the protestors would have worked out the uses of umbrellas themselves, adapting the tools that come to hand to the existing conditions.

Laser Pointers

Hong Kong, under Mainland influence, is increasingly a surveillance state; it makes sense that HKers would give considerable thought to surveillance, and how to avoid it, in the normal course of events. How much more so protestors:

I would classify the laser pointers tactic open source , since that's how I found out that yes, laser poinerns can knock out surveillance cameras . Again, there's no need to postulate that some unknown entity gave the protesters the idea; anybody with a little creativity and some research skills could come up with it, given the proper incentives (like being arrested, say).

Lennon Walls

Here is a Lennon Wall ("you may say I'm a dreamer") in Hong Kong: Lennon Walls originated in Prague after John Lennon's murder in 1980 : ( The 2014 Umbrella movement also used them .) But these are Lennon Walls with Chinese characteristics:

The idea that one may "post" anything has been actualized with Post-It Notes, giving HK walls a digital, pixelated look:

And the authorities have just begun to tear them down: Reminds me of the NYPD bulldozing the Zucotti Park library, sadly.

I would classify Lennon Walls in both categories: They originated, conceptually, in Prague (so open source ) but they are well adapted for massed protest in the material culture of Hong Kong. (Like massed umbrellas, massed PostIt notes scale easily from the tens to the thousands; they create a splendid visual effect en masse ; and they are available in any corner shop.)

Human Chain

Here is a poster publicizing "the Hong Kong Way," a human chain across Hong Kong: Here is the beautiful result:

I would classify "the Hong Kong Way" as open source , since the idea originated from " the Baltic Way ," where some two million people joined hands to form a human chain across the three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

Conclusion

Just to tweak the "It's a color revolution!" crowd, here's an image of HKers watching a movie about Maidan:

I hope I have persuaded you that (a) this Maidan movie is open source "; knowledge of Maidan as a worthy object of study, that (b) by Occam's Razor, it doesn't take a CIA handler to tell this to HKers, and that (c) if the HKers end up building catapults , they will be adapted to Hong Kong's material culture (i.e., probably not medieval in appearance or structure).[1]

NOTES

[1] The HKers may also be sending a message to the authorities: If Maidan is what you want, bring it!



TooSoonOld , , August 30, 2019 at 5:40 pm

Maciej Cegłowski has written a first-hand account that helped me understand some of the tactics the protesters employ. I see he's written a follow-on piece, too.
https://idlewords.com/2019/08/a_walk_in_hong_kong.htm

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , , August 30, 2019 at 6:46 pm

Another claim is that rich Hong Kongers are behind the protests, fearing extradition.

If they have factories in China now, and they are the invisible hands, I think they (and their factories) would be in trouble already, as in 'now,' and they don't have to worry about being extradited in the future.

I'm doubtful of that claim as well.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 4:40 am

I've read that claim too, and for the reasons you state and others it doesn't pass the smell test, its simply not credible.

pjay , , August 30, 2019 at 8:11 pm

Ok. I really did not want to post any more comments on Hong Kong, or China for that matter, here at NC. But I am genuinely puzzled, and I have to say concerned, about the way this issue has been framed here. One does not have to accept the argument that *either* (1) the protests are completely spontaneous and genuine; *or* (2) the protests are mainly the product of CIA manipulation of otherwise clueless dupes (a whole lot of them apparently!). This is a false dichotomy. None of the critics of the mainstream Hong Kong narrative that I am familiar with take a position any where close to (2). It is a straw-man position if applied to most reputable "skeptics."

Rather, the argument I have seen most often among these skeptics (including some commenters here) is that, while the protests *were* authentic and directed at real issues of concern to protesters, there have also been efforts on the part of Western agents to manipulate this situation. This included support of particular, strategically significant leaders and groups and, of course, control of the Western media narrative. We have pictures and stories in even the mainstream press of US officials and representatives of western NGOs meeting with such individuals. Hell, we have US politicians bragging about it. These connections are pretty clear, whether or not HKers can find Gene Sharp's work on the internet.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/17/hong-kong-protest-washington-nativism-violence/

I have no doubt that many HKers are opposed to mainland rule, so China hands here need not lecture me condescendingly on that issue. On the other hand, I have no doubt that Chinese officials are justified in suspecting covert action by the CIA to stir things up even more (though a lot of the activity is actually pretty overt). Looking at the postwar actions of the US and its allies all over the world, including China in the past, they would have to be idiots not to. And they are not idiots.

RubyDog , , August 30, 2019 at 8:56 pm

Good post. As usual, reality is far more complex and not reducible to simplistic either/or narratives. Protest, rebellion, and unrest are endemic in Chinese (and world) history. In a globalized and interconnected modern world, of course there is widespread awareness and cross fertilization of movements. The "West" did not start this fire, though no doubt they are doing some fanning of the flames.

What worries me is that I do not understand the endgame of the protesters. If you are facing a power far greater than your own, guerilla tactics are in order, but you have to know when to declare victory and back off for awhile. They seem to want to keep pushing and pushing until another Tienanmen may become inevitable.

Anon , , August 30, 2019 at 11:02 pm

The HK protesters recognize that they have enough bodies to literally bring parts of the city to a halt. Soon the authorities will realize that they don't have enough police to maintain order and some sort of compromise will be in order.

Imagine if 200 cars stopped on an LA freeway. Traffic would be halted for hours before enough tow trucks could be put in service. Bodies in the street (cars on the freeway) can be enough to stop "business as usual".

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 3:03 am

> I do not understand the endgame of the protesters

Me neither. That's a concern. However, there is the idea that "you taught me" that non-violence doesn't work (in 2014), "you" being the Chinese government. There is also the idea that the Mainland is no more agreement-capable than the United States," since they have no intention of adhering to the Basic Law on matters like universal suffrage . If the attitude among a great mass of the protestors is that they have nothing to lose, some sort of Masada-like scenario seems likely.

As for the rest of the comment, meh. It's simultaneously an initial withdrawal of the debunked "color revolution" theory, and a mushy reformulation of same in different terms ("no doubt that Chinese officials are justified in suspecting covert action by the CIA"). Either you believe that the Hong Kong protests are organic in origin and execution, or you don't. See my comment here .

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 6:05 am

My sympathy for the HK protesters is somewhat impaired by their antipathy for mainlanders and mainlander immigration to HK. Its worth reading Carl Zha on Tiananmen. I thought i knew what happened in Tiananmen, but it turned out i didn't.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:10 am

I'm a bit leery of Chongqing native Carl Zha and his sudden elevation. Let's remember that the Mainland is just as sophisticated in its information campaigns as the US. For example, a claim that he has revealed what really happened, as we say, at Tien An Man, without an explanation what his views are is a red flag to me. (In the worse case scenario, disinformation is infesting the NC comments section.) No, I'm not going to "just listen to the YouTube" because I don't have time to devote to it, as opposed to reading a transcript quickly.

Also, weird flex on "immigration."

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 8:52 am

I've just come across Zha once or twice and I certainly would not consider him a reliable source. The 'official' narrative around Tiannanman in China (as taught to Chinese people) has changed more than once, his seems to match the current version. This doesn't mean he is lying or wrong, I'm just suspicious about anyone who claims to know the 'truth' about such a chaotic and charged event, and some of the things he has written is simply not a reflection of what Chinese people I know think about it.

Its worth pointing out of course that almost all the evidence suggests that the Chinese intelligence penetration of the US has been far more competent than vice versa. The narrative that somehow the CIA was behind Tiananmen (which even MoA has pushed) and the current protests simply strains all credulity. There is no doubt they would provide any help they could to anti-government movements within China, but there is no evidence that they've done anything more than promote a few fringe dissidents.

harry , , August 31, 2019 at 11:56 am

Zha (to my recollection) did not suggest the CIA was behind Tiananmen. He did suggest that the amount of violence and the cause of the violence was not as reported in the West. There was little corroboration though. That said, he had quite an interesting take on the lone man with shopping bag stopping tank column. Perhaps it is common knowledge but he suggested that event took place on the day after Tiananmen, when the tanks were trying to head back to base. Just cos he said that don't make it true of course. But it did make me ask how i know what i think i know.

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 12:11 pm

I apologize for not outlining his views. I thought it better to just suggest him as a possible reference and allow people to come to their own conclusions. I came across him cos I follow Mark Ames on twitter. I know of Ames cos I spent time in Moscow in the 90s. So I considered it a good recommendation -- but hardly foolproof. Zha suggests that students in Tienamin set a bus on fire in the square (of heavenly peace?) which unfortunately contained a number of PLA soldiers who were burned alive. I have no way of knowing whether this account is true. However he also suggested the iconic man in front of tank column took place on the following day. Which was news to me, and seemed quite plausible when you consider the interaction. But I have no reason to believe this anymore than I should believe the BBC or CNN. Its just that where I have listened to the BBC on subjects I am personally familiar with, they have occasionally been rather "economical" with inconvenient truths. Mr Zha has the advantage of Ames recommendation, a clean slate, and an interesting but unproven assertion.

His take on HK protests is that they have become rather violent, with the aim being to prompt a violent response from the Chinese authorities.

HKers appear to view themselves as distinct from mainlanders, and do not seem to welcome mainland immigration. Fascinating to see british colonial flags brandished when telling Mandarin speakers to "go home". But even here I am relying on the translations applied by the makers of the videos. I dont speak Cantonese or Mandarin.

Seamus Padraig , , August 31, 2019 at 7:19 am

They seem to want to keep pushing and pushing until another Tienanmen may become inevitable.

And exactly whose interests would that serve? The interests of the students? The interests of Hong Kong generally? Answering that question will begin to take you down the rabbit hole.

Plenue , , August 30, 2019 at 9:28 pm

(2) seems to be Olga's position. She's repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for 'gullible youth'.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 2:54 am

> But I am genuinely puzzled, and I have to say concerned, about the way this issue has been framed here. One does not have to accept the argument that *either* (1) the protests are completely spontaneous and genuine; *or* (2) the protests are mainly the product of CIA manipulation of otherwise clueless dupes (a whole lot of them apparently!). This is a false dichotomy. None of the critics of the mainstream Hong Kong narrative that I am familiar with take a position any where close to (2). It is a straw-man position if applied to most reputable "skeptics."

Nonsense. If you say that the HK protests were a "color revolution," which was the original claim ( following Moon of Alabama here , with the most frequent analogy being Ukraine, #2 ("clueless dupes") is exactly what you're saying.

So, I'm not "straw manning" at all, but replying directly to a criticism expressed here. Please follow the site more closely before you mischaracterize what I wrote.

Now, it is true that "color revolution" in strong form seems to have lost some credibility, and that, if I may characterize the discourse collectively, we see a strategic retreat to formulations like "I'm sure the protestors have legitimacy," but they're still "manipulated," because, by gawd, that's what the US does.

And then we get NGOs (been around for years) and Jimmy Lai (been around for years). Constants, that is, where the protests are a variable (which is why the heavy-breathing GrayZone post about xenohobia doesn't impress me all that much).

The formulation employed in your comment is even weaker:

there have also been efforts on the part of Western agents to manipulate this situation. This included support of particular, strategically significant leaders and groups and, of course, control of the Western media narrative.

I don't know what "efforts by" even means. (I mean, there were "efforts by" various odd Russians to meet with Trump, but no hotel was build, and so, so what?) Nor do I think that editorials in the Times have the slightest influence either on the Hong Kong protestors or the Mainland. I can't imagine why anybody would take them seriously.

What I am here to say is that the HK protests are organic to HK. They are organized and directed by HKers, many of whom have a lot of experience protesting. There is no need to multiply entities -- whether in strong form the CIA or in very weak form "the connections are pretty clear" -- to give an account of them. Now, as I said here, I'm sure Five Eyes are "sniffing around." Probably Taipei, Japan, Indonesia, even the French and the Dutch; anyone with an interest in events in the South China Sea. But IMNSHO the protestors have full agency . (It's also hard to avoid that there's a whiff of colonialism here, too: How is it possible that mere Chinese people could achieve such things without Western help?

And so, like clockwork -- I've noticed this in other comments that start out with the weak form of "manipulation" and end up with the strong form of "control" -- we come right back to that claim!

On the other hand, I have no doubt that Chinese officials are justified in suspecting covert action by the CIA to stir things up even more (though a lot of the activity is actually pretty overt)

(So "overt" that you can't even link to whatever the activity might be. Fine.) First, we come back to the Mandy Rice-Davies rule: They would say that, wouldn't they? Second, so I wasn't straw-manning at all, then, was I? Third, after I went to the trouble of applying Occam's Razor to your claims, you just repeat them!

NOTE * "We have pictures and stories in even the mainstream press of US officials and representatives of western NGOs meeting with such individuals." The picture is in a hotel ffs. Pretty low level of operational security, if you ask me.

Carolinian , , August 30, 2019 at 8:37 pm

So will this protest end the way Occupy ended here in "democratic" USA? One has to suspect the secessionist aim that is one of the apparent motives will not be rewarded.

RBHoughton , , August 30, 2019 at 8:49 pm

This is frankly quite superficial but, if anyone has 30 minutes spare, they can learn the history behind today's Hong Kong riots here :

https://youtu.be/17f9yoorTu8

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 3:26 am

I've often inveighed against YouTube links that don't summarize the content. In this case, those interested in "connecting the dots" and following the money might be interested to know that the videocaster, Sarah Flounders, is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party :

The Workers World Party (WWP) is a revolutionary Marxist -- Leninist political party in the United States founded in 1959 by a group led by Sam Marcy of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Marcy and his followers split from the SWP in 1958 over a series of long-standing differences, among them their support for Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948, the positive view they held of the Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong and their defense of the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary, all of which the SWP opposed.

I don't know what the Chinese word for "tankies" is, or even if there is one, but we seem to have one such here. Here from their newspaper, Workers World, an article originally written in 1993, reprinted in 2019 :

Immediately before and during the Tienanmen Square days, China appeared to be in danger of disintegrating into warlordism. This was overcome and the decentralizing process that threatened to emerge was eliminated. That was a victory of socialism.

The question of how far the Chinese government can go with the capitalist reforms will certainly be up for review, notwithstanding a constitutional provision meant to make the reforms a permanent feature in Chinese society.

One fact has certainly emerged: the millions who left the rural areas for the great cities of China and were absorbed into the proletariat have given the Chinese government and Communist Party the opportunity to strengthen the socialist character of the state. The growth of the proletariat is the objective factor most needed for the building of socialism.

I don't think its surprising that Flounders and the WWP would retail the mainland line.

The Rev Kev , , August 30, 2019 at 9:56 pm

I guess that this comes about seeing what happened to all the young people who supported the Ukrainian "revolution" for a free, just society. Twice! How did that work out for them? How is the Ukraine going these days? What did they say when they found out that that so-called "revolution" last time had a $5 billion 'Made-in-the-USA' sticker on it? Conspiracy theory at the time. Recorded fact now.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:24 am

> Conspiracy theory at the time. Recorded fact now.

Not so. US funding and influence was quite well-attested then, for those who were paying attention. Oddly, or not, there seems to be no Victoria Nuland-equivalent for HK. One could argue, of course, that there's an invisible Nuland, but Occam's Razor eliminates that. I never followed Ukraine closely, I admit, partly because Ukraine is fabulously corrupt, and partly because (like Syria) it seemed impossible to separate fact from fiction on the ground. (The only rooting interest I have in Ukraine is their wonderful enormous airplanes.) I think for HK we have a lot more well-attested information. That's what the post is about, in fact.

John A , , August 31, 2019 at 7:47 am

Re similarities or otherwise with Kiev, we will have to wait and see if there is any sniper crowd killings in HK as with the 'Heavenly Hundred' in Kiev. At the time, the shootings were blamed on the government, but compelling evidence since points to US backed snipers from Georgia.

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 12:23 pm

Compelling might be pushing a point. There is certainly evidence, and some of it is quite persuasive. However I dont consider some Georgians snipers on Italian tv compelling evidence.

Anon , , August 30, 2019 at 10:54 pm

RE: Catapult

There is video of HKers using 3-person surgical tubing catapults to return to sender tear gas cannisters. I've seen pranksters use these "slingshots" to lob water balloons into unsuspecting civilians, but they are much better suited to return cannisters to the police.

I did a brief search on the Internet for some video but couldn't find it.

Anon , , August 30, 2019 at 11:08 pm

okay, here's a link:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7319925/Demonstrators-use-slingshots-hurl-rocks-police-station-Hong-Kong.html

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:39 am

The Maidan catapult had its own Twitter account. Here's what it looked like:

I doubt very much that a catapult designed by HKers would look like this; it is not constructed of materials that come readily to hand. (And perhaps massed slingshots would be more effective anyhow.)

(I can't read any languages written in Cyrillic, so I defer to any readers who can on my interpretation.)

VietnamVet , , August 30, 2019 at 11:30 pm

Endless wars. Smoke filled skies. Hurricanes, drought, flooding. No purpose in life. Incarceration, surveillance and insurmountable debt. Arrogant incompetence.

Change is coming. People need hope. A movement will be born.
"Bring it on" -- "Pa'lante" in Spanish.

Hurray For The Riff Raff -- Pa'lante

"And do my time, and be something
Well I just wanna prove my worth --
On the planet Earth, and be, something"

"To all who had to hide, I say, iPa'lante!
To all who lost their pride, I say, ¡Pa'lante!
To all who had to survive, I say, ¡Pa'lante!"

"To my brothers, and my sisters, I say, ¡Pa'lante!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LilVDjLaZSE

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 3:11 am

So "Pa'lante" is how you say "add oil" in Spanish!

Alex morfesis , , August 31, 2019 at 11:52 am

Para Alante. Pa'lante for forward/move forward/go forward/go to the front/continue/keep pushing forward/don't stop

Different Spanish interpretations depending on which blend of the language your ears become attuned to .mine flow from cuban, with a twist of Puerto Rican/Newrican, a dabble of dominican, some mexican icing and a little Columbian sprinkles on top

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 4:36 am

Thank you for this Lambert. Perhaps its my perspective of coming from a small country, but I find the anti-HK protestor comments I see here and elsewhere baffling coming from supposed progressives. Sometimes, really, its not all about the US, or even US Imperialism.

I know enough about HK to be a little suspicious of the motives of *some* protestors, but I'm in awe of their inventiveness and raw courage. And believe me, to protest publicly in HK/China requires real physical courage that is not required anywhere in the west, anyone who thinks otherwise is entirely clueless about the nature of the Chinese government and what it is capable of.

The fact that neo-con elements in the US are happy about the protests is entirely irrelevant, it really is. Its like saying that when RT had approving articles about Occupy or Black Lives Matter that this proves the Russians were behind it. It really is that stupid and US centric an opinion.

As to the questions about the endgame, I really don't know, and I suspect the protestors don't know either. My own opinion is that this is as much a nationalist movement as a political one. Many HKers see themselves as a nation with one foot in the east and one in the west and want to preserve this status, but nobody has to my knowledge articulated how they can achieve this. Many of them have a romantic notion of what western 'freedoms' mean, but not quite as romantic as people think, as so many HKers have lived in the US or UK or elsewhere and are not entirely politically naive. But they sure as hell know they do not want to live in an autocratic State led by Beijing, and they are perfectly entitled to that view.

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 5:03 am

Your last part of your comment makes the protestors sound like the Brexiteers of the Far Fast. People who want radical change but are uncertain how to go about it and with no clear aim in mind. They may not want to live in an autocratic State led by Beijing but according to the map that I use, Hong Kong is within the borders of China. They are not going to get independence and they cannot go back to the way things were so they had better sort out what it is they want their relationship to Beijing to be before it is decided for them.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 5:18 am

And thats exactly what they are doing. What are they supposed to do, just let their appointed leaders decide for them?

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 5:33 am

No. But their five demands don't sound like a winning combination. It doesn't make them sound even serious about full-fledged change-

1-The complete withdrawal of the proposed extradition bill
2-The government to withdraw the use of the word "riot" in relation to protests
3-The unconditional release of arrested protesters and charges against them dropped
4-An independent inquiry into police behaviour
5-Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:04 am

> 5-Implementation of genuine universal suffrage

That's a demand that Mainland China adhere to the Basic Law that transferred Hong Kong from British sovereignty to PRC sovereignty. What's unserious about that?

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 6:20 am

Agreed about that last demand but it is the outlier on that list. Demands 2, 3 and 4 sound like they are trying to 'prepare the battlefield' for the next series of protests by undermining the ability of the Hong Kong Police to do their work. Demand 1 is just fulfilling the casus belli for this series of protests.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:30 am

> 'prepare the battlefield' for the next series of protests by undermining the ability of the Hong Kong Police to do their work

In what sense is that not serious? (I'll say again that I think the HKers want what they think is liberal democracy as the US/UK may once be said to have had it this is not a proletarian revolution. Hence, the presence of billionaire Lai is unproblematic, despite heavy breathing at Grey Zone.)

In what sense is asking for one's first demand not serious? Is it more serious to write it off?

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 6:57 am

I realize that this is not a popular line of thought but I believe that you do have to consider all aspects of such a big event to be fair. I mean, even Paul Joseph Watson came out with a video supporting the protests-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVu9b6mcWos

But here's the rub. Can you imagine what would happen if this all happened in a western country? Imagine this happening in New York for example. Actually we don't. The authorities came down on the Occupy Wall Street movement like a ton of bricks so we had a taste of what would happen.

I am not saying that the Chinese government is right but I can understand their position here. They give Hong Kong a 'special deal' and the rest of China will want their own special deals.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 8:09 am

Hong Kong already has its own special deal, 'one nation, two systems' is the official slogan from Beijing. Its Beijing that is backing away from this, not the protestors.

The Rev Kev , , August 31, 2019 at 8:53 am

That's right. A 50-year deal and China was not in much of a position to do a lot about it. Times change and I guess that the Chinese feel that it is time to redress the wrongs of the past according to their lights. I wonder if Macau has the same issues.

Carolinian , , August 31, 2019 at 9:16 am

So if China is, as accused, reneging on the "two systems" then where are the protestors on the "one nation"? To some of us it appears that these young people simply don't want to be a part of China. If true then that's an aim that goes far beyond mere reform.

And the reason USG involvement matters is that some of us don't believe the US should be meddling in other countries -- even ones as unfree as China. The protestors could reassure about the purity of their aims by renouncing US support or the sanctions that some Republicans in Congress are threatening rather than waving US and British flags.

PlutoniumKun , , August 31, 2019 at 9:41 am

A 50-year deal and China was not in much of a position to do a lot about it.

Where on earth did you get that idea? It was actually China's idea, promoted by Deng Xiaoping -- part of their strategy to woo Taiwan and ease the concerns of their neighbours. Plus, it made perfect sense for them economically.

Lambert Strether Post author , , August 31, 2019 at 6:06 am

> The fact that neo-con elements in the US are happy about the protests is entirely irrelevant, it really is. Its like saying that when RT had approving articles about Occupy or Black Lives Matter that this proves the Russians were behind it. It really is that stupid and US centric an opinion.

The NYT wrote some editorials! ZOMG!!!!!

DJG , , August 31, 2019 at 10:57 am

PK: Thanks. You mention coming from a small country, and I think it would benefit all U.S. peeps here to adjust their perspectives accordingly. Good advice.

Second is dispelling the typical "Don't know much about history" attitude in the U S of A. I notice how Lambert Strether ties together several recent organic protest movements. (Should we also throw in Iranian protests after the presidential election in 2009, Taksim protests in Istanbul, and Greek protests against austerity? All of which were organic and fit these models -- the chants from the apartment building remind me of the videos of call and response at night in Iranian cities during those protests.)

Americans like to act as if every event is brand new. And the "don't know much about about history" attitude means being "nonjudgmental" -- which means having no control to assess facts and not much concern for critical thinking.

One question to be asked here would be: How can protest in the U S of A be raised to the HK or Taksim level of disruption?

Just like the Chinese elites, the U.S. elites don't want to deal with the citizenry, and protest is something that shocks them.

And the endgame? The endgame is protest. What comes next? We may be in an era where more protest is needed. Time to study again the disruptions of 1848?

Harry , , August 31, 2019 at 6:53 am

https://twitter.com/joshuawongcf/status/1167480860804710400?s=19

Seamus Padraig , , August 31, 2019 at 7:29 am

What really makes most HK skeptics suspicious is the way the media and the political establishment in the West are constantly slathering the students there with pure, unadulturated praise, while lambasting us skeptics as 'conspiracy theorists'. So comparisons of HK to Maidan are indeed apt. And please contrast the media's treatment of this protest with their (non-)treatment of the gilets jaunes movement in France. On that rare occasion when the MSM did deign to mention the gilets jaunes , they always faithfully accused them of 'racism' and 'anti-semitism'. But note how the HK protesters get pass for using Pepe the Frog as their symbol!

Whom the media cover and how they cover them will always tell you a lot about who is really behind a protest movement and who really stands to benefit from it.

Seamus Padraig , , August 31, 2019 at 7:34 am

Let me start out with a sidebar on "add oil" (加油), which you see all over the coverage of the Hong Kong protests: It originated, says the OED, as a cheer at the Macau Grand Prix in the 1960s, meaning "step on the gas" (which is good to know, because I thought that the underlying metaphor was adding cooking oil to a wok preparatory to frying). It translates roughly to "go for it!"

I have noticed that Germans often the phrase Gas geben (to floor it, to accelerate) with roughly the same colloquial meaning of 'to get a move on'.

XXYY , , August 31, 2019 at 10:42 am

I do not understand the endgame of the protesters.

The idea of protest is to disrupt the system and generally gum up the works, raising the costs of the offending campaign, hopefully to the point where the material and reputational damage makes the whole thing no longer worth pursuing. This is the end game.

To paraphrase Noam Chomsky: Elites want a smoothly-running system of oppression. There is no reason to give them this gift.

DJG , , August 31, 2019 at 10:59 am

XXYY: Yes. And there were a few essays recently about disobedience. The question isn't why people disobey. The true question is: Why is the mass of citizens so obedient?

XXYY , , August 31, 2019 at 11:23 am

During the Occupy protests one continually heard this question: What do they want?!?!

Leaving aside the fact that a group of 5000 people carrying large signs generally makes answering this question pretty easy, there seemed to be a limited ability to grasp the idea that protest is in fact an end .

I think we have somehow been seduced or indoctrinated with the idea that if you do A, it must be strictly in service of getting B. Often the motivations are just inchoate rage or anger, and often the intention is just to call attention to something or just f*ck sh*t up!

As we saw with Occupy, a major turning point in US history and society and the origin of much that was to come, it's fine to just trust the universe to helpfully spin your actions in ways your never could have predicted.

cbu , , August 31, 2019 at 10:55 am

The protest will end with the Hong Kong government invoking the Emergency Regulations Ordinance.

John k , , August 31, 2019 at 1:03 pm

To what end? That doesn't boost the number of cops. China brings in the tanks? That maybe ends hk usefulness to China as offshore financial center and certainly ends rapprochement with Taiwan.

IMO China's instinct for heavy handed response has led them to a series of mistakes. Perhaps the trade war has them on edge.

XXYY , , August 31, 2019 at 11:11 am

Re: https://www.wikihow.com/Blind-a-Surveillance-Camera

In general, the techniques described here seem unreliable and dangerous if masking your identity from surveillance is vital. The idea that you are going to identify and precisely target every video camera that can see you, 100% of the time, esp. in a moving and rapidly changing environment, seems extremely naive. Video cameras are small, cheap, inconspicuous, and easy to disguise. All that's needed by the opponent is a single video frame that shows your face clearly.

A much better approach to work on seems like trying to obscure your own identifying features. Obviously people are doing this with masks, hoods, goggles, hard hats, umbrellas, and everything else.

One thing I haven't seen too much about is strategies specifically intended to defeat facial recognition technology. AI-based recognizers seem to be extremely brittle; small and even undetectable modifications to the source data seem to be able to throw them off completely (e.g. https://mashable.com/2017/11/02/mit-researchers-fool-google-ai-program/ ). One can imagine these approaches being deployed deliberately as camoflauge or a "disguise". Obviously the problem would be finding robust techniques.

[Aug 06, 2019] The Declining Empire Of Chaos Is Going Nuts Over Iran

Notable quotes:
"... Tensions were then focused on Syria , where a mercenary army of at least 200,000 men, armed and trained by the US, UK, Israel, France, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, almost managed to completely topple the country. ..."
"... As the Americans, British, French and Israelis conducted their bombing missions in Syria, the danger of a deliberate attack on Russian positions always remained, something that would have had devastating consequences for the region and beyond. It is no secret that US military planners have repeatedly argued for a direct conflict with Moscow in a contained regional theater. (Clinton called for the downing of Russian jets over Syria, and former US officials claimed that some Russians had to " pay a little price ".) ..."
"... Trump's dramatic U-turn following his historic meeting with Kim Jong-un (a public relations/photo opportunity) began to paint a fairly comical and unreliable picture of US power, revealing to the world the new US president's strategy. The president threatens to nuke a country, but only as a negotiating tactic to bring his opponent to the negotiating table and thereby clinch a deal. He then presents himself to his domestic audience as the "great" deal-maker. ..."
"... With Iran, the recent target of the US administration, the bargaining method is the same, though with decidedly different results. In the cases of Ukraine and North Korea, the two most powerful lobbies in Washington, the Israeli and Saudi lobbies, have had little to say. Of course the neocons and the arms lobbyists are always gunning for war, but these two powerful state-backed lobbies were notably silent with regard to these countries, less towards Syria obviously. As distinguished political scientist John J. Mearsheimer has repeatedly explained , the Israel and Saudi lobbies have unlimited funds for corrupting Democrats and Republicans in order to push their foreign-policy goals. ..."
"... These two lobbies (together with their neocon allies) have for years been pushing to have a few hundred thousand young Americans sent to Iran to sacrifice themselves for the purposes of destroying Iran and her people. Such geopolitical games are played at the cost of US taxpayers, the lives of their children sent to war, and the lives of the people of the Middle East, who have been devastated by decades of conflict. ..."
"... The reasons vary with each case, and I have previously explained extensively why the possibilities for conflict are unthinkable. With Ukraine, a conflict on European soil between Russia and NATO was unthinkable , bringing to mind the type of devastation that was seen during the Second World War. Good sense prevailed, and even NATO somewhat refused to fully arm the Ukrainian army with weapons that would have given them an overwhelming advantage over the Donbass militias. ..."
"... In Syria, any involvement with ground troops would have been collective suicide, given the overwhelming air power deployed in the country by Russia. Recall that since the Second World War, the US has never fought a war in an airspace that was seriously contested (in Vietnam, US air losses were only elevated because of Sino-Soviet help), allowing for ground troops to receive air cover and protection . A ground assault in Syria would have therefore been catastrophic without the requisite control of Syria's skies. ..."
"... Because a war with Iran would be difficult to de-escalate, we can conclude that the possibility of war being waged against the country is unlikely if not impossible. The level of damage the belligerents would inflict on each other would make any diplomatic resolution of the conflict difficult. While the powerful Israeli and Saudi lobbies in the US may be beating the war drums, an indication of what would happen if war followed can be seen in Yemen. Egypt and the UAE were forced to withdraw from the coalition fighting the Houthis after the UAE suffered considerable damage from legitimate retaliatory missile strikes from the Yemen's Army Missile Forces. ..."
"... An open war against Iran continues to be a red line that the ruling financial elites in the US, Israelis and Saudis don't want to cross, having so much at stake. ..."
"... With an election looming, Trump cannot risk triggering a new conflict and betraying one of his most important electoral promises. The Western elite does not seem to have any intention of destroying the petrodollar-based world economy with which it generates its own profits and controls global finance. ..."
"... Even if we consider the possibility of Netanyahu and Bin Salman being mentally unstable, someone within the royal palace in Riyadh or the government in Tel Aviv would have counseled them on the political and personal consequences of an attack on Iran. ..."
Aug 06, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

In 2014 we were almost at the point of no return in Ukraine following the coup d'etat supported and funded by NATO and involving extremist right-wing Ukrainian nationalists. The conflict in the Donbass risked escalating into a conflict between NATO and the Russian Federation, every day in the summer and autumn of 2014 threatening to be doomsday. Rather than respond to the understandable impulse to send Russian troops into Ukraine to defend the population of Donbass, Putin had the presense of mind to pursue the less direct and more sensible strategy of supporting the material capacity of the residents of Donbass to resist the depredations of the Ukrainian army and their neo-Nazi Banderite thugs. Meanwhile, Europe's inept leaders initially egged on Ukraine's destabilization, only to get cold feet after reflecting on the possibility of having a conflict between Moscow and Washington fought on European soil.

With the resistance in Donbass managing to successfully hold back Ukrainian assaults, the conflict began to freeze, almost to the point of a complete ceasefire, even as Ukrainian provocations continue to this day.

Tensions were then focused on Syria , where a mercenary army of at least 200,000 men, armed and trained by the US, UK, Israel, France, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, almost managed to completely topple the country. Russian intervention in 2015 managed to save the country with no time to spare, destroying large numbers of terrorists and reorganizing the Syrian armed forces and training and equipping them with the necessary means to beat back the jihadi waves. The Russians also ensured control of the skies through their network of Pantsir-S1, Pantsir-S2, S-300 and S-400 air-defence systems, together with their impressive jamming (Krasukha-4), command and control information management system (Strelets C4ISR System) and electronic-warfare technologies (1RL257 Krasukha-4).

As the Americans, British, French and Israelis conducted their bombing missions in Syria, the danger of a deliberate attack on Russian positions always remained, something that would have had devastating consequences for the region and beyond. It is no secret that US military planners have repeatedly argued for a direct conflict with Moscow in a contained regional theater. (Clinton called for the downing of Russian jets over Syria, and former US officials claimed that some Russians had to " pay a little price ".)

Since Trump became president, the rhetoric of war has soared considerably, even as the awareness remains that any new conflict would sink Trump's chances of re-election. Despite this, Trump's bombings in Syria were real and potentially very harmful to the Syrian state. Nevertheless, they were foiled by Russia's electronic-warfare capability, which was able to send veering away from their intended target more than 70% of the latest-generation missiles launched by the British, French, Americans and Israelis.

One of the most terrifying moments for the future of humanity came a few months later when Trump started hurling threats and abuses at Kim Jong-un , threatening to reduce Pyongyang to ashes. Trump, moreover, delivered his fiery threats in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Trump's dramatic U-turn following his historic meeting with Kim Jong-un (a public relations/photo opportunity) began to paint a fairly comical and unreliable picture of US power, revealing to the world the new US president's strategy. The president threatens to nuke a country, but only as a negotiating tactic to bring his opponent to the negotiating table and thereby clinch a deal. He then presents himself to his domestic audience as the "great" deal-maker.

With Iran, the recent target of the US administration, the bargaining method is the same, though with decidedly different results. In the cases of Ukraine and North Korea, the two most powerful lobbies in Washington, the Israeli and Saudi lobbies, have had little to say. Of course the neocons and the arms lobbyists are always gunning for war, but these two powerful state-backed lobbies were notably silent with regard to these countries, less towards Syria obviously. As distinguished political scientist John J. Mearsheimer has repeatedly explained , the Israel and Saudi lobbies have unlimited funds for corrupting Democrats and Republicans in order to push their foreign-policy goals.

The difference between the case of Iran and the aforementioned cases of Ukraine, Syria and North Korea is precisely the direct involvement of these two lobbies in the decision-making process underway in the US.

These two lobbies (together with their neocon allies) have for years been pushing to have a few hundred thousand young Americans sent to Iran to sacrifice themselves for the purposes of destroying Iran and her people. Such geopolitical games are played at the cost of US taxpayers, the lives of their children sent to war, and the lives of the people of the Middle East, who have been devastated by decades of conflict.

What readers can be assured of is that in the cases of Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and Iran, the US is unable to militarily impose its geopolitical or economic will.

The reasons vary with each case, and I have previously explained extensively why the possibilities for conflict are unthinkable. With Ukraine, a conflict on European soil between Russia and NATO was unthinkable , bringing to mind the type of devastation that was seen during the Second World War. Good sense prevailed, and even NATO somewhat refused to fully arm the Ukrainian army with weapons that would have given them an overwhelming advantage over the Donbass militias.

In Syria, any involvement with ground troops would have been collective suicide, given the overwhelming air power deployed in the country by Russia. Recall that since the Second World War, the US has never fought a war in an airspace that was seriously contested (in Vietnam, US air losses were only elevated because of Sino-Soviet help), allowing for ground troops to receive air cover and protection . A ground assault in Syria would have therefore been catastrophic without the requisite control of Syria's skies.

In North Korea, the country's tactical and strategic nuclear and conventional deterrence discourages any missile attack. Any overland attack is out of the question, given the high number of active as well as reserve personnel in the DPRK army. If the US struggled to control a completely defeated Iraq in 2003, how much more difficult would be to deal with a country with a resilient population that is indisposed to bowing to the US? The 2003 Iraq campaign would really be a "cakewalk" in comparison. Another reason why a missile attack on North Korea is impossible is because of the conventional power that Pyongyang possesses in the form of tens of thousands of missiles and artillery pieces that could easily reduce Seoul to rubble in a matter of minutes. This would then lead to a war between the US and the DPRK being fought on the Korean Peninsula. Moon Jae-in, like Merkel and Sarkozy in the case of Ukraine, did everything in his power to prevent such a devastating conflict.

Concerning tensions between the US and Iran and the resulting threats of war, these should be taken as bluster and bluff. America's European allies are heavily involved in Iran and depend on the Middle East for their oil and gas imports. A US war against Iran would have devastating consequences for the world economy, with the Europeans seeing their imports halved or reduced. As Professor Chossudovsky of the strategic think tank Global Research has so ably argued , an attack on Iran is unsustainable, as the oil sectors of the UAE and Saudi Arabia would be hit and shut down. Exports would instantly end after the pipelines going West are bombed by the Houthis and the Strait of Hormuz closed. The economies of these two countries would implode and their ruling class wiped out by internal revolts. The state of Israel as well as US bases in the region would see themselves overwhelmed with missiles coming from Syria, Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Iran. The Tel Aviv government would last a few hours before capitulating under the pressure of its own citizens, who, like the Europeans, are unused to suffering war at home.

Because a war with Iran would be difficult to de-escalate, we can conclude that the possibility of war being waged against the country is unlikely if not impossible. The level of damage the belligerents would inflict on each other would make any diplomatic resolution of the conflict difficult. While the powerful Israeli and Saudi lobbies in the US may be beating the war drums, an indication of what would happen if war followed can be seen in Yemen. Egypt and the UAE were forced to withdraw from the coalition fighting the Houthis after the UAE suffered considerable damage from legitimate retaliatory missile strikes from the Yemen's Army Missile Forces.

An open war against Iran continues to be a red line that the ruling financial elites in the US, Israelis and Saudis don't want to cross, having so much at stake.

With an election looming, Trump cannot risk triggering a new conflict and betraying one of his most important electoral promises. The Western elite does not seem to have any intention of destroying the petrodollar-based world economy with which it generates its own profits and controls global finance. And finally, US military planners do not intend to suffer a humiliating defeat in Iran that would reveal the extent to which US military power is based on propaganda built over the years through Hollywood movies and wars successfully executed against relatively defenceless countries. Even if we consider the possibility of Netanyahu and Bin Salman being mentally unstable, someone within the royal palace in Riyadh or the government in Tel Aviv would have counseled them on the political and personal consequences of an attack on Iran.

It is telling that Washington, London, Tel Aviv and Riyadh have to resort to numerous but ultimately useless provocations against Iran, as they can only rely on hybrid attacks in order to economically isolate it from the rest of the world.

Paradoxically, this strategy has had devastating consequences for the role of the US dollar as a reserve currency together with the SWIFT system. In today's multipolar environment, acting in such an imperious manner leads to the acceleration of de-dollarization as a way of circumventing sanctions and bans imposed by the US.

A reserve currency is used to facilitate transactions. If the disadvantages come to exceed the benefits, it will progressively be used less and less, until it is replaced by a basket of currencies that more closely reflect the multipolar geopolitical reality.

The warmongers in Washington are exasperated by their continuing inability to curb the resilience and resistance of the people in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Donbass, countries and regions understood by the healthy part of the globe as representing the axis of resistance to US Imperialism.


Batman11 , 14 minutes ago link

A multi-polar world became a uni-polar world with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Francis Fukuyama said it was the end of history.

That didn't last long, did it?

The US came up with a great plan for an open, globalised world.

China went from almost nothing to become a global superpower.

It was a great plan for China, which is now the problem for the US.

Batman11 , 24 minutes ago link

The cry of US elites can be heard across the world.

Mummy.

What's gone wrong?

I am used to always getting my own way.

Thought.Adjuster , 55 minutes ago link

If Folks would just accept a unipolar World, we could all live together in peace.

ZeroPorridge , 6 minutes ago link

Monopoly means utter slavery.

Like in a living body, each cells on their own, grouped by function, none really being the boss of the rest.

uhland62 , 1 hour ago link

America must always threaten someone with war. Syria, Iran, Venezuela, China, Russia, so many to choose from.

Conflicts must never be resolved; they must always kept simmering, so a hot war can be triggered quickly. All Presidents are turned in the first three months after sworn in.

Jazzman , 1 hour ago link

Without required air superiority they are what? Say it! Say it loud!

Dude-dude , 49 minutes ago link

It's what happens as empires mature. Governance becomes bloated, corrupt and inept (often leading to wars). Maturity time has become significantly reduced due to the rate of information technology advance. America is five years away from going insolvent according to most models and forecasts. All new debt after 2024 will be used to pay the interest on existing debts and liabilities. There is simply no stopping it. The US already pays close to 500 billion in annual interest on debts and liabilities. Factor in a 600 billion or 700 billion dollar annual military budget, and unrestrained deficit spending clocking in at over a trillion, and, well, it isn't going to work for long. Considering most new well paying jobs are government jobs... The end is either full socialism / fascism (folks still don't get how similar these are), a currency crisis and panic, depression and institutional deterioration. The only good news to libertarians I guess - if you can call it good - is that the blotted government along with the crony corporations will mostly and eventually collapse. Libertarian governance might not be a choice by an electorate, it might simply become fact in the aftermath.

-- ALIEN -- , 3 hours ago link

As the falling EROEI of oil gets worse; countries will collapse... It's all downhill from here

...what few are left.

Lokiban , 3 hours ago link

I guess Trump eventually will understand this lesson in politics that friendship, mutual respect and helping each other accomplishes way way more then threatening countries to be bombed back into the stoneage.
Noone likes to do a cutthroat deal enforced upon them by thuggery. Trump's got to learn that you can't run politics like you do your bussinesses, it's not working unles that was his plan all this time, to destroy America.

NumbersUsa , 3 hours ago link

"The Israel and Saudi lobbies have unlimited funds for corrupting Democrats and Republicans in order to push their foreign-policy goals.

These two lobbies (together with their neocon allies) have for years been pushing to have a few hundred thousand young Americans sent to Iran to sacrifice themselves for the purposes of destroying Iran and her people. Such geopolitical games are played at the cost of US taxpayers, the lives of their children sent to war, and the lives of the people of the Middle East, who have been devastated by decades of conflict."

Excellent and Factual points! Thank You!

Scaliger , 3 hours ago link

https://www.jta.org/2019/07/01/united-states/the-israel-projects-ceo-is-leaving-amid-advocacy-groups-fundraising-difficulties

Minamoto , 3 hours ago link

America is increasingly looking like Ancient Rome towards the end. It is overstretched, nearly insolvent, fewer allies want to be allies, it's population is sick, physically and mentally. Obesity, diabetes, drug use/addiction make it impossible for the Pentagon to meet recruitment goal. Mental illness causes daily mass killing. The education system is so broken/broke that there is little real education being done. Americans are among the most ignorant, least educated and least educate-able people in the developed world.

Militarily, the USA can bomb but that's about it... defeats upon defeats over the past two decades demonstrate the US military is a paper tiger of astonishing incompetence.

Boeing can't make planes anymore. Lockheed is not much better. Parts of the F-35 are made by Chinese subsidiaries. The most recently built aircraft carrier cannot launch fighter jets.

-- ALIEN -- , 3 hours ago link

We gots NASCAR, big trucks, free TV, fast food, and endless ****.

Go 'Merica!

Justin Case , 2 hours ago link

Recent estimates indicate that more than 550,000 people experience homelessness in the US on any given night, with about two-thirds ending up in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs, and one-third finding their way to unsheltered locations like parks, vehicles, and metro stations. According to the Urban Institute, about 25% of homeless people have jobs.

I find that it is difficult for me to wrap my head around pain and suffering on such an immense scale. Americans often think of the homeless as drug-addicted men that don't want to work, but the truth is that about a quarter of the homeless population is made up of children.

foxenburg , 2 hours ago link

Seriously, why would Iran want to hijack a German ship? Iran took the UK one in retaliation for the Brits seizing the one at Gibraltar. Had that not happened, no Brit ships in the Persian Gulf would have been touched. This is all a carefully engineered USA provocation designed to, inter alia, increase tension in the Persian Gulf, put more nails in coffin of JCPOA...and most importantly give UK an excuse, as remaining signatory, to call for the original UN sanctions on Iran to be snapped-back.

terrific , 4 hours ago link

Federico, let me explain it simply: the U.S. is allied with Israel, and Iran hates Israel. Why, I don't know (nor do I care), but that's why the U.S. needs to keep Iran in check.

Grouchy-Bear , 4 hours ago link

You are confused...

Israel hates Iran and it is Israel that needs to be kept in check...

CatInTheHat , 4 hours ago link

Yet CONGRESS just passed the largest defense bill in history. The WAR industry is bankrupting us financially spiritually and morally.

A war is coming. But upon whom this time (or STILL?), because with President Bolton and Vice President Adelson in power, China Iran or Russia or maybe all three, are open options.

Ofelas , 4 hours ago link

Interview with a Russian I saw 2 years ago "USA wants to create local conflicts on foreign shores, ...on our borders, we will not allow that to happen and make the war international" I will translate: Russia will not be pulled in to some stupid small war draining their resources while the US sits comfortable, they will throw their missiles around - no escape from nuclear winter.

libtears , 3 hours ago link

Us pays more in interest than defense spending now. You'll need to factor that into your predictions

UBrexitUPay4it , 3 hours ago link

If spending has reached the limit now, during peacetime....what will happen during a protracted war? Even if it stays conventional, it would appear that a huge war effort, comparable to WWII, just won't be possible. The US seems to be in a pre-war Britain position, but there isn't a friendly giant across the water to bail them out with both cash and resources.

Either things become insane in fairly short order, or wiser heads will prevail and the US will step back from the brink. Do we have any wiser heads at the moment?

I keep seeing John Bolton's moustache, Andi am not filled with confidence.

[Jul 23, 2019] Did John Bolton Light the Fuse of the UK-Iranian Tanker Crisis

Notable quotes:
"... Contrary to the official rationale, the detention of the Iranian tanker was not consistent with the 2012 EU regulation on sanctions against the Assad government in Syria. The EU Council regulation in question specifies in Article 35 that the sanctions were to apply only within the territory of EU member states, to a national or business entity or onboard an aircraft or vessel "under the jurisdiction of a member state." ..."
"... The notice required the Gibraltar government to detain any such ship for at least 72 hours if it entered "British Gibraltar Territorial Waters." Significantly, however, the video statement by Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo on July 4 explaining the seizure of the Grace 1 made no such claim and avoided any mention of the precise location of the ship when it was seized. ..."
"... There is a good reason why the chief minister chose not to draw attention to the issue of the ship's location: it is virtually impossible that the ship was in British Gibraltar territorial waters at any time before being boarded. The UK claims territorial waters of three nautical miles from its coast, whereas the Strait of Gibraltar is 7.5 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. That would make the limit of UK territory just north of the middle of the Strait. ..."
"... But international straits must have clearly defined and separated shipping lanes going in different directions. The Grace 1 was in the shipping lane heading east toward the Mediterranean, which is south of the lane for ships heading west toward the Atlantic and thus clearly closer to the coast of Morocco than to the coast of Gibraltar, as can be seen from this live view of typical ship traffic through the strait . So it is quite implausible that the Grace 1 strayed out of its shipping lane into British territorial waters at any time before it was boarded. ..."
"... Such a move clearly violates the global treaty governing the issue -- the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea . Articles 37 through 44 of that agreement, ratified by 167 states, including the UK and the European Union, establish a "regime of transit passage" for international straits like the Strait of Gibraltar that guarantees freedom of navigation for merchant ships. The rules of that regime explicitly forbid states bordering the strait from interfering with the transit passage of a merchant ship, with very narrowly defined exceptions. ..."
"... The evidence indicates, moreover, that the UK's actions were part of a broader scheme coordinated with the Trump administration to tighten pressure on Iran's economy by reducing Iran's ability to export goods. ..."
"... On July 19, Reuters London correspondent Guy Falconbridge reported , "[S]everal diplomatic sources said the United States asked the UK to seize the vessel." ..."
"... Detailed evidence of Bolton deep involvement in the British plan to seize the Iranian tanker has surfaced in reporting on the withdrawal of Panamanian flag status for the Grace 1. ..."
"... The role of Panama's National Security Council signaled Bolton's hand, since he would have been the point of contact with that body. The result of his maneuvering was to leave the Grace 1 without the protection of flag status necessary to sail or visit a port in the middle of its journey. This in conjunction with the British seizure of the ship was yet another episode in the extraordinary American effort to deprive Iran of the most basic sovereign right to participate in the global economy. ..."
"... Back in 2013 2013 there was a rumour afoot that Edward Snowden, who at the time was stuck in the Moscow airport, trapped there by the sudden cancellation mid-flight of his US passport, was going spirited away by the President of Bolivia Evo Morales aboard his private jet. So what the US apparently was lean on it European allies to stop him. This they duly and dutifully did. Spain, France, and others denied overflight rights to the Bolivian jet, forcing it to turn back and land in Austria. There was even a report that once on the ground, the Spanish ambassador to Austria showed up and asked the Bolivian president if he might come out to the plain for a coffee--and presumably to have a poke around to see he could catch Snowden in the act of vanishing into the cargo hold. ..."
"... The rumor turned out to be completely false, but it was the Europeans who wound up with the egg on their face. Not to mention the ones who broke international law. ..."
"... Bolton persuaded the British to play along with the stupid US "maximum pressure" strategy, regardless of its illegality. (Maybe the British government thought that it would placate Trump after Ambassadorgate.) And then of course Pompeo threw them under the bus. It's getting hard to be a US ally (except for Saudi Arabia and Israel.) ..."
"... Spain lodged a formal complaint about the action, because it considers the sea around Gibraltar to be part of its international waters, "We are studying the circumstances and looking at how this affects our sovereignty," Josep Borell, Spain's acting foreign minister, said. So Gibraltar or Spanish waters? Gibraltar – Territorial Waters (1 pg): ..."
"... Worse than the bad behavior of Bolton, and the poodle behavior of Britain, is the utter failure of our press to provide us a skeptical eye and honest look at events. They've been mere stenographers and megaphones for power doing wrong. ..."
"... And this just in. A UK government official has just stated, related to the Iranian tanker stopped near Gibraltar, the UK will not be part of Trump's 'maximum pressure' gambit on Iran. We shall see if Boris Johnson is for or against that policy. ..."
"... John Bolton, war criminal. ..."
"... John Bolton has been desperate for a war with Iran for decades. This is just another escalation in his desperate attempt to get one. He's the classic neocon chicken hawk who is bravely ready to risk and sacrifice other people's lives at the drop of a hat. ..."
"... Since UK is abusing its control of Gibraltar by behaving like a thug, maybe it is better for the international community to support an independent state of Gibraltar, or at least let Spain has it. It will be better for world peace. ..."
"... While I agree with the gist of the article, remember that Bolton has no authority except that which is given to him. So stop blaming Bolton. Blame Trump. ..."
"... The provocations will go on and on until Iran shoots back and then Wash. will get the war it's been trying to start for some time now to pay back all those campaign donors who will profit from another war. ..."
"... The MIC needs constant wars to use up munitions so new ones can be manufactured. It's really just about business and politicians working together for mutual benefit to keep those contributions coming in. With all the other issues facing America, a war with Iran will just add to the end of the USA which is coming faster than you think. ..."
Jul 23, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Did John Bolton Light the Fuse of the UK-Iranian Tanker Crisis? Evidence suggests he pressured the Brits to seize an Iranian ship. Why? More war. By Gareth Porter July 23, 2019

While Iran's seizure of a British tanker near the Strait of Hormuz on Friday was a clear response to the British capture of an Iranian tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4, both the UK and U.S. governments are insisting that Iran's operation was illegal while the British acted legally.

The facts surrounding the British detention of the Iranian ship, however, suggest that, like the Iranian detention of the British ship, it was an illegal interference with freedom of navigation through an international strait. And even more importantly, evidence indicates that the British move was part of a bigger scheme coordinated by National Security Advisor John Bolton.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called the Iran seizure of the British-flagged tanker Stena Impero "unacceptable" and insisted that it is "essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region."

But the British denied Iran that same freedom of navigation through the Strait of Gibraltar on July 4.

The rationale for detaining the Iranian vessel and its crew was that it was delivering oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions. This was never questioned by Western news media. But a closer look reveals that the UK had no legal right to enforce those sanctions against that ship, and that it was a blatant violation of the clearly defined global rules that govern the passage of merchant ships through international straits.

The evidence also reveals that Bolton was actively involved in targeting the Grace 1 from the time it began its journey in May as part of the broader Trump administration campaign of "maximum pressure" on Iran.

Contrary to the official rationale, the detention of the Iranian tanker was not consistent with the 2012 EU regulation on sanctions against the Assad government in Syria. The EU Council regulation in question specifies in Article 35 that the sanctions were to apply only within the territory of EU member states, to a national or business entity or onboard an aircraft or vessel "under the jurisdiction of a member state."

The UK government planned to claim that the Iranian ship was under British "jurisdiction" when it was passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to justify its seizure as legally consistent with the EU regulation. A maritime news outlet has reported that on July 3, the day before the seizure of the ship, the Gibraltar government, which has no control over its internal security or foreign affairs, issued a regulation to provide what it would claim as a legal pretext for the operation. The regulation gave the "chief minister" of the British the power to detain any ship if there were "reasonable grounds" to "suspect" that it had been or even that it was even "likely" to be in breach of EU regulations.

The notice required the Gibraltar government to detain any such ship for at least 72 hours if it entered "British Gibraltar Territorial Waters." Significantly, however, the video statement by Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo on July 4 explaining the seizure of the Grace 1 made no such claim and avoided any mention of the precise location of the ship when it was seized.

There is a good reason why the chief minister chose not to draw attention to the issue of the ship's location: it is virtually impossible that the ship was in British Gibraltar territorial waters at any time before being boarded. The UK claims territorial waters of three nautical miles from its coast, whereas the Strait of Gibraltar is 7.5 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. That would make the limit of UK territory just north of the middle of the Strait.

But international straits must have clearly defined and separated shipping lanes going in different directions. The Grace 1 was in the shipping lane heading east toward the Mediterranean, which is south of the lane for ships heading west toward the Atlantic and thus clearly closer to the coast of Morocco than to the coast of Gibraltar, as can be seen from this live view of typical ship traffic through the strait . So it is quite implausible that the Grace 1 strayed out of its shipping lane into British territorial waters at any time before it was boarded.

But even if the ship had done so, that would not have given the UK "jurisdiction" over the Grace 1 and allowed it to legally seize the ship. Such a move clearly violates the global treaty governing the issue -- the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea . Articles 37 through 44 of that agreement, ratified by 167 states, including the UK and the European Union, establish a "regime of transit passage" for international straits like the Strait of Gibraltar that guarantees freedom of navigation for merchant ships. The rules of that regime explicitly forbid states bordering the strait from interfering with the transit passage of a merchant ship, with very narrowly defined exceptions.

These articles allow coastal states to adopt regulations relating to safety of navigation, pollution control, prevention of fishing, and "loading or unloading any commodity in contravention of customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations" of bordering states -- but for no other reason. The British seizure and detention of the Grace 1 was clearly not related to any of these concerns and thus a violation of the treaty.

The evidence indicates, moreover, that the UK's actions were part of a broader scheme coordinated with the Trump administration to tighten pressure on Iran's economy by reducing Iran's ability to export goods.

The statement by Gibraltar's chief minister said the decision to seize the ship was taken after the receipt of "information" that provided "reasonable grounds" for suspicion that it was carrying oil destined for Syria's Banyas refinery. That suggested the intelligence had come from a government that neither he nor the British wished to reveal.

BBC defense correspondent Jonathan Beale reported: "[I]t appears the intelligence came from the United States." Acting Spanish Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell commented on July 4 that the British seizure had followed "a demand from the United States to the UK." On July 19, Reuters London correspondent Guy Falconbridge reported , "[S]everal diplomatic sources said the United States asked the UK to seize the vessel."

Detailed evidence of Bolton deep involvement in the British plan to seize the Iranian tanker has surfaced in reporting on the withdrawal of Panamanian flag status for the Grace 1.

Panama was the flag state for many of the Iranian-owned vessels carrying various items exported by Iran. But when the Trump administration reinstated economic sanctions against Iran in October 2018, it included prohibitions on industry services such as insurance and reinsurance. This decision was accompanied by political pressure on Panama to withdraw Panamanian flag status from 59 Iranian vessels, many of which were owned by Iranian state-affiliated companies. Without such flag status, the Iranian-owned vessels could not get insurance for shipments by freighter.

That move was aimed at discouraging ports, canal operators, and private firms from allowing Iranian tankers to use their facilities. The State Department's Brian Hook, who is in charge of the sanctions, warned those entities last November that the Trump administration believed they would be responsible for the costs of an accident involving a self-insured Iranian tanker.

But the Grace 1 was special case, because it still had Panamanian flag status when it began its long journey around the Southern tip of Africa on the way to the Mediterranean. That trip began in late May, according to Automatic Identification System data cited by Riviera Maritime Media . It was no coincidence that the Panamanian Maritime Authority delisted the Grace 1 on May 29 -- just as the ship was beginning its journey. That decision came immediately after Panama's National Security Council issued an alert claiming that the Iranian-owned tanker "may be participating in terrorism financing in supporting the destabilization activities of some regimes led by terrorist groups."

The Panamanian body did not cite any evidence that the Grace 1 had ever been linked to terrorism.

The role of Panama's National Security Council signaled Bolton's hand, since he would have been the point of contact with that body. The result of his maneuvering was to leave the Grace 1 without the protection of flag status necessary to sail or visit a port in the middle of its journey. This in conjunction with the British seizure of the ship was yet another episode in the extraordinary American effort to deprive Iran of the most basic sovereign right to participate in the global economy.

Now that Iran has detained a British ship in order to force the UK to release the Grace 1, the British Foreign Ministry will claim that its seizure of the Iranian ship was entirely legitimate. The actual facts, however, put that charge under serious suspicion.

Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to The American Conservative . He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.


john 17 hours ago

Honestly the Brits are such idiots, we lied them into a war once. They knew we were lying and went for it anyway. Now the are falling for it again. Maybe it is May's parting gift to Boris?
kouroi 17 hours ago
Same EU legislation only forbids Syria exporting oil and not EU entities selling to Syria (albeit with some additional paperwork). However, it doesn't forbid other non-EU states to sell oil to Syria. They are not behaving like the US. And this is also not UN sanctioned. In fact, UK is also acting against the spirit of JPCOA towards Iran. Speak about Perfidious Albion (others would say US lapdog).
Stephen54321 15 hours ago • edited
This story has certain familiar elements to it.

Back in 2013 2013 there was a rumour afoot that Edward Snowden, who at the time was stuck in the Moscow airport, trapped there by the sudden cancellation mid-flight of his US passport, was going spirited away by the President of Bolivia Evo Morales aboard his private jet. So what the US apparently was lean on it European allies to stop him. This they duly and dutifully did. Spain, France, and others denied overflight rights to the Bolivian jet, forcing it to turn back and land in Austria. There was even a report that once on the ground, the Spanish ambassador to Austria showed up and asked the Bolivian president if he might come out to the plain for a coffee--and presumably to have a poke around to see he could catch Snowden in the act of vanishing into the cargo hold.

The rumor turned out to be completely false, but it was the Europeans who wound up with the egg on their face. Not to mention the ones who broke international law.

Now we find that once again a European country had (apparently) gone out on a limb for the US--and wound up with egg on its face for trying to show its loyalty to the US in an all-too-slavish fashion by doing America's dirty work.

When will they learn?

Geoff Arnold 15 hours ago
Bolton persuaded the British to play along with the stupid US "maximum pressure" strategy, regardless of its illegality. (Maybe the British government thought that it would placate Trump after Ambassadorgate.) And then of course Pompeo threw them under the bus. It's getting hard to be a US ally (except for Saudi Arabia and Israel.)
cka2nd 14 hours ago
Does the British establishment have any self-respect at all, or do they really enjoy playing lapdog for the USA?
JPH 11 hours ago • edited
The very fact that the UK tried to present its hijack of Iran Oil as an implementation of EU sanctions dovetail well with Bolton's objective of creating another of those "international coalitions" without a UN mandate engaging in 'Crimes of Aggression".

The total lack of support from the EU for this UK hijack signals another defeat to both the UK and the neocons of America.

chris chuba 10 hours ago
Too bad there isn't an international version of the ACLU to argue Iran's legal case before the EU body. What typically happens is that Iran will refuse to send representation because that would in effect, acknowledge their authority. The EU will have a Kangaroo court and enter a vacant decision. This has happened numerous times in the U.S.

Would anyone in the U.S. or EU recognize an Iranian court making similar claims? Speaking of which, the entire point of UN treaties and international law is to prevent individual countries from passing special purpose legislation targeting specific countries. Why couldn't Iran pass a law sanctioning EU vessels that tried to use their territorial waters, what is so special about the EU, because it is an acronym?

britbob 9 hours ago
Spain lodged a formal complaint about the action, because it considers the sea around Gibraltar to be part of its international waters, "We are studying the circumstances and looking at how this affects our sovereignty," Josep Borell, Spain's acting foreign minister, said. So Gibraltar or Spanish waters? Gibraltar – Territorial Waters (1 pg): https://www.academia.edu/30...
Mark Thomason 8 hours ago
Worse than the bad behavior of Bolton, and the poodle behavior of Britain, is the utter failure of our press to provide us a skeptical eye and honest look at events. They've been mere stenographers and megaphones for power doing wrong.
JeffK from PA 5 hours ago
Fake News! Fake News! Fake News! <sarcasm off="">

Thanks for the investigative reporting. Trump has lied almost 11,000 times, so I think nobody expects the truth from The Trump Administration anytime soon. Especially if it goes against the narrative.

JeffK from PA 5 hours ago
And this just in. A UK government official has just stated, related to the Iranian tanker stopped near Gibraltar, the UK will not be part of Trump's 'maximum pressure' gambit on Iran. We shall see if Boris Johnson is for or against that policy.
EmpireLoyalist 4 hours ago
Job number one for Johnson - even before Brexit - must be to purge the neo-con globalists and anybody under their influence from Government.
Fran Macadam 4 hours ago
John Bolton, war criminal.
HenionJD Fran Macadam 2 hours ago
To be considered as such he would have to actually have been involved in a war. Give him a few more weeks and your charge will be valid.
Sid Finster 3 hours ago
OK, so why did the Brits go along with it? Are they so stupid as to not figure out that Iran might respond in kind, or did the Brits not also want war?
LFC 3 hours ago
John Bolton has been desperate for a war with Iran for decades. This is just another escalation in his desperate attempt to get one. He's the classic neocon chicken hawk who is bravely ready to risk and sacrifice other people's lives at the drop of a hat.
david 3 hours ago
Since UK is abusing its control of Gibraltar by behaving like a thug, maybe it is better for the international community to support an independent state of Gibraltar, or at least let Spain has it. It will be better for world peace.
Sid Finster 2 hours ago
While I agree with the gist of the article, remember that Bolton has no authority except that which is given to him. So stop blaming Bolton. Blame Trump.
Zsuzsi Kruska 2 hours ago
The provocations will go on and on until Iran shoots back and then Wash. will get the war it's been trying to start for some time now to pay back all those campaign donors who will profit from another war.

The MIC needs constant wars to use up munitions so new ones can be manufactured. It's really just about business and politicians working together for mutual benefit to keep those contributions coming in. With all the other issues facing America, a war with Iran will just add to the end of the USA which is coming faster than you think.

[Jul 05, 2019] Bolton Isn't Quitting by DANIEL LARISON

Jul 05, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Tom Wright makes some good observations about Trump's foreign policy here, but I think he underestimates Bolton's determination to cling to power:

It's hard to see how Bolton can stay. Trump has long known that Bolton wanted war more than he does. He sidelined him on North Korea and overruled him on Iran. For his part, Bolton has privately attacked Pompeo, long a Trump favorite, as falling captive to the State Department bureaucracy and has predicted that the North Korea policy will fail.

Bolton has given an unusually large number of interviews to reporters and has been rewarded with positive profiles lauding his influence and bureaucratic prowess. Those of us who predicted that he would cling to the post of national security adviser, as it would be the last job he'd ever get, may have been wrong. In fact, Bolton looks and sounds as if he is preparing to exit on his own terms. Better that than being sent on a never-ending tour of the world's most obscure places. For Bolton, leaving because he's too tough for Trump is the perfect way to save face. Otherwise, he may be remembered as the man who presided over one of the weakest national security teams in modern American history and someone whose myopic obsessions -- like international treaties or communism in Venezuela -- meant the United States lost precious time in preparing for the national security challenges of the future.

Bolton has been allowed to drive Iran policy to the brink of war, and I can't believe that he would voluntarily leave the position he has when he still has a chance of getting the war with Iran that he has been seeking for years. It is true that Bolton was sent to Mongolia to keep him out of sight during the president's visit with Kim at the DMZ, but where is the proof that Trump has abandoned the maximalist demands that Bolton has long insisted on? On Iran, Trump is still reciting hawkish talking points, sanctioning anything that moves, and occasionally making more deranged threats against the entire country. Unless Trump decides to get rid of Bolton, I don't see why Bolton would want to leave. He gets to set policy on the issue he has obsessed over for decades, and he gets to pursue a policy of regime change in all but name. Bolton will probably be happy to let Pompeo have all the "credit" for North Korea policy, since there is none to be had, and he'll keep stoking the Iran obsession that has already done so much harm to the Iranian people and brought the U.S. dangerously close to a war it has no reason to fight.

Banishing Bolton to Mongolia was briefly entertaining for those of us that can't stand the National Security Advisor, but it doesn't mean very much if administration policies aren't changing. Since Bolton is the one running the policy "process," it seems unlikely that there will be any real change as long as he is there. For whatever reason, Trump doesn't seem willing to fire him. Maybe that's because he doesn't want to offend Sheldon Adelson, a known Bolton supporter and big Trump donor, or maybe it's because he enjoys having Bolton as a lightning rod to take some of the criticism, or maybe it's because their militaristic worldviews aren't as dissimilar as many people assume. It doesn't really matter why Trump won't rid himself of Bolton. What matters is that Bolton is supposedly "humiliated" again and again by Trump actions or statements, and then Bolton gets back to promoting his own agenda no matter what the president does.

For that matter, Bolton's absence from the DMZ meeting may have been exactly what he wanted. Graeme Wood suggested as much just the other day:

Carlson has inserted himself into the frame of this bizarre and impromptu diplomatic trip, and that is exactly where the Boltonites want him: forever associated with a handshake that will be recorded as a new low in the annals of presidential gullibility.

Many observers have assumed that Bolton won't be able to stay in the administration at different points over the last several months. When Trump claimed that he didn't want regime change in Iran, that was supposed to be a break with Bolton. The only hitch is that Bolton maintains this same fiction that they aren't trying to bring down the Iranian government when they obviously are. The second summit with North Korea and the possibility of some initial agreement caused similar speculation that Bolton's influence was waning, and then he managed to wreck the Hanoi summit by getting Trump to make demands that he and everyone else must have known were unacceptable to the North Koreans. Every time it seems that Bolton's maximalism is giving way to something else, Bolton gets the last laugh.

Demolishing the architecture of arms control has been one of Bolton's main ambitions throughout his career. He has already done quite a bit of damage, but I assume he will want to make sure that New START dies. Bolton likely will "be remembered as the man who presided over one of the weakest national security teams in modern American history and someone whose myopic obsessions -- like international treaties or communism in Venezuela -- meant the United States lost precious time in preparing for the national security challenges of the future," but as long as he has the chance to pursue those obsessions and advance his agenda I don't think he's going to give it up. He is an abysmal National Security Advisor, a fanatic, and a menace to this country, and I would love it if he did resign, but I just don't see it. I doubt that Bolton cares about "saving face" as much as he does inflicting as much damage as he can while he has the opportunity. The only thing that Bolton believes in quitting is a successful diplomatic agreement that advances U.S. interests. That is why it is necessary for the president to replace him, because I don't see any other way that he is going to leave.

Lily Sandoz6 hours ago

Bolton quitting? Heck! He's just getting started. Britain, on orders from Bolton, detained an Panamanian flagged supertanker heading to Syria with Iranian oil. Spanish officials said the Grace 1, was seized by British patrol ships off Gibraltar, and boarded by Royal Marines and detained on Wash.'s orders.

Bolton's power is becoming unlimited because Trump and the rest of the gov. is doing nothing to stop his agenda, which most of Wash., must share, of starting a war with Iran, N. Korea, or anywhere else he can stir up trouble.

It's so obvious Wash. wants Iran to fire the first shot in order to go to war and make political donors like Sheldon Adelson happy, as well as Netanyahu who has more to say about US foreign policy than the American people who just want to stop the wars and concentrate on the issues and problems here at home.

After all, it's OUR MONEY going to finance all the atrocities abroad that the war industry and other countries benefit from. Unbelievable stuff going on in Wash. and seems everyday it gets worse and more absurd.

[Jun 29, 2019] John Bolton is that you? on ZH? cooool, maybe pompeo will show up later?

Jun 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

LaugherNYC , 2 hours ago link

You gotta love the SCI. This shallowly-disguised Russian propaganda arm writes in the most charming awkward idiomatic English, bouncing from a "false neutral" tone to a jingoistic Amercia-phobic argot to produce its hit pieces.

Russian propaganda acts like Claude Raines in "Casablanca" : "i am shocked, shocked to discover (geopolitics) going on here!" Geeeee, Europe and the US are in a struggle to avoid Europe relying on Russia for strategic necessities like fuel, even if it imposes costs on European consumers. If you have a dangerous disease, and your pharmacist is known for cutting off their customers' vital drugs to extort them, you might consider using another provider who not only doesn't cut off supplies, but also provides the police department that protects you from your pharmacist's thugs who are known to invade customers' homes using the profits from their own business.

The US provides the protective umbrella that limits Putin's adventurism. Russia cuts of Ukraine's gas supplies in winter to force them into submission. Gasprom is effectively an arm of the Russian military, weaponizing Russia's only product as a geopolitical taser. Sure, it costs more to transport LNG across the Atlantic and convert it back to gas, but the profits from that business are routinely funneled back to Europe in the form of US trade, contributions to NATO, and the provision of the nuclear umbrella that protects Europeans from the man who has publicly lamented the fall of the Soviet Union, called for the return of the former SSRs, and violated the IRM treaty to place nuclear capable intermediate-range missiles and cruise missiles within range of Europe and boasted about his new hypersonic weapons' theoretic capability to decapitate NATO and American decision-making within a few minutes of launch.

... ... ...

Anonymous IX , 2 hours ago link

Oh, for pity's sake, Laugher. Everything...absolutely everything you attribute to Russia in your post can be said of the U.S. I'm not much of a Wiki fan, but for expediency, here's their view on military bases.

The establishment of military bases abroad enables a country to project power , e.g. to conduct expeditionary warfare , and thereby influence events abroad. Depending on their size and infrastructure, they can be used as staging areas or for logistical, communications and intelligence support. Many conflicts throughout modern history have resulted in overseas military bases being established in large numbers by world powers and the existence of bases abroad has served countries having them in achieving political and military goals.

And this link will provide you with countries worldwide and their bases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_overseas_military_bases

Note that Russia, in this particular list, has eight bases all contiguous to Russia. The U.S. has 36 listed here with none of them contiguous to the U.S.' borders.

[Jun 29, 2019] The West's Moral Bankruptcy Exposed

Notable quotes:
"... That nearly five-year investigation has never provided any credible proof of Russian culpability, yet the Dutch-led investigators known as the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) continually level allegations that Russia supplied an anti-aircraft missile to Ukrainian rebels who purportedly blasted the Boeing 777 out of the sky. ..."
"... However, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad denounced the report as "ridiculous hearsay" aimed at "scapegoating Russia". Tellingly, his comments were not widely reported in Western media. ..."
"... On the back of the MH17 imbroglio, as well as other slanders, Western governments have continued to impose economic sanctions on Russia. These sanctions have cost the Russian economy an estimated $50 billion. On top of that, Western states and their media portray Russia and President Putin as a rogue regime and pariah. ..."
"... There were two suspects: Russia and Kiev. The JIT not only included one of the suspects (Kiev) as part of the JIT, Kiev could also cancel any evidence that involved Kiev complicity in MH17. ..."
"... MH17 flight was normally a Southern route, but the route was changed to Northern, over the war zone between Rebels and Kiev. Guess who had authority to change the route of a plane entering their country. And, why would they change that route - hmmm. ..."
"... The lead investigator of JIT refused to consider any evidence presented by Russia. ..."
"... Western hypocrisy and duplicity. Tell us something we don't know. Like NATO's purpose being mutual defense. NATO's purpose is NWO recruitment. ..."
Jun 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

First there was the Dutch-led inquiry into downing of the Malaysian MH17 airliner, which put the finger of blame on Russia for the disaster in 2014 when all 298 people onboard were killed.

That nearly five-year investigation has never provided any credible proof of Russian culpability, yet the Dutch-led investigators known as the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) continually level allegations that Russia supplied an anti-aircraft missile to Ukrainian rebels who purportedly blasted the Boeing 777 out of the sky.

Despite its evident failures of due process, nonetheless Western governments and media have lent the JIT allegations (slanders) undue credibility. The US, Britain and other NATO members last week called on Russia to comply with the JIT "investigation", smearing Moscow as guilty of causing the MH17 deaths.

However, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad denounced the report as "ridiculous hearsay" aimed at "scapegoating Russia". Tellingly, his comments were not widely reported in Western media.

For its part, Russia has vehemently rejected allegations of involvement in the MH17 disaster, as have pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels. Russia's repeated offers of contributing information to the probe have been rebuffed by the Dutch-led JIT. By contrast, Russia's own investigation has uncovered credible radar and forensic evidence that an anti-aircraft missile fired at the passenger jet actually came from military forces under the Kiev regime's command. Russia's evidence has been steadfastly ignored by Western media reports.

The credible suspect party -- Kiev political and intelligence authorities -- have been allowed to participate in and frame the JIT probe to inculpate Russia. The US, European Union and NATO back the Neo-Nazi dominated regime in Kiev, financially and militarily , since it seized power in a violent coup d'état back in 2014. That should be the real focus of scandal in the MH17 story.

On the back of the MH17 imbroglio, as well as other slanders, Western governments have continued to impose economic sanctions on Russia. These sanctions have cost the Russian economy an estimated $50 billion. On top of that, Western states and their media portray Russia and President Putin as a rogue regime and pariah.

Now contrast the undue priority given to the above dubious JIT claims with two other reports also out last week.

One was on the horrific death toll among civilians in Yemen inflicted by the Western-backed Saudi-led war on that country. It is estimated that over 90,000 people have been killed in violence over the past four years, with most of the civilian victims caused by indiscriminate Saudi air strikes.

It is an indisputable fact that the US, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers have been arming the Saudi regime with warplanes, helicopters, missiles and logistics to carry out this slaughter of Yemeni civilians. The Western states are complicit in war crimes.

President Trump continues to defy US lawmakers by ordering multi-billion-dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite the carnage. The British government and wannabe prime minister Boris Johnson claims that its weapons exports are not involved in killing Yemeni civilians, in blatant denial of the facts.

A British court last week ruled that UK weapons exports were in breach of its own supposed ethical codes protecting civilian lives in conflicts. The British government is set to appeal the court ruling and will likely ignore it anyway given the systematic relationship of Britain arming Saudi Arabia -- the UK's biggest weapons export market -- year after year.

Western media last week, as usual, gave only minimal reporting on the shocking human suffering in Yemen. The whole barbarity and Western governments' culpability is largely hushed-up and omitted by the media.

... ... ...

Meanwhile, the US and its NATO allies impose sanctions on Russia based on unsubstantiated allegations about MH17, Ukraine, Crimea, election meddling, the Skripal spy poisoning affair, among other fabrications. Those sanctions -- based on flimsy innuendo -- are leading to ever-worsening relations with Russia and international tensions between nuclear powers. Western media do not expose the insanity, they foment it.

Such media are unwilling and incapable of pointing out this gross double standard. They propagate the double standard.

The moral bankruptcy of Western governments must be covered up by a servile media. Because the state, corporate power and media are all complicit.

Truth, justice and democracy, which they pontificate about, have nothing to do with the functioning of Western capitalist power; they're mere illusions to distract from systematic criminality. Last week was an object lesson for those willing to see it.


Evil Liberals , 3 hours ago link

There were two suspects: Russia and Kiev. The JIT not only included one of the suspects (Kiev) as part of the JIT, Kiev could also cancel any evidence that involved Kiev complicity in MH17.

MH17 flight was normally a Southern route, but the route was changed to Northern, over the war zone between Rebels and Kiev. Guess who had authority to change the route of a plane entering their country. And, why would they change that route - hmmm.

The lead investigator of JIT refused to consider any evidence presented by Russia.

MilwaukeeMark , 3 hours ago link

The bigger questions is, "who aboard was not meant to arrive where they were heading?".

Helg Saracen , 3 hours ago link

In Kiev, the "Khazar mafia" is strong, more precisely Chabad Lyubavichi (headquarters in New York). Kolomoisky (a member of Chabad Lyubavichi and the owner of the Nazi death squads in the former Ukraine) ...

messystateofaffairs , 4 hours ago link

Western hypocrisy and duplicity. Tell us something we don't know. Like NATO's purpose being mutual defense. NATO's purpose is NWO recruitment. The whore running the recruit victim country is promised personal bribes, and the security services of the gang which it must also support and pay for, in return for forgoing a degree of sovereignty. NATO is just another NWO one centrally managed world scam.

[Jun 28, 2019] Bolton Gets Ready to Kill New START by Daniel Larison

Jun 27, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
If Bolton gets his way, New START is not long for this world :

At the same time, the administration has signaled in recent days that it plans to let the New Start treaty, negotiated by Barack Obama, expire in February 2021 rather than renew it for another five years. John R. Bolton, the president's national security adviser, who met with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, in Jerusalem this week, said before leaving Washington that "there's no decision, but I think it's unlikely" the treaty would be renewed.

Mr. Bolton, a longtime skeptic of arms control agreements, said that New Start was flawed because it did not cover short-range tactical nuclear weapons or new Russian delivery systems. "So to extend for five years and not take these new delivery system threats into account would be malpractice," he told The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet.

Like all of his complaints about arms control agreements, Bolton's criticisms of New START are made in bad faith. Opponents of New START have long pretended that they oppose the treaty because it did not cover everything imaginable, including tactical nuclear weapons, but this has always been an excuse for them to reject a treaty that they have never wanted ratified in the first place. If the concern about negotiating a treaty that covered tactical nuclear weapons were genuine, the smart thing to do would be to extend New START and then begin negotiations for a more comprehensive arms control agreement. Faulting New START for failing to include things that are by definition not going to be included in a strategic arms reduction treaty gives the game away. This is what die-hard opponents of the treaty have been doing for almost ten years, and they do it because they want to dismantle the last vestiges of arms control. The proposal to include China as part of a new treaty is another tell that the Trump administration just wants the treaty to die.

The article concludes:

Some experts suspect talk of a three-way accord is merely a feint to get rid of the New Start treaty. "If a trilateral deal is meant as a substitute or prerequisite for extending New Start, it is a poison pill, no ifs, ands or buts," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. "If the president is seeking a trilateral deal as a follow-on to New Start, that's a different thing."

Knowing Bolton, it has to be a poison pill. Just as Bolton is ideologically opposed to making any deal with Iran, he is ideologically opposed to any arms control agreement that places limits on the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The "flaws" he identifies aren't really flaws that he wants to fix (and they may not be flaws at all), but excuses for trashing the agreement. He will make noises about how the current deal or treaty doesn't go far enough, but the truth is that he doesn't want any agreements to exist. In Bolton's worldview, nonproliferation and arms control agreements either give the other government too much or hamper the U.S. too much, and so he wants to destroy them all. He has had a lot of success at killing agreements and treaties that have been in the U.S. interest. Bolton has had a hand in blowing up the Agreed Framework with North Korea, abandoning the ABM Treaty, killing the INF Treaty, and reneging on the JCPOA. Unless the president can be persuaded to ignore or fire Bolton, New START will be his next victim.

If New START dies, it will be a loss for both the U.S. and Russia, it will make the world less secure, and it will make U.S.-Russian relations even worse. The stability that these treaties have provided has been important for U.S. security for almost fifty years. New START is the last of the treaties that constrain the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, and when it is gone there will be nothing to replace it for a long time. The collapse of arms control almost certainly means that the top two nuclear weapons states will expand their arsenals and put us back on the path of an insane and unwinnable arms race. Killing New START is irrational and purely destructive, and it needs to be opposed.


Taras77 a day ago

bolton is opposed to any treaty, to any agreement, whereby the other side can expect to obtain equally favorable terms-he wants the other side on their knees permanently without any expectation of compromise by the empire.
Sid Finster a day ago
I wonder how long it will take for Trump to finally figure out that Bolton and Pompeo regard him as expendable.

Whether Trump wins or loses in 2020 will not matter, as long as the neocons get what they want.

Tony 9 hours ago
John Bolton will not be satisfied until he has got us all killed.
He is an extremely dangerous man.

[Jun 28, 2019] Tulsi Gabbard vs Bolton

Highly recommended!
Jun 28, 2019 | www.unz.com

Chris Mallory , says: June 28, 2019 at 2:04 am GMT

Miss Gabbard just served two tours in the ME, one as enlisted in the HI National Guard.

Brave Mr. Bolton kept the dirty communists from endangering the US supply of Chesapeake crab while serving in the Maryland Guard. Rumor also has it that he helped Tompall Glaser write the song Streets of Baltimore. Some say they saw Mr. Bolton single handily defending Memorial Stadium from a combined VC/NVA attack during an Orioles game. The Cubans would have conquered the Pimlico Race Course if not for the combat skill of PFC Bolton.

[Jun 27, 2019] 'The Ugly Americans' From Kermit Roosevelt to John Bolton Iran Al Jazeera

Highly recommended!
Jun 27, 2019 | www.aljazeera.com

Sixty-six years later, I am witnessing how another "Ugly American" is walking in the footsteps of Roosevelt. His name is John Bolton, a chief advocate of the disastrous US invasion of Iraq, a nefarious Islamophobe, and former chairman of the far-right anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute. This infamous institution is known for spreading lies about Muslims - claiming there is a looming "jihadist takeover" that can lead to a "Great White Death" - to incite hatred against them and intimidate, silence, and alienate them.

In his diabolical plans to wage war on Iran, Bolton is taking a page from Roosevelt's playbook. Just as the CIA operative used venal Iranian politicians and fake news to incite against the democratically elected Iranian government, today his successor, the US national security adviser, is seeking to spread misinformation on a massive scale and set up a false flag operation with the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a militant terrorist organisation. Meanwhile, he has also pressed forward with debilitating sanctions that are further worsening the economic crisis in the country and making the lives of ordinary Iranians unbearable.

... ... ...

Bolton is the dreadful residue of the pure violence and wanton cruelty that drive Zionist Christian zealots in their crusades against Muslims. He is the embodiment of the basest and most racist roots of American imperialism.

The regime he serves is the most naked and vulgar face of brutish power, lacking any semblance of legitimacy - a bullying coward flexing its military muscles. At its helm is an arrogant mercantile president, who - faced with the possibility of an impeachment - has no qualms about using the war machine at his disposal to regain political relevance and line his pockets.

But the world must know Americans are not all ugly, they are not all rabid imperialists - Boltons and Roosevelts. What about those countless noble Americans - the sons and daughters of the original nations that graced this land, of the African slaves who were brought to this land in chains, of the millions after millions of immigrants who came to these shores in desperation or hope from the four corners of the earth? Do they not have a claim on this land too - to redefine it and bring it back to the bosom of humanity?

[Jun 27, 2019] For a man who did whatever he could to avoid fighting in a war, Bolton certainly seems to love the concept.

Jun 27, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com

Sally Snyder , June 27, 2019 at 08:18

Here is an interesting look at John Bolton's Three State Solution for the Middle East:

http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/02/john-boltons-three-state-middle-east.html

For a man who did whatever he could to avoid fighting in a war, he certainly seems to love the concept.

[Jun 27, 2019] What Will It Take to Get Bolton Fired by Daniel Larison

Notable quotes:
"... Just as Obama turned out to be a slightly more articulate version of Dubya, Trump has turned out to be a meaner, more dysfunctional, more reckless version of Dubya. ..."
"... Bolton is a neo-con, neo-cons are Trotskyites. They believe in an eternal revolution. Bolton believes in eternal war. ..."
"... Sid, the natural conclusion is that the 'deep state' is real, and for the most part runs the country. Whoever is President is less important than the goals of the American elite, most importantly the 'War Party' (the MIC and the IC) and Wall Street, but including Health Care. A side party of equal importance is the Israel Lobby. What happens in America is pretty much what the leaders of those groups want. ..."
"... Trump is too weak to push back on Bolton. He likes bluster. If starting a war will make Trump look macho, he very well might start one. Bolton wants war, Trump may let us stumble into one. ..."
"... "What will it take to get Bolton fired?" One phone call from Israel. Then again, one phone call from Israel would also stop Trump from firing him, and there's no reason to suspect that Bibi is anything other than ecstatic over Bolton's performance. ..."
"... Find out who "told" Donald Trump he HAD to hire Bolton (and Pompeo and others as well) and you'll probably learn the identity of the real puppet master pulling the strings in the "Deep State." It's simply impossible to believe Trump – who ran for president on a platform of "non-interventionism" – appointed this guy on his own volition. ..."
"... The headline asks, "What Will It Take to Get Bolton Fired?" This is a great question. If he CAN'T be fired, this tells us who is really running our country. Another question along the same lines: What will it take to get America to cease its support of Saudi Arabia? ..."
"... The petodollar makes these wars possible; it also defends or preserves the Status Quo, which makes so many of our elite ultra wealthy and powerful. Our carte blanche support of Saudi Arabia is telling us something important just like Trump's appointment of Bolton told us something important. ..."
May 07, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
For someone "not playing along," Trump has obediently given Bolton and the Iran hawks practically everything they have wanted so far. He has gone much further in laying the groundwork for war with Iran than any of his predecessors, and the only reason that many people seem confident that he won't order an attack is their mistaken belief that he is a non-interventionist when all of the evidence tells us that he is no such thing. Trump presumably doesn't want to start a multi-year, extremely expensive war that could also throw the economy into a recession, but then every president that launches an illegal war of choice assumes that the war would be much easier and take less time than it does. No one ever knowingly opts for a bloody debacle. The absurdly optimistic hawkish expectations of a quick and easy triumph are always dashed on the rocks of reality, but for some reason political leaders believe these expectations every time because "this time it's different." There will come a point where Bolton will tell Trump that attacking Iran (or Venezuela) is the only way to "win," and Trump will probably listen to him just as he has listened to him on all of these issues up until now.

There is no question that Bolton should lose his job. Even if you aren't an opponent of Trump, you should be unhappy with the way Bolton has been operating for the last year. He has made a point of sabotaging administration policies he doesn't like, resisting decisions he doesn't agree with, and effectively reversing policy changes while pretending to be carrying out the president's wishes. His mismanagement of the policy process is a bad joke, and the reason he runs the National Security Council this way is so that he can stop views and information that don't suit his agenda from reaching the president. But Trump pays little or no attention to any of this, and as long as Bolton remains loyal in public and a yes-man in person he is likely safe in his job. If Bolton gets his wish and the U.S. starts a war with Iran, he may not be in that job for much longer, but the damage will have already been done. Instead of counting on Trump to toss Bolton overboard, Congress and the public need to make absolutely clear that war with Iran and Venezuela is unacceptable and Trump will be destroying his presidency if he goes down that path in either country.

Sid Finster says: May 7, 2019 at 10:53 am

Obama entered office in 2008 promising to close Guantanamo and end the stupid wars.

Not only did Obama fail to end a single war, he gave us new and stupider wars in Syria, Yemen and Ukraine, to name but three. Guantanamo is still open.

Just as Obama turned out to be a slightly more articulate version of Dubya, Trump has turned out to be a meaner, more dysfunctional, more reckless version of Dubya.

Kouros says: May 7, 2019 at 11:26 am

The banality of Evil, eh?!

No One Listens says: May 7, 2019 at 1:37 pm

" some reason political leaders believe these expectations every time because "this time it's different."

Like communists, political leaders think 'this time we'll get it right. Bolton is a neo-con, neo-cons are Trotskyites. They believe in an eternal revolution. Bolton believes in eternal war.

EarlyBird says: May 7, 2019 at 1:52 pm

As much of a disaster for American institutions Trump has been, I believe he does not want to go to war. The times are a'changin'. Average Americans have figured out that these wars are self-defeating nonsense. Trump knows that, and doesn't want to alienate the middle American types who support him and would go to war.

But he does want to sound and look tough, hence Bolton. The problem is that while Trump may believe he's just blustering, reneging on the nuclear deal, cranking back brutal sanctions and sending US flotillas to the Strait of Hormuz looks and feels like war to the Iranians.

We could stumble into a very big and ugly war like America stumbled into the ugly era of Trump. And Trump is the absolute last person I would want to serve as a commander in chief during war time.

SteveK9 says: May 7, 2019 at 1:57 pm

Sid, the natural conclusion is that the 'deep state' is real, and for the most part runs the country. Whoever is President is less important than the goals of the American elite, most importantly the 'War Party' (the MIC and the IC) and Wall Street, but including Health Care. A side party of equal importance is the Israel Lobby. What happens in America is pretty much what the leaders of those groups want.

Zgler says: May 7, 2019 at 2:52 pm

Trump is too weak to push back on Bolton. He likes bluster. If starting a war will make Trump look macho, he very well might start one. Bolton wants war, Trump may let us stumble into one.

Sid Finster says: May 7, 2019 at 3:59 pm

Of course the "Deep State", the "permanent government" the "Borg" or whatever you want to call it is real.

Every winning candidate since arguably Bush 1.0 ("kinder gentler nation") ran for office as a non-interventionist. Even Dubya promised a humbler foreign policy in 2000.

Once inaugurated, each candidate morphed into a foaming-at-the-mouth hawk.

I don't pretend to know how the process works, or even if it is the same for every president, but the results speak for themselves. I suspect without evidence that it is something like what we saw in "Yes, Minister".

Whine Merchant says: May 7, 2019 at 5:18 pm

The neo-cons are busy studying the Israeli playbook of declaring themselves surrounded and launching a preemptive strike. Pompeo's view is that the occupation of Iraq is/was so difficult because the US isn't as ruthlessly efficient as the IDF in the West Bank and allowed Iraq some self-governance.He won't allow that in the conquered Iran.

Step 1: send a doctored telegram to Kaiser Trump and leak it to the press.
Step 2: Get the GOP Senate to pass the "Gulf of Hormuz" declaration.
Step 3: sink a ship, perhaps one called USS Maine or USS Liberty.

Good night

Oleg Gark says: May 7, 2019 at 6:32 pm

Trump would fire Bolton in a heartbeat, but Adelson won't let him.

Oscar Peterson says: May 7, 2019 at 7:43 pm

"What Will It Take to Get Bolton Fired?"

The first question is "What did it take to get Bolton hired?"

The answer to the author's question is that making Trump look bad (in a way that Trump recognizes) is what will get Bolton fired. But like Dick Cheney, Bolton has a very good sense of what a Richelieu needs to do to seem loyal and obedient to an idiot king. Rummy appended Bible verses to schemes that he wanted Bush to approve. Bolton does something similar, no doubt.

Westerbrook says: May 7, 2019 at 8:50 pm

"What will it take to get Bolton fired?" One phone call from Israel. Then again, one phone call from Israel would also stop Trump from firing him, and there's no reason to suspect that Bibi is anything other than ecstatic over Bolton's performance.

The mammoth "donations" from Adelson et al to Trump and the corrupt Republicans have paid off royally for Israel. With Trump and Bolton in the White House, Israel barely even needs a foreign ministry, a treasury, or a military anymore. Uncle Sam does it all for free.

Uncle Billy says: May 7, 2019 at 9:44 pm

Bolton needs a rabies shot. The man is a rabid neocon.

Deacon Blue says: May 8, 2019 at 9:40 am

Find out who "told" Donald Trump he HAD to hire Bolton (and Pompeo and others as well) and you'll probably learn the identity of the real puppet master pulling the strings in the "Deep State." It's simply impossible to believe Trump – who ran for president on a platform of "non-interventionism" – appointed this guy on his own volition.

Also, if it was so important to appoint Bolton, why would this be the case?

I think it's because – in the minds of those pulling the strings – it's crucial to them that America does the things Bolton wants to do.

That is, Bolton wasn't named National Security Advisor to do nothing.

Lessons?

1) Trump's not calling the important shots here.

2) Better buckle up your chinstrap.

Deacon Blue says: May 8, 2019 at 10:08 am

The headline asks, "What Will It Take to Get Bolton Fired?" This is a great question. If he CAN'T be fired, this tells us who is really running our country. Another question along the same lines: What will it take to get America to cease its support of Saudi Arabia?

We know the answer to this one. NOTHING. Consider that

The answer (Saudi Arabia can do whatever it wants with no risk of incurring the wrath of America) begs the question: Why is "letting Saudi Arabia do whatever it wants" so important to America?

This answer, I believe, has everything to do with the vital role the petrodollar plays in maintaining the Status Quo.

If the Deep State is calling the shots, what is most important to the Deep State?

Answer: Protecting the U.S. dollar (fiat) printing press. Absent this printing press and the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, none of our current wars and future wars would even be possible.

And the fact we are willing to wage these wars sends a vital message to the nations of the world: We WILL use our military against anyone who threatens the Status Quo.

The petodollar makes these wars possible; it also defends or preserves the Status Quo, which makes so many of our elite ultra wealthy and powerful. Our carte blanche support of Saudi Arabia is telling us something important just like Trump's appointment of Bolton told us something important.

TheSnark says: May 8, 2019 at 12:04 pm

The only way people like Bolton get fired is the same way Bannon got dumped. It is when Trump sees on Fox News that they are getting more press coverage than him.

Tony says: May 9, 2019 at 8:13 am

The post of national security advisor needs to be subject to Senate confirmation.

Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration and Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Carter administration were both more powerful/influential than the respective secretaries of state, William Rogers and Cyrus Vance.

The Senate needs to assert itself and ensure that national security advisors are appointed in the same way as secretaries of state. This would help to a certain extent.

[Jun 25, 2019] Tulsi on Iraq war and Trump administration and some interesting information about Bolton

With minor comment editions for clarity...
Looks like Bolton is dyed-in-the-wool imperialist. He believes the United States can do what wants without regard to international law, treaties or the роlitical commitments of previous administrations.
Notable quotes:
"... Israel is an Anglo American aircraft carrier to control the Eastern Mediterranean ..."
Jun 25, 2019 | www.unz.com

J. Gutierrez says: June 24, 2019 at 5:37 pm GMT 300 Words

...Look at this man's video and remember he is a pervert, warmonger and a coward!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hs35O_TBbbU

Ma Laoshi , says: June 24, 2019 at 11:56 pm GMT

@J. Gutierrez

...Zionists know what they want, are willing to work together towards their goals, and put their money where their mouth is. In contrast, for a few pennies the goyim will renounce any principle they pretend to cherish, and go on happily proclaiming the opposite even if a short while down the road it'll get their own children killed.

The real sad part about this notion of the goy as a mere beast in human form is maybe not that it got codified for eternity in the Talmud, but rather that there may be some truth to it? Another way of saying this is raising the question whether the goyim deserve better, given what we see around us.

Saka Arya , says: June 25, 2019 at 7:02 am GMT
@Malla

Israel is an Anglo American aircraft carrier to control the Eastern Mediterranean and prevent a Turko Egyptian and possibly Persian invasion of Greece & the West

[Jun 24, 2019] Trump Unleashes On Uber-Hawk Bolton We d Be Fighting The Whole World At One Time

That does not change the fact that Trump foreign policy is a continuation of Obama fogirn policy. It is neocon forign policy directed on "full spectrum dominance". Trump just added to this bulling to the mix.
Notable quotes:
"... When pressed on the dangers of having such an uber-hawk neo-conservative who remains an unapologetic cheerleader of the 2003 Iraq War, and who laid the ground work for it as a member of Bush's National Security Council, Trump followed with, "That doesn't matter because I want both sides." ..."
"... I was against going into Iraq... I was against going into the Middle East . Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now. ..."
"... Bolton has never kept his career-long goal of seeing regime change in Tehran a secret - repeating his position publicly every chance he got, especially in the years prior to tenure at the Trump White House. ..."
"... Tucker's epic "bureaucratic tapeworm" comment: https://www.youtube.com/embed/-c0jMsspE7Y ..."
"... Bolton! So much winning! And there's also Perry: Rick Perry, Trump's energy secretary, was flagged for describing Trumpism as a "toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition." ..."
"... Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and now he's itching to start a war with Iran -- an even bigger country with almost three times the population. ..."
Jun 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

In a stunningly frank moment during a Sunday Meet the Press interview focused on President Trump's decision-making on Iran, especially last week's "brink of war" moment which saw Trump draw down readied military forces in what he said was a "common sense" move, the commander in chief threw his own national security advisor under the bus in spectacular fashion .

Though it's not Trump's first tongue-in-cheek denigration of Bolton's notorious hawkishness, it's certainly the most brutal and blunt take down yet, and frankly just plain enjoyable to watch. When host Chuck Todd asked the president if he was "being pushed into military action against Iran" by his advisers in what was clearly a question focused on Bolton first and foremost, Trump responded:

"John Bolton is absolutely a hawk. If it was up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay?"

Trump began by explaining, "I have two groups of people. I have doves and I have hawks," before leading into this sure to be classic line that is one for the history books: "If it was up to him he'd take on the whole world at one time, okay?"

During this section of comments focused on US policy in the Middle East, the president reiterated his preference that he hear from "both sides" on an issue, but that he was ultimately the one making the decisions.

When pressed on the dangers of having such an uber-hawk neo-conservative who remains an unapologetic cheerleader of the 2003 Iraq War, and who laid the ground work for it as a member of Bush's National Security Council, Trump followed with, "That doesn't matter because I want both sides."

And in another clear indicator that Trump wants to stay true to his non-interventionist instincts voiced on the 2016 campaign trail, he explained to Todd that:

I was against going into Iraq... I was against going into the Middle East . Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now.

It was the second time this weekend that Trump was forced to defend his choice of Bolton as the nation's most influential foreign policy thinker and adviser. When peppered with questions at the White House Saturday following Thursday night's dramatic "almost war" with Iran, Trump said that he "disagrees" with Bolton "very much" but that ultimately he's "doing a very good job".

Bolton has never kept his career-long goal of seeing regime change in Tehran a secret - repeating his position publicly every chance he got, especially in the years prior to tenure at the Trump White House.

Tucker's epic "bureaucratic tapeworm" comment: https://www.youtube.com/embed/-c0jMsspE7Y

But Bolton hasn't had a good past week: not only had Trump on Thursday night shut the door on Bolton's dream of overseeing a major US military strike on Iran, but he's been pummeled in the media.

Even a Fox prime time show (who else but Tucker of course) colorfully described him as a "bureaucratic tapeworm" which periodically reemerges to cause pain and suffering.


Iconoclast422 , 15 seconds ago link

YOU TELL HIM BOSS. Only bomb one country at a time.

bizarroworld , 1 minute ago link

It's great that the biggest war mongers are the ones that not only never served but in the case of Bolton, purposely avoided serving. They should send that ****** to Iran so we can see just how supportive he is when he's actually in danger.

This guy is a worthless piece of **** and Trump's an idiot for hiring him.

Catullus , 1 minute ago link

Being a cheerleader for the Iraq war is as ridiculous as that ******* mustache. He's just letting neocons have a front row seat to power. That's how he's keeping them from jumping ship to become democrats. They have no principles. They're just power worshippers.

Moribundus , 2 minutes ago link

Do ya all remember when Trump took office? Losers use military strategy that is overwhelming bombardment b4 land attack. I thought that Donnie can not survive this pressure. Looks like now he is riding horse with banner in hands. Thumb up, MJT

thepsalmon , 2 minutes ago link

I was against going into the Middle East...$7 Trillion? So why is Jared trying to give away $50 Billion more? People thought they voted for MAGA, but they got Jared...MMEGA.

How about MJANYA?...Make Jared a New Yorker Again. Send Jared and Ivanka back to New York before it's $10 Trillion.

HenryJonesJr , 2 minutes ago link

Never understood why Trump allowed Bolton near the White House. Bolton is insane.

Joiningupthedots , 4 minutes ago link

WTF is wrong with Trump? He appointed Bolton and Pompeo......... OR DID HE?

SMOOCHY SMOOCHY CARLO , 4 minutes ago link

Bolton! So much winning! And there's also Perry: Rick Perry, Trump's energy secretary, was flagged for describing Trumpism as a "toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition."

ne-tiger , 4 minutes ago link

Holycrap trumptards: all get your 22 little pistols ready to die for your orange swamp mushroom?

ConanTheContrarian1 , 5 minutes ago link

Trump "unleashes"? For those who think, he also said Bolton is doing a good job. Crap headline. I think Solomon said, "In a multitude of counselors there is victory".

DingleBarryObummer , 4 minutes ago link

What kind of unprofessional dingus talks openly about employee issues? That's not how you run a organization. That's how you run a reality television show.

DingleBarryObummer , 5 minutes ago link

Bolton is just there to make Trump look like less of a Zionist tool in comparison.

Everybodys All American , 5 minutes ago link

Rid yourself of Bolton. The guy is a friggin megalomaniac and he's no fan of making America great. Move on from this idiot.

RedNemesis , 7 minutes ago link

Who would have thought that we now wish HR McMaster was back.

HillaryOdor , 9 minutes ago link

So why did you put him in your cabinet then you dumb ****? Was this actually news to you?

ConanTheContrarian1 , 8 minutes ago link

Because, you dumber ****, Trump wants to hear both sides, as was pointed out in the article.

DingleBarryObummer , 7 minutes ago link

Sides? I could hire Hobo Joe, the bum that huffs paint and drinks scotch out of plastic bottle while yelling at traffic by the intersection, as my advisor. He'd probably tell me to do some whacky stuff. But why would I do that?

HillaryOdor , 7 minutes ago link

There is no side to hear. Bomb everyone. That is John Bolton's side. It isn't worth hearing. The man shouldn't be drawing a paycheck. He shouldn't be drawing breath. He should be pushing up daisies. He the same as ISIS.

libertysghost , 6 minutes ago link

More easily controlled... Keep your enemies even closer, you may have heard.

HillaryOdor , 30 seconds ago link

Whatever you have to tell yourself to stay in the Trump delusion. What will the excuse be when they are at war with Iran?

Cognitive Dissonance , 1 minute ago link

Reading is fundamental....and certainly not needed to spout opinions. In fact, reading, combined with critical thinking, logic and reason, just gets in the way of forming opinions. Or should I say "repeating" other's opinions.

Commodore 1488 , 11 minutes ago link

John "The Pimp" Bolton wants American military to serve Israel.

FreeShitter , 7 minutes ago link

The military has been serving Israel for decades, you think this is new?

FreeShitter , 11 minutes ago link

"Chuck we've spent 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East right now."....Yes, just like your *** bosses wanted and needed and you dumb ******* sheep still think voting matters.

El_Puerco , 11 minutes ago link

Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton was one of the architects of the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and now he's itching to start a war with Iran -- an even bigger country with almost three times the population.

Democrats in Congress have the power to pull us back from the brink , but they need to act now. Once bombs start falling and troops are on the ground, there will be massive political pressure to rally around the flag.

[Jun 22, 2019] Why The Empire Is Failing The Horrid Hubris Of The Albright Doctrine by Doug Bandow

Highly recommended!
Bolton is just Albright of different sex. The same aggressive stupidity.
Notable quotes:
"... Albright typifies the arrogance and hawkishness of Washington blob... ..."
"... How to describe US foreign policy over the last couple of decades? Disastrous comes to mind. Arrogant and murderous also seem appropriate. ..."
"... Washington and Beijing appear to be a collision course on far more than trade. Yet the current administration appears convinced that doing more of the same will achieve different results, the best definition of insanity. ..."
"... Despite his sometimes abusive and incendiary rhetoric, the president has departed little from his predecessors' policies. For instance, American forces remain deployed in Afghanistan and Syria. Moreover, the Trump administration has increased its military and materiel deployments to Europe. Also, Washington has intensified economic sanctions on Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, and even penalized additional countries, namely Venezuela. ..."
"... "If we have to use force, it is because we are America: we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us." ..."
"... Even then her claim was implausible. America blundered into the Korean War and barely achieved a passable outcome. The Johnson administration infused Vietnam with dramatically outsize importance. For decades, Washington foolishly refused to engage the People's Republic of China. Washington-backed dictators in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and elsewhere fell ingloriously. An economic embargo against Cuba that continues today helped turn Fidel Castro into a global folk hero. Washington veered dangerously close to nuclear war with Moscow during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and again two decades later during military exercises in Europe. ..."
"... Perhaps the worst failing of U.S. foreign policy was ignoring the inevitable impact of foreign intervention. Americans would never passively accept another nation bombing, invading, and occupying their nation, or interfering in their political system. Even if outgunned, they would resist. Yet Washington has undertaken all of these practices, with little consideration of the impact on those most affected -- hence the rise of terrorism against the United States. Terrorism, horrid and awful though it is, became the weapon of choice of weaker peoples against intervention by the world's industrialized national states. ..."
"... Albright's assumption that members of The Blob were far-seeing was matched by her belief that the same people were entitled to make life-and-death decisions for the entire planet. ..."
"... The willingness to so callously sacrifice so many helps explain why "they" often hate us, usually meaning the U.S. government. This is also because "they" believe average Americans hate them. Understandably, it too often turns out, given the impact of the full range of American interventions -- imposing economic sanctions, bombing, invading, and occupying other nations, unleashing drone campaigns, underwriting tyrannical regimes, supporting governments which occupy and oppress other peoples, displaying ostentatious hypocrisy and bias, and more. ..."
"... At the 1999 Rambouillet conference Albright made demands of Yugoslavia that no independent, sovereign state could accept: that, for instance, it act like defeated and occupied territory by allowing the free transit of NATO forces. Washington expected the inevitable refusal, which was calculated to provide justification for launching an unprovoked, aggressive war against the Serb-dominated remnant of Yugoslavia. ..."
"... Alas, members of the Blob view Americans with little more respect. The ignorant masses should do what they are told. (Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster recently complained of public war-weariness from fighting in Afghanistan for no good reason for more than seventeen years.) Even more so, believed Albright, members of the military should cheerfully patrol the quasi-empire being established by Washington's far-sighted leaders. ..."
"... When asked in 2003 about the incident, she said "what I thought was that we had -- we were in a kind of a mode of thinking that we were never going to be able to use our military effectively again." ..."
"... For Albright, war is just another foreign policy tool. One could send a diplomatic note, impose economic sanctions, or unleash murder and mayhem. No reason to treat the latter as anything special. Joining the U.S. military means putting your life at the disposal of Albright and her peers in The Blob. ..."
Jun 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Doug Bandow via National Interest,

Albright typifies the arrogance and hawkishness of Washington blob...

How to describe US foreign policy over the last couple of decades? Disastrous comes to mind. Arrogant and murderous also seem appropriate.

Since 9/11, Washington has been extraordinarily active militarily -- invading two nations, bombing and droning several others, deploying special operations forces in yet more countries, and applying sanctions against many. Tragically, the threat of Islamist violence and terrorism only have metastasized. Although Al Qaeda lost its effectiveness in directly plotting attacks, it continues to inspire national offshoots. Moreover, while losing its physical "caliphate" the Islamic State added further terrorism to its portfolio.

Three successive administrations have ever more deeply ensnared the United States in the Middle East. War with Iran appears to be frighteningly possible. Ever-wealthier allies are ever-more dependent on America. Russia is actively hostile to the United States and Europe. Washington and Beijing appear to be a collision course on far more than trade. Yet the current administration appears convinced that doing more of the same will achieve different results, the best definition of insanity.

Despite his sometimes abusive and incendiary rhetoric, the president has departed little from his predecessors' policies. For instance, American forces remain deployed in Afghanistan and Syria. Moreover, the Trump administration has increased its military and materiel deployments to Europe. Also, Washington has intensified economic sanctions on Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, and even penalized additional countries, namely Venezuela.

U.S. foreign policy suffers from systematic flaws in the thinking of the informal policy collective which former Obama aide Ben Rhodes dismissed as "The Blob." Perhaps no official better articulated The Blob's defective precepts than Madeleine Albright, United Nations ambassador and Secretary of State.

First is overweening hubris. In 1998 Secretary of State Albright declared that

"If we have to use force, it is because we are America: we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."

Even then her claim was implausible. America blundered into the Korean War and barely achieved a passable outcome. The Johnson administration infused Vietnam with dramatically outsize importance. For decades, Washington foolishly refused to engage the People's Republic of China. Washington-backed dictators in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and elsewhere fell ingloriously. An economic embargo against Cuba that continues today helped turn Fidel Castro into a global folk hero. Washington veered dangerously close to nuclear war with Moscow during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and again two decades later during military exercises in Europe.

U.S. officials rarely were prepared for events that occurred in the next week or month, let alone years later. Americans did no better than the French in Vietnam. Americans managed events in Africa no better than the British, French, and Portuguese colonial overlords. Washington made more than its share of bad, even awful decisions in dealing with other nations around the globe.

Perhaps the worst failing of U.S. foreign policy was ignoring the inevitable impact of foreign intervention. Americans would never passively accept another nation bombing, invading, and occupying their nation, or interfering in their political system. Even if outgunned, they would resist. Yet Washington has undertaken all of these practices, with little consideration of the impact on those most affected -- hence the rise of terrorism against the United States. Terrorism, horrid and awful though it is, became the weapon of choice of weaker peoples against intervention by the world's industrialized national states.

The U.S. record since September 11 has been uniquely counterproductive. Rather than minimize hostility toward America, Washington adopted a policy -- highlighted by launching new wars, killing more civilians, and ravaging additional societies -- guaranteed to create enemies, exacerbate radicalism, and spread terrorism. Blowback is everywhere. Among the worst examples: Iraqi insurgents mutated into ISIS, which wreaked military havoc throughout the Middle East and turned to terrorism.

Albright's assumption that members of The Blob were far-seeing was matched by her belief that the same people were entitled to make life-and-death decisions for the entire planet. When queried 1996 about her justification for sanctions against Iraq which had killed a half million babies -- notably, she did not dispute the accuracy of that estimate -- she responded that "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." Exactly who "we" were she did not say. Most likely she meant those Americans admitted to the foreign policy priesthood, empowered to make foreign policy and take the practical steps necessary to enforce it. (She later stated of her reply: "I never should have made it. It was stupid." It was, but it reflected her mindset.)

In any normal country, such a claim would be shocking -- a few people sitting in another capital deciding who lived and died. Foreign elites, a world away from the hardship that they imposed, deciding the value of those dying versus the purported interests being promoted. Those paying the price had no voice in the decision, no way to hold their persecutors accountable.

The willingness to so callously sacrifice so many helps explain why "they" often hate us, usually meaning the U.S. government. This is also because "they" believe average Americans hate them. Understandably, it too often turns out, given the impact of the full range of American interventions -- imposing economic sanctions, bombing, invading, and occupying other nations, unleashing drone campaigns, underwriting tyrannical regimes, supporting governments which occupy and oppress other peoples, displaying ostentatious hypocrisy and bias, and more.

This mindset is reinforced by contempt toward even those being aided by Washington. Although American diplomats had termed the Kosovo Liberation Army as "terrorist," the Clinton Administration decided to use the growing insurgency as an opportunity to expand Washington's influence. At the 1999 Rambouillet conference Albright made demands of Yugoslavia that no independent, sovereign state could accept: that, for instance, it act like defeated and occupied territory by allowing the free transit of NATO forces. Washington expected the inevitable refusal, which was calculated to provide justification for launching an unprovoked, aggressive war against the Serb-dominated remnant of Yugoslavia.

However, initially the KLA, determined on independence, refused to sign Albright's agreement. She exploded. One of her officials anonymously complained: "Here is the greatest nation on earth pleading with some nothingballs to do something entirely in their own interest -- which is to say yes to an interim agreement -- and they stiff us." Someone described as "a close associate" observed: "She is so stung by what happened. She's angry at everyone -- the Serbs, the Albanians and NATO." For Albright, the determination of others to achieve their own goals, even at risk to their lives, was an insult to America and her.

Alas, members of the Blob view Americans with little more respect. The ignorant masses should do what they are told. (Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster recently complained of public war-weariness from fighting in Afghanistan for no good reason for more than seventeen years.) Even more so, believed Albright, members of the military should cheerfully patrol the quasi-empire being established by Washington's far-sighted leaders.

As Albright famously asked Colin Powell in 1992:

"What's the use of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" To her, American military personnel apparently were but gambit pawns in a global chess game, to be sacrificed for the interest and convenience of those playing. No wonder then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell's reaction stated in his autobiography was: "I thought I would have an aneurysm."

When asked in 2003 about the incident, she said "what I thought was that we had -- we were in a kind of a mode of thinking that we were never going to be able to use our military effectively again." Although sixty-five years had passed, she admitted that "my mindset is Munich," a unique circumstance and threat without even plausible parallel today.

Such a philosophy explains a 1997 comment by a cabinet member, likely Albright, to General Hugh Shelton, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "Hugh, I know I shouldn't even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event -- something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough -- and slow enough -- so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?" He responded sure, as soon as she qualified to fly the plane.

For Albright, war is just another foreign policy tool. One could send a diplomatic note, impose economic sanctions, or unleash murder and mayhem. No reason to treat the latter as anything special. Joining the U.S. military means putting your life at the disposal of Albright and her peers in The Blob.

Anyone of these comments could be dismissed as a careless aside. Taken together, however, they reflect an attitude dangerous for Americans and foreigners alike. Unfortunately, the vagaries of U.S. foreign policy suggest that this mindset is not limited to any one person. Any president serious about taking a new foreign-policy direction must do more than drain the swamp. He or she must sideline The Blob.

* * *

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire .

[Jun 22, 2019] Bolton Calls For Forceful Iranian Response To Continuing US Aggression

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "Iran cannot sit idly by as the American imperialist machine encroaches on their territory, threatens their sovereignty, and endangers their very way of life," said Bolton, warning that America's fanatical leadership, steadfast devotion to flexing their muscles in the region, and alleged access to nuclear weapons necessitated that Iran strike back with a vigorous show of force as soon -- and as hard -- as possible. ..."
"... "The only thing these Westerners understand is violence, so it's imperative that Iran sends a clear message that they won't be walked over. Let's not forget, the U.S. defied a diplomatically negotiated treaty for seemingly no reason at all -- these are dangerous radicals that cannot be reasoned with. ..."
Jun 22, 2019 | politics.theonion.com

Demanding that the Middle Eastern nation retaliate immediately in self-defense against the existential threat posed by America's military operations, National Security Adviser John Bolton called for a forceful Iranian response Friday to continuing United States aggression.

"Iran cannot sit idly by as the American imperialist machine encroaches on their territory, threatens their sovereignty, and endangers their very way of life," said Bolton, warning that America's fanatical leadership, steadfast devotion to flexing their muscles in the region, and alleged access to nuclear weapons necessitated that Iran strike back with a vigorous show of force as soon -- and as hard -- as possible.

"The only thing these Westerners understand is violence, so it's imperative that Iran sends a clear message that they won't be walked over. Let's not forget, the U.S. defied a diplomatically negotiated treaty for seemingly no reason at all -- these are dangerous radicals that cannot be reasoned with.

They've been given every opportunity to back down, but their goal is total domination of the region, and Iran won't stand for that."

At press time, Bolton said that the only option left on the table was for Iran to launch a full-fledged military strike against the Great Satan.

[Jun 21, 2019] Washington's Mighty Warriors Draft Dodgers and Scoundrels

Jun 21, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

Bolton was notoriously a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, like his current boss, not due to any scruples regarding what was occurring, but out of concern for his own sorry ass.

[Jun 03, 2019] Bolton Brazenly Lies About Iran Again by DANIEL LARISON

Notable quotes:
"... From what I have read, including excerpts of JCPOA, it seems that Iran's move to restart some low level enrichment is captured in the agreement as something that Iran could do if the other party(ies) are in breach of the agreement. And at this time, the US is not a party any longer and the EU is in breach by stopping any economic intercourse with Iran. ..."
"... This should be reiterated again and again, because just mentioning that Iran unilaterally is starting enrichment puts a target on their back especially in the United States of Amnesia, while they are still just doing only what is prescribed by the JCPOA. ..."
"... Bolton's lying goes with his broad contempt for the American people. He treats us like contemptible sheep, he lies to us, and then he tries to manipulate Trump into sending our sons and daughters to fight wars for his foreign buddies. ..."
"... It is indeed remarkable in a very bad way that Bolton has any credibility to speak on issues. He has a very long track record of lie after lie after lie, going back to the build up for Iraq war. Indeed, he has never acknowledged that Iraq war a monumental tragedy. ..."
May 29, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

John Bolton repeats one of the Trump administration's biggest and most important lies:

Donald Trump's national security adviser said Wednesday there was "no reason" for Iran to back out of its nuclear deal with world powers other than to seek atomic weapons, a year after the U.S. president unilaterally withdrew America from the accord.

Bolton and other administration officials have promoted the lie that Iran seeks nuclear weapons for months. Unfortunately, members of Congress and the press have largely failed to call out these lies for what they are. There is no evidence to support the administration's claims, and there is overwhelming evidence that they are wrong, but if they can get away with saying these things without being challenged they may not need evidence to get the crisis that Bolton and others like him want.

In this case, the AP story just relays Bolton's false and misleading statements as if they should be taken seriously, and their headline trumpets Bolton's dishonest insinuations as if they were credible. This is an unfortunate case of choosing the sensationalist, eye-catching headline that misinforms the public on a very important issue. Bolton's latest remarks are especially pernicious because they use Iran's modest reactions to Trump administration sanctions as evidence of Iran's imaginary intent to acquire weapons. The U.S. has been trying to push Iran to abandon the deal for more than a year, and at the first sign that Iran begins to reduce its compliance in order to push back against the administration's outrageous economic warfare Bolton tries to misrepresent it as proof that they seek nuclear weapons. Don't fall for it, and don't trust anything Bolton says. Not only does he have a record of distorting and manipulating intelligence to suit his purposes, but his longstanding desire for regime change and his ties to the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) make him an exceptionally unreliable person when it comes to any and all claims about the Iranian government.

The story provides some context, but still fails to challenge Bolton's assertions:

Bolton said that without more nuclear power plants, it made no sense for Iran to stockpile more low-enriched uranium as it now plans to do. But the U.S. also earlier cut off Iran's ability to sell its uranium to Russia in exchange for unprocessed yellow-cake uranium [bold mine-DK].

Iran has set a July 7 deadline for Europe to offer better terms to the unraveling nuclear deal, otherwise it will resume enrichment closer to weapons level. Bolton declined to say what the U.S. would do in response to that.

"There's no reason for them to do (higher enrichment) unless it is to reduce the breakout time to nuclear weapons," Bolton said.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration ended the sanctions waivers that enabled Iran to ship its excess low-enriched uranium out of the country. They made it practically impossible for Iran to do what they have been reliably doing for years, and now Bolton blames Iran for the consequences of administration actions. The administration has deliberately put Iran in a bind so that they either give up the enrichment that they are entitled to do under the JCPOA or exceed the restrictions on their stockpile so that the U.S. can then accuse them of a violation. Left out in all of this is that the U.S. is no longer a party to the deal and violated all of its commitments more than a year ago. Iran has patiently remained in compliance while the only party to breach the agreement desperately hunts for a pretext to accuse them of some minor infraction.

Iran's record of full compliance with the JCPOA for more than three years hasn't mattered to Bolton and his allies in the slightest, and they have had no problem reneging on U.S. commitments, but now the same ideologues that have wanted to destroy the deal from the start insist on treating the deal's restrictions as sacrosanct. These same people have worked to engineer a situation in which Iran may end up stockpiling more low-enriched uranium than they are supposed to have, and then seize on the situation they created to spread lies about Iran's desire for nukes. It's all so obviously being done in bad faith, but then that is what we have come to expect from Iran hawks and opponents of the nuclear deal. Don't let them get away with it.

The reason that Iran is threatening to enrich its uranium to a higher level is that the U.S. has been relentlessly sanctioning them despite their total compliance with the terms of the JCPOA. The Trump administration has done all it could to deny Iran the benefits of the deal, and then Bolton has the gall to say that they have no other reason to reduce their compliance. Of course Iran does have another reason, and that is to put pressure on the other remaining parties to the deal to find a way to get Iran the benefits it was promised. It is a small step taken in response to the administration's own destructive policy, and it is not evidence of anything else. Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, and it is grossly irresponsible to treat unfounded administration claims about this as anything other than propaganda and lies.


Kouros, says: May 29, 2019 at 10:58 am

From what I have read, including excerpts of JCPOA, it seems that Iran's move to restart some low level enrichment is captured in the agreement as something that Iran could do if the other party(ies) are in breach of the agreement. And at this time, the US is not a party any longer and the EU is in breach by stopping any economic intercourse with Iran.

This should be reiterated again and again, because just mentioning that Iran unilaterally is starting enrichment puts a target on their back especially in the United States of Amnesia, while they are still just doing only what is prescribed by the JCPOA.

Braced , says: May 29, 2019 at 3:24 pm

Bolton's lying goes with his broad contempt for the American people. He treats us like contemptible sheep, he lies to us, and then he tries to manipulate Trump into sending our sons and daughters to fight wars for his foreign buddies.

Taras 77 , says: May 29, 2019 at 3:56 pm

It is indeed remarkable in a very bad way that Bolton has any credibility to speak on issues. He has a very long track record of lie after lie after lie, going back to the build up for Iraq war. Indeed, he has never acknowledged that Iraq war a monumental tragedy.

I think NK has it right to assert that Bolton is a defective human product.

But there he is stacking intell in trump's ear.

[May 31, 2019] The entire "revolution of dignity" fiasco has been rejected: whatever Ukraine the voters want, it's not the one Nuland Co gave them

May 31, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

UKRAINE ELECTION. He was invited everywhere, pressed the flesh with everyone, has a whole wall of ego pictures; in the end he was defeated by Anybody-At-All. I have no idea what Zelensky will turn out to be and I doubt anyone else does either. But the conclusion is that the entire "revolution of dignity" fiasco has been rejected: whatever Ukraine the voters want, it's not the one Nuland & Co gave them.

[May 27, 2019] The Pathology of John Bolton by Joe Lauria

In short Bolton is a neofascist.
Notable quotes:
"... Most diplomats, officials, and journalists were shocked that Bolton (evading confirmation with a recess appointment) had actually become the U.S. representative, given his long, public disdain for the UN ..."
"... It's been the strategy of Republican administrations to appoint the fiercest critic to head an agency or institution in order to weaken it, perhaps even fatally. ..."
"... Bolton possesses an abiding self-righteousness rooted in what seems a sincere belief in the myth of American greatness, mixed with deep personal failings hidden from public view. ..."
"... It is more than an ideology. It's fanaticism. Bolton believes America is exceptional and indispensible and superior to all other nations and isn't afraid to say so. ..."
"... Bolton's all too willing to make his bullying personal on behalf of the state. He implicitly threatened the children of José Bustani, who Vice President Dick Cheney wanted out of his job as head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons because Bustani had gotten Iraq to agree to join the chemical weapons protocol, thereby making it harder for the U.S. to invade Iraq. ..."
"... We saw a pattern of Mr. Bolton trying to manipulate intelligence to justify his views. If it had happened once, maybe. But it came up multiple times, and always it was the same underlying issue: he would stake out a position, and then, if the intelligence didn't support it, he would try to exaggerate the intelligence and marginalize the officials who had produced it." ..."
"... Bolton is no fan of democracy if things don't go his way. He is a vociferous instigator of the so-far failed U.S. coup in Venezuela and of course Bolton organized the "Brooks Brothers riot" that disrupted the recounting of votes in Florida in the disputed 2000 presidential election ..."
"... This is a common ruling class tactic in the U.S. to portray disobedient leaders ripe for overthrow as Hitler. Saddam was Hitler, Milosevic was Hitler, Noriega was Hitler and Hillary Clinton called Putin Hitler. It is a false revival of U.S. glory from World War II to paint foreign adventures as moral crusades, rather than naked aggression in pursuit of profits and power. ..."
"... Bolton is the distillation of the pathology of American power. He is unique only in the purity of this pathology. ..."
"... Two months after Bolton was appointed national security adviser, in June 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the six-nation deal that has seen Tehran curtail its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for relaxation of U.S. and international sanctions. ..."
"... Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, lacking the military firepower of the United States, have long tried to get the U.S. to fight its wars, and one no more important than against its common enemy. ..."
"... It is the typical provocation of a bully: threaten someone with a cruise missile and the moment they pick up a knife in self-defense you attack, conveniently leaving the initial threat out of the story. It then becomes: "Iran picked up a knife. We have to blow them away with cruise missiles." ..."
"... The New York Times that day reported : "Privately, several European officials described Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo as pushing an unsuspecting Mr. Trump through a series of steps that could put the United States on a course to war before the president realizes it." ..."
"... Pompeo told a radio interviewer after the briefing that the U.S. had still not determined who attacked two Saudi, a Norwegian and an Emirati oil tanker in the Gulf last week, which bore the hallmarks of a provocation. Pompeo said "it seems like it's quite possible that Iran was behind" the attacks. ..."
"... But also last Sunday he told Fox News that the "military-industrial complex" is real and "they do like war" and they "went nuts" when he said he wanted to withdraw troops from Syria. Trump said he didn't want war with Iran, here possibly reflecting Israel's views. ..."
"... Joe, nice piece of work covering the psycho-pathology of America's leading nazi! ..."
"... To correct one of your statements: Trump DID NOT appoint him National Security Adviser, but Adelson and Mercer did. Trump is a brain-dead, blackmailed puppet who fancies himself as POTUS ..."
"... Everybody I know who is following the Washington Beltway histrionics of Trump et al know full-well that a certain intelligence agency of a small Middle East domiciled country have THE definitive dossier on Trump and have been building it for the last five decades. ..."
"... The Bolton-Pompeo-Pence presidency is destined to go down in history as one of infamy and treason. Trump? dead-man walking, more than likely by a stroke-heart attack when he's popping out one of his idiotic and manic tweets! ..."
"... John Bolton is a psychopath, He should be dismissed immediately, but I think that he should be institutionalized. ..."
"... Yeah Joe, it wasn't just you and other reporters who were stunned by Bolton's recess appt to the UN by W -- - many of us were staggered by the jaw-dropping inappropriateness of it, ..."
"... But, as you accurately mentioned, the Republicans had long-ago (I recall first hearing about it during Nixon's reign, with Earl Butz) used that gambit to effectively sabotage regulatory agencies & depts. Rather than try to dissolve an agency that most people want, they can neutralize it by appointing some hack or lobbyist for the entity being regulated so that nothing meaningful gets done, AND it has the 'beneficial' effect of discrediting the agency involved, and government in general, which is what many libertarian-inclined Republicans like. ..."
"... Israel doesnt want the US to attack Iran Well that is BS! Israel and its Fifth Column in the US have agitated for the US to attack Iran for years .we've all seen and heard it .and now they want to try to wipe our memories of their war mongering with their typical hasbara in the NYT and Netanyahu claiming .'oh we have nothing to do with it." ..."
"... Bolton is a psychopath but he is Sheldon Adelson's errand boy .who Bolton met with in Las Vegas the week before Trump appointed him and Adelson is the Orange carnival barker's 100 million dollar donor. ..."
"... Trump's incoherent mixture of neoconservative & isolationism almost make him a Bush! ..."
"... I assume Trump knows what a 'neocon' but is so indebted to Israel and intoxicated by Islamophobic rhetoric that he cannot free himself from his addiction to surrounding himself with more neo-cons ..."
"... The progression from Flynn to McMaster to Bolton was just selecting between neocon flavors for his National Security Advisers. What a joke of a nation! ..."
"... I appreciate the article, but it doesn't mention Israel, which is the fountainhead of the agenda to take out Iran, Iraq, and Syria. ..."
"... "Overall, 28 sitting senators have received sizable contributions from John Bolton PAC during the election cycle, as have nine representatives on the House defense, foreign affairs, and homeland security subcommittees." ..."
"... Don't forget who told Donald Trump to hire John Bolton. It was Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes. ..."
"... They like Bolton because he is "incapable of empathy and good on Israel." ..."
"... The NYT has indeed supported wars but it is not alone nor is this a recent trend. There is a very old trend of the commercial news establishments becoming war hawks and regurtitators of official propaganda whenever the USA wants to pick a fight. It goes back to the period after the establishment of the nation when expansionism set its roots down and what grew out of that is pretty much the same kind of nationalistic propaganda we see today. ..."
May 23, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Special to Consortium News 129 Comments

John Bolton has been saying for years he wants the Iranian government overthrown, and now he's made his move. But this time he may have gone too far, writes Joe Lauria.

I knew John Bolton and interacted with him on a nearly daily basis with my colleagues in the press corps at United Nations headquarters in New York when Bolton was the United States ambassador there from August 2005 to December 2006.

Most diplomats, officials, and journalists were shocked that Bolton (evading confirmation with a recess appointment) had actually become the U.S. representative, given his long, public disdain for the UN. But that turned out to be the point. It's been the strategy of Republican administrations to appoint the fiercest critic to head an agency or institution in order to weaken it, perhaps even fatally.

Bolton's most infamous quote about the UN followed him into the building. In 1994 he had said : "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

But a more telling comment in that same 1994 conference was when he said that no matter what the UN decides the U.S. will do whatever it wants:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VOINBs8eOdk?feature=oembed

Bolton sees such frank admissions as signs of strength, not alarm.

He is a humorless man, who at the UN at least, seemed to always think he was the smartest person in the room. He once gave a lecture in 2006 at the U.S. mission to UN correspondents, replete with a chalk board, on how nuclear enrichment worked. His aim, of course, was to convince us that Iran was close to a bomb, even though a 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate being prepared at the time said Tehran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

I thought I'd challenge him one day at the press stakeout outside the Security Council chamber, where Bolton often stopped to lecture journalists on what they should write. "If the United States and Britain had not overthrown a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 would the United States be today faced with a revolutionary government enriching uranium?' I asked him.

"That's an interesting question," he told me, "but for another time and another place." It was a time and a place, of course, that never came.

More Than an Ideology

Bolton possesses an abiding self-righteousness rooted in what seems a sincere belief in the myth of American greatness, mixed with deep personal failings hidden from public view.

He seemed perpetually angry and it wasn't clear whether it was over some personal or diplomatic feud. He seems to take personally nations standing up to America, binding his sense of personal power with that of the United States.

It is more than an ideology. It's fanaticism. Bolton believes America is exceptional and indispensible and superior to all other nations and isn't afraid to say so. He'd have been better off perhaps in the McKinley administration, before the days of PR-sugarcoating of imperial aggression. He's not your typical passive-aggressive government official. He's aggressive-aggressive.

And now Bolton is ordering 120,000 troops to get ready and an aircraft carrier to steam towards Iran.

Bolton's all too willing to make his bullying personal on behalf of the state. He implicitly threatened the children of José Bustani, who Vice President Dick Cheney wanted out of his job as head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons because Bustani had gotten Iraq to agree to join the chemical weapons protocol, thereby making it harder for the U.S. to invade Iraq.

After Bolton's failed 2005 confirmation hearings, Tony Blinken, the then staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The New Yorker 's Dexter Filkins:

"We saw a pattern of Mr. Bolton trying to manipulate intelligence to justify his views. If it had happened once, maybe. But it came up multiple times, and always it was the same underlying issue: he would stake out a position, and then, if the intelligence didn't support it, he would try to exaggerate the intelligence and marginalize the officials who had produced it."

Bolton is no fan of democracy if things don't go his way. He is a vociferous instigator of the so-far failed U.S. coup in Venezuela and of course Bolton organized the "Brooks Brothers riot" that disrupted the recounting of votes in Florida in the disputed 2000 presidential election.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MbVtROU9J_E?feature=oembed

What is alarming about the above video is not so much that he justifies lying, but the example he gives: lying to cover up military plans like the invasion of Normandy. This is a common ruling class tactic in the U.S. to portray disobedient leaders ripe for overthrow as Hitler. Saddam was Hitler, Milosevic was Hitler, Noriega was Hitler and Hillary Clinton called Putin Hitler. It is a false revival of U.S. glory from World War II to paint foreign adventures as moral crusades, rather than naked aggression in pursuit of profits and power.

Bolton is the distillation of the pathology of American power. He is unique only in the purity of this pathology.

Regime Change for Iran

The U.S. national security adviser has been saying for years he wants the Iranian government overthrown, and now he's made his move. But this time John Bolton may have flown too high.

He was chosen for his post by a president with limited understanding of international affairs -- if real estate is not involved -- and one who loves to be sucked up to. Trump is Bolton's perfect cover.

But hubris may have finally bested Bolton. He had never before maneuvered himself into such a position of power, though he'd left a trail of chaos at lower levels of government. Sitting opposite the Resolute desk on a daily basis has presented a chance to implement his plans.

At the top of that agenda has been Bolton's stated aim for years: to bomb and topple the Iranian government.

Thus Bolton was the driving force to get a carrier strike force sent to the Persian Gulf and, according to The New York Times, on May 14 , it was he who "ordered" a Pentagon plan to prepare 120,000 U.S. troops for the Gulf. These were to be deployed "if Iran attacked American forces or accelerated its work on nuclear weapons."

Two months after Bolton was appointed national security adviser, in June 2018, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the six-nation deal that has seen Tehran curtail its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for relaxation of U.S. and international sanctions.

At the time of Bolton's appointment in April 2018, Tom Countryman, who had been undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, as had Bolton, predicted to The Intercept that if Iran resumed enrichment after the U.S. left the deal, it "would be the kind of excuse that a person like Bolton would look to to create a military provocation or direct attack on Iran."

In response to ever tightening sanctions, Iran said on May 5 (May 6 in Tehran) that it would indeed restart partial nuclear enrichment. On the same day, Bolton announced the carrier strike group was headed to the Gulf.

Bolton Faces Resistance

If this were a normally functioning White House, in which imperial moves are normally made, a president would order military action, and not a national security adviser.

"I don't think Trump is smart enough to realize what Bolton and [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo are doing to him,"

former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel told RT's Afshin Rattansi this week.

"They have manipulated him. When you get the national security adviser who claims that he ordered an aircraft carrier flotilla to go into the Persian Gulf, we've never seen that. In the days of Henry Kissinger, who really brought sway, he never ordered this, and if it was ordered it was done behind closed doors."

Bolton claimed he acted on intelligence that Iran was poised to attack U.S. interests close to Iran.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, lacking the military firepower of the United States, have long tried to get the U.S. to fight its wars, and one no more important than against its common enemy. An editorial on May 16 in the Saudi English-language news outlet, Arab News , called for a U.S. "surgical strike" on Iran. But The New York Times reported on the same day that though Israel was behind Bolton's "intelligence" about an Iranian threat, Israel does not want the U.S. to attack Iran causing a full-scale war.

The intelligence alleged Iran was fitting missiles on fishing boats in the Gulf. Imagine a government targeted by the most powerful military force in history wanting to defend itself in its own waters.

Bolton also said Iran was threatening Western interests in Iraq, which led eventually to non-essential U.S. diplomatic staff leaving Baghdad and Erbil.

It is the typical provocation of a bully: threaten someone with a cruise missile and the moment they pick up a knife in self-defense you attack, conveniently leaving the initial threat out of the story. It then becomes: "Iran picked up a knife. We have to blow them away with cruise missiles."

But this time the bully is being challenged. Federica Mogherini, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, resisted the U.S. on Iran when she met Pompeo in Brussels on May 13.

"It's always better to talk, rather than not to, and especially when tensions arise Mike Pompeo heard that very clearly today from us," said Mogherini. "We are living in a crucial, delicate moment where the most relevant attitude to take – the most responsible attitude to take – is and we believe should be, that of maximum restraint and avoiding any escalation on the military side."

The New York Times that day reported : "Privately, several European officials described Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo as pushing an unsuspecting Mr. Trump through a series of steps that could put the United States on a course to war before the president realizes it."

Ghika: No new threat from Iran. (YouTube)

British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika then said on May 14: "There has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria." Ghika was rebuked by U.S. Central Command, whose spokesman said, "Recent comments from OIR's Deputy Commander run counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from U.S. and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region."

A day later it was Trump himself, however, who was said to be resisting Bolton. On May 15 The Washington Post reported:

"President Trump is frustrated with some of his top advisers, who he thinks could rush the United States into a military confrontation with Iran and shatter his long-standing pledge to withdraw from costly foreign wars, according to several U.S. officials. Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions and wants to speak directly with Iran's leaders."

The Times reported the next day:

"President Trump has told his acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, that he does not want to go to war with Iran, according to several administration officials, in a message to his hawkish aides that an intensifying American pressure campaign against the clerical-led government in Tehran must not escalate into open conflict."

Then it was the Democrats who stood up to Bolton. On Tuesday Pompeo and Shanahan briefed senators and representatives behind closed doors on Capitol Hill regarding the administration's case for confronting Iran.

"Are they (Iran) reacting to us, or are we doing these things in reaction to them? That is a major question I have, that I still have," Sen. Angus King told reporters after the briefing. "What we view as defensive, they view as provocative. Or vice versa."

Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego told reporters after the briefing: "I believe there is a certain level of escalation of both sides that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The feedback loop tells us they're escalating for war, but they could just be escalating because we're escalating."

Pompeo told a radio interviewer after the briefing that the U.S. had still not determined who attacked two Saudi, a Norwegian and an Emirati oil tanker in the Gulf last week, which bore the hallmarks of a provocation. Pompeo said "it seems like it's quite possible that Iran was behind" the attacks.

Bolton was conspicuously absent from the closed-door briefing.

It's Up to Trump

Trump has pinballed all over the place on Iran. He called the Times and Post stories about him resisting Bolton "fake news."

"The Fake News Media is hurting our Country with its fraudulent and highly inaccurate coverage of Iran. It is scattershot, poorly sourced (made up), and DANGEROUS. At least Iran doesn't know what to think, which at this point may very well be a good thing!" Trump tweeted on May 17.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

The Fake News Media is hurting our Country with its fraudulent and highly inaccurate coverage of Iran. It is scattershot, poorly sourced (made up), and DANGEROUS. At least Iran doesn't know what to think, which at this point may very well be a good thing!

77.7K 9:44 AM - May 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
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Then he threatened what could be construed as genocide against Iran. "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!" he tweeted on Sunday.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!

239K 4:25 PM - May 19, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
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But also last Sunday he told Fox News that the "military-industrial complex" is real and "they do like war" and they "went nuts" when he said he wanted to withdraw troops from Syria. Trump said he didn't want war with Iran, here possibly reflecting Israel's views.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vc4vYWJfJnE?feature=oembed

On Monday he implied that the crisis has been drummed up to get Iran to negotiate.

"The Fake News put out a typically false statement, without any knowledge that the United States was trying to set up a negotiation with Iran. This is a false report ."

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

The Fake News put out a typically false statement, without any knowledge that the United States was trying to set up a negotiation with Iran. This is a false report....

80.8K 1:30 PM - May 20, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
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John Bolton must be stopped before he gets his war. It is beyond troubling that the man we have to count on to do it is Donald Trump.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for T he Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe , Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe .


Jym Allyn , May 26, 2019 at 19:27

Or as Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is US." As in the lies that created the Vietnam war and the waste of 58,000 American soldiers and thousand of Vietnamese. Or the lie that Iran is our enemy when we funded and encouraged Saddam to attack them and destroyed their attempt to have a secular government.

Or the lie of the WMD's and the 9/11 attack which was funded by Saudi Arabia, and run by Saudis and NOT Iraq.

Or the lies of Afghanistan which was economically and culturally better off when it was controlled by the USSR...

John Hawk , May 26, 2019 at 16:56

Joe, nice piece of work covering the psycho-pathology of America's leading nazi!

To correct one of your statements: Trump DID NOT appoint him National Security Adviser, but Adelson and Mercer did. Trump is a brain-dead, blackmailed puppet who fancies himself as POTUS.

It can't get any more delusional than this. Everybody I know who is following the Washington Beltway histrionics of Trump et al know full-well that a certain intelligence agency of a small Middle East domiciled country have THE definitive dossier on Trump and have been building it for the last five decades.

After all, deception is their game and they use it liberally, like feeding their agenda to Bolton as 'intelligence' info of the highest order. The Bolton-Pompeo-Pence presidency is destined to go down in history as one of infamy and treason. Trump? dead-man walking, more than likely by a stroke-heart attack when he's popping out one of his idiotic and manic tweets!

Zhu , May 26, 2019 at 03:20

If Bolton were struck by lightning tomorrow morning, would anything change much? I doubt it. We Americans are as warlike as the ancient Assyrian. We've been slaughtering Indians, Koreans, SE Asians, Central Americans, and multiple Middle Eastern people for a looong time. It is flattering to blame this individual or th t country, but no. We, as a community, are all responsible to some degree. Even me, on the far side of the world.

Alex , May 25, 2019 at 21:50

Bolton's choosing destroyed IRAN but staying friends with Saudi Arabia it's so contradicting, and so obvious that he is influenced to behave this way is because Israelies influence. Saudy Kingdom using Bolton to get IRAN so Saudy will be only country promote Extreme version of Wahhabi Islam which is didn't existed In Islam's history.

So Bolton's obsession with destruction of Iran is ignorance as its best. September 11th suspects were most of them Saudy nationals, yet nobody wanted to talk about it, because there is irony that, George W Bush was and probably still doing business with Saudy. So how can you explain that to American people? No you can not.

Perhaps collectively hypnotism !

OlyaPola , May 26, 2019 at 02:58

" So how can you explain that to American people?"

Given that useful fools are useful, why would you want to?

" No you can not."

An illustration of the benefits of dumbing down do not accrue solely to those actively engaged in dumbing down, facilitating the minimising of blowback during implementation of strategies based on "How to drown a drowning man with the minimum of blowback", given that many believe that critical mass is a function of linear notions of 50% +1 and above; a further conflation of quantity with quality to which the opponents are prone.

William , May 25, 2019 at 19:06

John Bolton is a psychopath, He should be dismissed immediately, but I think that he should be institutionalized. Put him in a strait jacket and keep him in a padded cell. He poses a threat to millions of people.

Eddie S , May 25, 2019 at 11:26

Yeah Joe, it wasn't just you and other reporters who were stunned by Bolton's recess appt to the UN by W -- - many of us were staggered by the jaw-dropping inappropriateness of it, IF it was assessed from a pro-peace perspective.

But, as you accurately mentioned, the Republicans had long-ago (I recall first hearing about it during Nixon's reign, with Earl Butz) used that gambit to effectively sabotage regulatory agencies & depts. Rather than try to dissolve an agency that most people want, they can neutralize it by appointing some hack or lobbyist for the entity being regulated so that nothing meaningful gets done, AND it has the 'beneficial' effect of discrediting the agency involved, and government in general, which is what many libertarian-inclined Republicans like.

Good article about a reprehensible politician.

renfro , May 25, 2019 at 11:18

"But The New York Times reported on the same day that though Israel was behind Bolton's "intelligence" about an Iranian threat, Israel does not want the U.S. to attack Iran causing a full-scale war. "
________________________________

Israel doesnt want the US to attack Iran Well that is BS!
Israel and its Fifth Column in the US have agitated for the US to attack Iran for years .we've all seen and heard it .and now they want to try to wipe our memories of their war mongering with their typical hasbara in the NYT and Netanyahu claiming .'oh we have nothing to do with it."

Bolton is a psychopath but he is Sheldon Adelson's errand boy .who Bolton met with in Las Vegas the week before Trump appointed him and Adelson is the Orange carnival barker's 100 million dollar donor.

Seriously, how stupid do they think we are? If we attack Iran it will be for the Zionist and Saudis and we all know it.

Luther Bliss , May 25, 2019 at 10:57

Trump's incoherent mixture of neoconservative & isolationism almost make him a Bush!

Remember it wasn't until Bush JR's second term that he asked his father, "What's A Neocon?" to which Pappy Bush replied, "Israel."

I assume Trump knows what a 'neocon' but is so indebted to Israel and intoxicated by Islamophobic rhetoric that he cannot free himself from his addiction to surrounding himself with more neo-cons.

The progression from Flynn to McMaster to Bolton was just selecting between neocon flavors for his National Security Advisers. What a joke of a nation!

Mark , May 25, 2019 at 02:30

I appreciate the article, but it doesn't mention Israel, which is the fountainhead of the agenda to take out Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Bolton stands out for his extremity among extremists, but he's a means rather than the end. The agenda is something into which he bought, passionately by all indications, but which a paucity of other people created strictly to advance their own, tiny, exclusive clan, not for the benefit of the United States.

Hank , May 25, 2019 at 09:43

To think that this administration campaigned on a promise to restrict future wasteful and needless interventions and then hired this dinosaur of a warmonger makes my blood curl! Everyone with half a brain knows what Bolton's agenda is yet here he is leading the USA into a war at the behest of a foreign nation led by a felon and terrorist! The American people who want peace and their tax dollars invested into improving the USA have once again been stabbed in the back by a conniving administration. Will this cycle of non-democracy ever end? Until it does, future administrations will continue on just like previous ones- kowtowing to special interests, in particular the military/industrial mafia and the apartheid criminal state of Israel! All this massive business of holding "elections" in the USA, all the talk about "Russian collusion" and the REAL collusion is right there in front of us all- the US administration has once again COLLUDED to go back on a campaign promise and once again open the money trough for the military/industrialist pigs!

Mark , May 26, 2019 at 05:31

I get the idea, but it's necessary to look 'behind' back-stabbing, conniving, colluding administrations, and Bolton, and the military/industrial complex, and to bring Israel and some barely known U.S. history, at least back to World War I, explicitly to the fore for public scrutiny. That's a monumental task, to say the least, owing to American attention spans and the contrary interests of the powers that be.

Taras77 , May 24, 2019 at 20:24

Bolton has his own well funded PAC, from which he is free to "contribute" (bribe) sychophant congress individuals. What a situation for the fix for war.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/interests-pushing-for-hard-line-against-iran/

"Overall, 28 sitting senators have received sizable contributions from John Bolton PAC during the election cycle, as have nine representatives on the House defense, foreign affairs, and homeland security subcommittees."

ricardo2000 , May 24, 2019 at 17:29

By far the most productive, and most verifiable, way to eliminate weapons is at a negotiating table. The easiest way to start a war is with ignorant blather.

O Society , May 24, 2019 at 16:09

Don't forget who told Donald Trump to hire John Bolton. It was Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes.

They like Bolton because he is "incapable of empathy and good on Israel."

Trump initially declined on Bolton because "he doesn't like Bolton's moustache."

Kool Aid drinkers and idiots. We're being lead by a cult of morons who worship the bombs, money, and a white separatist state.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-book-donald-trump.html?gtm=bottom

Truth First , May 24, 2019 at 11:40

They don't call him, 'Bonkers' Bolton for nothin'.

Pedro Masculino Ghirotti , May 24, 2019 at 10:53

Nice piece Joe, but you just forgot to mention who Bolton actually works for, the Israelis.

JOHN CHUCKMAN , May 24, 2019 at 07:11

"Pathology." That's exactly the right word. But I think it has a wider application. See:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/john-chuckman-comment-why-trump-doesnt-rein-in-bolton-dismal-bolton-pompeo-and-abrams-are-part-of-the-price-trump-paid-for-political-support-against-threats-he-felt-and-getting-a-big-pile-of-ca/

old geezer , May 26, 2019 at 13:08

an accurate, concise review.

i doubt the iranians will test a nuke until after djt is out of office. after that you might wake up one morning and everything you knew before becomes quite obsolete.

my guess is israel has stealth cruise missiles with h bombs. it would be very foolish of them to not have them. those descendants of egyptian slaves are anything but foolish.

Sam , May 27, 2019 at 00:33

@ CitizenOne: Thank you for your long comment. I agree with much of what you wrote, but would like to know why you claimed, "Iran is surely guilty of vowing the destruction of Israel " . According to what I've read, Iran has not initiated hostilities with any nation for over a century – a clear, peaceful contrast to the rogue states of Israel & the U.S. Are you referring to the long-ago-debunked claim that Iran claimed to 'wipe Israel off the map'?
(See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155 ? "So there we have it. Starting with Juan Cole, and going via the New York Times' experts through MEMRI to the BBC's monitors, the consensus is that Ahmadinejad did not talk about any maps. He was, as I insisted in my original piece, offering a vague wish for the future.

"A very last point. The fact that he compared his desired option – the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" – with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. ")

Or perhaps you're referring to Revolutionary Guard deputy leader Hossein Salami's warning that if Israel starts an aggressive war against Iran, it 'will end with {Israel's} elimination from the global political map'? IMHO, warning an extremely aggressive, self-obsessed, Apartheid-practicing rogue state against trying to attack your nation is wise ;-) .

I look forward to your response. Thanks very much.

Sam F , May 27, 2019 at 06:12

Sam: please use an identifier initial as I do, to prevent confusion.
I have asked you twice before; perhaps not the same person.
It is unfair to expect others to make the clarification, and easy to prevent.

O Society , May 23, 2019 at 21:15

Neoconservative war pigs riding the bomb and the belligerence of Empire

http://opensociet.org/2019/05/23/the-belligerence-of-empire/

mike k , May 23, 2019 at 18:55

How is it that crazies like Bolton can end up high in our government hierarchy? It is because the whole damned government is crazy through and through

Joe , May 23, 2019 at 20:48

His Dad probably made a huge donation to Yale just like Bush's Dad. That's what happens when the system is gamed.

Art Thomas , May 25, 2019 at 09:22

Yes, in my opinion. The state stripped of patriotic rhetoric and other obfuscations that keep us devoted to it is nothing more than a criminal gang that hides behind the law.

Some basic examples. 1. The law: taxation, the crime: theft. 2. The law: monetary credit expansion, i.e. debt financing, the crime: counterfeiting, i.e. creating money out of thin air. 3. The invasion of countries not a threat to the invading state. Etc. etc.

Tiu , May 23, 2019 at 18:30

If the US "political establishment" was working for America's benefit, things would look very different.
They are instead working on the "globalist" agenda, which will, if successful, destroy all nations as we know them today and what remains will be ruled over by a bunch of sociopaths who are the same group that has inflicted John Bolton on the world.
Bolton's a tool, a bit like a hammer, to get their project done. The Democrats have equivalent tools e.g. H R Clinton.

Mark Thomason , May 23, 2019 at 18:04

The problem is if he hasn't gone too far. If he gets his war.

Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 16:53

John Bolton should get to ride the missile in the remake of Dr. Strangelove.

evelync , May 23, 2019 at 19:53

hah hah hah

I loved that movie :)

and yes Bolton is a perfect caricature of Slim Pickens AKA Dr Strangelove.

I also refer to him as Yosemite Sam

one difference for our current real life war monger is that the movie character was simply insane and didn't justify his craziness with explanations.

Bolton, OTOH, blames "national Security" and "the national interests" of this country .say what????

if we look at the horrific human costs and the enormous financial costs of the wars that were fought for U.S. "national interests" one would want to ask, once the rubble had cleared, what "interests" were actually served and whose "security" did they actually improve?
The answers always take us back to Eisenhower's MIC and Ray McGovern's MICIMATT (maybe I got a couple of these letters wrong?).
Whoever profited from the mayhem don't represent either our "national interest' or our "national security" IMO and yet those two phrases are used to shut down any discussion or criticism in the lead up .

whew

Mork D , May 25, 2019 at 01:20

Strictly about the movie – Slim Pickens plays the ranking officer on the B-52 (I think?) which is actually dropping the bomb. Dr Strangelove is a totally different character, one of a few played by Peter Sellers in that movie, and is a (mostly!) wheelchair-bound German scientist.

Jym Allyn , May 26, 2019 at 19:17

And the wheelchair bound psychopathic scientist of Dr. Strangelove was inspired by Kubrick meeting Henry Kissinger at a cocktail party and recognizing that Kissinger was the most evil person on this planet because he looked and sounded so responsible and rational.
Now that Saddam, bin Laden, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler are dead, Kissinger holds the record of the person still alive who has needlessly killed more people, both Americans and non-Americans, than any other person on this planet.
Hillary's idea of destabilizing Libya and creating a political vacuum there was from her training when working for Kissinger.

Abe , May 23, 2019 at 16:51

The Pathology:

John Bolton
Senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Chairman of Gatestone Institute (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Former board member of Project for the New American Century (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Former Adviser to Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/john-bolton/

Richard Goldberg – Aide to John Bolton at NSC (2019 – )
Former Senior Adviser at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/richard-goldberg/

Frederick Fleitz – Bolton's Former Chief of Staff at NSC (2018)
CEO of Center for Security Policy ( (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/frederick-fleitz/

Abe , May 23, 2019 at 19:32

The Pathology, Part Duh:

Mike Pompeo
Christian Zionist: "We will continue to fight these battles, it is a never ending struggle until the Rapture."
Associate of Center for Security Policy (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
Sponsor of ACT! for America (pro-Israel Lobby organization)
https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/mike-pompeo/

Sam , May 27, 2019 at 00:38

@ Abe: Thanks for the info!

Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 16:42

John Bolton is obviously a very sick puppy.
This is patently obvious to any observer with the least desgree of psyhological sophistication and insight.
If he lived on your block and made such statements about his neighbors, or a woman living nearby, he would be looking at restraining orders.
He is an out-of-control abusive pig who belongs in an institution where a course of shock therapy might actually help him. I reckon any basic psychological test would find that he has a least borderline personality and at worst is actually insane and incapable of taking responsibility for the consequences of his action.
Bolton has permanent termporary insanity.
Letting this tortured, psychopathic individual run the military is itself an enormous crime, one of murderous negligence, one for which Trump truly should and could be impeached. Congress must take all possible steps to get this man out of the Executive Branch.

Threaten Trump with impeachment if he doesn't fire Bolton.
His appointment of Bolton is reckless negligence and endangers this country.

James , May 23, 2019 at 19:09

I wonder how good American politicians of the past, if there were any, would react to the appointment of this psychopath as what he is now. Whom should be blamed for it? Donald Trump? The pro-Israeli lobbies? Or the American nation? A glance at the man's face is enough to realize that he is deeply sick. To me, he doesn't look like a human being at all! He looks like a monkey out of a stuffy room. Why don't psychotherapists do anything about him? Shouldn't he be hospitalized for the safety/security of the world population? By the way, I wonder where Netanyahu, the psychopath's provoker, is. He has been very quiet for about a month or so. Maybe he is waiting for the war to ignite without getting himself directly involved in it. Let Americans and Iranians kill one another while he waits to pick up the fruit in the end.

Mork D , May 25, 2019 at 01:27

Where does the blame lie? Who hired him? Who's the chief of the executive branch? Who's a person who could actually fire him (as he's so famous for doing on reality TV shows) instead of wringing his hands on friendly TV networks declaring he doesn't want to actually go to war, but if he's 'forced' to, he'll erase Iran from the map?

Druid , May 26, 2019 at 03:16

He would have to get permission from Adelson and the Mercers first.

CitizenOne , May 24, 2019 at 20:52

Bolton and Pompeo are the only things keeping him from impeachment. As long as Trump satisfies the bloodthirsty war mongers and the insatiable appetite of the MIC and the Pro Israel lobby and the Oil Lobby or Koch Industries he cannot lose. So far Trump is bangin on all cylinders. I really think he knows what he needs to do to survive. All this impeachment talk is just fantasy by the left dreaming about getting him out of office "somehow".

bjd , May 23, 2019 at 16:13

That the mono-maniacal psychopath Bolton is a walking exhibit of the Dunning–Kruger effect is no surprise to me. It is extra frightening though.

Realist , May 23, 2019 at 16:00

What was Bolton's day job before he started mucking around in politics and foreign policy? Master waterboarder or testicular electrificator in extraordinary renditions for the CIA? He seems the sort to have spent much time at Abu Ghraib, and not just to take notes. Honestly, his major goals seem to be the eradication of entire cultures and societies, which will somehow redound to the magnificence of the United States of America. Clearly a sociopathic personality. A lot in common with Cheney.

Jimmy G , May 23, 2019 at 15:57

Again the panic is stirred by .. The NYT! (The source of such good info regarding Russia gate) .
The statement regarding Bolton " ordering" anything is just one more example of the media and the intel bureaucrats trying to put the President in a jam politically . (Remember how a month ago we were invading Venezuela?)

Bolton is doing nothing more than getting enough rope to hang himself, and the military intelligence service, congressional and media Trumpophobes are willing to stir this to the very edge, and we all know Congress could (if it could act in good Constitutional faith, rather than pretending to be the judicial branch) unite for the good of this country and Trump would be amenable to whatever they came up with. Trump is far less of a warmonger than any POTUS we've had in a very long time.

Realist , May 23, 2019 at 16:18

If Congress is the only branch of government with the constitutional power to declare a war, surely it has the power to FORBID the executive branch from fomenting such a war against their judgement.

In fact, wasn't the Boland Amendment such a legislative act passed with the intent of preventing the Reagan administration from pursuing military action in Central America, most notably Nicaragua and El Salvador?

What's to prevent the Congress, if it were so inclined (which I doubt it is) to instruct the president (especially if he seems trigger-happy) to refrain from initiating any unprovoked attacks upon Iran, Venezuela, North Korea or any other country, for that matter?

Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 16:56

Ollie North worked for Reagan, didn't he?

RnM , May 25, 2019 at 17:27

Trump is very aware that 'Stache Bolton and Mike "Mumbles" Pompeo are significant threats to his re-election. Would not be surprised to see them removed before January.

CitizenOne , May 25, 2019 at 21:02

The NYT has indeed supported wars but it is not alone nor is this a recent trend. There is a very old trend of the commercial news establishments becoming war hawks and regurtitators of official propaganda whenever the USA wants to pick a fight. It goes back to the period after the establishment of the nation when expansionism set its roots down and what grew out of that is pretty much the same kind of nationalistic propaganda we see today.

I agree with your statement that Trump is far less vulnerable based on his history but I am sure that the war planners are always concocting special information diets that are carefully prepared to appeal to the particular tastes of the leader of the day. Whatever Trumps opinion is he will be surrounded by the hand picked lunatics of the day who will entice and enjoin him to agree with plans for war based on their carefully prepared menu of propaganda specifically designed to be appealing to the palate of whoever is in charge.

It is less certain that Trump's long history of opposing military action will have real staying power as he is served up courses of a sumptuous meal prepared specially for his palate designed to engage him in support for military action all over the World.

Trump is particularly susceptible to flattery and appeals to his greatness and his very stable genius. He wants to be the great leader and for that he needs a plan to deal with the geopolitical situation in many countries.

Trump is a man who knows what to do too.

He advised Germany that it was a puppet of Russia until he didn't
He advised Teresa May how to do Brexit the right way until he didn't
He announced to the World he had forged deep connections with North Korea until he didn't
He had high hopes for an alliance with Russia until he didn't.
He specified the right type of fire fighting to be used to fight the Notre Dame Cathedral fire until he didn't
He wanted to walk away from the fight in Syria until he didn't
He wanted to walk away from the war in Syria again until he didn't
He wanted to cut the military budget until he didn't

Ordinarily if we were in the middle of a democratic presidency the press would be raising the "flip flopper" argument every second of their available airtime.

Democrats are the flip floppers but never a republican even when he is. It all depends on the way the flips and the flops land. If they land on conservative positions then a flop or a flip never occurred. With republicans, flip flopping is just a corrective action to realign the president on the correct course. If it is a democrat then their hypocrisy and flip flopping are broadcast 24/7 and are portrayed a fundamentally disqualifying events which demonstrate a fundamental lack of principles and weakness of character deserving of condemnation. When errant republicans flip flop over to the "correct" vision they are welcomed with open arms into the fold.

Trump wants to be accepted so badly that the democrats hounding him are in fact herding him into the fold of the conservatives who will shelter him and support him at all costs and the media will never ever ever never call this flip flopping.

In short, if a political candidate shifts to the left his integrity will be destroyed as his character will be portrayed as weak and built on shifting sands. He will be deemed not to be trusted like some loose cannon.

On the other hand, if a political candidate shifts to the right he will be greeted as a prodigal son returning to the fold and will be welcomed with open arms.

So I am not as sure as you that Trump's background will be any indicator of his future ideas about how to succeed in the environment he is in where both democrats by their antagonism and republicans by their defense of him both push him over to the right.

He may once have been far less of a war hawk but politicians on both sides of the aisle are pushing him further to the right every day.

Consortium News editor Joe Lauria may wish to contribute a follow up series of articles detailing the purity of pro-Israel Lobby pathology exemplified by Bolton, Pompeo, and the beyond troubling Trump preferably before the next war.

Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 19:33

"the wider extent of pro-Israel Lobby pathology in the US government. "

That's it in a nutshell.

KiwiAntz , May 24, 2019 at 18:46

Thanks Joe for the great article. Bolton (aka the moustache) truly is a humourless, warmongering, depraved psycho? This is a cowardly man who dodged the Vietnam draft as he didn't want to die in some foreign patty field! But this lunatic has no qualms to send other peoples sons & daughters into a Iranian war zone as cannon fodder to satisfy his deluded & perverted bloodlust to destroy Iran? If "the moustache" wants a War with Iran he should be forced to fight on the frontlines with his troops along with POTUS Bonespurs Trump, another cowardly draft dodger? Let the moustache & the Dotard make a stand, like Jon Snow in the Battle of the bastards, sword in hand, facing down the so called Iranian, bogeyman enemy, but this would never happen as cowards & bastards like Bolton & Trump don't personally fight in the battles they start, they hide in safety in a Washington situation room, as far away from any War zone as possible! If Bolton gets his War with Iran, Trump will pay the price for this suicide mission because he would be blamed for the fallout of any Military defeat! America's already sorry record of Military humiliation & defeat in Regime change operations around the Globe would reach a crescendo if they ever dared to try to attack & overthrow Iran as it would be the endgame of the US Empire!

mark , May 23, 2019 at 22:28

Trump is just Israel's bitch.

incontinent reader , May 24, 2019 at 01:08

Good comment, Abe. We've missed you. Keep posting more of the same.

Zhu , May 25, 2019 at 01:37

We Americans were bloodthirsty long before Israel existed.

anon , May 25, 2019 at 06:35

What an absurd zionist troll post. Try it with someone dumb, Zhu.

Michael Steger , May 23, 2019 at 15:17

First Joe, McKinley did not implement American submission to British Imperialism, though it began with the end of Grant's administration as with the twice elected Groucher Cleveland, but it's confirmation as US policy began with Teddy Roosevelt. The Roosevelt Corollary destroyed JQA's Community of Principle in the Americas which should be known as the true Monroe Doctrine, contrary to popular opinion today which has incorrectly replaced the Monroe Doctrine with the Roosevelt Corollary (as Bolton is especially want to do). TR signalled the end of the Lincoln Era of American industrial development and global cooperation, which was best represented by Grant, the most overlooked of great Presidents (and perhaps we see similarities of Grant to Trump today). Bolton indeed is Captain Kangaroo, presiding over his Court as the Queen of No Hearts would in Alice's confrontation with British rule once she penetrates behind the facade of British Lockean empiricism. With insight only equalled to Lincoln's, who said "We can't fight two wars at once, so first the Confederacy and then the British," Trump has identified the fascist nexus within our government as that same British foe, a nexus led by Brennan, Rice, Clapper, Jarrett, et al, which works on behalf of what Eisenhower (another overlooked great President and General) called the Military Industrial Complex. The MIC is a British Intelligence deployment to fundamentally undermine our Constitution and put the US into a state of perpetual war and police surveillance. It is now over 70 years in the making, and is enforcing a new Cold War and attempted coup of our elected Government, and yet, it may have finally found its match, not just in Trump, but in Trump's intended cooperation with Putin of Russia and Xi of China. These three nations, along with Modi of India (just reelected) are a true threat to this rotten British system, from Fabian liberals to Bolton chickenhawks, the true enemy is this British System. If we move on that effectively, we may just have a chance to win this revolutionary moment now unfolding throughout the trans-Atlantic world. Let us return to JQA's community of principle for the entire world. Let us work with Trump to end this fascist British nexus. Let us celebrate our true heritage as Americans!

Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 16:51

Your comments read with interesting and well taken.
BUT: The bottom line is that Trump hired Bolton (and Pompeo) and has wound him up and set him loose goosewalking across the globe.
Why?
The buck for Bolton's suicidal buffonery stops with Trump.
So, I can't see him as a genuine foe of the Deep State-MIC as you describe.

Michael Steger , May 23, 2019 at 18:10

Bolton is loyal to Trump, even though he is a failed chickenhawk. Look at McMaster, at the leaking, and outright betrayal of the President. Same with Tillerson, betrayal. Pompeo and Bolton have ridiculous views and bloated war rhetoric, but they're personally loyal, perhaps opportunistically, and even temporarily, but nonetheless right now they are, and when they're not, I bet they're gone. But Trump does control the policy. Look at North Korea, any war? Media said there would be, then worked to undermine a deal. Venezuela, war? They're talking in Norway now, how'd that happen? Syria, troops out? MIC, Dems and Media opposed, and Trump called them out for the first time since Eisenhower! Pompeo to Sochi to see Putin, progress. How'd that happen? Trump is fighting the MIC and too many good Americans are spinning so fast from the propaganda machine they can't see straight.

anon4d2 , May 24, 2019 at 18:40

Interesting, but it is easy for a president to fight the MIC: simply fire and arrest anyone who acts against efforts to control them. He could send any federal enforcement agency, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, reserves, national guard, or even the Coast Guard, Secret Service, DC police, or private guards to arrest them and prosecute any resisters as traitors. It is not one man against the MIC.

And they cannot assassinate him once he has announced that intention, without exposing their hand and unleashing a generation of purges and strict controls. If he is surrounded by traitors, he has only to say that and fire the lot of them. He could leak that anonymously to Wikileaks or tweet it and they would be terrified.

Mork D , May 25, 2019 at 01:48

Bolton has been working DC bureaucracy like a pro for decades. He's using Trump like a marionette while he runs circles around the amateur. He was helping orchestrate foreign wars of choice back when Trump was still playing a pretend boss on TV. Bolton has no loyalty except as a facade for those he needs to suck up to.

Your examples of non-wars are terrific. Trump is amazing! – because he's running the government so badly that the State Dept doesn't know what the Pentagon is doing doesn't know and vice versa. He chose to ignore the Iran nuclear deal, which had prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons. So now, the Iranians declare (out of self defense) that they're now going to pursue nuclear weapons. Trump then says that he doesn't want to attack Iran, but they must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This is a circular argument exactly of the type the MIC uses to engage in war. Pompeo then indicates that laughable, ineffectual attempts at sabotage are most likely Iranian. This grave threat to our nation can't even do enough damage to an oil tanker to make it take on water.

Just because someone fails to do something doesn't mean that they were against it the whole time. Maybe they're just awful at it. Sure, Trump says some things that are heartening to the anti-war and anti-interventionist crowd. But the next day he'll say something heartening to rabid neocons. He needs to grow a spine, but it's far too late. He's a dandy, a spoiled rich kid fop who's never had to answer for his mishaps, because why, when you have inherited money and a stout legal team?

anon4d2 , May 24, 2019 at 19:06

The idea that "the MIC is a British Intelligence deployment" is fantastical, as the US MIC is several times the size of UK's entire MIC, and such a secret could never be kept. The US MIC has engaged UK secret agencies to subvert the US Constitution by serving as agents to pass intercepted US communications back to the US to pretend that the MIC didn't do it, or that it was foreign intel. But that is a long way from UK controlling the US MIC.

There are certainly confluences of interests between the US and UK oligarchies, but I see no basis for the contention that "American submission to British Imperialism began with the end of Grant's administration" when the US prosecuted Britain for building the Alabama etc. to break the Union blockade, and was outraged that Britain considered recognition of the Confederacy until it lost at Gettysburg. The US under TR was not submitting to anyone when it sent the Great White Fleet on tour, or when it seized Cuba and the Philippines. Nor under Wilson when it stayed out of WWI until very late in the war, despite the Lusitania loss. Nor under FDR when it stayed out of WWII until attacked, despite the passionate pleas of Churchill.

Some detailed argument with credible references would be needed to support those assertions.

Zhu , May 25, 2019 at 01:44

Scapegoating is real popular with lefties & rughties alike. American Exceptionalism forbids we ever accept respobility for what we've done.

Zhu , May 25, 2019 at 01:45

No, the rest of humanity is not any better.

anon4d2 , May 25, 2019 at 06:48

The commenter was searching for causes, and some UK conspiracy is simply too far from any available evidence. In fact it much appears to be a wild attempt to distract from the obvious causes including zionism, which you pretend is "scapegoating." No, zionism is a principle corrupting factor in US politics, especially foreign policy.

If you don't see that, you must start learning the evidence, rather than relying on the presumption that it is mere scapegoating. Otherwise you are serving their wrongful and racist tribal purposes, and others will presume that you know that.

Oscar Shank , May 26, 2019 at 07:24

Zhu knows it.

Vera Gottlieb , May 23, 2019 at 14:56

How much more peaceful the life on our entire planet would be if the Americans weren't around.

Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 16:58

Extend that to all humans, and the head of PETA would support the project.

David G. Horsman , May 23, 2019 at 17:16

I doubt that. Nature hates a void.

Bethany , May 24, 2019 at 17:50

Exactly. Very well put.

Abe , May 23, 2019 at 14:19

Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani, the first director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), only served about one year of his second term.

Bustani was forced out by the U.S. government in April 2002 because he wanted international chemical weapons monitors inside Iraq and thus was seen as impeding the US push for war against Iraq. The US accused Bustani of "advocacy of inappropriate roles for the OPCW".

Since 2011, the United Nations has stood by a US-Saudi-Israeli Axis financed and armed the mercenary terrorist forces attacked Syria. In addition to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, major support for terrorist mercenaries has provided via NATO-member state Turkey, as well as Jordan. Israel has launched repeated air attacks and provided direct support for terrorist forces in Syria.

From July 2010 to 2018, the Director-General of the OPCW was Turkish career diplomat Ahmet Uzumcu. Uzumcu served ambassador to Israel from 1999 to 2002, and as the Permanent Representative of Turkey to NATO between 2002 and 2004.

Turkey has been the primary channel for mercenary terrorist forces assaulting the Syrian state. The remaining terrorist forces in the Idlib Governorate continue to be supplied through Syria.

Since Uzumcu announced the creation of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria on 29 April 2014, not a single OPCW report has acknowledged these basic facts concerning the conflict in Syria.

Following a consensus recommendation by the OPCW Executive Council in October 2017. Spanish career diplomat Fernando Arias was appointed to replace Uzumcu as Director-General of the OPCW. Previously, Arias served as Ambassador of Spain to the Netherlands and the Permanent Representative of Spain to the OPCW. He also has served as Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations in New York.

Uzumcu, and now Bustani, obviously understand that the appropriate role of the OPCW is to provide propaganda support for "regime change" operations, and to say nothing contrary to the "narrative" endorsed by the US-Saudi-Israeli Axis.

David G. Horsman , May 23, 2019 at 17:52

The OPCW has certainly disgraced themselves in Syria. What a sham.

Randal Marlin , May 23, 2019 at 13:48

John Bolton's questioner in the second clip should have made the distinction between deception used to lead the country into war, and deception used to pursue a war already constitutionally declared and already underway.
In the first case there is a violation of democratic principle. When the people are the ultimate sovereign, they need to be properly informed. They can agree to deception, like where and when D-Day will occur, during war; but not in the case of leading the people into war. Lying to Congress is always unacceptable, and those who do lie to Congress should be made to suffer serious penalties.

zhenry , May 24, 2019 at 02:13

I read a report that the aircraft carrier strike force and preparation of 120,000 US troops, to Persian Gulf was ordered sometime ago and that Bolton took advantage of that fact to make it look that 'Bolton ordered it'?

vinnieoh , May 24, 2019 at 10:54

What I'd read is that the carrier strike force and bomber detachment were previously scheduled: there had been a previous drawdown and this deployment represents a return to a level similar to the end of the Iraq war, and that does sound like Bolton/Pompeo opportunism. The 120,000 troops plan sounds like something Bolton prodded pentagon scribes to produce. How to interpret when Bolton says that then Trump denies it, and then a new troop deployment (1% of the previous) is announced/suggested/leaked? I see it as Trump taking his dogs out for a walk to snarl at the neighbors.

David G , May 23, 2019 at 13:07

"Thus Bolton was the driving force to get a carrier strike force sent to the Persian Gulf and, according to The New York Times, on May 14, it was he who 'ordered' a Pentagon plan to prepare 120,000 U.S. troops for the Gulf."

That the National Security Advisor, irrespective of whether the job is currently held by a lunatic like Bolton, may be giving such orders should in and of itself be a subject of serious inquiry by Congress and the media.

The National Security Advisor is, as the title states, merely an advisor – not confirmed by the Senate, and therefore not, in constitutional terms, an "officer of the United States" with the authority to carry out the policy of the government. Other than his assistant fetching him lunch, nobody in government should be following Bolton's orders at all while he holds this job.

But this is nothing new. I had the same concern, on an even larger scale, during the first Bush Jr. administration when Cheney was running around reshaping the government in his own warped image. Despite the Vice President's elected status, he has no executive power under the Constitution – no power at all, in fact, except when sitting as President of the Senate. There was a time when everyone knew that.

With all the perennial crowing we see about the greatness of the Constitution, and the mewling about how Trump is degrading it, it would be nice if Congress and the media could spare a moment to care about whether the people giving orders to the world's largest military and covert/intelligence apparatus are legally empowered to do so.

Ash , May 23, 2019 at 17:17

> That the National Security Advisor, irrespective of whether the job is currently held by a lunatic like Bolton,
> may be giving such orders should in and of itself be a subject of serious inquiry by Congress and the media.

It does kind of have an Alexander Haig flavor to it, doesn't it?

David G , May 23, 2019 at 22:08

When Bolton gets up and says "I'm in control here", I'm definitely finding a rock to hide under.

Zenobia van Dongen , May 23, 2019 at 13:06

The question that Joe Lauria asked of John Bolton, i.e. "If the United States and Britain had not overthrown a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 would the United States be today faced with a revolutionary government enriching uranium?" seems to imply that Iran seeks revenge against the US for the CIA's 1953 coup d'état against prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq.
However the current leaders of Iran are not entitled to consider themselves the heirs of Mossadeq, nor are they morally justified in avenging him, since the CIA coup relied largely on support from the very same clerical establishment that now rules Iran. As a matter of fact in the 1950s and 60s Shia clerics in Iran were routinely considered CIA agents. Consequently the Iranian elite's pretense of carrying on Mossadeq's anti-imperialist struggle is profoundly hypocritical. I grant that the current reactionary clique that governs Iran defends Iran's sovereignty against US imperialism as Mossadeq did. But the underlying concept of the Iranian nation is profoundly different. The present régime has no respect for the principles of democracy and popular sovereignty that pervaded Iran's anti-imperialist struggle in the 1950s and was derived from the democratic ideals of the Persian constitutionalist revolution of 1909.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Constitutional_Revolution
Indeed, Iran has no hesitation in crushing underfoot the aspirations to independence of other nations. It ruthlessly conducts ethnic cleansing in Syria, commits assassinations in South America, and in general behaves with imperialist ruthlessness that is moreover unmitigated by any concern for human rights or international law.

vinnieoh , May 23, 2019 at 14:27

As to your last paragraph please provide proof for your allegations. As to your second paragraph you assume to know the meaning behind the question Mr. Lauria asked. Could it be possible (this I believe is more likely) that what Mr. Lauria meant or realizes that absent the '53 coup would there now be an Islamic theocracy ruling Iran?

Again making the disclaimer that I'm no expert on the region or Iran particularly I have followed many leads of reading and investigation to understand the ramifications of that seminal event (the '53 coup.) What I believe I've understood is that Iran prior to and until the '53 coup was on its own unique trajectory of reclaiming its sovereignty and rejecting its status as a (UK) colonial vassal. There seemed to be a somewhat fluid acceptance of the rising democratic movement of Mosaddeq et. al., a fading nod to the former royal house, and an acceptance of Shiite religiosity of some considerable social legitimacy.

So, three centers of power and influence working its unique way to an unique Iranian future.

With the US/UK engineered coup the imperialists destroyed the legitimate democratic evolution happening there. With the re-installation of the Shah Reza Pahlavi as the puppet ruler of the US, that traditional center of power and legitimacy was likewise forever delegitimized in the eyes of most Iranians. That sentiment was cemented with the creation of SAVAK by the US, UK, and Israel to be the iron fist of the Shah and his new imperial master.

That left only one center of power or authority which retained legitimacy in the eyes of Iranians – the Shiite theocrats, and that is why when Iranians kicked the US out it was the Islamic theocracy doing the booting. You are correct that there was at least one Shiite cleric (I've forgotten his name,) jealous and fearful of the rising influence of democratic governance, who is a known and recorded collaborator with the US/UK machinations of the coup. Without the help of the US/UK his part in the affair would probably have been inconsequential.

It is not Iran that is funding and establishing Islamic madrasses in Pakistan, India, China, Indonesia, Africa and elsewhere. It is the Wahhabist Sunnis and they preach intolerance and violent jihad. Furthermore, of the total global population of adherents of Islam, 75% are Sunni affiliated, and 25% are Shiite affiliated. Those percentages hold true in the immediate region of the ME as well. The repeated claims of Iranian desires of empire are a shibboleth emanating from KSA and UAE.

Nick , May 23, 2019 at 15:36

The leaders of the Islamic Revolution used Mossadegh's image to help get people on board against the Shah, The National Front was allowed to be a party again for a short time, and a Street in Tehran was renamed post-revolution for Mohammad Mossadegh. This was a cynical ploy by the Mullahs to get people on board with their revolution and make people believe that they were indeed the true heirs of Mossadegh and committed to democracy. It was all a sham. The National Front was made illegal again at some point in the 80s, and the street named for Mossadegh was renamed around the same time. These people are the heirs of the Shah whether they like it or not.

anon4d2 , May 23, 2019 at 16:59

Joe's question points out that, had the US not overthrown Mossadegh, there would have been a secular democratic government. That is true throughout the Mideast, where in the 1950s-70s the US supported radical Islamic movements that suppressed secular movements and overthrew secular governments, pretending that the USSR was moving in. There was no evidence of USSR interest there, as it was preoccupied with such factions in its central Asian republics, and apparently only some arms from the USSR in Egypt were ever found as "evidence."

Similar US actions have continued to date, almost 30 years after the collapse of the USSR, the US always supporting fanatics against moderates like Assad and Ghaddafi, and pretending to support "democracy."

Compare the US support of Saudi Arabia, a fanatical fundamentalist monarchy engaged in terrorism throughout the region, including against their only neighbor that defends minority rights, Syria. Again falsely claiming the need to protect oil supply, which it can buy anywhere without bombing anyone, like any other oil buyer. Again falsely claiming to support democracy which it overthrows everywhere at the pleasure of its own oligarchy, always to "protect Israel" or attack socialism, which is always to get political bribes.

There is no evidence of any "ethnic cleansing" by Iran in Syria or elsewhere. Where do you get that idea? Iran is majority Shiah, defending the majority Sunni population of Syria from Sunni fundamentalists. You certainly have no evidence that Iran "commits assassinations in South America" or opposes "aspirations to independence of other nations" and made that up to deceive others. Your comments on this site have been knowingly false.

zhenry , May 24, 2019 at 03:44

The above, re the current Iranian religious govt, very informative, thankyou.
Re Joe's article I cannot take seriously that Trump is against war and the Deep State.
If Trumps rhetoric during his electioneering, supporting the middle class (deeply deprived after the US corporations abandoned them for low paid Chinese labour) was in any way honest he would not have chosen the cabinet he did (and keeps on choosing).
Trump has not chosen one cabinet member that would support that supposed sympathy for the middle class.
Reporting that assumes Trump is fighting for moderation (against his own cabinet) and to establish policies in the direction of that sympathy, is without evidence, it seems to me, regardless of what he might suggest to Fox News.

Vonu , May 23, 2019 at 17:00

"The present régime has no respect for the principles of democracy and popular sovereignty that pervaded Iran's anti-imperialist struggle in the 1950s and was derived from the democratic ideals of the Persian constitutionalist revolution of 1909."
And the American government has equal respect for the Constitution.

David , May 23, 2019 at 12:56

Bolton didn't order a carrier group to the Persian Gulf. He doesn't have the authority. The carrier group left because of the deployment was already planned. Bolton does not have the power that has been ascribed to him. He is a grandiose clown who knows how to play the press. I don't think he will have his job six months from now.

David G , May 23, 2019 at 12:16

"At the time of Bolton's appointment in April 2018, Tom Countryman predicted to The Intercept that if Iran resumed enrichment after the U.S. left the deal, it 'would be the kind of excuse that a person like Bolton would look to to create a military provocation or direct attack on Iran.' In response to ever tightening sanctions, Iran said that it would indeed restart partial nuclear enrichment."

Two problems with this part of the article:

• The link in the main text here goes to an Intercept article about Bolton, but it has no mention of Tom Countryman, or even of Iran.

• It isn't accurate to say that Iran may now, or is saying it will, "resume" or "restart" nuclear enrichment, since it never ceased, nor did it ever commit to cease, such activity. The JCPOA merely imposed strict *limits* and monitoring on nuclear enrichment and stockpiling, some of which Iran is saying it will now depart from.

I also disagree with the imputation elsewhere in the article that Donald Trump has a good understanding of real estate. His disastrous, decades-long record in that business suggests otherwise. But I suppose some people will always believe what they see on TV.

lou e , May 23, 2019 at 12:06

Creeping fascism works like fishing with a rod and reel. You hook the fish and it runs off 100 ft of line . You reel in 50 ft and the fish takes 30 feet back. Do the Math! Some times burning down the village IS the only way to get rid of the infestation. Bit hard on the USSA, but as Ben Franklin put it you have a democratic republic IF ypu can Keep It.

Herman , May 23, 2019 at 11:56

Remember at an earlier time with Bolton, someone described him as a kiss up kick down kind of guy, i.e., a real jerk. I defended Trump against Russiagate because it was a threat to the office of the president. Unless, he gets his head straight, his "political" moves in the Middle East and Southwest Asia can spin out of control. He is not negotiating a new deal with some city to build another hotel, and his rhetoric makes him sound like that is the way he thinks he should act with other countries.

One can defend him by saying maybe it will work, but then maybe not and it is not a matter of your target taking his papers and leaving the room.

Great article, Mr. Lauria. Have you posted your resume on your site? Interested in your confrontation with Bolton.

Trump wants to be reelected more that being the President but in his defense we know what he will face if he decides to enter into honest negotiations. He's going to have a heck of a time finding people to cover his back. He can count on one presidential aspirant, Tulsi Gabbard but she's on the other side.

Jeff Harrison , May 23, 2019 at 11:42

If we have to rely on Thump for anything other than social controls, we're screwed.

David G , May 23, 2019 at 11:40

These personal reminiscences of Bolton at the U.N. by Joe Lauria unfortunately only confirm the man's very public record. The fact that such a creature has been accepted for so long in the heart of U.S. foreign "policy" is yet more evidence that the country's crisis of political culture started long before Trump came on the scene.

I don't quite accept the slight comfort implied in the formulations here that this time Bolton has "gone too far", or "flown too high", since to me they imply that there is some moral or rational bedrock that he has struck beneath which the establishment is not willing to go.

I don't think that's true, as a general proposition. For example, the U.S. continues less noisily but inexorably on its long-term collision course with China, which will be even more catastrophic than war with Iran, not to mention the ultimate one with the planet's environmental limits.

For me it's enough that, for a number of contingent reasons, Bolton's (and MBS's and Netanyahu's) lunge at Iran has fallen flat with both U.S. and European policy and media elites – for now, and I hope forever.

jessika , May 23, 2019 at 11:26

I just called WH 202-456-1111 to tell President Trump that Bolton should be fired; had to wait 8 min to talk. Trump certainly has lots of problems, but he'll have plenty more if he starts a war! Pox Americana!

Litchfield , May 23, 2019 at 16:58

Great idea.
I'll do the same.

vinnieoh , May 23, 2019 at 11:04

Thank you Mr. Lauria. I'm tending to believe that not only has Bolton flown too high, but Trump's predictable method of trying to get what he wants was completely miscalculated wrt Iran. There is no better treaty or deal to be had concerning keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The failures of the JCPOA that Trump is probably griping about all have to do with matters of Iran's necessary and legitimate right to security and self-defense. No sane nation would willingly give in to this bullying. Thanks again.

vinnieoh , May 23, 2019 at 11:44

Also, wrt Trump's predictable patterns, note that little if anything has changed regarding the US and the DPRK, so if he is a crafty and effective negotiator I'm having a hard time seeing it.

David G. Horsman , May 23, 2019 at 18:22

Good example Vinnieoh. NK and SK are reaching out and (more importantly) shoving out the US. More winning.

I love Trump. He is useful. Fascism, NAFTA, generic racism you name it, he really shines a light on issues.

Here again. (Currently) SA, GAZA, Israel, Syria and of course Iran. Hell, the entire region. What a train wreck he is.

What about the dollar? The EU? Yikes.

By gosh this man could single handedly take down an empire! MAGA!

O Society , May 23, 2019 at 10:47

Well done, Joe Lauria. Of course our dilemma is Donald Trump says one thing and contradicts himself 5 minutes later. You could say he "changes his mind" but I do not think his mind is stable to begin with. He's far too nuts to put any faith in for "doing the right thing,"

Bolton and his neoconservative pox on the world serve the interests of the war machine and fossil fuel corporations. When will be rid of them? When We the People grow a set of testicles and throw them all into prison. Trump isn't going to save us, but he might let Bolton get us all killed.

Time for the people to rise.

http://opensociet.org/2019/05/19/the-interlocking-crises-of-war-climate-chaos

Piotr Berman , May 23, 2019 at 11:31

Seems that Trump is so small minded that what we observe cannot be explained mechanistically, we need quantum mechanics. Rather that a particular state of mind we have a stochastic distribution, wave patterns and spin.

Marc R Hapke , May 23, 2019 at 14:34

Great analogy

O Society , May 23, 2019 at 12:39

The expert says what's going on in Trump's mind is solipsism and I agree with him:

https://opensociet.org/2018/07/07/assault-on-reality-solipsism-whats-wrong-with-donald-trump-part-1/

Sam F , May 23, 2019 at 13:12

Yes, Joe Lauria has presented the problem very well.

A major factor is certainly the persuasiveness of the NSC and other MIC entities which surround the president, and comprise much of official DC. Try persuading anyone in the MIC that war is ever inappropriate: they are all full of extreme scorn and false accusations, and have endless "evidence" of threats behind every tree, and rationales to attack this or at least that, just to make "statements" and "warnings" to invisible foreign monsters. The MIC is a completely and permanently logic-proof subculture of bullying, which bullies every member of its own tribe to line up behind tyrants like Bolton and a million other puerile bullies devoid of humanity.

No doubt you know that this was all well understood by the founders of the US, who restricted federal military powers to repelling invasions and knew that any standing military was a threat to democracy. The Federalist Papers should be required reading in the US. All of those understandings were gradually lost after the War of 1812 and the 1820s, as the founders died off. As the US became confident that it could repel any invasion, it lost the sense of the necessity of unity and cooperation of regions, and Congress degenerated into a battle of intransigent factions leading to the completely unnecessary Civil War. With the ebullient emergence of the middle class, no effort was made to correct the defects of the Constitution in failing to protect the institutions of democracy from the rising power of economic concentrations. With WWI and WWII, the power of oligarchy over mass media was consolidated, and by WWII the oligarchy and MIC effectively controlled elections, mass media, and the judiciary, the tools of democracy. Democracy has been a facade ever since.

The US has zero security problems that the MIC has not created, and could at any time re-purpose 80% of the MIC to developing infrastructure in the poorest nations with positive effects upon its security. Had it done so since WWII, we would have rescued the poorest half of humanity from poverty, ignorance, malnutrition, and disease, and would have had a true American Century. Instead we have killed over 20 million innocents and mortgaged the lives of our children to serve the infantile psychopaths of the MIC.

The solution is not only to eliminate the 2000-member NSC, cut the military by at least 80 percent, prohibit acts of war or surveillance by the executive branch, tax the rich so that no one has income above upper middle class, and demand amendments to the Constitution restricting funding of the mass media and elections to limited and registered individual donations. We also desperately need a fourth branch of federal government, which I am calling the College of Policy Debate, to conduct moderated textual debates of policy issues in all regions, protecting and representing every viewpoint, in which all views are challenged and must respond, and all parties must come to common terms. The CPD should produce commented debate summaries available to the public with mini-quizzes and discussion groups. Without that rational analysis and access to the core debates, we do not have a democracy at all, we are all no more than the fools and pawns of these oligarchy scammers, who must be actively excluded from all government capacities.

Sorry for the lecture.

Linda Wood , May 24, 2019 at 01:59

Please don't apologize, Sam F. Your brilliant and humane words give me hope at a time in which I am in shock at the blatancy of fascism in our government.

Doggrotter , May 23, 2019 at 10:33

Where is a drone strike when you need one?

OlyaPola , May 23, 2019 at 10:23

" seemed to always think he was the smartest person in the room."

Useful fools are often most useful when they are believers that they are not fools.

Once upon a time there was a discussion of which of the opponents' should be proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize – the list being relatively long.

After extensive analysis and discussion the short-list consisted of two opponents in alphabetical order Mr. John Bolton and Mr. Karl Rove.

However in light of the notion "Do you think your opponents are as stupid as you are? " the proposal question was left in abeyance, not only as a function of decorum but also through understanding that "Useful fools are often most useful when they are believers that they are not fools." and that even small dogs can seem tall when you are lying on your stomach.

OlyaPola , May 24, 2019 at 17:33

Since omniscience can't exist perhaps Mr. Bolton was/is subject to misrepresentation and misunderstanding?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE&list=RDXIOSOlqMaj8&index=17

bobzz , May 23, 2019 at 10:12

"Pompeo told a radio interviewer after the briefing that the U.S. had still not determined who attacked two Saudi, a Norwegian and an Emirati oil tanker in the Gulf last week, which bore the hallmarks of a provocation. Pompeo said "it seems like it's quite possible that Iran was behind" the attacks."

What possible advantage could accrue to Iran from putting a few dents in the ships? Smells of another false flag.

Piotr Berman , May 23, 2019 at 11:46

I would not be so sure. A delicate signal that Iran has more capabilities concerning stopping in-out-Gulf traffic than naive people like Bolton realize has a sobering potential. By the way of contrast, what kind of black flag it is if it is instantly put in doubt, "we do not know" etc. When there were "chemical incidents" in Syria, no one in Washington claimed the need for more facts, uncertainty etc.

Instead, UAE initially denied that it happened at all, subsequently, together with KSA, they did not have any "certain knowledge". Somehow no government appears to promote the incident. Even USA.

BTW, the allegation that Iran is placing missiles on fishing boats staggers the mind. First of all, "missile boats" of which Iran has plenty are small ships, BUT NOT VERY small, ca. 500-800 tons, which are fast, 40 kt, but not as fast as their predecessors, torpedo boats (200-300 tons, 50-60 kt). They are still faster than any of the larger naval vessels, can trail them, and attack from small distance in the case of start of hostilities. That Iran places missiles on such boats can be learned from videos proudly provided by PressTV.ir.

Using "fishing boats" for that purpose is dubious, and the largest question mark would be: WHY? The reason that missile boats are larger and heavier than torpedo boats is that you need more stability to launch missiles than torpedoes. Then you need a radar etc. Placing missiles on fishing boats would be a waste of missiles. Hardly an escalation.

OlyaPola , May 23, 2019 at 12:47

"Hardly an escalation."

Perhaps you are being deflected by framing?

One of the escalations is the escalation of belief in, requirement of, and resort to, the dumbed-downess of the "target audience".

One of the salient questions being deflected is why, and as ever investigation requires some knowledge of Mr. Heisenberg and his principles.

mark , May 23, 2019 at 22:34

Perhaps the Iranians are putting missiles on fishing boats to stun the fish and catch them that way. Fishing boats aren't exactly very fast.

Thomas , May 23, 2019 at 12:21

Anyone who actually believes the oil tanker incidents were carried by Iran should seek an immediate consultation with their doctor. These blatant false flags clearly are the work of fools and Iranians are not fools.

Brian , May 23, 2019 at 17:22

Exactly. According navel personnel, Iran has been using fishing boats to transfer rockets from land to it's vessels for years, supposedly because the gulf is too shallow. I don't have hydrographic maps of the area, anyone know if this is true?

Piotr Berman , May 23, 2019 at 23:33

Clearly, Persian Gulf has routes for the largest ships on Earth, but the supply bases for missiles may be away from ports, and it would make sense to place them so they are not easily accessible to a big ship navy, and in general, to disperse them.

Tim , May 26, 2019 at 06:43

"Thomas"

> These blatant false flags clearly are the work of fools

Since neither you nor I know who did it, and there are a whole slew of plausible suspects, we don't know why they did it, either. So it is silly to claim they are fools.

Since the Saudis and UAE are in the midst of waging war on Yemen, the most obvious suspects are their enemies there, al-Ansara.

(And by the way, contrary to what another commentator claimed, it was not a "few dents", but a gaping hole in the hull just below the waterline. And since the local authorities spoke of an impact by an unidentified object, these were presumably torpedo strikes.)

OlyaPola , May 26, 2019 at 07:58

"What possible advantage could accrue to Iran from putting a few dents in the ships?"

Quite a few including but not limited to further data on the opponents' perception of what constitutes plausible belief for the opponents' target audience, and the opponents' increasing resort to, amplitude, scope and velocity of "misrepresentations".

As is the case with the benefits of dumbing down not accruing solely to those actively engaged in dumbing down, the benefits of creation and implementation of "false flags" do not accrue solely to those engaged in "false flags", and are enhanced when the creators and implementers of "false flags" are immersed in amalga of projection and notions of sole/prime agency, facilitating potential benefits to many others not restricted to Iran.

[May 20, 2019] Venezuela Exposes the Myth of John Bolton's "Genius" by Martin Sieff

May 20, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

The fiasco of the latest obviously unsuccessful US attempt to topple twice democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro made a laughing stock of the US government throughout the world and is now exposing new splits in the Trump administration in Washington. It is also exposing a dangerous but also ridiculous myth that Washington has credulously swallowed for generations – the idea that National Security Adviser John Bolton is actually competent.

No one among the carefully trained castrated geldings of the US mainstream news media and their pseudo-liberal and libertarian outliers has ever dared to ask how able Bolton actually is. He is held in awe and even fear for his supposed brilliant intellect and for his undoubted energy and relentless determination to push the policies he supports with tunnel vision and fanatical relentlessness as hard as he can.

Yet given such undeniable "qualities" what is truly astonishing is how useless Bolton has been in pursuing his own primary foreign policy goals for more than 40 years. He failed to prevent the first president to take him seriously, Ronald Reagan to conduct sweeping nuclear arms reductions with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and to push ahead with Gorbachev to dismantle the Cold War. These policies were anathema to Bolton who prophesied – falsely – that war and catastrophe would flow from them. But Reagan ignored him and pushed them through anyway.

Now Bolton has destroyed Reagan's legacy of peace by convincing current President Donald Trump to scrap one of Reagan's greatest achievement, the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

He succeeded in helping provoke the US invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq under President George W. Bush in 2003 but failed to persuade even Bush, Junior and his top foreign policy adviser, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pull out of any arms control treaties whatsoever.

Then, the Iraq misadventure was so appallingly bungled that Bolton failed to get any traction whatsoever for his priority project of toppling the government of Iran, even if it took a full scale war to do it.

In Washington, even Bolton's greatest critics among libertarians and paleo-conservatives have spoken for decades with awe of his supposed brilliant intellect, command of all details, endless energy and ability to read and keep track of everything. But now, the latest failed coup in Venezuela instead reveals an ignorant, simplistic rash adventurer and gambler who charges head on into dangerous situations and who relies on bullying and bluster alone to get his way.

Bolton showed none of the ruthless, devious subtlety of a Dwight D. Eisenhower in masterminding a coup and fragrant breach of international law without appearing to have anything to do with it (a skill which Ronald Reagan, though far less masterful than the revered Eisenhower also attempted in Iran-Contra).

Bolton's fingerprints were all over the hard-charging policy of propping up ridiculous Juan Guiado as America's cardboard cutout puppet to run Venezuela, even though he had no credibility whatsoever.

Bolton is in fact is an awesomely bad judge of choosing his own allies in other countries. His combination of recklessness and vanity means he is always a sucker for whatever smooth-talking sociopath can worm his way into his presence.

This explains how the late, unlamented Ahmed Chalabi was able to convince Bolton and his neocon friends that he (Chalabi)) would be welcomed by tens of millions of Iraqis as soon the US armed forces invaded ("liberated" was the politically approved term) his country and how Zalmay Khalizad, a catastrophic clown, was acclaimed as an infallible guru on Afghanistan.

Bolton is widely known to have no small talk, private interests, charm or social skills whatsoever. Far from confirming his "genius", as his many worshipful courtiers claim, this only confirms his haplessness.

If Bolton played poker he would be skinned alive. He cannot read people and being an obsessive courtier and flatterer himself, he always falls flat on his face for the flattery of others. The arch-manipulator is in reality the easiest of figures to manipulate.

Once the strange miasma of worshipful myth is stripped from Bolton, all the confusions and bungles of the April 30 Coup That Never Was in Venezuela become clear.

[May 18, 2019] Is John Bolton the most dangerous man in the world? by Ben Armbruster

May 18, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

The US is closer to war with Iran than it has been since the Bush years, or perhaps ever. And Bolton is largely to blame

But Bolton is on a fast track, seemingly aware that Trump's time in office may be limited.' Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters Donald Trump's national security adviser John Bolton wants the United States to go to war with Iran .

We know this because he has been saying it for nearly two decades .

And everything that the Trump administration has done over its Iran policy, particularly since Bolton became Trump's top foreign policy adviser in April of 2018, must be viewed through this lens, including the alarming US military posturing in the Middle East of the past two weeks.

Just after one month on the job, Bolton gave Trump the final push he needed to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, which at the time was (and still is, for now) successfully boxing in Iran's nuclear program and blocking all pathways for Iran to build a bomb. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – as the Iran deal is formally known – was the biggest obstacle to Bolton's drive for a regime change war, because it eliminated a helpful pretext that served so useful to sell the war in Iraq 17 years ago.

Since walking away from the deal, the Trump administration has claimed that with a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran, it can achieve a "better deal" that magically turns Iran into a Jeffersonian democracy bowing to every and any American wish. But this has always been a fantastically bad-faith argument meant to obscure the actual goal (regime change) and provide cover for the incremental steps – the crushing sanctions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonizing military maneuvers – that have now put the United States closer to war with Iran than it has been since at least the latter half of the Bush administration, or perhaps ever.

And Bolton has no qualms about manipulating or outright ignoring intelligence to advance his agenda, which is exactly what's happening right now.

In his White House statement 10 days ago announcing (an already pre-planned) carrier and bomber deployment to the Middle East, Bolton cited "a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran to justify the bolstered US military presence. But multiple sources who have seen the same intelligence have since said that Bolton and the Trump administration blew it "out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was". Even a British general operating in the region pushed back this week, saying he has seen no evidence of an increased Iranian threat.

What's even more worrying is that Bolton knows what he's doing. He's "a seasoned bureaucratic infighter who has the skills to press forcefully for his views" – and he has a long history of using those skills to undermine American diplomacy and work toward killing arms control agreements.

As a senior official in the George W Bush administration, he played key role in the collapse of the Agreed Framework, the Clinton-era deal that froze North Korea's plutonium nuclear program (the North Koreans tested their first bomb four years later).

He said he "felt like a kid on Christmas day" after he orchestrated the US withdrawal from the international criminal court in 2002. And now as a senior official in the Trump administration, he pushed for the US to withdrawal from a crucial nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

While it's unclear how much of a role he played in scuttling Trump's negotiations with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi last year, he publicly called for the so-called "Libya model" with the North Koreans (in other words, regime change by force). Just months before joining the administration, he tried to make the legal case for a preventive war against Pyongyang. And if you think he cares about the aftermath of war with North Korea, he doesn't. Bolton was reportedly "unmoved" by a presentation during his time in the Bush administration of the catastrophic consequences of such a war. "I don't do war. I do policy," he said then.

So far, Bolton has been successful in moving the United States toward his desired outcome with Iran – if getting the Pentagon to draw up plans to send 120,000 US troops to the region to confront Iran is any indication. There are hopeful signs that we can avoid war, as US officials and our European allies, seemingly alarmed by what Bolton is up to, are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration skewing intelligence on Iran.

But Bolton is on a fast track, seemingly aware that Trump's time in office may be limited. The question, ultimately, is whether the president can stick to his instincts of avoiding more military conflict, or acquiesce to a man hellbent on boxing him into a corner with no way out other than war with Iran.

Ben Armbruster is the communications director for Win Without War and previously served as National Security Editor at ThinkProgress

[May 13, 2019] Something about Bolton past and sexual preferences

May 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

FB , says: Website May 11, 2019 at 4:46 pm GMT

@J. Gutierrez Thanks for putting together this commentary J

Bolton a swinger ?

LOL that's a mental picture that's deeply disturbing yet funny at the same time

J. Gutierrez , says: May 11, 2019 at 10:42 pm GMT
@FB Yeah brother that POS was called out during his confirmation hearings during baby bush's presidency. Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions.

Someone said they saw him proposition a teenage girl outside one of the swinger clubs he frequented.

Glad you enjoyed the piece take care brother

J. Gutierrez , says: May 12, 2019 at 1:05 am GMT
@SeekerofthePresence Thank you your comment is very much appreciated. But I'm definitely not a spokesman for moral truth, just the truth. I just watch in amazement from Mexico at what the US government has become. A den of the most vile people ever assembled in the world far worse than the people that demanded the crucification of Jesus Christ. We just went through a serious political conversion, but the people had to hit the streets for it to succeed. I just don't think the American people feel they are in a do or die situation, and they couldn't more wrong.

[May 13, 2019] John Bolton is the problem

May 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

Sunburst says: May 10, 2019 at 3:22 am GMT

U.S. Foreign Policy used to have only two instruments in dealing with rest of the world, namely carrots and sticks. Since the fall of Soviet Union and certainly after 9/11, only sticks remain. Now the World including the so-called allies are getting tired of the threats and start ignoring the Empire, hence the diminishing effectiveness, paving the way for polymorphic World. This transition is fraught with dangers as pointed out by the Author.

SeekerofthePresence , says: May 10, 2019 at 11:18 pm GMT

Lovely post by Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor on the end of empire:
"John Bolton is the problem"
"Trump's national security adviser is getting dangerous particularly to the president's ideals"
Douglas Macgregor
https://spectator.us/john-bolton-problem/

Could also be titled, "How to Exhaust an Empire."
Sun Tzu warned of the same demise in the "Art of War."
Didn't they used to teach that book at West Point?

FB , says: Website May 11, 2019 at 12:44 am GMT
@El Dato And also the 90 minute Trump-Putin phone call, where Venezuela was the main subject

From the way I understand Trump's comments afterward, it seems the military option is off the table the two presidents agreed that humanitarian aid is the priority

This is great news I have to give Trump credit here Justin Raimondo presciently opined a week ago that Trump may have been giving the 'walrus' just enough rope on Venezuela to hang himself

I have to wonder what Vlad whispered in carrot top's ear

'Come on man you can do it BE A BOSS '

LOL

J. Gutierrez , says: May 11, 2019 at 10:23 am GMT
When we take a close look at the American Government and it's elected officials, we can only come to one conclusion. The US is a thriving criminal enterprise that uses force to get what they want. The military's role is that of enforcers and the US President is no different than a Mafia Don. In no other time in US history has Government and Organized Criminal Gangs been so indistinguishable. George H.W. Bush with his New World Order announcements, his CIA drug dealing operations and military invasion of Panama to steal the drug cartel's money deposited in that county's banks, came close. Bill Clinton working with George H.W. Bush protecting drug shipments smuggled into Mena, AK, the cover up of murdered witnesses and numerous sexual assault allegations also came pretty close.

But when George W. Bush, Dick Chaney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld came into power, that was a Mafia if there was ever one. That group of criminals stole more money and murdered more people than any criminal organization in history. They even conned the American people into believing some rag-heads in Afghanistan hiding in caves did it. It was the first time since Pancho Villa that anyone attacked the US on its own soil. Not only did they steal all the gold stored in bank vaults located in the Twin Towers, but they put money on the stock market. In true gangster fashion the next move was to retaliate against the Muslim Mafia who was fingered by Mayer Lanski (Benjamin Nuttenyahoo) and their own paid snitches (MSM). It was time to hit mattresses and send their enforcers to get payback so the Purple Gang (Israel) can take over their territory.

There is a big difference between the US Government and the Mafia when it comes to war, the Mafia adheres to a strict code of ethics, they do not target their enemies families.

In 2016 the American people elected a true gangster from New York city. A known con man, a swindler, a tax evader and known associate of the criminal underground. A man with numerous court cases and 23 accusations of sexual assault. A man who was screwing a porn star while his wife was given birth. A man who's mentor was Roy Cohen a mob attorney and practicing homosexual who died of AIDS. A man that surrounded himself with the most perverted group of people in New York such as: Roger Stone a well known swinger and gay pride participant. Paul Manafort a convicted criminal and swinger who attended the same clubs as Stone along with their wives. They liked to watch their wives get screwed by other men. Lets not forget John Bolton who was exposed by Larry Flint for also being a swinger. His ex-wife accused him of forcing her to perform sex acts with multiple men at the same clubs the other 2 cuckolds attended. A Russian agent once commented that the best place to find government people to blackmail was the New York swingers scene.

Jeffery Epstein tops the list of perverted friends of Donald Trump. Epstein is the worst kind of perverted human being. The predator pedophile that uses his money to lure young girls into his sick world. Epstein holds the key to uncovering the nation wide pedophile ring that include some of the most famous people in the US. This is Trump's Mafia, a Mafia not like the Gambinos or Luchesis. A Mafia full of Perverts, Criminals, Pedophiles and Cuckolds. These are just a few of the people in Trump's circle of friends. If these are your leaders, what does that say about the American people!

My dad used to tell me tell me who you hang around with, and I'll tell you who you are! Every single person in DC government is compromised! And this incompetent Mafia of Perverts want you to believe that Madurro is a corrupt leader and Iran is a threat to the US!

[May 13, 2019] It's time for Trump to stop John Bolton and Mike Pompeo from sabotaging his foreign policy Mulshine

Bolton power over Trump is connected to Adelson power over Trump. To think about Bolton as pure advisor is to seriously underestimate his role and influence.
Notable quotes:
"... But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety. ..."
"... A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U. ..."
"... "Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," ..."
"... Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble. ..."
"... The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo, especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas. ..."
"... Tulsi for Sec of State 2020... ..."
"... Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner for failing to "win". ..."
"... You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the last 50 years. ..."
"... I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people and far too many details. ..."
"... Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they could matter. ..."
"... Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central to many of our poor strategic decision making. ..."
"... I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he really does not want one. ..."
"... "Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats." ..."
"... Exceptions are: Korea? (Eisenhower); Grenada? (Reagan); Iraq? (Bush Sr.) ..."
"... So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks ..."
"... If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee? ..."
May 12, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
It's time for Trump to stop John Bolton and Mike Pompeo from sabotaging his foreign policy | Mulshine

"I put that question to another military vet, former Vietnam Green Beret Pat Lang.

"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed," said Lang of Trump.

But Lang, who later spent more than a decade in the Mideast, noted that Bolton has no direct control over the military.

"Bolton has a problem," he said. "If he can just get the generals to obey him, he can start all the wars he wants. But they don't obey him."

They obey the commander-in-chief. And Trump has a history of hiring war-crazed advisors who end up losing their jobs when they get a bit too bellicose. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley comes to mind."

" In Lang's view, anyone who sees Trump as some sort of ideologue is missing the point.

"He's an entrepreneurial businessman who hires consultants for their advice and then gets rid of them when he doesn't want that advice," he said.

So far that advice hasn't been very helpful, at least in the case of Bolton. His big mouth seems to have deep-sixed Trump's chance of a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And that failed coup in Venezuela has brought up comparisons to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion during the Kennedy administration." Mulshine

--------------

Well, pilgrims, I worked exclusively on the subject of the Islamic culture continent for the USG from 1972 to 1994 and then in business from 1994 to 2006. I suppose I am still working on the subject. pl

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/05/its-time-for-trump-to-stop-john-bolton-and-mike-pompeo-from-sabotaging-his-foreign-policy-mulshine.html


JJackson , 12 May 2019 at 04:11 PM

What is happening with Trump's Syrian troop withdrawal? Someone seems to have spiked that order fairly effectively.
tony , 12 May 2019 at 05:12 PM
I don't get it I suppose. I'd always thought that maybe you wanted highly opinionated Type A personalities in the role of privy council, etc. You know, people who could forcefully advocate positions in closed session meetings and weren't afraid of taking contrary positions. But I always figured you needed to keep the blowhards under cover so they wouldn't stick their feet in their mouths and that the public position jobs should go to the smoothies..You, know, diplomats who were capable of some measure of subtlety.

But these days it's the loudmouths who get these jobs, to our detriment. When will senior govt. leaders understand that just because a person is a success in running for Congress doesn't mean he/she should be sent forth to mingle with the many different personalities and cultures running the rest of the world?

A clod like Bolton should be put aside and assigned the job of preparing position papers and a lout Like Pompeo should be a football coach at RoosterPoot U.

turcopolier -> tony... , 12 May 2019 at 06:55 PM
No. I would like to see highly opinionated Type B personalities like me hold those jobs. Type B does not mean you are passive. It means you are not obsessively competitive.
ex-PFC Chuck said in reply to tony... , 12 May 2019 at 08:06 PM
What do you expect when the boss himself is a loud-mouthed blowhard?
rho , 12 May 2019 at 06:34 PM
"Once he's committed to a war in the Mideast, he's just screwed,"

Not only Trump, at the same time the swamp creatures risk losing control over the Democrat primaries, too. With a new major war in the Mideast, Tulsi Gabbard's core message of non-interventionism will resonate a lot more, and that will lower the chances of the corporate DNC picks. A dangerous gamble.

E Publius , 12 May 2019 at 06:55 PM
Interesting post, thank you sir. Prior to this recent post I had never heard of Paul Mulshine. In fact I went through some of his earlier posts on Trump's foreign policy and I found a fair amount of common sense in them. He strikes me as a paleocon, like Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, Michael Scheuer, Doug Bandow, Tucker Carlson and others in that mold.

The other day I was thinking to myself that if Trump decides to dismiss Bolton or Pompeo, especially given how terrible Venezuela, NKorea, and Iran policies have turned out (clearly at odds with his non-interventionist campaign platform), who would he appoint as State Sec and NS adviser? and since Bolton was personally pushed to Trump by Adelson in exchange for campaign donation, would there be a backlash from the Jewish Republican donors and the loss of support? I think in both cases Trump is facing with big dilemmas.

My best hope is that Trump teams up with libertarians and maybe even paleocons to run his foreign policy. So far Trump has not succeeded in draining the Swamp. Bolton, Pompeo and their respective staff "are" indeed the Swamp creatures and they run their own policies that run against Trump's America First policy. Any thoughts?

Rick Merlotti said in reply to E Publius... , 13 May 2019 at 10:17 AM
Tulsi for Sec of State 2020...
jdledell , 13 May 2019 at 09:23 AM
Keeping Bolton and Pompeo on board is consistent with Trump's negotiating style. He is full of bluster and demands to put the other side in a defensive position. I guess it was a successful strategy for him so he continues it. Many years ago I was across the table from Trump negotiating the sale of the land under the Empire State Building which at the time was owned by Prudential even though Trump already had locked up the actual building. I just sat there, impassively, while Trump went on with his fire and fury. When I did not budge, he turned to his Japanese financial partner and said "take care of this" and walked out of the room. Then we were able to talk and negotiate in a logical manner and consumate a deal that was double Trump's negotiating bid. I learned later he was furious with his Japanese partner for failing to "win".

You can still these same traits in the way that Trump thinks about other countries - they can be cajoled or pushed into doing what Trump wants. If the other countries just wait Trump out they can usually get a much better deal. Bolton and Pompeo, as Blusterers, are useful in pursuing the same negotiation style, for better or worse, Trump has used for probably for the last 50 years.

Jack said in reply to jdledell... , 13 May 2019 at 02:14 PM
I have seen this style of negotiations work on occasion. The most important lesson I've learned is the willingness to walk. I'm not sure that Trump's personal style matters that much in complex negotiations among states. There's too many people and far too many details. I see he and his trade team not buckling to the Chinese at least not yet despite the intense pressure from Wall St and the big corporations.

Having the neocons front & center on his foreign policy team I believe has negative consequences for him politically. IMO, he won support from the anti-interventionists due to his strong campaign stance. While they may be a small segment in America in a tight race they could matter.

Additionally as Col. Lang notes the neocons could start a shooting match due to their hubris and that can always escalate and go awry. We can only hope that he's smart enough to recognize that. I remain convinced that our fawning allegiance to Bibi is central to many of our poor strategic decision making.

rho said in reply to jdledell... , 13 May 2019 at 04:33 PM
jdledell

Just out of curiosity: Did the deal go through in the end, despite Trump's ire? Or was Trump so furious with the negotiating result of his Japanese partner that he tore up the draft once it was presented to him?

turcopolier , 13 May 2019 at 11:17 AM
jdledell

I agree that this is Trump's style but what he does not seem to understand is that in using jugheads like these guys on the international scene he may precipitate a war when he really does not want one.

Outrage Beyond , 13 May 2019 at 11:51 AM
Mulshine's article has some good points, but he does include some hilariously ignorant bits which undermine his credibility.

"Jose Gomez Rivera is a Jersey guy who served in the State Department in Venezuela at the time of the coup that brought the current socialist regime to power."

Wrong. Maduro was elected and international observers seem to agree the election was fair.

"Perhaps the biggest lie the mainstream media have tried to get over on the American public is the idea that it is conservatives, that start wars. That's total nonsense of course. Almost all of America's wars in the 20th century were stared by liberal Democrats."

Exceptions are: Korea? (Eisenhower); Grenada? (Reagan); Iraq? (Bush Sr.)

O'Shawnessey , 13 May 2019 at 01:21 PM
So what exactly is Pussy John, then, just a Yosemite Sam-type bureaucrat with no actual portfolio, so to speak? I defer to your vastly greater knowledge of these matters, but at times it sure seems like they are pursuing a rear-guard action as the US Empire shrinks and shudders in its death throes underneath them, and at others it seems like they really have no idea what to do, other than engage in juvenile antics, snort some glue from a paper bag and set fires in the dumpsters behind the Taco Bell before going out into a darkened field somewhere to violate farm animals.

If were Lavrov, what would I think to myself were I to find myself on the other side of a phone call from PJ or the Malignant Manatee?

turcopolier , 13 May 2019 at 01:21 PM
O'Shaunessy - He is an adviser who has no power except over his own little staff. The president has the power, not Bolton.

[May 12, 2019] Is rabid warmonger, neocon chickenhawk Bolton a swinger? That is a mental picture that s deeply disturbing yet funny at the same time

Highly recommended!
In this case he looks like Bill Clinton impersonalization ;-) That's probably how Adelson controls Bolton ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions. ..."
May 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

FB , says: Website May 11, 2019 at 4:46 pm GMT

@J. Gutierrez Thanks for putting together this commentary J

Bolton a swinger ? LOL that's a mental picture that's deeply disturbing yet funny at the same time

J. Gutierrez , says: May 11, 2019 at 10:42 pm GMT

@FB Yeah brother, that POS was called out during his confirmation hearings during baby Bush's presidency. Larry Flint had offered a Million dollars to anyone who had proof of republican sexual exploits. He was quickly fingered by someone who attended those clubs. He was forced to accept a temporary position and quietly resigned after a few months so as to avoid facing questions.

Someone said they saw him proposition a teenage girl outside one of the swinger clubs he frequented.

Glad you enjoyed the piece take care brother.

[May 02, 2019] Russian and Eurasian Politics by Gordon M. Hahn

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... If Zelenskii sees himself as the spark or leader of a wave of color revolutions in the former USSR, he will find the going with Russia tough, regardless of who the Russian president is ..."
"... Another black swan is that Ukraine now has a Jewish president. This is not evidence of the absence of anti-Semitism, which is robust among Ukraine's substantial number of ultranationalists and neofascists. Anti-semitism has been overshadowed by such radicals' laser-like focus of their xenophobia on ethnic Russians. ..."
"... The fact of a Jewish president -- in addition to the present PM being Jewish -- poses the risk of an uptick in anti-Semitism and in the appeal of the ultranationalist/neofascist message if Zelenskii fails to improve the economy, cut corruption, and/or appears to be 'caving in' to Russian or Western demands to the detriment of Ukraine's interests. ..."
"... The Jewish president will be a prime scapegoat in the case of such failure. These two dynamics – the inexperienced Zelenskii's possible failure and the potential political repercussions of his Jewish roots -- could tip the scales in favor of the ultranationalist wing of the Maidan-in-opposition and shape its calculus as to whether or not to undertake a coup, repeating what worked once in February 2014. ..."
May 02, 2019 | gordonhahn.com

... Zelenskii himself is likely to fight corruption, to be sure, but he is unlikely to challenge the ultranationalists, neofascists, and their militarized combat organizations. ... Zelenskii is unlikely to offer concessions that the DNR, LNR or Moscow will find acceptable for resolving the Donbass civil war.

Zelenskii's Victory and the Presidential Elections

Zelenskii's victory signified some decline in the acceptability overall in Ukraine of the Galician/Western line backed by Poroshenko countrywide' fueled largely by a full rejection in the east and south. Zelenskii made it a central point of his campaign to bring the ostracized south and east back in to Ukraine and end the discrimination against the Russian language fostered by Poroshenko legislation. Thus, Zelenskii won more than 80 percent of the vote in each of the 11 more Russian-speaking regions in eastern and southern Ukraine and nearly 90 percent in several of them. Poroshenko took only nationalistic Lviv. In the rest of western Ukraine won, in many of these regions only by a slim majority, but he won nevertheless. He even took some 60 percent in Poroshenko's native Volhyn region ( https://elections.dekoder.org/ukraine/en?fbclid=IwAR36OdD3lrXL3EKKy9Zfdhk8k36Azgr6nNWLeYH3sYiYX9Ci51O86GVDhow ). To the extent Zelenskii received great support in the east, his election represents a desire for an end of the slow-burning civil war in Donbass, of the east-west polarization inside the country, and of alienation of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians as well as for a normalization of Kiev's relations with Russia. Poroshenko's narrow but nevertheless defeat in almost all the western regions reflects the Galicians disenchantment with corruption far more than any significant rejection of Galician Ukrainian nationalism, ultrnationalism and neofascism in the west.

... ... ...

The Nature of Maidan Ukraine's Hybrid Regime

However, the problem in Ukraine has often been less with its elections being unfree or unfair ( https://gordonhahn.com/2015/06/21/one-day-in-the-life-of-ukrainian-democracy/ ). Most often the problem has been with the rule of law, massive corruption, the theft of the state by various powerful oligarchs, the lack of a cohesive national identity, and a deeply polarized society. It is these aspects of Ukraine's authoritarian side, its 'stateness problem' and political polarization and instability which are rarely understood in the West [see Gordon M. Hahn, Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the 'New Cold War' (Jefferson: McFarland, 2018)].

The absence of the rule of law in Maidan Ukraine was in full display on the eve of the election as the siloviki chose sides in the vote. The SBU supported Poroshenko by trumping up the noted fake news of hacked emails never shown but allegedly showing that Zelenskii was Putin's Manchurian candidate ala 'Trump's collusion with the Kremln.' Doing the bidding of Yiliya Tymoshenko's campaign, the MVD, headed by ultranationalist Arsenii Avakov, uncovered Poroshenko vote buying schemes.

Similarly, the present and former Ukrainian general prosecutors' charges of interference in corruption investigations by US Vice President Joseph Biden and the present US ambassador to Ukraine underscored the point.

Also, the release of former Maidan war hero Nadia Savchenko also demonstrated this quite clearly. Either her arrest a little over a year ago for allegedly planning a massive terrorist attack that would have left many Maidan Rada deputies and civilians dead was based on wholly trumped up charges or some among the authorities are protecting an ultranationalist terrorist. Ironically, three days after the presidential vote, a Kievan was arrested on the basis of charges reminiscent of Russian law as many Maidan regime laws remind one of. Thus, the arrestee was charged with spreading on the Internet calls for 'separatism' and the overthrow of the Maidan regime that was established by an illegal and violent seizure of power ( https://vesti-ukr.com/kiev/334060-zhitelju-kievskoj-oblasti-hrozit-10-let-tjurmy-za-posty-v-sotssetjakh ).

A shocking level of official corruption has been characteristic of the Maidan regime's oligarchical side and was demonstrated even more forcefully during the presidential campaign. Poroshenko's failure to divest himself or 'trustify' his businesses established a fundamentally corrupt oligarch-presidency...

... ... ...

Historically speaking, some in the west -- Stepan Bandera's OUN and UPA fascists -- were allied with the Nazis in World War II; while the grandparents of many in the east fought for the Red Army against Hitler's forces and after the war repressed the OUN and UPA Banderites. This translates into a deep societal polarization with the west displaying considerable support for and tolerance of Galician-Ukrainian ultra-nationalism and neofascism in domestic politics a pro-Western foreign policy stance and the east supporting a more leftist, quasi-Soviet domestic order and pro-Russian foreign orientation. This divided has been repeatedly reflected in presidential and parliamentary elections throughout the history of post-Soviet Ukraine; hence the political upheavals often surrounding national elections, in particular in the 2004 'Orange revolution,' precursor to the 2013-14 Maidan revolt. This polarization has helped drive some of the lack of rule of law, corruption, and stealing of the state as oligarchs scramble to protect and expand their holdings on the background of deep political polarization between western Ukraine's Galicia and southeastern Ukraine and regime shifts from western Ukrainian-dominated governments to southeastern Ukrainian-dominated governments. All this explains and/or is explained by the Maidan regime's birth event – its original sin -- the 20 February 2014 snipers' terrorist false flag massacre.

Contrary to the West's false narrative that reads deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych ordered snipers to kill Maidan demonstrators, the Maidan's ultranationalist-neofascist wing, with support from former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, deployed snipers on the Maidan to fire on both police and demonstrators in the false flag terrorist operation of the century (Ivan Katchanovski, http://www.academia.edu/38171919/Witness_Testimonies_for_the_Maidan_Massacre_Trial_and_Investigation_about_Snipers_in_Maidan-Controlled_Buildings_Video_Appendix_E?auto=bookmark&campaign=weekly_digest ; Ivan Katchanovski, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2658245 ; and my own article at https://gordonhahn.com/2016/03/09/the-real-snipers-massacre-ukraine-february-2014-updatedrevised-working-paper/ ).

As one Ukrainian presidential candidate, former Orange regime Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, noted: "I propose that one of the reasons that (the snipers massacre) has not been investigated to the end is that someone has feathers on their snout among those who are now in power" ( https://gordonua.com/news/politics/gricenko-odna-iz-prichin-pochemu-rasstrel-nebesnoy-sotni-ne-rassledovan-do-konca-u-kogo-to-rylo-v-puhu-iz-teh-kto-seychas-pri-vlasti-705668.html?fbclid=iwar1c9xxnp6k48rqnxrz2c6ki18lrnf7k2fhilbk9t2o0cfkx70ceff4egdw )."

Weeks later, Zelenskii commented: "People whom came to power on blood are profiting on blood" (www.pravda.com.ua/news/2019/02/26/7207718/). It appears he understands the essence of the Maidan regime's original sin. This poses a grave threat to some of the most powerful men in the regime including the likely organizer of the snipers' plot, Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy, and perhaps Poroshenko himself, who appears to have played a role in helping smuggle the snipers out of Maidan Square, though he appears to have opposed the shooting as a video from the Maidan headquarters demonstrates.

This issue has the potential to bring the whole Western-backed house of cards tumbling down.

Maidan v. the People

The magnitude and centrality of the terrorist snipers' attack coverup for both the Maidan regime and the West's 'new cold war' narrative portend a bitter and brutal battle to prevent an objective investigation. Thus, the election of the politically unknown Zelenskii and the prospects of his inauguration and rule as president have sparked a cold civil war in Kiev. The Maidan regime's forces about to be relegated to the opposition, particularly after the victory of Zelenskii's new political party (Servant of the People in September's Rada elections, are poised and are already moving to do almost everything and perhaps everything to prevent his assuming the powers in Ukraine's semi-presidential system. Poroshenko and his allies and temporary allies in the Rada have undertaken several first steps against Zelenskii and his presidency. The most important may be the a draft law that would institute changes in the balance of power in the political system in favor of the prime minister and Rada against the president's office. Many of the proposed changes would empower the prime minister to a level nearly equal to that of the president. Thus, Article 35 of the new law would require the president to nominate a candidate for the post of prime minister indicated by a coalition of factions in the Rada. In other words, the Rada would nominate prime ministerial candidates, and the president would simply submit the same name much like the king or queen of England plays a purely formal role in the formation of the UK cabinet [https://samopomich.ua/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/project.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2QSRvRtMsWcWY-eR4ys0O6x0n_Doy21398U0VenM6J9jw21Hhy1E8sias (from here on cited as 'Draft Law'), p. 16].

Similarly, the president would be deprived by Article 36 in the new law of the power to independently submit to the Rada candidates for nomination to the posts of defense minister and foreign minister, the candidate nomination of which would have to be agreed upon before submission to the Rada again by a coalition of deputies' factions ( Draft law, pp. 16-17) . These clauses in the new law appear to be a direct violation of the Ukrainian Constitution's Article 106, which gives the President the unrestricted power to make such nominations.

The Rada is also boosted by the draft law's Article 85.1, which stipulates that in the event of the president's removal from office under an impeachment process the Rada's chair will execute the office of the presidency (Draft law, p. 42). This violates the Ukrainian Constitution's Article 112, which gives the role of acting president in such a case to the PM. At the same time, the PM would receive a series of new powers in the draft law. Article 39.3 of the draft law stipulates that the president "shall hold mandatory consultations with the Prime Minister regarding the formation of the personnel of the National Security and Defense Council" (SNBO), and Article 39.4 allows the Prime Minister to "initiate a decision before the President on formation of the personnel" of the SNBO and make changes to it (Draft law, p. 18).

Acting or temporary holders of the offices of Defense Minister, Foreign Minister, SBU chairman, and National Bank head are to be nominated by the PM under certain circumstances (Articles 30.4, 30.5, 40.6, and 42.5, respectively, Draft law, pp. 16-17, 19, and 20, respectively). Also, under the draft law the PM would also receive the new right to be consulted by the president in cases where two-thirds of a regional parliament has voted 'no confidence' in the region's administration head, which allows the president to dismiss him (Article 49. 3, Draft law, p. 24).

Although the President would retain the power to submit nominations to the posts of Prosecutor General and SBU chair, there is no mention of his power to appoint and dismiss regional prosecutors and SBU chiefs. The new law also appears to deprive the Ukrainian President of his present power to appoint the membership of the National Commission for Implementation of Regulation of Energy and Housing Services (NKREKU), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), and other regulators. Also, the president would be barred from creating any state administrative bodies such as a presidential apparatus or chancellery with powers anything more than advisory.

Thus under the new law the office of the president is deprived of its most important power -- appointment of the PM -- which now belongs to the majority in the Rada.

Thus, this new law on the presidency if adopted by the Rada and signed by Poroshenko as he leaves office would effectively transform Ukraine's semi-presidential system into a parliamentary republic with a powerful PM, whose authority rivals that of the President.

In and of itself this is not problematic and could even be regarded as a step in the direction of greater democracy in the sense of strong republican rule by a legislature of elected representatives of the people, it becomes anti-democratic and a violation of the rule of law by dint of the facts that several of the law's statutes violate the constitution. More importantly perhaps, the law violates the spirit of election by abrogating the recently expressed will of the people who elected a candidate to a particular office of the president of Ukraine as it existed on the day of the election, with all the powers the constitution vests in that office.

The imminent 'Maidan-in-opposition' has undertaken a series of other highly questionable measures to prepare to block or hamper his presidency. When presidential candidate Hrytsenko criticized the draft law on the presidency days after its posting on the site of the Galicia-based nationalist party 'Self-Help', led by the mayor of Lviv (Lvov) Andriy Sadoviy, the Lviv branch of the SBU opened an investigation against his wife's opinion polling company (www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2019/04/24/7213427/ and http://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2019/04/24/7213432/ ).

Hrytsenko was the only first round presidential election candidate to meet with Zelenskii during the campaign for the second round, rousing suspicions he may have cut a deal for a place in any Zelenskii administration, perhaps his return to the post of Defense Minister. A move directly against Zelenskii has been the delay in announcing the final results of the presidential election (www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-election-zelenskiy/ukraines-president-elect-says-being-blocked-from-calling-snap-poll-idUSKCN1S129Z?fbclid=IwAR0W0Rl_e-XHjwUza7U2h8vA0di4csdWGmITrRFQ0MTxbhkx5aNkSiCmqpg).

This move has been combined with an attempt to delay Zelenskii's inauguration by removing the chairman of the constitutional court who deliberates in the president-elect's taking of the oath of office ( https://strana.ua/news/198120-v-konstitutsionnom-sude-sobirajut-holosa-za-otstavku-hlavy-vedomstva-dlja-sryva-inauhuratsii-zelenskoho.html?fbclid=IwAR3flvIbho_Iq3Zn9fGW5am1xV2y8GkLK_SRs77PRk2507YYawFcxtRrULI and https://vesti-ukr.com/politika/334088-zhurnalisty-rasskazali-kak-u-poroshenko-provodjat-sryv-inauhuratsii-zelenskoho ).

Although the delay is not prohibitive yet it risks preventing Zelenskii from calling new Rada elections as soon as he assumes office as he has reportedly planned to do. Mid-term elections cannot be called less than six months before the end of a Rada's convocation. The present Rada's term ends in early November. The delay of the inauguration may also provide time for investigative processes against Zelenskii to be completed and used to block his assumption of office. Thus, three days after the election, the corrupt anti-corruption body, NABU, opened an investigation int Zelenskii production company ( https://strana.ua/news/198188-nabu-nachalo-rassledovanie-po-kompanii-zelenskoho-iz-za-vozmozhnoj-rastraty-sredstv-hoskino-sytnik.html ).

The new draconian language law adopted by the Rada four days after the voting excludes from civil service those not fluent in Ukrainian. Zelenskii is not fluent in Ukrainian, and Poroshenko has vowed to sigh the law; one he himself helped draft and then submitted to the Rada before the election. Tentative Conclusions and Some Black Swans The Ukraine is on the edge of a constitutional crisis.

The country remains badly divided between the newly elected and at present popular president and his support base in the east and south, on the one hand, and Maidan's outgoing president, government and Rada with its support base largely in the west. As at the beginning of the Maidan protests in fall 2013, there are many Ukrainians who want positive democratic change. Unfortunately, they are countered by a powerful oligachic-ultranationalist coalition that has been stealing the state, dividing Ukrainians along regional, ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines in order to stay in power, and is about to be relegated to the position of the Maidan-in-opposition.

For now, Zelenskii is the new Yanukovych minus the corruption and pro-Russian inclinations. His positive image with the voters can be destroyed with new framing that can come with the ravaging of time in office as the elan of the victory in the presidential election fades and by effective Maidan-in-opposition propaganda. With Rada elections set for September, the first five-six months of Zelenskii's presidency -- should Poroshenko and the Rada radicals allow it to commence -- will be bogged down in a bitter power struggle that can easily spin out of control.

There is good reason to believe that the Rada leadership, the siloviki , and the ultranationalists and neofascists in Ukraine's frequently uncivil society will be willing to repeat a use of violence of February 2014 in order to preserve their power and avoid the risk of Zelenskii investigations into their corruption and the Maidan's original sin of that February 2014 snipers' terrorist attack. Zelenskii may very well forego a serious investigation of the Maidan terrorist attack and a crackdown on the illegal armed formations and activity of ultranationalists and neofascists like the National Corps and C14. A bridge too far for any Ukrainian leader, given the weak state and powerful extremist element on the streets.

There are black swans on the horizon. One is Vladimir Putin. He 'welcomed' Zelenskii by issuing a decree easing requirements for immigration to Russia and the receipt of Russian passports and pension payments for residents in civil war-torn region of the separatist DNR and LNR. In this way, he seemed to remind Zelenskii of Russia's now limited, albeit, direct military presence in the war zone. He further signaled his intent to run a hard bargain by refusing to congratulate Zelenskii on his presidential election victory unlike in 2014 when Putin congratulated Poroshenko.

But Zelenskii may have walked into this slap. He threw down the gauntlet to Putin when declared after his election victory (and before these moves by Putin): "To all post-Soviet countries: Look at us, anything is possible" ( www.rferl.org/a/poroshenko-concedes-after-exit-polling-shows-zelenskiy-taking-ukraine-presidency/29894814.html ). He reiterated the point several days later specifically when responding to Putin's decision to ease Donbass access to Russian passports and immigration ( https://vesti-ukr.com/strana/334477-zelenskij-sdelal-zajavlenie-ob-idee-putina-vydavat-ukraintsam-pasporta-rf ).

If Zelenskii sees himself as the spark or leader of a wave of color revolutions in the former USSR, he will find the going with Russia tough, regardless of who the Russian president is. Russians fear both revolution and foreign interference far more than they do Putin. More importantly for Ukraine, such a stance will make a resolution of the Donbass conflict impossible.

Another black swan is that Ukraine now has a Jewish president. This is not evidence of the absence of anti-Semitism, which is robust among Ukraine's substantial number of ultranationalists and neofascists. Anti-semitism has been overshadowed by such radicals' laser-like focus of their xenophobia on ethnic Russians.

The fact of a Jewish president -- in addition to the present PM being Jewish -- poses the risk of an uptick in anti-Semitism and in the appeal of the ultranationalist/neofascist message if Zelenskii fails to improve the economy, cut corruption, and/or appears to be 'caving in' to Russian or Western demands to the detriment of Ukraine's interests.

The Jewish president will be a prime scapegoat in the case of such failure. These two dynamics – the inexperienced Zelenskii's possible failure and the potential political repercussions of his Jewish roots -- could tip the scales in favor of the ultranationalist wing of the Maidan-in-opposition and shape its calculus as to whether or not to undertake a coup, repeating what worked once in February 2014.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About the Author – Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California, www.cetisresearch.org ; an expert analyst at Corr Analytics, http://www.canalyt.com ; and an analyst at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation (Chicago), www.geostrategicforecasting.com .

Dr. Hahn is the author of the four books, most recently Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the 'New Cold War . Previously, he has authored three well-received books: The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014), Russia's Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia's Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction Publishers, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media.

Dr. Hahn also has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and has been a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, and the Hoover Institution.

[Apr 24, 2019] Bolton works for CIA.

Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

Oh no its the Illuminati , says: April 23, 2019 at 3:56 pm GMT

ChuckO,

Bolton? NSA? Do you mean NSC? Everything we hear about Bolton lately is ideological labeling as a so-called Neocon, more ambiguous bullshit, or tainting him by association with Israelis. Funny how everybody just forgot what Bolton did at the UN, when Bush shoehorned him in there without congressional consent. Bolton personally constipated the drafting of the Summit Outcome Document to remove awkward mentions of the magic word impunity. The old perv put up 700 amendments to obstruct the process.

Now, who cares that much about impunity? And why would it be such a big deal, unless you had impunity in municipal law but the whole world was committed to ending impunity? Cause if you think about it, that's what the whole world has been doing for 70 years, codifying the Pre-CIA Nuremberg Principles as international criminal law and developing state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts as customary and then conventional international law. Who doesn't want that?

CIA. Impunity is CIA's vital interest. They go to war to keep it all the time.

Bolton works for CIA.

DESERT FOX , says: April 23, 2019 at 4:22 pm GMT
@Oh no its the Illuminati See Col. L. Fletcher Proutys book The Secret Team , the CIA is the zionist chain dogs that rule America!
ChuckOrloski , says: April 23, 2019 at 4:54 pm GMT
@DESERT FOX Wisely, DESERT FOX recalled Colonel Fletcher Prouty, and wrote: " the CIA is the zionist chain dogs that rule America!"

Dear DESERT FOX,

As you know, for some very dramatic time, Attorney Garrison held Clay Shaw's feet-to-the-fire while demonstrating the latter businessman's connection to the Israeli company, Permindex.

So naturally, a reasonable & respectful question arises, for which there is likely no available & conclusive determination.

Are CIA, Mossad, and M16 joined as one (1) ruling and globally unaccountable
"(Western) Zionist chain dog" link? Tough one, D.F., but am confident you can intelligently handle it. Thanks & salud!

DESERT FOX , says: April 23, 2019 at 5:27 pm GMT
@ChuckOrloski From what I have read, MI6 is under zionist control and is the template for the CIA and the Mossad and is the controller of both the CIA and the Mossad and all three are under zionist control.

Another good book is The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman a former officer in MI6 and his videos on youtube.

[Apr 22, 2019] Poroshenko s attempt to appeal to nationalism has failed by Cnaan Liphshiz

Notable quotes:
"... Poroshenko's government greatly encouraged glorification of those troops and leaders as fighters for Ukrainian freedom who it insisted sided with Germany only in order to fight against the Russian-controlled Soviet Union. ..."
"... Meanwhile, in the western city of Lviv, nationalists became emboldened enough to celebrate with city authorities' permission the anniversary of the 14th Galician division of the Waffen SS. The anniversary events featured men parading in Nazi SS uniforms on the street. ..."
"... On this subject, Zelensky has said only that he personally does not favor the veneration of people like Bandera, whom he described as "a hero to some Ukrainians." It was a markedly reserved formulation compared to the unreserved endorsement of figures like Bandera by officials under Poroshenko. ..."
"... In some far-right circles, Zelensky's work in a television stationed owned by the Jewish billionaire Igor Kolomoisky was proof of his belonging to a "Jewish cabal." But it made Zelensky popular with other nationalists who appreciated Kolomoisky's reputation as a fiery patriot. ..."
"... Not denying his Jewish ancestry, Zelensky declined to explore it at length in the interview, Levy wrote. On this subject, he replied with typical self-deprecating humor, telling Levy: "The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults." ..."
"... This popularity has allowed Zelensky to both win on an unusually vague platform and distinguish himself from his professional politician rivals, with their proclivity to hyperbole and nationalist slogans. ..."
"... For example, when a reporter asked him how he would deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky reverted to his comic roots, saying "I would speak to him at eye level." It was a reference to him and Putin being at least three inches shorter than Poroshenko, a 6-footer. ..."
"... "We will need to wait and see what kind of president Zelensky turns out to be," said Dolinsky, who was an outspoken critic of some policies of the Poroshenko administration. "What is clear is that Poroshenko's attempt to appeal to nationalism has failed. Ukrainians said they wanted change. And I am feeling optimistic." ..."
Apr 22, 2019 | www.timesofisrael.com
Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky reacts after the announcement of the first exit poll results in the second round of Ukraine's presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev on April 21, 2019. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP) JTA -- Following the victory of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine's presidential elections, the country will become the only one in the world besides Israel whose president and prime minister are both Jewish.

When Zelensky is sworn in as president, his prime minister -- at least for a while and possibly until the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place sometime later this year -- will be Volodymyr Groysman, a Jewish politician who was the mayor of the city of Vinnytsia.

To some of incumbent Petro Poroshenko's critics, the landslide success of the vague campaign by the politically inexperienced Zelensky, a comedian, was not surprising in light of widespread resentment over the persistence of corruption under Poroshenko, who was elected in 2014 on a platform that vowed remedial action on exactly that front.

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More unusual to some, however, was how Zelensky's appears to have won the elections so decisively in spite of how his Jewish ancestry – his mother, Rima, is Jewish and he has jokingly referred to this during the campaign -- is well known in Ukraine.

After all, Russia and other critics claim Ukrainian society has a serious anti-Semitism problem and legacy.

"Imagine, a pure-blooded Jew with the appearance of a Sholom Aleichem protagonist wins by a landslide in a country where the glorification of Nazi criminals is enacted into law," wrote Avigdor Eskin, a Russian-Israeli columnist, in an analysis published earlier this month by the Regnum news agency.

Eskin in column on Zelensky downplayed allegations of widespread anti-Semitism in Ukraine, attributing much of the attention to the problem in media and beyond to propaganda by Russia, which is involved in an armed conflict over territory with Ukraine. But Eskin's statement about Ukrainian laws glorifying Nazi criminals is not inaccurate, and Russia is not alone in criticizing Ukraine over this and other issues connected to anti-Semitism.

Last year, Israel's government singled out Ukraine as a regional trouble spot in the Israeli government's annual report on anti-Semitism.

"A striking exception in the trend of decrease in anti-Semitic incidents in Eastern Europe was Ukraine, where the number of recorded anti-Semitic attacks was doubled from last year and surpassed the tally for all the incidents reported throughout the entire region combined," the report said. The authors of the report counted more than 130 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine in 2017, they said.

Also last year, more than 50 US Congress members condemned Ukrainian legislation that they said "glorifies Nazi collaborators" and therefore goes even further than Poland's controversial laws limiting what can be said about local complicity during the Holocaust.

A letter signed by the US lawmakers stated, "It's particularly troubling that much of the Nazi glorification in Ukraine is government-supported." It noted ceremonies, gestures and legislation venerating leaders of the UPA and OUN militias, who fought alongside Nazi Germany during World War II and whose troops participated in atrocities against Jews and other victims.

Poroshenko's government greatly encouraged glorification of those troops and leaders as fighters for Ukrainian freedom who it insisted sided with Germany only in order to fight against the Russian-controlled Soviet Union.

Several cities across Ukraine named streets for the Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera, who prior to Poroshenko's time in office was openly glorified only in the country's west.

Meanwhile, in the western city of Lviv, nationalists became emboldened enough to celebrate with city authorities' permission the anniversary of the 14th Galician division of the Waffen SS. The anniversary events featured men parading in Nazi SS uniforms on the street.

Such sights would have been unthinkable under Viktor Yanukovych, the corrupt president who was deposed in a 2013 revolution that ended with Poroshenko's election. Careful to alienate neither ethnic Russians in Ukraine nor its powerful neighbor to the east, Yanukovych was less tolerant of this nationalist phenomenon.

On this subject, Zelensky has said only that he personally does not favor the veneration of people like Bandera, whom he described as "a hero to some Ukrainians." It was a markedly reserved formulation compared to the unreserved endorsement of figures like Bandera by officials under Poroshenko.

The presidential campaign itself has featured some anti-Semitism. In some far-right circles, Zelensky's work in a television stationed owned by the Jewish billionaire Igor Kolomoisky was proof of his belonging to a "Jewish cabal." But it made Zelensky popular with other nationalists who appreciated Kolomoisky's reputation as a fiery patriot.

Alexander Paliy, an influential political analyst supporting Poroshenko, last month stirred controversy when he wrote on Facebook that, despite his "respect" for Jews and some Russians, "The president of Ukraine should be Ukrainian and Christian, like the absolute majority of Ukrainians."

Such rhetoric is shocking to many of Ukraine's 300,000-odd Jews, whose ancestors suffered murderous anti-Semitism in Ukraine for centuries before, during and decades after the Holocaust.

The French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy also referenced Ukrainian Jew's bloody history in an interview with Zelensky, the 41-year-old son of scientists who lived near major Soviet army bases in Ukraine, that he published earlier this month in the Le Point weekly.

"His Judaism. It's extraordinary that the possible future president of the country of the Shoah by Bullets and Babi Yar is a self-affirmed Jew from a family of survivors from Kryvy Rih near Dnipro – the land of pogrom if ever there was one," Levy wrote. "This postmodern kid, is he new proof that the virus of anti-Semitism has been contained" after the revolution, Levy added.

Not denying his Jewish ancestry, Zelensky declined to explore it at length in the interview, Levy wrote. On this subject, he replied with typical self-deprecating humor, telling Levy: "The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults."

Zelensky, whose mother, Rima, is Jewish, has ingratiated himself with the Ukrainian public with such jokes as the star of "Servant of the People" – a primetime television show where he portrays a teacher thrust by an unlikely chain of events to become Ukraine's president. He announced his candidacy in January, becoming an instant favorite.

This popularity has allowed Zelensky to both win on an unusually vague platform and distinguish himself from his professional politician rivals, with their proclivity to hyperbole and nationalist slogans.

For example, when a reporter asked him how he would deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky reverted to his comic roots, saying "I would speak to him at eye level." It was a reference to him and Putin being at least three inches shorter than Poroshenko, a 6-footer.

Zelensky opaqueness means a high level of uncertainty, Dolinsky, the Jewish community leader, said.

"We will need to wait and see what kind of president Zelensky turns out to be," said Dolinsky, who was an outspoken critic of some policies of the Poroshenko administration. "What is clear is that Poroshenko's attempt to appeal to nationalism has failed. Ukrainians said they wanted change. And I am feeling optimistic."

[Apr 18, 2019] Ask yourself "Is this creature sane or rational?"

Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Hoarsewhisperer , Apr 18, 2019 4:05:55 AM | link

John Bolton was interviewed on PBS Newshour on March 17. Look it up and watch it and ask yourself "Is this creature sane or rational?"

[Apr 15, 2019] Neoliberal globalization is under sieve, countries that refuse to unconditionally open markts to transnationals and be vassal of Washington are now labeled as authoritarian

This slur "authoritarian state" is now peddled by neocons as synonym for the "countries we do not like"
This neocons in not very inventive... We already saw this line from Robert Kagan, who actually is a better writer. This neocon/neolib pressitute can't even use proper terms such as "neoliberalism" and "Washington consensus"
And slide to far-right nationalism and neo-fascism is direct result of neoliberalism dominance for the last 40 years (since Carter) and sliding of the standard of living of workers and the middle class.
Notable quotes:
"... Both countries have touted the virtues of their systems, while arguing that Western values are a source of decadence, amorality and disorder in the Western world. ..."
Apr 15, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

Liberalism Is Under Siege. Conservatives Can Save It. - Bloomberg By Hal Brands

As international rivalry intensifies, the core strategic task for the U.S.-led democratic community is to contain the geopolitical influence and political disruption caused by authoritarian great powers, namely China and Russia. Yet that task is made all the harder because illiberalism -- and sympathy for those illiberal powers -- is simultaneously surging among key actors on the political right. If the U.S. and its allies are to succeed in the great global rivalry of the 21st century, the right must confront the threat of illiberalism within its ranks -- just as the left did during a previous twilight struggle in the 20th century.

... ... ...

This time, the threat is not expansionist communism, but a combination of autocracy and geopolitical revisionism. China has been moving toward a dystopian future of high-tech authoritarianism, as it pushes for greater power and influence overseas. Putin's Russia has consolidated an illiberal oligarchy, while using information warfare, political meddling and other tools to subvert liberal democracies in Europe, the U.S. and beyond.

Both countries have touted the virtues of their systems, while arguing that Western values are a source of decadence, amorality and disorder in the Western world.

... ... ...

It is not for nothing that the political scientist Marc Plattner has written that the gravest threat to liberal democracy today is “that it will end up being abandoned by substantial segments of the right.” And even in the U.S., there are alarming signs that conservative commitment to the norms of liberal democracy is under strain.

Hal Brands at [email protected]

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Che Guevara10 hours ago ,

Communism was not a threat, but actually benefited the world in many ways.
It was communism that put pressure on capitalism to provide labor a fair share of wealth and income. As soon as Soviet communism collapsed, capitalism returned to its avaricious roots, resulting in stagnant wages for the working class. And the pauperization of the working class in recent decades is the cause for the current revolt against liberal capitalism.
So it was the competition from communism that was helping capitalism to stay healthy. Without it capitalism has degenerated into a Dickensian dystopia. We should therefore welcome any alternative socio-economic models to liberal capitalism.

EmilyEnso Che Guevara7 hours ago ,

It was communism that put pressure on capitalism to provide labor a fair
share of wealth and income. As soon as Soviet communism collapsed,
capitalism returned to

Thats a great point Che.
I have never ever looked at it from that angle.
Interesting.

EeeYepBlowing Whistles EmilyEnso7 hours ago ,

The odd thing is that both communism and capitalism are both controlled from the same evil hidden hand!!!

George Evans Che Guevara8 hours ago ,

the success of the Chinese efforts may just be the spur needed...

brad_sk13 hours ago ,

Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, who has long been a leading conservative intellectual, warns that this disillusion with liberal democracy “is clearly present among American conservatives, and not just among the ‘alt-right.’

Honest and real conservatives are far and fewer in today's MAGA/tea party infested GOP. Forget career politicians like Ted Cruz or McConnell, even the previously decent conservative think tanks/pundits like from NR or Erik Erickson or others have all given up on any principles and just bow at the altar of Trump now.

Sebastian Cremmington brad_sk29 minutes ago ,

No they haven’t, Trump decided to put McConnell in charge so of course the #neverTrumpers like the McConnell presidency...which consists of appointing Republican judges at record pace and little else.

johnny sunshine brad_sk4 hours ago ,

Or they've become the right wing of the Democratic party.

dnjake12 hours ago ,

The biggest need is to resist holy warriors like Hal Brands who want to destroy the world if it resists their version of revealed truth. They are the biggest threat to the human future. The United States has to learn to live in a world that it cannot control. The American goal should be to work towards a constructive human future not some kind of holy war to impose American control on the rest of the world. The United States is the biggest military spender. In recent history, It has been the world's global aggressor.

It has an history of wars that have made little difference whether America won or lost them. Perhaps the United States could succeed with some kind of genocide that wiped out all of the parts of the world that refuse to accept American supremacy. But, short of that kind of disgrace, the United States is not going to succeed in achieving any meaningful goal through war. As long as America does not destroy the world, the future is going to be determined by economic competition and the destinies that the people of different parts of the world choose for themselves.

dav123411 hours ago ,

The author needs a reality check. Much of what he says is in his imagination.

emno33 hours ago ,

I had wondered if it was noticed the Liberalism was dying. The world has turned hard right, with all the anger, nationalism, do-as-I-say, and social intolerance. I don't even the children of today.

Camus534 hours ago ,

I might suggest that liberals themselves are destroying their freedoms with illogical illiberal liberalism.

YOU can't do that, say that, act like that, think like that...no no no...we must act and be correct, nice, polite, all forgiving and never critical.

Huh?

The freedoms that so many of us marched for, fought for, voted for, sang about (thank gawd the music still lives), got bloody for, even died for, are slipping away quicker than you can say me, me, me...it's all about me.

Maybe...small maybe...our youth can once again awaken America and the world's conscience. Maybe? Maybe not!

Mark Miller9 hours ago ,

"Just as the Cold War left broke with communism"

Wha? It seems our LIttle Cultural Revolution is just warming up. Wait till AOC et al are all growed up.

"This is a moment when the “free world” needs to be strong and united."

Is this the same "free" world that jails grandmothers over contested historical views? That has reneged on free speech?

Thanks to a truly ethnomasochistic immigration policy, I assure you that this will not happen. The West will be lucky if squeaks through this period without a civil war.

[Apr 12, 2019] John Bolton Took Money From Clinton Foundation Donor, Banks Tied To Cartels, Terrorists, Iran by William Craddick

Notable quotes:
"... On June 12, 2018 The Washington Post ran an overlooked story where they disclosed that National Security Advisor John Bolton had accepted money from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Deutsche Bank and HSBC to return for his participation in speeches and panel discussions ..."
"... John Bolton accepted $115,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation to speak at multiple events hosted by the Foundation including one in September 2017 where Bolton assured his audience that President Donald Trump would not radically change US foreign policy despite his explicit campaign promises to do so. ..."
"... More broadly, John Bolton's work for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, HSBC and Deutsche Bank shows that while he preaches hardline foreign policy approaches towards nations such as Iran and North Korea he has no issue tying himself to those who openly flaunt American sanctions and diplomatic attempts to pressure these states. For an individual who is the President's National Security Advisor to have taken money from banks who provide financial services to terror groups who have murdered thousands of Americans is totally unacceptable. ..."
Apr 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Disobedient Media

On June 12, 2018 The Washington Post ran an overlooked story where they disclosed that National Security Advisor John Bolton had accepted money from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Deutsche Bank and HSBC to return for his participation in speeches and panel discussions. These three entities have been linked to various kinds of corruption including sanctions evasion for Iran, money laundering on behalf of drug cartels, provision of banking services to backers of Islamic terror organizations and controversial donations to the Clinton Foundation.

The financial ties between Bolton and these institutions highlight serious ethical concerns about his suitability for the position of National Security Advisor.

I. Victor Pinchuk Foundation

John Bolton accepted $115,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation to speak at multiple events hosted by the Foundation including one in September 2017 where Bolton assured his audience that President Donald Trump would not radically change US foreign policy despite his explicit campaign promises to do so.

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation was blasted in 2016 over their donation of $10 to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation between 1994 and 2005. The donations lead to accusations of influence peddling after it emerged that Victor Pinchuk had been invited to Hillary Clinton's home during the final year of her tenure as Secretary of State.

Even more damning was Victor Pinchuk's participation in activities that constituted evasions of sanctions levied against Iran by the American government. A 2015 exposé by Newsweek highlighted the fact that Pinchuk owned Interpipe Group, a Cyprus-incorporated manufacturer of seamless pipes used in oil and gas sectors. A now-removed statement on Interpipe's website showed that they were doing business in Iran despite US sanctions aimed to prevent this kind of activity.

Why John Bolton, a notorious war hawk who has called for a hardline approach to Iran, would take money from an entity who was evading sanctions against the country is not clear. It does however, raise serious questions about whether or not Bolton should be employed by Donald Trump, who made attacks on the Clinton Foundation's questionable donations a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign.

II. HSBC Group

British bank HSBC paid Bolton $46,500 in June and August 2017 to speak at two gatherings of hedge fund managers and investors.

HSBC is notorious for its extensive ties to criminal and terror organizations for whom it has provided illegal financial services. Clients that HSBC have laundered money for include Colombian drug traffickers and Mexican cartels who have terrorized the country and recently raised murder rates to the highest levels in Mexico's history . They have also offered banking services to Chinese individuals who sourced chemicals and other materials used by cartels to produce methamphetamine and heroin that is then sold in the United States. China's Triads have helped open financial markets in Asia to cartels seeking to launder their profits derived from the drug trade.

In 2012, HSBC was blasted by the US Senate for for allowing money from Russian and Latin American criminal networks as well as Middle Eastern terror groups to enter the US. The banking group ultimately agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine for this misconduct as well as their involvement in processing sanctions-prohibited transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.

Some of the terror groups assisted by HSBC include the notorious Al Qaeda. During the 2012 scrutiny of HSBC, outlets such as Le Monde , Business Insider and the New York Times revealed that HSBC had maintained ties to Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank. Al Rajhi Bank was one of Osama Bin Ladin's "Golden Chain" of Al Qaeda's most important financiers. Even though HSBC's own internal compliance offices asked for the bank to terminate their relationship with Al Rajhi Bank, it continued until 2010.

More recently in 2018, reports have claimed that HSBC was used for illicit transactions between Iran and Chinese technology conglomerate Huawei. The US is currently seeking to extradite Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou after bringing charges against Huawei related to sanctions evasion and theft of intellectual property. The company has been described as a "backdoor" for elements of the Chinese government by certain US authorities.

Bolton's decision to accept money from HSBC given their well-known reputation is deeply hypocritical. HSBC's connection to terror organizations such as Al Qaeda in particular is damning for Bolton due to the fact that he formerly served as the chairman of the Gatestone Institute , a New York-based advocacy group that purports to oppose terrorism. These financial ties are absolutely improper for an individual acting as National Security Advisor.

III. Deutsche Bank

John Bolton accepted $72,000 from German Deutsche Bank to speak at an event in May 2017.

Deutsche Bank has for decades engaged in questionable behavior. During World War II, they provided financial services to the Nazi Gestapo and financed construction of the infamous Auschwitz as well as an adjacent plant for chemical company IG Farben.

Like HSBC, Deutsche Bank has provided illicit services to international criminal organizations. In 2014 court filings showed that Deutsche Bank, Citi and Bank of America had all acted as channels for drug money sent to Colombian security currency brokerages suspected of acting on behalf of traffickers. In 2017, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a $630 million fine after working with a Danish bank in Estonia to launder over $10 billion through London and Moscow on behalf of Russian entities. The UK's financial regulatory watchdog has said that Deutsche Bank is failing to prevent its accounts from being used to launder money, circumvent sanctions and finance terrorism. In November 2018, Deutsche Bank's headquarters was raided by German authorities as part of an investigation sparked by 2016 revelations in the "Panama Papers" leak from Panama's Mossack Fonseca.

Two weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the Bush administration signed an executive order linking a company owned by German national Mamoun Darkazanli to Al Qaeda. In 1995, Darkazanli co-signed the opening of a Deutsche Bank account for Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. Salim was identified by the CIA as the chief of bin Laden's computer operations and weapons procurement. He was ultimately arrested in Munich, extradited to the United States and charged with participation in the 1998 US embassy bombings.

In 2017, the Office of the New York State Comptroller opened an investigation into accounts that Deutsche Bank was operating on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is defined by both the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization. It is ironic that Bolton, who is a past recipient of the "Guardian of Zion Award" would accept money from an entity who provided services to Palestinian groups that Israel considers to be terror related.

IV. Clinton-esque Financial Ties Unbecoming To Trump Administration

Bolton's engagement in paid speeches, in some cases with well-known donors to the Clinton Foundation, paints the Trump administration in a very bad light. Donald Trump criticized Hillary Clinton during his 2016 Presidential campaign for speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs that were labeled by her detractors as "pay to play" behavior. John Bolton's acceptance of money from similar entities, especially the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, are exactly the same kind of activity and are an embarrassment for a President who claims to be against corruption.

More broadly, John Bolton's work for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, HSBC and Deutsche Bank shows that while he preaches hardline foreign policy approaches towards nations such as Iran and North Korea he has no issue tying himself to those who openly flaunt American sanctions and diplomatic attempts to pressure these states. For an individual who is the President's National Security Advisor to have taken money from banks who provide financial services to terror groups who have murdered thousands of Americans is totally unacceptable.

It is embarrassing enough that Donald Trump hired Bolton in the first place. The next best remedy is to let him go as soon as possible.

[Mar 07, 2019] John Bolton Is Exploiting Donald Trump's Weakness - Bloomberg

Mar 07, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

Just how weak a president has Donald Trump become? For an illustration, see a terrific Washington Post article on the foreign-policy decision-making process since John Bolton became Trump's national security adviser. Or, rather, the absence of anything resembling a process.

As Heather Hurlburt pointed out when Bolton took the job, he's ill-suited for it. Bolton is a policy advocate, not the honest broker that the position calls for. That's a particular problem for Trump. Because the president is inexperienced in national-security matters, he doesn't know whether Bolton is speaking for the experts on a policy question or just advocating for his own preferences. Because Trump knows little about the executive branch, Bolton can use his bureaucratic skills to advance his own agenda -- including impeding Trump's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

This isn't to say that Bolton's policies are necessarily wrong; that's for others to judge. But it creates a real problem for the presidency when top advisers are looking out for their own interests and not the president's.

On this point, Ronald Reagan's administration is instructive. By all accounts, Reagan was more informed about policy than Trump is. He was also a pragmatic politician, capable of compromising or even backing down entirely when it was in his interests. Reagan's weakness, however, was that he could be curiously passive at times, and (like many presidents) too easily swayed by anecdotes. That meant he needed high-level staffers who could serve as honest brokers. His first-term chief of staff, James Baker, allowed him to make good decisions. Baker's replacement, Donald Regan, failed to do so. Partly as a result, Reagan's presidency had almost completely collapsed by the time Regan was fired amid the Iran-Contra scandal.

[Feb 26, 2019] Bolton's financial disclosures show that between September 2015 and April 2018, he received $165,000 from the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP), a group with overlapping staffers, board members, and finances with UANI. According to the Bolton's disclosures, the payments were "consulting fees."

Feb 26, 2019 | www.unz.com

anon [228] Disclaimer , says: February 27, 2019 at 12:43 am GMT

@Thomm Bolton tweeted:

Attempts by Russian gov. to intimidate Amb. Wallace & @UANI are unacceptable. If President Putin is serious about stabilizing the Middle East, confronting terrorism & preventing a nuclear arms race in the region, he should stand with UANI & against Iran.

Why would the national security advisor care what the Russian Foreign Ministry has to say about a New York-based nonprofit's letter writing campaign, especially when those remarks got virtually no notice in the media?

Bolton's personal finances and the president's biggest campaign funder offer a couple clues.

Bolton's financial disclosures show that between September 2015 and April 2018, he received $165,000 from the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP), a group with overlapping staffers, board members, and finances with UANI. According to the Bolton's disclosures, the payments were "consulting fees."

https://lobelog.com/large-payments-to-bolton-might-explain-his-uani-tweet/

[Feb 22, 2019] 'Cheney wants you out,' Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. 'We can't accept your management style.'

Feb 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

AntiSpin , Feb 21, 2019 2:07:11 PM | link

@ Tom | Feb 21, 2019 1:29:28 AM | 84

"He threatened the head of OPCW I believe as well."

Your belief is correct; The one threatened was José Bustani, then --- head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

"Bolton -- then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs -- arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a warning to the organization's chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words. 'Cheney wants you out,' Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. 'We can't accept your management style.'

Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: 'You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you.'

There was a pause. 'We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York'."

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/john-bolton-trump-bush-bustani-kids-opcw/

The guy is a murdering thug -- a psychopath.

[Feb 06, 2019] Bolton unplugged RT

Feb 06, 2019 | www.rt.com

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump lambasted America's endless and wasteful wars. But as president, he has surrounded himself with individuals who have made defending and advancing American empire a full-time career. Why did Trump cave and what could be the consequences for him and his presidency?

CrossTalking with George Szamuely, Jeff Deist, and Lee Spieckerman.


That Lee guy demonstrated perfectly why the world should fear the USA. Dangerous stupid.
71 Likes


You are correct!
21 Likes


The danger comes from the arrogance with the stupidity. American exceptionalism at its ugliest, on par with bolton and pompeo for sure.

I don't think tRump really knows what he is saying, as in big disconnect between brain and mouth. More empty bluster than arrogance with his 5th grader stupidity.

23 Likes


The scary part is a lot of Americans are like him

23 Likes
Show 2 more replies


The "Lee" entity encapsulates everything that is wrong with consecutive US governments: arrogant, obnoxious, I'll mannered, undiplomatic, belligerent, misinformed and dangerously stupid.
43 Likes


Thanks for having this Lee Spieckerman on. It proves RT tries to show all sides and is a shocking example of how crazy the far right is.
Keep it real!

37 Likes


Spickerman is living in cuckoo land with his claim US is a force for good and billions are so happy to live under a bunch of mobster's Wrong

22 Likes


Lee Spickerman is a typical Sociopath

18 Likes


Lee Spickerman is mad like the US Governement.!!


The Monroe Doctrine gets evoked yet again. In written form it was "anti-colonial", but in practice it was "imperial anti-colonialism" and used as a declaration of hegemony and a right of unilateral intervention over the Americas.

This is why I feel we need to stop using the term "regime change" which also hides the reality of what are really coup d'etats and imperialist wars. It's not a regime being changed, but a regime trying to do the changing. Like Peter says at the end, it would take a long show to talk about them all.

Do us all a favor and take Mr. Spieckerman off your guest list. He advances our knowledge not a bit. He is merely one of the Bush claque. As for his admired public servant, John Bolton, rarely does this country produce so maniacal a political operator. Giving Bolton a responsible position was Trump's most egregious personnel error.


Lee Spieckerman = jewish neocon

[Feb 05, 2019] John Bolton Insists Iran Likely Harboring Dangerous Terrorist Osama Bin Laden

Feb 05, 2019 | politics.theonion.com

WASHINGTON -- In an impassioned call for preemptive action against the Middle Eastern nation, United States national security advisor John Bolton insisted Thursday that Iran was likely harboring the dangerous terrorist Osama bin Laden. "For the good of our nation, we must act immediately," said Bolton, citing several intelligence reports providing significant evidence that Iran is currently providing sanctuary to the Al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We must never rest until this fugitive is brought to justice, and the only way to achieve that is through repeated and prolonged military strikes on Iran.

We have reason to believe that he's living in a compound there where he's training a legion of bloodthirsty Iranian civilians to take up arms as the next generation of terrorists. It is our solemn duty as the international safeguard of freedom to prevent this at all costs."

At press time, Bolton had left the podium to follow up on an important tip that Iranian leaders had hired American nuclear physicist Otto Gunther Octavius.

[Feb 03, 2019] Horrifying, Personal John Bolton Story

Feb 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

AntiSpin , Feb 2, 2019 11:17:05 AM | link

Horrifying, Personal John Bolton Story

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/4/15/106909/-

"Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman."

[Jan 23, 2019] Curious Bedfellows The Neocon And Progressive Alliance To Destroy Donald Trump by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora ..."
"... The neocons initially found a home with Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, but they moved on in the 1970s and 1980s to prosper under Ronald Reagan as well as under Democrat Bill Clinton. Their ability to shape policy peaked under George W. Bush, when they virtually ran the Pentagon and were heavily represented in both the national security apparatus and in the White House. They became adept at selling their mantra of "strong national defense" to whomever was buying, including to President Obama, even while simultaneously complaining about his administration's "weakness." ..."
"... When Trump was elected, it, therefore, seemed that the reign of the neocons had ended, but chameleonlike, they have changed shape and are now ensconced both in some conservative as well as in an increasing number of progressive circles in Washington and in the media. Against all odds, they have even captured key posts in the White House itself with the naming of John Bolton as National Security Adviser and Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. Bolton's Chief of Staff is Fred Fleitz , a leading neocon and Islamophobe while last week Trump added Iran hawk Richard Goldberg to the National Security Council as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Goldberg is an alumnus of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is the leading neocon think tank calling incessantly for war with Iran. ..."
"... One of the most active groups attacking President Trump is "Republicans for the Rule of Law," founded by Bill Kristol in January 2018, as a component of Defending Democracy Together (DDT), a 501(c)4 lobbying group that also incorporates projects called The Russia Tweets and Republicans Against Putin. Republicans Against Putin promotes the view that President Trump is not "stand[ing] up to [Vladimir] Putin" and calls for more aggressive investigation of the Russian role in the 2016 election . ..."
"... Omidyar is a political liberal who has given millions of dollars to progressive organizations and individuals since 1999. Indeed, he is regarded as a top funder of liberal causes in the United States and even globally together with Michael Bloomberg and George Soros. His Democracy Fund awarded $9 million in grants in 2015 alone. ..."
"... Last week, the Omidyar-Kristol connection may have deepened with an announcement regarding the launch of the launch of a new webzine The Bulwark , which would clearly be at least somewhat intended to take the place of the recently deceased Weekly Standard. It is promoting itself as the center of the "Never Trump Resistance" and it is being assumed that at least some of the Omidyar money is behind it . ..."
"... That hatred is the tie that binds and it is why Bill Kristol, a man possessing no character and values whatsoever, is willing to take Pierre Omidyar's money while Pierre is quite happy to provide it to destroy a common enemy, the President of the United States of America. ..."
Jan 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

The Roman poet Ovid's masterful epic The Metamorphoses includes the memorable opening line regarding the poem's central theme of transformation. He wrote In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora , which has been translated as "Of shapes transformed to bodies strange, I purpose to entreat "

Ovid framed his narrative around gods, heroes and quasi-historical events but if he were around today, he would no doubt be fascinated by the many transformations of the group that has defined itself as neoconservative.The movement began in a cafeteria in City College of New York in the 1930s, where a group of radical Jewish students would meet to discuss politics and developments in Europe. Many of the founders were from the far left, communists of the Trotskyite persuasion, which meant that they believed in permanent global revolution led by a vanguard party. The transformation into conservatives of a neo-persuasion took place when they were reportedly "mugged by reality" into accepting that the standard leftist formulae were not working to transform the world rapidly enough. As liberal hawks, they then hitched their wagon to the power of the United States to bring about transformation by force if necessary and began to infiltrate institutions like the Pentagon to give themselves the tools to achieve their objectives, which included promotion of regime change wars, full spectrum global dominance and unconditional support for Israel.

The neocons initially found a home with Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, but they moved on in the 1970s and 1980s to prosper under Ronald Reagan as well as under Democrat Bill Clinton. Their ability to shape policy peaked under George W. Bush, when they virtually ran the Pentagon and were heavily represented in both the national security apparatus and in the White House. They became adept at selling their mantra of "strong national defense" to whomever was buying, including to President Obama, even while simultaneously complaining about his administration's "weakness."

The neoconservatives lined up behind Hillary Clinton in 2016, appalled by Donald Trump's condemnation of their centerpiece war in Iraq and even more so by his pledge to end the wars in Asia and nation-building projects while also improving relations with the Russians. They worked actively against the Republican candidate both before he was nominated and elected and did everything they could to stop him, including libeling him as a Russian agent.

When Trump was elected, it, therefore, seemed that the reign of the neocons had ended, but chameleonlike, they have changed shape and are now ensconced both in some conservative as well as in an increasing number of progressive circles in Washington and in the media. Against all odds, they have even captured key posts in the White House itself with the naming of John Bolton as National Security Adviser and Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. Bolton's Chief of Staff is Fred Fleitz , a leading neocon and Islamophobe while last week Trump added Iran hawk Richard Goldberg to the National Security Council as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Goldberg is an alumnus of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is the leading neocon think tank calling incessantly for war with Iran.

Meanwhile, the neocon metamorphosis is nearly complete as many of the neocons, who started out as Democrats, have returned home, where they are being welcomed for their hardline foreign policy viewpoint. Glenn Greenwald reports that , based on polling of party supporters, the Democrats have gone full-Hillary and are now by far more hawkish than the Republicans, unwilling to leave either Syria or Afghanistan.

The neocon survival and rejuvenation is particularly astonishing in that they have been wrong about virtually everything, most notably the catastrophic Iraq War. They have never been held accountable for anything, though one should note that accountability is not a prominent American trait, at least since Vietnam. What is important is that neocon views have been perceived by the media and punditry as being part of the Establishment consensus, which provides them with access to programming all across the political spectrum. That is why neocon standard-bearers like Bill Kristol and Max Boot have been able to move effortlessly from Fox News to MSNBC where they are fêted by the likes of Rachel Maddow. They applauded the Iraq War when the Establishment was firmly behind it and are now trying to destroy Donald Trump's presidency because America's elite is behind that effort.

Indeed, the largely successful swing by the neocons from right to left has in some ways become more surreal, as an increasing number of progressive spokesmen and institutions have lined up behind their perpetual warfare banner. The ease with which the transformation took place reveals, interestingly, that the neocons have no real political constituency apart from voters who feel threatened and respond by supporting perpetual war, but they do share many common interests with the so-called liberal interventionists. Neocons see a global crisis for the United States defined in terms of power while the liberals see the struggle as a moral imperative, but the end result is the same: intervention by the United States. This fusion is clearly visible in Washington, where the Clintons' Center for American Progress (CAP) is now working on position papers with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

One of the most active groups attacking President Trump is "Republicans for the Rule of Law," founded by Bill Kristol in January 2018, as a component of Defending Democracy Together (DDT), a 501(c)4 lobbying group that also incorporates projects called The Russia Tweets and Republicans Against Putin. Republicans Against Putin promotes the view that President Trump is not "stand[ing] up to [Vladimir] Putin" and calls for more aggressive investigation of the Russian role in the 2016 election .

DDT is a prime example of how the neoconservatives and traditional liberal interventionists have come together as it is in part funded by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire co-founder of eBay who has provided DDT with $600,000 in two grants through his Democracy Fund Voice , also a 501(c)4.

Omidyar is a political liberal who has given millions of dollars to progressive organizations and individuals since 1999. Indeed, he is regarded as a top funder of liberal causes in the United States and even globally together with Michael Bloomberg and George Soros. His Democracy Fund awarded $9 million in grants in 2015 alone.

Last week, the Omidyar-Kristol connection may have deepened with an announcement regarding the launch of the launch of a new webzine The Bulwark , which would clearly be at least somewhat intended to take the place of the recently deceased Weekly Standard. It is promoting itself as the center of the "Never Trump Resistance" and it is being assumed that at least some of the Omidyar money is behind it .

Iranian-born Omidyar's relationship with Kristol is clearly based on the hatred that the two share regarding Donald Trump.

Omidyar has stated that Trump is a "dangerous authoritarian demagogue endorsing Donald Trump immediately disqualifies you from any position of public trust."

He has tweeted that Trump suffers from "failing mental capacity" and is both "corrupt and incapacitated."

Omidyar is what he is – a hardcore social justice warrior who supports traditional big government and globalist liberal causes, most of which are antithetical to genuine conservatives.

But what is interesting about the relationship with Kristol is that it also reveals what the neoconservatives are all about. Kristol and company have never been actual conservatives on social issues, a topic that they studiously avoid, and their foreign policy is based on two principles: creating a state of perpetual war based on fearmongering about foreign enemies while also providing unlimited support for Israel. Kristol hates Trump because he threatens the war agenda while Omidyar despises the president for traditional progressive reasons.

That hatred is the tie that binds and it is why Bill Kristol, a man possessing no character and values whatsoever, is willing to take Pierre Omidyar's money while Pierre is quite happy to provide it to destroy a common enemy, the President of the United States of America.

[Jan 22, 2019] They're back Here's how the neocons are regaining power in Trump's America – Alternet.org

Notable quotes:
"... As Stephen Wertheim argues in The New York Review of Books , the neoconservatives are ascendant in Trump's America, reasserting themselves within GOP and, more troublingly, renewing their ties to the Democratic Party. Together they constitute the "neo-neoconservatives" or "post-neoconservatives," as he's dubbed them. ..."
"... "For Bolton and company, Donald Trump turned out to be a deliverance," he observes. "Trump elevated 'globalism' from a marginal slur to the central foil of American foreign policy and Republican politics." ..."
"... Ultimately, this embrace extends beyond pundits like Boot offering foreign policy advice to the party's leadership. Even purportedly liberal think tanks like the Center for American Progress are partnering with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The question is why, decades removed from Sen. Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson and the fall of the Berlin Wall, neoconservatives once again feel at home within the Democratic Party? Wertheim's conclusions are as credible as they are dispiriting. ..."
"... "What best explains centrist Democrats' rapprochement with neoconservatives isn't an anti-Trump strategy but rather a genuine affinity with their current political objectives and style," he writes. "Neocons have spent decades reducing politics to an all-encompassing crisis, a Manichean struggle between an imperiled liberal democracy and a pervasive totalitarian menace. Now certain liberals see things in much the same way. Lionizing the neocons indulges these Democrats' fantasy that respectable Republicans will rise up to sweep Trump and all he stands for onto the ash heap of history." ..."
Jan 22, 2019 | www.alternet.org

In December, after a 23-year run that saw it perpetuate the Bush administration lie that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction and breathlessly champion the ensuing war in Iraq...

In December, after a 23-year run that saw it perpetuate the Bush administration lie that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction and breathlessly champion the ensuing war in Iraq, The Weekly Standard released its final issue . Two years removed from Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election, one might be forgiven for concluding the publication's demise sounded the final death knell of neoconservatism -- an ideology that has been soundly defeated at the polls and appears to lack even a constituency, the ubiquity of Bill Kristol on cable news notwithstanding.

If only. As Stephen Wertheim argues in The New York Review of Books , the neoconservatives are ascendant in Trump's America, reasserting themselves within GOP and, more troublingly, renewing their ties to the Democratic Party. Together they constitute the "neo-neoconservatives" or "post-neoconservatives," as he's dubbed them.

"Today, neoconservatives are riding high once more, in the White House, on Capitol Hill, in the most prominent organs of opinion," Wertheim writes. "The Weekly Standard may have shuttered, but anti-Trump neocons enjoy increasing influence in the center of the Republican and Democratic parties and in publications like The Atlantic and The Washington Post."

In his essay, Wertheim traces the history of the movement from World War II through the Cold War and up to 9/11, which allowed Kristol and Commentary's Norman Podhoretz, among others, to forge an existential threat in the form of "Islamofascism." Indeed, neoconservatism draws from the philosophical tradition of Leo Strauss, who wrote in the "The City and Man" that "the crisis of the West consists in the West's having become uncertain of its purpose." For the Straussians and their intellectual descendants, military conflict offered that sense of purpose, whether the enemy was Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or Al-Qaeda.

Trump's presidency has proved a clarifying moment. "[He] has forced neoconservatives to decide, for the first time, whether they are more against 'totalitarianism' or 'globalism,'" continues Wertheim. "If anti-totalitarians take Trump to be perverting what they hold dear, anti-globalist neocons have found in Trump a kindred spirit and vehicle for power. Yet, even as they are fracturing, neocons are flourishing. They have bypassed the political wilderness and vaulted themselves to the vanguard on either side of the Trump divide."

Within Trump's cabinet, neoconservatism remains represented by national security adviser John Bolton, who has served in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan. Wertheim contends that while right-wing non-interventionism is typically attributed to paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan, neoconservatives have also historically taken aim at global institutions, if not globalism itself. Few have embodied this notion more than Bolton, who has made a career of bashing both the United Nations and its Security Council. During the Obama administration, Wertheim notes, he regularly sounded the alarm that "leftists like Obama were attempting to give away American sovereignty, bit by bit, to international bodies."

"For Bolton and company, Donald Trump turned out to be a deliverance," he observes. "Trump elevated 'globalism' from a marginal slur to the central foil of American foreign policy and Republican politics."

Which brings us to neoconservatives' suddenly lofty perch outside of the Trump administration. For Republican apostates like Jennifer Rubin, David Frum and Max Boot, Wertheim contends, the president has offered the "next best thing" to a foreign dictator: "an enemy within." His personal degeneracy and unabashed corruption have allowed them to "reclaim their preferred role as the moral truth-tellers in America."

"More surprising, perhaps, is that Democrats and outlets of the anti-Trump resistance have welcomed these neocons into their fold," Wertheim observes. "Boot, Kristol, Rubin, and former advisers of George W. Bush and Senator John McCain appear daily on MSNBC to excoriate Trump and Trumpism. David Frum, who coined the 'axis of evil' as George W. Bush's speechwriter, earns resistance retweets by warning of 'this hour of liberal peril' in The Atlantic. In 2017, The New York Times hired Bret Stephens from The Wall Street Journal in an effort to 'broaden the range of Times debate about consequential questions,' a curious rationale given that Stephens represented just the kind of Never Trump pundit repudiated by GOP voters and did nothing to change the op-ed page's lack of a single Trump-supporting columnist."

Ultimately, this embrace extends beyond pundits like Boot offering foreign policy advice to the party's leadership. Even purportedly liberal think tanks like the Center for American Progress are partnering with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The question is why, decades removed from Sen. Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson and the fall of the Berlin Wall, neoconservatives once again feel at home within the Democratic Party? Wertheim's conclusions are as credible as they are dispiriting.

"What best explains centrist Democrats' rapprochement with neoconservatives isn't an anti-Trump strategy but rather a genuine affinity with their current political objectives and style," he writes. "Neocons have spent decades reducing politics to an all-encompassing crisis, a Manichean struggle between an imperiled liberal democracy and a pervasive totalitarian menace. Now certain liberals see things in much the same way. Lionizing the neocons indulges these Democrats' fantasy that respectable Republicans will rise up to sweep Trump and all he stands for onto the ash heap of history."

Read Wertheim's essay at The New York Review of Books .

[Jan 15, 2019] Buchanan Is Bolton Steering Trump Into War With Iran

Jan 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

devo , 1 minute ago link

That fact Trump can be "steered into war" is disturbing.

2handband , 2 minutes ago link

This article is asinine. By the book, Bolton takes orders from Trump... not the other way around. Bolton is just being used as an excuse. Trump was never serious about getting the US out of any wars. I confidently predict that US troops will still be in Syria this time next year.

ne-tiger , 4 minutes ago link

"Was he aware of Bolton's request for a menu of targets in Iran for potential U.S. strikes? Did he authorize it? Has he authorized his national security adviser and secretary of state to engage in these hostile actions and bellicose rhetoric aimed at Iran? "

Yes, Yes and Yes, that's why he's an orange fucktard.

Taras Bulba , 12 minutes ago link

Bolton's former deputy, Mira Ricardel, reportedly told a gathering the shelling into the Green Zone was "an act of war" to which the U.S. must respond decisively.

This war mongering harpy fortunately was kicked to the curb by melania trump!

pelican , 13 minutes ago link

How did that psychopath appointed anyway? Another warmonger that hasn't served a day in the military.

MozartIII , 13 minutes ago link

Bolton can run the operation on the ground!

MozartIII , 14 minutes ago link

Send the House, Senate, FBI, CIA, IRS & all others state operatives to fight in Iran. Include the TSA for gods sake. Include the Obamas, Clintons and Bush's. So they can verify that their weapons are all delivered again and work properly. Bring our troops home to defend are border. Include NYT, WaPo and most of our current media in the Iran light brigade, so they can charge with the rest of the parasites. Many problems will be solved in very short order.

punchasocialist , 16 minutes ago link

This is another really infantile, softball article again by Buchanan.

As if Trump is anything more than an actor, and Bolton is anything more than a buffoon who has been laughed off the world stage FOREVER.

As if Trump and Bolton steer each other, instead of TAKING ORDERS from trillionaires.

resistedliving , 58 minutes ago link

You think Bolton is the new Alexander "I'm in charge now" Haig?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qarDtgSVpM

Captain Chlamydia , 22 minutes ago link

Yes he is.

I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 1 hour ago link

Obviously.

And so are Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, and Kushner, and his bankster pals.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YW4CvC5IaFI

Bolton is a traitor and agent of a foreign power. The Mouth of Netanyahu.

But Trump hired him, and Trump hasn't fired him.

Duc888 , 57 minutes ago link

Enjoy the show. Bolton has a half life of about 90 days. Can't you see a pattern when it's laid bare in front of you?

I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 40 minutes ago link

Like not having a wall, appointing neocon swamp creatures, still being in Afghanistan and Syria, and not releasing the FISAgate texts?

Like that pattern?

I... gee, I don't know.

You're right. I should prolly just ' trust the plan' like a good goy.

Thanks, newfriend!

🤨

I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 57 minutes ago link

Remarks by National Security Advisor Ambassador John Bolton to the Zionist Organization of America

JimmyJones , 27 minutes ago link

He also hasn't followed his recommendations. Perhaps he keeps him around so he knows what not to do?

Duc888 , 4 minutes ago link

He's a temporary useful idiot for Trump who will flush him at his convenience. He's handy to have around to encourage the Hawks do a group masturbation.

Seriously, if Ertogen tells Bolton to go **** off, he has no sauce. He's been neutered. Let him act all important and play in the sand box all he wants.

ted41776 , 1 hour ago link

trust the plan. there are white hats in government who have your best interest in mind. you don't need to do anything other than pretend like everything is fine, they'll take care of the rest. go to work and continue accepting continually devalued worthless fiat in exchange for time you spend away from your family and doing things you love. trust the plan, it's all going to be alright

/sarc

I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 47 minutes ago link

+ 1

Four chan , 41 minutes ago link

BOLTON IS MULLERS BUDDY, THATS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.

Francis Marx , 42 minutes ago link

I doubt Bolton has that much clout. Trump is no fool.

Haus-Targaryen , 42 minutes ago link

No, because the oil price to follow would blowup the US war machine.

Iran isn't going anywhere.

Erek , 38 minutes ago link

Time for Bolton to lay his **** on the anvil.

I woke up , 24 minutes ago link

Yeah, if Bolton is so enthused about it, send him first

Erek , 17 minutes ago link

And alone!

Duc888 , 3 minutes ago link

...it would be lost amongst the metal filings and swarf.

resistedliving , 16 minutes ago link

Israel uses natgas and coal

Helps their little conflict in the Tamar/Leviathan gas fields.

[Jan 14, 2019] 'A Reckless Advocate of Military Force' Demands for John Bolton's Dismissal After Reports He Asked Pentagon for Options to Str

Notable quotes:
"... By Jessica Corbett, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, called the news "a reminder that when it comes to Iran, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are batshit insane ..."
"... Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), tweeted, "Make no mistake: Bolton is the greatest threat to the security of the United States!" Parsi, an expert on U.S.-Iranian relations and longtime critic of Bolton, called for his immediate ouster over the request detailed in Journal ..."
"... Bolton: Chickenhawk-in-Chief ..."
"... Great point. None of my fellow comrades who actually participated in firefights (not just drove trucks behind the lines) are eager to be led into battle by National Guard and bone-spur deferrals, much less student deferral draft dodgers. ..."
"... Why did Trump appoint Bolton? ..."
"... I think Bolton is a sop to Sheldon Aldelson. He may be playing a similar role to "The Mooch", I hope. ..."
"... Likewise, Pompeo is the Koch brother's man. Both authoritarian billionaires trying to guarantee their investment in Trump. You see the US is being run like a business, or is that like a feudal fiefdom? ..."
"... Steven Cohen has an interesting editorial in RT, not about directly about Bolton but about the war parties' demand for ongoing M.E. conflict. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/448688-trump-withdrawal-syria-russia/ ..."
"... see what we could do ..."
"... Trump is interested in what is good for Trump. Why he thinks Bolton at his side is good for him is a mystery. Rather a hand grenade with the pin pulled in your pocket than Bolton. Much the same can be said of Pompeo. ..."
"... I agree with author Nicholas Taleb's view of the military interventionists, who include Bolton, that have repeatedly urged that we "intervene in foreign countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria -- whose governments did not meet their abstract standards of political acceptability." Besides the losses suffered by our troops and economy, as Taleb observed each of those interventions "made conditions significantly worse in the country being 'saved'. Yet the interventionists pay no price themselves for wrecking the lives of millions. Instead they keep appearing on CNN and PBS as 'experts' who should guide us in choosing what country to bomb next." Now, after imposing economic sanctions on Iran, they're evidently again seeking war. ..."
Jan 14, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Posted on January 14, 2019 by Yves Smith Yves here. I am surprised that Bolton has lasted this long. Bolton has two defining personal qualities that are not conducive to long-term survival with Trump: having a huge ego and being way too obvious about not caring about Trump's agenda (even with the difficulties of having it change all the time). Bolton is out for himself in far too obvious a manner.

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams

Reminding the world that he is, as one critic put it, " a reckless advocate of military force ," the Wall Street Journal revealed on Sunday that President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton "asked the Pentagon to provide the White House with military options to strike Iran last year, generating concern at the Pentagon and State Department."

"It definitely rattled people," a former U.S. official said of the request, which Bolton supposedly made after militants aligned with Iran fired mortars into the diplomatic quarter of Baghdad, Iraq that contains the U.S. Embassy in early September. "People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran."

"The Pentagon complied with the National Security Council's request to develop options for striking Iran," the Journal reported, citing unnamed officials. "But it isn't clear if the proposals were provided to the White House, whether Mr. Trump knew of the request, or whether serious plans for a U.S. strike against Iran took shape at that time."

The Journal 's report, which comes just days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an "arrogant tirade" of a speech vilifying Iran, sparked immediate alarm among critics of the Trump administration's biggest warmongers -- who, over the past several months, have been accused of fomenting unrest in Iran and laying the groundwork for war.

Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, called the news "a reminder that when it comes to Iran, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are batshit insane."

me title=

Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), tweeted, "Make no mistake: Bolton is the greatest threat to the security of the United States!" Parsi, an expert on U.S.-Iranian relations and longtime critic of Bolton, called for his immediate ouster over the request detailed in Journal 's report.

me title=

"This administration takes an expansive view of war authorities and is leaning into confrontation with Iran at a time when there are numerous tripwires for conflict across the region," NIAC president Jamal Abdi warned in a statement . "It is imperative that this Congress investigate Bolton's request for war options and pass legislation placing additional legal and political constraints on the administration's ability to start a new war of choice with Iran that could haunt America and the region for generations."

In a series of moves that have elicited concern from members of Congress, political experts, other world leaders, and peace activists, since May the Trump administration has ditched the Iran nuclear deal -- formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- and reimposed economic sanctions .

NIAC, in November, urged the new Congress that convened at the beginning of the year to challenge the administration's hawkish moves and restore U.S. standing on the world stage by passing measures to block the sanctions re-imposed in August and November , and reverse Trump's decision to breach the deal -- which European and Iranian diplomats have been trying to salvage .

Iran continues to comply with the terms of JCPOA, according to the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief, told state television on Sunday that "preliminary activities for designing modern 20 percent (enriched uranium) fuel have begun." While Iran has maintained that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons, the nation would still have to withdraw from the deal if it resumed enrichment at the level.

As Iran signals that it is considering withdrawing from the JCPOA, the Journal report has critics worried that Bolton and Pompeo have the administration on a war path -- with Bolton, just last week, insisting without any evidence that Iranian leadership is committed to pursuing nuclear weapons. Some have compared that claim to former Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous lie in 2002, to bolster support for the U.S. invasion, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

me title=

As the Journal noted, "Alongside the requests in regards to Iran, the National Security Council asked the Pentagon to provide the White House with options to respond with strikes in Iraq and Syria as well."


The Rev Kev , January 14, 2019 at 5:55 am

So Bolton wants war with Iran? Pretty tall talk from a man who during the war in 'Nam ducked into the Maryland Army National Guard because he had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy as he considered the war in Vietnam already lost. His words, not mine. The Iranian military will not be the push over the Iraq army was. They are much better equipped and motivated and have a healthy stock of missiles. They even have the Russian-made S-300 anti-aircraft missile system up and running.

Once you start a war, you never know where it will go. Suppose the Iranians consider – probably correctly – that it is Israel's influences that led to the attack and so launch a few missiles at them. What happens next? Will Hezbollah take action against them as well. If the US attacks Iran, then there is no reason whatsoever for Iran not to attack the various US contingents scattered around the Middle East in places like Syria. What if the Russians send in their Aerospace Forces to help stop an attack. Will they be attacked as well? Is the US prepared to lose a carrier?

And how will the war end? The country is mountainous like Afghanistan so cannot be occupied unless the entire complete total of all US forces are shipped over there. This is just lunacy squared and surely even Trump must realize that if the whole thing is another Bay of Pigs, it will be his name all over it in the history books and so sinking his chances for a 2020 re-election. And if the justification for the whole thing is a coupla mortars on a car park, how will he justify any American loses? At this point I am waiting for Bolton to finish each one of his speeches and tweets with the phrase-

"Parthia delenda est!"

Tomonthebeach , January 14, 2019 at 2:17 pm

Bolton: Chickenhawk-in-Chief

Great point. None of my fellow comrades who actually participated in firefights (not just drove trucks behind the lines) are eager to be led into battle by National Guard and bone-spur deferrals, much less student deferral draft dodgers.

Calling Bolton on Pompeo "batshit crazy" cries out for revisions in the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).

Ignim Brites , January 14, 2019 at 7:36 am

Why did Trump appoint Bolton? A saying of LBJ, I believe attributed to Sam Rayburn, might illuminate. "It is better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

Edward , January 14, 2019 at 8:26 am

I think Bolton is a sop to Sheldon Aldelson. He may be playing a similar role to "The Mooch", I hope.

Allegorio , January 14, 2019 at 12:49 pm

Likewise, Pompeo is the Koch brother's man. Both authoritarian billionaires trying to guarantee their investment in Trump. You see the US is being run like a business, or is that like a feudal fiefdom?

Edward , January 14, 2019 at 1:01 pm

I feel like the U.S. is an occupied country, invaded by corporate lobbyists. We have the kind of crap government you get from occupations.

Carolinian , January 14, 2019 at 8:33 am

Why did Trump appoint Bolton?

Not to be a broken record but should we blame the Dems? Arguably Trump's "out there" gestures to the right are because he has to keep the Repubs on his side given the constant threat of impeachment from the other side. Extremes beget extremes. There's also the Adelson factor.

Of course this theory may be incorrect and he and Bolton are ideological soul mates, but Trump's ideology doesn't appear to go much beyond a constant diet of Fox News. He seems quite capable of pragmatic gestures which are then denounced by a horrified press.

Lou Mannheim , January 14, 2019 at 10:11 am

"Not to be a broken record but should we blame the Dems?"

No. Despite Trump's wishes the buck stops with him.

Carolinian , January 14, 2019 at 10:27 am

... the Iran situation could have been solved years earlier by Obama and Hillary making it harder for Trump to stir up trouble.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/iran-brazil-and-turkey-make-new-nuclear-proposal/

ChiGal in Carolina , January 14, 2019 at 11:25 am

The point might be, sure the Dems as part of the duopoly created the context within which Trump now acts as president. Nonetheless there is a direct linear responsibility for his actions that rests with him.

Unless you consider him so impaired as not to be responsible for his actions ;-)

Carolinian , January 14, 2019 at 1:54 pm

So will the buck stop with Obama/Hillary for destroying Libya, the half million dead in Syria, the covert support for the Saudis in Yemen which started under Obama, the coup in Honduras, the deterioration in US/Russia relations to the point where nuclear war has once again started to become thinkable? By these standards Trump's wrecking ball is quite tiny.

neo-realist , January 14, 2019 at 11:53 am

It's not like the Obama administration and the EU didn't strike a nuclear deal with Iran to freeze nuclear capable production and allow for lifting of sanctions -- how could they have gone further? How could its deal be worse then the saber rattling of Trump/Bolton? Not saying this as a fan of the Obama administration in general.

Bill Smith , January 14, 2019 at 2:03 pm

Pied Piper Memo. It's up in Wikileaks. Clinton campaign laid out a strategy to help Trump along so he would be their opponent. They bet that he was too far out there for the general public to vote him in as president.

Yves Smith Post author , January 14, 2019 at 2:20 pm

...Everyone including Trump was shocked he won. He has made an only partly successful hostile takeover of the Republican party. The fact that he got only at best the second string, and mainly the fourth string, to work in his Administration, Trump's repudiation of international institutions and his trade war with China are all evidence that he was chosen by anyone, much the less a cabal you create out of thin air called "the oligarchy"

As Frank Herbert said in Dune, the most enduring principles in the universe are accident and error. Trump did not want to win. This was a brand-enhancing stunt for him that got out of control.

KLG , January 14, 2019 at 7:46 am

Something for our would be Croesus and his minions: If you go to war with Persia, you will destroy a mighty empire OK, not so mighty, but an empire nevertheless.

Ben Wolf , January 14, 2019 at 8:29 am

Reminiscent of John Kerry and Susan Rice publicly demanding bombing of Syria in 2015 after Obama had taken that option off the table.

Anon , January 14, 2019 at 12:26 pm

Iran is a much more formitable foe than Syria. Bullies love to taunt the weak; Iran is not weak.

Mark James , January 14, 2019 at 8:48 am

The US has previously run multiple conventual war simulations and in all cases the US lost against Iran, only when the US used its nuclear option did the US prevail. The implications of a nuclear strike and how the Russian Federation will react, to having yet another one of its allies attacked is unknown?

Bill Smith , January 14, 2019 at 2:10 pm

Really, in all cases? Seems unlikely. What did these conventional war simulations cover? What was the definition of wining and losing?

Jeremy Grimm , January 14, 2019 at 2:36 pm

Really -- who cares? Any claim of 'all' is difficult to support under the best of circumstances and unwise. Besides, suppose we could 'prevail' in a war with Iran -- why should or would we want to? Are you OK with a little war with Iran if a couple of conventional war simulations suggest we could win?

johnnygl , January 14, 2019 at 9:07 am

Couple of quick points

1) I really hope jim webb gets the def sec job. That would be a strong signal.

2) if the TDS infected bi-partisan consensus wants to impeach. They can build on this. I suspect they won't though.

3) Keep in mind Trump like some trash talk. Pompeo seems here to stay. Not sure about Bolton. But, as we saw with N. Korea, sometimes the crazy gets dialed up to 11, right before things get calmed down.

The Rev Kev , January 14, 2019 at 9:34 am

Because that worked so well in the Balkans and Iraq and Libya, etc, etc etc. The world is not what you think it is. Let us compare Iran as a country with America's loyal ally Saudi Arabia as an example. Would you believe that Iran has a Jewish population that feel safe there and have no interest in moving to Israel? In Saudi Arabia, if you renounce Islam that is a death sentence. Women have careers in Iran and drive cars. Woman have burkas in Saudi Arabia and have very few freedoms. Iran has taken in refugees from the recent wars. Saudi Arabia has taken virtually none from Syria. Iran wants to have their own country and work out their own problems as they are a multicultural country. Saudi Arabia is a medieval monarchy that has been exporting the most extremist view of Islam around the world using their oil money. Ideologically, all those jihadists the past few decades can be traced to Wahhabi teachings. Now tell me that if you had a choice, which country sounds more attractive to live in?

Redlife2013 , January 14, 2019 at 10:46 am

Having been to Iran, it is an amazing place and they are the most welcoming of people. One of the few places I have seen female taxi drivers, too. Women are very self-assured there – they will blow past men to get to what they want to do. Lots of people don't like the Islamic government (and they will note that to you), but as you mentioned, they are NOT medieval.

The government praises science and technology in roadside ads up and down the country. The ads, by the way, are almost always in Farsi and English, as English is the 2nd language of the country. And I'd like to add that they love Americans. It didn't matter what town I was in and we went to some small towns. I literally had people yelling "We love America" and asking for my autograph. And no – I am not famous. They are the most generous, gregarious people I have ever met in my life.

I have odd memories of my trip like being in a taxi going into Tehran listening to a instrument only version of Madonna's La Isla Bonita (they really like Madonna). And going to beautiful mosques which are filled with mirrors and coloured light so it's almost like a disco (mirrors and water are ancient pre-Islamic symbols). And the gardens – in odd places like underpasses that happen to have a bit of opening to light and rain. Where ever they can stick a garden they will do it.

Iran is a hodgepodge of so many thoughts, peoples, and currents. One thing they are though – is fiercely loyal to Iran. Not the government, but to their homeland, to their people. There is no way we would win. Due to geography and due to the losses they would be willing to sustain we would be destroyed. We would lose so badly that it would look like the First Anglo-Afghan War where only one Brit got back after the entire army was destroyed. We tussle with them on their own land at our peril.

Kilgore Trout , January 14, 2019 at 10:52 am

+10

Roger , January 14, 2019 at 11:42 am

Saudi Arabia is America's loyal ally! You mean the SA that financed, planned, and manned the 9/11 attacks? Because SA is a bigger shithole than Iran is no argument. What does need to be faced is that SA has a lock on American politics through its financial control of Washington DC swamp dwellers.

The Balkans is quiet now. Iraq became a mess when Paul Bremer snatched defeat from near total victory. Libya, Syria and Ukraine are the victims of malevolent US meddling (as was Vietnam). I am hoping that President Trump can reverse course and create a foreign policy that puts the interests of people first, particularly the interests of the people of the USA. Forlorn hope perhaps. I would not want to live in either of them.

Keith Howard , January 14, 2019 at 11:02 am

How about we throw the Ayatollah Pence and the rest of his contemptible ilk out of our own government first?

Tony Wright , January 14, 2019 at 2:12 pm

Well said. All religious fundamentalists are dangerous because they believe they are the "chosen ones" and therefore superior to "non-believers", whose lives are less important and therefore expendable if and when they feel so inclined.

pjay , January 14, 2019 at 11:05 am

Re "the Iranian people":

(1) Echoing other responses, I suggest we ask the "Iranian people" if they would like the U.S. to help them into modernity. Given our track record in Iran and other ME nations, I'm not sure they would welcome our assistance, particularly if it involved "a few explosions" or so.

(2) It is "the people" that are always hurt first, and the most, in such interventions, not the government.

I wasn't sure if this was a serious comment or one meant to provoke. It did provoke me to make an earlier response. I thank the moderators for blocking it (sincerely – not being sarcastic).

Adams , January 14, 2019 at 2:05 pm

Bah, who cares about a little collateral damage. The Iranian people obviously don't know what's good for them. We just need to bring back Wolfowitz to make sure they are on hand to lay down palm fronds before the US forces as they enter Baghdad after we nuke it into rubble. Speaking of sociopaths, I am sure Darth Vader would make himself available to advise from Wyoming. Where the hell is Elliot Abrams when you need him. What's Rumsfeld doing these days? How great would it be to get the old gang together again, under the maniacal leadership of Bolton. Maybe Dubya would be willing to do the "mission accomplished" as the smoke clears over the whole MENA region. What a great bunch of guys.

Eureka Springs , January 14, 2019 at 11:54 am

You're a regular humanitarian bomber. Reminds me of "Assad must go" and the fact 'we' never bombed him but all the people, all around the nation of the ilk you pretend to want to help by doing the same thing in Iran.

At best, you are speaking a bunch of hooey without thinking. Oh, and last I heard Iran has not invaded another country for something like 400 years. Look in your mirror.

Edward , January 14, 2019 at 12:28 pm

Are the Iranian people asking us to invade their country? In the U.S. there seems to be this bizarre nonchalance about war, which used to be considered a terrible scourge. After the recent disasters in Libya, Ukraine, and Iraq, "regime change" should be discredited. The U.S. has caused nothing but misery in the third world. We should focus on our own human rights and democracy problems. If we want to do something abroad I favor ending our support for Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

lyman alpha blob , January 14, 2019 at 1:42 pm

Yeah! We can bomb those priests right into the modern world with our own fundamentalist Air Force. Murica #1

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/air_forces_mind_boggling_violation_members_forced_to_swear_religious_allegiance/

flora , January 14, 2019 at 9:23 am

re: Bolton asking for war plans

Steven Cohen has an interesting editorial in RT, not about directly about Bolton but about the war parties' demand for ongoing M.E. conflict. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/448688-trump-withdrawal-syria-russia/

Tony Wright , January 14, 2019 at 2:46 pm

Gotta keep the military industrial complex well fed. George Orwell was right, sadly; constant state of military alert and occasionally shifting loose alliances between three competing major military powers. What a waste of human resources.

Off The Street , January 14, 2019 at 9:48 am

IMHO, Bolton serves two roles in the Trump Administration.

  1. As a symbol for the hawkier folks in Congress and the media
  2. As a foil to Trump in a good cop-bad cop, or bad cop-worse cop role, if you prefer

The first provides air cover and the second forestalls ground action. The air cover says see what we could do , and the ground action blusters to draw attention by the media thereby serving to defuse any escalationist tendencies pushed by neo-cons.

Bolton is a price of admission, and will not have much of a purpose as the effects of the Iran sanctions become more evident and that regime becomes more pliable. The people on the ground in Iran seem to want de-escalation and more normal lives, like so many around the world and at home.

John , January 14, 2019 at 10:02 am

Trump is interested in what is good for Trump. Why he thinks Bolton at his side is good for him is a mystery. Rather a hand grenade with the pin pulled in your pocket than Bolton. Much the same can be said of Pompeo.

I have never understood the lust for war with Iran it looks entirely irrational to me. The Iranian government may not be to your taste and pursue policies you dislike in the extreme, but is this a reason to gin up a war. I could never support such a conflict and would do whatever I could to thwart it.

L , January 14, 2019 at 10:31 am

This is not news and while concerning is not fundamental.

Bolton was hired precisely because of his uberhawk obsession with Iran. That is in fact the central credential that he brought to the table and as such there should be zero surprise in this. Indeed the only real shocker is that he asked for plans rather than pulling them out of his own fevered mind as he usually does.

And as others have noted the Pentagon draws up plans like this all the time. This kind of speculative planning is a big part of what the Pentagon does and somewhere no doubt is someone who is paid to prepare for the "inevitable" war in Jamaca.

The question really is whether we will act upon these plans, or some others, and from what I read of this article that is no more likely than it was a few months ago. Scary yes but no scarier than it already was.

Mattski , January 14, 2019 at 1:03 pm

Well, what do they want us to think? Of course this is predictable–even SOP–for Bolton. But someone in the Pentagon is offering some pushback, or wants to suggest there is resistance. Or someone in the CIA. Some of these people prefer wars to quagmires, especially after an exhausting 20 years. And climbing into bed with the Saudis and Israelis to fight Iran may not appeal to everyone.

Some may even see that Iran is a much more promising place for consumer and capital growth, and implementation of bourgeois democracy, than Saudi Arabia. But Mr. Bolton might say that that's the point.

Ashburn , January 14, 2019 at 11:10 am

I think we may be closer to war with Iran than most of us care to think. Trump is under siege from multiple investigations with no room to run, the Democrats now have the House and will only intensify the pressure, Pompeo and Bolton–both Iran hawks–are now in charge of our foreign policy, and a former Boeing executive (with stock options?) is in charge of the Pentagon, Trump is also being pushed into war by Saudi Arabia and Israel–his two closest buddies–and probably the two most malign influences on US policy, and finally, our economy is beginning to look shakey, and the normal functions of government are now in shutdown. Shock doctrine holds that now is the time to act.

ChiGal in Carolina , January 14, 2019 at 11:39 am

I recall a piece by Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader posted by another commenter here that he would likely do so BEFORE the Dems took control of the House. I thought there was a lot of huffing and puffing going on, except for the likelihood of wagging the dog, a tried and true tactic of US presidents.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/are-we-about-to-face-our-gravest-constitutional-crisis/

Harry , January 14, 2019 at 12:31 pm

Was chatting to a someone who was a junior official in the GWB administration. He suggested the first thing Bolton does when he joins an administration is request these plans. If you didn't, you wouldn't be able to take advantage of any interesting events to bomb Iran. Besides, he hasn't actually implemented them yet!

Amusingly its standard bureaucratic form to ensure you have plans on file. Otherwise when asked to list the options, how would you make sure your plan for covert opps, or democracy subsidizing/subverting payments appeared to be the most reasonable plan on the table?

Bolton is the same paleoconservative he ever was. And in that sense he is refreshing. One gets tired of seeing Israelis and Saudis make proposals for spending American lives on countless critically important projects.

Mattski , January 14, 2019 at 12:55 pm

There's also word that the US and Bolton have been giving quiet encouragement, with the new President in Brazil, for a Venezuela intervention.

I think it's important, though, not to simply characterize these people as monsters but to finger the system behind them. There was word before the election that Ms. Clinton has become chummy with Bolton and some of the other neocons; we might be looking at much the same if she had been elected.

Also, Kissinger bombed Cambodia and set off a genocide. Bolton is awful, but nothing whatsoever will make me yearn for Mr. K. I have a friend who's still unhappy with me because I turned down an invite to dine with him long ago, but I was just too frightened of what I might say in his presence.

Mattski , January 14, 2019 at 2:07 pm

We can take it for granted that they are nuts–but nuttiness is like monstrousness, not always so useful as explanation. They're also operating out of the logic of a contradictory and decaying system. The neocons are the ideological successors of the neoliberals (who liked to follow with the velvet fist rather than lead with it, but hardly eschewed it). . . the culmination of much of the same logic. Egalite and fraternite trail far behind these days.

Chauncey Gardiner , January 14, 2019 at 1:17 pm

I agree with author Nicholas Taleb's view of the military interventionists, who include Bolton, that have repeatedly urged that we "intervene in foreign countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria -- whose governments did not meet their abstract standards of political acceptability." Besides the losses suffered by our troops and economy, as Taleb observed each of those interventions "made conditions significantly worse in the country being 'saved'. Yet the interventionists pay no price themselves for wrecking the lives of millions. Instead they keep appearing on CNN and PBS as 'experts' who should guide us in choosing what country to bomb next." Now, after imposing economic sanctions on Iran, they're evidently again seeking war.

The National Security Advisor is a senior official in the executive branch. Who placed these people in charge of our nation's foreign policy and to act in our name?

There is no threat to the United States involved here. I don't recall being given the opportunity to vote on them or the policies they represent and push. It's past time these individuals be removed from positions of power and influence and for American soft power and diplomacy to be restored to preeminence. I want this country to stand for peace, freedom, equal opportunity and hope; not war, chaos, fear and death.

[Jan 14, 2019] The Push to Get Rid of Bolton by Daniel Larison

The US foreign policy generally doesn't depend on individual people. It is the Swamp which drive neolib/neocon policy which is driven mostly by the Deep State which means the coalition of MIC, Wall Street and intelligence agencies and their agents of influence within the government.
The most important question is how he managed to get into administration?
bolton is a bully and such people have no friends.
Notable quotes:
"... The National Security Advisor has had a reputation of being an abrasive and obnoxious colleague for a long time, and his attempts to push his aggressive foreign policy agenda have made him even more enemies. ..."
"... If Bolton is "under attack" from within the administration, it is because he has behaved with the same recklessness and incompetence that characterize his preferred policies overseas. He should be attacked, and with any luck he will be defeated and driven from office. Unfortunately, we have been seeing the opposite happen over the last few weeks: more Bolton allies are joining the administration in important positions and at least one major rival has exited. ..."
"... the longer he remains National Security Advisor the worse it will be for U.S. interests. ..."
Jan 14, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Henry Olsen is very worried that other people in the administration might be out to get Bolton:

Whatever the motive, conservatives who favor more robust U.S. involvement abroad should sit up and take notice. One of their strongest allies within the administration is under attack. Whether Bolton's influence wanes or even whether he remains is crucially important for anyone who worries that the president's impulses that deviate from past American foreign policy will weaken American security.

There have been a number of unflattering reports about Bolton in the last few weeks, but for the most part those stories are just proof that Bolton has no diplomatic skills and does a terrible job of managing the administration's policy process. If Bolton had done a better job of coordinating Syria policy, the administration's Syria policy wouldn't be the confused mess that it is. If he hadn't made such a hash of things with the Turkish government, there would have been no snub by Erdogan for anyone to report. There may be quite a bit of hostile leaking against Bolton, but that is itself a testament to how many other people in the administration loathe him.

The National Security Advisor has had a reputation of being an abrasive and obnoxious colleague for a long time, and his attempts to push his aggressive foreign policy agenda have made him even more enemies.

If Bolton is "under attack" from within the administration, it is because he has behaved with the same recklessness and incompetence that characterize his preferred policies overseas. He should be attacked, and with any luck he will be defeated and driven from office. Unfortunately, we have been seeing the opposite happen over the last few weeks: more Bolton allies are joining the administration in important positions and at least one major rival has exited.

Bolton's influence in the administration is an important indication of what U.S. foreign policy will look like in the months and years to come, and the longer he remains National Security Advisor the worse it will be for U.S. interests.

[Jan 14, 2019] I feel like the U.S. is an occupied country, invaded by corporate lobbyists. We have the kind of crap government you get from occupations.

Notable quotes:
"... Why did Trump appoint Bolton? ..."
"... I think Bolton is a sop to Sheldon Aldelson. He may be playing a similar role to "The Mooch", I hope. ..."
"... Likewise, Pompeo is the Koch brother's man. Both authoritarian billionaires trying to guarantee their investment in Trump. You see the US is being run like a business, or is that like a feudal fiefdom? ..."
Jan 14, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Edward , , January 14, 2019 at 1:01 pm

I feel like the U.S. is an occupied country, invaded by corporate lobbyists. We have the kind of crap government you get from occupations.

Ignim Brites , , January 14, 2019 at 7:36 am

Why did Trump appoint Bolton? A saying of LBJ, I believe attributed to Sam Rayburn, might illuminate. "It is better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."

Edward , , January 14, 2019 at 8:26 am

I think Bolton is a sop to Sheldon Aldelson. He may be playing a similar role to "The Mooch", I hope.

Allegorio , , January 14, 2019 at 12:49 pm

Likewise, Pompeo is the Koch brother's man. Both authoritarian billionaires trying to guarantee their investment in Trump. You see the US is being run like a business, or is that like a feudal fiefdom?

Carolinian , , January 14, 2019 at 8:33 am

Why did Trump appoint Bolton?

Not to be a broken record but should we blame the Dems? Arguably Trump's "out there" gestures to the right are because he has to keep the Repubs on his side given the constant threat of impeachment from the other side. Extremes beget extremes. There's also the Adelson factor.

Of course this theory may be incorrect and he and Bolton are ideological soul mates, but Trump's ideology doesn't appear to go much beyond a constant diet of Fox News. He seems quite capable of pragmatic gestures which are then denounced by a horrified press.

[Jan 13, 2019] Mitt Romney, Commander of the Fake Internationalists by Doug Bandow

Notable quotes:
"... Mitt Romney, Commander of the Fake Internationalists Newly-inaugurated Senator has been promoted to standard-bearer for the bipartisan War Party, filling in for John McCain. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of ..."
Jan 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Mitt Romney, Commander of the Fake Internationalists Newly-inaugurated Senator has been promoted to standard-bearer for the bipartisan War Party, filling in for John McCain.

No surprise: Senator Mitt Romney does not like President Donald Trump, as he recently explained in The Washington Post . But what, one wonders, was the former GOP presidential candidate thinking two years ago when he supped with the man he now claims to deplore while seeking an appointment as secretary of state?

Much of Romney's complaint is over manners. Yes, the president is a boor. Most people, including many of Trump's supporters, recognize that. Trump won not because of his etiquette but because of what he stood for -- and against.

Romney also defended The Blob, Washington's bipartisan foreign policy establishment. In his article attacking the president, he offered the usual vacuous bromides that characterize the interventionist consensus, which poses as internationalism but with plenty of bombing raids, illegal occupations, and nation-building. Most importantly, this perspective presumes permanent American domination, irrespective of cost.

Romney wrote: "America has long been looked to for leadership. Our economic and military strength was part of that, of course, but our enduring commitment to principled conduct in foreign relations, and to the rights of all people to freedom and equal justice, was even more esteemed." Indeed, "The world needs American leadership, and it is in America's interest to provide it. A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world -- and an America -- with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace."

In fact, Romney appears more committed to dependence on allies than American leadership. For him, these are two sides of the same coin. The only alternative he sees to Washington in control is the bad guys leading.

Related is Romney's apparent belief that foreign policy is fixed, irrespective of circumstance: the very same U.S.-dominated alliances created in 1950 are needed today. Although America's friends have raced ahead economically, politically, even militarily, Washington must forever treat them as helpless derelicts. For instance, Russia, a weakened declining power, faces the U.S. and Europe -- which together have more than 20 times its GDP. Yet Romney sees Moscow as the greatest threat facing America. It is 1945 all over again.

Romney's most important omission is Iraq. After the war there turned bad, he remained silent about his support for it. The Iraq disaster is an important reason why Trump won and other Republicans, including Romney, lost. In 2008, Americans rejected John McCain, the very symbol of promiscuous war-making. Four years later, Romney criticized President Barack Obama for leaving Iraq too soon, by which the Republican nominee probably meant leaving at any time. In saying he would keep more troops in Iraq, he ignored the fact that the Iraqis had refused to negotiate a status of forces agreement with the Bush administration.

Romney also failed to mention Afghanistan, both as a presidential candidate in 2012 and senator in 2019. After all, what good can be said for entering the 18th year of nation-building in a region of little strategic interest? As for Syria, last November, Romney predictably denounced as "recklessness in the extreme" exiting a multi-sided civil war in a country never important to America.

Whose Side is Mitt Romney On? Robert Kagan's Jungle Book of Forever War

Now Romney is being touted as the new standard-bearer for the bipartisan War Party, filling in for John McCain. Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands theorized that Romney was attempting to "position himself as heir to John McCain as the congressional conscience of U.S. diplomacy" (defined as advocating policies designed to prolifically kill and destroy).

Towards this effort, Romney is articulating "a renewed Republican internationalism based on opposition to aggressive authoritarian regimes." Brands celebrates Romney's Russophobia, saying he "deserves credit for being anti-Russia before being anti-Russia was cool." No hint that the U.S. might have contributed to Moscow's hostility through the aggressive "internationalism" of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -- violating commitments not to expand NATO, dismantling Moscow's Slavic friend Serbia, and encouraging violent regime change against an elected government that neighbored Russia. After all, equivalent Russian intervention in Mexico would have triggered an extremely hostile reaction in Washington.

Neoconservative Max Boot lauded Romney for throwing "down the gauntlet to President Trump." Indeed, argued Boot, "it now falls upon Romney to champion the cause of principled conservatism in Washington." Boot hoped the freshman senator would lead a general opposition and seemed especially pleased at Romney's support for the interventionist status quo.

Yet the passion-less Romney is a poor substitute for the perennially angry McCain. It is difficult to imagine Romney leading Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman on another apocalyptic ride, demanding that death and destruction be visited upon an enemy du jour. Indeed, Romney admitted as much, complained The New York Times , which noted that he said he "would only speak out against Mr. Trump on issues of 'great significance,' which means not much."

Worse, Romney is a typical denizen of Washington and lacks any connection to the disastrous consequences of his policies. Give McCain credit: he and his sons served in the military. Not Romney. He received four deferments during the Vietnam War, explaining that he "had other plans." This sounds eerily like Dick Cheney, who said his five deferments reflected "other priorities."

Moreover, none of Romney's five sons served. That is, of course, their prerogative. But their decision further insulated Romney from any consequences of his policies. His response to questions about their lack of service: "One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president." Did Romney believe working for him was as dangerous as fighting Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah? Or that his personal interest in winning the election was as important as the nation winning a war?

My friend William Smith at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at Catholic University argued that Romney's article "is another clear sign that the bipartisan political establishment is largely oblivious to the terrible tragedy of wartime casualties disproportionately inflicted on certain communities." Candidate Trump did particularly well in states that so suffered. Complained Smith: "What is astonishing is that, after all this tragedy, Romney offers only cliched neoconservative bromides to the many heartbroken communities across the nation."

However, The Blob, which dominates foreign policy under both parties, poses an even larger problem. These policymakers consider permanent war to be America's natural condition. They seek to suppress dissident views to ensure united support for permanent war. Anyone who hesitates to back every proposed new intervention is demonized and marginalized.

The favorite technique, recently employed by Frederick Kagan in The Hill, is to call opponents, irrespective of their actual positions, "isolationists." Thus did Kagan urge left and right "internationalists" -- meaning military interventionists -- to work together to defend "the principle that the United States must remain actively engaged in the world," by which he meant warring without end on multiple countries.

Exclaimed Kagan: "The isolationists who have condemned the United States involvement in the Middle East and the rest of the world for decades are about to get their wish. We will witness what the world looks like when left to its own devices."

Egads. Imagine what might have happened had the U.S. not intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, armed Turkey to kill tens of thousands of Kurds and destroy thousands of Kurdish villages, invaded Iraq and triggered sectarian conflict, fostered civil war in Libya and the chaos that followed, supported decades of violent occupation over millions of Palestinians by Israel, backed murderous Saudi Arabia in Bahrain and Yemen, supported a coup against Iran's democratically elected government and a brutal invasion backed by chemical weapons against Iran's Islamist regime, actively underwritten tyranny across the Middle East, and tried to sort out the Syrian Civil War. Something bad might have happened.

Yeah.

In Syria, Kagan views as "isolationist" the withdrawal of an illegal military deployment that risks violent confrontation with Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Russia over minor stakes. In contrast, "internationalism" means war everywhere all the time, especially in a country like Syria.

Trump, complained Kagan, is leaving "Afghanistan for no clear reason whatsoever." No reason other than Washington long ago having achieved its objective of degrading and displacing al-Qaeda and punishing the Taliban for hosting al-Qaeda. And eventually having recognized, after more than 17 years passed, trillions of dollars were spent, and thousands of lives were lost, that using force to create a liberal democracy in Central Asia is a fool's errand. Why leave, indeed?

It has oft been recognized that Donald Trump is a flawed vehicle to achieve almost any foreign policy end. However, he still possesses far more common sense than Mitt Romney. It is time to rescue "internationalism" from those who love humanity so much that they would destroy the world in order to save it.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire . MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Attack of the Pork Hawks Does It Really Matter If North Korea Denuclearizes? Hide 20 comments 20 Responses to Mitt Romney, Commander of the Fake Internationalists

EliteCommInc. January 9, 2019 at 11:01 pm

"No reason other than Washington long ago having achieved its objective of degrading and displacing al-Qaeda and punishing the Taliban for hosting al-Qaeda."

One should avoid the back pedal here. the Taliban did not host Al Quaeda in the manner your reference suggests.

John_M , , January 9, 2019 at 11:06 pm
I truly voted against Romney when he ran for president because of his omnidirectional belligerence. I also didn't like his vulture capitalism style (and I did technical due diligence for venture capital activities as a side line).

I don't see that he has gotten any wiser.

Own Goal , , January 10, 2019 at 2:22 am
Romney just guaranteed that he won't get the nomination. Amazing, really, stupid and gratuitous.

He could at the least have shown a little "growth" in the direction of populist disgust with the wasteful, reckless, failed wars, not to mention concerns about the growth of government and corporate mass surveillance of the public, and the continuing unholy collaboration between Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Washington in ripping off taxpayers and importing cheap labor to take American jobs.

Not Mitt. He seems to think he's running for president of our utterly discredited, pseudo-meritocratic "Establishment".

steve mckinney , , January 10, 2019 at 2:48 am
Let's all thank the knuckle-headed Utahns for delivering another unimaginative empty suit to the Nation's State House. Sure, Trump is often a boor, and unmistakably human, but give me a man-child with conviction and Devil-may-care determination over a dapper dolt whose ideas are contrived platitudes and whose passion is a Macbeth-like obsession with stature and power any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Well written Mr. Bandow! Keep fighting the good fight.
polistra , , January 10, 2019 at 4:10 am
I get the sense that the "isolationist" line doesn't work any more. It was a commonly used rhetorical weapon 10 years ago, and it effectively silenced opposition. Now it's not used much, and it seems to be ignored or derided when it is used. Most Americans understand now that maintaining and expanding an empire is destroying us.
Aunt Lila , , January 10, 2019 at 7:44 am
You really don't get Romney, do you. Who are you to decided what anyone sees or feels. Do you think you could use the word seems like a professional journalist. I don't construe
Romney that way. You SEEM to put words in his mouth and thought in his head. Please be professional.
Dan Green , , January 10, 2019 at 8:12 am
My take is Mitt see's himself as a Gerald Ford calming effect, for this 4 year disruption, the Swamp battles with. The Deep state needs an impeachment win and soon. With that said it will be ever difficult for the Beltway to change Americans perception , they don't trust the government.
Kolya Krassotkin , , January 10, 2019 at 10:23 am
For someone so smart Romney should realize that Americans will reject him (again), when he takes up the mantle of McCain (again) as quickly as they did the last time. But that he fails to realize that substance trumps form, which is why 67 million Americans voted for the President, demonstrates what a shallow narcisst and sociopath he is. I mean, it's okay to rob your neighbor so long as you say "please" and "thank you," isn't it?
Stephen J. , , January 10, 2019 at 11:31 am
The writer states: "Now Romney is being touted as the new standard-bearer for the bipartisan War Party, filling in for John McCain."

I believe The "War Party" are:
"The Maniacs of Militarism"

The maniacs of militarism are creating wars
Countries are bombed by warmongering whores
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other countries too
Are hell holes of the earth, "The work," of this insane crew

Enabled by politicians in positions of power
These well dressed war criminals hide and cower
The generals salute their political masters
Then the brainwashed obey these bemedaled disasters

Cities are destroyed and reduced to rubble
Where are the perpetrators that created all this trouble?
They are residing in luxury and given fancy titles
War crimes trials are needed, and are so vital

But this is not happening: the system is corrupted
And these evil beings, by some are worshiped
Blood-soaked villains that never do the fighting
They are the "experts" that do the inciting

They are the producers of death and destruction
Others are profiteers of all the bloody actions
Missiles, bombs and horrendous weapons
There is no end to the endless aggression

Millions are dead, and millions are homeless
Millions are refugees, and all this is atrocious
Once they had jobs, families, and homes as well
Then their countries were bombed by the agents from hell

Setting the world on fire is what these war arsonists do
The money for their depredations comes from me and you
They have made us all accessories to their criminal acts
Our Taxes are the blood money and that is a fact

Will the people ever say: "We have had enough"?
And put all these villains in secure handcuffs
Then lock them up in maximum security prisons
Then, we can say "goodbye" to the maniacs of militarism
[more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-maniacs-of-militarism.html
-- --
And:
"More War "

More war is needed to keep armies trained and employed
More wars are needed so that countries can be destroyed
More killing, bombing, destruction and death
More of this is needed until the victims have nothing left
[read more at link below]

https://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2017/08/more-war.html

prodigalson , , January 10, 2019 at 1:21 pm
Romney is such an empty suit i'm not sure if he isn't weakening his position just by virtue that, he Romney, supports it.

Does this guy inspire anyone to any emotion other than revulsion? Along with Hillary, they both strike me both as elites who want to become president, not from any actual passions or desires, but because they've run out of other things to add to their C.V.

The only thing I can say with certainty that Mitt Romney believes in, is Mitt Romney. So I'm intensely skeptical that ANYONE in America, aside from the most firebrand resistance types, are going to take anything coming out of this corporate drone's mouth with any seriousness. And even for the resistance types the support would equally follow a labrador retriever, just so long as it opposed Trump, so Mitt doesn't even have that thin thread of loyatly going for him.

I guess that leaves him with the neocons as BFFs. They're welcome to each other.

One Guy , , January 10, 2019 at 1:32 pm
Why are we ragging on Romney? Is it because he had the audacity to criticize Trump? Shouldn't we wait until he actually does something bad before ragging on him? Has he lied 6,000 times in the last few years, for example? Did he refuse to rake the forests?
Mike Clements , , January 10, 2019 at 2:54 pm
Such trashing of Romney becomes a real challenge for me.

I can't decide if it's the fevered imaginings or the straw man arguments that disappoint me the most.

Tim , , January 10, 2019 at 3:34 pm
I think Romney is simply miffed that the boorish Trump became president and he did not and sadly, he may be running for president again. I think someone used the word revulsion about Romney. I approve. It's ironic the boorish Trump isn't nearly as revolting as the urbane Mitt.
Jeeves , , January 10, 2019 at 4:09 pm
@Mike Clements
For me it's the straw man arguments that are most egregious. As an Arizonan, I knew John McCain, and Romney is no McCain (whose like we will never see again, if we're lucky).

Just to single out one objection to Mr. Bandow's argument: Romney didn't refer to the SOFA, which supposedly required Obama to abandon Iraq, for the very good reason that Leon Panetta, who should know, has said that Obama, with plenty of time to do it, made no effort whatsoever to re-negotiate the SOFA 2011 deadline. Panetta regrets this and so do I.

fabian , , January 10, 2019 at 4:34 pm
Romney is the epitome of the decay of the USA. Further, he shows the complete inability of the Republican party to choose the correct casting. After Bush and Iraq they propose McPain. After the Great Financial Crisis they propose Mittens. It's akin to cast Dany de Vito to play Casanova. When Trump is gone, this party is finished.
Kolya Krassotkin , , January 10, 2019 at 5:06 pm
I approve. It's ironic the boorish Trump isn't nearly as revolting as the urbane Mitt.

That Americans are revolted more by Romney than by Trump, in fact, speaks well for them. All morally mature folk should be repelled more by a polite, urbane, well-scrubbed pirate, who made his fortune destroying people's lives and wealth than by a loud-talking, crude womanizer, who creates wealth and, in fact, shows his concern for the people below him more than the polite, charming, well-bred pirate.

Bacon , , January 10, 2019 at 10:11 pm
As I understand it, Romney's saying we need more Middle East wars, more Wall Street bailouts, and more immigrants.

I think we already knew that Romney wants those things. It's why we don't want Romney.

Also, it's its unnecessary to counter Kagan's arguments. He's not taken seriously any more. Too many bad and wrong judgments about important things.

rta , , January 11, 2019 at 10:09 am
@Jeeves, Obama would have stayed in Iraq if the Iraqi's had allowed us to continue to kill with impunity. Thankfully, they said no. And why on earth would you regret us not negotiating a new SOFA?
kswc , , January 11, 2019 at 11:24 am
Mitt Romney is the Republican's answer to the Democrat's John Kerry.
WorkingClass , , January 11, 2019 at 5:06 pm
If Utah has a problem with Trump they could have elected a Democrat.

Romney is obsolete. Never Trump Republicans are sinking in a tar pit. Romney cannot be nominated much less elected even if Trump does not run. He can help with the impeachment of Trump if it comes to that. But again, a Democrat would be more useful.

[Jan 02, 2019] Viable Opposition How the U.S. Senate is Instigating a Hot War With Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Senate Resolution on December 19, 2019 which calls for "a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline ..."
"... Calling for a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. ..."
Jan 02, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com

Senator Ron Johnson (R- Wis) and Richard Durban (D-Ill) and 39 of their colleagues introduced a Senate Resolution on December 19, 2019 which calls for "a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline" as shown here :

Here is a list of co-sponsors of the resolution:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation; and Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), James Risch (R-Idaho), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), John Thune (R-S.D.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).
Here is the resolution (currently unnumbered) in its entirety:

Calling for a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

... ... ...

... ... ...

(9) applauds and concurs with the European 2 Parliament's December 12, 2018, resolution condemning Russian aggression in the Kerch Strait and
the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, calling for the pipeline's cancellation due to its threat to European energy security, and calling on the Russian Federation to
7 guarantee freedom of navigation in the Kerch Strait;

and

(10) urges the President to continue working with Congress and our allies to ensure the appropriate policies to deter the Russian Federation from further aggression.

Anonymous December 26, 2018 at 4:47 PM

Fortunately, these two neocons can make all the proclamations they want but without President Trump's support it's all just words; neocon virtue signalling. And of course President Trump won't support what they're doing because he campaigned on and governs as an anti-war president.

Ron Johnson is a Bushie neocon who actively supported the neocon ¡Jebe! (Please Clap) Bush while Durbin is a Hillary Clinton neocon who actively supported that drunken, corrupt, warmongering shrew.

Thank all that's holy that we have a genuine anti-war POTUS in office and not either of those two neocons, both of whom were utterly in the pockets of defense contractors.

Unknown January 1, 2019 at 10:02 PM

Thanks for your research on relevant naval law. The Ukrainian vessel is reported to have violated the ongoing protocol by failing to take on a Russian pilot as it transited the strait and an important bridge could potentially have been attacked by those vessels. This was a provocation by Ukraine that seems to have its desired effect on the U.S. Senate. For essential background on the Ukrainian civil war, I recommend reading Stephen F. Cohen's article in the Nation in 2014, titled "Kiev's atrocities and the Silence of the Hawks." https://www.thenation.com/article/kievs-atrocities-and-silence-hawks/

[Dec 29, 2018] After Syria, Trump Should Clean Out His National Security Bureaucracy by DOUG BANDOW

In any case this was a positive step by Trump. Which was done after several disastrous, typical neocon style actions.
Notable quotes:
"... Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of ..."
"... "Trump being Trump?" Seriously? He's proven through his actions and his appointments that he's a full-blown neocon ..."
"... If nothing else, appointing Bolton as national security advisor speaks volumes. Personnel is policy, as they say. ..."
"... Nothing to wonder at, war is the most lucrative racket going, for those who profit mightily from supplying weapons. It's become so important to an otherwise shrunken manufacturing base, that downsizing would affect employment, and there's nowhere domestic to absorb the overseas demobilized. ..."
"... Bolton is a national disgrace. This vile piece of trash is desperate to get the USA into a disastrous war with Iran. The quicker Bolton is removed the better. Any stooge who supported the Iraq invasion should be precluded from consideration. ..."
"... "Before we credit Trump with stumbling on something sensible for once, it might be wise to remember that we're still talking about -- Trump. Who now says that American troops still in Iraq can still raid into Syria as necessary, and by the way, they'll be staying in Iraq. So already it's shaping up as not so much a withdrawal as a reshuffling. After a minor adjustment to the game board, play can continue as necessary, such as whenever Bolton or Fox media whispers into the casino bankrupt's ear. Always always always a swindle, with Trump. It's an iron law." ..."
"... You do know that Trump wants to increase the military budget. Yet you maintain that he wanted to pull us out of foreign wars. Curious. Where would all that extra money go? ..."
"... Only an incompetent imbecile with no experience in leadership or government could be so dim-witted as to appoint people who would willfully defy and disregard his agenda. Surely our country would never put give such an incompetent so much authority. Oh wait sorry, never mind. ..."
"... I took his decision of withdrawal from Syria and seemingly from Afghanistan is his survival strategy for 2020 presidential election to appeal to war weariness American voters because Mr. Cohen's plea deal and the revelation of Trump signature on the license agreement for Moscow Trump Tower project would kill his 2020 chance. It is a good strategy but over the last two days his approval rating has not been improved." ..."
"... Those of us who want to see Bolton gone should first ask why he was chosen in the first place. Clearly Trump had to appease Adelson in order to make that appointment because he depends on his campaign donations. ..."
"... To those who say Trump has no foreign policy vision, you are wrong. His vision is simple, dismantle parts of the Empire, become a little more isolationist, and focus on 'America First'. Trump is not very intelligent, but he has the right instincts. He is up against the War Party, the most influential power center in the US, and that is not easy. Obama is more intelligent than Trump, but the results were very bad add one more destroyed country, Libya to his credit, and almost another, Syria (although thankfully the Russians stopped that). ..."
Dec 27, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

After Syria, Trump Should Clean Out His National Security Bureaucracy They're undermining his positions and pursuing their own agendas. John Bolton should be the first to go.

President Donald Trump has at last rediscovered his core foreign policy beliefs and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. Right on cue, official Washington had a collective mental breakdown. Neocons committed to war, progressives targeting Trump, and centrists determined to dominate the world unleashed an orgy of shrieking and caterwauling. The horrifying collective scream, a la artist Edvard Munch, continued for days.

Trump's decision should have surprised no one. As a candidate, he shocked the Republican Party establishment by criticizing George W. Bush's disastrous decision to invade Iraq and urging a quick exit from Afghanistan. As president, he inflamed the bipartisan War Party's fears by denouncing America's costly alliances with wealthy industrialized states. And to almost everyone's consternation, he said he wanted U.S. personnel out of Syria. Once the Islamic State was defeated, he explained, Americans should come home.

How shocking. How naïve. How outrageous.

The president's own appointees, the "adult" foreign policy advisors he surrounded himself with, disagreed with him on almost all of this -- not just micromanaging the Middle East, but subsidizing Europeans in NATO, underwriting South Korea, and negotiating with North Korea. His aides played him at every turn, adding allies, sending more men and materiel to defend foreign states, and expanding commitments in the Middle East.

https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-31/html/container.html

Last spring, the president talked of leaving Syria "very soon." But the American military stayed. Indeed, three months ago, National Security Advisor John Bolton announced an entirely new mission: "We're not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias."

That was chutzpah on a breathtaking scale. It meant effectively that the U.S. was entitled to invade and dismember nations, back aggressive wars begun by others, and scatter bases and deployments around the world. Since Damascus and Tehran have no reason to stop cooperating -- indeed, America's presence makes outside support even more important for the Assad regime -- Bolton was effectively planning a permanent presence, one that could bring American forces into contact with Russian, Syrian, and Turkish forces, as well as Iranians. As the Assad government consolidates its victory in the civil war, it inevitably will push into Kurdish territories in the north. That would have forced the small American garrison there to either yield ground or become a formal combatant in another Middle Eastern civil war.

The latter could have turned into a major confrontation. Damascus is backed by Russia and might be supported by Ankara, which would prefer to see the border controlled by Syrian than Kurdish forces. Moreover, the Kurds, under threat from Turkey, are not likely to divert forces to contain Iranians moving with the permission of the Damascus government. Better to cut a deal with Assad that minimizes the Turks than be Washington's catspaw.

The Pentagon initially appeared reluctant to accept this new objective. At the time, Brigadier General Scott Benedict told the House Armed Services Committee: "In Syria, our role is to defeat ISIS. That's it." However, the State Department envoy on Syria, Jim Jeffrey, began adding Iran to his sales pitch. So did Brian Hook, State's representative handling the undeclared diplomatic war on Iran, who said the goal was "to remove all forces under Iranian control from Syria."

Washington Melts Down Over Trump's Syria Withdrawal Mattis Marks the End of the Global War on Terror

Apparently this direct insubordination came to a head in a phone call between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "Why are you still there?" the latter asked Trump, who turned to Bolton. The national security advisor was on the call, but could offer no satisfactory explanation.

Perhaps at that moment, the president realized that only a direct order could enforce his policy. Otherwise his staffers would continue to pursue their militaristic ends. That determination apparently triggered the long-expected resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who deserves respect but was a charter member of the hawkish cabal around the president. He dissented from them only on ending the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Still in place is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who so far has proven to be a bit more malleable though still hostile to the president's agenda. He is an inveterate hawk, including toward Tehran, which he insists must surrender to both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as part of any negotiation. He's adopted the anti-Iran agenda in Syria as his own. His department offered no new approach to Russia over Ukraine, instead steadily increasing sanctions, without effect, on Moscow. At least Pompeo attempted to pursue discussions with North Korea, though he was certainly reluctant about it.

Most dangerous is Bolton. He publicly advocated war with both Iran and North Korea before his appointment, and his strategy in Syria risked conflict with several nations. He's demonstrated that he has no compunctions about defying the president, crafting policies that contradict the latter's directives. Indeed, Bolton is well-positioned to undermine even obvious successes, such as the peaceful opening with North Korea.

Supporting appointments to State and the National Security Council have been equally problematic. Candidate Trump criticized the bipartisan War Party, thereby appealing to heartland patriots who wonder why their relatives, friends, and neighbors have been dying in endless wars that have begotten nothing but more wars. Yet President Trump has surrounded himself with neocons, inveterate hawks, and ivory tower warriors. With virtually no aides around him who believe in his policies or were even willing to implement them, he looked like a George Bush/Barack Obama retread. The only certainty, beyond his stream of dramatic tweets, appeared to be that Americans would continue dying in wars throughout his presidency.

However, Trump took charge when he insisted on holding the summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Now U.S. forces are set to come home from Syria, and it appears that he may reduce or even eliminate the garrison in Afghanistan, where Americans have been fighting for more than 17 years. Perhaps he also will reconsider U.S. support for the Saudis and Emiratis in Yemen.

Trump should use Secretary Mattis's departure as an opportunity to refashion his national security team. Who is to succeed Mattis at the Pentagon? Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan appears to have the inside track. But former Navy secretary and senator Jim Webb deserves consideration. Or perhaps it's time for a second round for former senator Chuck Hagel, who opposed the Gulf war and backed dialog with Iran. Defense needs someone willing to challenge the Pentagon's thinking and practices. Best would be a civilian who won't be captured by the bureaucracy, one who understands that he or she faces a tough fight against advocates of perpetual war.

Next to go should be Bolton. There are many potential replacements who believe in a more restrained role for America. One who has been mentioned as a potential national security advisor in the past is retired Army colonel and respected security analyst Douglas Macgregor.

Equally important, though somewhat less urgent, is finding a new secretary of state. Although Pompeo has not so ostentatiously undermined his boss, he appears to oppose every effort by the president to end a war, drop a security commitment, or ease a conflict. Pompeo's enthusiasm for negotiation with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin is clearly lagging. While the secretary might not engage in open sabotage, his determination to take a confrontational approach everywhere except when explicitly ordered to do otherwise badly undermines Trump's policies.

Who to appoint? Perhaps Tennessee's John Duncan, the last Republican congressman who opposed the Iraq war and who retired this year after decades of patriotic service. There are a handful of active legislators who could serve with distinction as well, though their departures would be a significant loss on Capitol Hill: Senator Rand Paul and Representatives Justin Amash and Walter Jones, for instance.

Once the top officials have been replaced, the process should continue downwards. Those appointed don't need to be thoroughgoing Trumpists, of whom there are few. Rather, the president needs people generally supportive of his vision of a less embattled and entangled America: subordinates, not insubordinates. Then he will be less likely to find himself in embarrassing positions where his appointees create their own aggressive policies contrary to his expressed desires.

Trump has finally insisted on being Trump, but Syria must only be the start. He needs to fill his administration with allies, not adversaries. Only then will his "America First" policy actually put America first.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire .



Clyde Schechter , December 26, 2018 at 11:47 pm

After two years in office, I am utterly flabbergasted that there are still people out there who take seriously the notion that Trump wants to extricate us from our wars around the globe and refrain from starting new ones. Virtually every foreign policy decision he has made has been contrary to that.

Finally, for once, he decides to pull out of Syria (a mere few weeks after he announced we would stay there indefinitely) and somehow this one, as yet unimplemented decision represents "Trump being Trump?" Seriously? He's proven through his actions and his appointments that he's a full-blown neocon . Maybe I'll rescind the "full-blown" part of that judgment if he actually does withdraw from Syria. But it would still be a pretty tiny exception to his thoroughly neocon actions up to this point.

If nothing else, appointing Bolton as national security advisor speaks volumes. Personnel is policy, as they say. And you'd have have spent the last two decades in a coma living on another planet not to know that Bolton is the biggest warmonger around. He makes most of the neocons look like pacifists by comparison. Even the people who think Trump a complete idiot can't really imagine that Trump didn't know what he was getting when he hired Bolton.

Let's get real here. It'll be great if he withdraws from Syria. It'd be even better if he replaces his national security team along the lines suggested in this article. But don't hold your breath. It would go against nearly everything he has done since taking office.

It's time to come to grips with the non-existence of the tooth fairy.

Fran Macadam , , December 27, 2018 at 6:26 am

"heartland patriots who wonder why their relatives, friends, and neighbors have been dying in endless wars that have begotten nothing but more wars."

Nothing to wonder at, war is the most lucrative racket going, for those who profit mightily from supplying weapons. It's become so important to an otherwise shrunken manufacturing base, that downsizing would affect employment, and there's nowhere domestic to absorb the overseas demobilized.

The downside of this, therefore, is it may only be redirection and consolidation, to be able to concentrate forces on Iran instead. The budget's not getting any smaller, so there's got to be compensatory warmaking somewhere.

Trump got one right , , December 27, 2018 at 8:21 am

Bolton is a national disgrace. This vile piece of trash is desperate to get the USA into a disastrous war with Iran. The quicker Bolton is removed the better. Any stooge who supported the Iraq invasion should be precluded from consideration.

Mark Thomason , , December 27, 2018 at 9:35 am

"Yet President Trump has surrounded himself with neocons, inveterate hawks, and ivory tower warriors."

In fairness to Trump, there just was nobody else. He had nobody lined up to be an administration that believed what he did. Republicans were all hawks. Democrats wouldn't think of helping, and were also all hawks anyway.

Trump's first effort to break out of that with second or third-line people went bust with the likes of Gen. Flynn, and he was left with going back to the very people he'd defeated.

Fred Bowman , , December 27, 2018 at 9:43 am

At this point in time I don't think Trump will be able to win a second term, such is the chaos he's brought about to his Presidency. So that leaves to question which of the men you have suggested to help lead Trump to a less warlike America would choose to serve? Perhaps first, we need an "Adult" as POTUS and maybe then, we can get "men of wisdom" who can help America get out of it's "Military Misadventures" in the Middle East.

pax , , December 27, 2018 at 9:57 am

There is no problem replacing someone who should never have been tapped in the first place. John Bolton. Never too soon to right a wrong. Get rid of neocon Bolton and his types now. Not later. He marches to another drummer not to USA interests. I doubt Trump can even beat Kamila Harris (darling of the illiberal left) in 2020 if he keeps Bolton and Co. around.

Steve Naidamast , , December 27, 2018 at 10:52 am

I wouldn't get overly excited about this. Trump has habitually initiated all levels of chaos throughout his incompetent administration. This is nothing new but more of the same. If anyone believes Trump actually found his brain, they are smoking something

CLW , , December 27, 2018 at 12:19 pm

What a joke. Trump has no "foreign policy vision," just a series of boisterous, bellicose talking points that to his isolationist base and his own desire to be the strongman.

Kurt Gayle , , December 27, 2018 at 12:48 pm

sglover says (Dec 27, 12:12 am):

"Before we credit Trump with stumbling on something sensible for once, it might be wise to remember that we're still talking about -- Trump. Who now says that American troops still in Iraq can still raid into Syria as necessary, and by the way, they'll be staying in Iraq. So already it's shaping up as not so much a withdrawal as a reshuffling. After a minor adjustment to the game board, play can continue as necessary, such as whenever Bolton or Fox media whispers into the casino bankrupt's ear. Always always always a swindle, with Trump. It's an iron law."

However, just 6 days ago sglover said on another thread ("Washington Melts Down Over Trump's Syria Withdrawal" -- Dec 21, 3:26 pm):

"I despise Trump, but if he's managed to stumble on doing something sensible, and actually does it (never a certainty with the casino swindler) -- great! There's no sane reason for us to muck about in Syria. However it comes about, we should welcome a withdrawal there. If the move gives Trump some of the approval that he plainly craves, maybe he'll repeat the performance and end our purposeless wallow in Afghanistan. It doesn't say anything good about the nominal opposition party, the Dems, that half or more of them -- and apparently *all* of their dinosaur 'leadership' -- can't stifle the kneejerking and let him do it. Of course many of them are "troubled" because their Israeli & Saudi owners, er, 'donors' expect it. But some of them seem to have developed a sudden deep attachment to 'our mission in Syria' for no better reason than, Trump is for it, therefore I must shout against it. And then, of course, there's the Russia hysteria. Oh yeah, what a huge win for Moscow if it scores the 'prize' of occupying Syria! If that's Putin's idea of a big score, how exactly does it harm any American to let him have it? I wonder if the Democratic Party will ever be capable of doing anything other than snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?"

FL Transplant , , December 27, 2018 at 1:24 pm

The problem with they article begins with it's first sentence "President Donald Trump has at last rediscovered his core foreign policy beliefs " I can't find any core foreign policy beliefs. What I have seen is a mosh-mosh of sound bites that resound well with his audiences at rallies, and various people attempt to link those together and fill in the white space between with what they WANT his foreign policy beliefs to be. But to go so far as to say he has any consistent beliefs that combine to form a foreign policy is going way too far.

DeusIrae , , December 27, 2018 at 1:47 pm

Replace Bolton with Mike Flynn after all charges are dropped against him. Then have Robert Mueller et al. arrested to be tried and put to death for High Treason. Then liberate Britain, Bomb the Vatican, and put a naval blockade on China.

Bruceb , , December 27, 2018 at 2:21 pm

You do know that Trump wants to increase the military budget. Yet you maintain that he wanted to pull us out of foreign wars. Curious. Where would all that extra money go? I'd look for it at the top of Trump Tower. Certainly not in the pockets of ordinary citizens.

Shawn F , , December 27, 2018 at 3:08 pm

Hmm This article makes it seem like there's these renegades who have somehow held onto power and are charting America's course on their own. But doesn't the President hand pick the members of his cabinet? Wasn't every single one of them given their authority *by Donald Trump*?

Only an incompetent imbecile with no experience in leadership or government could be so dim-witted as to appoint people who would willfully defy and disregard his agenda. Surely our country would never put give such an incompetent so much authority. Oh wait sorry, never mind.

Jeeves , , December 27, 2018 at 3:13 pm

We have a "peaceful opening" with North Korea? How many months ago did Mr. Bandow last read about the NoKos counter-proposal to unconditional nuclear disarmament? And what about all the Trump saber-rattling that preceded this so-called opening? If Trump was "played" by his own advisers on Afghanistan, he was equally duped by the mirage offered by Kim.

WRW , , December 27, 2018 at 3:22 pm

Trump had no lofty notions underpinning this decision. He did it in an impetuous, chaotic manner in which he obtained nothing in return from Russia or Turkey or Iran to address our broader strategic interest in the region, such as ending the war in Yemen. Like everything he does, it reeks of corruption and no doubt will be added to Muellers investigation.

Contrary to Bandows libertarian take, it is an expression of Trumps imperial presidency. The Syrian involvement has strong bipartisan support even if lacking a resolution in support (and the Libertarian Sen. Paul never got anywhere with a resolution against.) Leaving Syria was the correct long term strategic decision.

I'm sure 99% of democrats in Congress supported the action. Only trump, with his narcissistic incompetence could take an action that his opponents would overwhelmingly support if done in a credible manner and turn it into controversy. Trump looks like the servant of Russians and Turks in his conduct. Jan 2021 can't come soon enough.

The Other Sands , , December 27, 2018 at 4:32 pm

I find it interesting that so many people (the author apparently included) are still so slow to understand that Trump can't afford to get rid of people, because he literally can't find new cabinet members.

He started with mostly C-listers, and most of them are gone. He is on to hiring TV hosts, bloggers, professional political grifters, his family, or just being stuck with straight-up vacant posts.

Only the worst sorts would voluntarily work for such an angry, undisciplined, chaotic boss in the smoking shambles of an organization like this administration.

You just go ahead and ask Chuck Hagel if he would join this train wreck.

Hideo Watanabe , , December 27, 2018 at 9:19 pm

I blogged on December 22 when I read a similar article like this;

"Every time I read such article as this about Mr. Trump's decisions of any sort, I always wonder if the authors believe that he has solid political philosophy or consolidated policy agenda.

I took his decision of withdrawal from Syria and seemingly from Afghanistan is his survival strategy for 2020 presidential election to appeal to war weariness American voters because Mr. Cohen's plea deal and the revelation of Trump signature on the license agreement for Moscow Trump Tower project would kill his 2020 chance. It is a good strategy but over the last two days his approval rating has not been improved."

Mr. Trump seems to have delivered a speech in Iraq saying that the withdrawal from Syria would not give any adverse effect on Israel security because the US government gives more than $45 billion every year according to a local newspaper of Middle East.

This is another tactic to appeal to AIPAC to make sure his own security for 2020 candidacy, isn't it?

usmc0846 , , December 27, 2018 at 9:52 pm

First 2000 troops is not much more than a reinforced battalion the USMC shuffles that many warriors and more around the Mediterranean every six months. I think the issue with Trump is, as it's always been, his gut seat of his pants way of handling virtually everything he does. There's no control or consideration apparent in any action other than to pitch chum at his largely illiterate followers.

In this case he's handed a huge victory to Putin (my my what a surprise that is) and essentially screwed the Kurds. If nothing else those 2000 troops were at least keeping a cap on things to some small degree. That's out the door now and I can't help but think that ISIS (aka the enemy here) will have a vote on what happens next.

Trump Voter , , December 27, 2018 at 10:43 pm

"President Donald Trump has at last rediscovered his core foreign policy beliefs and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. "

Too hopeful, at this point, I think. But I hope so, too.

Cloak And Dagger , , December 27, 2018 at 11:27 pm

Those of us who want to see Bolton gone should first ask why he was chosen in the first place. Clearly Trump had to appease Adelson in order to make that appointment because he depends on his campaign donations. What makes anyone think that the situation has changed in such a way as to permit Trump more autonomy in his choice of his cabinet?

NEexpert , , December 28, 2018 at 1:54 am

"Or perhaps it's time for a second round for former senator Chuck Hagel, who opposed the Gulf war and backed dialog with Iran."

I think it is an excellent idea to bring back Senator Hagel. He is a man of integrity. But most importantly, he hasn't sold out his soul to Israel.

SteveK9 , , December 28, 2018 at 12:00 pm

To those who say Trump has no foreign policy vision, you are wrong. His vision is simple, dismantle parts of the Empire, become a little more isolationist, and focus on 'America First'. Trump is not very intelligent, but he has the right instincts. He is up against the War Party, the most influential power center in the US, and that is not easy. Obama is more intelligent than Trump, but the results were very bad add one more destroyed country, Libya to his credit, and almost another, Syria (although thankfully the Russians stopped that).

What is mysterious is the following from the article:

'Yet President Trump has surrounded himself with neocons, inveterate hawks, and ivory tower warriors. With virtually no aides around him who believe in his policies or were even willing to implement them, he looked like a George Bush/Barack Obama retread.'

Why he does this, I don't know.

Pulling out of Syria will be a good thing for everyone. The reason is largely nonsense, as it was Russia/Syria that destroyed Isis (we did manage to destroy another city, Raqqa), but I don't care, and neither will the American Public, who understand nothing of Syria.

The Kurds will make an arrangement for limited autonomy with Damascus (already happening as they just asked for protection from Turkey in Manbij). Turkey will not invade Syria as long as they feel Damascus can control the border. Syria, Russia, and maybe even the Kurds will wipe out the last of Isis and those militants in Idlib that would rather die than give up the fight (the fanatics), will be killed.

Then, the reconstruction of Syria can begin in earnest, and it is to be hoped that the Chinese will get off their butt and provide some assistance.

Israel is probably unhappy, which pleases me no end, and I hope this is an indication that there is some limit to the number of people we are willing to murder on their behalf.

Guy St Hilaire , , December 28, 2018 at 2:55 pm

@ NEexpert.Integrity is a quality severely lacking in many politicians in the US.Not being American , but watching closely, if Senator hagel is such a man , it would do American politics much good ,not only for the US but the US standing in the world .Gods speed in chnaging the likes of Bolton and Pompeo to begin with.

sglover , , December 28, 2018 at 5:03 pm

@ Kurt Gayle -- I don't think you'll find any contradiction between my two remarks.

All I'm saying is that in all the ways that really matter the sudden "withdrawal" from Syria is already shaping up to be a typical Trump bait-and-switch. Sure, troops won't be bivouacing in Syria. Instead, they'll be stationed next door in Iraq, so they can continue to muck around in Syria. And Trump emphasized that as far as he's concerned we'll be staying in Iraq.

(Of course, that "strategic doctrine" is only valid until his next Fox media wallow in front of the idiot box. I.e., maybe until tomorrow afternoon)

[Dec 10, 2018] The American Melting Pot Can Turn Into A Volatile Mixture At The Top by Wayne Madsen

Melania slap of Bolton face might be a good sobering measure. But neocons can't probably recover from their addition
Notable quotes:
"... Ricardel is a longtime friend and associate of national security adviser John Bolton, who brought her into the National Security Council from the Department of Commerce, where she served as Undersecretary for Export Administration. Ricardel reportedly angered Ms. Trump over seating arrangements on a flight by Ms. Trump to Africa two weeks ago. Ricardel, who was to accompany the First Lady, did not make the trip. Ms. Trump, in an interview conducted with ABC News during the trip, said there were people in the White House she did not trust. Apparently, Ricardel was one of them. ..."
"... Perhaps no one in recent memory brought such a degree of ethnic baggage to her job like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright's Czech roots and the Yugoslav warrant issued for the arrest of her professor-diplomat father, Joseph Korbel, for the post-World War II theft of art from Prague, brought forth extreme anti-Serbian policies by the woman who would represent the United States at the United Nations and then serve as America's chief diplomat. Albright's hatred for Serbia was not much different than Zbigniew Brzezinski's Polish heritage evoking an almost-pathological hatred of Russia, while he served as Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser. ..."
"... In 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed Valdas Adamkus as the regional administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for the Mid-West states. Retiring from the US government after 29 years of service, Adamkus was elected to two terms as President of Lithuania. ..."
"... One might ask whether Ilves and Adamkus were kept on the US government payroll merely to support them until they could return to their countries in top leadership positions to help lead the Baltic nations into NATO membership. ..."
"... From 1993 to 1997, Army General John Shalikashvili served as Chairman of the Joint Chefs of Staff. Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Georgian and Polish mother. During World War II, his father served in the Georgian Legion, a special unit incorporated into the Nazi German "SS-Waffengruppe Georgien." General Shalikashvili served as commander of all US military forces during a time of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. It was no surprise that he was an avid cheerleader for NATO's expansion to the East. ..."
Nov 25, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

America has always fancied itself as a "melting pot" of ethnicities and religions that form a perfect union. The Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum, "out of many, one," is even found on the Great Seal of the United States.

However, as seen in a recent blow-up between First Lady Melania Trump and now-former Deputy National Security Adviser Mira Ricardel, old feuds from beyond the borders of the United States can result in major rifts at the highest echelons of the US government.

On November 13, Ms. Trump's communications director, Stephanie Grisham, fired off a tweet that read: "it is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she [Ricardel] no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House." The White House announced Ricardel's departure the next day, November 14.

Ricardel is a longtime friend and associate of national security adviser John Bolton, who brought her into the National Security Council from the Department of Commerce, where she served as Undersecretary for Export Administration. Ricardel reportedly angered Ms. Trump over seating arrangements on a flight by Ms. Trump to Africa two weeks ago. Ricardel, who was to accompany the First Lady, did not make the trip. Ms. Trump, in an interview conducted with ABC News during the trip, said there were people in the White House she did not trust. Apparently, Ricardel was one of them.

The bitter feud between Melania Trump and Mira Ricardel likely has its roots in their backgrounds in the former Yugoslavia. Ricardel was born Mira P. Radielović, the daughter of Peter Radielovich, a native of Breza, Bosnia-Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia. Ricardel speaks fluent Croatian and was a member of the Croatian Catholic Church. Melania Trump was born Melanija Knavs [pronounced Knaus] in Novo Mesto in Slovenia, also in the former Yugoslavia. Villagers in the village of Sevnica, where Ms. Trump was raised, claim she and her Communist Party parents were officially atheists. Ms. Trump later converted to Roman Catholicism. She and her son by Mr. Trump, Barron Trump, speak fluent Slovenian. The Yugoslav Civil War, which began in earnest in 1991, pitted the nation's ethnic groups against one another. There are ample reasons, political, ethnic, and religious, for bad blood between the Slovenian-born First Lady and a first-generation Croatian-American. The "battle royale" between Ms. Trump and Ricardel is but one example of a constant problem in the United States when individuals with foreign ties bring age-old inter-ethnic and inter-religious squabbles to governance.

Perhaps no one in recent memory brought such a degree of ethnic baggage to her job like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright's Czech roots and the Yugoslav warrant issued for the arrest of her professor-diplomat father, Joseph Korbel, for the post-World War II theft of art from Prague, brought forth extreme anti-Serbian policies by the woman who would represent the United States at the United Nations and then serve as America's chief diplomat. Albright's hatred for Serbia was not much different than Zbigniew Brzezinski's Polish heritage evoking an almost-pathological hatred of Russia, while he served as Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser.

Albright's bias against Serbia saw her influence US policy in casting a blind eye toward the terrorism carried out by the Kosovo Liberation Army and its terrorist leader Hashim Thaci. That policy resulted in Washington backing an independent Kosovo, a state beholden to organized criminal syndicates protected by one of the largest US military bases in Europe, Camp Bondsteel.

Ties by US foreign policy officials to their countries of origin continued to plagued administrations after Carter. For example, Kateryna Chumachenko served in the Reagan White House and State and Treasury Departments and later worked for KPMG as "Katherine" Chumachenko. She also worked in the White House Public Liaison Office, where she conducted outreach to various right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States, including the Friends of Afghanistan, on whose board Afghan refugee and later George W. Bush pro-consul in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, sat. Khalilzad, like Chumachenko, worked in the Reagan State Department. Chumachenko was married to Ukrainian "Orange Revolution" President Viktor Yushchenko, and, thusly, became the First Lady of Ukraine. Khalilzad became the Bush 43 ambassador to the UN, where he often was at loggerheads with Iran, Libya, Syria, and other Muslim states. As was the case with Albright and her anti-Serb underpinnings, it was difficult to ascertain whose agenda Khalilzad was serving.

After being fired from the White House, there were reports that Ricardel was offered the post of ambassador to Estonia. That Baltic country was no stranger to hauling foreign baggage into the US government. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a bow-tie wearing former Estonian language broadcaster for the Central Intelligence Agency-funded Radio Free Europe ; long time resident of Leonia, New Jersey; could have just as easily ended up in a senior State Department position rather than President of Estonia. Such is the nature of divided loyalties among senior US government officials of both major political parties.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed Valdas Adamkus as the regional administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for the Mid-West states. Retiring from the US government after 29 years of service, Adamkus was elected to two terms as President of Lithuania.

One might ask whether Ilves and Adamkus were kept on the US government payroll merely to support them until they could return to their countries in top leadership positions to help lead the Baltic nations into NATO membership.

From 1993 to 1997, Army General John Shalikashvili served as Chairman of the Joint Chefs of Staff. Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw, Poland to a Georgian and Polish mother. During World War II, his father served in the Georgian Legion, a special unit incorporated into the Nazi German "SS-Waffengruppe Georgien." General Shalikashvili served as commander of all US military forces during a time of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. It was no surprise that he was an avid cheerleader for NATO's expansion to the East.

Natalie Jaresko served in positions with the State Department, the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, the US Trade Representative, and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). In 2014, she became the Finance Minister for Ukraine. Earlier, she served as a financial adviser to Yushchenko. The United States is not the only "melting pot" in North America that suffers from officials burdened by ethnic dual loyalties. Halyna Chomiak, the Ukrainian-born émigré mother of Canada's Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, weighs heavily on Freeland's ability to advance Canada's interests over those of the nation of her mother's birth.

Trump's entire White House Middle East police team is composed of individuals who place Israel's interests ahead of the United States. Trump takes his Middle East advice from principally his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a contributor to and member of the board of the "Friends of the IDF," an American non-profit that raises funds for the Israeli armed forces. Kushner was named by Trump as a "special envoy" to the Middle East, while Jason Greenblatt, a former attorney with the Trump Organization, was named as special envoy in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Although the two positions appear to overlap, Kushner and Greenblatt, both Orthodox Jews who have little time for Palestinians, are on the same page when it comes to advancing the West Bank land grabbing policies of the Binyamin Netanyahu government in Israel. Trump thoroughly Zionized his administration's Middle East policy with the appointment of another Israel supporter, David M. Friedman, as US ambassador to Israel. Friedman had been a bankruptcy lawyer with the Trump Organization's primary law firm, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman.

Trump has nominated as US ambassador to South Africa, handbag designer Lana Marks, who was born in South Africa. Marks, who is known only to Trump from her membership in his Mar-a-Lago, Florida "billionaires club," left South Africa in 1975, when the country was under the apartheid regime. Marks claims to speak Afrikaans, the language preferred by the apartheid regime, and Xhosa, the ethnic language of the late President Nelson Mandela. Because Marks embellished her professional tennis career by claiming, without proof, participation in the French Open and Wimbledon in the 1970s, her mastery of Xhosa can be taken with a grain of salt. So, too, can her ability to deal with the current African National Congress government led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who had just been released from prison when Marks left the country in 1975. The claims and politics of Marks and every official and would-be US official who failed to shed their biases from their native and ancestral homelands, can all be taken with a metric ton of salt.

Melting pots are fine, so long as they truly blend together. However, that is not the situation in the United States as high government officials have difficulty in consigning the bigotry inherent in family folklore and beliefs to the family scrapbooks.

[Dec 05, 2018] What Foreign Threats by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... This shtick of blaming US state crimes on foreign influence is getting annoying. You know none of this would be happening if the DO didn't like it. If you want to stop CIA's common plan or conspiracy for war, you've got to end the impunity that permits it. Ratify the Rome Statute. With the judiciary completely gelded, that's the only way to get the CIA regime under control. It's that or DCI Poppy Hager swings at Nuremberg II. ..."
"... Nuland admitted to spending $5 billion to set Maidan up. That $5B is worth 10 times that much in Ukraine. You don't spend that kind of money unless you have a follow up plan, and NATOizing Ukraine to attack Russia was it. The trigger was NATO's bitch, the EU, creating such a horrible deal for Ukraine that only an imbecile would have accepted it. Viktor Yanukovych was no imbecile. The "Russian deal" wasn't all that great for Ukraine either, it was just infinitely better than the turd the EU told Yanukovych to sign. ..."
Dec 05, 2018 | www.unz.com

One of the local Washington television stations was doing a typical early morning honoring our soldiers schtick just before Thanksgiving. In it soldiers stationed far from home were treated to videolinks so they could talk to their families and everyone could nod happily and wish themselves a wonderful holiday. Not really listening, I became interested when I half heard that the soldier being interviewed was spending his Thanksgiving in Ukraine.

It occurred to me that the soldier just might have committed a security faux pas by revealing where he was, but I also recalled that there have been joint military maneuvers as well as some kind of training mission going on in the country, teaching the Ukrainian Army how to use the shiny new sophisticated weapons that the United States was providing it with to defend against "Russian aggression."

Ukraine is only one part of the world where the Trump Administration has expanded the mission of democracy promotion, only in Kiev the reality is more like faux democracy promotion since Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is clearly exploiting a situation that he himself provoked . He envisions setting himself up as a victim of Moscow to aid in his attempts to establish his own power through a security relationship with Washington. That in turn will help his bid for reelection in March 2019 elections, in which his poll numbers are currently running embarrassingly low largely due to the widescale corruption in his government. Poroshenko has already done much to silence the press in his county while the developing crisis with Russia has enabled him to declare martial law in the eastern parts of the country where he is most poorly regarded. If it all works out, he hopes to win the election and subsequently, it is widely believed, he will move to expand his own executive authority.

There also has to be some consideration the encounter with the Russians on the Kerch Strait was contrived by Poroshenko with the assistance of a gaggle of American neoconservative and Israeli advisers who have been actively engaged with the Ukrainian government for the past several years. The timing was good for Poroshenko for his own domestic political reasons but it was also an opportunity for the neocons warmongers that surround Trump and proliferate inside the Beltway to scuttle any possible meeting between a vulnerable Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the G20 gathering in Argentina.

The defection of Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, together with the assumption that a lot of anti-Trump dirt will be spilled soon, means that the American president had to be even more cautious than ever in any dealings with Moscow and all he needed was a nod of approval from National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to cancel the encounter. A heads-of-state meeting might not have solved anything but it certainly would be better than the current drift towards a new cold war. If the United States has only one vitally important relationship anywhere it is with Russia as the two countries are ready, able and apparently willing to destroy the world under the aegis of self-defense.

Given the anti-Russian hysteria prevailing in the U.S. and the ability of the neocons to switch on the media, it should come as no surprise that the Russian-Ukrainian incident immediately generated calls from the press and politicians for the White House to get tough with the Kremlin. It is important to note that the United States has no actual national interest in getting involved in a war between Russia and Ukraine if that should come about. The two Eastern European countries are neighbors and have a long history of both friendship and hostility but the only thing clear about the conflict is that it is up to them to sort things out and no amount of sanctions and jawing by concerned congressmen will change that fact.

Other Eastern European nations that similarly have problems with Russia should also be considered provocateurs as they seek to create tension to bind the United States more closely to them through the NATO alliance. The reality is that today's Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union and it neither aspires to nor can afford hegemony over its former allies. What it has made very clear that it does want is a modus vivendi where Russia itself is not being threatened by the West.

Recent military maneuvers in Poland and Lithuania and the stationing of new missiles in Eastern Europe do indeed pose a genuine threat to Moscow as it places NATO forces on top of Russia's border. When Russia reacts to incursions by NATO warships and planes right along its borders, it is accused of acting aggressively. One wonders how the U.S. government would respond if a Russian aircraft carrier were to take up position off the eastern seaboard and were to begin staging reconnaissance flights. Or if the Russian army were to begin military exercises with the Cubans? Does anyone today remember the Bay of Pigs?


renfro , says: December 4, 2018 at 5:53 am GMT

The only foreign threats we have come from the various psychos in the think tanks and special interest lobbies in the US.

As Jean-Jules Jusserand, the French ambassador to the United States
from once said of the US : .

"On the north, she has a weak neighbor; on the south, another weak neighbor; on the east, fish, and on the west, more fish.'

Justsaying , says: December 4, 2018 at 6:01 am GMT
Crying wolf provides a perfect pretext for the Empire's MIC to line the pockets of the merchants of death. In keeping with its time-honored tradition of propping up tyrants kowtowing to imperial hegemonic wishes, America hardly has friends without some military collaboration. Even the recently anointed sh*thole countries of Africa over 50 such countries have American military cooperation agreements under the guise of the infamous AFRICOM and the War on Terror. The number of military bases in sh*thole African countries remain unknown.

..the ability of the neocons to switch on the media

Hard to distinguish between the two really. The "free press" of WMD notoriety, Ghaddafi's "genocidal drive" against Libyan citizens, Iraq's involvement with 9/11? Iranian arms in Yemen that have not massacred children in school buses? Iranian fabricated nuclear weapons? Syrian chemical attacks?

The biggest threats to America come from its "friends"

America is being unwittingly exonerated as an innocent bystander unable to choose her own friends. It so happens America's "friends" share the common trait of pushing for war. In countries awash in petrodollars, purchasing billions of dollars in arms used in Yemen to murder children; Zionists are gifted with American state of the art arsenals to murder Palestinians, including women and children. The biggest threat to America comes from inside the deep state itself, especially with the Zionist Israel Firsters pulling strings at will.

anon [355] Disclaimer , says: December 4, 2018 at 6:43 am GMT
America's all time #1 phony "friend". -- -Israel.

With a "friend" like Israel, America doesn't need any enemies.

Ludwig Watzal , says: Website December 4, 2018 at 8:30 am GMT
I agree with Phil Giraldi on its analysis of US foreign policy. When lying with dogs, you get fleas. This saying holds especially true for the so-called US friends such as the Saudis, Israelis, Ukrainians, Poles, and the Brits. The NeoZion gang plays President Trump is an open secret. He still employes one of its guiding spirits as national security adviser. As long this Gordian knot is not cut, American foreign policy will not change, and it's getting worse. These folks who surround Trump want war, first with Iran and then with Russia. Their lackey Poroshenko is doing the bitting of Trump and the Zionist regime and their European puppets. The Zionist regime is deeply involved in steering up tensions. Prime minister Wolodymyr Hrojsman is Jewish. Is anyone surprised?
Art , says: December 4, 2018 at 8:33 am GMT
What chance does peace have with these people having Trump's ear: Javanka Kushner, Gina Haspel, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Mad Dog Mattis, and John Bolton?

Doesn't look good does it!

Think Peace -- Art

jilles dykstra , says: December 4, 2018 at 8:41 am GMT
Around 1890 one Rothschild wrote to another 'the only enemy of jews is jews'.

In my opinion at present the only enemy of the USA is the USA, that part of the USA that failed in getting Hillary elected.

On the European continent a similar situation, even an establishment Dutch politician, of a christian party, Segers, found out that a substantial part of the Dutch see the government as the enemy.

He has the illusion that pr can save him, and his cronies.

anon [121] Disclaimer , says: December 4, 2018 at 10:24 am GMT
"I am not sure that he ever understood "

He never understood. That was evident the moment he started floating names like Romney for his cabinet. Personally, I sympathize with Trump after what the deep state has done to him and his family, and I even respect the guy for telling things like they are – the poor autistic bastard just can't help but blurt out the truth about things* but he's also not the guy we needed. We needed a fearless, ruthless, and cunning fighter ready to martyr himself for our interests, the people's interests.

*Global Warming IS a scam – the Paris Accords would not decrease CO2 levels even under perfect – near miraculous – circumstances and is merely being floated by the Chinese so they can give off the appearance of doing something while doing nothing, as they have done before.

RVBlake , says: December 4, 2018 at 10:50 am GMT
I am left wondering again, what's so bad about isolationism?
james charles , says: December 4, 2018 at 11:08 am GMT
@jilles dykstra 'One of many truths lost within this discourse is the reality that the creation of a no-fly zone would, in the words of the most senior general in the US Armed Forces, mean the US going to war "against Syria and Russia". '

https://mronline.org/2016/12/13/allday131216-html/

During the election campaign H.R.C., three times, {stupidly?} threatened to impose a 'no fly zone' in Syria – confronting a nuclear armed country.

anonymous [340] Disclaimer , says: December 4, 2018 at 11:41 am GMT
For a peek into Establishment orthodoxy, check out "Why Does America Spend So Much on Israel?" on Beltway Conservatism's Cartoon Network, aka the PragerU Channel. I've recently started auditing classes there via the Videos page here at The Unz Review.

Beyond parody, a pensioned warrior narrates over 3rd grade graphics, telling most Americans all they care to know about what he calls "Izrul." Perhaps Mr. Giraldi could, despite the apparent taboo, leave a comment and get some discussion going with the Team Red NPCs -- it hasn't worked for me.

Moi , says: December 4, 2018 at 1:53 pm GMT
@Art I've wondered why we are the way we are. Then I came across this, and I understood:

D.H. Lawrence

"All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."

Moi , says: December 4, 2018 at 1:56 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra We failed the moment the "pilgrims" seeking freedom started slaughtering the native peoples.
Minidrop , says: December 4, 2018 at 2:29 pm GMT
This shtick of blaming US state crimes on foreign influence is getting annoying. You know none of this would be happening if the DO didn't like it. If you want to stop CIA's common plan or conspiracy for war, you've got to end the impunity that permits it. Ratify the Rome Statute. With the judiciary completely gelded, that's the only way to get the CIA regime under control. It's that or DCI Poppy Hager swings at Nuremberg II.
wayfarer , says: December 4, 2018 at 2:49 pm GMT
@Moi

"All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence

"You the one who killed our friend?"

DESERT FOX , says: December 4, 2018 at 3:14 pm GMT
The leading sponsors of terror in the world are Israel and the Zionist controlled U.S. and Britain and NATO and their terrorist mercenaries ISIS aka AL CIADA and all of the various off shoots that have been seeded throughout the world by the satanic Zionists.

The Zionists have a long historical experience with bringing terror to the world , one example being the Zionist/ Bolshevik revolution in Russia where the Bolsheviks killed some 60 million Russians bringing terror to Russia on an industrial level turning the whole country into a slaughter house!

The Zionist attack on the WTC is but another example of Zionist terrorism, where in one fell swoop the Zionists killed some 3000 Americans and got away with it and every thinking American knows that the Zionists did it!

The greatest terrorist kabal in the world is Zionism and these terrorists have control of every facet of the U.S. government and at some point are going to provoke a war with Russia that will get the whole world blown to hell and in fact this is what the Zionists want as they believe they will survive in their DUMBS akd Deep Underground Military Bases which they have in the U.S. and Israel and Britain, but they care not for the rest of humanity, that is terrorism in spades!

The enemy is not at the gates , the enemy is in control of the U.S. government and is going to be the destruction of America!

Curmudgeon , says: December 4, 2018 at 3:22 pm GMT
You can't really pin Ukraine on Trump. Maidan was not spontaneous.

Nuland admitted to spending $5 billion to set Maidan up. That $5B is worth 10 times that much in Ukraine. You don't spend that kind of money unless you have a follow up plan, and NATOizing Ukraine to attack Russia was it. The trigger was NATO's bitch, the EU, creating such a horrible deal for Ukraine that only an imbecile would have accepted it. Viktor Yanukovych was no imbecile. The "Russian deal" wasn't all that great for Ukraine either, it was just infinitely better than the turd the EU told Yanukovych to sign.

The real story on Russia is this: the same people that own every "Western liberal democracy" owned the USSR. The Russians got rid of them, and the USSR collapsed. A new invasion was hatched under the guise of "Westernizing" Russia. When the Russians saw that Yeltsin was suckered, and it was the same game, run by the same people, they got a new sheriff. That sheriff started to sort things out, while the owners fled to the UK and Israel. The lives of Russians got better, as the owners are gradually being stripped of their power. The long and short of it, our owners want their ownership of Russia restored.

All wars are economic wars. Capitalism and communism are the two sides of the same coin. Both seek to concentrate ownership, just in different ways using different scams.

wayfarer , says: December 4, 2018 at 3:39 pm GMT

"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

"Dangerous Tribalism of the Ruling Class"

Z-man , says: December 4, 2018 at 4:17 pm GMT
@Justsaying

The biggest threat to America comes from inside the deep state itself, especially with the Zionist Israel Firsters pulling strings at will.

Bears repeating.

Z-man , says: December 4, 2018 at 4:21 pm GMT
@Art I'd have to give 'Slurpy Dog' Mattis a pass on that list. I think (hope) he is aware of the pernicious power of the Cabal .
Anonymous [295] Disclaimer , says: December 4, 2018 at 6:31 pm GMT
The reason why Trump supports the Ukraine is easy.

"According to the European Jewish Congress, as of 2014, there are 360,000–400,000 Jews in Ukraine."

And there you have it. Wherever or whatever the interest of Jewry there will be the United States standing tall behind it. Let's just say the Ukraine is guaranteed to stay poor. While the Jews get rich!

CanSpeccy , says: Website December 4, 2018 at 6:33 pm GMT

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is clearly exploiting a situation that he himself provoked. He envisions setting himself up as a victim of Moscow to aid in his attempts to establish his own power through a security relationship with Washington. That in turn will help his bid for reelection in March 2019 elections

Nah, Porky needs a war to avoid an election which he would undoubtedly lose.

JLK , says: December 4, 2018 at 6:41 pm GMT
There's no use having an empire if you can't exact an economic advantage. Ultimately, most of the events unfolding today are about keeping the loot flowing to lower Manhattan and central London.
EugeneGur , says: December 4, 2018 at 6:42 pm GMT

Teenagers who get in trouble often have to ditch their bad friends to turn their lives around. There is still a chance for the United States if we keep our distance from the bad friends

It's hard to do if you are in fact the worst of those bad friends.

friends who have been convincing us to make poor choices.

The poor choices had been made long before these friends even appeared on the scene. In fact, many of these friends owe their very existence and/or influence to the poor choices the US had made. It's so disingenuous to blame the US politics on someone's influence when the reality is exactly the opposite.

If the US were in normal country prepared to behave in a sensible way it would've picked much better partners. But the thing is the US isn't a normal country; it doesn't want partners – in wants vassals, so it is naturally limited in its choice of friends.

Agent76 , says: December 4, 2018 at 6:47 pm GMT
September 17, 2014 US Pursues 134 Wars Around the World

The US is now involved in 134 wars or none, depending on your definition of war The White House spent much of last week trying to figure out if the word "war" was the right one to describe its military actions against the Islamic State. US Secretary of State John Kerry was at first reluctant: "We're engaged in a major counterterrorism operation," he told CBS News on Sept. 11. "I think war is the wrong terminology and analogy but the fact is that we are engaged in a very significant global effort to curb terrorist activity I don't think people need to get into war fever on this. I think they have to view it as a heightened level of counter terrorist activity." – Global Post

http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/35654/US-Pursues-134-Wars-Around-the-World/

Choose wisely America!

RobinG , says: December 4, 2018 at 7:39 pm GMT
Blowback: An Inside Look at How US-Funded Fascists in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-backed-fascist-azov-battalion-in-ukraine-is-training-and-radicalizing-american-white-supremacists/251951/

"Not only are white supremacists from across the West flocking to Ukraine to learn from the combat experience of their fascist brothers-in-arms, they are doing so openly, under the nose of a shrugging law enforcement -- chronicling their experiences on social media before they bring their lessons back home."

AnonFromTN , says: December 4, 2018 at 7:49 pm GMT
The greatest threat to America comes from its elites. Nobody else did as much damage to the country as those greedy thieves.
AnonFromTN , says: December 4, 2018 at 7:53 pm GMT
@CanSpeccy

Nah, Porky needs a war to avoid an election which he would undoubtedly lose.

You hit the nail on the head.

Realist , says: December 4, 2018 at 9:44 pm GMT

The timing was good for Poroshenko for his own domestic political reasons but it was also an opportunity for the neocons warmongers that surround Trump and proliferate inside the Beltway to scuttle any possible meeting between a vulnerable Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the G20 gathering in Argentina.

Trump isn't vulnerable he hired the Deep State apparatchiks, Bolton, Pompeo and many others. Trump is a Deep Stater and is doing a great Kabuki theater to dupe his followers into believing his hands are tied.

Rurik , says: December 5, 2018 at 9:19 pm GMT
@tzatz

How do YOU expect me (and others) to swallow YOUR position?

with a great gulps of satisfaction, that's how.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine was manufactured by the ZUS State Dept. ((Victoria Nuland)) and John McBloodstain in particular, when Putin upset the Zionist's plans to do a 'Libya' – to Syria.

It was a bloody coup foisted with 5 billion federal reserve note$, of the famous phone call ('Yats is our guy'). Since then the imbeciles in Ukraine have been doing Nazi salutes while taking orders from Jewish supremacist Zionists like Ihor Kolomoyskyi and assorted ZUS Zionists.

The conflict with Iran started when the CIA deposed the duly elected president Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953, and installed the brutal quisling Shah in his place. To keep the Iranian people terrorized for decades into submitting to this perfidy, they utilized the CIA and Mossad run SAVAK.

Learn a little history as you swallow.

[Dec 05, 2018] Who are the Neocons by Guyenot

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.) ..."
"... Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either. ..."
"... American Jewish Committee ..."
"... Contemporary Jewish Record ..."
"... If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying . And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren ..."
"... Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech. ..."
"... believes that Truth is harmful to the common man and the social order and should be reserved for superior minds. ..."
"... nations derive their strength from their myths , which are necessary for government and governance. ..."
"... national myths have no necessary relationship with historical reality: they are socio-cultural constructions that the State has a duty to disseminate . ..."
"... to be effective, any national myth must be based on a clear distinction between good and evil ; it derives its cohesive strength from the hatred of an enemy nation. ..."
"... deception is the norm in political life ..."
"... Office of Special Plans ..."
"... The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy. ..."
"... the "chosen people" myth (God likes us best, we are better than you) ..."
"... the Holy Land myth (one area of real estate is more holy than another) ..."
"... General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran". ..."
"... Among them are brilliant strategists ..."
"... They operate unrestrained by the most basic moral principles upon which civilization is founded. They are undisturbed by compassion for the suffering of others. ..."
"... They use consciously and skillfully use deception and "myth-making" to shape policy ..."
"... They have infiltrated the highest levels of banking, US military, NATO and US government. ..."
Dec 11, 2015 | Peak Prosperity

Mememonkey pointed my to a 2013 essay by Laurent Guyenot, a French historian and writer on the deep state, that addresses the question of "Who Are The Neoconservatives." If you would like to know about that group that sends the US military into battle and tortures prisoners of war in out name, you need to know about these guys.

First, if you are Jewish, or are a GREEN Meme, please stop and take a deep breath. Please put on your thinking cap and don't react. We are NOT disrespecting a religion, spiritual practice or a culture. We are talking about a radical and very destructive group hidden within a culture and using that culture. Christianity has similar groups and movements--the Crusades, the KKK, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, etc.

My personal investment: This question has been a subject of intense interest for me since I became convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Iraq war was waged for reasons entirely different from those publically stated. I have been horrified to see such a shadowy, powerful group operating from a profoundly "pre-moral" developmental level-i.e., not based in even the most rudimentary principles of morality foundational to civilization.

Who the hell are these people?!

Goyenot's main points (with a touch of personal editorializing):

1. The American Neocons are Zionists (Their goal is expanding political / military power. Initially this is focused on the state of Israel.)

Neoconservativism is essentially a modern right wing Jewish version of Machiavelli's political strategy. What characterizes the neoconservative movement is therefore not as much Judaism as a religious tradition, but rather Judiasm as a political project, i.e. Zionism, by Machiavellian means.

This is not a religious movement though it may use religions words and vocabulary. It is a political and military movement. They are not concerned with being close to God. This is a movement to expand political and military power. Some are Christian and Mormon, culturally.

Obviously , if Zionism is synonymous with patriotism in Israel, it cannot be an acceptable label in American politics, where it would mean loyalty to a foreign power. This is why the neoconservatives do not represent themselves as Zionists on the American scene. Yet they do not hide it all together either.

He points out dual-citizen (Israel / USA) members and self proclaimed Zionists throughout cabinet level positions in the US government, international banking and controlling the US military. In private writings and occasionally in public, Neocons admit that America's war policies are actually Israel's war goals. (Examples provided.)

2. Most American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and do NOT share the perspective of the radical Zionists.

The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than "conservative") Republican right, is, in reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary, a media arm of the American Jewish Committee, which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward, the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: "If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren".

3. Intellectual Basis and Moral developmental level

Goyenot traces the Neocon's origins through its influential writers and thinkers. Highest on the list is Leo Strauss. (Neocons are sometimes called "the Straussians.") Leo Strauss is a great admirer of Machiavelli with his utter contempt for restraining moral principles making him "uniquely effective," and, "the ideal patriot." He gushes over Machiavelli praising the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech.

Other major points:

4. The Zionist/Neocons are piggy-backing onto, or utilizing, the religious myths of both the Jewish and Christian world to consolidate power. This is brilliant Machiavellian strategy.

[The]Pax Judaica will come only when "all the nations shall flow" to the Jerusalem temple, from where "shall go forth the law" (Isaiah 2:1-3). This vision of a new world order with Jerusalem at its center resonates within the Likudnik and neoconservative circles. At the Jerusalem Summit, held from October 12th to 14th, 2003 in the symbolically significant King David Hotel, an alliance was forged between Zionist Jews and Evangelical Christians around a "theopolitical" project, one that would consider Israel "the key to the harmony of civilizations", replacing the United Nations that's become a "a tribalized confederation hijacked by Third World dictatorships": "Jerusalem's spiritual and historical importance endows it with a special authority to become a center of world's unity. [...] We believe that one of the objectives of Israel's divinely-inspired rebirth is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, foretold by the Prophets". Three acting Israeli ministers spoke at the summit, including Benjamin Netanyahu, and Richard Perle.

Jerusalem's dream empire is expected to come through the nightmare of world war. The prophet Zechariah, often cited on Zionist forums, predicted that the Lord will fight "all nations" allied against Israel. In a single day, the whole earth will become a desert, with the exception of Jerusalem, who "shall remain aloft upon its site" (14:10).

With more than 50 millions members, Christians United for Israel is a major political force in the U.S.. Its Chairman, pastor John Haggee, declared: "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West, [...] a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ".

And Guyenot concludes:

Is it possible that this biblical dream, mixed with the neo-Machiavellianism of Leo Strauss and the militarism of Likud, is what is quietly animating an exceptionally determined and organized ultra-Zionist clan? General Wesley Clark testified on numerous occasions before the cameras, that one month after September 11th, 2001 a general from the Pentagon showed him a memo from neoconservative strategists "that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan and finishing off with Iran".

Is it just a coincidence that the "seven nations" doomed to be destroyed by Israel form part of the biblical myths? [W]hen Yahweh will deliver Israel "seven nations greater and mightier than yourself [ ] you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them."

My summary:

[Nov 22, 2018] The State Dept. humanitarians, inspired by Clinton, and the totally zionized National Endowment for Democracy (and other banderite Chalupas) are undoubtedly elated with the "democracy on the march" in Ukraine

That complete misunderstanding the situation. The US officials might resent far right groups but the goal of encircling of Russia is of paramount importance and outwight all other considerations. In other word hostile to Russia Ukraine is the greatest US geopolitical victory after dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
Nov 22, 2018 | www.unz.com

annamaria says: November 21, 2018 at 12:50 pm GMT 300 Words Meanwhile, the zionist project in Kaganat of Nuland (former Ukraine) is humming full force: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/406991-western-media-ukraine-nazi/

"Last weekend saw Ukraine's biggest Nazi march of modern times. Yet, the Western media and its numerous correspondents in Kiev completely ignored the story, even on social networks.

On Saturday night, up to 20,000 far-right radicals honored the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – a paramilitary group led by Stepan Bandera, which actively collaborated with Hitler's Germany. They brandished lit torches, smoke pellets, and flares as they chanted fascist slogans. And some participants openly gave Nazi salutes during the rally."

– Viva Kagans clan. Viva the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center; your efforts at promoting the Nazi revival in Ukraine have been bringing great results, including the "biggest Nazi march of modern times."

The State Dept. humanitarians, inspired by Clinton, and the totally zionized National Endowment for Democracy (and other banderite Chalupas) are undoubtedly elated with the "democracy on the march" in Ukraine (remember the $5 billion spent by the US in Ukraine to spearhead the regime change in Kiev ) https://www.rt.com/news/444538-five-years-on-from-euromaidan/

"Ukraine is emerging as Europe's poorest country In fact, according to a recent Credit Suisse report, Ukrainians rank among the world's poorest people , coming a dismal 123rd out of 140 countries, with the net wealth of the country's citizens lagging behind Bangladesh and Cameroon. Another recent study by the United Nations Development Program found that, despite continuing economic growth, 60 percent of Ukrainians live below the poverty line."

[Nov 19, 2018] US-Funded Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists by Max Blumenthal

Notable quotes:
"... Last month, an unsealed FBI indictment of four American white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement (RAM) declared that the defendants had trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia officially incorporated into the country's national guard. The training took place after the white supremacist gang participated in violent riots in Huntington Beach and Berkeley, California and Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. ..."
"... Let's not forget that the illegal coup in Ukraine and ensuing civil war was pushed by Obama/Hillary. It was HRC who promoted Dick Cheney's chief foreign adviser, Victoria Nuland, to Secretary of European Affairs, and it was Nuland who was caught on tape discussing how to "midwife this thing" in Ukraine. ..."
Nov 19, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

US-Funded Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists November 17, 2018 • 43 Comments

Short-sighted U.S. foreign policy that backs jihadists in the Middle East and neo-Nazis in Ukraine is once again blowing back on the United States, as Max Blumenthal explains.

FBI: Azov Battalion Trained Rise Above Movement

Last month, an unsealed FBI indictment of four American white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement (RAM) declared that the defendants had trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia officially incorporated into the country's national guard. The training took place after the white supremacist gang participated in violent riots in Huntington Beach and Berkeley, California and Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

The indictment stated that the Azov Battalion "is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations."

After a wave of racist violence across America that culminated in the massacre of twelve Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the revelation that violent white supremacists have been traveling abroad for training and ideological indoctrination with a well-armed neo-Nazi militia should cause extreme alarm.

Not only are white supremacists from across the West flocking to Ukraine to learn from the combat experience of their fascist brothers-in-arms, they are doing so openly -- chronicling their experiences on social media before they bring their lessons back home. But U.S. law enforcement has done nothing so far to restrict the flow of right-wing American extremists to Azov's bases.

There is one likely explanation for the U.S. government's hands-off approach to Azov recruitment: the extremist militia is fighting pro-Russian separatists as a front-line proxy of Washington. In fact, the United States has directly armed the Azov Battalion, forking over anti-tank rocket launchers and even sending a team of Army officers to meet in the field with Azov commanders in 2017.

Though Congress passed legislation this year forbidding military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology, the Trump administration's authorization of $200 million in offensive weaponry and aid to the Ukrainian military makes it likely new stores of weapons will wind up the extremist regiment's hands. When queried by reporters about evidence of American military training of Azov personnel, multiple U.S. army spokespersons admitted there was no mechanism in place to prevent that from happening.

... ... ...


Hide Behind , November 18, 2018 at 6:55 pm

Strange people that live in US, those that live under belife of free speech and expression, and yet there are literally thousands of examples where those of opposing view points that try and present them in public are met with disruptive behaviors, banning from presentations of opposing ideology from speaking at Colleges and University campus, and removal and witholding of tenure to those who question edicts of correct speech and lets admit it anything that questions support of Israel the State.

And condoling of violent behavior by groups in US , crosses religious, political Partys, Anarchist, and now a liber storm trooper style ANTIFA that is beginning to better equip themselve tha. just pipes, knives, and clubs into having numbers armed with the Leftist hate most guns.

We have ultra right Trump supportive Militia that actively said they would revolt if Trump was defeated and now if he is impeached. The largest and most virulent part of the southern state militia are of Christian Zionist, and some militias signature patches have Star of David upon them and the cross

... ... ...

frank mintz , November 18, 2018 at 5:28 pm

You think that the October massacre marks a culmination? That is naive: it is undoubtedly not an end point and part of a crescendo building for decades. Meanwhile, the professional Right keeps denouncing the Democrats for anti-Semitism, which is frequently simply criticism of Israel and has nothing whatever to do with attacks on persons or property. Your article reminds us that these psychopathic attacks are coming from a particular branch of the "White Right" which has been talking upon Satanic Judaism and killing Jews–and targeting synagogues–for quite a while.

Zenobia van Dongen , November 18, 2018 at 5:21 pm

Fascinating article by Max Blumenthal. Max Blumenthal rightly denounces Italy's fascist Casa Pound party but fails to report that Casa Pound is on excellent terms with Hezbollah, as reported by the Italian daily Repubblica in 2015. According to Repubblica, the European Parliament declared Hezbollah a terrorist group on 10 March 2005.

On 26 September 2015 a convention called "Mediterranean Solidarity", "the first international convention of solidarity [among] identities" was held in Rome attended by Rima Fakhri, member of Hezbollah's politburo and Sayyed Ammar Al Moussaw, responsible for Hezbollah's international relations, as well as by top Casa Pound leaders like Alberto Palladino, who was seen in the Donbass during fighting between Russia and the Ukraine, Franco Nerozzi, who was convicted of international terrorism in Verona after taking part in a failed coup detat on the Comoros islands, Casa Pound leader Giovanni Feola, and Luca Bertoni, representing the Lombardy-Russia Association, who always accompanies Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega, on his trips to Moscow.

"Italian right-wingers have consolidated relations with the most fundamentalist and militant Islamic groups. In 2013 the City of Rome refused permission to the Syrian Uodai Soso Ramadan, also invited to the congress, to hold a pro-Assad demonstration. At the time he was staying at CasaPound."

Source: Roma, la strana coppia Hezbollah-Casapound insieme al convegno, di Corrado Zunino, Repubblica, 20 settembre 2015
https://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2015/09/20/news/roma_convegno_mediterraneo_solidale_iniziativa_fascio-islamica-123310960/

tom metzger , November 18, 2018 at 3:37 pm

The article on the neo-Nazi presence in Ukraine is very interesting. I am a white working-class white separatist with some longtime following. Even though this article had both lies, truths and maybes. It was well done. However, when it says there is no other side in the US with another view, you are wrong. I have experienced the attempted and sometimes successful penetration of the right wing by CIA types for many years and gotten rid of 2 serious penetrations in years past.

I have warned those that listen not to involve themselves in the Ukraine situation. In fact, don't travel to other countries. Where you do not really know the score and may be fighting on the wrong side anyway.

I am aware that anything the State Department involves itself in is totally suspect and probably criminal. Even if you don't acknowledge it there are other factions that are pretty much out of the right wing, but are still very strongly White separatists . In fact, my politics have moved to the left on several important issues. It would appear to me that the powers that be are attempting to design a right wing alleged neo-Nazi movement somewhat patterned some what after ISIS.It is obvious Blumenthal's article has a lot of truth in it, but his mindset tends to get in the way . When he uses the old dog whistles like Trump when labeling people. Tom Metzger

Geo , November 18, 2018 at 6:36 pm

Curious why you are a White Separatist? Is there any logical reason because the best I can gather from the many separatist commenters that have littered threads like these over the years is that they're too fragile to get by in an ethically equal society. It seems that they're greatest problem is that others have rights now so it's harder for these White Separatists to succeed seeing as how they must do so on merit instead of birthright.

Be curious to find out if there is any justification for ethnic separatism other than petty whining because of some mythical birthright you feel you're being denied?

rosemerry , November 18, 2018 at 1:56 pm

Notice that they admit the connection goes back at least to 2014. We never hear much about the overthrow of the new pro-Russian government in Ukraine after the Russians had worked for four years with the pro-Western lot. Only when Nuland/Yats and co interfered did the new "government" with its Nazi links become powerful with the help of the EU and of course USA. The whole continuing insistence on Russia being an enemy has no basis in reason or sense. To support Ukraine now just because it is fanatically against Russia after decades of cooperation in the USSR is not justified by any possible link with "national security of the USA" or of Europe.

O Society , November 18, 2018 at 1:13 pm

Sadly, white nationalism is a thing the United States enjoys exporting. It's an existential crises. https://opensociet.org/2018/11/16/the-rise-of-trump-is-white-america-dying/

Bruce Gagnon , November 18, 2018 at 12:55 pm

See this video of Obama's ambassador to Ukraine Pyatt going to visit training base in western Ukraine where Nazis brought into the then newly formed National Guard are still being trained by US Army Special Forces from Fort Carson, Colorado . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxeZFS9hTUg

Patrick Lucius , November 18, 2018 at 12:01 pm

Let's not forget that the illegal coup in Ukraine and ensuing civil war was pushed by Obama/Hillary. It was HRC who promoted Dick Cheney's chief foreign adviser, Victoria Nuland, to Secretary of European Affairs, and it was Nuland who was caught on tape discussing how to "midwife this thing" in Ukraine.

Nuland is wife of chief neocon Richard Kagan, founder of PNAC. This essentially restarted the cold war between Russia and America. Obama tarnished his presidency primarily by working with Clinton, including the destruction of Libya. Where were the Democrats to object to such shenanigans? I don't know where they were, but I do know where they are now–charging Trump with colluding with the Russians. I thought it was fascinating that Trump, when he secured the Republican nomination, insisted that the Republicans remove from their platform the promise of military aid to Western Ukraine, to fight the pro-Russian eastern Ukrainians. Where were the Democrats to applaud this anti-war mongering? I know where I, as a Democrat was–I was leaving the party and becoming a Trump supporter.

Martin - Swedish citizen , November 18, 2018 at 2:30 pm

Thanks, these are important points, is about the neocons.
On our smaller Swedish scale ,
I was similarly disgusted with the support by the once much more ethical Social Democratic Party for the US- and EU-supported coup in Kiev.

lucius , November 18, 2018 at 7:58 pm

Lots of room for disgust In America, the traditional Democrats and Republicans both are backing the neocons' stance with just about no questioning or examination. It seems to be a tribal thing, or some sort of group response, like geese in flight, or buffalo running off a cliff

Jesse , November 18, 2018 at 11:41 am

Thank you for providing a platform for Max Blumenthal's reporting.

Wayne Mclaughlin , November 18, 2018 at 10:35 am

Very good article except for the line " .. Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the failure of the EU and NATO to prevent it ." I always take issue with that representation because it implies an aggressive and forceful action by Russia when in fact Crimea seceded from Ukraine after the western backed and illegal coup of the democratically elected government.

Skip Scott , November 18, 2018 at 2:11 pm

One of the definitions of annexation is "the adding of new territory". I believe this is the way the word is being used in this article. It has come to mean "forceful acquisition" to many folks, and this leads to confusion. To those of us who know a little history, maybe a better word would have "rejoining", since Crimea was part of Russia until the early 1950's. When Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine it was still part of the USSR, so it was really no more than a gesture. The Russian naval base in Sevastopol has been there since the 1700's.

Martin - Swedish citizen , November 18, 2018 at 2:25 pm

Very good point!
Wording is important, and accepting the word annexation without clarification may be a step towards buying the lie.

Joe Tedesky , November 18, 2018 at 3:16 pm

Great point Skip. Joe

dale t hood , November 18, 2018 at 10:32 pm

thank you wayne

torture this , November 18, 2018 at 10:28 am

It must be a terrible feeling to know you can't compete with people that you believe are inferior. Nice to have some fellow losers to commiserate with, I suppose.

JOHN CHUCKMAN , November 18, 2018 at 8:33 am

Ah, America, land of liberty!

Is there anything you won't do in your rabid efforts to dominate the planet?

Of course, when you think about it, these Ukrainian thugs are no worse than other outfits America heavily supports, from the mercenaries of Syria and the government of Saudi Arabia to the King of Bahrain and the government of Israel.

A couple of these last – Israel, Saudi Arabia – kill more innocent civilians than any terrorist organization could dream of doing.

And no one says a thing.

mike k , November 18, 2018 at 8:27 am

Max Blumenthal does a valuable service shining a light into the dark places of Nazi Fascism in the US. Anyone who thinks these groups are too small to be important, should recall how small the movement that gave us Hitler was in it's beginnings.

mike k , November 18, 2018 at 8:16 am

Pro Nazi sentiment has never died in the US Oligarchy. The CIA is essentially a fascist organization pretending to be protectors of democracy. Worship of violence and authoritarianism is endemic to the American Spirit. All the better for being the world's greatest bully, pretending to be the guardians of the highest values. Those in high places here are the evil scum of the universe.

(Thanks for the new font! So much better.)

John A , November 18, 2018 at 7:57 am

The US is now funding a schism in the Orthodox church between Ukraine and Russia. The evil of the US knows no bounds.

rosemerry , November 18, 2018 at 2:01 pm

Of course, "good ole Americans" like Mike Pence claim to be Christians, and many other US Christians blame the Russian Orthodox church for not being as modern as they are and ready to accept LGBTQ..

Realist , November 18, 2018 at 4:14 am

Not surprising that some Americans think that racial bigotry is okie dokie when both political parties in Washington, especially the one that bases its platform on membership in certain favored identity groups, practice it routinely against anyone or anything Russian or Iranian. They have a few other fall guys as well, but those are the two blamed for everything these days.

No question but that Ukraine is one of the most ethnically prejudiced and fascist regimes on the planet, though that doesn't seem to bother Washington, as long as they are frenetically Russophobic. Neither does Israel's rampant anti-Arab, anti-Persian and anti-Muslim Zionism bother the bigots in DC in the slightest.

Yet they get into a lather when the small nations of Eastern Europe, especially those in the Visegrad countries (plus Austria, Slovenia and Croatia) constituting most of the Intermarium that the author alluded to, which happen to have both small populations and low birthrates, reasonably fear that their native populations will be swamped out within a couple of generations if they are forced by the EU to take in significant numbers of Islamic migrants from the lands thrown into turmoil by the U.S.-instigated wars throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Hungary's Viktor Orban is vilified in the West as some sort of new Hitler (must be Putin's twin brother) for implementing on a much smaller scale what Donald Trump is trying to institutionalise in the enormously larger United States.

Rather than force all these sociological "side effects" to its catastrophic wars on its putative "allies," perhaps Washington should finally see the light and do the right thing by winding down the carnage and aiding the resettlement and rebuilding of the war-torn countries by their displaced citizens. But they won't–they have overtly refused, at least until none of America's debts can be paid with devalued petrodollars, because that would let Russia off the hook, whom Washington wants to see crushed as badly as der Fuehrer did–I think it's trying to complete his mission. Plus the glorious new war against Iran would have to be cancelled. They used to say, "all roads lead to Rome." They oughta re-write that for the modern world as, "all strife traces from Washington."

mike k , November 18, 2018 at 8:19 am

Excellent comments Realist.

Joe Tedesky , November 18, 2018 at 10:55 am

Like our 'Big Pharma Over Medicated Society' we in the West would rather beat the hell out of the symptom rather than cure the cause, is our American hegemonic trademark. Similar to tightening the screw so tight the fragile glass begins to crack so you fix it with a hammer. It appears our leaders love spreading their chaos. None of this shows signs of ever ending well, but yet we overdose the symptom to the extreme that the side affect is what finally kills us. In the end it only matters how it shows on a profit and loss sheet.

rosemerry , November 18, 2018 at 2:05 pm

An excellent contribution-thanks realist.
The USA has steadfastly refused to rebuild their devastated victims' lands even when UN legal demands clearly demanded it eg Nicaragua.

Jean , November 18, 2018 at 3:01 am

Short sited or planned.

michael weddle , November 18, 2018 at 1:44 am

Excellent reporting, Max! I'm curious. Is there any connection with present or former Eric Prince mercenary soldiers, or soldiers from other private mercenary organizations, with these fascist movements?

Joe Tedesky , November 17, 2018 at 11:15 pm

This fascist trend should go well with Operation Timber Sycamore, where the U.S. armed the terrorist jihadist. When will our American leaders learn, that if you play with fire you will get burned. The rise of the Nazi is one more reason that we Americans should focus on this type of news as Max Blumenthal reports. Furthermore the American Jewish who do not support the Israeli apartheid state should join good thinking Americans to put down this disgusting happening. So thank you Victoria Nuland, Geoffrey Pratt, and the rest of this sick and insane DC bunch, because without you where would our Homeland Security budget be?

Think it can't happen here . the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter lived 4 blocks from me. Btw these racist don't vote, they just hate. And 'no' I didn't know him, but I know of others sick birds all of them.

And especially a warm thank you goes out to Max Blumenthal for his courageous reporting. Bless you Max. Joe

Bob Van Noy , November 18, 2018 at 10:32 am

Thank you Joe. The larger picture and insanity of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" Philosophy, is and always has been totally without moral responsibility. Interestingly, it seems to be a fundamental aspect of post WWII organizing by our own OSS, who became the CIA in 1949. Alan Dulles was busy organizing this kind of activity before that war ended.

Thanks to you Joe and of course Max Blumenthal for addressing this subject. I'll include a link to the early heritage of this bizarre and illegal concept here. Many thanks Consortium News.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault

Joe Tedesky , November 18, 2018 at 11:24 am

Thanks Bob reading John Mearsheimer well defined portrayal of what led up to the fall of the Ukraine as we once knew it, is reminiscent of reading Robert Parry's many articles on this subject. If you recall Parry was deeply into this U.S. led NATO aggression. Through the MSM of the West the tables were turned to point the finger to instead Russian aggression. Putin is never shown in light of his policy achievements nor are his speeches calling out to the world for sensible detente where needed ever covered, but instead Putin is demonized to no end.

Little is remembered, or even known by those in the West of another time where American and British capitalism hugged the very nature of Nazism, while the Russians even back then were too the target of this type of Western aggression. Who's needs history when dreams of speculative profit should cloud their eyes?

[Nov 19, 2018] The US instigated coup was in line with Brzezinski's "Grand Chessboard" delusions of the US having to control Eurasia especially Ukraine in order to reduce Russia to the role of a regional power.

Nov 19, 2018 | www.unz.com

JR , says: November 15, 2018 at 8:20 pm GMT

@Quartermaster Even the German government friendly Der Spiegel begs to differ:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/war-in-ukraine-a-result-of-misunderstandings-between-europe-and-russia-a-1004706.html

The US instigated coup was in line with Brzezinski's "Grand Chessboard" delusions of the US having to control Eurasia especially Ukraine in order to reduce Russia to the role of a regional power. The EU piggybacked on that coup by having the Maidan regime sign on to the European Neighborhood Policy thus reducing Ukraine to the role of a EU dependent non-member state.

http://www.imi-online.de/2016/03/10/expansion-association-confrontation/

[Nov 16, 2018] The Meaning Of A Multipolar World

Nov 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

The Meaning Of A Multipolar World

by Tyler Durden Fri, 11/16/2018 - 00:05 4 SHARES Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Saker Blog,

Right now, we live in a monopolar world.

Here is how U.S. President Barack Obama proudly, even imperially, described it when delivering the Commencement address to America's future generals, at West Point Military Academy, on 28 May 2014 :

The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation . [Every other nation is therefore 'dispensable'; we therefore now have "Amerika, Amerika über alles, über alles in der Welt".] That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else will...

Russia's aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China's economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us. [He was here telling these future U.S. military leaders that they are to fight for the U.S. aristocracy, to help them defeat any nation that resists.] ...

In Ukraine, Russia's recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe. But this isn't the Cold War. Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia right away. [He was proud of the U.S. Government's effectiveness at propaganda, just as Hitler was proud of the German Government's propaganda-effectiveness under Joseph Goebbels.] Because of American leadership, the world immediately condemned Russian actions; Europe and the G7 joined us to impose sanctions; NATO reinforced our commitment to Eastern European allies; the IMF is helping to stabilize Ukraine's economy; OSCE monitors brought the eyes of the world to unstable parts of Ukraine.

Actually, his - Obama's - regime, had conquered Ukraine in February 2014 by a very bloody coup , and installed a racist-fascist anti-Russian Government there next door to Russia, a stooge-regime to this day, which instituted a racial-cleansing campaign to eliminate enough pro-Russia voters so as to be able to hold onto power there. It has destroyed Ukraine and so alienated the regions of Ukraine that had voted more than 75% for the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom Obama overthrew, so that those pro-Russia regions quit Ukraine. What remains of Ukraine after the U.S. conquest is a nazi mess and a destroyed nation in hock to Western taxpayers and banks .

Furthermore, Obama insisted upon (to use Bush's term about Saddam Hussein) "regime-change" in Syria. Twice in one day the Secretary General of the U.N. asserted that only the Syrian people have any right to do that, no outside nation has any right to impose it. Obama ignored him and kept on trying. Obama actually protected Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate against bombing by Syria's Government and by Syria's ally Russia, while the U.S. bombed Syria's army , which was trying to prevent those jihadists from overthrowing the Government. Obama bombed Libya in order to "regime-change" Muammar Gaddafi, and he bombed Syria in order to "regime-change" Bashar al-Assad; and, so, while the "U.S. Drops Bombs; EU Gets Refugees & Blame. This Is Insane." And Obama's successor Trump continues Obama's policies in this regard. And, of course, the U.S. and its ally UK invaded Iraq in 2003, likewise on the basis of lies to the effect that Iraq was the aggressor . (Even Germany called Poland the aggressor when invading Poland in 1939.)

No other nation regularly invades other nations that never had invaded it. This is international aggression. It is the international crime of "War of Aggression" ; and the only nations which do it nowadays are America and its allies, such as the Sauds, Israel, France, and UK, which often join in America's aggressions (or, in the case of the Sauds' invasion of Yemen, the ally initiates an invasion, which the U.S. then joins). America's generals are taught this aggression, and not only by Obama. Ever since at least George W. Bush, it has been solid U.S. policy. (Bush even kicked out the U.N.'s weapons-inspectors, so as to bomb Iraq in 2003.)

In other words: a mono-polar world is a world in which one nation stands above international law, and that nation's participation in an invasion immunizes also each of its allies who join in the invasion, protecting it too from prosecution, so that a mono-polar world is one in which the United Nations can't even possibly impose international law impartially, but can impose it only against nations that aren't allied with the mono-polar power, which in this case is the United States. Furthermore, because the U.S. regime reigns supreme over the entire world, as it does, any nations -- such as Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Ecuador -- that the U.S. regime (which has itself been scientifically proven to be a dictatorship ) chooses to treat as an enemy, is especially disadvantaged internationally. Russia and China, however, are among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and therefore possess a degree of international protection that America's other chosen enemies do not. And the people who choose which nations to identify as America's 'enemies' are America's super-rich and not the entire American population, because the U.S. Government is controlled by the super-rich and not by the public .

So, that's the existing mono-polar world: it is a world that's controlled by one nation, and this one nation is, in turn, controlled by its aristocracy, its super-rich .

If one of the five permanent members of the Security Council would table at the U.N. a proposal to eliminate the immunity that the U.S. regime has, from investigation and prosecution for any future War of Aggression that it might perpetrate, then, of course, the U.S. and any of its allies on the Security Council would veto that, but if the proposing nation would then constantly call to the international public's attention that the U.S. and its allies had blocked passage of such a crucially needed "procedure to amend the UN charter" , and that this fact means that the U.S. and its allies constitute fascist regimes as was understood and applied against Germany's fascist regime, at the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945, then possibly some members of the U.S.-led gang (the NATO portion of it, at least) would quit that gang, and the U.S. global dictatorship might end, so that there would then become a multi-polar world, in which democracy could actually thrive.

Democracy can only shrivel in a mono-polar world, because all other nations then are simply vassal nations, which accept Obama's often-repeated dictum that all other nations are "dispensable" and that only the U.S. is not. Even the UK would actually gain in freedom, and in democracy, by breaking away from the U.S., because it would no longer be under the U.S. thumb -- the thumb of the global aggressor-nation.

Only one global poll has ever been taken of the question "Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?" and it found that, overwhelmingly, by a three-to-one ratio above the second-most-often named country, the United States was identified as being precisely that, the top threat to world-peace . But then, a few years later, another (though less-comprehensive) poll was taken on a similar question, and it produced similar results . Apparently, despite the effectiveness of America's propagandists, people in other lands recognize quite well that today's America is a more successful and longer-reigning version of Hitler's Germany. Although modern America's propaganda-operation is far more sophisticated than Nazi Germany's was, it's not entirely successful. America's invasions are now too common, all based on lies, just like Hitler's were.

On November 9th, Russian Television headlined "'Very insulting': Trump bashes Macron's idea of European army for protection from Russia, China & US" and reported that "US President Donald Trump has unloaded on his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, calling the French president's idea of a 'real European army,' independent from Washington, an insult." On the one hand, Trump constantly criticizes France and other European nations for allegedly not paying enough for America's NATO military alliance, but he now is denigrating France for proposing to other NATO members a decreasing reliance upon NATO, and increasing reliance, instead, upon the Permanent Structured Cooperation (or PESCO) European military alliance , which was begun on 11 December 2017, and which currently has "25 EU Member States participating: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden." Those are the European nations that are now on the path to eventually quitting NATO.

Once NATO is ended, the U.S. regime will find far more difficult any invasions such as of Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-, Yemen 2016-, and maybe even such as America's bloody coup that overthrew the democratically elected Government of Ukraine and installed a racist-fascist or nazi anti-Russian regime there in 2014 . All of these U.S. invasions (and coup) brought to Europe millions of refugees and enormously increased burdens upon European taxpayers. Plus, America's economic sanctions against both Russia and Iran have hurt European companies (and the U.S. does almost no business with either country, so is immune to that, also). Consequently, today's America is clearly Europe's actual main enemy. The continuation of NATO is actually toxic to the peoples of Europe. Communism and the Soviet Union and its NATO-mirroring Warsaw Pact military alliance, all ended peacefully in 1991, but the U.S. regime has secretly continued the Cold War, now against Russia , and is increasingly focusing its "regime-change" propaganda against Russia's popular democratic leader, Vladimir Putin, even though this U.S. aggression against Russia could mean a world-annihilating nuclear war.

On November 11th, RT bannered "'Good for multipolar world': Putin positive on Macron's 'European army' plan bashed by Trump (VIDEO)" , and opened:

Europe's desire to create its own army and stop relying on Washington for defense is not only understandable, but would be "positive" for the multipolar world, Vladimir Putin said days after Donald Trump ripped into it.

" Europe is a powerful economic union and it is only natural that they want to be independent and sovereign in the field of defense and security," Putin told RT in Paris where world leader gathered to mark the centenary of the end of WWI.

He also described the potential creation of a European army "a positive process," adding that it would "strengthen the multipolar world." The Russian leader even expressed his support to French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently championed this idea by saying that Russia's stance on the issue "is aligned with that of France" to some extent.

Macron recently revived the ambitious plans of creating a combined EU military force by saying that it is essential for the security of Europe. He also said that the EU must become independent from its key ally on the other side of the Atlantic, provoking an angry reaction from Washington.

Once NATO has shrunk to include only the pro-aggression and outright nazi European nations, such as Ukraine (after the U.S. gang accepts Ukraine into NATO, as it almost certainly then would do), the EU will have a degree of freedom and of democracy that it can only dream of today, and there will then be a multi-polar world, in which the leaders of the U.S. will no longer enjoy the type of immunity from investigation and possible prosecution, for their invasions, that they do today. The result of this will, however, be catastrophic for the top 100 U.S. 'defense' contractors , such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, because then all of those firms' foreign sales except to the Sauds, Israel and a few other feudal and fascist regimes, will greatly decline. Donald Trump is doing everything he can to keep the Sauds to the agreements he reached with them back in 2017 to buy $404 billion of U.S. weaponry over the following 10 years . If, in addition, those firms lose some of their European sales, then the U.S. economic boom thus far in Trump's Presidency will be seriously endangered. So, the U.S. regime, which is run by the owners of its 'defense'-contractors , will do all it can to prevent this from happening.

* * *

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

[Nov 16, 2018] What America's Coup in Ukraine Did by Eric Zuesse

This critique is pretty superficial. The truth is that Ukraine drifted to Baltic model (not without help from Western Europe and the USA) for a long time. And the process started in 2001 not in 2014. That means that February 2014 coup d'état by far right nationalist forces was just quantity turned into quality. With the dissolution of the USSR, it is clear that the result of WWII and Yalta conference will be revised.
While it is true that it was the greatest geopolitical victory of Barack Obama and the USA against Russia, it made the world more dangerous. The fact that it saws the teeth of dragon escaped those great US neocon strategists, like Victoria Nuland. She looks pretty medictre person to me, judging from her public appearances. Far below the level of position she occupied. Out of depth. Kind of early variation of Nikki Haley theme.
The USA established itself as a world power at the end of WWI, and the No.1 nation after WWII. So apparance of the USA on world scene happened a century ago and the period of the USA primacy started around 1945 or 72 year ago. But after dissolution of the USSR the US elite lost the countervailing power that kept it in check (and Sober) and now neocons which came to power after the crash fo the USSR are destroying the USA pretty fast. They are real national cancer. So sad... Neocons policy of fighting and challenging the rest of the world essentially guarantee that its dominant position will not last more one century.
Mar 24, 2017 | off-guardian.org
In March 23rd, Gallup headlined "South Sudan, Haiti and Ukraine Lead World in Suffering" , and the Ukrainian part of that can unquestionably be laid at the feet of U.S. President Barack Obama, who in February 2014 imposed upon Ukraine a very bloody coup (see above), which he and his press misrepresented (and still misrepresent) as being (and still represent as having been) a 'democratic revolution', but was nothing of the sort, and actually was instead the start of the Ukrainian dictatorship and the hell that has since destroyed that country, and brought the people there into such misery, it's now by far the worst in Europe, and nearly tied with the worst in the entire world.

America's criminal 'news' media never even reported the coup, nor that in 2011 the Obama regime began planning for a coup in Ukraine . And that by 1 March 2013 they started organizing it inside the U.S. Embassy there . And that they hired members of Ukraine's two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties, Right Sector and Svoboda (which latter had been called the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine until the CIA advised them to change it to Freedom Party, or "Svoboda" instead). And that in February 2014 they did it (and here's the 4 February 2014 phone call instructing the U.S. Ambassador whom to place in charge of the new regime when the coup will be completed), under the cover of authentic anti-corruption demonstrations that the Embassy organized on the Maidan Square in Kiev, demonstrations that the criminal U.S. 'news' media misrepresented as 'democracy demonstrations,' though Ukraine already had democracy (but still lots of corruption, even more than today's U.S. does, and the pontificating Obama said he was trying to end Ukraine's corruption -- which instead actually soared after his coup there).

The head of the 'private CIA' firm Stratfor said it was "the most blatant coup in history" but he couldn't say that to Americans, because he knows that our press is just a mouthpiece for the regime (just like it was during the lead-up to George W. Bush's equally unprovoked invasion of Iraq -- for which America's 'news' media suffered likewise no penalties).

When subsequently accused by neocons for his having said this, his response was "I told the business journal Kommersant that if the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history," but he was lying to say this, because, as I pointed out when writing about that rejoinder of his, he had, in fact, made quite clear in his Kommersant interview, that it was, in his view "the most blatant coup in history," no conditionals on that.

Everybody knows what Obama, and Clinton , and Sarkozy, did to Libya -- in their zeal to eliminate yet another nation's leader who was friendly toward Russia (Muammar Gaddafi), they turned one of the highest-living-standard nations in Africa into a failed state and huge source of refugees (as well as of weapons that the Clinton State Department transferred to the jihadists in Syria to bring down Bashar al-Assad, another ally of Russia) -- but the 'news' media have continued to hide what Obama (assisted by America's European allies, especially Poland and Netherlands, and also by America's apartheid Middle Eastern ally, Israel) did to Ukraine.

I voted for Obama, partly because the insane McCain ("bomb, bomb, bomb Iran") and the creepy Romney ("Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe") were denounced by the (duplicitous) Obama for saying such evil things, their aggressive international positions, which continued old Cold-War-era hostilities into the present, even after the Cold War had ended long ago (in 1991) ( but only on the Russian side ). I since have learned that in today's American political system, the same aristocracy controls both of our rotten political Parties, and American democracy no longer exists. (And the only scientific study of whether America between the years 1981 and 2002 was democratic found that it was not, and it already confirmed what Jimmy Carter later said on 28 July 2015 :

Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members."

But yet our Presidents continue the line, now demonstrably become a myth, of 'American democracy', and use it as a sledgehammer against other governments, to 'justify' invading (or, in Ukraine's case, overthrowing via a 'democratic revolution') their lands (allies of Russia) such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and maybe even soon, Iran.

Here are some of the events and important historical details along the way to Ukraine's plunge into a worse condition than most African nations:

"Yanukovych's Removal Was Unconstitutional" "Obama Definitely Caused The Malaysian Airliner To Be Downed" "War on Donbass was planned to ignite a major war in Europe." "Our 'Enemies' In Ukraine Speak" "Meet Ukraine's Master Mass-Murderer: Dmitriy Yarosh" "Ukrainian Soldier Explains Why He Enjoys Killing Russians" "Russia's Leader Putin Rejects Ukrainian Separatists' Aim To Become Part Of Russia" "Gallup: Ukrainians Loathe the Kiev Government Imposed by Obama"

Please send this article to every friend who is part of the majority that, as a Quinnipiac University poll published on March 22nd reported, "A total of 51 percent of voters say they can trust U.S. intelligence agencies to do what is right 'almost all of the time' or 'most of the time'" (and that level of trust was far higher than for the rotten press and for the rotten politicians), even after the CIA's rubber-stamping Bush's lies to invade Iraq, and after the FBI's shameless performance on Hillary Clinton's privatized State Department emails even after her smashing their cell-phones with hammers , etc., and all the other official cover-ups, with no American officials even so much as being charged for their rampant crimes against the American public. Besides: ever since the CIA's founding, it has had an "Operation Gladio" that specializes in organizing terrorist acts so as for them to be blamed on, first, communist countries when they existed; and, then, after the end of communism, on allies of Russia. Did the American dictatorship begin right after FDR died in 1945? How much longer will these lies succeed?

For the people of Iraq , and of Syria , and of Ukraine, and many such countries, this dictatorship has destroyed their lives. Trusting the 'intelligence' services of a dictatorship doesn't make any sense at all. They're all working for the aristocracy, the billionaires -- not for any public, anywhere; not here, not there, just nowhere. Should the cattle trust the feedlot-operator? Only ignorance can produce trust, under the conditions that actually exist.

So, unless the idea is that ignorance is bliss, pass along the truth, when you find it, because it is very rare -- and the system operates to keep it that way.


Farrier says Nov, 14, 2017

Overthrowing Ukraine was an attempt to end Russia being the major power on the Black Sea and establish it as a NATO lake to stop Russia from using the sea to aid Syria or Iran. That was ruined when Putin seized Crimea, keeping the Russian naval base.
Frank says Mar, 25, 2017
In fact, the destabilization of the Ukraine occurred at the dawn of the new century in 2004. The Presidential election of that year between Victor Yuschenko and Victor Yanukovich resulted initially in the victory of Yanukovich. However serious allegations regarding electoral fraud were raised. This resulted in mass demonstrations in Kiev and other cities throughout Ukraine.

A re-run was ordered and the second time around Yushchenko took the Presidency with 52% of the vote to Yanukovich's 44%. Suffice it to say that prior to the re-run a number of shadowy foreign NGOs – including the National Endowment for Democracy – were active in promoting civic disobedience in a number of Ukrainian cities in west and central Ukraine. Independence Square in the middle of Kiev was occupied after the first election which was declared invalid. These events became known as the 'Orange Revolution'.

It would be misleading to assume that significant numbers of the protestors did not have a valid case against Yanukovich in terms of corruption and self-serving. However, it was equally true that many of the demonstrators' motives were somewhat less noble. Prior to the election Yushchenko had promised his running mate Yulia Tymoshenko the position of Prime Minister should he win the election. Thus throughout, the disturbances were a struggle between the eastern and western oligarchs.

On the crucial question of the nature of these events, 'Peoples power' or 'revolutionary coup' the issue remains undecided.
This notwithstanding the British historian David Lane of Emmanuel College Cambridge argued that

"The 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine was widely considered to be an instance of the 'coloured revolutions' of 1989 engendered by democratic values and nascent civil societies in the process of nation building. The extent to which the 'Orange Revolution' could be considered a revolutionary event stimulated by civil society, or a different type of political activity (a putsch, coup d'état), legitimated by elite-sponsored 'soft' political power. Based on public opinion poll data and responses from focus groups, the author contends that what began as an orchestrated protest election fraud developed into a novel type of political activity -- a revolutionary coup d'état. It is contended that the movement was divisive rather than integrative and did not enjoy widespread popular support."

Which is about the nearest we will get to an authentic answer.

What followed, however, was a complete and corrupt shamble of opportunism, corruption and self-serving misrule of Yuschenko and Tymoshenko who, after becoming involved in some dubious energy deals was to become known as the 'Gas Princess'. These two paragons of democracy eventually became bitter enemies and saw the return of Yanukovich after the Presidential contest between her and Yanukovich in 2010 which Yanukovich narrowly won.

leruscino says Mar, 24, 2017
Wanted Dead or Alive !

BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA – AKA 'Barry Soetoro'

Crimes:
Mass Murder (c) 600,000+ Killed, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen.
&
Wiretapping

Reward : Clear Conscious, Service to Humanity.

Loading...
mohandeer says Mar, 24, 2017
Reblogged this on wgrovedotnet and commented:

It's long been a truth that democracy in the US died a long time ago and the wealth and power behind the POTUS, irrespective of who that might be, are mere puppets. Obama won his presidency on outright lies and the crooked Clintons and Sarkozys of the US corrupt elite serve no-one's interests but their own at the cost of the lives of Ukrainian Russian ethnics and the Libyan, Iraqi and Syrian people. "Saving Syria's children" would require the removal of the source of their suffering, which can be firmly laid at the door of murderous Washington War Hawks, rent-a-gobs like Samantha Powers and Victoria Nuland(nee Kagan)and corrupt MSM supporting the rogue state that is the USA.

[Nov 15, 2018] Bolton's Met His Match Melania! - Antiwar.com Original

Nov 15, 2018 | original.antiwar.com

Bolton's Met His Match – Melania!

by Justin Raimondo Posted on November 15, 2018 November 14, 2018 We don't really hear all that much about Melania Trump in the media except occasional digs at her immigration status and a few daring photos. That's because the FLOTUS is one of the few unreservedly good things about this administration, and of course the media doesn't want to go there. Her grace, her reserve, her remarkable calm at the epicenter of a tumultuous White House, and, strikingly, her sense of style (and I don't just mean her clothes) puts her on a different plane from the Washington circus that surrounds her.

She had managed to keep her distance from the cutthroat politics of the Beltway, that is, until her collision with Mira Ricardel, National Security Advisor John Bolton's top aide and enforcer. Ricardel apparently disparaged the First Lady to other members of the White House staff, and tried to withhold resources from her on her recent trip to Africa. Whatever personal interactions of an unpleasant nature may have passed between these women, it's hard to imagine what provoked the office of the FLOTUS to issue the following statement :

"It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House."

Ricardel is described by those who know her as abrasive, a bureaucratic in-fighter, and one "who doesn't suffer fools lightly." Having mistaken the First Lady for a fool, Ms. Ricardel is the one who will suffer – along with Bolton, who has protected her since her appointment from a chorus of critics, but who cannot stand against Melania.

So Team Bolton is on the outs, which means the America Firsters within the administration who oppose our foreign policy of globalism and perpetual war are on the rise. Which leads us to contemplate the meaning of this incident. The War Party's ranks are not filled with Mr. Nice Guys. They are nearly all of them pushy self-serving aggressive SOBs, with about as much personal charm as a rattlesnake.

I'm reminded of an essay by the conservative philosopher Claes Ryn, professor of politics at Catholic University, in which he describes the obnoxious behavior of the children of our political class in a local MacDonald's just inside one of the Beltway's more prestigious neighborhoods:

"Deference to grown-ups seems unknown. I used to take offense, but the children have only taken their cue from their parents, who took their cue from their parents. The adults, for their part, talk in loud, penetrating voices, some on cell phones, as if no other conversations mattered. The scene exudes self-absorption and lack of self-discipline.

"Yes, this picture has everything to do with U.S. foreign policy. This is the emerging American ruling class, which is made up increasingly of persons used to having the world cater to them. If others challenge their will, they throw a temper tantrum. Call this the imperialistic personality – if 'spoilt brat' sounds too crude."

The Imperialistic Personality, indeed! It seems Ms. Ricardel had one too many temper tantrums so that even in the permissive atmosphere of Washington, D.C., it was too much. There are a lot of imperialistic personalities in that particular location, it seems, for one reason or another. But things are different in Donald Trump's Washington, and even if we have to take down the Ricardels one by one, just think of the numbers we can rack up in the next six years.

A NOTE TO MY READERS : My apologies for the short column: I have some medical issues to take care off this week and I'm a bit pressed for time.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement , with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey , a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon ( ISI Books , 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here .

[Nov 14, 2018] Bolton Vows to 'Squeeze' Iran, Escalating Sanctions - News From by Jason Ditz

If this is Trump policy, then Trump is 100% pure neocon. It took just three months for the Deep state to turn him.
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton shrugged off the reality that Iran is still doing business internationally, saying that he believes Iran is "under real pressure" from the sanctions, and that he's determined to see it keep getting worse. ..."
Nov 13, 2018 | news.antiwar.com

Says Europe will be forced to accept US demands

With the newly reimposed US sanctions against Iran having little to no perceivable economic impact, national security adviser John Bolton is talking up his plans to continue to escalate the sanctions track, saying he will " squeeze Iran until the pips squeak ."

Bolton shrugged off the reality that Iran is still doing business internationally, saying that he believes Iran is "under real pressure" from the sanctions, and that he's determined to see it keep getting worse.

Bolton went on to predict that the European efforts to keep trading with Iran would ultimately fail. He said the Europeans are going through the six stages of grief , and would ultimately led to European acceptance of the US demands.

Either way, Bolton's position is that the US strategy will continue to be imposing new sanctions on Iran going forward. It's not clear what the end game is, beyond just damaging Iran.

[Nov 12, 2018] Bolton's Favorite Deranged Cult

Notable quotes:
"... You can always tell just how deep our understanding is of a country by the opposition we choose to support. ..."
Nov 12, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Sid Finster November 9, 2018 at 10:07 am

Sort of like how Bolton and his merry band of neocons seized upon Ahmad Chalabi and his merry men as some sort of Authentic Voice of Resistance to teh Evil Saddam. Does anyone else remember that?

Bolton et al. know better. As long as this gets them the regime change that they and their owners in Jerusalem and Riyadh demand, they do not care.

rayray , says: November 9, 2018 at 11:07 am
You can always tell just how deep our understanding is of a country by the opposition we choose to support.

As @Sid Finster pointed out, the fraudulent Chalabi was a good bellwether of our true understanding of Iraq, and the MEK shows just how equally deep we understand Iran.

SDS , says: November 9, 2018 at 11:13 am
Can't say if Bolton is just a nut; but Giuliani, et. al are probably just being paid; like any other prostitute. IF the $$ stop; they will then say "who knew?" .
AS with Trump; S.A. would have no problem paying enough for them to perform any act demanded.
b. , says: November 9, 2018 at 12:14 pm
So Obama sees a "Responsibility to Protect" MEK war criminals and the business interests of Dean, Bolton, Guiliani et.al, but is perfectly happy to let the Saudis "cross the blood red line" for years to save himself some headaches on JCOPA – an "agreement" that was not worth the paper it was written on without Congress actually binding itself by ratification.

But his minions did consider designating the Houthi "terrorists".

The intended Clinton-Obama "transition" had all the marks of a protection racket, all governance transient and passing and resting on the edifice of unconstitutionally expansive claims of executive power.

Clyde Schechter , says: November 9, 2018 at 5:23 pm
" Whatever else it may claim to be, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) is still a deranged totalitarian cult steeped in the blood of many innocent people. "

So true. So, why, Mr. Larison, are you perplexed by the fact that deranged totalitarians like Bolton support MEK?

Sid Finster , says: November 9, 2018 at 5:38 pm
@rayray, thank you for the kind words, but my position is more accurately stated as follows:

I suspect that in 2003, Bolton knew and knew full well that Chalabi was an opportunist at best. A fraudster, a monster, a sociopath, delusional, to put it more bluntly. That his support in Iraq was nil, and that Chalabi would be rejected immediately and rightfully, as an American puppet. Bolton may even have known that Chalabi was in the pay of Iran.

Like the MEK now, as long Bolton gets the war he so craves, he doesn't care about any of that.

[Nov 08, 2018] And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy?

Nov 08, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

CTacitus , 15 minutes ago link

LetThemEatRand:

America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic], not to protect or favor the American people.

And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these (((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?

... ... ...

[Nov 07, 2018] China ruled by Chinese...Russia ruled Russians...US ruled by dual citizens. See the difference

Nov 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Fu Ying, the chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China's National People's Congress, said while confirming the reality that China and Russia now find themselves in the same trenches: "I just hope that if some people in the U.S. insist on dragging us down the hill into Thucydides' trap, China will be smart enough not to follow."

Indeed to step back and review the breadth of Russia-China cooperation over the past couple years alone reveals the full potential "cost" of a US-China conflict , given the ways Russia could easily be pulled in. Fu Ying articulated the increasingly common view from Beijing, that "There is no sense of threat from Russia" and that "We feel comfortable back-to-back."

And participants in a recent study by the National Bureau of Asian Research , a Seattle-based think tank, actually agree. They were asked whether American policy was at fault for pushing China and Russia into closer cooperation, and alarmingly, as Bloomberg notes: "Some among the 100-plus participants called for Washington to prepare for the worst-case scenario the realignment implies: a two-front war ."

Here's but a partial list of the way Sino-Russian relations have been transformed in recent years:


waseda-anon , 27 minutes ago link

There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.

I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the problem of the Chi-coms.

KTX , 37 minutes ago link

US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big time being the biggest bully in the history.

hoist the bs flag , 41 minutes ago link

Bilateral trading of Russian and Chinese currency continues on. As do their trade agreements, military gear and friendship.

Thank you Mr. Trump, for helping along that SDR/NWO currency inception for these countries, starting a trade war while the dollar and T Bills drop.

outstanding. Here I thought a stupid ******* Democrat would be at the helm, imploding the United States. shocking...a billionaire con man is.

steverino999 , 8 minutes ago link

Forrest Trump - "My Herpes and Genital Warts are responsible for Melania sleeping in another room, not my small uncircumcised **** and uncontrollable flatulence. Just wanted to clarify." Hum, ahhhhhhh gee thanks for info...I think. Poor Forrest...sigh

me or you , 9 minutes ago link

China ruled by Chinese...Russia ruled Russians...US ruled by traitors and dual citizens. See the difference.

Buck Shot , 1 minute ago link

You are absolutely right. Add in that they are greedy motherfuckers and pied pipers to millions of blithering idiots that can't go one day without making things worse.

g3h , 12 minutes ago link

We are in a trap set by ourselves. The neocon and the liberals want wars with both. On those front they are unuted.

That's what we get.

Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 14 minutes ago link

Go ahead. Merge to form Ruina, with leaders PuXi and XiPu.

InnVestuhrr , 14 minutes ago link

China and Russia make an almost perfect symbiosis:

  1. Adjacent countries, transportation costs are as low as possible
  2. Neither regime cares as much as a gnat tear about civil rights & freedoms and neither is impeded by the vagaries of elections
  3. China has a huge need for natural resources, especially oil & nat gas, but has few resources beyond coal & not-so-rare earths, while Russia has natural resources in abundance
  4. Russia manufactures almost nothing for the international goods market while China is the world's factory
  5. USA regime lords have done an excellent job of alienating and uniting both of them
Karmageddon , 17 minutes ago link

While the US tears itself apart....

The_Juggernaut , 20 minutes ago link

Wow. Putin is even shorter than Xi? No wonder he feels compelled to post the shirtless tiger-wresting pics. He's about as shrimpy as Stalin was.

waseda-anon , 27 minutes ago link

There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.

I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the problem of the Chi-coms.

KTX , 37 minutes ago link

US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big time being the biggest bully in the history.

The_Juggernaut , 18 minutes ago link

Russia and China will come to blows soon enough. China has their eyes on all of that unpopulated land in Siberia, and they won't like it too much when Russia takes advantage of the fact that China is dependent on them for energy. The idea that they'll be best buddies is laughable.

hoist the bs flag , 41 minutes ago link

Bilateral trading of Russian and Chinese currency continues on. As do their trade agreements, military gear and friendship.

Thank you Mr. Trump, for helping along that SDR/NWO currency inception for these countries, starting a trade war while the dollar and T Bills drop.

outstanding. Here I thought a stupid ******* Democrat would be at the helm, imploding the United States. shocking...a billionaire con man is.

LetThemEatRand , 57 minutes ago link

Trump's balls are so big that he ran like a bitch away from his campaign promises to normalize relations with Russia and prevent this exact scenario. Or maybe he was just lying.

Nevermind, the ZH herd is stampeding on how great Trump is for pulling some press privileges of a CNN guy.

Sinophile , 52 minutes ago link

I don't think Trump was lying. I think he is doing his best to stay alive and get done what he can. This country is more fucked up than even he realized.

LetThemEatRand , 49 minutes ago link

He's so smart he realized that almost immediately and brought in a bunch of Goldman Sachs guys to be in his cabinet.

Trump should have said "I could hire a bunch of Goldman Sachs guys, and my idiot anti-banker supporters will still shill for me."

Alternative , 42 minutes ago link

Nobody gives a **** about normalizing relations with Russia.

Sad but true. You know that.

steverino999 , 8 minutes ago link

Forrest Trump - "My Herpes and Genital Warts are responsible for Melania sleeping in another room, not my small uncircumcised **** and uncontrollable flatulence. Just wanted to clarify." Hum, ahhhhhhh gee thanks for info...I think. Poor Forrest...sigh

me or you , 9 minutes ago link

China ruled by Chinese...Russia ruled Russians...US ruled by traitors and dual citizens. See the difference.

Buck Shot , 1 minute ago link

You are absolutely right. Add in that they are greedy motherfuckers and pied pipers to millions of blithering idiots that can't go one day without making things worse.

g3h , 12 minutes ago link

We are in a trap set by ourselves. The neocon and the liberals want wars with both. On those front they are unuted.

That's what we get.

Captain Nemo de Erehwon , 14 minutes ago link

Go ahead. Merge to form Ruina, with leaders PuXi and XiPu.

InnVestuhrr , 14 minutes ago link

China and Russia make an almost perfect symbiosis:

  1. Adjacent countries, transportation costs are as low as possible
  2. Neither regime cares as much as a gnat tear about civil rights & freedoms and neither is impeded by the vagaries of elections
  3. China has a huge need for natural resources, especially oil & nat gas, but has few resources beyond coal & not-so-rare earths, while Russia has natural resources in abundance
  4. Russia manufactures almost nothing for the international goods market while China is the world's factory
  5. USA regime lords have done an excellent job of alienating and uniting both of them
Karmageddon , 17 minutes ago link

While the US tears itself apart....

The_Juggernaut , 20 minutes ago link

Wow. Putin is even shorter than Xi? No wonder he feels compelled to post the shirtless tiger-wresting pics. He's about as shrimpy as Stalin was.

waseda-anon , 27 minutes ago link

There were moments when Putin showed support and a practical approach toward Trump (like when he schooled Fareed Zakaria). Putin even expressed that he was welcoming and respectful of Trumps proposition to restore full-fledged relations with Russia.

I blame the democrats for pointlessly antagonizing Russia for two years just to attempt to cover up the stench of their own excrement. Now it will be even more difficult to address the problem of the Chi-coms.

KTX , 37 minutes ago link

US has nothing to offer Russia as China has. Stop dreaming to befriend Russia to fight China. US had the opportunity to lead the world after the collapse of USSR but flunk it big time being the biggest bully in the history.

The_Juggernaut , 18 minutes ago link

Russia and China will come to blows soon enough. China has their eyes on all of that unpopulated land in Siberia, and they won't like it too much when Russia takes advantage of the fact that China is dependent on them for energy. The idea that they'll be best buddies is laughable.

hoist the bs flag , 41 minutes ago link

Bilateral trading of Russian and Chinese currency continues on. As do their trade agreements, military gear and friendship.

Thank you Mr. Trump, for helping along that SDR/NWO currency inception for these countries, starting a trade war while the dollar and T Bills drop.

outstanding. Here I thought a stupid ******* Democrat would be at the helm, imploding the United States. shocking...a billionaire con man is.

LetThemEatRand , 57 minutes ago link

Trump's balls are so big that he ran like a bitch away from his campaign promises to normalize relations with Russia and prevent this exact scenario. Or maybe he was just lying.

Nevermind, the ZH herd is stampeding on how great Trump is for pulling some press privileges of a CNN guy.

Sinophile , 52 minutes ago link

I don't think Trump was lying. I think he is doing his best to stay alive and get done what he can. This country is more fucked up than even he realized.

LetThemEatRand , 49 minutes ago link

He's so smart he realized that almost immediately and brought in a bunch of Goldman Sachs guys to be in his cabinet.

Trump should have said "I could hire a bunch of Goldman Sachs guys, and my idiot anti-banker supporters will still shill for me."

Alternative , 42 minutes ago link

Nobody gives a **** about normalizing relations with Russia.

Sad but true. You know that.

[Oct 25, 2018] Putin jokes with Bolton: Did the eagle eaten all the olives

Highly recommended!
John Bolton suffers a crippling shortage of olives.
Notable quotes:
"... "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy," ..."
"... "Looks like your eagle has already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?" ..."
Oct 25, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Meeting with US national security adviser John Bolton in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a comment about Washington's hostility that went right over the hawkish diplomat's head. "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy," Putin said in a meeting with Bolton in Moscow on Tuesday.

"I have a question," the Russian president added. "Looks like your eagle has already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?"

boz , October 23, 2018 at 3:49 pm

The Saker has the transcript of Putin's comments at a recent plenary in Sochi, small snippets of which have already appeared in the media.

http://thesaker.is/president-putin-meeting-of-the-valdai-international-discussion-club-2/

About 15-20 minutes to get through (the facilitator seems like a bit of a wet blanket), but fascinating to read, if like me, most of what you hear about Putin has been filtered through the MSM.

A couple of reflections:

Putin does detail. He is courteous and patient. He is highly pragmatic and appears to be widely (and, for my money, effectively) briefed.

Olga , October 23, 2018 at 5:33 pm

For those of us lucky enough to follow VVP in his native language – it is indeed a delight. (And – mind you – it was only after I took the time to follow him in his native language that I was able to appreciate this person and his leadership abilities. If one follows him through NYT – no chance that would give one an accurate picture.)
He is erudite, informed, and has a wicked sense of humour, as shown in this clip:
https://www.rt.com/news/442068-putin-olives-eagle-bolton/

[Oct 21, 2018] Bolton is a certified retard if he thinks he will bankrupt Russia with an arms race

Oct 21, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

kirill October 19, 2018 at 2:40 pm

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-19/bolton-pushes-trump-drop-1987-treaty-after-russia-unveils-advanced-nukes

Bolton pushes for the US to break out of the 1987 INF Treaty. Not surprising considering that all those ABM components they are deploying around Russia are dual use and violate the INF. The INF is also a joke (showing us what a comprador Gorby was) since it allows the US to deploy unlimited range nuclear missiles in its Naval assets. So Russia cannot have any land based intermediate range nukes, but the US can park its ships in EU harbours and deploy unlimited amounts of the "banned" class of missiles.

I say let the US break the INF. The INF helps the USA and its NATzO minions more than it helps Russia.

Patient Observer October 20, 2018 at 9:05 am
There may be several motivations for Bolton
– an attempt to force Russia into a ruinously expensive arms race;
– to create a regional Cold War to reverse the nascent rapprochement between Western Europe and Russia;
– an attempt to limit war to the European/Russian region as much as possible if a war against Russia is needed by the US.

Bolton is an idiot carrying out a moron's strategy. What could go wrong?

kirill October 20, 2018 at 2:46 pm
Bolton is a certified retard if he thinks he will bankrupt Russia with an arms race.

1) I find the theory that the USSR couldn't afford the 1970-80s arms race and went bankrupt to be of zero credibility. The USSR was a command economy and various estimates of how much it allegedly spent on the economy to be ridiculous western attempts to impose their capitalist accounting on a command economy.

The USSR collapsed due to internal political rot and not some "budget deficit" which was meaningless in command economics and never exiting in reality anyway. The only valid metrics of deficits in command economies if there are labour shortages in various industries.

The USSR had more than enough engineers, researchers, workers and material resources to keep up with the arms race.

This is why command economics is vastly superior to capitalist profiteering. Capitalism only triumphs because humans are genetically deficient to live optimally under a command economy since they need all sorts of superfluous incentives and feel-good junk.

2) Nuclear weapons are the cheapest option out of all military costs. Tanks, ships and armed troops are much more expensive. In the current rocket era, these expensive options are outdated and much less potent. Russia can neutralize any US move by deploying appropriately designed missiles and warheads.

[Sep 25, 2018] Bolton Hates the Nuclear Deal Because It Proves Diplomacy Works

Notable quotes:
"... Earlier today, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo spoke to the hard-line, misleadingly-named pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), and delivered their usual attacks on and threats against Iran. ..."
"... An agreement that eliminates any pretext for preventive war, imposes no costs on America, and succeeds through cooperation with multiple governments is anathema to someone like Bolton, because it is proof that diplomacy works and can achieve things that coercive and punitive policies never could. ..."
"... UANI audience members react this way to bad economic news from Iran because they desire the destabilization and overthrow of the government. The fact that the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor headlined their event this week confirms for us that this is the administration's goal as well. ..."
Sep 25, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Earlier today, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo spoke to the hard-line, misleadingly-named pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), and delivered their usual attacks on and threats against Iran. One line from Bolton's speech stood out for being as delusional as it was representative of the Iran hawk worldview:

The Iran Deal was the worst diplomatic debacle in American history [bold mine-DL]. It did nothing to address the regime's destabilizing activities or its ballistic missile development and proliferation. Worst of all, the deal failed in its fundamental objective: permanently denying Iran all paths to a nuclear bomb.

Bolton loathes diplomacy. That is the key thing to understand about him, and it helps explain almost everything he has done in his career. He regards any successful diplomatic agreement as something of a debacle because it involves striking a compromise with another government, usually an adversary or rival, and because it means that the other side wasn't forced to give in to our every demand. When he denounces the JCPOA as "the worst diplomatic debacle in American history," he is simply expressing the intensity of his hatred for the government with which the agreement was made. His previous and ongoing support for the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) shouldn't be forgotten when we try to make sense of this fanatical rhetoric.

If Bolton considers something to be the "worst diplomatic debacle" of our entire history, that tells us that the agreement required very little of the U.S., that it reinforced habits of multilateral cooperation, and that it successfully resolved an outstanding dispute that Bolton wished to resolve through regime change and war. An agreement that eliminates any pretext for preventive war, imposes no costs on America, and succeeds through cooperation with multiple governments is anathema to someone like Bolton, because it is proof that diplomacy works and can achieve things that coercive and punitive policies never could.

The venue for Bolton and Pompeo's speeches was no accident. It was an audience of hard-liners that detest Iran being addressed by like-minded speakers. UANI intensely opposed the nuclear deal and recited the usual false claims about it. Their vehement hostility to the most important and successful nonproliferation agreement of its kind is a testament to how little they care about actually restricting Iran's nuclear program. Like other Iran hawks, UANI is simply against Iran, and therefore they hate anything that might relieve international pressure on Iran. The group celebrates Trump administration sanctions and its members laugh about the deteriorating economic conditions inside Iran:

UANI audience members react this way to bad economic news from Iran because they desire the destabilization and overthrow of the government. The fact that the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor headlined their event this week confirms for us that this is the administration's goal as well.

Whine Merchant September 25, 2018 at 6:44 pm

Well, more evidence that the three stooges still drink Bibi's kool-aid. Perhaps AIPAC has promised to arrange for the Pompeo-Haley GOP Ticket to succeed Trump, with Bolton as Sec of State and Defence all-in-one.

[Aug 31, 2018] John Bolton is, I believe, the scariest character in Trump's administration

Aug 31, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Jessika , August 31, 2018 at 9:55 pm

John Bolton is, I believe, the scariest character in Trump's administration. How did Trump pick him? It makes no sense, but this whole mess literally makes none. There has got to be a way to get him out of there. Sheldon Adelson's money is the connection between Trump, Haley, Bolton. Bolton wants war with Iran, has been intent on it since Bush 2 administration. He is quite dangerous, and has connections to Netanyahu and even Meir Dagan of Mossad. I can't copy this link to Gareth Porter's article but maybe Joe or someone can, it's cited below. Everyone should read it. The facts in the article are quite alarming about Bolton. With all the political drama going on from the Mueller probe, there are possibilities of dreadful consequences, and I think Bolton could bring disaster. He may be the origin as well as the mouthpiece of this latest provocative threat about Assad using chemicals. Here is the article:

"The Untold Story of John Bolton's Campaign for War with Iran", by Gareth Porter, in The American Conservative, March 22, 2018.

[Aug 16, 2018] Russiagate and neo-McCarthysim are result of the newly minted Anti-Trump allience of neocons and neoliberals

Notable quotes:
"... Your comment is awaiting moderation. ..."
"... "authoritarian regimes pursue different objectives than societies with governments that are accountable to the people and respect the rule of law." ..."
"... Fortunately, our think tank alliance is in still in no position (heaven be thanked!) to impose its will. The most these hysterical complainers can do is air their grievances and misrepresent them as somehow "preserving democracy." ..."
"... This, of course, is indicative of the neocon tactic of linking whatever its advocates see fit to address to a supposed common purpose, which is saving democracy from whatever is defined as "antidemocratic." ..."
Aug 16, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Q August 13, 2018 at 6:17 pm

Neocons and [neo]liberals have always had a lot in common. They both want:
– Globalism
– open borders
– anti-Russia, Iran
– American hegemony which means endless wars
– support for gay marriage
– anti-Nationalism hence anti-Trump
The only thing that separated them were gun control and abortion, but even those issues aren't as clearcut anymore.
Learned Foot , says: August 13, 2018 at 9:42 pm
Two sides of the same bad penny. Question is, how do we get rid of it?
Tom Cullem , says: August 14, 2018 at 2:39 pm
@Dundalk – Second all that, perfectly put.

They aren't worried about democracy: they're worried about global corporatist power, which is what "transatlantic partnerships" really translates to.

"Populism" is another name for the Great Unwashed trying to regain some control of their environment. Bloody cheek, eh?

likbez , says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
August 15, 2018 at 9:34 pm
@Q, August 13, 2018 at 6:17 pm

Neocons and [neo]liberals have always had a lot in common. They both want:

Bingo! It looks like neocons and neoliberals joined forces to fight the rise of "populism" which should probably be more properly called "the crisis of neoliberalism." To a certain extent, the current "NeverTrumplists" neo-McCarthyism campaign is the behavior of a wounded neoliberal beast (I am not sure why they have such an allergic reaction to Trump who in domestic policies is 100% neoliberal and in foreign policy is 66% neocon.)

They try to suppress dissent under the smoke screen of "commitment to democracy and core democratic principles" because, as you can guess, this is very important "at a time when the character of our societies is at stake." The character of the neoliberal society in the USA and EU to be exact.

Ironically, those "defenders of democracy" are interested in the issue of democracy even less than former Soviet nomenklatura. All they want is to kick the "classic neoliberalism" can down the road (and, as a side effect, preserve their lucrative sinecures; this is especially visible with Max Boot in his recent interviews )

As Professor Paul Gottfried noted about the recent alliance of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the neoliberal Center for American Progress (CAP):

Moreover, who are these "authoritarian" bad guys that CAP now has in its crosshairs and plans to rid the world of with its new neocon pals?

Presumably, it's the right-of-center governments in Eastern and Central Europe, as personified by favorite leftist whipping boy Viktor Orban.

Although CAP doesn't want to be especially "confrontational" in dealing with its villains, or so it claims, it also proclaims that "authoritarian regimes pursue different objectives than societies with governments that are accountable to the people and respect the rule of law."

It might be useful for CAP to tell us how exactly Hungary, Poland, and other right-of-center European governments have not been democratically elected and have disrespected their countries' legal traditions.

Fortunately, our think tank alliance is in still in no position (heaven be thanked!) to impose its will. The most these hysterical complainers can do is air their grievances and misrepresent them as somehow "preserving democracy." All AEI and CAP have done is to take a multitude of grievances -- e.g., America's failing to oppose adequately China's cyberthreats, putting up with Russia's aggression, "security threats" in general, and nuclear proliferation -- and mixed them together with standard leftist boilerplate about Orban's "illiberalism" and "sharing our values."

This, of course, is indicative of the neocon tactic of linking whatever its advocates see fit to address to a supposed common purpose, which is saving democracy from whatever is defined as "antidemocratic."

[Aug 06, 2018] The Rise and Continued Influence of the Neocons. The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

Notable quotes:
"... The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and the rise of Obama . Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the world's remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in depth in the documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin. ..."
"... This feature is followed by an interview with writer, ecological campaigner, and Deep State researcher Mark Robinowitz . Originally recorded and aired in January 2018, Robinowitz helps delineate the factions of power shaping the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, as well as the players within the National Security State, including the neocons, that appear to be manipulating him and his presidency, possibly maneuvering him towards an impeachment within the next year. ..."
"... Robbie Martin is a journalist, musician and documentary film-maker. He is co-host with his sister Abby Martin of Media Roots Radio. A Very Heavy Agenda can be streamed or purchased here . Soundtrack for Film and music for these series from Fluorescent Grey (Robbie Martin). ..."
"... Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture practitioner and publisher of oilempire.us as well as jfkmoon.org . He is based in Eugene, Oregon. ..."
"... from the period between 2014 to 2018, it was like an exponentially rising climate of propaganda against Russia coming from the U.S. media ..."
"... they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality. ..."
"... And how it only took, you know, certain nudges and pushes and policy papers , and here we are. They essentially got their way, and Russia has never been more demonized since the fall of communism and the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. ..."
"... she had over 200 basically hit piece stories written about her within the span of a week, and I was just in this kind of depressed place checking in with her making sure she was doing okay, and not basically getting too stressed out from all this media pressure and this barrage of negative stories. So I was just watching these videos basically from the neocon think-tank that I believe was behind the smear campaign against her. ..."
"... Foreign Policy Initiative is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. ..."
"... Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the Obama era. ..."
"... the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which arguably that is the neocon prize but see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran. ..."
"... That's one of their foreign policy platforms they've sort of brushed under the rug, because that's one of The reason I'm giving that example is because that's how they have managed to cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say, hey we're kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin's bad, and let's really go after him. Let's overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe. ..."
"... So the first one is that how right after 9/11, several of these neocons, I think it's Don and Fred Kagan, went on TV and radio kind of immediately after for at least a 24-hour 48-hour period after 9/11 and basically blamed Palestinians for the attack, and were basically outright calling for the U.S. to attack Palestine. And even saying that they had no evidence but we should just go and attack them. So could you talk about what happened there, and what was the effect there? Everyone kind of forgets about this but what happened there, and what do you think the effect of that was? ..."
"... Because, and this is important to know, that Don Kagan is one of the only three authors credited as writing Rebuilding America's Defenses, the infamous paper that PNAC released that says we need a new Pearl Harbor, a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor. ..."
"... Don Kagan is someone who just, mostly an obscure figure in this, but I'd like to believe that if he was saying that on the radio within 24 hours of 9/11, that it was something being heavily discussed within that community behind the scenes. And h e and his son Fred Kagan are two of the most intellectual, influential neoconservatives in DC. Fred Kagan is behind the Iraq surge, he is also behind the Afghanistan s urge for Obama, directly working under David Petraeus. So these are not just like random neocons. It's important to stress that they are some of the most influential neocon brain-trust type people in DC even though they're so relatively obscure They're not household names. ..."
"... The news media played footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attacks in the middle of a national emergency at 12 p.m. while thousands of people were still missing during the World Trade Center attacks. So this is the kind of stuff that U.S. media was doing. ..."
"... And then also something else interesting Don Kagan brings up in the recording, and maybe you were going to mention this next, but I'll just say it because it's so weird, as he says what would have happened, and keep in mind this is 9/12-01, one day after 9/11. He says, what would have happened if the terrorists had Anthrax on that plane? ..."
Aug 06, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca

Robert Kagan. William Kristol. Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle. John Bolton. Elliott Abrams. Gary Schmitt. These are a few of the names generally associated with a strain of far-right political thought called neoconservatism. [1][2]

Politically, the neocons favour a world in which the United States adopts a much more aggressive military posture, and utilizes its military might to not only contain terrorist and related threats to its security, but force regime change in regions like the Middle East. They further take on the task of 'nation-building' all in the name of creating a safer world for 'democracy.' It was the neocons who promoted the stratagem of pre-emptive military action. [3]

The neocons enjoyed a robust period of influence under the Bush-Cheney administration. The 9/11 attacks and the triggering of a 'war on terrorism' enabled a series of foreign policy choices, most notably the War on Afghanistan and the War on Iraq, which aligned with the aims and aspirations of the group once referred to by President George Bush Sr. as the 'crazies in the basement.'[4]

The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and the rise of Obama . Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the world's remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in depth in the documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9kHHR_yy9CE

In part one of a special two part interview by Global Research News Hour guest contributor Scott Price , Martin describes the inspiration behind making the film, the post 9/11 atmosphere in which the neocons flourished, and the neocons' role in fostering the new Cold War mentality which contributed to the smearing of his better-known sister, former RT host Abby Martin .

This feature is followed by an interview with writer, ecological campaigner, and Deep State researcher Mark Robinowitz . Originally recorded and aired in January 2018, Robinowitz helps delineate the factions of power shaping the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, as well as the players within the National Security State, including the neocons, that appear to be manipulating him and his presidency, possibly maneuvering him towards an impeachment within the next year.

Robbie Martin is a journalist, musician and documentary film-maker. He is co-host with his sister Abby Martin of Media Roots Radio. A Very Heavy Agenda can be streamed or purchased here . Soundtrack for Film and music for these series from Fluorescent Grey (Robbie Martin).

Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture practitioner and publisher of oilempire.us as well as jfkmoon.org . He is based in Eugene, Oregon.

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Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript – Interview with Robbie Martin, July 2018

... ... ...

And of course, right after the Sochi Olympics, is when the Euromaidan protest in Ukraine, it kind of boiled over to the point where there were, you know, walls of flaming tires all over Euromaidan – basically a war zone. And of course the Ukrainian government fell due to a coup which many believe, including myself, was partially U.S. sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

And then things from there, Scott, just started to spiral out of contro , and from the period between 2014 to 2018, it was like an exponentially rising climate of propaganda against Russia coming from the U.S. media, and when I made my film series, I didn't I made it before the election, s o I didn't realize how hysterical it was going to get after the election, and frankly, I had no idea it was going to get this bad, to the point that it's got now.

I know that doesn't quite answer your question about my inspiration, but it 's kind of a long answer to your question is my film itself is essentially.. was tracking the neocon influence and how the neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that constructed the blueprints to the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality.

Neocon 101: What do neoconservatives believe?.

And how it only took, you know, certain nudges and pushes and policy papers , and here we are. They essentially got their way, and Russia has never been more demonized since the fall of communism and the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. So that's I don't know if that was too long of an answer for your question , but that's what was sort of my inspiration for how I made it. My sister was also kind of a part of the story because some of these neocons actually tried to smear her while she was working for RT.

... ... ...

RM: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think at first, I was really fascinated by the psychology of these key neoconservatives. I was watching, at first I didn't even know I was going to make a film. I was kind of in this weird place mentally, my sister had just been put through the wringer, she had over 200 basically hit piece stories written about her within the span of a week, and I was just in this kind of depressed place checking in with her making sure she was doing okay, and not basically getting too stressed out from all this media pressure and this barrage of negative stories. So I was just watching these videos basically from the neocon think-tank that I believe was behind the smear campaign against her.

So I was watching videos from this think tank, they were called the Foreign Policy Initiative, and I quickly learned maybe over 48 hour period, oh, the Foreign Policy Initiative is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. Once I realized that, then I just then I was obsessed with watching these videos. I watched probably every single video on their YouTube channel, and the majority of them were incredibly boring, very dry. And I was already in a depressed place, so, you know, it was kind of just putting me into this weird state where I was watching nothing but these dry foreign policy think tank videos for weeks on end.

Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the Obama era. Once I saw this, I became fascinated with his psychology. And I was already sort of fascinated with Bill Kristol's psychology, you know , going back to when I was a young man when I would watch Fox News you know during the Iraq War, I would watch Bill Kristol, and I found him fascinating back then because he seemed on a different level than most other, you know, war hawks that would go on Fox News.

But it was really Robert Kagan though that made me think, you know, his own words are so fascinating and so candid and so revealing without adding any editorial content that I wonder if this will work, if I present it just simply in his own words.

... ... ...

But I think one way to describe why they're so important and they're still so influential is because they managed to, a very small handful of them, maybe less than a dozen figures, managed to convince the rest of, what people describe as the DC blob, the sort of foreign policy consensus in DC overall, the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which arguably that is the neocon prize but see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran.

That's one of their foreign policy platforms they've sort of brushed under the rug, because that's one of The reason I'm giving that example is because that's how they have managed to cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say, hey we're kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin's bad, and let's really go after him. Let's overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe.

So yes, it's true that there are not that many actual literal neocons, but a lot of people now who are sort of anti-war, do work in anti-war or do foreign policy critique, they don't see much of a difference any more between sort of the neoliberal foreign policy group in DC, which is most of it, and the actual neocons anymore. Because they have essentially merged in a non-partisan fashion, and it's been very surreal to watch, especially after the 2016 election when you actually saw neocons saying well you should vote for Hillary. For the first time ever they all said that you shouldn't vote for a R epublican.

That's so I don't know that fully answers your question, but I think to su m it up it's because the neocons have influenced everybody. So now that they've been able to do that you don't really need that many of them around you know making that much trouble because everybody is carrying out their agenda essentially. In this DC foreign policy think-tank.

GR: Yeah I think the way you kind of describe it in maybe it's I don't know if you personally describe it, but I wrote it down in my notes about how neoconservatism is almost like a species and it kind of evolved over the last 20 years in a way? So I think what you're talking about how there's a shift to Hillary, and, but I mean that shift is more that the neoconservative line really became the mainstream line, whereas, you know, maybe in the early 2000s, like, there was a larger perception, yes, they were in the White House, but these people are also crazy, whereas now is kind of like the mainstream, which is quite scary. Which is something I think we'll talk about in a little bit. But kind of what I was talking about a bit before what I referenced was that I was a teenager when 9/11 happened, and it really shaped my generation and the world that I'm living in now

But as I was watching the 3-part documentary, there were several things that I was like kind of blown away by how these things kind of just went down the memory hole, and I want to talk about those things because several of these things I vaguely kind of remember now but for some odd reason I had totally forgotten about them, and they're not really within the wider narrative of 9/11 and the war on terror.

So the first one is that how right after 9/11, several of these neocons, I think it's Don and Fred Kagan, went on TV and radio kind of immediately after for at least a 24-hour 48-hour period after 9/11 and basically blamed Palestinians for the attack, and were basically outright calling for the U.S. to attack Palestine. And even saying that they had no evidence but we should just go and attack them. So could you talk about what happened there, and what was the effect there? Everyone kind of forgets about this but what happened there, and what do you think the effect of that was?

RM: You just opened up a really big can of worms with that question. Well, to fully answer that it would require a totally separate interview, but I'll do my best to answer it in this short time that we have. What you're describing is, what I would say, is the neocons flipping up and revealing too much of an early iteration of their script, than the rest of the consensus was ready to reveal or get on board with. And perhaps, even, they jumped ahead with something that the rest of the neocons already decided, we can't go there. Because, and this is important to know, that Don Kagan is one of the only three authors credited as writing Rebuilding America's Defenses, the infamous paper that PNAC released that says we need a new Pearl Harbor, a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.

Don Kagan is someone who just, mostly an obscure figure in this, but I'd like to believe that if he was saying that on the radio within 24 hours of 9/11, that it was something being heavily discussed within that community behind the scenes. And h e and his son Fred Kagan are two of the most intellectual, influential neoconservatives in DC. Fred Kagan is behind the Iraq surge, he is also behind the Afghanistan s urge for Obama, directly working under David Petraeus. So these are not just like random neocons. It's important to stress that they are some of the most influential neocon brain-trust type people in DC even though they're so relatively obscure They're not household names.

So to hear both of them saying that we need to clean out Palestine with the U.S. Delta Force raids and the full panoply of U.S. military tools and arsenal, it's a very shocking thing to hear. Even though I've long believed that neocons are some of the most evil people on the planet, that was even surprising for me to hear. That they went ahead and openly said that the U.S. military should do that, and actually, in their broadcast they make it clear that they don't even care who's behind 9/11. Which is strange. They say that if we run around tracing the actual perpetrators, we're just going to be wasting our time and we won't get anywhere. So what they are saying is that we should just go attack all these countries anyways because even if they're behind it or not, they hate us and want to kill us.

And Palestine was one of their primary targets to retaliate against in response to 9/11. Now that's very strange when you look at the day of 9/11, and I've actually done a podcast on this, I call it the Palestinian Frame-up, on 9/11, there were four separate incidences that were run throughout U.S. media throughout the day of 9/11 that were attempting to blame Palestinians for the attacks before Bin Laden became the primary culprit that the U.S. media latched on to. So I find that very strange.

And I'm not going to try to explain it here during this interview, but you can look into that. It's all documented. The news media played footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attacks in the middle of a national emergency at 12 p.m. while thousands of people were still missing during the World Trade Center attacks. So this is the kind of stuff that U.S. media was doing.

So it's very interesting for me to see neocons actually piggy-backing on that and saying we should attack Palestine. And that's a rare thing, I think, to find neocons slipping up that badly. And I guess I find that clip particularly fascinating because it's really one of the only ones like that out there, and to my knowledge, I'm the first one to find it by combing through all these archives. I've never heard of it before, never even heard of any neocon s saying that before on record.

And then also something else interesting Don Kagan brings up in the recording, and maybe you were going to mention this next, but I'll just say it because it's so weird, as he says what would have happened, and keep in mind this is 9/12-01, one day after 9/11. He says, what would have happened if the terrorists had Anthrax on that plane?

GR: Right. Yeah.

RM: And on October 5, weaponized anthrax was sent through the U.S. mail. While the Bush Administration was already inoculated with Cipro. the antibiotic taken to prevent Anthrax infection. So there's a lot of interesting and very scary questions that are raised just by that single clip. and I'm to this day it's still a mystery to me.

GR: That was Part 1 of the Global Research News Hour special with Robbie Martin on his documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda that explores the rise and continued influence of the neoconservatives. Part 2 will air next week where we will explore the anthrax attacks, the role of Vice in spreading U.S. propaganda. You can buy or stream A Very Heavy Agenda at averyheavyagenda.com. Music for this special provided by Fluorescent Grey, AKA Robbie Martin. For the Global Research News Hour, I'm Scott Price.

-end of transcript-

Global Research News Hour Summer 2018 Series Part 5

[Jul 23, 2018] US diplomats act like imperial governors riding roughshod over sovereignty of national governments by John Laughland

Notable quotes:
"... More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans. ..."
"... What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government. ..."
"... "As regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same." ..."
"... "pseudo-Euroskeptic" ..."
"... " interference " ..."
"... "fifth columnists" ..."
"... "Euro-Atlantic structures" ..."
"... "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down." ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
Jul 19, 2018 | www.rt.com

Photo (omitted): Geoffrey R. Pyatt (L) and Samantha Power on Maidan square, in Kiev on June 10, 2015 © YURY KIRNICHNY / AFP

On the world's Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors are perceived more as imperial governors than simple channels of communication. At the height of the Maidan protests in Kiev in early 2014, a conversation was leaked between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the then-Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Victoria Nuland. The conversation gained notoriety because Nuland said to Pyatt, "F**k the EU" and the recording was almost instantly available on Youtube .

More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.

Read more American meddling is bad too, except when it isn't, says ex-ambassador to Russia

What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government.

This has been going on for decades, although the levels of control exercised by the United States increased as it rushed to fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe after 1989. In earlier times, such control, especially regime change operations, had to be conducted either covertly, as with the overthrow of Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953, or by financing and arming an anti-government militia, such as in Nicaragua and elsewhere in central and South America, or by encouraging the army itself, most famously in Chile in 1973. There is a huge body of literature on this vast subject (for the coup against Mosaddegh, see especially 'All the Shah's Men' by Stephen Kinzer, 2003) and there is no possibility of denying that such operations took place. Indeed, former CIA director, James Woolsey, recently admitted that they continue to this day.

Many of the ambassadors who engineered or attempted regime change operations in Eastern Europe and the former USSR had cut their teeth in Latin America in 1980s and 1990s. One of them, Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, even boasted in a letter to The Guardian in 2001 that he was doing the same thing in Minsk as he had done in Managua. He wrote: "As regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same."

Read more US fingerprints all over Nicaragua's bloody unrest

Kozak did not mention that he also played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in Panama in 1989 but he is far from alone. The experience accumulated by the Americans during the Cold War, including in major European countries like Italy where US interference was key to preventing Communist victories in elections, spawned a whole generation of Kermit Roosevelts (the architect of the coup against Mosaddegh) who have made their careers over decades in the State Department. Some names, such as that of Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia who made no secret of his opposition to the president of the state to which he was accredited, will be familiar to RT readers.

Two years after the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, which he helped coordinate, Geoffrey Pyatt was appointed US ambassador to Greece. He remains in that post to this day - which is why some are asking whether his hand might be behind last week's expulsion of Russian diplomats from Athens. Greece and Russia have customarily had good relations but they differ on the Macedonian issue. Now, the Greek government headed by the "pseudo-Euroskeptic" Alexis Tsipras, claims that four Russian diplomats were engaged in covert operations in Greece to lobby against forcing Macedonia to change its official name.

READ MORE: Macedonian MPs ratify Greece name deal again

Like almost every other political issue these days, this relatively arcane one is regarded through the distorting prism of alleged Russian " interference " : any decision which does not consolidate the power of American-dominated supranational structures like the US or the EU is now routinely attributed to all-pervasive Russian influence, as if all dissidents were foreign agents. Western discussion of this subject now resembles the paranoia of the old Soviet regime, and of its satellites in Eastern Europe, which similarly attacked anti-Communists for being "fifth columnists" - the very phrase used by a prominent European politician last month to lambast all his enemies as Russian stooges.

Europe has a fifth column in its ranks: Putin's cheerleaders who want to destroy Europe & liberal democracy from within: Le Pen, Wilders, Farage, Orbàn, Kaczynski, Salvini use Kremlin money & intel. Like Farage's friend Arron Banks, who colluded w/ Russians to deliver #Brexit

-- Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) 13 juin 2018

US influence is suspected in this case between Greece and Macedonia because the Americans are pushing to bring the whole of the Balkan peninsula under Western control. This has been policy for nearly thirty years - at least since the Yugoslav wars led to a US-brokered peace deal in Bosnia in 1995. In recent years the tempo has quickened, with the accession of Montenegro to NATO last year leaving only Macedonia and Serbia as missing pieces of the puzzle. The Greek victory over the name of Macedonia removes the last obstacle to that country's accession to NATO and other "Euro-Atlantic structures" like the EU and soon only Serbia will be left. Will she last long?

One of the most notorious anecdotes of the Second World War was told by Churchill. While in Moscow in 1944, he and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of influence, putting percentage figures to show the respective weight of the West and the USSR - 10:90 in Greece, 50:50 Yugoslavia, 25:75 in Bulgaria, and so on. Churchill recalls how this so-called Percentages Agreement was concluded in a few minutes, and how he scribbled a note of their verbal agreement on a piece of paper which Stalin glanced at for a second and then ticked off. Churchill wrote, "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down."

Churchill then reflected that it might seem cynical to decide the fate of millions of people in such an offhand manner. Later generations have generally agreed with his self-criticism. Today's West would certainly never conclude such an agreement - but not because of any squeamishness or lack of cynicism on its part. Instead, the West, especially the US, could not conclude any agreement because in every case the only acceptable outcome would be 100% influence for itself. That is what Geoffrey Pyatt and his colleagues spend their entire careers trying to achieve - and, to a large extent, they succeed.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

John Laughland, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and who has taught at universities in Paris and Rome, is a historian and specialist in international affairs.

[Jun 28, 2018] What is John Bolton s role in Trump s ME drama?

With Mueller Trump is on a very short leash indeed, so I doubt that he has great freedom of maneuver.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump has a free hand from his base to negotiate peaceful coexistence with Russia, but he nevertheless must successfully deal with the passion of the neocon wing of the Borg (foreign policy establishment). They still swoon at the thought of the ongoing renewal of the Cold War. ..."
"... John Bolton is an arch-neocon, a neocon's neocon. Trump has sent him to Moscow to arrange an agenda, date and location for a meeting with Vladimir Putin. IMO this is a stroke of genius. What it does is put an enemy of good US-Russia relations in charge of arranging the schedule for discussions to improve US-Russia relations. In LBJ's vulgarism, Bolton is going to be inside the tent peeing out rather than outside peeing in. Having arranged the meeting, he will be personally invested in its success. How sweet that is! ..."
"... People want to believe so badly. I also want to believe, but I live in the real world. What happened the last time Trump made noises about leaving Syria to its own devices, most recently in April? Instant false flag, that's what. With Trump, it's worked twice already, I see no reason that it will not work a third or fourth time, or as often as needed. ..."
"... Without Russia as a selected enemy the US Army, with its expanding budget and end-strength has no important raison d'être , and what will the Borg do about that? First we can expect a large increase in the "Russia-bad" propaganda, similar to that on Iran (the greatest state sponsor of this and that). So I suppose Bolton is busy on his back-channel, etc. ..."
"... Between the end of Peace of Vienna and the start of Peace of Yalta there was a 50-year interval - filled with 2 world wars. Let us hope it be different this time. ..."
"... My biggest concern remains that Bibi's support itself will not guarantee acquiescence from the ultra-nationalist elements in Israel and their supporters elsewhere, who want to drag the US into the war. If the folks that carried out Khan Sheikhoun & other false flag CW attacks can be controlled, peace may have a chance. Otherwise, Trump's hand could still be forced. ..."
"... A stroke of genius. Bolton either demonstrates his obedience or is sacked, along with most of other neocons, for trying to spike the upcoming Putin summit. ..."
Jun 28, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

(editorial)

On a gestalt basis it seems to me from all the bits and pieces of information and rumor that DJT is attempting "The Deal of the Century!" (an episode or two of his soon to be award winning series on the subject of "The Greatest President.")

Russian cooperation in this is clearly needed. Trump is blessedly lacking in ideological fervor. His Deplorable base is also a bit short on ideology being focused on wages, prices, taxes and other everyday living issues. Their patriotism expresses itself in devotion to the flag and the anthem and a willingness to serve in the armed forces, something increasingly absent in the "resistance."

Trump has a free hand from his base to negotiate peaceful coexistence with Russia, but he nevertheless must successfully deal with the passion of the neocon wing of the Borg (foreign policy establishment). They still swoon at the thought of the ongoing renewal of the Cold War.

John Bolton is an arch-neocon, a neocon's neocon. Trump has sent him to Moscow to arrange an agenda, date and location for a meeting with Vladimir Putin. IMO this is a stroke of genius. What it does is put an enemy of good US-Russia relations in charge of arranging the schedule for discussions to improve US-Russia relations. In LBJ's vulgarism, Bolton is going to be inside the tent peeing out rather than outside peeing in. Having arranged the meeting, he will be personally invested in its success. How sweet that is!

Trumps is IMO trying for a grand ME bargain to be achieved with Russian help:

  1. Peace in Syria in the context of abandonment of regime change. Trump the pragmatist recognizes that the R+6 forces have won the civil war and, therefore he wishes to accept the sunk costs of previous American ineptitude in Syria and to walk away. US Embassy Amman has signaled to the FSA rebels in SW Syria that they should not expect the US to defend them. This is a traditional American stab in the back for guerrilla allies but the warning indicates to me that some group in the US Government (probably the CIA) has enough conscience to want to give warning. As soon as that warning was issued the rate of surrenders to the SAA rose.
  2. The US has thus made it clear that the SAA and Russian forces in Syria have a free hand in the SW and it seems that Israeli air and missile attacks are unlikely against the SW offensive. This has been insured through a Russian mandate that Hizbullah and IRGC dominated Shia militias stay out of the fight in Deraa and Quneitra Provinces.
  3. The Egyptians have been talking to Hamas about their willingness to enter into a hudna (religiously sanctioned truce) with Israel. Hamas has frequently offered this before. Such truces are renewable and are often for 10 years. Kushner's team thinks it has attained Natanyahhu's support for this. The deal would supposedly include; a Gaza-Egyptian industrial zone in the area of Raffa, an airport, a seaport. In return Hamas would be expected to police the truce from their side of the border. People on SST who have deep access in Israel doubt the sincerity of apparent Israeli assent, but there is little doubt I think that DJT considers this part of the Grand Bargain he is attempting to forge.

Nowhere in any of this is anything concerning Iran and I assume that regime change remains the policy. Nor is there anything about Saudi Arabia and the UAE's mercenary manned war in Yemen. Ah, well, pilgrims, everything in its time. pl


Sid Finster , 9 hours ago

People want to believe so badly. I also want to believe, but I live in the real world. What happened the last time Trump made noises about leaving Syria to its own devices, most recently in April? Instant false flag, that's what. With Trump, it's worked twice already, I see no reason that it will not work a third or fourth time, or as often as needed.
Don Bacon , 9 hours ago
Without Russia as a selected enemy the US Army, with its expanding budget and end-strength has no important raison d'être , and what will the Borg do about that? First we can expect a large increase in the "Russia-bad" propaganda, similar to that on Iran (the greatest state sponsor of this and that). So I suppose Bolton is busy on his back-channel, etc.
Pat Lang Mod -> Don Bacon , 9 hours ago
I suppose you mean the US Armed Forces, not the US Army.
Don Bacon -> Pat Lang , 6 hours ago
No, I mean the Army is especially invested in Europe and has been. I attended C&GSC at the peak of Vietnam and in exercises they were still mostly concerned with the Fulda Gap, division trains, etc. Big Army. Similar to how Army is going now, back to their roots so to speak. Even when they claimed they were short of funds, they found a way to send forces to Europe based on the claims that after Crimea, Russia was (and is) a threat to. . .the U.S.?

Peace with Russia would be a severe blow to Army especially with the shift to Indo-Pacific which involves Navy and Marines, and Army not much. I know Army was greatly involved with island operations in WWII, but China is not Japan regarding imperialism, IMO, and anyhow island invasions are not popular in Army.

So I look for a beefed up "Russia threat" campaign to counter Trump, and insider Bolton to be a big part of it.

Terra Cotta Woolpuller -> Pat Lang , 4 hours ago
Good analysis of the political implications of having Bolton establishing a summit as it worked with Pompeo. Always keep your friends close and your enemies closer good way to clean up the nest of venomous asps.
Michael Stojanovic , 9 hours ago
Qatar/Turkey may be an impediment/wild card, given it's Muslim brotherhood connections and leanings and strong backing for Hamas.
Pat Lang Mod -> Michael Stojanovic , 8 hours ago
It seems that Hamas has agreed.
Michael Stojanovic -> Pat Lang , 6 hours ago
Gen Sisi must have made an offer too good to resist. We know the House of Saud will finance it. Are they going to political legitimatize Hamas, turn Gaza in a statelet ? Perhaps Hamas sees, or is being threaten with the money spigot being turned off ? The only way to get money will be their share of offshore Natural Gas ? All for Hamas perhaps ? Nothing buys peace faster then lining a whole lot of pockets. With more money and Airports and a Shipping port, opens dangerous doors. Is Israel ready for that ? How will that be monitored ? So many damn questions. This may prove more problematic then the status quo, in the long run. Something does have to be done, the conditions in Gaza are unacceptable.
smoothieX12 . , 10 hours ago
Excellent analysis. In related news, a week or so ago semi-official Russian Vzglyad made a first media shot across the bow for Iran in which it stressed that the manner of Iran's "presence" in Syria is a complicating factor.
Babak Makkinejad -> smoothieX12 . , 9 hours ago
Russia cannot dislodge Iran out of Syria. And why should she try? And to what purpose?

Is there a new ABM Treaty in the works? Another SALT? Another Peace of Yalta?

smoothieX12 . -> Babak Makkinejad , 8 hours ago
Russia doesn't want to "dislodge" Iran from Syria but she needs Iran out of the border area with Israel. This is the key to a new arrangement, including, in the long run, Iran's security.

Is there a new ABM Treaty in the works? Another SALT? Another Peace of Yalta?

First two are important but are not clear and present danger for Russia for a number of reasons. Militarization of space is more important now. The last point, however, is extremely important because either there will be some kind of new geopolitical arrangement or we will see probability of a global military conflict grow exponentially.

Babak Makkinejad -> smoothieX12 . , 7 hours ago
Iranians do not need to be at the border area. All they need is to deploy their true and tested method of arming Syria with tens of thousands of precision rockets aimed at Haifa and Tel-Aviv. It worked for North Koreans.

No global peace is in the works.

Between the end of Peace of Vienna and the start of Peace of Yalta there was a 50-year interval - filled with 2 world wars. Let us hope it be different this time.

smoothieX12 . -> Babak Makkinejad , 5 hours ago
Between the end of Peace of Vienna and the start of Peace of Yalta there
was a 50-year interval - filled with 2 world wars. Let us hope it be
different this time.

It must be different, plus I disagree with historic parallel--two entirely different paradigms both in warfare, geopolitical balance and media.

Barbara Ann , 10 hours ago
Well I certainly wish The Greatest President luck. Who knows, I'm done underestimating the guy.

My biggest concern remains that Bibi's support itself will not guarantee acquiescence from the ultra-nationalist elements in Israel and their supporters elsewhere, who want to drag the US into the war. If the folks that carried out Khan Sheikhoun & other false flag CW attacks can be controlled, peace may have a chance. Otherwise, Trump's hand could still be forced.

The point of maximum danger appears to be at hand, given your characterization of the Daraa op as "betting the farm". Today's grant of new powers to the OPCW to apportion blame (designed to side-step the Russian veto at the UNSC) now means this body can effectively determine casus belli . Let us pray the OPCW will not have reason to exercise its new powers in Syria.

Tony , 11 hours ago
Let the hand wringing begin...
https://www.bbc.com/news/wo...
EEngineer , 12 hours ago
A stroke of genius. Bolton either demonstrates his obedience or is sacked, along with most of other neocons, for trying to spike the upcoming Putin summit.

On topic #2. If the SAA isn't feeling it's oats by now, forcing them fight a major battle that culminates a campaign by themselves would seem to be the ideal way to exorcise any remaining self doubts and engender a lasting esprit de corps. Stupid is what stupid does... Once these guys finish up in the SW and head east enforce it'll be show time.

[Jun 13, 2018] How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today by Philip M. GIRALDI

Highly recommended!
When the media is controlled by people responsible for false flag operation chances to use investigation to discredit this false flag operation, no matter how many evidence they have is close to zero
In other word false flag operation is perfect weapon for the "sole superpower" and due to this status entail very little risks.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. ..."
"... False flags can be involved in other sorts of activity as well. The past year's two major alleged chemical attacks carried out against Syrian civilians that resulted in President Donald Trump and associates launching 160 cruise missiles are pretty clearly false flag operations carried out by the rebels and terrorist groups that controlled the affected areas at the time. ..."
"... Because the rebels succeeded in convincing much of the world that the Syrian government had carried out the attacks, one might consider their false flag efforts to have been extremely successful. ..."
"... The remedy against false flag operations such as the recent one in Syria is, of course, to avoid taking the bait and instead waiting until a thorough and objective inspection of the evidence has taken place. The United States, Britain and France did not do that, preferring instead to respond to hysterical press reports by "doing something." If the U.N. investigation of the alleged attack turns up nothing, a distinct possibility, it is unlikely that they will apologize for having committed a war crime. ..."
"... The other major false flag that has recently surfaced is the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury England on March 4 th . Russia had no credible motive to carry out the attack and had, in fact, good reasons not to do so. ..."
"... Unfortunately, May proved wrong and the debate ignited over her actions, which included the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats, has done her severe damage. Few now believe that Russia actually carried out the poisoning and there is a growing body of opinion suggesting that it was actually a false flag executed by the British government or even by the CIA. ..."
"... The lesson that should be learned from Syria and Skripal is that if "an incident" looks like it has no obvious motive behind it, there is a high probability that it is a false flag. ..."
Apr 26, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org

False Flag is a concept that goes back centuries. It was considered to be a legitimate ploy by the Greeks and Romans, where a military force would pretend to be friendly to get close to an enemy before dropping the pretense and raising its banners to reveal its own affiliation just before launching an attack. In the sea battles of the eighteenth century among Spain, France and Britain hoisting an enemy flag instead of one's own to confuse the opponent was considered to be a legitimate ruse de guerre , but it was only "honorable" if one reverted to one's own flag before engaging in combat.

Today's false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing honorable about them as their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it did not do. There has been a lot of such activity lately and it was interesting to learn by way of a leak that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has developed a capability to mimic the internet fingerprints of other foreign intelligence services. That means that when the media is trumpeting news reports that the Russians or Chinese hacked into U.S. government websites or the sites of major corporations, it could actually have been the CIA carrying out the intrusion and making it look like it originated in Moscow or Beijing. Given that capability, there has been considerable speculation in the alternative media that it was actually the CIA that interfered in the 2016 national elections in the United States.

False flags can be involved in other sorts of activity as well. The past year's two major alleged chemical attacks carried out against Syrian civilians that resulted in President Donald Trump and associates launching 160 cruise missiles are pretty clearly false flag operations carried out by the rebels and terrorist groups that controlled the affected areas at the time. The most recent reported attack on April 7th might not have occurred at all according to doctors and other witnesses who were actually in Douma. Because the rebels succeeded in convincing much of the world that the Syrian government had carried out the attacks, one might consider their false flag efforts to have been extremely successful.

The remedy against false flag operations such as the recent one in Syria is, of course, to avoid taking the bait and instead waiting until a thorough and objective inspection of the evidence has taken place. The United States, Britain and France did not do that, preferring instead to respond to hysterical press reports by "doing something." If the U.N. investigation of the alleged attack turns up nothing, a distinct possibility, it is unlikely that they will apologize for having committed a war crime.

The other major false flag that has recently surfaced is the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury England on March 4th. Russia had no credible motive to carry out the attack and had, in fact, good reasons not to do so. The allegations made by British Prime Minister Theresa May about the claimed nerve agent being "very likely" Russian in origin have been debunked, in part through examination by the U.K.'s own chemical weapons lab. May, under attack even within her own party, needed a good story and a powerful enemy to solidify her own hold on power so false flagging something to Russia probably appeared to be just the ticket as Moscow would hardly be able to deny the "facts" being invented in London. Unfortunately, May proved wrong and the debate ignited over her actions, which included the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats, has done her severe damage. Few now believe that Russia actually carried out the poisoning and there is a growing body of opinion suggesting that it was actually a false flag executed by the British government or even by the CIA.

The lesson that should be learned from Syria and Skripal is that if "an incident" looks like it has no obvious motive behind it, there is a high probability that it is a false flag. A bit of caution in assigning blame is appropriate given that the alternative would be a precipitate and likely disproportionate response that could easily escalate into a shooting war.

Tags: CIA

[Jun 06, 2018] >John Bolton is now part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal

Notable quotes:
"... There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters ..."
"... What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he added. ..."
"... "That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration. ..."
Jun 06, 2018 | newrepublic.com

Speaking at CPAC in 2017, John Bolton boasted that his Super PAC's implementation of "advanced psychographic data" would help elect "filibuster majorities" in 2018. According to a New York Times report published on Friday, Bolton's Super PAC paid $1.2 million to Cambridge Analytica, the British firm that has come under scrutiny for its misuse of Facebook data to influence voters. Bolton's Super PAC, moreover, was heavily funded by the Mercer family, who gave millions to Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 presidential campaign.

There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters. "The data and modeling Bolton's PAC received was derived from the Facebook data," Christopher Wylie, the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower, told the Times . "We definitely told them about how we were doing it. We talked about it in conference calls, in meetings."

What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he added.

"That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration.

[May 12, 2018] Bolton diplomacy: "We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York." by B

Notable quotes:
"... John Bolton is a ruthless man : ..."
"... In early 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was putting intense pressure on [José] Bustani to quit as director-general of the [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons]. ..."
"... Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you." ..."
"... John Bolton was also behind a campaign against the IAEA and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei. ElBaradei's phone was tapped and rumors were launched against him to oust him from his office. ..."
May 12, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Originally from: MoA - Countdown To War On Iran

John Bolton is a ruthless man :

In early 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was putting intense pressure on [José] Bustani to quit as director-general of the [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons].
...
Bolton -- then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs -- arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a warning to the organization's chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words. "Cheney wants you out," Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. "We can't accept your management style."

Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you."

There was a pause.

"We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York."

José Bustani successfully negotiated to get OPCW inspectors back into Iraq. They would have found nothing. That would have contradicted the U.S. propaganda campaign to wage war on Iraq. When Bustani did not leave voluntarily, the U.S. threatened to cut the OPCW's budget and "convinced" other countries in the executive council to kick him out .

John Bolton was also behind a campaign against the IAEA and its chief Mohamed ElBaradei. ElBaradei's phone was tapped and rumors were launched against him to oust him from his office.

The U.S. administration, the neoconservatives and the media are running a remake (recommended) of the propaganda campaign they had launched to wage war on Iraq. This time the target is Iran:

As with Iraq, it's easier for Bolton and Netanyahu to achieve that goal if they discredit the current system of international inspections. Bolton has called the inspection efforts established by the Iran nuclear deal "fatally inadequate" and declared that "the International Atomic Energy Agency" is "likely missing significant Iranian [nuclear] facilities." In his 2015 speech to Congress attacking the Iran deal, Netanyahu insisted that "Iran not only defies inspectors, it also plays a pretty good game of hide-and-cheat with them."

Anyone who counters their propaganda must go. Bolton, who demands to bomb Iran , is back in charge. One of his natural targets is the IAEA which certifies that Iran sticks to the nuclear deal. It seems that Bolton succeeds with his machinations:

The chief of inspections at the U.N. nuclear watchdog has resigned suddenly, the agency said on Friday without giving a reason.

The departure of Tero Varjoranta comes at a sensitive time, three days after the United States announced it was quitting world powers' nuclear accord with Iran, raising questions as to whether Tehran will continue to comply with it.

Varjoranta, a Finn, had been a deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and head of its Department of Safeguards, which verifies countries' compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, since October 2013.

Another casualty is the State Department bureaucrat who certified Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal:

One of the State Department's top experts on nuclear proliferation resigned this week after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, in what officials and analysts say is part of a worrying brain drain from public service generally over the past 18 months.

Richard Johnson, a career civil servant who served as acting assistant coordinator in State's Office of Iran Nuclear Implementation, had been involved in talks with countries that sought to salvage the deal in recent weeks, including Britain, France, and Germany -- an effort that ultimately failed.
...
The office Johnson led has gone from seven full-time staffers to none since Trump's inauguration.

The man who launched the war on Iraq now gets awards . Netanyahoo is agitating for war on Iran just like he agitated for war on Iraq. Shady groups of nutty "experts" peddle policy papers for 'regime change'. U.S. "allies" are put under pressure. With their willingness to "compromise" they actually further the prospect of war . When they insist on sticking to international rules malign actors prepare measures to break their resistance. All that is still just a "shaping operation", a preparation of the battlefield of public opinion. This buildup towards the war will likely take a year or two.

What is still needed is an event that pushes the U.S. public into war fever. The U.S. typically uses false-flag incidents - the Tonkin incident, the sinking of the Maine, the Anthrax murders - to create a psychological pseudo-rationale for war. An Israel lobbyist begs for one to launch war on Iran.

One wonders when and how a new 9/11 like incident, or another Anthrax scare, will take place. It will be the surest sign that the countdown to war on Iran has started.

Posted by b on May 12, 2018 at 06:35 AM | Permalink


glitch , May 12, 2018 7:15:41 PM | 132

John Bolton's a man? Does a coward who instigated others to fight get to be called a man? Likewise Cheney Bush Clinton Obama Trump Bibi etc etc etc.
Easy to be ruthless when others take the risks and pay the costs.
fairleft , May 12, 2018 7:12:43 AM | 4
isn't the same unity throughout the powers that be, particularly in the mainstream media, that there was when Bush was President. Trump through the hatred he generates theoughout the 'upper crust', makes it hard for many deep staters to get on board a war drive he would lead.

And as you said, b, Trump needs a real or false flag, one with many casualties, and something that won't fall apart from lack of evidence and a few days of rational scrutiny. Sounds like a job for the Saudi mercenaries, Al Qaeda or ISIS.

Peter AU 1 , May 12, 2018 7:14:53 AM | 5
People in high places are leaving due to team Trump threats.
Receiving mail from team trump employed black cube is no small thing. Kudos to you b for sticking with it.
Two thoughts on US going to war with Iran. 10 It will destroy the US or certainly the US empire and hegemony. 2) Iran needs plenty of help and respect during and after as they will destroy the US. Not physically, but they will destroy US power.
Gesine Hammerling , May 12, 2018 8:04:24 AM | 6
What do those ziocons have in their hands that lets them get away with it over and over again?
john wilson , May 12, 2018 8:06:41 AM | 7
The question we all want to know is, did Trump appoint lunatic Bolton entirely of his own volition, or was he forced to appoint this psychopath? The reach of the US deep state seems to be limitless. A curious thing happened the other day when someone in the US administration announced that America would no longer be funding the white helmets propaganda outfit. Over here in the UK parliament an opposition member of parliament was practically foaming at the mouth with rage and demanded of prime minister Mrs May that the UK would be continuing to fund the white helmets. When she assured him that the UK was fully behind the white helmets and that funding would remain in place, there was a cheer from around the house. I'm amazed that Bolton allowed the administration to cut off funding when even the UK idiots in parliament want to fund the propaganda arm of the head choppers.
somebody , May 12, 2018 8:16:55 AM | 8
Iran is quite safe. Regime change is possible in the US.
Jen , May 12, 2018 8:24:06 AM | 9
I am just curious to know how much influence John Bolton can exercise as National Security Advisor: is his position part of the President's Executive Office and does he (Bolton, that is) have a department to answer to him and a budget? Is his position any more secure than, say, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State?
Ian , May 12, 2018 8:44:16 AM | 10
Gesine Hammerling @6:

Mementos from Epstein Island.

ralphieboy , May 12, 2018 8:52:43 AM | 11
The more that Trump is pushed into a corner by investigations of various scandals, the more he needs something to distract from them. A war in a far-off country would be the perfect thing to get people rallying around the President.
Ian , May 12, 2018 8:53:49 AM | 12
Jen @9:
From what I understand, Pompeo is much higher on the food chain. The SoS is in the line of succession; advisors are not. I believe the position is just a single individual with closer access to the POTUS.
Harry , May 12, 2018 8:59:01 AM | 13
I said it many times before, and I can safely repeat it again, there wont be a hot war with Iran. Entire NATO couldnt defeat Iran, and US would go alone (maybe Israel would piggyback few shots). It would end as catastrophe for US and de-facto end as the main superpower. Pentagon (and even CIA) are many things, but suicidally stupid isnt one of them, neither is Trump, or even Nutjobyahoo.

What we will see is more sanctions (to try to create civil unrest) and another "color revolution" endeavor, and it will fail too.

Anon , May 12, 2018 9:05:51 AM | 14
Harry

Top 3 nato countries could take out Iran military within a day, but nato cannot invade, occupy it in my opinion.

john , May 12, 2018 9:11:27 AM | 15
Gesine Hammerling says:

What do those ziocons have in their hands that lets them get away with it over and over again

notwithstanding your ziocons , you got an hour and a half ?

Jen says:

I am just curious to know how much influence John Bolton can exercise as National Security Advisor

maybe you should ask Condoleezza Rice?

somebody , May 12, 2018 9:12:09 AM | 16
14 " take out " ?
A P , May 12, 2018 9:12:42 AM | 17
Trump coopted by the neo-cons? Exactly what lever would they have on Trumpty Dumbdy that isn't already public knowledge? Misogyny, Philandering?... already tried that pussy-grabbing Stormy front. Financial improprieties? That Trump Inc. was/is a serial bankrupt corporation, even screwing low-income students and any building contractor it could?... Old news. That Trumpty Dumbdy is too stupid to read the full documentation presented to him, that he can't write/deliver a coherent, logical line of thought?... obvious from well before the day he officially declared his candidacy.

Trump (and his real estate "empire") was and is a product of the Rothschild cabal, and he was deliberately foisted on the US electorate to be the only one in the country Killary could beat... OOPS!

So we are now seeing Plan-B, where Trumpty is manipulated and browbeaten to shed the few shreds of intelligence and decency he still possessed. All the Deep State/Rothschild-enablers have to do is appeal to Trumpty's fragile ego, or Melania's emotional jags, and they are in control.

But even Bolton's ilk must know Russia and China will not stand by while FUKUS/Nutty/MBS openly attack Iran. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya show the likely course of events where the Zionists are allowed to carry on with the Yinon Plan. Syria is the line in the sand, despite Erdogan trying to play the US off Russia for historical gotcha gains. Don't forget, Erdogan owes his life to Putin, who ensured the US coup failed by targeting the rogue Turk jets tasked with shooting Erdogan's plane down... I'd bet the Turk pilots were told that if they even turned on their targeting systems, they would be shot down... self preservation is a strong deterrent.

Israel/Saudi on their own cannot withstand even Syria, Hizbolla and Iran directly, even if the russian military only backstopped the Syrian alliance. Ahe US public won't tolerate another Iraq debacle, as zero body bags landing at Edwards AFB is the limit. Let alone that Iran would be Iraq on steroids especially for the several 1,000 in the western Syria caldron. It's a big caldron right now, but with Russian-manned mobile S-400's/etc. protecting all Syrian, Iranian and possibly Iraqi airspace, those soldiers/mercenaries are sitting ducks after the first bomb lands in Iran.

Harry , May 12, 2018 9:13:12 AM | 18
@ Anon, first look up what type of strategy Iran has against US invasion, its literally impossible to take it out in 10 years, let alone in one day :)
morongobill , May 12, 2018 9:15:41 AM | 19
@14:"Top 3 nato countries could take out Iran military within a day"- highly doubt that.

Ian- agree but don't forget Kissinger and Nixon.

Robert Snefjella , May 12, 2018 9:18:08 AM | 20
Apologies if following musings are a bit disjointed.

American chronic hostility towards Iran, and long standing American economic and informational and low-level war gainst Iran, has an insane, out-of-touch with reality, ideological/mythological tinge/component to it. I won't try a broad psycho-analysis, or assemble many possible reasons why that might be.

But among those possible components there is a long standing implacable totalitarian bent to US power wielders, reflected in their ordained geo-political communications in the United States. The American economic sanctions and continuously variously hostile policy towards Cuba over more than half a century is an example. The former 'brothel dof the Caribbean' was apparently fine for the US, and the death squad ridden countries of Central America are quite acceptable, but Cuba out of the capitalist orbit? Cuba as attempting a different ideology, and approach: terrible recalcitrant. The very demon of the hemisphere.

In his revelatory book The Praetorian Guard, former CIA John Stockwell noted that as he was growing up, basically nobody questioned the prevailing American ideology and system. Real searching basic debate was absent. Within the context of a culture where freedom of speech is technically prioritized, lauded as an ideal, somehow self-censorship and discussion is limited to within-the-box of convention, thus discussion as scripted theatre, propaganda, dominated overwhelmingly.

No real debate, but what was repeated ad infinitum were messianic messages'we swear allegiance to the flag', we're number one, we're the free world, we're the good guys.

After the JFK coup d'etat, basically everything in American media became an exercise in controlling all political discourse and trying like crazy to make sure pretense prevailed. This was if anything accentuated after the 9/11 false flag treasonous mind-f**k.

There was also a deadly military doctrine adopted by the US after WW2, when segments of US power decided to go for global military domination, basically permanent war and war preparation. The cliche is that the first casualty of war is truth, but in the case of the United States, doubly so, as that train had already left the station.

The United States is a kind of astonishingly cautionary historical example of the deranged trajectory that dishonesty, pretense and censorship as normalized and dominant will ensure. So many natural advantages, but the external manifestation of the US became mass murder and subterfuge; internal problems of the US are festering, metastisizing, and tens of millions of Americans are deeply demoralized, anxiety ridden, emotion-related drug-medication-dependent.

Back to Iran. A few years ago while driving in the evening I turned on the car radio and the first words I heard from a (Jewish) talk show host on a Toronto station was the question: Do you think the Americans have the balls to nuke Iran? Really bizzarre sick question that apparently could be sent out glibly and sefely into the Canadian political discussion universe as an intellectual feat. And on numerous occasions for many years it has been commonplace in Canadian mass media to depict Iran in a hostile, negative light. And as German writer Udo Ulfkotte bravely told us before his untimely death, the CIA also influences and controls and thus contaminates much of European mass media communication.

So the American insanity and dishonesty and war mongering is playing itself out on a broad stage, (witness the truly crazy pathetic British government's behaviour of late) and crazy people do crazy things, so yah, Iran is still in the crosshairs. But there is a kind of desperate, fading, dated quality to the American obsession with 'evil Iran', and lies and make-believe and insanity cannot escape colliding with reality. The collision can make a helluva a mess, but at some point hopefully the pendulum swings towards a reassertion of sanity and decency and honesty.

How many times will Americans shoot themselves in the foot for Israel and fairy tales?

somebody , May 12, 2018 9:21:32 AM | 21
11 Yep, Reagan and Thatcher were there before. Reagan "was strong" in Grenada and Thatcher in the Falklands.

At present Pompeo seems to try to snatch North Korea from Russia and China .

Bolton seems to plan for war there, too .

I guess the US will have to get clear about their priorities.

ken , May 12, 2018 9:29:33 AM | 22
@ somebody.

"But even Bolton's ilk must know Russia and China will not stand by while FUKUS/Nutty/MBS openly attack Iran"

It appears Putin and Russia have decided to sit all this out. While Putin was enjoying the Victory Parade with Netanyahu,,, Netanyahu was bombing his ally Syria. Putin was all smiles and so far all we hear is crickets.

Putin will sell his S-400 systems to anyone that wants them EXCEPT Syria and all they want is the S-300.

I don't know what's going on but as far as Russia is concerned I wouldn't bank on their helping Iran.

China? China can be purchased like cloths on a rack.

No,,, I think it's pretty open right now for the US to attack Iran. Whether it can survive a war with Iran is doubtful,,, but that's never stopped them before.

Anon , May 12, 2018 9:31:07 AM | 23
somebody

Harry

Yes "take out" as I defined not through occupation/invasion but fighter jet strikes and/or from sea. That wont take more than 1 day for 3 top Nato nations.

Nev , May 12, 2018 9:37:59 AM | 24
I wonder what is going through the minds of Kim and the South Korean leadership. It is obvious that the US is not agreement capable. What sort of guarantees can the US provide. Even if China and Russia provide guarantees it may not be enough. Kim sees that if a deal is made, then the crippling sanctions could be reimposed or remain. Kim and his sister are not stupid.
Pft , May 12, 2018 9:56:51 AM | 25
Neocons and Bolton are Trotskyites. Permanent Revolutionists

The ruling elite never really knew how dumb people were until the internet and social media. With the help of Trumps supporter and Facebook investor Thiel and his company Palintir and Facebook to help them figure out all the data they collected, they know they can make the cattle believe anything without making it believable to anyone with an IQ under 120

The few that figure it out without being members of the cult are isolated and inconsequential.

Plato told us what he hoped would happen. Leo Straus who is the godfather of the neocons emphasized Platos Noble Lie which is behind all of todays fake news/history . Plato was heavily influenced by Irans Zoroastrianism

I believe elements behind the reformation in the 16th century and Sabbateans from the 17th century, Frankists , Freemasons and Jesuits from the 18 th century and Zionists , and Martinists and Marxists from the 19th century joined forces to create a NWO that is a Luciferian cult of Global Synachrists

The neocons are the latest manifestation of the Synarchists, and unfortunately for the world this means global terror much like the Rothschild back Trotsky hoped to accomplish in
the 20th century before being thwarted by Stalin. It also means the end of Religion as Neocons corrupt Protestant Christianity, in US and Across the Atlantic while CIA controlled Jesuit Pope Francis destroys Catholicism. Zionism and the Holocaust wiped out Torah believers and the GWOT and neocons are proceeding to destroy Islam after corrupting it with Islamism with help from the Saudi Arabias corrupt Wahhabism which has spread Islamic extremism along with US and Israel

For those who believe the US can be destroyed, you are in denial. There is no stopping the US/Israel//British/EU alliance. The only hope is that once the perpetual revolution is over that the philosopher kings described by Plato will be merciful. Unfortunately, given many of them are neo-malthusians who think most of humanity are worthless consumers of Gaias precious resources, i am not optimistic

Kalen , May 12, 2018 9:59:21 AM | 26
However you would define war US (Israel) and Iran is at war footing for decades, nothing new here, so I would not panic here that Bolton would do something.

It cannot be more clear that as much as Trump is a flaccid clown of ignorance and belligerence to cover up his tax evasion crimes from Muller, Bolton plays role of barking poodle that all, did not get anything done what global oligarchic interests tell him or he will be put down.

And Please do not compare Iran to Iraq especially after two Iraqi wars, Iran is in position to cause major damage to global oligarchic interests and hence there will be no escalation despite fire and fury rhetoric as it was in NK case, it is all about reintegration of Iranian oligarchy to global oligarchic country club and what we witness is negotiating of condition of selling out Iranians to neoliberal globalists and by that advance a step in isolating Russia to achieve the same purpose, surrender to globalism.

Also I do not see Netanyahu welcoming hundreds of Iranian missiles landing in Tel Aviv as Saddam only shot few Soviet museum item at Israel and back then all hit their however random targets. There would be no random targets this time so there would be death and vital damage, not to mention that Israel could loose Golan Height in the process. Also there is no way in hell for US to invade Iran, or gather 600k troops as it was in 1991 for one quarter Iran size Iraq.

I know that spreading fear brings clicks but here on this blog we know better than that.

Hoarsewhisperer , May 12, 2018 9:59:52 AM | 27
Don't underestimate Trump. He came to office on an audacious promise to drain The Swamp. It's a very specialized task. It was never going to be easy and I'm quite certain that he went in knowing that his first misjudgment would probably be his last. I don't know how to drain The Swamp but if Trump thinks he can then I do too. I've been pleasantly surprised at his ability to engage with senior officials on the World Stage and appear Presidential. Compared with bumbling fools like Ronny Raygun, Jimmy Carter and Dubya, Trump leaves them for dead in the "100% on the ball" stakes. Whilst I'm waiting, with fingers crossed, I console myself with the following thoughts:

1. Hillary would have been worse.
2. The non-people he wants to neutralise are the worst bunch of scum and arseholes on the planet.
3. Since he's the only person with a Swamp plan, we shouldn't be too picky about his timing and tactics.
4. Trump is an extremely clever individual.

james , May 12, 2018 10:04:17 AM | 28
thanks b... and thanks for the Atlantic article from peter beinart... i thought it was a good article.. here's a quote from it "More than 60 percent of Republicans, according to a March Pew Research Poll, think the United States was right to invade Iraq. George W. Bush's approval rating among Republicans, according to a January CNN poll, is 76 percent." and "It's rare to see non-Americans on political talk shows. That matters because non-Americans overwhelmingly think pulling out of the Iran deal is nuts. And non-Americans are more likely to raise fundamental questions about American nuclear policy -- like why America isn't pushing for inspections of Israel's nuclear program, and why America keeps demanding that other nations denuclearize while building ever more nuclear weapons of its own."

then you can read @20 Robert Snefjella post - thanks robert - and note the radio interview from toronto..

sorry to say, but this 'neo-con' term is a quick term to describe so much of what looks like the koolaid american citizens drink regularly.. and there is plenty of it to go around in canada too..

americans by and large look like a nation of idiots, spoon fed everything they know..

i tend to agree with harrys view @13... colour revolution will continue.. but unlike harry, i do believe the bombs will fall and we will enter some type of ww3 scenario.. the usa-israel are too much led by the neo con koolaid to step away from any of their ongoing insanity.. i just can't see the insanity stopping with rational, reasonable people having a say.. so, maybe i don't fully agree with harry other then in the short term..

ralphieboy , May 12, 2018 10:16:15 AM | 29
@ Hoarsewhisperer #11

I agree with your assessment that Trump is a very clever individual - when it comes to manipulating the media and distracting from his words and actions, but I disagree with every other assertion you have made and find that he has filled his administration with grifters and con artists that rival the days of Grant or Harding.

And if you have grown up in America under DACA and are about to be deported or are losing your health insurance coverage because key provisions of ACA have been overturned, just try reciting "Hillary would have been worse!"

Menschmaschine , May 12, 2018 10:17:56 AM | 30
Utter nonsense. The US and Israel are coward bullies. They will pounce when the odds are good, but they are quite rational about when they are not. There have been endless threats and sabre rattling by the US and Israel against Iran for decades, but they never followed through. They will most certainly not do so now, when the relative military position of Iran is better than ever. And this "crying wolf" article will join the the countless others written before on the junkpile of historical falsification...
Eric , May 12, 2018 10:28:56 AM | 31
There is a strong delusion that maintains its satanic grip on the "leadership" in DC.
The depiction of Mordor in Tolkien's "Fellowship of the Rings" series is very fitting in describing the present pure evil and absolute darkness of those who plan for war and destruction in the secret chambers in the upper echelons of our society.

What will stop the madness, death, and destruction that has rained down and continues to rain down on so many millions of hapless men, women, and children in the Middle East and abroad? Will it take a few US cities completely destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Americans vaporized before the insanity of US Empire is stopped?

I pray for peace for the sake of my children and grandchildren. I pray for a "great awakening" amongst the nations of the world to demand an end to the evil US/Zionist madness before it is too late.

Ian , May 12, 2018 10:31:16 AM | 32
Well, Bolton may be up to his usual tricks again. U.N. nuclear watchdog's inspections chief quits suddenly
Red Ryder , May 12, 2018 10:39:41 AM | 33
Any US attack on Iran will be by air, not ground. Though special ops will be inserted in the Afghan border provinces (where the last protests were the largest, fertile ground for insurgents).

Missiles of all kinds will fall on the regime, the military, the Quds, the militias.

And it will be huge, maybe the largest, heaviest attack ever. Once the air defenses are down, bombers will cover the major infrastructure sites with the heaviest bombing since Belgrade and Nam.

Only when the UNSC convenes, probably, no sooner than five or six days, will the attack slow or cease.

Iran will have been set back a few decades. That is the soft goal. The harder goal will be the insurgency and destabilization of the regime and final regime change.

It will take nothing special for this attack to happen. Trump has already made up his mind.

When it will happen is when the US and Israel feel they can suppress the Hezbollah missile threat. Until they have a workable plan for that, not much can happen on a large scale.

But it will come. Small or large, a missile attack will come to Iran. The regime is in the sights of the Hegemon.

Ghost Ship , May 12, 2018 10:44:28 AM | 34
>>>> Anon | May 12, 2018 9:05:51 AM | 14
Top 3 nato countries could take out Iran military within a day, but nato cannot invade, occupy it in my opinion.

Rubbish.

I assume you're referring to countries other than the United States. In which case, you do know that Germany has about half-a-dozen airworthy attack aircraft, the Royal Navy and France's aircraft carriers would require just about every ship in the other European navies to protect them and part of the reason the British and French begged the United States to intervene in Libya was because they'd run out of PGMs.

Give the European NATO countries a couple of years to build up their forces and force projection skills and European NATO might be in a position to bomb Iran, but as soon as they started building up their forces in the Gulf States, Iran could go to the UNSC to demand that this obvious aggression should be stopped and when FUKUS veto any resolution, Iran has carte blanche to launch preemptive strikes across the Persian Gulf. End of European NATO's war on Iran

And after the Iraq fiasco, I suspect the only country that would go to war without a UNSC resolution is the United States. Germany would almost certainly decide to sit it out, France most probably would and the UK would probably also sit it out.

Finally, even if the top 3 NATO countries did try to get away with a limited air attack, the best response for Iran would be to sink every ship in the Persian Gulf and go on doing so until the United States invades and becomes bogged down in a quagmire far worse than Iraq or Afghanistan.

Curtis , May 12, 2018 10:47:07 AM | 35
I have to agree with those who say a direct attack on Iran is imminent. Sure, some would love this to happen whether Yahoo or Bolton but for now will be happy to apply the "squeeze" of sanctions, ostracism/propaganda. The goal seems to have been to destroy and if not that, then to set the countries back ... under the thumb as it were.

Yes, the US with some assistance could rip Iran's military apart but not take over the country. A majority are somewhat satisfied with the theocratic setup. They know the history with the US/West. And how would Iran react? Long range attacks on Israel or much closer-to-home attacks on the Gulf States and the Saudis as well as blocking at Hormuz? Saddam lobbed a few Scuds at Israel and Riyadh but didn't have much. Iran has more and better missile tech ... which TPTB are going after now ... while Yahoo still pushes "nuclear programs" since he knows (like Iraq) there are no real weapons there.

lysander , May 12, 2018 10:54:54 AM | 36
The US will do everything possible to reimpose sanctions. Hence gaining control of the IAEA and inspection process. This is designed to offer the Europeans a face saving way to back down and submit to US will regarding sanctions. It will probably succeed. Europe, whether it likes it or not, is playing good cop in the game.

War, as in an actual US attack in Iran itself, is pretty much out if the question. A false flag designed to be blamed on Iran and big enough to warrant a war will be placed under enormous scrutiny. Not by the US MSM, of course, but by the rest of the world and the alternative media.

The fact is, before anyone can attack Iran, they have to win in Syria and it doesn't look like they are going to.

As far as sanctions, Iran's best bet may be to give the EU 3 weeks to prove its intent to confront the US (which is unlikely) Then Iran can resume its civilian nuclear development at the fastest possible pace, with the offer to discontinue once the US returns to the JCPOA.

Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 11:06:27 AM | 37
Peter Beinart, the author of the "As with Iraq" piece above, gets all wound up in the details of nuclear inspections and forgets that in 2003 he supported the misbegotten Iraq invasion and war because a (supposed) peaceful aftermath would help the people of Iraq, and so the people who oppose the war were wrong.
The truth is that liberalism has to try to harness American military power for its purposes because American tanks and bombs are often the only things that bring evil to heel. Opposing this war might have helped liberals retain their purity, but it would have done nothing for the people suffering under Saddam. If liberals are betrayed a second time in the Gulf, hawkish liberalism may well go into temporary eclipse. But one day we, and they, will need it again. . . here

That's akin to the position that Trump has taken on Iran.
In this effort, we stand in total solidarity with the Iranian regime's longest-suffering victims: its own people. The citizens of Iran have paid a heavy price for the violence and extremism of their leaders. The Iranian people long to -- and they just are longing, to reclaim their country's proud history, its culture, its civilization, its cooperation with its neighbors. . . here
Old Microbiologist , May 12, 2018 11:12:51 AM | 38
IMHO what we are seeing are the last ditch efforts of a failing nation. Russia isn't sitting it out but is taking a wait and see attitude. The same for China. All the bluster and twitter tweets in the world mean nothing until someone actually does something. Israel managed to shoot off a massive strike which at best was 50% effective. This was against "old" Pantsir S-1 systems which were quite effective. No one has seen the S-300 yet in action and Russia is holding it back keeping the ECM signature still secret until it is absolutely necessary. Russia cannot fight the US or Israel in Syria. They simply doesn't have the forces present. But, what they can do is push gently and make the FUKUS+I over-commit. Don't forget that the US is working at a current $22 Trillion of debt and these debacles are going to burn money faster than they can print. In the mean time Russia/China are creating an alternate economic system to bypass the petrodollar and especially the SWIFT banking. That is in place and perhaps we will see more countries deciding to bail on the dollar and join the growing crowd.

The US has demonstrated a complete lack of respect for sovereignty and has so far reneged on every treaty. This means that the US is at best an unreliable partner. The South Koreans have wised up seeing that the US is very willing to sacrifice the entire peninsula and every soul living there to kill off the DPNK. That should scare the bejeezus out of every nation friendly to the US anywhere in the world. They are losing friends so fast now it is scary. This only forces the inevitable and the US is going to have to bet the farm to try and keep the hegemony alive. It won't work and the US has the worst record of war fighting imaginable. They can't beat the goat-herders in Afghanistan for example over a span of now 17 years. Fighting a real military such as Iran would be impossible and especially if China throws in her weight. Iran is very important to China and to a lesser extent Russia as well. There is no danger of the US or NATO winning there. However, this could break the bank if it goes south. So, what we are seeing is an existential threat to the US in the form of rebellion against the dollar. Finally, we are seeing countries that have the weight of forces (nuclear) with serious resistance. It is for this reason we are not seeing a counter-attack against Israel. As Napoleon said "Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself".

james , May 12, 2018 11:15:39 AM | 39
@37 don.. peter beinart in the articles states he was wrong on iraq and this previous movement..
A P , May 12, 2018 11:18:36 AM | 40
The two FUKUS mass missile attacks on Syria, as well as Israel's latest jab, were a test of the Russian systems and general Syrian ability to interdict said missiles. If the missiles can't get through even at such short range, it is obvious Israeli/FUKUS aircraft can't either. Attempting the same "air war" stunt in Iran will just give the US MIC a big boost replacing virtually every piece of hardware sent over Iran airspace.

Again, the US soldiers/mercenaries currently in eastern Syria are in a caldron-in-making. They can no longer count on escaping via land transport through Iraq or Turkey, and without any air support/transport, they are trapped. Does anyone think the US public will tolerate the Deep State sacrificing about 5,000 soldiers/mercenaries immediately after the bombing of Iran starts? The handful of body bags from other recent US misadventures were not well-received at home, so the potential for another Vietnam?

Iran will not be the turkey-shoot Iraq was, Saddam was still under the delusion Rumsfeld's handshake gave him immunity from Deep State/Zionist machinations. Iran's leadership is under no such delusion, remembering the admitted 1953 CIA overthrow of democratically elected Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah.

Putin and Assad know time is on their side, and the longer they can delay a major FUKUS/Israeli/Saudi offensive, the better prepared they are and the less effect Zionist propaganda has worldwide. The IDF murdering unarmed Palestinians using a Gandhiesque tactic of showing how venal Nuttyyahoo's regime is... like Britain in India... there is no way to make this slaughter seem justified, and attempting to keep it out of the public consciousness has not worked.

bevin , May 12, 2018 11:20:20 AM | 41
"But it will come. Small or large, a missile attack will come to Iran. The regime is in the sights of the Hegemon."
That would be 'former Hegemon'.
The likelihood of war other than the predictable guerrilla campaigns launched from abroad, campaigns with which Iran has been successfully dealing for decades, seems to me to be low.
While everyone is watching Iran and Syria, the most important developments are those taking place in Korea, where some sort of peace agreement seems inevitable. And where anything short of war will mean an immense strengthening of the positions of Russia and China.Not least because Japan and Taiwan will be forced to adjust to the new reality.
In Korea... and in western Europe.
This is where the worst cracks in the US hegemonic facade are beginning to show: the logic of Eurasia and the illogic of Atlanticism are inescapable. The western european economies, including Germany's, France's and (the weakest link of all?) Italy's are dying for access to the eastern markets. Historically Germany has shared its technologies and culture with Russia, which has been the great source of its raw materials and food. The ending of the Iran deal seems to be the excuse needed to slip back into that relationship.
Those who rave against Putin's 'betrayal' understand nothing. It is necessary to lower the tension internationally in order for the tectonic movements, which are already well advanced, to settle.
Bolton and the warmongers depend on perpetuating war but all the momentum, internationally, is against war. The propaganda which has been their main weapon, is failing, their credibility is rapidly declining.
Outside Israel, the rump of the Saud family court which supports the Riyadh regime and the degenerated dregs of NATO trotskyism-inhabited by elderly, aethereal creatures who live in the Academy and know nothing of the world- the only people who want war are the speculators. And they are just as happy to have peace, anything that excites the market.
Those who claim that Iran could be defeated in a couple of days are, presumably, talking of nuclear weapons. Do they really believe that such an attack would not be deterred by Iran's allies?
A P , May 12, 2018 11:27:52 AM | 42
Trump is "clever", not intelligent. He is the personification of "bullshit baffles brains" methodology. Indications are he is marginally literate, as all info briefs have to be a couple pages at most and point form. It is obvious he has no patience to work through the finer details of complex situations, simply taking the position of whatever of his advisers can spread the BS in the most eloquent or forceful way.

But mostly whatever panders to his ego. Make Trumpty think he is being "the decider" (like Gerge W. Stupid) or that he is being the "tough guy" and he'll sign or say anything.

lysander , May 12, 2018 11:27:54 AM | 43
@ 33, It took NATO 73 days to bring Serbia down, and in the end it required trickery (promising Milosovich he can stay then color revolutionizing him out)

Serbia did not have the means to close the straights of Hormuz. Nor did it have a missile arsenal that could strike at several regional US bases. Nor could it destroy Saudi and Kuwaiti oil refineries. Nor did Serbia have several thousand US ground troops in easy reach.

Serbia also had the misfortune of being attacked during the weakest point in Russian history since the 1600s. Russia is quite certain to help Iran because it has a strong interest in Iran repelling a US attack. Even if you believe Russia is 100% cynical, they will have an enormously strong reason to see the US bogged down for a decade and bled white.

The Pentagon is aware of all of this and they aren't idiots. The fact is, the US was in a much better position to attack Iran in 2006 or 7, and they still didn't do it, because it was a terrible idea even back then. They will not do it now when it is a much worse idea.

Simply put, if attacking Iran were so easy, they would have done it a long, long time ago.

Now, attempts to destabilize and possibly preach rebellion to Iran's minorities, that they will do (without much success) But open war is a line they won't cross.

imo , May 12, 2018 11:30:30 AM | 44
@38 -- "This was against "old" Pantsir S-1 systems which were quite effective. No one has seen the S-300 yet in action and Russia is holding it back keeping the ECM signature still secret until it is absolutely necessary."

My reading is the S-300 has a range that would cover commercial airports in Tel-Aviv and it is probably too much risk for Putin to deliver these to Damascus in case an 'event' occurs and a civilian jet goes down. In any case, some suggest there are more effective equipment solutions for Syrian defense/response. Of course, in the wryly Russian way, Israeli destruction of "old" Pantsir S-1 systems simply opens up the rational and legal opportunity to provide a whole lot of 'new' updated replacement Pantsir S-1 systems. Background: https://sputniknews.com/military/201804171063644024-pantsir-top-facts/

psychohistorian , May 12, 2018 11:30:45 AM | 45
I think that the UN has always been mostly a circus court for empire....make it look like US is benevolent.

So now when the fig leaf comes off in public people are aghast. Empire only works like empire and when the wheels start to come off, the whole facade is exposed for the dog and pony show it has always been.

Will this be enough to change the world of global private finance? Iran, remember, refuses to become a member of the Western banking/elite cabal.

So just why might Trump be directed to attack Iran in his regular pompous manner. Is this a religious war we are fighting for Israel?

NO!!! It is all about the continuation of the Western form of social organization that has as its core religion the God of Mammon. Those at MoA who read me know that the God of Mammon that I write about have the tenets of private finance and property along with the rules of inheritance which has resulted in the elite of the past few centuries.

I continue to posit that all that is happening relates to that issue and the struggles around it not discussed in public for whatever reasons.

But carry on educating me and others about all the proxy shit going down and its relevance to how our society works....or doesn't........I want evolution and I want it this morning!!!!!!!

Jackrabbit , May 12, 2018 11:44:12 AM | 46
The coming "war on Iran" will be an excuse for all kinds of mischief. Some possibilities:
>> seizing western Iraq
further isolate Syria by blocking Iran-Syria land route

>> attack and occupation of Lebanon
to clear Hezbollah and allow for Israeli land grab up to Litani river (a goal previously expressed)

>> new round of terror attacks (from new/re-branded groups) focused on Syria, Iranian, and Russian interests (with a few attacks on the West to muddy the waters)
The psychological part of a war of attrition

>> intensified Ukraine-Russian frictions
full court press

>> ISIS expansion into Central Asia
accelerate what has already begun

>> Shut down of North Stream and Turk Stream
expect the 'cage match' with "recividist nations" to get nasty

Laguerre , May 12, 2018 11:45:50 AM | 47
Curious how things have calmed down on the Israel front. Things not gone quite as well as hoped? Or perhaps it is that they've figured out that there's nothing to do. SOHR, opposed to the Syrians, but with good telephone connections in Syria, has now come up with a list of a handful of Iranian dead. So I suppose a few Iranian camps were actually hit. But the only actual videoed strikes were against Syrians. It's what you'd call a nothing-burger, much like the 102 missile strike.

And this is the launch of a campaign against Iran?? Strange way of showing it. In my view, the US and Israel are so boxed in by their constraints, that it's very difficult to act decisively. No casualties, so no overflights of Syria, let alone Iran. No interruption of Gulf oil exports, as the Gulfies wouldn't like it. Gulf emirates not to be overturned. I'm sure I can think of some more....

imo , May 12, 2018 11:49:45 AM | 48
@40 -- "The handful of body bags from other recent US misadventures were not well-received at home, so the potential for another Vietnam?"

More likely an unlearned repeat of 'rhyming' history with Trump playing Jimmy Carter and the "5,000 soldiers/mercenaries" playing the suckers (in summer heat). How's the Big 'D' going to negotiate that deal over the mid-terms?

But that was Democrat 'smart' -- perhaps this re-mix will be closer an up-scaled rerun of Reagan's Iran–Contra scandal? Who's playing Oliver North?

fairleft , May 12, 2018 11:51:49 AM | 49
Robert Snefjella | May 12, 2018 9:18:08 AM | 20

Another great post. Thank you. Implied I think in your musings is, 'What will people remember of the U.S.' in a hundred years? The 20th century popular music. Blues, Jazz, Rock 'n Roll, and Country & Western for starters.

Anon , May 12, 2018 11:57:18 AM | 50
Ghost ship

Completely nonsense.

When have UNSC ever done to stop aggression by the same states that commit the aggression?
The topic wouldnt even raised in the UNSC.
Of course Iran wont start a "preemptive" war. Not atleast since that will be a suicide mission for themselves.

Anon , May 12, 2018 12:00:07 PM | 51
Lysander

Russia wont do anything then (us attack on iran), just look how they treated previous US wars, everytime people have said the same that RUssia will help and repel an attack, it have never happend and will never happen.

lysander , May 12, 2018 12:03:32 PM | 52
At 51...uh, you do realize Russia has an expeditionary force that is actually fighting and keeping Syria alive as we post, right? Perhaps they are not fighting as much as you would like, but they are fighting and Syria continues to exist because of it. As regards Iran, if Iran falls the Syria falls and Russian bases will be gone. Fortunately for all, that won't happen.
NemesisCalling , May 12, 2018 12:11:36 PM | 53
It is difficult to say what kind of scope the false flag would need to be to rally public opinion at home for an Iranian incursion. In many ways, pre-9/11, the antiwar movement was much stronger as was shown by the rallies against leading up to the Iraqi invasion. And yet this couldn't forestall it.

OTOH, independent media has come a long way in its reach and so cries of "false flag" have already been sounded, and, by and large, I believe America is fatigued with the ME. It is doubly ironic that dems like Schumer have been crying foul against DJT for playing soft with NoKo. I know that the current dem/lib establishment has thrown its antiwar credentials out the window, in favor of color revolutions, freedom, and LGBTQUIOGDTFBJK rights to fornicate in public spaces, but, my god, I would never have imagined the globalists to be THAT stupid in their disregard for basic human needs the world over for soverignty and national pride.

People have touched on it before, but is this whole current theater just an old money vs. new money second showing? The return of the repressed, with the globalist/neolib model being rundowned and usurped by nationalist oligarchs? It would seem the DJT has chosen to err to the old money side to the betterment of the world. And I, for one, as an American would rather have my elites localized so we would actually have access to their asses when we decide to put a pitchfork up them. It is very difficult to get past TSA with weaponized peasant tools.

Laguerre , May 12, 2018 12:13:00 PM | 54
Israel doesn't want war with Iran – it prefers crisis in Tehran . Anshel Pfeffer, Ha'aretz.

Israel's a bit late there then. The disturbances were at the beginning of the year. They're over now. The effect of the sanctions will be to swing people behind the regime, for the moment, at any rate.

Anon , May 12, 2018 12:30:10 PM | 55
lysander

No thats wrong too, Russia is not on a mission to save Syrians state, they are in Syria due takfiri threat. Nothing else, as we all see proof of past days...

As for your other statment, I am well sure that Syria have fallen long long before Iran (if they ever do that).

Lozion , May 12, 2018 12:44:53 PM | 56
@52 Lysander. I agree (btw never mind anon's trolling attempts). Simply put, the road to Tehran goes through Damascus and last I checked the Jasmine City was doing fine ;) If US/KSA/IL attempts a hot war on Iran it will only precipitate its fall..
Jose Garcia , May 12, 2018 12:55:54 PM | 57
Am reminded of the 3 Stooges, whenever I read about these warmongers, like " Bombs Away" Bolton. Moe tells a group of people, "We will fight till the last drop of.....", then points to Curly and finishes, "....your blood!" These bastards love war, but never are at the front line, fighting and dying along side our best. They sit at their plush offices and conference halls in the best hotels, sipping champagne and eating the best foods, making six or seven figure incomes. While our brothers, neighbors, fathers, sons, uncles die overseas, or come back a mental mess, and get crapped on by out government. What these no good for nothing rat bastards need is to experience the hell they unleash upon us and the rest of the world.
les7 , May 12, 2018 1:05:51 PM | 58
@32 thanks Ian for that link. good catch!
Rhisiart Gwilym , May 12, 2018 1:08:01 PM | 59
anon is clearly of the 'cakewalk', 'all be over by Christmas' school of strategic (lack of) intelligence. LOL!
john , May 12, 2018 1:09:24 PM | 60
NemesisCalling says:

I believe America is fatigued with the ME

i read this line a lot, from all spheres, and it always perplexes me. to be fatigued you'd have to be overwhelmed, inundated, and i'd wager that the ME and what's going on there hardly crosses the vast majority of minds in more than a peripheral way, you know, like beyond certain key words they hear on tv.

one thing's for sure though, the ME is most definitely fatigued with America!

james , May 12, 2018 1:16:32 PM | 61
@59 rhisiart... a broken clock is right twice a day!!

many fine posts, excluding the anons of moa, lol.. thanks..

Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 1:20:52 PM | 62
Looks like there might not be a Coalition Of The Willing in any anti-Iran military operation. Quite the opposite, it's a further lessening of US world hegemony.
. . .Cartoon of Trump giving the middle finger Goodbye, Europe! in Der Spiegel.
Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 1:23:47 PM | 63
@ Ian 32
U.N. nuclear watchdog's inspections chief quits suddenly
The IAEA is not a UN agency.
Anon , May 12, 2018 1:30:35 PM | 64
Don Bacon

Dont bet on that,

May, Trump Agree to Counter Iran's 'Destabilising Activity' - Downing Street
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201805121064380224-usa-uk-iran-sanctions-pressure/

WJ , May 12, 2018 1:31:06 PM | 65
Why are commentators assuming that, *if* the US does launch a war of aggression against Iran, it will do so in tandem with its NATO allies--and the UK, France, and Germany in particular? It is doubtful that these allies will even abide by the new US economic sanctions imposed upon Iran. Why think that they will be willing, or even politically able, to follow the US orders for war?

b is right that the neocons are setting up a replay of the 2001-2003 Iraq propaganda campaign. But the global and domestic conditions that enabled the success of that campaign no longer hold. The US is far weaker now than then; Iran is more powerful and unified than Iraq ever was; NATO countries have hundreds of billions of dollars of trade contracts in place or projected with Iran; Russia and China are far stronger. It just doesn't add up.

NemesisCalling , May 12, 2018 1:31:57 PM | 66
@60 john

I suppose what I was trying to say is that the narrative TPTB have spun over the last twenty years has gone beyond the realm of convoluted to the average American and now has completely unwound into chaos. It was only three years ago that we were being told about the surging threat of ISIS to Americans. Well...that didn't last long...and now they are back to Iran which the west knows very little about and really doesn't care to. Us Americans like the good guy/bad guy fight. But if you can't drum up a good enough backstory for the black hats, I'm afraid that the average American will simply change the channel.

That being said...a compelling backstory isn't really needed for pyschopaths to wage their war anyway.

Jackrabbit , May 12, 2018 1:33:28 PM | 67
Lorizon @56

I believe you are referring to Anon as troll.

"anon" (small 'a') makes valuable contributions.

Jackrabbit , May 12, 2018 1:34:39 PM | 68
Typo: Lozion
MIschi , May 12, 2018 1:35:05 PM | 69
Russia has probably delivered the S-300 to Syria but isn't saying.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201805111064353749-russia-s300-supplies-syria/

Also, Putin and Lavrov always talk to other parties that they aren't getting along with, hence Netanyahu's invitation to the Victory Day parade.

les7 , May 12, 2018 1:38:08 PM | 70
Several here ave wondered what kind of false flag could motivate the populace in NA and the EU to support an attack on Iran. May I propose one?

First stage - Israel (using the EW cover from AlTanf) bombs the Iranian nuclear plant. Radiation release threatens tens of thousands.

Second stage - Supposed 'Iranian' counter-attack sets oil tankers ablaze (For maximum PR effect do not sink them) in the Hormuz straights closing the gulf to shipments of Gulf sourced oil. Oil prices temporarily spike to over $200 a barrel,

Europe's supply of oil is cut drastically, industries world-wide are paralysed and the US (secure with its' supply sourced outside the gulf)is free to ride to the rescue - all while RUSSIA (and China) have NO LEGITIMATE REASON to oppose the aggression.

Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 1:39:56 PM | 71
bevin 41
The likelihood of war other than the predictable guerrilla campaigns launched from abroad, campaigns with which Iran has been successfully dealing for decades, seems to me to be low.
Yes, the US Army is demonstrably weak especially for any foreign invasion.

Historically Germany has shared its technologies and culture with Russia, which has been the great source of its raw materials and food. The ending of the Iran deal seems to be the excuse needed to slip back into that relationship.
And also China's BRI -- coming up June 28-- -- The China Germany BRI Summit 2018

As the first and third largest exporters globally, China and Germany will prove crucial drivers of trade along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road. Together these form the Belt and Road Initiative, a landmark shift in the global economic order that will touch over 65 countries across four continents.
The China Germany BRI Summit 2018 will dispel myths on what the Belt and Road Initiative means for the world, tackle the challenges for global financial institutions and corporations looking to leverage the initiative, and identify the enormous opportunities in M&A, capital markets and trade finance. here .
ninel , May 12, 2018 1:42:37 PM | 72
Iran Breaks the Rules of Engagement: Israel Takes Its Revenge, and Syria and Iran Impose the Golan Equation, May 10 2018

https://www.globalresearch.ca/iran-breaks-the-rules-of-engagement-israel-takes-its-revenge-and-syria-and-iran-impose-the-golan-equation/5640231

@ Anon 64
Dont bet on that, May, Trump Agree to Counter Iran's 'Destabilising Activity' - Downing Street
OMG, not the powerful UK military!! (heh)
Besides, haven't you heard? The UK isn't in Europe any more, or soon won't be.

Posted by: Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 1:45:05 PM | 73

@ Anon 64
Dont bet on that, May, Trump Agree to Counter Iran's 'Destabilising Activity' - Downing Street
OMG, not the powerful UK military!! (heh)
Besides, haven't you heard? The UK isn't in Europe any more, or soon won't be.

Posted by: Don Bacon | May 12, 2018 1:45:05 PM | 73 /div

WJ , May 12, 2018 1:46:54 PM | 74
Don Bacon @71,

The extremely complex entanglement of Germany with (roughly) the NATO/EU alliance on the one hand and Russia/China on the other is a prime reason why I do not believe that Germany (which is by far the biggest economy in the EU) will be able to be strong armed or enticed into signing up with another Zionist driven US war of aggression with a country as major as Iran.

xpat , May 12, 2018 1:48:26 PM | 75
Re the possibility of a "united front" of western powers confronting Iran, the truth is that no one knows for certain at this point how it this will play out.

We have to remember the deafening silence of the western media during the obvious Skripjal-Ghouta fakery, so there's a good chance the US/Israel axis will again have a relatively free hand to concoct any number of escalating false flags, not all of which will stick, but some probably will. So that is a cause for concern re any future "coalition".

As for enforcing the sanctions, I've seen people argue both ways - that this is a bridge too far for Europe, and accepting it will both do too much economic damage and make Europe appear too obviously as US toadies; and OTOH, Europe will be blackmailed into knuckling under when confronted with illegal US fines and secondary sanctions.

wenlich , May 12, 2018 1:51:06 PM | 76
@59 Lysander

> Curious how things have calmed down on the Israel front. Things not gone quite as well as hoped?

This is all that needs to be noted about the absurdity of even the idea that the US regime is capable of attacking Iran.

This delusion appears to be the same type thinking as the "Generals Always Fight the Previous War" saying.

The days of the Israeli regime flying at will over countries bombing at will are over. And the days of the US regime parking an aircraft carrier off the coast of a country and leisurely taking out its air defense network are long gone.

Russian air defense and electronic warfare tech are now being shown to be significantly superior to US regime offensive capabilities in real world combat. So much so that the most common reaction has been to try to rationalize the fact with crazy conspiracy theories about behind the scenes wink and nod agreements between the US regime and Russia.

Trump foolishly trying to attack Iran to distract from his political problems would end up as the first modern US regime leader who lost an aircraft carrier and ten dollar gas prices.

Israeli's were cowering in their sewers while their junk air defense network repeatedly failed to defend against a minor Syrian retaliatory barrage while Syrians in Damascus were cheering on their rooftops as their Russian air defense network knocked Israeli missiles from the sky.

Syria smacking down the Israeli regime is going to have Trump's military advisors sitting him down and giving him a hard dose of reality about the Israeli/Saudi/Neocon delusions about attacking Iran.

FB Ali , May 12, 2018 2:00:04 PM | 77
Old Microbiologist, @ #38, above has a good handle on the current situation in the region.

I agree with his views.

Ian , May 12, 2018 2:08:08 PM | 78
Don Bacon @63:

According to Reuters it is. :p

Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 2:19:50 PM | 79
Pompeo(US) and Zarif(Iran) are currently making the diplomatic rounds, the former looking for a new & improved plan, and the latter emphasizing that the US never adhered to the old plan and united opposition to sanctions is in everyon'e best interest.
from the Iran statement:
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has not only made explicit and official statements against the agreement in violation of its provisions, but has in practice also failed to implement U.S. practical – and not merely formal commitments under the JCPOA. The Islamic Republic of Iran has recorded these violations in numerous letters to the Joint Commission convened under the JCPOA, outlining the current U.S. Administration's bad faith and continuous violations of the accord. Thus Mr. Trump's latest action is not a new development but simply means the end of the obstructionist presence of the United States as a participant in the JCPOA. . . here

The apparent US line now, as before, is to "change the regime's malign behavior" which is ridiculous and thus doomed.
A P , May 12, 2018 2:22:57 PM | 80
@ MISchi 69: There have been Russian-operated S-400's in Syria for years. Even the US propaganda rags admit it is significant in reducing FUKUS attacks.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34976537

http://www.janes.com/article/74500/second-russian-s-400-in-syria-confirmed

So just because Russia isn't giving the SAA S-300's doesn't mean Syria has no protection. The fact the updated S-200s and Pantsirs are doing the job reasonably well will give FUKUS and Israeli/Saudi military planners pause. Note that the cowardly Israeli jets attack from Lebanese or Jordanian airspace.

And Nuttyyahoo merely crashed the Victory Day festivities, and Putin is too gracious a host to kick Nutty out. But the body language between them was obvious, Putin was not happy to see Nutty trying to capitalize on Putin's good manners.

Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 2:29:46 PM | 81
@ Ian 77
According to Reuters it is.
Reuters doesn't take comments so I'm telling you (and others), if you don't mind, because you are misleading people with something that isn't true.
Don Wiscacho , May 12, 2018 2:29:47 PM | 82
As much as Bolton and his ilk would love to attack Iran, I have to disagree that a full-fledged war is likely. USrael will ratchet up tensions all they can, hoping that Iran will take the bait and actually respond, but the only way an actual war MAY be fought is with a massive false flag attack. However, it took a massive false flag attack to allow the neocons to invade Iraq, so said black op would have to be on that magnitude. Here's the thing though, the neocons seem to be getting worse at false flags and more over the world ain't buying them like they used to.
Sure you can get your European lackeys to sign up to a few sanctions, but will anyone actually support the utter tanking of the world economy? Because that will be the end result of war with Iran and behind closed doors everyone knows this. Look up the Millennial War Games simulation that pitted the US against Iran. And how did that $200 million exercise turn out? The US had to "refloat" its fleet in order to win. Using older Chinese anti- ship missiles the Iranians decimated US naval assets. The US hasn't developed counter measures against these while the Iranians have undoubtedly improved on these missiles. No matter what happens to its ground forces and population centers, shipping in the Persian Gulf will be shut down. That one action will raise the price of oil to over $200 a barrel overnight, possibly much higher. And with that the global economy will be left in tatters. Too many of the world's leaders understand this completely and simply will not go along with the US and line up against Iran like they did with Iraq.
Mischi , May 12, 2018 2:35:20 PM | 83
no, Netanyahu was invited. I read about it a week before the parade. Lavrov always says that you don't need to negotiate with your friends, but you do with your enemies. Hence the invite.

Like the Godfather said in the eponymous movie "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer."

Anon , May 12, 2018 2:38:30 PM | 84
Don Bacon

UKs military is of course far stronger than Iran,
we will see renewed sanctions against Iran and EU will be onboard and have already mentioned they "need" to pressure Iran more.

Don Bacon , May 12, 2018 2:40:47 PM | 85
The attacks on Iran will be only financial, not military, is my guess. The big news in the military sector is often on cyber attacks. Cyber will be a "new military front."

Financial is akin to cyber. No shooting. The military experts don't discuss financial, I guess because the U.S. is the only country capable of it, controlling world finance as it does. But a full-on sanctions regime on another small country like Iran could do a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people, as it did in Iraq previously. Sort of like what the U.S. did to Japan to precipitate the war in the Pacific, except Iran's reactions must be much more limited.

So the big question is Europe, and if it is able to legislate any significant counter-sanction laws that would encourage Iran-Europe business. France looks good on this, Germany is more significant.

Laguerre , May 12, 2018 2:41:18 PM | 86
I do wish people would stop calling themselves Anon. It's very difficult to know which is which. It's easy enough to anonymise yourself with a distinctive handle. Maybe b should ban it as a handle.
Chipnik , May 12, 2018 2:56:50 PM | 87
60

Many years ago I got to hear Sir Edmond Hillary speak to the assembled students at my school, just a few years after his amazing climbing feat. No multimedia or lasers pointers or cheesy-brand tee-shirt cannons, ... just an electric performance by an incredible man that shaped my life, one foot at a time.

Several decades later, I watched SEH demonstrate Simple Green soap at REI. So incredibly sad. I'll never forget either presentation. The Man in the Moon had become another Soapy Salesman.

At the same time I first heard SEH speak, my father, an international businessman, brought home a Buddhist monk exchange student from Asia for the holiday. It was spellbinding to meet a bright and well-off monk, who knew all this amazing arcane reality, that we call the Wheel. It shaped my entire approach to the summit.

Several decades later, in fact, just recently, I watched a performance by a Tibetan monk troupe, after which they essentially begged for sponsors for the remaining exiled monks now starving in India by the 1000s. They are dying out, like the 1,000s, the 10,000s of aboriginal valley cultures that once walked the Earth.

Soapy Sales and Starving Monks, who only decades ago were both sitting on Top of the World. Kind of like everyone's experience, even John Bolton's, former UN ambassador, now a sleazy salesman-demonstrator for Death Inc, too proud to sell soap, or to busker for alms. He's pathetic.

So let me bring it on home.

A student of mine is a senior monk in Asia. His charge is to free the spirits of the just dead. Not the two monks chanting and incense and sprinkling with flower petal water in front of a cherished photo. No, he blesses the *dying*, the human roadkills from the reckless Chinese Escalades bombing through SEAsian commute traffic, the black and blue herion addicts with the needle still in their arm, bright red blood bubbling out of their noses, the raped, strangled, discarded and bloating young girls, dumped in the nearest rice paddy ditch.

He gets those calls. He never talks about his work, never shows the horror pictures or trashes the perps. He sends selfies, pics of meals, flowers and temples. So I asked him, doesn't this bother you at night, the carnal evil, the rape, the murder? Don't you wanna see justice done?

He said simply, we're all going to die, many of us soon, we have very little time away from the Wheel. We should spend every precious second of free time uplifting those who are below us, the poor, the infirm, the feeble, the indentured, the slave, ...because we're all gonna die as beggars some day. We should hold faith with the beggars.

Bolton is a sick fuck, in a pantheon of sick fucks. Why squander a nanosecond meditating on any of them? They are nothingness, the void. MoA seems to have a fascination with evil and death, and making Death's bit players into pop-idols. Selling a different brand of soap, I guess.

OJS , May 12, 2018 3:04:21 PM | 88

Israeli Air Force Strikes Gaza Strip, More Than 20 Missiles Fired

Israeli having free hands bombings not only Syria and in Gaza too. Syrians and Palestinians lives dun matter?

What if.... Regime changes in Syria and Iran will the killing stops?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-12/israeli-air-force-strikes-gaza-strip-more-20-missiles-fired

lysander , May 12, 2018 3:06:13 PM | 89
@70, les7

Closing Hormuz would likely be the Iranian response to a sustained bombing campaign. A single strike on a nuclear facility could elicit a missile strike on the attacking party (US, Isreal or both.) Or it could involve multiple attacks on vulnerable US troops in Iraq and Syria. Iran has several rungs in its escalation ladder. It doesn't have to jump to the top one all at once.

Laguerre , May 12, 2018 3:07:58 PM | 90
re Don 84

Of course financial sanctions are the main, if not the only, US war-winning tactic available today. Mainly the control of the VISA and SWIFT exchange systems. But I'm not financially knowledgeable. It was one reason that Iran signed in 2015. I remember well, about 10 years ago, the husband of an Iranian student arriving with $20K (?) sewn into his overcoat, to pay for his wife's studies.

However, the US has used this tactic so often now, that people must be looking to ways of getting round the problem. I'm not quite sure how much success they may have had. People talk about Russia-China erecting a parallel to the SWIFT system. I hope this does happen, though it must be expensive. Non-US allies need it.

A P , May 12, 2018 3:36:24 PM | 91
@lLaguerre: Russia already has set up its version of SWIFT. As has China, as well as both agreeing to transactions in rubles/yuan first for petroleum, then recently for all other trade, to bypass the US$ SWIFT system. The US gets a "cut", every time a corporation/country converts from local currency to US$, then again when that same US$ cash is converted to the currency of the second trading partner. To avoid this, non-US countries keep US$ reserves to trade between themselves. This scam was set up at Bretton Woods after WW2 when the US economy was the only economy/industrial-base left unscathed.

https://www.rt.com/business/424108-russia-rostec-swift-alternative/

"In 2017, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, said at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin that Russia is ready for disconnection from SWIFT."

Cyril , May 12, 2018 3:36:53 PM | 92
Because of their large inertia, these things, when they get moving, cannot be stopped and proceed to the inevitable. The ziocons have pushed the boulder and it's starting to roll.

That is what a lot of panicky people said in 2013, that Obama's invasion of Syria was inevitable because Assad was gassing his people in Ghouta. It didn't happen. As it turned out, the "massive momemtum" was in the Zionist propangda, hoping to sucker the U.S. into the Middle East again.

Cyril , May 12, 2018 3:40:31 PM | 93
[Bolton:] "We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York."

What an ass Bolton is. I hope Bustani replied with "We know where you live."

Lozion , May 12, 2018 3:47:06 PM | 94
@67/68 hence @85. Agreed, using anon as a handle only lowers the signal-to-noise ratio at MoA. This isnt Reddit nor should it become, IMO..
james , May 12, 2018 3:48:57 PM | 95
i think swift and bis are linked in with imf.. unfortunately i don't know how it all works, but russias central bank is part of imf.. the way imf is set up favours the developed countries over the developing countries.. they have some other tricks to keep control over it too, but i do believe it is tricky navigating moving away from it all, which is why the financial system is the first line of action to put other countries deemed out of line - into line.. some have tried to get the imf to change without success which is why i believe brics was working towards an alternative.. of course the b in brics went thru a type of regime change under a different facade and i am not sure where they are at with that at this moment in time...
WJ , May 12, 2018 3:50:46 PM | 96

Julian Assange
@JulianAssange
There is something very odd about the Joseph Mifsud story and the role of the UK in the 2016 US presidential election:
(thread)
5:07 PM · Mar 22, 2018


DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets

-- Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) May 11, 2018

A P , May 12, 2018 3:51:01 PM | 97
@MISchi: Israel may have been "invited", but only as a standard diplomatic courtesy, not as a "guest of honour" as the MSM and Hasbara would have us beleive. The US was probably invited too... and didn't have the grace to show up? The US and EU were for sure in 2014, but "boycotted" it over the US coup in Ukraine. Nuttyyahoo was just looking for MSM cover for the illegal bombing he knew was going to happen, making it look like Putin was "in on it".

I'd guess Putin is simply giving Nutty all the rope Nutty needs to hang himself in the court of world public opinion. When I see an official statement from Putin (or any Russian senior official) saying Putin gave any approval of Israel's past and present illegal incursions in Syria, let alone the illegal occupation of the Golan, I'll believe Nutty being at the Victory Parade was some sort of endorsement by Putin of Nutty's insanity.

karlof1 , May 12, 2018 4:01:47 PM | 98
I agree with Lysander's logic. Iran will not be attacked in the "normal" manner; it will be asymmetrical. The performance of not-so antiquated air defenses in Syria are the big game changer as Iran has those and its own S-300 version. Plus all those big stationary targets. Plus, I figure Bolton has a target on his back, as do other neocons--you don't murder over a million without creating some enemies. I see lots of bluster to foment as much chaos as possible to accentuate the asymmetrical impact. But as for an actual military assault, Bolton and company are a decade plus too late.

To negate the potential effect of another Operation Northwoods, I think it wise to pull up those old pdf docs and spread them around the world via social media--a move I'm frankly surprised has yet to be made--along with some additional contemporary context.

A P , May 12, 2018 4:03:42 PM | 99
@james: The Russian central bank is a member of the IMF/World Bank/BIS/SWIFT system as are nearly every other central bank in the world. Not being "in" this club severely restricts the ability to do international trade. Russia and China are quietly spearheading the move to conduct international trade in local currencies, outside the US$-reserve-currency scam (sorry, system). Both Russia and China have set up alternative systems, which along with the SCO/AIIB offer participating countries a way to side-set US economic terrorism and sanctions. The Rothschilds may have managed to stall the BRICS for now, but that won't last long.
A P , May 12, 2018 4:04:38 PM | 100
sorry, should be "side-step".

[Apr 27, 2018] Roger Stone said that he has known John Bolton since the Reagan years. Stone claims Bolton is not a neocon warmonger but a guy who is a staunch believer in the old doctrine of peace through strength.

Apr 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

Anonymous [201] Disclaimer , April 24, 2018 at 11:36 am GMT

Roger Stone said that he has known John Bolton since the Reagan years. Stone claims Bolton is not a neocon warmonger but a guy who is a staunch believer in the old doctrine of peace through strength. Interesting as Stone despises neocons. Bolton went to Yale undergrad and Yale Law. Haley has a degree in accounting from Clemson, a mediocre land grant public university in South Carolina.
Anonymous [196] Disclaimer , April 25, 2018 at 12:04 am GMT
Ok, you all, I have a personal story about John Bolton that I'm gonna drop here. This story comes from someone who used to live next door to John Bolton in Bethesda (or Chevy Chase?). Bolton's former (and current?) neighbor is a Harvard-trained medical doctor and a liberal Jewish guy. He has two daughters who are now grown. One is now a veterinarian in North Potomac. Anyway, his daughters were like 10 and 12-years old when they would water Bolton's plants when he was away on travel. One time when Bolton was traveling he asked the older girl to water his plants and he'd pay her $25. She agreed. Then a few days later she had something come up and would not be able to do it and asked her younger sister if she could take care of it she could have the full $25. The younger sister agreed. After Bolton returned from his trip the younger sister went over to Bolton and explained what happened and that she, not her older sister, had taken care and watered his plants. Bolton told her that he was not going to pay her because the agreement was strictly between him and her older sister. That was last interaction they had with Bolton. End of story.

[Apr 17, 2018] The long hand of Bolton

Apr 17, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

CE , Apr 15, 2018 12:38:18 PM | 34

@16 "The long hand of Bolton"

I've posted the following deep in the previous thread, so here for those who missed it:

As to the OPCW making "political decisions", The Intercept had an interesting piece by Mehdi Hasan recently, about a certain John Bolton.

In 2001, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had penned a letter to [OPCW head José] Bustani, thanking him for his "very impressive" work. By March 2002, however, Bolton -- then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs -- arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a warning to the organization's chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words. "Cheney wants you out," Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. "We can't accept your management style."

Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you."

There was a pause.

"We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York."

[Apr 17, 2018] John Bolton In Search of Carthage by By Michael Shindler

Looks like Iran is Carnage for Bolton and neocon fellow travelers in Trump administration such as Haley and Pompeo.
Notable quotes:
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... In that vein, it is Bolton who merits historical comparison: to Cato the Elder, a conservative-yet-eccentric Roman statesman who, according to Plutarch, would often and invariably call for the destruction of Carthage, even though the Carthaginian threat was neither imminent nor apparent. Eventually, Cato's words wended their way into the ears of power and hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians were pointlessly slaughtered. According to the Greek historian Polybius, Scipio Aemilianus, the young Roman General who led the attack, at seeing the carnage of a great people, "shed tears and wept openly." ..."
"... Michael Shindler is an Advocate with Young Voices and a writer living in Washington, D.C. Follow him @MichaelShindler . ..."
Apr 17, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Last week, John Bolton ascended to the office of National Security Advisor, following in the hurried footsteps of Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster. Two peculiar characteristics set Bolton apart from most folks in D.C.: an unabashedly luxurious mustache and an unmatched penchant for unjustified preemptive violence.

At the University of Chicago in 2009, Bolton warned , "Unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran's program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future." Thankfully, Israel didn't take Bolton's advice and, as most predicted, Iran never lived up to his expectations. Similarly, in a 2015 op-ed in the New York Times , Bolton opined , "The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure . Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed." Three short months later, a non-proliferation deal wherein Iran agreed to a 98 percent reduction in its enriched uranium stockpile and a 15-year pause in the development of key weapons infrastructure was negotiated.

More recently in February, Bolton advised in the Wall Street Journal that "Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute . It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current 'necessity' posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons by striking first."

By this point Bolton's record of calling for war in every possible situation had lost the ability to shock. Still, the Founding Fathers would probably be appalled.

A comparatively irenic vision pervades the philosophy of the founders. James Wilson, in his Lectures on Law, wrote that when a nation "is under an obligation to preserve itself and its members; it has a right to do everything" that it can "without injuring others." In Federalist 4, John Jay advised that the American people ought to support steps that would "put and keep them in such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it." And in his Farewell Address, George Washington asserted that the United States should be "always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence."

A preemptive nuclear strike justified on the flimsy basis of "gaps in U.S. intelligence" hardly seems concordant with such military restraint and "exalted justice." And lest it be thought these ideals were mere lofty notions, consider how, as American history proceeded, they became enshrined in American diplomacy.

In 1837, Canadian rebels sailing aboard the Caroline fled to an island in the Niagara River with the help of a few American citizens. British forces boarded their ship, killed an American member of the crew, and then set the Caroline ablaze before forcing it over Niagara Falls. Enraged, American and Canadian raiders destroyed a British ship. Several attacks followed until the crisis was at last ended in 1842 by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In the aftermath, the Caroline test was established, which stipulates that an attack made in self-defense is justifiable only when, in the words of Daniel Webster, the necessity is "instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." This principle remains the international standard, though some like Bolton think it's outdated.

With the Caroline test in mind, Bolton wrote while arguing in favor of a preemptive strike against North Korea, "The case against preemption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times." In other words, Bolton believes that we can no longer afford to wait for the situation to be "instant" and "overwhelming," and makes an offense out of abstaining from immediate preemptive action, regardless of the potential costs involved.

Relatedly, one of Bolton's most colorful jabs at President Obama involved likening him to Æthelred the Unready, a medieval Anglo-Saxon king remembered for his tragic indecisiveness. Yet given the costs of groundless preemption, indecisiveness is often a midwife to careful contemplation and peace. Had Prime Minister Netanyahu or Obama been persuaded by Bolton's retrospectively warrantless calls for preemption in Iran, tragedy would have followed.

In that vein, it is Bolton who merits historical comparison: to Cato the Elder, a conservative-yet-eccentric Roman statesman who, according to Plutarch, would often and invariably call for the destruction of Carthage, even though the Carthaginian threat was neither imminent nor apparent. Eventually, Cato's words wended their way into the ears of power and hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians were pointlessly slaughtered. According to the Greek historian Polybius, Scipio Aemilianus, the young Roman General who led the attack, at seeing the carnage of a great people, "shed tears and wept openly."

In order that we never find ourselves standing alongside Scipio knee-deep in unjustly spilt blood, Bolton should reconsider whether the flimsy merits of rash preemption truly outweigh the durable wisdom of the Founding Fathers and the lessons of history.

Michael Shindler is an Advocate with Young Voices and a writer living in Washington, D.C. Follow him @MichaelShindler .


Janwaar Bibi April 17, 2018 at 4:28 pm

From the Wikipedia article for Bolton:

During the 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery, Bolton drew number 185. (Draft numbers corresponded to birth dates.) As a result of the Johnson and Nixon administrations' decisions to rely largely on the draft rather than on the reserve forces, joining a Guard or Reserve unit became a way to avoid service in the Vietnam War. Before graduating from Yale in 1970, Bolton enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard rather than wait to find out if his draft number would be called. (The highest number called to military service was 195.) He saw active duty for 18 weeks of training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, from July to November 1970.

After serving in the National Guard for four years, he served in the United States Army Reserve until the end of his enlistment two years later.[1]

He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost." In an interview, Bolton discussed his comment in the reunion book, explaining that he decided to avoid service in Vietnam because "by the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that opponents of the Vietnam War had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to take it away from."

Why is it that the US leads the world in production of chicken-hawks? Even these mangy ex-colonial countries like the UK and France do not have as many chicken-hawks as we do.

connecticut farmer , says: April 17, 2018 at 4:53 pm
Cato the Elder: "Carthago dalenda est!" ("Carthage Must Be Destroyed!")

John Bolton: "Syria dalenda est!" "Iran dalenda est!" Russia dalenda est!" And etc etc.

Connecticut Farmer: "Bolton dalenda est!"

Kent , says: April 17, 2018 at 5:02 pm
"In order that we never find ourselves standing alongside Scipio knee-deep in unjustly spilt blood,"

That ship sailed awhile back.

JonF , says: April 17, 2018 at 5:08 pm
Comparing Obama to Athelred is absurd. Athelred's problem was not that he was indecisive, but rather that he refused to listen to advice from anyone (the moniker "Unready" actually meant "Uncounseled" in Old English) and that he was extremely impulsive and deeply bigoted. Hence he ordered a general massacre of the Danes in England. Luckily it was only carried out in a limited region, unluckily the victims included the King of Denmark's sister and her children, leading to an open blood feud war, and also cost Aethelred any support he might have had from his wife's kinsman, the Duke of Normandy. If anyone is a good match for old Aethelred, it's Donald Trump.

[Apr 16, 2018] The Bolton-Pompeo Package

Notable quotes:
"... Given that a key function of that position is to ensure that the bureaucracy provides the relevant options and most accurate information to the president before major national security decisions, it is hard to think of anyone more ill-suited to that duty. Bolton's method of policy formation has been to try to bully any part of the bureaucracy that does not subscribe to his personal agenda, and to try to bully away any part of the truth that does not serve his objectives. ..."
"... The Senate is about to have an opportunity to weigh in on another highly important foreign policy position, that of secretary of state, for which President Trump has nominated Mike Pompeo. Senators ought to consider that nomination in tandem with the appointment of Bolton as national security adviser, even though the Senate formally has a role with only one of those appointments and not with the other. Senators should consider the two as a package deal. They should not vote to confirm Pompeo if they are uncomfortable with either part of the package. ..."
"... The main reason to approach the Pompeo nomination this way is that the nation currently has a president who, sad to say, needs restraint. He will need restraint all the more during the coming months as troubles of his own making increase the chance that he will lash out in destructive ways . ..."
"... But both Pompeo and Bolton are more likely to accentuate Trump's impulses than to restrain them. Bolton got his job because the sort of things he says on Fox are more what Donald Trump likes to hear than the briefings that H.R. McMaster gave him, which evidently were too long for Trump's taste or for his short attention span. ..."
"... Pompeo did not rise so quickly from being a relatively junior congressman functioning as a partisan attack dog to where he is now, on the verge of occupying Thomas Jefferson's chair, by telling Trump what he needs to hear rather than what he wants to hear. ..."
Apr 16, 2018 | nationalinterest.org

This week John Bolton assumes the job of national security adviser. Given that a key function of that position is to ensure that the bureaucracy provides the relevant options and most accurate information to the president before major national security decisions, it is hard to think of anyone more ill-suited to that duty. Bolton's method of policy formation has been to try to bully any part of the bureaucracy that does not subscribe to his personal agenda, and to try to bully away any part of the truth that does not serve his objectives. Bolton's objectives are characterized by never meeting a war or prospective war he didn't like. He still avows that the Iraq War -- with all the costs and chaos it has caused, from thousands of American deaths to the birth of the group that we now know as ISIS -- was a good idea. That someone with this perspective has been entrusted with the job Bolton now has is a glaring example of how there often is no accountability in Washington for gross policy malpractice.

Appointments as national security adviser are not subject to Senate confirmation. If they were, it would be appropriate for the Senate to react as it did the last time Bolton came before that body as a nominee for a job that does require confirmation. In 2005 the Senate turned down his nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations. The Senate review brought to light some of the uglier aspects of Bolton's conduct in his previous job as an undersecretary of state. President George W. Bush gave him a recess appointment to the U.N. job, but fortunately that meant there was a time limit to the destruction Bolton could wreak in that position.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/9521689830966886?pubid=ld-7032-4043&pubo=http%3A%2F%2Fnationalinterest.org&rid=nationalinterest.org&width=637

The Senate is about to have an opportunity to weigh in on another highly important foreign policy position, that of secretary of state, for which President Trump has nominated Mike Pompeo. Senators ought to consider that nomination in tandem with the appointment of Bolton as national security adviser, even though the Senate formally has a role with only one of those appointments and not with the other. Senators should consider the two as a package deal. They should not vote to confirm Pompeo if they are uncomfortable with either part of the package.

The main reason to approach the Pompeo nomination this way is that the nation currently has a president who, sad to say, needs restraint. He will need restraint all the more during the coming months as troubles of his own making increase the chance that he will lash out in destructive ways . The copious commentary during the fifteen months of the Trump presidency about having "adults in the room" to restrain the worst urges of an inexperienced and impulsive president speaks to an important truth. Whether adult supervision of this sort succeeds or fails depends on the collective impact of all of the president's senior subordinates. To the extent any one subordinate is especially influential in this regard on foreign policy, it probably is the national security adviser who is best positioned either to accentuate or to restrain Trump's impulses. Having Bolton in that job makes the restraining ability of the secretary of state all the more important.

But both Pompeo and Bolton are more likely to accentuate Trump's impulses than to restrain them. Bolton got his job because the sort of things he says on Fox are more what Donald Trump likes to hear than the briefings that H.R. McMaster gave him, which evidently were too long for Trump's taste or for his short attention span. P

Pompeo's winning of favor with Trump, during what reportedly has been lots of face time with him at the White House during the past year, has a similar dynamic. Pompeo did not rise so quickly from being a relatively junior congressman functioning as a partisan attack dog to where he is now, on the verge of occupying Thomas Jefferson's chair, by telling Trump what he needs to hear rather than what he wants to hear.

Senators hold up confirmation of nominees, and sometimes vote against them, for all kinds of reasons unrelated to the resumé of the nominee. It would be proper for them to vote against a nominee for secretary of state partly because of who the national security adviser is, given that both of them are in service to an unstable president.

There are other reasons to consider Pompeo and Bolton in tandem. In several respects they are two hazardous peas in a pod. On North Korea, Bolton's bellicose posture is matched by Pompeo's statements about seeking ways to "separate" Kim Jong Un from his nuclear weapons , suggesting a priority to regime change over keeping a volatile situation on the Korean peninsula from blowing up. Both Pompeo and Bolton, along with Trump, have sworn eternal hostility to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral agreement that closed all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon. Neither man bothers to explain how destruction of the agreement, which would free Iran to produce as much fissile material as it wants and would end the intrusive international inspections of the Iranian program, could possibly

[Apr 02, 2018] Trump has shown that he'll bend quickly to neocon pressure, with increased interest in foreign war

Notable quotes:
"... North Korea's negotiating position has not really changed with the announcement. They have repeatedly said for years they are willing to agree to denuclearization of the Peninsula in return for security guarantees. I find the media trumpeting this as a new development rather vexing. Anyways, China has been putting the screws on them since about September/October (Apparently, they told Kim Jongun they know they can't overthrow the DPRK government, but they can get rid of him personally), which is also why there have not been any new nuclear tests. ..."
"... I think Yves has got it right: USA threatens PRC with tariffs, so PRC pressures NK to make concessions to the USA. i.e. Two big guys screwing the little guy. ..."
"... In the USA, imperialist machtpolitik is a thoroughly bipartisan affair. It doesn't matter how faithfully NK or PRC might fulfill obligations. Trump's successors, whoever they may be, will simply apply more pressure and demand more concessions. They won't stop until somebody else stops them. ..."
Apr 02, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Larry , March 30, 2018 at 8:04 am

I believe Trump could negotiate a deal. But I also believe he could blow up the whole talk before it even happens. He has shown that he'll bend quickly to neocon pressure, with increased interest in foreign war (Bolton hiring) and the ramping up of hostilities by bouncing Russians from the U.S. over the phony poisoning story in the UK.

a different chris , March 30, 2018 at 8:48 am

I don't disagree with your comment, but not comfortable with the term "bend to". Trump gets enamored with different people at different times, but he always is looking down at them. They may get enough rope to scare the rest of us, but they are still on a rope.

Bolton is horrible, but a lot of other horrible people have come and gone in this really quick year.

cocomaan , March 30, 2018 at 11:15 am

Bolton is horrible but probably won't last long. Nobody at Trump's ear has, including his own children.

Trump just announced that we're withdrawing from Syria. That's more than Obama ever did.

Part of being a nationalist demagogue is that you're not as interested in foreign wars unless they enrich the country. Not a single one of our wars does that. There's nothing interesting in mercantilism, for instance, that we can't do at home (drill baby drill).

I'm not saying I agree with that view, I'm just saying that if he's a nationalist demagogue, it only follows that he's not interested in, uh, "non-for-profit warmaking".

sgt_doom , March 30, 2018 at 2:57 pm

I am NO Trump fan or voter, but it does appear that he's the first one to apply sanctions to those specific Chinese banks handling the trade with North Korea.

Arizona Slim , March 30, 2018 at 6:32 pm

Uh-oh, I find myself agreeing with something that Trump is doing. Does that make me a backward deplorable?

Al Swearengen , March 30, 2018 at 8:45 am

(Somewhat) OT, but it strikes me that the best way to look at Trump is through the lense of what he is – the US version of Sylvio Berlusconi. A sleazy billionaire Oligarch with no core principles and a fondness for Bunga Bunga parties.

Rather than as LITERALLY HITLER as per the verbiage of hashtag the resistance.

Thus, rather than as a crazed madman bent on "evil" at all times one wonders whether Mr. Bunga Bunga would do a deal with Lil' Kim. Sure he would, assuming that the ruling military Junta allows him to. It might be in the interest of the latter to de-escalate this particular hotspot (as NK crisis/hype fatigue may set in) and simply push Iran as the next flashpoint to hype.

sgt_doom , March 30, 2018 at 2:59 pm

Indeed! They even sound quite similar -- I recall in a speech that Berlusconi gave when he was still the Italian president and the Italian left was screaming for his resignation, Sylvio claimed such demands were making him uneasy, since if he was to go home, and he had 20 homes, it would be difficult for him to decide which house or mansion to go to!

Brooklin Bridge , March 30, 2018 at 9:05 am

It seems the bottom line for negotiations with North Korea have little to do with this article which covers Trump's thoughts on nuclear proliferation between major powers that have massive stockpiles.

North Korea is mainly interested in protecting itself from regime change and from becoming a US outpost (as in target) butt up against China. It is hard to believe that Kim Jong-Un would get any advantage whatsoever out of dismantling his nuclear arsenal, however small. One assumes he is aware of Gaddafi in particular and US's track record on keeping it's promises – particularly over the span of different administrations – in general.

Brooklin Bridge , March 30, 2018 at 9:13 am

The above comment assumes full disarmament as the minimum condition of any "negotiation" since Trump has gone so far out of his way to make that clear.

Yves Smith Post author , March 30, 2018 at 12:06 pm

Oh, and now see the lead story at the Financial Times, China uses economic muscle to bring N Korea to negotiating table:

China virtually halted exports of petroleum products, coal and other key materials to North Korea in the months leading to this week's unprecedented summit between Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

The export freeze -- revealed in official Chinese data and going much further than the limits stipulated under UN sanctions -- shows the extent of Chinese pressure following the ramping up of Pyongyang's nuclear testing programme. It also suggests that behind Mr Xi's talk this week of a "profound revolutionary friendship" between the two nations, his government has been playing hard ball with its neighbour.

https://www.ft.com/content/8a2b2696-33f7-11e8-ae84-494103e73f7f

Yves Smith Post author , March 30, 2018 at 11:24 am

I would normally agree but Kim Jong-Un was just summoned to China. Not even given a state visit. The Chinese announced North Korea would denuclearlize:

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearization and to meet U.S. officials, China said on Wednesday after his meeting with President Xi Jinping, who promised China would uphold friendship with its isolated neighbour.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china/china-says-north-koreas-kim-pledged-commitment-to-denuclearization-idUSKBN1H305W

China has heretofore pretended that it couldn't do anything about North Korea. It looks like Trump's tariff threat extracted China jerking Kim Jong-Un's chain as a concession. I don't see how Kim Jong-Un can defy China if China is serious about wanting North Korea to denuclearlize. Maybe it will merely reduce its arsenal and stop threatening Hawaii (even though its ability to deliver rockets that far is in doubt) and just stick to being able to light up Seoul instead.

Brooklin Bridge , March 30, 2018 at 2:25 pm

Agree. I wasn't aware of the details you mention above regarding the export freeze. (I won't use Google and my normal 'trick' doesn't work to get around FT's paywall – and I won't use the trial membership either). I'm hopeless.

Anyway, you make a very convincing case. I can only imagine that Kim Jong Un is one miserable scared rat. My point about a "silk noose" below was perhaps on the mark.

neo-realist , March 31, 2018 at 12:47 am

Kim might agree on paper or through an insincere promise to denuclearize, but I don't see a closed authoritarian regime like the North agreeing to an inspection regime that would insure that such a pledge would be lived up to. Reduction, but build-up on the sly w/o inspections.

China may be interested in a deal to the extent that it prevents a bloody war breaking out that they'll probably expend manpower to help clean up and it insures the security of a North Korean buffer that keeps American troops off their border; After all, they've got to keep the powder dry for "reunification" with Taiwan.

I also don't believe that the US would agree to concessions, such as removing American troops from the peninsula. the pentagon wouldn't like it, the hawks around Trumps wouldn't like it, and I believe the SK leadership would not be too crazy about the potential ramifications for their security with such an agreement.

Travis Bickle , March 30, 2018 at 9:19 am

But, can Trump (by extension, the US), make an agreement that can be relied on over its term?

For any hope of NK trusting any deal with the US he would have to stand by the Iranian deal. Then there's Bolton and the Neocon Will To War, for deeply pathological reasons which by nature cannot be debated.

In this case, the mere possibility of a "deal" is possible, but only if there is a third party to hold both of them to it.

Hello China?

ambrit , March 30, 2018 at 10:02 am

Did the Chinese call Kim to Beijing to reassure him? Carrot AND stick.

Brooklin Bridge , March 30, 2018 at 10:43 am

Presentation of a silk noose perhaps?

Brooklin Bridge , March 30, 2018 at 11:05 am

That's the crazy thing about this. What possible inducement could Kim Jong-Un have gotten to attend his own funeral? Why would anyone trust the US an inch?

I suppose if he can keep his own people in a suspended state of extreme propaganda, then he might be vulnerable to his own medicine, but that seems at odds with his behavior so far (such as the assassination of his uncle). If anything, he would be especially leery of anything coming out of the US.

And then can he really be that psyched out by Bolton, Pompeo and Torture Lady so that good cop Trump can hand him is own death certificate with a space for his signature?

Travis Bickle , March 31, 2018 at 2:15 pm

Whatever happened during this China trip, the overarching theme must have been how to manage the US. Here's one rough scenario:

NK 'disarms' to some definition, under the auspices of China, acquiring in return an explicit Chinese security umbrella for the buffer it presents between them and SK. Nobody really wants a unified Korea in any case. In return, the US vacates SK militarily, ever so discretely and over time.

Done correctly, and with the finesse necessary for Trump, China is in a position to extract all sorts of concessions from the US on other fronts as well. Nothing positive is going to happen here without China, and they hold most of the cards. If nothing positive happens, we have to consider the pressure that'd build on Trump to do something, anything, and that probably being something rash. (Better a big disaster over there than a mammoth one over here thinking).

gearandgrit , March 30, 2018 at 9:46 am

"he can't go willy nilly and set nukes a-flying just because it struck him as a good idea that day."

I mean sure. His "button" isn't literally connected to a missile somewhere, but he sure as hell can ask that nukes be fired whenever and wherever he wants. You could argue that someone in the chain of command would prevent that from happening, but that's more of a hope than a guarantee. For a really good read on how this all works and the history of the nuclear program I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

With Bolton on board and seemingly everyone with half a brain, a little logic and the ability to hold their tongue for more than about 5 seconds out, I highly doubt anything will come of these negotiations. In fact, I'm more worried that the US will get steamrolled by China and NK.

Yves Smith Post author , March 30, 2018 at 11:13 am

That isn't true. See the link I provided, which you clearly did not bother to read. Various people can refuse his order as illegal. Former Secretary of State Jim Baker, in a Financial Times, before Trump was elected, said the same thing. Bolton is the National Security Adviser. He may have a lot of informal power by having direct access to the President, but he does not tie in to the formal chain of command, either at the DoD or State.

gearandgrit , March 30, 2018 at 12:09 pm

Oh I read it and I've read many other articles and a lot of non-fiction on the issue. Again, I would call your position and the position of this article hopeful at best. Trump has the football, he has the codes in his jacket pocket and everyone responsible for carrying out the order to launch has been raised up through a military system that ensures no one questions an order from their superior. Relying on various people to refuse his order as illegal in this system is not a fail-safe I feel comfortable with. I do find it interesting that you just assume I didn't read the article as if this one article is the end all be all on the subject.

David , March 30, 2018 at 12:31 pm

The article seems a bit confused about what it's trying to say. Stopping nuclear proliferation has been a major policy priority of the US and other western governments since the 1960s, and if I recall correctly it was one of Bolton's priorities when he was in Bush the Lesser's administration. It's something in which all of the declared nuclear powers have an interest, because the smaller the number of nuclear powers in the world, the greater the difference between them and the rest. This is much more important than wild fantasies about rogue attacks: if N Korea becomes a de facto nuclear power like India, Israel and Pakistan, then all sorts of other countries might be tempted to have a go, starting with S Korea (which has the capacity and has been caught cheating before). Whilst this risk is objectively small, an end to the NK programme would make it even smaller. I suspect the deal will be that NK denuclearizes and China guarantees its security: a non-nuclear NK will be even more of a client state than it is now.
Nuclear competition among the superpowers is quite different and involves a whole set of different issues.

Synoia , March 30, 2018 at 1:18 pm

since one of Trump's salient characteristics is to have no enduring principles

I beg to differ. He most certainly has enduring principles:

1. My Children
2. Me
3. My current wife.
4. My money

The exact order is debatable, situational, and probably not provable.

Edward E , March 31, 2018 at 3:20 pm

5. My Wall

Less warfare = more wall
But remember the last time Trump said something in Syria's favor? A chemical attack happened in small village for no logical reason and the hawks immediately took to framing Assad. Trump then backed off and took harder line on Assad, launching missiles into Syria.

So I'm inclined to think he wants a deal. But look out for screaming hawks immediately trying to scuttle anything.

Tomonthebeach , March 30, 2018 at 2:15 pm

Perhaps 30 years ago, Trump was an international defense luminary, but I see little evidence of the boasted emotional control and cool Trump claimed. He is unarguably a successful grifter. Is that what it takes to make peace? What happens when the other guy realizes he has been lied to by a congenital liar? Back to square 1.

In my take, the recent meeting between the heads of China and N Korea just Trumped any leverage the US might have had in peace talks. Trump will be there only if a scapegoat is needed. Both S. Korea and Japan have expressed doubts about our reliability as a defense shield against powerful China – Japan and the Koreans' neighbor. What Little Rocketman has likely achieved is diplomatically checkmating the US. Now Trump's tariff threats serve only to push US allies in the region closer to China. Should that turn out to be the case, the economic repercussions are as dangerous and unpredictable as nukes in the air or as Trump himself. I sure hope I got this all wrong.

RBHoughton , March 30, 2018 at 7:51 pm

"no enduring principles" is a feature of politicians everywhere today. Their concern is to represent the rich and their qualification is to present those biased arguments in a way that beguiles the electorate into supposing its a good idea for them as well. Step Two is the "who would have thought it?" response after the country catches on.

In former times the candidate for public office would assert his principles on the hustings and the voters would remember what they knew of him before voting. Sure, there were ambitious unreliable people who were willing to exchange their reputations for office but they were few. We should get back to those days.

We allowed our merchants and spooks to drive USSR to the precipice without any thoughts about the nukes they had. It appeared then that warheads supposedly in Ukraine were missing. We will likely discover what happened to them in due course. It is possible that surveillance of communications is the main reason they are not a thread for the time being but that does not mean they have dropped out of existence.

Thank you NC for introducing an issue that should concern economists as much as everyone else.

Coldhearted Liberal , March 30, 2018 at 8:57 pm

North Korea's negotiating position has not really changed with the announcement. They have repeatedly said for years they are willing to agree to denuclearization of the Peninsula in return for security guarantees. I find the media trumpeting this as a new development rather vexing. Anyways, China has been putting the screws on them since about September/October (Apparently, they told Kim Jongun they know they can't overthrow the DPRK government, but they can get rid of him personally), which is also why there have not been any new nuclear tests.

Don't forget the United States has itself promised to denuclearize, under the NPT.

Plenue , March 31, 2018 at 2:08 am

It would certainly bring me great pleasure if Trump of all people were to bring about some great positive change in regards to the Forever War with North Korea. Imagine all the whining liberals if Trump, unlike Obama, actually did something worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

Roland , March 31, 2018 at 3:42 pm

I think Yves has got it right: USA threatens PRC with tariffs, so PRC pressures NK to make concessions to the USA. i.e. Two big guys screwing the little guy.

PRC and NK leaders might think that all they have to do is get through a short patch of bad weather until 2020. If so, they are badly kidding themselves.

In the USA, imperialist machtpolitik is a thoroughly bipartisan affair. It doesn't matter how faithfully NK or PRC might fulfill obligations. Trump's successors, whoever they may be, will simply apply more pressure and demand more concessions. They won't stop until somebody else stops them.

[Mar 30, 2018] Bolton Is the Opposite of an 'Honest Broker' The American Conservative

Mar 30, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Sebastian Rotella reports on how many of the people that worked with Bolton remember his tendency to distort intelligence and ignore facts that contradicted his assumptions:

"Anyone who is so cavalier not just with intelligence, but with facts, and so ideologically driven, is unfit to be national security adviser," said Robert Hutchings, who dealt extensively with Bolton as head of the National Intelligence Council, a high-level agency that synthesizes analysis from across the intelligence community to produce strategic assessments for policymakers. "He's impervious to information that goes against his preconceived ideological views." [bold mine-DL]

That assessment lines up with what I understood about Bolton, and it points to one of the biggest problems with his appointment. I wrote this shortly before Trump announced that he was choosing Bolton:

The real danger is that he is such an ideologue that he would keep information from the president that contradicts his views and prevent Trump from getting the best available advice. Trump is poorly informed to begin with, and having Bolton as his main adviser on matters of national security and foreign policy would make sure that he stays that way.

Trump is especially susceptible to being manipulated by his advisers into endorsing the policies they want because he knows so little and responds so favorably to flattery, and he has shown that he is already more than willing to select a more aggressive option when he is told that it is the "presidential" thing to do. We should expect that Bolton will feed Trump bad or incomplete information, present aggressive options in the most favorable light while dismissing alternatives, and praise Trump's leadership to get him to go along with the hard-line policies Bolton wants. Bolton will run a very distorted policy process and he will be the opposite of an honest broker. That won't serve Trump well, and it will be terrible for our foreign policy.

[Mar 30, 2018] Donald Trump s Appointment Of John Bolton Means Regime Change Is Coming To Iran Sheep Media

Notable quotes:
"... It should also be noted that Bolton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations , an organization whose members have influenced the state of geopolitics for the last few generations. Bolton was also a member of the neo-conservative, warhawk think tank, "Project for the New American Century," which was enthusiastically promoting the lie about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. ..."
"... In 2000, PNAC released a report titled Rebuilding America's Defenses which outlined a strategy of regime change in Iraq and beyond. Under a section titled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force," the think tank wrote the following controversial line: ..."
"... "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." ..."
Mar 29, 2018 | asheepnomore.net

Donald Trump's Appointment Of John Bolton Means Regime Change Is Coming To Iran

March 29, 2018 By Sheep Media

This article was written by Derrick Broze and originally published at Activist Post

The latest neo-conservative warmonger to join the Trump Administration does not bode well for the people of Iran.

On Thursday Donald Trump announced that John Bolton, a former official in George W. Bush's administration and former ambassador to the UN, would be his new National Security Advisor. Bolton is a warhawk who called for the invasion of Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction and has for years called for the invasion of Iran.

Middle East Eye collected a number of quotes from Bolton over the years that indicate his plans for Iran and other nations viewed as a threat to national security of the U.S. government. And by that I mean the people who secretly wield control of corporate and state power.

In 2009, Bolton said that regime change is "ultimately, the only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons." As recent as 2015 Bolton call for a U.S./Israel joint bombing campaign."Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran's opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran."

Meanwhile, Senator Rand Paul questioned the appointment. "It concerns me that Trump would put someone in charge who is unhinged as far as believing in absolute and total intervention," Paul stated. Bolton's appointment was also criticized by Trita Parsi, leader of the National Iranian American Council.

Further, it seems that Bolton and former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani have already promised the regime change would be happening within the next year. "Just eight months ago, at a Paris gathering, Bolton told members of the Iranian exile group, known as the Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK, or People's Mujahedeen, that the Trump administration should embrace their goal of immediate regime change in Iran and recognize their group as a 'viable' alternative," The Intercept reports.

"The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself," newly appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton told the crowd. The Intercept also noted that Iranian expatriate journalist Bahman Kalbasi reported that Bolton ended his talk by promising, "And that's why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!"

At a recent celebration of the Persian New Year, Rudy Giuliani promised the audience that "if anything, John Bolton has become more determined that there needs to be regime change in Iran, that the nuclear agreement needs to be burned, and that you need to be in charge of that country." Disturbingly, Giuliani reportedly led the crowd in a chant of "regime change!".

It should also be noted that Bolton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations , an organization whose members have influenced the state of geopolitics for the last few generations. Bolton was also a member of the neo-conservative, warhawk think tank, "Project for the New American Century," which was enthusiastically promoting the lie about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction.

In 2000, PNAC released a report titled Rebuilding America's Defenses which outlined a strategy of regime change in Iraq and beyond. Under a section titled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force," the think tank wrote the following controversial line:

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

Less than a year later, 10 of the 18 men who signed the paper became members of the Bush administration. The attacks of 9/11 would come soon after and the neocons had their "catastrophic and catalyzing event" and an excuse to invade Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and soon possibly, Iran.

The men included Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House liaison to the Iraqi opposition; William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, and Richard Perle, chairman of the advisory Defense Science Board.

In addition to the well-known Pearl Harbor quote, the paper goes on to describe the eventual outcome of the initial regime change. "Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change – transition and transformation – over the coming decades." If the last 15 years of war, violence, and death in the Middle East have been the "transition" phase, John Bolton and Trump may be preparing to shift gears and move into the "transformation" phase – beginning with the invasion of Iran. However, based on PNAC's track record, they might be looking for a new catastrophic event to generate support for intervention in Iran.

So much for draining the swamp

H/T: Alt- Market.com

[Mar 27, 2018] Here's John Bolton Promising Regime Change in Iran by the End of 2018

Mar 27, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Richardstevenhack Reply 26 March 2018 at 06:35 PM

Humans are primates. Thus, they are stupid, ignorant, malicious and fearful - mostly the latter. Pretty much explains everything in human history.

I subscribe to the concept of survival at any cost. But in a rational society that would entail being aware of the long-term consequences. This, however, is not a rational society.

Off topic - or maybe not given the topic of human heartlessness - here we have John Bolton:

Here's John Bolton Promising Regime Change in Iran by the End of 2018
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/heres-john-bolton-promising-regime-change-iran-end-2018/

Apparently he told the M.E.K. cult that the US would end Iran's leadership before the 40 year anniversary which is February 11, 2019.

That of course is absurd unless somehow the US manages to decapitate the Iranian leadership with an airstrike or nuclear attack. What actually will happen if the US attacks Iran is that Iran will fight for the next several decades until the US backs off. There is no chance short of nuclear bombardment for the US to "defeat" Iran. The US couldn't even "defeat" Iraq in less than five years and hasn't defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan in 17 years. Iran will be a far harder nut to crack than either of those.

Lobe Log has published a "John Bolton: The Essential Profile" which covers this lunatic.
http://lobelog.com/john-bolton-the-essential-profile/

Of note in that piece is how many diplomats both within the US State Department and the EU explicitly state they can't stand the guy.

[Mar 27, 2018] John Bolton Tapped for NSA What Does It Mean for US-Russia Relations

Mar 27, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org

John Bolton Tapped for NSA: What Does It Mean for US-Russia Relations?

John Bolton, a Yale-educated lawyer known as a foreign policy hawk , has been appointed National Security Adviser (NSA), in a major reshuffle of President Trump's administration. He officially takes office on April 9. No Senate confirmation is required. Welcome back, Mr. Straight Talker!

Mr. Bolton has a long history of government service, including in the positions of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and ambassador to the UN, the organization he once described as "no such thing" and wants to be defunded . John Bolton scorns international institutions and does not believe that engaging much with the world is in keeping with US interests.

This soon-to-be NSA is an experienced lawyer and "think tanker," as well as a foreign-policy pundit who has written a multitude of books and articles. He's a deft and ready speaker whose gift of gab can win over an audience at any time. The National Security Advisor-designate even considered entering the presidential races in 2012 and 2016.

In his frequent television commentaries , Mr. Bolton has always advocated tough approaches and never missed an opportunity to support using force rather than wasting time on fruitless diplomacy. For instance, he has advocated for a military option to solve the problem with North Korea and for boosting cooperation with Taiwan in order to irk China. He takes a very hard line on Iran. " To stop Iran's bomb, bomb Iran ," sums up his position.

Mr. Bolton believes the JCPOA was a blunder. He wants the US to push Iran out of Syria and topple President Assad's Tehran-friendly government. With his appointment, the chances of the US certifying the Iran nuclear deal appear to be somewhere between zero and zilch. Mr. Bolton has always been pro-Israel and backed the idea of a unilateral Israeli strike against Iran to knock out the facilities there related to its nuclear program.

The late Jesse Helms, a well-known hawk, once claime d Mr. Bolton would be the right man "to stand with at Armageddon."

The newest appointee has championed the idea of raising tariffs to unleash trade wars.

With these two very hawkish Republicans -- John Bolton and Mike Pompeo -- Donald Trump will be under strong pressure to adopt a get-tough approach to all major issues. Gina Haspel, another hawk, will have frequent access to Donald Trump in her role as the newly appointed CIA director. The spirit of Barry Goldwater lives on.

John Bolton has always been critical of Moscow and it is almost unanimously believed that his appointment does not augur well for US-Russia relations.

In response to President Putin's speech in which he unveiled the existence of his new super weapons, Bolton emphasized the need for "a strategic response ." He has called on NATO to offer a strong reaction to what is known as the Scripal case, expressing his conviction that the POTUS was considering such a response. The latest choice for National Security Advisor endorses the idea of providing Ukraine with lethal weapons and wants the West to take a much tougher stance on Russia. John Bolton will certainly advocate for expediting Georgia's and Ukraine's membership in the North Atlantic alliance, as well as granting those nations the status of Major Non–NATO ally of the US.

He strongly criticized President Obama's "reset policy." Yet despite all that, he never launched personal attacks against Vladimir Putin. He always seemed to genuinely enjoy his visits to Russia, including press conferences and visits to think tanks. Despite his tough talk, he has always been amicable and ready to communicate. He has a long list of personal acquaintances, including many in senior government positions and academia. John Bolton worked with Sergey Kiriyenko, Russia's First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration, back when the latter headed Russia's State Commission on Chemical Disarmament.

Mr. Bolton is an experienced negotiator on strategic arms-control issues. John Bolton was a strong advocate of the US withdrawal from the 1972 BM Treaty. He took part in the talks over the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) that was in effect until the New START went into force. John Bolton sees the New START as a unilateral disarmament agreement that is at odds with US interests. President Trump has also decried that treaty.

Being a hawk does not make him a hopeless prospect. He views the interests of his nation in his own way, but he wants America to lead, not perish in a war it can't win. His experience in strategic arms talks is invaluable. Mr. Bolton has a good understanding of security-related issues.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was a Russia hawk, a tough guy no one could make a deal with. Remember his " joke " about dropping bombs on the USSR in five minutes? Or his "Evil Empire" speech? During his second term, the landmark INF Treaty was signed and the friendly environment of the US-USSR summits were proof that that bilateral relationship had clearly evolved beyond its Cold War roots.

The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev believes that "He has already entered history as a man who was instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War." President Reagan ended the Cold War and made it possible to ease the nuclear tensions in the 1990s.

Agreements will remain elusive on many issues and negotiations on some key matters may even break down, but dialog on arms control will probably continue because it meets vital US interests and Mr. Bolton knows that well.

In the end, the decisions are made by the president, and while advisers may have influence, they only advise. President Trump has many people around him to help him see issues from different viewpoints.

Tags: NSA Bolton

[Mar 25, 2018] John Bolton is in all likelihood a Zionist asset due to the Israelis having some very powerful kompromat on him

Mar 25, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Outrage Beyond , 23 March 2018 at 09:04 AM

John Bolton is in all likelihood a Zionist asset due to the Israelis having some very powerful kompromat on him.

Numerous sources allege that Bolton forced his wife (now ex-wife) into group sex at a swinger's club. Did someone get it on film, tape, or some other recording media?

Given the extreme fervor of Bolton's Zionism, the answer seems obvious.

Dr. Puck -> LondonBob... , 23 March 2018 at 12:14 PM
Bolton, to me, is worse than McMaster, is decidedly a neocon, and may well end up being the intellectual impetus behind a shiny new war in the ME or the Korean peninsula.

Although Trump the candidate offered a sketch of his FP views, including his well known declaration about the catastrophic Iraq war, today one can itemize where the US military is currently robustly engaged.

If Bolton can dial back his hawkishness with respect to Russia, not mention--too much--Iraq, he and POTUS may likely find alignment about which will be the first regime to be targeted by our standoff capabilities. imao

Anna -> falcemartello ... , 23 March 2018 at 03:01 PM
Bolton is a dead hand of Cheney. "They are dead before they go..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Wn3Eey6dY
catherine -> semiconscious... , 23 March 2018 at 03:02 PM
I agree, people shouldn't imply, they should say straight out what they think.
So allow me.

It appears that the uber Israeli Sheldon Adelson who was the largest campaign donor to Trump and Nikki Haley and also employs John Bolton is dictating US policy to Trump.

If it trots and barks like an Adelson, then its a Adelson poddle.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/13/nikki-haley-trump-iran-whisperer-243772

[Mar 25, 2018] Don't forget that Bolton was the one who immediately blamed the Hariri assassination on Syria

Mar 25, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Petri Krohn | Mar 24, 2018 11:37:39 AM | 79

@Rusty Pipes , Mar 24, 2018 8:09:45 AM | 75

Don't forget that Bolton was the one who immediately blamed the Hariri assassination on Syria.

Immediately assigning blame is one of the signs of a false-flag operation. If Mossad killed Hariri, Bolton would know about it. He would also know if Mossad whacked the Skripals.

The political dividing line in America may not be Left vs. Right or Democrats vs. Republicans or anti-war vs. pro-war but Russiagate believers vs. realist who know it is all a false-flag.

Thierry Meyssan believes that Rex Tillerson fell for the Skripal hoax and that is why Trump fired him. I said something similar here on MoA

[Mar 25, 2018] Hawks Always Fail Upwards by Daniel Larison

This is about American Imperialism and MIC. Neocons are just well-laid MIC lobbyists. Some like Bolton are pretty talented guys. Some like Max Boot are simply stupid.
Notable quotes:
"... What sort of political system allows someone with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous war, never expresses a moment's regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again? [bold mine-DL] ..."
"... So by all means worry. But the real problem isn't Bolton -- it's a system that permits people like him to screw up and move up again and again. ..."
"... National Review ..."
Mar 25, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The conclusion of Stephen Walt's column on John Bolton is exactly right:

Don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to "normalize" this appointment or suggest that it shouldn't concern you. Rather, I'm suggesting that if you are worried about Bolton, you should ask yourself the following question: What sort of political system allows someone with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous war, never expresses a moment's regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again? [bold mine-DL]

So by all means worry. But the real problem isn't Bolton -- it's a system that permits people like him to screw up and move up again and again.

There is a strong bias in our foreign policy debates in favor of "action," no matter how stupid or destructive that action proves to be. That is one reason why reflexive supporters of an activist foreign policy will never have to face the consequences of the policies they support. Bolton has thrived as an advocate of hard-line policies precisely because he fills the assigned role of the fanatical warmonger, and there is always a demand for someone to fill that role. His fanaticism doesn't discredit him, because it is eminently useful to his somewhat less fanatical colleagues. That is how he can hang around long enough until there is a president ignorant enough to think that he is qualified to be a top adviser.

Bolton will also have reliable supporters in the conservative movement that will make excuses for the inexcusable. National Review recently published an article by David French in defense of Bolton whose conclusion was that we should "give a hawk a chance." Besides being evasive and dishonest about just how fanatical Bolton is, the article was an effort to pretend that Iraq war supporters should be given another chance to wreck U.S. foreign policy again. It may be true that Bolton's views are "in the mainstream of conservative foreign-policy thought," but that is an indictment of the so-called "mainstream" that is being represented. Bolton has been wrong about every major foreign policy issue of the last twenty years. If that doesn't disqualify you from holding a high-ranking government position, what does?

Hawks have been given a chance to run our foreign policy every day for decades on end, and they have failed numerous times at exorbitant cost. Generic hawks don't deserve a second chance after the last sixteen-plus years of failure and disaster, and fanatical hard-liners like Bolton never deserved a first chance.

French asserts that Bolton is "not extreme," but that raises the obvious question: compared to what?Bolton has publicly, repeatedly urged the U.S. government to launch illegal preventive wars against Iran and North Korea, and that just scratches the surface of his fanaticism. That strikes me as rather extreme, and that is why so many people are disturbed by the Bolton appointment. If he isn't "extreme" even by contemporary movement conservative standards, who is? How psychopathic would one need to be to be considered extreme in French's eyes? If movement conservatives can't see why Bolton is an unacceptable and outrageous choice for National Security Advisor, they are so far gone that there is nothing to be done for them and no point in listening to anything they have to say.

[Mar 24, 2018] I have to laugh at the people trying to portray Bonkers Bolton as somehow less insane than he is.

Mar 24, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Richardstevenhack 24 March 2018 at 06:03 PM

I have to laugh at the people trying to portray Bonkers Bolton as somehow less insane than he is.

Yesterday in my Youtube recommended list was at least half a dozen channels with headlines expressing horror at the appointment of Bolton as National Security Adviser. Clearly there has been a backlash in quite a few quarters that this appointment is simply lunatic - of a lunatic.

So naturally today we see people trying to play down the absolute stark insanity of Trump appointing this clown.

The only thing we can hope for is that before Bolton does too much damage that Trump gets tired of him, as he has everyone else in his administration, and fires him. But given Trump's history, all we can expect then is that he appoints Nikki Haley to the same post.

Russia, ever patient, issued a statement saying they're ready to work with Bolton. Privately they must be wondering why they didn't develop Novichok so they could use it on him.

Meanwhile the Democrats are trotting out all the hot women they claim had affairs with Trump. Hello, Democrats! Anyone remember Bill Clinton? At least Trump has a wife good-looking enough to maybe keep him home at night.

[Mar 24, 2018] Does Bolton appointment means the return to Monroe doctrine?

Mar 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

bevin | Mar 24, 2018 2:28:24 PM | 82

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that the real danger from Bolton is that, in Trumpian fashion, he will return to those good old days when the Cold War was ending and the US went hog wild in Central America.

Like a bruised and beaten bully who's just had his come-uppance in the pub who, returning home, angry and impotent beats up the wife and kids and threatens the neighbours, Uncle Sam is returning, his tail between his legs, from the middle east to his home turf.

Look out Cuba! Look out Venezuela!

The Contras are back in business. Ecuador-sorry Julian- looks about to crumble. Honduras, Paraguay, Haiti, Brazil and Argentina have all been rescued from their own people. Things are beginning to look like the 80s again except that this time there are hardly any 'communists' left to kill. Military dictatorships are back, death squads are bigger than ever.

And, best of all, from the Bolton/Trump viewpoint, the dangers of running into Russian or Chinese backed resistance is negligible, the money to be made is infinite. One Continent from north pole to south, run by a mafia based in Washington.

Its what Making America Great Again means-a return to the Monroe Doctrine and letting up on the mad dream of global hegemony. There's plenty of poor suckers for everyone to exploit a billion or so.

There's only one caveat-Israel. Israel undoubtedly wants a war with Iran, just as it wants to smash up Syria (or get the US to do it for them) but I just can't see the many local interested parties allowing it. Perhaps moving the Embassy to Jerusalem and getting the Guatemalans, Hondurans and Solomon Islanders to do the same, is all that they are going to get from Trump- a gesture without meaning. A con from the grifter himself.

[Mar 24, 2018] John Bolton: The Angriest Neocon by Adam Zagorin

Nov 16, 2007 | content.time.com

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have become accustomed to taking flak from Democratic (and even some G.O.P.) legislators when she testifies on Capitol Hill, but some of the most ferocious criticism she has recently faced comes from an unlikely source: John Bolton, the fiery conservative who served under Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In his new memoir, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad, Bolton -- known to be close to Vice President Dick Cheney -- outlines some of the internal foreign policy battles in the Administration of George W. Bush, and paints President Bush himself as betraying his own gut instinct.

Bolton's book covers his childhood as the son of a Baltimore fireman, his days at Yale Law School and his service in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. But it's the brickbats he reserves for Rice and fellow diplomats and civil servants in the current Administration that grab the most attention. First as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and then as U.N. ambassador, Bolton emerges as an outspoken unilateralist and an opponent of treaties and international institutions ranging from the Kyoto climate convention to the International Court of Criminal Justice. And he has been a vocal opponent, both inside and outside the Administration, of negotiations with North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs.

Bolton's outspoken policy views have long been familiar, but what's most interesting about his new book is the sheer enthusiasm with which he has adopted the mantle of the most vocal neoconservative critic of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, only months after resigning from the Bush team when the Senate for the second time refused to confirm his nomination to the U.N. post.

Bolton accuses the Administration of laxity in dealing with a nuclear-armed North Korea and an Iran intent on obtaining the bomb, not to mention its efforts to arrange a Middle East peace conference. But implicit in Bolton's bomb-throwing is a startling admission: that his never-ending battle against "pragmatists" and those less ideologically committed inside the most conservative administration in decades has been lost. In an interview with TIME, Bolton said: "Secretary Condoleezza Rice is the dominant voice on national security and there is no one running even a close second; her ascendancy is undisputed."

So where does that leave Bolton allies like Cheney and his hard-line advisers, and the few remaining neocons scattered through the national security bureaucracy? "You will never know what the VP's exact interaction with the President is," says Bolton, "But the VP is still closer to the President's basic instincts than anyone else." Bolton's explanation for the shift in White House policy: "The President may be distracted by the Iraq war or other events... but there's no doubt that the President has moved heartbreakingly away from his own deepest impulses on the three principal issues of controversy (North Korea, Iran and Middle East peace); what is happening now is contrary to his basic instincts."

On Iran, Bolton says former Secretary of State Colin Powell was too intent on mollifying U.S. allies like France, Britain and Germany. This caused Powell to offer Iran too many "carrots" -- trade and commercial inducements -- if Tehran would rein in its pursuit of atomic materials. To a large degree Rice, in Bolton's view, perpetuated this strategy even though, he believes, there is almost no chance that Iran will give up its nuclear ambitions. As a result, he says, the U.S. has wasted time on "four and half years of failed diplomacy" indulging Iran with unnecessarily accommodationist negotiations, a period Iran has used to advance its nuclear acquisitions and research.

On North Korea, Bolton cites (unconfirmed) reports of the Hermit Kingdom's collaboration with Syria on a secret nuclear facility as evidence that the denuclearization deal between the U.S. and North Korea is not working. Talks with North Korea continue, he notes, and the U.S. looks set to invite Syria to its Middle East peace conference later this month. Uncomfortable issues are not being raised, Bolton charges, for fear of disrupting negotiations that he sees as pointless to begin with.

So what are the prospects for a return to the muscular unilateralism that Bolton favors? "There's a possibility that events in the external world will validate our position and give the President a means to return to his gut," the former U.N. ambassador told TIME. "But until and unless external events prove that current policies are on the wrong track, there is no countervailing or obvious force inside this administration that is going to produce a course correction. "

[Mar 24, 2018] Bolton plans to fire dozens of White House officials

Notable quotes:
"... The Wall Street Journal ..."
Mar 24, 2018 | www.veteranstoday.com
John Bolton, US President Donald Trump's incoming hawkish national security adviser, is reportedly planning a massive dismissal of staff at the National Security Council, aiming to remove dozens of White House officials.

Sources aware of the changes told Foreign Policy that Bolton is preparing to "clean house" and remove nearly all of the political appointees brought in by his predecessor.

"Bolton can and will clean house," one former White House official told Foreign Policy. One other source said, "He is going to remove almost all the political [appointees] McMaster brought in."

Another former official said that any National Security Council officials appointed under former President Obama "should start packing their shit."

Trump and Bolton see eye to eye on their hawkish foreign policy, especially when it comes to North Korea and Iran, and are equally averse to multilateral diplomacy, whether that means the UN or working with the European Union.

A history of bellicosity

Bolton, an outspoken advocate of military action who served in the administration of former US president George W. Bush, has called for action against Iran and North Korea.

"He is unabashed about this," said Mark Groombridge, a former top adviser to Bolton at the State Department and United Nations pointing to his views on preemptive warfare.

"He has no problems with the doctrine of preemption and feels the greatest threat that the United States faces is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

The Washington Post reports that at the White House, Bolton is likely to reinforce Trump's "America First" view of the world. Both Trump and Bolton share a long-standing animosity toward any treaties, international laws or alliances that limit America's freedom to act on the world stage.

[Mar 24, 2018] Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, who pressured intelligence officers to endorse his views of other rogue states, especially Syria and Cuba.

Notable quotes:
"... When the relevant analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) refused to agree with Bolton's language, the undersecretary summoned the analyst and scolded him in a red-faced, finger-waving rage. ..."
"... The director of INR at the time, Carl Ford, told the congressional committee considering Bolton's nomination that he had never before seen such abuse of a subordinate ..."
Mar 24, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

outthere 24 March 2018 at 04:50 PM

Paul Pillar says:

> The most egregious recent instances of arm twisting arose in George W. Bush's administration but did not involve Iraq. The twister was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, who pressured intelligence officers to endorse his views of other rogue states, especially Syria and Cuba. Bolton wrote his own public statements on the issues and then tried to get intelligence officers to endorse them.

According to what later came to light when Bolton was nominated to become ambassador to the United Nations, the biggest altercation involved Bolton's statements about Cuba's allegedly pursuing a biological weapons program. When the relevant analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) refused to agree with Bolton's language, the undersecretary summoned the analyst and scolded him in a red-faced, finger-waving rage.

The director of INR at the time, Carl Ford, told the congressional committee considering Bolton's nomination that he had never before seen such abuse of a subordinate -- and this comment came from someone who described himself as a conservative Republican who supported the Bush administration's policies -- an orientation I can verify, having testified alongside him in later appearances on Capitol Hill.

> When Bolton's angry tirade failed to get the INR analyst to cave, the undersecretary demanded that the analyst be removed. Ford refused. Bolton attempted similar pressure on the national intelligence officer for Latin America, who also inconveniently did not endorse Bolton's views on Cuba. Bolton came across the river one day to our National Intelligence Council offices and demanded to the council's acting chairman that my Latin America colleague be removed.

http://lobelog.com/how-john-bolton-handles-diverse-viewpoints-and-expert-analysis/

[Mar 23, 2018] 'Trump lining up war cabinet' Bolton's elevation to NSC adviser fuels alarm

Notable quotes:
"... "With the appointments of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, @realDonaldTrump is successfully lining up his war cabinet. Bolton played a key role in politicizing the intel that misled us into the Iraq War. We cannot let this extreme war hawk blunder us into another terrible conflict," ..."
"... "John Bolton supports proactively bombing Iran & striking North Korea with nuclear weapons first without provocation. Appointing him to be Nat Sec Advisor is a grave danger to the American people & a clear message from @realDonaldTrump that he is gearing up for military conflict," ..."
"... "If you're always wrong on security, you're the wrong person to be National Security Advisor," ..."
"... "drumbeats of war." ..."
"... "absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now," ..."
"... "John Bolton was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war and has supported military action against North Korea and Iran. He was too extreme to be confirmed as UN ambassador in 2005 and is absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now," ..."
"... "John Bolton is a dangerous radical. President Trump's decision to make Bolton his National Security Advisor is deeply disturbing," ..."
"... "John Bolton has spent his entire career pushing fringe conspiracy theories, espousing radical ideas about multilateralism, and undermining key alliances across the world." ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
Mar 23, 2018 | www.rt.com

Donald Trump's cabinet reshuffles have fueled concerns, not least after the latest appointment of hawkish John Bolton as national security adviser, just days after installing a former CIA chief as the new secretary of state. On Thursday afternoon Donald Trump decided to sack Gen. HR McMaster from his national security adviser post, replacing him with John Bolton. The former US envoy to the United Nations will assume office on April 9 – just days after Mike Pompeo is set to replace Rex Tillerson as the new secretary of state.

READ MORE: Trump replaces national security adviser McMaster with John Bolton

The newly formed doublet has caused shockwaves among the Democrats, who have alleged that Trump seems to be preparing for war. Democratic Senator from Massachusetts Ed Markey warned that Trump is creating a "war cabinet," warning of "grave danger" following Bolton's appointment.

John Bolton supports proactively bombing Iran and conducting a first strike on North Korea without provocation. Appointing him to be Nat Sec Advisor is a grave danger to the American people and a clear message from @realDonaldTrump that he is gearing up for military conflict.

-- Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) March 22, 2018

"With the appointments of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, @realDonaldTrump is successfully lining up his war cabinet. Bolton played a key role in politicizing the intel that misled us into the Iraq War. We cannot let this extreme war hawk blunder us into another terrible conflict," he tweeted.

"John Bolton supports proactively bombing Iran & striking North Korea with nuclear weapons first without provocation. Appointing him to be Nat Sec Advisor is a grave danger to the American people & a clear message from @realDonaldTrump that he is gearing up for military conflict," Senator Markey added.

John Bolton:
Wanted war w Cuba, arguing wrongly that Cuba had WMD
Wanted war w Iraq, arguing – wrong again – that Iraq had WMD
Believes – wrongly – that Islamic law is taking over America

If you're always wrong on security, you're the wrong person to be National Security Advisor

-- Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) March 22, 2018

The choice of Bolton as the national security adviser has also been questioned by Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon, who has pointed out many flaws with the new appointee's policies. "If you're always wrong on security, you're the wrong person to be National Security Advisor," Merkley tweeted.

This is dangerous news for the country and the world. John Bolton was easily one of the most extreme, pro-war members of the Bush Administration.

Imagine what havoc he could wreak whispering in Donald Trump's ear...I hear the drumbeats of war. https://t.co/A6ZIyORAM7

-- Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) March 22, 2018

Rep. Barbara Jean Lee of California's 13th congressional district was also disappointed by Trump's choice, claiming she is hearing the "drumbeats of war."

The President is surrounding himself with combative lawyers. He's replacing Tillerson and McMaster with Pompeo and Bolton.

It's almost like the President is preparing to go to war in the legal and foreign relations sense...

-- Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) March 22, 2018

Fears expressed by some Capitol Hill members and the public seem justified. The notoriously hawkish former United Nations ambassador was a chief architect of the George W. Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq in 2003, that was based on false accusations that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction.

This is one of the most dangerous developments I've seen in our foreign and nat'l security policy. Period. #Bolton #McMaster . https://t.co/aEl5aRn9fA

-- Steve Israel (@RepSteveIsrael) March 22, 2018

Trump's choice of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo as the new secretary of state also made many in Washington uneasy. Unlike his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, Pompeo seems better aligned with Trump's confrontational foreign policy, namely on the Iran nuclear deal, on North Korea, and on the shift of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Besides politicians, the American public also expressed concern about the feasibility of a looming armed conflict.

John Bolton was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war and has supported military action against North Korea and Iran. He was too extreme to be confirmed as UN ambassador in 2005 and is absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now.

-- Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 22, 2018

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders called Bolton "absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now," recalling how he deceived the public about the Iraq war.

"John Bolton was part of the effort to mislead the US into the disastrous Iraq war and has supported military action against North Korea and Iran. He was too extreme to be confirmed as UN ambassador in 2005 and is absolutely the wrong person to be national security advisor now," Sanders tweeted.

"John Bolton is a dangerous radical. President Trump's decision to make Bolton his National Security Advisor is deeply disturbing," Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-13) said in a written statement. "John Bolton has spent his entire career pushing fringe conspiracy theories, espousing radical ideas about multilateralism, and undermining key alliances across the world."

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

[Mar 23, 2018] So on the 15th anniversary of the Iraq debacle, a neocon who cheered it on is rewarded with a national security post where he can cue up the attack on Iran that was always the ultimate prize for Israel's US stooges?

Mar 22, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com


Jim Haygood , , March 22, 2018 at 7:31 pm

So on the 15th anniversary of the Iraq debacle, a neocon who cheered it on is rewarded with a national security post where he can cue up the attack on Iran that was always the ultimate prize for Israel's US stooges?

Guess we'll be out marching again, just like last time. Bolton's walrus mustache is the 21st century version of Adolph H's toothbrush mustache. Down with the Persian Untermenschen! /sarc

Carolinian , , March 22, 2018 at 8:50 pm

Of course while working for Cheney Bolton was pretty confident about getting Dubya to start a war with Iran and that didn't happen. Here's a backgrounder that suggests that Bolton is tight with both Adelson and the Mossad so one way of looking at this has Russia fading as a target and Iran falling under the bulls eye. Trump's recent friendly phone call with Putin was contrary to instructions from his NSC and therefore presumably McMaster.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-a-john-bolton-appointment-is-scarier-than-you-think-mcmaster-trump/

Looked at optimistically it could be out of the frying pan and into a smaller frying pan (for us if not for Iran but that remains to be seen).

Of course looked at pessimistically it's terrible news but if the public and Congress are afraid of Trump gratuitously starting a new war then perhaps they should take away his power to do so. Seems the Constitution did have something to say about that.

barrisj , , March 22, 2018 at 10:21 pm

Tol'ja so these miserable wretches simply cannot die resurrection a promise any time a misfit administration takes power all that audition time on FoxNews paid off Trump stripping the cable channels of right-wing bloviators "best people for the jawb", don't you know.

[Mar 23, 2018] The worst thing about the appointment of anti-Iran hawk John Bolton is that the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party 100% supports war with Iran.

Mar 23, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

fairleft | Mar 23, 2018 12:37:30 AM | 72

The worst thing about the appointment of anti-Iran hawk John Bolton is that the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party 100% supports war with Iran. In fact Hillary was attacking Trump from the war hawk right on this issue in 2016 (of course alienating key voters as she did so). So, just like in 2002 with Iraq, the two-party mainstream and all the mainstream media will be overwhelmed by pro-war voices, and the arguments in favor of peace and basic sanity will be ostracized. Note in the RT piece below that the only Democrats expressing real, concrete concern/revulsion are the usual, sheepdog leftie suspects.

'Trump lining up war cabinet'? Bolton's elevation to NSC adviser fuels alarm

https://www.rt.com/usa/422084-trump-bolton-war-cabinet-reaction/

[Mar 23, 2018] Say what you will about Bolton he is a shrewd political animal. Here it looks as though he is trying to appear sane and reasonable....perhaps even likeable.

Mar 23, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

dh , Mar 23, 2018 12:13:22 AM | 69

@66 Say what you will about Bolton he is a shrewd political animal. Here it looks as though he is trying to appear sane and reasonable....perhaps even likeable.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-bolton-fires-back-against-004800253.html

[Mar 23, 2018] MoA - John Bolton - The Man With A Hammer Is Looking For Nails

Notable quotes:
"... Kelly and, only later on Mattis will likely be the next to get fired. That will eliminate the last people with access to Trump who have some marginal sanity on war and peace issues. Trump will be completely isolated and easy to manipulate. ..."
"... Fortunately the media in the US has had it's credibility with just about everyone, including anti-Trump people, shredded and I don't think they'll be able to prepare people for a war like they did before the 2016 election, people are finally awake or have a sense of agency. ..."
"... If Mattis will be out at some point along with Kelly, thus destroying the tempering influence of these generals, who hated Iraq as much as Vietnam, the next question is how Trump's apparent judgment on Iraq as disastrous will play out with a Bolton crowd (Bolton one of the first signatories of PNAC in 1998) on what to do when the North Koreans say fuck you loudly and clearly. ..."
"... Trump has surrounded himself with real men who want to go to Tehran. Syria, not so much anymore. Besides, Ukraine 3.0 will be great until the Russians show up. The CIA's Dark Prince is already there. ..."
"... global oligarchy live in harmony while concocting massive Orwellian propaganda of great enemies that must be defeated at all cost, cost of your freedom and your purse. ..."
"... Face it b, Bolton is just a impotent loud barking dog to scare ordinary people for his temporary owner , a flaccid clown of global oligarchy. ..."
Mar 23, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

...He is also an exceptionally avid bureaucrat who knows how to get the things he wants done. That quality is what makes him truly dangerous. Bolton is known for sweet-talking to his superiors, being ruthless against competitors and for kicking down on everyone below him.

Soon Netanyahoo will have the cabinet in place in DC he always dreamed of. A hawkish Pompeo at State, a real torturer as head of the CIA and now Bolton are already sufficient to protect Israel's further expansion. Kelly and, only later on Mattis will likely be the next to get fired. That will eliminate the last people with access to Trump who have some marginal sanity on war and peace issues. Trump will be completely isolated and easy to manipulate.

Bolton has a hammer and he will find lots of nails. Like Hillary Clinton he will want to fight with Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and others in no particular order. He will want to destroy Syria. He is cozy with the Kurds and the Iranian terror cult MEK. He addressed (vid) their congress eight years in a row and made lots of money for saying things like this :

"[B]efore 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran."

Bolton has little concern for U.S. allies except, maybe, for Israel.

His first priority will be to prevent the announced summit between Trump and Kim Jong-un. He will want more sanctions on North Korea and may argue for a 'preventive' strike against it. He does not care that such a strike will certainly kill tens of thousands of Koreans in the north and south and several thousand U.S. soldiers and civilians.

New sanctions on North Korea are problematic as Trump has just put additional tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. imports of Chinese goods. (The Chinese response is smart: Tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods from states that Trump won.) Why should China and Russia (and South Korea) help the U.S. to strangulate North Korea when they themselves are under fire? To prevent a U.S. strike that may come anyway the very next day?

The Europeans who were part of the nuclear agreement with Iran have to answer a similar question . Why offer Trump a 'compromise' over the JCPOA when the chances are now high that he will destroy it anyway?

What will Bolton do on Syria? Will he try to find a new agreement with Erdogan and drag Turkey away from endorsing Russia's polices in Syria? If he manages to do so, Syria's north will become a shared Turkish-U.S. entity and will be lost for a long time. New attacks on the Syrian government, from the north, south and east, where the U.S. re-trains ISIS into a new 'moderate rebel' army, would then open the next phase of the war.

So far the mean time of survival for Trump appointees is some six to eight months. Let us hope that John Bolton's appointment will - in the end - lower that average.

Posted by b on March 23, 2018 at 11:50 AM | Permalink

Comments


HnH , Mar 23, 2018 12:05:22 PM | 1

Trump wants war with Iran. The reasons are unknown to me, but the intention is very, very clear. The choices of Pompeo and Bolton confirm this.

If Trump gets this war, the short and medium term effects on world trade, and the oil trade in particular, will be absolutely devastating.

Iran will close the strait of Hormuz. The oil shipments will stop. Saudi Arabia may burn, Israel may get attacked. The US homeland may get attacked.

When the oil shipments stop, fuel shortages will occur, supermarkets will get empty, food prices will rocket.

God help us all.

harrylaw , Mar 23, 2018 12:10:50 PM | 2

Bomb Iran, is what Bolton advocated several years ago, this article 'The untold story of John Bolton's campaign for war with Iran' indicates he has not changed his mind http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-a-john-bolton-appointment-is-scarier-than-you-think-mcmaster-trump/
Altai , Mar 23, 2018 12:13:20 PM | 3
These appointments are weird. Ultimately Trump doesn't seem to have an appetite for large-scale war. What does seem like a dangerous possibility is if Bolton can et al can provoke a situation that traps Trump in his responses, maybe with a tight timeframe to respond and leads to a conflict starting that way.

Fortunately the media in the US has had it's credibility with just about everyone, including anti-Trump people, shredded and I don't think they'll be able to prepare people for a war like they did before the 2016 election, people are finally awake or have a sense of agency.

Ultimately it doesn't seem like Trump's election has changed much in terms of foreign policy among prospective successors. So it seems like eventually they will get their war with Iran during Trump's term or afterwards. It's utterly incredible how implacable the neo-cons are despite constant exposure over the last 15-20 years and with at least one President being elected on the basis of disgust with them. (Obama, could maybe include Trump too)

Tom Welsh , Mar 23, 2018 12:36:14 PM | 4
Kim Jong-un has no good reason for a "summit" with Trump. Indeed, there is no reason for him or his country to have anything to do with the USA or its catamites.

The best path for Korea is for North and South to plan reunification, as early as possible. They might as well retain the North's nuclear weapons, just in case anyone cuts up rough. If the Americans try to interfere, the nuclear weapons are there. Any American attempt to escalate, right on China's and Russia's front door, would meet with an extremely frigid response from them.

We must always remember that there was never any "North" or "South" Korea until President Truman's bureaucrats conjured them up out of thin air - apparently with the aid of a school atlas - to avoid the hideous tragedy of the whole of Korea "going communist". South Korea is an occupied nation, and should take immediate steps to kick the American occupiers out. By force if necessary.

Sid2 , Mar 23, 2018 12:38:17 PM | 5
Optimism on Bolton as relatively harmless in yesterday's thread is given an interesting perspective by this piece (from today), adding to b's pessimism above:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/bolton-and-the-north-korea-summit/

It seems the apparently contradictory move by Trump to appoint Bolton after getting rid of McMaster, who had a similar view to Bolton (North Korea had to be attacked because it is too late for diplomacy, their rocket programs too advanced), could be part of a scheme for a "big victory" effort by Trump who is, according to this view, amidst an artful deal-making moment of allowing faux-optimism re South-North Korean negotiations.

Bolton calls this "diplomatic shock and awe":

Bolton said Trump had short-circuited North Korea's plan of obtaining the capability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon and then stretching out negotiations for months that could distract the American government before making an official announcement about achieving the capability. Bolton envisioned the meeting between Trump and Kim as an opportunity to deliver a threat of military action:

"I think this session between the two leaders could well be a fairly brief session where Trump says, 'Tell me you have begun total denuclearization, because we're not going to have protracted negotiations, you can tell me right now or we'll start thinking of something else.' "

Trump, who only a few weeks back condemned (again) the Iraq War as disastrous, may be thinking Bolton is just the man to nail down a quivering retreat of the North Koreans into denuclearizing or else, now that they've had a nice taste of how sweet it could be in talking with Moon and the South.

If Mattis will be out at some point along with Kelly, thus destroying the tempering influence of these generals, who hated Iraq as much as Vietnam, the next question is how Trump's apparent judgment on Iraq as disastrous will play out with a Bolton crowd (Bolton one of the first signatories of PNAC in 1998) on what to do when the North Koreans say fuck you loudly and clearly.

This analysis also points out how disturbed Asia is over this appointment, and indicates that despite his views McMaster had been working with South Korea on the problem, and now has been jerked. This sounds like what happened in Iraq also, jerking out people who were building relationships and replacing them with hardnose "bring 'em on" thinking from the brilliant leadership in that war.

p has surrounded himself with real men who want to go to Tehran. Syria, not so much anymore. Besides, Ukraine 3.0 will be great until the Russians show up. The CIA's Dark Prince is already there.

Posted by: Fec , Mar 23, 2018 12:38:24 PM | 6

Trump has surrounded himself with real men who want to go to Tehran. Syria, not so much anymore. Besides, Ukraine 3.0 will be great until the Russians show up. The CIA's Dark Prince is already there.

Posted by: Fec | Mar 23, 2018 12:38:24 PM | 6 /div

Kalen , Mar 23, 2018 12:54:25 PM | 8
I understand that Syrian situation can drive people insane but unfortunately it was and is interpreted wrongly as a preparation to nuke war, it is not. It is same old same old thing, it is just more exposed by internet.

US military is in shambles what they showed in Iraq and Syria last year is all they got, nothing more but a capability of a chicken hawk and D.C. is run by chicken hawks whose business is intimidation not war about which they have no idea and they know that US military can only take on shoeless peasants with dilapitated AK 47 and call it even like in Afghanistan which was utter defeat no one even here want to talk about.

Like Roman Empire before US emporium is an empty shell, and its myth is maintained by US INSTALLED ELITES to control their own populations.

Recent military posturing on all sides of a global country club dinner table is just nothing but bail out of MIC and its wall street backers .

Open your even globalization has been accomplished and global oligarchy live in harmony while concocting massive Orwellian propaganda of great enemies that must be defeated at all cost, cost of your freedom and your purse.

Face it b, Bolton is just a impotent loud barking dog to scare ordinary people for his temporary owner , a flaccid clown of global oligarchy.

Show must go on. 160 years after collapse of Roman Empire Roman circuses and theater continued like Nothing happened.

We are watching such a circus.

Sid2 , Mar 23, 2018 1:03:51 PM | 9
@7 James:

I see this confusing sentence--

"Bolton said Trump had short-circuited North Korea's plan of obtaining the capability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon and then stretching out negotiations for months that could distract the American government before making an official announcement about achieving the capability."

--as, Bolton believes the North Koreans are playing around with negotiations only to delay toward capability, that Trump knows this, and all of it's a game toward resurrection of the hostilities.

This attitude suggests a foregone conclusion that the Trump-Kim meeting will fail, which could set up the next step at (from Bolton): "You see, it's hopeless, we just have to attack and take out this country, as we did with Iraq and are trying to do with Syria."


Charles Misfeldt , Mar 23, 2018 1:08:52 PM | 10
Israel has the Epstein tapes which show Trump having sex with underage girls, Saudi Arabia has billions of dollars to bribe Trump with arms deals, both of these immoral nations want Iran eliminated as an threat to their agendas. Israel and Saudi Arabia demand that Trump try and neutralize Iran before Trump is removed from office which will happen before his first term is up if this nation has any sense of self preservation. Trump is replacing those opposed to a war against Iran with those who support it. Trump is seriously compromised by foreign agendas.
Harry , Mar 23, 2018 1:09:52 PM | 11
My two cents:

1. Iran nuclear deal is dead, EU poodles will fall in line (but not entirely) with sanctions against Iran. I'm curious how Iran will respond, IMHO will restart all centrifuges and raise enrichment level? I still think its unlikely Iran would go for the nukes as ultimate deterrent.

2. US will be more involved in Syria. We can most definitely expect more false flag CW attacks and "retaliation" missiles. The big question mark if Russia will live up to its promise to retaliate on launch sites or US planes.

3. There will be no overt war against Iran, Pompeo/Bolton or not, US simply cannot win it. Covert - most definitely. More sabotage, assassinations, sanctions, etc.

It will be hard to do Libya 3.0 as well, but USrael might try anyway. Arm kurds and baluchis radicals, activate MEK network, it wont be anywhere as bad as in Syria, but some damage would be done. Thats the most what they can do.

Hoarsewhisperer , Mar 23, 2018 1:19:40 PM | 12
Bolton is a fruitcake. Imo Trump only hired him to expose his nuttiness and fire him. When he does, the World will breathe a sigh of relief and Trump's popularity will improve.
Bolton's Achilles Heel is that he doesn't do low-profile and talks too much.
james , Mar 23, 2018 1:25:51 PM | 13
@9 sid.. thanks.. i get that... i am more inclined to view bolton like @8 kalen.. it really does seem that way to me and if so, suggests trump is still in control and happy to have these bozos talk the talk, while knowing they are not able to walk the walk.. trump would throw a real monkey wrench in the spanner if he was to engage in the talks and come away with a positive resolution.. it would be a a nightmare for the military industrial complex and neo cons.. i still think he is capable of this...

@11 harry.. i hope you are wrong, but it is completely conceivable and tends to be the usa/israels pattern when confronted with a loss..

Fec , Mar 23, 2018 1:28:22 PM | 14
@ 12 When you're powerless, give the opposition what they want and hope they choke on it. Trump is being underestimated. Dunford, Mattis, Pompeo and Kelly lined up
behind Trump against Tillerson and the White Helmets in Ghouta.
Mike Maloney , Mar 23, 2018 1:48:20 PM | 15
Let's not forget about Venezuela. Story from McClatchy's D.C. bureau says Bolton considers Venezuela low-hanging fruit ripe for the plucking.
Emily , Mar 23, 2018 2:12:09 PM | 16
Bolton was named as one of Trump's very earliest supporters.
Right at the beginning.
Sounding alarm bells for many.
A few links to refresh some memories.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/john-bolton-state-trump-232573
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/310197-giving-bolton-place-at-state-would-undermine-trumps-own
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-john-bolton-isnt-part-of-the-trump-administration/
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/29/politics/bolton-iran-deal-cancel/
DonFromWyoming , Mar 23, 2018 2:12:53 PM | 17
"libertarian hawk" is an oxymoron, kind of like saying "a peace-loving bomb-thrower".
Pnyx , Mar 23, 2018 2:21:12 PM | 18
"Trump will be completely isolated and easy to manipulate."
This is nonsense. And you know it B. But you still fancy your idea about a non-interventionistic Trump, and now, by the time this belief is definitely shattered, you try a reasoning dangerously near to 'wenn das der Führer wüsste'.
Sid2 , Mar 23, 2018 2:35:10 PM | 19
thanks to b for this excellent link and extensive discussion of Mattis:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/23/james-mattis-defense-secretary-how-to-succeed-in-trump-cabinet-without-getting-fired-217699

This discussion suggests why Mattis has been successful with a naïve blowhard president, including the following interesting comment:

John Bolton's arrival in April as the president's new national security adviser will give Mattis a more ardent and skillful adversary at the National Security Council. Mattis outranked McMaster in military terms and always considered him his junior, even though Mattis is retired. He likely won't view Bolton that way, and Bolton prizes his ability to corral the bureaucracy for his purposes.

We're looking at an upcoming contest Mattis vs. Bolton on such matters as wars with Iran, North Korea, and whoever.

Glad to see all the optimism here on how harmless Bolton is but would like a little more substance versus the automatic dismissals.

Jef , Mar 23, 2018 2:39:05 PM | 20
I don't see the financial thread in all of this and I seriously believe that is #1 on Trumps mind. He would love for his legacy to be the POTUS that turned around the global economic collapse and opened the door big business everywhere.

That is his history wrt foreign relations and he could care less for the "blow shit up" mentality. Not saying that he can't be talked into it, just saying he would prefer the headline "Trump opens up the world for more US business". I honestly think that he believes that a trade war (business by other means) leads to US becoming a Mfg powerhouse again. Those around him might convince him that blowing shit up will have the same outcome.

Banking/finance learned a long time ago that you are better off keeping your customers around to continue borrowing than imprisoning or kill them off. The world is a market place and Trump wants to "make deals-not war" as long as America gets the better part of the deal.

Only other thing that makes since is what CM @ 10 proposes, that Trump is compromised.

bevin , Mar 23, 2018 2:39:59 PM | 21
Kalen @8 you must have followed the Bolton divorce case.
Iran doesn't need nuclear weapons it just needs a treaty with Russia and China. It might be of assistance to the dimwitted in Washington if the treaty specifically stated that Iran is under a nuclear umbrella.
We ought to acknowledge that, as the camarilla of generals surrounding Trump turns into a junta of bullshitters and blowhards, the dictatorship in DC has never been anything more than an alliance between billionaires, bullshitters and the American Gestapo.
jayc , Mar 23, 2018 2:41:38 PM | 22
Bolton's presence will accelerate Europe's move away from the U.S. This is probably inevitable now.
dh , Mar 23, 2018 3:02:14 PM | 23
@20 Trump may be all about deals but he's having a terrible effect on the stock markets. If a trade war with China wasn't bad enough now they have Bolton to worry about.
Jose Garcia , Mar 23, 2018 3:17:23 PM | 24
What you mean about Bolt-man is he'll be safe in his office, while YOUR father, mother, son, uncle, brother, sister or other family member dies for HIS idea of how the world should be. "We will fight fight "till the last drop of.....your blood!" The "inside the Beltway" gangsters sicken me.
TJ , Mar 23, 2018 3:19:34 PM | 25
Bolton is not a libertarian, libertarians believe in the "non-aggression principle" -

https://www.theadvocates.org/2016/10/aggression/

Please correct this.

Augustin L , Mar 23, 2018 3:20:38 PM | 26
@ 10 Charles,
In New-York Trump's been known as The FRONT GOY even before the Atlantic city heist. Without Kompromat tapes they can bury him six million different ways before sunday...
Charles Michael , Mar 23, 2018 3:37:29 PM | 27
Pat lang SST was horrified by the prospect of Bolton nomination: Not Bolton! not him !

Yesterday Alastair Crooke published on Strategi Culture:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/03/22/is-north-korea-deal-stalking-horse-trump-mid-east-makeover.html

A day before Bolton got the job, still a very interesting read as usual, up to the end, because Nothing can go wrigth in DC those days, in fact nothing can be done.

Peter AU 1 , Mar 23, 2018 3:51:55 PM | 28
The Trump meeting with KJU, if it comes off, will give an indication of where Trump is headed. Much showtime shock and awe and hyperbole leading up to his suddenly agreeing to the meeting which caught all the US political animals on both sides of the fence by surprise.
Haley constantly yapping like an annoying little dog has achieved what? Haley seems be just another prop in the shock and awe show.
At the same time, Trump could miscalculate and stumble into major war, or he may be actually planning a war. Always room for both pessimism and optimism with Trump, depending on the day.
Laguerre , Mar 23, 2018 4:02:08 PM | 29
I rather agree with Kalen. Trump is genuinely a blowhard - loud mouth and little action.

Bolton is an unpleasant warmonger, though he didn't get much through before. He was never confirmed by the Senate as ambassador to the UN. Since then he's had various sidelined positions as thinktank fellow.

My impression of Trump is that he is too lazy to get the US into a major war. A major war would be a lot of work, and, whatever the advice from the help, I don't think he'd go for it. Especially he wouldn't like months or years in a nuclear bunker. He couldn't dandle young thighs at Mar-a-Lago. That would be a major argument.

An important issue with Trump is that he is unable to keep staff. He must be running out of potential candidates. That's why Bolton.

Don Bacon , Mar 23, 2018 4:24:18 PM | 30
re: "libertarian hawk" is an oxymoron . .Bolton is not a libertarian

Libertarianism (from Latin: libertas, meaning "freedom") is a collection of political philosophies and movements that uphold liberty as a core principle. There are various interpretations of what libertarianism means to various people, such as the freedom to do as one pleases.
Bolton is a libertarian in a national sense. His liberty is national liberty. He is anti-globalist and unilateralist, believing that the country's values should never be superseded by international agreements and treaties. This thinking coincides with Trump's position declared during the campaign. "We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism," Trump said in his defining foreign policy speech as a candidate in the spring of 2016. "The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down."
Following from this concept of national libertarianism, Bolton goes further to the ready and unilateral use of armed force to advance foreign policy, without bilateral or multilateral agreement. He's a hawk, but that's not unusual for Americans in government.

Lester , Mar 23, 2018 4:37:44 PM | 31
The planet isn't going to survive much longer with Americans and the Tribe infesting it. Fumigation is in order. Pack the Americans and the antisemite semites into an ICBM and send them flying into the heart of the sun. A solution as good as any other.
Sid2 , Mar 23, 2018 4:39:20 PM | 32
@ 27 and 20: thanks Charles re link to the Alastair Crooke article which reflects Jef's earlier comment: that is, Trump would likely say: me for war? hell no I'm a peace lover but I'll drive the good bargain including war threat as needed in my "art of making a deal"(hence tools to this end such as Pompeo and Bolton). Crooke makes a good point that Tillerson was too much a conventional diplomat; Trump likes tough, unpredictable guys like Mattis to model himself after.

But all this is in the fundamentals of the same megalomaniacal type thinking that drove/drives PNAC and smart-ass know-it-all-ism of the Iraq Invasion and continuation of this mindset (see Bremer) after "mission accomplished."

This mind-set at base is the problem. I call it megalomania, others might call it hubris on steroids, or daydreams of the psychopath. For me it's difficult to pull Trump out of this mindset, because he's essentially the same. At the same time HIS version of it clashes with State Department Egomania--possibly toward doing some good at times (as with changing the course of US action in Syria last year; as with low-key response to the Skripal nonsense at this time) but nonetheless presenting the possibility of a new set of tripwires a la invasion of Iraq 2003, in terms of North Korea-Iraq.

It seems apparent at this time that Trump is clueless that for North Korea to denuclearize that would mean a quid pro quo of US forces leaving South Korea--which will never be acceptable to the neocons or Trump.

Jason , Mar 23, 2018 5:18:16 PM | 33
I wonder if there are people in the military thinking about resigning before WW3? There is isn't even a believable narrative put forward in bombing Damascus nor Tehran except for murder, destruction and conquest, there is literally zero self defensive aspect. I wonder how special forces troops in Syria who are about to attack the Syrian army and Syrian people on the side if HTS, Al Qaeda, IS, Nouri al Zinki, FSA feel about their mission; many must know they are basically committing treason.
Lester , Mar 23, 2018 5:31:07 PM | 34
"Murder, destruction and conquest". That's as American as apple pie. Why would Americans be committing treason doing the Tribe's work?
worldblee , Mar 23, 2018 5:39:20 PM | 35
Bolton may or may not be a blowhard but the malignant idiocy that billows forth from his mouth is frightening in its combination of willful ignorance and unrestrained rage. He is the new National Insecurity Advisor--that would be his more accurate title.
Blessed Economist , Mar 23, 2018 5:43:29 PM | 36
How long will he last. There cannot be many rooms in the Whitehouse big enough to hold the ego of Trump and the ego of Bolton at the same time.
bevin , Mar 23, 2018 5:43:59 PM | 37
From Off Guardian:
"...as of today, it appears that long battle for Jobar and its neighboring suburbs is finally over after an agreement was put in place with the primary militant groups there.

"According to a military report from Damascus, the Syrian Army and Faylaq Al-Rahman have agreed to peace terms in four East Ghouta suburbs, with the latter agreeing to leave to Idlib.

"Based on the agreement, Faylaq Al-Rahman will surrender all of their weapons, except for their small arms; they will release all Syrian Army prisoners from their jails; they will inform the government of all explosives they placed around the suburbs of Zamalka, Jobar, 'Ayn Tarma, and Arbin; and agree to exit these suburbs on Saturday.

"The militants are now scheduled to leave these four East Ghouta suburbs by noon tomorrow..."

ashley albanese , Mar 23, 2018 5:46:05 PM | 38
Bhadrakumar writes bigger ' war in Syria is imminent ' .
Laguerre , Mar 23, 2018 6:16:30 PM | 39
It is evident that US policy in Syria is failing. The original plan was to divide Syria into weak independent cantons, much as the French wanted in the 1920s. The French didn't succeed. It would be surprising of the US did.

The only parts which remain, are the jihadis in Idlib, and the Kurds in Jazira. Two elements which are opposed to one another.

Supposing that the US wants to revive the war in Syria, as the Neocons do, what are they going to do? Decapitation of the regime in Damascus was a way of getting the Jihadis into power (you have to wonder about US support for jihadis). Unfortunately, the Russians put troops into Damascus a few weeks ago to prevent that. Otherwise it's a bit of a nothing. The Kurds can stay in Jazira, Nobody's going to stop them.

Du , Mar 23, 2018 6:39:55 PM | 40
Great analysis - as usual. The thing missing is that this guy is a rabid zionist and the White House is now a governorate of the AN orthodox American province of Israel.

[Mar 23, 2018] Hawks Resurgent in Washington by Philip Girald

Notable quotes:
"... Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation ..."
Mar 22, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org

One of the most discouraging aspects of the musical chairs being played among the members of the White House inner circle is that every change reflects an inexorable move to the right in foreign policy, which means that the interventionists are back without anyone at the White House level remaining to say "no." President Donald Trump, for all his international experience as a businessman, is a novice at the step-by-step process required in diplomacy and in the development of a coherent foreign policy, so he is inevitably being directed by individuals who have long American global leadership by force if necessary.

The resurgence of the hawks is facilitated by Donald Trump's own inclinations. He likes to see himself as a man of action and a leader, which inclines him to be impulsive, some might even say reckless. He is convinced that he can enter into negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with virtually no preparations and make a deal that will somehow end the crisis over that nation's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, for example. In so doing, he is being encouraged by his National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and his Pentagon chief James Mattis, who believe that the United States can somehow prevail in a preemptive war with the Koreans if that should become necessary. The enormous collateral damage to South Korea and even Japan is something that Washington planners somehow seem to miss in their calculations.

The recent shifts in the cabinet have Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. A leading hawk, he was first in his class of 1986 at the United States Military Academy but found himself as a junior officer with no real war to fight. He spent six years in uniform before resigning, never having seen combat, making war an abstraction for him. He went to Harvard Law and then into politics where he became a Tea Party congressman, eventually becoming a leader of that caucus when it stopped being Libertarian and lurched rightwards. He has since marketed himself as a fearless soldier in the war against terrorism and rogue states, in which category he includes both Iran and Russia.

Pompeo was not popular at the CIA because he enforced a uniformity of thinking that was anathema for intelligence professionals dedicated to collecting solid information and using it to produce sound analysis of developments worldwide. Pompeo, an ardent supporter of Israel and one of the government's leading Iran haters, has been regularly threatening Iran while at the Agency and will no doubt find plenty of support at State from Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East David Satterfield, a former top adviser of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Pompeo has proven himself more than willing to manipulate intelligence produce the result he desires. Last year, he declassified and then cherry picked documents recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan that suggested that al-Qaeda had ties with Iran. The move was coordinated with simultaneous White House steps to prepare Congress and the public for a withdrawal from the Iran nuclear arms agreement. The documents were initially released to a journal produced by the neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Pompeo has a number of times spoken, to guarantee wide exposure in all the right places.

Pompeo's arrival might only be the first of several other high-level moves by the White House. Like the rumors that preceded the firing of Secretary of State Tillerson two weeks ago, there have been recurrent suggestions that McMaster will be the next to go as he reportedly is too moderate for the president and has also been accused of being anti-Israeli , the kiss of death in Washington. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton has been a frequent visitor at the White House and it is believed that he is the preferred candidate to fill the position. He is an extreme hawk, closely tied to the Israel Lobby, who would push hard for war against Iran and also for a hardline position in Syria, one that could lead to direct confrontation with the Syrian Armed Forces and possibly the Russians.

Bolton, who has been described by a former George W. Bush official as "the most dangerous man we had during the entire eight years," will undoubtedly have a problem in getting confirmed by Congress. He was rejected as U.N. Ambassador, requiring Bush to make a recess appointment which did not need Congressional approval.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation

[Mar 23, 2018] John Bolton's Incompetence May Be More Dangerous Than His Ideology by Heather Hurlburt

Notable quotes:
"... President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package. ..."
"... Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being too emotional . ..."
Mar 23, 2018 | nymag.com

John Bolton has been one of liberals' top bogeymen on national security for more than a decade now. He seems to relish the role, going out of his way to argue that the Iraq War wasn't really a failure, calling for U.S.-led regime change in Iran and preventive war against North Korea, and writing the foreword for a book that proclaimed President Obama to be a secret Muslim. He is a profoundly partisan creature, having started a super-PAC whose largest donor was leading Trump benefactor Rebekah Mercer and whose provider of analytics was Cambridge Analytica, the firm alleged to have improperly used Facebook data to make voter profiles, which it sold to the Trump and Brexit campaigns, among others.

Recently Bolton's statements have grown more extreme, alarming centrist and conservative national security professionals along with his longtime liberal foes. He seemed to say that the United States could attack North Korea without the agreement of our South Korean allies, who would face the highest risk of retaliation and casualties; just two months ago he called for a regime change effort in Iran that would allow the U.S. to open a new embassy there by 2019, the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the taking of Americans hostage in Tehran. His hostility toward Islam points toward a set of extreme policies that could easily have the effect of abridging American Muslims' rights at home and alienating America's Muslim allies abroad.

As worrying as these policies are, it's worth taking a step back and thinking not about Bolton, but about his new boss, Donald Trump. Trump reportedly considered Bolton for a Cabinet post early on, but then soured on him, finding his mustache unprofessional. His choice of Bolton to lead the National Security Council reinforces several trends: right now, this administration is all about making Trump's opponents uncomfortable and angry. Internal coherence and policy effectiveness are not a primary or even secondary consideration. And anyone would be a fool to imagine that, because Bolton pleases Trump today, he will continue to do so tomorrow.

Yes, Bolton has taken strong stances against the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin (though he has also been quoted praising Russian "democracy" as recently as 2013). That's nothing new: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have called for greater pushback on Russia as well. But there's every reason to think that, rather than a well-oiled war machine, what we'll get from Bolton's National Security Council is scheming and discord – which could be even more dangerous.

President Trump was said to complain that Tillerson disagreed with him and McMaster talked too much. Bolton seems likely to combine both of those traits in one pugnacious, mustachioed package. Their disagreements are real – Bolton has famously pooh-poohed the kind of summit diplomacy with North Korea that Trump is now committed to. While Trump famously backed away from his support for the 2002 invasion of Iraq, courting the GOP isolationist base, Bolton continues to argue that the invasion worked, and seldom hears of a war he would not participate in. Trump attempted to block transgender people from serving in the military, but Bolton has declined to take part in the right's LGBT-bashing, famously hiring gay staff and calling for the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

That's all substance. What really seems likely to take Bolton down is his style, which is legendary – and not in a good way. His colleagues from the George W. Bush administration responded to Trump's announcement with comments like "the obvious question is whether John Bolton has the temperament and the judgment for the job" – not exactly a ringing endorsement. One former co-worker described Bolton as a "kiss up, kick down kind of guy," and he was notorious in past administrations for conniving and sneaking around officials who disagreed with him, both traits that Trump seems likely to enjoy until he doesn't. This is a man who can't refrain from telling Tucker Carlson that his analysis is "simpleminded" – while he's a guest on Carlson's show. Turns out it's not true that he threw a stapler at a contractor – it was a tape dispenser. When Bolton was caught attempting to cook intelligence to suggest that Cuba had a biological weapons program, he bullied the analyst who had dared push back, calling him a " midlevel munchkin ." How long until Trump tires of the drama – or of being eclipsed?

Bolton may find that in this job, he's the midlevel munchkin. Remember, the national security adviser is supposed to be the coordinator, conciliator, and honest broker among Cabinet officials, managing a process by which all get a fair say and the president makes well-informed decisions. Outgoing National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly lost favor with Defense Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly for failing to defer to them, and for being too emotional .

Love Bolton or hate him, no one imagines he will be a self-effacing figure, and no one hires him to run a no-drama process. It's also hard to imagine that many of the high-quality professionals McMaster brought into the National Security Council staff will choose to stay. McMaster repeatedly had to fight for his team within the Trump administration, but Bolton seems unlikely to follow that pattern, or to inspire the kind of loyalty that drew well-regarded policy wonks to work for McMaster, regardless their views of Trump.

So even if you like the policies Bolton espouses, it's hard to imagine a smooth process implementing them. That seems likely to leave us with Muslim ban-level incompetence, extreme bellicosity, and several very loud, competing voices – with Twitter feeds – on the most sensitive issues of war and weapons of mass destruction.

[Mar 22, 2018] Bad news: Trump just picked John Bolton to be the new National Security Advisor.

Mar 22, 2018 | www.unz.com

Seamus Padraig , Next New Comment March 22, 2018 at 11:17 pm GMT

OT, but related.

Bad news: Trump just picked John Bolton to be the new National Security Advisor.

https://www.rt.com/usa/422081-trump-security-adviser-mcmaster-bolton/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=push_notifications

[Mar 22, 2018] McMaster to Resign as National Security Adviser, and Will Be Replaced by John Bolton - The New York Times

Mar 22, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON -- Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the battle-tested Army officer tapped as President Trump's national security adviser last year to stabilize a turbulent foreign policy operation, will resign and be replaced by John R. Bolton, a hard-line former United States ambassador to the United Nations, White House officials said Thursday.

General McMaster will retire from the military, the officials said. He has been discussing his departure with President Trump for several weeks, they said, but decided to speed up his departure, in part because questions about his status were casting a shadow over his conversations with foreign officials.

The officials also said that Mr. Trump wanted to fill out his national security team before his meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un. He replaced Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson with the C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, last week.

Officials emphasized that General McMaster's departure was a mutual decision and amicable, with none of the recrimination that marked Mr. Tillerson's exit. They said it was not related to a leak on Tuesday of briefing materials for Mr. Trump's phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In the materials, Mr. Trump was advised not to congratulate Mr. Putin on his re-election, which the president went ahead and did during the call.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

Mr. Bolton, who will take office April 9, has met regularly with Mr. Trump to discuss foreign policy, and was on a list of candidates for national security adviser. He was in the West Wing with Mr. Trump to discuss the job on Thursday.

[Mar 22, 2018] The Untold Story of John Bolton's Campaign for War With Iran by Gareth Porter

Another chickenhawk in Trump administration. Sad...
Notable quotes:
"... Bolton's high-profile advocacy of war with Iran is well known. What is not at all well known is that, when he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security, he executed a complex and devious strategy aimed at creating the justification for a U.S. attack on Iran. Bolton sought to convict the Islamic Republic in the court of international public opinion of having a covert nuclear weapons program using a combination of diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and fabricated evidence. ..."
"... Despite the fact that Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of State Colin Powell, his actual boss in devising and carrying out that strategy was Vice President Dick Cheney. Bolton was also the administration's main point of contact with the Israeli government, and with Cheney's backing, he was able to flout normal State Department rules by taking a series of trips to Israel in 2003 and 2004 without having the required clearance from the State Department's Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs. ..."
"... During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the secretary of state and other relevant offices. Judging from that report on an early Bolton visit, those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual U.S. strike against Iran. ..."
"... Unfortunately, John Bolton is not just your typical neocon pathological liar and warmonger. Even by their abysmal standards he's pretty unhinged. He is one of the most dangerous people around these days. ..."
"... Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the whole warmongering crowd that frequent the air waves at FOX will not rest until they have us at war with Iran and Russia. ..."
"... So Trump is thinking of hiring a loudmouthed incompetent who is a known conduit for botched Israeli spy service forgeries used to gin up war with Iran. What a sick farce. ..."
"... Bolton is a cancer for the US. As a warmonger, he thrives in hostile environnements so no wonder Bolton wants to create them with no regards for consequences. ..."
"... I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Bolton was duped by Israeli forgers (very droll story, by the way). You'd think that no serious person would consider giving him a National Security Council post, particularly given the current level of concern about "foreign meddling". ..."
"... I do not agree that Iran could prevent a conventional bombing/invasion of their country. But they could make it sooo expensive, the dollar ceases to be the world reserve currency, and if they do that, they will have done mankind a favor. ..."
"... But after the conquest, imagine the guerrilla war! The US basically had to fight an insurgency from amongst 5 million Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Iran is much more ethnically homogeneous. So even if you get some minorities to turncoat and work for the occupiers, you are still left with about 60 million ethnically Persian Shiites. That is a 12 times larger insurgency than what you had in Iraq. ..."
"... Bolton and Cheney must have been livid about Stuxnet, for all the wrong reasons ..."
"... Hiring a ghoul like Bolton will mark a new low even for the Trump administration. And that's saying something. These chickenhawk bastards should all be required to fight on the front lines of the wars they push. That was true, I'll guarantee you Bolton would shut up in a hurry. ..."
"... Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to ..."
"... . He is also the author of ..."
"... Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter . ..."
Mar 22, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Everyone knows Bolton is a hawk. Less understood is how he labored in secret to drive Washington and Tehran apart. By Gareth Porter March 22, 2018

John Bolton (Gage Skidmore/Flikr) In my reporting on U.S.-Israeli policy, I have tracked numerous episodes in which the United States and/or Israel made moves that seemed to indicate preparations for war against Iran. Each time -- in 2007 , in 2008, and again in 2011 -- those moves, presented in corporate media as presaging attacks on Tehran, were actually bluffs aimed at putting pressure on the Iranian government.

But the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose John Bolton as his next national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of such a policy.

His is not merely a rhetorical stance: Bolton actively conspired during his tenure as the Bush administration's policymaker on Iran from 2002 through 2004 to establish the political conditions necessary for the administration to carry out military action.

More than anyone else inside or outside the Trump administration, Bolton has already influenced Trump to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Bolton parlayed his connection with the primary financier behind both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself -- the militantly Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson -- to get Trump's ear last October, just as the president was preparing to announce his policy on the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He spoke with Trump by phone from Las Vegas after meeting with Adelson .

It was Bolton who persuaded Trump to commit to specific language pledging to pull out of the JCPOA if Congress and America's European allies did not go along with demands for major changes that were clearly calculated to ensure the deal would fall apart.

Although Bolton was passed over for the job of secretary of state, he now appears to have had the inside track for national security advisor. Trump met with Bolton on March 6 and told him, "We need you here, John," according to a Bolton associate. Bolton said he would only take secretary of state or national security advisor, whereupon Trump promised, "I'll call you really soon." Trump then replaced Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with former CIA director Mike Pompeo, after which White House sources leaked to the media Trump's intention to replace H.R. McMaster within a matter of weeks.

The only other possible candidate for the position mentioned in media accounts is Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was acting national security advisor after General Michael Flynn was ousted in February 2017.

Bolton's high-profile advocacy of war with Iran is well known. What is not at all well known is that, when he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security, he executed a complex and devious strategy aimed at creating the justification for a U.S. attack on Iran. Bolton sought to convict the Islamic Republic in the court of international public opinion of having a covert nuclear weapons program using a combination of diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and fabricated evidence.

Despite the fact that Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of State Colin Powell, his actual boss in devising and carrying out that strategy was Vice President Dick Cheney. Bolton was also the administration's main point of contact with the Israeli government, and with Cheney's backing, he was able to flout normal State Department rules by taking a series of trips to Israel in 2003 and 2004 without having the required clearance from the State Department's Bureau for Near Eastern Affairs.

Thus, at the very moment that Powell was saying administration policy was not to attack Iran, Bolton was working with the Israelis to lay the groundwork for just such a war. During a February 2003 visit, Bolton assured Israeli officials in private meetings that he had no doubt the United States would attack Iraq, and that after taking down Saddam, it would deal with Iran, too, as well as Syria.

During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the secretary of state and other relevant offices. Judging from that report on an early Bolton visit, those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual U.S. strike against Iran.

Mossad played a very aggressive role in influencing world opinion on the Iranian nuclear program. In the summer of 2003, according to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins in their book The Nuclear Jihadist , Meir Dagan created a new Mossad office tasked with briefing the world's press on alleged Iranian efforts to achieve a nuclear weapons capability. The new unit's responsibilities included circulating documents from inside Iran as well from outside, according to Frantz and Collins.

Bolton's role in a joint U.S.-Israeli strategy, as he outlines in his own 2007 memoir , was to ensure that the Iran nuclear issue would be moved out of the International Atomic Energy Agency and into the United Nations Security Council. He was determined to prevent IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei from reaching an agreement with Iran that would make it more difficult for the Bush administration to demonize Tehran as posing a nuclear weapons threat. Bolton began accusing Iran of having a covert nuclear weapons program in mid-2003, but encountered resistance not only from ElBaradei and non-aligned states, but from Britain, France, and Germany as well.

Bolton's strategy was based on the claim that Iran was hiding its military nuclear program from the IAEA, and in early 2004, he came up with a dramatic propaganda ploy: he sent a set of satellite images to the IAEA showing sites at the Iranian military reservation at Parchin that he claimed were being used for tests to simulate nuclear weapons. Bolton demanded that the IAEA request access to inspect those sites and leaked his demand to the Associated Press in September 2004. In fact, the satellite images showed nothing more than bunkers and buildings for conventional explosives testing.

Bolton was apparently hoping the Iranian military would not agree to any IAEA inspections based on such bogus claims, thus playing into his propaganda theme of Iran's "intransigence" in refusing to answer questions about its nuclear program. But in 2005 Iran allowed the inspectors into those sites and even let them choose several more sites to inspect. The inspectors found no evidence of any nuclear-related activities.

The U.S.-Israeli strategy would later hit the jackpot, however, when a large cache of documents supposedly from a covert source within Iran's nuclear weapons program surfaced in autumn 2004. The documents, allegedly found on the laptop computer of one of the participants, included technical drawings of a series of efforts to redesign Iran's Shahab-3 missile to carry what appeared to be a nuclear weapon.

But the whole story of the so-called "laptop documents" was a fabrication. In 2013, a former senior German official revealed the true story to this writer: the documents had been given to German intelligence by the Mujahedin E Khalq, the anti-Iran armed group that was well known to have been used by Mossad to "launder" information the Israelis did not want attributed to themselves. Furthermore, the drawings showing the redesign that were cited as proof of a nuclear weapons program were clearly done by someone who didn't know that Iran had already abandoned the Shahab-3's nose cone for an entirely different design.

Mossad had clearly been working on those documents in 2003 and 2004 when Bolton was meeting with Meir Dagan. Whether Bolton knew the Israelis were preparing fake documents or not, it was the Israeli contribution towards establishing the political basis for an American attack on Iran for which he was the point man. Bolton reveals in his memoirs that this Cheney-directed strategy took its cues from the Israelis, who told Bolton that the Iranians were getting close to "the point of no return." That was point, Bolton wrote, at which "we could not stop their progress without using force."

Cheney and Bolton based their war strategy on the premise that the U.S. military would be able to consolidate control over Iraq quickly. Instead the U.S. occupation bogged down and never fully recovered. Cheney proposed taking advantage of a high-casualty event in Iraq that could be blamed on Iran to attack an IRGC base in Iran in the summer of 2007. But the risk that pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq would retaliate against U.S. troops was a key argument against the proposal.

The Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were also well aware that Iran had the capability to retaliate directly against U.S. forces in the region, including against warships in the Strait of Hormuz. They had no patience for Cheney's wild ideas about more war.

That Pentagon caution remains unchanged. But two minds in the White House unhinged from reality could challenge that wariness -- and push the United States closer towards a dangerous war with Iran.



Stephen J. March 21, 2018 at 10:37 pm

I believe "War With Iran" is on the agenda. I wrote the article below some time ago. "Will There Be War With Iran"? Is it now Iran's turn to be subjected to the planned and hellish wars that have already engulfed Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan and other countries? Will, the gates of hell be further opened to include an attack on Iran?

[read more at link below]

http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/02/will-there-be-war-with-iran.html

See also: Will the War Agenda of the War Criminals Result in Nuclear War? http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/02/will-war-agenda-of-war-criminals-result.html

Clyde Schechter , , says: March 21, 2018 at 11:37 pm
Unfortunately, John Bolton is not just your typical neocon pathological liar and warmonger. Even by their abysmal standards he's pretty unhinged. He is one of the most dangerous people around these days.
Procivic , , says: March 22, 2018 at 12:35 am
The re-emergence of Bolton is the result of Trump's electoral victory, a phenomenon that resembles the upheavals that followed when an unhinged hereditary ruler would take the reins of power in bygone empires.
Duglarri , , says: March 22, 2018 at 1:16 am
There's a big difference between the wars with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Somalia, and a war with Iran. The difference is, this is a war the United States could lose. And lose very, very badly. As Pompeo remarked, it would take "only" 2000 airstrikes to eliminate the Iranian nuclear facilities. But what will it take to land 20,000 marines on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf to secure the straits, and there fend off 1.7 million Iranian regulars and militia on the ground? How will the navy cope with hundreds and hundreds of supersonic cruise missiles fired in volleys? What about the S-300 missiles that are by now fully operational in Iran?

A look at the map shows that this is a war that the US simply cannot win.

Unless it uses nuclear weapons and simply sets out to kill every last man, woman, and child in Iran, all 80 million of them.

Which I suppose is not out of the question. As all options are sure to be on the table.

Minnesota Mary , , says: March 22, 2018 at 1:54 am
"Everyone worshipped the dragon because he had given his authority to the beast. They worshipped the beast also, saying, 'Who is like the beast? Who can fight against it?'" Revelation 13:4

Who can fight against the U.S/NATO? Bolton, Gen. Jack Keane, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters and the whole warmongering crowd that frequent the air waves at FOX will not rest until they have us at war with Iran and Russia.

wrap , , says: March 22, 2018 at 3:43 am
So Trump is thinking of hiring a loudmouthed incompetent who is a known conduit for botched Israeli spy service forgeries used to gin up war with Iran. What a sick farce.
Hanson , , says: March 22, 2018 at 4:58 am
The Boltons, Frums, and Boots of the world never have to fight the wars they start.
Julien , , says: March 22, 2018 at 5:54 am
Bolton is a cancer for the US. As a warmonger, he thrives in hostile environnements so no wonder Bolton wants to create them with no regards for consequences.
EliteCommInc. , , says: March 22, 2018 at 9:03 am
Well, we need the John Bolton's of this world for times in which a uncompromising use of force is required. But I don't need background to know that advocating for wars that serve little in the way of US interests because we simply are not in any "clear and present danger".

Odd that so many "old schoolers" have abandoned some general cliche's that serve as sound guide.

the freakshow (cont'd) , , says: March 22, 2018 at 9:41 am
Just when you think you've heard the last of the various catastrophes, blunders, and odd capering about involving Bolton, you hear that voice from the old late night gadget commercials barking "wait, there's more !!"

I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that Bolton was duped by Israeli forgers (very droll story, by the way). You'd think that no serious person would consider giving him a National Security Council post, particularly given the current level of concern about "foreign meddling".

rta , , says: March 22, 2018 at 10:25 am
I wonder if people will finally realize that Trump was only draining the swamp so he could replace it with a cesspool.
Chris Mallory , , says: March 22, 2018 at 11:16 am
"The Boltons, Frums, and Boots of the world never have to fight the wars they start."

Hey now, Bolton's service in the Maryland National Guard made sure the North Vietnamese never landed in Baltimore. Can you imagine the horror if the Russians had captured our supply of soft shell crab?

Esther Haman , , says: March 22, 2018 at 11:27 am
John Bolton a 75 year old loser, a has Never-been, which is the mouth piece of the Zionists who keep him on the pay roll. He likes to hear his own voice and to feel important because he wants war with Iran or all the Middle East. He's actions and speeches are all emotional and lack logic and reasoning. So, what is he good for?!
Egypt Steve , , says: March 22, 2018 at 11:29 am
Re: "Well, we need the John Bolton's of this world for times in which a uncompromising use of force is required."

Not sure about that. We definitely need Roosevelts and Lincolns, Grants and Shermans and Eisenhowers and Pattons. I'm not clear on what function the likes of Bolton serve.

Kent , , says: March 22, 2018 at 12:16 pm
This article fails to address the why. Why does Bolton want war with Iran?
Steve , , says: March 22, 2018 at 12:38 pm
I do not agree that Iran could prevent a conventional bombing/invasion of their country. But they could make it sooo expensive, the dollar ceases to be the world reserve currency, and if they do that, they will have done mankind a favor.

But after the conquest, imagine the guerrilla war! The US basically had to fight an insurgency from amongst 5 million Sunni Arabs in Iraq. Iran is much more ethnically homogeneous. So even if you get some minorities to turncoat and work for the occupiers, you are still left with about 60 million ethnically Persian Shiites. That is a 12 times larger insurgency than what you had in Iraq.

And if the Iranians had any sense RIGHT NOW, they would make sure every family had a stock of 10 powerful anti-vehicle mines, REALLY powerful mines. Make sure all are safely buried with locations memorized. And make sure everyone had the training to use them, even older children (who will be the front-line guerrillas in 5 years).

So if that devil Bolton gets his way, his own country will pay a price too, and deservedly too. I want my country to be peaceful and friendly to the world like the Germans are now. But it may take the same type of "WWII treatment" to get my hateful war-loving countrymen to walk away from their sin.

Steve , , says: March 22, 2018 at 12:47 pm
The guerrilla war in Iraq was fought against only 5 million Sunni Arabs, the US occupiers having successfully pealed away the Kurds and Shia to be collaborators, or at least stay uninvolved with the insurgency.

But Iran is not just bigger than Iraq, but much more ethnically and religiously homogeneous. Imagine what kind of insurgency you might get from 60 million ethnically Persian Shiites?

My advice to the Iranians RIGHT NOW is to mass-produce the most lethal anti-vehicle mines possible and distribute them to the entire civilian population. Train everyone how to use them, then once trained, bury maybe 20 mines per family, all in known but hidden locations.

THAT will stop the Bolton/Zionist plan dead in its tracks.

b. , , says: March 22, 2018 at 1:46 pm
"Why does Bolton want war with Iran?"

Maybe it was a career-enhancing move. It is a legitimate question, along with "follow the money"? Regardless of why sociopaths like Keith Payne or John Bolton become obsessed with "winning nuclear war" or "bombing Iran" . How do they make a living? Who would bankroll somebody – over many decades – to not just consider or plan, but actively provoke illegal acts of aggressive war, against declared policy of the government and the demands of the Constitution they have sworn an oath to uphold?

It is also educational to see that the fabrications and other "war-program related activities" in regards to Iran resemble the same stovepipelines that provide the Iraq 2003 pretexts – with Powell reprising his role as useful idiot – which clashes badly with the "blunder" narrative that anybody in the US government actually believed Iraq had WMD – was beyond "the point of no return".

This also bodes ill for a Bolton-formulated policy on Korea, and any "National Security Advice" he would see fit to fabricate and feed to the Bomber In Chief.

Furthermore, we learn just how unhinged Cheney et.al. really were – expecting Iraq to be a mere stepping stone along their adventures on the "Axis of Evil" trail. If these are our gamblers, nobody would suspect them of counting cards.

b. , , says: March 22, 2018 at 2:04 pm
Bolton and Cheney must have been livid about Stuxnet, for all the wrong reasons
PAX , , says: March 22, 2018 at 2:49 pm
We must look into our very national soul and ask why are we entertaining a war with Iran? The answer is clear. It is to further the goals of a fanatical, right-wing, group of Zionists. When a truthful history is written about this era of endless wars, the errant and disgraceful behavior of this group will be clearly identified and they will not have anywhere to hide. You may fool some of the folks, some of the time, but not all the folks, all of the time.
Buzz Man , , says: March 22, 2018 at 3:21 pm
Hiring a ghoul like Bolton will mark a new low even for the Trump administration. And that's saying something. These chickenhawk bastards should all be required to fight on the front lines of the wars they push. That was true, I'll guarantee you Bolton would shut up in a hurry.
marvin , , says: March 22, 2018 at 3:32 pm
John "FIVE DEFERMENTS" Bolton is a filthy yellow bellied coward. Drag her/him to Afghanistan amd make IT serve in the Front Lines for the duration.
Tulsa Ron , , says: March 22, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Israel and the Zionists are exactly the "foreign entanglements" that George Washington warned us about. Bolton is a neocon-Zionist who wants the United States blood and taxes to ensure Israel's dominance of the Middle East.
Jeeves , , says: March 22, 2018 at 5:14 pm
So Gareth Porter cites his own Truthout article as authority for the assertion that the "laptop documents" are fabrications. Most of the cited article seems to be devoted to "Curveball", the impeached source of Iraqi intelligence, in order to prop up the bona fides of the German who claims the Iranian intelligence is a forgery. Any other sourcing for this allegation available?

Judging from a quick look at what else Truthout has on offer, I'm not sure about the credibility of Mr. Porter.

pirouz moghaddam , , says: March 22, 2018 at 7:41 pm
Thank you Mr. Porter for your insightful and intelligent articles, being that I am from Iran Originally brings tears to my eyes to even imagine such tragedy, I pray this will never happen. Having lived in America more than half of my life and having children that are Americans makes these thoughts even more horrifying . I am however thankful to read all the comments from so many intelligent , decent and true Americans and that gives me hope that such disaster will not take place. The people of Iran are decent and kind and cultured , I am hopeful that they will find their way and bring about a true democracy soon and again become a positive force to the humanity.
Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to TAC . He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter .

[Mar 12, 2018] US 'rudely and insolently cheated Russia' during Ukraine coup Putin

To trust the USA in Ukraine (if such thing happened) would be a huge, monumental blunder on Putin part. It was clear to any observer that the goal is to put Ukraine on "Baltic path" using Ukrainian nationalist as a brute force to get the power.
Notable quotes:
"... The US used Russia to prevent Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich from using his military against rioters in Kiev, and then 'cheated' Moscow by supporting an armed coup, President Vladimir Putin said. The accusation refers to events that happened in February 2014, when Ukraine was gripped by violent anti-government protests. Yanukovich and three leaders of the opposition forces signed a power-sharing deal, which effectively amounted to a capitulation of the president. ..."
"... "Here is something not publicly known," Putin revealed in an interview. "At this very moment, our American partners called us and asked to do everything – and that's almost a quote – to ensure that Yanukovich didn't use the army, so that the opposition could clear the squares and governmental buildings on its own terms and go on towards the implementation of the agreement." ..."
"... The Russian president said Moscow agreed to this request, only to see the situation escalate the next day into a full-fledged armed coup. "They could have at least called us, do something, say a word! They could have said, 'It was a case of agents stepping out of line, but we will fix it and turn everything into the bounds of the law,'" he said. ..."
"... "Not a word! On the contrary, there was full support of those who committed this coup," Putin recalled. "This is what they did with their own hands. How can they not support the current leadership now? They put themselves into a corner." ..."
"... After he was asked whether this was the first time Moscow had been cheated by Washington, Putin said this instance was "the first when the cheating was done so rudely and insolently." It was the first time that the US had broken a promise this quickly, and would not even bother to explain their actions through proper channels, the president added. ..."
"... "If they did it a little different, Ukraine would have benefited much more. Our co-operation links would not have been broken. Entire industries in Ukraine would have still existed," Putin said. "All this destruction was done for what? For a 'civilizational choice?' Was that a choice of poverty or an opportunity to work illegally in European countries under the guise of a tourist visa?" ..."
"... 'World Order 2018,' ..."
Mar 12, 2018 | www.rt.com

The US used Russia to prevent Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich from using his military against rioters in Kiev, and then 'cheated' Moscow by supporting an armed coup, President Vladimir Putin said. The accusation refers to events that happened in February 2014, when Ukraine was gripped by violent anti-government protests. Yanukovich and three leaders of the opposition forces signed a power-sharing deal, which effectively amounted to a capitulation of the president.

The deal was enforced by three European nations: Germany, France and Poland. The accord lasted only a few days, however, as protestors – led by far-right nationalists – violated its terms and advanced unopposed by demoralized security forces. This forced Yanukovich to flee for his life.

"Here is something not publicly known," Putin revealed in an interview. "At this very moment, our American partners called us and asked to do everything – and that's almost a quote – to ensure that Yanukovich didn't use the army, so that the opposition could clear the squares and governmental buildings on its own terms and go on towards the implementation of the agreement."

The Russian president said Moscow agreed to this request, only to see the situation escalate the next day into a full-fledged armed coup. "They could have at least called us, do something, say a word! They could have said, 'It was a case of agents stepping out of line, but we will fix it and turn everything into the bounds of the law,'" he said.

"Not a word! On the contrary, there was full support of those who committed this coup," Putin recalled. "This is what they did with their own hands. How can they not support the current leadership now? They put themselves into a corner."

After he was asked whether this was the first time Moscow had been cheated by Washington, Putin said this instance was "the first when the cheating was done so rudely and insolently." It was the first time that the US had broken a promise this quickly, and would not even bother to explain their actions through proper channels, the president added.

"They should have understood that all this was happening near our borders. There are many people who identify themselves as Russians or consider themselves closely connected with Russia," Putin said. "[Ukraine] is a country with which we have centuries-old special relations. We had an integrated production, energy and transport system. How can one not consider all those things?"

After the armed coup, the leadership of Ukraine chose to sever as many ties with Russia as it could, even though it hurt their own country. The painful break-up was justified by Kiev's ambition to become part of NATO and the European Union – two goals that don't seem much closer, four years after the ousting of Yanukovich. It did, however, cause significant damage to Ukraine's economy, forcing millions of Ukrainians to seek low-paid jobs in countries like Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic.

"If they did it a little different, Ukraine would have benefited much more. Our co-operation links would not have been broken. Entire industries in Ukraine would have still existed," Putin said. "All this destruction was done for what? For a 'civilizational choice?' Was that a choice of poverty or an opportunity to work illegally in European countries under the guise of a tourist visa?"

The remarks feature in a 90-minute documentary by journalist Vladimir Solovyov called 'World Order 2018,' which is based on interviews with Putin and a number of foreign dignitaries. The film is intended to show how the Russian leadership perceives the country's place in the world today.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

[Feb 17, 2018] Victoria Nuland Kagan is now Senior Adviser in the Donald's Department of Defense

Notable quotes:
"... So just to clarify - yes, the CIA chief admitted that Democracy-spreading 'Murica meddled in the Democratic elections of other nations "in the interests of democracy." ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

So just to clarify - yes, the CIA chief admitted that Democracy-spreading 'Murica meddled in the Democratic elections of other nations "in the interests of democracy."

In case you wondered which ones he was referring to, here's a brief selection since 1948...

2016: UK (verbal intervention against Brexit)
2014: Afghanistan (effectively re-writing Afghan constitution)
2014: UK (verbal intervention against Scottish independence)
2011: Libya (providing support to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi)
2009: Honduras (ousting President Zelaya)
2006: Palestine (providing support to oust Prime Minister Haniyeh)
2005: Syria (providing support against President al-Assad)
2003: Iran (providing support against President Khatami)-
2003: Iraq (ousting of President Hussein)
2002: Venezuela (providing support to attempt an overthrow of President Chavez)
1999: Yugoslavia (removing Yugoslav forces from Kosovo)
1994: Iraq (attempted overthrow of President Hussein)
1991: Haiti (ousting President Aristide)
1991: Kuwait (removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait)
1989: Panama (ousting General Noriega)
1983: Grenada (ousting General Austin's Marxist forces)
1982: Nicaragua (providing support
1971: Chile (ousting President Allende)
1967: Indonesia (ousting President Sukarno)
1964: Brazil (ousting President Goulart)
1964: Chile (providing support against Salvador Allende)
1961: Congo (assassination of leader Lumumba)
1958: Lebanon (providing support to Christian political parties)
1954: Guatemala (ousting President Arbenz)
1953: Iran (ousting Prime Minister Mossadegh)
1953: Philippines (providing support to the President Magsaysay campaign)
1948: Italy (providing support to the Christian Democrats campaign)

(h/t @Yogi_Chan)


gellero Sat, 02/17/2018 - 16:18 Permalink

SoilMyselfRotten -> skbull44 Sat, 02/17/2018 - 16:47 Permalink

Democracy? Annnnnnnd it's gone! No wonder the rest of the world thinks we've collectively lost our minds. BTW, Victoria Noodles will be very disappointed Ukraine didn't make the list after all of her hard work.

marysimmons -> SoilMyselfRotten Sat, 02/17/2018 - 17:16 Permalink

Victoria "F*ck the EU" Nuland and the CIA were all over the Ukrainian "coup", but of course no mention of that on "Fair and Balanced". Laura Ingram is a typical Fox News Zio-Nazi bitch, hiding behind a cross, who apparently believes her own BS, and along others like Hannity have blood on their hands.

The whole purpose of the Mueller indictment was to give the mainstream outlets something to report so idiot Americans will believe the crap put out about Russia since the Winter Olympics in Sochi and set the tone to justify a military conflict with Russia that won't end well for anyone, IMO

veritas semper -> marysimmons Sat, 02/17/2018 - 17:40 Permalink

And Victoria Nuland Kagan is now Senior Adviser in the Donald's Department of Defense.

See, kids, how the swamp is drained?

[Jan 30, 2018] The Unseen Wars of America the Empire The American Conservative

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger," said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing." ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
Jan 30, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The Unseen Wars of America the Empire By Patrick J. Buchanan January 30, 2018, 12:01 AM

Forward Operating Base Torkham, in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan (army.mil) If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.

Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his forces will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded.

Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the United States to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates all the way to Iraq.

If the Turks attack Manbij, America will face a choice: stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.

Should the U.S. let the Turks drive the Kurds out of Manbij and the entire Syrian border area, as Erdogan threatens, American credibility would suffer a blow from which it would not soon recover.

But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan's forces could mean a crackup of NATO and a loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including the air base at Incirlik.

Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea. NATO's loss would thus be a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who gave Ankara the green light to cleanse the Kurds from Afrin.

Yet Syria is but one of many challenges facing U.S. foreign policy.

The Winter Olympics in South Korea may have taken the menace of a North Korean ICBM out of the news, but no one believes that threat is behind us.

Last week, China charged that the USS Hopper, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, though it is far closer to Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer, says China, was chased off by one of her frigates. If we continue to contest China's territorial claims with our warships, a clash is inevitable.

In a similar incident Monday, a Russian military jet came within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance jet in international airspace over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to end its mission.

U.S. relations with Cold War ally Pakistan are at rock bottom. In his first tweet of 2018, President Trump charged Pakistan with being a false friend.

"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools," Trump declared. "They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"

As for America's longest war in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year, the end is nowhere on the horizon. A week ago, the International Hotel in Kabul was attacked and held for 13 hours by Taliban gunmen who killed 40. Midweek, a Save the Children facility in Jalalabad was attacked by ISIS, creating panic among aid workers across the country.

Saturday, an ambulance exploded in Kabul, killing 103 people and wounding 235. Monday, Islamic State militants attacked Afghan soldiers guarding a military academy in Kabul. With the fighting season two months off, U.S. troops will not soon be departing. If Pakistan is indeed providing sanctuary for the terrorists of the Haqqani network, how does this war end successfully for the United States? Last week, in a friendly fire incident, the U.S.-led coalition killed 10 Iraqi soldiers. The Iraq war began 15 years ago.

Yet another war, where the humanitarian crisis rivals Syria, continues on the Arabian Peninsula. There, a Saudi air, sea, and land blockade that threatens the Yemeni people with starvation has failed to dislodge Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa three years ago. This weekend brought news that secessionist rebels, backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized power in Yemen's southern port of Aden from the Saudi-backed Hadi regime fighting the Houthis. These rebels seek to split the country, as it was before 1990.

Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE appear to be backing different horses in this tribal-civil-sectarian war into which America has been drawn. There are other wars -- Somalia, Libya, Ukraine -- where the U.S. is taking sides, sending arms, training troops, flying missions.

Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger," said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing."

No, we don't, Senator. As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

[Dec 25, 2017] The USA as neocons occupied country

Apr 28, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
XXX, April 28, 2017 at 06:29 PM
Sanjait,

"Hillary Clinton, following a long tradition of mainstream Democrats, had a grab bag of proposals that, if enacted, would collectively make a huge difference in the lives of working people. "

I think you are wrong here.

Hillary was/is a neoliberal, and as such is hostile to the interests of working people and middle class in general. Like most neoliberals she is a Machiavellian elitist. Her election promises are pure demagogy, much like Trump or Obama election promised (immortalized in the slogan "change we can believe in" which now became the synonym of election fraud)

Also she was/is hell-bent of preserving/expanding the US neoliberal empire and the wars for neoliberal dominance (in ME mainly for the benefit of Israel and Saudis). War are pretty costly ventures and they are financed at the expense of working class and lower middle class, never at the expense of "fat cats" from Wall Street.

All-in-all I think the role of POTUS is greatly "misunderestimated" in your line of thinking. As we can see differences between Trump and Hillary in foreign policy are marginal. Why are you assuming that the differences in domestic economic policies would be greater ?

In reality there are other powerful factors in play that diminish the importance of POTUS:

  1. The US Presidential Elections are no longer an instrument for change. They are completely corrupted and are mostly of "bread and circuses" type of events, where two gladiators preselected by financial elite fight for the coveted position, using all kind of dirty tricks for US public entertainment.
  2. While the appearance of democracy remains, in reality the current system represents that rule of "deep state". In the classic form of "National security state". In the National Security State, the US people no longer have the any chances to change the policies.
  3. Political emasculation of US voters has led to frustration, depression and rage. It feeds radical right movement including neo-fascists, which embrace more extreme remedies to the current problems because they correctly feel that the traditional parties no longer represent the will of the people.
  4. Insulated and partially degenerated US elite have grown more obtuse and is essentially a hostage for neocons. They chose to ignore the seething anger that lies just below the surface of brainwashed Us electorate.
  5. The "American Dream" is officially dead. People at a and below lower middle class level see little hope for themselves, their children or the country. The chasm between top 1% (or let's say top 20%) and the rest continues to fuel populist anger.
  6. While Trump proved to be "yet another turncoat" like Barak Obama (who just got his first silver coin in the form of the $400K one hour speech) Trump's election signify a broad rejection of the country's neoliberal elite, including neoliberal MSM, neocon foreign policy as well as neoliberal economic system (and first of all neoliberal globalization).
  7. The country foreign policy remains hijacked by neocons (this time in the form of fiends of Paul Wolfowitz among the military brass appointed by Trump to top positions in his administration) and that might spell major conflict or even WWIII.

The level of subservience to neocon agenda in Trump administration might well be higher then in previous administration. And "make America first" was already transformed into "full spectrum dominance" == "America uber alles". http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/deutschland-uber-alles-and-america-first-in-song

8. We can now talk about the USA as "neocon occupied country" (NOC), because the neocons policies contradict the USA national interests and put heavy burden of taxpayers, especially in lower income categories. Due to neglect in maintaining infrastructure, in some areas the USA already looks like third word country. Still we finance Israel and several other countries to the tune of $40 billion dollars in military aid alone (that that's in case of Israel just the tip of the iceberg; real figure is probably double of that) https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

Since Bill Clinton POTUS is more or less a marionette of financial oligarchy (which Obama -- as a person without the past (or with a very fuzzy past) - symbolizes all too well).

[Dec 23, 2017] Neocons and Neoliberals -- Two Masks, One Face by WashingtonsBlog

Notable quotes:
"... Trotsky communism ..."
Nov 10, 2008 | www.washingtonsblog.com

Obama might very well be classified as a "neoliberal". He appears to be appointing leading neoliberals to key positions in his administration .

If you're a liberal, you might think this is great. Instead of the Neoconservatives who have been in power for the last 8 years, we'll now have neoliberals. You may assume that "neoliberals" are new, smarter liberals -- with liberal social policies, but with a stronger, more realistic outlook.

Nope.

In reality, neoliberalism is as dissimilar to true progressive liberal politics as neo-conservatism is to true conservative politics (if you don't know it, most leading neoconservatives are former followers of Trotsky communism -- not very conservative, huh?)

For example, did you know that Ronald Reagan was a leading neoliberal ? In the U.S., of course, he is described as the quintessential conservative. But internationally, people understand that he really pushed neoliberal economic policies.

As former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi writes :

Neoconservatives and neoliberals are really quite similar, so it doesn't matter who gets elected in 2008. The American public, weary of preemptive attacks, democracy-promotion, and nation-building, will still get war either way.

And leading neo-conservative strategist Robert Kagan recently said :

Until now the liberal West's strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to tame them and make them safe for liberalism."

So neoconservatives are not really conservative and neoliberals are not really liberal. But neocons and neoliberals are very similar to each other . Neocons are a lot more similar to neoliberals than to true conservatives; neoliberass are more similar to neocons than to real liberals.

Do you get it? Both the Republican and Democratic party are now run by people with identical agendas: make the big corporations richer and expand the American empire.

There is only one party, which simply puts on different faces depending on which "branch" of the party is in power. If its the Democratic branch, there is a slightly liberal social veneer to the mask: a little more funding for social programs, a little more nice guy talk, a little more of a laissez faire attitude towards gays and minorities, and a little more patient push towards military conquest and empire.

If its the Republican branch, there's a little more tough guy talk, quicker moves towards military empire, a little more mention of religion, and a tad more centralization of power in the president.

But there is only a single face behind both masks: the face of raw corporatism, greed and yearning for power and empire.

Until Americans stop getting distracted by the Republican versus Democratic melodrama, America will move steadily forward towards war, empire and -- inevitably as with any country which extends too far -- collapse.

Neoliberalism is neither "new" or liberal. Neoconservativism is neither new or conservative. They are just new labels for a very old agenda: serving the powers-that-be, consolidating power, controlling resources. Whether the iron fist has a velvet glove on it or not, it is still an iron fist.

A true opposition party is needed to counter the never-changing American agenda for military and corporate empire.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/9498954186704486?pubid=ld-6193-3093&pubo=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonsblog.com&width=747

J R Thompson , September 19, 2012 10:33 PM

This article does much to confuse and disinform. NeoCons are essential modern day Fascists. If you don't recall your politics, Fascists are to the right of Conservatives on the political spectrum. They have nothing to do with Communists who are far to the left. During the 1930s Nazis were the NeoCons. They were Fascists, and they also had the overwhelming support of Muslims, who are also Fascists. Today's NeoLiberals are basically Right Wing and hardly middle of the fence. There is virtually no politics to the left of centre and this is the catalyst for massive economic stagnation, economic collapse, rapidly growing global instability, indemic poverty, and an ongoing threat of pandemic disease and general global conflict. Until we have some form of political balance, we're on the brink of catastrophe, and will probably end up with an enormous mess to clean up.

Guest J R Thompson , June 18, 2014 8:12 PM

The Wiki page disagrees with you.

It says that Neo-Conservatives descend from Trotskeyism.

Grey Winters J R Thompson , June 23, 2014 4:28 PM

Fascism is statism and nothing represents the ultimate power of the state then the liberal. No liberal supports our constitution or a smaller government . But it's innately typical of a liberal to project their agenda onto others.

Malcolm Scott J R Thompson , November 4, 2016 9:18 PM

Fascism, Communism are just different faces of Totalitarianism or Statism. Fascism gives "private" owners (oligarchs) the illusion of freedom.

MisterReason J R Thompson , November 8, 2015 6:27 AM

Your communist professor lied to you.

Communism and Fascism are one degree apart. In Fascism, instead of the elite being part of the government, they are part of the private sector. That is the only difference. They are both mainly concerned with consolidation of power and shaping the culture though control of information. Internationally they operate the same as well, expanding their influence through wars of occupation.

Adnihilo , November 11, 2008 7:16 PM

Thank you for this article! As an author you always seem to be one step ahead of me in articles I've been planning to write! I too have been asserting [in comments mostly at OpedNews] that the economic right political 'values' found in NeoLibs, [short for both NeoLibertarians and Neoliberals] NeoCons, and TheoCons are predominantly the same for months now ever since these corporate bailouts started. This author has a firm grasp on political ideologies as evidenced in his other articles correctly identifying the now $2 trillion in US corporate bailouts as the economic policy of Fascism.

The TheoCons-NeoCons-NeoLibs have taken the country so far to the economic right and up in to an authoritarian level since 2000 that most all in the democratic party, excluding a few like Kucinich and Sanders, have moved from a 'centrist' political ideology to an authoritarian right and moderate conservative political ideology.

Like Anna here more fully displays, the overwhelming majority of Americans just do not have a realistic grasp on global political ideologies, much less their own personal political values. Political party indoctrination and mud slinging has the population wrongly convinced democratic politicians are for the most part 'liberals' when they're economic right NeoLiberals and moderate conservatives while republicans calling themselves 'conservative' are instead radically authoritarian and economic right TheoCons and NeoCons.

When Americans don't understand their own political values, much less those of the candidate they vote for, they will continue to make the wrong choices. This would seem to be exactly what the '1' party corporatist system wants so Americans will only continue making the wrong choices from choosing between 'moderate conservative' Democrats like Obama-Biden, and NeoCon/TheoCon republicans like McCain-Palin. Who better to assert this 1 party economic right NeoLiberal reality than one of the most renown liberal authors and intellectuals than Chomsky in his recent article the Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed.

Chomsky cites America as a "one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats" while putting the blame on this economic crisis where it belongs on the very people who created it, America's NeoLiberals. Anna, if you need more proof I suggest you take a trip to the non partisan web site created by a group of doctorate degreed political ideology professors, political experts and sociologists called Political Compass. I guarantee you these experts are far more learned than you are about political ideologies and political values not just in the US, but around the globe. It will surely shock you to learn based on speeches, public statements and most crucially voting records that Obama is firmly in the authoritarian right quadrant as a moderate conservative.

There you'll see their reasons for this based on his voting record and speeches briefly cited in "While Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe.

Similarly, Obama is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while elsewhere in the west his record is that of a moderate conservative. For example, in the case of the death penalty he is not an uncompromising abolitionist, while mainstream conservatives in all other western democracies are deeply opposed to capital punishment. The Democratic party's presidential candidate also reneged on his commitment to oppose the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He sided with the ultra conservative bloc in the Supreme Court against the Washington DC handgun ban and for capital punishment in child rape cases. He supports President Bush's faith-based initiatives and is reported in Fortune to have said that NAFTA isn't so bad."A way to realistically determine if the candidate you vote for actually represents your own political values is to take the political values test found at political compass here and afterward learn about the inadequacies inherent in the limited age-old traditional left-right economic view of political ideologies.

Then you Anna, along with a host of others, may actually start voting in support of candidates that factually represent your own political values. Or you may find you really aren't this liberal you think you are after all. Regardless, only by learning more about ones' own political values and those of the candidates Americans support will they get the political leaders, type of leadership, and government they actually want....

Alejandro Moreno Adnihilo , July 21, 2016 2:07 PM

Written 8 years ago and yet STILL true, Sanders and Kucinich are still of, by and for the people.

Dave , December 8, 2012 11:06 AM

Libertarian Party. http://www.lp.org

SuperTech86 Dave , November 11, 2015 3:20 AM

Doesn't do anything to stop the advance of corporatism which ultimately leads to tyranny and fascism.

Ian SuperTech86 , September 5, 2016 6:28 PM

Its debatable. Corporations won't be near as interested in a small government that is less willing to do favors for them. What do you suggest as a solution to stop the advancement of corporatism? If your answer is to tax the rich more and grow the government you would just get tyranny. Currently with big government we have both tyranny and fascism.

bosunj , November 10, 2008 5:59 PM

Indeed. One Party. The Corporate party. GOP-DEM are little different than Sunni and Shia! GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!

anon bosunj , November 17, 2013 9:43 PM

This is just ignorance -- the Republicans and Democrats are the same, but Sunni and Shia Islam are not just arbitrary branches of some terrorist collective called Islam. I suggest you read more about Islam, it's extraordinarily misunderstood AND--I might add--misinforming people about Islam is an integral part of the agenda of the corporate GOP-DEM elite. I'm not a Muslim, for the record.

Mike , November 10, 2008 6:31 PM

You are confusing the issue. The work neoliberal applies to an economic philosophy which is also sometimes called the Chicago School or the Washington Consensus. It is related to what we often call globalization, and it has to to with "liberalization" of economies, in other words privatization of publicly held industries etc. Liberal in the American political sense it totally unrelated to neoliberal. Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that espouses vanguardism and militant foreign policy. They are related in that their goals dove tail, kind of like apples and oranges are similar in that they are both edible.

[Dec 02, 2017] The New Cold War and the Death of the Discourse by Justin Raimondo

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... So the Ukrainian government is admitting that their previous narrative is false – and that the ultra-rghtist Svoboda and Right Sector, who were the military arm of the Maidan protesters, provoked the incident that led to Yanukovich's overthrow. ..."
"... are opposed to the Minsk agreement, brokered by the EU, which makes concessions to the east Ukrainians. ..."
Oct 19, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Russophobia compromises the media and academia

The truth is often ignored, at first, and when that becomes impossible, truth-tellers are often punished. As two incidents starkly reveal, this is certainly the case when it comes to the civil war in Ukraine and Washington's unfolding cold war with Russia.

The first illustration of our truth-telling principle occurred after the "Maidan revolution" had already captured the imagination of the Western media, which was busy promulgating the official view as given expression by US government officials. According to this narrative, the "protesters" were heroes, the government of "Russian-backed' Viktor Yanukovich was a coven of devils, and the catalyzing incident that led to Yanukovich's ouster, the shooting of protesters in the Maidan, was the work of the Berkut, the Ukrainian government's militarized police.

There's just one problem with this story: it isn't true. A leaked phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, revealed that the protesters were shot by their own leaders – the radical nationalists who had military control of the Maiden.

... ... ...

Ashton's main concern seemed to be that this would get out and discredit the new government "from the very beginning."

Oh, but not to worry: it didn't get out, at least not in the United States. There were oblique mentions of the recording in the mainstream media, but only weeks afterward and then without any specifics: two months after the fact, the Los Angeles Times referred to it in the vaguest terms, only to dismiss it as a "conspiracy theory." The New York Times didn't cover it: neither did the War Street Journal, Time magazine, or any of the other usual suspects. The Daily Beast, typically, served as a mouthpiece for the official Washington-Kiev account, citing Dr. Bogomolets as claiming her conversation with Paet was a "misunderstanding." Yet Paet didn't cite her as his sole source: he said "all the evidence." No doubt the Estonians have their own sources in the country, and it's improbable the Foreign Minister would have made such an assertion based on a single person's testimony.

In any case, the story was pretty much buried here in the US, with the exception of this space and a few other alternative news sources.

But in Europe, it was a different story: the German public television station ARD carried a report which threw the identity of the Maidan shooters into serious question. And more recently the BBC produced a documentary, "The Untold Story of the Maidan Massacre," in which eyewitnesses assert that the Berkut were fired on from positions controlled by the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, which, along with the neo-Nazi "Right Sector" organization, ran Maidan security.

Still, the story was ignored in the US, but that may not be possible much longer, and the reason springs from an unlikely source: the current Ukrainian government of President Petro Poroshenko.

Last week Ukrainian police raided the homes of Svoboda Party leaders Oleksandr Sych, who served as Deputy Prime Minister in the post-Maidan government, and Ole Pankevich, whose 2013 appearance at a neo-Nazi memorial event provoked the ire of the World Jewish Congress. The Ukrainian prosecutor's office confirmed that the raid was conducted as part of an investigation into the Maidan shootings:

"The court warrant for the raid on the apartment of Pankevich, a former MP and the ex-head of Lviv regional council, explicitly referred to a BBC documentary on the subject, according to a copy of the warrant In the documentary, journalist Gabriel Gatehouse spoke to an opposition nationalist rifleman who had acknowledged having fired on riot police in the morning of February 20."

The warrant, posted online,

"[A]lso refers to video footage that showed a rifleman firing out of the Hotel Ukraina, situated on Maidan. The room from which he fired was occupied at the time by Pankevich, according to the court warrant.

"Police also raided the apartment of Sich, vice-prime minister in the immediate post-Maidan government in 2014, also in connection with shots fired from the same hotel, where he was also staying on February 20.

"An assistant to Ukraine's prosecutor general, Vladislav Kutsenko, confirmed to the Ukrainian TV channel 112 that searches of the Svoboda leaders' apartments were linked to an investigation of the February 20 events."

So the Ukrainian government is admitting that their previous narrative is false – and that the ultra-rghtist Svoboda and Right Sector, who were the military arm of the Maidan protesters, provoked the incident that led to Yanukovich's overthrow.

Why this stunning turnaround?

Both Svoboda and Right Sector have declared war on the Poroshenko regime and are calling for a "national revolution" – one that would install them in power. The ultra-nationalists are opposed to the Minsk agreement, brokered by the EU, which makes concessions to the east Ukrainians.

The far right is accusing Poroshenko of "betraying the revolution." They scoff at the ceasefire as a "sellout" because they want the civil war to continue: and as Poroshenko makes draconian cuts in the government budget in order to mollify Ukraine's creditors, and to ensure the flow of Western funding, the rightists are gaining ground politically. And they are getting increasingly violent, staging a riot in front of the parliament building in which three officers were killed by a grenade hurled at policemen: 130 cops were injured. The rightists were protesting the decision by the parliament to grant the eastern rebels some small degree of autonomy. This incident followed a series of shoot-outs with the armed rightist gang known as Right Sector, which played a key role in the Maidan protest movement.

That the Poroshenko government, which had previously stonewalled any serious effort to investigate the shooting deaths that sent Yanukovich packing, is playing this card now is an indication of the regime's desperation in the face of a challenge from the ultra-right. For to upend the official narrative – one that is fully supported by their Western sponsors, and their amen corner in the media – is to subvert the very foundations of the post-Maidan order. If the truth comes out, the ultra-nationalists may be finished – but so may the government that exposes their murderous role.

... ... ...

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud. I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and ISI Books, 2008). You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

[Nov 29, 2017] It must be embarrassing to be European these days. To be dressed down by the corrupt country you support on handouts because you are not doing enough to support it.

Notable quotes:
"... "We live at the time of a certain degrading of European institutions and their external weakening, including by Russia. You can accept it and go with the flow but you can also recognize the fact try to resist it." ..."
Nov 29, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

marknesop , , November 28, 2017 at 2:13 pm

Ha, ha!!! The Victim Of The Aggressor Country seldom fails to entertain. Here we have VR Deputy Chairperson Ira Gerashchenko bossing Europe around , and telling it that the Victim Of The Aggressor Country's parliamentary delegation will continue to insist on Russia not returning to the Council of Europe. Because, she says, Russia has stolen part of the territory of the VOTAC which was a gift from Russia in the first place (although she doesn't mention that last part), thereby setting a precedent for every country which has a province 'liberated' by the west to term it stolen by the west. But that wasn't my favourite part. No; this is – "We live at the time of a certain degrading of European institutions and their external weakening, including by Russia. You can accept it and go with the flow but you can also recognize the fact try to resist it."

Beautiful, Ira!! Inspiring!! And how many degraded European leaders are Billionaires who openly own an impressive slate of businesses and media in their countries, which they continue to operate and profit from while piously declaring their only interest is the welfare of the country? Which is, by the bye, the most corrupt country in Europe ? How many Prosecutors-General has the VOTAC had since its glorious liberation from the yoke of the Moskali? Yes, you can certainly teach Yurrup a thing or two about integrity.

It must be embarrassing to be European these days. To be dressed down by the corrupt country you support on handouts because you are not doing enough to support it. First we had the 'Me' generation. Then we had the 'Me' country.

[Nov 29, 2017] The Russian Question by Niall Ferguson

Highly recommended!
This year old article written at the beginning of anti-Russian witch hunt makes it easier to understand the tribe of "national security parasites" to which Ferguson firmly belongs. Like many other members of the national security parasites tribe, he made a brilliant career pandering to right-wing think tanks.
The very simple message of this tribe is "Carnage should be destroyed" and argumentation is selectively produced to support this very idea. This is a dangerous level of political paranoia, or imperial sense of inferiority, if you wish. He is so incoherent and selective in his rendering of Russian history that he looks like a charlatan, not historian.
Note that the term "neoliberalism" and "US neoliberal empire" are not even mentioned by this "historian". The tribe prohibits using those terms.
Also not mentioned was an attempt by Clinton administration to subjugate Russia and convert it into vassal state which was instrumental in bringing Putin to power.
As for Ukraine he conveniently forgot the role of Victoria Nuland in Maydan events (aka Nulandgate). The idea to break China-Russia cooperation by dangling different carrots at both, the carrots the move then apart, is the replay of British strategy to prevent any possible alliance between Germany and and Russia. Nothing new here. It is a standard imperial policy to destroy any alliance that threaten the empire global domination.
Notable quotes:
"... Nevertheless, it is important to remember what exactly Putin said on that occasion. In remarks that seemed mainly directed at the Europeans in the room, he warned that a "unipolar world" - meaning one dominated by the United States - would prove "pernicious not only for all those within this system but also for the sovereign itself." America's "hyper use of force," Putin said, was "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." Speaking at a time when neither Iraq nor Afghanistan seemed especially good advertisements for U.S. military intervention, those words had a certain force, especially in German ears. ..."
"... If I look back on what I thought and wrote during the administration of George W. Bush, I would say that I underestimated the extent to which the expansion of both NATO and the European Union was antagonizing the Russians. ..."
"... Though notionally intended to detect and counter Iranian missiles, these installations were bound to be regarded by the Russians as directed at them. The subsequent deployment of Iskander short-range missiles to Kaliningrad was a predictable retaliation. ..."
"... The biggest miscalculation, however, was the willingness of the Bush administration to consider Ukraine for NATO membership and the later backing by the Obama administration of EU efforts to offer Ukraine an association agreement. ..."
"... This was despite an explicit warning from Putin's aide Sergei Glazyev, who attended the conference, that signing the EU association agreement would lead to "political and social unrest," a dramatic decline in living standards, and "chaos." ..."
"... "I don't really even need George Kennan right now," President Obama told the New Yorker ..."
"... It was foolish to expect Russians to view with equanimity the departure into the Western sphere of influence of the heartland of medieval Russia, the breadbasket of the tsarist empire, the setting for Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard ..."
"... One might have thought the events of 2014 would have taught U.S. policymakers a lesson. Yet the Obama administration has persisted in misreading Russia. It was arguably a mistake to leave Germany and France to handle the Ukraine crisis, when more direct U.S. involvement might have made the Minsk agreements effective. ..."
"... President Obama has been right in saying that Russia is a much weaker power than the United States. His failure has been to exploit that American advantage. ..."
"... After all, an economic system that prefers an oil price closer to $100 a barrel than $50 benefits more than most from escalating conflict in the Middle East and North Africa - preferably conflict that spills over into the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. ..."
"... However, if that is the goal of Russia's strategy, then it is hard to see for how much longer Beijing and Moscow will be able to cooperate in the Security Council. Beijing needs stability in oil production and low oil prices as much as Russia needs the opposite. Because of recent tensions with the United States, Russia has been acquiescent as the "One Belt, One Road" program extends China's economic influence into Central Asia, once a Russian domain. There is potential conflict of interest there, too. ..."
foreignpolicy.com

Moscow may no longer be a superpower, but its revanchist politics are unsettling the international order. How should Donald Trump deal with Vladimir Putin?

... ... ...

It did not have to be this way. Twenty-five years ago, the dissolution of the Soviet Union marked not only the end of the Cold War but also the beginning of what should have been a golden era of friendly relations between Russia and the West. With enthusiasm, it seemed, Russians embraced both capitalism and democracy. To an extent that was startling, Russian cities became Westernized. Empty shelves and po-faced propaganda gave way to abundance and dazzling advertisements.

Contrary to the fears of some, there was a new world order after 1991. The world became a markedly more peaceful place as the flows of money and arms that had turned so many regional disputes into proxy wars dried up. American economists rushed to advise Russian politicians. American multinationals hurried to invest.

Go back a quarter century to 1991 and imagine three more or less equally plausible futures. First, imagine that the coup by hard-liners in August of that year had been more competently executed and that the Soviet Union had been preserved. Second, imagine a much more violent dissolution of the Soviet system in which ethnic and regional tensions escalated much further, producing the kind of "super-Yugoslavia" Kissinger has occasionally warned about. Finally, imagine a happily-ever-after history, in which Russia's economy thrived on the basis of capitalism and globalization, growing at Asian rates.

Russia could have been deep-frozen. It could have disintegrated. It could have boomed. No one in 1991 knew which of these futures we would get. In fact, we got none of them. Russia has retained the democratic institutions that were established after 1991, but the rule of law has not taken root, and, under Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian nationalist form of government has established itself that is notably ruthless in its suppression of opposition and criticism. Despite centrifugal forces, most obviously in the Caucasus, the Russian Federation has held together. However, the economy has performed much less well than might have been hoped. Between 1992 and 2016, the real compound annual growth rate of Russian per capita GDP has been 1.5 percent. Compare that with equivalent figures for India (5.1 percent) and China (8.9 percent).

Today, the Russian economy accounts for just over 3 percent of global output, according to the International Monetary Fund's estimates based on purchasing power parity. The U.S. share is 16 percent. The Chinese share is 18 percent. Calculated on a current dollar basis, Russia's GDP is less than 7 percent of America's. The British economy is twice the size of Russia's.

Moreover, the reliance of the Russian economy on exported fossil fuels - as well as other primary products - is shocking. Nearly two-thirds of Russian exports are petroleum (63 percent), according the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

... ... ...

Nevertheless, it is important to remember what exactly Putin said on that occasion. In remarks that seemed mainly directed at the Europeans in the room, he warned that a "unipolar world" - meaning one dominated by the United States - would prove "pernicious not only for all those within this system but also for the sovereign itself." America's "hyper use of force," Putin said, was "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts." Speaking at a time when neither Iraq nor Afghanistan seemed especially good advertisements for U.S. military intervention, those words had a certain force, especially in German ears.

Nearly 10 years later, even Putin's most splenetic critics would be well-advised to reflect for a moment on our own part in the deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow. The Russian view that the fault lies partly with Western overreach deserves to be taken more seriously than it generally is.

Is the West to blame?

If I look back on what I thought and wrote during the administration of George W. Bush, I would say that I underestimated the extent to which the expansion of both NATO and the European Union was antagonizing the Russians.

Certain decisions still seem to me defensible. Given their experiences in the middle of the 20th century, the Poles and the Czechs deserved both the security afforded by NATO membership (from 1999, when they joined along with Hungary) and the economic opportunities offered by EU membership (from 2004). Yet the U.S. decision in March 2007 to build an anti-ballistic missile defense site in Poland along with a radar station in the Czech Republic seems, with hindsight, more questionable, as does the subsequent decision to deploy 10 two-stage missile interceptors and a battery of MIM-104 Patriot missiles in Poland. Though notionally intended to detect and counter Iranian missiles, these installations were bound to be regarded by the Russians as directed at them. The subsequent deployment of Iskander short-range missiles to Kaliningrad was a predictable retaliation.

A similar act of retaliation followed in 2008 when, with encouragement from some EU states, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. In response, Russia recognized rebels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and invaded those parts of Georgia. From a Russian perspective, this was no different from what the West had done in Kosovo.

The biggest miscalculation, however, was the willingness of the Bush administration to consider Ukraine for NATO membership and the later backing by the Obama administration of EU efforts to offer Ukraine an association agreement. I well remember the giddy mood at a pro-European conference in Yalta in September 2013, when Western representatives almost unanimously exhorted Ukraine to follow the Polish path. Not nearly enough consideration was given to the very different way Russia regards Ukraine nor to the obvious West-East divisions within Ukraine itself. This was despite an explicit warning from Putin's aide Sergei Glazyev, who attended the conference, that signing the EU association agreement would lead to "political and social unrest," a dramatic decline in living standards, and "chaos."

This is not in any way to legitimize the Russian actions of 2014, which were in clear violation of international law and agreements. It is to criticize successive administrations for paying too little heed to Russia's sensitivities and likely reactions.

"I don't really even need George Kennan right now," President Obama told the New Yorker's David Remnick in early 2014. The very opposite was true. He and his predecessor badly needed advisors who understood Russia as well as Kennan did. As Kissinger has often remarked, history is to nations what character is to people. In recent years, American policymakers have tended to forget that and then to wax indignant when other states act in ways that a knowledge of history might have enabled them to anticipate. No country, it might be said, has had its character more conditioned by its history than Russia. It was foolish to expect Russians to view with equanimity the departure into the Western sphere of influence of the heartland of medieval Russia, the breadbasket of the tsarist empire, the setting for Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard, the crime scene of Joseph Stalin's man-made famine, and the main target of Adolf Hitler's Operation Barbarossa.

One might have thought the events of 2014 would have taught U.S. policymakers a lesson. Yet the Obama administration has persisted in misreading Russia. It was arguably a mistake to leave Germany and France to handle the Ukraine crisis, when more direct U.S. involvement might have made the Minsk agreements effective. It was certainly a disastrous blunder to give Putin an admission ticket into the Syrian conflict by leaving to him the (partial) removal of Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons. One of Kissinger's lasting achievements in the early 1970s was to squeeze the Soviets out of the Middle East. The Obama administration has undone that, with dire consequences. We see in Aleppo the Russian military for what it is: a master of the mid-20th-century tactic of winning victories through the indiscriminate bombing of cities.

Left: Free Syrian Army fighters fire an anti-aircraft weapon in Aleppo on Dec. 12. (Photo by AFP/Getty Images); Right: Far-right Ukrainian activists attack the office of the pro-Russian movement "Ukrainian Choice" in Kiev on Nov. 21. (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)

What price peace?

Yet I remain to be convinced that the correct response to these errors of American policy is to swing from underestimating Russia to overestimating it. Such an approach has the potential to be just another variation on the theme of misunderstanding.

It is not difficult to infer what Putin would like to get in any "great deal" between himself and Trump. Item No. 1 would be a lifting of sanctions. Item No. 2 would be an end to the war in Syria on Russia's terms - which would include the preservation of Assad in power for at least some "decent interval." Item No. 3 would be a de facto recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea and some constitutional change designed to render the government in Kiev impotent by giving the country's eastern Donbass region a permanent pro-Russian veto power.

What is hard to understand is why the United States would want give Russia even a fraction of all this. What exactly would Russia be giving the United States in return for such concessions? That is the question that Trump's national security team needs to ask itself before he so much as takes a courtesy call from the Kremlin.

There is no question that the war in Syria needs to end, just as the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine needs resolution. But the terms of peace can and must be very different from those that Putin has in mind. Any deal that pacified Syria by sacrificing Ukraine would be a grave mistake.

President Obama has been right in saying that Russia is a much weaker power than the United States. His failure has been to exploit that American advantage.

... ... ...

The Russian Question itself can be settled another day. But by reframing the international order on the basis of cooperation rather than deadlock in the Security Council, the United States at least poses the question in a new way. Will Russia learn to cooperate with the other great powers? Or will it continue to be the opponent of international order? Perhaps the latter is the option it will choose. After all, an economic system that prefers an oil price closer to $100 a barrel than $50 benefits more than most from escalating conflict in the Middle East and North Africa - preferably conflict that spills over into the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.

However, if that is the goal of Russia's strategy, then it is hard to see for how much longer Beijing and Moscow will be able to cooperate in the Security Council. Beijing needs stability in oil production and low oil prices as much as Russia needs the opposite. Because of recent tensions with the United States, Russia has been acquiescent as the "One Belt, One Road" program extends China's economic influence into Central Asia, once a Russian domain. There is potential conflict of interest there, too.

... ... ...

[Nov 28, 2017] The Duplicitous Superpower by Ted Galen Carpenter

Highly recommended!
At some point quantity of duplicity turns into quality. and affect international relations. Economic decline can speed this process up. The US elite has way too easy life since 1991. And that destroyed the tiny patina of self-restraint that it has during Cold War with negative (hugely negative) consequences first of all for the US population. Empire building is a costly project even if it supported by the dominance of neoliberal ideology and technological advances in computers and telecommunication. . The idea of "full spectrum dominance" was a disaster. But the realization of this came too late and at huge cost for the world and for the US population. Russia decimated its own elite twice in the last century. In might be the time for the USA to follow the Russia example and do it once in XXI century. If we thing about Hillary Clinton Jon McCain, Joe Biden, Niki Haley, as member of the US elite it is clear that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark).
Notable quotes:
"... How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous. ..."
"... There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious. ..."
"... The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia, a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West would use subsequently in Libya. ..."
"... Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. ..."
"... Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking. ..."
"... This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Español's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and, more famously, in Ukraine. ..."
"... One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess. Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate. ..."
"... "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard." ..."
"... Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision and Putin knows it. ..."
"... He's been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove (former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough. ..."
"... U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending the befuddled taxpayers the bill. ..."
"... When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America. ..."
Nov 28, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy.

For any country, the foundation of successful diplomacy is a reputation for credibility and reliability. Governments are wary of concluding agreements with a negotiating partner that violates existing commitments and has a record of duplicity. Recent U.S. administrations have ignored that principle, and their actions have backfired majorly, damaging American foreign policy in the process.

The consequences of previous deceit are most evident in the ongoing effort to achieve a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. During his recent trip to East Asia, President Trump urged Kim Jong-un's regime to "come to the negotiating table" and "do the right thing" -- relinquish the country's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Presumably, that concession would lead to a lifting (or at least an easing) of international economic sanctions and a more normal relationship between Pyongyang and the international community.

Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous.

North Korea is likely focused on another incident that raises even greater doubts about U.S. credibility. Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi capitulated on the nuclear issue in December of 2003, abandoning his country's nuclear program and reiterating a commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and welcomed Libya back into the community of respectable nations. Barely seven years later, though, Washington and its NATO partners double-crossed Qaddafi, launching airstrikes and cruise missile attacks to assist rebels in their campaign to overthrow the Libyan strongman. North Korea and other powers took notice of Qaddafi's fate, making the already difficult task of getting a de-nuclearization agreement with Pyongyang nearly impossible.

The Libya intervention sullied America's reputation in another way. Washington and its NATO allies prevailed on the UN Security Council to pass a resolution endorsing a military intervention to protect innocent civilians. Russia and China refrained from vetoing that resolution after Washington's assurances that military action would be limited in scope and solely for humanitarian purposes. Once the assault began, it quickly became evident that the resolution was merely a fig leaf for another U.S.-led regime-change war.

Beijing, and especially Moscow, understandably felt duped. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates succinctly described Russia's reaction, both short-term and long-term:

The Russians later firmly believed they had been deceived on Libya. They had been persuaded to abstain at the UN on the grounds that the resolution provided for a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians. Yet as the list of bombing targets steadily grew, it became obvious that very few targets were off-limits, and that NATO was intent on getting rid of Qaddafi. Convinced they had been tricked, the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

The Libya episode was hardly the first time the Russians concluded that U.S. leaders had cynically misled them . Moscow asserts that when East Germany unraveled in 1990, both U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher offered verbal assurances that, if Russia accepted a unified Germany within NATO, the alliance would not expand beyond Germany's eastern border. The official U.S. position that there was nothing in writing affirming such a limitation is correct -- and the clarity, extent, and duration of any verbal commitment to refrain from enlargement are certainly matters of intense controversy . But invoking a "you didn't get it in writing" dodge does not inspire another government's trust.

There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious.

The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia, a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West would use subsequently in Libya.

Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own.

Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking.

It is painful for any American to admit that the United States has acquired a well-deserved reputation for duplicity in its foreign policy. But the evidence for that proposition is quite substantial. Indeed, disingenuous U.S. behavior regarding NATO expansion and the resolution of Kosovo's political status may be the single most important factor for the poisoned bilateral relationship with Moscow. The U.S. track record of duplicity and betrayal is one reason why prospects for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue through diplomacy are so bleak.

Actions have consequences, and Washington's reputation for disingenuous behavior has complicated America's own foreign policy objectives. This is a textbook example of a great power shooting itself in the foot.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles and policy studies on international affairs.

Magdi , says: November 28, 2017 at 5:46 am

you are dead ON! I have been saying this since IRAQ
fiasco (not one Iraqi onboard on 9/11) we should have invaded egypt and saudi arabia. how the foolish american public(sheep) just buys the american propaganda is beyond me.. don't blame the Russians one spittle!!
Herbert Heebert , says: November 28, 2017 at 7:47 am
A few points:

1. I think North Korea might also be looking at the example of Ukraine, and Russia's clear violation of the Budapest Memorandum.

2. It's silly to put so much weight on Baker's verbal assurance re: NATO expansion.

3. I would suggest Mr. Carpenter make a list of Russia's betrayals. But I have the impression he is not interested.

Viriato , says: November 28, 2017 at 9:25 am
Excellent piece. The US really has destroyed its credibility over the years.

This points Ted Galen Carpenter makes in this piece go a long way toward explaining Russia's destabilizing behavior in recent years.

One point in particular jumped out at me:

"Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique."

This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Español's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and, more famously, in Ukraine.

This

craigsummers , says: November 28, 2017 at 10:09 am
Mr. Carpenter

You have made a reasonable case that the US and Europe have not always been reliable, but the expansion of NATO is not one of them. No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard.

The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic which Russia invoked with the Medvedev Doctrine in 2008. This is currently on display in Ukraine. Russia is aggressively denying Ukraine their sovereignty. Who could possibly blame former Soviet Block countries for hightailing it to NATO during a lull in Russian aggression?

DOD , says: November 28, 2017 at 10:23 am
One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess. Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate.
Michael Kenny , says: November 28, 2017 at 12:12 pm
The whole weakness of the author's argument is a classic American one: very few Americans seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that the Soviet Union ceased to exist 26 years ago! They are still totally locked into their cold war mentality. He thus unquestioningly accepts Putin's pre-1789 "sphere of influence" theory in which there are "superior" and "inferior" races, with only the superior races being entitled to have a sovereign state and the inferior races being forced to submit to being ruled by foreigners. Mr Carpenter really needs to put his cold war mentality aside and come into the 21st century!

Most seriously of all, Mr Carpenter offers no solution for improving relations between the US and Russia. Saying that past US actions were wrong, even if true, says nothing about the present and offers nothing for the future. At best, Mr Carpenter's article is empty moralising.

And the unspoken, but perfectly obvious, subtext, namely that the US should "atone for its sins" by capitulating to Putin, is morally reprehensible and politically unrealistic. Since, by Mr Carpenter's own account, the problem is caused by US wrongdoing, isn't it for the US to put things right (for example, by getting Putin out of Ukraine) and not simply make a mess in someone else's country and then run for home with its tail between its legs? Who gave Americans the right to give away other people's countries?

Will Harrington , says: November 28, 2017 at 12:58 pm
Herbert Heevert

The one problem with your argument if, you are an american as I am, is that Russia is not acting in our names. If the US government, supposedly a government of, by, and for the people breaks its word, then you and I are foresworn oathbreakers as well because the government is (theoretically, at least) acting on OUR authority.

Will Harrington , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:15 pm
Craig Summers

Really?! "Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."

I think that if you look at a map or a globe, you will find that this is not a belief but a fact. How you could overlook this, I don't know.

"The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic "

If you are going to try and use history to influence opinion, it is best to check your facts. This is a very old concept.What do you think the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire in Central Asia was about? For that matter, what we call the Byzantine Commonwealth was a clearly attempt by the Romaoi to establish a political, cultural, and religious sphere of influence to support the power of the Empire, much as the United States has been doing over the past several decades.

NoldorElf , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:31 pm
You could make the case that Iraq too in 2003 is another reason why the Russians and the North Koreans distrust the US.

At this point, it is fairly certain that the Bush Administration knew that Saddam was not building nuclear weapons of mass destruction, which is what Bush strongly implied in his ramp up to the war.

One other takeaway that the North Koreans mag have from the 2003 Iraq invasion is that the US will lie any way to get what it wants.

Not saying that Russia or North Korea are perfect. Far from it. But the US needs to take a hard look in the mirror.

Jeeves , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:42 pm
What Craigsummers said.

And, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym for "oral."

SteveM , says: November 28, 2017 at 1:49 pm
Re: craigsummers, "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."

Except both here and abroad, the Global Cop Elites in Washington shape the strategy space through propaganda, fear-mongering and subversion. Moreover, the Eastern European countries are happy to join NATO when it's the American taxpayers who foot a large percentage of the bill.

Standard U.S. MO: create the threat, inflate the threat, send in the War Machine at massive cost to sustain the threat.

Rather than being broadened, NATO should have been ratcheted back after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. military presence in Europe massively reduced. Then normalized relations between Europe and Russia would have been designed and developed by Europe and Russia. Not the 800 pound Gorilla Global Cop that is good at little more than breaking things. (And perversely, after flushing TRILLIONS of tax dollars down the toilet, duping Americans to wildly applaud the "Warrior-Heroes" for a job well done.)

b. , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:33 pm
The 2008 war between Georgia and Russia was, per observers at the time, in Russian word and thought directly linked to the Balkan 's precedent.

The subtext here – of nation states, sovereignty, separatism and secessionist movements – is even more relevant with respect to US-China relationships. Since WW2 and that brief, transient monopoly on nuclear weapons, US foreign policy has eroded the Peace of Westphalia while attempting to erect an "international order" of convenience on top if it.

Both China and Russia know that nothing will stop the expansionism of US "national interests". In response to the doctrinal aspirations of the Soviets, the US has committed itself to an ideology that is just a greedy and relentless. In retrospect, it is hard to tell how many decades ago the Cold War stopped being about opposition to Soviet ideology, and instead became about "projecting" – in every sense of the word – an equally globalist US ideology.

We are the redcoats now. Now wonder the neocons and neolibs are shouting "Russia!" at every opportunity.

Janek , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:45 pm
I am amazed how many masochistic conservatives are in USA conservative circles especially in the CATO institute. Mr. T. G. Carpenter, as is clear from not only this and other articles, is a staunch defender of Yalta and proponent of Yalta 2 after the Cold War ended. As far as I remember Libya was the hatchet job of the Europeans especially the French and British. B. Obama at first didn't want to attack Libya but gave in after lobbying by the French, British and the neoliberal/neo-conservative lobby and supporters of the Arab Spring in the USA. America lost credibility after and only since the conservatives neoliberals and neocons manipulated USA and the West's foreign politics for thirty plus years. USA is still a democratic country so it is easy to blame everything on the US. In today's Putin's Russia similar critics of the Russian politics wouldn't be so "easy".

The Central Europe doesn't want Russia's sphere of influence precisely because of centuries of Russian occupation and atrocities in there especially after WW2, brutal and bloody invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Crisis, Afghanistan, Chechnya etc. Now you have infiltration by Russia of the American electoral process and political system and some conservatives still can't connect the dots and see what is going on. I wonder why the western conservatives and US in particular are such great supporters of Russia. If Russia should be allowed to keep her sphere of influence after the Cold War then what was the reason to fight the Cold War in the first place. Wouldn't it be easier to surrender to Russia right after WW2.

SteveM , says: November 28, 2017 at 2:45 pm
One other observation about Russia that should be made but isn't is that the Russia-phobes can't point to an actual motive for Russian military aggression. There is no "Putin Plan" for conquest and domination by Russia like in Das Kapital or Hitler's Mein Kampf . What strategic value would Russia see from overrunning Poland and then having to perpetually suppress 35 million resistors? Or retaking the Baltic states that have only minority ethnic Russian populations?

Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision and Putin knows it.

In the gangster movies, a mob boss often says that he hates bloodshed because it's bad for business. That's Putin. He's been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove (former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough.

U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending the befuddled taxpayers the bill.

Mark , says: November 28, 2017 at 3:00 pm
"And, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym for "oral."

I imagine you thought you were being funny; and you were, just not in the way you foresaw. In fact, verbal is a synonym for oral; to wit, "spoken rather than written; oral. "a verbal agreement". Synonyms: oral, spoken, stated, said, verbalized, expressed."

Of course anyone who attempts to portray the United States as duplicitous and sneaky (those are synonyms!)is immediately branded a "Russian apologist". As if there are certain countries which automatically have no rights, and can be assumed to be lying every time they speak. Except they're not, and the verbal agreement that NATO would not advance further east in exchange for Russian cooperation has been acknowledged by western principals who were present.

As SteveM implies, NATO's reason for being evaporated with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and was dead as a dodo with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Everything since has been a rationalization for keeping it going, including regular demonizations of imaginary enemies until they become real enemies. You can't just 'join NATO' because it's the in-crowd, you know. No, there are actually criteria, one of which is the premise that your acceptance materially enhances the security of the alliance. Pretty comical imagining Montenegro in that context, isn't it?

When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America.

[Oct 17, 2017] Latin-Americanization of the xUSSR space is what essentially State Department tried to accomplish. They were successful in Ukraine. by Robert Parry

While the USA pursued their geopolitical goals in supporting the coup d'état against corrupt Yanukovich government by less corrupt western-Ukrainian nationalists (and a difficult clan on oligarch, as Yanukovich was a puppet of Donetsk oligarch clan) , this is actually disaster capitalism in action... There is very little Ukrainians can do now to improve their standard of living which dropped at least two times since 2014. Civil war remains a drain on economy and selling assets to western companies does not improve the standard fo living iether. For 20K grivna (less then $740 a month) you can hire top level specialist in Ukraine (regular salary is less then $150 a month). Economy is still supported by the housing boom, but we know how such things might end.
The neocons are now as important factor in America's foreign policy today as they were during the darkest days of the Bush administration. And like on old time the Ukrainian coup has all traces of globalist bankers allied with local compradors operating under fig leaf of Western-Ukrainian nationalism (which were simply puppets in a much bigger financial and geopolitical game). It is the same aggressive push by the United States to topple governments and politicians in Latin America to advance the USA geopolitical or economic interests.
See also Empire's Workshop Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism " Latin America once again became a school where the United States studied how to execute imperial violence through proxies. After World War II, in the name of containing Communism, the United States, mostly through the actions of local allies, executed or encouraged coups in, among other places, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina and patronized a brutal mercenary war in Nicaragua. Latin America became a laboratory tor counter-insurgency, as military officials and covert operators applied insights learned in the region to Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. By the end of the Cold War, Latin American security forces trained, funded, equipped, and incited by Washington had executed a reign of bloody terror - hundreds of thousands killed, an equal number tortured, millions driven into exile - from which the region has yet to fully recover."
Parry provides an interesting perspective on neoconservative intellectuals who now are driving the expansion of the US-led neoliberal empire into xUSSR space. In this sense Ukrainian nationalists serve as a proxies of an American imperialism which is driven by a combination of neoliberalism, Neoconservatism and the euphoria from the victory Cold War, of which Ukraine civil war is the tragic endgame.
Parry does not addresses the controversial role of Russia, which actually helped to start the Donbass civil war as initially Putin promised that the Ukraine territories who will vote "yes" in referendums to join Russia will be accepted to Russia but soon changed his mind. And later supplied arms to the insurgents.
Notable quotes:
"... Thus, you have the current hysteria over Russia's supposed "aggression" in Ukraine when the crisis was actually provoked by the West, including by U.S. neocons who helped create today's humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine that they now cynically blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... Many of the old intelligence operatives, including Casey and Raymond, are now dead, but other influential Washington figures who were deeply involved by these strategies remain, such as neocon stalwart Robert Kagan, whose first major job in Washington was as chief of Reagan's State Department Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America. ..."
"... During the Reagan years, Kagan worked closely on propaganda schemes with Elliott Abrams, then the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America. After getting convicted and then pardoned in the Iran-Contra scandal, Abrams reemerged on President George W. Bush's National Security Council handling Middle East issues, including the Iraq War, and later "global democracy strategy." Abrams is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ..."
"... These and other neocons were among the most diligent students learning the art of "perception management" from the likes of Raymond and Casey, but those propaganda skills have spread much more widely as "public diplomacy" and "information warfare" have now become an integral part of every U.S. foreign policy initiative. ..."
"... The National Endowment for Democracy, which was formed in 1983 at the urging of CIA Director Casey and under the supervision of Walter Raymond's NSC operation, is still run by the same neocon, Carl Gershman, and has an even bigger budget, now exceeding $100 million a year. ..."
"... Gershman and his NED played important behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Ukraine crisis by financing activists, journalists and other operatives who supported the coup against elected President Yanukovych. The NED-backed Freedom House also beat the propaganda drums. [See Consortiumnews.com's " A Shadow Foreign Policy. "] ..."
"... Two other Reagan-era veterans, Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, have both provided important intellectual support for continuing U.S. interventionism around the world. Earlier this year, Kagan's article for The New Republic, entitled " Superpowers Don't Get to Retire ," touched such a raw nerve with President Obama that he hosted Kagan at a White House lunch and crafted the presidential commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of Kagan's criticism of Obama's hesitancy to use military force. ..."
"... According to the Times article, the husband-and-wife team share both a common world view and professional ambitions, Nuland editing Kagan's articles and Kagan "not permitted to use any official information he overhears or picks up around the house" a suggestion that Kagan's thinking at least may be informed by foreign policy secrets passed on by his wife. ..."
Dec 28, 2014 | consortiumnews.com

Thus, you have the current hysteria over Russia's supposed "aggression" in Ukraine when the crisis was actually provoked by the West, including by U.S. neocons who helped create today's humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine that they now cynically blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yet, many of these same U.S. foreign policy operatives outraged over Russia's limited intervention to protect ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are demanding that President Obama launch an air war against the Syrian military as a "humanitarian" intervention there.

In other words, if the Russians act to shield ethnic Russians on their border who are being bombarded by a coup regime in Kiev that was installed with U.S. support, the Russians are the villains blamed for the thousands of civilian deaths, even though the vast majority of the casualties have been inflicted by the Kiev regime from indiscriminate bombing and from dispatching neo-Nazi militias to do the street fighting.

In Ukraine, the exigent circumstances don't matter, including the violent overthrow of the constitutionally elected president last February. It's all about white hats for the current Kiev regime and black hats for the ethnic Russians and especially for Putin.

... ... ...

For this project, Ronald Reagan's CIA Director William J. Casey sent his top propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr. to the National Security Council staff to manage the inter-agency task forces that would brainstorm and coordinate this "public diplomacy" strategy.

Many of the old intelligence operatives, including Casey and Raymond, are now dead, but other influential Washington figures who were deeply involved by these strategies remain, such as neocon stalwart Robert Kagan, whose first major job in Washington was as chief of Reagan's State Department Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America.

Now a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist at the Washington Post, Kagan remains an expert in presenting foreign policy initiatives within the "good guy/bad guy" frames that he learned in the 1980s. He is also the husband of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who oversaw the overthrow of Ukraine's elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February amid a very effective U.S. propaganda strategy.

During the Reagan years, Kagan worked closely on propaganda schemes with Elliott Abrams, then the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America. After getting convicted and then pardoned in the Iran-Contra scandal, Abrams reemerged on President George W. Bush's National Security Council handling Middle East issues, including the Iraq War, and later "global democracy strategy." Abrams is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

These and other neocons were among the most diligent students learning the art of "perception management" from the likes of Raymond and Casey, but those propaganda skills have spread much more widely as "public diplomacy" and "information warfare" have now become an integral part of every U.S. foreign policy initiative.

... ... ...

Though Reagan's creation of a domestic propaganda bureaucracy began more than three decades ago and Bush's vanquishing of the Vietnam Syndrome was more than two decades ago the legacy of those actions continue to reverberate today in how the perceptions of the American people are now routinely managed. That was true during last decade's Iraq War and this decade's conflicts in Libya, Syria and Ukraine as well as the economic sanctions against Iran and Russia.

Indeed, while the older generation that pioneered these domestic propaganda techniques has passed from the scene, many of their protégés are still around along with some of the same organizations. The National Endowment for Democracy, which was formed in 1983 at the urging of CIA Director Casey and under the supervision of Walter Raymond's NSC operation, is still run by the same neocon, Carl Gershman, and has an even bigger budget, now exceeding $100 million a year.

Gershman and his NED played important behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Ukraine crisis by financing activists, journalists and other operatives who supported the coup against elected President Yanukovych. The NED-backed Freedom House also beat the propaganda drums. [See Consortiumnews.com's " A Shadow Foreign Policy. "]

Two other Reagan-era veterans, Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, have both provided important intellectual support for continuing U.S. interventionism around the world. Earlier this year, Kagan's article for The New Republic, entitled " Superpowers Don't Get to Retire ," touched such a raw nerve with President Obama that he hosted Kagan at a White House lunch and crafted the presidential commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of Kagan's criticism of Obama's hesitancy to use military force.

A New York Times article about Kagan's influence over Obama reported that Kagan's wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, apparently had a hand in crafting the attack on her ostensible boss, President Obama.

According to the Times article, the husband-and-wife team share both a common world view and professional ambitions, Nuland editing Kagan's articles and Kagan "not permitted to use any official information he overhears or picks up around the house" a suggestion that Kagan's thinking at least may be informed by foreign policy secrets passed on by his wife.

Though Nuland wouldn't comment specifically on Kagan's attack on President Obama, she indicated that she holds similar views. "But suffice to say," Nuland said, "that nothing goes out of the house that I don't think is worthy of his talents. Let's put it that way."

[Sep 25, 2017] I am presently reading the book JFK and the Unspeakable by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Although I voted for Trump, only because he was a slightly smaller POS than Hillary, it's hard to have any sympathy for him. ..."
"... The Democrats and the Deep State should have accused Israel of interfering in US elections. That would have been a credible complaint. ..."
"... Felix, Except that Israel and her deep state puppets were interfering on behalf of the democrats. ..."
"... What is happening in the U.S. is the same MO the CIA has developed over the past 64 years to create turmoil within a nation to overthrow a ruler that would not comply with the dictates of Wall Street. ..."
"... I am presently reading the book " JFK and the Unspeakable" by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed. ..."
"... Russia-gate - Just another weapon of mass distraction, brought to you by the liars in charge. ..."
"... David Stockman's excellent analysis makes clear that Trump doesn't know what he's doing and has appointed poor advisors, many of whom have been working against him from the start. Yet, per Stockman, "he doesn't need to be the passive object of a witch hunt." He could have and should have exposed the crimes of his accusers from the beginning, while he still had 100% support from the anti-war Right, which put him in office in the first place. He should have ignored the hysteria emanating from his enemies, and made peace with Vladimir Putin as a first order of business. Millions would have supported him. ..."
"... But, after his provocations in Syria and against Russia, which really resulted because he gave control of military decisions to uber hawk and Russia-phobic Mad Dog Mattis, his support from the anti-war crowd has all but evaporated and is unlikely to return. In other words, although he has been treated extremely unfairly by the corporate media, ultimately he has no one to blame but himself. Trump, with his endless stupid tweeting, has become a sad caricature of himself. ..."
"... When an outsider (like Trump) is elected POTUS and promises to do harm to the Pentagon, against the will of the Deep State -- the battle is on. A coup was planned against him, even before he took the oath of office. And, BTW--against the will of the people ..."
"... The Deep State bureaucracy will never let him have full control. Apparently, Obomber and Killery are running a Shadow White House, with all major decisions coming from the Deep State actors thereof. ..."
"... Killery still has her security clearance, by which she knew where the US Military would strike in Syria before Trump had any idea what was going on ..."
"... The Pentagon has seized power and does not recognize any elected or appointed power of the US government. Trump's 'power' is non-existent. If this 'soft coup' becomes a hard one, I predict all hell breaking loose in America ..."
"... "In a word, the Little Putsch in Kiev is now begetting a Great Big Coup in the Imperial City." Interesting point of view from David Stockman. Whatever happens in Washington, one can be sure there will come another provocation against Russia. ..."
"... This will probably be the Joint Investigation Team's final word on the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, not long after the little putsch in Kiev. The Joint Investigation Team relies on the Dutch Safety Board's Final Report on Flight MH17. With this report, the Dutch Safety Board has given the world a classic snow job, which I have pointed out in my critique on it. Please read it on my website at www.show-the-house.com/id119.html and share it with your elected representatives. Maybe a collective effort can head this off . ..."
"... Not the first time! "US Power Elite, at war among themselves?" https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/us-powe... ..."
"... Watching from Australia what passes for domestic politics in the US within the media, reminds me of a primitive tribe reacting to a solar eclipse. They run around in hysterical fear gnashing their teeth thinking the great evil spirit has come to steal their corn, carry off their daughters, and destroy their village. ..."
Jun 26, 2017 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Jenny G · 3 days ago

Although I voted for Trump, only because he was a slightly smaller POS than Hillary, it's hard to have any sympathy for him.

Every time he walks out on a stage clapping his hands, encouraging applause, like a daytime TV game show host, I want to puke.

I honestly don't think Trump really expected to win the presidency. And when he did, he was clueless. His "Mission Accomplished" party at the White House for a bill which would never pass the senate, was pure Dubya Bush. The orange haired POS is an embarrassment to the country.

Felix · 4 days ago
The Democrats and the Deep State should have accused Israel of interfering in US elections. That would have been a credible complaint.
follyofwar · 3 days ago
Felix, Except that Israel and her deep state puppets were interfering on behalf of the democrats.
olde reb · 3 days ago
What is happening in the U.S. is the same MO the CIA has developed over the past 64 years to create turmoil within a nation to overthrow a ruler that would not comply with the dictates of Wall Street.

Detailed in --. http://farmwars.info/?p=15338 . A FACE FOR THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT

The "ultimate goal" (according to internal memos), is to collect on the fraudulent $20 trillion national debt which will result in Wall Street owning the United States. Hello, Greece.

Guysth · 3 days ago
I am presently reading the book " JFK and the Unspeakable" by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed.

Peace is not in their books,war is. John Kennedy had an epiphany and was wanting to make peace with the USSR at the time, after the Cuban crisis, and this could not be allowed to happen .

Same $hit different pile.

doray · 3 days ago
Russia-gate - Just another weapon of mass distraction, brought to you by the liars in charge.
astraeaisabella · 3 days ago
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2011/10/25... This may seem relevant, but considering Trump's visit to SAudi Arabia and then immediately "Israel", you might find it interesting.
follyofwar · 3 days ago

David Stockman's excellent analysis makes clear that Trump doesn't know what he's doing and has appointed poor advisors, many of whom have been working against him from the start. Yet, per Stockman, "he doesn't need to be the passive object of a witch hunt." He could have and should have exposed the crimes of his accusers from the beginning, while he still had 100% support from the anti-war Right, which put him in office in the first place. He should have ignored the hysteria emanating from his enemies, and made peace with Vladimir Putin as a first order of business. Millions would have supported him.

But, after his provocations in Syria and against Russia, which really resulted because he gave control of military decisions to uber hawk and Russia-phobic Mad Dog Mattis, his support from the anti-war crowd has all but evaporated and is unlikely to return. In other words, although he has been treated extremely unfairly by the corporate media, ultimately he has no one to blame but himself. Trump, with his endless stupid tweeting, has become a sad caricature of himself.

RedRubies · 3 days ago
Stockman has only been a Congressman. They are allowed more leeway.

When an outsider (like Trump) is elected POTUS and promises to do harm to the Pentagon, against the will of the Deep State -- the battle is on. A coup was planned against him, even before he took the oath of office. And, BTW--against the will of the people, themselves.

The Deep State bureaucracy will never let him have full control. Apparently, Obomber and Killery are running a Shadow White House, with all major decisions coming from the Deep State actors thereof.

Killery still has her security clearance, by which she knew where the US Military would strike in Syria before Trump had any idea what was going on (http://headlinebits.com/2017-06-21/deep-state-hillary-clinton-staffers-still-have-security-clearances-access-to-sensitive-governmen.AlsHBgBSVVwAV1FWVwdSAwBWAg8HXQYE.html) .

You can't write an article about a 'soft coup' and NOT mention her name in connection with it!

The Pentagon has seized power and does not recognize any elected or appointed power of the US government. Trump's 'power' is non-existent. If this 'soft coup' becomes a hard one, I predict all hell breaking loose in America.

Stephen M. St. John · 3 days ago

"In a word, the Little Putsch in Kiev is now begetting a Great Big Coup in the Imperial City." Interesting point of view from David Stockman. Whatever happens in Washington, one can be sure there will come another provocation against Russia.

This will probably be the Joint Investigation Team's final word on the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, not long after the little putsch in Kiev. The Joint Investigation Team relies on the Dutch Safety Board's Final Report on Flight MH17. With this report, the Dutch Safety Board has given the world a classic snow job, which I have pointed out in my critique on it. Please read it on my website at www.show-the-house.com/id119.html and share it with your elected representatives. Maybe a collective effort can head this off .

Schlüter 91p · 3 days ago
Not the first time! "US Power Elite, at war among themselves?" https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/us-powe...
Dick · 3 days ago
Watching from Australia what passes for domestic politics in the US within the media, reminds me of a primitive tribe reacting to a solar eclipse. They run around in hysterical fear gnashing their teeth thinking the great evil spirit has come to steal their corn, carry off their daughters, and destroy their village.

Emotional ignorance and blindness to the rational reality will only lead to more tears.

[Sep 18, 2017] Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish partnerships with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.

Notable quotes:
"... In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California. ..."
"... Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story. ..."
"... Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against "threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats". ..."
"... US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China. ..."
"... The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth. ..."
"... The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect. ..."
"... In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site. ..."
Sep 18, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:31 pm

Yellow journalism now employs "open source and social media investigation" scams foisted by Eliot Higgins and the Bellingcat disinformation site.

Bellingcat is allied with the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two principal mainstream media organs for "regime change" propaganda, via the First Draft Coalition "partner network".

In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Google-sponsored "post-Truth" Propaganda 3.0 coalition declares that member organizations will "work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process".

The New York Times routinely hacks up Bellingcat "reports" and pretends they're "verification"

Malachy Browne, "Senior Story Producer" at the New York Times, cited Bellingcat to embellish the media "story" about the Khan Shaykhun chemical incident in Idlib Syria.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/insider/the-times-uses-forensic-mapping-to-verify-a-syrian-chemical-attack.html

Before joining the Times, Browne was an editor at "social news and marketing agency" Storyful and at Reported. ly, the "social reporting" arm of Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media.

Browne generously "supplemented" his "reporting" on the Khan Shaykun incident with "videos gathered by the journalist Eliot Higgins and the social media news agency Storyful".

Browne encouraged Times readers to participate in the Bellingcat-style "verification" charade: "Find a computer, get on Google Earth and match what you see in the video to the streets and buildings"

Browne of Storyful and Higgins of Bellingcat are founding members of the Google-funded "First Draft" coalition.

Browne demonstrates how the NYT and other "First Draft" coalition media outlets use video to "strengthen" their "storytelling".

In 2016, the NYT video department hired Browne and Andrew Glazer. a senior producer on the team that launched VICE News, to help "enhance" the "reporting" at the Times.

Browne represents the Times' effort to package its dubious "reporting" using the Storyful marketing strategy of "building trust, loyalty, and revenue with insight and emotionally driven content" wedded with Bellingcat style "digital forensics" scams.

In other words, we should expect the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, UK Guardian, and all the other "First Draft" coalition media "partners" to barrage us more Bellingcat / Atlantic Council-style Facebook and YouTube video mashups, crazy fun with Google Earth, and Twitter campaigns.

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 7:00 pm

There is no reason to assume that the trollish rants of "Voytenko" are from some outraged flag-waving "patriot" in Kiev. There are plenty of other "useful idiots" ready, willing and able to make mischief.

For example, about a million Jews emigrated to Israel ("made Aliyah") from the post-Soviet states during the 1990s. Some 266,300 were Ukrainian Jews. A large number of Ukrainian Jews also emigrated to the United States during this period. For example, out of an estimated 400 thousand Russian-speaking Jews in Metro New York, the largest number (thirty-six percent) hail from Ukraine. Needless to say, many among them are not so well disposed toward the nations of Russia or Ukraine, and quite capable of all manner of mischief.

A particularly "useful idiot" making mischief the days is Sergey Brin of Google. Brin's parents were graduates of Moscow State University who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979 when their son was five years old.

Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.

In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish "partnerships" with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.

Google's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful".

In a 2004 letter prior to their initial public offering, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin explained their "Don't be evil" culture required objectivity and an absence of bias: "We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see."

The corporate giant appears to have replaced the original motto altogether. A carefully reworded version appears in the Google Code of Conduct: "You can make money without doing evil".

This new gospel allows Google and its "partners" to make money promoting propaganda and engaging in surveillance, and somehow manage to not "be evil". That's "post-truth" logic for you.

Google has been enthusiastically promoting Eliot Higgins "arm chair analytics" since 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWhcWizSFY

Indeed, a very cozy cross-promotion is happening between Google and Bellingcat.

In November 2014, Google Ideas and Google For Media, partnered the George Soros-funded Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to host an "Investigathon" in New York City. Google Ideas promoted Higgins' "War and Pieces: Social Media Investigations" song and dance via their YouTube page.

Higgins constantly insists that Bellingcat "findings" are "reaffirmed" by accessing imagery in Google Earth.

Google Earth, originally called EarthViewer 3D, was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded company acquired by Google in 2004. Google Earth uses satellite images provided by the company Digital Globe, a supplier of the US Department of Defense (DoD) with deep connections to both the military and intelligence communities.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency under the United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence Community. Robert T. Cardillo, director of the NGA, lavishly praised Digital Globe as "a true mission partner in every sense of the word". Examination of the Board of Directors of Digital Globe reveals intimate connections to DoD and CIA

Google has quite the history of malicious behavior. In what became known as the "Wi-Spy" scandal, it was revealed that Google had been collecting hundreds of gigabytes of payload data, including personal and sensitive information. First names, email addresses, physical addresses, and a conversation between two married individuals planning an extra-marital affair were all cited by the FCC. In a 2012 settlement, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google will pay $22.5 million for overriding privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser. Though it was the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission had ever imposed for violating one of its orders, the penalty as little more than symbolic for a company that had $2.8 billion in earnings the previous quarter.

Google is a joint venture partner with the CIA In 2009, Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel invested "under $10 million each" into Recorded Future shortly after the company was founded. The company developed technology that strips information from web pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts.

In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California.

Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank. Alperovitz said that Crowdstrike has "high confidence" it was "Russian hackers". "But we don't have hard evidence," Alperovitch admitted in a June 16, 2016 Washington Post interview.

Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against "threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats".

The US and UK possess elite cyber capabilities for both cyberspace espionage and offensive operations.

Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are intelligence agencies with a long history of supporting military operations. US military cyber operations are the responsibility of US Cyber Command, whose commander is also the head of the NSA.

US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.

The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth.

Recent US domestic cyber operations have been used for coercive effect, creating uncertainty and concern within the American government and population.

The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect.

In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site.

Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:58 pm

Higgins and Bellingcat receives direct funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) founded by business magnate George Soros, and from Google's Digital News Initiatives (DNI).

Google's 2017 DNI Fund Annual Report describes Higgins as "a world–leading expert in news verification".

Higgins claims the DNI funding "allowed us to push this to the next level".
https://digitalnewsinitiative.com/news/case-study-codifying-social-conflict-data/

In their zeal to propagate the story of Higgins as a courageous former "unemployed man" now busy independently "Codifying social conflict data", Google neglects to mention Higgins' role as a "research fellow" for the NATO-funded Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank.

Despite their claims of "independent journalism", Eliot Higgins and the team of disinformation operatives at Bellingcat depend on the Atlantic Council to promote their "online investigations".

The Atlantic Council donors list includes:

– US government and military entities: US State Department, US Air Force, US Army, US Marines.

– The NATO military alliance

– Large corporations and major military contractors: Chevron, Google, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Northrup Grumman, SAIC, ConocoPhillips, and Dow Chemical

– Foreign governments: United Arab Emirates (UAE; which gives the think tank at least $1 million), Kingdom of Bahrain, City of London, Ministry of Defense of Finland, Embassy of Latvia, Estonian Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Defense of Georgia

– Other think tanks and think tankers: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Nicolas Veron of Bruegel (formerly at PIIE), Anne-Marie Slaughter (head of New America Foundation), Michele Flournoy (head of Center for a New American Security), Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution.

Higgins is a Research Associate of the Department of War Studies at King's College, and was principal co-author of the Atlantic Council "reports" on Ukraine and Syria.

Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programs and Strategy at the Atlantic Council, a co-author with Higgins of the report, effusively praised Higgins' effort to bolster anti-Russian propaganda:

Wilson stated, "We make this case using only open source, all unclassified material. And none of it provided by government sources. And it's thanks to works, the work that's been pioneered by human rights defenders and our partner Eliot Higgins, uh, we've been able to use social media forensics and geolocation to back this up." (see Atlantic Council video presentation minutes 35:10-36:30)

However, the Atlantic Council claim that "none" of Higgins' material was provided by government sources is an obvious lie.

Higgins' primary "pieces of evidence" are a video depicting a Buk missile launcher and a set of geolocation coordinates that were supplied by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior via the Facebook page of senior-level Ukrainian government official Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs.

Higgins and the Atlantic Council are working in support of the Pentagon and Western intelligence's "hybrid war" against Russia.

The laudatory bio of Higgins on the Kings College website specifically acknowledges his service to the Atlantic Council:

"an award winning investigative journalist and publishes the work of an international alliance of fellow investigators using freely available online information. He has helped inaugurate open-source and social media investigations by trawling through vast amounts of data uploaded constantly on to the web and social media sites. His inquiries have revealed extraordinary findings, including linking the Buk used to down flight MH17 to Russia, uncovering details about the August 21st 2013 Sarin attacks in Damascus, and evidencing the involvement of the Russian military in the Ukrainian conflict. Recently he has worked with the Atlantic Council on the report "Hiding in Plain Sight", which used open source information to detail Russia's military involvement in the crisis in Ukraine."

While it honors Higgins' enthusiastic "trawling", King's College curiously neglects to mention that Higgins' "findings" on the Syian sarin attacks were thoroughly debunked.

King's College also curiously neglects to mention the fact that Higgins, now listed as a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's "Future Europe Initiative", was principal co-author of the April 2016 Atlantic Council "report" on Syria.

The report's other key author was John E. Herbst, United States Ambassador to Ukraine from September 2003 to May 2006 (the period that became known as the Orange Revolution) and Director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.

Other report authors include Frederic C. Hof, who served as Special Adviser on Syrian political transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012. Hof was previously the Special Coordinator for Regional Affairs in the US Department of State's Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchel. Hof had been a Resident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East since November 2012, and assumed the position as Director in May 2016.

There is no daylight between the "online investigations" of Higgins and Bellingcat and the "regime change" efforts of the NATO-backed Atlantic Council.

Thanks to the Atlantic Council, Soros, and Google, it's a pretty well-funded gig for fake "citizen investigative journalist" Higgins.

[Sep 18, 2017] Americas Deadliest Export -- Democracy - The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else by Gary Corseri

Notable quotes:
"... "If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security... and if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State." ..."
Amazon.com

William Blum's "Cri de Coeur", February 9, 2013

William Blum's Cri de Coeur
A review of "America's Deadliest Export: Democracy" by William Blum (Zed Books, London/New York, 2013.)

(As it has appeared at DissidentVoice, OpEdNews, etc.):

In activist-author-publisher William Blum's new book, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy, he tells the story of how he got his 15 minutes of fame back in 2006. Osama bin Laden had released an audiotape, declaring:

"If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security... and if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State."

Bin Laden then quoted from the Foreword of Blum's 2000 book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, in which he had mused:

"If I were... president, I could stop terrorist attacks [on us] in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize... to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America's global interventions... have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but... a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims. ... That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated."

Unfortunately, Blum never made it to the White House! But, fortunately, for those who have read his books or follow his "Anti-Empire Reports" on the Web, he was not assassinated! And now he has collected his reports and essays of the last dozen years or so into a 352-page volume that will not only stand the test of time, but will help to define this disillusioned, morose, violent and unraveling Age.

America's Deadliest... is divided into 21 chapters and an introduction--and there's something to underline or memorize on every page! Sometimes it's just one of Blum's irrepressible quips, and sometimes it's a matter of searing American foreign or domestic policiy that clarifies that Bushwhackian question of yore: "Why do they hate us?"

Reading this scrupulously documented book, I lost count of the times I uttered, "unbelievable!" concerning some nefarious act committed by the US Empire in the name of freedom, democracy and fighting communism or terrorism. Reading Blum's book with an open mind, weighing the evidence, will bleach out any pride in the flag we have planted in so many corpses around the world. The book is a diuretic and emetic!

Blum's style is common sense raised to its highest level. The wonder of America's Deadliest ... is that it covers so much of the sodden, bloody ground of America's march across our post-Second-World-War world, yet tells the story with such deftness and grace-under-fire that the reader is enticed--not moralized, not disquisitionally badgered--, but enticed to consider our globe from a promontory of higher understanding.

Some of the themes Blum covers (and often eviscerates) include:

  1. Why they hate us;
  2. America means well;
  3. We cannot permit a successful alternative to the capitalist model to develop anywhere in the world;
  4. We will use whatever means necessary--including, lies, deception, sabotage, bribery, torture and war--to achieve the above idea.

Along the way, we get glimpses of Blum's experientially rich life. A note "About the Author" tells us that, "He left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer because of his opposition to what the US was doing in Vietnam. He then became a founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital."

In his chapter on "Patriotism," Blum relates how, after a talk, he was asked: "Do you love America?" He responded with what we may take for his credo: "I don't love any country. I'm a citizen of the world. I love certain principles, like human rights, civil liberties, meaningful democracy, an economy which puts people before profits."

America's Deadliest... is a book of wisdom and wit that ponders "how this world became so unbearably cruel, corrupt, unjust, and stupid?" In a pointillistic approach, sowing aphoristic seeds for thought, Blum enumerates instances of that cruelty, often with wry, pained commentary. "War can be seen as America's religion," he tells us. Reflecting on Obama's octupling Bush's number of drones used to assassinate, collaterally kill and terrorize, he affirms:

"Obama is one of the worst things that has ever happened to the American left." And, he avers, "Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good." And then turns around and reminds us--lest we forget--how the mass media have invaded our lives, with memes about patriotism, democracy, God, the "good life": "Can it be imagined that an American president would openly implore America's young people to fight a foreign war to defend `capitalism'?" he wonders.

"The word itself has largely gone out of fashion. The approved references now are to the market economy, free market, free enterprise, or private enterprise."

Cynthia McKinney writes that the book is "corruscating, eye-opening, and essential." Oliver Stone calls it a "fireball of terse information."
Like Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, Paul Craig Roberts, Cindy Sheehan and Bradley Manning, Blum is committed to setting the historical record straight. His book is dangerous. Steadfast, immutable "truths" one has taken for granted--often since childhood--are exposed as hollow baubles to entertain the un/mis/and dis-informed. One such Blumism recollects Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez's account of a videotape with a very undiplomatic Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and cowboy George Bush: "`We've got to smash somebody's ass quickly,'" Powell said. "`We must have a brute demonstration of power.'

Then Bush spoke: `Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! ... Stay strong! ... Kill them! ... We are going to wipe them out!'"

Blum's intellectual resources are as keen as anyone's writing today. He also adds an ample measure of humanity to his trenchant critiques. He juxtaposes the noble rhetoric of our professed values with the mordant facts of our deeds. The cognitive dissonance makes for a memorable, very unpretty picture of how an immensely privileged people lost themselves, while gorging on junk food, junk politics, junk economics, junk education, junk media. Like an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, he lambastes his own--us!--flaying layers of hypocrisy and betrayals while seeking to reveal the core values of human dignity, empathy and moral rectitude.

Gary Corseri has published and posted prose, poetry and dramas at hundreds of periodicals and websites worldwide, including CommonDreams, Countercurrents, BraveNewWorld.in, OpEdNews, CounterPunch, Outlook India, The New York Times, Dissident Voice. He has published novels, poetry collections and a literary anthology (edited). His dramas have been presented on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere, and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library. He has taught in US public schools and prisons, and at American and Japanese universities. Contact: [email protected].

[Sep 18, 2017] Down With Western Democracy !

Notable quotes:
"... German Nazis and Italian Fascists defined their rule as 'democratic', and so does this Empire. The British and French empires that exterminated tens of millions of people all over the world, always promoted themselves as 'democracies'. ..."
"... And now, once again, we are witnessing a tremendous onslaught by the business-political-imperialist Western apparatus, destabilizing or directly destroying entire nations, overthrowing governments and bombing 'rebellious' states into the ground. All this is done in the name of democracy, in the name of freedom. ..."
"... This sacrificial altar is called, Democracy, in direct mockery to what the term symbolizes in its original, Greek, language. ..."
Aug 02, 2014 | CounterPunch

A specter is haunting Europe and Western world - it is this time, the specter of fascism. It came quietly, without great fanfare and parades, without raised hands and loud shouts. But it came, or it returned, as it has always been present in this culture, one that has, for centuries, been enslaving our entire planet.

As was in Nazi Germany, resistance to the fascist empire is again given an unsavory name: terrorism. Partisans and patriots, resistance fighters – all of them were and have always been defined by fascist bigots as terrorists.

By the logic of Empire, to murder millions of men, women and children in all corners of the world abroad is considered legitimate and patriotic, but to defend one's motherland was and is a sign of extremism.

German Nazis and Italian Fascists defined their rule as 'democratic', and so does this Empire. The British and French empires that exterminated tens of millions of people all over the world, always promoted themselves as 'democracies'.

And now, once again, we are witnessing a tremendous onslaught by the business-political-imperialist Western apparatus, destabilizing or directly destroying entire nations, overthrowing governments and bombing 'rebellious' states into the ground. All this is done in the name of democracy, in the name of freedom.

An unelected monster, as it has done for centuries, is playing with the world, torturing some, and plundering others, or both.

The West, in a final act of arrogance, has somehow confused itself with its own concept of God. It has decided that it has the full right to shape the planet, to punish and to reward, to destroy and rebuild as it wishes.

This horrible wave of terror unleashed against our planet, is justified by an increasingly meaningless but fanatically defended dogma, symbolized by a box (made of card or wood, usually), and masses of people sticking pieces of paper into the opening on the top of that box.

This is the altar of Western ideological fundamentalism. This is a supreme idiocy that cannot be questioned, as it guarantees the status quo for ruling elites and business interests, an absurdity that justifies all crimes, all lies and all madness.

This sacrificial altar is called, Democracy, in direct mockery to what the term symbolizes in its original, Greek, language.

***

In our latest book, "On Western Terrorism – from Hiroshima to Drone Warfare", Noam Chomsky commented on the 'democratic' process in the Western world:

"The goal of elections now is to undermine democracy. They are run by the public relations industry and they're certainly not trying to create informed voters who'll make rational choices. They are trying to delude people into making irrational choices. The same techniques that are used to undermine markets are used to undermine democracy. It's one of the major industries in the country and its basic workings are invisible."

But what is it that really signifies this 'sacred' word, this almost religious term, and this pinnacle of Western demagogy? We hear it everywhere. We are ready to sacrifice millions of lives (not ours of course, at least not yet, but definitely lives of the others) in the name of it.

Democracy!

All those grand slogans and propaganda! Last year I visited Pyongyang, but I have to testify that North Koreans are not as good at slogans as the Western propagandists are.

"In the name of freedom and democracy!" Hundreds of millions tons of bombs fell from the sky on the Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese countryside bodies were burned by napalm, mutilated by spectacular explosions.

"Defending democracy!" Children were raped in front of their parents in Central America, men and women machine-gunned down by death squads that had been trained in military bases in the United States of America.

"Civilizing the world and spreading democracy!" That has always been a European slogan, their 'stuff to do', and a way of showing their great civilization to others. Amputating hands of Congolese people, murdering around ten million of them, and many more in Namibia, East Africa, West Africa and Algiers; gassing people of the Middle East ( "I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes", to borrow from the colorful lexicon of (Sir) Winston Churchill).

So what is it really? Who is it, that strange lady with an axe in her hand and with a covered face – the lady whose name is Democracy?

***

It is all very simple, actually. The term originates from the Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía) "rule of the people". Then and now, it was supposed to be in direct contrast to ἀριστοκρατία (aristokratia), that means "rule of an elite".

'Rule of the people' Let us just visit a few examples of the 'rule of the people'.

People spoke, they ruled, they voted 'democratically' in Chile, bringing in the mild and socialist government of 'Popular Unity' of Salvador Allende.

Sure, the Chilean education system was so brilliant, its political and social system so wonderful, that it inspired not only many countries in Latin America, but also those in far away Mediterranean Europe.

That could not be tolerated, because, as we all know, it is only white Europe and North America that can be allowed to supply the world with the blueprint for any society, anywhere on this planet. It was decided that "Chile has to scream", that its economy had to be ruined and the "Popular Unity" government kicked out of power.

Henry Kissinger, belonging, obviously, to a much higher race and country of a much higher grade, made a straightforward and in a way very 'honest' statement, clearly defining the North American stand towards global democracy: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people."

And so Chile was ravaged. Thousands of people were murdered and 'our son-of-a-bitch' was brought to power. General Pinochet was not elected: he bombed the Presidential palace in Santiago, he savagely tortured the men and women who were elected by the Chilean people, and he "disappeared" thousands.

But that was fine, because democracy, as it is seen from Washington, London or Paris, is nothing more and nothing less than what the white man needs in order to control this planet, unopposed and preferably never criticized.

Of course Chile was not the only place where 'democracy' was 'redefined'. And it was not the most brutal scenario either, although it was brutal enough. But it was a very symbolic 'case', because here, there could be absolutely no dispute: an extremely well educated, middle class country, voted in transparent elections, just to have its government murdered, tortured and exiled, simply because it was too democratic and too involved in improving the lives of its people.

There were countless instances of open spite coming from the North, towards the 'rule of the people' in Latin America. For centuries, there have been limitless examples. Every country 'south of the border' in the Western Hemisphere, became a victim.

After all, the self-imposed Monroe Doctrine gave North Americans 'unquestionable rights' to intervene and 'correct' any 'irresponsible' democratic moves made by the lower races inhabiting Central and South America as well as the Caribbean Islands.

There were many different scenarios of real ingenuity, in how to torture countries that embarked on building decent homes for their people, although soon there was evidence of repetitiveness and predictability.

The US has been either sponsoring extremely brutal coups (like the one in Guatemala in 1954), or simply occupying the countries in order to overthrow their democratically elected governments. Justifications for such interventions have varied: it was done in order to 'restore order', to 'restore freedom and democracy', or to prevent the emergence of 'another Cuba'.

From the Dominican Republic in 1965 to Grenada in 1983, countries were 'saved from themselves' through the introduction (by orders from mainly the Protestant North American elites with clearly pathological superiority complexes) of death squads that administered torture, rape and extrajudicial executions. People were killed because their democratic decisions were seen as 'irresponsible' and therefore unacceptable.

While there has been open racism in every aspect of how the Empire controlled its colonies, 'political correctness' was skillfully introduced, effectively reducing to a bare minimum any serious critiques of the societies that were forced into submission.

In Indonesia, between 1 and 3 million people were murdered in the years1965/66, in a US -sponsored coup, because there too, was a 'great danger' that the people would rule and decide to vote 'irresponsibly', bringing the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), at that time the third most numerous Communist Party anywhere in the world, to power.

The democratically elected President of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961, by the joint efforts of the United States and Europe, simply because he was determined to use the vast natural resources of his country to feed his own people; and because he dared to criticize Western colonialism and imperialism openly and passionately.

East Timor lost a third of its population simply because its people, after gaining independence from Portugal, dared to vote the left-leaning FRETILIN into power. "We are not going to tolerate another Cuba next to our shores", protested the Indonesian fascist dictator Suharto, and the US and Australia strongly agreed. The torture, and extermination of East Timorese people by the Indonesian military, was considered irrelevant and not even worth reporting in the mass media.

The people of Iran could of course not be trusted with 'democracy'. Iran is one of the oldest and greatest cultures on earth, but its people wanted to use the revenues from its oil to improve their lives, not to feed foreign multi-nationals. That has always been considered a crime by Western powers – a crime punishable by death.

The people of Iran decided to rule; they voted, they said that they want to have all their oil industry nationalized. Mohammad Mosaddeq, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, was ready to implement what his people demanded. But his government was overthrown in a coup d'état, orchestrated by the British MI6 and North American CIA, and what followed was the murderous dictatorship of the deranged Western puppet – Reza Pahlavi. As in Latin America and Indonesia, instead of schools, hospitals and housing projects, people got death squads, torture chambers and fear. Is that what they wanted? Is that what they voted for?

There were literally dozens of countries, all over the world, which had to be 'saved', by the West, from their own 'irresponsible citizens and voters'. Brazil recently 'celebrated' the 50th anniversary of the US-backed military coup d'état, which began a horrendous 20 year long military dictatorship. The US supported two coups in Iraq, in 1963 and 1968 that brought Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party to power. The list is endless. These are only some random examples.

On closer examination, the West has overthrown, or made attempts to overthrow, almost any democratically elected governments, on all continents attempting to serve their own people, by providing them with decent standards of living and social services. That is quite an achievement, and some stamina!

Could it be then that the West only respects 'Democracy' when 'people are forced to rule' against their own interests? And when they are 'defending' what they are ordered to defend by local elites that are subservient to North American and European interests? and also when they are defending the interests of foreign multi-national companies and Western governments that are dependent on those companies?

***

Can anything be done? If a country is too weak to defend itself by military means, against some mighty Western aggressor, could it approach any international democratic institutions, hoping for protection?

Unthinkable!

A good example is Nicaragua, which had been literally terrorized by the United States, for no other reason than for being socialist. Its government went to court.

The case was called: The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America.

It was a 1986 case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which the ICJ ruled in favor of Nicaragua and against the United States and awarded reparations to Nicaragua.

The judgment was long, consisting of 291 points. Among them that the United States had been involved in the "unlawful use of force." The alleged violations included attacks on Nicaraguan facilities and naval vessels, the mining of Nicaraguan ports, the invasion of Nicaraguan air space, and the training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying of forces (the "Contras") and seeking to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

Judgment was passed, and so were UN votes and resolutions. The UN resolution from 1986 called for the full and immediate compliance with the Judgment. Only Thailand, France and the UK abstained. The US showed total spite towards the court, and it vetoed all UN resolutions.

It continued its terror campaign against Nicaragua. In the end, the ruined and exhausted country voted in 1990. It was soon clear that it was not voting for or against Sandinista government, but whether to endure more violence from the North, or to simply accept depressing defeat. The Sandinista government lost. It lost because the voters had a North American gun pointing at their heads.

This is how 'democracy' works.

I covered the Nicaraguan elections of 1996 and I was told by voters, by a great majority of them, that they were going to vote for the right-wing candidate (Aleman), only because the US was threatening to unleash another wave of terror in case the Sandinista government came back to power, democratically.

The Sandinistas are now back. But only because most of Latin America has changed, and there is unity and determination to fight, if necessary.

***

While the Europeans are clearly benefiting from neo-colonialism and the plunder that goes on all over the world, it would be ridiculous to claim that they themselves are 'enjoying the fruits of democracy'.

In a dazzling novel "Seeing", written by Jose Saramago, a laureate for the Nobel Prize for literature, some 83% of voters in an unidentified country (most likely Saramago's native Portugal), decide to cast blank ballots, expressing clear spite towards the Western representative election system.

This state, which prided itself as a 'democratic one', responded by unleashing an orgy of terror against its own citizens. It soon became obvious that people are allowed to make democratic choices only when the result serves the interests of the regime.

Ursula K Le Guin, reviewing the novel in the pages of The Guardian, on 15 April 2006, admitted:

Turning in a blank ballot is a signal unfamiliar to most Britons and Americans, who aren't yet used to living under a government that has made voting meaningless. In a functioning democracy, one can consider not voting a lazy protest liable to play into the hands of the party in power (as when low Labour turn-out allowed Margaret Thatcher's re-elections, and Democratic apathy secured both elections of George W Bush). It comes hard to me to admit that a vote is not in itself an act of power, and I was at first blind to the point Saramago's non-voting voters are making.

She should not have been. Even in Europe itself, terror had been unleashed, on many occasions, against the people who decided to vote 'incorrectly'.

Perhaps the most brutal instance was in the post WWII period, when the Communist Parties were clearly heading for spectacular victories in France, Italy and West Germany. Such 'irresponsible behavior' had to be, of course, stopped. Both US and UK intelligence forces made a tremendous effort to 'save democracy' in Europe, employing Nazis to break, intimidate, even murder members of progressive movements and parties.

These Nazi cadres were later allowed, even encouraged, to leave Europe for South America, some carrying huge booty from the victims who vanished in concentration camps. This booty included gold teeth.

Later on, in the 1990's, I spoke to some of them, and also to their children, in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. They were proud of their deeds, unrepentant, and as Nazi as ever.

Many of those European Nazis later actively participated in Operation Condor, so enthusiastically supported by the Paraguayan fascist and pro-Western dictator, Alfredo Strössner. Mr Strössner was a dear friend and asylum-giver to many WWII war criminals, including people like Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor known as the "Angel of Death", who performed genetic experiments on children during the WWII.

So, after destroying that 'irresponsible democratic process' in Europe (the post-war Western Empire), many European Nazis that were now loyally serving their new master, were asked to continue with what they knew how to do best. Therefore they helped to assassinate some 60,000 left-wing South American men, women and their children, who were guilty of building egalitarian and just societies in their home countries. Many of these Nazis took part, directly, in Operacion Condor, under the direct supervision of the United States and Europe.

As Naomi Klein writes in her book, Shock Doctrine:

"Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor, Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a campaign of political repression and terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program was intended to eradicate communist or Soviet influence and ideas, and to suppress active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments."

In Chile, German Nazis rolled up their sleeves and went to work directly: by interrogating, liquidating and savagely torturing members of the democratically elected government and its supporters. They also performed countless medical experiments on people, at the so-called Colonia Dirnidad, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose rule was manufactured and sustained by Dr. Kissinger and his clique.

But back to Europe: in Greece, after WWII, both the UK and US got heavily involved in the civil war between the Communists and the extreme right-wing forces.

In 1967, just one month before the elections in which the Greek left-wing was expected to win democratically (the Indonesian scenario of 1965), the US and its 'Greek colonels' staged a coup, which marked the beginning of a 7 year savage dictatorship.

What happened in Yugoslavia, some 30 years later is, of course clear. A successful Communist country could not be allowed to survive, and definitely not in Europe. As bombs fell on Belgrade, many of those inquisitive and critically thinking people that had any illusions left about the Western regime and its 'democratic principles', lost them rapidly.

But by then, the majority of Europe already consisted of indoctrinated masses, some of the worst informed and most monolithic (in their thinking) on earth.

Europe and its voters It is that constantly complaining multitude, which wants more and more money, and delivers the same and extremely predictable electoral results every four, five or six years. It lives and votes mechanically. It has totally lost its ability to imagine a different world, to fight for humanist principles, and even to dream.

It is turning into an extremely scary place, a museum at best, and a cemetery of human vision at the worst.

***

As Noam Chomsky pointed out:

Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalizing the population. A huge propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalized quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, "That's politics." But it isn't. It's only a small part of politics.
The population has been carefully excluded from political activity, and not by accident. An enormous amount of work has gone into that disenfranchisement. During the 1960s the outburst of popular participation in democracy terrified the forces of convention, which mounted a fierce counter-campaign. Manifestations show up today on the left as well as the right in the effort to drive democracy back into the hole where it belongs.

Arundhati Roy, commented in her "Is there life after democracy?"

The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? Is it possible to reverse this process? Can something that has mutated go back to being what it used to be?

***

After all that brutality, and spite for people all over the world, the West is now teaching the planet about democracy. It is lecturing Asians and Africans, people from Middle East and Sub-Continent, on how to make their countries more 'democratic'. It is actually hard to believe, it should be one of the most hilarious things on earth, but it is happening, and everyone is silent about it.

Those who are listening without bursting into laughter are actually well paid.

There are seminars; even foreign aid projects related to 'good governance', sponsored by the European Union, and the United States. The EU is actually much more active in this field. Like the Italian mafia, it sends covert but unmistakable messages to the world: "You do as we say, or we break your legs But if you obey, come to us and we will teach you how to be a good aide to Cosa Nostra! And we will give you some pasta and wine while you are learning."

Because there is plenty of money, so called 'funding' members of the elite, the academia, media and non-government organizations, from countries that have been plundered by the West – countries like Indonesia, Philippines, DR Congo, Honduras, or Colombia –send armies of people to get voluntarily indoctrinated, (sorry, to be 'enlightened') to learn about democracy from the greatest assassins of genuine 'people's power'; from the West.

Violating democracy is an enormous business. To hush it up is part of that business. To learn how to be idle and not to intervene against the external forces destroying democracy in your own country, while pretending to be 'engaged and active', is actually the best business, much better than building bridges or educating children (from a mercantilist point of view).

Once, at the University of Indonesia where I was invited to speak, a student asked me 'what is the way forward', to make his country more democratic? I replied, looking at several members of the professorial staff:

"Demand that your teachers stop going to Europe on fully funded trips. Demand that they stop being trained in how to brainwash you. Do not go there yourself, to study. Go there to see, to understand and to learn, but not to study Europe had robbed you of everything. They are still looting your country. What do you think you will learn there? Do you really think they will teach you how to save your nation?"

Students began laughing. The professors were fuming. I was never invited back. I am sure that the professors knew exactly what I was talking about. The students did not. They were thinking that I made a very good joke. But I was not trying to be funny.

***

As I write these words, the Thai military junta has taken over the country. The West is silent: the Thai military is an extremely close ally. Democracy at work

And as I write these words, the fascist government in Kiev is chasing, kidnapping and "disappearing" people in the east and south of Ukraine. By some insane twist of logic, the Western corporate media is managing to blame Russia. And only a few people are rolling around on the floor, laughing.

As I write these words, a big part of Africa is in flames, totally destroyed by the US, UK, France and other colonial powers.

Client states like the Philippines are now literally being paid to get antagonistic with China.

Japanese neo-fascist adventurism fully supported by the Unites States can easily trigger WWIII. So can Western greed and fascist practices in Ukraine.

Democracy! People's power!

If the West had sat on its ass, where it belongs, in Europe and in North America, after WWII, the world would have hardly any problems now. People like Lumumba, Allende, Sukarno, Mosaddeq, would have led their nations and continents. They would have communicated with their own people, interacted with them. They would have built their own styles of 'democracy'.

But all that came from the Bandung Conference of 1955, from the ideals of the Non-Aligned movement, was ruined and bathed in blood. The true hopes of the people of the world cut to pieces, urinated on, and then thrown into gutter.

But no more time should be wasted by just analyzing, and by crying over spilt milk. Time to move on!

The world has been tortured by Europe and the United States, for decades and centuries. It has been tortured in the name of democracy but it has all been one great lie. The world has been tortured simply because of greed, and because of racism. Just look back at history. Europe and the United States have only stopped calling people "niggers", but they do not have any more respect for them than before. And they are willing, same as before, to sacrifice millions of human lives.

Let us stop worshiping their box, and those meaningless pieces of paper that they want us to stick in there. There is no power of people in this. Look at the United States itself – where is our democracy? It is a one-party regime fully controlled by market fundamentalists. Look at our press, and propaganda

Rule of the people by the people, true democracy, can be achieved. We the people had been derailed, intellectually, so we have not been thinking how, for so many decades.

Now we, many of us, know what is wrong, but we are still not sure what is right.

Let us think and let us search, let us experiment. And also, let us reject their fascism first. Let them stick their papers wherever they want! Let them pretend that they are not slaves to some vendors and swindlers. Let them do whatever they want – there, where they belong.

Democracy is more than a box. It is more than a multitude of political parties. It is when people can truly choose, decide and build a society that they dream about. Democracy is the lack of fear of having napalm and bombs murdering our dreams. Democracy is when people speak and from those words grow their own nation. Democracy is when millions of hands join together and from that brilliant union, new trains begin to run, new schools begin to teach, and new hospitals begin to heal. All this by the people, for the people! All this created by proud and free humans as gift to all – to their nation.

Yes, let the slave masters stick their pieces of paper into a box, or somewhere else. They can call it democracy. Let us call democracy something else – rule of the people, a great exchange of ideas, of hopes and dreams. Let our taking control over our lives and over our nations be called 'democracy'!

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His discussion with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism is now going to print. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is now re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called "Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear". He has just completed the feature documentary, "Rwanda Gambit" about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

[Sep 18, 2017] A Foreign Enemy is a Tyrants Best Friend

Notable quotes:
"... This activates what Randolph Bourne called their "herd mind," inducing them to rally around their governments in a militaristic stampede so as to create the national unity of purpose deemed necessary to defend the homeland against the foreign menace. When you lay siege to an entire country, don't be surprised when it starts to look and act like a barracks. ..."
"... Imperial governments like to pretend that affairs are quite the reverse, adopting the essentially terrorist rationale that waging war against the civilian populace of a rogue state will pressure them to blame and turn against their governments. In reality, it only tends to bolster public support for the regime. ..."
"... The imperial "bogeygoat" is an essential prop for the power of petty tyrants, just as rogue state bogeymen are essential props for the power of grand tyrants like our own. Thus, it should be no surprise that the staunchest opponents to the Iran nuclear deal include both American and Iranian hardliners. Just as there is a "symbiosis of savagery" between imperial hawks and anti-imperial terrorists (as I explain here), there is a similar symbiotic relationship between imperial and rogue state hardliners. ..."
Jul 28, 2015 | Antiwar.com

Cold wars freeze despotism in place, and thaws in foreign relations melt it away

The recent Iran nuclear deal represents a thaw in the American cold war against that country. It is a welcome sequel to the Obama administration's partial normalization with Cuba announced late last year.

Hardliners denounce these policies as "going soft" on theocracy and communism. Yet, it is such critics' own hardline, hawkish policies that have done the most to ossify and strengthen such regimes.

That is because war, including cold war, is the health of the state. Antagonistic imperial policies - economic warfare, saber-rattling, clandestine interventions, and full-blown attacks - make the citizens of targeted "rogue states" feel under siege.

This activates what Randolph Bourne called their "herd mind," inducing them to rally around their governments in a militaristic stampede so as to create the national unity of purpose deemed necessary to defend the homeland against the foreign menace. When you lay siege to an entire country, don't be surprised when it starts to look and act like a barracks.

Rogue state governments eagerly amplify and exploit this siege effect through propaganda, taking on the mantle of foremost defender of the nation against the "Yankee Imperialist" or "Great Satan." Amid the atmosphere of crisis, public resistance against domestic oppression by the now indispensable "guardian class" goes by the board. "Quit your complaining. Don't you know there's a cold war on? Don't you know we're under siege?"

Moreover, cold wars make it easy for rogue state governments to shift the blame for domestic troubles away from their own misrule, and onto the foreign bogeyman/scapegoat ("bogeygoat?") instead. This is especially easy for being to some extent correct, especially with regard to economic blockades and other crippling sanctions, like those Washington has imposed on Cuba, Iran, etc.

Imperial governments like to pretend that affairs are quite the reverse, adopting the essentially terrorist rationale that waging war against the civilian populace of a rogue state will pressure them to blame and turn against their governments. In reality, it only tends to bolster public support for the regime.

The imperial "bogeygoat" is an essential prop for the power of petty tyrants, just as rogue state bogeymen are essential props for the power of grand tyrants like our own. Thus, it should be no surprise that the staunchest opponents to the Iran nuclear deal include both American and Iranian hardliners. Just as there is a "symbiosis of savagery" between imperial hawks and anti-imperial terrorists (as I explain here), there is a similar symbiotic relationship between imperial and rogue state hardliners.

The last thing hardliners want is the loss of their cherished bogeygoat. Once an emergency foreign threat recedes, and the fog of war hysteria lifts, people are then more capable of clearly seeing their "guardians" as the domestic threat that they are, and more likely to feel that they can afford to address that threat without exposing themselves to foreign danger. This tends to impel governments to become less oppressive, and may even lead to their loss of power.

Thus after Nixon normalized with communist China and belatedly ended the war on communist Vietnam, both of those countries greatly liberalized and became more prosperous. Even Soviet reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union only arose following American detente.

Simultaneously, as the American cold wars against communist Cuba and communist North Korea continued without stint for decades, providing the Castros and Kims the ultimate bogeygoat to feature in their propaganda, the impoverishing authoritarian grip of those regimes on their besieged people only strengthened.

Similarly, ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the puppet dictator that the CIA had installed over Iran in a 1953 coup, the Ayatollahs have been able to exploit ongoing hostility from the American "Great Satan" to retain and consolidate their repressive theocratic power.

All this is an object lesson for US relations with Putin's Russia, Chavista Venezuela, and beyond. Disastrously, it is being unheeded.

Even while thawing relations with Iran, the Obama administration has triggered a new cold war with Russia over Ukraine. This has only made Russian President Vladimir Putin more domestically popular than ever.

And even while normalizing relations with Cuba, Obama recently declared Venezuela a national security threat, imposing new sanctions. As journalist Alexandra Ulmer argued, these sanctions "may be godsend for struggling Venezuelan leader," President Nicolas Maduro. As Ulmer wrote in Reuters:

"Suddenly, the unpopular leader has an excuse to crank up the revolutionary rhetoric and try to fire up supporters, copying a tactic used skillfully for more than a decade by his mentor and predecessor, the late socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez.

A new fight with the enemy to the north may also help unite disparate ruling Socialist Party factions and distract Venezuelans from relentless and depressing talk about their day-to-day economic problems."

[Jul 17, 2017] Russias anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet eras by Michael Birnbaum

Is not this a blowback of Washington neocons organized Kiev coup d'état of February 22, 2014 ?
Neocons sowed the teeth of dragon. Now wait...
Notable quotes:
"... The anger is a challenge for U.S. policymakers seeking to reach out to a shrinking pool of friendly faces in Russia. ..."
"... The anti-Western anger stands to grow even stronger if President Obama decides to send lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian military, as he has been considering. The aim would be to "raise the cost" of any Russian intervention by making the Ukrainian response more lethal. But even some of Putin's toughest critics say they cannot support that proposal, since the cost is the lives of their nation's soldiers. ..."
"... "The United States is experimenting geopolitically, using people like guinea pigs," said Sergey Mikheev, director of the Kremlin-allied Center for Current Politics, on a popular talk show on the state-run First Channel last year. His accusations, drawn out by a host who said it was important to "know the enemy," were typical of the rhetoric that fills Russian airwaves. ..."
"... Soviet rhetoric was officially anti-Western, but it couldn't repress ordinary Russians' passion for the Beatles or their enthusiasm for getting news from jammed Voice of America broadcasts. Those positive feelings spilled over after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... But the list of perceived slights from the United States has long been building, particularly after the United States and NATO bombed Serbia, a Russian ally, in 1999. Then came the war in Iraq, NATO expansion and the Russia-Georgia conflict. Each time, there were smaller spikes of anti-American sentiment that receded as quickly as they emerged. ..."
"... The years of perceived humiliations have "led to anti-Americanism at the grass-roots level, which did not exist before," said Vladimir Pozner, a journalist who for decades was a prominent voice of the Soviet Union in the United States. More recently, he has to explain the United States inside Russia. "We don't like the Americans, and it's because they're pushy, they think they're unique and they have had no regard for anyone else." ..."
"... Many Russians tapped into a deep-rooted resentment that after modeling themselves on the West following the breakup of the Soviet Union, they had experienced only hardship and humiliation in return. ..."
Mar 08, 2015 | The Washington Post

After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-U.S. bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say.

The indignation peaked after the assassination of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, as conspiracy theories started to swirl - just a few hours after he was killed - that his death was a CIA plot to discredit Russia. (On Sunday, Russia charged two men from Chechnya, and detained three others, in connection with Nemtsov's killing.)

There are drives to exchange Western-branded clothing for Russia's red, blue and white. Efforts to replace Coke with Russian-made soft drinks. Fury over U.S. sanctions. And a passionate, conspiracy-laden fascination with the methods that Washington is supposedly using to foment unrest in Ukraine and Russia.

The anger is a challenge for U.S. policymakers seeking to reach out to a shrinking pool of friendly faces in Russia. And it is a marker of the limits of their ability to influence Russian decision-making after a year of sanctions. More than 80 percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States, according to the independent Levada Center, a number that has more than doubled over the past year and that is by far the highest negative rating since the center started tracking those views in 1988.

Nemtsov's assassination, the highest-profile political killing during Vladimir Putin's 15 years in power, was yet another brutal strike against pro-Western forces in Russia. Nemtsov had long modeled himself on Western politicians and amassed a long list of enemies who resented him for it.

The anti-Western anger stands to grow even stronger if President Obama decides to send lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian military, as he has been considering. The aim would be to "raise the cost" of any Russian intervention by making the Ukrainian response more lethal. But even some of Putin's toughest critics say they cannot support that proposal, since the cost is the lives of their nation's soldiers.

"The United States is experimenting geopolitically, using people like guinea pigs," said Sergey Mikheev, director of the Kremlin-allied Center for Current Politics, on a popular talk show on the state-run First Channel last year. His accusations, drawn out by a host who said it was important to "know the enemy," were typical of the rhetoric that fills Russian airwaves.

"They treat us all in the same way, threatening not only world stability but the existence of every human being on the planet," Mikheev said.

Soviet rhetoric was officially anti-Western, but it couldn't repress ordinary Russians' passion for the Beatles or their enthusiasm for getting news from jammed Voice of America broadcasts. Those positive feelings spilled over after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

But the list of perceived slights from the United States has long been building, particularly after the United States and NATO bombed Serbia, a Russian ally, in 1999. Then came the war in Iraq, NATO expansion and the Russia-Georgia conflict. Each time, there were smaller spikes of anti-American sentiment that receded as quickly as they emerged.

Putin cranked up the volume after protest movements in late 2011 and 2012, which he blamed on the State Department. It wasn't until last year, when the crisis started in Ukraine, that anti-Americanism spread even among those who once eagerly hopped on planes to Miami and Los Angeles.

Fed by the powerful antagonism on Russian federal television channels, the main source of news for more than 90 percent of Russians, ordinary people started to feel more and more disillusioned. The anger seems different from the fast-receding jolts of the past, observers say, having spread faster and wider.

The years of perceived humiliations have "led to anti-Americanism at the grass-roots level, which did not exist before," said Vladimir Pozner, a journalist who for decades was a prominent voice of the Soviet Union in the United States. More recently, he has to explain the United States inside Russia. "We don't like the Americans, and it's because they're pushy, they think they're unique and they have had no regard for anyone else."

... ... ...

Many Russians tapped into a deep-rooted resentment that after modeling themselves on the West following the breakup of the Soviet Union, they had experienced only hardship and humiliation in return.

"Starting from about 1989, we completely reoriented toward the West. We looked at them as a future paradise. We expected that once we had done all that they demanded, we'd dance for them and they would finally hug and kiss us and we would merge in ecstasy," said Evgeny Tarlo, a member of Russia's upper house of parliament, on a Russian talk show last year. Instead, he said, the West has been trying to destroy Russia.

The anti-Americanism makes it harder for American culture to make inroads through its traditional means - soft-power routes such as movies, music and education. Last year, Russian policymakers ended a decades-old high school exchange program that offered their nation's best and brightest the chance to spend semesters at U.S. schools. Few Western artists now perform on Russian soil.

Western diplomats also say privately that they find themselves frozen out of speaking engagements and other opportunities to explain their countries' positions to Russian audiences. And Russians who work for local outposts of Western companies say their friends and neighbors increasingly question their patriotism.

... ... ...

Even McDonald's, long an embodiment of Russian dreams about the West, was targeted for supposed health violations in the fall. Some of its most prominent locations were forced to shut down temporarily. When they reopened, McDonald's started an advertising campaign emphasizing its local ties and its 25-year history in Russia, playing down the Golden Arches' global significance as a bright beacon of America.

Last week, one McDonald's billboard in the heart of Moscow read: "Made in Russia, for Russians."

Michael Birnbaum is The Post's Moscow bureau chief. He previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.

[Jul 10, 2017] We need to, as a society, start throwing these neocon criminals their co-conspirators right where they belong in a jail cell post haste

Jul 10, 2017 | www.unz.com

Silverado , July 14, 2015 at 10:47 pm GMT

@Kiza

After reading, listening to and watching so much of the information about the shooting down of MH17 I put forward the most likely scenario and some important related points.

1) If the Ukrainians shot it down, then it would have been a deliberate and planned act; if the Separatists did it it would have been a totally stupid mistake. Shooting down a plane which even falls onto their territory was definitely not in their interest.
2) If MH17 was shot-down by the Ukrainians then nobody would believe that the West was not involved in this act, therefore the West has a strong incentive to defend its Ukrainians even if it knows that they have done it.
3) It is possible that the US neocons knew of the plan to shoot down a passenger plane, but it was unlikely that this was known within the wider US Administration
4) The Prime Minister of Australia one Tony Abbott, was screaming his head off against the Russians about 7 hours after the shoot-down; he reduced rhetoric later, but how did he know who did it so quickly?
5) It is not impossible but it is not easy to shoot down a passenger plane flying at almost 11,000 m and at a high speed from the ground. When the USS Vincennes downed the Iran Air Flight 655, this plane was still climbing up. Other examples of shootdowns were mostly by military jets, not by Surface-to-Air missiles (SAMs).
6) Therefore, most likely the MH17 was shot down by a military jet, because nobody saw a very visible plume from a BUK missile.
7) It is extremely unlikely that the US does not have satellite imagery, where is it?
8) Who directed a civilian jet over a small conflict area (50km x 80km)?
9) Why the black boxes were never analysed and sound of the last few seconds played in the media, as it usually happens?
10) What about news that the Ukrainian Government was given the right of veto over the investigative report's content? This would make this report totally compromised and worthless.

In conclusion - most information points that MH17 was shot down at the behest of the US neocons and executed by their Ukrainian proxies . The majority of the US Government has not been involved in this act, but all information has been suppressed and this is why the US intelligence professionals have been complaining. That reminds me of an old neocon joke I re-heard the other day that goes like

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and John McCain are all flying over New Orleans in a Blackhawk, surveying the progress that has been made in rebuilding the city and the levees. As they fly over the Ninth Ward, Cheney looks out the window, grins, and says, "You know, I could throw a thousand-dollar bill out the window right now and make one of those poor bastards very happy."

Bush says, "Well, I could throw ten hundred-dollar bills out the window right now and make TEN people very happy."

Not to be outdone, McCain chimes in, "Oh yeah? Well, I could throw a hundred $10 bills out the window and make a HUNDRED Americans very happy."

Hearing this, the copter pilot rolls his eyes and says, "Man, I could throw all three of you out the window and make 300 million Americans very happy."

We need to, as a society, start throwing these neocon criminals & their co-conspirators right where they belong – in a jail cell post haste

[Jul 09, 2017] The stakes in U.S.-Russia relations could not be higher possible nuclear conflagration and the end of civilization but the U.S. mainstream media is still slouching around in mccarthyism-ville by Robert Parry

this is pure McCarthyism, not "propaganda ville". Clapper and Brennan are the leaders of Russiagate color revolution against Trump. And there is no countervailing force.
Notable quotes:
"... It wasn't until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper belatedly set the record straight in sworn congressional testimony in which he explained that there were only three "contributing agencies" from which analysts were "hand-picked." ..."
"... The reference to "hand-picked" analysts pricked the ears of some former U.S. intelligence analysts who had suffered through earlier periods of "politicized" intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear. ..."
"... On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper's description, saying only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment. ..."
"... Finally, on June 25, the Times' hand was forced when White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to the old formulation, mocking Trump for "still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected." ..."
"... When this falsehood was called to the Times' attention, it had little choice but to append a correction to the article, noting that the intelligence "assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community." ..."
"... The Associated Press ran a similar "clarification" applied to some of its fallacious reporting repeating the "17-intelligence-agencies" meme. ..."
"... Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference suggests that more than one key element of the case for Russian culpability was based not on direct investigations by the U.S. intelligence agencies, but on the work of external organizations. ..."
"... Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the FBI access to its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the investigators to rely on a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of getting this sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with ties to the anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council. ..."
"... But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia hacked into Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks for publication (something that both Russia and WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger danger is how the major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently propagandistic approach toward everything relating to Russia. ..."
"... The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014 by supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fiercely anti-Russian regime. ..."
"... The U.S. operation was spearheaded by neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain. ..."
"... "On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display determination. Russia fomented an armed uprising and seized Crimea in violation of international norms, and it continues to instigate violence in the Donbas. Mr. Trump ought to make it unmistakably clear to Mr.Putin that the United States will not retreat from the sanctions imposed over Ukraine until the conditions of peace agreements are met." Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of some collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in Syria, Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in a July 5 column , "Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge bstacle right now. It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in Syria." Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors. There is no doubt that Russia "invaded" Ukraine; "seized" Crimea; "meddled" in U.S. and European elections. Yet all these groupthinks should be subjected to skepticism, not simply treated as undeniable truths. ..."
"... As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be, it also represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with the existential risk of nuclear conflagration. ..."
"... With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence – and the avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go without question. Journalists and commentators should hold themselves to professional precision, not slide into sloppy careerism, lost in "propaganda-ville." ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
Jul 09, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

Exclusive: The stakes in U.S.-Russia relations could not be higher – possible nuclear conflagration and the end of civilization – but the U.S. mainstream media is still slouching around in "propaganda-ville," says Robert Parry.

MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville By Robert Parry

As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to believe that it is the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in a wilderness of propaganda and falsehoods, a dangerous land of delusion that is putting the future of humankind at risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.

This media problem has grown over recent decades as lucrative careerism has replaced responsible professionalism. Pack journalism has always been a threat to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a self-sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, "there's safety in numbers," is borne out by the fact that being horrendously wrong, such as on Iraq's WMD, leads to almost no accountability because so many important colleagues were wrong as well.

Similarly, there has been no accountability after many mainstream journalists and commentators falsely stated as flat-fact that "all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies" concurred that Russia did "meddle" in last November's U.S. election.

For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down whenever anyone questions the groupthink of Russian venality perverting American democracy. Even the esteemed "Politifact" deemed the assertion "true." But it was never true.

It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he issued a statement last Oct. 7 alleging Russian meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim that it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence agencies, a dishonest twist that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began touting.

However, for people who understand how the U.S. Intelligence Community works, the claim of a 17-agencies consensus has a specific meaning, some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that seeks out judgments and dissents from the various agencies.

But there was no NIE regarding alleged Russian meddling and there apparently wasn't even a formal assessment from a subset of the agencies at the time of Clapper's statement. President Obama did not order a publishable assessment until December – after the election – and it was not completed until Jan. 6, when a report from Clapper's office presented the opinions of analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency – three agencies (or four if you count the DNI's office), not 17.

Lacking Hard Evidence

The report also contained no hard evidence of a Russian "hack" and amounted to a one-sided circumstantial case at best. However, by then, the U.S. mainstream media had embraced the "all-17-intelligence-agencies" refrain and anyone who disagreed, including President Trump, was treated as delusional. The argument went: "How can anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies have confirmed as true?"

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

It wasn't until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper belatedly set the record straight in sworn congressional testimony in which he explained that there were only three "contributing agencies" from which analysts were "hand-picked."

The reference to "hand-picked" analysts pricked the ears of some former U.S. intelligence analysts who had suffered through earlier periods of "politicized" intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear.

On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper's description, saying only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment.

Brennan said the Jan. 6 report "followed the general model of how you want to do something like this with some notable exceptions. It only involved the FBI, NSA and CIA as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It wasn't a full inter-agency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies."

After this testimony, some of the major news organizations, which had been waving around the "17-intelligence-agencies" meme, subtly changed their phrasing to either depict Russian "meddling" as an established fact no longer requiring attribution or referred to the "unanimous judgment" of the Intelligence Community without citing a specific number.

This "unanimous judgment" formulation was deceptive, too, because it suggested that all 17 agencies were in accord albeit without exactly saying that. For a regular reader of The New York Times or a frequent viewer of CNN, the distinction would almost assuredly not be detected.

For more than a month after the Clapper-Brennan testimonies, there was no formal correction.

A Belated Correction

Finally, on June 25, the Times' hand was forced when White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to the old formulation, mocking Trump for "still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected."

When this falsehood was called to the Times' attention, it had little choice but to append a correction to the article, noting that the intelligence "assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."

The Associated Press ran a similar "clarification" applied to some of its fallacious reporting repeating the "17-intelligence-agencies" meme.

So, you might have thought that the mainstream media was finally adjusting its reporting to conform to reality. But that would mean that one of the pillars of the Russia-gate "scandal" had crumbled, the certainty that Russia and Vladimir Putin did "meddle" in the election.

The story would have to go back to square one and the major news organizations would have to begin reporting on whether or not there ever was solid evidence to support what had become a "certainty" – and there appeared to be no stomach for such soul-searching. Since pretty much all the important media figures had made the same error, it would be much easier to simply move on as if nothing had changed.

That would mean that skepticism would still be unwelcome and curious leads would not be followed. For instance, there was a head-turning reference in an otherwise typical Washington Post take-out on June 25 accusing Russia of committing "the crime of the century." A reference, stuck deep inside the five-page opus, said, "Some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia came from another country, officials said. Because of the source of the material, the NSA was reluctant to view it with high confidence." Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference suggests that more than one key element of the case for Russian culpability was based not on direct investigations by the U.S. intelligence agencies, but on the work of external organizations.

Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the FBI access to its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the investigators to rely on a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of getting this sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with ties to the anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council.

Relying on Outsiders

You might be wondering why something as important as this "crime of the century," which has pushed the world closer to nuclear annihilation, is dependent on dubious entities outside the U.S. government with possible conflicts of interest.

If the U.S. government really took this issue seriously, which it should, why didn't the FBI seize the DNC's computers and insist that impartial government experts lead the investigation? And why – given the extraordinary expertise of the NSA in computer hacking – is "some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia [coming] from another country," one that doesn't inspire the NSA's confidence?

But such pesky questions are not likely to be asked or answered by a mainstream U.S. media that displays deep-seated bias toward both Putin and Trump.

Mostly, major news outlets continue to brush aside the clarifications and return to various formulations that continue to embrace the "17-intelligence-agencies" canard, albeit in slightly different forms, such as references to the collective Intelligence Community without the specific number. Anyone who questions this established conventional wisdom is still crazy and out of step.

For instance, James Holmes of Esquire was stunned on Thursday when Trump at a news conference in Poland reminded the traveling press corps about the inaccurate reporting regarding the 17 intelligence agencies and said he still wasn't entirely sure about Russia's guilt. "In public, he's still casting doubt on the intelligence community's finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election nearly nine months after the fact," Holmes sputtered before describing Trump's comment as a "rant." So, if you thought that a chastened mainstream media might stop in the wake of the "17-intelligence-agencies" falsehood and rethink the whole Russia-gate business, you would have been sadly mistaken.

But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia hacked into Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks for publication (something that both Russia and WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger danger is how the major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently propagandistic approach toward everything relating to Russia.

Hating Putin

This pattern traces back to the earliest days of Vladimir Putin's presidency in 2000 when he began to rein in the U.S.-prescribed "shock therapy," which had sold off Russia's assets to well-connected insiders, making billions of dollars for the West-favored "oligarchs," even as the process threw millions of average Russian into poverty.

But the U.S. mainstream media's contempt for Putin reached new heights after he helped President Obama head off neoconservative (and liberal interventionist) demands for a full-scale U.S. military assault on Syria in August 2013 and helped bring Iran into a restrictive nuclear agreement when the neocons wanted to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran.

The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014 by supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. operation was spearheaded by neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain.

Nuland was heard in an intercepted pre-coup phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should become the new leaders and pondering how to "glue" or "midwife this thing."

Despite the clear evidence of U.S. interference in Ukrainian politics, the U.S. government and the mainstream media embraced the coup and accused Putin of "aggression" when ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, called the Donbas, resisted the coup regime.

When ethnic Russians and other citizens in Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject the coup regime and rejoin Russia – a move protected by some of the 20,000 Russian troops inside Crimea as part of a basing agreement – that became a Russian "invasion." But it was the most peculiar "invasion," since there were no images of tanks crashing across borders or amphibious landing craft on Crimean beaches, because no such "invasion" had occurred.

However, in virtually every instance, the U.S. mainstream media insisted on the most extreme anti-Russian propaganda line and accused people who questioned this Official Narrative of disseminating Russian "propaganda" – or being a "Moscow stooge" or acting as a "useful fool." There was no tolerance for skepticism about whatever the State Department or the Washington think tanks were saying.

Trump Meets Putin

So, as Trump prepares for his first meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the U.S. mainstream media has been in a frenzy, linking up its groupthinks about the Ukraine "invasion" with its groupthinks about Russia "hacking" the election.

In a July 3 editorial , The Washington Post declared, "Mr. Trump simply cannot fail to admonish Mr. Putin for Russia's attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. He must make clear the United States will not tolerate it, period. Naturally, this is a difficult issue for Mr. Trump, who reaped the benefit of Russia's intervention and now faces a special counsel's investigation, but nonetheless, in his first session with Mr. Putin, the president must not hesitate to be blunt.

"On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display determination. Russia fomented an armed uprising and seized Crimea in violation of international norms, and it continues to instigate violence in the Donbas. Mr. Trump ought to make it unmistakably clear to Mr.Putin that the United States will not retreat from the sanctions imposed over Ukraine until the conditions of peace agreements are met." Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of some collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in Syria, Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in a July 5 column , "Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge bstacle right now. It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in Syria." Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors. There is no doubt that Russia "invaded" Ukraine; "seized" Crimea; "meddled" in U.S. and European elections. Yet all these groupthinks should be subjected to skepticism, not simply treated as undeniable truths.

But seeing only one side to a story is where the U.S. mainstream media is at this point in history. Yes, it is possible that Russia was responsible for the Democratic hacks and did funnel the material to WikiLeaks, but evidence has so far been lacking. And, instead of presenting both sides fairly, the major media acts as if only one side deserves any respect and dissenting views must be ridiculed and condemned.

In this perverted process, collectively approved versions of complex situations congeal into conventional wisdom, which simply cannot be significantly reconsidered regardless of future revelations.

As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be, it also represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with the existential risk of nuclear conflagration.

With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence – and the avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go without question. Journalists and commentators should hold themselves to professional precision, not slide into sloppy careerism, lost in "propaganda-ville."

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

[Jul 07, 2017] Tillerson Sanctions on Russia Will Remain Until Crimea Is Returned

"Until Crimea is returned" is a sign of neocon foreign policy
Jul 07, 2017 | news.antiwar.com

Assured Ukraine Sanctions Against Russia Won't Change

Jason Ditz Posted on April 24, 2017 Categories News Tags Crimea , Russia , Tillerson , Ukraine Hopes that the US sanctions against Russia would be quickly rolled back when President Trump was elected in November didn't pan out, and the latest comments from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggest that the administration has no intention of removing the sanctions at all.

Speaking with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko over the weekend, Tillerson reported told him that the US sanctions on Russia will remain wholly in place " until Russia returns control of the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine. " Needless to say, Russia isn't going to do that.

Crimea was an autonomous oblast within Ukraine until 2014, when they held a referendum and seceded. After that secession, they sought and gained accession into the Russian Federation, which the US doesn't recognize. US officials have repeatedly presented this as Russia "invading Crimea" or "taking Crimea by force," though the peninsula's ethnic Russian majority was able to effectively secede outright without anything nearly so dramatic happening.

Nobody seriously expects Russia to "give back" Crimea, even if there was a mechanism by which they could conceivably do so, which there isn't. Conditioning sanctions relief on that is tantamount to announcing the sanctions as a permanent feature of US policy, a stance which will likely suit the many Russia hawks in Congress and across Western Europe quite well.

[Jul 07, 2017] Western powers fuel the Ukrainian conflict - and wider tensions with Russia - by treating Ukraine as a strategic prize, says Nicolai Petro, Silvia-Chandley professor of Peace Studies and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island

Jul 07, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

https://ads.pubmatic.com/AdServer/js/showad.js#PIX&kdntuid=1&p=156204

Warren , July 7, 2017 at 8:45 am

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vyrEujl75tk

Published on 6 Jul 2017

Western powers fuel the Ukrainian conflict - and wider tensions with Russia - by treating Ukraine as a strategic prize, says Nicolai Petro, Silvia-Chandley professor of Peace Studies and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island

et Al , July 7, 2017 at 6:03 am

Words are much cheaper than actions

Warren , July 7, 2017 at 8:45 am

Dr Nicolai Petro is very brave to express such opinions considering where he is – Odessa. Anyone who deviates from the Banderite-Maidan propaganda line in Ukraine is censored and ostracised at best, at worst – murdered.

Bob , July 7, 2017 at 11:32 am

Odessa has a noticeable pro-Russian element as is true in some other parts of Kiev regime controlled Ukraine. Granted, folks with such views need to be careful.

[May 30, 2017] Someone needs to remind Brennan that the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started immediately upon Brennans arrival toKiev in 2014

Notable quotes:
"... getting to the crux of the matter when Russia released the phone conversation where ZUS State Dept. – Kagan klan / Zio-bitch Nuland was overheard deciding who was going to be the next president of Ukraine (some democracy), it was this breach of global oligarch protocol that has riled the deepstate Zio-war-scum ever since. Hence all the screeching and hysterics about "Russian hacking". The thug Brennan, (as you correctly call him [imagine this mug coming into the room as you're about to be 'enhanced interrogated']) ..."
"... All these war criminals are all scrambling to undermine Trump in the fear that he'll eventually hold some of them accountable for their serial crimes, treasons, and treachery. Which brings us to this curious comment.. ..."
"... And if it puts a smelly sock in the mouths of the neocons and war pigs to saber rattle at Iran, with no possibility to actually do them any harm, because of the treaty and Europe's need to respect it, then what's the harm of Trump sounding a little buffoonish if it gets them off his back so that he can circle himself with a Pretorian guard of loyalists and get to the bottom of all of this. I suspect that is what terrifies people like Brennan more than anything else. ..."
www.unz.com

annamaria , May 30, 2017 at 2:50 pm GMT

@exiled off mainstreet

The end result of Brennan's fulminations likely is nuclear war, since he seems to consider even contact with the Russians treasonous. His view is both fascist and nihilist and treasonous to civilization itself and a threat to our survival. Brennan is just a regular profiteering opportunist.

Someone needs to remind the scoundrel that the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014. He tried to make the visit secret but this did not work and Brennan's presence in Ukraine became widely known: https://sputniknews.com/world/20140415189240842-ANALYSIS-CIA-Director-Brennans-Trip-to-Ukraine-Initiates-Use-Of/

"CIA Director John Brennan visited Ukraine over the weekend, information that was confirmed by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday, after being reported by media on Sunday.

Over the same weekend, Kiev authorities cracked down on pro-federalization protests in eastern Ukraine. Regime troops advanced toward a number of cities in eastern Ukraine Tuesday to attack the protesters. "Brennan's appearance in Kiev just before the announcement of a violent crackdown in eastern Ukraine is just too timely to assume that it is a coincidence," Turbeville [an American international affairs expert] said.

"Brennan, who has been actively involved in arming insurgents in Libya, Syria and Venezuela, has a reputation for using thuggish tactics in pursuit of CIA goals," Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist told RIA Novosti."

This is a fact showing the US' direct meddling in the affairs of another state and in creating a war on a border with Russian federation. Brennan has been so much immersed in lies and politicking and war crimes that it is impossible to expect any decent reasoning from this miserable opportunist.

Rurik , Website May 30, 2017 at 4:06 pm GMT

@annamaria

the civil war in Ukraine (initiated by an illegal Kievan junta sponsored and installed by the US), had started immediately upon Brennan's arrival to Kiev in 2014

I wouldn't so much call it a civil war, as a ZUSA imposed putsch, installing a Zio-bankster-quisling.

PG:

the United States routinely interferes in elections worldwide and that the action taken in various places including Ukraine goes far beyond phone conversations.

getting to the crux of the matter when Russia released the phone conversation where ZUS State Dept. – Kagan klan / Zio-bitch Nuland was overheard deciding who was going to be the next president of Ukraine (some democracy), it was this breach of global oligarch protocol that has riled the deepstate Zio-war-scum ever since. Hence all the screeching and hysterics about "Russian hacking". The thug Brennan, (as you correctly call him [imagine this mug coming into the room as you're about to be 'enhanced interrogated'])

http://www.frontpagemag.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2015/03/John_Brennan.jpg

has his fingerprints not just all over the war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, but Syria and elsewhere too.

All these war criminals are all scrambling to undermine Trump in the fear that he'll eventually hold some of them accountable for their serial crimes, treasons, and treachery. Which brings us to this curious comment..

The desire to bring down the buffoonish Donald Trump is understandable,

what the hell does Mr. G think will replace him?!

So far the "buffoonish Donald Trump" has not declared a no-fly zone in Syria, as we know the war sow would have by now. He's not materially harmed the Assad regime, but only made symbolic attempts to presumably mollify the war pigs like McBloodstain and co in the zio-media/AIPAC/etc..

His rhetoric notwithstanding, he seems to be making nice with the Russians, to the apoplectic hysteria of people like Brennan and the Stain.

In fact the more people like Brennan and Bloodstain and the zio-media and others seem on the brink of madness, the better Trump seems to me every day.

And if it puts a smelly sock in the mouths of the neocons and war pigs to saber rattle at Iran, with no possibility to actually do them any harm, because of the treaty and Europe's need to respect it, then what's the harm of Trump sounding a little buffoonish if it gets them off his back so that he can circle himself with a Pretorian guard of loyalists and get to the bottom of all of this. I suspect that is what terrifies people like Brennan more than anything else.

[May 05, 2017] How to Bring Down the Elephant in the Room by the Saker

I think the problem with this article is that the author can't distinguish were Neoliberalism starts and ends and were Anglo Zionism (which we will understand simply as Neocon ideology starts and ends. both are variants of Trotskyism -- "Trotskyism for the rich" to be exact. Also it is economic interest that trump all others, so that alliance of the USA and Israel is pragmatic and is about USA access to ME oil
They definitely highly intersect, but they are still distinct political ideas ("The USA global empire uber alles in case of neocons; translational elites uber alles in case of neoliberals) and somewhat distinct ideologies. I am not convinced that Cheney cabals (which included Paul Wolfiwitz and several other neocons) was only or mostly pro-Israel political faction. And if tail really wags the dog -- the idea that Israel determine foreign policy of the USA -- is true of not. It can be be that empire has its own dynamics and Israel is just a convenient and valuable ally for now, much like Saudies
Notable quotes:
"... To sum it all up, I need to warn both racists and rabid anti-anti-Zionists that I will disappoint them both: the object of my discussion and criticism below will be limited to categories which a person chooses to belong to or endorse (religion, political ideas, etc.) and not categories which one is born with (race, ethnicity). ..."
"... Second, so what are Jews if not a race? In my opinion, they are a tribe (which Oxford Dictionaires defines as: a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader ..."
"... as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise ..."
"... My own preference still goes for "Zionist" because it combines the ideological racism of secular Jews with the religious racism of Judaics (if you don't like my choice, just replace "Zionist" with any of the categories I listed above). Zionism used to be secular, but it has turned religious during the late 20th century now and so for our purposes this term can encompass both secular and religious Jewish supremacists. Add to this some more or less conservative opinions and minsets and you have "Ziocons" as an alternative expression. ..."
"... doubleplusgoodthinking ..."
"... The reason why I decided to tackle this issue today is that the forces who broke Trump in less than a month are also the very same forces who have forced him into a political 180: the Neocons and the US deep state. However, I think that these two concepts can be fused into on I would call the "Ziocons": basically Zionists plus some rabid Anglo imperialists à la ..."
"... There is some pretty good evidence that the person in charge of this quiet coup is Jared Kushner, a rabid Zionist . Maybe . Maybe not. This does not really matter, what matters now is to understand what this all means for the rest of us in the "basket of deplorables", the "99%ers" – basically the rest of the planet. ..."
"... Syria . I think that we can all agree that having the black flag of Daesh fly over Damascus would be a disaster for Israel. Right? Wrong! You are thinking like a mentally sane person. This is not how the Israelis think at all. For them, Daesh is much preferable to Assad not only because Assad is the cornerstone of a unitary Syria, but because Daesh in power gives the Israelis the perfect pretext to establish a "security zone" to "protect" northern Israel. ..."
"... Daesh is basically a tool to carve up an even bigger Zionist entity. ..."
"... The bottom line is this: modern Neocons are little more than former Trotskyists who have found a new host to use. Their hatred for everything Russian is still so visceral that they rather support bona fide ..."
"... Bottom line – Ziocons feel an overwhelming and always present hatred for Russia and Russians and that factor is one of the key components of their motivations. Unless you take that hatred into account you will never be able to make sense of the Ziocons and their demented policies. ..."
"... Yes, Trump is a poorly educated ignoramus who is much better suited to the shows in Las Vegas than to be President of a nuclear superpower, but I don't see any signs of him being hateful of anybody. ..."
"... The poor man apparently had absolutely no idea of the power and maniacal drive of the Neocons who met him once he entered the White House. ..."
"... we now have the Ziocons in total control of BOTH parties in Congress (or, more accurately, both wings of the Ziocon party in Congress ..."
"... I get the feeling that there are only two types of officers left in the top ranks of the US military: retired ones and " ass-kissing little chickenshit s " à la ..."
"... ZOG. Or "Zionist Occupation Government". That used to be the favorite expression of various Jew-haters out there and it's use was considered the surefire sign of a rabid anti-Semite. And yet, that is precisely what we are now all living with: a Zionist occupation government which has clearly forced Trump to make a 180 on all his campaign promises and which now risks turning the USA into a radioactive desert resulting from a completely artificial and needless confrontation with Russia. ..."
"... Facts are facts, you cannot deny them or refuse to correctly qualify them that because of the possible "overtones" of the term chosen or because of some invented need to be especially "sensitive" when dealing with some special group. Remember – Jews are not owed any special favor and there is no need to constantly engage in various forms of complex linguistic or mental yoga contortions when discussing them and their role in the modern world. Still, I am using ZOG here just to show that it can be done, but this is not my favorite expression. ..."
"... at the same time ..."
"... ZOG is not an American problem. It is a planetary problem, if only because right now ZOG controls the US nuclear arsenal. ..."
"... I don't believe that Trump is dumb enough to actually strike at North Korea. I think that his dumbass plan is probably to shoot down a DPRK missile to show that he has made "America great again" or something equally asinine. ..."
"... To be totally honest, I don't think that the "very powerful armada" will do anything other than waste the US taxpayer's money. I am getting a strong sense that Trump is all about appearance over substance, what the Russians call "показуха" – a kind of fake show of force, full with special effects and "cool" photo ops, but lacking any real substance. Still, being on the receiving end of Trump's показуха (po-kah-zoo-kha) must be unnerving, especially if you already have natural paranoid tendencies. I am not at all sure the Kim Jong-un will find the presence of the US carrier strike group as pathetic and useless as I do. ..."
"... They are the ONLY ONES who really want to maintain the AngloZionst Empire at any cost. Trump made it clear over and over again that his priority was the USA and the American people, not the Empire. ..."
"... I can imagine the gasp of horror and disgust some of you will have at seeing me use the ZOG expression. I assure you, it is quite deliberate on my part. I want to 1) wake you up and 2) show you that you cannot allow the discomfort created by conditioning to guide your analyses ..."
"... Things are coming to a head. Trump presented himself as a real alternative to the ultimate warmongering shabbos-shiksa Hillary. It is now pretty darn obvious that what we got ourselves is just another puppet, but that the puppet-masters have not changed. ..."
"... From Ann Coulter to Pat Buchanan , many paleo-Conservatives clearly "got it". As did the real progressives . What we are left with is what I call the "extreme center", basically zombies who get their news from the Ziomedia and who have so many mental blocks that it takes weeks of focused efforts to basically bring them back to reality. ..."
"... The modern western [neoliberal] society has been built on a categorical rejection of [Christian] ethics and morality. Slogans like "God is dead" or "Beyond good and evil" resulted in the most abject and viciously evil century in human history: the 20th century. Furthermore, most people by now can tell that Hollywood, and its bigger brother, the US porn industry, have played a central role in basically removing categories such as "good" or "truth" or "honor" from the mind of those infected by the US mass media, especially the Idiot-box (aka "telescreen" in Orwell's 1984). Instead unbridled greed and consumption became the highest and most sacred expression of "our way of life" as Americans like to say ..."
"... Hollywood movies proclaimed that " greed is good ". In fact, at the very core of the capitalist [neoliberal] ideology is the belief that the sum total of everybody's greed yields the happiest and most successful society possible. Crazy and sick stuff, but I don't have the place to discuss this here. ..."
"... Sidebar: by the way, and contrary to popular belief, Russia is not an especially religious country at all. While only a minority of Russians is truly religious, a majority of Russians seem to support religious values as civilizational ones. ..."
"... for the time being we have this apparently paradoxical situation of a generally secular society standing for traditional and religious values ..."
"... You might wonder how pacifism, international law, human and civil rights, democracy, pluralism, anti-racism, ethics and morality can help avert a nuclear war in Korea. In truth – they cannot directly do this. But in the long term, I firmly believe that these values can corrode the AngloZionist Empire from within. ..."
"... Public protests does not work in a regime where the Ziomedia gets to decide which demonstration gets coverage and which one does not. ..."
"... ZIG is a more accurate acronym as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks, lice, mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc. ..."
"... Excellent, thought provoking and depressingly accurate. Even the cavil about the Golan Heights is based, if I'm not mistaken, on the fact Israel declared it annexed in 1981. ..."
"... I'll have to disagree. It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized the propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it. ..."
"... That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70 years now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA. US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used to be back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them. ..."
"... Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans. Who were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews were the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the victims can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. ..."
"... US are not the ones being controlled, they are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material. Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea. ..."
"... If Trump's foreign policies are being dictated by someone else I want him to give us names, addresses and photographs of the real decision makers. Until that happens I hold him responsible. I have begun to regard Trump as Dubya with Jared as his Cheney. ..."
"... Zionists are very powerful, but they are part of Globalism, a cabal of all elites of world: Chinese, EU, American, Jewish, Latin America, Hindus, Saudis, etc. It is the GLOB that rules. ..."
"... In general, the US leadership has not proven itself bright, cunning or principled enough to resist the Zio agenda. For exhibit "A" just read up on Truman. Then consider LBJ's response to the attack on the USS Liberty. ..."
"... One could also examine who the influential members of the admins of Wilson and FDR as well. ..."
"... But ZOG goes beyond mere government. The Zions now permeate countless NGO's, media institutions including news and entertainment, high finance, folkways involving culture-wide taboos, and or course, higher and lower education. Even Christian doctrine has been altered to accommodate this highly-aggressive movement. The Zionist agenda is a burgeoning phenomena. And its zombie acolytes are similarly ubiquitous. The Zions have captured our government–and more. ..."
"... So, we see a bunch of loyal dual American-Israeli citizens sitting at the top of the Israeli government, it's businesses, and its media? Oh – right – all those dual citizens are sitting atop US government, businesses and media. And we see Israel fighting wars for US' benefit? Oh – right – it's US doing the dirty work for Jewish expansionism. ..."
"... You do not get it Saker. It does not work that way. In absolute numbers losses are very low. It is all up to media to create a perception. America can afford to have many 1000′s more dead w/o any dent in its well being. Just control the media. Vilify the enemies. ..."
"... With the exception of Vietnam War America as and Empire hasn't lost a single war. Vietnam War was misguided from the point of view of the Empire which at the end of 1960′s and beginning of 1970′s was to be redirected to Middle East. ..."
"... There will be everlasting chaos of sectarian fighting as as long as TPTB will be supplying weapons to one of the sides. Always the weaker one at given moment. The same goes for Libya and soon for Syria. No more stable, semi-secular states with strong central power in the Middle East. ..."
"... Do not judge war success in terms of what is good or bad for Americans. It's all about the Empire, not about Americans. ..."
"... My bet is that it is not Trump himself but Ivanka. The elites found a soft spot and are using this weakness to control him. Who would have the means to do this? None other than his son in law Jared. ..."
"... Roland Bernard High Finance Shocking Revelations (Dutch with Subtitles) This video, more than any I have seen, exposes the dark heart of the matter. It's a must-watch from beginning to end. Highly credible, in my opinion. ..."
"... The Zionist attempt to control language. The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY ..."
"... But the Elephant driver is the British Empire System!!! ..."
"... It is the British behind the coup against Trump. The British want to prevent the end of "Geopolitics" as we know it which is what would happen should America Russia and China come together per the New Silk Road and One Belt initiatives. This is why the British are setting off ..."
"... Look at a swarm of the US Congresspeople blubbering praises for Israel during AIPAC' annual meetings. The US Congress is indeed the Zionist Occupied Territory, a picture of a host captured by a parasitoid. ..."
"... How many referenda the Syrians have held to bring the Golan Heights to the embrace of Israel? We cannot wait to hear your story of Syrian people voting to join Israel. ..."
"... Surely in the dreams of the US ziocons and in the criminal Oded Yinon's plan for Eretz Israel, which preaches for creating a civil disorder in the neighboring states so that Israel could snatch as much territory as possible from the neighbors. The ongoing Libyan and Syrian tragedies belong to that plan. ..."
"... Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in 1948. Jewish-American gangsters used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation " ..."
"... when I read that I thought you might have meant Charlie Reese. he used to write for the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, until ((they)) ran him out ..."
"... Doesn't matter. It was a political defeat, and war is an extension of politics. ..."
Apr 16, 2017 | www.unz.com
219 Comments

First, a painful, but needed, clarification: Basement crazies . Neocons . Zionists . Israel Lobbyists . Judaics . Jews . Somewhere along this list we bump into the proverbial "elephant in the room". For some this bumping will happen earlier in the list, for others a little later down the list, but the list will be more or less the same for everybody. Proper etiquette, as least in the West, would want to make us run away from that topic. I won't. Why? Well, for one thing I am constantly accused of not discussing this elephant. Furthermore, I am afraid that the role this elephant is playing is particularly toxic right now. So let me try to deal with this beast, but first I have to begin with some caveats.

First, terminology. For those who have not seen it, please read my article " Why I use the term AngloZionist and why it is important ". Second, please read my friend Gilad Atzmon's article " Jews, Judaism & Jewishness " (or, even better, please read his seminal book The Wondering Who ). Please note that Gilad specifically excludes Judaics (religious Jews,) from his discussion. He writes "I do not deal with Jews as a race or an ethnicity . I also generally avoid dealing with Judaism (the religion)". I very much include them in my discussion. However, I also fully agree with Gilad when he writes that " Jews Are Not a Race But Jewish Identity is Racist " (those having any doubts about Jews not being a race or ethnicity should read Shlomo Sand's excellent book " The Invention of the Jewish People "). Lastly, please carefully review my definition of racism as spelled out in my " moderation policies ":

Racism is, in my opinion, not so much the belief that various human groups are different from each other, say like dog breeds can be different, but the belief that the differences between human groups are larger than within the group. Second, racism is also a belief that the biological characteristics of your group somehow pre-determine your actions/choices/values in life. Third, racism often, but not always, assumes a hierarchy amongst human groups (Germanic Aryans over Slavs or Jews, Jews over Gentiles, etc.). I believe that God created all humans with the same purpose and that we are all "brothers in Adam", that we all equally share the image (eternal and inherent potential for perfection) of God (as opposed to our likeness to Him, which is our temporary and changing individual condition).

To sum it all up, I need to warn both racists and rabid anti-anti-Zionists that I will disappoint them both: the object of my discussion and criticism below will be limited to categories which a person chooses to belong to or endorse (religion, political ideas, etc.) and not categories which one is born with (race, ethnicity).

Second, so what are Jews if not a race? In my opinion, they are a tribe (which Oxford Dictionaires defines as: a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader ). A tribe is a group one can chose to join (Elizabeth Taylor) or leave (Gilad Atzmon).

Third, it is precisely and because Jews are a tribe that we, non-Jews, owe them exactly nothing: no special status, neither bad nor good, no special privilege of any kind, no special respect or "sensitivity" – nothing at all. We ought to treat Jews exactly as we treat any other of our fellow human beings: as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise (Luke 6:31). So if being Jewish is a choice and if any choice is a legitimate object of discussion and criticism, then (choosing to) being Jewish is a legitimate object of discussion and criticism. Conversely, those who would deny us the right to criticize Jews are, of course, the real racists since they do believe that Jews somehow deserve a special status. In fact, that notion is at the core of the entire Jewish identity and ideology.

Now let's come back to our opening list: Basement crazies. Neocons. Zionists. Israel Lobbyists. Judaics. Jews. I submit that these are all legitimate categories as long as it is clear that "Jews by birth only", what Alain Soral in France calls "the everyday Jews", are not included in this list. Thus, for our purposes and in this context, these terms are all interchangeable. My own preference still goes for "Zionist" because it combines the ideological racism of secular Jews with the religious racism of Judaics (if you don't like my choice, just replace "Zionist" with any of the categories I listed above). Zionism used to be secular, but it has turned religious during the late 20th century now and so for our purposes this term can encompass both secular and religious Jewish supremacists. Add to this some more or less conservative opinions and minsets and you have "Ziocons" as an alternative expression.

[Sidebar: it tells you something about the power of the Zionist propaganda machine, I call it the Ziomedia, that I would have to preface this article with a 700+ explanatory words note to try to overcome conditioned mental reflexes in the reader (that I might be an evil anti-Semite). By the way, I am under no illusions either: some Jews or doubleplusgoodthinking shabbos-goyim will still accuse me of racism. This just comes with the territory. But the good news is when I will challenge them to prove their accusation they will walk away empty-handed].

The reason why I decided to tackle this issue today is that the forces who broke Trump in less than a month are also the very same forces who have forced him into a political 180: the Neocons and the US deep state. However, I think that these two concepts can be fused into on I would call the "Ziocons": basically Zionists plus some rabid Anglo imperialists à la Cheney or McCain. These are the folks who control the US corporate media, Hollywood, Congress, most of academia, etc . These are the folks who organized a ferocious assault on the "nationalist" or "patriotic" wing of Trump supporters and ousted Flynn and Bannon and these are the folks who basically staged a color revolution against Trump . There is some pretty good evidence that the person in charge of this quiet coup is Jared Kushner, a rabid Zionist . Maybe . Maybe not. This does not really matter, what matters now is to understand what this all means for the rest of us in the "basket of deplorables", the "99%ers" – basically the rest of the planet.

Making sense of the crazies

Making sense of the motives and goals (one cannot speak of "logic" in this case) of self-deluded racists can be a difficult exercise. But when the "basement crazies" (reminder: the term from from here ) are basically in control of the policies of the US Empire, this exercise becomes crucial, vital for the survival of the mentally sane. I will now try to outline the reasons behind the "new" Trump policies using two examples: Syria and Russia.

Syria . I think that we can all agree that having the black flag of Daesh fly over Damascus would be a disaster for Israel. Right? Wrong! You are thinking like a mentally sane person. This is not how the Israelis think at all. For them, Daesh is much preferable to Assad not only because Assad is the cornerstone of a unitary Syria, but because Daesh in power gives the Israelis the perfect pretext to establish a "security zone" to "protect" northern Israel. And that, in plain English, means fully occupying and annexing the Golan (an old Israeli dream). Even better, the Israelis know Daesh really well (they helped create it with the USA and Saudi Arabia) and they know that Daesh is a mortal threat to Hezbollah. By putting Daesh into power in Syria, the Israelis hope for a long, bloody and never ending war in Lebanon and Syria. While their northern neighbors would be plugged into maelstrom of atrocities and horrors, the Israelis would get to watch it all from across their border while sending a few aircraft from time to time to bomb Hezbollah positions or even innocent civilians under whatever pretext. Remember how the Israelis watched in total delight how their forces bombed the population of Gaza in 2014? With Daesh in power in Damascus, they would get an even better show to take their kids to. Finally, and last but most definitely not least, the Syrian Christians would be basically completely wiped out. For those who know the hatred Judaics and Jews have always felt for Christianity (even today ) it will be clear why the Israelis would want Daesh in power in Syria: Daesh is basically a tool to carve up an even bigger Zionist entity.

Russia . Ziocons absolutely loathe Russia and everything Russian. Particularly the ex-Trotskyists turned Neocons. I have explained the origins of this hatred elsewhere and I won't repeat it all here. You just need to study the genocidal policies against anything Russian of the first Bolshevik government (which was 80%-85% Jews; don't believe me? Then listen to Putin himself ). I have already discussed " The ancient spiritual roots of russophobia " in a past article and I have also explain what rabbinical Phariseism (what is mistakenly called "Judaism" nowadays) is little more than an "anti-Christianity "(please read those articles if this complex and fascinating history is of interest to you). The bottom line is this: modern Neocons are little more than former Trotskyists who have found a new host to use. Their hatred for everything Russian is still so visceral that they rather support bona fide Nazis (isn't this ironic?) in the Ukraine than Russia, which is even more paradoxical if you recall that before the 1917 Bolshevik coup anti-Jewish feelings were much stronger in what is today the Ukraine than in what is the Russian Federation today.

In fact, relations between Russians and Jews have, I would argue, been significantly improving since the Nazi coup in Kiev, much to the chagrin of the relatively few Russians left who truly hate Jews. While you will hear a lot of criticism of organized political Jewry in Russia, especially compared to the West, there is very little true anti-Jewish racism in Russia today, and even less publicly expressed in the media (in fact, 'hate speech' is illegal in Russia). One thing to keep in mind is that there are many substantial differences between Russian Jews and US Jews, especially amongst those Russian Jews who deliberately chose not to emigrate to Israel, or some other western country (those interested in this topic can find a more detailed discussion here ). Jews in Russia today deliberately chose to stay and that, right there, show a very different attitude than the attitude of those (Jews and non-Jews) who took the first opportunity to get out of Russia as soon as possible. Bottom line – Ziocons feel an overwhelming and always present hatred for Russia and Russians and that factor is one of the key components of their motivations. Unless you take that hatred into account you will never be able to make sense of the Ziocons and their demented policies.

Making sense of Trump

I think that Trump can be criticized for a lot of things, but there is exactly zero evidence of him ever harboring anti-Russian feelings. There is plenty of evidence that he has always been pro-Israeli, but no more than any politician or businessman in the USA. I doubt that Trump even knows where the Golan Heights even are. He probably also does not know that Hezbollah and Daesh are mortal enemies. Yes, Trump is a poorly educated ignoramus who is much better suited to the shows in Las Vegas than to be President of a nuclear superpower, but I don't see any signs of him being hateful of anybody. More generally, the guy is really not ideological. The best evidence is his goofy idea of building a wall to solve the problem of illegal immigration: he (correctly) identified a problem, but then he came up with a Kindergarten level (pseudo) solution.

The same goes for his views on Russia. He probably figured out something along these lines: "Putin is a strong guy, Russia is a strong country, they hate Daesh and want to destroy it – let's join forces". The poor man apparently had absolutely no idea of the power and maniacal drive of the Neocons who met him once he entered the White House. Even worse is the fact that he apparently does not realize that they are now using him to try out some pretty demented policies for which they will later try to impeach him as the sole culprit should things go wrong (and they most definitely will). Frankly, I get the feeling that Trump was basically sincere in his desire to "drain the swamp" but that he is simply not too clever (just the way he betrayed Flynn and Bannon to try to appease the Ziocons is so self-defeating and, frankly, stupid). But even if I am wrong and Trump was "their" plant all along (I still don't believe that at all), the end result is the same: we now have the Ziocons in total control of BOTH parties in Congress (or, more accurately, both wings of the Ziocon party in Congress ), in total control of the White House, the mass media and Hollywood. I am not so sure that they truly are in control of the Pentagon, but when I see the kind of pliable and spineless figures military Trump has recently appointed, I get the feeling that there are only two types of officers left in the top ranks of the US military: retired ones and " ass-kissing little chickenshit s " à la Petraeus. Not good. Not good at all. As for the ridiculously bloated (and therefore mostly incompetent) "three letter agencies soup", it appears that it has been turned from an intelligence community to a highly politicized propaganda community whose main purpose is to justify whatever counter-factual insanity their political bosses can dream up. Again. Not good. Not good at all.

Living with ZOG

ZOG. Or "Zionist Occupation Government". That used to be the favorite expression of various Jew-haters out there and it's use was considered the surefire sign of a rabid anti-Semite. And yet, that is precisely what we are now all living with: a Zionist occupation government which has clearly forced Trump to make a 180 on all his campaign promises and which now risks turning the USA into a radioactive desert resulting from a completely artificial and needless confrontation with Russia. To those horrified that I would dare use an expression like ZOG I will reply this: believe me, I am even more upset about having to admit that ZOG is real than you are: I really don't care for racists of any kind, and most of these ZOG folks looks like real racists to me. But, alas, they are also right! Facts are facts, you cannot deny them or refuse to correctly qualify them that because of the possible "overtones" of the term chosen or because of some invented need to be especially "sensitive" when dealing with some special group. Remember – Jews are not owed any special favor and there is no need to constantly engage in various forms of complex linguistic or mental yoga contortions when discussing them and their role in the modern world. Still, I am using ZOG here just to show that it can be done, but this is not my favorite expression. I just feel that committing the crimethink here will encourage others to come out of their shell and speak freely. At the very least, asking the question of whether we do or do not have a Zionist Occupation Government is an extremely important exercise all by itself. Hence, today I ZOG-away

Some might argue with the "occupation" part of the label. Okay – what would you call a regime which is clearly acting in direct opposition to the will of an overwhelming majority of the people and which acts in the interests of a foreign power (with which the USA does not even have a formal treaty)? Because, please make no mistake here, this is not a Trump-specific phenomenon. I think that it all began with Reagan and that the Ziocons fully seized power with Bill Clinton. Others think that it all began with Kennedy. Whatever may be the case, what is clear is that election after election Americans consistently vote for less war and each time around they get more wars . It is true that most Americans are mentally unable to conceptually analyze the bizarre phenomena of a country with no enemies and formidable natural barriers needs to spend more on wars of aggression then the rest of the planet spends of defense. Nor are they equipped to wonder why the US needs 16/17 intelligences agencies when the vast majority of countries out there do fine with 2-5. Lastly, most Americans do believe that they have some kind of duty to police the planet. True. But at the same time , they are also sick and tired of wars, if only because so many of their relatives, friends and neighbors return from these wars either dead or crippled. That, and the fact that Americans absolutely hate losing. Losing is all the USA has been doing since God knows how long: losing wars against all but the weakest and most defenseless countries out there. Most Americans also would prefer that the money spent aboard on "defending democracy" (i.e. imperialism) be spent at home to help the millions of Americans in need in the USA. As the southern rock band Lynyrd Snynyrd (which hails from Jacksonville, Florida) once put it in their songs " Things goin' on ":

Too many lives they've spent across the ocean
Too much money been spent upon the moon
Well, until they make it right
I hope they never sleep at night
They better make some changes
And do it soon

Soon? That song was written in 1978! And since then, nothing has changed. If anything, things got worse, much worse.

Houston, we got a problem

ZOG is not an American problem. It is a planetary problem, if only because right now ZOG controls the US nuclear arsenal. And Trump, who clearly and unequivocally campaigned on a peace platform, is now sending a " very powerful armada " to the coast of the DPRK. Powerful as this armada might be, it can do absolutely nothing to prevent the DPRK artillery from smashing Seoul into smithereens. You think that I am exaggerating? Business Insider estimated in 2010 that it would take the DPRK 2 hours to completely obliterate Seoul . Why? Because the DPRK has enough artillery pieces to fire 500,000 rounds of artillery on Seoul in the first hour of a conflict , that's why. Here we are talking about old fashioned, conventional, artillery pieces. Wikipedia says that the DPRK has 8,600 artillery pieces and 4,800 multiple rocket launcher systems. Two days a go a Russian expert said that the real figure was just under 20'000 artillery pieces. Whatever thee exact figure, suffice to say that it is "a lot".

The DPRK also has some more modern but equally dangerous capabilities . Of special importance here are the roughly 200'000 North Korean special forces. Oh sure, these 200'000 are not US Green Beret or Russian Spetsnaz, but they are adequate for their task: to operate deep behind enemy lies and create chaos and destroy key objectives. You tell me – what can the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group deploy against these well hidden and dispersed 10'000+ artillery pieces and 200'000 special forces? Exactly, nothing at all.

And did I mention that the DPRK has nukes?

No, I did not. First, I am not at all sure that the kind of nukes the DPRK has can be fitted for delivery on a missile. Having a few nukes and having missiles is one thing, having missiles capable of adequately delivering these nukes is quite another. I suppose that DPRK special forces could simply drive a nuke down near Seoul on a simple army truck and blow it up. Or bring it in a container ship somewhere in the general vicinity of a US or Korean base and blow it up there. One neat trick would be to load a nuke on a civilian ship, say a fishing vessel, and bring it somewhere near the USS Carl Vinson and then blow it up. Even if the USN ships survive this unscathed, the panic aboard these ships would be total. To be honest, this mostly Tom Clancy stuff, in real warfare I don't think that the North Korean nukes would be very useful against a US attack. But you never know, necessity is the mother of invention , as the British like to say.

I don't believe that Trump is dumb enough to actually strike at North Korea. I think that his dumbass plan is probably to shoot down a DPRK missile to show that he has made "America great again" or something equally asinine. The problem here is that I am not sure at all how Kim Jong-un and his Party minions might react to that kind of loss of face. What if they decided that they needed to fire some more missiles, some in the general direction of US forces in the region (there are fixed US targets all over the place). Then what? How will Trump prove that he is the biggest dog on the block? Could he decide to "punish" the offending missile launch site like he did with the al-Sharyat airbase in Syria? And if Trump does that – what will Kim Jong-un's reaction be?

To be totally honest, I don't think that the "very powerful armada" will do anything other than waste the US taxpayer's money. I am getting a strong sense that Trump is all about appearance over substance, what the Russians call "показуха" – a kind of fake show of force, full with special effects and "cool" photo ops, but lacking any real substance. Still, being on the receiving end of Trump's показуха (po-kah-zoo-kha) must be unnerving, especially if you already have natural paranoid tendencies. I am not at all sure the Kim Jong-un will find the presence of the US carrier strike group as pathetic and useless as I do.

Both Russia and Syria have shown an amazing about of restraint when provoked by Turkey or the US. This is mostly due to the fact that Russian and Syrian leaders are well-educated people who are less concerned with loss of face than with achieving their end result. In direct contrast, both Kim Jong-un and Trump are weak, insecure, leaders with an urgent need to prove to their people (and to themselves!) that they are tough guys. Exactly the most dangerous kind of mindset you want in any nuclear-capable power, be it huge like the USA or tiny like the DPRK.

So what does that have to do with the ZOG and the Ziocons? Everything.

They are the ONLY ONES who really want to maintain the AngloZionst Empire at any cost. Trump made it clear over and over again that his priority was the USA and the American people, not the Empire. And yet now is is playing a crazy game of "nuclear chicken" with the DPRK. Does that sound like the "real Trump" to you? Maybe – but not to me. All this crazy stuff around the DPRK and the (few) nukes it apparently has, is all just a pretext to "play empire", to show that, as Obama liked to say, the USA is the " indispensable nation ". God forbid the local countries would deal with that problem alone, without USN carrier strike groups involved in the "solving" of this problem!

[Sidebar: by the way, this is also the exact same situation in Syria: the Russians have single-handedly organized a viable peace-process on the ground and then followed it up with a multi-party conference in Astana, Kazakhstan. Looks great except for one problem: the indispensable nation was not even invited. Even worse, the prospects of peace breaking out became terribly real. The said indispensable nation therefore "invited itself" by illegally (and ineffectually) bombing a Syrian air base and, having now proven its capacity to wreck any peace process, the USA is now right back in center-stage of the negotiations about the future of Syria. In a perverse way, this almost makes sense.]

So yes, we have a problem and that problem is that ZOG is in total control of the Empire and will never accept to let it go, even if that means destroying the USA in the process.

I can imagine the gasp of horror and disgust some of you will have at seeing me use the ZOG expression. I assure you, it is quite deliberate on my part. I want to 1) wake you up and 2) show you that you cannot allow the discomfort created by conditioning to guide your analyses . As with all the other forms of crimethink , I recommend that you engage in a lot of it, preferably in public, and you will get used to it. First it will be hard, but with time it will get easier (it is also great fun). Furthermore, somebody needs to be the first one to scream " the emperor has no clothes ". Then, once one person does it, the others realize that it is safe and more follow. The key thing here is not to allow ideological "sacred cows" to roam around your intellectual mindspace and limit you in your thinking. Dogmas should be limited to Divine revelations, not human ideological constructs.

Where do we go from here?

Things are coming to a head. Trump presented himself as a real alternative to the ultimate warmongering shabbos-shiksa Hillary. It is now pretty darn obvious that what we got ourselves is just another puppet, but that the puppet-masters have not changed. The good news is that those who were sincere in their opposition to war are now openly speaking about Trump great betrayal. From Ann Coulter to Pat Buchanan , many paleo-Conservatives clearly "got it". As did the real progressives . What we are left with is what I call the "extreme center", basically zombies who get their news from the Ziomedia and who have so many mental blocks that it takes weeks of focused efforts to basically bring them back to reality.

The key issue here is how do we bring together those who are still capable of thought? I think that a minimalist agenda we can all agree upon could be composed of the following points:

Peace/pacifism International law Human and civil rights Democracy Pluralism Anti-racism Ethics and morality

Sounds harmless? It ain't, I assure you. ZOG can only survive by violence, terror and war. Furthermore, the AngloZionist Empire cannot abide by any principles of international law. As for human and civil right, once quick look at the Patriot Act (which was already ready by the time the 9/11 false flag operation was executed) will tell you how ZOG feels about these issues. More proof? How about the entire "fake news" canard? How about the new levels of censorship in YouTube, Facebook or Google? Don't you see that this is simply a frontal attack on free speech and the First Amendment?! What about Black Lives Matter – is that not a perfect pretext to justify more police powers and a further militarization of police forces? To think that the Zionists care about human or civil rights is a joke! Just read what the Uber-Zionist and [putative] human right lawyer, the great Alan Dershowitz writes about torture, Israel or free speech (for Norman Finkelstein). Heck, just read what ultra-liberal super-mega human righter (well, after he returned to civilian life) and ex-President Jimmy Carter writes about Israel -- Or look at the policies of the Bolshevik regime in Russia. It it pretty clear that these guys not only don't give a damn about human or civil right, but that they are deeply offended and outraged when they are told that they cannot violate these rights.

What about democracy? How can that be a intellectual weapon? Simple – you show that every time the people (in the USA or Europe) voted for X they got Y. Or they were told to re-vote and re-vote and re-vote again and again until, finally, the Y won. That is a clear lack of democracy. So if you say that you want to restore democracy, you are basically advocating regime-change, but nicely wrapped into a "good" ideological wrapper. Western democracies are profoundly anti-democratic. Show it!

Pluralism? Same deal. All this takes is to prove that the western society has become a "mono-ideological" society were real dissent is simply not tolerated and were real pluralism is completely ascent from the public discourse. Demand that the enemies of the system be given equal time on air and always make sure that you give the supporters of the system equal time on media outlets you (we) control. Then ask them to compare. This is exactly what Russia is doing nowadays (see here if you are interested). Western democracies are profoundly anti-pluralistic. Again, show it!

Anti-racism. Should be obvious to the reader by now. Denounce, reject and attack any idea which gives any group any special status. Force your opponents to fess up to the fact that what they really want when they claim to struggle for "equality" is a special status for their single-issue minority. Reject any and all special interest groups and, especially, reject the notion that democracy is about defending the minority against the majority. In reality, minorities are always much more driven and motivated by a single issue which is why a coalition of minorities inevitably comes to power. What the world needs is the exact opposite: a democracy which would protect the majority against the minorities. Oh, sure, they will fight you on this one, but since you are right this is an intellectual argument you ought to be capable of winning pretty easily (just remember, don't let accusations of crimethink freeze you in terror).

Last, my favorite one: ethics and morality.

The modern western [neoliberal] society has been built on a categorical rejection of [Christian] ethics and morality. Slogans like "God is dead" or "Beyond good and evil" resulted in the most abject and viciously evil century in human history: the 20th century. Furthermore, most people by now can tell that Hollywood, and its bigger brother, the US porn industry, have played a central role in basically removing categories such as "good" or "truth" or "honor" from the mind of those infected by the US mass media, especially the Idiot-box (aka "telescreen" in Orwell's 1984). Instead unbridled greed and consumption became the highest and most sacred expression of "our way of life" as Americans like to say .

Hollywood movies proclaimed that " greed is good ". In fact, at the very core of the capitalist [neoliberal] ideology is the belief that the sum total of everybody's greed yields the happiest and most successful society possible. Crazy and sick stuff, but I don't have the place to discuss this here. All I will say that that rehabilitating notions such as right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, healthy and natural versus unnatural and pathological is a great legal way (at least so far) to fight the Empire. Ditto for sexual morality and family. There is a reason why all Hollywood movies inevitably present only divorced or sexually promiscuous heroes: they are trying to destroy the natural family unit because they *correctly* identify the traditional family unit as a threat to the AngloZionist order. Likewise, there is also a reason why all the western elites are constantly plagued by accusations of pedophilia and other sexual scandals. One Russian commentator, Vitalii Tretiakov, recently hilariously paraphrased the old communist slogan and declared "naturals of all countries – come to Russia" [in modern Russian "naturals" is the antonym of "homosexual"). He was joking, of course, but he was also making a serious point: Russia has become the only country which dares to openly uphold the core values of Christianity and Islam (that, of course, only adds to the Ziocon's hatred of Russia).

[ Sidebar: by the way, and contrary to popular belief, Russia is not an especially religious country at all. While only a minority of Russians is truly religious, a majority of Russians seem to support religious values as civilizational ones. I don't think that this is sustainable for too long, Russia will either become more religious or more secularized, but for the time being we have this apparently paradoxical situation of a generally secular society standing for traditional and religious values ]

You might wonder how pacifism, international law, human and civil rights, democracy, pluralism, anti-racism, ethics and morality can help avert a nuclear war in Korea. In truth – they cannot directly do this. But in the long term, I firmly believe that these values can corrode the AngloZionist Empire from within. And look at the alternatives:

Organizing political parties does not work in a system where money determine the outcome. "Direct action" does not work in a system which treats libertarians and ecologists as potential terrorists. Public protests does not work in a regime where the Ziomedia gets to decide which demonstration gets coverage and which one does not. Civil disobedience does not work in a regime which has no problem having the highest per capita incarceration rate on the planet. Running for office does not work in a regime which selects for spinelessness, immorality and, above all, subservience. Even running away abroad does not work when dealing with an Empire which has 700-1000 (depends on how you count) military bases worldwide and which will bomb the crap out of any government which strives at even a modicum of true sovereignty.

The only other option is "internal exile", when you build yourself you own inner world of spiritual and intellectual freedom and you basically "live there" with no external signs of you having "fled" the Empire's ugly reality. But if nuclear-tipped ICBMs start flying no amount of "internal exile" will protect you, not even if you combine that internal exile with with a life far away in the boonies.

Orthodox Christian eschatology teaches that the End Times are inevitable. However, the Fathers also teach that we can push the End Times back by our collective actions, be it in the form of prayers or in the form of an open resistance to Evil in our world. I have three children, 1 girl and 2 boys, and I feel like I owe it to them to fight to make the world they will have to live even marginally better.

... ... ..

nsa, April 17, 2017 at 1:26 am GMT

ZIG is a more accurate acronym as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks, lice, mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc.

exiled off mainstreet, April 17, 2017 at 2:10 am GMT • 100 Words

Excellent, thought provoking and depressingly accurate. Even the cavil about the Golan Heights is based, if I'm not mistaken, on the fact Israel declared it annexed in 1981. I'm not sure it is internationally recognized, though the US, as an Israeli acolyte as indicated by the article in spades, may have done so at some point.

Cyrano , April 17, 2017 at 2:44 am GMT

Most of the time I like the way Saker thinks, but on this one I'll have to disagree. It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized the propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it.

That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70 years now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA. US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used to be back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them.

Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda." They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps, the US decided to change their tune.

Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans. Who were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews were the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the victims can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. That formula is still being used today, but it's mostly in Europe and US that it's still considered valid, for the rest of the world just too much time has passed and some of Israel's behavior in the ME has cast a shadow on their image as eternal victims.

People on this site want to view the Jews as George Milton and US as Lenny Small – from Steinbeck novel "Of mice and men". But the reality is much different. US are not Lenny Small, a giant with great physical strength but not too much brain power. US are not the ones being controlled, they are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material. Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea.

WorkingClass, April 17, 2017 at 4:20 am GMT /p>

If Trump's foreign policies are being dictated by someone else I want him to give us names, addresses and photographs of the real decision makers. Until that happens I hold him responsible. I have begun to regard Trump as Dubya with Jared as his Cheney.

Well done Saker. Please keep up the good work.

Anon, April 17, 2017 at 5:31 am GMT

Zionists are very powerful, but they are part of Globalism, a cabal of all elites of world: Chinese, EU, American, Jewish, Latin America, Hindus, Saudis, etc. It is the GLOB that rules.

jacques sheete , April 17, 2017 at 12:37 pm GMT
@Cyrano

But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea.

Nice try, but what have you to say about the originators of the Zionist project?

P.S.: In general, the US leadership has not proven itself bright, cunning or principled enough to resist the Zio agenda. For exhibit "A" just read up on Truman. Then consider LBJ's response to the attack on the USS Liberty.

One could also examine who the influential members of the admins of Wilson and FDR as well.

Mark Green, April 17, 2017 at 4:50 pm GMT

This is a very thoughtful article. The Saker covers a lot of ground. Basically, he has provided his readers with not only a highly perceptive overview, but a blueprint from which they can begin resisting ZOG (or ZIG) tyranny. And let's make no mistake about it: ZOG exists and its impact is immense.

But ZOG goes beyond mere government. The Zions now permeate countless NGO's, media institutions including news and entertainment, high finance, folkways involving culture-wide taboos, and or course, higher and lower education. Even Christian doctrine has been altered to accommodate this highly-aggressive movement. The Zionist agenda is a burgeoning phenomena. And its zombie acolytes are similarly ubiquitous. The Zions have captured our government–and more.

The Saker also correctly notes that the distorting influence of Zionism has become too apparent to deny–even though it is, at the same time, nearly invisible; as it operates in plain sight under various pseudonyms, disguises and false pretenses.

Indeed, its influence remains mostly unrecognized and it is therefore unresisted. For now.

Indeed, even Trump–after only months in office–has fallen under its clever spell. We must therefore strive to examine, discuss, critique and resist this extra-national force of malevolence. Step one: Identify the source.

The intellectual and culture-wide power of ZOG emanates in great part via our mainstream media. The mind-numbing and destructive impact of ZOG in Western media must be understood and unmasked.

Fran Macadam, April 18, 2017 at 2:13 am GMT

When you're right you're right. Logic like this is what leads the paranoiacs to think Russkis are taking over! When you make good sense, it can't help but "control" minds.

One of the saddest developments, to a former implacable Cold Warrior and anticommunist, is that when by a miracle (yes, I count it that) the Russians ended communism by their own choice, without shots being fired, our side did not respond honorably (at least the ones at the commanding heights of our society.)

Like your description of what Trump thought, "Hey Russia's fighting ISIS, let's have them take care of it and save us the trouble" I'm a simple guy too who'd rather see the destructive waste of war money instead be spent on infrastructure for our folks.

I think of "House of the Dead" where the picture of the prisoners waiting for release through the coming of Christ, is a picture of us poor prisoners, but still of faith, waiting in this world too. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

CalDre, April 18, 2017 at 2:56 am GMT

@Cyrano

Wow, where to start when someone claims white is black .

It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around.

So, we see a bunch of loyal dual American-Israeli citizens sitting at the top of the Israeli government, it's businesses, and its media? Oh – right – all those dual citizens are sitting atop US government, businesses and media. And we see Israel fighting wars for US' benefit? Oh – right – it's US doing the dirty work for Jewish expansionism.

US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it.

That's not the case. The Jews were turned away because the Jewish Establishment/Zionists ordered the US to turn them back. Why? Because they wanted them to go to Israel to rob the Palestinians of their land instead. So it was not the Nazis the US was afraid of (then or now), but the Jewish oligarchs.

Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda." They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps, the US decided to change their tune.

There is not to this day any "overwhelming" or even "underwhelming" evidence of the Holohoax. Soviets made a bunch of propaganda out of the (labor) camps in large part to get back at Germany for the terrible losses the Soviets suffered, as well as the huge embarrassment when the Nazis revealed the Soviet crimes in Katlyn Forest. However when in the early 1990s Gorbachev released the notorious Auschwitz "death books", it turns out hardly any Jews were killed, and none by gassings, rather the vast majority of the dead succumbed to typhus (typhus being carried by lice, and Zyklon-B, the chemical Germany is (falsely) accused of using to murder Jews by the millions, was actually used to kill lice and thereby save Jews in the camps).

utu, April 18, 2017 at 5:37 am GMT

But even if I am wrong and Trump was "their" plant all along

It's possible that Trump did not even know that he was their plant but at some point after psychological profiling of him and assessing all leverages available to them to pry and prod him it was decided he will be just fine for the job. That's why he was allowed to win the election. The anti-Trump color revolution conducted by the so-called liberal left was a crucial part from the arsenal of the leverages. In the end it worked out beautifully for them. Gen. Flynn was not too bright to realize what hit him but Bannon is perhaps the only guy, in the good guys camp, who knows what is really going on. I am just wondering why he is still there. Perhaps they are forcing him to stay for the sake of the deluded iron electorate of Trump to prolong their delusion.

utu , April 18, 2017 at 5:54 am GMT

they are also sick and tired of wars, if only because so many of their relatives, friends and neighbors return from these wars either dead or crippled. That, and the fact that Americans absolutely hate losing. Losing is all the USA has been doing since God knows how long: losing wars against all but the weakest and most defenseless countries out there

You do not get it Saker. It does not work that way. In absolute numbers losses are very low. It is all up to media to create a perception. America can afford to have many 1000′s more dead w/o any dent in its well being. Just control the media. Vilify the enemies.

With the exception of Vietnam War America as and Empire hasn't lost a single war. Vietnam War was misguided from the point of view of the Empire which at the end of 1960′s and beginning of 1970′s was to be redirected to Middle East.

This was a new task for the Empire. So everything goes according to the plan, e.g. Iraq war goals were 100% accomplished. There is no more state of Iraq. Iraq will no pose a thread to anybody and Israel in particular. There will be everlasting chaos of sectarian fighting as as long as TPTB will be supplying weapons to one of the sides. Always the weaker one at given moment. The same goes for Libya and soon for Syria. No more stable, semi-secular states with strong central power in the Middle East.

Do not judge war success in terms of what is good or bad for Americans. It's all about the Empire, not about Americans.

Kiza , April 18, 2017 at 6:54 am GMT
The best Saker's essay so far, the most inspired and the most identifiable. Just two quick notes from me.

First, the ZOG/ZIG is so ubiquitous and powerful that the past election with Trump against Hillary was really a duel between pro-Trump young Zionists and the pro-Hillary old Zionists, in other words it was a generational change among the Masters (it was also a change in who will profit from political power). Since Trump turned to the Dark Side, I have realised that Jared was always there, even during the election, as an éminence grise and he pulled Trump's strings a forced a switch from election rhetoric to post-election reality. I have no doubt that Jared is the man behind the man, except that he also must have a fairly powerful Zionist base behind him.

Second, Saker just like Mr Giraldi has become a magnet for all and sundry Hasbara trolls, obviously because both are the most prominent exposers of the ZOG/ZIG. It is important to remember that all Western Governments are ZOG/ZIG, without exception. Only BRICS countries appear free at the moment, despite 1000 military basis of the global ZOG/ZIG.

Truth , April 18, 2017 at 12:09 pm GMT
@Anonymous

Trump is being blackmailed.

My bet is that it is not Trump himself but Ivanka. The elites found a soft spot and are using this weakness to control him. Who would have the means to do this? None other than his son in law Jared.

He could have coerced her into doing something stupid on camera like group sex or being blacked and little Jared would not think twice to use this to control a weak man like Trump.

Translation from "alt-rightish" into English:

"Ive been a dupe and a stupid sucker for the last 2 1/2 years, and I need to believe that somehow the Jooz corrupted and bent this fine American hero to their own will in two months, instead of acknowledging the obvious truth that he was a weak, pathetic asset, and a literal as well as figurative, cocksucker, all along."

You're welcome

Tha Philosopher , April 18, 2017 at 12:46 pm GMT
I don't know if you wrote this as a response to my comment some time back arguing you were ignoring the elephant in the room, but this article reflects my thoughts more or less on Zion.

I would add the historical record of Zion from Pharoah, the catacombs under Rome, to Spain, to Edwardian England, Tsarist Russia and so on is a record much like a locust. You have to wonder where all the 'persecution' comes from. Where the causuality?

Its seeks economic surplus.

And yes, they are missing the part of the brain associated with white high empathy and 'fair play' as Jayman has mentioned. They studied that weakness in Tavistock to find these pavlonian words like 'rac-ism' and when designing the themes in their movies and the fiction work they publish.

The way to defeat Zion is to say the Necromancers name. Say it. If you say whats going on, the power of the Illusion and the fraud subsists entirely. No violence is needed. Repeat no violence is needed. Just say it. Bring it up in a discussion about politics politely and with evidence. The higher IQ people you meet will cotton on when you anchor the pattern recognition.

They are the real 1%, they cannot govern with enlightened chattel. This is why philosophy, psychology, economics, history, anthropology, biology, and so on have been debased into slogans in the academy.

In time, they will come after your daughters and mothers and sisters and turn them into whores. They will send your sons to war. They will fleece your pension funds.

The truth, is that the most persecuted race of man in history – with a notable minority of followers of truth like the editor of this webzine -Mr Unz, Mr Sanders, Mr Marx and so on – is that there is a number who are essentially a very high IQ version of the mafia.

Tha Philosopher , April 18, 2017 at 12:51 pm GMT
• 100 Words My own reading leads me to identify the following as the Elders of Zion:

Steve Schwarzmann
Paul Singer
Robert Rubin
David Rubenstein
Summer Rothstein
Evelyn Rothschild
Stephen Friedman
Elliot Abrams

There are some more. Put them on a map and draw the links between them and their agents. Khordovsky gave his money to Rothschild to mind after the 1990s pillaging of Russia when Putin imprisoned him.

Ohhh they hate Putin because he stopped them in the 90s more than anything. Khordovsky was trying to buy a media outlet.

Also the Protocols may be based on a satire but as Lord Syndenham mentioned in the Times 100 years ago, it was a spooky blueprint for the Bolshevik revolution .and the EU.

Tha Philosopher , April 18, 2017 at 12:58 pm GMT
You can tell the puppets by their policies

Lena Dunham social policy for jewish social freedom
Milton Autism on economics to stop redistribution to the goyim
Kristol on foreign policy for Israel's world domination.

e.g Tony Blair, Macron, Cameroon, Merkel, Juncker, Bush, Clinton etc etc.

There is no difference. They are all the same party.

Zion.

Uncle Davy , April 19, 2017 at 6:25 am GMT
@Cyrano Most of the time I like the way Saker thinks, but on this one I'll have to disagree. It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized the propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it.

That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70 years now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA. US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used to be back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them.

Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda." They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps, the US decided to change their tune.

Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans. Who were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews were the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the victims can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. That formula is still being used today, but it's mostly in Europe and US that it's still considered valid, for the rest of the world just too much time has passed and some of Israel's behavior in the ME has cast a shadow on their image as eternal victims.

People on this site want to view the Jews as George Milton and US as Lenny Small – from Steinbeck novel "Of mice and men". But the reality is much different. US are not Lenny Small, a giant with great physical strength but not too much brain power. US are not the ones being controlled, they are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material. Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea. With no disrespect Cyrano, you may need to read the 1996 report 'A Clean Break'
- and you'll quickly discover its the zionist entity that is the tail that wags the American dog. The zionist entity is not limited to the geographical borders of the state of Israel, either.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140125123844/http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

Fran Macadam , • Website April 19, 2017 at 9:08 am GMT
Before blaming "The Jews" for the ills of the world it would behoove everyone to take a good long hard look in the mirror. If you think you get an affirmative answer to "Who is the most beautiful of all?" you are living in a fairy tale.
Deeply Concerned , April 19, 2017 at 1:09 pm GMT
• 100 Words May I add that calling for a worldwide demonstration on a preannouced day (similar to the one against W's Iraq war) is critically needed. The slogan of this demonstration should be "ANY US CITIZEN WHO PUTS THE INTEREST OF ISRAEL ABOVE THE NATIONAL INTEREST OF THE US IS – A TRAITOR . ANYONE WHO SUPPORT, PROMOTE, DEFEND A TRAITOR IS A TRAITOR". Traitor is the key word in my opinion and it should be the rallying word.
Vires , April 19, 2017 at 5:50 pm GMT
• 300 Words @Cyrano Most of the time I like the way Saker thinks, but on this one I'll have to disagree. It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around. US realized the propaganda potential of the Jews and Israel at the end of WW2 and they never let go of it.

That propaganda potential is still there, although it has been milked for more than 70 years now. Before WW2, there was not any kind of "special relationship" between the Jews and USA. US even turned a ship full of Jewish refugees before the onset of the war out of fear that they might offend the Nazis and suffer the consequences for it. That's what a great power they used to be back then – afraid what the Nazis might do to them.

Then in the closing stages of WW2, when the Russians told them what they found in the concentration camps that they liberated – at first the Americans dismissed their reports as "communist propaganda." They refused to believe that highly "civilized" European country such as Germany can commit such barbarities. Only after they were faced with overwhelming evidence about the concentration camps, the US decided to change their tune.

Their calculation was like this: Who were the greatest villains of WW2? – The Germans. Who were the ultimate victims of WW2? – The Jews. If the Germans were the bad guys, and the Jews were the good guys and the innocent victims – anybody portraying themselves as protectors of the victims can enjoy the image of being the good guys themselves. That formula is still being used today, but it's mostly in Europe and US that it's still considered valid, for the rest of the world just too much time has passed and some of Israel's behavior in the ME has cast a shadow on their image as eternal victims.

People on this site want to view the Jews as George Milton and US as Lenny Small – from Steinbeck novel "Of mice and men". But the reality is much different. US are not Lenny Small, a giant with great physical strength but not too much brain power. US are not the ones being controlled, they are the ones using Israel and the Jews for all they are worth as excellent propaganda material. Sure Israel and the Jews benefit from this, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to this cozy symbiotic relationship. But the Jews didn't initiate this, it was always US idea. Why are you trying to conflate Jews and Zionists? Are you unable to see the difference between the two concepts?

It's pretty clear the issue is the stranglehold the Zionist Lobby AKA Israel lobby has on the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of the US Federal Government and the Federal Reserve, and its influence on the propaganda machine and academia.

Therefore the issue is not about "Jews" using the USG, but rather the Zionist Lobby, AKA Israel Lobby in the US or Jewish Lobby in Israel, having and using the stranglehold on the USG, academia and propaganda machine (mass media and Hollywood) to further their goals.

It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around

When you refer to "Jews", do you mean the Zionist lobby AKA Israel lobby , or the average "Jew sixpack" living in the US i.e. the rest?

If what you mean is the so called Israel lobby when you refer to "Jews", two professors, one of Political Sciences and one of International Affairs, both from top US Universities, disagree with your remarkable theory, and have written extensively and with plenty of references supporting their claims:

John Mearsheimer
R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Sciences
Chicago University

Stephen Walt
Belfer Professor of International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University

Three links, first two for an article, second with all references. Third for the even more detailed book, refuting your claims.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjoisrX36zTAhVIJlAKHbf5Bm4QFghAMAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmearsheimer.uchicago.edu%2Fpdfs%2FIsraelLobby.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFlVQO8EGLPxZsbik8QZaH4vQ15Cw

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Are you familiar with their work? Are you rejecting their claims?

If yes, on what are you basing your rebuttal and what is your background?

Or are you trying to frame the blogger and everyone concerned with the subject as old Jew-haters and anti-semites?

Now, if after reading the Saker's post, the only thing you understood was:

The Saker: "The Jews" are to blame for the ills of the world folks

Then I would recommend you should seriously improve your English, at least reading comprehension skills – perhaps some online courses – before commenting and making a fool of yourself again publicly.

Cyrano , April 19, 2017 at 7:39 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Vires Why are you trying to conflate Jews and Zionists? Are you unable to see the difference between the two concepts?

It's pretty clear the issue is the stranglehold the Zionist Lobby AKA Israel lobby has on the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of the US Federal Government and the Federal Reserve, and its influence on the propaganda machine and academia.

Therefore the issue is not about "Jews" using the USG, but rather the Zionist Lobby, AKA Israel Lobby in the US or Jewish Lobby in Israel, having and using the stranglehold on the USG, academia and propaganda machine (mass media and Hollywood) to further their goals.


It's not the Jews that are using US for their own needs – it's the other way around
When you refer to "Jews", do you mean the Zionist lobby AKA Israel lobby , or the average "Jew sixpack" living in the US i.e. the rest?

If what you mean is the so called Israel lobby when you refer to "Jews", two professors, one of Political Sciences and one of International Affairs, both from top US Universities, disagree with your remarkable theory, and have written extensively and with plenty of references supporting their claims:

John Mearsheimer
R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Sciences
Chicago University

Stephen Walt
Belfer Professor of International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University

Three links, first two for an article, second with all references. Third for the even more detailed book, refuting your claims.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjoisrX36zTAhVIJlAKHbf5Bm4QFghAMAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmearsheimer.uchicago.edu%2Fpdfs%2FIsraelLobby.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFlVQO8EGLPxZsbik8QZaH4vQ15Cw

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

What is your background, and on what are you basing your claims?

Have you published an official rebuttal?

Or is your theory just a "hunch"? I am just a writer, I don't have any agenda and I call the things as I see them. I don't buy the theory of the all-powerful Zionist lobby steering the American foreign policy either. Why? Because it makes no sense. Sure there is such a lobby, but US allows it to exist because it suits their interests. They (US establishment) are the ones responsible, not the Israel lobby.

If all anyone had to do in order to influence US government – was to form a lobby – then during the cold war there would have been a communist lobby in Washington, financed by the USSR. They would have poured billions of dollars, and not only the cold war could have ended quickly, but maybe today America would have been communist. Do you see where I am going with this? US government allows lobbies to exist only after they comply with their interests. They are the initiators of policies, not lobbies. Have a nice day.

Cyrano, April 20, 2017 at 3:56 am GMT

• 100 Word\

@Vires

You know man, you are a perfect proof why there is so much propaganda in US. Because you make it easy on them. Them being the government. Yeah, poor US government at the mercy of evil Zionist lobby. If it wasn't for it, it would be the most benevolent government in the world, bringing peace and prosperity wherever they go. One day you'll wake up and you'll look into the abyss and you'll realize that the abyss is your complete ignorance. But don't listen to me, keep on voting every 4 years, that's going to change everything. And keep bitching about the Jewish lobby, you are so much smarter than the average American, you have it all figured out.

wayfarer , April 20, 2017 at 4:44 am GMT
Inevitably, somebody always volunteers to carry water, down the dark self-serving spiritual path.

"Israel Benefits as World Loses"
source: https://www.sott.net/article/268125-Israel-benefits-as-world-loses

"True Cost of Israel"
source: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-true-cost-of-israel/

"History of the House of Rothschild"
source: http://rense.com/general88/hist.htm

Greasy William , April 20, 2017 at 6:18 am GMT

Russia. Ziocons absolutely loathe Russia and everything Russian.

Don't flatter yourself. Most Jews don't give a shit about Russia. Jews *DO* hate Iranians, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Arab Christians but we really don't care about Russia. We like to mock Russian nationalists like yourself and Western Russophiles but we don't hate you. Okay, maybe we do hate Western Russophiles, I know I sure do, but we don't hate Russia or Russians.

And the reason we don't hate you is because you just aren't important enough to be worth hating.

I agree with your reasons for why Israel wants an ISIS victory (although it is ridiculous to suggest that Israel's current cucked out leadership wants to expand Israel's borders). It is probably the only thing you have gotten right in years. Good job! You are improving!

ThereisaGod , April 20, 2017 at 6:40 am GMT
Roland Bernard High Finance Shocking Revelations (Dutch with Subtitles) This video, more than any I have seen, exposes the dark heart of the matter. It's a must-watch from beginning to end. Highly credible, in my opinion.
Wally , April 20, 2017 at 7:58 am GMT
@Greasy William
Russia. Ziocons absolutely loathe Russia and everything Russian.
Don't flatter yourself. Most Jews don't give a shit about Russia. Jews *DO* hate Iranians, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Arab Christians but we really don't care about Russia. We like to mock Russian nationalists like yourself and Western Russophiles but we don't hate you. Okay, maybe we do hate Western Russophiles, I know I sure do, but we don't hate Russia or Russians.

And the reason we don't hate you is because you just aren't important enough to be worth hating.

I agree with your reasons for why Israel wants an ISIS victory (although it is ridiculous to suggest that Israel's current cucked out leadership wants to expand Israel's borders). It is probably the only thing you have gotten right in years. Good job! You are improving! The True Cost of Israel
Forced U.S. taxpayers money goes far beyond the official numbers.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-true-cost-of-israel/

Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security"

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/islamophobia-shmislamophobia-97-of-homeland-security-security-grants-go-to-jewish-orgs

and:
Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189

and:
The Zionist attempt to control language. The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY

https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-projects-2009-global-language-dictionary.pdf

and:
The commander behind the pro-Israel student troops on U.S. college campuses

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-1.709014

and:
Israel tech site paying "interns" to covertly plant stories in social media

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-paying-interns-covertly-plant-stories-social-media

and:
Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-students-get-2000-spread-state-propaganda-facebook

Anonymous, April 20, 2017 at 8:58 am GMT

@Kiza

"Only BRICS countries appear free at the moment "

Apparently you haven't heard of the long amorous relationship between the Zionists and the I in BRICS.

Agent76 , April 20, 2017 at 1:08 pm GMT
Apr 13, 2017 Empire Files: Silencing Palestine – Prison & Repression

Israel's occupation of the West Bank is an internationally-recognized human rights crime-but those being impacted are harshly punished for not only acts of resistance, but even mere advocacy for their rights.

wow , April 20, 2017 at 2:41 pm GMT
When Trump basically fellated AIPAC during his campaign it worried me. But I thought maybe just maybe, Trump was playing the Jews ..this article in all it's glory suggests I am very wrong.

That any potential president has to genuflect to Israel and Jews is the saddest thing in American History. You can almost wish it would all implode. A hard reset minus Jewish whining and control would be a true utopia.

Stonehands , April 20, 2017 at 3:19 pm GMT
@Cyrano You know man, you are a perfect proof why there is so much propaganda in US. Because you make it easy on them. Them being the government. Yeah, poor US government at the mercy of evil Zionist lobby. If it wasn't for it, it would be the most benevolent government in the world, bringing peace and prosperity wherever they go. One day you'll wake up and you'll look into the abyss and you'll realize that the abyss is your complete ignorance. But don't listen to me, keep on voting every 4 years, that's going to change everything. And keep bitching about the Jewish lobby, you are so much smarter than the average American, you have it all figured out. Jew finance capitalists [ the master money manipulators] and their cohort in MEDIA are most certainly jewish.. Who the hell do you think promotes all this homo rights crap? It's not so much the jew Svengali -but you- the rube in the mirror, who will have to be dealt with first when the lights go out..
Bruce Marshall , April 20, 2017 at 4:16 pm GMT
But the Elephant driver is the British Empire System!!!

It is the British behind the coup against Trump. The British want to prevent the end of "Geopolitics" as we know it which is what would happen should America Russia and China come together per the New Silk Road and One Belt initiatives. This is why the British are setting off
World War III.

http://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2017/2017_10-19/2017-15/pdf/02-03_4415.pdf

annamaria , April 20, 2017 at 4:18 pm GMT

@Cyrano

" you are a perfect proof why there is so much propaganda in US. "

Don't you imply that "so much propaganda in US" is anti-Zionist? If yes, then you have no idea about MSM in the US. Just to give you a hint, try to google this name: Helen Thomas, specifically a story of her private conversation with a Jewish man (who happened to be a born informer). Look at a swarm of the US Congresspeople blubbering praises for Israel during AIPAC' annual meetings. The US Congress is indeed the Zionist Occupied Territory, a picture of a host captured by a parasitoid.

annamaria , April 20, 2017 at 4:29 pm GMT
@Quartermaster And so was Russia's annexation of Crimea. You don't think Saker would want to call attention to such things do you?

How many referenda the Syrians have held to bring the Golan Heights to the embrace of Israel? We cannot wait to hear your story of Syrian people voting to join Israel. Tell us, when did the Golan Heights belong to Israel?

Surely in the dreams of the US ziocons and in the criminal Oded Yinon's plan for Eretz Israel, which preaches for creating a civil disorder in the neighboring states so that Israel could snatch as much territory as possible from the neighbors. The ongoing Libyan and Syrian tragedies belong to that plan.

The ziocons' cooperation with Ukrainian neo-Nazis is another story. "Never again," indeed.

annamaria , April 20, 2017 at 4:40 pm GMT
@biz

In the Middle Ages, antisemitism defined Jews as a religious group and focused on their religious separateness.

In the more secular era of Dreyfus and the Nazis and Nasser, antisemitism defined Jews as an ethnic group and focused on their ethnic separateness.

Now that we are in an era which celebrates group identity and views it as a virtue, antisemitism focuses on denying Jews their ethnic or religious identity.

Fascinating.

annamaria , April 20, 2017 at 4:40 pm GMT
@biz

" antisemitism focuses on denying Jews their ethnic or religious identity.states "

The article is about ziocons and it emphasizes, specifically, that conflating Jews and Zionists is dishonest. You need to read the article before making your generalizations.

It was the Israelis that enjoyed the bombing of civilians in Israel-occupied Gaza by the "most moral" idiots of IDF. Palestinian children died in hundreds. White phosphorus was used by Israelis. https://friendsofpalestine.wordpress.com/resources-and-readings/image-galleries/photos-of-israeli-white-phosphorus-attacks-on-un-schools-in-gaza/ So much for "never again."

Considering the number of synagogues in the US and the prominence of ziocons among policy-makers in the US, please tell us, who exactly "denies Jews their ethnic or religious identity." Have you heard about Wolfowitz, Feith, and Kagans? How about Nuland-Kagan fraternizing with neo-Nazis? Still OK? https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/

annamaria , April 20, 2017 at 4:41 pm GMT
@Quartermaster And so was Russia's annexation of Crimea. You don't think Saker would want to call attention to such things do you? Oded Yinon' plan for creating Eretz Israel: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf
Jus' Sayin'... , April 20, 2017 at 4:42 pm GMT
@nsa

ZIG is a more accurate acronym......as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks, lice, mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc.

Zionist Infested Government! Brilliant! I'm going to start using this term.

Anyone who's spent any time inside the beltway quickly realizes that AngloZionists – the Saker's term is really useful if one wants to accurately and concisely summarize these people, their ideology, and their ultimate loyalties – infest from top to bottom the three branches of the federal government, all the supporting bureaucracies, and all the parasitic lobbying groups, consultants, foundations, think tanks, etc., that wield less official powers. Their proportional presence in Washington is many orders of magnitude greater than their proportion in the general population and their power is magnified by their informally shared ideologies and goals.

Not many of these people are actually aware of the harm they are causing. Most are fundamentally decent people. Some I count as close friends. Yet the combined power these people wield and the varying levels of allegiance they bear to foreign powers whose interests are inimical to those of the USA and its citizens make them, considered en masse, an existential threat to this country, to world peace, and to international law and order.

jilles dykstra , April 20, 2017 at 5:29 pm GMT
Few US citizens nowadays seem to know any foreign language, pity, for the following book explains Russian anti semitism:
Alexander Solschenizyn, ´Die russisch- jüdische Geschichte 1795- 1916, >> Zweihundert Jahre zusammen <<´, Moskau 2001, München 2002
Who is interested in the why of German anti semitism after 1870 has more luck:
Ismar Schorsch, 'Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870 – 1914', New York 1972
Fritz Stern, 'Gold and Iron, Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire', New York, 1977.
'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA
Also interesting is:
Horace Meyer Kallen, 'Zionism and World Politics; A Study in History and Social Psychology', New York, 1921
Pre WWII 'neocons':
Bruce Allen Murphy, 'The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection, The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices', New York, 1983

jacques sheete ,

April 20, 2017 at 6:23 pm GMT

@Wally

Jewish groups get up to 97% of grants from the Homeland Security"

The so called non-profit scene also appears to me little more than a cesspool of corruption and I wonder who or what dominates those rackets.

Art , April 20, 2017 at 9:06 pm GMT
ZOG. Or "Zionist Occupation Government".

ZOG is an excellent term that describes the situation in America perfectly. The fact of ZOG is undeniable to everyone politically involved in the US government.

The question is will people use the term "ZOG" to attack Jews? It has one great advantage – the word "Jew" is not used.

The thing that Jews themselves fear the most, is the word "Jew" used by Gentiles. The American population is conditioned not to use the word. Subliminal fear is attached to using the word "Jew."

The goal of the American population must be to eliminate ZOG – but not Jews.

The question is – can this be done without using the word "Jew" and all that goes with it?

The answer is most likely – NOT!

Peace - Art

p.s. Great article.

Dr. X , April 20, 2017 at 9:10 pm GMT
@blaggard I applaud your honesty and logic. What a fight...

Although it is made to appear so, the battle between the 'conservatives' and 'liberals' is not a battle of ideas or even of political organizations. It's is a battle of force, terror and power. The Jews and their accomplices and dupes are not running our country and its people because of the excellence of their ideas or the merit of their work or because they have the genuine backing of the majority. The Zionists are in power in spite of the lack of these things, and only because they have driven their way into power by daring minority tactics. They can stay in power only because people are afraid to oppose them, afraid they will be socially ostracized, afraid they will be smeared in the press, afraid they will lose their jobs, afraid they will not be able to run their businesses, afraid they will lose their political offices. It is fear and fear alone which keeps these filthy left-wing sneaks in power.

George Lincoln Rockwell wrote that - in 1961 (!)

Beefcake the Mighty , April 20, 2017 at 9:17 pm GMT
@naro No one is more critical of Jews and Israel than other Jews. Jews are and have been a NATION in exile. Their genetic identity has been proven several times using Mitochondrial DNA in prestigious medical journals such as Nature and Science...so it is not in doubt. There is continuous historical record of Jews for at least 2000 years. Christian guilt is well deserved for their historical hounding, persecutions, exiled and pogroms against innocent Jews under their jurisdictions.

The writer of this article is a hate monger. There are Jews of all political spectrum. They are not homogeneous in their political position.
Jews succeed because they study hard, work hard, and take risks in business and politics. They think outside the box, and are inventive and scientifically curious. Instead of envying their success try to learn and emulate it losers.

They also engage in pretty intense ethnic networking and favoritism, things they typically castigate others for doing.

Re. diversity of Jewish political opinion, I don't see it. Most Jews are partisan Democrats in the US and there is very broad agreement on major issues, like immigration and Israeli-centric foreign policy, details notwithstanding. And very few Jews will acknowledge that historically, collective Jewish behavior has played a role in the negative opinions so many peoples hold against them, indeed they strenuously deny it. (Smoke but no fire? Unlikely.)

Talha , April 20, 2017 at 9:51 pm GMT

Last, my favorite one: ethics and morality. The modern western society has been built on a categorical rejection of ethics and morality.

Bravo – that paragraph was golden in my book. If this is gone – kiss your society good bye – you're just living on borrowed time – all the gold and all the nuclear spears in the world will not save you.

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." – Henry David Thoreau

Talha , April 20, 2017 at 9:52 pm GMT
@Seraphim Tramp is a Joo himself!

"Looks Like Donald Trump May Well Be Jewish. That Would Explain A Great Deal", By Miles Mathis via Jim Kirwan, 4-9-17

- See more at: http://www.rense.com/general96/trumpjewish.htm#sthash.4xaQKh2i.dpuf

Ivanka's mommy is of the tribe too: "Ivana is also Jewish. Geni.com lists her father's name as both Knavs and Zelnícek. I'll give you a hint: drop the second "e". You get Zelnick. It is Yiddish for haberdasher. Clothier. It's Jewish, too. See Robert Zelnick, Strauss Zelnick, Bob Zelnick, etc. Robert was a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. Strauss was President of 20th Century Fox. Bob was ABC News producer. Also Friedrich Zelnik, silent film producer. Also David O. Selznick, whose name was originally Zeleznick, or, alternately, Zelnick. He and his father were major Hollywood produ - See more at: http://www.rense.com/general96/trumpjewish.htm#sthash.4xaQKh2i.dpuf

It's all in the family (La famiglia, Kosher Nostra). The ones who voted for him are the suckers. Kosher Nostra!!!

Oh man – that was awesome!!!

Peace.

wayfarer , April 20, 2017 at 10:12 pm GMT
The problem with fiat money is that if one has enough of it, one can buy just about anything under the sun that they please, including even large parts of a country's political system and government.

Take for example, Jared (a.k.a. billionaire arch-Zionist trust-fund baby) Kushner

source: https://www.sott.net/article/348461-The-controversy-of-Jared-Kushner-A-suspected-gangster-within-the-Trump-White-House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtf6TgQgWr4

Seraphim , April 20, 2017 at 11:52 pm GMT
• 200 Words @Talha Kosher Nostra!!!

Oh man - that was awesome!!!

Peace. It is not my invention. All From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Jewish-American organized crime":

'Jewish-American organized crime emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mafia, Kosher Nostra, or Undzer Shtik (Yiddish: אונדזער שטיק‎). The last two of these terms refer to the Italian Cosa Nostra (Italian pronunciation: [kɔza nɔstra]); the former is a play on the word kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a direct translation of the phrase (Italian for "our thing") into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States

In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the forms of both Israeli and Jewish-Russian mafia criminal groups, and Orthodox kidnapping gangs .

Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in 1948. Jewish-American gangsters used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation "

Anonymous , April 21, 2017 at 3:31 am GMT

@wayfarer

Even the staff at his own Jewish day school were surprised he was accepted at Harvard.

He was described as a lacklustre student his father bought his entry, and they were disappointed that more qualified students from his school didn't make the cut.

Miro23 , April 21, 2017 at 5:26 am GMT

Second, so what are Jews if not a race? In my opinion, they are a tribe (which Oxford Dictionaires defines as: a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader). A tribe is a group one can chose to join (Elizabeth Taylor) or leave (Gilad Atzmon).

It's true that US Jews are mixed race (about 55% European and 45% Semitic) although they choose to Obama-ize the fact (the European part disappears).

Also, after a lifetime of contact, I would say that the best guys leave the Tribe (often the most Semitic and through disgust ) and the worst girls join (Gentiles attracted by money and power).

annamaria , April 21, 2017 at 9:40 am GMT
@Ilyana_Rozumova @

Saker!!!!

FGS. Please give it up! Trying to solve Jewish question eventually leads to insanity. Saker (et al on this site) are not interested in "solving Jewish question." – We are interested in the survival of humanity, specifically in stopping a WWIII that could happen thanks to ziocons' policies.
" fomenting sectarian strife in order to forestal the development of a unified Arab nation which could threaten it and creating the circumstances in which land could be acquired was at the root of Israel's relationship with its northern neighbor." http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-and-islamist-militias-a-strange-and-recurring-alliance/5586075
" the "liberal" American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to call "the constructive criticism." (In fact those among them who claim also to be "Anti- Stalinist" are in reality more Stalinist than Stalin, with Israel being their god which has not yet failed). In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always "good intentions" and only "makes mistakes," and therefore such a plan would not be a matter for discussion–exactly as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not mentioned." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf

jilles dykstra , April 21, 2017 at 9:53 am GMT
@JerseyJeffersonian Thanks Jilles,

My German is not of the best, but I have been interested in 200 Years Together for a while, so maybe I can give it a try. I will try to check out these other titles you have provided, too. Sol Bloom, 'The Autobiography of Sol Bloom', New York 1948

also is interesting, though just for one sentence, something like 'the great accomplishment of Roosevelt was that he slowy prepared the USA people for war'.
This is in one sentence the book

Charles A. Beard, 'American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932 – 1940, A study in responsibilities', New Haven, 1946

Alas few people seem to read books any more, especially old books. The interesting thing about a book, great contrast with a web article, is, once printed, it cannot be changed any more.

Sol Bloom was a jewish friend of Roosevelt. You might also want to read
Henry Morgenthau, 'Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', New Yirk, 1918
Heath W. Lowry, 'The story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story', Istanbul 1990
and
Charles Callan Tansill, 'Amerika geht in den Krieg', Stuttgart 1939 (America goes to War, 1938)
How the USA, and especially Morgenthau, wanted to fight Germany, in WWI.
Both Bloom and Morgenthau were of German descent, I suppose they hated Germany because of its antisemitism.

jilles dykstra , April 21, 2017 at 10:03 am GMT
@Ilyana_Rozumova @ Saker!!!!
FGS. Please give it up! Trying to solve Jewish question eventually leads to insanity. Are maybe present events solving the jewish question ?
There seems to be little doubt that Trump is in conflict with Deep State, neocons in the lead, mainly jews.
See also:
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, 'The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy', New York 2007
It is possible that Marine le Pen of FN wins the French elections.
FN is accused of being antisemitic:
Pierre-André Taguieff, Michèle Tribalat, 'Face au Front national, Arguments pour une contre-offensive', Paris, 1998 is an anti FN book written by two jews.
Hungary is closing Soros's university.
Putin already closed his institutions in Russia.

Joe Levantine , April 21, 2017 at 3:24 pm GMT

@Cyrano

Americans using Jews or vice versa? Just check the roles that Bernard Baruck and Rabbi Steven Wise have played from the administration of crooked Woodrow Wilson to the more crooked Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Two names among thousands of Jews who have shaped U.S. policies while hiding behind the facade of their puppet presidents should give anyone food for thought.
If Cyrano can bring back into circulation the forbidden book of ' The Controversy of Zion' by the late Douglas Reed who turned from bestseller author to a nonexistent nothing the moment he published his 400+ book, I am positive that the commentator would apologise for this comment.

annamaria , April 21, 2017 at 4:53 pm GMT
@naro Mr. Petras you are a vile old man. Nazis were quite capable at merciless killing of defenseless Jewish (and others) men, women and children by the millions, as they were unprepared for the utter vile brutality that Nazism represented. Now the Jews are well defended and strong, and will defend themselves to the utmost. So come to to the fight old boy, we can take on Nazis . We know them better now. "Now the Jews are well defended and strong we can take on Nazis."

Actually, an Israeli citizen Mr. Kolomojsky financed the neo-Nazi Azov battalion that auto-da-fe(d) a good number of civilians in Odessa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJexglSOF6s (see also Azov battalion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion )

A member of the powerful Kagans' clan of warmongers, Mrs. Nuland-Kagan has been an eager collaborator with Ukrainian neo-Nazis (do you know about Baby Yar and such? – Mrs. Nuland-Kagan is obviously OK with the history of Ukrainian Jews during WWII). Neither ADL nor AIPAC made any noises about bringing Ukrainian neo-Nazis to power in Kiev in 2014. Why?

And what about Israel' collaboration with ISIS against sovereign Syria? "The documents show that Israel has been doing more than simply treating wounded Syrian civilians in hospitals. This and a few past reports have described transfer of unspecified supplies from Israel to the Syrian rebels, and sightings of IDF soldiers meeting with the Syrian opposition east of the green zone, as well as incidents when Israeli soldiers opened up the fence to allow Syrians through who did not appear to be injured. http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/New-UN-report-reveals-collaboration-between-Israel-and-Syrian-rebels-383926

A Canadian darling of the US State Dept, Chrystia Freeland, happened to be a progeny of a Nazi collaborator from Ukraine (Mr. Chomiak), though Mrs. Freeland proclaimed loudly that her grandpa was "persecuted by the Soviets:" https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/27/a-nazi-skeleton-in-the-family-closet/
" it appears Freeland's grandfather – rather than being a helpless victim – was given a prestigious job to spread Nazi propaganda, praising Hitler from a publishing house stolen from Jews and given to Ukrainians who shared the values of Nazism. Chomiak's editorials also described a Poland "infected by Jews." Mrs. Freeland is still in office, spreading Russophobia that is so dear to ziocon hearts.

In case you did not notice, Zionists (ziocons) are modern-day Nazis.

" the "liberal" American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to call "the constructive criticism." In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always "good intentions" and only "makes mistakes," and therefore such a plan would not be a matter for discussion–exactly as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not mentioned." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/The%20Zionist%20Plan%20for%20th

Rurik , April 21, 2017 at 5:22 pm GMT

Good ol' Charlie he knew.
He learned to beware the POWER of the Cabal

when I read that I thought you might have meant Charlie Reese. he used to write for the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, until ((they)) ran him out

here's a light hearted one that shows his depth and humor

http://thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-Birds&OtherAnimals/+Doc-Birds&OtherAnimals-OtherAnimals/CharleyReeseOnSquirrels.htm

more:

We are guilty by proxy of murder, land theft, destruction of property and all the other human misery that Israel has caused in the region.

So, if you're one of those rah-rah Israel First supporters, don't complain when the terrorists come looking for you. You've allowed your politicians to enlist you in somebody else's war, and in war there are always casualties on both sides.

America has become a nation of pathological irresponsibility. Nobody wants to take responsibility for his or her own actions, which is the basic cause of the litigation flood. Least of all do American politicians wish to do so. They would rather heap on the manure that the terrorism directed at us has nothing whatsoever to do with the policies they have followed for the past 30 years or more. In truth, it has everything to do with those policies.

So, if you or your loved ones get bloodied by terrorists, then blame your Christian Zionists, your Israel First crowd and your corrupt politicians who have their tongues in the ears and their hands in the pockets of the Israeli lobby.

http://www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=2197

there's a whole slew of treasures and beautiful prose and simple, human humility and decency in these archives.

http://www.antiwar.com/reese/archives.php

I heartily encourage the reader to peruse them with pleasure.

more:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-charley-reese-545-people-1984-073111-story.html

Alden , April 21, 2017 at 5:53 pm GMT
@turtle Sooner or later, the U.S. will go down to defeat, at which point "da Joos" will have to find a new host.
I expect they will have a bit of a tough row to hoe in this, the New Chinese Century.
No matter how hard you try, I doubt you can pass off this woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Chung
or any of her countrywomen, as "Semitic,"
thus disproving that "Jewish" = "Semitic" or vice versa.
Shlomo Wong? I think not. I read Jewish community publications all the time I have concluded they are planning their next jump to China after they destroy America
There are endless articles about how much Jews and Chinese have in common (lie, cheat and steal). They discovered that in medieval and early modern times there was a community of Persian Jews in China and blather on about that.
And there is approval of marriage of Jewish men to Chinese women.

But the Chinese are not love thy neighbor Christians. Nor do they have millions of wanna be Jews Old Testament obsessed Protestants. Chinese officials are well known for accepting bribes and then doing exactly what they want.

On the other hand, Israel and American DOD employees sell lots of stolen American military secrets to China.

Jewish attempted takeover of China will be a battle of the Titans.

Anon , April 21, 2017 at 6:05 pm GMT
• 100 Words @Wally Indeed, "non-profit", but Jews Only and huge salaries

Recall the corrupt & hate mongering ADL, or SPLC.

Look at the 'holocau$t' scam.

Build yet another laughable 'holocaust' Theme Park, Potemkin Village, put up a picture of MLK, falsely claim that it's all about 'tolerance', 'diversity and civil rights while down playing it's obvious Jewish supremacism, and voila! Massive taxpayers subsidies.


"One should not ask, how this mass murder was made possible. It was technically possible, because it happened. This has to be the obligatory starting-point for any historical research regarding this topic. We would just like to remind you: There is no debate regarding the existence of the gas chambers, and there can never be one."
- endorsed by 34 "reputable historians" and published in the French daily Le Monde on February 21, 1979
====================================
"These Holocaust deniers are very slick people. They justify everything they say with facts and figures."

- Steven Some, Chairman of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, Newark Star-Ledger, 23 Oct. 1996, p 15.

Here's the top non-profits. None are identifiably Jewish:

1 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation United States Seattle, Washington $42.3 billion 1994 [1]
2 Stichting INGKA Foundation Netherlands Leiden $34.6 billion €33.0 billion (EUR) 1982 [2]
3 Wellcome Trust United Kingdom London $26.0 billion £20.9 billion (GBP) 1936 [3]
4 Howard Hughes Medical Institute United States Chevy Chase, Maryland $18.2 billion 1953 [4]
5 Ford Foundation United States New York City, New York $11.2 billion 1936 [5]
6 Kamehameha Schools United States Honolulu, Hawaii $11.1 billion 1887 [6]
7 J. Paul Getty Trust United States Los Angeles, California $10.5 billion 1982 [5]
8 Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation United Arab Emirates Dubai $10.0 billion 37 billion د.إ (AED) 2007 [7]
9 Azim Premji Foundation India Bangalore $9.8 billion 2001 [8]
10 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation United States Princeton, New Jersey $9.53 billion 1972 [5]

Art , April 21, 2017 at 6:56 pm GMT
@Alden I just read the latest ADL diktat. As of today any mention of Jared Kushner is deemed anti Semitic. Consequences will be severe. I just read the latest ADL diktat. As of today any mention of Jared Kushner is deemed anti Semitic. Consequences will be severe.

They have good reason to hide him – he and his family have some shady business dealings – his father is a x-convict. How did he come into billions of dollars?

They say that Jared inherited his money – how did that happen when his father is still living – did they get special tax treatment?

Hmm?

Peace - Art

p.s. Jared Kushner is 100% Zionist – how can this work out good for America?

Sam J. , April 21, 2017 at 7:29 pm GMT
" Please note that Gilad specifically excludes Judaics (religious Jews,) "

Well he's wrong to exclude them unless you're just excluding Zionist. It doesn't matter whether they are religious or secular. They're all made of the same stuff. Surely you've heard of all the organ smuggling, drug dealing and other goings on in the religious community and they're supposed to be the good guys?

There's one idea that describes the Jews perfectly. It describes their parasitism, their, lying, their chameleon like behavior, their sense of superiority and belief that they are different from everyone else. There's a simple explanation for why the Jews are hated so much that also explains their behavior and success. The Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. No all, maybe not even the majority, but a large number. All of the Jews ancient writings are nothing more than a manual for psychopaths to live by. The Talmud is nothing but one psychopathic thought after another. The Talmud "great enlightenment" basically says that everyone not Jewish is there to serve Jews. All their property is really the Jews. No one is really human unless they're Jews and their lives don't matter. A psychopathic religion for a psychopathic people.

They've been thrown out of every single country that they've been to in any numbers. Psychopaths having no empathy themselves can only go by the feedback they get from the people they are exploiting. So they push and push to see what they can get away with. The normal people build up resentment towards them. Thinking "surely they will reform or repent" like a normal person who does wrong. Of course the Jews do not. They don't have the mental process for reform. Then in a huge mass outpouring of hate for the Jews, fed up with the refusal to reform their behavior, they attack and/or deport them. In this stage of the cycle the Big/Rich Jews escape and the little Jews are attacked.

Start over.

Even if it's wrong if you assume the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths you will never be surprised and Jew's behavior will make sense.

In order to predict Jews behavior read the great book on Psychopaths by Hervey Cleckley, "The Mask of Sanity". Here's a chapter you should read. It's about the psychopath Stanley. Who does all kinds of manic bullshit and spends all his time feeding people the most outrageous lies. Look at the astounding array of things he's able to get away with. Maybe it will remind you of a certain tribe. New meme. "They're pulling a Stanley". The whole book is on the web and worth reading.

http://www.energyenhancement.org/Psychopath/psychopath-Hervey-Cleckley-the-mask-of-sanity-SECTION-TWO-THE-MATERIAL-Part-1-The-disorder-in-full-clinical-manifestations-19-Stanley.html

I use the simplest of logic to determine this. Form follows function, Occam's Razor. Their behavior is exactly like psychopaths. Their religious beliefs are exactly like the internal dialog of psychopaths. I don't know but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck. It's a duck and the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. The MOST IMPORTANT PART is that the behavior of the Jews as a group over time can not be reliably separated from the behavior of psychopaths. Even if I'm wrong their behavior is the same so they should be treated as psychopaths. A very dangerous, powerful group with no empathy towards anyone but other Jews.

I don't know why Zionist get such a bad rap I want them all to go to Israel so I'm a Zionist too.

Alden , April 21, 2017 at 8:18 pm GMT
@wayfarer The problem with fiat money is that if one has enough of it, one can buy just about anything under the sun that they please, including even large parts of a country's political system and government.

Take for example, Jared (a.k.a. billionaire arch-Zionist trust-fund baby) Kushner

source: https://www.sott.net/article/348461-The-controversy-of-Jared-Kushner-A-suspected-gangster-within-the-Trump-White-House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtf6TgQgWr4

Thanks, very interesting. Funny thing, most of the Jews I know are such fervent liberals they think Kushner is a traitor to the cause of liberalism.
Seraphim , April 22, 2017 at 2:09 am GMT
@Art You are a nazi. Your generalization are the vile ranting of a hate filled animal.

Oh my - straight to the "N" word - what happened to "anti-Semite" - has it lost its sting? Ah' to bad.

What are you going to call us next?

Peace --- Art

p.s. By the way Nazism and Zionism are brothers - both are fascists.

p.s. What about you Jew animals in Israel - you have the most immoral army in the world.

p.s. You Jews and your hateful bluster - you are fooling no one.

p.s. ZOG is going to lose. It is an irrefragable law:

"Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage which asserts that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches -‌that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler.

Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric where 'reductio ad Hitlerum'* occurs.

*Reductio ad Hitlerum (pseudo-Latin for "reduction to Hitler"; sometimes argumentum ad Hitlerum, "argument to Hitler", ad Nazium, "to Nazism"), or playing the Nazi card, is an attempt to invalidate someone else's position on the basis that the same view was held by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party, for example: "Hitler was a vegetarian, X is a vegetarian, therefore X is a Nazi". A variation of this fallacy, reductio ad Stalinum, also known as "red-baiting", has also been used in political discourse.

Coined by Leo Strauss in 1951, reductio ad Hitlerum borrows its name from the term used in logic, reductio ad absurdum (reduction to the absurd). According to Strauss, reductio ad Hitlerum is a form of ad hominem, ad misericordiam, or a fallacy of irrelevance. The suggested rationale is one of guilt by association. It is a tactic often used to derail arguments, because such comparisons tend to distract and anger the opponent, as Hitler and Nazism have been condemned in the modern world.

Sam J. , April 22, 2017 at 7:34 am GMT
@Sam J. "... Please note that Gilad specifically excludes Judaics (religious Jews,)..."

Well he's wrong to exclude them unless you're just excluding Zionist. It doesn't matter whether they are religious or secular. They're all made of the same stuff. Surely you've heard of all the organ smuggling, drug dealing and other goings on in the religious community and they're supposed to be the good guys?

There's one idea that describes the Jews perfectly. It describes their parasitism, their, lying, their chameleon like behavior, their sense of superiority and belief that they are different from everyone else. There's a simple explanation for why the Jews are hated so much that also explains their behavior and success. The Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. No all, maybe not even the majority, but a large number. All of the Jews ancient writings are nothing more than a manual for psychopaths to live by. The Talmud is nothing but one psychopathic thought after another. The Talmud "great enlightenment" basically says that everyone not Jewish is there to serve Jews. All their property is really the Jews. No one is really human unless they're Jews and their lives don't matter. A psychopathic religion for a psychopathic people.

They've been thrown out of every single country that they've been to in any numbers. Psychopaths having no empathy themselves can only go by the feedback they get from the people they are exploiting. So they push and push to see what they can get away with. The normal people build up resentment towards them. Thinking "surely they will reform or repent" like a normal person who does wrong. Of course the Jews do not. They don't have the mental process for reform. Then in a huge mass outpouring of hate for the Jews, fed up with the refusal to reform their behavior, they attack and/or deport them. In this stage of the cycle the Big/Rich Jews escape and the little Jews are attacked.

Start over.

Even if it's wrong if you assume the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths you will never be surprised and Jew's behavior will make sense.

In order to predict Jews behavior read the great book on Psychopaths by Hervey Cleckley, "The Mask of Sanity". Here's a chapter you should read. It's about the psychopath Stanley. Who does all kinds of manic bullshit and spends all his time feeding people the most outrageous lies. Look at the astounding array of things he's able to get away with. Maybe it will remind you of a certain tribe. New meme. "They're pulling a Stanley". The whole book is on the web and worth reading.

http://www.energyenhancement.org/Psychopath/psychopath-Hervey-Cleckley-the-mask-of-sanity-SECTION-TWO-THE-MATERIAL-Part-1-The-disorder-in-full-clinical-manifestations-19-Stanley.html

I use the simplest of logic to determine this. Form follows function, Occam's Razor. Their behavior is exactly like psychopaths. Their religious beliefs are exactly like the internal dialog of psychopaths. I don't know but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck. It's a duck and the Jews are a tribe of psychopaths. The MOST IMPORTANT PART is that the behavior of the Jews as a group over time can not be reliably separated from the behavior of psychopaths. Even if I'm wrong their behavior is the same so they should be treated as psychopaths. A very dangerous, powerful group with no empathy towards anyone but other Jews.

I don't know why Zionist get such a bad rap I want them all to go to Israel so I'm a Zionist too. I don't know if this guy is real or if it's true or not but there's a vast amount of information and cases which readily conform to the idea that everything he says is true. According to the witnesses in the dutroux-affair all the participants had to break the law to be in business with them on an intimate level. Mostly this was done through sexual abuse of children. Twenty years ago you might could laugh this off as some foolish rantings of conspiracy freaks but there's been too many verifiable cases with lots of physical evidence.

Pizzagate Pedogate Dutch Whistleblower Real Big Money Revelations by an Insider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO4rAYk-420

I'm also not saying it's just Jews but I am saying they are the root of it all. They're the glue that keeps the whole thing together due to their insider grouping tribalism.

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." – Henry David Thoreau

annamaria , April 22, 2017 at 5:19 pm GMT
@Naro Again To Summarize JEWS ARE THE BRAINIEST AND MOST ACCOMPLISHED HUMANS ALIVE TRYING TO SURVIVE IN A WORLD OF MORONS AND IMPRESSIONABLE IDIOTS! Examples of the psychopathology and idiocy of the Nazis is obvious on this thread-ironically in a web site owned by a Jew.
The envious losers, and political manipulators have always looked for scapegoats for their failures, and Jews were easy targets. Not any more. Jews are quite able to defend themselves ..thank you. You don't believe me? just try. " Jews are quite able to defend themselves .."

At least now you have prudently omitted references to Nazis, since you became educated from other posts that American Jews – see Kagans' clan of warmongers – are in bed with Ukrainian neo-Nazis and, moreover, that an Israeli citizen is known as a financier of the bloody neo-Nazi battalion that had burnt a score of civilians to death in Odessa.
American (and UK) Israel-firsters have betrayed western civilization for the benefit of mythological Eretz Israel. Your tribe was pushing for the slaughter in Iraq (see treasonous Wolfowitz and Feith and the despicable Kristol) and in Libya (the former pearl of North Africa, where citizens used to enjoy free education, free health care, and a sizable gold reserve – the latter stolen by the US "deciders"). Currently, it is an ongoing bloodbath in Syria, which Israel wants to prolong as much as possible in order to steal the Golan Heights. For the same reason your "most accomplished" Israeli generals proclaimed loudly their preference for ISIS. What have you claimed, that your tribe is the "brainiest?" – Relax. With such "activists" like the openly racist Avigdor Lieberman (ex-convict) and your half-wit hater Ayelet Shaked you are safely among mediocrities. As for the truly brainiest and ethical like Baruch Spinoza and Hanna Arend, they were rejected by your supremacist tribe. Check the location of Spinoza' grave.

annamaria , April 22, 2017 at 11:16 pm GMT
@Anonymous shut up naziscum. where is your thousand year reich? in the garbage An Israeli demonstrates her regular poor manners Aren't you trying to imply that Israelis are striving for their thousand-year reich? Good luck. Don't forget to take the neo-Nazi-loving Kagans' clan with you.
Johnny F. Ive , April 23, 2017 at 6:48 am GMT
What if the US Empire was financially bankrupted? How would it behave afterwards? I think it will end with military overstretch and bankruptcy or nuclear war. One or the other. Its sad that all this suffering is a tribal war. On man's way to civilization he forgot to leave that behind. Would the US behave after bankruptcy like the Soviets did after losing in Afghanistan or is the US going to be even more like a huge North Korea? Besides Israel there is the manipulations of other countries like the Europeans.

I agree Trump is very concerned about appearance and that makes him weak. He like the rest of the American Establishment is like Narcissus and in their pond the Empire is reflected back at them. They won't let go of it.

I disagree that the American people vote against war. The American people have had plenty of chances. They've had chances to turn the world's fortunes around plenty of times with Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader. That pretty much covers the whole ideological spectrum except the neocons. The American people have consistently voted for war at least since 1992. They had these men who ran for president in order to save us all and the were consistently rejected by the electorate. Its not just the government. Its the 4th estate. The corporations. I'm now a pessimist. War will come and it will fail. The question is who will the Empire wage war against and who will survive the war?

Is Pauline Christianity legitimate? The problem with it has always been that it was built on a tribal story. A lot of good came from it. It was used to justify some bad things too. Its origins are not the classical world. That is probably why the alt-right has a fascination with modern pseudo-pagan religions. I think the real story is that the Ancient Greeks particularly the Epicureans have won the argument:
https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/Stoic-Epic-comp.html – these ideas are older than Christianity.

The AngloZionist tribe is now considered what the Catholics considered the pagans were. The word paganus means hick. Pagan now means new age and Christian in the West means hick. The AngloZionist don't even like them but require their obedience and support. Perhaps its only a matter of time before the Judeo-Christian fairy tail loses its political power and just becomes good literature. It has no hope especially with the transhumanist wonders about to bequeathed to the world. It can't compete. They avoided the truth for about 2000 years and couldn't develop a convincing response against Epicureanism. Genesis is the best they could muster against natural selection after thousands of years of knowing about it? Epikoros (Hebrew for heretic) in the end won! But the US Empire has an unhealthy appetite of playing chicken with nuclear powers and western Judeo-Christianity will not go peacefully into the night. Read More Agree: Beefcake the Mighty

Frankly Frivilous , April 23, 2017 at 6:50 am GMT
@Yevardian Um, the Golan Heights was officially annexed by Israel in 1981.

I enjoy your articles, but you can't be taken seriously whilst you keep making amateurish mistakes like this.

Ditto on Russia being the only country truly upholding Islamic values. If Israel officially annexed the Golan heights in 1981, why is Netanyahu making noise about it now? Seems insecure. Also consider that "true" Islamic or Christian values would be those proposed by the actual adherents. Would Russians have any reason to discount or misrepresent their stated values if they were altruistic and high minded? I suggest you try and critique the Sakers comments on their intended merits if you wish to be taken seriously.

Joe Franklin , April 23, 2017 at 7:05 pm GMT
@nsa ZIG is a more accurate acronym......as in INFESTED. Think parasites like bed bugs, ticks, lice, mites, termites, scabies, fleas, ringworm, etc. ZOP is accurate too, and ZOP is the specific cause of ZOG.

ZOP is Zionist Occupied People, and ZOP is a description of the US and Israeli voter obsession with and participation in a neurotic victim cult.

ZOP is the elephant in the room that nobody in broadcast media will discuss.

US and Israeli victim cult lobbyist are obsessed with cult dominance of national elections and society.

The US and Israel have a dominant victim cult that displays a neurotic persecution complex and frequently demands government remedies.

A US and Israeli victim cultist is conditioned to demand government reparations and entitlements in exchange for their votes.

A typical US and Israeli victim cultist is obsessed with Nazi and white supremacy, claiming that white-straight-Christian-males are deplorable Nazi or Nazi sympathizers.

The US and Israeli victim cult is aggressive toward foreign nations that are a perceived threat to the cult.

As an example, here are some of the government entitlements enjoyed by victim cultists in Israel:

https://electronicintifada.net/content/lawsuit-challenges-israels-discriminatory-citizenship-definition/8767

Israel refused to recognize an Israeli nationality at the country's establishment in 1948, making an unusual distinction between "citizenship" and "nationality." Although all Israelis qualify as "citizens of Israel," the state is defined as belonging to the "Jewish nation," meaning not only the 5.6 million Israeli Jews but also more than seven million Jews in the diaspora.

Critics say the special status of Jewish nationality has been a way to undermine the citizenship rights of non-Jews in Israel, especially the fifth of the population who are Arab. Some 30 laws in Israel specifically privilege Jews, including in the areas of immigration rights, naturalization, access to land and employment.

Arab leaders have also long complained that indications of "Arab" nationality on ID cards make it easy for police and government officials to target Arab citizens for harsher treatment.

The interior ministry has adopted more than 130 possible nationalities for Israeli citizens, most of them defined in religious or ethnic terms, with "Jewish" and "Arab" being the main categories.

Gene S. , April 23, 2017 at 9:02 pm GMT
@wayne Read about King David in the Bible. He was a genocidal psychopath. It states in the Bible how he vicioulsy murdered civilian prisoners of war. And on at least one occasion he gave his men all the pre-puberty girls to "do with as they pleased", which was after they had murdered their parents and all family members. I am sure this was a great sadistical delight to him and his troops. Men of God? No God damned way. Undoubtely men of Satan. Different time, different standards. You are judging him with the modern "for show" standards, by which the "civilized" nations, which have instituted them, do not abide. The US govt has killed 10s of millions of mostly civilians (men, women, children) since the end of WWII, around the world, and now their clients in the Middle East and Ukraine continue mass rapes and murder. David's crimes pale by comparison. Those in Washington D.C. will never face justice for what they are doing, at least in this world, nor do they repent at all. You can read about King David's repentance in the same Bible.
Anon , April 23, 2017 at 9:47 pm GMT
300 Words @Incitatus I deeply apologize, Anon/Keith. I overestimated you. Mea colpa.

The fable was intended to illustrate the difference between embarrassing irrational instinct (canine leg-humpers) and intelligent criticism. You excelled, once again, at the former, and proudly so. Knock yourself out. Polish those table legs.

"I know I confuse you."

The only one confused is you, Anon, the evader of any record who still fancies the distinction 'Keith.' Are you afraid that a record of your remarks will easily indict you for your narrow agenda and regurgitative screeds?

No matter.

You might look up Julius Streicher, your patron saint. A man so vile cardinal Nazis at Nüremberg avoided him as if he would leave excrement on them in any prolonged contact. They knew best. Keith ,

"Are you afraid that a record of your remarks will easily endict you".

Indict me for wanting to bring down the elephant in the room? Did the Jewnited states already pass hate speech laws, forbidding all criticism of Israel and for exposing Jewish power in America? Did the Jewmerica pass laws criminalizing Holocaust Revisionism? Did I wake up in a country without first amendment rights. Or is all of this wishful thinking on your part?

Should I be indicted for a hate crime for asking for an autopsy proving several million Jews were gassed at the Auschwitz labor camps? Should I be hung because there is no autopsy evidence?

Maybe this is the purpose of the Unz Review. My Unz Review remarks will be use to retro actively endict me for laws that weren't on the books when I made my forbidden remarks, just like the Germans were endicted, convicted and hung at Nuremberg?

It is you and the other Hasbara trolls who have a defensive agenda and regurgitate
the same old name calling " Its a trick, the Jews always use it"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jUGVPBO9_cA

When the Jewish Bolshevik NeoCons take over America, I am convinced I will be one of the first to be put in a NKVD Gulag. I also know my cell mates will be other patriotic Unz Review Americans along with millions of others who want to bring down the elephant in the room.

I apologize for mentioning the forbidden news about Rabbis and Herpes and the Jewish Egypt slave myth. I know this upset you. Both of these stories were news published in the Israeli Haaretz News. I guess these stories were for Jews eyes only.

Anon , April 23, 2017 at 11:01 pm GMT
@Ace

Vietnam was not a military defeat.

Doesn't matter. It was a political defeat, and war is an extension of politics.

[Apr 08, 2017] Turning the tables: Duma committee to probe US media for meddling in Russian elections

Notable quotes:
"... preemptive retaliation ..."
"... After the end of the US presidential elections, the American politicians who voiced very acute accusations targeting the Russian mass media, proceeded from words to real action ..."
"... Once Reagan, discussing taxes, addressed Americans with 'Read my lips: No ..."
Apr 08, 2017 | www.rt.com
The State Duma Committee for Information Policy, IT and Communications has decided to hold an investigation into the work of Western media outlets in order to examine possible attempts to influence election processes in Russia. The head of the committee, MP Leonid Levin (Fair Russia) told TASS that he and his colleagues would soon hold a special session with analysts and experts, at which they intend to look into the activities of such mass media organizations as CNN, Radio Liberty and Voice of America. Read my lips: NO – Putin says about Russia's 'meddling' in US elections

The idea to launch a probe was proposed by MP Konstantin Zatulin of the majority United Russia party. In an attachment to the protocol letter, the lawmaker described the motion as " preemptive retaliation ."

" After the end of the US presidential elections, the American politicians who voiced very acute accusations targeting the Russian mass media, proceeded from words to real action ," Zatulin wrote.

This action includes, for example, a bill that gives Justice Department additional authority to investigate RT America for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, drafted recently by Democratic Party Senator Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire). Shaheen said in press comments that her bill was a response to a report from the director of national intelligence about Russian influence in the 2016 election.

Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations of its role in the last US presidential elections. Most recently the rumors were dismissed by President Vladimir Putin as he spoke to journalists during the Arctic Forum in late March.

" Once Reagan, discussing taxes, addressed Americans with 'Read my lips: No !'" Putin said, answering a question posed by the anchor of the forum.

[Apr 04, 2017] Drones, special operations, CIA arms supplies, military advisers, aerial bombings - the whole nine yards.

Apr 04, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
RGC , April 04, 2017 at 07:42 AM
US Military Should Get Out of the Middle East Jeffrey Sachs, Boston Globe

It's time to end US military engagements in the Middle East.

Drones, special operations, CIA arms supplies, military advisers, aerial bombings - the whole nine yards. Over and done with.

That might seem impossible in the face of ISIS, terrorism, Iranian ballistic missiles, and other US security interests, but a military withdrawal from the Middle East is by far the safest path for the United States and the region. That approach has instructive historical precedents.

America has been no different from other imperial powers in finding itself ensnared repeatedly in costly, bloody, and eventually futile overseas wars. From the Roman empire till today, the issue is not whether an imperial army can defeat a local one. It usually can, just as the United States did quickly in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

The issue is whether it gains anything by doing so. Following such a "victory," the imperial power faces unending heavy costs in terms of policing, political instability, guerilla war, and terrorist blowback.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/03/us-military-should-get-out-middle-east

anne -> RGC... , April 04, 2017 at 08:42 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/magazine/the-empire-slinks-back.html

April 27, 2003

The Empire Slinks Back
By NIALL FERGUSON

Wheresoever the Roman conquers, he inhabits. -- Seneca

Iraq has fallen. Saddam's statues are face down in the dust. His evil tyranny is at an end.

So -- can we, like, go home now?

You didn't have to wait long for a perfect symbol of the fundamental weakness at the heart of the new American imperialism -- sorry, humanitarianism. I'm talking about its chronically short time frame. I wasn't counting, but the Stars and Stripes must have been up there on the head of that statue of Saddam for less than a minute. You have to wonder what his commanding officer said to the marine responsible, Cpl. Edward Chin, when he saw Old Glory up there. ''Son, get that thing down on the double, or we'll have every TV station from here to Bangladesh denouncing us as Yankee imperialists!''

An echo of Corporal Chin's imperial impulse can be heard in the last letter Cpl. Kemaphoom Chanawongse sent home before he and his Marine unit entered Iraq. Chanawongse joked that his camp in Kuwait was like something out of ''M*A*S*H'' -- except that it would need to be called ''M*A*H*T*S*F'': ''marines are here to stay forever.''

But the question raised by Corporal Chanawongse's poignant final joke -- he was killed a week later, when his amphibious assault vehicle was blown up in Nasiriya -- is, Are the marines in Iraq ''to stay forever''? No doubt it is true, as President Bush said, that the America will ''honor forever'' Corporal Chanawongse and the more than 120 other service personnel so far killed in the conflict. Honored forever, yes. But there forever? In many ways the biggest mystery about the American occupation of Iraq is its probable duration. Recent statements by members of the Bush administration bespeak a time frame a lot closer to ephemeral than eternal. As the president himself told the Iraqi people in a television broadcast shortly after the fall of Baghdad: ''The government of Iraq and the future of your country will soon belong to you. . . . We will respect your great religious traditions, whose principles of equality and compassion are essential to Iraq's future. We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave.''

What the president didn't make entirely clear was whether the departing troops would be accompanied by the retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner and his ''Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance,'' newspeak for what would once have been called Omgus -- the Office of Military Government (United States). Nor was he very specific about when exactly he expected to see the handover of power to the ''peaceful and representative government'' of Iraqis.

But we know the kind of time frame the president has in mind. In a prewar speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Bush declared, ''We will remain in Iraq as long as necessary and not a day more.'' It is striking that the unit of measure he used was days. Speaking less than a week before the fall of Baghdad, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, suggested that Garner would be running Iraq for at least six months. Other administration spokesmen have mentioned two years as the maximum transition period. When Garner himself was asked how long he expected to be in charge, he talked about just three months.

If -- as more and more commentators claim -- America has embarked on a new age of empire, it may turn out to be the most evanescent empire in all history. Other empire builders have fantasized about ruling subject peoples for a thousand years. This is shaping up to be history's first thousand-day empire. Make that a thousand hours.

Let me come clean. I am a fully paid-up member of the neoimperialist gang. Two years ago -- when it was not at all fashionable to say so -- I was already arguing that it would be ''desirable for the United States to depose'' tyrants like Saddam Hussein. ''Capitalism and democracy,'' I wrote, ''are not naturally occurring, but require strong institutional foundations of law and order. The proper role of an imperial America is to establish these institutions where they are lacking, if necessary . . . by military force.'' ...

[Apr 03, 2017] Globalists who express the interests of transnational corporations and world financial organisations vs populists who express the interests of the people in their countries

Apr 03, 2017 | thesaker.is
Question: Today we see a growing split of the world political elites. There are globalists who express the interests of transnational corporations and world financial organisations and there is a new political concept, the so-called populists who express the interests of the people in their countries. A vivid example is the election of US President Donald Trump, and there are a number of other political leaders who are seen as fringe politicians in the West, for example Marine Le Pen. Given this, it is not by chance that Russia is seen as a leader in half of the world. Is this view justified? Can we talk about a future victory for one of these ideologies? How would this influence today's world order?

Sergey Lavrov: I wouldn't call Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen "fringe politicians" if only because they absolutely fit into the principles that underlie the functioning of the American and French states. Marine Le Pen is a European member of parliament and her party is active in the national parliament. Donald Trump has been elected in full accordance with the American constitution, with its two-level indirect system of electing the president. I would not even call them populists. The word "populist" has a negative connotation. You said interestingly that populists are those who represent the people. There are nuances in the interpretation of the word "populist." In modern Russian it tends to be applied to people who go into politics, but do not bear the responsibility for their words and just seek to lure voters. A populist is someone who might promise to triple wages while the budget absolutely cannot support it, etc. So I would rather call them realists or anti-globalists, if you like. Having said that, anti-globalists are also associated with hooligans who try to disrupt the G20 and G7 summits, and so on. Come to think of it, even now that the new president of the world's largest power has declared that it is necessary to think not of global expansion, but of how America lives, the role of globalists will be changing. American corporations have already demanded a reduction in manufacturing in developing countries to move it to the US in order to create jobs there. Granted, this may not be very good news for the consumer because labour is more expensive in the US, so the prices for goods, cars and so on will increase. But this is the trend. In general, President Trump's conceptual slogans during his election campaign to the effect that America should interfere less in the affairs of other countries and address its own issues send a very serious signal to the globalists themselves. Again, up until now the US has been perceived as a symbol of globalism and the expansion of transnational corporations. Those who represent their interests are the huge team that has taken up arms against President Trump and his administration and in general against everything he does, and which tries, in any way possible, to throw a spanner in the works. Something similar things are happening in France where mountains of compromising materials of ten or fifteen years ago have been unearthed which invariably are presented through an "anti-Russia prism." It's been a long time since I've seen such a dirty campaign when at stake are the concepts and ideas of how to develop the state and their country, and a smear war is being waged. We had this not so long ago, and I don't see anything good about it.

In parallel the global market and the global trade system are being reappraised through the actions and statements of the new US administration. As you know, they have walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and said they would work through regional and bilateral agreements. We believe, though, that the World Trade Organisation which it took us such a long time to join did provide a common umbrella for world trade. Some regional structures could be built into these universal systems so as not to break the ties with the non-members of these regional organisations to maintain some common contact and exchanges through the WTO. That too is now under threat. So, we are in a period of rethinking our approaches, and I don't think it has everything to do with Trump. These changes have been brewing; otherwise the American position on so many issues could not have changed so abruptly. They were long in coming, and the WTO was in a major crisis when the Western countries categorically refused to listen to the leading developing countries on a range of issues connected with investment, financial services, etc.

I wouldn't say that there are globalists and populists. There are simply people who want to get elected and follow a well-trodden path and preserve the neoliberal structures that are all over the place in the West, and then there are people who see the neoliberalism and permissiveness which are part of the neoliberal approach as a threat to their societies, traditions and cultures. This is accompanied by philosophical reflections and practical discussions of what to do about the problem of illegal migrants, their own roots and religions, whether it is politically correct to remind people that you are an Orthodox or Catholic or whether you should forget about religion altogether. I have said more than once that the European Union wanted to adopt a constitution many years ago and was drafting it. The commission was headed by Giscard d'Estaing and he proposed a very simple sentence about Europe having Christian roots. He was prevented from doing so on the grounds that it would not be politically correct and would insult the Muslims. In reality it turns out that if you are cautious about making your religious roots known you end up not caring about the religious roots of others and the consequences are not usually good. Therefore, at the UN and UNESCO, we actively support all the initiatives that are particularly relevant today: the Dialogue of Civilisations, the Dialogue of Cultures and the Dialogue of Religions. It is not by chance that they have become topical issues on the agenda because they reflect the fermentation within societies and the need to somehow search for a national consensus.

[Apr 03, 2017] Recent experience shows that, in terms of the damage they cause, aggressive actions in the media at times have consequences similar to the use of weapons of mass destruction

Apr 03, 2017 | thesaker.is

Question : Recent experience shows that, in terms of the damage they cause, aggressive actions in the media at times have consequences similar to the use of weapons of mass destruction. In your opinion, isn't it time, at the UN, in the format of bilateral ties with other states, to move forward with drafting and signing a comprehensive treaty in this field, similar to strategic arms limitation treaties?

Sergey Lavrov : We've been working on this for several years now. Russia put forward an initiative that became known at the UN as International Information Security [Initiative]. It has been a subject of independent resolutions at a number of UN General Assembly sessions. While initially these resolutions were rejected by some of our Western partners, in recent years resolutions related to the UN contribution to international information security have been adopted unanimously.

Several years ago, a group of government experts was set up. It drafted a report that was approved by consensus at the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly expressed support for continuing this effort in the context of identifying specific cyberspace risks at present. Another government expert group was also formed, which is beginning to work. It is meant to prepare specific proposals in one and a half years.

I'd like to say right away that despite the apparently constructive participation of all states in this discussion, we are aware of the desire [of certain states] to limit themselves to discussions and not reach practical international legal agreements. So, alongside the work that I just mentioned, Russia and its partners, in particular in the SCO, have drafted a document entitled Code of Conduct for Cyberspace. It was also distributed at the UN and is designed to promote targeted dialogue on the legal aspects of this problem. Overall, we believe (and we have already submitted this proposal) that it is time to draft an international convention on cyber security, including the elimination of threats and risks related to hacking. We were the first to propose penalising and banning hacking within the framework of international law. We will see how those who are accusing Russian hackers of seeking to blow up the world in the style of James Bond will respond to this.

There is another important topic related to these issues. It concerns internet governance. For several years now a discussion on the democratisation of the internet and internet governance has been ongoing at the International Telecommunication Union. A very serious ideological struggle, if you will, is under way. Some people are upholding free market principles but there are also those who believe that farming out the internet to the free market is tantamount to giving it away to just one country. In this context, serious debate lies ahead.

We see all these problems. The majority of countries agree on the need to enforce some generally acceptable order. Focused work is under way but it is too early to expect any results yet.

[Apr 03, 2017] The United States started using the so called managed chaos technology long ago

Notable quotes:
"... The concept of managed chaos appeared long ago as a method of strengthening US influence. Its basic premise is that managed chaos projects should be launched away from the United States in regions that are crucial for global economic and financial development. The Middle East has always been in the focus of politicians and foreign policy engineers in Washington. Practice has shown that this concept is dangerous and destructive, in particular for the countries where the experiment was launched, namely Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. ..."
"... we have proposed that the UN General Assembly formalise the universal unacceptability of coups as a means of changing government. ..."
"... Last autumn, a resolution was adopted at the initiative of a large group of co-authors – our Cuban colleagues were among the most active advocates of this idea, alongside other countries. ..."
"... This resolution recognised the importance of creating a more democratic and equitable world order and openly rejected the change of governments through unconstitutional coups and attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of states and to impose alien ideas and values on them as unacceptable. It is also unacceptable when national jurisdictions are applied extraterritorially, when a country hunts down other countries' legal entities and nationals around the world even though they have not violated international law but are believed to have violated the national legislation of the said country. Three countries voted against this resolution and a few dozen countries – mostly Western ones – abstained. The resolution was adopted by a far larger vote than some other resolutions that our Western partners like to quote ..."
thesaker.is

Question: The United States started using the so-called managed chaos technology long ago. What can be used to counter such technology on the international scale? Is there a response to the concept of global stability and security management? Which countries could potentially initiate this project?

Sergey Lavrov: The concept of managed chaos appeared long ago as a method of strengthening US influence. Its basic premise is that managed chaos projects should be launched away from the United States in regions that are crucial for global economic and financial development. The Middle East has always been in the focus of politicians and foreign policy engineers in Washington. Practice has shown that this concept is dangerous and destructive, in particular for the countries where the experiment was launched, namely Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.

In the case of Afghanistan, the United States launched its operation there with international support following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The UN Security Council unanimously confirmed the US right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The US operation against the Taliban and al-Qaeda was supported by all countries. It's another matter that after receiving the international approval, the United States and its NATO allies, which took over in Afghanistan, started acting rather inconsistently, to put it mildly. During their operation in Afghanistan, the terrorist threat has not been rooted out, while the drug threat has increased many times over. The drug industry prospered. There is factual evidence that some of the NATO contingents in Afghanistan turned a blind eye to the illegal drug trafficking, even if they were not directly involved in these criminal schemes. Afghanistan is a separate case, although the current developments there, which are a result of the NATO operation's failure, despite the carte blanche the bloc received from the international community, can be considered an unintended cause of managed chaos. In Iraq, Syria and Libya, this chaos was created intentionally.

I have also mentioned Yemen. The situation there can be described as a huge humanitarian catastrophe. It is not at the top of the international agenda, for some reason, although representatives of the UN Secretariat who are responsible for humanitarian affairs have described the situation in Yemen as the "largest humanitarian crisis in the world", larger than in Syria or Iraq. Responsible politicians have come to see that the managed chaos theory is destroying life in many regions. Some parties can benefit in the short term from fluctuations on the raw materials markets provoked by the revolutions orchestrated by external forces, but this theory ultimately backfires at its engineers and executors in the form of massive migration inflows, which terrorists use to enter these countries.

We can see this in Europe. Terrorist attacks have been staged even in the United States.

The Atlantic Ocean has not protected it from the terrorist threat. This is the boomerang effect. Serious people are coming to see this. Reliance on international law is the only weapon against this threat. The UN Charter offers the necessary tools for this. Military force can only be used by decision of the UN Security Council, or a country can resort to anticipatory self-defence in keeping with the spirit of the UN Charter when an armed attack is imminent and inevitable.

Russia acts in keeping with these premises in its relations with other countries. China, India, Brazil and the majority of other countries share this view.

There is one more thing connected with the issue of managed chaos and its consequences.

The policy of countries in Africa and Latin America, as well as their regional organisations – the African Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) – is based on a formal principle on the unacceptability of the unconstitutional change of power via a coup d'état. Since this danger is not purely African or Latin American (we have seen it surface in other parts of the world), we have proposed that the UN General Assembly formalise the universal unacceptability of coups as a means of changing government.

Last autumn, a resolution was adopted at the initiative of a large group of co-authors – our Cuban colleagues were among the most active advocates of this idea, alongside other countries.

This resolution recognised the importance of creating a more democratic and equitable world order and openly rejected the change of governments through unconstitutional coups and attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of states and to impose alien ideas and values on them as unacceptable. It is also unacceptable when national jurisdictions are applied extraterritorially, when a country hunts down other countries' legal entities and nationals around the world even though they have not violated international law but are believed to have violated the national legislation of the said country. Three countries voted against this resolution and a few dozen countries – mostly Western ones – abstained. The resolution was adopted by a far larger vote than some other resolutions that our Western partners like to quote, for example the resolution on the violation of human rights in Crimea.

[Apr 02, 2017] With the emergence of globalization, the term comprador denote trading groups and classes in the developing world that benefit and prefer subordinate relationships with metropolitan capital

Apr 02, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
libezkova -> pgl... , April 01, 2017 at 01:55 PM
"Trump is Yeltsin American style."

Nothing can be more wrong that this statement. This is an absurd statement to say the least.

Yeltsin was a comprador, member of Russian "lumpen elite". Trump is more of economic nationalist.

See

Rise of the lumpen elite: is this really what we fought for? Published on openDemocracy

https://opendemocracy.net/printpdf/62166

Yeltsin sold Russian industry to foreigh interests for pennies on a dollar. Gave up natural resposes for peanuts, on essentially colonial terms. That how Us oil companies got to Sakhalin island.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-II

The first ever Russian production sharing agreement was signed in the framework of the Sakhalin-2 project in 1994.

In foreign policy Yeltsin behaves like a drunk puppet of Clinton. His foreign minister Kozirev ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Kozyrev ) was nicknamed by US press "Mister Yes".

anne -> libezkova... , April 01, 2017 at 02:14 PM
"Trump is Yeltsin American style."

Nothing can be more wrong that this statement. This is an absurd statement to say the least.

Yeltsin was a comprador, member of Russian "lumpen elite".

[ Do explain this further when possible. ]

anne -> anne... , April 01, 2017 at 02:15 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprador

A comprador is a "person who acts as an agent for foreign organizations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation". A comprador is a native manager of European business houses in East and South East Asia, and, by extension, social groups that play broadly similar roles in other parts of the world.

anne -> libezkova... , April 01, 2017 at 02:20 PM
The use of emotionally laden jargon would not seem necessary if the point is to allow understanding.

Lumpen-this and Lumpen-that, such terms are of no interest to me.

anne -> anne... , April 01, 2017 at 02:21 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenbourgeoisie

Lumpenbourgeoisie is a term used primarily in the context of colonial and neocolonial elites in Latin America, which became heavily dependent on and supportive of the neocolonial powers.

libezkova -> anne... , April 01, 2017 at 03:52 PM
"Lumpenbourgeoisie" is a more correct term as for Yeltsin entourage then "lumpen elite". Sorry about that.

But "comprador" also is a legitimate term for describing this phenomena. It originated in Marxism and means "groups and classes in the developing world in subordinate to imperial power interests"

== quote from Wikipedia ==

In Marxism, the term comprador bourgeoisie was later applied to similar trading-class in regions outside of East Asia.[5][6][7][8]

With the emergence (or re-emergence) of globalization, the term comprador has reentered the lexicon to denote trading groups and classes in the developing world in subordinate but mutually advantageous relationships with metropolitan capital. The Egyptian Marxist Samir Amin has discussed the role of compradors in the contemporary global economy in his recent work.[9] In addition, the Indian economist, Ashok Mitra, has accused the owners and managers of firms attached to the Indian software industry of being compradors.[10] Growing identification of the software industry in India with comprador 'qualities' has led to the labeling of certain persons associated with the industry as 'dot.compradors'.[11]

== end of quote ==


But meaning all those terms is essentially the same -- part of the elite acting not in interests of the county, but some imperial foreign powers and content with neo-colonial role of their country.

In some sense neoliberal governments also can be called "lumpen elite" as they are subservient to transnational corporations, not so much interests of their own country population.

pgl -> libezkova... , April 01, 2017 at 03:09 PM
Yeltsin sold Russian industry to foreigh interests for pennies on a dollar.

True but me thinks Trump will do the same.

libezkova -> pgl... , April 01, 2017 at 04:40 PM
Future is unpredictable by definition.

But I would draw analogies between Weimar government and Yeltsin regime. In both case countries faced huge financial outflows (reparations in one case, "economic rape" in another), hyperinflation, mass impoverishment of population, disappearance of middle class, and high unemployment.

To a certain extent that was true about Obama regime in 2008-2010.

Yeltin Russia was really a "failed country". Government employees and government workers were not paid for many months, average longevity for males dropped below 60. And Russian neoliberals (such as Yegor Gaidar( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yegor_Gaidar an object of loathing among ordinary Russians who lost everything during the neoliberal privatization, Anatoly Chubais -- the most hated person in Russia, oligarchs such as Berezovsky, Gusinsky ) who came to power with Yeltsin tried to ally with foreign powers in order to secure what they stole from Russian people. Rephrasing Obama, only the USA stand between them and pitchforks. BTW Chubais is (or was) a member of the Advisory Council for JPMorgan.

It rather funny and tragic that criminals that stole money from Russians and than managed to escape to the West with their money already in Western banks instantly become fighters for democracy -- I would call this "Classic Neoliberal Metamorphose" (CMM). Berezovsky is one example here. Very convenient, useful for the pressure on Russian government, and you do not return the money :-)

A very interesting variant of the "rule of law".

In a sense Trump is more similar to Putin than Yeltsin. Both accidentally came to power on the wave of dis-illusion of the mass of population in previous administration and dramatic loss of "good" jobs.

ilsm -> libezkova... , April 01, 2017 at 03:53 PM
Libezkova you should follow David Warsh who runs Economic Principals blog which Professor Thoma links from here.

Warsh is writing a history of the US delegation, many from Harvard, who plundered Russia's attempt to build a stock exchange, etc.

[Apr 02, 2017] Barack Obamas theory of politics is and always has been garbage

Apr 02, 2017 | theweek.com
ny Ryan Cooper

The absolute nadir of Obama's presidency was the moment he chose to try to negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling (which limits the amount the federal government can borrow) to try to get a "grand bargain" on taxes and social insurance. If Republicans would agree to some tax hikes, he would get Democrats to support large cuts to Social Security and Medicare. This was stone idiocy on several levels: It accepted the legitimacy of Republicans taking the debt ceiling hostage - thus threatening national default and world financial crisis - to extract unrelated policy concessions; and as policy it was actively harmful. The narrative of looming debt crisis due to excessively generous social insurance was and is despicable garbage - and austerity and cuts to social insurance were the exact opposite of what was needed in July 2011, when the unemployment rate was 9.0 percent .

Obama was so enamored of the idea of being the president who finally cut through the partisan gridlock that he nearly undermined two of the country's most foundational programs. The only reason the grand bargain didn't pass was that the extremist faction of House Republicans refused to countenance any tax increases whatsoever .

After that humiliating failure, Obama retreated somewhat from trying to get compromises. Locked out of traditional governing, but still needing to address emergencies like climate change, he ended up resorting to a lot of unilateral executive orders.

But it seems this was merely a tactical retreat. In his 2015 State of the Union address , and again at the 2016 Democratic National Convention , he once more sounded the same anti-partisan notes of compromise and reasoned discussion. And as Jeff Stein reports after interviewing multiple top figures in Obama circles, the former president is preparing to redouble his anti-partisan efforts with a new foundation dedicated towards a rather content-free notion of "citizenship." This was also one major reason why Obama installed his loyal follower Tom Perez at the DNC - because he could liberate "himself from having to personally respond to Trump over the next several years" and thus stay above the partisan fray.

Now, as Steve Randy Waldman writes , it's not wrong to believe that a nation-state needs a basic commonality of belief and fellow feeling among the citizenry to succeed. Tying the nation together with cords of mutual dependence is one underrated function of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, for instance. But when confronted with a political faction fanatically dedicated to cutting those cords, the right approach is not to keep reaching across the aisle to get tased. Instead, as FDR showed when New Deal Democrats constructed the basic structure of modern American society, one must comprehensively defeat that faction politically, over and over, until their views are exiled from the political mainstream. With agreement again defined along reasonable lines, civil political discourse will flourish once more.

But until then, it's fight or lose.

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.

[Apr 01, 2017] There some signes the quite coup happened under Obama and the remnants of democracy were lost

Notable quotes:
"... The Obama era looks like an echo of the Federalist power grabs of the 1780's and 1790's both in its enrichment and glorification of financial elites and its open disdain for anything resembling true economic democracy ..."
Apr 01, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
juliania, March 31, 2017 at 9:53 pm

Thank you, thank you, Lambert, for that excellent Matt Stoller piece ( https://thebaffler.com/salvos/hamilton-hustle-stoller ). At the risk of repeating what others I hope have already read, this stood out for me:

As economist Simon Johnson pointed out in a 2009 essay in The Atlantic titled "The Quiet Coup," what the bailouts truly represented was the seizure of political power by a small group of American financiers. Just as in the founding era, we saw a massive foreclosure crisis and the evisceration of the main source of middle class wealth. A bailout, similar to one that created the national debt, ensured that wealth would be concentrated in the hands of a small group. The Citizens United decision and the ever-increasing importance of money in politics have strong parallels to the property disenfranchisement along class lines that occurred in the post-Revolutionary period. Just as turnout fell to record lows in much of the country in 2014, turnout collapsed after the rebellions were put down. And in another parallel, Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out across the country were evicted by armed guards-a martial response coordinated by banks, the federal government, and many Democratic mayors.

The Obama era looks like an echo of the Federalist power grabs of the 1780's and 1790's both in its enrichment and glorification of financial elites and its open disdain for anything resembling true economic democracy "

The parallels he draws are irrefutable.

[Apr 01, 2017] US neocons have a hard time coming to terms with a multi-lateral world. Still detente offered to Russia is likely to be conditioned on pulling Russia out of Chinas orbit and accepting Us terms in Syria

Apr 01, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 31, 2017 3:08:38 PM | 17

b's quote from Obama is from January 2016. I don't think Obama was EVER serious about fighting ISIS. He helped to create ISIS when he ignored their rise, calling them al Queda's "JV team". He confirmed his support for ISIS with his "leading from behind" policy.

In January 2016, the US was starting the charade of separating moderate rebels. We know how that farce turned out.

Even after the San Bernardino (Dec. 2015) and Orlando (Jun. 2016) terror attacks - attributed to ISIS - nothing really changed. For Obama it was business as usual.

Trump initiated talks between US military command and Russians for the first time since 2014. Gen. Dunford met with Gen. Gerasimov in Feb. 2017. We now see Israel stepping up operations in Syria as a result of US pulling back from the failed 'Assad must go!' policy.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

Has there been any real change or just a hiatus? I don't think we'll know until Trump meets with Putin.

Many in the US (esp. neocons) will have a hard time coming to terms with a multi-lateral world. Whatever peace is offered to Russia is likely to be conditioned on pulling Russia out of China's orbit.

Hayder | Mar 31, 2017 1:17:42 PM | 1
I'm sorry about this long contribution, but as I was writing this, more information and ideas came to hand.


Iraqi situation:


Recently, Iraqi PM Al-Abadi met with President Trump in the White House.

As well as the usual niceties of a meeting between two heads of state in Washington, the meeting centred around three main areas where the US has objectives that need to be address by their Iraqi counterparts:​


1) The Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU): These forces must be disbanded, and are seen as a stumbling block in the face of US objectives in Iraq and the wider region. There has been some indications that PM Al-Abadi will disband them after the elimination of Daesh/ISIS, allowing those that wish to remain to be integrated into the Iraqi security apparatus and disbanding those that do not. This is the "objective", but whether Al-Abadi can deliver is an entirely different matter. Already, Iraqi members of parliament have come out in protest at there mere possibility of the disbandment of the PMU, stating that the PM does not have the legal authority to disband them, and it needs parliamentary approval, where any MP voting for this will be committing political suicide due to the popularity the the PMU among ordinary Iraqis.


2) Permanent american Bases in Iraq and increasing the number of troops in the country: This is a big issue for President Trump. During his presidential campaign, he repeatedly stated the need to control Iraqi oil, and stated that leaving Iraq was a mistake. He even said this IN FRONT OF PM Al-Abadi several times.There is also widespread concern amongst Iraqis that the US is on its way back to Iraq, and in large numbers- some report a figure of up to fifty thousand troops, in permanent bases. There is also a very large US military base being build in Al Qayyarah area in Northern Iraq (about half way between Beiji and Mosul), that reports say will equal the size of Incirlik. This is another very "hot" topic in Iraq, and has widespread rejection by the Iraqi people. Once again, Iraqi MPs state that Al-Abadi DOES NOT have legal authority to allow permanent bases or keep foreign troops permanently in Iraq, and that such a step would need approval by parliament. Again, any MP voting for this will be committing political suicide. There is genuine fear amongst Iraqis about the situation "after" Daesh/ISIS. The concern is, that in the event the Government DOES NOT cede to the will of the US, and approve bases and troops etc.. there will be a dramatic political change, either in the form of a coup, or declaration of a state of emergency, through which special measures will take place. There is also talk of appointing a military governor for the mainly Sunni provinces of Nainawa, Salahuldeen (Saladin) and Anbar- a de facto state within a state- this could link up with Eastern Syria (see bellow).


3) Moving Iraq away from Iran and closer to the Saudi "camp". The recent visit to Iraq by the Saudi Foreign Minister has been well covered. There was also a meeting between the Iraqi PM and the Saudi King on the 29th on March. Al-Abadi's speech at the Heads of State of the Arab League in Jordan (29th March) was notable in that it was close to the Saudi position on several topics: a) His statement did not mention Syria, b) It stated that Iraq will "expel ISIS outside Iraq" { ?into Syria as per the objectives of others wishing to topple the Syrian state}, c) Is stressed the need for a unified Arab front against threats to Iraqi sovereignty, or the sovereignty of any Arab nation {reference to alleged Iranian interference in the region}. On the face of it, it seems that Iraq is moving away from Iran and edging closer to the Saudi camp, albeit slowly, but this is purely at the level of the current Iraqi government. I think efforts to distance Iraq from Iran and closer to Saudi Arabia will ultimately fail, for two reasons:


Firstly, The vast majority of Iraqi people view Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf Monarchies very negatively. Unlike Iraqi politicians, who will certainly have some personal gains from closer ties with Saudi Arabia, Iraqi people are unwilling to just "forgive and forget" how the Saudis and others persistently conspired against the Iraqi people over the years. It was the Saudis and other Gulf States who supported Saddam Hussein and his regime, which oppressed Iraqis terribly, they supported him to the tune of over 200 billion dollars for the war against Iran and persistently opposed the political process since 2003 (and Democracy was NOT the reason!). More recently, the Saudis have been supporting Daesh/ISIS both financially and ideologically. This support has carried on unabated to this day.


Secondly: the links between Iraq and Iran are much closer and deeper than others realise, and including at a cultural, religious and tribal level, and no government can alter that. The only exception to this would be a harsh dictatorial regime, such as that of Saddam Hussein, whereby government policy had absolutely no relation to Iraqi public opinion, and was simply a tool for carrying out the wishes of the "Dear Leader".


Other Iraq developments:


A) PMU still barred from entering Tel Afar. The Iraqi government has succumbed to pressure from Turkey to prevent Tal Afar from being liberated, with a threat of invasion by a Turkish force stationed at the boarder town of Silopi should the PMUs enter Tel Afar.


B) Rumours that Daesh/ISIS evacuating injured/ getting supplies from through a corridor to the North of Mosul, via Masoud Barzani controlled territory / Turkey, and plans are to slow down the Iraqi advance long enough for the majority of Daesh/ISIS forces to evacuate into Syria. The route takes them through Tell Kayf and Batnay (see Southfront mosul situation update map 31 March https://southfront.org/military-situation-in-mosul-on-march-31-2017-iraqi-map-update/ ).

Syria situation:


With the ongoing advance towards Raqqa by US/SDF forces, the bid event recently was the surprise Tabqa operation. It is notable that the airborne landings in Tabqa by a small US/SDF force occurred with relatively little resistance from Daesh/ISIS, with few casualties. Some have concluded that the majority of ISIS had already withdrawn. Contrast this with the Ithriyah-Raqqa offensive carried out by the Syrian Arab Army in 2016, whereby the SAA suffered heavy casualties and resulted in Daesh/ISIS gains. There are also reports of a rapid withdraw on ISIS from East As-Suwayda to reinforce strength in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and As-Sukhnah.


The US/SDF landings in Tabqa aimed at achieving several objectives. The most important is blocking the path of the Syrian army and allies from Reqqa.

If/when US/SDF forces defeat Daesh/ISIS in Reqqa , they will have virtual control of the whole of Eastern Syria, save for three pockets of SAA control in Qamishli, Hasakah and Deir Ezzur, as well as some areas where Daesh/ISIS will remain.

The Eastern part of Syria is where the baulk of the oil and gas is located as well as being the agricultural heartland of the country. The US secretary of State, Tillerson stated that the the US longer sees toppling President Assad as a primary objective. This may be the case (for now), but on the ground, events are such that Syria is being divided into regions of influence whereby the Damascus Government no longer has authority over large swathes of it. We are witnessing a de facto federalisation of Syria, with the Eastern part no longer under the rule of Damascus, and in effect a US protectorate, with troops on the ground. The creation of this "region" also serves another critical US objective in the region - it acts as a "wall" separating Iran & "Shia" Iraq from the Government of Syria and Lebanon. There are whispers that parts of Western Iraq will be added to this new entity in a "redrawing" of the political maps in the region. As stated in a previous post of mine, I believe that Daesh/ISIS will concentrate its forces in Deir Ezzor after its defeat in Raqqa, for a final "showdown" with other forces. It will likely face both US/SDF and Syrian/Russian forces there, but time will tell.


Turkey announced the Euphrates Shield has concluded. Turkey has managed to split the two areas of Kurdish influence in Syria, but I believe the operation was concluded as there was no more room for Turkey to move, rather than by choice. Erdogan has finally got a foothold in Norther Syria. Could this area now be used to house refugees as per "safe zones" advocated by Turkey, Saudi and now the new US administration?

Arab Summit:

Some are sating that the recent summit of the Arabs Heads of State held in Jordan on March 29th marked the unofficial start of the "Arab NATO" to face Iran. There was the usual anti-Iran rhetoric from the "usual suspects" but Iraq was usually cold towards Iran. The question of Palestine was high on the agenda at the summit, but it is thought that this is merely being used as a tool to provide "political cover" for the upcoming Sunni NATO, with an expected summit to be held sometime down the line in Washington that will bring together these Arab leaders together with their Israeli counterparts in a public display of a new type alliance between Arabs and Israelis to face the "Iranian threat".


War in Yemen:

There are signs that the US is about to enter the war in Yemen, against the government in Sana'a (Houthi-Saleh alliance). This is seen as a war against Iran in Yemen. There are currently three US destroyers with support vessels in the Red Sea. The is a media storm from the Saudi side regarding the port of Hodeida, and that it is used to smuggle weapons into Yemen, stressing the importance of "taking it out". The next large operation could well be the battle for the West coast of Yemen (on the Red Sea). The Sana'a forces have stated that they will NOT tolerate an attack on Hodeida, and any such action will mean a major escalation on their part. At present, the Sana'a forces have refrained from going deep into Saudi territory- but this could change and their forces may receive the political green light to proceed if Hodeida is attacked.


End in sight in Syria .....?


Things seem to be clearing up in Syria.. Daesh/ISIS is on the ropes, US/SDF making steady progress in the East, and the Syrian army, backed by the Russians is in control of most of the major population areas, and the fact that the US publicly states that removal of Assad is no longer a priority have lead some to argued that it is the beginning of the end.. that the players are making their final touches before a political settlement is reached.. they argue that at the start, the US and its allies wanted regime change by supporting the rebels, and aimed at taking the whole of Syria- this has failed. Now, the US and its allies are involved directly and will settle for a different model, whereby there are regions of influence, a division between the US and Russian Axis. I disagree with this. I think it is still too early, and the US, Turkey, Saudi and other will still relish the overthrow of the Syrian government- and as things stand, they cant do it, but are still open to seizing any opportunity that may present itself in the future to achieve this. That is the only explanation for the lack of full co-ordination between the US and Russia to bring a devastating defeat to Daesh/ISIS, Al-Nusra and groups allied to them. If the US and its allies were serious in accepting what gains they have made, then they would start the full co-ordination of efforts to defeat the extremists with a view of working out a final political settlement. We have to remember that Daesh/ISIS and other groups are only a tool, a means to an end. they are weapons on mass destruction- some may have outlived their usefulness and will need to be exterminated, others still have a role to play.


Its not over yet,. it is not clear what the final outcome for both Iraq and Syria will be after Daesh/ISIS. As regards Syria, I think there is a false sense of security, and the danger to the Syrian government will stem from the South- contrary to expectations.

Hayder, the Iraqi abroad

WorldBLee | Mar 31, 2017 3:12:54 PM | 18
I used to use the term "Obusha" for the hybrid nature of the last two administrations where the Coke/Pepsi branding masked the fact that the core policies were the same. Perhaps "Trama" is the term for the current state where the Washington-Wall Street consensus types scream about how Trump is an abomination while in reality business as usual goes in most areas. Certainly Trama describes the impact on the rest of the world, particularly in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

Temporarily Sane | Mar 31, 2017 3:14:17 PM | 19
@1 Hayder

Excellent analysis. I wonder what the Iranian, Syrian, Hezbollah reaction will be. Part of Trump's goal, I suspect, is moving Russia away from Iran. There are already points of contention between Russia and Syria/Iran namely that the former has not made the continued unity of Syrian territory a non-negotiable condition. Which begs the question what Russia's actual goals in Syria are.

james | Mar 31, 2017 3:33:23 PM | 20
b - thank you... the only dupes who are going to swallow the change in the words, are the same dupes who believed all the previous lies... meanwhile, until an actual change happens, it will be the same biz as usual from the same group of liars... they must think folks are complete idiots to believe any of their bs!! change my ass... hopey changey, lol...

dh | Mar 31, 2017 1:45:47 PM | 6
Good point b about this being Obama policy but

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/03/31/team-trump-doubles-down-on-obamas-horrendous-betrayal-of-syria

likklemore | Mar 31, 2017 2:00:02 PM | 8
yes b, Haley also said "Assad regime, Iran and Russia committed war crimes"

No, never mind "war crimes" Assad may stay because we failed the regime change thingy after Mr. Putin entered in support of Syria..Bad Putin who hijacked our elections they are no match for us. So, our new focus is North Korea, third world dictator Kim Jung-Un, piece of cake we can readily beat just like we did the Taliban in Afghanistan. Kim Jung's half brother was offed - we will continue to send a message. This time around we really do intend to teach NK people a lesson in democracy and vassalship. See..the USA Sec. of War

In London, Mad-Dog Mattis: "North Korea 'Has Got to Be Stopped"

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/defense-sec-james-mattis-north-korea-has-got-be-stopped-n740966

Mad-Dog is an apt descriptor MAD --setting up the final event for total collapse.
I gotta go buy some supplies: plastic sheeting, duct tape, water and food. Can't afford a luxury underground bunker.

likklemore | Mar 31, 2017 3:02:23 PM | 14
hopehely @ 10

Guess, I should have included the /S tag


Dh @ 12

John McCain loves his friends, ISIS. Here he is outing himself on Hannity Show saying:
"ISIS! not true" "I know these people intimately, I know these people I am in contact with them all the time."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHtS3c5olMY

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You think?
All doubts of McCain ISIS connection now debunked.

Peter AU | Mar 31, 2017 4:19:29 PM | 22
Temporarily Sane 19 "There are already points of contention between Russia and Syria/Iran namely that the former has not made the continued unity of Syrian territory a non-negotiable condition. Which begs the question what Russia's actual goals in Syria are."

There is the matter of the UNSC resolution, that Russia put up and US agreed to, that Syria retains its territorial integrity.
US may occupy part of Syria for awhile. Nothing Russia can do about that in the short term, short of going to war with the US. Russia is looking at the long term.

Louis Proyect | Mar 31, 2017 5:16:50 PM | 23
Okay, it is now six years and counting. How many years will it take for you to figure out that the USA prefers Assad to the religiously conservative rural poor? Maybe both Obama and Trump took the advice of the RAND corporation:: "Regime collapse, while not considered a likely outcome, was perceived to be the worst possible outcome for U.S. strategic interests"

Yonatan | Mar 31, 2017 5:23:00 PM | 24
Temporarily Sane @19

Russia's primary goal in Syria is to destroy the Islamic terrorists so they can't be sent on to Russia. They have already taken out around 4500 terrorists whose passports show they were from RF states. The Russia media is littered with details of small scale takfiri terrorist acts around the RF southern borders - the biggest most recent was 6 or so taken out on the border to Chechnya.

Secondary goals include the support for primacy of international law relating to national integrity, support for an ally, testing military systems in real conditions and increasing the strength of the multipolar opposition to Anglo-Zionist hegemony.

Harry | Mar 31, 2017 5:38:31 PM | 25
@ Peter AU | 22

There is the matter of the UNSC resolution, that Russia put up and US agreed to, that Syria retains its territorial integrity.

If Kurds get de-facto independence within Syria (according to their manifesto) a la Barzanistan, resolution of "territorial integrity" technically remains intact. Russia could make such concessions (even blasted Assad for desiring to return all of Syria's territory) if only US would agree to barter, so far they didnt (or maybe Trump/Putin already did, who knows). While for Syria/Iran its as bad as it gets.

US may occupy part of Syria for awhile. Nothing Russia can do about that in the short term, short of going to war with the US. Russia is looking at the long term.

US wont be the one occupying, Kurds will (US will just rule them). Do you think Syria will start a war with Kurds (especially under US protection)? Of course not. Kurds expanded their territory 10x (now finishing off ethnic cleansing that ISIS started), occupied as many oilfields as they could.

Kurds themselves are divided, but US will make sure their puppets have the power, while pro-Syrian Kurds will be marginalized or simply killed. The idea that Kurds will come to their senses is slim and most likely wont happen, just look at Barzanistan. Independence US dangling in front of them is powerful motivator, not to speak of how much influence and money US, Israel, monarchies, etc. have.

As for Russia, both short and long term its looking after its own interests, which may or may not be whats the best for Syria. Hence the clashes.

telescope | Mar 31, 2017 10:31:53 PM | 30
The more US soldiers are stuck in Islamic badlands (Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq) - without any chances of even remotely favorable outcome - the better it's for America's foes. The US will keep bleeding financially, emotionally, spiritually and literally, until its military machine simply unravels and disappears into a memory hole. The Russians and the Chinese must be watching US moves with utter amazement. America's inability to perform even the simplest geopolitical calculations may very well be unprecedented in world's history.

Alaric | Mar 31, 2017 10:36:32 PM | 31
While i agree that the goal remains one of dividing Syria, I doubt it will work out as planned by the US/Saudis/Israelis etc. Raqqa is not Kurd territory and I'm skeptical that the various arab tribes there are going to accept governance by a Kurd/US alliance. I also wonder why Kurds are liberating Raqqa. The main advantage to them beyond killing ISIS is really leverage in negotiations with Assad. Do you want Raqqa back? Well here is what we want. I have a hard time believing the Kurds really expect to occupy Arab territories under the nose of Assad, Russia and Turkey for any extended period of time?

Net: capturing Raqqa gives the kurds bargaining power against the Asaad government towards Kurd autonomy.

[Mar 24, 2017] Neoliberal policies aided the far right.

Notable quotes:
"... During the inflationary crisis of the 1970s, elite policymakers in Western Europe came to the conclusion that it was no longer possible for the welfare state to operate as it had since 1945. Their project thereafter has been twofold: to convince the public that their diagnosis is right, and to enact (what they consider) necessary neoliberal reforms by any means necessary. ..."
"... The first task proved difficult with certain reforms (notably liberalizing labor markets) and easier with others (implementing a fixed exchange rate regime, effectively blocking full employment macroeconomic policy, though not explicitly described as such by its proponents). ..."
"... Gradually, elites shifted their emphasis toward the second strategy. Their primary means of forcing through reform has been the non-democratic policymaking machinery that the European Union put in place in the 1980s and '90s to straitjacket national political actors. (A policymaking machinery that national actors have largely gone along with, since they too are convinced that their domestic policies need a heavy dose of neoliberal reform.) ..."
"... The European far right has existed continuously since World War II, with outbreaks in different countries at different times, each of which is an interesting political phenomenon in its own right. ..."
"... Le Pen's first appearance on the French political scene: the 1956 general election, when Le Pen was elected as part of a wave of followers of the lower-middle-class, xenophobic, populist tax-revolter Pierre Poujade. ..."
"... The center-left establishment is disdained because it tried to bypass national politics and become the high priest-caste of a regressive European order. ..."
"... The reason this political moment feels different - the threat of the far right more threatening, the wan protection offered by the political establishment least reassuring - has nothing to do with the far right itself, nor with the failure of traditional social-democratic policies. Indeed, since Beauchamp assumes that social democracy has been static since 1945, it cannot possibly have caused a political phenomenon that only thrust itself upon us in the last few years. ..."
"... The difference - the critical break - lies in the behavior of the establishment near-right in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It perceived, far sooner than the hapless social democrats of the European mainstream, that the consensus economic policies of the post-1970s era were doomed in the public mind. Having no other acceptable economic program to fall back on, they moved to assimilate xenophobia and use it as both an offensive and defensive weapon for the coming populist onslaught. That is what Cameron did when he acceded to a Brexit referendum, and that is what the Republican Party did when it nominated Donald Trump for the presidency. ..."
"... In short, Trump cannot simply have been caused by white supremacy, because we have always had white supremacy. What we haven't always had is the breakdown of elite consensus and the center-left's veneration of procedural norms and reliance on "non-partisan" third-party validators to fight what is in fact an ideological power struggle. ..."
Mar 19, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Peter K. : March 17, 2017 at 01:07 PM
Again it's interesting that Sanjait and PGL usually agree with Krugman, Bible and verse but they didn't agree with his most recent blog post which was about populism and leftwing/Sanders-type economic policy.

Titled "Populism and the Politics of Health"

And yet they didn't want to talk about! Very odd...

Here's a good rejoiner to Vox and Krugman about a subject Sanjait and PGL don't want to talk about:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/beauchamp-vox-le-pen-corbyn-trump-populism/

No Easy Answers, Just Bad History

A Vox writer sets out to prove social-democratic policies aided the far right. He fails.

by Marshall Steinbaum

Several weeks before Hillary Clinton's bitter defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, Vox's Zack Beauchamp waded into the simplistic debate about whether "economic anxiety" or racism was to blame for Trump's political success with a salvo on behalf of the racism explanation. Although that effort made some worthwhile points, it ultimately failed to explain why long-existing latent racism manifested in the sudden increase in xenophobia in formal politics.

This week Beauchamp returned to the breach, which has only grown wider since Trump's victory. Now the battle is about whether economic populism offers a way to stop Trump and the international march of the far right, rather than whether economic dislocation caused that march in the first place.

Beauchamp doesn't think Bernie Sanders–style economic populism can foil the far right. But his argument is much more ambitious: he sets out to prove that economically populist policies stoke, rather than ameliorate, far-right political tendencies. To do that, he deploys the following claims:

*European countries that adopted more generous redistributive policies in the post–World War II era were more vulnerable to far-right politics than those that adopted less generous ones.

*The far right's rise occurred over the past several decades and continues despite the Left's efforts to buy its supporters off with socialism. The reason why is that continuous immigration has run up against an electorate that is irredeemably racist and only becomes more so as it perceives immigrants to be the beneficiaries of the welfare state.

*Recent cases in which once-center-left parties swung decisively to the left - notably, the UK Labour Party - have proved politically disastrous and only further exacerbated the loss of political ground to the far right.

*American history is replete with white supremacy, and that fact is probably the major reason why politics in the US has consistently been several notches to the right of our European counterparts.

Of these claims, only the last one resembles reality. All the others are blatant misreadings of recent and not-so-recent history.

According to Beauchamp's stylized view of European politics, social democracy exists along a one-dimensional continuum, with variation in the degree to which it was enacted into policy in different countries after 1945. Combining the rising tide of immigration since the 1970s with the ex-ante degree of social generosity, Beauchamp concludes that redistribution is perceived as a giveaway to outsiders, and hence motivates backlash politics.

What's missing here is an understanding of what actually happened to European social democracy along the way. So let me supply a hopefully slightly better potted history.

During the inflationary crisis of the 1970s, elite policymakers in Western Europe came to the conclusion that it was no longer possible for the welfare state to operate as it had since 1945. Their project thereafter has been twofold: to convince the public that their diagnosis is right, and to enact (what they consider) necessary neoliberal reforms by any means necessary.

The first task proved difficult with certain reforms (notably liberalizing labor markets) and easier with others (implementing a fixed exchange rate regime, effectively blocking full employment macroeconomic policy, though not explicitly described as such by its proponents).

Gradually, elites shifted their emphasis toward the second strategy. Their primary means of forcing through reform has been the non-democratic policymaking machinery that the European Union put in place in the 1980s and '90s to straitjacket national political actors. (A policymaking machinery that national actors have largely gone along with, since they too are convinced that their domestic policies need a heavy dose of neoliberal reform.)

This hollowing out of national politics has had a profound effect on European social democracy. As power shifted from democratically accountable to democratically unaccountable institutions through privatization and European integration, the state's capacity to do anything about popular (as opposed to elite) grievances eroded and discontent exploded.

The ideal end goal of contemporary European social democratic parties is perhaps best embodied by Germany's Hartz Reforms. Enacted by a Social Democratic government in the early to mid 2000s over the objections of the country's labor unions, the labor market reforms occasioned a split in the party that has not been bridged since. According to the consensus narrative, the measures left Germany in better shape than ever, allowing it to weather the Great Recession and become a haven for economic and political refugees.

Beauchamp buys this assessment, endorsing - without evidence - the view that too much redistribution and regulation causes economic problems. Yet the Hartz Reforms are not responsible for Germany's relative macroeconomic success. In fact, they've worsened its labor market outcomes.

Beauchamp's point is not to conduct a policy evaluation, of course, but to presuppose that such an evaluation has already been conducted. And that serves his real rhetorical aim: to discredit the notion that social-democratic policies offer a solution to an emboldened far right. That it might be exactly the failure of these neoliberal reforms and the disrepute they've brought the leaders and factions who spearheaded them that caused social democracy's parlous state is nowhere entertained. The sea change in social democracy goes entirely unmentioned in Beauchamp's piece.

Which brings us to the parallel potted history of the European far right. Beauchamp's method is to recount a series of dates and country names: Jen-Marie Le Pen's creation of the Front National in France in 1972; its electoral breakthrough in the 1984 European elections (which Beauchamp doesn't note immediately followed a round of fiscal austerity inflicted by a Socialist government); Jorg Haider's takeover of the Freedom Party in Austria in 1986; Pim Fortuyn's 2002 assassination on the cusp of winning an outsized share of the vote in a Dutch parliamentary election; and Le Pen's success at reaching the French presidential election's second round that year. The narrative here is of a transnational, steady rise to power.

That telling is almost wholly false. The European far right has existed continuously since World War II, with outbreaks in different countries at different times, each of which is an interesting political phenomenon in its own right.

Beauchamp doesn't mention, for instance, Le Pen's first appearance on the French political scene: the 1956 general election, when Le Pen was elected as part of a wave of followers of the lower-middle-class, xenophobic, populist tax-revolter Pierre Poujade. Why omit that election? Because it would hinder Beauchamp's claim, pointing as it does to a social movement that has long existed on the fringes of politics and society and comes closest to power only when the political establishment is most discredited in the public mind. And that is exactly where we are now.

The reason the European political establishment, particularly of the center-left variety, is held in contempt is not because it tried making the welfare state more generous, only to have the electorate turn against them out of the racist belief that foreigners were vacuuming up all the benefits. The center-left establishment is disdained because it tried to bypass national politics and become the high priest-caste of a regressive European order.

Which brings us to the UK Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn's election as its leader. Beauchamp's move here is to conflate Corbyn with his hapless predecessor, Ed Miliband, and thereby link Labour's poor performance since 2010 to one big move to the left. In truth, Miliband inherited a party burned by its association with the financial crisis and its willingness to go along with the Iraq War, and steered it through treacherous waters with a mix of Blairite and more populist rhetoric (his greatest success being a proposal to regulate power companies).

Although Beauchamp paints the 2015 general election result as a disaster for Labour, the incumbent Tory-led coalition government came very close to losing, and the current Tory government enjoys the slimmest parliamentary majority since the 1970s. Labour netted seats at Conservative and Liberal Democrat expense in England; its total count suffered because the Scottish electorate deserted the party in favor of the Scottish National Party - a move driven by Scotland's overwhelming disgust for the incumbent government and hostility to the Westminster Labour faction's record under Blair and Brown. Far from being a failure of the left, these results were further evidence of the establishment's tarnished legitimacy.

This is the environment that propelled Corbyn to the top of Labour. His candidacy in the leadership election later that year was given a crucial boost by the parliamentary party's failure to oppose the reelected Tory government's cuts to social welfare early in the parliament's term - feeding the perception of a hapless, ideologically adrift party leadership in need of a drastic shake up.

Notably, the name "David Cameron" appears not once in Beauchamp's account of recent British political history. Yet the reason Cameron won the 2015 election was the big giveaway he made to shore up his right flank: the Brexit referendum. When Brexit ended up passing - despite the opposition of every major party - it was a gigantic slap in the face to the incumbent establishment. (Oddly, Beauchamp portrays Brexit as discrediting Corbyn - mirroring the way that Corbyn's intraparty opponents blamed his leadership for the vote, even though the Labour electorate overwhelmingly opposed Brexit and its winning margin was drawn from the English middle class, long the Tories' electoral backbone.)

The reason this political moment feels different - the threat of the far right more threatening, the wan protection offered by the political establishment least reassuring - has nothing to do with the far right itself, nor with the failure of traditional social-democratic policies. Indeed, since Beauchamp assumes that social democracy has been static since 1945, it cannot possibly have caused a political phenomenon that only thrust itself upon us in the last few years.

The difference - the critical break - lies in the behavior of the establishment near-right in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It perceived, far sooner than the hapless social democrats of the European mainstream, that the consensus economic policies of the post-1970s era were doomed in the public mind. Having no other acceptable economic program to fall back on, they moved to assimilate xenophobia and use it as both an offensive and defensive weapon for the coming populist onslaught. That is what Cameron did when he acceded to a Brexit referendum, and that is what the Republican Party did when it nominated Donald Trump for the presidency.

Which brings us, finally, back home. The last section of Beauchamp's article draws upon the great work of Eric Foner and his many disciples. American democracy and American government, Foner argues, have been stained by white supremacy from the country's founding right up through the present. The disenfranchisement of a large segment of what would have been a core constituency for an American social-democratic party - southern blacks - helps explain twentieth- and twenty-first century political and policy outcomes, well beyond the dire consequences for disenfranchised blacks themselves. This is a basic, ineluctable fact of American politics.

That's not where Beauchamp ends up, however. Instead he blames the victim for social democracy's failure in the US: by advocating economic egalitarianism in hostile political territory, he argues, economic populists brought defeat upon themselves as a racist electorate interpreted that agenda as a bid to overturn the racial hierarchy.

As Matt Bruenig has written, the unspoken implication of Beauchamp's narrative is that any left economic agenda must first make it clear that the racial hierarchy will under no circumstances be threatened. "You can have diversity or you can have economic justice, but you can't have both," to use Bruenig's characterization. The acceptance of that false dichotomy, of course, is what gave us "super-predators," "the end of welfare as we know it," and the Obama administration's absolute prohibition on uttering the word "poverty" in public prior to its 2012 reelection.

Yet if Beauchamp's interpretation is correct, then the US should never have seen anything other than reactionary economic policy. And that's obviously not the case.

Interracial, interethnic social movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century won major reforms in the face of implacable hostility from both white supremacists and capitalist interests. And insofar as Progressive Era politicians betrayed the integrated coalitions that brought them to power, the sellout took place behind the closed doors of the statehouses and the United States Capitol. They most certainly did not reflect the impossibility of forming a class-based, multiracial political coalition.

Then there was the period from 1940 to 1970, which witnessed the greatest progress in closing the racial wealth and earnings gaps since Reconstruction, thanks to the strength of the New Deal coalition and the labor movement, which integrated the federal government's military-industrial supply chain (as well as the military itself, following the war), and the Civil Rights Movement, which successfully pressed the federal government to intervene in the South on behalf of equal rights. That advance was eventually turned back the same way it was during Reconstruction: through an alliance of white supremacy and implicitly racialized "free market" ideology, the latter of which came to dominate both major political parties.

In short, Trump cannot simply have been caused by white supremacy, because we have always had white supremacy. What we haven't always had is the breakdown of elite consensus and the center-left's veneration of procedural norms and reliance on "non-partisan" third-party validators to fight what is in fact an ideological power struggle.

Insofar as Beauchamp has a rhetorical opponent rather than a straw man, it is the Left's backlash against this retrograde, apologetic politics, which comes at a time when the latter has finally and abjectly failed to win or hold power at the federal, state, or local level. And that failure has occurred because centrist apologetics are up against the real thing: far-right xenophobia, shoulder to shoulder with plutocracy, dominating our national politics and threatening the lives and wellbeing of millions of our American and immigrant brethren.

Winning justice for those oppressed groups, if it is to happen, will owe nothing to the politics for which Beauchamp fights his rearguard action.

[Mar 14, 2017] Angler 2.0 Brennan Wields His Puppet Strings Differently by emptywheel

John Brennan was Obama's Cheney
Notable quotes:
"... But instead of telling the story of John Brennan, Obama's Cheney, the story pitches Obama as the key decision-maker–a storyline Brennan has always been one of the most aggressive pitchmen for, including when he confirmed information on the Anwar al-Awlaki strike he shouldn't have. In a sense, then, Brennan has done Cheney one better: seed a story of his own power, but sell it as a sign of the President's steeliness. ..."
"... "Pragmatism over ideology," his campaign national security team had advised in a memo in March 2008. It was counsel that only reinforced the president's instincts. ..."
"... The memo was written not long after Brennan started playing a more central role among Obama's campaign advisors. But the story makes no mention of his presumed role in it. Further, in describing Jeh Johnson to introduce a quote, the piece notes that he was "a campaign adviser" (it doesn't say Johnson was also focused on voter protection). But it does not note that Brennan, too, was a key campaign advisor, one with an exclusively national security focus. ..."
"... In other words, in several places in this story, Brennan plays a key role that is downplayed. ..."
"... There is clearly an attempt to sell the Team Obama Campaign 2012 political viewpoint of a steely-eyed leader astride his charging steed slaying the nation's enemies left and right. ..."
"... There is clearly an attempt by Father John, Blabbermouth of Brennan to sanctify his patron Saint Obama (and no less sanctify himself). ..."
"... In the end, it seems to me that Team Obama Campaign 2012 narrative was the overarching theme, and a somewhat defensive one at that. ..."
"... By that I mean, the campaign narrative seemed to say that even if Obama hasn't done much of anything else, not much to get Americans back to work, not much to keep Americans in their homes, not much to calm the waters and heal the American political discourse, at least the American voting public can rest assured that he's personally taken charge of the nation's war on terrorism and has been slaying the dragons wherever they've appeared ..."
May 29, 2012 | www.emptywheel.net
As I said earlier , the parallel between the Jo Becker/Scott Shane Angler 2.0 story and the earlier series by Becker and Barton Gellman is hard to miss.

But I'm very interested in how the stories are structured differently. With Angler 1.0, the story was very clearly about Dick Cheney and the methods he used to manipulate Bush into following his advice. Here, the story is really about John Brennan, Obama's Cheney, portrayed deep in thought and foregrounding Obama in the article's picture. Indeed, halfway through, the story even gives biographical background on Brennan, the classic "son of Irish immigrants" story, along with Harold Koh's dubious endorsement of Brennan's "moral rectitude."

But instead of telling the story of John Brennan, Obama's Cheney, the story pitches Obama as the key decision-maker–a storyline Brennan has always been one of the most aggressive pitchmen for, including when he confirmed information on the Anwar al-Awlaki strike he shouldn't have. In a sense, then, Brennan has done Cheney one better: seed a story of his own power, but sell it as a sign of the President's steeliness.

The Silent Sources for the Story

I already pointed out how, after presenting unambiguous evidence of Brennan's past on-the-record lies, the story backed off calling him on it.

But there are other ways in which this story shifts the focus away from Brennan.

A remarkable number of the sources for the story spoke on the record: Tom Donilon, Cameron Munter, Dennis Blair, Bill Daley, Jeh Johnson, Michael Hayden, Jim Jones, Harold Koh, Eric Holder, Michael Leiter, John Rizzo, and John Bellinger. But it's not until roughly the 3,450th word of a 6,000 word article that Brennan is first quoted–and that's to largely repeat the pre-emptive lies of his drone speech from last month.

"The purpose of these actions is to mitigate threats to U.S. persons' lives," Mr. Brennan said in an interview. "It is the option of last recourse. So the president, and I think all of us here, don't like the fact that people have to die. And so he wants to make sure that we go through a rigorous checklist: The infeasibility of capture, the certainty of the intelligence base, the imminence of the threat, all of these things."

That is the only on-the-record direct quote from Brennan in the entire article, in spite of the centrality of Brennan to the story.

And I would bet several of the sources quoted anonymously in the section describing Obama's method of counting the dead (which still ignores the women and children) are Brennan: "a top White House adviser" describing how sharp Obama was in the face of the first civilian casualties; "a senior administration official" claiming, in the face of credible evidence to the contrary, that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan were in "single digits."

Note, too, the reference to a memo his campaign national security advisors wrote him.

"Pragmatism over ideology," his campaign national security team had advised in a memo in March 2008. It was counsel that only reinforced the president's instincts.

The memo was written not long after Brennan started playing a more central role among Obama's campaign advisors. But the story makes no mention of his presumed role in it. Further, in describing Jeh Johnson to introduce a quote, the piece notes that he was "a campaign adviser" (it doesn't say Johnson was also focused on voter protection). But it does not note that Brennan, too, was a key campaign advisor, one with an exclusively national security focus.

Nor does the story note, when it describes how Obama "deployed his legal skills to preserve trials in civilian courts" it was John Brennan making that case , not the Attorney General .

In other words, in several places in this story, Brennan plays a key role that is downplayed.

The Pro-Drone Narrator

Given that fact, I'm really interested in the several places where the story adopts a pro-drone viewpoint (it does adopt a more critical stance in the narrative voice at the end).

For example, the story claims, in the first part of the story, that the drone strikes "have eviscerated Al Qaeda" without presenting any basis for that claim. This, in spite of the fact that al Qaeda has expanded in Yemen since we've started hitting it with drones.

Later, the article uncritically accepts the claim that the drone–regardless of the targeting that goes into using it–is a "precision weapon" that constitutes a rejection of a "false choice between our safety and our ideals."

The care that Mr. Obama and his counterterrorism chief take in choosing targets, and their reliance on a precision weapon, the drone, reflect his pledge at the outset of his presidency to reject what he called the Bush administration's "false choice between our safety and our ideals."

For fucks sake! This article describes how the White House has adopted a "guilt by association" approach to drone targeting. It describes renamed signature strikes (though presents what is almost certainly an outdated picture of the targeting review process). Yet it uncritically accepts this "precision" claim–which clearly reflects a source's judgment–as true.

Finally, a potentially even bigger bias is in the presentation of the al-Majala strike on December 17, 2009.

It killed not only its intended target, but also two neighboring families, and left behind a trail of cluster bombs that subsequently killed more innocents. It was hardly the kind of precise operation that Mr. Obama favored. Videos of children's bodies and angry tribesmen holding up American missile parts flooded You Tube, fueling a ferocious backlash that Yemeni officials said bolstered Al Qaeda.

The sloppy strike shook Mr. Obama and Mr. Brennan, officials said, and once again they tried to impose some discipline.

The story doesn't name who the target was; it says only that the strike killed him, and the NYT repeats the claim without asking for such details.

As I have noted , though, sources speaking immediately after the strike explained the target struck where "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset was being planned." (The quotes here are from the source, not the ABC report.) There was, of course, an imminent attack being planned at the time, one about which we had at least some advance intelligence. That was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attack. I'm pretty sure the strike on a Yemeni site 10 days after he left the country missed him, though.

These last two quotes–perhaps all three–look like comments a White House figure (and it'll surprise no one that I suspect it's Brennan) gave on deep background, such that his exact words are used, but without quotation marks or any indication of the source. Credible journalists would have no other reason to make such unsubstantiated claims, particularly the "precision" claim that they disprove elsewhere in the same article.

Who Okayed Killing Mehsud's Wife?

Ultimately, the depiction of John Brennan as Obama's puppetmaster is most interesting in the telling of Baitullah Mehsud's killing. This version conflicts in key ways from the story that Joby Warrick told in his book, starting with the uranium claim that provided the excuse for targeting him. And while I'm working from memory, I believe Warrick portrayed the approval of that killing–which might kill Mehsud's wife in addition to Mehsud–as involving Panetta alone. This version says Panetta consulted Obama–through Brennan.

Then, in August 2009, the CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, told Mr. Brennan that the agency had Mr. Mehsud in its sights. But taking out the Pakistani Taliban leader, Mr. Panetta warned, did not meet Mr. Obama's standard of "near certainty" of no innocents being killed. In fact, a strike would certainly result in such deaths: he was with his wife at his in-laws' home.

"Many times," General Jones said, in similar circumstances, "at the 11th hour we waved off a mission simply because the target had people around them and we were able to loiter on station until they didn't."

But not this time. Mr. Obama, through Mr. Brennan, told the CIA to take the shot, and Mr. Mehsud was killed, along with his wife and, by some reports, other family members as well, said a senior intelligence official.

I'm not surprised by (or critical of) the conflict in the stories. It seems like Warrick relied primarily on CIA sources telling a packaged version of the strike, while this story tells another packaged version of it. (Note, curiously, Panetta is only named in this passage and never quoted.)

But I am struck by how obviously this story–whether filtered through Brennan as a direct source for this story, or filtered through Brennan for Panetta's consumption at the time–depends on John Brennan to narrate Obama's role. If he weren't involved somehow, the NYT wouldn't have included the "through Mr. Brennan." And while the detail doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things–Mehsud's wife's death will weigh no more or less against Obama's and Brennan's record than Abdulrahman al-Awlaki or the Bedouin women and children at al-Majala–it is a testament to the degree to which this story, and so many of those cited in this article, depend on Brennan narrating Obama's role.

As I'll show in a later post, I think this story is an attempt to combat the picture of John Brennan's private signature strike shop that has developed over the last month. Perhaps it's even a way to protect himself by implicating the President , as Brennan's old boss George Tenet did with torture . Perhaps, too, this article (which given the number of on-the-record quotes, must be sanctioned) is meant to add to the campaign's portrayal of Obama as a fearless counterterrorism warrior.

But I'm just as fascinated by the way that Angler 2.0 managed to wield puppet strings for the story about himself, too.

emptywheel

Marcy has been blogging full time since 2007. She's known for her live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, her discovery of the number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, and generally for her weedy analysis of document dumps. Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon, and the Progressive, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the "feuilleton," a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse and dog in Grand Rapids, MI.

joanneleon says: May 29, 2012 at 5:19 pm

Wow, that NYTimes story has 1088 public comments as of now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html

MadDog says: May 29, 2012 at 5:22 pm

Like you EW, I got the sense that this NYT story was the product of a number of different motivations.

There is clearly an attempt to sell the Team Obama Campaign 2012 political viewpoint of a steely-eyed leader astride his charging steed slaying the nation's enemies left and right.

There is clearly an attempt by Father John, Blabbermouth of Brennan to sanctify his patron Saint Obama (and no less sanctify himself).

There are a number of attempts by lesser Doubting Thomases to question the sanctity of both Saint Obama and Father John.

There is a certain amount of seemingly NYT editorial tut-tutting as well as cheerleading.

In the end, it seems to me that Team Obama Campaign 2012 narrative was the overarching theme, and a somewhat defensive one at that.

By that I mean, the campaign narrative seemed to say that even if Obama hasn't done much of anything else, not much to get Americans back to work, not much to keep Americans in their homes, not much to calm the waters and heal the American political discourse, at least the American voting public can rest assured that he's personally taken charge of the nation's war on terrorism and has been slaying the dragons wherever they've appeared.

[Mar 03, 2017] America primary strategic threat is not North Korea, or radical Islam, or Russia, but its own revolutionary, messianic, expansionist ideology.

Notable quotes:
"... "In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of providence, which is inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of that conceit comes much mischief. And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like Donald Trump." These last sentences sums up the problem of the War mongering Neo-Cons of Republican Party and their imitators in Democratic Party." Honestly it brings to mind the Jehovah witnesses who call on me to save my soul, in spite of the fact I keep reminding them that I am a Hindu and I believe in Karma and do my best to be good to others. But they don't give up just like the Neo-Cons. ..."
"... Brooks himself is a wealthy man who lives in a bubble in Washington and nothing he recommends will impact upon him personally in any way. That is what being a neocon is all about. Why should anyone listen to what he has to say? ..."
"... Putin conspiracy theories regards killing journalists of "Ted" reference have never been proven. I believe the theory that has key wings of the American governing apparatus allowing (not planning but looking the other way) the 9-11-2001 attacks have more credence but I would never comment in a doctrinaire manner that implied policy should revolve around the theory. ..."
"... If you really want to get down on the man, though, follow Columbia professor Andrew Gellman. Here is a sample of his take on Brooks: http://andrewgelman.com/2015/06/16/the-david-brooks-files-how-many-uncorrected-mistakes-does-it-take-to-be-discredited/ ..."
"... To understand David Brooks' "thinking" just go back to his initiation by disciples of Leo Strauss during his undergraduate days at the University of Chicago. It is all there, a "political philosophy" that somehow winds up with initiates convinced that they are a tiny elite that needs to lead dumb Americans in defending civilization, viz, the "West", against barbarism. After my own indoctrination, I was ready to jump in an F-16 and attack, well, just about anybody. See Senator Tom Cotton, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, etc., for other examples of the phenomenon. Washington is crawling with these guys and gals. ..."
"... The trend is to Deep State co-option of democracy, its overthrow or unaccountable management, a confluence with democracy-killing Globalism that seeks to make of all governments multinational corporate subordinates. Which corporatism involves democracy, not at all. ..."
Feb 25, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Sceptic , says: February 23, 2017 at 11:28 am
Bacevich is one of our very few strategic thinkers. What Bacevich has disclosed here is something far more significant than merely the faults of Brooks' or of neoconservatism generally (and to be fair, where Brooks goes beyond neoconservatism/nationalism, he can be thoughtful).

What he has disclosed in fact is that America's primary - I emphasize again, primary - strategic threat is not N. Korea, or radical Islam, or Russia, but its own revolutionary, messianic, expansionist ideology. That is the source of our woes, our growing insecurities and looming financial bankruptcy (to say nothing of the sufferings of millions of our victims).

America's strategic problem is its own mental imprisonment: its self-worship, its inability to view itself - its destructive acts as well as its pet handful of ideas torn from the complex fabric of a truly vibrant culture - with any critical distance or objectivity.

Joined to that, and as a logical consequence of it - the United States' persistent inability to view with any objectivity its endless, often manufactured enemies.

Cornel Lencar , says: February 23, 2017 at 11:46 am

Kudos Mr. Bacevich for an exceptional piece!

Somehow the current situation in the U.S. reminds me of the end of a TV miniseries, "Merlin", where Sam Neil plays the role of Merlin. At the end, Merlin speaks to his archenemy, Morgana, that she will loose her grip on the people because they will just stop believing in her and her powers. And as he speaks, the group of countrymen surrounding Merlin turn their back one after another at Morgana and after the last one turns her back, Morgana simply vanishes

The flip side of The Church of America the Redeemer, as with any other respectable church is that it needs the "hell", the fear, to better control its flock. The terrorists that want to kill us for our liberties You should have included this in your article.

Also, mentioning Jerusalem, a place of madness and fervor, and pain, and strife, that has brought nothing civilizational to the world, as in par with Rome, Athens, Baghdad, Florence, and other cultural centres in Iran, China, India, Japan, is an overstretch

Murali , says: February 23, 2017 at 12:16 pm
"In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of providence, which is inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of that conceit comes much mischief. And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like Donald Trump." These last sentences sums up the problem of the War mongering Neo-Cons of Republican Party and their imitators in Democratic Party." Honestly it brings to mind the Jehovah witnesses who call on me to save my soul, in spite of the fact I keep reminding them that I am a Hindu and I believe in Karma and do my best to be good to others. But they don't give up just like the Neo-Cons.
Phil Giraldi , says: February 23, 2017 at 1:08 pm
David Brooks is a Canadian whose son served by choice in the Israeli Defense Forces rather than the U.S. military. He passed on playing an active role in the wars that his father so passionately supports. Brooks himself is a wealthy man who lives in a bubble in Washington and nothing he recommends will impact upon him personally in any way. That is what being a neocon is all about. Why should anyone listen to what he has to say?
Cynthia McLean , says: February 23, 2017 at 2:09 pm
Brilliant! It's about time someone seriously took down David Brooks & Co's faux innocence narrative of US history. The only point I would add is that this story predates Brooks by a good century and a half. By identifying its national "interests" with those of the Divine, the US gives itself an eternal and perpetual get-out-jail-free-card. It seems not to matter that millions are slaughtered and entire cultures destroyed, as all was all done with the "best of intentions."
Howard , says: February 23, 2017 at 2:12 pm
It's a poor kind of child who loves his parents only so long as they are more attractive, richer, and more powerful than other parents, and it is a poor kind of "patriot" who loves his country only so long as it is more admired, richer, and more powerful than other countries.
David Walkabout , says: February 23, 2017 at 3:37 pm
Preach it, Brother Andrew!
No Nation Nell , says: February 23, 2017 at 4:18 pm
I don't know if it was your intention but your piece made it far more evident that Brooks is a charlatan you've constructed as Trump.
Howard , says: February 23, 2017 at 4:41 pm
"In terms of confessional fealty, his true allegiance is not to conservatism as such, but to the Church of America the Redeemer." As though having "confessional fealty" to "conservatism" (which some people indeed have) were any better. Regarding anyone who falls into that category, all I can do is quote one of the great voices of wisdom for our time: "I pity the fool!"
jon-e , says: February 23, 2017 at 5:48 pm
'The things Americans do they do not only for themselves, but for all mankind.' Well aint that grand! Brooks must have been intoxicated by his ideas at this point, sounds like Dennis Prager. It would be easy to laugh at such ideas if they weren't so destructive. Excellent piece.
Ken Hoop , says: February 23, 2017 at 7:14 pm
Brooks son being in the IDF and Brooks own vehemence to destroy an unthreatening (to the US) enemy of Israel in 2003 is of course of one piece.

Putin conspiracy theories regards killing journalists of "Ted" reference have never been proven. I believe the theory that has key wings of the American governing apparatus allowing (not planning but looking the other way) the 9-11-2001 attacks have more credence but I would never comment in a doctrinaire manner that implied policy should revolve around the theory.

Of course Russia has always needed a strong man to stay intact and I couldn't rule out government sympathizers might have taken action on their own, those who were alarmed at Russian liberal journalists fomenting the kind of discord which might suit Victoria Nuland but not Russia staying intact that is.

Rick Jones , says: February 23, 2017 at 8:04 pm
Although I actively seek out level-headed conservative thinkers/writers, I've never been a fan of David Brooks (probably for reasons related to those put forth in this article).

If you really want to get down on the man, though, follow Columbia professor Andrew Gellman. Here is a sample of his take on Brooks: http://andrewgelman.com/2015/06/16/the-david-brooks-files-how-many-uncorrected-mistakes-does-it-take-to-be-discredited/

troopertyree , says: February 23, 2017 at 9:51 pm
Phil giraldi. if brooks'views are less valid because his son skipped Iraq are bill kristol's and Elliot Cohen's more valid because their sons were u.s.marines in Iraq?
ctks , says: February 24, 2017 at 2:57 am
superb essay.
Gil , says: February 24, 2017 at 6:45 am
Lies, Andrew. Not "alt-facts." Lies.
david robbins tien , says: February 24, 2017 at 7:49 am
To understand David Brooks' "thinking" just go back to his initiation by disciples of Leo Strauss during his undergraduate days at the University of Chicago. It is all there, a "political philosophy" that somehow winds up with initiates convinced that they are a tiny elite that needs to lead dumb Americans in defending civilization, viz, the "West", against barbarism. After my own indoctrination, I was ready to jump in an F-16 and attack, well, just about anybody. See Senator Tom Cotton, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, etc., for other examples of the phenomenon. Washington is crawling with these guys and gals.
connecticut farmer , says: February 24, 2017 at 9:03 am
Good article. Couldn't agree more. A few minor quibbles though:

1. Compared to Lippmann, Brooks is an intellectual lightweight. They're not even close.

2. Though in the context of the article somewhat self-serving, Brooks' criticism of the educational system is valid.

Otherwise, the author is spot-on.

Fran Macadam , says: February 24, 2017 at 12:28 pm
"The global trend has been towards democracy for a century now"

The trend is to Deep State co-option of democracy, its overthrow or unaccountable management, a confluence with democracy-killing Globalism that seeks to make of all governments multinational corporate subordinates. Which corporatism involves democracy, not at all.

[Feb 19, 2017] COLOR REVOLUTIONS: TECHNIQUES IN BREAKING DOWN MODERN POLITICAL REGIMES

Notable quotes:
"... The characteristics of color revolutions are: ..."
"... The impact on power is exercised in a special form of political blackmail. ..."
"... Youth protest movement serves as the main tool for influencing the power. ..."
"... At the heart of the technological scenario of a color revolution is the Anglo-Saxon (North American) ideology of democratization, suggesting the export democracy and the democratic institutions and values in the neighboring countries. 54 In practice, only their authors and their developers, the Anglo-Saxons, are able to use the technologies of color revolutions. In any country where the color revolution began to unfold, we look for the trail of North America. ..."
www.orbus.be

The purpose of any color revolution is a coup, i.e. a seizure and hold of power by force.

The objects of the color revolutions are power and power relations; its subject is the political regime.

Color revolutions have necessary and sufficient conditions for their success.

A necessary condition for the implementation of a color revolution is the existence of political instability in the country, accompanied by the current government crisis. If the political situation in the country is stable, it is necessary to artificially destabilize it.

A sufficient condition is the presence of a specially organized (in the form of a special network) youth protest movement.

The characteristics of color revolutions are:

  1. The impact on power is exercised in a special form of political blackmail.
  2. Youth protest movement serves as the main tool for influencing the power.

The color revolutions only resemble real revolutionary movements. Unlike the real revolutions, caused by the objective development of the historical process, the color revolutions are technologies that are successfully masquerading as natural processes. They differ in the level of an almost theatrical drama that Western political scientists are diligently trying to pass off as natural and spontaneous manifestations of the will of the people that suddenly decided to regain the right to govern their own country.

At the heart of the technological scenario of a color revolution is the Anglo-Saxon (North American) ideology of democratization, suggesting the export democracy and the democratic institutions and values in the neighboring countries.54 In practice, only their authors and their developers, the Anglo-Saxons, are able to use the technologies of color revolutions. In any country where the color revolution began to unfold, we look for the trail of North America.

There are two versions of the explanation of the causes of the color revolutions: the version of spontaneity and a version of the recreation of the color revolutions (random and not). Both versions have a right to exist, and both are not certain.

Supporters of spontaneity of the color revolutions insist that the cause of the revolution is the objective social contradictions that are manifested in the forms of popular uprisings and mass protests of the "oppressed" people. Poverty, fatigue regimes, the craving for democratic change, and demographic situation are cited as such reasons.

Meanwhile, when we look at the socio-political situation in almost every country where there was a color revolution, it often turns out that the existing contradictions and social breaks were not their main and only reason, although they have become a catalyst for the subsequent events.

For example, in Egypt, until the color revolution there were the so-called subsidy for tortillas, providing access to the main product, the Corn tortillas, for the poorest segments of the population. In the slums of Cairo, however, on the roof of each hut there is a satellite TV dish, and Libyan nationals received welfare (and a lot of other benefits), which was so great that people stopped working and put to work the visiting guest workers from Egypt and other African countries; the standard of living in Tunisia, the most democratic of all authoritarian countries in Africa, became very close to the South of France (Provence and Languedoc), and even exceeded southern Italy. One of the reasons for the burst of protest movements in Syria is that Assad decided (without any pressure) to soften the authoritarian regime and began to conduct liberal reforms that the Islamists immediately took advantage of, as well as their supporters from the United States, etc.

The supporters of the recreation of the color revolutions indicate multiple repeatable scenarios (a democratic template) of these revolutions in various countries around the world that are very different both in terms of the political system, and in the nature of the socio-political problems. They claim that all the colored revolutions are "a blueprint," and the likelihood of the recurrence of the same event on the same pattern in nature is negligible. On the basis of these findings, supporters of the recreation of the color revolutions point to a number of grounds, on which any externally spontaneous popular revolt can set a color revolution.

Every color revolution has its own features that show technology.

  1. First, it is a feature of the Anglo-Saxons' external politics, their distinctive style of work.
  2. Second, it is a strict correspondence of the revolution to the plan of any base template (or scenario). All color revolutions develop in the same scenario using a template pattern.
  3. Third, this is how the youth protest movement is organized and used, which is controlled by the technology of reflexive control (it is also an American invention).
  4. Fourth, there are certain recurring features in the selection and the nomination of the revolutionary leaders.
  5. Fifth, in some color revolutions, revolutionary ideology that allows recognizing them as fake is completely absent. This is due to the fact that the Americans, the authors of the color revolutions, do not always understand the mentality and the psychology of the people. They want to bring "the value of a true democracy," and cannot offer an ideology that is organically accepted by all sectors of society.

The color revolutions are often called the technology or instruments of the "soft power" as it is understood in the perspective given to this term by John Nye.55 This approach, based on the principle of analogy (externally color revolutions are non-coercive techniques of regime change), is not quite accurate and is often misleading, causing the color revolutions to be considered softer and, therefore, more a progressive and a less dangerous form of social influence on authoritarian regimes. Thereby, a campaign to promote color revolutions unfolds, in defiance of any form of self-armed coups.

In our view, it is difficult to determine what is actually a more dangerous phenomenon for the international security as a whole: the color revolutions or local armed conflicts. The modern Middle East, immersed in color revolutions of the "controlled chaos," is a full proof. It still seems pretty obvious that modern color revolutions in nature are not a manifestation of the "soft power." Color revolutions are nothing but an organizational form of state intimidation (i.e. blackmail, the object of which is an independent and sovereign state), masquerading as a legend and slogans of the national revolution.

Color revolutions are not "soft power." It is a hacking tool of democratic regimes in transition, copied from the Anglo-Saxon model by the non-Western countries which have tendencies of imitating. One could argue that Americans not only created a model of the democratic structure of the state, focused on the "export," but also took care of the creation of the special tools for its demolition and dismantling, if it suddenly became necessary. In today's world, such tools that act as master keys to break the political regimes of the Western liberal type, are the technologies of the color revolutions.

Special attention is given to questions related to the risk of escalating a color revolution in a civil war or an international conflict, in the phase of an armed confrontation. Color revolutions use military force as a factor of the service function that their writers and technologists resorted in case of emergency. Military force for color revolutions is not the main tool. Its use is rather forced and secondary in character. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to draw attention to the fact that modern color revolutions really create the conditions and reasons for the subsequent military intervention.

There is only one underlying model of a color revolution. It is the creation of the protest movement and turning it into a political crowd and directing its aggression to the current government, in order to get it to voluntarily withdraw from public office and to give up control of the country. This pressure on the government always takes the form of blackmail and ultimatums with threats of massacres and, rarely, physical attacks against the dissidents. If the government starts to resist, a color revolution enters a phase of armed rebellion. Sometimes this is accompanied by an armed revolt with the intervention of the Western countries, as it did in Libya, and may be in Syria.

The model of color revolution consists of five main stages or phases:

  1. Any color revolution begins with the formation of the country's organized protest movement - the main driving force of the future color revolution.

    At the initial stage, before the big opening, the protest movement is generated in the form of a network of conspiratorial cells, each of which has a leader, and three or four activists on call. These networks bring together thousands of activists that make up the core of the future of the protest movement. Before becoming the leaders of the cells, many of them are trained in special centers, specializing in promoting democratization.

    The activists are recruited from the youth environment that is extremely mobile and easily entrained with different bright appeals and slogans.

    The network principle of the organization of the protest movement resembles the principle of global terrorist organization networks, which, in fact, is the same organizational technology.

  2. This network emerges from the underground to the streets of major cities at the same time and on cue, which is called the incident. Such incident can be any event, shocking society and getting a powerful public outcry. As a rule, it is initiated on purpose.

    In the revolutions in Serbia (Bulldozer Revolution 2000), Ukraine (2004), and Georgia (2004), the results of the elections were such incident, which were declared fraudulent. The revolution in Tunisia (2010), a country with an authoritarian regime, began with the self-immolation of a trader on one of the central squares of the capital: an insignificant event across the country.

    It is important that the incident would attract the attention of the whole society and would be the subject of extensive discussion, interpretation, a rise of universal excitement, and it would initiate spontaneous forms of mass behavior.

  3. After the incident occurred, the protest network rises from the underground to the streets, where a group of activists of the cells become a catalyst for massive spontaneous processes, involving all major sectors of the population.

    The mechanisms to mobilize the conflict are turned on, one of which is the "Twitter revolution" - involvement through social networks.

    The cells begin to rapidly grow with citizens that are dragged into a spontaneous protest movement and that they pushed to take part in mainly out of fear for their future. The overall mood of anxiety leads to the fact that the consciousness of men that goes into the so-called borderline and becomes subject to a mass panic reactions, general hysteria, often manifested at the level of reflexes and instincts. From this point, there is only one step from becoming a mass protest of the community into the crowd of protesters.

  4. The next step in the scheme of a color revolution is the formation of a political crowd. To do this, a large enough area (Maidan) needs to be chosen that could accommodate large masses.

    The activists lead their elected protesters to this square, where there is a complete fusion of the participants into a single mass during the hours of the meeting, known in psychology as the crowd. There is a complete emotional fusion of individuals with the crowd, where bright "revolutionary" identification symbolism begins to be to be used, in order to identify "their own" and "foreign".

    In these conditions, the mind controlling technologies affect the crowd, introducing new values ​​and imperatives, and reprogramming a person . It is these technologies that are used in Protestant totalitarian sects.

    It creates the conditions to sustain the existence and functioning of the crowd: financial security, tents, hot meals, clothing, money for the activists, means of attack (and armature ...), and etc. The "Home Front Command" is well-organized.

  5. On behalf of the crowd, crucial requirements come to those in power using the threat of mass riots or, at least, of the physical destruction. In that case, if the government does not sustain this pressure, it is swept by fury. If the government accepts the challenge and is ready to fight, the crowd becomes a major ram factor that the authors color revolution apply to those in power. In the future, such a revolution inevitably turns into a rebellion, and in some cases into a civil war, accompanied by military intervention.

The evolution of organizational charts and patterns of color revolutions are pretty well traced by the example of the revolutions of the "Arab Spring." Thus, the "Arab Spring" revolutions have their own characteristics that distinguish them structurally and technologically from its predecessors - the color revolutions in Central Asia, Ukraine, Georgia, and even the so-called "Green Revolution" in Iran in 2009. The feedback mechanisms (iterative mechanism is well known to mathematicians) and "controlled chaos" are added to the classical scheme to implement a color revolution (i.e., a coup) that allow to control the political instability not only within a single, relatively small countries (such as Ukraine or Georgia) but across the entire region (Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and etc.).

The feedback mechanism is a special correction mechanism that allows it to identify and to eliminate the shortcomings in the implementation of schemes of the color revolutions in real-time, modifying them under specific conditions of the particular social and cultural environment. Such a mechanism was first worked out in the revolutions of the "Arab Spring," in which coups in the countries that are victims of a wave of the "forced democratization," are not carried out simultaneously but sequentially along a chain. Each subsequent implementation scheme of color revolution took the mistakes made in the implementation of the previous scheme into account. The introduction of color revolutions into technological schemes of feedback mechanisms in real-time, based on iterative schemes, is a direct result of their evolutionary development, allowing the immersion of entire regions and not just individual countries into the revolutionary processes.

The mechanism of the "controlled chaos" is another evolutionary breakthrough in the technology of color revolutions, which allows the use of "democratic schemes and templates," originally developed for the Western type society (individualistic) in terms of traditional Eastern societies, that are resistant to the promotion of democratic and liberal values in their original form. In order for the Western and Anglo-Saxon technology of the colored revolutions started to work in this kind of socio-cultural environment, the traditional structure of the social order must first be destroyed, which is what the technology of the "controlled chaos" does (and very successfully). The main goal of these technologies is to prepare a traditional society to use technology to control mass political consciousness and mass political behavior that is achieved with the help of its "atomization," the breaking of the bonds between individuals and the community, the introduction Western type surrogate individualism into the consciousness of citizens.

Modern developments in Ukraine (2013-2014) are also relevant to the color revolutions, as they repeat the Egyptian scenario exactly. Therefore, it can be expected that the color revolution in Ukraine also opens the way for foreign intervention, as in Libya, and may be in Syria.

In the events in Ukraine, we can discern some signs familiar to the color revolutions in the CIS, Georgia, and Central Asia, that engulfed Ukraine in the 2000s in the "orange" frenzy, as well as in the recent revolutions of the "Arab Spring."

Comparing the current Ukrainian color revolution with recent events in the Middle East and North Africa, it should be noted that the scenario of the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 is exactly the same as the revolution in Egypt, that destroyed the Mubarak regime, and the Egyptian president was dismissed from his post and imprisoned. There are too many coincidences, which are:

  1. the nature of popular unrest, which escalated into riots that were passed as the spontaneous, but in fact were not.
  2. a well-organized protest movement, supported by paramilitary militias, the Ukrainian nationalists, had been transferred to Kiev from the Western regions of Ukraine, where they trained all these years in special camps, studying the tactics of resistance of the special units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine, as well as the tactics of the war in an urban setting.
  3. the blockade of the authorities to seize the strategic and vital infrastructure of the capital.
  4. the use of mechanisms for conflict mobilization of a community, involving it in the conflict on the side of the "representatives of the people in revolt," inciting hatred against the regime, the wide ideological treatment of those that come under the influence of radicals
  5. large-scale information war
  6. a well-organized supply of the rebels with everything they need to continue the fight, including special equipment, clothing, food, financial means used for the services of mercenaries and provocateurs.

These similarities of the Egyptian and the Ukrainian revolutions, however, are limitless. In both cases, under the guise of the people in revolt, organized and well-armed groups of rebels are included in the armed struggle: in Egypt - the Islamists , and in Ukraine - the Western nationalists. For the public this struggle that has all the signs of the beginning of the Civil War, is presented as a "national liberation movement, deployed by the people in revolt against the criminal regime."

In both cases, "people in revolt" were opposed by the weak, indecisive and corrupt power that is afraid to take decisive action and that is slow when it comes to making a choice, torn between recent allies that tend to distance themselves from it the new conditions, makes contradictory statements, demonstrating their helplessness and discrediting itself perhaps more effectively than the opponents do. That is how Mubarak behaved. Until the last moment, he believed that the US would come to his aid and save him from his own play of a color revolution, hoping that this is just an educational measure. His hopes, however, were dashed just like the expectations of Viktor Yanukovych that an almost European Ukraine is not the wild Egypt; Ukrainians are not illiterate Arabs, and all will settle by itself.

A few years, Yanukovych repeated the exact behavior of Mubarak: despite the obvious threat posed by the burgeoning insurgency, which began with really a trifling unrest in the so-called Independence Square, he did nothing to stop this revolution. Instead of tough but fair measures to restore order (as Alexander Lukashenko did with the "Jeans Revolution"), Yanukovych started an incomprehensible political game, playing with the West (EU and US), then with Russia, hoping that Ukraine will receive the next tranche of financial support from both sides in the background of his "intended great role in containing chaos."

Yanukovych's weakness was the reason that at first he lost the support of the electorate, and then his supporters turned away from him that began to rapidly disperse or just run over to the enemy's side. In these critical conditions, Yanukovych still ordered the suppression of the power of the Maidan, but he did not have the willpower to finish it. When the rebels pulled in the illegal armed nationalist groups to the Maidan and began to form squads of "self-defense" out of the the bulk of the protesters, the suppression of the rebellion was only possible at the cost of bloodshed. Yanukovych did not dare to do this for the fear of, not so much, the killings, but for the safety of their capital and accounts in foreign banks, which he could be deprived of overnight could after being recognized as an "international criminal offender."

Yanukovych's playing around with the European Union also played a fatal role. FIrst, the EU insisted that Yanukovych would strongly suppress the riots in the capital, restoring the rule of law. When he finally started doing so and the first victims appeared, the EU immediately began to blame Yanukovych's regime for human rights violations and the genocide of his own people, as well as the urgent need to make concessions to the rebels and to negotiate with them. When Yanukovych, following recommendations, went to negotiate with the rebels, they thought it was the recognition of the weakness of the government and intensified their actions, entering a phase of uncompromising armed struggle. As a result, Yanukovych and his team just escaped from Kiev, instead of continuing to fight or take responsibility for their actions.

The differences between Egypt and Ukraine are really small: in Egypt, the Arabs came to the Cairo Square, and in Kiev they were the Ukrainian nationalists, and ordinary citizens, dissatisfied with the dominance of the Donetsk clan. In fact, in both cases citizen became "tired of those in power," which served as the catalyst for the color revolution from both, the Mubarak regime and the regime of Yanukovych. That is what appeals to the nationalists, forgetting the obvious analogy, which can be traced between the Ukrainian and Egyptian scenarios.

In similar revolutions in Syria and in Libya, the Islamists were the ones against the regimes, with which these regime have been struggling for decades; The Ukrainian nationalists are composed of many Catholics, Greek Catholics, and many of those that adapted some Protestant sects, mostly totalitarian in character that preach extremism. In fact, in both cases, the success of the coup became possible only because of the weakness and the infinite fluctuations of the ruling regime, initially an extremely self-confident one, and then quickly fallen in spirit, serving as an example that gave a signal to its supporters "to escape if you can." In Egypt, moderate Islamists came to power after the revolution, and in Ukraine, extreme nationalists seized power, which is about the same.

During the entire time that North Africa and the Middle East were swept by the tsunami of the color revolutions of the "Arab Spring" and the world's attention was focused on to the tragedy of Libya and Syria, Russia has not ceased to argue, when will the tide of the color revolutions return, and when will the last bastion, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, be swept away. It was pretty obvious for all that the implementation of new technologies of the color revolutions, based on the "controlled chaos," having a run-in the Arab East, thereby will not be limited to the East. A question arose: which country is next in line to be thrown in the chopper? Will it be Iran, where the so-called "green revolution" almost reached its goal in 2009?

The states of Central Asia were called as the following objectives of the color revolutions, where the previous model of the color revolutions failed to ensure the stability of the puppet regimes that came to power in the wake of a color revolution. Belarusian partisan regime has long been a strong annoyance for the whole of the West, something resembling the Gaddafi regime; some had mentioned China. However, the wave of the color revolutions did not continue to format the Muslim East, and suddenly emerged in Ukraine, directly on Russia's borders. Hence, the obvious conclusion: the purpose of the new wave of the color revolutions is not Ukraine and not the Yanukovych regime, but Russia and its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Russia, based on the Ukrainian experience, must prepare for the fact that it will be the next target in the list of the Anglo-Saxon color revolutions that already have the experience in eastern traditional societies and under a super-centralized state built on the principle of the "power vertical," not having airbags in the form of a civil society. A country needs a state concept to counter the color revolutions, both in Russia and, in general, throughout the CIS, having its implementation be backed by road map. It would be naive to hope that this time the wave of the color revolutions will bypass Russia. There are no miracles or exceptions in politics. It's just that the Americans have been searching for approaches to Russia, based on the experience of a test color revolution, the so-called "revolution of the white ribbons." Finally, this approach is found. Ukraine was nothing more than the last dress rehearsal for a revolution, using a country with a similar mentality, culture and civilization identity.

The situation is similar to Ukrainian, is developing today in Venezuela. Here, a protest movement unfolds, which has all the hallmarks of a classic color revolution. This may mean that the United States, having realized a scenario of a color revolution in Ukraine, used another Russian ally - Venezuela. Moreover, we can say with confidence that this time the US created a wave of color revolutions, not in a single country (Ukraine, for example) or a region, but launched an offensive in several strategic directions making countries, such as Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela their targets, i.e. those countries that are (Ukraine - until February 2014) Russia's strategic allies.

A color revolution in Venezuela is possible, moreover, it is inevitable. The fact is that due to the credibility and popularity of Venezuela in the Latin American world, the use of brute military intervention by the United States can be ruled out, as it was in Grenada and Panama. Therefore, in the quest to destroy the gains of the Bolivarian revolution and to undermine the pursuit of freedom by the people of Venezuela, the United States will use the "soft power," "soft" coup technologies, disguised as spontaneous acts of political processes and popular revolutions, the way it was organized in Tunisia, Libya, Syria. Libya, particularly, is an illustrative example, where the color revolution turned into a civil war, and the last one turned into the intervention by France and Great Britain, as well as the United States that later came to the rescue. Of course, Venezuela is not Libya, and here the Americans will use a special scenario, based on all the same basic scheme similar for all the color revolutions. Most likely, the scheme, repeating an armed rebellion of 2013 - 2014 in Ukraine will be applied in Venezuela, which began with "Euro Maidan."

  1. The first sign. Those protest movements and demonstrations that are currently taking place in the largest cities of Venezuela, is the first sign of the beginning of the color revolution. Please note that the protest demonstrations take place in major cities at the same time, hence, they cannot be considered spontaneous, due to a high degree of synchronization of operations.
  2. The second sign is the coverage of these protests by the Western media, in which there are signs of and the elements of information warfare. There are other signs that definitely do not point to chance and external handling of the protests. If it is a color revolution, the support for the opposition groups from the outside is a prerequisite of its success. The organization of large-scale protests, even the ones that look spontaneous, is very expensive. None of the forces within the country, sympathetic to the rebels, have such funds. As a rule, the channels of financial income in the country to organize a color revolution are quite easily detected by the financial intelligence.

Preliminary tests of the color revolution scenarios in Venezuela were held during the election campaign, when the Chavistas actually lost (or won by a whisker) in all major cities, but won in provincial areas.

All the signs indicate that the "controlled chaos" technology is used in Venezuela. The "controlled chaos" technology is a technology of destruction of structures and institutions of civil society that can resist the rebels and the participants of the color revolutions. They make the human environment receptive to the slogans of the color revolutions, since technology if the color revolutions were developed by Americans living in a society of individualists and liberals, for similar societies and social formations. The pure technologies of the color revolutions have stalled in the East because society is not liberal there, but organized by the communal, ancestral or tribal basis. The "controlled chaos" destroys a community structure, resulting in a lot of people being deprived of social protection and experiencing feelings of fear and panic, being forced to seek refuge, organizing into a crowd, which is then used by the directors of the color revolutions.

In the case of Venezuela, "controlled chaos" will be necessarily involved to destroy the social unity of those, who gained a lot from the peaceful Chavez revolution, and to weaken the rest of the Hispanic world that may not come to Venezuela to help.

There is a system of measures that help reduce the risk of the color revolutions. It consists of three groups.

  1. The first group of measures is aimed at detecting and blocking financial flows going to finance the protest movement.
  2. The second group of measures is aimed at involving the social base of the protest movement, young people aged 18 to 35, in the activities of the non-governmental organizations of pro-government orientation.
  3. The third group of measures is to create "valves to let off steam" a society to relieve tension that would not allow a society to "overheat" like a steam boiler, and then throw out the accumulated energy in the form of a social explosion.

It is interesting that in the latest works of the Western authors (including British and French) there appear assessments of the color revolutions, which are contrary to the notions of color revolutions as instruments of democratization and formation of a democratic world as imposed by the United States. For example, some scientists are beginning (still quite cautiously) to argue that none of the color revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have brought prosperity to the Christian world. On the contrary, the "Arab Spring" has stirred up the most dangerous, extremist forces representing Islamism and forced them to withdraw from the deep underground, which the Western countries now have to deal with at the official level.

The "Arab Spring" that began under the banner of democratization of the Arab East, accelerated the retreat of Christianity under the pressure of radical Islam, which strengthened with the beginning of the colored revolutions of the "Arab Spring." The "Arab Spring," created with the money and with the help of American and Western European allies, has become for Western Christian civilization that is already experiencing an acute crisis, the beginning of the "Christian winter." 56

Western Christianity has put down another line of defense. It makes us seriously think about what role today he color revolutions actually play in world politics in the formation of a new world order, and what will it become if the wave of the color revolutions will not be stopped in time.


Conclusion

The modern world is experiencing an era of global change, accompanied by the collapse of the Westphalian system, the growth of the global political instability, the reconfiguring of the system of international relations that existed in the postwar world, international legal nihilism, the devaluation of values and a decrease of the role of international institutions, such as the UN.

Even S.V. Lavrov in an interview to the "International Affairs" journal has noted that "the historical processes continue to gain speed. We see this in the acceleration of the deep, as they say, tectonic shifts in the redistribution of power and influence at the global level, in the rapid developments in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in a number of other areas of the world." 62 In these circumstances, it is necessary to develop a new platform for the global unification and integration, on the solid foundation where a new architecture of international relations and a new design of international institutions can be built that meet the realities of the emerging multipolar world.

[Feb 19, 2017] Covert Action The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World by Gregory F. Treverton

October 3, 2005 | www.amazon.com
T. bailey on October 3, 2005

Under Cover, or Out of Control?

The New York Times November 29, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition (Review of 2 books, including The perfect failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs, only this book review included here)

The torrent of revelations about the Iran-contra affair during the summer's televised hearings, and in the recently released report of the Congressional committees that conducted the hearings, has made Americans aware both of the importance of covert action in the foreign policy of their country and of its risks and costs. These two books do nothing to rehabilitate its reputation or to improve its image...

Both men show how much euphoria about covert action was created by two early successes of the CIA: in Iran in 1953, when Kermit Roosevelt, with the help of what Mr. Treverton calls a ''strange assemblage'' - a pro-Shah mob controlled by one Iranian leader, ''complete with giant . . . weight-lifters recruited from Teheran athletic clubs'' - overthrew Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh's Government and consolidated the Shah's shaky power; and in Guatemala in 1954, when the regime of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was toppled by a small group of rebel soldiers moving in from Honduras. The action in Guatemala led officials to believe that such successes could be repeated elsewhere; it ''consolidated the ascendancy of covert action over espionage, and of operations over intelligence in the CIA,'' in Mr. Treverton's words - and it led directly to the Bay of Pigs and to the later operations in Chile that toppled that country's Government. Most of the men who planned these later activities had been involved in the Guatemalan affair.

''Covert Action'' is valuable not only for its brief, sharp accounts of covert enterprises (the one in Chile was undertaken even though none of the official assessments had concluded that the election of Salvador Allende Gossens in 1970 threatened any vital United States interest), but above all for the lessons Mr. Treverton draws from history, and for his own assessments. The lessons are stark. As the targets of United States action became more formidable (Fidel Castro learned from Arbenz's fate), the chances of success decreased. Success requires bigger operations - and big operations can't remain secret (as the Reagan arms sales to Iran demonstrated).

If the covert activities go on for a long time, as they have in Angola and, since 1981, in Nicaragua, the purposes tend to expand, along with the commitment and public knowledge. When the operations entail the manipulation of foreign elements with their own agenda (the Cuban exiles mobilized for the Bay of Pigs landing, or the Nicaraguan contras, or the anti-Allende factions in the Chilean military), American ability to control them is often limited. In any case, the fine-tuning of covert actions is difficult. In Chile, the United States Government tried to maintain a barrier ''between supporting opposition forces and funding groups trying to promote a military coup,'' but local realities made this ''a distinction built of sand.'' As a result, whatever restrictions and distinctions the United States may have tried to observe, in Chile and elsewhere, it ended up, in the eyes of foreign observers, being seen as responsible for the fall of Allende, or for the acts and fate of the Shah, or as colluding with South Africa against the Marxist regime in Angola.

Mr. Treverton deals at length with the problems of control over covert action. He shows that the enthusiasm shown for it by several Administrations resulted not merely from the ''operational behavior'' of the CIA - its bias for action over mere espionage - but also, frequently, from Presidential pressures (especially from Presidents Nixon and Reagan). But the need to keep operations secret - and the need to protect Presidents by maintaining the possibility of so-called plausible denial - meant that the activities would be discussed only by a small number of people, that insufficient debate and criticism would lead to grievous errors (such as the mistaken belief that the Cuban people would support the invading exiles rather than Mr. Castro) and that only a small proportion of covert-action projects would be reviewed by the National Security Council system.

As for Congress, which went through a long period of complacency and complicity, it tried to reverse course after the Watergate crisis. The Hughes-Ryan Act of 1974 put an end to plausible denial by requiring a Presidential finding that each operation is important to national security, and the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980 required that Congress be notified of all covert operations. But both laws are full of enough vague terms and escape hatches to allow the executive branch to thwart their authors' intentions, as the Iran-contra affair has shown. Indeed, the members of Congress are in a dilemma, highlighted by Mr. Treverton: when they are informed, they are in no position to stop the action - unless they leak its existence and thereby foreclose ''the option of covertness.''

Thus, covert action raises formidable issues in an open society. Mr. Treverton lists the realists' arguments on behalf of secret operations - especially the need to meet, if not to match, Soviet covert activities and to help one's friends in a harsh and dangerous world. But his own position is closer to that of the idealists. He recognizes that covert operations may be necessary at times. But he doubts they'll remain secret, warns about their unintended effects and long-term costs and argues against having them run from the White House or in contradiction of official policy (as in the case of Irangate). He also shows that much that is done covertly by the CIA could be done overtly by private organizations (he notes the foundations established by West German political parties that have aided democratic forces in such countries as Portugal), and, above all, he concludes that most covert-action successes have been small, ambiguous and transitory (Iran and Guatemala in the 1950's, for example).''Covert Action'' is enlightening, thoughtful and wise.

Mr. Treverton, who writes elegantly, paints an often dirty scene in pastel colors.

[Jan 28, 2017] The US government has been making a mess of the world for decades with its overt and covert wars of aggression

Notable quotes:
"... My feel is nyt don't care for détente and prefers something like the stalemate in central Europe of 1983 ..."
"... 1983 the year I (along with most Germans) realized I could be 'envied by the survivors'. ..."
"... This neocon is really unrepentant Trotskyite hell bent on world neoliberal revolution and the USA world hegemony. Nothing will change such people. ..."
"... In a sense they are real "occupiers" of the USA, the sect that keep the country, and especially its foreign policy, hostage. ..."
"... This represents a continuation of the plan outlined by the neocon think tank known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). It was the PNAC that plotted to deceive the US into invading Iraq for the benefit of Israel. (Do some Googling and reading if none of this sounds familiar.) ..."
"... The US government has been making a mess of the world for decades with its overt and covert wars of aggression. Maybe we should insist that "our" government quit dancing to the tune of the special interests who profit from endless war and conflict (the "defense" industry, the Israel lobby, etc.) and try minding our own business in the world for a change? ..."
"... Mc Cain and Portman are of the hillary/nuland/kagan neocon branch of the GOP. Why Jeb! was dumped. Mc Cain just came out for a nearly 50% increase in weapons buying funds! ..."
"... US intelligence officials before the inauguration pandered to Obama about hacking! ..."
Jan 28, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... January 28, 2017 at 07:13 AM , 2017 at 07:13 AM
How much does Trump love Putin? And how worried should we be?
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/01/28/how-much-does-trump-love-putin-and-how-worried-should/ogb4ZD4DyCyKlQyX3knqkJ/story.html?event=event25
via @BostonGlobe - Alan Berger - January 28, 2017

In a notorious interview with the Times of London and the German paper Bild, America's new president, Donald Trump, opined that NATO is obsolete, that disintegration of the European Union would make no difference to the United States, and that he will start off trusting Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel equally. It should come as no surprise that Trump's airing of such views provoked anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic.

Speaking in his characteristic scattershot style, however, Trump also said he respected Merkel, he appreciated NATO, and his trust of either Putin or Merkel could dissipate rapidly. Thus it was that Trump raised vexing questions about himself.

Is he really in thrall to Putin the war criminal? Does Trump have some sinister reason for praising Putin as a strong leader and passing over in silence Putin's propensity for having meddlesome journalists, dissidents, and turncoat spooks gunned down or poisoned with potions prepared by his special services?

Or does Trump's praise of Putin reflect a neophyte's susceptibility to the views of courtiers such as his strategic adviser Steve Bannon, promoter of alt-right nationalism, or national security advisor, Mike Flynn, who took money from Putin's TV propaganda arm, Russia Today, and was seated next to Putin at a banquet celebrating the success of that international enterprise?

To frame the question in a cruder way: Should we look on Trump as Putin's puppet or merely as a feckless con man from Queens who is woefully out of his depth on the great stage of history?

Concern about a suspect relationship between Trump and Putin's regime cannot be dismissed as pure paranoia - even if there is no compromising video of Trump cavorting in a Moscow hotel with sex workers employed by Putin's security services. The FBI and US intelligence agencies had been looking into transactions between Trump associates and Putin's people well before receiving the dossier on Trump's Kremlin ties assembled by a retired officer of Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6.

And there is something yet more worrisome. The Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, noted for his exceptional sources in Israel's intelligence services, reported in the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth that in a recent meeting between American and Israeli intelligence officers, the Americans warned their Israeli counterparts not to disclose sensitive sources and methods to the Trump White House or security council. The Israelis were told there is a danger Trump's people might pass such items to Russia's security services, and the Russians, wishing to make Iran as dependent on Moscow as Syria has become, would deliver Israel's most closely guarded secrets to Iran.

Nevertheless, Trump's ignorance represents a greater danger than any covert obligation to the Kremlin.

There is, after all, a rational case to be made that presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush indulged in geopolitical hubris when, disregarding Russian anxieties about a vulnerable periphery as well as verbal assurances originally offered by George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker, they permitted NATO to expand from Germany's eastern to Russia's western border. At the end of the Cold War, Russia should have been brought into a Eurasian partnership with the NATO allies.

Hence it makes sense for a new US president to seek to resolve dangerous tensions with a nuclear-armed Russia. But there is no justification for Trump's denigration of NATO and America's allies.

Someone, perhaps Defense Secretary James Mattis, ought to explain to Trump what has made Article 5 of the NATO treaty - the pledge that an attack on one alliance member will be considered an attack on all - the key to keeping the peace in Europe. Stalin and his successors understood that Article 5 was an absolute commitment; that once Warsaw Pact troops marched westward, there would be no parliamentary debates in Western capitols, no dithering by presidents or prime ministers; there would be immediate military retaliation.

This has been the secret of Western solidarity and the primary reason Mattis could say in his confirmation hearing that NATO might be the most successful military alliance in history. Success meant never having to use NATO armed forces in Europe.

When Trump mindlessly hints that he might refuse to defend NATO allies who don't meet a voluntary pledge to spend 2 percent of their budgets on their militaries, he undermines Article 5. If he were sitting on Putin's lap and mouthing words from the Kremlin Godfather, his performance might be understandable. But if these impulses are his own, they suggest a perverse worldview that endangers America, its allies, and world peace.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 28, 2017 at 07:20 AM
'It should come as no surprise that Trump's airing of such views provoked anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic':

Trump's barbs aimed at Germany's
Merkel seen boosting her election pitch
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/01/17/trump-barbs-aimed-germany-merkel-seen-boosting-her-election-pitch/8vG3sSSaUOq2EUZSdKGcmK/story.html?event=event25 via @BostonGlobe
Arne Delfs and Patrick Donahue - Bloomberg News - January 17, 2017

Angela Merkel's advisers see a chance that Donald Trump's swipes against the chancellor could work in her favor as she seeks a fourth term as German leader. ...

Polls suggest most Germans were already put off by the U.S. president-elect's rhetoric and policy positions even before his latest volley, published in the country's biggest-selling Bild newspaper. Though he expressed respect for Merkel as Europe's pre-eminent leader, Trump laid out stances on the European Union, NATO and the economy that signal a fundamental clash with the chancellor's defense of free trade, open borders and liberal democracy. ...

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 28, 2017 at 10:29 AM
Does Merkel really want open borders while US neocons would war over countries kluged after WW II?

Or is this more yellow journalism from a nyt subsidiary?

My feel is nyt don't care for détente and prefers something like the stalemate in central Europe of 1983.

1983 the year I (along with most Germans) realized I could be 'envied by the survivors'........

libezkova -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 28, 2017 at 04:23 PM
Compare with his previous article

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/09/20/berger/pT8vfC7EUkHwDRsZo1tPhK/story.html

This neocon is really unrepentant Trotskyite hell bent on world neoliberal revolution and the USA world hegemony. Nothing will change such people.

In a sense they are real "occupiers" of the USA, the sect that keep the country, and especially its foreign policy, hostage.

Here is one interesting comment from
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/03/11/for-islamic-state-war-hints-look-to-the-bolsheviks/

== quote ==

The rise of ISIS was the direct consequence of the neocon-controlled US government's attempts at "regime change" in the Middle East. The CIA and other US government stooges helped provide arms, training, and funding to rebels in Libya and Syria in the hope that fueling those civil conflicts would destabilize the region.

This represents a continuation of the plan outlined by the neocon think tank known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). It was the PNAC that plotted to deceive the US into invading Iraq for the benefit of Israel. (Do some Googling and reading if none of this sounds familiar.)

The situation with ISIS parallels the rise of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as a result of covert CIA support for the Islamic mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet occupiers. Most Americans are too ignorant to know that Osama Bin Laden and his comrades were once US allies (just as Saddam Hussein was a US ally until he ceased to be a cooperative puppet). Here's a quote from Reagan himself:

"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom."
- U.S. President Ronald Reagan, March 21, 1983

Naturally, those freedom fighters magically turned into "terrorists" and "cowards" once they started using those simple hand-held weapons to fight the massive US military that was invading their land, just as the Soviets had done in years past.

The US government has been making a mess of the world for decades with its overt and covert wars of aggression. Maybe we should insist that "our" government quit dancing to the tune of the special interests who profit from endless war and conflict (the "defense" industry, the Israel lobby, etc.) and try minding our own business in the world for a change?

Posted by Heretic50 | Report as abusive

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , January 28, 2017 at 10:25 AM
Mc Cain and Portman are of the hillary/nuland/kagan neocon branch of the GOP. Why Jeb! was dumped. Mc Cain just came out for a nearly 50% increase in weapons buying funds!

US intelligence officials before the inauguration pandered to Obama about hacking!

Why I do not touch nyt, more yellow than wsj!

[Jan 27, 2017] How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – and Launched a War by Michael Lind

Jan 27, 2017 | www.antiwar.com

America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon. Further, President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not genuine "Texas oil men" but career politicians who, in between stints in public life, would have used their connections to enrich themselves as figureheads in the wheat business, if they had been residents of Kansas, or in tech companies, had they been Californians.

Equally wrong is the theory that the American and European civilizations are evolving in opposite directions. The thesis of Robert Kagan, the neoconservative propagandist, that Americans are martial and Europeans pacifist, is complete nonsense. A majority of Americans voted for either Al Gore or Ralph Nader in 2000. Were it not for the overrepresentation of sparsely populated, right-wing states in both the presidential electoral college and the Senate, the White House and the Senate today would be controlled by Democrats, whose views and values, on everything from war to the welfare state, are very close to those of western Europeans.

Both the economic-determinist theory and the clash-of-cultures theory are reassuring: They assume that the recent revolution in U.S. foreign policy is the result of obscure but understandable forces in an orderly world. The truth is more alarming. As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies – such as the selection rather than election of George W. Bush, and Sept. 11 – the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.

The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called "neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right.) Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. He is the defense mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the U.S. to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned his unpaid chairmanship of a defense department advisory body after a lobbying scandal. Most of these "experts" never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defense secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.

Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy." They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.

The neocon defense intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the center of a metaphorical "pentagon" of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think tanks, foundations and media empires. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) provide homes for neocon "in-and-outers" when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations, such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neocons are ideologues, not opportunists.

The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he cosigned a Jinsa letter that began: "We ... believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the] Palestinian Authority."

The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government.

Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots – odd as it seems – in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard – edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) – acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.

Strangest of all is the media network centered on the Washington Times – owned by the South Korean messiah (and ex-convict) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon – which owns the newswire UPI. UPI is now run by John O'Sullivan, the ghostwriter for Margaret Thatcher who once worked as an editor for Conrad Black in Canada. Through such channels, the "gotcha!" style of right-wing British journalism, and its Europhobic substance, have contaminated the US conservative movement.

The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a P.R. technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neocons published a series of public letters whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team. They called for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favorite). During Clinton's two terms, these fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they are frantically being studied.

How did the neocon defense intellectuals – a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic – manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first – a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process – and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.

Then they had a stroke of luck – Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.

The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.

The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.

It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," something the leading neocons say in public but are far too intelligent to believe themselves. The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years, for reasons that had nothing to do with possible links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Public letters signed by Wolfowitz and others called on the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon, and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran with U.S. attacks if they continued to sponsor terrorism. Claims that the purpose is not to protect the American people but to make the Middle East safe for Israel are dismissed by the neocons as vicious anti-Semitism. Yet Syria, Iran and Iraq are bitter enemies, with their weapons pointed at each other, and the terrorists they sponsor target Israel rather than the U.S. The neocons urge war with Iran next, though by any rational measurement North Korea's new nuclear arsenal is, for the U.S., a far greater problem.

So that is the bizarre story of how neoconservatives took over Washington and steered the U.S. into a Middle Eastern war unrelated to any plausible threat to the U.S. and opposed by the public of every country in the world except Israel. The frightening thing is the role of happenstance and personality. After the al-Qaida attacks, any U.S. president would likely have gone to war to topple bin Laden's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. But everything that the U.S. has done since then would have been different had America's 18 th century electoral rules not given Bush the presidency and had Cheney not used the transition period to turn the foreign policy executive into a PNAC reunion.

For a British equivalent, one would have to imagine a Tory government, with Downing Street and Whitehall controlled by followers of the Rev. Ian Paisley, extreme Euroskeptics, empire loyalists and Blimpish military types – all determined, for a variety of strategic or religious reasons, to invade Egypt. Their aim would be to regain the Suez Canal as the first step in a campaign to restore the British empire. Yes, it really is that weird.

[Jan 22, 2017] Jack Ma said the poor plight of American economy was due to the costly wars waged by Washington and has nothing to do with trade ties with Beijing

Notable quotes:
"... Jack Ma said the poor plight of American economy was due to the costly wars waged by Washington and has nothing to do with trade ties with Beijing. The US adopted a strategy to control intellectual property rights and select brands three decades ago, leaving lower-level works to the rest of the world.... Microsoft and IBM have created hundreds of millions in profits through globalisation. ..."
Jan 22, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
jonny bakho -> ilsm... , January 22, 2017 at 09:41 AM
FWIW from Jack Ma Aliba founder:

Jack Ma said the poor plight of American economy was due to the costly wars waged by Washington and has nothing to do with trade ties with Beijing. The US adopted a strategy to control intellectual property rights and select brands three decades ago, leaving lower-level works to the rest of the world.... Microsoft and IBM have created hundreds of millions in profits through globalisation.

This large sum could have been invested in infrastructure and employment, but was instead put towards 13 wars, he said. The US simply failed to allot the funds reasonably." , Ma said his meeting with Trump was much more productive than expected the discussions mainly focused on .... American enterprises selling in Asia through Alibaba's platform, which will provide about one million jobs for Americans in various ways.

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/JrmTPAOTPEFwXT2xGujjQN/Blame-costly-wars-not-China-for-poor-state-of-US-economy.html

ilsm -> jonny bakho... , January 22, 2017 at 10:34 AM
What have we got for $4.6T since 2001? Security from Taliban!

I agree, wars* are opportunity lost and should only be entered in to when society is in harm's way.

US since Pearl Harbor has used the fake excuse+ that any attack on Osan or Estonia is a threat to its existence.

+Unwarranted influence was paid at huge expense to the US at large.

*Eternal vigilance and preparedness for wars is hugely profitable and wasteful to those not profiting.

anne -> jonny bakho... , January 22, 2017 at 12:01 PM
http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2016/Costs%20of%20War%20through%202016%20FINAL%20final%20v2.pdf

September, 2016

US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting
Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security

By Neta C. Crawford

Summary

Wars cost money before, during and after they occur - as governments prepare for, wage, and recover from them by replacing equipment, caring for the wounded and repairing the infrastructure destroyed in the fighting. Although it is rare to have a precise accounting of the costs of war - especially of long wars - one can get a sense of the rough scale of the costs by surveying the major categories of spending.

As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent, or taken on obligations to spend more than $3.6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and on Homeland Security (2001 through fiscal year 2016). To this total should be added the approximately $65 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested for the next fiscal year, 2017, along with an additional nearly $32 billion requested for the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years. When those are included, the total US budgetary cost of the wars reaches $4.79 trillion....

[Jan 07, 2017] War conflict is not a chess game like many neocon chicenhawks assume.

Notable quotes:
"... Chickenhawks like you should better be careful what they wish for. With the election of Hillary we would be on the brink of not "cold", but "hot" war, starting in Syria. But chickenhawks like you prefer other people to die to their imperial complex of inferiority. ..."
"... In other words, all you funny "Putin Poodle", "Putin is a kleptocrat", etc noises is just a testament of the inferiority complex of a typical neoliberal chickenhawk. Much like was the case with Hillary. ..."
Jan 07, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com

Libezkova -> pgl... January 06, 2017 at 05:09 PM

Why don't you just buy m16, some ammunition and go to Syria to prove your point and take revenge for Hillary fiasco.

Chickenhawks like you should better be careful what they wish for. With the election of Hillary we would be on the brink of not "cold", but "hot" war, starting in Syria. But chickenhawks like you prefer other people to die to their imperial complex of inferiority.

In other words, all you funny "Putin Poodle", "Putin is a kleptocrat", etc noises is just a testament of the inferiority complex of a typical neoliberal chickenhawk. Much like was the case with Hillary.

War conflict is not a chess game.

[Dec 27, 2016] Collapse of the USSR was the biggest color revolution model success of our times

Some day the figures of case infusion to buy Soviet elite will be known. the rumors are the over billion of dollars was spend to bytthe KGB brass and some members of Politburo.
Not the the USSR economic model was viable. But "return to NEP" was possible without the dissolution of the country. The tragic coincidence was the the collapse happened when neoliberal idea became popular. This period was the period of Triumphal march of neoliberalism over the globe. and that inflicted on the former USSR republic looting on the scale that happened only in middle ages. Many Soviet people paid with life and thier helath for this mass scale social experiment inflicted on them by Harvard academic crooks/henchmen, see Harvard Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the economic rape of Russia for details.
Notable quotes:
"... People's Daily ..."
Dec 24, 2016 | foreignpolicy.com

It's been 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, and in that time the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has generated tens of thousands of internal papers, roundtables, and even documentaries on the issue. Like most intellectual products in the mainland, 95 percent of these have been worthless regurgitations of the political line of the day by mediocre careerists . But the official angle on the collapse, which once seemed to be pushing the country toward reforms that were more sensitive to public needs and opening the economy, has shifted sharply in the last few years. Today, the lessons Beijing is drawing seem likely to keep sending it backward.

It's no surprise that the party is obsessed with the collapse of its former rival and ideological partner. The most bizarre thing about the brief spate of articles in 2012 and 2013 describing the newly appointed CCP general secretary, Xi Jinping, as a potential Mikhail Gorbachev for China was that some of the writers seemed to think they were paying him a compliment. In China, though, Gorbachev is seen not as a far-sighted reformer but as a disastrous failure, a man who led his country, and his party, to national calamity. That's not an unfair view: China has no desire to lose a quarter of its territory, watch GDP drop by 40 percent, and see male life expectancy cut short by seven years, as Russia did in the 1990s.

Before the Soviet leader's failed gambit, though, many Chinese looked favorably on Gorbachev. The Soviet Union and China had tentatively made up after their vicious - and nearly world-ending - split in the 1960s, and both were looking to learn from the other's experiences. Moscow was increasingly convinced that China's "reform and opening up" was a way forward for its moribund economy, and Chinese intellectuals, inside and outside the party, were intrigued by the possibilities offered by glasnost and perestroika - the pillars of Gorbachev's heralded reform platform.

The Soviet collapse prompted hard self-reflection, albeit couched within the even harder limits of Chinese political correctness.
The Soviet collapse prompted hard self-reflection, albeit couched within the even harder limits of Chinese political correctness. (Even in relatively liberal moments - such as the fervent intellectual debates of the late 1980s - raising fundamental questions about national identity, the leadership of the party, and the correctness of socialism was a risky move for anyone inside the system.) What were the causes? Was China inevitably heading down the same path if it didn't change its ways?

Virtually every aspect of the early People's Republic, from the organization of its railways to its party structure to its ethnic minority policy, was copied from the Soviet Union. As Marxist theorists saw it, like the Soviets, China had leapfrogged from peasant feudalism over industrial capitalism straight into socialism. But in reality, both slapped a veneer of socialism over a fusion of new nationalism and old-fashioned empire. And both followed mass famine with cultural revolution (originally a Soviet term ) and bloody party purges.

At first, part of the Chinese response was to use the Soviet example to spur further reform inside the party itself. As political scientist David Shambaugh has argued , critical analysis of Soviet failings pointed to a top-heavy, incompetent, and stagnant Soviet Communist Party and prompted efforts in Beijing to transform the CCP into a more modern, flexible, and resilient organization. That didn't mean sweeping democratic reform, but it meant a party more sensitive to public opinion - and more interested in steering it, through both subtle and unsubtle means, in the right direction.

There were also more immediate shifts. Fear of the popular changes unleashed across Eastern Europe had already played a powerful role in prompting the brutal crackdown on protesters in Beijing and elsewhere in 1989. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, deeply conscious of the role that rising nationalism, from Ukraine to Azerbaijan, had played in bringing down the Soviet Union, policy around China's autonomous regions and ethnic minorities tightened, and the language shifted. Minzu , the Chinese term for non-ethnic-Han groups, shifted from being "nationalities" in official translations to "ethnic minorities." Meanwhile, worries over Soviet economic stagnation boosted Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's final big push for economic reform during his 1992 "Southern Tour" of the country's newly booming commercial cities.

Running parallel to this, however, was always a counternarrative that suggested the disaster hadn't come from inside but outside. It was the reformers who had caused the fall of a superpower, this argument went, by shaking faith in the system through acknowledging the Soviet Union's past crimes , letting in dangerous foreign influences, and abandoning hard-line Marxism. This idea has now received official stamp from the very top of Beijing's leadership, and one can see it reverberating through the new wave of paranoia about foreign influence, reassertion of party power, and hostility to civil society.

As Xi himself put it in a 2013 speech : "Their ideals and beliefs had been shaken. In the end, 'the ruler's flag over the city tower' changed overnight. It's a profound lesson for us! To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and it confuses our thoughts and undermines the party's organizations on all levels."

" Historical nihilism " has become a favorite shibboleth for those looking to demonstrate loyalty under Xi, as has the hysterical defense of every bit of past propaganda . Manufactured Maoist hero Lei Feng , once idealized by Chinese youth in the 1960s, has been dragged, yet again, from the grave to serve as inspiration for utterly indifferent Chinese youth despite the "Western conspiracy" against him .

The new line is simple: blame the West and blame the Soviet leaders - like Gorbachev - who let the West in. It's one reason why China has pushed through harsh new laws designed to force out foreign nongovernmental organizations, why the national press is getting shriller and shriller in its hostility to the United States, and why censorship is worsening. At the same time, there's no sign of the political reforms that some Western observers once confidently predicted .

What's behind this shift? Part of it seems to be Xi's personal conviction in the essential truth of the party - and in his own right to rule as a revolutionary scion . That would be enough to shift the entire course of discussion by itself, in a country where following the leader's signals is second nature for anyone who wants to climb the ladder. (It's a habit that carries over into other contexts: Before President-elect Donald Trump's Taiwan call, visiting Chinese groups in Washington were ending speeches with, "Together, we can make America and China great again.")

But Xi's own convictions have been empowered by the events of the last decade.

The deepest Chinese fear is of regime change similar to the kinds that swept across the former Soviet space and let loose the Arab Spring.

The deepest Chinese fear is of regime change similar to the kinds that swept across the former Soviet space and let loose the Arab Spring. "Color revolution" is a useful phrase, because it detaches these events from true, rightful revolution - of the kind that made the People's Republic of China and all its "revolutionary martyrs" - and puts it firmly in the realm of an organized, U.S.-led conspiracy designed to destabilize potential opponents.

The belief that all of these revolutions were U.S.-orchestrated plots isn't just propaganda, but sincerely held; I argued with a People's Daily editor after a visit to Iran just after the Green Revolution in which he'd claimed that the Iranians loved their regime. "All the so-called protesters were CIA spies!" he told me.

In Beijing, American promotion of democracy and human rights is seen as just a tool to ensure U.S. dominance and one that therefore has to be constantly resisted. " Peaceful evolution ," the nationalist tabloid Global Times proclaimed, was just another name for color revolution. Even seemingly harmless cultural products have been caught up in this. Zootopia , a recent Disney animated children's film, explained a People's Liberation Army newspaper, was an American plot to weaken China's morale.

The hostility toward the color revolutions and the chaos they've unleashed has thus been projected backward. The Soviet fall, once seen at least in part as a result of the Communist Party's own failings, has become reinterpreted as a deliberate U.S. plot and a moral failure to hold the line against Western influence. That has ended what was once a powerful spur to reform - meaning that, barring a major change in leadership, the likely course of Chinese politics over the next few years will be further xenophobia, even more power to the party, and an unwillingness to talk about the harder lessons of history.

[Dec 21, 2016] Russia: The Old-New Official Enemy

Dec 21, 2016 | www.fff.org
by Jacob G. Hornberger December 15, 2016

It is impossible to overstate the stakes involved in the latest controversy over Russia. They involve trillions of dollars in warfare largess to the tens of thousands of bureaucratic warfare-state parasites who are sucking the lifeblood out of the American people.

Ever since the advent of the U.S. national-security state after World War II, America has needed official enemies, especially ones that induce fear, terror, and panic within the American citizenry. When people are fearful, terrified, and panicked, they are much more willing, even eager, to have government officials do whatever is necessary to keep them safe and secure. It is during such times that liberty is at greatest risk because of the propensity of government to assume emergency powers and the proclivity of the citizenry to let them have them.

That's what the Cold War was all about. The official enemies were communism and the Soviet Union, which was an alliance of nations that had Russia at its center. U.S. officials convinced Americans that there was a worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the world, with its principal base in Moscow.

A correlative threat was Red China, whose communist hordes were supposedly threatening to flood the United States.

There were also the communist outposts, which were considered spearheads pointed at America. North Korea. North Vietnam. Cuba, which, Americans were told, was a communist dagger pointed out America's neck from only 90 miles away.

And then there was communism the philosophy, along with the communists who promoted it. It was clear, U.S. officials gravely maintained, that communism was spreading all across the world, including inside the U.S. Army, the State Department, and Hollywood, and that communists were everyone, including leftist organizations and even sometimes under people's beds.

Needless to say, all this fear, terror, and panic induced people to support the ever-growing budgets, influence, and power of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which had become the national-security branch of the federal government - and the most powerful branch at that. Few cared that their hard-earned monies were being taken from them by the IRS in ever-increasing amounts. All that mattered was being kept safe from the communists.

Hardly anyone questioned or challenged this warfare-state racket. President Eisenhower alluded to it in his Farewell Address in 1961, when he pointed out that this new-fangled governmental structure, which he called "the military industrial complex," now posed a grave threat to the freedoms and democratic processes of the American people.

One of those who did challenge this official-enemy syndrome was President John F. Kennedy. At war with his national-security establishment in 1963, Kennedy threw the gauntlet down at his famous Peace Speech at American University in June of that year. There was no reason, Kennedy said, that the Soviet Union (i.e., Russia) and the rest of the communist world couldn't live in peace co-existence and even friendship, even if the nations were guided by different ideologies and philosophies. Kennedy announced that it was time to end the Cold War against Russia and the rest of the communist world.

What Kennedy was proposing was anathema to the national-security state and its ever-growing army of voracious contractors and subcontractors who were feeding at the public trough. How dare he remove the Soviet Union (i.e., Russia) as America's official enemy? How could the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA justify their ever-growing budgets and their ever-growing emergency powers? Indeed, how could they justify the very existence of their Cold War totalitarian-type apparatus known as a "national security state" without a giant official enemy to strike fear, terror, and panic with the American people?

Kennedy was considered a neophyte and an incompetent by the national-security establishment, not to mention an immoral adulterous philanderer who was even sleeping with the girlfriend of a Mafia don. What Kennedy didn't realize, the Pentagon and the CIA believed, was that it was impossible for the United States and the communist world to live in peaceful coexistence. This was a fight to the finish. Kennedy was being lulled, perhaps even blackmailed, into surrendering America to the Reds. He was considered a traitor, a betrayer, and the epitome of naïve. (See: JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne; The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger; Regime Change: The Kennedy Assassination by Jacob Hornberger; The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger; and CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley.)

Once Kennedy was removed from the scene, everything returned to "normal." The Cold War continued. The Vietnam War against the commies in Asia to prevent more dominoes from falling got ramped up. The Soviet Union, Red China, and the worldwide communist conspiracy continued to be America's big official enemies. The military and intelligence budgets continued to rise. The number of warfare state parasites continued soaring.

Seemingly, there was never going to be an end to the process. Until one day, the unexpected suddenly happened. The Berlin Wall came crashing down, East and West Germany were reunited, and the Soviet Union was dismantled, all of which struck unmitigated fear within the bowels of the American deep state.

Oh sure, there was still Cuba, Red China, North Korea, and Vietnam but those communist nations, for some reason, just didn't strike fear, terror, and panic within Americans as Russia did.

U.S. officials needed a new official enemy. Enter Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, who had served as a partner and ally of the U.S. government during the 1980s when he was waging war against Iran, which, by that time, had become converted from official friend to official enemy of the U.S. Empire. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam was made into the new official enemy. Like the Soviets and the communists, Saddam was coming to get us and unleash mushroom clouds all over America. The American people bought it and, not surprisingly, budgets for the national-security establishment continued their upward soar.

Then came the 9/11 attacks in retaliation for what the Pentagon and the CIA were doing in the Middle East, followed by with the retaliatory invasions Afghanistan and Iraq. Suddenly the new official enemies were "terrorism" and then later Islam. Like the communists of yesteryear, the terrorists and the Muslims were coming to get us, take over the federal government, run the IRS and HUD, and force everyone to study the Koran. The American people bought it and, not surprisingly, budgets for the national-security establishment continued their upward soar.

The problem is that Americans, including U.S. soldiers and their families, are now growing weary of the forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. But U.S. national-security state officials know that if they bring the troops home, the official enemies of terrorism and Islam disappear at the same time.

That's why they have decided to return to their old, tried and true official enemy - Russia and, implicitly, communism. It's why the U.S. broke its promise to Russia to dismantle NATO. It's why the U.S. supported regime change in the coup in Ukraine. It's why the U.S. wants Ukraine into NATO - to enable the U.S. to install missiles on Russia's border. It's why the national-security state is "pivoting" toward Asia - to provoke crises with Red China. It's why they are accusing Russia of interfering with the U.S. presidential election and campaigning for Donald Trump. The aim of it all is to bring back the old Cold War official enemies of Russia, China, and communism, in order to keep Americans afraid, terrified, and panicked, which then means the continuation of ever-growing budgets to all those warfare state parasites who are sucking the lifeblood out of the American people.

With his fight against the CIA over Russian hacking and his desire to establish normal relations with Russia, Donald Trump is clearly not buying into this old, tried-and-true Russia-as-official enemy narrative. In the process, he is posing a grave threat to the national-security establishment and its ever-growing budgets, influence, and power.

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[Dec 20, 2016] Its official the US is funding Middle-East jihadists!

Dec 20, 2016 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr
It's official: the US is funding Middle-East jihadists!

globinfo freexchange

We should not expect the truth from the corrupted establishment who fiercely fought Bernie Sanders, for example. We should expect it from someone who supported him. Indeed, the Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned as DNC vice-chair on February 28, 2016, in order to endorse Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and actually was the first female US Representative to endorse Sanders, 'dared' to introduce bill so that the US to stop arming terrorists!

Her words left no doubt of who is behind the dirty war in Syria and the chaos in the Middle East:

Mr. speaker, under US law, it is illegal for you, or me, or any American, to provide any type of assistance to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or other terrorist groups. If we broke this law, we'll be thrown in jail.

Yet the US government has been violating this law for years, directly and indirectly supporting allies and partners of groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, with money, weapons, intelligence and other support in their fight to overthrow the Syrian government .

A recent NY Times article, confirmed that rebel groups supported by the US 'have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of al-Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as al Nusra.' The Wall Street Journal reports that rebel groups are 'doubling down on their alliance with al-Qaeda'. This alliance has rendered the phrase 'moderate rebels' meaningless .

We must stop this madness.We must stop arming terrorists .

I'm introducing the Stop Arming Terrorists act today, to prohibit taxpayer dollars for being used to support terrorists.

Speaking on CNN , Gabbard specifically named CIA as the agency that supports terrorist groups in the Middle East:

The US government has been providing money, weapons, intel. assistance and other types of support through the CIA, directly to these groups that are working with and are affiliated with Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Also, Gabbard specifically named the allies through which the US assist these terrorist groups:

We've also been providing that support through countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar ...

Speaking on NPR , Gabbard explained that she was working on the issue of the US interventionist, regime-change wars for years since she has been in Congress. Therefore, her position coincides with that of Donald Trump who repeatedly declared his opposition to these wars. This was also the main reason for which she endorsed Bernie Sanders:

SIMON: You and President-elect Trump are obviously of different parties. But don't you kind of have the same position on Syria?

GABBARD: I have heard him talk about his opposition to continuing interventionist, regime-change wars. I want to be clear, though, that this is an issue that I have been working on for years since I have been in Congress. And it's one...

SIMON: It's why you endorsed Senator Sanders, isn't it?

GABBARD: It's - correct. It was a clear difference between Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton. I am hopeful that this new administration coming in will change these policies so that we don't continue making these destructive decisions, as have been made in the past.

This is really a unique moment, showing the absolute failure of the US obsolete, dirty policies and the degree of degeneration of the 'idealistic' picture of the Unites States as the number one global power. We can't remember any moment in the past in which a congressman was seeking to pass a bill to prohibit the US government funding terrorists, or, a newly elected president who, in his campaigns, was stating clearly that the previous administration created many terrorist groups.

[Dec 10, 2016] Possible connection between Ukraian Diaspora in the USA and

Typically Diaspora is more nationalistic the "mainland" population. This is very true about Ukrainian Diaspora, which partially is represented by those who fought on the side of Germany in the WWII. They are adamantly anti-Russian.
Notable quotes:
"... Here it also bears mentioning that it has been established that Yanukovych's Party of Regions transferred $200,000 to the far right Svoboda party and about $30,000 to the nationalist UNA-UNSO. This is serious money in Ukraine. ..."
"... Firstly, most Ukrainians don't give a shit about Bandera and the OUN. So if they're not speaking out against people using those symbols or slogans it's not because they support them, but because they're more concerned with issues of pure survival. ..."
"... And then these same fascists were whitewashed as noble freedom fighters by Western MSM simply because their interests happen to allign with the interests of the US, for the moment. ..."
"... Uh, no. I haven't noticed anyone here thinking that Russia is some sort of fighter for social and economic justice. Rather, we as a group are sick of noxious propaganda driven by American Exceptionalism. ..."
"... And speaking for myself, I find the rise of Russia to be potentially a very good thing for the US itself, if it manages to curtail the MIC-driven hegemonic drive, weakens its relative power, and forces it to focus its money and energies on pressing domestic issues. ..."
"... The idea of considering Putin to be anticapitalist is risible. Putin represents a limit on a US hegemonized economic order and the greater likelihood that some portion ..."
"... This is some insidious strawman and dishonest argumentation, speaking of "BS." Nowhere does this article state that the entire Maidan revolution was a "fascist coup"-that's you putting words in the author's mouth to make his article appear to be Russian propaganda. The author specifies names of top figures in power today with seriously disturbing neo-Nazi backgrounds-the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, its Interior Minister, and head of National Police. He never once calls it a "fascist coup". Using strawman to avoid having to answer these specific allegations is bad faith commenting. ..."
"... The false analogy to Occupy shows how dishonest your comment is. No one disputes that neo-Nazi leader Parubiy was in charge of Maidan's "self-defense"; and that neo-Nazi Right Sektor played a lead role in the confrontations with the Yanukovych authorities. ..."
"... I suspect that Mr. Kovpak is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora that first infested this country starting around 1945, and has since been trying to justify the belief that the wrong side won WWII. ..."
"... "The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko " ..."
"... Paruiby (Neo Fascist) was in charge before and after the Maidan for security – the trajectory of the bullets came from his peoples positions that shot the cops – analyzed over and over ..."
"... The Nazi Asov Battalion among other organizations supporting the Regime in Kiev has Nazi symbols, objectives and is one of the main forces armed and trained by American Military. ..."
"... The entire corrupt Kiev administration is Nazi and now it appears the Clinton Campaign has direct ties well beyond the $13 million she received in her Slush Fund from the Oligarchs in 2013. The driving force behind this entire Fake News Initiative and support for Hillary is becoming more visible each day. ..."
"... Not to mention the Ukrainian Nazis penchant for shelling civilians. Or will Kovpak (Ukrainian school perhaps? Did his grandfather emigrate with the other Ukrainian SS?) will repeat the canard that unbeknownst to the locals, the rebels are shelling themselves, using artillery shells that can 180 mid-flight? ..."
"... What is the liberals' talking point these days? "Not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that racism isn't a deal-breaker. End of story." Hillary's SoS-designate Nuland and Barry 0 decided that Ukie nazism wasn't a deal breaker. End of story. ..."
"... Ukrainian neo-fascists were an integral part of the Maidan (trained in Poland, US, and Canada). ..."
"... Yes, ordinary Ukrainians protested against corruption – but every U. government since 1991 has been corrupt. Yanukovich was no exception – but he was also not the worst one (do some research on J. Timoshenko). ..."
"... There is enough actual footage from Maidan that shows the presence of neo-nazi members on the square from the beginning. They were also the one who completed the violent overthrow of the government that happened on 2/21-22/14 – after a deal had been signed calling for early elections. The burning of 48 people in Odessa was probably done by angels, according to your likely analysis. ..."
"... So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points ..."
"... I was going to say something about how the CIA made Ukraine's Social Nationalist party change its name to Svoboda (freedom), to obscure the obvious Nazi connection, but instead I will just laugh at you. ..."
"... What a shocker that Jim Kovpak, the commenter who tries smearing this article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking points" -- works for CIA-founded Voice of America and is a regular with Ukraine's "StopFake.org" which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy , the CIA's color revolution "soft" arm - in other words, PropOrNot's folks. Can't make this stuff up. ..."
"... Wait, so in Kovpak's case our tax dollars are used to fund and disseminate propaganda to America's public, too? I am not shocked or anything, but rather amused that the vaunted American democracy and famously free media is beginning to resemble communist Bulgaria. ..."
"... Okay, but isn't it the case that many far-right leaders have migrated to parties closer to the center, such as People's Front? Svoboda's leaders have done this. Andriy Parubiy, Tetiana Chornovol, and Oleksandr Turchynov, for example, hold high positions in People's Front, but started out as members or Svoboda. If I'm not mistaken, People's Front also has strong connections to the far-right Volunteer Battalions. I believe People's Front has its own paramilitary branch too. ..."
"... What this tells me is that much of Ukraine's far-right may be masquerading as right-center. That's kind of like a political Trojan Horse operation. This way the fascists avoid standing out as far-right, but at the same time, move closer to the mechanisms of power within Ukraine's government. ..."
"... Here's an article by Lev Golinkin commenting on the far-right's strong and dangerous influence on Ukraine today. A fascist presence like this could easily be a powerful element in Ukrainian elections, very suddenly and unpredictably too. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ukrainian-far-right-and-the-danger-it-poses/ ..."
"... This is getting darker and darker. As much as I dislike Trump I feel happier that Clinton didn't make it. The TINA party is the most reactionary thing by far! ..."
"... Sanders might have had a hard time driving as far left on FP as he did on domestic issues. I'm his constituent, and I have a letter from him from mid-'15 reiterating all the mainstream lies about Russia and Ukraine. ..."
"... and/or incontinence ..."
Dec 09, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Jim Kovpak December 9, 2016 at 3:45 am

Hello, I'm the blogger of Russia Without BS, a site you cited once in the stories about PropOrNot. As I have recently written on my blog , I believe PropOrNot is most likely one person who is not linked to any real organization group or intelligence agency. The individual is most likely what I call a cheerleader, which is basically a person with no reasonable connection to some conflict, yet who takes a side and sort of lives vicariously through their imagined "struggle."

That being said, you're probably not going to do yourself any favors claiming that Maidan was a fascist coup and that fascists are in charge in Ukraine. Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers (quite the opposite, actually), and they were not the majority of people there. Basically you condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence of neo-Nazis and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well documented).

Without actually bothering to look at the issues involved, you are basically telling millions of Ukrainians that they should have tolerated a corrupt, increasingly authoritarian government that was literally stealing their future all because some right-wingers happened to latch on to that cause too. Here it also bears mentioning that it has been established that Yanukovych's Party of Regions transferred $200,000 to the far right Svoboda party and about $30,000 to the nationalist UNA-UNSO. This is serious money in Ukraine.

As for the slogan, yes, Slava Ukraini, Heroiam Slava! has its origins in the OUN, but there are some important things to consider when discussing Ukrainian history.

Firstly, most Ukrainians don't give a shit about Bandera and the OUN. So if they're not speaking out against people using those symbols or slogans it's not because they support them, but because they're more concerned with issues of pure survival. Look at the average salary in Ukraine and look into some of the instances of corruption (some of which continue to this day), and you'll understand why a lot of people aren't going to get up in arms about someone waving the red and black flag. Most people have become very cynical and see the nationalists as provocateurs or clowns, and thus they don't take them seriously enough.

... ... ...

olga December 9, 2016 at 12:35 pm

Before you call this good points, please familiarize yourself with the (accurate) history of the Maidan, Ukraine, neo-nazi presence in that country, and Russian history. Please Kovpak seems to be an embodiment of what Ames tries to convey.

dk December 9, 2016 at 2:30 pm

"You're a poseur!"
"No, you're poser!"

The more experienced observer listens to all sides; and all sides lie at least a little, if only for their own comfort. Beyond that, subjectivity is inescapable, and any pair of subjectives will inevitably diverge. This is not a malign intent, it's existential circumstance, the burden of identity, of individual life.

My own (admittedly cursory) analysis happens to coincide with Jim Kovpak's first para (PropOrNot being primarily a lone "cheerleader"). And I can see merit, and the call for dispassionate assessment, in some of his other points. This does not mean I endorse Kovpak over Ames, or Ames over Kovpak; both contribute to the searching discussion with cogent observation (and the inevitable measure of subjective evaluation).

I thank both for their remarks, and also thank our gracious hosts ;).

hemeantwell December 9, 2016 at 9:23 am

Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers

No, but it was hijacked by fascists. It is sad that more democratic/progressive forces lost out, but that's what happened. You seem to be trying to avoid recognizing this fact by affirming the rightfulness of those who began the revolt. Their agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered, spent, and gunned them. It's time to mourn, not to defend a parasitic Frankenstein that is trying to develop a European fascist movement. Goons from that movement assaulted and injured May Day demonstrators in Sweden this year and then fled back to the Ukraine. They are dangerous and should not be protected with illusions.

OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 10:08 am

Their agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered, spent, and gunned them

And then these same fascists were whitewashed as noble freedom fighters by Western MSM simply because their interests happen to allign with the interests of the US, for the moment. Thus we have the ridiculous situation where supposedly reputable media like NYT and WaPoo cheer on the Azov battalion and its brethren, and deny the very symbolism of the various Nazi insignia and regalia featured on their uniforms. Jim makes some very good points, but he fell way short in ignoring the role of the US MSM in this travesty.

And just in case someone tries to claim that we all make mistakes at times and that the MSM made an honest mistake in regards to these neo-Nazi formations, the same thing has been happening in Syria, where the US and its Gulf allies have armed extremists and have whitewashed their extremism by claiming even Al Qaeda and its offshoots are noble freedom fighters.

hemeantwell December 9, 2016 at 12:05 pm

Good on the parallel with Syria. The evolution, or distortion, of revolutionary movements as they struggle to gain support and offensive power and then either are modified or jacked by "supporting" external powers is not a cheering subject. The tendency to ignore that this has happened takes two forms. One is what we are here discussing. The other is its opposite, as seen in, for example, the way some writers try to maintain that there never was a significant democratic/progressive/humane etc. element to the Syrian opposition.

flora December 9, 2016 at 9:57 am

Ukraine, as I understand it, is not monolith but has roughly 2 interest areas – western and eastern – divided by the River Dnieper. The Western half is more pro-European and EU, the Eastern half is more pro-Russia. The word "fascist" in Ukraine means something slightly different than in means in the US and the EU. So I take your comment with a grain of salt, even though it is interesting.

Ukraine's geographical location as the land "highway" between Europe and Asia has created a long and embattled history there.

OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 10:17 am

So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points because you mistakenly think Russia is somehow opposed to US capitalism,

Uh, no. I haven't noticed anyone here thinking that Russia is some sort of fighter for social and economic justice. Rather, we as a group are sick of noxious propaganda driven by American Exceptionalism.

And speaking for myself, I find the rise of Russia to be potentially a very good thing for the US itself, if it manages to curtail the MIC-driven hegemonic drive, weakens its relative power, and forces it to focus its money and energies on pressing domestic issues.

Soulipsis December 9, 2016 at 11:48 am

Seconded.

hemeantwell December 9, 2016 at 12:15 pm

Thirded. The idea of considering Putin to be anticapitalist is risible. Putin represents a limit on a US hegemonized economic order and the greater likelihood that some portion of the fruits of the Russian oligarchic capitalist effort will benefit Russians, not elites tied to the US, because of his self-interested nationalism. Not much to cheer about but better than where things were headed when Yeltsin was in power.

KRB December 9, 2016 at 10:49 am

This is some insidious strawman and dishonest argumentation, speaking of "BS." Nowhere does this article state that the entire Maidan revolution was a "fascist coup"-that's you putting words in the author's mouth to make his article appear to be Russian propaganda. The author specifies names of top figures in power today with seriously disturbing neo-Nazi backgrounds-the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, its Interior Minister, and head of National Police. He never once calls it a "fascist coup". Using strawman to avoid having to answer these specific allegations is bad faith commenting.

The false analogy to Occupy shows how dishonest your comment is. No one disputes that neo-Nazi leader Parubiy was in charge of Maidan's "self-defense"; and that neo-Nazi Right Sektor played a lead role in the confrontations with the Yanukovych authorities. There is absolutely no equivalent to this with Occupy at all. Where does this false analogy even come from? No where does the author state that Maidan was ONLY fascists, that is again your strawman response. Maidan had a lot of support from pro-western, pro-european, pro-liberal forces. But to deny the key and often lead roles played by neo-fascists in the actual organization, "self defense" and violent confrontations with the Yanukovych goons is gross whitewashing.

Much worse is the way you rationalize the fascist OUN salute by arguing that it means something else now, or it's become normalized, etc. These are all the same bullshit arguments made by defenders of the Confederate flag. "It means something different now." "it's about heritage/being a rebel!/individualism!" There is no "but" to this, and anyone who claims so is an asshole of the first order. The salute descends directly from collaborators in the Holocaust and mass-murder of Jews and Poles and collaboration with Nazis. If people claim they don't understand its origins, then educate them on why it's so fucked up, don't make excuses for them. Really disgusting that you'd try to rationalize this away. There is no "but" and no excuse, period.

"Russia Without BS" is one hell of an ironic name for someone bs-ing like this. Your failure to actually engage the article, setting up and knocking down strawmen instead, and evading, using false analogies-reveal your own intellectual pathologies. Try responding to the actual text here, and maybe you'll be taken seriously.

Martin Finnucane December 9, 2016 at 2:47 pm

+1

My thought was that this post was an example of the strawman fallacy. Yet certainly Mr. Kovpak wasn't just shooting from the hip. That is, he thought about this thing, wrote it, looked it over, and said "well enough" and posted it. Poor logic, or bad faith?

I think the tell was his characterization of the article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking points." What the hell is a "Russian talking point"? How do Ames' contentions follow said talking points? Are he saying, perhaps, that Ames is another one of those Kremlin agents we've been hearing about, or perhaps another "useful idiot"? Perhaps Ames – of all people – is a dupe for Putin, right?

Hasbara, Ukrainian style. Bringing this junk onto NS, either this guy is alot of dumber than he gives himself credit for, or he actually has no familiarity with NS, outside of the now- and rightly-notorious WP/ProporNot blacklist. Probably the latter, since it looks like his comment was a pre-masticated one-and-done.

sid_finster December 9, 2016 at 3:03 pm

I suspect that Mr. Kovpak is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora that first infested this country starting around 1945, and has since been trying to justify the belief that the wrong side won WWII.

AD December 9, 2016 at 10:55 am

I'm glad Jim Kovpak provided this background. I was very troubled to see Ames breezily smear the Ukrainian uprising as "fascist," essentially writing off the protesters as U.S. proxies and dismissing their grievances as either non-existent or irrelevant. Something similar has happened in Syria, of course. Yes, the U.S. ruling blocs try to advance their interests in such places, but if you ignore the people on the ground or dismiss them as irrelevant, you're just playing into the hands of other tyrannical interests (in Syria: Assad, Putin, Hezbollah, etc.).

OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 12:06 pm

$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they ain't US proxies. Gla that you straightened that out for us.

The grievances in Ukraine are many and are legitimate. But that the people's anger was hijacked by US-financed proxies is a fact. Nuland was caught dictating that Yats would be the new PM, and darned if he didn't become just that. The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko, and the country was plunged into a civil war. But Yats and Porky are freedom-loving democrats! The old saying remains true: "They may be corrupt SOBs, but they are our corrupt SOBs!"

Heck, for all the crocodile tears shed by the West about corruption and democracy, it has nurtured corruption in Eastern Europe and looked the other way as democracy has been trampled. Including in my native Bulgaria, where millions of dollars spent by the US and allied NGOs on promoting and financing "free press" have seen Bulgaria's freedom of media ranking slip to third world levels. But Bulgaria is a "democracy" because it is a member of the EU and NATO, and as such its elites have done the bidding of its Western masters at the expense of Bulgaria's national interests and the interests of its people. Ukraine is headed down that road, and all I can say to regular Ukrainians is that they are in for an even bigger screwing down the road, cheer-led by the Western "democracies" and "free" media.

Meddling by US hyperpower in the internal affairs and the replacement of one set of bastahds with another set of bastahds that is beholden to the US is not progress, which is why we call it out. After all the spilled blood and destruction sponsored by the US, can you honestly say that Ukraine and Syria and Libya and Iraq are now better off, and that their futures are bright? I can't, and I can't say that for my native country either. That's because this new version of neocolonialism is the most destructive and virulent yet. And it is particularly insidious because it fools well-meaning people, like yourself, into believing that it actually helps improve the lives of the natives. It does not.

lyman alpha blob December 9, 2016 at 12:39 pm

"The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko "

That pretty much sums it up. Jim Kovpak does make some excellent points which help to understand what the Ukranians are thinking. The discussion regarding the poor education system and potential lack of knowledge of what certain symbolism refers to was really good. Sort of reminds me of the Southerners in the US who still claim that the Stars and Bars is just about Southern heritage and pride without bothering to consider the other ramifications and what the symbol means for those who were persecuted at one time (and continuing to today). But yeah, I'm sure there are those who think that that flag was just something the Duke boys used on the General Lee when trying to outrun Roscoe.

All that being said, I don't believe anybody here thinks that Yanukovich was some paragon of virtue ruling a modern utopia. The problem is that the new boss looks surprisingly familiar to the old boss with the main difference being that the fruits of corruption are being funneled to different parties with the people likely still getting the shaft.

If your a(just as many in the US are), it's quite possible they are also unaware of the current US influence in their country, just as most US citizens are unaware of what the US has done in other countries.

I'd be very interested in Jim Kovpak's thoughts on this.

RMcHewn December 9, 2016 at 4:37 pm

$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they ain't US proxies. Gla[d] that you straightened that out for us.

Yes, it doesn't get any more blatant than that, and if anyone believes otherwise they are obviously hooked on the officially sanctioned fake news, aka the MSM.

Damian December 9, 2016 at 10:56 am

"Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers / Ukraine certainly does not have more right-wingers than other Eastern European nations" silly at best!

Paruiby (Neo Fascist) was in charge before and after the Maidan for security – the trajectory of the bullets came from his peoples positions that shot the cops – analyzed over and over

The Nazi Asov Battalion among other organizations supporting the Regime in Kiev has Nazi symbols, objectives and is one of the main forces armed and trained by American Military.

The entire corrupt Kiev administration is Nazi and now it appears the Clinton Campaign has direct ties well beyond the $13 million she received in her Slush Fund from the Oligarchs in 2013. The driving force behind this entire Fake News Initiative and support for Hillary is becoming more visible each day.

Your statements are pure propaganda and I would assume you work indirectly for Alexandra Chalupa!

sid_finster December 9, 2016 at 11:35 am

Not to mention the Ukrainian Nazis penchant for shelling civilians. Or will Kovpak (Ukrainian school perhaps? Did his grandfather emigrate with the other Ukrainian SS?) will repeat the canard that unbeknownst to the locals, the rebels are shelling themselves, using artillery shells that can 180 mid-flight?

Young Ex-Pat December 9, 2016 at 11:28 am

"Basically you condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence of neo-Nazis and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well documented)."

You must be kidding. Where to begin? Can we start with the simple fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry wasn't handing out baked goods to Occupy protesters in NYC, egging them on as they tossed molotov cocktails at police, who, strangely enough, refrained from shooting protesters until right after a peaceful political settlement was reached? Coincidence or fate? Or maybe there is strong evidence that right wing fanatics were the ones who started the shooting on that fateful day? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31359021

And sorry, no matter how much Kovpak denies it, the muscle behind the "glorious revolution" was a bunch of far-right thugs that make our American alt-right look like girl scouts. Andrei Biletsky, leader of Azov Battalion and head of Ukraine's creatively named Social-National Assembly, says he's committed to "punishing severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man." http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329 - Just like those hippies at Zuccotti Park, right?! Oh,and this guy received a medal from Poroshenko.

I can keep going, but your "Maidan was just like Occupy!" argument pretty much speaks for itself. Glory to the heroes indeed.

p.s. "Russia Without the BS" is awful.

sid_finster December 9, 2016 at 11:30 am

As someone who lived many years in Ukraine, speaks Ukrainian and Russian and knows personally many of the people involved, yes, Ukrainians know full well the origin of the Nazi slogans that the local Nazis spout.

That doesn't mean that the average frustrated euromaidan supporter is a Nazi, but Nazis bussed in from Galicia did eventually provide the muscle, as it were, and the rest of the country were willing to get in bed with them, appoint them to run ministries, and let them have independent military units.

Those Nazis are perfectly happy to call themselves Nazis.

OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 12:11 pm

What is the liberals' talking point these days? "Not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that racism isn't a deal-breaker. End of story." Hillary's SoS-designate Nuland and Barry 0 decided that Ukie nazism wasn't a deal breaker. End of story.

Foppe December 9, 2016 at 2:41 pm

To be fair, there is a fairly wide gap between 'racist' and 'violent racist of the KKK/Nazi variety'.

Also (yes, partly preaching to the choir, but with a purpose), liberals are perfectly happy to stay quiet about enormous income/prosecution/incarceration/kill rate differences, so long as those targeted/affected can (bureau-/meritocratically) be described as 'druggies/criminals/"extremists"/uneducated-thus- undeserving '. And to ignore drone bombing of brown people. Etc. So all the pearl-clutching/virtue-signaling concerning racism is pretty easy to shrug off as concerning little more than a plea to express one's support for racist policy in a PC fashion.

(Highly recommend The New Jim Crow , which I've only recently started reading, for no good reason. Bizarre to realize that all of the stuff that's being reported on a little bit now has been going on for 30 years now (30y of silence / wir-haben-es-nicht-gewusst wrt the structural nature; note that any/all reporting that im/explicitly describes these issues as "scandals"/"excesses" is part of the problem.)

Gareth December 9, 2016 at 12:24 pm

The whole Fake News world is a house of mirrors:

http://www.stopfake.org/en/stopfakenews-98-eng-with-jim-kovpak/

olga December 9, 2016 at 12:31 pm

WOW I guess we have democracy, so your comment got through. In a way, your post confirms the existence of rabidly anti-Russian entities – the very point that Mark Ames makes. But you know, there are people who know a thing or two about Russia and Ukraine, and can easily refute much of your diatribe. (1) Ukrainian neo-fascists were an integral part of the Maidan (trained in Poland, US, and Canada).

Yes, ordinary Ukrainians protested against corruption – but every U. government since 1991 has been corrupt. Yanukovich was no exception – but he was also not the worst one (do some research on J. Timoshenko).

Corruption persists in U. today – and based on the now-required property disclosures by U. politicians – may be even worse. It is likely correct that most U. don't give a damn about Bandera – but most U. also do not have any power to do anything about the neo-nazis, as they are (at least in the western part of the country) numerous, vocal, and prone to violence.

There is enough actual footage from Maidan that shows the presence of neo-nazi members on the square from the beginning. They were also the one who completed the violent overthrow of the government that happened on 2/21-22/14 – after a deal had been signed calling for early elections. The burning of 48 people in Odessa was probably done by angels, according to your likely analysis.

(2) But it is your comments about the U. neo-nazi participation in the war that seem to clarify who you really represent. This participation was not much discussed during the soviet times – I only found out that they continued to fight against the soviet state long after the war ended recently – from family members who witnessed it (in Belorussia, west. Ukr., and eastern Czechoslovakia). Some of them witnessed the unspeakable cruelty of these Ukr. "troops" against villagers and any partisans they could find. White-washing this period (or smearing soviet educational system) will not help – there is plenty of historical evidence for those who are interested in the subject.

(3) What you say about the Russian state promoting this or that is just a scurrilous attack, with no proof. Not even worth exploring. On the other hand, there are plenty of documented murders of Ukr. journalists (google Buzina – a highly intelligent and eloquent Ukr. journalist, who was gunned down in front of his home; there are quite a few others).

Ukr. in 2014 may have been protesting inept government, but what they ended up with is far worse – by any measure, Ukr. standard of living has gone way down. But now, the industrial base of the country has been destroyed, and the neo-nazi genie will not go back into the bottle any time soon. Ukr. as a unified place did not exist until after WWI, and the great divisions – brought starkly into contrast by the 2014 destruction of the state – cannot be papered over anytime soon.

lyman alpha blob December 9, 2016 at 12:48 pm

Appreciate the points you bring up but if the Ukranians truly want an end to an exploitative system, they probably are not going to get it by allying themselves with Uncle Sugar. The US provided billions of dollars to foment the coup and our oligarchs expect a return on that investment – they aren't going to suddenly start trust funds for all Ukranians out of the goodness of their hearts. You are aware of that aren't you?

integer December 9, 2016 at 4:04 pm

So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points

I was going to say something about how the CIA made Ukraine's Social Nationalist party change its name to Svoboda (freedom), to obscure the obvious Nazi connection, but instead I will just laugh at you.
Hahahahahaha!

Reply
KRB December 9, 2016 at 4:33 pm

What a shocker that Jim Kovpak, the commenter who tries smearing this article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking points" -- works for CIA-founded Voice of America and is a regular with Ukraine's "StopFake.org" which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy , the CIA's color revolution "soft" arm - in other words, PropOrNot's folks. Can't make this stuff up.

Rhondda December 9, 2016 at 5:22 pm

It was patently obvious from his comment that he's a pro shill but very good to have the proof. Thanks, KRB.

OIFVet December 9, 2016 at 5:54 pm

Wait, so in Kovpak's case our tax dollars are used to fund and disseminate propaganda to America's public, too? I am not shocked or anything, but rather amused that the vaunted American democracy and famously free media is beginning to resemble communist Bulgaria. The good news is that by the 80's nobody believed the state and its propagandists, even on the rare occasion they were telling the truth, and America's people seem to be a bit ahead of the curve already, which may explain the "fake news" hysteria from the creators and disseminators of fake news.

Eddie Anderson December 9, 2016 at 8:34 pm

Ukraine certainly does not have more right-wingers than other Eastern European nations, but if you look at their polls and elections you see that the far-right in Ukraine does far worse than it does in other Eastern and even Western European countries

Okay, but isn't it the case that many far-right leaders have migrated to parties closer to the center, such as People's Front? Svoboda's leaders have done this. Andriy Parubiy, Tetiana Chornovol, and Oleksandr Turchynov, for example, hold high positions in People's Front, but started out as members or Svoboda. If I'm not mistaken, People's Front also has strong connections to the far-right Volunteer Battalions. I believe People's Front has its own paramilitary branch too.

What this tells me is that much of Ukraine's far-right may be masquerading as right-center. That's kind of like a political Trojan Horse operation. This way the fascists avoid standing out as far-right, but at the same time, move closer to the mechanisms of power within Ukraine's government.

Here in America we saw something like that in the early 1990s, when KKK leader David Duke migrated to the political mainstream by running for office as a Republican in Louisiana. Of course Duke never changed his views, he just learned to dissemble himself in the way he sold his politics to the public.

Here's an article by Lev Golinkin commenting on the far-right's strong and dangerous influence on Ukraine today. A fascist presence like this could easily be a powerful element in Ukrainian elections, very suddenly and unpredictably too. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ukrainian-far-right-and-the-danger-it-poses/

Ignacio December 9, 2016 at 4:22 am

This is getting darker and darker. As much as I dislike Trump I feel happier that Clinton didn't make it. The TINA party is the most reactionary thing by far!

Benedict@Large December 9, 2016 at 7:32 am

Yes, these are dangerous people, as are most "true believers". I'm also becoming even more disappointed at Ms, Clinton. For a while, she seemed to be keeping a little distance from her dead-enders, but now that her and Bill are out back on the money trail (How much is enough?), it doesn't look good.

Selling fear? Really? Isn't there a shelf life on that?

notabanker December 9, 2016 at 7:56 am

Ahhh, but it's not money they accumulate, its power. And time is their only constraint. This is what they do.

Jim Haygood December 9, 2016 at 8:03 am

William Banzai7 on "Prop or Nuts." Hillary's "Childen of the Rainbow" button (look carefully) is to die for.

https://c8.staticflickr.com/1/601/30710973103_365b8e0b4d_b.jpg

Clive December 9, 2016 at 9:00 am

There's a crock of something at the end of that rainbow, but I doubt very much that it contains any gold.

ambrit December 9, 2016 at 11:07 am

I'm not certain about the contents of that crock, good sir. We now live in a "culture" where s–t IS gold. Otherwise, why are we now enduring a "popular press" full of "wardrobe malfunctions," new amazing bikini bodies, salacious gossip, and equally salacious "news?" (The Page Three was shut down really because there was too much competition.)

Oh tempura, oh s'mores! (Latinate for "We're crisped!")

Carolinian December 9, 2016 at 9:30 am

Indeed. The above article is great, great stuff and shows why some of us found Hillary more disturbing than Trump. Therefore Ames' final assumption

And the timing is incredible-as if Bezos' rag has taken upon itself to soften up the American media before Trump moves in for the kill.

seems a bit off. It's certainly true that Trump said news organizations should face greater exposure to libel laws but one suspects this has more to do with his personal peevishness and inability to take criticism than the Deep State-y motives described above. Clearly the "public versus private" Hillary–Nixon in a pant suit–would have been just the person to embrace this sort of censorship by smear and her connection with various shadowy exiles and in her own campaign no less shows why Sanders' failure to make FP the center of his opposition was, if not a political mistake, at least evidence of his limited point of view.

It's unlikely that anyone running this time would be able to change our domestic trajectory but this fascism from abroad is a real danger IMO. In Reagan times some of us thought that Reagan supported reactionary governments abroad because that's what he and his rogue's gallery including Casey and North wished they could do here. The people getting hysterical over Trump while pining for Hillary don't seem to know fascism when it's right in front of them. Or perhaps it's just a matter of whose ox is going to be gored.

Soulipsis December 9, 2016 at 11:59 am

Sanders might have had a hard time driving as far left on FP as he did on domestic issues. I'm his constituent, and I have a letter from him from mid-'15 reiterating all the mainstream lies about Russia and Ukraine.

Disturbed Voter December 9, 2016 at 6:45 am

No surprise, ever since the US, and Biden, got involved in Ukraine. And it is even probable, that people like that were behind the Kennedy assassination, that the US has admitted was a conspiracy, that is still protected from "journalistic sunshine" under lock and key by the US government.

integer December 9, 2016 at 6:49 am

Thanks for giving this article its own post, and thanks to dcblogger for providing the link in yesterday's Water Cooler.

Seems to me that this little bout of D-party/CIA incompetence, and/or incontinence, will finally sound the death knell for the Operation Paperclip gang's plan. Good riddance.

integer December 9, 2016 at 7:01 am

and/or incontinence

I'm looking at you, Soros!

[Dec 05, 2016] Capitalism Requires World War by Cathal Haughian via TheSaker.ie,

www.zerohedge.com

It has been our undertaking, since 2010, to chronicle our understanding of capitalism via our book The Philosophy of Capitalism . We were curious as to the underlying nature of the system which endows us, the owners of capital, with so many favours. The Saker has asked me to explain our somewhat crude statement 'Capitalism Requires World War'.

The present showdown between West, Russia and China is the culmination of a long running saga that began with World War One. Prior to which, Capitalism was governed by the gold standard system which was international, very solid, with clear rules and had brought great prosperity: for banking Capital was scarce and so allocated carefully. World War One required debt-capitalism of the FIAT kind, a bankrupt Britain began to pass the Imperial baton to the US, which had profited by financing the war and selling munitions.

The Weimar Republic, suffering a continuation of hostilities via economic means, tried to inflate away its debts in 1919-1923 with disastrous results-hyperinflation. Then, the reintroduction of the gold standard into a world poisoned by war, reparation and debt was fated to fail and ended with a deflationary bust in the early 1930's and WW2.

The US government gained a lot of credibility after WW2 by outlawing offensive war and funding many construction projects that helped transfer private debt to the public book. The US government's debt exploded during the war, but it also shifted the power game away from creditors to a big debtor that had a lot of political capital. The US used her power to define the new rules of the monetary system at Bretton Woods in 1944 and to keep physical hold of gold owned by other nations.

The US jacked up tax rates on the wealthy and had a period of elevated inflation in the late 40s and into the 1950s – all of which wiped out creditors, but also ushered in a unique middle class era in the West. The US also reformed extraction centric institutions in Europe and Japan to make sure an extractive-creditor class did not hobble growth, which was easy to do because the war had wiped them out (same as in Korea).

Capital destruction in WW2 reversed the Marxist rule that the rate of profit always falls. Take any given market – say jeans. At first, all the companies make these jeans using a great deal of human labour so all the jeans are priced around the average of total social labour time required for production (some companies will charge more, some companies less).

One company then introduces a machine (costed at $n) that makes jeans using a lot less labour time. Each of these robot assisted workers is paid the same hourly rate but the production process is now far more productive. This company, ignoring the capital outlay in the machinery, will now have a much higher profit rate than the others. This will attract capital, as capital is always on the lookout for higher rates of profit. The result will be a generalisation of this new mode of production. The robot or machine will be adopted by all the other companies, as it is a more efficient way of producing jeans.

As a consequence the price of the jeans will fall, as there is an increased margin within which each market actor can undercut his fellows. One company will lower prices so as to increase market share. This new price-point will become generalised as competing companies cut their prices to defend their market share. A further n$ was invested but per unit profit margin is put under constant downward pressure, so the rate of return in productive assets tends to fall over time in a competitive market place.

Interest rates have been falling for decades in the West because interest rates must always be below the rate of return on productive investments. If interest rates are higher than the risk adjusted rate of return then the capitalist might as well keep his money in a savings account. If there is real deflation his purchasing power increases for free and if there is inflation he will park his money (plus debt) in an unproductive asset that's price inflating, E.G. Housing. Sound familiar? Sure, there has been plenty of profit generated since 2008 but it has not been recovered from productive investments in a competitive free market place. All that profit came from bubbles in asset classes and financial schemes abetted by money printing and zero interest rates.

Thus, we know that the underlying rate of return is near zero in the West. The rate of return falls naturally, due to capital accumulation and market competition. The system is called capitalism because capital accumulates: high income economies are those with the greatest accumulation of capital per worker. The robot assisted worker enjoys a higher income as he is highly productive, partly because the robotics made some of the workers redundant and there are fewer workers to share the profit. All the high income economies have had near zero interest rates for seven years. Interest rates in Europe are even negative. How has the system remained stable for so long?

All economic growth depends on energy gain. It takes energy (drilling the oil well) to gain energy. Unlike our everyday experience whereby energy acquisition and energy expenditure can be balanced, capitalism requires an absolute net energy gain. That gain, by way of energy exchange, takes the form of tools and machines that permit an increase in productivity per work hour. Thus GDP increases, living standards improve and the debts can be repaid. Thus, oil is a strategic capitalistic resource.

US net energy gain production peaked in 1974, to be replaced by production from Saudi Arabia, which made the USA a net importer of oil for the first time. US dependence on foreign oil rose from 26% to 47% between 1985 and 1989 to hit a peak of 60% in 2006. And, tellingly, real wages peaked in 1974, levelled-off and then began to fall for most US workers. Wages have never recovered. (The decline is more severe if you don't believe government reported inflation figures that don't count the costof housing.)

What was the economic and political result of this decline? During the 20 years 1965-85, there were 4 recessions, 2 energy crises and wage and price controls. These were unprecedented in peacetime and The Gulf of Tonkin event led to the Vietnam War which finally required Nixon to move away from the Gold-Exchange Standard in 1971, opening the next degenerate chapter of FIAT finance up until 2008. Cutting this link to gold was cutting the external anchor impeding war and deficit spending. The promise of gold for dollars was revoked.

GDP in the US increased after 1974 but a portion of end use buying power was transferred to Saudi Arabia. They were supplying the net energy gain that was powering the US GDP increase. The working class in the US began to experience a slow real decline in living standards, as 'their share' of the economic pie was squeezed by the ever increasing transfer of buying power to Saudi Arabia.

The US banking and government elite responded by creating and cutting back legal and behavioral rules of a fiat based monetary system. The Chinese appreciated the long term opportunity that this presented and agreed to play ball. The USA over-produced credit money and China over-produced manufactured goods which cushioned the real decline in the buying power of America's working class. Power relations between China and the US began to change: The Communist Party transferred value to the American consumer whilst Wall Street transferred most of the US industrial base to China. They didn't ship the military industrial complex.

Large scale leverage meant that US consumers and businesses had the means to purchase increasingly with debt so the class war was deferred. This is how over production occurs: more is produced that is paid for not with money that represents actual realized labour time, but from future wealth, to be realised from future labour time. The Chinese labour force was producing more than it consumed.

The system has never differed from the limits laid down by the Laws of Thermodynamics. The Real economy system can never over-produce per se. The limit of production is absolute net energy gain. What is produced can be consumed. How did the Chinese produce such a super massive excess and for so long? Economic slavery can achieve radical improvements in living standards for those that benefit from ownership. Slaves don't depreciate as they are rented and are not repaired for they replicate for free. Hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants limited their way of life and controlled their consumption in order to benefit their children. And their exploited life raised the rate of profit!

They began their long march to modern prosperity making toys, shoes, and textiles cheaper than poor women could in South Carolina or Honduras. Such factories are cheap to build and deferential, obedient and industrious peasant staff were a perfect match for work that was not dissimilar to tossing fruit into a bucket. Their legacy is the initial capital formation of modern China and one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. The Chinese didn't use net energy gain from oil to power their super massive and sustained increase in production. They used economic slavery powered by caloric energy, exchanged from solar energy. The Chinese labour force picked the World's low hanging fruit that didn't need many tools or machines. Slaves don't need tools for they are the tool.

Without a gold standard and capital ratios our form of over-production has grown enormously. The dotcom bubble was reflated through a housing bubble, which has been pumped up again by sovereign debt, printing press (QE) and central bank insolvency. The US working and middle classes have over-consumed relative to their share of the global economic pie for decades. The correction to prices (the destruction of credit money & accumulated capital) is still yet to happen. This is what has been happening since 1971 because of the growth of financialisation or monetisation.

The application of all these economic methods was justified by the political ideology of neo-Liberalism. Neo-Liberalism entails no or few capital controls, the destruction of trade unions, plundering state and public assets, importing peasants as domesticated help, and entrusting society's value added production to The Communist Party of The People's Republic of China.

The Chinese have many motives but their first motivation is power. Power is more important than money. If you're rich and weak you get robbed. Russia provides illustrating stories of such: Gorbachev had received a promise from George HW Bush that the US would pay Russia approximately $400 billion over10 years as a "peace dividend" and as a tool to be utilized in the conversion of their state run to a market based economic system. The Russians believe the head of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, essentially killed the deal based on the idea that "letting the country fall apart will destroy Russia as a future military threat". The country fell apart in 1992. Its natural assets were plundered which raised the rate of profit in the 90's until President Putin put a stop to the robbery.

In the last analysis, the current framework of Capitalism results in labour redundancy, a falling rate of profit and ingrained trading imbalances caused by excess capacity. Under our current monopoly state capitalism a number of temporary preventive measures have evolved, including the expansion of university, military, and prison systems to warehouse new generations of labour.

Our problem is how to retain the "expected return rate" for us, the dominant class. Ultimately, there are only two large-scale solutions, which are intertwined .

One is expansion of state debt to keep "the markets" moving and transfer wealth from future generations of labour to the present dominant class.

The other is war, the consumer of last resort. Wars can burn up excess capacity, shift global markets, generate monopoly rents, and return future labour to a state of helplessness and reduced expectations. The Spanish flu killed 50-100 million people in 1918. As if this was not enough, it also took two World Wars across the 20th century and some 96 million dead to reduce unemployment and stabilize the "labour problem."

Capitalism requires World War because Capitalism requires profit and cannot afford the unemployed . The point is capitalism could afford social democracy after the rate of profit was restored thanks to the depression of the 1930's and the physical destruction of capital during WW2. Capitalism only produces for profit and social democracy was funded by taxing profits after WW2.

Post WW2 growth in labour productivity, due to automation, itself due to oil & gas replacing coal, meant workers could be better off. As the economic pie was growing, workers could receive the same %, and still receive a bigger slice. Wages as a % of US GDP actually increased in the period, 1945-1970. There was an increase in government spending which was being redirected in the form of redistributed incomes. Inequality will only worsen, because to make profits now we have to continually cut the cost of inputs, i.e. wages & benefits. Have we not already reached the point where large numbers of the working class can neither feed themselves nor afford a roof over their heads?13% of the UK working age population is out of work and receiving out of work benefits. A huge fraction is receiving in work benefits because low skill work now pays so little.

The underlying nature of Capitalism is cyclical. Here is how the political aspect of the cycle ends:

If Capitalism could speak, she would ask her older brother, Imperialism, this: "Can you solve the problem?" We are not reliving the 1930's, the economy is now an integrated whole that encompasses the entire World. Capital has been accumulating since 1945, so under- and unemployment is a plague everywhere. How big is the problem? Official data tells us nothing, but the 47 million Americans on food aid are suggestive. That's 1 in 7 Americans and total World population is 7 billion.

The scale of the solution is dangerous. Our probing for weakness in the South China Sea, Ukraine and Syria has awakened them to their danger.The Chinese and Russian leadershave reacted by integrating their payment systems and real economies, trading energy for manufactured goods for advanced weapon systems. As they are central players in the Shanghai Group we can assume their aim is the monetary system which is the bedrock of our Imperial power. What's worse, they can avoid overt enemy action and simply choose to undermine "confidence" in the FIAT.

Though given the calibre of their nuclear arsenal, how can they be fought let alone defeated? Appetite preceded Reason, so Lust is hard to Reason with. But beware brother. Your Lust for Power began this saga, perhaps it's time to Reason.

Uncle Sugar

Seriously - Having a Central Bank with a debt based monetary system requires permanent wars. True market based capitalism does not.

Father Thyme

Your logical fallacy is no true scotsman
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/no-true-scotsman

Wed, 03/02/2016 - 23:21 | 7264475 Seek_Truth

Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

If wealth were measured by creating strawmen- you would be a Rothschild.

gwiss

That's because they don't understand the word "capitalism."

Capitalism simply means economic freedom. And economic freedom, just like freedom to breed, must be exposed to the pruning action of cause and effect, otherwise it outgrows its container and becomes unstable and explodes. As long as it is continually exposed to the grinding wheel of causality, it continues to hold a fine edge, as the dross is scraped away and the fine steel stays. Reality is full of dualities, and those dualities cannot be separated without creating broken symmetry and therefore terminal instability. Freedom and responsibility, for example. One without the other is unstable. Voting and taxation in direct proportion to each other is another example.

Fiat currency is an attempt to create an artificial reality, one without the necessary symmetry and balance of a real system. However, reality can not be gamed, because it will produce its own symmetry if you try to deny it. Thus the symmetry of fiat currency is boom and bust, a sine wave that still manages to produce equilibrium, however at a huge bubbling splattering boil rather than a fine simmer.

The folks that wrote this do not have a large enough world view. Capitalism does not require world wars because freedom does not require world wars. Freedom tends to bleed imbalances out when they are small. On the other hand, empire does require world war, which is why we are going to have one.

Wed, 03/02/2016 - 23:27 | 7264485 GRDguy

Capitalism becomes imperialism when financial sociopaths steal profits from both sides of the trade. What you're seeing is an Imperialism of Capital, as explained very nicely in the 1889 book "The Great Red Dragon."

AchtungAffen

Really? I thought that was the re-prints of Mises Canada, Kunstler or Brandon Smith. In comparison, this article is sublime.

Caviar Emptor

Wrong. Capitalism needs prolonged directionless wars without clear winners and contained destruction that utilize massive amounts of raw materials and endless orders for weapons and logistical support. That's what makes some guys rich.

Wed, 03/02/2016 - 22:56 | 7264423 Jack's Raging B...

That's was a very long-winded and deliberately obtuse way of explaining how DEBT AS MONEY and The State's usurpation of sound money destroyed efficient markets. The author then goes to call this system Capitalism.

So yeah, the deliberate destruction of capital, in all its forms, is somehow capitalism. Brilliant observation. Fuck you. There are better terms for things like this. Perhaps....central banking? The State? Fiat debt creation? Evil? Naw, let's just contort and abuse language instead. That's the ticket.

My Days Are Get...

From Russia News Feed:

Cathal Haughian Bio :

I've spent my adult life in 51 countries. This was financed by correctly anticipating the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. I was studying Marx at that time. I'm presently an employee of the Chinese State. I educate the children of China's best families. I am the author, alongside a large international team of capitalists, of Before The Collapse : The Philosophy of Capitalism.

I also have my own business; I live with my girlfriend and was born and grew up in Ireland.

===============

Why would anyone waste time to read this drivel, buttressed by the author's credentials.

The unstated thesis is that wars involve millions of actors, who produce an end-result of many hundreds of millions killed.

Absent coercion ("the Draft"), how is any government going to man hundreds of divisions of foot soldiers. That concept is passé.

Distribute some aerosol poisons via drones and kill as many people as deemed necessary. How in the hell will that action stimulate the world economy.

Weapons of mass-destruction are smaller, cheaper and easier to deploy. War as a progenitor of growth - forget it.

The good news is that this guy is educating the children of elite in China. Possibly the Pentagon could clone him 10,000 times and send those cyborgs to China - cripple China for another generation or two.

slimycorporated...

Capitalism requires banks that made shitty loans to fail

Ms No

The term cyclical doesn't quite cover what we have being experiencing. It's more like a ragdoll being shaken by a white shark. The euphoria of bubble is more like complete unhinged unicorn mania anymore and the lows are complete grapes of wrath. It's probably always been that way to some extent because corruption has remained unchallenged for a great deal of time. The boom phases are scarier than the downturns anymore, especially the last oil boom and housing boom. Complete Alfred Hitchcock stuff.

I don't think it's capitalism and that term comes across as an explanation that legitimizes this completely contrived pattern that benefits a few and screws everybody else. Markets should not be behaving in such a violent fashion. Money should probably be made steady and slow. And downturns shouldn't turn a country into Zimbabwe. I could be wrong but there is really no way to know with the corruption we have.

Good times.

o r c k

And War requires that an enemy be created. According to American General Breedlove-head of NATO's European Command-speaking to the US Armed Services Committee 2 days ago, "Russia and Assad are deliberately weaponizing migration to break European resolve". "The only reason to use non-precision weapons like barrel bombs is to keep refugees on the move". "These refugees bring criminality, foreign fighters and terrorism", and "are being used to overwhelm European structures". "Russia has chosen to be an adversary and is a real threat." "Russia is irresponsible with nuclear weapons-always threatening to use them." And strangely, "In the past week alone, Russia has made 450 attacks along the front lines in E. Ukraine".

Even with insanity overflowing the West, I found these comments to be the most bizarrely threatening propaganda yet. After reading them for the first time, I had to prove to myself that I wasn't hallucinating it.

[Dec 05, 2016] Spanish civil war nostalgics join fight alongside Ukrainian rebels by Kazbek Basayev

Notable quotes:
"... That star and a ribbon around Munez's wrist hint at the Spaniards' motivation for joining a war thousands of miles from home. The ribbon's red, yellow and purple are the colors of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict in the 1930s where thousands of foreigners joined the leftists against right-wing foes who eventually prevailed. ..."
"... More than 1,100 people have been killed in the fighting in Ukraine since mid-April, according to the United Nations, in a civil conflict that has dragged ties between Russia and the West to their lowest since the Cold War. ..."
"... Davilla-Rivas blamed the West - which has imposed sanctions on Moscow, accusing it of backing the rebels - for stoking the war. "The United States is trying to provoke a third (world war) against Russia here with your people," he said. "Ordinary people are suffering because they are caught in between three imperial powers - the Russian Federation, the European Union and, certainly, the United States, which is putting money into all this." ..."
"... Civil war in Ukraine is going more then 4 months. 30 000 Ukrainians was killed, and 1 million expelled from their homes. ..."
"... Volunteers, revolutionaries, zealots, idealist, mercenaries are all drawn to conflicts all over the globe. ..."
Aug 08, 2014 | Yahoo/Reuters

Angel Davilla-Rivas, a Spaniard who came to east Ukraine to fight alongside pro-Russian rebels, proudly shows off two big monochrome portraits of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, tattooed on the right and left side of his torso.

Davilla-Rivas and his comrade Rafa Munez, both in their mid-twenties, traveled by train from Madrid to eastern Ukraine where they joined the Vostok battalion, the most prominent and heavily armed unit fighting Ukrainian troops.

"I am the only son, and it hurts my mother and father and my family a lot that I am putting myself at risk. But ... I can't sleep in my bed knowing what's going on here," said Davilla-Rivas, sporting a cap with the Soviet red star pinned to it.

That star and a ribbon around Munez's wrist hint at the Spaniards' motivation for joining a war thousands of miles from home. The ribbon's red, yellow and purple are the colors of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict in the 1930s where thousands of foreigners joined the leftists against right-wing foes who eventually prevailed.

Angel said he wanted to return the favor after the Soviet Union, under Stalin, supported the Republican side in Spain.

More than 1,100 people have been killed in the fighting in Ukraine since mid-April, according to the United Nations, in a civil conflict that has dragged ties between Russia and the West to their lowest since the Cold War.

The Spaniards are not the first foreigners to enter the fight.

Men from Russia, its former rebel republic of Chechnya and the Caucasus region of North Ossetia have fought on the rebel side along with volunteers from a Russian-backed separatist enclave of Georgia and natives of Serbia.

Russians have also taken top positions among the rebels, though a local took over at the helm of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk Peoples' Republic" on Thursday, in a move aimed at blunting Western accusations the rebellion is run by Moscow.

Moscow said last month there were reports that citizens from Sweden, Finland, France and the former Soviet Baltic states had joined pro-Kiev volunteer battalions in the east as "mercenaries".

Davilla-Rivas blamed the West - which has imposed sanctions on Moscow, accusing it of backing the rebels - for stoking the war. "The United States is trying to provoke a third (world war) against Russia here with your people," he said. "Ordinary people are suffering because they are caught in between three imperial powers - the Russian Federation, the European Union and, certainly, the United States, which is putting money into all this."

A Vostok fighter said he was happy to have the Spaniards. "We need support now, we need fighters. An additional automatic gun will do no harm, to support, to cover one's back," said the young, brown-haired man who did not give his name. The Spanish embassy in Moscow was not immediately available for comment.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

blazo 6 months ago

Civil war in Ukraine is going more then 4 months. 30 000 Ukrainians was killed, and 1 million expelled from their homes. Not too bad for only 4 months. But it could be better.

Commander in chief of glorious Kiev army, Mr Porkoshenko, and his sponsor in killings and expulsions, Mr Obama are not satisfied. For money spent, much higher pace of killing should be #$%$ured. What is their reference? In Babin Yar during WW 2, 1200 Ukrainian #$%$, with help of 300 Germans, managed to kill 60 000 Ukrainians for only two days. So Mr Porkoshenko ask from Chef of all Ukrainian security forces, Mr Paruby to explain discrepancy in efficiency in Babin Yar, and in Donbas killings. Mr Paruby said: In Babin Yar Ukrainians to be killed were civilized and unarmed. They even smiled for photographs during killing. But in Donbas they are barbaric armed people, they don t allow us to kill them in peace. They turned arms on us, and killed 10 000 of our brave soldiers. They burned our tanks, APCs, and shot down our jet bombers. And as a extreme barbarism, they captured from us multiple rocket launchers, and fired on us, killing our 25th, 72nd, 79th motorized brigades. Mr Porkoshenko said: You are fired, and kicked him with foot to his #$%$.

The great strategist and visionary, Mr Porkoshenko said on 25th of May: It is not a question of days, weeks, or months, when rebellion in East Ukraine will be defeated. It is the question of hours.... .

Ricardo 6 months ago

Volunteers, revolutionaries, zealots, idealist, mercenaries are all drawn to conflicts all over the globe. Muslims are headed to Syria and Iraq from Europe and North Africa to fight either Assad or along side ISIS, now those that believe the days of the old USSR are returning are headed to eastern Ukraine to fight. If you look at some of the countries mentioned in this article it will not surprise anyone that they are all from Soviet/Russian supported countries that even after the collapse of the USSR still follow the Russians, no matter the consequences to their country.

[Dec 04, 2016] Nuclear war our likely future as Russia China would not accept US hegemony, Reagan official warns

Notable quotes:
"... "confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington's control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests." ..."
"... "for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda." ..."
"... "How America Was Lost" ..."
"... "aggression and blatant propaganda have convinced Russia and China that Washington intends war, and this realization has drawn the two countries into a strategic alliance." ..."
"... "vassalage status accepted by the UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia." ..."
"... "price of world peace is the world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony." ..."
"... "On the foreign policy front, the hubris and arrogance of America's self-image as the 'exceptional, indispensable' country with hegemonic rights over other countries means that the world is primed for war," ..."
"... "unless the dollar and with it US power collapses or Europe finds the courage to break with Washington and to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying good-bye to NATO, nuclear war is our likely future." ..."
"... "historical turning point," ..."
"... "the Chinese were there in their place," ..."
"... "Russian casualties compared to the combined casualties of the US, UK, and France make it completely clear that it was Russia that defeated Hitler," ..."
"... "in the Orwellian West, the latest rewriting of history leaves out of the story the Red Army's destruction of the Wehrmacht." ..."
"... "expressed gratitude to 'the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the victory.'" ..."
"... "do not hear when Russia says 'don't push us this hard, we are not your enemy. We want to be your partners.'" ..."
"... "finally realized that their choice is vassalage or war," ..."
"... "made the mistake that could be fateful for humanity," ..."
May 13, 2015 | RT News
The White House is determined to block the rise of the key nuclear-armed nations, Russia and China, neither of whom will join the "world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony," says head of the Institute for Political Economy, Paul Craig Roberts.

The former US assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, has written on his blog that Beijing is currently "confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington's control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests."

Roberts writes that Washington's commitment to contain Russia is the reason "for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda."

The author of several books, "How America Was Lost" among the latest titles, says that US "aggression and blatant propaganda have convinced Russia and China that Washington intends war, and this realization has drawn the two countries into a strategic alliance."

Dr Roberts believes that neither Russia, nor China will meanwhile accept the so-called "vassalage status accepted by the UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia." According to the political analyst, the "price of world peace is the world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony."

"On the foreign policy front, the hubris and arrogance of America's self-image as the 'exceptional, indispensable' country with hegemonic rights over other countries means that the world is primed for war," Roberts writes.

He gives a gloomy political forecast in his column saying that "unless the dollar and with it US power collapses or Europe finds the courage to break with Washington and to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying good-bye to NATO, nuclear war is our likely future."

Russia's far-reaching May 9 Victory Day celebration was meanwhile a "historical turning point," according to Roberts who says that while Western politicians chose to boycott the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, "the Chinese were there in their place," China's president sitting next to President Putin during the military parade on Red Square in Moscow.

A recent poll targeting over 3,000 people in France, Germany and the UK has recently revealed that as little as 13 percent of Europeans think the Soviet Army played the leading role in liberating Europe from Nazism during WW2. The majority of respondents – 43 percent – said the US Army played the main role in liberating Europe.

"Russian casualties compared to the combined casualties of the US, UK, and France make it completely clear that it was Russia that defeated Hitler," Roberts points out, adding that "in the Orwellian West, the latest rewriting of history leaves out of the story the Red Army's destruction of the Wehrmacht."

The head of the presidential administration, Sergey Ivanov, told RT earlier this month that attempts to diminish the role played by Russia in defeating Nazi Germany through rewriting history by some Western countries are part of the ongoing campaign to isolate and alienate Russia.

Dr Roberts has also stated in his column that while the US president only mentioned US forces in his remarks on the 70th anniversary of the victory, President Putin in contrast "expressed gratitude to 'the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the victory.'"

The political analyst notes that America along with its allies "do not hear when Russia says 'don't push us this hard, we are not your enemy. We want to be your partners.'"

While Moscow and Beijing have "finally realized that their choice is vassalage or war," Washington "made the mistake that could be fateful for humanity," according to Dr Roberts.

Read more Perverted history: Europeans think US army liberated continent during WW2

Read more US mulls sending military ships, aircraft near South China Sea disputed islands – report

[Nov 12, 2016] Neocon bottomfeeders now are having the second thoughts

Notable quotes:
"... Some of those applications are coming from the #NeverTrump crowd, the source said, and include former national security officials who signed one or more of the letters opposing Trump. ..."
"... Fifty GOP national security experts signed an August letter saying Trump "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being" because he "lacks the character, values and experience" to occupy the Oval Office, making him "the most reckless president in American history." ..."
"... Another bipartisan letter cited concern about potential foreign conflicts of interest Trump might encounter as president, and called on him to disclose them by releasing his tax returns. Trump has refused to do so, saying he is under audit and will make the returns public only once that is done. ..."
www.cnn.com

The extraordinary repudiation -- partly based on Trump's rejection of basic US foreign policy tenets, including support for close allies -- helped spark the hashtag #NeverTrump. Now, a source familiar with transition planning says that hard wall of resistance is crumbling fast.

There are "boxes" of applications, the source said. "There are many more than people realize."

Some of those applications are coming from the #NeverTrump crowd, the source said, and include former national security officials who signed one or more of the letters opposing Trump. "Mea culpas" are being considered -- and in some cases being granted, the source said -- for people who did not go a step further in attacking Trump personally.

... ... ...

Fifty GOP national security experts signed an August letter saying Trump "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being" because he "lacks the character, values and experience" to occupy the Oval Office, making him "the most reckless president in American history."

Another bipartisan letter cited concern about potential foreign conflicts of interest Trump might encounter as president, and called on him to disclose them by releasing his tax returns. Trump has refused to do so, saying he is under audit and will make the returns public only once that is done.

It remains to be seen what kind of team Trump will pull together, how many "NeverTrumpers" will apply for positions and to what degree the President-elect will be willing to accept them.

There's a fight underway within the Trump transition team about whether to consider "never Trumpers" for jobs, one official tells CNN. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is leading the transition team, has been working to persuade Trump and other top officials to consider Republicans who openly opposed his campaign. That has caused some friction with those who see no place for people who didn't support their candidate.

[Nov 03, 2016] Racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup

Notable quotes:
"... it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism". ..."
"... Populations can be racialized according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic ..."
"... unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup ..."
Nov 02, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

likbez @ 16,

it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism".

Populations can be racialized according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are".

Although from my understanding Ukrainian citizenship like that in most of Europe is primarily determined by jus sanguinis, and like most of Europe it's still deep in the muck of racial discrimination toward e.g. the Roma, so unless I'm misreading things it seems like a stretch to put too much distance between Ukraine (or Europe in general) and even a very colloquial sense of "ethnonationalism".

It can be articulated more explicitly by outright fascists or more obliquely by mainstream centrist parties, but it's still there.

And as long as we're talking about academic definitions of racism (I'm partial to the definition proffered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death", although Emmett Rensin's obnoxiously thorough definition is also good) funnily enough they tend to point at something pretty much identical to what Quiggin appears to mean by "tribalism".

Except unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup

Which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking about it as a specific mass political movement at all.

And again, as annoying as it is to have pigheaded reactionaries accuse us of twisting language and "playing the race card" and so on, putting up with this noise is preferable to sacrificing useful concepts like racism and fascism from one's everyday understanding of the world, and it's certainly preferable to swapping out the terms in question for a racially charged term like "tribalism".

[Nov 01, 2016] Soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate left also exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor

Notable quotes:
"... Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it with a different style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting anti-racist and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . . ..."
"... I seriously doubt a human social phenomenon as broad and universal as "identifying with an in-group against an out-group", if this is how y'all intend to define "tribalism", can be made narrow enough to usefully describe a specific tendency in modern capitalist politics. ..."
"... According to a study of Alan Krueger that examined prime-age men (ages 25–54) who are not working or looking for work – there are alone about 7 million (lost) workers -- (and their wives and relatives) – many of them supposedly dropped out of the labor force altogether and reporting 'pain' that keeps them from taking jobs. ..."
"... "The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil." ..."
"... I think the notion that racism is somehow regional in the US ..."
"... Populations can be "racialized" according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are". ..."
"... As in voting behavior the dividing lines are NOT so much anymore between left and right, but more between a liberal, cosmopolitan bourgeoisie in the center and on both edges populists who are propagating partitioning and protectionism. ..."
Nov 01, 2016 | crookedtimber.org
xxx
John, I agree that tribalism is a huge force in politics, but the way you have defined it describes a huge portion of how people on all sides vote. All sorts of research shows that a majority of people seem to use the rubric "what do people of my affiliation believe" to reach conclusions and then defend them rather than following any particular chain of logic about the actual question. So I'm not sure what kind of differentiation work the term is doing.

On the other hand I think you're definitely on to something about the change of formerly stable political orders, and I'm not sure I can identify what it is either. I sort of see what you are trying to do with the in-group/out-group thing. Those impulses always existed, so I wonder what has changed? Is it assimilation norms that have weakened? Economic loss or the fear of it in the 'in group'? Fear of going from an 'in group' to an 'out group'? Combination of those?

bruce wilder 10.30.16 at 9:34 pm

The success of [civil rights and anti-apartheid] movements did not end racism, but drove it underground, allowing neoliberals to exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor.

That coalition has now been replaced by one in which the tribalists and racists are dominant. For the moment at least, [hard] neoliberals continue to support the parties they formerly controlled, with the result that the balance of political forces between the right and the opposing coalition of soft neoliberals and the left has not changed significantly.

There's an ambiguity in this narrative and in the three-party analysis.

Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it with a different style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting anti-racist and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . .

The new politics of the right has lost faith in the hard neoliberalism that formerly furnished its policy agenda of tax cuts for the rich, war in the Middle East and so on, leaving the impure resentment ungoverned and unfocused, as you say.

The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil.

The problem of how to oppose racism and tribalism effectively is now entangled with soft neoliberal control of the remaining party coalition, which is to say with the credibility of the left party as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)

The form of tribalism used to mobilize the left entails denying that an agenda of economic populism is relevant to the problems of sexism and racism, because the deplorables must be deplored to get out the vote. And, because the (soft) neoliberals in charge must keep economic populism under control to deliver the goods to their donor base.

RichardM 10.30.16 at 9:41 pm ( 39 )

"That doesn't mean that we should maintain the long-standing taboo on using the word "racist" to describe such people."

Whether you 'should' or 'shouldn't' largely depends on which country you are in; the US has sufficient minorities able to vote that a 'wide' definition of racism is almost certainly a net vote-winner.

The UK, Australia, etc. don't. So they have to rely on opposition to racism on moral grounds, which in turn depends on using a narrow definition.

Alternatively, you could be talking in an academic context, independent of any particular country's politics, in which case I would imagine that using different words for different things would be minimally confusing.

LFC 10.30.16 at 10:50 pm Alesis @19

Race is the foundational organizing principle of American life

There is no such thing as "the foundational organizing principle of American life." There are conflicting ideologies, a conflicting set of histories, and a conflicting set of regional traditions, plus founding documents that are subject to conflicting interpretations. There are certain experiences that might be presumed to shape some sort of common collective memory, but nowadays even that is debatable.

Kurt Schuler 10.30.16 at 11:00 pm ( 41 )

As one who has lived for more than fifty years in the United States, rather than just a few years here and there as John Quiggin has, I assure him that racism has not been driven underground here. It has died as a mass sentiment capable of serving as a power base for such figures as Lyndon Johnson, George Wallace, or Jimmy Carter.

All had to change their tune to retain or increase their power, and that was about half a century ago. No aspiring politician could get started today making the kind of racial appeals they did at the beginning of their political careers, and in the cases of Johnson and Wallace for a long time thereafter.

There is no mass sentiment for re-establishing separate drinking fountains, toilets, dining areas, schools, etc. by race or for repealing the Civil War-era amendments to the Constitution. I even hear rumors that Americans may be receptive to the idea of electing a black President.

Alan Luchetti 10.30.16 at 11:11 pm

I just put up this link for consideration:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/

My suggestion is to tackle the pandering by the rich party for the poor's votes by appealing to racism, rather than the racism itself. "You're being played" may work better than "you're wrong".

I also think that the severity continuum of racism needs to be emphasized. We pretty much all exhibit minor solecisms as we overcome features of our culture and upbringing. When a gentle correction triggers complaints about monstrous PC allegations, I recommend a response like "Hey, it's no biggie. You're not Hitler. Why are you taking a dive?"

porpoise 10.30.16 at 11:29 pm ( 43 )

"Tribalism" in the sense it's being used here has nothing to do with "primitive" tribes; it's a reference to the ancient Roman tribes (the origin of the word) and the similar Greek phylai, which were essentially arbitrary groupings of citizens which struggled amongst each other because of group identification despite all being of the same ethnic group and nation. If there's a better word for this, it isn't ethnonationalism or fascism.

Omega Centauri 10.31.16 at 1:19 am

I think poor to outright horrific epistemology in public discussion creates the basis for a lot of bad politics. Many have described our current time as a post-truth era. There have been some efforts towards fact-checking, but these seem to be simple refutations of facts, like Trump saying
that he didn't say X, when we can play a two-day old tape of him in fact saying X. Part of the manifestation of "tribalism", is the holding of in-group shibboleths, and the failure to critically examine them -- for fear that that might weaken their role as weaponized-memes. That and our
politics has severely degenerated into character assassination, much of it unfounded. So we can't even have a semi-rational discussion about issues, as political actors have to expend all their efforts fending off attempts to assassinate their reputation, and to level even more damaging attacks against their enemies.

So we have to start reclaiming decent epistemological practices in our public discussion. I don't think this is going to be an easy or a quick process. But without it, we are highly vulnerable to emotion based movements and their demagogues. Graham's conspiracy theory observations, as well as those of bob@4 and loki@12, are symptoms of this degeneration of epiestemology.

John Quiggin 10.31.16 at 1:44 am

nastywoman @21 The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold. In US political discussion, "working class" is used to mean "no college degree" which isn't at all the same thing: it includes lots of small business owners, for example, and is also correlated with age.

The terminology appears to be driven by data. Education level is objective and easily elicited, whereas social class is not.

Mike Furlan 10.31.16 at 1:50 am

Racism (and sexism), something described by Tom Magliozzi's "Non Impediti Ratione Cogitationis-Unencumbered by the Thought Process" is impervious to argumentation. I've lost a lot of friends driven mad first by the Kenyan, and now by that "nasty woman."

Imagine a future scenario of yet another financial crisis the pushes unemployment above 30% and mere words will certainly fail you.

My hope is to build communities of loving people, so that we are not picked off one at a time as we compose blog posts.

Bob Zannelli 10.31.16 at 2:19 am ( 47 )

The great problem progressives face is that many , if not most of the working class really don't want social justice , they want to be the fat cats. And when they don't join the ranks of the fat cats they are easily convinced that this is because the liberals are stealing from them to give to the "welfare" people. Trump has expanded to include hordes of invading Mexicans and Muslims.

Bob Zannelli 10.31.16 at 2:20 am

"There is no such thing as "the foundational organizing principle of American life." There are conflicting ideologies, a conflicting set of histories, and a conflicting set of regional traditions, plus founding documents that are subject to conflicting interpretations. There are certain experiences that might be presumed to shape some sort of common collective memory, but nowadays even that is debatable."

I agree with this.

js. 10.31.16 at 2:39 am ( 49 )

Re bruce wilder

the credibility of the left party as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)

1. I have no fucking idea what you got out of my comments, but just to be very clear, I would almost certainly support, and strongly, almost all _policies_ that you're likely to classify as "economically populist". (I prefer a term like "socially equitable"-in a material sense, not talking about symbolic stuff or the politics of recognition here. But e.g. I think repeal of the Hyde Amendment should go under exactly the same heading as minimum wage increases, trade deals with strong labor protections, etc.-which kind of thing gets lost when people talk about "economic populism".)

On the _politics_ you and I each think the other one is dead wrong, and both of us already know this, and neither of us is about to give half an inch, so I don't think there's much point in pursuing the argument. But…

2. …Entirely leaving aside racism for a minute, when has it ever seemed plausible that "economic populism" would be an effective counter to entrenched sexism? This makes no sense to me whatsoever.

--

Re WLGR

In contrast to a true petite bourgeoisie, which has no historical memory of the full trauma of capitalist expropriation, a labor aristocracy on some level is aware that its economically secure position relative to the still-fully-dispossessed global working class depends on accepting and defending the racist/nationalist logic of imperial expropriation

I'll have to think about more. My first instinct is to say - there's something to this, but the contrast is significantly less sharp than that (in both directions), but I need to think it out more.

WLGR 10.31.16 at 4:18 am

I seriously doubt a human social phenomenon as broad and universal as "identifying with an in-group against an out-group", if this is how y'all intend to define "tribalism", can be made narrow enough to usefully describe a specific tendency in modern capitalist politics.

It would be absurd to claim that nobody who isn't a fascist/racist/ethnonationalist/etc. determines their political priorities on some level according to ingroup/outgroup morality - speaking from experience in a US context, cosmopolitan liberals' disdain for "rubes"/"hicks"/"rednecks" from "flyover country" (probably the very people "tribalist" is intended to denote) could itself be described as "tribalist" in the sense you mean it, as for that matter could many socialists' disdain for liberals, or economists' disdain for sociologists, or old-money politicos' disdain for nouveau-riche boors like Donald Trump, or whatever.

People seem to be shying away from the idea that what defines so-called "tribalists" as a political force in developed capitalist nation-states is "tribalism" regarding a particular aspect of their worldview, namely race and nationality. I get that this is a contortion to avoid the politically charged act of calling people "racists" or "fascists" (although it's perplexing that so many people here have surrendered to reactionaries' bizarre contention that using these terms even when they're suitably descriptive is somehow foul play) but insinuating a categorical deficiency of basic human social consciousness compared to the categorically more enlightened social consciousness of the accuser is hardly any less insulting, even before you get into the racial implications of the term itself.

The best comparison I can think of is the way so-called "New Atheists" tend to group their ideological taxonomy according to the distinction between "rational" and "irrational": both of these are such thoroughly universal aspects of human thought and behavior that it can only be monumental hubris to characterize "rationality" as the very cornerstone of one's worldview and "irrationality" as the very cornerstone of an opponent's. A weaker and more defensible claim of rationality about a very particular aspect of one's worldview, such as the existence of deities, leaves open the possibility of irrationality in other aspects of their worldview, such as the alleged existential threat of Islam (about which many "rationalist" "New Atheists" are famously paranoid and reactionary). Now imagine the term "irrational" has been used for centuries as a sloppily interchangeable pejorative for various targets of systematic marginalization, oppression, enslavement, and genocide.

Graham 10.31.16 at 4:52 am ( 51 )

do those qualify as conspiracy?
Perhaps they do

I would say that after talking to people the republican base is the coalition of
1. Plutocrats
2. Single issue abortion voters
3. Conspiracy theorists and religious conspiracy theorists (end times prophecy mixed with conspiracy)
4. True believers – that is free market types who believe that top end tax cuts and cutting minimum wage actually help the poor
5. Basket of deplorables you racist/mysoginest you name it

Type 1, 4 and some of 2 have been pealed off the R coalition during the trump campaign due to how shocking a candidate Trump is. However, type 3 and 5 are more energized than ever. If there was an effective way to counter type 3 republican voters their coalition would reduce by maybe half. I know that sounds like a lot but I've lived in the south and have a lot of friends there. Conspiracy is more powerful than people realize

nastywoman 10.31.16 at 4:57 am

'The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold.'

Not if we count all 'the workers' – who follow and will vote for Trump because he promised them to bring their jobs back -(with fascistic solutions)

According to a study of Alan Krueger that examined prime-age men (ages 25–54) who are not working or looking for work – there are alone about 7 million (lost) workers -- (and their wives and relatives) – many of them supposedly dropped out of the labor force altogether and reporting 'pain' that keeps them from taking jobs.

These workers – a lot of them who had lost their jobs by US companies outsourcing or terminating their jobs altogether after the economical collapse of 2008 – are a 'traditional constituency' of the left – and they should have been supported much better and NOT 'picked up' by Trump.

kidneystones 10.31.16 at 5:48 am ( 53 )

@ 31 Hi Joseph.

The link actually takes you to page 2 of the Grenville article. He cites Hochschild on page 1: 'Arlie Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" captures the intractability of the discontent: "'You are patiently standing in a long line' for something you call the American dream. You are white, Christian, of modest means, and getting along in years. You are male. There are people of color behind you, and 'in principle you wish them well.' But you've waited long, worked hard, 'and the line is barely moving.'

Then 'Look! You see people cutting in line ahead of you!' Who are these interlopers? 'Some are black,' others 'immigrants, refugees.'
They get affirmative action, sympathy and welfare - 'checks for the listless and idle.' The government wants you to feel sorry for them."

@50 WLGR "….rational" and "irrational": both of these are such thoroughly universal aspects of human thought and behavior that it can only be monumental hubris to characterize "rationality" as the very cornerstone of one's worldview and "irrationality" as the very cornerstone of an opponent's." Agreed. Happens here all the time, or used to.

Val 10.31.16 at 6:22 am

I tend to agree with what WLGR is saying about 'tribalists'. What porpoise @43 said is interesting historically, but I don't think it removes the overlay from later colonial and imperial associations of 'tribes' with 'primitives'/inferiors. So I don't think tribalism is a good word here, but not sure what would be a better one.

'Cultural nationalism' seems to come closest, at least in the Australian and British contexts I'm familiar with, because the so-called 'tribalists' seem to be people who have a strong idea about who are the 'right kind' of Australians (or Britons), and it is a mixture of cultural and racial/ethnic characteristics.

Here in Australia, it is certainly possible for people from non-Anglo backgrounds to be at least conditionally accepted by the 'tribalists' if they appear to embrace the tribalists' idea of Aussie culture (although it's conditional because the 'tribalists' who are 'accepting' the non-Anglo immigrants unconsciously see their ability to pass judgement as related to their own Anglo/white background, I think). Complicated, I am getting tied in knots, but I agree tribalist isn't the best word.

Neville Morley 10.31.16 at 7:24 am ( 55 )

Porpoise @43: I'm slightly puzzled by your version of classical history.

Yes, the Romans had tribes, dating from the very beginning of their history; these *were* seen as relating to what you refer to as "primitive tribes", and according to at least one ancient source reflected the original composition of the Roman people from Latins, Sabines and Etruscans.

Yes, by the late Republic these were largely (not entirely) arbitrary divisions of more or less homogeneous citizens – but by that date there's no evidence that I'm aware of that they served any purpose other than organising voting in the comitia tributa; certainly no struggles because of group identification.

ZM 10.31.16 at 7:45 am bruce wilder,

"The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil."

I think economic populism is problematic really, depending on what policy settings you mean by "economic populism" I guess.

I remember thinking Australia could have more protectionist policies and that would be a solution to some of our economic issues, but then I did an economics group project with a woman from Singapore, and I realised a country like Singapore would be much worse off if other countries resorted to protectionism as a response to the financial crisis, and I was being unfair thinking more protectionist policy was the answer.

I don't think that the economic populism of the post-war era is really something we want to return to - in Australia at least it was connected to the racist White Australia Policy which was dismantled over time by 1973 and also to sexist policies that benefited male wage earners with the "living wage" but prevented women from taking up certain jobs or from working after marriage and that sort of thing.

Also in the post-war era Australia benefitted from trade networks with the UK as part of the Commonwealth, but I presume that some other countries didn't benefit from that set of international trade agreements (although I have never looked into what the international trade settings were to know which countries overall benefited and which countries disbenefited).

I don't think returning to economic populism is a solution. There were a lot of problems, both within countries with racism and sexism, and also between countries with unfair international trade agreements.

Any solution to current problems has to be equitable within the nation, and fair between nations. If economic populism is the answer it has to be a transformed economic populism that is capable of that, and also of managing our global and local environmental problems.

ZM 10.31.16 at 8:05 am ( 57 )

Also at the moment the Australian federal government is doing the "Racism. It Stops With Me" campaign around Australia trying to encourage everyday Australians to speak out against racism when they encounter it in their daily lives. I hope the US government does something similar if Trump loses the election, I really think anti-racism is better off being bi-partisan, and its a bad long term strategy by either main party in America to use race to divide voters.

https://itstopswithme.humanrights.gov.au

Alesis 10.31.16 at 10:20 am

I think the notion that racism is somehow regional in the US or that their are "conflicting histories" is pitch perfect example of the difficulty of keeping race in American life in focus I mentioned in my comment.

There is no region of the US in which race did not play a foundation role. No history of the US which does not rest in the disenfranchisement of "lower races". From Oregon to Florida. From New York to California.

From 1700 to 2016 this is an American constant and we will continue to the "Shocked! Shocked!" That more Trump's arise until we recognize that.

RichardM 10.31.16 at 10:53 am ( 59 )

> The terminology appears to be driven by data. Education level is objective and easily elicited, whereas social class is not.

Race too, of course.

It doesn't seem like it would be beyond the power of a single guy who wanted to write a book to bring a torch and see if there is anything interesting hidden where the lampposts don't shine.

The raw data seems to be available[1], it just needs correlating with polls. That's a 2-3 man year project, probably doable within a 5 digit budget.

[1] https://dqydj.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2013scf_income_v_wealth_united_states.png

SusanC 10.31.16 at 1:41 pm

I think I agree that "conspiracy theory" is a strong element in current politics. It has been for a while, of course. See for example Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics .

In a democratic system, any party hoping to win has to somehow persuade the voters to vote for them and not the other party. Hence impugning the judgment or moral character of the opposing party is one of the obvious strategies. Accusing the other party of actually being crooks (as opposed to merely making poor decisions, or decisions that benefit some group other than the voters one wishes to court) takes this a step further. Once a party had taken the "they're a bunch of crooks" move, it would be surprising if they didn't leap at the chance when they can make a credible and specific allegation of lawbreaking by their opponent, instead of just relying on non-specific "would you buy a used car from this man?" rhetoric. ("man" -> "woman" if we're talking about Hilary Clinton rather than Richard Nixon, but the same principle holds)

The current round of populism seems to go further still, in attributing crookedness not just to their political opponents but to just about everyone involved in the entire system, e.g. by alleging that the election might be fraudulent.

The term "conspiracy theory" often has rather dismissive or perjorative connotations, but I think this basic political pattern could exist even if the opposing party were actually in fact crooks.

[And over here in the UK, it's also a kind of conspiracy theory that Tony Blair lied to the people about the case for going to war in Iraq. It's less obvious what Blair could actually be charged with criminally (as opposed to Hilary Clinton), but that hasn't stopped people calling for his head … possibly in a literal, rather than metaphorical, sense]

JimV 10.31.16 at 1:59 pm ( 61 )

Omega Centauri 10.31.16 at 1:19 am (#44): great comment, puts the finger on the problem, and deserves engagement. Unfortunately, all I have to offer are solutions from science-fiction: reliable lie-detectors and benign A.I. government. But how to avoid the obvious misuses and bad side-tracks on the way to utopian deployment of such technologies is beyond me. The Internet already gives us the ability to do our own fact-checking and analysis of issues, but it seems more effective at spreading lies.

MPAVictoria 10.31.16 at 2:29 pm

Unions, unions, and more unions are the answer to the question of what the left should be doing going forward. Union members are more likely to:
– Vote
– Volunteer in support of progressive campaigns and causes
– Support progressive economic AND social policies

The left's strategy going forward MUST include efforts to increase union density.

WLGR 10.31.16 at 3:46 pm ( 63 )

js, I guess the most important caveat re: the US (along with other settler societies) is that many Euro-Americans never actually went through proletarianization themselves, but probably would have been pushed into the working class they'd stayed in Europe through the heyday of capitalist industrialization, so they left Europe and joined the metaphorical shock troops of settler-colonialism in order to avoid it. The important point is that the combined spoils of settler-colonial expropriation, racial/national hierarchy, and continuing imperialist exploitation in the Third World have largely spared the much-ballyhooed "white working class" (i.e. labor aristocracy) from the abject poverty capitalism invariably wreaks on the working class proper - and on some level these people realize that as long as capitalism exists, this economic safety net is only really justifiable if there's some fundamental hierarchy of humanity dictating that they as a group deserve to be offered better lives than the people trying to "steal their jobs" and so on. The extent to which different people in different situations are compelled to articulate this ideology in fully conscious ways is another matter, but when they are, terms like "racist", "ethnonationalist", and "fascist" are entirely descriptive and not the least bit inappropriate.

For anybody who hasn't heard of it, the book Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat is an accessible exposition of this kind of viewpoint (and for anybody who takes a glance and can't get past smarming at the crude typesetting and nonstandard semantic choices e.g. "Amerika", just grow up).

WLGR 10.31.16 at 3:52 pm

likbez @ 16,

it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism".

Populations can be "racialized" according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are".

Although from my understanding Ukrainian citizenship like that in most of Europe is primarily determined by jus sanguinis, and like most of Europe it's still deep in the muck of racial discrimination toward e.g. the Roma, so unless I'm misreading things it seems like a stretch to put too much distance between Ukraine (or Europe in general) and even a very colloquial sense of "ethnonationalism". It can be articulated more explicitly by outright fascists or more obliquely by mainstream centrist parties, but it's still there.

And as long as we're talking about academic definitions of racism (I'm partial to the definition proffered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death", although Emmett Rensin's obnoxiously thorough definition is also good) funnily enough they tend to point at something pretty much identical to what Quiggin appears to mean by "tribalism". Except unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup , which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking about it as a specific mass political movement at all. And again, as annoying as it is to have pigheaded reactionaries accuse us of twisting language and "playing the race card" and so on, putting up with this noise is preferable to sacrificing useful concepts like racism and fascism from one's everyday understanding of the world, and it's certainly preferable to swapping out the terms in question for a racially charged term like "tribalism".

Anarcissie 10.31.16 at 4:13 pm ( 65 )

Mike Furlan 10.31.16 at 1:50 am @ 46:
'… My hope is to build communities of loving people, so that we are not picked off one at a time as we compose blog posts.'

Or at least tolerant people who are positive about relationships with the Others even though they may err. Surely this would be a requirement for achieving equality, because otherwise you have the good people and the bad people, and the good people would have to defeat, rule over, or maybe even exterminate the bad people. P. J. O'Rourke once wrote that the reason Evangelicals adhere to the Republican Party (and Black people to the Democrats) is that that is the party which, while it doesn't do much for them, doesn't hate them. We have seen that expressed in the recent past not only with Trump's success but with the 'basket of deplorables'. Even a petrochemical plant poisoning your back yard may be preferable to submitting to the power of those who openly despise you and your kind.

But a lot of people want to fight.

John Quiggin 10.31.16 at 8:33 pm

Kurt Schuler @41 This seems an odd choice of post on which to claim special authority as a US resident, given that it's about developments common throughout the developed world, and refers to Australia and the UK, as well as the US.

js. 10.31.16 at 8:47 pm ( 67 )

On topic:

The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold. In US political discussion, "working class" is used to mean "no college degree" which isn't at all the same thing: it includes lots of small business owners, for example, and is also correlated with age.

Right. This is why I think petty bourgeois (petit bourgeois if you want to be all fancy and French about it) is a better term.

nastywoman 10.31.16 at 9:43 pm

In conclusion this analysis is still based on a traditional understanding of left and right which doesn't exist anymore in most European countries – as concerning the most important issues like globalization and protectionism the radical left and the radical right seem to agree.

And so the the traditional understanding of left and right is often used for justification of the own political position, while it is less and less helpful to explain voting behavior.

As in voting behavior the dividing lines are NOT so much anymore between left and right, but more between a liberal, cosmopolitan bourgeoisie in the center and on both edges populists who are propagating partitioning and protectionism.

This is true not only for Europe but also for the United States of Trump – aka the once 'United States of America' -(if this currently very popular joke in Europe is allowed?)

[Nov 01, 2016] The terms racist and tribalist are deployed so cynically and freely as to render them practically meaningless.

Notable quotes:
"... Few dispute that a significant subset of any given population is going to regard in-group/out-group distinctions along the highly imprecise lines of 'race' and ethnicity, or religion. The question, for some, is what percentage? ..."
"... Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines. ..."
"... These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans. The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious lines as it does elsewhere. ..."
crookedtimber.org

kidneystones 10.30.16 at 9:15 am 14

I read an interesting piece in the Nikkei, hardly an left-leaning publication citing Arlie Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right."

Doubtless some here would like to see more misery heaped upon those who do not look to the Democratic party as saviors, but Hochschild is rarely regarded as a defender of the American right.

Few dispute that a significant subset of any given population is going to regard in-group/out-group distinctions along the highly imprecise lines of 'race' and ethnicity, or religion. The question, for some, is what percentage?

The Nikkei article by Stephen Grenville concludes: Over the longer term, the constituency for globalization has to be rebuilt, the methodology for multilateral trade agreements has to be revived…"

Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines.

These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans. The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious lines as it does elsewhere.

Generally, I think John is right. The term 'racist' no longer carries any of the stigma it once held in part because the term is deployed so cynically and freely as to render it practically meaningless. HRC and Bill and their supporters (including me, at one time) are racists for as long as its convenient and politically expedient to call them racists. Once that moment has passed, the term 'racist' is withdrawn and replaced with something like Secretary of State, or some other such title.

I've no clear 'solution' other than to support a more exact and thoughtful discussion of the causes of fear and anxiety that compels people to bind together into in-groups and out-groups, and to encourage the fearful to take a few risks now and again.

Here's the link: http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20161020-An-era-ends-in-Thailand/Viewpoints/Stephen-Grenville-The-US-election-is-putting-the-TPP-trade-agreement-in-doubt?page=2

[Nov 01, 2016] Inside the Invisible Government - The Unz Review

Nov 01, 2016 | www.unz.com

The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.

The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an "agreement" that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.

As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.

From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.

Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: "We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked."

The West's medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars' worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the children are malnourished.

[Oct 28, 2016] Russias Putin says Obama administration does not stick to any deals Reuters

Oct 28, 2016 | www.reuters.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday it was hard for him to work with the current U.S. administration because it did not stick to any agreements, including on Syria.

Putin said he was ready to engage with a new president however, whoever the American people chose, and to discuss any problem.

[Oct 26, 2016] It is striking to me how even on the left the discussion of U.S. militarism and imperialism has been marginalized

Oct 26, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

PGD 10.24.16 at 6:28 pm 32

It is striking to me how even on the left the discussion of U.S. militarism and imperialism has been marginalized and does not come up much in casual conversation. We had an active peace movement through the worst days of the Cold War, and then there was a bit of a resurgence of it in response to the Iraq War. But Obama's acceptance of the core assumptions of the 'War on Terror' (even as he waged it more responsibly) seems to have led to the war party co-opting the liberals as well until there is no longer an effective opposition. The rhetoric of 'humanitarian intervention' has been hugely successful in that effort.

One of the most depressing things about this election campaign to me has been to see the Democrats using their full spectrum media dominance not to fight for a mandate for left policies, but to run a coordinated and effective propaganda campaign for greater U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, focusing on demonizing Putin and on humanitarian intervention rhetoric around Aleppo and the like.

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