This page includes materials on US relations with the world, with a special focus on Northeast Asia and, inevitably, the Middle East. And so Britain is brought into it. And sometimes I stray further afield, when something catches my eye. Prior to 2005 it was called 'US and the world'

• Matt Drudge suggests US government behind cyberattack on ‘Drudge Report’
  By Greg Hadley In his first tweets from his personal account, Matthew Drudge, creator of the popular news website "The Drudge Report," alleged that the U.S. government might be trying to crash his website. Drudge started his Twitter account in 2011. DDoS is an acronym for distributed denial-of-service attack and refers to a tactic used by some organizations to overwhelm a website’s server with millions of requests and cause it to crash. A major DDoS attack this past Drudge’s mention of Fort Meade is a reference to the Maryland headquarters of the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command. As of Thursday night, “Drudge Report” was still available to readers on multiple internet browsers, according to the Washington Times. However, the International Business Times reports that the website was briefly unavailable around 7 p.m. Eastern time Thursday. Drudge’s speculation comes just hours after the Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia in retaliation for hacking efforts aimed at disrupting the presidential election. Russia’s role in the hacks, which many political analysts say aided Republican Donald Trump, has been disputed by some conservatives and Trump himself. “The Drudge Report” has covered Trump favorably in the past, and at least one activist group has accused the site of pushing Russian propaganda throughout the election. Through the website’s official Twitter account, Drudge said the attack lasted 90 minutes. According to Politico, “The Drudge Report,” which was launched in 1995 and has famously kept its bare-bones design and long lists of links, is the top referrer of traffic to the Daily Mail, CNN, Fox News, Roll Call, Breitbart, The New York Times, National Journal, USA Today, Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and Politico itself. The site has more than 700 million page views per month [Hacking]
• What it means that the U.S. is not part of the Syria cease-fire
  December 29, 2016 a There is a new cease-fire agreement in Syria, but this time without the U.S. at the negotiating table. Will it last when so many others have failed? William Brangham speaks with Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma about the symbolic significance of the move and what’s next for the rebels, the Assad regime and Syria. RELATED • Syrian government and rebels agree to nationwide ceasefire • Is the Russia-Turkey cease-fire deal a breakthrough? HARI SREENIVASAN: The Russians and Turks announced a cease-fire deal among some of the warring parties in Syria. It went into effect at midnight in Damascus. For that, I’m joined now via Skype from Tucson by Andrew Tabler, who’s a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Joshua Landis, who directs the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Welcome to you both. Joshua Landis, I would like to start with you first. We have seen cease-fires come and we have seen cease-fires go. Are you at all confident that this one is going to last? JOSHUA LANDIS, University of Oklahoma: No, I’m not confident. This is really not about the cease-fire holding. It’s about Turkey being involved with Russia and Iran and essentially letting the rebels know that a new page has been turned, that Turkey cannot keep its — cannot keep its door open to the rebels, that it’s closing the door, and that they’re going to have to fend for themselves in negotiations with the Assad regime. [Russia Syria] [Turkey] [Decline]
• The Real US Strategic Blunder in Syria
  by Gareth Porter President Barack Obama has long been under fire from the US national security elite and the media for failing to intervene aggressively against the Assad regime. But the real strategic blunder was not that Barack Obama didn’t launch yet another war in Syria, but that he decided to go along with the ambitions of America’s Sunni allies to create and arm a Syrian opposition army to overthrow the regime in the first place. Now a former Obama administration official who is knowledgeable on the internal discussions on Syria policy, speaking to this writer on condition of anonymity, has shed new light on how and why that fateful decision was made. The former official revealed that when Obama made the first move toward supporting the arming of Syrian opposition forces, the president failed to foresee the risk of a direct Iranian or Russian intervention on behalf of the Syrian regime in response to an externally armed opposition – because his advisors had failed to take this likelihood into account themselves. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Client]
• The Diplomacy of Donald J. Trump
  by Mel Gurtov Oblivious to Tradition and Good Sense Those of us who appreciate the unconventional have to have second thoughts after watching Donald J. Trump in action. All the more so when it comes to the conduct of foreign affairs, in which Mr. Trump is a novice. Defying convention, which calls for the president or president-elect to call on the State Department for advice and talking points, and on the intelligence community for daily briefings, Trump at any time might decide to pick up the phone and chat with a foreign leader, might Tweet an opinion, or might make an off-the-cuff remark about a controversial issue. Trouble is, any of these acts might run directly counter to ongoing US foreign policy. You can’t flatter a dictator, interject comments about another country’s domestic affairs, praise one country at the expense of another, or bring family into high-level meetings without consequences. Trump has done all these, and more, and as president seems determined to continue the practice. Such practices only make sense when understood in terms of Trump’s “art of the deal” approach to diplomacy. And “the deal” must be taken literally, since Trump clearly sees doing the nation’s business as being equivalent to doing his personal business. Protecting the environment, promoting human rights and social justice, and strengthening international law have no place in the deal. [Trump] [Foreign policy]
• Turkey's Erdogan: 'Confirmed evidence' US-led coalition supports ISIS & other terrorists in Syria
  Published time: 27 Dec, 2016 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said "it's very clear" that the US-led coalition is supporting terrorist groups in Syria, Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL) among them. "They give support to terrorist groups including Daesh (Arabic for IS)," Erdogan said. Saying that the US have accused Turkey of supporting IS, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday the Turkish leader blamed the US-led coalition for assisting terrorists themselves. Apart from IS, he also mentioned Kurdish People's Protection Units in northern Syria (YPG) and Democratic Union Party (PYD) as groups supported by the coalition. "We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos," he added. Read more ‘US not serious about fighting ISIS, it raised terrorists & wants them to stay’ – Iran Def Min to RT Erdogan has also called on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to join Russia, Turkey and Iran in peace talks on Syria. On Tuesday, the Turkish leader said officials of these Gulf states should be included in the talks of foreign ministers in Kazakhstan next month, as their countries had "shown goodwill and given support'' to Syria, AP reported. However, the Turkish president stressed that Ankara itself would not take part should Syrian Kurdish groups - whom he called "terrorist organizations" - be invited to take part in the meeting. [Outsourcing] [ISIS]
• Cease-fire to begin across Syria starting at midnight, Syrian army says
  By Louisa Loveluck and Andrew Roth December 29 at 9:41 AM A cease-fire will take effect across much of Syria from midnight Thursday, the Syrian army announced, in a deal that opposition officials hailed as a rare chance to tamp down violence in the country’s bloody war. In a statement posted to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the military declared a “comprehensive” cessation of hostilities following “victories and advances” by Syria’s armed forces. But it said the deal excluded “terrorist organizations” including the Islamic State and the country’s al-Qaeda affiliate, now an influential component of what remains of Syria’s armed opposition. The caveat suggested that the fighting could continue in the northwestern province of Idlib, now the rebels’ final bastion. Their most important stronghold, east Aleppo, fell earlier this month to a coalition of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That victory is likely to be seen as a milestone in Syria’s five-and-a-half-year war. Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of Assad’s most important backers, announced earlier Thursday that agreements on a cease-fire have been reached with the Syrian government, Iran and Turkey turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says Turkey and Russia will be the guarantors of a cease-fire deal, speaking just before a deal is announced by Syria, Russia and Ankara. (Reuters)
  Notably absent from the peace process was the United States. As President Obama prepares to leave office next month, Washington’s influence in Syria is much diminished. Moscow and Ankara now are taking the lead on initiatives to end a war that has killed almost half a million people, spurred the largest refu¬gee crisis since World War II and spawned a global terrorist threat in the form of the Islamic State. [Syria] [Decline]
• The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country. Here’s what we’re buying.
  By Carolyn Y. Johnson December 27 at 11:00 AM American health-care spending, measured in trillions of dollars, boggles the mind. Last year, we spent $3.2 trillion on health care -- a number so large that it can be difficult to grasp its scale. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals what patients and their insurers are spending that money on, breaking it down by 155 diseases, patient age and category -- such as pharmaceuticals or hospitalizations. Among its findings: •Chronic -- and often preventable -- diseases are a huge driver of personal health spending. The three most expensive diseases in 2013: diabetes ($101 billion), the most common form of heart disease ($88 billion) and back and neck pain ($88 billion). •Yearly spending increases aren't uniform: Over a nearly two-decade period, diabetes and low back and neck pain grew at more than 6 percent per year -- much faster than overall spending. Meanwhile, heart disease spending grew at 0.2 percent. •Medical spending increases with age -- with the exception of newborns. About 38 percent of personal health spending in 2013 was for people over age 65. Annual spending for girls between 1 and 4 years old averaged $2,000 per person; older women 70 to 74 years old averaged $16,000. The analysis provides some insight into what's driving one particularly large statistic: Within a decade, close to a fifth of the American economy will consist of health care. [Health]
• Do the Tragedies of Syria Signal the End of Arab Revolutions?
  by Robert Fisk Just as the catastrophic Anglo-American invasion of Iraq brought an end to epic Western military adventures in the Middle East, so the tragedy of Syria ensures that there will be no more Arab revolutions. And it’s taken just 13 bloodsoaked years – from 2003 to 2016 – to realign political power. Russia and Iran and the Shia Muslims of the region are now deciding its future; Bashar al-Assad cannot claim victory – but he is winning. “Aleppo must be taken quickly – before Mosul falls,” a Syrian brigadier announced to me with a wan smile in the country’s army headquarters in Damascus. And it did, scarcely a month later. There were – and still are – little Aleppos all over Syria in which the government and its armed “jihadi” opponents are playing “good guy” and “bad guy”, depending on who is besieging whom. When the Sunni militias end their siege of little Shia towns like Faour, the civilians flock to government lines. It’s reported as a slightly incomprehensible local dispute. But when the regime’s forces storm into eastern Aleppo, it’s deplored around the world as a war crime. I’ve grown tired of repeating that, yes, war crimes are committed on both sides, and Bashar’s forces are no squeaky clean military cadets – although these days, we have to remember that 42 Royal Marine Commandos were not that squeaky clean in Afghanistan. But the story of Aleppo is still being re-threaded into old loops, the brave but largely “jihadi” defenders disguised as nondescript “rebels”, their opponents compared to Milosevic’s Serb killers or Saddam’s gas-bomb pilots. All this will soon end. Russia realised that Obama and the weeping liberals of Europe were bluffing about the overthrow of Bashar – who, unlike Putin’s Ukrainian ally in Kiev, did not run away – and backed his army. The Economist made fun of Syrian soldiers because they supposedly couldn’t march in step when Moscow staged a military parade at its Syrian air base. But you don’t have to march like the Wehrmacht to win battles. The Syrian Arab Army – its real name, which is increasingly used, I notice, by the usual mountebanks who pose as “experts” on the satellite channels – boasts that it has fought simultaneously on 80 fronts against Isis, Nusrah and a clutch of other “jihadi” armies (and Free Syrian Army men who changed sides). Which, given the infractions and bulges in front lines, is probably true, but perhaps not a military record to be proud of. It’s one thing to recapture Palmyra from Isis, quite another to lose it to Isis again in the middle of the battle for eastern Aleppo. Syrian soldiers have a lot of time for their Hezbollah militia allies – who used to turn up on the battlefield better armed than the Syrians themselves – but are less enamoured of the Iranian “advisors” who supposedly know so much about open warfare. I have been present when an Iranian officer called a Syrian general “stupid” – in this case, the Iranian was probably right – but Syrian officers are far more battle-trained and experienced than the Revolutionary Guard from Tehran who have sustained – along with their Afghan and Iraqi Shia allies – far more casualties than they believed possible. So after almost five years of battle, the Syrian army is still in action. The Nusrah and Isis forces surrounding the government sector of the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zour will almost certainly be its next target — after the retaking of Palmyra, but long before the Isis capital of Raqqa, which will probably be retaken by Washington’s Kurdish allies. And it is the Syrian army which will most likely have to rebuild the new Syria when the war eventually ends. It will certainly decide the future of the country. That doesn’t mean the overthrow of Bashar. Neither among his official opponents nor his mortal jihadi enemies nor the corrupt and corrupted political opposition in Turkey is there anyone who can challenge him on the ground. Even if they were successful, you can be sure that the same prisons and dungeons in Syria would be in operation within 24 hours to lock up and torture the “new” opposition to a “new” regime. Besides, Vladimir Putin has suffered enough humiliation after Isis’s second success in Palmyra – after the Russians staged a victory concert of peace in the Roman city only a few months ago. He is not going to permit the defenestration of Bashar al-Assad. Oddly, Western leaders remain stupefyingly unaware of the nature of the real struggle in Syria, and even which warlords they should support. Take the impotent François Hollande, who chose to tell the United Nations in September that Russia and Iran must compel Assad to make peace, because they would otherwise, along with the regime, “bear the responsibility for the division and chaos in Syria”. All well and good. Yet only two months earlier, the same Hollande was demanding “effective action” against the Islamist Nusrah front – among the defenders of Aleppo, although most of us decided not to tell our readers this – on the grounds that Isis was in retreat and Nusrah stood to take advantage of this. “That is beyond dispute,” Hollande pompously remarked of Isis’s “retreat”. That was before the retaking of Palmyra by the same ISIS brigands. [Syria] [Bashar Assad] [Turkey]
• Singapore Blogger Applies for U.S. Asylum
  VOA News December 26, 2016 08:35 A teenage blogger from Singapore has applied for political asylum in the United States after being detained last week at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, released a statement Saturday saying Amos Yee, 18, was in federal custody while awaiting federal immigration court proceedings. Yee, detained Dec. 16, was at the McHenry Adult Correctional Facility, an hour away from Chicago. His U.S. attorney, Sandra Grossman, said Yee was arrested because he entered the country on a tourist visa despite his intention to apply for asylum. Rights group Human Rights Watch called on Washington to recognize Yee's asylum claim, saying Yee had been consistently harassed by the Singapore government for publicly expressing his views on politics and religion and criticizing Singapore's leaders. . Teen blogger Amos Yee arrives with his mother at the State Courts in Singapore on Sept. 28, 2016. /Reuters The video blogger aired a piece full of expletives last March as the city-state was mourning the death of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore's government said his posting mocked Christians and Muslims, and it argued that his jailing was meant to preserve racial and religious harmony. Yee was jailed twice this year on charges of offending Christians and Muslims with his online activities. He is also due to be called up for mandatory military service. Grossman, Yee's attorney, said the teen would have to undergo an interview by an asylum official to determine whether he had "credible fear" of persecution or torture in Singapore. He would then be scheduled to appear before an immigration court, a process that could take years because of a backlog of applications. . © This is copyrighted material owned by Digital Chosun Inc. No part of it may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. [Defector] [Double standards] [Singapore] [Human rights]
• Aleppo city is one, no more west, or east
  Xinhua, December 25, 2016 Rolling his wheelchair through the rubble-strewn crossing of Bustan al-Qasr into the former rebel-held eastern Aleppo, 53-year-old Bakri Maruf was fearless, unlike the first time he crossed through the same area three years ago, when shrapnels sliced through his legs and placed him in his wheelchair. "I was hoping I could cross back into eastern Aleppo on my feet, but because of my condition I couldn't, but I am happy anyway because I will take a look at my house in the Mashad neighborhood," he told Xinhua, as his son was walking beside him to help him. Maruf is one of thousands of people who have started returning to check on their homes in eastern Aleppo city in northern Syria, after the army declared its control over the entire city, following the withdrawal of the last rebel groups on Friday. Bustan al-Qasr was the main crossing between the former rebel-held areas in the east and the government-controlled ones in the western part of the city. The crossing was so important for the residents of Aleppo who used to cross back and forth between both parts of the city to visit their relatives or attend to their jobs, or schools. The wreckage of two buses sandbags had been used at the entrance of the crossing, which was a lifeline to both part of the city, especially when the rebels besieged the government side of Aleppo in 2012, the same year eastern Aleppo fell under the rebel control. At the time, the checkpoint was controlled by a group of rogue rebel groups who tried to extort money from the war-weary people using it. But with the recent military offensive in Aleppo, which has seen the evacuation of the rebels and their families from the eastern part of the city, the notion of eastern Aleppo and western Aleppo was over. It's one now, according to pro-government activists from Aleppo who want to see the city back as one again. Government trucks were quick to start removing the sandbags and the wreckages of buses blocking the crossings or streets between both parts of the city, which facilitate the flow of civilians, who had fled eastern Aleppo for a long time, to return to check on their homes. [Aleppo]
• The War on Terrorism Just Keeps Making It Worse
  by Patrick Cockburn European political leaders are making the same mistake in reacting to the massacre at the Christmas fair in Berlin, in which 12 died, as they did during previous terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. There is an over-concentration on the failings of the security services in not identifying and neutralising the Tunisian petty criminal, Anis Amri, as the threat he turned out to be. There is too little focus on bringing to an end the wars in Syria and Iraq which make this type of atrocity unstoppable. In the aftermath of the killings the visibility of Amri, who was shot dead in Milan this morning, as a potential threat looks misleadingly obvious, and the culpability of those who did not see this appears more glaring than it really was. The number of possible suspects – suspected before they have done anything – is too great to police them effectively. [Terrorism] [Blowback]
• Who Profits from Turkey’s ‘Sarajevo Moment’?
  by Pepe Escobar Let’s cut to the chase: Ankara 2016 is not Sarajevo 1914. This is not a prelude to WWIII. Whoever plotted the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov – a cool, calm, collected old-school diplomat – risks a mighty blowback. The assassin, Mevlut Mert Altintas, was a 22-year-old police academy graduate. He was suspended from the Turkish National Police (TNP) over suspected links to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO) after the failed July 15 putsch against Erdogan but returned to duty in November. It’s no secret Gulenists heavily infiltrate the TNP; so a particular outcome of the attack will be an, even more, relentless Erdogan/AKP crackdown on the Gulen network. The Turkish investigation will have to focus not only on the (major) security service fail at Ankara’s modern art center – but way beyond. It’s not very reassuring that Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu put out a terse statement a very long three hours after the facts. [Turkey] [Realignment] {Assassination]
• World War I, “An Un-Christian Like Patriotic Fervor”: The 102nd Anniversary of the Christmas Truce of 1914
  Questioning Christian Participation in Aggressive Warfare By Dr. Gary G. Kohls Global Research, December 21, 2016 “…and the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame; And on each end of the rifle we’re the same” — John McCutcheon 102 years ago this Christmas Eve something happened in the early months of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war. The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again. “Christian” Europe was in the fifth month of the war of 1914 – 1918, the so-called Great War that finally ground to a mutually suicidal halt after four years of exhausting trench warfare, with all of the original participants financially, spiritually and morally bankrupted. [WWI] [Christianity] [Peace effort]
• It Wasn’t the Russians: Hillary Lost Because She Blew Off Sanders and His Voters
  by Dave Lindorff The incredible group-think that has seen the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, President Obama, the Clinton campaign and most of the corporate media braying that Vladimir Putin scandalously upended American democracy and threw the election to his favored candidate Donald Trump is based on a ludicrous premise. That premise: that the election went Trump’s way because several tens of thousands of voters in a few states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — switched away from Clinton to Trump because of an alleged (and factually unproven) Russian “hack” of Democratic National Committee and of Hillary campaign chair John Podesta’s emails. According to this conspiracy theory — and that is what it is — the “Russian” hack, with the results allegedly passed on to Wikileaks, and the resulting release of emails that showed that the DNC had conspired to throw the primary election to Clinton, and that revealed the contents of Clinton’s secret sycophantic quarter-million-dollar speeches to Wall Street banks, explain those narrow Trump wins in three key swing states. What is ludicrous about this alleged conspiracy is that Sanders supporters already knew the DNC was in bed with the Clinton campaign. They’d already learned that first hand from Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who quit in disgust back in late February, saying that the DNC was undermining Sanders and working for Clinton. As for the bank speeches, Clinton did all the damage herself by refusing to disclose what she’d said in those extravagantly paid gigs, and by getting caught in a lie that she couldn’t release the texts because they were “under the control” of the banks (she actually owned the copyrights). She also hurt herself by lying and saying during one debate that she hadn’t asked for the high fees when in fact her agent had demanded them. This infuriating information was all out there way before Wikileaks started releasing the documents in had in its possession. [Hillary Clinton] [Sanders] [DNC]
• Keith Ellison’s one-man march
  The man seeking to lead the Democratic Party on Louis Farrakhan, Donald Trump and his personal journey on race. By Glenn Thrush 12/20/16 05:08 AM EST Rep. Keith Ellison was on the cusp of an easy victory in the race for Democratic National Committee chairman until the past few weeks. | Bridget Mulcahy/POLITICO . Keith Ellison is chair-slumped in a nondescript union office a few hundred yards north of the Capitol, surrounded by boxes of fliers for his campaign to chair the Democratic National Committee, nursing a nasty cold and eye-rolling at another question about his onetime admiration for Louis Farrakhan. . . The Minnesota congressman — a powerful speaker and canny political organizer — was on the cusp of an easy victory in the race for DNC chairman until the past few weeks, when his decades-old writings on the Nation of Islam leader (he called him a “role model for Black Youth” in a 1995 student editorial) resurfaced and ignited. Soon after, reporters unearthed 2010 comments about how Israel, “a country of seven million,” dominates U.S. policy in the Mideast — prompting a denunciation from the head of the Anti-Defamation League and Democratic mega-donor Haim Saban, casting his coronation into sudden and serious doubt. [Ellison] [DNC]
• In last-shot bid, thousands urge electoral college to block Trump at Monday vote
  With criticism flying about the electoral college, here's what you need to know about our system for electing the president and why the "Hamilton electors" don't like it. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) By Robert Samuels December 17 at 6:38 PM ? Pressure on members of the electoral college to select someone other than Donald Trump has grown dramatically — and noisily — in recent weeks, causing some to waver but yielding little evidence that Trump will fall short when electors convene in most state capitals Monday to cast their votes. Carole Joyce of Arizona expected her role as a GOP elector to be pretty simple: She would meet the others in Phoenix and carry out a vote for Trump, who won the most votes in her state and whom she personally supported. But then came the mail and the emails and the phone calls — first hundreds, then thousands of voters worrying that Trump’s impulsive nature would lead the country into another war. “Honestly, it had an impact,” said Joyce, a 72-year-old Republican state committee member. “I’ve seen enough funerals. I’m tired of hearing bagpipes.?.?.?. But I signed a loyalty pledge. And that matters.” Such is the life these days for many of the 538 men and women who are scheduled to meet Monday across the country to carry out what has traditionally been a perfunctory vote after most every presidential election. [Trump] [US_election16] [Electoral College] [Coup]
• Aleppo evacuation efforts falter as Islamist fighters burn convoy of rescue buses
  By Louisa Loveluck December 18 at 4:38 PM ? BEIRUT — Evacuation efforts in Syria were on the verge of fresh collapse Sunday, with thousands of people trapped inside the shattered rebel enclave of Aleppo after gunmen burned a rescue convoy bound for government areas in a neighboring province. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said evacuations were postponed for an “unknown” period, deepening abject suffering inside eastern Aleppo as the United Nations thrashed out ways to resolve the crisis. After more than three hours of closed consultations, France and Russia said Sunday that they had agreed on a U.N. Security Council resolution to deploy international monitors to eastern Aleppo to ensure safe evacuations and immediate delivery of humanitarian aid. [Aleppo] [Hostage]
• A Spy Coup in America?
  December 18, 2016 Exclusive: As the Electoral College assembles, U.S. intelligence agencies are stepping up a campaign to delegitimize Donald Trump as a Russian stooge, raising concerns about a spy coup in America, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry As Official Washington’s latest “group think” solidifies into certainty – that Russia used hacked Democratic emails to help elect Donald Trump – something entirely different may be afoot: a months-long effort by elements of the U.S. intelligence community to determine who becomes the next president. I was told by a well-placed intelligence source some months ago that senior leaders of the Obama administration’s intelligence agencies – from the CIA to the FBI – were deeply concerned about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump ascending to the presidency. And, it’s true that intelligence officials often come to see themselves as the stewards of America’s fundamental interests, sometimes needing to protect the country from dangerous passions of the public or from inept or corrupt political leaders. It was, after all, a senior FBI official, Mark Felt, who – as “Deep Throat” – guided The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate investigation into the criminality of President Richard Nixon. And, I was told by former U.S. intelligence officers that they wanted to block President Jimmy Carter’s reelection in 1980 because they viewed him as ineffectual and thus not protecting American global interests. [Coup] [Trump] [CIA]
• At Least 14 US Coalition Military Officers Allegedly Captured by Syrian forces in East Aleppo Bunker
  from 21st Century Wire DAMASCUS – According to two reports coming out of Aleppo today, at least 14 US Coalition military officers were captured this morning in an East Aleppo bunker by Syrian Special Forces. This story was quietly leaked by Voltaire.net, who announced, “The Security Council is sitting in private on Friday, December 16, 2016, at 17:00 GMT, while NATO officers were arrested this morning by the Syrian Special Forces in a bunker in East Aleppo.” Fares Shehabi MP, a prominent Syrian Parliamentarian and head of Aleppo’s Chamber of Commerce published the names of the Coalition officers on his Facebook page on the 15th December (emphasis added): Mutaz Kanoglu – Turkey David Scott Winer – USA David Shlomo Aram – Israel Muhamad Tamimi – Qatar Muhamad Ahmad Assabian – Saudi Abd-el-Menham Fahd al Harij – Saudi Islam Salam Ezzahran Al Hajlan – Saudi Ahmed Ben Naoufel Al Darij – Saudi Muhamad Hassan Al Sabihi – Saudi Hamad Fahad Al Dousri – Saudi Amjad Qassem Al Tiraoui – Jordan Qassem Saad Al Shamry – Saudi Ayman Qassem Al Thahalbi – Saudi Mohamed Ech-Chafihi El Idrissi – Moroccan Listen to Fares Shehabi’s interview on the Sunday Wire radio show: ‘Liberation Aleppo‘ In addition to Voltaire.net, the other original report was provided by Damascus-based Syrian journalist Said Hilal Alcharifi. According to Alcharifi, captured “NATO” officers were from a number of member states including the US, France, Germany and Turkey, as well as Israel. Here is his statement (translated from French): “Thanks to information received, Syrian authorities discovered the headquarters of high ranking western/NATO officers in the basement of an area in East Aleppo and have captured them alive. Some names have already been given to Syrian journalists, myself included. The nationalities are US, French, British, German, Israeli, Turkish, Saudi, Moroccan, Qatari etc. In light of their nationalities and their rank, I assure you that the Syrian government have a very important catch, which should enable them to direct negotiations with the countries that have tried to destroy them.” Although these initial reports describe the individuals in question as “NATO” officers, it’s unlikely they would have been carrying NATO colors on a covert operation – and might be more accurately labeled as US Coalition officers. Note that early reports suggest that these are not standard ‘street rebel’ or jihadi terrorists but actual Coalition military personnel and field commanders. 21WIRE also received unconfirmed reports yesterday that militants had fired a missile into the Ramousa area and then tried, unsuccessfully, to get cars out of East Aleppo. It’s possible this incident could be related to today reports of captured western operatives. [Aleppo] [Outsourcing] [Proxy]
• Make America Great Again
  Israel Shamir It is so dark now in the North. The Sun rises at 10 am to go down at 3 pm. White and plentiful snow and glorious stars outside and Christmas trees indoors make this darkness bearable – just. Here one understands why the people of the North had viewed Yuletide with great anxiety: they never were quite sure whether the Darkness would actually lift and pass away and the Day would gain this year, too. Last year it worked, but who can be sure that this year the Undead creatures won’t keep the Sun in eternal captivity? Now we are in a similar quandary. Will the sun rise? Will Donald Trump gain the White House from the Undead Ones? Never before in our memory has the President-elect’s progress been so full of uncertainties and so pregnant by possible dangers. It appears that the losers still do not accept their defeat. Like the Germans in 1945, they look for a Wunderwaffe, a wonder weapon to turn the tables and win, no trick is too mean to try. They will try to influence electors, they may try to prevent Congress from approving their choice, they may try their hand in public disturbances or a military coup. The Yuletide will be anything but peaceful and dull. Their idea of recount did not work the desired miracle. In vain Ms Stein had turned her fine party into a tool in the hands of Soros et al. Trump is still ahead in the marginal states he won. No state had been shifted into Clinton’s camp. [US_election16]
• How Republics End
  Paul Krugman DEC. 19, 2016 Many people are reacting to the rise of Trumpism and nativist movements in Europe by reading history — specifically, the history of the 1930s. And they are right to do so. It takes willful blindness not to see the parallels between the rise of fascism and our current political nightmare. But the ’30s isn’t the only era with lessons to teach us. Lately I’ve been reading a lot about the ancient world. Initially, I have to admit, I was doing it for entertainment and as a refuge from news that gets worse with each passing day. But I couldn’t help noticing the contemporary resonances of some Roman history — specifically, the tale of how the Roman Republic fell. Here’s what I learned: Republican institutions don’t protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms. And tyranny, when it comes, can flourish even while maintaining a republican facade. On the first point: Roman politics involved fierce competition among ambitious men. But for centuries that competition was constrained by some seemingly unbreakable rules. Here’s what Adrian Goldsworthy’s “In the Name of Rome” says: “However important it was for an individual to win fame and add to his and his family’s reputation, this should always be subordinated to the good of the Republic … no disappointed Roman politician sought the aid of a foreign power.” America used to be like that, with prominent senators declaring that we must stop “partisan politics at the water’s edge.” But now we have a president-elect who openly asked Russia to help smear his opponent, and all indications are that the bulk of his party was and is just fine with that. (A new poll shows that Republican approval of Vladimir Putin has surged even though — or, more likely, precisely because — it has become clear that Russian intervention played an important role in the U.S. election.) Winning domestic political struggles is all that matters, the good of the republic be damned. [Russia confrontation] [US_election16] [Trump]
• Washington’s most exclusive meeting may lose its luster under Trump
  By Greg Jaffe December 18 at 6:16 PM  For eight years, it has been the most exclusive, and arguably most important, daily meeting in Washington. Each morning, President Obama gathers his inner circle for the Presidential Daily Briefing, a run-through of the most important intelligence from around the world. The rules under Obama have been strict and unyielding: No substitutes are permitted if one of the six regular attendees is out sick or traveling. No straphangers are allowed to linger in the Oval Office and watch. Unlike just about every other meeting involving Washington officialdom, this one rarely, if ever, leaks. Now it looks as if the PDB’s status as Washington’s most indispensable briefing could be coming to an end. “I get it when I need it,” said President-elect Donald Trump, who so far is taking the PDB only a few times a week. “I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t need to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years.” [Trump] [Intelligence] [CIA]
• Lessons From a Dark Year in Syria
  Dec 18, 2016 11:00 AM EDT By Noah Feldman The fall of Aleppo at the close of 2016 signals an especially depressing future for the civil war, the region, and the vast number of refugees within Syria and beyond. For all practical purposes, the end of this battle means that the Syrian dictatorship has, with Russian help, won its war for survival. However, there is no clear path for the Assad regime to wipe out the last of the rebels.So fighting will continue, and a rump Syrian Sunni statelet will persist. And because displaced Sunnis will remain deeply wary of going home to places now controlled by the hostile regime, the long war's refugee problem may become permanent. That's no small matter. In scope it dwarfs the Palestinian refugee crises of 1948 or 1967. The human rights failure in Aleppo is on par with other failures in recent decades, from Srebrenica to Rwanda. The international community had no leverage with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or Russian President Vladimir Putin as they remorselessly bombed the city, killing thousands of civilians. Worse, the tactic worked, which sends a lesson to other future rights violators that they should use whatever means necessary to achieve victory. Yet like every such tragedy, the fall of Aleppo also has a particular meaning for the struggle in which it has taken place. Specifically, Assad’s victory shows that with air support from a great power and no compunction for collateral damage, an armed regime can displace rebels from urban space, even when the rebels have substantial civilian support. The U.S. could have gotten Islamic State fighters out of Syrian cities using the same scorched earth techniques, had it been inclined to ignore international law and not to care about the loyalty of the bombed civilians after the conflict was over. [Aleppo] [Double standards] [Hypocrisy]
• It was bizarre to watch Samantha Power at the UN conveniently forget to mention all the massacres done in America's name
  When Samantha talked about ‘barbarism against civilians’ in Aleppo, I remembered climbing over the dead Palestinian civilians massacred at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, slaughtered by Israel’s Lebanese militia friends while the Israeli army – Washington’s most powerful ally in the Middle East – watched
  Robert Fisk | Thursday 15 December 2016 Nor – most oddly of all – did Samantha mention 9/11. Here, surely, was an international crime against humanity worthy of mention in Samantha’s roll call of shame. 3,996 innocent dead. A must-be, you’d think, for throwing at the Syrians and the Russkis and the Iranians. But no. For there’s a wee bit of a problem there, isn’t there? Because the 9/11 bloodbath was carried out by al-Qaeda. And al-Qaeda in Syria has changed its name to al-Nusra and then to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and – well, it’s al-Sham (alias Nusra, alias al-Qaeda) that’s been fighting against the Syrian regime in eastern Aleppo. A bit difficult, you see, for Samantha to express her horror over the most terrifying attack on her country in recent history – talk about “barbarism against civilians” – when the very criminal “jihadi” organisation which committed this outrage is, yes, in eastern Aleppo fighting against the Syrian army. [Aleppo] [Samantha Power] [Hypocrisy] [9/11] [Al Qaeda]
• This Won’t Look Like Winning: A Sensible Path for Trump’s Syria Policy
  Sam Heller December 14, 2016 For the United States, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency is the beginning of a period of profound political and social uncertainty. For Syria, it signals a sort of end. Prior to November 8, the national security policy community, like most others, assumed the victory of Hillary Clinton was a near-certainty. A number of proposals for U.S. Syria policy were therefore prepared and advanced with a Clinton presidency in mind. These were mostly forward-leaning and hawkish, calling for things like U.S. escalation against the Assad regime and, indirectly, its Russian ally. With Trump’s victory, most of this debate is now void. There is still a good deal of ambiguity about how Trump will govern. Many of the positions he took over the course of the campaign seem to have been improvised, or not to be particularly strongly held. But on Syria specifically, he seems to have some clear, consistent preferences: He is focused on defeating the Islamic State, wants to prioritize cooperation with Russia, and is extremely skeptical of U.S. support for the Syrian opposition. [US Syria policy] [Trump]
• The Bad Losers (And What They Fear Losing)
  by Diana Johnstone Paris. If the 2016 presidential campaign was a national disgrace, the reaction of the losers is an even more disgraceful spectacle. It seems that the political machine backing Hillary Clinton can’t stand losing an election. And why is that? Because they are determined to impose “exceptional” America’s hegemony on the entire world, using military-backed regime changes, and Donald Trump seems poised to spoil their plans. The entire Western establishment, roughly composed of neoconservative ideologues, liberal interventionists, financial powers, NATO, mainstream media and politicians in both the United States and Western Europe, committed to remaking the Middle East to suit Israel and Saudi Arabia and to shattering impertinent Russia, have been thrown into an hysterical panic at the prospect of their joint globalization project being sabotaged by in ignorant intruder. [US_election16] [Imperialism]
• Why it’s possible to anticipate a Syrian peace process
  By M.K. Bhadrakumar December 16, 2016 The fall of Aleppo to Syrian government forces was expected to produce a barrage of western condemnation of Russia and Iran. In a proxy war, defeat is seldom accepted stoically. The western intelligence suffered a comprehensive rout in Aleppo. The Iraq war was also a defeat – moral and political – and Libya remains a permanent scar on the West’s conscience, but Syria is also a geopolitical defeat, given the nature of the proxy war. Syria was where President Barack Obama had openly expressed the certainty to create a quagmire for his Russian adversary Vladimir Putin. The calculation of the Obama administration was that the quagmire in Syria would mean a devastating setback for Putin, which in turn, would erode his grip on power and mark the unraveling of the Russian political system itself. The timeline for the ‘bear trap’ factored in the presidential election in Russia in early 2018. The Obama administration pursued a multi-dimensional approach – engaging Russia on the diplomatic track to buy time for extremist groups in Aleppo to regroup and try to break the siege; taking control of Raqqa on the supply route to Aleppo; keeping up a sustained propaganda barrage on ‘humanitarian grounds’ to disorient the Russian military track – all predicated on the hope of Hillary Clinton becoming the next US president. [US Middle East Strategy] [Russia confrontation] [Turkey] [Iran]
• Iran Calls for P5+1 Meeting Over US Sanctions Extension
  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSDEC. 17, 2016, 7:45 A.M. E.S.T. TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's Foreign Minister in a letter to the European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has called for a joint commission meeting on the nuclear deal over the extension of U.S. sanctions against Iran. Iran's official IRNA news agency is reporting Saturday that Mohammad Javad Zarif has requested that Mogherini inform all P5+1 nation members to hold a joint commission meeting over extension of U.S. sanctions against Iran. American lawmakers voted to extend some sanctions against Iran for another 10 years and although President Barack Obama declined to sign the act it still became law. [Iran deal] [Renege]
• How James Mattis Could Stop Trump From Ripping up the Iran Nuclear Deal Ilan Goldenberg
  He’s primed to play a major role. Last April, retired Gen. James Mattis stood in front of an august audience at the Center for Security and International Studies in Washington and declared, “The Iranian regime, in my mind, is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.” This was quite a statement, given the challenges posed by ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Syrian civil war, and Russia’s first military intervention in the Middle East in 30 years. But for Mattis, the priority was crystal clear: Iran. Fast forward six months, and President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Mattis to be the next U.S. secretary of defense. Ironically enough, the man who places such a high priority on countering Iran’s bad behavior may turn out to be one of the new administration’s biggest supporters of the Iran Nuclear deal that aims to curb the country’s nuclear programs, which Trump criticized throughout his presidential campaign. To understand why, it’s worth taking a closer look at his military background. Mattis’s focus on Iran is shaped by the U.S. military’s experiences over the past 35 years. The 1983 Marine Barracks attack by Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah bombers killed 241 service members, leaving an indelible mark, especially for Marines such as Mattis. The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, sponsored by Iran, killed 19 Americans. And most recently, Iranian-armed Shia proxy groups in Iraq were responsible for roughly 1,000 American fatalities during the eight years of the Iraq War. [Iran deal] [Trump] [Renege] [Mattis]
• Saddam Hussein should have been left to run Iraq, says CIA officer who interrogated him
  By Ishaan Tharoor December 16 at 12:44 PM Iraqi President Saddam Hussein holds up a rifle during a Dec. 31, 2000, military parade in Baghdad. Hussein was forced from power in 2003 in a U.S.-led invasion. (AP) Both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump believe the United States never should have invaded Iraq in 2o03 (or, at least, Trump claims he now does). The war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath in many ways prefigure the present moment in the Middle East; it triggered a sectarian unraveling that now haunts both Iraq and Syria and looms large in the minds of an Obama administration wary of further intervention in the region's conflicts. In a new book coming out this month, John Nixon, a former CIA officer who interrogated Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after he was captured by coalition forces in December 2003, details his encounter with the toppled despot and the varied discussions that followed. Early on, Hussein warned that the occupation of Iraq wouldn't be as much of a "cakewalk" as Washington's neoconservatives assumed at the time. From an excerpt published on Time magazine's website: When I interrogated Saddam, he told me: “You are going to fail. You are going to find that it is not so easy to govern Iraq.” When I told him I was curious why he felt that way, he replied: “You are going to fail in Iraq because you do not know the language, the history, and you do not understand the Arab mind.” Nixon now reckons Hussein had a point and that a ruthless strongman like him was necessary to "maintain Iraq's multi-ethnic state" and keep both Sunni extremism and the power of Shiite-led Iran, a Hussein foe, at bay. [Iraq] [Saddam Hussein] [CIA]
• If Assad Takes Eastern Aleppo He Will Think He’s Won the War
  by Patrick Cockburn The Syrian armed forces are close to capturing the remaining rebel-held districts in the enclave of east Aleppo, bringing them their biggest victory in five years of war. The insurgent armed forces, that were originally estimated to number between 8,000 and 10,000 fighters, have been retreating or giving up more readily than had been expected. It is still possible that a hard core will hold out in the ruins, but President Bashar al-Assad will be eager to crush any remaining resistance so he can present the fall of east Aleppo as a decisive turning point in the conflict. Will this be true? There are so many players with such diverse agendas in the Syrian civil war that past “turning points” have turned out to be no such thing. But what is truly important about what we have just seen in Aleppo is that the outside allies of the armed opposition to Assad – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, in a somewhat different category, the US – have not come to the rescue of the rebels whom they have previously supported. Over the last five years it has been foreign powers and not domestic parties in Syria who have dictated who is winning or losing at any particular moment [Aleppo]
• There is More Than One Truth to Tell in the Terrible Story of Aleppo
  by Robert Fisk
  December 14, 2016 Western politicians, “experts” and journalists are going to have to reboot their stories over the next few days now that Bashar al-Assad’s army has retaken control of eastern Aleppo. We’re going to find out if the 250,000 civilians “trapped” in the city were indeed that numerous. We’re going to hear far more about why they were not able to leave when the Syrian government and Russian air force staged their ferocious bombardment of the eastern part of the city. And we’re going to learn a lot more about the “rebels” whom we in the West – the US, Britain and our head-chopping mates in the Gulf – have been supporting. They did, after all, include al-Qaeda (alias Jabhat al-Nusra, alias Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), the “folk” – as George W Bush called them – who committed the crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001. Remember the War on Terror? Remember the “pure evil” of al-Qaeda. Remember all the warnings from our beloved security services in the UK about how al-Qaeda can still strike terror in London? Not when the rebels, including al-Qaeda, were bravely defending east Aleppo, we didn’t – because a powerful tale of heroism, democracy and suffering was being woven for us, a narrative of good guys versus bad guys as explosive and dishonest as “weapons of mass destruction”. [Aleppo] [Media] [Propaganda]
• Bipartisan War: A new study urges more U.S. interventions
  Philip Giraldi • December 13, 2016 The Establishment and Realist foreign policy communities in the United States often seem separated by language which leads them to talk past each other. When a realist or Libertarian talks about non-intervention or restraint in foreign policy, as Ron Paul did in 2008 and 2012, the Establishment response is to denounce isolationism. As Dr. Paul noted during his campaigns, non-interventionism and isolationism have nothing to do with each other as a country that does not meddle in the affairs of others can nevertheless be accessible and open in dealing with other nations in many other ways. Non-interventionists are fond of quoting George Washington’s Farewell Address, in which he recommended that “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible… Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.” Establishment pundits tend to dismiss that “little political connection” bit, preferring instead to warn how detachment from foreign politics might lead to the rise of a new Adolph Hitler. I was reminded of the language barrier while reading the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force report, which appeared on November 30th. The report, which promises a new “Compact for the Middle East” while also asserting that “isolationism is a dangerous delusion,” might be regarded as a quintessential document laying out the Establishment position on what should be done in the region. It is ostensibly the product of two co-chairs, Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley, but it is also credited to an Executive Team headed by Executive Director Stephen Grand and Deputy Executive Director Jessica Ashooh, who in all probability were responsible for the actual drafting and editing. [US Middle East Strategy] [Establishment]
• The electoral college should think hard before handing Trump the presidency
  By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer December 14 at 7:11 PM In making what is likely to be the most consequential decision of this transition period, Donald Trump couldn’t resist petty vindictiveness. Mitt Romney was briefly touted as the front-runner to become secretary of state. After meeting with Trump over a meal, he pronounced himself “very impressed” by the man he had described as “a phony, a fraud” during the campaign. Trump did not accept this graciously. Citing a Trump friend, The Post reported that the president-elect “enjoyed watching his dinner partner appear to grovel for the post.” Memo to Trump’s Republican critics: Your initial instincts about Trump were right. Remember that catering to this man will bring only pain and humiliation. Memo to those claiming that everyone should give Trump a chance now that the people have spoken: Actually, “the people” didn’t make Trump president. They preferred Hillary Clinton by at least 2.8 million votes. If Trump takes office, it’s the electoral-college system that will do it. And the post-election Trump has been as abusive and self-involved as he was during the campaign. The opposition’s job is to stand up and prevent or mitigate the damage he could do to our country. [US_election16] [Electoral College] [Coup]
• Iran sanctions renewal becomes law without Obama signature
  By Josh Lederman?|?P December 15 at 1:59 PM WASHINGTON — In an unexpected reversal, President Barack Obama declined to sign a renewal of sanctions against Iran but let it become law anyway, in an apparent bid to alleviate Tehran’s concerns that the U.S. is backsliding on the nuclear deal. Although the White House had said that Obama was expected to sign the 10-year-renewal, the midnight deadline came and went Thursday with no approval from the president. Instead, he opted to let it become law without his signature — a rare move that Obama has never used before. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president’s decision was intended to send a direct message to lawmakers who passed the sanctions renewal over his objections. [Iran deal] [Renege] [Governance] [Obama]
• With small changes, U.S. maintains military aid to Saudi Arabia despite rebukes over Yemen carnage
  By Missy Ryan December 13 at 11:00 AM Smoke rises after Saudi-led airstrikes hit a food factory in Sanaa, Yemen, on Aug. 9, 2016. (Hani Mohammed/AP) The Obama administration will curtail some intelligence sharing with Saudi Arabia following a review of military assistance, a U.S. official said, but it will expand support in other areas despite intense criticism of Saudi strikes on civilians during the Kingdom’s air war in Yemen. The carrot-and-stick approach reflects an attempt by U.S. officials, increasingly uncomfortable with support for an operation that has been widely condemned by rights groups, to distance themselves from the Yemen campaign without alienating a core Middle Eastern ally. [US Middle East strategy] [Saudi Arabia] [Double standards]
• The ISIS Offensive against Palmyra: A US-NATO Sponsored Operation?
  By Mehmet Ersoy Global Research, December 14, 2016 Inside Syria Media Center 15 December 2016 On December 10, the world media reported that IS terrorists started an offensive on Palmyra liberated by the SAA in spring. According to Syrian MoD, the total number of fighters exceeded 4,000, they used tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and improvised cars with heavy guns. On December 11, the terrorists pushed the government troops and took control over central Palmyra. At the same time Homs governor Talal al-Barazi said that unfortunately only some 80% of Palmyra residents had been evacuated. Within one day, Palmyra saw the continuing intensified clashes between the SAA and ISIS; Damascus and its allies killed more than 300 militants and destroyed dozens of vehicles. However, eventually the troops had to leave the town. Obviously, the Syrian army command was unprepared for such a large-scale attack. Another thing is also clear: the Islamic State wouldn’t been able to deploy such a number of troops and vehicles without any aid. The largest group might have arrived from Raqqa which is about 220 km to the north of Palmyra. Yesterday, various Middle East media reported the terrorists’ success became possible due to the US-led international coalition which had suspended its operations in Raqqa during the offensive on Palmyra. Using such a pause, ISIS regrouped and moved its forces for the upcoming attack on the ancient town. Besides, terrorists seem to have arrived from Deir Ezzor and Iraq’s Mosul through the corridor set up by the coalition. It could be supposed that the movement had been planned and coordinated with the US-led coalition. That means the West once again showed how it is using the Islamic State as a tool for reaching its goals in Syria. [Palmyra] [ISIS] [Outsourcing]
• Who planned the terrorist operation in Palmyra?
  Wed, Dec 14, 2016 The unexpected militant attack on Palmyra on Dec. 10 was an unpleasant revelation for everyone who expected IS/Daesh to quickly succumb after its stinging defeat in Aleppo. Around 5,000 terrorists overcame the resistance of smaller SAA contingent who were forced to withdraw toward the T4 airbase. Fortunately, 80% of the civilians had been successfully evacuated from Palmyra in time, but due to the presence of those remaining, the Russian air force could not be fully utilized to assail the positions of terrorists who had embedded themselves in residential neighborhoods. More than anything else the attack was a serious blow aimed at Russia’s international image, as the world associates her with Palmyra after Valery Gergiev conducted an unforgettable concert there last May. Unfortunately, the Syrian General Staff did not attach much importance to the skirmishes near the hilltop of Qasr al-Halabat southwest of Palmyra, Jabal Hayan in the western suburbs, South Sawamea to the northeast, and the Hawaisis region to the northwest, which took place on Dec. 9 and 10, and as a result the fighting advanced to within four kilometers of the city’s borders. It is quite obvious that the terrorists had been trained in advance to capture the city. Back in late November, hundreds of armed infiltrators posing as civilians were secretly dispatched into Palmyra and at the appointed hour they ambushed the Syrian troops. Under cover of night, other ISIL detachments no less successfully managed to capture the poorly guarded vantage points and – simultaneously with the reinforcements arriving from Raqqa – attacked Assad’s forces that were guarding the city. The total number of fighters taking part in the attack, as well as its timing, is clear evidence that this operation had been more carefully mapped out than is typical for terrorists, which suggests the existence of shadowy consultants working for Daesh. Not to mention the fact that the terrorists had unexpectedly acquired reserve personnel, high-end weaponry, tactical information, and specialized equipment. The way the battle itself unfolded also seems suspicious. Despite heavy losses in manpower and equipment, the terrorists were focused and steady in their efforts to penetrate the residential areas of the city, without pausing to inflict bloodshed or collateral damage. This uncharacteristic behavior suggests that they had been drilled on the need to overtake the Syrian strongholds and make their way into the civilian neighborhoods prior to the arrival of the Russian air force. [Palmyra] [ISIS] [Outsourcing]
• UNICEF: One child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen
  At least 462,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition with 2.2m in need of urgent care, UNICEF says. UNICEF says at least 2.2 million children in Yemen are in need of urgent care [Reuters] More than 400,000 children are at risk of starvation in Yemen, with nearly 2.2 million in need of urgent care, according to the UN children's agency UNICEF. New figures indicate that hunger among children has reached an "all time high," with at least 462,000 suffering from severe acute malnutrition - a drastic increase of about 200 percent since 2014. In a report published on Monday, UNICEF said at least one child dies every 10 minutes because of malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory-tract infections "The state of health of children in the Middle East's poorest country has never been as catastrophic as it is today," Meritxell Relano, the agency's acting representative, said in a statement. "Malnutrition in Yemen is at an all-time high and increasing." Severe acute malnutrition is a major cause of death for children under the age of five, and is apparent when a child has a very low weight for their height and becomes visibly frail and skeletal. Saada governorate, the most heavily bombed region in Yemen, has the world's highest stunting rates among children, affecting eight out of 10 in some areas, it said. [Yemen] [Saudi Arabia] [Double standards]
• Trump takes aim at Pentagon’s ‘revolving door’ and Lockheed Martin’s $400 billion F-35 program
  By Christian Davenport December 12 at 10:45 AM President-elect Donald Trump took aim at another major defense contractor on Monday, saying the cost of Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet program was too high. (Reuters) Just over a year after Northrop Grumman won the multibillion dollar contract to build a next-generation stealth bomber, the company appointed Mark Welsh, who was serving as Air Force chief of staff at the time of the contract award, to its board. The appointment, announced Friday, is not unusual in Washington, where former high-ranking Pentagon officials often go to work for the defense industry after their military service. But it comes as President-elect Donald Trump is highlighting the potential conflicts of interests in the “revolving door” between the Pentagon and industry, as he vows to clean up Washington. On Monday, Trump also took a shot at Lockheed Martin’s $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the most expensive in the history of the Pentagon, saying the “cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.” [Trump] [Military industrial complex] [F-35]
• Syrian forces push Aleppo rebels to brink as city nears ‘total collapse’
  By Louisa Loveluck December 12 at 8:31 PM BEIRUT — Syrian forces in the northern city of Aleppo pinned down rebel fighters to a sliver of territory on Monday as President Bashar al-Assad’s troops appeared close to capturing their biggest battlefield prize and delivering a crushing loss to the opposition. Taking full control of Aleppo — whose eastern districts were among the last urban strongholds of the rebels — would not end the more than five-year-long conflict that has ravaged Syria and scattered millions of war refugees across the Middle East and Europe. But Aleppo’s fall would mark a major setback for rebel factions and leave them — and their Western and Arab allies — struggling for ways to keep the anti- Assad rebellion alive. [Aleppo]
• Syrian Government Moves Closer to Completely Controlling Aleppo
  By Anne Barnard Dec. 12, 2016 BEIRUT, Lebanon — The siege in Aleppo is almost over. Advances by Syrian government forces and their allies have squeezed the fighters and civilians remaining in rebel-held parts of the city into a sliver of territory, spokesmen for the government and the opposition forces said on Monday. The last civilians caught in the shrinking antigovernment enclave issued panicked calls for help. Late Monday, several residents reported via text and voice messages that they were crowded into abandoned apartments and rainy streets, exposed to shelling and afraid they would be killed or arrested if pro-government forces reached them, as antigovernment activists circulated reports of scores of summary killings in retaken areas. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said in a statement on Monday that he was alarmed by reports of atrocities against a large number of civilians, including women and children.
  It appeared increasingly likely that the government would gain control of the whole of Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, within days, if not hours. Videos from government-held districts showed people celebrating in the streets, waving flags and honking horns. [Aleppo] [Public opinion] [Media]
• Advice for the 45th U.S. President: Opinions from Across the Pacific
  The election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States surprised observers on both sides of the Pacific and raised more questions than answers in terms of what it means for U.S. policy in Asia. Primarily, what policy course will a Trump administration chart in the region? On December 13, 2016 the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) addressed this critical topic by launching a new briefing book, Advice for the 45th U.S. President: Opinions from Across the Pacific. Drawing on our global network of high-level advisors, ASPI has compiled a series of short policy memos for the next administration, providing regional perspectives on what U.S. policy could look like if its partners were writing the script. Our aim is to provide the next President with practical advice on what motivates Asian countries, how they view America's role in the Pacific, and what their priorities and concerns will be for the next several years. The briefing book includes perspectives from regional leaders who have experienced first-hand the challenges of managing Asia's complex relationships. Authors include: • Chan Heng Chee, Chairwoman of the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities and former Ambassador of the Republic of Singapore to the United States • Choi Seokyoung, Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University and former Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the World Trade Organization • Peter Jennings, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and former Deputy Secretary for Strategy in the Australian Department of Defence • Yoriko Kawaguchi, Professor at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs and former Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Environment • Ken Koyama, Chief Economist and Managing Director for Japan's Institute for Energy Economics • Shivshankar Menon, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi and former Indian National Security Adviser • Wang Jisi, President of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University [Trump] [US Asia]
• In Washington, Syrian opposition offers to work with Trump and Russia
  By Josh Rogin Global Opinions December 11 Last week, two top leaders of the Syrian civilian opposition quietly visited Washington to meet with lawmakers and experts with connections to the Trump transition team. Their mission was as simple as it was urgent: to convince Donald Trump that he needs Syria’s rebels as much as they need him. Before the election, Trump often railed against the U.S.-backed resistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, suggesting the United States did not understand its true nature and questioning whether the success of the Syrian revolution would be better than the preservation of the Assad regime. Trump pledged to join with Moscow to fight the “terrorists” without defining who they were. He even declared that the city of Aleppo had fallen although rebels and civilians there are still fighting for survival. The aim of opposition leaders is to convince the next president that the Syrian civil war, and the threat it poses to vital U.S. interests, cannot be ended without their collaboration. In an interview, they told me that they want to help the Trump administration work with Russia and against the terrorists. [US Syria policy] [Proxy] [Client]
• Islamic State re-enters Syria's Palmyra
  Xinhua, December 11, 2016 The Islamic State (IS) group entered the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria on Saturday, nine months after the Syrian army captured it, a monitor group reported. "The IS is in the city of Palmyra for the first time after losing it to the Syrian army, whose forces are collapsing in the city," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The UK-based watchdog group said the IS group succeeded to advance and reach the vicinity of the Palmyra hospital in the northwestern outskirts of the city, after capturing the Amiriyeh suburb in the northern part. The IS militants also captured the Tar mountain, close to the Palmyra Citadel, west of the city, in tandem with shelling the citadel with mortar shells and heavy artillery. The Observatory said intense battles are still raging between the IS militants and the Syrian government forces in the city. [ISIS]
• Constitutional Crisis, Movement to Undermine President-elect Donald Trump’s Accession to the White House?
  America is gearing towards a Constitutional Crisis
  By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, December 09, 2016 Author’s note: This article does not constitute an endorsement of Donald Trump. Quite the opposite. The focus is on an unfolding constitutional crisis. While Trump has put together a right wing cabinet of arch reactionaries which largely conforms to the mainstay of the Republican Party, the bi-partisan “entente cordiale” is in crisis. The powerful corporate interests which supported the Clinton candidacy remain intent upon undermining Trump’s accession to the White House. Global capitalism is by no means monolithic. What is at stake are fundamental rivalries within the US establishment marked by the clash between competing corporate factions, each of which is intent upon exerting control over the incoming US presidency. In this regard, Trump is not entirely in the pocket of the lobby groups. As a member of the establishment, he has his own corporate sponsors. His stated foreign policy agenda including his commitment to revise Washington’s relationship with Moscow does not fully conform with the interests of the defence contractors. In contrast, Hillary takes her instructions from a panoply of corporate lobby groups including the defence establishment, the oil conglomerates, Wall Street hedge funds, etc. not to mention Monsanto-Bayer, which has generously funded her election campaign. [US_Election16] [Trump] [Russia confrontation] [Canard] [coup]
• Pentagon expands Syria force ahead of assault on militant capital
  By Missy Ryan December 10 at 2:18 AM ? Troops identified by Syrian Democratic forces as members of U.S. special operations are seen May 25, 2016 near the village of Fatisah in the northern Syrian province of Raqqa on May 25, 2016. (AFP/Getty Images) The Pentagon will send another 200 Special Operations troops to Syria, a senior official said on Saturday, substantially expanding the U.S. military footprint as part of an effort to topple the Islamic State capital there. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, speaking at a conference in Bahrain, said the troops would include trainers, advisers and explosives specialists. He said the increase would better enable the United States to support allied Syrian forces who were now only 15 miles from Raqqa, the Syrian city where the Islamic State is expected to make a final stand. The Obama administration currently has about 300 Special Operations troops in Syria. Those troops are “bringing down to bear the full weight of U.S. forces around the theater of operations like the funnel of a giant tornado,” Carter said, according to prepared remarks released before his address. A senior defense official, speaking in a statement provided to reporters, said the addition of new forces was “tied to the growing number of local forces now willing to participate in this fight, and our efforts to enable them.” The announcement comes as U.S. military commanders seek to advance plans, which President Obama approved in October, to launch an operation to capture Raqqa using a Kurdish-dominated group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. [US Syria policy] [Special forces] [Kurds] [Proxy]
• Was 11/8 a new 9/11?
  The election that changed everything and could prove history’s deal-breaker
  by Tom Engelhardt, 5 December 2016 For decades, Washington had a habit of using the Central Intelligence Agency to deep-six governments of the people, by the people, and for the people that weren’t to its taste and replacing them with governments of the [take your choice: military junta, shah, autocrat, dictator] across the planet.
  At least those acts remained largely covert, undoubtedly reflecting a sense that this wasn’t the sort of thing you should proudly broadcast in the light of day. In the early years of the twenty-first century, however, a new mindset emerged. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, “regime change” became the phrase du jour. As a course of action, there was no longer anything to be covert about. Instead, the process was debated openly and carried out in the full glare of media attention. [Trump] [Climate change]
• How War Propaganda Keeps on Killing
  By Robert Parry Consortiumnews 7 December 2016 A key reason why American foreign debacles have been particularly destructive mostly to the countries attacked but also to the United States is that these interventions are always accompanied by major U.S. government investments in propaganda. So, even when officials recognize a misjudgment has been made, the propaganda machinery continues to grind on to prevent a timely reversal. In effect, Official Washington gets trapped by its own propaganda, which restricts the government’s ability to change direction even when the need for a shift becomes obvious. After all, once a foreign leader is demonized, it’s hard for a U.S. official to explain that the leader may not be all that bad or is at least better than the likely alternative. So, it’s not just that officials start believing their own propaganda, it’s that the propaganda takes on a life of its own and keeps the failed policy churning forward. It’s a bit like the old story of the chicken that continues to run around with its head cut off. In the case of the U.S. government, the pro-war or pro-intervention “group think” continues to run amok even after wiser policymakers recognize the imperative to change course. The reason for that dilemma is that so much money gets spread around to pay for the propaganda and so many careers are tethered to the storyline that it’s easier to let thousands of U.S. soldiers and foreign citizens die than to admit that the policy was built on distortions, propaganda and lies. That would be bad for one’s career. And, because of the lag time required for contracts to be issued and the money to flow into the propaganda shops, the public case for the policy can outlive the belief that the policy makes sense. [Propaganda] [Military-Industrial complex] [Liberal]
• U.K.-U.S. Called Israel 'True Threat' to Middle East
  A 2008 document, leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, says the British were concerned about Israel's stance on Iran. GCHQ also spied on Israeli diplomats, and defense firms. Haaretz and JTA Dec 07, 2016 10:33 PM Edward Snowden speaks via video link during a conference at University of Buenos Aires Law School, Argentina, November 14, 2016. Marcos Brindicci, Reuters British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats, Snowden leaks reveal Der Spiegel: Germany spying on Israeli Prime Minister's Office U.K.-U.S. spy operations also reportedly targeted Israeli missile project British intelligence spied on Israeli diplomats and firms in addition to its military, the French daily Le Monde reported on Wednesday, based on leaked documents that came into the possession of whistleblower Edward Snowden. In one of the files, Britain’s GCHQ intelligence-gathering apparatus defined Israel as "a true threat" to the Middle East. “The Israelis constitute a true threat to regional security, notably because of the country’s position on the Iran issue," a leaked top secret document from 2009 said. According to Le Monde, the GCHQ collected information on Israeli diplomats, including a person described by the newspaper as the second-highest ranking official in the Israeli foreign ministry. That person was not named. The British also spied on the Palestinian Authority, the report said. [Espionage] [Israel] [UK]
• Syrian army retakes Aleppo’s Old City as rebels discuss exit
  Smoke billows near the historic citadel during fighting between Syrian regime forces and rebel fighters in Aleppo on Dec. 3. (Youssef Karwashan/AFP/Getty Images) By Louisa Loveluck and Karen DeYoung December 7 at 6:38 PM ? BEIRUT — Syrian government forces swept through the Old City of Aleppo on Wednesday as rebel forces — besieged and facing certain defeat — debated when to withdraw from their shattered stronghold. The government’s push into the historic heart of Syria’s largest city marks a defining moment in more than five years of war. The army and allied militiamen now control three-quarters of east Aleppo, the rebels’ most important enclave. The accelerating rebel collapse came as Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Germany for a last-ditch effort to agree on conditions that would allow the city to be evacuated. Kerry said the two would meet again Thursday morning. [Aleppo]
• Americans Are Paying Apple Millions to Shelter Overseas Profits
  by Andrea Wong December 7, 2016 Over the years, Apple Inc. has become the poster child for U.S. multinationals accused of sheltering overseas profits to avoid the IRS. What’s gone largely unnoticed is that it’s been paid more than half a billion dollars by the U.S. government to do just that. Taking advantage of an exemption tucked into America’s Byzantine tax code, Apple stashed much of its foreign earnings—tax-free—right here in the U.S., in part by purchasing government bonds, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. In return, the Treasury Department paid Apple at least $600 million and possibly much more over the past five years in the form of interest, a Bloomberg review of its regulatory filings shows. [Apple] [Tax evasion] [Corporate power]
• Trump hires a third general, raising concerns about heavy military influence
  By Philip Rucker and Mike DeBonis December 7 at 6:43 PM ? President-elect Donald Trump has selected retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly as secretary of homeland security, officials familiar with the decision said Wednesday, recruiting a third former member of the military’s brass to serve at the highest levels of his administration. Trump’s choice of Kelly — and his continued deliberations about tapping as many as two more military figures for other posts — has intensified worries among some members of Congress and national security experts that the new administration’s policies may be shaped disproportionately by military commanders. “I’m concerned,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “Each of these individuals may have great merit in their own right, but what we’ve learned over the past 15 years is that when we view problems in the world through a military lens, we make big mistakes.” Despite making regular remarks on the campaign trail disparaging the nation’s generals, Trump has long shown an affinity for them. In shaping his administration, Trump has prioritized what one adviser described as “can-do, no-bull types,” which the president-elect sees as a deliberate contrast from the personnel choices President Obama has made. [Trump] [Militarisation]
• U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993
  By Lenny Bernstein December 8 at 12:01 AM ? For the first time in more than two decades, life expectancy for Americans declined last year — a troubling development linked to a panoply of worsening health problems in the United States. Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses, accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed in a report released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics. In all, death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death. Life expectancy at selected ages, by sex (CDC/NCHS/HHS/NVSS) “I think we should be very concerned,” said Princeton economist Anne Case, who called for thorough research on the increase in deaths from heart disease, the No. 1 killer in the United States. “This is singular. This doesn’t happen.” A year ago, research by Case and Angus Deaton, also an economist at Princeton, brought worldwide attention to the unexpected jump in mortality rates among white middle-aged Americans. That trend was blamed on what are sometimes called diseases of despair: overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. The new report raises the possibility that major illnesses may be eroding prospects for an even wider group of Americans. [Health] [Life expectancy]
• 'Threshold not crossed’: Boris Johnson denies Saudi bombing massacres in Yemen breach int'l law
  The UK government does not believe that Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen violates international law, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said, defending the UK’s arms sales to Riyadh and expressing support for the Arab kingdom. “So far, we do not believe that there has been a clear risk of a breach of the international humanitarian law,” Johnson told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show, referring to the Saudi actions in Yemen and adding: “At the moment, we do not think the threshold has been crossed.” [Boris Johnston] [Saudi Arabia] [Yemen] [Double standards] [Arms sales]
• How Iran closed the Mosul 'horseshoe' and changed Iraq war
  By Dominic Evans, Maher Chmaytelli and Patrick Markey | BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq In the early days of the assault on Islamic State in Mosul, Iran successfully pressed Iraq to change its battle plan and seal off the city, an intervention which has since shaped the tortuous course of the conflict, sources briefed on the plan say. The original campaign strategy called for Iraqi forces to close in around Mosul in a horseshoe formation, blocking three fronts but leaving open the fourth - to the west of the city leading to Islamic State territory in neighboring Syria. That model, used to recapture several Iraqi cities from the ultra-hardline militants in the last two years, would have left fighters and civilians a clear route of escape and could have made the Mosul battle quicker and simpler. But Tehran, anxious that retreating fighters would sweep back into Syria just as Iran's ally President Bashar al-Assad was gaining the upper hand in his country's five-year civil war, wanted Islamic State crushed and eliminated in Mosul. The sources say Iran lobbied for Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization fighters to be sent to the western front to seal off the link between Mosul and Raqqa, the two main cities of Islamic State's self-declared cross-border caliphate. That link is now broken. For the first time in Iraq's two-and-half-year, Western-backed drive to defeat Islamic State, several thousand militants have little choice but to fight to the death, and 1 million remaining Mosul citizens have no escape from the front lines creeping ever closer to the city center. [Mosul] [Iran] [ISIS]
• Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste
  By Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward December 5 at 6:47 PM ? Pentagon buries internal study documenting billions of dollars in waste The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste, according to findings by The Washington Post. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post. Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results. The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology. [Pentagon] [Military-Industrial complex] [Corruption] [Incompetence]
• Can Iran moderates hold ground against US pressure?
  TEHRAN, Iran — The US House of Representatives voted to extend the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) on Nov. 15, and the Senate followed suit on Dec. 1, approving the measure in a vote of 99-0 and sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature. “We believe the Iran Sanctions Act extension is not necessary, but we also believe it won't interfere with the Iran deal,” said Eric Schultz, deputy White House press secretary. “I would expect the president to sign this piece of legislation.” The US Congress vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act has provoked harsh rhetoric in Tehran as well as a tempered response from decision-makers. Author Rohollah FaghihiPosted December 6, 2016 US sanctions against Iran had originally been set out in 1996 in the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) “to impose sanctions on persons making certain investments directly and significantly contributing to the enhancement of the ability of Iran or Libya to develop its petroleum resources.” After sanctions on Libya ended, the ILSA was renamed the Iran Sanctions Act, which passed in 2006. The day after the November House vote, Iran adopted a strident tone in warning about its consequences. On Nov. 16, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said, “If you extend the sanctions, this will mean kicking out the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], and we will confront it through implementing powerful technical packages.” Moreover, in a Nov. 23 meeting with members of the volunteer Basij forces, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “If these sanctions are extended, it will surely constitute a violation of the JCPOA, and [the United States] should know that the Islamic Republic will definitely react to it.” [Iran deal] [Renege]
• Syrian rebels in talks with U.S. about surrender in Aleppo, evacuation
  Secretary of State John F. Kerry said he plans to meet with his Russian counterpart later this week for further talks on a proposal for the rebels’ departure from Aleppo that was first discussed Friday. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters) By Karen DeYoung December 6 at 3:50 PM ? BRUSSELS — The United States is discussing with Syrian rebels their surrender and evacuation from Aleppo, as Russia on Tuesday threatened the imminent “elimination” of anyone who refuses to leave the city. “Those who refuse to leave of their own accord will be wiped out,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow. “There is no other solution.” Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in Brussels for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, said he expects to meet with Lavrov later this week for further talks on a proposal for the rebels’ departure that was first discussed Friday. But hopes of agreement on the new plan to stop the carnage in Aleppo again appeared to falter amid charges, countercharges and confusion. Russian-backed Syrian forces­ made further gains Tuesday in reclaiming rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of the city amid heavy civilian casualties. [Aleppo] [Proxy] [Kerry]
• Post-election, will the US have an Asia policy?
  5 November 2016 Author: Sheila A. Smith, Council on Foreign Relations The Obama administration’s rebalance to Asia has sought to energise US partnerships in the region, stabilise relations with an increasingly assertive China and embed the United States in the economic prosperity of the region. But as Obama’s time in office comes to an end, the rebalance has been found wanting. And his successor’s efforts will be gravely hampered by the challenges revealed during the 2016 presidential election. [US Asia]
• Syrian troops close in on Aleppo's Old City
  By Angus McDowall , John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA Syria's army and allies closed in on areas near Aleppo's Old City on Tuesday, looking closer than ever to achieving their most important victory of the five year civil war by driving rebels out of their last urban stronghold. Rebels said on Tuesday they would never abandon Aleppo, after reports that U.S. and Russian diplomats were preparing to meet to discuss the surrender and evacuation of insurgents from territory they have held for years. Russia said its Syrian government allies had taken control of five more districts of Aleppo, and had now seized 35 districts from the rebels during an advance that has changed the course of the conflict. The government now appears closer to victory than at any point since 2012, the year after rebels took up arms to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless and created the world's worst refugee crisis. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said it would accept no truce at this point in Aleppo, should any outside parties try to negotiate one. Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Monday calling for a weeklong ceasefire. Moscow said rebels used such pauses in the past to reinforce. Rebel-held districts of Aleppo, reduced to a few kilometers across, where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped, looks set to fall. The United Nations, whose staff are restricted to government-controlled areas of the city, on Tuesday described "a very disastrous situation in eastern Aleppo". [Aleppo] [Hypocrisy] [Outsourcing]
• Can The Iranian Nuclear Deal Survive The Trump Presidency?
  12/06/2016 Daniel Wagner Managing Director of Risk Cooperative / Co-author of “Global Risk Agility and Decision Making”. Giorgio Cafiero CEO and co-founder of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy Donald Trump’s shocking victory will bear important, albeit unclear, implications for a variety of America’s bilateral relationships, few more important than its relationship with Iran and the impact that may have on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Throughout his campaign, Trump made no secret of his opposition to the deal. In March, when he addressed the annual AIPAC meeting in Washington, Trump declared that his “number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” Shortly after the news of Trump’s victory, Reuters reported that the election’s outcome had placed JCPOA on “shaky ground,” and one knowledgeable commentator said simply “say goodbye to the Iran deal.” Yet even if Trump takes action to retard JCPOA’s implementation, he cannot single-handedly tear the nuclear deal to shreds. [Iran deal] [Trump] [Renege]
• . Why Everything You’ve Read About Syria and Iraq Could be Wrong
  by Patrick Cockburn December 2, 2016 The Iraqi army, backed by US-led airstrikes, is trying to capture east Mosul at the same time as the Syrian army and its Shia paramilitary allies are fighting their way into east Aleppo. An estimated 300 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by government artillery and bombing in the last fortnight, and in Mosul there are reportedly some 600 civilian dead over a month. Despite these similarities, the reporting by the international media of these two sieges is radically different. In Mosul, civilian loss of life is blamed on Isis, with its indiscriminate use of mortars and suicide bombers, while the Iraqi army and their air support are largely given a free pass. Isis is accused of preventing civilians from leaving the city so they can be used as human shields. [Media] [Double standards] [Mosul] [Aleppo] [Propaganda]
• Congress authorizes Trump to arm Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles
  The House voted for the first time today to explicitly authorize the incoming Donald Trump administration to arm vetted Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles. The House passed a defense bill that conditionally allows the provision of MANPADs to anti-Syrian regime forces. Author Julian Pecquet Posted December 2, 2016 While the language in the annual defense bill also creates restrictions on the provision of the controversial weapons, it represents a win for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., a fervent advocate of helping the rebels resist President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. The Senate is expected to pass the bill next week. Until now, the transfer of man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADs, had been implicitly authorized in the absence of an outright ban. Critics, however, view the new provision as tantamount to a policy recommendation for the president-elect. "I'm more afraid of Congress on this issue than I am of Trump,” said Robert Naiman, the policy director at Just Foreign Policy, a liberal advocacy group that lobbied for a ban. “I think Congress is trying to tie Trump's hands against making a realistic deal with Russia to end the Syrian civil war. And they are trying to pressure him in the direction of not doing that," he told Al-Monitor. Trump was outspoken about his reluctance to get dragged into the Syrian civil war throughout the presidential campaign. He has since picked hawkish advisers and candidates for Cabinet positions, including retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/12/defense-ndaa-congress-manpads-syria.html#ixzz4RzZpshUQ [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Trump] [Congress]
• For 10 years, a fake U.S. embassy in Ghana sold illegal visas and ID papers
  By Greg Hadley Every Monday, Tuesday and Friday for the past decade, a pink building in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, flew an American flag from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. Inside, a portrait of President Barack Obama hung on the wall, and people claiming to be consulate workers speaking English sold visas to the U.S., India and other countries to rural Ghanaians for $6,000 apiece. It was all a fraud, a scheme of organized crime rings and a Ghanaian lawyer to defraud people of tens of thousands of dollars, according to the U.S. State Department, which recently raided and shut down the fake embassy. And it wasn’t just the U.S. There was also a fake Dutch embassy being run as well. ADVERTISING The U.S. does have a real embassy in Accra, and a standard tourism visa costs $160, according to the U.S. Department of State’s website. But Ghanaian and Turkish crime syndicates were able to keep their fraudulent business going for so long by bribing corrupt local officials and doctoring bank statements, according to the State Department. They also specifically targeted people who lived in rural areas of Africa who would be easier to fool. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article118758218.html#storylink=cpy [Bizarre]
• Why Aleppo’s fall will be a game-changer for Turkey
  Soon after the insurgency in Syria got underway, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed his sensitivity about Aleppo for the first time. Around midnight on March 29, 2011, we were on board his aircraft flying back to Turkey from his visit to Iraq. Erdogan had made history as the first Turkish prime minister to pay an official visit to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The recapture of Aleppo by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces could turn the tables on Turkey. Cengiz Çandar Posted December 1, 2016 We were flying from Erbil back to Ankara, following a dinner given in his honor in the residence of once-and-future KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, in the presence of his uncle and father-in-law, KRG President Massoud Barzani. There were three of us journalists listening to Erdogan; one is now an adviser to Erdogan, who became president in 2014, and the other is at large as a wanted Gulenist following the failed July 15 coup attempt. In 2011, the so-called Arab Spring had just knocked on Syria's door with March 15 disturbances in the southern town of Daraa and with some minor demonstrations in Damascus. It was too early to call it an uprising. But what if the disturbances in Syria turned into a revolutionary situation such as those in Tunisia and Egypt, I wondered. At that point, Erdogan was a close friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, and Syria's Sunni majority had pinned its hopes on Erdogan as a pious Sunni leader of its strong neighbor, Turkey. Would not the evolution of events in Syria be an embarrassment for Erdogan? How would he tackle it in such a case? Erdogan expressed the geopolitical importance of Syria, especially Aleppo, to Turkey. [Erdogan] [Aleppo]
• After a mere 25 years, the triumph of the West is over
  By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer December 1 at 7:25 PM ? Twenty-five years ago — December 1991 — communism died, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. It was the largest breakup of an empire in modern history and not a shot was fired. It was an event of biblical proportions that my generation thought it would never live to see. As Wordsworth famously rhapsodized (about the French Revolution), “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven!” That dawn marked the ultimate triumph of the liberal democratic idea. It promised an era of Western dominance led by a preeminent America, the world’s last remaining superpower. And so it was for a decade as the community of democracies expanded, first into Eastern Europe and former Soviet colonies. The U.S. was so dominant that when, on Dec. 31, 1999, it gave up one of the most prized geostrategic assets on the globe — the Panama Canal — no one even noticed. That era is over. [Hegemony] [Decline]
• Iran says extension of sanctions act shows U.S. unreliable
  Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is pictured after meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun at the presidential palace in Baabda, near Beirut, Lebanon November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir A U.S. Senate vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) for 10 years shows the world that Washington cannot be relied upon to act on its commitments, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday. Iran has vowed to retaliate against the ISA extension, passed unanimously on Thursday, saying it violated last year's agreement with six major powers to curb its nuclear program in return for lifting of international financial sanctions. "To the world community, the extension of sanctions against Iran shows the unreliability of the American government," state broadcaster IRIB quoted Zarif as saying on arriving in India for an official visit. "America is acting against its commitment." U.S. officials said the ISA renewal would not infringe the nuclear agreement. U.S. lawmakers have also said the ISA extension would make it easier for sanctions to be quickly reimposed if Iran contravened the nuclear deal.. [Iran deal] [Renege] [Congress]
• Trump’s emerging Cabinet is looking less Trumpian than expected
  By John Wagner and Sean Sullivan December 3 at 2:24 PM Just two weeks ago, President-elect Donald Trump appeared poised to assemble a Cabinet as unconventional as he is, drawing heavily from a band of quirky loyalists that included several from the fringes of the Republican Party. But as he moves rapidly toward assembling his roster of top advisers, Trump instead is pulling together a more orthodox GOP team than many expected, including a defense secretary nominee, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, who has received solid marks from the party establishment ahead of his formal unveiling Monday. The emerging Cabinet has gone a long way toward mollifying some of Trump’s Republican critics, and several of the picks — including the wife of the Senate majority leader as transportation secretary — are tailor-made to encourage cooperation between the administration and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill. The incoming team is preparing not only to implement longtime Republicans goals — such as repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting taxes — but also to push for Trump’s iconoclastic and controversial campaign promises on issues such as a border wall and trade. But the group and the president-elect are also fraught with conflicting views over key issues including Iran policy, Medicare and immigration, raising the risk of infighting and fractiousness both within the administration and with Congress. Several of Trump’s early personnel picks were “more directly in your face, while others that have come forward since then are decidedly less so,” said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “At this point, I would say the Republican establishment that was so attacked by Trump during the campaign is doing pretty well in shaping his administration.” [Continuities] [Trump]
• Roaming Charges: The CIA’s Plots to Kill Castro
  by Jeffrey St. Clair When it came to trying to eliminate Fidel Castro, the Central Intelligence Agency spared no effort across a quarter of a century. In 1975, former CIA director William Colby admitted to the US Senate’s Church Committee investigating CIA abuses that the agency had tried and failed to kill Castro several times, but, Colby claimed, not nearly as often as its critics alleged. “It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Colby observed. “Castro gave McGovern in 1975 a list of the attempts made on his life – there were about thirty by that time – as he said, by the CIA. McGovern gave it to me and I looked through it and checked it off against our records and said we could account for about five or six. The others – I can understand Castro’s feeling about them because they were all ex-Bay of Pigs people or something like that, so he thinks they’re all CIA. Once you get into one of them, then bingo! – you get blamed for all the rest. We didn’t have any connections with the rest of them, but we’d never convince Castro of that.” [Fidel] [Assassination]
• Does an "ageing population" make it harder to afford our NHS? A look behind the rhetoric
  Stephen Watkins 30 November 2016 Jeremy Hunt claims the "ageing population" poses a challenge "as serious as global warming". New UKIP leader Paul Nuttall says the "ageing population" will force us to see the NHS as merely a "monolithic hangover from days gone by". OurNHS thought it was time to examine such claims - and finds they distort a much more interesting reality...
  The most optimistic scenario however is that we will live longer and we will spend less of that time ill. For each extra year of life there will be fewer years of woe. We will live longer and die quicker. My preferred mode of death is to be shot by a jealous lover at the age of 104: [Ageing society]
• Introduction: Perspectives on the Bombing of Civilians From World War II to the Present
  Claire Andrieu and Mark Selden December 1, 2016 The articles included in this special issue on the bombing of civilians from World War II to the present represent a selection drawn from a December 2015 Paris workshop held on the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The workshop was organized by the Mass Violence & Resistance online journal (CERI-Sciences Po and the Center for History at Sciences Po) in partnership with the Asia-Pacific Journal and is being published simultaneously at both sites. This bouquet of articles opens with Sheldon Garon’s depiction of the transnational knowledge transfer of civil defense praxis from 1920 to 1945. The first aerial bombing occurred in 1911 in Libya. But it was the First World War which made clear its revolutionary potential. [Bombing] [Civilians] [History] [Nuclear weapons] [Firebombing]
• Obama, Trump, and the Future of U.S. Foreign Policy
  The Obama administration will soon hand over power to a Trump administration that shares some of the very same foreign policy commitments. By Edward Hunt, November 23, 2016. Originally published in Lobelog. Amid all the uncertainty about what a Trump presidency means for the future role of the United States in the world, one possibility is that Trump will embrace some variant of the policies that have been pursued for the past few decades by the nation’s foreign policy establishment. Although Trump may break sharply with the establishment consensus that the United States must play the lead role in imposing order on the world, many signs indicate that Trump will continue to ensure that the United States plays the dominant role in policing the world. [Trump] [Foreign policy] [Continuities]
• Trump’s Falling for the Same Old ‘War on Terror’ Fantasies
  If Trump really sought to make America great again, he'd extricate the U.S. from war. But early signs aren't promising. By Andrew Bacevich, November 30, 2016. Originally published in TomDispatch. President-elect Donald Trump’s message for the nation’s senior military leadership is ambiguously unambiguous. Here is he on 60 Minutes just days after winning the election. Trump: “We have some great generals. We have great generals.” Lesley Stahl: “You said you knew more than the generals about ISIS.” Trump: “Well, I’ll be honest with you, I probably do because look at the job they’ve done. OK, look at the job they’ve done. They haven’t done the job.” In reality, Trump, the former reality show host, knows next to nothing about ISIS, one of many gaps in his education that his impending encounter with actual reality is likely to fill. Yet when it comes to America’s generals, our president-to-be is onto something. No doubt our three- and four-star officers qualify as “great” in the sense that they mean well, work hard, and are altogether fine men and women. That they have not “done the job,” however, is indisputable — at least if their job is to bring America’s wars to a timely and successful conclusion. Trump’s unhappy verdict — that the senior U.S. military leadership doesn’t know how to win — applies in spades to the two principal conflicts of the post-9/11 era: the Afghanistan War, now in its 16th year, and the Iraq War, launched in 2003 and (after a brief hiatus) once more grinding on. Yet the verdict applies equally to lesser theaters of conflict, largely overlooked by the American public, that in recent years have engaged the attention of U.S. forces, a list that would include conflicts in Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Granted, our generals have demonstrated an impressive aptitude for moving pieces around on a dauntingly complex military chessboard. Brigades, battle groups, and squadrons shuttle in and out of various war zones, responding to the needs of the moment. The sheer immensity of the enterprise across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa — the sorties flown, munitions expended, the seamless deployment and redeployment of thousands of troops over thousands of miles, the vast stockpiles of material positioned, expended, and continuously resupplied — represents a staggering achievement. Measured by these or similar quantifiable outputs, America’s military has excelled. No other military establishment in history could have come close to duplicating the logistical feats being performed year in, year out by the armed forces of the United States. [Trump] [Foreign policy] [Continuities] [US military]
• Accidental strikes on Syrian forces were the result of human error, Pentagon investigation finds
  By Thomas Gibbons-Neff November 29 at 1:36 PM ? A U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet conducts a mission over the Persian Gulf. (Tech. Sgt. Rob Tabor/ U.S. Air Force) An investigation into several U.S., Danish, British and Australian airstrikes that accidentally decimated positions belonging to Syrian government forces in September concluded that the attack was the result of multiple human errors, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Richard “Tex” Coe, the officer who oversaw the investigation, told reporters that intelligence assets monitored a vehicle believed to have been aligned with the Islamic State in eastern Syria’s Deir al-Zour province, and followed it to a position with dozens of troops, tents, entrenchments and at least one tank. [After an apparently errant strike in Syria, confusion and competing claims] On Sept. 17, that position was struck by F-16s, F-18s, drones and A-10 ground attack aircraft, dropping 34 precision-guided munitions and firing 380 rounds of 30 mm cannon fire within the span of an hour, killing dozens of Syrians. Coe said the presence of the vehicle, compounded by the troops’ lack of uniforms or identifying features, gave the targeting personnel watching the area what he called “confirmation bias,” and they concluded they were looking at an Islamic State encampment. [US Syria policy] [Bombing] [Spin]
• Was Fidel a “Dictator?” A Personal Account
  by Margot Pepper November 29, 2016 Given the current U.S. media market, I could start my article about Fidel Castro thus: “Contrary to Donald Trump’s reputation, Fidel Castro had a reputation as ‘el caballo— ‘the horse.’ Could organ envy be the real impetus for Trump’s rants against Castro? However, this is a serious article about a serious leader. So let’s start here: [Fidel] [Cuba]
• From a parade of foreign leaders, a glowing farewell to Fidel Castro
  Latin American leaders pay tribute to Fidel Castro Leaders of Latin America's left gathered with thousands of mourners at a farewell ceremony in Havana's Revolution Square on Nov. 29 and shared glowing tributes to Fidel Castro. (Reuters) By Nick Miroff November 29 at 10:41 PM ? HAVANA — Fidel Castro’s international allies and leftist leaders from around the world paid their respects to the deceased Cuban ruler Tuesday night at a massive outdoor farewell ceremony, honoring him with effusive praise that cut a stark contrast with his negative reputation in the United States. Castro’s death Friday at age 90 brought jubilant celebrations among Cuban exiles in Miami, but the solemn event here was a reminder that his socialist idealism and clash with the United States made him a powerful symbol in many other nations, and especially in the global south. The event stretched late into the night as presidents and foreign dignitaries from Russia, Iran, China, South Africa, Vietnam and across Latin America came to the podium in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution, praising Castro as a towering figure and tireless advocate for the world’s poor and downtrodden. [Fidel Castro was a revolutionary leader who remade Cuba as a socialist state] “His will could never be broken, nor the will of the Cuban people,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s parliament, who came on behalf of Vladimir Putin. “Fidel’s strength has been an example for all the people of the world who want to choose their own path of development.” [Fidel] [Imperialism]
• The Liberation of Aleppo: Tears, Hugs and Smiles, the Relief of Escaping Imprisonment in East Aleppo
  By Vanessa Beeley Global Research, November 30, 2016 21st Century Wire 29 November 2016 These images and videos will never see the light of day in the corporate media editing rooms because they expose their almost six year narrative on Syria as one of the most criminal propaganda projects ever deployed against a sovereign nation, its people, its state and its national army. The prolonged dehumanization of the majority of the Syrian people, the exploitation of their children as cynical props to further the NATO & Gulf state geo-political objectives in the region, the overt and covert endorsement of NATO State-proxy terrorism, the tacit endorsement of economic terrorism via the illegal US/EU sanctions against Syria, all amount to crimes against Humanity and the Syrian people. The #FakeNews “regime change” cohorts are seeing their pyramid of lies being dismantled stone by stone, by the very people they have been claiming to “protect” for almost six years. This video shows the reactions of civilians, fleeing their four year imprisonment in East Aleppo, subjugated by various militant factions, funded by NATO states and led by Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda. The first woman, collapses into tears, as she reaches the journalist. These touching moments will be sullied by the corporate media reporting and accounting of events, as they desperately try to resuscitate their expiring Aleppo chronicles. [Aleppo]
• Aleppo: How US-Saudi Backed “Rebels” Target “Every Syrian”
  By Eva Bartlett Global Research, November 30, 2016 Mint Press News 29 November 2016 In early November, Fares Shehabi, a member of the Syrian parliament from Aleppo, organized a trip to Aleppo for 13 Western journalists, including myself, with security provided by forces in the Syrian Arab Army. While I had traveled to Aleppo independently as recently as July and August, for many others in the delegation, it was their first visit to the city or their first visit since the war on Syria began in 2011. On previous visits to Aleppo, I met with the Aleppo Medical Association and saw a maternity hospital hit twice by rocket and mortar attacks by militants under Jaysh al-Fatah (the Army of Conquest), a loose alliance of anti-government terrorist groups. I met with members of a branch of the Syria Civil Defense and Christian and Muslim religious leaders. Just north of the city, I visited Nubl and Zahraa, towns besieged for more than three years by the Free Syrian Army, the Nusra Front, and other affiliated terrorist factions before the Syrian Arab Army drove them out in February of this year. I saw the liberated region of Bani Zaid and the al-Layramoun industrial district. I interacted with civilians in public parks, streets, and markets. Ahead of my trip earlier this month, I was interested to see what might have changed following the liberation of still more areas by the SAA. I also hoped to speak with civilians who had fled the terrorist-held areas of Aleppo’s eastern districts since I had last visited, during which time eight humanitarian corridors had been established for civilians and members of terrorist factions willing to relinquish their arms or to accept safe passage to areas in Idlib and government-secured parts of western Aleppo. However, on Nov. 4, no one fled terrorist-held areas of Aleppo. Family members of civilians still there say their loved ones are being used as human shields by groups like the Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, or Nour al-Din al-Zenki — the so-called “moderate rebels” and “opposition forces” backed by the United States, NATO, Israel and Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing]

• Trump meets with Petraeus, Romney as secretary of state battle heats up
  Retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus has emerged as a potential secretary of state pick for the upcoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. (Photo: Anthony Behar/Bloomberg) (Bastien Inzaurralde, Osman Malik/The Washington Post) By Jerry Markon and Paul Kane November 28 at 4:04 PM President-elect Donald Trump met Monday with retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, a possible alternative choice for secretary of state amid an escalating feud over the position between supporters of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who will sit down with Trump on Tuesday. As Trump’s senior advisers battled over who should fill what is considered the most prestigious Cabinet post, the president-elect will hold a second session with Romney along with another possible option, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), aides said Monday. Corker, who will visit Manhattan’s Trump Tower on Tuesday, chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and had suggested publicly that he was unlikely to be chosen. [SecState] [Petraeus]
• Western weapons falls into the hands of terrorists
  by Sophie Mangal British organization Conflict Armament Research (CAR) has examined the ways arms have been supplied to the areas of military conflict around the world and has published a new investigation on Syria (link: http://www.conflictarm.com/publications/). CAR experts have found that weapons supplied by Western countries not only get into the hands of the Syrian opposition fighters but also into the hands of IS terrorists. It is noteworthy that at the beginning of the Syrian conflict IS militants used mainly weapons captured during the fighting with the Syrian and Iraqi government troops. But after 2012 the terrorists gained new sources such as illegal supplies of weapons from the Western countries, buy and capture arms shipments destined to the Syrian opposition, as well as its own domestic arms industry. According to CAR’s James Bevan, the first evidence of illegal weapons turnover showed up as his staff found a box of ammunition with serial numbers not far from Mosul. It turned out that the ammunition had been manufactured in the factories of Eastern Europe, but it was legally acquired by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States after some time. These countries were delivering weapons to the opposition groups in Syria through Turkey. Moreover different batches of ammunition were found in the Iraqi cities of Tikrit, Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul. Daesh militants used such ammunition against government troops. CAR has documented more than 300 samples which were manufactured in the United States since the 2000s. The terrorists very often got the ammo in just two months after it was shipped from the factory to the original customer. [Arms] [Outsourcing] [Syria] [Iraq]
• Uniquely Talented: Only the Democrats Could Have Lost to Trump
  Fred Reed • November 24, 2016 A great uproar goes forth from the enemies of the Trump Beast, with much gnashing of hair and pulling of teeth. He will be a terrible President, they say, and they may well be right. There are ominous signs, particularly as regards foreign policy, and he seems radically incoherent and contradictory. Interestingly, his critics have no slight idea why he won. The reason is obvious: He won because everybody was campaigning for him, in particular the media, Hillary, Black Lives Matter, Obama, Democrats, and far leftists. Everybody worked for Trump. He couldn’t lose. The election was a referendum on Marie Antoinette’s court. It was the revolt of the unnoticed downtrodden, the financially sinking, the working classes rising against privileged snots–but it was engineered by the elites. The glittering elect of course did not say “working class,” this being a loaded phrase redolent of Marxism and of the Democratic Party of five decades back before it became a royal court. They spoke instead of disgruntled white men, racists, homophobes, sexists, and the Islamonauseated–phobic, I meant. The rich and powerful are on display in Washington, white, well paid, secure, above average in intelligence, often from Oberlin, Amherst, Swarthmore, Yale. The better sorts of schools, you know. They cluster in Washington’s posh barrios of Bethesda, Upper Connecticut, Cap Hill, and Great Falls. They drink together and talk to each other and believe that they must be right because everyone they know agrees with them. [US_election16] [Hubris]
• Syrian forces seize more rebel-held districts in Aleppo as assault gains momentum
  By Louisa Loveluck November 28 at 1:19 PM BEIRUT — Syrian government forces seized full control of northeast Aleppo on Monday, overrunning a third of what remained of the rebel enclave and sending thousands of civilians into panicked flight. The area’s recapture brings President Bashar al-Assad’s troops closer than ever to realizing their biggest victory of the five-year-old civil war: retaking full control of the northern city of Aleppo. The reconquered neighborhoods in what was once Syria’s commercial capital had been among the first to throw off government control in 2012. On Nov. 15, government forces launched a final push to take them back, supported by Russian warplanes and Iranian-backed troops. Monitoring groups said the rebels in Aleppo city had lost a third of their territory by Monday evening as district after district fell to government and Kurdish forces, which are fighting on separate fronts to expand footholds in Aleppo, although apparently with a degree of coordination. [Aleppo]
• The CIA and Castro: an Undying Obsession
  by Nelson P. Valdes - Saul Landau “Show me where Stalin’s buried, and I’ll show you a communist plot.” — Edgar Bergen For 53 years exiles from Miami and US officials have tried to assassinate Fidel Castro 638 times, overthrow his revolutionary government, and blamed him for numerous sins. The exiles and government officials who upbraid him have yet to thank Fidel for providing them with long-term employment. Given their levels of incompetence in carrying out bloody but unsuccessful terrorist acts, writing of inane and inaccurate reports and uttering of supercilious predictions about Cuba’s reality and its future, they appear unfit for other work — well, maybe as TSA screeners. One Fidel beneficiary, retired CIA analyst Brian Latell (“Castro’s Secrets: The CIA And Cuba’s Intelligence Machine,” Palgrave Macmillan) condemns Castro for not informing the US government about Lee Harvey Oswald’s intentions to kill Kennedy. To support this accusation, Latell rehashes defecting Cuban intelligence agents’ information to the CIA about Castro’s knowledge of Oswald’s murderous intentions, which he screamed in the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City while trying in vain to obtain a visa. Latell omits that CIA Agents in Mexico, including Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, had reported this information to the Agency and that Fidel had disclosed the incident in a November 27, 1963 speech. Latell doesn’t even ask why Oswald wanted a Cuban visa or why his CIA colleague David Attlee Phillips sent his agent on such a quest. (See also Jefferson Morley) Over decades, US heavies (including President Johnson and journalist Jack Anderson) believed Castro had masterminded the JFK hit. But who in his right mind would blame Castro for withholding such data from a government trying to assassinate him? Unless, of course, one is dealing with someone whose mind doesn’t heed facts or reason. In March 1977, responding to a Bill Moyers question about Senator Robert Morgan ‘s (D-NC) accusation that he killed Kennedy in retaliation for attempts to kill him, Castro explained “it would have been absolute insanity on Cuba’s part… to risk that our country would have been destroyed by the United States. Nobody who is not crazy would have had such a thought.” Logically, Castro continued, why eliminate a known adversary for an unknown?” We understood Kennedy from “observing his behavior at the Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis.” Finally, Castro said assassination didn’t change policies. “It would have been easier to kill Batista than wage two years of guerrilla war, but it would not have changed the system.” (CBS Reports June 10, 1977) [Fidel Castro] [Assassination]
• Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies
  Shanghai Daily, November 26, 2016 Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro died late Friday in Havana, his brother, President Raul Castro, announced on national television. "The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening," the president announced on national television. Fidel Castro was 90. [Fidel Castro]
• Perversions of Power: Trump’s Hedonism vs Pence’s Puritanism
  by David Rosen Since the nation’s founding there’s been a peculiar tension between the president and the vice president. This tension was first established in 1796 when John Adams became president and Thomas Jefferson the vp. The two men could not have been more different. Adams was a Northern Federalist, pro-British and morally upright, puritanically married to Abagail; Jefferson was a Southern Democratic-Republican, pro-French and worldly, intimately involved with his slave, Sally Hemings, with whom they had four surviving children who he set free. Over the intervening two-plus centuries and nearly 50 administrations, a host of different president and vice-president tag-teams have occupied the White House. Drawing only upon some recent examples, the nation’s two top officials have reflected differences in age (e.g., Eisenhower and Nixon), geography (e.g., Kennedy and Johnson) and race (e.g., Obama and Biden). Donald Trump and Mike Pence, the tug-of-war leaders who will soon occupy the headquarters of global power for the next four years, could not appear more different. [Trump] [Pence]
• Trump's day one: in crisis mode
  Paul Rogers 25 November 2016 The president-elect's hope is to follow an "America first" path to domestic renewal. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya may puncture it. The previous column in this series contrasted Donald Trump's isolationist geopolitical stance with plans to increase the size of all four branches of the US armed forces – army, navy, airforce and marine corps, with the last constituting the Pentagon’s major instrument of expeditionary warfare. The column concluded a little cautiously, suggesting that if such an expansion went ahead it did not necessarily imply Trump's keenness to go to war. But the situation might change if domestic reversals made an "overseas adventure" look a tempting diversion: “In all of this there may be an element of giving Trump increased options in a time of crisis, but the fact remains that this will be a substantial expansion at a time when the Republicans control both Houses of Congress. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that if Trump’s first term runs into trouble, not least with an inability to deliver on domestic campaign promises, then that would be the kind of circumstance where an overseas adventure – “war” in other words – might become rather attractive. What these various expansions mean is that in such circumstances the military will be in a stronger position to oblige” (see "Trump and the Pentagon", 7 November 2016). The case against this conclusion might be that it takes too long-term a view. For a start, it's doubtful that Barack Obama's two terms will end with significant successes in areas where the United States military is now directly involved: Iraq, Afghanistan, and lesser areas of Islamic State activity such as Libya (see "Trump in context", 11 November 2016). By this stage, it had long been expected that Mosul would have been purged of IS forces and that even the capital of the caliphate, Raqqa in northern Syria, would have been under heavy pressure; that there would have been sufficient progress in Afghanistan to resume the gradual drawdown of US forces; and that the coastal city of Sirte would have been freed from IS control. Add the grim siege of Aleppo and relations with the Kremlin, and the challenges mount. Thus, Trump may well inherit acute problems that will demand his attention from day one of his presidency, 20 January 2017. [Trump] [Foreign policy] [Adventurism]
• Syrian War Threatens to Escalate as Turkey Accuses Damascus of Attacking its Troops
  By Jordan Shilton Global Research, November 25, 2016 World Socialist Web Site 25 November 2016 Turkey’s Prime Minister and armed forces both accused the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad Thursday of conducting an airstrike on Turkish troops in the vicinity of al-Bab in the country’s north, resulting in three casualties. The incident threatens to escalate already sharp tensions between Ankara and Damascus into all-out war, posing the very real risk of direct clashes between the major powers. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned in comments to Hurriyet that the attack would “not be left unanswered.” Turkish warplanes at the Gaziantep air base were placed on emergency standby. A direct Turkish attack on Syrian government forces would quickly draw Russia, a key ally of the Assad regime, even more deeply into the conflict and Turkey, as a member of NATO, could call on the alliance for support under Article 5, which obliges alliance members to come to the defense of a NATO state under attack. Such a move would mean war between NATO and Russia. Turkish troops launched Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria in late August, in alliance with opposition militias organized in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) with the aim of preventing the establishment of a Kurdish enclave on the Turkish border by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters, which are aligned with the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party (PYD). The Syrian government condemned the intervention as a violation of its territorial sovereignty. Ankara alleged the attack occurred as its troops sought to push into al-Bab, an Islamic State-held town it is determined to capture before Kurdish forces. Gaining control of al-Bab would enable Turkey to have a major say in the offensive to retake the ISIS capital of Raqqa and represent an important step in blocking attempts by YPG fighters to link two Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria. The Syrian government also recently indicated that it might be preparing to launch an offensive on al-Bab, raising the prospect of a multi-front battle over the town. Reports said pro-government forces had been seen gathering to the south. Speaking to Voice of America, an anonymous Western diplomat stated that the alleged Syrian government attack runs the risk of causing a “potentially catastrophic escalation of the war.” While it is entirely possible that Syrian aircraft did launch the attack, there is strong evidence to suggest that Turkey is seeking to pin the blame on Damascus to legitimize its ongoing incursion. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-aligned organization that can hardly be accused of having a brief for the Assad government, reported that the Turkish casualties were in fact caused by an ISIS suicide bombing on Wednesday. For its part, the Turkish government imposed a gag order on media reporting of the attack. The Syrian government has not commented on the incident and there has been no independent verification of Ankara’s claims. [Turkey Syria] [Legality] [US Syria policy]
• Obama administration expands elite military unit’s powers to hunt foreign fighters globally
  By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe November 25 at 11:06 AM ? U.S. Special Operations forces travel through the village of Fatisah in the northern Syrian province of Raqqa on May 25, 2016. (Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images) The Obama administration is giving the elite Joint Special Operations Command — the organization that helped kill Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid by Navy SEALs — expanded power to track, plan and potentially launch attacks on terrorist cells around the globe, a move driven by concerns of a dispersed terrorist threat as Islamic State militants are driven from strongholds in Iraq and Syria, U.S. officials said. The missions could occur well beyond the battlefields of places like Iraq, Syria and Libya where Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has carried out clandestine operations in the past. When finalized, it will elevate JSOC from being a highly-valued strike tool used by regional military commands to leading a new multiagency intelligence and action force. Known as the “Counter-External Operations Task Force,” the group will be designed to take JSOC’s targeting model — honed over the last 15 years of conflict — and export it globally to go after terrorist networks plotting attacks against the West. [Special Forces] [Assassination] [Extraterritoriality]
• The Liberation of the Slaves
  Israel Shamir • November 22, 2016 Donald Trump’s electoral victory unleashed pent-up tectonic energies on the unprecedented scale. The world has been changed, much more than could be expected from any election of a US president. Just a short time has passed since election day, but it appears that the New World Order has received a shattering blow. There is a great feeling of freedom in the air, as if the vote broke the chains of a generation, and we suddenly found ourselves free. As the first sign of this new freedom, there are reports that the dreaded TTIP and TTP, the twin agreements almost imposed by Obama administration on the world, are as good as dead. Trump killed the agreements, said the Germans, and it is a very good news. Just for that, it was worth electing Trump. Silly activists say they stopped the TTIP and TTP by their own efforts. Bunkum! Without Trump, the agreements would have been duly signed and ratified despite all the protests. Let us give him his due. I congratulate Trump on choosing Stephen Bannon. He is so heavily demonised by the NWO forces, so fervently called “an anti-Semite”, that he’s got to be good. If Trump will persevere and keep him, it will be additional proof that Trump is fearless, that the magic of political correctness has stopped working and that the word “anti-Semite” does not ruin a career anymore. [Trump]
• Trump nominates two prominent GOP women: DeVos as education secretary, Haley as U.N. ambassador
  By Jerry Markon, Robert Costa and Emma Brown November 23 at 4:08 PM ? President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday selected two prominent Republican women for Cabinet-level positions, adding diversity to an inner circle that was already coming under fire for being composed mostly of white men. In a potentially controversial choice, Trump intends to nominate billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos for education secretary, turning to a conservative activist who has forcefully pushed for private school voucher programs. Her nomination is expected to face strong opposition from public school advocates, who oppose her efforts to funnel taxpayer dollars from public to private and religious schools.
  DeVos — whose husband, Dick DeVos Jr., is an heir to the Amway direct-sale fortune — is a Michigan power broker and major donor to conservative causes and candidates around the country. Her brother is Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, one of the most profitable private security contractors during the Iraq War. [Trump] [Plutocracy] [Privatisation]
• Trump turning away intelligence briefers since election win
  By Greg Miller and Adam Entous November 23 at 8:40 PM ? President-elect Donald Trump has received two classified intelligence briefings since his surprise election victory earlier this month, a frequency that is notably lower — at least so far — than that of his predecessors, current and former U.S. officials said. A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, by contrast, has set aside time for intelligence briefings almost every day since the election, officials said. [Trump] [Foreign policy] [Intelligence]
• Trump’s Campaign of Militarization
  by Melvin Goodman President-elect Donald Trump’s authoritarian style and personality, which attracted an overwhelmingly authoritarian following, is manifesting itself in the selection of his national security team. The appointment of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as the national security adviser is particularly worrisome because of the general’s lack of experience in strategic policy and his controversial stewardship as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. More recently, we have learned that general officers are being given consideration as secretaries of state, defense, and homeland security. Trump is putting at risk the Constitution’s support for civilian control of the military as well as decision-making in the use of force as well as national security policy in general. What is at stake in this case is the deepening cultural divide between the military and civilian worlds, particularly the increased militarization of national security policy that has taken place over the past two decades. the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have catered to the military, and have appointed too many general and flag officers to positions that should be in the hands of civilians. President Obama was particularly guilty in this regard, rewarding general officers with ambassadorial positions and naming a retired marine general to the post of national security adviser. The general, James Jones, was a poor fit in terms of both management and substantive support, and was soon forced out of the White House. With the exception of the first appointment to the post of director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, all of Bush’s and Obama’s intelligence stars have been general and flag officers, and during this period we have witnessed a signficant decline in the production and usefulness of strategic intelligence. Obama also demonstrated too much deference to the military when he retained Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, as his own in order not to create concerns about reform of the military within the Pentagon. [Militarisation] [Trump]
• Foreign Donors Begin Pulling Out From Clinton Foundation
  Overseas governments clearly feel there is nothing left to buy By Michael Sainato • 11/23/16 6:45am Former Secretary of State and former Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Clinton Foundation scandals emerged as a major blow to Hillary Clinton’s campaign this past election, as emails released by WikiLeaks and from FOIA requests revealed pay-to-play schemes and overt conflicts of interest between the Foundation and Clinton’s State Department. Though the Clintons and their supporters staunchly defended the Foundation, pointing to the charitable work it produced to defend any criticisms, such claims of corruption were proven correct. It now appears that Norway, one of the most prolific foreign Clinton Foundation donors, is decreasing its annual donation from $20 million in 2015 to $4.2 million this year—a significant drop suggesting the foreign government had expected to receive benefits in return for its generous donation. Norway’s move also provides further evidence that the Foundation serves more as a front to sell access to the Clintons than as an organization focused on philanthropy. While the Foundation may have conducted some charitable work, its greater purpose has always been to boost the Clinton brand, market the Clintons on the highly paid speech circuit, and offer donors access to the Clintons and their prolific network of elite and corporate connections. [Clinton] [Corruption] [Media] [Trump]
• Trump names foreign policy novice Haley as envoy to U.N.
  Haley accepts top U.N. post: reports By Roberta Rampton and Doina Chiacu | WEST PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON Donald Trump on Wednesday named South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a former critic who has little foreign policy experience, to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at a time of uncertainty over America's international role under his presidency. Haley, one of two women chosen for a job in Trump's Cabinet, is "a proven dealmaker, and we look to be making plenty of deals. She will be a great leader representing us on the world stage," the Republican president-elect said in a statement. A 44-year-old Republican and the daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley took Trump strongly to task during the presidential campaign over his harsh rhetoric about illegal immigration and for not speaking forcefully enough against white supremacists. [Trump] [UNUS]
• Hidden Warfare 2: Drones
  Richard Norton-Taylor 21 November 2016 In an attempt to give them a better image, the British MoD has renamed them Protector rather than Predator. Drones, like nuclear weapons, are here to stay. Unlike nuclear weapons, whose ostensible purpose is to deter, drones will be used more and more frequently as they get smaller and cheaper. They could be used by terrorists. There is talk of ‘suicide drones’.(sic) The Ministry of Defence, true to form, was initially extremely reluctant even to admit the RAF was deploying drones, first in Afghanistan. Now, as they are used in Syria and Iraq, the MoD cannot avoid commenting on attacks by armed ‘remotely-piloted air systems’ (RPAS) as it insists on calling them. The ministry is buying 20 American Predator B drones, at a cost of more than £400m. The aircraft, which can carry a range of bombs, cameras, and sensors, can fly for almost two days, will replace the RAF’s 10 Reapers. They will be operated, via satellite link, by RAF personnel at their base at Waddington in Lincolnshire. In an attempt to give them a better image, the MoD has renamed them Protector rather than Predator. [UAV] [Spin] [Euphemism]
• Trump’s Team Will Start New Wars in the Middle East
  by Patrick Cockburn Isis is under pressure in Mosul and Raqqa, but it is jubilant at the election of Donald Trump. Abu Omar Khorasani, an Isis leader in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying that “our leaders were closely following the US election, but it was unexpected that the Americans would dig their own graves.” He added that what he termed Trump’s “hatred” towards Muslims would enable Isis to recruit thousands of fighters. The Isis calculation is that, as happened after 9/11, the demonisation and collective punishment of Muslims will propel a proportion of the Islamic community into its ranks. Given that there are 1.6 billion Muslims – about 23 per cent of the world’s population – Isis and al-Qaeda-type organisations need to win the loyalty of only a small proportion of the Islamic community to remain a powerful force. [Trump] [Islamophobia] [ISIS]
• The 60 Minutes Interview George Soros Tried To Bury
  Long lost footage of George Soros appearing on 60 Minutes in 1998. GS has allegedly gone to some lengths to suppress this interview, and it’s not hard to see why. He does not come off well. ?Sit back and enjoy the media-vaunted “philanthropist” inadvertently reveal his textbook psychopathy to an incredulous interviewer (who does his best to cover for him). ?Listen to George tell us it’s all about making money and the social consequences of his actions just don’t bother him. ?Watch George admit he feels no shame for selling out his fellow Jews to the Nazis and pocketing their gold. ?Marvel at his blank incomprehension when asked if he is tortured by guilt for what he did. Guilt? Moi? Nah, he says, with what may pass for a smile to those familiar with his facial expressions, it’s just like business really – if George wasn’t doing it someone else would be. Still think George is funding Avaaz and all those other NGOs because he just cares so much about humanity to the depths of his big soft heart? [Soros]
• My American Decade
  Anatoly Karlin • November 8, 2016 As I am leaving the United States for an indeterminate period of time, now would likely not be a bad time to share some of my impressions of what is still, when all is said and done, an extraordinarily effective, dynamic, and successful nation. It would be redundant to compare to simply compare it with the two other countries that I have extensive experience of – that is, Russia and the United Kingdom – because I have already done that, and at great length (the whole thing together runs to 37,000 words), in my 2011 series of posts Comparison of USA, UK, Russia: •Introduction •Freedom and Security •The People •Everyday Life •Politics and Media •Conclusion Though some of my assessments will have inevitably changed since then, it would not (yet) be worthwhile to repeat this exercise today. Instead, I will take a look at America as it was in space and time during the 2006-2016 time, especially relative to how it was perceived by West Europeans. All the photos are my own. *** America in Time: The Obama Decade If I had to summarize the changes the US has undergone in the past 10 years in one short phrase, it would be the following: It has become a European country.
• Fed up with EU, Erdogan says Turkey could join Shanghai bloc
  President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted on Sunday as saying that Turkey did not need to join the European Union "at all costs" and could instead become part of a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations. NATO member Turkey's prospects of joining the EU look more remote than ever after 11 years of negotiations. European leaders have been critical of its record on democratic freedoms, while Ankara has grown increasingly exasperated by what it sees as Western condescension. "Turkey must feel at ease. It mustn't say 'for me it's the European Union at all costs'. That's my view," Erdogan was quoted by the Hurriyet newspaper as telling reporters on his plane on the way back from a visit to Pakistan and Uzbekistan. "Why shouldn't Turkey be in the Shanghai Five? I said this to (Russian President) Mr Putin, to (Kazakh President) Nazarbayev, to those who are in the Shanghai Five now," he said. "I hope that if there is a positive development there, I think if Turkey were to join the Shanghai Five, it will enable it to act with much greater ease." [Turkey] [Realignment] [SCO] [EU]
• With Donald Trump's election, has the American 'experiment' run its course?
  Tom Engelhardt 19 November 2016 A deep and spreading sense of disorder lay at the heart of the bizarre election campaign and, with Donald Trump's election, it may never really end. Is Trump the end of the 'American experiment'? Traditional Russian wooden dolls depict recent US presidents, including President-elect Donald Trump. Pavel Golovkin AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved. The one thing you could say about empires is that, at or near their height, they have always represented a principle of order as well as domination. So here’s the confounding thing about the American version of empire in the years when this country was often referred to as ‘the sole superpower’, when it was putting more money into its military than the next ten nations combined: it’s been an empire of chaos. [Trump] [Liberal]
• CIA likely to change directions under Pompeo, especially in Syria
  By Tim Johnson WASHINGTON — The nominee to become the director of the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo, suggested early this year that execution would be an appropriate punishment for Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who revealed the vast extent of government monitoring of Americans’ phone communications. “He should be brought back from Russia and given due process,” Pompeo said on C-SPAN, “and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.” Over his nearly six years on Capitol Hill, the Kansas Republican has routinely offered such strong views, suggesting that U.S. forces should use banned interrogation tactics on terrorism suspects and keep the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba open indefinitely. He won’t be the first politician with firm partisan beliefs to become CIA chief. But those before him offer a mixed record. And if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on campaign promises, Pompeo may instruct CIA agents in the field to take a 180-degree turn after inauguration day Jan. 20. “In some cases, it’s going to be doing exactly the opposite of what they’ve been doing,” said John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who became a whistleblower and who served two years in prison for telling a reporter the name of a fellow CIA operative. One example may be Syria, where President Barack Obama has pushed a policy of regime change against President Bashar Assad and CIA officers have provided so-called moderate rebels with weapons and guidance. But Trump disdains regime change and pledges to work closely on Syria with Russia, whose policy is to bolster Assad. [US Syria Policy] [CIA] [Pompeo] [Proxy]
• “Rebel Unity” Fails Amid Aleppo’s Fall
  Salman Rafi Sheikh What had once been called a “jewel of Syrian rebellion” by the West is now facing its collapse. Aleppo now stands to fall back to the Syrian government forces, and with is likely to come one of the biggest symbolic and territorial defeats to the foreign funded “rebels.” According to the latest reports, Syrian government forces have recaptured all of the areas taken by “rebel fighters” in a recent assault intended to break the regime siege on eastern Aleppo. The setbacks these “rebels” have suffered have practically undone all of the progress made during a recent push by a coalition of groups, including (former) Al Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham front, as they tried to end a government siege on the east of Aleppo city. Whereas the defeat is likely, it has done a lot of damage to the fragile unity different rebel groups, particularly backed by the former Al-Nusra front, had forged among themselves at the beginning of their counter-attack on Syrian forces in August. What had started as a ‘co-ordinated front’ against Assad’s siege-attack is now crumbling like a heap of cards and is desperately fighting its own self to salvage out of the city. Aleppo being the last major urban centre where the rebels have had a foothold, success against Syrian forces would have meant a lot of psychological advantage, reversing the momentum of months of setbacks brought about by an intense Russian air campaign in support of Assad. Failure to hold onto the city has initiated a self-destructing process, forcing the bigger rebel groups to swallow the smaller groups and bring more territory under their control, and thereby find more recruits for future fighting. [Aleppo] [Jihadist]
• For Syria rebels, Trump win adds to uncertain fate
  By Tom Perry and Suleiman Al-Khalidi | BEIRUT/AMMAN On the eve of Donald Trump's election victory, members of a Western-backed Syrian rebel group met U.S. officials to ask about the outlook for arms shipments they have received to fight President Bashar al-Assad. They were told the program would continue until the end of the year, but anything more would depend on the next U.S. administration, a rebel official at the meeting said. When Trump takes office in January, it may stop altogether. The president-elect has signaled opposition to U.S. support for the rebels, and an overhaul of policy on Syria. The military aid program overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency has given arms and training to moderate rebels in coordination with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and others. [US Syria policy] [Proxy] [Trump]
• Trump and the Pentagon
  Paul Rogers 17 November 2016 Under the president-elect, America's military can expect more of everything. What then? The assault on Mosul in northern Iraq has been eclipsed somewhat by the aftermath of the presidential election in the United States. A stuttering military campaign and a messy transition process, however, are also two parts of the same reality. Decisions now being made in Washington seem bound to bring them closer. Mosul has now been fought over since mid-October. In the early phase, Iraqi government forces were able to move speedily through the less populated outer districts. There, air power could be used repeatedly, but this is less available when close urban fighting is required. This is one reason why the Iraqis' advance into the eastern part of the city has slowed to a crawl. [Mosul] [Trump] [Military expenditure] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Trump’s First Crisis: Iraqi Troops in Mosul?
  by Patrick Cockburn The Iraqi armed forces are becoming bogged down in the battle for Mosul. Its elite special forces and an armoured division are fighting to hold districts in the eastern outskirts of the city against counter-attacks by Isis fighters using networks of tunnels to move about unseen. “In one day we lost 37 dead and 70 wounded,” said a former senior Iraqi official, adding that the Iraqi forces had been caught by surprise by the extent of the tunnel system built by Isis, said to be 45 miles long. [Mosul] [ISIS] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Bolton, Giuliani: Finalists to Head Trump State Department
  The State Department is about to veer sharply to the right.
  By Derek Davison, November 15, 2016. Originally published in Lobelog. The election of any new president brings some uncertainty about how that president’s administration will govern. But the uncertainty surrounding the incoming Donald Trump administration is greater than usual, for the simple reason that Trump was remarkably unclear and self-contradictory throughout the campaign. This may have worked to his advantage politically, as voters may have seen in Trump whatever they wanted to see. As tech billionaire and Trump supporter Peter Thiel put it, they took Trump “seriously but not literally.” [Trump] [SecState] [Bolton] [Giuliani]
• Trump’s $1 Trillion Infrastructure Plan: Another Privatization Firesale? Lincoln Had a Bolder Solution
  By Ellen Brown
  Global Research, November 15, 2016 Donald Trump was an outsider who boldly stormed the citadel of Washington DC and won. He has promised real change, but his infrastructure plan appears to be just more of the same – privatizing public assets and delivering unearned profits to investors at the expense of the people. He needs to try something new; and for this he could look to Abraham Lincoln, whose bold solution was very similar to one now being considered in Europe: just print the money. In Donald Trump’s victory speech after the presidential election, he vowed: We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it. It sounds great; but as usual, the devil is in the details. Both parties in Congress agree that infrastructure is desperately needed. The roadblock is in where to find the money. Raising taxes and going further into debt are both evidently off the table. The Trump solution is touted as avoiding those options, but according to his economic advisors, it does this by privatizing public goods, imposing high user fees on the citizenry for assets that should have been public utilities. Raise taxes, add to the federal debt, privatize – there is nothing new here. The president-elect needs another alternative; and there is one, something he is evidently open to. In May 2016, when challenged over the risk of default from the mounting federal debt, he said, “You never have to default, because you print the money.” The Federal Reserve has already created trillions of dollars for the 1% by just printing the money. The new president could create another trillion for the majority of the 99% who elected him. [Privatisation] [Infrastructure]
• The Middle East is Now All About Putin
  by Robert Fisk November 15, 2016 Predictable claptrap is being uttered about Trump and the Middle East. How can the Muslim world deal with a man who is an Islamophobe? For that is indeed what Trump is. He is a disgrace to his country and to his people – who, heavens above, elected the chap. But here’s a mollifying thought. US prestige in the region has fallen so low, the Arab world’s belief (and quite possibly the Israeli belief) in American power so shattered by Washington’s stupidity and ineptness, that I rather suspect little attention will be paid to Donald Trump. [Trump] [Islamophobia] [Putin] [US Middle East strategy]
• National security expert decides he’s not playing nice with Trump after all
  By David Goldstein dgoldstein@mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON — Eliot Cohen is the epitome of the national security establishment that President-elect Donald Trump had vowed to topple and remove from power. Now Cohen, who teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, has become involved in a mini-controversy that opens a window onto the deliberations of the Trump transition team, where loyalty and perhaps political vengeance play determining roles. Cohen is former top defense and state department official, who’s worked with the White House National Security Council and advised on policy on issues from Iraq and Afghanistan to Russia and North Korea. To burnish his eastern establishment credentials further still, he not only attended Harvard, but taught there and became an assistant dean as well. Additionally, he’s authored several books about military campaigns and strategy. Alarmed by Trump’s rise through the Republican primaries, he coordinated a letter last spring signed by 122 national security experts, who concluded that Trump would make America “unsafe” and that his views posed a “threat to civil liberty.” Trump’s lack of government experience, and its political value as a campaign message got him votes, but now could present some hurdles in filling jobs. [MISCOM] [Establishment] [Trump]
• I told conservatives to work for Trump. One talk with his team changed my mind.
  By Eliot A. Cohen November 15 at 9:33 PM Eliot A. Cohen is the author of the forthcoming “The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force.” He served as counselor of the State Department from 2007 to 2009. I am a national security Never-Trumper who, after the election, made the case that young conservatives should volunteer to serve in the new administration, warily, their undated letters of resignation ready. That advice, I have concluded, was wrong. My about-face began with a discreet request to me from a friend in Trumpworld to provide names — unsullied by having signed the two anti-Trump foreign policy letters — of those who might be willing to serve. My friend and I had agreed to disagree a while back about my taking an uncompromising anti-Trump stand; now, he wanted assistance and I willingly complied. [Trump] [MISCOM] [Establishment]
• Hague prosecutors say U.S. forces may have committed war crimes
  By Thomas Escritt | AMSTERDAM Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said on Monday there were preliminary grounds to believe U.S. forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan and at secret detention facilities elsewhere in 2003 and 2004. In a report, prosecutors said there was a "reasonable basis to believe" that U.S. forces had tortured prisoners in Afghanistan and at Central Intelligence Agency detention facilities elsewhere in 2003 and 2004. "Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture," the prosecutors' office, wrote. It added that CIA officials appeared to have tortured another 27 detainees. [War crimes] [ICC] [Afghanistan] [Torture]
• After the Election: Don’t Panic, Think!
  by Diana Johnstone November 14, 2016 In 2016, the fundamentally undemocratic U.S. two-party system presented the public with the two most hated candidates in history. The choice was so dismal that over forty three percent of the voters could not bring themselves to go to the polls. Everyone hated one or the other of the candidates, or both. Whoever won was bound to face vehement opposition. The unexpected shock of Donald Trump’s victory created mass hysteria, with crowds in tears going into the streets to protest – an unprecedented reaction to an uncontested election. This hysterical opposition is not the best basis for building the new movement needed to oppose a widely rejected political establishment. Most of the weeping and wailing comes not from Bernie Sanders supporters, who were prepared for the worst, but from those who believed the Clinton campaign claim that Trump represents nothing but various ways to “hate” other people: sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. The response is to hate Trump. This is sterile and gets nowhere politically. [US_election16]
• Trump hates the nuclear pact with Iran, but the rest of the world is busy cutting deals
  By Brian Murphy November 14 at 12:41 PM Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan, right, exchanges cooperation documents with Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan in Tehran on Nov. 14. (Iranian Defense Ministry/European Pressphoto Agency) Judging from Donald Trump’s campaign posturing, his Big Three foreign policy views go something like this: Russia can be wooed, Iran needs to be slammed, and China’s economic and strategic reach must be tamed. But what happens when they all start to overlap? A series of initiatives and announcements Monday pointed to the deepening interplay between Iran, China and Russia — and offered an early lesson to the Trump administration on the slippery reality of the world. One maxim Trump will quickly learn: Washington now has very limited power to isolate and punish Iran. Trump may be able to follow through on pledges to tear up the U.S. portion of last year’s nuclear deal, which seeks to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing international sanctions. But that leaves America’s other five negotiating partners — including Russia and China — sticking with the program and making deals with Iran. [Iran deal] [Renege] [Trump]
• Should Iran fear a Trump presidency?
  European Union and allies remain committed to Iran deal New US sanctions could end up isolating Washington, not Tehran, as Iran gains ground in the region; Obama’s decision to target Jabhat al-Nusra leaders could lead to breakthrough on Aleppo. Author Week in Review Posted November 12, 2016 US President-elect Donald Trump will give priority to new sanctions and pressure on Iran, while considering whether and how his administration might seek to renegotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The trend in Europe and Asia, however, is heading in the other direction, where the emphasis is on breaking down, rather than erecting, barriers to business and engagement with Iran. It is difficult to envision a global retreat from Iran, absent an Iranian breach in its commitments to the JCPOA. [Iran deal] [Trump]
• Who Benefits From Donald Trump's Tax Plan?
  John Ydstie Donald Trump has proposed a very detailed tax plan — but his statements on the campaign trail don't always match what his proposal would really do. Politics FACT CHECK: Donald Trump's First 100 Days Action Plan Politics Analysis: Trump Tax Plan Would Cost Trillions, Boost Incomes For The Rich For instance, at a rally in Scranton, Pa., Trump promised to "massively cut taxes for the middle class, the forgotten people, the forgotten men and women of this country, who built our country." During a town hall meeting on NBC's Today show, he said he believes in raising taxes on the wealthy. And at least half of Trump's supporters agreed with him on that, according to a pre-election survey by the RAND Corporation, a research group. "Just before the election, after the last debate, 51 percent of them intending to vote for Trump supported increasing taxes on high-earning individuals," says Michael Pollard of RAND. But Trump's plan does the opposite, says Lily Batchelder, a law professor at NYU and visiting fellow at the Tax Policy Center. "If you look at the most wealthy, the top 1 percent would get about half the benefits of his tax cut, and a millionaire would get an average tax cut of $317,000," she says But a family earning between $40,000 and $50,000 a year would get a tax cut of only $560, she says, and millions of middle-class working families will see their tax bills rise under Trump's plan — especially single-parent families. [Trump] [Tax] [Inequality]
• No one has a clue what kind of president Donald Trump will be
  President-elect Donald Trump listens as President Obama speaks at a news conference in the Oval Office on Nov. 10. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) By Dan Balz November 12 at 1:31 PM ? The battle for Donald Trump’s presidency is underway, and there’s nothing orderly about it. Washington is rife with rumor, speculation and trepidation. The rest of the country is in the dark and divided. Trump always said he liked to be unpredictable, and so it is left to others right now to imagine how all the conflicts, contradictions and questions will be resolved. Two signs of the absence of clarity came Friday when Trump reshuffled the leadership of his transition team, jettisoning New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and some of his loyalists and installing Vice President-elect Mike Pence to run the show. At the same time came suggestions that Trump might back away from several key campaign pledges, raising once again the question of what his real convictions are. These might just be hiccups. If not, look out. [Trump] [Unpredictable]
• Trump’s Victory: Arrogance Defeated
  by Jean Bricmont Hillary Clinton called half of Trump voters “a basket of deplorables”. In all the discussions I have had with American “liberals”, they explained to me that Trump supporters were mostly uneducated white men. However, I am old enough to remember an era when the all the leftwing parties, socialist or communist, and even American Democrats, were based on the workers or the “working class” or the “common man”. Nobody thought to inquire whether they had university degrees or to investigate whether or not their opinions were politically correct on issues such as racism, sexism or homophobia. What defined the workers as progressive subjects was their economically exploited condition and not some ideological orthodoxy or moral purity. At the end of the 1970s a great change took place within leftwing parties. They were increasingly dominated by academics and their ideology changed radically from that of the classical left. Far from aiming to establish some form of socialism, or merely of social justice, the left turned into the champion of the fight for equal opportunity, against discrimination and prejudice, and – with the rise of globalization – the opening of markets. The more or less mythical hero of the left was no longer the proletarian but the marginal, the migrant, the foreigner, the dissident, or the rebel – even if he happened to be a religious fanatic that no leftist intellectual would have anything to do with. One recalls how Jean-Jacques Rousseau made fun of those who pretend to love the Tartars in order to avoid loving their neighbors. Little by little a new class alliance formed: the one percent as it is called, or more realistically the richest ten percent who benefit from globalization are allied with the middle class intelligentsia to sell us globalization in the name of “openness to others” and which flaunt the specter of racism or sexism to attract minorities and certain feminists (for although women are not a minority, certain feminist demands are similar to those of minorities). [US_election16]
• We Googled Trump’s top Cabinet picks so you don’t have to
  By Vera Bergengruen, Anna Douglas and Matthew Schofield McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s list of choices for his Cabinet contains an eclectic mix of early backers of his campaign, business executives and conservative activists. Despite his promise to “drain the swamp,” the names being mentioned also show that he and his advisers are drawing heavily from a group of Washington insiders. Here are the top picks being considered to serve in Trump’s Cabinet and as White House chief of staff.
  Secretary of state Newt Gingrich, 73, an early and important supporter of Trump’s campaign, served as speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999 and ran for president in 2012. Like Trump, he has often spoken of creating a new Republican Party, and he would bring congressional experience. He has been a strong supporter of Trump’s proposals for combating terrorism, and he drew criticism for calling for a “test” for Muslims entering the U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., 64, is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He advised Trump on foreign policy during the campaign and has visited more than 70 countries. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, 67, served in George W. Bush’s administration and is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He previously served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs. [Trump] [Cabinet]
• The Middle East Crises Trump Inherits Could Still Suck Him in
  Patrick Cockburn • November 11, 2016 ‘Make America Great Again’ was the slogan of Donald Trump’s election, but the immediate impact of his victory is to make the US less of a power in the world for two reasons: American prestige and influence will be damaged by a general belief internationally that the US has just elected a dangerous buffoon as its leader. The perception is pervasive, but is not very deeply rooted and likely be temporary, stemming as it does from Trump’s demagogic rants during the election campaign. Those about relations with foreign countries were particularly vague and least likely to provide a guide to future policy. More damaging in the long term for America’s status as superpower is the likelihood that the US is now a more deeply divided society than ever. Trump won the election by demonising and threatening individuals and communities – Mexicans, Muslims, Latinos – and his confrontational style of politics is not going to disappear. Verbal violence produces a permanently over-heated political atmosphere in which physical violence becomes an option. At the same time, the election campaign was focused almost exclusively on American domestic politics with voters showing little interest in events abroad. This is unlikely to change. Governments around the world can see this for themselves, though this will not stop them badgering their diplomats in Washington and New York for an inkling as to how far Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks were more than outrageous attempts to dominate the news agenda for a few hours. Fortunately, his pronouncements were so woolly that they can be easily jettisoned between now and his inauguration. Real foreign policy positions will only emerge with the formation of a Trump cabinet when it becomes clear who will be in charge. But, if future policies remain unknowable, super-charged American nationalism combined with economic populism and isolationism are likely to set the general tone. Trump has invariably portrayed Americans as the victims of the foul machinations of foreign countries who previously faced no real resistance from an incompetent self-serving American elite. [Trump] [Foreign policy] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Trump undermines America’s already-tattered authority
  By Bob Rigg, Former Executive Director, Amnesty International NZ
  November 13, 2016 3:33 AM (UTC+8) Hillary Clinton and the Democrats deserved to lose the presidential election. Under Hillary’s husband Bill, the Democratic Party moved to the center, which in US terms means to the right, in what was touted at the time as a smart strategic repositioning. What the Democrats lost sight of was that, in repositioning themselves, they were abandoning their traditional working class and black constituencies, while they were at the same time continuing to rely on their support at the ballot box. Slowly, over decades, it began to dawn on traditional Democratic voters that the Democratic Party was no longer dedicated to serving their interests. Mass unemployment and immiseration, especially in the so-called rust belt but also nationwide, were simply disregarded by the Democratic elite, which lined its pockets with congressional salaries, pensions and benefits and supported the nakedly self-seeking Clinton dynasty, which devoted more energy to building up its own assets than it did to combating the flagrant inequalities that were increasingly at the heart of post-neoliberal life in the US. The predatory practices of the Washington elite were actively supported by congressional carpetbaggers who approved legislation that opened the floodgates to every imaginable form of financial manipulation. When these sharp practices produced the global international crisis which, in the US, dispossessed very large numbers of ordinary citizens, sometimes depriving them of both their homes and their pensions, their cup began to run over. Congress bailed out the banks with prodigious sums of taxpayer money. The then-new Barack Obama administration, whose financial advisers were the core of the financial elite, refrained from prosecuting a single CEO. The good will of US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was valued more highly than the loyalty of Obama’s legions of camp followers. What does this potted Democratic prehistory have to do with Donald Trump, the unlikely hero of the hour? Everything. While Bill and Hillary were rapidly accumulating a personal fortune in excess of $100 million, and were playing a starring role in the life of the nation’s elite, many of their loyal constituents were going to the wall while Bill and Hillary hobnobbed with the Trumps, even gracing their lavish wedding with their presence. Their daughter Chelsea is a best friend of Trump’s daughter Ivanka. [Trump] [US_Election16]
• Meet the potential Trump Cabinet picks most likely to make liberals squirm
  By Aaron Blake November 11 at 2:15 PM ? Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke holds up a rifle that was presented to him as part of his Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2015 in National Harbor, Md. (Alex Brandon/AP) We don't know a whole heckuva lot about who Donald Trump will pick for his Cabinet at this point. So far, the process is heavy on rumors and preliminary lists. For Trump, selecting and vetting his picks isn't a three-day process, nor should we expect much of it to be done in public. [Trump]
• On foreign policy, Donald Trump is no realist
  By Robert D. Kaplan
  November 11 at 7:10 PM Robert D. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and author of “Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World,” to be published in January. President-elect Donald Trump is being called a “realist” in foreign policy. Don’t believe it. He may have some crude realist instincts, but that only makes him a terrible messenger for realism. Realists like myself should be very nervous about his election. [Trump] [Foreign policy] [Realism]
• Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, one of the most formidable forces fighting Assad
  This 2015 file photo posted on the Twitter page of Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, shows al-Nusra fighters in Idlib province where the United States has begun to strike the group’s leadership. (AP) By Adam Entous November 10 at 4:42 PM President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government, U.S. officials said. The decision to deploy more drones and intelligence assets against the militant group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra reflects Obama’s concern that it is turning parts of Syria into a new base of operations for al-Qaeda on Europe’s southern doorstep, the officials said. The move underlines the extent to which Obama has come to prioritize the counter­terrorism mission in Syria over efforts to pressure President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, as al-Nusra is among the most effective forces­­ battling the Syrian government. [US Syria policy] [Nusra]
• The Unpredictable Presidency of Donald Trump
  Donald Trump's election as the 45th president of the United States was not the product of his strength, but of Hillary Clinton's weakness. His victory has plunged the US into a deep crisis -- and nobody knows how he might govern, perhaps not even Trump himself. By Gordon Repinski and Holger Stark November 11, 2016 09:41 PM In the moment of his triumph, when Donald Trump began making his way to the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan in the early morning hours of Wednesday, the chanting started -- aggressive and loud, bellowed out by a group of frenzied men. It spread through the crowd and was aimed at Trump's erstwhile opponent, Hillary Clinton. "Lock her up! Lock her up!" Trump, after all, had promised to do just that -- to throw his political adversary in prison as soon as he had taken the oath of office on January 20, not unlike the way Vladimir Putin deals with his enemies in Moscow or Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. And thus, the zero hour of the new American era began just as the campaign had ended: with a threat that contained little in the way of reconciliation and was reminiscent of distant dictatorships -- even as Trump later sought to rein in the chants by speaking of "binding the wounds of division" and of coming "together as one united people." His followers saw his victory as a signal, as the beginning and not as the end. They bared their teeth and cheered as the Empire State Building radiated red in the night sky with a gigantic image of their leader projected onto the facade. [Trump] [Alienation]
• Trump foreign policy adviser: Trump will demand changes to the Iran nuclear deal
  By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN Updated 2205 GMT (0605 HKT) November 10, • "He's gonna take that agreement, it's been done before in international context, and then review it," Phares said. • "He will take the agreement, review it, send it to Congress, demand from the Iranians to restore few issues or change few issues, and there will be a discussion," Phares said. (CNN)Walid Phares, one of Donald Trump's foreign policy advisers, says the President-elect is going to demand changes to the Iran nuclear agreement. During the campaign, Trump said the Iran deal was one of the worst agreements ever negotiated. In a USA Today op-ed in September of 2015 Trump said, "When I am elected president, I will renegotiate with Iran." Republican members of Congress have sharply criticized the deal since it was announced in 2014. [Iran deal] [Renege] [Trump]
• What will Trump do on Syria?
  Trump's "America first" is likely to make him cooperate with Putin on Syria.
  By Rami G Khouri Rami G Khouri is a senior public policy fellow in the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. Anyone interested in how the United States president-elect Donald Trump will fill in the many blanks in his foreign policy should keep an eye on the Middle East - the most dramatic convergence point of ongoing American military engagements and Russia's foreign policy. Russia and its leader President Vladimir Putin is also the issue on which Trump has spoken with perhaps the most clarity and specificity, amid his otherwise vague and often changing foreign policy positions. Syria, in particular, is where Trump's emphatic "America-first" principles and his disdain for promoting regime change and nation-building abroad naturally line up with two of his expressed views: The US should get out of the war in Syria and avoid destabilising more Middle Eastern countries, and the US should work with Putin to defeat terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). [Trump] [US Syria policy] [Russia Syria]
• Change.org Petition to Unseat Donald and Make Hillary President
  By Stephen Lendman Global Research, November 11, 2016 Change.org is a for-profit enterprise, not an NGO – deceiving supporters by using the .org domain suffix, not .com as it should. Its business is getting people to sign petitions, along with selling advertising and personal data for added profits. Best to ignore its petitions altogether, especially a deplorable one now circulating with nearly two million signers – calling for the Electoral College to make war goddess/racketeer/perjurer Hillary president when it votes on December 19 - wanting Trump’s election annulled. Democracy in America is pure fantasy. Change.org wants it undermined more than already – for its bottom line interests exclusively, taking advantage of state-sponsored and media anti-Trumpism, unrelated to electoral results or anything else. What it asks for, is the following: “On December 19, the Electors of the Electoral College will cast their ballots. If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win.” “However, they can vote for Hillary Clinton if they choose. Even in states where that is not allowed, their vote would still be counted, they would simply pay a small fine – which we can be sure Clinton supporters will be glad to pay! We are calling on the Electors to ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton.” [US_Election16] [Democracy] [Coup]
• Meet Trump's Cabinet-in-waiting
  He’s expected to reward the band of surrogates who stood by him. By Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia 11/09/16 02:56 AM EST President-elect Donald Trump does not have the traditional cadre of Washington insiders and donors to build out his Cabinet, but his transition team has spent the past several months quietly building a short list of industry titans and conservative activists who could comprise one of the more eclectic and controversial presidential Cabinets in modern history. Trumpworld has started with a mandate to hire from the private sector whenever possible. That’s why the Trump campaign is seriously considering Forrest Lucas, the 74-year-old co-founder of oil products company Lucas Oil, as a top contender for Interior secretary, or donor and Goldman Sachs veteran Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary He’s also expected to reward the band of surrogates who stood by him during the bruising presidential campaign, including Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, all of whom are being considered for top posts. A handful of Republican politicians may also make the cut, including Sen. Bob Corker for secretary of state or Sen. Jeff Sessions for secretary of defense. [Trump] [Cabinet] [Corker]
• Trump’s Triumph: DiEM25 on how progressives must react
  Yanis Varoufakis Posted on November 9, 2016 by yanisv Donald Trump’s victory marks the end of an era when a self-confident Establishment preached the end of history, the end of passion and the supremacy of a technocracy working on behalf of the 1%. But the era it ushers in is not new. It is a new variant of the 1930s, featuring deflationary economics, xenophobia and divide-and-rule politics. Passion has returned to politics but not in a way that will help the 80% left behind since the 1970s. Passion is now fuelling misanthropy. Passion is exploiting the anger of the 80% to re-arrange power at the top, while leaving the 80% moribund, betrayed and divided. And it is our job to stop this. It is our job to harness passion in the cause of humanism. The Establishment’s folly is causing its demise. Unable to come to terms with the economic crisis they created, they crushed the Greek Spring because they could. They pushed the majority of British families into austerity-induced hopelessness. They committed millions of Germans to mini-jobs. They conspired to keep Bernie Sanders at bay. And when Golden Dawn, Brexit, the Alternative für Deutschland and Donald Trump were the result, they responded with a mixture of condescension, denial and panic. Politics is undergoing a shake up that the world has not seen since the 1930s. A Great Deflation is now gripping both sides of the Atlantic, re-kindling political forces that had been dormant since the 1930s. President Trump’s use of Mussolini-like tactics and narratives is a mere symptom of the rendition of that bleak era. [Trump] [Radical]
• An American Tragedy
  By David Remnick , November 9, 2016 The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety. [Trump] [Liberal]
• With Trump as commander in chief, ‘America is in uncharted territory’
  By Missy Ryan November 9 at 3:58 PM ? This fall, after Iranian naval vessels veered dangerously close to American ships in the Middle East, then-candidate Donald Trump promised a swift response. “With Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water,” the Republican presidential nominee told supporters in September. Trump’s vow to escalate a standoff with a significant military power stood in contrast to the Obama administration’s calibrated response to the naval confrontations with Iran, which included using loudspeakers to wave off approaching ships and firing warning shots into the water. It also raises questions about what the nation can expect from a commander in chief who, as a candidate, vowed to upend many of the fundamentals of U.S. defense policy and transform the use of the world’s most powerful military. [Trump] [US military]
• Hillary versus Donald: Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead! Victory for the Wizard of Oz!
  By Diana Johnstone Global Research, November 09, 2016 The real meaning of this election is not, as bitterly disappointed Hillary supporters still maintain with tears in their eyes and fear in their throats, a victory for racism and sexism. The real meaning of this upset is that Wall Street’s globalization project has been rejected by the citizens of its homeland. This has major implications for the European nations that have been dragged along into this ruinous project. [Trump] [Hillary Clinton]
• The Iraqi Christians Who Are Struggling to Survive After Isis
  by Patrick Cockburn In the half-burned church of St Mary al-Tahira in Qaraqosh, several dozen Syriac Catholics are holding a mass in Aramaic amid the wreckage left by Isis. The upper part of the stone columns and the nave are scorched black by fire and the only artificial light comes from three or four candles flickering on an improvised altar. Isis fighters used the courtyard outside as a firing range and metal targets set at one end of it are riddled with bullets. In his sermon, the Syriac Catholic Bishop of Baghdad Yusuf Abba calls for the congregation to show cooperation and goodwill to all. But the people of Qaraqosh, an overwhelmingly Christian town 20 miles south east of Mosul, wonder just how much goodwill and cooperation they can expect in return. . The Christians are still traumatised by the disasters of the last two-and-a-half years. When Isis took Qaraqosh on 8 August 2014 it had a population of 44,000, almost all Syriac Catholics, who fled for their lives to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Some 40 per cent of these have since migrated further to countries like Australia and France or, within the Middle East, to Istanbul and Lebanon. [ISIS] [Christianity]
• A View of the Syrian War From the Golan Heights
  by Robert Fisk November 9, 2016 From Colonel Saleh’s forward position on his front line north of Quneitra, he has a unique and exclusive view of the Syrian war. To his west and south is a vast area of his country which is occupied by Jabhat al-Nusra Islamist fighters – their earthen ramparts and supply roads are scarcely half a mile away. Then, another couple of miles away, Israeli soldiers are inside their concrete positions on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, above the old and Nusra-held Syrian city of Quneitra. “You see that mosque over there, just to the right of the water tower?” the colonel asks. “Well, Nusra is there. And you see the triangular hill beyond? The Israelis are there.” It’s what you call a politically intriguing battlefield – yes, shells do come whizzing in towards the Syrians from Nusra and also from the Israelis. The Syrians concentrate their fire on Nusra but Nusra’s casualties are often taken through the Israeli lines for hospital treatment in Haifa. [Nusra] [Israel]
• Congratulations, Folks!
  Israel Shamir • November 9, 2016 What could be better than waking up in time to witness the last few minutes of the historic race between the Champion of Deplorables and the Best Friend of Banksters, and to see Trump emerging victorious! Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to see these scenes at all and especially in sunny Jerusalem where I am now, and thank you, our American friends, for achieving this victory. You were not scared when they called you “racist rednecks”, you did not despair when the CNN said (yesterday) that Clinton had a 96% chance of winning. You did not sat down with a bottle of beer, you still went to the booths and voted, God bless you. [Trump]
• Many of Trump’s sweeping promises will be hard, if not impossible, to fulfill
  By Sean Sullivan and Dana Priest November 9 at 7:21 PM ? NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office under immense pressure to quickly deliver on a list of audacious campaign promises that served as the cornerstone of his bid to disrupt Washington and undo pieces of President Obama’s agenda. Some of Trump’s most dramatic undertakings — such as canceling Obama’s “illegal” executive actions — can be done in his first hours as president. Other priorities, such as repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act or building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, will require the approval of Congress, which will be controlled by Republicans but could still squabble over details. Others still could run into political or legal obstacles that may be difficult to overcome. For Trump, the transition from proposing severe changes on the campaign trail to trying to navigate the complex gears of government to implement them will serve as a jarring early test of his tenure in the White House. Two of Trump’s ideas could probably be realized as early as his first day in office: scrapping executive orders issued by Obama — including those that shielded from deportation some immigrants who are here illegally — and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate vanquished Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. [Trump] [Candidate promises]
• Donald Trump has won the presidency: ‘It is time for us to come together’
  Associated Press and staff reports Donald Trump has been elected the 45th president of the United States, and in a speech to supporters he said Hillary Clinton had called him to concede. Trump also struck a note of reconciliation. “Now it is time for Americans to bind the wounds of division. It is time for us to come together as one united people,” he said. “I pledge to every citizen that I will be president for all americans and this is so important to me.” His triumph over Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House and threatens to undo major achievements of President Barack Obama. He's pledged to act quickly to repeal Obama's landmark health care law, revoke the nuclear agreement with Iran and rewrite important trade deals with other countries, particularly Mexico and Canada. The Republican blasted through Democrats' longstanding firewall, carrying Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that hadn't voted for a GOP presidential candidate since the 1980s. He needed to win nearly all of the competitive battleground states, and he did just that, claiming Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and others. Global stock markets and U.S. stock futures plunged deeply, reflecting investor alarm over what a Trump presidency might mean for the economy and trade. [Trump]
• Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment
  By Matt Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro Nov. 9, 2016 Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on Tuesday in a stunning culmination of an explosive, populist and polarizing campaign that took relentless aim at the institutions and long-held ideals of American democracy. The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed Hillary Clinton with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as Mr. Trump’s unvarnished overtures to disillusioned voters took hold. The triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on everything from trade to immigration. The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism. [Trump] [Alienation]
• Donald Trump wins the presidency in stunning upset over Clinton
  Early on the morning of Nov. 9, Republican President-elect Donald Trump addressed supporters in New York, declaring victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Here are key moments from that speech. (Video: Sarah Parnass/Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) By Karen Tumulty, Philip Rucker and Anne Gearan November 9 at 5:12 AM ? Donald Trump was elected the nation’s 45th president in the stunning culmination of a campaign that defied expectations and conventions at every turn and galvanized legions of aggrieved Americans in a loud repudiation of the status quo. Hillary Clinton’s quest to make history as the first female president was thwarted by the Republican nominee’s breathtaking performance at the polls. He was carried to victory by voters fed up with the political system and mistrustful of Clinton, a former first lady, senator and secretary of state. Trump, a 70-year-old celebrity businessman who had never before run for office, is poised to become the oldest president ever elected to a first term. After running a divisive campaign, Trump sounded a magnanimous note of reconciliation as he claimed victory shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday. [Trump]
• What President Trump’s foreign policy will look like
  By David Ignatius Opinion writer November 9 at 2:37 AM ? Donald Trump proclaimed “America First” on his way to his head-spinning victory in Tuesday’s presidential election, and the success of that message will rock many foreign capitals where leaders have feared that Trump would alter the basics of U.S. foreign policy. Making predictions about Trump’s foreign policy is difficult, given his lack of experience. But the most likely bet is that as president he will seek to do what he promised during the campaign in breaking from current U.S. approaches to Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Traveling abroad over the past year, I heard concern about Donald Trump’s candidacy from senior officials in more than a dozen countries. He was viewed as an inexperienced and unreliable figure who might dismantle traditional U.S. commitments and alliances. Most foreign leaders will be upset that Hillary Clinton, an advocate of traditional U.S. strategy and commitments, lost the race. [Trump] [Foreign policy]
• Mosul and Aleppo, a reshaping war
  Paul Rogers 7 November 2016 The intense aerial assaults in Iraq and Syria are being seized as an opportunity by forces, both ISIS and other jihadi, on the receiving end. After two weeks of military assault on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, there is no sign of a definitive breakthrough. The attackers, a wide-ranging coalition of international forces, have made some incursions into its eastern environs. But the main part of the city, west of the Tigris, remains firmly under ISIS control. If ISIS does not withdraw, as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's rare message has indicated, the most likely development is the greater use of intensive firepower to support ground troops in ejecting them. The United States and its coalition partners have certainly brought in all the weapons to take that route. Such an approach may kill many civilians and damage much of the city. That, after all, was the pattern in Fallujah and Ramadi during earlier stages of the anti-ISIS campaign. An example of what is being done is a report in the Pentagon’s own newspaper, Stars and Stripes, reporting from a base within range of the city: “Here at Qayara Airfield West, the thud of outgoing fire from American M109 Paladins and CAESAR howitzers manned by French troops stationed at the base is punctuated by the occasional whoosh of rockets launched by a U.S. Army HIMARS (High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System). The multiple-launch rocket systems have unleashed more than 200 rounds in support of Iraqi ground forces since the weapons started shooting from this area 10 weeks ago, first at a nearby base and then here” (see "Destruction, sounds of battle attest to US support for Iraqi offensive on Mosul", Starts and Stripes, 31 October 2016). HIMARS is a multiple-launch rocket system which is highly accurate in all weathers, during night and day, and can operate when strike-aircraft and helicopter-gunships are grounded. The fact that French troops are operating at such a forward base is a reminder that this really is a coalition with a number of western states involved, and a contrast with the country's refusal to get involvoled in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. One result of the media concentration on Mosul is that there is far less coverage in the western media of Russian and Syrian regime operations to take control of eastern Aleppo. The Russians have now announced a brief pause to allow rebels to leave the city before what they describe as the final attack, which would be prosecuted by intensive (and often inaccurate) air-power in support of Syrian ground troops. [Airpower] [Mosul] [Aleppo] [Double standards]
• Democracy at a Dead-End in America
  On the eve of the US election, Hillary Clinton has a lead in the polls, but it's a small one. Donald Trump's success is the logical outcome of the decades-long erosion of liberal democracy in America. An Essay by Georg Diez November 07, 2016 05:33 PM I can hardly believe it -- and my fingers are quivering as I type this -- but I'm afraid that Donald Trump will be elected as the next president of the United States How have I come to that conclusion? It has been like a slow-motion train wreck that we have been watching in amazement, fear and disgust over the course of the past several months. But now, shortly before the trains finally plow into each other, something akin to understanding has set in. It may have been misguided to focus too intently on the trains themselves. The real story is the history of this country, which is so deeply and traumatically divided. It is a country that is so profoundly rent asunder by shock and change, so gripped by fear, that it is hardly recognizable anymore The real story is that of the last 35 years. Since the 1980 Reagan Revolution, a conservative syndicate has systematically strived to destroy the foundations of liberal democracy by elevating the economy, selfishness and social Darwinism above all. The real story is that of the last 25 years. Since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Democrats, the leftists and liberal forces (as has happened with New Labour in Britain and the Social Democrats in Germany) have capitulated to globalization as if to a law of nature. Step by step, they have abandoned a significant segment of their voters: workers and the lower-middle class. The real story is that of the last eight years, during which Barack Obama has been president. For many Americans, his presidency remains an ignominy and a disgrace because racism has such deep roots in American history and now appears to many whites as a matter of survival. Sometimes it seems as though it's all they have left. The election of Donald Trump by these white Americans would be a direct reaction to the eight years of Barack Obama, a man who embodies the future and opportunities of this country. In concert with reactionaries who have come before, Trump invokes an idyllic past, to which it is impossible to return, not even with violence. [Alienation] [US_Election16] [Reagan] [Liberal]
• The FBI-Justice Department war has gone nuclear. Comey’s decision on Clinton’s emails won’t fix the fallout.
  By Tim Weiner The end of the most bitter presidential contest in memory is upon us. One candidate says he may or may not respect the results. The other has been the subject of a long national-security investigation by the FBI. Americans have been justly afraid of a crisis before and after the ballots are cast. What if a cyberattack strikes Monday? If self-proclaimed poll-watchers confront voters with violence on Tuesday? If a clear loser refuses to concede and rejects the will of the people on Wednesday? FBI Director James B. Comey broke ranks with his superiors at the Justice Department on October 28 and fired a loaded weapon in the form of a letter to Congress. On Sunday, that bullet ricocheted. He has inflicted a wholly unnecessary wound on the Democratic presidential nominee and left a scar on the American body politic. [FBI] [Emails] [DoJ] [Hillary] [Media]
• Elephant In The Room: The Pentagon’s Massive Carbon Footprint
  by Lisa Savage July 23, 2015 It’s not news that climate change threatens the security of every person on planet Earth. The Union of Concerned Scientists predicts 6-16 inches of sea level rise by the year 2050. The threat is apparent in the Marshall Islands, which just set its own ambitious goal for reducing carbon emissions in the wake of catastrophic storms and coastal flooding in the South Pacific. The threat is apparent in California, where prolonged drought has led to wildfires like the one that crossed a busy highway and caused several vehicles to explode in flames. The threat of weather extremes is apparent in Sydney, Australia, which saw snowfall this winter for the first time since 1836. What is news: the Pentagon’s enormous, unacknowledged contribution to climate change. According to its own study, in 2013 the Pentagon consumed fuel equivalent to 90,000,000 barrels of crude oil. This amounts to 80% of the total fuel usage by the federal government. If burned as jet fuel it produces about 38,700,000 metric tons of CO2. And the Pentagon’s figures do not include carbon produced by the thousands of bombs dropped in 2013, or the fires that burned after the jets and drones departed. Corporate media reports on alarming climate change never mention the Pentagon. Newspapers and television stations [Pentagon] [Climate change]
• Majority of voters think Clinton acted illegally, new poll finds
  By Anita Kumar and Lesley Clark McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — A majority of voters believe Hillary Clinton has done something illegal, according to a new McClatchy-Marist Poll days before the presidential election. A total of 83 percent of likely voters believe that Clinton did something wrong – 51 percent saying she did something illegal and 32 percent saying she something unethical but not illegal. Just 14 percent said she’s done nothing wrong. By comparison, 79 percent think Donald Trump did something wrong, though not nearly as many think he did something illegal. Just 26 percent think he’s done something illegal, while 53 percent think he’s dome something unethical but not illegal. Just 17 percent think he’s done nothing wrong. The deep suspicion of Clinton is likely a top reason she’s lost much of her lead and the race for the White House has tightened in the race’s closing days. [Hillary Clinton] [Legality] [Public opinion]
• ‘I Saw My Father Dying’: A View From Aleppo’s Government-Held Side
  By Anne Barnard Nov. 4, 2016 ALEPPO, Syria — The government-held side of Aleppo looks halfway normal: bustling with restaurants, parks, hotel swimming pools and commuters. President Bashar al-Assad’s main pitch to his people is that they are safer in the territory he controls, a far cry from the bombs and hunger on the rebels’ half of the storied and strategic city. This is what the government wanted international journalists to see when it invited a group into the country this week after years of keeping most out. But when I stepped off the bus, I found a war zone. The thump of outgoing artillery fire sounded throughout Thursday morning, and the crack of incoming shells was increasing. Paramedics whisked groaning men in camouflage jackets from ambulances outside Al Razi hospital, where a 14-year-old boy wept quietly. His mother had just been killed when a mortar shell hit their house; his father had died in an attack the day before. [Syria] [Media]
• The Secrets of the US Election: Julian Assange Talks to John Pilger
  by Julian Assange – John Pilger This interview was filmed in the Embassy of Ecuador in London – where Julian Assange is a political refugee – and broadcast on November 5, 2016. John Pilger: What’s the significance of the FBI’s intervention in these last days of the U.S. election campaign, in the case against Hillary Clinton? Julian Assange: If you look at the history of the FBI, it has become effectively America’s political police. The FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist us. But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI’s investigation, so there’s anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak. We’ve published about 33,000 of Clinton’s emails when she was Secretary of State. They come from a batch of just over 60,000 emails, [of which] Clinton has kept about half – 30,000 — to herself, and we’ve published about half. [WikiLeaks] [Hillary Clinton]
• President al-Assad: United States and its Western allies are to blame for failure of latest ceasefire
  3 November? 2016 Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad asserted that the United States and its Western allies are to blame for the failure of latest ceasefire, because terrorism and terrorists are for them a card they want to play on the Syrian arena. In an interview given to the Serbian newspaper Politika, President al-Assad said that Russia is very serious and very determined to continue fighting the terrorists, while the Americans base their politics on a different value as they use the terrorists as a card to play the political game to serve their own interests at the expense of the interests of other countries in the world. President al-Assad pointed out that Western countries wanted to use the humanitarian mask in order to have an excuse to intervene more in Syria, either militarily or by supporting the terrorists. Following is the full text of the interview: Question 1: Mr. President, why has the latest Syria ceasefire failed? Who is to blame for that? President Assad: Actually, the West, mainly the United States, has made that pressure regarding the ceasefire, and they always ask for ceasefire only when the terrorists are in a bad situation, not for the civilians. And they try to use those ceasefires in order to support the terrorists, bring them logistic support, armament, money, everything, in order to re-attack and to become stronger again. When it didn’t work, they ask the terrorists to make it fail or to start attacking again. So, who’s to blame? It’s the United States and its allies, the Western countries, because for them, terrorists and terrorism are a card they want to play on the Syrian arena, it’s not a value, they’re not against terrorists. For them, supporting the terrorists is a war of attrition against Syria, against Iran, against Russia, that’s how they look at it. That’s why not only this ceasefire; every attempt regarding ceasefire or political moving or political initiative, every failure of these things, the United States was to be blamed. Question 2: But which country is supporting terrorism? Saudi Arabia? Qatar? President Assad: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey… Journalist: Turkey? President Assad: Because they came through Turkey with the support of the government, direct support from the government. Journalist: Directly? President Assad: Direct support from the government, of course. [Bashar Assad] [US Syria policy]
• Privatization Cure Often Worse Than Malady
  By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury Jomo Kwame Sundaram was a UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Anis Chowdhury is Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, and held various senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok. KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Nov 3 2016 (IPS) - Privatization of SOEs has been a cornerstone of the neo-liberal counterrevolution that swept the world from the 1980s following the economic crisis brought about by US Fed’s sharp hike in interest rates. Developing countries, seeking aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, often had to commit to privatization as a condition for credit support. The World Bank and the IMF then attributed developing countries’ inability to adjust to the external shocks of that time, inter alia, to their import-substituting industrial policy initiatives and the inefficiency of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Hence, their support came with conditions to undertake measures for ‘stabilization’ and ‘structural adjustment’. Privatization was seen and advocated as an easy means to accelerate growth, improve efficiency and productivity, shrink the public sector and associated debt, as well as reduce governments’ financial and administrative responsibilities and activities. However, the privatization experiences of the last three and a half decades, especially for developing countries, have been anything but glorious. [Privatisation]
• Iran to ‘send nuclear deal to museum’ if US fails to keep its pledges: IRGC
  “If the US does not remain fully committed to its pledges in implementation of the nuclear deal, the inactive centrifuges will come on stream once again but this time we will not restrict ourselves to the pre-sanctions level,” the commander said. The Iranian government is not just committed to the US and the G5+1 countries, it is also committed to the Iranian nation, Salami said, adding that the Iranian government has promised the nation that if the US fails to honor its commitments under the nuclear deal, it will nullify the deal and resume nuclear activities. Baku – APA. If the US fails to honor its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran will send it to museum and return to the first point, according to an IRGC official. Deputy Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Hossein Salami issued the warning in Tehran on Thursday on the anniversary of the take-over of the US embassy in Tehran by revolutionary students in 1979, IRNA reported. The day, which is also called as the Student Day, falls on November 3 this year. “If the US does not remain fully committed to its pledges in implementation of the nuclear deal, the inactive centrifuges will come on stream once again but this time we will not restrict ourselves to the pre-sanctions level,” the commander said. The Iranian government is not just committed to the US and the G5+1 countries, it is also committed to the Iranian nation, Salami said, adding that the Iranian government has promised the nation that if the US fails to honor its commitments under the nuclear deal, it will nullify the deal and resume nuclear activities. [Iran deal] [Renege]
• The intrigue-laden tale of U.S. efforts to seize jet engines bound for Iran
  By Michael Doyle WASHINGTON — A British Virgin Islands-based company allegedly controlled by Russians now faces a $15,000-a-day fine until it retrieves a pair of General Electric jet engines thought to be bound for Iran. And no, a federal judge says, a comparable pair of jet engines located in Miami won’t suffice as an alternative. In a case that combines asset forfeiture with a hint of international intrigue, U.S. District of Columbia District Court Judge Gladys Kessler imposed the fine this week on Evans Meridians, Ltd, after rejecting the company’s offer to turn over instead what Kessler called “the Miami engines.” Such sales would be legal today, in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal. The stakes could be more than financial, even as the United States begins lifting certain economic sanctions on Iran. The Justice Department contends, Kessler noted, that the two jet engines being sought were “destined for Iran, and more specifically, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.” “If correct, each day that the defendant engines remain outside the United States increases the risk that they will arrive at their intended destination, and thereby benefit a hostile organization,” Kessler reasoned. [Iran deal] [Renege] [Legality]
• I Envy You
  Israel Shamir • November 3, 2016 I envy you, American citizens. I do not care about your military might, nor for your supreme currency, the US dollar. I envy your chance to deal on 11/8 a decisive blow to the rule of the Masters of Discourse. Though the Masters control the entirety of world media, and they decide what people may think and say from Canada to Hong Kong, only you, American citizens, can defeat them. This is a great chance, a unique opportunity not to be missed. The Masters of Discourse can be defeated. They are not stronger than any ruler of past. Trump has a great quality making him fit for the task: he is impervious to labels and libels. He had been called everything in the book: anti-Semite, racist, women hater, you name it. And he still survived that flak. Such people are very rare. We know he is against the Masters because every newspaper is against him. I never saw a similar onslaught but once, in Russia in 1996. Then President Yeltsin, an old drunkard who had brought Russia to collapse, had to run for his second term. His popularity was next to zero. Two per cent of Russians intended to vote for him. And then the oligarchs turned on their propaganda machine. Yeltsin’s competitor Gennady Zyuganov, a mild church-going post-communist, had been presented like a Hitler of his days. All the Russian media of the day belonged to oligarchs, and all of it participated in the onslaught. Zyuganov surrendered. Perhaps he won the election, but he congratulated Yeltsin with his victory. It was said that he was threatened with assassination unless… Others say he was bribed. I do not exclude both explanations, but for sure the might of united media can crush a timid man. [Media] [Election]
• At the close of an ugly contest, a stark reality of low expectations awaits the next president
  By John Wagner November 4 at 11:22 AM Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) This story was reported by Jose A. DelReal, Anne Gearan, Abby Phillip, Patricia Sullivan, Sean Sullivan, John Wagner and David Weigel and written by Wagner. RALEIGH, N.C. — Jennifer Petticolas arrived early at the Hillary Clinton rally here, and there was no doubt that the Democratic nominee would get her vote. But the retired educator said the biggest draw for her on a sunny fall day was Mothers of the Movement — women appearing on the program with Clinton who have lost children to gun violence or in the custody of law enforcement. As the African American grandmother of a 3-year-old, Petticolas said she prays for the day that her grandson will be able to walk down the street and not be viewed suspiciously by police because of his skin color. Asked what she thinks the Democratic nominee can do to help with that, Petticolas sighed — and then confessed that her expectations aren’t terribly high for a candidate she considers only “the better of the two.” “This is the worst election I’ve ever seen,” Petticolas said, “and I’m 68 years old.” [US_Election16] [Alienation]
• Rudy Giuliani Confirms FBI Insiders Leaked Information To The Trump Campaign
  “Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it.” 11/04/2016 11:49 am Mollie Reilly Deputy Politics Editor, The Huffington Post Rudy Giuliani said Friday that he knew the FBI planned to review more emails tied to Hillary Clinton before a public announcement about the investigation last week, confirming that the agency leaked information to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign The former New York City mayor and Trump surrogate has recently dropped a series of hints that he knew in advance that the FBI planned to look at emails potentially connected to Clinton’s private server. The agency discovered the messages while investigating former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) for allegedly sexting with a minor. (Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a top aide to Clinton.) Giuliani has bragged about his close ties to the FBI for months, mentioning in interviews that “outraged FBI agents” have told him they’re frustrated by how the Clinton investigation was handled. And two days before FBI Director James Comey announced that the agency was reviewing the newly uncovered emails, Giuliani teased that Trump’s campaign had “a couple of surprises left.” [Hillary Clinton] [Emails] [FBI]
• A Retired FBI Agent Addresses James Comey on the Hillary Clinton Investigation
  By Hugh Galyen October 25, 2016 Mr. James Comey, Director Federal Bureau of Investigation Sir, I am writing regarding your public statement in July, 2016 informing the American people that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton was being closed without referring it to a Federal Grand Jury or the Attorney General of the U. S. for a decision whether or not to indict her. Strangely, you eloquently laid out enough of the evidence deduced from the investigation to strongly indicate there was abundant evidence uncovered during the investigation and interview of her to not only indict but to convict her in Federal Court.­­­­­­­ ­­­­­­However, you personally re-worded and soft-pedaled the actions she took as Secretary of State describing her actions as "extremely careless” in using a personal email and un-secured server for her communications while Secretary of State. You rewrote the statute, which is not your job. [Hillary Clinton] [Emails] [FBI]
• Iraq ‘Ready For War’ With Turkey Over Who Should Control Mosul After Isis
  Patrick Cockburn • November 2, 2016 Iraq and Turkey are threatening to go to war with each other over who should hold power in Mosul and the surrounding region after the defeat of Isis. Turkish tanks and artillery have deployed along the border and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said that while Iraq “did not want war with Turkey” it is ready to fight one if necessary. The confrontation is sharpening as the Iraqi Army enters eastern Mosul and Shia militia known as the Hashd al-Shaabi advance towards the town of Tal Afar, threatening to cut Isis’s last escape route from Mosul to Syria. Turkey sees itself as the protector of the Sunni Arabs of Mosul and northern Iraq, a community left vulnerable by the likely defeat of Isis by Shia and Kurdish forces backed by US-led airpower. [Mosul] [Turkey] [Iraq] [Neo-Ottomanism]
• Hillary Clinton and the Neocons
  Veteran GOP foreign policy hawks are flocking to Hillary Clinton. Is it callow opportunism, or a major realignment? By John Feffer, November 2, 2016. Much has been made of the swing in political allegiances of neoconservatives in favor of Hillary Clinton. As a group, Washington’s neocons are generally terrified of Trump’s unpredictability and his flirtation with the alt-right. They also support Clinton’s more assertive foreign policy (not to mention her closer relationship to Israel). Perhaps, too, after eight long years in the wilderness, they’re daydreaming of an appointment or two in a Clinton administration. This group of previously staunch Republicans, who believe in using American military power to promote democracy, build nations, and secure U.S. interests abroad, have defected in surprising numbers. Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, and the Foreign Policy Initiative’s James Kirchick have all endorsed Clinton. Other prominent neocons like The National Review’s William Kristol, the Wall Street Journal’s Max Boot, and SAIS’s Eliot Cohen have rejected Trump but not quite taken the leap to supporting Clinton. [Hillary Clinton] [Neocon]
• The fatal expense of American imperialism
  By Jeffrey D. Sachs October 30, 2016 Part of a weekly series on the economic choices facing the United States and its relations with the rest of the world. For previous entries, click here. THE SINGLE MOST important issue in allocating national resources is war versus peace, or as macroeconomists put it, “guns versus butter.” The United States is getting this choice profoundly wrong, squandering vast sums and undermining national security. In economic and geopolitical terms, America suffers from what Yale historian Paul Kennedy calls “imperial overreach.” If our next president remains trapped in expensive Middle East wars, the budgetary costs alone could derail any hopes for solving our vast domestic problems. [Imperialism]
• Clintons Are Under Multiple FBI Investigations as Agents Are Stymied
  By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 31, 2016 Current and former FBI officials have launched a media counter-offensive to engage head to head with the Clinton media machine and to throw off the shackles the Loretta Lynch Justice Department has used to stymie their multiple investigations into the Clinton pay-to-play network. Over the past weekend, former FBI Assistant Director and current CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Tom Fuentes told viewers that “the FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation.” He said he had received this information from “senior officials” at the FBI, “several of them, in and out of the Bureau.” (See video clip from CNN below.) That information was further supported by an in-depth article last evening in the Wall Street Journal by Devlin Barrett. According to Barrett, the “probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.” Barrett’s article suggests that the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, has attempted to circumvent the investigation. The new revelations lead to the appearance of wrongdoing on the part of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for secretly meeting with Bill Clinton on her plane on the tarmac of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on the evening of June 28 of this year. Not only was Bill Clinton’s wife under an FBI investigation at the time over her use of a private email server in the basement of her New York home over which Top Secret material was transmitted while she was Secretary of State but his own charitable foundation was also under investigation, a fact that was unknown at the time to the public and the media. [Clintons] [Corruption] [FBI]
• Clinton loses popularity edge in tight race with Trump, new Post-ABC Tracking Poll finds
  By Scott Clement and Emily Guskin October 31 at 7:00 AM ? With one week to go, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are in a statistical dead heat nationally. The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains what you should expect from the last week of the election. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Registered voters see Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a nearly identical negative light, mirroring a persistently close split in overall vote preference in a new Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll. Nearly 6 in 10 registered voters have an unfavorable impression of Clinton (59 percent), and an identical percentage see Trump negatively. Nearly half of registered voters, 47 percent, have a "strongly unfavorable" view of Clinton and Trump alike. [US_Election16] [Public opinion]
• Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run
  Thomas Frank WikiLeaks’ dump of messages to and from Clinton’s campaign chief offer an unprecedented view into the workings of the elite, and how it looks after itself Monday 31 October 2016 22.00 AEDT Last modified on Tuesday 1 November 2016 05.39 AEDT The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers. The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent. [Corruption] [Cronyism]
• Justifying the Saudi Slaughter in Yemen
  October 31, 2016 Exclusive: Official Washington insists Iran is the main Mideast troublemaker when clearly that isn’t true, but the “group think” explains why a few intercepted arms shipments to Somalia where linked to Iran and Yemen, reports Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter The Obama administration has carried out a deliberately deceptive campaign accusing Iran of covertly sending arms to the Houthis by sea, a claim that Washington cites to help justify the Saudi massive air attack against the Houthis that began last year. By repeating the accusation over and over, the administration has been largely successful in turning a dubious allegation into accepted fact, even though it is contradicted by evidence that is well-documented on the public record. [Yemen] [US Middle East policy] [Propaganda]

• Five myths about the Salem witch trials
  By Stacy Schiff October 28 Stacy Schiff is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem.” Historical truths emerge only with time, after which they are ours, particularly on Halloween, to mangle. Early on, the Salem witch trials disappeared from the record; a hush descended over 1692 for generations. “The People of Salem Do Not Like to Be Questioned in Regard to the Witchery Affair” reads a Philadelphia Inquirer headline — from 1895. It fell to others to resurrect the “witchcraft,” as the South did during the debate over slavery. Then came Arthur Miller, who made off with the story, or at least a version of it. A lush mythology grew up around the trials, one that reassured us that these events took place in a remote land in no way resembling our own. In truth, they are deeply woven into the American fabric. They are more relevant than the lore suggests — our earliest instance of conspiratorial fantasy and reckless demonizing, of the brand of national distemper that grips us in anxious times. [Hysteria]
• The Foreign-Policy Elite Are Extremely Ready for More War in Syria
  By Eric Levitz In an election cycle that has pushed American politics to new heights of partisan acrimony, the Washington foreign-policy elite has represented a singular bastion of bipartisan comity. A large segment of the GOP’s neoconservative wing broke with Donald Trump in the early days of his general-election campaign. A significant number took shelter in Hillary Clinton’s coalition, where they’ve gotten along amiably with liberal interventionists who share their belief that Obama has betrayed America’s obligation to lead. That point of agreement has now been ratified in a flurry of new reports — from an array of think tanks that span partisan divide — all calling for an escalation in U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war. Per the Washington Post: The studies, which reflect Clinton’s stated views and the direction she is likely to take if she is elected, break most forcefully with Obama on Syria. Virtually all these efforts, including a report that will be released Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress, call for stepped up military action to deter President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Russian forces in Syria. The proposed military measures include calls for safe zones to protect moderate rebels from Syrian and Russian forces. Most of the studies propose limited American airstrikes with cruise missiles to punish Assad if he continues to attack civilians with barrel bombs, as is currently happening in besieged Aleppo. So far, Obama has staunchly resisted any military action against the Assad regime. The foreign-policy elite’s frustration with President Obama’s reluctance to engage in a large-scale military intervention in Syria is nothing new. And the desire to do something to ameliorate the suffering of the Syrian people is, of course, understandable. But there are a few problems with the narrative advanced by the papers and foreign-policy thinkers quoted in the Post — which is to say, the notion that the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria illustrates the perils of America withdrawing from the world. Or as Philip Gordon, a senior foreign-policy adviser to Obama until 2015, put it in an interview with the paper, “There’s a widespread perception that not being active enough or recognizing the limits of American power has costs … So the normal swing is to be more interventionist.” For one thing, this summation suggests that America has not been active in Syria under Obama’s tenure. Which is false. Among other things, the United States has provided weapons and training to Syrian rebel groups and conducted air strikes against ISIS in eastern Syria. [US Syria policy]
• FBI’s new Clinton investigation could upend presidential race
  By Anita Kumar, David Goldstein and David Lightman McClatchy Washington Bureau With 11 days left in the presidential election, the FBI’s decision to launch another investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email system for government business threatens to upend an already volatile race. At the most, it could turn at least some voters to rival Donald Trump, who has rested much of his pitch on the argument that Clinton is dishonest and who grabbed at the news immediately as a gift to salvage his trailing campaign. With less but still important impact, it could freeze the momentum to Clinton that has helped her pull ahead in past weeks. At a minimum, it could have a nominal effect on an electorate that already had doubts about her honesty, and has already started voting. FBI Director James Comey set off the late October furor with a letter to Congress on Friday saying the agency was launching another investigation into Clinton’s personal email server after obtaining additional information in an unrelated case Thursday. “The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote in the letter. “I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation [US_Election16] [FBI] [Emails]
• Inside the Invisible Government; War, Propaganda, Clinton & Trump
  by John Pilger The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions. In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade – behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!” Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it”. He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government”. Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged. Imagine two cities. [Media] [Propaganda] [Imperialism]
• Seven World-Historical Achievements of the Iraq Invasion of 2003
  by Gary Leupp Here is a list of the noteworthy, ongoing results of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq beginning in March 2003. (Recall that that that invasion was denounced by the UN as illegal, based entirely on lies, and—given the U.S.’s hegemonic position in the world, allowing it to act with impunity—the crime’s architects have never punished.) [US Middle East Strategy] [Consequences]
• Irony Redefined: “Human Rights Champion” Suu Kyi Jails Dissidents
  Tony Cartalucci Myanmar’s defacto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi of the National League for Democracy (NDL) political party, has paved her time since coming to power earlier this year with both irony and hypocrisy. She has not only illegally declared herself “leader” of the Southeast Asian state in contravention of its constitution, she has also embarked on an iron-fisted purge of her political opponents identical to the one she fought against as she struggled to seize power to begin with. http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/28/irony-redefined-human-rights-champion-suu-kyi-jails-dissidents/ [Suu Kyi]
• Computer seized in Weiner probe prompts FBI to take new steps in Clinton email inquiry
  Hillary Clinton calls on FBI to release information on emails By Rosalind S. Helderman, Matt Zapotosky and Sari Horwitz October 28 at 9:32 PM Newly discovered emails found on a computer seized during an investigation of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner thrust the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server back into the presidential campaign less than two weeks before the election. Officials said the discovery prompted a surprise announcement Friday by FBI Director James B. Comey that the agency would once again be examining emails related to Clinton’s time as secretary of state. In a letter to lawmakers, Comey said the FBI would take “appropriate investigative steps” to determine whether the newly discovered emails contain classified information and to assess whether they are relevant to the Clinton server probe. [Hillary Clinton] [Emails] [FBI]
• Professor who’s predicted 30 years of presidential elections correctly is doubling down on a Trump win
  By Peter W. Stevenson October 28 at 8:50 AM Professor Allan Lichtman, author of "The Keys to the White House," explains why his keys still point to a Democratic loss in the 2016 presidential election – and a Donald Trump victory. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Last month, the man who's tried to turn vote prediction into a science predicted a Trump win. Allan J. Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University, said Democrats would not be able to hold on to the White House. In the intervening weeks, the campaign was rocked by a series of events. The release of the Access Hollywood tape obtained by The Washington Post was followed by accusations from a growing list of women of various improprieties on Trump's part, ranging from verbal abuse and harassment to outright sexual assault. Fix founder Chris Cillizza named Trump the winner of the inauspicious “Worst Week in Washington” award for four weeks running. At the same time, WikiLeaks released internal Clinton campaign emails, and the U.S. government flatly accused the Kremlin of being involved. And let's not forget those presidential debates. So plenty has changed. But one thing hasn't: Lichtman, author of “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House 2016,” is sticking with his prediction of a Trump victory. [US_Election16] [Prediction]
• The True Flag – Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire
  Understanding Imperial Rhetoric. Review of Stephen Kinzer's Book By Jim Miles Global Research, October 28, 2016 The True Flag – Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire. Stephen Kinzer. Henry Holt and Company, New York. 2017. The American empire is usually not spoken of as such within today’s current mainstream media discussions, but is generally recognized as such during infrequent candid moments, and within discussions in much of the alternate media. The discussion is not new, and the factors within the discussion, while changing somewhat with the times, tend to have remained the same. Stephen Kinzer’s illustrative new history, The True Flag, takes the reader back to the turn of the Twentieth Century when the first acts of overseas empire were argued and acted on. It can be argued that ‘empire’ starts with the first movement across the continent by the new United States, incorporating, by various means, Florida, the Louisiana Purchase, the northern half of Mexican territory, and the lands of the native population. Kinzer acknowledges all that indirectly, as do some of the characters in the history, but his focus is on the pivotal years of 1898 to 1901 when the arguments concerning overseas territories focussed on the Spanish empire in Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the then sovereign state of Hawaii. [Imperialism] [History] [Philippines]
• Iran-backed Shi'ite militias to join assault near Mosul on new front
  By Saif Hameed and Maher Chmaytelli | BAGHDAD Iraqi Shi'ite militias backed by Iran said on Friday they would soon join the fight against Islamic State on a new front west of Mosul, a move which could block any retreat by the jihadists into Syria but might alarm Turkey and the United States. The Shi'ite militias, with thousands of battle-hardened fighters trained by Iran, would bring important extra firepower to what is expected to be the biggest battle in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But their arrival on the battlefield in one of the most diverse parts of Iraq also creates worry for Western countries backing the Iraqi government offensive, who fear that the Shi'ite fighters could alienate residents in mainly Sunni areas. [Mosul] [US Middle East Strategy] [Iran]
• In Germany, Syrians find mosques too conservative
  By Joseph Nasr | COLOGNE, Germany Hani Salam escaped civil war in Syria and survived the journey from Egypt to Europe. But when he saw men with bushy long beards at a mosque near his current home in Cologne last November, he was worried. The men's appearance reminded him of Jaish al-Islam, the Islamist rebels who took over his hometown near Damascus, said Salam, 36, who wears a mustache but no beard. One of them told Salam that "good Muslims grow beards, not moustaches," he recalled – a centuries-old idea that he dismisses. "Everything about this mosque made me feel uneasy," he said. Syrians in Germany say many of the country's Arab mosques are more conservative than those at home. [Islam] [Emigres][Conservative]
• Hillary Clinton: A Hawk in the Wings
  After a mere eight years in which diplomacy narrowly edged out militarism, the foreign policy elite rallying around Clinton has forgotten the lessons of the George W. Bush era. By John Feffer, October 26, 2016. When Barack Obama was running for office in 2008, he was determined to redirect U.S. military efforts away from the “bad war” in Iraq and toward the “good war” in Afghanistan. This commitment to extricate the U.S. military from the dismal aftermath of a botched exercise in regime change earned Obama the exaggerated designation of “peace candidate.” Jump ahead eight years and listen to how history rhymes. Today, the Obama administration is reluctant to pour more resources into a failed regime change effort in Syria and far more intent on confronting the Islamic State in the battle for Mosul and, ultimately its capital of Raqqa. Once again, the “good” war competes for attention with the “bad” war. Meanwhile, the candidate that challenged Obama as too naïve and peace-loving back in 2008 is poised to succeed him as president. Once again, she has staked out a more hawkish position. And this time she has a large chunk of the foreign policy elite behind her. As Greg Jaffe wrote last week in The Washington Post: [Hillary Clinton] [Liberal interventionism]
• West's failure to reconnect Iran to global banks 'risks breaching nuclear deal'
  The west risks breaching the landmark nuclear agreement if it fails to give Iran proper access to the international financial system, a former British ambassador to Iran has argued. Sir Richard Dalton, who served in Tehran between 2003 and 2006, said in a report published this week in the journal of the Royal Society of Asian Affairs in London that the US and its allies had made “some potentially significant mistakes” in respect to reconnecting Iran to global banks after the deal. [Iran deal] [Renege]
• Inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’: Hacked memo reveals intersection of charity and personal income
  By Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger October 26 at 8:17 PM ? When top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band wrote the memo, he was a central player at the Clinton Foundation and president of his own corporate consulting firm. Over the course of 13 pages, he made a case that his multiple roles had served the interests of the Clinton family and its charity. In doing so, Band also detailed a circle of enrichment in which he raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president. The system has drawn scrutiny from Republicans, who say it allowed corporations and other wealthy supporters to pay for entree to a popular former president and a onetime secretary of state who is now the Democratic presidential nominee. [Corruption] [Bill Clinton]
• Is Yemen Too Much for the World to Take?
  by Robert Fisk The Yemen war uniquely combines tragedy, hypocrisy and farce. First come the casualties: around 10,000, almost 4,000 of them civilians. Then come those anonymous British and American advisers who seem quite content to go on “helping” the Saudi onslaughts on funerals, markets and other obviously (to the Brits, I suppose) military targets. Then come the Saudi costs: more than $250m (£200m) a month, according to Standard Chartered Bank – and this for a country that cannot pay its debts to construction companies. But now comes the dark comedy bit: the Saudis have included in their bombing targets cows, farms and sorghum – which can be used for bread or animal fodder – as well as numerous agricultural facilities. In fact, there is substantial evidence emerging that the Saudis and their “coalition” allies – and, I suppose, those horrid British “advisers” – are deliberately targeting Yemen’s tiny agricultural sector in a campaign which, if successful, would lead a post-war Yemeni nation not just into starvation but total reliance on food imports for survival. Much of this would no doubt come from the Gulf states which are currently bombing the poor country to bits. [Yemen] [War crimes] [Saudi Arabia]
• Fact Check: Trump Is Right that Clinton Might Cause WW3
  Posted on October 26, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog Trump claims that Clinton’s policy on Syria would lead to World War 3. Let’s fact check … The Washington Post points out that a vote for Clinton is a vote for escalating military confrontation in Syria and elsewhere: In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief. The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House. *** The studies, which reflect Clinton’s stated views, break most forcefully with Obama on Syria …. call[ing] for stepped-up military action to deter President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Russian forces in ­Syria. *** Most of the studies propose limited American airstrikes with cruise missiles to punish Assad …. *** Last year, Obama dismissed calls for a no-fly zone in northwestern Syria — a position advocated by Clinton — as “half-baked.” *** Even pinprick cruise-missile strikes designed to hobble the ­Syrian air force or punish Assad would risk a direct confrontation with Russian forces, which are scattered throughout the key ­Syrian military bases that would be targeted. “You can’t pretend you can go to war against Assad and not go to war against the Russians,” said a senior administration official who is involved in Middle East policy and was granted anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations. [Hillary Clinton] [WWIII] [Russia confrontation] [Libya] [Syria]
• U.S. abstains on UN resolution blasting U.S. Cuba embargo
  By Franco Ordoñez WASHINGTON — For the first time in more than a quarter century, the United States refused to oppose a United Nation resolution condemning the American trade embargo against the communist island. “The United states has always voted against this resolution. Today, United States will abstain,” U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power said to applause from the UN General Assembly. For the 25th consecutive year, the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday for an end to the U.S. policy that restricts trade between the countries. The final vote was 191 in favor, with two abstentions – the United States and Israel. The U.S. abstention aligns the Obama administration with the international community against U.S. laws against Cuba, which continues to be supported by the Republican-led Congress. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls the embargo the “most unjust, severe and long-lived system” of sanctions ever applied against a country. [Cuba] [Embargo] [Sanctions]
• Afghan Woman in Famed National Geographic Photo Is Arrested in Pakistan
  By Christine Hauser and Ismail Khan Oct. 26, 2016 Sharbat Gula, left on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, and then nearly two decades later, after she was featured in a story in the magazine about being reunited with the photographer. Credit Steve McCurry/National Geographic Society, via Agence france-presse An Afghan woman whose photograph as a young refugee with piercing green eyes was published on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, becoming a symbol of the turmoil of war in Afghanistan, is facing charges in Pakistan of fraudulently obtaining national identity cards. The arrest on Wednesday of the woman, Sharbat Gula, came as the Pakistani authorities are cracking down on Afghans with illegal national identity cards. Ms. Gula was arrested at her residence in the northwestern city of Peshawar after more than a year of investigation, said Shahid Ilyas, the assistant director of the Federal Investigation Authority. “We raided the house and picked her up,” he said. “It took us a while to collect all the evidence against her, and the officials involved in helping her and her two sons get Pakistani national identity cards.” He added, “We have the evidence now, and we are going to go for prosecution.” [Afghanistan] [Refugee] [Poverty]
• In Lebanon deal, Iran wins and Saudi retreats
  By Tom Perry and Laila Bassam | Beirut A veteran Christian leader is set to fill Lebanon's long-vacant presidency in a deal that underlines the ascendancy of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement and the diminished role of Saudi Arabia in the country. It appears all but certain that Michel Aoun will become president next week under an unlikely proposal tabled by Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri, whose Saudi-backed coalition opposed Hezbollah for years. Parliament will likely elect Aoun on Oct. 31. This will end one element of a paralyzing political crisis: the 29-month-long presidential vacuum. But it is also creating new tensions that may disrupt the formation of a new government expected to be led by Hariri under a deal with Aoun. Aoun's election will also raise questions over Western policy toward Lebanon. Lebanon's army, guarantor of the country's internal peace, depends on aid from the United States, which deems Hezbollah a terrorist group. Hariri's proposal, unthinkable a few weeks ago, appears to have been forced on him by problems at his Saudi-based construction firm, Saudi Oger, the financial backbone of his political network in Lebanon. It marks the death throes of the Hariri-led alliance that struggled with Hezbollah for more than a decade, only to see the heavily armed Shi'ite group go from strength to strength in Lebanon and the wider region. [Lebanon] [Saudi Arabia]
• House Republicans are already preparing for ‘years’ of investigations of Clinton
  By David Weigel October 26 at 12:19 PM SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman wrapping up his first term atop the powerful House Oversight Committee, unendorsed Donald Trump weeks ago. That freed him up to prepare for something else: spending years, come January, probing the record of a President Hillary Clinton. “It’s a target-rich environment,” the Republican said in an interview in Salt Lake City’s suburbs. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.” In a tweet Wednesday night, Chaffetz reaffirmed his distaste for Clinton and his refusal to endorse Trump — but reversed his plans not to vote for the Republican nominee. If Republicans retain control of the House, something that GOP-friendly maps make possible even in the event of a Trump loss, Clinton will become the first president since George H.W. Bush to immediately face a House Oversight Committee controlled by the opposition party. (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama lost Congress later in their presidencies.) [Hillary Clinton] [Republicans]
• U.S. has secretly expanded its global network of drone bases to North Africa
  By Adam Entous and Missy Ryan October 26 at 1:09 PM The Pentagon has secretly expanded its global network of drone bases­ to North Africa, deploying unmanned aircraft and U.S. military personnel to a facility in Tunisia to conduct spy missions in neighboring Libya. The Air Force Reaper drones began flying out of the Tunisian base in late June and have played a key role in an extended U.S. air offensive against an Islamic State stronghold in neighboring Libya. The Obama administration pressed for access to the Tunisian base as part of a security strategy for the broader Middle East that calls for placing drones and small Special Operations teams at a number of facilities within striking distance of militants who could pose a threat to the West. U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an operation that has not been acknowledged, said the drones being flown out of Tunisia were unarmed and were principally being used to collect intelligence on Islamic State targets in Sirte, Libya, where the United States has conducted more than 300 airstrikes since August. U.S. officials said they sought access to the air base in Tunisia to close a critical “blind spot” for U.S. and Western intelligence services­ in North Africa, which has become the Islamic State’s largest base of operations outside of Syria and Iraq. The region is also home to al-Qaeda-linked fighters. [Drones] [US Africa] [Bases]
• Christians in Syria: “Help us pull our country back from the brink of the abyss”
  Many Christian leaders of Syria are speaking out, asking world leaders to preserve their ancient, war-torn homeland. October 21, 2016 05:24 EST Alessandra Nucci One message that should not be lost in the deluge of often one-sided media reports about the war being waged in Syria is that the land of Damascus—the site of the conversion of the Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul—retains a unique culture of fraternal respect and dignified acceptance of people of different creeds. This culture rejects all attempts to foment division, not only among the various Christian denominations, but even between Christians and Muslims. “You ask how many Muslims there are in Syria, a land of 23 million people? The answer is 23 million. How many Christians? 23 million.” This was the reply given both by the Grand Mufti of Damascus and by a Christian Orthodox bishop to the questions posed by a delegation of American citizens who went to Syria in September. The delegation was seeking to solve the riddle of how the country has managed to withstand more than five years of brutal military attacks, economic sanctions, and media distortion at the hands of several foreign powers. Their report confirms what has been said by the many Syrian religious leaders who have travelled to and from the West, at some risk, in the midst of the warfare, to try and set the record straight, in the interests not only of truth but of peace itself. “Please help us pull our country back from the brink of the abyss of the fundamentalist regime in which they are trying to immerge us,” is the dramatic appeal to the West by Jean Clément Jeanbart, Greek-Melkite archbishop of Aleppo. “Please help us continue to live in a dignified manner on this blessed land where we were born and raised!" [Syria] [Christianity] [Media] [US Syria policy] [Saudi Arabia]
• Snapchat use ends Saudi marriage after two hours
  By Hong Dam-young Social media use has caused a marriage to end in just in two hours in one of the male-dominated Middle East nations. A groom in Saudi Arabia filed for divorce after realizing his wife had shared wedding pictures with her friends on Snapchat, an image messaging mobile app, according to the British Daily Mail on Monday. Not sharing pictures or videos of the ceremony was a binding clause in the marriage contract. "Regretfully, my sister did not honor the pledge and used Snapchat to share pictures from the wedding ceremony with her female friends, resulting in the shocking decision by the groom to cancel their marriage and call for a divorce," said a brother of the bride. [Saudi Arabia] [Bizarre]
• U.S. House to vote on Iran Sanctions Act renewal as soon as November
  By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON The Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives plan a vote as soon as mid-November on a 10-year reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act, congressional aides told Reuters on Tuesday. The act, which expires on Dec. 31, is one of the major pieces of unfinished business facing lawmakers when they return to Washington on Nov. 14 for the first time after the Nov. 8 election. Aides said the reauthorization of a "clean" bill, unchanged from the current legislation, was likely to pass the House, but its fate in the Senate was less certain, given Obama administration concerns. The Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, was first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran's energy industry and deter Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. But President Barack Obama's administration and other world powers reached an agreement with Iran last year in which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The White House has warned Congress repeatedly that it would oppose any new sanctions that interfere with the nuclear deal. But every Republican in Congress and many Democrats opposed the nuclear agreement and do not want the sanctions act to expire [Iran deal] [Renege]
• Plans to send heavier weapons to CIA-backed rebels in Syria stall amid White House skepticism
  By Greg Miller and Adam Entous October 23 at 7:03 PM As rebel-held sections of Aleppo crumbled under Russian bombing this month, the Obama administration was secretly weighing plans to rush more firepower to CIA-backed units in ­Syria. The proposal, which involved weapons that might help those forces defend themselves against Russian aircraft and artillery, made its way onto the agenda of a recent meeting President Obama held with his national security team. And that’s as far as it got. Neither approved nor rejected, the plan was left in a state of ambiguity that U.S. officials said reflects growing administration skepticism about escalating a covert CIA program that has trained and armed thousands of Syrian fighters over the past three years. [US Syria policy] [Proxy] [Nusra]
• Tom Hayden, preeminent 1960s political radical and anti-war protester, dies at 76
  By Elaine Woo October 24 at 2:13 AM Tom Hayden, the preeminent 1960s radical who roused a generation of alienated young Americans, became a symbol of militancy by leading riotous protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and added Hollywood glamour to his mystique with an activist partnership and marriage to film star Jane Fonda, died Oct. 23 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 76. Mr. Hayden’s wife, Barbara Williams, confirmed the death to the Associated Press but did not provide an immediate cause. He had heart disease and was hospitalized for a stroke in 2015. At a moment in history — June 1962 — before U.S. escalation in Vietnam, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the civil rights March on Washington and the awakening of the environmental and feminist movements, Mr. Hayden emerged as one of the most articulate spokesmen of youthful angst. At 22, a year out of college in Michigan, he drafted the Port Huron Statement, an expansive utopian manifesto that extolled “participatory democracy” as an antidote to the complacency and conformity of the Eisenhower decade. [Vietnam war] [Protest]
• The Revolutionary Distemper in Syria That Wasn’t
  By Stephen Gowans Apparently, the US Left has yet to figure out that Washington doesn’t try to overthrow neoliberals. If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were a devotee of the Washington Consensus–as Counterpunch’s Eric Draitser seems to believe–the United States government wouldn’t have been calling since 2003 for Assad to step down. Nor would it be overseeing the Islamist guerilla war against his government; it would be protecting him. There is a shibboleth in some circles that, as Eric Draitser put it in a recent Counterpunch article, the uprising in Syria “began as a response to the Syrian government’s neoliberal policies and brutality,” and that “the revolutionary content of the rebel side in Syria has been sidelined by a hodgepodge of Saudi and Qatari-financed jihadists.” This theory appears, as far as I can tell, to be based on argument by assertion, not evidence. A review of press reports in the weeks immediately preceding and following the mid-March 2011 outbreak of riots in Daraa—usually recognized as the beginning of the uprising—offers no indication that Syria was in the grips of a revolutionary distemper, whether anti-neo-liberal or otherwise. [US Syria policy]
• Clinton’s Slog Deeper into the Big Muddy
  October 24, 2016 Exclusive: In the last debate, Hillary Clinton vowed to follow up the defeat of ISIS in Iraq’s Mosul with a march on ISIS’ capital in Raqqa, except that’s in Syria, a suggestion of a wider war, says Daniel Lazare. By Daniel Lazare Attentive viewers may have noticed something curious about last week’s presidential debate. Asked if she would send troops to help stabilize Iraq once ISIS has been expelled from of the northern city of Mosul, Hillary Clinton replied that U.S. intervention would only make matters worse by providing Islamic State with a rallying point. But then she said: “The goal here is to take back Mosul. It’s going to be a hard fight. I’ve got no illusions about that. And then [we should] continue to press into Syria to begin to take back and move on Raqqa, which is the ISIS headquarters. I am hopeful that the hard work that American military advisers have done will pay off and that we will see a really successful military operation.” Move on Raqqah? What did that mean – that Clinton wants to follow up victory in Mosul with a push into Syria? That she envisions a coordinated military thrust into Syria from Iraq? The answer is not quite, although the results could hardly be more dangerous than if she did. [Hillary Clinton] [US Middle East strategy]
• America's Assad Quandary
  An excruciating fact confronts us: it does not necessarily follow that Bashar al-Assad’s departure would improve the situation in Syria. Robert D. Kaplan October 17, 2016 November-December 2016 A PRINCIPAL tenet of realism is that disorder is worse than injustice, since injustice merely means the world is imperfect, whereas disorder can mean there is no justice for anyone. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has tested this thesis to an unbearable extent. The degree of injustice he has perpetrated can be equated with crimes against humanity. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in a half-decade-old civil war, both ignited and perpetuated by Assad’s regime—not to mention the millions of refugees and regional chaos his rule has spawned in the Middle East and Europe. But an excruciating fact confronts us: it does not necessarily follow that his departure would improve the situation, at least at this juncture. Syria, to put it mildly, is in great disorder. Assad’s abdication could both deepen and broaden that disorder, if it has any effect at all. Don’t ever assume that things cannot get worse. Assad remains a secular ruler from a minority group, whose forces and allied criminal bands still control more of the Syrian heartland than any other warlord. These are not altogether negative attributes, given Syria’s level of anarchy and the plethora of Islamic extremist outfits operating in that environment. His departure, rather than leading directly or indirectly to peace, would more likely raise the stakes for those already vying for supremacy. Rebels would not surrender their guns at the sight of his removal—they would have even more cause to keep fighting for each patch of ground. Damascus, in such a circumstance, could quickly descend into another version of the humanitarian hell that is Aleppo, as various rebel groups battle over the frightful carcass of what was once Syria. Fanciful descriptions of Assad ceding command, even as the Alawite power structure survives to provide transitional stability, entirely miss the point: The Alawite state itself may be synonymous with the very person of Assad, who assumed power in 2000 precisely because it was only he who could unite the various factions of the regime built by his father, Hafez al-Assad. Quite possibly, Bashar al-Assad is the state, or what’s left of it. In any case, an outside power demonstrably acting to dislodge him would have to assume moral and political responsibility for the consequences, which might include a variety of dire outcomes: some ethnic cleansing of the Alawites; the slaughter of more Christians; and the eventual establishment of a Sunni jihadist regime in Damascus more hostile than Assad to Israel and Jordan, both U.S. allies. [US Syria policy]
• Hillary Clinton’s Strategic Ambition in a Nutshell
  by Diana Johnstone It has become crystal clear. For the record, here it is. She has big ambitions, which she does not spell out for fear of frightening part of the electorate, but which are perfectly understood by her closest aides and biggest donors. She wants to achieve regime change in Russia. She enjoys the support of most of the State Department and much of the Pentagon, and Congress is ready to go. The method: a repeat of the 1979 Brezinski ploy, which consisted of luring Moscow into Afghanistan, in order to get the Russians bogged down in their “Vietnam”. As the Russians are a much more peace-loving people, largely because of what they suffered in two World Wars, the Russian involvement in Afghanistan was very unpopular and can be seen as a cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union. [Hillary Clinton] [Russia confrontation] [US Syria policy]
• Ronald McDonald or Lucretia Borgia?
  In the Long Run, We Are all Dead Fred Reed • October 20, 2016 • 1,200 Words • 56 Comments • Reply More fun in the Indispensable Nation: As we have all heard by now, according to Hillary, ardent of becoming National Basilisk, half of Trump’s supporters are evil and the other half losers, deplorables all. That is, she holds half of Americans in contempt. Unsurprisingly she said this in New York, which is barely America, and to a convention of sexual curiosities. I frankly think her admirable. As she coughs, staggers, convulses, lies, pilfers, sells favors and lapses into intermittent confusion, she still has the courage to tell America that she loathes half of it. That´s candor. Give her credit for consistency. She is always mendacious, firmly in the pockets of Wall Street, Israel, the Neocon hawks, and the arms industry, never having accomplished anything on her own, always riding Bill’s coattails, having a disastrous record as SecState, always for sale. With her, we know what we will get. With Trump, it’s a roll of very weird dice. Ah, the Donald. While he unmistakably displays various presidential qualities–he can walk up stairs by himself, and his eyes usually point in the same direction–there is indeed a certain aleatory quality to the man. God knows what he might do. He shoots from the hip, saying all sorts of loopy but interesting things. Interesting if you live somewhere else. He talks unflatteringly about the other sex near open mikes, instead of away from them like everybody else. The Donald merely makes me nervous, while Hillary makes me want to take poison. It is the difference between an acid trip and death by sinus drainage. His truly great strength is that he is not Hillary. The election is really a contest between placeholders for conflicting interests, for different views of the world. Few would want either if there were another choice. Hillary’s attitude toward America has for years been implicit in our ruling class in New York. Having little in common with the rest of the country, they speak of most of it as Flyover Land, a realm of intellectual darkness and barbarism separating Manhattan and Hollywood. So far as I know, this is the first time the elites have had the confidence, if not necessarily the judgement, to say it plainly. Let’s not delude ourselves. America is ruled by the Five Cities, Boston, New York, Washington, Tel Aviv, and Hollywood. The rest of us just pay taxes. The heart of the beast is New York, the Ivies being its nursery and Washington its storefront. [US_election16] [Decline]
• President al-Assad to Swiss SRF 1 TV channel: Fighting terrorists is the way to protect civilians in Aleppo
  By Bashar al Assad Syrian Arab News Agency 19 October 2016 Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad stressed that protecting civilians in Aleppo necessitates getting rid of the terrorists. Speaking in an interview with the Swiss SRF 1 TV channel, the President said “Of course, it’s our mission according to the constitution and the law. We have to protect the people, and we have to get rid of those terrorists in Aleppo. That’s how we can protect civilians.” He added that it goes without saying that the way to protect the civilians in Aleppo is to attack the terrorists who hold the civilians under their control and are killing them. Following is the full text of the interview: Journalist: Mr. President, thank you very much for having welcomed Swiss Television and our program Rundschau here in Damascus. President Assad: You are most welcome in Syria. Question 1: First, please, allow me to clarify one thing: may I ask you every question? President Assad: Every question, without exception. Question 2: I’m asking because one of your conditions is that interview is being broadcast in its full version. Are you afraid that we might manipulate your statements? President Assad: You should answer that question, but I think we should build this relation upon the trust, and I think you are worried about the trust of your audience, so I don’t think so. I think you have good reputation in conveying the truth in every subject you try to cover. [Media] [Bashar Assad]
• A Syrian no-fly zone would be a gift to the terrorists
  By Christina Lin| October 20, 2016 The US and its rebel proxies in Syria appear to be weaponizing human rights as a tool to legitimize regime change operations. In Libya, the US invoked Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a rationale to overthrow the sovereign government under Muammar Gaddafi, and destroyed a country that enjoyed the highest living standard on the African continent prior to US/NATO invasion in 2011. Now this OPEC member is a cauldron of Wahhabi-Salafi terrorism and a weapons bazaar for Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda and various international Islamic extremist groups. With increasing footage of alleged Syrian air force war crimes in Aleppo supplied by the White Helmets — a Syrian civil defense organization created by the US and UK in 2013 — there has been corresponding calls in Washington for a no-fly zone and war against Russia and Syria ostensibly to protect civilians. However, in practice the no-fly zone serves as a form of asymmetric warfare waged by terrorists against an air force. [Syria] [Outsourcing] [No fly zone]
• Cautious Western insurers rebuild business ties with Iran
  By Jonathan Saul and Carolyn Cohn | LONDON Western insurers are slowly reaching deals with Iran as they seek to re-enter a multi-billion dollar market although the pace of business is hampered by banking restrictions ten months on from the lifting of international sanctions. Shut out of international financial markets for years, Iran is still trying to reap the benefits of last year's nuclear deal with world powers. Despite the removal of international banking restrictions in January, Tehran has secured ties with only a limited number of smaller banks as U.S. sanctions remain in force. By contrast, Iran is in more active talks with insurers to provide cover in a market valued at $9 billion overall last year and potentially double that in the next decade. Western companies need insurance in order to resume business with Iran. Shipping and trade credit insurance, which remove the risk of non-payment for goods, are the first types of insurance being offered. [Iran deal] [Financial sanctions]
• Syrian army vows decisive response to terrorist spillover
  Xinhua, October 18, 2016 The Syrian army said on Tuesday that it will deal decisively with Islamic State (IS) terrorists fleeing Iraq's Mosul city into Syria, according to the state news agency SANA. Mosul, an IS stronghold, has been under extensive attack by the Iraqi army in order to drive out IS militants. Although the military statement hailed the progress made by Iraq's army "heroes" against the IS, it warned of a "Western scheme, whose features have started to become obvious." The scheme, the statement continued, is for IS militants to obtain access from Mosul into Syria' eastern region, mainly the province of Deir al-Zour by Iraq's border. "While the general-command of the Syrian army stresses that the battle to liberate Mosul from terrorism is its battle too, it will deem any infiltration of the Syrian borders as an aggression and will deal with the infiltrators as terrorists with all possible means," the statement said. Military experts in Syria have recently warned that Western countries, mainly the United States, want IS militants to flee Iraq into Syria. This comes particularly after the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition attacked Syrian military posts recently, killing 90 soldiers and allowing IS militants to control bombed military posts in Deir al-Zour. Officials in Syria said the U.S. intends for IS to remain strong in Deir al-Zour and for the province to become a safe haven for IS militants fleeing Iraq in order to pressure the Syrian army and its Russian ally. [Mosul] [ISIS] [US Middle East strategy]
• Irregular war, and how to reverse it
  Paul Rogers 20 October 2016 A military-led response to violent movements such as ISIS and al-Qaida misses the wider global forces that are triggering their rise. A member of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces pauses as they advance towards the city of Mosul. 20 October 2016. Khalid Mohammed/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved. The long-awaited military assault on ISIS in Mosul began on 16 October, two years and four months since the movement seized the city in its advance across northern Iraq. Its initial moves were accompanied by much hype from western broadcasters, though this eased within a day amidst some confusion over the pace of operations. Iraqi government officials reported that Kurdish elements were seeking more time to complete the first phase of their operations, whereas Kurdish sources said that they had achieved their objectives and were waiting for Iraqi army units to advance. At the same time, sources point to extensive ISIS use of mortars, car- and truck-bombs and roadside devices, all of them capable of hampering the attackers' progress. ISIS, with at most 6,000 fighters at its disposal in Mosul, faces much larger numbers – around 80,000 in all – arrayed against it. That imbalance could yet be a factor in the decision of the movement's leaders about whether to abandon the city. When Ramadi was retaken in 2015, the Iraqi attackers numbered around 10,000, while 15,000 were deployed in the battle for Fallujah earlier this year. Yet the early indications are that many of the ISIS paramilitaries will stay. If so, a pattern may emerge similar to Ramadi. There, a battle expected to last little more than a fortnight extended for four months, with much of the city severely damaged in airstrikes and artillery bombardments. [COIN] [Global insurgency] [Asymmetry]
• Washington’s foreign policy elite breaks with Obama over Syrian bloodshed
  By Greg Jaffe October 20 at 10:20 AM ? There is one corner of Washington where Donald Trump’s scorched-earth presidential campaign is treated as a mere distraction and where bipartisanship reigns. In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief. The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House. It is not unusual for Washington’s establishment to launch major studies in the final months of an administration to correct the perceived mistakes of a president or influence his successor. But the bipartisan nature of the recent recommendations, coming at a time when the country has never been more polarized, reflects a remarkable consensus among the foreign policy elite. This consensus is driven by a broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East. “There’s a widespread perception that not being active enough or recognizing the limits of American power has costs,” said Philip Gordon, a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama until 2015. “So the normal swing is to be more interventionist.” [US Syria policy] [MISCOM] Hillary Clinton] [Russia confrontation]
• Israel’s Bogus History Lesson
  by Jonathan Cook It was presumably intended as an Israeli history lesson to the world. A video posted to social media by Israel’s foreign ministry shows an everyday Jewish couple, Jacob and Rachel, in a home named the “Land of Israel”. A series of knocks on the door brings 3,000 years of interruptions to their happiness. First it’s the Assyrians, followed by the Babylonians, Hellenists, Arabs, Romans, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottomans – all straight out of Monty Python central casting. Jacob and Rachel are forced by the warring factions to relocate to ever smaller parts of their home until finally they have to pitch a tent in the garden. Their fortunes change only with the arrival of a servant of the British Empire, who returns the title deeds. A final knock disturbs their celebrations. On the doorstep are a penniless Palestinian couple, craning their necks to see what goodies await them inside. The chauvinism in portraying Jacob and Rachel as the only normal folk, stoicly enduring barbarians butchering each other in their living room, is ugly enough. But it is harder still to take seriously an account in which the Palestinians suddenly appear out of nowhere in 1948, as Britain departs. [Israel] [History]
• Dennis Kucinich: War or Peace?
  By Dennis Kucinich The most consequential statement by Secretary Clinton in last night’s debate was her pronouncement that a no-fly zone over Syria could “save lives and hasten the end of the conflict,” that a no-fly zone would provide “safe zones on the ground” was in “the best interests of the people on the ground in Syria” and would “help us with our fight against ISIS.” It would do none of the above. A US attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Syria would, as Secretary Clinton once cautioned a Goldman Sachs audience, “kill a lot of Syrians,” and, according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dunford, lead to a war with Russia. If the US has not been invited into a country to establish a “no-fly zone” such an action is, in fact, an invasion, an act of war. It is abundantly clear from our dark alliance with Saudi Arabia and our conduct in support of jihadists in Syria that our current leaders have learned nothing from Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya as we prepare to plunge head-long into the abyss of a world war. Our international relations are built upon lies to promote regime changes, the fantasy of a unipolar world ruled by America, and a blank check for the national security state. [US Syria policy] [Imperialism]
• Congress’s Take on the Heroin Epidemic
  by William Edstrom / October 17th, 2016 A heroin epidemic is on fire all across America. Heroin deaths shot up from 1,779 in 2001 to 10,574 in 2014 as Afghan opium poppy fields metastasized from 7,600 hectares in 2001 (when the War in Afghanistan began) to 224,000 hectares currently. The Taliban outlawed opium in Afghanistan in 2000 and within a year it was all but gone, demonstrating that Afghan opium can be eradicated quickly for any administration that chooses to do so. Afghanistan is, by far, the number one source globally of both opium and heroin. In 2014, 7,554 tons of raw opium were produced worldwide, including 6,400 tons in US-occupied Afghanistan and 173 tons from Mexico and Colombia. Opium plus chemicals (like acetic anhydride) produce heroin. US-occupied Afghanistan produces 85% of the world’s heroin. Mexico and Colombia produce only 2% of the world’s heroin. Mexico and Colombia produce enough heroin for only 115,000 heroin addicts. [Drugs] [Afghanistan]
• Video: Interview of Syria’s First Lady Asma Al-Assad
  By Asma al-Assad and Russia-TV24 Global Research, October 19, 2016 Syria’s First Lady, Asma al-Assad delivers her first public interview with foreign media. We bring to the attention of Global Research readers her interview with Russia’s Channel 24 TV. It is important that Americans across the land take cognizance of the voice of Syria’s First Lady, acknowledge her humanitarian mandate and commitment outside the realm of mainstream media propaganda. While Obama and the US media have persistently described the war in Syria as the result of sectarian conflicts opposing the Allawite minority and the Sunni majority, they fail to acknowledge that the First Lady Asma Al Assad is Sunni. [Asma al-Assad]
• Turkey bombs Syrian Kurdish militia allied to U.S.-backed force
  Ece Toksabay and Angus McDowall | ISTANBUL/BEIRUT Turkish air strikes pounded a group of Kurdish fighters allied to a U.S.-backed militia in northern Syria overnight, highlighting the conflicting agendas of NATO members Ankara and Washington in an increasingly complex battlefield. The jets targeted positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in three villages, northeast of the city of Aleppo, that the SDF had captured from Islamic State, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late on Wednesday. The Turkish military confirmed its warplanes had carried out 26 strikes on areas recently taken by the Kurdish YPG militia, the strongest force in the SDF, and that it had killed between 160 and 200 combatants. [Turkey] [Kurds] [Friction] [Outsourcing]
• This Battle for Mosul Will Not Be the Last
  by Patrick Cockburn The Iraqi government and its allies may eventually capture Mosul from Isis, but this could be just a new chapter in the war. It will only win because of the devastating firepower of the US-led air forces and sheer weight of numbers. But the fight for the city is militarily and politically complex. The Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga, Shia Hashd al-Shaabi and Sunni fighters from Mosul and Nineveh province, which make up the anti-Isis forces, suspect and fear each other almost as much as they hate Isis. The Western media is portraying the first advances towards Mosul as if it is as orderly and well-planned as the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944. But in private Iraqis, who have seen many decisive victories turn out to be no such thing, are more sceptical about what they are seeing. One Iraqi observer in Baghdad, who did not want his name published, said that “the whole Mosul offensive seems to be a ramshackle affair held together by the expected high level of support from the US air force and special forces”. [Mosul] [Airpower]
• Syrian priest who escaped ISIS says, ‘Boycott Saudi Arabia!’
  Berthold Pelster October 18, 2016 . Syrian priest who escaped ISIS says, ‘Boycott Saudi Arabia!’ Father Jacques Mourad, who was held captive by the Islamic State for nearly five months in 2015. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need.) "Last spring, I had the following inspiration during Mass: our world needs a revolution against violence. Only then will it be able to find peace. We want to be instruments of peace," says Father Jacques Mourad, a priest who was kidnapped by ISIS. HOMS, Syria - Father Jacques Mourad was prior of the Mar Elian monastery, a pilgrimage centre near Al Quaryatayn, about 65 miles southeast of Homs, until he was abducted by Islamic State militants in May 2015. He managed to escape after nearly five months of captivity, yet that August the Islamic State had captured Al Quaryatayn and destroyed the monastery. The city was later liberated by Syrian forces, in April 2016. Now based in Europe, Mourad spoke Oct. 17 with international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need about the situation in Syria. In early April 2016, Al Quaryatayn was finally freed from ISIS. How is the situation there now? The city may have been liberated, but normal, everyday life is not yet possible. Most houses have been destroyed, but at least electricity and water have in the meantime been restored. However, most people have not yet returned to Al Quaryatayn. The fear that ISIS will come back is great. The war in Syria continues unabated. Peace negotiations have repeatedly failed. Many people are fleeing, including Christians. How great is the danger that Christianity will be obliterated in the Middle East? This obliteration has already become reality. There are regions in Iraq and Syria that no longer have any Christian inhabitants. But, the people are not fleeing willingly. They have no other choice. This is especially true for the Christians in Syria, because we are a small minority. The violence that reigns in Syria is unbearable. I do not understand why other countries refuse to see this reality and take action. The world must finally react! What actions are needed?
  If the world is really serious about putting an end to the ravages of the fanatics, then it will have to stop doing business with Saudi Arabia. Because that is where the funding and weapons for ISIS are coming from. [ISIS] [Saudi Arabia]
• After Mosul Falls, ISIS will Flee to Syria. Then What?
  by Robert Fisk Syria’s army and Hezbollah and Iranian allies are preparing for a massive invasion by thousands of Isis fighters who will be driven out of Iraq when Mosul falls. The real purpose behind the much-trumpeted US-planned “liberation” of the Iraqi city, the Syrian military suspect, is to swamp Syria with the hordes of Isis fighters who will flee their Iraqi capital in favour of their “mini-capital” of Raqqa inside Syria itself. [ISIS] [Outsourcing] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Ecuador cut off Assange’s internet at U.S. request, WikiLeaks says
  By Tim Johnson WASHINGTON — Wikileaks said Tuesday that Secretary of State John Kerry asked Ecuador to stop WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, from publishing leaked emails that could disrupt peace negotiations with a guerrilla group in Colombia. [WikiLeaks emails show influence of Univision chairman in Clinton campaign // Internet cutoff is just the latest trouble for WikiLeaks’ Assange] Assange, who has been in refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London for more than four years, saw his access to the internet cut over the weekend. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article108908532.html#storylink=cpy [WikiLeaks] [US dominance] [Pretext]
• The Real Humanitarian Crisis Is Not Aleppo. The Crisis is Washington Loosing its ISIS Mercenaries
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Why do we hear only of the “humanitarian crisis in Aleppo” and not of the humanitarian crisis everywhere else in Syria where the evil that rules in Washington has unleashed its ISIL mercenaries to slaughter the Syrian people? Why do we not hear about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen where the US and its Saudi Arabian vassal are slaughtering Yemeni women and children? Why don’t we hear about the humanitarian crisis in Libya where Washington destroyed a country leaving chaos in its place? Why don’t we hear about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, ongoing now for 13 years, or the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan now 15 years old? The answer is that the crisis in Aleppo is the crisis of Washington losing its ISIL mercenaries to the Syrian army and Russian air force. The jihadists sent by Obama and the killer Hillary (“We came, we saw, he died”) to destroy Syria are being themselves destroyed. The Obama regime and the Western presstitutes are trying to save the jihadists by covering them in the blanket of “humanitarian crisis.” Such hypocrisy is standard fare for Washington. If the Obama regime gave a hoot about “humanitarian crisis,” the Obama regime would not have orchestrated humanitarian crisis in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen. We are in the middle of a presidential campaign in the US and no one has asked why the US is determined to overthrow a democratically elected Syrian government that is supported by the Syrian people. [US Syria policy] [Hypocrisy]
• US Allies are Funding ISIS (and Hillary Knew All Along)
  by Patrick Cockburn It is fortunate for Saudi Arabia and Qatar that the furore over the sexual antics of Donald Trump is preventing much attention being given to the latest batch of leaked emails to and from Hillary Clinton. Most fascinating of these is what reads like a US State Department memo, dated 17 August 2014, on the appropriate US response to the rapid advance of Isis forces, which were then sweeping through northern Iraq and eastern Syria. At the time, the US government was not admitting that Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies were supporting Isis and al-Qaeda-type movements. But in the leaked memo, which says that it draws on “western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region” there is no ambivalence about who is backing Isis, which at the time of writing was butchering and raping Yazidi villagers and slaughtering captured Iraqi and Syrian soldiers. The memo says: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region.” [ISIS] [Outsourcing] [Hillary Clinton] [Saudi Arabia] [Qatar]
• US Treasury official praises Saudi cooperation against terror funding
  A senior US official in charge of combatting terrorist financing praised Saudi Arabia for its progress in blocking the flow of funds to groups such as al-Qaeda and said he wished other countries in the Persian Gulf would meet the same standard. Summary? Print Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser says there has been substantial progress reducing funds amassed by the Islamic State, but warns that IS could seek external financing if it loses its "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria. Author Barbara Slavin Posted October 14, 2016 "We have a very willing and capable partner in Saudi Arabia," Daniel Glaser, the assistant secretary for terrorist financing in the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, told an audience at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Oct. 13. "Our goal is to see a similar evolution in Qatar and Kuwait," which he said had made some progress but not to the same extent as the Saudi government over the past decade. Glaser's praise for Saudi Arabia as the "No. 1" US partner in the region combatting terrorist financing comes at a time of severe strain between the United States and the kingdom over other issues, including the Saudi bombing of civilians at a funeral in Yemen and new US legislation that permits the relatives of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, to sue Saudi Arabia in US courts. President Barack Obama vetoed the bill, but was overridden by the US Congress, which may revisit the issue after US presidential elections in November. The Obama administration has also said it is reviewing its support for the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen. [Saudi Arabia] [Outsourcing] [Treasury]
• King Pumipon of Thailand: The ugly truth
  Ugly Truth-Thailand? 15 October 2016, 7:00am 19 Shed not one tear for Pumipon, writes Giles Ji Ungpakom. Instead, think of those who were killed in his name by the military. KING PUMIPON of Thailand was a weak and characterless monarch who spent his useless and privileged life in a bubble, surrounded by fawning, grovelling, toadies who claimed that he was a “god”. He was a pathetic creature who should not in any way be pitied. His life’s work was in self-enrichment, support for military regimes and the defence of inequality. He played a significant role in preventing democratic rights, the development of social justice and the fair and unbiased use of the law. He did this by legitimising all the worst government policies and atrocities committed by Thai rulers. In recent years, he remained silent while more and more dissidents were gaoled, under the draconian lèse majesté law, for merely speaking out against the destruction of democracy. He always remained silent about the killing of innocent civilians by the military. Pumipon was a willing tool of the military, who constantly staged coups and obstructed democracy and the economic development of the Thai people. For Pumipon, this resulted in great rewards. He amassed so much wealth from the work of others during his reign that he became the richest man in Thailand and the richest monarch in the world. Yet he preached, through the “Sufficiency Economy Ideology” that his “subjects” should be happy in their poverty and always opposed any redistribution of wealth. Thailand is one of the most unequal countries in Asia. His toadies had to constantly project a photo of him with a drop of sweat falling from his nose. The photo was always the same one, since Pumipon seldom did anything to work up a real sweat. Unbelievably, his followers wept when the Palace released a photo of him tying his own shoe-laces without help from any servants. He allowed the use of crawling and special royal language in his presence without any sense of shame, and he passed on his warped and elitist view of the world to his dysfunctional children. [Thailand] [Monarchy]
• Behind closed doors, Clinton spoke of willingness to bomb Iran's facilities
  By Michael Wilner 10/16/2016 21:51 The Wikileaks documents reveal her conversation with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein after a paid speech to the firm. WASHINGTON -- As recently as 2013, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton believed that joint military action by Israel and the United States might be necessary to stop Iran from expanding its nuclear program, according to documents released by Wikileaks over the weekend. The documents, which have not been confirmed by the Clinton campaign as authentic, reveal her conversation with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein after a paid speech to the firm. "The option" to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Clinton said, was a massive US-led air campaign on its nuclear facilities. "The Israelis, as you know, have looked at this very closely for a number of years," the former secretary of state said. "The Israelis’ estimate is even if we set their program back for just a couple of years it’s worth doing and whatever their reaction might be is absorbable." "That has been up until this recent government, the prior government, their position," she continued. "But they couldn’t do much damage themselves. We now have a weapon that is quite a serious one." She proceeded to describe to Blankfein the creation of a 30,000 "bunker-buster" bomb intended for targets such as Iran's burrowed nuclear facility in the holy city of Qom. Named the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the Pentagon accelerated development at US President Barack Obama's order in 2009. [Hillary Clinton] [Iran] [Bunker buster]
• BRICS agrees to set up credit rating agency
  The five-nation group BRICS agreed to set up an independent rating agency based on market-oriented principles, saying it would further strengthen the global governance architecture. “We believe that BRICS institution-building is critical to our shared vision of transforming the global financial architecture to one based on the principles of fairness and equity,” the declaration stated. “...to further bridge the gap in the global financial architecture, we agreed to fast-track the setting up of a BRICS Rating Agency,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a statement at the conclusion of the BRICS Summit. Batting for a rating agency backed by BRICS, New Development Bank president K.V. Kamath had expressed concerns over methodologies of the three global agencies (S&P, Fitch, Moody’s saying that these constrain growth in emerging nations. He had said that ratings of multilateral banks like the BRICS-promoted NDB were affected by the parent countries’ ratings, despite having deep capital buffers. — PTI [BRICS] [Rating] [Decline]
• The Ruling Class’s Hatred of Trump is Different Than Yours
  by Paul Street Much, maybe most, of the nation’s corporate, financial, and imperial establishment loathes Donald Trump. When’s the last time one of the corporate media’s presidential debate moderators actually argue with one of the two major party presidential contenders, as did the wealthy ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz (enraged by Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for a United States military confrontation with Russia in Syria) last Sunday? More than fifty Republican “national security” “elites” have joined several top Republican office-holders, a good number of typically Republican newspaper editorial boards, and the “liberal” New York Times’ editors in proclaiming Trump too stupid, sexist, juvenile, racist, volatile, ignorant, and vicious to be trusted with the keys to the White House. The master class’s fear and loathing of Trump – one of their own, sort of – can be detected in the normally Republican-leaning corporate elite. A recent Wall Street Journal report finds that not a single solitary Fortune 100 chief executive has endorsed Trump or donated to his campaign. Hillary Clinton has accepted campaign contributions funds from 11 of these corporate captains. Four years ago, just five F-100 CEOs gave to Obama while a while nearly a third donated to Mitt Romney. [Trump]
• I Nominate Viktor Orban for Nobel Peace Prize
  F. William Engdahl Now before you react, I am fully aware that the Norwegian Nobel Committee which decides Nobel Peace Prize winners has usually chosen based on a globalist agenda, one might call them corrupted by it. I’m aware they have in the past given the prize to some very not-peace-loving candidates including Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama, even the European Union. Nonetheless, I want to nominate the courageous Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, for the award. Let me explain my reasons. He stands, together with more than three million of his fellow Hungarians, opposed to the destructive demands of the unelected, faceless bureaucrats of the European Union, to block the forced future imposition of refugees from Syria and who knows where, in Hungary. His stand might well be the catalyst to stop the disintegration of the nation-state in Europe, and stop a social conflict that threatens to rip Europe apart in a frenzy of hate and destruction. The Notable Referendum I’ve noted before that Viktor Orban is unusual for a European politician or prime minister. He is actually a genuine democrat, which clearly is why the EU Commission and so many fake democratic EU leaders demonize him and call him totalitarian or who knows what. Now, as most reading this know, on October 2 Hungarians went to vote in a national referendum. Hungary, unlike Germany and other EU nations, allows its citizens to express their preferences in referendum form. Orban has used this tool in the past to be sure whether he has a strong popular backing for major decisions. The results on October 2 saw 3 million 204 thousand eligible Hungarians voting on the refugee referendum. An impressive 95% of those, or 3 million forty four thousand, voted No! to the Brussels plan of forced national refugee quotas. The mainstream media across the EU claims it is a mandatory quota but only for some two thousand refugees. Reality is it is a forced quota for any and all refugees the EU accepts from now on. That’s what makes it so dangerous. The schemers behind the EU refugee crisis intend to use it to destroy national sovereignty, eliminate borders, the nation-state, and national identity. http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/12/i-nominate-viktor-orban-for-nobel-peace-prize/ [Hungary] [Orban] [Refugee] [EU]
• An Urgently Necessary Briefing on Syria
  by Gary Leupp 1. Syria is country about the size of Washington state, with an extraordinarily long, well-documented and glorious history, and central role in the emergence of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Before the current war, it had a population of around 22 millions. It has never threatened and poses no threat to the United States. It is a secular, constitutional republic recognized diplomatically by the United Nations and has diplomatic and usually cordial relations with Russia, Iran, China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines, Argentina, Tanzania, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Oman, etc. It has historically been a battleground of Arab, Iranian and Turkish peoples, at different times a part of the Persian Empire, the Arab-led Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, or the Ottoman Empire. It fell under French colonial administration after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire (centered on what is now Turkey) in the course of World War I. It was briefly declared a kingdom under the Arab Emir Feisal until the French drove him out of Damascus in 1920. [Syria] [History] [US Syria policy]
• The Kissinger Story
  by Uri Avnery I am writing this (may God forgive me) on Yom Kippur. Exactly 43 years ago, at this exact moment, the sirens sounded. We were sitting in the living room, looking out on one of Tel Aviv’s main streets. The city was completely silent. No cars. No traffic of any kind. A few children were riding about on their bicycles, which is allowed on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. Just like now. Rachel, my wife, I, and our guest, Professor Hans Kreitler, were in deep conversation. The professor, a renowned psychologist, was living nearby, so he could come on foot. And then the silence was pierced by a siren. For a moment we thought that it was a mistake, but then it was joined by another and another. We went to the window and saw a commotion. The street, that had been totally empty a few minutes before, began to fill up with vehicles, military and civilian. And then the radio, which had been silent for Yom Kippur, came on. War had broken out. [US Middle East Strategy] [Kissinger]
• NYT Finds "Hidden Hand" In War On Yemen
  Yesterday the U.S. openly attacked Yemen by firing cruise missiles against old Yemeni radar stations. This, allegedly, in response to four missiles fired on two days against a U.S. destroyer at the Yemeni coast. The U.S. Navy said the missiles fell short. They were unable to reach the ship. No one but the navy, especially no one in Yemen, has seen or reported any such missile launches - short or long. The U.S. is in alliance with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other countries in bombing Yemen for 18 month now. They totally blockade the coast of the country that depends on imports of food and medicines. The actively fighting countries are heavily supported by the U.S. military. This has been widely admitted by U.S. officials and in military reports. The U.S. government even feared of being help legally responsible for the carnage it causes. But since the launch of the cruise missile U.S. media have totally forgotten all of this. Now the U.S. "has been attacked", without any recognizable reason, and is only "defending" itself. No legal consequences are to fear now. Anyone who believes that the U.S. is somehow responsible for the at least 10,000 dead and the many starving people in Yemen must somehow believe in a mysterious conspiracy. [US Yemen] [Agency]
• Hacked emails raise possibility of Clinton Foundation ethics breach
  Hacked emails published by Wikileaks this week appear to show Qatar pledging to donate $1 million to Hillary Clinton's family's charitable foundation, despite her promise to curb new donations by foreign governments while U.S. secretary of state. In an email from 2012, a senior official from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation informs colleagues that a planned donation by Qatar's government to mark Bill Clinton's birthday came up in a meeting he had with the Gulf state's ambassador in Washington. The ambassador said that he asked "to see WJC 'for five minutes' in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC's birthday in 2011," Amitabh Desai, the foundation official, writes in his email, using the former U.S. president's initials. Hillary Clinton, who is the Democratic nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election, served as secretary of state from 2009 until 2013. The hacked email is among thousands published over the last week by the pro-transparency group Wikileaks from the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. [Clintons] [Corruption]
• Navy launches Tomahawk missiles at rebel sites in Yemen after attacks on U.S. ships
  By Dan Lamothe October 12 at 11:15 PM ? Tomahawk missiles were launched from the USS Nitze early Thursday off the coast of Yemen. The missiles struck three coastal radar sites that were associated with previous attacks on Navy ships. (U.S. Navy) The U.S. Navy launched Tomahawk missiles early Thursday from the Red Sea at three coastal radar sites in Yemen, destroying targets associated with missile attacks on U.S. ships this week. The Tomahawks were launched from the destroyer USS Nitze at about 4 a.m. at three locations in territory held by Houthi rebels north of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said. President Obama authorized the strikes upon the recommendations of Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships, and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” Cook said. “The United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate, and will continue to maintain our freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and elsewhere around the world.” [Saudi airstrikes on Yemeni civilians may have put a target on the backs of U.S. troops] The strikes were announced late Wednesday in Washington. A defense official said the radar sites were in remote areas where there was little risk of civilian casualties, but declined to say how many Tomahawks were used. The equipment was set up near Ras Isa, north of Mocha and near Khoka. All are on or near Yemen’s western coastline. [Yemen] [Cruise missiles]
• Why a No-Fly Zone Will Not Solve the Crisis in Aleppo
  by Patrick Cockburn The proposal put forward to shoot down Russian and Syrian aircraft over Eastern Aleppo in a bid to end the bombardment of this part of the city is wholly unrealistic. The West is not going to risk a war against a nuclear power and its Syrian ally in order to help the 250,000 to 275,000 civilians trapped there. To pretend anything else is empty bombast detached from the realities on the ground. The danger of such wild schemes is that they divert attention from more realistic plans to save the besieged from further suffering and death. [Aleppo]
• The "Salafist Principality" - ISIS Paid Off To Leave Mosul, Take Deir Ezzor?
  Updated below (3:34pm EDT) On September 20 I wrote about the likely reason for the willful U.S. bombing attack on a critical Syrian army position in Deir Ezzor: Two recent attacks against the Syrian Arab Army in east-Syria point to a U.S. plan to eliminate all Syrian government presence east of Palmyra. This would enable the U.S. and its allies to create a "Sunni entity" in east-Syria and west-Iraq which would be a permanent thorn in side of Syria and its allies. ... The U.S. plan is to eventually take Raqqa by using Turkish or Kurdish proxies. It also plans to let the Iraqi army retake Mosul in Iraq. The only major city in Islamic State territory left between those two is Deir Ezzor. Should IS be able to take it away from the isolated Syrian army garrison it has at least a decent base to survive. (Conveniently there are also rich oil wells nearby.) No one, but the hampered Syrian state, would have an immediate interest to remove it from there. There are new signs that this analysis was correct. [ISIS] [US Middle East Strategy]
• “Remember the Mason!” – US attacks Houthis in Yemen
  by Kit Four days ago, after reports that Saudi Arabia had bombed a funeral in Yemen killing 140 mourners, America announced it would “review its support” for the Saudi-led coalition. Three days ago the USS Mason, an American destroyer patrolling the Red Sea, was apparently fired upon from Yemen. It has gone unquestioned in the Western MSM that the Houthis were behind this attack, despite strong denials from the Houthis themselves. Yesterday, all thoughts of “reviewing support” put aside, the Americans bombed three “radar sites” that they claim were a threat to their assets in the Red Sea. Just like that, America is now an active player in the war on Yemen, when before they were simply selling weapons to the Saudis et al. You might consider it strange that the Houthis, who have not fired on American ships ever before in the nearly 2 years of warfare in Yemen, suddenly decided – just as American support for Saudi Arabia was in question – to launch missiles at an American destroyer. You might be asking yourself, “Why would the Houthis, who struggle to get any coverage in the Western press at all, let alone sympathetic coverage, launch an attack on America?” You might consider it strange that the Houthis, already fighting a losing battle against a richer and better equipped enemy, might try and drag America into the war. It’s not strange. Not in the least. It fits so well with the history of American military entanglements that one might even call it predictable, at this point. [US Yemen] [False flag] [Diversion]
• ISIS's squeeze, al-Qaida's return
  Paul Rogers 13 October 2016 Aleppo burns and Mosul reels. But in the background, yet more conflicts are incubating. The combined Russian-Syrian bombardment of eastern Aleppo continues to be intense and often indiscriminate. In this the operation resembles the destruction of Grozny in the two Chechen wars of the 1990s. Strong opposition in western states includes a demand that relevant actions be designated as war crimes. In practice, such calls will not resonate much in the Middle East, for two reasons. The United States-led air-war against ISIS has caused 1,500-plus civilian casualties, a fact little acknowledged, while western support for the Saudi-led assault in Yemen – using weaponry sold by Britain – further erodes the credibility of British parliamentarians who criticise Russia. [US Middle east strategy] [ISIS]
• Saudi standoff with Iran threatens regional turmoil
  BY Nishank Motwani Riyadh’s perceptions of ’enemy’ Iran are creating political tensions in the region Beneath the strategic rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the latter’s perception of its Persian neighbour as an existential threat is an example of ‘ideological fundamentalism’ in operation. International relations theorists Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler explain that when a state develops a perception of a counterpart based on what it thinks the other is, meaning its political identity or character, rather than how it actually acts, the state creates an ‘enemy image’ of that counterpart. In extraordinary cases, the enemy image also extends to the other state’s society, thus intensifying the other’s presumed malign behaviour. The operationalisation of such enemy images, as exemplified by the way the Al Sauds view their Iranian counterparts, harms Saudi Arabia’s ability to find within itself the political will, clarity of thought and foresight to build a cooperative relationship with Iran for mutual gain. Moreover, the promotion of Saudi ideological antipathy towards Iran since its Islamic revolution in 1979 prevents rapprochement and exacerbates political tensions where Riyadh’s strategic interests compete with Tehran’s in countries such as Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, among others [Saudi Arabia]
• It’s Time to Release the Real History of the 1953 Iran Coup
  Contrary to what the U.S. government might think, holding on to the records certainly isn’t helping U.S. interests in the region. By Malcolm Byrne October 12, 2016 . Sixty-three years ago, the CIA and British intelligence fomented a coup d’état that toppled the prime minister of Iran, restored a cooperative shah and strengthened a regional buffer against possible Soviet aggression. It also unwittingly set Iran on a course toward dictatorship and helped inject the 1979 Iranian revolution with an anti-American cast that continues to animate hardline elements within the current regime. More than six decades later, the coup against Mohammad Mosaddeq and its aftermath are still haunting U.S.-Iran relations. Yet amazingly, Americans do not have access to the full historical record of U.S. involvement in the event, even though much of that record (at least the parts the CIA has not destroyed, by its own admission) is unclassified. [Iran] [Coup]
• Media Silence Over Deadly Sanctions: From Iraq To Syria
  In Alerts 2016 Post 10 October 2016 Last Updated on 10 October 2016 By Editor Hits: 532 Awkward facts that erode the 'benign humanitarian' self-image of the West are routinely side-lined or buried by the corporate media. Consider, for example, the severe impact of sanctions imposed on Syria by the United States and the European Union. An internal United Nations assessment, revealed on September 28 by Rania Khalek in The Intercept, makes clear that the sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and preventing vital aid, including medical supplies, from reaching those in dire need. Access has been denied for blood safety equipment, medicines, medical devices, food, fuel, water pumps and spare parts for power plants, amongst other items. Khalek notes that the internal assessment, which was prepared for the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, describes: 'the U.S. and EU measures as "some of the most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed." Detailing a complex system of "unpredictable and time-consuming" financial restrictions and licensing requirements, the report finds that U.S. sanctions are exceptionally harsh "regarding provision of humanitarian aid."' US sanctions on Syrian banks have made the transfer of funds into Syria 'nearly impossible'. This has had a two-fold effect: 1. Aid groups have been unable to pay local staff and suppliers which has delayed or prevented aid from reaching those in need. 2. An unofficial and unregulated financial network has proliferated, making it easier for ISIS and al Qaeda to divert funds undetected. Khalek also reports that a leaked email from 'a key UN official' blamed US and EU sanctions for contributing to food shortages and weakened health care. In particular: [Sanctions effect] [US Syria policy]
• U.S. and EU Sanctions Are Punishing Ordinary Syrians and Crippling Aid Work, U.N. Report Reveals
  Rania Khalek Sep. 28 2016, 2:55 p.m. Internal United Nations assessments obtained by The Intercept reveal that U.S. and European sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians and crippling aid work during the largest humanitarian emergency since World War II. The sanctions and war have destabilized every sector of Syria’s economy, transforming a once self-sufficient country into an aid-dependent nation. But aid is hard to come by, with sanctions blocking access to blood safety equipment, medicines, medical devices, food, fuel, water pumps, spare parts for power plants, and more. A 40-page internal assessment commissioned by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia to analyze the humanitarian impact of the sanctions describes the U.S. and EU measures as “some of the most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed.” Detailing a complex system of “unpredictable and time-consuming” financial restrictions and licensing requirements, the report finds that U.S. sanctions are exceptionally harsh “regarding provision of humanitarian aid.” [Sanctions effect] [Syria]
• Obama’s Syria policy and the illusion of US power in the Middle East
  Gareth Porter
  Friday 7 October 2016 23:27 UTC One of Obama's biggest failures is letting his policy in Syria be determined primarily by the ambitions of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey With the collapse of the US-Russian ceasefire agreement and the resumption and escalation of the massive Russian bombing campaign in Aleppo, the frustration of hawks in Washington over the failure of the Obama administration to use American military power in Syria has risen to new heights. But the administration’s inability to do anything about Russian military escalation in Aleppo is the logical result of the role the Obama administration has been playing in Syria over the past five years. The problem is that the administration has pursued policy objectives that it lacked the means to achieve. When Obama called on President Bashar al-Assad to step down in September 2011, the administration believed, incredibly, that he would do so of his own accord. As former Hillary Clinton aide and Pentagon official Derek Chollet reveals in his new book, The Long Game, “[E]arly in the crisis, most officials believed Assad lacked the necessary cunning and fortitude to stay in power.” Administration policymakers began using the phrase “managed transition” in regard to US policy toward the government, according to Chollet. The phrase reflected perfectly the vaulting ambitions of policymakers who were eager to participate in a regime change that they saw as a big win for the United States and Israel and a big loss for Iran. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be out front pushing for a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a “transition” in Syria. But US regional Sunni allies - Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia - would provide the arms to Syrian fighters. The only US role in the war would be a covert operation devised by then CIA director David Petraeus to provide intelligence and logistical assistance to those allies, to get arms to the groups chosen by the Sunni regimes that would pay for them. Of course there were those, led by Clinton herself, who wanted to go further and create a “no-fly zone” where the insurgents could be trained and operate freely. But Obama, supported by the US military leadership, would not support that invitation to war. The US was going to play the great power role in Syria without getting its hands dirty with the arming of an opposition force. But within a few months it was already clear that the administration’s “managed transition” had gone terribly wrong. Al-Qaeda, firmly ensconced in Iraq, had begun to show its hand in a series of attacks in Damascus and elsewhere in Syria. By August 2012, it was widely recognised that the jihadists were rapidly taking over the anti-Assad war. Ed Hussein of the Council on Foreign Relations observed in the Christian Science Monitor that Syria was becoming “a magnet for jihadis globally,” just as Iraq had become after the US invasion. The Defense Intelligence Agency identified al-Qaeda, the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood as the three major strains in the rapidly growing anti-Assad war. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing]
• Attack on mourners in Yemen kills more than 140, say local health officials
  By Mohammed Ghobari | SANAA Saudi-led warplanes struck a funeral at a community hall in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, the country's Houthi-run administration said on Saturday, but the coalition denied any role in the attack. More than 140 mourners were killed, according to local health officials cited by the United Nations, in an attack that prompted a strong rebuke from Washington, a key Saudi ally. Jamie McGoldrick, a UN official in charge of humanitarian efforts in the country, said more than 525 were injured. The death toll was 82, according to Ghazi Ismail, the administration's acting health minister. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers was not immediately clear. Ismail said the air strike occurred in the southern part of the city, where a wake was taking place for the father of the administration's interior minister, Jalal al-Roweishan, who had died of natural causes on Friday. The death toll was one of the largest in any single incident since the Saudi-led alliance began military operations to try to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power following his ousting by the Iran-aligned Houthis in March 2015. [Saudi Arabia] [Yemen] [Bombing]
• WikiLeaks email dump reveals excerpts of Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street
  By Anita Kumar, Tim Johnson and David Lightman McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches, including those to Wall Street, were leaked late Friday, a revelation that may perpetuate criticism that she is an out-of-touch Washington insider and potentially create trouble for her in the final weeks of her run for the White House. “Obviously, I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten it,” Clinton told Goldman-Black Rock on Feb. 4, 2014. In the transcripts, Clinton acknowledges that she can’t relate to everyday Americans and admits she’s created a public personality separate from who she is behind closed doors. She discusses her stances on trade, health care and Wall Street. “Politics is like sausage being made,” Clinton told the National Multi-Housing Council on April 24, 2013. “It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.” [Hillary Clinton] [WikiLeaks]
• Carter Launches Plan C; Pentagon Begins Low-Intensity, Stealth War in Syria
  Mike Whitney • October 7, 2016 “Last Wednesday, at a Deputies Committee meeting at the White House, officials from the State Department, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed limited military strikes against the (Assad) regime … One proposed way to get around the White House’s long-standing objection to striking the Assad regime without a U.N. Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment.” – Washington Post Call it stealth warfare, call it poking the bear, call it whatever you’d like. The fact is, the Syrian war has entered a new and more dangerous phase increasing the chances of a catastrophic confrontation between the US and Russia. This new chapter of the conflict is the brainchild of Pentagon warlord, Ash Carter, whose attack on a Syrian outpost at Deir Ezzor killed 62 Syrian regulars putting a swift end to the fragile ceasefire agreement. Carter and his generals opposed the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire deal because it would have required “military and intelligence cooperation with the Russians”. In other words, the US would have had to get the greenlight from Moscow for its bombing targets which would have undermined its ability to assist its jihadist fighters on the ground. That was a real deal-breaker for the Pentagon. But bombing Deir Ezzor fixed all that. It got the Pentagon out of the jam it was in, it torpedoed the ceasefire, and it allowed Carter to launch his own private shooting match without presidential authorization. Mission accomplished. [US Syria policy] [Covert war] [Ash Carter]
• Needed Now: a Peace Movement Against the Clinton Wars to Come
  by Andrew Levine Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize –for not being George W. Bush. This seemed unseemly at the time, but not outrageous. Seven years later, it seems grotesque. As the steward-in-chief of the American empire, Obama continued Bush’s Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and extended his “War on Terror” into Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East. He also became a terrorist himself and a serial killer, weaponized drones and special ops assassins being his weapons of choice. Much of this has taken place under a veil of secrecy. A great deal of effort has gone into keeping news of the murder and mayhem Obama let loose upon the world out of public view; so far out that, to this day, Obama, is still widely thought of as a man of peace. He kept that illusion intact the way that Bill Clinton kept a similar illusion alive in the nineties– by keeping war talk to a minimum and by keeping American combatants out of harm’s way. Along with his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, Clinton saw to it that sanctions would kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. And when sanctions weren’t enough to complete the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, he unleashed death and destruction from the skies. With his drones, Obama has surpassed Clinton in that one respect; if they gave a Nobel Prize for killing from afar, he’d win hands down. Sometimes, though, there is no avoiding “boots on the ground.” When this is the case, the Clinton-Obama way is to rely as much as possible on proxy armies or militias to do the fighting, using the empire’s own troops only as a last resort. Also, like Clinton, Obama relies on “humanitarian” interveners to make his depredations seem kosher. Nobody can sell killing and maiming to a gullible public as well as they. [Hillary Clinton]
• The Trump Phenomenon, as Seen From Europe
  October 7, 2016 by Jean Bricmont Brussels, Belgium. The first thing to say about the U.S. presidential elections is that they are extremely anti-democratic. And here I’m not even talking about the manipulations that may have enabled Clinton to beat Sanders or about the fact that mainstream media spend their time deriding one candidate and covering up for the other. The most fundamentally anti-democratic aspect of the American elections is that a small fragment of humanity gets to elect someone who has an enormous influence over the rest of the world, someone who takes decisions that can drag us all into a generalized war, or at very least can aggravate tensions with Russia, Iran, and China, not to mention Syria, which are contrary to European interests. From that point of view, Trump has an advantage over Clinton. That is, he says he wants to be President of the United States and not of the whole world, whereas she insists that the United States must exert world leadership. [Trump]
• It’s Time to Rethink Syria
  For years, I helped advise President Obama on Syria. It’s now clearer than ever that a new strategy is needed. By Philip Gordon
  September 25, 2015
  If somehow the tragic trajectory of the conflict in Syria were not apparent enough, several dramatic developments in recent weeks have come together to make it impossible to ignore. The most obvious is the influx into Europe of tens of thousands of desperate, hungry refugees—so devoid of hope in their homeland or neighboring refugee camps they are willing to risk drowning and starvation in the hope of finding a better life for themselves and their children. The second is the growing evidence of the failure of efforts to train and equip a moderate, unified opposition capable of pressuring the Assad regime to change. Despite extensive efforts by the U.S. government and its partners to build such a force, the opposition remains deeply fragmented, dominated by extremists and incapable of threatening Assad’s rule or of stabilizing Syria even if the regime did somehow fall. Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/its-time-to-rethink-syria-213184#ixzz4MQH5dIyI Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Proxy]
• JASTA’s Impact on the US-Saudi Relations, as Seen from the Middle East
  The adoption of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) by the US Congress and the impact it may have on Washington’s relations with Riyadh and the future of the Gulf region have been actively discussed across Arab media and social networks. This act grants the families of 9/11 victims the chance to sue Saudi Arabia for its involvement in the attacks. The frustration that Riyadh and other Gulf countries have shown towards this development, in the opinion of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahmar, clearly shows that JASTA will increase tensions in US-Saudi relations even further. There’s been talks about the possible suspension of bilateral cooperation between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US in such areas including the fight against terrorism, the closure of US military bases in the region, and the withdrawal of billions of Saudi dollars from American banks. On the other hand, one may have the impression that Riyadh perceives JASTA through the prism of the current election season in the United States. Analysts point out that Riyadh has little to nothing to worry about, since it’s highly unlikely that American families will be able to win against Saudi Arabia in US courts to obtain compensation for the deaths of their loved ones in an attack that shook America. One would be demanded to provide irrefutable evidence that must prove the involvement of Saudi officials in the preparations of the attacks, which is a pretty tall order, the newspaper concludes. A number of Arab lawyers have described the law as a direct violation of the concept of state sovereign immunity. However, according to the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, the adoption of JASTA by the US Congress casts a severe blow against Saudi Arabia at a particularly difficult time for this monarchy. This will lead to the distancing between the US and Saudi Arabia against the background of the current turbulent situation in the Middle East, when the two states are still involved in various “proxy wars”. A number of Arab experts believe that Saudi Arabia must have been expecting a step like this one, since the foundations of bilateral relations between the two countries that were laid down by the founder of the modern Saudi state, King Abdul Aziz Al Saud and US President Roosevelt in 1945, have already been shaken. A prominent Lebanese journalist, Sarkis Nahum, is drawing the attention of his readers toward the fact that the differences that Washington and Riyadh had in their interpretation of the Arab Spring movement, followed by rapprochement with Iran over its nuclear program have created the preconditions for JASTA. But what’s even more important is that the two states in their assessments of the situation in the world are applying completely different and often conflicting doctrines. [Saudi Arabia] [JASTA]
• Army Warns that Future War with Russia or China Would Be ‘Extremely Lethal and Fast’
  By Bradley Peniston Read bio October 4, 2016 Leaders say warfare in the coming decades will be fundamentally different from the past 25 years. To envision the wars of the future, first remember those of the distant past, with their soul-numbing artillery barrages and unstinting waves of conventional enemy forces. Then speed up that mental newsreel and imagine a ground war accelerated by artificial intelligence and precision munitions, nested in a larger strategic sphere where everything is moving at Internet velocity. That’s the picture that Army leaders are working from as they try to prepare their force to deter and defeat America’s enemies over the next few decades. The nation faces existential threats from “modern nation-states acting aggressively in militarized competition,” said Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, Army deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and training. “Who does that sound like? Russia?” He spoke on a future-of-the-Army panel at the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army in Washington on Tuesday. China is a growing threat as well, if not one that can project force globally yet. Together, these two powers are mustering conventionally massive militaries that are increasingly technological — and forcing the Pentagon to contemplate and prepare for “violence on the scale that the U.S. Army has not seen since Korea,” said Maj. Gen. William Hix, Anderson’s deputy. “A conventional conflict in the near future will be extremely lethal and fast. And we will not own the stopwatch. [US military]
• Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte dares CIA to 'oust' him, says it's part of his destiny
  AFP Updated: Oct 7, 2016 20:10 IST Davao: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday dared the United States' CIA spy agency to try and oust him, as he branded Western critics of his deadly crime war "animals" and vowed many more killings. In two fiery speeches to mark his 100 days in office, Duterte repeatedly raised the prospect of local or foreign opponents seeking to remove him from power in an effort to stop the violence. But he insisted he would not be intimidated and that his campaign against drugs, in which an average of more than 33 people a day are being killed, would not end. "You want to oust me? You want to use the CIA? Go ahead," Duterte said in a speech in his southern home town of Davao city, referring to the Central Intelligence Agency, while railing against US President Barack Obama and other critics. Last month Duterte accused the CIA of plotting to kill him, but gave no specifics. [Duterte] [CIA] [Coup]
• Reaping the Whirlwind: Kerry, al-Nusra, Russia and Syria
  by Gary Leupp “I think you’re looking at three people, four people in the administration. I lost the argument. I’ve argued for the use of force. I’m the guy who stood up [in August 2013] and announced that we’re going to attack Assad for the use of weapons.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, talking informally with Syrian “opposition” members, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Oct. 3, 2016 The Libya UNSC Resolution of 2011: Template for the Syria Resolution of 2017? I’ve been re-reading UNSC Resolution 1973, which provided a legal fig leaf for the regime-change assault on Libya from March to October 2011. [Kerry]
• U.S. Diplomacy: A Dangerous Proposal
  Is the United States on the verge of enshrining humanitarian intervention as a bedrock principle of foreign policy? By Conn Hallinan, October 3, 2016. While the mainstream media focuses on losers and winners in the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a largely unreported debate is going on over the future course of U.S. diplomacy. Its outcome will have a profound effect on how Washington projects power—both diplomatic and military—in the coming decade. The issues at stake are hardly abstract. The United States is currently engaged in active wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. It has deployed troops on the Russian border, played push –and-shove with China in Asia, and greatly extended its military footprint on the African continent. It would not be an exaggeration to say—as former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry has recently done—that the world is a more dangerous place today than it was during darkest times of the Cold War. Tracking the outlines of this argument is not easy, in part because the participants are not always forthcoming about what they are proposing, in part because the media oversimplifies the issues. In its broadest framework, “realists” represented by former National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Harvard’s Steven Walt, and University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer have squared off against “humanitarian interventionists” like current UN Ambassador Samantha Power. Given that Power is a key advisor to the Obama administration on foreign policy and is likely to play a similar role if Clinton is elected, her views carry weight. In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Power asks, “How is a statesman to advance his nation’s interests?” She begins by hijacking the realist position that U.S. diplomacy must reflect “national interests,” arguing that they are indistinguishable from “moral values.” What happens to people in other countries, she argues, is in our “national security.” [Humanitarian intervention] [Samantha Power] [US global strategy]
• US moral decay? Congress passes arms package to slaughter more Yemenis
  By Christina Lin on October 4, 2016 On September 21, Congress approved a new $1.15 billion arms package to Saudi Arabia to continue bombing Yemen. The Obama administration has already sold about $100 billion worth of weapons and military equipment to Riyadh, including cluster bombs. Despite 64 lawmakers submitting a resolution to block the sale, the Senate rejected the resolution with a vote of 71 to 27. Before the vote, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif) who spearheaded the bill, slammed that it’s “morally outrageous for US to continue its direct assistance in the slaughter of civilians by Saudi Arabia in Yemen.” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) likewise had scathing words regarding arming Riyadh that was “involved in the financing of terror including 9/11”, commits human rights abuses, bombs hospitals and schools, and creates millions of refugees for Europe and the US while refusing to take in any. [Arms sales] [Yemen] [Ignorance] [Governance]
• Presidential Candidates Silent as Saudis Prepare to Crucify Activist
  Not their cross to bear? Leading politicians have yet to offer a position on young protester's penalty. By Steven Nelson | Staff Writer Sept. 24, 2015, at 3:06 p.m. Presidential Candidates Silent as Saudis Prepare to Crucify Activist Ali Mohammed al-Nimr could be executed without notice in Saudi Arabia. At bottom left, a photo of al-Nimr's uncle, a prominent Shiite leader also sentenced to death. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr could be executed without notice in Saudi Arabia. Since last week his case has attracted widespread international attention. At bottom left, a photo of al-Nimr's uncle, a prominent Shiite leader also sentenced to death. Facebook/Free Sheikh Nimr Baqir Al-Nimr Saudi Arabia’s justice system reportedly has cleared the way for political activist Ali Mohammed al-Nimr's crucifixion. No major U.S. presidential candidate has yet weighed in as the looming execution increasingly attracts global attention and outrage. Critics say al-Nimr's trial was unfair and the punishment grossly disproportionate -- particularly for someone who was a minor at the time of his alleged crimes. The 21-year-old Shiite from eastern Saudi Arabia is the nephew of a prominent dissident cleric. Both were arrested in 2012 following political protests and later sentenced to death by the fundamentalist Sunni kingdom, along with a handful of others. U.K.-based advocacy group Reprieve says al-Nimr, arrested when he was 17 years old, was tortured. His father told Agence France-Presse this week his son denies allegations he committed non-political crimes including burglary and throwing Molotov cocktails. The penalty of crucifixion, recently practiced by the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, would reportedly feature decapitation by sword, followed by display of al-Nimr's body on a cross. [Saudi Arabia] [Human rights] [Sectarianism] [Execution]
• A President Trump could end the era of American global leadership
  By Editorial Board October 3 IN NO realm is the U.S. president more powerful than in matters of national security. A president may launch wars, conduct intelligence operations and strike deals with foreign governments with minimal checks from the courts and Congress. If he wished, a President Donald Trump could carry out — or at least order — many of the most extreme proposals he has tossed off during the election campaign. If Mr. Trump chose to “take the oil” of Iraq or Syria, as he has frequently proposed, he could direct the armed forces to plan and launch such an operation, whatever its prospects for success. If he wanted to assassinate foreigners who opposed him, he could unilaterally and secretly change the executive order prohibiting such action. If he wanted to reinstate waterboarding and other torture methods for use on detainees, he could cancel President Obama’s orders governing torture and appoint lawyers to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel willing to issue a secret opinion invalidating a congressional ban. Mr. Trump could launch surveillance programs targeting foreigners without informing Congress. He could scrap — again, without public notice — the rules Mr. Obama instituted for limiting U.S. drone strikes. He could shut U.S. bases abroad, withdrawing troops from Japan, South Korea and Europe. [Trump] [US foreign policy] [Leadership]
• This Is How America Will Accidentally Join the Syrian War
  Neither of the presidential campaigns knows what their Syria policies actually mean. By Micah Zenko October 5, 2016 During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, there was a brief exchange between the moderator and candidates that perfectly captured the muddled confusion over potential new U.S.-led military missions in Syria. It showcased the type of slippery and imprecise rhetoric that could easily result in the United States entering a war the public opposes. Halfway through the debate, moderator Elaine Quijano asked Gov. Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Kaine about the war there. “250,000 people, 100,000 of them children, are under siege in Aleppo, Syria. Bunker buster bombs, cluster munitions, and incendiary weapons are being dropped on them by Russian and Syrian militaries. Does the U.S. have a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties on this scale?” Pence first made the case for significantly expanding the number of troops in the U.S. military, which was a puzzling policy suggestion, given that Donald Trump does not endorse any U.S. boots on the ground in Syria. He then added, “We have got to begin to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership.” [US_election16] [US Syria policy]
• The Rise of Hypersonic Weapons
  October 5, 2016 | Will Edwards and Luke Penn-Hall A hypersonic missile launched from mainland China could strike a U.S. carrier group located anywhere in the South China Sea in under 20 minutes. That’s a hypothetical right now, but hypersonics are poised to be the next big thing in defense technology. A hypersonic weapon is any projectile that is able to achieve and sustain speeds at or above Mach 5, which is to say, five times the speed of sound. Some weapons, like electromagnetic railguns, can fire munitions at these speeds – but the primary focus of current research efforts is the creation of hypersonic missiles. Cruise missile type hypersonic weapons could be fired from planes or ships and would be relatively cheap, whereas hypersonic glide vehicles are the final stage of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), which makes it both effective and accurate at very long ranges. Both types would be extremely fast and maneuverable, which makes them very difficult to intercept. Hypersonic weapons are currently under development by the United States, Russia, China, and India, though each country intends to deploy them differently. The U.S. envisions that hypersonic weapons will be an integral piece of the prompt global strike regime; a concept that seeks to deliver a precision guided conventional strike anywhere in the world in as little as an hour [PGS] [Military balance]
• Destroying Syria: a Joint Criminal Enterprise
  by Diana Johnstone
  Everyone claims to want to end the war in Syria and restore peace to the Middle East. Well, almost everyone. “This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York told the New York Times in June 2013. “Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here.” Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, stressed the same points in August 2016: “The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction… Allowing bad guys to kill bad guys sounds very cynical, but it is useful and even moral to do so if it keeps the bad guys busy and less able to harm the good guys… Moreover, instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change… The American administration does not appear capable of recognizing the fact that IS can be a useful tool in undermining Tehran’s ambitious plan for domination of the Middle East.” Okay, not exactly everyone. But surely the humanitarian website Avaaz wants to end the war and restore peace. Or does it? Avaaz is currently circulating a petition which has gathered over a million signatures and is aiming at a million and a half. It is likely to get them, with words like this: “100 children have been killed in Aleppo since last Friday. “Enough is enough!” Avaaz goes on to declare: “There is no easy way to end this war, but there’s only one way to prevent this terror from the skies — people everywhere demanding a no-fly zone to protect civilians.” No-fly zone? Doesn’t that sound familiar? [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [NGO] [Front] [DaR]
• JASTA Opens Many Doors: Will Israel be sued for 9/11?
  Philip Giraldi • October 4, 2016 By overwhelming margins the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted on September 28th to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). Obama had noted that the Act would have negative consequences for U.S. officials overseas as it establishes the principle that governments can be held accountable in the courts for what they do. Prior to this legislation Washington generally respected the principle of sovereign immunity, which means in practice that governments resolve issues between themselves by negotiation, not through litigation.
  But the potentially biggest secondary target of the new legislation would without a doubt be Israel. The Israeli role in 9/11, insofar as can be determined, has never been seriously investigated at all and any suppositions or conclusions regarding its activities were never included in the final 9/11 Commission Report. [9/11] [Saudi Arabia] [Israel]
• Why thousands of millionaires don’t pay federal income taxes
  By Christopher Ingraham October 3 at 4:23 PM ? Here’s how Trump could have taken a $916 million loss and avoided paying taxes for 18 years The tax code allows real estate developers or managers to use special tax breaks and benefits that the rest of us can’t. Here’s how that works. (Daron Taylor, Sarah Parnass, Danielle Kunitz, Lisa Rein, Kelsey Snell/The Washington Post) Tax documents obtained by the New York Times show that Donald Trump declared a massive net operating loss of $916 million in 1995, enough to allow him to avoid paying federal income taxes for up to 18 years. The documents shed light on provisions in the U.S. tax code that allow wealthy individuals to avoid income tax payments even in years when they make millions. In 1995, Trump declared $3.4 million in business income, $7.4 million in interest income, and close to $100,000 in income from other sources such as dividends, taxable refunds and wages. But this income was more than offset by hundreds of millions of dollars in reported losses from real estate and "the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan," according to the Times. About 46 percent of all tax filers (individuals or households) pay no federal income taxes each year because of various exclusions. High-income tax filers make up a tiny portion of that number, but they are by far the biggest beneficiaries. More than half of the tax revenue lost to the most common tax exclusions stays in the pockets of the richest one-fifth of Americans, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. [Tax] [Plutocracy] [Trump]
• WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange 'We Believe in What We're Doing'
  WikiLeaks is now 10 years old. SPIEGEL met with founder Julian Assange, 45, to discuss the whistleblower platform's achievements and whether recent criticism leveled at the site is justified. Interview Conducted by Michael Sontheimer AFP WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange September 30, 2016 06:12 PM SPIEGEL: Mr. Assange, 10 years after the founding of WikiLeaks, the whistleblower platform is again being criticized. WikiLeaks is said to have put millions of Turkish voters in danger. What is your response? Assange: A few days after the publication of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, an entirely false story was put out that we had published the names, addresses and phone numbers of all female voters in Turkey. It is completely false. And it was and is simple to check. Power factions fight back with lies. That's not surprising. SPIEGEL: Quite a few German journalists have long sympathized with WikiLeaks and also with Edward Snowden. But they aren't impressed with the publishing of the DNC emails. Are you campaigning on behalf of Donald Trump? Assange: Our publication of the DNC leaks has showed that the Democratic National Committee had effectively rigged the primaries in the United States on behalf of Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. That led to the resignation of leading members of the DNC, including its president Debbie Wasserman Schultz SPIEGEL: People within the Clinton campaign have suggested that the DNC emails were given to you by the Russian secret service. Assange: There have been many attempts to distract from the power of our publications. Hillary Clinton is the favorite to win. As always, most media aligns with the presumptive winner even though their claimed societal virtue is to investigate those in power. SPIEGEL: The fact is, WikiLeaks is damaging Clinton and bolstering Trump. [WikiLeaks] [Canard] [Whistleblower]
• Trump could have avoided paying taxes for 18 years, report on tax records says
  By David A. Fahrenthold, Rosalind S. Helderman and Jose A. DelReal October 2 at 12:12 AM ? Donald Trump declared a loss of $916 million on his income tax returns for 1995, and — because of tax rules that favor wealthy real estate investors — he could have used that loss to avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, according to a report in the New York Times. The Times’ report said that the enormous loss Trump reported in 1995 — $916 million — seemed to be a holdover from the early 1990s, when his real estate and casino empire tottered and almost fell. [Trump] [Tax] [Media]
• U.N. atomic agency chief says Iran sticking to nuclear deal
  Iran has kept to a nuclear deal it agreed with six world powers last year limiting its stockpiles of substances that could be used to make atomic weapons, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told French daily Le Monde. Confirming the findings of a confidential report by the U.N. agency seen by Reuters last month, IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said Tehran had observed the deal which was opposed by hardliners inside Iran and by skeptics in the West. "The deal is being implemented since January without any particular problem," he told Le Monde in an interview published on Saturday. "There was a small incident in February: the stock of heavy water very slightly exceeded the limit set - 130 tonnes. But we immediately signaled that to Iran which took all the necessary measures," he said. Under its July deal with the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, Iran is allowed to have 130 tonnes of heavy water, a moderator in reactors like the one it has disabled at Arak and a chemical it produces itself. The stock briefly reached 130.9 tonnes, the agency reported in February. "Apart from that, I can certify that Tehran respects its commitments to the letter. The Iranians are doing what they promised the international community," Amano said. [Iran deal] [IAEA]
• How Arms Sales Distort US Foreign Policy
  October 1, 2016 Exclusive: Money may not be the root of all evil but it surely contributes to horrible war crimes when lucrative arms sales distort U.S. foreign policy and cause selective outrage over human rights atrocities, writes Jonathan Marshall. By Jonathan Marshall Forget oil. In the Middle East, the profits and jobs reaped from tens of billions of dollars in arms sales are becoming the key drivers of U.S. and British policy. Oil still matters, of course. So do geopolitical interests, including military bases, and powerful political lobbies funded by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states. But you can’t explain Washington’s deference to Saudi Arabia, despite its criminal war in Yemen and its admitted support for Islamist extremism, without acknowledging the political pull generated by more than $115 billion in U.S. military deals with Saudi Arabia authorized since President Obama took office. Saudi King Salman bids farewell to President Barack Obama at Erga Palace after a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) As arms sales expert William Hartung observed earlier this year, “U.S. arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia have increased by 96% compared to the Bush years. . . In 2014 alone more than 2,500 Saudi military personnel received training in the United States.” These deals have generated huge new business opportunities for politically powerful U.S. contractors such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Raytheon. Neither the White House nor Congress will let mere war crimes stand in the way of continued sales that fund thousands of jobs. [Arms sales] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Defense secretary: US will sharpen 'military edge' in Asia
  By Associated Press Published: 12:21 +10:00, 30 September 2016 | SAN DIEGO (AP) — Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday the U.S. will "sharpen our military edge" in Asia and the Pacific in order to remain a dominant power in a region feeling the effects of China's rising military might. Carter made the pledge in a speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in port in San Diego. The Pentagon chief described what he called the next phase of a U.S. pivot to Asia — a rebalancing of American security commitments after years of heavy focus on the Middle East. His speech, aimed at reassuring allies unsettled by China's behavior in the South China Sea, came three days after he made remarks at a nuclear missile base in North Dakota about rebuilding the nuclear force. Those comments prompted a strong reaction from the Russian foreign ministry, which issued a statement saying it had interpreted Carter's statement as a declared intention to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. Carter said the Pentagon will make its attack submarines more lethal and spend more to build undersea drones that can operate in shallower waters where submarines cannot. [US global strategy] [US military] [China confrontation]
• The cobalt pipeline
  Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops
  Story by Todd C. Frankel Photos by Michael Robinson Chavez Video editing by Jorge Ribas September 30, 2016 The sun was rising over one of the richest mineral deposits on Earth, in one of the poorest countries, as Sidiki Mayamba got ready for work. Mayamba is a cobalt miner. And the red-dirt savanna stretching outside his door contains such an astonishing wealth of cobalt and other minerals that a geologist once described it as a “scandale geologique.” [Capitalism] [Labour] [Human rights]
• Cracks in the Kingdom: Saudi Arabia Rocked by Financial Strains
  by Patrick Cockburn Hundreds of foreign hospital workers in Saudi Arabia, unpaid for seven months, were on strike this week and were blocking a highway in Eastern Province in defiance of the ban on strikes and demonstrations in the Kingdom. The employees’ anger was deepened by the belief that the very same employer who has been holding back their salaries regularly offers massive fees to international singers who perform at his parties. Things are not well in Saudi Arabia and this week there were two pieces of bad news. Hitherto, there have been protests like this by foreign employees suffering from the knock-on effects of cuts in state expenditure following the drop in the oil price. In work camps far out in the desert workers complain that, not only have they stopped receiving money owed to them, but they are no longer even receiving supplied of food and electricity.
  . What makes the present economic stresses more significant is that they come at a moment when Saudi political influence is visibly under strain in the region and the world. Among those exempted from this week’s benefit cuts are Saudi forces in Yemen which may remind Saudis that they are still mired in a vastly expensive conflict there which their government voluntarily entered last year and shows no sign of winning. In Syria, the five-year-long effort by Saudi Arabia, together with Turkey and Qatar, to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad, has likewise failed. In the decade-long Saudi rivalry with Iran, today it is the Iranians who look like getting the upper hand. But a more menacing development than this may be facing the rulers of the Kingdom in the US. For so long the ultimate guarantor of the status quo in Saudi Arabia, the US is increasingly ambivalent or hostile towards its old ally. On Wednesday, the US Senate will vote on whether or not to override a presidential veto preventing the families of victims of 9/11 suing the Saudi government. The measure is unlikely to become law, but it is a sign of the Kingdom’s ebbing influence where it really matters at a time of deepening troubles at home. [Saudi Arabia]
• The Butcher of Qana: Shimon Peres Was No Peacemaker
  by Robert Fisk When the world heard that Shimon Peres had died, it shouted “Peacemaker!” But when I heard that Peres was dead, I thought of blood and fire and slaughter. I saw the results: babies torn apart, shrieking refugees, smouldering bodies. It was a place called Qana and most of the 106 bodies – half of them children – now lie beneath the UN camp where they were torn to pieces by Israeli shells in 1996. I had been on a UN aid convoy just outside the south Lebanese village. Those shells swished right over our heads and into the refugees packed below us. It lasted for 17 minutes. [Israel] [Massacre]
• Donald Trump proves he is unfit, unserious and unprepared on national security
  By Michael Vickers and Michael Morell September 28 Michael Vickers was undersecretary of defense for intelligence from 2011 to 2015 and assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities from 2007 to 2011. Michael Morell was deputy director of the CIA from 2010 to 2013, and twice served as acting director during that time. They have both endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president. Donald Trump showed again during Monday’s presidential debate the many ways in which he is unfit to be president. But nowhere did he reveal himself to be as temperamentally unfit, unserious, unprepared and incoherent as he did on the topic of national security. Trump continued to question the global alliance system that has served U.S. national security interests so well since World War II. He continues to see our relationships with our closest allies and partners solely in terms of cost — who is paying how much of the bill. He does not see all the benefits that have accrued to the United States from this system, including the stability of Europe and East Asia that has made this a more secure and prosperous nation. [Trump] [MISCOM]

• New Cold War Spins Out of Control
  By Alastair Crooke
  September 26, 2016 U.S. enthusiasts for the New Cold War with Russia appear to be ignoring less-belligerent orders from President Obama and pushing for a dangerous escalation of tensions, reports ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke. In the aftermath of the U.S. attack on the Syrian army positions overlooking and commanding the Dier A-Zor airfield – the airfield, whose daily “Berlin air-bridge” style flights, are the sole lifeline to a city long besieged by ISIS – the Russian U.N. Ambassador asked a pertinent rhetorical question at the United Nations Security Council: Who is running U.S. policy: Is it the Pentagon or the White House? There was no official response, of course, but one was not necessary: the New York Times editorial board gave us the answer in its verdict of Sept. 15: Praising the U.S. Secretary of State for his energetic, but “quixotic” diplomacy, the “Board” wrote: President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) President Barack Obama meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the sidelines of the G20 Summit at Regnum Carya Resort in Antalya, Turkey, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice listens at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) “The [Syria ceasefire] agreement also has powerful critics inside the Obama administration, including Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. On Tuesday, Pentagon officials refused to say whether they would comply with their part of the deal, which calls on the United States to share information with the Russians on Islamic State targets in Syria if the cease-fire holds for seven days. This would be an unusual and possibly risky collaboration with a Russian regime that has become increasingly adversarial and could profit from learning American military secrets.” What is so surprising here is the non-surprise evinced by the editorial writers of the New York Times. The Board blandly states that the Defense Secretary and the Pentagon might not comply. Not a hint of surprise is evident at the constitutional implications of this open defiance of Presidential authority. [Dissension] [US Syria strategy] [Pentagon] [NCW]
• Who Is Making American Foreign Policy—the President or the War Party?
  The US military attack on the Syrian army gravely endangers Obama’s proposed détente with Putin in Syria and elsewhere. By Stephen F. Cohen September 21, 2016 Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Tonight’s main focus is on Syria, the crisis in Ukraine, and Russia’s parliamentary elections. Cohen discusses the following issues: [Dissension] [Russia confrontation]
• Cliché and Banality at the Debates: Trump and Clinton on the Middle East
  by Robert Fisk
  September 28, 2016 Watching them both yacking on about the Middle East as a pink dawn glowed from behind the Lebanese mountains above Beirut, I found the Trump-Clinton show a grimly instructive experience. In the few hundred miles east and south of Lebanon, hundreds are dying every week – in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq – and yet there were the terrible twins playing “I can beat Isis better than you can beat Isis”. Was this what the Arab world really meant to the reality show participants at the unpronounceable university campus on Long Island? [US Middle East policy] [US_election16]
• Interview With Al-Nusra Commander “The Americans stand on our side”
  from Moon of Alabama This interview by Jürgen Todenhöfer was first published in German on September 26 2016 by the Kölner Stadtanzeiger, the major newspaper in the Cologne region. (The interview was copied and translated to English by Bernhard for educational and academic purposes.), and is being reproduced here for the same purpose It was the seventh trip by my son Frederic and me to the civil war country Syria. We were there for 13 days. Words can only barely describe the extend of damage and suffering on both sides. We conducted the interview ten days ago with a commander of the al-Qaida branch “Jabhat al-Nusra”. Abu al-Ezz reported quite openly about his financiers Saudi-Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. We were able to exactly research the identity of the man and know practically everything about him. [Outsourcing] [Nusra]
• President Assad: US Aerial Aggression on Our Troops in Deir Ezzor Lasted for Almost an Hour
  President Assad interview with AP
  September 22, 2016 The Syrian president Bashar Assad revealed on Thursday that the US air raids which targeted one of the army’s posts in Deir Ezzor last for almost an hour, which refutes the American claim that the attacks were launched mistakenly. In an interview with the American news agency, Associated Press, President Assad reiterated that Syria will preserve its integrity and confront the terrorist challenge. The following is full text of the interview: Journalist: President Assad, thank you very much for this opportunity to be interviewed by the Associated Press. President Assad: You are most welcome in Syria. Question 1: I will start by talking about the ceasefire in Syria. Russia, the US, and several countries say a ceasefire could be revived despite the recent violence and the recrimination. Do you agree, and are you prepared to try again? President Assad: We announced that we are ready to be committed to any halt of operations, or if you want to call it ceasefire, but it’s not about Syria or Russia; it’s about the United States and the terrorist groups that have been affiliated to ISIS and al-Nusra and Al Qaeda, and to the United States and to Turkey and to Saudi Arabia. They announced publicly that they are not committed, and this is not the first attempt to have a halt of operations in Syria. The first attempt was in last February, and didn’t work, I think, because of the United States, and I believe that the United States is not genuine regarding having a cessation of violence in Syria. Question 2: Do you believe there could ever be a joint US-Russian military partnership against the militants, as outlined in the deal? President Assad: Again, practically, yes, but in reality, no, because the United States doesn’t have the will to work against al-Nusra or even ISIL, because they believe that this is a card they can use for their own agenda. If they attack al-Nusra or ISIL, they will lose a very important card regarding the situation in Syria. So, I don’t believe the United States will be ready to join Russia in fighting terrorists in Syria. Question 3: This week, the US has said the coalition attack on Syrian troops was an accident. Do you accept that explanation? President Assad: No, no. It’s not, because it wasn’t an accident by one airplane for once, let’s say. It was four airplanes that kept attacking the position of the Syrian troops for nearly one hour, or a little bit more than one hour. You don’t commit a mistake for more than one hour. This is first. Second, they weren’t attacking a building in a quartier; they were attacking a huge place constituted of many hills, and there was not terrorist adjacent to the Syrian troops there. At the same time, the ISIS troops or the ISIL militants attacked right away after the American strike. How could they know that the Americans are going to attack that position in order to gather their militants to attack right away and to capture it one hour after the strike? So it was definitely intentional, not unintentional as they claimed. [US Syria policy] [Disinformation]
• Another Kerry Rush to Judgment on Syria
  September 24, 2016 Exclusive: The U.N. withdrew its claim that an airstrike hit its Syrian relief convoy but Secretary of State Kerry relied on the outdated claim in lashing out at Russia in a repeat of his earlier rushes to judgment, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Secretary of State John Kerry has engaged in another rush to judgment blaming the Russians for an attack on a United Nations relief convoy in Syria before any thorough investigation could be conducted and thus prejudicing whatever might follow, as he did with the Syrian sarin case in 2013 and the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014. Eager to go on the propaganda offensive – especially after a U.S. military airstrike last Saturday killed scores of Syrian soldiers who were battling the Islamic State in eastern Syria – Kerry pounced on an initial report that the attack on the convoy on Monday was an airstrike and then insisted that the Russians must have been responsible because one of their jets was supposedly in the area. But the United Nations – and I’m told CIA analysts – have not ruled out the possibility that the convoy was instead hit by a surface-to-surface missile. On Friday, a source briefed by U.S. intelligence said one fear is that the jihadist group, Ahrar al-Sham, which has fought alongside Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front but is deemed to be part of the “moderate” opposition, may have used a U.S.-supplied TOW missile in the attack. [Syria] [Canard] [Russia confrontation]
• Are US-Turkey military ties under threat?
  Until two years ago, deep-rooted US-Turkey military relations were cited as a model of strength in the defense industry, military training and exercises, global peace support operations, global struggle against terror, NATO missions, and joint operations in Afghanistan. These were all signs of the high level of cooperation and interoperability between the US military and Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). Both Ankara and Washington seem to be oblivious to the changing nature of their relations. Author Metin GurcanPosted September 23, 2016 Translator Timur Göksel In those good old days, billions of dollars’ worth of defense projects between the two countries moved forward despite minor hiccups and, financed by the International Military Education and Training Fund, hundreds of Turkish officers and noncommissioned officers went to the United States for training. Every year, the two sides carried out about 20 bilateral or multilateral exercises and maneuvers, organized high-level military summits, and they even awarded each other medals of outstanding service. The traditional model of US-Turkish military relations resembled a sort of "high politics" shaped behind closed doors by the Turkish General Staff and its US counterpart, where societal dynamics and the elected civilians of Turkey did not have much say. The relations were also an anchor of Turkey's untouchable links to the Western security bloc, thereby directly affecting Ankara's foreign policy choices. [Turkey US] [Military]
• Airstrikes, Obfuscation and Propaganda in Syria
  by Patrick Cockburn September 23, 2016 Airstrikes that hit the wrong target have always been justified or denied by the perpetrators with a rich blend of hypocrisy and lies. It was interesting to see this tradition of deliberate mendacity being not only maintained, but outdone in Syria over the last week. The US was seeking to explain how it had come to kill at least 62 Syrian soldiers fighting Isis in the besieged government-held city of Deir Ezzor a week ago and the Russians evading responsibility for an air attack on a UN aid convoy killing 20 people outside Aleppo five days later. The explanation of US military officials was splendidly ingenious. As dutifully retailed by CNN, they said they believed a likely scenario was that the personnel hit were prisoners of the regime, perhaps military personnel being detained, although that is not certain. The initial signs indicated that they were dressed in civilian clothing. They may not have had the typical weapons of a Syrian military unit but rather trucks with weapons mounted on top of them. It is also not known if they were deliberately placed there to potentially deceive the coalition. For students of war propaganda this is a wonderful piece of obfuscation. No evidence is produced for “the likely scenario” in which supposition is heaped on supposition. Its purpose is instead to mask, or throw in doubt over, the obvious fact that someone had committed a blunder and ordered an attack on a long established Syrian Army position near Deir Ezzor airport. This sort of smoke screen is not designed to last very long, but to blunt criticism during the first crucial few days when the story is still at the top of the news agenda. Then a few weeks or even months down the road, there can be a grudging admission of the truth, or part of it, when it will barely get a mention at the end of newscasts or be relegated to page 24 of the newspapers. An old PR adage says that the best way for the perpetrator of some disaster to limit the damage to himself or herself is to “first say no story and then say old story.” It still works. The Russian explanation of the attack on the UN aid convoy on 19 September is also well worth studying as an example of the propagandist’s art. It is important to make your explanation detailed and interesting because it will be competing with a reality which, in the nature of war, will be murky and confusing. The Russian news agency Tass quoted a senior Russian official as saying that “analysis of video records from drones of yesterday’s movement of the humanitarian convoy across Aleppo territories controlled by militants has revealed new details. It is clearly seen in the video that a terrorists’ pickup truck with a towed large-calibre mortar is moving along with the convoy.” This was good stuff. Suggesting that there was an understandable reason to imagine they were attacking a legitimate target – though it had to be admitted that “the large calibre mortar” had somehow disappeared by the time of the attack. But the Russians made the mistake of producing too many exculpatory stories at the same time, claiming there were no Russian or Syrian planes in the area – in which case why suggest the legitimate target scenario? Other Russian explanations were that there had been no attack at all and, if there had been, it had been carried out by jihadis and, in any case, all the damage was done from the ground and not from the air. [Airstrikes] Casualties] [False balance] [US Syria policy]
• Nicaragua speaks out against congressional rebuke
  By Franco Ordoñez WASHINGTON — The Nicaraguan officials accused members of Congress with carrying out an intimidation and disinformation campaign against the government. They called a House proposal, led by Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, to restrict the President Daniel Ortega government’s access to loans a violation of international agreements. “We reject as a violation of International Law and the United Nations Charter, the proposals and Initiatives presented in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States that are part of a pattern of historic interventionist policies in our Rightful and Sovereign Political, Social and Economic Processes, especially in an intensive way during Electoral Moments,” government said in a statement. Concern in Washington about Nicaragua has grown as the government has cozied up with the Russian military and Ortega has sought to build his authoritarian power. He’s running for a third consecutive term and has refused U.S. and its allies calls to allow international monitors to observer the election. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article103697317.html#storylink=cpy [Nicaragua] [Russia confrontation]
• Turkey's Erdogan says U.S. sent weapons to Kurdish fighters in Syria
  By Daren Butler and David Dolan | ISTANBUL Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused the United States of supplying more weapons to Kurdish fighters in northern Syria this week, saying Washington had delivered two plane loads of arms to what Ankara considers a terrorist group. Erdogan's comments are likely to add to the tension between Turkey and the United States over Syria, where Washington backs the Kurdish YPG forces against Islamic State. [Turkey] [Kurds] [Proxy] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Obama vetoes Sept. 11 Saudi bill, sets up showdown with Congress
  By Patricia Zengerle and Roberta Rampton | WASHINGTON President Barack Obama on Friday vetoed legislation allowing families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, which could prompt Congress to overturn his decision with a rare veto override, the first of his presidency. Obama said the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act would hurt U.S. national security and harm important alliances, while shifting crucial terrorism-related issues from policy officials into the hands of the courts. The bill passed the Senate and House of Representatives in reaction to long-running suspicions, denied by Saudi Arabia, that hijackers of the four U.S. jetliners that attacked the United States in 2001 were backed by the Saudi government. [9/11] [Saudi Arabia] [Governance]
• Yemen: The Graveyard of the Obama Doctrine
  The human costs of facilitating Saudi Arabia’s proxy war Samuel Oakford and Peter Salisbury Sep 23, 2016 This past Tuesday, President Barack Obama delivered his final speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Though he tried to sound optimistic, he couldn’t help but strike a rueful tone. Gone was the global media darling who electrified world leaders in 2009—that Obama was “determined to act boldly and collectively on behalf of justice and prosperity at home and abroad.” The graying, deliberate Obama of 2016 could offer only limited aspirations of a “course correction” in world politics, while pondering why cycles of conflict and suffering persisted. Though the president advocated for the “hard work of diplomacy” in places like Syria, he also elaborated on one of his recent, common refrains, cautioning that in the Middle East “no external power is going to be able to force different religious communities or ethnic communities to co-exist for long.” Across the region, “we have to insist that all parties recognize a common humanity and that nations end proxy wars that fuel disorder,” Obama said. A day later, the U.S. Senate held a rare debate on the sale of arms destined for another war in the Middle East. The deal, for $1.15 billion in weaponry to Saudi Arabia, including over 150 Abrams tanks, is a drop in a bucket: more than $100 billion in arms sales to the kingdom have already been approved by the Obama administration. But a year and a half into the kingdom’s relentless war in Yemen, opponents of the new sale see it as an outright affirmation of Washington’s involvement in a deadly, strategically incoherent war that the White House has kept largely quiet about. What’s more, it is at odds with Obama’s apparent distaste for regional proxy wars. [Yemen] [Saudi Arabia] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Syrian Ceasefire failed, what now?
  By Aram Mirzaei from The Saker One week ago I and many other analysts predicted that the ceasefire agreement brokered by the US and Russia last week was doomed to fail. I said this because of the fact that there are no “moderate” rebels, and that any group trying to disassociate itself from Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham (formerly Jabhat Al-Nusra) would commit both political and military suicide. Right from the first day of the implementation, Western backed Jihadists and their allies declared that they would not take part in the cessation of hostilities, which really rendered the whole agreement useless since it became clear that they would use this opportunity to regroup and rearm. This week long ceasefire was also supposed to allow for humanitarian aid to reach besieged areas such as East Aleppo which is currently under the control of Washington’s “moderate” rebels. Despite the Syrian Army withdrawing up to 1 km north of the imperative Castillo road leading into the eastern parts of Aleppo and handing over the control over the checkpoints in this area to Russian Marines and Syrian Red Crescent Society, the humanitarian aid destined for eastern Aleppo were severely delayed due to constant attacks on the Russian Marines by the Jihadists. In a video posted by RT on their Youtube page, one can clearly see the Russian personnel coming under attack by Jihadist fire, yet despite this, mainstream media in the West shamefully reported that the “Assad regime” were the ones who were guilty of both violating the ceasefire and disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Jihadists and their supporters refused to allow for humanitarian aid to be delivered because they refused to acknowledge the ceasefire, instead claiming that both the ceasefire and the humanitarian aid being sent to them was part of a “UN conspiracy” and that they “refuse to accept this humiliating and pathetic aid”. In a video posted online, a rally takes place in eastern Aleppo where Jihadists and their supporters declare that they refuse to accept this “humiliating” aid in the name of the religion (of Islam). [Syria] [Ceasefire]
• Young voters to Clinton: We can’t stand you
  By David Lightman STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Students all over Penn State University agree on this much about Hillary Clinton: “She’s slimy,” said Anay Pope. And Pope, 25, is a Clinton supporter. For the moment. Clinton’s poll numbers are sagging, and the biggest reason is that she’s plunging among young voters. A Quinnipiac University poll this month found that in a four-way race, Clinton is up 5 points nationally with 18- to 34-year-old voters, down from a 24-point lead just a month before. Just days ahead of the first debate Monday and less than two months before voting ends, interviews with more than 30 young voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania underscore her two challenges: Many young voters are taking serious looks at Donald Trump as well as Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein. And many are debating whether they even want to vote this year. [Hillary Clinton] [Alimentation]
• Politicians have always lied. Does it matter if they leave the truth behind entirely?
  Sep 10th 2016 CONSIDER how far Donald Trump is estranged from fact. He inhabits a fantastical realm where Barack Obama’s birth certificate was faked, the president founded Islamic State (IS), the Clintons are killers and the father of a rival was with Lee Harvey Oswald before he shot John F. Kennedy. Mr Trump is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics—a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power. And he is not alone. Members of Poland’s government assert that a previous president, who died in a plane crash, was assassinated by Russia. Turkish politicians claim the perpetrators of the recent bungled coup were acting on orders issued by the CIA. The successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union warned of the hordes of immigrants that would result from Turkey’s imminent accession to the union. [Propaganda] [Media] [Trump] [Irony]
• Islamic State fired crude chemical weapons on US troops – Pentagon
  Powdered mustard used in attack on air base near Mosul in Iraq, raising questions about whether the militant group is manufacturing the agent itself Spencer Ackerman in New York Thursday 22 September 2016 02.28 Islamic State forces have fired crude chemical weapons at US troops in Iraq, the Pentagon has confirmed, a startling disclosure that US officials promptly downplayed as resulting in no deaths or injuries. The attack came from a powdered mustard agent delivered in a mortar or rocket shell and fired on US forces on Tuesday at the Qayyarah West air base near Mosul. The air base, recaptured from Isis in July, is a pivotal staging ground for a highly anticipated attack on Mosul, Isis’s capital in Iraq approximately 40 miles (65km) to the north. [ISIS] [cbw]
• An American in Latakia: “this was no revolution”
  by Lily Martin c As an eye witness to the entire war in Syria, from March 2011 to present, I can state this was no revolution. I am an American citizen living permanently in Syria, which is my husband’s birthplace. I have been here 24 years. A real revolution would have the support of the people, inside Syria, not Syrian living in Paris and London for the past 40 years. To have a real grassroots uprising, you need the support of the people living inside Syria, who would share your views. If it had been a real uprising/revolution, the whole process could have taken 3-6 months, because the Army would have followed the will of the people, given the fact the Syrian Army is made up of Syrians of all ethnic and religious sects. The Syrian Army is a true representative of the Syrian population. If the population wanted the goals stated by the ‘protesters’, which was to establish Islamic law in Syria, and to abolish the current secular government, the Army would have eventually followed along, expressing the will of the people. However, you had a small minority in the Syrian population who were for regime change, but this very small group was backed by USA, UK, NATO, EU, and the Arab Gulf Monarchies. Money talks, as we say in America. [Syria]
• Clinton or Trump victory? America says ‘meh’
  Elections 2016 September 21, 2016 2:04 PM By Lesley Clark WASHINGTON — No matter who wins the November election – Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump – America will not be that enthusiastic. Only about 1 in 10 registered voters say they’ll be excited if either major party candidate wins, a new national survey by the Pew Research Center says. The poll illustrates just how deeply unpopular both candidates are. The Clinton excitement level ranked at 12 percent; Trump’s at 11 percent. Even among supporters, more said they’d feel relief rather than excitement if their preferred candidate won. That fits with an overall finding that 33 percent of Trump supporters and about as many Clinton supporters say they’re voting at least partially in opposition to the other candidate. Among Clinton supporters, only her experience – at 32 percent – is mentioned as frequently as opposition to Trump. For Trump supporters, opposition to Clinton is among the most frequently cited factors for supporting the candidate, with nearly as many citing his status as a political outsider – 27 percent – or his policy stances – 26 percent. [US_Election16] [Alienation]
• Rogue Mission: Did the Pentagon Bomb Syrian Army to Kill Ceasefire Deal?
  Mike Whitney • September 20, 2016 “Everything suggests that the attack…… was deliberately committed by forces inside the US government hostile to the ceasefire….Claims that US fighters were unaware of who they were bombing are simply not credible, and are flatly contradicted by other accounts in the media…” — Alex Lantier, World Socialist Web Site A rift between the Pentagon and the White House turned into open rebellion on Saturday when two US F-16s and two A-10 warplanes bombed Syrian Arab Army (SAA) positions at Deir al-Zor killing at least 62 Syrian regulars and wounding 100 others. The US has officially taken responsibility for the incident which it called a “mistake”, but the timing of the massacre has increased speculation that the attack was a desperate, eleventh-hour attempt to derail the fragile ceasefire and avoid parts of the implementation agreement that Pentagon leaders publicly opposed. Many analysts now wonder whether the attacks are an indication that the neocon-strewn DOD is actively engaged in sabotaging President Obama’s Syria policy, a claim that implies that the Pentagon is led by anti-democratic rebels who reject the Constitutional authority of the civilian leadership. Saturday’s bloodletting strongly suggests that a mutiny is brewing at the War Department. [US Syria policy] [Dissension]
• US-Russian Ceasefire in Syria Has Broken Down, But Who Is at Fault?
  Patrick Cockburn • September 20, 2016 The British participation in the misdirected US-led air raid that killed at least 62 Syrian soldiers and the final breakdown of the shaky six-day truce combine to underline the need to bring the war to an end and to emphasise how difficult it will be to accomplish this in the near future. The British and Americans admit to a mistake in targeting the Syrian army rather than Isis, but in the atmosphere of chronic suspicion that swirls around anything to do with the Syrian war, there will be plenty, and not just in Damascus and Moscow, who will not believe them. [Syria] [Ceasefire]
• U.S. begins unblocking jetliner sales to Iran
  By Tim Hepher and Alwyn Scott | PARIS/NEW YORK The United States has begun unblocking deals by Western giants to sell jetliners to Iran in a move likely to ease complaints from Tehran over implementation of last year's sanctions deal, but test conservative opposition to the deals in both nations. Europe's Airbus (AIR.PA) said on Wednesday it had received U.S. Treasury approval to begin exporting jets to Iran, under a deal for more than 100 jets struck in January. Hours later, its U.S. rival Boeing (BA.N), which had been behind Airbus in the line for permits because its matching deal for over 100 jets came six months later, said it had received a sales license and remained in talks with IranAir. [nL2N1BX1TJ] The U.S. Treasury confirmed issuing two licenses. [Iran deal] [Treasury]
• Obama’s Curious UN Farewell Address
  September 21, 2016 President Obama’s U.N. speech looked critically at the U.S. role in world and admitted capitalism’s shortcomings, a contrast with Obama’s previous bluster about “indispensable” and “exceptional” America, notes Joe Lauria. By Joe Lauria The Barack Obama of 2008 reemerged at the United Nations on Tuesday, bookending his presidency with an uplifting address somewhat critical of American power and calling for an end to economic inequality at home and abroad. The speech revealed the president that Obama might have been – and that many people had hoped for – if he had successfully confronted the American Deep State. But he waited until his farewell U.N. address, much like Dwight Eisenhower did with his Farewell Address in 1961 warning about the Military-Industrial Complex, to say what he really thought without having to suffer the full consequences inside the Beltway. President Barack Obama waits backstage before making his last address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 20, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) President Barack Obama waits backstage before making his last address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 20, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Obama didn’t mention the word “exceptional” once as he has in his past U.N. speeches, and he kept his distorted criticism of Russia and China to a minimum. (He briefly tried to say the U.S. was not behind the Ukraine coup.) Last year, bashing Beijing and Moscow was the main point of an address steeped in hypocrisy. [Obama] [Rhetoric]
• Why ASEAN is here to stay and what that means for the US
  by Satu Limaye In the wake of President Barack Obama's final attendance at the ASEAN-led East Asia Summit (EAS) in Vientiane, Laos, it is a good time to take stock of ASEAN’s imperfections, ability to endure, and utility to the United States. Especially in the US, commentary has concentrated on ASEAN’s inability to forge consensus on the South China Sea (SCS). The more puzzling question, however, is why observers should expect 10 disparate countries with widely divergent interests on the SCS to have a unified position. We need to avoid “ASEANology” (the parsing of each ASEAN gathering’s developments and communiqués regarding the SCS) and focus more on ASEAN’s fundamental shortcomings, how it is likely to endure despite them, and its utility to US interests in Southeast Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific. {ASEAN] [US global strategy]
• The aftermath of Turkey’s failed coup threatens its ties with Western allies
  By Michael Birnbaum and Karen DeYoung September 21 at 2:46 PM ? ISTANBUL — More than two months after a rump military group and its backers tried to overthrow the elected government of Turkey — bombing the parliament, sending tanks into the streets and only narrowly failing in an attempt to kidnap the president — the Turkish government last week sent Washington its first evidence that an elderly cleric living in rural Pennsylvania was the mastermind of the coup attempt. If the information persuades the Justice Department, a federal court will decide whether to accede to Turkey’s demand that Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish imam who has resided under self- imposed exile in the United States for nearly two decades, be sent home to face charges. Should the Justice Department or the court be unconvinced, or the process take too long, U.S. relations with the West’s most important Muslim-majority ally are likely to hit new lows. [Turkey US] [Coup] [Gulen]
• 75 retired senior diplomats sign letter opposing Trump for president
  A group of former senior diplomats released a letter Wednesday saying they will oppose Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who is seen here touring the Staub Manufacturing plant in Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) By Karen DeYoung September 21 at 6:54 PM ? A group of 75 retired career Foreign Service officers, including ambassadors and senior State Department officials under Republican and Democratic presidents over nearly a half-century, has signed an open letter calling Donald Trump “entirely unqualified to serve as President and Commander-in-Chief.” The diplomats said “none of us” will vote for Trump. While they said not all of them agreed with every decision made by Hillary Clinton, they said they all supported her candidacy. “Because the stakes in this election are so high,” the letter said, “this is the first time many of us have publicly endorsed a candidate for President.” [Read the diplomats’ letter on why they will not vote for Donald Trump] The letter is the latest in an unprecedented number of joint public statements signed by retired high-level government officials and military officers this election cycle. Most have focused on national security, and most have been against Trump. [Trump] [Deep state]
• Turkey’s Euphrates Shield has turned into the Sword of Osman
  By M.K. Bhadrakumar on September 20, 2016 Although Euphrates Shield had exceeded its original mission and further extension of the operation involves political and military risks, Turkey is still eyeing control of al-Bab to create for itself a ‘safe zone’ inside Syria and to reinforce the rebel forces controlling the eastern part of Aleppo city. The Turkish military incursion into Syria, which began on August 24, is getting to be one month old. Ankara faces a ticklish decision: Should it rename its operation code-named Euphrates Shield as the Sword of Osman used for the coronation of Ottoman Sultans? A member of Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army stands guard in front of a building in the border town of Jarablus A member of Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), seen with a mural of the Islamic State in the background, stands guard in front of a building in the border town of Jarablus, Syria, August 31, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas Euphrates Shield began modestly as an operation to drive away Syrian Kurdish militia back to the eastern side of Euphrates River. It now wears the look of ‘Mission Creep’. President Recep Erdogan redefined the scope of Euphrates Shield in a major statement on Monday. Having first taken over the Syrian border towns of Jarablus al-Rab, Turkish troops are “now going down as far as al-Bab”, as he put it. Erdogan posed the question that is on everyone’s lips: “But why are you going down there?” Then, he offered an answer himself: “We need to rid these places from being a threat to us”. Turkish troops are now poised to go 30 kilometers inside Syrian territory, close to the eye of the storm in Aleppo where a battle is raging between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters supported by Turkey. [Turkey Syria] [Neo-Ottomanism]
• Deir ez-Zor bombings: What is US’ actual goal in Syria?
  By Christina Lin on September 20, 2016 Mother Agnes Mariam, a nominee for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize from Homs diocese, has some harsh words for the US war against Syria: “Shame on a coalition who pretends fighting ISIS while in reality is helping ISIS killing innocent soldiers whose mission is to protect civilians.” This is in response to the September 17 US airstrikes in Deir ez-Zor that massacred 62 Syrian soldiers and injured 100 more who have been fighting ISIS.[1] According to a June 2015 Time magazine article, Deir ez-Zor with a population of 228,000 has been under siege by ISIS the past years, relying on the nightly arrival of a large Syrian air-force-operated cargo plane which has a payload of more than 46 tons and transports munitions, food and medical supplies. This much needed aid is flown out from the military air base southeast of the city, the target of ISIS the past years and now bombed by US jet fighters. During the bombing, ISIS launched a simultaneous attack and threatened to overrun the air base as well as slaughter the over 200,000 civilians. Deir ez-Zor is also home to a large Christian population protected by the Syrian government, similar to most other Christian inhabited cities that are in government-controlled areas along the coast. [US Syria policy]
• 32 killed in Aleppo after truce expires
  Xinhua, September 20, 2016 At least 32 people were killed and many more wounded in the northern province of Aleppo on Monday, in the first hours after a U.S.-Russian truce expired, a monitor group reported. Over 40 airstrikes were carried against rebel-held areas in Aleppo and its countryside Monday, just hours after a week-long ceasefire expired without any extension. Twelve of those killed were drivers of aid convoys of the Red Crescent, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The UK-based watchdog group said the death toll could likely rise due to the high number of critically wounded people. Meanwhile, the state news agency SANA said the rebel groups attacked military positions on Monday afternoon in the 1070 residential area in the southern countryside of Aleppo. It added that the Syrian forces repelled the attack, inflicting losses on the assailants. [Syria] [Ceasefire]
• If Hillary’s Not Able, There’s Always Kaine
  by Eric Draitser If internet speculation is to be believed, Hillary Clinton is suffering from everything from epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease to adverse reactions to chemotherapy and Zika-West Nile-SARS-swine flu. The problem is that, like bellybuttons, everyone’s got a theory; and, again like bellybuttons, most theories are useless. Whatever the case may be with Hillary’s health, the fact is that she remains the likely winner of the presidential election, which means that a potentially sick woman will become the Commander-in-Chief. So that raises an obvious question: what next? Put another way, the American people deserve to know who the hell Tim Kaine is, and what he would do as president. Because, after the initial “Tim who?” round of questions, citizens will want to understand who this underwhelming ex-Governor and Democratic Party hack is, and what sort of policies he’d pursue. [US_Election16] [Hillary Clinton] [Tim Kaine]
• Deep State America
  One explanation why U.S. policies serve no national interests Philip Giraldi • September 20, 2016 On September 9th the Washington Post featured a front page article describing how the Defense Department had used warplanes to attack targets and kill suspected militants in six countries over the Labor Day weekend. The article was celebratory, citing Pentagon officials who boasted of the ability to engage “multiple targets” anywhere in the world in what has become a “permanent war.” The article did not mention that the United States is not currently at war with any of the six target countries and made no attempt to make a case that the men and women who were killed actually threatened the U.S. or American citizens. Actual American interests in fighting a war without limits and without an end were not described. They never are. Indeed, in the U.S. and elsewhere many citizens often wonder how certain government policies like the Washington’s war on terror can persist in spite of widespread popular opposition or clear perceptions that they are either ineffective or even harmful. This persistence of policies regarding which there is no debate is sometimes attributed to a “deep state.” [Deep state]
• America in Asia: Arrogant, Unapologetic, and Ready for More Conflict
  By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, September 20, 2016 New Eastern Outlook 19 September 2016 The United States exists an entire ocean away from Asia, yet its policymakers, politicians, and even Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter have declared America’s “primacy” over the region, vowing to assert itself and its interests above all nations actually located in Asia. In a June 2016 Reuters article titled, “U.S. flexes muscles as Asia worries about South China Sea row,” Secretary Carter is quoted as saying: The United States will remain the most powerful military and main underwriter of security in the [Asian] region for decades to come – and there should be no doubt about that. The US, by presuming to dictate all that takes place across Asia, has all but declared itself a hegemon. Reiterating the notion of American primacy and exceptionalism is a full-time occupation for the US State Department’s employees. This includes US Ambassador to ASEAN Nina Hachigian who pointed out to followers on Twitter that she had “spoke to some Lao shop owners” following US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to the Southeast Asian nation, and “they said [President Obama’s] visit was the most exciting and significant event in decades.” Of course, for the nation of Laos, the most significant event regarding the US is undoubtedly the 2 million tons of munitions the US dumped on it between 1964 and 1973. These 2 million tons include cluster bombs consisting of some 266 million submunitions, an estimated 30% of which were left unexploded and remain to this day an enduring, deadly hazard to Laos and its 6.8 million people. There are an estimated 80 million submunitions still littering the country, or about 11 for each man, woman, and child that lives in Laos. 20,000 people have been killed by unexploded US munitions and many more maimed which includes losing limbs. [Hegemony] [Laos] [War crimes]
• Syria Bombing Exposes Cracks in American Facade
  by Kit Yesterday, the USA committed what is – essentially – an act of war against the legitimate government of Syria. The official position is that, due to a breakdown in communication (or possibly bad intelligence), the US Air Force – with Australian support – bombed SAA men and vehicles resulting in the deaths of at least 60 Syrian soldiers. The Russian’s are, understandably, incensed. Accusing the Americans of “assisting ISIS” and describing it as an “intentional provocation”, all of which ties into a speech Putin gave yesterday, in which he questioned American commitment to the deal. But why did this attack happen? Assuming it wasn’t just straight incompetence, which is always a possibility when dealing with an American military far more concerned with being expensive than efficient, what was the motivation? Why has the Obama administration worked for weeks to get this deal together, only for the USAF to bomb Syrian soldiers days into the ceasefire? Why has Kerry spent hours carefully negotiating with Sergei Lavrov, only for Samantha Power to immediately launch into abusive and hysterical language the moment any even minor conflict occurs? The only logical position to take is that, for some reason, some parts of the American political or military establishment are trying to scupper the ceasefire before it can take hold. To smother peace in its cradle. [US Syria policy] [Dissension]
• Iran urges U.S. to unblock aircraft deals, seeks investors
  By Tim Hepher | TEHRAN Iran urged the United States on Sunday to remove remaining obstacles to it buying passenger planes following the lifting of international sanctions and spread out the welcome mat to foreign investors as it seeks to boost its aviation sector. Iran provisionally agreed earlier this year to buy over 200 jets worth $50 billion at list prices from Airbus and Boeing under an agreement between Tehran and world powers to ease sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear activities. Both deals hinge on the longer-than-expected process of winning U.S. Treasury approval, which is needed due to the high proportion of U.S. parts in virtually all modern jetliners, including those made by Europe's Airbus. [Iran deal] [Renege] [Treasury] [US dominance]
• America’s Worldwide Impunity
  September 19, 2016 Exclusive: The mainstream U.S. media is treating the U.S.-led airstrike that killed scores of Syrian troops as an unfortunate boo-boo, ignoring that the U.S. and its allies have no legal right to operate in Syria at all, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry After several years of arming and supporting Syrian rebel groups that often collaborated with Al Qaeda’s Nusra terror affiliate, the United States launched an illegal invasion of Syria two years ago with airstrikes supposedly aimed at Al Qaeda’s Islamic State spin-off, but on Saturday that air war killed scores of Syrian soldiers and aided an Islamic State victory. Yet, the major American news outlets treat this extraordinary set of circumstances as barely newsworthy, operating with an imperial hubris that holds any U.S. invasion or subversion of another country as simply, ho-hum, the way things are supposed to work. On Monday, The Washington Post dismissed the devastating airstrike at Deir al-Zour killing at least 62 Syrian soldiers as one of several “mishaps” that had occurred over the past week and jeopardized a limited ceasefire, arranged between Russia and the Obama administration. But the fact that the U.S. and several allies have been routinely violating Syrian sovereign airspace to carry out attacks was not even an issue, nor is it a scandal that the U.S. military and CIA have been arming and training Syrian rebels. In the world of Official Washington, the United States has the right to intervene anywhere, anytime, for whatever reason it chooses. President Barack Obama even has publicly talked about authorizing military strikes in seven different countries, including Syria, and yet he is deemed “weak” for not invading more countries, at least more decisively. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has vowed to engage in a larger invasion of Syria, albeit wrapping the aggression in pretty words like “safe zone” and “no-fly zone,” but it would mean bombing and killing more Syrian soldiers. As Secretary of State, Clinton used similar language to justify invading Libya and implementing a “regime change” that killed the nation’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and unleashed five years of violent political chaos. If you were living a truly democratic country with a truly professional news media, you would think that this evolution of the United States into a rogue superpower violating pretty much every international law and treaty of the post-World War II era would be a regular topic of debate and criticism. Those crimes include horrendous acts against people, such as torture and other violations of the Geneva Conventions, as well as acts of aggression, which the Nuremberg Tribunals deemed “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” [Imperialism] [Media]
• Saudi Arabia appears to be using U.S.-supplied white phosphorus in its war in Yemen
  By Thomas Gibbons-Neff September 19 at 7:00 AM ? An 81mm white phosphorus mortar round bursts on impact during a live-fire exercise involving elements of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. (Spc. Barbara Ospina/1st Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs) Saudi Arabia appears to be using U.S.-supplied white phosphorus munitions in its war in Yemen, based on images and videos posted to social media, raising concerns among human rights groups that the highly incendiary material could be used against civilians. Under U.S. regulations, white phosphorus sold to other countries is to be used only for signaling to other troops and creating smoke screens. When the munition explodes, it releases white phosphorus that automatically ignites in the air and creates a thick white smoke. When used against soldiers or civilians, it can maim and kill by burning to the bone. It is unclear exactly how the Saudis are using the munitions, but the government has already received widespread condemnation for its indiscriminate bombing in civilian areas since its campaign against rebel forces in Yemen began in 2015. [cbw] [Yemen] [Saudi Arabia] [Arms sales]
• Hillary Clinton regrets her Iraq vote. But opting for intervention was a pattern.
  By Michael Kranish September 15 at 6:04 PM Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) speaks at debate on Joint Resolution 114, which authorized President George W. Bush to use force against Iraq, on Oct. 11, 2002. The resolution passed in the House 295 to 133 and in the Senate 77 to 23. (Senate TV/Getty Images) It was hours before Sen. Hillary Clinton would vote in 2002 on whether to give President George W. Bush the authority to go to war with Iraq. She had been advised by her husband and many close associates to vote yes. Now, at the last minute, she met with a group of church leaders, joining hands in silent prayer, insisting that she remained undecided. “What I saw was her asking a lot of probing questions, a lot of concern about would this be effective,” said Andrew Shapiro, Clinton’s foreign policy adviser at the time, referring to the days leading up to her decision. In the end, however, the New York Democrat crossed party lines and voted for the authorization to use military force. It would take her years to acknowledge that the decision was misguided, eventually calling it “my mistake.” But it was little surprise to many who watched her evolution as a hawk over her years as a first lady and then as a senator. For years, Clinton has blamed Bush for misleading her into voting for the resolution. But an examination by The Washington Post found that her decision was based as much on advice from her husband’s advisers as from Bush administration officials. There were also significant gaps in her fact-gathering, most notably her apparent failure to read a classified analysis that other senators cited in voting against the resolution. [Hillary Clinton] [Belligerence] [Iraq]
• Assad’s Death Warrant
  Mike Whitney • September 15, 2016 “Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria.” — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria, Politico The conflict in Syria is not a war in the conventional sense of the word. It is a regime change operation, just like Libya and Iraq were regime change operations. The main driver of the conflict is the country that’s toppled more than 50 sovereign governments since the end of World War 2. (See: Bill Blum here.) We’re talking about the United States of course. Washington is the hands-down regime change champion, no one else even comes close. That being the case, one might assume that the American people would notice the pattern of intervention, see through the propaganda and assign blame accordingly. But that never seems to happen and it probably won’t happen here either. No matter how compelling the evidence may be, the brainwashed American people always believe their government is doing the right thing. [US Syria policy] [Pipeline]
• Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria
  They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries — for oil. By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr 2/23/16, 8:50 AM CET Updated 9/16/16, 10:12 AM CET In part because my father was murdered by an Arab, I’ve made an effort to understand the impact of U.S. policy in the Mideast and particularly the factors that sometimes motivate bloodthirsty responses from the Islamic world against our country. As we focus on the rise of the Islamic State and search for the source of the savagery that took so many innocent lives in Paris and San Bernardino, we might want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology. Instead we should examine the more complex rationales of history and oil — and how they often point the finger of blame back at our own shores [US Middle East policy]
• The curious death of Iran's left
  Shahir Shahidsaless Friday 16 September 2016 16:20 UTC Over the past four decades, the political currents that brought down Iran's monarchy have slowly disappeared into a mysterious ether There is a consensus among the scholars who have studied and written about the 1979 Iranian Revolution that social and economic inequalities were central to the collapse of the Iranian Monarchy. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution, mobilised the masses by defending the barefooted, the mostazafin. He presented the Islamic system as a system that would fulfill every aspect of social justice in its broad meaning, including the economic. Central to his discourse was defending kookh’neshinan (those who live in very poor accommodations) against kakh’neshinan (those who live in palaces). [Iran]
• US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture
  September 16, 2016 A group of U.S. intelligence veterans chastises the mainstream U.S. media for virtually ignoring a British newspaper’s account of the gripping inside story on how the CIA tried to block the U.S. Senate’s torture investigation. MEMORANDUM FOR: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity SUBJECT: U.S. Media Mum On How Your Committee Faced Down Both CIA and Obama We write to thank you for your unwavering support for your extraordinarily courageous and tenacious staff in (1) investigating CIA torture under the Bush/Cheney administration and (2) resisting CIA/White House attempts under the Obama administration to cover up heinous torture crimes like waterboarding. The CIA seal in the lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. We confess to having been shocked at the torture detailed in the version of the executive summary your Committee released on December 9, 2014. We found ourselves wondering what additional behavior could have been deemed so repugnant that the White House and CIA insisted it be redacted; and if the entire 6,700-page investigation – with whatever redaction might be truly necessary – would ever see the light of day. We think you could take steps now to make it less likely that the full report be deep-sixed, and we will make some suggestions below toward that end. [Torture] [CIA]
• U.S.-led forces strike Syrian troops, prompting emergency U.N. meeting
  U.S.: 'Not our intention' to strike Syrian personnel By Angus McDowall and Andrew Osborn | BEIRUT/MOSCOW U.S.-led coalition air strikes reportedly killed dozens of Syrian soldiers on Saturday, endangering a U.S.-Russian brokered ceasefire and prompting an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting as tensions between Moscow and Washington escalated. The United States military said the coalition stopped the attacks against what it had believed to be Islamic State positions in northeast Syria after Russia informed it that Syrian military personnel and vehicles may have been hit. [US Syria policy] [ISIS] [Outsourcing]
• As ISIS closed in, a race to remove chemical-weapon precursors in Libya
  By Missy Ryan and Greg Jaffe September 13 at 7:05 PM Late last year, as Islamic State fighters battled to expand their stronghold on Libya’s coast, ­militants came within 45 miles ­of the country’s sole remaining ­chemical-weapons site, unnerving Libyan and American officials who feared that potentially deadly chemicals could fall into extremist hands. In May, when the fighters struck a mile from the lightly guarded desert facility, killing two security officers at a checkpoint, they decided it was time to act. The Islamic State’s encroachment on an installation outside the remote oasis town of Waddan, where 500 metric tons of ­chemical-weapon precursor materials were stored, set off a hurried chain of events culminating in a disarmament operation involving the United States, European countries and the United Nations. The international effort, which concluded last week when a Danish ship unloaded the materials at a German port for destruction, is one of the rare successes that Western nations can claim in Libya since dictator Moammar Gaddafi’s ouster in 2011 pitched the North African country into lawlessness and civil war. [cbw] [ISIS] [Libya] [Agency]
• Israel to get $38 billion in U.S. military aid over 10 years
  By: Josh Lederman, The Associated Press, September 13, 2016 (Photo Credit: Pete Souza/White House) WASHINGTON — The United States will provide Israel's military with $38 billion during the next 10 years, officials said Tuesday, the largest batch of military assistance the U.S. has ever pledged to another country. Following months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the State Department said the two countries had reached a 10-year agreement, with a signing ceremony planned for Wednesday. The U.S. and Israel haven't disclosed the exact sum, but officials familiar with the deal said it totals $3.8 billion a year — up from the $3.1 billion the U.S. gave Israel annually under the previous 10-year deal. Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, planned to attend the ceremony at the State Department, a senior Obama administration official said. Israel's acting national security adviser, Jacob Nagel, arrived in Washington ahead of the announcement and was also expected to attend. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed in a brief statement that a deal had been reached, but offered no additional comment. Under the agreement, Israel's ability to spend part of the funds on Israeli military products will be gradually phased out, eventually requiring all of the funds to be spend on American military industries. Israel's preference for spending some of the funds internally had been a major sticking point in the deal. [Israel] [Arms Sales] [MISCOM]
• Marine drill instructor accused of running a clothes dryer with a Muslim recruit inside
  By Dan Lamothe September 13 at 2:22 PM Recruits push through the final steps of the Crucible, the culminating training that is part of Marine Corps boot camp, at Parris Island, S.C., on Aug. 13, 2016. (Cpl. Vanessa Austin/ Marine Corps) A Muslim Marine said he was called a terrorist and ordered into an industrial clothes dryer multiple times by a drill instructor who then turned it on, burning him, according to investigative documents that provide new details about the alleged abuse of recruits at the service’s training center at Parris Island, S.C. “You’re going to kill us all the first chance you get aren’t you, terrorist?” the drill instructor thundered at the recruit, the new Marine later alleged, according to the documents that have not been released publicly but were reviewed by The Washington Post. “What are your plans? Aren’t you a terrorist?” [Following a Marine recruit’s death, a culture of hazing is exposed on a storied base] The issue of hazing and abuse at Parris Island surfaced March 18, when a 20-year-old recruit with Pakistani roots — Raheel Siddiqui of Taylor, Mich. — died after leaping from a stairwell landing that was nearly 40 feet high while running away from the same drill instructor who used the dryer. The instructor had just slapped Siddiqui before he jumped. Siddiqui’s death drew public scrutiny to a culture of harsh punishments at Parris Island — one that Marine officials were already examining, the documents show. [Islamophobia] [US military]
• False Flag Terror “Has Succeeded Consistently Against Audiences Around The World, For Millennia, To Compel War”
  By Washington's Blog Global Research, September 13, 2016 Washington's Blog 12 September 2016 Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos: (1) In 1697, native American conspirators admitted in court that Iroquois leaders convinced a Piscataway tribesman to murder an Englishwoman in Virginia for the purpose of igniting a war between the English and the Piscataway – thus weakening both parties – and allowing the Iroquois to seize Piscataway lands. (2) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army ….” And see this, this and this. [False flag]
• Al Qaeda’s Ties to US-Backed Syrian Rebels
  September 13, 2016 Exclusive: The U.S. is demanding the grounding of Syria’s air force but is resisting Russian demands that U.S.-armed rebels separate from Al Qaeda, a possible fatal flaw in the new cease-fire, writes Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter The new ceasefire agreement between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which went into effect at noon Monday, has a new central compromise absent from the earlier ceasefire agreement that the same two men negotiated last February. But it isn’t clear that it will produce markedly different results. The new agreement incorporates a U.S.-Russian bargain: the Syrian air force is prohibited from operating except under very specific circumstances in return for U.S.-Russian military cooperation against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, ISIS or ISIL. That compromise could be a much stronger basis for an effective ceasefire, provided there is sufficient motivation to carry it out fully. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chats with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov outside a room in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Osobnyak Guesthouse in Moscow, Russia, on July 15, 2016. [State Department Photo] The question, however, is whether the Obama administration is willing to do what would certainly be necessary for the agreement to establish a longer-term ceasefire at the expense of Daesh and Al Qaeda. In return for ending the Syrian air force’s operations, generally regarded as indiscriminate, and lifting the siege on the rebel-controlled sectors of Aleppo, the United States is supposed to ensure the end of the close military collaboration between the armed groups it supports and Al Qaeda, and join with Russian forces in weakening Al Qaeda. The new bargain is actually a variant of a provision in the Feb. 27 ceasefire agreement: in return for Russian and Syrian restraints on bombing operations, the United States would prevail on its clients to separate themselves from their erstwhile Al Qaeda allies. But that never happened. Instead the U.S.-supported groups not only declared publicly that they would not honor a “partial ceasefire” that excluded areas controlled by Al Qaeda’s affiliate, then known as Nusra Front, but joined with Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham, in a major open violation of the ceasefire by seizing strategic terrain south of Aleppo in early April. As the Kerry-Lavrov negotiations on a ceasefire continued, Kerry’s State Department hinted that the U.S. was linking its willingness to pressure its Syrian military clients to separate themselves from Al Qaeda’s forces in the northwest to an unspecified Russian concession on the ceasefire that was still being negotiated. It is now clear that what Kerry was pushing for was what the Obama administration characterized as the “grounding” of the Syrian air force in the current agreement. Al Qaeda’s Ties [US Syria policy] [Al Qaeda]
• Syria’s Fragile Truce: Can It Last a Week?
  by Patrick Cockburn A ceasefire began at sunset aimed at ending the five-year long civil war in Syria that has killed over a quarter of a million Syrians and forced five million more to flee the country. Under an agreement between the US and Russia, the initial truce will last seven days, during which time UN convoys will bring aid to besieged districts and Syrian government bombing of civilian areas will stop. The Syrian army said a seven-day “calm” would be applied across Syria from 7pm on Monday, but it reserved the right to respond decisively “using all forms of fire to any violation by the armed groups”. If the truce holds for a week, the US and Russia will form an unprecedented military partnership that will control airstrikes targeting Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the former Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda that has relabelled itself as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. Moderate rebel groups are supposed to separate themselves from al-Nusra in order to avoid air attack, though there are doubts about the feasibility of this. Most of the participants in the war say they will respect the ceasefire, though armed groups seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad said they did not think al-Nusra should be singled out as a target for air strikes. Observers in Damascus say one of the weaknesses of the accord is that “Nusra is the backbone of the armed opposition, but has no reason to abide by the terms of the ceasefire from which it is excluded”. [US Syria policy] [Nusra]
• The pros and cons of Kerry's Syria deal
  By Peter Apps The landmark deal last week between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov is, in many ways, a major breakthrough. It may well save lives. Against the backdrop of what has been the worst war of the 21st century, that’s a prize worth seizing. The problem: The effects will be strictly limited. The agreement is really several significant, but limited, tactical deals – on aid, on local ceasefires and on coordination against certain Islamist groups that both Washington and Moscow don’t want to see as part of the long-term future of Syria. That’s something, to be sure. To get that deal, however, Kerry and Lavrov appear to have deliberately avoided the toughest issues. Most crucial, the ultimate fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was off the table. That omission has likely been noticed in Damascus, Aleppo and the various regional capitals that must also help decide the conflict. It’s hardly surprising the United States and Russia can’t agree. Not least because there is still little to no agreement in Washington on exactly what the United States should be doing. Nor are European capitals – many increasingly worried about the political implications of the growing flow of refugees in their countries – all singing from the same song book. Some would like the war over at any cost. Others are still looking for specific outcomes. [Syria]
• US ambassador is ‘not a governor of Turkey,’ says Turkish FM
  ANTALYA Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu has slammed the recent statement by the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, saying the U.S. ambassador in Turkey “is not a governor.” “Some statements, especially coming from our allies, make us sad at a time when we are fighting against terrorism,” Çavusoglu said on Sept. 13 in his hometown Antalya. “No elected official can be untouchable if they are aiding terrorists,” he added. The U.S. Embassy on Sept. 11 released a statement on its website expressing concern about a government decision to replace 24 mayors in Turkey’s east and southeast with trustees, calling for early local elections as soon as possible. “First of all, the method of such an interference cannot be accepted,” Çavusoglu said in response. “We voice our concerns about issues in many countries, for example the rising racism in the U.S. The police have killed countless people in the U.S., but I don’t call my ambassador in Washington and tell him to make a statement. We voice our concerns directly to our American counterparts, this is just politeness,” he added. The foreign minister also complained that “the Americans feel entitled to say anything.” “None of you are the bosses of Turkey … If you want to have a strong relationship with Turkey, you will consider Turkey as an equal partner,” Çavusoglu said. “It is not a second-class country.” “Your ambassadors are not governors in Turkey. They should do their jobs properly within the framework of the Vienna Conventions,” he added. [Turkey] [Subversion]
• The Violent, Racist Meaning of “Redemption”
  In foretelling bloody insurrection in the event of a Clinton victory, Kentucky’s governor invoked America’s history of racial reaction. By Jamelle Bouie Over the weekend, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin stopped in Washington to speak at the Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of social conservatives. In his speech, the Tea Party politician addressed a dark question about America’s future under a second President Clinton: Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview, “Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive, that we’d ever be able to recover as a nation?” And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood of who? The tyrants, to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen. Bevin is not the first Republican to suggest armed insurrection in the event of a Democratic victory. And conservative rhetoric around the Second Amendment often takes, as a given, that it was placed in the Constitution as a safety valve against “tyranny,” with the clear implication that a present or future Democratic administration might be reckoned such. [US_Election16] [Hillary Clinton] [Republicans] [Insurrection]
• Here are the juiciest Colin Powell comments about Trump and Clinton from his hacked emails
  By Aaron Blake September 14 Newly released emails reportedly hacked from former Secretary of State Colin Powell's account show him calling Donald Trump a quote "national disgrace" and "international pariah." He also reportedly criticizes Hillary Clinton's camp for trying to drag him into her email scandal. (Reuters) This post has been updated. In new emails leaked by a hacker, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell offers unvarnished and highly negative opinions about both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He calls Trump "a national disgrace and an international pariah" who led a "racist" birther movement. And he says that he resented Clinton's dragging him into her email problems and that "everything [she] touches she kind of screws up with hubris." [Trump] [Republicans]
• America’s Mr. Diplomacy
  By THE EDITORIAL BOARD SEPT. 14, 2016 Since becoming secretary of state more than three years ago, John Kerry has been a man on a mission — multiple missions, in fact — relentlessly traveling the globe in search of diplomatic solutions to the world’s toughest problems. His efforts have been daring and, at times, quixotic. He was no more successful than his predecessors in securing a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. But without his persistence, the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 and last December’s global climate change agreement in Paris would almost certainly have been unattainable. [Kerry] [US Syria policy]
• A reminder of the permanent wars: Dozens of U.S. airstrikes in six countries
  By Missy Ryan September 8 at 6:06 PM While Americans savored the last moments of summer this Labor Day weekend, the U.S. military was busy overseas as warplanes conducted strikes in six countries in a flurry of attacks. The bombing runs across Asia, Africa and the Middle East spotlighted the diffuse terrorist threats that have persisted into the final days of the Obama presidency — conflicts that the next president is now certain to inherit. In Iraq and Syria, between Saturday and Monday, the United States conducted about 45 strikes against Islamic State targets. On the other side of the Mediterranean, in the Libyan city of Sirte, U.S. forces also hit fighters with the militant group. On Sunday in Yemen, a U.S. drone strike killed six suspected members of ­al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The following day, just across the Gulf of Aden in Somalia, the Pentagon targeted al-Shabab, another group aligned with ­al-Qaeda. The military also conducted several counterterrorism strikes over the weekend in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and the Islamic State are on the offensive. [Imperialism] [Resistance] [US Middle East strategy]
• No to partitioning Syria
  Calling for the partitioning of Syria is short-sighted and reckless.
  By Marwan Bishara Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera. It's terribly annoying - not to say revolting - to read Western "experts" as they present a division of Syria as the "best", "most logical", or even "the only" solution to the civil war there. I remember a few years ago when an academic drew a straight line through the map of Syria on CNN and, along with the host, agreed to partition the country. OK, so the guy had actually been to Syria - perhaps he felt somehow entitled to an opinion on the matter. But what about those who've never even been to Syria and yet are so eager to prescribe partition of the country? No longer along one straight line but more along the lines of a Swiss cheese carving. The problem with their thesis is not that partition in principle is blasphemous, unthinkable or improbable. It's rather how they're so blase about the unity or division of other nations, and who is best served by such analysis. You may or may not have noticed, but the pomposity about Syria's future comes primarily from present or past seats of empire, whether it's Washington, New York, London, Paris or Moscow. Even non-Westerners get to feel imperial as soon as they teach, write or even reside in Western capitals, alas. You just don't hear the same type of bombast about the casual partitioning of other states coming from Jakarta, Delhi or Brasilia. A hundred years have passed since the original sin of partitioning the Middle East was imposed from outside the region, and there's no relief in sight. It seems the solution to bad partition is another partition. If partition doesn't work, more partition will. [US Syria policy] [Fragmentation]
• Hope for the Philippines?
  by Gary Leupp September 9, 2016 Son of a bitch (var. sonovabitch): Something that is very difficult or unpleasant. Used to express surprise, disappointment, anger, etc. (based on Merriam-Webster) Rodrigo Duterte, elected president of the Philippines last May, was supposed to meet with President Obama in Laos on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting Monday. He had referred to Obama as a putang ina (“son of a bitch”) in a news conference, and earlier to U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg with what was reported as a homophobic slur. (I understand that Duterte routinely uses the word bakla or “gay” to refer to elite men, but—like most Filipinos—actually is fine with gayness. The city of Dalao, where he was mayor for many years, has lots of gay establishments and he had no problem with them. He supports gay marriage. When asked last year if he would mind if his son Paolo had a gay partner, he replied that he had no problem at all.
  But while Sison was touring the world in the year following his release—notably, accepting a literary award for a book of poetry he had composed from the hands of the king of Thailand in October 1986—the Aquino regime under army pressure decided to revoke his passport. Ever since he has been stuck in Utrecht, Holland, advising the CPP from abroad. The prospect of his return to the Philippines, publicly embraced by Duterte, possibly taking a cabinet post along with other members of the CPP, must be producing shit-fits in the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon. [Philippines] [US global strategy] [CPP] [Sison]
• Divided and Conquered
  by Serge Halimi The US celebrates Labour Day in September. This year’s celebration will be unusual because of the many factory and office workers — especially white men — thronging to Donald Trump’s rallies. The Republican presidential candidate cultivates their support by criticising the free trade agreements that have precipitated the decline of former strongholds of US manufacturing industry, and brought loss of status, bitterness and despair to the working class. The ‘law and order’ that Trump promises to restore is that of the 1960s, when — if you were white — you didn’t need a university degree to have a good salary, two cars, and a few days’ paid vacation. For a New York billionaire whose fiscal programme is even more regressive than Ronald Reagan’s — and whose practices go against what he preaches (the products he sells are manufactured in Bangladesh and China, he employs illegal immigrants in his luxury hotels) — to become the voice of working-class resentment would have been harder if trade unionism had not been weakened. And if progressive parties in the West had not for nearly 40 years steadily been replacing working-class activists and leaders with professional politicians, public relations executives, senior civil servants and journalists, all safely enveloped in a bubble of privilege. [Labour]
• UN Team Heard Claims of ‘Staged’ Chemical Attacks
  September 8, 2016 Exclusive: A widely touted U.N. report accusing the Syrian government of two chlorine-gas attacks relied on shaky evidence and brushed aside witness testimony that claimed some incidents were staged, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry United Nations investigators encountered evidence that alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian military were staged by jihadist rebels and their supporters, but still decided to blame the government for two incidents in which chlorine was allegedly dispersed via improvised explosives dropped by helicopters. In both cases, the Syrian government denied that it had any aircraft in the areas at the times of the purported attacks, but the U.N. team rejected that explanation with the curious argument that Syria failed to provide flight records to corroborate the absence of any flights. Yet, if there had been no flights, there would be no flight records. The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the flight paths of two missiles from the Aug. 21 Sarin attack intersecting at a Syrian military base. The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the flight paths of two missiles from the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack intersecting at a Syrian military base. The analysis was later discredited when aeronautical experts found that the one missile carrying sarin had only one-fourth the necessary range. The U.N. team also dismissed out of hand the possibility that jihadist rebels who had overrun some air bases and thus had operational helicopters at their disposal might have used them as part of a staged event designed to incriminate the Damascus regime and thus justify U.S. or other outside military intervention. Another problem with the U.N. team’s findings is that the home-made chlorine bombs had minimal military value, inflicting relatively few casualties and only a handful of deaths. Why the Syrian government, which was under intense international pressure regarding alleged chemical weapons use and was in the process of surrendering its stockpile of such weapons, would have jerry-rigged a handful of homemade bombs and dropped them for no discernible military effect makes little sense. [Syria] [cbw] [False flag] [UNUS]
• Democrats wonder and worry: Why isn’t Clinton far ahead of Trump?
  By Anne Gearan, Jenna Johnson and John Wagner September 9 at 8:23 PM ? NEW YORK — With Election Day less than two months away, Democrats are increasingly worried that Hillary Clinton has not built a formidable lead against Donald Trump despite his historic weaknesses as a national party candidate. Even the Democratic nominee’s advisers acknowledge that she must make changes, and quickly. Clinton leads Trump by three percentage points, having fallen from her high of nine points in August, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. That tightening has frustrated many Clinton allies and operatives, who are astonished that she isn’t running away with this race, given Trump’s deep unpopularity and his continuing stream of controversial comments. “Generally, I’m concerned, frankly,” said former Democratic Senate leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.). “It still looks positive, and I think if you look at the swing states and where she is right now, she’s got a lead. But it’s certainly not in the bag. We have two months to go, and I think it’s going to be a competitive race all the way through. I would say she’s got at least a 60 percent chance of winning.” [US_Election16]
• Why is Duterte so popular in the Philippines?
  By now, the world is well-acquainted with the Philippine president as an unconventional foul-mouthed leader. But what the world may not understand is his high popularity among the Filipino people. Ana P. Santos reports. On August 31, 128 overseas Filipino workers were repatriated from Saudi Arabia. When plummeting oil prices sent Saudi Arabia spiraling into an economic crisis, the company they worked for declared bankruptcy and the workers were left with no job, no pay and no means to return home. Labor groups estimate that there are about 12,000 Filipino workers affected by the Saudi Arabia economic crisis. About 60 percent availed themselves of the repatriation program. At the airport in Manila, they were met by President Rodrigo Duterte who welcomed the workers back to the country and promised to help them. He also said that when he learned about their situation, he was ready to go Saudi Arabia himself and bring them back home. [Duterte] [Overseas labour] [Philippines]
• Academic: ‘Duterte held up a long-hidden looking glass to the US’
  By Rigoberto D. Tiglao on September 12, 2016 Following is an excellent article that was published on September 9 in the Australia-based website The Conversation, with an interesting slogan: “Academic Rigour, Journalistic Flair.” It was written by Adele Webb, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Sydney’s Department of Government and International Relations. She is working on her thesis “that explores the colonial construction of Philippine democracy, and its legacy in Filipino imaginings of political freedom.” This column’s title is that of her article. I hope our millennials read it: Few Filipinos really know about how ruthlessly the US subjugated us. Although she seemed to believe foreign correspondents’ inaccurate report that President Duterte called President Obama “son of a whore’” (which he didn’t), still, what a difference it is for an analysis on Philippine current events by a well-informed scholar. Webb’s article: Hypocrisy? Rare photo of 600 Moro insurgents and civilians killed by US troops at Bud Dajo in Jolo, March 7, 1906, which President Duterte showed to Asean delegates last week in Laos to counter US criticisms of his regime’s human rights violations. Hypocrisy? Rare photo of 600 Moro insurgents and civilians killed by US troops at Bud Dajo in Jolo, March 7, 1906, which President Duterte showed to Asean delegates last week in Laos to counter US criticisms of his regime’s human rights violations. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has taken his “bad manners” – having gained global notoriety with his election campaign insults earlier this year – to a new level. [Duterte] [Philippines] [History] [Imperialism]
• Trump Favors Regime Change in Iran, Says He’ll Attack Them Over Rude Gestures
  By Chas Danner Speaking at a campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida on Friday night, Donald Trump indicated that, as president, he would attack Iran if their sailors made improper gestures towards the U.S. Navy. After promising to build more ships for the Navy, which has a base in Pensacola, Trump tossed in an aside referencing the recent run-ins that U.S. warships have had with Iranian attack boats in the Persian Gulf. During those encounters, small Iranian speedboats controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which opposes the country’s nuclear deal with the U.S., have harassed U.S. ships in ways the Navy has deemed “unsafe and unprofessional.” Said Trump, to the delight of the crowd, “When [the Iranians] circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.” Some news reports are framing Trump’s statement about Iran as a matter of him once again going off script and ad-libbing some ill-advised bluster on top of the supposedly-softened speeches his campaign has prepared for him. That’s undoubtedly what he did in this case, and maybe it was just intended as some kind of macho nationalistic towel-snap to get a quick “U.S.A.” chant out of the crowd. But while it’s indeed worrisome, if not exactly news, that the apparent body-language expert is unable to follow plans, or scripts, or basic political norms — in this case Trump, a major-party’s presidential candidate, indicated that he would be willing to start an armed conflict with another country, not to defend America’s citizens, interests, or allies — but over injured pride. And even if it is just a joke, or something Trump is willing to say to get a buzz off of a specific crowd, there is no reason to believe he wouldn’t continue to offer such asides if elected. [Trump] [Iran] [Belligerence]
• Fifteen years after 9/11, the jihadist threat looms larger than ever across the globe
  A look back at the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. By Joby Warrick and Greg Miller September 10 ? Nine days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush stood before Congress to outline a two-pronged response to history’s deadliest terrorist act: dramatic improvements in security at home and an all-out assault against what he called a “fringe form of Islamic extremism” at war with the West. Fifteen years later, the first goal arguably has been met, as Americans by almost every measure are safer today from another 9/11-scale attack than in 2001. Yet the struggle to defeat the global network of violent, rabidly anti-Western jihadist groups has recorded fewer successes. Indeed, the problem appears to have grown bigger. The al-Qaeda organization once led by Osama bin Laden has been decimated and is no longer capable of orchestrating a sophisticated, trans-national plot on its own, terrorism experts say they believe. Al-Qaeda’s branches in North Africa and Yemen also have been weakened by Western military strikes and ongoing fighting with rival factions. [9/11] [Global insurgency]
• How the government could resist President Trump’s orders
  Civil servants can refuse to comply, judges can issue injunctions and members of Congress can decline to help. By Melinda Henneberger September 9 Melinda Henneberger is a visiting fellow at Catholic University of America’s Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies. If Donald Trump is elected, he’s promised to move quickly to suspend Muslim immigration, or maybe even stop people from entering the United States “from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism.” We’ll withdraw from NATO unless all other members pay their fair share, either renegotiate or shred NAFTA and begin “extreme vetting” of immigrants to make sure they aren’t sneaking in any “hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles.” Before you can say “Geneva Conventions,” he’ll order the waterboarding of suspected terrorists and approve interrogation techniques “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” too, including the killing of the families of terrorism suspects. He might (or might not, or might) deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. But “on Day One,” he insists, we will definitely “begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall.” Only, Washington has some pretty high walls in place, too, and electric fences that might shock any newcomer naive enough to believe Trump’s line about “criminal aliens”: that on “Day One, my first hour in office, those people are gone.” In a real sense, this town exists to serve the liberal, constitutional order, and President Trump would face fierce and sustained resistance to his “because I say so” threats to that order — not only from the other party but from his own, and from the nonpartisan civil servants who run the government day to day. [Trump] [Deep state] [Coup]
• Cuba launches new international campaign against U.S. embargo
  By Nelson Acosta | HAVANA U.S. sanctions cost Cuba $4.6 billion last financial year, the government said on Friday, and called on U.S. President Barack Obama to do more to ease the pressure in the spirit of improved relations between the two countries. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez made the comments at the launch of an annual campaign for a United Nations resolution condemning the U.S. trade embargo put in place after Cuba's 1959 revolution, but which has softened a little under Obama. "The blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba persists," Rodriguez told reporters at a news conference. "The blockade is the main cause of the economy's problems and obstacle to development." Rodriguez said damages from April 2015 through March 2016 amounted to $4.6 billion and to $125.9 billion since the embargo's inception. [Cuba] [Sanctions cost]
• Hillary E-mail: Must Overthrow Syria “to Help Israel” — Confirms Israel has Nuclear Weapons
  Monday, March 28, 2016 3:58 The Obama Administration helped ignite the civil war in Syria as “the best way to help Israel,” a newly-released Hillary Clinton email published by Wikileaks has confirmed. The document, case number F-2014-20439, number C05794498, is part of a mass publishing by Wikileaks of all the emails released by the Justice Department probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server during her time as Secretary of State from 2009 – 2013. “The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad,” then-Secretary Clinton starts off the lengthy email. [Hillary Clinton] [WikiLeaks] [Emails] [Israel] {rain] [Syria]
• Truth and Duterte in media crosshairs
  By Peter Lee on September 9, 2016 Judging by the spate of attacks on Duterte in the Western press and veiled criticism from some of the Manila papers, it looks like Duterte’s insufficient loyalty to the pivot vision may result in his downfall. Indeed, with the Duterte-US split deepening, his removal may become a strategic imperative for America. Serial misreporting on Asian affairs is the price the media pays for loyally supporting the US pivot to Asia. It’s also a sign that, after a brief US government dalliance with feisty Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, the skids are probably getting greased for his removal. [Duterte] [Coup]
• House Passes Bill Allowing 9/11 Families to Sue Saudi Arabia Amid Veto Threat
  By BENJAMIN SIEGEL Sep 9, 2016, 12:03 PM ET The House voted on a bipartisan bill that would allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, Sept. 9, 2016. The House overwhelmingly approved a bill today that would give the families of 9/11 victims the ability to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts, pitting Congress against the White House ahead of the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks. US Declassifies Secret 9/11 Documents Known as the '28 Pages' What to Know About Classified Pages of the 9/11 Report That May Be Released The White House has suggested that President Obama would veto the measure over concerns that it would open the U.S. up to lawsuits in other countries. “The president of the United States continues to harbor serious concerns that this legislation would make the United States vulnerable in other court systems around the world,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in May. If he does, Congress would be in a position to override Obama’s veto for the first time in his presidency. More than two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate support the proposal, which Saudi Arabia has criticized. [9/11] [Saudi Arabia]
• ISIS Fighter Reveals Group’s Plan If Defeated in Syria
  by Patrick Cockburn Isis will flourish and survive even if it is defeated in the present battle for Syria and Iraq an Isis militant has told The Independent. In an exclusive interview, Faraj, a 30-year-old veteran fighter from north east Syria, says that “when we say that the Islamic State [Isis] is everlasting and expanding, it is not a mere poetic or propaganda phrase”. He says the group intends to rebuild its strength in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, adding that “Isis has sleeper agents all over the world and their numbers are increasing”. In his account of his life in Isis, Faraj makes plain that only a year after the caliphate was declared in the wake of the capture of Mosul in 2014, its leaders could foresee that it might be overrun militarily. He reveals hitherto unknown details of the apparent close cooperation between Isis and Turkey and the degree to which foreign fighters who flooded into Syria to fight for Isis alienated local people from the movement by ordering them about and interfering in their lives. [ISIS] [Turkey]
• [Editorial] Battle lines being drawn in East Asia following G20, as ASEAN unfolds
  Posted on : Sep.7,2016 17:08 KST President Park Geun-hye and US President Barack Obama hold a summit meeting at the Landmark Hotel in Vientiane, Laos, on Sept. 6. (by Kim Gyoung-ho, staff photographer in Vientiane) Presidents Park Geun-hye and Barack Obama had what was for all intents and purposes their last summit on Sept. 6 in Laos. It was an occasion for the two leaders to coordinate solutions to key issues based on previous summits each had had with China and Russia. But with both confirming their rigid positions, the conflict over those issues appears destined to continue. On the THAAD issue, Park and Obama said they had agreed to maintain a “strong deterrence posture” through reinforcement of allied defensive capabilities, including THAAD deployment, and an expanded deterrent. The message is that they will go ahead with the deployment as planned, despite heavy objections from China and Russia. Their conflicts with those two countries are now certain to grow. Obama described THAAD as a “purely defensive system to deter and defend against North Korean threats,” but the likelihood of Beijing and Moscow agreeing is almost nonexistent. After all of these summit meetings, the conflicts over THAAD are only increasing. [THAAD] [NCW] [US dominance]
• Brazil’s Congress Expels Lawmaker Who Led Ouster of President
  By Simon Romero Sept. 13, 2016 Eduardo Cunha, the former speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, during a session on Monday in Brasília at which lawmakers voted to remove him from office. Credit Evaristo Sa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted overwhelmingly late Monday night to expel the conservative lawmaker who led the charge to oust Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s former president, reflecting how on edge the country’s political class remains over colossal corruption scandals. The chamber voted 450 to 10 to strip the lawmaker, Eduardo Cunha, of his seat as he faces a trial on graft charges. As a result, Mr. Cunha, 57, an evangelical Christian radio commentator who was the speaker of the lower house, loses the broad legal privileges that normally protect federal legislators from imprisonment. The expulsion of Mr. Cunha from the chamber he once deftly commanded, ranking him among Brazil’s most powerful politicians just a few months ago, shows that the country’s political turmoil is far from settled. The new administration of President Michel Temer, the former vice president who broke with Ms. Rousseff, is grappling with low approval ratings, street protests and claims that it is trying to stifle corruption inquiries. [Brazil] [Corruption]
• New book reveals Bill Clinton’s rogue diplomacy against the Iraq War
  Former president Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006. Three years earlier, Blair asked Clinton to help round up support for a U.N. resolution aimed at avoiding the Iraq War. (J. Emilio Flores/Getty Images) By Abby Phillip September 6 at 10:00 AM It was March 2003, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had summoned his friend Bill Clinton to Chequers Court, his country home in England, to make an urgent request: Could the former president quietly help corral U.N. Security Council members to back a resolution aimed at slowing or, according to Blair, even stopping the Iraq War? The events that followed show Clinton taking an unprecedented and un­or­tho­dox role in the foreign policy of his successor, George W. Bush, according to a new book, “Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton,” written by liberal journalist Joe Conason. Clinton’s activism came months after his wife’s vote in October 2002 in favor of authorizing Bush to use military force in Iraq — a decision that, according to the book, Bill Clinton counseled her to make. And the former president acted without the express approval of the White House. The 13-year-old incident highlights the 42nd president’s outsize role in foreign affairs even after he left Washington. It is an exception to the pattern of Clinton’s post-presidential diplomatic work, which was usually done at the request of his successors — such as his trip to North Korea in 2009 to help rescue imprisoned journalists at the request of President Obama. Former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at Bush’s presidential library in Dallas in 2015. A spokesman for Clinton said his 2003 efforts were in keeping with the Bush administration’s public position at the time. (Mike Stone/Reuters) In Conason’s account, Clinton made last-minute appeals to several world leaders he considered “friends,” asking them to back Blair’s resolution in the hopes of slowing Bush’s march to war or ending it altogether. [Bill Clinton] [Tony Blair] [Iraq]
• “Socialists” Supporting NATO and U.S. Empire, Endorse “Moderate” Terrorists in Syria
  By Rick Sterling Global Research, September 06, 2016 At the recent annual convention of Veterans for Peace, VFP Vice President Jerry Condon said “The US peace movement has been demobilized by disinformation on Syria.” Disinformation and propaganda on Syria takes three distinct forms. The first is the demonization of the Syrian leadership. The second is the romanticization of the opposition. The third form involves attacking anyone questioning the preceding characterizations. There is a recent article which exemplifies all three of these forms. It is titled “Anti-Imperialism and the Syrian Revolution” by Ashley Smith of the International Socialist Organization (ISO). It’s a remarkable piece of misinformation and faulty analysis. Because it is clear and well written, it is likely to mislead people who are not well informed on the facts regarding Syria. Hence the importance of critically reviewing it. Technique 1: Demonize the enemy … “the Syrian regime and its brutal dictator” Smith starts off posing the question: Are you with the Syrian revolution or the brutal Assad dictatorship? The way he frames it, it’s not a difficult choice: yay for the revolution! Like these false options, Ashley Smith’s article is a fairy tale devoid of reality. His bias is shown as he criticizes the Left for ignoring “Assad’s massacre of some 400,000 Syrians”. Included in this death count are 100 – 150 thousand Syrian soldiers and allies. Ashley blames Assad instead of the armed opposition for killing Syrian soldiers! [Trotskyist] [Syria]
• American Pravda: How the CIA Invented "Conspiracy Theories"
  Ron Unz • September 5, 2016 A year or two ago, I saw the much-touted science fiction film Interstellar, and although the plot wasn’t any good, one early scene was quite amusing. For various reasons, the American government of the future claimed that our Moon Landings of the late 1960s had been faked, a trick aimed at winning the Cold War by bankrupting Russia into fruitless space efforts of its own. This inversion of historical reality was accepted as true by nearly everyone, and those few people who claimed that Neil Armstrong had indeed set foot on the Moon were universally ridiculed as “crazy conspiracy theorists.” This seems a realistic portrayal of human nature to me. Obviously, a large fraction of everything described by our government leaders or presented in the pages of our most respectable newspapers—from the 9/11 attacks to the most insignificant local case of petty urban corruption—could objectively be categorized as a “conspiracy theory” but such words are never applied. Instead, use of that highly loaded phrase is reserved for those theories, whether plausible or fanciful, that do not possess the endorsement stamp of establishmentarian approval. Put another way, there are good “conspiracy theories” and bad “conspiracy theories,” with the former being the ones promoted by pundits on mainstream television shows and hence never described as such. I’ve sometimes joked with people that if ownership and control of our television stations and other major media outlets suddenly changed, the new information regime would require only a few weeks of concerted effort to totally invert all of our most famous “conspiracy theories” in the minds of the gullible American public. [Conspiracy]
• USA Blocked Signing of Colombian Peace Agreement at UN in New York
  nsnbc : The United States blocked the signing of the peace agreement between the Colombian State and the FARC this month at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. President Juan manuel Santos announces that the peace agreement will be signed on September 26 in Cartagena. President Juan Manuel Santos announces that the peace agreement will be signed on September 26 in Cartagena. On September 26, 2016, the administration of Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos and the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) will sign a peace agreement in the Colombian city of Cartagena. The signing of the peace accord that effectively ends 52 years of civil war between the State and the largest leftist Colombian guerrilla should have been signed at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York City, USA. However, the signing of the historic accord was blocked by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ). Nobody at the DoJ would officially confirm the decision, but the DoJ’s obstruction was substantiated by the fact that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, on Wednesday, announced that the accord would be signed at the UN in New York City. The allegations about the United States’ obstructions were further substantiated by Robert McBrien, a former lawyer at the DoJ and retired associate director of the Global Targeting Division of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control. McBrien would talk about FARC delegates, saying “These are people we would work very hard to bring to the U.S. to prosecute. To let them come in and sign an agreement and then fly away, I find very hard to accept.” [UNUS] [DoJ] [Dissension] [Extraterritoriality]
• An 'ominous reminder' for Saudi Arabia's oil industry
  Elena Holodny Sep 5, 2016, 3:45 AM ? ? Last week, a rocket originating from Yemen hit a power relay facility in southern Saudi Arabia, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported, as was cited by Bloomberg. Yemeni rebels said they hit Saudi Aramco facilities, but the kingdom’s state-run oil company, announced that “all of its oil, gas, and refining plants were operating as normal” in the aftermath, according to Bloomberg. Still, some analysts argued that the episode serves to show that the Saudis’ campaign in Yemen could pose a risk to its oil sector. “The recent cross-border rocket attacks originating from Yemen are an ominous reminder of the dangers posed by Saudi Arabia’s 18-month military intervention in Yemen,” argued Helima Croft, the head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, in a note to clients. “Although no ARAMCO facility in the southern region has yet to be hit, the fact that a rocket did strike a power station in Najran last week demonstrates that critical local infrastructure indeed remains vulnerable.” Notably, the RBC Capital Markets team also argued last year that the Saudi campaign in Yemen could also add additional pressures on its finances as it increases security spending. “The military campaign in Yemen, more assertive efforts to roll back Iranian regional influence, and more muscular counter-terrorism efforts will put further pressure on Saudi government finances as they ratchet up security spending,” the team wrote back in June 2015. [Saudi Arabia] [Military expenditure]
• U.S. vs. U.S. in Syria
  Eric Margolis • September 2, 2016 What a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be? It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up the war in Syria but then lost control of the process. When the US has a strong president, he can usually keep the military and intelligence agencies on a tight leash. But the Obama administration has had a weak secretary of defense and a bunch of lady strategists who are the worst military commanders since Louis XV, who put his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, in charge of French military forces during the Seven Year’s War. The French were routed by the Prussians. France’s foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, named one of his dogs, “la Pompadour.” [US Syria Policy] [Incompetence]
• America: The Indispensable Nation…Not!
  Hillary Clinton affirmed “American exceptionalism” in a speech to the American Legion in Cincinnati on August 31. If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this. The United States is an exceptional nation…And part of what makes America an exceptional nation, is that we are also an indispensable nation. In fact, we are the indispensable nation. People all over the world look to us and follow our lead. Her speech was another episode in the chronicle of Clintonian triangulation: the continual search for positions that co-opt and neutralize critics of Clinton and Clintonian policies. And by declaring the “indispensable nation” doctrine, Hillary Clinton convincingly shed the pro-peace/anti-military incubus that had bedeviled the Democratic Party and her family over the last three decades and seized the “strength and security” a.k.a. “warmonger” mantle from the GOP. Her husband, Bill Clinton, had encountered unique difficulties as the first US president not to have served in the military in some capacity in World War II. In fact, he had taken advantage of a student deferment to avoid induction into the military during the Vietnam War. His first visit as president to a military installation as president subjected him to excruciating mockery and virtual insubordination. Joke: “A protester threw a beer at the president. Don’t worry, he dodged it. It was a draft.” [Exceptionalism] [Hillary Clinton]
• Barack Obama is now alone in Washington
  By Fareed Zakaria Opinion writer September 1 at 7:20 PM While we are consumed with the ups and downs of the bizarre U.S. presidential campaign, Barack Obama will make his last trip to Asia as president. The direct purpose of his trip to China is to attend a meeting of the Group of 20, but perhaps more importantly, the visit is intended to breathe life into one of his big ideas: the pivot to Asia. It is a genuinely important policy, but Obama is now the last man standing willing to push for it. Foreign policy is consumed with momentary crises — often created by failing states and violent groups. But in the long run, the future is shaped by winners, not noisy losers. And when the flash points of today have passed, the rise of Asia will remain the dominant trend of our time. The Pacific will be the arena that defines the 21st century. According to the World Bank, in just 10 years, four of the five largest economies in the world will be in the Asia-Pacific region. The United States will be able to shape the 21st century only if it remains a vital Pacific power. How should Washington approach this region? One central task is obviously to prevent China from dominating it. That job has been made somewhat easier by Beijing’s recent expansionist moves, especially in the South China Sea. These actions illustrate the challenge China faces — it is not rising in a vacuum. Asia is a crowded continent, and every aggressive move by Beijing produces an angry reaction from neighbors such as Vietnam and the Philippines. India, which has resisted any moves that would suggest it is ganging up with the United States against China, has nonetheless moved in that direction in recent weeks. The Obama administration has also enhanced security cooperation with a range of traditional allies such as Japan, Australia and Singapore. But Washington’s policy is not containment. It can’t be. China is not the Soviet Union but rather the most important trading partner for every country in Asia. [Obama] [China confrontation] [Pivot] US global strategy]
• Public Relations Firm Claims to Have Ghost Written Thousands of Op-Eds in Major U.S. Newspapers
  by David Swanson Laura Bentz of Keybridge Communications describes her company as “a boutique PR firm — founded by a former writer for the Wall Street Journal — that specializes in writing and placing op-eds. With some of the country’s most influential trade groups and global corporations as clients, we run many of the major op-ed campaigns in the U.S. We place roughly 3,000 op-eds per year.” On its website, Keybridge openly claims to be able to “brand a CEO” by putting op-eds into newspapers in “virtually every major city.” Less openly, Keybridge carefully markets its services with a PDF that names people for whom it claims to have written and placed op-eds. For a mere $5000, Keybridge offers this service in the PDF: “First, we write a 500-800 word op-ed. Then we place it in one or more newspapers around the country. If we’re pitching to a national audience, we guarantee that we’ll reach at least 50,000 readers. Includes media monitoring.” [Media]
• It’s the Robots, Stupid: the Fundamental Issue None of the Candidates Want to Talk About
  by Barry Lando It’s the robots, stupid. The rabid anti-immigrant campaign of Donald Trump mirrors the racist vitriol of right-wing politicians across much of the developed world. But totally absent from what passes for political debate in the U.S. and abroad is what’s really driving those ever more incendiary movements. They are fueled by fear. There’s the dread of terrorist attacks, to be sure. But much more pervasive is the unremitting, anxiety of hundreds of millions in the developed world that they are threatened by change, by dark forces they neither understand nor control—by rampant unemployment, a diminished standard of living. They have been brought up to believe that hard work and sacrifice would bring a better life. No longer. Donald Trump tells them hordes of immigrants, illegal aliens and disastrous trade pacts are to blame. But Trump—as well as those excoriating him–are totally missing the point. The major force impacting our society is the spectacular advance of technologies —robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The dizzying pace of change is only going to accelerate: a chain reaction as we hurtle to warp speed. (See my previous blog) [Technology] [Robot] [Unemployment]
• Is The Nation-State And Its Welfare State Dead? A Critique Of Varoufakis
  by Vincente Navarro, via Social Europe I always read the writings of Mr. Varoufakis with great interest, and I frequently find myself in agreement, particularly in his criticism of the Troika (the International Monetary Fund, European Commission, and European Central Bank) and of the Eurogroup (the Ministers of Economy and Finances of the European Union). I also concur with his call for a European-wide mobilization to force democracy upon the institutions that govern the EU, although I disagree with his proposed way to do it. He believes (wrongly, I think) that the power of nation-states has practically disappeared in the EU. They do not count any longer. Based on his Greek experience, when he represented the Syriza government in negotiations with the Troika, he concludes that nation-states do not have any power. According to Varoufakis, governments and parliaments in these nation-states have been transformed into mere transmission belts of whatever is decided by the Troika and associated institutions. He writes in one of his recent publications that “European governments transmit to the Parliaments whatever is decided at the European level (the European Commission or the European Council) and the Parliaments carry out whatever instructions they received from those institutions” (Yanis Varoufakis and Gerard Pisarello, A plan for Europe, p. 89). [Capitalism] [Crisis] [Welfare state]
• Turkey’s new sultan drives Uncle Sam, Ivan and Ali up the wall
  By M.K. Bhadrakumar on September 1, 2016 Turkey’s display of strategic autonomy during its intervention in Syria has unnerved the U.S., Russia and Iran. Ankara can give three days’ notice to cancel access for the US to the Incirlik base. As the military balance changes, Iranian forces and Hezbollah have to get used to a superior military power with boots on the ground in Syria. Although Moscow has urged Ankara to undertake course correction, the future directions of the Turkish intervention in Syria remain unclear. Like a slow motion movie, Turkey’s military intervention in Syria appears to have slowed down. The time-manipulation allows the startled viewers’ emotional and cognitive processing and initial arousal response to calm down Clearly, the US has been outmaneuvered. Washington all along wanted Turkey to be ‘proactive’ against the Islamic State (IS) but not this way. Washington faces a stark choice between its NATO ally or Syrian Kurds. The alliance with Turkey by far outweighs and the logical thing would be to throw the Syrian Kurds under the bus. [Turkey]
• US-Saudi push for regime change arms terror groups, poses threat to Asia
  Realizing this threat and US-Saudi agenda for regime change, countries like China and India seem to be trying to forge a coalition and formulate plans to counter them. By Christina Lin on September 2, 2016 Islamic State and Saudi Arabia share the same intolerant Wahhabi ideology. Wahhabi-inspired extremism is dangerously changing the character of Asian states with large Muslim population like Indonesia. Realizing this threat and US-Saudi agenda for regime change, countries like China and India seem to be trying to forge a coalition and formulate plans to counter them. The US-Saudi nexus is posing a problem for Asian security. From Afghanistan to Syria and now back to Asia, this nexus of arming and supporting Islamic extremists for regime change operations has spawned and introduced global jihad into the international community. Dr. Brahma Chellaney in New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research also noted, “Western powers actually encouraged the kingdom – as an antidote to communism and the 1979 anti-US Iranian revolution – to export Wahhabism.” [1] [Saudi Arabia] [Wahhabism] [Outsourcing] [China India]
• FBI releases Hillary Clinton email investigation documents
  The FBI Sept. 2 published a detailed report on its investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) By Matt Zapotosky and Rosalind S. Helderman September 2 at 7:00 PM ? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staffers employed an informal and sometimes haphazard system for exchanging and storing sensitive information and were at times either unaware or unconcerned with State Department policy, documents from an FBI investigation into her private email server system show. The documents reveal a myriad of new details about the email set-up and show that investigators found multiple attempts by hackers to access Clinton’s system — a series of personal devices and servers that the Democratic presidential candidate told investigators she used as a matter of convenience while she was secretary of state. The materials, which include a summary of the FBI’s entire investigation as well as Clinton’s hours-long interview with agents in July, contain no major revelations. But they offer new details that Clinton’s political opponents will be able use in the months leading up to the November election. The summary shows that Clinton’s account to law enforcement was generally consistent with what she has said about her email situation publicly, but she repeatedly told agents she could not recall important details or specific emails she was questioned about. [Hillary Clinton] [Emails]
• Is Turkey falling into its own Syrian trap?
  The sentiment in Turkey is that, with "Operation Euphrates Shield," the country has made a thunderous return to the Middle East. But in a topography where nobody knows who is fighting who and what will tomorrow's alliances look like, there are serious traps awaiting Turkey. Summary? Print Kurds may be avoiding combat with Turkey, Syria's reaction could be restrained and the Islamic State might have withdrawn without a fight, but Ankara could still get stuck in a quagmire. Author Fehim Tastekin Posted September 1, 2016 Translator Timur Göksel During the first week of the operation, Turkey's target shifted from the Islamic State (IS) to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). While IS withdrew from Jarablus without fighting and still occupies scores of other places, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and allied groups continued their advances toward areas the SDF had liberated from IS. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Aug. 29 said the operations will continue "until the YPG [People's Protection Units] is no longer a threat." The equation that has cropped up is that groups supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), accompanied by Turkish tanks, are clashing with groups backed by the US military. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/09/turkey-syria-kurds-ankara-can-get-stuck-quagmire.html#ixzz4JAkCO0H9 [Turkey] [Syria]
• How the Turks deceived the Americans on Syria
  Op-ed: The US simply joined the Russian-Turkish party in Syria, essentially allowing Assad's rule to continue—at least for now—and Iran and Hezbollah to establish their hold on the war-battered country. This is the worst possible outcome for Israel. Alex Fishman|Published: 31.08.16 , 15:53 The Americans are now selling out the Syrian Kurds to the Turks—but we've already gotten used to their cynical foreign policy. What Israel is having a hard time getting used to, however, is the fact its biggest ally is completely disregarding Israeli interests in the Middle East. Over the past two years, since the international intervention in Syria began, Western diplomacy has been trying to convince allies in the world to cooperate with the minorities in Syria. Alongside the Kurds and Druze, who are the two larger minority groups, there are other ethnic-religious groups in Syria who are demanding autonomy. Israel has a "minority strategy" of its own that is based on the assumption that if Syria breaks into autonomous minorities, it would stop the Iranian/Shi'ite takeover of the country, and eventually thwart the main threat to Israel: an Iranian hold on the Golan Heights, on top of its hold on Lebanon. [Israel Syria] [Fragmentation]
• The East Asia Summit in Contested Asia
  by Nick Bisley and Malcolm Cook President Obama’s final trip to Asia — the region toward which he has rebalanced the US — has generated considerable media interest. Yet, the reason for the timing of this trip and the inclusion of Laos, Southeast Asia’s weakest state, in the itinerary is missing from much of the coverage. Obama is going to Vientiane, Laos’ capital with a population of just 800,000 people, to attend the East Asia Summit (EAS), the annual gathering of 16 of Asia’s crucial powers’ heads of government. Its membership – the ASEAN 10 plus China, ROK, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Russia – its full spectrum policy remit and political clout give the EAS huge potential. At the 10th anniversary meeting last year the summit took small but important steps to improve the grouping’s collaborative potential. As the 11th approaches what can we expect? Optimists look at November 2016’s Kuala Lumpur Declaration and see an EAS that is on ASEAN pace to becoming the premier strategic forum in the region. It is beginning to figure out how to relate to other institutional processes. It has, in the permanent representatives’ committee in Jakarta, a mechanism to develop ideas and maintain momentum. And finally, there is a dedicated staff in the ASEAN secretariat to provide institutional support. Pessimists, when they bother to acknowledge the EAS existence, see little more than a two-hour meeting in which leaders read bland statements to bored and disengaged peers. From this perspective, the EAS is a policy-free zone whose contribution to regional security is miniscule at best. The potential of the EAS is real. It is the peak inclusive regional strategic forum in the region, recognized as such by virtually all powers. Yet, the summit, like other parts of the regional institutional architecture faces a conundrum. Rising security tensions mean that the need for improved cooperation and understanding among its members is pressing. Yet it is precisely this gloomy security environment that is constraining the effectiveness of inclusive regional institutions. [EAS] [US Global strategy]
• U.S. is trapped between its allies’ ambitions in Syria
  By Sudarsan Raghavan and Liz Sly September 1 at 4:47 PM ? KIVIRCIK, Turkey — The Pentagon’s decision to arm a mostly Syrian Kurdish force has paid big dividends in northern Syria, where the Islamic State has been on the run in recent months. Backed by U.S. air power, ­Kurdish-led offensives have captured important pieces of the radical group’s “caliphate,” including the town of Manbij in August. Then Turkish tanks and warplanes entered Syria last week and began targeting the Kurds, their long-standing enemy. But what happened next blindsided Kurdish leaders: Their American allies sided with the Turks — and ordered the Kurdish forces to hand over hard-won territory. “Unfortunately, as Kurdish allies fighting against terrorism and making a lot of victories, we expected more from the United States,” said Idriss Naasan, a former official in the Kurds’ self- proclaimed government in Syria who is living in the northern town of Kobane. “We expect them to support us and not let Turkey target us.” Across Syrian Kurdish regions, a sense of betrayal by Washington is setting in, threatening to weaken the campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. [US Syria strategy] [Kurds] [Turkey] [Renege]
• Neoliberalism is not dead: A Response to Martin Jacques
  by Darryl S.L. Jarvis Martin Jacques (The Guardian, August 21) recent comments on the ‘death of neoliberalism’ are important, not least because he was one of the first analysts in the early 1980s to identify the emerging dominance of neoliberalism in the West. This reversal of fortunes for neoliberalism, due to what Jacques identifies as a wave of political developments in the two countries which were its main champions, the UK and USA, is thus significant – indeed for many a cause for celebration. To borrow a line from Mark Twain, however, reports of the death of neoliberalism are greatly exaggerated. Jacques’ analysis is an overly optimistic reading of current political developments — developments which are still formative and which may yet challenge neoliberalism but through inherently nationalist and reactionary ways. Jacques’s assertion, for example, that ‘A wave of populism marks the return of class as a central agency in politics, both in the UK and the US’ is questionable. The populist politics of Trump and UKIP can equally be read as race politics, or a reaction to cosmopolitism, multiculturalism, and the rise of race-nationalism. To be sure, such movements might be driven by growing material inequality and the failure of various governments to sustain redistributive measures, but the anti-neoliberal politics Jacques identifies is not manifesting as a class consciousness but often something altogether more dangerous. At the same time, the rise of populist political movements seems far from challenging the pillars of neoliberalism. The pending failure to secure both the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), for example, will have little impact on the neoliberal trade order. [Neoliberalism]
• Has Turkey Overplayed Its Hand in Syria?
  by Patrick Cockburn Turkey is back in the game in Syria. Turkish tanks and special forces last week joined anti-Assad rebels to capture the border town of Jarabulus from Isis. It was the first significant Turkish ground operation in Syria since the beginning of the war in 2011. The immediate target was Isis, but a more important Turkish objective is to strike at the political and military power of the Syrian Kurds who are already in control of much of the territory south of the Syrian-Turkish frontier. The war in Syria has reached a critical moment which may see it de-escalate or explode into even greater violence. US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met on Friday in Geneva with the aim of reaching a political and military cooperation agreement. Asked to identify the main obstacle to a ceasefire, Mr Lavrov said: “I don’t want to spoil the atmosphere for the negotiations.” Moscow has already proposed a 48-hour ceasefire in Aleppo. It is as if all side are consolidating their positions in expectation of a shift towards more war or greater peace. As Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov met in Geneva, ambulances, buses and trucks were assembling outside the rebel-held suburb of Daraya in Damascus which government forces besieged for four years. Under an agreement reached on Thursday, some 4,000 anti-Assad fighters and local people are to be evacuated to rebel-held areas. But government control is not extending everywhere in Syria as in the north eastern provincial capital of Hasakah Syrian Kurdish fighters have driven out the Syrian Army and its local paramilitary allies from most of the city. The biggest change in the political and military landscape is the Turkish intervention, though its extent remains unclear. The aim may be primarily defensive, limited to controlling the zone between Jarabulus and the Kurdish enclave of Afrin 70 miles to the west through Arab and Turkoman proxies backed by the Turkish armed forces. Alternatively, Turkey could build up an anti-Assad and anti-Kurdish base area north of Aleppo making it a main player in the region. The first purpose is already largely achieved with apparent US support, Russian tolerance and muted criticism from the Damascus government, suggesting that Turkish action was not unexpected by all three. [Turkey] [Syria]
• Did US drag Turkey into 'Syrian quagmire'?
  Turkey’s radically new approach to Syria since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan replaced Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in May with his trusted acolyte Binali Yildirim is unfolding fast. Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, named Operation Euphrates Shield, which includes Turkish-trained Free Syrian Army (FSA) elements, reflects the new climate prevailing in Ankara. The Turkish government remains defiant in the face of warnings from the US, but there are those who believe Ankara was forced into the Syrian quagmire by Washington. Author Semih Idiz Posted August 30, 2016 The United States has welcomed the Turkish-led liberation of Jarablus from the Islamic State (IS), to which the US Air Force also contributed. It is displeased, however, with Turkey’s operations south of Jarablus against the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria. The YPG is the main element of the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which recently wrested the strategic city of Manbij, west of the Euphrates River, from IS. The continued presence of YPG fighters in Manbij is causing fresh tensions between Ankara and Washington. [Turkey] [Syria] [Kurds] [Coup] [Anti-Americanism]

• America’s True Role in Syria
  NEW YORK – Syria’s civil war is the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet. Since early 2011, hundreds of thousands have died; around ten million Syrians have been displaced; Europe has been convulsed with Islamic State (ISIS) terror and the political fallout of refugees; and the United States and its NATO allies have more than once come perilously close to direct confrontation with Russia. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has greatly compounded the dangers by hiding the US role in Syria from the American people and from world opinion. An end to the Syrian war requires an honest accounting by the US of its ongoing, often secretive role in the Syrian conflict since 2011, including who is funding, arming, training, and abetting the various sides. Such exposure would help bring to an end many countries’ reckless actions. A widespread – and false – perception is that Obama has kept the US out of the Syrian war. Indeed, the US right wing routinely criticizes him for having drawn a line in the sand for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over chemical weapons, and then backing off when Assad allegedly crossed it (the issue remains murky and disputed, like so much else in Syria). A leading columnist for the Financial Times, repeating the erroneous idea that the US has remained on the sidelines, recently implied that Obama had rejected the advice of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to arm the Syrian rebels fighting Assad. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Proxy] [Russia confrontation]
• The media has failed to explain the new war on ISIS in Libya — and the chaos wrought by NATO regime change
  Is the new U.S. bombing campaign in Libya really making things better? Media has utterly failed to provide context Ben Norton Libya remains embroiled in chaos. Its U.N.-backed government is falling apart, and internal wars continue to be waged on multiple fronts. ISIS ravages the north of the country. The U.S. is bombing it — again, in the second war in five years. But what is rarely communicated in media reports is that the only reason ISIS is in Libya in the first place is because of the 2011 NATO regime change operation that toppled the government, giving Islamist extremists a vacuum in which to expand. Western powers sold the 2011 bombing campaign as an ostensible humanitarian mission to protect rebels fighting the regime of Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi. Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, used NATO’s own materials, however, to conclusively show that “the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start.” In the process, the Obama administration “misled the American public,” Zenko wrote, because “admitting to the honest objective in Libya — regime change — would have brought about more scrutiny and diminished public support.” [Libya] [Outsourcing] [ISIS]
• High-profile meeting between Venezuela and Iran should set off alarm bells, experts say
  By Franz von Bergen Published August 30, 2016 Fox News Latino Caracas, Venezuela – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro made room in his high-pressure agenda to receive Iran’s foreign minister over the weekend, and he made sure the meeting was broadcast on national TV. Maduro gave Mohammad Javad Zarif a warm welcome in the Presidential Palace of Miraflores. They shook hands as they announced an alliance to stabilize oil prices. [Oil] [Venezuela] [Iran]
• In potential blow to propaganda power, Islamic State reports death of senior leader in Syria
  By Missy Ryan and Greg Miller August 30 at 4:20 PM ? Islamic State says leader killed in Syria The Islamic State said one of its longest-serving and most prominent leaders, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, has been killed in Syria. (Reuters) The Islamic State reported the death of its chief spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, on Tuesday, potentially signaling the loss of a senior militant who has steered the group’s campaign to bring violent operations to the West. The Pentagon said that Adnani, a Syrian national among the militant group’s most experienced and well-connected figures, had been the target of an airstrike near the Syrian city of al-Bab, but officials said it was too early to be certain he had been killed. [ISIS] [Syria]
• Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, a woman of honor, confronts Senate of scoundrels
  Dilma Rousseff entered the Senate and calmly stared down her accusers. She left with her head held high after exhorting those Senators to vote with their conscience. Most of those politicians present probably had no idea what conscience means; they’re no more than corrupt messenger boys. But the Brazilian collective unconscious – Jung to the rescue – will be marked. President Dilma Rousseff, in a detailed, occasionally emotional speech, defended herself with honor and dignity from accusations she committed a “crime of responsibility”. She was not actually facing a political cesspool, but that ‘Angel of History’ so beloved by Walter Benjamin. History will judge her kindly. Meanwhile, it ain’t over till a dodgy politico sings. As I write, Rousseff is on the way to be stripped from the presidency of the world’s 8th largest economy by a bunch of scoundrel-cum-coward politicos. Her only fear, she said, was the “death of democracy”. Rousseff’s impeachment means in practice that democratic voting in one of the world’s largest democracies will be cancelled by a parliamentary coup remote-controlled by oligarchic interests. This is not, and never was, about justice; it’s about dirty, nasty politics. [Brazil] [Dilma] [Corruption]
• American Pravda: Alexander Cockburn and the British Spies
  Ron Unz • August 29, 2016 About a decade ago I’d gotten a little friendly with the late Alexander Cockburn, one of America’s premier radical journalists and the founder of Counterpunch, a leading leftist webzine. With virtually all of America’s mainstream media outlets endlessly cheerleading for the total insanity of our Iraq War, Counterpunch was a port in the storm, and gained considerable credibility in my eyes. Although Alex lived in the far northern reaches of the Golden State, the rural North Coast close to the Oregon border where much of the local cash economy was based on illegal marijuana growing, he periodically took trips down to the Bay Area, and sometimes dropped by Palo Alto to have lunch with me when he did. Often as not, he brought along a book that he was in the middle of reading, and based on his strong recommendations, it usually ended up on my own list. [WWII] [Manipulation] [Isolationism] [MI6]
• In the Shadow of the CIA: Liberalism’s Big Embarrassing Moment
  by Paul Buhle The death of Warren Hinckle, a journalist long forgotten outside San Francisco, brings back Ramparts magazine’s crowning moment, also one of crucial moments of postwar liberalism. At a stroke, in March, 1967, the presumptions of innocence by purportedly freedom-loving (albeit hawkish) prestigious intellectuals were stripped off. It turned out that the grand banquets and conferences with literary-and-other luminaries, the New York Times-reported cocktail parties, indeed the whole egghead-celebrity thing, was at base a CIA operation called, without irony, the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The list of collaborators was a long one, but Mary McCarthy, Irving Kristol, Leslie Fiedler, Dwight Macdonald, Sidney Hook and the Trillings, Diana and Lionel, among the most famous Americans, with European stars including Isaiah Berlin and Arthur Koestler at the top (Hannah Arendt in both categories). The Partisan Review, Encounter and a considerable stream of literary or quasi-literary journals existed, as it turned out, with the help of intelligence-agency donations. [CIA] [Front] [Softwar]
• Colombia's War and Peace Through the Eyes of a Dutch FARC Rebel
  Alexandra Nariño joined the FARC in 2002 and is a delegate at the negotiating table in Colombia's peace process. | FARC guerrilla fighter and delegate in the peace negotiations, Alexandra Nariño, speaks to teleSUR about her 14 years with the rebel army. Alexandra Nariño is not Colombian, yet the impending end of the South American country’s 50-year civil war between the government and left-wing rebel forces represents “enormous happiness” for her. OPINION: The Possibilities Opened by Colombia's Peace Process and Agreement That’s because the Dutch national has been fighting within Colombia’s FARC guerilla army for 14 years. After living in the jungle in FARC camps for about a decade, for the last four years Nariño has played a key role in the peace process in Havana, Cuba, that aims to transition Colombia out of the longstanding internal conflict and toward a new era of peace. But though Nariño, also known as Tanja Nijmeijer, is from the Netherlands, she says her reasons for deciding to take up arms as part of the left-wing rebel movement were the same as those that pushed her Colombian fellow combatants to join — a claim she admits may be hard for many to believe. “I came to Colombia, I saw the injustice and I felt that something had to be done,” Nariño told teleSUR from Havana, the site of the peace talks. “The only difference might be that I didn’t really live the injustice … I saw the state violence, but I didn’t suffer it.” Nariño joined the FARC in 2002 after being impacted by the level of inequality and state-sanctioned human rights abuses in Colombia during a year-long stint as an English teacher in 1998. “I think for me it was just enough to know that people (are) suffering to make the decision to join and show my solidarity with them,” she said. [Columbia] [Protest]
• Joe Biden came, saw, but failed to conquer Turkey
  By M.K. Bhadrakumar on August 26, 2016 If US Vice President Joe Biden hoped for a trade-off with Turkish President Recep Erdogan – US assurances over Euphrates River ‘red line’ for Kurdish militia in lieu of Turkey’s acquiescence with Islamist preacher Fetullah Gulen remaining in Pennsylvania – that was not to be. ‘Euphrates Shield’ pre-empted Biden’s bidding. Erdogan thereby made Gulen’s extradition a ‘stand-alone’ issue. US’s Syria policies are in free fall and Turkey is increasingly eyeing Russia and Iran as its key interlocutors to resolve the Syrian problem. Strategic ambiguity becomes necessary even between allies while addressing difficult issues. Turkey, with its long experience in diplomacy, displayed this week its exceptional mastery over the concept of strategic ambiguity. [Turkey] [US Syria policy] [Realignment] [Kurds]
• Tehran warns US to stay out of Iranian waters in Gulf
  Defence Minister said Iranian vessels accused of harassing a US warship were doing their job. Washington and Tehran have not had formal diplomatic ties for more than 35 years [EPA] Tehran has warned Washington against deploying warships in Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf, after a close encounter earlier in the week between Iranian and US naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan said on Thursday that every US ship that entered Iranian waters would first be warned, but if the intrusion was considered an invasion, there would be a confrontation. "If an American ship enters Iran's maritime region, it will definitely get a warning. We will monitor them and, if they violate our waters, we will confront them," he said in a statement reported by the Iranian Students' News Agency. The warning follows an incident on Wednesday when a US warship and Iranian ships faced off near the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf. US Navy spokesman Bill Urban said on Thursday that a US Navy patrol boat in the Persian Gulf fired three warning shots after an Iranian vessel approached head on, coming within 200 metres of the US ship. During Wednesday's incident, the USS Squall "resorted to firing three warning shots from their 50-caliber gun, which caused the Iranian vessel to turn away," he said. Earlier, a US defence official said that four vessels from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps conducted a "high-speed intercept" of the warship in the Strait of Hormuz. The official said two of the Iranian vessels came within 300 yards of the USS Nitze in an incident that was "unsafe and unprofessional", underlining the tensions that remain more than a year after Washington and other Western powers reached a landmark nuclear deal with Iran and lifted sanctions.
  While the US claims its ship was in international waters, Iran says the vessel was in Iranian waters and therefore violated the country's sovereignty. [Iran confrontation] [Legality]
• Iran says security forces killed senior spy
  Thu Aug 25, 2016 12:41PM Iran's Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi says Iranian security forces have killed a senior spy working for foreign intelligence services to destabilize the borders. "The trace of spying agencies is seen in creating certain security challenges in the country’s borders,” Alavi said in the holy city of Qom on Thursday. The agencies set up 12 teams and paid USD 500,000 for every operation, USD 3,000 to each member per month and USD 10,000 to the families of a person killed, Alavi noted. These expenses were made “to threaten our country’s security, but due to the vigilance of Iranian security forces their plot was foiled and their leader Abu Hafiz Balushi with the ID card name of Hosham Azizi was killed,” the Iranian minister stated. [Destabilisation] [money as ammunition]
• Creating Frankenstein: The Saudi Export Of Wahhabism
  By James M. Dorsey August 24, 2016 This book project on Saudi public diplomacy using primarily the kingdom’s financial muscle has had a long gestation. It focuses on the impact of various policies of the kingdom on Muslim communities and nations across the globe. In doing so, I will concentrate on Saudi government policy and actions as well as those of senior members of the ruling Al Saud family rather than wealthy individuals who may or may not be associated with them. As a result, theological and ideological differences between various expressions of Muslim ultra-conservatism fall beyond the parameters of what I am looking at. My thinking on this has evolved in the past year despite having covered the Saudi efforts for many years from very different angles and multiple geographies. The evolution of my thinking is reflected in the fact that were I looking today for a title for these remarks, I’d call it Saudi export of ultra-conservatism rather than Wahhabism. The reason is simple: Saudi export and global support for religiously driven groups goes far beyond Wahhabism. It is not simply a product of the Faustian bargain that the Al Sauds made with the Wahhabis. It is central to Saudi Arabia’s efforts to position itself internationally and flex its muscles regionally as well as on the international stage and has been crucial to the Al Sauds’ survival strategy for at least the last four decades. There is a lot of talk about Saudi funding of Wahhabism, yet in the mushrooming of Islamic ultra-conservatism in the last half century, Wahhabis as a group form a minority in the ultra-conservative Muslim world. The reason for this is fairly straightforward: For the Saudi government, support of puritan, intolerant, non-pluralistic and discriminatory forms of ultra-conservatism – primarily Wahhabism, Salafism in its various stripes, and Deobandism in South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora – is about soft power and countering Iran in what is for the Al Sauds an existential battle, rather than religious proselytization. One other important aspect is that South Asia has been an important contributor to ultra-conservative thinking for more than a century. Another significant element is the fact that while the Saudi campaign focuses predominantly on the Muslim world, it also at times involved ties to other, non-Muslim ultra-conservative faith groups and right-wing political groups. [Saudi Arabia] [Wahhabism]
• Turkey’s Foray into Syria: a Gamble in a Very Dangerous Game
  by Patrick Cockburn The record of Turkish involvement in the war in Syria over the last five years has been one of repeated disaster. It wanted to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad and his government and it is still there and in control of at least two thirds of the Syrian population. Instead, the Syrian wing of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting a guerilla war against the Turkish state since 1984, was able to establish its rule, with the military backing of the US, across a great swathe of northern Syria south of the border with Turkey. Isis, which Ankara once tolerated, has launched a vicious bombing campaign in Turkey which killed 54 people at a wedding in Gaziantep last weekend. Will Turkey’s military incursion, which began at 4am this morning, fare any better than its past initiatives in Syria? Its tanks, special forces amd artillery are backing at least 500 Syrian rebels in an attack on the Isis-held town of Jarabulus just west of the Euphrates River. [Turkey] [Syria]
• August 26, 2016 Unworthy Victims: Houthis and Hutus
  by Ann Garrison Last week the ?U.S. helped its ??Saudi pals bomb another hospital and school in? Yemen, killing 25, including at least 10 children. Don’t imagine that its intentions are any more humanitarian in? Burundi just because they’re not selling fighter bomber jets, MK-84 laser guided bombs or GBU-31 satellite-guided bombs to their pal Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president for life. Kagame is intent on bringing down President Pierre Nkurunziza’s government in Burundi, as Saudi sheikhs are intent on bringing down the Houthi government in Yemen. There are no multibillion dollar weapons sales motivating the U.S. to support a coup in Burundi, but access to the strategic mineral wealth required to manufacture weapons is among the stakes. Burundi has nickel, gold, copper, uranium, tungsten, tin, peat, platinum, limestone, vanadium, tantalum, niobium, kaolin and cobalt. Though its output has not yet been globally significant, its government has contracted with a Russian firm to mine its nickel reserves, and Bloomberg today quotes a Chinese source predicting a bull market in nickel just beginning. Nickel is used to make stainless steal, and nickel alloys are used in electronics, specialist engineering, space vehicles, submarines and the tubing used in desalination plants for converting sea water into fresh water. I haven’t seen Burundi’s mining contract with the Russian firm, but I’ve been told that the Russians valued the country’s nickel reserves far higher than Western firms and offered a much better deal. More importantly, Burundi shares a western border with the scandalously mineral rich eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and an eastern border with Tanzania, an East African nation with an Indian Ocean port that is also leaning towards the East in the heightening competition between Eastern and Western axes of power. If the U.S. and Rwanda succeed in taking down the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza, we won’t see video of hair-raising Pentagon special effects. Instead we’ll hear more preposterous rhetoric about the world’s obligation to “intervene,” ignoring Burundi’s’ sovereignty, to “stop genocide” or “stop the next Rwanda.” This argument has also been used to justify war in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and even Iraq, where genetic damage caused by toxic U.S. munitions is the most literal genocide the world has yet seen. The “stop the next Rwanda” argument is more easily made in Burundi because Rwandans and Burundians are close to being the same people. They share both a border and a Hutu majority, Tutsi minority demographic. Their languages, Burundi’s Kirundi and Rwanda’s Kinyarwanda, vary only slightly. This recently shrill warning from the UN and the Voice of America – UN: Violence, Hatred Against Burundi Tutsis Could Presage Genocide – is one more in a steady stream published in the U.S. and European press since President Pierre Nkurunziza’s re-election in July 2015. In a nation in which these two groups, Hutus and Tutsis, have been historically polarized and have massacred one another in competitions for power, this is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theatre. If there is an outbreak of violence between Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi, the U.S. will bear huge responsibility as it did for the Rwandan war of 1990 to 1994, which ended in horrific massacres of both groups as U.S. ally Paul Kagame seized power. [Humanitarian intervention] [Double standards]
• Afghanistan, dynamic of war
  Paul Rogers 26 August 2016 A renewed Taliban offensive is forcing Washington to bolster Kabul. Fifteen years after 9/11, the conflict has turned full circle. Afghanistan has somewhat fallen off the radar of western media, even though violent conflict there continues unabated. An exception is major incidents such as the ten-hour attack and siege against the American University in Kabul on 24 August, which killed fourteen people and injured many more. This rightly attracted attention as a grim indicator of continued Taliban activity, as did the bombing of a Hazara protest march on 23 July, also in the capital, when eighty people died and 250 were wounded. But other developments in the Afghan conflict, which are barely reported or even ignored by establishment media in the west, can carry much greater significance. So it was this week with a report at the bottom of an inside page of a leading military journal: “B-52 bombers rejoin US campaign in Afghanistan”. [Afghanistan] [B-52] [Bombing]
• Colombian government and FARC rebels announce peace deal
  By Nick Miroff August 24 at 10:47 PM HAVANA — After 52 years of fighting and nearly four years of grinding negotiations, the Colombian government and the country’s FARC rebel group declared Wednesday that they had reached an agreement to end the longest-running armed conflict in the Americas. “The war is over,” said Humberto de la Calle, the government’s lead negotiator, after signing the accord with his guerrilla counterparts. The two sides made the announcement in Cuba, where the negotiations began in 2012 and where Fidel Castro launched a communist revolution that inspired guerrilla insurgencies across the hemisphere. Colombia, a nation of 50 million that is among the closest U.S. allies in Latin America, is the one place where war has yet to end. “We have finished fighting with weapons and will now do battle with ideas,” said FARC’s chief negotiator, Iván Márquez, a former member of Congress who took up arms after many other leftist Colombian politicians were assassinated by right-wing groups in the 1980s. In their statements, the two negotiators described the accord as a road map for the transformation of Colombia, ending a sordid history of political violence and creating a more democratic society in a country long dominated by a well-to-do elite. [Columbia] [FARC]
• The Broken Chessboard: Brzezinski Gives Up on Empire
  by Mike Whitney August 25, 2016 The main architect of Washington’s plan to rule the world has abandoned the scheme and called for the forging of ties with Russia and China. While Zbigniew Brzezinski’s article in The American Interest titled “Towards a Global Realignment” has largely been ignored by the media, it shows that powerful members of the policymaking establishment no longer believe that Washington will prevail in its quest to extent US hegemony across the Middle East and Asia. Brzezinski, who was the main proponent of this idea and who drew up the blueprint for imperial expansion in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, has done an about-face and called for a dramatic revising of the strategy. Here’s an excerpt from the article in the AI: “As its era of global dominance ends, the United States needs to take the lead in realigning the global power architecture. Five basic verities regarding the emerging redistribution of global political power and the violent political awakening in the Middle East are signaling the coming of a new global realignment. The first of these verities is that the United States is still the world’s politically, economically, and militarily most powerful entity but, given complex geopolitical shifts in regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power.” (Toward a Global Realignment, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The American Interest) Repeat: The US is “no longer the globally imperial power.” Compare this assessment to a statement Brzezinski made years earlier in Chessboard when he claimed the US was ” the world’s paramount power.” [Brzezinski] [US global strategy]
• Zika Is Just the First Front in the 21st-Century Biowar
  Why a new era of synthetic biology could make the dangers of the atomic age seem quaint. By James Stavridis August 24, 2016 There are many national security challenges facing the United States, but too often our focus is exclusively on threats from terrorism geopolitics and cyberattacks. As the country confronts the arrival of the Zika virus and contemplates travel bans to Miami, it’s time to have an adult conversation about the threats posed by biology. It’s not hard to understand why our lives are increasingly wrapped up in the latest twists and turns of the cyberworld. That supercomputer you are carrying in your pocket (when its tiny colorful screen isn’t parked six inches in front of your eyes) is a synthesizer of all the world’s knowledge, photography, art, music, and data. It is also a kind of X-ray machine that can provide insights into the deepest recesses of our personal lives: our preferences, choices, intimate moments, health, purchases, and indeed our character. Yet the impact of all that information and data pales in comparison to what is heading our way in the world of biology. Biological, not cybernetic, developments will determine the course of the 21st century. Ebola, Zika, and the emergence of antibiotic-impervious superbugs are just previews of the coming challenges. [cbw]
• Turkish troops enter Syria to take on ISIS, backed by U.S. warplanes
  Turkey launches U.S.-backed offensive in Syria Turkey launched an operation supported by U.S.-led coalition warplanes in northern Syria early on Aug. 24 to wipe out Islamic State elements near the border town of Jarablus. (Video: Reuters / Photo: AP) By Erin Cunningham, Liz Sly and Karen DeYoung August 24 at 4:52 PM ? ISTANBUL — Turkish troops and tanks crossed into Syria on Wednesday in support of a new U.S.-backed offensive against the Islamic State, helping Syrian rebels to swiftly recapture an important border town but also adding another layer of complexity to Syria’s deeply complicated war. By late afternoon, rebel units with the Free Syrian Army had swept into the center of the Syrian town of Jarabulus, the Islamic State’s last foothold on the Turkish border. The rebels encountered almost no resistance from Islamic State fighters, who fled ahead of the advancing force, according to rebel commanders in the area. Photographs posted on social media showed rebels posing in front of deserted government buildings in the town’s central square and raising the flags of Turkey and the Free Syrian Army over the gates to the town. “There wasn’t much resistance at all from ISIS forces and they retreated even faster after Turkish troops marched across the border,” said Ahmed al-Gader, a rebel fighter speaking from Jarabulus. “We have taken over the main buildings of the town, and things are very quiet now.” The offensive coincided with a crucial visit to Ankara by Vice President Biden and seemed timed to demonstrate that Turkey and the United States remain close allies in the war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, despite the tensions that have erupted in their relationship since last month’s coup attempt in Turkey. The move drew condemnations from the Syrian government and Russia, as well as Syrian Kurds, who have been regarded as the United States’ most reliable and effective partner in the war against the Islamic State but now risk being usurped by their arch enemy, Turkey. [Turkey] [Legality] [Kurds]
• U.S. and Europe Say Assad May Have Kept Some Chemical Weapons
  Damascus promised to destroy its entire arsenal, but the world’s chemical weapons watchdog suggests Assad may have squirreled some away. • By Colum Lynch, David Kenner • August 23, 2016 The world’s chemical weapons watchdog has repeatedly found traces of deadly nerve agents in laboratories that Syria insisted were never part of its chemical weapons program, raising new questions about whether Damascus has abided by its commitments to destroy all of its armaments, according to a highly confidential new report. The discoveries of precursors for chemical warfare agents like soman and VX at several undeclared facilities, including two on the outskirts of Damascus, underscored what a 75-page report by the director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) describes as a troubling pattern of incomplete and inaccurate Syrian disclosures over the past three years about the scope of the country’s chemical weapons program. [cbw] [Propaganda] [US Syria policy]
• FBI finds more evidence in Clinton email probe
  Xinhua, August 23, 2016 The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has uncovered nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed documents to or from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton when she served as secretary of state, a federal judge was told at a hearing on Monday. Lawyers for the State Department suggested to begin the release of the emails weekly on Oct. 14 in a civil public records lawsuit before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington. However, Boasberg rejected the proposal, ordering the State Department to prioritize Clinton's emails and to return to court on Sept. 22 with a new plan. Tom Fitton, president of the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, which filed the lawsuit in May 2015 after disclosures that Clinton had exclusively used a personal email server based at her home when she worked with the State Department, welcomed the judge's decision. [Hillary Clinton] [Emails]
• Hillary and the Glass Ceilings Illusion
  by Diana Johnstone August 23, 2016 Meryl Streep must be a very intelligent woman to be such a good actress. So it was embarrassing to see her dressed in an American flag playing cheer leader for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Convention. One must suppose that she is too busy studying for all her varied movie roles to have learned much about the sinister nature of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy. She proclaimed that President Hillary Clinton would be “making history” simply by being a woman. That means symbolic history. The fact that President Hillary Clinton is more likely to make real history by starting another war even more disastrous than those she has already helped get us into seems not to have occurred to Meryl Streep. Nor does it occur to millions of other American women who share the same illusion. Those women are thinking too much in terms of symbols and images. They are ignoring the major issue facing the United States: whether to make peace or war. They don’t worry that the imminent conflict with the other major nuclear power, Russia, might affect themselves, their families, the world and the future. They feel that they will somehow personally benefit from the election of a woman to the U.S. Presidency. The feminist idea behind this illusion is that by becoming President, Hillary will be “shattering the glass ceilings” – the invisible obstacles – that prevent women from rising to the top. Women everywhere will benefit – just as American blacks all Johnstone-Queen-Cover-ak800--291x450benefited from the election of Barack Obama. Oops, wait a minute, did they really? What about the growing black prison population, or the unarmed blacks shot dead in the street by policemen? Never mind, it made many blacks feel good to have a black President, which is understandable given American history. But in concrete terms, it did nothing for the black population as a whole. [Hilary Clinton] [Gender]
• Was General Patton Assassinated?
  Ron Unz • August 22, 2016 During the long Cold War many Russians grew sufficiently disenchanted with the lies and omissions of their own news outlets that they turned to Western radio for a glimpse of the truth. The growth of the Internet has now provided Americans with a similar opportunity to click on a foreign website and discover the important stories that have somehow escaped the attention of their own leading journalists. Ironically, much of such “alternative media” coverage actually appears in the leading British newspapers, eminently respectable and published in our closest historic ally. For example, three or four years ago I noticed a link on a prominent libertarian website suggesting that George S. Patton, one of America’s most renowned World War II military commanders, had been murdered by order of the U.S. government. Not being someone much drawn to conspiracy-mongering, the lurid claim seemed totally outlandish, but I decided to click my mouse and harmlessly examine a bit of Internet fringe-lunacy. However, the source turned out to be a lengthy article in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, one of the world’s leading newspapers, describing a newly published book based on a decade of detailed research and interviews undertaken by an experienced American military affairs writer. [Assassination]
• General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book
  George S. Patton, America's greatest combat general of the Second World War, was assassinated after the conflict with the connivance of US leaders, according to a new book. General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book 'We've got a terrible situation with this great patriot, he's out of control and we must save him from himself'. The OSS head General did not trust Patton By Tim Shipman in Washington 7:16PM GMT 20 Dec 2008 The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives. The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home. But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts". His book, "Target Patton", contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch. Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general. [Assassination]
• Joint FBI-US Attorney Probe Of Clinton Foundation Is Underway
  Richard Pollock 10:36 PM 08/11/2016 WARREN, MI - AUGUST 11: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton tours Futuramic Tool & Engineering before giving a speech there on the U.S. economy August 11, 2016 in Warren, Michigan. In her speech, Clinton contrasted her economic plan to that of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation, according to a former senior law enforcement official. The investigation centers on New York City where the Clinton Foundation has its main offices, according to the former official who has direct knowledge of the activities. Prosecutorial support will come from various U.S. Attorneys Offices — a major departure from other centralized FBI investigations. The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara’s prosecutorial aggressiveness has resulted in a large number of convictions of banks, hedge funds and Wall Street insiders. [Clinton] [Corruption]
• Tens of thousands of Yemenis rally to support Houthi-led council
  A soldier looks at people rallying to show support to a political council formed by the Houthi movement and the General People's Congress party to unilaterally rule Yemen by both groups, in the capital Sanaa August 20, 2016. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah Tens of thousands of Yemenis rallied in the center of the capital on Saturday to show support for the Houthi-led bloc as the head of the group's new governing council vowed to form a full government in the coming days. In apparent response to the Houthi show of force, ambassadors from the G18 group of nations that has backed U.N. peace talks to end Yemen's civil war issued a statement condemning "unconstitutional and unilateral actions in Sanaa." "The Group of Ambassadors repeats its concern that actions taken by elements of the General People's Congress and the Houthis as well as their supporters are making the search for a peaceful solution more difficult," the envoys added in a statement posted on the U.S. embassy's Facebook page. As Houthi demonstrators packed Sanaa's Sabeen Square waving Yemeni flags and chanting slogans, chairman Saleh al-Samad outlined the council's plans for running the war-ravaged country following the breakdown of the peace talks earlier this month. [Yemen]
• Trump doubles down in naming a combative true believer as campaign chief
  By Karen Tumulty and David Weigel August 17 at 8:33 PM At the lowest point of Donald Trump’s quest for the presidency, the Republican nominee might have brought in a political handyman to sand his edges. Instead, he put his campaign in the hands of a true believer who promises to amplify the GOP nominee’s nationalist message and reinforce his populist impulses. “Steve Bannon is a fighter’s fighter. He is somebody who wants to be the first boots on the beach. In the military, it’s called the tip of the spear,” said David Bossie, a conservative activist. It was Bossie who five years ago introduced Trump to Bannon, the top executive of the new media clarion of the establishment-­loathing right, Breitbart News. Breitbart has since become a champion of Trump’s candidacy — in large part because Stephen K. Bannon himself believes it represents a cause much bigger than a political campaign. Bannon sees Trumpism as part of a global movement that will continue, no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office next January, those close to him say. [Trump]
• The allure of war: the motivations of Jordanian foreign fighters in Syria
  Gregory Waters 18 August 2016 Broadly speaking, religious motivations are the primary draw for Jordanian volunteers in Syria. In the light of the June attacks in Jordan, the Hashemite Kingdom has closed its borders with Syria and continues to imprison its nationals for terrorism-related charges. Jordan has already taken steps to limit the threat from extremists, but without fully understanding the many reasons why these men have traveled to Syria, effective counter-radicalization and de-radicalization will not be possible. Furthermore, understanding why Jordanians fight in Syria sheds light on possible motivations for European foreign fighters. Each individual has unique circumstances and beliefs that drew them to Syria. However, the following is a breakdown of the major motivations, determined through independent research and expert interviews, that have played some role for many of Jordan's volunteers. These motivations were determined through analyses of news reports, scholarly works, and interviews I conducted in Jordan with Salafi experts and activists. Broadly speaking, religious motivations are the primary draw for Jordanian volunteers in Syria. This can be broken down into its component parts: generally, for the youth, the desire to create an Islamic State is a prevailing factor. [Jihadist]
• Syria-Iraq and beyond: octopus wars
  Paul Rogers 18 August 2016 Only a change of dynamic towards diplomacy can offer an alternative to endless conflict in the Middle East. In the early weeks of this year, Pentagon sources were reporting that the intense air war against ISIS had killed 30,000 of the movement’s paramilitaries. This military assault, however, had long been factored into ISIS's strategy. As earlier columns in this series have indicated, there is evidence that ISIS planners had already begun to prepare attacks overseas in response to the air campaign. The two major Tunisian attacks on western tourists, and later ones in Brussels, Paris and elsewhere, are part of this longer-term plan. The implication is that ISIS, if suppressed in Iraq and Syria, would be able to respond by morphing into a more traditional insurgency that was still capable of causing continuing and deep insecurity across the Middle East, north Africa, and probably elsewhere (see "ISIS's war: real to virtual, far to near", 4 August 2016). A more recent indication from United States military sources is that the number of ISIS operatives now “taken off” the battlefield has risen to as many as 45,000, though it is unclear if this means deaths, injuries or temporary tactical withdrawals. That leaves ISIS with between 15,000 and 20,000 engaged in combat. Against them, the US is further strengthening its own troop numbers in Iraq, especially to support an Iraqi assault on Mosul, expected to develop in October-November 2016. After more than two years since it exploded onto the scene, there is confidence in Washington that ISIS really is in decline in its core ares. Syria's proxy conflict At the same time, the conflict in Syria is continuing to develop. Russia’s involvement has expanded with its use of the Iranian base near Hamadan to conduct raids across northern Syria, while ISIS and other Islamist groups continue to operate against the Bashar al-Assad regime, and the western coalition supports its own allies, including the Kurds. The Tu-22M3 long-range Backfire bombers flown by Russia from Iran can drop a far heavier bomb-load than the smaller strike-aircraft that operate from the main Russian base in Syria. But they mostly use unguided “dumb” bombs, dropped from altitude and thus with very limited accuracy. This is in line with a more general feature of the whole Russian military operation – the level of civilian casualties. It is true that there are uncomfortable questions about the casualties caused by the much large western air war, but independent analysts are in little doubt that the Russian operations are far less discriminate and kill many more civilians (see "Russia in Syria, and a flawed strategy", 1 October 2015).. [ISIS] [Russia Syria] [Airpower] [Civilians]
• Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons
  By Matt Zapotosky and Chico Harlan August 18 at 6:35 PM ? Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates instructed Justice Department officials Thursday to end its use of private prisons. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.” “They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” Yates wrote. [Privatisation] [Incarceration]
• The Obama Doctrine is Ravaging the Middle East
  by Ramzy Baroud Everyone seems to have a theory on how to obliterate ISIS, or ‘Daesh’. However, two points are rarely raised: one, concerning the origins of the group and the second, on whether there are genuine intentions to defeat it, in the first place. We must boldly address the first to unravel the enigma behind the rise and growth of ‘Daesh’ – otherwise, how else can the group be dismantled. We must contend with the second point before engaging in superfluous discussions about the most appropriate war strategy – that if war is, at all, the answer. The questions are quite urgent yet, somehow, they are frequently overlooked, glossed over through some disingenuous logic or the blame is always placed somewhere else. Now that the Americans have launched yet another aerial war against Libya, purportedly to target ‘Daesh’ positions there, the discussion is being carefully geared towards how far the US must go to defeat the militant group? In fact, “can airstrikes alone win a war without ‘boots on the ground’?” has morphed, somehow, to become the crux of the matter, which has engaged a large number of intellectuals on both sides of the debate. [US Middle East Policy] [Outsourcing]
• Guardian: “yes media is weighted against Trump” because he’s “rubbish”
  by Catte As a female writer I often cringe at the embarrassing collection of beaming, smooth-faced young women the Guardian fields to wrap dangerous political extremisms in lipsticky identity-politics. There’s a touch of exploitation in it, intended or not. Here’s the latest example, by Lucia Graves: The article sets out the case that Trump does not deserve unbiased press coverage. The media would love to be fair to him, of course, because fairness is their watchword – but they just can’t do it, because they have to protect their audience from his lies. Censorship is actually a sort of duty, Lucia tells us in her elementary-school prose, because Trump is “rubbish”. “ His campaign is indeed a place where journalistic objectivity meets its limits, but it’s not because we’re deliberately gunning for him. There simply is no fairness in presenting both sides of a story when one side is consistently rubbish, to put it kindly, or a dumpster fire, in this cycle’s parlance. Trump changes his mind like it’s the weather and tells a lie every five minutes, going by Politico’s best count. [Trump] [Media]
• How has Hillary Clinton lied to us? Let me count the ways
  By J. Peder Zane A letter published in response to my last column “Hate Clinton and Trump? Look in the mirror” asked for “some evidence, or at least an explanation of … Hillary’s character flaws in the early 1990s.” Of course. Let’s start in 1998, when Hillary attributed the Lewinsky affair and other Clinton scandals to a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” In fact, her husband had been having an affair with the 22-year-old White House intern whom Hillary had called a “narcissistic loony toon.” Indeed, the presidential candidate who brags that she has spent her lifetime fighting for equality cut her political teeth destroying the powerless young women (“bimbo eruptions” in Clintonspeak) who claimed that Bill had slept with or forced himself upon them. They included Juanita Broaddrick, Connie Hamzy, Kathleen Willey and Gennifer Flowers, whom the Clintons memorably called a liar in a “60 Minutes” interview that saved his 1992 campaign. Don’t forget Paula Jones, to whom Bill ultimately paid $850,000 to drop her sexual harassment lawsuit. When Hillary declares that “every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed and supported,” she means only those who do not threaten her power. All this is dismissed as old news by the Clintons and the mainstream media who are relentlessly focused on portraying Donald Trump as unfit for office. Perhaps he is. But if Trump’s honest expression of views some people find repugnant is disqualifying, what do we make of a rank hypocrite who consistently lies to the American people about … everything? As early as 1996, New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary as a congenital liar because of the “blizzard of lies” she offered in response to various scandals. Fast forward 20 years to hear FBI Director James Comey confirm that she had relentlessly misled the American people about her use of a private email server. Hillary responded by lying about Comey’s assessment of her actions. Even her supporters were left scratching their heads. Why would she do that? Because that’s who she is. [Hillary Clinton]
• Clinton’s Foreign Policy Would Be More Like Bush’s Than Obama’s
  By Marc Joffe August 16, 2016 The modern Democratic Party has had a potent anti-war wing since Eugene McCarthy called for a swift withdrawal from Vietnam during the 1968 primary. Democratic anti-war highlights in this millennium include California Rep. Barbara Lee’s opposition to the 2001 Afghanistan invasion, the 126 House Democratic votes against the Iraq War resolution in 2002 and Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign. Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton does not follow in this tradition, leaving Democrats who want to “give peace a chance” a difficult choice in November. Clinton would succeed an Obama administration that did not start any new, large-scale ground wars and wound down the ones initiated by his predecessor. Obama also delivered progress on Cuba and Iran, but disappointed many, especially on the left, by intensifying drone warfare, bombing Libya and entertaining regime change in Syria. Peace movement expectations of Obama were too high, failing to take into account that every modern president’s discretion is limited by the deep state — a collection of financial and defense industry interests, think-tank experts and government officials who shape public policy largely outside of public view. [Hillary Clinton] [US global strategy] [Deep state]
• Introduction to “the Deep State”
  The Deep State (available January 5, 2016) An excerpt from the introduction: THE DEEP STATE HC HIGH RESAnyone who has spent time on Capitol Hill will occasionally get the feeling when watching debates in the House or Senate chambers that he or she is seeing a kind of marionette theater, with members of Congress reading carefully vetted talking points about prefabricated issues. This impression was particularly strong both in the run-up to the Iraq war and later, during the mock deliberations over funding that ongoing debacle. While the public is now aware of the disproportionate influence of powerful corporations over Washington, best exemplified by the judicial travesty known as the Citizens United decision, few fully appreciate that the United States has in the last several decades gradually undergone a process first identified by Aristotle and later championed by Machiavelli that the journalist Lawrence Peter Garrett described in the 1930s as a “revolution within the form.” Our venerable institutions of government have outwardly remained the same, but they have grown more and more resistant to the popular will as they have become hardwired into a corporate and private influence network with almost unlimited cash to enforce its will. Even as commentators decry a broken government that cannot marshal the money, the will, or the competence to repair our roads and bridges, heal our war veterans, or even roll out a health care website, there is always enough money and will, and maybe just enough competence, to overthrow foreign governments, fight the longest war in U.S. history, and conduct dragnet surveillance over the entire surface of the planet. This paradox of penury and dysfunction on the one hand and unlimited wealth and seeming omnipotence on the other is replicated outside of government as well. By every international metric of health and living standards, the rural countries of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky qualify as third world. So do large areas of Detroit, Cleveland, Camden, Gary, and many other American cities. At the same time, wealth beyond computation, almost beyond imagining, piles up in the money center of New York and the technology hub of Palo Alto. It piles up long enough to purchase a $95,000 truffle, a $38 million vintage Ferrari GTO, or a $179 million Picasso before the balance finds its way to an offshore hiding place. These paradoxes, both within the government and within the ostensibly private economy, are related. They are symptoms of a shadow government ruling the United States that pays little heed to the plain words of the Constitution. Its governing philosophy profoundly influences foreign and national security policy and such domestic matters as spending priorities, trade, investment, income inequality, privatization of government services, media presentation of news, and the whole meaning and worth of citizens’ participation in their government. I have come to call this shadow government the Deep State. The term was actually coined in Turkey, and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary, and organized crime. [Deep state]
• Shielded from Oversight: The Disastrous US Approach to Strategic Missile Defense (2016)
  Missile defense is supposed to protect the US public. The evidence shows that it doesn’t. Decades of research and development. Forty billion in taxpayer dollars. Test flights that fail more often than not. It’s not the beginning that George W. Bush envisioned for US missile defense when he ordered the system built in 2002. And yet it’s the reality of national missile defense today—an expensive false promise that was rushed to the field without oversight or accountability. How did we get here—and what does it mean for US security? Analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found fundamental flaws throughout the missile defense program, from its administration and oversight procedures to the tough technical realities of defending against a nuclear strike. Congress and the administration owe it to national security—and US taxpayers—to critically reevaluate the system’s purpose, costs, and benefits. [Missile defense]
• For millennial voters, the Clinton vs. Trump choice ‘feels like a joke’
  By Philip Rucker August 13 Jo and Wes Tongue with their daughters, Evie, 4, and Lu, 3, in Fort Collins, Colo. The Tongues are disillusioned with the presidential campaign and undecided about which candidate to support. (Matthew Staver/For The Washington Post) This article was reported by Philip Rucker in Fort Collins, Colo.; Robert Costa in Madison, Wis.; Abby Phillip in Austin and Fort Worth; John Wagner in Washington; Dan Balz in Palo Alto, Calif., and Seaside, Calif.; and Isaac Stanley-Becker in Goldsboro, N.C., and Norfolk, Va. FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Jo Tongue doesn’t have much time for politics, but the Hillary and Trump show is hard to tune out. And even harder to take. To this 31-year-old mother of two, with a third on the way, the presidency should be an honorable office, but instead she feels “bummed that we’re at a place where it all feels like a joke.” “Watching Jimmy Fallon, I feel like, ugh, is this how we should start out? We’re already mocking our president?” Tongue says she is both “sad” and “defeated” and — in a world filled with shootings, bombings and financial strain — maintains scant hope that a new president will change any of it. [US_Election16] [Alienation]
• 'Final Collapse' of Secular Syria Could Foster the Rise of a Terrorist State
  The overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad will lead to Islamic terrorists seizing power in Syria and a "final collapse" of the country, which is out of line with the West's interests, Gunter Mayer, head of the Center for Arab Studies at the University of Mainz, told the German news network NDR. In an interview with the German news network NDR, Gunter Mayer, head of the Center for Arab Studies at the University of Mainz, warned that the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad would result in grave consequences: Islamic terrorists would come to power in Syria. The interview came amid the deterioration of the situation in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, where intense fighting between government forces and terrorists shows no sign of abating. NDR recalled in this context that doctors urged US President Barack Obama to "influence on the warring parties and encourage them to protect the civilian population." Russia in turn has already announced a daily three-hour ceasefire, NDR said. The West is, meanwhile, calling for toppling President Bashar Assad, which Mayer said would inevitably lead to the seizure of power in Syria by rebels, including members of Islamist terrorist groups. "Under their rule, Syria will finally collapse, something that does not meet the interests of the West," Mayer pointed out. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Jihadist] [Bashar Assad]
• One Helluva Fella: The Horrifically Contemporary World of Hieronymus Bosch
  By Ulrike Knöfel Impaled heads and burning bodies: Hieronymus Bosch, the great Dutch painter whose images depicted the horrors and terror of the past, present and future, died 500 years ago. In the era of Abu Ghraib and Islamic State, his work feels as contemporary as ever. The artist Hieronymus Bosch probably had the most prodigious imagination of his day. He was the great surrealist of the waning Middle Ages. His paintings were both a promise and a threat, intended to convey an idea of what would happen in paradise and, even more so, in hell. He created labyrinths of atrocities and a vocabulary of the bestial. He depicted devils and monsters, but also people being tortured, naked people whose throats were being slit, almost as if they were part of a scene in the latest propaganda video from the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS). And then there are images and motifs that seem comedic in their sheer absurdity. Bosch, this mysterious painter whose motives were unclear, died 500 years ago, in August 1516. One thing is certain: The Dutchman from the Duchy of Brabant did not spare his audience. He painted what no one had painted before him. And he must have had his own dark humor. In one painting, he depicts a dwarflike being with an upper body that resembles an egg, while the lower body is reminiscent of a lizard. But the gaunt face is that of a human being, with glasses perched on his nose. It is often speculated that this may have been the face of Bosch himself. He painted this curious being in the corner of a plate, next to Saint Mark the Evangelist foreseeing the End of Time. Did Bosch also perceive himself as a visionary? As someone who wanted to make mankind squirm as it learned of its future? Are his paintings a painted version of gallows humor? [Hieronymus Bosch]
• Changing Cuba pays homage to Fidel Castro ahead of 90th birthday
  By Sarah Marsh | HAVANA Cuba is awash with official tributes to former leader Fidel Castro ahead of his 90th birthday on Saturday, even as its people and leadership have begun to look beyond the legacy of the Communist-ruled state's founding figure. Dotted around Havana, flags read "Gracias, Fidel" and billboards cite his best-known phrases, while state media churns out stories about the man who toppled a U.S.-backed dictator in 1959 and went on to rule Cuba for nearly half a century. Thousands are expected to attend street concerts over the weekend in honor of Castro, who is revered by many for freeing Cuba from U.S. domination and bringing universal healthcare and education, but loathed by others for his long grip on the island. [Fidel]
• With ISIS on the run, new wars could erupt in Iraq
  By Liz Sly August 12 at 4:37 AM ? TUZ KHURMATU, IRAQ — The front line south of this bleak and dusty town looks much as it did two years ago, when the Islamic State was the enemy and controlled a village less than a mile away. Now, however, the Kurdish peshmerga fighters holed up behind sandbags and barbed wire are peering across the line at Shiite militias, ostensibly their allies in the fight against the Islamic State. Whether their alliance will outlast the Islamic State is in question. The militants’ defenses have been crumbling fast across Iraq. An offensive for the city of Mosul, the Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, is likely by the end of the year, U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials say. If the battle goes well, the defeat of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq, at least in terms of the territory it controls, is on the horizon. And so too are new problems — and potentially new conflicts. For the past two years, Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi Army forces, Shiite militias and some Sunni ones have largely overlooked long-standing differences to confront the menace posed to them. But their feuds and grievances — over vital issues such as the distribution of power, land, money and oil — have not been resolved. [Iraq] [Fragmentation]
• Newly public U.S. documents detail struggle over Argentina’s ‘dirty war’
  By James Rosen WASHINGTON — Hundreds of pages of declassified documents released Monday show efforts by President Jimmy Carter and his top aides to pressure Argentina’s military dictators to ease repression as part of Carter’s broader initiative to push human rights around the globe. The State Department released 1,080 pages of previously classified documents five months after President Barack Obama, during a visit to Argentina, pledged to embark on a comprehensive initiative to find and release U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic records tied to state-sponsored murders and human rights abuses committed during the nearly decade-long “dirty war” under a military junta installed after a March 1976 coup. “I believe we have a responsibility to confront the past with honesty and transparency,” Obama said then in a Buenos Aires ceremony attended by relatives of some of the thousands of Argentines who died at the hands of government forces. Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst with the National Security Archive at George Washington University, hailed the release of what the Obama administration called “the first tranche” of 1970s-era documents related to the repression in Argentina. The documents were delivered by Secretary of State John Kerry to Argentine President Mauricio Macri last week. “This is a tremendous gesture of declassified diplomacy,” Kornbluh told McClatchy. “The administration has taken the first step to carry out President Obama’s commitment to Argentine human rights groups.” Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article94484892.html#storylink=cpy [Argentina]
• States Vie to Shield the Wealth of the 1 Percent
  By Patricia Cohen Aug. 8, 2016 LAS VEGAS — Steven J. Oshins, a Nevada lawyer who specializes in estate planning, has never met the wealthy software entrepreneur Dan Kloiber, but he is nonetheless intensely interested in Mr. Kloiber’s contentious divorce. “I have had a Google news alert on that for a couple years,” Mr. Oshins said as he discussed the case from his office in a squat pink complex about a 20-minute drive from the Las Vegas Strip. What animates Mr. Oshins is not the juicy marital feud, but the legal arcana governing a trust in Delaware where the Kloiber family parked assets worth hundreds of million of dollars, sheltered from estate taxes. Mr. Oshins, with a gleeful grin spreading across his face, relished the thought of the no-longer-beloved Mrs. Kloiber busting through the trust and exposing a potential chink in the formidable trust protection armor promised by Delaware — which just happens to fiercely compete with Nevada for the lucrative business of shielding assets owned by the superrich. [Inequality] [Corruption] [Tax]
• Philippines Talks of Barring Donald Trump for Calling It a ‘Terrorist Nation’
  By J. R. Alibutud Aug. 12, 2016 MANILA — Donald J. Trump’s recent assertion that the United States was letting in “animals” from “terrorist nations,” among them the Philippines, has provoked a strong backlash here, making headlines and prompting a Philippine congressman to propose barring Mr. Trump from the country. The congressman, Jose Salceda, filed a resolution this week seeking to “refuse Donald J. Trump entry into the Philippines” for the “wholesale labeling of Filipinos as coming from a ‘terrorist’ state.” Mr. Salceda condemned Mr. Trump’s “ugliness of utterances, largely unprompted and undeserved,” even though Mr. Trump profited handsomely from licensing his name and brand to a real estate development in the Philippines. At a campaign rally last week in Portland, Me., Mr. Trump said refugees from “terrorist nations” should be barred from the United States. “We are letting people come in from terrorist nations that shouldn’t be allowed because you can’t vet them,” he said. He then named several countries, including the Philippines, whose immigrants, he said, had been arrested in the United States for terrorism-related offenses. “We’re dealing with animals,” he said. Mr. Trump presents quite a different message about the Philippines on the website for Trump Tower at Century City, a $150 million, 57-story apartment building nearing completion in metropolitan Manila. “I’ve always loved the Philippines,” he says. “I think it’s just a special place and Manila is one of Asia’s most spectacular cities.” [Trump] [Philippines]
• Aleppo Humanitarian Operation: Hypocrisy and Contradictions of US Policy
  Alex Gorka | 10.08.2016 The humanitarian operation in Aleppo launched upon the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin to open three escape routes for civilians and one for militants wishing to lay down arms, evokes stiff opposition. The United States has called on Russia and the Syrian government to refrain from offensive operations in Syria at the time the cessation of hostilities is broken by the groups that has been enjoying US support. President Barack Obama on August 4 cast doubt on whether the United States «could trust» Russia as a partner to end the Syrian civil war. «I’m not confident that we can trust the Russians and Vladimir Putin, which is why we have to test whether or not we can get an actual cessation of hostilities», Obama told reporters at the Pentagon after meeting with members of his National Security Council to discuss the fight against Islamic State. Indeed, the fierce fighting has recently intensified in Aleppo. One thing is clear – the breach of cessation of hostilities has been initiated by radical opposition groups as they try to break the government siege of rebel-held areas after the army cut them off last month. The humanitarian corridors and aid centers have been set up to minimize civilian casualties and save the city residents lives. For comparison, the situation is quite different in Manbij, where US-supported forces advance to push Islamic State militants away before the planned Raqqa offensive. More and more civilians become victims as US aircraft deliver indiscriminate air strikes. Manbij civilians call for international aid to the displaced civilians who fled war-torn areas of the city. «We appeal to the UN and humanitarian organizations around the world to send us more help. Until now we have not received anything», said Faruk al-Mashi, the co-head of the newly established Manbij city council. [US Syria policy] [Bombing] [Double standards]
• There Are So Many Foreign Backers in Syria That Nothing Is Changing
  Patrick Cockburn • August 13, 2016 The Syrian army and its militia allies from the Shia world are preparing a counter-offensive to cut the recently-opened corridor connecting East Aleppo to rebel territory. Syrian and Russian aircraft pound the ruins of this corner of Aleppo through which also runs the main supply road to the government-held west side of the city. The strengths and weaknesses of all sides in the Syrian war are on show in the present battle. First there was a victory by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, which cut the enemy’s supply line to East Aleppo on 28 July. But this was balanced within a few days by a rebel success in another part of the city, which shows how equally the two sides are balanced. Claims of decisive victories in local offensives dribble away because neither side can keep up the momentum after initial advances. Each side has a limited number of effective combat soldiers of which they cannot afford to lose too many. The rebels are reported to have lost 500 individuals in their recent offensive. [Syria]
• What does the security establishment attack on Trump say about the establishment?
  Mikhail Molchanov 10 August 2016 They say Donald Trump "lacks the character, values and experience" to be Commander-in-Chief. What they mean is, he is not enough of a warmonger.
  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Las Vegas, 2015. John Locher / Press Association. All rights reserved. In a recent letter, 50 Republican national security experts lambast Donald Trump, saying he "would be the most reckless president" in US history. Given his latest statement on the “Second Amendment people” and their right to change the government by force it seems hard to disagree. Yet the question of whether reckless and even unacceptable rhetoric in a modern ‘civilized society’ necessarily translates into political action – be it the revolutionary upheaval of the masses or bold, path breaking politics of the elites – remains. [Trump] [MISCOM]
• That time the Philippine president used a homophobic slur to describe the U.S. ambassador
  By Emily Rauhala August 10 at 6:39 AM Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, already famous for his unexpected pronouncements, has used wildly undiplomatic language to refer to the U.S. ambassador. (Bullit Marquez/AP) The first rule of diplomacy? Don't use a homophobic slur when referring to a foreign dignitary. But that's exactly what Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, did in televised remarks Friday. Washington reportedly summoned Manila's charge d’affaires in Washington on Monday to complain, in what must have been a rather awkward meeting. Duterte, a fast-talking former mayor who swept to power this spring, was telling reporters about his relationship with U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg when he made the wildly homophobic — and utterly undiplomatic — remark. "As you know, I’m fighting with [U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s] ambassador. His gay ambassador, the son of a whore. He pissed me off,” Duterte said. (He was speaking in Tagalog, the main language of the Philippines, and the word for "son of a whore" isn't quite as pointed as it seems in English. It might be compared to calling someone an S.O.B.) During this year's election campaign, Duterte drew national and international condemnation for saying he wished he had "been first" to rape an Australian missionary who was assaulted and killed during a prison riot. The Australian ambassador objected, as did Goldberg. Duterte told them both to "shut up." [Duterte] [Philippines US] [China confrontation] [South China Sea]
• The US is hiring military contractors for operations in Syria
  David Choi Aug 10, 2016, 6:06 AM David Furst/Pool/Getty ImagesA US Marine takes a retinal scan of a local Fallujah resident. In an obscure yet publicly available report, the Pentagon has for the first time indicated that it was hiring military contractors for operations in Syria. In an investigation from The Daily Beast, the nearly 300 US troops already present in Syria would be receiving “intelligence analysis services” from Six3 Intelligence Solutions Inc., a privately held defence contractor based out of McLean, Virginia. This $10 million contract would place an unknown number of contractors in various countries, including Syria. [US Syria policy] [Privatisation]
• Email batch provides additional evidence that Clinton Foundation donors got access at State Department
  By Tom Hamburger August 10 at 9:42 PM Newly released State Department emails shed additional light on the relationships Hillary Clinton and her top aides maintained with her family’s foundation during the years she served as secretary of state. The emails, obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch as part of a public-records lawsuit, included one in which a longtime aide to Bill Clinton sought a State Department meeting on behalf of a major foundation donor. The aide, Doug Band, who played a role in expanding the foundation’s reach, wrote to Hillary Clinton’s State Department staff requesting a meeting for a wealthy Ni­ger­ian businessman of Lebanese descent who has given the Clinton Foundation $1 million to $5 million in donations, according to disclosure reports. “We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Band wrote in the email addressed to Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, two of Clinton’s closest aides at State. “As you know he’s a key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.” Abedin responded with the name of the recent U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, who was serving as acting assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs. She added: “I’ll talk to Jeff.” [Hilary Clinton] [Emails] [Corruption] [Guanxi]
• The Pentagon Money Pit
  by Dave Lindorff What if the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services were to report that $6.5 billion in spending by that federal agency was unaccounted for and untraceable? You can imagine the headlines, right? What if it was $65 billion? The headlines would be as big as for the first moon landing or for troops landing on Omaha Beach in World War II. But how about a report by the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General saying that the US Army had $6.5 trillion in unaccountable expenditures for which there is simply no paper trail? That is 6,500 billion dollars! Have you heard about that? Probably not. That damning report was issued back on July 26 — two whole weeks ago — but as of today it has not even been reported anywhere in the corporate media. It’s not that it’s secret information, or hard to come by. The report is available online at the Department of Defense’s OIG website. [Pentagon] [Media] [Corruption]
• Turkey's Purge of Political Opponents Will Come Back to Haunt It
  Despite a show of almost unprecedented unity at a recent rally – and newfound Turkish nationalism following July’s bloody coup attempt – the purges hark back to a bleak pattern in Turkey’s past. Louis Fishman Aug 09, 2016 7:48 PM Erdogan stages mass rally in show of strength after failed coup The failed putsch in Turkey put the last nail in Ataturk's coffin Amnesty International reports 'credible evidence' Turkey torturing post-coup detainees Will July 15, 2016 go down in history as the day Turkey tried to wipe the slate clean? Just three weeks after Turkey was shaken by a bloody coup attempt, the nation on Sunday came together in a mass show of unity. According to Turkish sources, at least 3 million people joined together in Istanbul's Yenikapi district to celebrate the nation's democracy and to remember the more than 250 people killed by the ruthless putschists. The massive rally will go down in history not merely due to the sheer numbers of citizens from different backgrounds who attended, but due to the fact that it managed to bring together warring parties, the ruling AKP government and its staunch adversary, the secular CHP, in addition to the smaller nationalist MHP. Seeing the CHPs Kemal Kilicdaroglu speaking at the same rally as the nation's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for many, was an unbelievable moment. This newfound unity has emerged as all parties in the parliament, including the mostly Kurdish leftist party, the HDP, which was not invited to the government rally, have come to a consensus that the U.S.-based, self-exiled religious leader Fetullah Gulen—who ordered his secret followers in the army to overthrow the democratically elected government—was behind the coup. [Turkey] [Coup]
• U.S. Special Operations troops aiding Libyan forces in major battle against Islamic State
  By Missy Ryan and Sudarsan Raghavan August 9 at 4:51 PM A fighter from the pro-government forces on the front line in Sirte, Libya. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post) U.S. Special Operations forces are providing direct, on-the-ground support for the first time to fighters battling the Islamic State in Libya, U.S. and Libyan officials said, coordinating American airstrikes and providing intelligence information in an effort to oust the group from a militant stronghold. The positioning of a small number of elite U.S. personnel, operating alongside British troops, in the coastal city of Sirte deepens the involvement of Western nations against the Islamic State’s most powerful affiliate. U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a mission that has not been announced publicly, said the American troops were operating out of a joint operations center on the city’s outskirts and that their role was limited to supporting forces loyal to the country’s fragile unity government. [Libya] [Outsourcing] [Special forces] [Proxy] [AFRICOM]
• 'Pallets of cash' controversies pay off for conservatives in US, Iran
  For those in Tehran and Washington who have spent a generation trying to redefine the US-Iranian relationship, Jan. 16, 2016, was a day of victories that had long been elusive. In the morning, Iran was found to have complied fully with the terms of the historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, marking the deal’s Implementation Day, and as such, triggering the lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions. Almost immediately, four Iranian-Americans jailed in Tehran’s Evin Prison were freed and hustled to Mehrabad Airport to catch a private plane bound for Germany. At the same time, an unmarked plane carrying $400 million in non-dollar currencies landed in Tehran, marking the successful settlement of a disputed US-Iranian arms sale dating back to 1979. Proponents of diplomacy saw the dramatic events as vindication of the notion that festering disputes between the two countries could be resolved through talks. Conservative skeptics of the nuclear deal in the United States and Iran, however, saw something very different — a hefty ransom paid to free the jailed American citizens. [Iran deal]
• Russia, Syria and the US: Hillary’s Foreign Policy Priority
  by Gary Leupp A week ago, after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the two sides had made progress on the matter of coordination and intelligence sharing in the air war against al-Nusra (now re-dubbed Fatah al-Sham) and ISIL in Syria. Meanwhile President Obama (at least since last December) has backed off on his insistence—urgent in 2011, when he was advised by Hillary Clinton as secretary of state—that Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad surrender power. This demand has weakened over time as Assad has stubbornly clung to power, as the (largely Sunni) national army has performed unexpectedly well against U.S.-backed armed rebels, and as Russia has belatedly intervened on behalf of the regime (or, as Moscow sees it, the modern, secular Syrian state itself). [US Syria policy] [Hillary Clinton]
• 50 Republican National Security Officials Eviscerate Trump In Open Letter
  Trump “would be the most reckless President in American history,” they write. 08/08/2016 03:28 pm ET Christina Wilkie National Political Reporter, The Huffington Post Dozens of the Republican Party’s most experienced national security officials will not vote for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, they wrote in an open letter released Monday. “We are convinced that [Trump] would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being,” said the former officials, many of whom held top positions in the George W. Bush administration. “Most fundamentally, Mr. Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President,” they added. “He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world. He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary.” [Trump] [MISCOM]
• China, Central Asian states watch as US legitimizes Al Qaeda in Syria
  By Christina Lin on August 7, 2016 Although a change in name of the terrorist group Jabbat al Nusra to Jabbat Fatah al Sham signifies nothing, Beltway pundits are pushing for arming and legitimizing various al-Qaeda groups under such nicknames to overthrow the Syrian government. Since 2015, Idlib and parts of Aleppo have become the base of anti-Chinese Turkistan Islamic Party and Central Asian jihadists and Nusra, which fights closely with them, is only seeking additional support from the US by the recent re-branding exercise. With Al Qaeda in Syria announcing its name change from Jabbat al Nusra to Jabbat Fatah al Sham and supposedly distancing itself from al-Qaeda, the excited US media, Beltway think tanks and State Department are now pushing full throttle to support this jihadi group to overthrow the Syrian government and establish an Islamic state under Shaira law. CNN immediately gave airtime to the “reformed” al-Qaeda branch, angering many Americans who still remember the 9/11 attacks.[1] [Outsourcing] [US Syria policy] [Xinjiang]
• The Shot Heard All Over the Country
  by Uri Avnery The facts of the case are quite clear. Two young Palestinians attacked an Israeli soldier with a knife in Tel Rumaida, a settlement of extremist Jews in the center of Hebron. The soldier was slightly wounded. The attackers were shot, one died on the spot, the other was severely wounded and lay bleeding on the ground. What happened next was photographed by a local Palestinian with one of the many cameras distributed by the Israeli human rights association “B’Tselem” to the local population. The crew of an Israeli ambulance was treating the wounded soldier, ignoring the seriously wounded Arab who was lying on the ground. Several Israeli soldiers were standing around, also ignoring the Palestinian. About 10 minutes later Sergeant Elor Azaria, a medic, appeared on the scene, approached the wounded Palestinian and shot him point-blank in the head, killing him. [Israel] [War crime]
• The Elective Affinities of Hillary Clinton
  by Luciana Bohne August 5, 2016 God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.” — Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, during the US annexation of the Philippines, 1898. A grotesque power-fest at the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia left me feeling about Hillary Clinton the way P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster felt about his Aunt Agatha—“the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth.” There is something disquieting and secretively lascivious about her open-mouthed cackle. She doesn’t so much laugh as lusts. She reminded me, too, of the mythical basilisk in the bestiary at the convention—the queen among the serpents. The basilisk of legend, wearing a king’s crown on his head, is only twelve-fingers long, but his venom withers all living plants in his wake. His gaze is enough to kill, according to Pliny the Elder. Only the droppings of a weasel have the potent odor to kill him, but it didn’t work with this basilisk. Her weasel endorsed her, embraced her, kissed her. His odor and her venom neutralized each other and merged into the unity party of the Serpent and the Weasel. Her party’s opponent is Charybdis, “a huge bladder of a creature whose face was all mouth and whose arms and legs were flippers” according to Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings (1957). [Imperialism] [Hillary Clinton]
• Scrutinize US air strikes more closely
  By Chen Weihua (China Daily) Updated: 2016-08-05 09:35 Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook issued a statement on Monday saying that on the request of the Libyan Government of National Accord, the US military conducted precision air strikes against Islamic State group targets in Sirte, Libya. He said Monday's action and those taken previously will help prevent the IS group from gaining a haven in Libya from which it could attack the United States and its allies. The words seem carefully chosen to show that the US actions were not uninvited but "at the request of the Libyan" government, and that the air strikes were precise. But actually they reveal the problems with US air strikes, manned or unmanned. [Casualties] [Civilians]
• Researchers or Corporate Allies? Think Tanks Blur the Line
  Think tanks are seen as independent, but their scholars often push donors’ agendas, amplifying a culture of corporate influence in Washington.
  By Eric Lipton and Brooke Williams Aug. 7, 2016 WASHINGTON — As Lennar Corporation, one of the nation’s largest home builders, pushed ahead with an $8 billion plan to revitalize a barren swath of San Francisco, it found a trusted voice to vouch for its work: the Brookings Institution, the most prestigious think tank in the world. “This can become a productive, mutually beneficial relationship,” Bruce Katz, a Brookings vice president, wrote to Lennar in July 2010. The ultimate benefit for Brookings: $400,000 in donations from Lennar’s different divisions. The think tank began to aggressively promote the project, San Francisco’s biggest redevelopment effort since its recovery from the 1906 earthquake, and later offered to help Lennar, a publicly traded company, “engage with national media to develop stories that highlight Lennar’s innovative approach.” [Think tanks]
• When superpowers court Rodrigo Duterte
  Duterte wants to make sure his country is not taken for granted, while extracting maximum benefits from superpowers.
  By Richard Javad Heydarian "I will be chartering a [foreign policy] course [for the Philippines] on its own and will not be dependent on the United States," exclaimed Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines' firebrand president shortly after winning a historic election in May. After almost a century of strategic dependence on the US, the Philippines was now interested in charting its own destiny. Duterte presented himself as a fully fledged maverick, willing to shake up the Southeast Asian country's state of affairs, even if it came at the expense of estranging traditional allies. Not long ago, though, the Philippines' newly elected president was dismissed by many across the globe as a foul-mouthed provincial mayor. Many analysts questioned his competence to lead one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Others feared he lacked the requisite strategic knowledge to handle major foreign policy issues such as the South China Sea disputes. A month into office, however, he has found himself on the receiving end of proactive courtship by global powers, both the US and China, who are eager to win Duterte's goodwill. [Philippines] [Duterte] [China confrontation] [Independence]
• The Saudi Role in the 9/11 Attacks
  by Lawrence Davidson On 27 November 2002 a bipartisan commission was established by Congress to investigate the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. By the time the commission was created, President George W. Bush had characterised the attacks as “acts of war”, adding that “freedom and democracy are under attack”. It was therefore to be expected that anyone who was actually, or even imagined to be, involved in these attacks was going to be labelled as an enemy. However, when on 22 July 2004, after two years of investigation, the 9/11 Commission’s report was released, something was missing. Twenty-eight pages had been withheld from publication. [28 pages] [Saudi Arabia]
• Why Iraq Fears Victory
  by Peter Harling August 5, 2016 Iraq’s national grid is a metaphor for the country’s problems. Access to electricity, the starting point for all modern human activity, is the last problem you would expect in a country with plentiful hydrocarbon reserves, big rivers and as much sunshine as the Garden of Eden (1). But the electricity supply illustrates the failings and the convolutions of the political system. The state provides only a patchy service, for just a few hours a day. It’s no better in Shia-majority areas: the system is not sectarian in its dysfunction. In the southern city of Basra (built on top of huge oil reserves), where temperatures can exceed 50ºC, the local authorities foresaw riots if power cuts continued into the summer, and asked for help from neighbouring Iran. That says a lot about what can be expected from Baghdad.
• Saudi Arabia Cuts Asian Oil Prices to Counter Rivals Russia, Iraq and Iran
  in Closing Bell Story / Energy News by— Oil & Gas 360 August 5, 2016 Share From the Wall Street Journal Under pressure from Russian, Iraqi and Iranian oil exports, Saudi Arabia discounted its crude last weekend to maintain its share of big Asian markets. The price cut, which applies to September purchases, comes after two years of high-volume pumping by Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer. The kingdom had chosen to feed an oil glut and see prices drop rather than sacrifice sales to international rivals. But in Asia—the main source of oil-demand growth recently—Saudi Arabia has continued to lose ground. [Oil]
• Want to end the Olympic war on performance-enhancing drugs? Legalize them
  By Sally Jenkins Columnist August 4 RIO DE JANEIRO — It’s time to junk the World Anti-Doping Agency and throw it into the same bin with Prohibition. It’s a failed social experiment that has yielded nothing but a larger form of corruption, a crooked self-dealing bureaucracy headed by a bunch of careerist drones trying to legislate a morality they themselves do not possess. Abraham Lincoln once famously said that prohibition “makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.” WADA has done exactly that. Its short history traces the same path as American Prohibition: a raft of unintended consequences breeding new forms of sin greater than the sin it was supposed to stamp out — as the Russian doping crisis so amply demonstrates. Individual rights have been infringed on, money has been wasted, and gangsterism has flourished, while failing to protect the health of athletes. Looming over it all is a portentous bureaucracy that exhibits more pratfalls than a Charlie Chaplin film. When officials from WADA and its parent, the International Olympic Committee, aren’t colluding with its business partner the Russian government — “It looked like you were personally helping us,” a Russian state reporter said to IOC President Thomas Bach at a news conference Thursday — they’re laughably inefficient. WADA labs have proved to be easily circumvented by holes in the wall. In June, the Rio-based WADA lab’s credentials were suspended, apparently because of technical errors giving off false positives. On the day before the Opening Ceremonies of the Rio Games, Bach windily defended the IOC’s refusal to ban Russia for its state-sponsored doping program, claiming, “We have applied a system of justice. .?.?. I think this is a very thorough, strict and clear procedure.” [Drugs] [Russia confrontation]
• Trump: 'I know far more about foreign policy' than Obama
  By Zach Montellaro 08/02/16 07:53 PM EDT Donald Trump fired back Tuesday at President Barack Obama, saying in an interview that he knows “more about foreign policy” than the current commander in chief. “He talks about Ukraine. I believe I know far more about foreign policy than he knows,” Trump said to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on "The O'Reilly Factor." “He talks about Ukraine, how tough he is, how tough he is with Russia. In the meantime, they took over Crimea and I understood that. Trump also said Obama is the “worst president maybe in the history of our country." Obama said earlier in the day that Trump is “woefully unprepared” for the job of president. The Republican nominee also hit Obama for his relationship with Russia, advocating for working with the superpower to fight terrorism. “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing, frankly, if we actually got along with Russia and worked out some kind of a deal where we go and knock the hell out of ISIS along with NATO and along with countries that are in the area,” Trump said. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful, as opposed to fighting?” [Trump] [US foreign policy] [Russia confrontation]
• Syria's civil war is a post-factual conflict
  Never before in the history of conflicts we had so much information as to what is happening, yet know so little. By James Denselow James Denselow is a writer on Middle East politics and security issues and a research associate at the Foreign Policy Centre. After five years of brutal conflict in which half the population has been forced from their homes, there is still no end in sight to the war in Syria. One of the reasons behind this longevity is that Syria has become a post-factual conflict and it is that dynamic that fundamentally undermines any political solution. So what does it mean to be a post-factual conflict? Before he became Britain's Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson once explained that if you are losing an argument with the facts against you, instead of maintaining focus on the reality your best bet is to "throw a dead cat on the table" explaining that "everyone will shout 'Jeez, mate, there's a dead cat on the table!'" Syria's President Bashar al-Assad must be aware of the facts of what's happening in Syria. Hundreds of thousands have died, life expectancy has been set back by two decades, 80 percent of the country lives in poverty and at least $200bn of damage has been done to the country's infrastructure. He cannot rationally say that his presidency has overseen a positive influence on the country's direction of travel. [Syria] [Agency] [Qatar] [Media] [Propaganda]
• Long road ahead for Iran’s bid to join World Trade Organization
  Author Maysam Bizær Posted August 2, 2016 If it wants to join the World Trade Organization, Iran will face many hurdles and has to take some painful measures. TEHRAN, Iran — “Now that years of intensive negotiations have finally cleared all the misunderstandings around Iran's nuclear activities, we are taking the next step toward integrating more deeply into the global economy. … Finalizing WTO membership is therefore a priority for the Iranian government,” said Industry Minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh at a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Nairobi late last year. Unlike the UN Security Council, in which only the five permanent members wield veto power, any decision at the WTO must be approved by all member states. This means that even the objection of a single state effectively results in a veto. As such, it was only in May 2005, after 21 failed attempts over the course of two decades — due to objections by the United States — that Iran’s application was finally approved unanimously to give it observer status. Yet Iran, the second -argest economy in the Middle East and North Africa region after Saudi Arabia, is still the largest economy excluded from the WTO. [Iran] [WTO] [UNUS]
• Many early warning signs signaled current Arab disarray
  by Rami G. Khouri BEIRUT — Never in modern history has the Arab world experienced such a wide range of jarring political developments as it does today, including fragmenting states, refugee flows, a terrorism export industry, and long-running devastating wars. These conditions did not suddenly emerge overnight. Many early warning signs in recent decades should have been appreciated as signaling structural problems and deep injustices in our political, economic, environmental, and social systems. Those signs were never grasped by the Arab power structures, or the external powers that supported them — the very same powers (United States, UK, France, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia) that now actively engage in warfare in several Arab lands. Here is my list of ten significant developments across the Arab world since the mid-1970s that should have been seen as early warning signs of problems in our societies. They raise the question of whether today we acknowledge and act on early warning signs, or just repeat the mistakes of the recent past? [Middle East]
• After the Coup, Turkey is Being Torn Apart
  by Patrick Cockburn Coup attempt and purge are tearing Turkey apart. The Turkish armed forces, for long the backbone of the state, are in a state of turmoil. Some 40 per cent of its generals and admirals have been detained or dismissed, including senior army commanders. They are suspected of launching the abortive military takeover on 15-16 July, which left at least 246 people dead, saw parliament and various security headquarters bombed and a near successful bid to kill or capture President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In response, Erdogan and his government are carrying out a purge of everybody from soldiers to teachers connected in any way to the movement of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen accused of organising the coup attempt. Among media outlets closed in the past few days are 45 newspapers, 16 TV channels – including a children’s channel – and 23 radio stations. People fearful of being implicated in the plot have been hurriedly disposing of Gulenist books and papers by burning them, throwing it into rivers or stuffing them into rubbish bins. Five years ago, Turkey looked like the most stable and successful country in the Middle East – an example that its neighbours might like to follow. But, instead of Iraq and Syria becoming more like Turkey, it has become more like them in terms of political, ethnic and sectarian division. Erdogan’s personal authority is being enhanced by his bravery and vigour in defeating the coup attempt and by the removal of remaining obstacles to his rule. But the failed putsch was also a sign that Turkey – a nation of 80 million people with an army 600,000-strong – is becoming weaker and more unstable. Its leaders will be absorbed in the immediate future in conducting an internal purge and deciding who is loyal and who is not. While this is going on, the country faces pressures on many fronts, notably the war with Kurdish guerrillas in the south east, terror attacks by the Islamic State and diplomatic isolation stemming from disastrous Turkish involvement in the war in Syria. The destabilisation of Turkey is good news for Isis because Turkish security organisations, never very assiduous in pursuing salafi-jihadi rebels, will be devoting most of their efforts to hunting down Gulenists. Both Isis and other al-Qaeda-type movements like al-Nusra Front will benefit from the anti-American atmosphere in Turkey, where most believe that the US supported the coup attempt. [Turkey]
• ‘US supporting Syrian groups that use chemical weapons, but media won't report it'
  Published time: 4 Aug, 2016 15:20 We keep hearing about a 'moderate opposition' instead of calling them what they are. These are radical Islamic jihadi terror groups, Jim Jatras, former U.S. diplomat and GOP Senate policy adviser, told RT. RT: Given the complex situation on the ground it is always difficult to determine who has done what, but with the repeated allegations, why does the U.S. continue to support groups which are being accused of committing war crimes? Jim Jatras: I wish I knew the answer to that question. They’ve been doing it for five years, and of course you know that the American media don’t make it real clear the nature of the groups we’re supporting in Syria. We keep hearing about a moderate opposition instead of calling them what they are. These are radical Islamic jihadi terror groups – the same ones we keep saying we’re worried about launching attacks here in the United States. And here we are supporting groups in Syria that have this jihadist ideology, cut off heads of little kids, use chemical weapons and I don’t think the American people really make the connection because the media does not report it RT: What is the red line, that if the group crosses, the U.S. might stop backing it? Isn't the beheading of a child or the use of prohibited weapons enough to put an end to supporting a particular group? JJ: I think what it likely to resolve it in another sense is by what’s happening on the battlefield. The reason these two chemical attacks were launched, clearly is a false flag in the case of the one that landed in opposition-controlled territory, is to try to pull a rabbit out of the hat to stop the Syrian Army’s offensive in Aleppo, supported by the Russian Air Force. If Aleppo is liberated this war is going to be effectively over. It will take [Syria] [cbw] [false flag]
• The Decay of American Politics: An Ode to Ike and Adlai
  by Andrew Bacevich My earliest recollection of national politics dates back exactly 60 years to the moment, in the summer of 1956, when I watched the political conventions in the company of that wondrous new addition to our family, television. My parents were supporting President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term and that was good enough for me. Even as a youngster, I sensed that Ike, the former supreme commander of allied forces in Europe in World War II, was someone of real stature. In a troubled time, he exuded authority and self-confidence. By comparison, Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson came across as vaguely suspect. Next to the five-star incumbent, he seemed soft, even foppish, and therefore not up to the job. So at least it appeared to a nine-year-old living in Chicagoland. Of the seamy underside of politics I knew nothing, of course. On the surface, all seemed reassuring. As if by divine mandate, two parties vied for power. The views they represented defined the allowable range of opinion. The outcome of any election expressed the collective will of the people and was to be accepted as such. That I was growing up in the best democracy the world had ever known — its very existence a daily rebuke to the enemies of freedom — was beyond question. Naïve? Embarrassingly so. Yet how I wish that Election Day in November 2016 might present Americans with something even loosely approximating the alternatives available to them in November 1956. Oh, to choose once more between an Ike and an Adlai [US_Election16] [Liberal]
• As Israel Prospers, Obama Set to Give Billions More in Aid While Netanyahu Demands Even More
  Glenn Greenwald Aug. 1 2016, 3:44 a.m. For all the chatter about animosity between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Washington Post reports that “a senior Israeli official will arrive in Washington next week for a final round of negotiations involving the largest military aid package the United States has ever given any country and that will last more than a decade after President Obama leaves office.” The U.S. already transfers $3.1 billion in taxpayer money every year to Israel – more than any other country by far – but the new agreement Obama is set to sign “significantly raises” that amount, and guarantees it for 10 years. [Israel] [Military aid]
• Seventy-five percent of U.S. foreign military financing goes to two countries
  By Nick Thompson, CNN Updated 1801 GMT (0201 HKT) November 11, 2015 (CNN) — American taxpayers doled out $5.9 billion in foreign military financing in 2014, according to the government's Foreign Assistance report -- that's roughly the GDP of Somalia. But where did the money go? To the usual suspects, mostly -- Israel ($3.1B) and Egypt ($1.3B) received roughly 75% of all foreign military aid money handed out by the U.S. last year. This map from the cost-information website howmuch.net shows the relative size of countries based on how much U.S. military aid they receive. The top five recipients of foreign military financing in 2014, according to the report: 1. Israel: $3.1 billion 2. Egypt: $1.3 billion 3. Iraq: $300 million 3. Jordan: $300 million 5. Pakistan: $280 million What also stands out from the report is the regional distribution -- the Middle East (64%) and Africa (23%) account for 86% of all U.S. foreign military financing last year. [Foreign military assistance] [Israel]
• Breaking the Camouflage Wall of Silence: When AFRICOM Evaluates Itself, the News Is Grim
  August 2, 2016 by Nick Turse It’s rare to hear one top military commander publicly badmouth another, call attention to his faults, or simply point out his shortcomings. Despite a seemingly endless supply of debacles from strategic setbacks to quagmire conflicts since 9/11, the top brass rarely criticize each other or, even in retirement, utter a word about the failings of their predecessors or successors. Think of it as the camouflage wall of silence. You may loathe him. You may badmouth him behind closed doors. You may have secretly hoped for his career to implode. But publicly point out failures? That’s left to those further down the chain of command. And yet that’s effectively exactly what newly installed U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) chief, General Thomas Waldhauser, did earlier this year in a statement to the Senate Arms Services Committee (SASC). It’s just that no one, almost certainly including Waldhauser himself, seemed to notice or recognize it for the criticism it was, including the people tasked with oversight of military operations and those in the media. Over these last years, the number of personnel, missions, dollars spent, and special ops training efforts as well as drone bases and other outposts on the continent have all multiplied. At the same time, incoming AFRICOM commanders have been publicly warning about the escalating perils and challenges from terror groups that menace the command’s area of operations. Almost no one, however — neither those senators nor the media — has raised pointed questions, no less demanded frank answers, about why such crises on the continent have so perfectly mirrored American military expansion. Asked earlier this year about the difficulties he’d face if confirmed, Waldhauser was blunt: “A major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and ISIL in Libya.” That should have been a déjà vu moment for some of those senators. Three years earlier, the man previously nominated to lead AFRICOM, General David Rodriguez, was asked the same question. His reply was suspiciously similar: “A major challenge is effectively countering violent extremist organizations, especially the growth of Mali as an al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb safe haven, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and al-Shabaab in Somalia.” All that had changed between 2013 and 2016, it seemed, was the addition of one more significant threat. [AFRICOM]
• ‘There isn’t really anything magical about it’: Why more millennials are avoiding sex
  By Tara Bahrampour August 2 at 6:00 AM ? Alexandra Wolff, 19, in her bedroom at her house in Marietta, Ga. “It’s not like I’m saving myself for anything; it’s more like I’ve been busy,” she says. (Michael A. Schwarz/For The Washington Post) Sam Wei, a 26-year-old financial analyst in Chicago, has not had sex since her last relationship ended 18 months ago. She makes out with guys sometimes, and she likes to cuddle. “To me, there’s more intimacy with having someone there next to you that you can rely on without having to have sex,” she said. “I don’t want to do anything that would harm the relationship and be something that we can’t come back from.” Sam Wei, 26, finds “intellectual conversation more stimulating and more pleasurable than having sex sometimes.” (Courtesy of Sam Wei) It’s a less sexy time to be young than it used to be, despite millennials’ reputation as bed-hoppers frolicking like the characters on “Girls.” A study published Tuesday in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior finds that younger millennials — born in the 1990s — are more than twice as likely to be sexually inactive in their early 20s as the previous generation was. Even older millennials are more sexually active than this younger group is. Recent research also shows that overall, millennials — people born between the early 1980s and 2000 — have fewer sexual partners than the baby boomers and those in Generation X, the group immediately preceding them. Granted, the vast majority of young adults are still having sex, but an increasing number of them appear to be standing on the sidelines. Delaying sex is not necessarily bad, experts say: Being intentional about when to have sex can lead to stronger relationships in the long run. The trend may also reflect women’s feeling more empowered to say no, said Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families. “As people have gotten much more accepting of all sorts of forms of consensual sex, they’ve also gotten more picky about what constitutes consent ,” Coontz said. “We are far less accepting of pressured sex.” But some experts are concerned that the drop-off reflects the difficulty some young people are having in forming deep romantic connections. They cite other reasons for putting off sex, including pressure to succeed, social lives increasingly conducted on-screen, unrealistic expectations of physical perfection encouraged by dating apps and wariness over date rape. ‘The nature of communication now is anti-sexual’ Noah Patterson, 18, likes to sit in front of several screens simultaneously: a work project, a YouTube clip, a video game. To shut it all down for a date or even a one-night stand seems like a waste. “For an average date, you’re going to spend at least two hours, and in that two hours I won’t be doing something I enjoy,” he said. [sex]
• Khamenei calls negotiation with US 'lethal poison'
  Six months into the implementation of the comprehensive deal between Iran and six world powers that curtailed the country’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on Iran's nuclear program, has criticized the United States for its implementation of the deal and the lack of benefits for the Iranian public. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has again criticized the nuclear deal, saying due to US-made obstacles, there have been no tangible effects for the people of Iran. AuthorArash Karami Posted August 1, 2016 During an Aug. 1 speech, Khamenei said that even Iran’s nuclear negotiators have conceded that the United States has made "bad pacts," created obstacles and attempted to “destroy Iran’s economic relationships with other countries.” The obstacles Khamenei referred to are likely the remaining US banking sanctions unrelated to nuclear sanctions that have made European companies hesitant to fully establish economic relations with Iran. Iranian negotiators had previously said that the United States wanted more concessions to remove the banking sanctions. In an indirect attack on President Hassan Rouhani and others who hope for better ties with the United States, Khamenei said, “Of course it’s been some years that I have been repeating this about the lack of trust with America, but for some it was hard to accept this reality.” According to Khamenei, in the last meeting with their American counterparts, the Iranian negotiators accused the opposing side of “breaking oaths, not acting on their commitments and creating obstacles.” In some of his harshest criticism of the nuclear deal since its implementation, Khamenei asked, “Was it not supposed to be so that the unjust sanctions would be removed and it would have an effect on people’s lives? After six months, is there any tangible effect on the lives of the people? If not for America violating its oaths, would the administration not be able to do many things during this time?” Khamenei continued, “Approximately two years ago we said that the nation would look at the negotiations as an experience to see what the Americans do in practice, and now it is clear that they are acting contrary to their promises and busy with conspiracies.” He added that the United States has approached Iran to negotiate on other regional issues, but recent experience has shown that negotiations with the Americans is like “a lethal poison” and there is no issue in which their word can be trusted. Khamenei said this is the reason for his “continuous opposition to negotiating with America.” Khamenei also said that if an enemy country were committed to its word, it would be possible to negotiate with the country on certain matters, but that America has shown it is not this type of enemy country. He said that the best path for Iran is to continue its policies so “the enemy will come after us, not us go after the enemy.” Khamenei also condemned the warming of ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, calling it “treason” to the Islamic world. According to Khamenei, the United States had a role in this decision, given the Saudi reliance on it. Khamenei also accused the United States of having a hand in the coup attempt in Turkey, saying that the United States is opposed to Islamist governments. [Iran deal] [Renege]
• Militants Use Chemical Weapons in Syria's Aleppo
  © Sputnik/ Mikhail Voskresenskiy Terrorists have fired shells filled with a toxic gas in the Syrian city of Aleppo, killing five civilians, local popular defense forces told RIA Novosti. "Terrorists have used a weapon causing asphyxia and damaging the nervous system. Five people have died from suffocation," a militia member said. Men inspect the wreckage of a Russian helicopter that had been shot down in the north of Syria's rebel-held Idlib province, Syria © REUTERS/ Ammar Abdullah Redefining Moderation: US-Backed Syrian Rebels Shoot Down Russian Helicopter, Abuse Crew Bodies Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups. Aleppo is partially controlled by Jabhat Fatah al Sham (previously known as the al-Nusra Front), an terrorist group outlawed in Russia and other countries along with Daesh. [cbw] [Syria]
• F-35 ready for service, says US air force, as Australia and Britain await delivery
  Doubts remain over Pentagon’s biggest ever weapons project after long delays, cost overruns and technical problems Staff and agencies in Washington Wednesday 3 August 2016 03.12 BST Last modified on Wednesday 3 August 2016 04.12 BST The US air force has declared an initial squadron of F-35 fighters jets ready for combat, marking a major milestone for a program dogged by serious cost overruns and delays that have infuriated US lawmakers and governments around the world that are buying the planes. The $379bn program is the Pentagon’s largest weapons project. The air force’s decision follows one by the US marines in July 2015 declaring a first squadron of the Lockheed Martin planes ready for combat. The air force plans to buy a total of 1,763 F-35A conventional takeoff and landing jets in coming years, and to operate the largest F-35 fleet in the world. Lockheed is building three models of the F-35 Lightning II for the US military and 10 countries that have ordered them: Britain, Australia, Norway, Italy, Turkey, Denmark, the Netherlands, Israel, South Korea and Japan. [F35] [MISCOM]
• Absence of reaction from OPCW to Damascus reports of use of chemical weapons in Syria causes perplexity - Russian Foreign Ministry
  August 03, 2016 15:00 MOSCOW. Aug 3 (Interfax) - Moscow is surprised by the absence of reaction from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to the reports from Damascus on the use of chemical weapons in Syria and expects a report on the joint UN-OPCW mechanism on the violations in August. "The information on the use by militants of chemical weapons is received regularly, including on the use by them of chlorine. We have precise information that ISIL [terrorist group banned in Russia] has appropriate knowledge and even industrial capacities for the production of combat toxic substances, which chlorine in itself is not. The Syrians regularly register these facts, report to the UN Security Council, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), but all these reports are left without a reaction from the OPCW, which perplexes us," Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's department on non-proliferation and arms control issues, told Interfax. It was reported on Tuesday that a toxic substance was found in the area where the Russian plane was downed. By Tuesday evening, information appeared on the use of chemical weapons in the old city of Aleppo. Responding to a question as to who uses it, the moderate opposition or the terrorists, Ulyanov said: "It's hard for me to judge who in Syria is moderate opposition and who are radical militants. The borderline is often vague. The information that we get from various sources is still largely connected to those organizations that are regarded as terrorist such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the so-called Islamic State." [cbw] [UNUS] [Syria]
• Who Leaked the Damning DNC Emails? What Difference Does It Make?
  by Gary Leupp The Democratic National Committee under Debbie Wasserman Schultz in fact served as the Hillary Clinton Coronation Organizing Committee, operating, step by step, to ensure that the front-runner would become the party’s nominee. Some of us assumed all along that it was all preprogrammed. But then, on the eve of the coronation itself, leaked emails revealed to everyone that, indeed, top DNC officials conspired to defeat the Sanders campaign. Just as the party leaders were lavishing praise on Sanders for bringing in so many new, enthusiastic activists—and stressing how close Clinton and Sanders have become programmatically—somebody released these emails that cannot but arouse further indignation among Sanders’ supporters (among others, who care about fairness). How do the party leaders caught with their pants down respond? Not even bothering to pull them up, they point a finger. Russia hacked us. Putin is trying to influence the U.S. election in favor of Trump. It’s a wise (and maybe the only) political move available to these scumbags. The alternative would be to say, “Well, sure, DNC officials had their private preferences and mentioned them in emails. But she got more votes, she got Sanders’ endorsement in the end, and the content of those emails is irrelevant now. Why make trouble? It’s done. Let’s move on.” No, they couldn’t say that. They had to change the subject. And since it’s a cardinal fact of the U.S. mainstream media that when you accuse Vladimir Putin of something—anything at all, really—you will receive serious attention, the Democrats know that they can transform this horrible “DNC Conspired Against Sanders” headline into an “Russia Suspected in DNC Hacking” headline. [Russia confrontation] [Emails]
• Don’t be Fooled by Reports that al-Qaeda and Nusra Have Split for the Good of the Suffering Syrian People
  by Robert Fisk Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is at it again. Qatar’s ruler has been trying to get Jabhat al-Nusra off America’s infamous “terrorist” list once more – and calculating that the institutional memory of the world’s media is that of a street dog. He’s right. Last year, Tamim’s Al Jazeera satellite channel produced a tiresome two-part interview with Mohamed al-Julani, Nusra’s CEO, in which the poor man boasted that he had absolutely nothing against Christians, Alawites or Americans. Nusra just wanted to get rid of that pesky Assad chappy in Damascus, he told the world, along with Assad’s Russki friends. Syrian Christians to Lebanon and Syrian Alawites to the grave? Nonsense. That was the claptrap peddled by the rotten, horrid Isis of which the Saudis were so enamoured. Then in May this year, ol’ Doc Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s luckless successor, told Mohamed al-Julani that he could dissociate himself from the original al-Qaeda. Bingo. The split cometh. America’s enemies were breaking apart. Nusra would be the new “moderates”, worthy of America’s backing, certainly of Britain’s – whose then-Prime Minister, David Cameron, had invented 70,000 “moderate” Syrian rebels for the world to support against Assad. And now, wearingly, we are being served up the same old cocktail again. Claiming that he is giving his first ever recorded message – a palpable nonsense since al-Julani had bored us all last year with the same stuff – the BBC told its audience that “Syria Nusra Front announces split with al-Qaeda”. And yet again, we were treated to al-Julani distancing himself from al-Qaeda and telling us that Nusra is now changing its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Liberation of the Levant). [Nusra] [Al Qaeda] [Outsourcing] [Qatar]

• Al-Qaeda just got dumped by its partner in Syria — and it's not good for the US
  By Davide Mastracci July 29, 2016 | 5:05 am Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's Syrian offshoot, is breaking its ties with the mother organization, according to an announcement from the group on Thursday. Al Nusra leader Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, along with two of the group's senior figures, made the announcement in a broadcast on Orient News and Al Jazeera Arabic. Al-Jolani appeared in the broadcast with his face uncovered, in contrast to an appearance on Al Jazeera Arabic in 2015. Earlier today, al-Nusra media accounts shared the first photo of al-Jolani ever released. In an audio statement also released earlier today, al-Qaeda's second in command, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, gave permission to al-Nusra to break off, portraying it as a pragmatic step toward uniting all rebel factions fighting against the Syrian regime. Al-Jolani said his group will merge into a new movement with other rebel groups called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, or "movement for the conquest of the Levant." The move heralds the formation of a new alliance to fight the Syrian regime, which is close to dealing rebels a crushing blow in the key city of Aleppo. It's also a setback for the US strategy of trying to separate the more moderate Syrian rebels from the jihadists affiliated with al-Qaeda [Nusra] [US Syria policy] [Proxy] [Outsourcing] [Jihadist]
• Army General Command announces cutting off terrorists’ supply routes to eastern part of Aleppo city, offers gunmen chance to resolve status
  Damascus, SANA – The General Command of the Army and Armed Forces announced on Wednesday that as part of the plan to restore security and stability to Aleppo city, units of the Armed Forces in cooperation with supporting forces carried out their military tasks successfully in areas north of Aleppo, cutting off all supply lines and corridors that terrorists had been using to transfer mercenaries, weapons, and munitions to the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo city. The General Command asserted its keenness on the safety and security of all citizens, calling on them to cooperate with the Syrian Arab Army to contribute to the cessation of combat and to restoring calm, services, and normal life to Aleppo city. The General Command stressed that, out of its commitment to end bloodshed, it offers everyone who is bearing arms in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo a real chance to resolve their status either by turning in their weapons and remaining in the city or turning in their weapons and leaving it, calling on everyone to turn to reason and put national interest above other considerations so that security and stability can be restored to Aleppo. [Syria]
• The Party of Michael Bloomberg: Why rich voters have found a home among the Democrats.
  By Reihan Salam There are very few endorsements that are going to matter in this presidential election, but Michael Bloomberg’s might be one of them. On Wednesday night in Philadelphia, the three-term mayor of New York City called on his fellow independents to vote for Hillary Clinton. “I am asking you to join with me not out of party loyalty, but out of love of country,” Bloomberg said. Why? Is it because he’s so enthusiastic about her many virtues? Nope, it’s because a Trump presidency would be an unmitigated disaster: “He would make it harder for small businesses to compete, do great damage to our economy, threaten the retirement savings of millions of Americans, lead to greater debt and more unemployment, erode our influence in the world, and make our communities less safe.” Ouch. [US_Election16]
• Hillary Clinton wants to review US strategy in Syria against Isis and Bashar al-Assad's 'murderous' regime
  The political will to oust the Syrian President has waned since the rise of Isis Lizzie Dearden Hillary Clinton plans to order a full review of the United States’ strategy in Syria as one of her first priorities if elected President. One of her foreign policy advisers, Jeremy Bash, said she would seek to end Bashar al-Assad’s “murderous” regime despite waning political will to oust the autocratic Syrian President. He said dealing with Syria would be Ms Clinton’s “first key task” if elected and she would work to get President Assad “out of there”. “A Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is,” he told The Telegraph [US Syria policy] [Hillary Clinton]
• Hillary Clinton will reset Syria policy against 'murderous' Assad regime
  By Ruth Sherlock, Philadelphia 29 July 2016 • 7:09pm Hillary Clinton will order a "full review" of the United States' strategy on Syria as a "first key task" of her presidency, resetting the policy to emphasise the "murderous" nature of the Assad regime, foreign policy adviser with her campaign has said. Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff for the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, said Mrs Clinton would both escalate the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and work to get Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, "out of there". [US Syria policy] [Hillary Clinton]
• DNC Hack: Ignore the diversions – the content is what counts
  by Kit The hacked and leaked e-mails of the Democratic National Committee prove what many people already knew – the primaries were unfair. This is not a surprise, anybody paying attention to the race for the past months has witness massive “voting irregularities”, then there’s the totally undemocratic system of “super delegates”, and the ridiculously unfair provisional ballots. The DNC e-mails, where party officials discuss ways to discredit and sabotage Sanders’ campaign, merely serve to turn a glut of evidence into an all-out orgy. That the chairwoman of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, should be forced to resign in disgrace…only to be immediately hired by Clinton’s campaign, is just the icing on the cake. The elections were rigged. Sanders never had a chance. That is clearer now than it has ever been. You would think that evidence of massive corruption at the heart of the American political establishment would be newsworthy, but you would be wrong. Hillary, in this case as in many others, seems to be above criticism. Unfortunately for the establishment, simply ignoring it wasn’t really an option, because nowadays people have twitter and facebook. This was happening here and now…it’s not just some Yemeni wedding party that you blow up and pretend never existed. No, what they really needed was a distraction, and Conway Twitty is dead. Blaming Russia is the new black, in this regard. It was all the Kremlin! The Kremlin leaked these e-mails…it doesn’t matter what they said, in fact don’t even read them…RUSSIA! PUTIN! KREMLIN! It’s important to point out at this point, that there is literally no evidence Russia leaked these e-mails. None. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Sure, they MAY HAVE. But loads of people may have. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians. Trump or Sanders campaigns. Germany, France, Britain. A Clinton or DNC whistleblower. An aggrieved ex-employee. Wikileaks. Or just some guy with a shitload of proxies and spare time. [US_election16] [Diversion]
• Karl Rove: Donald Trump Is The Underdog, But America Shouldn't Count Him Out
  Madeline Farber July 23, 2016 He said during the OZY Fusion Fest in New York City. Donald Trump may be the underdog in this year’s general election, but American shouldn’t count him out just yet. That’s what Karl Rove, previous Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration, said during an on-stage interview at the OZY Fusion Fest in New York City, a festival that celebrates music, food, and thought. When asked what he thinks will be the outcome in the 2016 election, Rove said, “I frankly don’t know, but he’s the underdog. It’s a much narrower path to victory for a Republican, particularly if you have problems among Latinos.” Rove and Trump have long been at odds publicly. In the past, Rove has called Trump “graceless and divisive,” and assailed Trump’s boasts about beating Hillary Clinton in the polls as false. Their tense relationship is deeply rooted in Rove’s support of George W. Bush and the Bush family, as well as Rove’s long-standing relationship with major GOP donors, such as Sheldon Adelson the American business magnate. [US_Election16] [Trump] [Prediction]
• Boeing Officials Fear Rival Airbus Could Have Market to Themselves
  by Jason Ditz, July 22, 2016 An effort by Congressional hawks to derail a massive contract between Boeing and Iran Air to supply them with a large number of civilian airliners has fueled considerable consternation within the well-connected US aviation company, with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg quoted as warning that if Boeing could not have the Iran Air contract “nobody should.” That’s a concern for Boeing because they only got half of the Iran Air contract, with European rival Airbus securing a roughly equal contract shortly before theirs was announced. Though the Congressional effort aims to derail the European company’s sales too, they might not be able to prevent all commercial airliners getting to Iran. And that’s where Boeing is really freaking out, as they compete intensely with Airbus. Boeing spokesman Tim Neale insisted Congress was wrong to try to block the deal, noting that the P5+1 agreement was supposed to allow civilian airplane sales. Neale added that Boeing is unwilling to “relinquish any competitive opportunity to Airbus,” and suggested the company’s real concern was if Airbus got into the market “and if Iran stays on the straight and narrow path and the moderates prevail politically and the market really grows in years ahead, they would have that market to themselves.” [Iran deal] [Renege]
• Zimbabwe threatens "traitorous" war veterans after Mugabe attack
  Harare | By MacDonald Dzirutwe Zimbabwe's government denounced leading independence war veterans as traitors on Saturday for an unprecedented attack on ageing President Robert Mugabe and vowed to identify its unnamed authors and put them on trial. Veterans who fought against white minority rule in the former British colony turned on their long-time ally and commander on Thursday, calling him a dictator in a jolting rebuke highlighting political maneuvering over his succession and mounting anger over economic woes. Mugabe abruptly canceled a hastily arranged news conference on Friday evening meant to respond to the veterans. State-owned newspapers reflected the power struggle on Saturday with a highly unusual 12-page supplement praising his wife Grace on her 51st birthday. War veterans have accused her of having too much influence over her 92-year-old husband. "Government ... dismisses the said traitorous so-called communique, which is treasonable in the constitutional democracy that Zimbabwe is," Retired Brigadier-General Asher Tapfumaneyi, the most senior civil servant in the veterans ministry, said in a statement on Saturday. [Zimbabwe]
• Pillory Hillary Now
  by Andrew Levine Hillary Clinton is not a lesser, but good enough, Bernie Sanders, even allowing for his many faults. She is a Wall Street flunky and a liberal imperialist with pronounced neocon predilections, who is shamelessly obeisant to all the usual suspects – from the fracking lobby to AIPAC. And because of her belief in “American exceptionalism” and therefore in the rectitude of American world domination, and because she is inclined to seek military “solutions” to the problems that the empire brings upon itself, she is a very dangerous woman. If the election were held now, as the pollsters say, I would vote for Jill Stein. No doubt, many others would too. But this will be a protest vote. Stein won’t win, and it is not even clear how helpful voting for her will be in making the Green Party a factor in American politics at some future time. Most likely, it won’t be helpful at all, because, in the end, many Stein supporters, fearing Trumpian “fascism,” will cave in at the end. This is what many potential Nader voters did in 2000, and there is no reason to think that fear won’t triumph again. The fact is, though, that Trump will not be sending Hillary and Bill, his once and future friends, packing. This is probably a good thing, though not nearly to the extent that most liberals assume. There is no point in engaging the who-really-is-the-lesser-evil question now – not because the answer is obvious, it isn’t, but because, unless the gods intervene, Trump doesn’t stand a chance. Unfortunately, most people don’t yet see how obvious this is. After the election is over, everyone will. Unlike Stein or Trump, Bernie Sanders did stand a chance of stopping the Clinton juggernaut. It was never much of a chance, however — because the Democratic Party was against him and because the system is rigged. This too was obvious from Day One. Now, thanks to Wikileaks, the evidence is so incontrovertible that we will soon be seeing the back of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She is small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, but this is excellent news nevertheless. Had Sanders gone for the jugular, the way that Trump is doing, he might have prevailed even so, just as Trump prevailed over the establishment in the GOP. [Hillary Clinton]
• Japan’s “Helicopter Money” Play: Road to Hyperinflation or Cure for Debt Deflation?
  by Ellen Brown July 26, 2016 When then-Fed Governor Ben Bernanke gave his famous helicopter money speech to the Japanese in 2002, he was talking about something quite different from the quantitative easing they actually got and other central banks later mimicked. Quoting Milton Friedman, he said the government could reverse a deflation simply by printing money and dropping it from helicopters. A gift of free money with no strings attached, it would find its way into the real economy and trigger the demand needed to power productivity and employment. What the world got instead was a form of QE in which new money is swapped for assets in the reserve accounts of banks, leaving liquidity trapped on bank balance sheets. Whether manipulating bank reserves can affect the circulating money supply at all is controversial. But if it can, it is only by triggering new borrowing. And today, according to Richard Koo, chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute, individuals and businesses are paying down debt rather than taking out new loans. They are doing this although credit is very “accommodative” (cheap), because they need to rectify their debt-ridden balance sheets in order to stay afloat. Koo calls it a “balance sheet recession.” As the Bank of England recently acknowledged, the vast majority of the money supply is now created by banks when they make loans. [Money]
• Erdogan is Strengthened by the Failed Coup, But Turkey is the Loser
  by Patrick Cockburn The failed military coup is a disaster for Turkey, but its success would have been a far greater calamity. If the plotters had killed or captured President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then other parts of the armed forces might have joined them, but a civil war would have been inevitable as the security forces split and Erdogan’s supporters fought back. The disaster is that it will now be much more difficult for Turks to resist Erdogan establishing a monopoly of power. By resisting the coup as the leader of a democratically-elected government, he has enhanced his legitimacy. Moreover, all opposition to his rule can be labelled as support for terrorism and punished as such. [Turkey] [Coup]
• Assad the tyrant?
  by Philip Roddis, May 23, 2016 I know men and women of intelligence, courage, independence and good intent who are sure that Bashar al-Assad – the mild mannered bloke who looks like a French gendarme and, given his druthers, would be the eye surgeon he wanted and trained to be had history not harboured other plans for him – is a monster. Some say he’s every bit as bad as the head choppers bent on turning a diverse and once prosperous nation into a one dimensional horror show; the fanatics’ idea of Allah’s Will on Earth. [Bashar Assad]
• Prominent Zimbabweans eye 'National Transitional Authority' to run country until 'fair' elections
  • Peta Thornycroft, Johannesburg 24 July 2016 • 7:21pm A group of prominent Zimbabweans calling themselves “concerned citizens” have proposed a non-political National Transitional Authority to take over the running of the country from the Mugabe regime until “fair” elections can be held. The group, which includes leading former supporters of Zimbabwe’s autocratic and ageing president Robert Mugabe, senior business people and former veterans of the war against minority white-rule, is calling for the establishment of an 18-member technocratic ruling council. Amid an open political revolt by a growing number of Mr Mugabe’s former staunch supporters, the citizens’ group has warned that Zimbabwe risks descending into chaos unless a politically neutral body can be established to steer the country towards reforms and free and fair elections. Zimbabwe is so desperately short of cash - it uses US dollars - that it recently slashed imports and has struggled to pay civil servants. The cash shortage recently sparked several episodes of social unrest and a national strike on July 6. [Zimbabwe] [Destabilisation]
• Turkey: A War of Two Coups
  by Sungur Savran On the night of 15-16 July, Turkey went through a cataclysm that stunned the world: a huge section of the armed forces of the country (TSK in its Turkish acronym) attempted to take power from the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP, came very close to its objective, but was ultimately defeated. Official statements of imperialist countries celebrate the triumph of democracy. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Furthermore, many commentators, remaining captive to the official explanation of the AKP government, point to the followers of Fethullah Gülen, a powerful imam who has been residing in the US for close to two decades now, as the culprit behind the coup. This is a mystification used by the AKP for various purposes, the most important being to ostracize the Gülenists and to hide from view that a much wider array of forces within the army have taken up arms. And on the left and far left, many are filled with excitement at the sight of civilians climbing over tanks and challenging with bare hands the heavily armed soldiers of the putschist forces. This, too, is a very distorted picture. The correct characterization of the coup is not one of democracy defeating dictatorship. Two despotic forces faced each other and the more gradualist one won. Anyone who dares to talk about the triumph of democracy in Turkey is lying and deceiving the whole world. This episode was the result of a long-drawn out civil war between the two sides of what we as DIP (Revolutionary Workers' Party) have been calling the (bloodless) civil war of the bourgeoisie. This war has now been soaked in blood and a 24-hour civil war has shaken the country. The civil war of the bourgeoisie has now gone into its 14th year and, expectably, some of the protagonists have shifted sides. This is what complicates the picture. But divested of all the complications and reduced to its kernel, this coup was a struggle unto death of, on the one hand, those forces within the Turkish ruling classes who choose to anchor Turkey strategically to the imperialist West as opposed to, on the other, the up and rising fraction of the Turkish bourgeoisie who have cast their fate with Erdogan and are looking for a future in which Turkey rules the Sunni Islamic world. This battle, as many of the previous ones, has been won by Erdogan and his followers. This means that the road has now been opened towards a much more repressive imposition of a new regime that would strengthen the hands of Erdogan, creating an autocracy of unimaginable proportions, at the side of which regimes like those of Russia's Putin or Hungary's Orban would stand like shining examples of democracy. This is why the outcome of the 15 July episode was not democracy defeating despotism, but the victory of the more gradualist despotism in the face of a more abrupt repression of all democratic forms. As opposed to the immediate ending of any semblance of democracy that the coup represented, Erdogan's is a long-drawn-out strategy of infusing extremely anti-democratic substance into seemingly formal democratic structures. Or rather it was. Like the Reichstag fire in the case of Hitler, this incident will, in all probability, be used by Erdogan and the AKP as an excuse for throwing away all allegiance to democratic formalities. They have already started to do so, expelling at least 50,000 public employees from their posts in a matter of three days, with utter disregard for legal niceties. This orientation has already put to shame those who were vaunting the triumph of democracy in the aftermath of the failed coup. [Turkey] [Coup] [Erdogan] [Neo-Ottomanism]
• The Surprising Popularity of Military Coups
  The attempted military coup in Turkey and the possibility of a President Trump may have more Americans considering the military option. By John Feffer, July 20, 2016. News of the military coup in Turkey was dribbling in on Saturday afternoon when I was having lunch with a group of six friends in West Virginia. Suddenly, one person looked up from her salad and said, “If Trump gets elected, I’d support a military coup in this country.” At least one other person at the table seconded her opinion. I was astonished. Since when had the “military option” become a viable political strategy in the United States? Maybe it was the ghost of John Brown or something in the drinking water out there near Harpers Ferry. Or perhaps the peculiar conjunction of Turkey and Trump had elicited what must surely be an unpopular sentiment in America. Then I did some research. It turns out that the views around the table matched those of average Americans. According to a September 2015 poll by YouGov, nearly one-third of respondents (29 percent) “could imagine a situation in which they would support the military seizing control of the federal government.” That number went up to 43 percent in a hypothetical situation in which the government was beginning to violate the U.S. constitution. [Coup] [Decline] [Trump]
• Money Talks: Trump Does a U-Turn on Israel
  by Jonathan Cook The grubby underside of US electoral politics is on show once again as the Democratic and Republican candidates prepare to fight it out for the presidency. And it doesn’t get seamier than the battle to prove how loyal each candidate is to Israel. New depths are being plumbed this week at the Republican convention in Cleveland, as Donald Trump is crowned the party’s nominee. His platform breaks with decades of United States policy to effectively deny the Palestinians any hope of statehood. The question now is whether the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, who positions herself as Israel’s greatest ally, will try to outbid Trump in cravenly submitting to the Israeli right. It all started so differently. Through much of the primary season, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had reason to be worried about Israel’s “special relationship” with the next occupant of the White House. Early on, Trump promised to be “neutral” and expressed doubts about whether it made sense to hand Israel billions of dollars annually in military aid. He backed a two-state solution and refused to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. On the Democrat side, Clinton was challenged by outsider Bernie Sanders, who urged “even-handedness” towards Israel and the Palestinians. He too objected to the huge sums of aid the US bestows on Israel. Sanders exploited his massive support among Democrats to force Clinton to include well-known supporters of Palestinian rights on the committee that drafts the party’s platform. But any hopes of an imminent change in US policy in the Middle East have been dashed. Last week, as the draft Republic platform was leaked, Trump proudly tweeted that it was the “most pro-Israel of all time!” Avoiding any mention of a two-state solution, it states: “Support for Israel is an expression of Americanism. … We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier.” [Trump] [Israel]
• Erdogan targets more than 50,000 in purge after failed Turkish coup
  ISTANBUL/ANKARA | By Humeyra Pamuk and Ercan Gurses Turkey vowed to root out allies of the U.S.-based cleric it blames for an abortive coup last week, widening a purge of the army, police and judiciary on Tuesday to universities and schools, the intelligence agency and religious authorities. Around 50,000 soldiers, police, judges, civil servants and teachers have been suspended or detained since the coup attempt, stirring tensions across the country of 80 million which borders Syria's chaos and is a Western ally against Islamic State. [Erdogan] [Turkey] [Coup]
• Indonesian state 'responsible for genocide' in 1965
  People's tribunal says government must compensate victims and survivors of mass killings some five decades ago.
  A final report on "war crimes" committed in Indonesia decades ago has called on the government to investigate and prosecute all those involved in the deaths of at least 400,000 of its own citizens. The international people's tribunal formed at the Hague said on Wednesday the Indonesian state was "responsible" for the "genocide" against members and supporters of the country's Communist party and followers of President Soekarno during the 1965-66 killings. Zak Yacoob, chief justice of the civil society tribunal, said the government of Indonesia needed to act "urgently and without qualification" to address the injustices committed in the deadly purge. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Yacoob also said that aside from prosecuting those involved in the killings, the government must also "apologise" to all victims or their survivors, as well "ensure appropriate compensation and reparation". Starting on October 2, 1965, Indonesia's General Suharto launched a campaign to wipe out Communist party officials and sympathisers, following a failed coup which resulted in the death of six generals. The report also detailed 10 "gross human rights violations" carried out against civilians, including imprisonment, torture and sexual violence. The people's tribunal was formed last year after efforts to bring the mass killers to justice had failed. [Indonesia] [Massacre] [Suharto]
• Trump says U.S. won’t rush to defend NATO countries if they don’t spend more on military
  By Carol Morello and Adam Taylor July 21 at 7:45 PM ? Presidential candidate Donald Trump has set off alarm bells with a suggestion that a Trump administration would not automatically defend fellow members of NATO from a Russian attack if they have not lived up to their financial obligations. Trump, in an interview transcript published Thursday in the New York Times, went beyond his earlier assertions that he might reconsider the U.S. role as one of 28 nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, because many European countries are not spending enough on defense. When asked whether he would provide military aid to the Baltic countries if Russia were to attack, Trump replied, “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.” Trump was more vague when asked what he would do if the answer were no. “Well, I’m not saying if not,” he said. “I’m saying, right now there are many countries that have not fulfilled their obligations to us.” [Trump] [Russia confrontation] [NATO] [Military expenditure]
• An airstrike in Syria killed entire families instead of ISIS fighters
  By Max Bearak July 21 at 10:19 AM ? An image from a video showing the U.S.-led coalition's airstrike on a location 10 miles north of Manbij, Syria, near where civilians mistaken for Islamic State fighters were killed in a similar strike this week. The airstrikes at dawn on Tuesday pulverized entire families, including young children — families that were fleeing Islamic State militants but were instead mistaken for being those very fighters. Depending on whom you ask, the number of bodies found in the rubble is 56, 85, 160 or 212. Pictures of the mangled bodies, covered in dust, are a testament to the carnage. People who live near where the bombs fell — about 10 miles north of Manbij in northern Syria — said the only planes they'd seen since June were from a U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State. The area is just a few miles north of the front line between the Islamic State and the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). If Tuesday's airstrikes were indeed by coalition jets, and not Russian or Syrian government warplanes, this would easily be the highest civilian toll from any action by the coalition since it formed in 2014. Faced with the likelihood of a grave error by the coalition, U.S. officials responded cautiously, emphasizing the need to verify what had happened [Bombing] [Civilians]
• Syria war: Dozens killed in 'US-led strikes' on Manbij
  Coalition strikes on northern Manbij kill 56 civilians, bringing death toll to 167 in past two months, monitor says. Manbij civilian killings: ?Total of 167 killed since May, monitor says ?Toll includes 44 children and 17 women ?US Central Command confirms to Al Jazeera it was conducting strikes in the area ?Centcom says it will investigate allegations of civilian deaths Dozens of civilians have been killed in US-led air strikes against areas in Syria held by the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS), a monitoring group said. At least 56 civilians, including 11 children, were killed in air strikes on the Tokhar area in the northern city of Manbij in the Aleppo governate on Tuesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Ten others, including four children, were killed in coalition strikes on the village of Hamira, in the southern suburbs of Manbij. The UK-based Observatory has put the total number of civilians killed by coalition strikes on Manbij since the Democratic Forces of Syria (DFS) launched their campaign there at the end of May, at 167. Among the dead were about 44 children, 17 women and eight prisoners, the Observatory said. [Bombing] [Civilians]
• Questioning the Turkish Coup. “Certain Events and Occurrences Don’t Make Sense”
  By Devon Douglas-Bowers Global Research, July 21, 2016 As readers may know, I generally do not delve into the ideas of false flags and whatnot. It isn’t that I don’t think that false flags don’t exist, it’s just that it isn’t what I do my research in. However, the information surrounding the coup attempt gets more and more interesting and perplexing, certain events and occurrences don’t make sense. 1. According to Reuters, pro-coup planes had Erdogan’s presidential plane in their sights, but didn’t shoot him down. Specifically Reuters reported that “At the height of the attempt to overthrow Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the rebel pilots of two F-16 fighter jets had Erdogan’s plane in their sights. And yet he was able to fly on” and quoted a Turkish military official as saying “At least two F-16s harassed Erdogan’s plane while it was in the air and en route to Istanbul. They locked their radars on his plane and on two other F-16s protecting him.”[1] Why would you have the president in your sights, are locked on to him, and not shoot? If this is a serious coup attempt, one of the first things that is done is the capture or killing of a leader. 2. It was reported on July 17, 2016 that due to the attempted coup, a little over 2,700 judges were dismissed “along with several members of the council itself.”[2] That’s a large amount of judges and it seems rather strange to have the coup first be reported on July 16, 2016[3] and literally the day after suddenly have over 2,000 judges that you want dismissed. This is further backed up by EU commissioner Johannes Hahn, who is dealing with Turkey’s EU membership bid. He has said that the swift rounding up of judges and others indicates that the lists were made beforehand.[4] [Turkey] [Coup]
• Child beheading in Syria triggers backlash against U.S.-supported rebel group
  The Associated Press 2:37 p.m. EDT July 20, 2016
  BEIRUT — A U.S.-supported Syrian rebel group said Wednesday it will open an investigation into the beheading of a Syrian boy on spy accusations, calling it an "individual mistake" that does not represent the overall policies of the group. The Nour el-Din al-Zinki group, a relatively moderate group that fights the Syrian government and the Islamic State group, condemned the beheading which was captured on video and triggered an instant backlash against the group. It is not clear who the boy was or why he was beheaded on camera. He was identified by activists on social media as Mahmoud Issa, a 12-year-old Palestinian. The Syrian government also denounced the killing in a statement to the United Nations, saying the boy was a Palestinian from a refugee camp near Aleppo. The incident allegedly occurred in Handarat, near Aleppo, on Tuesday. A young boy is seen on the back of a pickup truck surrounded by armed men who accuse him of being a spy and a member of the Quds Brigade, a pro-government Palestinian militia. He is then beheaded with a knife by one of them. [US Syria policy] [Proxy] [War crime]
• Will failed coup push Erdogan toward Iran, Russia?
  Along with its many implications at home, the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey may have important repercussions on Ankara’s foreign policy, especially regarding Syria. The foiled coup in Turkey could lay the groundwork for closer ties with Russia and Iran, resulting in a Turkish turnabout in Syria. Author Fehim TastekinPosted July 20, 2016 Translator Sibel Utku Bila The apology Ankara extended to Moscow last month for the Nov. 24 downing of a Russian jet had already raised expectations that normalization with Moscow could facilitate Turkey's U-turn from its failed Syria policy. Indeed, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim soon made overtures to that effect, though he later attached strings related to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s departure. A number of issues bear on Turkey’s Syria policy: Turkey’s perceived inadequate support for the international coalition against the Islamic State (IS); its hostile policy toward the Kurds in northern Syria; support for groups fighting the Syrian government; and disagreements on targeting Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch and other Salafi groups such as Ahrar al-Sham. The signals of a policy shift may have irked Ankara’s friends in the Gulf, yet many players on the ground continue to count on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as evidenced by their reactions to the coup attempt. Ahrar al-Sham condemned the botched bid, while Syrian refugees joined anti-coup demonstrations in Turkey. In contrast to Egypt, which blocked a condemnation of the coup attempt at the UN Security Council, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas expressed strong support for Erdogan, which should be seen as a message for him to stay on his current course. [Turkey] [Syria] [Neo-Ottomanism]
• The Coup in Turkey has Thrown a Wrench in Uncle Sam’s “Pivot” Plan
  by Mike Whitney A failed coup in Turkey has changed the geopolitical landscape overnight realigning Ankara with Moscow while shattering Washington’s plan to redraw the map of the Middle East. Whether Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan staged the coup or not is of little importance in the bigger scheme of things. The fact is, the incident has consolidated his power domestically while derailing Washington’s plan to control critical resources and pipeline corridors from Qatar to Europe. The Obama administrations disregard for the national security interests of its allies, has pushed the Turkish president into Moscow’s camp, removing the crucial landbridge between Europe and Asia that Washington needs to maintain its global hegemony into the new century. Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia, surround and break up Russia, control China’s growth and maintain its iron grip on global power is now in a shambles. The events of the last few days have changed everything. This is from the Daily Sahbah: “Turkey’s changing rhetoric toward Russia is also a direct consequence of Ankara’s unmet expectations regarding the Syria conflict. Turkey’s disappointment with the United States’ policy in Syria has increased with time, especially considering Washington’s continued support for the Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria. Ankara sees this group as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization (Daily Sabah, 12 June). (A Change in Turkish-Russian Relations: What Sort of Rapprochement?, The Jamestown Foundation) Obama can only blame himself for the debacle that is now unfolding. Erdogan was completely clear about Turkey’s red lines, the most important of which is preventing the Kurdish militias from moving west of the Euphrates and creating a contiguous state along the Syrian side of Turkeys southern border. [Turkey] [Erdogan] [US Syria policy] [Kurds] [Turkey Russia]
• Who is Behind Turkey’s Failed Coup? Erdogan Inside Job, US-Gulen Op., or Joint US-Turkey False Flag?
  By Joachim Hagopian Global Research, July 20, 2016 The latest mystery puzzle on the geopolitical chessboard is who was really behind that failed military coup to overthrow Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan over the weekend? Erdogan immediately blamed his former ally and now exiled enemy in Pennsylvania – the 75-year old Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen. The Turkish labor minister went so far as to charge the United States with inciting the quickly quelled “uprising” as described by both Erdogan and Western media. [Turkey] [Coup]
• Why Iran stood with Erdogan
  As July 15 was coming to an end in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was on the phone with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose government was under the threat of being overthrown by a military coup. Meanwhile, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), was on another line with security officials in Ankara. All the while, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, Iran’s regional military arm, was busy pursuing and reviewing various scenarios that might emerge. Even though Iran and Turkey have major differences over many issues in the region, the Iranian government strongly came out in support of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid the coup attempt. The question is why. Author Ali HashemPosted July 19, 2016 “It’s not a secret anymore,” an Iranian official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “Zarif, Shamkhani and Soleimani were executing higher orders. The whole establishment was too concerned. Turkey is a neighboring state. President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and his government are strong partners of Iran. Our nations enjoy strong brotherly ties, so it’s the least we can do to show solidarity and try to offer any help they might need in such critical times.” Within hours after the coup attempt began late July 15, the SNSC convened to discuss developments in Turkey. Following the meeting, which was chaired by President Hassan Rouhani, Shamkhani publicly condemned the coup attempt, telling local media outlets, “We support Turkey's legal government and oppose any type of coup — either [initiated] domestically or supported by foreign sides.” Shamkhani said, “What determined the fate of developments in Turkey were the will and presence of the [Turkish] nation and the vigilance of political parties, whose contribution thwarted this coup. Shamkhani concluded, “Our stance is not exclusive to Turkey either. We have pursued the same stance in Syria too. Our position toward all regional countries is that we always prefer people's votes [to decide governments] rather than tribal, sectarian and hereditary governments, and this means democracy." “A coup in Turkey isn’t something Iran can tolerate,” another Iranian politician told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “It’s true that there are differences over Syria, and sometimes in Iraq. Yet the fact is that there is no direct problem between Iran and Turkey; on the contrary, [bilateral] relations are always advancing for the better [Turkey Iran] [Coup]
• Why The Failed Turkish Coup Attempt Wasn’t A “False Flag” Power Grab By Erdogan
  by Andrew Korybko The failed coup attempt against Erdogan provoked a flurry of excited polemics in the alternative informational space, leading to the emergence of two competing hypotheses. The author already published his own analysis on how this was actually a sloppy, last-ditch move by the US to frantically offset the game-changing geopolitical consequences of the surprise Russian-Turkish detente, but the other main theory that’s going around is that this was all a false flag attempt by Erdogan to seize more power. The False Flag Theory There are plenty of reasons why this is believable, not least of which is Erdogan’s involvement in other false flag plans such as the aborted 2014 mission to attack the Suleyman Shah tomb in northern Syria as a pretext for launching an all-out invasion. The Turkish strongman has also been implicated in the terrorist bombing campaign that broke out in the southern part of the country last summer and was eventually used as the grounds for relaunching hostilities against the Kurds. Advocates of the “false flag coup” theory point to Erdogan’s immediate retribution against political opponents as alleged proof that he initiated his country’s regime change drama in order to give him a reason to carry out more purges and complete the Islamification of the constitutionally secular state. Actually, it was already widely known that the President had a long list of political enemies that he was progressively dealing with one by one, and that the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Salafization of society had been gradually enabled through internationally recognized “democratic” means (however flawed and manipulated they may be). Erdogan didn’t need a “false flag coup” to continue with this years’-long and drawn-out agenda, though it did admittedly accelerate his plans. In arguing against the “false flag coup” theory, it’s relevant to bear in mind that Erdogan is the consummate politician and never misses a chance to exploit a crisis to his benefit. After the re-establishment of his power in the wake of the failed coup, Erdogan saw an unprecedented moment to take out all of his enemies in one fell swoop, which is exactly what he’s in the process of doing right now. Still, this doesn’t necessarily prove that he wasn’t “in on it” all along. [Turkey] [Coup] [Erdogan]
• The continuing political decline of Hillary Clinton
  By Aaron Blake July 18 A millennial's guide to Clinton scandals of the '90s ?Play Video6:33 Nannygate, Travelgate, Whitewater, Filegate: it's tough to remember all the scandals that plagued then-President Bill and Hillary Clinton through the '90s. For millennials --- here's what you missed. For everyone else, here's a refresher. (Sarah Parnass, Adriana Usero/The Washington Post) If it weren't for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton would be the most disliked major-party presidential nominee in recent American history. That qualifier, of course, is important here. Clinton doesn't need to be liked; she needs to be liked slightly more than Trump in what will very likely boil down to a two-candidate race. But it's hard to overstate just how bad Clinton's numbers are. And a new Washington Post-ABC News poll is the latest to suggest they just keep getting worse — so much so that they are in some ways about as bad as Trump's. The poll shows 54 percent of all Americans have an unfavorable view of Clinton and 44 percent have a "strongly unfavorable" view of her. When you boil it down just to registered voters, those numbers tick up to 57 percent and 47 percent, respectively. [Hillary Clinton] [US_Election16] [Polls]
• Best Speech a U.S. President Ever Gave
  By David Swanson In planning an upcoming conference and nonviolent action aimed at challenging the institution of war, with the conference to be held at American University, I can’t help but be drawn to the speech a U.S. president gave at American University a little more than 50 years ago. Whether or not you agree with me that this is the best speech ever given by a U.S. president, there should be little dispute that it is the speech most out of step with what anyone will say at either the Republican or the Democratic national convention this year. Here’s a video of the best portion of the speech [Rhetoric] [Kennedy] [Disarmament]
• NATO meet in Warsaw: Obama’s last waltz won’t last forever
  NATO meet in Warsaw: Obama’s last waltz won’t last forever By M.K. Bhadrakumar on July 11, 2016 There is something very surreal about what the United States would have achieved at the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Warsaw (July 8-9). For a start, this was an American show personally conducted by President Barack Obama; and, it was his last waltz in Europe. For a change, Obama was explicitly there on the centre stage, leading the western alliance. This is the first time Obama has really done that. He himself has admitted may times that the crowning achievement of his presidency on the foreign policy arena – Iran nuclear deal – was a collective effort by the “P5+1” (veto-holding members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.) Of course, it is recorded history that he chose to lead from behind the western military intervention in Libya in 2011. Perhaps, Obama would have left the world a far better place had he continued leading the West from behind. For the first time in the post-Cold War era, the specter of war between the US and Russia haunts the world community. And that will be his most consequential presidential legacy. [Barack Obama] [Russia confrontation] [NATO]
• Erdogan is Using This Failed Coup to Get Rid of the Last Vestiges of Secular Turkey
  by Patrick Cockburn The sweeping purge of soldiers and officials in the wake of the failed coup in Turkey is likely to be conducted with extra vigour because a number of close associates of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are among the 265 dead. The number of people detained so far is at 6,000 including soldiers, and around 3,000 judges and legal officials who are unlikely to have been connected to the attempted military takeover. On Sunday, Erdogan attended the funeral of the elder brother of his chief adviser, Mustafa Varank. Varank’s older brother, Dr Ilhan Varank, studied at Ohio State University, and was the chairman of Computer and Technology Education Department at Istanbul’s Yildiz Technical University, according to Anadolu Agency (AA). It says that the 45-year-old was shot at and killed as he demonstrated in front of the Istanbul Municipality building on the night of the coup, 15 July. [Turkey] [Coup]
• Hints at a developing western narrative on the failed coup in Turkey?
  The fact the Guardian is giving a sympathetic ear to Fethullah Gülen, the man Turkish president Erdogan alleges was behind the failed coup, could be a hint at some of the complex realities and conflicting loyalties here. As indeed can the media’s sudden and renewed discovery of the Erdogan government’s long history of brutality, which is also being freshly aired by the BBC. The Guardian article even suggests the coup may have been staged by Erdogan to increase his own popularity. Again this is interesting. In general it’s only regimes we’re being invited to disapprove of or demonise that are accused of shady dealings and false flags. Any suggestion that a friendly nation could stage a fake coup would usually be greeted with cries of “conspiracy theory.” So it looks as if Erdogan is in an ambiguous position with his masters in Washington right now. A development that may not be entirely unconnected with Erdogan’s recent overtures of conciliation toward Russia. Erdogan is demanding Gülen’s extradition, and the US is requesting evidence of the latter’s guilt before considering its position, whatever that will turn out to mean. And the Incirlik air base is apparently still intermittently being closed for use by the Pentagon, for reasons that remain unclear. Time will no doubt reveal more. But we can at least detect the broad strokes of an emerging narrative. Erdogan’s brutality is no longer inadmissible in the neoliberal media. And Gülen is being sold to us as a more acceptable potential alternative. [Turkey] [Coup]
• How the attempted coup in Turkey endangers the U.S.
  Highlights The country is a NATO ally It is host to the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group Turkey lies at the strategic nexus between the Middle East and Europe By Teresa Welsh Reports of an attempted coup in Turkey caught Washington off guard Friday as a military faction claimed it had taken control of the strategic U.S. ally. Relations between the U.S. and Turkey have been strained in recent months, but stability in the country is vital to American interests in the Middle East. Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirm announced that a group within the country’s military had attempted late Friday to overthrow the government. Social media in the country has been largely shut down and television stations showed tanks and jeeps outside Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, site of a recent terrorist attack. A military official read a statement on Turkish television stating that martial law had been imposed. Turkey lies at the nexus between the Middle East and Europe, and is directly north of Syria. It hosts the U.S.-led international coalition fighting the Islamic State group, which conducts airstrikes against the extremists from Incirlik Airbase in the southern part of Turkey. The Defense Department did not have an immediate statement on the status of American personnel and assets at the base, MSNBC reported. It is unclear what, if any, obligation the U.S. would have to come to Turkey’s defense as a NATO ally. The Article 5 provision of the NATO alliance requires countries to come to the aid of a fellow ally in case of attack, but it is unknown how it would apply in the case of a coup rather than an attack from a country outside the alliance. Article 5 has only been invoked once since NATO was signed in 1949, by the U.S. following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Turkey has also been destabilized as civil war rages in neighboring Syria. The border between the countries has been porous, allowing foreign fighters seeking to join the Islamic State group to flow into Syria. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article89937372.html#storylink=cpy [Turkey] [Coup] [Syria] [Agency]
• Syrian rebels stunned as Turkey signals normalisation of Damascus relations
  Apparent policy shift could spell end to rebellion against Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria
  Kareem Shaheen and Martin Chulov in Beirut Wednesday 13 July 2016 18.40 BST Last modified on Wednesday 13 July 2016 22.00 BST More than five years into Syria’s civil war, Turkey, the country that has most helped the rebellion against the rule of Bashar al-Assad, has hinted it may move to normalise relations with Damascus. The suggestion made by the Turkish prime minister, Binali Yildirim, on Wednesday, stunned the Syrian opposition leadership, which Ankara hosts, as well as regional leaders, who had allied with Turkey in their push to oust Assad over a long, unforgiving war. “I am sure that we will return [our] ties with Syria to normal,” he said, straying far from an official script that has persistently called for immediate regime change. “We need it. We normalised our relations with Israel and Russia. I’m sure we will go back to normal relations with Syria as well.” Though Turkish officials later claimed the remarks were made in hope, and did not imply a policy shift, both the Ankara-backed rebels and regional diplomats inferred that Turkey was softening its rhetoric in advance of a reset with Assad, whose allies have backed him into a winning position in the war. [Turkey] [Outsourcing] [Syria] [Neo-Ottomanism]
• Freedom for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi! Freedom for Libya!
  Eric Draitser The news that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the assassinated leader of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Muammar Gaddafi, has been released from captivity is one of the most significant developments in Libya in some time. For while the Western corporate media would like people to believe that the Gaddafi name is dead and buried, the fact remains that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and the surviving members of the Gaddafi family, are seen as heroes by many in Libya. Moreover, Saif’s release has the potential to transform the political situation in the country. Although details are few and far between, what we do know is that according to his lawyer at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Saif Gaddafi “was given his liberty on April 12, 2016.” Indeed official documents (which remain unverified) seem to support the assertion that Saif has, in fact, been released. Considering the statements from his attorneys that Saif is “well and safe and in Libya,” the political ramifications of this development should not be underestimated. Not only is Saif Gaddafi the second eldest and most prominent of Col. Gaddafi’s sons, he is also the one seen as the inheritor of his father’s legacy of independent peaceful development and the maintenance of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. This last point is of critical importance as his release is a clear signal to many Libyans that the resistance to the NATO-imposed chaos and war is alive and well. And while there have been isolated upsurges of pro-Gaddafi sentiments at various times in the last five years, they mostly remained underground. Perhaps it might soon be time for the resistance to once again become united as it moves to drive out the terrorists and opportunists who have torn the jewel of Africa apart these last five years. [Libya] [Gaddafi]
• American Pravda: The Legacy of Sydney Schanberg
  Ron Unz • July 13, 2016 The death on Saturday of Sydney Schanberg at age 82 should sadden us not only for the loss of one of our most renowned journalists but also for what his story reveals about the nature of our national media. Syd had made his career at the New York Times for 26 years, winning a Pulitzer Prize, two George Polk Memorial awards, and numerous other honors. His passing received the notice it deserved, with the world’s most prestigious broadsheet devoting nearly a full page of its Sunday edition to his obituary, a singular honor that in this degraded era is more typically reserved for leading pop stars or sports figures. Several photos were included of his Cambodia reporting, which had become the basis for the Oscar-winning film The Killing Fields, one of Hollywood’s most memorable accounts of our disastrous Indo-Chinese War. But for all the 1,300 words and numerous images charting his long and illustrious journalistic history, not even a single mention was made of the biggest story of his career, which has seemingly vanished down the memory hole without trace. And therein lies a tale. Could a news story ever be “too big” for the media to cover? Every journalist is always seeking a major expose, a piece that not merely reaches the transitory front pages but also might win a journalistic prize or even change the history books. Stories such as these appear rarely but can make a reporter’s career, and it is difficult to imagine a writer turning one down, or an editor rejecting it. But what if the story is so big that it actually reveals dangerous truths about the real nature of the American media, portrays too many powerful people in a very negative light, and perhaps leads to a widespread loss of faith in our major news media? If readers were to see a story like that, they might naturally begin to wonder “why hadn’t we ever been told?” or even “what else might be out there?” Towards the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, while John McCain battled Barack Obama for the White House, I clicked an intriguing link on a small website and discovered Syd’s remarkable expose, one which had been passed over or rejected by every major media outlet in the country, his enormous personal reputation notwithstanding. The basic outline of events he described was a simple one. During the Paris Peace Talks that ended the Vietnam War, the U.S. government had committed to pay its Hanoi adversaries $3.25 billion in war reparations, and in exchange would receive back the American POWs held by the Vietnamese. The agreement was signed and the war officially ended, but the Vietnamese, suspecting a possible financial double-cross, kept back many hundreds of the imprisoned Americans until they received the promised payment. For domestic political reasons, the Nixon Administration had characterized the billions of dollars pledged as “humanitarian assistance” and Congress balked at appropriating such a large sum for a hated Communist regime. Desperate for “peace with honor” and already suffering under the growing Watergate Scandal, Nixon and his aides could not admit that many hundreds of the POWs remained in enemy hands, and so declared them all returned, probably hoping to quietly arrange a trade of money for prisoners once the dust had settled. Similarly, Hanoi’s leaders falsely claimed that all the captives had been released, while they waited for their money to be paid. As a result, the two governments had jointly created a Big Lie, one which has largely maintained itself right down to the present day. [Vietnam] [POW] [US Negotiating] [Renege]
• Inside ISIS: Quietly preparing for the loss of the ‘caliphate’
  By Joby Warrick and Souad Mekhennet July 12 at 8:26 PM ? Even as it launches waves of terrorist attacks around the globe, the Islamic State is quietly preparing its followers for the eventual collapse of the caliphate it proclaimed with great fanfare two years ago. In public messages and in recent actions in Syria, the group’s leaders are acknowledging the terrorist organization’s declining fortunes on the battlefield while bracing for the possibility that its remaining strongholds could fall. At the same time, the group is vowing to press on with its recent campaign of violence, even if the terrorists themselves are driven underground. U.S. counterterrorism experts believe the mass­casualty attacks in Istanbul and Baghdad in the past month were largely a response to military reversals in Iraq and Syria. Such terrorist acts are likely to continue and even intensify, at least initially, analysts say, as the group evolves from a quasi-state with territorial holdings to a shadowy and diffuse network with branches and cells on at least three continents. Indeed, while the loss of a physical sanctuary would constitute a major blow to the Islamic State — severely limiting, for example, its ability to raise money, train recruits or plan complex terrorist operations — the group’s highly decentralized nature ensures that it will remain dangerous for some time to come, according to current and former U.S. officials and terrorism experts. [ISIS]
• The world watched her stand alone against the police, then stood with her
  Highlights The photo of Ieshia Evans at a protest in Baton Rouge this weekend went viral In the image, Evans stands alone as two police officers in riot gear run up to arrest her She said it was all “the work of God” A demonstrator protesting the shooting death of Alton Sterling is detained by law enforcement in Baton Rouge on July 9, 2016. A demonstrator protesting the shooting death of Alton Sterling is detained by law enforcement in Baton Rouge on July 9, 2016. Jonathan Bachman - Reuters By ELIZABETH KOH ekoh@mcclatchy.com A line of police in riot gear stood to the left, visors down, mirroring the sun. Standing before them, she waited, arms to her side, wrists in front of her. Her gray dress floated about her in the summer breeze. Two officers, guns holstered at their waists, fast approached with zip ties. Then Jonathan Bachman, a freelance photographer for Reuters, clicked his camera. The resulting photo was seen across the country after Ieshia Evans, 28, was taken into police custody and charged with obstructing the highway, one of more than a hundred protesters who demonstrated in the streets of Baton Rouge Saturday. But it was the photo of her, standing alone against a line of police officers, that caught the nation’s eye. Shaun King, a New York Daily News writer and activist, shared the photo on Facebook, praising it as “POWERFUL.” Commenters, including friends and family, marveled at her posture, “balanced, powerful, upright and well grounded with both feet firmly planted on the earth.” “This is a legendary picture,” a commenter wrote. “It will be in history and art books from this time.” But Evans suggested a greater power was at work in the moment the photo was taken. “I just need you people to know. I appreciate the well wishes and love, but this is the work of God,” she posted Sunday night on Facebook after she was released. “I am a vessel! Glory to the most high!” [Racism]
• Trump’s favorite dictators: In reviled tyrants, GOP nominee finds traits to praise
  Iraqi President Saddam Hussein holds up a rifle during a Dec. 31, 2000, military parade in Baghdad. Hussein was forced from power in 2003 in a U.S.-led invasion. (Jassim Mohammed/Associated Press) By Jose A. DelReal July 6 Donald Trump’s regular praise for authoritarian governments and dictators has come under fresh scrutiny this week following his latest laudatory comments about the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose human rights abuses and support for international terrorism made him a top enemy of the United States for decades. “He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good,” Trump said during a campaign event in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday evening. “They didn’t read them the rights — they didn’t talk, they were a terrorist, it was over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism. You want to be a terrorist, you go to Iraq. It’s like Harvard. Okay? So sad.” The remarks have revived worries among Republican lawmakers and members of the party’s foreign-policy establishment, many of whom have become increasingly despondent over Trump’s loose and threatening rhetoric on international relations. Many critics in both parties also say that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is laying out an alarmingly dark worldview that should give voters serious pause. [Trump] [Governance] [Putin]
• 5 reasons Rouhani may not win second term
  TEHRAN, Iran — As the faction most opposed to the government, Iran's hard-liners have made it their goal to make Hassan Rouhani the first Iranian president not to be re-elected for a second term. In fact, this objective was sought since their loss of the executive branch back in 2013. They simply cannot fathom being barred from the presidency for another five years until the 2021 presidential election. Thus, they're determined to seize back control of the executive branch as soon as possible. Their latest move, the war over pay stubs, is considered to be in this line.
  Fourth, the continued pressure of the United States and the blocking of banking operations due to US sanctions threaten Rouhani's re-election. In this vein, the recent confiscation of Iranian assets after a US Supreme Court ruling in favor of families of terror victims seeking compensation signals trouble ahead. There are also the issues of the Canadian judiciary confiscating $15 million worth of Iranian assets, the continuous aggressive tone of the US Congress and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's attitude toward Iran. These kinds of developments have resulted in Iranians questioning the benefits of the JCPOA. While sanctions have formally been lifted, it will take time until conditions return to normal. Though the better-informed citizens recognize this, the wider Iranian society — and particularly the lower classes — does not. They expect an immediate impact, such as drastic price declines, which have not occurred. [Rouhani] [Iran deal] [Renege] [Class]
• Disarray in NATO Completes Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy
  By Patrick Smith July 11, 2016 As of Friday, when NATO concluded its most important gathering since the Cold War ended, the North Atlantic alliance has a full menu of new tasks. So does Barack Obama’s successor. With the Warsaw summit, Obama’s foreign policy legacy is now complete in outline -- and there’s more mess than success in it. The administration has just has elevated Cold War II to official policy across both oceans. The Warsaw summit confirms Russia as implacable enemy No. 1, while Defense Secretary Carter’s recent campaign to up the military ante in the western Pacific casts China as a close No. 2. Related: NATO-Russia Council to meet in possible move to ease tensions Barack Obama, the peacenik president, turns out to be highly proficient at cultivating enemies. In both cases, the administration has left immense room for cooperation on questions of shared concern more or less unexplored. [Obama] [US global strategy] [NATO]
• Monsanto, Bayer, and the Push for Corporate Cannabis
  by Ellen Brown As detailed in my recent article “The War on Weed is Winding Down,” the health benefits of cannabis are now well established. It is a cheap, natural alternative effective for a broad range of conditions, and the non-psychoactive form known as hemp has thousands of industrial uses. At one time, cannabis was one of the world’s most important crops. There have been no recorded deaths from cannabis overdose in the US, compared to about 30,000 deaths annually from alcohol abuse (not counting auto accidents), and 100,000 deaths annually from prescription drugs taken as directed. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance (“a deadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for abuse”), illegal to be sold or grown in the US. Powerful corporate interests no doubt had a hand in keeping cannabis off the market. The question now is why they have suddenly gotten on the bandwagon for its legalization. According to an April 2014 article in The Washington Times, the big money behind the recent push for legalization has come, not from a grassroots movement, but from a few very wealthy individuals with links to Big Ag and Big Pharma. Leading the charge is George Soros, a major shareholder in Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company and producer of genetically modified seeds. Monsanto is the biotech giant that brought you Agent Orange, DDT, PCBs, dioxin-based pesticides, aspartame, rBGH (genetically engineered bovine growth hormone), RoundUp (glyphosate) herbicides, and RoundUp Ready crops (seeds genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate). [Drugs] [Corporate power]
• A New Fight Over Syria War Strategy
  President Obama has signaled a willingness to join Russia in going after Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria, but neocons and other hawks are fighting the policy shift, reports Gareth Porter. by Gareth Porter The long internal political struggle within the Obama administration over policy toward Syria has intensified following a proposal by President Barack Obama to cooperate with Russia in an air campaign against Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise. The proposal, in response to an overture from Russia in May, would coordinate airstrikes against al-Nusra Front – the most powerful force in the war against Bashar al-Assad’s regime – in return for Russian agreement to constrain the Syrian regime from bombing non-jihadist forces willing to comply with the ceasefire. If fully implemented, such a joint U.S.-Russian military campaign against Nusra could help hasten an end to the war by weakening the jihadist group cited by the Syrian regime as a major reason it has refused to make sufficient political concessions. In theory, such cooperation could strengthen both the regime and the so-called “moderate” rebels at the expense of the jihadists. "As the Obama administration goes into its final months, what appears to be the most promising path to an end to the Syrian civil war may yet be blocked by U.S. refusal to break with the policies of its regional allies who have been feeding the jihadist-led war for years." But Obama’s proposal is under attack by powerful elements of the national security bureaucracy. Even though the opponents have been unable to stop the proposal, they continue to press their case and it is not clear how committed the proponents are in pressuring their Syrian clients to comply with an agreement. Last week, opponents of the proposal within the Obama administration leaked its existence to Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, whose sympathies clearly lie with the U.S. advocates of direct U.S. war against the Assad regime. [US Syria policy] [Russia confrontation] [Hawk]
• In an apparent first, Dallas police used a robot to deliver bomb that killed shooting suspect
  By Andrea Peterson July 8 at 4:57 PM ? A standoff between police and one of the suspects in a Dallas shooting spree, which left at least five police officers dead and seven others wounded Thursday night, ended after the suspect was killed when a robot delivered and detonated explosives where he was holed up, according to local law enforcement officials. The move represents a potentially unprecedented use of robots to deliberately deliver lethal force in domestic policing, according to experts, raising questions about how local law enforcement officials are deploying the high-tech tools that increasingly fill their arsenals. "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the subject was," Dallas Police Chief David Brown said at a news conference Friday morning. "Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger." [What we know about the attack on police in Dallas] Attempts by a hostage negotiator to persuade the suspect to surrender were unsuccessful, and he exchanged fire with the police during the standoff, Brown said. Three other suspects are in custody, according to police. A senior U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the investigation identified the deceased suspect as Micah Xavier Johnson. The shootings in Dallas occurred at the end of an otherwise peaceful demonstration spurred by police shootings this week that killed Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana.
• The Real Lesson of Iraq: Nothing Was Learned, No Good Was Done
  by Patrick Cockburn Denunciations of Tony Blair as the evil architect of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War often dominate discussions of what happened there and many will look to the Chilcot inquiry to provide further evidence of his guilt. But the demonisation of Mr Blair is excessive and simple-minded and diverts attention from what really happened in Iraq and how such mistakes can be avoided in future. He may have unwisely followed the US into the quagmire of Iraq, but British government policy since 1941 has been to position itself as America’s most loyal and effective ally in peace and war. There have been significant exceptions to this rule, such as the Suez Crisis and the Vietnam War, but during the last 70 years the UK has generally sought to influence US policy in its formulation and then support it unequivocally once adopted. This may on occasions be humiliating and out of keeping with the British self-image of robust independence, but it is not as stupid from the point of view of the British state. In going to war in alliance with the US in Iraq, Mr Blair was not doing anything very different from his predecessors or successors, except that he was more successful than them in establishing close relations with the White House. Many British politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists have subsequently claimed they were convinced at the time that the invasion would end badly, but they were notably quiet about their forebodings at the time and for most part their wisdom is retrospective. Nor that British opposition to the US venture in Iraq could have done much to stop it happening. I was in Washington in the first months of 2003, working for a think tank and it was clear that the invasion was going to go ahead whatever London said or did. In the hysterical super-patriotic atmosphere post 9/11, it was difficult for Americans to oppose the war and those who told me that they had doubts about it – one academic expert said he was sure it would be as disastrous for the US as the Suez Crisis had been for Britain – were careful not to say so publicly. [Iraq] [Tony Blair] [Pacification]
• Spending on jails outpaced spending on schools by three times over the last 30 years
  Highlights Spending on jails and prisons increased by 324 percent Texas hiked incarceration spending by 850 percent More than two thirds of state prison inmates are high school dropouts The U.S. has the highest percentage of people in jail of any country. The U.S. has the highest percentage of people in jail of any country. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews By Teresa Welsh twelsh@mcclatchy.com Over the last 30 years, local and state governments increased how much they spend on putting people in jail three times more than how much they spend on educating students, according to a new analysis by the Department of Education. The department examined corrections spending and education spending data from 1979-1980 to 2012-2013 and found that over that time, governments increased spending on incarceration by 324 percent (from $17 to $71 billion). This is more than three times the spending increase on education, which only grew 107 percent (from $258 to $534 billion) over the same time period. All of the 50 states had lower expenditure growth rates for PK-12 education than for corrections. Seven states increased corrections budgets more than five times as quickly than they did K-12 education budgets: ?Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia?. Texas had the largest percentage increase over 30 years, hiking incarceration spending by 850 percent. “These aren’t just statistics. When I think about the lives of those who are incarcerated, I can’t help but feel disheartened,” Education Secretary John King wrote on Medium. “I can’t help but think about their families, spouses, sons, daughters, and parents?—?or about the art not created; the entrepreneurial ideas that may never reach the drawing board; the classrooms these Americans will never lead; and the discoveries they’ll never make.” [Prisoners] [Education] [Human rights]
• Words of Mass Destruction That Continue to Deceive
  Patrick Cockburn • July 5, 2016 By an accident of history, the Chilcot inquiry on the Iraq War is appearing at a critical moment in British history. The war was the first great test this century of the ability of the British powers-that-be to govern intelligently and successfully and one which they demonstrably failed. The crisis provoked by the vote to leave the European Union is the next crisis of similar gravity faced by these same powers and, once again, they appear unable to cope. Britain’s politicians and senior officials have traditionally had the reputation of making fewer mistakes than their rivals, but their inability to grapple with these crises is a sign that this period may be drawing to an end. The Chilcot report will presumably provide evidence about why Britain made so many mistakes before and during the Iraq war, but is unlikely to explain why it went on making them in Libya and Syria. Britain’s rulers periodically admit that they got many things wrong in Iraq, but they tend to be unspecific about what these were or what practical lessons can be learned from British military involvement there between 2003 and 2009. This ignorance is wilful, stemming from a conscious or unconscious sense that, if Britain admits to real weaknesses and failures, it will be seen as a less valuable ally by the US and others whom Britain is trying to convince of its continuing political and military strength. One way of looking at the Iraq conflict is to see it as a disastrous attempt by Britain to make war on the cheap in conditions which were far more risky than those launching it imagined. To prevent fragile support for the war eroding further, bad news was concealed or glossed over to the point that propaganda took over from reality It was comical but chilling in the early years of the war to see Tony Blair and other British ministers, sometimes protected by helmets and body armour, travelling by helicopter from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone because it was too dangerous for them to drive along the short stretch of road between the two. Despite the necessity for these security measures in the heart of the Iraqi capital, they would then blithely state that the insurgents were on the run and a majority of Iraqi provinces at peace, a claim they wisely made no attempt to validate by a personal visit and in the knowledge that journalists could not disprove without grave risk of being murdered. Within a year of the invasion, the US and Britain controlled only beleaguered islands of territory which were under constant attack. The British Army, its forces far too small for the task they had been given, failed to control Basra in southern Iraq and by the end was humiliatingly confined to a camp on its outskirts. Many of the British soldiers there were transferred to an equally messy, unwinnable and ill-understood conflict in Helmand province in Afghanistan in 2006 with predictably grim and bloody consequences. [Iraq] [Tony Blair]
• The Truth About Chilcot. The Inquiry, Who’s Who?
  By Craig Murray Global Research, July 07, 2016 craigmurray.org 6 July 2016 The death toll from the horrific recent Iraq bombings has risen over 250. If Blair had not been absolutely determined to attack Iraq on the basis of a knowing lie about WMD, they would be alive now, along with millions of other dead. ISIS would never have taken control of territory in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda would never have grown from an organisation of a few hundred to one of tens of thousands. We would not have a completely destabilised Middle East and a massive refugee crisis. Do not expect a full truth and a full accounting from the Chilcot panel of establishment trusties today. Remember who they are. [Chilcot] [Iraq]
• Leaker, Speaker, Soldier, Spy: The Charmed Life of David Petraeus
  by Nick Turse I ran into David Petraeus the other night. Or rather, I ran after him. It’s been more than a year since I first tried to connect with the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director — and no luck yet. On a recent evening, as the sky was turning from a crisp ice blue into a host of Easter-egg hues, I missed him again. Led from a curtained “backstage” area where he had retreated after a midtown Manhattan event, Petraeus moved briskly to a staff-only room, then into a tightly packed elevator, and momentarily out onto the street before being quickly ushered into a waiting late-model, black Mercedes S550. And then he was gone, whisked into the warm New York night, companions in tow. For the previous hour, Petraeus had been in conversation with Peter Bergen, a journalist, CNN analyst, and vice president at New America, the think tank sponsoring the event. Looking fit and well-rested in a smart dark-blue suit, the former four-star offered palatable, pat, and — judging from the approving murmurs of the audience — popular answers to a host of questions about national security issues ranging from the fight against the Islamic State to domestic gun control. While voicing support for the Second Amendment, for example, he spoke about implementing “common sense solutions to the availability of weapons,” specifically keeping guns out of the hands of “domestic abusers” and those on the no-fly list. Even as he expressed “great respect” for those who carried out acts of torture in the wake of 9/11, he denounced its use — except in the case of a “ticking time bomb.” In an era when victory hasn’t been a word much used in relation to the American military, he even predicted something close to it on the horizon. “I’ve said from the very beginning, even in the darkest days, the Islamic State would be defeated in Iraq,” he told the appreciative crowd. [Petraeus] [MISCOM]
• FBI rebuke leaves a heavy political cloud over Clinton
  FBI Director James Comey said on July 5 that Hillary Clinton should not be charged for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. Here's what he said, in three minutes. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) By Philip Rucker, Abby Phillip and Anne Gearan July 5 at 4:34 PM Hillary Clinton may avoid criminal charges, but the searing rebuke of her “extremely careless” email practices Tuesday by FBI Director James B. Comey is likely to reverberate through the November election and, if she wins, well into her presidency. In a methodical, 15-minute statement bringing an end to the FBI investigation of Clinton’s personal email system while she was secretary of state, Comey laid bare a litany of facts that amounted to a stern admonishment of her judgment, management and stewardship of state secrets. Even as Comey lifted a legal cloud by announcing that the FBI would not recommend criminal charges, he systematically obliterated many of the key defenses Clinton and her advisers have offered to reassure the public in the 15 months since the discovery that she used a private email system. For instance, Clinton had insisted that she did not send or receive classified materials, but Comey said the FBI found that 110 of her emails contained classified information. For weeks now, Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has been arguing that her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, is unfit to be president and cannot be trusted in the Oval Office. She had hoped that a rally Tuesday afternoon in Charlotte with President Obama — their first joint appearance of the campaign — would underscore that contrast with Trump. Instead, the remarks by Comey — a Republican with a sterling reputation among leaders of both parties — delivered from a lectern at FBI headquarters cast fresh doubt on Clinton’s own fitness and trustworthiness. [Hillary Clinton] [FBI] [Emails]
• Trump, Saddam and why people mistrust the media
  By David Weigel July 6 at 8:11 AM ? Trump: Saddam Hussein killed terrorists 'so good' At a July 5 rally in Raleigh, N.C., Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told supporters that Saddam Hussein was a "really bad guy," but that "he killed terrorists. He did that so good." (Reuters) By now, everyone's aware that Donald Trump wandered off message Tuesday night and told an audience in Raleigh, N.C., that Saddam Hussein, for all his sins, "killed terrorists." "He did that so good," the presumed GOP presidential nominee said. "They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists. It was over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism. You want to be a terrorist, you go to Iraq. It’s like Harvard, okay? So sad." There were spasms of outrage, from Hillary Clinton's campaign ("Donald Trump’s praise for brutal strongmen seemingly knows no bounds") to the perpetually disappointed-to-hear-this House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Hussein "was one of the 20th century’s most evil people"). In outrage mode, it was easy to ignore something Clinton spokesman Jake Sullivan said in his reaction. Trump didn't just praise Hussein. He "yet again lauded" him. As the Post's Jenna Johnson pointed out, Trump had used this language many, many times, with plenty of cameras pointed at him. The narrowing of the field, the fact that the rally was on prime time television -- some of that contributed to the furor, which began before anyone from team Clinton spoke out. [Trump] [Saddam Hussein] [Jihadist] Double standards] [Bizarre] [Media]
• Hillary Clinton’s email problems might be even worse than we thought
  By Chris Cillizza July 5 ? FBI Director James Comey said on July 5 that Hillary Clinton should not be charged for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. Here's what he said, in three minutes. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Here’s the good news for Hillary Clinton: The FBI has recommended that no charges be brought following its investigation of the former secretary of state's private email server. Here’s the bad news: Just about everything else. FBI Director James B. Comey dismantled large portions of Clinton's long-told story about her private server and what she sent or received on it during a stirring 15-minute news conference, after which he took no questions. While Comey exonerated Clinton, legally speaking, he provided huge amounts of fodder that could badly hamstring her in the court of public opinion. [Hillary Clinton] [Emails]
• Hillary: Ordinarily Awful or Uncommonly Awful?
  by Andrew Levine Throughout her far too long public life, Hillary Clinton has demonstrated repeatedly how clueless and inept she is; her tenure as Secretary of State is riddled with examples from around the world. Libya, Syria and Iraq are the jewels in the crown of the Queen of Chaos, as Diana Johnstone has aptly described her. But nearly everything that the Madam Secretary did at State went awry. She is the Empress of Ineptitude too. And yet, conventional wisdom has it that she is a foreign policy whiz. Conventional wisdom is often wrong, but this is extreme. How did it come about that the conventional wisdom and the truth got to be so wildly out of line? [Hillary Clinton] [Incompetence]
• Washington’s Not-So-Invisible Hand: It’s Not Economics, It’s Empire
  by Jason Hirthler Scottish philosopher Adam Smith famously noted the “invisible hand” of the market that shaped the character of economies near and far. The rightwing neoliberal capitalist movement, dominant in the West since the early Seventies, has turned this phrase into the sacrosanct dictum of its secular religion. All human behavior must be submitted to the “free market.” (This is the notional credo, but in practice corporate elites are subsidized, bailout out, and given every possible taxpayer benefit to ensure higher private profits.) So now, when nations fail, it is typically said in the media to be the product of a) a crazed dictator threatening counterintuitive genocide on his own people; or b) foolish state interventions by deranged socialist ideologues. In other words, if only these benighted nations would embrace free markets and free elections, all would be well. Imagine Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss admonishing “emerging” nations amid the collapsing scenery of the “developed” world. What’s more, the media conflates free markets with free elections in a risible construct called “free-market democracy,” despite the fact that markets are neither free nor a foundation of democracy, as the construct suggests. Moreover, absolutely free markets would instantly prohibit democracy, which is why democracy, and often free elections, must be thoroughly undermined to even enable free-market thinking to reign. In reality, it isn’t the market’s hidden hand at work in country after country, but Washington’s. It is Washington that intervenes to prop up failed businesses at the behest of corporate campaign donors. It is Washington that stages humanitarian interventions to unlock a guarded nation’s resources under the guise of defending the defenseless. It is Washington that negotiates supply gluts in the oil market, crashing the “market price” of crude and producing needless economic trouble for enemies Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and others.........
  Iran is slowly learning that it was foolish to negotiate in good faith with the United States. Washington rarely keeps its word. The State Department is less a source of policy prescriptions than the media-facing front for Pentagon and White House initiatives. The anti-nuclear pressure Secretary of State John Kerry’s department has applied to Tehran is simply part of a larger imperial plan dating back decades, recently reflected in Paul Wolfowitz foreign policy planning for the Clinton administration. Now Tehran, much to the growing disgust of the sharp-tongued Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are pinioned in a vice of an unprecedentedly intrusive IAEA inspections regime. [Imperialism] [Iran deal] [Renege]
• The Age of Disintegration: Neoliberalism, Interventionism, the Resource Curse, and a Fragmenting World
  Patrick Cockburn • June 28, 2016 We live in an age of disintegration. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Greater Middle East and Africa. Across the vast swath of territory between Pakistan and Nigeria, there are at least seven ongoing wars — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and South Sudan. These conflicts are extraordinarily destructive. They are tearing apart the countries in which they are taking place in ways that make it doubtful they will ever recover. Cities like Aleppo in Syria, Ramadi in Iraq, Taiz in Yemen, and Benghazi in Libya have been partly or entirely reduced to ruins. There are also at least three other serious insurgencies: in southeast Turkey, where Kurdish guerrillas are fighting the Turkish army, in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where a little-reported but ferocious guerrilla conflict is underway, and in northeast Nigeria and neighboring countries where Boko Haram continues to launch murderous attacks. All of these have a number of things in common: they are endless and seem never to produce definitive winners or losers. (Afghanistan has effectively been at war since 1979, Somalia since 1991.) They involve the destruction or dismemberment of unified nations, their de facto partition amid mass population movements and upheavals — well publicized in the case of Syria and Iraq, less so in places like South Sudan where more than 2.4 million people have been displaced in recent years. Add in one more similarity, no less crucial for being obvious: in most of these countries, where Islam is the dominant religion, extreme Salafi-Jihadi movements, including the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda, and the Taliban are essentially the only available vehicles for protest and rebellion. By now, they have completely replaced the socialist and nationalist movements that predominated in the twentieth century; these years have, that is, seen a remarkable reversion to religious, ethnic, and tribal identity, to movements that seek to establish their own exclusive territory by the persecution and expulsion of minorities. [Fragmentation] [Alienation] [Religion]
• Major New Brazil Events Expose the Fraud of Dilma’s Impeachment — and Temer’s Corruption
  Glenn Greenwald July 1 2016, 8:37 a.m. From the start of the campaign to impeach Brazil’s democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff, the primary justification was that she used a budget trick known as pedaladas (“peddling”: illegal delay of re-payments to state banks) to mask public debt. But this week, as the Senate conducts her impeachment trial, that accusation was obliterated: The Senate’s own expert report concluded there was “no indication of direct or indirect action by Dilma” in any such budgetary maneuvers. As the Associated Press put it: “Independent auditors hired by Brazil’s Senate said in a report released Monday that suspended President Dilma Rousseff didn’t engage in the creative accounting she was charged with at her impeachment trial.” In other words, the Senate’s own objective experts gutted the primary claim as to why impeachment was something other than a coup. The report did not fully exonerate Dilma, finding that she did open lines of credit without congressional approval, part of the impeachment case. But it was the pedaladas charge that dominated the debate all along. [Brazil] [Dilma] [Corruption]
• The Life of the Parties: The Influence of Influence in Washington
  by Thomas Frank June 30, 2016 Although it’s difficult to remember those days eight years ago when Democrats seemed to represent something idealistic and hopeful and brave, let’s take a moment and try to recall the stand Barack Obama once took against lobbyists. Those were the days when the nation was learning that George W. Bush’s Washington was, essentially, just a big playground for those lobbyists and that every government operation had been opened to the power of money. Righteous disgust filled the air. “Special interests” were much denounced. And a certain inspiring senator from Illinois promised that, should he be elected president, his administration would contain no lobbyists at all. The revolving door between government and K Street, he assured us, would turn no more. Instead, the nation got a lesson in all the other ways that “special interests” can get what they want — like simple class solidarity between the Ivy Leaguers who advise the president and the Ivy Leaguers who sell derivative securities to unsuspecting foreigners. As that inspiring young president filled his administration with Wall Street personnel, we learned that the revolving door still works, even if the people passing through it aren’t registered lobbyists. [Lobby] [Obama]
• Donald Trump’s Bill O’Reilly interview is an instant classic
  By Chris Cillizza June 30 at 8:18 AM ? Donald Trump went on The O'Reilly Factor Wednesday night to discuss, well, everything. These Trump-O'Reilly interviews are usually fascinating and this one didn't disappoint. … O'REILLY: Today Mr. Obama spoke about the ISIS attack in Istanbul. Saying we stand with the people of Turkey. More empty rhetoric. We don't stand with anyone. We will not do what is necessary to defeat this evil. The ISIS battle should be a major presidential campaign issue if Hillary Clinton is going to continue the policies of Barack Obama, every American should know that. On the other side Donald Trump needs to get very specific about his plan to defeat ISIS and the jihadi. He should spell it out. And that's the memo. Now, to the top story. Let's bring in the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who joins us now from Bangor, Maine. So, I'm looking for specifics tonight, Mr. Trump, do you have any for us? TRUMP: Well, I do have them and I hate to give them out because frankly if I win, it looks like I have a pretty good chance of winning, I don't like to be giving out all of this information. I'd like to just go and do the job. If you look at General Patton he wasn't one to give out information on television and then do whatever he has to do. O'REILLY: Yes. But I mean, you have got to have -- TRUMP: We're going to have to -- I know that but I have given out plenty. Believe me. I was the one that said take the oil. And I hate it to tell everybody and we should have taken the oil when we left and we didn't do it. And who has the oil now? ISIS has the oil. O'REILLY: Yes. But then Iran is going to stop people from Iraq. Taking the oil is not going to stop people from blowing up airports and killing people in night clubs. TRUMP: No, it's not. O'REILLY: And so, what I'm trying to get at here is look, I just laid out a very specific plan. All right? But it's a plan that doesn't have well we are going to invade here and we are going to have this many troops here. We're not that. But just a plan that you mobilize the most powerful alliance on the face of the earth. Okay? They commit, right, to killing savages. That's a plan. TRUMP: Hundred percent. Yes. [Trump] [ISIS]
• West cooperating secretly with Damascus against militants: Assad
  Syrian President Bashar al Assad said in an interview to be broadcast on Friday that Western countries had sent security officials to help his government covertly in fighting Islamist militants involved in Syria's war. Assad, in remarks to Australia's SBS News channel that were carried by Syrian state media, said Western states - who are strongly opposed to his rule but also face the threat of Islamist attacks at home - were secretly cooperating with his government in counter-terrorism operations. "They attack us politically and then they send officials to deal with us under the table, especially the security, including your [the Australian] government," Assad was quoted as saying. "They don't want to upset the United States. Actually most of the Western officials, they only repeat what the United States want them to say. This is the reality," he said. [US Syria policy] [Dissension]

• The ‘Dissent’ Memo That Isn’t
  June 29, 2016 The major U.S. media touts a State Department “dissent cable” urging military strikes on the Syrian military as a brave act by 51 diplomats, but it actually matches the views of Secretary Kerry and other top officials, notes Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter The memorandum by 51 State Department officials calling for U.S. military intervention in Syria has been treated in news media coverage as a case of “dissent” from existing Syria policy by individual officials involved in Syria policy. But the memo has all the earmarks of an initiative that had the blessing of the most senior officials in the department – including Secretary of State John Kerry himself – rather than having been put together by individual officials entirely on their own. And it may mark the beginning of an effort to take advantage of the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Aug. 30, 2013, claims to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but that evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited. [State Department photo] U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Aug. 30, 2013, claims to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but that evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited. [State Department photo] The memo called for a “more militarily assertive US role” in the Syrian conflict in the form of “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed US-led diplomatic process.“ That is precisely the policy option that Secretary of State Kerry has been widely reported to have championed privately for years. As the story in the New York Times, which published the supposedly confidential memo, noted, “[H]igher-level State Department officials are known to share their concerns.” The submission of the memo through the State Department’s “dissent channel” appears to have been a device to make it appear entirely independent of senior officials in the department. According to the State Department regulation on the “dissent channel,” it is to be used only when dissenting views “cannot be communicated in a full and timely manner through regular operating channels or procedures” or “in a manner which protects the author from any penalty, reprisal, or recrimination.” [US Syria policy] [Hillary Clinton] [Bombing
• A more-selective US grand strategy
  June 28, 2016 From the British vote to exit the European Union to Trump rallies in the United States, democratic polities are awash in a wave of populist dissatisfaction with perceived failure of governments to serve the interests of ordinary citizens. In particular, Trump alleges that US foreign policy in Asia has led to countries such as China taking unfair advantage of the US in trade deals while allowing allies such as South Korea and Japan to underpay for military protection US taxpayers provide. At the same time, the expensive and permanent policy of maintaining a US leadership role in Asia, intended to assuage regional conflict and maintain an environment conducive to prosperity for the US and its allies, has not prevented a new crisis with China. The sense that the US is militarily over-engaged throughout the world, with counterproductive results, has led many analysts to advocate that it adopt an “offshore balancing” grand strategy. Rather than garrisoning conflict-prone regions with forward-deployed forces, the United States would maintain a more modest-sized military based in its own territory, intervening overseas only if and when this was necessary to stave off a direct and dire threat to the homeland. An offshore balancing grand strategy might mean an “Amexit” from Asia, with Washington withdrawing from alliances and moving out of military bases. [US global strategy] [Offshore balancing]
• Genocidal Corporate Media
  NATO Terrorists are invading Syria, and the Syria government is blamed for the ensuing disasters By Mark Taliano Global Research, June 29, 2016 Genocidal corporate media presstitutes follow the all-too-familiar script of blaming the victim for the crimes perpetrated by aggressor nations. NATO terrorists, for example, are invading and occupying Syria, and the Syria government is blamed for the ensuing disasters, but the presstitutes omit this this from their narratives and instead find creative ways to blame the al Assad government whose duty it is to protect Syria, its sovereignty, and its territorial integrity. When terrorists are occupying cities, as they do in Syria, innocent people will always be victimized, including during government operations to clear out the terrorist infestations, but the presstitutes blame the Syrian government, not the NATO terrorists. President Assad is fraudulently demonized for a war perpetrated by aggressors who are tasked with destroying Syria so the West can further the destruction under a fraudulent Responsibility To Protect (R2P) mandate, wherein criminal West promises to save Syrians from the West’s own terrorists. It’s basically a mafia –style protection racket writ large: If Assad steps down, we’ll “protect you” and replace him with a Wahhabi stooge government, and everyone will be happy. The reality of course, is that if the Western terrorists win the war, Syria will be totally destroyed, much like Libya, Iraq, and the Ukraine. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Media]
• United States bombings of other countries
  William Blum
  It is a scandal in contemporary international law, don’t forget, that while “wanton destruction of towns, cities and villages” is a war crime of long standing, the bombing of cities from airplanes goes not only unpunished but virtually unaccused. Air bombardment is state terrorism, the terrorism of the rich. It has burned up and blasted apart more innocents in the past six decades than have all the antistate terrorists who ever lived. Something has benumbed our consciousness against this reality. In the United States we would not consider for the presidency a man who had once thrown a bomb into a crowded restaurant, but we are happy to elect a man who once dropped bombs from airplanes that destroyed not only restaurants but the buildings that contained them and the neighborhoods that surrounded them. I went to Iraq after the Gulf war and saw for myself what the bombs did; “wanton destruction” is just the term for it. – C. Douglas Lummis, political scientist 1 The above was written in 1994, before the wanton destruction generated by the bombing of Yugoslavia, another in a long list of countries the United States has bombarded since the end of World War II, which is presented below. There appears to be something about launching bombs or missiles from afar onto cities and people that appeals to American military and political leaders. In part it has to do with a conscious desire to not risk American lives in ground combat. And in part, perhaps not entirely conscious, it has to do with not wishing to look upon the gory remains of the victims, allowing American GIs and TV viewers at home to cling to their warm fuzzy feelings about themselves, their government, and their marvelous “family values”. Washington officials are careful to distinguish between the explosives the US drops from the sky and “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD), which only the officially-designated enemies (ODE) are depraved enough to use. The US government speaks sternly of WMD, defining them as nuclear, chemical and biological in nature, and “indiscriminate” (meaning their use can’t be limited to military objectives), as opposed to the likes of American “precision” cruise missiles. This is indeed a shaky semantic leg to stand on, given the well-known extremely extensive damage to non-military targets, including numerous residences, schools and hospitals, even from American “smart” bombs, in almost all of the bombings listed below. [US global strategy] [Bombing]
• How American Politics Went Insane
  It happened gradually—and until the U.S. figures out how to treat the problem, it will only get worse.
  Phil Toledano
  It’s 2020, four years from now. The campaign is under way to succeed the president, who is retiring after a single wretched term. Voters are angrier than ever—at politicians, at compromisers, at the establishment. Congress and the White House seem incapable of working together on anything, even when their interests align. With lawmaking at a standstill, the president’s use of executive orders and regulatory discretion has reached a level that Congress views as dictatorial—not that Congress can do anything about it, except file lawsuits that the divided Supreme Court, its three vacancies unfilled, has been unable to resolve. On Capitol Hill, Speaker Paul Ryan resigned after proving unable to pass a budget, or much else. The House burned through two more speakers and one “acting” speaker, a job invented following four speakerless months. The Senate, meanwhile, is tied in knots by wannabe presidents and aspiring talk-show hosts, who use the chamber as a social-media platform to build their brands by obstructing—well, everything. The Defense Department is among hundreds of agencies that have not been reauthorized, the government has shut down three times, and, yes, it finally happened: The United States briefly defaulted on the national debt, precipitating a market collapse and an economic downturn. No one wanted that outcome, but no one was able to prevent it. [Decline]
• No bombshells, but new details on Benghazi in GOP report
  Highlights Release comes ahead of Hillary Clinton’s nomination at Democratic convention Democrats say report is designed to hurt former secretary of state in presidential race Committee spent two years investigating attack that left four Americans dead in Libya By Anita Kumar and Hannah Allam McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Tuesday released their long-awaited report on the fatal attacks in Benghazi, concluding that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her team failed to act on intelligence that warned of the risks posed by violent extremists. There’s no bombshell revelation in the GOP-led committee’s 800-page report, which offers a more detailed look at the bureaucratic failings revealed by previous inquiries. Still, the pages of criticism of Clinton’s response to security concerns before the attack and her handling of the aftermath are sure to provide fresh fodder against the Democratic candidate in a particularly nasty presidential election. “Washington had access to real time information but that real time information did not inform or instruct the decisions made,” said committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. at a news conference on Capitol Hill in which he repeatedly urged Americans to read the report. [Benghazi] [Libya] [Hillary Clinton]
• White House: Blame to share for failed Libya aftermath
  By JOSH LEDERMAN and KATHLEEN HENNESSEY Apr. 11, 2016 3:22 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House sought Monday to share the blame for the failed aftermath of the 2011 intervention in Libya, arguing the U.S. and its NATO allies asked too few questions about what would follow after dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled. A day after President Barack Obama called that failure the worst mistake of his presidency, the White House said Obama believed more should have been done to fill the power vacuum. Although the U.S. played a leading role in that effort, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama's regrets extended to what "the United States and the rest of the members of our coalition didn't do." "The president has tried to apply this lesson in considering the use of military and other circumstances," Earnest said, "that asking the question about what situation will prevail and what sort of commitments from the international community will be required after that military intervention has been ordered by the commander in chief." Obama, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," said that his biggest mistake was "probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya." [Libya] [Obama]
• House Republicans issue report on Benghazi attacks but find no new evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton
  By Karen DeYoung June 28 at 1:50 PM ? A final report issued by the Republican-majority committee that investigated the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, found fault with virtually every element of the executive-branch response to the attacks but provided no new evidence of specific wrongdoing by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A committee news release said the report “fundamentally changes the public’s understanding of the 2012 terrorist attacks that killed four Americans,” including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens. [Benghazi] [Libya] [Hillary Clinton]
• Hillary Clinton’s email story continues to get harder and harder to believe
  By Chris Cillizza June 28 at 11:52 AM ? 8 takeaways from the Inspector General's report on Hillary Clinton’s emails The Inspector General's office said on May 25 that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email account was "not an appropriate method" for preserving those emails. (Peter Stevenson,Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) On Monday night, the Associated Press published a piece noting the release of an additional 165 pages of emails Hillary Clinton sent from her private email address while serving as secretary of state. These were emails that had never been previously released and only were made public because of a court order in response to a request from a conservative group. And yet again, the emails poke holes in Clinton's initial explanation for why she decided to exclusively use a private email server for her electronic correspondence while serving as the nation's top diplomat. Let's start with this from the AP story: "The emails were not among the 55,000 pages of work-related messages that Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence." [Hillary Clinton] [email]
• Clinton regains double-digit lead over Trump: Reuters/Ipsos poll
  NEW YORK | By Chris Kahn Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton regained a double-digit lead over Republican rival Donald Trump this week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday. The June 20-24 poll showed that 46.6 percent of likely American voters supported Clinton while 33.3 percent supported Trump. Another 20.1 percent said they would support neither candidate. [US_election16]
• The National Endowment for Democracy: Not National and Not for Democracy
  Tony Cartalucci Using a front to hide illegal or immoral activities has been a feature of human criminality since the beginning of human civilization itself. Facades, both ideological and economical, have helped criminal enterprises conceal the true nature of their activities for centuries. In ages past, organized religion would often take systems of legitimate philosophy and spirituality, and transform them into a means of organizing the masses for the benefit of an elite few, often those heading empires, kingdoms, or nation-states. More recently, patriotism and now the notion of “democracy” have been used successfully by similar cadres of special interests to conceal their self-serving agendas behind notions likely to recruit support from large segments of a population that would otherwise be disinterested. There is no example of this more transparent than that of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to its own website, it claims: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, NED makes more than 1,200 grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries. “The growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world” sounds noble enough. One would expect, then, that the NED would be led by a collection of some of the most notable activists involved in the empowerment of “the people.” Instead, upon NED’s board of directors, we find people representing corporate-financier interests notorious for instead, exploiting and subjugating “the people.” Unfortunately, for those receiving the millions upon millions of dollars the NED hands out annually to “nongovernmental organizations” (NGOs) around the world, few bother to actually check who it is underwriting their daily activities, and fewer still have the integrity to both turn down the money let alone inform the people they claim to represent just who is attempting to reach into their respective nations and subvert their political systems, and to what end. Quite literally, each and every member of the NED’s board of directors represents Fortune 500 corporations, insidious corporate-financier funded policy think-tanks, and a wide variety of other obvious conflicts of interest unbecoming of an organization truly interested in, “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.” [NED] [Front] [NGO]
• Bernie’s Capitulation and Hillary’s Syrian War to Come
  by Gary Leupp In his quasi-concession speech last Thursday, broadcast without a live audience (probably due to the fear of loud boos), Bernie Sanders began with the observation, “Election days come and go. But political and social revolutions that attempt to transform our society never end.” In other words: Even if I concede, I want the movement I generated to continue. Citing various ongoing mass movements, he declared, “And that’s what this campaign has been about over this past year. That’s what the political revolution is all about.” Subtext: It’s all about bringing you kids into the Democratic Party—in order to change it.
  While Sanders prepares to throw in the towel, Chintonites in the State Department posture to get her attention as most useful allies in her Syrian “no fly zone” plans. It’s unusual for 51 State Department employees to not only sign and submit to their department superiors, but to leak to the press, a petition urging another blatantly illegal and inevitably disastrous, illegal, murderous regime-change war, such as the U.S. has conducted in Iraq and Libya. That it has occurred is doubtless (as former high-ranking CIA agent Ray McGovern has opined on RT TV) a bid by Hillary Clinton-appointed low-ranking State Department officials to curry favor with the past Goldwater Girl and future President Clinton (known to be a bloodthirsty soulless Kissinger in a pantsuit hell-bent to leave her mark on the Middle East—just like the way her husband left his mark on the butchered, still-bleeding Balkans that our press never mentions). Some promotions in store, no doubt. Isn’t it obvious that they’re lining up support for a showdown with Russia? The Wall Street Journal reports: “Obama administration officials have expressed concern that attacking the Assad regime could lead to a direct conflict with Russia and Iran.” Well, duh. [Sanders] [Hillary Clinton] [US Syria policy] [Russia confrontation]
• Former Ambassador Robert Ford on the State Department Mutiny on Syria
  By Robin Wright Ford quit the Foreign Service in 2014 in frustration. “I could no longer defend U.S. policy” on Syria, he said. Photograph by Chip Somodevilla / Getty The Obama Administration has long been divided over what to do about Syria. The crisis produced one of the biggest differences between President Obama and Hillary Clinton, his first Secretary of State. The policy chasm has only deepened during the five years of conflict, which has now reportedly claimed almost half a million lives. The State Department acknowledged tersely on Friday that more than fifty American diplomats had recently submitted a letter of complaint about U.S. policy in Syria through its Dissent Channel, a sort of complaint box through which employees can voice their disagreement with official policy without fear of reprisal. Travelling in Europe, Secretary John Kerry told reporters, “I think it’s an important statement and I respect the process very, very much, and I will probably meet with people or have a chance to talk when we get back.” [US Syria policy] [Hawk]
• Why America’s men aren’t working
  By Ylan Q. Mui June 20 The Empire State Building stands past the silhouette of a construction worker before the start of a topping-out ceremony at 10 Hudson Yards in New York on Oct. 7, 2015. (John Taggart/Bloomberg News) The national unemployment rate has fallen by more than half since the nation emerged from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It peaked at 10 percent in 2010 and stood at just 4.7 percent last month. That’s mostly good news: Private employers have added more than 14 million jobs. About 2 million people have been out of a job for six months or longer, far too many but only about a quarter of the number of long-term unemployed people seven years ago. By almost every measure, the labor market has made incredible progress. But there’s one statistic that has been vexing economists. The size of the nation’s workforce -- known as the labor force participation rate -- continues to fall. Since the start of the downturn, the percentage of that population that has a job or is looking for one has dropped more than 3 percentage points, to 62.6 percent, a level not seen since the 1970s. The problem is particularly pronounced among men between the ages of 25 and 54, traditionally considered the prime working years. Their participation rate has been declining for decades, but the drop-off accelerated during the recession. The high mark was 98 percent in 1954, and it now stands at 88 percent. A new analysis from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, slated for release Monday, found that the United States now has the third-lowest participation rate for “prime-age men” among the world’s developed countries.
  Instead, the CEA concludes that the problem is one of education and the erosion of demand for low-skilled workers. More than 90 percent of college-educated men are in the workforce, compared with 83 percent of those with a high school diploma or less. It’s a theme seen time and again in our increasingly globalized and high-tech economy: Blue-collar jobs that were once the cornerstone of the middle class get outsourced or replaced by automation.
  The report also explores one more unorthodox explanation: the high number of men who have been incarcerated. The CEA notes that the U.S. prison population has grown significantly since 1990 and is far above that of any other developed country. [Employment] [Offshoring] [Prisoners]
• The Pentagon’s Real $trategy
  Keeping the Money Flowing
  by Andrew Cockburn These days, lamenting the apparently aimless character of Washington’s military operations in the Greater Middle East has become conventional wisdom among administration critics of every sort. Senator John McCain thunders that “this president has no strategy to successfully reverse the tide of slaughter and mayhem” in that region. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies bemoans the “lack of a viable and public strategy.” Andrew Bacevich suggests that “there is no strategy. None. Zilch.” After 15 years of grinding war with no obvious end in sight, U.S. military operations certainly deserve such obloquy. But the pundit outrage may be misplaced. Focusing on Washington rather than on distant war zones, it becomes clear that the military establishment does indeed have a strategy, a highly successful one, which is to protect and enhance its own prosperity. [MISCOM] [Pentagon] [Nuclear weapons]
• Samantha Power, Henry Kissinger & Imperial Delusions
  by Daniel Kovalik Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet shaking hands with Kissinger in 1976, Archivo General Histórico del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, licensed under CC BY 2.0 Quite revealingly, the self-proclaimed crusader against genocide, Samantha Power, was awarded the 2016 Henry A. Kissinger Prize in Berlin. That Power would be awarded a prize named after one of the world’s great génocidaires, and that she would happily accept it, proves what many of us have believed all along – that she is more the clever apologist for U.S. crimes than a bona fide human rights advocate. The problem with Power all along has been that her refusal to acknowledge the incontrovertible fact that the U.S., as exemplified by such figures as Henry Kissinger himself, is in reality the world leader in war crimes commission, and an active facilitator of genocide. The U.S. is not, as Power has claimed throughout her career, a force for halting such evils. However, Power has done an impressive job in advancing this myth, and in the process in perpetuating the false belief that the world would be better off if only the U.S. were more active militarily throughout the world. In so doing, Power, who is lauded as some great human rights advocate, probably does more than any other public figure to harm the cause of global human rights. [Samantha Power] [Humanitarian intervention]
• Donald Trump falls behind in US presidential polls
  A string of controversial remarks seems to be taking a toll on the Republican candidate Trump’s conspiracy theories fall flat by: Courtney Weaver and Shawn Donnan in Washington and Barney Jopson in Orlando Donald Trump has taken a fall in the polls, raising the question of whether controversial remarks by the presumptive Republican nominee are catching up with him. Two new opinion surveys show that the candidate has fallen significantly behind rival Hillary Clinton nationally after he accused a Hispanic-American judge of bias against him because of his Mexican heritage. He later suggested that he should be congratulated for “being right on Islamic terrorism” following Sunday’s attack in Orlando. Seventy per cent of Americans now have negative views of Mr Trump, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Wednesday, his highest disapproval rating since the 2016 campaign began. [US_Election16] [Trump]
• U.S. sanctions agency beefs up staff to help implement Iran deal
  Washington | By Yeganeh Torbati U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attend a bilateral meeting in Vienna, Austria, May 17, 2016. Reuters/Leonhard Foeger The chief U.S. agency in charge of implementing sanctions has added staff to help speed up processing applications from businesses hoping to trade with Iran, a U.S. Treasury official said on Thursday. The beefing up of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control comes as businesses and lawyers say that often the answers they receive from the agency on whether certain trade is allowed in Iran is vague, non-committal and too slow to facilitate fast-moving business decisions. Iranian officials have also complained that the country is not bearing the full economic fruits of the deal, and have urged the United States to do more to clarify the sanctions relief and to encourage commercial business deals. [Iran deal] [Treasury] [Governance]
• Favorability of Trump’s GOP Lowest in Bloomberg Poll’s History
  John McCormick June 16, 2016 — 9:00 AM NZST Just 32 percent of Americans view the Republican Party favorably as it prepares to formally nominate Donald Trump for president, the latest Bloomberg Politics national poll shows, the lowest level recorded since the poll’s inception in September 2009. The Democratic Party, by contrast, is seen favorably by 49 percent. Congress is viewed favorably by just 24 percent, the lowest since March 2010 and a response that found near bipartisan agreement in the poll. [Public opinion] [Governance]
• No, the intervention in Libya wasn't a success
  Ian Sinclair 15 June 2016 Shadi Hamid's claims that the Western war in Libya went well ignore significant evidence of disaster. Shadi Hamid, a well-respected analyst with the Brookings Institution thinktank, recently published an article titled ‘Everyone says the Libya intervention was a failure. They’re wrong’. Contradicting even the US President’s analysis of the 2011 NATO intervention – Obama is reported to describe it as a “shit show” – Hamid asserts the “intervention was successful”, later referring to the “justness of the military intervention” in Libya. As the Libyan intervention was supported by 98 percent of British MPs and the majority of the British media, but has since been largely forgotten, it is worth interrogating Hamid’s claims. Protecting civilians? Hamid begins by stating “the goal” of the intervention “was to protect civilians and prevent a massacre”, noting “this is what was achieved”. This was certainly how the NATO action was officially justified and presented to the Western publics in 2011 but, as Noam Chomsky has long noted, “it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric” because “deeds commonly tell a different story”. [Libya]
• Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure
  As Ferdinand Marcos used his fortune to cling to power, he found an ally in Trump’s campaign chairman. By Kenneth P. Vogel | June 10, 2016 . When Paul Manafort met Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s, each had something the other wanted. Marcos, then in his third decade as leader of the Philippines, had developed a reputation in Washington as a stalwart ally in the fight against communism. But he was facing rising concerns about rampant corruption, plundering of public resources and human rights violations under his increasingly despotic leadership, during which Amnesty International now estimates 34,000 people were tortured and 3,240 killed. Meanwhile, Marcos amassed a fortune estimated at $10 billion, spending big on paintings by Pissarro and Manet, a fleet of private planes and helicopters and Mercedes-Benzes. [Trump] [Lobby]
• Orlando gunman said he carried out attack to get ‘Americans to stop bombing his country,’ witness says
  By Katie Zezima, Matt Zapotosky, Adam Goldman and Mark Berman June 14 at 6:32 PM ? Survivor describes being trapped in the bathroom with the Orlando gunman ? ? Patience Carter was trapped in a bathroom with her two friends and the gunman during the Pulse massacre. During a press conference at Florida Hospital on Tuesday, she gave her chilling account of what happened. (Reuters) ORLANDO — The gunman who opened fire inside a nightclub here said he carried out the attack because he wanted “Americans to stop bombing his country,” according to a witness who survived the rampage. This account from Patience Carter, a 20-year-old who was inside the club during a three-hour hostage standoff, offers the first glimpse at what the shooter said spurred him to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Carter said the gunman made his claims about his motivation during the same 911 call in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. At one point, while about two dozen hostages were in the bathrooms inside Pulse, Carter said the gunman asked if there were any black people in the room. When one man said yes, the shooter said, “‘You know I don’t have a problem with black people,'” Carter recalled during a news conference. She said he added: “‘This is about my country. You guys suffered enough.'” These comments further add to the uncertainty regarding what may have inspired the gunman, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, who was born in the United States to parents from Afghanistan. At various points, Mateen invoked opposing militant groups, making “inflammatory and contradictory” comments, said FBI Director James B. Comey. [Imperialism] [Afghanistan] [Blowback]
• Perverting History at NPR: Commenting on Orlando, Terrorism Reporter Reverses Political Lesson of Madrid Blast
  by Sam Husseini Shortly before noon on Sunday (6/12/16), during NPR‘s national coverage of the horrific shooting in Orlando, NPR “counter-terrorism correspondent” Dina Temple-Raston made a critical false claim that deserves an on-air correction. NPR‘s hosts were talking about the Orlando shooting, terrorism and the US election. They asked Temple-Raston to chime in on the issue, and she drew a parallel with Spain, claiming that when the 2004 Madrid train attacks happened just before the Spanish election, “the more conservative candidate ended up winning.” This is exactly backwards. In fact, the incumbent government, led by the conservative People’s Party, had brought the country into the Iraq War a year before against public opposition, and feared that if the attack were shown to be Mideast-related, voters would be furious. The day of the attack, March 11, 2004, the Spanish government had the United Nations Security Council pass resolution 1530, which condemned in “the strongest terms the bomb attacks in Madrid, Spain, perpetrated by the terrorist group ETA.” Three days later, the day of the election, Al Qaeda claimed responsibility. [Imperialism] [Blowback] [Terrorism]
• Hillary Clinton’s Project For A New American Century
  by Dan Wright Here we go again. Earlier this year, some were surprised to see Project For The New American Century (PNAC) co-founder and longtime DC fixture Robert Kagan endorse former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president. They shouldn’t have been. As is now clear from a policy paper [PDF] published last month, the neoconservatives are going all-in on Hillary Clinton being the best vessel for American power in the years ahead. The paper, titled “Expanding American Power,” was published by the Center for a New American Security, a Democratic Party-friendly think tank co-founded and led by former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy. Flournoy served in the Obama Administration under Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and is widely considered to be the frontrunner for the next secretary of defense, should Hillary Clinton become president. [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• Qatar convicts Dutch woman held 'after being raped'
  Image caption Sexual acts by non-married people are punishable under Qatar's penal code A court in Qatar has convicted a Dutch woman of having sex outside marriage after she told police she was raped. The 22-year-old was handed a suspended sentence and fined $824 (£580). She will also be deported. Her lawyer said her drink had been spiked at a Doha hotel in March and she had woken up in a stranger's flat, where she realised she had been raped. Her alleged attacker, who said the sex was consensual, was sentenced to 100 lashes for having sex outside marriage. He will be given a further 40 lashes for consuming alcohol. The woman has been detained since making the allegation three months ago, but her case only came to light over the weekend when her family decided to go public. [Qatar] [Human rights]
• New Hillary Scandal Checks All the Boxes on the Clinton Controversy Bingo Card
  By Josh Voorhees Hillary Clinton had an undeniably great day on Thursday, but Friday brought a stark reminder that as the presumptive Democratic nominee looks ahead to the general election, there will be plenty of people justifiably looking into her past. Thanks to a newly released batch of State Department emails, ABC News was able to revisit the story of Rajiv Fernando, a wealthy securities trader who gave heavily to both Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and the Clinton Foundation—and who just so happened to land himself a plum spot on a sensitive government intelligence advisory panel after Hillary became secretary of state. Politicos rewarding donors is sadly not uncommon but what makes this particular example stand out is Fernando’s lack of qualifications for a job that involved advising the secretary of state—and, by extension, the president of the United States—on the topic of nuclear weapons. And if that weren’t enough, the story also looks an awfully lot like a Clinton Controversy Bingo Card. In addition to the appearance of quid pro quo with a major fundraiser, we also have a clear lack of transparency, Clinton loyalists going to great lengths to protect her, questions over access to sensitive government information, and, of course, Hillary’s private email account. You can read ABC’s full blow-by-blow here, but the short version is this: The rest of the International Security Advisory Board was filled with nuclear scientists, past Cabinet secretaries, and former members of Congress. But the only thing Fernando had to offer the group was, in ABC’s words, “his technological know-how,” which none of his fellow panelists seemed to find all that helpful. Fernando was so out of place, in fact, that one board member told ABC that none of his colleagues could figure out why he was even there. [Hillary Clinton] [Corruption]
• Bern Rate: the Once and Future Sandernistas
  by Jeffrey St. Clair om It ended the way it began, with Bernie Sanders drawing huge energetic crowds and winning few votes from blacks and Hispanics. Sanders could never connect with the most vulnerable voters in the country. That fact alone doomed his campaign. Those vast crowds seemed to have acted on Sanders like a kind of opiate, numbing him to the political reality of his campaign. As noted in a recent Politico article, the Sanders campaign staff had known for months that the senator had no path to victory. Instead of being honest with their supporters, the Sanders campaign fed them one illusory scenario after another. Even Sanders himself got seduced by the fairy tale. There’s no loyalty anymore. In that same Politco article, Sanders’s top political hired-hacks took pleasure in plunging anonymous knives into their leader’s back, blaming him for every misstep in the campaign. These professional turncoats are simply trying to scrub any lingering stains of their own hands and polish up their resumés for a job with Team Clinton. On the other hand, Bernie hired these deplorable operatives. You get what you pay for. The dream campaign came to an abrupt end with Sanders’s crushing defeat in California. Bernie camped out in the Golden State for two weeks, doing three or four large events a day. The senator seemed energized by the sunshine and the adoring crowds. He was transfixed by his own hype. But Sanders never had any real chance to win California. The demographics and party establishment were aligned against him. California is a machine state and Sanders didn’t throw enough monkeywrenches into the gears. In the end, he lost by more than 400,000 votes, a humiliating margin that can’t be written off to voter suppression or hacked machines. Such conspiracy mongering only serves to deflect attention from the real defects that fatally crippled the Sanders campaign. The stakes are too high to surrender to magical thinking. Running as an economic revolutionary, Sanders spent most of his time in the cozy milieu of college campuses instead of in desolate urban landscapes or working-class suburbs. It’s hard to earn the trust of poor people when you don’t spend much time in their company. [Sanders]
• Why isn’t Havana among Cuban cities U.S. airlines can now serve?
  By Franco Ordoñez Washington — The United States announced Friday that six U.S. airlines have received permission to provide air service to Cuba beginning in the fall – another step that is likely to vastly increase the number of Americans traveling to the island, challenging its tourism infrastructure. But the government did not approve any service from the United States to Havana, the island nation’s capital. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said on a Department of Transportation blog that he’s working with U.S. airlines on proposals for Havana service, but that those routes will be announced at a later date. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article83077297.html#storylink=cpy [Cuba deal]
• Special Operations Command looks to U.S. companies for homemade AK-47s
  By Thomas Gibbons-Neff June 10 at 12:44 PM ? U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees some of America’s most elite forces, is exploring the possibility of having American companies manufacture Russian-designed weapons, such as the AK-47, that are ubiquitous in war zones. First reported by the Tampa Bay Times, Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, posted a “sources sought” solicitation for non-standard weapons on a federal contracting site early last month. In April, the command posted a similar notice for non-standard weapon ammunition. The term “non standard” is used for weapons not frequently employed by the United States or its NATO allies. [Report: U.S. contractor tried to arm Syrian rebels with defective grenades By] “For this solicitation, we are exploring capabilities and capacity within [the United States’] industrial base to build the types of weapons many of our foreign partners use,” Navy Cmdr. Matt Allen, a SOCOM spokesman, said in an email. SOCOM’s solicitation includes weapons such as the iconic “AK-47? rifle, a catchall designator for Kalashnikov-variant rifles designed to fire a certain type of ammunition and often identified by their distinctive curved magazines. Other weapons include the SVD, a unique looking sniper rifle that has likely killed thousands of U.S. troops since it was first introduced in the years leading up to the Vietnam War. Additionally, Russian medium and heavy machine guns as well as 14.5mm aircraft guns are included in the notice. While the United States has sent American-made weapons to the Afghan military and Iraqi security forces, the presence of U.S. equipment in foreign hands can be problematic. Recently, U.S.-backed groups in Syria have been spotted with American equipment, including heavy machine guns and sniper rifles. Although likely more accurate than their Soviet-style counterparts, U.S. weapons can make the fighters carrying them targets for other factions. Aside from standing out, U.S. weapons can also be difficult to maintain, prompting Special Operations Command and the CIA to procure and supply weapons that their allies are used to fighting with, such as Kalashnikovs. To do this, the U.S. government often contracts with smaller companies to buy and ship the weapons. [Special operations] [False flag]
• Assad pledges more bloodshed in Syria, says the peace process has failed
  Syria’s Assad vows to crush Islamic State amid dual offensives ?Play Video1:15 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vows to defeat Islamic State as his troops advance against the militants in two crucial provinces. (Reuters) By Liz Sly June 7 at 12:41 PM ? BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad signaled Tuesday that his government intends to escalate military efforts to crush the five-year-old uprising against his rule, saying the bloodshed will not end until he has regained control over all areas of Syria lost to the rebellion. His tough words came amid indications that Russia is preparing to reengage in the war in support of Assad, almost three months after it threw its support behind a U.S.-backed cease-fire and announced it was withdrawing most of its military from Syria. The violence has already been ticking up, with government and Russian warplanes conducting air raids over northern Syria in the past week and rebels launching an offensive to recapture territory south of the city of Aleppo. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia tripled the number of its airstrikes over a four-day period last week, to levels not seen since before the imposition of the cessation of hostilities in late February. Assad’s comments, made in an address to a newly installed parliament in Damascus, suggested that he and his Russian allies are preparing for a full-scale resumption of the war, with Aleppo as their first target [Syria] [Media]
• When Phoenix Came to Thanh Phong: Bob Kerrey and War Crimes as Policy in Vietnam
  by Douglas Valentine On May 16, 2016, former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey was named chairman of Fulbright University, a US-backed college with ties to the State Department in Ho Chi Minh City. During his recent visit to Vietnam, President Barack Obama heaped praise on Kerrey, a former Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. What Obama failed to mention is that Kerrey also supervised one of the most atrocious war crimes of that ghastly war. The unit he lead killed women and children during an assassination mission in 1969. Some of the victims had their throats slit. Instead of being charged with war crimes, Kerrey was awarded a Medal of Honor for his role in another operation that year in Nha Trong Bay. Today we reprint Douglas Valentine’s ground-breaking piece on Kerrey’s raid on Thanh Phong Village that appear in the May 2001 edition of CounterPunch. –Jeffrey St. Clair By now everybody knows that former Senator Bob Kerrey led a seven-member team of Navy Seals into Thanh Phong village in February 1969, and murdered in cold blood more than a dozen women and children. What hardly anyone knows, and what no one in the press is talking about (although many of them know), is that Kerrey was on a CIA mission, and its specific purpose was to destroy that village of civilian peasants. It was illegal, premeditated mass murder and it was a war crime. And it’s time to hold the CIA responsible. It’s time for a war crimes tribunal to examine the CIA’s illegal activities during and since the Vietnam War. [Vietnam] [CIA] [War crimes]
• The Increasingly Unstable United States
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 426, June 1, 2016 We are used to thinking of instability in states as being located primarily in the global South. It is about those regions that pundits and politicians in the global North speak of "failed states" in which there are "civil wars." Life is very uncertain for the inhabitants of these regions. There is massive displacement of populations and efforts to flee these regions to "safer" parts of the world. These safer parts are supposed to have more jobs and higher standards of living. In particular, the United States has been seen as the migratory goal of a very large percentage of the world's population. This was once largely true. In the period that ran roughly from 1945 to 1970, the United States was the hegemonic power in the world-system in which life was indeed better economically and socially for its inhabitants. And while the frontiers for immigrants were not exactly open, those migrants who managed to arrive in one way or another were by and large content with what they regarded as their good fortune. And others from the countries of origin of the successful immigrants kept trying to follow in their footsteps. In this period, there was very little emigration from the United States other than on a temporary basis to take very well-paying employment as economic, political, or military mercenaries. This golden era of U.S. dominance of the world-system began to come undone circa 1970 and has been unraveling ever since, and increasingly. What are the signs of this? There are many, some of them within the United States itself and some of them in changing attitudes of the rest of the world towards the United States. [Decline]
• What Asia needs to know about Trump
  5 June 2016 Author: T J Pempel, UC Berkeley Virtually every Asian academic, business leader, policymaker or taxi driver I have encountered in the last six months has, within minutes, pummelled me for answers to the Trump question. They are flabbergasted that a man so bereft of political experience, foreign policy knowhow and macroeconomic basics, who radiates disdain for foreigners, women and the disabled, has come to dominate the American political dialogue. Bemused befuddlement at a self-aggrandising buffoon has given way to ripening anxiety that he may well become the next occupant of the Oval Office, unleashing disastrous consequences for economic and security relations across the Asia Pacific. There are four points that Asians must understand about the Trump phenomenon. First, the election has almost nothing to do with Asia. Despite Trump’s periodic pronouncements about the desirability of nuclear weapons for Japan and South Korea, his calls for high tariffs on Chinese exports and his scorn for free trade agreements, foreign policy remains far from the minds of most voters in 2016. Driving American voters today is a toxic cocktail of anger at what appears to be a rigged economic system serviced by a self-serving political class. [Trump]
• Hillary Comes Out as the War Party Candidate
  by Diana Johnstone On June 2, a few days before the California primary, Hillary Clinton gave up trying to compete with Bernie Sanders on domestic policy. Instead, she zeroed in on the soft target of Donald Trump’s most “bizarre rants” in order to present herself as experienced and reasonable. Evidently taking her Democratic Party nomination for granted, she is positioning herself as the perfect candidate for hawkish Republicans. Choosing to speak in San Diego, home base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, on a platform draped with 19 American flags and preceded by half an hour of military marching music, Hillary Clinton was certain of finding a friendly audience for her celebration of American “strength”, “values” and “exceptionalism”. Cheered on by a military audience, Hillary was already assuming the role to which she most ardently aspires: that of Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. [Hillary Clinton] [Militarisation]
• Mission creep or mission rush?
  Paul Rogers 2 June 2016 The United States's military deployments in Iraq signal the escalation of the anti-ISIS war. In a wider context this is a profound moment. The assault on Fallujah has begun. United States-trained Iraqi army units supported by Shi’a militias and Iranian military personnel are attempting to dislodge Islamic State operatives who are deeply embedded in the Iraqi city, west of Baghdad. Some initial reports of success by the attacking forces were quickly modified. These are a salutary reminder of what happened in the similar assault on Ramadi in August 2015. Then, early optimism that the city would fall in a couple of weeks turned out to be hugely overblown. The siege ended up lasting for more than four months, and by the end of it much of the city lay in ruins. There are many gaps in the current reporting. There are no accounts of the intensity of the US air operations, nor of their direct support of operations by Shi’a militias – something that they avoided when Tikrit fell in April 2015. The caution is most likely because the Pentagon is only too well aware that the Saudis are getting agitated over the extent of Iranian involvement across their northern border, and especially the collaboration between Washington and Tehran. All the attention being focused on Fallujah carries the danger of missing another significant element in the western media’s coverage of the war. This is the extent of the direct involvement of US troops on the ground, not least as casualties begin to mount. [US Iraq strategy]
• The Missing 28 Pages from the 9/11 Report Could Make Us Safer
  The 28 pages that the Bush administration deleted from the 9/11 report have implications not only for our relationship with the Saudis, but our national security. By Russ Wellen, June 1, 2016. The sheer volume of crimes that the George W. Bush administration committed will keep historians busy chronicling them for decade. Among them were: 1. Hiding the role that Saudi officials in not only Saudi Arabia, but the United States, played in financing and supporting the planning of the 9/11 attacks. 2. Keeping the relationship with Saudi Arabia status quo afterward. (Nothing to see here. Move on.) Especially flagrant was that in 2002 the Bush administration removed the 28 pages that dealt with the Saudis from the report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. The Obama administration hasn’t been of much help in revealing those pages. We revisited a 2014 article in the New Yorker by Lawrence Wright, in which he suggests that publishing the 28 pages could be helpful in helping to understand the Islamic State. [9/11] [28 pages] [Saudi Arabia]
• The Twenty-Eight Pages
  By Lawrence Wright September 9, 2014
  On the bottom floor of the United States Capitol’s new underground visitors’ center, there is a secure room where the House Intelligence Committee maintains highly classified files. One of those files is titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.” It is twenty-eight pages long. In 2002, the Administration of George W. Bush excised those pages from the report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. President Bush said then that publication of that section of the report would damage American intelligence operations, revealing “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.” “There’s nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. [9/11] [28 pages] [Saudi Arabia]
• Recording Spurs Anticorruption Minister to Resign in Brazil
  By SIMON ROMEROMAY 30, 2016 RIO DE JANEIRO — The anticorruption minister of Brazil’s interim president, Michel Temer, resigned Monday night after a secret recording seemed to show that he tried to stymie the sweeping corruption investigation revolving around Petrobras, the national oil company. The fall of Fabiano Silveira, whose title was minister of transparency, dealt another blow to a government that seems to limp from one scandal to the next just weeks after Mr. Temer replaced Dilma Rousseff. Ms. Rousseff was suspended as president to face claims of budgetary manipulation in an impeachment trial. One of Mr. Temer’s top aides, Romero Jucá, stepped down last week as planning minister after another recording indicated that their centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or P.M.D.B., had sought Ms. Rousseff’s ouster to thwart the inquiry into the Petrobras graft scheme. In an increasingly paranoid atmosphere in the capital, Brasília, members of the country’s political and business elite are secretly recording one another with the aim of reaching plea deals. Sergio Machado, a politician who was the chief executive of a Petrobras transportation unit for more than a decade, has turned over a trove of recordings to investigators. In doing so, Mr. Machado, who has been accused of helping to orchestrate the Petrobras bribery scheme, is betraying various senior political figures whom he recorded. They include José Sarney, a former president; Renan Calheiros, the head of the Senate; and Mr. Jucá, the former planning minister, who remains a senator and the president of the P.M.D.B. In the latest revelation, Mr. Machado captured a conversation this year involving himself, Mr. Calheiros and Mr. Silveira. At the time, Mr. Silveira was on the National Council of Justice, a panel overseeing Brazil’s judiciary. In the recording, parts of which were broadcast over the weekend on the Globo television network, Mr. Silveira can be heard advising Mr. Calheiros on how to deflect the scrutiny of prosecutors. A spokesman for Mr. Silveira said the remarks had been taken out of context. Mr. Calheiros, together with an array of other powerful politicians, is under investigation over accusations that he pocketed huge bribes in the Petrobras scheme. Nearly 40 politicians, business moguls, campaign strategists and black-market money dealers have been jailed since prosecutors began delving into the scheme two years ago. [Corruption] [Brazil]
• Brazil's government has sprung a leak, and a flood of secrets is gushing out
  Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff participates in the presentation of a book addressing her impeachment process, "Resistance to the Coup of 2016," in Brasilia, the capital, on May 30, 2016. (Cadu Gomes / European Pressphoto Agency) Vincent Bevins There’s a saying in Brazil: “Even the past is unpredictable.” It seems particularly apt in the wake of leaked audio recordings that point to ulterior motives for the recent impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and that have already forced the resignations of two members of the new Cabinet. Congress voted to put Rousseff on trial on charges that she shifted funds to cover holes in the national budget. The recordings — made before she was booted from office — bolster the suspicions of many Brazilians that her impeachment was both a power grab by political opponents and an effort to stop widespread corruption investigations that targeted them. The first Cabinet resignation came last week. Romero Juca, the planning minister, stepped down after a leaked recording suggested that his main reason for wanting to remove Rousseff from office was to stop the corruption inquiries. “We have to change the government to stop the bleeding,” the then-senator said in the recording. [Brazil] [Corruption] [Coup] [Dilma Rousseff]
• Airstrikes on ISIS are Reducing Their Cities to Ruins
  by Patrick Cockburn “They make a desert and they call it peace,” is the bitter line Tacitus attributed to the British tribal leader Calgacus speaking 2,000 years ago of the devastation inflicted by the Roman army on the rebellious British. The denunciation has echoed down the centuries and been applied to many pacification campaigns, but it is peculiarly appropriate to what is now happening in Iraq. Some 20,000 Iraqi soldiers, special forces, federal police and Shia paramilitaries are advancing on Fallujah, a Sunni Arab city held by Isis since early 2014. They are backed by the destructive might of the US-led coalition of air forces that have carried out 8,503 air strikes in Iraq and 3,450 in Syria over the last two years. Without such close air support, the anti-Isis forces in Iraq and Syria would not have had their recent successes. [ISIS] [Airpower] [Double standards]
• The Sailors of the USS Liberty: They, Too, Deserve to Be Honored
  by Raouf Halaby On this 2016 Memorial Day, much like all Memorial Day commemorations since 1968, no official recognition or memorial services will be held to honor the 34 dead and the 167 wounded US Navy Men. In what has to be one of the most cowardly and expedient political decisions made by a Commander in Chief, politicians, and top brass to uphold the constitution of the United States and to defend American citizens, Lyndon Johnson and his underlings orchestrated a cover up of epic proportions. Today no one will hear about the Israeli June 8, 1967 assault on the USS Liberty, an attack so cowardly and so heinous that it exposes Israel’s penchant for manufacturing facts and its ability to manipulate American leadership and the media to gloss over its dastardly deeds. On that infamous 8th day of June 1967, and in an act of cowardly and pre-meditated murder, the USS Liberty, even though she was flying the American flag, was repeatedly attacked by Israeli French-made jet fighters and torpedo boats. When it was all said and done, 34 American navy men were killed and 167 were wounded. (See: Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited by Jeffrey St. Clair.) [Israel] [US]
• Donald Trump: Joker’s Wild
  Posted on : May.29,2016 19:23 KST John Feffer In poker, a wild card can add to the fun of the game. But it throws off the odds and makes the hands more unpredictable. That’s why poker purists prefer to keep jokers and other wild cards out of the deck. In American politics, the presidential primaries usually function as a vetting process to remove wild cards from the elections. In the most recent Republican primary, for instance, two improbable choices never attracted much in the way of support: the non-politicians Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. They were good for a couple of one-liners. But they weren’t serious candidates. But the biggest wild card of them all – Donald Trump – has managed to all but secure the Republican Party nomination. Like all jokers, he is throwing off the odds. Few people predicted he would get as far as he has in politics. And few expect him to win in November. But he has defied expectations so far. And the political mainstream is very worried about how he might upend the status quo. Political purists, like poker purists, would prefer to keep jokers out of the deck. I also believe that Trump will lose in November. He has the highest unfavorable rating of any previous presidential aspirant. He deeply offends key voting constituencies such as women (53 percent of the electorate in 2012) and Latinos (8.4 percent of all voters in 2012). The very qualities that made him virtually unbeatable in the Republican primaries – intolerance, intemperance, incoherence – are not appealing to the general electorate. [Trump]
• Six Giant Corporations Control the Media, and Americans Consume 10 Hours of ‘Programming’ a Day
  By Michael Snyder Global Research, May 31, 2016 The Economic Collapse 26 May 2016 If you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world. In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market. In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the “programming” that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world. So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous “propaganda matrix”? Just think about your own behavior. Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on. Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media. In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence. It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out. It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of “programming” from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become. Faces - Public Domain These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on. For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about? If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place. Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations. I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe. They come directly out of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report“, and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes through various methods each day… Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes Using a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes When you add all of those numbers together, it comes to a grand total of more than 10 hours. [Media] [Corporate power] [Indoctrination]
• Libya: How to Bring Down a Nation
  by Patrick Howlett-Martin / More than 30,000 Libyans died during seven months of bombing by an essentially tripartite force – France, Great Britain, United States – which clearly favored the rebels. “The most successful mission in NATO’s history”, in the imprudent words of NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a Dane, in Tripoli in October 2011[1]. French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s eagerness to support a military intervention with the purported aim of protecting the civilian population contrasts with the reception offered to the Libyan president, Muammar Gaddafi, when he visited Paris in December 2007 and signed major military agreements worth some 4.5 billion euros along with cooperation agreements for the development of nuclear energy for peacetime uses. The contracts that Libya seemed no longer willing to pursue focused on 14 Dassault Rafale multirole fighter jets and their armament (the same model that France sold or is trying to sold to Egypt´s General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the self-proclaimed marshal), 35 Eurocopter helicopters, six patrol boats, a hundred armored vehicles, and the overhaul of 17 Mirage F1 fighters sold by Dassault Aviation in the 1970s[2]. The major oil companies (Occidental Petroleum, State Oil, Petro-Canada…) working in Libya helped Libya pay the 1.5 billion dollars in compensation that the Libyan regime had agreed to pay to the families of the victims of Pan Am flight 103[3]. At the time, the compensation was intended to be one of the conditions for Libya to be reaccepted into the community of international relations. [Libya] [NATO]

• Carry on flying: why activists should take to the skies
  Jem Bendell 30 May 2016 Protesting against air travel might displace attention away from the actions required to reduce carbon emissions at the necessary scale. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original image cropped by Gralo. Public Domain. I’m writing this at 35,000 feet above the Bay of Bengal, on my way to lecture in Malaysia at HELP University on Innovation Leadership. Just before take-off, I received some emails from subscribers to my newsletter, questioning my international speaking schedule: “You’re a Professor of Sustainability Leadership, so how can you justify all that flying?” was the gist. “You should lead by example” and encourage everyone to fly much less. My travel this year means that my carbon footprint will be approximately double that of the average person in Britain, which is around 14 tonnes of CO2 or its equivalent per annum. Like many readers of Transformation I believe that we should seek to align our daily lives with our political views and values. So is it hypocritical of environmentalists to fly? Not necessarily: in fact I’ve come to see critiques of flying as sometimes misguided and even counter-productive. That's because not flying isn’t an effective way for me to combat the causes of environmental degradation and climate change. Here are three reasons why.
  At the heart of the claim that it’s hypocritical to fly is the idea that everyone should have the same carbon footprint, but that makes no sense. What about ambulance drivers, or firemen, or members of the armed forces? [Environment] [Bizarre]
• ISIS and Israel on the Golan Heights
  Sam Brennan 28 May 2016 The Yarmouk Valley is run by ISIS – and left alone by Israel. This is a testament to the complex, cynical and calculated machinations of the actors in this conflict. There is a strange relationship between Israel and a small sect of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) based next to the Golan Heights. The very presence of a group like ISIS so close to Israel brings up many questions. Firstly why has ISIS not attacked Israel – a country they have sworn to destroy – from said base? Similarly why has the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) not attacked this small and weak group of extremists on their border? The answers to such questions show the truth behind the rhetoric all actors use in this conflict. [Israel] [ISIS]
• The Pentagon’s dark money: Billions of federal dollars are vanishing into thin air
  It's not just that its books don't add up. The Department of Defense is actively disguising how it spends its funds William D. Hartung, TomDispatch.com Now you see it, now you don’t. Think of it as the Department of Defense’s version of the street con game, three-card monte, or maybe simply as the Pentagon shuffle. In any case, the Pentagon’s budget is as close to a work of art as you’re likely to find in the U.S. government — if, that is, by work of art you mean scam. The United States is on track to spend more than $600 billion on the military this year — more, that is, than was spent at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War military buildup, and more than the military budgets of at least the next seven nations in the world combined. And keep in mind that that’s just a partial total. As an analysis by the Straus Military Reform Project has shown, if we count related activities like homeland security, veterans’ affairs, nuclear warhead production at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries, and interest on the military-related national debt, that figure reaches a cool $1 trillion. [Military expenditure] [Corruption]
• America's $1 Trillion National Security Budget
  By: Mandy Smithberger | February 10, 2016 | Download PDF Total US National Security Spending, 2016-2017 (All figures are $ billions; then-Year $) (Sources: Table 28-1 from Analytical Perspectives and Homeland Security Appendix in 2017 OMB Budget) [Military expenditure]
• Donald Trump exposes the GOP’s dirty secret: They build everything by nurturing white rage
  For decades, GOP has used the war on drugs or voter ID laws as cover for race-baiting. Trump just blew their cover Carol Anderson Paul Ryan is angry with Donald Trump, not so much for failing to espouse conservative values, as for exposing America’s dirty little secret — white rage: that deep-seated determination to block black progress in this country. For years, conservative politicians have relied upon the cover of high-minded principles and slogans – “protecting the integrity of the ballot box,” or waging a “war on drugs” — in order to cloak their determination to restrict African Americans’ citizenship rights. The racism fueling Trump’s campaign and his followers, however, is so overt, that it is undoing decades of hard covert work by the GOP. When Trump didn’t immediately disavow an endorsement from Klansman David Duke; when the GOP front-runner condoned the beatings African Americans endured at his campaign rallies; and when 20 percent of his followers insisted that the Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery, was bad policy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s carefully stitched plan of “racism with plausible deniability” began to unravel. Shortly before he died, Reagan’s strategist Lee Atwater explained the game plan of the Southern Strategy in a matter-of-fact clinical policy. “By 1968 you can’t say ‘n***r’ — that hurts you, backfires,” Atwater emphasized. “So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. And you’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.” But Donald Trump doesn’t do abstract and that is what has sent the GOP into a tizzy. [Trump] [Southern Strategy] [Racism]
• U.S. commander warns that Iraqi forces may face resistance in key urban fight
  Iraqi forces fired on Islamic State fighters in Saqlawiyah, 45 miles west of Baghdad in the early hours of Saturday May 28, as part of their effort to drive the militants out of Fallujah. Fallujah has been under ISIS control for more than two years. (AP) By Missy Ryan and Mustafa Salim May 28 at 4:36 PM ? BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces’ ability to deal a swift blow to the Islamic State in the city of Fallujah could be slowed by local support for militants, the U.S. commander in Iraq said, suggesting a key battle may be a longer, tougher fight than Iraqi leaders are predicting. Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who commands U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, said it was too soon to know how the battle within Fallujah would unfold. But he struck a more cautious note than Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other senior officials have in rallying Iraqis around what they say will be a rapid, decisive campaign in the besieged city. “We really haven’t fought a battle like this,” MacFarland said in an interview this past week. The general said that the western city is home to some of Iraq’s “early adopters” of the Islamic State’s radical cause and that others have been indoctrinated. “You could have a fairly large percentage of a fairly large city that’s hostile to us,” he said. [ISIS] [Public opinion]
• Special Forces in Syria Ordered to Take Off 'Unauthorized' YPG Patches
  . FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2014 photo, pictures adorn the walls of a position held by Kurdish popular protection and women's defense units of fighters who have been lost in the battles against ISIS in Kobani, Syria. (AP Photo/Jake FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2014 photo, pictures adorn the walls of a position held by Kurdish popular protection and women's defense units of fighters who have been lost in the battles against ISIS in Kobani, Syria. (AP Photo/Jake Military.com May 27, 2016 | by Richard Sisk U.S. Special Forces troops in Syria have been ordered to stop wearing the arm patches of a Kurdish rebel group regarded as an offshoot of a terrorist organization by Turkey, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday. "Wearing those patches was unauthorized and inappropriate and corrective action has been taken. We have communicated as much" to NATO ally Turkey, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad. Warren said the order to take off the patches came directly from the CJTF commander, Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland. The "corrective action" was not expected to involve reprimands or other disciplinary measures beyond the order to take off the insignia. Warren announced the order after Agence France Presse published photos of several well-armed and equipped troops identified by local leaders as Americans who were at or near the front lines with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, moving towards Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. At least one of the individuals in the photos was wearing the army patch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, known as the YPG. Warren confirmed that all of the individuals in the photos were U.S. Special forces troops. Although the U.S. has backed the YPG with airstrikes and supplies, and its fighters have proven to be among the most effective in Syria’s multi-sided civil war, Turkey has branded the group as the military wing of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK. Both Turkey and the U.S. have labeled the PKK as a terrorist organization. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday called the U.S. "two-faced" for refusing to call the YPG a terrorist group along with the PKK. "If they (U.S. officials) say 'We don't see the YPG and these terrorist groups as the same,' my answer is, that is a double standard and two-faced," Cavusoglu said at a United Nations summit in Turkey. "It is unacceptable for U.S. soldiers to use the insignia of the YPG, a terrorist group," he said. However, the YPG dominates in the umbrella group SDF, which also includes Arab and Christian fighters, and has notched victories against ISIS in northeastern Syria in the defense of the flashpoint border town of Kobane and in liberating Shaddadi, a key connector between Raqqa and Mosul, the main ISIS stronghold in Iraq. [US Syria strategy] [Kurds] [Turkey] [Client]
• Silencing America as It Prepares for War
  by John Pilger Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party’s rigged convention. The great counter revolution had begun. The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America’s victims in faraway places. “We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don’t you forget it.” So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie. [Imperialism] [Propaganda]
• Brazil’s right-wing coup: Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment threatens more than the nation’s democracy
  Michel Temer and his exclusively light-skinned, male cabinet threaten to unravel 20 years of social progress Marshall Eakin, The Conversation Brazil is in the midst of its worst political crisis since the 1960s and possibly its most severe economic downturn in the last 100 years. The economy will not – and cannot – improve until the country emerges from the political chaos of the moment and puts into place strong and legitimate leadership. Most of the commentary on Brazil’s current crisis has focused on politics and economics. I believe that a more profound threat generated by this crisis will be to Brazilians’ sense of self – to their very identity as Brazilians. [Brazil] [Coup]
• The Death Toll in Syria: What Do the Numbers Really Say?
  by Alex Ray What is the Syrian death toll now? 400,000? Less? More? While the aphorism “One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic”, has been attributed to many, it is likely none foresaw the inverse utility of this concept for shaping narratives in an age of humanitarian intervention. Statistics are now weapons in themselves. Raw numbers are ambiguous; as journalist Sharmine Narwani writes, “It doesn’t tell us who is killing and who is dying. And that information matters – the global political response to a genuine civil conflict would be different than to a genocide committed by a ruthless authority.” When the United States’ Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) released its eighth summary of the Syrian death toll in mid-2015 it painted this confused picture: 230,000 total deaths, between 150,000 and 160,000 ‘opposition deaths’ (civilian and military), a further 98,000 ‘other’ civilian deaths, and a very precise 18,476 ‘regime’ deaths – an actual minimum total of 266,476. As this example shows, there are serious problems with the Syrian statistics. As the Washington Post reported earlier in 2016 “In some ways, the details matter more than the big picture in the death toll, but again, the details are divisive.” While death toll reporting in conflicts is never accurate, CFR’s sources are hardly reliable. It cites three pro-opposition outlets – the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR), the Violation Documentation Center in Syria (VDC), and the Syrian Revolution Martyr Database (SRMD) – which report significantly different figures in all casualty categories. [Syria] [Casualties] [Statistics] [Propaganda]
• Why the US Dropped Its Demand That Assad Must Go
  by Robert Fisk I’m getting a bit tired of reading about the “US-backed alliance of Syrian militias” and their advance against Isis. The ‘alliance’ is largely Kurdish – which is why, I suppose, the Americans talked about northern Syria when they announced the visit of General Joseph Votel, the head of US Central Command, to the little Kurdish enclave. General Votel could only set foot in the tiny strip of territory along the Turkish border partly held by Kurdish and a sprinkling of Turkmen groups. A visit to northern Syria by an American general is thus a lot less impressive than it sounds. It’s interesting to see a US commander crossing the border to cheer on participants in a civil war. That’s also what the American military has been doing in Iraq, where forces have been encouraging Shia militias fighting on the outskirts of Fallujah, and even providing air support to the forces of the perilously weak government in Baghdad. For Iraq now meets many of the definitions of civil war. Yet in Syria, the Americans started by supporting “democratic” forces fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and mysteriously supported the same men (and women) when they were ready to fight Isis for Ain al-Arab (or Kobani for those who prefer the Kurdish version of the name). [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Kurd]
• Remnants of past wars haunt Obama’s trip to Asia
  Highlights Activists call on president to do more to address legacy of war Obama tries to move past war to new programs on first visit to Vietnam He leaves Wednesday for Japan, where he will visit Hiroshima By Anita Kumar HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM — President Barack Obama came to Vietnam to fully restore relations between two former foes. But he couldn’t escape the remnants of a decades-old war. Obama tried to make his first visit to the communist country about future ties, largely ignoring the pressure to acknowledge ongoing impacts of the Vietnam War, which left nearly 60,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese dead. “I come here mindful of the past, mindful of our difficult history, but focused on the future – the prosperity, security and human dignity that we can advance together,” Obama said in a speech Tuesday billed as an address to the people of Vietnam. He did announce stepped-up efforts to remove unexploded landmines and bombs and to clean soil contaminated by Agent Orange. He also thanked Vietnam for its work in trying to account for American soldiers still missing in action. But he resisted calls to meet with victims of Agent Orange or to push Vietnam to do more to find missing Americans, disappointing activists and veterans in both nations. “He’s going to focus on building toward the future, building trust, trying to lay a framework to keep engaging at the various levels that are happening already,” said Murray Hiebert, deputy director and senior fellow of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Obama, on a weeklong trip to Vietnam and Japan, faces ghosts from two wars, prompting some to question again whether he will be remorseful about past U.S. actions as he looks to rebuild relationships around the globe. The trip comes after a similar trip to Cuba in the spring, where Obama famously said he was burying “the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.”
• It’s not just Hiroshima: The many other things America hasn’t apologized for
  By Adam Taylor May 26 at 2:00 AM This week, President Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city that the United States nearly destroyed with a nuclear bomb in 1945. While the bombing is estimated to have killed as many as 150,000 people, Obama is not expected to apologize during his visit. It's reasonable to ask, after more than 70 years, why not apologize for Hiroshoma? One well-worn argument is that the bombing of the city (and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki that followed) was morally justifiable as it was the quickest way to end World War II — a conflict that had already taken millions of lives. [How the Hiroshima bombing is taught around the world] But another argument is broader and perhaps even more persuasive: Apologizing simply isn't something the United States does, nor do many other countries. "We don’t apologize, ever," said Jennifer Lind, a professor at Dartmouth College and the author of "Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics." This isn't a unique facet of American diplomacy, either. "Countries in general do not apologize for violence against other countries," Lind added, noting that Germany and, to a lesser degree, Japan are outliers, as they have actually apologized [US global strategy]
• US and Vietnam finally and fully normalize relations
  By Xuan Loc Doan on May 23, 2016 By lifting the US arms embargo on Vietnam on the first day of his three-day visit to the latter, President Barack Obama made history by finally and fully normalizing US-Vietnam relations, a process that former President Bill Clinton started more than 20 years ago. On a joint press conference with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang after a private meeting with the latter, Obama declared a complete end to the longstanding US embargo on the sale of lethal arms to its one-time war enemy. With it, US-Vietnam relations, which have gradually but enormously advanced, during the last two decades, will now move to a higher level. [Vietnam] [China confrontation]
• The Significance of the Battle for Aleppo
  Alexander Kuznetsov | 25.05.2016 In Aleppo the fierce fighting continues. After the peace agreement was broken by the armed opposition, Syrian government forces launched an offensive in order to completely blockade and take control of the western part of the city that had been seized by militants. Anti-government forces regularly shell civilians in Aleppo’s Christian neighborhoods and in the Sheikh Maqsood district that is inhabited by Kurds. One result of this new phase in the military campaign has been an increase in the influence of jihadist groups, especially Jabhat al-Nusra. It is this group and its allies that Turkey and the US are trying to proclaim the «moderate opposition», which is supposedly capable of battling the Islamic State. But when it comes to their methods for disposing of political opponents and Christians, these radical Islamic groups are indistinguishable. [Syria] [Jihadist]
• Clinton’s Gender Wars
  Israel Shamir • May 24, 2016 Will the men voting for Mrs Clinton end up in Hell? I am not sure. We know that women who vote for a male candidate have a special place in hell, as the old Jewish feminist lady divined, and she should know. It is not only Madeleine Albright looks like a creature from hell, she also belongs there, for her justification of murder of half a million Iraqi children, among other deeds. But what about men who cross the gender divide? I would not condemn them. Such a condemnation would rather undermine and harm Messrs Trump and Sanders, for men have no gender voting pattern. Men vote for the cause they prefer, and they strongly dislike a suggestion that their vote has been determined by what they are, instead of what they think. [Hillary Clinton] [Gender]
• How the Constant Threat of War Shaped Israel’s Tech Industry
  Episode 3: Visit a technology giant with thousands of cutting-edge startups. By Ashlee Vance | May 25, 2016 From Bloomberg Businessweek Unit 8200 is Israel’s most mysterious agency. No one outside knows exactly how it operates, who works there, or how they learn. All the public knows for certain is that Unit 8200 has been the beating heart of Israel’s spectacular—and in many ways unmatched—technology boom. At its most basic level, Unit 8200 resembles the National Security Agency (NSA) in the U.S. It’s an elite branch of the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, that specializes in computer security and murkier, more controversial stuff, such as espionage and cyber attacks. For about 25 years, veterans of Unit 8200 have gone on to found security startups, making both the software and hardware that protect corporate computing systems throughout the world. Graduates of 8200 invented the firewall and early VPN technology and have started dozens of security companies such as Check Point Software Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, and CyberArk Software—all multibillion-dollar operations. [Israel] [Military industrial complex] [Repression]
• Taliban replaces leader killed in U.S. drone strike
  By Antonio Olivo May 25 at 10:05 AM ? KABUL — Just days after a U.S. drone strike killed the leader of the Taliban, the insurgent group named his successor Wednesday in a move that appeared to signal a blow to peace efforts by Afghanistan’s Western-allied government. Haibatullah Akhundzada, a cleric and once the Taliban’s top judge, was a deputy under Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who was killed in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Saturday. Akhundzada’s appointment could strengthen the group by easing infighting among Taliban factions, but it appeared to undercut Afghan and U.S. hopes that a new leader could be more receptive to peace negotiations to end the group’s nearly 15-year-long insurgency. [Assassination] [Taliban]
• Mindanao, Duterte, and the Real History of the Philippines
  "US is responsible for at least a quarter of a million conflict deaths in the Philippines while the PRC has accounted for ze..." "Hey, look at that ship over there!" The U.S. government and the Manila elite are pretty interested in hyping the naval confrontation with the PRC, while going all "bygones" on the bloody, corrupting, ongoing, and (for some elite Filipinos empowering and enriching) U.S. deep penetration of the Philippines' political and security regimes. Duterte upsets this script, because his political career has been spent on Mindanao and he's been exposed to the pointy, crappy end of the U.S. military spear for over a decade. I wrote about Duterte's direct, unhappy experience with U.S. milsec shenanigans in the matter of bomb-building US spook Michael Meiring at Asia Times. I also put up a long piece on China Matters that discussed the fact that Meiring is just one of many old and current skeletons ready to come clattering out of the closet if Duterte diverts the political discourse away from "US and Philippines: Shoulder to Shoulder Against China in the SCS!" to an examination of serial U.S. meddling in the Philippines in the name of security, counterinsurgency, and anti-terror over the last 115 years. [Duterte] [Philippines]
• Iran, India, Afghanistan pen trilateral transit pact
  May 23, 2016 TEHRAN- Iran, India and Afghanistan signed a tripartite trade and transit corridor agreement on Chabahar port in Tehran on Monday, which allows the three countries open new routes to connect among themselves via converting the Iranian southern Port of Chabahar into a transit hub bypassing Pakistan. Accordingly, through Chabahar port India can bypass Pakistan and transport goods to Afghanistan and central Asia, while Afghanistan can get linked to India via sea. [Logistics] [Iran] [India]
• Syrian rebel whose group is linked to al Qaida visited U.S.
  Highlights Ahrar al Sham is an Islamist rebel force that works with al Qaida Though controversial, Ahrar al Sham is not a designated terrorist group Rebels say U.S. inaction leaves them no choice but to work with jihadists By Hannah Allam hallam@mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON — A senior figure from a Syrian rebel group with links to al Qaida was allowed into the United States for a brief visit, raising questions about how much the Obama administration will compromise in the search for partners in the conflict. Labib al Nahhas, foreign affairs director for the Islamist fighting group Ahrar al Sham, spent a few days in Washington in December, according to four people with direct knowledge of the trip and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of U.S. relations with Syrian rebels. His previously undisclosed visit is a delicate matter for both sides – the conservative Salafist insurgents risk their credibility with even perceived ties to the United States, and the U.S. government risks looking soft on screenings by allowing entry to a member of an Islamist paramilitary force. National security analysts say U.S. authorities likely knew of Nahhas’ arrival – intelligence agencies for years have watched his group’s interactions with al Qaida’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Jihadist] [Al Qaeda]
• Al Qaeda: Heroes of the Empire
  Ulson Gunnar Syrian President Bashar al Assad would seem like a natural ally to the United States and the European Union. He heads a secular government and presides over a secular nation. It is a nation where extremist political factions like the Muslim Brotherhood are outlawed and armed terrorist groups hunted down and eliminated. There was even a point in history before the 2011 war began within and along Syria’s borders that Washington even feigned such an alliance with Damascus. The London Telegraph in its article, “John Kerry and Bashar al-Assad dined in Damascus,” reported: Mr Kerry visited Damascus in February 2009, when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said in a press conference during the visit: “President Barack Obama’s administration considers Syria a key player in Washington’s efforts to revive the stalled Middle East peace process. “Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region.” Mr Kerry met with Mr Assad at least six times, and on one occasion – seen in the photographs – dining with the two men’s wives at the Naranj restaurant in central Damascus. Though the US considered at the time Syria to be a “state sponsor of terrorism,” that was only because of its support of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, not Al Qaeda and its affiliates who the US Army’s own reports indicate the government was working against even during the US occupation of Iraq when Syria was used as an entry point into the country along its southern borders. Ironically, the US Army’s reports would indicate that many of the networks now considered “rebels,” were involved in facilitating Al Qaeda’s transit through Syrian territory into Iraq to kill Americans using Saudi cash. [Outsourcing] [US Syria strategy]
• Debunking Popular Clichés About Modern Warfare
  The Saker • May 19, 2016 “What would a war between Russia and the USA look like?” This must be the question which I am most frequently asked. This is also the question to which I hear the most outlandish and ill-informed responses to. I have addressed this question in the past and those interested in this topic can consult the following articles: •Remembering the important lessons of the Cold War •Making sense of Obama’s billion dollar hammer •Why the US-Russian nuclear balance is as solid as ever •Short reminder about US and Russian nuclear weapons •Thinking the unthinkable •The Russia-U.S. Conventional Military Balance It would be pointless for me to repeat it all here, so I will try to approach the issue from a somewhat different angle, but I would strongly recommend that those interested take the time to read this articles which, while mostly written in 2014 and 2015, are still basically valid, especially in the methodology used to tackle this issue. All I propose to do today is to debunk a few popular clichés about modern warfare in general. My hope is that by debunking them I will provide you with some tools to cut through the nonsense which the corporate media loves to present to us as “analysis”. Cliché No 1: the US military has a huge conventional advantage over Russia It all depends by what you mean by “advantage”. The US armed forces are much larger than the Russian ones, that is true. But, unlike the Russians ones, they are spread all over the planet. In warfare what matters is not the size of your military, but how much of it is actually available for combat in the theater of military operations TMO (conflict area). For example, if in any one given TMO you have only 2 airfields each capable of sustaining air operations for, say 100 aircraft, it will do you no good to have 1000 aircraft available. You might have heard the sentence “civilians focus on firepower, soldiers on logistics“. This is true. Modern military forces are extremely “support heavy” meaning that for one tank, aircraft or artillery piece you need a huge and sophisticated support line making it possible for the tank, aircraft or artillery piece to operate in a normal way. Simply put – if your tank is out of fuel or spares – it stops. So it makes absolutely no sense to say, for example, that the USA has 13,000 aircraft and Russia only 3,000. This might well be true, but it is also irrelevant. What matters is only how many aircraft the US and NATO could have ready to engage on the moment of the initiation of combat operations and what their mission would be. The Israelis have a long record of destroying the Arab air forces on the ground, rather than in the air, in surprise attacks which are the best way to negate a numerical advantage of an adversary. The reality is that the USA would need many months to assemble in western Europe a force having even a marginal hope to take on the Russian military. And the reality also is that nothing could force the Russians to just sit and watch while such a force is being assembled (the biggest mistake Saddam Hussein made). [Russia confrontation] [Military balance]
• Rouhani’s greatest win on the verge of becoming liability
  The United States and Iran had little trust in one another when it came to negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Yet, Iran provided some comfort when it implemented steps necessary to ease sanctions. Four months after Implementation Day for the JCPOA, Tehran is struggling to show tangible and substantive economic benefits. Both ends of the bargain of the nuclear deal must be delivered to ensure the agreement will be a lasting legacy. Author Ellie Geranmayeh Posted May 19, 2016 Iran’s leadership, and increasingly the political elite and middle class who supported the nuclear negotiations, is accusing the United States of undercutting the JCPOA by not taking adequate steps to allow for Iran’s re-entry into the global economy. Unless such perceptions (or misperceptions) are addressed, the base of support in Iran for the JCPOA and additional engagement with the West is likely to shrink. [Iran deal] [Renege]
• Agreement that could lead to U.S. troops in Libya could be reached ‘any day’
  By Dan Lamothe May 19 at 7:46 PM Fighters against the Islamic State group fire weapons in the Hawari area, southwest of the city of Benghazi, Libya, on March 10, 2016. (AP Photo/Mohammed El-Shaiky) ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The U.S. military’s top general said Thursday that the Libyan government is in a “period of intense dialogue” that could soon lead to an agreement in which U.S. military advisers will be deployed there to assist in the fight against the Islamic State. “There’s a lot of activity going on underneath the surface,” said Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We’re just not ready to deploy capabilities yet because there hasn’t been an agreement. And frankly, any day that could happen.” Dunford spoke to a handful of journalists while returning to the United States from Brussels, where he met with military chiefs this week from numerous NATO nations. There is interest among some NATO nations in participating in the mission, Dunford said, but the specifics of who and what would be involved remain unclear. The operation will likely focus on training and equipping militias that pledge loyalty to Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj, the leader of the new Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), which is backed by the United Nations. [Who in Libya will the U.S. send weapons to? It’s complicated, says a top general.] “There will be a long-term mission in Libya,” Dunford predicted, adding that NATO will want a request from the new government in order to get involved. [Libya] [US military] [Unintended consequences] [Quagmire]
• Trump once revealed his income tax returns. They showed he didn’t pay a cent.
  By Drew Harwell May 20 at 1:00 PM ? The last time information from Donald Trump’s income-tax returns was made public, the bottom line was striking: He had paid the federal government $0 in income taxes. The disclosure, in a 1981 report by New Jersey gambling regulators, revealed that the wealthy Manhattan investor had for at least two years in the late 1970s taken advantage of a tax-code provision popular with developers that allowed him to report negative income. Today, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump regularly denounces corporate executives for using loopholes and “false deductions to “get away with murder” when it comes to avoiding taxes. “They make a fortune. They pay no tax,” Trump said last year on CBS. “It’s ridiculous, okay?” [Trump] [Tax] [Chutzpah]
• Duterte’s Crass Politics and Anti-Imperialism: Class War in the Philippines
  by Walden Bello International reports about the recent election in the Philippines invariably refer to its result as a “political earthquake.” The metaphor is accurate. A year ago, few believed that Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of Davao, would be the next president of the Philippines. Duterte had achieved a reputation as a Filipino “Dirty Harry,” a strongman who boasted that he got rid of criminals and drug pushers by wiping them off the face of the earth. When questioned about the 1,000-plus extrajudicial executions alleged to have taken place under his watch, he simply growled that criminals had no human rights and were not entitled to due process. He was the outlier in Philippine politics, the one who didn’t buy into liberal values and liberal democratic discourse. He seemed to take perverse delight in peppering his talks with curses like putang ina (“son of a bitch”) and calling people who irritated him bakla (gay) or cono (cunt) — his special term for people coming from elite families. Not surprisingly, many have likened him to another political outlier: Donald Trump. [Duterte] [Philippines] [Class]
• Forbes Named "Champion of Healthcare Innovation" By National Healthcare Leaders
  Washington, D.C. – Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04) was honored as a “Champion of Healthcare Innovation” by The Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC), a coalition of the nation’s premier healthcare companies and organizations, at an award ceremony in Washington, D.C. [Health] [Lobby] [Corruption]
• NATO & the Humanitarian Dismemberment of Yugoslavia
  by Shay LaFontaine On March 24th, 1999, NATO launched its 78-day round the clock aerial assault on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. Over a thousand NATO warplanes delivered over 2,000 airstrikes in nearly 40,000 sorties, dropping over 20,000 bombs over the former Yugoslavia, killing thousands of civilian men, women, and children, as well as upwards of a thousand Yugoslav soldiers and police.[1] [2] [3] NATO employed weapons considered criminal by international law such as depleted uranium and cluster bombs.[4] [5] [6] [7] The popular narrative is that is that the Western powers dropped these bombs out of humanitarian concern, but this claim falls apart once the distorted lens of Western saviourism is dropped and actual facts are presented. In truth, NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was predicated on the imperialist, colonialist economic and ideological interests of the NATO states, masquerading for the public as a humanitarian effort, that in fact served to dismantle the last remnant of socialism in Europe and recolonize the Balkans. This becomes apparent when the economic interests and actions of the NATO bloc in the decades leading up the breakup are analyzed, when what actually occurred during the intervention is further explored, and when the reality of life in the former Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the ‘humanitarian’ intervention is more closely examined. It becomes clear that the most suffering endured by the Yugoslav people since Nazi occupation was the result of the actions of NATO with the United States at its helm. [Yugoslavia] [NATO] [Fragmentation]
• How Supreme Court decision to freeze Iran assets undermines US foreign policy
  The dysfunctional relationship between the United States and Iran has produced its share of victims over the years. On the Iranian side, they include nationalist political figures, civilian airline passengers, chemical warfare survivors, businessmen caught up in sanctions enforcement and average people harmed by decades of sanctions. The United States can claim harm done to American diplomats, soldiers and a wide range of Iranian-Americans whose lives have been torn apart by the Iranian government’s distrust of dual nationals. The grievances are real, but victims have largely been blocked from redress by a foundational principle of international law called state immunity, which says that governments cannot use their judicial systems to sit in judgment of one another. The US Supreme Court’s decision to seize Iranian assets to compensate terror victims is creating a backlash that undermines US business interests and could sabotage US foreign policy. Author Saam Borhani Posted May 17, 2016 The concept that a nation is immune from lawsuits in the courts of another is accepted internationally, even in cases where the alleged harm is egregious. The United States enshrined state immunity as law through the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) of 1976. Since its enactment, FSIA has gone through transformations resulting in exceptions to the law that include the right of victims of terrorism to sue states listed as “state sponsors of terrorism.” This list includes Iran, but not US allies such as Saudi Arabia. Recent actions under the FSIA exceptions include the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the seizing of $2 billion of Iranian assets to compensate victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, a lawsuit against Iran filed by former Marine and prisoner Amir Hekmati and a widely mocked decision by a federal court that found Iran liable for the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States seems to be moving forward with the aggressive use of FSIA exceptions to account for past Iranian actions, but the further weakening of state immunity will have unintended consequences that are likely to backfire. [Iran deal] [Dissension] [Governance] [Extraterritoriality]
• The West’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ in Syria
  By Gearóid Ó Colmáin Global Research, May 18, 2016 On the 12th of May a massacre was committed in the town of al-Zara in the southern contryside of Hama, Syria. Woman and children were slaughtered by Takfiri death squads branded by the Western media as ‘moderate rebels’. There was no mention of the massacre in the Western press. There was no need to mention it because it was of no use to them. Often, the Western-backed terrorists film their massacres or post pictures of the dead children on social media. These pictures are then displayed across all the front pages of corporate newspapers and flashed across television screens. People’s emotions are aroused. Western governments rant and rave about the necessity of military intervention to ‘stop the massacres.’ This time there was silence. There is no benefit to the perpetrators of neocolonial warfare and genocide in admitting that the terrorist is NATO – that it is actually the Syrian Arab Army that is fighting terrorism and not the Western military alliance. If the masses knew this, there would be a revolution and the perpetrators of war would become its casualties. The fact that no moderate rebels exist in Syria has been admitted by the U.S. Government on several occasions. Vice-president Joe Biden has admitted it, the Pentagon’s General Dempsey has admitted it, Tulsi Gabbard of the US Armed Services Committee has admitted it, and the Defense Intelligence Agency has admitted it. Western corporate media agencies have themselves admitted that the West is supporting al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria in an attempt to overthrow President Assad, yet, perversely, the same media systematically re-brand barbaric head-choppers and child murderers as ‘moderate rebels’, when their heinous crimes are propitious to Western foreign policy objectives. Nicolas_Poussin_-_Le_massacre_des_Innocents_-_Google_Art_Project Due to mass media saturation in the West most people believe they are well-informed about what is happening in the world. They regularly see news stories about other governments committing atrocities against their own people and hear sober press conference condemnations from Western leaders and government officials. Massacres allegedly committed by the enemies of the West regularly make front page headlines which arouse an outpouring of sympathy and indignation that such atrocities could be committed while the ‘ international community’ stands watching. The obsequiousness and docility of the Western public enables those who own the means of production, education and communication, that is to say the Power Elite, to use war as a means of furthering their interests. They re-brand the supreme crime as ‘humanitarian intervention’ and well-intentioned citizens of the West not only accept it but often demand that the humanitarian war is carried out- such is the power of the tableau limned by corporate media professionals for general consumption. [Terrorism] [Outsourcing] [Indoctrination]
• Poof! It’s Forgotten
  Five Ways the Newest Story in Iraq and Syria is... That There Is No New Story by Peter Van Buren One of the most popular apps these days is Snapchat. It allows the sender to set a timer for any photo dispatched via the app, so that a few seconds after the recipient opens the message, the photo is automatically deleted. The evidence of what you did at that party last night is seen and then disappears. POOF! I hope you’ll forgive me if I suggest that the Iraq-Syria War against the Islamic State (ISIS) is being conveyed to us via Snapchat. Important things happen, they appear in front of us, and then… POOF!… they’re gone. No one seems to remember them. Who cares that they’ve happened at all, when there’s a new snap already arriving for your attention? As with most of what flows through the real Snapchat, what’s of some interest at first makes no difference in the long run. Just because we now have terrifyingly short memories does not, however, mean that things did not happen. Despite the POOF! effect, events that genuinely mattered when it comes to the region in which Washington has, since the 1980s, been embroiled in four wars, actually did occur last week, last month, a war or two ago, or, in some cases, more than half a century in the past. What follows are just some of the things we’ve forgotten that couldn’t matter more. It’s a Limited Mission — POOF! Perhaps General David Petraeus’s all-time sharpest comment came in the earliest days of Iraq War 2.0. “Tell me how this ends,” he said, referring to the Bush administration’s invasion. At the time, he was already worried that there was no endgame. That question should be asked daily in Washington. It and the underlying assumption that there must be a clear scope and duration to America’s wars are too easily forgotten. It took eight long years until the last American combat troops were withdrawn from Iraq. Though there were no ticker tape parades or iconic photos of sailors smooching their gals in Times Square in 2011, the war was indeed finally over and Barack Obama’s campaign promise fulfilled… Until, of course, it wasn’t, and in 2014 the same president restarted the war, claiming that a genocide against the Yazidis, a group hitherto unknown to most of us and since largely forgotten, was in process. Air strikes were authorized to support a “limited” rescue mission. Then, more — limited — American military power was needed to stop the Islamic State from conquering Iraq. Then more air strikes, along with limited numbers of military advisers and trainers, were sure to wrap things up, and somehow, by May 2016, the U.S. has 5,400 military personnel, including Special Operations forces, on the ground across Iraq and Syria, with expectations that more would soon be needed, even as a massive regional air campaign drags on. That’s how Washington’s wars seem to go these days, with no real debate, no Congressional declaration, just, if we’re lucky, a news item announcing what’s happened. [US Middle East strategy] [Governance]
• 24 years since Izetbegovic paramilitaries massacred retreating JNA troops in Tuzla
  by Grey Carter, May 15, 2013 Today marks [24] years since the ambush on a convoy of soldiers of the former Yugoslav Peoples’ Army (JNA) that was retreating from Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina. On May 15, 1992, Bosnian Muslim paramilitary troops, aided by the local officials, used snipers to ambush and attack Yugoslav Army convoy while it was attempting to withdraw from the territory of then-Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a result, up to 200 JNA conscripts were killed, 33 were wounded, 140 were imprisoned and tortured, many of whom were handed back to their loved ones in the body bags later on. For some, this atrocious war crime signaled an actual start of the Bosnian civil war (1992-1995). At the trial of Croat Ilija Jurišic, indicted for ordering attack on the convoy of Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) conscripts during their scheduled retreat from Tuzla in May 1992, Deputy Chief of Military Security at the time, Marko Novakovic, who testified on January 16, said that the attack “never could have been carried out without the express approval of the Bosnian Muslim supreme command in Sarajevo.” In a case known as the Tuzla Column massacre, trial before the Belgrade District Court War Crimes Chamber to Ilija Jurišic continues to provide solid evidence that the coldblooded massacre was ordered and coordinated at the very top of Bosnian Muslim leadership. According to the indictment, JNA convoy, consisting mainly of unarmed 18-year-old conscripts from all parts of former Yugoslavia and of all nationalities, who were serving in the unified country in various military polygons throughout state of Yugoslavia, obeyed a decision on peaceful withdrawal of troops from the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in order not to exasperate with their presence a tense atmosphere at the time one segment of the population, Bosnian Muslims, demanded secession of the republic from Yugoslavia. [Yugoslavia]
• Brazil: US Special Services Behind the Turmoil
  No doubt, US special services are behind the crisis in Brazil. Now they continue to control the events. Compromising evidence against the leadership of the Workers’ Party, the top officials of Petrobras, a state-owned oil company, and the inner circles of President Dilma Rousseff and former President Lula da Silva has been leaked as part of an operation to undermine the «hostile regime». In the eyes of President Barack Obama and his administration, the largest Latin American country is a hostile state because it dares to implement independent policies. The US goal is to subjugate the ruling elite of Brazil and make it dance to the US tune. This turn of events has been predicted by a number of Latin American presidents, including Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Tabaré Vázquez of Uruguay among others. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro put it bluntly saying the events in Brazil are nothing else but a coup d’état staged by the US. According to Maduro, the attack against Dilma Rousseff threatens democracy in Brazil. It is also directed against such regional organizations as Celac (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), Unasur (the Union of South American Nations), as well as public and political movements protecting people’s interests. Maduro called on all left-wing movements in Latin America to join together and protest against the smear campaign against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The Venezuelan leader believes they must act to protect peace and prosperity on the continent. [Brazil]
• US secretary John Kerry’s Iran stance lacks credibility
  Brian Caplen | 17/05/2016 11:13 am
  Iran will be off limits to banks for many years, while January’s deal could still fall apart, writes Brian Caplen. The West’s policy on Iran is totally confusing and will not restart investment. For starters, the deal negotiated in January for sanctions on Iran to be lifted in return for the scaling back of nuclear activities still leaves many sanctions in place. Anyone doing business with companies related to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corsp (IRGC), for example, could still be breaking both US and EU sanctions. But with the IRGC embroiled in many economic activities in the country, how could a bank ever be sure its due diligence was correct? Then there is the strange situation whereby many of the edicts prohibiting American banks from doing Iranian business are still in place, such as the treasury department’s listing of the Iranian financial sector as a money-laundering risk, as well as Financial Action Task Force (FATF) measures. [Iran deal] [Financial sanctions] [Treasury]
• Iran parliament seeks damages for US support of Saddam
  After the US Supreme Court upheld legislation that allows American courts to confiscate Iranian assets in the United States, the Iranian parliament passed a bill that forces the administration to seek compensation from the United States for US actions taken against Iran in the past 63 years. Iranian parliament passes bill to seek American assets for US actions taken against Iran in the past 63 years. Author Arash KaramiPosted May 16, 2016 In an open session May 15, the parliament passed the double emergency bill with 181 votes in favor, six votes opposed and eight abstentions. According to Mehr News Agency, some members of parliament chanted "Death to America" during the vote. Ibrahim Karkhaneh, the head of Iranian parliament's Nuclear Committee, presented the bill and said that the court cases against Iran in the United States were examples of "unjust actions to seize property and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Blaming officials from President Hassan Rouhani’s administration, Karkhaneh added, "The Islamic Republic of Iran until now has not taken significant action against these unjust actions, and day by day these sentences in America are increasing." Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/05/iran-parliament-seize-us-assets-coup-iraq-war.html#ixzz48wtBd4GV [Iran deal] [Extraterritoriality] [Response]
• No, Yemen’s Houthis actually aren’t Iranian puppets
  By Thomas Juneau May 16 at 2:00 PM For years, mounting instability had many predicting the collapse of Yemen. These forecasts became reality in 2014 when years of accumulated tension pushed the country into civil war. On one side is an alliance of the Houthis, a northern movement that has been fighting the government since 2004, and troops and militias loyal to a former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. On the other side are supporters of the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was overthrown by the Houthis in early 2015. The war intensified in March 2015 when a coalition of 10 states led by Saudi Arabia launched a campaign of airstrikes against the Houthi-Saleh coalition. Riyadh’s declared objectives are to roll back the Houthis and reinstate Hadi. Saudi Arabia claims that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy, leading it to frame the war as an effort to counter Iran’s influence. The Saudis are not the only ones to label the Houthis puppets of Iran. Politicians and media in the West, in particular, also frequently describe them as Iranian proxies. Yet as I argue in a recent article in the May 2016 issue of International Affairs, the Chatham House journal, Tehran’s support for the Houthis is limited, and its influence in Yemen is marginal. It is simply inaccurate to claim that the Houthis are Iranian proxies. Instead, the war in Yemen is driven by local grievances and competition for power among Yemeni actors [Yemen] [Iran] [Saudi Arabia]
• Leaked wiretaps of IS agents show Ankara ignores terrorist cross-border activity
  By AT Editor on May 14, 2016 in Asia Times News & Features, Middle East (From RT) Thousands of Islamic State (IS) associates have been routinely crossing into Syria aided by contacts in Turkey, phone calls tapped by Ankara security forces and handed to the media by opposition MP Erem Erdem reveal. He accuses the government of a massive cover-up. Transcribed phone recordings belonging to Ilhami Bali, well known in IS ranks and suspected of staging high-profile bomb attacks in Ankara and the mainly-Kurdish border city of Suruc, detail the lack of control along the Syrian Turkish border. The 98-kilometer (61-mile) stretch of border has only two crossings, the Jarablus and Al Rai entry points across from Turkey’s Gaziantep and Kilis [Erdogan] [ISIS]
• “Print the Money”: Trump’s “Reckless” Proposal Echoes Franklin and Lincoln
  By Ellen Brown Global Research, May 15, 2016 The Web of Debt Blog 14 May 2016 “Print the money” has been called crazy talk, but it may be the only sane solution to a $19 trillion federal debt that has doubled in the last 10 years. The solution of Abraham Lincoln and the American colonists can still work today. “Reckless,” “alarming,” “disastrous,” “swashbuckling,” “playing with fire,” “crazy talk,” “lost in a forest of nonsense”: these are a few of the labels applied by media commentators to Donald Trump’s latest proposal for dealing with the federal debt. On Monday, May 9th, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate said on CNN, “You print the money.” The remark was in response to a firestorm created the previous week, when Trump was asked if the US should pay its debt in full or possibly negotiate partial repayment. He replied, “I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” Commentators took this to mean a default. On May 9, Trump countered that he was misquoted: People said I want to go and buy debt and default on debt – these people are crazy. This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, okay? So there’s never a default. That remark wasn’t exactly crazy. It echoed one by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who said in 2011: The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default. [Debt]
• Tough guy wins in the Philippines, another tough guy waiting in the wings
  BY Damien Kingsbury There may be more to the Philippines’ new president Rodrigo Duterte than his tough guy image indicates In the populist theatrics that are Filipino politics, the overwhelming election of Rodrigo Duterte should not have come as a surprise, even if comparisons with US ‘outsider’ Donald Trump have been as common as they are inaccurate. Unlike Trump, Duterte is an active Filipino politician and, unlike Trump, his rhetorical bluster is backed by action. Duterte’s campaign was notable for its tough, sometimes trashy talk, particularly on stepping outside the law to crack down on crime and corruption. He has even threatened the Philippines legislature if its members are found to be corrupt or don’t join him in his fight against corruption. Duterte is seen as a political outsider because he is not of the traditional Philippines’ elite. Yet in some respects he is a quintessential Filipino politician. In a country in which private armed groups and resorting to extra-legal measures have been commonplace, Duterte has earned an undeniable reputation for backing strong words with strong action.
  Positively, too, Duterte was the only presidential aspirant to put forward clear plans to deal with two of the Philippines’ biggest problems; China’s encroachment in the South China Sea and the Islamist separatist rebellion on his home island of Mindanao. The Philippines reasonably claims that China has encroached on waters that should, under international law, in part fall to its jurisdiction. Rather than make a simple—and confrontational—territorial claim, Duterte has suggested an alternative in which disputing countries in the South China Sea negotiate a resource-sharing agreement in a mutually administered region. Similarly, and again in contrast with his head-on approach, Duterte is keen to have a peace agreement with Mindanao’s Moro Islamic Liberation Front finally signed off. [Philippines] [Duterte]
• Industry spending to beat a pharmaceutical initiative could set a new standard for 'drug money'
  Michael Weinstein, head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, is the man behind the upcoming California drug-price initiative. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times) Michael HiltzikContact ReporterThe Economy Hub Due to California’s penchant for legislating at the ballot box, the state has reigned as the top destination for industry campaign spending since even before the Supreme Court widened the door to corporate political donations with its 2010 Citizens United decision. But one measure on this November's California ballot appears poised to set a new standard for corporate spending. The so-called California Drug Price Relief Act would cap the price any state agency or healthcare program could spend on prescription drugs at the level paid by the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, which customarily receives the largest discounts of any government agency. Turning the VA’s prices into a benchmark for California could cost Big Pharma billions of dollars a year in profits, especially if the discounts were later demanded by other states or even private insurers. [Pharma]
• Myanmar: West’s “Saint Suu Kyi” Tramples Rohingya
  Tony Cartalucci Myanmar’s “de facto leader” Aung San Suu Kyi recently warned the United States to not refer to the Rohingya ethnic minority as “Rohingya,” in an attempt to deny them the dignity and human rights she and her party posed as renowned defenders of. For those critically examining and long-following political developments in Myanmar and their wider geopolitical implications for Southeast Asia, Asia, and the world, Aung San Suu Kyi and her “National League for Democracy” (NLD) political front, along with a vast array of Western-funded NGOs’ turning against Myanmar’s Rohingya population after predicating their ascent into power upon “human rights” and “democracy” is no surprise. For those receiving their news from establishment media networks in the US and Europe, Suu Kyi refusing to recognize the Rohingya, many of whom have lived in Myanmar for generations, may seem puzzling, even disappointing, or more disturbingly, an opportunity for excuses. However, it was warned before recent elections – hailed by the Western media as “historic” – that not only would Suu Kyi fail to deliver on the utopian promises her party represented, and not only would her coming to power begin a process of recolonization by the British Empire’s successors in London and on Wall Street, but that it would also herald increasing persecution, violence, and eventually genocide against the Rohingya minority already long-targeted by Suu Kyi’s staunchest supporters. [Suu Kyi] [Human rights]
• The US is Under Pressure in Syria
  Salman Rafi Sheikh While the U.S. government, particularly president Obama and John Kerry, have been voicing two different courses of action with regard to Syria, some recent developments explain the reason for a sort of confused policy the U.S. is currently following and might continue to follow in the months to come. This confusion is evident from the way the U.S. President categorically denied, in his recently given interview to BBC, the possibility of sending more troops to Syria and the way an announcement was afterwards made with regard to sending 250 more troops to Syria to buttress the already stationed troops’ position. This announcement seems to be in ‘perfect harmony’ with John Kerry’s recent ‘warning’ to Syria, Iran and Russia regarding kick-starting transition in Syria by August or else the U.S. might come up with a “new approach” to resolve the crisis. While the prevailing confusion might not be a ‘confused’ policy in hard terms, it is certainly clear that the U.S. is under a lot of pressure, both domestically and globally, due to its inability to achieve its objectives in Syria in particular, and the Middle East, in general. While the U.S. media was quick to associate this decision of sending additional troops to Syria to the mounting domestic pressure against the government’s passivity against ISIS, the underlying reason is that the U.S. sponsored militants are continuously losing ground to the Syrian army in Syria. [US Syria policy]
• US, Iran holding secret talks to stabilize situation in Baghdad: sources
  DEBKAfile May 14, 2016, 6:33 PM (IDT) Sources in the US and the Persian Gulf reported Saturday that Washington and Tehran are engaged in secret talks on stabilizing the situation in Baghdad. Observers say that the two countries have a joint interest in ending the political chaos in the Iraqi capital after reaching the conclusion that the only one profiting from the current situation is ISIS. Sources close to the contacts report that the Americans and the Iranians have agreed to support the continuation of the tenures of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Iraqi parliament's speaker, Salim Al Jabouri. Meanwhile, Tehran called on the leader of the Shiites in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters took over parts of Baghdad's Green Zone last week, to return to Qom, the center of religious rule in Iran. He was ordered by Iranian clerics to whom he is subordinate to rein in his supporters in Iraq and cease his actions against al-Abadi's government. [US Middle East strategy] [Iraq] [Iran]
• HSBC criticises John Kerry over business with Iran request
  Washington taking ‘odd position’ by asking Europe’s banks to engage with Iran while restricting US firms from doing so, says bank Jill Treanor Friday 13 May 2016 16.35 BST Last modified on Friday 13 May 2016 23.55 BST HSBC has criticised the US secretary of state, John Kerry, for asking European banks to do more business with Iran while Washington continues to restrict American financial firms from doing the same. The bank’s chief legal officer, Stuart Levey, said HSBC had no intention of doing any new business with Iran after a meeting in London on Thursday in which Kerry urged a gathering of European bankers to make a push into the country. [Iran deal] [Financial sanctions] [Governance] [Strategic incoherence] [Banking]
• Dilma Out: Brazilian Plutocracy Sets 54 Million Votes on Fire
  by Pepe Escobar Never in modern political history has it been so easy to “abolish the people” and simply erase 54 million votes cast in a free and fair presidential election. Forget about hanging chads, as in Florida 2000. This is a day that will live in infamy all across the Global South – when what was one of its most dynamic democracies veered into a plutocratic regime, under a flimsy parliamentary/judicial veneer, with legal and constitutional guarantees now at the mercy of lowly comprador elites. After the proverbial marathon, the Brazilian Senate voted 55-22 to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial for “crimes of responsibility” – related to alleged window dressing of the government’s budget. [Brazil]
• Visas are Weapons in the Hands of Terrorists
  By Congressman Randy Forbes May 14, 2016 To terrorists, travel documents are weapons. Family-based immigration visas, fiancé visas, and other documents required for entry into our nation can be used as the Trojan horses – the means to destructive plots. Such was the case with a Pakistani visa applicant who entered the United States in 2014 when her soon- to-be husband submitted a petition to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). U.S. officials requested more evidence to verify that she and her future husband had actually met in person – a requirement for fiancé visas – but the evidence was never provided. The petition was incomplete. Yet, she was approved for a visa and allowed entry into the United States. Americans came to know her as Tashfeen Malik when her photo flashed across television screens, smartphones, and internet news sites in December 2015. She and her husband opened fire at a holiday party at the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center. They killed 14 Americans and seriously injured 22 others. Unfortunately, the current visa vetting system allowed Malik to get through. But it’s not just Tashfeen Malik who wishes us harm. And the negligence may have not been a fluke. [Islamophobia] [Terrorism] [Blowback]
• Brazil’s Democracy to Suffer Grievous Blow as Unelectable, Corrupt Neoliberal is Installed
  Glenn Greenwald May 12 2016, 1:48 a.m. In 2002, Brazil’s left-of-center Workers Party (PT) ascended to the presidency when Lula da Silva won in a landslide over the candidate of the center-right party PSDB (throughout 2002, “markets” were indignant at the mere prospect of PT’s victory). The PT remained in power when Lula, in 2006, was re-elected in another landslide against a different PSDB candidate. PT’s enemies thought they had their chance to get rid of PT in 2010, when Lula was barred by term limits from running again, but their hopes were crushed when Lula’s handpicked successor, the previously unknown Dilma Rousseff, won by 12 points over the same PSDB candidate who lost to Lula in 2002. In 2014, PT’s enemies poured huge amounts of money and resources into defeating her, believing she was vulnerable and that they had finally found a star PSDB candidate, but they lost again, this time narrowly, as Dilma was re-elected with 54 million votes. In sum, PT has won four straight national elections – the last one occurring just 18 months ago. Its opponents have vigorously tried – and failed – to defeat them at the ballot box, largely due to PT’s support among Brazil’s poor and working classes. [Brazil] [Coup] [Corruption] [Hypocrisy]
• Syrian villagers describe massacre by militant group spared from UN terror blacklist
  Published time: 13 May, 2016 22:27 Eyewitnesses from Zara, an Alawite Syrian village, have revealed brutal killings and kidnappings at the hands of Ahrar al-Sham and Al-Nusra fighters to RT. This week, Western powers blocked the militant group’s inclusion on the UN terrorist list. Ahrar al-Sham, which espouses a strict Salafist form of Sunni Islam, reportedly fought alongside the Al-Nusra Front, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, which is not protected by the US and Russia-mediated ceasefire in Syria. The group admitted responsibility for the raid but claimed that it had not mistreated those who did not resist. “Civilians were not targeted. On the contrary factions made great effort to spare civilians and deal with prisoners humanely,” said an Ahrar al-Sham spokesman in a statement, cited by Reuters. However, residents of the village who spoke with RT Arabic painted a different picture of events, describing the raid on the settlement as a war crime. “They killed elderly people, took children and women as captives. We want to find out what happened to them afterwards. We know nothing about them,” Abdou Khalifa, a villager, who himself sustained wounds, told the channel. “Strangers came to our village. Most of them were foreigners, we understood that they weren't from Syria from the way they looked. They attacked our village, many were killed. My brother is among the dead, his children were wounded. They killed entire families,” said Ahmad Muhammad al Qasem. [US Syria policy] [Jihadists] [Sectarianism] [Massacre] [UNUS]
• Hezbollah blames rebel shelling for death of top commander in Syria
  BEIRUT | By Lisa Barrington Hezbollah said on Saturday its top military commander, whose death it announced on Friday, was killed in Syria by Sunni Islamist artillery fire and not by an Israeli air strike as one member of the Lebanese Shi'ite movement had said. "Investigations have showed that the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus International Airport, and which led to the martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri (hardline Sunni) groups in the area," Hezbollah said in a statement. The Shi'ite Muslim group is fighting in Syria, backing President Bashar al-Assad against a range of Sunni groups including Islamic State and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. [Hezbollah]
• ‘Assad must go’ demand should go, ex-White House official says
  Highlights Phil Gordon, a Clinton campaign adviser, handled Middle East policy at National Security Council Gordon condemns Syria’s Assad but says it’s more practical now to keep him in place Statement reflective of growing resignation that President Bashar Assad will stay By Hannah Allam WASHINGTON — Phil Gordon, a former senior White House adviser who is now part of the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy brain trust, argued Thursday that it’s time to stop calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s departure, saying the demand is part of a U.S. strategy that has failed to end the conflict. The willingness of such a prominent Middle East observer to make that call, on the record at a media briefing at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, signals a greater openness now in bluntly stating what U.S. officials have accepted for months, if not years: Assad isn’t leaving. While it’s still taboo to say it aloud, Assad’s departure hasn’t been a U.S. priority in a long time, and the Obama administration’s old mantra of “Assad must go” is now mostly hollow. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article77313747.html#storylink=cpy [US Syria strategy] [Regime change] [Assad]
• Washington’s Military Addiction And The Ruins Still to Come
  Tom Engelhardt • May 12, 2016 There are the news stories that genuinely surprise you, and then there are the ones that you could write in your sleep before they happen. Let me concoct an example for you: “Top American and European military leaders are weighing options to step up the fight against the Islamic State in the Mideast, including possibly sending more U.S. forces into Iraq, Syria, and Libya, just as Washington confirmed the second American combat casualty in Iraq in as many months.” Oh wait, that was actually the lead sentence in a May 3rd Washington Times piece by Carlo Muñoz. Honestly, though, it could have been written anytime in the last few months by just about anyone paying any attention whatsoever, and it surely will prove reusable in the months to come (with casualty figures altered, of course). The sad truth is that across the Greater Middle East and expanding parts of Africa, a similar set of lines could be written ahead of time about the use of Special Operations forces, drones, advisers, whatever, as could the sorry results of making such moves in [add the name of your country of choice here]. Put another way, in a Washington that seems incapable of doing anything but worshiping at the temple of the U.S. military, global policymaking has become a remarkably mindless military-first process of repetition. It’s as if, as problems built up in your life, you looked in the closet marked “solutions” and the only thing you could ever see was one hulking, over-armed soldier, whom you obsessively let loose, causing yet more damage. How Much, How Many, How Often, and How Destructively In Iraq and Syria, it’s been mission creep all the way. The B-52s barely made it to the battle zone for the first time and were almost instantaneously in the air, attacking Islamic State militants. U.S. firebases are built ever closer to the front lines. The number of special ops forces continues to edge up. American weapons flow in (ending up in god knows whose hands). American trainers and advisers follow in ever increasing numbers, and those numbers are repeatedly fiddled with to deemphasize how many of them are actually there. The private contractors begin to arrive in numbers never to be counted. The local forces being trained or retrained have their usual problems in battle. American troops and advisers who were never, never going to be “in combat” or “boots on the ground” themselves now have their boots distinctly on the ground in combat situations. The first American casualties are dribbling in. Meanwhile, conditions in tottering Iraq and the former nation of Syria grow ever murkier, more chaotic, and less amenable by the week to any solution American officials might care for. And the response to all this in present-day Washington? You know perfectly well what the sole imaginable response can be: sending in yet more weapons, boots, air power, special ops types, trainers, advisers, private contractors, drones, and funds to increasingly chaotic conflict zones across significant swaths of the planet. Above all, there can be no serious thought, discussion, or debate about how such a militarized approach to our world might have contributed to, and continues to contribute to, the very problems it was meant to solve. Not in our nation’s capital, anyway. [US global strategy] [Militarisation]
• European banks resist calls to increase business ties with Iran
  Martin Arnold in London, Geoff Dyer in Washington and Najmeh Bozorgmehr Some of Europe’s biggest banks are to resist rising political pressure to do more business in Iran when they meet the US secretary of state and the British foreign secretary on Thursday. John Kerry and Philip Hammond plan to call on the banks to do more to reconnect with Iran and to finance British companies seeking to win contracts in the Middle East’s second-largest economy In January, Iran and six leading powers — the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — implemented an agreement reached in July 2015 when Tehran agreed to scale down its nuclear activities in return for lifting of some sanctions. But the continuation of many US sanctions relating to other issues, such as facilitating terrorism, has made many western banks wary of working with Iranian institutions and individuals. This is causing growing frustration among officials in Iran, the US and Europe about the slow pace with which Tehran is being reconnected to the global financial system. [Iran deal] [Financial sanctions] [Agency]
• US and UK urge banks to do business with Iran
  Iranian president Hassan Rouhani is under pressure from hardliners as lifting of sanctions fails to live up to expectation An attempt by the US and UK governments to persuade European banks to do more business in Iran in the wake of last year’s nuclear deal, appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Senior representatives from nine major banks listened on Thursday to appeals from the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, urging them to help finance expanded trade with Iran following the lifting of sanctions under the agreement sealed in Vienna last July. As its part of the bargain, Tehran dismantled much of the infrastructure of its nuclear programme, but the government of President Hassan Rouhani has come under intense pressure recently from Iranian hardliners as the economic benefits have failed to live up to expectations. But banking representatives said the verbal encouragement had done little to ease their concerns or clarify the continuing complexity and uncertainty surrounding trade with Iran. They pointed out that while Washington and Europe had lifted some sanctions, there was still a ban on the use of dollars in the US banking system to finance Iranian trade, and individual US states have defied the federal government on some sanctions relief. [Iran] [Financial sanctions] [Public opinion][Treasury]
• John Boehner thinks Donald Trump can win in November
  Former House Speaker John Boehner is supporting Donald Trump, although he disagrees with Trump on issues like foreign policy, Trump's temporary Muslim entry ban proposal, and tearing up trade deals, among other things. In Las Vegas at a financial industry conference, Boehner said the billionaire businessman is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, "whether people like it or not." And he is confident that Trump can beat likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "Anyone who thinks Donald Trump can't win, just watch," Boehner said at the SALT Conference. Among those dubious of Trump's chances in November is Obama's former deputy chief of staff and 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, who was also on stage at the SALT Conference. "For a year, I prayed, 'Please God, let Donald Trump win the nomination. Turns out Jesus loves the sh*t out of me," Messina said at the same conference -- noted by CNN's Phil Mattingly in this tweet. Boehner's appearance at the conference coincided with the end of House Speaker Paul Ryan's much ballyhooed meeting with Trump in Washington. Ryan said he was "very encouraged" by the meeting but declined to endorse Trump. Boehner said he thinks Ryan is probably "trying to help shape the direction of Trump's policies," but ultimately, he doesn't doubt "there will be a meeting of the minds."
  And the former House speaker has no regrets about calling former presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh" recently, telling the conference, "Thank God that guy from Texas didn't win." He then apparently quipped, "I got criticized by some satanic organization for giving Lucifer a bad name." [Trump] [Cruz]
• Open letter to MSF: About Bias and Propaganda on Syria
  Rick Sterling writes an open letter to MSF/Doctors without Borders:
  Dear MSF International President Dr. Joanne Liu, Your organization is well regarded and influential. I appreciate that many good people work for and support MSF/Doctors Without Borders. However, I need to inquire about your independence and the consequences of your work in Syria. I believe an objective look will reveal that while you are helping in some areas, you are causing harm in others. Following are questions on this important issue: [MSF] [Canard] [Syria]
• ISIS-Israeli Relations: A Marriage of Convenience?
  Martin Berger The question of why the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) hasn’t launched a single attack against Israel so far has been bothering international analysts for months, since the “Jewish State” would seem a somewhat logical target for alleged “radical Islamists” supposedly building a “caliphate”. Ever since 2014, when this terrorist group began capturing large areas of land in Iraq and Syria it hasn’t engaged in a single hostile act against the “Zionist regime”, as they call Israel. One of the lastest public threats against Israel released by ISIS last December, involved a masked terrorist who announced in a video clip: We will uproot the state of the Jews (Israel) and you and Fatah, and all of the secularists are nothing and you will be over-run by our creeping multitudes. The rule of sharia (Islamic law) will be implemented in Gaza, in spite of you. We swear that what is happening in the Levant today, and in particular the Yarmouk camp, will happen in Gaza However, after careful evaluation, one can safely conclude that the ISIS threat against Israel – is a tribute to the traditional Arab perception of the “Zionist regime” that has “occupied” Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. Muslims of the Middle East have been critical of ISIS due to the fact that so far it has been waging a bloody war against co-believers, while leaving Israel, who has consistently oppressed and subjugated the Palestinians, alone. To address this increasing frustration, ISIS published an article in its weekly journal that tried to explain that Israel is the enemy of ISIS, but not the most important one under current circumstances. The top priority in its so-called “holy war” in the Middle East are the Shia centers of power, to be followed by Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf who are “occupying” two sacred Muslim shrines in Mecca and Medina. Therefore, the Shia Hezbollah group and other pro-Iranian allies are to go first, ISIS representatives argue, only to be followed by Saudi Arabia and its neighbors. Once those targets are “dealt with”, only then ISIS would agree to launch a “holy war” against Israel. But there’s yet another possible explanation of the extremely high “tolerance” that ISIS affords Israel. A number of United Nations reports (in particular, S/2013/345, S/2014/401 and S/2014/85) contain data that the Israeli Armed Forces (IDF) has been in regular contact with ISIS militants since 2013. The journal Addicting Info has even made an attempt to bring some light to this story: In a new report from the UN, it is revealed that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were maintaining regular contact with members of the so-called Islamic State since May of 2013. Initial reports from the IDF stated that this was only for medical care for civilians, but that story fell apart when the UN observers identified direct contact between IDF forces and ISIS soldiers, including giving medical care to ISIS fighters. Observations even included the transfer of two crates from the IDF to ISIS forces, the contents of which have not been confirmed at this time. Further the UN report identified what the Syrians label a crossing point of forces between Israel and ISIS, a point of concern brought before the UN Security Council. This report from the UN strengthens the claims by the Syrian regime that Israel is heavily involved in operations within the nation. To some extent, this version in which Israel is collaborating with ISIS can by confirmed by recent developments like the air raid Israel launched against military facilities near Damascus International Airport or the murder of Iranian General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi in Syria. Additionally, Israel was pretty reluctant to support US military actions against ISIS at the initial stages of the operation. http://journal-neo.org/2016/05/09/isis-israeli-relations-a-marriage-of-convenience/ [ISIS Israel]
• The Costs of Violence: Masters of Mankind (Part 2)
  by Noam Chomsky May 10, 2016 This piece, the second of two parts, is excerpted from Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books). Part 1 can be found by clicking here.] In brief, the Global War on Terror sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world, from Africa through the Levant and South Asia to Southeast Asia. It has also incited attacks in Europe and the United States. The invasion of Iraq made a substantial contribution to this process, much as intelligence agencies had predicted. Terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimate that the Iraq War “generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.” Other exercises have been similarly productive. A group of major human rights organizations — Physicians for Social Responsibility (U.S.), Physicians for Global Survival (Canada), and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany) — conducted a study that sought “to provide as realistic an estimate as possible of the total body count in the three main war zones [Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan] during 12 years of ‘war on terrorism,'” including an extensive review “of the major studies and data published on the numbers of victims in these countries,” along with additional information on military actions. Their “conservative estimate” is that these wars killed about 1.3 million people, a toll that “could also be in excess of 2 million.” A database search by independent researcher David Peterson in the days following the publication of the report found virtually no mention of it. Who cares? More generally, studies carried out by the Oslo Peace Research Institute show that two-thirds of the region’s conflict fatalities were produced in originally internal disputes where outsiders imposed their solutions. In such conflicts, 98% of fatalities were produced only after outsiders had entered the domestic dispute with their military might. In Syria, the number of direct conflict fatalities more than tripled after the West initiated air strikes against the self-declared Islamic State and the CIA started its indirect military interference in the war — interference which appears to have drawn the Russians in as advanced US antitank missiles were decimating the forces of their ally Bashar al-Assad. Early indications are that Russian bombing is having the usual consequences. [Imperialism] [Outsourcing] [False balance]
• American Power Under Challenge: Masters of Mankind (Part 1)
  By Noam Chomsky
  May 8, 2016. [This piece, the first of two parts, is excerpted from Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books). Part 2 will be posted on Tuesday morning.] When we ask “Who rules the world?” we commonly adopt the standard convention that the actors in world affairs are states, primarily the great powers, and we consider their decisions and the relations among them. That is not wrong. But we would do well to keep in mind that this level of abstraction can also be highly misleading. States of course have complex internal structures, and the choices and decisions of the political leadership are heavily influenced by internal concentrations of power, while the general population is often marginalized. That is true even for the more democratic societies, and obviously for others. We cannot gain a realistic understanding of who rules the world while ignoring the “masters of mankind,” as Adam Smith called them: in his day, the merchants and manufacturers of England; in ours, multinational conglomerates, huge financial institutions, retail empires, and the like. Still following Smith, it is also wise to attend to the “vile maxim” to which the “masters of mankind” are dedicated: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people” -- a doctrine known otherwise as bitter and incessant class war, often one-sided, much to the detriment of the people of the home country and the world. In the contemporary global order, the institutions of the masters hold enormous power, not only in the international arena but also within their home states, on which they rely to protect their power and to provide economic support by a wide variety of means. When we consider the role of the masters of mankind, we turn to such state policy priorities of the moment as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the investor-rights agreements mislabeled “free-trade agreements” in propaganda and commentary. They are negotiated in secret, apart from the hundreds of corporate lawyers and lobbyists writing the crucial details. The intention is to have them adopted in good Stalinist style with “fast track” procedures designed to block discussion and allow only the choice of yes or no (hence yes). The designers regularly do quite well, not surprisingly. People are incidental, with the consequences one might anticipate.
• Syria war: The Afghans sent by Iran to fight for Assad
  By Fariba Sahraei BBC Persian 15 April 2016 As the five-year conflict in Syria grinds on, BBC Persian has found evidence that Iran is sending thousands of Afghan men to fight alongside Syrian government forces. The men, who are mainly ethnic Hazaras, are recruited from impoverished and vulnerable migrant communities in Iran, and sent to join a multi-national Shia Muslim militia - in effect a "Foreign Legion" - that Iran has mobilised to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Many have since fled the battlefield and joined the refugee trail to Europe. [Iran] [Sectarianism] [Afghanistan] [Personalisation]
• Iran’s Grim News from Syria
  By Robin Wright • Iran is taking increasingly heavy casualties in Syria. A statement from the Revolutionary Guards announced on Saturday that thirteen of the corps’ élite forces were “martyred” in the escalating battle near Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, which has become the front line in the five-year civil war. Another twenty-one Iranians were wounded. It is, for Iran, the largest single casualty toll since the country intervened to rescue the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The fighting took place in Khan Touman, a village nine miles south of Aleppo. There’s no hiding the human costs in a war that is being played out graphically on social media. Syrian rebels immediately posted grisly photographs and videos of a pile of corpses dressed in camouflage, as well as photos of wallets with Iranian documents, identity cards, and currency The news has made front pages across Tehran. The newspaper Ghanoun compared the fight for Aleppo with the Battle of Karbala, from the year 680—an event that was pivotal in the Islamic world and has symbolized tensions between Shiites and Sunnis ever since. In Karbala, a small group of Shiites were slaughtered by Sunnis of the Umayyad dynasty. Since then, Sunnis have dominated Islam—in terms of numbers, geographic range, resources, and power. Karbala also made martyrdom integral to Shiite tradition—and to Tehran’s concept of modern warfare. [Iran] [Syria] [Jihadist] [Sectarianism]
• A dilemma called Trump
  Premen Addy
  Time was when the fourth estate was exalted as one of the guardians of American democracy. Its record over the past few years, however, has given rise to disillusionment, as the mainstream American media lined up with patriotic ardour in support of their governments' catastrophic interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria. John Swinton, once the doyen of the New York press corps, blew open the lid on self-evident truths with an excoriating speech upon his retirement: "There is no such thing, at this stage of the world's history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. [Trump] [Media] [US_Election16] [Republicans]
• Turkey’s Sultan eases out his Grand Vizier
  By M.K. Bhadrakumar on May 5, 2016 Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s exit puts at risk Turkey’s ties with the West, which sees President Recep Erdogan with skepticism bordering on derision. Erdogan will henceforth be the head of state, head of government, head of the ruling party and the “head of everything in Turkey” There is an ancient saying in South India regarding leadership styles – ‘Nothing grows under a banyan tree’. The banyan tree is a great sight with its spread-out branches, air-roots, secondary trunks, covering a vast area, giving shelter. But nothing grows under its dense foliage, and when it dies, the ground beneath its feet lies barren and scorched. Erdogan probably decided to ease out Davutoglu just as the latter was acquiring a stature of his own among European statesman Erdogan (L) probably decided to ease out Davutoglu just as the latter was acquiring a stature of his own among European statesmen Some leaders are like banyan trees who can only tolerate followers and will not allow for the emergence of other leaders. Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan is one such leader. According to the latest reports, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has announced that he is stepping aside, declaring a May 22 congress date to mark the party’s future leader. Erdogan was seeking his replacement. A tense meeting lasting 100 minutes between the two in the presidential palace in Ankara on Wednesday was preceded by a poignant public remark by Erdogan –”What matters is that you should not forget how you got to your post.” The import was not lost on Davutoglu who was hand-picked by the strongman when he himself moved into the presidency in August 2014. It is a miserable spectacle to watch when the strong man tramples over a weakling. But why is Erdogan unhappy with Davutoglu? [Turkey] [Erdogan]
• Iran Threatens To Close Oil Shipping Lanes, Could Beijing Do Likewise In South China Sea?
  Tim Daiss , Contributor Iran’s threats also pre-shadows what the future could hold in the South China Sea, also one of the most important oil and natural gas transport choke points in the world News from late last week that Iran had threatened to close oil shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. proceeds with further military drills in the area is disturbing enough, but it also provokes questions about actions China could also take in the not too distant future in the South China Sea. Oilprice.com reported on the Iran story on Friday, citing remarks made on Iranian television by General Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard. “If the Americans and their regional allies want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and threaten us, we will not allow any entry,” Salami said. [Iran] [Inversion] [Media] [South China Sea]
• US Defense Giants Expect $50Bln Aircraft Sales to Israel, Arab States
  The finalization of Israel’s foreign military funding package could mean a surge in new spending on US aircraft, including more purchases of Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, according to Guggenheim Securities The finalization of Israel’s foreign military funding package could mean a surge in new spending on US aircraft, including more purchases of Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets. By Sputnik News | May 7, 2016 A new financial report projects that the largest US defense contractors are looking forward to a new bonanza of expensive aircraft sales to Gulf states and Israel, including an extra squadron of F-15 jets, the Defense News reported on Friday. “The… finalization of a ten-year military funding plan for Israel [is] expected to be in the $40 billion to $50 billion range,” the newspaper stated, citing a financial report from Guggenheim Securities. “If the final figure ends up on the higher edge, Israel could seek to add two squadrons of F-15s.” Acquisitions would also include a long-pending buy of Textron-Boeing MV-22 Ospreys, the report noted. Guggenheim Securities also predicted likely approval for “a pair of long-held fighter sales by Boeing to the Gulf: 73 F-15s to Qatar and 40 F-18 jets to Kuwait.” Once Israel’s deal is completed, Guggenheim Securities suggested, those sales will be allowed to move forward. Approval for the two Gulf Arab states’ combat aircraft sales has been delayed by the White House, but is believed to be close at hand, Guggenheim Securities stated. [Arms sales] [US Middle East strategy]
• When Liberals Run Out of Patience: the Impolite Exile of Seymour Hersh
  by Dave Wagner May 6, 2016 Seymour Hersh’s The Killing of Osama bin Laden a pocket-size collection of stories written for the London Review and printed during the second Obama administration arrives at an awkward moment for the expatriate journalist who not so long ago was esteemed as the finest investigative reporter in the United States. Hersh now publishes abroad because his talent, though undiminished, no longer fits into the publication plans of the nation’s newspaper and magazine publishers. He has, it appears, failed to adapt to the times. His revelations about deceit and brute force in the conduct of foreign affairs that delighted his editors when he raised a torch over Dick Cheney lost its shine when he reported on President’s Obama’s not-so-different Cold War liberalism. The moment of Hersh’s fall from grace can be pinpointed to a meeting in the office of New Yorker editor David Remnick in 2011. Hersh wanted to write a story challenging the official account of the recent Navy Seals raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the notorious terrorist chief Osama bin Laden was gunned down in his hostage compound run by the Pakistani military. There was no firefight at the compound, no burial at sea. His sources agreed on these points, among many others. Remnick said to go ahead but to write it, but not for the magazine. He wanted a short piece for the magazine’s web site. Hersh was thunderstruck. He was like the reporter at the fabled small-town paper who rushed to tell his city editor he’d just found a murder victim in the newpaper’s lobby. Only to have the city editor respond, “Let the wires cover it.” “David said, ‘Do a blog,’” Hersh recalled. “I said, I don’t want to do a blog.’ It’s about money. I get paid a lot more for writing a piece for the New Yorker [magazine] … I’m old and cranky. [New York magazine, May 11, 2015.] But of course it was about more than money. It was also about respect and credibility, the coin of his livelihood as a journalist. [Osama] [Hersh] [Media] [Censor]
• Iran to close key oil shipping lanes if U.S. proceeds with military drills
  By James Burgess, Oilprice.com | Updated May 6, 2016 at 5:52 AM Iranian high officials have threatened to close the vital Strait of Hormuz to the United States and its allies if they threaten the regime in Tehran in the wake of American military drills launched in the Persian Gulf in April. "If the Americans and their regional allies want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and threaten us, we will not allow any entry," deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), General Hossein Salami said on the national television. The military drills were indeed large-scale, with more than 30 countries from six continents involved in what has been dubbed the International Mine Countermeasures Exercise. It took place at major maritime choke points in the world: the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab Al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. [Joint US military] [Iran]
• After Trump, the deluge: Does the GOP catastrophe hold the seeds of renewal?
  After the Trumpian ascendancy and the hilarious downfall of Ted Cruz, do the Republicans have a future? Maybe Andrew O'Hehir Follow I was looking forward to more of Carly Fiorina’s nightmarish singing. I don’t think that adjective is metaphorical. That moment last week when Fiorina busted out the lullabies for Ted Cruz’s robot children, revealing her true identity as the White Witch from the “Chronicles of Narnia,” was a lot like one of those moments in a “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie where a character thinks she’s awake and in the real world only to realize, skreek-skreek-skreek, that the real world no longer exists and maybe never did. Now the upper echelons of the Republican Party are having their own nightmare moment, following the ignominious defeat of the worst standard-bearer for their damaged brand they could possibly have conjured up. Seriously: Their final weapon against a hostile takeover by a would-be tyrant who represents virtually none of their party’s supposed core beliefs, and who is positioned for a disastrous defeat in an election they quite likely could have won was a man whose actual wife felt compelled to deny that he was the Zodiac Killer. It was as if the Los Angeles tourist board sat around a table trying to come up with the perfect symbol for their city’s wild and colorful cultural history, and unanimously agreed on Charlie Manson. [US_Election16] [Republicans]
• Huge Numbers of Dead and Wounded as Terrorists Rain Missiles down on Aleppo
  by Silvia Cattori, translated by Vanessa Beeley for 21st Century Wire The missiles raining down upon Aleppo since dawn on the 3rd May 2016 are being launched by the terrorist groups our media like to call “revolutionaries”. “Today, the deluge of bombs striking Aleppo have targeted the Obstetric hospital. Huge numbers of dead and wounded.” ~ Dr Nabil Antaki, 3pm [Syria] [Casualties]
• Forget Gene Sharp, John Carlarne Is The New Color Revolution Chief
  by Andrew Korybko, via The Duran Long thought of as being the ‘godfather’ of Color Revolutions, elderly Gene Sharp is stepping aside in favor of a much younger spiritual successor, John Carlarne. Color Revolutions are the epitome of post-modern warfare, and they’ve been successfully applied to devastating effect everywhere from Serbia to Syria. Whether as stand-alone regime change operations such as the one in 2003 Georgia or the catalyst to a Hybrid War like in 2011 Libya, Color Revolutions have arguably emerged as one of the US’ preferred strategies of choice in destabilizing targeted states. The architect behind this new method of warfare is Gene Sharp, an expert in “non-violent resistance” strategies and the founder of the “Albert Einstein Institution”. He’s published such works as “From Dictatorship To Democracy” and “There Are Realistic Alternatives”, both of which have been instrumental in honing Color Revolution organizational strategies and applied tactics. Largely credited with sparking the “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions, Sharp is a ‘god among men’ when it comes to asymmetrical warfare methods, but his elderly age means that someone else must pick up the torch and continue his work once he inevitably passes away. A New Leader Rises Enter John Carlarne, an up-and-coming Color Revolution strategist from The Ohio State University’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies. His publicly available CV indicates that he has a wealth of experience that’s particularly relevant for this field. From serving around the world as a Commissioned Officer in the British Army from 1990-1995 to being the Vice-President of the Peace Brigades International (PBI) from 1997 to the present, Carlarne has been able to combine his military training with broad NGO activity in spearheading the new tactic of “protective accompaniment”. [NGO] [Hybrid War]
• Forget “False-Flag”: Terrorism as Military Deception
  by Dr. Richard Mardsen Forget “false flag” labels when encountering military or terrorist events that look contrived or staged by those who stand to gain from them. The presumed motive to false-flag events is to provoke an adversary into doing what it would not otherwise do, or to provide a pretext for the covert party to openly attack that adversary. At the very least, “false-flag” usually alerts us to deficiencies in official explanation of military (including terrorist) events. I want to suggest, however, that it is an outdated metaphor of limited usefulness because it does not go far enough. Learn about Military Deception (MILDEC) instead. “False-flag” is but an accusation which can (and routinely is) easily ignored or dismissed as “conspiracy theory”, because it infers the result (“what” happened) from a presumed motive (“why” it happened) based on a calculation of the suspect’s real interests (hence “who gains”?). In other words, false-flaggers reason forward from an assumed and contestable motive. Real detective work always reasons-in-reverse from the concrete facts on the ground. Without an explanation of the “how” we are asked to accept false-flag charges on faith and—crucially—the “who” go unpunished. To understand the “how” of false-flag operations learn about the concepts and techniques of Military Deception (or MILDEC) as practiced covertly by conventional armed forces from the beginning of warfare. [Covert war] [Hybrid War] [IO]
• The SWIFT System: A Potential Weapon in the Hybrid War
  The acronym SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) has once again popped up in the global media headlines. Experts usually describe SWIFT as an international, interbank network for transmitting information about payment transactions. Globalization would be impossible without SWIFT The society was founded in 1973. By that time the post-war monetary system established in 1944 in Bretton Woods had virtually collapsed. The dollar as well as other currencies had been divorced from gold, and the printing presses at the US Federal Reserve and other Western central banks were furiously at work. The volume of international payments had increased sharply. The traditional systems for sharing data about payment transactions (the teletype, telegraph, and telephone) could not cope with the increased traffic. It was necessary to draw upon the latest technology in order to centralize the isolated channels used to exchange information. Two hundred thirty-nine banks from 15 countries worked together to set up an organization devoted to solving this problem. SWIFT is a cooperative society, established under European law, with a head office in Brussels. Currently almost 11,000 institutions from over 200 countries, including 9,600 banks, are members of SWIFT. Every year 2.5 billion payment orders are transmitted through the SWIFT network, which processes billions of dollars each day. SWIFT’s advantages are its speed, low cost, and reliable data protection. As a result, the majority of the world’s international settlements and payments now go through the SWIFT system. Payments are also cleared through this network even when each of the parties is under the same jurisdiction. This includes dollar and euro payments that must be handled by the banking systems of the US and European Union. During the 21st century the SWIFT system began helping money circulate throughout the entire global economy. The economic and financial globalization that began in the 1970s would have been impossible without SWIFT. [Financial sanctions] [Covert war]
• Norman Finkelstein on Sanders, the First Intifada, BDS, and Ten Years of Unemployment
  Norman Finkelstein • April 27, 2016 We interviewed Norman Finkelstein, the noted scholar of the Israel/Palestine conflict, in Brooklyn on April 8 and followed up with email exchanges. The following text contains both oral and written responses to our questions. PART 1: SANDERS Q. You’ve been canvassing for Bernie Sanders. Tell us why you’re so excited. I’ve witnessed three great social movements in my lifetime, the Civil Rights Movement, the Antiwar Movement and this is the third. Bernie’s campaign took the Occupy movement, which was localized, and he elevated it to the national level. I don’t know what will come next. I doubt anyone knows. But it’s exhilarating to be part of it. If you asked me one year ago whether young people would come out in these numbers, I would have laughed. My impression was that they were hooked on internet chatter and antidepressants. But the young folks in the campaign are so serious, so intelligent; they remind me of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) folks from the early 1960s. I went on a bus ride to Massachusetts to campaign for Bernie. I was one of five in the alte kaker brigade. The rest were young people. It struck me that on the way home, there were no drugs, no one smoking marijuana, no alcohol. We got home at midnight or 1 am. It was a kind of moral austerity. Like, this is serious stuff, we’re not going to diminish it. I have to say, it made me feel proud, for once, to be an American. On the other hand, these young people have good reason to be serious. They’re struggling for their future. If nothing comes of this, it’s really a black hole for them, a futureless future. They’re attending colleges with astronomical tuitions, coming out strapped with astronomical debt, then they have to pay astronomical interest rates, and—the worst is—there are no jobs out there. So they have a real (as we used to say) material interest in the Bernie Sanders campaign. [Sanders]
• Iran's Humiliation of American Sailors Must Have Consequences
  Forbes Introduces Bill Connecting Nuclear Sanctions and Iran's Maritime Behavior, Condemning Administration's Weakness in the Face of Iranian Aggression Washington, D.C. – Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04), Chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, introduced H.Res. 709, condemning Iran’s actions of illegally capturing, detaining, and humiliating U.S. Navy sailors in January and connecting consideration of future sanctions against Tehran to this incident. [Iran] [Hawk] [Inversion] [Legality]
  • Khamenei to US Navy: Keep your drills in the Bay of Pigs
    Author Arash Karami Posted May 2, 2016 During a speech May 2, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the US military presence in the Persian Gulf. "Today, the enemy makes statements that are bigger than their mouths," said Khamenei. "They sit and scheme that Iran must not have military drills in the Persian Gulf. What a strange thing to say. They come from that side of the world and conduct drills. What are you guys doing here?" Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran would not refrain from holding military drills in the Persian Gulf. Addressing the United States, Khamenei joked, "Go to the 'Gulf of Pigs,'" referring to the Bay of Pigs in southwest Cuba, where the United States supported an unsuccessful invasion to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in 1961. He added, "What are you doing in the Persian Gulf? The Persian Gulf is our home. The Persian Gulf is the place for the presence of the great nation of Iran." He said that Iran would continue to have a presence, hold drills and show its strength in the Persian Gulf. Khamenei's comments are in response to an April 28 resolution by Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., regarding Iranian naval actions in the Persian Gulf. While the Forbes resolution hardly made news in the United States, it was the top story on Kayhan newspaper's front page May 2. Kayhan is one of the premier conservative papers in Iran, and its editor is chosen by Khamenei. Forbes, who is chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote that Iran had on a number of occasions failed to "adhere to international maritime law" and by conducting military drills has "undermined stability" in the Persian Gulf. Iran held naval drills in the Sea of Oman and the Indian Ocean in January. They held a joint naval drill with Oman in December 2015. One of the main incidents cited in Forbes' resolution was the January incident in which Iran seized two US Navy boats, which had crossed into Iranian waters, and took 10 sailors captive. The sailors were shortly released, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later released pictures of the sailors surrendering, which angered many American politicians. [Iran] [Hawk] [Inversion] [Legality]
• Australian Public Broadcaster ABC unable to look at oil statistics
  By matt – April 30, 2016 Posted in: Australia Four times in as many months did ABC publish inaccurate statements about US shale oil. A glut of mis-information. This is unacceptable because it leads to wrong policy decisions and has ultimately damaging economic and financial consequences. [Oil] [Shale]
• Escalating U.S. Air Strikes Kill Hundreds of Civilians in Mosul, Iraq
  by Nicolas J S Davies USA Today revealed on April 19th that U.S. air forces have been operating under looser rules of engagement in Iraq and Syria since last fall. The war commander, Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials acknowledge that air strikes are killing more civilians under the new rules. U.S. officials previously claimed that air strikes in Iraq and Syria had killed as few as 26 civilians. A senior Pentagon official who is briefed daily on the air war told USA Today that was unrealistic, since air strikes that have destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles have inevitably killed much higher numbers of civilians. As the U.S. escalates its air strikes on Mosul, the largest city occupied by Islamic State, reports of hundreds of civilians killed by air strikes reveal some of the human costs of the U.S. air war and the new rules of engagement. [Civilian]
• The Syria White Helmets Exposed as US UK Agents Embedded with Al Nusra and ISIS
  Video produced by Hands Off Syria. [US Syria policy] [NGO] [Front]
• Aleppo Doctor Attacks Western Media for Bias, Censorship and Lies
  by Vanessa Beeley, for 21st Century Wire When the US and NATO war of aggression was launched against Syria, Dr Nabil Antaki could have abandoned Aleppo to ensure his own safety. Instead he decided to remain and to serve the besieged people of his city, working with various local charities. Above all, he wanted to bear witness to the destruction caused by Western support for the foreign armed groups who have been systematically destroying Syria and terrorising its people for the last 5 years. Yesterday [April 29] Silvia Cattori recorded this report from Dr Antaki on the recent amplification of propaganda surrounding events in Aleppo. It has been translated from the French by Vanessa Beeley. “With regards to recent events in Aleppo, I state very clearly that the mainstream media are lying by omission. Since the beginning of the war in Aleppo that began 4 years ago, they have consistently failed to report all the facts. All of us here in Aleppo are disgusted by their lack of impartiality and objectivity. They only ever talk about the loss of life in the east of Aleppo which is entirely controlled by Al Nusra, a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. These are their “moderate rebels” a title that affords them an unmerited degree of respectability. [Syria] [Media]
• Europe’s Banks Are Staying Out of Iran
  by Fabio Benedetti Valentini Ladane Nasseri May 3, 2016 — 3:00 PM NZST European companies flocking back to Iran are doing so without their favored lenders at their side. Less than two years after BNP Paribas SA agreed to pay a record $9 billion U.S. fine in part for dealings with Iran, many of the continent’s biggest banks remain unwilling to go anywhere near Iran-related business for fear that they will run afoul of remaining U.S. sanctions on the country. That’s opened the way for Chinese and Persian Gulf lenders, as well as European institutions such as Belgium’s KBC Groep NV, to grab a slice of the business of funding companies’ investments in Iran. The reluctance adds a complication for manufacturers from Airbus Group SE to PSA Group, the maker of Peugeot cars, as they seek to capitalize on growth in Iran. The funding issue has become a financial diplomacy hot-spot. In France, the government, worried that companies may lose exports, has started talks with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to get a commitment that banks can do business without incurring legal woes, two people with knowledge of the matter said. “Banks want the maximum certainty,” said Tanguy Coatmellec, a Dubai-based partner at Ernst & Young’s financial-services advisory group. “A big part of the risk is really the U.S. political position over the long term. Either financing methods will be found or these contracts won’t be finalized.” [Iran deal] [Renege] [Financial sanctions] [Treasury]
• Drop the Just War Theory
  by Mairead Maguire Laity and religious meeting in Rome appeal to Pope Francis to share with the world an encyclical on nonviolence and just peace and for the church to no longer use or teach ‘Just War theory’ It was a joy for me to join eighty people from around the world meeting in Rome 11-12th April, 2016, to contribute to the important discussion ‘Nonviolence and Just Peace Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence’. Members of the three day event co-hosted by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the International Catholic Peace Movement Organization, Pax Christi, strongly called on Pope Francis ‘to share with the world an encyclical on nonviolence and Just Peace; and on the Church to ‘no longer use or teach ‘just war theory’; and continue advocating for the abolition of war and nuclear weapons’. The statement of Appeal to the Pope also said: ‘We believe there is no ‘just war’. Too often the ‘just war theory’ has been used to endorse rather than prevent or limit war. Suggesting that a ‘just war’ is possible also undermines the moral imperative to develop tools and capacities for nonviolent transformation of conflict’. [Catholic] [War]
• Inside Panama Papers: Multiple Clinton connections
  Highlights Some donors to Clinton foundation used the Panamanian law firm for offshores Connections come from the more than 40 years Bill and Hillary Clinton have spent in public life Clinton criticized those exposed in the Panama Papers, some looking to hide their wealth By Anita Kumar, Marisa Taylor and Kevin G. Hall McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton recently blasted the hidden financial dealings exposed in the Panama Papers, but she and her husband have multiple connections with people who have used the besieged law firm Mossack Fonseca to establish offshore entities. Among them are Gabrielle Fialkoff, finance director for Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate; Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate who has traveled the globe with Bill Clinton; the Chagoury family, which pledged $1 billion in projects to the Clinton Global Initiative; and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president. Also using the Panamanian law firm was the company founded by the late billionaire investor Marc Rich, an international fugitive when Bill Clinton pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency. The ties are both recent and decades old, not surprising for the Democratic presidential front-runner and her husband, who have been in public life since the 1970s. [Panama Papers] [Hillary Clinton]
• The Unspoken Truth is that America is Supporting Al Qaeda: Heavy Propaganda Rages in the Battle for Aleppo. The Terrorists are Portrayed as “Freedom Fighters”
  By Prof. Tim Anderson Global Research, May 01, 2016 Heavy propaganda accompanies the strategic battle in Aleppo between the Syrian Army and its allies (Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and other militia) and the Saudi-Turkey-NATO backed terrorist groups (Jabhat al Nusra, Jaysh al Islam, Ahrar as Sham and ISIS). Fighting escalated in late April when the armed groups sent hundreds of mortars into Syria’s second city, and the Syrian Army responded with its long awaited offensive. Western media now claim that Aleppo’s citizens are under threat from the Syrian Army, while Syrian sources show civilians, reeling from constant mortar attacks, demanding that the Army roots out all terrorist groups. al-Nusra-Front supported by US-NATO-Israel In an attempt to claim the moral high ground, Washington uses proxy NGOs alongside proxy militia, to maintain the fiction that the Syrian Army does nothing but attack Syrian civilians. Prominent among these NGOs is ‘The White Helmets’ aka ‘Syrian Civil Defence’, which has become a principal source of claims that Syrian and Russian planes are targeting hospitals. In fact ‘The White Helmets’, which claims to be independent, is a Wall Street creation, led by former British soldier James le Mesurier, co-funded by the US Government and embedded with the terrorist organisation Jabhat al Nusra, banned by the UN Security Council. Every attack on al Nusra is thus portrayed as an attack on ‘civilians’ and clinics, or on emergency health workers. Much the same applies to Medicin Sans Frontiers (MSF), which funds al Nusra clinics (mostly without foreign volunteers) in several terrorist held areas. These links, including participation in sectarian executions, are well spelt out in a recent short documentary ‘The White Helmets – al Qaeda with a Facelift’, by Steve Ezzeddine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aAaReVn2I4 Background on The White Helmets has also been exposed in a series of articles by investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, including ‘’White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists’ (Sept 2015) at 21st Century Wire: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/ The contradiction in US policy and practice was recently highlighted when the Syrian head of TWH, Raed Saleh, travelled to receive a humanitarian award, but was refused permission to enter the US and was sent back to Istanbul. The likely reason was Saleh’s notorious association with Jabhat al Nusra. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [NGO]
• Is Ted Cruz Really an Awful, Terrible Jerk?
  Well, terms like "pompous asshole" and "backpfeifengesicht" tend to come up. —By Tim Murphy and David Corn | Mon Jan. 25, 2016 With the bromance between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump over, the mogul turned GOP front-runner has begun trash talking the senator from Texas. "He's a nasty guy," Trump recently huffed. "Nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him." For members of the politerati, this was no revelation. As Cruz has quickly climbed the political ladder, he has left a long line of associates who complain, without much prompting, that he is an insufferable schmuck. A prominent aide to George W. Bush's 2000 campaign could barely contain himself when we asked him to discuss Cruz, who worked in the campaign's policy shop. This person described Cruz as hyper-arrogant and widely despised, and he emphasized—over and over—that the pervasive dislike of Cruz within the Bush ranks had nothing to do with ideology. (Cruz, he noted, never objected to Bush's call for compassionate conservatism, immigration reform, and national education standards, and no one on the campaign regarded him as an ideologue.) The problem was simple: his personality. "That's exactly what he was: a big asshole," says a campaign veteran who worked with Cruz. [Cruz]
• US Presidential Election: Beyond Lesser Evilism
  by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
  The ongoing presidential race in the United States has revealed a number of phenomena that seem to have been brewing under the surface of neoliberal austerity economics for years. For one thing, it has shown a widespread popular discontent with the status quo. For another, it has revealed that the American public is no longer averse to socialistic ideas. The relative financial security of the “golden” years of the U.S. economy (late 1940s–early 1970s), along with the Cold War propaganda of the “communist threat to our lives,” had created a strong aversion to socialism in the American psyche. But the change in the objective conditions (precipitated largely by the switch from New Deal economics to Neoliberal economics) has led to change in consciousness. Evidence shows that the success of Sanders’ campaign has been not despite but largely because of his unabashedly professing to be a “democratic socialist.” This obviously means that, tired of the agonizing austerity economics, considerable segments of the electorate have come to view socialism as an alternative to Neoliberalism. Under the prevailing conditions that are clearly favorable to an alternative to neoliberal economics, a logical question to ask is: where are the labor leaders? Where are Messrs. Richard Trumka, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and his high-ranking labor lieutenants at the head of big unions? Why aren’t these influential labor leaders, representing 12.5 million union members, taking advantage of the popular anger to challenge the austerity economics of neoliberalism and chart an independent labor and/or grassroots movement that could lead to meaningful changes in favor of the working class and the broader masses of the dispossessed? Tragically, not only are the leaders of big unions not tapping into the rebellious popular mood to challenge the status quo, but they are, in fact, working very hard to contain rank-and-file workers not to vote for Bernie Sanders and, instead, vote for the candidate of the status quo, Hillary Clinton. [Socialism] [US_Election16]

• Flashback: Top Journalist Exposes How Intelligence Agencies Control Western Media
  Steven MacMillan In an age where information warfare is one of the most critical and well-financed areas of warfare, the revelation in 2014 by a former top journalist in Germany is crucial in understanding how the Western media operates. Although this is a story that has been written about by numerous journalists and commentators in the real/alternative media, it is still vital to emphasize the importance of these revelations. Udo Ulfkotte, a top German journalist and former editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, revealed in an interview with RT in 2014 that journalists are often bribed to lie, deceive and write stories favourable to intelligence agencies (it is worth quoting Ulfkotte at some length): http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/28/flashback-top-journalist-exposes-how-intelligence-agencies-control-western-media/ [Media] [Espionage]
• US troops in Syria to topple govt.: FM Lavrov
  Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:55AM Russia says the US military intervention in Syria is illegal, ultimately aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter that the intervention without the authorization of the "legitimate" Syrian authorities was a "big mistake." "I've told our American partners repeatedly that this is a big mistake. Just like they received approval from the Iraqi government, they should have obtained approval from Damascus or come to the UN Security Council," he said. "The fact that they went there illegally reflects, firstly, the arrogant stance that Syrian President Assad heads an illegitimate regime," Lavrov said in remarks published on Thursday. "And, secondly, in my opinion, the desire to keep their hands untied and be able to use the coalition to attack not only terrorist positions, but perhaps also the regime's forces later on in order to overthrow it, as it happened in Libya." Lavrov said Russia is "the only country engaged in anti-terrorism activities in Syria legally." [US Syria policy] [Legality]
• The Classified ’28 Pages’: a Diversion From Real US-Saudi Issues
  by Gareth Porter The controversy surrounding the infamous “28 pages” on the possible Saudi connection with the terrorists that were excised from the joint Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is at fever pitch. But that controversy is a distraction from the real problems that Saudi Arabia’s policies pose to the United States and the entire Middle East region. The political pressure to release the 28 pages has been growing for the past couple of years, with resolutions in both houses of Congress urging the president to declassify the information. But now legislation with bipartisan sponsorship has advanced in Congress that would deprive any foreign government of sovereign immunity in regard to responsibility for a terrorist attack on US soil and thus make it possible to sue the Saudi government in court for damages from the 9/11 attacks. [Saudi Arabia] [9/11] [28 pages] [Wahhabi]
• Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved Sending Libya’s Sarin to Syrian Rebels
  Eric Zuesse | 28.04.2016 | WORLD In an interview with Alternet.org, the independent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh was asked about Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi Libya consulate’s operation to collect sarin from Libyan stockpiles and send it through Turkey into Syria for a set-up sarin-gas attack, to be blamed on Assad in order to ‘justify’ the US invading Syria, as it had invaded Libya. He said: «That ambassador who was killed, he was known as a guy, from what I understand, as somebody, who would not get in the way of the CIA. As I wrote, on the day of the mission he was meeting with the CIA base chief and the shipping company. He was certainly involved, aware and witting of everything that was going on. And there’s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by some channel». [US Middle East policy] [Outsourcing] [cbw] [False flag]
• The Real Meaning of Donald Trump
  He’s a Sign of American Decline (Just Not in the Way You Think) Tom Engelhardt • April 26, 2016 “Low-energy Jeb.” “Little Marco.” “Lyin’ Ted.” “Crooked Hillary.” Give Donald Trump credit. He has a memorable way with insults. His have a way of etching themselves on the brain. And they’ve garnered media coverage, analysis, and commentary almost beyond imagining. Memorable as they might be, however, they won’t be what last of Trump’s 2016 election run. That’s surely reserved for a single slogan that will sum up his candidacy when it’s all over (no matter how it ends). He arrived with it on that Trump Tower escalator in the first moments of his campaign and it now headlines his website, where it’s also emblazoned on an array of products from hats to t-shirts. You already know which line I mean: “Make America Great Again!” With that exclamation point ensuring that you won’t miss the hyperbolic, Trumpian nature of its promise to return the country to its former glory days. In it lies the essence of his campaign, of what he’s promising his followers and Americans generally — and yet, strangely enough, of all his lines, it’s the one most taken for granted, the one that’s been given the least thought and analysis. And that’s a shame, because it represents something new in our American age. The problem, I suspect, is that what first catches the eye is the phrase “Make America Great” and then, of course, the exclamation point, while the single most important word in the slogan, historically speaking, is barely noted: “again.” With that “again,” Donald Trump crossed a line in American politics that, until his escalator moment, represented a kind of psychological taboo for politicians of any stripe, of either party, including presidents and potential candidates for that position. He is the first American leader or potential leader of recent times not to feel the need or obligation to insist that the United States, the “sole” superpower of Planet Earth, is an “exceptional” nation, an “indispensable” country, or even in an unqualified sense a “great” one. His claim is the opposite. That, at present, America is anything but exceptional, indispensable, or great, though he alone could make it “great again.” In that claim lies a curiosity that, in a court of law, might be considered an admission of guilt. Yes, it says, if one man is allowed to enter the White House in January 2017, this could be a different country, but — and in this lies the originality of the slogan — it is not great now, and in that admission-that-hasn’t-been-seen-as-an-admission lies something new on the American landscape. Donald Trump, in other words, is the first person to run openly and without apology on a platform of American decline. Think about that for a moment. “Make America Great Again!” is indeed an admission in the form of a boast. As he tells his audiences repeatedly, America, the formerly great, is today a punching bag for China, Mexico… well, you know the pitch. You don’t have to agree with him on the specifics. What’s interesting is the overall vision of a country lacking in its former greatness. Perhaps a little history of American greatness and presidents (as well as presidential candidates) is in order here. [Trump] [Decline] [Exceptionalism]
• Former Speaker John Boehner Responds With Most Brutal, Blunt Remarks Yet When Asked for His Opinion on Ted Cruz
  Apr. 28, 2016 9:54am Kaitlyn Schallhorn Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) excoriated Republican presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz during an event at Stanford University Wednesday as he referred to him simply as “Lucifer in the flesh.” Boehner let loose with his harsh critique of the Texas senator after he was asked by the event moderator to be “frank,” according to the Stanford Daily. “Lucifer in the flesh,” Boehner said of Cruz. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.” Former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio. (Getty Images/Andrew Harrer) The event at Stanford wasn’t the first time Boehner has referred to Cruz as “Lucifer.” During the Future Industry Association conference in Florida last month, Boehner levied the charge. He’s also referred to Cruz as a “jackass.” And on Wednesday, Boehner contended that he would vote for GOP front-runner Donald Trump — with whom he has a relationship that he described as “texting buddies” who play golf — should he become the nominee. However, Boehner vowed that he would never vote for Cruz. [US_Election16] [Cruz]
• Bashar basking in Baath Party victory
  ALEPPO, Syria — In a strange scene full of contradiction, President Bashar al-Assad's government held parliamentary elections April 13 in a country that has been crumbling under the weight of shelling, battles and displacement for five years in a row. The Syrian parliamentary elections organized by President Bashar al-Assad's regime consecrated the Baath Party's domination and led some critics to say Assad isn't interested in a political solution to the war there. Author Mohammed al-KhatiebPosted April 27, 2016 Translator Pascale el-Khoury The elections were only held in areas controlled by the regime, which according to Omran for Strategic Studies constitute only 17% of Syria's land area, while the Islamic State (IS), Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party (PYD) and opposition forces control the rest of the country. The war in Syria has sent about 5 million people fleeing to neighboring countries and elsewhere, but the recent elections were held in a peaceful atmosphere, as if no war has been plaguing the country. Even in provinces completely outside the regime's control, such as Deir ez-Zor, Idlib and Raqqa, lists of candidates were formed and voters headed to polling stations designated for them in regions under the regime’s control. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/syria-parliamentary-elections-opposition-baath-regime.html#ixzz479ddzakL [Syria] [Election] [Media]
• Big Money in Politics Doesn’t Just Drive Inequality. It Drives War.
  Military contractors have shelled out over $1 million to the 2016 presidential candidates — including over $200,000 to Hillary Clinton alone. By Rebecca Green, April 27, 2016. Originally published in OtherWords. Military-Industrial Diagnosis Khalil Bendib / OtherWords.org The 2016 presidential elections are proving historic, and not just because of the surprising success of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, the lively debate among feminists over whether to support Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump’s unorthodox candidacy. The elections are also groundbreaking because they’re revealing more dramatically than ever the corrosive effect of big money on our decaying democracy. Following the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision and related rulings, corporations and the wealthiest Americans gained the legal right to raise and spend as much money as they want on political candidates. The 2012 elections were consequently the most expensive in U.S. history. And this year’s races are predicted to cost even more. With the general election still six months away, donors have already sunk $1 billion into the presidential race — with $619 million raised by candidates and another $412 million by super PACs. Big money in politics drives grave inequality in our country. It also drives war. After all, war is a profitable industry. While millions of people all over the world are being killed and traumatized by violence, a small few make a killing from the never-ending war machine. [MISCOM] [US_Election16] [Plutocracy]
• Saudi Arabia and 9/11: the Kingdom May be in For a Nasty Shock
  by Patrick Cockburn Foreign leaders visiting King Salman of Saudi Arabia have noticed that there is a large flower display positioned just in front of where the 80-year-old monarch sits. On closer investigation, the visitors realised that the purpose of the flowers is to conceal a computer which acts as a teleprompter, enabling the King to appear capable of carrying on a coherent conversation about important issues. One visiting US delegation meeting with King Salman recently observed a different method of convincing visitors – or at least television viewers watching the encounter – that he can deal with the escalating crises facing Saudi Arabia. The king did not look at the group but at a giant television screen hanging from the ceiling of the room on which was appearing prompts. Simon Henderson, the Saudi expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who tells the story, writes that off to one side in the room was an aide who “furiously hammered talking points into a keyboard”. [Saudi Arabia]
• When Will the Saudi Regime Stop Killing Syrians?
  Nedal Naisseh The Syrian High Negotiations Committee is Saudi-made. Some reports show that Saudi Arabia’s intervention and support for terror in Syria are nothing compared to the estimated tens of billions of dollars spent by the Saudi regime to topple Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad by recruiting terrorists and purchasing weapons needed for the five-year war on Syria. Most of the leaders and high-ranking figures of the so-called Syrian Opposition are living with their families in Saudi Arabia. Dozens of them stay in five-star hotels in the kingdom and abroad at the Saudi Intelligence Organisation’s expenses. The 200.000-euro gift awarded to each one who attended the recent Riyadh Conference was published and admitted by HNC members themselves and reported by news agencies. Add to that salaries, among other facilities which are secret or concealed, all this boils down to: killing Syrians and destroying Syria. In fact, there are two kinds of external support to terrorists in Syria. One is financial provided by Saudis, Qataris, UAE, Kuwait and to some extent previously, some western countries. The second is logistic, which is securing and facilitating the flow of mercenaries, foreign fighters and terrorists entering Syria from all over the world. [Saudi Arabia] [Syria]
• World Economy in Serious Difficulty: Call for Bold Measures
  By Yilmaz Akyuz Yilmaz Akyuz is the chief economist of the South Centre, based in Geneva. A longer version of this article was originally published in the Real News network (http://therealnews.com/t2/) GENEVA, Apr 26 2016 (IPS) - The US was the cause of the crisis but has come out better than anyone else in the advanced world and better than many developing countries. During the crisis there was a widespread perception that this was the end of US hegemony. It was end of the dollar as the major reserve currency. When we look back now, we see that the US is strengthened a lot more as a result of this crisis. Not only vis-à-vis other developed countries –“ Europe, European Union or Japan – but developing countries including China, in economic terms. The status of the dollar as a reserve currency today is unchallenged because of the crisis in Europe. [Crisis] [Reserve]
• The Missing 28 Pages: America's "allies" pursue their own agendas
  Philip Giraldi • April 26, 2016 The redacted 28 pages describing the Saudi Arabian role in 9/11 have become somewhat of a political football. At this point, I suspect the Obama Administration is doing a damage assessment on them to determine whether they will in any way hurt Democratic electoral prospects in November. As the missing pages will likely lead to increased speculation about a major cover-up carried out by the George W. Bush Administration, Obama’s political advisers would likely be inclined to convince him to release the document if he is at all hesitating. If the pages are released there will significant foreign policy fallout. There have already been demands that the Saudi government be considered fair game for remedial lawsuits in U.S. courts by filed by families of victims of 9/11. There is currently a bill in Congress specifically authorizing such action. Riyadh has already responded to it by threatening massive retaliation if official Washington does not take steps to prohibit such legal action, including the warning that it might consider selling off its $750 billion in American based assets, which might produce a surge in U.S. interest rates. Washington has up until now specifically protected Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts by having the State Department intercede and grant it sovereign immunity, a privilege not extended to the Palestinian Authority and to Iran, both of which have been hammered by adverse judgements in Manhattan courtrooms. [9/11] [Saudi Arabia] [28 pages]
• How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11
  By Paul Sperry April 17, 2016 | 6:00am In its report on the still-censored “28 pages” implicating the Saudi government in 9/11, “60 Minutes” last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been “soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom. That’s quite an understatement. Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook. Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. [9/11] [Saudi Arabia] [28 pages]
• What Role now for Iran in the Middle East and the World
  Transcript of the talk ]in Wellington] by: Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif Khonsari Minister of Foreign Affairs, Iran I want to share with you some thoughts about how if it is possible for us to make the change in the nuclear negotiations and whether we could use the model that we use for the nuclear negotiations and apply it to the situation in our region and maybe even if we are not too modest draw larger lessons for how we conduct diplomacy in the international arena. Let me begin by giving a preface to that discussion, by addressing the reality of our today’s world. We all talk about globalisation, mostly not knowing exactly the dimensions of what we are talking about. By globalisation most of us mean our environment is globalised. We cannot protect our environment when there is degradation going on everywhere. We cannot protect the environment if greenhouse gas emissions everywhere are on the rise. We cannot erect a big wall around our country or our city or our neighbourhood to protect this environment. That’s globalisation for you. We also talk about globalisation that we cannot have prosperity when others are in dire poverty because we lose markets, we lose consumers. That’s again globalisation for you. But we all neglect the fact that we cannot have security when others are insecure. We cannot establish countries or regions that are immune from threats be it by deflation or terrorism or violence or inequality where it’s raging elsewhere in the world. [Iran]
• Documentary: Life in Syria’s capital through the lens of a local cameraman
  “ War has been raging in Syria for five years, causing millions to leave the country. This is the story of some who’ve stayed. [Syria] [EWA]
• Video: A Syrian soldier speaks
  Interview in Damascus, December 2013 [Syria] [EWA]
• Charles Koch suggests that another Clinton in the White House might be better than Trump or Cruz
  By Vanessa Williams April 24 Charles Koch said the political network he helps lead is "seeking to right injustices that are holding our country back." (Bo Rader/The Wichita Eagle via AP, File) Charles Koch has criticized the tone of the GOP presidential primary campaign. (Bo Rader/the Wichita Eagle via AP) Conservative political activist Charles Koch suggested in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that Democrat Hillary Clinton would be a better president than the Republican contenders, although he stopped short of saying he would support the former secretary of state if she ends up representing her party in a general election. The billionaire, who with brother David has been active in Republican Party politics, criticized the tone of the GOP presidential primary campaign, citing it as the reason the brothers have not contributed to any campaigns, including efforts to derail Republican front-runner Donald Trump. [US_Election16] [Hillary Clinton] [Koch]
• Saudi Arabia Snubs Obama: Failure of US Middle East Policy
  Peter Korzun | 24.04.2016 During his trip (April 20-21) to Saudi Arabia US President Obama held a private meeting with King Salman and attended a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit focused on regional stability, Iran and counterterrorism. His entourage included US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, demonstrating the focus on security. The visit was overshadowed by Gulf Arab countries’ exasperation with the US approach to the region. The group of monarchies comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, are sorely disappointed by Obama's presidency, regarding it as a period in which the United States has pulled back from the region, giving more space to their rival Iran for expanding its influence. Stepping off of Air Force One earlier at King Khalid International Airport, Obama was greeted not by King Salman but by a lower-ranking royal, Prince Faisal bin Bandar Al Saud, the governor of Riyadh. Ahead of Obama's arrival, Saudi state television showed the king personally greeting senior officials from other Gulf nations arriving at the Air Base. Unlike previous visits, this time his low-key arrival was not shown live on Saudi television. The tensions are aggravated by the congressional report suggesting that the Saudis may have played a role in the 9/11 attacks. US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is reviewing the 28 classified pages from the 9/11 Commission report to see whether they can be released. A bill that could make Saudi Arabia liable for any role in the terrorist attacks is drawing support from both Republicans and Democrats, despite the administration’s opposition. Saudi Arabia is angry about the possible revival of the matter believed to be settled long ago (fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi citizens). Riyadh has reportedly warned it could sell off hundreds of billion dollars’ worth of US assets if the bipartisan bill passes. [Saudi Arabia] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Syrian Elections Confirm West’s Worst Fears
  Tony Cartalucci Despite Syria’s ongoing conflict, life in many parts of the nation goes on. Syria’s election schedule is no exception. The last parliamentary elections before the latest held this month were in 2012. Since these elections are held every 4 years, the recent elections were far from a “political stunt” to bolster the legitimacy of the current government, but instead represented the continuity of Syria’s ongoing, sovereign political process. Attempts to undermine the credibility of the elections have become the primary objective of US and European news agencies, however, even the US government’s own election monitoring nongovernmental (NGO) agencies have conceded the last presidential election in 2014 saw soaring voter turnout, and despite attempts to leave voter turnout this year omitted from US-European press reports, it appears to also have been high. The Washington-based, USAID-funded “Election Guide” reported a 73.42% voter turnout in Syria’s 2014 presidential election, a turnout that would be astounding had they been US elections. Voter turnout for the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections in the US, for example, were 57.1% and 54.9% respectively. http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/23/syrian-elections-confirm-wests-worst-fears/ [Syria] [Election] [Media] [Disinformation]
• Palmyra and propaganda
  James Snell 21 April 2016
  Those who unthinkingly applaud the Assad regime for recapturing Palmyra run the risk of looking as though they care more for Roman ruins than Syrian lives.
  In Syria at the moment, nothing is as simple as it initially seems. There are always complicating factors, overlooked actors and unforeseen consequences with which to contend. Especially when considering the propaganda output of the Assad regime, it is best to treat everything said with a great degree of caution. This is especially true when considering the sort of stories the regime may promote in order to capture the world's attention or otherwise appeal to western perspectives. The recent case of Palmyra provides a particularly pertinent lesson in this particular modus operandi. After the recapture of the city from the Islamic State by forces claiming allegiance to Assad, it was very quickly suggested that this represented a turning point of sorts, in two ways. First, it was argued, this meant that the regime, long viewed as sclerotic and suspected of haemorrhaging manpower, retained the capacity to retake territory; and second, as some in the west were suspiciously eager to point out in rather more idealistic terms, the regime could be seen as not only the potential scourge of ISIS but also the defender of civilisation to boot. The tendency to portray dictators like Assad as 'defenders of civilisation' in contrast with terrorist groups like ISIS is a longstanding practice, and one which is in no small way encouraged by the regimes themselves. After all, in the face of decades of oppression – and five years of civil war precipitated by a brutal crackdown – anything which might be used to categorise the regime in good, decent terms is seized upon. [Syria] [ISIS] [Media] [Outsourcing] [Palmyra]
• In the Wake of the Earthquake: “Normal” in Nepal Spells Trouble
  By Barbara Nimri Aziz Global Research, April 21, 2016 “Things are normal”, responded my friend by phone from Kathmandu. “Nothing has changed”. Oh dear; this means the situation there remains dire. Not a good sign—too much like news of a terminally ill relative. Nepal has fallen into a troubling, dysfunctional state of ‘normality’ which has little to do with last year’s eruptions that destroyed villages, leveled temples and schools, killing almost 9,000 people in and around Kathmandu Valley. The county’s capital, a city of four million, needs to awaken from its comatose state, a condition that may seem an outcome of the earthquake, but in fact is a result of deep-seated endemic problems:– bad leadership, misplaced and mismanaged development policies and funds, factionalism, and an over-dependence on India. Yes, Nepal generates news: Britain’s Prince Harry was there helping out—not the political mess but something easy, like water pipes or village schools. A major newspaper devotes a full page to 3-D printers being introduced to isolated villages (their residents still live in tents waiting to rebuild homes crushed by the earthquake). Because hoteliers are readying tourist comforts and trekking trails are reopening, progress appears to be underway. You’ll find instagram images of spectacular glaciers and color-splashed youngsters frolicking at festival-time. Those unable to experience Nepal firsthand can order quality fabrics and carpets produced by foreign-run factories using advanced technologies there. For the spiritually minded, Patan’s ancient Hindu temples are being restored and yoga retreats can be booked online. Image-makers provide appropriate graphics for those who continue to deny Nepal’s reality—that is, a nation absent basic services for its people and where government responsibility is hard to find. [Nepal]
• Lay-up plan jeopardizes some of the Navy's best ships: Forbes
  By Rep. J. Randy Forbes, Special to Military Times 10:11 a.m. EDT April 19, 2016 Over the past five years, the United States military has been under tremendous fiscal pressure. Since 2011, when the Budget Control Act capped defense spending and created the threat of sequestration, the armed forces have seen their budgets cut significantly. While the world has grown more dangerous, each service has been driven to sacrifice elements of force structure on the altar of austerity. For the U.S. Navy, the sacrificial victims have been cruisers and amphibious ships. Thus far, Congress has been able to save these vital vessels from the chopping block, but action by Congress will be needed once again in 2016 to keep them in service and prevent the further degradation of our Navy. [MISCOM] [Seapower]
• The Decline And Fall Of The House Of Saud? – OpEd
  By Bob Rigg April 22, 2016
  While Iran has been systematically demonized by western governments and western media since the 1979 revolution, with a venom relying heavily on Islamophobic stereotypes, Saudi Arabia has been permitted to lead a charmed life, with western leaders falling over each other to benefit from either Saudi oil or Saudi largesse, irrespective of brutal Saudi oppression of their own Shia minority and the ruthless crushing of anything remotely resembling domestic dissent. Saudi Arabia is the de facto military government of neighboring Bahrain, where a tiny Sunni elite rules with an iron fist over an overwhelming Shia majority. When Bahrainis take to the streets in protest Saudi military convoys have been known to drive across the causeway linking Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. But because Bahrain is the major US naval and air base in the region the US has been strangely silent about this. Saudi Arabia has also allowed the US to establish military bases on its territory, although this stirred up domestic dissent. [Saudi Arabia]
• Europe Says U.S. Regulations Keeping It From Trade With Iran
  By Thomas Erdbrink April 21, 2016 Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, left, met with Ayatollah Ali Khameinei, the Iranian supreme leader, to discuss trade between Iran and the European Union. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images TEHRAN — With the completion of the nuclear deal with Iran and the opening of its market, European businesses expected a trade bonanza. But three months after the lifting of many sanctions against Iran, there is growing frustration among European politicians, diplomats and businesspeople over the inability to complete dozens of energy, aviation and construction deals with the Iranians. The main obstacle, the Europeans say, is their ally, and the driving force behind the historic nuclear agreement, the United States. Wary of running afoul of new sanctions imposed by Washington over Iran’s missile program and accusations that Iran sponsors terrorism, European banks are refusing to finance any of the deals, effectively perpetuating Iran’s isolation from the global financial system. Europeans also point to new American visa regulations that make it more difficult for them to enter the United States if they have traveled to Iran. Those financial and travel restrictions, they say, make it nearly impossible to reach agreements with their Iranian counterparts [Iran deal] [Renege]
• Yemen's guerrilla war tests military ambitions of big-spending Saudis
  RIYADH/WASHINGTON | By Angus McDowall , Phil Stewart and David Rohde A Saudi air force jet flies in formation during a graduation ceremony for air force officers at King Faisal military college in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 27, 2009. To match Special Report SAUDI-MILITARY/ Reuters/Fahad Shadeed/File Photo Six years ago, Saudi and American officials agreed on a record $60 billion arms deal. The United States would sell scores of F-15 fighters, Apache attack helicopters and other advanced weaponry to the oil-rich kingdom. The arms, both sides hoped, would fortify the Saudis against their aggressive arch-rival in the region, Iran. But as President Barack Obama makes his final visit to Riyadh this week, Saudi Arabia's military capabilities remain a work in progress – and the gap in perceptions between Washington and Riyadh has widened dramatically. The biggest stumble has come in Yemen. Frustrated by Obama's nuclear deal with Iran and the U.S. pullback from the region, Riyadh launched an Arab military intervention last year to confront perceived Iranian expansionism in its southern neighbor. [Saudi Arabia] [Arms sales] [Iran] [Yemen] [Pacification]
• Brazil: Coup d'état - live on TV!
  Alicia Castro 20 April 2016 An elected president faces impeachment just because Congress dislikes her. This grotesque manoeuvre aims to block Lula from standing in the next election. President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha, centre at the table, starts the session on whether or not to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, in Brasilia, Brazil. April 17, 2016. AP Photo/Eraldo Peres Brazil’s congress has given the go-ahead to impeach President Dilma Rousseff - who a year and a half ago received the votes of 54 million Brazilians. A majority in the legislature has launched the process, which will now pass to the senate, despite the fact that Dilma is not accused of criminal responsibility - which under Brazilian law, is the only justification for impeaching the head of state. One paradox is that while the President has not been involved in any case of corruption, of the 513 members of Congress, no fewer than 299 are under judicial investigation and 76 have already been found guilty. The President of the Chamber, who is the main instigator of the proceedings against Dilma - which has led to him being characterised as the sinister manipulator in a Parliament re-baptised as the “House of Cunha” (the Brazilian equivalent of “House of Cards”) - is facing prosecution in the Supreme Court for concealing five million dollars in a Swiss bank account, the proceeds of bribes extracted from companies in return for arranging contracts with Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company. [Brazil] [Coup] [Corruption] [Inversion]
• Khamenei warns of 'soft war' between Iran, US
  Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei defended Lebanese group Hezbollah after it was condemned in the closing statement of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Istanbul. After the Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemned Hezbollah and Iran, Iran's supreme leader has indirectly criticized Saudi Arabia and called the condemnation meaningless. Author Arash KaramiPosted April 20, 2016 During a speech to the Islamic Students Association April 19, Khamenei said, “See what they did against the devout youth in Palestine and Lebanon? How many real and propaganda threats have they made against Hezbollah of Lebanon? Yet Hezbollah of Lebanon is showing its brave [face] in the world of Islam.” Referring to the OIC statement, which Iranian officials accused of being heavily influenced by Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia, Khamenei said, “The dependent, corrupt, hollow and empty government, in a statement with petrodollars, condemns Hezbollah. So what? What importance does it have? Hezbollah is shining like the sun. Hezbollah is a source of pride for Muslims.”
  Khamenei also warned his young audience about America’s “soft war” against the country, saying, “Right now with the issue of the youth, there is a comprehensive soft war between the Islamic Republic of Iran on one side and America and Zionists and their followers on the other side.” Khamenei said that young Iranian students should consider themselves the officers of this war and warned them, “Westerners, especially America, want the Iranian youth to be without faith, cowardly, unmotivated, inactive, hopeless, optimistic toward the enemy and pessimistic toward their own commanders.” [Softwar]
• The Pentagon’s Twisted Potlatch
  The logic of military spending leads countries to effectively destroy their own property and burn down their own villages. By John Feffer, April 20, 2016. military-spending-pentagon-budget The world spent $1.7 trillion on weapons in 2015, with the U.S. leading the pack by a factor of 3. (Photo: U.S. Army / Flickr) The global military-industrial complex similarly stands outside normal market economics. You can’t buy a nuke or even an F-35 on Amazon. The state intervenes in the economy in order to guarantee the production of these items and ensure that they are not available through normal market mechanisms. The state does so, moreover, not so much to make money from their sale — though this happens, too — but to reaffirm the country’s status. This status is sometimes expressed a different way: deterrence. If we have enough big weapons and you know that we’re packing some serious heat, you’ll think twice about attacking us. This rule applies with even greater force to the top of the pyramid. The United States is the world’s single superpower not because of the moral character of its policies or the size of its economy (China’s is larger at the moment). The notion of “superpowerdom” is directly tied to the size and quantity of America’s weaponry. We’re No. 1 by virtue of our capacity to destroy. Let’s be clear: The ceremony of military spending does not revolve around gift giving, even though the United States occasionally bestows a fighter plane or two on its closest allies. Rather, the resemblance to a potlatch lies elsewhere. The logic of military spending leads countries to effectively destroy their own property and burn down their own villages, through misplaced national budget priorities, in order to engage in the one-upmanship logic of local, regional, and global arms races. For instance, at a time when the United States is falling apart bridge by bridge and Flint by Flint, it nevertheless devotes hundreds of billions of dollars to perfecting the machinery of death [Military industrial complex] [Pentagon] [Military expenditure]
• The New Riddle of US Foreign Policy
  Dmitriy Sedov | 20.04.2016 | WORLD News agencies have been publishing some curious news stories. «The US believes that an offensive by Syrian government forces in Aleppo province could adversely affect the intra-Syrian talks due to begin in Geneva», said the United States’ Permanent Representative to the UN, Samantha Power. Following a UN Security Council meeting held behind closed doors, Power told journalists that the US was «very alarmed» at such an offensive. As she explained, it «would be devastating, for the people of Aleppo of course, but also to this intricate process where the cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access and political negotiations are all related to one another». This was then followed by a demand for Russia to put pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to force him to «get the regime back with the program». The battle around Aleppo is intensifying, which cannot but lead to an increase in the number of civilian casualties, yet Samantha Power’s statement carries little concern for the humanitarian situation in the area of conflict. The US Permanent Representative makes a connection between humanitarian access and the difficult political negotiations in Geneva. But are ISIS representatives involved in the Geneva talks? In Aleppo, the final round of the bitter struggle against ISIS is being played out. It threatens serious consequences for the city and the surrounding populated areas, but the ‘moderate opposition’ is not taking part in this fighting alongside ISIS. So how could the talks be derailed exactly? [US Syria policy]
• What the election results tell about the reality of war-torn Syria
  By Ken Stone (Canada) Syrian election on 13 April was a vote of confidence by the Syrian people in their government. 5,085,444 voters cast their ballots out of a possible 8,834,994 eligible voters. The overall participation rate of 58% (virtually identical to Canada’s last federal election) exceeded the government’s expectations in most places but was low in others. For example, it was over 80% in Homs but only 52% in Tartous. What might explain the uneven results is the history of the war. People who suffered the most from the war, for example in Homs, were probably more grateful for their liberation and more motivated to exercise their political rights than people in Tartous who saw no fighting at all (though they lost thousands upon thousands of sons and grandsons in the war). [Syria] [Election]
• The War Against the World: Washington finds enemies everywhere
  Philip Giraldi • April 19, 2016 Secretary of War Ash Carter is concerned about America’s posture. No, it’s not about sitting with your back straight up and your knees placed primly together. It all has to do with how many enemies there are out there threatening the United States and what we have to do, globally speaking, to make them cry uncle. Ash outlined his views at a “posture hearing” before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17th, part of a process intended to give still more money to the Pentagon, $582.7 billion to be exact for fiscal year 2017. I respect Ash at least a bit because he once studied Medieval History at Yale, though he apparently has forgotten about the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses. Both devastated winners and losers alike, a salutary lesson for those who are concerned about what the United States has been up to for the past fifteen years. Yet Ash, who is characteristically no veteran and for whom war is an abstraction that must be supported by counting and piling up sufficient beans, thinks that more is always better when it comes to having fancy new toys to play with. Since his proposed budget will be giving the Navy a few tens of billions worth of Ohio class subs the Air Force will have to get its own strategic bombers so no one will feel cheated. Just wait until the bill from the Army comes in.
  Ash justified all the needless spending by telling the Senators that there are five “security challenges” confronting the United States – terrorism, North Korea, China, Russia and Iran – before lapsing into Pentagon-speak about why more money is always better than less money. He attacked any attempt at sequestration, which would require budget cuts across the board, because it risks the “funding of critical investments.” [US global strategy] [MISCOM] [Threat]
• Saudi Arabia looks for anchor as it inches toward defeat in Yemen
  By Salman Rafi on April 19, 2016 Saudi Arabia’s King Salman’s recent visit to Egypt, although aimed at cultivating Turkey and Egypt into a strategic alliance, has taken place at a time when things look really bad for it in Yemen. Never has the need for actualizing the paper-army, the coalition of 39 countries, been felt as badly as today. On the one hand, the U.S. has decided to pull out of Yemen “leaving the Saudis in lurch”, and on the other, the Houthis and the Yemeni army’s factions still loyal to former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, have joined hands, making it extremely difficult for the Arab Coalition to retain and hold onto what it has achieved in the last year or so. It was not long ago when the U.S. President Barak Obama had hailed their operations in Yemen as one of the most successful stories of the CIA. However, the sudden pull-out strongly indicates that the U.S. is no more willing to shoulder the burden of the mess Saudi Arabia and its allies have created. [Yemen] [Saudi Arabia] [US Middle East strategy]
• How Western Intervention in Yemen Gave Al Qaeda the Upper Hand
  by Patrick Cockburn They have done it again. The US, Britain and regional allies led by Saudi Arabia have come together to intervene in another country with calamitous results. Instead of achieving their aims, they have produced chaos, ruining the lives of millions of people and creating ideal conditions for salafi-jihadi movements like al-Qaeda and Islamic State. The latest self-inflicted failure in the “war on terror” is in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Sunni states intervened on one side in a civil war in March 2015. Their aim was to defeat the Houthis – labelled somewhat inaccurately as Shia and pro-Iranian – who had seized most of the country in alliance with the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who retained the loyalty of much of the Yemeni army. Yemeni politics is exceptionally complicated and often violent, but violence has traditionally been followed by compromise between warring parties. The Saudi intervention, supported in practice by the US and Britain, has made a bad situation far worse. A year-long campaign of air strikes was supposed to re-impose the rule of former president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whose dysfunctional and unelected government had fled to Saudi Arabia. Relentless bombing had some success and the forces fighting in President Hadi’s name advanced north, but were unable to retake the capital Sanaa. Over the last week there has been a shaky truce. The real winners in this war are al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which has taken advantage of the collapse of central government to create its own mini-state. [Yemen]
• Sanders Changes the Rules
  Israel Shamir • April 18, 2016 You have to pay obeisance to Israel if you want to become the US President. You have to swear your full compliance with Israel’s demands. You have to run to AIPAC and declare your eternal love of the Jewish state. This is a truism, like “Monsieur de la Palisse was alive fifteen minutes before his death”. Or so it was until Bernie Sanders turned the tables and changed the rules. We do not know yet whether his game will succeed and he will be anointed the next President. We do not know even whether he will snatch the Democrats’ nomination from the teeth of Mme Clinton. But he already achieved a great victory and toppled the mainstay pillar of the regime. [Sanders] [AIPAC] [Jewish lobby]
• Kerry: Iran Has Only Received $3 Billion, Not $100B, As a Result of Nuclear Deal
  By Patrick Goodenough | April 19, 2016 | 4:16 AM EDT Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during the J Street gala dinner in Washington on Monday, April 19, 2016. (Photo: J Street/Twitter) (CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday night that Iran has reaped just $3 billion so far as a result of the nuclear deal, despite critics’ claims that it would get more than $100 billion in frozen assets. Touting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) at a gala dinner hosted by liberal lobby group J Street – one of the few Jewish organizations to have supported the agreement – Kerry said those who spoke of Iran getting $155 billion or $100 billion were wrong. The administration itself put the figure at around $55 billion, citing Treasury and intelligence analysis, saying that Iran won’t have all the assets at its disposal because some of it was tied up in debts. But Kerry said Iran has to date received much less than even that amount. “Do you remember the debate over how much money Iran was going to get?” he asked. “Sometimes you hear some of the presidential candidates putting a mistaken figure out of $155 billion. I’ve never heard – we never thought it would be that.” While others thought it would be about $100 billion, he said, “We calculated it to be about $55 billion, when you really take a hard look at the economy and what is happening.” “Guess what, folks. You know how much they have received to date as I stand here tonight? About $3 billion,” Kerry said. “So what we said to people was true.” [Iran deal] [Renege]
• How Turkish police could have prevented IS massacre in Ankara
  Could Turkish police have prevented the double-suicide attack Oct. 10 in Ankara that killed 102 people? Until April 13, we could only speculate. But now, we can give a firm answer that yes, the attack could have been thwarted. Recent reports in the Turkish press have fueled claims that police were more than just negligent in their failure to act on intelligence reports before the Islamic State attacked Ankara on Oct. 10. Author Kadri Gursel Posted April 18, 2016 This was the question asked immediately after the attack, because nobody had seen any police measures near the train station where the bombs went off. Those coming to the station, where a peace rally was being organized by labor unions and civil society organizations, were not searched by the police. This question is vital because this Islamic State (IS) attack had a bearing on the fate of Turkey. Chaos and the threat of terror, which was forged by this bloodiest terror attack in Turkey’s history, played a role in the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) victory in the Nov. 1 elections, after its resounding loss of votes in the June 7 general elections. Thanks to stories in the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet by journalist Kemal Goktas published April 13 and April 14, we now know security forces had advance intelligence reports that IS was planning such attacks. The forces even had the names of the terrorists planning to carry them out. But not only did the police in Ankara fail to prevent the attacks, they actually facilitated the attacks with their ill-contrived actions. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/turkey-isis-police-can-prevented-ankara-attack.html#ixzz46IwzQzgB [Turkey] [ISIS] [Election] [Outsourcing]
• UC Berkeley student removed from Southwest flight after speaking Arabic on plane
  By Yanan Wang April 18 ? Shortly after the woman’s departure, he said a Southwest employee informed him, “Sir, you need to step out of the plane right now.” Makhzoomi was then led off the plane to a hallway by the boarding gate, where three police officers were awaiting him. He said the Southwest employee appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent and began speaking to him in Arabic. The employee told him he used to live in Dubai and asked him where he was from. At Makhzoomi’s urging, the employee switched back to English. “Why would you speak in Arabic on the airplane?” the employee asked him. “It’s dangerous. You know the environment around the airport. You understand what’s going on in this country.” The employee’s tone made Makhzoomi feel demeaned, he said. He was immediately deferential. “I’m sorry,” Makhzoomi responded. “I shouldn’t have done that.” But the employee continued to be accusatory, and Makhzoomi said he grew frustrated. Exasperated, the college student said, “This is what Islamophobia has done.” [Islamophobia]
• Taliban strikes in heart of Kabul in deadly attack on elite agency
  Kabul hit with one of the most devastating attacks in years At least 28 were killed and more than 300 wounded after a Taliban suicide attack in Kabul. (Reuters) By Tim Craig and Sayed Salahuddin April 19 at 1:52 PM ? KABUL — The suicide blast tore open the gates of the compound. One worker inside saw a shower of glass shards and jagged pieces of the explosive-rigged truck. Then seconds later Tuesday — as an ash-gray cloud rose over Kabul — Taliban gunmen opened fire on Afghanistan’s equivalent of the Secret Service. For three hours, a gun battle raged even as some agents were trapped under collapsed walls and ceilings. Just a week earlier, the Taliban vowed to escalate attacks as the Afghan weather warms. The militants now appeared to have followed through with the warnings in a shattering tally: at least 28 people killed, more than 325 injured and authorities left struggling over how Taliban attackers outwitted security patrols to carry out one of the most devastating attacks in Kabul in years. The target — the main training ground for an Afghan intelligence unit tasked with protecting senior officials — represented a direct strike against the Western-aided government as it takes the lead role in the fight against the Islamist militants. [Afghanistan] [Taliban]
• Obama administration urges states to revisit Iran laws
  Eli Lake, (c) 2016, Bloomberg View(c) 2016, Bloomberg View After lifting international and federal sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program, the Barack Obama administration is turning its attention to state governments. On April 8, the State Department's lead coordinator for Iran nuclear implementation, Stephen Mull, sent letters to the governors of all 50 states as well as some local officials. He asked them to reconsider any laws on the books that called for divesting state funds, such as pensions, from businesses interacting with Iran's economy, or laws that would deny contracts to companies that do business with Iran. The State Department has signaled this might be coming. Over the summer, Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress he would be asking states not to interfere with the implementation of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which relaxes some economic sanctions. And over the last month, Iran's leaders have complained they aren't getting everything they're owed under the nuclear agreement. On Friday, the head of Iran's central bank was in Washington, where he delivered a speech warning that the deal -- known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA -- would be in danger if Iran didn't see more economic benefits. "Some states have adopted laws designed to incentivize Iran to change its behavior in certain ways," Mull wrote in a letter to Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, R, which I obtained over the weekend. "If that is the case in your state, I would urge you to consider whether the implementation of the JCPOA, which verifiably ensures that Iran's nuclear program is and will remain exclusively peaceful, addresses the underlying concerns with Iran articulated in your state's law." John Kirby, the State Department's spokesman, told me in a statement that similar letters had been sent out to the governors of all 50 states. He said the Iran agreement committed the U.S. to encourage state and local governments to review their sanctions against Iran. While Kirby was careful to say that the agreement itself -- which was never submitted to the Senate as a treaty -- doesn't affect these state and local laws, he did say that changes to U.S. foreign policy as a result of the agreement might. "As part of the JCPOA, the United States committed to encourage state and local governments to take account of the changes in U.S. policy as a result of the JCPOA, which could impact state and local laws and regulations," Kirby said. This is where the State Department has leverage. In 2000, the Supreme Court overturned Massachusetts sanctions against Myanmar (also know as Burma) on the grounds that it interfered with the president's constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy. [Sanctions] [Governance] [Iran deal]
• After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington
  Glenn Greenwald Andrew Fishman David Miranda Apr. 19 2016, 4:19 a.m. BRAZIL’S LOWER HOUSE of Congress on Sunday voted to impeach the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, sending the removal process to the Senate. In an act of unintended though rich symbolism, the House member who pushed impeachment over the 342-vote threshold was Dep. Bruno Araújo, himself implicated by a document indicating he may have received illegal funds from the construction giant at the heart of the nation’s corruption scandal. Even more significantly, Araújo belongs to the center-right party PSDB, whose nominees have lost four straight national elections to Rousseff’s moderate-left PT party, with the last ballot-box defeat delivered just 18 months ago, when 54 million Brazilians voted to re-elect Dilma as president. Those two facts about Araújo underscore the unprecedentedly surreal nature of yesterday’s proceedings in Brasília, capital of the world’s fifth-largest country. Politicians and parties that have spent two decades trying, and failing, to defeat PT in democratic elections triumphantly marched forward to effectively overturn the 2014 vote by removing Dilma on grounds that, as today’s New York Times report makes clear, are, at best, dubious in the extreme. Even The Economist, which has long despised the PT and its anti-poverty programs and wants Dilma to resign, has argued that “in the absence of proof of criminality, impeachment is unwarranted” and “looks like a pretext for ousting an unpopular president.” [Brazil] [Impeachment] [Corruption] [Double standards]
• The ‘Hybrid War’ of Economic Sanctions
  April 1, 2016 U.S. politicians love the “silver bullet” of economic sanctions to punish foreign adversaries, but the weapon’s overuse is driving China and Russia to develop countermeasures, as British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains. By Alastair Crooke Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told a large group of people in the holy city of Mashhad on Sunday that “The Americans did not act on what they promised in the [Iranian] nuclear accord [the JCPOA]; they did not do what they should have done. According to Foreign Minister [Javad Zarif], they brought something on paper but prevented materialization of the objectives of the Islamic Republic of Iran through many diversionary ways.” This statement during the Supreme Leader’s key Nowruz (New Year) address should be understood as a flashing amber light: it was no rhetorical flourish. And it was not a simple dig at America (as some may suppose). It was perhaps more of a gentle warning to the Iranian government to “take care” of the possible political consequences. What is happening is significant: for whatever motive, the U.S. Treasury is busy emptying much of the JCPOA sanctions relief of any real substance (and their motive is something which deserves careful attention). The Supreme Leader also noted that Iran is experiencing difficulties in repatriating its formerly frozen, external funds. U.S. Treasury officials, since “implementation” day, have been doing the rounds, warning European banks that the U.S. sanctions on Iran remain in place, and that European banks should not think, even for a second, of tapping the dollar or euro bond markets in order to finance trade with Iran, or to become involved with financing infrastructure projects in Iran. Banks well understand the message: touch Iranian commerce and you will be whacked with a billion dollar fine – against which there is no appeal, no clear legal framework – and no argument countenanced. The banks (understandably) are shying off. Not a single bank or financial lending institution turned up when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited Paris to hold meetings with the local business élite. [Sanctions] [Iran deal] [Treasury] [Renege]
• She’ll make Iran, Syria worse: What the media won’t tell you about our foreign policy — and how hawkish Hillary will pour the kerosene
  The truth about our foreign policy is on display, if we choose to look. If only we ever learned the right lessons
  Patrick L. Smith
  What an unusual season—or seasons, I should say. The inner workings of American foreign policy are rarely as exposed as they have been over the past couple of years. We ought to appreciate the clarity of this interim and take from it lessons that will make us smarter. And angrier, which is my abiding hope. One still has to look past the well-embroidered drapery of mis- and disinformation that official Washington weaves to understand events as they are. As ever, one must read the press not to know what has occurred in any given case, only to know what we are supposed to think occurred. Then commences the search for what did occur. It can be found; I cannot recall a time during my professional life when the “alternative” press—how I dislike this term—bore more responsibility than it does now. [Hillary Clinton] [Media][US global strategy]
• Outside the wire: How U.S. Special Operations troops secretly help foreign forces target terrorists
  By Souad Mekhennet and Missy Ryan April 16 at 9:22 PM ? TUNIS — The armed men drove right into the nighttime ambush. The militants, led by a veteran jihadist blamed for a bloody attack on Westerners just 10 days earlier, were winding their way along a narrow desert road in central Tunisia. When the elite Tunisian forces hidden in the surrounding hills opened fire, their tracers lit up the night sky, and some of the militants tried to flee. All nine suspects, including the senior militant, Khaled Chaib, were killed. An informant in the truck at the time of the ambush was wounded in the shoulder. The March 2015 operation was a badly needed victory for Tunisia’s fragile democracy, whose leaders were struggling to deliver on the promise of the 2011 revolution. Prime Minister Habib Essid called the ambush by Tunisian National Guard forces the crowning success of a growing counterterrorism capability. One newspaper headline proclaimed: “The country has been saved from catastrophe.” But what Tunisian leaders did not reveal was the pivotal role that U.S. Special Operations forces had taken in helping to design and stage the operation. [Special forces] [Proxy]
• A Note on Hillary Clinton, the Queen of Chaos
  by Diana Johnstone April 15, 2016 About a year ago, I concluded my book on Hillary Clinton, “Queen of Chaos”, with a fairly pessimistic chapter on the “War Party” which controls United States foreign policy. At the time, I wrote: “A last-minute peace candidate would be a divine surprise. But a real alternative to the War Party must be built up over time…” In fact, this primary campaign has produced a couple of surprises, more earthly than divine. Both surprises reveal widespread grassroots discontent with both Hillary Clinton and the whole American political establishment. However, this discontent so far fails to focus on the point of my book: the need to combat the ideology and practice of U.S. war policy personified by Hillary Clinton. Where is the effective alternative to the War Party? Donald Trump has made it clear he wants to end the current hysterical anti-Putin pre-war propaganda and do business with Russia. This sounds like a major step toward preventing Johnstone-Queen-Cover-ak800--291x450nuclear war. All to the good. The problem is, Trump is a lone wolf. Many of his supporters seem more excited by style than by content. Their multiple incoherent grudges against the system do not add up to an anti-war movement. Trump is unpredictable, and it is hard to see where he would find the foreign policy team and the support needed to overthrow the entrenched foreign policy elite. With Bernie Sanders, things are a bit the other way around. [US_Election16] [Trump] [Sanders] [Hillary Clinton]
• Iran seeks EU leverage to get financial concessions from U.S
  DUBAI/BRUSSELS | By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Julia Fioretti Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks during a news conference in Canberra, March 15, 2016. Reuters/Lukas Coch/AAP/Files Iran, seeking European leverage to secure better terms from the United States following last year's nuclear deal, asked the European Union to put pressure on Washington to let it into the global financial system. In a visit to Tehran by a high-powered EU team in which both sides spoke of a significant expansion in economic and energy ties, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif welcomed EU support for its bid to join the World Trade Organisation and spoke of a "new beginning" in relations with Europe. [Iran deal] [Client] [EU] [Financial sanctions]
• How America backed the ISIS Takeover and Destruction of Palmyra
  By Prof. Tim Anderson Global Research, April 15, 2016 As explosions from detonated mines continued in the background a Syrian general confirmed in some detail an ugly truth: Washington and its close allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel backed the ISIS takeover and destruction of Palmyra. Most of the weapons ISIS used were from the US , with some ammunition from Israel . ISIS had US Hummers, spinning explosive projectiles and military rations from the US , Turkey and Saudi Arabia . That should not have been a surprise. US officials admitted in 2014 that their allies Turkey , the Saudis and Qatar were backing every single armed group in Syria , in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government led by President Bashar al Assad. Our group of 30 journalists visited liberated Palmyra on 14 April, 18 days after the Syrian Army freed the historic city from a ten month reign of terror. Syrian bulldozers were cleaning debris while Russian sappers continued exploding mines. Three thousand had been cleared and another 30 exploded in the two hours we were there. We saw the damaged buildings, bomb and mine craters along the roads, and the bizarre steel and wire structure where ‘infidels’ and pro-government people were publicly crucified and beheaded, their bodies drained of blood into what had been a pleasant fountain next to the entrance to the historic sites. We saw the extensive vandalism to the museum, with all human or animal statues beheaded or damaged. [US Syria policy] [ISIS] [Outsourcing]
• Syrian Elections 2016: US, NATO Criminals, Liars & Hypocrites’ Failed Attempt to Deny the Will of the Syrian People
  April 14, 2016 By Vanessa Beeley “We declare our right on this earth…to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” ~ Malcolm X Yesterday Parliamentary elections were held in Syria. 7000 polling booths were opened across the country. 11, 341 candidates were proposed from across Syria with 250 to be elected to Parliament, including a number of female candidates. Candidates were spread out as follows: 988 in Damascus, 817 in Damascus countryside, Aleppo 1437, in Aleppo regions 1048, In Idleb 386, in Homs 1800, Hama 700, Lattakia 1653, Tartous 634, Deir Ezzor 311, Hasaka 546, Raqqa 197, Daraa 321, Sweida 263 and in Quneitra 240 Voting centres opened at 7.30 am and were obliged to extend their sessions by five hours to accommodate the high turn out of voters. women Some of the women candidates in Syrian Parliamentary elections. “The voting centers include over 2,000 centers in Damascus, 17 in Deir Ezzor, 1,047 in Lattakia, 661 in Homs, 347 in Sweida, 741 in Hama, 368 in Hasaka, 816 in Tartous, and 347 in Sweida are receiving voters. It should be noted that voting centers were opened in Damascus, Damascus Countryside, Hama, Lattakia, Aleppo, Tartous, Hasaka, and Deir Ezzor to receive voters staying in these provinces who are originally from other areas, namely the provinces of Idleb, Raqqa, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, and Daraa.” ~ SANA So contrary to spurious claims from western governments and media, efforts were made to open the voting to all Syrian civilians including those who have fled terrorists held areas. We must also bear in mind that over 90% of IDPs [Internally displaced persons] have fled to Government controlled areas, thus further discrediting claims that these elections are non representative. For a full photo report on the Syrian elections: Peoples Assembly Elections 2016 On an equally positive note, of course ignored in the western and gulf media, 1.7 million of these internally displaced refugees have been able to return home thanks not only to the SAA [Syrian Arab Army] liberation of whole swathes of Syrian villages and towns from US NATO terrorist occupation but also due to the Syrian Governments laudable efforts to rebuild and restore infrastructure in these areas. [Syria] [Elections]
• Syrian Christian families who fled to Europe begin to return home
  by Catholic News Service posted Wednesday, 13 Apr 2016 Refugees making their way back to the city of Sadad more than two years after it was overrun by terrorists Hundreds of Christian families are returning to Sadad, Syria, more than two years after their city was overrun by terrorists, a local official has said. Suleiman al Khalil, the mayor of Sadad, told Russian media on April 6 of the influx of Christians returning to the city after Russian forces defeated the al Nusra Front, reported Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. “Christians who had left Syria for Europe are beginning to return to Sadad and also to other cities,” he said, according to Fides. [Syria] [Christians]
• Maybe Cuba Should Have Kept Those Soviet Nukes
  Peter Lee • April 3, 2016 The Nuclear Security Summit in Washington is reminds us that President Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize in large part because of his stated intentions concerning nuclear non-proliferation. The two most recent achievements in US counterproliferation (Libya) and non-proliferation (Iran) have been tarnished by the destruction of Libya as a counter-proliferation example for North Korea by the deposition and murder of a WMD-bereft Muammar Qaddafi; the US inability to follow through on President Obama’s ambitions to bring Israel into the NPT fold as a self-acknowledged nuclear weapons power; and by US acquiescence to brutal Saudi Arabia-led rollback operations against Shia forces in Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain as compensation for US-Iran rapprochement. In contrast to most sane Americans, I am not an enthusiast for the NPT-enforced oligopoly of a few nuclear states. I think it distorts foreign policy, particularly American foreign policy, which is keyed to the idea of leveraging the US “nuclear umbrella” to establish the United States as the indispensable security power everywhere and anywhere. [Proliferation] [Libya]
• Socialist Senator Explains the Difference Between Democrats and Republicans
  Mike Whitney • April 12, 2016 What’s the biggest difference between “socialist-lite” candidate, Bernie Sanders, and a political heavyweight like Huey Long? For one thing, Long didn’t mind bending the rules. After his scuffle with Standard Oil, (Note: The Louisiana legislature tried to impeach Long after he threatened to raise taxes by $.05 on every barrel of oil refined in the state.), Long threw away the rulebook and decided he’d do whatever-it-takes to defeat his enemies. “You sometimes have to fight fire with fire,” Long said. “The end justifies the means. I would do it some other way if there was time or if it wasn’t necessary to do it this way.” And he was right, too. You can’t beat corporate America by playing nice and hoping that truth will prevail. It won’t prevail. The corporations are too powerful and too willing to crush anyone that gets in their way. Long learned that the hard way. His falling-out with Standard Oil turned the media and the wealthy elites against him like a pack of rabid dogs. He was demonized in the papers and accused of all kinds of nefarious things including trying to have a political rival assassinated and attending parties “where half-naked women danced the Hula”. Naturally, these fabrications paved the way for his impeachment. But Long outfoxed them all. He fired up his base by barnstorming across the countryside denouncing Standard Oil and he enlisted the support of 15 senators who helped him block the impeachment. His critics claimed that the senators were bribed for their support, and they probably were. But the fact is, the experience taught Long how the game was played, how to fight dirty and win. And when he won, the people of Lousiana won, because the money he collected on the oil tax went to roads, bridges, universities and free books for schoolkids. Can you imagine Sanders doing anything like that? Can you imagine him doing anything even slightly shady or underhanded? [Huey Long]
• Failing States: Many Problems, Few Solutions
  By Joseph Chamie and Barry Mirkin Joseph Chamie is a former director of the United Nations Population Division and Barry Mirkin is a former chief of the Population Policy Section of the United Nations Population Division. NEW YORK, Apr 9 2016 (IPS) - Regardless of whether they are called fragile, failed, or failing states, scores of countries around the globe are plagued by overwhelming problems with few solutions in sight. Moreover, the instability and dire straits of these countries are spilling across national borders, destabilizing neighboring countries and regions, while posing enormous challenges for international organizations and donors. While lists of failing states may differ, they include for the most part, the same set of countries. In brief, failing states are unable to provide fundamental societal requirements and basic services to their citizens such as health, education, housing, welfare, employment, security, justice, governance and human rights. [Failing states] [Agency]
• Exclusive Interview by Glenn Greenwald with Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva
  Glenn Greenwald Apr. 11 2016, 8:12 p.m. The life trajectory of Brazil’s former President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) has been extraordinary. Born into extreme poverty, Lula left the presidential office in 2010, after serving two terms, with an unprecedented 86 percent approval rating, seemingly destined to enjoy almost universal respect on the world stage and to be remembered as one of modern history’s greatest statesmen. Similar to the post-office path of Tony Blair and Bill and Hillary Clinton, Lula, since his term ended, has amassed great personal wealth by delivering speeches and providing consulting services to global power centers. The moderately left-wing party he co-founded, the Worker’s Party (PT), has now controlled the presidency for fourteen straight years. But all of that, the entirety of Lula’s legacy, is now seriously threatened. A grave, widespread corruption scandal involving the national oil company, Petrobras, is engulfing Brazil’s economic and political elite, with PT at its center. His protégé and handpicked successor, the former anti-dictatorship Marxist guerrilla and current President Dilma Rousseff, faces a credible impeachment threat (now supported by a majority of Brazilians) and widespread unpopularity due to an intractable, severe recession. Senior members of PT have been arrested and imprisoned. Massive street protests, both in favor of and against impeachment, have recently turned ugly, with physical altercations becoming increasingly common. [Lula] [Brazil]
• Syria’s 2016 Congressional Elections. “Enthusiasm to Vote in a War-Torn Country”
  Author Prof. Tim Anderson, reporting from Damascus Syria approaches its 13 April congress (Majlis al Shaab) elections with over 11,000 candidates and candidate banners and billboards across the country. Elections for law makers in presidential systems are often more subdued affairs, but the enthusiasm to participate in the democracy of this war-turn country is obvious. Higher Judicial Committee for Elections (HJCE) Hisham al-Shaar said on 2 March that the HJCE had closed nominations, with 11341 candidates across the country (988 in Damascus, 817 in Damascus countryside, Aleppo 1437, in Aleppo regions 1048, In Idleb 386, in Homs 1800, Hama 700, Lattakia 1653, Tartous 634, Deir Ezzor 311, Hasaka 546, Raqqa 197, Daraa 321, Sweida 263 and in Quneitra 240). While there is a semblance of political negotiation with armed group representatives in Geneva, Syria’s 2016 congress elections are taking place according to the Syrian constitution and electoral law. The armed groups have shown little interest in elections. [Syria] [Elections]
• The Global Refugee Crisis: Statement by the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group
  Brussels | 12 Apr 2016 The challenge The Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group calls on world leaders to take more coordinated, better principled action to address the global refugee crisis. The scale of the tragedy shines the spotlight on just how remiss the international order has been in managing, much less settling, the conflicts that generate so much of today’s human flight. [Refugee]
• Writing a Blank Check on War for the President
  How the United States Became a Prisoner of War and Congress Went MIA Andrew J. Bacevich • April 5, 2016 Let’s face it: in times of war, the Constitution tends to take a beating. With the safety or survival of the nation said to be at risk, the basic law of the land — otherwise considered sacrosanct — becomes nonbinding, subject to being waived at the whim of government authorities who are impatient, scared, panicky, or just plain pissed off. The examples are legion. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln arbitrarily suspended the writ of habeas corpus and ignored court orders that took issue with his authority to do so. After U.S. entry into World War I, the administration of Woodrow Wilson mounted a comprehensive effort to crush dissent, shutting down anti-war publications in complete disregard of the First Amendment. Amid the hysteria triggered by Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order consigning to concentration camps more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, many of them native-born citizens. Asked in 1944 to review this gross violation of due process, the Supreme Court endorsed the government’s action by a 6-3 vote. [Militarisation] [Governance]
• The Privatization of War: Mercenaries, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC)
  Beyond the WikiLeaks Files By Jose L. Gomez del Prado Global Research, April 09, 2016 UN Working Group on Mercenaries and Global Research 7 November 2010 This article was first published by Global Research on November 08, 2010. Private military and security companies (PMSC) are the modern reincarnation of a long lineage of private providers of physical force: corsairs, privateers and mercenaries. Mercenaries, which had practically disappeared during the XIXth and XXth centuries, reappeared in the 1960’s during the decolonization period operating mainly in Africa and Asia. Under the United Nations a convention was adopted which outlaws and criminalizes their activities. Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions also contains a definition of mercenary. These non-state entities of the XXIst century operate in extremely blurred situations where the frontiers are difficult to separate. The new security industry of private companies moves large quantities of weapons and military equipment. It provides services for military operations recruiting former militaries as civilians to carry out passive or defensive security. [Privatisation] [Mercenaries]
• U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda & Co in Syria
  The United States via its Central Intelligence Agency is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria. The British military information service Janes found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov. Janes writes: The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy's Military Sealift Command. Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba. ... The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks. The Janes author tweeted the full article (copy here). One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which is a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4. We already knew that the "rebels" in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these "rebels" regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra): Hard-core Islamists in the Nusra Front have long outgunned the more secular, nationalist, Western-supported rebels. According to FSA officers, Nusra routinely harvests up to half the weapons supplied by the Friends of Syria, a collection of countries opposed to Assad, .. [Outsourcing] [Nusra]
• Trump's worldview could unravel entire post-war order: US expert
  Donald Trump has demonstrated a worldview that could undo everything the United States has done to build its presence and influence around the world, especially in Asia, including the alliances with South Korea and Japan, a U.S. expert has warned. Robert Manning, a senior Asia affairs expert at the think tank Atlantic Council, made the case in a recent article, refuting Trump's arguments one by one and warning that his election as president "could unravel the entire post-World War II order." "Most dramatically, Trump expressed a willingness to withdraw U.S. troops, rip up longstanding treaty alliances with Japan and South Korea, and have them obtain their own nuclear weapons," Manning said in the article posted on the think tank's website. Trump has long argued that the U.S. has been defending wealthy nations like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia in exchange for almost nothing and those countries should pay more for the protection. He also suggested arming South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons as a way to reduce U.S. security burdens. "Trump does not view the United States' overseas presence and alliance network as public goods that enable U.S. global leadership, deter adversaries and enforce a rules-based international system," Manning said. [Trump] [MISCOM] [US global strategy] [Imperialism]
• Trump takes 'none-of-my-business' attitude to ally's conflict with N. Korea
  U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has shown a none-of-my-business attitude to a potential conflict between one of the key U.S. allies and North Korea, once again displaying his ignorance of American foreign policy. Speaking at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Saturday ahead of the state's primary next week, Trump said that if a conflict between Japan and a nuclear-armed North Korea were to break out, "it would be a terrible thing, but if they do, they do," according to news reports. He went on to say, "Good luck. Enjoy yourself, folks." The U.S. is bound by treaties to fight alongside South Korea and Japan if the allies come under attack. About 28,500 and some 50,000 American troops are stationed in South Korea and Japan, respectively, to help defend the allies against North Korean and other threats. [Trump] [US global strategy] [Imperialism]
• The Easter Rising, My Grandfather and the Untold Story of Sir Roger Casement
  Patrick Cockburn • April 2, 2016 The 100th anniversary of the Easter uprising of 1916 saw the beginnings of a deeper appreciation of the achievements of Sir Roger Casement who was hanged as a traitor in Pentonville prison on 3 August 1916. Over the following century he has never lacked for notoriety, famous as an Irish patriotic martyr, but discussion of his life has frequently focused on his sexuality and revolved around the “Black Diaries” that were covertly used by the British government to blacken Casement’s name and sabotage the campaign against his execution. The controversy over whether or not the diaries were forged never discredited Casement – in Ireland, if anything, they further sanctified his name as a victim of British machinations – but it did divert attention from his work in exposing the mass murder and enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Congo and Amazon. He detailed how they were not only being mistreated, but actually wiped out by the terror imposed by those seeking to obtain rubber through forced labour. To understand what Casement was trying to stop, it is best to quote some of the Congolese interviewed by Casement for his report published in 1903 which describes the atrocities being carried out by King Leopold 11 of Belgium and his private army in the Congo. The witnesses are identified only by their initials or are unnamed. R.R. said “I ran away with two old people, but they were caught and killed, and the soldiers made me carry the baskets holding their cut-off hands. They killed my little sister, threw her in a house, and set it on fire.” U.U. gives a similar account of the reign of terror, saying that “as we fled, the soldiers killed ten children, in the water. They killed a lot of adults, cut off their hands, put them in baskets, and took them to the white man, who counted 200 hands…. One day, soldiers struck a child with a gun-butt, cut off its head, and killed my sister and cut off her head, hands and feet because she had on rings.” [Colonialism]
• Blue collar voters: Trade is killing us
  Highlights Labor under siege in Wisconsin over free trade Layoffs, plant closings underscore workers’ fears Supporters say the economy has changed, so adjust By David Goldstein SOUTH MILWAUKEE — Maurice King worked for Joerns Healthcare, a medical furniture manufacturer, for nearly 43 years. Until suddenly one day, he didn’t. Joerns shuttered its plant in Stevens Point, Wis., in 2012 after years of gradually outsourcing work to China. It cut loose 175 workers. Now the 62-year-old former local steelworkers union president works a 2-11 p.m. shift at a fan factory. No more local fish fries on Friday nights with his wife, or his side job for 25 years as town chairman in Dewey, population 975. He hasn’t yet earned a week of vacation. As for retirement? That’s been pushed back. “You had the job, you figured you were planning out how things were going to go,” King said. “Now you’ve got to back up and rethink.” Establishment voices of economists, government and business officials argue that trade deals are critical in a global economy, and great for America. But critics such as organized labor call them “death warrants.” And in blue collar communities in Wisconsin and across the industrial Midwest, that economic angst, coupled with some sense of betrayal, helps explain the roiling politics of 2016. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article69551672.html#storylink=cpy [Offshoring] [Trade] [Labour] [US_elction16]
• How US-Backed War on Syria Helped ISIS
  March 31, 2016 Exclusive: By funneling TOW missiles and other weapons to Syrian jihadists for their “regime change” war, President Obama facilitated the Islamic State’s rise with the terrorist blowback now hitting Europe, says Daniel Lazare. By Daniel Lazare Why are Islamic militants wreaking havoc from Brussels to Lahore? The best way to answer this question is by taking a close look at how The New York Times covered this weekend’s liberation of Palmyra from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State. The article, entitled “Syrian Troops Said to Recapture Historic Palmyra From ISIS,” began on a snide note. While the victory may have netted Bashar al-Assad “a strategic prize,” reporters Hwaida Saad and Kareem Fahim wrote that it also provided the Syrian president with “something more rare: a measure of international praise.” Saudi King Salman meets with President Barack Obama at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Saudi King Salman meets with President Barack Obama at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) The article noted that “Mr. Assad’s contention that his government is a bulwark against the transnational extremist group” has been bolstered, but added that “his foes and some allies argue that he must leave power as part of a political settlement to end the war in Syria” – without, of course, specifying who those allies might be. Then it offered a bit of background: “Lost in the celebrations was a discussion of how Palmyra had fallen in the first place. When the Islamic State captured the city in May [2015], the militants faced little resistance from Syrian troops. At the time, residents said officers and militiamen had fled into orchards outside the city, leaving conscripted soldiers and residents to face the militants alone.” Since the Times claims to have “several hundred” surreptitious contacts inside Syria, the charge that Assad’s troops fled without a fight may conceivably be correct. But it’s hard to square with reports that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) had to battle for seven or eight days before entering the city and then had to deal with a counter-offensive on the city’s outskirts. But even if true, it’s only part of the story and a small one at that. The real story began two months earlier when Syrian rebels launched a major offensive in Syria’s northern Idlib province with heavy backing from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Led by Al Nusra, the local Al Qaeda affiliate, but with the full participation of U.S.-backed rebel forces, the assault proved highly successful because of the large numbers of U.S.-made optically guided TOW missiles supplied by the Saudis. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda.”] [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Blowback]
• The Clinton Myth and the Strange Case of Donald Trump
  by Andrew Levine April 1, 2016 Republicans are known for forming opinions “unencumbered by the thought process,” as Tom and Ray, the Car Guys, used to say. They have problems with facts too. Democrats are supposed to be better at such things, but many, maybe most, of them have a similar problem. How else to account for the widespread belief that while Hillary Clinton may be unappealing, inauthentic, untrustworthy, uninspiring, and more “moderate” than the average Democratic voter, at least she knows how to get things done? Like what? Examples please! She bungled health care reform so thoroughly in the early nineties that, for the next two decades, appalling numbers of Americans remained uninsured or underinsured. Obamacare fixed some of that, but it also further entrenched the power of private insurance companies, for-profit health care providers, and, worst of all, Big Pharma. A lot of the blame for these “revolting developments” goes back to Hillary’s machinations a generation ago. Her tenure at the State Department was more disastrous still. No doubt, Obama had his reasons for making her his Secretary of State, but what was he thinking! All she knew of world affairs was what she picked up as an official wife and as a lackluster Senator. Unlike, say, Sarah Palin, she could name of a lot of world leaders, and she could probably have picked many of them out of a lineup. She could also call upon the services of what remained of her husband’s far from stellar foreign policy team. But that was about it. The transition from Condoleezza Rice to Hillary was, all things considered, a step down. American foreign policy remained about the same, but at least Rice had no time for “humanitarian interveners” of the Samantha Power type. [Trump] [Hillary Clinton] [Sanders]
• Rouhani’s “Open-Door” Economic Policy for Iran: Recipe for Indebtedness, Deindustrialization and Dependence
  by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh April 1, 2016 A number of commentators have compared President Rouhani’s policies of opening Iran’s markets to Western business with those of China’s Deng Xiaoping following the death of Mao Zedong some four decades ago [1]. A closer look at Mr. Rouhani’s open-door economic policies indicates, however, that they are more akin to those of Boris Yeltsin’s Russia following the collapse of the Berlin Wall than those of China since Deng Xiaoping. This study makes an argument that both in theory and practice the Rouhani administration is following an economic model that is widely known to create indebtedness, warped industrialization and dependent development, which also often leads to a loss of political/geopolitical independence. To this end, the study focuses on the administration’s approach to trade and development, to foreign capital, and to industrialization and technological transfer. [Iran] [Neo-liberalism]
• Opinion: Our vital military partnership
  By Congressman Randy Forbes March 26, 2016, 5:41 PM One of the many things that makes Hampton Roads unique is its relationship with the military. With approximately 82,000 military personnel, 43,600 civilian employees of the Department of Defense and thousands more civilians performing more than $8 billion in DoD contracts, Hampton Roads is an epicenter of U.S. military activity. While all branches of the military play a significant role in the region, the Navy has the strongest presence. Naval Station Norfolk is the world's largest naval base and homeport for a large portion of our fleet — with four of nine carrier strike groups, three of nine amphibious ready groups, and more than a third of the Navy's cruisers and destroyers based in the region. [MISCOM] [US Military] [Congress]
• Trump and the Liberal Intelligentsia: a View from Europe
  by Jean Bricmont A new specter haunts the American elites: the candidacy of Donald Trump in the US President election and his success so far in the Republican primaries. The Republican establishment itself hopes to block his rise, even as he is drawing huge crowds into the party. As for the Democrats, they are hoping that his repugnant image will make the election of Hillary Clinton that much easier. Let’s start by admitting what seems obvious: Trump is vulgar, insulting, demagogic. He says one thing and then the opposite, and shows distinct signs of megalomania. That much said, the anti-Trump campaign is typical of the rhetoric of the dominant political class. [Trump]
• International Injustice: the Conviction of Radovan Karadzic
  by Diana Johnstone
  Last Thursday, news reports were largely devoted to the March 22 Brussels terror bombings and the US primary campaigns. And so little attention was paid to the verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for (former) Yugoslavia (ICTY) finding Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic guilty of every crime it could come up with, including “genocide”. It was a “ho-hum” bit of news. Karadzic had already been convicted by the media of every possible crime, and nobody ever imagined that he would be declared innocent by the single-issue court set up in The Hague essentially to judge the Serb side in the 1990s civil wars that tore apart the once independent country of Yugoslavia. Although it bears the UN stamp of approval, thanks to the influence of the Western powers, ICTY is essentially a NATO tribunal, with proceedings in English according to a jurisprudence invented as it goes along. Its international judges are vetted by Washington officials. The presiding judge in the Karadzic case was a South Korean, O-Gon Kwon, selected surely less for his grasp of ethnic subtleties in the Balkans than for the fact that he holds a degree from Harvard Law School. Of the other two judges on the panel, one was British and the other was a retired judge from Trinidad and Tobago. As is the habit with the ICTY, the non-jury trial dragged on for years – seven and a half years to be precise. Horror stories heavily laced with hearsay, denials, more or less far fetched interpretations end up “drowning the fish” as the saying goes. A proper trial would narrow the charges to facts which can clearly be proved or not proved, but these sprawling proceedings defy any notion of relevance. Nobody who has not devoted a lifetime to following these proceedings can tell what real evidence supports the final judgment. The media stayed away from the marathon, and only showed up to report the inevitable “guilty” verdict condemning the bad guy. The verdict reads a bit like, “they said, he said, and we believe them not him.” [Yugoslavia] [Double standards] [UNUS]
• ‘Syrian Army’s battlefield successes speed up political settlement’ – Assad
  Published time: 30 Mar, 2016 10:17 Many countries would like to see the Syrian Army defeated so Damascus would become more concessive, President Bashar Assad told Sputnik in an exclusive interview. The army’s advances are in fact a major contribution to eventual peace, he said. The Syrian Arab Army’s success on the battlefield, with Russia’s support, is going to speed up a political settlement in Syria, not hinder it, Assad believes. “Because there are those who accuse us and Russia of [hindering the peace process], when trying to present Russia's intervention aimed at countering terrorism as an intervention to support the president or the Syrian government, and thus, as an obstacle in the way of the political process,” Assad told the director general of Rossiya Segodnya (incorporating Sputnik and RIA Novosti news agencies), Dmitry Kiselev. Assad named Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France and the United Kingdom among countries that “are counting on our defeat on the battlefield in order to impose their conditions at the negotiations. [Bashar Assad] [Russia Syria]
• Turkish President Rips Obama, as Qatar Waits for its F-15s
  By Paul McLeary, Adam Rawnsley March 31, 2016 - 8:03 am Well, this is awkward. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a private dinner with some of the biggest names in the Washington, D.C. think tank world earlier this week in an effort to rehabilitate his image. And he took the opportunity to slam the Obama administration’s policies in Syria. FP’s John Hudson gets the scoop on the off-the-record dinner at Washington’s St. Regis Hotel, where “a defiant Erdogan ripped the American media’s coverage of his administration’s policies and bashed the White House’s support for Kurdish fighters in Syria.” Turkey continues to be furious that Washington has been backing Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, as Erdogan views them as terrorists aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a militant group struggling for autonomy. One anonymous attendee tells Hudson, “he kept coming back to that issue: Terrorists are terrorists — there are no good ones…he pretty much threw the administration under the bus.” [Erdogan] [Kurds] [Think Tanks]
• The U.S. Is Militarizing the Pacific — and Not Taking Questions
  Hawaii's members of Congress sit at the linchpin of a huge realignment of U.S. military power. Good luck getting them to talk about it. By Jon Letman, March 30, 2016. The biggest U.S. military re-alignment in a generation may be underway in the Asia-Pacific. But most Americans know nothing about it. Unveiled in 2011, the “Pacific Pivot” aims to transition U.S. military and diplomatic resources away from the Middle East and toward the world’s most populous and economically dynamic region. The United States already has enormous resources invested in the region — including tens of thousands of troops, large aircraft carrier groups, and mutual defense treaties with powerful countries like South Korea and Japan. The pivot aims to bolster that military presence, as well as secure more political cooperation from U.S. allies and boost trade through major pacts like the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP. “The United States is a Pacific Power,” President Obama told the Australian parliament in November 2011, “and we are here to stay.” In the shadow of a rising China, Obama promised that Washington “will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” [US East Asia policy] [China confrontation] [Liberal]
• Donald Trump: Foreign Policy’s Useful Idiot?
  It might take someone of Trump’s vapid visibility to drive home the point that "world’s policeman" is not a viable role for the U.S. to play. By John Feffer, March 30, 2016. Donald Trump may be a bigot and a bully, but it’s hard not to applaud when he pisses off the stuff shirts at the Washington Post. (Photo: Gage Skidmore / Flickr) He wants to cut back on U.S. military commitments overseas. He calls the Iraq War “one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of our country.” He promises to make deals with America’s adversaries. He’s comfortable with the détente with Cuba. And he really pisses off the stuffed shirts at The Washington Post. So, what’s not to like about Donald Trump? Well, a great deal, of course. The man is an incoherent, misogynistic bully. But his foreign policy vision, a kind of fun-house version of Reaganism, is upsetting Beltway mandarins, shaking up the Republican Party, and pointing to a potential rupture in the informal liberal-conservative consensus on foreign policy that has prevailed in Washington since the end of the Cold War. It’s hard not to enjoy a frisson of schadenfreude watching Trump tear through the conservative mainstream like Jack the Ripper at a Heritage Foundation tea party. [Trump] [US Foreign Policy]

• The Blue State Model: How the Democrats Created a "Liberalism of the Rich"
  By Thomas Frank [This piece has been adapted from Thomas Frank's new book, Listen, Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Metropolitan Books).] When you press Democrats on their uninspiring deeds -- their lousy free trade deals, for example, or their flaccid response to Wall Street misbehavior -- when you press them on any of these things, they automatically reply that this is the best anyone could have done. After all, they had to deal with those awful Republicans, and those awful Republicans wouldn’t let the really good stuff get through. They filibustered in the Senate. They gerrymandered the congressional districts. And besides, change takes a long time. Surely you don’t think the tepid-to-lukewarm things Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have done in Washington really represent the fiery Democratic soul. So let’s go to a place that does. Let’s choose a locale where Democratic rule is virtually unopposed, a place where Republican obstruction and sabotage can’t taint the experiment. Let’s go to Boston, Massachusetts, the spiritual homeland of the professional class and a place where the ideology of modern liberalism has been permitted to grow and flourish without challenge or restraint. As the seat of American higher learning, it seems unsurprising that Boston should anchor one of the most Democratic of states, a place where elected Republicans (like the new governor) are highly unusual. This is the city that virtually invented the blue-state economic model, in which prosperity arises from higher education and the knowledge-based industries that surround it. [Liberal] [Democratic Party]
• Pentagon and State Department order families of U.S. troops and diplomats to leave Turkey
  By Dan Lamothe March 29 at 12:20 PM ? Airman 1st Class Miller Swanson of the 39th Security Forces Squadron provides security during a wing exercise Jan. 15, 2016, at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. (Senior Airman Krystal Ardrey/Air Force) The United States will withdraw virtually all family members of U.S. troops and diplomats from its installations in Turkey, U.S. officials said Tuesday, citing security concerns as the campaign against the Islamic State continues. The military decision was announced on the blog for U.S. European Command, which also instituted travel restrictions in Brussels last week after a terrorist attack killed 38 people, including three suicide bombers. At least four Americans were killed and about a dozen more were wounded, including an Air Force officer who was stationed in Europe and members of his family. “The decision to move our families and civilians was made in consultation with the Government of Turkey, our State Department, and our Secretary of Defense,” Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the commander of European Command, said in a statement. “We understand this is disruptive to our military families, but we must keep them safe and ensure the combat effectiveness of our forces to support our strong Ally Turkey in the fight against terrorism.” [Turkey]
• Chomsky on Korea, U.S. Foreign Policy, Sanders and Clinton
  March 7, 2016 By Simone Chun | March 6, 2016 Originally published on Tim Shorrock’s blog Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears Noam Chomsky has long had a deep interest in Korea. Ever since his involvement in the antiwar movement of the 1960s, he’s paid close attention to the country and the controversial role played by the United States on the peninsula since 1945. Last month, Professor Chomsky was interviewed in Boston by the writer and activist Simone Chun for the Hankyoreh newspaper. Here is the English translation of the interview, courtesy of Ms. Chun. Ms. Chun’s interview took place on January 19th, 2016, at Professor Chomsky’s office at MIT. Chun: Do you feel that there will be any significant change in the foreign policy of the United States after President Obama? Chomsky: If Republicans are elected, there could be major changes that will be awful. I have never seen such lunatics in the political system. For instance, Ted Cruz’s response to terrorism is to carpet-bomb everyone. Chun: Would you expect that Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy would be different from President Obama’s? [Chomsky]
• Trump and Clinton: Censoring the Unpalatable
  by John Pilger March 29, 2016 A virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win the Republican Party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as the “women’s candidate” and the champion of American liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One. This is drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and suffering around the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in her own country. To say so, however, is becoming intolerable in the land of free speech. The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama should have alerted even the most dewy-eyed. Obama based his “hope” campaign almost entirely on the fact of an African-American aspiring to lead the land of slavery. He was also “antiwar”. Obama was never antiwar. On the contrary, like all American presidents, he was pro-war. He had voted for George W. Bush’s funding of the slaughter in Iraq and he was planning to escalate the invasion of Afghanistan. In the weeks before he took the presidential oath, he secretly approved an Israeli assault on Gaza, the massacre known as Operation Cast Lead. He promised to close the concentration camp at Guantanamo and did not. He pledged to help make the world “free from nuclear weapons” and did the opposite. As a new kind of marketing manager for the status quo, the unctuous Obama was an inspired choice. Even at the end of his blood-spattered presidency, with his signature drones spreading infinitely more terror and death around the world than that ignited by jihadists in Paris and Brussels, Obama is fawned on as “cool” (the Guardian). On March 23, CounterPunch published my article, “A World War has Begun: Break the Silence”. As has been my practice for years, I then syndicated the piece across an international network, including Truthout.com, the liberal American website. Truthout publishes some important journalism, not least Dahr Jamail’s outstanding corporate exposes. Truthout rejected the piece because, said an editor, it had appeared on CounterPunch and had broken “guidelines”. I replied that this had never been a problem over many years and I knew of no guidelines. My recalcitrance was then given another meaning. The article was reprieved provided I submitted to a “review” and agreed to changes and deletions made by Truthout’s “editorial committee”. The result was the softening and censoring of my criticism of Hillary Clinton, and the distancing of her from Trump. The following was cut: Trump is a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism. Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama … The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system … As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies– just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”. The “editorial committee” clearly wanted me to water down my argument that Clinton represented a proven extreme danger to the world. [Liberal] [Hillary Clinton]
• Brother Obama: In the Footprints of the Conquistadores
  by Fidel Castro The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country. Tourism today, in large part, consists of viewing the delights of our landscapes and tasting exquisite delicacies from our seas, and is always shared with the private capital of large foreign corporations, whose earnings, if they don’t reach billions of dollars, are not worthy of any attention whatsoever. [Cuba deal] [Obama]
• Kerry’s Plan at Balkanising Syria
  Maram Susli Last month, US secretary of State John Kerry called for Syria to be partitioned saying it was “Plan B” if negotiations fail. But in reality this was always plan A. Plans to balkanize Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern states were laid out by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a 2006 trip to Tel Aviv. It was part of the so called “Project For a New Middle East”. This was a carbon copy of the Odid Yinon plan drawn up by Israel in 1982. The plan outlined the way in which Middle Eastern countries could be balkanized along sectarian lines. This would result in the creation of several weak landlocked micro-states that would be in perpetual war with each other and never united enough to resist Israeli expansionism. “Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan… ” Oded Yinon, “A strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”, The leaked emails of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reveal advocates of the Oded Yinon plan were behind the US push for regime change in Syria. An Israeli intelligence adviser writes in an email to Hillary, “The fall of the House of Assad could well ignite a sectarian war between the Shiites and the majority Sunnis of the region drawing in Iran, which, in the view of Israeli commanders would not be a bad thing for Israel and its Western allies,”. Kerry’s plan B comment came right before UN’s special envoy de Mistura said federalism would be discussed at the Geneva talks due to a push from major powers. Both side’s of the Geneva talks, the Syrian Government and the Syrian National Coalition flat out rejected Federalism. Highlighting the fact that the idea did not come from the Syrian’s themselves. The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Al Jaafari, said that the Idea of federalization would not be up for discussion. “Take the idea of separating Syrian land out of your mind,” he would say. http://journal-neo.org/2016/03/29/kerry-s-plan-at-balkanising-syria/ [US Syria policy] [Fragmentation]
• Turkey's Links With Islamic State: New Evidence Provided by Russia
  Alex Gorka | 29.03.2016 The Brussels bombings have accelerated US efforts to close off the last remaining Islamic State (IS) route out of Syria through Turkey, which officials suspect was the main thoroughfare for militants who carried out deadly attacks in Belgium and France. On March 23, the day US State Secretary John Kerry arrived to Russia, top US diplomats pressed Turkey to embrace a proposal to rely on American-backed Kurdish fighters to shut down the highway, which the militant group use to send dozens of attackers across Europe. This is a very important news story. «After our Aerospace Forces initiated the operation to terminate the illegal traffic, particularly of oil and oil products, from Syria… to Turkey, this traffic has decreased substantially», Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during his recent meeting with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who visited Moscow on the same day (March 23) to discuss Syria and other issues with Russian leaders. «We insist on compliance with UN Security Council resolutions demanding to stop trade with the IS and other terrorists just as resolutions demanding an end to the flow of foreign terrorists, gunmen via Turkish territory to Syria», Lavrov added. «In general, although this flow has not run dry altogether, it has decreased considerably», the Minister noted. «Nevertheless, it is still there. The sector of the border between two Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria is actively used», he said. The Russian top diplomat stressed that when the Kurds were trying to win back territory from the Islamic State group, «artillery bombardments of Kurdish positions were conducted from the Turkish side thus hampering their fight against this terrorist group». The next day (March 24), Igor Konashenkov, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman, said the Russian military had received new documents confirming cooperation of the Turkish authorities with the Islamic State militants. Last December the Russian military presented evidence to corroborate the fact that Turkey is the main consumer of oil smuggled by Islamic State from Syria and Iraq, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family were involved in the criminal business. The Ministry’s evidence is confirmed by the documentary report on the results of investigation conducted by Russia Today (RT). It was made public on March 24. The RT website published an eight-minute excerpt from the documentary. The full version, which contains «unique footage from the Syrian cities of Al-Shadadi, Romulan, al-Qamishli and tel Abyad freed from Islamic state, interviews with locals who worked on the refining of crude oil for IS, and with captured terrorists» will be aired in April this year. The report says, Turkey benefits from the Islamic State because the terrorist group provides it with cheap oil and is fighting both Syria’s government and the Syrian Kurds. This is an opinion shared by both the Kurds and their mortal enemies from the jihadist organization. The IS documents obtained by RT may provide additional evidence revealing the dirty game being played by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Syria. Another set of documents was found at the IS Tell Abyad checkpoint. Among many other things (such as vehicle numbers and the weight of transported materials), the documents listed the names of passengers who had reportedly travelled to Mosul, Raqqa, Istanbul, and Ankara. The illegal ties between Turkey and Islamic State have become an open secret since a long time ago. [Turkey] [ISIS]
• A Stolen Europe
  The Saker • March 26, 2016 Saker rant about a stolen Europe My latest column about Europe has elicited a lot of reactions, more than I expected, and I feel that I have to follow up by answering some of the comments made and by simply sharing with you not so much my thoughts as my feelings about Europe and her plight. Careful here, this will be a angry rant, written with sadness and despair in my heart, and with no regard whatsoever for good manners or political correctness (or spelling and grammar, for that matter) If you offend easily, stop reading now. Same thing if you expect a carefully written analysis. This will be a *rant*. You have been warned! For those who might not already know this, I was born in Switzerland in 1963 and, as most your Swiss people do, I traveled all over Europe for many years. My favorite destinations were mostly in the South: Greece (Athens, Aegina, Aghia Marina), Spain (Gran Canaria, Andalusia, Madrid), Italy (Ansedonia, Rome, Milan, Aosta), France (Creuse, Corrèze, Vercors), but also in the *real* “Central Europe” of Switzerland (Berner Oberland, Graubunden, Val Poschiavo), Germany (Bavaria), Holland (Amsterdam, the Hague) and Belgium (Brugge). I even has some wonderful trips to Ireland (Dublin, Donegall, Connemara) and I loved it all. I loved the languages (I speak Spanish, German, French, Italian), I loved the beautiful diversity of people, the music, the food, the landscapes, the accents and beautiful buildings as witnesses of the past reaching as far as antiquity – all these were joys to my heart and food for my mind. I absolutely LOVE Europe, and not only because by ethnicity I am half-European myself (my father, who did not raise me, is Dutch) but because most of my life was spent there and no matter what Europe will feel like home to me. [Europe] [Migration]
• The US Military: Back on the Battlefield in Iraq
  by Patrick Cockburn It was suddenly announced last week that the Iraqi army was taking territory from Islamic State forces in what was presented as the first steps in an offensive to recapture the city of Mosul. It sounded as if the self-declared Caliphate was crumbling and was particularly welcome news since it coincided with the Isis suicide bombings in Brussels. The message was that Isis might be able to slaughter civilians in Europe, but was being defeated on its home turf in Iraq and Syria. I was particularly interested in the attack because two months ago I had been with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga in Makhmour, the town in the front line between Mosul and the Kurdish capital Erbil, where the offensive by the 15th Division of the Iraqi Army was said to have taken place. At that time, local Kurdish commanders said that there was little fighting and they did not expect an offensive to recapture Mosul, which Isis had captured in June 2014, to happen any time soon. [Airpower] [ISIS] [Casualties]
• Imperial Math: Counting the Dead
  by Thomas S. Harrington March 25, 2016 On Tuesday, immediately following the bloody attacks in Brussels, Michael Morrell, the former number-two at the CIA, proclaimed that ISIS is “winning” its ongoing confrontation with the US and the countries of Europe. “They’re winning, and we’re going to have to find additional approaches to try to undermine them.” I am no expert on the metrics employed by military strategists to gauge success in armed conflicts. My guess, however, is that it all boils down to some combination of a) the ability to kill the highest possible number of the enemy’s combatants and their presumed supporters and b) the ability to inflict the greatest amount of damage and disruption on the social and physical infrastructure of the societies that the designated enemies are from, or are believed to identify with most strongly. So let’s see how the scorecard between “us” and the societies where “our enemies” live and/or find their sense of cultural direction, plays out. The figures are culled from various sources readily available on the Internet. Over the last 15 years Islamic militants have carried out five major coordinated attacks on US and western European targets (New York and Washington 2001, Madrid 2004, London 2005, Paris 2015 and Brussels 2016) killing some 3402 people. If we widen the scope of the inquiry to include Israelis under the umbrella of US-Western European culture and civilization (as they so often remind us should be the case) there are some 465 people more people for a total of 3867. If we widen the net further to include attacks that occurred in Russia along with all of the less massive attacks on US and European soil (a total of 693, mainly Russians), the number rises to 4560. When it comes to the matter of destroyed infrastructure and enduring disruptions of daily life in the US and Western Europe, there’s really nothing to report. While the attacks have been psychologically terrifying, and a source of unending pain and grief for the families and loved ones of those whose lives were cruelly extinguished, the attacks have done virtually nothing to alter our ability to live and work as we did before. [Imperialism] [Casualties]
• A Force Unto Itself: A Military Leviathan Has Emerged as America’s 51st and Most Powerful State
  William J. Astore • March 22, 2016 In the decades since the draft ended in 1973, a strange new military has emerged in the United States. Think of it, if you will, as a post-democratic force that prides itself on its warrior ethos rather than the old-fashioned citizen-soldier ideal. As such, it’s a military increasingly divorced from the people, with a way of life ever more foreign to most Americans (adulatory as they may feel toward its troops). Abroad, it’s now regularly put to purposes foreign to any traditional idea of national defense. In Washington, it has become a force unto itself, following its own priorities, pursuing its own agendas, increasingly unaccountable to either the president or Congress. Three areas highlight the post-democratic transformation of this military with striking clarity: the blending of military professionals with privatized mercenaries in prosecuting unending “limited” wars; the way senior military commanders are cashing in on retirement; and finally the emergence of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as a quasi-missionary imperial force with a presence in at least 135 countries a year (and counting). The All-Volunteer Military and Mercenaries: An Undemocratic Amalgam I’m a product of the all-volunteer military. In 1973, the Nixon administration ended the draft, which also marked the end of a citizen-soldier tradition that had served the nation for two centuries. At the time, neither the top brass nor the president wanted to face a future in which, in the style of the Vietnam era just then winding up, a force of citizen-soldiers could vote with their feet and their mouths in the kinds of protest that had only recently left the Army in significant disarray. The new military was to be all volunteers and a thoroughly professional force. (Think: no dissenters, no protesters, no antiwar sentiments; in short, no repeats of what had just happened.) And so it has remained for more than 40 years. Most Americans were happy to see the draft abolished. (Although young men still register for selective service at age 18, there are neither popular calls for its return, nor serious plans to revive it.) Yet its end was not celebrated by all. At the time, some military men advised against it, convinced that what, in fact, did happen would happen: that an all-volunteer force would become more prone to military adventurism enabled by civilian leaders who no longer had to consider the sort of opposition draft call-ups might create for undeclared and unpopular wars. [US military]
• A World War has Begun: Break the Silence
  by John Pilger March 23, 2016 I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini”, they say, “You mean the swimsuit.” Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years. Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered “unsafe” on a Geiger counter. Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called “Bravo”. The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever. On my return journey, I stopped at Honolulu airport and noticed an American magazine called Women’s Health. On the cover was a smiling woman in a bikini swimsuit, and the headline: “You, too, can have a bikini body.” A few days earlier, in the Marshall Islands, I had interviewed women who had very different “bikini bodies”; each had suffered thyroid cancer and other life-threatening cancers. Unlike the smiling woman in the magazine, all of them were impoverished: the victims and guinea pigs of a rapacious superpower that is today more dangerous than ever. I relate this experience as a warning and to interrupt a distraction that has consumed so many of us. The founder of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, described this phenomenon as “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the habits and opinions” of democratic societies. He called it an “invisible government”. How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile. In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons”. People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was all fake. He was lying. The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion. A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable.” In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two — led by the United States — is taking place along Russia’s western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia. Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority. This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth. [Imperialism] [Media] [Nuclear weapons]
• SYRIA: Aleppo’s Black Box is Found Under the Rubble of Propaganda
  March 23, 2016 By Vanessa Beeley 21st Century Wire “Hagop Tchouroukian, an Armenian shopkeeper, lost his home when a homemade bomb struck two years ago, killing a woman and two children in his building in the Midan neighborhood. He has moved elsewhere but returns to the area every day to work in his shop. His 4-year-old twins play in the street, something that would not have been possible before the cease-fire, he said. Before the truce, two or three mortar shells fell every day. Now there have just been one or two in the past two weeks, he said.” ~ Washington Post Perhaps more than any other region in Syria, Aleppo has been the hub of the NATO/US/Gulf media and NGO propaganda, intent on demonization of the Syrian Government and Syrian Arab Army. White Helmet central, Aleppo has been the concealed nest of Al Nusra operatives, overt or covert, disguised as the ‘Syria Civil Defence’, white helmeted “saviours of all Humanity” provided the Humanity has no associations with the Syrian Government, Shia, Kurdish or Christian factions in or surrounding Aleppo. Since the Syrian Arab Army has advanced deeper into Al Nusra and ISIS territory uprooting the terrorist cells, the truth has revealed itself by degrees. [Syria] [EWA]
• Cuba-US Relations: the View from the Other Side
  by John Kirk – Stephen Kimber March 21, 2016 On Dec. 17, 2014, President Barack Obama went on television to declare the United States was unilaterally ending America’s “outdated approach [to Cuba] that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests.” So why do so many American politicians and commentators still persist in arguing the U.S. has been “giving and giving” in dealings with Cuba, and insisting the Cubans reciprocate by… well, changing their government to suit American demands? Let’s start with simple truths. Cuban did not impose a stifling, 55-year economic embargo on the United States that has failed to advance anyone’s interests. Cuba did not put the United States on a list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba did not try to assassinate American presidents. Cuba did not attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. During President Obama’s historic visit to Cuba this week, Americans need to at least consider the perspective from the Cuban side of the Florida Straits divide. The U.S. embargo — the Cubans call it a blockade — is still the law of the American land. According to the United Nations, the embargo, which has been virtually universally condemned internationally, has cost the Cuban economy over $116 billion. [Cuba deal] [Sanctions] [Sanctions cost]
• How Politicians Duck the Blame for Terrorism
  by Patrick Cockburn The capture of Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving planner of the Paris massacre, means that the media is focusing once again on the threat of terrorist attack by Islamic State. Questions are asked about why the most wanted man in Europe was able to elude the police for so long, even though he was living in his home district of Molenbeek in Brussels. Television and newspapers ask nervously about the chances of Isis carrying out another atrocity aimed at dominating the news agenda and showing that it is still in business. The reporting of the events in Brussels is in keeping with that after the January (Charlie Hebdo) and November Paris attacks and the Tunisian beach killings by Isis last year. For several days there is blanket coverage by the media as it allocates time and space far beyond what is needed to relate developments. But then the focus shifts abruptly elsewhere and Isis becomes yesterday’s story, treated as if the movement has ceased to exist or at least lost its capacity to affect our lives. [Outsourcing] [Blowback]
• Five Years of the Syrian Saga
  Alexander Kuznetsov | 21.03.2016 March 15 marked the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the spring 2011 unrest in Syria, which snowballed into a civil war and foreign intervention. On that day, 15 March 2011, police arrested several teenagers in the city of Daraa for painting anti-government slogans on the walls. A few days later, it became known that some of those detained had died as a result of torture in prison. The news galvanised the populations of Daraa and other cities and there were large-scale anti-government demonstrations across the country, intensified by the interference of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the West in Syria’s affairs... External forces skilfully used the conditions for an internal crisis already present in Syria at the beginning of 2011. These included the liberal economic reforms carried out in the early 2000s by Abdullah Dardari, which caused the country enormous harm. The ‘reforms’ increased social inequality and the resulting discontent was compounded by the unlimited power of the Syrian intelligence agencies, of which there were twelve in the country and which began to replace the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. The situation was complicated by the fact that between 2004 and 2009, Syria suffered a raging drought that saw nearly three million people move from villages to cities. Once there, they were forced to live in slum settlements on the brink of poverty and this was fertile ground for the dissemination of propaganda by Salafi extremists. [Syria]
• Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare
  Fri, Mar 4, 2016 By Andrew Korybko (USA) Oriental Review is very happy to announce that we will be regularly publishing Andrew Korybko’s latest research on Hybrid Wars. Building off of the strategies that he described in last year’s book of the same name, Andrew has conceptualized a new paradigm for understanding international relations and invented an accompanying methodology for testing it. The “Law Of Hybrid War”, the name of his newest series, states that: The grand objective behind every Hybrid War is to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects through externally provoked identity conflicts (ethnic, religious, regional, political, etc.) within a targeted transit state. Russia’s Eurasian integration objectives and China’s Silk Road projects are the targets of the US’ global Hybrid War strategy, and this accordingly opens up a wide range of geographic battlefields. Andrew examines the Greater Heartland, the Balkans, ASEAN, transoceanic Africa, and Latin America in identifying the vulnerabilities that each of the relevant transit states has to this revolutionary type of asymmetrical warfare. His unique methodology incorporates the variables of ethnicity, religion, history, administrative boundaries, physical geography, and socio-economic disparity in crafting comprehensive analyses that demonstrate each country’s Hybrid War weaknesses. The objective of the work is to illustrate the means that the US could predictably employ in destabilizing these targeted states, thereby giving decision makers and the public advance notice so that they can be better prepared to deal with certain preplanned scenarios as they arise. [Outsourcing] [Imperialism] [Hybrid war] [Controlled Chaos]
• Obama lands in Cuba amid protests, detentions
  Highlights Air Force One touched down in Cuba, kicking off historic visit Opposition protestors were rounded up in Havana A flurry of deal-making ahead of the trip By Mimi Whitefield and Jim Wyss HAVANA — Air Force One touched down at José Martí International Airport at 4:20 EST Sunday, marking the beginning of a three-day trip that’s expected to highlight the growing ties between the Cold War foes, even as old wounds fester. Obama and the first family were greeted at the airport by Cuban delegates bearing flowers. But there was one prominent no-show on the tarmac: Cuban President Raúl Castro. As the plane hit the runway, Obama tweeted: “¿Que bolá Cuba? Just touched down here, looking forward to meeting and hearing directly from the Cuban people.” The trip marks the first time in more than 80 years that a U.S. president has visited the communist island. And even as hopes were high for the visit, there were also signs of tension. Earlier in the day, as they have for 46 consecutive Sundays, the dissident Ladies in White marched along Havana’s Fifth Avenue to demand respect for human rights and amnesty for political prisoners. After a rally in a nearby park with more international journalists in attendance than dissidents, it appeared they had escaped their usual fate of arrest and short-term detentions. But they decided to march another two blocks where state security, three buses and a pro-government crowd waving small Cuban flags and placards with slogans such as “Long live Fidel and Raul waited. [Cuba deal] [Media]
• Iran’s Supreme Leader Says Sanctions Still Affecting Country’s Economy
  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticizes U.S. government in message marking the Persian New Year Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a ceremony on the occasion of the start of the Persian New Year in the city of Mashhad on Sunday. ENLARGE Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a ceremony on the occasion of the start of the Persian New Year in the city of Mashhad on Sunday. Photo: iranian supreme leader website/h/European Pressphoto Agency By Aresu Eqbali and Margherita Stancati March 20, 2016 3:38 p.m. ET Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday said sanctions continue to bite the country’s economy, and again warned against trusting the U.S. -- further dimming hopes that the nuclear deal could pave the way for warmer ties between Tehran and Washington. “They removed the sanctions in paper only,” Mr. Khamenei, Iran’s highest authority, said in a televised address that marked the Persian New Year. Around two months since the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers including the U.S. came into effect, Mr. Khamenei said the country is still having trouble accessing banking services that are needed for international transactions with the West and countries close to it. He blamed the U.S. “We don’t have any problem with the American people. What we are dealing with here is the politicians. They are the enemies,” he said, speaking from a shrine in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. Mr. Khamenei, who has the final say on most matters of state, had condemned the sanctions and expressed doubt about the nuclear negotiations. While he welcomed the sanctions relief, the hard-line cleric has repeatedly voiced suspicion on the intentions of America, Iran’s avowed enemy for more than three decades. Under the deal, Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions that had crippled its economy. The agreement opened up Iran’s market to foreign investment, and gave it access to money that had been frozen oversees. U.S. companies, however, remain largely barred from doing business with Iran because of unilateral American sanctions. [Iran deal] [Sanctions]
• Divining A ‘Trump Doctrine’: Finding Contours Of Donald Trump’s Foreign And National Security Policy – Analysis
  By Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute March 19, 2016 By John R. Haines* The ancient Greeks maintained that divination — how mortals learn the will of the gods — requires inspiration in the form of phrensy or madness. It was thought especially useful when some calamity shows the gods to be displeased. Today, simply imagining Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief prompts many political oracles to the requisite condition.[1] A group of Republican foreign policy notables published an open letter in which they harshly rebuked Donald Trump for some of his recent pronouncements on foreign policy and national defense.[2] Two open letter signatories associated with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Dov Zakheim and Colin Dueck, subsequently penned thoughtful essays in which each elaborated his respective position vis-à-vis Mr. Trump.[3] The open letter itself reads more like a series of rejoinders than a policy rebuttal per se, to which its authors’ likely response is that Mr. Trump so far has expressed his position in aphorisms, not doctrine. Aphorisms of course have their place in American political discourse — the clarity of Benjamin Franklin’s “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” is undiminished after 230 years — and collected aphorisms can, like with Epicurus’ Sovran Maxims, efficiently summarize a larger doctrine. [Trump] [US global strategy]
• Kennedy to Sputnik: 'Pipeline War' is at the Roots of Syrian Crisis
  15:53 04.03.2016(updated 16:06 04.03.2016) Get short URL Radio Sputnik discusses the origins of the Syrian crisis with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., attorney and nephew of US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Kennedy writes that the US decided to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power after he refused to back a Qatari gas pipeline project. Sputnik also touched upon US foreign policy, the refugee crisis and why Donald Trump would be a better president than Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. “We've compromised our own constitution, including the Bill of Rights in the name of the national security state and a warfare state. We've gotten rid, in many cases, of the right of jury trial. We've gotten rid of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. We talked ourselves into this idea that it's okay to water board and torture people.” He went on to say that the US public is disillusioned to think that the US is still a beacon of democracy. He spoke about how the government stood for freedom of people before. But the United States has intervened fifty eight times since WW2. [US Syria policy] [Pipeline]
• The Wrong Kind Of Victory: Is the US More Powerful Militarily?
  By Dmitry Orlov Global Research, March 20, 2016 Club Orlov and Information Clearing House 19 March 2016 One often hears of the fact that the US spends more on its military than most other nations combined. This is usually presented as evidence that the US is more powerful militarily—perhaps so powerful that it could take on the rest of the planet, and prevail. I find this attitude highly questionable. If we look at what sort of “defense” the US actually spends money on, and what it gets in return in terms of military capabilities, an entirely different picture emerges: of a corruption-riddled blundering leviathan that is thwarting its own purpose at every turn. To start with, assessing relative military strength based on relative levels of military spending is a lot like betting on a race horse based on how much the horse eats. Sure, horses have to eat, but a horse that eats ten times more than all the other horses is probably not going to come out ahead because there is something seriously wrong with it. [Military expenditure] [Military balance]
• Resentment and Aspiration: How Donald and Hillary Explain America’s Dysfunctional Politics
  by Thomas Castillo March 18, 2016 In the first 18 years of my life my parents liked to say that we were part of the middle class. It brought them pride and helped alleviate the pain and insecurity we dealt with daily. That phrase, middle class, had a way of bestowing status to our family: my father and mother, as Latino immigrants, were happy to have succeeded in starting a family and surviving in the United States. Unfortunately, reality placed my family more in the realm of the working class—a struggling, need all the income we could get working class. My father often worked two jobs but too frequently was underemployed or unemployed; my mom worked full time; my siblings got jobs once they were legally able to; I started working for my dad as a house painter when I was 12 and then the day I became 16, I started to work at a fast food restaurant. Yeah, we were middle class in mind alone not in the real world. Things had not always been that way. My father had been a union member in an auto parts factory. Times were good then. He ran a side “business” of house painting and he was also briefly a co-franchise owner of a small gas station. Yeah, three jobs. My mom did not work. This was the late 1960s through the mid-1970s. Then we moved from New Jersey to Florida in 1978 and then things turned out as already described. Regret colored our first years in Florida as we remembered New Jersey, believe it or not, as the good old days. However, soon that nostalgia dissipated to growing alienation as anger, frustration, and fatigue from tough work (try house painting in FLA heat) defined too much of our existence to care for happy remembrances anymore. While not a citizen and unable to vote until later in the 1980s, my father supported Jimmy Carter in 1980 while my mother argued for Reagan. Both soon aligned with Republican politics despite the contradictions. [Middle class]
• 2017 Defense Posture Statement Posted on Defense.gov
  March 17, 2016 The 2017 Defense Posture Statement: Taking the Long View, Investing for the Future has been posted on Defense.gov. It can be found at the following link: http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2017DODPOSTURE_FINAL_MAR17UpdatePage4_WEB.PDF [US Global strategy] [US military]
• Exposing the Libyan Agenda: a Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails
  by Ellen Brown
  The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a “victory lap.” “We came, we saw, he died!” she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi. But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, “as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain.” [Libya] [Hillary Clinton] [Reserve]
• Even as political spending explodes, disclosure remains hazy
  Highlights The Supreme Court repeatedly has ruled for public disclosure of campaign contributions However, the Citizens United decision also removed limits to contributions Some states are starting to look at limits at their level Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, second from left, and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch are greeted by the governor's cabinet and staff at the state Capitol Madison, Wis., a day after Walker beat Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in a recall election. A railroad executive was caught violating contribution limits for illegally funneling cash to Walker's campaign through his employees. Key to the investigation, was a requirement that donors disclose where they work, but Republican lawmakers have since wiped out the rule. By Mary Spicuzza and Jeremy B. White Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Sacramento Bee Politicians in Mississippi have used campaign money to pay for such things as a BMW, an RV and $800 cowboy boots. In Wisconsin, a railroad executive was caught violating contribution limits after an ex-girlfriend he met on a “sugar daddy” dating website reported him for illegally funneling cash to Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign. Key to the investigation, election officials say, was a requirement that donors disclose their employers – but Republican lawmakers have since wiped out the rule. Meanwhile, “dark money” spending by outside groups that aren’t required to disclose their donors is expected to explode during this presidential election year. States can take action to stem the tide at the local level, but few have. Congress could require more disclosure about who is financing campaigns, but it has made no move to do so. Disclosure may be the public’s best and often only remaining way of knowing who is supporting political candidates in the wake of recent court decisions. [Election] [Plutocracy] [Corruption]
• With Aleppo Encircled, West Seeks Wildcard to Save its Terror Hordes
  Cartalucci, Tony The Syrian Arab Army is reportedly close to completely encircling militants that have occupied the northern city of Aleppo since they invaded it from NATO territory in 2012. Once the encirclement is complete, analysts believe the the city will be finally liberated, in a process similar to the retaking of Homs further south. The desperation of militants facing this final phase in the Battle for Aleppo is indicated by their Western sponsors’ attempts to broker a ceasefire and arrange “aid” to reach them. Similar attempts were made in vain during the closing phases in the Battle for Homs in mid-2014 – with the city of Homs having been an epicenter of terrorist activity beginning in 2011, and now under the control of the Syrian government. Small pockets of militants have been isolated within Homs, allowing order to be restored across the majority of the city and the surrounding region. As the Syrian government systematically regains control of a nation up-ended by Western-backed terrorists flooding the country accompanied by a seemingly inexhaustible torrent of cash, weapons, and equipment, the desperation of these Western interests has visibly increased. http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/23/with-aleppo-encircled-west-seeks-wildcard-to-save-its-terror-hordes/ [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing]
• The Blessed Bigotry of Mr Trump
  Israel Shamir • March 13, 2016 Only a dumb fish would complain if a man were to say: “I never eat fish, and I do not intend to eat fish”. Only the dumbest fish would condemn the man as a bigot: “What! He does not like us!” And yet, our Muslim American friends apparently emulate the stupid fish when speaking of Donald Trump. I spoke well of Trump. My Radical Muslim American friend screamed on a list serve: “And what about his racist remarks about Muslims that are akin to those made about Jews not all that long ago? Shall we accept him on that basis as well as his sick stand on overweight women? Do we overlook all that???????????????????!!!!!” He referred to Trump’s idea to ban Muslims from migrating to the US. Indeed this sounds awful, and the comparison with Jews has been made often. [Trump] [Migration]
• American Exceptionalism Presents an Election Made in Hell
  By William Blum Global Research, March 12, 2016 If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump. My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted. And not much better can be expected on domestic issues from this woman who was paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs – one of the most reactionary, anti-social corporations in this sad world – for four speeches and even more than that in political donations in recent years. Add to that Hillary’s willingness to serve for six years on the board of Walmart while her husband was governor of Arkansas. Can we expect to change corporate behavior by taking their money? The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial the day after the multiple primary elections of March 1 which began: “Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States,” and then declared: “The reality is that Trump has no experience whatsoever in government.” When I need to have my car fixed I look for a mechanic with experience with my type of auto. When I have a medical problem I prefer a doctor who specializes in the part of my body that’s ill. But when it comes to politicians, experience means nothing. The only thing that counts is the person’s ideology. Who would you sooner vote for, a person with 30 years in Congress who doesn’t share your political and social views at all, is even hostile to them, or someone who has never held public office before but is an ideological comrade on every important issue? Clinton’s 12 years in high government positions carries no weight with me. The Times continued about Trump: “He has shamefully little knowledge of the issues facing the country and the world.” Again, knowledge is trumped (no pun intended) by ideology. As Secretary of State (January 2009-February 2013), with great access to knowledge, Clinton played a key role in the 2011 destruction of Libya’s modern and secular welfare state, sending it crashing in utter chaos into a failed state, leading to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists. What good did Secretary of State Clinton’s knowledge do? It was enough for her to know that Gaddafi’s Libya, for several reasons, would never be a properly obedient client state of Washington. Thus it was that the United States, along with NATO, bombed the people of Libya almost daily for more than six months, giving as an excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States was thus saving the people of that city from a massacre. The American people and the American media of course swallowed this story, though no convincing evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. (The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter – a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period – makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.) The Western intervention in Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had “championed”, convincing Obama in “what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.” All the knowledge she was privy to did not keep her from this disastrous mistake in Libya. And the same can be said about her support of placing regime change in Syria ahead of supporting the Syrian government in its struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Even more disastrous was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq which she as a senator supported. Both policies were of course clear violations of international law and the UN Charter. [US_Election16] [Trump] [Hillary Clinton] [US global strategy] [Libya]
• Scaparrotti nominated to replace Breedlove at EUCOM, NATO
  By John Vandiver Stars and Stripes Published: March 11, 2016 STUTTGART, Germany — Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti was tapped Friday to command U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, where he will face a once tranquil security environment transformed by old Cold War tensions with Russia and a refugee crisis threatening Europe’s political order. The Pentagon announced Friday that Scaparrotti has been nominated as the commander of European Command and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. [NATO] [US Dominance] [USFK]
• Breedlove: Russia’s Syria campaign sending foreign fighters to Europe
  By John Vandiver Stars and Stripes Published: March 1, 2016 The top U.S. general in Europe told a congressional committee Tuesday that Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria has increased the flow of refugees into Europe, a mass migration that now includes a growing number of foreign fighters and terrorists who are using the crisis for cover. [Outsourcing] [Blowback] [Russia Syria]
• Syrian Kurds accuse Turkey of aiding delivery of chem weapons to Terrorists
  Thursday, 10 March 2016 In an interview with media, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia accused Turkey of providing a clear transit route for the chemical weapons that were deployed against them near the city of Aleppo on Tuesday. Syrian anti-government militants “took advantage of the ceasefire” to launch attacks against a Kurdish-controlled area near Aleppo in northern Syria, Redur Xelil told media. The attackers targeted a civilian district of what was once Syria’s biggest city, and has since become a key battleground. According to Xelil, the shells emitted an “unnatural smell” and “yellow smoke” upon impact, indicating that chemical weapons were involved. “Our sources inside the rebel groups have confirmed that toxic substances were used. We also have verified information that sarin gas was delivered to them from Turkey. All signs point to the fact that these factions were using banned weapons, but we cannot access the launching area, as it is located on the front between the Turkish and rebel forces,” Xelil told media by Skype from Rojava in Syria. Kurdish deputies in the Turkish parliament have previously accused Ankara of supplying Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and other jihadist groups inside Syria with chemical weapons, which are used both in their fight against the Syrian government and to pin responsibility for their deployment on the regime of President Bashar Assad. [cbw] [False flag] Syria] [Turkey]
• Iran ordered to pay $10.5 billion for 9/11 by US judge
  Published time: 10 Mar, 2016 20:04 A US judge ordered Iran to pay over $10 billion in damages to families of victims who died on September 11, 2001 – even though there is no evidence of Tehran’s direct connection to the attack. The same judge earlier cleared Saudi Arabia from culpability. The default judgement was issued by US District Judge George Daniels in New York on Wednesday. Under the ruling, Tehran was ordered to pay $7.5 billion to 9/11 victims’ families, including $2 million to each victim’s estate for pain and suffering, and another $6.88 million in punitive damages. Insurers who paid for property damage and claimed their businesses were interrupted were awarded an additional $3 billion in the ruling. The ruling is noteworthy particularly since none of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Iranian citizens. Fifteen were citizens of Saudi Arabia, while two were from the United Arab Emirates, and one each from Egypt and Lebanon. [9/11] [Bizarre] [Iran] [Extraterritoriality]
• Hillary Clinton: the Queen of Chaos and the Threat of World War III
  by Maidhc Ó Cathail – Diana Johnstone katz / Shutterstock.com Maidhc Ó Cathail: In your latest book, you dub Hillary Clinton the “Queen of Chaos”. Can you explain why you chose this derogatory sobriquet to describe Hillary? Diana Johnstone: Libya, in a word. Hillary Clinton was so proud of her major role in instigating the war against Libya that she and her advisors initially planned to use it as basis of a “Clinton doctrine”, meaning a “smart power” regime change strategy, as a presidential campaign slogan. The Libyan catastrophe actually inspired me to write this book, along with the mounting danger of war with Russia. [Hillary Clinton] [Libya] [Russia confrontation] [Imperialism] [Peace]
• Mahathir & Anwar vs Najib: how will it end?
  by Yang Razali Kassim The unthinkable is happening in Malaysian politics. It is triggered by the deepest political crisis the country has ever known, at the center of which is Prime Minister Najib Razak. Forced by a common desire to end the turmoil by unseating Najib, two bitter foes – former premier Mahathir Mohammad and his jailed former deputy Anwar Ibrahim – have joined hands in what has long been thought an impossible alliance. Aptly described as a sea-change in Malaysian politics, never before have such sworn enemies buried their hatchets for a common cause – and never before had that been a joint cause celebre to sack a sitting prime minister. By launching his rainbow “core group” of concerned citizens of various political stripes and leanings to “Save Malaysia,” Mahathir has once again thrust himself into the eye of the storm to redefine the political landscape. In the same vein, with Anwar in jail, all the disparate forces that have aligned themselves against Najib over the 1MDB investment fund scandal have finally found someone of stature to rally around in a marriage of convenience. It is ironic that the man who crushed the opposition while in power has remade himself in retirement as the de facto leader of what in essence is a citizens’ revolt. Strange group or a potent movement? Mahathir himself described this as a “very strange group of people” brought together by a common goal of citizens calling for the scandal-hit prime minister to be replaced. By calling it a “core group,” Mahathir is indicating that this is only the beginning of more moves to come. What could emerge down the road is yet hazy, perhaps even to the nanogenarian. But it is safe to say that a new era in Malaysian politics is unfolding with the key players jostling for a place in the shifting ground as they position themselves for a very uncertain road ahead. [Malaysia]
• Ryan says U.S. Congress will press for new sanctions against Iran
  (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday that lawmakers would continue to press for new sanctions against Tehran "until the regime ends its violent, provocative behavior against the U.S. and our allies." Ryan, whose Republican party opposed the landmark nuclear agreement the Obama administration and five other world powers reached with Tehran last year, said Iran's latest reported missile test violated international law. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) test-fired several ballistic missiles on Tuesday, state television said, challenging a United Nations resolution and drawing the threat of a diplomatic response from the United States. U.S. and French officials had earlier said a missile test by Iran would violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls on Iran not to conduct "any activity" related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. [Iran deal] [Renege] [Republicans] [UNUS]
• Six reasons why Iran won’t join the war in Yemen
  For nearly a year now, Saudi Arabia has been bombarding its southern neighbor, Yemen, while diverting the world’s attention toward Iran. Saudi military forces invaded Bahrain using this very tactic and have been aiding extremist forces in Syria and Iraq, all while pointing the finger at the Islamic Republic. Even if Iran considers Yemen as an opportunity to expand its influence, it views averting the crisis there at hand is more important than directly entering it. Author Hassan Ahmadian Posted March 7, 2016 With the help of its extensive media machine, Riyadh has continued to push the line that it is engaged in a “confrontation” with Iran, and still finds an audience for this message in the West, regardless of its own actions. This same media machine is now using passing remarks on developments in the Middle East by Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, as a pretext to accuse Tehran of having military intentions in regards to Yemen. Speaking before reporters on Feb. 2, Velayati stated in response to a question about the possibility of a Saudi-Turkish ground operation in Syria that the Saudis “can’t do more than what they have done in Yemen. They have used all of their capabilities and still haven’t been successful." He added, “Which force does Saudi Arabia have that it has kept behind the scene and which it hasn’t used? If it has such a force, it should use it so as to not lose face in Yemen.” However, the one remark by Velayati that caused a stir in Arab media was the comment that "the domain of cooperation between Iran and Russia [extends to] Iraq [and] Lebanon, and I predict that in the future it will also include Yemen." The ruckus about Velayati’s remarks aside, Iran has repeatedly showed that it has no desire for a military campaign in Yemen for six main reasons. [Iran] [Yemen]
• The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases
  The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel By Jules Dufour Global Research, March 07, 2016 Global Research 1 July 2007 Global Research Editor’s Note This important analysis and review of US military might by distinguished Canadian geographer Professor Jules Dufour and CRG Research Associate was first published by Global Research in 2007. US military presence around the World has expanded dramatically in the course of the last five years. This study is largely based on data for the period 2001-2005. The Worldwide control of humanity’s economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultimately consist in a process of global subordination. Where is the Threat? The 2000 Global Report published in 1980 had outlined “the State of the World” by focusing on so-called “level of threats” which might negatively influence or undermine US interests. Twenty years later, US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualized the greatest fraud in US history, namely “the Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony. A modern form of slavery, instrumented through militarization and the “free market” has unfolded. Major elements of the conquest and world domination strategy by the US refer to: 1) the control of the world economy and its financial markets, 2) the taking over of all natural resources (primary resources and nonrenewable sources of energy). The latter constitute the cornerstone of US power through the activities of its multinational corporations. [US global strategy] [Bases]
• The Cult of the Reagans
  by Jeffrey St. Clair - Alexander Cockburn March 7, 2016 . The queen of head is dead. At 94, the life of Nancy Reagan, the pin-up girl for the genocidal War on Drugs, finally blinked out. Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford, who frequently appeared on Ronald Reagan’s General Electric Theatre, wrote in his memoir that Nancy gave the best blowjobs in Hollywood. It’s one of the most benign things you could say about the woman who saw herself as a kind of Catherine the Great for the American Imperium. Already the airwaves are throbbing with misty tributes to the Reagan years, an age than never really was. Here then is a corrective to the manufactured history of Ron and Nancy and their court that Alexander Cockburn and I wrote on the centenary of Reagan’s birth. –JSC The script of the recurring homages to the Reagans remains unchanging: with the Gipper’s straightforward, sunny disposition and aw-shucks can-do style the manly Reagan gave America back its confidence. In less flattering terms, Reagan and his PR crew catered expertly to the demands of the American national fantasy: that homely common sense could return America to the vigor of its youth and the economy of the 1950s. [Reagan]
• The West’s Flawed Desire to “Liberate” the Middle East
  by Robert Fisk
  As General de Gaulle set out for the Middle East in April of 1941, he famously wrote that “towards the complicated Orient, I flew with simple ideas”. They all did. Napoleon was going to “liberate” Cairo, and Bush and Blair were going to “liberate” Iraq; and Obama, briefly, was going to “liberate” Syria. A magnificent book by the French Saint Cyr Military School historian Henri de Wailly, Invasion Syria 1941, has just been published for the first time in English – and at what a moment. As Stalingrad-size casualties mount in civil war Syria today, here is the story of how the French – and the British — thought they could create “modern” Lebanon and Syria by driving across the border from what was then Palestine and taking over the Levant from the 35,000 demoralised Vichy troops who had been forced since the summer of 1940 to serve Marshal Petain’s pro-German collaborationist regime. It turned out rather differently, but some things never change in the eyes of the Westerner. Here, for example, is Vichy General Tony Albord on the local Alawite and Lebanese soldiers he commanded – the Alawites, of course, being the same Shia sect to which today’s President Bashar al-Assad of Syria belongs. “The Alawite soldier is capable,” Albord wrote, “the Syrian simple and disciplined, but anti-authority, easily upset and uncultured. His martial spirit is reduced. The Lebanese are conscientious mercenaries, civilians dressed in military uniform. The Lebanese and Syrian middle classes have no esteem for the army; their sons must be lawyers.” [US Middle East Strategy] [France] [Syria]
• Reviving Napoleon’s Army: “Cry havoc, and Let Slip the Frogs of Yore”
  Fred Reed • March 3, 2016 It is curious how little military men know about war. You would think they would think about it more. Yet, oddly, they regularly misjudge practically everything concerning the dismal trade. Their errors are not the sort that inevitably must occur in a contest, as when a quarterback doesn’t pick up a blitz. They are fundamental misappreciations of war itself. The foregoing sounds both arrogant and improbable, like saying that dentists do not understand teeth. Actually it is neither. The reasons are several. First, the military attracts certain kinds of men—authoritarian, hierarchical, conformist—who are not imaginative and do not think independently. Second, the appeal of the military is visceral, emotional, hormonal. Neither of these things is true of dentists. This explains why wars monotonously turn out not to resemble expectations. In WWI, the German command expected a lightning victory via the Schlieffen Plan. It failed, but the foolishness does not lie in the failure. Rather it is in the complete incapacity to foresee that the failure would result in four years of inconclusive static war. Trenches, barbed wire, and machine guns took them by surprise. Yet the existence of all of these things was well known. This sort of blindness is common, almost normal. At First Manassas in the American Civil War, the armies had no faint idea that they might be embarking on four years of horrendous war, or of the kind of war it would be. When America invaded Vietnam, the Pentagon did not foresee ten years of a losing war. Nor did it have any notion of what would happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Militaries regularly underestimate the enemy and overestimate their own capacities. The reasons I think are several. One is that morale is important in war and a sober estimation of reality often does not conduce to high morale. For example, you do not tell your troops, “You are mediocre infantry and inferior man for man to the enemy but we have better technology and will rely on this.” Thus American troops are always the finest, best trained and best armed the world has ever seen. Another and important reason is the Star Wars Effect. In movie theaters watch the audience, and particularly the male part, when the good space ships swoop in, dodging, maneuvering, firing, just on the edge of defeat, the music coming up, and blow the bad guy away. The watchers grip the armrests, sway with the turns of the hero’s spaceship. This visceral, adrenal response to war runs through humanity: The Ride of the Valkyries, The Sands of Iwo Jima, and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Military training aims at the inculcation of a sense of invincibility. Years back at Parris Island a sign read, “The Most Dangerous Thing in the World: A Marine and his Rifle.” It was nonsense, the marines then being decent light infantry but no more, yet we were told endlessly that were unique in the annals of war. This sort of overconfidence has consequences. Sometimes it provides the elan needed to win. Sometimes it leads to disaster. The unrealistic sense of power is instilled in training by, for example, running in close formation. The rhythmic thumpthumpthump of fifty pairs of boots unleashes something deep in males. It is the pack instinct, a call to savagery intensified by calling cadence, “Luke the gook comes marching by, stick your bayonet in his eye, lefryelefrylefryelef….” We are the toughest of the tough. Often the belief in invincibility becomes almost mystical. In WWI the French believed in cran, in l’offensive a outrnce, the fighting spirit that was sure to lead to victory. More attention to heavy artillery would have been prudent. In Japan it was bushido. Yamamoto, who had been in the United States and knew what it was, suggested that starting a war with a country having ten times your industrial potential was not unduly bright. The Army ignored him. Underestimation of the enemy is a military disease bordering at time on a death wish. Before WWII, the US military tended to regard the Japanese as funny little buck-toothed monkeys with thick glasses. The same monkeys had destroyed the Russian fleet in 1905, fought for years in China with an excellent fighter plane—the Zero—and conducted sophisticated carrier operations. None of this occurred to the Americans. [Military]
• Energy Wars of Attrition: The Irony of Oil Abundance
  By Michael T. Klare Three and a half years ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) triggered headlines around the world by predicting that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world’s leading oil producer by 2020 and, together with Canada, would become a net exporter of oil around 2030. Overnight, a new strain of American energy triumphalism appeared and experts began speaking of “Saudi America,” a reinvigorated U.S.A. animated by copious streams of oil and natural gas, much of it obtained through the then-pioneering technique of hydro-fracking. “This is a real energy revolution,” the Wall Street Journal crowed in an editorial heralding the IEA pronouncement. The most immediate effect of this “revolution,” its boosters proclaimed, would be to banish any likelihood of a “peak” in world oil production and subsequent petroleum scarcity. The peak oil theorists, who flourished in the early years of the twenty-first century, warned that global output was likely to reach its maximum attainable level in the near future, possibly as early as 2012, and then commence an irreversible decline as the major reserves of energy were tapped dry. The proponents of this outlook did not, however, foresee the coming of hydro-fracking and the exploitation of previously inaccessible reserves of oil and natural gas in underground shale formations. [Oil]
• Libya: Worse than Iraq. Sorry, Hillary
  George W. Bush destroyed the state and army of Iraq, but it was located within a constellation of relatively powerful and capable states interested in some form of stability or control. The United States also poured massive doses of money and power into Iraq in an attempt to influence its outcomes. However, when the US pitched in to “lead from behind” and destroy the Libyan state at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s urging, even though Libya was surrounded by relatively vulnerable, at-risk states unable or unwilling to project power beyond their borders, the U.S. refused to go “Pottery Barn”, to use Colin Powell’s analogy, and fill the power vacuum in Libya with its own forces. The United States did worse than just walk away. In a misguided and morally and intellectually lazy (my opinion!) gambit it tried to “export” its way out of the Libyan problem by supporting the migration of destabilizing elements, i.e. the Islamist fighters who had brought down Qaddafi, to another adventure in Syria. Now, with the Syrian project faltering despite 5 years of foreign-funded Islamist insurrection, Libya has emerged as a preferred destination not only for returning Libyan fighters, but also a growing population of transnational fighters from dozens of countries. [Libya] [Hillary Clinton] [Outsourcing]
• Syria: Phantom “Rebels” Return from the Dead
  The French colonial green, white, and black banner of Syria adapted by the West’s proxy “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) had long been forgotten in the sea of black banners held aloft by Washington and Riyadh’s more extreme ploy to gain leverage upon and more direct access to the battlefield. However, as Syrian forces backed by its regional allies and Russian airpower overwhelm these forces while building alliances with other factions, including the Kurds, the West’s entire regime change enterprise faces ignominious collapse. It appears that – having exhausted all other options – the West has decided to change as many of those black banners back to the “rebel” green, white, and black as possible, before the conflict draws to a close, giving the West the most favorable position achievable ahead of “peace talks.” The West’s Shape-Shifting Proxies For years, just looking at maps – including those produced by Washington-based think tanks themselves – revealed the true nature of Syria’s ongoing conflict. Forces could be seen flowing into the country as one would expect amid an invasion, not a “civil war.” While the West’s military campaigns over and upon Syrian soil claimed to be taking on the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), it was clear that nothing was being done about cutting off the obvious supply corridors sustaining ISIS’ fighting capacity. In other words, the US and its “coalition’s” war on ISIS was feigned. No genuine military campaign would ever be fought on the front lines while neglecting the enemy’s logistical lifelines – especially when those lifelines led from NATO territory. It wasn’t until Russia’s intervention on behalf of the Syrian government, that these corridors were targeted and disrupted – thus fully exposing the gambit for all the world to see. Not surprisingly, as soon as this began, it had an immediate effect on the West’s proxy forces across the country. Since then, Russian-backed Syrian forces have incrementally begun sealing off Syria’s borders, isolating stranded terrorist factions within the interior of the country, and retaking territory as these forces atrophy and dissipate. http://journal-neo.org/2016/03/07/syria-phantom-rebels-return-from-the-dead/ [Syria] [Outsourcing]
• The military wouldn’t save us from President Trump’s illegal orders
  By Rosa Brooks March 4 Rosa Brooks is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a former Pentagon official. Her next book, "How Everything Became War," will be published by Simon & Schuster in August. Donald Trump promises that if Americans send him to the White House, he’ll bring back waterboarding — and techniques that are “a hell of a lot worse.” Why? Because “torture works,” he claims, and even “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway.” That’s not Trump’s only bright idea for U.S. counterterrorism policy. He’d also “bomb the hell out of ISIS,” and he favors targeting the spouses and children of Islamic State fighters, too, since “with the terrorists, you have to take out their families.” That kind of rhetoric from the GOP front-runner has rightly alarmed the foreign policy establishment, prompting an open letter this past week from an array of Republican advisers opposing Trump. Former CIA director Michael Hayden, who also served as a four-star Air Force general and the director of the National Security Agency, sees a remedy: The military would save us from Trump’s excesses if he somehow gets elected. “If any future president wants .?.?. to waterboard anybody, he better bring his own bucket,” Hayden has said. The Pentagon would never let him get away with war crimes: “The American armed forces would refuse to act,” he told HBO’s Bill Maher recently. “You are required not to follow an unlawful order.” Hayden’s right that any presidential order to use torture or deliberately target civilians would be illegal. Under international and U.S. law, both are grave crimes, punishable by imprisonment or, under U.S. law, death. He’s also right that military personnel have no duty to obey unlawful orders. But don’t count on the Pentagon to stop President Trump. The billionaire himself, asked at a Republican debate Thursday night what he would do if the military refused to obey his orders, seemed aware of that: “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me. .?.?. If I say ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it.” (On Friday, he said he wouldn’t order troops to violate the law.) Unfortunately, recent history suggests that he’s right. Military resistance is no safeguard against a future president — Trump or anyone else — who’s determined to have his way. [Trump] [Pentagon] [Legality] [Torture]
• The West and Syria: the corporate media vs. reality
  Ian Sinclair 4 March 2016
  The media keeps saying that the West isn't involved in Syria. This isn't true. Abandoned Syrian army tank, Christiaan Triebert, wikimedia, some rights reserved. “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary”, George Orwell noted in his censored preface to his 1945 book Animal Farm. “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban”. Orwell went onto explain that “at any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it”. The corporate media’s ‘coverage’ of Syria adds a twist to Orwell’s dictum – inconvenient reports and facts do occasionally appear in respected newspapers and on popular news programmes but they are invariably ignored, decontextualised or not followed up on. Rather than informing the historical record, public opinion and government policy these snippets of essential information are effectively thrown down the memory hole. [US Syria policy] [Media] [Self-censorship] [Proxy]
• Rebirth of the Real Left: is Third-Way Politics Finally Dead?
  by Serge Halimi March 4, 2016 The persistent unpopularity of France’s socialist leaders is not a national exception attributable to poor employment figures or the renunciation of the left’s main ideas. The US and most other European countries have also witnessed the end of the ideological cycle of the “third way”, personified 20 years ago by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Felipe González, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Gerhard Schröder. But it is not just forces located still further to the right that have benefited from this rout of a long-triumphant brand of social liberalism. Recently there has also been a renaissance of a dissenting tendency whose ideas were considered archaic, and swept away by globalisation, flexibility and new technology. On US campuses, in London suburbs and among local authorities in Madrid and Barcelona, this left, which has shed its complexes, is gaining political traction. It sometimes dares to name its enemies: capital’s grip on the means of production, the power of the media and the excessive power of finance. The rebels may still be no more than a harbinger of spring, but at a time when the far right is often the sole repository of public anger, they offer a hope that could well challenge the right in seasons to come. [Socialism] [Liberal]
• Killing Someone Else’s Beloved: Promoting the American Way of War in Campaign 2016
  Mattea Kramer • March 3, 2016 The crowd that gathered in an airplane hangar in the desert roared with excitement when the man on stage vowed to murder women and children. It was just another Donald Trump campaign event, and the candidate had affirmed his previously made pledge not only to kill terrorists but to “take out” their family members, too. Outrageous as that might sound, it hardly distinguished Trump from most of his Republican rivals, fiercely competing over who will commit the worst war crimes if elected. All the chilling claims about who will preside over more killings of innocents in distant lands — and the thunderous applause that meets such boasts — could easily be taken as evidence that the megalomaniacal billionaire Republican front-runner, his various opponents, and their legions of supporters, are all crazytown. Yet Trump’s pledge to murder the civilian relatives of terrorists could be considered quite modest — and, in its bluntness, refreshingly candid — when compared to President Obama’s ongoing policy of loosing drones and U.S. Special Operations forces in the Greater Middle East. Those policies, the assassinations that go with them, and the “collateral damage” they regularly cause are based on one premise when it comes to the American public: that we will permanently suspend our capacity for grief and empathy when it comes to the dead (and the living) in distant countries. Classified documents recently leaked to the Intercept by a whistleblower describe the “killing campaign” carried out by the CIA and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command in Yemen and Somalia. (The U.S. also conducts drone strikes in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya; the leaked documents explain how President Obama has institutionalized the practice of striking outside regions of “active hostilities.”) Intelligence personnel build a case against a terror suspect and then develop what’s termed a “baseball card” — a condensed dossier with a portrait of the individual targeted and the nature of the alleged threat he poses to U.S. interests — that gets sent up the chain of command, eventually landing in the Oval Office. The president then meets with more than 100 representatives of his national security team, generally on a weekly basis, to determine just which of those cards will be selected picked for death. (The New York Times has vividly described this intimate process of choosing assassination targets.) Orders then make their way down to drone operators somewhere in the United States, thousands of miles from the individuals slated to be killed, who remotely pilot the aircraft to the location and then pull the trigger. But when those drone operators launch missiles on the other side of the world, the terrifying truth is that the U.S. “is often unsure who will die,” as a New York Times headline put it. That’s because intel on a target’s precise whereabouts at any given moment can be faulty. And so, as the Times reported, “most individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names.” In 2014, for instance, the human-rights group Reprieve, analyzing what limited data on U.S. drone strikes was available, discovered that in attempts to kill 41 terror figures (not all of whom died), 1,147 people were killed. The study found that the vast majority of strikes failed to take down the intended victim, and thus numerous strikes were often attempted on a single target. The Guardian reported that in attempts to take down 24 men in Pakistan — only six of whom were eventually eliminated in successful drone strikes — the U.S. killed an estimated 142 children. Trump’s plan merely to murder the relatives of terrorists seems practically tame, by comparison. [UAV] [Assassination]
• Fall of American empire
  Under Emperor Donald (90% humor) By Oh Young-jin With the trademark pucker in his face and his middle finger jabbing into the air, Emperor Donald (his full name before his self-coronation was Donald John Trump) emphatically stressed his latest contribution to humankind during an appearance at the podium in the main hall of the U.N. building in New York. In the background were two pictures ? a big one capturing a photo taken from space showing a distinctive line along the U.S.-Mexican border, and a vague hint of a line across China, giving impressions that something there for a long time had been recently moved. "This is my gift to the world," he said. "I am a man of my word." The long line is the wall he had promised to set up to fend off streams of Mexican rapists who ventured to cross the 3,145 km porous belt into the U.S. "Not a single Mexican has ever been allowed to scale the wall to the northern side and no state money has been used for that," he said [Trump] [Humour]
• Trump defends manhood, front-runner status, in wild debate
  By William Douglas and Lesley Clark McClatchy Washington Bureau DETROIT — With the race accelerating and the stakes rising, three Republican rivals worked furiously in a raucous debate Thursday to stop front-runner Donald Trump’s march toward the nomination. Trump found himself defending his business record and his conservative credentials on several fronts, lashed out repeatedly at Marco Rubio, and drew groans and gasps when he offered an unsolicited defense of the size of his genitalia. [Trump]
• Cable, Dutch Gov’t Official: Saudi Arabia’s War On Yemen Motivated By US-Backed Pipeline Fantasy
  Secret cable and Dutch government official recently confirmed that Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen is partly motivated by an ambitious US-backed pipeline fantasy. Despite an economic and resource motivator, the Saudi war for the Yemen oil pipeline is empowering al-Qaeda and ISIS . By Nafeez Ahmed @nafeezahmed | March 1, 2016 Nearly 3,000 civilians have been slaughtered and a million displaced in Saudi Arabia’s noble aerial bombardment of Yemen, which is backed by the United States and Britain. Over 14 million Yemenis face food insecurity – a jump of 12 percent since June 2015. Out of these, three million children are malnourished. And across the country, an estimated 20 million people cannot safely access clean water. The Saudi air force has systematically bombed Yemen’s civilian infrastructure in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. An official UN report to the Security Council leaked last month found that the Saudis have “conducted airstrikes targeting civilians and civilian objects … including camps for internally displaced persons and refugees; civilian gatherings, including weddings; civilian vehicles, including buses; civilian residential areas; medical facilities; schools; mosques; markets, factories and food storage warehouses; and other essential civilian infrastructure, such as the airport in Sanaa, the port in Hudaida and domestic transit routes.” US-made cluster bombs have been dropped on residential areas – an act that even the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon tepidly concedes “may amount to a war crime”. In other words, Saudi Arabia is a rogue state. But make no mistake. This kingdom is our rogue state. [Saudi Arabia] [Yemen] [Oil]
• Osama bin Laden almost sounds like a U.S. presidential candidate in this secret letter
  By Ishaan Tharoor March 1 Osama bin Laden, in an image released by the Pentagon on May 7, 2011. (Pentagon via Reuters ) In a letter apparently written by Osama bin Laden, the late al-Qaeda leader denounced the corporate interests supposedly driving politics in the United States and hailed the courage of the country's Founding Fathers. Yes, you read that right. The letter is part of a tranche of more than 100 documents released Tuesday by the office of the Director of National Intelligence from the trove of material gathered after the 2011 raid on bin Laden's secret hideaway in Abbottabad, Pakistan. These include missives sent by the al-Qaeda leader to accomplices, responses received as well as drafts of speeches and other rants he may have penned during his many years in hiding. [You can read them all here.] "The files reinforce the sense that bin Laden was increasingly anxious about security amid an escalating campaign of CIA drone strikes as the decade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda leader wore on," writes my colleague Greg Miller. "He also appeared increasingly disconnected from how much his organization had been degraded, calling on deputies to mount operations and fill positions even as they pleaded that they lacked capable recruits." But one document, titled "To the American People," is particularly intriguing. "I direct my talk specifically to those who support real change, especially the youth," it begins, before declaiming "the tyranny of the control of capital by large companies" that has evidently harmed the American economy. The letter is undated but appears to be written around 2009, with references to the recent election of "Barack Husayn" and the "six years" of war waged by President George W. Bush in Iraq. It goes on to bemoan the bailout of big banks during the Great Recession and then links the forces in play to the agenda of American warmongers and "Jewish" interests. [Osama bin Laden] [Corporate power]
• China Overtakes US, Russia Overtakes Germany
  Anatoly Karlin • August 17, 2015 At least according to the latest revision of the World Bank’s PPP-adjusted GDP estimates. China has long been expected to overtake the US economy (one economist dated it to as early as 2010), and there had already been a flurry in the media when the IMF claimed the same thing in December last year. The World Bank’s new figures just confirm the new reality and scaremongering about a bad night at the irrelevant casino that is the Chinese stockmarket is not going to materially change the fact. Annual growth continues at 7% per year, much the same as South Korea when it was at a similar stage of per capita development in the 1980s. Russia’s PPP-adjusted GDP actually marginally overtook Germany’s back in 2013, and it managed to maintain this small lead into 2014 despite falling into recession. Of course with GDP expected to fall by around 3% this year, there will almost certainly be a reversal of this, but not by any radical amount – the hystrionical pronunciations of the Western media regardless – and will likely be temporary anyway import substitution really kicks in. Financial, military, and cultural power are all ultimately functions, if lagging functions, of productive economic power. Although it would be a bad idea to go overboard with it, the spectacle of the same year (give or take) seeing both Russia overtaking the former biggest economy in Europe, and China overtaking the former biggest economy in the world, is really quite symbolic. [GDP]
• Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton's State Department
  By David Sirota ?@davidsirota AND Andrew Perez ?@AndrewPerezDC On 05/26/15 AT 8:44 AM Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to the United States' oil-rich ally in the Middle East. Israeli officials were agitated, reportedly complaining to the Obama administration that this substantial enhancement to Saudi air power risked disrupting the region's fragile balance of power. The deal appeared to collide with the State Department’s documented concerns about the repressive policies of the Saudi royal family. But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At press conferences in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.” These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing -- the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 -- contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release. [Hillary Clinton] [Arms sales] [Saudi Arabia]
• February 29, 2016 Oscar Hangover Special: Why “Spotlight” Is a Terrible Film
  by JoAnn Wypijewski I don’t “believe the victims”. I was in Boston in the Spring of 2002 reporting on the priest scandal, and because I know some of what is untrue, I don’t believe the personal injury lawyers or the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team or the Catholic “faithful” who became harpies outside Boston churches, carrying signs with images of Satan, hurling invective at congregants who’d just attended Mass, and at least once – this in my presence – spitting in the face of a person who dared dispute them. I don’t believe the prosecutors who pursued tainted cases or the therapists who revived junk science or the juries that sided with them or the judges who failed to act justly or the people who made money off any of this. And I am astonished (though I suppose I shouldn’t be) that, across the past few months, ever since Spotlight hit theaters, otherwise serious left-of-center people have peppered their party conversation with effusions that the film reflects a heroic journalism, the kind we all need more of. I don’t believe the claims of all who say they are victims – or who prefer the more tough-minded label ‘survivor’ – because ready belief is not part of a journalist’s mental kit, but also because what happened in 2002 makes it difficult to distinguish real claims from fraudulent or opportunistic ones without independent research. What editor Marty Baron and the Globe sparked with their 600 stories and their confidential tip line for grievances was not laudatory journalism but a moral panic, and unfortunately for those who are telling the truth, truth was its casualty. By their nature, moral panics are hysterical. They jettison reason for emotion, transform accusation into proof, spur more accusation and create a climate that demands not deliberation or evidence or resistance to prejudice but mindless faith. [Hysteria] [Media]
• At least 2,079 Clinton emails contain classified material
  Highlights State Department says none was marked classified during Clinton’s tenure 261 of the newly released emails contained classified information Monday’s release marks the 14th and final batch of Clinton emails Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is surrounded by security as she poses for a photo with a supporter at a campaign event at the Old South Meeting House, Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Boston. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is surrounded by security as she poses for a photo with a supporter at a campaign event at the Old South Meeting House, Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Boston. Elise Amendola - AP By Anita Kumar Washington — At least 2,079 emails that Hillary Clinton sent or received contained classified material, according to the State Department’s final update from its review of more than 30,000 emails. The State Department released a new batch of 3,871 pages of Clinton’s emails Monday evening in response to a court order. Of those, 261 contain classified information. Most were at the confidential level, which is the lowest level of classification. Twenty-three of them were at the Secret level. None of Clinton’s emails was marked as classified during her tenure, State Department officials say, but intelligence officials say some material was clearly classified at the time. Her aides also sent and received classified information. Clinton, running a tough race for the Democratic nomination for president, has been under fire for months for exclusively using personal email routed through a private server while serving as the nation’s top diplomat. The FBI launched an inquiry into the handling of sensitive information after classified information was found in some. [Hillary Clinton]
• Presidential Elections 2016: The Revolt of the Masses
  James Petras • February 24, 2016 Introduction: The presidential elections of 2016 have several unique characteristics that defy common wisdom about political practices in 21st century America. Clearly the established political machinery – party elites and their corporate backers -have (in part) lost control of the nomination process and confront ‘unwanted’ candidates who are campaigning with programs and pronouncements that polarize the electorate. But there are other more specific factors, which have energized the electorate and speak to recent US history. These portend and reflect a realignment of US politics. In this essay, we will outline these changes and their larger consequences for the future of American politics. We will examine how these factors affect each of the two major parties. [US_Election16] [Sanders] [Trump]
• What is Riyadh's endgame in Lebanon?
  Saudi Arabia is playing a high-stakes game in Lebanon, seeking to punish and weaken Hezbollah and Iran. It's not clear if the Saudis have an achievable end goal in mind. In an effort to condemn Iran, Saudi Arabia is setting its sights on Hezbollah and Lebanon. Author Bruce RiedelPosted February 29, 2016 Lebanon did not join an Arab League consensus in condemning Iran for the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in early January. In response, Riyadh suspended indefinitely a $3 billion program to purchase French weapons for the Lebanese military and canceled a $1 billion project to assist the Lebanese internal security service. Then it announced a travel warning discouraging tourists and others from visiting Lebanon. Several Hezbollah-connected companies have been blacklisted by Riyadh. The Saudis’ Gulf allies quickly followed suit and issued travel bans. Saudi and Emirati banks are said to be leaving Beirut. Next, the kingdom and its allies may start sending Lebanese expatriate workers home — something that would be a major hit to Lebanon's economy given that half a million Lebanese citizens work in the Gulf. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry in Lebanon is decades old. This current round got started last summer when Saudi spies captured Ahmed Ibrahim al-Mughassil at the Beirut airport, arriving from Tehran. Mughassil is a Lebanese Shiite who has worked with Iranian intelligence for a quarter century. He was the mastermind of the deadly 1996 attack on a US Air Force barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 Americans. Snatching Mughassil out of Lebanon was an embarrassment for Hezbollah and Iran. His subsequent debriefing probably also dealt a blow to their covert apparatus in the Gulf states. [Saudi Arabia] [Lebanon] [Iran]
• Albert Woodfox released from jail after 43 years in solitary confinement
  US’s longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner set free in Louisiana after more than four decades in form of captivity widely denounced as tortur Albert Woodfox, the longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner in the US, held in isolation in a six-by-nine-foot cell almost continuously for 43 years, has been released from a Louisiana jail. Woodfox, who was kept in solitary following the 1972 murder of a prison guard for which he has always professed his innocence, marked his 69th birthday on Friday by being released from West Feliciana parish detention center. It was a bittersweet birthday present: the prisoner finally escaped a form of captivity that has widely been denounced as torture, and that has deprived him of all meaningful human contact for more than four decades. Albert Woodfox speaks after 43 years in solitary confinement: 'I would not let them drive me insane' Read more For the duration of that time, Woodfox was held in the cell for 23 hours a day. In the single remaining hour, he was allowed out of the cell to go to the “exercise yard” – a small area of fenced concrete – but was shackled and kept alone there as well. Last November James Dennis, a judge with the federal fifth circuit appeals court, described the conditions of Woodfox’s confinement. “For the vast majority of his life, Woodfox has spent nearly every waking hour in a cramped cell in crushing solitude without a valid conviction,” he said. [Human rights] [Prisoner]
• Five years on, predictions by Gadhafi's son come true
  When eastern Libya erupted in protest against the regime of Moammar Gadhafi on Feb. 15, 2011, it took Seif al-Islam Gadhafi — Moammar Gadhafi’s son and favorite heir at the time — a full five days to appear on state TV to explain to the nation what was going on. After that famous speech, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi was accused by many Libyans, outside observers and even the International Criminal Court of inciting violence and threatening his countrymen that they either had to stop all anti-government activities or face the consequences. Following the revolution against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in 2011, his son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, made extensive predictions about Libya’s political, social and economic future — which have been proved right. Author Mustafa Fetouri Posted February 28, 2016 Not many people paid any attention to the predictions he made about the future of Libya. Five years on, however, most of what the young Gadhafi predicted has proved accurate. Among other things, he predicted Libyans would lack security, the country would descend into chaos and lawlessness, many Libyans would die, the West would intervene and the economy would collapse because the oil would "cease to flow.” He also warned Libyans against dividing the country and having fanatic Islamic organizations take over some areas, if not all of them. He said many Libyans would be displaced inside and outside their country, repeating the same pattern of 100 years ago when Italy occupied Libya in 1911, forcing thousands to migrate to neighboring countries. [Libya] [Prediction]

• Saudi Arabia's Future: Will Al Saud's Partnership with Wahhabism Hold?
  James Dorsey Senior fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies • Saudi Arabia's Future: Will Al Saud's Partnership with Wahhabism Hold? By James M. Dorsey Saudi Arabia may be heading into a perfect storm of economic problems, social challenges and foreign policy crises. Tumbling commodity and energy prices are forcing the Saudi government to reform, diversify, streamline and rationalise the kingdom's economy. The government is cutting subsidies, raising prices for services, searching for alternative sources of revenue, and moving towards a greater role for the private sector and women. Cost cutting occurs at a time that Saudi Arabia is spending effusively on efforts to counter winds of political change in the region with its stalled military intervention in Yemen, its support for anti-Bashar al Assad rebels in Syria, and massive financial injections into an increasingly troubled regime in Egypt that has yet to perform. Traditional autocratic rule in the Middle East and North Africa is being challenged like never before. Despite renewed doomsday prediction about the viability of the Saudi regime, its future however depends less on how it solves any one of these issues individually. Instead, it will be determined by how the kingdom's rulers restructure their Faustian bargain with Wahhabism, the puritan interpretation of Islam in which the Al Saud cloak themselves but which increasingly looms as a prime obstacle to resolving their problems. [Saudi Arabia] [Wahhabi]
• The [Redacted] Truth: How the CIA Lies to Its Own Employees
  When the CIA wants to keep something from its operatives, it simply lies to them. Those lies make their way to Congress, and eventually into history. By John Kiriakou, February 24, 2016. Originally published in OtherWords. It’s no secret that the CIA isn’t always up front with the public about its operations. You may even be kept in the dark if you’re an elected official. But did you know the agency even lies to its own employees? That’s the subject of a recent Washington Post report on a heretofore unknown practice at the CIA called “eyewashing.” Before moving to the substance of the article, however, I owe my readers an explanation: The Central Intelligence Agency must approve of everything I write about intelligence, the CIA, foreign policy, diplomacy, the military, and national security — for the rest of my life. They didn’t like this column, even though the source material is freely available to anybody who reads the Post. The CIA consented to let me run it, but only if I redacted a few important sections. [CIA] [Eyewash]
• Hillary Goes to War
  by Diana Johnstone
  February 26, 2016 When voters elected Bill Clinton president of the United States in 1992, they were also electing his wife. Bill announced the fact himself, but after the failure of her health reform plan, Hillary’s only political success was her excellent performance in the role of a faithful wife who “stands by her man”. Her brave defense of her frivolous husband was widely appreciated, but as a qualification for the highest office in the land, it seems a bit skimpy. Having played a part in wars in the former Yugoslavia might seem more presidential. During the 2008 Democratic Party primaries, Hillary evoked the foreign policy experience she had gained as First Lady by repeatedly regaling audiences with an exciting account of her trip to the Bosnian city of Tuzla in 1996: “I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” she told audiences. “There was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” As word got around of what she was telling audiences, Hillary’s story was rapidly denied by numerous eyewitnesses to the event, as well as by television footage showing Ms. Clinton arriving in Tuzla with her daughter Chelsea and being greeted by little children offering flowers. Cornered by the Philadelphia Daily News editorial board during an interview in late March, 2008, Hillary Clinton was forced to acknowledge that there were no snipers, but eased her way out: “I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things – millions of words a day – so if I misspoke it was just a misstatement.” She never had to dodge sniper fire, but she does know how to dodge embarrassing questions. The fact that she utters “millions of words per day” is supposed to give her a generous quota of possible “misstatements”, or to put it more simply, lies. [Hillary Clinton]
• End Times for the Caliphate?
  by Patrick Cockburn The war in Syria and Iraq has produced two new de facto states in the last five years and enabled a third quasi-state greatly to expand its territory and power. The two new states, though unrecognised internationally, are stronger militarily and politically than most members of the UN. One is the Islamic State, which established its caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq in the summer of 2014 after capturing Mosul and defeating the Iraqi army. The second is Rojava, as the Syrian Kurds call the area they gained control of when the Syrian army largely withdrew in 2012, and which now, thanks to a series of victories over IS, stretches across northern Syria between the Tigris and Euphrates. In Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), already highly autonomous, took advantage of IS’s destruction of Baghdad’s authority in northern Iraq to expand its territory by 40 per cent, taking over areas long disputed between itself and Baghdad, including the Kirkuk oilfields and some mixed Kurdish-Arab districts. The question is whether these radical changes in the political geography of the Middle East will persist – or to what extent they will persist – when the present conflict is over. The Islamic State is likely to be destroyed eventually, such is the pressure from its disunited but numerous enemies, though its adherents will remain a force in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Islamic world. The Kurds are in a stronger position, benefiting as they do from US support, but that support exists only because they provide some 120,000 ground troops which, in co-operation with the US-led coalition air forces, have proved an effective and politically acceptable counter to IS. The Kurds fear that this support will evaporate if and when IS is defeated and they will be left to the mercy of resurgent central governments in Iraq and Syria as well as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. ‘We don’t want to be used as cannon fodder to take Raqqa,’ a Syrian Kurdish leader in Rojava told me last year. I heard the same thing this month five hundred miles to the east, in KRG territory near Halabja on the Iranian border, from Muhammad Haji Mahmud, a veteran Peshmerga commander and general secretary of the Socialist Party, who led one thousand fighters to defend Kirkuk from IS in 2014. His son Atta was killed in the battle. He said he worried that ‘once Mosul is liberated and IS defeated, the Kurds won’t have the same value internationally.’ Without this support, the KRG would be unable to hold onto its disputed territories. [ISIS] [Kurd] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Hillary Clinton’s Speech to Goldman Sachs
  by K.J. Noh February 26, 2016 The following is a leaked transcript of Hillary Clinton’s first speech to Goldman Sachs delivered on 6/04/2013. Two other speeches are also rumored to be in circulation awaiting publication. This is the full transcript. Secretary Clinton received $225,000 for this speech. The speech has not been confirmed or authenticated. CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Lloyd [Blankfein], and thanks to everyone at Goldman Sachs for welcoming me today. I’m delighted to be back among friends, colleagues, collaborators, supporters, kindred spirits… Let me jump right in. You know, over the past few months, there have been popular concerns about an economy that still isn’t delivering for the majority of Americans. It’s not “delivering” the way that they feel it should, that they feel entitled to. Most Americans that you speak to, speak a populist rhetoric that claims it is stacked for those at the top, that those of you here have it too good. (Laughter) But we know the hopes that the little people have for their future — things like school, job, food, clothing on their backs– all of those little things would not be possible without your leadership and innovation. Since the time of the Medicis, even before, and the financing of the first joint stock companies in the transatlantic slave trade, we know that finance and banking is what makes our capitalist economy not just grow but tick… [Hilary Clinton] [Pastiche]
• Neocon Kagan Endorses Hillary Clinton
  February 25, 2016 Exclusive: Hillary Clinton’s cozy ties to Washington’s powerful neocons have paid off with the endorsement of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential neocons. But it also should raise questions among Democrats about what kind of foreign policy a President Hillary Clinton would pursue, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel’s interests. In a Washington Post op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions for Trump’s rise and then asked, “So what to do now? The Republicans’ creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry Then referring to himself, he added, “For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.” While many of Kagan’s observations about the Republican tolerance – and even encouragement – of bigotry are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies. The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented an aggressive “regime change” strategy against governments and political movements that don’t toe Washington’s line or that deviate from Israel’s goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) – all with various degrees of disastrous results. [Neocon] [Hillary Clinton]
• Military Analysis: US Military presence in Europe
  Written and produced by SF Team: Igor Pejic, Edwin Watson, Rachel Lane MA Igor Pejic, graduated Political Science Foreign Affairs Department at the Faculty of Political Science and now he is MA in Terrorism, Security and Organized Crime at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. The European region bears a great significance for the US and its ambitions to act as a global power. Relations between the United States and some European countries date back even to 17th and 18th century, when the European settlers began their voyage to the New World, the ties which bond these two global entities are not only political, military and economic in nature but they are also historical and social. Western Europe countries share more or less the same values with the US regarding the human rights and freedoms, democracy, civil society and more; but the interests for Europe in the US rapidly grew only after the Second World War and the bipolarization of the world. The rise of communism and the USSR made an imminent threat to Europe and of course to the new emerging global power, the United States. [US military] [Europe] [NATO]
• Newly Translated WikiLeaks Saudi Cable: Overthrow the Syrian Regime, but Play Nice with Russia
  February 25, 2016 by Brad Hoff It Is No Secret that Saudi Arabia, along with its Gulf and Western allies, has played a direct role in fueling the fires of grinding sectarian conflict that has kept Syria burning for the past five years. It is also no secret that Russian intervention has radically altered the kingdom’s “regime change” calculus in effect since at least 2011. But an internal Saudi government cable sheds new light on the kingdom’s current threats of military escalation in Syria. Overthrow the Regime “by all means available” A WikiLeaks cable released as part of “The Saudi Cables” in the summer of 2015, now fully translated here for the first time, reveals what the Saudis feared most in the early years of the war: Russian military intervention and Syrian retaliation. These fears were such that the kingdom directed its media “not to oppose Russian figures and to avoid insulting them” at the time. Saudi Arabia had further miscalculated that the “Russian position” of preserving the Assad government “will not persist in force.” In Saudi thinking, reflected in the leaked memo, Assad’s violent ouster (“by all means available”) could be pursued so long as Russia stayed on the sidelines. The following section is categorical in its emphasis on regime change at all costs, even should the U.S. vacillate for “lack of desire”: [Saudi Arabia] [Syria] [WikiLeaks]
• Why the most dangerous group in Syria isn't ISIS
  By Jennifer Cafarella Updated 1601 GMT (0001 HKT) February 26, 2016 Jabhat al-Nusra is more dangerous than ISIS, Jennifer Cafarella says • Cafarella: U.S. focus on ISIS is allowing al Qaeda to set up a return to the global stage Jennifer Cafarella is the Evans Hanson Fellow and a Syria Analyst at the Washington D.C.- based Institute for the Study of War, where she focuses on the Syrian civil war and opposition groups. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. (CNN)Hardly a day goes by without news of the progress being made in the war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In recent months, American-backed forces have secured much of the Syrian-Turkish border, recaptured Ramadi, and stemmed the flow of fighters and supplies to the terror group's capital cities of Raqqa and Mosul. But momentum is not the same as winning, and the U.S. has fallen into a number of traps in Iraq and Syria -- the most deadly of which has been set by al Qaeda. Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, is more dangerous than ISIS -- and while the two groups share the common goal of establishing a global caliphate, they are using different means to achieve it [al_Nusra] [US Syria policy]
• Regime Change in Ankara? More Likely Than You Think
  by Mike Whitney February 24, 2016 On Friday, the United States rejected a draft resolution by Russia that was intended to prevent a Turkish invasion of Syria. Moscow had called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to address its growing concern that Turkey is planning to send thousands of ground troops and armored vehicles it has massed on its southern border, into Syria to protect Turkish-backed militants and to block the Kurdish militia, the YPG, from establishing a contiguous state in northern Syria. Moscow’s one-page resolution was a thoroughly-straightforward document aimed at preventing a massive escalation in a conflict that has already claimed the lives of 250, 000 and left the country in ruins. According to Russia’s deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, “The main elements of this Russian draft resolution are to demand that all parties refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, that they fully respect Syria’s sovereignty and independence, stop incursions, and abandon plans for ground operations.” The resolution also expressed Moscow’s “grave alarm at the reports of military buildup and preparatory activities aimed at launching foreign ground intervention into the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.” There was nothing controversial about the resolution, no tricks and no hidden meaning. The delegates were simply asked to support Syrian sovereignty and oppose armed aggression. These are the very principles upon which the United Nations was founded. The US and its allies rejected these principles because they failed to jibe with Washington’s geopolitical ambitions in Syria. Quashing the resolution confirms in the clearest terms that Washington doesn’t want peace in Syria. Also, it suggests that the Obama administration thinks that Turkish ground troops could play an important role in shaping the outcome of a conflict that the US is still determined to win. Keep in mind, if the resolution had passed, the threat of a Turkish invasion would have vanished immediately. Why? Because the Turkish “military has publicly stated that it is not willing to send troops across the border without U.N. Security Council approval.” (Washington Post) Many people in the west are under the illusion that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dictatorial powers and can simply order his troops into battle whenever he chooses. But that is not the case. While Erdogan has removed many of his rivals within the military, the top brass still maintains a certain autonomy from the civilian leadership. Turkish generals want assurances that they will not be prosecuted for war crimes in the future. The best way to do that is to make sure that any invasion has the blessing of either the US, NATO or the UN. [US Syria policy] [Russia confrontation] [Turkey] [Erdogan] [Regime change]
• War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
  And no kidding, that’s the literal truth when it comes to war, American-style 25 February, by Tom Engelhardt It may be hard to believe now, but in 1970 the protest song “War,” sung by Edwin Starr, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. That was at the height of the Vietnam antiwar movement and the song, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, became something of a sensation. Even so many years later, who could forget its famed chorus? “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.” Not me. And yet heartfelt as the song was then — “War, it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker. War, it’s got one friend, that’s the undertaker...” — it has little resonance in America today. But here’s the strange thing: in a way its authors and singer could hardly have imagined, in a way we still can’t quite absorb, that chorus has proven eerily prophetic — in fact, accurate beyond measure in the most literal possible sense. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. You could think of American war in the twenty-first century as an ongoing experiment in proving just that point. Looking back on almost 15 years in which the United States has been engaged in something like permanent war in the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, one thing couldn’t be clearer: the planet’s sole superpower with a military funded and armed like none other and a “defense” budget larger than the next seven countries combined (three times as large as number two spender, China) has managed to accomplish — again, quite literally — absolutely nothing, or perhaps (if a slight rewrite of that classic song were allowed) less than nothing. Unless, of course, you consider an expanding series of failed states, spreading terror movements, wrecked cities, countries hemorrhaging refugees, and the like as accomplishments. In these years, no goal of Washington — not a single one — has been accomplished by war. This has proven true even when, in the first flush of death and destruction, victory or at least success was hailed, as in Afghanistan in 2001 ("You helped Afghanistan liberate itself — for a second time," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to U.S. special operations forces), Iraq in 2003 ("Mission accomplished"), or Libya in 2011 ("We came, we saw, he died," Hillary Clinton on the death of autocrat Muammar Gaddafi). [US Middle East strategy] [Liberal]
• This highly advanced U.S.-made anti-tank missile could now be on Syria’s frontlines
  By Thomas Gibbons-Neff February 23 at 3:18 PM ? Spc. Vincent de Ruiter, prepares to fire a Javelin missile launcher at oncoming tanks during a training exercise at the Orchard Combat Training Center, Idaho, Aug. 21 (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Leon Cook, 20th Public Affairs Detachment) A picture of a U.S.-made advanced anti-tank missile, apparently in the hands of a group Kurdish forces fighting near the northern Syrian town of Shaddadi, was posted to social media Tuesday. If confirmed, it would be one of the first documented uses of a FGM-148 Javelin in the war against the Islamic State and a marked escalation in U.S. material being funneled to local groups. [Outsourcing] [US Syria policy]
• Reports point to a new arms race breaking in the Asia Pacific region
  Posted on : Feb.23,2016 17:10 KST Arms imports by region and World’s 10 biggest arms importers between 2011 and 2015 Despite economic slowdown and meager growth in China, many countries are boosting weapons purchases The struggle between the US and China over China’s rise and their rivalry for primacy in Asia is triggering a regional arms race, a new report concludes. According to a report released on Feb. 22 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), six of the world’s 10 biggest arms importers between 2011 and 2015 were in the Asia-Pacific region: India, China, Australia, Pakistan, Vietnam and South Korea. South Korea ranked 10th on the list, accounting for 2.6% of global arms imports. Arms imports in Asia and Oceania were up sharply, by 26%, from the previous five years (2006-2010). Huge amounts of weapons were bought by countries in the region, making up 46% of global arms imports. [Arms sales] [Arms imports]
• Asia and the Middle East lead rise in arms imports; the United States and Russia remain largest arms exporters, says SIPRI
  (Stockholm, 22 February 2016) The volume of international transfers of major weapons has grown continuously since 2004 and rose by 14 per cent between 2006–10 and 2011–15, according to new data on international arms transfers published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Six of the top 10 largest arms importers in the 5-year period 2011–15 are in Asia and Oceania: India (14 per cent of global arms imports), China (4.7 per cent), Australia (3.6 per cent), Pakistan (3.3 per cent), Viet Nam (2.9 per cent) and South Korea (2.6 per cent). Viet Nam’s arms imports rose by 699 per cent. Arms imports by states in Asia and Oceania increased by 26 per cent between 2006–10 and 2011–15, with states in the region receiving 46 per cent of global imports in 2011–15. ‘China continues to expand its military capabilities with imported and domestically produced weapons,’ said Siemon Wezeman, Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme. ‘Neighbouring states such as India, Viet Nam and Japan are also significantly strengthening their military forces.’ [Arms sales] [Arms imports]
• Signs grow of new Western urgency to stop Islamic State in Libya
  Wadi Bey, Libya | By Aidan Lewis Reuters/Sabratha municipality media office/Handout via Reuters/Files An hour's drive from the Libyan city of Sirte, a few dozen troops man outposts along a desert road. They are hoping the West will soon be giving them more help to fight a common enemy: Islamic State. Armed with little more than gun-mounted pick-up trucks, they are a last line of defense against the Sunni Islamist group which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq and which has now taken advantage of chaos in the north African state to seize territory there. Sirte is its stronghold. "They're getting stronger because no one is fighting them," said Misrata forces commander Mahmoud Gazwan at the Wadi Bey checkpoint, a dusty outpost serving as a mobile base for his brigade of fighters. ADVERTISING There are signs of a growing Western urgency to stop Islamic State (ISIS), and Libyan commanders say Western weapons and air strikes will make a vital difference in the coming battle against their better-armed enemy. But Western officials say just as important is the need for a united Libya government to request more aid and for the Libyan forces ranged against IS to bridge their own deep divisions. [Libya] [Blowback] [ISIS]
• What happened to Turkey's foreign policy?
  Turkish experts — aside from the most hardened, pro-government experts — agree that Ankara’s foreign policy under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is in shambles. They generally agree this was caused by the country abandoning its traditional foreign policy in favor of an Islamist outlook. Turkey has made some major mistakes with its one-dimensional foreign policy, say former ambassadors who served under the Justice and Development Party. Author Semih Idiz Posted February 23, 2016 This situation, experts argue, has reduced Ankara’s options significantly, especially at this turbulent time in the region. Al-Monitor asked three retired ambassadors, who served under the AKP and are known as seasoned foreign policy commentators, to explain why Ankara finds itself isolated and unable to influence regional events that are having seriously negative effects on Turkey’s interests. The foreign policy framework drawn up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, is summarized by the adage he coined, “Peace at home, peace in the world.” It was based on a realistic assessment of Turkey’s geopolitical location, as well as bitter past experiences, said retired Ambassador Uluc Ozulker. A basic tenet of this policy was to remain Westward-looking — a tenet Ozulker said has changed under the AKP. [Turkey] [Foreign Policy] [Erdogan] [Sunni]
• Forbes’ Statement on the Administration’s Plan to Close GTMO
  Washington, D.C. – Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04), Chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, issued the following statement today on the Administration’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility: “The President's new proposal for closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is incomplete in almost every significant detail, including where released terrorists will now be held. I strongly oppose closing this facility, have fought to prevent the transfer of detainees to U.S. soil, and will continue to do so. The President has shown a repeated disregard for Congress and the rule of law, and Congress must remain vigilant that American national security is placed ahead of ideologically-driven campaign promises." [Republicans] [Prisoners] [Guantanamo Bay]
• Turkey’s increasingly desperate predicament poses real dangers
  By Liz Sly February 20 at 7:09 PM ? ISTANBUL — Turkey is confronting what amounts to a strategic nightmare as bombs explode in its cities, its enemies encroach on its borders and its allies seemingly snub its demands. As recently as four years ago, Turkey appeared poised to become one of the biggest winners of the Arab Spring, an ascendant power hailed by the West as a model and embraced by a region seeking new patrons and new forms of governance. All that has evaporated since the failure of the Arab revolts, shifts in the geopolitical landscape and the trajectory of the Syrian war. [Turkey]
• The Iran-Saudi Conflict
  February 18, 2016 The heightening of tensions between Riyadh and Tehran has become a significant factor in the regional politics of the Middle East. While the cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia is certainly not a new phenomenon, the recent execution of Sheikh Nimr by the Kingdom, the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Iran, and the end to formal diplomatic ties between the two countries signals a more dangerous chapter in the regional conflict. What are the perspectives from Iran and Saudi Arabia on the rising tensions? How do they view each other’s regional intentions and foreign policies? And, what steps can be taken to mitigate the conflict? To answer these questions, we have solicited two pieces to provide us with vantage points representing how Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively view each other. Below, we are delighted to highlight HRH Abdulmajeed AlSaud’s article on behalf of the Saudi perspective, and Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Mehrdad Saberi’s article on the Iranian perspective. [Saudi Arabia] [Iran]
• ISIS and the 'war on terror'
  Paul Rogers 19 February 2016 The rivalries of powerful states are now driving Syria's conflict. But ISIS is thinking bigger. The war against ISIS has seen 18 months of of airstrikes by United States-led coalition forces in both Iraq and Syria. An even more concentrated period is now under way, with signs of greater use of special forces by western militaries and pledges of ground troops by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And while western governments continue to claim that there are no "boots on the ground”, there is clear evidence that special forces from coalition states are involved in combat. An already complex situation is made hugely more so by intensive Russian air operations. Russia's determination to have a major impact on the course of the war and its outcome is reflected in its deployment of four of the country's small stock of modern Su-35S multi-role strike-aircraft, the latter supplementing a force of no less than 36 other types. The Russian assaults appear to be causing high civilian casualties, which does much to explain the desperate movement of a new tranche of refugees towards Turkey. They also may become the crucial factor in allowing the Assad regime to survive, while having little impact on ISIS. [ISIS] [US Middle East Strategy]
• U.S. strike on Libya camp escalates campaign against Islamic State
  Damage seen Friday in Sabratha, Libya after an attack by U.S. planes. (Sabratha municipality t via Reuters) By Sudarsan Raghavan, Missy Ryan and Brian Murphy February 19 at 7:15 PM ? CAIRO — A U.S. air attack killed dozens of militants in Libya on Friday, marking an escalation in the American campaign against the Islamic State as the militant group expands its reach from North Africa to Central Asia. U.S. and regional officials said that U.S. F-15 fighter jets struck a suspected Islamic State camp on the outskirts of Sabratha, a restive city in western Libya, killing at least 40 people in an early-morning attack that targeted senior militant Noureddine Chouchane. The Pentagon said Chouchane, suspected of overseeing attacks on Western tourists in neighboring Tunisia, was probably killed in the air raid, but officials cautioned that they had not yet reached a conclusive determination. [Bombing] [Double standards] [Civilian] [Assassination]
• Hillary Clinton, With Little Notice, Vows to Embrace an Extremist Agenda on Israel
  Glenn Greenwald Feb. 19 2016, 1:53 a.m. Former President Bill Clinton on Monday met in secret (no press allowed) with roughly 100 leaders of South Florida’s Jewish community, and, as the Times of Israel reports, “He vowed that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would make it one of her top priorities to strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance.” He also “stressed the close bond that he and his wife have with the State of Israel.” It may be tempting to dismiss this as standard, vapid Clintonian politicking: adeptly telling everyone what they want to hear and making them believe it. After all, is it even physically possible to “strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance” beyond what it already entails: billions of dollars in American taxpayer money transferred every year, sophisticated weapons fed to Israel as it bombs its defenseless neighbors, blindly loyal diplomatic support and protection for everything it does? But Bill Clinton’s vow of even greater support for Israel is completely consistent with what Hillary Clinton herself has been telling American Jewish audiences for months. In November, she published an op-ed in The Forward in which she vowed to strengthen relations not only with Israel, but also with its extremist prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. [Hillary Clinton] [Israel]
• Regime Advance Could Open Door to Another ISIS Push
  ?15 February 2016 Hassan Hassan Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme In Syria, the jihadist group has failed to reclaim Idlib and western Aleppo, but the military landscape is changing – probably to their benefit. In January 2014, newly organized rebel factions in northern Syria declared war on Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and this culminated in the expulsion of the group from all of the city of Idlib and most of Aleppo. Rebel forces in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Hasaka similarly rose up to root out the increasingly overbearing foreign organization. The anti-ISIS offensive reportedly cost the rebels about 7,000 fighters. The group’s presence in Syria was seriously threatened, receding to Raqqa and pockets in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Hasaka, until the summer of that year, when ISIS swiftly took over Deir ez-Zor and consolidated its presence in eastern Aleppo, southern Hasaka and Raqqa. It was helped by momentum and the advanced weapons it seized after it took over Mosul in mid-June and the Iraqi army there collapsed. But the advancing hordes of ISIS still failed to reclaim control in Idlib or the rest of Aleppo. That remains true today. Local rebel factions have resisted the group’s incessant attempts to return. The rebels’ resilience in those areas is remarkable, especially considering ISIS’s control of al-Bab and Manbij west of Aleppo, two significant strongholds for, respectively, ISIS’s economic activities and its manpower. - See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/regime-advance-could-open-door-another-isis-push#sthash.SKN2QI5Z.dpuf [Syria] [Jihadist]
• Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Hit Record in 2015
  By Thomas Gaist Global Research, February 16, 2016 World Socialist Web Site The US war in Afghanistan produced at least 11,000 civilian casualties last year, setting a new official record, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. The total number of civilians killed and wounded during combat actions by US and US-backed government forces, Taliban militias and other insurgent groups rose nearly five percent above 2014’s figure, according to the UN. Afghan government forces were responsible for 17 percent of the casualties, while US and NATO forces were responsible for 2 percent, the UN found. The report identified at least 1,000 civilian casualties that could not be definitely attributed to any of the warring parties. The UN report repeats the claims of the US military, blaming the Taliban for the bloodshed and implying that the relative drawdown of international forces carried out since 2014 has intensified the killing. In reality, responsibility for the deepening social catastrophe in Afghanistan lies squarely with American imperialism, which has fomented and waged a series of wars against the Afghan people over a period of decades. [Afghanistan] [Civilians] [UNUS]
• Collapse of Iraqi Kurdistan
  By Andre Vltchek Global Research, February 16, 2016 RT 14 February 2016 It used to be presented as a huge success story. We were told that in the middle of a ravished Middle East, surrounded by despair, death and pain, a land of milk and honey was shining brightly like a torch of hope. Or was it more like a delicious cake surrounded by rot? This exceptional place was called Iraqi Kurdistan, or officially the “Kurdistan Region.” This is where the victorious global capitalism has been injecting “massive investments,” while the West was “guaranteeing security and peace.” Here, Turkish firms were building and financing countless projects, while their road tankers and later a pipeline, were moving mind-boggling quantities of oil toward the West. At the smart Erbil International Airport, European businessmen, soldiers and security experts were rubbing shoulders with UN development specialists. Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Turkish Airlines, MEA and other major airlines were busy inaugurating flights to this new “hip” hub of the Middle East. Never mind that the government of the Kurdistan Region kept clashing with the capital city of Baghdad, over the oil reserves, over the extent of self-rule, and many other essential issues. Never mind that (as it often happens in extreme capitalist societies), the macroeconomic indicators were suddenly in frightening contrast with the growing misery of local people. As long as the oil was flowing, as long as this self-administered region was pledging eternal allegiance to the West. But then the economy began slowing down, and then it halted. All social indicators nosedived. The happiness of Western and Turkish investors, and especially of the political handlers, looked increasingly out of place, becoming almost insulting to those who were trying to make ends meet. And on the day that I was leaving, February 9, 2016, “Iraqi Kurdistan” suddenly exploded in series of violent protests, over “austerity measures to avert an economic collapse.” [Kurd]
• 71st anniversary of Dresden fire bombing: Allied war crime prelude to the Cold War
  By Dougal Macdonald On the night of February 13-14, 1945, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber command carried out two devastating attacks on the German city of Dresden. At the time, Dresden’s pre-war population of 640,000 had been swelled by the presence of an estimated 100,000-200,000 refugees. Seven hundred and twenty-two aircraft dropped 1,478 tons of high explosives and 1,181 tons of incendiaries on the city. The resulting firestorm destroyed an area of 13 square miles, including the historic Altstadt Museum. Shortly after noon on February 14, a fleet of 316 U.S. bombers made a third attack, dropping a further 488 tons of high explosives and 294 tons of incendiaries. On February 15, two hundred and eleven U.S. bombers made a fourth attack, dropping 466 tons of high explosives. The fire-bombing of Dresden was considered to be a gratuitous crime on the part of the British which caused up to 300,000 deaths.[1] Dresden was almost completely defenseless against the Anglo-American terror-attacks, which allowed the bombers to descend to lower levels and to maintain a steady height and heading, making their bombs even more effective.
  Why was Dresden selected for the February 1945 bombings? Dresden was directly in the path of the advancing Soviet Army, who occupied the city shortly after the raids on their way to Berlin (Dresden was soon to be part of the post-war Soviet Zone). The idea was that the death and devastation caused by the bombing would be seen and reported back to Stalin, showing him the destructive capabilities of the U.S. and British bomber forces. With the end of the war only three months away, the aim of the Dresden raids was to try to intimidate Stalin and the Soviet Union so they would not stand up to the Anglo-American imperialists after the war. About three weeks after Dresden, another similarly coded message was sent to Stalin and the Soviet Union via the U.S. imperialists’ firebombing of Tokyo, which incinerated between 80,000 and 200,000 people. In August 1945, the U.S. imperialists sent two new messages, targeting Hiroshima and Nagasaki to showcase the destructive force of their new atomic bomb. Just as Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki had little or nothing to do with the war against the Japanese imperialists, Dresden had little or nothing to do with the war against the Nazis. But it had much, if not everything, to do with a new conflict in which the Nazis and the Japanese imperialists would be Anglo-American allies and the enemy would be the Soviet Union. The Cold War was born amid the ashes of the hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who were murdered in the deadly infernos of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [Dresden] [Cold War] [Airpower]
• Question of Nusra Front likely to bedevil Syrian cease-fire talks
  Highlights A move toward a possible break in fighting in Syria faces many hurdles Among them: What constitutes a terrorist group? Syria protagonists have yet to say they’ll go along with U.S.-Russia announcement The Task Force on Humanitarian Access in Syria, set up under an agreement announced in Munich, held its first meeting Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva. By Hannah Allam WASHINGTON — After four years of carnage in Syria, the bar for good news is so low that the word “cease-fire” sounded encouraging when Secretary of State John Kerry announced early Friday in Germany that world powers had reached an agreement intended to pause fighting in the conflict. Within a day, however, professional observers of the war had concluded that the development is fragile at best, with make-or-break issues left unaddressed, starting with whether both the Syrian government and the rebels would even accept the terms. Supposing it makes it past that basic hurdle, the agreement then faces an even tougher challenge: the determination of which fighting groups are terrorists and which are acceptable partners to implement the deal, which doesn’t cover terrorist groups. A task force co-chaired by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to tackle that issue, a perennial dispute that threatens the viability of peace talks. The “cessation of hostilities” deal hammered out in Munich under United Nations auspices excludes the Islamic State and al Qaida’s Nusra Front by name. While the Islamic State has few friends among rebel factions, the Nusra question is more complicated, given the group’s entrenchment in eight of the nine areas rebels control and its record of cooperation with Western-backed rebels. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article60125646.html#storylink=cpy [US Syria policy] [Al Qaeda] [Outsourcing] [Terrorist]
• A Comedy of Terrors: When in Doubt, Bomb Syria
  by Jeffrey St. Clair Poor ISIS. Try as they might, the men in black still can’t out-terrorize their enemies or, more pointedly, even their patrons. For the past three years, decapitations have served as the money shots for ISIS’s theater of cruelty. Then on New Year’s Day the Saudis upstaged ISIS by audaciously chopping off the heads of 47 men, including a prominent Shia cleric. This act of brazen butchery is made all the more horrific by virtue of the fact that the Saudi head-slicers recently landed a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, largely at the insistence of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who personally vouched for the petro-autocracy’s acute sensitivity to matters of civil liberties and the humane treatment of prisoners. Then again the drone-troika of Britain, France and the U.S. also enjoy seats on the council, so perhaps the Saudis have earned their slot after all. With his peculiar fondness for porcine heads, Cameron is probably the Kingdom’s most un-kosher ally, but he is far from Saudi Arabia’s only political cheerleader. Showing a stunning lack of judgment, Comandante Bernie Sanders says his Syrian strategy relies on the Saudis taking the lead in the fight against ISIS. “They’ve got to get their hands dirty,” Sanders inveighed to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. “They’ve got to get their troops on the ground. They’ve got to win that war with our support. We cannot be leading the effort.” [Syria]
• Munich Accord on Truce in Syria: Major Diplomatic Breakthrough to Keep UN-Brokered Peace Process Afloat
  Peter Korzun | 14.02.2016 | 08:00 World powers have agreed to implement a nationwide «cessation of hostilities» in Syria. The breakthrough was announced on Feb. 12 at a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in Munich. The cessation would go into effect next Friday, Feb. 19, with terrorist groups continued to be targeted (the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria). The document was signed by 17 nations, including Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on behalf of Syrian opposition and Iran’s top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif representing Assad’s government. If executed, the accord, forged by the ISSG, would mark the first sustained and formally declared halt to fighting in Syria since the civil war began in 2011, early in the Arab uprisings.
• Are We on the Eve of War?
  February 9, 2016 ?JC Collins Is the US Leading Saudi Arabia Down the Kuwaiti Invasion Road? By JC Collins For the first time in a long time I feel concerned and worried about the prospect of war. The reaction of Saudi Arabia to the Russian intervention in Syria has always been the wild card in the shifting geopolitical power base in the Middle East. Turkey and Israel, along with Saudi Arabia are the three countries with the most to lose because of a strong alliance between Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. These three traditional American allies have been accustomed to Western support in regards to their own specific regional goals and ambitions. This support has been so staunch and counterproductive to regional stability that the growing comfort and alliance between Iran and the US should be both confusing and worrisome to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. On the one hand the US is making agreements with Iran and lifting sanction while on the other hand it is indirectly supporting Saudi Arabia’s and Turkey’s proxy war against Syria. A war which Iran, along with the support of Russia and Hezbollah, are resisting and countering with massive aerial and ground support. This contradiction is suggestive of another and more complex strategy which may be unfolding in the Middle East. A strategy which is beginning to look familiar. [US Middle East Strategy] [Saudi Arabia]
• Why Are Neocons so Desperate to Rescue al-Qaeda in Syria?
  Written by Daniel McAdams Thursday February 11, 2016 Reading Dennis Ross and David Ignatius is a good reminder that the neocons live in a different world than the rest of us. They do not conform their analysis to reality, but rather they conform reality to their view of the world. Where most people would be encouraged to read that Aleppo in Syria was about to be liberated from its 3.5 year occupation by al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise, the neocons see a disaster. On the brink of al-Qaeda's defeat in Aleppo, the Washington Post's Ignatius is furious that, "President Obama won’t approve military tactics that could actually shift the balance." Yes, he wants to shift the balance toward al-Qaeda because like the other neocons he is so invested in the idea of regime change in Syria that he would even prefer turning the country into another Libya than to see government forces defeat his jihadist insurgents. Failing to "shift the balance" toward al-Qaeda fighters in Aleppo only brings "greater misery for the Syrian people," in the world of Ignatius. Ignatius's Washington Post, which has never seen a potential war it did not want to see turned into an actual war, thinks it a tragedy that the Syrian army's advance on al-Qaeda occupied Aleppo has "cut off all vital routes of supply from Turkey to the rebel-held areas of the city." Those would be Turkish supplies in support of al-Qaeda and ISIS rebels, but the Post is too deceptive to mention that fact. [US Syria Policy] [Al Qaeda] [Outsourcing]
• The predators behind the TPP
  Twelve Pacific Rim countries representing around 40 percent of the global economy signed the ?Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade accord on Thursday. Dutch author Karel van Wolferen ?examines the corporate ramifications of the divisive deal by Karel Van Wolferen Special To The Japan Times Feb 6, 2016 Misnomers that hide what the strong and rich control — and aspire to control — help promote our world’s numerous political ills. “Spreading democracy” in the Middle East and Africa has been used to excuse much slaughter, ruin and higher risks of wider war for purposes not remotely connected with democracy. The designation “trade” used by politicians and the media when talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact and the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TPIP) agreement is another perfect example of a misnomer thanks to which a new shadow will be cast over the generally more fortunate parts of the world. If signed and ratified, the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic agreements, which seek to organize business activity under one gigantic umbrella of new rules, are likely to change our living environment in ways very different from what elected officials have been misled to imagine. They have been peddled as trade treaties, and hence as being wonderful for economic growth, job creation, social well-being and general happiness. But the TPP agreement, which aims to tie the United States together with close to a dozen countries in Asia, Oceania and a bit of Latin America, is not in the first place about trade, and may hardly be significant at all for stimulating genuine exchanges traditionally labelled that way. The same is true for its TPIP companion, which is meant to create and foster a new American-European business environment. The TPP and TPIP accords are about power, not trade. More specifically, the agreements are about changed power relations between a collectivity of politically well-connected large corporations and the sovereign states in which these entities want to sink new roots. In particular, these treaties would allow U.S. corporations to engage in conduct unchecked by national rules of the participating countries. In eyes not fogged over through neoliberal dogma, such a thing would be recognized as predation. [TPP] [Corporate power]
• The End of U.S. Space Supremacy
  February 9, 2016 | Luke Penn-Hall Space may be infinite, but it’s starting to get crowded around Earth. As more nations have gained the ability to send assets into orbit, a new space race has started to emerge. But rather than focus on merely reaching space, the goal now is to leverage dominance in space into a material advantage on the ground – in terms of both commerce and military force. There is a growing commercial space industry, and the number of satellites launched into orbit is increasing. The world economy is dependent, at least in part, upon the telecommunications and navigation capabilities that these satellites provide. Although there has been a distinct military component to space since the Cold War, space is now similar to the sea during the age of exploration – it is critical for commerce, but it is also being militarized very rapidly. [Decline] [Aerospace]
• Syria: Peace talks collapse, Aleppo encircled, disaster looms for rebels
  rs21onFebruary 8, 2016/8 Mark Boothroyd puts the Syrian regime’s offensives in Aleppo into context and discusses what anti-war activists in Britain and internationally can do. Kafranbel Peace talks fail The past week has seen major developments on the ground in Syria which imperil the entirety of rebel held Syria. The regime has launched an offensive in the north Aleppo countryside which has cut the major rebel supply line from Turkey to Aleppo, leaving Free Aleppo almost completely encircled and 400,000 civilians potentially trapped. At the same time the regime is pursuing offensives in Daraa and Latakia province that are creating tens of thousands of refugees and driving back rebel frontlines. Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese sectarian militias backed by Russian air power are employing scorched earth tactics reminiscent of Russia’s attack on the Chechen capital Grozny in 1999, reducing towns and villages to rubble to secure military victories, at immense cost to civilians. [Russia Syria] [Mis-support]
• Great Power Pivot: U.S. Shifts Focus to War With China and Russia
  Dave Majumdar February 10, 2016 President Barack Obama’s 2017 defense budget proposal refocuses the Pentagon on great power conflict—or in other words, Russia and China. Both nations are becoming more aggressive along their peripheries, which means that even as the United States continues to cooperate on certain issues with both countries, Washington must be prepared to compete with Moscow and Beijing over the next twenty-five years. “The most significant shift in the future security environment—and that is a return to an era of great power competition,” Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work said during a press conference at the Pentagon on February 9. “Today, we are faced by a resurgent, revanchist Russia and a rising China. Both are nuclear-armed powers. Both are fielding advanced capabilities at a rapid rate. Both are permanent members of the UN Security Council, and both take issue with some aspects of the principled international order that has preserved stability and enabled the peaceful pursuit of prosperity for decades.” [US global strategy] [China confrontation] [Russia confrontation]
• Iran's accession to the SCO would benefit Russia and China
  February 5, 2016 Oleg Yegorov, RBTH With the lifting of international sanctions against Iran, there are no legal barriers to the country joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Russian experts believe that Tehran's accession to the grouping would provide additional security guarantees for Iran and existing SCO members. During his visit to Iran in January, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in addition to signing 17 trade agreements worth more than $600 billion with President Hassan Rouhani, said “China supports Iran's application for full membership of the SCO.” Russia had already expressed support for the initiative. “Russia has consistently supported Iran's full-scale engagement in cooperation with the SCO members and directly with the organization,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in January. As for Iran itself, its Foreign Ministry has also confirmed that the country is interested in joining the SCO. [SCO] [Iran]
• As Syria Devolves Further, Allies Criticize American Policy
  By Ceylan Yeginsu Feb. 10, 2016 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an address to provincial officials Wednesday, denounced the United States' failure to recognize a Syrian Kurdish rebel group as a terrorist organization. By REUTERS on Publish Date February 10, 2016. Photo by Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. ISTANBUL — Allies of the United States sharply criticized the Obama administration’s Syria policy on Wednesday, when the outgoing foreign minister of France called it “ambiguous” and the president of Turkey said American inaction had allowed the region to descend into a blood bath. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey called into question the American commitment to fighting terrorist groups in Syria and cited the Washington’s failure to recognize a Syrian Kurdish rebel group as a terrorist organization. “Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist P.Y.D. and P.K.K. organizations?” Mr. Erdogan said in an address to provincial officials in the Turkish capital, Ankara, referring to American support for members of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or P.Y.D., in their fight against the Islamic State in Syria. Tensions between Turkey and the United States, NATO allies, have been escalating over their differing positions on the Kurds. Turkey considers the Kurdish Democratic Union Party to be a terrorist organization through its affiliation with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or P.K.K., which has carried out a three-decade-long insurgency against Turkey. [US Syria policy] [Turkey] [Kurd] [Friction]
• America's Agitator: Donald Trump Is the World's Most Dangerous Man
  By Markus Feldenkirchen, Veit Medick and Holger Stark AFP Donald Trump is the leader of a new, hate-filled authoritarian movement. Nothing would be more harmful to the idea of the West and world peace than if he were to be elected president. George W. Bush's America would seem like a place of logic and reason in comparison. Donald Trump recently spoke about American football. No other game more fully embodies his country's character. The sport is about capturing territory, and players need to be tough and fearless to win. A player who is afraid of being tackled by someone from the opposing team while running has already lost the game. "I don't even watch it as much anymore," Trump told a crowd of his supporters in Reno, Nevada. "The whole game is all screwed up." A growing number of studies point to the devastating consequences of the many tackles in the game, in which players try to stop their opponents by throwing themselves at them head-first: brain trauma, depression, suicide. New rules have been created, and there are now stiffer penalties for the most glaring fouls. On the stage in Reno, Trump said he missed "what used to be considered a great tackle, a violent head-on tackle." He slammed his fists together and repeated himself, vulgarly pursing his lips as he said the word "violent." "You used to see these tackles and it was incredible to watch, right?" And today? "Bing! Flag!" Trump shouted. "The referees, they want to all throw flags so their wives see them at home." "Football has become soft," he said, repeating the sentence as if it were a key hypothesis on the state of the nation. "Football has become soft like our country has become soft!" As he held up his index finger, the crowd cheered and people held signs up in the air that read: "The silent majority stands with Trump." [Trump]
• The Syria War Will Not Be a Quagmire -- Because Putin and Assad Are Winning
  02/08/2016 12:13 pm ET Alastair Crooke Fmr. MI-6 agent; Author, 'Resistance: The Essence of Islamic Revolution' BEIRUT -- Late in the night on Feb. 2, the news hit: "all communication and supply line[s]" between Turkey and Aleppo had been severed, according to a Elijah Magnier, a renowned Arab war correspondent with Alrai Media Group. It seems to be so: the Syrian army and allied militias, backed by Hezbollah and Russian air power, took control of a tendril of territory that cuts off Aleppo-based rebels from the Turkish border. See the map below. Eastern supply lines for the so-called Islamic State appear to have also been cut. Of particular strategic importance is the village of Murassat Khan and adjacent towns north of Aleppo: by taking control of the area, Damascus ended the main Turkey-Aleppo insurgent supply line. The tourniquet around Aleppo can be pulled off the city -- and at the same time, one of the main ISIS oil corridors to Turkey is cut. If things proceed as they have been, with the regime advancing further into rebel-held territory, the red swathe of Syrian government forces will shortly expand to encircle all opposition forces (predominantly Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS), who themselves have been encircling Aleppo in the east. [Russia Syria] [US Syria policy] [Turkey] [Public opinion]
• 'TPP will reduce jobs in most countries'
  By Choi Sung-jin Updated : 2016-02-06 11:50 The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement will produce such ill effects as reducing jobs in member countries and even pulling down their gross domestic product, a U.S. university forecasts in a report. After the TPP goes into effect, some 771,000 jobs will disappear in participating countries – 625,000 in developed and 147,000 in developing nations – according to the report released by Tufts University on Jan. 27, titled: "Trading Down: Unemployment, Inequality and other Risks of TPP agreement." By country, the United States will lose the most jobs (448,000), followed by Mexico (78,000), Japan (74,000), Canada (58,000), four Southeast Asian countries (55,000), Australia (39,000), two Latin American countries (14,000) and New Zealand (6,000), according to the report. The report also stated the GDP of advanced countries that have joined the TPP will drop by an average of 0.34 percent in the 10 years following the implementation of the agreement. [TPP] [Labour] [Employment]
• Possible Saudi military intervention in Syria reflects dismay over army progress
  Source: Xinhua 2016-02-07 23:25:02 by Hummam Sheikh Ali DAMASCUS, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia's declared "readiness" to send ground troops into Syria to fight the Islamic State (IS) is seen by Damascus as a frustrated Saudi move to prop up Syrian rebels in the face of the recent sweeping victories of the Syrian army, analysts say. Syria's nearly five years of conflict has been largely blamed on international intervention in the course of actions on ground. Such intervention has made the crisis more complicated with international powers supporting each party of the conflict to achieve gains in this strategic Middle Eastern country. Saudi Arabia has emerged as a supporter of Islamist insurgents, like the Islam Army, which is operating in several Syrian areas, including the vicinity of the capital Damascus. The kingdom has also been the loudest voice demanding the downfall of the administrative of President Bashar al-Assad, mainly due to its desire to bring in a Sunni-led system in Syria and curb the Iranian sway, represented with the strong alliance between the Assad regime and the Iranians as well as Hezbollah. Curbing the Iranian sway in the region has always been the main drive of Saudi Arabia in its anti-Assad stance, analysts say. Observers in Damascus say that the Saudis and other regional powers have always placed their bets on dealing a defeat to the Syrian government, by providing a big deal of support to the insurgents seeking Assad's ouster. [Saudi Arabia] [Proxy]
• Afghanistan is on the brink after US invests $100 billion
  Marguerite Ward Wednesday, 3 Feb 2016 Afghanistan's economy is worsening and its security deteriorating despite more than a decade of U.S.-led reconstruction efforts and more than $100 billion poured into the country, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an independent oversight agency created by Congress in 2008. The agency's investigation, conducted between October and December of last year, paints a grim picture of the country — including millions of dollars squandered on projects that never came to be, a resurgent Taliban, infiltration by the so-called Islamic State and a handful of guilty pleas from U.S. military personnel in bribery cases. Despite all that, however, the United States should not back out now, experts said, or it runs the risk of a completely failed state — which in turn is a green light for terrorist organizations to grow, and oppression and corruption to spread. [Afghanistan] [Corruption] [Incompetence]
• Syrian rebels are losing Aleppo and perhaps also the war
  Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air strikes, broke through rebel lines near Aleppo just days after U.N.-backed peace talks were put on hold. (Reuters) By Liz Sly and Zakaria Zakaria February 4 ? GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syrian rebels battled for their survival in and around Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Thursday after a blitz of Russian airstrikes helped government loyalists sever a vital supply route and sent a new surge of refugees fleeing toward the border with Turkey. The Russian-backed onslaught against rebel positions in Aleppo coincided with the failure of peace talks in Geneva, and helped reinforce opposition suspicions that Russia and its Syrian government allies are more interested in securing a military victory over the rebels than negotiating a settlement. After two days of what rebel fighters described as the most intense airstrikes yet, government forces had succeeded on Wednesday in cutting off the rebels’ main supply route from the Turkish border to the portion of Aleppo city that remains under opposition control. On Thursday, the government captured several more villages in the surrounding countryside, prompting fears among residents and rebels that the city could soon be entirely surrounded. The loss of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and the most significant urban center to fall, at least partially, under rebel control, would represent a potentially decisive blow to the nearly five-year-old rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The rebels have maintained control of much of Aleppo since they surged into the city in 2012, prompting U.S. intelligence assessments that they eventually would topple the government in Damascus. [US Syria policy] [Media]
• The utter nastiness of Ted Cruz
  By Dana Milbank Opinion writer February 5 at 2:20 PM ? PORTSMOUTH, N.H. When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) last month mocked Donald Trump’s “New York values,” it wasn’t entirely clear what he was implying. This week we got a clue: For Cruz, “New York” is another way of saying “Jewish.” At an event in New Hampshire, Cruz, the Republican Iowa caucuses winner, was asked about campaign money he and his wife borrowed from Goldman Sachs. Cruz, asserting that Trump had “upward of $480 million of loans from giant Wall Street banks,” said: “For him to make this attack, to use a New York term, it’s the height of chutzpah.” Cruz, pausing for laughter after the phrase “New York term,” exaggerated the guttural “ch” to more laughter and applause. But “chutzpah,” of course, is not a “New York” term. It’s a Yiddish — a Jewish — one. And using “New York” as a euphemism for “Jewish” has long been an anti-Semitic dog whistle. I followed both Cruz and Trump this week at multiple campaign events across New Hampshire. It was, in a sense, a pleasure to see them use their prodigious skills of character assassination against each other. It was demagogue against demagogue: lie vs. lie. Both men riled their supporters with fantasies and straw men. [Jennifer Rubin: Why the Cruz campaign’s “dirty tricks” matter] But there were discernible differences. Trump owned anger. Cruz, by contrast, had a lock on nastiness. Trump is belligerent and hyperbolic, with an authoritarian style. But while Trump fires up the masses with his nonstop epithets, Cruz has Joe McCarthy’s knack for false insinuation and underhandedness. What sets Cruz apart is the malice he exudes. [Cruz] [Anti-Semitism] [Trump]
• When Chivalry Fails: St. Bernard and the Machine
  by Jeffrey St. Clair February 5, 2016 Did Hillary Clinton really win the diversionary spectacle known as the Iowa Caucuses by two-tenths of a percent? Probably not. But we will never know. Why? Because Bernie Sanders refuses to call the results into question and demand the release the raw vote totals, which would likely show the senator won the actual vote by a decisive margin. Sound familiar? It echoes Al Gore’s “honorable” tactic during the 2000 recounts, when he refused to fight not only for his own election but also the voters (and members of the Congressional Black Caucus) who put it on the line for his campaign. As much as I like to credit Ralph Nader, Gore had only himself to blame for the debacle. Ditto: Bernie Sanders. Sanders had one real chance to derail Hillary Clinton: win Iowa and then New Hampshire. And he let it slip away. The deflating outcome Iowa campaign must be a bitter disappointment to the young people flocking to his rallies, eager for a taste of real radical politics. I find Sanders’s speeches rather dreary, the lugubrious moth-eaten rhetoric of a distant era. But you can’t deny the continent-wide yearning for someone, anyone, who will attack the banks, Wall Street and grinding economic inequality that is rupturing the republic. Those spirited Sandernistas are also rightly angered by the manifest corruption of a political system that treats them as outcasts. The specious nature of the Iowa results only confirms those suspicions, from coin flips to missing precinct workers to the notorious Microsoft vote-tabulating app (who would ever trust the company that created MS Windows?). Bernie should have been as furious as his band of collegiate san culottes. Instead, he raised the white flag of surrender. At that moment, the Clintons must have known they had his number. Panic averted. [Sanders] [Acceptance]
• Freeing Julian Assange: the Final Chapter
  by John Pilger February 5, 2016 One of the epic miscarriages of justice of our time is unravelling. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — — the international tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations — has ruled that Julian Assange has been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden. After five years of fighting to clear his name — having been smeared relentlessly yet charged with no crime — Assange is closer to justice and vindication, and perhaps freedom, than at any time since he was arrested and held in London under a European Extradition Warrant, itself now discredited by Parliament. [Assuage] [Whistleblower] [Double standards]
• Assad Regime Gains in Aleppo Alter Balance of Power in Northern Syria
  Friday, February 5, 2016 By: Christopher Kozak Battlefield realities rather than great power politics will determine the ultimate terms of a settlement to end the Syrian Civil War. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies in Russia and Iran have internalized this basic principle even as Washington and other Western capitals pinned their hopes upon UN-sponsored Geneva Talks, which faltered only two days after they began on February 1, 2016. Russian airpower and Iranian manpower have brought President Assad within five miles of completing the encirclement of Aleppo City, the largest urban center in Syria and an opposition stronghold since 2012. The current campaign has already surpassed the high-water mark set by the regime’s previous failed attempt to besiege Aleppo City in early 2015. The full encirclement of Aleppo City would fuel a humanitarian catastrophe, shatter opposition morale, fundamentally challenge Turkish strategic ambitions, and deny the opposition its most valuable bargaining chip before the international community. [Russia Syria] [Turkey] [Neocon]
• Hillary and the Urn of Ashes
  by Conn Hallinan “They sent forth men to battle. But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome. Comes ashes in an urn.” — Ode from “Agamemnon,” Aeschylus Aeschylus—who had actually fought at Marathon in 490 BC, the battle that defeated the first Persian invasion of Greece—had few illusions about the consequences of war. His ode is one that the candidates for the U.S. presidency might consider, though one doubts that many of them would think to find wisdom in a 2,500 year-old Greek play. And that, in itself, is a tragedy. Historical blindness has been much on display in the run-up to the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. On the Republican side candidates were going to “kick ass” in Iraq, make the “sand glow” in Syria, and face down the Russians in Europe. But while the Democratic aspirants were more measured, there is a pervasive ideology than binds together all but cranks like Ron Paul: America has the right, indeed, the duty to order the world’s affairs. This peculiar view of the role of the U.S. takes on a certain messianic quality in candidates like Hillary Clinton, who routinely quotes former Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s line about America as “the indispensible nation” whose job is to lead the world. At a recent rally in Indianola, Iowa, Clinton said that “Senator [Bernie] Sanders doesn’t talk much about foreign policy, and, when he does, it raises concerns because sometimes it can sound like he really hasn’t thought things through.” The former Secretary of State was certainly correct. Foreign policy for Sanders is pretty much an afterthought to his signature issues of economic inequality and a national health care system. But the implication of her comment is that she has thought things through. If she has, it is not evident in her biography, Hard Choices, or in her campaign speeches. [Hillary Clinton] [US global strategy]
• Why Michael Hudson is the World’s Best Economist
  by Paul Craig Roberts Michael Hudson is the best economist in the world. Indeed, I could almost say that he is the only economist in the world. Almost all of the rest are neoliberals, who are not economists but shills for financial interests. If you have not heard of Michael Hudson it merely shows the power of the Matrix. Hudson should have won several Nobel prizes in economics, but he will never get one. Hudson did not intend to be an economist. At the University of Chicago, which had a leading economics faculty, Hudson studied music and cultural history. He went to New York City to work in publishing. He thought he could set out on his own when he was assigned rights to the writings and archives of George Lukacs and Leon Trotsky, but publishing houses were not interested in the work of two Jewish Marxists who had a significant impact on the 20th century. Friendships connected Hudson to a former economist for General Electric who taught him the flow of funds through the economic system and explained how crises develop when debt outgrows the economy. Hooked, Hudson enrolled in the economics graduate program at NYU and took a job in the financial sector calculating how savings were recycled into new mortgage loans. Hudson learned more economics from his work experience than from his Ph.D. courses.
• The Break-up of Syria? Washington Pushing Syrian Kurds to Declare Autonomy
  FARS News Agency 1 February 2016 Brett McGurk, the US president’s envoy to the anti-ISIL coalition group, claimed in a recent visit to Kobani that Syrian Kurds are entitled to have an autonomous state, provoking separatist groups to secede from Syria. “McGurk was accompanied by a number of French and British officials,” Kurdish sources said Sunday, adding that the Western delegation held talks with members of the Kurdish-Arab alliance fighting ISIL, that is known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), where McGurk defended “Kurdish autonomy.” US Envoy Provoking Syrian Kurds to Declare Autonomy Brett McGurk The weekend visit to the war-torn country – confirmed by a US official – appeared to be the first public visit by a senior US government figure inside the Syrian territory ever since US hawkish senator John McCain visited Northern Syria and met with al-Nusra and ISIL members back in 2012. This is while back in December, Iranian Supreme Leader’s top adviser for international affairs Ali Akbar Velayati had warned that Washington plans to disintegrate regional states into smaller countries to make them weak and guarantee Israel’s security. “The US is after implementing its plot to create a Greater Middle-East whose aim is disintegrating Iraq into three countries and dividing Syria into five states in a bid to downsize countries to provide security to the Zionist regime,” Velayati said. [US Syria policy] [Fragmentation] [Kurd]
• Turkey’s Syrian Calculation: Gambling on an Invasion?
  by Patrick Cockburn February 1, 2016 A month before Turkey shot down a Russian bomber which it accused of entering its airspace, Russian military intelligence had warned President Vladimir Putin that this was the Turkish plan. Diplomats familiar with the events say that Putin dismissed the warning, probably because he did not believe that Turkey would risk provoking Russia into deeper military engagement in the Syrian war. In the event, on 24 November last year a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian bomber, killing one of the pilots, in an attack that had every sign of being a well-prepared ambush. Turkey claimed that it was responding to the Russian plane entering its airspace for 17 seconds, but the Turkish fighters made every effort to conceal themselves by flying at low altitude, and they appear to have been on a special mission to destroy the Russian aircraft. The shooting-down – the first of a Russian plane by a Nato power since the Korean War – is important because it shows how far Turkey will go to maintain its position in the war raging on the southern side of its 550-mile border with Syria. It is a highly relevant event today because, two months further on, Turkey now faces military developments in northern Syria that pose a much more serious threat to its interests than that brief incursion into its airspace, even though Ankara made fresh claims yesterday over a new Russian violation on Friday. [Turkey] [Syria] [Kurds]
• Surprise: Among Muslim Republicans, Donald Trump is No. 1
  Highlights Survey of Muslims in 6 states found most intend to vote for Democrats But of those who favored Republicans, Trump was the 1st choice Is it possible they don’t know his stand on monitoring Muslims? By Javaria Khan WASHINGTON — A survey of Muslim voters in six states has found one surprising result: Donald Trump was the most popular Republican presidential candidate, despite his calls for tighter surveillance of Muslims and limits on Muslim immigration. The poll, not unexpectedly, found that 67 percent of the respondents support the Democratic Party and 51 percent of them plan to vote for Hillary Clinton. Sen. Bernie Sanders trailed with 22 percent. But of the 15 percent who said they intended to vote for Republicans, Trump was the first choice, with more than 7 percent of the total. More than 73 percent of respondents said they plan to vote in their states’ primary elections, an increase from the 69 percent who answered that way in a similar survey taken before the 2014 midterm elections. [Trump] [Islam]
• Washington’s Secret War in Syria Uncovered
  Vladimir Odintsov The CIA and the intelligence agencies of several US allies in the Middle Eastern conflicts have recently been uncovered by the New York Times. The newspaper cites a number of unnamed White House officials that point out that Saudi Arabia has been keeping the role that Washington played in different conflicts throughout the region a secret. Moreover, Saudi officials have been heavily sponsoring US regional engagement, financing operations carried out by American special forces units. The New York Times notes that “business” relations between the CIA and Saudi Arabia can be traced back to the end of 1970s, when sheikhs from Riyadh organized the so-called Safari Club - “a coalition of nations including Morocco, Egypt and France — that ran covert operations around Africa at a time when Congress had clipped the C.I.A.’s wings over years of abuses.” There’s little doubt that this step was followed by the funding of CIA operations in Afghanistan, Angola and other parts of the world, and the subsequent creation of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the likes of them, that have been heavily supplied with arms and money. As for the war in Syria, the CIA and Saudi Arabia back in 2013 agreed to conduct a joint operation under the codename: Timber Sycamore, the prime goal of which was the toppling of the legitimately elected Syrian president. Under this agreement, the Saudis have been providing arms and resources, while the CIA trained “insurgents” before deploying to the battlefield. The newspaper names other “sponsors” of the CIA campaign: Turkey, Jordan and Qatar. Although the exact amount of the “contribution” of each of the states to the secret operation in Syria remains unknown, it is mentioned that Saudi Arabia has been one of the main sponsors, providing billions of dollars. Thanks to The New York Times, we can now confirm that in the period from 2012 to 2014 Prince Bandar bin Sultan the then director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency bought Raytheon anti-tank TOW missiles to arm extremist groups. Those groups have already joined al-Qaeda and now are using this equipment against government forces in Syria. The CIA station chief oversaw all of these operations, since he had better business and personal relations with Saudi authorities than even the US ambassador. These issues were discussed at least once a month in Washington by Prince Bandar himself and the former director of the CIA. Recently relations between Washington and Riyadh have been in decline, since the US has became less dependent on imports of oil and started rapprochement with Iran. However, the criminal “alliance” is not going anywhere anytime soon, since US covert operations in the region are still being sponsored by Saudi Arabia. This fact explains why Washington keeps away from openly criticizing Saudi Arabia for its continuous violation of human rights, the treatment of women and support for the radical Islamic movement – Wahhabism. What’s curious is that Saudi Arabia continues assisting the White House whenever there’s some “dirty work” to be done, instructing representatives of the so-called “Syrian opposition” on the eve of the Geneva talks, while preparing, together with Turkey, Qatar and other “American allies” new provocations in Syria and across the Middle East. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/01/washington-s-secret-war-in-syria-uncovered/ [CIA] [Deep state] [US Middle East Strategy] [Outsourcing]
• Adjusting Medication May Prolong Levine’s Tenure at the Met
  By Michael Cooper Feb. 1, 2016 The stage was being set to announce the retirement of James Levine, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera since 1976, after his long-standing health woes seemed to worsen this season to the point that singers and musicians were having difficulty following his conducting. But then Mr. Levine and Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, paid a visit last week to his neurologist for an update on his condition — and the doctor gave Mr. Levine an 11th hour reprieve, saying that Mr. Levine’s most serious problems could probably be solved by adjusting the dosage of a medication that he has been taking to treat his Parkinson’s disease. The news cheered Mr. Levine, who had been saddened by the thought that his illness might force him to step down. “I hope he’s right, because I love the Met company more than I can describe,” the conductor said on Monday evening in an interview at the office of his neurologist, Dr. Stanley Fahn. And it surprised Mr. Gelb, who said in an interview that he had been in talk with Mr. Levine about announcing the conductor’s retirement after this season and making him the Met’s music director emeritus. But Mr. Gelb said he felt obligated, both morally and artistically, to see if changing Mr. Levine’s dosage would improve his upper body movement and help him get back to normal. [Parkinson's]
• Ted Cruz Wins Republican Caucuses in Iowa
  By Jonathan Martin Feb. 1, 2016 DES MOINES — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, powered by a surge of support from evangelical Christians, dealt a humbling loss to Donald J. Trump in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, throwing into question the depth of support for Mr. Trump’s unconventional candidacy. In the first contest of what so far has been more a populist revolt against the political order than a traditional Republican primary, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida finished a strong third, bolstering his case to consolidate the support of Republicans uneasy about the two top finishers. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Cruz had nearly 28 percent of the vote, Mr. Trump 24 percent and Mr. Rubio 23 percent. Mr. Cruz’s victory was hard-earned. He fought off a barrage of attacks in the campaign’s final weeks from Mr. Trump as well as from Iowa’s longtime governor, Terry E. Branstad, and Republican leaders in Washington who warned that the hard-line Mr. Cruz would lead the party to electoral disaster this fall. [US_Election16] [Cruz] [Evangelical]
• An Improbable Solution: Delusions on Syria prevail in official Washington
  Philip Giraldi • February 2, 2016 Tulsi Gabbard is one brave Congresswoman. She has challenged her party and the president saying that it’s time for Washington to halt its “illegal, counter-productive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad. I don’t think Assad should be removed. If Assad is removed and overthrown, ISIS, al Qaeda, Al Nustra, these Islamic extremist groups will walk straight in and take over all of Syria … they will be even stronger.” Indeed, Washington’s senseless policy in Syria has been hanging out there like overripe fruit for quite some time with the mainstream media instead marching at lockstep to the tune being whistled by a large disengaged and unaccountable White House. Gabbard might go one step further to ask why Syria is the way it is in the first place since that would question Administration priorities under Democrats as well as Republicans, both of which have emphasized eliminating al-Assad for no conceivable reason that has anything to do with actual American interests. [US Syria policy] [Liberal]
• Coalition spokesman Steven Warren said that Turkish military forces in Iraq are not a part of the US-led coalition.
  MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Turkish military forces in Iraq are not a part of the US-led coalition and the United States has not given Ankara the green light to fight against terrorism in the country, coalition spokesman Steven Warren said in an interview on Iraq’s Alsumaria television Tuesday. Warren said that Turkish forces are in Iraq on their “own mission.” Tensions in Iraq's relations with Turkey escalated in December, when Turkish troops arrived at the Bashik camp in the northern Iraq province of Nineveh. Baghdad and other nations have called on Ankara to withdraw its troops and respect Iraq's territorial sovereignty. On January 25, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reiterated the claim that the Turkish troops' objective was to support Iraq in the campaign against the Daesh jihadist group. Warren reaffirmed the United States' respect for Iraq's sovereignty. [Sovereignty] [US Middle East strategy] [Turkey] [Iraq]
• Syrian army threatens to encircle Aleppo as talks falter
  BEIRUT/AMMAN/GENEVA | By Tom Perry, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and John Irish Reuters/Abdalrhman Ismail A Syrian military offensive backed by heavy Russian air strikes threatened to cut critical rebel supply lines into the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday while the warring sides said peace talks had not started despite a U.N. statement they had. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura announced the formal start on Monday of the first attempt in two years to negotiate an end to a war that has killed 250,000 people, caused a refugee crisis in the region and Europe and empowered Islamic State militants. But both opposition and government representatives have since said the talks had not in fact begun and fighting on the ground raged on without constraint. The opposition canceled a meeting with de Mistura on Tuesday afternoon, and issued a statement condemning "a massive acceleration of Russian and regime military aggression on Aleppo and Homs", calling it a threat to the political process. Rebels described the assault north of Aleppo as the most intense yet. One commander said opposition-held areas of the divided city were at risk of being encircled entirely by the government and allied militia, appealing to foreign states that back the rebels to send more weapons. [Syria] [Outsourcing] [Turkey] [Media]
• THE FUTURE WE WANT: Radical Ideas for the New Century
  Edited by Sarah Leonard and Bhaskar Sunkara About the Book: A stirring blueprint for American equality, from the "breakout stars" (The New York Times) of the young new left Democrat, Republican -- the list of presidential candidates confirms that business is proceeding pretty much as usual. The Future We Want proposes something different. In a sharp, rousing collective manifesto, ten young cultural and political critics dismantle the usual liberal solutions to America's ills and propose a pragmatic alternative. What would finance look like without Wall Street? Or the workplace with responsibility shared by the entire workforce? From a campaign to limit work hours, to a program for full employment, to proposals for a new feminism, The Future We Want has the courage to think of alternatives that are both utopian and possible. [Inequality] [Liberal]
• Saudi Royal Family Gave $681M to Malaysian PM Who Banned Shia Islam
  By Newsrescue Global Research, February 01, 2016 Newsrescue 30 January 2015 On Wednesday last week the Malaysia’s attorney general confirmed that Saudi Arabia’s royal family gave Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak a $681 million personal gift. The confirmation of the scandal ended months of speculation about the source of the huge personal donation received from ‘a middle eastern donor’ by the Prime Minister. The country’s top anti-graft agency had recommended Najib Razak be charged with criminal misappropriation. The transfer of almost $700 million was made ahead of the 2013 re-election of the Prime Minister. Prime Minister Najib Razak who had been in office since 2009 is widely known for his clamp down on Shia minority Islam in the nation. In 2010 the nation declared that Shiites in the country, who have been termed a “deviant” sect, were barred from promoting their faith to other Muslims. - See more at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/saudi-royal-family-gave-681m-to-malaysian-pm-who-banned-shia-islam/5504643#sthash.sB99UHNq.dpuf [Sectarianism] [Malaysia] [Corruption] [Saudi Arabia]
• Out of Bounds, Off-Limits, or Just Plain Ignored
  Six National Security Questions Hillary, Donald, Ted, Marco, et al., Don’t Want to Answer and Won’t Even Be Asked
  Andrew J. Bacevich • January 26, 2016 To judge by the early returns, the presidential race of 2016 is shaping up as the most disheartening in recent memory. Other than as a form of low entertainment, the speeches, debates, campaign events, and slick TV ads already inundating the public sphere offer little of value. Rather than exhibiting the vitality of American democracy, they testify to its hollowness. Present-day Iranian politics may actually possess considerably more substance than our own. There, the parties involved, whether favoring change or opposing it, understand that the issues at stake have momentous implications. Here, what passes for national politics is a form of exhibitionism about as genuine as pro wrestling. A presidential election campaign ought to involve more than competing coalitions of interest groups or bevies of investment banks and billionaires vying to install their preferred candidate in the White House. It should engage and educate citizens, illuminating issues and subjecting alternative solutions to careful scrutiny. [US_election16] [Democracy]
• Eyewash’: How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations
  By Greg Miller and Adam Goldman January 31 at 9:52 PM ? Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information about operations and sources overseas, according to current and former U.S. officials who said the practice is known by the term “eyewash.” Agency veterans described the tactic as an infrequent but important security measure, a means of protecting vital secrets by inserting fake communications into routine cable traffic while using separate channels to convey accurate information to cleared recipients. But others cited a significant potential for abuse. Beyond the internal distrust implied by the practice, officials said there is no clear mechanism for labeling eyewash cables or distinguishing them from legitimate records being examined by the CIA’s inspector general, turned over to Congress or declassified for historians. [CIA] [Disinformation]
• Should armed groups allied with al-Qaeda be included in Syria peace talks?
  No concessions to al-Qaeda allies at Geneva talks Summary? Print Our answer is no; Erekat’s “main priority is not to allow IS to raise its flag in Palestine”; Turkey responds to Biden with fake news. Author Week in Review Posted January 31, 2016 In a potentially encouraging sign, the High Negotiations Committee, the Saudi-backed Syrian umbrella opposition group, has agreed to attend the UN-mediated Geneva peace conference. The committee is saying, however, that it will not meet with the government delegation until the Syrian military ceases bombardment of rebel-held areas and lifts the siege of opposition-controlled towns. UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura will shuttle between the delegations in what are deemed “proximity” talks. According to press accounts, the United States and Russia seem to agree on the broad outline of a two-year transition plan that envisages moderate Syrian opposition political figures and fighters merging with the Syrian state over several years, with the question of the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad deferred until the end of the transition. The United States and Russia still publicly disagree on whether Assad should stay or go at the end of the transition. While we continue to support de Mistura’s diplomacy and are encouraged by the committee’s willingness to participate in the Geneva talks, the key trend to watch is actually in Syria, where last week government forces, backed by Russian air power, achieved significant gains in the strategic Latakia region. In addition, this column recently explained how Aleppo is the bridge to an endgame in Syria. Just this week, Syrian armed groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and other rebel forces, joined with Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, to rally against advances by the Syrian military and its allies around Aleppo. So let us state again, for the record, and in response to the bewildering advocacy effort to open the door to Ahrar al-Sham — al-Qaeda’s brother in arms and fellow believer in Sharia rule for all — that the United States should keep Ahrar al-Sham, the Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam) and any and all Jabhat al-Nusra collaborators out of the Syria peace talks. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Al Qaeda]
• The Big Money and What It Means in Election 2016
  Posted by Nomi Prins at 5:02pm, January 31, 2016. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. How do you respond to a rampaging bull of a billionaire in the political arena? In America in 2016, the answer is obvious. You send in not the clowns, but the matador: another billionaire, of course. So Michael Bloomberg is now threatening to enter the race as a third-party candidate. According to the New York Times, he’s considering spending at least $1 billion of his $36 billion (or is it almost $49 billion?) fortune if it looks like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders (just about the only candidate in the race not backed by billionaires and so an obvious threat to any billionaire around) might truly be nominated for president. Of course, if he wanted to, Bloomberg could dump billions into an election run, since he may be worth 11 or more Donald Trumps. (And he could potentially tip the election to the Republicans or, if no one ends up with a majority in the Electoral College, even put it in the House of Representatives, making Paul Ryan the equivalent of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore.) In the post-Citizens United era, after the Supreme Court let a flood of plutocratic money pour through a super PAC darkly, the billionaires began to run rampant. Soon enough, new informal “primaries” were set up in which potential candidates on bended knee toured the resorts and luxury locales those billionaires preferred, auditioning for their support. And yet transformation has come so quickly to American politics that those may soon be considered the good old days of twenty-first-century democracy before the billionaires realized that, when it came to candidates, they didn't have to buy them, they could be them. Donald Trump was the first to take that aperçu to the bank big time (though Ross Perot in 1992 and Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000 broke the ground). Now, as TomDispatch regular Nomi Prins, author of All the Presidents' Bankers, points out (offering the dollars and sense to back it up), the American electoral system is a genuine billionaire’s playground -- and ever more literally so. And here, from the 1% point of view, is the heartwarming aspect to it all. Once upon a time being a billionaire came with a certain taint, but in this great land of ours, such deficits can be overcome. Today -- talk about equality at the top -- you can be a billionaire, run for president, and stand a chance to win! Think of this country in 2016 as a billionaire’s field of dreams. Tom Democracy of the Billionaires The Most Expensive Election Ever Is A Billionaire’s Playground (Except for Bernie Sanders) By Nomi Prins Speaking of the need for citizen participation in our national politics in his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “Our brand of democracy is hard.” A more accurate characterization might have been: “Our brand of democracy is cold hard cash.” [Plutocracy] [US election_16]
• Targeted killings through drones are war crimes
  Daniele Archibugi 29 January 2016 The threat that terrorists pose to US interests and security did not create killing drones: rather the technical feasibility of killing drones has generated imagined terrorist threats. Book review. It is nearly fifteen years since the United States, followed by a few of its closest allies such as the United Kingdom and Israel, used unmanned flying vehicles, better known as drones, for targeted killings. As is often the case with new weapons and new technologies, the implications of these actions have passed unnoticed. In a disturbing silence, occasionally broken by brave investigative journalists and scholars, they are becoming de facto a standard practice of modern warfare. But a few moments of reflection suffice to realise that targeted killings through drones are egregious war crimes. They violate basic human rights and the laws of war that were established several centuries ago. A fresh, well-researched and well-written book by Laurie Calhoun (We Kill Because We Can. From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, Zed Books, London, 2015, ISBN 978-1-78360-548-4) provides an occasion to think about the deep implications of killing people though drones and hopefully to act to stop this high-tech barbarian practice. [Assassination] [UAV]

• Europe to U.S. on Iran: You Snooze, You Lose (Part 2)
  Geoffrey Smith As with all the best poolside loungers, the Germans got there first. Iran’s Prime Minister Hassan Rouhani’s trip to Rome and Paris this week may have grabbed the headlines, but even he was slow out of the blocks compared to some when it came to getting trade with the West up and running again after years of sanctions. Months before “Implementation Day” on January 18, the day when U.N. sanctions on the Teheran regime over its nuclear program were finally lifted, Wolfgang Bernhard, the head of Daimler AG’s commercial vehicles division, had been preparing for when the company could resume making trucks there. Implementation Day fell on a Saturday. By nightfall on Sunday (a business day in the Islamic Republic), Bernhard had already inked contracts with two separate companies that will see the German company back making trucks, powertrains and axles locally as soon (fingers crossed) as the end of this year. (It’s hard to resist a parallel with those German tourists who are always up first to bag the best loungers next to the hotel pool, but we’ll try.) Iran is one of the few markets in the emerging world that is a nailed-on certainty for growth this year. And, with some 80 million people and a GDP of $416 billion, it’s a big one–and one with a relatively large industrial sector for a truckmaker to serve, too. Six years of sanctions have left a huge amount of pent-up demand, and Daimler expects strong demand for trucks not only from the key oil and gas sector, but also from the construction and infrastructure sectors, according to spokesman Florian Martens. “The public transport sector also probably needs bringing up to date,” Martens added. [Iran deal] [EU] [Decline]
• Iran is showing off this new video to say it flew a drone over a U.S. aircraft carrier
  By Dan Lamothe January 29 at 2:46 PM ? State-run Iranian media reported Friday that Iran recently flew a military drone over a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and released a video that they said showed the provocative action underway. The video shows a ship covered in fighter jets steaming through the blue seas. Cmdr. William Marks, a U.S. Navy spokesman, said in an statement that he could not confirm the authenticity of the video, but he added that an Iranian drone was spotted flying around the French carrier Charles de Gaulle and the American carrier USS Harry S. Truman on Jan. 12 in the Persian Gulf. The drone was unarmed and determined not to be a threat, but Marks said the incident is still considered “abnormal and unprofessional.” Both aircraft carriers were traveling through international waters, where they have been launching fighter jets to carry out airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria. [UAV] [Double standards] [Arrogance]
• The Rise of ISIS and Other Extremist Groups: the role of the West and Regional Powers
  by Bouthaina Shaaban January 29, 2016 This essay examines the role of Western and regional players (i.e. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar) in inflaming the conflict and the growth of terrorism in Syria. It examines the attempts to break up Syria’s civilian and military institutions, the delegitimization of the Syrian government, the attempts to procure a UN mandate for a military intervention in Syria, the imposition of suffocating economic sanctions on Syria, and most importantly the support that Western and regional powers gave to a plethora of armed groups, including al-Qaeda and ISIS, to fight the Syrian government. The latter point is scrutinized in order to highlight how the United States, and its allies in the region, cynically employed extremist groups in Syria to achieve geopolitical gains, thus leading to wider regional upheaval, the effects of which will most certainly go beyond the West Asia region. This essay then moves to examine the crucial differences between the US-led campaign against ISIS, and the Russian efforts in Syria, in addition to examining the central role of the Syrian government and army in the fight against terrorism. Finally, this paper examines the dangers of extremist ideologies being espoused and promoted by governments and individuals in the Gulf region, and their effect on social cohesion in targeted countries, with Syria being the latest example. Throughout the proceeding points, special attention will be given to the role played by Western and Gulf mass media and the false narratives it propagated about the conflict in Syria and the wider West Asia region. [Syria] [Outsourcing]
• The Five Lamest Excuses for Hillary Clinton’s Vote to Invade Iraq
  Clinton supporters want Democratic voters to forgive their candidate's support for the most disastrous foreign policy decision in decades. They shouldn't. By Stephen Zunes, January 26, 2016. Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the invasion of Iraq. That war not only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the Islamic State and other extremists, and a dramatic increase in the federal deficit, resulting in major cutbacks to important social programs. Moreover, the primary reasons Clinton gave for supporting President George W. Bush’s request for authorizing that illegal and unnecessary war have long been proven false. As a result, many Democratic voters are questioning — despite her years of foreign policy experience — whether Clinton has the judgment and integrity to lead the United States on the world stage. It was just such concerns that resulted in her losing the 2008 nomination to then-Senator Barack Obama, an outspoken Iraq War opponent. This time around, Clinton supporters have been hoping that enough Democratic voters — the overwhelming majority of whom opposed the war — will forget about her strong endorsement of the Bush administration’s most disastrous foreign policy. Failing that, they’ve come up with a number of excuses to justify her October 2002 vote for the authorization of military force. Here they are, in no particular order. [Hillary Clinton] [Iraq] [US Middle East Policy]
• Coercive Engineered Migration: Zionism’s War on Europe
  Is Victor Orban the 'Chavez of Europe? (Part 1 of an 11 part series) by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / January 16th, 2016 If aggression against another foreign country means that it strains its social structure, that it ruins its finances, that is has to give up its territory for sheltering refugees, what is the difference between that kind of aggression and the other type, the more classical type, when someone declares war, or something of that sort. — Sawer Sen, India’s Ambassador to the UN In an EU press conference on September 3rd, 2015 Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban candidly referred to the current refugee crisis in Europe as “Germany’s problem”. Orban was referring to the fact that refugees amassing at the border of Hungary were heading, for the most part, to Germany. The Hungarian Prime Minister stressed that most of the refugees did not intend to stay in Hungary. Orban has come under criticism for his decision to erect a security fence on the Hungarian/Serbian border in order to stem the flow of migrants entering Hungarian territory illegally. While most of the European media have portrayed Orban as a xenophobic, far right dictator, the decision to erect a fence was carried out in compliance with EU regulations, which require that all immigrants entering the Shengen zone be registered by the police at the border. Yet, paradoxically, Brussels is criticizing the Hungarian Prime Minister for attempting to comply with EU laws! France’s daily Le Monde refers to the Hungarian Prime Minister as the man who is attempting to ‘criminalise‘ illegal immigrants. It is indeed a strange country that would criminalize those who break its laws! So why is Orban coming under fire? Since coming to power in 2010 Victor Orban has implemented domestic, social and political policies that run counter to those dictated by the EU commission. In 2013 Hungary closed down the office of the International Monetary Fund, bringing the country’s finance under state control. The International Monetary Fund is a key institution of US/Zionist global governance and there are few countries who have escaped its clutches of permanent debt. Therefore, the decision of the Hungarian government to show the IMF the door was nothing short than an act of bold insubordination to US imperialism. Hungary has also come under criticism for media laws which ban foreign interference from US propaganda outlets such as Voice of America, which the Hungarian government deems to be contrary to the public interest. Consequently, the European Union, which is perfectly happy to ban Iranian television stations, has criticized Hungary for violations of ‘freedom of speech’. Orban told an audience in Chatham House in 2013 that he believed there was a “leftist and green conspiracy” in Europe against “traditional values”. Orban is no doubt referring to the constant tirades made by war mongering ‘leftist’ zionists such as EU MP Daniel Cohen Bendit against Hungary. Bendit has ironically called Orban the “Chavez of Europe”. This example of ideological name-calling epitomises the meaninglessness of the left/right political paradigm in the post-Soviet era. [Hungary] [EU] [Orban]
• The Populist Revolution: Bernie and Beyond
  by Ellen Brown The world is undergoing a populist revival. From the revolt against austerity led by the Syriza Party in Greece and the Podemos Party in Spain, to Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise victory as Labour leader in the UK, to Donald Trump’s ascendancy in the Republican polls, to Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton – contenders with their fingers on the popular pulse are surging ahead of their establishment rivals. Today’s populist revolt mimics an earlier one that reached its peak in the US in the 1890s. Then it was all about challenging Wall Street, reclaiming the government’s power to create money, curing rampant deflation with US Notes (Greenbacks) or silver coins (then considered the money of the people), nationalizing the banks, and establishing a central bank that actually responded to the will of the people. Over a century later, Occupy Wall Street revived the populist challenge, armed this time with the Internet and mass media to spread the word. The Occupy movement shined a spotlight on the corrupt culture of greed unleashed by deregulating Wall Street, widening the yawning gap between the 1% and the 99% and destroying jobs, households and the economy. Donald Trump’s populist campaign has not focused much on Wall Street; but Bernie Sanders’ has, in spades. Sanders has picked as will so will I figure up the baton where Occupy left off, and the disenfranchised Millennials who composed that movement have flocked behind him. [Banking] [Nationalisation]
• What Donald Rumsfeld Knew We Didn’t Know About Iraq
  The document reveals gaps of intelligence on WMD. Why didn’t the Pentagon chief share it? By John Walcott 1/24/2016 On September 9, 2002, as the George W. Bush administration was launching its campaign to invade Iraq, a classified report landed on the desk of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It came from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and it carried an ominous note. “Please take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD,” Rumsfeld wrote to Air Force General Richard Myers. “It is big.” . . The report was an inventory of what U.S. intelligence knew—or more importantly didn’t know—about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Its assessment was blunt: “We’ve struggled to estimate the unknowns. ... We range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their program.” Myers already knew about the report. The Joint Staff’s director for intelligence had prepared it, but Rumsfeld’s urgent tone said a great deal about how seriously the head of the Defense Department viewed the report’s potential to undermine the Bush administration’s case for war. But he never shared the eight-page report with key members of the administration such as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell or top officials at the CIA, according to multiple sources at the State Department, White House and CIA who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. Instead, the report disappeared, and with it a potentially powerful counter-narrative to the administration’s argument that Saddam Hussein’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons posed a grave threat to the U.S. and its allies, which was beginning to gain traction in major news outlets, led by the New York Times. Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/iraq-war-wmds-donald-rumsfeld-new-report-213530#ixzz3yW6tAY4C [WMD] [Iraq] [Rumsfeld] [Intelligence]
• How Catalonia is the Key to Spain’s Current Political Deadlock
  by Adrià Alsina – Krystyna Schreiber January 27, 2016 176: This is the magic number in Spanish politics. Half+1 members of Congress, which is a 350-seat semicircle now plagued with as many as 12 different political groups. Or even 15, if you dare to count in the three regional-based confluences finally included within the Podemos “Confederal” brand that couldn’t struck a deal to obtain a separate group of their own. Spain used to be a game of two. The Popular Party (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) would often rely on regional-based forces such as Convergència i Unió (CiU) in Catalonia to secure comfortable majorities either to the right or to the left. Jordi Pujol, president of Catalonia for 23 years and indisputable leader of CiU, was celebrated as a key negotiator and even named “Spanish Man of the Year” in 1993 by conservative newspaper ABC. Yet these times are long gone. Jordi Pujol is facing trial for alleged corruption and has vanished from the political arena, while his former coalition Convergència i Unió doesn’t even exist as such anymore. Many Catalans have turned their eyes to independence, and the Republican Left (ERC) and Democràcia i Llibertat (DiL, a coalition that engulfed part of the former CiU) are their new fierce representatives. They won’t settle for less than a Scotland-like self-determination referendum. And –hence the key– they hold 17 seats in Congress. [Spain] [Separatism]
• Gov. Brownback stands by saying Planned Parenthood selling ‘baby body parts’
  Highlights Kansas governor says anti-abortion videos haven’t been discredited Planned Parenthood says agency has been cleared of wrongdoing by state agencies A Texas grand jury this week indicted two members of an anti-abortion group who made secret recordings of Planned Parenthood officials By Edward M. Eveld TOPEKA — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on Wednesday held firm to his recent statement that Planned Parenthood was selling “baby body parts” despite news about the Texas grand jury indictment this week of two abortion opponents. Brownback said the indictments didn’t change his mind about the veracity of videos by an anti-abortion group. “I don’t think those videos were discredited — not with that charge,” he said. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri has decried Brownback’s order to cut Medicaid funding to the group and a comment he included in his State of the State address earlier this month. “Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of baby body parts is antithetical to our belief in human dignity,” Brownback said in the State of the State. On Wednesday, Brownback said his views hadn’t changed. Asked if he owed Planned Parenthood an apology, he said, “No, I think they need to stop trafficking in baby body parts.” Laura McQuade, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said the agency has been cleared by state agencies of any wrongdoing. “I think that it’s very clear that Gov. Brownback’s agenda is simply that,” McQuade said. “It’s his extremist ideological agenda. “He’s not interested in facts. He’s not interested in what his own regulatory agencies tell him.” The state’s Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts found that Planned Parenthood had done nothing illegal or unethical, she said. Abortion opponents have claimed that secretly recorded videos showed Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for profit, but the assertions haven’t been supported by congressional and state investigations. The grand jury in Texas cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing and indicted two members of the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group that had made secret recordings of Planned Parenthood officials. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article56928058.html#storylink=cpy [Brownback]
• Israel, Turkey and ISIS Ally to Steal Syrian Energy
  Maram Susli The discovery of the Leviathan gas field within Israeli and Cypriot waters has made Israel a potential energy exporting nation. However the means to transport the gas to the large energy markets of Europe continues to elude Israel. Recent talks between Turkey and Israel about plans to build a gas pipeline, through Turkey and into Europe, have been extensively reported. Many of the reports claim the discussions are the results of the thaw in relations between Turkey and Israel. The rift was supposedly caused by Israel’s attack on the MV MarMara, the aid ship attempting to break Israel’s siege on Gaza in 2010, and the execution of 8 Turkish citizens on board the ship. But even during this period of “tense” relations, discussions about the gas pipeline were still being held between Turkey and Israel. Trade between the two states went up by 25%. The tense relations were a facade, a face saving measure that allowed Turkish President Erdogan to portray an image of a patriotic defender of Turkish citizens, and a champion of Islam and the Palestinian cause. During the initial uproar of the flotilla incident, Erdogan promised the next flotilla would be escorted by the Turkish navy. Instead Erdogan blocked the Mavi MarMara from heading to Gaza. Far from defending the Palestinian cause, Turkey continued to produce Israel’s Military combat boots which are used in the occupation of the West bank. Relations with Turkey improved even though Israel’s treatment of Palestinians did not improve. This reveals the extent of which Turkey’s foreign policy is drenched in hypocrisy. For both Israel and Turkey, business comes first. Israel is also juggling a foreign policy inconsistent with its portrayed image of being at the forefront of the war on terrorism. The fact that Turkey is one of Al-Qaeda’s and ISIS’s main benefactors , has not been an issue for Israel. Even when ISIS beheaded Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff while Turkey was allowing ISIS to use its border as a smuggling route, Israeli-Turkish relations were not harmed. Israel and Turkey have a shared agenda in Syria, which has stood in the many business plans between the respective states. Long Gas pipelines can only be built economically in shallow waters hugging coastlines, or future repairs would be difficult. The planned Turkey-Israel pipeline could potentially have to go through Syria’s exclusive economic zone which extends 370 km off the Syrian coastline. Israel illegally occupies Syrian land and has been in a state of cold war with Syria for decades. Both Israel and Turkey would economically benefit from the dismantlement of the Syrian State through the support of terrorist groups operating in the country. Several American think tanks have been promoting the balkanization of Syria and separating its coastal region from the rest of the country. Armed Forces Journal published plans to balkanise Syria in 2006, preliminary talks on the gas pipeline between Turkey-Israel were also held that year. Such a breakdown of the Syrian state would clear the path for Israel and Turkey to build a pipeline across Syria’s coastal region, and ISIS is the tool by which this can be achieved. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/28/israel-turkey-and-isis-ally-to-steal-syrian-energy/ [Pipeline] [Syria] [Fragmentation]
• US-NATO Invade Libya to Fight Terrorists of Own Creation
  Tony Cartalucci Up to 6,000 troops are being sent to invade and occupy Libya, seizing oilfields allegedly threatened by terrorists NATO armed and put into power in 2011. The London Telegraph, almost as a footnote, reports of a sizable Western military force being sent in on the ground to occupy Libya in an operation it claims is aimed at fighting the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS). In its article, “Islamic State battles to seize control of key Libyan oil depot,” it reports: Under the plan, up to 1,000 British troops would form part of a 6,000-strong joint force with Italy – Libya’s former colonial power – in training and advising Libyan forces. British special forces could also be engaged on the front line. One would suspect a 6,000-strong foreign military force being sent into Libya would be major headline news, with debates raging before the operation even was approved. However, it appears with no debate, no public approval, and little media coverage, US, British, and European troops, including Libya’s former colonial rulers – the Italians – are pushing forward with direct military intervention in Libya, once again. The Mirror’s “SAS spearhead coalition offensive to halt Islamic State oil snatches in Libya,” claims the West’s 6,000 soldiers face up to 5,000 ISIS terrorists – raising questions about the veracity of both the true intentions of the West’s military intervention and the nature of the enemy they are allegedly intervening to fight. Military doctrine generally prescribes overwhelming numerical superiority for invading forces versus defenders. For example, during the the 2004 battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the US arrayed over 10,000 troops versus 3,000-4,000 defenders. This means large, sweeping operations to directly confront and destroy ISIS in Libya are not intended, and like Western interventions elsewhere, it is being designed to instead perpetuate the threat of ISIS and therefore, perpetuate Western justification for extraterritorial military intervention in Libya and beyond. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/27/us-nato-invade-libya-to-fight-terrorists-of-own-creation/ [Libya] [Outsourcing] [Special forces]
• The U.S. was supposed to leave Afghanistan by 2017. Now it might take decades.
  By Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan January 26 at 6:00 AM ? Top U.S. military commanders, who only a few months ago were planning to pull the last American troops out of Afghanistan by year’s end, are now quietly talking about an American commitment that could keep thousands of troops in the country for decades. The shift in mind-set, made possible by President Obama’s decision last fall to cancel withdrawal plans, reflects the Afghan government’s vulnerability to continued militant assault and concern that terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda continue to build training camps whose effect could be felt far beyond the region, said senior military officials. At a news conference Thursday, Oct. 15, President Obama says the U.S. will maintain 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through most of 2016 and will not go down to a normal embassy presence by the end of 2016, but instead will keep 5,500 troops at a small number of bases. (AP) The new American outlook marks a striking change for Obama, who campaigned on a promise to bring American troops home and has said repeatedly that he does not support the “idea of endless war.” And it highlights a major shift for the American military, which has spent much of the past decade racing to hit milestones as part of its broader “exit strategy” from Afghanistan and Iraq. These days, that phrase has largely disappeared from the military’s lexicon. [Afghanistan]
• DoD’s Final Report on Anthrax Fiasco a Whitewash
  Janet Phelan Rather than examining why live anthrax was mailed to nearly 200 labs, worldwide, the United States Department of Defense “Committee for Comprehensive Review of DoD Laboratory Procedures, Processes, and Protocols Associated with Inactivating Bacillus anthracis Spores” has produced a report which essentially whitewashes the activities going on at Dugway Proving Ground, a military base in Utah. In Spring of 2015, Dugway was found to have sent multiple lots of live anthrax to a number of labs. As the scandal grew, more and more labs were added to the list of those which received the deadly pathogen, sent via FedEx. The final count of labs receiving the live killer agent included labs in all fifty states and nine foreign countries. The DoD report, published January 13, states that “A single root cause for shipping viable BA (live anthrax) samples could not be identified. DoD personnel appear to have followed their own protocols correctly.” The report goes on to determine that “the committee found inherent deficiencies in protocols for three phases in the production of inactive spores that could lead to non-sterile products: 1) radiation dosing, 2) viability testing, and 3) aseptic operations (contamination prevention).” The report discusses why post inactivation viability testing did not detect the presence of live anthrax and why spores may have survived the irradiation process. A series of recommendations include “enhancement of quality assurance, a more extensive scientific peer review process, and improvements in program management for inactivation and viability testing of BA” (live anthrax). Steve Erickson, of the Citizens Education Project in Utah, finds the lack of oversight at Dugway to be problematic. “We’ve been watchdogging Dugway since 1988,” Erickson declared in an interview this past week. He has found the defense base to be “less than transparent,” and states that Dugway is “conducting experiments which could be considered to be potentially dangerous and of questionable value.” Erickson remembers that a state committee was formed in the 1990s to oversee Dugway. “It died on the vine,” he states. “They simply couldn’t get any information out of Dugway as to what they were doing over there.” More Anthrax Fallout at Dugway And when we say “anthrax fallout,” we mean that literally. Dugway Proving Ground has performed open air anthrax experiments going back as far as at least 1955. One of these experiments involved dropping anthrax “bomblets” on live monkeys at the Proving Ground. According to a recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune, the Army failed to document the effectiveness of these tests. The romance between Dugway and anthrax has been going on at least sixty years. When President Nixon discontinued the US’s offensive biological weapons program back in 1969, the only thing that apparently changed was the language of the biological weapons experiments. As it was no longer acceptable to produce weapons grade anthrax as an offensive weapon, the language of the work reported that weapons grade anthrax was produced in order to test countermeasures. However, with so many national and international labs working on anthrax, it is curious that not even an approved second generation anthrax vaccine has been produced. The initial anthrax vaccine, given to troops in the Gulf War, has been thought to produce “Gulf War Syndrome.” First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/27/dod-s-final-report-on-anthrax-fiasco-a-whitewash/ [cbw]
• How Biden annoyed Ankara during his recent visit to Turkey
  The high-profile visit by US Vice President Joe Biden to Turkey last weekend produced little satisfaction and much annoyance in Ankara, especially with regard to Washington’s position on the state of democracy in Turkey and on certain developments in Syria. Was the US vice president's awkward talks with the Turkish president and prime minister a harbinger of even more tension in already strained ties between the two countries? Author Semih Idiz Posted January 26, 2016 Many analysts see Biden’s awkward talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as a harbinger of tense moments to come in what are already strained ties between the two countries. Few, however, expect a break in ties because neither can afford that. Ankara expected criticism from Biden with regard to what independent human rights organizations and media watchdog groups say is the hounding of journalists critical of the government’s policies and academics opposed to its current war against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The government’s irritation, however, intensified when Biden met members of civil society groups and prominent journalists known to be in the government’s crosshairs, expressing solidarity with them ahead of talks with Erdogan and Davutoglu. [Turkey US] [Subversion] [Kurds] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Iran: Lifting Sanctions and Coming Betrayal
  Tony Cartalucci
  US policymakers have long conspired to broker what would be meant to appear as a historic deal with the political order in Tehran. It would be a deal almost unreasonably compromising for the United States, in order to enhance the illusion that the West sought every means to integrate Iran peacefully back into the “international community” before resorting to armed and direct military aggression. Knowing that Iran will never exist within Washington, Wall Street, London, and Brussels’ “international order” as an obedient client state, a prescription for regime change in Tehran has long been formulated. Best summarized in the 2009 Brookings Institution paper titled, “The Path to Persia: Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran” (.pdf), this regime change formula includes absolutely everything from economic sanctions and US-backed political upheaval, to the use of terrorism and proxy war to undermine and overthrow Iranian sociopolitical stability and eventually the Iranian state itself. In the lengthy 220 page document, Brookings policymakers acknowledge the necessity to first neutralize Syria before moving against Iran itself. It also prescribes the delisting of US State Department foreign terrorist organizations in order for the US to then arm and back them in a proxy war against Tehran. Among the terrorist organizations mentioned was Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a terrorist organization guilty of years of violence including the kidnapping and murder of American service members and American civilians. MEK has also continued carrying out terrorist attacks against political and civilian targets in Iran up to present day. It should be noted that these 2009 “suggestions” eventually manifested themselves as the current, ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq where US, Saudi, and Turkish-backed terrorists are waging war against Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian, and Russian backed political and military fronts, as well as the eventual delisting of MEK. It is clear then, that the Brookings paper was more than a collection of mere suggestions. It was an anthology of various operations arrayed against Tehran either ongoing or in the planning stages as of 2009. The only scenarios that have not yet been implemented were those dealing with full-scale war by the West against Tehran predicated on either a staged provocation, or a “superb offer” the Iranians “rejected” or failed to fulfill that justified direct Western – including Israeli – aggression. [US Middle East Strategy] [Iran] [Libya] [Syria]
• instaPoll: Are you concerned that the billions in unfrozen assets released to Iran will be used to expand its military capabilities and terrorist activities?
  This week, as aspects of the Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran officially take effect, Iran regained access to roughly $55-150 billion in assets that had previously been frozen in overseas accounts. While proponents of the deal say it’s an important step towards protecting the world from a nuclear Iran, critics of the deal have long argued that rewarding the terrorist regime in Tehran with billions in unfrozen assets will fuel Iran’s efforts to destroy Israel, expand terrorist activities, and increase military capabilities. In a recent interview with CNBC television, Secretary of State John Kerry admitted this possibility, stating, "I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists,” although he does not believe that is currently the case. Congressman Forbes voted against the Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. Question of the Week: Are you concerned that the billions in unfrozen assets released to Iran will be used to expand its military capabilities and terrorist activities?* Yes. No. I don't know. Other (share your thoughts on my blog here). [Iran deal] [Republican] [Renege] [Legality] [Inversion]
• Winners and Losers in Our New Media Moment
  Donald Trump, Mass Shootings With an Islamic Terrorist Flavor, and the Rise of the "Spectaculection" Tom Engelhardt • December 15, 2015 Sometimes what matters most takes up every inch of space in the room and somehow we still don’t see it. That’s how I feel about our present media moment. Let me put it this way: I’m a creature of habit, and one of those habits has long been watching NBC Nightly News, previously with anchor Brian Williams and now with Lester Holt. It’s my way of getting some sense of what an aging cohort of American news viewers (like me) learns daily about the world — what stories are considered important and not, and in what order, and how presented. Here’s one thing it’s hard not to notice: the line-up of stories that we used to call the “news” seems increasingly like a thing of the past. Remarkably often these days, the “news” is a single hyped-up story — most recently, the San Bernardino shootings — reported frenetically and yet formulaically, often in near-apocalyptic fashion. Clearly, such an approach is meant to glue eyeballs in a situation in which viewers are eternally restless and there are so many other screens available. This single story approach is both relentless and remarkably repetitious because a lot of the time next to nothing new is known about the supposedly unfolding event (which is nonetheless presented as if our lives depended upon it). To fall back on the anchor of Avon, it often enough seems like a tale told by a collective idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. What this form of news certainly does is suck all the air out of the newsroom. On some days, when one of these 24/7 events is running wild, you could be excused, at the end of half an hour of “national news,” for thinking that nothing other than the event at screen center had happened anywhere on Earth. And I mean nothing. Not even the weather, generally such a favored subject of the nightly news because it offers disaster in its most picturesquely chaotic and yet expectable form. Above all, the 24/7, all-hands-on-deck news story obliterates context, or rather becomes the only context of the moment. To offer the most obvious recent example: in the days in which the San Bernardino shootings ate the screen, most Americans would not have noticed that the fate of the planet was being seriously discussed and negotiated in Paris by representatives of just about every country. There was next to nothing but those shootings available — the exploration of the backgrounds of the two killers, their marriage, their arsenal of weaponry, a pledge of allegiance by the wife to ISIS, the contents of their house, what relatives and friends in Pakistan had to say, their bank account, heart-rending tales of those killed, testimony from survivors, and on and on. Even more than a week after the event, it was still the lead story on NBC Nightly News evening after evening. (“San Bernardino Shooters Discussed Jihad in 2013 Before Engagement,” “FBI Divers Search Lake Near San Bernardino Massacre for Clues.”) Viewers might be pardoned for thinking that Islamic terrorism was indeed an apocalyptic threat for most Americans rather than the distinctly minor one it is. Sucking the Air Out of the Newsroom Mass shootings, a particularly American phenomenon, seem like the perfect story for our news moment. They are guaranteed to eat any screen and recur so regularly, with uniquely gruesome twists, that covering them has become formulaic. They are the equivalent of no-brainers: disturbed (or disturbing) shooters, horrified victims, blood and guts, grim hospital scenes, the testimony of victims, the rites around the dead, and in the case of San Bernardino the added attraction (or repulsion) of Islamic terrorism. Put another way, what passes for the news is often enough closer to a horror movie in which, just around the next corner, another nightmare is readying itself to leap out and scare you to death. Maybe it’s not what you really want to see, but once it starts, you can’t take your eyes off it. And that’s the point. Unfortunately, none of this is actually a horror movie. When these all-too-real events loom so much larger than life and without context, they seem to trigger panic, fear, even hysteria, and a profound sense of endangerment in many Americans; they create, that is, a vision of how the world works and of its dangers that bears little relationship to the place we actually live. [Media]
• Emancipation of Military: Containing the Citizenry
  Fred Reed • January 21, 2016 Those who try to understand military policy often confuse themselves by focusing on minor matters such as strategy, tactics, logistics, and armament. Here they err. For years the central goal of the military, the brass ring, has been independence from control by civilians. It has been achieved. In time of war, the first concern of the command is to limit the flow of information to their publics. The actions of the enemy are an important but secondary consideration. Thus militaries strive to prevent the dissemination of photos of mutilated soldiers or, as in Washington today, of governmentally tortured prisoners. In the United States, which characteristically fights wars unrelated to the safety of the country, the Pentagon must also keep soldiers from being told that they are being sacrifice for the benefit of arms manufacturers and imperialist ambitions. In wars before Vietnam, this was adroitly effected. You could go to jail for criticizing a war. [Military] [Media] [MISCOM]
• The Pentagon’s Progress: Will American “Successes” Lead to More Iraqi Military Failures?
  By Nick Turse There’s good news coming out of Iraq... again. The efforts of a 65-nation coalition and punishing U.S. airstrikes have helped local ground forces roll back gains by the Islamic State (IS). Government forces and Shiite militias, for example, recaptured the city of Tikrit, while Kurdish troops ousted IS fighters from the town of Sinjar and other parts of northern Iraq. Last month, Iraqi troops finally pushed Islamic State militants out of most of the city of Ramadi, which the group had held since routing Iraqi forces there last spring. In the wake of all this, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter touted “the kind of progress that the Iraqi forces are exhibiting in Ramadi, building on that success to… continue the campaign with the important goal of retaking Mosul as soon as possible.” Even more recently, he said those forces were “proving themselves not only motivated but capable.” I encountered the same upbeat tone when I asked Colonel Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, about the Iraqi security forces. “The last year has been a process of constructing, rebuilding, and refitting the Iraqi army,” he explained. “While it takes time for training and equipping efforts to take effect, the increasing tactical confidence and competence of the ISF [Iraqi security forces] and their recent battlefield successes indicate that we are on track.” “Progress.” “Successes.” “On track.” “Increasing tactical confidence and competence.” It all sounded very familiar to me. By September 2012, after almost a decade at the task, the U.S. had allocated and spent nearly $25 billion on “training, equipping, and sustaining” the Iraqi security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Along the way, a parade of generals, government officials, and Pentagon spokesmen had offered up an almost unending stream of good news about the new Iraqi Army. Near constant reports came in of “remarkable,” “big,” even “enormous” progress for a force that was said to be exuding increasing “confidence,” and whose performance was always improving. In the end, the U.S. claimed to have trained roughly 950,000 members of the “steady,” “solid,” Iraqi security forces. And yet just two and a half years after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, that same force collapsed in spectacular fashion in the face of assaults by Islamic State militants who, by CIA estimates, numbered no more than 31,000 in all. [Iraq] [Proxy]
• The Citadel is Breached: Congress Taps the Fed for Infrastructure Funding
  by Ellen Brown For at least a decade, think tanks, commissions and other stakeholders have fought to get Congress to address the staggering backlog of maintenance, upkeep and improvements required to bring the nation’s infrastructure into the 21st century. Countries with less in the way of assets have overtaken the US in innovation and efficiency, while our dysfunctional Congress has battled endlessly over the fiscal cliff, tax reform, entitlement reform, and deficit reduction. Both houses and both political parties agree that something must be done, but they have been unable to agree on where to find the funds. Republicans aren’t willing to raise taxes on the rich, and Democrats aren’t willing to cut social services for the poor. In December 2015, however, a compromise was finally reached. On December 4, the last day the Department of Transportation was authorized to cut checks for highway and transit projects, President Obama signed a 1,300-page $305-billion transportation infrastructure bill that renewed existing highway and transit programs. According to America’s civil engineers, the sum was not nearly enough for all the work that needs to be done. But the bill was nevertheless considered a landmark achievement, because Congress has not been able to agree on how to fund a long-term highway and transit bill since 2005. That was one of its landmark achievements. Less publicized was where Congress would get the money: largely from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street megabanks. The deal was summarized in a December 1st Bloomberg article titled “Highway Bill Compromise Would Take Money from US Banks”: The highway measure would be financed in part by a one-time use of Federal Reserve surplus funds and by a reduction in the 6 percent dividend that national banks receive from the Fed. . . . Banks with $10 billion or less in assets would be exempt from the cut. The Fed’s surplus capital comes from the 12 reserve banks. The highway bill would allow for a one-time draw of $19 billion from the surplus, which totaled $29.3 billion as of Nov. 25. . . . Banks vigorously fought the dividend cut, which was estimated to generate about $17 billion over 10 years for the highway trust fund. [Infrastructure] [Banking]
• US Agents Are Filling Key Posts in Argentina
  Nil Nikandrov | 19.01.2016 | 08:00 In December 2015, Mauricio Macri became the new president of Argentina. Washington was euphoric over his victory. Naturally this festive mood also permeated the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, where Macri has always been seen as «their man». And there is ample evidence that he isn’t exactly trying to conceal his trusting relationship with those American envoys. The clues include materials published by WikiLeaks, such as detailed reports by diplomats about their conversations with Macri, in which he in one case urged «the US to take a tougher public line with the Kirchners» and even predicted that Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would be forced out before the end of her presidential term. As expected, Macri arrived at the presidential palace and began an overhaul of state agencies, «cleansing» the government and mass media of Kirshner supporters. He explained these measures by saying that during the 12 years under the «populists» Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández, the agencies of the executive branch of government had been filled with thousands of political appointees from the Front for Victory Party, a mix of Peronists, radicals, and socialists. These people are hostile to the neoliberal program Macri promised to introduce after taking office, and so he needs to get rid of them. Kirshner supporters and representatives of Front for Victory and its allies dominate Argentina’s National Congress – in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Congress will return to work in early March, after a lengthy break, and Macri will have to demonstrate a miraculous level of flexibility and willingness to compromise in order to garner parliamentary support for his program. Is Macri prepared for this? That’s extremely doubtful. That is exactly why political analysts think the president began to govern the country by relying on «emergency» decrees. Currently more than four dozen of those are in effect. Rulings were pushed through to raise the rates for gas and electricity. Restrictions were lifted on peso-dollar exchanges. Mass layoffs of workers became a common occurrence, with no regard for the laws that limit arbitrary actions by employers. Anticipating public resistance, the president gave the police carte blanche to use force – including the use of rubber bullets – to suppress protests. Every day the Argentine media and bloggers publish more stories about the intimidation of demonstrators. As promised, President Macri immediately began to halt the trials of war criminals.
• US imposes new sanctions on Iran
  Xinhua, January 18, 2016 The United States announced on Sunday new sanctions relating to Iran's ballistic missile program, a day after the Obama administration lifted sanctions on Iran's nuclear program. Six Iranian nationals and 11 companies were added to an American blacklist, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement. "This action is consistent with the U.S. government's commitment to continue targeting those who assist in Iran's efforts to procure items for its ballistic missile program," said the statement. Adam Szubin, acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said "We have consistently made clear that the United States will vigorously press sanctions against Iranian activities outside of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- including those related to Iran's support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile program." U.S. President Barack Obama said in a speech on Sunday that the U.S. will impose new sanctions if Tehran continues missile program implementation. On Saturday, Obama signed an executive order to lift sanctions on Iran related to its nuclear program, the White House said. "Iran's implementation of the nuclear-related measures ..., as verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency, marks a fundamental shift in circumstances with respect to Iran's nuclear program," Obama said in the executive order issued by the White House. Obama's decision came after the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Iran's compliance of the historic nuclear deal, known as JCPOA, reached last summer. [Sanctions] [Iran deal] [Missile] [Renege] [US Negotiating]
• 62 richest people own as much as half of the world's population
  • Around 73 million people are richer than the rest of the world put together • Findings have been released ahead of the annual World Economic Forum • Report found that the gap between rich and poor had widened dramatically • Super-rich have a total of 7.6trn dollars (£5.3trn) in offshore accounts By Anthony Joseph for MailOnline Published: 05:19 GMT, 18 January 2016 The 62 richest people in the world own as much as the poorest 3.6billion, a new report has revealed (file photo) The 62 richest people in the world own as much as the poorest 3.6billion, a new report has revealed. Oxfam's publication also reveals that the wealthiest one per cent, around 73million out of the 7.3bn people in the world, now own the same as everyone else put together. The new findings have been released ahead of the annual World Economic Forum of global political and business leaders in Swiss ski resort Davos. The report found that the gap between rich and poor had widened 'dramatically' over the past 12 months. As recently as 2010, the combined wealth of the 388 richest people was needed to equal that of the poorest half of the world, but that number has since plummeted to 80 last year and 62 now. [Inequality] [Capitalism]
• An Economy For the 1%
  How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this can be stopped
  Post date: 18 January 2016 The global inequality crisis is reaching new extremes. The richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined. Power and privilege is being used to skew the economic system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest. A global network of tax havens further enables the richest individuals to hide $7.6 trillion. The fight against poverty will not be won until the inequality crisis is tackled. [Inequality] [Capitalism]
• Obama’s final State of the Union: Lies, evasions and threats
  By Patrick Martin 13 January 2016 The final State of the Union speech delivered Tuesday night by President Barack Obama was a demonstration of the incapacity of the American political system to deal honestly or seriously with a single social question. Obama evaded the real issues that affect tens of millions of working people in America every day of their lives. He painted a ludicrous picture of economic recovery and social progress that insulted the intelligence of his television audience—and went unchallenged by the millionaire politicians assembled in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Summing up what he called “the progress of these past seven years,” Obama gave first place to “how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations.” The so-called “recovery” has been a bonanza for corporate profits, stock prices, and the wealth and income of the super-rich. For the working people who are the vast majority of the population, it has been a disaster. [Obama]
• “Nothing Is Moving,” Baltic Dry Index Crashes as Insiders Warn International “Commerce Has Come To a Halt”
  The Baltic Dry Index, an assessment of the price of moving major raw materials by sea, By Tyler Durden Global Research, January 16, 2016 Zero Hedge 16 January 2016 The continued collapse of The Baltic Dry Index remains ignored by most – besides we still have Netflix, right? But, as Dollar Vigilante’s Jeff Berwick details, it appears the worldwide ‘real’ economy has ground to a halt!! Last week, I received news from a contact who is friends with one of the biggest billionaire shipping families in the world. He told me they had no ships at sea right now, because operating them meant running at a loss. This weekend, reports are circulating saying much the same thing: The North Atlantic has little or no cargo ships traveling in its waters. Instead, they are anchored. Unmoving. Empty. [Crisis] [Trade]
• Currency Dictatorship. The Struggle to End US Dollar Hegemony
  By Rakesh Krishan Simha Global Research, January 17, 2016 India and the BRICS are giving the US dollar the boot? Is it really so? The last time a country decided to dump the dollar in the oil business, the US destroyed it. Now India, the world’s third largest economy, and Iran have agreed to settle their outstanding oil dues in rupees. What’s more, the two countries may conduct all future trade in their national currencies. This follows an agreement between Iran and India in mid-2011 in which both sides decided to settle 45 per cent of India’s oil import bill in rupees and the remaining 55 per cent in euros. In March 2012 the two countries inked the Rupee Payment Mechanism that allowed India to buy crude oil in its national currency. Iran then used the funds to buy products from Indian manufacturers. Ironically, it is the US itself which is responsible for the dollar’s elimination from India-Iran trade. The Rupee Payment Mechanism was set up to skirt American economic sanctions on Tehran. Iranian oil forms a significant portion of India’s energy requirements. Similarly, the Iranians rely upon India for steel, medicines, food and chemicals. Replacing the dollar India and the US may have come closer in recent years, but that hasn’t blinded New Delhi to the toxic nature of America’s currency as well as manipulation by Britain. The US is literally writing its own cheque with its unrestrained printing of the dollar, the bedrock of America’s post-war hegemony. It is the reserve currency status of the dollar that allows the US to fund its endless wars and topple governments with impunity. [Reserve]
• Hagel says Obama 'paralyzed' Syria policy around Assad ouster
  Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told a Washington audience Jan. 13 that President Barack Obama erred when he called for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to step down early in the Syrian civil war. Summary? Print Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says President Barack Obama erred in calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go and declaring a red line over Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and also compared Republican presidential candidates to a "mass gong show" and urged them to be less divisive. Author Barbara Slavin Posted January 14, 2016 While Assad is a “brutal dictator” who must eventually leave office, Hagel said, the United States should have learned from the chaos that followed the abrupt removal of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi that taking out authoritarian leaders without knowing who will take their place is not the best solution. “We have allowed ourselves to get caught and paralyzed on our Syrian policy by the statement that 'Assad must go,'” Hagel said, adding, “Assad was never our enemy.” Asked by Al-Monitor what it would take to bring stability to Syria after the deaths of 300,000 people — many at the hands of Assad’s forces — and the country’s fracturing into battered ethnic and sectarian enclaves, Hagel said it would require working with the Russians, Iranians and Saudis. “All have to come together with enough common interest to stabilize things,” he said. Hagel, a decorated Vietnam veteran and the first non-commissioned officer to run the Pentagon, was pushed to leave the Obama administration after only two years on the job after a series of disagreements over policy and process. While gentler in his criticism of Obama the evening of Jan. 13 than he was in a recent interview, he also criticized the president for declaring a “red line” against Assad’s use of chemical weapons and then failing to carry out missile strikes in 2013 when Syria’s massive use of such arms was confirmed. “I think it did hurt the credibility of the president,” Hagel told a large crowd at the Atlantic Council in his first extended public appearance since leaving the Pentagon a year ago. “When a president of the United States says something, it means something. … To make those kinds of pronouncements and not follow through affects the credibility of the president.” [US Syria policy] [Hagel]
• Al Jazeera America: Was the TV news network cursed from the start?
  Al Jazeera America to close by April 30 Al Jazeera America, the cable television news outlet owned by the Qatari government, says it is shutting down less than three years after its high-profile launch. (Reuters) By Paul Farhi January 13 ? From the start, people at the Al Jazeera America cable-news network knew they faced an uphill battle for ratings and acceptance. It wasn’t just that they were taking on entrenched competitors such as CNN and Fox News with an unfamiliar, foreign brand name. Insiders knew that it would take ample distribution, lots of promotion, and audience goodwill to establish a foothold. On Wednesday, Al Jazeera America’s owners acknowledged they had achieved none of those things. In an unexpected move that surprised even its journalists, the network’s Qatar-based parent said it would pull the plug on April 30, shutting down the channel less than three years after it started. Although it won journalism awards, the network — known internally as AJAM — never caught on with viewers. According to the Nielsen rating service, the network attracted an average nightly audience of around 34,000 last year, and about 24,000 throughout the entire day. Sometimes its audience was so small that Nielsen couldn’t offer an estimate. Advertisers ignored it. Al Jazeera America chief executive Al Anstey conceded the difficulties in a memo to employees, writing that the decision to close was “driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable.” [Media] [Parochialism]
• What Accounts for the Saudi Regime’s Hysterical Belligerence? The Agony of Death
  by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh January 15, 2016 The purpose of this essay is to explain, not describe, the frantically belligerent behavior of the Saudi regime. The goal is not to delve into what the regime and its imperialist enablers have done, or are doing; that unsavory record of atrocities, both at home and abroad, is abundantly exposed by other writers/commentators [1]. It is, rather, to focus on why they have done or are doing what they do. In the Throes of the Agony of Death The Saudi rulers find themselves in a losing race against time, or history. Although in denial, they cannot but realize the historical reality that the days of ruling by birthright are long past, and that the House of Saud as the ruler of the kingdom by inheritance is obsolete. This is the main reason for the Saudi’s frantically belligerent behavior. The hysteria is tantamount to the frenzy of the proverbial agony of a prolonged death. It explains why they react so harshly to any social or geopolitical development at home or in the region that they perceive as a threat to their rule. [Saudi Arabia]
• Lawrence Wilkerson: Call Tehran
  Colin Powell's former adviser says the solution to the crisis in Iraq is to craft a new balance of power Posted on August 1, 2014 in National Security Southwest Asia has been with me for a long time. For over a decade, I was a small part of a fairly well-orchestrated U.S. strategy to maintain the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. When the Shah of Iran fell in 1979, we knew that the papier-mache kingdom of Saudi Arabia could not replace Iran as our “protector in the Gulf,” so we settled for the next best thing: a relatively stable balance between the Arabs of Iraq and the Persians of Iran. We had to work hard to maintain this balance. The first serious challenge came in the mid-1980s when I was a joint-staff officer for the principal military force-provider for the region, U.S. Pacific Command. I helped plan the U.S. military’s response to defeat a push by the Soviets into Iran in search of warm-water ports. In 1979, Russia had already invaded Afghanistan and many predicted Iran was next. The Cold War’s strategy preempted everything else, but we still kept a wary eye on others in the Persian Gulf, particularly after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. When it looked as if the long and bloody war Hussein had started might eventually destroy the balance we sought and draw the Soviets into Gulf waters, the U.S. openly took Iraq’s side. We re-flagged and escorted Kuwaiti tankers, a U.S. warship absorbed two Iraqi Exocet missiles and almost sank, another of our warships struck an Iranian mine, we attacked Iran’s command-and-control assets, sunk one Iranian warship and badly damaged another, and then tragically shot down an Iranian civilian airliner with 290 people on board. It was this tragic act that many believe caused Ayatollah Khomeini to “drink the hemlock,” as he put it, and declare an end to the disastrous war Iraq had begun. The stability we sought was reestablished. At the end of the 1980s, I became a special adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Having been thwarted in his attempt to conquer Iran, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and we immediately launched Operation Desert Shield to protect Saudi oil facilities and, some months later, Operation Desert Storm to kick the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. [US Middle East strategy] [Iran]
• Enduring Bases, Enduring War in the Middle East
  Posted by David Vine at 7:42am, January 14, 2016. Meet the hottest new commander in the increasingly secretive world of American warfare, Lieutenant General Raymond “Tony” Thomas. A rare portrait in the Washington Post paints him as a “shadowy figure” -- an appropriate phrase for the general who has been leading the U.S. military’s “manhunters,” aka Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. They are considered the crème de la crème among America’s ever-larger crew of Special Operations forces, now at almost 70,000 and growing. Thomas is reportedly slated to take over Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and so head up that now massive secret military cocooned inside the U.S. military. To put its ranks in perspective, think of the active duty militaries of Argentina (73,000), Australia (56,000), Canada (66,000), Chile (61,000), or South Africa (62,000). In other words, our secret “warriors” now outnumber the military contingents of major nations. [Special forces] [US Global strategy] [bases]
• WikiLeaks Reveals Saudi Arabia, Turkey & Qatar Secret Anti-Syria Plot
  The whistleblower website WikiLeaks says that leaked documents from Saudi ministries revealed that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey had a secret deal three years ago to topple the Syrian government. By Press TV | November 24, 2015 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Rossiya-1 (Russia 1) TV channel on Sunday that the United States, France, and Britain had also been involved in the secret deal in 2012. He added that Washington’s allies in the Middle East such as Riyadh acted in a more aggressive manner and even against the directives of the United States. WikiLeaks began publishing hundreds of thousands of diplomatic and government documents, including internal reports from Saudi government organizations and communications between the country’s embassies across the world earlier in June. The transparency website has obtained e-mail communications between Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry and other countries. WikiLeaks has announced that it had already released over 60,000 Saudi documents on its webpage, most of them in Arabic. Syria has been grappling with a deadly crisis since 2011 with more than 230,000 people dead and millions of others injured in the scourge so far. The US and its allies are rendering support for the militants fighting against the Syrian government forces. Classified reports from a number of Saudi institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the Kingdom’s General Intelligence Services, were among the published documents. Back in 2010, Assange won international prominence and angered the US administration by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents, including those related to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Outsourcing] [Syria] [Saudi Arabia]
• Doubling Down on a Failed Strategy
  January 14, 2016 The Pentagon’s Dangerous “New” Base Plan By David Vine Amid the distractions of the holiday season, the New York Times revealed that the Obama administration is considering a Pentagon proposal to create a “new” and “enduring” system of military bases around the Middle East. Though this is being presented as a response to the rise of the Islamic State and other militant groups, there's remarkably little that’s new about the Pentagon plan. For more than 36 years, the U.S. military has been building an unprecedented constellation of bases that stretches from Southern Europe and the Middle East to Africa and Southwest Asia. The record of these bases is disastrous. They have cost tens of billions of dollars and provided support for a long list of undemocratic host regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and Djibouti. They have enabled a series of U.S. wars and military interventions, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which have helped make the Greater Middle East a cauldron of sectarian-tinged power struggles, failed states, and humanitarian catastrophe. And the bases have fueled radicalism, anti-Americanism, and the growth of the very terrorist organizations now targeted by the supposedly new strategy. [US global strategy] [Bases] [Liberal] [Logic] [Objectives]
• They make Cheney look like Chomsky: Cruz, Trump, Rubio and the frightening bellicosity of today’s GOP
  They want to "carpet bomb," "bomb the shit" out of them & make "sand glow." GOP field somehow makes Cheney moderate Lou Dubose, Washington Spectator In 2005 I was doing a regular Tuesday–Friday commute between Austin and Washington. One of the regulars on the flights was Karen Hughes, a longtime advisor to then-President George W. Bush. At the time, she was commuting to her State Department office, where she was the undersecretary for public diplomacy. On one Tuesday morning flight, my traveling companion, a journalist who wrote about international oil-and-gas interests and the Middle East, took a seat beside the undersecretary and began querying her about her reading on the region As it turned out, she had read very little. Her seatmate recommended half a dozen familiar titles, as Hughes politely said she would “put it on my list,” though she wrote down nothing and seemed more than eager to get back to her Austin American-Statesman. The brief conversation ended with a telling exchange. My journo friend observed that Islamic societies were once among the most literate in the world. As the United States had a significant presence in two Muslim countries, he asked, was the State Department considering literacy programs, investing in teaching young men and women to read? “We don’t care if they can read,” Hughes said. “We just want to make sure they don’t bomb us again.” Her response said a lot about the administration’s policy in the region. No sense of history, no anthropology, no cultural sensitivity [US Middle East strategy] [State Department] [Ignorance]
• Trans-Pacific Partnership will barely benefit Australia, says World Bank report
  Date January 12, 2016 26 reading now Peter Martin Economics Editor, The Age Concerns over the power of multinationals in the TPP is 'fear-mongering that has been perpetuated for five years in ignorance' says Trade Minister Andrew Robb. Courtesy of ABC News 24. Australia stands to gain almost nothing from the mega trade deal sealed with 11 other nations including United States, Japan, and Singapore, the first comprehensive economic analysis finds. Prepared by staff from the World Bank, the study says the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership would boost Australia's economy by just 0.7 per cent by the year 2030. The annual boost to growth would be less than one half of one 10th of 1 per cent. Other members of the TPP stand to benefit much more, according to the analysis. Vietnam's economy would be 10 per cent bigger by 2030, Malaysia's 8 per cent bigger, New Zealand's 3 per cent bigger, and Singapore's 3 per cent bigger. [TPP]
• Potential Macroeconomic Implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
  On October 4, 2015, 12 Paci?c Rim countries concluded negotiations on the Trans-Paci?c Partnership. If rati?ed by all, the agreement could raise GDP in member countries by an average of 1.1 percent by 2030. It could also increase member countries’ trade by 11 percent by 2030, and represent a boost to regional trade growth, which had slowed to about 5 percent, on average, during 2010-14 from about 10 percent during 1990 -07. To the extent that the bene?ts of reforms have positive spillovers for the rest of the world, the detrimental e?ects of the agreement due to trade diversion and preference erosion on non-members, would be limited. -e global signi?cance of the agreement depends on whether it gains broader international traction. [TPP]
• The Economist meets Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince, the man who wields power behind the throne of his father, King Salman
  Jan 6th 2016 Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince and the country's defence minister, spoke to The Economist on January 4th. As part of a five-hour conversation, he gave his first on-the-record interview, which we have transcribed below. Our briefing includes quotations from both this and the broader discussion. Our cover leader is available here and more analysis on a possible Aramco listing is here. The Economist: Let’s focus first on the recent executions. Why did they take place now, so many years after the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia? And why did you include a prominent shia cleric? Muhammad bin Salman: First of all, these were sentenced in a court of law with charges related to terrorism and they went through three layers of judicial proceedings. They had the right to hire an attorney and they had attorneys present throughout each layer of the proceedings. The court doors were also open for any media people and journalists, and all the proceedings and the judicial texts were made public. And the court did not, at all, make any distinction between whether or not a person is Shi’ite or Sunni. They are reviewing a crime, and a procedure, and a trial, and a sentence, and carrying out the sentence. But these executions have provoked violent reactions in Iran. Your embassy was attacked, you’ve broken off diplomatic relations, as have Bahrain and Sudan. What will be the consequence of this escalation of regional tensions? [Saudi Arabia] [Execution] [Media]
• The Saudi Rules
  by Robert Fisk January 12, 2016 Only six of our British military chaps, it seems, are helping the Sunni Saudis kill Shia Yemenis. And they’re not actually in Yemen, merely helping to choose the targets – which have so far included hospitals, markets, a wedding party and a site opposite the Iranian embassy. Not that our boys and girls selected those particular “terrorist” nests for destruction, you understand. They’re just helping their Saudi mates – in the words of our Ministry of Defence – “comply to the rules of war”. Saudi “rules”, of course, are not necessarily the same as “our” rules – although our drone-executions of UK citizens leave a lot of elbow-room for our British warriors in Riyadh. But I couldn’t help chuckling when I read the condemnation of David Mephan, the Human Rights Watch director. Yes, he told us that the Saudis “are committing multiple violations of the laws of war in Yemen”, and that the British “are working hand in glove with the Saudis, helping them, enhancing their capacity to prosecute this war that has led to the death of so many civilians”. Spot on. But then he added that he thought all this “deeply regrettable and unacceptable”. “Regrettable” and “unacceptable” represent the double standards we employ when our wealthy Saudi friends put their hands to bloody work. [Saudi Arabia] [Double standards] [HRW] [Spin]
• Text of Obama’s State of the Union address, as prepared for delivery
  Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans: Tonight marks the eighth year I’ve come here to report on the State of the Union. And for this final one, I’m going to try to make it shorter. I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article54396675.html#storylink=cpy [Obama]
• Sarin Gas: The Guy Who Told Us So Is Now Telling Us This
  The other day I said the following in an email to Gordon Duff, Editor in Chief of Veterans Today, an online journal for the intelligence community: “I watched the interview programme with you and Kevin Barrett. See minute 4:15 However, you need to keep in mind that the Sarin gas story, broken by the Turkish MP and Russia Today, is old news, and much more is involved. “One only needs to take a closer look at the PR in support of the bio weapons lab in Tbilisi, who is involved and who stands behind them. Let’s not forget that former US Senator Richard Lugar called it the “latest advancement in protecting Americans against global biological risks and how this and other labs identify and report potentially deadly pathogens before they can spread.” However, it does not stop there. “Consider the players, aside from Bechtel National. CH2M Hill and Battelle, two of the main contractors to Bechtel and DoD, are still there conducting maintenance. Others in the project include the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command (MRMC) which claims it is backstopping international norms for bio security in Georgia’s national repository of infectious disease pathogens (bio weapons depot). First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/13/sarin-gas-the-guy-who-told-us-so-is-now-telling-us-this/ [cbw] [Outsourcing]
• U.S. Dropped 23,144 Bombs on Muslim-Majority Countries in 2015
  Nobel Peace Prize-winner President Obama dropped a serious amount of ordnance last year.
  By Adam Johnson / AlterNet January 10, 2016 Council of Foreign Relations resident skeptic Micah Zenko recently tallied up how many bombs the United States has dropped on other countries and the results are as depressing as one would think. Zenko figured that since Jan. 1, 2015, the U.S. has dropped around 23,144 bombs on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, all countries that are majority Muslim.
• A Few Disjointed Thoughts on the Events in Cologne
  The Saker • January 11, 2016 What I want to share with you today is most definitely not a comprehensive analysis of the events which took place recently in Germany, but rather a few unconnected thoughts and memories we came to my mind when I heard about what had happened. So here we go. First, the figures are staggering: according to Russian sources there have been over 700 hundred assaults in Cologne, 40% of which were sexual (the rest begin “regular” assaults, robberies, battery, etc.). There is mounting evidence that this was a coordinated attack organized through the social media. [Orthodox] [Culture clash] [Refugee]
• How to Help the Syrians Who Want to Return Home
  By Maureen White Jan. 12, 2016 IN the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., American support for accepting more Syrian refugees has withered. The Republican presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump has called for blocking all Muslims from entering the United States, saying we are at war with radical Islam. Other politicians, including some governors and members of Congress, now specifically label Syrian refugees a threat. Editorial: Agony and Starvation in the Syrian WarJAN. 12, 2016 The focus on whether or not to admit these desperate people to the United States obscures the bigger question of the refugee crisis. A vast majority of the more than four million refugees want to return to Syria once the war there ends. For that reason, most have stayed in the region, often languishing for years in camps in Lebanon and Jordan, rather than migrating to Europe or attempting to enter the United States. According to estimates from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are some 634,000 refugees still in Jordan, 1.1 million in Lebanon and 2.3 million in Turkey. [refugees]
• BBC Caught Recycling Old Footage to Create More Humanitarian Mythology for Madaya, Syria
  January 12, 2016 Vanessa Beeley 21st Century Wire Since the story of the Madaya “starvation” story broke seemingly hours after the Saudi lawless and brutal execution of inspirational opposition speaker and cleric Sheikh Nimr al Nimr, we have been presented with a ceaseless array of fake images many of which have been corrected or withdrawn by the offending mainstream media outlets but then relentlessly and brazenly recycled, regardless, by the social media propaganda rings. However the cherry on the propaganda cake came tonight with a report from the BBC on the plight of the town of Madaya, Syria. Not only do they try to conceal the fact that civilians are arguing with Ahrar al Sham terrorists and yelling at them: “You are not hungry, we are!!” [Syria] [Media] The chart, provided by the generally pro-State Department think tank, puts in stark terms how much destruction the U.S. has leveled on other countries. Whether or not one thinks such bombing is justified, it's a blunt illustration of how much raw damage the United States inflicts on the Muslim world: [US Middle east strategy] [Bombing]
• The most dangerous man in the world?
  Saudi Arabia’s defence minister is aggressive and ambitious – and his enemies within and without are in his sights Bill Law | Saturday 9 January 2016| Mohammed bin Salman attends a summit of Arab and Latin American leaders in Riyadh AP When Mohammed bin Salman was just 12 he began sitting in on meetings led by his father Salman, the then governor of Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Province. Some 17 years later, at 29 and already the world’s youngest defence minister, he plunged his country into a brutal war in Yemen with no end in sight. Now the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is jousting dangerously with its regional foe Iran, led by a man seemingly in a big hurry to become the Middle East’s most powerful leader. Prince Mohammed was still in his early teens when he began trading in shares and property. And when he ran into a scrape or two, his father was able to take care of things. Unlike his older half-brothers, MbS, as he is known, did not go abroad to university, choosing to remain in Riyadh where he attended King Saud University, graduating in law. Associates considered him an earnest young man who neither smoked nor drank and had no interest in partying. In 2011, his father became deputy Crown Prince and secured the prized Ministry of Defence, with its vast budget and lucrative weapons contracts. MbS, as a private adviser, ran the royal court with a decisive hand after his father was named Crown Prince in 2012. Every step of the way, Prince Mohammed has been with his father , who took his favoured son with him as he rose in the hierarchy of the House of Saud. Within the Saudi religious and business elite it was well understood that if you wanted to see the father you had to go through the son. Critics claim he has amassed a vast fortune, but it is power, not money, that drives the prince. [Saudi Arabia]
• Syria conflict: OPCW finds signs of sarin exposure
  5 January 2016 Sarin was used in an attack on several suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus in 2013 The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has found indications that some Syrians have been exposed to sarin or a similar nerve agent. A report by the watchdog said it was investigating 11 chemical-weapon attacks alleged by Syria's government. In one case, blood samples showed victims had been exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance. The OPCW did not say when or where the attacks occurred, or which side in the five-year conflict was responsible. Hundreds were killed when rockets filled with sarin were fired at several opposition-held suburbs of the capital Damascus in 2013. Western powers said only the government could have been responsible, but it blamed rebels. 'Further investigation necessary' The results of the OPCW's fact-finding mission were contained in the latest report on Syria from the group's Director General Ahmet Uzumcu, which was attached in a letter by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the UN Security Council. "In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance," he added. "Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred." [cbw] [Sarin] [OPCW]
• OPCW report: rebels used chemical weapons – not Assad Syria
  Written by Chris Tomson on 08/01/2016 1:31 pm The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has confirmed the traces of the sarin gas used in Syria are not linked with the Syrian government’s former stockpile of chemical weapons. The report corroborates the Syrian government’s assertions that the faction responsible for the chemical attack, as well as 11 other instances of chemical weapons use, was the Syrian opposition. The report also substantiates last month’s claims from Ahmed al-Gaddafi al-Qahsi, cousin of Muammar Gaddafi, who said that the chemical weapons used in the incident had been stolen from Libya and later smuggled into Syria via Turkey by militants. The announcement follows an investigation carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at the request of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government. “In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance” said Ahmet Uzumcu, the head of the OPCW. He later added that the sarin gas examined bore different characteristics to the one formerly owned by the Syrian government. [cbw] [Syria] [OPCW]
• Syria chemical arms probe found signs of sarin gas exposure: U.N.
  UNITED NATIONS | By Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols A view of Zamalka area, in what activists say chemical weapons have been used by forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad in the eastern suburbs of Damascus August 22, 2013. Reuters/Bassam Khabieh A fact-finding mission of the global anti-chemical weapons watchdog has found indications that some people in Syria were exposed to deadly sarin gas, or a compound like it, according to a report the United Nations released on Monday. The findings come in the latest monthly report on Syria from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) chief Ahmet Uzumcu. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon attached it in a Dec. 29 letter to the 15-nation Security Council. Uzumcu's report said his agency's fact-finding mission in Syria was looking into charges by the Syrian government that chemical weapons were used in 11 instances. The report did not specify when the alleged toxic gas attacks occurred. "In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance," Uzumcu said. "Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred." [cbw] [OPCW] [Media]
• Analyzing Madaya’s Starvation Falsification
  EDITOR'S CHOICE | 11.01.2016 | 10:50 Public outcry and condemnation against the Syrian government spread like wildfire across mainstream news and social media when the horrific photos of starved children and civilians from the besieged town of Madaya emerged. No one could understand why Assad would allow this to happen to his own people, especially since videos emerged (that can be seen on my last Madaya article) under a month ago that displayed rallies against the occupying terrorist forces and in support of the Syrian government. Hours after my last article, truth seekers quickly unveiled the lies shrouding around the starvation of the people. It was also interesting to see that an official statement by the neutral Red Cross could not verify or deny the systematic starvation of Madaya’s people. However, for the sake of analysis, I must now retract from my previous refusal of posting photos of malnourished people so that the truth can be open. One of the first and most heartbreaking was one of a healthy young girl followed by a new photo of her on the verge of death because of starvation. 1 This photo published by Saudi owned Al-Arabiya soon quickly engulfed media platforms and the calls for humanitarian intervention was called. However, it was quickly revealed by the Lebanese Daily Star that the girl in question is actually a south Lebanese girl who is in safe hands with her family, and is fit and healthy. [Syria] [Disinformation]
• This small airstrip is the future of America’s way of war
  By Joseph Trevithick January 5, 2016 The Pentagon is quietly building up a small airstrip in a remote region of east Africa as part of its war against Islamic militants. More importantly, the airfield is a complex microcosm of how Washington runs military operations overseas — and how America’s way of war will probably look for the foreseeable future. Chabelley Airfield is less than 10 miles from the capital of the small African nation of Djibouti. The small airport is the hub for America’s drone operations in the nearby hotspots of Somalia and Yemen. But in spite of all of this, Chabelley isn’t what it might otherwise seem – at least not officially. You see, the site is not technically an American base. [Bases]
• The Difference a Year Makes: a Reason to Hope?
  by Andrew Levine At the dawn of 2015 and then for the next five or six months, it seemed all but certain that, by now, America’s two most noxious political families, the Clintons and the Bushes, would be fighting it out with one another – to see which would, at last, fade from the scene, and which would soldier on nefariously for another four or eight years. Either way, banksters, corporate moguls and other malevolent capitalists would benefit egregiously, the fossil fuel and defense industries would prosper, and the material wellbeing of nearly everyone else would decline. Still, there would be reasons to care about the outcome. Nominations to the Supreme Court and other federal benches are at stake, along with appointments of officials who serve at the President’s pleasure. On matters such as these, sensible people would assume correctly that Hillary Clinton would be better (less bad) than Jeb Bush. This is why the expectation a year ago was that, by now, liberals would be back in full-fledged lesser evil mode. What a dreary prospect! [US_election16]
• Prince Mohammed bin Salman: Naive, arrogant Saudi prince is playing with fire
  German intelligence memo shows the threat from the kingdom’s headstrong defence minister Patrick Cockburn | Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the powerful 29-year-old favourite son of the ageing King Salman AFP/Getty Images At the end of last year the BND, the German intelligence agency, published a remarkable one-and-a-half-page memo saying that Saudi Arabia had adopted “an impulsive policy of intervention”. It portrayed Saudi defence minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – the powerful 29-year-old favourite son of the ageing King Salman, who is suffering from dementia – as a political gambler who is destabilising the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria. Spy agencies do not normally hand out such politically explosive documents to the press criticising the leadership of a close and powerful ally such as Saudi Arabia. It is a measure of the concern in the BND that the memo should have been so openly and widely distributed. The agency was swiftly slapped down by the German foreign ministry after official Saudi protests, but the BND’s warning was a sign of growing fears that Saudi Arabia has become an unpredictable wild card. One former minister from the Middle East, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “In the past the Saudis generally tried to keep their options open and were cautions, even when they were trying to get rid of some government they did not like.” The BND report made surprisingly little impact outside Germany at the time. [Saudi Arabia] [Outsourcing] [Wahhabi]
• The Saudi-U.S. relationship: Shakier than ever
  Saudi Arabia's royal family is frightened — and that's a problem for the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The Saudis are surrounded by enemies. To the north, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, leader of Islamic State, has promised to overthrow the Al Saud dynasty, which he calls “the serpent's head.” To the south, Sunni-led Saudi forces are at war against Shia Muslim rebels in Yemen. To the east, the Al Saud face the rival they fear most, Shia-ruled Iran. The fracture in U.S.-Saudi relations isn't going away, because the foundations of the relationship -- the interests the two countries had in common -- are no longer as strong. - [Saudi Arabia] [US Middle East Strategy]
• Oil, money, politics and evil: Our leading Middle East ally is the worst country imaginable
  America's BFF relationship with the corrupt, vicious and oil-rich Saudi despots might be our worst mistake of all Andrew O'Hehir Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Saudi Arabia'a Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud at the State Department in Washington, on April 12, 2012. (Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin) American foreign policy is full of things we can’t see and things we don’t talk about. The drone war of the Obama years; the “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” of the George W. Bush years. Nixon and Kissinger’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. The overthrow of democratic governments we didn’t like: Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Once you get started with this stuff it’s hard to stop, and pretty soon your friends are giving you that look, like they’re wondering at what point you’ll start talking about your stormy personal relationship with Richard Helms, or the microchips implanted in your dental work. But even by those standards, the case of Saudi Arabia is special. We love Saudi Arabia so much! The Bush family loves Saudi Arabia; the Clinton family loves Saudi Arabia. You and I are frequently told that we love Saudi Arabia, even if we aren’t exactly sure why. We write mash notes in Saudi Arabia’s yearbook, in pink Magic Marker with lots of hearts: BE-HEDDING ALL THOSE PPL! U R SO SEXY!!! We have never overthrown a democratic government in Saudi Arabia. It would admittedly be difficult to do so, since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has never had a democratic government and never will. Our tax dollars and Saudi oil dollars flow back and forth between Washington and Riyadh in a bewildering matrix understood by no one, ending up along the way in the handbags of hookers in Vegas and the tip baskets of croupiers in Macau. It’s kind of a crazy, stupid love. No, I mean that. It’s diagnosably insane and unbelievably stupid, verging on suicidal. [Saudi Arabia] [US Middle East policy] [Hillary Clinton]
• Defy America, pay no price
  By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer January 7
  If you’re going to engage in a foreign policy capitulation, might as well do it when everyone is getting tanked and otherwise occupied. Say, around New Year’s Eve. Here’s the story. In October, Iran test-fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in brazen violation of a Security Council resolution explicitly prohibiting such launches. President Obama does nothing. One month later, Iran does it again. The administration makes a few gestures at the U.N. Then nothing. Then finally, on Dec. 30, the White House announces a few sanctions. They are weak, aimed mostly at individuals and designed essentially for show. Amazingly, even that proves too much. By 10 p.m. that night, the administration caves. The White House sends out an email saying that sanctions are off — and the Iranian president orders the military to expedite the missile program. Is there any red line left? First, the Syrian chemical weapons. Then the administration insistence that there would be no nuclear deal unless Iran accounted for its past nuclear activities. (It didn’t.) And unless Iran permitted inspection of its Parchin nuclear testing facility. (It was allowed self-inspection and declared itself clean.) And now, illegal ballistic missiles. [US Middle East Strategy] [Hawk]
• Saudi Arabia faces 'economic bomb' and hikes gas prices 50%
  by Heather Long January 5, 2016: 12:18 PM ET While the world's attention is focused on Saudi Arabia's latest flare up with Iran, many Saudis are concerned about the "economic bomb" at home. The government is slashing a plethora of perks for its citizens. The cash crunch is so dire that the Saudi government just hiked the price of gasoline by 50%. Saudis lined up at gas stations Monday to fill up before the higher prices kicked in. "They have announced cutbacks in subsidies that will hurt every single Saudi in their pocketbook," says Robert Jordan, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and author of "Desert Diplomat: Inside Saudi Arabia Following 9/11." Gas used to cost a mere 16 cents a liter in Saudi Arabia, one of the cheapest prices in the world. Many Saudis drive large SUVs and "have no concept of saving gas," says Jordan. Gas price hike is just the beginning The gas hike is just the beginning. Water and electricity prices are also going up, and the government is scaling back spending on roads, buildings and other infrastructure. Those cuts might sound normal for any government that is running low on cash. But it's especially problematic in Saudi Arabia because the vast majority of Saudis work in the public sector. About 75% of the Saudi government's budget comes from oil. The price of oil has crashed from over $100 a barrel in 2014 to around $36 currently. Most experts don't expect a rebound anytime soon. The Saudi government used its vast oil wealth to provide generous benefits to its citizens. When the Arab Spring rocked the Middle East in 2011, the Saudi king spent even more in an effort to subdue any discontent in the country. [Saudi Arabia]
• The United States’ 20 Wealthiest People, The 0.000006%, and Who Pays $300k to Hear Hillary
  By David Swanson Global Research, January 07, 2016 Let's Try Democracy 6 January 2015 The United States’ 20 wealthiest people (The 0.000006 Percent) now own more wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households. The Forbes 400 now own about as much wealth as the nation’s entire African-American population — plus more than a third of the Latino population — combined; more wealth combined than the bottom 61 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 194 million people or 70 million households. These stats are from the Middle Ages and also from the Institute for Policy Studies which acknowledges that much wealth is hidden offshore and the reality is likely even worse. [Inequality] [Plutocracy] [Corruption]
• Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us
  Wealthiest 20 people own more wealth than half the American population By Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, December 1, 2015. This report exposes the extreme wealth concentrated within the fortunes of the 400 wealthiest Americans and compares this wealth to the much more meager assets of several different segments of American society. The report proposes several solutions to close the growing gap between the ultra wealthy and the rest of the country. These policies include closing offshore tax havens and billionaire loopholes in the tax code that the wealthy exploit to hide their wealth. The report also proposes a direct tax on wealth to break up the concentration of wealth and generate trillions of dollars in new revenue to invest in wealth building opportunities for working families. See shareable graphics below. KEY FINDINGS: •America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 luxury jet –­ now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households. •The Forbes 400 now own about as much wealth as the nation’s entire African-American population ­– plus more than a third of the Latino population ­– combined. •The wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire African American population in the United States. Among the Forbes 400, just 2 individuals are African American –­ Oprah Winfrey and Robert Smith. •The wealthiest 186 members of the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population. Just five members of the Forbes 400 are Latino including Jorge Perez, Arturo Moreno, and three members of the Santo Domingo family. •With a combined worth of $2.34 trillion, the Forbes 400 own more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the country combined, a staggering 194 million people. •The median American family has a net worth of $81,000. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 36 million of these typical American families. That’s as many households in the United States that own cats. We believe that these statistics actually underestimate our current national levels of wealth concentration. The growing use of offshore tax havens and legal trusts has made the concealing of assets much more widespread than ever before. [Inequality]
• Immunity of State Officials for War Crimes: UN Library’s Most-checked-out Book in 2015
  By Dylan Matthews Global Research, January 07, 2016 Vox 6 January 2016 The United Nations and the Houla Massacre: The Information Battlefield The Dag Hammarskjöld Library at the United Nations — named after the secretary general who died in 1961 — doesn’t make the news very often. Meant to be used by the professional Secretariat staff of the UN and by national delegations, it stores documents and publications from the UN and related organizations, as well as a raft of other books and materials on international relations, law, economics, and other UN-relevant topics. So, you know, a library. But even the UN’s library has a social media presence now, and recently it tweeted the publication that got checked out the most frequently in 2015: What was our most popular book of 2015? Find it in our library catalogue! https://t.co/hmfeCmGKCj (UN only) pic.twitter.com/niGXUxHtGt — UN Library (@UNLibrary) December 31, 2015 To be clear: The UN is full of delegates representing awful dictatorships, and the book that got checked out the most from the UN library was about … how to be immune from war crimes prosecution. That does not seem like a good thing! [War crimes] [Double standards]
• Saudi Arabia stews in policy hell: Spengler
  By David P. Goldman on January 3, 2016 in AT Top Writers, China, David P. Goldman, Middle East, Spengler Last week’s mass executions in Saudi Arabia suggest panic at the highest level of the monarchy. The action is without precedent, even by the grim standards of Saudi repression. In 1980 Riyadh killed 63 jihadists who had attacked the Grand Mosque of Mecca, but that was fresh after the event. Most of the 47 prisoners shot and beheaded on Jan. 2 had sat in Saudi jails for a decade. The decision to kill the prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, the most prominent spokesman for restive Saudi Shia Muslims in Eastern Province, betrays fear of subversion with Iranian sponsorship. Why kill them all now? It is very hard to evaluate the scale of internal threats to the Saudi monarchy, but the broader context for its concern is clear: Saudi Arabia finds itself isolated, abandoned by its longstanding American ally, at odds with China, and pressured by Russia’s sudden preeminence in the region. The Saudi-backed Army of Conquest in Syria seems to be crumbling under Russian attack. The Saudi intervention in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi rebels has gone poorly. And its Turkish ally-of-convenience is consumed by a low-level civil war. Nothing has gone right for Riyadh. [Saudi Arabia]
• Romancing the Sunni: A US policy tragedy in three acts; Act I
  By Angelo Codevilla on December 21, 2015 Lifting the veil Today, as Daesh/ISIS — a sub-sect of Sunni Islam — murders and encourages murdering Americans, our foreign policy establishment argues that doubling down on efforts to “gain the confidence” of Sunni states, potentates, and peoples will lead them to turn against the jihadis among themselves and to fight Daesh with “boots on the ground.” For more than a quarter century, as Americans have suffered trouble from the Muslim world’s Sunni and Shia components and as the perennial quarrel between them has intensified, the US government has taken the side of the Sunni. This has not worked out well for us. It is past time for our government to sort out our own business, and to mind it aggressively. President George W. Bush doing sword dance with then prince (now Saudi king) Salman bin Abdul Aziz in 2008. President George W. Bush doing sword dance with then prince (now Saudi king) Salman bin Abdul Aziz in 2008. To understand why hopes for help from the Sunni side are forlorn, we must be clear that jihadism in general and Daesh in particular are logical outgrowths of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s (and the Gulf monarchies’) official religion, about how they fit in the broader conflict between Sunni and Shia, as well as about how the US occupation of Iraq exposed America to the vagaries of intra-Muslim conflicts. [US Middle East Strategy]
• Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libya Intervention
  by Brad Hoff January 6, 2016 Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, murdered by Western-backed rebels on October 20, 2011, planned to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the dollar and euro. (Photo: Jesse B. Awalt/US Navy) Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, murdered by Western-backed rebels on October 20, 2011, planned to create a gold-backed African currency to compete with the dollar and euro. (Photo: Jesse B. Awalt/US Navy) The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook. But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency. [Libya] [Pretext] [Reserve] [US$]
• Crime and Punishment in Kosovo
  by Vedat Xhymshiti December 26, 2015 The question is why the EU is banning ordinary citizens freedom of movement, but not criminals. Kosovo accused the European Union on Tuesday for inciting extremism in the impoverished Balkan countries, by refusing to ease visa rules for Kosovars in 2016. Kosovo remains the only country in the Balkans whose citizens need visas to travel to most EU countries. The political leadership has been speaking of visa liberalization every year since 2008, and recently told citizens that they expected a favorable decision this month and possible late requests for next year, regarding the visa process. “These delays are absurd and deliberate, which not only encourage extremism in the country, but also will increase frustration among the citizens of Kosovo,” read a statement from Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hashim Thaçi. Kosovo is the poorest and most isolated country in Europe, with millionaire politicians steeped in crime. A third of the workforce is unemployed, and corruption is widespread. Youth unemployment (those aged 25 and under) stands at 2 in 3, and nearly half of the 1.8 million citizens of Kosovo are considered to be in poverty. From December 2014 until February 2015, about 5% of the population was forced to leave the country in an effort to find a better life, studies and more dignified jobs, on their uncertain path towards wealthier countries in the EU. The decision came at a time when Kosovo is facing the most serious political crisis since the declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008. In the past three months the opposition has disrupted the work of Parliament using tear gas and pepper spray, whistles and water bottles, apparently demanding that the government renounce a deal with Serbia giving more powers to ethnic-Serb communities and another with Montenegro on border demarcation. Thirteen members of the opposition in the country so far are being held in custody on suspicion of ‘endangering the general safety’. [Kosovo]
• Kosovo: NATO’s Success Story?
  by Dan Glazebrook January 6, 2016 In 1999, NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days, culminating in the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the Serbian province of Kosovo. Tens of thousands were killed or maimed by the airstrikes, and Kosovo was carved out as a NATO statelet under the control of UNMIK (the United Nations Mission in Kosovo) in alliance with its local quislings the Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA). Last month’s parliamentary debate on British airstrikes in Syria witnessed several MPs citing the operation as a great success. Labour MP Ivan Lewis was “proud of the difficult choices that we made” in Kosovo and elsewhere, which he claimed “saved hundreds of thousands of lives”. Kosovo was particularly held up by those supporting British military action in Syria as an example of how airstrikes alone, without support from ground forces, can be victorious. Mocking those who argued that “coalition action which rests almost wholly on bombing…will have little effect”, Margaret Beckett responded “well, tell that to the Kosovans, and do not forget that if there had not been any bombing in Kosovo perhaps 1 million Albanian Muslim refugees would be seeking refuge in Europe.” Conservative MP Richard Benyon concurred, adding: “I asked one my constituents––someone who knows a bit about this, General Sir Mike Jackson––whether he could remember any conflict where air power alone made a difference. He thought and said one word: Kosovo.” The argument is entirely fallacious. [Kosovo]
• Yemen to expel UN human rights official
  Agence France Presse UNITED NATIONS: Yemen has declared the leading U.N. rights official in the country "persona non grata", the U.N. spokesman said Thursday, describing the decision as "an extremely regrettable development." George Abu al-Zulof, the head of the U.N. human rights office in Yemen, "has been doing an excellent job," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The decision came just days after the United Nations raised alarm over the use of cluster bombs by the Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen's government in its war against Shiite rebels. The office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights said Tuesday that its staff in Yemen had found remnants of 29 cluster bombs during a field visit in Haradh district in the northwest. [Cluster bombs] [Yemen] [Saudi Arabia]
• Saudi Arabia's troubled economy could bring down ruling House of Saud
  Economic View: The collapse of the global oil price since the summer of 2014 has destroyed the Kingdom’s public finances • Ben Chu Economics Editor • @Benchu_ An investor at the Saudi Stock Exchange, or Tadawul, in the capital Riyadh Getty Images The smoke from the Middle Eastern firestorm ignited by Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shia cleric has served to obscure the Kingdom’s economic crisis. On Wednesday, the US Secretary of State John Kerry launched a frenetic round of telephone diplomacy to attempt to persuade leaders in Saudi Arabia and Iran to step back from edge. But in the medium term, it might well be the economic crisis that matters more. The collapse of the global oil price since the summer of 2014 has destroyed the Kingdom’s public finances – hardly surprising given it relies on oil sales for 90 per cent of state revenues. The Kingdom’s budget deficit for 2015 ballooned to 15 per cent of its GDP. [Saudi Arabia]
• U.S. sees Assad staying in Syria until March 2017
  By Matthew Lee and Bradley Klapper, The Associated Press 1:38 p.m. EST January 6, 2016 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's best-case scenario for political transition in Syria does not foresee Bashar Assad stepping down as the country's leader before March 2017, outlasting Obama's presidency by at least two months, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press. An internal timeline prepared for U.S. officials dealing with the Syria crisis sets an unspecified date in March 2017 for Assad to "relinquish" his position as president and for his "inner circle" to depart. That would be more than five years after Obama first called for Assad to leave. The timeline is based on a broad U.N.-endorsed plan that was initially laid out at an international conference in Vienna in November. Syria, according to that strategy, would hold elections for a new president and parliament in August 2017 — some 19 months from now. In the interim, Syria would be run by a transitional governing body. [US Syria policy] [Bashar Assad]
• The Ramadi illusion
  The Iraqi military's hasty self-congratulatory statements of victory in Ramadi are as misleading as the international chorus that echoes them, envisaging a routing-in-the-making of the Islamic State (IS). Just as the United States had made three different anticlimactic announcements of its withdrawal from a "stabilized and democratized" Iraq (in November 2008, in February 2009 and in August 2010), only to be back with additional troops in June 2014 and more troops a year later, the US-trained Iraqi military declared months ago that it had forced IS from parts of Ramadi and was on the offensive to retake it and announced that the city was about to fall in its hands. Author Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou Posted January 5, 2016 Beyond their time-honored shortsightedness, there is something particularly arresting about the latest victory narratives: They betray a vividly impatient desire on the part of the Iraqi authorities and their regional and international allies to paint a victory — any victory — against IS at the price of far-sighted strategy, realistic assessment and lessons learned — and that, in itself, is an indication of how much genuine and innovative effort will be needed from them to decisively battle IS in the long run. [ISIS] [Iraq]
• Does Bernie Sanders’ Imperialism Matter?
  by Shamus Cooke Critiquing Bernie Sanders from the left can be a lonely project. There is a “hope”-powered hysteria surrounding his campaign, and bursting the “hope” bubble can produce a fierce backlash. The Sanders “hope” explosion is so fierce because capitalism has become a hopeless place. Hope can be positive by pushing people into political action, but it’s also exploited by the establishment as shiny bait. Obama, for example, fished for votes using “hope” and reeled in the presidency. He then clubbed “hope” senseless by betraying his promises, continuing war and maintaining the domestic policies of the 1%. Hope was so thoroughly thrashed that a new messiah of hope was needed to cure the Obama-fortified hopelessness. Bernie’s version of hope is deeper than Obama’s shallow PR electoral campaign, but under capitalism real “hope” isn’t a simple recipe, and Bernie is missing some key ingredients, most notably “anti-imperialism,” which is exemplified in Bernie’s reactionary foreign policy positions. [Sanders] [Imperialism]
• Invitation to a Beheading: Saudi Arabia’s Enablers
  by Robert Fisk January 5, 2016 When Saudi Arabia was elected to the UN Human Rights Council in 2013 – with Dave Cameron’s help – we all regarded it as farce. Now, only hours after the Sunni Muslim Saudis chopped off the heads of 47 of their enemies – including a prominent Shia Muslim cleric – the Saudi appointment is grotesque. Of course, the world of human rights is appalled – and Shia Iran is talking of the “divine punishment” that will destroy the House of Saud. Crowds attack the Saudi embassy in Tehran. So what’s new? [Saudi Arabia] [Execution]
• The Ten Most Important Developments In Syria In 2015
  By Syria Comment - Joshua Landis January 6, 2016 By Aron Lund for Syria Comment* I wrote an article for Syria Comment last year listing the top events of 2014 and what to look for in 2015. So here’s another one—a very long one, in fact. It has been compiled in bits and pieces over a few weeks but was finalized only now, a few days after the fact. In keeping with the buzzfeedification of international political writing, I have decided to make it a top ten list and to provide very few useful sources, just a lot of speculative opinion. [Syria]
• 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2016
  Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Foreign Policy | 3 Jan 2016 Pulling together a list of the wars most in need of international attention and support in 2016 is challenging for all the wrong reasons. For 20 years after the end of the Cold War, deadly conflict was in decline. Fewer wars were killing fewer people the world over. Five years ago, however, that positive trend went into reverse, and each year since has seen more conflict, more victims, and more people displaced. 2016 is unlikely to bring an improvement from the woes of 2015: It is war — not peace — that has momentum. That said, there are conflicts whose urgency and importance rise above. This year’s list of 10 is weighted toward wars with the worst humanitarian consequences: Syria and Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the Lake Chad basin. It includes those in influential and functioning states, like Turkey, as well as those that have collapsed, like Libya. It features conflicts that are already bad but are poised to get much worse without intelligent intervention, such as Burundi, as well as tensions, such as those in the South China Sea, that are simmering but have yet to boil over. The list also considers the hopeful example presented by Colombia, where considerable progress is being made toward ending a 51-year insurgency.
• Trump says Cruz’s Canadian birth could be ‘very precarious’ for GOP
  By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker January 5 at 8:11 PM ? LOWELL, Mass. — Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a “very precarious” issue that could make the senator from Texas vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee. “Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic. “It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.” Trump added: “I’d hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.” [US_Election16]
• Iran, Emerging From Sanctions, Faces More Isolation After Embassy Attack
  By Thomas Erdbrink Jan. 4, 2016 The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr sparked outrage and protests in parts of the Muslim world, leading to the severing of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. TEHRAN — When a Saudi state executioner beheaded the prominent Shiite dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, the Shiite theocracy in Iran took it as a deliberate provocation by its regional rival and dusted off its favored playbook, unleashing hard-liner anger on the streets. Within hours of the execution, nationalist Iranian websites were calling for demonstrations in front of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad. The police, outnumbered, looked the other way as angry protesters set the embassy ablaze with firebombs, climbed the fences and vandalized parts of the building. [Saudi Arabia] [Iran] [Media] [Inversion]
• U.S. Struggles to Explain Alliance With Saudis
  By David E. Sanger Jan. 4, 2016 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Monday confronted the fundamental contradiction in its increasingly tense relationship with Saudi Arabia. It could not bring itself, at least in public, to condemn the execution of a dissident cleric who challenged the royal family, for fear of undermining the fragile Saudi leadership that it desperately needs in fighting the Islamic State and ending the conflict in Syria. The United States has usually looked the other way or issued carefully calibrated warnings in human rights reports as the Saudi royal family cracked down on dissent and free speech and allowed its elite to fund Islamic extremists. In return, Saudi Arabia became America’s most dependable filling station, a regular supplier of intelligence, and a valuable counterweight to Iran. For years it was oil that provided the glue for a relationship between two nations that share few common values. Today, with American oil production surging and the Saudi leadership fractured, the mutual dependency that goes back to the early 1930s, with the first American investment in the kingdom’s oil fields, no longer binds the nations as it once did. [Saudi Arabia] [US Middle East Strategy] [Double standards]
• Saudi Arabia’s reckless regime
  By Editorial Board January 3 SAUDI ARABIA’S King Salman has dedicated his first year on the throne to bold and sometimes reckless moves to shore up the royal family’s power both at home and abroad. Now he has taken a step that was as risky and ruthless as it was unjustified: the execution of a leading Shiite cleric who had spoken out for the kingdom’s repressed minority sect. It was an act that appears bound — and maybe was intended — to further inflame conflict between Shiites and Sunnis across the Middle East. [Saudi Arabia] [US Middle East policy]
• European Sympathies Lean Toward Iran in Conflict With Saudi Arabia
  By Sewell Chan Jan. 4, 2016 LONDON — In the days since Saudi Arabia inflamed tensions with Iran by executing 47 people, including a Shiite cleric, European observers have been quick to condemn the action, reflecting broader concern across the Continent about Saudi policy and its role in the tumult rolling through the Middle East. Opposition in Europe to the death penalty — and harsh corporal punishment, including the flogging of a Saudi blogger who has become something of a cause célèbre in Europe — is just one element of the criticism of the Saudi monarchy. Even as European governments continue to view Saudi Arabia as a vital if problematic stabilizing force in the region, as well as a rich market for European arms and other products, European opinion has grown increasingly critical of Saudi support and financing for Wahhabist and Salafist preachers who have contributed to the Sunni extremist ideology that has fueled Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. In addition, the European Union and six major world powers reached a deal in Vienna over the summer to contain Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran is seen as essential to ending the five-year-old civil war in Syria, which has fueled a surge of migrants to the Continent, the highest number since World War II. So for many Europeans, Iran — long a pariah because of its anti-Western rhetoric and its nuclear program — has suddenly become, at least in comparison with Saudi Arabia, an object of sympathy. [EU] [Public opinion] [Saudi Arabia] [Execution]
• Ben Anderson: the one and only!
  BY Ariel Heryanto Obituary Benedict Anderson (1936–2015) The sudden and peaceful death of Benedict Anderson on 13 December 2015, in Indonesia, has generated a flurry of tributes around the world. Instead of highlighting his best achievements, I wish to suggest how some of his achievements can inspire Asian studies scholars as they face the challenges of the new century. For at least the past two decades, Asian-area studies has been the target of attacks from multiple directions. Its value and relevance are questioned, often in opposition to traditional disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Closely related to the debate is the value of language training. Finally, there are issues of ethics and politics of studying Asia. The work and life of Ben Anderson are immensely relevant to all these issues. [Asian Studies] [Indonesia] [Benedict Anderson]
• Malaysia In 2015: Year Of Governing Arrogantly – OpEd
  By Dr. Azly Rahman January 3, 2016 There is so much to talk about the horrible state of Malaysian politics one does not know where to begin to analyze it. We leave 2015 with a stronger government with all the tools and instruments of repression it needs, a nation almost bankrupt, a helpless populace drowned in their daily struggle amid the rising cost of living, reading stories upon stories of massive corruption among the leaders of the ruling party, increasing violence on the streets, rising tension between youth of different ethnic groups, talk of Johor, Sabah, and Sarawak leaving Malaysia, a broken-down-opposition coalition, a still unresolved issue of the 1MDB, and a range of other issues that will usher our beloved nation into yet another hateful year. [Malaysia]
• Saudi Arabia has a giant mess on its hands
  By Matt O'Brien January 4 at 6:30 AM The next casualty in Saudi Arabia's oil price war might be its own economy. That's because, with oil revenues drying up, Saudi Arabia is about to make the same mistake that Europe has over and over and over again. What's that? Well, trying to cut its budget without cutting interest rates or otherwise softening the economic blow. Now, it's true that Saudi Arabia has to do something. You can't have an economy based on redistributing oil money when there isn't that much oil money to redistribute. Especially when it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. Saudi Arabia, you see, has been flooding the market with cheap crude to try to drive its high-cost competitors out of business, but that isn't as easy as it used to be. Shale drillers can stay profitable at lower prices than before, and, more importantly, can turn production on or off as needed for relatively little. So even if the Saudis succeed in forcing them into hibernation, they should still be able to wake up in time to keep prices from rising to much more than $50-a-barrel. And that, in turn, means that Riyadh can't continue to spend so much money that it'd need oil to be at $80-a-barrel to pay for it.
• US threatens new sanctions on Iran
  By Peter Symonds 4 January 2016 The Iranian regime has reacted angrily to threats by the Obama administration last week to impose new sanctions targeting individuals and companies connected to its ballistic missile program. The US is accusing Iran of carrying out two ballistic missile tests—in October and November—in breach of a UN Security Council resolution banning Iran’s development of such weapons systems. Washington’s threat is particularly provocative as it came just days after Tehran fulfilled a key aspect of the nuclear agreement reached last July between Iran and the P5+1 group that includes the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany. A Russian ship left Iran last Monday carrying virtually all country’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium and thus greatly lengthening the time that would be needed to manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. Tehran has repeatedly denied that it has any plans to build a nuclear weapon. [US Middle East Policy] [Iran] [UNUS] [Missile]
• The mass beheadings in Saudi Arabia
  4 January 2016 Washington’s closest ally in the Arab world, the dictatorial monarchy of Saudi Arabia, ushered in the New Year with a torrent of blood, simultaneously executing 47 prisoners. This wave of state murders unfolded at 12 separate prisons across the kingdom. At eight of them, the condemned were beheaded, while at four others they were cut down by firing squads. The headless corpses were then crucified and left hanging in public as a hideous warning to any who would even contemplate opposing the absolute power of the ruling royal family. The most prominent of those put to death was Nimr al-Nimr, a Muslim cleric and leading spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shiite minority. Nimr, who was interrogated under torture and then brought before a kangaroo court, was convicted on charges that included “disobeying the ruler” and “encouraging, leading and participating in demonstrations.” These “crimes” stemmed from the mass protests that swept Saudi Arabia’s predominantly Shiite Eastern Province in 2011, expressing popular demands for democratic reforms and an end to the Sunni monarchy’s discrimination and oppression of the Shiite population. Three other Shiite prisoners were executed alongside Nimr, including one who was a minor at the time of his alleged offense. The rest of those put to death were Sunnis accused of involvement in Al Qaeda attacks that took place in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006. The barbaric killing spree carried out by the regime in Riyadh was a calculated political act driven by both domestic and international objectives. The Saudi monarchy joined the execution of Nimr with those of the alleged Al Qaeda members to drive home its identification of any opposition to its rule as an act of terrorism. In the first instance, its aim is to intimidate the Shiite minority, which constitutes approximately 15 percent of the population and is concentrated in the Eastern Province, a key oil-producing region. [Saudi Arabia]
• Slouching Toward Global Disaster
  by Richard Falk January 1, 2016 There are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace. Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’ These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hillary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder. From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives. The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement. Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president. Already Donald Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner, has seemed to commit the United States to a struggle against all of Islam by his foolish effort to insist that every Muslim is a terrorist suspect Islam as a potential terrorist who should be so treated. Even Samuel Huntington were he still alive might not welcome such an advocate of ‘the clash of civilizations’! [US Middle East Policy] [Liberal]
• Violent sovereign-citizen plots grow in U.S. — and now go worldwide
  Highlights Authorities around the world now are dealing with the anti-government movement Meanwhile, domestic terrorism cases continue to mount in the U.S. Experts say our focus must be on all terrorism, foreign and domestic By Judy L. Thomas In June, police showed up at Norman Raddatz’s door to arrest him on a criminal harassment charge involving an ongoing anti-Semitic hate crimes case. When they tried to enter, Raddatz fired more than 50 rounds from a high-powered rifle inside his home, killing one officer and wounding another, authorities said. After the shooting subsided, the house burst into flames, and Raddatz’s body was later found in the charred remains. Raddatz was described as a sovereign citizen, and the incident compares with a number of other violent confrontations involving sovereigns over the past year. Except that it occurred in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The sovereign citizen movement, which has emerged as a key combatant in the battle against domestic terrorism in the United States, continues to swell, with violent incidents erupting on a regular basis. But authorities and experts say the exponential growth of sovereign citizens — their numbers are now estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands — isn’t strictly a U.S. phenomenon any more. The movement’s tentacles, they say, are reaching worldwide. “It has gone international,” said Bob Paudert, the former police chief of West Memphis, Ark., whose son and another officer were gunned down by sovereign citizens during a traffic stop in 2010. “We know they’ve been in Canada for several years, and now they’re organizing in Australia. “This is exactly where we were in 2010. We had no idea who they were or what they were, the judges didn’t know, and the officers didn’t know.” Sovereign citizens are a loose network of individuals whose adherents believe the government is corrupt and out of control; therefore, they do not recognize local, state or federal authority or tax systems. In Canada, they’re sometimes known as Freemen on the Land. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article51885525.html#storylink=cpy [Alienation]
• Bernie Sanders: The Quiet Revolt
  Simon Head In 2003 I wrote in my The New Ruthless Economy that one of the great imponderables of the twenty-first century was how long it would take for the deteriorating economic circumstances of most Americans to become a dominant political issue. It has taken over ten years but it is now happening, and its most dramatic manifestation to date is the rise of Bernie Sanders. While many political commentators seem to have concluded that Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee, polls taken as recently as the third week of December show Sanders to be ahead by more than ten points in New Hampshire and within single-figure striking distance of her in Iowa, the other early primary state. Though he continues to receive far less attention in the national media than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, Sanders is posing a powerful challenge not only to the Democratic establishment aligned with Hillary Clinton, but also the school of thought that assumes that the Democrats need an establishment candidate like Clinton to run a viable campaign for president. Why this should be happening right now is a mystery for historians to unravel. It could be the delayed effect of the Great Recession of 2007-2008, or of economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez’s unmasking of the vast concentration of wealth among the top 1 percent and the 0.1 percent of Americans, or just the cumulative effect of years of disappointment for many American workers. Such mass progressive awakenings have happened before. I remember taking part in antiwar demonstrations on the East and West coasts in the Fall and Winter of 1967–1968. I noticed that significant numbers of solid middle-class citizens were joining in, sometimes with strollers, children, and dogs in tow. I felt at the time that this was the writing on the wall for Lyndon Johnson, as indeed it turned out to be. We may yet see such a shift away from Hillary Clinton, despite her strong performance in the recent debates and her recent recovery in the polls. If it happens, it will owe in large part to Sanders’s unusual, if not unique, political identity. Consider the mix of political labels being attached to him, some by Sanders himself: liberal, left-liberal, progressive, pragmatist, radical, independent, socialist, and democratic socialist. Sanders’s straight talk about the growing inequalities of income and wealth in America has been much written about, notably in a long profile of him in The New Yorker in October. But most of this writing has been of the campaign trail genre, and has not gotten very far in sorting out the strands of radicalism that have come together in Sanders’s run for the presidency and that have attracted large numbers of Americans dissatisfied with their deteriorating economic circumstances and with the politics that has helped create them. Sanders is unusual because he brings together three kinds of radicalism, each with very different roots [Sanders] [US_Election16]
• Saudi Arabia wages a phony war on terror
  Brahma Chellaney Thursday, December 31, 2015 Behind its strategic manipulations and sham alliance to tackle the likes of IS, a purported ally of the West’s official ideology forms the heart of the terrorist creed, writes Brahma Chellaney Saudi security forces take part in a military parade in preparation for the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Picture: Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP CONTAINING the scourge of Islamist terror will be impossible without containing the ideology that drives it: Wahhabism, a messianic, jihad- extolling form of Sunni fundamentalism whose international expansion has been bankrolled by oil-rich sheikhdoms, especially Saudi Arabia. That is why the newly announced Saudi-led anti-terror coalition, the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, should be viewed with profound skepticism. Wahhabism promotes, among other things, the subjugation of women and the death of “infidels”. It is — to quote US President Barack Obama’s description of what motivated a married couple of Pakistani origin to carry out the recent mass shooting in San Bernardino, California — a “perverted interpretation of Islam”, and the ideological mother of jihadist terrorism. Its offspring include Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State, all of which blend hostility toward non-Sunnis and anti-modern romanticism into nihilistic rage. [Saudi Arabia] [Wahhabism]
• Saudi Arabia executes prominent Shiite cleric and 46 others in 12 cities
  Saudi Arabia says 47 executed, including prominent Shiite cleric By Liz Sly January 2 at 8:33 AM ? BEIRUT — Prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr was among 47 people executed Saturday by Saudi Arabia, triggering an angry response from across the Shiite world, including the kingdom’s archenemy, Iran. The official Saudi Press Agency listed Nimr’s name among thosewho were killed in the capital Riyadh and 12 other cities. Some were beheaded, others were killed by firing squads, according to Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry. Nimr, 56, was a key figure in the protests that erupted among Sunni Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring revolts elsewhere in the region. The execution risks stirring renewed unrest among Shiites in the kingdom and drew an immediate harsh response from Iran, which has warned in the past that carrying out the death sentence on Nimr could cost Saudi Arabia dearly. [Saudi Arabia] [Repression] [Sectarianism]
• Obama thinks his Syria strategy is right — and folks just don’t get it
  By Karen DeYoung December 31 at 11:20 AM ? As President Obama flew home from Asia aboard Air Force One in late November, he scolded his aides about how poorly the administration was communicating the U.S.-led strategy against the Islamic State. Throughout the nine-day trip, which had begun less than 24 hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris, they had all heard critics at home and abroad charge that he had no coherent game plan, Obama said. There had even been suggestions that France, with tough talk and a series of retaliatory airstrikes, was now leading the anti-terrorism fight. Aides agreed that the message they had heard on the road was “jarring,” said a senior administration official who was on the flight. But while many outside the administration found the strategy itself lacking, Obama felt what they really needed was to do a better job of explaining it. He ordered what the official called an “uptick in our communications tempo.” Within days of their return, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes had drafted a memo for the president’s approval, outlining specific tasks for officials at all levels, starting with the president himself. Cabinet secretaries needed to talk more in public about all elements of the strategy. The media needed more briefings. Everybody needed to become more comfortable with Twitter. [US Syria policy] [Obama] [Rhetoric]
• Theranos: The Elizabeth Holmes Reality Distortion Field
  Steve Sailer • December 30, 2015 I had only been vaguely aware of the Elizabeth Holmes saga until recently. My impression from all the magazine covers had been that the celebrated Silicon Valley startup foundrix had invented some revolutionary disruptive new method for testing blood and made the Forbes 400 off her invention. Back in 2014, this high tech startup’s board of directors was … remarkable. From Fortune: Little known and privately held, Theranos has assembled what may be, in terms of public service, the most illustrious board in U.S. corporate history. It includes three former U.S. cabinet secretaries, two former U.S. senators, a retired Navy admiral and a retired Marine Corps general. In 2011, explains company founder Elizabeth Holmes, she realized that changing the way health care is delivered in this country would require the help of great strategists. That July she finagled an introduction to George Shultz (above), the former Secretary of State, Treasury, and Labor, at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Shultz had held four cabinet-level positions, counting his stint as director of the Office of Management and Budget, and had also been president of engineering giant Bechtel Group and a director at biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. … Three years later nearly all the other outside directors on Theranos’s board are people who were introduced to the company through Shultz, now 93. They are former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Senators Sam Nunn and Bill Frist (a heart-transplant surgeon), retired U.S. Navy Adm. Gary Roughead, retired U.S. Marine Corp Gen. James Mattis, former Wells Fargo CEO and chairman Dick Kovacevich, and former Bechtel Group CEO Riley Bechtel. Why isn’t Prince Bandar on her board? [Bizarre]
• Israel and its lobby lose the Iran Deal all over again, in news of damning wiretaps
  James North and Philip Weiss on December 30, 2015 You’d think that there would be widespread outrage over the story everyone’s talking about today, the Wall Street Journal scoop that the Obama administration spied on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during the Iran Deal negotiations so as to counter his efforts to sink it. The wiretaps reveal that Israeli officials were up to their necks in the US political process; they “coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.” The president approved the wiretaps. Privately, Mr. Obama maintained the monitoring of Mr. Netanyahu on the grounds that it served a “compelling national security purpose,” according to current and former U.S. officials. That’s right; there’s a compelling national interest in stopping the Israel lobby. Many have said that President Obama lacks spine? Well, it sure looks like the leak to reporters Adam Entous and Danny Yadron came from the administration, and it’s hard to believe that a leak of this magnitude was not approved by the president. - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/israel-damning-wiretaps#sthash.y9E6N9bN.dpuf [Israel] [Iran deal] [Surveillance] [Jewish Lobby]
• Star Wars and the Death of American Cinema
  by John Wight ‘Star Wars’ is a simple story, simply told, of good versus evil, light versus darkness, and freedom versus tyranny. In other words it is the story of America’s struggle to preserve democracy and civilization in a world beset by evil and ‘evildoers’. Movies and political propaganda have long walked hand in hand. Indeed if ever a medium was suited to propaganda it is the medium of cinema. And if ever an industry could be credited with creating an alternate reality so pervasive it has managed to convince generations of Americans and others around the world that up is down, black is white, and left is right, that industry is Hollywood. George Lucas, the creator of a Star Wars franchise which, including this latest installment, has churned out seven movies since the original appeared in 1977, is along with Steven Spielberg a child of the reaction to the American counter-culture of the sixties and early seventies. Though both products of the sixties – a decade in which culture and the arts, particularly cinema, was at the forefront of resistance to the US military industrial complex – Lucas and Spielberg came to prominence in the mid 1970s with movies which rather than attack or question the establishment, instead embraced its role as both protector and arbiter of the nation’s morals. The curtain began to come down on the most culturally vital and exciting and cerebral period of American cinema – responsible for producing such classics as ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, ‘MASH’, ‘The Last Detail’, ‘The French Connection’, ‘The Wild Bunch’, ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Apocalypse Now’ – with Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’ in 1975, followed in 1977 by Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’. The former frightened America, while the latter made it feel good about itself again. Both movies together spawned the high concept blockbuster, wherein audiences were invited to feel rather than to think, allowing them to suspend disbelief and escape reality instead of sharing the experience of confronting it via stories in which alienated characters expressed the angst, frustration, anger, and disaffection which they themselves were experiencing in their own lives, thus inducing a sense of solidarity.
• Donald Trump’s Trump Cards
  Dmitry Minin | 31.12.2015 They say name spells the destiny. Donald Trump could be a good example of that. Being a grandmaster of political game he has become the wild-card in the high-stakes card game called the US election race. Evidently, Trump has fallen out of favor with media. At that he is the clear leader of the 2016 presidential campaign leaving behind all other GOP candidates. His rivals cherished hopes that his recently made statement demanding «total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States» would show that what he says runs contrary to the political correctness rules established in America today. As it happened, many voters who see current administration as weak and ineffective on terrorism, support what Trump says. Besides, Trump explained that his words were distorted. He never said the ban should be permanent. The frontrunner recommended to introduce it on temporary basis until a coherent anti-terrorist national strategy is in place. He hit the nail right on the head choosing this issue as a trump card. A survey conducted before the debates in the days after Trump made his controversial call to ban Muslims from entering the United States showed him having 41 percent support and opening up a 27-point lead over the next closest contender Ted Cruz ahead of December 15 Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas. [Trump]
• How False Stories of Iran Arming the Houthis Were Used to Justify War in Yemen
  Thursday, 31 December 2015 10:42 By Gareth Porter, Truthout Peace talks between the Saudi-supported government of Yemen and the Houthi rebels ended in late December without any agreement to end the bombing campaign started by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies with US support last March. The rationale for the Saudi-led war on Houthis in Yemen has been that the Houthis are merely proxies of Iran, and the main alleged evidence for that conclusion is that Iran has been arming the Houthis for years. The allegation of Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis - an allegation that has often been mentioned in press coverage of the conflict but never proven - was reinforced by a report released last June by a panel of experts created by the UN Security Council: The report concluded that Iran had been shipping arms to the Houthi rebels in Yemen by sea since at least 2009. But an investigation of the two main allegations of such arms shipments made by the Yemeni government and cited by the expert panel shows that they were both crudely constructed ruses. [Iran] [Yemen] [Disinformation]