MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

Tulsi Gabbard: R.I.P. – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on August 6, 2019

Those of us who actually know, such as myself and Stephen Cohen, have been warning for years that the orchestrated hostility against Russia is producing a far more dangerous Cold War than the original one.

A strong personality in what is allegedly the most powerful office in the world who allows his entire first term to be wasted by his opponents in an attempt to frame him and drive him from office is all we need to know about the likely fate of Tulsi Gabbard.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/05/tulsi-gabbard-r-i-p/

Paul Craig Roberts

It is unfortunate that Tulsi Gabbard succumbed to the Israel Lobby.  The forces of the Empire saw it as a sign of weakness and have set about destroying her.

The ruling elite see Gabbard as a threat just as they saw Trump as a threat.  A threat is an attractive political candidate who questions the Empire’s agenda.  Trump questioned the hostility toward Russia orchestrated by the military/security complex.  Gabbard questions the Empire’s wars in the Middle East. This is questioning that encroaches on the agendas of the military/security complex and Israel Lobby.  If fear of Israel is what caused Gabbard to vote the AIPAC line on the bill forbidding criticism of Israel, she won’t be able to stick to her line against Washington’s aggression in the Middle East.  Israel is behind that aggression as it serves Israeli interests.

But the Empire is taking no chances.  The Empire has sicced its Presstitute Battalion on her. Josh Rogin (Washington Post), Joy Reid (MSNBC), Wajahat Ali (New York Times and CNN), and, of course the Twitter trolls paid to slander and misrepresent public figures that the Empire targets.  Google added its weight to the obfuscation of Gabbard.

Gabbard, who in the second “debate” between Democratic Party candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, took down the despicable Kamala Harris with ease, was promptly labeled “an Assad apologist” and a conspiracist with Russia to put herself as a Putin agent in the White House.  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/01/crazed-democrats-now-claim-it-is-tulsi-gabbard-who-is-in-conspiracy-with-putin/

Wars in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies and preparation for major wars against Iran, Russia, and China are the bread and butter for the powerful US military/security complex lobby.  All that is important to the military/security complex is their profits, not whether they get all of us killed.  In other words, their propaganda about protecting America is a lie.  They endanger us all in order to have enemies in order to justify their massive budget and power…

Washington, however, does gain by tearing up the INF treaty. At Europe’s risk, not America’s, Washington’s intermediate-range nuclear missiles stationed in Europe on Russia’s borders permit a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia.  Because of proximity, the warning time is only a couple of minutes.  Washington’s crazed war planners believe that so much of the Russian retaliatory capacity would be destroyed, that Russia would surrender rather than retaliate with diminished forces and risk a second attack.

Putin stresses this danger as does the Russian military.  US missiles on Russia’s border puts the world on a hair trigger. Aside from the fact that a nuclear attack on Russia is the likely intent of the criminal neoconservatives, nuclear warning systems are notorious for false alarms.  During Cold War I, both sides worked to build trust, but since the criminal Clinton regime Washington has worked to destroy all trust between the two dominant nuclear powers.  All that is required to obliterate life on earth, thanks entirely to the crazed fools in Washington, is one false alarm received by the Russians.  Unlike past false alarms, next time the Russians will have no choice but to believe it.

Intermediate-range nuclear missiles leave no time for a phone call between Putin and Trump.  The Russian leader who has suffered hundreds of diplomatic insults, demonization of his person and his country, illegal sanctions, endless false accusations, and endless threats cannot assume that the warning is false.

The idiots in Washington and the presstitutes have programmed the end of the world. When the alarm goes off, the Russian leader has no choice but to push the button…

The American government in Washington has been made so utterly stupid by its arrogant hubris that it has no comprehension of the dangerous situation that it, and it alone, has created.  We are all at risk every minute of our lives because of the power, of which President Eisenhower warned us more than a half century ago to no avail, of the US military/security complex, an organized powerful force determined and able to destroy any American president who would threaten their budget and power by making peace.

Donald Trump is a strong personality, but he has been cowed by the Israel Lobby and the military/security complex.  As reigning president, Trump sat there Twittering while an attack orchestrated by the military/security complex and the Democratic Party, with 100% cooperation from the American media, tried to portray him as a Russian agent as grounds for his impeachment.

A strong personality in what is allegedly the most powerful office in the world who allows his entire first term to be wasted by his opponents in an attempt to frame him and drive him from office is all we need to know about the likely fate of Tulsi Gabbard.

Be seeing you

4ec7b-iu

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Dumb American Worker – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 6, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/bill-sardi/the-dumb-american-worker/

By

I’m reading Steven Greenhouse’s article in the New York Times today entitled YES, AMERICA IS RIGGED AGAINST WORKERS. What drivel.  It would be published in the socialist New York Slimes.

Right to a lunch break, paid maternity leave, vacations, sick days.  These are trivial benefits next to the claws of the Federal Reserve Bank that erodes American workers real purchasing power via inflation.  Inflation is more crushing than any other factor that makes American workers peons.  Whatever pay raise a worker earns, the Federal Reserve taketh away.  Inflation is not the target 2% the Federal Reserve publishes, but more like 6-8% (Source: Shadowstats.com). You have to ask for a 6-8% pay increase every year to maintain your standard of living! 

Any laws that address minimum workers “rights” will simply cripple small business and give more of a market share to the large chain operations…

For entry level workers with few if any skills, giving them the same benefits as other skilled workers seems antithetical to the idea of working your way up to the top.  How many times I’ve heard people say, get a good government job and you will get all the health insurance benefits and vacations, etc.  In other words, you get these benefits regardless of your skill level.  So workers who don’t have the same benefits pay taxes so the government workers can be guaranteed (have a right) to these job benefits.  Is that equality?

The negative part of this is workers begin to look for jobs where they don’t have to compete and learn new job skills.  The mindset is to get a “cush job.”  And regardless of how good you are at your job, the pay grade for your job is already established. 

Of course, you can start your own business like others do, to see how much they are worth in the labor market.  But no, workers demand “equality.”  As Churchill once said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”

Here is what Greenhouse writes: 

“America’s workers have for decades been losing out: year after year of wage stagnation, increased insecurity on the job, waves of downsizing and offshoring, and labor’s share of national income declining to its lowest level in seven decades.”

“Numerous studies have found that an important cause of America’s soaring income inequality is the decline of labor unions — and the concomitant decline in workers’ ability to extract more of the profit and prosperity from the corporations they work for.” 

Here we go, socialist jingo.  Note the words “income inequality.” Joining a union is not going to get you anywhere as the union takes a cut of your paycheck.  Unions, plus or minus, socialize what a worker is worth.  

Businesses operate in a competitive market.  Cost of labor can doom a restaurant owner who is only working on a 10% profit margin to begin with.  Of course, we can halt competition.  Then the cost of everything rises.

We send American kids to school with no orientation on how to get a job, how to build their worth, how to develop job skills.  Students pass a few college classes that hand out true or false tests and that makes them worth more in the labor market?  Young Americans would be better off working as an understudy plumber…

I think of that Biblical parable where a landowner hired workers in the field and agreed pay them a denarius for a day’s work.  But later in the morning the landowner saw other laborers looking for a job and agreed to pay them “whatever is right.”  Then at midday and then again at 3 in the afternoon, the landowner found more idle workers and hired them too.  When it came time to pay all the workers at the end of the day the landowner instructed his paymaster to pay a full denarius even to the workers who weren’t hired until 5 PM.  There was grumbling by the workers who worked all day for the same wage.  The parable was about entering heaven and “the last shall be first” to enter. 

“You have made them equal to us who have worked longer,” said the workers who were hired in the morning.  Just think, workers thought the landowner was unfair when he was just being generous, knowing workers still have the same needs to survive.  In the parable the landowner asked the disgruntled workers “I am not being unfair to you… are you envious because I am generous?” 

Yes, God is unfair too.  Some of the worst sinners who repented have made it into heaven.  I can hear it now… “But I went to church every Sunday and Bible study too, and you (God) let the worst of sinners into heaven before me.”  Yes, that is the lesson.

Be seeing you

Higher minimum wage doesn’t solve main problem ...

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Wars and Domestic Massacres – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 6, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/lew-rockwell/wars-and-massacres/

By

This past weekend, 22 people were killed in El Paso, Texas and 9 in Dayton, Ohio.  There have been a number of other mass shootings in the past two decades or so; the largest was in Las Vegas in 2017, with 58 killed. This is sad, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the real perpetrators of death in America—-the US military.

It is been well-said that “it’s time for America to reckon with the staggering death toll of the post 9-11 wars.”

Brown University’s Costs of War Project this month released a new estimate of the total death toll from the U.S. wars in three countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The numbers, while conservatively estimated, are staggering. Brown’s researchers estimate that at least 480,000 people have been directly killed by violence over the course of these conflicts, more than 244,000 of them civilians. In addition to those killed by direct acts violence, the number of indirect deaths — those resulting from disease, displacement, and the loss of critical infrastructure — is believed to be several times higher, running into the millions.

The report, which uses data spanning from October 2001 to October 2018, compiles previous analysis from nongovernmental organizations, U.S. and foreign government data, and media reports. In a statement, the report authors said the figures still just “scratches the surface of the human consequences of 17 years of war.” Due to challenges in data collection, their total estimate is an undercount, they added.

If we want to end mass killing, this is what we should be trying to stop. Instead, the military is glorified. Deaths in war are downplayed, but when a mass shooting happens in an American city, the media saturates us with propaganda calling for gun control.

This is ironic not only because of the enormous disparity between the numbers killed by the military and those killed in mass shootings. It is also ironic because many of the mass shooters are people the military has trained to become mass killers. In the aftermath of yet another mass shooting in the United States, the internet and broadcast news alike are inundated with commentary about why this keeps happening in America… Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

State Dept: Al-Qaeda Is Strong As it Has Ever Been – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2019

18 years, thousands of US dead, tens of thousands of US maimed, millions of civilian dead and refugees, immigrant invasion of US and Europe.

All for nothing.

It doesn’t help that the US supports 9/11 and Al Qaeda enabler Saudi Arabia.

https://news.antiwar.com/2019/08/04/state-dept-al-qaeda-is-strong-as-it-has-ever-been/

Jason Ditz

It is difficult too understand how the US measures the strength of al-Qaeda at any given time, but the US State Department is saying that the group remains as deadly and active worldwide as it has ever been, and that they are not any weaker than they were during the 9//11 attack.

Arguing that well-established enemies are as strong as ever makes sense from one perspective, as it allows the administration to continue to justify huge military spending to confront their global war on terror.

At the same time, admitting al-Qaeda isn’t substantially weakened from 9/11, despite 18 solid years of US wars against them, doesn’t exactly put the wars in a very positive light, and seems all but an admission of failure.

This is particularly true since the US wars aren’t broadly against al-Qaeda anyhow. A generation of war that was meant to degrade and defeat al-Qaeda has ultimately done neither, and the US is still entangled in multiple wars for its trouble.

Be seeing you

steel helmet

Steel Helmet

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

The Dangers – and Causes – of Unintentional Idling – EPautos – Libertarian Car Talk

Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2019

Several people have already been killed by the gasses emitted from cars left unintentionally idling – a modern problem that first arose when keyless/push-button ignition system came online in mass-marketed cars in the early 2000s.

CAFE standards designed to eliminate internal combustion autos have resulted in ASS.

Switching off your engine. There must be an APP for that.

https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/08/03/the-dangers-of-unintentional-idling/

By

eric

If you don’t think your engine’s still running, you might forget to turn it off. Well, you might forget to push the ignition button off – because the engine isn’t running right now. It seems to be off.

So you think it is, don’t push Off  . . . and leave the car.

Which starts running again a few minutes after you left.

This can – and is – happening because of Automated StartStop (ASS) the new “feature” many new cars come standard with as a fuel-saving measure. Whenever the car stops, so does the engine – the idea being that a non-running engine doesn’t burn any gas or emit any gas. The gains – and reductions – are almost immeasurably small per car but necessary from the standpoint of regulatory compliance – the fuel economy and emissions fatwas that are becoming otherwise impossible to comply with – without switching over to electric cars, which is another story.

So ASS automatically turns the engine off whenever the car isn’t moving, as at a red light or when traffic stops moving. When the driver takes his foot off the brake and depresses the gas pedal, the engine automatically restarts itself and the car resumes moving.

That’s the theory. Here’s the problem:

ASS can’t tell the difference between stopping for a red light or because traffic has temporarily stopped – and stopping because you’re parking. If you forget to push the ignition button off – which is easy to do when the engine has already turned itself off – the engine will restart after awhile, even if the car isn’t moving (and you’re no longer in it) because otherwise the battery runs down – because electrically powered accessories will still be powered if the ignition is still on.

If the engine kicks itself back to life when the car is outside, it’s no big deal. Gas will be wasted – and emitted – as the engine idles.

But if it idles for hours in your garage, it could be a very big deal – if the gasses emitted find their way into your house…

Several people have already been killed by the gasses emitted from cars left unintentionally idling – a modern problem that first arose when keyless/push-button ignition system came online in mass-marketed cars in the early 2000s…

People in a hurry or not paying attention no longer had to shut off the engine in order to remove a physical key. It was now possible for them to assume they’d shut off the engine – because they thought they’d pushed the Off button . . .  and walk away from a still-running car.

If you’ve had a chance to drive a car with pushbutton ignition, you already know all about this. Some systems require an extended push to register the driver’s intentions. If you don’t push – and hold – the button long enough, the engine sometimes stays on. Or it comes back on (if you press the button too long).

You have to make sure the engine is in fact off in a way that was never necessary when keys were used to turn an engine on – and off.

ASS has compounded this problem by actually shutting off the engine  . . . temporarily.

But the ignition is still on – and if that’s not very deliberately turned off, the engine will come back on…

Be seeing you

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Tulsi: A Living Reminder of Iraq’s Liars and Apologists | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2019

Gore Vidal once christened his country the “United States of Amnesia,” explaining that Americans live in a perpetual state of a hangover: “Every morning we wake up having forgotten what happened the night before.”

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/tulsi-a-living-reminder-of-iraqs-liars-and-apologists/

By David Masciotra

Estimates of the number of civilians who died during the war in Iraq range from 151,000 to 655,000. An additional 4,491 American military personnel perished in the war. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, toxicologist at the University of Michigan, has organized several research expeditions to Iraq to measure the contamination and pollution still poisoning the air and water supply from the tons of munitions dropped during the war. It does not require any expertise to assume what the studies confirm: disease is still widespread and birth defects are gruesomely common. Back home, it is difficult to measure just how many struggle with critical injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The gains of war in Iraq remain elusive, especially considering that the justifications for invasion—weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein’s connection to al-Qaeda, the ambition to create a Western-style democracy at gunpoint—remain “murky at best.” That’s a quote from the 9/11 Commission’s conclusion on the so-called evidence linking Iraq to Osama bin Laden’s group, which actually did carry out the worst terrorist attack in American history.

As far as stupid and barbarous decisions are concerned, it is difficult to top the war in Iraq. It is also difficult to match its price tag, which, according to a recent Brown University study, amounts to $1.1 trillion.

Gore Vidal once christened his country the “United States of Amnesia,” explaining that Americans live in a perpetual state of a hangover: “Every morning we wake up having forgotten what happened the night before.”… Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

U.S. Troops Are Back in Saudia Arabia—This Will End Badly

Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2019

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/u-s-troops-are-back-in-saudia-arabia-this-will-end-badly/

Maj. Danny Sjursen

It was big news. U.S. military forces streamed into Saudi Arabia in response to a supposedly serious threat to the kingdom’s eastern region. The American troops were invited by nervous Saudi royals; it wasn’t an American invasion per se. Everything unfolded smoothly at first; still, the consequences would be severe for the United States. Pick up the latest Military Times, or any other news source, and the story will seem recent, if not worthy of any special attention or alarm. Indeed, U.S. troops are headed into Saudi Arabia right now, but that’s not the situation described above.

No, that happened in August 1990, in response to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq—a nation, few remembered, that the U.S. had previously backed in its aggressive war with Iran (1980-88). The kingdom then served as a launch point for the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War (1991) which drove the Iraqis from tiny Kuwait. American soldiers pulled out of Saudi Arabia just over a decade later, in 2003. Now they’re rolling back in. History, as it’s said to do, seems to be repeating itself.

This time, however, the ostensible threat to Saudi Arabia comes from naughty Iran, the American national security state’s current favorite exaggerated villain. And, of course, Iran—unlike our onetime “partners” in Iraq—hasn’t invaded anybody. Thus, the U.S. troop infusion is more preemptive than reactive. It’s no matter; few Americans (or even most media/political elites) seem to notice.

Besides, what could go wrong?…

Maybe the U.S. will get lucky and suffer only a few terror attacks on its troops in the kingdom. Then again, Washington might just blunder into an unnecessary, unwinnable, unethical war with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a nation of 80 million, and further destabilize an already precarious region. The nightmare, but totally possible, scenario would be the radicalization of new Saudi and transnational jihadis who then take the fight to New York or Los Angeles.

It’s happened before, back when America was far less unpopular in the Mideast and the Muslim world than it is today. Don’t count it out.

Be seeing you

?u=http1.bp.blogspot.com-VW7oJe44hnEUOoJECSaOdIAAAAAAAAFtcOBwYhJUuqKMs640cliche3.jpg&f=1

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Book Review: The Assassination of James Forrestal by David Martin – Solari Report

Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2019

It is like messing with Mother Nature. They get mad.

https://home.solari.com/book-review-the-assassination-of-james-forrestal-by-david-martin/

by Catherine Austin Fitts

James Forrestal had a successful career on Wall Street at Dillon, Read & Co. Inc, rising from an entry level position as bond trader to run the firm in 1937. I described Forrestal in Dillon Read & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits:

“James Forrestal’s oil portrait always hung prominently in one of the private Dillon Read dining rooms for the eleven years that I worked at the firm. Forrestal, a highly regarded Dillon partner and President of the firm, had gone to Washington, D.C. in 1940 to lead the Navy during WWII and then played a critical role in creating the National Security Act of 1947. He then became Secretary of War (later termed Secretary of Defense) in September 1947 and served until March 28, 1949.”

David Martin has just published The Assassination of James Forrestal documenting his investigation into the assassination of Secretary Forrestal on May 22, 1949. Forrestal was killed shortly after his forced resignation in March, his “house arrest” at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the pretext that he was unstable, and immediately before the CIA Act was enacted in June 1949.

In combination, the National Security Act of 1947 and the CIA Act of 1949 established the legal framework for the US black budget. Combined with the seizures of assets from WW II to help create a hidden system of finance, the CIA and the US intelligence agencies became the most powerful bankers on the planet with the ability to field significant “secret money for secret armies.” This was combined with a strategic decision to open US consumer markets to narcotics trafficking to pool low cost capital to help build the Anglo-American empires multinational infrastructure. The various partnerships between mafias, organized crime networks and the British and US intelligence and enforcement networks this required have been described – including by Hollywood.

Assassination is a tool used to decide policy debates. Indeed, the power to kill with impunity is the greatest political power on the planet. By simply eliminating effective leadership with important networks and knowledge, it is possible to change the course of events. If you study the work and assassinations of Secretary Forrestal, Senator Joseph McCarthy, President John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, you realize what a different country the United States would be if they have managed to stay alive and in position.

Martin has done a remarkable job of sleuthing out the available facts of what happened. He was able after multiple FOIAs to obtain and publish the Navy’s investigation into Forrestal’s death. With much digging and hard work, he was able to sort through what evidence is available and the sources of the smear effort designed to persuade the general population that Forrestal had a nervous breakdown and had committed suicide. it is a case study on the conversion of garbage into “official history” which cascades through journalists and historians through the years….

I continue to wonder about Forrestal’s opposition to a black budget. Martin points out the President Eisenhower’s grandson had reported that President Truman had tasked then General Eisenhower to “push Forrestal out [of office].” Given the powers that Eisenhower vested in the CIA, one wonders if a partnership between the Dulles brothers and the Rockefellers and the Zionists was involved. Something akin to “You get Israeli nationhood, we get the CIA and the black budget.”

How did things get so bad? When you assassinate the best and the brightest and use the shriek-o-meter to promote thugs, then thugs is what you get. If thugs have the ability to use “bribes and bullets” with impunity, then thugs run countries and international orders. Crime that pays is crime that stays…

Be seing you

world tour

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Has Washington Joined the List of Israeli Occupied Territories? — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2019

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/04/has-washington-joined-the-list-of-israeli-occupied-territories/

Elias Samo

 

Relations between Washington and Damascus have never been cordial, particularly after the creation of Israel in 1948 and Washington’s blanket support of the newly established state. With the election of Obama in 2008, there was a glimmer of hope for improved relations between the two capitals. Although the high expectations of improved Washington-Damascus relations did not materialize noticeably, the Obama period could be viewed as the ‘good old days’ compared to the Trump presidency. Unfortunately, the animosity in Washington towards Syria is not exclusive to the White House, but it includes Congress and Foggy Bottom, and it is counterproductive to the interests of both nations.

UK ambassador Sir Kim Darroch’s “clumsy and inept” characterization of Trump’s administration aside, it is sufficient to refer to Trump’s own characterization of Syria: “We’re not talking about vast wealth. We’re talking about sand and death”. It is beyond belief that a sitting US President labeled the home of the historic Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia, a land very rich in soil, an abundance of rainfall and rivers including the Euphrates and Tigris, as “sand and death”. Syria is also the cradle of civilizations, the home of the three monotheistic religions and home of three of the five oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

Irrespective of Trump’s ignorant comments on Syria, his actions prove he is a dummy for ventriloquist Netanyahu. East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan were occupied in the ‘67 War. From 1967 to the Trump administration, the US went through nine administrations. Many of the presidential candidates publicly spoke of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but not once in the White House did any administration see the wisdom of doing so. Along came Trump and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan.

Congress, the second center of power and decision making in Washington, has long been considered Israeli-occupied territory. In an article titled “The Only Strategic Rationale for America’s Involvement in Syria Finally Revealed,” I wrote that nearly four hundred congressmen; roughly seventy five percent of the total number of congressmen from both chambers and both parties, had written a letter to Trump. The irony, as I noted in the article, is the fact that “four hundred congressmen, who are elected by Americans to serve American interests, at a time when the US is bogged down in the Arab region, sign and submit a letter to the US President concerned almost exclusively with Israeli Security” I conclude noting: “These congressmen had an opportunity to make a coherent recommendation on US policy in the Arab region in the interest of American National Interest, but instead chose to make recommendations to safeguard the wellbeing and security of a foreign state: Israel.” More recently, also nearly four hundred House of Representatives members chose to violate the freedom of speech protected in the First Amendment of the US Constitution and vote for a resolution that rejects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions- BDS- campaign against Israel. Thus, the notion that US Congress is Israeli occupied territory is no exaggeration…

Syria, Israel’s archenemy, would be surrounded on its northern and southern borders by two hostile and powerful enemies occupying Syrian land and would consider further occupation, violating Syrian territorial integrity and permanently threatening Syrian national security. However, take heed, Syria is not a pushover, nor is it alone.

Be seeing you

?u=http1.bp.blogspot.com-VW7oJe44hnEUOoJECSaOdIAAAAAAAAFtcOBwYhJUuqKMs640cliche3.jpg&f=1

John Bolton in drag.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

The Citadels of America’s Elites: Fractured and At Odds with Each Other — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2019

One such orientation insists on a renewal of the Cold War to sustain and renew that supersized military-security complex, which accounts for more than half of America’s GDP.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/03/citadels-america-elites-fractured-and-at-odds-with-each-other/

Alastair Crooke

 

Something is ‘up’. When two Financial Times columnists – pillars of the western Establishment – raise a warning flag, we must take note: Martin Wolf was first off, with a piece dramatically headlined: The looming 100-year, US-China Conflict. No ‘mere’ trade war, he implied, but a full-spectrum struggle. Then his FT colleague Edward Luce, pointed out that Wolf’s “argument is more nuanced than the headline. Having spent part of this week among leading policymakers and thinkers at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Colorado,” Lucetr writes, “I am inclined to think Martin was not exaggerating. The speed with which US political leaders of all stripes have united behind the idea of a ‘new cold war’ is something that takes my breath away. Eighteen months ago the phrase was dismissed as fringe scaremongering. Today it is consensus.”

A significant shift is underway in US policy circles, it seems. Luce’s final ‘take’ is that “it is very hard to see what, or who, is going to prevent this great power rivalry from dominating the 21st century”. It is clear that there is indeed now a clear bi-partisan consensus in the US on China. Luce is surely right. But that is far from being the end of it. A collective psychology of belligerence seems to be taking shape, and, as one commentator noted, it has become not just a great-power rivalry, but a rivalry amongst ‘Beltway’ policy wonks to show “who has the bigger dick”.

And quick to demonstrate his, at Aspen (after others had unveiled their masculinity on China and Iran), was the US envoy for Syria (and deputy US National Security Adviser), James Jeffrey: A US policy boiled down to one overriding component: ‘hammering Russia’. “Hammering Russia” (he insisted repeatedly), will continue until President Putin understands there is no military solution in Syria (he said with heightened verbal emphasis). Russia falsely assumes that Assad has ‘won’ war: “He hasn’t”, Jeffrey said. And the US is committed to demonstrating this fundamental ‘truth’.

Therefore, the US plans to ‘up the pressure’; will escalate the cost to Russia, until a political transition is in place, with a new Syria emerging as a “normal nation”. The US will ‘leverage’ the costs on Russia across the board: Through military pressure – ensuring a lack of military progress in Idlib; through Israelis operating freely across Syria’s airspace; through ‘US partners’ (i.e. the Kurds) consolidating in NE Syria; through economic costs (“our success” in stopping reconstruction aid to Syria); through extensive US sanctions on Syria (integrated with those on Iran) – “these sanctions are succeeding”; and thirdly, by diplomatic pressure: i.e. “hammering Russia” in the UN.

Well, the US shift on Syria also takes one’s breath away. Recall how little time ago, the talk was of partnership, of the US working with Russia to find a solution in Syria. Now the talk of the US Envoy is the talk of Cold War with Russia as much as were his Aspen colleagues – albeit in respect to China. Such ‘machismo’ is evidenced too coming from the US President: “I could – if I wanted – end the US war in Afghanistan in a week”, (but it would entail the deaths of 10 million Afghans), Trump excalimed. And, in the same mode, Trump now suggests that for Iran, he is easy: war or not – either path is fine, for him…

The point here is that the tacit coupling of Russia – now termed a major ‘foe’ of America by US Defence officials – and China, inevitably is being refracted back at the US, in terms of a growing strategic Russo-Chinese partnership, ready to challenge the US and its allies…

So, as we look around, the picture seems to be one in which US bellicosity is somehow consolidating as an élite consensus (with but a few individuals courageously pushing-back on the trend). So what is going on?

The two FT correspondents effectively were signalling – in their separate articles – that the US is entering on a momentous and hazardous transformation. Further, it would seem that America’s élite is being fractured into balkanised enclaves that are not communicating with one another – nor wanting to communicate with each other. Rather, it is another conflict between deadly rivals.

One such orientation insists on a renewal of the Cold War to sustain and renew that supersized military-security complex, which accounts for more than half of America’s GDP…

The leader of any nation is never sovereign. He or she sits atop a pyramid of quarrelling princelings (Deep State princelings, in this instance), who have their own interests and agenda. Trump is not immune to their machinations. One obvious example being Mr Bolton’s successful gambit in persuading the Brits to seize the Grace I tanker off Gibraltar. At a stroke, Bolton escalated the conflict with Iran (‘increased the pressure’ on Iran, as Bolton would probably term it); put the UK at the forefront of America’s ‘war’ with Iran; divided the JCPOA signatories, and embarrassed the EU. He is a canny ‘operator’ – no doubt about it.

And this is the point: these princelings can initiate actions (including false flags) that drive events to their agenda; that can corner a President. And that is presuming that the President is somehow immune to a great ‘switch in mood’ among his own lieutenants (even if that consensus is nothing more than a fable that belligerency succeeds). But is it safe to assume Trump is immune to the general ‘mood’ amongst the varied élites? Do not his recent glib comments about Afghanistan and Iran suggest that he might leaning towards the new belligerency? Martin Wolf concluded his FT piece by suggesting the shift in the US suggests we may be witnessing a stumbling towards a century of conflict. But in the case of Iran, any mis-move could result in something more immediate – and uncontained.

Be seeing you

Bankster

Bankster

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »