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Paul Merrell

Hillary Clinton Goes to Militaristic, Hawkish Think Tank, Gives Militaristic, Hawkish S... - 0 views

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Auction 2016 Hillary Israel-lobby pro-war propaganda

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this morning delivered a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. By itself, the choice of the venue was revealing. Brookings served as Ground Zero for centrist think tank advocacy of the Iraq War, which Clinton (along with potential rival Joe Biden) notoriously and vehemently advocated. Brookings’ two leading “scholar”-stars — Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon — spent all of 2002 and 2003 insisting that invading Iraq was wise and just, and spent the years after that assuring Americans that the “victorious” war and subsequent occupation were going really well (in April 2003, O’Hanlon debated with himself over whether the strategy that led to the “victory” in his beloved war should be deemed “brilliant” or just extremely “clever,” while in June 2003, Pollack assured New York Times readers that Saddam’s WMD would be found).
  • Since then, O’Hanlon in particular has advocated for increased military force in more countries than one can count. That’s not surprising: Brookings is funded in part by one of the Democratic Party’s favorite billionaires, Haim Saban, who is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Israel and once said of himself: “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Pollack advocated for the attack on Iraq while he was “Director of Research of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.” Saban became the Democratic Party’s largest fundraiser — even paying $7 million for the new DNC building — and is now a very substantial funder of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In exchange, she’s written a personal letter to him publicly “expressing her strong and unequivocal support for Israel in the face of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement.” So the hawkish Brookings is the prism through which Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy worldview can be best understood. The think tank is filled with former advisers to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and would certainly provide numerous top-level foreign policy officials in any Hillary Clinton administration. As she put it today at the start: “There are a lot of long-time friends and colleagues who perch here at Brookings.” And she proceeded to deliver exactly the speech one would expect, reminding everyone of just how militaristic and hawkish she is.
  • Clinton proclaimed that she “too [is] deeply concerned about Iranian aggression and the need to confront it. It’s a ruthless, brutal regime that has the blood of Americans, many others and including its own people on its hands.” Even worse, she said, “Its political rallies resound with cries of ‘Death to America.’ Its leaders talk about wiping Israel off the face of the map, most recently just yesterday, and foment terror against it. There is absolutely no reason to trust Iran.” She repeated that claim several times for emphasis: “They vow to destroy Israel. And that’s worth saying again. They vow to destroy Israel.” She vowed that in dealing with Iran, she will be tougher and more aggressive than Reagan was with the Soviet Union: “You remember President Reagan’s line about the Soviets: Trust but verify? My approach will be distrust and verify.” She also explicitly threatened Iran with war if they fail to comply: “I will not hesitate to take military action if Iran attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon, and I will set up my successor to be able to credibly make the same pledge.” She even depicted the Iran Deal as making a future war with Iran easier and more powerful:
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  • Should it become necessary in the future having exhausted peaceful alternatives to turn to military force, we will have preserved and in some cases enhanced our capacity to act. And because we have proven our commitment to diplomacy first, the world will more likely join us. As for Israel itself, Clinton eagerly promised to shower it with a long, expensive, and dangerous list of gifts. Here’s just a part of what that country can expect from the second President Clinton: I will deepen America’s unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security, including our long standing tradition of guaranteeing Israel’s qualitative military edge. I’ll increase support for Israeli rocket and missile defenses and for intelligence sharing. I’ll sell Israel the most sophisticated fire aircraft ever developed. The F-35. We’ll work together to develop and implement better tunnel detection technology to prevent arms smuggling and kidnapping as well as the strongest possible missile defense system for Northern Israel, which has been subjected to Hezbollah’s attacks for years.
  • She promised she “will sustain a robust military presence in the [Persian Gulf] region, especially our air and naval forces.” She vowed to “increase security cooperation with our Gulf allies” — by which she means the despotic regimes in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, among others. She swore she will crack down even further on Hezbollah: “It’s time to eliminate the false distinction that some still make between the supposed political and military wings. If you’re part of Hezbollah, you’re part of a terrorist organization, plain and simple.” Then she took the ultimate pledge: “I would not support this agreement for one second if I thought it put Israel in greater danger.” So even if the deal would benefit the U.S., she would not support it “for one second” if it “put Israel in greater danger.” That’s an unusually blunt vow to subordinate the interests of the U.S. to that foreign nation.
  • But when it comes to gifts to Israel, that’s not all! Echoing the vow of several GOP candidates to call Netanyahu right away after being elected, Clinton promised: “I would invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House during my first month in office to talk about all of these issues and to set us on a course of close, frequent consultation right from the start, because we both rely on each other for support as partners, allies and friends.” She then addressed “the people of Israel,” telling them: “Let me say, you’ll never have to question whether we’re with you. The United States will always be with you.” For good measure, she heaped praise on “my friend Chuck Schumer,” who has led the battle to defeat the Iran Deal, gushing about what an “excellent leader in the Senate” he will make. What’s a little warmongering among friends? Just as was true in her book, she implicitly criticized Obama — who boasts that he has bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries — of being insufficiently militaristic, imperialistic, and violent. She said she wanted more involvement in Syria from the start (though did not call for the U.S. to accept any of its refugees). In a clear rebuke to the current president, she decreed that any criticisms U.S. officials may utter of Israel should be done only in private (“in private and behind, you know, closed doors”), not in public, lest “it open[] the door to everybody else to delegitimize Israel to, you know, pile on in ways that are not good for the — the strength and stability, not just of Israel.” About Russia, she said, “I think we have not done enough” and put herself “in the category of people who wanted us to do more in response to the annexation of Crimea and the continuing destabilization of Ukraine.”
  • Two words that did not come out of Clinton’s mouth during the entire event: “Palestinians” (do they exist?) and “Libya” (that glorious war she supported that was going to be the inspiring template for future “humanitarian interventions” before it predictably destroyed that whole country).
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 15
     
    Glenn Greenwald tags Hillary pandering to the Chicken Hawk Party
Paul Merrell

US Policymakers Propose Working Closer with the State Sponsors of the Islamic State (IS... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5560813

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Saudis Turkey state-sponsors-of-terrorism Brookings

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • US-based corporate-financier funded policy think tank, the Brookings Institution, published a particularly incoherent piece titled, “Should we work with the devil we know against the Islamic State?” The piece’s author, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, Daniel Byman, claims (emphasis added): Saudi Arabia has proven a major source of terrorist recruits and financing, while the Syria-Turkey border was a major crossing point for Islamic State recruits. Both countries [Saudi Arabia and Turkey] still have much to do, but that’s the point—if the Trump administration alienates them, the Islamic State problem will get much worse. With the United States on the other side in Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia might send anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian rebels and otherwise escalate the fighting in ways dangerous for international terrorism—actions that, so far, the United States has helped reduce. In essence, Byman is admitting what the rest of the world already long ago concluded – the vast fighting capacity the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) possesses is not only a result of immense state sponsorship, it is sponsored by two of America’s closest allies in the region – Saudi Arabia and NATO-member Turkey.
  • Byman’s other ‘moral metrics’ for opposing Syria include “supporting terrorism against Israel” and being otherwise opposed to “U.S. interests,” but neither accusation is qualified. In reality, Byman is admitting that the US is aligned with two of the largest regional sponsors of terrorism, including sponsors aiding and abetting ISIS itself, and seeks to depose the Syrian government because it otherwise opposes US interests. Byman then claims: Assad’s regime is the primary culprit in a war that has killed roughly half a million Syrians and driven millions more into long-term exile. Byman also laments that an Assad victory would create more refugees still – apparently oblivious to the “successful” regime change the US carried out in Libya in 2011, leaving the nation a failed state and the epicenter of the current and still ongoing regional refugee crisis. In his eagerness to blame the Syrian government for the ongoing war, Byman strategically omits his own direct role and those of other US policymakers who, for years before the war began, advocated and plotted for its fruition.
  • As early as 2007, US journalists like Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh warned of US policymakers plotting with Saudi Arabia to use militants aligned with Al Qaeda to overthrow the governments of both Syria and Iran. In his article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” Hersh prophetically reported (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. Byman himself, in 2009, would sign his name to a Brookings policy paper titled, “Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), in which he and other US policymakers would advocate the use of terrorism, color revolutions, staged provocations, sanctions and a vast array of other methods to provoke war with and overthrow the government of Iran. As a prerequisite for war with Iran, the paper noted that Syria would need to be dealt with. In 2011, it became clear that many of the methods described in minute detail in the Brookings policy paper were put into practice, targeting the government in Damascus, not Tehran.
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  • Byman’s latest piece promoted by Brookings all but admits the US maintains an alliance of convenience with the state sponsors of ISIS – not to defend any sort of value, principle, or moral imperative, but instead to achieve a self-serving geopolitical objective at the cost of such values, principles, and moral imperatives. Byman concludes by claiming the Syrian government is too weak to consolidate control over Syria, omitting that there exists no alternative more unified or capable than the Syrian government. He then claims that the US should continue backing the “Syrian opposition,” either oblivious of or indifferent to the fact that no such thing exists aside from ISIS and other foreign sponsored terrorist organizations. Aside from Raqqa and Idlib run by ISIS and Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise – Al Nusra respectively, the Syrian government has already indeed consolidated control over the country’s main urban centers, including Aleppo. For Byman and other policymakers like him, they find themselves moving imaginary armies across the battlefield that simply do not exist. In the end, the US will have to either abandon its enterprise in Syria, or pledge increasingly open support for ISIS and Al Nusra.
Paul Merrell

US Support For Palestine Shifts Following UN Vote On Israeli Settlements - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...223512

polls Israel Palestine popular-support sanctions Dems young

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • The United States’ abstention from a Security Council vote condemning Israel’s West Bank settlements on Friday followed a sharp rise in support for Palestinians among U.S. voters, particularly members of President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party. “American attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” two polls released by the Washington-based Brookings Institute on Dec. 2, showed growing numbers critical of Israeli actions and eager for U.S. responses, including sanctions and U.N. measures, to counter them. “The Democratic Party’s base is very split from leadership now,” Peter Feld, a Democratic strategist and polling expert in New York, told MintPress News about the survey results. “But in this moment of overall crisis for the Democrats, they’re going to have to listen to the base.” According Brookings, 40 percent favored “Obama supporting or sponsoring a United Nations resolution to end Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank before he leaves office.” But among young voters between the ages of 18 and 34, the number increased to 51 percent, while 65 percent of Democrats supported the measure.
  • Similarly, 46 percent of respondents, including 51 percent of young voters and 60 percent of Democrats, favored “economic sanctions” and “more serious action” in response to Israeli settlement construction. When Brookings asked the same question in November 2014, only 38 percent of respondents, including 48 percent of Democrats, favored “sanctions” and “serious action.” The differences between the two sets of numbers — one collected on the heels of a bloody Israeli military operation that killed over 2,200 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip alone, the other after more than two years of relative, if checkered, quiet — indicate that domestic U.S. politics, rather than developments in Palestine, may have spurred the shift in public opinion.
Paul Merrell

More Businesses Shutting Down than Starting Up | The Weekly Standard - 0 views

www.weeklystandard.com/...ting-down-starting_791127.html

economy U.S. stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 May 14 - No Cached
  • A new Brookings Institution report indicates that businesses are shuttering their doors more quickly than new ones are popping up. From the Washington Post: The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That's the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978. Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study -- 2009, 2010 and 2011 -- businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first. Overall, new businesses creation (measured as the share of all businesses less than one year old) declined by about half from 1978 to 2011. This descent has a broad scope; no group is immune. Brookings notes that “the national decline in business dynamism has been a widely shared experience.” It “hasn’t been isolated to particular industrial sectors and firm sizes” and “reach[es] all fifty states and all but a few metropolitan areas.”
Paul Merrell

Poll Finds 37% Of Americans Believe Israel Has Too Much Influence Over US Politics - 0 views

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Israel-lobby polls Israeli-influence U.S. Congress

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Poll results released last month show that Americans are sharply divided over the influence of Israel on U.S. politics, and those divisions often fall along party lines. On Dec. 4, The Brookings Institution, a highly influential Washington-based think tank, released the results of a study of American attitudes toward Israel and the Middle East. The report comes after a year in which Israel’s influence on America’s governance and foreign policy received heightened scrutiny, especially following a controversial speech to a joint session of Congress by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobbying group, also faced increased criticism. The bulk of the poll was based on the opinions of 875 randomly selected Americans, but the study’s author, Shibley Telhami, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings’ Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, also polled an additional 863 additional Americans who self-identify as Evangelical or Born-again Christians to determine how their attitudes differed from the average.
  • When asked “How Much Influence Does the Israeli Government Have in American Politics?” 37 percent, or just over 1 in 3 Americans, feel Israel has too much influence. Eighteen percent say Israel should have even more influence over our government, while the largest group, at 44 percent, feels Israel wields an appropriate level of influence. Almost half of Democrats, 49 percent, feel Israel has too much influence over U.S. politics, while a slight majority of Republicans, 52 percent, are comfortable with Israel’s current level of influence. Among Evangelical Christians, meanwhile, 39 percent believe Israel has too little influence and 38 percent are satisfied with the country’s level of influence. Telhami also asked respondents about their views on the conflict between apartheid Israel and occupied Palestine. Twenty-nine percent of Americans reported that they are “very concerned” about recent events in Israel and Palestine, while 38 percent are “somewhat concerned.” When asked who is to blame for strife in the region, the most popular answer, 31 percent, was the lack of a peace process, “while 26% equally blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement, expansion in the West Bank, and Palestinian extremists.” These results also showed strong partisan differences:
  • “[A] plurality of Democrats, 37%, blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, followed by 35% who blame the absence of serious peace diplomacy, while 15% blame Palestinian extremists. In contrast, 40% of Republicans blame Palestinian extremists first, followed by 27% who blame absence of serious diplomacy, and 16% blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion.” The report noted a slight increase in support for a one-state solution to problems in Israel compared to findings in 2014. Under a one-state solution, Israel and Palestine would become a single, multicultural, multireligious nation, as opposed to two-state solutions which would divide Israel and Palestine into two separate, independent countries. “Those who advocate a one-state solution, 31%, are now comparable to those who advocate a two-state solution, 35%,” Telhami wrote, adding that Republicans saw the largest increase in support for a single-state solution. “The most notable change is that Republicans this year equally support a two-state solution vs. one-state solution (29% each).” More people are also willing to accept a single-state solution if a two-state solution proves impossible, he added: “Among those who advocate a two-state solution as their preferred solution, 73% say they would support a one-state solution if the first option were no longer possible (in comparison to only 66% in 2014).” The poll also found that Netanyahu’s popularity has fallen sharply over the last year, at least among Democrats. Thirty-four percent now view him unfavorably, up from 22 percent in 2014, while Republicans’ opinions of him remain largely unchanged.
Paul Merrell

Confirmed: Washington Intends to "Use" Al Qaeda to "Take Out" Syria and Overthrow the A... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5473386

war & peace Syria Iraq Isil Petraeus Ford Brookings

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The Daily Beast’s article, “Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS,” reveals the final piece to the “safe haven” or “buffer zone” puzzle, providing the world a complete picture of how the United States and its regional allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and others, plan to finally overthrow the government in Damascus, and eliminate Syria as a functioning nation state through the use of listed terrorist organizations responsible for over a decade of devastating global war.
  • The Daily Beast reports: Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus.  The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast. 
  • In addition to Petraeus’ alleged plans, the Daily Beast reports former US Ambassador to Syria  Robert Ford also advocated supporting terrorists linked directly to Al Qaeda, including the Ahrar al Sham faction. However this “proposed” advocacy is an afterthought – a matter of public perception management – as terrorist organizations like Ahrar al Sham and the Al Nusra Front already are receiving significant US backing either directly or laundered through one of America’s many regional collaborators. Ahrar al Sham’s extensive video documentation online shows the group even employing US anti-tank TOW missiles. Furthermore, US corporate-financier funded policy think tanks like the Brookings Institution have already enumerated precisely this plan. In a recent publication on Brookings’ “Order From Chaos” blog titled, “Should the United States negotiate with terrorists?,” it is stated: Ultimately, negotiation and amnesty programs with extremist groups must enter the U.S. counterterrorism repertoire if reluctance to military deployment continues. Brookings describes almost verbatim the proposal put forth by Petraeus and Ford, indicating this plan is more deeply rooted as a matter of policy than indicated by the Daily Beast.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15
     
    Ignoring the fact that the U.S. voted for two adopted U.N. Security Council resolutions specifically forbidding nations from aiding in any way Al-0Qaida and Al-Nusrah, thus establishing it as a violation of international law to do as these jerks advise. Notwithstanding that, the U.S. has for several years been supplying Al-Nusrah with weapons, supplies, intelligence, and leadership through two operations centers, one in Jordan and the other in Turkey.   
Paul Merrell

Syria: US Success Would Only Be the End of the Beginning | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran Israel MEK

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • An October 7, 2015 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Armed Forces (SASC) titled, “Iranian Influence in Iraq and the Case of Camp Liberty,” served as a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to back the terrorist organization Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) and specifically 2,400 members of the organization being harbored on a former US military base in Iraq.
  • Providing testimony was former US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, former US Marine Corps Commandant and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe General James Jones, USMC (Ret.), and Colonel Wesley Martin, US Army (Ret.). All three witnesses made passionate pleas before a room full of nodding senators for America to continue backing not only MEK terrorists currently harbored on a former US military base in Iraq, but to back groups like MEK inside of Iran itself to threaten the very survival of the government in Tehran. In the opening remarks by Lieberman, he stated: It was not only right and just that we took them off the foreign terrorist organization list, but the truth is now that we ought to be supportive of them and others in opposition to the government in Iran more than we have been.
  • Lieberman would also state (emphasis added): Here’s my point Mr. Chairman, we ought to compartmentalize that agreement also, that nuclear agreement. We ought to put it over there, and not let it stop us from confronting what they’re doing in Syria. Continuing the sanctions for human rights violations in Iran in support of terrorism. And here’s the point I want to make about the National Council of Resistance of Iran and other democratic opposition groups that are Iranian – we ought to be supporting them.  This regime in Tehran is hopeless. It’s not going to change. There’s no evidence … every piece of evidence says the contrary. So I hope we can find a way, we used to do this not so long ago, supporting opposition groups in Iran. They deserve our support, and actually they would constitute a form of pressure on the government in Tehran that would unsettle them as much as anything else we could do because it would threaten the survival of the regime which from every objective indicator I can see is a very unpopular regime in Iran.  The United States, unrepentant regarding the arc of chaos, mass murder, terrorism, civilizational destruction it has created stretching from Libya to Syria, now seeks openly to extend it further into Iran using precisely the same tactics – the use of terrorist proxies – to dismantle and destroy Iranian society.
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  • MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations of Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard. Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK’s violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror – a testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate. To this day MEK terrorists have been carrying out attacks inside of Iran killing political opponents, attacking civilian targets, as well as carrying out the US-Israeli program of targeting and assassinating Iranian scientists. MEK terrorists are also suspected of handling patsies in recent false flag operations carried out in India, Georgia, and Thailand, which have been ham-handedly blamed on the Iranian government.
  • MEK is described by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh as a “cult-like organization” with “totalitarian tendencies.” While Takeyh fails to expand on what he meant by “cult-like” and “totalitarian,” an interview with US State Department-run Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported that a MEK Camp Ashraf escapee claimed the terrorist organization bans marriage, using radios, the Internet, and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape. Not once is any of this backstory mentioned in the testimony of any of the witnesses before the senate hearing, defiling the memories of those who have been murdered and otherwise victimized by this terrorist organization. The de-listing of MEK in 2012 as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department is another indictment of the utter lack of principles the US clearly hides behind rather than in any way upholds as a matter of executing foreign policy.
  • MEK has already afforded the US the ability to wage a low-intensity conflict with Iran. MEK’s role in doing so was eagerly discussed in 2009, several years before it was even de-listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in the Brooking Institution’s policy paper “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF). The report stated (emphasis added): Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.
  • In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.   Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread. Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
  • Proof that Brookings’ policy paper was more than a mere theoretical exercise, in 2012 MEK would indeed be de-listed by the US State Department with support for the terrorist organization expanded. The fact that former senators and retired generals representing well-funded corporate think tanks even just this week are plotting to use MEK to overthrow the Iranian government should raise alarms that other criminality conspired within the pages of this policy paper may still well be in play. Lieberman himself suggests that proxy war and regime-change should proceed regardless of the so-called “nuclear deal” – with the 2009 Brookings report itself having stated that (emphasis added): …any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.  Clearly, both Brookings in 2009, and Lieberman this week have conspired to use the so-called “Iranian Nuclear Deal” as cover for betrayal and regime change.
  • For those wondering why Russia has intervened in Syria in the matter that it has, it should be plainly obvious. The US has no intention to stop in Syria. With Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya behind it, and Syria within its clutches, it is clear that Iran is next, and inevitably this global blitzkrieg will not stop until it reaches Moscow and Beijing. Even as the US adamantly denies the obvious – that is has intentionally created and is currently perpetuating Al Qaeda, the so-called “Islamic State,” and other terrorist groups in Syria, it is openly conspiring to use another army of terrorists against neighboring Iran, live before a US Senate hearing. Should the US succeed in Syria, it would not be the end of the conflict, but only the end of the beginning of a much wider world war.
Paul Merrell

Making NATO Defunct: EU Military Force intended to Reduce US Influence in Europe? | Glo... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5436940

empire NATO-breakup EC EU-military U.S.-foreign-policy Ukraine Germany

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • An EU military force is being justified as protection from Russia, but it may also be a way of reducing US influence as the EU and Germany come to loggerheads with the US and NATO over Ukraine. While speaking to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced the time has come for the creation of a unified EU military force. Juncker used rhetoric about “defending the values of the European Union” and nuanced anti-Russian polemics to promote the creation of a European army, which would convey a message to Moscow. The polemics and arguments for an EU army may be based around Russia, but the idea is really directed against the US. The underlying story here is the tensions that are developing between the US, on one side, and the EU and Germany, on the other side. This is why Germany reacted enthusiastically to the proposal, putting its support behind a joint EU armed force.
  • Previously, the EU military force was seriously mulled over during the buildup to the illegal Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 when Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg met to discuss it as an alternative to a US-dominated NATO. The idea has been resurrected again under similar circumstances. In 2003, the friction was over the US-led invasion of Iraq. In 2015, it is because of the mounting friction between Germany and the US over the crisis in Ukraine.
  • To understand the latest buildup behind the call for a common EU military, we have to look at the events stretching from November 2014 until March 2015. They started when Germany and France began showing signs that they were having second thoughts about the warpath that the US and NATO were taking them down in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Franco-German differences with the US began to emerge after Tony Blinken, US President Barack Obama’s former Deputy National Security Advisor and current Deputy Secretary of State and the number two diplomat at the US Department of State, announced that the Pentagon was going to send arms into Ukraine at a hearing of the US Congress about his nomination, that was held on November 19, 2014. As the Fiscal Times put it, “Washington treated Russia and the Europeans to a one-two punch when it revealed its thinking about arming Ukraine.” The Russian Foreign Ministry responded to Blinken by announcing that if the Pentagon poured weapons into Ukraine, Washington would not only seriously escalate the conflict, but it would be a serious signal from the US that will change the dynamics of the conflict inside Ukraine. Realizing that things could escalate out of control, the French and German response was to initiate a peace offence through diplomatic talks that would eventually lead to a new ceasefire agreement in Minsk, Belarus under the “Normandy Format” consisting of the representatives of France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine.
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  • Germany’s public position at the Munich Security Conference flew in the face of US demands to get its European allies to militarize the conflict in Ukraine. While US Secretary of State John Kerry went out of his way at the gathering to reassure the media and the public that there was no rift between Washington and the Franco-German side, it was widely reported that the warmonger Senator John McCain lost his cool while he was in Bavaria. Reportedly, he called the Franco-German peace initiative “Moscow bullshit.” He would then criticize Angela Merkel in an interview with the German channel Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), which would prompt calls by German MP Peter Tauber, the secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), for an apology from Senator McCain.
  • After the Munich Security Conference it was actually revealed that clandestine arms shipments were already being made to Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin would let this be publicly known at a joint press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest when he said that weapons were already secretly being sent to the Kiev authorities. In the same month a report, named Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do, was released arguing for the need to send arms to Ukraine — ranging from spare parts and missiles to heavy personnel — as a means of ultimately fighting Russia. This report was authored by a triumvirate of leading US think-tanks, the Brookings Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs — the two former being from the detached ivory tower “think-tankistan” that is the Washington Beltway. This is the same clique that has advocated for the invasions of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran.
  • Watch out NATO! United EU military in the horizon? It is in the context of divisions between the EU and Washington that the calls for an EU military force are being made by both the European Commission and Germany.
  • The EU and Germans realize there is not much they can do to hamper Washington as long as it has a say in EU and European security. Both Berlin and a cross-section of the EU have been resentful of how Washington is using NATO to advance its interests and to influence the events inside Europe. If not a form of pressure in behind the door negotiations with Washington, the calls for an EU military are designed to reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and possibly make NATO defunct. An EU army that would cancel out NATO would have a heavy strategic cost for the US. In this context, Washington would lose its western perch in Eurasia. It “would automatically spell the end of America’s participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard,” in the words of former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
  • The intelligentsias in the US are already alarmed at the risks that an EU military would pose to American influence. The American Jewish Committee’s influential Commentary Magazine, which is affiliated to the neo-cons in the Washington Beltway, has asked, as the title of the article by Seth Mandel illustrates, “Why Is Germany Undermining NATO?” This is while the Washington Examiner has asked, as the title of the article by Hoskingson says, “Whatever happened to US influence?” This is why Washington’s vassals in the EU — specifically Britain, Poland, and the three Baltic states — have all been very vocal in their opposition to the idea of a common EU military force. While Paris has been reluctant to join the calls for an EU army, French opposition politician Marine Le Pen has announced that the time has come for France to come out of the shadow of the United States.
  • here are some very important questions here. Are the calls for an EU military, meant to pressure the US or is there a real attempt to curb Washington’s influence inside Europe? And are moves being made by Berlin and its partners to evict Washington from Europe by deactivating NATO through a common EU military?
Paul Merrell

Turkey Goes to War - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...turkey-goes-to-war

war & peace Turkey Syria invasion safety-zones Obama Erdogan

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • More important, Erdogan intends to use his landslide victory to persuade the Military High Command that he has a popular mandate for his foreign policy, a policy that has amassed thousands of Turkish troops, armored vehicles and tanks on the Syrian border for a possible invasion. Up to now, the military has resisted Erdogan on this matter, but now that Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, has been replaced as head of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) by the more compliant General Hulusi Akar, the plan to invade Syria and secure a so called “safety zone” along the Syrian side of the Turkish border, becomes much more probable. The plan to annex sovereign Syrian territory and use it to launch attacks on the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad dates back to 2012.  In 2015, however, the strategy was expanded upon by Brookings analyst Michael E. O’Hanlon in a piece  titled “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”. Here’s an excerpt:
  • “…the only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs Syria….the international community should work to create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria over time… The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via special forces. … Western forces themselves would remain in more secure positions in general—within the safe zones but back from the front lines—at least until the reliability of such defenses, and also local allied forces, made it practical to deploy and live in more forward locations. Creation of these sanctuaries would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad ….The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones… The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force….to make these zones defensible and governable,….and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.”  (Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Brookings Institute)
  • This is the Obama administration’s basic blueprint for toppling Assad and reducing Syria into an ungovernable failed state run by regional warlords, renegade militias and Islamic extremists. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed our worst suspicions about this sinister plan in a speech he delivered to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace just last week.  Here’s part of what he said: “In northern Syria, the coalition and its partners have pushed Daesh (ISIS) out of more than 17,000 square kilometers of territory, and we have secured the Turkish-Syrian border east of the Euphrates River. That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest……. We’re also enhancing our air campaign in order to help drive Daesh, which once dominated the Syria-Turkey border, out of the last 70-mile stretch that it controls.” (U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the Future of U.S. Policy in the Middle East, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) Repeat: “That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest.”
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  • Why has Obama “authorized further activities to secure the rest”? Because no one in Washington believes that the US-backed jihadis will beat the combined forces of the Russian-led coalition which is gradually annihilating the terrorist militias across Syria. So now, Obama is moving on to Plan B, the creation of a terrorist sanctuary on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border where the US and its partners can continue to arm, train and deploy their jihadi maniacs back into Syria whenever they choose to do so. Undoubtedly, Obama’s Special Forces will be used to oversee this operation and to make sure that everything goes according to plan. There is, of course, a question about the Kurdish militias role in this strategy. Recently, the US has air-dropped pallet-loads of weapons and ammo to the Democratic Union Party (PYD)  hoping the group could help the US secure the last stretch of land along the border west of the Euphrates thus keeping vital supplylines open for the jihadis while establishing a safe haven on Syrian territory. Erdogan violently opposes any operation that will create a contiguous Kurdish state on the Syrian side of the border. So how will this situation be resolved? Will Obama stick with the Kurds or realign with Erdogan in exchange for Turkish boots on the ground?
Paul Merrell

Déjà vu? Saudi clerics declare jihad on Russia | Brookings Institution - 0 views

www.brookings.edu/...cs-declare-jihad-russia-riedel

war & peace Russia Saudi-clerics jihad Sunni-Shia-War

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • In a statement harkening back to the war against the Soviet Union 36 years ago in Afghanistan, fifty-five Saudi Wahhabi clerics have signed a call for jihad against Russia for its military intervention in Syria. America and the West are accused of colluding with Moscow by only pretending to support the Syrian opposition since 2011. The statement is not an official document of the Kingdom, but it undoubtedly has much support in the House of Saud. The statement calls on all Sunni Muslims to unite to defeat "tsars and Caesars" who have backed the "Christian regime" and its Alawi partners in Damascus. Russians, the "fanatical people of the cross," are warned to remember how the Afghan mujaheddin destroyed the Soviet Union in 1989 in Afghanistan. The Russian state will suffer the same fate. Iran is also targeted for the jihad. The Persians and their Iraqi Shiite allies—as well as Hezbollah—have aligned themselves with the Russian Orthodox Christians against Islam. All of the Safavids (the Persian dynasty that adopted Shiism as the state religion) are legitimate targets for the holy war, the statement says.
  • So too are America and the West for promising to help the Syrian people but never delivering anti-aircraft missiles or other sophisticated weapons. Washington feigns opposition to Moscow, the statement alleges, but is really part of the plot against Sunnis. The signatories remind their readers that President George Bush waged a “crusade” in Iraq that installed a Shiite government and accuse Washington and Moscow of being engaged in "evil scheming." The Sunni-Shiite war has been escalating for the last few decades but it is now boiling at a fever pitch. The signatories include some clerics with a past history of supporting al-Qaida. None appear to be members of the Al Sheikh family, the descendants of Muhammad Ibn Abd Al Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism and the most prominent clerical family in Saudi Arabia with the closest ties to the royals). Nonetheless, the statement reflects the views of many Saudis about Russia's intervention to back up Bashar Assad and U.S. failure to depose him. The statement reflects the growing intensification of sectarian extremism in the region. The Sunni-Shiite war has been escalating for the last few decades but it is now boiling at a fever pitch. Editors' note: Since the original publication of the post, we have added a link (Arabic) to the letter signed by 55 Saudi clerics.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Oct 15
     
    The Saudi govenment has been making lots of threat about increasing aid and weapons for Sunni fighters in Syria to fight Russia. I wonder which side of that issue the CIA is on? (Note that U.S. DoD  Secretary Ash Carter has been publicly warning Russia that its intervention in Syria will povoke Islamic militants across the region and into Russia itself.) The Saudis have also been threatening to arm jihadis in Syria MANPAD should-fired anti-aircraft missiles that are capable of taking down Russian and Syrian fighters that would have to be provided by U.S. manufacturers. I don't know whether the Saudis already have more than enough for the nation's military defense forces. 
Gary Edwards

Should We Worry about the Class Divide? - 0 views

dailyreckoning.com/e-worry-about-the-class-divide

Class-Warfare Class-Welfare Charles-Murray daily-recknoning Liberty Libertarian

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 12
     
    Excellent review of Charles Murray's new book on Class Warfare, "Coming Apart".  Excellent libertarian commentary hits hard on solutions pouring out of the both the left and the right advocating the use of big government force and power to level the class divide.  Whatever happened to individual liberty and the Constitution? excerpt: This is what the debate is about. To the left, the answer about what to do is completely obvious. We need massive government programs to boost the lowers, and we need new taxes and punishments to whack the uppers good and hard. Never mind that the programs for the lowers don't work and the punishments on the rich end up only bolstering a new government elite that lords it over everyone. The right has a different solution. Well, not everyone on the right, but those neoconservatives who take it as a given that every coherent nation needs a unified national culture. To quote David Brooks: "We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement. If we could jam the tribes together, we'd have a better elite and a better mass." No thanks on this Stalinist plan. The right is just like the left in this sense: If there is a national problem, it needs a solution imposed by force. The left favors looting people, whereas the right favors Tasing people. Either way, it is all about increasing the police powers of the state. On the extremes, the left wants total expropriation to make everyone equally poor, whereas the right wants total war to unify us all in a grand project of killing and being killed. This is what worries me most about the Murray thesis. No matter where you look for answers, the solutions actually seem worse than the problem itself. More fundamentally, we have to ask: What is the problem we are actually tryin
Paul Merrell

Propaganda Wave Portends Invasion of Syria | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ave-portends-invasion-of-syria

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria boots-on-the-ground invasion

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • It was reported just days ago that US policymakers have signed and dated plans drawn up for the US invasion and occupation of Syria. The plan as described by the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution – a corporate think-tank that has previously drawn up plans for the invasion, occupation, and “surge” in Iraq – is to occupy border regions of Syria with US special forces to then justify a nationwide “no-fly-zone” if and when Syrian forces attempt to retake these “safe zones.”
  • The “safe zones” are to be used by various terrorists fronts Brookings admits are tied to Al Qaeda, to take refuge from Syrian air power and from which to stage and launch attacks deeper into Syrian territory. The end game is the Balkanization of Syria into ineffectual vassal states the US can later stitch together into a larger client regime. It was also reported that this signed and dated conspiracy to invade, occupy, and destroy Syria would be followed by widespread propaganda aimed at selling the policy paper under the guise of “defeating” the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL). In reality, hundreds of trucks a day, originating deep within NATO-member Turkey’s territory, cross the Turkish-Syrian border unopposed, destined for ISIS territory, keeping the terrorist front well supplied and armed, along with its ranks full of fresh fighters. It is clear that US, British, and other regional allies conducting airstrikes on ISIS in Syria are doing so with full knowledge that whatever damage they are doing is quickly absorbed by the logistical torrent they themselves allow, even underwrite, to freely flow into ISIS territory. No attempts have been made by the US or any of the NATO nations involved in the Syrian conflict, to first stem ISIS’ supply lines – an elementary and obvious strategic goal necessary if the West was truly interested in stopping ISIS.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Jul 15
     
    Turkey has been pushing for this strategy for over a year. Now the neocons in the U.S. have joined in. The propaganda in favor of the strategy is coming to a crescendo. But I'll wait for further evidence of implementation before calling it an invasion, albeit U.S. Special Forces have been working with Al Qaeda forces inside Syria since 2011.
Paul Merrell

Europe and Ukraine: A tale of two elections - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

rt.com/...161664-elections-in-eu-ukraine

Auction-2014 EU Ukraine

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 14 - No Cached
  • Circumstances surrounding the European and Ukrainian elections were far from being a mere coincidence. The regime changers in Kiev decided to hold a presidential election on May 25, the same day as European Parliament elections, in order to demonstrate their desire to follow a European-centric foreign policy.
  • Way beyond the established fact of an Atlantic push against Russian western borderlands, Ukraine remains a catfight of local oligarchies. No wonder the new Ukrainian president is also an oligarch; the 7th wealthiest citizen in the land, who owns not just a chocolate empire, but also automotive plants, a shipyard in Crimea and a TV channel. The only difference is that he’s a NATO oligarch
  • Meanwhile, in NATOstan, local and transnational elites have been desperately trying to spin a measure of success. Abstention remains notable – only roughly 4 in 10 Europeans take the trouble to vote on what goes on in Strasbourg, with a majority alienated enough to legitimize the mix of internal European austerity and international belligerence.
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  • Hardly discussed in the pre-vote campaigns were the Snowden NSA revelations; the shady negotiations between Washington and Brussels over a free trade agreement which will be a boon for US Big Business; and how the financial casino supervised by the European Central Bank, the IMF, and the European Commission (EC) will remain untouched, further ravaging the European middle classes. The anti-EU crowd performed very well in France, the UK, Denmark and Greece. Not so well in Italy and the Netherlands. The mainstream did relatively well in Germany and ultraconservative Spain – even though losing votes to small parties.
  • Essentially, European voters said two things out loud: either “the EU sucks,” or “we couldn’t care less about you, Eurocrat suckers.” As if that sea of lavishly pensioned Brussels apparatchiks – the Eurocrats - would care. After all, their mantra is that “democracy” is only good for others (even Ukrainians…) but not for the EU; when the European flock of sheep votes, they should only be allowed to pick obscure Brussels-peddled and Brussels-approved treaties. Brussels, anyway, is bound to remain the Kafkaesque political epitome of centralized control and red tape run amok. No wonder the EU is breathlessly pivoting with itself as the global economy relentlessly pivots to Asia.
  • To believe that an EU under troika austerity will bail Kiev out of its massive outstanding debts is wishful thinking. The recipe - already inbuilt in the $17 billion IMF “rescue” package is, of course, austerity. Oligarchs will remain in control, while assorted plunderers are already lining up. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – for whom hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were expendable – “observed” the elections, and most of all observed how to privatize Telecom Ukraine, as she is doing now with Telekom Kosovo. There’s no evidence Right Sector and Svoboda will cease to be crypto-fascist, racist and intolerant just because Poroshenko – the King of Ukrainian Chocolate – is now the president. By the way, his margin for maneuver is slim, as his own markets – not to mention some of his factories – are in Russia. Heavy industry and the weapons industry in eastern Ukraine depend on Russian demand. It would take at least a whopping $276 billion for the West to “stabilize” eastern Ukraine. The notion of the EU “saving” Ukraine is D.O.A.
  • Moscow, once again, just needs to do what it is doing: nothing. And make sure there will be no economic or political help unless a federalized – and Finlandized - Ukraine with strong regions sees the light of day. Even the Brookings Institution has reluctantly been forced to admit that the US neo-con gambit has failed miserably; there’s no Ukraine without Russian help.
  • Signs so far are mixed. Poroshenko said Ukraine could “possibly” become an EU member state by 2025 (it won’t happen). He ruled out entering NATO (wise move). He rejects federalization (dumb move). He believes that with a strong economy Crimea would want to be back (wishful thinking). Still, he believes in reaching a compromise with Moscow (that’s what Moscow always wanted, even before regime change).
  • Back in NATOstan, there’s the crucial point of what happens to the ultra-right-wing anti-EU brigade in the Parliament in Strasbourg. They may all abhor the EU, but the fact is this ideological basket case will hardly form an alliance.
  • What this ultimately means is that conservative and moderate parties, as per the status quo, will remain in control, expressed via an extremely likely coalition of the European People’s Party (center-right) and the Socialists and Democrats (center-left). What comes next, in the second half of 2014, is the appointment of a new EU Commission. That’s Kafka redux, as in the bureaucrat-infested executive arm of the EU, which shapes the agenda, sort of (when it’s not busy distributing subventions in color-coded folders for assorted European cows.) There are 5 candidates fighting for the position of EC president. According to the current EU treaty, member states have to consider the result of EU Parliament elections when appointing a new president. Germany wants a conservative. France and Italy want a socialist. So expect a tortuous debate ahead to find who will succeed the spectacularly mediocre Jose Manuel Barroso. The favorite is a right-winger of the European People’s Party, former Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker. He is an avid defender of banking secrecy while posing himself as a champion of “market social economy.”
  • Then there’s more Kafka: choosing the new president of the EU Council and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Translation: the EU won’t decide anything, or “reform” anything for months. That includes the critical negotiations with the Americans over the free trade deal. It’s absolutely impossible to spin these Sunday elections as not discrediting even more the EU project as it stands. As I’ve seen for myself, since early 2014, in 5 among the top EU countries, what matters for the average citizen is as follows: how to deal with immigration; how to fight the eradication of the welfare state; the implications of the free trade agreement with the US; the value of the euro –including an absurdly high cost of living; and what the ECB mafia is actually doing to fight unemployment.
  • With Kafka in charge for the foreseeable future, what’s certain is that Paris and Berlin will drift further and further apart. There will be no redesign of the EU’s institutions. And the next Parliament, filled with sound and fury, will be no more than a hostage of the devastating, inexorable political fragmentation of Europe. “Saving” Ukraine? What a joke. The EU cannot even save itself.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 May 14
     
    Pepe Escobar's take on the Presidential election in Ukraine and the EU-wide national election of EU Parliament members, both held on the same day. Excerpts only highlighted.  
Paul Merrell

U.S. "Humanitarian" Bombing of Iraq: A Redundant Presidential Ritual - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...-redundant-presidential-ritual

war & peace Iraq U.S.-foreign-policy Obama Big-Energy humanitarian-wars

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • There are several brief points worth noting about all of this: (1) For those who ask “what should be done?,” has the hideous aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya – hailed as a grand success for “humanitarian interventions” – not taught the crucial lessons that (a) bombing for ostensibly “humanitarian” ends virtually never fulfills the claimed goals but rather almost always makes the situation worse; (b) the U.S. military is not designed, and is not deployed, for “humanitarian” purposes?; and (c) the U.S. military is not always capable of “doing something” positive about every humanitarian crisis even if that were really the goal of U.S. officials? The suffering in Iraq is real, as is the brutality of ISIS, and the desire to fix it is understandable. There may be some ideal world in which a superpower is both able and eager to bomb for humanitarian purposes. But that is not this world. Just note how completely the welfare of Libya was ignored by most intervention advocates the minute the fun, glorious, exciting part – “We came, we saw, he died,” chuckled Hillary Clinton – was over.
  • (2) It is simply mystifying how anyone can look at U.S. actions in the Middle East and still believe that the goal of its military deployments is humanitarianism. The U.S. government does not oppose tyranny and violent oppression in the Middle East. To the contrary, it is and long has been American policy to do everything possible to subjugate the populations of that region with brutal force – as conclusively demonstrated by stalwart U.S. support for the region’s worst oppressors. Or, as Hillary Clinton so memorably put it in 2009: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.” How can anyone believe that a government whose overt, explicit policy is “regime continuity” for Saudi Arabia, and who continues to lend all sorts of support to the military dictators of Egypt, is simultaneously driven by humanitarian missions in the region? (3) “Humanitarianism” is the pretty packaging in which all wars – even the most blatantly aggressive ones – are wrapped, but it is almost never the actual purpose. There are often numerous steps the U.S. could take to advance actually humanitarian goals, but those take persistence and resources, and entail little means of control, and are thus usually ignored in favor of blowing things and people up with Freedom Bombs.
  • (4) Note how even the pretenses of constitutional democracy are now dispensed with: there is a reasonable legal debate over legality, but in essence: the President has the power to order bombing of Iraq because he decides it should happen. (5) Perhaps having Israel and the U.S. simultaneously bombing Arabs in different countries – yet again – will create some extremely negative consequences?
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  • (6) This above-documented parade of “Saddam-is-worse-than-Hitler” campaigns was surrounded by stints of U.S. arming and funding of the very same Saddam (the same, of course, was true of the Taliban precursors, Gadhaffi, Iran, Manuel Noriega, and virtually every other Latest Villain who needed to be bombed; the US was roughly allied with ISIS allies in Syria and American allies fund ISIS itself). The propaganda has gone from “pulling babies from incubators: as bad as Hitler” to “rape rooms: worse than Hitler” to the new slogan: “worse than al-Qaeda!” What’s left? For quite some time, it was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the democratically elected president of Iran who left office peacefully at the end of his term and who never actually invaded anybody – who was The New Hitler. As all of this demonstrates, there certainly are some heinous, violent people in the world: often including America’s closest allies and the ones who unleash the violence documented here, as well as those at whom that violence is directed. But perhaps some perspective and serious skepticism is warranted the next time we’re relentlessly bombarded with messaging about The New Greatest Villainous Threat in History – and especially manipulative accusations that opposition to U.S. military attack is indicative of support for those New Villains – as a means to secure acquiescence to the next bombing campaign.
  • (7) Maybe this and this, rather than humanitarianism, is a more significant influence in this new bombing campaign? Targeted strikes against ISIS is obviously not remotely the same as a full-scale invasion of Iraq, but whatever else is true, and whatever one’s opinions are on this latest bombing, it is self-evidently significant that, as the NYT’s Peter Baker wrote today, “Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition” known as Iraq.
Paul Merrell

Meet The Big Wallets Pushing Obama Towards A New Cold War - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...ing-obama-towards-new-cold-war

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Ukraine U.S.-war-profitters

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • There’s a familiar ring to the U.S. calls to arm Ukraine’s post-coup government. That’s because the same big-money players who stand to benefit from belligerent relations with Russia haven’t forgotten a favorite Cold War tune. President Obama has said that he won’t rule out arming Ukraine if a recent truce, which has all but evaporated, fails like its predecessor. His comments echoed the advice of a report issued a week prior by three prominent U.S. think tanks: the Brookings Institute, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Atlantic Council. The report advocated sending $1 billion worth of “defensive” military assistance to Kiev’s pro-Western government. If followed, those recommendations would bring the U.S. and Russia the closest to conflict since the heyday of the Cold War. Russia has said that it would “respond asymmetrically against Washington or its allies on other fronts” if the U.S. supplies weapons to Kiev. The powers with the most skin in the game—France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine—struck a deal on Feb. 12, which outlines the terms for a ceasefire between Kiev and the pro-Russian, breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine. It envisages a withdrawal of heavy weaponry followed by local elections and constitutional reform by the end of 2015, granting more autonomy to the eastern regions.
  • But not all is quiet on the eastern front. The truce appears to be headed the route of a nearly identical compromise in September, which broke down immediately afterward. Moscow’s national security interests are clear. Washington’s are less so, unless you look at the bottom lines of defense contractors. As for those in the K Street elite pushing Uncle Sam to confront the bear, it isn’t hard to see what they have to gain. Just take a look below at the blow-by-blow history of their Beltway-bandit benefactors:
Paul Merrell

Washington Misses Bigger Picture of New Chinese Bank « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/er-picture-of-new-chinese-bank

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Bibi Netanyahu’s election, persistent violence through much of the Middle East and North Africa, and intensified efforts to forge a nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran topped the news here in Washington this week. But a much bigger story in terms of the future order of global politics was taking place in Europe and Beijing. The story was simply this: virtually all of the closest European allies of the United States, beginning with Britain, defied pressure from Washington by deciding to apply for founding membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This Chinese initiative could quickly rival the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank as a major source of funding for big development projects across Eurasia. The new bank, which offers a serious multilateral alternative to the Western-dominated international financial institutions (IFIs) established in the post-World War II order, is expected to attract about three dozen initial members, including all of China’s Asian neighbors (with the possible exception of Japan). Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states are also likely to join by the March 31 deadline set by Beijing for prospective co-founders to apply. Its $50 billion in initial capital is expected to double with the addition of new members, and that amount could quickly grow given China’s $3 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. More details about the bank can be found in a helpful Q&A here at the Council on Foreign Relations website.
  • Along with the so-called BRICS bank—whose membership so far is limited to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the AIIB poses a real “challenge to the existing global economic order,” which, of course, Western nations have dominated since the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the final days of World War II. As one unnamed European official told The New York Times, “We have moved from the world of 1945.” That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the AIIB over U.S. objections offers yet more evidence that the “unipolar moment” celebrated by neoconservatives and aggressive nationalists 25 years ago and then reaffirmed by the same forces after the 2003 Iraq invasion is well and truly. And yet, these same neoconservatives continue to insist that—but for Obama’s weakness and defeatism—the United States remains so powerful that it really doesn’t have to take account of anyone’s interests outside its borders except, maybe, Israel’s. (That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the new bank over U.S. objections could also presage a greater willingness to abandon the international sanctions regime against Iran if Washington is seen as responsible for the collapse of the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Granted, Iran’s economy—and its potential as a source of investment capital—is itsy-bitsy compared to China.)
  • Indeed, commentators are depicting US allies’ decision to join the AIIB (see here, here, and here as examples) as a debacle for U.S. diplomacy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has predictably blamed Obama for defeat, calling it a “case study in declining American influence” (although it also defended Washington’s decision against joining and accused Britain of “appeasing China for commercial purposes.”) What the Journal predictably didn’t mention was a key reason why the administration did not seek membership in the new bank: there was virtually no chance that a Republican-dominated Congress would approve it. Indeed, one reason Beijing launched its initiative and so many of our allies in both Asia and Europe have decided to join is their frustration with Republicans in Congress who have refused to ratify a major reform package designed to give developing countries, including China, a little more voting power on the Western-dominated governing boards of the IMF and the World Bank. The Group of 20 (G20) biggest economic powers actually proposed this reform in 2010, and it doesn’t even reduce Washington’s voting power, which gives it an effective veto over major policy changes in both institutions. As a result of this intransigence, the United States is the only G-20 member that has failed to ratify the reforms, effectively blocking their implementation.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 15
     
    U.S. global hegemony is rapidly disintegrating as former puppet states in Europe jump from the dwindling dollar economy to the rising remnimbi/ruble BRICS economies. And many of the "stans" south of Russia threatened by U.S. mercenaries provided by the Gulf Coast States are jumping in that direction too, along with Turkey, a NATO member. The Stans involved are oil and natural gas rich; combined with Russian oil and gas, they have enough oil and gas reserves to rival the Gulf Coast States.  The most interesting part to me is the debate now under way in the EU over dropping out of NATO and creating a replacement European mutual defense force that excludes the U.S. I'm beginning to hit some chatter about inviting Russia into that hypoethesized treaty. That makes sense for the EU because it would give Europe the benefit of Russian nuclear deterrence, both in land and submarine-based ICBMs. I'm not convinced that Russia would sign on. Russia is already running joint military exercises with China, which is playing the role of Russia's economic savior at this point. So China might have the final say on that scenario. A pan-Eurasian mutual defense treaty? What would be left of the U.S. Empire without NATO, particularly given that the dollar would surely collapse before such a treaty were signed? The War Party in Congress has only one tool to work with, war, and when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Current U.S. military power is built around the capacity to wage two major wars concurrently, but is very heavily dependent on NATO to do so. I'm not sure at all that the War Party has what it takes to cope with a peaceful group boycott by other NATO members. 
Paul Merrell

Bragging that she and Israel were born within months, Clinton praises its 'prowess in war' - 0 views

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Auction 2016 Hillary Israel BDS

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Yesterday Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Washington at the Saban Forum of Brookings that included more pandering to Israel than any speech I’ve heard from any American politician. It was endless. Israel is a brave democracy, a light unto the nations, a miracle, its “prowess in war” is “inspiring,” and we must take the US-Israel relationship to the “next level.”
  • Just as the Republican candidates had attacked Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) at the Republican Jewish Coalition last week, Clinton said that BDS was hurting the U.S.’s ability to fight terrorism. This is language straight out of Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Speaking of Netanyahu, Clinton was asked by Saban what she would do on her first day in office and she said dutifully: on the first day I would extend an invitation to the Israeli prime minister to come to the United States hopefully within the first month, certainly as soon as it could be arranged to do exactly what I briefly outlined. To work toward very much strengthening and intensifying our relationship on military matters, on terrorism and on everything else that we can do more to cooperate on that will send a strong message to our own peoples as well as the rest of the world. So that is on my list for the first day. Here are more incredible pander quotes.
  • The boycott movement against Israel is making our alliance with Israel “more indispensable than ever”. Here is where she suggests that BDS is hurting US efforts to fight terrorism: In this period of period of peril, Israel needs a strong America by its side, and America needs a strong and secure Israel by our side. It’s in our national interest to have an Israel that remains a bastion of stability and a core ally in a region in chaos. An Israel strong enough to deter its enemies, and strong enough to take steps in the pursuit of peace. We need a brave democracy whose perseverance and pluralism are a rebuke to every extremist and tyrant. We need a light unto the nations as darkness threatens. Today three trends in the region and the world are converging and making our alliance with Israel more indispensable than ever. The first is a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, from North Africa to South Asia. The second is Iran’s continued aggression. The third is the growing effort to delegitimize Israel on the world stage. America and Israel need to address these threats together. We must take an already strong relationship to the next level. We have to develop a common, strategic vision and pursue a coordinated approach, deepen our cooperation and consultation across the board.
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  • Why is fighting BDS an American interest? Clinton never says, though she links the movement with anti-Semitism globally. As Secretary of State I called out systemic structural anti-Israel basis at the UN and fought to block the one sided Goldstone report particularly at a time when anti-semitism is on the rise across the world especially in Europe. We need to repudiate efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. The boycott, divestment and sanctions  movement known as BDS is the latest front in this battle. Demonizing Israeli scientists and intellectuals, even young students, comparing Israel to South African apartheid, now no nation is above criticism. But this is wrong and it should stop immediately.
  • And as for diplomacy, she says that no outside pressure should be brought on Israel: Some proponents of BDS may hope that pressuring Israel may lead to peace. Well that’s wrong too. No outside force is going to resolve the conflict between Israeli’s and Palestinian’s. Only a two state solution can provide Palestinian’s independence, sovereignty and dignity and provide Israelis the secure and recognized borders of a democratic Jewish state.
  • Some of this language is defensive. Clinton knows that the Democratic base doesn’t care about Israel: With every passing year we must tie bonds tighter, reach out to the next generation to bring them with us and do the hard necessary work of friendship because there is a new generation in both countries today that does not remember that shared past… Ben Gurion once said, “In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.” Well, tonight is the first night of Hanukah and the Jewish people and Israel and all over the world praise the almighty for the miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds, for the saving acts. This season and this moment in history is a time once again for mighty deeds and saving acts. For us to rededicate and renew our great alliance. For us once again to light candles of hope that will shine through the darkness for our peoples and all peoples if we do it together. So Clinton is completely flouting the Democratic base. Because she feels secure inside the party on this issue. Imagine if she insulted Black Lives Matter in the way she’s insulting Palestinian-Americans and Arab-Americans. There would be an uprising in her own base. I have to believe that uprising will come on this issue too. As it is, Clinton is using fear to try and strengthen the U.S. Israel relationship even more.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Dec 15
     
    Hillary isn't giving the swing vote much incentive to vote for her other than being female and having name familiarity.
Paul Merrell

Even as Clinton opposes sanctions over Israeli settlements, new poll shows her Democrat... - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...nctions-settlements-democratic

war & peace Auction 2016 Israel Palestine BDS polls Hillary

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Last weekend Hillary Clinton joined the Republican candidates in coming down hard against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Speaking to her financial sponsor Haim Saban as well as a D.C. audience, she described the campaign as anti-semitic and wrong, and meantime offered vague opposition to Israeli settlements. Well there’s a good reason Clinton doesn’t want the issue politicized. If the matter were actually debated openly between Republicans and Democrats, her own base would be against her. A new poll of American attitudes on the conflict from Shibley Telhami at the Brookings Institution says that Democrats favor sanctions to counter Israeli settlement construction. Telhami reports: It is notable that among Democrats, more people (49%) recommend either imposing economic sanctions or taking more serious action [re settlements], than those recommending doing nothing or limiting U.S. opposition towards (46%)
  • The poll also shows broad support for a one-state outcome among Americans. The poll at Telhami’s academic site defines one state as “a single democratic state in which both Jews and Arabs are full and equal citizens, covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories.” Those who advocate a one-state solution, 31%, are now comparable to those who advocate a two-state solution, 35%. The most notable change is that Republicans this year equally support a two-state solution vs. one-state solution (29% each). This shows that Democrats support a two-state-solution over one state by 45 to 33. Still: a third of Dem voters are for a single democratic state with equal citizenship. Dems don’t like the Israel lobby either. The poll shows that by more than a three-to-one ratio, Democrats feel that Israel has too much influence in American politics. And Americans generally also are turned off:
  • Overall, twice as many Americans say the Israeli government has too much influence (37%) than say too little influence (18%), while a plurality (44 %) say it’s the right level. The story once again is more pronounced in the partisan views: Among Democrats, about half (49%) say Israel has too much influence, compared with 14% who say Israel has too little influence, and 36 % who say it’s the right level. Netanyahu’s popularity has crashed among Dems, though he’s a heroic figure to Republicans. Notice that Democratic attitudes on blame for the recent “escalation in violence” actually track attitudes on our site. Democrats understand the Palestinian violence as a response to lack of freedom: A plurality of Democrats, 37%, blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, followed by 35% who blame the absence of serious peace diplomacy, while 15% blame Palestinian extremists. In contrast, 40% of Republicans blame Palestinian extremists first…
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  • And again, Americans are for a secular democracy there. Where did we ever get that idea? Strong American majorities continue to favor Israel’s democracy over its Jewishness in the absence of a two-state solution (72% in 2015, compared with 71% in 2014). Hillary Clinton has very different attitudes. She calls Israel “a thriving raucous democracy” and a “light unto the nations,” and is fundamentally opposed to the idea of any pressure on Israel. She said: Some proponents of BDS may hope that pressuring Israel may lead to peace. Well that’s wrong too. No outside force is going to resolve the conflict between Israeli’s and Palestinian’s.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 15
     
    "Negotiations" for a two-state solution has never been anything more than an excuse for prolonging an apartheid government across all of Palestine. The fact that public support is building in the U.S. for a single-state, secular government for all of Palestine including Israel has to be keeping Israel's right-wing leadership up at night. Israel is losing the BDS battle for U.S. hearts and minds. Hillary risks eroding her support by continuing to push for the increasingly unpopular two-state solution.
Paul Merrell

Does Our Military Know Something We Don't About Global Warming? - Forbes - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...g-we-dont-about-global-warming

climate-change preparations DoD

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Every branch of the United States Military is worried about climate change. They have been since well before it became controversial. In the wake of an historic climate change agreement between President Obama and President Xi Jinping in China this week (Brookings), the military’s perspective is significant in how it views climate effects on emerging military conflicts.
  • At a time when Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush 41, and even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, called for binding international protocols to control greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. Military was seriously studying global warming in order to determine what actions they could take to prepare for the change in threats that our military will face in the future. The Center for Naval Analysis has had its Military Advisory Board examining the national security implications of climate change for many years. Lead by Army General Paul Kern, the Military Advisory Board is a group of 16 retired flag-level officers from all branches of the Service. This is not a group normally considered to be liberal activists and fear-mongers.
  • This year, the Military Advisory Board came out with a new report, called National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change, that is a serious discussion about what the military sees as the threats and the actions to be taken to mitigate them. “The potential security ramifications of global climate change should be serving as catalysts for cooperation and change. Instead, climate change impacts are already accelerating instability in vulnerable areas of the world and are serving as catalysts for conflict.”
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  • Bill Pennell, former Director of the Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, summed up the threat in recent discussions about climate and national security: “The environmental consequences of climate change are a significant threat multiplier, which by itself, can be a cause for future conflicts. Global warming will affect military operations as well as its theaters of operations. And it poses significant risks and costs to military and civilian infrastructure, especially those facilities located on the coastline.” “The countries and regions posing the greatest security threats to the United States are among those most susceptible to the adverse and destabilizing effects of climate change. Many of these countries are already unstable and have little economic or social capital for coping with additional disruptions.” “Whether in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, or North Korea, we are already seeing how extreme weather events – such as droughts and flooding and the food shortages and population dislocations that accompany them – can destabilize governments and lead to conflict. For example, one trigger of the chaos in Syria has been the multi-year drought the country has experienced since 2006 and the Assad Regime’s ineptitude in dealing with it.”
  • So why is the country as a whole, and those who normally support our military, so loathe to prepare for possible threats from this direction? In 1990, Eugene Skolnikoff summarized the national policy issues surrounding global warming and why it has been so difficult to rationally develop policy to address it. “The central problem is that outside the security sector, policy processes confronting issues with substantial uncertainty do not normally yield policy that has high economic or political costs. This is especially true when the uncertainty extends not only to the issues themselves, but also to the measures to avert them or deal with their consequences.” “The climate change issue illustrates – in fact exaggerates – all the elements of this central problem. Indeed, no major action is likely to be taken until those uncertainties are substantially reduced, and probably not before evidence of warming and its effects are actually visible. Unfortunately, any increase in temperature will be irreversible by the time the danger becomes obvious enough to permit political action.” And this was in 1990!
  • As Arctic ice diminishes, the region will see new shipping routes, new energy zones, new fisheries, new tourism and new sources of conflict not covered by existing maritime treaties. Since the United States is not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) treaty, we will not have maximum operating flexibility in the Arctic. Even seemingly small administrative issues may become important in the new era, e.g., the Unified Command Plan presently splits Arctic responsibility between two Combatant Commands: U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and U.S. European Command (EUCOM). This type of things needs to be resolved with the coming global changes in mind. Source: Center for Naval Analysis
Paul Merrell

Jake Sullivan seeks to rebrand 'American exceptionalism' - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...llivan-american-exceptionalism

polls support-for-Israel

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 May 17 - No Cached
  • (But according to an oft-cited Pew Poll, 33% of Democrats sympathize with Israel versus 31% who sympathize with Palestine, indicating this majority no longer exists among Democrats. And according to a recent Brookings poll, 60% of Democrats “now support imposing economic sanctions or more serious action” against Israel in reaction to Israeli settlement expansion.)
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