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Paul Merrell

Israel decries US 'knife in back' over Palestinian govt - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/alestinian-govt-210018880.html

war & peace Israel Palestine Kerry Obama Netanyahu negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Washington's support for a new Palestinian government backed by Israel's Islamist foe Hamas, has left the Jewish state feeling betrayed, triggering a new crisis with its closest ally. Several Israeli ministers expressed public anger on Tuesday after the US State Department said it was willing to work with the new Palestinian unity government put together by the West Bank leadership and Gaza's Hamas rulers. Technocratic in nature, the new government was sworn in on Monday in front of president Mahmud Abbas, with Washington offering its backing several hours later.
  • Speaking to reporters on Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the new cabinet would be judged "by its actions.""At this point, it appears that president Abbas has formed an interim technocratic government that does not include ministers affiliated with Hamas," she said. "With what we know now, we will work with this government."
  • The US endorsement was viewed as a major blow for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had on Sunday urged the international community not to rush into recognising the new government, which he said would only "strengthen terror."
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  • "Unfortunately, American naivety has broken all records," said Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, a cabinet hardliner who is close to Netanyahu."Collaborating with Hamas, which is defined as a terror organisation in the United States, is simply unthinkable. "US capitulation to Palestinian tactics badly damages the chance of ever returning to negotiations and will cause Israel to take unilateral steps to defend its citizens from the government of terror which Abu Mazen (Abbas) has set up." Public radio said Netanyahu was feeling "betrayed and deceived," particularly as he had assured his security cabinet that US Secretary of State John Kerry had promised him Washington would not recognise the new government immediately.
  • "And it wasn't immediate -- it was five hours later that this recognition took place," the radio noted ironically. A senior political official quoted by the Israel Hayom freesheet, widely regarded as Netanyahu's mouthpiece, said the US move was "like a knife in the back." - 'Answer with annexation' - Israeli commentators said the Palestinians had chalked up a "major success" in driving a new wedge between Israel and its US ally.
  • With the peace process in tatters, hardliners within Netanyahu's rightwing coalition have been pushing for Israel to take unilateral steps such as the annexation of the main Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.
  • The security cabinet agreed on Monday to set up a team to examine the annexation option, but Yediot Aharonot commentator Shimon Shiffer said the move was a sop to Bennett and other hardliners rather than a serious policy change.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 14
     
    What's remarkable here is that Obama has apparently ratcheted down his fear of the Israel Lobby. But it's not as though Mr. Netanyahu was not warned that the world would see Israel as responsible if it blew up the Kerry-brokered negotiation between Israel and Palestine. Israel did blow it up by not delivering the last shipment of Palestinian prisoners required by the pre-negotiation agreement, attempting to gain further concessions using their release as leverage.  Palestine responded by joining a large number of U.N. treaty organizations and was thus recognized by most nations on the planet as a nation: a critically important move, because it is recognition by other nations as a nation that qualifies Palestine as a full-fledged U.N. member rather than an observer state, an application Palestine can now make at the time of its choosing. That is also important because Palestine is now positioned to join the Rome Convention that created the International Criminal Court, providing Palestine with legal standing to file war crime charges against high Israeli officials that would then obligate the Court to investigate. Palestine is holding back on that move, using it as bargaining leverage on the world stage.   Palestine also responded by forming a coalition "unity" government with Hamas, the political party that nominally rules the Gaza strip, the world's largest open-air concentration camp. At Israel's request, the U.S. had several years ago designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. But that was a purely political move. It seems that the political situation has changed. Obama is pivoting out of the Mideast as he performs his ballyhooed "pivot to Asia," which is actually a pivot to contain Russia that isn't working and a pivot to subjugate Africa and its huge store of untapped natural resources, including lots of oil. Blocking China's economic deals in Africa with military force seems to be the current top concern in the White House. Israel was already a pari
Paul Merrell

Obama Gave Up on Ukraine, Press Simply Ignored It Washington's Blog - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...e-press-simply-ignored-it.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Ukraine Russia Minsk-Agreement U.S.-loss Kerry Nuland

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 May 15 - No Cached
  • On Tuesday, May 12th, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was asked at a press conference in Sochi Russia, to respond to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s recent statements promising renewed war against Donbass, which were made first on April 30th, “The war will end when Ukraine regains Donbass and Crimea,” and which were repeated on May 11th, by his saying, “I have no doubt, we will free the [Donetsk] Airport, because it is our land.” In other words, Poroshenko had repeatedly made clear that he plans a third invasion of Donbass, and, ultimately, also to invade and retake Crimea. (The Western press, however, had not reported any of these threats that were being made by Poroshenko.) Kerry responded: “ I have not had a chance – I have not read the speech. I haven’t seen any context. I have simply heard about it in the course of today [which would be shocking if true]. But if indeed President Poroshenko is advocating an engagement in a forceful effort at this time, we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.”
  • None of this was reported by Western ‘news’ media. Even Russia’s own Sputnik News, which was Russia’s main English-language medium reporting on Kerry’s comment, ignored this shocking assertion by the U.S. Secretary of State contradicting the nominal leader of the Ukrainian Government that the U.S. itself had installed in February 2014.  The Obama Administration now had slammed Poroshenko down on the key issue of whether to resume the war against Ukraine’s former Donbass region, and also slammed him on whether Ukraine should invade Crimea, which is Russian territory and would therefore mean a war against the Russian armed forces. America’s stooge-regime in Kiev was here being publicly taken to the woodshed about the advisability of yet another Ukrainian invasion of Ukraine’s former southeastern breakaway regions, Donbass and, even Crimea. 
  • Western ‘news’ media were far worse than a botch; they were outright dishonest. Typical was BBC, which headlined on May 12th, “Ukraine Crisis: Kerry Has ‘Frank’ Meeting with Putin,” and their article said nothing whatsoever about Kerry’s shocking slam-down of his Ukrainian stooge. To that ‘news’ report was also appended an “Analysis: Bridget Kendall, BBC News, Sochi,” which simply blathered, and concluded, “There was no breakthrough on anything.” That statement was the exact opposite of the truth. The one good, and, really, brilliant, news-analysis on this important matter, was from the legendary specialist on “the Empire’s [Washington’s] War on Russia,” the anonymous blogger who goes by the name, “The Saker.” His was not really a news-report, because he, too, failed to quote Kerry’s pathbreaking and shocking statement. He didn’t even quote the insignificant squib that Sputnik itself had quoted from Kerry’s remarks. Instead, he merely paraphrased Kerry, which is far less reliable than a quotation, and also far less informative than the packed shocker that Kerry actually delivered. Saker’s paraphrase was far briefer than was Kerry’s statement which is quoted here; it was merely: “Kerry made a few rather interesting remarks, saying that the Minsk-2  Agreement (M2A) was the only way forward and that he would strongly caution Poroshenko against the idea of renewing military operations.” That’s all there was to it. So, The Saker failed to provide a news-report on Kerry’s shocker. But his news-analysis  of its significance was superb, and it’s extremely worth reading (it’s worth clicking onto the link which will now be provided on the article’s title). That analysis was dated May 13th, and it was bannered, “Yet Another Huge Diplomatic Victory for Russia.”  
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  • But also there was just a slice of real news in The Saker’s article, when he said, only in passing (as if it were insignificant, which it was not), “Then, there was the rather interesting behavior of [Victoria] Nuland, who was with Kerry’s delegation, she refused to speak to the press and left looking rather unhappy.” Nothing more than that, but that’s plenty. In other words: Nuland, the agent whom President Obama had placed in charge of arranging the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, and of selecting the leader of the junta that would be imposed upon Ukraine (“Yats” Yatsenyuk), and who told the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine what to do and how to do it, was now exceedingly disturbed to find herself overridden at this late date in her Ukrainian escapade, publicly overridden by her own immediate boss, Secretary of State Kerry.  In other words: she is now sidelined. That’s important news, but The Saker there merely hinted at it, and only in passing. So, as a news-report, The Saker’s article was poor but perhaps the best around; but as a news-analysis, it was excellent, and by far the best.
  • Nuland now knows that she has lost, and that Obama has thrown in the towel on the original plan for Ukraine, which had been for an all-out military conquest of the region, Donbass, where the people had voted over 90% for the man whom Nuland’s team had overthrown on 22 February 2014, Viktor Yanukovych, and so Obama had wanted those people to be either killed or else expelled from Ukraine (so that they’d never again be able to vote in a Ukrainian national election and thus possibly restore a neutralist leadership of Ukraine, such as had existed under the man Obama deposed, Yanukovych). Consequently, clearly, now, Obama is on-board with the “Plan B” for Ukraine, which Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel had put into place, the Minsk II Agreement, which brought about the present ceasefire, which now has become clearly the utter (even accepted by Kerry) capitulation of Obama’s Plan A on Ukraine, which plan Nuland had been carrying out. Kerry’s public statement there was a public slap in the face to his own #2 official on Ukraine; and it could not have been asserted by him if he were not under Obama’s instruction that the previous plan, to exterminate or drive out all the residents of Donbass, was no longer worth trying, and that the Hollande-Merkel plan would be America’s fall-back position.
  • Obama’s message in this, through Kerry, to Ukraine’s President Poroshenko, and indirectly also to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk (the leader whom Nuland herself had selected), is: we’ll back you only as long as you accept that you have failed our military expectations and that we will be stricter with you in the future regarding how you spend our military money. We’re getting in line now behind the Hollande-Merkel peace plan for Ukraine. Dmitriy Yarosh, and the other outright nazis who had been threatening to overthrow Poroshenko if he doesn’t renew the war against Donbass and seize Crimea; Dmitriy Yarosh, who was the man who had led the Ukrainian coup for the U.S., and whose thugs had dressed as Yanukovych’s security forces when gunning down both police and demonstrators in the February 2014 coup, in order for Yanukovych to become blamed for the bloodshed on that occasion; is now, in effect, being told: if you will try another coup, this time to overthrow our own stooges in Ukraine, then you’re finished, Mr. Yarosh. Don’t do it.
  • Merkel and Hollande thus won. Putin had decidedly won. Obama and the nazis he had empowered in Ukraine have now, clearly, been defeated. But the mess that Obama’s people have created in Ukraine by their coup and subsequent ethnic-cleansing to eliminate the residents of Donbass, will take decades, if ever, to repair. Western ‘news’ media can cover it all up, but they can’t change this reality, which, increasingly as time goes by, will expose the press’s failure to have even reported on this historically important U.S. coup in Ukraine and its ultimate failure. As a story about  the press, it is about yet another system-wide press-deceit upon the public, comparable to their ‘news coverage’ of ‘Saddam’s WMD,’ and other lies, in 2002 and 2003. 
Paul Merrell

Putin Forces Obama to Capitulate on Syria - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...s-obama-to-capitulate-on-syria

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Assad Russia Obama-capitulates.

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Russian-led military coalition is badly beating Washington’s proxies in Syria which is why John Kerry is calling for a “Time Out”. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for an emergency summit later in the week so that leaders from Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could discuss ways to avoid the “total destruction” of Syria. According to Kerry, “Everybody, including the Russians and the Iranians, have said there is no military solution, so we need to make an effort to find a political solution. This is a human catastrophe that now threatens the integrity of a whole group of countries around the region,” Kerry added. Of course, it was never a “catastrophe” when the terrorists were destroying cities and villages across the country, uprooting half the population and transforming the once-unified and secure nation into an anarchic failed state. It only became a catastrophe when Vladimir Putin synchronized the Russian bombing campaign with allied forces on the ground who started wiping out hundreds of US-backed militants and recapturing critical cities across Western corridor. Now that the Russian airforce is pounding the living daylights out of jihadi ammo dumps, weapons depots and rebel strongholds, and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is tightening their grip on Aleppo, and Hezbollah is inflicting heavy casualties on Jabhat al Nusra militants and other Al Qaida-linked vermin; Kerry’s decided it’s a catastrophe. Now that the momentum of the war has shifted in favor of Syrian president Bashar al Assad, Kerry wants a “Time out”.
  • Keep in mind, that Putin worked tirelessly throughout the summer months to try to bring the warring parties together (including Assad’s political opposition) to see if deal could be worked out to stabilize Syria and fight ISIS. But Washington wanted no part of any Russian-led coalition. Having exhausted all the possibilities for resolving the conflict through a broader consensus, Putin decided to get directly involved by committing the Russian airforce to lead the fight against the Sunni extremists and other anti-government forces that have been tearing the country apart and paving the way for Al Qaida-linked forces to take control of the Capital. Putin’s intervention stopped the emergence of a terrorist Caliphate in Damascus. He turned the tide in the four year-long war, and delivered a body-blow to Washington’s malign strategy Now he’s going to finish the job. Putin is not gullible enough to fall for Kerry’s stalling tactic. He’s going to kill or capture as many of the terrorists as possible and he’s not going to let Uncle Sam get in the way. These terrorists–over 2,000 of who are from Chechnya–pose an existential threat to Russia, as does the US plan to use Islamic extremists to advance their foreign policy objectives. Putin takes the threat seriously. He knows that if Washington’s strategy succeeds in Syria, it will be used in Iran and then again in Russia. That’s why he’s decided to dump tons of money and resources into the project. That’s why his Generals have worked out all the details and come up with a rock-solid strategy for annihilating this clatter of juvenile delinquents and for restoring Syria’s sovereign borders. And that’s why he’s not going to be waved-away by the likes of mealy-mouth John Kerry. Putin is going to see this thing through to the bitter end. He’s not going to stop for anyone or anything. Winning in Syria is a matter of national security, Russia’s national security.
  • “Syrian President Bashar Assad “does not have to leave tomorrow or the next day,” the US State Department (spokesman Mark Toner) has stated. Washington allows that Assad may take part in transitional process, but can’t be part of Syria’s next government… “… this isn’t the US dictating this. This is the feeling of many governments around the world, and frankly, the majority of the Syrian people,” Toner said.
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  • Putin has offered solutions from the very onset, it was Washington that rejected those remedies. Putin supported the so called Geneva communique dating back to 2012. In fact, it was then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who threw a wrench in the proceedings by demanding that Assad not be part of any transitional governing body. (Note: Now Obama has caved on this demand.) Russia saw her demand as tantamount to regime change, which it was since Assad is the internationally-recognized head of state and fully entitled to be a part of any transitional government. US rejectionism sabotaged efforts for internationally-monitored “free and fair multi-party elections” and ended any chance for a speedy end to the war. Washington was more determined to get its own way (“Assad must go”) then to save the lives of tens of thousands of civilians who have died since Clinton walked away from Geneva. And now Kerry is extending the olive branch? Now Washington pretends to care about the “total destruction” of Syria? I’m not buying it. What Kerry cares about is his hoodlum “head-chopper” buddies that are being turned into shredded wheat by Russian Daisy Cutters. That’s what he cares about. Take a look at this from RT:
  • Toner is backpeddling so fast he’s not even sure what he’s saying. Clearly, the administration is so flustered by developments on the ground in Syria, and so eager to stop the killing of US-backed jihadis, that they sent poor Toner out to talk to the media before he’d even gotten his talking points figured out. What a joke. The administration has gone from refusing to meet with a high-level Russian delegation just last week (to talk about coordinating airstrikes in Syria), to completely capitulating on their ridiculous “Assad must go” position today. That’s quite a reversal, don’t you think? I’m surprised they didn’t just run a big white Flag up over 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. while the Marine Band played Taps. But don’t think that this latest humiliation will derail Washington’s plan for destroying Syria as a functioning, sovereign state and carving it into a million powerless statelets that pose no threat to Big Oil’s pipeline corridors, or US military bases, or Israel’s sprawling Zionist Valhalla. Because it won’t. That plan is still right on track despite Putin’s efforts to crush the militants and defend the borders.
  • Topple Assad and partition the country. Destroy Syria once and for all. That is Washington’s operating strategy. It’s a plan that was first proposed by Brooking’s analyst Michael O’Hanlon who recently said: “…a future Syria could be a confederation of several sectors: one largely Alawite (Assad’s own sect), spread along the Mediterranean coast; another Kurdish, along the north and northeast corridors near the Turkish border; a third primarily Druse, in the southwest; a fourth largely made up of Sunni Muslims; and then a central zone of intermixed groups in the country’s main population belt from Damascus to Aleppo… Under such an arrangement, Assad would ultimately have to step down from power in Damascus… A weak central government would replace him. But most of the power, as well as most of the armed forces. would reside within the individual autonomous sectors — and belong to the various regional governments… American and other foreign trainers would need to deploy inside Syria, where the would-be recruits actually live — and must stay, if they are to protect their families. (Syria’s one hope may be as dim as Bosnia’s once was, Michael O’ Hanlon, Reuters)
  • Once again, the same theme repeated: Topple Assad and partition the country. Of course, the US will have to train “would-be recruits” to police the natives and prevent the buildup of any coalition or militia that might threaten US imperial ambitions in the region. But that goes without saying. (By the way, Hillary Clinton has already thrown her support behind the O’Hanlon plan emphasizing the importance of “safe zones” that could be used to harbor Sunni militants and other enemies of the state.)
  • (Note: As this article was going to press, the Turkish Daily Zaman reported that: “….the US and several European and Gulf states…have agreed to a plan under which Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad will remain in power for the next six months during a transition period….Turkey has abandoned its determination [to get rid of Assad] and has agreed on an interim period with Assad in place,” former Foreign Minister Yaşar Yakış told Today’s Zaman on Tuesday….If the Syrian people decide to continue with Assad, then there is not much Turkey can object to.” (Report: Turkey agrees to Syria political transition involving Assad, Today’s Zaman) This story has not yet appeared in any western media. Obama’s Syrian policy has completely collapsed.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15
     
    Mike Whitney paints a picture of the Obama Administration's desperation to saeve its jihadi mercenaries in Syria from complete destruction. 
Gary Edwards

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Superpower in Distress | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...lare%2C_superpower_in_distress

Iraq ISIS

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • In response, the Obama administration dispatched thousands of new advisers and trainers and began shipping in piles of new weaponry to re-equip the Iraqi army.  It also filled Iraqi skies with U.S. planes armed with their own munitions to destroy, among other things, some of that captured U.S. weaponry.  Then it set to work standing up a smaller version of the Iraqi army.  Now, skip nearly a year ahead and on a somewhat lesser scale the whole process has just happened again.  Less than two weeks ago, Islamic State militants took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province.  Iraqi army units, including the elite American-trained Golden Division, broke and fled, leaving behind -- you’ll undoubtedly be shocked to hear -- yet another huge cache of weaponry and equipment, including tanks, more than 100 Humvees and other vehicles, artillery, and so on. The Obama administration reacted in a thoroughly novel way: it immediately began shipping in new stocks of weaponry, starting with 1,000 antitank weapons, so that the reconstituted Iraqi military could take out future “massive suicide vehicle bombs” (some of which, assumedly, will be those captured vehicles from Ramadi).  Meanwhile, American planes began roaming the skies over that city, trying to destroy some of the equipment IS militants had captured.
  • Notice anything repetitive in all this -- other than another a bonanza for U.S. weapons makers?  Logically, it would prove less expensive for the Obama administration to simply arm the Islamic State directly before sending in the air strikes
  • In any case, what a microcosm of U.S. imperial hubris and folly in the twenty-first century all this training and equipping of the Iraqi military has proved to be.  Start with the post-invasion decision of the Bush administration to totally disband Saddam’s army and instantly eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps into the chaos of the “new” Iraq and you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement.  Then, add in a little extra “training” at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison in Iraq, for key unemployed officers, and -- Voilà! -- you’ve helped set up the petri dish in which the leadership of the Islamic State movement will grow.  Multiply such stunning tactical finesse many times over globally and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, you have what might be called the folly of the “sole superpower” writ large. Tom
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  • Delusionary Thinking in Washington The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower By Michael T. Klare
  • Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance? This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”
  • The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed “imperial overstretch.” As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which “the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country’s power to defend all of them simultaneously.”
  • The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act.  It involves the constant juggling of America’s capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration.  Call it the Obama Doctrine.
  • In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017 will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary disasters, we’re likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy with an even greater impulse to use military force.
  • The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy.
  • Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention.
  • Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms. 
  • fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Jun 15
     
    Thanks Marbux! "Think of this as a little imperial folly update -- and here's the backstory.  In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein's military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into "standing up" a new Iraqi army.  By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 "ghost soldiers," was only standing in the imaginations of its generals and perhaps Washington.  When relatively small numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants swept into northern Iraq, it collapsed, abandoning four cities -- including Mosul, the country's second largest -- and leaving behind enormous stores of U.S. weaponry, ranging from tanks and Humvees to artillery and rifles.  In essence, the U.S. was now standing up its future enemy in a style to which it was unaccustomed and, unlike the imploded Iraqi military, the forces of the Islamic State proved quite capable of using that weaponry without a foreign trainer or adviser in sight."
Gary Edwards

Putin's Progress in Syria Sends Kerry Scampering to the United Nations - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...ampering-to-the-united-nations

Syria

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • And, keep in mind, Kerry didn’t drag his case before the UN Security Council because he’s serious about a negotiated settlement or peace. That’s baloney. What Kerry wants is a resolution that will protect the groups of US-backed jihadis on the ground from the Russian-led offensive. That’s what’s really going on. The Obama administration sees the handwriting on the wall. They know that Russia is going to win the war, so they’ve settled on a plan for protecting their agents in the field. That’s why the emphasis is on a ceasefire; it’s because Kerry wants a  “Timeout” so his Sunni militants can either regroup or retreat.  Just take a look at this short excerpt from the UN’s summary of last Friday’s confab and you’ll see Kerry’s really up-to:
  • The truth is the Obama administration is just as committed to toppling Assad as ever. Kerry was just misleading Putin to get his approval for his ridiculous resolution at the UN.  As a result, Assad’s name was never mentioned in the resolution which,  Kerry seems to think, is a big victory for the US. But it’s not a victory, in fact, all of Russia’s demands were met in full through the passing of UN Resolution  2254 (three resolutions were passed on Friday) which reiterates all Putin’s demands dating back to the Geneva Communique’ of 2012.  Assad was never mentioned in 2254 either, because naming the president wasn’t necessary to establish the conditions for 1–a transitional government, 2–outlining the terms for a new constitution and  a non-Islamist Syrian state, and 3—free and fair elections to ensure the Syrian people control their own future. In 2012, the US rejected these three provisions saying that the would not agree unless Assad was excluded from participating in the transitional government. Now the US has reversed its position on Assad which means that 100 percent of Moscow’s demands have been met.  UN Resolution  2254 is complete capitulation on the part of the US. It is a humiliating diplomatic defeat which no one in the media is even willing to acknowledge.
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 15
     
    Great catch from Marbux. If the opening statement in this article doesn't get your attention, nothing will. ""It is remarkable that western leaders only remember the term ceasefire when their rebels on the ground are losing. Why didn't they see the need for peace in Syria before the Russian operation started?" - Iyad Khuder, Damascus-based political analyst Imagine if the American people elected a president who was much worse than George W. Bush or Barack Obama. A real tyrant. Would that be sufficient justification for someone like Vladimir Putin to arm and train Mexican and Canadian mercenaries to invade America, kill US civilians, destroy cities and critical infrastructure, seize vital oil refineries and pipeline corridors, behead government officials and prisoners they'd captured, declare their own independent state, and do everything in their power to overthrow the elected-government in Washington? Of course not. The question is ridiculous. It wouldn't matter if the US president was a tyrant or not, that doesn't justify an invasion by armed proxies from another country.  And yet, this is precisely the policy that US Secretary of State John Kerry defended at the United Nations on Friday.  Behind all the political blabber about a "roadmap to peace", Kerry was tacitly defending a policy which has led to the deaths of 250,000 Syrians and the destruction of the country."
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 15
     
    The Hersh article is at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military It's well worth the read.
Paul Merrell

Why France Sank an Iran Nuke Deal | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...-france-sank-an-iran-nuke-deal

war & peace Saudis Israel France Egypt Syria

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • France’s sabotage of a compromise agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is a textbook case of how the new Saudi-Israel alliance can disrupt President Barack Obama’s strategy for resolving Middle East disputes through diplomacy, not war. Over the summer, Saudi officials including intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan visited European capitals dangling financial deals and energy concessions to countries if they would line up behind Saudi and Israeli desires for military intervention in the Syrian civil war and heightened economic warfare against Iran. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius greets U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Paris, France, on Feb. 27, 2013. [State Department photo]The carrots were particularly appealing to the French who are struggling with a sluggish economy, high unemployment and a recent credit downgrade. So, the flash of Saudi petro-dollars got the attention of the French government.
  • Just last month, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian celebrated the signing of a $1.5 billion deal with Saudi Arabia to overhaul six of its navy ships. In July, Saudi Arabia’s ally, United Arab Emirates, signed a $913 million deal with France to buy two high-resolution Helios military satellites. Other lucrative arms deals are reportedly in the works between France and Saudi Arabia (and its Sunni allies). Saudi Arabia also has deployed its money to bolster France’s sagging agricultural and food sectors, including a Saudi firm buying a major stake in Groupe Doux, Europe’s largest poultry firm based in Brittany. The Saudis, however, had less success with other countries.
  • Putin also stepped up his cooperation with President Obama in searching for negotiated settlements to longstanding disagreements in the Middle East, including a U.S.-Russia-brokered deal to get the Syrian government to give up its chemical weapons, a joint push for Syrian peace talks in Geneva and a plan to resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Saudi royals favor a more belligerent approach to these conflicts – wanting the United States to bomb Syria and “degrade” its military, demanding the immediate removal of Syrian President Assad, and insisting on a complete capitulation by Iran under threat of crippling economic sanctions or a U.S.-Israeli aerial bombardment. Last weekend – as an interim agreement with Iran was about to be signed by the five United Nations Security Council members plus Germany – the French rushed to the rescue of the Israeli-Saudi alliance, showing up at the last minute to unravel the deal that had been painstakingly knitted together. To the apparent surprise of the Obama administration, the Russians and other governments working on a compromise with Iran over its nuclear program, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius joined the talks late and prevented the accord from being signed.
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  • Much of the subsequent commentary has focused on why the French were coming to the aid of the Israelis in blocking the interim agreement that Netanyahu has denounced in apocalyptic terms. But France’s interest in undercutting the deal can perhaps best be understood by factoring in the Saudi money. Indeed, the logic behind the behind-the-scenes Saudi-Israeli alliance has been that the two former adversaries now view their interests as mostly aligning, especially their contempt for Iran’s Shiite government and its influence extending along the Shiite Crescent from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut. Israel and Saudi Arabia agree that Iran is the greatest threat to their regional interests. Both countries have indicated that they want the Iranian-backed government in Syria to be overthrown even if that means it will be replaced by Saudi-backed Sunni jihadists linked to al-Qaeda. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Israel Sides with Syrian Jihadists.”]
  • Israel and Saudi Arabia also took the same side on the Egyptian military coup d’etat which ousted elected President Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Though the Muslim Brotherhood is Sunni – like the Saudis – it represents a populist movement that the Saudi monarchy considers a threat to its anti-democratic structure. Israel views the Muslim Brotherhood as sympathetic to Hamas in Gaza. But what makes the Saudi-Israeli alliance so influential is the complementary strengths of the two countries. Israel has extraordinary skills at lobbying and propaganda, especially in influencing Official Washington and Capitol Hill. Saudi Arabia has vast financial resources that can turn the heads of defense officials in Paris, oil men in Houston or investment bankers on Wall Street. Together these strengths can make the negotiation of any good-faith compromise with Iran or Syria difficult, if not impossible. Between Netanyahu pulling the strings of his political and media marionettes in Washington and the Saudis manipulating the French government and others with financial inducements, it will take toughness and savvy for the Obama administration to guide the process to a peaceful resolution. And, toughness and savvy are not attributes that the administration is known to have in great supply.
Paul Merrell

White House: racial slurs in NSA intelligence material 'unacceptable' | World news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...racial-slurs-training-material

surveillance state NSA NSA-targets Muslims NSA-blowback

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The White House has instructed US security agencies to review their training and policy materials for racial or religious bias after documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed training material for the intelligence agencies referring to "Mohammed Raghead".After an extensive investigation by the Intercept on Wednesday reported that the NSA and the FBI spied on the emails of five prominent US activists and attorneys with Muslim backgrounds, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that the administration took accusations of the slurs "extremely seriously." "Upon learning of this matter, the White House immediately requested that the director of national intelligence undertake an assessment of intelligence community policies, training standards or directives that promote diversity and tolerance, and as necessary, make any recommendations changes or additional reforms," Hayden said.It is at least the second time the White House has ordered a review of agency training materials said to include offensive language.
  • Hayden declined to provide additional detail on the scope or duration of the investigation. But it is reminiscent of an earlier incident in which the White House ordered the government's vast counter-terrorism apparatus to find and purge inflammatory training material, particularly that which singled out Muslims for particular scrutiny. In 2011, this reporter published FBI training material instructing newer counter-terrorism agents that Islam itself was a threat to US national security and compared the prophet Muhammad to a cult leader. Initial FBI pushback gave way to an inquiry, at the instruction of the White House, that removed significant quantities of offensive or imprecise training material. That instruction came six years after the "Mohammed Raghead" material and stretched far beyond the FBI. Anti-Islam training material, including some urging "Hiroshima" tactics against Islamic nations, was found and removed from professional education courses for US military officers, at the behest of Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
  • The accusation is one of the gravest the US intelligence agencies have faced in the year since the Guardian and other news outlets began publishing material leaked by Snowden. A central aspect of the intelligence agency's public defense is that it cannot surveil US persons for constitutionally-protected activity and that its court-certified privacy protections are too robust to allow for privacy intrusions of the sort the Intercept reported.The allegation threatens to sever the tenuous relationship between US law enforcement and surveillance agencies and American Muslim communities, many of whom have long suspected that their government views them as an internal threat and not a population to be protected.The NSA, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sharply pushed back against the accusations that protected speech, unrelated to terrorism or espionage, turned American Muslims into counterterrorism targets.
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  • The Obama administration has strained to reconcile the vast counter-terrorism bureaucracy with its policy declarations that the US is not at war with Islam and has attempted, with mixed results, to cultivate a less militarized and security-focused relationship with US Muslims, often preferring the term "countering violent extremism" over "counter-terrorism".In some anti-Islam circles, the removal of the instructional material is infamous and considered evidence of an administration capitulation to Islam – the exact opposite of the concern raised by the Intercept on Wednesday. The Intercept report, by former Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, Murtaza Hussain and Josh Meyer, suggested a persistent counter-terrorism atmosphere in which the mixture of Muslim heritage or faith and political activism attracted the scrutiny of US security agencies, despite first amendment protections. It presented the cases of five American activists and attorneys of Muslim heritage who appear to have been targeted for surveillance, at least between 2002 and 2008. None have been charged with a crime.
  • US Muslim leaders and civil rights groups reacted with fury to the Intercept report.A coalition of 44 civil rights organizations wrote Obama on Wednesday to request a meeting with him, attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director James Comey. "In short, the government’s domestic counterterrorism policies treat entire minority communities as suspect, and American Muslims have borne the brunt of government suspicion, stigma and abuse," reads an open letter issued by a coalition that includes the ACLU, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Arab-American Institute, and dozens of others.In a statement, the law firm Muslim Advocates said the spying, apparently conducted between 2002 and 2008, "confirms the worst fears of American Muslims"."The federal government has targeted Americans, even those who have served their country in the military and government, simply because of their faith or religious heritage," the group said. "The report clearly documents how biased training by the FBI leads to biased surveillance."
  • Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, issued a statement comparing the surveillance of Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, named by the Intercept as one of the five surveillance targets, to the infamous surveillance of the Civil Rights Movement."The NSA’s surveillance of Nihad Awad and CAIR fits the same pattern as the FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, Ella Baker, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, and other leaders of the civil rights movement. Then it was based on manufactured suspicions of associations with the Communist party. Now it is seemingly based on unproven claims of tangential associations with Hamas," Warren said.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14
     
    Don't look for the American Muslim community to let go of this one anytime soon. They know they've been profiled since 9-11 but finally have proof.
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