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Paul Merrell

Putin Advisor Proposes "Anti-Dollar Alliance" To Halt US Aggression Abroad | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...nce-halt-us-foreign-aggression

war & peace Ukraine Russia U.S. EU economic-warfare anti-dollar-alliance banksters

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • It has been a while since both Ukraine, and the ongoing Russian response to western sanctions (which set off the great Eurasian axis in motion, pushing China and Russia close together, and accelerating the "Holy Grail" gas deal between the two countries) have made headlines. It is still not clear just why the western media dropped Ukraine coverage like a hot potato, especially since the civil war in Ukraine's Donbas continues to rage and claim dozens of casualties on both sides. Perhaps the audience has simply gotten tired of hearing about mixed chess/checkers game between Putin vs Obama, and instead has reverted to reading the propaganda surrounding just as deadly events in the third war of Iraq in as many decades. However, "out of sight" may be just what Russia's political elite wants. In fact, as VoR's  Valentin Mândr??escu reports, while the great US spin and distraction machine is focused elsewhere, Russia is already preparing for the next steps. Which brings us to Putin advisor Sergey Glazyev, the same person who in early March was the first to suggest Russia dump US bonds and abandon the dollar in retaliation to US sanctions, a strategy which worked because even as the Kremlin has retained control over Crimea, western sanctions have magically halted (and not only that, but as the Russian central bank just reported, the country's 2014 current account surplus may be as high as $35 billion, up from $33 billion in 2013, and a far cry from some fabricated "$200+ billion" in Russian capital outflows which Mario Draghi was warning about recently). Glazyev was also the person instrumental in pushing the Kremlin to approach China and force the nat gas deal with Beijing which took place not necessarily at the most beneficial terms for Russia.
  • It is this same Glazyev who published an article in Russian Argumenty Nedeli, in which he outlined a plan for "undermining the economic strength of the US" in order to force Washington to stop the civil war in Ukraine. Glazyev believes that the only way of making the US give up its plans on starting a new cold war is to crash the dollar system. As summarized by VoR, in his article, published by Argumenty Nedeli, Putin's economic aide and the mastermind behind the Eurasian Economic Union, argues that Washington is trying to provoke a Russian military intervention in Ukraine, using the junta in Kiev as bait. If fulfilled, the plan will give Washington a number of important benefits. Firstly, it will allow the US to introduce new sanctions against Russia, writing off Moscow's portfolio of US Treasury bills. More important is that a new wave of sanctions will create a situation in which Russian companies won't be able to service their debts to European banks. According to Glazyev, the so-called "third phase" of sanctions against Russia will be a tremendous cost for the European Union. The total estimated losses will be higher than 1 trillion euros. Such losses will severely hurt the European economy, making the US the sole "safe haven" in the world. Harsh sanctions against Russia will also displace Gazprom from the European energy market, leaving it wide open for the much more expensive LNG from the US.
  • Co-opting European countries in a new arms race and military operations against Russia will increase American political influence in Europe and will help the US force the European Union to accept the American version of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a trade agreement that will basically transform the EU into a big economic colony of the US. Glazyev believes that igniting a new war in Europe will only bring benefits for America and only problems for the European Union. Washington has repeatedly used global and regional wars for the benefit of  the American economy and now the White House is trying to use the civil war in Ukraine as a pretext to repeat the old trick. Glazyev's set of countermeasures specifically targets the core strength of the US war machine, i.e. the Fed's printing press. Putin's advisor proposes the creation of a "broad anti-dollar alliance" of countries willing and able to drop the dollar from their international trade. Members of the alliance would also refrain from keeping the currency reserves in dollar-denominated instruments. Glazyev advocates treating positions in dollar-denominated instruments like holdings of junk securities and believes that regulators should require full collateralization of such holdings. An anti-dollar coalition would be the first step for the creation of an anti-war coalition that can help stop the US' aggression.
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  • Unsurprisingly, Sergey Glazyev believes that the main role in the creation of such a political coalition is to be played by the European business community because America's attempts to ignite a war in Europe and a cold war against Russia are threatening the interests of big European business. Judging by the recent efforts to stop the sanctions against Russia, made by the German, French, Italian and Austrian business leaders, Putin's aide is right in his assessment. Somewhat surprisingly for Washington, the war for Ukraine may soon become the war for Europe's independence from the US and a war against the dollar.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Jun 14
     
    Russia takes aim at the Fed's printing press with a U.S. dollar boycott to end the war in Ukraine. There are a lot of incentives for EU investors to join the boycott. Interesting idea; I'll need to think about this.  
Paul Merrell

Obama's "War on Ebola" or War for Oil? Sending 3000 Troops to African "Ebola" Areas tha... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5406142

war & peace Ebola big oil west-Africa Obama boots-on-the-ground

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • For a Nobel Peace Prize President, Barack Obama seems destined to go down in history books as the President who presided over one of the most aggressive series of wars ever waged by a bellicose Washington Administration. Not even George Bush and Dick Cheney came close.
  • Now Obama’s advisers, no doubt led by the blood-thirsty National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, have come up with a new war. This is the War Against Ebola. On September 16, President Obama solemnly declared the war. He announced, to the surprise of most sane citizens, that he had ordered 3,000 American troops, the so-called “boots on the ground” that the Pentagon refuses to agree to in Syria, to wage a war against….a virus? In a carefully stage-managed appearance at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Obama read a bone-chilling speech. He called the alleged Ebola outbreaks in west Africa, “a global threat, and it demands a truly global response. This is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security. It’s a potential threat to global security, if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic,” Obama continued, conjuring images that would have made Andromeda Strain novelist Michael Chrichton drool with envy. Obama added, “That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease. This outbreak is already spiraling out of control.”
  • With that hair-raising introduction, the President of the world’s greatest Superpower announced his response. In his role as Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America announced he has ordered 3,000 US troops to west Africa in what he called, “the largest international response in the history of the CDC.” He didn’t make clear if their job would be to shoot the virus wherever it reared its ugly head, or to shoot any poor hapless African suspected of having Ebola. Little does it matter that the US military doesn’t have anywhere near 3,000 troops with the slightest training in public health. Before we all panic and line up to receive the millions of doses of untested and reportedly highly dangerous “Ebola vaccines” the major drug-makers are preparing to dump on the market, some peculiarities of this Ebola outbreak in Africa are worth noting.
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  • A major problem for Chan and her backers, however, is that her Ebola statistics are very, very dubious. For those whose memory is short, this is the same Dr Margaret Chan at WHO in Geneva who was guilty in 2009 of trying to panic the world into taking unproven vaccines for “Swine Flu” influenza, by declaring a Global Pandemic with statistics calling every case of symptoms that of the common cold to be “Swine Flu,” whether it was runny nose, coughing, sneezing, sore throat. That changed WHO definition of Swine Flu allowed the statistics of the disease to be declared Pandemic. It was an utter fraud, a criminal fraud Chan carried out, wittingly or unwittingly (she could be simply stupid but evidence suggests otherwise), on behalf of the major US and EU pharmaceutical cartel. In a recent Washington Post article it was admitted that sixty-nine percent of all the Ebola cases in Liberia registered by WHO have not been laboratory confirmed through blood tests. Liberia is the epicenter of the Ebola alarm in west Africa. More than half of the alleged Ebola deaths, 1,224, and nearly half of all cases, 2,046, have been in Liberia says WHO. And the US FDA diagnostic test used for the lab confirmation of Ebola is so flawed that the FDA has prohibited anyone from claiming they are safe or effective. That means, a significant proportion of the remaining 31 % of the Ebola cases lab confirmed through blood tests could be false cases.
  • Then the official WHO Ebola Fact Sheet dated September, 2014, states, “It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis.” Excuse me, Dr Margaret Chan, can you say that slowly? It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis? And you admit that 69% of the declared cases have never been adequately tested? And you state that the Ebola symptoms include “sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding”? In short it is all the most vague and unsubstantiated basis that lies behind President Obama’s new War on Ebola.
  • One striking aspect of this new concern of the US President for the situation in Liberia and other west African states where alleged surges of Ebola are being claimed is the presence of oil, huge volumes of untapped oil. The offshore coast of Liberia and east African ‘Ebola zones’ conveniently map with the presence of vast untapped oil and gas resources shown here The issue of oil in west Africa, notably in the waters of the Gulf of Guinea have become increasingly strategic both to China who is roaming the world in search of future secure oil import sources, and the United States, whose oil geo-politics was summed up in a quip by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970’s: ‘If you control the oil, you control entire nations.’
  • The Obama Administration and Pentagon policy has continued that of George W. Bush who in 2008 created the US military Africa Command or AFRICOM, to battle the rapidly-growing Chinese economic presence in Africa’s potential oil-rich countries. West Africa is a rapidly-emerging oil treasure, barely tapped to date. A US Department of Energy study projected that African oil production would rise 91 percent between 2002 and 2025, much from the region of the present Ebola alarm. Chinese oil companies are all over Africa and increasingly active in west Africa, especially Angola, Sudan and Guinea, the later in the epicenter of Obama’s new War on Ebola troop deployment.
  • If the US President were genuine about his concern to contain a public health emergency, he could look at the example of that US-declared pariah Caribbean nation, Cuba. Reuters reports that the Cuban government, a small financially distressed, economically sanctioned island nation of 11 million people, with a national budget of $50 billion, Gross Domestic Product of 121 billion and per capita GDP of just over $10,000, is dispatching 165 medical personnel to Africa to regions where there are Ebola outbreaks. Washington sends 3,000 combat troops. Something smells very rotten around the entire Ebola scare.
  • F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
Paul Merrell

Ukraine and the Rise of Euro-Fascism | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5388443

war & peace Ukraine Russia EU U.S.-foreign-policy strategy

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The disaster in Ukraine may be termed aggression against Russia by the U.S. and its NATO allies. This is a contemporary version of Euro-fascism, which differs from the previous face of fascism during World War II in that it employs “soft” power with just some elements of armed action in cases of extreme necessity, as well as the use of Nazi ideology as a supplementary rather than an absolute ideology. One of the main defining elements of Eurofascism has been preserved, however, and that is the division of citizens into superior ones (those who support the “European choice”) and inferior ones, who have no right to their own opinions and toward whom all is permitted. Another feature is the readiness to use violence and commit crimes in dealing with political opponents. The final aspect that needs to be understood, is what drives the rebirth of fascism in Europe; without grasping this, it is impossible to develop a resistance plan and save the Russian world from this latest threat of Euro-occupation.
  • The theory of long-term economic development recognizes an interrelationship between long waves of economic activity and long waves of military and political tension. Periodic shifts from one dominant technological mode to the next alternate with economic depressions, wherein increased government spending is used as an incentive for overcoming the crisis. The spending is concentrated in the military-industrial complex, because the liberal economic ideology allows enhancement of the role of the state only for national security objectives. Therefore, military and political tension is promoted and international conflicts provoked, to justify increased defense spending. This is what is happening at present: the U.S. is attempting to resolve its accumulated economic, financial, and industrial imbalances at other countries’ expense, by escalating international conflicts that will allow it to write off debts, appropriate assets belonging to others, and weaken its geopolitical rivals. When this was done during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the result was World War II. The American aggression against Ukraine pursues all of the above-mentioned goals. First, economic sanctions against Russia are intended to wipe out billions of dollars of U.S. debt to Russia. A second objective is to take over Ukrainian state assets, including the natural gas transport system, mineral deposits, the country’s gold reserves, and valuable art and cultural objects. Third, to capture Ukrainian markets of importance to American companies, such as nuclear fuel, aircraft, energy sources, and others. Fourth, to weaken not only Russia, but also the European Union, whose economy will sustain an estimated trillion-dollar loss from economic sanctions against Russia. Fifth, to attract capital flight from instability in Europe, to the USA.
  • Thus, war in Ukraine is just business for the United States. Judging by reports in the media, the U.S. has already recouped its spending on the Orange Revolution and the Maidan by carrying off treasures from the ransacked National Museum of Russian Art and National Historical Museum, taking over potential gas fields, and forcing the Ukrainian government to switch from Russian to American nuclear fuel supplies for its power plants. In addition, the Americans have moved ahead on their long-term objective of splitting Ukraine from Russia, turning what used to be “Little Russia” into a state hostile to Russia, in order to prevent it from joining the Eurasian integration process. This analysis leaves no room for doubt about the long-term and consistent nature of the American aggression against Russia in Ukraine. Washington is directing its Kiev puppets to escalate the conflict, rather than the reverse. They are also inciting the Ukrainian military against Russia, aiming to drag Russian ground forces into a war against Ukraine. They are encouraging the Nazis there to initiate new combat operations. This is a real war, organized by the United States and its NATO allies. Just like 75 years ago, it is being waged by Eurofascists against Russia, with the use of Ukrainian Nazis cultivated for this purpose.
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  • What is surprising is the position of the European countries, which are tailing the U.S. and doing nothing to prevent a further escalation of the crisis. They should understand better than anybody, that Nazis can only be stopped with force. The sooner this is done, the fewer victims and less destruction there will be in Europe. The avalanche of wars across North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and now Ukraine, incited by the U.S. in its own interests, threatens Europe most of all; and it was the devastation of Europe in two world wars that gave rise to the American economic miracle in the 20th century. But the Old World will not survive a Third World War. To prevent such a war means that there must be international acknowledgement that the actions of the U.S. constitute aggression, and that the EU and U.S. officials carrying them out are war criminals. It is important to accord this aggression the legal definition of “Eurofascism” and to condemn the actions of the European politicians and officials who are party to the revival of Nazism under cover of the Eastern Partnership.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Jun 14
     
    Interesting take on U.S. instigation of the coup in Ukraine via neo-Nazi organizations, written by a top economic advisor to Vladimir Putin. 
Gary Edwards

Birth of an Internet independence movement | CIO - 0 views

www.cio.com/...net-independence-movement.html

internet

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 May 15 - No Cached
  • The arrogance and utter incongruity of declaring Internet and telephone networks equivalent has led a group of friends, all of them reluctant activists, to convene an effort to restore Internet independence. So far, the group of “Tech Innovators” includes John Perry Barlow, Mark Cuban, Tim Draper, Tom Evslin, Dave Farber, Charlie Giancarlo, George Gilder, John Gilmore, Brian Martin, Bob Metcalfe, Ray Ozzie, Jeff Pulver, Michael Robertson, Scott McNealy and Les Vadasz. Through this civic initiative, we hope to defend the remarkable success of the Internet and lead a conversation toward the future — not the past, where laws enacted under FDR must inevitably lead us. The open Internet rules from the FCC end the “permissionless innovation” they purport to protect by inviting the commission to regulate computer networks for the first time. The uncertain benefits and certain unintended consequences of the policy reversal expose the communicating public to unnecessary risk and threaten to upend the success of the past 20 years. The Tech Innovators believe that by recognizing “Internet Independence Day,” Congress can help initiate and advance bipartisan legislation to restore the private-sector framework responsible for of the success of the Internet.
  • Americans today enjoy a thousand-fold improvement from the 56Kbps dial-up modems that 15 million Internet early adopters relied on in the ’90s. The Internet now reaches 3 billion people, and a proliferation of services push communication options far beyond the long-distance phone call of 1995. The FCC plan to impose public utility Title II provisions ends the policies responsible for these accomplishments. Domains subject to telephone-style regulations suffer stagnation without exception. A routine 10Mbps connection available as a nonregulated information service prior to the Open Internet Order would have cost $10,000 per month as a Title II data service in 1995. The insertion of fiat regulatory powers will prove fatal to the entrepreneurial energies responsible for building what FCC Chairman Wheeler calls “the most powerful network in the history of mankind” — a network built beyond the reach of FCC regulatory jurisdiction.
  • The Open Internet Order invents artificial distinctions between content companies, Internet providers and end users for the purposes of regulation. This will lead to the same types of regulatory arbitrage and innovation-deadening consequences as prior distinctions such as “long distance” or “intra-lata.” History demonstrates that asserting artificial market distinctions for purposes of regulation always invites arbitrage and unintended consequences. Resources White Paper 802.11ac: Wireless The Easy Way White Paper Web Application Acceleration: Practical Implementations See All Go The commission obtains jurisdiction by changing the definition of “public switched network” to include networks with IP addresses. The complete transformation of a policy landscape represents a decision the Constitution grants exclusively to Congress.
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  • The coming litigation leaves the Internet ecosystem in jeopardy without regard to the outcome. The preference for a congressional action addressing current conditions and issues relative to the prospects of an 80-year-old regulatory framework should not be controversial. The privatization of the Internet represented an experiment. Restoring Internet independence merely recognizes the remarkable success of the commercial Internet.
  • Gary Edwards on 04 May 15
     
    "The 20th anniversary of the privatization of the Internet deserves recognition by the U.S. Congress and celebration by all Americans as "Internet Independence Day." Two decades ago, on April 30, 1995, the Internet was privatized with the decommissioning of the NSFNET backbone. State of the CIO 2015 More than 500 top IT leaders responded to our online survey to help us gauge the state of the READ NOW The past two decades of Internet-driven success were set in motion with the passage of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, championed by Sen. Al Gore and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. That decision of the U.S. government to step back and privatize the Internet led to a thriving and open Internet that provides a remarkable platform for innovation. Ironically, the Federal Communication Commission's recently announced Open Internet Order reasserts government control over the Internet by the means of repurposing Depression-era industrial policy meant to address a monopoly in voice-transmission technology. The FCC went down the dangerous and uncertain legal path of reverting to traditional, utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934."
Paul Merrell

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic | WEB OF DEBT BLOG - 0 views

ellenbrown.com/...-and-the-death-of-the-republic

trade agreements TPP fast-track Investor-State-DisputeSettlement ISDS legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers. The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.
  • The most controversial provision of the TPP is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) section, which strengthens existing ISDS  procedures. ISDS first appeared in a bilateral trade agreement in 1959. According to The Economist, ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law to do things that hurt corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing a nuclear catastrophe. Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases; and the secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent gives wide scope for creative judgments. To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
  • Under the TPP, however, even larger judgments can be anticipated, since the sort of “investment” it protects includes not just “the commitment of capital or other resources” but “the expectation of gain or profit.” That means the rights of corporations in other countries extend not just to their factories and other “capital” but to the profits they expect to receive there.
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  • Under the TPP, could the US government be sued and be held liable if it decided to stop issuing Treasury debt and financed deficit spending in some other way (perhaps by quantitative easing or by issuing trillion dollar coins)? Why not, since some private companies would lose profits as a result? Under the TPP or the TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under negotiation with the European Union), would the Federal Reserve be sued if it failed to bail out banks that were too big to fail? Firestone notes that under the Netherlands-Czech trade agreement, the Czech Republic was sued in an investor-state dispute for failing to bail out an insolvent bank in which the complainant had an interest. The investor company was awarded $236 million in the dispute settlement. What might the damages be, asks Firestone, if the Fed decided to let the Bank of America fail, and a Saudi-based investment company decided to sue?
  • Just the threat of this sort of massive damage award could be enough to block prospective legislation. But the TPP goes further and takes on the legislative function directly, by forbidding specific forms of regulation. Public Citizen observes that the TPP would provide big banks with a backdoor means of watering down efforts to re-regulate Wall Street, after deregulation triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: The TPP would forbid countries from banning particularly risky financial products, such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion government bailout of AIG. It would prohibit policies to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail,” and threaten the use of “firewalls” to prevent banks that keep our savings accounts from taking hedge-fund-style bets. The TPP would also restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money. . . . And the deal would prohibit taxes on Wall Street speculation, such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax that would generate billions of dollars’ worth of revenue for social, health, or environmental causes.
  • Clauses on dispute settlement in earlier free trade agreements have been invoked to challenge efforts to regulate big business. The fossil fuel industry is seeking to overturn Quebec’s ban on the ecologically destructive practice of fracking. Veolia, the French behemoth known for building a tram network to serve Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, is contesting increases in Egypt’s minimum wage. The tobacco maker Philip Morris is suing against anti-smoking initiatives in Uruguay and Australia. The TPP would empower not just foreign manufacturers but foreign financial firms to attack financial policies in foreign tribunals, demanding taxpayer compensation for regulations that they claim frustrate their expectations and inhibit their profits.
  • What is the justification for this encroachment on the sovereign rights of government? Allegedly, ISDS is necessary in order to increase foreign investment. But as noted in The Economist, investors can protect themselves by purchasing political-risk insurance. Moreover, Brazil continues to receive sizable foreign investment despite its long-standing refusal to sign any treaty with an ISDS mechanism. Other countries are beginning to follow Brazil’s lead. In an April 22nd report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, gains from multilateral trade liberalization were shown to be very small, equal to only about 0.014% of consumption, or about $.43 per person per month. And that assumes that any benefits are distributed uniformly across the economic spectrum. In fact, transnational corporations get the bulk of the benefits, at the expense of most of the world’s population.
  • Something else besides attracting investment money and encouraging foreign trade seems to be going on. The TPP would destroy our republican form of government under the rule of law, by elevating the rights of investors – also called the rights of “capital” – above the rights of the citizens. That means that TPP is blatantly unconstitutional. But as Joe Firestone observes, neo-liberalism and corporate contributions seem to have blinded the deal’s proponents so much that they cannot see they are selling out the sovereignty of the United States to foreign and multinational corporations.
  • For more information and to get involved, visit: Flush the TPP The Citizens Trade Campaign Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Eyes on Trade
Paul Merrell

Greek Voters Return Alexis Tsipras to Power in Snap Elections | TIME - 0 views

time.com/...ras-to-power-in-snap-elections

banksters Greece elections Tsipras Syriza Grexit

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Despite unhappiness with his capitulation to European creditors, Tsipras remains in power after snap elections It was a “victory of the people” said Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras as he was swept back to power following a snap general election on Sunday. Despite his failure to rid Greece of the troika as he’d once promised; and instead, dragging the country into a yet another austerity program, Tsipras told a band of over 2,000 Syriza loyalists near Syntagma Square on Sunday night that “justice had been done.”
  • In comparison to January’s lightning victory for Syriza, and the defiance and righteousness that emerged during the bailout referendum held n July, celebrations were relatively low-key. And no surprise—the government has a mountain of harsh policies to implement, including full reassessment of the welfare system with savings worth 0.5 per cent of GDP, reconstruction of a broken tax collection system and full liberalization of the energy market. Tsipras told the audience that starting on Monday morning he will “fight corruption”—a key strategy plank during the election campaign. Tsipiras lost of some of his strongest comrades in the run up to the election, including the former president of the parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou who joined several other splitters from Sryiza in a new party called Popular Unity. They were angry about what they saw as Tsipiras’ capitulation to Germany and other creditor nations. But the Prime Minister’s legions of fans remain undeniably behind him. “Tsipras is strong in his game; he’s playing chess and we’re following him”, said 32-year-old Ugur from Athens. “He is a realist, and a leftist; he had to sign the memorandum because we were on the edge and were going to fall over.”
  • “I’m very happy with the result—Syriza is the only party that will support the poor people and workers rights; he’s one of the best politicians to renegotiate the memorandum,” said 50-year-old Kostas Dianis. Although a former communist, some critics say Tsipras can no longer claim to represent the far left; not after his capitulation in Brussels earlier this summer when he agreed to a third bailout worth over $95 billion based on the demands of European creditors. “Tsipras is an agent for capitalism; he is not from the left; he is part of the system, and will continue the system, rather than changing it”, said 32-year-old Yannis; a taxi driver who voted for Syriza in January, but this time voted for the Communist party because “they’re the only ones that say what they mean.” And although Tsipras was unable to free Greece from austerity, as he had initially promised, the alternative left—the MP’s that split from Tsipras earlier this summer, provided few viable alternatives to Greek voters.
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  • Though she remains personally popular, the strident Zoe Konstantopoulou didn’t win back her seat after Popular Unity failed to reach the 3 per cent threshold. “The mandate of the people on the 5th of July was a clear ‘No’ to the extortion, the violation of human rights and ‘No’ to austerity”, she told TIME in an interview. Many Greek voters may well have agreed with Konstantopoulou, but they were still willing to give Tsipras a chance. “I voted for Tsipras because the others are worse and they got us into this mess” said 43 year old Elaney Depoli. “People in Greece are depressed from 5 years of austerity; this is the best opportunity to get better results. He signed the memorandum to save Greece, and he is saving Greece.”
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Sep 15
     
    Sounds like no Grexit before the Greek far left reorganizes in a new party separate from Syrisa. And it may be the Communist Party that leads Greece out from under the tyranny of the Eurozone. That would have an anti-communists in the U.S. State Dept. in a true tizzy and might result in NATO intervention. 
Paul Merrell

The Russia-China Counter-Alliance to US-NATO Aggression | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5383873

foreign-relations empire BRICS NATO China Russia Iran trade-policy banksters reserve currrencies

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 May 14 - No Cached
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin has said recently that his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this week in Shanghai marked a new stage in Russia-China relations, and that the two countries will roll out all-around cooperation. China and Russia signed a $400 billion (237.1 billion pounds) gas supply deal on Wednesday, securing the world’s top energy user a major source of cleaner fuel and opening up a new market for Moscow as it risks losing European customers over the Ukraine crisis. Furthermore, the two countries began joint military exercises in the East China Sea in a clear show of strength against Japan, a western ally. The Chinese President has also openly demonstrated his desire to create a counter-alliance to the U.S. Speaking on May 20 President Xi Jinping called for the creation of a new Asian structure for security cooperation based on a regional group that includes Russia and Iran and excludes the United States. Clearly pointing a finger at the United States he called NATO an outdated thinking of the Cold War. According to him, “We cannot just have security for one or a few countries while leaving the rest insecure”. In his speech Mr. Xi Jinping offered an alternative vision for the region based on an all-inclusive regional security framework rather than individual alliances with external actors like the United States. China’s proposal to push forward with the ambitious Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific met an especially chilly reception from the U.S., which is focused on a 12-country trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which excludes China.
Paul Merrell

BBC News - UK support for China-backed Asia bank prompts US concern - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-australia-31864877

war & peace economic-warfare UK AIIB banksters U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The US has expressed concern over the UK's bid to become a founding member of a Chinese-backed development bank. The UK is the first big Western economy to apply for membership of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The US has raised questions over the bank's commitment to international standards on governance. "There will be times when we take a different approach," a spokesperson for Prime Minister David Cameron said about the rare rebuke from the US. The AIIB, which was created in October by 21 countries, led by China, will fund Asian energy, transport and infrastructure projects. The UK insisted it would demand the bank adhere to strict banking and oversight procedures. "We think that it's in the UK's national interest," said Mr Cameron's spokesperson.
  • In a statement announcing the UK's intention to join the bank, Mr Osborne said that joining the AIIB at the founding stage would create "an unrivalled opportunity for the UK and Asia to invest and grow together". The hope is that investment in the bank will give British companies an opportunity to invest in the world's fastest growing markets. But the US sees the Chinese effort as a ploy to dilute US control of the banking system, and has persuaded regional allies such as Australia, South Korea and Japan to stay out of the bank. In response to the move, US National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said: "We believe any new multilateral institution should incorporate the high standards of the World Bank and the regional development banks." "Based on many discussions, we have concerns about whether the AIIB will meet these high standards, particularly related to governance, and environmental and social safeguards," he added.
  • The Financial Times (FT) newspaper reported on Thursday that US officials had complained about the British move. The report cited an unnamed senior US administration official as saying the British decision was taken after "virtually no consultation with the US". "We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China," the newspaper quoted the US official as saying.
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  • The founding member countries of the AIIB have agreed the basic parameters that would determine the capital structure of the new bank would be relative gross domestic product. Banking experts have estimated that, if taken at face value, this would give China a 67% shareholding in the new bank. That's significantly different than the Asia Development Bank, which has a similar structure to the World Bank and has been in existence 1966. There, the majority stakes are controlled by Japan and the US.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15
     
    The line comes to mind about rats deserting a sinking ship. 
Paul Merrell

Responding to Failure: Reorganizing U.S. Policies in the Middle East | Middle East Poli... - 0 views

mepc.org/...nizing-us-policies-middle-east

war & peace Mideast Israel Arabs Shia-nations U.S.-foreign-policy recommendations

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no struggles that cannot be lost. It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study. • Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago. • Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.
  • • Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it. • Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples. • Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three. • In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left. • Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation. • Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.
  • • At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests. That’s quite a record.
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  • One can only measure success or failure by reference to what one is trying achieve. So, in practice, what have U.S. objectives been? Are these objectives still valid? If we’ve failed to advance them, what went wrong? What must we do now to have a better chance of success? Our objectives in the Middle East have not changed much over the course of the past half century or more. We have sought to 1. Gain acceptance and security for a Jewish homeland from the other states and peoples of the region; 2. Ensure the uninterrupted availability of the region’s energy supplies to sustain global and U.S. security and prosperity; 3. Preserve our ability to transit the region so as to be able to project power around the world; 4. Prevent the rise of a regional hegemon or the deployment of weapons of mass destruction that might threaten any or all of these first three objectives; 5. Maximize profitable commerce; and 6. Promote stability while enhancing respect for human rights and progress toward constitutional democracy. Let’s briefly review what’s happened with respect to each of these objectives. I will not mince words.
  • Israel has come to enjoy military supremacy but it remains excluded from most participation in its region’s political, economic, and cultural life. In the 67 years since the Jewish state was proclaimed, Israel has not made a single friend in the Middle East, where it continues to be regarded as an illegitimate legacy of Western imperialism engaged in racist removal of the indigenous population. International support for Israel is down to the United States and a few of the former colonial powers that originally imposed the Zionist project on the Arabs under Sykes-Picot and the related Balfour Declaration. The two-state solution has expired as a physical or political possibility. There is no longer any peace process to distract global attention from Israel’s maltreatment of its captive Arab populations. After years of deference to American diplomacy, the Palestinians are about to challenge the legality of Israel’s cruelties to them in the International Criminal Court and other venues in which Americans have no veto, are not present, or cannot protect the Jewish state from the consequences of its own behavior as we have always been able to do in the past. Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza are fueling a drive to boycott its products, disinvest in its companies, and sanction its political and cultural elite. These trends are the very opposite of what the United States has attempted to achieve for Israel.
  • In a stunning demonstration of his country’s most famous renewable resource — chutzpah — Israel’s Prime Minister chose this very moment to make America the main issue in his reelection campaign while simultaneously transforming Israel into a partisan issue in the United States. This is the very opposite of a sound survival strategy for Israel. Uncertainties about their country’s future are leading many Israelis to emigrate, not just to America but to Europe. This should disturb not just Israelis but Americans, if only because of the enormous investment we have made in attempts to gain a secure place for Israel in its region and the world. The Palestinians have been silent about Mr. Netanyahu’s recent political maneuvers. Evidently, they recall Napoleon’s adage that one should never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. This brings me to an awkward but transcendently important issue. Israel was established as a haven from anti-Semitism — Jew hatred — in Europe, a disease of nationalism and Christian culture that culminated in the Holocaust. Israel’s creation was a relief for European Jews but a disaster for the Arabs of Palestine, who were either ethnically cleansed by European Jewish settlers or subjugated, or both.  But the birth of Israel also proved tragic for Jews throughout the Middle East — the Mizrahim. In a nasty irony, the implementation of Zionism in the Holy Land led to the introduction of European-style anti-Semitism — including its classic Christian libels on Jews — to the region, dividing Arab Jews from their Muslim neighbors as never before and compelling them to join European Jews in taking refuge in Israel amidst outrage over the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland. Now, in a further irony, Israel’s pogroms and other injustices to the Muslim and Christian Arabs over whom it rules are leading not just to a rebirth of anti-Semitism in Europe but to its globalization.
  • The late King `Abdullah of Saudi Arabia engineered a reversal of decades of Arab rejectionism at Beirut in 2002. He brought all Arab countries and later all 57 Muslim countries to agree to normalize relations with Israel if it did a deal — any deal — with the Palestinians that the latter could accept. Israel spurned the offer. Its working assumption seems to be that it does not need peace with its neighbors as long as it can bomb and strafe them. Proceeding on this basis is not just a bad bet, it is one that is dividing Israel from the world, including Jews outside Israel. This does not look like a story with a happy ending. It’s hard to avoid the thought that Zionism is turning out to be bad for the Jews. If so, given the American investment in it, it will also have turned out to be bad for America. The political costs to America of support for Israel are steadily rising. We must find a way to divert Israel from the largely self-engineered isolation into which it is driving itself, while repairing our own increasing international ostracism on issues related to Israel.  
  • Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s recent public hysteria about Iran and his efforts to demonize it, Israel has traditionally seen Iran’s rivalry with the Arabs as a strategic asset. It had a very cooperative relationship with the Shah. Neither Israelis nor Arabs have forgotten the strategic logic that produced Israel's entente with Iran. Israel is very much on Daesh’s list of targets, as is Iran. For now, however, Israel’s main concern is the possible loss of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Many years ago, Israel actually did what it now accuses Iran of planning to do. It clandestinely developed nuclear weapons while denying to us and others that it was doing so. Unlike Iran, Israel has not adhered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or subjected its nuclear facilities to international inspection. It has expressed no interest in proposals for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. It sees its ability to bring on nuclear Armageddon as the ultimate guarantee of its existence.
  • To many, Israel now seems to have acquired the obnoxious habit of biting the American hand that has fed it for so long. The Palestinians have despaired of American support for their self-determination. They are reaching out to the international community in ways that deliberately bypass the United States. Random acts of violence herald mayhem in the Holy Land. Daesh has proclaimed the objective of erasing the Sykes-Picot borders and the states within them. It has already expunged the border between Iraq and Syria. It is at work in Lebanon and has set its sights on Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Lebanon, under Saudi influence, has turned to France rather than America for support. Hezbollah has intervened militarily in Iraq and Syria, both of whose governments are close to Iran. Egypt and Turkey have distanced themselves from the United States as well as from each other. Russia is back as a regional actor and arms supplier. The Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey now separately intervene in Libya, Syria, and Iraq without reference to American policy or views. Iran is the dominant influence in Iraq, Syria, parts of Lebanon, and now Yemen. It has boots on the ground in Iraq. And now Saudi Arabia seems to be organizing a coalition that will manage its own nuclear deterrence and military balancing of Ir
  • To describe this as out of control is hardly adequate. What are we to do about it? Perhaps we should start by recalling the first law of holes — “when stuck in one, stop digging.” It appears that “don’t just sit there, bomb something” isn’t much of a strategy. When he was asked last summer what our strategy for dealing with Daesh was, President Obama replied, “We don’t yet have one.” He was widely derided for that. He should have been praised for making the novel suggestion that before Washington acts, it should first think through what it hopes to accomplish and how best to do it. Sunzi once observed that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." America’s noisy but strategy-free approach to the Middle East has proven him right. Again the starting point must be what we are trying to accomplish. Strategy is "the discipline of achieving desired ends through the most efficient use of available means" [John Lewis Gaddis].Our desired ends with respect to the Middle East are not in doubt. They have been and remain to gain an accepted and therefore secure place for Israel there; to keep the region's oil and gas coming at reasonable prices; to be able to pass through the area at will; to head off challenges to these interests; to do profitable business in the markets of the Middle East; and to promote stability amidst the expansion of liberty in its countries. Judging by results, we have been doing a lot wrong. Two related problems in our overall approach need correction. They are “enablement” and the creation of “moral hazard.” Both are fall-out from  relationships of codependency.
  • Enablement occurs when one party to a relationship indulges or supports and thereby enables another party’s dysfunctional behavior. A familiar example from ordinary life is giving money to a drunk or a drug addict or ignoring, explaining away, or defending their subsequent self-destructive behavior.  Moral hazard is the condition that obtains when one party is emboldened to take risks it would not otherwise take because it knows another party will shoulder the consequences and bear the costs of failure. The U.S.-Israel relationship has evolved to exemplify codependency. It now embodies both enablement and moral hazard. U.S. support for Israel is unconditional.  Israel has therefore had no need to cultivate relations with others in the Middle East, to declare its borders, or to choose peace over continued expansion into formerly Arab lands. Confidence in U.S. backing enables Israel to do whatever it likes to the Palestinians and its neighbors without having to worry about the consequences. Israel is now a rich country, but the United States continues to subsidize it with cash transfers and other fiscal privileges. The Jewish state is the most powerful country in the Middle East. It can launch attacks on its neighbors, confident that it will be resupplied by the United States. Its use of U.S. weapons in ways that violate both U.S. and international law goes unrebuked. 41 American vetoes in the United Nations Security Council have exempted Israel from censure and international law. We enable it to defy the expressed will of the international community, including, ironically, our own.
  • We Americans are facilitating Israel's indulgence in denial and avoidance of the choices it must make if it is not to jeopardize its long-term existence as a state in the Middle East. The biggest contribution we could now make to Israel's longevity would be to ration our support for it, so as to cause it to rethink and reform its often self-destructive behavior. Such peace as Israel now enjoys with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians is the direct result of tough love of this kind by earlier American administrations. We Americans cannot save Israel from itself, but we can avoid killing it with uncritical kindness. We should support Israel when it makes sense to do so and it needs our support on specific issues, but not otherwise. Israel is placing itself and American interests in jeopardy. We need to discuss how to reverse this dynamic.
  • Moral hazard has also been a major problem in our relationship with our Arab partners. Why should they play an active role in countering the threat to them they perceive from Iran, if they can get America to do this for them? Similarly, why should any Muslim country rearrange its priorities to deal with Muslim renegades like Daesh when it can count on America to act for it? If America thinks it must lead, why not let it do so? But responsible foreign and defense policies begin with self-help, not outsourcing of military risks. The United States has the power-projection and war-fighting capabilities to back a Saudi-led coalition effort against Daesh. The Saudis have the religious and political credibility, leadership credentials, and diplomatic connections to organize such an effort. We do not. Since this century began, America has administered multiple disappointments to its allies and friends in the Middle East, while empowering their and our adversaries. Unlike the Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey, Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran. Given our non-Muslim identity, solidarity with Israel, and recent history in the Fertile Crescent, the United States cannot hope to unite the region’s Muslims against Daesh.  Daesh is an insurgency that claims to exemplify Islam as well as a governing structure and an armed force. A coalition led by inhibited foreign forces, built on papered-over differences, and embodying hedged commitments will not defeat such an insurgency with or without boots on the ground.
  • When elections have yielded governments whose policies we oppose, we have not hesitated to conspire with their opponents to overthrow them. But the results of our efforts to coerce political change in the Middle East are not just failures but catastrophic failures. Our policies have nowhere produced democracy. They have instead contrived the destabilization of societies, the kindling of religious warfare, and the installation of dictatorships contemptuous of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. Frankly, we have done a lot better at selling things, including armaments, to the region than we have at transplanting the ideals of the Atlantic Enlightenment there. The region’s autocrats cooperate with us to secure our protection, and they get it. When they are nonetheless overthrown, the result is not democracy or the rule of law but socio-political collapse and the emergence of  a Hobbesian state of nature in which religious and ethnic communities, families, and individuals are able to feel safe only when they are armed and have the drop on each other. Where we have engineered or attempted to engineer regime change, violent politics, partition, and ethno-religious cleansing have everywhere succeeded unjust but tranquil order. One result of our bungled interventions in Iraq and Syria is the rise of Daesh. This is yet another illustration that, in our efforts to do good in the Middle East, we have violated the principle that one should first do no harm.
  • Americans used to believe that we could best lead by example. We and those in the Middle East seeking nonviolent change would all be better off if America returned to that tradition and forswore ideologically motivated hectoring and intervention. No one willingly follows a wagging finger. Despite our unparalleled ability to use force against foreigners, the best way to inspire them to emulate us remains showing them that we have our act together. At the moment, we do not. In the end, to cure the dysfunction in our policies toward the Middle East, it comes down to this. We must cure the dysfunction and venality of our politics. If we cannot, we have no business trying to use an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver to fix things one-third of the way around the world. That doesn’t work well under the best of circumstances. But when the country wielding the screwdriver has very little idea what it’s doing, it really screws things up.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Chas Freeman served as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the war to liberate Kuwait and as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1993-94. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "diplomacy" and is the author of five books, including "America's Misadventures in the Middle East" and "Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige."  I have largely omitted highlighting portions of the speech dealing with Muslim nations because Freeman has apparently lost touch with the actual U.S., Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Turish roles in creating and expanding ISIL. But his analysis of Israel's situation and recommendations for curing it seem quite valid, as well as his overall Mideast recommendation to heed the First Law of Holes: "when stuck in one, stop digging."   I recommend reading the entire speech notwithstanding his misunderstanding of ISIL. There is a lot of very important history there ably summarized.
Paul Merrell

Looking at Armenian-Iranian Relations Through a Russian Lens « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/lations-through-a-russian-lens

economic-warfare Russia Iran Armenia railroad New-Silk-Road

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The late January visit to Armenia by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif got little media attention, but it could have significant ramifications for geopolitics in Eurasia. Specifically, the trip could help Russia gain a trade outlet that softens the blow of Western sanctions.
  • Most significantly, Zarif said Iran has “no restrictions” in developing ties with Armenia, highlighting two areas in particular – transportation and trade. On both fronts, the role of Russia looms large. First, both Tehran and Yerevan have emphasized the need to make progress on the construction of the Southern Armenia Railway, a project that would better link the two countries. On the issue of trade, Zarif praised Armenia’s accession to the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and pointed to it as a potentially important development for Iran.
  • a Russian angle to the construction of the Southern Armenia Railway is apparent. As Prime Minister Abrahamyan put it, “Iran and Armenia can jointly produce agricultural products and export them to Eurasia” via the proposed rail project. However, both Moscow and Tehran evidently have much greater ambitions than just providing an outlet to and from the small Armenian market. Iran’s trade with Armenia is only about $300 million per year, a tiny share of its overall trade. The 470-km rail project, which was first proposed in 2010 and has remained largely on the drawing board since then, is seen as a missing link in a North-South Eurasian trade corridor connecting the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea. Its construction would give both Iran and Russia an important alternative outlet for trade. The significance of the project is also reflected in President Vladimir Putin’s announcement back in September 2013 to contribute $429 million in financing for the multi-billion-dollar rail project. Given its current economic woes, there is no longer a guarantee that Russia could follow through on Putin’s pledge. Still, Russian diplomatic and economic interests in Iran are intensifying.
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  • The statements made during Zarif’s trip to Yerevan are better understood when Russia’s regional role is taken into account. Since Armenia regained independence in 1991, Russia has served as a geopolitical protector for Yerevan. And thanks to the EEU and to Russia’s acquisition of strategic economic assets in Armenia over the past decade, the Kremlin is in position to play economic kingmaker for the South Caucasus country. Meanwhile, Iran has played a complementary role to that of Russia as far as Armenia is concerned. Tehran has served as Armenia’s most reliable trade outlet to the world since 1994, when Turkey and Azerbaijan imposed a blockade. In addition, Iran has tended to favor Armenia, and not fellow Shia Azerbaijan, in the search for a lasting political settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Two factors are driving Iran’s desire for closer ties to Armenia. First, Tehran has from early on resented Azerbaijan’s relatively strong relationship with the United States and European Union, and is particularly alarmed by Baku’s growing contacts with Israel. While Iranian-Azerbaijani relations have improved in recent months, Tehran remains wary of Baku’s intentions.
  • Second, Tehran has made a strategic decision not to challenge or upset Russian interests in Moscow’s self-defined “near abroad.” For Iran, Russian goodwill is important in light of Tehran’s troubled relations with the Western world. Ultimately, when it comes to Armenia, Iran has pursued a policy that is deferential to Russian interests. In cases where Russians interests have been at stake – when, for example, Iran and Armenia pursued joint energy projects that would circumvent Moscow – the Iranians have been quick to back down in the face of Kremlin opposition. These days, when it comes to Iranian-Armenian ties, Russian calculations are straightforward: given the rising tension between Moscow and the West over Ukraine, the Kremlin wants to secure alternative trade partners. As long as Russia believes closer Armenian-Iranian ties serve its interests, the momentum that Zarif and his hosts in Yerevan spoke about stands a good chance of building.
Paul Merrell

Russia and Egypt to establish 'free trade zone' and build nuclear reactor | Middle East... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ish-free-trade-zone-1505432412

economic-warfare Egypt Russia China de-dollarization nuclear-reactors

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has hailed the economic and security relationship between Egypt and Russia, and announced the establishment of a “free trade zone” between Egypt and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
  • Sisi also announced a strengthening of trade relations between the two countries, culminating in a preliminary agreement to create a Russian industrial zone in Egypt, near the Suez Canal. The pair also said that they would set up a nuclear power plant designed to “help Egypt reach its energy needs”. Egypt had taken steps in the early 1980s to launch a nuclear plant to produce electricity in Dabaa but it was shut down after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The EEU currently consists of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and has generally been seen as an attempt by Russia to provide a counterweight to the European Union (EU).
  • The decision by Egypt to increase its bilateral trade with Russia is likely to further increase tensions with the EU and the US, who have placed sanctions on Russia over its alleged interference in the Ukraine conflict. It is possible the meet might also upset wealthy Gulf donors who have clashed with Moscow over its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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  • While no statements were made about the possibility of arms sales, following a meet in Russia last summer, Putin announced that the two countries were close to penning a $3bn deal for Moscow to supply missiles and warplanes, including MiG-29 fighters and attack helicopters. However, Washington has since resumed its annual $1.5 bn in aid to Egypt, also delivering Apache helicopter gunships to fight militants in the Sinai.
  • In a further controversial move, the two countries have also suggested they may stop using the dollar in bilateral trade and instead use national currencies. “This measure will open up new prospects for trade and investment cooperation between our countries, reduce its dependence on the current trends in the world markets,” Putin told Egyptian state newspaper al-Ahram. “I should note that we already use national currencies for trade with a number of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) states, and China. This practice proves its worth; we are ready to adopt it in our relations with Egypt as well. This issue is being discussed in substance by relevant agencies of both countries.” Egypt offered to increase agricultural exports to Russia by 30 percent as Russia underwent Western economic sanctions last year for its part in occupying parts of Ukraine. 
  • Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), said the strengthening Egypt-Russian ties should come as no surprise. "Incorporating a Russia angle into one’s geostrategic toolbox appealed to many Middle Eastern states even before the current crisis, as Russia had been actively re-asserting itself in the region in recent years," he wrote on the ECFR website. "Which is not to say that the West’s Middle East allies really see in Russia a replacement option – rather that they see greater value in both doing some geo-strategic balancing and in being able to use a flirtation with Russia as part of their respective strategies for managing the West, deflecting any Western criticism and guaranteeing future Western assistance and arms sales." He also pointed out that Russia was now the number one source of tourists to Egypt, which has seen a drop-off in tourism as the security situation has deteriorated in the country.
Paul Merrell

Presence of U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Okinawa - 0 views

nsarchive.gwu.edu/...s-on-Okinawa-Declassified-2016

war & peace Iraq nuclear-weapons-myth CIA Iraq-War

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Also posted today are recently released CIA documents containing bogus information about Iraq’s nuclear programs
  • Two CIA reports on Iraq and its weapons activities produced during the months after 9/11; the CIA had denied both in their entirety. Neither treated Iraq as a significant threat, but both made claims which would become part of the justification for the 2003 war: that Iraq 1) had acquired aluminum tubes for gas centrifuges and 2) had deployed mobile biological laboratories, claims which were later disproven.
  • Documents 5A-B: Iraq through CIA Eyes after 9/11 A: Central Intelligence Agency, “The Iraq Threat,” 15 December 2001, SPWR [Senior Publish When Ready] 12501-07, Top Secret, excised copy B: Central Intelligence Agency, Senior Executive Memorandum [SEM], “In Response to a query about the status of Iran’s nuclear program,” 11 January 2002, Top Secret, excised copy Source: MDR request to CIA These two high-level CIA assessments from late 2001 and early 2002 demonstrate the lack of solid intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMD programs during the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq.[3] There was a marked gap between the empirical information which the CIA could report, and be certain about, and the threat assessments which analysts were tasked to produce. Worst-case outcomes are proposed, then quickly undermined by admitting the lack of any intelligence to support doomsday scenarios. “The worst case scenario is illicit acquisition of sufficient fissile material, uranium or plutonium, to allow Baghdad to produce a crude nuclear weapon within a year. CIA has not detected a dedicated Iraqi effort to obtain fissile material from another government or on the black market but Baghdad could be expected to entertain any offers it deems credible” [SEM].
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  • The memoranda also indicate a significant disparity between what was probable, and what was feared. The analysts were most confident assessing that Saddam Hussein could be developing nuclear capabilities in just under ten years. Iraq might produce a “nuclear weapon, potentially late this decade,” the SEM notes. The SPWR, on the other hand, concludes: “Iraq is trying to jump-start a clandestine uranium enrichment program to produce the fissile material for a weapon, potentially by late this decade.” Those assessments were produced in the shadow of the failure of U.S. intelligence to detect Saddam Hussein’s clandestine nuclear program before the Gulf War. CIA analysts were hesitant to conclude that Iraq was not an immediate threat, yet they had little evidence indicating the existence of an Iraqi nuclear program that genuinely posed a hazard. “Saddam never abandoned his nuclear weapons program, but reporting on Iraqi efforts to revive it is limited. Iraq continues to employ effective denial and deception measures and there are no indicators that Baghdad has embarked on an extensive nuclear weapons effort as it did before the Gulf War” [SEM]. The released paragraphs addressing Iraq’s support of terrorism failed to mention al-Qaeda, surprising in light of claims from Bush Administration officials that Iraq was linked to terrorism and September 11. The Senior Executive Memorandum notes: “Baghdad has reduced its reliance on surrogates, preferring instead to use its own intelligence services for sensitive terrorist operations,” making a connection to non-Iraqi terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, doubtful. Within Iraq, the 2001 memo notes how Saddam maintained a “multilayered and pervasive security apparatus.” The underground networks were critical to the anti-American insurgency that developed following the 2003 U.S. invasion, fragments of which have since evolved into the Islamic State. 
  • Despite their equivocal findings, these reports are evidence of the intelligence failure which contributed to the U.S. war. For example, CIA analysts linked the procurement of aluminum tubes to the potential development of centrifuges for uranium enrichment – an assertion later seized on by top officials as evidence that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. Interestingly, intelligence analysts at the Department of Energy disagreed with this CIA contention, instead assessing that the aluminum tubes in question were much more likely intended for more benign purposes. However this disagreement did not appear to receive a full vetting during the lead-up to the 2003 war. Just as dubious were the CIA statements about mobile biological warfare laboratories, information that can be traced back to the notorious dissembler Curveball.
Paul Merrell

Moscow dips Erdogan's Nose in ISIS Oil - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace Syia Iraq ISIL Russia Turkey oil-smuggling Erdogan

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The Russian Ministry of Defense held a press conference, presenting satellite images documenting the smuggling of Syrian oil by Daesh via Turkey. The Defense Ministry stressed that a terrorist organization without funds is like a predator without teeth. Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that part of the Turkish leadership is trading with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. 
  • On Wednesday the Russian Defense Ministry held a press conference, briefing the press on oil smuggling operations by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL / Daesh) as well as other Islamist terrorist organizations from Syria and Iraq via Turkey. Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, stressed that Russia is aware of three main oil smuggling routes to Turkey. Antonov noted that the Ministry would only be presenting some of the facts that confirm that “a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites are stealing oil from their neighbors”, operating in the region. Antonov stressed that smuggling operations have such proportions that they constitute a de facto pipeline – on wheels – consisting of thousands of trucks. The Defense Ministry released images from Russian air strikes against smuggling operations. Besides that, the Ministry presented satellite images that show how thousands of trucks, including oil tankers are crossing the border between Syria and Turkey, unimpeded and uncontrolled. The flow of oil is in part refined in Syria or northern Iraq, while much is transported to refineries in Turkey. While part of the product is used for the domestic market, much of the oil is exported via Turkish parts such as Iskenderun, as shown in Satellite images.
  • Russian Air Forces have, over the past two months struck 32 oil complexes, 11 refineries, 23 oil pumping stations, said Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy . Rudskoy stressed that the air strikes have cut the smuggling operations which are estimated at a value between 1.4 and 3 million dollar US per day by about 50 percent. The Chief of the National Center for State Defense Control Lt.Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said that the Defense Ministry is aware of that up to 2,000 fighters, 120 tons of ammunition and 250 vehicles have been delivered to Islamic State and Al-Nusrah militants from Turkish territory recently. Such operations have, however, been ongoing for a long time. Turkish President R. Tayyip Erdogan responded to the Russian Defense Ministry dipping his nose in ISIS oil, claiming that it was purely slander. Speaking in the Qatari capital Doha, Erdogan attempted to distract from the presented satellite data by accusing Russia of doing business with Daesh. Pentagon spokesman Steve Warren responded by saying that Washington flatly denies that the Turks are somehow working with ISIL. Warren denounced these “allegations” based in satellite images as “preposterous“.
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  • It is noteworthy that the European Union, on April 22, 2013, lifted its ban on the import of Syrian oil, provided that it comes from “rebel-held territories”. Prominent Turks, including the former Chief of Military Intelligence Hakki Pekin and members of Turkey’s progressive opposition have for years stressed that they have evidence that networks around Erdogan and the AKP leadership are smuggling both stolen Syrian oil as well as Iraqi oil from the predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq via Turkey. It is also noteworthy that nsnbc has been presented evidence that shows that R. Tayyip Erdogan, former Lebanese PM Saad Hariri and others, including US citizens were present when the final decision to “invade Iraq with ISIS” was made on the sidelines of the Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit in Turkey, in November 2013. Speaking at his annual address, Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at part of Turkey’s leadership over its business with and support of terrorist organizations while he promised additional sanctions against Turkey. Commenting on both the State sponsorship of terrorism and the downing of a Russian Su-24 front-line bomber by a Turkish F-16, Putin noted: “We were prepared to cooperate with Turkey on most sensitive issues and go further than their allies. Allah knows why they did it. Apparently Allah decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by taking their sanity,”
  • Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 15
     
    All blacked out in American mainstream media, of course. 
Paul Merrell

M of A - Erdogan Moves To Annexes Mosul - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...an-moves-to-annexes-mosul.html

war & peace Turkey Iraq invasion Mosul

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country
  • Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.
  • Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris. The Iraqi government and all major Iraqi parties see the Turkish invasion as a hostile act against their country. Abadi demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Turkish forces but it is unlikely that Turkey will act on that. Some Iraqi politicians have called for the immediate dispatch of the Iraqi air force to bomb the Turks near Mosul. That would probably the best solution right now but the U.S. installed Premier Abadi is too timid to go for such strikes. The thinking in Baghdad is that Turkey can be kicked out after the Islamic State is defeated. But this thinking gives Turkey only more reason to keep the Islamic State alive and use it for its own purpose. The cancer should be routed now as it is still small. Barzani's Kurdistan is so broke that is has even confiscated foreign bank accounts to pay some bills. That may be the reason why Barzani agreed to the deal now. But the roots run deeper. Barzani is illegally selling oil that belongs to the Iraqi government to Turkey. The Barzani family occupies  not only the presidential office in the KRG but also the prime minister position and the local secret services. It is running the oil business and gets a big share of everything else. On the Turkish side the oil deal is handled within the family of President Erdogan. His son in law, now energy minister, had the exclusive right to transport the Kurdish oil through Turkey. Erdogan's son controls the shipping company that transports the oil over sea to the customer, most often Israel. The oil under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq passes the exactly same route. These are businesses that generate hundreds of millions per year.
  • It is unlikely that U.S., if it is not behinds Turkey new escapade, will do anything about it. The best Iraq could do now is to ask the Russians for their active military support. The Turks insisted on their sovereignty when they ambushed a Russian jet that brushed its border but had no intend of harming Turkey. Iraq should likewise insist on its sovereignty, ask Russia for help and immediately kick the Turks out. The longer it waits the bigger the risk that Turkey will eventually own Mosul.
Paul Merrell

Are US Academics Who Cite WikiLeaks Blackballed? - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...212806

Wikileaks censorship academic

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Speaking to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in July 2015, Assange suggested that institutions within the international relations discipline have failed to understand the intersection between current geopolitical and technological developments. Specifically, Assange charged that the US journal International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), published by the prestigious International Studies Association (ISA), would not accept manuscripts based on WikiLeaks’ material. Professor of international politics Daniel W. Drezner hit back on July 30 in The Washington Post, arguing that there were other explanations for why the journal was not publishing WikiLeaks’ material. However, he did concede that it is possible that the “structural forces” opposing WikiLeaks were so powerful that a scholar would eschew WikiLeaks’ publications for “fear of being blackballed”. For the thousands of undergraduate to PhD students, fellows and academic researchers facing a precarious employment market, self-censorship for fear of freezing one’s career is not unlikely. One publicised incident from November 2010 concerning the office of career services at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), which according to The New York Times “grooms future diplomats”, provides the perfect illustration. That year the office sent an email to students warning them against commenting on or posting WikiLeaks’ documents on social media because “engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government”. The warning came to the office through a SIPA alumnus working at the State Department.
  • Years later, the tone of the warning continued to reverberate through the halls of one of the most reputable universities in the world. In documenting human rights abuses in June 2013 a Columbia University graduate class produced the anonymous academic paper “WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: the sum of parts may not add up to the whole — a comparison of two tallies of Iraqi civilian deaths”. The acknowledgements section of their report refers to the 2010 warning email and states that in light of that email it would be “unwise and perhaps unethical to acknowledge all the participating students by name”. Others participating in a peer-review process have cited additional factors curtailing their use of comprehensive and illuminating WikiLeaks publications. Former US presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney, for example, says that she was forced to scrub her PhD dissertation from any reference of WikiLeaks material. However Drezner, who is an ISA member and on the ISQ’s web advisory board, claims that WikiLeaks’ published diplomatic cables “are not nearly as significant as Assange believes” and that the “academic universe is indifferent to WikiLeaks”. A surprising claim, given that international human rights courts have not been indifferent to evidence derived from WikiLeaks’ published cables, including cables that show the insidious ways in which European officials attempt to conceal CIA torture in secret prisons.
  • To help address the gap in scholarly analysis of the more than 2 million US diplomatic cables and State Department records published by WikiLeaks since 2010, WikiLeaks has produced a new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, published September 7, 2015. The book brings together journalists, researchers and experts on international law and foreign policy to examine the current cables and records. The documents are extensive. They expose US efforts —  across Bush and Obama administrations — to use bribes and threats to keep the US protected from facing war crimes allegations, conveying the fading effervescence of concepts such as “international justice” or “rule of law” in the face of a superpower that clearly believes that “might makes right”. Analysts review the efforts US diplomats take to maintain ties with dictators. They examine the meaning of human rights in the context of a global “War on Terror”. Like the cables they seek to illuminate, the 18 chapters of the book touch upon most major regions of the world. Experts on US foreign policy such as Robert Naiman, Stephen Zunes and Gareth Porter examine cables that reveal US meddling in Syria, US acceptance of Israeli violations of international law, and how the US dealt with the International Atomic Energy Agency in relation to Iranian nuclear development. The book offers a user guide written by WikiLeaks’ investigations editor Sarah Harrison on how to research WikiLeaks’ cables including meta data and content.
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  • Writing in the book’s introduction, Assange proposes that the diplomatic cables provide “the vivisection of a living empire, showing what substance flowed from which state organ and when”. Assange notes in his introduction that academic disciplines outside international relations, and where career aspirations do not go hand in hand with patronage by government institutions, have voluminous coverage of the cables. But the ISA does not accept submissions citing WikiLeaks’ material. Although ISA executive director Mark Boyer denies that the association has a formal policy against publishing WikiLeaks’ material, he says that journal editors have discussed the implications of publishing material that is legally prohibited by the US government. According to Gabriel J. Michael, author of the Yale Law School paper Who’s Afraid of WikiLeaks? Missed Opportunities in Political Science Research, the ISQ has adopted a “provisional policy” against handling manuscripts that make use of leaked documents if such use could be interpreted as mishandling “classified” material. According to an ISQ editor quoted in Michael’s paper, this policy prohibits direct quotations as well as data mining, and was developed in consultation with legal counsel. Stating that editors are currently “in an untenable position”. According to the editor, ISQ’s policy will remain in place pending broader action from the ISA, which publishes several other disciplinary journals. The ISA and ISQ concerns about handling material that the US government forbids —  which include WikiLeaks’ cables —  amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cables go into the heart of an empire, and reflect on matters that affect everyone.
  • Without WikiLeaks, the public would still be in the dark about the Trans-Pacific Partnership “agreement” currently being negotiated. The treaty aims to rewrite the global rules on intellectual property rights and would create spheres of trade which would be protected from judicial oversight. Such agreements have the potential to change the fabric of how states operate, and the leaked cables shed light on how states negotiate significant treaties, aiming to keep citizenship participation in politics out. Where academia bans the use of important leaked documents the public loses out.
Paul Merrell

Moon of Alabama - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy moderate-rebels military-defeat

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15 - Cached
  • Over the last year the U.S. bombed Jabhat al-Nusra personal and facilities in Syria some five or six times. The al-Qaeda subgroup also has a history of attacking U.S. paid "relative moderate" proxy forces in Syria. The Pentagon recently inserted another U.S. mercenary group into north Syria. This was accompanied by a media campaign in which the administration lauded itself for the operation. The newly inserted group is especially trained and equipped to direct U.S. air attacks like those that earlier hit al-Nusra fighters. Now that freshly inserted group was attacked by Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of its members were killed and others were abducted. The Obama administration is shocked, SHOCKED, ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that Jabhat al-Nusra would do such a ghastly deed. "Why would they do that?" "Who could have known that they would attack U.S. proxy forces???"
  • There is no longer an Jihadist ISIS or ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The people leading that entity declared (pdf) today, at the highly symbolic beginning of Ramadan, themselves to be a new caliphate:
  • Could someone explain to the fucking dimwits in the Pentagon and the Obama administrations that people everywhere, and especially terrorists group, hate it when you bomb them and kill their leaders? That those people you bomb might want to take revenge against you and your proxies? That people you bombed will not like your targeting team moving in next door to them? That alQaeda is not an "ally"? These people are too pathetically clueless to even be embarrassed about it. The accumulated intelligence quotient of the administration and Pentagon officials running the anti-Syria operation must be below three digits. But aside from their lack of basic intelligence the utter lack of simple "street smarts" is the real problem here. These people have no idea how life works outside of their beltway cages.
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  • On more thought from me on why the dimwits did not foresee that Nusra would attack. The White House insisted on calling a part of Nusra the "Khorasan group" and explained that it was only bombing this groups of alQaeda veterans now part of Nusra because the "Khorasan group" planning to hit in "western" countries. No expert nor anyone on the ground in Syria thought that this differentiation was meaningful. Nusra is alQaeda and so are all of its members. But the White House and Pentagon probably thought that Nusra would accept the artificial separation they themselves had made up. That Nusra would understand that it is seen as an "ally" and only the "Khorasan group" is seen as an enemy. If that was the line of thinking, and the situation seems to point to that, then these people have fallen for their own propaganda stunt. They probably believed that the "Khorasan group" was an accepted narrative because they were telling that tale to themselves. Poor idiots.
  • UPDATE: The one sane guy at the Council of Foreign relations, Micah Zenko, foresaw this debacle and wrote on March 2: [The U.S. trained mercenaries] will immediately be an attractive target for attacks by the Islamic State, Assad’s ground and air forces, and perhaps Nusra and other forces. Killing or taking prisoner fighters (or the families of those fighters) who were trained by the U.S. military will offer propaganda value, as well as leverage, to bargain for those prisoners’ release. He compared the whole operation to the 1961 CIA invasion of Cuba: Last September, the White House and Congress agreed to authorize and fund a train-and-equip project similar to the Bay of Pigs, but this time in the Middle East, without any discussion about phase two. The Syrian project resembles 1961 in two ways: What happens when the fighting starts is undecided, and the intended strategic objective is wholly implausible.
  • The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program. In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure. While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State....A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the threat to the trainees and their Syrian recruiters had been misjudged, and said that officials were trying to understand why the Nusra Front had turned on the trainees. Like other Obama administration operations this one did not fail because of "intelligence failure" but because an utter lack of common sense.
  • U.S. media can no agree with itself if Russia is giving ISIS an airforce or if Russia pounds ISIS with the biggest bomber raid in decades. Such confusion occurs when propaganda fantasies collide with the observable reality. To bridge such divide requires some fudging. So when the U.S. claims to act against the finances of the Islamic State while not doing much, the U.S Public Broadcasting Service has to use footage of Russian airstrikes against the Islamic State while reporting claimed U.S. airstrike successes. The U.S. military recently claimed to have hit Islamic State oil tankers in Syria. This only after Putin embarrassed Obama at the G-20 meeting in Turkey. Putin showed satellite pictures of ridiculous long tanker lines waiting for days and weeks to load oil from the Islamic State without any U.S. interference.
  • The U.S. then claimed to have hit 116 oil tankers while the Russian air force claims to have hit 500. But there is an important difference between these claims. The Russians provided videos showing how their airstrikes hit at least two different very large oil tanker assemblies with hundreds of tankers in each. They also provided video of several hits on oil storage sites and refinery infrastructure. I have found no video of U.S. hits on Islamic State oil tanker assemblies. The U.S. PBS NewsHour did not find any either. In their TV report yesterday about Islamic State financing and the claimed U.S. hits on oil trucks they used the videos Russia provided without revealing the source. You can see the Russian videos played within an interview with a U.S. military spokesperson at 2:22 min.
  • The U.S. military spokesperson speaks on camera about U.S. airforce hits against the Islamic State. The video cuts to footage taken by Russian airplanes hitting oil tanks and then trucks. The voice-over while showing the Russian video with the Russians blowing up trucks says: "For the first time the U.S. is attacking oil delivery trucks." The video then cuts back to the U.S. military spokesperson. At no point is the Russian campaign mentioned or the source of the footage revealed. Any average viewer of the PBS report will assume that the black and white explosions of oil trucks and tanks are from of U.S. airstrikes filmed by U.S. air force planes. The U.S. military itself admitted that its strikes on IS oil infrastructure over the last year were "minimally effective". One wonders then how effective the claimed strike against 116 trucks really was. But unless we have U.S. video of such strikes and not copies of Russian strike video fraudulently passed off as U.S. strikes we will not know if those strikes happened at all.
  • The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country
  • Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.
  • Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4. There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris.
  • The Iraqi government and all major Iraqi parties see the Turkish invasion as a hostile act against their country. Abadi demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Turkish forces but it is unlikely that Turkey will act on that. Some Iraqi politicians have called for the immediate dispatch of the Iraqi air force to bomb the Turks near Mosul. That would probably the best solution right now but the U.S. installed Premier Abadi is too timid to go for such strikes. The thinking in Baghdad is that Turkey can be kicked out after the Islamic State is defeated. But this thinking gives Turkey only more reason to keep the Islamic State alive and use it for its own purpose. The cancer should be routed now as it is still small. Barzani's Kurdistan is so broke that is has even confiscated foreign bank accounts to pay some bills. That may be the reason why Barzani agreed to the deal now. But the roots run deeper. Barzani is illegally selling oil that belongs to the Iraqi government to Turkey. The Barzani family occupies  not only the presidential office in the KRG but also the prime minister position and the local secret services. It is running the oil business and gets a big share of everything else. On the Turkish side the oil deal is handled within the family of President Erdogan. His son in law, now energy minister, had the exclusive right to transport the Kurdish oil through Turkey. Erdogan's son controls the shipping company that transports the oil over sea to the customer, most often Israel. The oil under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq passes the exactly same route. These are businesses that generate hundreds of millions per year.
  • It is unlikely that U.S., if it is not behinds Turkey new escapade, will do anything about it. The best Iraq could do now is to ask the Russians for their active military support. The Turks insisted on their sovereignty when they ambushed a Russian jet that brushed its border but had no intend of harming Turkey. Iraq should likewise insist on its sovereignty, ask Russia for help and immediately kick the Turks out. The longer it waits the bigger the risk that Turkey will eventually own Mosul.
  • Another fake news item currently circling is that Trump has given order to the military to create safe zones for Syria. The reality is still far from it: [H]is administration crafted a draft order that would direct the Pentagon and the State Department to submit plans for the safe zones within 90 days. The order hasn't yet been issued. The draft of the order, which will be endlessly revised, says that safe zones could be in Syria or in neighboring countries. The Pentagon has always argued against such zones in Syria and the plans it will submit, should such an order be issued at all, will reflect that. The safe zones in Syria ain't gonna happen
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15
     
    So the first group of U.S. trained "moderate" Syrian opposition fighters are an epic fail. Who'd of thunk? 
Paul Merrell

Trump's Infrastructure Boondoggle - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...umps-infrastructure-boondoggle

economy Trump infrastructure

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan is not an infrastructure plan and it won’t put $1 trillion of fiscal stimulus into the economy. It’s basically a scheme for handing over public assets to private corporations that will extract maximum profits via user fees and tolls. Because the plan is essentially a boondoggle, it will not lift the economy out of the doldrums, increase activity or boost growth.  Quite the contrary. When the details of how the program is going to be implemented are announced,  public confidence in the Trump administration is going to wither and stock prices are going to plunge.   This scenario cannot be avoided because the penny-pinching conservatives in the House and Senate have already said that they won’t support any plan that is not “revenue neutral” which means that any real $1 trillion spending package is a dead letter.  Thus, it’s only a matter of time before the Trump’s plan is exposed as a fraud and the sh** hits the fan.
  • Here are more of the details from an article at Slate: “Under Trump’s plan…the federal government would offer tax credits to private investors interested in funding large infrastructure projects, who would put down some of their own money up front, then borrow the rest on the private bond markets. They would eventually earn their profits on the back end from usage fees, such as highway and bridge tolls (if they built a highway or bridge) or higher water rates (if they fixed up some water mains). So instead of paying for their new roads at tax time, Americans would pay for them during their daily commute. And of course, all these private developers would earn a nice return at the end of the day.” (“Donald Trump’s Plan to Privatize America’s Roads and Bridges”, Slate) Normally, fiscal stimulus is financed by increasing the budget deficits, but Maestro Trump has something else up his sleeve.  He wants the big construction companies and private equity firms to stump up the seed money and start the work with the understanding that they’ll be able to impose user fees and tolls on roads and bridges when the work is completed.  For every dollar that corporations spend on rebuilding US infrastructure, they’ll get a dollar back via tax credits, which means that they’ll end up controlling valuable, revenue-generating assets for nothing. The whole thing is a flagrant ripoff that stinks to high heaven.   The corporations rake in hefty profits on sweetheart deals, while the American people get bupkis. Welcome to Trumpworld.  Here’s more background from Trump’s campaign website:
  • “American Energy and  Infrastructure Act Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.” (Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter”) In practical terms, ‘revenue neutral’ means that every dollar of new spending has to be matched by cuts to other government programs.  So, if there are hidden costs to Trump’s plan, then they’ll have to be paid for by slashing funds for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps etc. But, keep in mind, these other programs are much more effective sources of stimulus since the money goes directly to the people who spend it immediately and help grow the economy. Trump’s infrastructure plan doesn’t work like that. A lot of the money will go towards management fees and operational costs leaving fewer dollars to trickle down to low-paid construction workers whose personal consumption drives the economy. Less money for workers means less spending, less activity and weaker growth.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Here’s more on the topic from the Washington Post: “Trump’s plan is not really an infrastructure plan. It’s a tax-cut plan for utility-industry and construction-sector investors, and a massive corporate welfare plan for contractors. The Trump plan doesn’t directly fund new roads, bridges, water systems or airports…. Instead, Trump’s plan provides tax breaks to private-sector investors who back profitable construction projects. … There’s no requirement that the tax breaks be used for … expanded construction efforts; they could all go just to fatten the pockets of investors in previously planned projects… Second, as a result of the above, Trump’s plan isn’t really a jobs plan, either. Because the plan subsidizes investors, not projects; because it funds tax breaks, not bridges; because there’s no requirement that the projects be otherwise unfunded, there is simply no guarantee that the plan will produce any net new hiring. … Buried inside the plan will be provisions to weaken prevailing wage protections on construction projects, undermining unions and ultimately eroding workers’ earnings. Environmental rules are almost certain to be gutted in the name of accelerating projects.” (Trump’s big infrastructure plan? It’s a trap. Washington Post) Let’s summarize:  “Trump’s plan” is “massive corporate welfare plan for contractors” and the “tax breaks”…”could all go just to fatten the pockets of investors in previously planned projects.”
  • What part of this plan looks like it will have a positive impact on the economy? None. If Trump was serious about raising GDP to 4 percent, (another one of his promises) he’d increase Social Security payments, beef up the food stamps program, or hire more government workers.  Any one of these would trigger an immediate uptick in activity spurring more growth and a stronger economy.  And while America’s ramshackle bridges and roads may be in dire need of a facelift,  infrastructure is actually a poor way to inject fiscal stimulus which can be more easily distributed  by simply hiring government agents to stand on streetcorners and hand out 100 dollar bills to passersby. That might not fill the pothole-strewn streets in downtown Duluth, but it would sure as hell would light a fire under GDP. So what’s the gameplan here? What’s Trump really up to? If his infrastructure plan isn’t going to work, then what’s the real objective? The objective is to allow wealthy corporations to buy public assets at firesale prices so they can turn them into profit-generating enterprises. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s why the emphasis is on “unconventional financing programs”, “public-private partnerships”, and “Build America Bonds” instead of plain-old fiscal stimulus, jobs programs and deficit spending. Trump is signaling to his pirate friends in Corporate America that he’ll use his power as executive to find new outlets for profitable investment so they have some place to stick their mountain of money. Of course, none of this has anything to do with rebuilding America’s dilapidated infrastructure or even revving up GDP. That’s just public relations bunkum. What’s really going on is a massive looting operation organized and executed under the watchful eye of Donald Trump, Robber Baron-in-Chief.
  • And Infrastructure is just the tip of the iceberg. Once these kleptomaniacs hit their stride, they’re going to cut through Washington like locusts through a corn field. Bet on it.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 17
     
    Mike Whitney always tells it like it is.
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