Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged failed-foreign-policy

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

Tech firms and privacy groups press for curbs on NSA surveillance powers - The Washingt... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...4-ab77-9646eea6a4c7_story.html

surveillance state Patriot-Act 215-sunset NSA-reform legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The nation’s top technology firms and a coalition of privacy groups are urging Congress to place curbs on government surveillance in the face of a fast-approaching deadline for legislative action. A set of key Patriot Act surveillance authorities expire June 1, but the effective date is May 21 — the last day before Congress breaks for a Memorial Day recess. In a letter to be sent Wednesday to the Obama administration and senior lawmakers, the coalition vowed to oppose any legislation that, among other things, does not ban the “bulk collection” of Americans’ phone records and other data.
  • We know that there are some in Congress who think that they can get away with reauthorizing the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act without any reforms at all,” said Kevin Bankston, policy director of New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, a privacy group that organized the effort. “This letter draws a line in the sand that makes clear that the privacy community and the Internet industry do not intend to let that happen without a fight.” At issue is the bulk collection of Americans’ data by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency. The NSA’s daily gathering of millions of records logging phone call times, lengths and other “metadata” stirred controversy when it was revealed in June 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The records are placed in a database that can, with a judge’s permission, be searched for links to foreign terrorists.They do not include the content of conversations.
  • That program, placed under federal surveillance court oversight in 2006, was authorized by the court in secret under Section 215 of the Patriot Act — one of the expiring provisions. The public outcry that ensued after the program was disclosed forced President Obama in January 2014 to call for an end to the NSA’s storage of the data. He also appealed to Congress to find a way to preserve the agency’s access to the data for counterterrorism information.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Despite growing opposition in some quarters to ending the NSA’s program, a “clean” authorization — one that would enable its continuation without any changes — is unlikely, lawmakers from both parties say. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a leading opponent of the NSA’s program in its current format, said he would be “surprised if there are 60 votes” in the Senate for that. In the House, where there is bipartisan support for reining in surveillance, it’s a longer shot still. “It’s a toxic vote back in your district to reauthorize the Patriot Act, if you don’t get some reforms” with it, said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The House last fall passed the USA Freedom Act, which would have ended the NSA program, but the Senate failed to advance its own version.The House and Senate judiciary committees are working to come up with new bipartisan legislation to be introduced soon.
  • The tech firms and privacy groups’ demands are a baseline, they say. Besides ending bulk collection, they want companies to have the right to be more transparent in reporting on national security requests and greater declassification of opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  • Some legal experts have pointed to a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act that would appear to allow bulk collection to continue even if the authority is not renewed. Administration officials have conceded privately that a legal case probably could be made for that, but politically it would be a tough sell. On Tuesday, a White House spokesman indicated the administration would not seek to exploit that clause. “If Section 215 sunsets, we will not continue the bulk telephony metadata program,” National Security Council spokesman Edward Price said in a statement first reported by Reuters. Price added that allowing Section 215 to expire would result in the loss of a “critical national security tool” used in investigations that do not involve the bulk collection of data. “That is why we have underscored the imperative of Congressional action in the coming weeks, and we welcome the opportunity to work with lawmakers on such legislation,” he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
    I omitted some stuff about opposition to sunsetting the provisions. They  seem to forget, as does Obama, that the proponents of the FISA Court's expansive reading of section 215 have not yet come up with a single instance where 215-derived data caught a single terrorist or prevented a single act of terrorism. Which means that if that data is of some use, it ain't in fighting terrorism, the purpose of the section.  Patriot Act § 215 is codified as 50 USCS § 1861, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861 That section authorizes the FBI to obtain an iorder from the FISA Court "requiring the production of *any tangible things* (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)."  Specific examples (a non-exclusive list) include: the production of library circulation records, library patron lists, book sales records, book customer lists, firearms sales records, tax return records, educational records, or medical records containing information that would identify a person." The Court can order that the recipient of the order tell no one of its receipt of the order or its response to it.   In other words, this is about way more than your telephone metadata. Do you trust the NSA with your medical records? 
Paul Merrell

Philippine leader Duterte now wants U.S. troops out 'in the next two years' - The Washi... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-8e9d-4d7762865055_story.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy decline of the American Empire The-Philippines military-bases

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Wednesday he wanted U.S. troops out of his country, perhaps in the next two years, underlining his intention to press ahead with a major realignment of his country’s foreign and security policies. It is not the first time Duterte has made this kind of threat, but his two-year timetable for a U.S. military exit appeared designed to reinforce his break-the-mold message to Washington and neighbors in Asia, particularly powerhouse China. So far, however, his administration has failed to follow through on previous pledges to remove a small contingent of U.S. counterterrorism troops from the southern island of Mindanao or to notify Washington of an end to military exercises. The United States “has received no formal communication from the government of the Philippines expressing a desire to make specific changes to our relationship or alliance,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday at a news briefing in Washington. “The United States remains committed to our pursuit of shared objectives” in keeping with the “seven-decade alliance between our two countries,” he said.
Paul Merrell

Trump, Kissinger and Ma playing on a crowded chessboard | Asia Times - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...-ma-playing-crowded-chessboard

geopolitics U.S.-foreign-policy China Russia Jack-Ma Kissinger Trump

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • And that brings us once again to Henry Kissinger, the putative dalang — puppet master — of Trump’s foreign policy. As leaked late last year in Germany’s Bild Zeitung newspaper, Kissinger has drafted a plan to officially recognize Crimea as part of Russia and lift the Obama administration’s economic sanctions.
  • The plan fits into Kissinger’s overall strategy — call it a traditional British Balance of Power, or Divide and Rule, approach — of breaking up the Eurasian front (Russia-China-Iran) that constitutes the real “threat” to what Mattis defines as the “established world order.” The strategy consists in seducing the alleged weaker top “threat” (Russia) away from the stronger (China), while keeping on antagonizing/harassing the third and weakest pole, Iran. Kissinger is certainly more sophisticated than predictable US Think Tankland in his attempt to dismember the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, one of key nodes of the Russia-China strategic partnership. The SCO has been on the go for a decade and a half now. Iran, an observer, will soon become a full member, as will India and Pakistan; and Turkey — after the failed coup against Erdogan — is being courted by Moscow. German analyst Peter Spengler adds a juicy teaser — if Kissinger’s “Metternichian approach would include some degree of ‘harmonization’ with Russia, how will a Trump presidency then manage to contain the re-engineered ally Germany?” After all, a key priority for sanctions-averse German industrialists is to vastly expand business with Russia.
  • Kissinger’s strategy essentially tweaks the early 1970s Trilateral Commission, largely advanced by his rival dalang Dr Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski, according to which geopolitics is to be managed by North America, Western Europe and Japan.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The US deep state plutocracy never sleeps. Admitting both Russia and China, linked by a strategic partnership, as equal stakeholders in the “established world order” is anathema; that would imply the end of US hegemony. And that’s where the top Western would-be dalangs diverge, as they look for the most efficient Divide and Rule opening. Kissinger privileges Russia; Dr Zbig privileges China, painting it as a threat to Russia. Meanwhile, Russian Eurasianists — in frontal opposition to the Atlanticists — visualize the US, China and Russia on an equal geopolitical footing. It will be fascinating to watch how the New Great Game develops in the Central Asian “stans”. That’s a privileged theater in which to see the Russia-China strategic partnership, or division of labor, in action: China goes no holds barred on investment — via One Belt, One Road, aka the New Silk Roads — while Russia remains paramount in politics and security.
  • The bottom line: Moscow feels no existential “threat” from Beijing because for China, Central Asia and the Russian Far East register essentially as economic/investment opportunities along the New Silk Roads.
  • Once again, Kissinger’s strategy will run into a solidified Russia-China strategic partnership — already manifested in Pipelineistan (multibillion-dollar oil and gas projects); security deals; the SCO; cooperation inside BRICS; exchange of cutting-edge military technology; and the progressive interlocking of the New Silk Roads and the Eurasian Economic Union. When the New Silk Roads hit the next level, by the start of the next decade, the Eurasian heartland, as well as the rimland, will be deeply immersed in a connectivity frenzy. Welcome to Mackinder and Spykman revisited — and there’s no “offer” Washington can come up with to make it go away.
  • Into this crucial juncture steps Jack Ma. The Trump-Ma meeting at Trump Tower was niskala disguised as sekala. The House That Ma Built — Alibaba — is no less than the New Great Wall, resisting the assault of behemoth Amazon.com in the ultimate commercial arena of the 21st century: e-commerce. Ma also happens to be very close to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Like an upgraded we-mean-business Deng Xiaoping, Ma proposed, on the record, the creation of 1 million US jobs. That’s an offer Trump cannot possibly refuse. And this after shadow US Secretary of State Jared Kushner had a Chateau Lafite Rothschild-inundated lunch with another Chinese tycoon, Anbang Insurance Group’s Wu Xiahoui, who married Deng’s niece and whose company owns the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan.
  • Ma’s business firepower should not be underestimated. Alibaba is involved in a massive project to modernize even rural China. He’s the face of Chinese business not only internally but globally. Xi Jinping knows this all too well — who better than Ma as China’s top business ambassador? This is not, as Japanese interests spin it, about the “death” of Made in China; it is about globalized China exporting business and jobs to the West. All of the above points to a very crowded chessboard. Trump will do business and clinch deals with China, while his deep state-tinged cabinet barks the usually explosive national security rhetoric, dalang Kissinger plots a Russia-China split, and Moscow-Beijing secretly concoct concerted moves. Place your bets on who will be the major partner in the Trump, Kissinger and Ma law firm.
Paul Merrell

Trump nixes Abrams for No. 2 State Department job: sources | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...usa-trump-abrams-idUSKBN15P2B8

Trump appointments Abrams neocons

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • U.S. President Donald Trump has nixed Elliott Abrams for the No. 2 position at the State Department after learning that the Republican foreign policy veteran had criticized him during the 2016 election campaign, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.Trump decided not to nominate Abrams, who had been the leading candidate for deputy secretary of state, after meeting him at the White House on Tuesday along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, two sources told Reuters.Abrams, 69, who served in foreign policy roles for presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, was Tillerson’s pick for the job, and the administration’s newly installed top diplomat tried and failed to convince the president to reconsider and offer him the job, one of the sources said.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Feb 17
     
    Whew! Dodged that neocon bullet.
Paul Merrell

Al Qaeda Now Controls More Territory In The Arab World Than Ever Before | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...more-territory-arab-world-ever

war & peace al-Qaeda U.S. foreign policy failed-foreign-policy neocons

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In what can be described a truly ironic event and a major failure for America's stated mission (because one can't help but wonder at all the support various Al Qaeda cells have received from the US and/or CIA) of eradicating the Al Qaeda scourge from the face of the earth, we learn today that al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history. According to a CNN report "from around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist websites."
  • The following recent map from Jane's shows just how extensive Al Qaeda's influence has grown in recent years.
Paul Merrell

Obama's Gun-Running Operation: Weapons and Support for "Islamic Terrorists" in Syria an... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5450832

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Obama CIA Benghazi-coverup Iraq Syria ISIL must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 May 15 - No Cached
  • Newly disclosed Pentagon documents prove what we’ve known for a while now: the Obama administration knew as early as 2012 that weapons were being sent from Benghazi, Libya, to rebels in Syria. The U.S. government also knew at the time that: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq were] the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” But did they just “know” or was it part of the plan? These official documents of the Obama administration add to the large  amount of evidence proving that the actual chaos and havoc wreaked by extremist groups in the Middle East was deliberately created by the U.S. and its allies and is not the result of a “failed foreign policy”.
  • Although the documents do not reveal who was responsible for sending weapons to Syria, it is quite obvious from the language used in the documents that it was a US initiative and the CIA presence in Benghazi at the time suggests that US intelligence was behind this gun-running operation.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 May 15
     
    A must-read. The alternative press is on to Obama's "secret" strategy to overthrow the Syrian government and trifurcate Iraq. This article provides lots of links to support its conclusion.
Paul Merrell

Saudi Prince Threatens 'Military Action Without American Support' Against Iran | MRCTV - 0 views

www.mrctv.org/...iran-still-table-or-without-us

war & peace Iran negotiations Saudis saber-rattling

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • In the first public criticism of the P5+Iran deal by a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family, Prince Bandar bin Sultan told Lebanon’s Daily Star the deal would allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb and would “wreak havoc in the region." Covered in The Times of London, the prince also told Daily Star, "Saudi Arabia and the Gulf powers are prepared to take military action without American support after the Iran nuclear deal" Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two leading players in the Sunni/Shia divide and are competing for leadership of the Muslim world. The Sunni Islam Saudi Arabian monarchy fears that the Shia Islam Iranians will employ terrorists in an attempt topple the monarchy and the ruling House of Saud.  Prince Bandar was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 20 years before returning home to run the country’s intelligence service from 2005-2014. While he is no longer a part of the inner ring of Saudi decision-making, the prince is still a very connected member of the ruling family. The prince would not be conducting interviews without the permission of highest authorities; most likely he was asked to to put himself out there by his uncle King Salman.
  • The Prince also said that regional powers have lost faith in America: “People in my region now are relying on God’s will, and consolidating their local capabilities and analysis with everybody else except our oldest and most powerful ally” The prince was less polite in an op-ed he wrote for the London-based Arabic news Web site Elaph. He compared the Iran nuclear deal made by Obama to the North Korean nuclear deal Bill Clinton made.  Bandar suggested that they were both bad deals but Clinton made a bad deal with the best of intentions thinking it was a good deal. Obama on the other hand knew he was making a lousy deal and made it anyway.  Quoted in a Washington Post article which translated part of the Elaph piece: Bandar says [about the North Korean pact], "it turned out that the strategic foreign policy analysis was wrong and there was a major intelligence failure." He added that if Clinton had known the full picture, "I am absolutely confident he would not have made that decision."
  • The Saudi royal then contrasts this with the present situation with Iran, "where the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America’s allies in the region's intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse – with the billions of dollars that Iran will have access to." Bandar says Obama is smart enough to understand this but that he is ideologically willing to accept collateral damage because he believes he is right. (..)The Saudi prince says the new Iran deal and other developments in the region have led him to conclude that a phrase first used by Henry Kissinger – “America’s enemies should fear America, but America’s friends should fear America more" – is correct.
Paul Merrell

Turmoil in Hong Kong, Terrorism in Xinjiang: America's Covert War on China | Global Res... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5409079

war & peace China U.S.-foreign-policy destabilization-activities

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • What is more troubling is the greater geopolitical agenda driving both of these seemingly “internal” conflicts – and that they both lead back to a single source beyond China’s borders. With the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) now implicated in receiving, training, and employing terrorists from China’s Xinjiang province, and considering the fact that ISIS is the result of an intentional, engineered proxy war the US and its allies are waging in the Middle East, along with the fact that the unrest in Hong Kong is also traced back to Washington and London, presents a narrative of an ongoing confrontation between East and West being fought on the battlefield of fourth generation warfare.
  • If one was asked to name a global-spanning military and intelligence operation opposed to Syria, Iran, Russia, and China, they might say the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US Government – and they would be right. But they could also easily answer by saying the “Islamic State” or ISIS/ISIL as it is also known. This is especially true after revelations surfaced that US-backed Uyghur separatists in China’s western-most province of Xinjiang have joined ISIS for training with intentions of leading an armed rebellion against Beijing upon their return. Reuters in their article, “China militants getting IS ‘training’,” would claim: Chinese militants from the western region of Xinjiang have fled from the country to get “terrorist training” from Islamic State group fighters for attacks at home, state media reported on Monday. The report was the first time state-run media had linked militants from Xinjiang, home to ethnic minority Uighur Muslims, to militants of the Islamic State group of radical Sunni Muslims.
  • However, it isn’t just China’s government that claims militants in Xinjiang seek to carve out an independent state in western China – the militants themselves have stated as much, and the United States government fully backs their agenda to do so. Indeed, first and foremost in backing the Xinjiang Uyghur separatists is the United States through the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED). For China, the Western region referred to as “Xinjiang/East Turkistan” has its own webpage on NED’s site covering the various fronts funded by the US which include:
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The next step Washington appears to be taking in China is an attempts to enhance the menace of terrorists in Xinjiang. In addition to assisting US attempts to destabilize territory in China, ISIS has also threatened to launch a campaign against another US enemy – Russia – this in addition to already directly fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, the governments of Syria and Iraq, and with ISIS claiming to be behind attacks in Egypt against the military-led government that ousted the West’s Muslim Brotherhood proxies. With both Russia and China now in ISIS’ sights, the global public must begin asking questions as to how and why ISIS just so happens to be arraying itself against all of Washington’s enemies, by-passing all of its allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and where exactly they are getting the weapons, cash, intelligence, logistical, and administrative capabilities to do so. So suspicious is ISIS’ appearance, agenda, and actions, many across the world have long-ago concluded they are simply the latest creation of the US and other Western-aligned intelligence agencies, just as Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood was before them, So loud has this narrative become, establishment newspapers like the New York Times have begun writing columns to tamp down what they are calling “conspiracy theories.”
  • This containment strategy would be updated and detailed in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral” where it outlines China’s efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea as well as means by which the US can maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The premise is that, should Western foreign policy fail to entice China into participating in the “international system” as responsible stakeholders, an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation. This includes funding, arming, and backing terrorists and proxy regimes from Africa, across the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and even within China’s territory itself. Documented support of these movements not only include Xinjiang separatists and the leaders of “Occupy Central” in Hong Kong, but also militants and separatists in Baluchistan, Pakistan where the West seeks to disrupt a newly christened Chinese port and pipeline, as well as the machete wielding supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar’s Rakhine state – yet another site the Chinese hope to establish a logistical hub.
  • It is not a coincidence that ISIS is standing in for and fulfilling America’s deepest imperial aspirations from North Africa, across the Middle East, and now inching toward the borders of the West’s two largest competitors, Russia and China. Nor is it a coincidence that “Occupy Central” protesters are parroting verbatim talking points scripted in Washington earlier this year. It is no coincidence that the US State Department’s NED is found involved in every hotspot of instability and conflict both within China’s borders and beyond them. It is a documented conspiracy that is now increasingly seeing the light truth cast upon it. Whether or not that is enough to end the unnecessary barbarism and bloodshed that has resulted from the West’s hegemonic aspirations remains to be seen.
Paul Merrell

Argentina Calls out US Republican Meddling in Nisman Case | News | teleSUR - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...Nisman-Case-20150130-0024.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Argentina interference-in-foreign-governments Rubio

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Argentine Chief of Cabinet Jorge Capitanich accused U.S. Republican senator Marco Rubio of “imperialist behavior,” after the right-wing politician expressed doubts about the Argentine government's ability to conduct the investigation into the death of the prosecutor Alberto Nisman.  “The Republic of Argentina is an autonomous, sovereign and independent country, Marco Rubio with his imperialist vision fails to recognize the United Nations charter since the meddling in the affairs of other states constitutes imperialist interference,” Capitanich said Friday during a press conference. On Thursday, Rubio urged U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to support the creation of an “independent, internationally assisted investigation” into the case.  “I am increasingly concerned about the ability of the Government of Argentina to conduct a fair and impartial investigation into his death, or its capacity to ensure the independence of a prosecutor that would continue Mr. Nisman's work,” said Rubio, who has spearheaded the push for hostile policies towards left-leaning governments in Latin America. “I thus urge the Administration to support the establishment of an independent, internationally assisted investigation into Mr. Nisman's suspicious death.” Capitanich called the proposal “unwarranted meddling” into the South American country's affairs.
  • Cables revealed by Wikileaks suggest that Nisman was being advised by U.S. and Israeli intelligence services, and Argentina officials investigating Nisman's death say the attorney’s 300-page report indicate he was manipulated and being fed him false information. Officials also say rogue agents from Argentina own intelligence services were behind the death.  President Cristina Fernandez, whose husband and late President Nestor Kirchner ordered the investigation into the AMIA bombing, was quick to cast doubt on the apparent suicide of the attorney.
Paul Merrell

Israeli Defense Minister: We Prefer ISIS Over Iran - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...212977

war & peace Israel ISIL Iran Iranian-nukes-myth terrorism™

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon declared on Tuesday that if he was to choose between Iran and ISIS – “I prefer ISIS.” Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies’ (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv, Ya’alon sought to clarify that “Iran is our main enemy, after I heard voices saying different things.”
  • Tehran, he said, “is a rogue regime with designs on a regional hegemony. Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy, with the ability to declare war. Iran currently has terror infrastructure in place in five continents: Asia, Africa, Europe and both in South and North America.” Th nuclear agreement signed between the Islamic Republic and world powers, the defense minister said, “pushed back the clock from three months to one year. If Iran feels economically secure, it can breakout and produce a bomb even faster.” Ya’alon doesn’t put much stock in the Russians’ ability to retake Syria from jihadists- including ISIS – who took over large swaths of land. “The Russians thought they’d get to the Euphrates River in three months,” he said, noting the Russian army is not reaching its goals and failing to achieve much in the Golan Heights. “There are achievements in the fighting against ISIS – led by the US,” Ya’alon said. “ISIS is suffering serious defeats in Iraq and Syria.” “We believe ISIS will be eventually defeated territorially after the blows it has been suffering, and in light of the attacks on its oil reserves,” he added. The strategy in Syria, he said, should be “to strengthen local forces with ‘boots on the ground,’ like the Kurds are doing.”
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Jan 16
     
    Keep in mind that the Defense Minister in Israel is a political appointee but has little actual influence over the military in important matters. The Israeli military's recently published long-term strategy document does not identify Iran or its "nuclear weapons ambitions" as a major threat.  But Israeli foreign policy differs from the military's conservative pragmatism. Israeli right-wingers hae long had a goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Arab and Muslim nations in the Near East, with long-term imperial ambitions that would include Israel being the major military and economic power in the Mideast and with Israel's borders expanded from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Syria and Iraq, encompassing most of the Arabian Peninsula. The "Ersatz Israel" ambition is derived from passages in the Bible in which God allegedly promised Abraham that his people would have that territory, although different passages speak of varying boundaries. Israel's treatment of native Palestinians is largely the byproduct of that religion-based goal; in the Zionnist viewpoint, Palestinians are latter-day interlopers and sub-humans who have no right to the land, which was supposedly promised by God to the Jews. Establishing Ersatz Israel is the major goal of Zionism.  
Paul Merrell

Failed NATO Invasion of Moldova SITREP, by Scott | The Vineyard of the Saker - 0 views

thesaker.is/ion-of-moldova-sitrep-by-scott

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Moldova coup-attempts

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 May 16 - No Cached
  • It’s hard to overestimate the value of planning in advance, especially when it comes to getting reservations in popular restaurants and invading countries by military force. In the week of the May 9th Victory Day two significant failures took place  each one remarkable in its own way. Each event went completely unreported by the Western corporate and government media, but discussed on Social Media.
  • In the following three weeks after the incident with the USS Florida, while Russia was preparing for Victory Day celebrations and all eyes were on Moscow, attention of Ukrainians was fully concentrated on the visit of Victoria Nuland to Kiev on April 26th allegedly to discuss the implementation of the Minsk II Agreement and the future elections in Donetsk and Lugansk republics. Since the day when President Putin said that the republics can have their elections anytime they want, the question of these elections ceased to be a subject of blackmail toward the Kremlin.   It appeared that the true reason for Nuland’s visit could be located to the west of Kiev, rather than the east. Just recently, Robert D. Kaplan, a former Stratfor’s Chief Geopolitical Analyst, and currently a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has published a book “In Europe’s Shadow” where he lays out a plan to reunite Romania with “its lost province of Moldova.” Nuland visited Moldova back in January, with the task to coerce Moldova’s government and its oligarchs to change the country’s Constitution provision of neutrality. Before she left, she gave a short speech at the American Embassy in Bucharest after a private dinner with PM Ciolos and President Klaus. “We powerfully support the desire of the people in Moldova to have responsible leaders who can implement reforms. This is the best way to assure the future of Moldova. Romania and the United States, in conjunction with NATO, have support programs in place to assure the security of Moldova but the government has to work to implement these programs.”
  • Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, and its economy heavily relies on Russia. According to the CIA Fact Book: Moldova’s annual remittances of about $1.12 billion comes from the roughly one million Moldovans working in Europe, Russia, and other former Soviet Bloc countries; Moldova imports almost all of its energy supplies from Russia and Ukraine; Moldova’s dependence on Russian energy is underscored by a more than $5 billion debt to Russian natural gas supplier Gazprom; Moldova signed an Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU during fall 2014, however its biggest trade partner remains Russia. Everyone understands that a NATO membership will cut all economic ties with Russia, including jobs, and it will turn Moldova into a failed state, or in the CIA doublespeak, the country would stop being vulnerable to “Russian pressure.” Apparently, the failure of Moldova as a state, and its disappearance as a nation is also what the EU wants. On January 6, the new Moldovan Ambassador to Germany was presenting his credentials when, out of the blue, the German president asked the new ambassador what the procedure was for Republic of Moldova to formally unite with Romania. On May 4th, the Katehon reported on Vladimir Plahotniuc’s (the infamous Moldavian oligarch and mafia boss) visit to the US and his meeting with Victoria Nuland there. As the Victory Day celebration was approaching, we all fully anticipated from the US to conduct terror acts, military excursions/drills, and political and legal attacks on Russia as the US and the EU always do to harass Russia during its major national and Church holidays.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Starting with April 21st,  we saw a flurry of “news” about Ukraine and Romania joining NATO Black Sea flotilla and the organization of Romanian-Ukrainian-Bulgarian brigade similar to that created by Poland. On April 26, Georgia (Gruzia) pitched in via the Georgia Today: “creation of NATO Black Sea Fleet Gains US Support” and praising Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania for calls to expand the Western military. All what Russia said to all this NATO generated noise was a brief statement of  Russia’s envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko. “NATO should be in a position to know that all necessary steps will be taken from our side to neutralize the emerging threats.” With all these  preparations for the war on Russia going on, NATO also planned military drills in neutral Moldova, chosen to start on May 2nd, the day of remembrance for the victims of the Odessa Massacre. Meanwhile, the patriots of Moldavia who worked together regardless of their political views, discovered something interesting and saved Moldova. NATO reported that for drills they would be entering Moldova in four formations, and that the total of motorized units will be 50+. However, the very first formation that made an attempt to enter the territory of Moldova contained 100+ unites. This was just one formation. And there was expected three more formations.
  • The plan of NATO was to enter the country with too large for this tiny country forces, to stage a bloody false flag attack during the Victory Day celebration in Moldova with the participation of Ukrainian Right Sector terrorists masquerading as “pro-Russia separatists.” This plot worked in Ukraine, so it should work in Moldova, right? That’s the true reason why Nuland was in Kiev two weeks prior. After this false flag attack, a Romanian fleet was planned to enter Ukrainian territorial waters “by invitation of the Ukrainian government” and arrive to Odessa in order to block Russian fleets from interfering and helping Transnistria. But… Coming back to the bizarre incident near Gibraltar, when one NATO member’s tiny 20 tone Costal Guards’ boat was attacked by another NATO member for interfering with the 18,000 tones behemoth of a submarine  of the third NATO member. The NATO plan apparently was to stealthy and quietly position the Ohio-class ballistic guided-missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) in the Mediterranean or even in the Black Sea so it would be able to shoot into Moldova to overwhelm Moldovan minuscule defense forces. We have to remember that it was the USS Florida “that opened up the Libya intervention,” firing more than 90 cruise missiles to destroy Libya’s air defenses and clearing the way for NATO air strikes. “Never before in the history of the United States of America has one ship conducted that much land attack strikes, conventionally, in one short time period,” Rear Adm. Rick Breckenridge had said.
  • However, thanks to Spanish Costal Guards the submarine was discovered and talked about all around the world via social media and the press. The USS Florida had no other options but to retreat and return to home base. In fact, there were TWO incidents on the same April 16th  day involving the USS Florida. First, it was  the Spanish patrol boat belonged to the Servicio de Vigilancia Aduanera, at whom the British Navy opened  fire.  A bit later,  the Guardia Civil vessel Rio Cedeña tried to cut across the submarine’s bow and was photographed  by multiple witnesses.
  • According to V.V. Pyakin, a political analyst with the Concept Technologies Foundation, a think tank located in St. Petersburg, NATO was in a process of conducting a full-scale invasion of Moldova with the annexation of a Southern part of Ukraine including Odessa to construct a NATO Navy base there. Moldova was supposed to become a part of Romania automatically with the US military forces arriving to the capital and taking  over the government of Moldova. That’s why NATO needed all those military “drills” in the Black Sea region and in the Baltics simultaneously. When the patriotic forces of Moldavia discovered that NATO was about to enter the territory of Moldova in four formations, 100+ motorized units each, they protested loudly and blocked the entrance of NATO troops on the border. Meanwhile, the biggest political fraction in Moldova threatened with the impeachment of the president for treason, if  NATO troops would be allowed to enter the country. Reports from Moldova at the time disclosed that American troops stopped at the border crossing didn’t have proper ID and other papers. Moldovans came to greet them with the banners “Moldova is a neutral country” and “Stop bases of NATO,” “Stop NATO” and “NATO go home.” As the result, on April 28th only about 60 units and 200 servicemen the U.S. Army 2nd Cavalry Regimental Engineer Squadron were allowed to enter the country.
  • When a formation of American military crossed the Romanian-Moldova border allegedly to take part in  Dragon Pioneer 2016 NATO military drills, Moldavian opposition leaders expressed protests. Several members of the Parliament blocked the road.  They reported to Russian and international media and news outlets that the US troops didn’t have an international agreement signed by the defense ministers of Moldova and USA. They also lacked a legal government agreement on the entrance of the heavy military equipment and weaponry to the territory of the country. 60% of American servicemen didn’t have valid military IDs. According to a TASS report,  “To prevent collisions, officers from the Fulger (Lightning) police battalion of special purpose intervened, which were specially delivered from Chisinau. After checking the documents, a column of military vehicles followed the US to the place of temporary location at the site of Negresht,” said the inspectorate.” “The initiative to invite the US troops into the country and hold the exhibition of American technology belongs to the Minister of Defense of Moldova Anatol Șalaru, who is famous for the organization of the “Museum of Soviet occupation” in Chisinau, calls to repeal neutrality and make the country a member of NATO, and the fight against monuments of the Soviet era.” This move was harshly criticized by Igor Dodon, whose party has the largest faction in Parliament and controls a quarter of the seats.
  • He stated: “We believe military exercises involving US troops on Moldovan territory is a flagrant violation of the constitutional principle of neutrality of Moldova. In this regard, the deputies from the Party of socialists have already initiated a number of procedures. They will continue, and this will be one of the reasons for introducing in May the initiative to dismiss the government.” By Victory Day it became apparent that the Nuland-Kogan-NATO plan for invasion of Moldova was foiled. All Americans could do was   to “crush” a Victory Day parade in the center of Moldova’s capital by coming uninvited and bringing their motorized vehicles to it. And that’s where NATO troops and Moldovan patriots came face to face. Pindos lost their freaking mind:  An American Colonel demands from the citizen of Moldova to leave the central square ПИНДОСЫ ОХРЕНЕЛИ В КОНЕЦ! Американский полковник предлагает покинуть центральную площадь Кишинева гражданину РМ pic.twitter.com/FfECO3NBXi — Серж Высоцкий (@Albertich50) May 12, 2016 An American Colonel demands from the citizen of Moldova to leave the central square
Paul Merrell

Turkey Expands Purge, Shutting Down News Media Outlets - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...key-media-newspapers-shut.html

war & peace Turkey coup-attempts U.S. foreign policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • The Turkish government ordered the closing of more than 100 media outlets on Wednesday, including newspapers, publishing companies and television channels, as part of a sweeping crackdown following a failed military coup this month.The Turkish authorities ordered the shutdown of 45 newspapers, three news agencies, 16 television channels, 15 magazines and 29 publishers in a decree that was published in the government’s official gazette on Wednesday.Among those ordered to close are the newspaper Zaman and the Cihan News Agency, which had previously been seized by the government over suspicions that it has links to the network of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States and has been accused of orchestrating the July 15 coup attempt.
  • In response to the botched coup, the government has purged tens of thousands of soldiers, police officers, journalists, teachers and government employees accused of having ties to the Gulen organization. Advertisement Continue reading the main story More than 9,000 people have been arrested in connection with the coup attempt, and thousands more have been detained, the semiofficial Anadolu News Agency reported. Since Monday, detention warrants have been issued for at least 80 journalists suspected of having ties to Mr. Gulen.
  • More than 1,000 members of the Turkish military, including 127 generals and 32 admirals, were also dismissed as a result of the decree published under the state of emergency late Wednesday. They have been accused of having connections to Mr. Gulen.
Paul Merrell

'Kerry fails to get Obama backing to confront Israel on peace terms' | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/confront-israel-on-peace-terms

war & peace U.S. Israel Palestine negotiations Kerry foreign policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • S Secretary of State John Kerry sought but failed to get backing from President Barack Obama to confront Israel over its objections to his peace proposals, and therefore his bid to try impose terms for peace on Israel and the Palestinians has “pretty much collapsed,” an Israeli TV report claimed on Sunday night.
  • Citing unnamed sources close to the negotiations, Channel 10 news said that Kerry, who had hoped to impose a binding “framework” agreement on the two sides, covering all the key core issues for a peace agreement, sought Obama’s “political backing for confrontation primarily with Israel,” but got the presidential cold-shoulder. It was deemed that now was “not the time for such moves” for the president, the report said. As a result, Kerry’s effort to put together a substantive framework agreement “has pretty much collapsed for now.” There was no independent confirmation of the report.
Paul Merrell

The Incredible, Shrinking Presidency of Barack Obama » CounterPunch: Tells th... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...ing-presidency-of-barack-obama

Obama polls stats economy Obama-failure

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • According to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, Barack Obama now ranks among the least popular presidents in the last century. In fact, his approval rating is lower than Bush’s was in his fifth year in office. Obama’s overall approval rating stands at a dismal 43 percent, with a full 55 percent of the public “disapproving of the way he is handling the economy”. The same percentage  of people “disapprove of the way he is handling his job as president”.  Thus, on the two main issues, leadership and the economy, Obama gets failing grades. An even higher percentage of people are upset at the way the president is implementing his signature health care system dubbed “Obamacare”.  When asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Obama is handling “implementation of the new health care law?” A full 62% said they disapprove, although I suspect that the anger has less to do with the plan’s “implementation” than it does with the fact that Obamacare is widely seen as a profit-delivery system for the voracious insurance industry.  Notwithstanding the administration’s impressive public relations campaign, a clear majority of people have seen through Obama’s health care ruse and given the program a big thumb’s down.
  • Of course, Obamacare is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The list of policy disasters that preceded this latest fiasco is nearly endless,  including everything from blanket pardons for the Wall Street big-wigs who took down the global financial system, to re-upping the Bush tax cuts, to appointing a commission of deficit hawks to slash Social Security and Medicare (Bowles-Simpson), to breaking his word on Gitmo, to reneging on his promise to pass Card Check, to expanding to wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, to droning 4-times as many civilians as the homicidal maniac he replaced as president in 2008.
  • All told, Obama has been bad for the economy, bad for civil liberties, bad for minorities,  bad for foreign wars, and bad for health care. He has, however, been a very effective lackey-sock puppet for Wall Street, Big Pharma, the oil magnates, and the other 1% -vermin Kleptocrats who run the country and who will undoubtedly attend his $100,000-per-plate speaking engagements when he finally retires in comfort to some gated community where he’ll work on his memoirs and cash in on his 8 years of faithful service to the racketeer class.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Everything has gotten worse under Obama. Everything. And, not once, in his five years as president, has this gifted and charismatic leader ever lifted a finger to help the millions of people who supported him, who believed in him, and who voted him into office. These latest poll results indicate that many of those same people are beginning to wake up and see what Obama is really all about.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Dec 13
     
    A well-written rant from a progressive about Obama's failure as a President, supported by lots of poll results and statistics. But I find it amusing that Obama's harshest progressive critics mostly choose to view him as a failure rather than recognizing that his campaign promises and claims to be a progressive were lies. Obama has been an incredibly successful president for his real constituency, the banksters, the giant multinational corporations, the military industry, etc. Apparently it's more difficult for progressives to recognize the man for what he really stands for than to accept that they were suckered into voting for another political shyster whose real constituency are corporatist/globalist interests. They'd rather view him as a failed progressive with a still pure heart than believe that his campaign promises were lies.  But to me, Obama's behavior speaks far more loudly about his real goals than his words. 
Gary Edwards

Mice and Men: The Failures of Closing our MidEast Embassies | We Meant Well - Peter Van... - 0 views

wemeantwell.com/blog

Peter-Van-Buren Islamic-Wars post-Constitutional-America Embassy-Closures

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • What do you call it when you follow the same strategy for twelve years not only without success, but with negative results? What if time shows that that strategy actually helps the enemy you seek to defeat? Failure.
  • Failing to Learn America’s global war of terror can this week be declared officially a failure, total and complete. After twelve years of invasions, drones, torture, spying and gulags, the U.S. closed its embassies and consulates across (only) the Muslim world. Not for a day, but in most cases heading toward a week, with terror warnings on file lasting through the month. The U.S. evacuated all non-essential diplomatic and military personnel from Yemen; dependents are already gone from most other MidEast posts. Only our fortress embassies in Kabul and Baghdad ironically were considered safe enough to reopen a day or two ago. The cause of all this? Apparently a message from al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri to his second in command in Yemen telling him to “do something.”
  • Failure to Understand All this might be read in one of three ways: – The simplest explanation is that the threat is indeed real. Twelves years of war has simply pushed the terror threat around, spilled mercury-like, from country to country. A Whack-a-Mole war. – U.S. officials, perhaps still reeling from Edward Snowden’s NSA disclosures, chose to exaggerate a threat, in essence creating a strawman that could then be defeated. In favor of this argument are the many “leaks” noted above, essentially disclosing raw intel, specific conversations that would clearly reveal to the al Qaeda people concerned how and when they were monitored. Usually try to avoid that in the spy biz. The Frankenbomber stuff is pure 2001 scare tactic recycled. The idea that al Qaeda sought to seize infrastructure is a certain falsehood , as the whole point of guerrilla war is never to seize things, which would create a concentrated, open, stationary target that plays right into the Big Hardware advantage the U.S. holds. Just does not make sense, and supports the idea that this is all made-up for some U.S. domestic purpose. – However, the third way of looking at this is that the U.S. has failed to walk away from the climate of fear and paranoia that has distorted foreign and domestic policy since 9/12, Chicken Littles if you will. What if the U.S. really believed that al Qaeda was planning to take over Yemen this week in spite of the odd inconsistencies? What if “chatter” was enough to provoke the last Superpower into a super-sized public cower?
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Failure to Not Act The why in this case may not matter, when the what is so controlling.
  • That sadly predictable resort to violence by the U.S. shows that we have fundamentally failed to understand that in a guerrilla war one cannot shoot one’s way out.
  • You win by offering a better idea to people than the other side, while at the same time luring the other side into acts of violence and political repression that make them lose the support of those same people.
  • This is asymmetrical warfare 101 stuff.
  • –In the populations al Qaeda seeks to influence, claiming they “humbled and scared” the US twelve years after 9/11 simply by ramping up their chatter seems an effective al Qaeda strategy.
  • As with the British thrashing about as their empire collapsed, the world’s greatest military defeated by natives with old rifles, so now goes the U.S., by its own hand.
  • “We continue to pay in blood because we can’t learn how to do something besides fight.”
Paul Merrell

Has questioning 9/11 become more acceptable? - RT Op-Edge - 2 views

rt.com/...9-11-conspiracy-acceptable-708

war & peace war on terror™ polling 9-11

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13 - No Cached
Gary Edwards liked it
  • Despite the media’s best efforts to dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theories, one in two Americans doubt the government’s narrative and skepticism is slowly seeping its way into the mainstream. Twelve years on from the events of September 11, 2001, and a seemingly nightmarish deja vu has gripped the United States and its war-weary citizens. Again, the public is told that destructive weapons in faraway countries pose a critical danger, and that despite wearing the clothes of humanitarianism, a military solution that will inevitably harm civilians is the only meaningful response. The main difference today is that after an abstract decade-long ‘War on Terror’, Washington finds itself fighting in Syria on the same side as Al-Qaeda and those who are sympathetic to the alleged culprits of the 9/11 attacks.
  • Contrary to how the US media has presented them, movements that have questioned 9/11 continue to gather momentum and are often led by increasingly vocal scientists and academics that claim the account presented in the official 9/11 Commission report could not possibly be accurate.
  • The 9/11 Commission was chartered to provide a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, but even former commission vice-chairman Lee Hamilton wrote an article in the New York Times in 2008 describing how the CIA obstructed the 9/11 investigations, destroyed evidence and failed to respond to the commission’s own lawful requests for information – plus it’s also widely known that the 9/11 Commission report relies heavily on torture testimony.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • If the United States continually lobbies its population to intervene in unpopular new military conflicts using unsubstantiated claims and questionable evidence, there is little doubt that greater numbers of people will reexamine 9/11 and endorse more critical perspectives of it, especially as those campaigns mature and become more sophisticated. There are many who have looked at the evidence and are convinced that Washington is lying, but the real juicy question is who exactly is responsible? Kevin Ryan of the Journal of 9/11 Studies recently published a book, “Another Nineteen,” which is perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the political and military command structure that spectacularly failed to act on the morning of 9/11. The task at hand for 9/11 advocacy movements is grasping both the scientific and political totality of events and bringing that scrutiny into the mainstream, which it is steadily beginning to do.
  • It’s not easy to reliably gauge public opinion figures on this issue, but in 2008, a comprehensive international poll showed that 54 percent of respondents believed that parties other than Al-Qaeda were responsible, as reported by Reuters. A new poll conducted in September 2013 by polling firm YouGov found that one in two Americans have doubts about the government’s account of 9/11. 
  • There will always be mocking and scathing criticisms of those who question 9/11, but if scientists and experts disagree over the technical fundamentals, this enough is sufficient ground for advocating a new and comprehensive investigation. As it stands, this transformative event that radically altered American foreign and domestic policy and led to the deaths of over a million people has not been sufficiently explained.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Sep 13
     
    On August 31st, 2013, Kevin Ryan appeared on Coast to Coast (http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2013/08/31) for a four hour interview that is available on request. Amazing interview! The long-time co-editor of the Journal of 9/11, Kevin Ryan, offered an evidence-based analysis of other potential suspects responsible for the September 11th attacks in 2001. A former employee of Underwriters Laboratories (UL), Ryan pointed out that the World Trade Center (WTC) was designed to withstand the impact of airliners and the steel used in the buildings was certified by UL to tolerate several hours of intense fire. The steel was tested at 2000 degrees F and a typical office fire burns at 1200 degrees F, he explained, noting that the temperatures measured at the WTC were much lower, around 500 degrees F. This presents a glaring problem since one of the towers was completely destroyed in only 56 minutes, Ryan added. The UL repeated its tests after the disaster and determined the steel columns and floor structures should not have failed, he revealed. A proponent of controlled-demolition theory, Ryan stated definitively that "the evidence really points to the buildings having been destroyed through the use of explosives." Many witnesses reported explosions and flashes of light, he said. Ryan questioned the official government story that 19 young Arab Muslims led by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed executed this unbelievable attack, observing that such a feat could not have been accomplished by these men as they had no access to plant explosives. Ryan identified former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Vice President Dick Cheney as "the two people who were in perfect position to coordinate the attacks of 9/11." Rumsfeld went missing for more than 30 minutes during the height of the attacks and Cheney gave a stand-down order as a plane approached the Pentagon, he reported. Ryan credited Rumsfeld and Cheney with the false conclusions that led to the Iraq
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Sep 13
     
    Be sure to catch the free on-line documentary, "September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor", where director Massimo Mazzucco presents five hours of interviews and evidence comparing the 9-11 events to Pearl Harbor. Massimo confirms the findings of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth; that this was a controlled demolition. He then goes on to name the inside players responsible, and why they did it. Lots of discussion about the 1997 Cheney-Rumsfeld white paper, "The New American Century". The documentary (3 DVD's) is at: http://goo.gl/EIie3d
Paul Merrell

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

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

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

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

SteveLendmanBlog - 0 views

sjlendman.blogspot.mx/...d-coup-attempt-in-ecuador.html

war & peace Ecuador U.S.-foreign-policy coup-attempts

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • cuador is in the eye of the storm. Obama's earlier 2010 attempt to forcibly unseat popular President Rafael Correa failed.  He's trying again. Ecuadorean democracy is being attacked. Since early June, US-orchestrated right-wing protests (mainly in Quito and Guayaquil) erupted. They continue at times violently to replace Correa with fascist rule. They began on the pretext of announced higher inheritance and capital gains taxes affecting about 2% of the population - the Law to Redistribute the Wealth now being debated after Correa halted its implementation to make rich Ecuadorians pay more along with creating more social enterprises, collectives and cooperatives.  Protest leaders want Correa forcibly ousted. Interior Minister Jose Serrano revealed a plot to storm the presidential palace, block airports and bridges on the Colombian and Peruvian borders, as well as attack security forces.
  • Serrano said opposition lawmakers Andres Paez and Lourdes Tiban conspired with former Col. Mario Pazmino to instigate violence and chaos during protests. Pazmino was former army military intelligence head - "very close to the CIA," according to Correa. In 2008, he was sacked for colluding with Colombia's bombing of Ecuador.
  • On Thursday, violent clashes erupted. Right-wing extremists attacked Ecuadorean police near Quito's presidential palace. Their plan to breach their lines failed. Four officers sustained injuries.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Washington wants Correa's government replaced by a regime it controls, neo-colonial rule most Ecuadoreans oppose - following the pattern of earlier failed Venezuelan protests.  So far, popular support for Correa prevails. At the same time, dark forces headquartered in Washington never end their dirty game for unchallenged global dominance - a plot to create unfit to live in ruler-serf societies worldwide.
Paul Merrell

AIPAC Spent $14.5 Million on TV Ads during Iran Deal Debate « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/tv-ads-during-iran-deal-debate

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal lobbying stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • In the aftermath of Senate Republicans’ failed efforts to derail the plan agreed on in July to limit Iran’s nuclear program, responsibility has fallen on AIPAC for its inability to persuade a meaningful number of Senate Democrats to join their GOP colleagues in opposing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). To put it bluntly, AIPAC, a group with historically stronger ties to the Democratic Party, failed miserably. Only four Senators—Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Joe Manchin (D-WV)—broke ranks with their colleagues and minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to oppose the nuclear deal. But AIPAC didn’t fail on the cheap. They raised and spent a staggering sum of money in an effort to tilt public opinion against the White House’s signature second-term foreign policy initiative. This summer, AIPAC announced the formation of a new dark money group, “Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran,” dedicated exclusively to opposing the emerging nuclear deal with Iran. The Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Ron Kampeas reported that the group raised “nearly $30 million.” After a review of over 700 FCC disclosures, helpfully tagged by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation’s “political ad sleuth,” we can confirm that the AIPAC spin-off spent at least $14.5 million on television commercials airing on broadcast television networks (ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS) from mid-July until mid-September. This period coincides with the intensive two-month lobbying period from the announcement of the JCPOA in Vienna to the failure of the Senate resolution of disapproval.
  • These numbers don’t take into account the cost of ad buys on cable networks and any lag in the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Ad Sleuth’s tagging of relevant FCC filings. But the broad outlines of AIPAC’s well-moneyed opposition to the Iran deal indicate that the pro-Israel group quickly raised a significant amount of money to blanket the airwaves with anti-deal television commercials, dwarfing any efforts by J Street or other pro-deal groups to air competing ads.
Paul Merrell

Abbas: Palestinians to seek further UN recognition | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR - 0 views

dailystar.com.lb/...ek-to-join-15-un-agencies.ashx

war & peace Israel Palestine negotiations U.S.-foreign-policy UN-recognition

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • RAMALLAH, West Bank: In a surprise move that could jeopardize U.S. peace efforts, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday resumed a bid for further Palestinian recognition by the United Nations, despite a promise to suspend such efforts during nine months of negotiations with Israel. Abbas signed "State of Palestine" applications for 15 U.N. agencies in a hastily convened ceremony televised live from his West Bank headquarters.  Abbas said he was compelled to take action because Israel had failed to carry out a promised released of veteran Palestinian prisoners. "We will apply to 15 agencies and conventions immediately," Abbas said after leading members of his Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization supported the decision unanimously by a show of hands. Abbas insisted that he is still interested in negotiating a deal with Israel on the terms of Palestinian statehood, saying he and his aides "will continue our efforts to reach a peaceful solution through negotiations."
  • Such talks resumed in late July, after a push by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and were to last for nine months, until the end of April.  During this period, Abbas promised to suspend his U.N. bid, while Israel was to release 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners in four stages. The Palestinians say the fourth group of prisoners was due to be released by the end of March, and that Israel failed to live up to its promise. There was no immediate reaction from Israel and from Kerry, who has been mediating between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the past year. It was not immediately clear if Abbas' decision was a negotiating tactic or signaled a fundamental shift in strategy. In his brief comments Tuesday, the Palestinian leader said he is "not seeking a conflict with anyone, particularly the U.S."
  • It was also uncertain if a meeting between Abbas and Kerry, tentatively arranged for Wednesday, would still take place. Abbas' decision, meanwhile, also threw into doubt claims that a deal was emerging that would have extended Israel-Palestinian talks beyond an April 29 deadline and included the release of imprisoned American Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In a surprise move that could jeopardize U.S. peace efforts, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday resumed a bid for further Palestinian recognition by the United Nations, despite a promise to suspend such efforts during nine months of negotiations with Israel. Abbas signed "State of Palestine" applications for 15 U.N. agencies in a hastily convened ceremony televised live from his West Bank headquarters.  Abbas said he was compelled to take action because Israel had failed to carry out a promised released of veteran Palestinian prisoners. "We will apply to 15 agencies and conventions immediately," Abbas said after leading members of his Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization supported the decision unanimously by a show of hands.
« First ‹ Previous 101 - 120 of 233 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page