Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

A top federal court on Wednesday ruled that people held for months on end for immigration violations following Sept. 11, 2001, can sue top government officials for racial profiling and other abuses.The split decision from a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals comes after more than a decade of litigation, and could lead to increased scrutiny on the government’s behavior following the 2001 terror attack.  ADVERTISEMENT“We simply cannot conclude at this stage that concern for the safety of our nation justified the violation of the constitutional rights on which this nation was built,” Judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard Wesley wrote in their 109-page decision.“The question at this stage of the litigation is whether the [eight foreigners arrested on immigration charges] have plausibly pleaded that the [government officials] exceeded the bounds of the Constitution in the wake of 9/11,” they wrote. “We believe that they have.”

After being arrested for immigration charges such as overstaying a visa or working without legal authorization after 9/11, the men were held from between three to eight months in New York or New Jersey. The men, who are all Arab or South Asian, were detained for being “suspected terrorists” and claim that they were abused by prison guards and subjected to extended solitary confinement.In 2002, they filed a class action lawsuit againt then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller and other federal and local law enforcement officials.Wednesday’s decision allows that suit to go forward.“The Constitution defines the limits of the Defendants’ authority,” the two judges wrote, “detaining individuals as if they were terrorists, in the most restrictive conditions of confinement available, simply because these individuals were, or appeared to be, Arab or Muslim exceeds those limits.”

The lawsuit is Turkmen v. Ashcroft.

U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern, South and Central Asian Affairs, released the following statement today on expanded U.S. military operations against ISIL: "Actions by ISIL over the past several months, including the gruesome murder of an American journalist and threats against others, are barbaric and the work of a callous terrorist organization. I agree that ISIL poses a significant terrorist threat to U.S. interests and partners in the region, which is why the Administration has initiated military action against the group. But I do not believe that our expanded military operations against ISIL are covered under existing authorizations from Congress.  The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force does not apply, and the Administration has testified that the 2002 Iraq war authorization is obsolete and should be repealed.  Under Article II, the President has authority to defend against imminent threats to U.S. national security interests and personnel, but I have reservations regarding whether our military actions against ISIL all meet this test. “I’m encouraged by reports that indicate Administration officials have signaled that seeking Congressional authorization for U.S. military action against ISIL is being considered. This fight, and the threat posed by ISIL, is serious enough that Congress and the Administration must be united on U.S. policy going forward. I urge the Administration to use the next two weeks to clearly define the strategy and objectives of its mission against ISIL, then bring it to Congress for a debate and authorization vote. 

“I have long stressed that Congress must formally approve the initiation of significant military action – it is what the framers of the Constitution intended, and Congress and the Executive have a responsibility to do the hard work to build a political consensus in support of our military missions. ?? "No one doubts the inhumane nature of ISIL. The Secretary of Defense has described ISIL as ‘beyond anything that we’ve seen.’  I applaud the setbacks ISIL has suffered at the hands of the U.S. military.  And I will always support the President when he takes action to protect American servicemembers and diplomats.  But I am calling for the mission and objectives for this current significant military action against ISIL to be made clear to Congress, the American people, and our men and women in uniform.  And Congress should vote up or down on it.”? ?

Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published a video report of immense implications - possibly the first national broadcaster in the West to admit that the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) is supplied not by "black market oil" or "hostage ransoms" but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey's borders via hundreds of trucks a day. The report titled, "'IS' supply channels through Turkey," confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 - that NATO member Turkey has allowed a torrent in supplies, fighters, and weapons to cross its borders unopposed to resupply ISIS positions inside of Syria.

Local residents and merchants interviewed by Germany's DW admitted that commerce with Syria benefiting them had ended since the conflict began and that the supplies trucks carry as they stream across the border originates from "western Turkey." The DW report does not elaborate on what "western Turkey" means, but it most likely refers to Ankara, various ports used by NATO, and of course NATO's Incirlik Air Base. While DW's report claims no one knows who is arranging the shipments, it does reveal that the very torrent of trucks its film crew documented was officially denied by the Turkish government in Ankara. It is a certainty that Turkey is not only aware of this, but directly complicit, as is NATO who has feigned a desire to defeat ISIS but has failed to expose and uproot ISIS' multinational sponsorship and more importantly, has refused to cut its supply lines - an elementary prerequisite of any military strategy. 

SIS supply lines leading from NATO territory should be of no surprise. As reported since as early as 2007, the US and its regional accomplices conspired to use Al Qaeda and other armed extremists in a bid to reorder North Africa and the Middle East. It would be Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" that explicitly stated (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 

Wars in an imperialist democracy cannot simply be dictated by executive fiat, they require the consent of highly motivated masses who will make the human and material sacrifices. Imperialist leaders have to create a visible and highly charged emotional sense of injustice and righteousness to secure national cohesion and overcome the natural opposition to early death, destruction and disruption of civilian life and to the brutal regimentation that goes with submission to absolutist rule by the military. The need to invent a cause is especially the case with imperialist countries because their national territory is not under threat. There is no visible occupation army oppressing the mass of the people in their everyday life. The ‘enemy’ does not disrupt everyday normal life – as forced conscription would and does. Under normal peaceful time, who would be willing to sacrifice their constitutional rights and their participation in civil society to subject themselves to martial rule that precludes the exercise of all their civil freedoms?

The task of imperial rulers is to fabricate a world in which the enemy to be attacked (an emerging imperial power like Japan) is portrayed as an ‘invader’ or an ‘aggressor’ in the case of revolutionary movements (Korean and Indo-Chinese communists) engaged in a civil war against an imperial client ruler or a ‘terrorist conspiracy’ linked to an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial Islamic movements and secular states. Imperialist-democracies in the past did not need to consult or secure mass support for their expansionist wars; they relied on volunteer armies, mercenaries and colonial subjects led and directed by colonial officers. Only with the confluence of imperialism, electoral politics and total war did the need arise to secure not only consent, but also enthusiasm, to facilitate mass recruitment and obligatory conscription. Since all US imperial wars are fought ‘overseas’ – far from any immediate threats, attacks or invasions – -US imperial rulers have the special task of making the ‘causus bellicus’ immediate, ‘dramatic’ and self-righteously ‘defensive’. To this end US Presidents have created circumstances, fabricated incidents and acted in complicity with their enemies, to incite the bellicose temperament of the masses in favor of war.

The pretext for wars are acts of provocation which set in motion a series of counter-moves by the enemy, which are then used to justify an imperial mass military mobilization leading to and legitimizing war. State ‘provocations’ require uniform mass media complicity in the lead-up to open warfare: Namely the portrayal of the imperial country as a victim of its own over-trusting innocence and good intentions. All four major US imperial wars over the past 67 years resorted to a provocation, a pretext, and systematic, high intensity mass media propaganda to mobilize the masses for war. An army of academics, journalists, mass media pundits and experts ‘soften up’ the public in preparation for war through demonological writing and commentary: Each and every aspect of the forthcoming military target is described as totally evil – hence ‘totalitarian’ – in which even the most benign policy is linked to demonic ends of the regime. Since the ‘enemy to be’ lacks any saving graces and worst, since the ‘totalitarian state’ controls everything and everybody, no process of internal reform or change is possible. Hence the defeat of ‘total evil’ can only take place through ‘total war’. The targeted state and people must be destroyed in order to be redeemed. In a word, the imperial democracy must regiment and convert itself into a military juggernaut based on mass complicity with imperial war crimes. The war against ‘totalitarianism’ becomes the vehicle for total state control for an imperial war.

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting. The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition. That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

There are several brief points worth noting about all of this: (1) For those who ask “what should be done?,” has the hideous aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya – hailed as a grand success for “humanitarian interventions” – not taught the crucial lessons that (a) bombing for ostensibly “humanitarian” ends virtually never fulfills the claimed goals but rather almost always makes the situation worse; (b) the U.S. military is not designed, and is not deployed, for “humanitarian” purposes?; and (c) the U.S. military is not always capable of “doing something” positive about every humanitarian crisis even if that were really the goal of U.S. officials? The suffering in Iraq is real, as is the brutality of ISIS, and the desire to fix it is understandable. There may be some ideal world in which a superpower is both able and eager to bomb for humanitarian purposes. But that is not this world. Just note how completely the welfare of Libya was ignored by most intervention advocates the minute the fun, glorious, exciting part – “We came, we saw, he died,” chuckled Hillary Clinton – was over.

(2) It is simply mystifying how anyone can look at U.S. actions in the Middle East and still believe that the goal of its military deployments is humanitarianism. The U.S. government does not oppose tyranny and violent oppression in the Middle East. To the contrary, it is and long has been American policy to do everything possible to subjugate the populations of that region with brutal force – as conclusively demonstrated by stalwart U.S. support for the region’s worst oppressors. Or, as Hillary Clinton so memorably put it in 2009: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.” How can anyone believe that a government whose overt, explicit policy is “regime continuity” for Saudi Arabia, and who continues to lend all sorts of support to the military dictators of Egypt, is simultaneously driven by humanitarian missions in the region? (3) “Humanitarianism” is the pretty packaging in which all wars – even the most blatantly aggressive ones – are wrapped, but it is almost never the actual purpose. There are often numerous steps the U.S. could take to advance actually humanitarian goals, but those take persistence and resources, and entail little means of control, and are thus usually ignored in favor of blowing things and people up with Freedom Bombs.

(4) Note how even the pretenses of constitutional democracy are now dispensed with: there is a reasonable legal debate over legality, but in essence: the President has the power to order bombing of Iraq because he decides it should happen. (5) Perhaps having Israel and the U.S. simultaneously bombing Arabs in different countries – yet again – will create some extremely negative consequences?

And yet, for all this success, the European project is currently teetering on the edge of failure. Growth is anemic at best and socio-economic inequality is on the rise. The countries of Eastern and Central Europe, even relatively successful Poland, have failed to bridge the income gap with the richer half of the continent. And the highly indebted periphery is in revolt. Politically, the center may not hold and things seem to be falling apart. From the left, parties like Syriza in Greece are challenging the EU’s prescriptions of austerity. From the right, Euroskeptic parties are taking aim at the entire quasi-federal model. Racism and xenophobia are gaining ever more adherents, even in previously placid regions like Scandinavia. Perhaps the primary social challenge facing Europe at the moment, however, is the surging popularity of Islamophobia, the latest “socialism of fools.” From the killings at the Munich Olympics in 1972 to the recent attacks at Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris, wars in the Middle East have long inspired proxy battles in Europe. Today, however, the continent finds itself ever more divided between a handful of would-be combatants who claim the mantle of true Islam and an ever-growing contingent who believe Islam — all of Islam — has no place in Europe.

Europeans are beginning to realize that Margaret Thatcher was wrong and there are alternatives — to liberalism and European integration. The most notorious example of this new illiberalism is Hungary. On July 26, 2014, in a speech to his party faithful, Prime Minister Viktor Orban confided that he intended a thorough reorganization of the country. The reform model Orban had in mind, however, had nothing to do with the United States, Britain, or France. Rather, he aspired to create what he bluntly called an “illiberal state” in the very heart of Europe, one strong on Christian values and light on the libertine ways of the West. More precisely, what he wanted was to turn Hungary into a mini-Russia or mini-China. “Societies founded upon the principle of the liberal way,” Orban intoned, “will not be able to sustain their world-competitiveness in the following years, and more likely they will suffer a setback, unless they will be able to substantially reform themselves.” He was also eager to reorient to the east, relying ever less on Brussels and ever more on potentially lucrative markets in and investments from Russia, China, and the Middle East.

For some, the relationship between Hungary and the rest of Europe is reminiscent of the moment in the 1960s when Albania fled the Soviet bloc and, in an act of transcontinental audacity, aligned itself with Communist China. But Albania was then a marginal player and China still a poor peasant country. Hungary is an important EU member and China’s illiberal development model, which has vaulted it to the top of the global economy, now has increasing international influence. This, in other words, is no Albanian mouse that roared. A new illiberal axis connecting Budapest to Beijing and Moscow would have far-reaching implications.

The outgoing president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has told the United States in his final address to parliament that US soldiers can leave the country at the end of the year. Karzai said on Saturday that his military was ready to take over because it already protected 93 percent of the country, and were strong enough to defend Afghanistan without assistance. Karzai has refused to sign a security agreement with the US, which would allow US forces to remain in the country from 2015 and beyond, and said he would not do so until peace is achieved. All 10 presidential candidates for the April 5 election have said they would sign the security agreement if elected. But Karzai does not want his legacy to include a commitment to extending a foreign military presence. "I want to say to all those foreign countries who, maybe out of habit, or because they want to interfere, that they should not interfere," Karzai said.

Karzai will step down after next month's presidential elections. Under Afghanistan's constitution, he is banned from seeking a third term.

Last week began with a blistering denunciation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Iranian duplicity and ended with diminished prospects for Israel to take direct action to address Iran's nuclear capabilities ."The Israelis find themselves in a far worse position now than they have been for several years," concluded Elliott Abrams, a leading neo-conservative who served as George W Bush's main Middle East adviser, in Foreign Affairs. While Israel could still attack Iran's nuclear sites on its own, "[i]ts ability to do so is already being narrowed considerably by the diplomatic thaw" between Iran and the United States, Abrams wrote. "It is one thing to bomb Iran when it appears hopelessly <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> recalcitrant and isolated and quite another to bomb it when much of the world - especially the United States - is optimistic about the prospects of talks." Abrams' assessment was widely shared among his ideological comrades who believe Israel will be the big loser if hopes for detente between Washington and Tehran gather steam after next week's meeting in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany).

Gary Sick, an Iran expert who served on the National Security Council under presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan, told IPS that neo-conservatives' recent outpouring of defiance and despair constituted "the most convincing evidence I have seen to date that the die-hard supporters of sabotaging an agreement between the US and Iran are in full defensive mode".

A week before Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is expected to sit down with his P5+1 interlocutors in Geneva, Netanyahu and supporters in Washington face a diplomatic and political environment distinctly different from that of just five weeks ago. That environment is defined above all by a pervasive war-weariness among the US electorate, clearly indicated by strong public support for Obama's choice of diplomacy over missile strikes to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal.

South American governments have rejected an effort by U.S. lawmakers to apply sanctions on Venezuela over human rights concerns. Foreign ministers from the 12-member Union of South American Nations issued a statement Friday saying that the proposed legislation would constitute a violation of Venezuela's internal affairs and undermine attempts by regional diplomats and the Vatican to foster dialogue between the government and opposition.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday is expected to debate a bipartisan bill that would order the Obama administration to ban visas and freeze the assets of Venezuelan officials who've committed abuses during the past three months of unrest. Similar legislation has already cleared the Senate foreign relations committee. The Obama administration has condemned President Nicolas Maduro's crackdown on protests but wants to hold off on applying sanctions to give more time to dialogue.

President Obama must approve operational plans to target overseas terrorist suspects with drones or other weapons outside war zones but in some cases does not sign off on specific strikes, according to newly declassified administration guidelines. In addition to setting out the role of the president, the guidelines emphasize the importance of “verifying” the identity of high-value targets, even as they outline the criteria and legality of striking unidentified others when “necessary to achieve U.S. policy objectives.” The guidelines provide rules for targeting U.S. citizens abroad and include lengthy guidance on what to do with captured terrorist suspects. “In no event,” the document says, “will additional detainees be brought to the detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.” The 18-page top-secret document was declassified and released late Friday, with relatively minor redactions, in response to a federal court order. When Obama signed the guidelines, in May 2013, the administration released a brief “fact sheet” on procedures and criteria for such operations that were drawn from the classified version.

Judging by both the words, and deeds of the Obama White House and its political ‘diplomatic’ appointees led by perfidious John Kerry and caustic Samantha Power – all evidence to date points to the US wanting to escalate its war on Syria – while happily baiting a military confrontation, and ‘World War‘ scenario with Russia and its allies in the process.  If this latest leak is indeed true – and time will certainly tell whether or not it is, it would constitute one of the most egregious violations of both US and international law – by the United States government and its theocratic dictator partner in Saudi Arabia. Washington’s own anti-terror legislation expressly forbids colluding to provide logistical or material support for terrorist groups, and this US-Saudi venture would be the latest in a long list of violations…

Here’s what makes this a potential shocker: the operation allows for safe passage for 9,000 ISIS fighters on the proviso that they are transferred from Iraq to eastern Syria in order to help US plans for “regime change” there.  “At the time of the assault, coalition aircraft would strike only on a pre-agreed detached buildings in the city, which are empty, the source said.” “According to him [the source], the plan of Washington and Riyadh also provides that the rebels move from Mosul to Syria for the attack on the government-controlled town of troops.” Essentially, Washington and Saudi Arabia, will allow 9,000 ISIS (Islamic State) fighter FREE passage into Syria if they agree to join Washington’s “regime change” operations there. This could also include, “… eastern regions of Syria to follow a major offensive operation, which involves the capture of Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra,” the source added. Before you write this story off as some ornate Russian psychological operation, consider the long trend arch. The US along with its generous Gulf sidekicks, have already established a solid track record of aiding and abetting ISIS – not just in Syria, but in Iraq too. The record shows that the US is guilty on a number of counts…

If the Mosul leak is true, then it wouldn’t be the first time that the US has provided cover in the military pantomime the world has come to know as “the fight against ISIS.” When large ISIS convoys crossed the Syrian desert to invade and occupy the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in May 2015, the US ‘Coalition’ airforce did nothing, and allowed ISIS to take and destroy part of the world’s great historic cultural heritage, along with the murder of scores of innocent civilians. Professor Tim Anderson from Sydney University states: “U.S. weapons with Israeli ammunition were used by Islamic State group when taking over Palmyra. The extremists also had U.S. military rations.” “The U.S., which since 2014 claimed to be conducting a war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and which had air power and sophisticated surveillance of the region, did nothing to stop the huge ISIS advance on Palmyra.” The US isn’t even shy about its laissez-faire policy with ISIS in the field, with the New York Times openly boasting, “Any airstrikes against Islamic State militants in and around Palmyra would probably benefit the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. So far, United States-led airstrikes in Syria have largely focused on areas far outside government control, to avoid the perception of aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.”

On Thursday, the Senate passed a bill that puts every American who travels by plane at risk.  It is among the stupidest pieces of legislation ever written and it explains– to a great extent– why the US Congress has a public approval rating of 13 percent and is among the most loathed institutions in America. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the House last Friday in a 375-34 vote. On Thursday, it cleared the senate with a 92 to 7 margin.  The bill will now be sent to Obama where it is expected to be signed into law. According to an article on SOFREP titled  “Congress authorizes anti-aircraft missiles for Syrian opposition”: Congress for the first time authorized the Department of Defense to provide vetted-Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles. The provision is contained within the $619 billion Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the Senate on Dec. 8 and the House on Dec. 2. Under the bill, the Secretaries of Defense and State must submit a report to Congress explaining why they determined Syrian groups need man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). (SOFREP: Trusted News and Intelligence From Spec Ops Veterans, “Congress authorizes anti-aircraft missiles for Syrian opposition”)

You read that right, Congress just passed a bill that will provide shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles to lunatic jihadists who will undoubtedly use them to take down American or Israeli jetliners. The argument that these Islamic militants are fully vetted is complete nonsense as both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have repeatedly shown. According to a recent article in the New York Times, rebel groups supported by the USG  “have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of al Qaida in Syria formerly known as al Nusra.”  The Wall Street Journal reports that rebel groups are “doubling-down on their alliance with al Qaida. This alliance has rendered the phrase ‘moderate rebels’ meaningless.” Everyone who has followed developments on the ground in Syria knows that the distinction between the “good” terrorists and the “bad” terrorists is pure bunkum. The various militias are merely the many heads of the same homicidal anti-government hydra that has killed over 400,000 Syrians and decimated a large part of the country. The CIA should not be assisting any of these madmen let alone providing them with lethal state-of the-art weapons that will inevitably be used to take down US aircraft.  Here’s more from the same article: The inclusion of the provision represents a departure from previous versions of the NDAA. The original House bill specifically prohibited the transfer of MANPADS to “any entity” in Syria, while the Senate bill did not address it. So, the original bill forbid “the transfer of MANPADS” to Syrian militants because it was considered too dangerous. But now that Obama’s proxy-army is getting pulverized in Aleppo,  Congress has taken off the gloves and gone into full-revenge mode.  Isn’t that what’s really going on?

And it looks like Obama has already given this crazy policy a big thumbs up. Check out this “Presidential Determination and Waiver ….on the Arms Export Control Act to Support U.S. Special Operations to Combat Terrorism in Syria” that the White House issued late Thursday: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2249a of title 10, United States Code, sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) (22 U.S.C. 2780 and 2781), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby: determine that the transaction, encompassing the provision of defense articles and services to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing U.S. military operations to counter terrorism in Syria, is essential to the national security interests of the United States.(Presidential Determination and Waiver) It looks to me like our Nobel prize-winning president just gave Congress’s idiot plan his ringing endorsement.

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.

I hope against hope that the rumors are wrong and that President Donald Trump will not open the State Department door to the neocons. Crack the door to admit Elliott Abrams and the neocons will scurry in by the hundreds. Neoconservative interventionists have had us at perpetual war for 25 years. While President Trump has repeatedly stated his belief that the Iraq War was a mistake, the neocons (all of them Never-Trumpers) continue to maintain that the Iraq and Libyan Wars were brilliant ideas. These are the same people who think we must blow up half the Middle East, then rebuild it and police it for decades. They’re wrong and they should not be given a voice in this administration.

One of the things I like most about President Trump is his acknowledgement that nation building does not work and actually works against the nation building we need to do here at home. With a $20 trillion debt, we don’t have the money to do both. I urge him to keep that in mind this week when he meets with Elliott Abrams, the rumored pick for second in command to the Secretary of State. Abrams would be a terrible appointment for countless reasons. He doesn’t agree with the president in so many areas of foreign policy and he has said so repeatedly; he is a loud voice for nation building and when asked about the president’s opposition to nation building, Abrams said that Trump was absolutely wrong; and during the election he was unequivocal in his opposition to Donald Trump, going so far as to say, “the chair in which Washington and Lincoln sat, he is not fit to sit.” Why then would the president trust him with the second most powerful position in the State Department?

Elliott Abrams is a neoconservative too long in the tooth to change his spots, and the president should have no reason to trust that he would carry out a Trump agenda rather than a neocon agenda. But just as importantly, Congress has good reason not to trust him — he was convicted of lying to Congress in his previous job. His conviction for deceiving Congress over secret arms deals, better known as the Iran-Contra scandal, show that his neocon agenda trumps his fidelity to the rule of law. The Constitution directs Congress to approve or disapprove of war. It would be a mistake to appoint anyone to the State Department who was previously convicted for defying Congressional authority. Nation building in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen has not and will not work. Mr. President please, please do not open the door to the people who sip lattes while sneering behind your back. They are bold enough to come begging for work while continuing to laugh and deride your every remark concerning foreign policy. Don’t let them in! The neocon trademark is to conduct war in secret to avoid congressional scrutiny. This is exactly what happened during Iran-Contra. Despite legislation that prohibited sending arms to Nicaragua, Abrams and other neocons surreptitiously funneled money from sultans in Brunei to sheiks in Iran, converting the cash into weapons that were then sent to authoritarians in Nicaragua.

n the last few days, something remarkable has taken place in American politics. The president of the United States has made a point of taking on the special relationship with Israel and the Israel lobby in his effort to defend the Iran deal, and supporters of the special relationship have struck back hard, accusing him of anti-Semitism. Elliott Abrams, Lee Smith and Tablet magazine for starters. What’s remarkable is that mainstream supporters of the deal have left the president to do this heavy lifting on his own. They have largely ignored his pointed comments: that the Democrats are under pressure from big donors to oppose the Iran Deal, that the same moneyed groups pushed the Iraq war, that it would be an abrogation of his constitutional duty if he sided with Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and that Netanyahu’s intervention in American politics is unprecedented. The exceptions are Eli Clifton working hard to expose AIPAC as warmongers at Lobelog, and David Bromwich attacking the Congress-people who are Netanyahu’s “marionettes” at Huffington Post. But generally the liberal press has been embarrassed by Obama’s comments or tried to wish them away. The New York Times put AIPAC on its front page the other day, but allowed David Makovsky, an ardent supporter of Israel, to say that some of Obama’s statements are “dangerous.” David Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy, is supporting the deal, but he has said on twitter that the emphasis on the Israel lobby is disturbing to him. Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli-American, tries to dispose of the criticisms of Obama by arguing that he can’t have any objection to dual loyalty in this day and age: The very idea that there’s something wrong with dual loyalty is obsolete. It’s a fossilized relic of single-identity patriotism to the patria from centuries past. Nowadays, people migrate, have mixed heritage, multiple citizenships, meta-state communities and even multiple sexualities

Ali Gharib backs her up, saying that conservative critics of Obama are attributing ideas he doesn’t have to him. While Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine says much the same; he denies that Obama was talking about Jewish pro-Israel donors when it was reported in the New York Times that the president was lobbying Democratic senators to stick with him: The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator. Elliott Abrams seized on that same report to say that the president was mining anti-Semitism, by talking about the Israel lobby.

So the president is out there on his own. I believe he wants us, the American people, to talk about the Israel lobby and whose interests it’s supporting at this critical moment, so that he can solidify the most important foreign policy move of his administration; but the conversation isn’t really happening. Last night on Hardball, Steve Kornacki led a discussion of Chuck Schumer’s opposition to the deal in which he and Michael Tomasky acknowledged “political” pressures on Schumer from his constituents, but they left it at that. They didn’t say what those pressures are– Israel. They didn’t say that Schumer calls himself Israel’s Shomer, or guardian, didn’t even say that he is Jewish, something that the networks have been reporting because it’s relevant. Just as Laura Rozen of al Monitor cites Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz’s Jewishness in embracing his support of the deal yesterday. I want the president’s conversation to happen. I want Americans to talk about the Israel lobby’s influence due to wealthy donors and talk about pro-Israeli activists’ loyalty to Netanyahu over the president. I think this important discussion can happen without anti-Semitism for a simple reason. Zionism is not Judaism. Jewish Americans do not all support Netanyahu. Some of us don’t even support Israel. Anti-Zionists don’t believe in the idea of a Jewish state any more than they’d support a Christian state in the U.S. Myself, I became an anti-Zionist in recent years because my liberal American values impelled me to demand that Palestinians living under Israeli rule should have the right to vote for their government.

Iran took defiant steps on Monday in response to the intensified Western sanctions aimed at stifling its oil exports, announcing legislation intended to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf shipping lane, and testing missiles in a desert drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.

The legislation calls for Iran's military to block any oil tanker heading through the strait en route to countries no longer buying Iranian crude because of the European Union embargo, which took effect on Sunday. It was unclear whether the legislation would pass or precisely how Iran would enforce it, given that the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet patrols the strait. Pentagon officials have said Iran's military is capable of closing the strait temporarily, and the Obama administration has warned that any such move would constitute a "red line" that would provoke an American response. The strait, connecting the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf, is the conduit for one fifth of the world's oil supply and has been called the world's most important "oil chokepoint" by the United States Department of Energy.

Iranian news services quoted Ibrahim Agha-Mohammadi, a member of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, as saying the panel drafted the legislation "as an answer to the European Union's oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran." The European embargo, along with new American restrictions that took effect on Friday, are intended to penalize Iran for refusing to suspend all uranium enrichment. Western nations and Israel suspect the enrichment program is aimed at creating the ability to make nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. While high-level talks have faltered, a meeting of lower level negotiators is planned for Tuesday. In the second saber-rattling step, Iranian news agencies announced that the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps had begun three days of missile testing in the desert region of the central province of Semnan. Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a commander of the exercises, was quoted as saying they were intended as practice responses to attacks by "adventurous nations," a reference to Israel and its most important ally, the United States.

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.

Washington can’t stop lying.  Don’t be convinced by last Thursday’s job report that it is your fault if you don’t have a job. Those 288,000 jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate are more fiction than reality.  In his analysis of the June Labor Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, John Williams (www.ShadowStats.com) wrote that the 288,000 June jobs and 6.1% unemployment rate  are “far removed from common experience and underlying reality.” Payrolls were overstated by “massive, hidden shifts in seasonal adjustments,” and the Birth-Death model added the usual phantom jobs.  Williams reports that “the seasonal factors are changed each and every month as part of the concurrent seasonal-adjustment process, which is tantamount to a fraud,” as the changes in the seasonal factors can inflate the jobs number.  While the headline numbers always are on a new basis, the prior reporting is not revised so as to be consistent.

The monthly unemployment rates are not comparable, so one doesn’t know whether the official U.3 rate (the headline rate that the financial press reports) went up or down. Moreover, the rate does not count discouraged workers who, unable to find a job, cease looking. To be counted among the U.3 unemployed, the person must have actively looked for work during the four weeks prior to the survey. The U.3 rate automatically declines as people who have been unable to find jobs cease trying to find one and thereby cease to be counted as unemployed. There is a second official measure of unemployment that includes people who have been discouraged for less than one year. That rate, known as U.6, is seldom reported and is double the 6.1% rate. Since 1994 there has been no official measure than includes discouraged people who have not looked for a job for more than a year. Including all discouraged workers produces an unemployment rate that currently stands at 23.1%, almost four times the rate that the financial press reports.

What you can take away from this is the opposite of what the presstitute media would have you believe.  The measured rate of unemployment can decline simply because large numbers of the unemployed become discouraged workers, cease looking for work, and cease to be counted in the U.3 and U.6 measures of the unemployment rate.   The decline in the employment-population ratio from 63% prior to the 2008 downturn to 59% today reflects the growth in discouraged workers.  Indeed, the ratio has not recovered its previous level during the alleged recovery, an indication that the recovery is an illusion created by the understated measure of inflation that is used to deflate nominal GDP growth.

Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing creates a moral frequency that vast numbers of people are eager to hear. We don’t want our lives, communities, country and world continually damaged by the deadening silences of fear and conformity. I’ve met many whistleblowers over the years, and they’ve been extraordinarily ordinary. None were applying for halos or sainthood. All experienced anguish before deciding that continuous inaction had a price that was too high. All suffered negative consequences as well as relief after they spoke up and took action. All made the world better with their courage. Whistleblowers don’t sign up to be whistleblowers. Almost always, they begin their work as true believers in the system that conscience later compels them to challenge. “It took years of involvement with a mendacious war policy, evidence of which was apparent to me as early as 2003, before I found the courage to follow my conscience,” Matthew Hoh recalled this week.“It is not an easy or light decision for anyone to make, but we need members of our military, development, diplomatic and intelligence community to speak out if we are ever to have a just and sound foreign policy.”

Hoh describes his record this way: “After over 11 continuous years of service with the U.S. military and U.S. government, nearly six of those years overseas, including service in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as positions within the Secretary of the Navy’s Office as a White House Liaison, and as a consultant for the State Department’s Iraq Desk, I resigned from my position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of war in 2009.” Another former Department of State official, the ex-diplomat and retired Army colonel Ann Wright, who resigned in protest of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, is crossing paths with Hoh on Friday as they do the honors at a ribbon-cutting — half a block from the State Department headquarters in Washington — for a billboard with a picture of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Big-lettered words begin by referring to the years he waited before releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. “Don’t do what I did,” Ellsberg says on the billboard.  “Don’t wait until a new war has started, don’t wait until thousands more have died, before you tell the truth with documents that reveal lies or crimes or internal projections of costs and dangers. You might save a war’s worth of lives.

The billboard – sponsored by the ExposeFacts organization, which launched this week — will spread to other prominent locations in Washington and beyond. As an organizer for ExposeFacts, I’m glad to report that outreach to potential whistleblowers is just getting started. (For details, visit ExposeFacts.org.) We’re propelled by the kind of hopeful determination that Hoh expressed the day before the billboard ribbon-cutting when he said: “I trust ExposeFacts and its efforts will encourage others to follow their conscience and do what is right.” The journalist Kevin Gosztola, who has astutely covered a range of whistleblower issues for years, pointed this week to the imperative of opening up news media. “There is an important role for ExposeFacts to play in not only forcing more transparency, but also inspiring more media organizations to engage in adversarial journalism,” he wrote. “Such journalism is called for in the face of wars, environmental destruction, escalating poverty, egregious abuses in the justice system, corporate control of government, and national security state secrecy. Perhaps a truly successful organization could inspire U.S. media organizations to play much more of a watchdog role than a lapdog role when covering powerful institutions in government.”