Armageddon Rides in the Balance

SUBHEAD: Never before have irrationality and immorality had such a firm hold on the US government.

By Paul Craig Roberts on 10 September 2018 for PaulCraigRoberts.org -
(https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/09/10/armageddon-rides-in-the-balance/)


Image above: Many in this world inhabit Armageddon already. Damaged buildings are seen at the Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus, Syria. April 28, 2018. Photo by Omar Sanadiki. From (https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/syria-regime-and-rebels-agree-evacuation-deal-in-southern-damascus-1.725770).

IB Publisher's note: Yes Paul Craig Roberts is a nutcake. He is a Ronald Reagan Republican economist who sees clearly, but through a deeply colored filter. None the less, he does have an inkling of the dichotomy between the "Left" and the "Right". The "Left" with elements of the "Deep State" (intelligence complex, CIA, NSA, State Department, etc) and the "Right" with elements of the "Military-Industrial Complex" (Pentagon, Defense contractors, Mercenary operations, ICE, etc.). Both aspects of our government are hurtling towards a more repressive and garrulous America. As these aggressive and regressive forces gain influence, woe is us. America will conduct more war and experience more repression.] 

For some time I have pointed out the paradox of the American liberal/progressive/left being allied with the CIA, FBI, military/security complex and deep state. Now leftist Ann Garrison has noticed the paradox of this alliance. She concludes that the Left has lost its mind. https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-love-the-cia-or-how-the-left-lost-its-mind/5653450

Indeed, it has.

Out of its hatred of Trump the Left has united with the forces of evil and war that are leading to conflict with Russia. The Left’s hatred of Trump shows that the American Left has totally seperated from the interests of the working class, which elected Trump.

The American Left has abandoned the working class for the group victimizations and hatreds of Identity Politics. As Hillary put it, the working class comprises the “Trump deplorables.” The Democratic Party, like the Republicans, represents the ruling oligarchy.

I have explained that the leftwing lost its bearings when the Soviet Union collapsed and socialism gave way to neoliberal privatizations.

The moral fury of the leftwing movement had to go somewhere, and it found its home in Identity Politics in which the white heterosexual male takes the place of the capitalist, and his victim groups—blacks, women, homosexuals, illegal immigrants—take the place of the working class.

The consequences of the leftwing’s alliance with warmongers and liars is the leftwing’s loss of veracity. The Left has endorsed a CIA orchestration—“Russiagate”—for which there is no known evidence, but which the Left supports as proven truth.

The purpose of “Russiagate” is to prevent President Trump from normalizing relations with Russia. In these times when so many Americans are hard pressed, normal relations could adversely impact the budget and power of the military/security complex by reducing the “Russian threat.”

If there is no real Russian threat, only an orchestrated perceived one, the question arises: why does the military/security complex have a taxpayer-supported annual budget of $1,000 billion dollars?

The presstitutes have kept the truth from emerging that the “Russiagate” investigation has found no sign of a Trump/Putin plot to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hillary.

Indeed, it has been proven beyond all questioning that the Hillary emails were not hacked but were downloaded on a thumb drive. This proof collapses the entire premise of “Russiagate.”
Nevertheless, the hoax continues.

Muller’s indictments are for unrelated matters, such as income tax evasion in the distant past of Republican fund raisers and consultants. These charges have nothing whatsoever to do with Mueller’s mandate.

Indeed, as Andrew C. McCarthy, a former US attorney who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has made clear, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Mueller to head the “Russiagate” investigation is not in compliance with the regulations that govern the appointment of a special prosecutor.

The appointment of a special prosecutor requires evidence of a specific federal crime that is to be investigated. You only have a special prosecutor when there is factual basis for believing that a federal crime has been committed.

What is the federal crime? What is the factual basis? Mueller’s appointment does not say. Therefore, Mueller’s appointment is invalid. Rosenstein has violated the process.

In my opinion, this is grounds for Rosenstein to be removed from office. https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/trump-russia-probe-robert-mueller-investigation/

At one time, Congress—both parties—would have been all over the invalid Mueller appointment.

However, after 16 years of Cheney/Bush and Obama regime lawlessness, even Republicans accept that the Constitution’s restraints on executive branch power, along with the laws and regulations Congress has established specifying the exercise of these powers, have been rendered meaningless by the “war on terror,” a hoax designed to further Israel’s interests in the Middle East and the neoonservative doctrine of US hegemony, while making billions of dollars for the military/security complex.

Charlie Savage’s book, Takeover, and David Ray Griffin’s book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, accurately document how 9/11 was used to destroy the Constitution’s balance of power within the government and to create unaccountable executive branch powers that over-ride the Constitution’s protection of civil liberty.

This demand for an unaccountable executive branch, pushed by VP—actually President in fact—Dick Cheney and his minions, such as Addington and John Yoo, was the agenda of the Republican Federalist Society.

An early book laying out the legally invalid and legally incompetent argument that the president had powers unchecked by Congress or the judiciary was Terry Eastland’s book, Energy in the Executive.

This collection of nonsense became Cheney’s bible as he proceeded in secret to remove constraints on executive branch power. The elevation of the executive branch above the law of the land is documented in Charlie Savage’s book. Read it and weep for your country destroyed by Dick Cheney.

On top of Cheney’s coup against accountable government, we have in America today another coup, organized by former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI director Comey, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, the Democratic National Committee, the departed Republican senator John McCain, a coup fully supported by the entirety of the US presstitute media.

This coup is against the democratically elected President of the United States for the sole reason that he threatens the power and profit of the entrenched military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us 57 years ago, by wanting to normalize relations with Russia, the world’s premier nuclear power.

The question is unavoidable: Why do the American people put up with this? Are they so insouciant that they have no realization that, if a president can be driven from office because he wants peace with Russia, the removed president’s successor will have to stand against Russia or also be driven from office. Trust and negotiation between the nuclear powers becomes impossible.

Why do Americans support conflict with a nuclear power that can completely destroy America?

During the entirety of the Cold War, in which I was a participant, the emphasis was on reducing tensions and creating trust. Today Washington’s interest is piling provocation after provocation on a country that can wipe us off the face of the earth.

The liberal/progressive/left, the Democratic National Committee, the CIA and the rest of the covert state, and the media whores all share this same commitment to the reckless and irresponsible provocation of a powerful nuclear power. As the US military itself acknowledges, Russia’s weapons are far beyond America’s defenses.

So what is going on? Is it the liberal/progressive/left’s desire that evil America be destroyed? Is this desired destruction of evil America the reason the Left has allied itself so tightly with the warmongers in Washington?

Is this the reason that the Left and the Democrats and a handful of Republicans want to impeach President Trump for attempting to make peace with Russia?

How can these crazed immoral people present themselves as some sort of moral arbiter when they are locked on a trajectory that will destroy Earth?

This destruction might be closer than anyone thinks. Here is the situation in Syria:

Russia and Syria, in cooperation with Iran and Turkey, have begun the assult on Iblid province, the last stronghold of Washington’s proxy army consisting of Al Qaeda, Al Nursra, and ISIS mercenaries hired by Washington.

According to reports, which might or might not be true considering the lack of veracity that is the defining characteristic of the Western media, the US and UK have troops among the mercenary forces, hoping apparently that this presence will deter the attack. As the attack has already begun, this is a false hope.

The Russians discovered Washington’s plot to explode a chemical weapon in Iblid province and exposed Washington’s plot to the UN. Washington had it set up that once its proxies created the appearance of a chemical weapon explosion, Washington would send Tomahawk missiles upon the Syrian forces, thus protecting its proxy army that it sent to overthrow Assad for Israel.

The Russian exposure of Washington’s conspiracy has denied Washington UN support. Moreover, Russia has sent a naval force armed with the new Russian hypersonic missiles to Syria and has announced that its aircraft in the area are also armed with these missiles.

As the US Navy and Air Force have no defense whatsoever against these missiles, if the US attacks the Syrian/Russian forces, it will be Putin’s decision whether any US ship or military aircraft in the area exists as anything but a smoldering ruin.

In other words, the entire power in the area lies in Russian hands. If Washington had any sense—and it doesn’t, Washington has hubris and arrogance in the place of sense—Washington would be nowhere close to Syria.

The question is this: Will the hotheads in Washington conclude that the Russian announcements and marshalling of forces is “just another Putin bluff.”

So far Putin has been loaded up with never-ending insults and provocation— blame for the crash of the Malaysian airliner, blame for poisoning a variety of people in England, blame for invading Ukraine, blame for interfering in US elections, blame for supporting the “dictator” Assad, a person democratically elected by a large vote who obviously has the support of the Syrian people as he liberates Syria from the forces Washington sent to put the country into the same chaos that exists in Iraq and Libya.

Have we reached the situation about which I have been worried, worries shared with my readers, in which Washington makes the miscalculation, based on the incorrect understanding of Russia’s resolve, to launch an attack on the Syrian/Russian forces that have begun the final liberation of Syria from Washington’s paid mercenaries?

Yesterday the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity sent a letter to President Trump advising him of the war danger that the Trump administration has created by its continued illegal interference in Syria’s internal affairs. https://www.globalresearch.ca/moscow-has-upped-the-ante-in-syria/5653571

The Russian government cannot accept Washington’s military intervention in behalf of Al Qaeda, Al Nursa, and ISIS without completely losing all credibility, not only in the world, but inside Russia itself.

A realistic alternative to military action would be for Washington to stand aside as Syria reconstitutes itself and use a propaganda war to blame Syria and Russia for civilian deaths and for destroying “democratic rebels” who rose against a “dictator.”

The fear could be expanded to the Baltics and Ukraine by reviving the propaganda that Putin intends to reconstruct the Soviet Empire.

Washington has long used an expertly manufactured fear of Russia to control Europe. Fear can keep Europe in line, whereas military action against Russia could scare Europe into taking refuge in a revival of its sovereignty.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported: “President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has approved the use of chlorine gas in an offensive against the country’s last major rebel stronghold, U.S. officials said, raising the prospects for another retaliatory U.S. military strike as thousands try to escape what could be a decisive battle in the seven-year-old war.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the US strikes could target Russian and Iranian forces as well as Syrian forces.

It is difficult to believe that Washington thinks attacks on Russian forces would go unanswered. Such a reckless and irresponsible act could initiate Armageddon.

The claim that Assad has approved the use of chlorine gas in the liberation of Iblid is propagandistic nonsense put out by Washington as an excuse for Washington’s effort to protect its proxy army in Syria with military strikes.

All Syrian chemical weapons were removed by Russia and turned over to the US during the Obama regime. Moreover, Russia would not permit Assad to use chemical weapons if he had them.

Life on earth is faced with a situation in which Washington is so determined to overthrow Assad and to leave Syria in the same chaos as Libya and Iraq that Washington is willing to risk war with Russia.

Never before have irrationality and immorality had such a firm hold on a government. The world should be scared to death of the recklessness and irresponsibility of the US government.

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Apartheid Israel Report

SUBHEAD: If anyone doubts that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, he should read the UN report.

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar on 21 March 2017 for Counter Currents -
(http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/21/apartheid-israel/)


Image above: "Control + Alt + Delete" graffiti on Israeli "defense" wall separating Palestinians from Jewish state. From (https://www.flickr.com/photos/54853721@N03/5081744059).

If anyone doubts that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, he should read the report “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid” commissioned by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

The report released on the 15^th March 2017 and posted on the ESCWA website has now been removed on the orders of the UN Secretary-General, pressurized, it is alleged, by the governments of Israel and the United States both of whom have denounced the report in harsh terms.

The withdrawal of the report prompted the ESCWA Executive Secretary and UN Under-Secretary-General Dr. Rima Khalaf, to submit her resignation. In her words, “I resigned because it is my duty not to conceal a clear crime and I stand by all the conclusions of the report.”

 It is worth noting that the report carried a clear disclaimer that “the findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the UN or its officials or Member States.”

The report was co-authored by two distinguished American scholars — Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law Princeton University who, from 2008 to 2014, also served as UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and Virginia Tilley, Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University and author of Beyond Occupation: Apartheid Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Carefully worded, incisively analyzed and succinctly articulated, the report is a significant milestone in the endeavor to understand one of the longest political conflicts in modern times.

Using international human rights law as a basis, the report provides ample evidence to show why Israel practices apartheid in various facets of governance. Land policy is one example.

Land occupied by Israel between 1948 and 1967 can only be owned and used by Jews and by law excludes non-Jews some of whom have documentary claims to the land that go back a few centuries.

An even more insidious mechanism employed by the Israeli regime to exercise control and domination is the fragmentation of the Palestinian population into various categories.

The authors of the report call them ‘domains.’ Domain 1 comprises those who are citizens of the state of Israel. They receive inferior social services, limited budget allocations, and are subjected to restrictions on jobs and professional opportunities.

They live in segregated residential areas and are aware that  access to public benefits are by and large reserved for those who qualify as citizens under the Citizenship Law and the Law of Return, meaning by which Jews.  This creates a system of covert racism and renders Palestinians second-class citizens.

Domain 2, also under Israeli rule, is made up of Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem. They are also victims of discrimination like their counterparts in Domain 1. They have limited access to good educational and health care facilities.

In addition, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem can have his residency revoked if he cannot prove that Jerusalem is his “center of life.” Between 1996 and 2014, residency was revoked for more than 11,000 Palestinians.

Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, would constitute Domain 3. They are governed by military law. Though Hamas has limited authority over Gaza, it is Israel that has exclusive control over its borders.

And since 2007, Israel has imposed a blockade upon Gaza that affects all aspects of life in that tiny peninsula. While the residents of both West Bank and Gaza are subject to military law, the 350,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank are governed by Israeli civil law.

This dual legal system underscores stark racial discrimination which manifests itself in many other ways. In contrast to the parlous state of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, Jewish settlements continue to flourish.

Jews from all over the world are offered various incentives to move to these well-endowed settlements,including employment guarantees, agricultural subsidies, school grants and special recreational facilities.

Unlike the first three domains, Palestinians in Domain 4 are the only ones who are not under Israeli control. These are Palestinians who are refugees from the wars and expulsions since 1948 and their descendants who have been living outside original Palestine, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and a number of other countries in West Asia and North Africa (WANA). There are some who for generations have been staying in Europe and North America.

All of them are affected by one vital dimension of Israeli policy. They are barred from returning home. While they are prohibited from returning to the land of their ancestors, a Jew who does not have the flimsiest link to Israel or Palestine is encouraged to settle down in these territories.

This is yet another blatant example of apartheid.

The report prepared by Falk and Tilley argues eloquently that the emergence of the domains and the apartheid practiced by various Israeli governments cannot be separated from the desire and the drive in the Zionist movement from the turn of the 20^th century to establish an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine.

Bringing in Jewish immigrants long before the Israeli state was created, the wars, the expulsions and the laws to prevent Palestinians from returning to their land were all part of that mission.

Indeed, there has been deliberate ethnic cleansing of Palestine — a point which has been elaborated with much lucidity by the outstanding Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in his ground breaking book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

In its conclusion, the Falk-Tilley report establishes, “on the basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.” It then proposes that an international tribunal examine the report and make an assessment that will be truly authoritative.

If such an authoritative assessment concurs with the finding of the report, the UN and its agencies, regional outfits and national governments should act. They have a collective duty to de-legitimise an apartheid regime and render it illegal. They cannot allow such a regime to continue.
 
The report also urges civil society groups and non-state actors to step up their campaign against apartheid Israel. Some of them are already doing quite a bit through the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. They should organize and mobilize much more through the alternative media.

That the media has given so little attention to the contents of the report on apartheid Israel is an indication of the power and influence of the states and vested interests that do not want the truth about Israel to be known to the world.

This is what we have to struggle against in order to ensure that truth triumphs and justice is done to the people of Palestine.

• Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). Malaysia.
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Betraying the Bern!

SUBHEAD: Clinton DNC appointees back platform that includes fracking, TPP and Israel Occupation.

By Lauren McCauly on 25 June 2016 for Common Dreams -
(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/25/betraying-progressives-dnc-platform-backs-fracking-tpp-and-israel-occupation)


Image above: Members of the Democratic party Platform Committee, including (from left to right) American Federation of State, County, and Muncipal Employees executive assistant to the president, Paul Booth, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), former White House Energy and Climate Change Policy director Carol Browner, and Palestinian rights academic James Zogby. From original article.

Despite its claims to want to unify voters ahead of November's election, the Democratic party appears to be pushing for an agenda that critics say ignores basic progressive policies, "staying true" to their Corporate donors above all else.

During a 9-hour meeting in St. Louis, Missouri on Friday, members of the DNC's platform drafting committee voted down a number of measures proposed by Bernie Sanders surrogates that would have come out against the contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), fracking, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. At the same time, proposals to support a carbon tax, Single Payer healthcare, and a $15 minimum wage tied to inflation were also disregarded.

In a statement, Sanders said he was "disappointed and dismayed" that representatives of Hillary Clinton and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz rejected the proposal on trade put forth by Sanders appointee Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), despite the fact that the presumed nominee has herself come out against the 12-nation deal.

"Inexplicable" was how Sanders described the move, adding:

"It is hard for me to understand why Secretary Clinton’s delegates won’t stand behind Secretary Clinton’s positions in the party’s platform."

The panel also rejected amendments suggested by 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, another Sanders pick, that would have imposed a carbon tax, declared a national moratorium on fracking as well as new fossil fuel drilling leases on federal lands and waters.

"This is not a political problem of the sort that we are used to dealing with," McKibben stated during the marathon debate. "Most political problems yield well to the formula that we’ve kept adopting on thing after thing—compromise, we’ll go halfway, we’ll get part of this done. That’s because most political problems are really between different groups of people. They’re between industry and environmentalists. That is not the case here."

"Former U.S. Representative Howard Berman, American Federation of State, County, and Muncipal Employees executive assistant to the president, Paul Booth, former White House Energy and Climate Change Policy director Carol Browner, Ohio State Representative Alicia Reece, former State Department official Wendy Sherman, and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden all raised their hands to prevent a moratorium from becoming a part of the platform," noted Shadowproof's Kevin Gosztola.

According to Gosztola's reporting on the exchange, Dr. Cornel West lambasted the aforementioned panel members, particularly Browner, for "endorsing reform incrementalism" in the face of an urgent planetary crisis.

"When you’re on the edge of the abyss or when you’re on that stove, to use the language of Malcolm X, you don’t use the language of incrementalism. It hurts, and the species is hurting," West said.
Other progressive policies were adopted piecemeal, such as the $15 minimum wage, which the committee accepted but without the amendment put forth by Ellison that would have indexed the wage to inflation.

The panel did vote unanimously to back a proposal to abolish the death penalty and adopted language calling for breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and enacting a modern-day Glass-Steagall Act—measures that Sanders said he was "pleased" about.

According to AP, the final discussion "centered on the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

"The committee defeated an amendment by Sanders supporter James Zogby that would have called for providing Palestinians with 'an end to occupation and illegal settlements' and urged an international effort to rebuild Gaza," AP reports, measures which Zogby said Sanders helped craft.

Instead, AP reports, the adopted draft "advocates working toward a 'two-state solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict' that guarantees Israel's security with recognized borders 'and provides the Palestinians with independence, sovereignty, and dignity.'"

Citing these "moral failures" of the platform draft, West abstained during the final vote to send the document to review by the full Platform Committee next month in Orlando, Florida.

"If we can't say a word about TPP, if we can't talk about Medicare-for-All explicitly, if the greatest prophetic voice dealing with pending ecologically catastrophe can hardly win a vote, and if we can't even acknowledge occupation... it seems there is no way in good conscience I can say, 'Take it to the next stage,'" West declared before the assembly.

"I wasn't raised like that," he said. "I have to abstain. I have no other moral option, it would be a violation of my own limited sense of moral integrity and spiritual conscience," adding, "That's how I roll."
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Skidding towards Syrian War

SUBHEAD: Nobody is challenging Hillary Clinton enough on what her plan for a no-fly zone and military escalation in Syria will mean. And the slope is very, very slippery.

By John Queelly on  on 17 June 2016 for Common Ground -
(\http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/17/leaked-cable-greasing-skids-clintons-next-regime-change-disaster)


Image above: Smoke and flames rose after what fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces said were American-led airstrikes on the mills of Manbij where Islamic State militants are positioned, in Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday. From (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/syria-assad-obama-airstrikes-diplomats-memo.html).

An internal cable signed by more than 51 State Department officials objecting to the Obama administration's policy on Syria is particularly worrisome, according to experts, given Hillary Clinton's hawkish foreign policy positions and her stated plan to escalate President Barack Obama's war in Syria if elected.

The cable itself was leaked to major news outlets, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, both of which carried frontpage stories on its implications Friday morning.

The memo, sent through an official "dissent channel" within the State Department, includes repeated calls for "targeted military strikes" against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and expressions of frustration that Obama has resisted deeper military engagement amid peace talk efforts that have produced little progress over recent months.

It puts forth "moral rationale" for such calls, saying "[t]he status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges."
The WSJ reports that such official dissent is not unusual, but that "the number of diplomats actively opposing a major White House" policy position was.

"It's embarrassing for the administration to have so many rank-and-file members break on Syria," a former State Department official who worked on Middle East policy told the WSJ.

According to the Times, "The names on the memo are almost all midlevel officials — many of them career diplomats — who have been involved in the administration’s Syria policy over the last five years, at home or abroad. They range from a Syria desk officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to a former deputy to the American ambassador in Damascus."

Strikingly, those knowledgeable about the cable suggested it may not be directed at President Obama as much as it is directed at a future President Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee and current general election frontrunner.

As the WSJ reported, "The internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook of the next administration, the official familiar with the document said. President Barack Obama has balked at taking military action against Mr. Assad, while Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised a more hawkish stance toward the Syrian leader."

As numerous respondents on social media noted in their reactions to the story, the implications of the memo are more pronounced—and potentially more dangerous—when considered in the context of a hypothetical Hillary Clinton administration:

Dan Kennedy (@dankennedy_nu)
Unfortunately, Clinton wouldn't have to be persuaded to bomb Syria. She's already there. nytimes.com

Jonathan Cohn (@JonathanCohn)
Biding their time until Clinton takes over?
wsj,com

Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton)Dozens of US State Dept officials are again calling for regime change, which will officially turn Syria into Iraq #2 
nyti.ms/YvNU03 

According to Phyllis Bennis, who directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and spoke with Common Dreams by phone Friday morning, the diplomatic officials should be commended for highlighting the abject failures of the U.S. policies in Syria. However, she warned there is much to be alarmed about, given the prescriptions attached to their dissent and the political context under which they were made public.

"I have no doubt that people working on the Syria desk in the State Department over these years must be incredibly frustrated, there's no doubt about that," Bennis said. She applauded the moral considerations offered by the officials, but said just because they recognize that the "U.S. policy has failed and is failing" it doesn't follow "that the only alternative is military escalation."

"Though the cable also calls for an increased diplomatic effort," Bennis said, "they do so in the context of saying that greater military attacks will somehow bring Assad to the table. And there simply is no evidence of that—quite the contrary. The notion that the military engagement itself is what is preventing potential success for a greater diplomatic engagement is simply not taken seriously."

Citing the Pentagon's opposition to ramped up strikes in Syria, Bennis said the contents of the memo are not without irony. "You have the military brass recognizing largely that military escalation is not going to work [in Syria] and the so-called 'diplomats' are the ones calling for the military."
As one commenter on Twitter similarly noted, "We've come 180° from Vietnam War, when Pentagon always wanted to bomb & State was where diplomatic doves roosted."

In their cable, the officials insist they are not "advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia," but rather pushing for, according to the Times, a credible threat of military action to keep Assad in line.

However, according to Bennis, that logic is extremely problematic given that it totally "denies the reality that a confrontation with Bashar al-Assad right now is a confrontation with Russia."
That may not have been the case six or eight months ago, Bennis explained, but given the level of Russian's current involvement, it is certainly the case now.

"Direct bombing of Assad's own targets is that slippery slope," she said. "And it's very, very slippery."

Given the current volatile relationship between the Washington, D.C. and Moscow—noting heightened tensions amid NATO war games in Poland this week and increased saber-rattling in eastern Europe and the Baltic States—Bennis argues that further antagonizing Russia will do nothing to bring peace to the Syrian people.

"Under conditions when relations with Russia are all warm and fuzzy you might be able to get away with this without it necessarily leading to major Cold War escalation or worse," she said. "But these are not warm and fuzzy times with Russia. There are enormous tensions, including military tensions right on Russia's border."

The kind of bombings these officials are calling for is very dangerous, said Bennis, "because what they're proposing is the kind of escalation that is certain to lead to more political confrontation with Russia and threatens the possibility that that confrontation could become more than just political."

Like other observers, Bennis also expressed specific concerns about the cable's implications in the context of U.S. presidential race in which neither media outlets nor voters have exerted much pressure on candidates to answer difficult questions about U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Syria and the greater Middle East.

"These wars," she said, "which the U.S. is waging around the world, have simply not be a feature of the election campaign from any of that candidates. And it's time that stopped."

"We know that current policy is failing. What would they do differently?" Bennis asked. "Hillary Clinton says she would do what President Obama is doing, but that she'd do more of it and harsher—more bombs, more regime change, and a quicker move to a no-fly zone."

That, too, would further antagonize Russia, she said. "Nobody is challenging Hillary Clinton on what her discussion of a no-fly means vis-a-vis Russia. Does she think that [former] Secretary of Defense Gates was wrong when he said creating a no-fly zone starts with going to war? Or does she think going to war against Russia is just fine?"


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Hillary and the Syrian Bloodbath

SOURCE: Russ Pascatore (russ.pascatore@titanx.com)
SUBHEAD: Clinton is a danger to global peace. She has much to answer for regarding the disaster in Syria.


By Jeffrey Sachs on 14 February 2016 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-clinton-and-the-s_b_9231190.html)


Image above: Hillary Clintonat the microphone. AP Photo by Charlie Neibergall. From (http://theweek.com/articles/598798/hillary-clintons-dirty-attack-bernie-sanders).

In the Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution on a Syrian ceasefire:

But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together.

This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton's role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.
In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan.

It was US intransigence - Clinton's intransigence - that led to the failure of Annan's peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats. Despite Clinton's insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.

As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself. It is mostly a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and misguided for that reason.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria.

This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power for a long time--in fact, for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not going away. There is no way, and no reason, to "defeat" Iran. The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran.

And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.

Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran's influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.

When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime change.

In early 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia leveraged local protests against Assad to try to foment conditions for his ouster. By the spring of 2011, the CIA and the US allies were organizing an armed insurrection against the regime. On August 18, 2011, the US Government made public its position: "Assad must go."

Since then and until the recent fragile UN Security Council accord, the US has refused to agree to any ceasefire unless Assad is first deposed. The US policy--under Clinton and until recently--has been: regime change first, ceasefire after.

After all, it's only Syrians who are dying. Annan's peace efforts were sunk by the United States' unbending insistence that U.S.-led regime change must precede or at least accompany a ceasefire. As the Nation editors put it in August 2012:

The US demand that Assad be removed and sanctions be imposed before negotiations could seriously begin, along with the refusal to include Iran in the process, doomed [Annan's] mission.

Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called "Friends of Syria" to back the CIA-led insurgency.

The U.S. policy was a massive, horrific failure. Assad did not go, and was not defeated. Russia came to his support. Iran came to his support. The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves radical jihadists with their own agendas.

The chaos opened the way for the Islamic State, building on disaffected Iraqi Army leaders (deposed by the US in 2003), on captured U.S. weaponry, and on the considerable backing by Saudi funds. If the truth were fully known, the multiple scandals involved would surely rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment.

The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no bounds. The tactic of CIA-led regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a "normal" instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly noticed by the U.S. public or media. Overthrowing another government is against the U.N. charter and international law. But what are such niceties among friends?

This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated failure.

 Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup d'état resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has been, almost inevitably, a prelude to a bloodbath. How could it be otherwise? Other societies don't like their countries to be manipulated by U.S. covert operations.

Removing a leader, even if done "successfully," doesn't solve any underlying geopolitical problems, much less ecological, social, or economic ones. A coup d'etat invites a civil war, the kind that now wracks Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

 It invites a hostile international response, such as Russia's backing of its Syrian ally in the face of the CIA-led operations. The record of misery caused by covert CIA operations literally fills volumes at this point. What surprise, then, the Clinton acknowledges Henry Kissinger as a mentor and guide?

And where is the establishment media in this debacle? The New York Times finally covered a bit of this story last month in describing the CIA-Saudi connection, in which Saudi funds are used to pay for CIA operations in order to make an end-run around Congress and the American people. The story ran once and was dropped.

Yet the Saudi funding of CIA operations is the same basic tactic used by Ronald Reagan and Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (with Iranian arms sales used to fund CIA-led covert operations in Central America without consent or oversight by the American people).

Clinton herself has never shown the least reservation or scruples in deploying this instrument of U.S. foreign policy.

 Her record of avid support for US-led regime change includes (but is not limited to) the US bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq War in 2003, the Honduran coup in 2009, the killing of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and the CIA-coordinated insurrection against Assad from 2011 until today.
 
It takes great presidential leadership to resist CIA misadventures. Presidents get along by going along with arms contractors, generals, and CIA operatives. They thereby also protect themselves from political attack by hardline right-wingers. They succeed by exulting in U.S. military might, not restraining it.

Many historians believe that JFK was assassinated as a result of his peace overtures to the Soviet Union, overture he made against the objections of hardline rightwing opposition in the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government.

Hillary Clinton has never shown an iota of bravery, or even of comprehension, in facing down the CIA. She has been the CIA's relentless supporter, and has exulted in showing her toughness by supporting every one of its misguided operations.

The failures, of course, are relentlessly hidden from view. Clinton is a danger to global peace. She has much to answer for regarding the disaster in Syria.

.

Syriasly

SUBHEAD: We might we ask ourselves if there anything to the US’s complaint that Russia is not bombing the right ISIS?

By James Kunstler on 5 October 2015 for  Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/syriasly/)


Image above: Cartoon by Gary Varvel of Putin and Obama about Syria int the Indianapolis Star. From (http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/columnists/varvel/2015/10/05/cartoonist-gary-varvel-putin-boots-obamas-syria-strategy/73366578/).

Senior administration officials say the new offensive holds promise and may change the dynamics on the ground.

Whew…. That’s reassuring. Finally, a Middle East policy you can believe in.

It’s apparently based on a joint Kurdish-Arab army that our side (the USA) is pretending to assemble around the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, near the Turkish border. We’re informed also that American military officials have screened the leaders of the Arab groups to ensure that they meet standards set by Congress when it approved $500 million last year for the Defense Department to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels. Thank God we have a functioning HR department over there.

Is it safe to say that the table is now set for World War Three? King Salman of Saudi Arabia is itching to mix it up. Of course, the moment he sends official KSA ground troops in there, he will be eligible to have his oil terminal at Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf blown up. Imagine what that would do to the S & P index.

The Turks, too, are none too happy with their currency imploding and their economy falling apart, and perhaps view a widened war as politically refreshing.

And let’s not forget Iran — having concluded the long, torturous negotiations to make America feel better about their nuke program, Iran is eager to put an end to this barbaric (Sunni-flavored) ISIS nonsense.

Oh, did I leave out Israel. Probably a good idea since so many people just want to hate on it if the subject even comes up. But suffice it to say they are in the mix, too, with the ability to turn their adversaries into ashtrays, should it come to that.

As the old song goes: someone left the cake out in the rain.

You had to at least admire the forthrightness of Mr. Putin. His economy of motion is breathtaking. He goes to the UN and says: “The situation in Syria is intolerable and we’re going to do something about it,” and a few days later they did. Russia commenced bombing groups that the US had labeled “the moderate opposition” to Bashar al-Assad.

The quandary for the US, of course, as Mr. Putin pointed out at the UN, is that we keep on arming and training “moderate oppositions” to this regime and that regime and abracadabra (to use an old Middle Eastern term-of-art) they break bad on us. 

They use the Humvee’s we give them to control the landscape and they blow stuff up with the ordnance we give them, and cut off the heads of Americans on video in the rudest and cruelest manner imaginable.

So, might we ask ourselves: is there anything to the US’s complaint that Russia is not bombing the right ISIS?

I suspect world opinion is not buying our claim that Bashar al-Assad has to go because he bombed his own citizens and used gas on them. I mean, we say that a lot, but is it actually true? US officials say a lot of things a lot that happen not to be true (e.g. the Federal Reserve’s claim that the US economy is humming.) In fact, we’re in this predicament precisely because we have squandered our credibility.

We go into one country after another and destroy the institutions that held these places together, and leave a train of death and chaos behind. Iraq, Libya, Somalia, now Syria.

Maybe we just ought to step aside for a while and see what happens. The Russians could shoot themselves in the foot over there, of course. They did it before in Afghanistan. But that was back in Soviet times, with its clunky leadership. Mr. Putin proved pretty nimble in Georgia.

Whatever else you can say about that little war, the region has been stable for years now. They’re not cutting off people’s heads on TV there. Similarly, you don’t hear much about Chechnyans perpetrating terrorist acts anymore.

Ukraine, for all its faults and troubles, was a stable country until the US decided to pull off regime change there. The deposed president Yanukovych was pressed into choosing between NATO and the Russian-backed Eurasian Custom’s Union and he chose wrong. The US pulled a few levers and abracadabra: civil war.

So, Assad still heads a government in Syria. We don’t like him because he is cozy with Iran, and their proxy war machine, Hezbollah. But will eliminating him make the situation any better?

---

Saudi Arabia may enter war

By Tyler Durden on 5 Octrober 2015 for Zero Hedge - 
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-04/saudis-mull-launch-regional-war-russia-pounds-targets-syria-fourth-day)

While the US has certainly made some epic strategic blunders in Syria that raise serious questions about just how “intelligent” US intelligence actually is, there’s little doubt that if one were to look behind all of the media parroting, the Pentagon and Langley understand all too well what’s going on in the Middle East.

That is, the significance of the Russia-Iran “nexus” in Syria isn’t lost on anyone in the US military and you can bet there have been quite a few high level discussions over the past 72 hours about the best way to counter Moscow and Tehran’s powerplay before it spills over into Iraq and ends up degrading Washington’s influence in Baghdad.

As we put it on Friday, “if Russia ends up bolstering Iran's position in Syria (by expanding Hezbollah's influence and capabilities) and if the Russian air force effectively takes control of Iraq thus allowing Iran to exert a greater influence over the government in Baghdad, the fragile balance of power that has existed in the region will be turned on its head and in the event this plays out, one should not expect Washington, Riyadh, Jerusalem, and London to simply go gentle into that good night.”

Sure enough, some experts now predict Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey will move to counter Russia militarily if Moscow continues to rack up gains for Assad. Here’s The Guardian with more:

Regional powers have quietly, but effectively, channelled funds, weapons and other support to rebel groups making the biggest inroads against the forces from Damascus. In doing so, they are investing heavily in a conflict which they see as part of a wider regional struggle for influence with bitter rival Iran.

In a week when Russia made dozens of bombing raids, those countries have made it clear that they remain at least as committed to removing Assad as Moscow is to preserving him.

“There is no future for Assad in Syria,” Saudi foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir warned, a few hours before the first Russian bombing sorties began. If that was not blunt enough, he spelled out that if the president did not step down as part of a political transition, his country would embrace a military option, “which also would end with the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power”. With at least 39 civilians reported dead in the first bombing raids, the prospect of an escalation between backers of Assad and his opponents is likely to spell more misery for ordinary Syrians.

“The Russian intervention is a massive setback for those states backing the opposition, particularly within the region – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – and is likely to elicit a strong response in terms of a counter-escalation,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

As the Syrian civil war has unfolded, Saudi Arabia has been clear about its position, say analysts. “Since the beginning of the uprising in Syria, the view in Riyadh has been that Bashar al-Assad must go. There is no indication what-soever that Riyadh will change this position,” said Mohammed Alyahya, associate fellow at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh.

“What is clear to Riyadh and its regional allies is that the recent Russian and Iranian escalation will only create a more unstable region and spill more blood,” he said.

Riyadh has focused support on rebels in the south, say analysts, while allies Turkey and Qatar have reportedly backed northern rebels, including conservative Islamist militias such as Ahrar al Sham.

That group, in alliance with the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al Nusra, recently reached a local ceasefire deal with Assad in the north. Its success in taking on government forces is thought to have been one trigger for the Russian bombing campaign and put them among the jets’ first targets.

“Most probably, the coming efforts will focus on boosting the effectiveness of major coalitions, co-ordination and co-operation between the most influential and effective groups in Syria,” said regional analyst Ali Bakeer.

Of course that isn’t going to work.

Say what you will about how successful guerilla/urban warfare can be when it comes to bogging down a conventional army (examples of this include Vietnam, the Soviet-Afghan war, and Somalia during the Black Hawk down debacle), but the disorganization of the Syrian resistance combined with the fact that Iran has its own well-armed militias on the ground that, in combination with Hezbollah, are providing the ground support for Russian airstrikes, means the situation is all but hopeless for the various Riyadh- and Doha-backed groups operating in Syria.

The only way to turn the tide here would be to intervene directly.

But just as Iran is unwilling to risk direct intervention on behalf of the Houthis in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will likely be unwilling to risk direct intervention on behalf of their proxy armies in Syria. The problem for Riyadh and Doha: Syria is a lot more strategically important than Yemen. Here’s The Guardian again:

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already embroiled in an expensive and bloody war in Yemen that may limit both their military and financial resources. They have also so far deferred to western bans on transferring hi-tech weapons – including missiles that could take down aircraft – over fears that they might change hands in the chaos of the war and be used against their makers.

“The uncertain question today is the degree of power combined with efficiency that regional powers will be willing to bring to the table,” said Barnes-Dacey. “Do the Saudis now try to take matters decisively into their hands, including by providing rebels with sophisticated weaponry long denied them?

“The new [Saudi] king [Salman] has shown a willingness to be much more assertive and take measures into the kingdom’s own hands. If the Saudis see the situation slipping out of their hands, and there is a real sense that the Iranians are consolidating their position in Syria, you could see much stronger response.”

And speaking of a “strong response,” Russia continued to hit anti-regime targets for a fourth consecutive day on Sunday, making good on the Defense Ministry’s promise to step up strikes. Here’s Reuters:

Air strikes by suspected Russian jets hit targets around the town of Talbiseh in western Syria on Sunday, residents and a group which monitors the civil war in Syria said, a day after Russia promised to step up its air campaign.

Ambulances rushed wounded people to hospital in Talbiseh, north of the city of Homs, and one resident said at least five bodies had been recovered from the western part of the town.

"So far there are seven or six raids in the town," said Abdul Ghafar al Dweik, a former government employee and volunteer rescue worker.

He said he believed the raid was carried out by Russian jets. "They come suddenly... With the Syrian planes, we would get a warning but now all of a sudden we see it over our heads," he said.

We have said time and again that there’s no question Russian airstrikes will contribute to human suffering in Syria. After all, when you drop bombs on populated areas you’re bound to kill civilians (including women and children) no matter what Moscow says. However, the highlighted passages above shouldn’t come as a surprise. If you want your airstrikes to be effective, you’re not going to warn anyone about them beforehand unless of course you're dropping a nuke in which case you can tell civilians to leave ahead of time because you're reasonably sure the destruction will be so vast as to make the element of surprise a non-factor.

As for the effectiveness of the strikes, The Kremlin is out again claiming that ISIS is on its heels. Via Bloomberg and the Russian Defense Ministry (translated):

• Russian warplanes have made 20 sorties, attacked 10 ISIS targets in Syria in past 24h, Russian Defense Ministry says on website.
• Air force has attacked militant training camps in Raqqa, Idlib provinces; destroyed explosives workshop
• Warplanes destroyed at least 4 ammunition depots, several command posts
• Russian forces have broken “the management and logistics of the terrorist organization” and caused “significant damage to the infrastructure used for preparation of terrorist attacks”

And here's David Cameron repeating the Assad "butcher" accustations (again, via Bloomberg):

Russia is “backing the butcher Assad, which is a terrible mistake for them and for the world,” Cameron told BBC Television’s “Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday. “It’s going to make the region more unstable, which will lead to further radicalization and increased terrorism.”

Cameron continued: “I would say to them change direction, join us in attacking ISIL but recognize that if we want to have a secure region we need an alternative to Assad,” using an alternative designation for Islamic State. Assad “can’t unite the Syrian people.”

Yes, Assad "can't unite the Syrian people", because clearly that's what this is all about, which explains why the West has been doing anything and everything to promote disunity among Syrians for the better part of a decade, and on that note, we close with the following excerpt from a leaked diplomatic cable penned by then-Deputy Head of Mission in Syria William Roebuck in 2006 which shows just how concerned the West is with Syrian "unity":

-- PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE:  There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis.  Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business. Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here, (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders), are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue. 

---

US Syrian propaganda advise

SUBHEAD: State Department prep sheet for mass media outlets on handling stories on Syria.

By Gary Leupp on 2 October 2015 for CounterPunch.org
(http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/a-useful-prep-sheet-on-syria-for-media-propagandists/)


Image above: CNN's Christine Amanpour spews the John Kerry State Department's line on Syrian atrocities. From (http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/columnists/varvel/2015/10/05/cartoonist-gary-varvel-putin-boots-obamas-syria-strategy/73366578/).

State Department talking points on Syria for cable news anchors:

KEEP mentioning the barrel bombs. Do not mention how their use was pioneered by the Israeli Air Force in 1948, and how they were used by the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam in Operation Inferno in 1968. Keep repeating, “barrel bombs, barrel bombs” and stating with a straight face that the Syrian regime is using them “against its own people.” Against its own people. Against its own people. Against its own people.

KEEP mentioning “200,000.” (The UN estimates that 220,000 have been killed in the conflict since 2011.) Declare like you really believe it that this is the number of civilians the Syrian government of Bashar Assad has killed during the war. (Do not be concerned about any need to back the figure up. No one is ever going to call you on it publicly.)

DO NOT mention that around half of the war dead (estimates range from 84,000 to 133,000) are Syrian government forces waging war against an overwhelmingly Islamist opposition, and an additional 73,000 to 114,000 are anti-government combatants.

DO NOT discuss these figures because they would call into question the claim that the Syrian government is targeting and killing tens of thousands of civilians willy-nilly. (If feeling any qualms of conscience, recall Karl Rove’s immortal dictum that “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”)

KEEP mentioning the “Arab Spring” and how in 2011 Syrians peacefully mobilized to challenge the regime were violently repressed. But don’t dwell on the Arab Spring too much. Realize that the State Department was actually shocked by it, particularly by its repercussions in Egypt, where democratization brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power before the U.S.-backed military drowned its opponents in blood.

DO NOT mention how in Bahrain, peaceful demonstrations by the majority Shiites against the repressive Sunni monarchy were crushed by a Saudi-led invasion force tacitly supported by the U.S. And NEVER mention that the bulk of the peaceful protesters in the Syrian Arab Spring want nothing to do with the U.S.-supported armed opposition but are instead receptive to calls from Damascus, Moscow and Tehran for dialogue towards a power-sharing arrangement.

DO NOT explain that the pro-democracy student activists and their allies fear most is the radical Islamists who have burgeoned in large part due to foreign intervention since 2011.

KEEP mentioning the “Free Syrian Army” and the “moderate opposition” to give the impression that they actually exist in the real world.

DO NOT point out that the FSA organization is actually a joke; that its leaders live in Turkey; that its remaining units are headed by CIA officers; that U.S. efforts to train over 5000 FSA troops have been an utter failure; that the tiny group of 54 recently sent to the front were immediately captured by the al-Nusra Front and another 70 dispatched from Turkey immediately turned over their arms to that al-Qaeda-linked group; that their chief of staff has resigned protesting U.S. incompetence; that Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the top American commander in the Middle East, told Congress last month that only “four or five” Syrians had been trained by the U.S. to fight ISIL; and that the U.S.-trained forces have been accused of multiple human rights abuses.

DO NOT mention these things. They are so totally embarrassing that the State Department officials responsible just want to curl up into a ball and roll into a corner. Your mission is to put a bright face on this and continue to pretend there’s something in Syria, supported by the U.S., that falls between the terrorists and the Assad regime.

KEEP expressing consternation if not outrage that Russia is “interfering” in Syria. Scrunch up your face and act like you think it’s puzzling.

DO NOT mention that Syria is much closer to Russia than  to the U.S. and that Russia faces a much greater threat of Islamist terror than the U.S. (in places like Chechnya and Dagestan that your viewers can’t locate on a map).

DOWNPLAY the fact that Russia has had a military relationship with Syria since the 1950s no more nor less legitimate that the U.S. military relationship with Saudi Arabia. (And avoid any objective comparisons of the human rights records of Saudi Arabia and Syria since the former’s is manifestly so much worse than the latter’s!)

DO NOT imply any moral equivalence between Russia’s desire to prevent U.S.-backed regime change in Syria and the U.S.’s desire to inflict another Iraq or Libya-type regime change on that tragically war-torn country.

KEEP treating the Assad regime as an obvious pariah, whose leader has “lost legitimacy.” Say that with an air of authority, like you really believe that U.S. presidents—like Chinese emperors of the past or medieval popes— enjoy so much “legitimacy” that they can confer this on, or remove it from, anybody else.

STUDY CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s facial expressions and body language when he announces—so matter-of-factly, as a self-evident fact, as a done deal—that (come on, everybody!) “Assad hast lost legitimacy.”

(Chris is your model. He’s the State Department’s pleasantly vapid headed scion-of-privilege poster boy, whose occasional dark flashes of indignation—especially those directed towards anyone questioning the official talking points on Russia—embody the attitude Foggy Bottom seeks to encourage in the corporate press.)

DO NOT remind viewers that the Syrian government is internationally recognized, holds a UN seat, retains cordial relations with most nations and is engaged in a life-and-death struggle against people who enslave, crucify, behead, bury alive and burn alive people and want to replace Syria’s modern secular government with a medieval religious one intolerant of any diversity.

KEEP insisting that the Assad regime somehow is responsible for, and even in league with, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and ISIL. Since this makes no logical sense, just have faith in the ignorance of the viewership and its disinclination to distinguish one Arab from another and to assume that they’re all linked in ways that aren’t worth even trying to sort out. Imply that by staying in power (and not complying with Obama’s demand that he step down) Assad has actually invited the presence of radical Islamists to his country, or provoked their emergence.

DO NOT  mention that al-Qaeda offshoots have proliferated globally since the U.S. invaded and wrecked Iraq in 2003, in a war based entirely on lies, and that there was no al-Nusra Front or ISIL until the U.S. set out to effect regime change throughout the Middle East. Do NOT let on that State Department PR strategy is precisely to obfuscate the real causal relationship, and to impute to the beleaguered Assad phenomena actually generated by U.S. aggression in the region.

KEEP treating Russian President Vladimir Putin as America’s Enemy Number One, an ally of a Syrian government that U.S. has said must go, deploying force in Syria to bolster Assad rather than (as Moscow claims) to target ISIL.

DO NOT lend any credence to the Russian assertion that the Syrian Army is the force best placed to defeat ISIL. Do NOT point out the incongruity of the U.S. invading and attacking countries from Pakistan to Libya since 2001 while expressing alarm that Moscow is (after much hesitation) taking action against Islamist terrorists at Damascus’s invitation.

DO NOT harp on the past, revisit history, or attempt to place the contemporary situation in Syria in perspective. Do NOT complicate the storyline by mentioning Damascus’s cooperation in the “War on Terror” and the U.S. use of Syrian torture chambers in its “special renditions” program after 2001. Do NOT mention Syria’s large Christian minority or its historical support for Assad’s Baath party, which was co-founded by a Syrian Christian.

KEEP everything simple, following the examples set by MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough and CNN’s Cuomo, and inculcate in the mind of the viewer that Assad is the main problem and most horrible actor in the Syrian situation. Tell them that Putin, while striving to revive the tsarist empire, is backing Assad as a loyal ally and using his military to prolong his rule that Washington condemns rather than (as he states) taking action against ISIL.

If you do all this, you will demonstrate your loyalty to the State Department, the bipartisan foreign policy consensus, the military-industrial complex, the One Percent, your advertisers, your producers and editors, and the unsung heroes behind the scenes who arrange your teleprompter scripts.

You too could be an Andrea Mitchell, or Christiane Amanpour, posturing as an “expert” while trotting out our talking points. And even after they’re exposed as bullshit, you won’t have to say you’re sorry. People will soon forget anyway.

Those unconscionable barrel bombs! 200,000 civilians killed by the illegitimate regime! U.S. support for the moderate opposition! Russia up to no good, supporting Assad and not really targeting ISI!. Russian moves “worrisome” (whereas U.S. moves are not.)


• Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu

.

Voila - World War Three

SUBHEAD: Things are happening at lightning speed over in the region and beware of how the turmoil spreads from one flashpoint to another.

By James Kunstler on 30 June 2014 for Kunstler.com-
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/voila-world-war-three/)


Image above: Shakir Wahiyib is a feared enforcer for ISIS who does not cover up his face in videos of his killings. From (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10899901/Iraq-crisis-the-bare-faced-ISIS-executioner-who-spreads-terror-with-his-open-killing.html).

[IB Publisher's note: As the Great Collapse and Peak Everything continue their relentless path the US continues to slip into irrelevancy. We thrash and gnash our teeth we are lossing ground in many foreign landscapes including Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South China Sea. We are seriously challenged by China and Russia and want our hegemony back. It's way late for that.]

Whoever really runs things these days for the semi-mummified royal administration down in Saudi Arabia must be leaving skid-marks in his small-clothes thinking about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his ISIS army of psychopathic killers sweeping hither and thither through what is again being quaintly called “the Levant.”

ISIS just concluded an orgy of crucifixions up in Syria over the weekend, the victims being other Islamic militants who were not radical enough, or who had dallied with US support.

Crucifixion sends an interesting and complex message to various parties around this systemically fracturing globe. It’s a step back from the disabling horror of video beheadings, but it still packs a punch. For the Christian West, it re-awakens a certain central cultural narrative that had gone somnolent there for a century or so. ISIS’s message: If you thought the Romans were bad…. Among the human race, you see, the memories linger.

ISIS has successfully shocked the world over the last two weeks by negating eight years, several trillion dollars, and 4,500 battle deaths in the USA’s endeavor to turn Iraq into an obedient oil dispensary. Now they have gone and announced that their conquests of the moment amount to a Caliphate, that is, an Islamic theocracy.>

In that sense, they are at least out-doing America’s Republican Party, which has been trying to do something similar here from sea to shining sea but finds itself thwarted by hostile blue states on both coasts.

More to the point, the press (another quaint term, I suppose) is not paying any attention whatsoever to what goes down with ISIS and the other states besides Iraq and Syria in the region. I aver to Saudi Arabia especially because Americans seem to regard it as an impregnable bastion against the bloodthirsty craziness spreading over the rest of the Muslim world.

Saudi Arabia is, of course, the keystone of OPEC. Saudi Arabia has had the distinction of remaining stable through all the escalating tumult of recent decades, reliably pumping out its roughly 10 million barrels a day like Bossy the cow in America’s oil import barn.

Or seeming to remain stable, I should say, because the Saud family royal administration of mummified rulers and senile princes looks more and more like a Potemkin monarchy every month. 90-year-old King Abdullah has been rumored to be on life support lo these last two years, his successor brothers already dead and gone, and other powerful Arabian clans with leaders who can walk across a room and speak itching to kick this zombie Saud family off the throne.

To make matters worse, the Sauds have also managed to sponsor much of the organized Sunni terrorism in the region (around the world, really) in their role as the chief enemy of the Shia ­— as represented by the politicized clergy of Iran.

Things are happening at lightning speed over in the region and beware of how the turmoil spreads from one flashpoint to another. This would be an opportunity for ISIS to put the Saud family on the spot regarding the just-announced Caliphate — as in the question: who really calls the shots for this new theocratic kingdom? (Answer: maybe not you, doddering, mummified, America suck-up Saudi Arabia).

What’s more, what happens to the other kingdoms and rickety states in that corner of the world? For instance, Lebanon, which has been a sort of political demolition derby for three decades.

The founder of the group al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), pre-cursor to ISIS, was the Lebanese Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi — blown up in a USA air strike some years ago. Lebanon has been under the sway of Hezbollah for a decade and Hezbollah is sponsored by Shi’ite Iran, making it an enemy of ISIS. Might ISIS roll westward over Hezbollah now to capture the pearl of the Mediterranean (or what’s left of it) Beirut? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Then there’s Jordan, and it’s youngish King Abdullah, another notorious USA ass-kisser. Those crucifixion photos coming out of Syria must be making him a little loose in the bowels. And, of course, Syria, where this whole thing started, is a smoldering rump-roast of a state. And finally, that bugbear in the bull’s-eye of the old Levant: Israel.

It is miraculous that Israel has managed so far to stay out of the way of this juggernaut. Of course, among its chief enemies are Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s foster father, Iran, which happen to be the enemy of ISIS and, of course, in that part of the world the enemy of my enemy is my ally — though, I’m sorry, it’s rather impossible to imagine Israel getting all chummy with the psychopaths of ISIS.

One thing is a fact: all other things being equal, Israel has the capability of turning any other state or kingdom in the region into an ashtray, if push came to shove. Voila: World War Three.

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Ukraine attacks as cease fire ends 

SUBHEAD:  Russian  stressed the need to extend the cease-fire and also establish a reliable mechanism for monitoring it.

By Laura Smith park & Alia Eshchenko on 1 July 2014 for CNN -
(http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/01/world/europe/ukraine-crisis/)


Image above: A pro-Russian rebel prepares to fire a rocket propelled grenade during clashes as they attack a border guard base held by Ukrainian troops. From (http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/russia-calls-un-meeting-to-seek-cease-fire-in-ukraine-1.1849601).

Ukrainian forces began military operations in the east of the country Tuesday, marking a definite end to a unilateral cease-fire that had been in place for 10 days.

The speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Oleksandr Turchynov, told lawmakers the government's "anti-terror operation" against pro-Russia separatists had been "renewed."

Ukrainian armed forces have been conducting "attacks on terrorists' bases and defended posts," he said.

The announcement came hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that his country would not renew a cease-fire with the separatists, vowing instead to "attack and liberate our land."

"Termination of cease-fire is our response to terrorists, insurgents, marauders ... and (those who) deprive people of normal peaceful life," Poroshenko said.

In a statement on his website, Poroshenko congratulated Ukraine's armed forces and border guards for re-establishing control over the checkpoint at Dolzhanskyi, in "the first victory since the restoration of the CTO," a reference to the government's Counterterrorist Operation. He said the armed forces and the State Border Service of Ukraine regained control over the checkpoint and combat engineers removed mines from the checkpoint and adjacent roads.

Violence flared Tuesday in Donetsk, one of the cities at the heart of the separatist unrest.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, on his official Facebook page, said that militants had launched an attack on a regional police headquarters building in Donetsk, killing one police officer and badly injuring two more.

Avakov said the police were barricaded inside the building in the city of Donetsk and that the fighting was ongoing.

The Interior Ministry later said three people were seriously injured -- one woman and two special forces policemen. Three others were injured and hospitalized, the ministry said.

Police successfully fought back the attack, the ministry said on its website.

On its website, the Donetsk regional state administration said Ukrainian forces attacked the central part of Kramatorsk from the air and ground. A bus attack in Kramatorsk left four people dead and five others injured. The statement did not say which side in the conflict carried out that attack.

Yuriy Stets, information security head for the National Guard and a parliamentarian, told CNN that the National Guard had regained control of Zakotne, near Slovyansk, and were targeting two other towns.

Cease-fire hopes dashed

The fragile cease-fire expired at midnight Monday, hours after Poroshenko spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. Poroshenko also talked on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The cease-fire -- agreed on last month amid a volatile political crisis -- raised hopes that Ukraine could be moving back from the brink of full-fledged civil war.

As part of a peace plan, Poroshenko urged the rebels to lay down their arms and engage in talks. He also called for the strengthening of Ukraine-Russia border controls, the freeing of hostages and changes to the constitution to decentralize power.

In his statement, Poroshenko said the militants had failed to take up a "unique opportunity" to support the peace plan and had instead violated the unilateral cease-fire more than 100 times.

Putin, addressing Russian diplomats in Moscow, said he regretted the decision to end the cease-fire.

"Unfortunately, President Poroshenko decided to resume a military operation. I and my EU colleagues could not convince him" of the need to settle the crisis peacefully.

Putin: 'Only on equal terms'

Putin said Russia had been obliged to annex Ukraine's Crimea region in March in order to prevent NATO forces entering, which would have created "a completely different alignment of forces."

He told the diplomats that they would "face growing pressure in defending national interests" and that "the events provoked by the West in Ukraine have become a concentrated political expression of deterrence toward Russia."

Putin also referred to Russia's tense relationship with the United States, suggesting that the current crisis was born of the West's attempts to impose its own way of doing things on the rest of the world.

"Our relationship with the United States is not the best at the moment," he said.

"We have always tried to be predictable partners, handle business on an equal basis, but in return our legal interests were partially ignored and are still ignored. Russian and U.S. contacts have a great meaning for the entire world.

"We are ready for constructive dialogue, but again I emphasize only on equal terms."

Russia's ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, said Tuesday that the refusal to extend the cease-fire is a "negative sign," the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.

"This makes it even harder to understand the logic of how the confirmation of the so-called 15-point peace plan correlates with the refusal to prolong truce," Chizhov was quoted as saying by state news agency ITAR-Tass.

'Enemies and invaders'

Poroshenko declared in a late-night televised address that the cease-fire was over.

In Kiev's Independence Square, known as Maidan, activists outside the presidential administration building applauded Poroshenko's stance.

"We need only military actions," a priest named Valentyn said in a Reuters interview. "We were forced by those who entered our country as enemies and invaders."

The crisis has its roots in former President Viktor Yanukovych's decision last year to shun a European Union Association Agreement and turn toward Russia instead. The move unleashed deadly strife that led to Yanukovych's ouster, Ukraine's loss of Crimea, and a pro-Russia separatist rebellion. Russia also massed troops along its western border with Ukraine.

The Association Agreement, which will bring closer trade and political ties between Ukraine and Europe, was finally signed by Poroshenko and European leaders last week.

After Monday's phone call, Poroshenko said his goal was peace but insisted it takes the participation of all parties to maintain stability, noting violations of the cease-fire by pro-Russia separatists.

The Ukrainian government "has been completely fulfilling its commitments and unilaterally complying with the ceasefire regime for 10 days and paid dozens of lives for that," he said.

Peace talks were held last week among Ukrainian government officials, pro-Russia separatists from the restive eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russian officials, and members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

'Bloody truce'

Activist Vadym told Reuters there was no point in continuing the cease-fire.

"There is definitely no need for an extension of the truce," he said. "Because a lot of our boys died during this truce."

Fellow activist Yulia agreed.

"Bloody military actions are better than such bloody truce," she said. "We must put an end to it once and that's all."

A statement from Putin's press office about the call said the Russian President "stressed the need to extend the cease-fire and also establish a reliable mechanism for monitoring" it.

---

Philippine & US troops at South China Sea

SUBHEAD: More than 200 US and Filipino Marines launched a mock amphibious assault on Monday on an enemy beachfront close to a disputed South China Sea outcrop.

By AFP Staff on 30 June 2014 in Channel News - 
(http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/philippine-us-troops-hold/1222692.html)


Image above: Philippine Marines walk past a US Marine amphibious assault vehicle during a mock beach assault as part of Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT14) during RIMPAC14.)

More than 200 US and Filipino Marines launched a mock amphibious assault on Monday on an enemy beachfront close to a disputed South China Sea outcrop.

Amid driving rain and rough waves, five amphibious assault tanks roared off from a US destroyer anchored off Zambales province, about two hours drive northwest of Manila, and landed on the soggy beach peppered with imaginary foes.

US Marines scanned the horizon on scopes mounted on assault rifles as they dramatically emerged from the hatch, while their Filipino counterparts took firing positions on the ground.

Shots later rang out towards enemy positions in an assault that lasted about an hour.

The drill was part of week-long, annual Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training that the United States bilaterally holds with Asian allies, including the Philippines, to boost maritime security.

About 1,000 US and Filipino troops and five warships, including an American missile destroyer, took part in the training, which began last week.

Philippine fleet commander Jaime Bernardino told reporters at the start of the war games last week that they were designed to upgrade the Filipino navy's capability in guarding the country's long coastline.

"These are the gaps that we would like to address (to) make sure we detect (foreign vessels) properly, we intercept them and we neutralise them if necessary," he had said.

Monday's exercise took place on an uninhabited beach near a naval outpost on Zambales on Luzon island, 220 kilometres (137 miles) east of Scarborough Shoal on the South China Sea.

The shoal, a traditionally-rich fishing ground, has been effectively taken over by China following a tense year-long stand-off with the Philippines in 2012.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including waters near its smaller neighbours' shores.
It has been accused of becoming increasingly aggressive in staking its claims to the sea, a vital shipping lane also believed to contain vast oil and mineral deposits. Parts of the sea are also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Filipino military officials had said the manoeuvres were designed to plug "capability gaps" within the Philippine military, considered one of the weakest in the region.

The Philippines has increasingly looked at the United States to boost its military capabilities amid the Chinese threat.

In recent years, the Philippine acquired two US ships to patrol its coasts.

In April, the allies signed a defence pact that would see thousands of US troops stationed in the country in the next decade, including in Subic Bay.

---

Clearing way for wider military role
SUBHEAD: Japan opens door for Self Defense Force use abroad; Abe says risk of war lessens.

By Staff on 1 July 2014 for Asahi Shimbun -
(http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201407010053)


Image above American Marines and Japanese special Self Defense Force members emerge from US Osprey helicopters for joint  battle simulation in California. From original article.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is poised to achieve his long-held goal of reinterpreting Article 9 of the Constitution to allow Japan to exercise its right to engage in collective self-defense under the U.N. Charter.

In February, Abe reconvened an advisory panel of security experts for the first time since his previous, short-lived stint as prime minister nearly six years ago. He also appointed Ambassador to France Ichiro Komatsu, a collective defense advocate, as new head of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, which has long upheld the ban on collective defense according to the government’s current interpretation of Article 9, which renounces the use of force to settle international disputes.

Reinterpreting Article 9, which Abe eventually hopes to amend, would be a big change for a nation that has effectively had a defense-only posture since the war.

Here are some questions and answers on collective self-defense and interpreting the Constitution:

What is the right?
Article 51 of the United Nations Charter authorizes member states to exercise collective self-defense — the use of force to defend an ally under armed attack.

Japan thus has this right under international law, but the government has banned its use because it implies the use of force beyond what is necessary to defend Japan.

Article 9 states: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

“In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”
The present interpretation dates to a report submitted to the Diet in 1972 by the then-Liberal Democratic Party-led government. The report said Japan as a sovereign state is entitled to the right to collective self-defense under international law but cannot exercise it under Article 9.

This stance was repeated in 1981. Then-LDP Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki’s Cabinet said in a written response submitted to the Lower House that Article 9 allows only minimum self-defense and any collective activity would go beyond that scope, thus the exercise of that right is banned by the Constitution, which took effect in 1947. This interpretation stands.

Collective self-defense did not become a major bone of contention until 1960, when the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was revised and questions were raised about whether the Constitution allows Japan to send the Self-Defense Forces overseas to defend an ally.

As demands from the U.S. for Japan to boost its defense cooperation increased in the 1980s and as the SDF started to participate in joint military exercises with the U.S., the debate heated up, leading the government to clarify Japan’s stance on the use of force other than for its own defense.

Why has Abe been eager to change the status quo?
The general argument has been that Japan needs to strengthen its security alliance with the U.S. to counter North Korea’s growing missile and nuclear threats and China’s expanding military might and provocations in the East China Sea. Cybersecurity and terrorism are also new angles Japan needs to consider, experts say.

What did the advisory panel set up in 2007 discuss?
Abe presented four hypothetical scenarios to the panel in 2007, asking them to determine if Japan can act on them.

In response, the panel compiled a report in 2008 recommending Japan be allowed to use force in all the scenarios, which included: shooting down a ballistic missile headed toward the U.S.; defending U.S. military ships on the high seas that are in joint operations with the SDF; using arms in U.N.-led peacekeeping operations to defend allied troops; and providing logistic support for U.N.-led troops fighting overseas.

After Abe stepped down in 2007, the panel in June 2008 submitted its recommendations to his successor, Yasuo Fukuda, who took no further action.

When Abe revived the panel in February, he picked the same 13 experts, headed by ex-Ambassador to the U.S. Shunji Yanai, to resume talks on lifting the self-imposed ban. The panel plans to make its recommendations by year’s end.

Will the same four scenarios be revisited?
The panel is reportedly expected to discuss more than the four hypothetical cases this time.
It will also consider extending the parameters of collective self-defense to include other countries than the U.S. They also plan to weigh whether to aid countries that defend sea lanes to protect oil shipments from the Middle East, reports said.

International University President Shinichi Kitaoka, the panel’s acting chairman, said in a recent interview with Kyodo News that its new report will state Japan can exercise the right of collective self-defense when “countries with close ties” are under attack.

Although Kitaoka said the panel won’t specify which countries Japan may seek to defend, Australia, South Korea and Southeast Asian nations were floated at its February meeting.

Last week, Kitaoka said his team is also looking at allowing Japan to engage in U.N.-led collective security — as allowed by the U.N. Charter. This is an arrangement whereby nations agree to take joint action against a state that attacks any one of them.

Can the government engage in collective self-defense merely by reinterpreting Article 9?
No. It will also need to change any laws related to the execution of the right, including the Self-Defense Forces Law, to stipulate the procedures and other details needed for the SDF to do so.

What opposition would a reinterpretation face?
The Japanese Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party and even the LDP’s junior partner, New Komeito, are opposed to reinterpreting Article 9 and collective self-defense in any way.

But lifting the ban would also draw heavy criticism from China and what is now South Korea, which suffered heavily from Japanese conquest during the war.


See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: The Pacific Pivot 6/28/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai's PMRF is bang out of sight 6/26/14
Ea O Ka Aina: RIMPAC IMPACT 6/8/14
Ea O Ka Aina: RIMPAC Then and Now 5/16/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Earthday TPP Fukushima RIMPAC 4/22/14
Ea O Ka Aina: The Asian Pivot - An ugly dance 12/5/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Help save Mariana Islands 11/13/13
Ea O Ka Aina: End RimPac destruction of Pacific 11/1/13 
Ea O Ka Aina: Moana Nui Confereence 11/1/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Navy to conquer Marianas again  9/3/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Pagan Island beauty threatened 10/26/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Sleepwalking through destruction 7/16/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Okinawa breathes easier 4/27/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Navy Next-War-Itis 4/13/12
Ea O Ka Aina: America bullies Koreans 4/13/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Despoiling Jeju island coast begins 3/7/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Jeju Islanders protests Navy Base 2/29/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaii - Start of American Empire 2/26/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Korean Island of Peace 2/26/12   
Ea O Ka Aina: Military schmoozes Guam & Hawaii 3/17/11
Ea O Ka Aina: In Search of Real Security - One 8/31/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Peace for the Blue Continent 8/10/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Shift in Pacific Power Balance 8/5/10
Ea O Ka Aina: RimPac to expand activities 6/29/10
Ea O Ka Aina: RIMPAC War Games here in July 6/20/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Pacific Resistance to U.S. Military 5/24/10

Ea O Ka Aina: De-colonizing the Pacific 5/21/10

Ea O Ka Aina: RIMPAC to Return in 2010 5/2/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Living at the Tip of the Spear 4/5/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Living at the Tip of the Spear 4/15/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Guam Land Grab 11/30/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Guam as a modern Bikini Atoll 12/25/09
Ea O Ka Aina: GUAM - Another Strategic Island 11/8/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Diego Garcia - Another stolen island 11/6/09
Ea O Ka Aina: DARPA & Super-Cavitation on Kauai 3/24/09
Island Breath: RIMPAC 2008 - Navy fired up in Hawaii 7/2/08
Island Breath: RIMPAC 2008 uses destructive sonar 4/22/08
Island Breath: Navy Plans for the Pacific 9/3/07
Island Breath: Judge restricts sonar off California 08/07/07
Island Breath: RIMPAC 2006 sonar compromise 7/9/06
Island Breath: RIMPAC 2006 - Impact on Ocean 5/23/06
Island Breath: RIMPAC 2004 - Whale strandings on Kauai 9/2/04
Island Breath: PMRF Land Grab 3/15/04 .