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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The Empire's new Reality

SUBHEAD: From Skripal to Syria – The empire’s “New Realities” are reaching the end of the road.

By Rob Slane on 12 April 2018 for The Blogmire -
(http://www.theblogmire.com/from-skripal-to-syria-the-empires-new-realities-are-reaching-the-end-of-the-road/)


Image above: A detail of 19th century cartoon by Victor Gillam of America's Uncle Sam with the caption "A Lesson For Anti-Expansionists showing how Uncle Sam has been an expansionist first, last and all the time." From (https://fabiusmaximus.com/2018/01/12/an-anthropologist-explains-the-american-empire/).

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Thus spake Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Government of George W. Bush.

I do wish people would study Rove’s words more carefully. Judiciously study them.

If they did, then whenever the next alleged atrocity occurs and the United States, together with its coalition of supine vassals, starts yelling and hollering 10 minutes later for action to be taken, on the basis of a test-tube full of washing powder, or pictures of injured women and children in a war zone, and the entire media of dutiful stenographers shrieks that “something must be done”, then perhaps we might pause and wonder if we are being played.

Instead of falling into an emotional spasm, maybe we would instead reject the deafening drumbeats of war – wars that have a habit of killing immeasurably more women and children than the alleged incidents on which they are based, by the way — and ask ourselves whether “Rove’s Law” has come into play.


As an aside, the West’s interventionist wars remind me of that wonderfully cynical exchange in the film, The Man With Two Brains:

Dr. Hfuhruhurr: “The only time we doctors should accept death is when it’s caused by our own incompetence!”
Dr. Necessiter: “Nonsense! If the murder of twelve innocent people can help save one human life, it will have been worth it!”

Here’s Dr. Necessiter selling us into war in Iraq: “Nonsense! If it costs us the deaths of 500,000 people to topple the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, it will have been worth it!”

Here he is selling us bombs on Libya: “Nonsense! If turning Libya into a failed state, a terrorist’s playground, and causing a mass exodus of refugees is the price for getting rid of Gaddafi, it will have been worth it.”

And here’s Dr Necessiter again, this time trying to sell us into bombing Syria: “Nonsense! Risking a catastrophic clash with a country armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is worth it in order to respond to the alleged deaths of less than a hundred people in a totally unproven chemical weapons attack.”

Behold, the “logic” of the interventionists!

But back to Rove. What was he saying? Three things:

Number one: We – that is the Globalist Deep State, centred in Washington DC – are sovereign over the entire globe and we will do as we please.

Number two: That we don’t follow reality, we create it.

Number three: That we are prepared to do things that will make your jaws drop, your hair stand on end, and your eyes boggle as you wonder what is going on, and while your jaws, your hair and your eyes are busy doing their thing, we will have moved onto create our next reality.

In other words – we are God – and not a kind and merciful God, but a God who lords it over all peoples’, nations and tongues, who tells lies, and then tells more lies to cover up those lies and – when you poor saps are trying to work out what it is we’re really up to.

Before you know what has happened, those lies and those lies to cover up lies will have become the new reality. We’ll have moved on and the world with it, and the narrative we have created will have been written in the history books, which we ourselves shall write.

The cases of Sergei Skripal and the alleged chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta seem somehow to represent the zenith of this ideology.

I do not know who poisoned Sergei Skripal or for what reason.

It could be that the Russian Government was behind it, although this would mean accepting the highly improbable thesis that they decided to target a has-been MI6 spy, who they released from prison eight years ago, using perhaps the dumbest assassination method in the history of the world.

It was an ineffective, slow-operating, “military-grade” nerve agent, which could be traced back to them, and which they smeared on a door handle in rainy Salisbury –, a week or so before a Presidential election, and less than 100 days before they are due to host the World Cup.

In other words, the official narrative does not rest on accepting that the Russian state is the epitome of pure evil; it rests on accepting that it is the epitome of insanity and bumbling incompetence.

I do not know what happened in Eastern Ghouta. It could be that the Syrian Government was behind what is alleged to have happened (if it indeed did happen), but this would mean having to accept the thesis that just 24 hours away from completely liberating the last pocket of resistance in Damascus, after the US, the UK and France had all warned that they would attack if chemical weapons were used, just a week or so after the US President, Donald J. Swamp, announced that the US would be pulling out of Syria (which they occupied illegally, by the way), they made the decision to use a weapon that gave them no military advantage whatsoever, but which was practically guaranteed to be used as a pretext for airstrikes against them.

In other words, like the Skripal case, the theory does not stand on accepting that the Syrian state is the epitome of pure evil; it stands on accepting that it is the epitome of self-defeating stupidity on an epic scale.

But you see what I’ve done? I’ve fallen right into Karl Rove’s trap, haven’t I?

I’m asking questions about whether the narratives in these cases stack up. In the Skripal case, I’ve been judiciously studying reality by asking lots of questions that ought to have occurred to anyone with a keen interest in arriving at the truth (here and here, for instance). I could do the same with the Syrian case, if I had the time.

Yet while I’m doing so, the narrative is moving on. I’m falling into exactly the trap that Karl and his disciples have laid.

They want two sorts of people: those who just blindly accept that it was the Russians that did it, or that it was Assad that did it; and those who spend their time asking questions about the official explanations. The first group call the second group conspiracy theorists and nutters. The second group call the first group dumb sheeple.

And the Globalist Deep State laughs and laughs and laughs as the two groups battle it out to make sense of what has happened, leaving it free to march on to create the next reality. Truly I tell you, these Bolsheviks have learned their Hegelian Dialectics well.

Now, this is not to rule out that in the Salisbury and Eastern Ghouta cases the official narratives might – just might – be the correct ones. That both Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad might be the Laurel and Hardy of Geopolitics.

Yet it has to be said that whatever else you think about them, neither of them tends to come across in interviews as being what you might call dumb or inept.

Nor do either of them give the impression that they have sudden insane impulses to do things which have absolutely no benefit to them, but which hand their enemies massive PR victories.

But this is besides the point.

The point is not whether these particular incidents are what the official narrative says they are, or whether they are provocations.

It suffices for the “new reality creators” to create their realities on occasion, or perhaps to distort occurrences which they didn’t create, and before you know it you have your two groups battling over events which may be real or fake.

On one hand are the conspiracists – who are studying every event to try to work out the details and the inconsistencies – and the other are the sheeple – who believe that their Government is full of good hearted, white hatted chaps and lasses who would never, ever do anything bad – unlike those orcs over in Mordor.

Rove and Co have basically created a “reality” where truth is no longer discernible, where assertions of guilt are taken as fact, and where holes in these kinds of incidents only serve to divide the people further, so that the Globalist Deep State can move on to create their next reality.

But let’s not get gloomy. The good news is that although they clearly think they can get away with it indefinitely, they can’t. No kingdom or empire built on a mountain of lies can stand indefinitely. They all fall.

And can’t you start to sense the signs that the empire’s “new realities” – or what are known as lies in laymen’s terms – are reaching boiling point?

Don’t you sense that they have just got too confident and in doing so have begun to get careless? They are making mistakes. And as they do, they are having to resort to bigger and bigger lies to cover up the ones they’ve already told.

Sadly for Rove and Co, but happily for the rest of us, the world doesn’t actually work the way they think it does. Reality — I mean real reality, rather than the phony reality they have created — will catch up sooner or later. I sense that it’s on its way even now.

And when it finally comes, the whole rotten edifice that these “history’s actors” have tried to create will crash and burn. Bringing much rejoicing.

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The Dog Wags Trump

SUBHEAD: The "missile attack" on Syria hardly diverted attention from the impeachment lava flow headed Trump's way.

By Juan Wilson on 14 April 2018 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-dog-wags-trump.html)


Image above: US Tomahawk fly missiles over Damascus, Syria. Photo by Hassan Amma. From (http://www.srzd.com/geral/putin-acusa-eua-ataque-agrava-crise-humanitaria-na-siria/).

The Upside
Bombing hardly worked to divert attention from "Trump's bad press problem a year ago when US navel forces in the Mediterranean Sea sent 59 Tomahawk missiles to a pre-warned Shayrat Air Base in Syria on 7 April 2017. That "wagging of the dog" ended with Syrian combat flights resumed from the airbase the same day on the relatively undamaged runways.

Now we have another show of force against the Syrian government in reprisal for another supposed "weapons of mass destruction" incident with poison gas. This time 71 of 105 Tomahawk missiles were intercepted by high tech Russian installed missile defense systems.

This kill count was likely enhanced by US military information provided to the Russians to avoid tripping into WWIII.

The effort to drag our allies into this mess did more harm than good, in that England and France (both nuclear powers) came along for the show but Germany and Italy wanted no part i it. This effectively splits the NATO alliance in two.

The Downside
It appears the Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's "personal attorney" and "Fixer"- who did not practice law or have other clients to speak of - will likely be the fall guy for a myriad of felonies related Trump's "business activity" otherwise known as  "organized crime". As in the "Godfather", Cohen has been the Consigliere (counselor Tom Hagen) to the Don ( mob boss Michael Corleone).

Unfortunately for Trump, the warrant the FBI obtained to search the home, office, and hotel room occupied by Cohen will likely produce a treasure trove of records pointing to criminal activity of the Trump organization.

If you look at the leadership personnel of the FBI, Special Prosecutor's Office, and Court of the Southern District of New York, you will realize that it is the Republicans that are legally going after Trump in a way that will likely lead to impeachment in the Republican controlled US Congress and Senate.

Trump is Toast
I think the writing is on the wall. The conservative Deep State has been embarrassed by Trump's crudeness, ignorance, narcissism, selfishness and impropriety. The stench of corruption is everywhere and it's too ugly for them to watch. George Bush was an embarrassment as well, but at least he took orders from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove. Trump has the misconception that he's "The Boss". Sorry chump! YOU'RE FIRED! 


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Warmonger's Remorse

SUBHEAD: Defense head “Mad Dog” Mattis put the kibosh on the latest neocon temper tantrum.

By James Kunstler on 13 April 2018 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/warmongers-remorse/)


Image above: "Mad Gog" General Jim Mattis looks at Donald Trump with some trepidation as "Golden Gollum" speaks in a Nationa Security Council Meeting. From (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-likes-mattis-will-it-last/2017/12/21/341f7654-e694-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html).

I don’t know about you, but for a couple of days there I expected to wake up to the sight of mushroom clouds billowing across the horizon, all our exceptional hopes, wishes, troubles, and cares as a nation gone up in a vapor of smoking plastic.

I think it was the Defense Secretary, nickname “Mad Dog,” who put the kibosh on the latest neocon temper tantrum against Bashar “The Animal” al-Assad. General Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee that the US was, er, “still looking for evidence” of an alleged poison gas attack against civilians in Douma, Syria.

That phrase “still looking for evidence” sounds like an elliptical way of saying we have no idea what, if anything, might have actually happened over there, just possibly even nothing at all.

The Russians were busy looking for evidence on the ground in and around Douma, and they claimed to have found nothing — no traces of poison gas, no corpses, no gassing victims in the local hospital — and put out a call for international inspectors to come have a look.

No reply on that from our side. Which does raise the question: are we even interested in the truth?

Maybe not. Also apparently not in the strange case of the poisoned Skripals that preceded the incident (or not) at Douma, and which touched off an expulsion orgy of Russian Diplomats among the US and our allies. Sergei Skripal, a Russian/British double-agent who had been exchanged to Britain in a spy-swap, fell ill along with his daughter, Yulia, on a park bench after lunching in quaint old Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK.

The supposed weapon in that case, Novichok, an advanced neurotoxin that kills instantly, was found on the doorknob of the Skripal house, and yet the couple made it downtown, enjoyed a leisurely meal, and took a post-luncheon stroll.

Casual observers did note that Salisbury is only a ten-minute drive from the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, where military poisons are stored and evaluated, and after two weeks of idle chatter, scientists there released a galling report that they could not determine the origin of whatever knocked out the Skripals.

In any case, it didn’t kill them. Yulia Skripal was released from the hospital this week and is, apparently, some sort of hostage of the British government.

You’d suppose that in a free country, Yulia might be interested in talking to the press, and certainly vice-versa, but she is incommunicado and was whisked away under guard to some mysterious hideaway. Sergei, we’re told, is coming out of it, too, in his hospital room, and seems to have nothing to say, either.

There was chatter in the US media that the Skripals might be sent here under some sort of US witness protection program. It looks like the US and Britain are running out of rugs to sweep stuff under.

Clownish as it was, the Skripal affair ramped up already poor relations between Russia and the West (mainly the US) to code red levels, as perhaps intended by the dream factory known as the Intelligence Community. At least that’s how it played in Deep State officialdom. The distracted public has stopped paying attention to it.

Note: neither The New York Times, the WashPo, nor CNN, have issued any righteous calls for answers in the malodorous Skripal matter. They’re all probably embarrassed that they latched on to the story and played it like “Pearl Harbor.”

But no one is accountable and the net result is a Russian diplomatic presence reduced to a skeleton crew in Washington, which can’t be a great thing for mutual understanding.

So, now, the Russians and Syrians have had plenty of time to scramble their airplanes and move personnel around the landscape to await another US smackdown, and the Russians have promised to shoot down our missiles with some spooky new technology, and it looks like our side is blinking.

Do we have any idea whether the Russians actually can shoot down our offensive missiles? Maybe we don’t want to know. We surely don’t want the world to know. It would be — how you say? — bad optics.

Of course, this latest uproar over the Douma poison gas incident coincided with the first day at work of National Security Advisor John Bolton, a reputed devotee of military monkey business.

But it’s possible that even Mr. Bolton is embarrassed by these crude shenanigans, which just preceded his return to influence on the political scene.

If he has any influence at all, perhaps he might use it to suggest that the President of the United States just shut the fuck up for a while.

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Trumped up war with Syria

SUBHEAD: In order to to save his presidency the Donald will have to connive a "Fatal "Distraction".

By  Juan Wilson on 11 April 2018 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2018/04/trumped-up-war-with-syria.html)


Image above:Trump, Pence, Bolten meet with US military leaders on Syrian crisis.From (https://www.politico.eu/article/syria-crisis-collides-with-donald-trump-chaos-russia-vladimir-putin/).

Anybody here remember how the United States was conned into a full out effort to join into the Vietnam War?

Under President Kennedy our "contribution" to keeping South Vietnam from joining the north in what might be a Communist union had been through "advisors" - a few tens-of-thousands - who provided expertise, communications, weapons and aerial and naval backup.

Even so the corrupt South Vietnamese government was unable to beat back the revolution.

In 1965 US President Lyndon Johnson's CIA came up with a plan fort us to join into the ware effort openly.

Our Navy, in August of 1964 arranged for the US Maddox to be in the Gulf of Tonkin off the North Vietnam port of Hai Phong and was met by North Vietnam naval patrol boats.

The ensuing engagements in international waters of North Vietnam were our excuse to enter into the longest (and most useless) American war.

Until we got into the endless Middle East War that has destroyed several nation states that include Afghanistran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and now Syria.

Donald Trump's crimes of corruption are about to destroy his presidency. There are a limited number of unlikely scenarios that might save it... economic collapse or more war.

We now have a convenient "war crime" in Syria to act on.

It's not exactly clear if Syria's President Bashar al-Assad decided on a chemical ware attack on innocent civilians as part of a desire for suicide, or one of his bombs hit a military target where chemical weapons were stored or the event was caused by another party in order to instigate a war that America would see as its destiny.

In any case it is convenient for Trump to deflect interest in the investigation that is about to show his bottomless corruption with organized criminal oligarchs working out of the remnants of the former Soviet Union. So war it is!

See articles below for a hint where Justice Department is going. Why the Cohen warrant search reaction while Trump sits with military brass on subject of Syria War.

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Trump knows he's the real target
(https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-knows-hes-real-target-fbi-raid-michael-cohen)

SUBHEAD: "It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for."

President Trump made a statement on Monday that many people in American never thought they'd hear from him. He said, "It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for."

Unfortunately, the president wasn't talking about the interference in our democratic election process in 2016.

He was referring to the FBI warrants served on his attorney Michael Cohen's office and two residences that morning, in which agents seized documents reportedly pertaining to suspected wire fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. Trump believes that such an investigation is an attack on America because he believes it is an attack on him.

To paraphrase a quip from the great Molly Ivins, it sounded better in the original French: L'état, c'est moi.

Trump was very worked up, so worked up that he spent the first 15 minutes or so of a televised photo-op with his national security team and the Joint Chiefs railing against Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Department of Justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Hillary Clinton and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, among others.

It wasn't the first time we've seen this president deliver a petulant and angry denunciation of the Russia probe. But to do it as he sat around a table with the military brass, for a meeting called to decide how to respond to a chemical warfare attack, was stunningly narcissistic even for him.

The cameras didn't show much of his team, but one can imagine how they felt being led by such a man.

It's not hard to imagine how most people in the country felt either. No one will ever describe Donald Trump as a leader who shows grace under pressure.

These warrants were issued by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (a Trump appointee, by the way), based on a referral from the special counsel's office. Nobody is quite sure exactly why it happened that way.

Some have speculated that this is about the Stormy Daniels case, and therefore far afield from Mueller's mandate, while others have suggested that Mueller passed this to a federal prosecutor to avoid the accusation that he crossed Trump's (nonexistent) red line.

At this point, all we can say for sure is that all warrants targeting an attorney go through an extraordinary process all the way up the line in the Department of Justice and are subject to extreme scrutiny by the magistrates who must approve them.

These are all lawyers, and by training and instinct they are protective of attorney-client privilege. The U.S. Attorneys’ Manual identifies six additional safeguards to ensure that the Department of Justice doesn't violate it in cases where an attorney is the subject of an investigation.

This particular lawyer is also the president's personal attorney, so it's fair to assume investigators were careful to demonstrate probable cause that Cohen had committed a crime in the course of representing his client and that he would be likely to destroy the evidence if they simply subpoenaed his records.

That may be the most extraordinary aspect of this entire event, although if you look at the way Cohen has talked and behaved over the years, it's not hard to see why someone might assume he could do that.

Nonetheless, any prosecutor would have to be aware of the political implications, and think long and hard about whether or not he or she had the goods to pursue such a case.
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Nobody should have been all that surprised by this, least of all Michael Cohen himself. He's at the center of the Stormy Daniels case, and the president unhelpfully exacerbated his problems last Friday on Air Force One when he referred questions about the alleged $130,000 payment to "my attorney Michael Cohen."

There is some speculation that he and Cohen believed they'd be protected by attorney-client privilege; if so, they were wrong.

But while that probably didn't help, it's almost certainly the reason Cohen's office and homes were raided on Monday. There's plenty of reporting to indicate that Cohen has been in the crosshairs for quite some time.

The Washington Post reported back in March that Mueller's office was interrogating witnesses about Cohen's negotiations during the presidential campaign to build a Moscow Trump Tower.

Reportedly, investigators were also exploring the odd story about the Russia-friendly "peace proposal" for Ukraine that Cohen received about a week after Trump was inaugurated.

Last week McClatchy reported that Mueller's team had shown up unannounced at the home of an unnamed Trump Organization business associate, "armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony."

This person had reportedly worked with the company on overseas deals for years, and investigators were specifically interested in interactions with Cohen.

According to The New York Times on Monday, Mueller is also interested in a $150,000 payment paid to the Trump Foundation by a Ukrainian oligarch for a brief speech Trump gave during the presidential campaign. (You will recall that Trump has a way of pocketing money collected for his foundation.)

That deal was allegedly solicited by Michael Cohen. This apparently doesn't pertain to the warrants issued on Monday but rather the subpoenas issued to the Trump Organization last month.

Whether various federal officials are tracking Cohen's activities overseas, like the Moscow tower or the Ukraine speech, or the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, it looks as though all roads lead to President Trump's personal lawyer.

Considering that it's well understood whom Michael Cohen is working for every minute of every day, that means the road dead-ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

---

Trump reacts to Cohen raid
By Michael D. Shear on 9 April 2018 for the New York Times

(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/us/politics/trump-cohen-mueller-full-transcript.html)

President Trump spoke to reporters on Monday at the beginning of a meeting with military leaders and national security officials. He reacted to the news that the F.B.I. raided the office of his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, and discussed his frustrations with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and the special counsel’s investigation being led by Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. Trump also touched on the potential for military action in Syria in the wake of a suspected chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government that killed dozens of people over the weekend.

The following is a transcript of those remarks, as prepared by The New York Times, with analysis from The Times’s Michael D. Shear, a White House correspondent.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So, I just heard that they broke in to the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man, and it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given, I believe, over a million pages worth of documents to the special counsel.

Analysis
If there was one sign that Mr. Trump was furious about the raids of Mr. Cohen’s office and hotel, it was this phrase: They “broke in to the office.” Arms crossed, the president was clearly angry about how his friend and loyal attorney was treated — and did little to hide it.

TRUMP: They continue to just go forward and here we are talking about Syria, we’re talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever, and I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now, and actually much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination it started.

And it’s a disgrace, it’s frankly a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.

So when I saw this and when I heard it — I heard it like you did — I said that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness. So this has been going on, I saw one of the reporters who is not necessarily a fan of mine, not necessarily very good to me, he said in effect that this is ridiculous, this is now getting ridiculous. They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia, the reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion.

Analysis
In a presidency not known for consistency, Mr. Trump has never wavered from his insistence that “they found no collusion.” In fact, what congressional investigators have always said is they had not yet determined whether the president or his aides had colluded with the Russians. Mr. Mueller has not said publicly one way or the other.

TRUMP: This is the most biased group of people, these people have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen. Democrats, all — or just about all — either Democrats, or a couple of Republicans that worked for President Obama — they’re not looking at the other side.

They’re not looking at the Hillary Clinton, horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed. They’re not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side.

Analysis
Mr. Trump immediately focused on Mr. Mueller and his team, but in fact, Monday’s raids were authorized by a United States attorney who was appointed by Mr. Sessions and is a former law partner of Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Trump supporter. They were not authorized by Mr. Mueller.

TRUMP: They only keep looking at us. So they find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, “Well, let’s keep going,” and they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning and I think it’s a disgrace.

So we’ll be talking about it more, but this is the most conflicted group of people I’ve ever seen. The attorney general made a terrible mistake when he did this, and when he recused himself, or he should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have used a — put a different attorney general in. So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country, but you’ll figure that out.

Analysis
Mr. Trump’s statement that “we’ll be talking about it more” — a reference to bias among the special counsel’s team — is an ominous one, suggesting that he might do something about it. What that would be is unclear, though adversaries and allies alike have at times worried that he might fire Mr. Mueller.

TRUMP: All I can say is after looking for a long period of time, not even before the special counsel because it really started just about from the time I won the nomination, and you look at what took place and what happened and it’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace. I’ve been president now for what seems like a lengthy period of time. We’ve done a fantastic job. We’ve beaten ISIS. We have just about 100 percent of the caliphate or the land. Our economy is incredible.

The stock market dropped a lot today as soon as they heard the noise of, you know, this nonsense that’s going on. It dropped a lot. It was up — way up — and then it dropped quite a bit at the end, a lot. But that we have to go through that, we’ve had that hanging over us now from the very, very beginning and yet the other side, they don’t even bother looking. And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious:

Lies under oath, all over the place, emails that are knocked out, that are acid-washed and deleted, nobody’s ever seen — 33,000 emails are deleted after getting a subpoena for Congress, and nobody bothers looking at that.

Analysis
After repeatedly hailing stock market increases during his first year in office, Mr. Trump has all but ignored the market’s steep declines in the wake of his protectionist trade policies. So it was ironic that the president would blame what he called “this nonsense” for a drop in the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average actually ended the day up slightly after at one point rising nearly 400 points.

TRUMP: And many, many other things, so I just think it’s a disgrace that a thing like this can happen.

With all of that being said, we are here to discuss Syria tonight. We’re the greatest fighting force anywhere in the world. These gentlemen and ladies are incredible people. Incredible talent, and we’re making a decision as to what we do with respect to the horrible attack that was made near Damascus, and it will be met, and it will be met forcefully. And when, I will not say because I don’t like talking about timing, but we are developing the greatest force that we’ve ever had.

We had $700 billion just approved, which was the reason I went along with that budget, because we had to fix our military. General Mattis would tell you that above anybody, we had to fix our military and right now we’re in a big process of doing that, $700 million and then $716 billion next year. So we’re going to make a decision tonight or very shortly thereafter and you’ll be hearing the decision.

But we can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed, and you can see that and it’s horrible. We can’t let that happen. In our world, we can’t let that happen. Especially when we’re able to, because of the power of the United States, because of the power of our country, we’re able to stop it.

I want to thank Ambassador John Bolton for joining us. I think he’s going to be a fantastic representative of our team. He’s highly respected by everybody in this room and, John, I want to thank you very much, this is going to be a lot of work.

Interesting day, he picked today as his first day. So, generals, I think he picked the right day. But certainly you’re going to find it very exciting but you are going to do a fantastic job and I appreciate you joining us.

Analysis
The president shifted briefly to Syria, taking note of John R. Bolton’s first day as national security adviser. He hinted that the United States would respond militarily to the chemical attacks in that country, saying that “we can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed” happen. He did not indicate whether Mr. Bolton — a noted national security hawk — had argued for a strike.

JOHN R. BOLTON: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

TRUMP: Thank you all very much.

REPORTER: Any concerns about what the F.B.I. might find, Mr. President?

TRUMP: No.

REPORTER: Do you have any concerns?

TRUMP: No, I’m not.

REPORTER: Did you have an affair with Stormy Daniels?

TRUMP: Why don’t I just fire Mueller?

REPORTER: Yeah, just fire the guy.

TRUMP: Well, I think it’s a disgrace, what’s going on. We’ll see what happens. But I think it’s really a sad situation when you look at what happened. And many people have said you should fire him. Again, they found nothing and in finding nothing, that’s a big statement.

Analysis
Among Mr. Trump’s verbal tics is the phrase “we’ll see what happens.” He says it all the time. So when he was asked why he doesn’t just fire Mr. Mueller, it popped out. It is not clear whether that means he is really considering doing that, or if the response was just another instance of this habit.

TRUMP: If you know the person who’s in charge of the investigation, you know all about that deputy Rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein, he wrote the letter very critical of Comey. One of the things I said, I fired Comey, well, I turned out to do the right thing because you look at all of the things that he’s done and the lies and you look at what’s gone on at the F.B.I. with the insurance policy and all of the things that happened, turned out I did the right thing. But he signed, as you know, he also signed the FISA warrant.

So Rod Rosenstein, who’s in charge of this, signed a FISA warrant, and he also, he also signed a letter that was essentially saying to fire James Comey, and he was right about that. He was absolutely right. So we’ll see what happens. I think it’s disgraceful and so does a lot of other people. This is a pure and simple witch hunt. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Analysis
The president appointed Rod J. Rosenstein to be the deputy attorney general. But at Monday’s meeting, he criticized him for signing a FISA warrant, an apparent reference to the fact that Mr. Rosenstein had authorized agents to seek a warrant to wiretap Trump associates in the Russia probe. Mr. Trump and Republican allies have said the warrants were sought under false pretenses.

[Cross talk]

REPORTER: Can we get more clarity on who was responsible … [Inaudible]

TRUMP: We are getting clarity on that. Who is responsible for the weapons attack. We are getting very good clarity, actually. We have some pretty good answers. REPORTER: What are your options?

[Cross talk]

TRUMP: We have a lot of options militarily and we’ll be letting you know pretty soon.

AIDE: Thank you, everyone. Thank you all.

TRUMP: Probably after the fact.

AIDE: Thank you.


.

State of Failure

SUBHEAD: How is it in Bashar al-Assad’s interests to provoke a fresh international uproar against him and his regime?

By James Kunstler on 9 April 2018 for Kunstler.com  -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/state-of-failure/)


Image above: War Criminal Votes. Bachar al-Assad and his wife Asma at a polling place during a recent vote in Damascus, Syria. From (http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2018/mar/19/syrias-assad-congratulates-vladimir-putin-on-natural-victory-1789486.html).

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Days after President Trump said he wanted to pull the United States out of Syria, Syrian forces hit a suburb of Damascus with bombs that rescue workers said unleashed toxic gas.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, the old saying goes. So, tread carefully through the minefields of propaganda laid for the credulous in such low organs as The New York Times.

There are excellent reasons to suppose that the American Deep State wishes strenuously to keep meddling all around the Middle East.

The record so far shows that the blunt instruments of US strategic policy produce a consistent result: failed states.

Syria was well on its way to that sorry condition — prompted by an inflow of Jihadi maniacs fleeing our previous nation un-building experiment in Iraq — when the Russians stepped in with an arrantly contrary idea: to support the Syrian government.

Of course, the Russians had ulterior motives: a naval base on the Mediterranean, expanded influence in the region, and a Gazprom concession to develop and manage large natural gas fields near the Syrian city of Homs, for export to Europe.

The latter would have competed with America’s client state, Qatar, a leading gas exporter to Europe.

But the US objected to supporting the government of Bashar al-Assad, as it had previously with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, as well as Russia’s presence there in the first place.

So, the US cultivated anti-government forces in the Syrian civil war, a hodgepodge of Islamic psychopaths variously known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), Daesh, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, Ansar al-Din, Jaysh al-Sunna, Nour al-Din al-Zenki, and what-have-you.

As it happened, US policy in Syria after 2013 became an exercise in waffling. It was clear that our support for the forces of Jihad against Assad was turning major Syrian cities into rubble-fields, with masses of civilians caught in the middle and ground up like so much dog food.

President Barack Obama famously drew a line-in-the-sand on the use of chemical weapons. It was well-known that the Syrian army had stockpiles of chemical poisons.

But the US also knew that our Jihadi consorts had plenty of their own. Incidents of chemical atrocities were carried out by… somebody… it was never altogether clear or proven… and Mr. Obama’s line-in-the-sand disappeared under dust-storms of equivocation.

Finally, a joint mission of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was called in to supervise the destruction of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons, and certified it as accomplished in late 2014.

Yet, poison gas incidents continued — most notoriously in 2017 when President Donald Trump responded to one with a sortie of cruise missiles against a vacant Syrian government airfield.


Image above:  War Criminal Votes. Donald Trump, with his wife Melania, votes for himself at polling place during 2016 Presidential Election. From (https://qz.com/831181/election-2016-how-do-you-write-donald-trump-in-chinese/).

And now another incident in the Damascus suburb of Douma has provoked Mr. Trump to tweetstormed threats of retaliatory violence, just days after he proposed a swift withdrawal from that vexing corner of the world.

Surely by now the American public has developed some immunity to claims of nefarious doings in foreign lands (“weapons of mass destruction,” and all).

The operative sentence in that New York Times report is “…Syrian forces hit a suburb of Damascus with bombs that rescue workers said unleashed toxic gas.”

Yeah, well, how clear is it that the toxic gas was contained in the bombs, or rather that the bombs dropped by the Syrian military blew up a chemical weapon depot controlled by anti-government Jihadis?

Does that hodgepodge of maniacs show any respect for the UN, or the Geneva Convention, or any other agency of international law?

As in many previous such incidents, we don’t know who was responsible — though there is plenty of reason to believe that parties within the US establishment are against Mr. Trump’s idea of getting the hell out of that place, and might cook up a convenient reason to prevent it.

Lastly, how is it in Bashar al-Assad’s interests to provoke a fresh international uproar against him and his regime? I’d say it is not the least in his interest, since he is on the verge of putting an end to the awful conflict. He may not be a model of rectitude by Western standards, but he’s not a mental defective.

And he has very able Russian support advising him in what has been so far a long and difficult effort to prevent his state from failing — or being failed for him.

[IB Publisher's note: We have been at war in the Middle East since 2001 and at war in Syria since 2013. As Americans we are now in a state of perpetual war in that region that accelerates ecosystem collapse and permanent climate change and mass exodus. Next stop Iran!]

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Syriasly! 4/2/18
Ea O Ka Aina: US shoots down Syrian jet 6/19/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Australia suspends Syria overflights 6/ 20/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Syria poison gas story unravels 4/18/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Source of Sarin gas attack faked? 4/14/17
Ea O Ka Aina: US has used DU in Syria 2/19/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Ms Gabbard goes to Syria 1/29/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump amps up war in Syria 1/29/17
Ea O Ka Aina: US shoots down Syrian drone 1/20/17
Ea O Ka Aina: Need for New Syria Policy 12/19/16
Ea O Ka Aina: To prevent still worse in Syria 10/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: WWIII has begun in Syria 9/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Skidding towards Syrian War 6/19/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Hillary and the Syrian Bloodbath 2/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Road to World War III 2/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Don't Bomb Syria 11/28/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Ten reasons not to overthrow Syria 11/23/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Tulsi Gabbard on Syria 11/1/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Michele won't go to Syria 9/10/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Pentagon's Syrian Blackout 6/6/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Syria a preview of 2030 6/2/13

.

Syriasly!

SUBHEAD: Nature’s way of correcting those imbalances is very ugly, and easily mistaken for mere politics.

By James Kunstler on 2 April 2018 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/syriasly-2/)


Image above: Before and After photos of a street in Homs, Syria, after attempt to end terrorism there. From (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/314266880219519388).

[IB Publisher's comment: "In order to save the village, we had to destroy it." Quote attributed to unidentified US Army Major concerning Ben Tre, South Vietnam reported by AP correspondent Peter Arnett, "Major Describes Move"in the New York Times (February 8, 1968), p. 14.]

“Peace with Honor” was President Nixon’s anodyne phrase for futzing around as long as possible in Vietnam to conceal the reality that the US military was getting its ass kicked by what we had initially thought was a 98-pound weakling of a Third World country.

That was a half-century ago and I remember it now at age 106 thanks to my diet of kale and pepperoni sticks.

Not ironically, the long struggle finally ended a few years after Nixon quit the scene, with the last straggling American evacuees waiting desperately for helicopter airlifts off the US embassy roof. And now, of course, Vietnam is a tourism hot-spot.

And so just the other day, the latest POTUS declared (in his usual way) that “we’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.” The utterance sent the neocon partisans in government into a paroxysm.

Cries of “Say What?” echoed up and down the Great Mall. Which “other people” was Mr. Trump referring to? The United Auto Workers? Gandalf the Grey? The cast of Glee?

I doubt that the average Harvard faculty member can state with any conviction what the fuck is going on in Syria.

Vietnam was like a simple game of Animal Lotto compared to the mystifying puzzle of Syria. And then, of course, once you get handle on who the players are, it’s another matter altogether to descry what US interests there might be.

One angle of the story is whether it is in America’s interest for Syria to become another failed state in a region of several other failed states.

Whatever else you might say about US policy in that part of the world, the general result in places like Iraq, Libya, and Yemen has been anarchy and irresolvable factional conflict.

In today’s world of nation-states, a central government is required to avoid that fate, and the embattled one in Syria happens to be the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The US has long militated for the overthrow of Assad, but I would also challenge you (and the Harvard faculty) to name any credible party or person who we have hypothetically proposed to replace him with.

You might argue that the Great Age of Nation States is winding down, that the world does not need them anymore, that they are the cause of too much strife and anguish.

But then you would have to account for all the strife and anguish that occupied the world when it was composed of petty kingdoms, principalities, fiefdoms, and tribes.

And, of course, following that logic you’d also have to inquire into the legitimacy of the US government — which, by the way, California is well into testing these days.

One might also propose that the battlefield of Syria, with its array of militant religious maniac armies, is just a proxy action for the tag-teams of the USA/Israel versus Russia/Iran. If so, the US has not been very clear or honest about it.

Anyway, it has hardly been demonstrated that Russia is all that comfortable with Iran extending its influence to the Mediterranean Sea.

I would take Russia’s presence in Syria as an attempt to block, or at least moderate, Iran’s influence there — which is one of the arguments for a US/Russia partnership in cleaning up the mess there.

That possible outcome has been hugely compromised by the "RussiaRussiaRussia!" hysteria engineered by the neocon warhawks of the US permanent bureaucracy (a.k.a. the Deep State).

The latest ploy by these players is the overcooked story of Vladimir Putin personally moving to poison the Russian/British double agent Skripal (and daughter) in Salisbury, UK.

Given the extremely lethal nature of the supposed poison, Novichok, and the method supposedly used (smearing it on the Skripal doorknob), it’s hard to believe that the Skripals were able to walk to the park bench where they collapsed, nor that other persons ranging from the police to the medical examiners didn’t come into contact with the substance and fall ill.

But this is the sort of cockamamie melodrama that it has come down to on our side of the gameboard.

The other part of the story worth considering is this: Syria, like other new-ish nations of the Middle East, was able to hugely increase its population in the post-WW2 era due to oil wealth (now all but gone in Syria), and other perks of modernity like cheap grains for feeding all the newcomers.

Dwindling oil revenue and severe drought (arguably induced by climate change) that caused crop failures commenced in 2006.

So Syria became a workshop study in population overshoot and resource scarcity — problems that are sure to spread around other regions of the world in the years ahead. Nature’s way of correcting those imbalances is very ugly, and easily mistaken for mere politics.

.

US shoots down Syrian drone

SUBHEAD: US jet shoots down Syrian Army drone in "Dangerous Escalation" in region.

By Tyler Durden on 20 June 2017 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-20/us-jet-shoots-down-syrian-army-drone-dangerous-escalation)


Image above: An Iranian made Shahed drone in hanger. The craft used by Syrian military for air surveillance and attacks. This is the type of aircrarft shot down by American F-15 yesterday.  From (https://dragonsdrones.com/2017/04/11/description-hesa-shahed-129/).

An American Air Forde F-15E fighter jet shot down a Syrian regime Iranian made Shahed-129 drone on Monday near At Tanf, Syria. This is the third downing of a pro-regime aircraft this month, CNN reported.

The downing of the drone comes a day after a US jet shot down a regime aircraft that was engaging a fleeing ISIS convoy, according to the Syrian government.

An armed Shaheed-129 UAV “displayed hostile intent and advanced on Coalition forces” at 12:30 am local time on Tuesday, the coalition said in a statement. The drone was observed in the same area where another UAV was shot down on June 8th.

"The drone was downed just outside the 55 kilometer de-confliction zone, according to the officials.

It was an Iranian-made Shahed 129 and was thought to be armed and in firing range of US troops.

One official said that the drone was shot down because it was 'assessed to be a threat.'

That drone was shot down after it dropped one of several weapons it was carrying near a position where coalition personnel are training and advising partner ground forces in the fight against ISIS."

According to Fox News, this is the second time the US has shot down an Iranian drone in less than a month. It also marks the fifth time since late May the U.S. military has bombed pro-Syrian forces in southern Syria.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy described the attack as “a dangerous escalation" of tensions between the US and the main backers of the Syrian regime, Russia and Iran.

Murphy told CNN that if the US doesn't stop the attacks, the situation could escalate into an armed conflict between the two sides, who both claim to be fighting ISIS.

“I think we’re getting closer and closer to open conflict between Iran and Russia and the American public need to know that we are moving very fast towards what could be another war in the Middle East – something Donald Trump promised he wouldn’t do when he ran for office.”

The US's actions could also prompt its coalition partners to withdraw from Syria, wary of being drawn deeper into an armed conflict with Iran and Russia. On Tuesday, Australia said it would temporarily suspend fights in the conflict zone as a "precautionary measure" after Russia said it would withdraw from an air-safety agreement in retaliation for Sunday's downing of the Syrian aircraft.

On the same day that the drone was shot down by US forces, an armed Russian fighter jet buzzed a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft in the Baltic Sea, two U.S. officials told Fox News.
In the latest in a long series of close encounters, Fox News reports the Russian Su-27 jet had missiles under its wings and approached the U.S. Air Force RC-135 recon jet "rapidly," coming within five feet of the American aircraft, the officials said.

Once alongside, the Russian jet was “provocative” in its flight maneuvers and flying “erratically,” according to another official.


.

Australia suspends Syria overflights

SUBHEAD: Australia became the first coalition member to suspend flights in Syria, claiming it's too dangerous for its planes.

By Tyler Durden on 20 June 2017 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-20/australia-halts-flights-syria-citing-potential-threats-russia)


Image above: Royal Australian Air Force flying American made F18 Hornets began making their first strike on Islamic State forces in Syria in September 2015. From (http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/09/09/first-raaf-strikes-syria-within-week).

Russia’s Monday decision to suspend a memorandum of cooperation with the US-led coalition in retaliation after a US jet shot down a Syrian Army plane has rattled some US allies, who fear escalating tensions between Russia and the coalition. In what it called a "precautionary measure," Australia became the first coalition member to suspend flights in Syria, claiming it's too dangerous for its planes to fly without the agreement, according to BBC.

“As a precautionary measure, Australian Defense Force (ADF) strike operations into Syria have temporarily ceased,” Australia’s Department of Defense said in a statement, adding its operations in Iraq would continue as part of the coalition.”

“ADF personnel are closely monitoring the air situation in Syria and a decision on the resumption of ADF air operations in Syria will be made in due course.”

“Australian Defense Force protection is regularly reviewed in response to a range of potential threats,” the Department of Defense said.

Australia has deployed about 780 military personnel as part of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

The BBC notes that Australia has a small but highly capable contingent of six F/A-18 strike aircraft; a tanker; and an E-7A Wedgetail early warning aircraft, all based at Al Minhad in the United Arab Emirates.

Most of the Australian strikes have been in Iraq, though its aircraft do also operate over Syria. Australian commanders will reassess the situation in due course. The more fundamental question is what the Russian threat actually amounts to. Is it just rhetoric or does Moscow want to deny certain areas of Syrian airspace to US-led coalition aircraft?

Australian aircraft will continue to fly missions in Iraq.As reported yesterday, Russia suspended cooperation under the “Memorandum on the Prevention of Incidents and Ensuring Air Safety in Syria” on Monday after the US shot down a Syrian Army fighter jet. 

The Russian Defense ministry called the attack “an act of aggression,” on the part of the US-led coalition. The US military neglected to use a communication line with Russia concerning this attack, despite the fact that Russian warplanes were also on a mission in Syrian airspace at the time, the Russian Defense Ministry alleged, conflicting with the Pentagon's explanation of events.

The bilateral memorandum of understanding was signed between the United States and Russia signed in October 2015 to ensure the safety of flights during combat missions over Syria.

In retaliation for the US attack, the ministry warned that Russian missile defense would intercept any aircraft in the area of operations of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced, quoted by Sputnik;

"In areas where Russian aviation is conducting combat missions in the Syrian skies, any flying objects, including jets and unmanned aerial vehicles of the international coalition discovered west of the Euphrates River will be followed by Russian air and ground defenses as air targets."

Contrary to the earlier statement by the US, according to which it "contacted its Russian counterparts by telephone via an established "de-confliction line" to de-escalate the situation and stop the firing", Russia claims the US-led coalition command didn't use the deconfliction channel with Russia to avoid an incident during an operation in Raqqa:

"Russian Aerospace Forces' jets were conducting operations in Syrian airspace that time. However, the command of the coalition forces didn't use the existing channel between the air command of the Qatari airbase al Udeid and the [Russian] Hmeymim airbase to avoid incidents over Syria."

We now wait to see which other US allies – Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Jordan and the UK also are contributing men and arms to the task of "liberating" Syria  – will announce that they're temporarily pulling out of the conflict until tensions once again de-escalate.


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US shoots down Syrian jet

SUBHEAD: Russia halts cooperation with US in Syria, will "Intercept Any Aircraft" in Russian areas of operation.

By Tyler Durden on 19 June 2017 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-19/russia-halts-cooperation-us-syria-will-intercept-any-aircraft-russian-areas-operatio)


Image above: The kind of plane US shot down was a Russian built SU-22 aircraft. They are worn out and their pilots are old, but they’re all still flying. This is a close-up of the fin and rear fuselage of the SyAAF’s Su-22M-4K serial number 3224, as seen during a pre-fight inspection. From (http://warisboring.com/the-su-22-is-syrias-war-weary-warhorse/).

Shortly after Russia's deputy foreign minister slammed the US downing of a Syrian Su-22 jet as an "act of aggression" and "support for terrorists", Russia announced that starting June 19th it was halting all interactions with the US under the framework on the "memorandum of incident prevention in Syrian skies", the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday, thereby assuring the probability of even more deadly escalations between Russia and the US-led coalition.

In retaliation, the ministry warned that Russian missile defense will intercept any aircraft in the area of operations of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria,

"In areas where Russian aviation is conducting combat missions in the Syrian skies, any flying ojects, including jets and unmanned aerial vehicles of the international coalition discovered west of the Euphrates River will be followed by Russian air and ground defenses as air targets," the Russian Defense Ministry announced, quoted by Sputnik.

Contrary to the earlier statement by the US according to which, it "contacted its Russian counterparts by telephone via an established "de-confliction line" to de-escalate the situation and stop the firing", Russia claims the US-led coalition command didn't use the deconfliction channel with Russia to avoid an incident during an operation in Raqqa:

"Russian Aerospace Forces' jets were conducting operations in Syrian airspace that time. However, the command of the coalition forces didn't use the existing channel between the air command of the Qatari airbase al Udeid and the [Russian] Hmeymim airbase to avoid incidents over Syria."

The Russian ministry also demands a thorough investigation by the US command with the provision of its results and measures taken.

"We consider such actions of the US command as an intentional violation of its obligations in the framework of the memo on avoiding incidents and the safety of aviation flights during operations in Syria signed on October 20, 2015."

A bilateral memorandum of understanding was signed between the United States and Russia signed in October 2015 to ensure the safety of flights during combat missions over Syria.

On June 18, the Syrian army said that the US-led coalition had brought down its aircraft in southern Raqqa countryside when it was fulfilling its mission against Daesh.

Later, the coalition confirmed the attack saying that it shot down the Syrian government forces' Su-22 aircraft as it had allegedly been bombing in an area where US-backed rebel forces, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), were stationed, south of Tabqa in the Raqqa province. The US-led coalition called its attack on the Syrian army's jet "collective self-defense," adding that it contacted the Russian military to de-escalate the situation after the incident.

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Absent Without Leave

SUBHEAD: The public may not give a shit about the Middle East or federal dairy supports, but they’ll notice when their money is worthless.

By James Kunslter on 19 June 2017 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/7816/)


Image above: Rochelle Pipier (L) and Tonya Tedrow (R) in Littleton, West Virginia, where poverty and opioids are destroying people and community. From (http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2015/05/31/Littleton-W-Va-is-a-town-decimated-by-poverty-drugs/stories/201504280190).

It ain’t bragging if it’s true. I’ve said repeatedly on this blog for years that the federal government would only become more impotent, more incompetent, and more ineffectual as The Long Emergency rolled out. And here we are now, at just such pass in history.

The process has been well underway since the beginning of the century. Even the attempts to expand its scope and reach — such as the post 9-11 addition of God-knows-how-many new intelligence services — has only produced an epic clusterfuck of cross-purposed mission creep that threatens the federal government’s existential legitimacy.

After nearly a year of investigating, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, DHS, et. al. haven’t been able to leak any substantial fact about “Russian collusion” with the Trump election campaign — and, considering the torrent of leaks about all manner of other collateral matters during this same period, it seems impossible to conclude that there is anything actually there besides utterly manufactured hysteria.

Now, one might imagine that this intelligence community could have manufactured some gift-wrapped facts rather than just waves of hysteria, but that’s where the incompetence and impotence comes in.

They never came up with anything besides Flynn and Sessions having conversations with the Russian ambassador — as if the ambassadors are not here to have conversations with our government officials.

You’d think that with all the computer graphics available these days they could concoct a cineplex-quality feature film-length recording of Donald Trump making a “great deal” to swap Kansas for Lithuania, or Jared Kushner giving piggyback rides to Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

But all we’ve really ever gotten was a packet of emails from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta of the Clinton campaign gloating about how nicely they fucked over Bernie Sanders — and that doesn’t exactly reflect so well on what has evolved to be the so-called “Resistance.”

The net effect of all this sound and fury is a government so paralyzed that it can’t even pass bad legislation or execute its existing (excessive) duties. That might theoretically be a good thing, except what we’re seeing are individual departments just veering off on their own, especially the military, which now operates without any civilian control.

Apparently General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, pretty much decided on his own to dispatch another 8,000 US troops to Afghanistan to move things along there in the war’s 16^th year. Or did he get President Trump to look up from his Twitter window for three seconds to explain the situation and get a nod of approval?

Perhaps you also didn’t notice the news item over the weekend that a US-led fighter plane coalition shot down a Syrian air force plane in Syrian airspace. In an earlier era that could easily be construed as an act of war.

Who gave the order for that, you have to wonder. And what will the consequences be? Reasonable people might also ask: haven’t we already made enough deadly mischief in that part of the world?

With the US military gone rogue in foreign lands, and the intelligence community off-the-reservation at home, and the Trump White House all gummed up in the tarbaby of RussiaGate, and the House and Senate lost in the shuffle, you also have to wonder what anybody is going to do about the imminent technical bankruptcy of the USA as the Treasury Department spends down its dwindling fund of remaining cash money to pay ongoing expenses — everything from agriculture subsidies to Medicare.

That well is going dry in the middle of the summer, and without any resolution to the debt ceiling debate, the country will not be able to borrow more to pretend that it’s solvent.

I don’t see any indication that the House and Senate will be able to bluster their way through this. Instead, the situation will compel extraordinary new acts of financial fraud via the central banks and its cadre of Too-Big-To-Fail associates. In the event, the likely outcome will be a spectacular fall in the value of the US dollar, and perhaps consecutively, the collapse of the equity and real estate markets.

The public may not give a shit about Syria, Afghanistan, or federal dairy supports, but they’ll sure perk up and notice that their money is going worthless. I doubt they’ll be clamoring for Hillary Clinton to be installed as the first US Caesar to fix it all.

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Syria poison gas story unravels

SUBHEAD: The Trump Administration narrative continues to come apart revealing the lust for war.

By Michael Krieger on 18 April 2017 for Libertty Blitzkrieg -
(https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/04/18/the-trump-administrations-syria-gas-attack-narrative-continues-to-unravel)


Image above: American UN Ambassador Nikki Haley reprises UN Ambassador Colin Powell false demonstration of weapons of mass destruction - this time with photos of "victims" of Syrian war crimes. Photo by Drew Angerer. From (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syria-chemical-attack-al-qaeda-played-donald-trump_us_58ea226fe4b058f0a02fca4d).

Pretty much every official statement emanating from the U.S. government these days is a deception, fabrication, or outright lie. I understand that this is a hard thing for a U.S. citizen to admit, but as James Baldwin so accurately stated:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

So let’s go ahead and face the facts. Governments lie. Governments have always lied. Extremely corrupt, imperial governments overseeing societies in deep economic and cultural decline lie even more. This isn’t conspiracy theory, it’s what obviously happens when you combine tremendous power with human nature.

Although I’ve been questioning the Trump administration’s fairytale narrative about the recent Syria gas attack from day one, I don’t have the expertise to sufficiently examine the evidence and put some meat on the bones.

In contrast, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at MIT, Theodore A. Postol does, and he’s published a series of reports over the past week calling out what he believes is a deliberate deception by members of the Trump team.

IB Publisher's note: A section of this report has been omitted as it duplicates our reporting, on 14 April 2017, of Professor Postol's analysis. You can see that material, if you have not read it here Ea O Ka Aina: Source of Sarin gas attack faked? Michael Krieger goes on to say:

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Take a look at the “Summary and Conclusions” section from his third report courtesy of Naked Capitalism:

Summary and Conclusions
It is now clear from video evidence that the WHR (White House Intelligence Report) was fabricated without input from the professional intelligence community.

The press reported on April 4 that a nerve agent attack had occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria during the early morning hours locally on that day. On April 7, The United States carried out a cruise missile attack on Syria ordered by President Trump. It now appears that the president ordered this cruise missile attack without any valid intelligence to support it.

In order to cover up the lack of intelligence to supporting the president’s action, the National Security Council produced a fraudulent intelligence report on April 11 four days later. The individual responsible for this report was Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the National Security Advisor.

The McMaster report is completely undermined by a significant body of video evidence taken after the alleged sarin attack and before the US cruise missile attack that unambiguously shows the claims in the WHR could not possibly be true. This cannot be explained as a simple error.

The National Security Council Intelligence Report clearly refers to evidence that it claims was obtained from commercial and open sources shortly after the alleged nerve agent attack (on April 5 and April 6). If such a collection of commercial evidence was done, it would have surely found the videos contained herein.

This unambiguously indicates a dedicated attempt to manufacture a false claim that intelligence actually supported the president’s decision to attack Syria, and of far more importance, to accuse Russia of being either complicit or a participant in an alleged atrocity.

The attack on the Syrian government threatened to undermine the relationship between Russia and the United States. Cooperation between Russia and the United States is critical to the defeat of the Islamic State. In addition, the false accusation that Russia knowingly engaged in an atrocity raises the most serious questions about a willful attempt to do damage relations with Russia for domestic political purposes.
We repeat here a quote from the WHR:

An open source video also shows where we believe the chemical munition landed—not on a facility filled with weapons, but in the middle of a street in the northern section of Khan Shaykhun. Commercial satellite imagery of that site from April 6, after the allegation, shows a crater in the road that corresponds to the open source video.

The data provided in these videos make it clear that the WHR made no good-faith attempt to collect data that could have supported its “confident assessment.” that the Syrian government executed a sarin attack as indicated by the location and characteristics of the crater.

This very disturbing event is not a unique situation. President George W. Bush argued that he was misinformed about unambiguous evidence that Iraq was hiding a substantial store of weapons of mass destruction. This false intelligence led to a US attack on Iraq that started a process that ultimately led to the political disintegration in the Middle East, which through a series of unpredicted events then led to the rise of the Islamic State.

On August 30, 2013, the White House produced a similarly false report about the nerve agent attack on August 21, 2013 in Damascus.

This report also contained numerous intelligence claims that could not be true. An interview with President Obama published in The Atlantic in April 2016 indicates that Obama was initially told that there was solid intelligence that the Syrian government was responsible for the nerve agent attack of August 21, 2013 in Ghouta, Syria. Obama reported that he was later told that the intelligence was not solid by the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.

Equally serious questions are raised about the abuse of intelligence findings by the incident in 2013. Questions that have not been answered about that incident is how the White House produced a false intelligence report with false claims that could obviously be identified by experts outside the White House and without access to classified information.

There also needs to be an explanation of why this 2013 false report was not corrected. Secretary of State John Kerry emphatically testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee repeating information in this so-called un-equivocating report.
On August 30, 2013 Secretary of State Kerry made the following statement from the Treaty Room in the State Department:

Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack[Emphasis added], and I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment. Accordingly, we have taken unprecedented steps to declassify and make facts available to people who can judge for themselves.

It is now obvious that this incident produced by the WHR, while just as serious in terms of the dangers it created for US security, was a clumsy and outright fabrication of a report that was certainly not supported by the intelligence community.


In this case, the president, supported by his staff, made a decision to launch 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. This action was accompanied by serious risks of creating a confrontation with Russia, and also undermining cooperative efforts to win the war against the Islamic State.

I therefore conclude that there needs to be a comprehensive investigation of these events that have either misled people in the White House, or worse yet, been perpetrated by people to protect themselves from domestic political criticisms for uninformed and ill-considered actions.

Sincerely yours, Theodore A. Postol
Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy Massachusetts Institute of Technology Email: postol@mit.edu

The U.S. government is completely rogue and determined to drive the U.S. into an unwinable war based on false pretenses, which doesn’t serve the national interest. These lunatics must be stopped.


Image above: American UN Ambassador Colin Powell holding up a vial with powder that could be used to hold anthrax, in his presentation to the UN in February 2003, ahead of the Iraq invasion. Did he really think we'd believe he brought a vial of anthrax into the United Nations General Assembly hall. A lying sack of shit. Photograph by Timothy A Clary  From (https://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/02/28/how-bush-administration-sold-war-and-we-bought-it)

See also:
U.S. Propaganda is Embarrassingly Bad (and Why it Matters)
Disturbed Intelligence Analysts Express Concern Over Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Syria Moment
Prepare for Impact – This is the Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire
Goldman Sachs and the Deep State Have Taken Over the Trump Administration

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