What A Coincidence! After Syria Attack, Will We Have To Stay?
Thursday January 17, 2019
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What A Coincidence! After Syria Attack, Will We Have To Stay?
Thursday January 17, 2019
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Pompeo Turns Reality Upside Down
Thursday January 17, 2019
The speech made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the American University in Cairo on January 10th deserves more attention than it has received from the US media. In it, Pompeo reveals his own peculiar vision of what is taking place in the Middle East, to include the impact of his own personal religiosity, and his belief that Washington’s proper role in the region is to act as “a force for good.” The extent to which the Secretary of State was speaking for himself was not completely clear, but the text of the presentation was posted on the State Department website without any qualification, so one has to assume that Pompeo was representing White House policy.
Pompeo immediately set the stage for what was to follow, asserting in his first several paragraphs that “This trip is especially meaningful for me as an evangelical Christian… In my office, I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and His Word, and The Truth. And it’s the truth, lower-case ‘t,’ that I’m here to talk about today. It is a truth that isn’t often spoken in this part of the world, but because I’m a military man by training, I’ll be very blunt and direct today: America is a force for good in the Middle East.”
Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence are quite likely the two most prominent Evangelical Christians in the Donald Trump Administration. Further, the two are Christian Zionists, which means that the return of the Jews to the Middle East is an essential precursor component of their belief that certain steps must be taken to bring about the second coming of Christ.
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The National Security Agency Is A Criminal Organization
Thursday January 17, 2019
Years before Edward Snowden provided documented proof that the National Security Agency was really a national insecurity agency as it was violating law and the US Constitution and spying indiscriminately on American citizens, William Binney, who designed and developed the NSA spy program revealed the illegal and unconstitutional spying. Binney turned whistleblower, because NSA was using the program to spy on Americans.
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US Ground Forces are Leaving the Middle East - Like it or Not
Thursday January 17, 2019
US ground forces appear to be leaving Syria in spite of the efforts of those who are obsessed with the region and who seek to remain no matter the cost. Inexplicably, some who wish us to remain have responsibilities in the Trump Administration.
Our wars in the Middle East were lost the moment they began. These wars have proven costly in lives, wounded, populations displaced and destroyed, America’s alliances and standing in the world and trillions of dollars wasted. The greatest costs, however, have been incurred by allowing our obsession with the Middle East to permit Russia to expand its lead in military technology.
The War in Syria, like the rest of America’s 21st-century incursions into the Middle East, has been irretrievably lost. This reality, while dismissed in Washington, is recognized almost everywhere else.
Consider, for example, that in the past few days the Arab League has scheduled a vote — expected to easily pass — on reestablishing relations with Syria and reopening their Embassies in Damascus. The United Arab Emirates has already done so. Italy and Great Britain are renovating their Embassies in preparation for reopening. At the same time, the Iraqi Air Force is flying missions in support of the Syrian government. Recently, Syria has received, and is learning to operate, the very sophisticated Russian S-300 Anti-Aircraft System which works in concert with Syrian shorter range air defenses and Russian systems. Russian air defense and electronic warfare systems, along with Russian aircraft, operate from Russia’s two Syrian bases in support of Syrian military operations.
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Silver Lining In The Government Shutdown
Wednesday January 16, 2019
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Bolton’s Radical Reshaping Plan for Mideast Included 'Mind Boggling' Strikes on Iran, Syria, and Iraq
Wednesday January 16, 2019
In 2017, less than a year before he became national security advisor, John Bolton promised a gathering of the Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK) that:
The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. … The behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself. … And that’s why, before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!”
While some may have thought Bolton’s statements of regime change in Iran before 2019 were just more bellicose rhetoric from a well-known Iran hawk, a report published Sunday in the Wall Street Journal has revealed that Bolton did everything within his power to push for President Donald Trump to launch a military attack on Iran.
According to the Journal, Trump’s national security team – which is led by Bolton – requested that the Pentagon develop “far-reaching military options to strike Iran” last September after Shia militias in Iraq fired three mortars at the US embassy and diplomatic compound in Baghdad. As the report noted, the shells “landed in an open lot and harmed no one,” but the group that fired them is alleged to have ties with Iran.
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The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started This War
Wednesday January 16, 2019
The Middle East is metamorphosing. New fault-lines are emerging, yet Trump’s foreign policy “hawks” still try to stage “old movies” in a new “theatre.” The “old movie” is for the US to “stand up” Sunni, Arab states, and lead them towards confronting “bad actor” Iran. “Team Bolton” is reverting back to the old 1996 Clean Break script – as if nothing has changed.
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Democrats Prepare Hearings on 'Rightwing Extremism'
Wednesday January 16, 2019
Prior to the 2018 midterm election, I speculated a Democrat-controlled House would result in hearings targeting “hate groups,” that is to say anybody on the “right” who challenges official narratives, otherwise known as “conspiracy theories.”
“Rep. Bennie Thompson, an African American lawmaker from Mississippi, is in charge of the House Homeland Security Committee,” reports McClatchy. “Thompson intends to hold hearings to spotlight what experts say is a growth of deadly right wing extremism in America, even if the hearings could feature members of white supremacist groups.”
Thompson said his aim is to change the dialogue and find a balance in a US domestic terrorism strategy that he believes has focused too heavily on the threat of homegrown Muslim terrorism and too little the rise of far right, white nationalist, and anti-Semitic groups.
The corporate propaganda media has done a fair job of conflating “white supremacy” and political thought the government wants to silence and shutdown.
The McClatchy article follows this line and links the “trend” of antigovernment activism to Timothy McVeigh and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
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Top 10 Reasons Not to Love NATO
Tuesday January 15, 2019
The New York Times loves NATO, but should you?
Judging by comments in social media and the real world, millions of people in the United States have gone from having little or no opinion on NATO, or from opposing NATO as the world’s biggest military force responsible for disastrous wars in places like Afghanistan (for Democrats) or Libya (for Republicans), to believing NATO to be a tremendous force for good in the world.
I believe this notion to be propped up by a series of misconceptions that stand in dire need of correction.
1. NATO is not a war-legalizing body, quite the opposite. NATO, like the United Nations, is an international institution that has something or other to do with war, but transferring the UN’s claimed authority to legalize a war to NATO has no support whatsoever in reality. The crime of attacking another nation maintains an absolutely unaltered legal status whether or not NATO is involved. Yet NATO is used within the US and by other NATO members as cover to wage wars under the pretense that they are somehow more legal or acceptable. This misconception is not the only way in which NATO works against the rule of law. Placing a primarily-US war under the banner of NATO also helps to prevent Congressional oversight of that war. Placing nuclear weapons in “non-nuclear” nations, in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, is also excused with the claim that the nations are NATO members (so what?). And NATO, of course, assigns nations the responsibility to go to war if other nations go to war — a responsibility that requires them to be prepared for war, with all the damage such preparation does.
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The Obama/New York Times Plot To Overthrow Trump
Tuesday January 15, 2019
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