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War Whore

Best of the Web: Ex-president Musharraf admits Pakistani intel ISI used terror outfit JeM to carry out attacks in India during his tenure

Bobins Abraham
India Times
Thu, 07 Mar 2019 21:32 UTC
Pervez Musharraf
© GettyFormer Pakistan president General Pervez Musharraf

Comment: This is probably as close we'll get to governments admitting they use terrorists as proxy military forces. And make no mistake; Pakistan is NOT the exception...


Facing global isolation for harbouring terrorists, the establishment in Pakistan seems to have gone into a tizzy. While the civilian leadership is busy defending "unwell" Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar who "cannot even leave his home" the powerful Pakistan Army says there is no Jaish in Pakistan.

And even as Pakistan continues to deny the JeM links to the Pulwama terror attack and acknowledge the evidence handed over by India, the country had more international embarrassment on Wednesday after former Army Chief and President Pervez Musharraf admitted that the ISI has been using the terror outfit to carry out attacks in India during his tenure.

"Our intelligence men were involved in a tit-for-tat between India and Pakistan. They were conducting bomb blasts in Pakistan and we were getting it done there (in India)," he said. The exiled former leader made the revelations while talking to a Pakistani journalist for a talk show.
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Russian Flag

Best of the Web: Stephen Cohen: The long history of US-Russian 'meddling'

Stephen F. Cohen
The Nation
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:43 UTC
russian flag
© Reuters / Alexander DemianchukA man waves a Russian flag in St. Petersburg in November 1998.
Even though the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee found "no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia," Russiagate allegations of "collusion" between candidate and then-President Donald Trump and the Kremlin have poisoned American politics for nearly three years. They are likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, due not only to the current subpoena-happy Democratic chairs of House "investigative" committees.

At the core of the Russiagate narrative is the allegation that the Kremlin "meddled" in the 2016 US presidential election. The word "meddle" is nebulous and could mean almost anything, but Russiagate zealots deploy it in the most ominous ways, as a war-like "attack on America," a kind of "Pearl Harbor." They also imply that such meddling is unprecedented when in fact both the United States and Russia have interfered repeatedly in the other's internal politics, in one way or another, certainly since the 1917 Russian Revolution.

For context, recall that such meddling is an integral part of Cold War and that there have been three Cold Wars between America and Russia during the past one hundred years. The first was from 1917 to 1933, when Washington did not even formally recognize the new Soviet government in Moscow. The second is, of course, the best known, the 40-year Cold War from about 1948 to 1988, when the US and Soviet leaders, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, declared it over. And then, by my reckoning, the new, ongoing Cold War began in the late 1990s, when the Clinton administration initiated the expansion of NATO toward Russia's borders and bombed Moscow's longtime Slav and political ally Serbia.

That's approximately 85 years of US-Russian Cold War in a hundred years of relations and, not surprisingly, a lot of meddling on both sides, even leaving aside espionage and spies. The meddling has taken various forms.
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Megaphone

Best of the Web: UN human rights rep demands 'full investigation' on France's 'excessive force' against Yellow Vests


RT
Thu, 07 Mar 2019 16:02 UTC
Yellow Vests
© Reuters/Benoit TessierYellow Vests hold banner reading "Stop Police Violence."
UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has called for a full investigation into reports of excessive use of force by the French police against Yellow Vest protesters resulting in over 2,000 injured and dozens being maimed.

"We encourage the government to continue dialogue - including follow-up to the national discussions which are currently underway - and urge full investigation of all reported cases of excessive use of force," the former Chilean President said in her annual address to the UN Human Rights council in Geneva. Her speech highlighted how the Yellow Vests' demand for "respectful dialogue" has seemingly been met with over the top violence by the state.

Comment: Uhm, there have been 9 deaths in the Haiti protests. There have been 11 deaths in the French ones.

See also:

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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Former Adviser to Venezuelan President Chavez: 'There's no way to save Maduro'


Sputnik
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:05 UTC
maduro
© AFP 2018 / HO / Venezuelan Presidency
Venezuela's self-proclaimed interim president, Juan Guaido, returned to the country on Monday and successfully passed immigration control at Caracas Airport, despite fears he might be arrested after flouting a travel ban imposed by the nation's Supreme Court.

After his arrival, Guaido greeted crowds at an opposition rally and called on his supporters to take to the streets for more protests on Saturday.

Sputnik has discussed the situation in Venezuela with Professor Heinz Dieterich, an adviser to the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who now manages a research centre at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City.

Sputnik: The economic crisis that's continuing in Venezuela started in the last century under the former leader Hugo Chavez. In your view has the situation spiralled now even more so under President Maduro?

Heinz Dieterich: Maduro inherited an economic and political model that was already in crisis in the last years of President Chavez's government and that was due to the 2008 world financial economic capitalist crisis which brought down the oil price and the whole model of Hugo Chavez had been based on the foreign income of the high oil price plateau, and that was enough to satisfy the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and the masses and also the US transnational corporations who were omitted from in the oil exploitation.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Bulb

Best of the Web: Universal basic income for every American? In defense of Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend

Samuel Kronen
Quillette
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 18:06 UTC
andrew yang
We should replace the ragbag of specific welfare programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash - a negative income tax. It would provide an assured minimum to all persons in need, regardless of the reasons for their need...A negative income tax provides comprehensive reform which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely.
~Milton Friedman
I get emotional about facts.
~Andrew Yang
Although we are still a long way from the 2020 presidential campaigns, whispers of who the Democratic candidates will be and what policy platforms will be adopted is steadily droning into an orchestra. We can already predict some of the names that are likely to appear on the ballot sheet and the talking points that will be heard on the campaign trail, and it would not be imprudent to suspect the upcoming election will be even uglier and more contentious than the last.

While the overwhelming majority of political pundits seem to be pouring their energies into slamming the current president-criticizing old models rather than conjuring new ones-many are wondering what will be left standing in the wake of yet another crashing political wave.
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Better Earth

Best of the Web: Italy will be first G7 nation to support China's One Belt One Road program

Evelyn Cheng
CNBC
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:08 UTC
kenya railways
© REUTERSA train launched to operate on the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line constructed by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) and financed by the Chinese government arrives at the Nairobi Terminus on the outskirts of Kenya's capital Wednesday.
Italy is planning to officially announce its support for China's Belt and Road Initiative this month, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. It would be the first endorsement by a G-7 nation, the report pointed out.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's regional infrastructure investment program is widely seen as Beijing's attempt to expand its influence globally through the construction of a network of land and maritime routes across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

Critics say that through the project, China forces developing nations to take on high debt burdens while benefiting Chinese companies which are often state-owned.


Comment: China forces no one to participate, that's how the US/World bank/IMF does business.


Comment: Italy has shown itself to be the one of the few forward-thinking countries in Europe that is willing to break away from the entrenched and erroneous 'establishment' for the good of its people: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Chess

Best of the Web: Trump/Kim summit: What really happened in Hanoi?

Mike Whitney
Unz Review
Mon, 04 Mar 2019 02:41 UTC
us and korean flags
While the western media has written off last weekend's summit in Hanoi as a failure, the talks did help to burnish Kim Jong-un's reputation as a sincere statesman committed to peacefully resolving the nuclear issue. This is a significant development for the simple reason that Kim needs to continue to build popular support for his cause if he hopes to prevail in the long-term.

In that regard, the lifting of sanctions is not nearly as important as Kim's broader goal of ending Washington's military occupation of the Korean peninsula and reunifying the country. In order to achieve those objectives, Kim will need the support of his allies in Moscow and Beijing as well as that of the Korean people. His disciplined performance in Hanoi suggests that he is entirely deserving of that support.

There's no way to know whether Kim expected President Trump to put the kibosh on the deal or not. But with uber-hawks like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton at the bargaining table, he must have figured that there was a high probability of failure. Was that why Kim made such a generous offer during the negotiations? Was it part of a plan to make him look good because he knew Trump would throw a wrench in the works?
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Binoculars

Best of the Web: One year on: An open letter to the Metropolitan police about the Salisbury poisoning

Rob Slane
The Blogmire
Sun, 03 Mar 2019 21:05 UTC
salisbury
© Sputnik / Alexey Filippov
Dear Assistant Commissioner Basu,

It is now a year since the events in Salisbury that shocked the nation, and indeed the world. Since then, your organisation has conducted an investigation into the case, and has laid out a case about what happened in a series of statements, notably those made on 5th September (no longer available on your website), in which two suspects were formally accused, and another on 22nd November, following the screening of the Panorama documentary: Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack - The Inside Story.

To those who have a superficial interest in the case, the explanations you have presented for what happened on 4th March 2018 may appear credible, especially since the British media has largely repeated them verbatim, even when they have been self-evidently flawed and contradictory. Indeed the press has steadfastly refused (or been refused) to ask some very obvious and much needed questions about them. But to those who have spent time looking at the incident, the explanations you have set out contain glaring omissions, factual errors (see here for more detail), and at least one scientific impossibility (more on this below). What I wish to do in this letter, is to set out some of the most important, and which I believe you owe it to the public to explain.
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Black Cat

Best of the Web: Don't get caught up by the fascinating spell cast by weasels

Ed Curtain
The Greanville Post
Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
J. Edgar Hoover
Hoover: a hard to match weasel for the ages. In a prudish and arch-hypocritical society, his stock in trade was often political blackmail and innuendo over sexual peccadilloes.
"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style."
- Albert Camus, The Fall

To be fascinated by another person who holds or symbolizes power is very common. It is often accompanied by a frisson of sexual excitement, whether repressed or acknowledged, explicitly or implicitly projected. Masters need slaves and slaves need their masters. The chief, the big man, the fascinating woman, the glamorous celebrity, the rich mogul, the powerful politician, while all standard vintage people without their accoutrements of prestigious (magical) power, magnetically attract many people wishing to surrender passively to the perceived superior power of what Carl Jung called the "mana-personality." However, such supernatural power or aura is in the eyes of the beholder, who wishes to be hypnotized and to fulfill his secret wish to be will-less. As Dostoevsky has written, "Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born." A smile, a song, or the projection of unconflicted authority - often that is all it takes for the spell to be cast.

Think of weasels. They are very vicious and can be found all around the world. Their cute faces belie their treacherous nature. They have the ability to fascinate their victims - fascinate means to cast a spell upon or hypnotize (from the Latin, fascinare, to bewitch). They do this by a stupefying song and dance, a facility that paralyzes those they prey upon before they pounce upon them.

Most people have never seen weasels in the wild, for they are secretive creatures who go about their killing clandestinely. Whether they kill softly, I can't say. I've never heard their song, or the screaming of their victims.
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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: Assange in Room 101: The Prisoner Says no to Big Brother

John Pilger
johnpilger.com
Mon, 04 Mar 2019 19:54 UTC
John Pilger invokes George Orwell in calling on his compatriots to stand up for the freedom of 'a distinguished Australian', the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and for 'real journalism of a kind now considered exotic'.
assange embassy pilger
Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and fetid.

This is Room 101.

Before I enter Room 101, I must surrender my passport and phone. My pockets and possessions are examined. The food I bring is inspected.

The man who guards Room 101 sits in what looks like an old-fashioned telephone box. He watches a screen, watching Julian. There are others unseen, agents of the state, watching and listening.

Cameras are everywhere in Room 101. To avoid them, Julian manoeuvres us both into a corner, side by side, flat up against the wall. This is how we catch up: whispering and writing to each other on a notepad, which he shields from the cameras. Sometimes we laugh.

Comment: Organize a protest/riot or flash-mob through which Assange could be secreted into a waiting vehicle or nearby safe-house, and from there hopefully escape Blighty, preferably to safety in Russia as he's not safe anywhere else in NATOstan.

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