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China-Iran alliance? Chinese destroyer visits Iranian port amid talk of strengthening ties


ecns.cn
Mon, 22 Sep 2014 22:20 UTC
Image
© Xinhua
People take pictures of "Changchun" destroyer from the 17th Chinese escort naval fleet in southern port of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Sept 20, 2014.
A Chinese flotilla docked in an Iranian port for the first time on Saturday as both China and Iran pledged to strengthen naval ties.

The Chinese missile destroyer Changchun and missile frigate Changzhou were guided by Iran's frigate Alvand to the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, the PLA Daily reported.

The two Chinese warships are part of the 17th Chinese escort naval fleet, which just finished its mission in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia.

The Chinese flotilla came here for peace, and to strengthen understanding and naval exchanges, Huang Xinjian, commander of the fleet, said upon arrival.

Amir Hossein Azad, the commander of Iran's First Naval Zone, said: "The voyage of the Chinese army's fleet of warships for the first time in Persian Gulf waters is aimed at a joint preparation of Iran and China for establishing peace, stability, tranquility and multilateral and mutual cooperation," according to Iran's FARS News Agency.

During the five-day stay, Huang is scheduled to meet officials from the Iranian navy and Hormozgan province. Bandar Abbas is the capital of the province.

Both sides will also hold a series of activities, including deck receptions, open-house events on the warships, and sport activities such as soccer and pingpong.
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Binoculars

U.S. military plays up role of Zarqawi

Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post
Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:32 UTC

Comment: The following piece, published in 2006, reveals that the U.S. was running a massive PSYOP using the founder of "al-Qaeda in Iraq", Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who coincidentally fought for the CIA/mujahideen in Afghanistan, where he later spent time with current head of ISIL/ISIS/IS Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.


Image
© AP
America's most wanted … Abu Musab al-Zarqawi taunts George Bush in the 34-minute video.
The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

Comment: Just 2 weeks after this article was posted, conveniently Zarqawi 'reappeared'. Obviously, that PSYOP hadn't ended. Any bets on Zarqawi's bunk buddy Baghdadi also being a PSYOP creation, refurbished and re-purposed for the new war on ISIS?

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Quenelle

Kremlin adopts a new national strategy

Dmitri Trenin
Carnegie Europe
Fri, 22 Aug 2014 19:37 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo / Alexey Druzhinin
Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) and China's President Xi Jinping attend an agreement signing ceremony during a bilateral meeting at Xijiao State Guest house ahead of the fourth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit, in Shanghai on May 20, 2014.
Amid the ongoing crisis over Ukraine, the Kremlin has adopted a new national strategy that crystallizes trends that have been gaining ground in Russia over the past two years. This development goes beyond the current crisis in Russian-Western relations and has important consequences for Russia's neighbors, especially the EU.

Essentially, the Kremlin sees Russia's future as separate from the rest of Europe's. Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal for a Greater Europe stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, cold-shouldered by many in the EU, has now been finally withdrawn by its author. Instead, Russia will largely rely on its own resources as it seeks to develop its economy, consolidate its political system, and build a strong military.

Russia's development model will not be autarkic, but neither will it rely too much on exploiting the fruits of globalization. Recent sanctions against it have taught Moscow that these fruits can suddenly grow sour. Instead, Russia will be in the business of import substitution industrialization, promoting domestic agricultural production, and seeking to create a measure of financial autonomy.

The defense industry has long been designated the prime vehicle of industrial and technological innovation. Its main mission, however, will be completing Russia's military modernization by equipping the country's armed forces with a wide range of usable instruments of power, both for home defense and force projection.

Confrontation with the West - especially over economic sanctions and information warfare against Russia - has given Russian patriotism a powerful boost. Now, Moscow's task at hand is to consolidate the bulk of Russian society on the basis of this platform, thus cementing national unity. Those few who disagree would be putting themselves beyond the pale as foreign agents.
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Eiffel Tower

The US grand coaltion of none: France folds on ISIS airstrikes

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge.com
Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:18 UTC
Coalition cartoon
In yet another rather embarrassing event for The White House, just days after President Obama praised the French for helping in the fight against ISIS, and General Martin Dempsey noted "the French were our very first ally and they're with us again now," French officials have, according to Reuters, ruled out participation in airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria. With the fall of France (and Germany already saying "nein"), it appears the broad coalition is now a "coalition of none," as Obama has stated the US would not go it alone...

Last week...
Germany and the U.K. ruled out carrying out air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria, a day after President Barack Obama authorized the start of U.S. air strikes there.

Turkey - the USA's closest ally in NATO among the Middle East - denies them its airbases for use as launch sites of airstrikes and will not support airstrikes in Syria

Iraq's newly-installed US-friendly PM al-Abadi defies the US and halts airstrikes on ISIS-held civilian areas
Last Friday...
President Obama and his staff are thanking France for agreeing to help in Iraq in the fight against the Islamic State.

"We look forward to coordinating with our French partners in the days to come," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
And now today...
  • FRANCE RULES OUT AIR STRIKES IN SYRIA AGAINST ISLAMIC STATE, FOREIGN MINISTER LAURENT FABIUS SAYS
The "Coalition of None" continues...

If you like your anti-ISIS airstrike coalition, you can't keep it...

* * *

Perhaps most concerningly for The US administration, the fact that Germany and France have denied the US leaves them instead sided with Russia's perspective on Syria and ISIS, as "there are deep concerns that the U.S. will bomb not only ISIS positions in Syria, but also the Syrian government forces."
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Snakes in Suits

Our global cancer: Machiavelli and oligarchic democracy

Lorenzo Del Savio and Matteo Mameli
Truthout
Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:51 UTC
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Machiavelli wrote that when we are trying to understand politics and the history of human societies, much can be explained in terms of the eternal conflict between two fundamental desires. One is the desire of the grandi - that is, the super-rich and the super-powerful - to protect their wealth and power, and to accumulate more wealth and power. The other is the desire of ordinary citizens - that is, anyone who is not super-rich or super-powerful - to live in peace and freedom without being subjected to the predatory activities of the grandi. As stressed by John McCormick, Machiavelli thought that the predatory tendencies of oligarchs were the gravest threat to the liberty and well-being of ordinary people.


Comment: Not only is it the gravest, it's ultimately the only real threat to the masses: all other threats stem from this one.


Machiavelli was right. Many things have changed, but what was true then is still true today. Oligarchic appetites are an enormous threat to liberty and freedom. Machiavelli used his writings to try to convince those in power that oligarchic greed needed to be curbed; his critique of oligarchic domination has often been misunderstood.


Comment: Irony of ironies: that bastion of 'liberty and freedom', the U.S., is in reality an oligarchy - the 1%. Just look at the people they support, like puppet president Poroshenko (oligarch, worth $1.3 billion) in Ukraine, and their 'darling martyr for democracy' Khodorkovsky (oligarch, once worth $15 billion) from Russia.


But who are the oligarchs today in our corporatized and financialized world? They are the super-rich and more generally those who command massive concentrations of wealth, even if they do not own it, or even if they own only a fraction of it, such as the individuals in charge of multinational corporations and financial firms.

Comment: And who exactly are these heartless, ruthless, greedy oligarchs? Psychopaths.

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Snakes in Suits

Voting fraud in action: The Scottish referendum for independence was rigged to fail

Shawn Helton
21st Century Wire
Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:36 UTC
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Was voter fraud committed during the Scottish Independence referendum?

It has been confirmed that the names of 10 people were already crossed off a voter list prior them voting inside a polling station.
According to reports, the Glasgow City Council confirmed that there were ten cases of suspected electoral fraud occurring at polling stations following the Scottish referendum vote on the 18th. As authorities have been investigating thousands have gathered outside in George Square, Glasgow, which has been dubbed "Independence Square," in the time leading up to the vote.

Scotland on Sunday published a piece in early September suggesting the integrity of the electoral register was called into question a month prior to the historic vote:
"With less than two weeks to go before the independence vote on 18 September, Scotland on Sunday has learned that a formal complaint is to be made by Labour to the returning officer at East Ayrshire Council after activists discovered that at least four children in the area aged between three and 11 have received polling cards."
Continuing, the recent polling concerns were put into context:
"The revelation has echoes of the problems which beset the 1979 devolution referendum, in which some dead people were given the vote, undermining public confidence in the result which did not meet the threshold set by the Callaghan government for creating a Scottish Parliament."
What would be the motive for keeping Scotland in the UK?

Comment: See also:

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No Entry

Moscow says U.S. hindering peace process in Ukraine


RT
Mon, 22 Sep 2014 18:18 UTC
poroshenko
© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, September 18, 2014.
Moscow is bewildered by Washington's warmongering rhetoric, which accompanied President Petro Poroshenko's visit to the US. Russia has also noted all the Russia-unfriendly opinions voiced recently by hawkish American politicians.

"We'll keep in mind all signals, including those unfriendly towards Russia, that were heard during the visit of the Ukrainian president to Washington," commented Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. "We do regret that there are quite influential circles [within the American establishment] that are unambiguously working against the emerging stabilization [in Ukraine]," Ryabkov said.


Comment: If you have the stomach, you can view Poroshenko's obsequious, nauseating, obviously scripted speech in Washington here: Pass the sick bag! Poroshenko's speech in front of the Imperial Senate


In short, US senators urged to supply Ukraine with arms to fight against Russia and President Putin.

Senator Robert Mendez, a Democrat who runs the Foreign Relations Committee told CNN, "We should provide the Ukrainians with the type of defensive weapons that will impose a cost upon Putin for further aggression.


Comment: Mendez, and the entire Imperial Senate and Congress, seem to be living in a fantasy world. No wonder the Russians no longer wants anything to do with them.

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Footprints

'Protests' in Russia, but no Russian Maidan

The Saker
The Vineyard of the Saker
Sun, 21 Sep 2014 18:35 UTC
moscow march
© Reuters
Why are they marching? Moscow has been the only party doing anything to finally achieve peace in Ukraine.
Demonstrations in Russia

According to RT, 5'000 to 26'000 people have marched in the streets of Moscow demanding peace in the Ukraine. According to Vzgliad, 20 people demonstrated in Petrozavodsk and Saratov, 50 in Perm, up to 100 in Ekaterinburg, 10 in Novosibirsk, 15 in Syktyvkar and a few people in Barnaul. What are important here are not the actual figures, but the order of magnitude. What we clearly see is that these demonstrations were tiny, at least by Russian standards and when RT's Anissa Naouai reports that there was a "very high turnout" she is plain wrong. Also, and this is no less important, let us be very careful about what these demonstrations were all about: for peace in the Ukraine and against war. With such a vague and yet doubleplusgoodmeaning slogan, even refugees from bombed out Donetsk could agree (maybe even especially them).

What we have here is a typical propaganda ploy: get people in the streets in support of peace, love and happiness all over the world, and then present that as an "opposition" protest against the government policies. But, come on, seriously, who wants war in the Ukraine? The Kremlin?

The other important point is this: even if, for argument's sake, we agree that 100% of the demonstrators were fierce opponents of Putin or Russian policies in the Ukraine, that is less than nothing compared to Putin's 80%+ approval rate.

So what did not happen?
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Quenelle

Fear mongering as a prelude to another false flag attack?

Stephen Lendman
Activist Post
Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:35 UTC
terrorist threat
© docstoc
Fear-mongering is sinister. It's reprehensible. It's longstanding US policy. So are false flags. Merriam-Webster calls them "deliberate gross distortion(s) of the truth used especially as a propaganda tactic." Wikipedia says they're "covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities."

Official reports hype Big Lies. MSM scoundrels regurgitate them. Truth is systematically buried. Deception substitutes for reality.

False flags are pretexts for militarism, wars, occupations, colonization, resource theft, and exploiting populations for profit. They facilitate ruthlessness. They foster police state repression against freedom. Post-9/11, global war on terror lawlessness followed. It rages out-of-control. One country after another is ravaged, destroyed and pillaged. No end of conflicts loom. Permanent war is official US policy.
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Star of David

Manufacturing anti-Semitism: Yale University Episcopal chaplain forced out by Zionist attacks

Fred Mazelis
Word Socialist Web Site
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:30 UTC
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Bruce Shipman, former Chaplain - Episcopal Church at Yale
After a two-week campaign, the Yale University Episcopal chaplain was forced to resign over a letter to the New York Times in which he explained that actions such as the recent Israeli war on Gaza were breeding anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere.

The Rev. Bruce Shipman, in a three-sentence letter that was published in the Times on August 26, responded to an Op-Ed article by scholar Deborah Lipstadt discussing European anti-Semitism. Shipman's letter read, in its entirety, as follows:
"Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.

"The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.

"As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel's patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question."

Comment: The "spirit of collaboration and collegiality" at Yale is apparently one that seeks to maintain cooperation with the brutality and genocidal psychopaths of Israel. America's educational institutions have always been more about indoctrination than actual education. Zionists have been playing victim and trying to cover their crimes with cries of anti-Semitism for far too long. People must speak out, and thankfully people like Rev. Chapman are doing so.

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