Puppet Masters

The coming backlash over the Pentagon's hybrid war in Syria

M.K.Bhadrakumar
The American Conservative
Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC

U.S. and Turkish officials are due to meet in Washington today to begin thrashing out the range of issues now threatening to tear the already fragile relationship between the two NATO allies apart.

The Turkish-American discord goes back to the Obama administration when Washington persuaded Ankara to spearhead the regime-change project in Syria circa 2011, only to see the U.S. retract later, leaving Turkey holding a can of worms.

Since then the relationship has become mired in several disputes, with the overarching geopolitical result that Turkey has steadily drifted away from its Western allies towards a détente with Russia. This has taken the form of a quasi-alliance with Moscow over the Syrian conflict-a partnership that appears to be flourishing as a "win-win" economic relationship and has resulted in the Turkish decision to purchase an S-400 air defense system from Russia.

The situation in Syria will top the agenda during the talks in Washington on Thursday. The priority for both sides will be to avert a standoff in northern Syria where the U.S. and Turkey are pursuing sharply divergent interests. At least since 2014, the U.S. has aligned with Kurdish groups that Ankara regards as terrorists belonging to the PKK, the separatist movement waging a bloody struggle to carve out an independent state in the Kurdish homelands in eastern Turkey. On the other hand, Kurds are the Pentagon's foot soldiers in its war against the Islamic State in Syria.

Comment: See also:

Latvia Bank killing: Washington's financial warfare on Russia

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC

Washington has begun a new phase in its geopolitical financial warfare in the small Baltic republic of Latvia. Within days it managed to force the Latvian government and the European Central Bank to force the dissolution of Latvia's third largest bank without even a hint of a legal process. Whatever the true relation of Latvia's ABLV Bank AS to money laundering, to North Korea or to Russia, the Washington move can be seen as an ominous precedent for a next phase of blackmail on the financial structures of the European Union or other foreign states not singing the preferred Washington tune.

On February 23, despite the fact that ABLV announced it had raised almost $1.7 billion in four days to stabilize deposit withdrawals, the ECB claimed the bank lacked adequate liquidity and deemed it "failing or likely to fail," committing it to Europe's Single Resolution Board for dissolution. The move followed by hours the arrest of the Latvia representative on the ECB Governing Council, Latvia Central Bank Governor Ilmars Rimsevics, amid bribery allegations in a case supposedly not linked to ABLV's takedown by the ECB. He was released two days later without being charged, but the timing is highly suspicious.

At that point the ECB instructed the Latvian supervisory authority, the Financial and Capital Markets Commission (FCMC), to impose a moratorium on the bank to give time to the bank to stabilize its situation. A moratorium was also imposed by the Luxembourg authorities for the subsidiary of the bank in Luxembourg.

Comment: Freezing out Russian assets, going after international banking institutions, attempting to isolate Russia -- these actions hurt European and other global business partnerships, forces commerce to find other alternatives and strengthens the Russia-China partnership. The US is sabotaging itself as other options open for those persecuted or affected by these political tantrums and destructive tours of force.

Trump may exempt NATO allies from tariffs if they raise military spending

RFE/RL
Sat, 10 Mar 2018 16:51 UTC

U.S. allies might be asked to increase their financial commitments to NATO to avoid new U.S. tariffs on their exports of steel and aluminum to the United States, the U.S. Treasury secretary has said.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC in an interview on March 9 that President Donald Trump will take national security into account in deciding which countries to exempt from the tariffs, and he noted that Trump wants to see NATO allies spend more on defense. Mnuchin said Trump is specifically pushing to get NATO allies to spend the agreed goal of 2 percent of their gross domestic output on defense.

"We're spending 4 percent of GDP and many of our allies are spending 1 percent of GDP and not making commitments to go up to 2 percent, so the president is very clear.... If we're in NATO, he wants to make sure that NATO gets more money so that NATO can protect all of us and fulfill its goal," Mnuchin told CNBC.

Comment: Three birds with one stone? Endgame: Russia and China are economic targets.

Stephen Cohen: How Washington provoked and lost a nuclear-arms race

Stephen Cohen
RT
Thu, 08 Mar 2018 16:29 UTC

Putin declares that the long US attempt to gain nuclear superiority over Russia has failed and hopes Washington will "listen now."

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.)

Cohen explains that President Putin's speech to both houses of the Russian parliament on March 1, somewhat akin to the US president's annual State of the Union address, was composed of two distinct parts. The first approximately two-thirds was pitched to the upcoming Russian presidential election, on March 18, and to domestic concerns of Russian voters, which are not unlike those of American voters: stability, jobs, health care, education, taxes, infrastructures, etc.

The latter part of the speech was, however, devoted solely to recent achievements in Russia's strategic, or nuclear, weapons. These remarks, though also of electoral value, were addressed directly to Washington. Putin's overarching point was that Russia has thwarted Washington's two-decade-long effort to gain nuclear superiority over -- and thus a survivable first-strike capability against -- Russia. His attendant conclusion was that one era in post-Soviet Russian-American strategic relations has ended and a new one has begun. This part of Putin's speech makes it among the [most] important he has delivered during his 18 years in power. (It is on the ACEWA website eastwestaccord.com.)

Comment: To effect US' strategic aspirations and negotiate a working agreement with Russia, Trump would have to miraculously redirect the MIC and recalibrate America's current political climate. Chances, anyone?

Sessions might appoint 2nd special prosecutor to investigate possible crimes in growing scandals

Ken Klukowski
Breitbart
Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC

Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed prosecutors in 2017 to investigate matters Congress referred to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as growing scandals possibly involved criminal activities.

These prosecutors will report directly back to Sessions, who told Fox News on Wednesday night that he will then decide whether a second special prosecutor is necessary to take these matters to court.

Critics of the attorney general have said he needs to look into matters where there are suspicions that crimes may have been committed, such as the growing scandal regarding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) search warrants to spy on members of President Trump's campaign and transition team in 2016. Emerging evidence suggests this surveillance continued after the presidential election.

He is doing exactly that, Sessions told Shannon Bream during an interview Wednesday. The attorney general has appointed a prosecutor with "many years in the Department of Justice" to investigate these things, and will "consider seriously" appointing a second special counsel to possibly bring criminal charges.

Comment: Enigmatic, guarded, unrevealing...may all be descriptives for AG Sessions. He has kept a relatively tight ship, offering few details.

The Saker: Political implications of Russia's new weapons

The Saker
Fri, 09 Mar 2018 12:00 UTC

Newly Revealed Russian Weapons Systems: Political Implications

For those interested in the military implications of the recent revelations by Vladimir Putin about new Russian weapon systems I would recommend the excellent article entitled "The Implications of Russia's New Weapon Systems" by Andrei Martyanov who offers a superb analysis of what these new weapons mean for the US and, especially, the US Navy. What I want to do here is something a little different and look at some of the more political consequences of these latest revelations.

The first two of the five stages of grief: denial and anger

Right now, the AngloZionists are undergoing something very similar to the first two of the Five Stages of the Kübler-Ross Grief model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Mostly this manifests itself in criticisms of the quality of the videos presented by Putin and by simple incantations about "these weapons only exist on paper". This is absolutely normal and will not last too long. That kind of denial is a normal coping mechanism whose primary function is to "soften the blow", but not something one can base any actual policy or strategy on. However, it is worth looking into why exactly these revelations triggered such a powerful reaction as things are a little more complicated than might first appear.

Comment: See Also:

Senator Chuck Schumer's sycophantic and 'absolutely disgusting' AIPAC speech

Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC

© AIPAC/Screengrab
"Bigoted, divisive, embarrassing, as is the fact that you let your caucus gut Dodd-Frank while you were busy sucking up to AIPAC. New Yorkers deserve better representation," wrote journalist David Klion.

"At AIPAC, Democrats try to outdo Trump in their devotion to Israel's oppression of Palestinians."

"Bigoted," "outrageous," and "disgusting" were just a handful of the many adjectives critics used to denounce Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) speech this week before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which attributed ongoing Middle East conflict not to Israel's decades of brutal U.S.-backed occupation of Palestinian territories, but to Palestinians' failure to "believe in the Torah."

"The fact of the matter is that too many Palestinians and too many Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the Middle East," Schumer told the audience gathered for AIPAC's annual conference in Washington, D.C. "Of course, we say it's our land, the Torah says it, but they don't believe in the Torah. So that's the reason there is not peace. They invent other reasons, but they do not believe in a Jewish state and that is why we, in America, must stand strong with Israel through thick and thin."

Watch:

Comment: Some other news around the increasingly belligerent - and criticized AIPAC meeting:

Trump says that North Korea promises to halt missile tests until meeting

RT
Sat, 10 Mar 2018 20:38 UTC

US President Donald Trump has said that North Korea has promised not to conduct any missile tests up to and during the planned meetings between the two adversaries.

Trump took to his favorite medium - Twitter - to make the announcement on Saturday. "North Korea has not conducted a Missile Test since November 28, 2017 and has promised not to do so through our meetings," Trump wrote, adding that he believes "they will honor that commitment!"

Comment: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has fallen ill while on tour in Africa and has cancelled several events on his diplomatic schedule.

Tillerson, currently on a round of diplomatic visits to the governments of Kenya, Chad, Nigeria, Djibouti and Ethiopia, was announced by US state department representatives to have fallen ill on Saturday in Nairobi, according to The Hill.

"The secretary is not feeling well after a long couple days working on major issues back home such as North Korea," stated undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs Steve Goldstein, while on tour with Tillerson.

Trump's 'spontaneous' decision to meet Kim Jong-un, was the CIA's staged decision

Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
Sat, 10 Mar 2018 19:01 UTC

According to the US media (in chorus) it was president Trump who took the decision (without prior consultation with his Cabinet, national security and intelligence advisors) to meet face to face North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a US-DPRK Summit.

According to reports, this decision was taken spontaneously by president Trump following discussions in the Oval Office with a South Korean delegation headed by ROK National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong on March 8:

In a stunning turn of events, Trump personally intervened in a security briefing intended for his top deputies, inviting the South Korean officials into the Oval Office, where he agreed on the spot to a historic but exceedingly risky summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. (WP, March 9, 2018)

Trump announced his decision on the driveway outside the West Wing of the White House to the media, which was immediately broadcast live on TV networks Worldwide.

Hypocrisy Inc.: The National Endowment for (meddling in) Democracy

Daniel Lazare
The American Conservative
Thu, 08 Mar 2018 16:36 UTC

© Mstyslav Chernov/Creative Commons
Kiev during the NED supported protests that led to the coup of the pro-Russian president, in 2014

"They're meddling in our politics!" That's the war cry of outraged Clintonites and neocons, who seem to think election interference is something that Russians do to us and we never, ever do to them.

But meddling in other countries has been a favorite Washington pastime ever since William McKinley vowed to "Christianize" the Philippines in 1899, despite the fact that most Filipinos were already Catholic. Today, an alphabet soup of U.S. agencies engage in political interference virtually around the clock, everyone from USAID to the VOA, RFE/RL to the DHS -- respectively the U.S. Agency for International Development, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Department of Homeland Security. The last maintains some 2,000 U.S. employees in 70 countries to ensure that no one even thinks of doing anything bad to anyone over here.

Eclipse throws new light on gut infections [Link] #astrology

Javed

The " I love my job, but not as much as my freedom " is much too tame. It should read " I love my job, but not as much as my life "

codis

.. .. W ho's the mayor of Bots-Biden, NJ? [Link]

Jibrish

Estimated impact energy 1200 megatons give or take a lot. The apparent impact point -20.758, -69.008 (not really a crater) is roughly 6km across....

StonedMentat

When is Space Weather Scary? & Top Science Updates | S0 News Nov.5.2021 [Link]

parzival

Puppet Masters

The coming backlash over the Pentagon's hybrid war in Syria

Latvia Bank killing: Washington's financial warfare on Russia

Trump may exempt NATO allies from tariffs if they raise military spending

Stephen Cohen: How Washington provoked and lost a nuclear-arms race

Sessions might appoint 2nd special prosecutor to investigate possible crimes in growing scandals

The Saker: Political implications of Russia's new weapons

Senator Chuck Schumer's sycophantic and 'absolutely disgusting' AIPAC speech

Trump says that North Korea promises to halt missile tests until meeting

Trump's 'spontaneous' decision to meet Kim Jong-un, was the CIA's staged decision

Hypocrisy Inc.: The National Endowment for (meddling in) Democracy

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