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McCain suggests Israel "go rogue" and attack Iran to blow up U.S.-Iran negotiations

Zaid Jilani
AlterNet
Sun, 29 Mar 2015 21:50 UTC
Image
As Iran talks appear to be coming to a close with a successful agreement that would both lead to the lifting of international sanctions and restrictions that would prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, most in the international community are relieved.

Yet Republicans have teamed up with their counterparts in the Israeli political system to do everything they can to obstruct a deal - with tactics such as drafting new sanctions legislation and warning the Iranian leadership that the nuclear agreement will not outlast President Obama.

But this past week Senator John McCain (R-AZ) ratcheted up this sabotage to a new level. During a floor speech he gave on March 24th, the senator suggested that Israel "go rogue" and that if they don't they may not survive the next 22 months of the Obama presidency:

McCAIN: The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let's hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

Watch it:




Recall that McCain is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Republican presidential candidate. His call for a foreign state to openly obstruct U.S. policy and in the process initiate a catastrophic regional war is perhaps unprecedented for someone of his senior position.
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Pistol

'Leftist' terrorist group DHKP-C attempts to assassinate member who planned to reveal group's ties to shadowy Ergenekon group


Today's Zaman
Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:48 UTC
A terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) member has confessed to police to having shot Asuman akça, a former member of the far-left
Image

A member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) displays the weapon he will use to overthrow the Turkish government. In theory.
, just as she was planning to reveal the group's ties to the Ergenekon terrorist organization.

Akça was shot in the head in her Istanbul home on Oct. 24. She is currently undergoing medical treatment, and doctors say she is in critical condition. S.A. was captured by İstanbul police on Oct. 28 on suspicion of being connected to the attack. The man declined to reveal the purpose of the attack at first, but he recently told the police that he was ordered to assassinate Akça as she had plans to make public the ties between the DHKP/C and Ergenekon.

Ergenekon is a shadowy network nested within the state bureaucracy which is believed to be behind a large number of assassinations and other activities which the group hoped would eventually lead to the overthrow of the government.

Akça, who was responsible for the coordination of the DHKP/C's activities in İstanbul, was arrested in 2008 on the grounds that she was preparing to assassinate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A prosecutor demanded that she be sentenced to up to 55 years in prison, but the court hearing the case against her failed to reach a verdict despite the fact that more than four years have passed since Akça's arrest, and Akça was released pending trial in March as part of a judicial reform package.

Comment: Ergenekon is essentially the NATO 'deep state' equivalent of Operation Gladio in Turkey.

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War Whore

U.S.-backed attack on Yemen reminiscent of 1930s aggression and descent into barbarism

Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture Foundation
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 21:24 UTC
Image
© AFP/ MOHAMMED HUWAIS
Yemenis gather near the rubble of houses close to Sanaa Airport, March 31, 2015, after they were destroyed in an air strike by Saudi-led coalition warplanes
Both the Arab League and the United Nations have fully transformed themselves into the ill-fated League of Nations that more than 70 years ago disgraced itself into oblivion when it failed to condemn foreign aggressions that eventually led to the cataclysm of World War Two.

As delegates gathered in Egypt's resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the Arab League last weekend, nearly half of its member states were at the same time openly engaged in an aerial blitz on one of the League's weakest countries - Yemen.

Far from issuing any misgiving, or appeal for restraint, the League fully endorsed the onslaught on Yemen and even went on to call for a new «unified military force» to repeat the action in other countries where a «security risk» is deemed. This is a cart blanche for further foreign military interventions bypassing the United Nations Security Council. In other words, it is open season for lawless aggression.

With a population of only 24 million and half of them living in poverty, Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Arab region. It is also one of the founding members of the Arab League, which was formed in 1945 at the end of the Second World War.

Since last week, scores of Yemeni civilians, including children, have been killed in a massive bombing campaign led by Saudi Arabia and co-ordinated by the United States. The bombing coalition of 10 countries include Egypt, North Sudan, Morocco and the Persian Gulf Arab states of Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain. More than 200 fighter jets from those countries have been reported carrying out air strikes on the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, as well as on the southern port city of Aden and surrounding countryside.
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Safe

Iceland to take back the power to create money

Raúl Ilargi Meijer
The Automatic Earth
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 20:58 UTC
Who knew that the revolution would start with those radical Icelanders? It does, though. One Frosti Sigurjonsson, a lawmaker from the ruling Progress Party, issued a report today that suggests taking the power to create money away from commercial banks, and hand it to the central bank and, ultimately, Parliament.

Can't see commercial banks in the western world be too happy with this. They must be contemplating wiping the island nation off the map. If accepted in the Iceland parliament , the plan would change the game in a very radical way. It would be successful too, because there is no bigger scourge on our economies than commercial banks creating money and then securitizing and selling off the loans they just created the money (credit) with.

Comment: Good on Iceland to pave the way to monetary reform.

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Bad Guys

The geopolitics of Saudi aggression and the invasion of Yemen

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 30 Mar 2015 19:08 UTC
yemen

No aggression here, just business as usual.
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen's capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.

The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi.

The Houthis and their allies represent a diverse cross-section of Yemeni society and the majority of Yemenites. The Houthi movement's domestic alliance against Al-Hadi includes Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims alike. The US and House of Saud never thought that they Houthis would assert themselves by removing Al-Hadi from power, but this reaction had been a decade in the making. With the House of Saud, Al-Hadi had been involved in the persecution of the Houthis and the manipulation of tribal politics in Yemen even before he became president. When he became Yemeni president he dragged his feet and was working against the implementation of the arrangements that had been arranged through consensus and negotiations in Yemen's National Dialogue, which convened after Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to hand over his powers in 2011.

Comment: Read part II here. See also: Hypocrisy hyperbole: Russian 'aggression' in Ukraine vs. Saudi 'defense' in Yemen

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Attention

License to kill

Dmitry Orlov
ClubOrlov
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 17:23 UTC
License to Kill
© Jakub Rozalski
The story is the same every time: some nation, due to a confluence of lucky circumstances, becomes powerful—much more powerful than the rest—and, for a time, is dominant. But the lucky circumstances, which often amount to no more than a few advantageous quirks of geology, be it Welsh coal or West Texas oil, in due course come to an end. In the meantime, the erstwhile superpower becomes corrupted by its own power.

As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in charge of the collapsing empire resort to all sorts of desperate measures—all except one: they will refuse to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower is at an end, and that they should change their ways accordingly. George Orwell once offered an excellent explanation for this phenomenon: as the imperial end-game approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial self-preservation to breed a special-purpose ruling class—one that is incapable of understanding that the end-game is approaching. Because, you see, if they had an inkling of what's going on, they wouldn't take their jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as long as possible.

The approaching imperial collapse can be seen in the ever worsening results the empire gets for its imperial efforts. After World War II, the US was able to do a respectable job helping to rebuild Germany, along with the rest of western Europe. Japan also did rather well under US tutelage, as did South Korea after the end of fighting on the Korean peninsula. With Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of which were badly damaged by the US, the results were significantly worse: Vietnam was an outright defeat, Cambodia lived through a period of genocide, while amazingly resilient Laos—the most heavily bombed country on the planet—recovered on its own.
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USA

Regime change in Yemen - How the U.S. created the "South Arabia" separatist movement


Sputnik
Fri, 27 Mar 2015 17:17 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/ Yassir Hassan
As Saudi Arabia and its allies have begun the bombing campaign against Yemen, in the south, a separatist movement calling for a "State of South Arabia" is emerging. Fostered by the US, it will leave the Houthis with two hostile states at their borders and locked access to the sea, if it succeeds.

Welcome to phase two of US regime change operations. After Yemen's 2011 revolution failed and Houthi militias overthrew President Hadi, forces trained and sponsored by the US government are being activated as a separatist movement.

The Southern People's Committees (SPC), founded around 2007 although USAID has been conducting political workshops as part of a $695,000 project and actively grooming leadership in Yemen since 2005. (Also in 2007, weekly protests began, organized by women's organizations, fostered by the workshops.) The SPC were similar to many color revolution movements such as Serbia's Otpor in that they did not have a central leadership, but rather an autonomous cell-based organization. In addition, they were very capable in the use of social media technologies, text messaging and the circumventing the government's internet censorship to organize protests.

Meanwhile, the Yemen Center for Human Rights Studies, which received $193,000 from the EU and US-funded Foundation for the Future in 2009, conducted a poll in January 2010, which found that 70 percent of southern Yemenis favored secession.
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Quenelle

Analyzing Putin's new Mediterranean strategy

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 29 Mar 2015 16:07 UTC
Image
© ITAR-TASS
While attention has been focused in recent weeks on the role of Russia and President Vladimir Putin in brokering a new ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, the Russian president has made time for two crucial state missions—one to Cyprus and one to Egypt. What they both share in common is a border on the shore of the eastern Mediterranean Sea, a strategic body of water whose importance in the escalating NATO confrontation with Russia cannot be underestimated.

For more than 2000 years the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the world's most strategic waters. It joins Middle East oil and gas with markets in the European Union. It joins Indian Ocean shipping, increasingly from China, India, South Korea and the rest of Asia to European markets and to the Atlantic Ocean through the Egyptian Suez Canal. It joins the vital Russian Black Sea Fleet naval base in Crimea to both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. In brief it connects Europe, Eurasia and Africa.

With this in mind, let's look at Putin's most recent travels.

Comment: While the West flails its arms trying to bring down Putin, he is going around gaining allies by the day with smart, calculated decisions that positively affect not just the rich but also a country's whole population. It's not hard to think that that is one of the reasons the Western Empire so desires to remove him from power. They don't like any world leader doing good deeds for the people of the world.

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Pistol

In midst of nationwide power blackout, Turkish chief prosecutor held at gunpoint by Ergenekon-linked 'leftist' terror group


The Independent, UK
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:36 UTC
Image

Prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz being held at gunpoint by some nutjob
Suspected communist militants have taken a chief prosecutor hostage in Istanbul as revenge for the death of a teenage boy hit by a tear gas cannister during anti-government protests.

Men believed to be members of the banned Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) posted pictures on social media of a gun being held to Mehmet Selim Kiraz's head, threatening to shoot him unless authorities meet their demands.

The group's flag could be seen in the background as Mr Kiraz was held gagged and with his hands tied in front of him.

According to a statement released on halkinsesi.tv, the militants gave authorities until 3.36 pm local time (1.36pm BST) to meet their demands - three hours after they stormed the court building.

Speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Vedat Yiğit said negotiations between militants and police "continue via a mediator that they picked".

"Our negotiators and Umit Kocasakal, the head of the Istanbul Bar Association, are talking to the militants," Istanbul Police Chief Selami Altunok said.

"We are trying to resolve the issue without anyone being hurt."


Comment: This 'Marxist-Leninist People's Liberation Party/Front' (DHKP-C) has been accused of being one of the many faces of the Ergenekon network in Turkey, which is effectively NATO's stay-behind deep state Gladio structure in Turkey. The accusations are not without foundation...
DHKP-C shoots member who planned to reveal group's ties to Ergenekon

Today's Zaman, 12 May 2012

A terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) member has confessed to police to having shot Asuman akça, a former member of the far-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), just as she was planning to reveal the group's ties to the Ergenekon terrorist organization.

Akça was shot in the head in her Istanbul home on Oct. 24. She is currently undergoing medical treatment, and doctors say she is in critical condition. S.A. was captured by İstanbul police on Oct. 28 on suspicion of being connected to the attack. The man declined to reveal the purpose of the attack at first, but he recently told the police that he was ordered to assassinate Akça as she had plans to make public the ties between the DHKP/C and Ergenekon.

Ergenekon is a shadowy network nested within the state bureaucracy which is believed to be behind a large number of assassinations and other activities which the group hoped would eventually lead to the overthrow of the government.
Like all such networks, it's not so much that their aim is to overthrow the governments of NATO member-states, but rather to ensure that their governments toe the party line (ie, Washington's line).

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Chess

Greece's Prime Minister hopes for 'true reset' with forthcoming visit to Russia


The Journal of Turkish Weekly
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:29 UTC
Alexis Tsipras and Vladimir Putin
Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hopes his forthcoming visit to Russia will help boost trade and economic links hit by the EU sanctions against Moscow and the Kremlin's ban on food imports from the Union.

Greece doesn't support the sanctions against Russia as they are a "road to nowhere," Tsipras said in an exclusive interview for Russia's TASS news agency published on Tuesday.

The visit to Moscow due on April 8 is expected to give a fresh impetus to the Russian-Greek relations, Tsipras said.

"This is a possibility for their true reset," he said.

Tsipras singled out energy, trade, agriculture and tourism as the key areas offering opportunities for boosting bilateral relationship.

He went on to say the Russian ban on imports of agricultural produce from the EU has dealt a heavy blow to Greek farmers, inflicting a serious damage to the Greek economy.

"We are in a geopolitical environment of special tensions and have common challenges, and we need to look at how we treat them," the Greek Prime Minister said.

"The new European security architecture must include Russia," he said.
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