Puppet MastersS


Chess

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: Houthi rebels overturned the chessboard

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Thu, 19 Sep 2019 09:47 UTC
Yemeni
© Hani Al-Ansi/dpaA Yemeni Shiite man holds his weapon and a flag with an Arabic inscription reading 'Disgrace is far from us,' as he takes part in a religious procession held by Houthi rebels to mark the first day of Ashura.
We are the Houthis and we're coming to town. With the spectacular attack on Abqaiq, Yemen's Houthis have overturned the geopolitical chessboard in Southwest Asia - going as far as introducing a whole new dimension: the distinct possibility of investing in a push to drive the House of Saud out of power.

Blowback is a bitch. Houthis - Zaidi Shiites from northern Yemen - and Wahhabis have been at each other's throats for ages. This book is absolutely essential to understand the mind-boggling complexity of Houthi tribes; as a bonus, it places the turmoil in southern Arabian lands way beyond a mere Iran-Saudi proxy war.

Still, it's always important to consider that Arab Shiites in the Eastern province - working in Saudi oil installations - have got to be natural allies of the Houthis fighting against Riyadh.

Comment: See also: US oil reserve sell off and decrepit facilities revealed following Saudi oil plant attack

RT's interview with Professor Marandi mentioined in the article:
If Iran behind attack, 'US military worthless' - Tehran prof



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Star of David

Israel's snap elections change 'absolutely nothing' for Gaza

Haidar Eid
Mondoweiss
Thu, 19 Sep 2019 08:40 UTC
ISrael elections
© ReutersThe results of the exit polls are shown on a screen at Benny Gantz's Blue and White party headquarters, following Israel's parliamentary election, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sept. 17, 2019.
Five months ago, I wrote a piece for Middle East Eye on Israel's parliamentary elections in which I argued that those elections change absolutely nothing for us Palestinians, the indigenous population of this land. And today, Israelis went to the polling stations again in what seems to be a repeat of what happened in April. Still, Israelis do no know who their next Prime Minister is going to be.

But we Palestinians are certain that he will be a white, Ashkenazi male committed to the Zionist consensus prevalent these days across party lines regardless of the domestic agenda. Whether it is Benny Gantz, a war criminal by all means, or Benjamin Netanyahu, or any other leader, the new Israeli prime minister will not accept an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, and/or the return of Palestinian refuges scattered in refugee camps in neighboring countries, and/or Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem, and/or eviction of Israeli, Jewish settlers from Israeli colonies in the West Bank. Almost all political parties competed in the elections are Zionist, with the exception of the Joint Arab List.
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Question

Who is Bolton replacement Robert C. O'Brien and what is his stance on matters of war and peace?


RT
Wed, 18 Sep 2019 20:46 UTC
Trump/O'Brien
© Reuters/Tom BrennerPresident Donald Trump and National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien in Los Angeles
President Donald Trump has named Robert C. O'Brien as his new National Security Advisor. As O'Brien steps into the role vacated by the hawkish John Bolton, how different are his foreign policy positions?

Before Trump announced O'Brien's hiring on Wednesday, the State Department diplomat was a relatively unknown figure outside the Beltway, save for his bizarre jaunt to Sweden in July to haggle for the release of jailed American rapper A$AP Rocky, at Trump's behest.

Though that endeavor was ultimately fruitless, the president saw fit to promote O'Brien to National Security Advisor - a position occupied by infamous superhawk John Bolton. Trump fired Bolton last week after "strongly disagreeing" with his positions - reportedly because Bolton was trying to goad the president into wars in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Syria. But now that O'Brien has Trump's ear on matters of war and peace, will he prove a different kind of influence?
While Bolton's appetite for conflict was well known before he joined the Trump administration, O'Brien's philosophy is less household knowledge. However, many of his positions are set out in his 2016 book: While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis
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Attention

Julian Assange: The world's most important political prisoner

Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org
Sun, 15 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
assange free society
We are now just one week away from the end of Julian Assange's uniquely lengthy imprisonment for bail violation. He will receive parole from the rest of that sentence, but will continue to be imprisoned on remand awaiting his hearing on extradition to the USA - a process which could last several years.

At that point, all the excuses for Assange's imprisonment which so-called leftists and liberals in the UK have hidden behind will evaporate. There are no charges and no active investigation in Sweden, where the "evidence" disintegrated at the first whiff of critical scrutiny. He is no longer imprisoned for "jumping bail". The sole reason for his incarceration will be the publishing of the Afghan and Iraq war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning, with their evidence of wrongdoing and multiple war crimes.

In imprisoning Assange for bail violation, the UK was in clear defiance of the judgement of the UN Working Group on arbitrary Detention, which stated
Under international law, pre-trial detention must be only imposed in limited instances. Detention during investigations must be even more limited, especially in the absence of any charge. The Swedish investigations have been closed for over 18 months now, and the only ground remaining for Mr. Assange's continued deprivation of liberty is a bail violation in the UK, which is, objectively, a minor offense that cannot post facto justify the more than 6 years confinement that he has been subjected to since he sought asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador. Mr. Assange should be able to exercise his right to freedom of movement in an unhindered manner, in accordance with the human rights conventions the UK has ratified,
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Illiberal Undemocrats say 'boll**ks' to the people in the name of 'liberalism' and 'democracy'

Neil Clark
RT
Wed, 18 Sep 2019 14:22 UTC
Liberal Democrats
© Getty Images / PA Images / Jonathan BradyChuka Umunna at the Liberal Democrats conference in Bournemouth.
The Liberal Democrats conference in Bournemouth has shown us where 'liberalism' is today, and it's a pretty dark place. If you have the wrong (i.e. unenlightened) views, the party which preaches 'tolerance' will not tolerate you.

Britain in 2019 presents a topsy-turvy political landscape straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan Savoy Opera. 'Conservatives' who don't conserve anything. 'Luxury communists' who oppose communism. And Liberal Democrats who aren't very liberal, or very democratic.

The Lib Dem conference had to be seen to be believed - and even then it was scarcely believable.

First, there was the party's decision to cancel Brexit, without even a second referendum.

In saying 'Boll**ks' to Brexit, and pledging to scrap Article 50 on their 'first day in power' - if that ever happens - the Lib Dems are effectively saying 'Boll**ks' to the 17.4 million people who, rightly or wrongly, voted to leave the European Union in 2016, a large percentage of whom were working class and/or elderly.

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

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Newspaper

US oil reserve sell off and decrepit facilities revealed following Saudi oil plant attack

Nick Cunningham
Oil Price
Wed, 18 Sep 2019 18:00 UTC
saudi oil facility
Videos apparently shot in Buqyaq showed smoke rising over the skyline and glowing flames could be seen at the Abqaiq oil-processing facility.
Oil prices have gyrated this week on conflicting reports and predictions regarding the restoration of operations at the damaged Abqaiq processing facility in Saudi Arabia. The largest disruption in oil market history led to a 15 percent price gain on Monday, but prices opened up sharply lower on Tuesday after Reuters reported that operations would resume much quicker than expected.

The outage at Abqaiq is not just a problem because of the immediate impact on production, but also because it takes much of the world's spare capacity offline. According to Bloomberg, the most optimistic assessment puts global spare capacity at 3.9 million barrels per day (mb/d), but that includes half a million barrels of daily capacity from idled Neutral Zone oil fields, plus some optimistic assumptions about the usability of spare capacity elsewhere.

In reality, spare capacity would be incredibly thin if Abqaiq remains offline for an extended period of time. Bloomberg notes that Saudi Arabia has about 1.67 mb/d of surplus capacity, but some of that would likely need to be processed at Abqaiq, leaving it temporarily unusable. Those details are kept secret.

Comment: RT reports:
India to boost crude imports from Russia after Saudi oil attacks

The world's third-largest oil consumer, India, is seeking to increase oil imports from Russia following drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities.The kingdom is the second biggest supplier of crude to India after Iraq.

India's Minister of Petroleum Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters he had met with the Russian oil producer Rosneft's CEO, Igor Sechin, to discuss the possibility of oil imports.

Four Indian companies have plans to increase their investment in Russian oilfields, said Pradhan.

Rosneft and India have also discussed the development of Nayara Еnergy, a company in which the Russian oil producer holds a majority stake.

The consortium is reviewing the option of a two-fold increase in refining throughput at the Vadinar Refinery, said Rosneft, as cited by Reuters.

In the first stage, the consortium has committed to invest $850 million towards the building of a petrochemical unit within two years.

"The consortium is also planning to expand Nayara Energy's retail presence, which is currently the fastest growing pan-India fuel retail network with over 5,300 retail outlets," Rosneft said.

It added that joint projects, specifically Sakhalin-1 (oil and gas project), Taas-Yuryakh and Vankor (oilfields in Russia), were being reviewed.
See also:

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Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: The United States is run by psychopaths for psychopaths

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Mon, 16 Sep 2019 14:09 UTC
banksters
Ryan Murphy, an economist at Southern Methodist University, recently published a working paper in which he ranked each of the states by the predominance of — there's no nice way to put it — psychopaths. The winner? Washington in a walk. In fact, the capital scored higher on Murphy's scale than the next two runners-up combined.

"I had previously written on politicians and psychopathy, but I had no expectation D.C. would stand out as much as it does," Murphy wrote in an email...

On a national level, it raises the troubling question as to what it means to live in a country whose institutions are set up to reward some very dubious human traits. Like it or not, we're more likely than not to wind up with some alarming personalities in positions of power.

- From last year's Politico article, Washington, D.C.: the Psychopath Capital of America
One of the most frustrating aspects of modern American politics — and the culture in general — is our all encompassing fixation on the superficial. It's also one of the main reasons I have very little interest in presidential politics, which basically consists of a bunch of billionaire friendly puppets auditioning to become the next public face of imperial oligarchy. Though I understand the desire for quick fixes, our focus on highlighting and mitigating only the symptoms of societal decay as opposed to the root causes, ensures we'll never achieve the sort of positive paradigm-level shift necessary to bring humankind forward.
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Attention

The ignorance of 'Iran experts' is just the beginning of Washington's foreign policy problems

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Mon, 16 Sep 2019 22:48 UTC
Imam Reza Shrine
© Asia Times/Pepe EscobarImam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, Iran
An explosive essay calling out the lack of legitimate expertise about Iran ought to be a wake-up call for the US foreign policy field. Yet the same problem also affects Washington's analysis of Russia, China and many other places.

Imagine a field of study in which less than a third of the experts had related doctorates, half of them could not read, speak or write the language required, and just as many have never set foot inside the relevant country. Preposterous, you might say - yet scientific observation has shown that this is precisely what the US expertise on Iran looks like, according to an essay by political anthropologist Negar Razavi, recently published in the journal Jadaliyya.

Comment: A government and foreign policy essentially based on self-serving armchair experts? Literally anyone can acquire this degree from the University of CNN!

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Star of David

Best of the Web: Galloway: Netanyahu lost Israeli vote, Palestinians lose either way

George Galloway
RT
Wed, 18 Sep 2019 12:20 UTC
Netanyahu banners
© AFP/Hazem BaderWoman places electoral banners for Likud party in city of Beersheva.
Vladimir Lenin is said to have opined that the only thing certain about British elections is who is going to lose. He meant the British working class, at a time when they were effectively unrepresented in the political system.

Equally, whatever the outcome of the Israeli elections, the Palestinians will be the big losers. According to preliminary results, Netanyahu has lost his majority of course - having failing to reach the magic number of 61 seats in the Knesset.

But his opponents - the Palestinians living under siege in Gaza, under occupation in the West Bank, or under annexation in East Jerusalem, an annexation Netanyahu threatened to visit upon the whole of the Jordan Valley - are no better off. Neither, for that matter, are the so-called "Arab-Israelis" who increasingly identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel and whose treatment as the 'enemy within' reached its apogee in Likud hate-speech about them. This saw them briefly banned from Facebook last week.

Neither is an election the final say on the matter - this is the second in five months - and the fact that no-one seems likely to gain a majority will see the attention swiftly turn to horse-trading. And that, for the Palestinians, is the danger.

Comment: All this to say there is no upside to the Israeli election, especially for the Palestinians. When it comes down to psychopath versus psychopath, there is no hope for improvement nor will the world be a better place.

See also:

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Boat

Persian Gulf: Saudi Arabia to join US maritime operation after oil attacks


DW
Wed, 18 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
Guy w Headphones
© picture-alliance/ZUMAPRESS.com/US Navy
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday announced its decision to join a US-led maritime security operation in the Persian Gulf days after two of its oil production facilities were targeted in an attack. "The kingdom's accession to this international alliance comes in support of regional and international efforts to deter and counter threats to maritime navigation and global trade," reported the official state-run Saudi Press Agency, citing a defense ministry official.

US and Saudi officials have accused Iran of involvement in the attacks on the oil production facilities. US President Donald Trump earlier this week threatened a military response, saying US forces are "locked and loaded."

The freedom of navigation operation in the Persian Gulf was launched in response to attacks on several merchant vessels and oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz throughout the summer. The White House has blamed the attacks on Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.

'We don't want war'

Tensions in the Persian Gulf have escalated over the attacks. Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility, saying they had launched several drones in a targeted assault on the oil production facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia. But US officials have cast doubt on those claims.
Satellite view damage
© US Government/Digital Globe/APDamage to oil/gas infrastructure at Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia

Comment: See also:

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