Puppet MastersS


Attention

Too many wars make too many enemies

Pat Buchanan
Creators
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
black countries on red
© SOTT.net
If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.

Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded. Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S. to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates, all the way to Iraq.

If the Turks attack Manbij, the U.S. will face a choice: Stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.
Should the U.S. let the Turks drive the Kurds out of Manbij and the entire Syrian border area with Turkey, as Erdogan threatens, U.S. credibility would suffer a blow from which it would not soon recover.

But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan's forces could mean a crackup of NATO and loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including the air base at Incirlik.
Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea. NATO's loss of Turkey would thus be a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who gave Ankara the green light to cleanse the Kurds from Afrin.

Yet Syria is but one of many challenges to U.S. foreign policy.


Comment: Wars are not one-sided, and picking to fight one is never a requisite. Choosing to fight many wars simultaneously is downright insanity.


Comment: And there it is. The 'memo' trumps unholy wars. This is what distracts the American public from the ongoing, escalating and mind-blowing atrocities being committed daily in its name.

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Attention

Xi Jinping's ally returns, unlikely to improve China-US relations


Sputnik
Wed, 31 Jan 2018 17:31 UTC
Wang Qishan/ Xi Jinping
© South China Morning PostWang Qishan, Chinese President Xi Jinping
The expected revival of Chinese President Xi Jinping's powerful ally, Wang Qishan, who has expertise in dealing with the United States, is unlikely to significantly improve China-US relations, experts told Sputnik.

The 69-year-old Wang, who helped lead the Chinese president's sweeping anti-corruption campaign during Xi's first five years in office, was not included in the country's new lineup of its core leadership, known as the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) of the Communist Party of China, unveiled during the ruling party's 19th National Congress last October.

Wang's exclusion from the PBSC followed an unwritten rule in the Chinese leadership in recent years, when leaders older than 68 were not expected to hold onto their positions. However, rumors started to circulate late last year that Wang's political career did not seem to be in jeopardy following his retirement from the PBSC. The powerful ally of Xi is expected to take over the position as the vice president of China during the nation's annual legislative session of the National People's Congress in March, the South China Morning Post reported last December.

Comment: See also: Still in the game: Bannon held secret meeting with China's second most powerful official

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Wine

Trump to release of FISA memo (after FBI redacts it)

Saagar Enjeti
The Daily Caller
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:23 UTC
trump and glass
© Getty ImagesUS President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump has approved the release of a classified memo compiled by House Republicans on the intelligence committee, clearing the way for its release Friday, multiple outlets report.


The document allegedly contains proof that some of the top officials in the Obama-era national security establishment abused their authority to obtain surveillance warrants on members of the Trump 2016 campaign. House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes assembled the memo with fellow Intel committee members and staff based on classified information turned over by the FBI and the DOJ.


Comment: Due to likely redactions, the public may have to rely on commentary from those who were privileged to see it.

In other words, this may be a damp squib.

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Star of David

Israel's threat to Lebanon: 'Full strength' ground invasion in case of conflict


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 14:48 UTC
3soldiers
© Ronen Zvulun / ReutersIsraeli soldiers patrol Lebanese border in Northern Israel.
Tel Aviv is ready for an all-out ground invasion of Lebanon in the event of a military conflict with Beirut, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said. His comments come as relations between the two neighbors continue to sour. "We must prepare for maneuvering on the ground too, even if we do not use it," the minister said at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) held at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday.

Not mincing his words, Lieberman said that, in a worst-case scenario, Israel would conduct the operation at 'full strength.' "We must not take one step forward and one step backward. We will move forward as fast as possible," Lieberman added, speaking about the Israeli strategy in a possible conflict with its northern neighbor.

At the same time, he said that "maneuvering is not a goal in itself," but is a means of ending the war in what Tel Aviv sees as the most efficient way. "No one is looking for adventures, but if we have no choice the goal is to end [the fighting] as quickly and as unequivocally as possible," the minister told the conference, adding that Israel's past experience has shown that "all the conflicts in the Middle East" do not "come to an end" without "soldiers on the ground."

Comment: What Lieberman left out was: this recent revving of war engines on a new front provides the necessity and excuse for the US to stay in Syria, compliments of Israel for the benefit of Israel. A war with Lebanon could, likewise, gives other participants an excuse.

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USA

Trump thinks it will be hard to unify the country without a 'major event'

Yamiche Alcindor
PBS News Hour
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 04:37 UTC
Trump
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesPresident Trump
Hours before his first State of the Union, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he wants to unite the country amid "tremendous divisiveness" and hopes he can do so without a traumatic event affecting Americans.

Trump spoke about creating a more united country during a lunch with a number of television news anchors. Trump said the United States has long been divided, including during the impeachment of former president Bill Clinton. Trump also said that Americans usually come together during times of suffering.

"I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity," Trump said. "Without a major event where people pull together, that's hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing."

The president also said the country's divisions date back to both Republican and Democratic administrations, citing the scandals that led to Clinton's impeachment by the House in 1998.

"I want to see our country united. I want to bring our country back from a tremendous divisiveness, which has taken place not just over one year, over many years, including the Bush years, not just Obama." he said.

Comment: The US has spent the last couple of decades in societal and political devolution, hard processes to reverse. A whole string of 'ifs' mark the way to again achieving unity. The steps may be there, but the path forward has not yet been cleared.

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Stop

UK lawyers ask UN Human Rights Council to suspend Saudi Arabia

Dania Akkad
Middle East Eye
Wed, 31 Jan 2018 10:30 UTC
Salman al-Awdah
© Emad Alhusayni/FlickrSalman al-Awdah, arrested cleric
Two British human rights lawyers have asked for Saudi Arabia to be suspended from the UN Human Rights Council over 61 people "arbitrarily detained or disappeared" by the kingdom's authorities.

Ken Macdonald and Rodney Dixon submitted their report to the council in Geneva on Wednesday, stating that the arrests of prominent clerics, human rights activists, journalists, poets and academics were "in breach of both Saudi and international law". The report was commissioned by family members of some of the detained Saudis.

Their arrests last September, overshadowed by the high-profile purge two months later of princes and business moguls detained in Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton, are "part of an ongoing, established and long-running pattern of abuse" by Saudi Arabia.

At the time of the arrests, Madawi al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, wrote that the Saudi government was "intimidating the most famous and well-known religious figures in the country, sending a message to their followers".

Comment: See also:

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Pirates

Blowback: How ISIS became the result of the US invasion of Iraq

Mehdi Hasan
The Intercept
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 09:49 UTC
ISIS
© Countercurrents
"YOUR BROTHER CREATED ISIS," college student Ivy Ziedrich told a startled Jeb Bush after a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada, in May 2015. The then-Republican presidential hopeful tried to defend his elder sibling, former President George W. Bush, by blaming the rise of the Islamic State on Barack Obama, "because Americans pulled back" from Iraq in 2011.

It sounds a bit conspiratorial, right? Calling Dubya the creator of ISIS? The reality, however, is that Ziedrich's accusation wasn't far off the mark.

Had it not been for Bush's catastrophic decision to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003, in defiance of international law, the world's most feared terrorist group would not exist today. ISIS is blowback.


Comment: What about the CIA's hand in the creation of both Al-Qaeda and ISIS? A successful invention inspires versions with different attributes, functions and facilitation. No matter if they were from the same or entirely different origins, their purposes and results indicate who trains, funds and supplies their needs.

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Rocket

Is the US defenceless? Another Navy ballistic missile intercept fails the test

David B. Larter
Defense News
Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
failedmissile test
© Stars and StripesA Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) test failure in Hawaii.
A test shoot of the SM-3 Block IIA fired from an Aegis Ashore test site in Hawaii failed Wednesday, CNN has reported. The missile is designed to intercept ballistic missiles.

If confirmed, it would mark the second unsuccessful test of the Raytheon missile in the past year. It also deals a setback to U.S. missile defense efforts as North Korea makes seemingly daily progress on it goal of striking the U.S. mainland with nuclear-armed missiles. When reached for comment, U.S. Missile Defense Agency spokesman Mark Wright declined to comment on the outcome of the test.

"The Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Navy sailors manning the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex (AAMDTC) conducted a live-fire missile flight test using a Standard-Missile (SM)-3 Block IIA missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii, Wednesday morning," Wright said. CNN was first to report the failed test.

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Info

FBI makes last-ditch CYA effort to block memo release - Nunes bites back

Chuck Ross
The Daily Caller
Wed, 31 Jan 2018 20:28 UTC
DevinNunes
© Crooks and LiarsChair of House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes
The FBI expressed "grave concerns" on Wednesday over a controversial surveillance memo that could be released to the public this week.

In a rare move, the FBI issued an on-the-record statement claiming that the memo, which was crafted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, contains "material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy."


Comment: This contradicts the "off-the-record" statements released to Fox just the day before.


The four-page memo reportedly alleges that the Justice Department and FBI failed to provide information regarding the infamous Steele dossier in an application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant taken out against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The warrant was granted in Sept. 2016, just after Page left the Trump campaign. He is a prominent figure in the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC.

Comment: We'll have to see what exactly the memo says, and what happens as a result, before knowing for sure the precise reasons for such efforts by Schiff, the FBI and DOJ. Because it really looks like they have something to hide and are trying their best to prevent being publicly exposed. If that is indeed the case, they will only look worse when the memo IS released. Just look at this headline:
  • TOP DEMOCRAT ON U.S. HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE SAYS REPUBLICAN MEMO SETS STAGE FOR POSSIBLE FIRING OF SPECIAL COUNSEL MUELLER OR MORE LIKELY DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROSENSTEIN
These people are not exhibiting any rational thinking abilities. On the contrary, they're acting like a bunch of village idiots. If the memo is so bad, the worst thing they could do is attract so much attention to it, and to themselves. Case in point, Eric Holder:


Even the FBI Director, Christopher Wray, is pressuring the White House to redact ALL names in the memo. Nothing to hide, right?


See also:

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Bad Guys

Poland's Senate passes bill to outlaw blaming Poles for Holocaust atrocities, triggers diplomatic row with Israel


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 14:48 UTC
Poland Senate
© Agencja Gazeta / Slawomir Kaminskivia / Reuters
Poland's Senate has approved a bill that outlaws blaming Poles for the atrocities committed in WWII death camps on Polish soil, or even using the phrase "Polish death camp." The bill earlier infuriated Israeli leaders.

The upper house of the Polish parliament approved the bill with 57 votes for the motion and 23 against. There were two abstentions. To become law, it now needs only to be signed by the country's president, Andrzej Duda.

Under the new legislation, using the phrase "Polish death camp" or otherwise implying that Poles were complicit in Nazi crimes during WWII can result in up to three years in jail.

The measure, championed by the ruling and right-wing Law and Justice Party (Pis), drew strong denunciation from the Israeli government, Jewish rights groups and politicians. The bill's critics argued that it's designed at whitewashing history, in particular, some Poles' complicity in the Holocaust and restricting scholarly research on the topic.

Comment: Guess what? We live in a reality where countries are made up of people who both perpetuate crimes and are also victims of crimes. Wild concept, isn't it!? The problem however, is that focusing on victim-status imposes blinders that conceal our capacity for harm to others. Governments that push such an agenda, which is widespread in the West, are setting weak foundations bound to crumble.

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