Puppet Masters

Russia's Big Gamble in Libya

Steve Brown
Sott.net
Fri, 17 Jan 2020 20:09 UTC

First, the background. When the United States abandoned the Iran agreement, that left Turkey's oil imports adrift due to newly imposed US Treasury sanctions on Iranian oil exports. By December 2018, Turkey was forced to look elsewhere for its oil imports, with Libya being the most logical choice by price and proximity, despite the violence there. Misrata rebels allied with Libya Dawn in charge of Libya's largest free trade port, arranged oil exports from Zawiya and Sirte to Italy* and Turkey, at favorable prices.

Recall that Tripolitania (west) and Cyrenaica (east) are at war, and Cyrenaica has its own oil production and storage terminals in the east while most proceeds (for both belligerents) in the Libyan conflict are settled by Libya's National Oil Company (NOC). But little of that mattered to Turkey's oil import market and Turkey signed an energy corridor agreement with Libya. Then in April of 2019, the Libyan National Army's offensive versus Tripolitania's Government of National Accord (GNA) began, resulting in the fall of Sirte early this year.

Turkey's foray into Libyan oil ran into trouble by June of 2018. Turkey objected to LNA rogue oil deals free of NOC oversight, where the NOC's mandate was to enforce the UN arms embargo by disbursing funds only for civilian government use. Then the LNA's April offensive resulted in air strikes on Misrata and the west, impacting Turkey's oil imports. The fall of Sirte and LNA strikes on NOC offices and the Zawiya oil terminal late in 2019 dealt serious blows to Turkeys' oil ambitions in Libya.

Democratic Party divide: Anti-war progressive candidates face off against mainstream war-hawks

Philip Weiss
Mondweiss
Wed, 15 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC

A clear divide in the Democratic Party presidential debate last night was between mainstream candidates who see American troops performing a vital role in the Middle East and the two progressive candidates who don't. The talking point for the mainstream candidates was fighting "terrorism." Amy Klobuchar went so far as to call Iran a "terrorist regime."

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren did not use that word, while offering eloquent statements about the failures of U.S. foreign policy.

All the leading candidates said they would restore the Iran deal that Trump has sought to destroy. But they differed over withdrawing troops from the region.

Comment: CNN, Warren's sexism jibe against Sanders backfires as #CNNisTrash trends on Twitter

Iranian military source: Russia gave Israel codes to Syrian air defense systems, enabling airstrikes

Yasser Okbi & Maariv Hashavua
The Jerusalem Post
Tue, 21 Mar 2017 17:04 UTC

Kuwaiti daily quotes Iran Defense Ministry source as saying Iran was able to change the codes without Russia's knowledge, enabling Friday's missile launch against Israeli aircraft

Iran has accused Russia of giving the codes for Syria's anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, a senior official in the engineering department of Iran's Defense Department told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Jarida on Monday.

According to the report, much remains unknown about Israel's attack on a Hezbollah weapons convoy and the Syrian response to the Israeli fighter jets early Friday morning. Israel has reportedly attacked dozens of times in Syrian territory since Hezbollah joined the Syrian civil war in 2012, but Friday marked the first time that an anti-aircraft missile had been fired at an IAF jet.

Al-Jarida's Tehran correspondent, Farzad Qassemi, cited a source in the Iranian Defense Ministry as saying that Iranian experts had changed the operation codes for the Syrian air defense system, which is what enabled the anti-aircraft missiles to be used against the Israeli Air Force on Friday morning.

Comment: Now we have - in addition to a third-hand claim made in 2009 that Russia had, in 2008, given Israel codes for accessing the Tor-M1 air-defense systems it sold to Iran - another, more recent, example of the 'exchanging of codes' by Russia to Israel.

This report goes some way towards explaining why Syria has been bombarded with sporadic but successful Israeli airstrikes all these years. It also shows that Iran has found a workaround, so having access codes isn't by itself sufficient.

Since the above 'trade', Syria successfully shot down an Israeli jet (or two), in February 2018, and it has been able to repel many if not most Israeli missiles fired from jets.

Modern Poland rewrites its WWII past: Patriotism, negligence or something else?

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Fri, 17 Jan 2020 17:41 UTC

Ignoring the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Warsaw is just the latest questionable decision by Polish authorities, eager to rewrite WWII history to better fit modern political imperatives. However, patriotism it is not.

Units of the Red Army and the First Polish Army entered Warsaw on January 17, 1945, ending more than five years of German occupation. Seventy-five years after the fact, however, Warsaw is choosing not to honor its liberators.

Quite the opposite, in fact: modern Polish authorities insist that their country was a purely innocent victim of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, asserting their moral equivalence.

This kind of historical revisionism is clearly politically motivated. While the Polish People's Republic (1947-1989) was a client of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Third Polish Republic hastened to become a vassal of the US upon its conclusion, joining NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004.

Searching for Steele: Investigative documentary exposes how US military fomented sectarian hate in Iraq that will last for generations

21st Century Wire
Sun, 12 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC

Our weekly documentary film curated by the editorial team at 21WIRE.

Following the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, we can now look back at the US occupation of Iraq which began in 2003, and which directly led to emergence of terrorist group. One of the key factors in motivating extremists in Iraq was a chain of US-funded torture centres in the country which helped drive one of the deadliest sectarian wars ever in the region. One of the key actors in the clandestine violence and terrorism sponsored by the US is a man named James Steele. In this 15-month investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic, investigators revealed how the retired US colonel - who reported directly to General David Petraeus, both veterans of American proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua - played a key role in training and overseeing commandos who tortured Iraqis, and foment sectarian hate for a generation. Through their efforts, these men unleashed hell on Earth.

Comment: More on the clandestine activities of Mr. Steele:

Top US general says Iranian military involvement against ISIS in Iraq 'a positive thing'

Robert Burns
The Times of Israel
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:15 UTC

Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey argues that Tehran's involvement is only a problem 'if it results in sectarianism'

© AFP/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
General Martin Dempsey testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, on September 16, 2014.

Iran's direct support for an Iraqi push to dislodge the Islamic State group from the northern city of Tikrit could turn out to be "a positive thing" if it does not inflame sectarian tensions, the top US general said Tuesday.

The statement by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reflected the delicate balance Washington is trying to strike between limiting Iranian influence and allowing Iraqi leaders to determine their own path to defeating the Islamic State.

US officials have said Iraq did not ask the US to provide air support for the Tikrit offensive, even though the US-led military coalition has been conducting airstrikes in much of Iraq since August and has deployed hundreds of US soldiers to try to regenerate an Iraqi army that collapsed last June.

Dempsey said Iran and its proxies have been operating inside Iraq since 2004, but the Tikrit campaign signals a new level of involvement.

Comment: Which they did do (perform in a credible way). And to which the US responded last week by assassinating Soleimani.

Heshmat Alavi wrote DOZENS of anti-Iran articles for MSM. Turns out he's an M.E.K. sockpuppet

Murtaza Hussain
The Intercept
Sun, 09 Jun 2019 18:48 UTC

Comment: The vast majority of what you hear about Iran is Fake News, literally...

In 2018, President Donald Trump was seeking to jettison the landmark nuclear deal that his predecessor had signed with Iran in 2015, and he was looking for ways to win over a skeptical press. The White House claimed that the nuclear deal had allowed Iran to increase its military budget, and Washington Post reporters Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly asked for a source. In response, the White House passed along an article published in Forbes by a writer named Heshmat Alavi.

"Iran's current budget is funded largely through 'oil, taxes, increasing bonds, [and] eliminating cash handouts or subsidies' for Iranians, according to an article by a Forbes contributor, Heshmat Alavi, sent to us by a White House official," Rizzo and Kelly reported. The White House had used Alavi's article — itself partly drawn from Iranian sources — to justify its decision to terminate the agreement.

Comment: MEK has a long and terrifying history. The fact that neocon hawks like John Bolton are supporters only makes it worse. Naturally Israel is mixed up in it, as they view Iran as their principal threat to regional hegemony.

The complicit Western media distorts Gen. Soleimani's role in Iran to justify killing him

James North
Mondoweiss
Fri, 17 Jan 2020 15:06 UTC

© Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia
Qasem Soleimani, Commander of Quds Forces during National AGIR commanders conference, September 2013

The U.S. mainstream media's shoddy, dishonest reporting about the Iran Crisis continues. The media refuses to closely examine the Trump administration's latest justification for killing Qasem Soleimani — that the Iranian general was responsible for the deaths of "thousands of U.S. troops."

Trump's original rationale — that Soleimani was planning "imminent" attacks on U.S. embassies and soldiers — has crumbled away. Trump himself in a Tweet dismissed the false "imminent" charge, saying "it really doesn't matter because of his [Soleimani's] horrible past!"

Some days ago, the Washington Post looked into the charge. It consulted a number of experts — all Americans — and ended by citing Brian Hook, the U.S. State Department's Special Representative for Iran, who contended, (with suspicious precision), that Iran was "responsible for the death of at least 608 American service members."

Comment: One reason for eliminating Soleimani could be his outspokenness over the true origins of ISIS. And remember, the true reason for any American actions in the Middle East is, in the end, at the service of Israel.

Pentagon admits there WERE U.S. casualties from Iranian airstrikes, but 'only 11 injuries'

Frank Miles
Fox News
Fri, 17 Jan 2020 11:01 UTC

Comment: The Pentagon's P.R. operation regarding the damage Iran inflicted on its largest airbase in Iraq, and regarding U.S. casualties, continues...

© Emiliene Malfatto/WaPo
U.S. troops walk by a crater caused by Iranian airstrikes inside al-Assad Air Base near Anbar, Iraq, on Jan. 13, 2020.

Eleven U.S. service members were flown out of Al- Assad Air Base in Iraq and treated for concussion symptoms after Iran's rocket attack targeting two Iraqi military bases earlier this month, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command revealed Thursday night.

President Trump and U.S. officials had said earlier that no Americans were killed or injured in the Jan. 8 attack.

Several U.S. troops "were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed. As a standard procedure, all personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injury, and if deemed appropriate are transported to a higher level of care," Capt. Bill Urban, the Central Command spokesman, said Thursday.

He said that although no U.S. service members were killed in the attack on Al Assad Air Base, "in the days following the attack, out of an abundance of caution, some service members were transported... to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, others were sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for follow-on screening. When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq following screening. The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual's medical status. At this time, eight individuals have been transported to Landstuhl, and three have been transported to Camp Arifjan."

Comment: When US media was first allowed on the base about 4 days after the strikes, reporters heard Lt Col Staci Coleman, the U.S. air force officer who runs the airfield there, say:

"It's miraculous no one was hurt. Who thinks they're going to have ballistic missiles launched at them and suffer no casualties?"

Clearly, the brass, rank-and-file, their families and the media CAN and DO effectively engage in 'conspiracies of silence' about such things.

Maybe "11 concussions" is all there is to it, but maybe the Pentagon is in the process of walking back its initial claim because it was much worse than that.

See also: Iraqi TV network: Iranian airstrikes on al-Assad airbase resulted in hundreds of US casualties and extensive damage - UPDATE: 'Letter is fake'

Voice of America confuses Communist leader with new Russian PM... showing once again MSM can't do Russia

RT
Thu, 16 Jan 2020 18:08 UTC

US-government sponsored Voice of America is well aware that Russia's new PM Mikhail Mishustin is "a career bureaucrat who never had political ambitions" but, strangely enough, it doesn't seem to know what the man looks like.

Kudos to the US outlet for having noticed a major shake-up in the Russian government, but someone at the desk needs to read up on the country's internal affairs, it would seem - if only for better face recognition. A photo of the long-time leader of Russia's Communist party, Gennady Zyuganov, has appeared on VOA's article about Mishustin - who was ratified by the parliament as Prime Minister on Thursday.

The caption under the picture reads "Russia's new Prime Minister Mishustin" - and neither photo nor caption seems to be going anywhere over an hour later. Who'd ever care to check, right?

Comment: Yet another glaring (albeit, sadly, unsurprising) example of the sorry state of US journalism.

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Puppet Masters

Russia's Big Gamble in Libya

Democratic Party divide: Anti-war progressive candidates face off against mainstream war-hawks

Iranian military source: Russia gave Israel codes to Syrian air defense systems, enabling airstrikes

Modern Poland rewrites its WWII past: Patriotism, negligence or something else?

Searching for Steele: Investigative documentary exposes how US military fomented sectarian hate in Iraq that will last for generations

Top US general says Iranian military involvement against ISIS in Iraq 'a positive thing'

Heshmat Alavi wrote DOZENS of anti-Iran articles for MSM. Turns out he's an M.E.K. sockpuppet

The complicit Western media distorts Gen. Soleimani's role in Iran to justify killing him

Pentagon admits there WERE U.S. casualties from Iranian airstrikes, but 'only 11 injuries'

Voice of America confuses Communist leader with new Russian PM... showing once again MSM can't do Russia

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