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New US National Security Advisor John Bolton supports terrorists

Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 31 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
John Bolton

John "terrorists are ok if they help us meet our geopolitical objectives" Bolton
Talk surrounding US President Donald Trump's move to appoint John Bolton as his new National Security Advisor has focused on Bolton's role in promoting the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the profound contrast his appointment signifies in light of President Trump's 2016 campaign promises to "drain the swamp."

However, Bolton's appointment carries with it greater implications both to those apparently criticizing him as well as those attempting to promote him. Bolton has - for years - lobbied for a terrorist organization guilty of kidnapping and killing both US service members as well as US civilian contractors, along with an untold number of Iranian civilians and politicians in a campaign of terror that has stretched over several decades and continues today.

Worst of all, the terrorist organization Bolton lobbied for was literally listed on the US State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list during his lobbying activities - in direct violation of US counter-terrorism laws.

That organization - Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and its political front, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) - has since been delisted as of 2012. However, the organization was delisted not because it has fully given up armed terrorism, but because the US has planned since at least as early as 2009 - according to Washington's own policy papers - to use MEK as armed proxies against the nation of Iran.


Comment: See the Sott Focus: MEK Terrorist Death Cult: Meet Washington's 'Iranian Opposition'


Comment: Trump picked himself a real winner in choosing John Bolton to be his new National Security Advisor. Will Bolton's appointment mean reaching the tipping point the neocons seek in order to compel the US to go all-out bat-shit war-waging crazy on Iran and the rest of the world? It looks so.

The articles on just how malevolent Bolton is just continue to stream in. All based in horrible fact:

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Post-It Note

'Smoking gun' text messages show that it was Obama White House - NOT Russia - that interfered in 2016 election

Seraphim Hanisch
The Duran
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 01:22 UTC
Obama
Newly leaked text messages show that RussiaGate was planned and coordinated by Intel leaders and Obama administration months before the November election

The RussiaGate scandal is one of the most aggressively pushed and factually empty hoaxes a government has ever tried to pull on its people.

The fact we have this phony scandal in the United States, which is supposed to be the "land of the free", is also a huge travesty against both the integrity and honor of the nation.

It is also a scandal which reflects a most amazing degree of arrogance on the part of the liberals in the US government, in that they seem to have believed that they could fabricate a scandal and launch investigations based on it, only to get caught up in it themselves.

On March 29th, 2018, a possible 'smoking gun' was found in the investigation of the text messages between FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ lawyer Lisa Page that, if understood correctly, reveals the involvement of several Congressmen and other officials in the Obama Administration in a plot to stir up paranoia in order to justify launching of a fake investigation into the 'meddling' by Russian agencies in the upcoming US Presidential election.

Comment: Obviously the Obama White House never expected to have all these maneuvers brought to the light of day. The question is, now that it has, do Trump and his allies in Congress have the political will to mete out some justice beyond investigation??

See:

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Stock Up

China's Petroyuan was just born - and here's what it means

James Corbett
The Corbett Report
Sat, 31 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
petroyuan
It has been promised for 25 years. Its coming has been heralded as a world-changing event. It has launched a thousand headlines in the last few months. And it happened this week. But if you blinked you would have missed it.

What am I talking about? Why, the launch of a Chinese yuan-denominated oil futures contracts on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, of course! Or, in more headline-appropriate terms: The Birth of the Petroyuan!

Considering this event has been in the works for literally a quarter of a century (since the Chinese tried and failed to launch such a contract in 1993), the event came and went with remarkably little fanfare, even from the ChiCom mouthpiece press. Take Xinhua's decidedly low-key announcement: "China launches crude oil futures trading." No celebration of the glorious arrival of the dawn of a new monetary order. No bold proclamations about the impending dominance of the Chinese benchmark in global oil sales. Not even a screed about how the fearless leader, President For Life Xi, is bravely steering the country toward a petroyuan utopia. Just:
China on Monday launched trading of the yuan-denominated crude oil futures contracts at the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, which is the first futures listed on China's mainland to overseas investors.

The listed futures for trading are contracts to be delivered from September this year to March 2019. The benchmark prices of 15 contracts were set at 416 yuan (65.8 U.S. dollars), 388 yuan and 375 yuan per barrel, varied by delivery dates.

Li Qiang, Shanghai's Party chief, and Liu Shiyu, chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission, together rang the gong to open the trading session.

Comment: To learn more about this sea change in the world economy check out:

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Snakes in Suits

Erdogan unsurprisingly rejects Macron's offer to "get into bed with terrorists"


Al Jazeera
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 12:00 UTC
erdogan

Erdogan said Turkey had begun preparations to clear parts of northern Syria from 'militants' [Rasit Aydogan/Anadolu]
Turkish president's comments come after a delegation of Kurdish fighters in Syria met French President Emmanuel Macron.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected a French offer to mediate between Turkey and Kurdish fighters in Syria that have been blacklisted by Ankara.

His comments on Friday came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a delegation of Kurdish fighters in Paris and offered to mediate between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - an umbrella group of fighters dominated by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) - and the Turkish government.

"Who are you to mediate between Turkey and a terror group?" Erdogan said at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in the capital, Ankara.

Comment: Chickenhawk Macron: 'France ready to strike chemical weapons sites in Syria'

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USA

2018-2028: The Most Dangerous Decade

Chris Kanthan
Sott.net
Sat, 31 Mar 2018 22:12 UTC
cycles of violence USA
Every 80 years, nations often experience tumultuous events. There are different theories about what is behind this cycle - for example, the Fourth Turning theory focuses on the cyclical strengths of institutions versus individuals. Others surmise that four generations after a major crisis, there are no more older people to warn society of the dangers, and the younger people take peace and prosperity for granted.
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Dollar Gold

Nicolas Sarkozy: A case of crime and punishment?

Gilbert Doctorow
Consortium News
Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
GaddafiSarkosy
© Patrick Hertzog/AP
Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi, left, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, pose during a signing ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris in December 2007.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is under investigation for allegedly receiving millions of euros in illegal election campaign funding from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. This must be placed in the broader context of war crimes by Western heads of state.

The relationship between Sarkozy and Gaddafi fits the pattern of the old mafia joke: "You're my friend. I kill you for nothing."

Two news items jostled for attention on the front pages of mainstream newspapers and news bulletins of the main television channels on the Old Continent last week. One was the Sergei Skripal "nerve agent attack" and Theresa May's attempts to find support among EU leaders for a common stand against Russia as perpetrator. The other was the arrest and questioning of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy over allegations that he took 50 million euros in cash from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2007 for the election campaign that won him the presidency.

Comment: There are many 'heads of the Western hydra' that could/should come to reckoning if societies are demanding enough and the layers of protection, supplied by governments and colluders, are stripped bare. The evidence is all around us. We have to be willing to see it.

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Handcuffs

Kiriakou: I went to prison for disclosing the CIA's torture - Haspel helped cover it up

John Kiriakou
The Washington Post
Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
John Kiriakou
© Intercept
John Kiriakou
I was inside the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters on Sept. 11, 2001. Like all Americans, I was traumatized, and I volunteered to go overseas to help bring al-Qaeda's leaders to justice. I headed counterterrorism operations in Pakistan from January to May 2002. My team captured dozens of al-Qaeda fighters, including senior training-camp commanders. One of the fighters whom I played an integral role in capturing was Abu Zubaida, mistakenly thought at the time to be the third-ranking person in the militant group.

By that May, the CIA had decided to torture him. When I returned to CIA headquarters that month, a senior officer in the Counterterrorism Center asked me if I wanted to be "trained in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques." I had never heard the term, so I asked what it meant. After a brief explanation, I declined. I said that I had a moral and ethical problem with torture and that - the judgment of the Justice Department notwithstanding - I thought it was illegal.

Unfortunately, there were plenty of people in the U.S. government who were all too willing to allow the practice to go on. One of them was Gina Haspel, whom President Trump nominated Tuesday as the CIA's next director.


Comment: Agencies, such as the CIA, become magnets for pathological abusers. The public has to recognize, acknowledge and address psychopathic traits within its leaders, agencies and general population to understand the ramifications for victims as well as society in general. Without this filter, nothing can or will be done to change the parameters by which Americans are governed and who is deemed responsible.

See also: 'She tortured just for the sake of torture' says CIA whistleblower on CIA pick Gina Haspel

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Arrow Down

Sarkozy's downfall, the revenge of Gaddafi and Libya

John Wight
Sputnik
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 15:35 UTC
Sarkozy
© RTL.fr
Former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy
None other than Julius Caesar reminds us that "fortune, whose power is very great in all spheres, but particularly in warfare, often brings about great reversals by a slight tilt of the balance."

The wisdom contained in the words of Rome's most famous and illustrious emperor, a man whose very name is synonymous with power, is confirmed in the plight of Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of the French Republic for whom ignominy beckons with the news that he has been charged with corruption and influence peddling. Specifically, he is accused of attempting to suborn the senior judge who was heading the investigation into Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, concerning campaign finance illegalities.

The announcement that French authorities have decided to formally charge the country's former president with criminal wrongdoing on this matter comes on the back of the revelation that another investigation has begun in the wake of the allegation that Sarkozy accepted millions in illegal campaign donations from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi to help finance his 2007 bid for the presidency.

Comment: The destruction of Libya and the horror suffered by its people will never be compensated, but bringing one of the colluders to justice is a start.
See also:

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Nuke

Some say blame Trump when Iran races for the bomb

Trita Parsi
Foreign Policy
Thu, 29 Mar 2018 12:13 UTC
trump
© Columbia Journalism Review
If the United States breaks its end of the nuclear deal, the Islamic Republic's hard-liners are going to want a weapon ASAP.

The nuclear deal with Iran hangs by a thread. The appointment of John Bolton - an unapologetic proponent of war with Iran - as U.S. national security advisor has prompted celebrations among Iran deal detractors. The announcement that nuclear talks with North Korea will be held around the same time that U.S. President Donald Trump must decide whether to keep or kill the Iran deal has further complicated the picture. Yet few in Washington understand how Trump's gamble with Pyongyang may impact Tehran's nuclear calculations.

Conventional wisdom declares that Trump would be foolish to kill the Iran deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) if he genuinely seeks to reach an agreement with the North Koreans. If Trump shows that he does not honor America's agreements, why would Pyongyang strike a deal with him?

But Trump is anything but conventional. His logic runs in the opposite direction, and Bolton will be more than happy to enable Trump's worst instincts. By killing the JCPOA, Trump thinks he'll signal to the North Koreans that they should have no doubt that he is ready to walk away from the talks if he doesn't get what he wants. After all, walking away from ongoing negotiations is much easier than killing an existing deal.

Comment: What Trump says and what he doesn't say send messages, and as such, have the power to validate or change a point of view. Trump's ability to be diplomatic occurs off camera and is certainly not evident in his blustery media displays some have come to cringingly love. That aside, the US is no shining example by which to lord judgement on any other nation.

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Jet3

Mattis admits US is involved in planning Saudi strikes in Yemen

Jason Ditz
AntiWar.com
Wed, 28 Mar 2018 01:00 UTC
Mattis
© Unknown
Defense Secretary James Mattis
Says US involved in 'dynamic battlefield management'

In a new meeting with reporters, Defense Secretary James Mattis has offered new details about US involvement in the Saudi invasion of Yemen, providing specifics about what the US is doing that contradict long-standing claims of a very limited, non-combat involvement.

Mattis now admits the US is "doing the planning" in Yemen strikes, and has shown the Saudis how the concept of a no-strike zone is supposed to work, and engaged in a maturing process of "battlefield management" intended to see Saudi strikes killing fewer civilians.

Mattis also tried to spin the already established US involvement in mid-air refueling as beneficial for civilians being bombed. He warned Saudi bombers would make "rash or hasty decisions" if they had to worry about running out of fuel before bombing a place, and might take less time to avoid hitting civilian targets.

Comment: Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen is really a Western war against Yemen.

See also: 'Mad Dog' Mattis tells Senate US support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen will reduce civilian casualties

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