All posts tagged: Donald trump

Trump’s cave-in on Russia

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by Philip Roddis A friend asked my thoughts on the allegations of Russia having hacked the US election. I’ve no inside knowledge but we’d have to be super credulous to accept them purely on FBI/CIA say-so. For one thing, no other other state is so brazenly weird in projecting its own sociopathies onto those that stand in its way. This after all is the state that overthrew Yanukovych to install a semi fascist regime in Kiev; Zelaya to aid a military coup in Honduras: the state we know, from an Ed Snowden Obama wanted locked up with key thrown away, to have spied on Chancellor Merkel and other ‘allies’. (These being specimen charges. A fuller list is given in the previous post.) For another, US moves in Syria and Ukraine, and the express view of elements within its Deep State that a nuclear war can be won, betray a waning empire determined to ‘contain’ Russia. I’ve noted this before but it’ll stand repeating. Too many of the left/liberal intelligentia fail to grasp the true extent …

Intel Behind Trump’s Syria Attack Questioned

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by Ray McGovern, via Information Clearing House The mainstream media is so hostile to challenges to its groupthinks that famed journalist Seymour Hersh had to take his take-down of President Trump’s April 6 attack on Syria to Germany, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. June 26, 2017 “Information Clearing House” – Legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is challenging the Trump administration’s version of events surrounding the April 4 “chemical weapons attack” on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun – though Hersh had to find a publisher in Germany to get his information out. In the Sunday edition of Die Welt, Hersh reports that his national security sources offered a distinctly different account, revealing President Trump rashly deciding to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airbase on April 6 despite the absence of intelligence supporting his conclusion that the Syrian military was guilty. Hersh draws on the kind of inside sources from whom he has earned longstanding trust to dispute that there ever was a “chemical weapons attack” and to assert that Trump was told …

Trump Has Been Continuing Obama’s Syria-Policy

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by Eric Zuesse U.S. President Donald Trump, who during the election-campaign ferociously condemned Barack Obama’s foreign policies, while asserting nothing concrete of his own, has, as the U.S. President, committed himself quite clearly to continuing Obama’s publicly stated policy on Syria, which policy was to place, as the first priority, the elimination of ISIS, and as the policy to follow that, the elimination and replacement of Syria’s government. I have previously indicated that on June 19th “Russia Announces No-Fly Zone in Syria — War Against U.S. There”, and that the early indications are that Trump has changed his Syria-policy to accommodate Russia’s demands there; but, prior to June 19th, Trump was actually following Obama’s publicly stated Syria-policy. As also will be shown here, Obama’s publicly stated policy — to destroy ISIS and then to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad — was actually less extreme than his real policy, which was to overthrow Assad and to use the jihadist forces in Syria (especially Al Qaeda in Syria) to achieve that objective. Trump, at least until 19 …

Mass Incarceration, Prison Labor in the United States

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by John Staunton, via Global Research The Federal Prison Industries (FPI) under the brand UNICORE operates approximately 52 factories (prisons) across the United States. Prisoners manufacture or assemble a number of products for the US military, homeland security,and federal agencies according to the UNICORE/FPI website. They produce furniture, clothing and circuit boards in addition to providing computer aided design services and call center support for private companies. UNICORE/FPI makes its pitch for employing call center support personnel to firms thinking about off-shoring their call center functions. The logic is that, hey!, they may be prisoners, but it’s keeping the jobs in the USA that matters. Fair enough. That approach cuts out the middleman though, those Americans desperate for any kind of work but, through no fault of their own, are not behind prison bars and employable by UNICORE/FPI. Sure, it seems a heartless statement and there are any number of angles to take on why the USA is the world’s number one incarcerator: Capitalism, racism, social and political injustice, a pay-as-you-go legal system, bone-headed policy …

Washington’s Dangerous Middle East Agenda

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from New Eastern Outlook It’s clear at this point that the recent visit of US President Trump to Saudi Arabia and Israel was about setting events into motion in order to fundamentally alter the present balance of power in the entire Middle East to the greater advantage of the United States and US energy geopolitics. As with most everything that Washington tries to do to rebuild its rapidly declining global dominance, this latest move by Washington to incite the Saudi Kingdom to ignite regime change in Qatar and escalate a form of oil war disguised as a Sunni-Shi’ite power conflict already looks in serious trouble. I share with you a recent interview with an Arabic-language Middle East magazine in question and answer format. Q: What can you say about the conflict between Qatar Gulf at this moment after the Arabic-Islamic-American summit at Riyadh? WE: In my view this is a deep power struggle between Qatar and Saudi Arabia that has little to do with stated reasons regarding Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. The action to isolate …

What Did John Brennan and Anonymous Sources Really Say?

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by Philip Giraldi from UNZ Review The Washington Post and a number of other mainstream media outlets are sensing blood in the water in the wake of former CIA Director John Brennan’s public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. The Post headlined a front page featured article with: Brennan’s explosive testimony just made it harder for the GOP to protect Trump. The article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign: reviewed intelligence that showed ‘contacts and interaction’ between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump campaign.” Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled Brennan: “Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides”. The precise money quote by Brennan that the two articles chiefly rely on is: “I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the …

JFK at 100: The War on Our Heroes Part 1

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If the bullets hadn’t flown, John Fitzgerald Kennedy might have been one hundred years old today. Granted, it’s not likely, put definitely possible. If the parade route hadn’t been changed, and the roof taken off the limousine, and the secret service ordered to stand down, the world would likely be a very different place. If the man had safely negotiated the last 54 years, and was still breathing today, what would he make of this mess?

Watergate Redux or ‘Deep State’ Coup?

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The whole Comey/Russophobia issue continues to spiral past propaganda, past delusion and into total madness. Social media is boiling with neoliberals telling each other Trump is a “new Nixon” for sacking Comey. The WaPo suggests a Russian photographer smuggled a bug into the Oval Office. Fox TV host Julie Roginsky tells viewers Russia is invading countries and “forcing” the inhabitants to speak Russian, and will soon be America’s “new overlords.” Ex-Tory MP Louise Mensch thinks the only way to stop that happening is to do “precision bombing raids” (on Moscow presumably). What is the root of this dangerous folie en masse? In an article at Defend Democracy, Robert Parry posits this as evidence the intelligence agencies are now de facto kingmakers, who have created the Russia-gate and Comey issues in a bid to both discredit and manipulate Trump, just as they promoted the investigation of Clinton’s email irregularities to destroy her chance of the Presidency. President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday reflected a growing concern inside the White House that the …

American Democracy: A Dead Man Walking

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by Paul Craig Roberts Trump’s “sell-out,” as it is called, coming on top of Obama’s eight-year “sell-out,” is instructive. We have now had a Democratic president who sold out the people who elected him and a Republican president who has done the same thing. This is a very interesting point, the meaning of which most people miss. But not Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. At the Valdai discussion club, Putin summed up Western democracy, which I paraphrase as follows: In the West, voters cannot change policies through elections, because the ruling elites control whoever is elected. Elections give the appearance of democracy, but voting does not change the policies that favor war and the elites. Therefore, the will of the people is impotent. People are experiencing that they and their votes have no influence on the conduct of affairs of the country. This makes them afraid, frusrated, and angry, a combination of emotions that is dangerous to the ruling elite, who in response organize the powers of the state against the people, while urging them with …

The US Aggression on Syria and the Principles of a “Just War”

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by Prof. Vladislav Sotirovic The US military forces committed a classical example of the aggression on one sovereign and independent state on April 6th, 2017 by bombing the territory of Syrian Arab Republic with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Killing civilians who are proclaimed, as usual, as “collateral damage”. A formal excuse for the aggression was based, as many times before (from Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya), on traditional political false flags and mainstream media fake news used by the US propaganda machinery to sanction the Pentagon’s hegemonic policy of the Pax Americana. The Fundamental Dilemma The fundamental dilemma is why the US administrations of Obama & Trump were and are supporting different kinds of the Islamic fundamentalist jihad organizations in Syria and the Mideast regardless on the fact that they are called by the White House as “moderate terrorists”? A terrorist is simply a terrorist and there is no any difference between “moderate” or “hardcore” terrorist if the first term can exist at all from both logical and moral reasons. It is already known that …

A Lot of What You Know About North Korea Is Racist Nonsense

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Traffic ladies are iconic to North Korea and it’s a highly respected profession. Their movements are definitive and militaristic, saluting party delegates as they pass as pictured here. Photo Elliot/Earth Nutshell. Andrew Dobbs in Defiant: Pyongyang is not crazy Less than three months into Pres. Donald Trump’s reign we can already say that there is a non-trivial chance that the United States will soon be engaged in a nuclear war. The threat is still remote, but all the pieces are in place. An aircraft carrier group en route to North Korea, anonymous sources threatening a preemptive strike against them, a recent unilateral attack on the Syrian government and the dropping of a 21,000 pound conventional bomb in Afghanistan — interpreted by many as a message for North Korea. Any misjudgments or mistakes could easily spark a shooting war in which the North Koreans will face an existential threat they can only resist with their nuclear weapons. The United States would be likely to respond in kind. The main thing standing between us and this scenario? The cooler heads …

Mad-Dog Mattis Going Rabid

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byEric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org On Monday, April 25th, the AP headlined, “US general in Afghanistan suggests Russia arming the Taliban” and reported that U.S. Pentagon chief James “Mad Dog” Mattis was accusing Russia of violating the sovereignty of unnamed nation(s) and was supplying weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan — the very same group that the U.S. back in 1979 had begun arming in Pakistan so that the Taliban would invade Afghanistan and lure Soviet forces into Afghanistan, so as to make the Soviets “bleed” there, as the U.S. itself had bled in its Vietnam War. The U.S. National Security Advisor at that time went to Pakistan and rallied the Taliban there by saying “Your cause is right, and God is on your side!” (see above video). Mattis was also quoted in this news-report as saying, “We’re going to have to confront Russia where what they’re doing is contrary to international law or denying the sovereignty of other countries.” The United States has, in fact, invaded Syria — routinely violating the sovereignty of …

VIDEO: Trump Won’t Be Cancelling World War 3 After All

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from StormCloudsGathering On April 6th, 2017, on the 100 year anniversary of America’s entry into World War I, Donald Trump launched airstrikes against against the Syrian government; in retaliation for a gas attack supposedly perpetrated by Assad. There was no investigation, not even a hack job of a frame up like we had in 2003. The evidence we do have contradicts the official story, and the stakes are much higher this time around. Full transcript and sources available here.

Donald Trump Has Been Played Like a Violin

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by David William Pear, via OpEd News The Central Intelligence Agency, the Democrats, neocons in the Republican Party and the Main Stream Media (MSM) have gotten under Donald Trump’s thin skin. When attacked, Trump’s instinct is to lash out at his attackers with counter attacks, without regard to his truthfulness or not. When Trump was a candidate for President that meant a war of words. As the President of the United States of America he has resorted to a dangerous and deadly shooting war of aggression. Trumps critics are so numerous, unrelenting and persistent that like a cornered rat, Trump lost any sanity that he may have possessed and instead of lashing out at his tormentors, he lashed out at Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. Just like a drunk that comes home and beats his wife, terrorize his children, busts up the furniture and kicks the dog it accomplished nothing but chaos, but it feels so good to blow off some steam, even if it is at the wrong target. Now Trump has a lot of …

Big Bangs Can Not End The War On Afghanistan – Admitting Defeat Will

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from Moon of Alabama 5667 days after the beginning of the war between the mightiest military of the world and local Afghan farmers, Pentagon reporters were excited to report: BREAKING: US drops largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan – GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, via @barbarastarrcnn — Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) 13 April 2017 The U.S. generals demand, as they always do, more troops to “break the stalemate”. But there is no stalemate. The Afghan farmers are winning. The Taliban control more areas now than they ever controlled since 2002. Dropping 22,000 lbs of high explosives on some shack will not change that trend. (Though it will drown the news that the U.S. military just bombed and killed 18 of its Kurdish proxy forces in Syria.) So what can the U.S. do in Afghanistan but blaming Russia and Iran on dubious grounds. Those countries – like China and other nearby countries – see the obviously coming U.S. retreat and talk with the Taliban to prepare for it. The U.S. will have to and will leave and acknowledge …

The Impending Clash Between the U.S. and Russia

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by Mike Whitney, 7 April 2017, UNZ Review President Donald Trump’s missile attack on the Shayrat Airfield in Western Syria was a poorly planned display of imperial muscle-flexing that had the exact opposite effect of what was intended. While the attack undoubtedly lifted the morale of the jihadists who have been rampaging across the country for the last six years, it had no military or strategic value at all. The damage to the airfield was very slight and there is no reason to believe it will impact the Syrian Army’s progress on the ground. The attack did however kill four Syrian servicemen which means the US troops in Syria can no longer be considered part of an international coalition fighting terrorism. The US is now a hostile force that represents an existential threat to the sovereign government. Is that the change that Trump wanted? As of Friday, Russia has frozen all military cooperation with the United States. According to the New York Times: In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, …

Questions following the US attack on Syria

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Last night, and much to chagrin of people who thought Trump would not escalate matters in Syria, the US military launched 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria, allegedly attempting to destroy a government airbase. They warned the Russian government before-hand, who will have passed on that warning to the Syrians, meaning the area was probably on alert, with any important equipment or personnel removed. The Pentagon have also stated that, at this time, there are no plans for any other strikes or any campaign in Syria.

Idlib chemical attack: A sign no change of policy is on the horizon

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The alleged chemical attack, reported yesterday, is the latest in a series of atrocities notionally carried out by the Syrian government (“The Regime”, in the partisan parlance of the press). There has not been time, as yet, to fully examine and analyse all the evidence – the claims and counter claims, the photographs and videos – but it would be a massive mistake to view it in a vacuum.

Does the Washington Establishment Seek War with Russia?

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by Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org Which does the Washington’s Establishment prefer: a U.S. President who wants to reach new agreements with Russia, or a U.S. President who wants to replace all of Russia’s allies? What we’ve been having recently is solely Presidents who want to replace all of Russia’s allies — and they’ve been succeeding at that, so far: They replaced Saddam Hussein. They replaced Muammar Gaddafi. They replaced Viktor Yanukovych. They’re still trying to replace Bashar al-Assad, and also Iran’s leadership. There still is question, however, as to whether U.S. President Donald Trump will continue this string; and many in America’s ‘news’media consider him to be too favorable toward Russia. The aristocracy own the few ‘news’media that have substantial audiences in the U.S., and their advertisers are also overwhelmingly owned by them; and the politicians’ campaigns tend also to be receiving most of their money from them; so, generally, it’s considered political suicide to buck what the few billionaires are rather united on in America, and what they seem quite united on …