Jennifer Rubin: Hillary Must Stop Peace With Iran at All Costs!

by Daniel McAdams,

After anxiously and incessantly angling for a hardcore neoconservative to take the Republican presidential nomination, the Washington Post’s online blogger Jennifer Rubin has made the long journey home. Rebuffed by Republican voters who selected Donald Trump as their candidate, Rubin’s gunpowder breath is now desperately seeking Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s ear.

Her message? This damned Iran deal is improving US/Iran relations and that is completely intolerable. “Hillary: Please bomb something over there,” Rubin screeches, in her latest installment of the neocon chronicles.

Why is Rubin so hot and bothered? Well, Secretary of State John Kerry has dared to encourage some business investment in Iran after the nuclear deal has begun paying dividends in more stable relations. Doing business is always preferable to sanctions and blockades because it makes war less likely. Each side has too much to lose when there are economic interests at stake so each side will act with more caution. As when a Chinese incident with a US spy plane led the damaged US plane to land in China, yet both sides realized that economic relations were sufficiently important that the potentially volatile situation needed to be carefully walked back from the brink of conflict.

War kills economic opportunities for the average people on both sides, but it also produces unique financial opportunities for the specially connected. Like the people around Jennifer Rubin.

Rubin is given a little corner of Washington’s “paper of record,” but she is either so ill-formed when it comes to the basic situation in Syria that one wonders why she has such a platform when surely there are plenty of better-informed high school students who could fill the slot…or she is purposely obfuscating from her little perch in which case the Washington Post is a witting party to her deception.

For example she writes this:

This week we have also learned that as many as 100,000 Iranian-backed militiamembers are fighting in Iraq…

But she does not inform her readers that these Iranian militia members are in fact fighting ISIS in Iraq. In other words, they are helping us defeat our sworn enemy. While Washington is pained to admit it, even John Kerry said not long ago that having so many additional fighters taking on ISIS in Iraq is “helpful” to America’s efforts to defeat ISIS.

http://original.antiwar.com/daniel-mcadams/2016/08/18/jennifer-rubin-hillary-must-stop-peace-iran-costs/

 

Gus: The American pain is that the Administration is not so much trying to defeat ISIS but to let it fester, while appearing to fight it, until Syria is won to benefit the Saudis... This is the real game plan. Rubin is thus employed to create a bit more confusion in the mind of the "ordinary" Americans, in regard to the murky plot'litics of the US double dealing Administration. The Washington Post obliges. Unfortunately, the Russians have pooped on the pitch of the US game plan.

see also:

Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat and founder of the Conflicts Forum, discusses how Washington’s foreign policy hawks are trying to stall an Obama-Putin agreement on Syria until Hillary Clinton is (presumably) elected so the new Cold War with Russia can proceed unabated.

 

From Bill Moran...

Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul penned a scathing piece in the Washington Post accusing the Kremlin of intervening in the American election, based solely on the evidence of a harsh article regarding Clinton published by Sputnik News. Boy, was he wrong!

My name is Bill Moran. A native Arizonan, I have worked on dozens of Democratic Party campaigns, and am more recently a proud writer for Sputnik’s Washington, DC bureau.

It also seems, as of Thursday morning, that I am the source of controversy between the United States and Russia — something I never quite could have imagined — for writing an article that was critical of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a stinging headline and a harsh hashtag. 

So, what is this controversy all about? This weekend I published a piece with the headline, “Secret File Confirms Trump Claim: Obama, Hillary ‘Founded ISIS’ to Oust Assad.” I also tweeted out this story from our platform with the hashtag #CrookedHillary. Guilty as charged.

On Wednesday night, Michael McFaul took to the Washington Post to opine that the article was part of a Kremlin-led conspiracy to subvert the American election, referring to the person running the Sputnik Twitter account (that particular day being me) as a “Russian official,” before warning (threatening) that we “might want to think about what we plan to do” if Clinton becomes president.

I feel it is necessary to pause, here, before having a substantive argument about the article’s merits and purpose within the public discourse, to address the severity of the accusation leveled against me and Sputnik’s staff (not by name until now), and its disturbing implications on freedom of speech, dissent, and American democracy — implications that I hope Mr. McFaul, other public proponents of the Hillary campaign, and the cadre of Russian critics consider.

Pursuant to 18 US Code Chapter 115, I’d be writing this article to you from prison, if not awaiting a death sentence, if I were writing content ordered down to me by the Kremlin with a view towards subverting the American election. I am instead writing this piece from my favorite coffeeshop in downtown DC. I am not a Russian official. Our staff members are not Russian officials. We are not Kremlin controlled. We do not speak with Vladimir Putin over our morning coffee.

Mr. McFaul worked side-by-side with the former Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, and his routine accusations that Trump supporters are siding with Putin leaves me to imagine that he is a Clinton insider if not a direct campaign surrogate. That such a public official would suggest reprisals against those with differing viewpoints in the event that she wins is disturbing.
Our outlet does not endorse or support any particular US presidential candidate, but rather reports news and views for the day in as diligent a manner as we possibly can. This is evident in our very harsh headlines on Trump, which Mr. McFaul failed to review before making his attack.

In fact, the Atlantic Council’s Ben Nimmo leveled a completely different view on Friday morning, calling our coverage “uncharacteristically balanced,” but arguing that, because we report generally negative stories on both candidates, our real target is American democracy itself. 

It may surprise Mr. McFaul and Mr. Nimmo to learn that, in my previous work on political campaigns, I actually helped fundraise for Hillary Clinton — the candidate whose inner circle is now labelling my colleagues and I as foreign saboteurs. It is neither my fault nor Sputnik’s fault that Secretary Clinton’s campaign has devolved into one predicated upon fear and conspiracy, where the two primary lines are “the Russians did it” and that she is not Trump.

Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating since presidential polling began. Until recently, Clinton had the second lowest approval rating since presidential polling began. Their numbers are worse than even Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, in fact.

The fact that more than 50% of the country dislikes both presidential candidates is not a Kremlin conspiracy. Would it be appropriate for us to present to our readers an alternate universe a la MSNBC, which defended Clinton’s trustworthiness by saying she only perjured herself three times?

There is a reason why both presidential candidates have received less than fawning coverage from our outlet: they have not done anything to warrant positive coverage. My colleagues, also Americans, like so many others in this country, wish they would.

Returning to the substance of the article to which Mr. McFaul took exception. This piece was written because it was newsworthy — it informed our readers and forced them to think.

The provocative headline of the story was based on a statement by Trump that is a bit of a stretch (notice the air quotes on the title), but which highlights a major policy decision made by this administration that has not been properly scrutinized by the mainstream media.

In the article, for those who actually read it, I refer to the 2012 DNI report that correctly calculated that Obama’s policy in Syria would lead to the development of a Salafist entity controlling territory and that this outcome was “wanted.” Hence, the title.

Today, the Obama Administration grapples with a similar debate over whether to continue to support the “moderate rebels” in Syria, despite the fact that they have now melded with al-Nusra (an al-Qaeda affiliate until they rebranded), under the banner of the Army of Conquest in Syria. We do not pretend that these decisions exist in a vacuum with a clear right and wrong answer upon which no two intelligent people differ, but this is a matter worthy of public discourse.And what about that hashtag? Why would I use #CrookedHillary? I mean, I could have put #Imwithher, but I wasn’t trying to be ironic. When a hashtag is featured at the end of a sentence, its purpose is for cataloging. Some people, usually non-millennials, use hashtags as text to convey a particular opinion. I was not doing that. I also used #NeverTrump in a separate article.

But Mr. McFaul lazily cherry-picked, and then labeled (maybe unwittingly) Sputnik’s American writers traitors to this country. 

That, I personally, expect an apology for.

http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20160820/1044451585/McFaul-Putin-Trump.html

 

It appears that RT.com (the voice of Russia) which had been under cyber attack for a while has succumbed a couple of days ago...

 

 

Meanwhile:
Crimea, Georgia and the New Olympic Sport - Russia Bashing
21.08.2016

 

"In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People." (Eugene Victor Debs, 1855-1926.)
Oh dear, as the fantasy of Vladimir Putin as "Vlad the Terrible" ratchets up in the US-UK-NATO driven new Cold War, the Independent runs a piece headed: "What lies behind the new Russian threat to Ukraine", the sub-heading is: "Vladimir Putin, his opponents repeatedly point out, has form on this. The war between Russia and Georgia took place in 2008 at the time of the Beijing Olympics...
- See more at: http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/21-08-2016/135395-russia_bashing-0/#sthash.Qvgmgvke.dpuf

 

 

MAURIZIO MOLINARI

 

Le scintille lungo il confine con l’Ucraina, la cruenta battaglia di Aleppo e la riconciliazione con la Turchia di Erdogan descrivono la determinazione con cui Vladimir Putin sta costruendo attorno alla Federazione russa un nuovo ambizioso assetto internazionale. 

 

È un’offensiva che si sviluppa su tre fronti. Primo: le fibrillazioni con Kiev sui confini della Crimea, incluso l’invio di missili S-400, servono a far sapere all’Europa dell’Est che Mosca resta protagonista della regione, determinata a tutelare i diritti delle popolazioni russofone, per nulla intimorita dal dispiegamento di truppe Nato lungo i propri confini deciso al recente vertice di Varsavia.  

 

read more: https://www.lastampa.it/2016/08/14/cultura/opinioni/editoriali/il-grande-gioco-di-putin-k0GFDAVFoBAkfNQfg6gKtJ/pagina.html

 

------------------

 

Quick translation by Gus leonisky:

 

 

 

The great game of Putin: a three-pronged strategy

14/08/2016

MAURIZIO MOLINARI

The firefights along the border with Ukraine, the bloody battle of Aleppo and the reconciliation with Erdogan describe the determination with which Vladimir Putin is building an ambitious new international order around the Russian Federation. 

It is an operation on three fronts. 

First, dealing with the skirmishes with Kiev on the borders of Crimea, including sending S-400 missiles, to let people in Eastern Europe know that Moscow remains the main player in the region, all determined to protect the rights of Russian-speaking populations, and to protect those intimidated by the deployment of NATO troops along Russia's borders, after the recent summit in Warsaw. 

Second, the intensification of the offensive in Aleppo, with heavy raids on areas held by anti-Assad Islamic rebels, shows the Russian will maintain the regime of Assad, delaying the transition in Damascus and managing the future balance between the great rivals of the Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia. 

Third: the reconciliation with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an indispensable interlocutor on Syria because it supports some Islamic rebels. This reconciliation helps identify Turkey as an economic and political partner in the wider arena of Eurasia despite still belonging to the Atlantic Alliance. 

Looking more closely at these fronts, we realize that wherever Putin is, he intends to reduce US influence in a sensitive manner: in Ukraine he wants to weaken Washington's credibility as a guarantor of Eastern Europe, in Syria, Putin aims to demonstrate more military capacity against the jihadists than the coalition of more than 60 countries led by Obama and with Turkey he aims to disrupt the binding of Ankara to NATO, using for this purpose, Erdogan's irritation about the presence in Pennsylvania of the alleged director of the failed coup military of 15 July last, Fethullah Gulen. 
What can help Putin in this Great Game, the epicentre of which is in the eastern Mediterranean, is the West being riven by disagreements on migration and terrorism, weakened economically and in the final analysis having deficient leadership that failed to prevent protest movements as demonstrated by the referendum on Brexit. 

Putin's ambition is to lay the foundations of a new international order no longer centered on the West — as expressed by Fyodor Lukyanov, an appreciated analyst in Moscow, who explains "Putin and Erdogan have felt marginalized by both projects of Greater Europe after the Cold War ". They share a desire for redemption that, according to Russian political scientist Maxim Sukhov, includes  "Eurasia rediscovery" because of converging interests in countries such as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia. 
More generally Putin is building a network of privileged relations with countries governed by different political models than Western democracies — from Belarus to Turkey, from Egypt to Iran to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia — overlapping energy investments and military presence plus a very effective Russian "soft power", as evidenced by the popularity of TV "Russia Today" in the Arab world. 

The Kremlin, however, knows that this strategic expansion phase is likely to conflict with Obama's views, in the Oval Office. Whoever is Obama's successor could have a more aggressive approach on the international stage, thus Moscow "fears" Hillary Clinton because her candidacy expresses a Washington bipartisanship willing to regain lost ground of recent years. 

What Putin wants to avoid is a repeat of one of the most serious mistakes made by Moscow during the Cold War. In 1980 when America Jimmy Carter seemed weakened by crises in Iran, Afghanistan and Nicaragua it would suggest to the Kremlin that the US had folded, when in fact the victory of Ronald Reagan changed the course of history, causing the opposite outcome. That's why Putin remains on the offensive to grow the profile of Russia a little everywhere, even in our Central Mediterranean, as demonstrated by his decision to oppose bluntly the US raids on Sirte — supporting the positions of General Khalifa Haftar, opponent of Fayez Sarraj of the Tripoli government.


Gus note: In order to bomb the place, the US used devious misinformation on Sirte, letting the world know that the city was full of ISIS troops. It's not.

 

Note: The RT site seems to still be in operation but access has possibly been "thwarted" in Australia by whatever cyberbot. I could access the RT. America yesterday until this US connection was cut off as well.

 

Bond and Bourne come together to complement the manner in which two imperial warriors upgrade their medieval antecedents as the knights of two successively globalised empires during the first (British) and the second (American) half of the 20th century.

The British liberal imperialism became normative to its age as its American successor became typically amnesiac and neurotic, an extension of the delusional neurosis it considers its "manifest destiny".

Bourne's phobic demeanour typifies the proverbial American "exceptionalism" in which there is a neurotic tension between the fact of the global reach of its military might and the delusion of its mom-and-apple-pie, folkloric "exceptionalism".

Bourne cannot remember anything precisely, the same way as successive US administrations systemically reinvent their imperial reach with a short memory. The massive surveillance apparatus that Edward Snowden tells us about sustains its suspicious neurosis while the world only exacerbates its pathological amnesia.

The internal conflict of Bourne thus stages the ascetic ethics of his shabby demeanour, staging his state-of-the-art cut-throat killer instinct, his fancy martial art techniques, and the massive electronic gadgetry that is outfoxed by him.

...

 

Bourne is a trained assassin, serving the system that has crafted him and is second nature to him.

His immediate bosses are all corrupt and he outwits them all - and as he fights the good fight his boyish innocence translates into a false moral rectitude for an otherwise deeply amoral imperium that at the end of every "election" cycle will only offer the world the horror of a Hillary Clinton if it wishes to be saved from the nightmare of its Donald Trump.

By the next election cycle, Bourne, as the rest of his generation, cannot remember one from the other.

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

Read more: 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/08/hamid-dabashi-bond-bourne-normative-neurotic-imperialism-160822080841791.html

 

 

'If a cat goes missing, Putin must have eaten it' - German comedian

 

A German comedian has called for the end of war as a “multi-billion dollar business” while speaking during an anti-war protest in Munich. She went on to criticize the media for “blaming everything on Putin,” no matter the topic.

Lisa Fitz told demonstrators it is “naive” to believe wars start because there's a conflict between two countries which then escalates.

“Often you find something on the internet that finally clears your naive mind,” she said during the protest, which coincided with a security conference in the German city.

Fitz went on to give an example which involved retired NATO general Wesley Clark, who reportedly claimed he was informed by Pentagon staff that the country was going to invade Iraq, without being given a reason. He was then told that other countries would soon be invaded, too.

“...Seven countries in five years! For me, my dear peace-loving friends, it means that we can’t afford to rely on politicians or mass media anymore. We need to look for the reasons and explanations on our own, step by step. We can’t remain in the dark,” Fitz said. 

“Naturally, everyone thinks they have an opinion of their own, but they forget HOW they got that opinion...” she continued, adding that “a gram of information weighs more than 50 tons of opinion.”

The comedian goes on to bring up the conflict in Ukraine, claiming $5 billion was paid to organize regime change.

“The goal was to make Ukraine join the EU and eventually NATO,” she said, stating that NATO tanks are currently deployed 150 kilometers south of St. Petersburg.

“In early January 2017, a US tank brigade disembarked in Bremerhaven and was sent to the Eastern Front. This went largely unnoticed by the general public. Our media pays little attention to this threat; instead, they blame everything on Putin. If a cat goes missing, Putin must have eaten it.”

Fitz noted that although the security conference Munich has been taking place since 1963, security has not increased.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/379090-german-comedian-russia-war-fitz/

 

See toon at top. Unfortunately in this day and age of deceit, one gram of opinion will sway the public more than 100 tons of truth...