Friday 29th of March 2024

for the empire, peace is a disease...

american gangsters

On the eve of the Brussels conference we see this alleged chemical attack, and we see this absolute psychopathic knee-jerk reaction to this alleged attack, says Vanessa Beeley, independent researcher and journalist who has traveled to Syria on numerous occasions.

On Friday morning, two US destroyers stationed in the Mediterranean Sea launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria's Shayrat airbase,  The Pentagon claims they destroyed 20 Syrian warplanes, while according to the governor of Homs province 14 people were killed in the incident.

Russia's Defense Ministry says a storage depot, a training facility, a canteen, six aircraft and a radar station were destroyed. Moscow described the strike as 'aggression against a sovereign state' and warned of grave consequences for the Middle East.

Syrian officials said the attack was not a surprise and will only play into the hands of terrorist groups.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on the US missile strike which saw a clash between the American and Russian envoys.

‘Psychopathic knee-jerk reaction’

Vanessa Beeley, independent researcher and journalist

RT: This dramatic escalation from the Trump administration took many people by surprise. What do you think prompted him to take this drastic step?

VB: What we are seeing is an element of cornering President Trump after he basically defied and confronted his own deep state and the Pentagon with Tillerson’s announcement that Assad’s leaving was to be taken off the table. And then almost instantaneously and on the eve of the Brussels conference we see this alleged chemical attack, and we see this absolute psychopathic knee-jerk reaction to this alleged attack.

We have to understand that within 24 hours of this attack, which, let’s face it, was once again produced – or rather, the report was produced – by, of course, the primarily British government-funded White Helmets, who have a history of producing these convenient attacks at pivotal moments in this six-year conflict…

Again here, as soon as a statement is made by the US administration that says “Assad should stay,” and that going forward a peaceful resolution will include President Assad, we see almost instantaneously this chemical weapons attack, which of course precipitates us towards a frightening escalation in the conflict.

‘Evidence first’

Ted Seay, former US diplomat

RT: Many European leaders support the latest move by Donald Trump, few spoke out against it. Why do they support military action, which didn't get UN approval?

TS: There is pressure on a lot of government to speak out in favor of something like this. There are phone calls that are made behind the scenes we are not even aware of suggesting that a public statement would be helpful after something like this takes place.

RT: The Russian’s point here is we don’t know who did it. A proper investigation into the attacks has never taken place so how can anybody assign blame at such an early stage?

TS: We need to maintain and strengthen the norm against uses of various kinds of weapons of mass destruction. But we need evidence first before we have any kind of retaliation take place. And I am afraid that is exactly what hasn’t happen here. I think there was strong political pressure on President Trump to do something as there often is after an event like that, where there were people who were clearly affected by what looks like a nerve agent. I don’t think the Russian government is denying that nerve agent was released at this point, they are just saying that it came from an entirely different source than the US government is saying.

But that is a lot easier than taking the time necessary to calmly unfold what exactly happened and to prove beyond reasonable doubt to the UN international standard that there is a perpetrator who is known and then, if there is retaliation to take place, that is the kind of thing that the UN is set up to decide. What do we do, when and how?

‘Disregard for international law’

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/384041-syria-war-attack-trump-criminal/

 

 

 

helping the terrorists...

 

Russian Foreign Minister told his US counterpart Rex Tillerson in a phone conversation that the US attack on Syrian army's airfield plays into the hands of terrorists, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The Russian and US top diplomats discussed the US missile attack in Syria.

Only terrorists will benefit from the US strikes on the Syrian airbase, Lavrov told Tillerson.

"Sergei Lavrov emphasized that an attack on a country whose government is fighting against terrorism is only playing into extremists' hands and creating additional threats for regional and global security," the statement by the Russian ministry read.

Lavrov stressed that reports of use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib are false. Lavrov added that it is necessary to conduct a throrough, impartial investigation into the Idlib chemical attack.

 

"It was noted that it is necessary to conduct a thorough and professional investigation into facts concerning all this situation [the Idlib chemical attack]."

Lavrov and Tillerson agreed to continue the discussion of the Syrian settlement during a personal meeting next week during US Secretary's of State visit to Moscow.

On Thursday night, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha’irat, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city of Homs. US President Donald Trump said the attack was a response to the alleged chemical weapon use in Syria's Idlib on Tuesday, which Washington blames on the Syrian government.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201704081052450213-lavrov-tillerson-us-...

 

 

pushing the "deep state" doctrine...

 

A US airstrike on a Syrian airbase, however potentially illegal, can relieve the pressure being experienced by the Trump administration by the mainstream media, says Max Blumenthal, author, journalist and blogger.

The US says it’s prepared for more strikes against Syria after firing 59 missiles at one of the country's key air bases on Friday. The attack killed at least 9 civilians and 5 Syrian soldiers.

Tellingly, Donald Trump's move has largely won over the mainstream media and marked a significant shift from his presidential campaign stance.

RT: What is your reaction to the events that we have seen?

Max Blumenthal: I thought the timing was really interesting of the chemical attack. It is clear that something did occur, that people died in a horrific fashion. It was truly shocking, but what was also shocking was that diplomats were gathering in Brussels for the first time to talk about reconstructing Syria. The reconstruction is an issue that the Syrian opposition has tried to prevent. We also saw the Trump administration officially reverse the long-standing US line of regime change days before these attacks. For me, the timing was shocking because it would have been politically suicidal for the Assad government to have authorized officially a sarin gas attack in an area like Khan Sheikhoun, which has very little strategic significance. And beyond that I don’t understand the military strategy behind deploying sarin gas. It would have been some rogue low-level commander to have done this because the political logic just doesn’t add up…

What we’ve seen since 2013 “red line” debacle when the Syrian opposition failed to get the intervention it would have needed to march on Damascus is a beefing up of insurgent propaganda as it is known within the intelligence community, basically helping provide the rebels and opposition activists with cameras, media gear. USAID has contributed possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to that. [Additionally, there is] one of the major forces involved in insurgent propaganda, the so-called White Helmets. These are the groups that produce the images that we saw from Khan Sheikhoun. I am not disputing that the images were very real and terrible, but the point of this images and the atrocity exhibition by Nikki Haley at the UN was to overwhelm all reason so that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons would not be able to come in and perform an independent investigation. We had to rely on all these dodgy sources on the ground and Trump was ultimately pushed into implementing a policy that the so-called ‘deep state’, the national security state, has been pushing for ever since 2013.

T: Why do you think we saw such a U-turn?

MB: During the campaign what we saw with Trump’s seeming anti-interventionist rhetoric was a reflection of the influence of figures like Stephen Bannon, who was his campaign manager towards the end. Figures like Michael Flynn who had advocated détente with Russia even as he advocates a hard anti-Iran line. And these figures did not want to intervene in Syria. That is very clear. Flynn was ousted thanks to the FISA wiretaps and his lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. That was the first piece of the puzzle. Then Bannon was pushed out by Flynn’s replacement, H.R. McMaster, who comes straight out of the national security state.

And so when you see these figures get sidelined, then you have the Defense Secretary James Mattis and H.R. McMaster in the driver seat with Trump down in Mar-a-Lago; he [Donald Trump] is a very weak figure, he may have been even emotionally moved by these pictures, he is an unstable character. And in any case, you also have to factor in the massive amount of pressure that all of this hysteria about Trump’s supposed ties to Russia had on this situation. A symbolic strike on a Syrian airbase can relieve the pressure and we saw a chorus of “idiot” liberals - I would call them “Id-libs” - celebrating the lack of congressional oversight on the Trump administration’s march to war in Syria; a celebration by Trump’s opponents of this potentially internationally illegal attack. From a political domestic standpoint, Trump has scored a kind of victory with his opponents.

 

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/384052-us-trump-congress-syria/

 

 

the tail wagging the dog...

 

...

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has backed the Putin-done-it conspiracy theorists in an article published by The Sunday Times.

“By proxy, Russia is responsible for every civilian death last week,” he wrote in reference to the alleged gas attack in Idlib which killed at least 58 people.

Fallon’s argument rests on one of the two competing conspiracy theories promulgated by MSM outlets about the attack.

The first theory is that Trump was baited by a false flag attack into a foreign war, while the second alleges that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself ordered a chemical weapons attack in Syria to distract from the investigation into Russian ties with the Trump cabinet.

 

...

 

O’Donnell then drew comparisons with a similar false flag narrative that was spun by Republicans during Bill Clinton’s presidency which alleged that the embattled president launched missile attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan in August 1998 to distract from the ongoing Monica Lewinski sex scandal.

Obvious comparisons were drawn with the newly released film Wag the dog in which a White House advisor creates a fictitious war with Albania to distract the American people from an ongoing scandal.

However, in the absence of any evidence to back up his claims, O’Donnell instead deftly retreated to one of two possible logical fallacies: an argument from ignorance or shifting the burden of proof. “You won't hear ... proof that the scenario I've just outlined is impossible,” the host proudly stated, without a hint of self-awareness.  

“It changes the conventional wisdom about the dynamic between President Trump and Vladimir Putin,”O'Donnell added.

The blame game also extends to alternative media sources, in a further attempt to muddy the waters rather than focus on fact and evidence when covering or responding to a story.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/viral/384121-syria-chemical-attack-conspiracy-theories/

 

in disagreement with itself

A weekend of official explanations for President Trump’s airstrikes on a Syrian air base has only deepened the confusion over his intentions, next steps and the legal basis for his unilateral use of force in the middle of that complicated, intractable civil war. The administration will have to do better than this.

Presidents have an obligation to explain military operations to the American people and the world, and, when possible, most begin making their argument well before they take action. In Mr. Trump’s case, the need for clarity is even greater given that the attack on Thursday, in retaliation for President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons on civilians, was a reversal of the position he campaigned on just months ago.

Now that Mr. Trump has ordered a strike against the Assad government, how far is he prepared to go to end the six-year-old civil war? What does the operation say about his willingness to use force beyond Syria? One troublesome answer may be found in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’scomments on Monday. “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” he said on a trip to a World War II memorial in Italy, a trip aimed at rallying allies and Russia around a strategy to end the Syrian war.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/opinion/on-syria-an-administration-in-disagreement-with-itself.html

tillerson's big lie...

It reminds me strongly of the events in 2003 when the US representatives demonstrated at the UN Security Council session the presumed chemical weapons found in Iraq,” he said at a joint press conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Moscow.

RT spoke to Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

RT: Vladimir Putin said the US strike on the Syrian army over accusations of a chemical attack remind him of the 2003 US presentation at the UN which led to the invasion of Iraq. As a witness to those events, do you see any similarities?

Lawrence Wilkerson: I see similarities only in the fact that the US government has jumped to a conclusion with regard to the provenance of that particular attack. Let me add I think that I know their motivation for having done so; it was domestic. They wanted to get the whole Russia issue off the domestic agenda, and they succeed majorly in doing that. And it was also international because, let’s face it, up to this point, the US has had no real dog in the fight in terms of hard military power, and now they do. Now they feel they have more leverage if we have political talks which I hope we do because that’s the only way we are ever going to end this tragic civil war. And they are probably making moves right now; I would suspect to gain even more leverage. We all need to pay very close attention to what those moves are because it is a very dangerous situation.

RT: How do you think that is going to play out? Is it going to be more strikes? The Pentagon said it is going to be one op, but the US is inextricably embroiled in this now, isn’t it?

LW: I think we are. And I don’t see how we get away with doing just one op in this case. And I suspect that even now we are doing things - particularly in the Kurdish-controlled regions of Syria - to protect the Kurds from possible Turkish wrath. And also to consolidate their gains in those areas against ISIS in preparation for what you might call the final attack on areas where ISIS has still predominant control and the elimination of ISIS. I see it is moving even further into the Syrian morass in order to get rid of ISIS, but also have some real leverage with regard to the negotiations that inevitably will have to be held in order to end this conflict.

 

RT:
President Putin used the term ‘provocation.' What do you think he means by that? The militants are trying to provoke the West into an intervention?

LW: They’ve been doing that all along. My intelligence sources, which are by the way quite good now that I’ve learned who to go to, both US and international, and the people who I know well, who were in Syria let me know from time to time what is going on with Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda, and other groups, that from time to time the US has actually wittingly been supporting, particularly through the CIA. The prominence of some of these actions, these more heinous actions are clearly disputable…Each side has different motivations. I’m not trying to excuse Assad’s brutality in this war, but I’m saying the intelligence about who’s doing what to whom has been very mixed and not very good frankly.

RT: What message is Rex Tillerson bringing to Moscow, do you think?

LW: I hope he’ll tell Sergey Lavrov “Hello, good to see you again.” Because that is one of the smartest diplomats I have ever met in my life... I think the first thing Tillerson ought to do is explain to Sergey the less than truth that Tillerson has been spreading around the world. And that is the Russia was responsible for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks. This is preposterous. I can’t believe we are lying this way. The US Army and its contractors destroyed 600 metric tons of Syrian chemical weapons stocks. The entire operation was under the OPCW and the UN. It wasn’t just Russia that was responsible. Did Bashar Assad hold some chemical weapons back, like VX and sarin? Possibly, that could be the case. But to blame Russia for that failure as it were for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons is preposterous. And I hope Tillerson will apologize to Lavrov for that.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/384388-tillerson-lavrov-moscow-syria-chemical/

obamagate...

 

From The American Conservative :

Russiagate’s latest celebrity is a former Donald Trump associate named Carter Page. Page, who worked for Merrill Lynch in Moscow and speaks Russian, is a banker and investor who early in 2016 was a part of the amorphous group that was advising Trump on foreign policy. There is no evidence to suggest that he was ever an insider with the Trump campaign—quite the contrary. The Washington Postreports that he made several efforts to meet directly with Donald Trump but that his entreaties were rejected.

So why the fuss? Page appears to have been a target of Russian intelligence for a time, even though he had no sensitive information to give anyone and the presumed relationship appears to have ended long before the 2016 campaign. The possibility that Page might have been some kind of Moscow-controlled agent of influence close to Donald Trump has nevertheless excited Democratic Party critics who have been looking for some solid evidence of Russian government subversion of America’s electoral process. It has also provided some insights into the never-ending spy vs. counterspy battle, while suggesting that the Obama administration was not quite a wide-eyed innocent regarding FBI investigation of anyone plausibly linked to Trump.

Bear in mind that intelligence officers make a living and get promoted based on the “scalps” they acquire, to use the CIA expression, which means recruitment of possible sources of information. Page was and is somewhat of an expert on energy issues and, by virtue of his time spent in Russia, something of a Russophile. The combination would be very attractive to a Russian case officer looking for a new asset, so it is perhaps no surprise that Page bumped into Russian diplomat Victor Podobny at an energy conference in New York. The two soon established mutual interests in energy-industry developments and Page, apparently looking for business and investment opportunities, eventually passed some unclassified papers he had prepared to the Russian.

The passage of documents is a key case-officer objective. The assumption is that once documents are provided by the target and suitable noises are made about how they could result in wonderful business opportunities, this will lead to receipt of papers that are more sensitive. Then the prospective agent would be hooked, leading to his or her eventual acceptance of money or something in kind that seals the deal. If the transaction is completely illegal, so much the better, as the target would be disinclined to reveal the depth of involvement for fear of being exposed.

So Page passed papers to Podobny, not knowing that he was an intelligence officer. Pobodny in turn did not think much of his new prospect, telling a colleague in an intercepted phone conversation that Page was an “idiot” who “wants to earn a lot of money.” Pobodny observed that he would be reeled in by trading “favor for favor,” allowing the Russian to exploit him for whatever information of value he possessed before discarding him. The Page saga ended when diplomatic-covered Podobny was exposed and expelled as “persona non grata” from the United States in 2013. Page was interviewed by the FBI but it was determined that he had not compromised any confidential information.

But the story did not end there. Three years later, in July 2016, the FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to monitor the communications of Page, who was at the time associating with the Trump campaign. It has been alleged that Page became a person of interest after meeting with some unidentified Russians, but the only evidence that has surfaced possibly relating to that is a claim that in July 2016 he met with Igor Sechin, chief executive of the energy company Rosneft and a reported Putin crony. Page has reportedly denied that the meeting even took place. The Washington Post also claims that Page gave a speech in Moscow “harshly critical of the United States’ policy towards Russia.”

The FISA warrant was presumably granted based on that visit. As a former intelligence officer, I can attest that the recruitment of someone who is close to a potential presidential candidate in any country is a prize worth having. It is referred to as an agent in place or an agent of influence, but its value is that it provides a possible insight into what another foreign leader actually intends to do. It is far more valuable than a stack of emails. So the possibility that Russian intelligence realized what potential access Page might provide and acted upon it should not be dismissed. And, of course, it is also possible that nothing of the sort happened, that the Russians did not realize what they might have and slept through the entire Page visit.

In either case, we might someday know what happened or possibly not. But one other thing that is clear is that the Obama administration did not hesitate to go after someone presumed to be close to GOP candidate Donald Trump based on evidence that may or may not have been compelling. Page himself denounced the FISA warrant as “unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance.” Bear in mind that the FISA court tends to approve most surveillance requests, not making much effort to challenge the executive branch.

The arguments that President Obama and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice have been making, asserting that they knew nothing about politically charged and highly sensitive FBI investigations are, of course, nonsense. Rice’s request for the identities of Americans appearing on transcripts of communications intercepts reveals that there was very much a heightened sense of the political dimensions of what was taking place. And she would have undoubtedly conveyed as much to her boss, suggesting yet again that the latest chapter in Russiagate may turn out to be Obamagate after all.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

 

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/will-russiagate-become-o...

Meanwhile Donald is saving the furniture... :

how the world diplomacy was influenced by a shot gun wedding...

 

stone, putin and snowden...

 

"He [Putin] talks pretty straight," Stone says. "I think we did him the justice of putting [his comments] into a Western narrative that could explain their viewpoint in the hopes that it will prevent continued misunderstanding and a dangerous situation – on the brink of war."

While Stone grew up a Republican with a father who was a stockbroker, his view of the world – and his politics – changed while serving in combat during the Vietnam War, winning a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He reportedly voted for Barack Obama as president in 2008 and 2012 then Green Party candidate Jill Stein last year but strongly refutes claims about Russian influence on the Trump presidency.

"That's a path that leads nowhere to my mind," Stone says. "That's an internal war of politics in the US in which the Democratic party has taken a suicide pact or something to blow him up; in other words, to completely de-legitimise him and in so doing blow up the US essentially.

"What they're doing is destroying the trust that exists between people and government. It's a very dangerous position to make accusations you cannot prove."

One of the subjects that Stone will talk about at Vivid Ideas and Semi Permanent in Sydney next month is the power of film to create change. And despite making many passionate movies about livewire political subjects, he seems pessimistic.

"I've done in my own work three Vietnam War films, three presidential type films, one film on Central America, one economics film on Wall Street and so forth," he says. "And in the matter of war, they've had no influence.

"Perhaps some people have recognised the humanity in them in their stance about war and what its meaningless is, especially when it came to Vietnam, but that has not been translated into an argument against Iraq or Libya or Syria or Afghanistan. It's very frustrating to be a veteran of a war and have America not listening.

"Many people like the films but I don't know how long they last in the memory. When you're dealing with the power of the state, which has the propaganda power to repeat and repeat and repeat every day that 'so-and-so is the enemy and that we've got to go to war', it becomes like a 1984 situation."

After early success writing Midnight Express and Scarface, Stone has also directed SalvadorThe DoorsAny Given SundayAlexanderWorld Trade Centre, the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Savages. He has made documentaries on Cuban leader Fidel Castro (the most recent being Castro in Winter), leftist governments in Latin America (South of the Border), Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (Mi Amigo Hugo) and American political history (the series The Untold History of the United States).

"I think you get appreciated and remembered – sometimes booed, hated, reviled – but at the end of the day, do they remember?" he says. "I wonder. I think a lot of dramatists wonder."

Amid escalating nuclear tensions with North Korea, Stone says he is disturbed by where recent US attacks on Syria and Afghanistan might lead.

"I'm 70 years old," he says. "I've been around for the Cuban missile crisis. I've seen our forces in action in Vietnam.

"I was around for Mr Reagan's – people found out later – near-nuclear confrontation in 1983 [when a Soviet early warning system wrongly reported the US had launched intercontinental ballistic missiles]. It came very close to war.

"There have been near accidents all along the way. We felt with the agreements between Gorbachev and Reagan and after the Soviet Union disintegrated that this thing would be over for many of us – a peace dividend that the United States would get off its war footing – but nothing changed. 

"The United States is spending on defence and security almost a trillion dollars a year, which is more than all the countries in the world spend on security and the military. It's inexcusable to people who examine this rationally."

Stone laments that his latest movie, Snowden, was poorly received in Australia last year. He considers it an important film for attempting to tell the truth about the US intelligence contractor who revealed the extent of covert government surveillance.

And he believes the move towards all-seeing surveillance technology could be a huge mistake.

"I think we've had a lot of false information – fake news as they say – used for political ideological purposes," he says. "In other words, the US has been able, because of this technology, to say without any doubt Russia hacked the election. This is coming from who? From the intelligence agencies that are fighting against Russia with all their hearts and minds.

"They [US intelligence agencies] can't be trusted. This is important to recognise. I think the Snowden movie shows why they cannot be trusted."

Read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/director-oliver-stone-on-his-...

 

The problem of Stone's movies having little influence on the psychopaths in government also happens with satire. We, idiotic satirists and cartoonists, can get blue in the face exposing the duplicity, the hypocrisy, the stupidity of governments, especially that of the US Empire (see The Age of Deceit), our efforts only make a few people laugh, but those who hold power and those who finance power could not care less in their Toorak, Mosman and Point Piper housing estate. They actually relish their privileged position of creating war for profit while claiming "freedom" and sending your sons (and daughters) to war with their hand on their heart (as if they had one) for photo opportunity. The mass media (MMMM) is complicit to various degree in this charade, especially the Murdoch media and the Soros media who battle it out in their own little supremacist games. 

see toon at top.