COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

No one in Washington has yet taken the slightest responsibility for blowing a hole through the Middle East, loosing mayhem across significant swathes of the planet, or helping release the forces that would create the first true terrorist state of modern history; nor has anyone in any official capacity taken responsibility for creating the conditions that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, possibly a million or more people, turned many in the Greater Middle East into internal or external refugees, destroyed nations, and brought unbelievable pain to countless human beings.




14 Years After 9/11, the War on Terror Is Accomplishing Everything bin Laden Hoped It Would



Fourteen years later and do you even believe it? Did we actually live it? Are we still living it? And how improbable is that?

Fourteen years of wars, interventions, assassinations, torture, kidnappings, black sites, the growth of the American national security state to monumental proportions, and the spread of Islamic extremism across much of the Greater Middle East and Africa. Fourteen years of astronomical expense, bombing campaigns galore, and a military-first foreign policy of repeated defeats, disappointments, and disasters. Fourteen years of a culture of fear in America, of endless alarms and warnings, as well as dire predictions of terrorist attacks. Fourteen years of the burial of American democracy (or rather its recreation as a billionaire’s playground and a source of spectacle and entertainment but not governance). Fourteen years of the spread of secrecy, the classification of every document in sight, the fierce prosecution of whistleblowers, and a faith-basedurge to keep Americans “secure” by leaving them in the dark about what their government is doing. Fourteen years of the demobilization of the citizenry. Fourteen years of the rise of the warrior corporation, the transformation of war and intelligence gathering into profit-making activities, and the flocking of countless private contractors to the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, and too many other parts of the national security state to keep track of. Fourteen years of our wars coming home in the form of PTSD, the militarization of the police, and the spread of war-zone technology like drones and stingrays to the “homeland.” Fourteen years of that un-American word “homeland.” Fourteen years of the expansion of surveillance of every kind and of the development of a global surveillance system whose reach—from foreign leaders to tribal groups in the backlands of the planet—would have stunned those running the totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Fourteen years of the financial starvation of America’s infrastructure and still not a single mile of high-speed rail built anywhere in the country. Fourteen years in which to launch Afghan War 2.0, Iraq Wars 2.0 and 3.0, and Syria War 1.0. Fourteen years, that is, of the improbable made probable.

Fourteen years later, thanks a heap, Osama bin Laden. With a small number of supporters, $400,000-$500,000, and 19 suicidal hijackers, most of them Saudis, you pulled off a geopolitical magic trick of the first order. Think of it as wizardry from the theater of darkness. In the process, you did “change everything” or at least enough of everything to matter. Or rather, you goaded us into doing what you had neither the resources nor the ability to do. So let’s give credit where it’s due. Psychologically speaking, the 9/11 attacks represented precision targeting of a kind American leaders would only dream of in the years to follow. I have no idea how, but you clearly understood us so much better than we understood you or, for that matter, ourselves. You knew just which buttons of ours to push so that we would essentially carry out the rest of your plan for you. While you sat back and waited in Abbottabad, we followed the blueprints for your dreams and desires as if you had planned it and, in the process, made the world a significantly different (and significantly grimmer) place.

Fourteen years later, we don’t even grasp what we did.

Fourteen years later, the improbability of it all still staggers the imagination, starting with those vast shards of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, the real-world equivalent of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand in the original Planet of the Apes. With lower Manhattan still burning and the air acrid with destruction, they seemed like evidence of a culture that had undergone its own apocalyptic moment and come out the other side unrecognizably transformed. To believe the coverage of the time, Americans had experienced Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima combined. We were planet Earth’s ultimate victims and downtown New York was “Ground Zero,” a phrase previously reserved for places where nuclear explosions had occurred. We were instantly the world’s greatest victim and greatest survivor, and it was taken for granted that the world’s most fulfilling sense of revenge would be ours. 9/11 came to be seen as an assault on everything innocent and good and triumphant about us, the ultimate they-hate-our-freedoms moment and, Osama, it worked. You spooked this country into 14 years of giving any dumb or horrifying act or idea or law or intrusion into our lives or curtailment of our rights a get-out-of-jail-free pass. You loosed not just your dogs of war, but ours, which was exactly what you needed to bring chaos to the Muslim world.

Fourteen years later, let me remind you of just how totally improbable 9/11 was and how ragingly clueless we all were on that day. George W. Bush (and cohorts) couldn’t even take it in when, on August 6, 2001, the president was given a daily intelligence briefing titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” The NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, which had many of the pieces of the bin Laden puzzle in their hands, still couldn’t imagine it. And believe me, even when it was happening, I could hardly grasp it. I was doing exercises in my bedroom with the TV going when I first heard the news of a plane hitting the World Trade Center and saw the initial shots of a smoking tower. And I remember my immediate thought: just like the B-25 that almost took out the Empire State Building back in 1945. Terrorists bringing down the World Trade Center? Please. Al-Qaeda? You must be kidding. Later, when two planes had struck in New York and another had taken out part of the Pentagon, and it was obvious that it wasn’t an accident, I had an even more ludicrous thought. It occurred to me that the unexpected vulnerability of Americans living in a land largely protected from the chaos so much of the world experiences might open us up to the pain of others in a new way. Dream on. All it opened us up to was bringing pain to others.

Fourteen years later, don’t you still find it improbable that George W. Bush and company used those murderous acts and the nearly 3,000 resulting deaths as an excuse to try to make the world theirs? It took them no time at all to decide to launch a “Global War on Terror” in up to 60 countries. It took them next to no time to begin dreaming of the establishment of a future Pax Americana in the Middle East, followed by the sort of global imperium that had previously been conjured up only by cackling bad guys in James Bond films. Don’t you find it strange, looking back, just how quickly 9/11 set their brains aflame? Don’t you find it curious that the Bush administration’s top officials were quite so infatuated by the US military? Doesn’t it still strike you as odd that they had such blind faith in that military’s supposedly limitless powers to do essentially anything and be “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known”? Don’t you still find it eerie that, amid the wreckage of the Pentagon, the initial orders our secretary of defense gave his aides were to come up with plans for striking Iraq, even though he was already convinced that Al Qaeda had launched the attack? (“‘Go massive,’ an aide’s notes quote him as saying. ‘Sweep it all up. Things related and not.’”) Don’t you think “and not” sums up the era to come? Don’t you find it curious that, in the rubble of those towers, plans not just to pay Osama bin Laden back, but to turn Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly Iran—“Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran”—into American protectorates were already being imagined?

Fourteen years later, how probable was it that the country then universally considered the planet’s “sole superpower,” openly challenged only by tiny numbers of jihadist extremists, with a military better funded than the next 10to 13 forces combined (most of whom were allies anyway), and whose technological skills were, as they say, to die for would win no wars, defeat no enemies, and successfully complete no occupations? What were the odds? If, on September 12, 2001, someone had given you half-reasonable odds on a US military winning streak in the Greater Middle East, don’t tell me you wouldn’t have slapped some money on the table.

Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that the US military has been unable to extricate itself from Iraq and Afghanistan, its two major wars of this century, despite having officially left one of those countries in 2011 (only to head back again in the late summer of 2014) and having endlessly announced the conclusion of its operations in the other (only to ratchet them up again)?

Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that Washington’s post-9/11 policies in the Middle East helped lead to the establishment of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in parts of fractured Iraq and Syria and to a movement of almost unparalleled extremism that has successfully “franchised” itself out from Libya to Nigeria to Afghanistan? If, on September 12, 2001, you had predicted such a possibility, who wouldn’t have thought you mad?
Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that the United States has gone into the business of robotic assassination big time; that (despite Watergate-era legal prohibitions on such acts), we are now the Terminators of Planet Earth, not its John Connors; that the president is openly and proudly an assassin-in-chief with his own global “kill list”; that we have endlessly targeted the backlands of the planet with our (Grim) Reaper and Predator (thank you Hollywood!) drones armed with Hellfire missiles; and that Washington has regularly knocked off women and children while searching for militant leaders and their generic followers? And don’t you find it odd that all of this has been done in the name of wiping out the terrorists and their movements, despite the fact that wherever our drones strike, those movements seem to gain in strength and power?

Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that our “war on terror” has so regularly devolved into a war of and for terror; that our methods, including the targeted killings of numerous leaders and “lieutenants” of militant groups have visibly promoted, not blunted, the spread of Islamic extremism; and that, despite this, Washington has generally not recalibrated its actions in any meaningful way?

Fourteen years later, isn’t it possible to think of 9/11 as a mass grave into which significant aspects of American life as we knew it have been shoveled? Of course, the changes that came, especially those reinforcing the most oppressive aspects of state power, didn’t arrive out of the blue like those hijacked planes. Who, after all, could dismiss the size and power of the national security state and the military-industrial complex before those 19 men with box cutters arrived on the scene? Who could deny that, packed into the Patriot Act (passed largely unread by Congress in October 2001) was a wish list of pre-9/11 law enforcementand right-wing hobbyhorses? Who could deny that the top officials of the Bush administration and their neocon supporters had long been thinkingabout how to leverage “U.S. military supremacy” into a Pax Americana–style new world order or that they had been dreaming of “a new Pearl Harbor” which might speed up the process? It was, however, only thanks to Osama bin Laden, that they—and we—were shuttled into the most improbable of all centuries, the 21st.

Fourteen years later, the 9/11 attacks and the thousands of innocents killed represent international criminality and immorality of the first order. On that, Americans are clear, but—most improbable of all—no one in Washington has yet taken the slightest responsibility for blowing a hole through the Middle East, loosing mayhem across significant swathes of the planet, or helping release the forces that would create the first true terrorist state of modern history; nor has anyone in any official capacity taken responsibility for creating the conditions that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, possibly a million or more people, turned many in the Greater Middle East into internal or external refugees, destroyed nations, and brought unbelievable pain to countless human beings. In these years, no act—not of torture, nor murder, nor the illegal offshore imprisonment of innocent people, nor death delivered from the air or the ground, nor the slaughter of wedding parties, nor the killing of children—has blunted the sense among Americans that we live in an “exceptional” and “indispensable” country of staggering goodness and innocence.

Fourteen years later, how improbable is that?


118 comments:

  1. When the Canadians were thinking seriously of breaking their country up, Quebec and the rest, there was no gunfire...even with the language difference....there was just a vote.....and there may be another, and another.....

    Culture counts....

    I like Canadians, Ash excluded....

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    1. I don't mean to say I dislike Ash, he's just a young fool, irritating...

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  2. How Neocons Destabilized Europe
    September 7, 2015

    Exclusive: The neocon prescription of endless “regime change” is spreading chaos across the Middle East and now into Europe, yet the neocons still control the mainstream U.S. narrative and thus have diagnosed the problem as not enough “regime change,” as Robert Parry reports.

    By Robert Parry

    The refugee chaos that is now pushing deep into Europe – dramatized by gut-wrenching photos of Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey – started with the cavalier ambitions of American neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks who planned to remake the Middle East and other parts of the world through “regime change.”

    Instead of the promised wonders of “democracy promotion” and “human rights,” what these “anti-realists” have accomplished is to spread death, destruction and destabilization across the Middle East and parts of Africa and now into Ukraine and the heart of Europe. Yet, since these neocon forces still control the Official Narrative, their explanations get top billing – such as that there hasn’t been enough “regime change.”

    For instance, The Washington Post’s neocon editorial page editor Fred Hiatt on Monday blamed “realists” for the cascading catastrophes. Hiatt castigated them and President Barack Obama for not intervening more aggressively in Syria to depose President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime neocon target for “regime change.”
    But the truth is that this accelerating spread of human suffering can be traced back directly to the unchecked influence of the neocons and their liberal fellow-travelers who have resisted political compromise and, in the case of Syria, blocked any realistic efforts to work out a power-sharing agreement between Assad and his political opponents, those who are not terrorists.

    In early 2014, the neocons and liberal hawks sabotaged Syrian peace talks in Geneva by blocking Iran’s participation and turning the peace conference into a one-sided shouting match where U.S.-funded opposition leaders yelled at Assad’s representatives who then went home. All the while, the Post’s editors and their friends kept egging Obama to start bombing Assad’s forces.

    The madness of this neocon approach grew more obvious in the summer of 2014 when the Islamic State, an Al Qaeda spinoff which had been slaughtering suspected pro-government people in Syria, expanded its bloody campaign of beheadings back into Iraq where this hyper-brutal movement first emerged as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” in response to the 2003 U.S. invasion.

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    1. It should have been clear by mid-2014 that if the neocons had gotten their way and Obama had conducted a massive U.S. bombing campaign to devastate Assad’s military, the black flag of Sunni terrorism might well be flying above the Syrian capital of Damascus while its streets would run red with blood.

      But now a year later, the likes of Hiatt still have not absorbed that lesson — and the spreading chaos from neocon strategies is destabilizing Europe. As shocking and disturbing as that is, none of it should have come as much of a surprise, since the neocons have always brought chaos and dislocations in their wake.

      When I first encountered the neocons in the 1980s, they had been given Central America to play with. President Ronald Reagan had credentialed many of them, bringing into the U.S. government neocon luminaries such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan. But Reagan mostly kept them out of the big-power realms: the Mideast and Europe.

      Those strategic areas went to the “adults,” people like James Baker, George Shultz, Philip Habib and Brent Scowcroft. The poor Central Americans, as they tried to shed generations of repression and backwardness imposed by brutal right-wing oligarchies, faced U.S. neocon ideologues who unleashed death squads and even genocide against peasants, students and workers.

      The result – not surprisingly – was a flood of refugees, especially from El Salvador and Guatemala, northward to the United States. The neocon “success” in the 1980s, crushing progressive social movements and reinforcing the oligarchic controls, left most countries of Central America in the grip of corrupt regimes and crime syndicates, periodically driving more waves of what Reagan called “feet people” through Mexico to the southern U.S. border.

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  3. Messing Up the Mideast

    But the neocons weren’t satisfied sitting at the kids’ table. Even during the Reagan administration, they tried to squeeze themselves among the “adults” at the grown-ups’ table. For instance, neocons, such as Robert McFarlane and Paul Wolfowitz, pushed Israel-friendly policies toward Iran, which the Israelis then saw as a counterweight to Iraq. That strategy led eventually to the Iran-Contra Affair, the worst scandal of the Reagan administration. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “When Israel /Neocons Favored Iran.”]

    However, the right-wing and mainstream U.S. media never liked the complex Iran-Contra story and thus exposure of the many levels of the scandal’s criminality was avoided. Democrats also preferred compromise to confrontation. So, most of the key neocons survived the Iran-Contra fallout, leaving their ranks still firmly in place for the next phase of their rise to power.

    In the 1990s, the neocons built up a well-funded infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets, benefiting from both the largesse of military contractors donating to think tanks and government-funded operations like the National Endowment for Democracy, headed by neocon Carl Gershman.

    The neocons gained more political momentum from the U.S. military might displayed during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. Many Americans began to see war as fun, almost like a video game in which “enemy” forces get obliterated from afar. On TV news shows, tough-talking pundits were all the rage. If you wanted to be taken seriously, you couldn’t go wrong taking the most macho position, what I sometimes call the “er-er-er” growling effect.

    Combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the notion that U.S. military supremacy was unmatched and unchallengeable gave rise to neocon theories about turning “diplomacy” into nothing more than the delivery of U.S. ultimatums. In the Middle East, that was a view shared by Israeli hardliners, who had grown tired of negotiating with the Palestinians and other Arabs.

    Instead of talk, there would be “regime change” for any government that would not fall into line. This strategy was articulated in 1996 when a group of American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign in Israel and compiled a strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”

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    1. Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran.

      The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no choice but to accept what was on the table.

      In 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century, founded by neocons Robert Kagan and William Kristol, called for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, but President Bill Clinton balked at something that extreme. The situation changed, however, when President George W. Bush took office and the 9/11 attacks terrified and infuriated the American public.

      Suddenly, the neocons had a Commander-in-Chief who agreed with the need to eliminate Iraq’s Saddam Hussein – and Americans were easily persuaded although Iraq and Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

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    2. The Death of ‘Realism’

      The 2003 Iraq invasion sounded the death knell for foreign policy “realism” in Official Washington. Aging or dead, the old adult voices were silent or ignored. From Congress and the Executive Branch to the think tanks and the mainstream news media, almost all the “opinion leaders” were neocons and many liberals fell into line behind Bush’s case for war.

      And, even though the Iraq War “group think” was almost entirely wrong, both on the WMD justifications for war and the “cakewalk” expectations for remaking Iraq, almost no one who promoted the fiasco suffered punishment for either the illegality of the invasion or the absence of sanity in promoting such a harebrained scheme.

      Instead of negative repercussions, the Iraq War backers – the neocons and their liberal-hawk accomplices – essentially solidified their control over U.S. foreign policy and the major news media. From The New York Times and The Washington Post to the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, the “regime change” agenda continued to hold sway.

      It didn’t even matter when the sectarian warfare unleashed in Iraq left hundreds of thousands dead, displaced millions and gave rise to Al Qaeda’s ruthless Iraq affiliate. Not even the 2008 election of Barack Obama, an Iraq War opponent, changed this overall dynamic.

      Rather than standing up to this new foreign policy establishment, Obama bowed to it, retaining key players from President Bush’s national security team, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus, and by hiring hawkish Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, who became Secretary of State, and Samantha Power at the National Security Council.

      Thus, the cult of “regime change” did not just survive the Iraq disaster; it thrived. Whenever a difficult foreign problem emerged, the go-to solution was still “regime change,” accompanied by the usual demonizing of a targeted leader, support for the “democratic opposition” and calls for military intervention. President Obama, arguably a “closet realist,” found himself as the foot-dragger-in-chief as he reluctantly was pulled along on one “regime change” crusade after another.

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    3. In 2011, for instance, Secretary of State Clinton and National Security Council aide Power persuaded Obama to join with some hot-for-war European leaders to achieve “regime change” in Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi had gone on the offensive against groups in eastern Libya that he identified as Islamic terrorists.

      But Clinton and Power saw the case as a test for their theories of “humanitarian warfare” – or “regime change” to remove a “bad guy” like Gaddafi from power. Obama soon signed on and, with the U.S. military providing crucial technological support, a devastating bombing campaign destroyed Gaddafi’s army, drove him from Tripoli, and ultimately led to his torture-murder.

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    4. ’We Came, We Saw, He Died’

      Secretary Clinton scurried to secure credit for this “regime change.” According to one email chain in August 2011, her longtime friend and personal adviser Sidney Blumenthal praised the bombing campaign to destroy Gaddafi’s army and hailed the dictator’s impending ouster.

      “First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” Blumenthal wrote on Aug. 22, 2011. “When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation home. … You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment. … The most important phrase is: ‘successful strategy.’”

      Clinton forwarded Blumenthal’s advice to Jake Sullivan, a close State Department aide. “Pls read below,” she wrote. “Sid makes a good case for what I should say, but it’s premised on being said after Q[addafi] goes, which will make it more dramatic. That’s my hesitancy, since I’m not sure how many chances I’ll get.”

      Sullivan responded, saying “it might make sense for you to do an op-ed to run right after he falls, making this point. … You can reinforce the op-ed in all your appearances, but it makes sense to lay down something definitive, almost like the Clinton Doctrine.”

      However, when Gaddafi abandoned Tripoli that day, President Obama seized the moment to make a triumphant announcement. Clinton’s opportunity to highlight her joy at the Libyan “regime change” had to wait until Oct. 20, 2011, when Gaddafi was captured, tortured and murdered.

      In a TV interview, Clinton celebrated the news when it appeared on her cell phone and paraphrased Julius Caesar’s famous line after Roman forces achieved a resounding victory in 46 B.C. and he declared, “veni, vidi, vici” – “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Clinton’s reprise of Caesar’s boast went: “We came; we saw; he died.” She then laughed and clapped her hands.

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    5. But the problem with Clinton’s boasting about the “Clinton Doctrine” was that the Libyan adventure quickly turned sour with the Islamic terrorists, whom Gaddafi had warned about, seizing wide swaths of territory and turning it into another Iraq-like badlands.

      On Sept. 11, 2012, this reality hit home when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was overrun and U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomatic personnel were killed. It turned out that Gaddafi wasn’t entirely wrong about the nature of his opposition.

      Eventually, the extremist violence in Libya grew so out of control that the United States and European countries abandoned their embassies in Tripoli. Since then, Islamic State terrorists have begun decapitating Coptic Christians on Libyan beaches and slaughtering other “heretics.” Amid the anarchy, Libya has become a route for desperate migrants seeking passage across the Mediterranean to Europe.

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    6. A War on Assad

      Parallel to the “regime change” in Libya was a similar enterprise in Syria in which the neocons and liberal interventionists pressed for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, whose government in 2011 cracked down on what had quickly become a violent rebellion led by extremist elements, though the Western propaganda portrayed the opposition as “moderate” and “peaceful.”

      For the first years of the Syrian civil war, the pretense remained that these “moderate” rebels were facing unjustified repression and the only answer was “regime change” in Damascus. Assad’s claim that the opposition included many Islamic extremists was largely dismissed as were Gaddafi’s alarms in Libya.

      On Aug. 21, 2013, a sarin gas attack outside Damascus killed hundreds of civilians and the U.S. State Department and the mainstream news media immediately blamed Assad’s forces amid demands for military retaliation against the Syrian army.

      Despite doubts within the U.S. intelligence community about Assad’s responsibility for the sarin attack, which some analysts saw instead as a provocation by anti-Assad terrorists, the clamor from Official Washington’s neocons and liberal interventionists for war was intense and any doubts were brushed aside.

      But President Obama, aware of the uncertainty within the U.S. intelligence community, held back from a military strike and eventually worked out a deal, brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which Assad agreed to surrender his entire chemical-weapons arsenal while still denying any role in the sarin attack.

      Though the case pinning the sarin attack on the Syrian government eventually fell apart – with evidence pointing to a “false flag” operation by Sunni radicals to trick the United States into intervening on their side – Official Washington’s “group think” refused to reconsider the initial rush to judgment. In Monday’s column, Hiatt still references Assad’s “savagery of chemical weapons.”

      Any suggestion that the only realistic option in Syria is a power-sharing compromise that would include Assad – who is viewed as the protector of Syria’s Christian, Shiite and Alawite minorities – is rejected out of hand with the slogan, “Assad must go!”

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    7. The neocons have created a conventional wisdom which holds that the Syrian crisis would have been prevented if only Obama had followed the neocons’ 2011 prescription of another U.S. intervention to force another “regime change.” Yet, the far more likely outcome would have been either another indefinite and bloody U.S. military occupation of Syria or the black flag of Islamic terrorism flying over Damascus.

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    8. Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

      https://consortiumnews.com/2015/09/07/how-neocons-destabilized-europe/

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    9. Washington’s serial wars in the Mideast are the product of PNAC neocons who have been nesting in Washington since Clinton, if not before. If you dare to look beneath the surface. the blood-stained tracks of all these interventions by Washington lead directly back to lobbyists, politicians, donors and NGOs that are indelibly linked to Zionist money and other Israeli-friendly forces that sustain America’s ‘special relationship’ to the All-Jewish entity. The ongoing destabilization of the Middle East is just business as usual for these people.

      America is simply being used for the purpose of cutting up and redividing the Middle East into tribes, factions and sects. Once that’s done, no nation can possibly threaten the tiny but mega-powerful Israel.

      http://www.persecutionprivilegeandpower.com

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  4. Give it a break, Deuce

    One day it's the "Neo-Cons", the next the Jews.

    Then there is the "Neo-Con/Jewish" conspiracy.

    The truth is that it is the Islamics, always out to kill everybody else and themselves too..

    Tickets to the Basque Festival in Boise, Idaho availble here:

    http://www.basquecenter.com/

    Great dancers....

    G'Night

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  5. I once bailed Quirk out of jail in Boise, Idaho for "impersonating a Basque"

    No one was really upset about it, surely not the Basgues.....

    It was $300 hundred bucks,...a total loss to me....

    Ah, well, it has happened before...

    I think the Boise police were just out to make a little extra at the weekend...

    Quirk was a little 'misbehaving' at the time...but no big deal...

    Quirk went back to dancing, when out of jail, and finally disappeared, much later than mid night, with some gal whose speech I could not understand..

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    1. Quirk was a little 'misbehaving' at the time...but no big deal...

      Mouthing off, mostly......

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  6. MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that Russian military advisers were in Syria, but it said that their presence was part of a longstanding agreement to provide military aid to the Middle Eastern country.

    Russian military aid to Syria has become a new source of tension between Washington and Moscow over the past few days, with the United States accusing Russia of escalating the conflict.

    You have to be shitting me. Russia is responsible for escalating the conflict in Syria?

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  7. READ CAREFULLY:

    Syrian troops have pulled out of a major air base in northwestern Syria, state television said on Wednesday, after a two-year siege by Islamist-led insurgents, increasing pressure on government-held coastal areas north of the capital.

    A group monitoring the war said the Syrian military had been completely driven out of the northwestern province of Idlib after the fall of the base.

    Rebel sources said al Qaeda's Nusra Front had played a leading role in the capture of the airport. Nusra is part of a coalition of Islamist groups called the Army of Conquest which has seized most of the surrounding Idlib province.

    In a newsflash, Syrian state television said the army garrison that had defended the Abu al-Duhur military airport had evacuated the post.

    The airport, which was one of the last remaining military strongholds in Idlib province, has been under siege for almost two years by rebels. Another major base east of Aleppo, Kweiris, is currently besieged by ultra hardline Islamic State militants.

    Nusra Front has made gains in northwestern Syria alongside other insurgent groups since May, seizing the city of Idlib, the town of Jisr al-Shughour and bringing them closer to government-held coastal areas north of the capital.

    GUESS WHO HAS BEEB AIDING the NUSRA FRONT:

    During his 2014 address to the UN General Assembly, Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “fighting militant Islam is indivisible.”

    The Israeli prime minister’s crude attempts to conflate ISIS with Hamas should not be allowed to conceal an important truth: Israel aids the forces of “militant Islam” when it is considered opportune to do so.

    The most egregious example of such aid in recent times has been Israel’s support for Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida’s franchise in Syria, as witnessed by UN peacekeeping forces stationed in the occupied Golan Heights.

    Israel’s collusion with al-Qaida has been virtually ignored by the American media, with a few exceptions. For example, The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Israel has been treating wounded al-Nusra fighters and then sending them back into the Golan to battle Hizballah and the Syrian army.

    Other media outlets have danced around the issue.

    The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, a frequent conduit for information from official sources, mentioned, in passing, last month that “Jordan and Israel have developed secret contacts with members of the Jabhat al-Nusra group along their borders.” But he failed to elaborate.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sure I’ll give it a break. I don’t want to confuse or tire anyone out about the devastation to the Middle East by the US and the Neocons and their Israeli merchants of war.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Material aid

      As Israel’s neighbors absorbed millions of displaced Syrians fleeing a war that, according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has killed more than 220,000 people, the Israeli government has painted its medical care for those wounded in Syria as altruistic. But only a third of the 1,500 treated by Israel have been women and children, according to the March report in The Wall Street Journal.

      The rest have been fighters who Israeli officials admit are not screened and likely belong to al-Nusra.

      Once it became undeniable, Israel confessed it was treating fighters, but claimed that they were moderates.

      But after al-Nusra captured and ejected UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights last August, there was no longer any doubt that al-Nusra was the dominant force among opposition fighters in the area.

      Since then, Ynet has resorted to whitewashing al-Nusra’s connections to al-Qaida. Citing unnamed Israeli officials, the publication claims that al-Nusra’s members are “simply local residents who joined the organization to benefit from the logistical and financial support it offers them.”

      Delete
    2. IT GETS WORSE:


      Retired Brigadier General Michael Herzog, a former chief of staff for Israel’s defense minister, told The Wall Street Journal that “Nusra is a unique version of al-Qaida. They manage to cooperate with non-Islamist and non-jihadi organizations in one coalition … They are totally focused on the war in Syria and aren’t focused on us. But when Hizballah and Iran and others are pushing south, they are very much focused on us.”

      Israeli soldiers have also been seen providing Syrian opposition fighters dominated by al-Nusra with material aid.

      Dozens of interactions between Israel and opposition fighters, as far back as 2012, have been documented by the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), the peacekeeping mission responsible for monitoring the 1974 ceasefire line between Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights.

      The UN has good reason to observe these interactions closely.

      In August last year, al-Nusra detained 43 UN peacekeepers and seized their equipment, prompting the UN to evacuate many of its soldiers to the Israeli-occupied side of the ceasefire line.

      Quarterly UNDOF reports since the pullback reveal an ongoing pattern of Israeli coordination with those armed groups.

      Delete
    3. AND WORSE STILL:

      According to the December 2014 report, UNDOF observed two Israeli soldiers “opening the technical fence gate and letting two individuals pass from the [Syrian] to the [Israeli] side” on 27 October. Unlike most fighters seen entering the Israeli side, these individuals were not wounded and the purpose of their visit remains a mystery.

      UNDOF “sporadically observed armed members of the opposition interacting” with the Israeli military across the ceasefire line, the report states.

      The next UNDOF report, released in March, notes that UN forces witnessed Israeli soldiers delivering material aid to armed Syrian opposition groups.

      “During the evening of 20 January, in the area north of observation post 54, UNDOF observed two trucks crossing from the [Syrian] side to the [Israeli] side, where they were received by IDF [Israeli military] personnel,” the report states. “The trucks were loaded with sacks before returning to the [Syrian] side.”

      The coordination between Israel and armed opposition groups continued into May, according to the June UNDOF report.

      Israel appears determined to keep the nature of these interactions as low key as possible, something Sidqi Maqt, a Druze resident of the Golan Heights, understands better than most.

      In February, Maqt was arrested by Israeli intelligence for posting photos and videos to his Facebook page of Israeli army interactions with armed opposition groups. Maqt paid particular attention to documenting encounters he believed demonstrated the Israeli army’s alliance with al-Nusra.

      Released in 2012 after serving 37 years in prison for engaging in armed resistance against Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, Maqt is once again behind bars. He has been charged with “espionage, assisting an enemy during wartime and contact with a foreign agent,” according to Al Jazeera.

      On top of providing al-Nusra with material aid and punishing those who expose it, Israel has launched airstrikes almost exclusively against forces fighting al-Nusra.

      Delete
    4. On 18 January, for example, an Israeli air strike on a convoy near Quneitra killed six members of Hizballah and a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

      Days later, rockets landed in the Golan Heights, according to UNDOF. The Israeli army retaliated by shelling a location it said was the source of the fire.

      A Syrian army official, however, told the UN that “terrorists” had fired the rockets and that the Syrian army planned to target their positions. The UN relayed this message to the Israeli army, which responded with airstrikes against two Syrian army artillery positions.

      Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has said that some in Syria joke, “How can you say that al-Qaida doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force.”

      While Assad’s policies, including the bombardments that have devastated cities and towns forcing millions to flee their homes, have contributed to the chaos and vacuum that has enabled extremist groups to flourish in some areas, Israel’s actions on behalf of those groups grant credence to his claim.

      Cheering on ISIS
      Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli general, has offered a candid explanation for Israel’s partnership with al-Nusra.

      “There is no doubt that Hizballah and Iran are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90 percent of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy — maybe it isn’t Israel,” he reasoned.

      Delete
    5. NEVER MISS AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLOIT AN OPPORTUNITY

      Hizballah, which is aligned with Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has been fighting al-Nusra in the Golan Heights with Iranian support. Given Hizballah’s growing capacity and proven willingness to defend against Israeli aggression, Israel appears to favor al-Qaida on its northern front and to view the destruction of Syria as an opportunity to incapacitate Hizballah in southern Lebanon by draining its resources in Syria.

      This does not mean Israel wants Assad to fall. On the contrary, Israel prefers a region fractured into small sectarian enclaves that are too busy fighting one another to unite against it. It is for this reason that Yair Golan, the Israeli army’s deputy chief of staff, recently celebrated the conditions on Israel’s northern border as “better than ever.”

      The Jerusalem Post’s security correspondent, Yossi Melman, has echoed Golan, depicting Syria’s descent into chaos and fragmentation as a strategic boost for Israel.

      Gilad Sharon, son of late Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, has gone even further by arguing that an ISIS takeover in Syria would offer an opening for Israel to acquire the Golan Heights permanently.

      In the event of an ISIS takeover, Sharon wrote last month, “There would be no international pressure for Israel to give back the Golan Heights either — and that’s a very good thing. The Golan will remain an important part of Israel forever.” He added that Israel could rely on the West’s so-called anti-ISIS coalition to defeat a victorious ISIS next door, allowing Israel to bask in its newly annexed territory without lifting a finger.

      Israel would not necessarily “welcome the presence of the Islamic State lunatics on our border,” Sharon wrote, “but it’s certainly no worse, and may even be better, than the presence there of Hizballah, which is the Lebanese proxy of the Iranian regime.”

      Naftali Bennett, Israeli education minister and leader of the ultra-nationalist party Habeyit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), appears to be following Sharon’s advice.

      Speaking at the Herzliya conference, a key event in Israel’s political calendar, this month, Bennett called on Israel to invoke the threat of ISIS expansion to compel governments around the world to legitimize its annexation of the Golan Heights.

      “Who do they want us to give the Golan to? To Assad? Today, it’s clear that if we listened to the world we would give up the Golan and ISIS would be swimming in the Sea of Galilee. Enough with the hypocrisy,” said Bennett, agitating for expanding the number of Israeli settlers in the Golan from 20,000 to 100,000 in the next five years.

      Delete
    6. BOTTOM LINE

      Support for al-Qaida in Syria, then, serves at least two purposes from Israel’s perspective: sapping the strength of the foe it fears most — Hizballah — and solidifying its occupation of the Golan Heights.

      In addition to sowing chaos and bloodshed, Israel’s machiavellian schemes — as its decades of meddling in Lebanon show — have a poor record of achieving their goals.

      https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-has-israel-embraced-al-qaidas-branch-syria/14619

      Delete
    7. .

      The neocon thought process never recognizes nor admits to mistakes.

      Saudi Arabia thought al Queda was great while their interests aligned. Now the Saudis are fighting al-Queda in Saudi Arabia.

      The Sunni countries of the ME were all perfectly willing to help all the opposition militant groups in Syria fight Assad. Now that AQIL has morphed into ISIS and is attacking these countries in turn, not so much.

      We have seen what the US support of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan has wrought.

      The arrogance encompassed in the view that these groups can be manipulated is amazing.

      We shall see what Israel's playing with fire brings.

      .

      Delete
  9. All made possible by the US Government.

    ReplyDelete
  10. .

    Excellent piece of history.

    Yesterday, I was writing a rather long post that paralleled Robert Parry's article on all the key points though it didn't go all the way back to Reagan. I was writing it to prove the US hands were all over the refugee crisis currently enveloping much of the ME. However, by the time I got to Syria it was quite long and I had to break off to get some yard work done before the rains arrived. So I settled for a truncated synopsis of why the US has a moral obligation for accepting more ME refugees and put it up here. I didn't get a chance to complete the entire post. Now, I don't have to. Parry's article says it all and in more detail than I would have.

    Parry's article along with the main article from Nation pretty much summarizes the disaster the neocons have wrought. And as Parry points out you don't have to be a GOP hack to be a neocon. Obama may have been an unwilling warrior in Libya but in the end he went along. He may have been reluctant to get involved in Syria but he let it fester by refusing to allow either Assad or Iran to be part of the negotiations on a settlement. He may have negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran, but he has continued to promote and expand major aspects of the "war on terror', expanding the neocon agenda in so many ways from drones and signature strikes to suppression of the press to a vast expansion of the big brother aspects of the police state. They are all dicks.

    In the Nation article, Tom Englehardt uses the phrase 'How probable is it...' often. I have to ask, how probable is it that most of these guys aren't behind bars for war crimes rather than sitting around the ranch doing water colors (Bush), being elected to run the World Bank (Wolfowitz), running for president (Clinton), or still politicking for war on national TV (Cheney)? For that matter, why haven't some of the key advocates of the neocon doctrine been run out of town on a rail (Kristol and Kagen) instead of publishing the Weekly Standard?

    .

    ReplyDelete
  11. Pretty astonishing number for July Job Openings

    5.8 Million

    ReplyDelete
  12. GUANTANAMO WATER BOARD PARK MATERIAL

    Something revealing happened over the weekend on Fox News Sunday. Dick Cheney had stopped by to bash President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal and promote his new book (co-authored with his daughter Liz). But moderator Chris Wallace, to his credit, wanted to ask Cheney about his own failings on Iran. On the Bush administration’s watch, Wallace noted, Iran’s centrifuges for enriching uranium “went from zero to 5,000.” Cheney protested, declaring that, “That happened on Obama’s watch and not on our watch.” But Wallace held his ground. “No, no, no,” he insisted. “By 2009, they were at 5,000.” Cheney paused for an instant, muttered, “right,” and went back to his talking points.

    The exchange illustrated why the former vice president is such an effective purveyor of untruths. Even when caught in a falsehood, he displays no discomfort. Unlike Rick Perry, he never ever says “oops.”

    Cheney has needed that sangfroid in recent days, because his falsehoods keep piling up. On Fox, he said that in the nuclear negotiations, the Iranians “got everything they asked for.” Really? In a June 24 tweet, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, declared “we do not accept 10, 12 years long-term restrictions.” But under the deal signed a few weeks later, the Iranians accepted restrictions on their uranium enrichment and their plutonium reprocessing that last 15 years. They accepted international inspections of their uranium mines and mills for 25 years. And they agreed to implement the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which gives inspectors the right to see undeclared nuclear sites in perpetuity. Khamenei also demanded “immediate removal of economic, financial and banking sanctions,” adding that, “We do not agree with IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] verification as precondition for the other side to implement its commitments.” But under the agreement, U.S. and European economic, financial, and banking sanctions imposed against Iran’s nuclear program are not immediately removed. They will remain until, you guessed it, “IAEA verification” that Iran has curbed its nuclear program.

    On Fox, Cheney also said Obama had paid “cash to the Iranians just to get them to come to the table.” That’s false too. It’s true that in the interim nuclear framework signed in November 2013, the United States and its allies agreed to release $700 million per month in frozen Iranian funds.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/dick-cheney-iran-deal-military-force/404296/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In fact, Cheney was vice president for eight years in an administration that watched the Iranian nuclear program progress and never took military action against Iran.

      Delete
    2. Massive heart attack wile being waterboarded would be perfect.

      Delete
    3. In fact, Obama has been at the helm for 7 years which has seen even larger gains and has done nothing to even slow it down.

      Delete
  13. Let me think a sec. Should I give it a break or keep going?

    Time’s up.

    I think I’ll keep going.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Never look back; something might be gaining on you.

      Satchel Paige

      :)

      Delete
  14. Quirk: We shall see what Israel's playing with fire brings.


    Innovation, better computers, improved medical devices, nano tech, bio tech and a beter sodastream to say the least.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Will see how all that works when BDS kicks in.

      Delete
    2. LOL

      BDS?

      Sorry but that may brighten up some Israel haters but guess what deuce, no one cares about the palestinians and their bullshit anymore.

      Delete
    3. Let's see the BDSer's give up their israeli invented technology…

      Oh that's right they won't..

      The world is rushing to do business with Iran, does a trillion with china…

      Really you think the world will not do business with Israel?

      What planet are you living on?

      LOL

      Delete
    4. The number of U.S. campuses with anti-Israel activity jumped by 31.2 percent from the precious academic year. We will see.

      Delete
  15. Cheney offered an alternative, saying a far better deal was still possible. “Iran will not be convinced to abandon its programme peacefully unless it knows it will face military action if it refuses to do so,” he said.

    Let’s think about that a moment:

    Gaddafi trusted the US, dumped his nuclear program and when terrorist attacked his country, he fought them. How did that work out for Libya?

    We intimidated Iraq with military action. Oh wait, we also attacked. And we occupied. That surely settled things down. Oh, shit - ISIS.

    Any American with a functioning brain doesn’t trust Washington or the lobbyists or the media. Surely Iran should trust the US government.

    Iran just negotiated a deal with all the major powers. It was approved by the UN and yet the entire Republican establishment is threatening to trash the deal and settling things with military attacks. If I were Iranian and the deal gets knocked down, I’m going to buy enough nuclear weapons to keep all the usual suspects guessing.

    Cheney’s advice and actions brought us ISIS.

    I also believe that ISIS will get some nuclear weapons, not to use them, but to guarantee they stay in power. The only country in the Middle East that has the chops and stops to take on ISIS, is Iran. The US, Saudis and Israelis own ISIS. That these psychos in Washington think that a war against Iran would set things jolly straight is beyond insane.


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Iran created ISIS by it's support for it's proxies to slaughter 550,000 sunnis in iraq and 360,000 in syria.

      iSIS is the reaction to Iran's hegemony in the middle east.

      ISIS sucks of course, but Iran and its shia butchers (and proxies) are worse.

      Maybe Isis will spread to Iran…

      Delete
    2. .

      Saudi Arabia with its funding of radical groups and their proselytizing of the radical Wahhabi philosophy is the fountainhead, the original source from which ISIS eventually sprang.

      Over a decade, US actions in the ME provided the environment for ISIS and others to thrive and spread.

      The connections are obvious.

      Who has ever connected Iran with the creation of ISIS other than in the irrational rants of the Israelis and their neocon allies?

      .

      Delete
    3. The Israeli-firsters are so used to dealing in myth, fabrication, justification and denial, that they default to pulling something out of their ass, keep repeating it, get it into the media and voila! It morphs into reality.

      Delete
    4. Iran is fighting ISIS. Read the post. Israel supports ISIS.

      Delete
    5. ISIS is shit. Iran is shit.

      May they both fight each other.

      Delete
  16. http://news.yahoo.com/swiss-buy-israeli-drones-parliament-green-light-183333373.html

    Geneva (AFP) - Switzerland's parliament on Monday voted in favour of a controversial plan to buy six Israeli surveillance drones worth 250 million Swiss francs ($256 million, 230 million euros).

    The upper house of the Swiss parliament approved the purchase of six unarmed Hermes 900 drones with 30 votes in favour and 12 opposed, confirming the lower chamber's previous authorisation of the deal.

    Campaigners had rallied against the deal with Israeli company Elbit Systems, urging Switzerland not to invest in Israel's military complex due to its "systematic human rights abuses" against Palestinians.




    BDSFAIL...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. RAT used to post endlessly about Israel and the ISIS connection. He also was one of the first to postulate that the Benghazi affair was a CIA arms deal for ISIS “Syrian Freedom Fighters” that went badly.

      Delete
  17. Everyone used to have a chuckle about his posting “Israel prefers ISIS”. He was right.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops, three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there said on Wednesday.

    The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what U.S. officials say appears to be a new military buildup by Moscow, one of President Bashar al-Assad's main allies, though one of the sources said the numbers of Russians involved so far were small.

    Two U.S. officials said Russia has sent two tank landing ships and additional aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and has deployed a small number of naval infantry forces.

    The U.S. officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia's military moves in Syria remained unclear. One of the officials said initial indications suggested the focus was on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, an Assad stronghold.

    The moves come at a time when forces of Assad's government have faced major setbacks on the battlefield in a four-year-old multi-sided civil war that has killed 250,000 people and driven half of Syria's 23 million people from their homes.

    Syrian troops pulled out of a major air base on Wednesday, and a monitoring group said this meant government soldiers were no longer present at all in Idlib province, most of which slipped from government control earlier this year.

    Moscow confirmed it had "experts" on the ground.

    But Russia has declined to comment on the exact scale and scope of its military presence in Syria. Damascus denied Russians were involved in combat, but a Syrian official said the presence of experts had increased in the past year.

    Officials in the United States, which is fighting an air war against the Islamist militant group Islamic State in Syria and also opposes Assad's government, have said in recent days that they suspect Russia is reinforcing to aid Assad.

    Washington has put pressure on countries nearby to deny their air space to Russian flights, a move Moscow denounced on Wednesday as "international boorishness".

    Moscow's only naval base in the Mediterranean is at Tartous on the Syrian coast in territory held by Assad, and keeping it secure would be an important strategic objective for the Kremlin.

    Two of the Lebanese sources said the Russians were establishing two bases in Syria, one near the coast and one further inland which would be an operations base.

    "The Russians are no longer just advisors," one of them said. "The Russians have decided to join the war against terrorism."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Let me know how threatening Russia will work out for the Neocons.

      Delete
  19. “And yet, while [David] Cameron continues to impose limits on the number of refugees who can take shelter in the UK, he is willing to welcome Netanyahu to our shores.” Len McCluskey et al, The Guardian, Sep 7, 2015

    It has been there, in the background, gurgling away. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been the subject of a busy UK petition which has seen over a hundred thousand signatures demanding his arrest. “Under international law, he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014.”[1]

    The hundred thousand threshold, apart from its obvious statement of indignation, also brings into play another feature of the UK political process: it compels parliamentarians to take notice and debate the issue. The government, however, reserves the right not to hold a debate in the Commons “if the issue has already been debated recently or there’s a debate scheduled for the near future.”

    When the petition started to gather steam, the Israeli Foreign Ministry gave it short shrift, deeming it “a public relations stunt with no practical significance.” The official position from the British government remains traditional: international law does not, as yet, countenance the prospects of arresting a head of state while holding office.

    The moment Netanyahu decides to hang up his sword of battle and leave office, that could be quite another matter. Venues for safe travel have certainly shrunk over the years, and his blood spattered resume is becoming the stuff of legend.

    For current purposes, Cameron’s position is that of lamentation and acceptance: pity the dead, but value necessary military action, the sort that inheres within the nasty confines of state sovereignty. “We recognise that the conflict in Gaza last year took a terrible toll. As the prime minister said, we were all deeply saddened by the violence and the UK has been at the forefront of international reconstruction efforts.”

    The very statistical discrepancy between 2,100 dead Palestinians, 500 children, as against seventy-three Israelis, almost all combatants, should stand out as a classic of disproportionate military action. During the conflict between July and August last year, 6,000 airstrikes were launched, 50,000 tank and artillery shells fired. But such ruthless muscularity is more likely than not going to be stricken from the agenda.

    As with so much on the Netanyahu schedules of late, such a visit will be closely choreographed. Local dissent will have to be managed. A delegation of parliamentarians has been combed to meet the Israeli prime minister. A range of Jewish leaders also make the list. None of the four candidates of the Labor party’s leadership will be amongst them, and certainly not Jeremy Corbyn, whose pro-Palestinian credentials are well noted.

    Corbyn’s position is reflected in a plethora of organisations who have argued for the squeeze to be applied to Israel. The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, which is intending to hold a protest later today opposite 10 Downing Street, has called for arms embargos and sanctions to be imposed (The Jerusalem Post, Sep 9).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A joint letter published in the Guardian, authored by a range of unions (TSSA, RMT, Aslef, Unite), left wing advocates and Labour MPs Jo Stevens and Cat Smith, similarly denounced the visit, claiming that Netanyahu “must bear responsibility for war crimes identified by the UN human rights council in its investigation into Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza.”[2]

      Those wishing to identify some form of proportionate response on the IDF’s part tend to point to the 4,881 rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups, including 1,753 mortar rounds into Israel. The balance sheet of death is somewhat less impressive than that of the Israeli war machine: six civilians in all, albeit a considerable number of injuries – 1,600.

      Netanyahu’s own salvo against the UN report was to argue that it stemmed from “a committee that does everything but protect human rights”. Case closed. A similar response ensued to the Amnesty International report on the same conflict from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Amnesty International had supposedly ignored “the heinous strategy of these terrorist organisations to embed their military operations within the civilian environment, and to fire at the IDF and Israel’s civilian population from behind the civilian population.”[3]

      Israel’s officials have previously featured as subjects of interest on the British legal circuit. Former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was the subject of an arrest warrant from a British court in 2009. It was subsequently withdrawn as Livni took heed and cancelled her trip to Britain.

      Earlier this year, there were mutterings that former defence minister Shaul Mofaz could be a potential target. According to the Jerusalem Post, “Israeli media reported that Mofaz was at risk of being detained on possible war crimes charges since Israeli authorities had tried and failed to secure diplomatic immunity for him on the trip.”[4]

      While the wheels of international law on the subject of criminal responsibility tend to move slowly, the International Criminal Court is engaged in preliminary investigations into the 2014 war. Israel remains rather vocal in attempting to undermine it.

      As such, much of this legal process remains ritualised and careful – to start going about clapping current leaders in irons for alleged crimes of high order would see an emptying out of the stables. Netanyahu, however, has been put on lingering notice.

      Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

      Notes

      [1] https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/105446

      [2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/07/binyamin-netanyahu-uk-visit-denounced-letter-war-crimes

      [3] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422891/british-leftists-want-bibi-netanyahu-arrested-war-crimes-mark-antonio-wright

      [4] http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Arrest-Netanyahu-for-war-crimes-British-petitioners-demand-411777

      Delete
    2. Interesting you didn't mention Hamas and it's war crimes.

      Nor the fact that Hamas started the war…


      Face it British leftists are just as deranged as American leftists.

      Delete
  20. Deuce ☂Wed Sep 09, 02:24:00 PM EDT
    The Israeli-firsters are so used to dealing in myth, fabrication, justification and denial, that they default to pulling something out of their ass, keep repeating it, get it into the media and voila! It morphs into reality.


    wow talk about pulling something out of your ass…

    ReplyDelete
  21. .

    The best Assad can likely hope for is a stalemate and partition of the country. Even then, he would have a hard time holding on since most of the energy resources are in the hands of the militants. However, he has no choice but to fight on.

    In the absence of a negotiated agreement in which he is allowed to share power (unlikely) it looks like he either gets asylum in Russia or he has to fight on. In the absence of either of those, he is a dead man.

    If the Assad regime falls, it will be followed by a bloodbath that makes the current situation in Syria look like a picnic or a stroll in the park.

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Assad and his friends, (iran, hezbollah) have directly murdered 360,000 and created over 11 million refugees..

      They have for decades supported the terrorists that blew up airplanes and buses across the world…

      Quirk, after ww2 (if you were alive and of voting age) would you as an American give two shits about the german civilians?

      And they surrendered…

      Now if the Assad regime falls, they will not be surrendering..

      And their victims, other arabs, will be pulling out their retribution….

      Hard to get my panties in a wad over it.

      Delete
    2. Ever heard of the Berlin Airlift?

      Delete
    3. ,

      Quirk, after ww2 (if you were alive and of voting age) would you as an American give two shits about the german civilians?

      Of course?

      Anyone with a spec of humanity would.

      Hard to get my panties in a wad over it.

      No surprise. Here, you constantly applaud the slaughter in the ME. Nothing new.

      .

      Delete
  22. Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said the US should take greater steps to address the migrant crisis in Europe.

    Speaking on Fox News, the real estate mogul turned candidate described the situation as "an unbelievable humanitarian problem".
    Thousands of people, mainly from Syria, have been entering Europe and travelling northwards in recent weeks.

    The US has allowed 1,500 Syrians to re-settle since the start of the conflict.
    But there are hints that it will take more.

    Speaking from the US Capitol on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the US was committed to welcoming more Syrian refugees.

    The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has asked governments around the world to resettle 130,000 Syrians by the end of 2016. In past conflicts, the US has typically taken half of the UNHCR request.

    “On a humanitarian basis, something does have to be done," Mr Trump said.

    "It's a serious problem. We haven't seen anything like it since the second world war, and it's getting worse and worse".
    When asked whether he thought they should be allowed in the US, the business mogul said: “I hate the concept of it, but on a humanitarian basis, with what's happening, you have to."

    He added: "It's living in hell in Syria. They are living in hell."

    ReplyDelete
  23. Pennsylvania alone could easily handle 100,000.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why should the arab league not be organizing the refugee resettlement efforts?

      Delete
    2. Just like Israel carries its own water. Never takes a dime or asks a favor. Let’s take a trip in the time machine shall we? How about 1995?

      Let’s see what those up by their own bootstrap motherfuckers did it in Tel Aviv:

      1995 April-May Table of Contents
      Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April/May 1995, Pages 79-80

      Middle East History—It Happened in May

      Israel Requests $10 Billion in U.S. Loan Guarantees for Soviet Immigrants
      By Donald Neff

      It was four years ago, on May 5, 1991, that Israeli Ambassador to the United States Zalman Shoval said Israel would soon ask America for $10 billion in loan guarantees to help provide housing for as many as a million Soviet immigrants expected to arrive in Israel over the next five years.1 His statement marked the beginning of the sharpest clash ever between Washington and Tel Aviv over the question of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israeli troops. The battle raged over the next 16 months, with President George Bush seeking to do what no president had ever had the courage to attempt—link U.S. aid to Israel's settlement policy.

      Despite a heroic effort, in the end the president's effort to link U.S. aid to restrictions on Jewish settlements was lost. Israel got its $10 billion in guarantees and at the same time went ahead with a vigorous program to establish settlements on Palestinian land.2

      Ambassador Shoval's warning about Israel's pending request for loan guarantees came at a delicate time in the Middle East. America had just led a coalition of forces to turn back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and Bush's popularity was at an all-time peak. He and Secretary of State James A. Baker III were deep in an active campaign to take advantage of the high standing of the United States in the region by trying to jump-start the peace process.

      But a new disturbing factor had appeared. It was at this time that unprecedented numbers of Jews from Russia were pouring into Israel. More than 200,000 had arrived between mid-1989 and mid-1991. The massive immigration alarmed Arabs who feared the new immigrants would settle in the occupied territories and thereby further deprive Palestinians of their land.

      Bush and Baker were caught in a dilemma. For humanitarian and domestic political reasons, they wanted to aid Israel in its efforts to house the new immigrants. But at the same time they did not want to sidetrack the peace process by having the Russians housed in occupied territory, thereby alienating the Arabs and undermining the peace process.

      Arab criticism was already high from an earlier loan guarantee granted Israel. In October 1990, Washington had agreed to provide Israel with $400 million in loan guarantees for the Russian immigrants to be housed within the frontiers of Israel. But it quickly became obvious that Israel was cheating on its written promise not to use the money to build housing in the occupied territories. Although Israel denied any wrongdoing, a report by its own Housing Ministry on March 3, 1991, revealed that plans called for more than 10,000 immigrants to be located in housing in the occupied territories.


      Aren’t they fucking marvelous?

      Delete
    3. Today that $10 billion is worth $15 billion. Such self efficiency and reliance is truly inspiring.

      Delete
  24. THIS IS CHOICE:

    (Reuters) - Russia has sent two tank landing ships and additional aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and has deployed a small number of forces there, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, in the latest signs of a military buildup that has put Washington on edge.

    The two U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia's military moves in Syria remained unclear.

    U.S. officials have not ruled out the possibility that Moscow may be laying the groundwork for an air combat role in Syria's conflict to bolster Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    Assad, a longtime Russian ally, has seen the area he controls whittled down to a fifth or less of Syria's territory after more than four years of grinding civil war.

    An official with the Russian defense ministry declined to comment.

    A traditional arms supplier to Damascus, Moscow has supported Assad throughout the war that has fractured Syria and has said it strongly opposes Islamic State, a militant group that is also the target of a U.S.-led air campaign.

    One of the U.S. officials said initial indications suggested the focus was on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of Assad.

    The officials estimated that dozens of the naval infantry forces had recently arrived at the airfield, possibly to help provide security.

    Reuters has previously reported on the transport of prefabricated housing units for hundreds of people to the Syrian airfield. The two officials said additional Russian prefabricated housing units had arrived as well.

    The Russian tank landing ships arrived in the past day or so at the port city of Tartus, just south of Latakia, the officials said, without providing information on the cargo. Additional cargo aircraft had also arrived at the airfield near Latakia.

    The United States and Russia have long been at loggerheads over Syria. Russia has backed Assad, while the United States advocates a political transition to end his rule.

    On Tuesday, the Pentagon said Russian support for Assad risked "further escalating the conflict."

    "If there are further efforts to support the Assad regime from a military standpoint on the part of the Russians, we would again see that with concern," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told a news briefing. (Reporting by Phil Stewart, additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why are our rulers and masters on edge? Could it be worried that the Russians might be helpful? I have been to Russia. It is not exactly a textbook case for efficiency, however, can anyone fuck the Middle East up worse than what Washington and the Pentagon have done in the last 15 years?

      Delete
    2. Russia has helped Iran and Syria (and Hezbollah) slaughter 360,000 syrians.

      Maybe unlike you, some don't like what russia and iran are doing…

      So Comrade Deuce, when will you be moving to the motherland?

      Delete
    3. When are you getting out of my country?

      Delete
    4. I am just as much an American citizen a you are.

      I was born in Philadelphia unlike you I am not a supporter of a nation at war with the USA

      When are you going to be honest Comrade Deuce?

      Delete
  25. Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online.

    In a quote posted to Twitter by Khamenei’s official account, Khamenei addresses Israel, saying, “You will not see next 25 years,” and
    adds that the Jewish state will be hounded until it is destroyed.

    The quote comes against a backdrop of a photograph apparently showing the Iranian leader walking on an Israeli flag painted on a sidewalk.

    “After negotiations, in Zionist regime they said they had no more concern about Iran for next 25 years; I’d say: Firstly, you will not see next 25 years; God willing, there will be nothing as Zionist regime by next 25 years. Secondly, until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists,” the quote from Iran’s top leader reads in broken English.



    So maybe Iran needs to be destroyed 1st?

    Maybe its wise to fund and supply ISIS? Maybe ISIS will destroy Iran?

    Iran has declared war already against BOTH the USA and Israel.

    So let's humor him and destroy all he holds dear 1st…

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As usual, no link. Another Debkafile special?

      Delete
    2. .

      I googled it. The first three links I came across were...

      rendevouswithdestiny.blogspot.com

      livinghiswordministries.wordpress.com

      endtimebibleprophecy.wordpress.com

      You know, the usual.

      :o)

      .

      Delete
    3. You are the propagandist here and unattributed quotes is a standard tactic of yours. Why should I Google it when I already know it is just your usual Bullshit misdirection? The unis is upon you to demonstrate what you write isn't your usual lie.

      Delete
    4. funny I googled it:

      In the news
      Image for the news result
      Khamenei: Israel won't survive next 25 years
      The Times of Israel‎ - 15 hours ago
      Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by ...
      Netanyahu: 'Tyrant' Khamenei is wrong, Israel is here to stay
      The Times of Israel‎ - 4 hours ago
      Quick Hits Page
      RushLimbaugh.com‎ - 4 hours ago
      More news for Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online.
      Ayatollah Khamenei: Israel Won't Last Next 25 Years - The ...
      www.thegatewaypundit.com/.../ayatollah-khamenei-israel-wont-last-next...
      17 hours ago - Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online. In a quote posted to Twitter by Khamenei's official account, Khamenei addresses Israel, saying, “You will not see next 25 years,” and adds that ...


      you are a liar.

      Delete
    5. Right up near the top is godlikeproductions.com real class site that

      Delete
  26. Russia’s foreign ministry has complained of a “strange hysteria” over Moscow’s actions in Syria, as western countries expressed concerns over apparent preparations for military intervention.

    Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “Russia has never made a secret of its military-technical cooperation with Syria” and confirmed that “Russian military specialists are in Syria to help them master the weapons being supplied”. She said there was nothing out of the ordinary about their presence.

    However, there have been a number of signs of more intensive Russian activity in Syria in recent weeks, including reported sightings of Russian jets and combat vehicles, claims of increased weapons deliveries, and even reports that prefabricated housing was being erected to pave the way for a major military presence.

    A number of photographs have been posted to social media networks from Tartus in eastern Syria by men who appear to be Russian contract soldiers.

    The Tartus naval base, which Russia has maintained since the 1970s, was previously a small and low-significance maintenance outpost, but has seen increased activity recently.

    The reports of growing Russian military activity in Syria were troubling, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. “I am concerned about reports about increased Russian military presence in Syria,” Stoltenberg said. “That will not contribute to solving the conflict.”

    Russia has insisted there is nothing out of the ordinary about the military assistance to the country, and Syrian government officials have also been playing down recent reports about an enhanced Russian military role, but insisting that Moscow remains a supportive ally.

    “Russian experts are always present but in the last year they have been present to a greater degree,” a Syrian official told Reuters. “All aspects of the relationship are currently being developed, including the military one.”


    President Bashar al-Assad did not comment on the question when it was raised by Russian journalists who interviewed him in Damascus on Sunday. But on the diplomatic front, western officials in fact say they detect signs of greater readiness by Moscow to push for a negotiated solution to the Syrian crisis – in part because of its growing concerns about the threat from Islamic State.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      I have no doubt Russia is upping the ante in Syria but ...

      A number of photographs have been posted to social media networks from Tartus in eastern Syria by men who appear to be Russian contract soldiers.

      can anyone tell me what a 'Russian contract worker' looks like?

      The reports sound like something our spooks would come up with.

      ,

      Delete
  27. QuirkWed Sep 09, 05:54:00 PM EDT
    .

    I googled it. The first three links I came across were...

    rendevouswithdestiny.blogspot.com

    livinghiswordministries.wordpress.com

    endtimebibleprophecy.wordpress.com


    more quirk lies.

    https://www.google.com/#q=Israel+will+not+survive+the+next+25+years%2C+Iran’s+Supreme+Leader+Ayatollah+Ali+Khamenei+said+Wednesday%2C+making+a+series+of+threatening+remarks+published+online.

    About 30,900 results (0.82 seconds)
    Search Results
    In the news
    Image for the news result
    Khamenei: Israel won't survive next 25 years
    The Times of Israel‎ - 15 hours ago
    Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by ...



    Maybe quirk you need to learn how to google?

    Or you are just full of shit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      Hey asshole, maybe it's you that doesn't know how google works.

      All I did is pull a passage from the post you put up and stuck it in Google. The links I put up showed at the top of the first page. Now you are saying I was supposed to filter through 30,000 links to figure out which one you used.

      Kiss off.

      .

      Delete
    2. fuck you.


      i put the 1st line in google and posted the results.

      you are a liar

      Delete
    3. notice how I show PROOF of my results you lying sack of crap...

      more quirk lies.

      https://www.google.com/#q=Israel+will+not+survive+the+next+25+years%2C+Iran’s+Supreme+Leader+Ayatollah+Ali+Khamenei+said+Wednesday%2C+making+a+series+of+threatening+remarks+published+online.

      About 30,900 results (0.82 seconds)
      Search Results
      In the news
      Image for the news result
      Khamenei: Israel won't survive next 25 years
      The Times of Israel‎ - 15 hours ago
      Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by ...

      Delete
  28. Deuce the occupying settler says:

    Deuce ☂Wed Sep 09, 05:04:00 PM EDT
    When are you getting out of my country?


    SO Deuce, why is this YOUR country and not mine?

    You have tried all the great nazis tricks like calling me disloyal, israel firster, 5th column...

    But it still is just that, bullshit.

    Now you claim America is yours?

    Hmmm.. You stand with Hamas, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. You don't stand even with Obama. or the Office of the President.

    Who do you stand with again?

    The mullahs of Iran..

    Maybe you should get out of MY country.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Read your own post moron. Always the victim.

      What is "Occupation"Wed Sep 09, 05:03:00 PM EDT
      Russia has helped Iran and Syria (and Hezbollah) slaughter 360,000 syrians.

      Maybe unlike you, some don't like what russia and iran are doing…

      So Comrade Deuce, when will you be moving to the motherland?

      Delete
  29. so now that the lazy lying pricks tried to lie and say discredit the post I had to provide the links, lazy pricks...

    Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online.

    In a quote posted to Twitter by Khamenei’s official account, Khamenei addresses Israel, saying, “You will not see next 25 years,” and
    adds that the Jewish state will be hounded until it is destroyed.

    The quote comes against a backdrop of a photograph apparently showing the Iranian leader walking on an Israeli flag painted on a sidewalk.

    “After negotiations, in Zionist regime they said they had no more concern about Iran for next 25 years; I’d say: Firstly, you will not see next 25 years; God willing, there will be nothing as Zionist regime by next 25 years. Secondly, until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists,” the quote from Iran’s top leader reads in broken English.



    So maybe Iran needs to be destroyed 1st?

    Maybe its wise to fund and supply ISIS? Maybe ISIS will destroy Iran?

    Iran has declared war already against BOTH the USA and Israel.

    So let's humor him and destroy all he holds dear 1st…


    My point is still valid.

    Iran is open in it's declaration of war against the Jews and Israel.

    Maybe Iran will need to be destroyed 1st....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      So let's humor him and destroy all he holds dear 1st…

      Let's?

      You talking to me white man?

      .

      .

      Delete
  30. WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced a series of new steps by his administration to help make community college affordable for most Americans.

    Speaking at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, Obama unveiled a new national advisory board and a wide-reaching advocacy campaign, both aimed at building support for America's College Promise, the higher education plan he first publicized in January. It calls for spending $60 billion over 10 years to provide participating students with two years of free community college.

    In order to qualify for the tuition waiver, students would have to be enrolled at least half-time in accredited programs, and maintain their academic progress.

    "Community colleges are at the heart of the American dream," Obama told an enthusiastic crowd of students and faculty. "And for every young person willing to work hard, I want two years of community college to be as free and universal as high school is today."

    Offering free community college, he said, "is a concrete way to reduce the cost of education for young people, to improve the skills of workers so they get higher paying jobs, and to grow our economy."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The president attended the event with Jill Biden, a community college professor and the wife of Vice President Joe Biden. Earlier in the day, the White House announced that she will chair the administration's new College Promise Advisory Board with Jim Geringer, a former Republican governor of Wyoming.

      "Our task is to bring together leaders from across the country to highlight student success stories like we've seen in Tennessee, Chicago and Michigan," Biden told the crowd, "to share best practices and to encourage others to join our efforts."

      In addition to the community college initiatives, Obama also announced $175 million in federal grant money to expand apprenticeship programs, where students "earn while you learn" in job settings instead of traditional classrooms. The American Apprenticeship Grants will help train and place some 34,000 new apprentices at U.S. companies, a White House fact sheet stated.

      "The average starting salary for a person who's finished an apprenticeship is now more than $50,000," said the president."We want to give workers across America the same chance you have [at Macomb] to get real-world experience that leads directly to a good job."

      Obama's free community college proposal was one of the highlights of the domestic policy agenda he unveiled during his State of the Union address in January. But it was quickly met with stiff opposition from Republicans in Congress, who balked at both the price tag and at the notion of creating a new federal education program.

      The concept has had more success outside of Washington, and 11 states are currently considering legislative proposals to offer free community college. In Tennessee, state lottery funds are used to fund Tennessee Promise, a program that covers community college tuition and fees for students who maintain a minimum 2.0 GPA.

      Delete
    2. "There's a movement going on here; it's an idea whose time has come," Obama said. "Free community college for responsible students. It's an idea that makes sense."

      article

      Delete
    3. LOL

      Free?


      Somebody PAYS for it...

      FREE?

      Delete
    4. FREE? Yes, like the FREE stuff that Israel sponges off the US on its annual shakedown.

      Delete
  31. Under the amazing presidency of Obama we have collected more taxes than at any other time in history.

    And yet?

    Our debt is topping 18 trillion.

    We print 50 billion a month in quantitative easing every month.

    But we can give FREE college (community) for selected folks...

    Let's add that to the Americans already on the public dole...

    109,631,000 Americans lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded "means-tested programs" — also known as welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.Aug 20, 2014

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...and I’ll bet Israel has cost us 3 trillion out of the 18 trillion.

      Delete
  32. How amazing a liar you have become Quirk.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      Once again, you prove how you jump to conclusions. All you said was 'google it'. I googled it.

      I noticed your post above where you said you googled it by using the first line. I didn't. I just quickly grabbed a fragment from the body of your post and stuck it in google, this fragment...

      In a quote posted to Twitter by Khamenei’s official account, Khamenei addresses Israel, say

      But I'm a big man. I am willing to accept your apology when you post it here. That's the way I roll.

      .

      Delete
  33. CBO: Fiscal 2015 Federal Deficit through August more than 10% below Last Year

    by Bill McBride on 9/08/2015 04:43:00 PM

    More good news ... the budget deficit in fiscal 2015 will probably decline more than 10% compared to fiscal 2014.

    From the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today: Monthly Budget Review for August 2015

    The federal government’s budget deficit amounted to $528 billion for the first 11 months of fiscal year 2015, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. That deficit was $61 billion smaller than the one recorded during the same period last year. Revenues and outlays were both higher than last year’s amounts, by 8 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Adjusted for shifts in the timing of certain payments (which otherwise would have fallen on a weekend), the deficit for the 11-month period decreased by $42 billion.

    In its most recent budget projections, CBO estimated that the deficit for fiscal year 2015 (which will end on September 30, 2015) would total $426 billion, about $59 billion less than the shortfall in fiscal year 2014. ...
    The Treasury will run a surplus in September, and it appears the deficit for fiscal 2015 (ends in September) will be below 2.4% of GDP.

    Read more at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2015/09/cbo-fiscal-2015-federal-deficit-through.html#4gWVvTOBRDJThEwO.99

    Calculated Risk Blog

    ReplyDelete
  34. Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops, three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there said on Wednesday.

    The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what the United States fears is a deepening Russian military role in Syria's civil war, though one of the Lebanese sources said the number of Russians involved so far was small.

    U.S. officials said Russia sent two tank landing ships and additional cargo aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and deployed a small number of naval infantry forces.

    The U.S. officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia's military moves in Syria was unclear. One suggested the focus may be on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    U.S. officials have not ruled out the possibility that Russia may want to use the airfield for air combat missions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/10/us-mideast-crisis-syria-exclusive-idUSKCN0R91H720150910

      Delete
    2. NBC- Two Russian military ships believed to be carrying equipment and supplies are headed to Syria, defense officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

      The Russians' intentions remain unclear, officials said. Moscow has previously sent humanitarian assistance to the Syrians, but another U.S. official said analysis suggests Moscow is setting up a site for a squadron to go in, presumably to help the regime of President Bashar Assad with airstrikes.

      Al Qaeda-linked rebels have recently seized a number of cities in a four-year civil war that has killed at least 250,000 people. They forced government troops out of Abu al-Duhur, a major air base in the northwestern province of Idlib, after a two-year siege, state TV said Wednesday.

      Russia has refused to detail the scope of its military presence in Syria. The U.S. says it is believed to have fewer than 100 military personnel on the ground, setting up mobile housing units and a portable air traffic control tower at an airstrip outside Latakia.

      But "we have been informed that the Russians are entering into active intervention," Amos Gilad, a senior adviser to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, said Tuesday at a security conference in Israel.

      Delete
  35. WASHINGTON: A rebellion by conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives on Wednesday delayed the first congressional vote on the nuclear agreement with Iran and raised the possibility that lawmakers might never vote on a resolution disapproving of the pact.

    The House was supposed to vote on a procedural motion to begin debate on Wednesday, but it was put off after some Republicans said they wanted to push President Barack Obama to provide more information about the deal.

    Instead, House Republican leaders scheduled a late afternoon meeting to discuss how to proceed.

    Under a law Obama signed in May, Congress has until September 17 to vote on a resolution of disapproval of the nuclear agreement between the United States, five other world powers and Tehran.

    The resolution of disapproval, if passed, would sink the deal, under which Iran gains relief from sanctions in return for curbing its nuclear program. Obama has secured enough votes from his fellow Democrats to sustain a veto of the measure, even if the Republican-led Congress approves it.

    The rebel Republicans, led by Representative Peter Roskam, said the Obama administration had not provided all the information about the deal required under the Iran Nuclear Review Act. They said it includes "secret side deals" about inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities that have not been fully revealed.

    The White House dismissed that suggestion.

    "If Congress does not vote, this agreement goes into effect. It's as simple as that," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

    The dispute arose after announcements on Tuesday that deal supporters had mustered 42 votes in the Senate, more than enough to block a disapproval resolution before it could be passed, if all of the votes hold.

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Republican-dispute-delays-US-Cong-vote-on-Iran-nuclear-deal/articleshow/48893246.cms

    ReplyDelete
  36. .

    so now that the lazy lying pricks tried to lie and say discredit the post I had to provide the links, lazy pricks...

    :o)

    :o)

    Lesson learned. Had you simply put up your link in the first place, it would have saved you the trouble of posting the dozen posts that followed.

    And then you still got it wrong.

    I await your apology for impugning my integrity.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  37. MORE ON THE NEOCON

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has opened up about his new book, 'The WikiLeaks Files,' speaking about the 'US empire' and telling RT's 'Going Underground' program that Washington had plans to overthrow Syria's government long before the 2011 uprising began.
    Speaking to ‘Going Underground’ host Afshin Rattansi, Assange referred to the chapter on Syria, which goes back to 2006. In that chapter is a cable from US Ambassador William Roebuck, who was stationed in Damascus, which apparently discusses a plan for the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria.


    “...That plan was to use a number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there's a coup...so in theory it says 'We have a problem with Islamic extremists crossing over the border with Iraq, and we're taking actions against them to take this information and make the Syrian government look weak, the fact that it is dealing with Islamic extremists at all.'”


    He added that the most serious part of the plan was to “foster tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. In particular, to take rumors that are known to be false...or exaggerations and promote them – that Iran is trying to convert poor Sunnis, and to work with Saudi and Egypt to foster that perception in order to make it harder for Iran to have influence, and also harder for the government to have influence in the population.”

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. While we’re waiting for Congress to return from their August recess to debate the deal between Iran and the U.S., we’re seeing Republicans making statements about how the deal will embolden Iran to continue their efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, putting the United States at an unnecessary risk. The people out there pushing these talking points are the same ones who told us that we have to invade Iraq in order to stop terrorism.

      Ring of Fire’s Sam Seder recently spoke with author David Bromwich about why we need to ignore the Iran talk coming from these war hawks.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am4oGVy2j1A

      Delete
  38. McCAIN IS INSANE

    By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John McCain displayed a photo of the body of a 3-year-old Syrian refugee on the Senate floor Wednesday as he urged stronger leadership from President Barack Obama on Syria.

    McCain, a Republican, stood next to an enlarged, close-up photo of Aylan Kurdi, who drowned along with his 5-year-old brother and mother when their small rubber boat capsized as it headed for Greece. McCain said the photo has "opened the world's eye to this devastating crisis."

    McCain said it should haunt Americans that "the United States will continue to do nothing meaningful" about conflicts like that in Syria that have led to a surge in refugees.

    Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday after meetings on Capitol Hill that the U.S. will take in more refugees.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No one in the US Senate has more to account for the debacle in Syria than John McCain.

      Delete