Category Archives: Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

NATO-Like Arab Force in Mideast Meant to Support Israel, Counter Iran: US Analyst Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy
 Tasnim’s interview with Dennis Etler which makes many of the same points I raised in my interview.
اتلر

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – US President Donald Trump, in his Middle East tour, is seeking to create the Arab equivalent of the NATO military alliance to help the Zionist regime of Israel and contain the Islamic Republic of Iran, an American analyst said.

“He (Trump) now seeks to consolidate an alliance of Arab states under US tutelage by courting Saudi Arabia. The main reason for seeking an Arab coalition is to better support Israel in its contention with Iran and re-insinuate the US into the region as a backroom wheeler and dealer. The US position, however, is fraught with contradictions,” Dennis Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, told the Tasnim News Agency.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: On Saturday, US President Donald Trump opened a nine-day foreign trip in Saudi Arabia. The past four US presidents, when making their first trips abroad, traveled to either Canada or Mexico. Donald Trump, by contrast, has traveled to Saudi Arabia. What is your take on Trump’s visit?

Etler: Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia while couched in terms of seeking peace and development in the Middle East is actually an attempt to shore up US influence in the region by supplying the Kingdom with an unlimited amount of arms to pursue its policy of military confrontation with Iran. The Trump administration views Iran as its principal enemy and Saudi Arabia as its principle ally in the Middle East, even though it is Iran which is fighting against Takfiri terrorism and Saudi Arabia which has been tacitly supporting it.

The reason for this is both ideological and economic. The US was founded as a settler state. The Pilgrims had the expressed purpose of setting up a New Zion on the territory they conquered. Thus the US has always been at heart an expansionist Zionist state. Its support for the Zionist regime of Israel, founded under the auspices of Anglo-American imperialism is a natural outgrowth of its history. Saudi Arabia is also the product of Anglo-American imperialism. Trump’s chief adviser Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, is an orthodox Jew and ardent Zionist. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have been the bulwark of US power projection in the region and serve as the staging grounds for US intervention and hegemony.

Trump has no concern for the issues dear to neo-liberals which are cast in terms of universal human rights, which more often than not results in cultural imperialism. While this has often served the purpose of providing a cover for US attempts at regime change to install governments more to its liking, it has also served as an impediment to maintaining good relations with some of its surrogates, such as Saudi Arabia which has an abysmal human rights record by US liberal standards. Trump in disregarding these concerns is able to deal arms to Saudi Arabia with complete impunity.

Trump’s first overseas trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel are part of his plan to reinvigorate the US position in the Middle East which is still the crux of US foreign policy, particularly as it is a potential choke point for China’s Belt and Road Initiative if US-China relations sour.

Tasnim: Trump is also scheduled to make a speech for 50 leaders of Muslim countries attending the so-called “Arab Islamic American Summit” during his two-day visit. It seems that Arabs are still excited about Donald Trump, even as the president’s position among his own people continues to collapse. What do you think? Do you believe Trump is looking for more respect abroad?

Etler: When US Presidents have troubles at home as Trump now has their natural inclination is to seek some sort of foreign triumph to distract attention from their domestic problems. In order to shore up his credentials in the face of the Russiagate scandal Trump has reversed his positions first on dealing with China and then on his assessment of Islam. He now seeks to consolidate an alliance of Arab states under US tutelage by courting Saudi Arabia. The main reason for seeking an Arab coalition is to better support Israel in its contention with Iran and re-insinuate the US into the region as a backroom wheeler and dealer. The US position, however, is fraught with contradictions. While attempting to forge an alliance with Russia against Takfiri terrorism it seeks to isolate and contain Iran, a vital ally of Russia and Syria in their fight against ISIS. Trump’s antagonism towards Iran serves only the geopolitical interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are the main logistical supporters of the terrorists Trump has vowed to fight.

Tasnim: According to a recent article published in the Atlantic, “US strategists have long dreamed of creating an indigenous military coalition in the [Persian] Gulf that could take some of the security burden off the 35,000 US troops stationed there—or perhaps free up some of those 35,000 troops to do jobs elsewhere in, say, the Asia-Pacific region.” Kindly share your thoughts with us.

Etler: Trump has long complained of the fact that the US has been footing the bill for regional security, with the countries who benefit from US largess getting a free ride. This is a half-truth at best but speaks to the fact that the US wants the countries within its sphere of interest to take on more of the burdens of imperialism. The US is more than willing to sell these countries arms so long as they shoulder more of the responsibility to protect US interests in the region.

Tasnim: As you know, since March 25, 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd RabbuhMansour Hadi. According to Yemen’s Legal Center of Rights and Development, the Saudi campaign has claimed the lives of over 12,000 Yemenis and left more than 20,000 others wounded. Media reports suggest that Trump will use his Saudi Arabia trip to announce one of the largest arms sales deals in US history – somewhere in the neighborhood of $98bn to $128bn worth of arms. What’s your take on Saudi military aggression on Yemen and US support for it?

Etler: Saudi Arabian aggression against Yemen is akin to its aggression against both Iraq and Syria. The only difference being that Saudi aggression in Yemen is an example of direct intervention rather than surreptitious infiltration. For all its talk of human rights during the Obama administration, the US nonetheless supported Saudi aggression in Yemen and elsewhere. Under Trump, the US is now doubling down in its support of Saudi Arabia. This is simply raw power politics as the US tries to regain lost ground throughout the region.

Arab Regimes under Influence of ‘Atlanticist-Zionist-Wahhabist’ Triangle: US Analyst Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

My latest interview with Tasnim.

کیث پرستون

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst said the majority of Arab regimes in the region are under the control of ‘Atlanticist-Zionist-Wahhabist’ triangle.

“The majority of Arab governments are controlled by forces that are part of the wider Atlanticist-Zionist-Wahhabist triangle, particularly those in the Persian Gulf, so it is certainly predictable that they would welcome greater recognition from the Trump administration,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told the Tasnim news agency in an interview.

Keith Preston was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States. He received degrees in Religious Studies, History, and Sociology from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the founder and director of American Revolutionary Vanguard and the chief editor of AttacktheSystem.Com. He has also been a contributor to LewRockwell.Com, Antiwar.Com, Anti-State.Com,Taki’s Magazine, Radix Journal, and AlternativeRight.Com . He is the author of six books, and was awarded the 2008 Chris R. Tame Memorial Prize by the United Kingdom’s Libertarian Alliance. Keith has been a featured speaker at conferences of the National Policy Institute, H. L. Mencken Club, and Anarchapulco. He has been interviewed on numerous radio programs and internet broadcasts, and appeared as a guest analyst on Russia Today, Press TV and the BBC.

The following is the full text of the interview.

Tasnim: On Saturday, US President Donald Trump opened a nine-day foreign trip in Saudi Arabia. The past four US presidents, when making their first trips abroad, traveled to either Canada or Mexico. Donald Trump, by contrast, travelled to Saudi Arabia. What is your take on Trump’s visit?

Preston: The Trump administration is in the process of sealing a major arms deal with the regime in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis will be purchasing $110 billion in weaponry from American armaments manufacturers, and this will be a major boon to the domestic U.S. armaments industry. The US is also attempting to strengthen the Saudi state in its war efforts in Yemen. The war is a manifestation of the ongoing conflict in the region between the Resistance Block and the Saudi-led Wahhabist block which aspires to hegemony in the Middle East. The triangular relationship between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel is one that wishes to prevent the ascendency of any force in the region that could potentially challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, or Israel’s ongoing expansionist program. The ambition of the United States in attempting to strengthen the Saudi military is to counter the influence of independent regimes in the region that resist U.S. hegemony such as Iran or Syria, and to oppose non-state tendencies which also resist US hegemony such as Hezbollah. The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia with regards to the petroleum industry must also be considered. The current US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is the former CEO of the Exxon Mobil petroleum firm, which is the largest foreign investor in Saudi Arabia.

Tasnim: Trump made a speech for 50 leaders of Muslim countries attending the so-called “Arab Islamic American Summit” during his two-day visit. It seems that Arabs are still excited about Donald Trump, even as the president’s position among his own people continues to collapse. What do you think? Do you believe Trump is looking for more respect abroad?

Preston: The Arab states to which you refer are those states in the Middle East which are part of the wider triangular relationship between the Atlanticist, Zionist, and Wahhabist forces that I previously mentioned. At present, the hegemonic influence of this triangle is being challenged in the region by the actions of the various forces that collectively comprise the Resistance Block, and by the efforts of certain nations within the BRICS axis to assist this challenge. In particular, the United States is opposed to the development of a closer relationship between Iran and Russia, Iran’s support for on the ground forces such as Hezbollah that are resisting the growth of Salafist terrorism in the Middle East, the military assistance that has Russia has given to President Assad of Syria during the course of the civil war in that country, the role of Iran and Syria along with Hezbollah as counter forces to Israeli expansionism, and the ambitions of China to assume a more active role in the economic development in the region, particularly in Afghanistan. The majority of Arab governments are controlled by forces that are part of the wider Atlanticist-Zionist-Wahhabist triangle, particularly those in the Persian Gulf, so it is certainly predictable that they would welcome greater recognition from the Trump administration.

Tasnim: According to a recent article published in the Atlantic, “US strategists have long dreamed of creating an indigenous military coalition in the [Persian] Gulf that could take some of the security burden off the 35,000 US troops stationed there—or perhaps free up some of those 35,000 troops to do jobs elsewhere in, say, the Asia-Pacific region.” Kindly share your thoughts with us.

Preston: A major difficulty that the nations of the Persian Gulf have faced is their failure to maintain effective military forces that are capable of engaging in combat with their rivals in the region. The performance of the Saudi military in the past, for example, has been very lackluster. Rather than seeking to develop their own forces, the states in the Persian Gulf have sought to rely on the support and protection of U.S. military forces that are stationed in the region. This constitutes a major military commitment on the part of the United States. If the Persian Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others were to develop an effective and competent military coalition of their own, the United States would be able to relocate its own troops to other areas where the US has a perceived interest. The Asia-Pacific region is certainly one of these given the growing dispute over the South China Seas islands, the ongoing conflict with North Korea, and the desire of the U.S. to prevent China from becoming the hegemonic power in the region.

Tasnim: As you know, since March 25, 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to Hadi. According to Yemen’s Legal Center of Rights and Development, the Saudi campaign has claimed the lives of over 12,000 Yemenis and left more than 20,000 others wounded. Media reports suggest that Trump will use his Saudi Arabia trip to announce one of the largest arms sales deals in US history – somewhere in the neighborhood of $98bn to $128bn worth of arms. What’s your take on Saudi military aggression on Yemen and US support for it?

Preston: The Houthi Ansarullah is aligned with Iran, and part of the wider Resistance Block. Therefore, it is obvious that Saudi Arabia would wish to prevent the growth of the Houthi Ansarullah in Yemen as an insurgent political and military force. Iran is Saudi Arabia’s principal rival in the region, and Saudi Arabia certainly does not wish for an Iran-friendly regime to come to power in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is a nation that has one of the worst human rights records in the world, and this is reflected in Saudi Arabia’s war policy in Yemen, which seems to have little concern for the humanitarian consequences of the war or the civilian casualties that are being generated. The United States also has a lengthy history of providing aid to regimes with terrible human rights records, so it is doubtful that the human rights situation in Yemen is of any concern to the United States. Instead, the primary objective the United States is to assist its Saudi ally in the defense of its own hegemony in the Persian Gulf, and to counter the influence of Iran.

Keith Preston: US trying to save Zionist-Wahhabi axis in Middle East 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Press TV. Listen here.

The United States is concerned about the faltering Wahhabi-Zionist alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that’s why US President Donald Trump is going to visit Riyadh and Tel Aviv on his first foreign trip, according to an American analyst. 

Keith Preston, the director of attackthesystem.com, made the remarks on Wednesday while discussing high-profile visits by American officials to Israel over the past few weeks.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford traveled to Israel on Monday to discuss military ties and address the Tel Aviv regime’s concerns about the situation in Syria and Egypt.

In April, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis visited Israel on his first trip as the Pentagon chief, where he reaffirmed Washington’s “absolute and unwavering commitment to Israel’s security.”

General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the US European Command, echoed the same stance when he visited the occupied Palestinian lands in March.

Trump is expected to visit Israel on May 22, after making a stop in Saudi Arabia during his first ever foreign trip as the US president.

Preston told Press TV that while the US has been helping terror groups to wreak havoc in the region over the years, it is now getting increasingly concerned about the consequences of the trend for its own allies, specially Israel.

“The United States has always expressed concern about terrorist activity in the Middle East but at the same time the United States has always tried to undermine independent regimes that would serve as a bulwark against terrorism,” he argued.

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America is worried that destabilizing policies by its regional allies like Saudi Arabia would eventually harm Israel’s security, the Virginia-based analyst added.

“Now, I think on one hand, the Americans, the Israelis and the Saudis all want to have a certain amount of instability and destabilization… but at the same time I don’t all relish the idea of there being an insurgency going on as well that goes beyond a certain point,” he explained.

Preston said Trump’s upcoming tour to the Middle East, which involves stops at Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt, is aimed at maintaining the “Anglo-American, Zionist, Wahhabist” axis in the region.

“So, it seems to me that.. there is concern about losing control in the region and they are trying to consolidate the position, the triangular relationship that exists between the Zionists, the Wahhabists and the West,” he concluded.

Is It True That Not a Single Senator—Even Bernie Sanders—Cares About Palestinian Plight? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

The entire political class, from the most liberal Democrats to the most conservative Republicans, are the enemy.

By Ben Norton and Adam Johnson

Alternet

All 100 members of the U.S. Senate sent a letter to the United Nations on April 27 that spread misleading pro-Israel myths. Included as signatories were the Senate’s two progressive leaders, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

AlterNet repeatedly contacted the offices of Sanders and Warren with a request for comment. Neither replied.

The 725-word letter does not mention Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestinian land, which marks its 50th anniversary this June. Nor does it acknowledge Israel’s illegal colonization of Palestinian territory through ever-expanding settlements.

Even the U.S., Israel’s closest ally, has agreed at the U.N. that Israel’s occupation and settlements are flagrant violations of international law. The senators’ letter glosses over this elementary fact, and does not even acknowledge the existence of the Palestinian people.

The bipartisan senatorial campaign against the U.N. was led by hard-right neoconservative Republican Marco Rubio and Reagan-Republican-turned-Democrat Christopher Coons.

“Although, as Republicans and Democrats, we disagree on many issues, we are united in our desire to see the United Nations improve its treatment of Israel,” the senators wrote in the letter, which also demonizes the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

They claimed “member states and agencies are using the U.N.’s privileged platform to advance an anti-Israel agenda.”

U.N.’s Pro-Israel Bias

In reality, the evidence shows that the U.N. has a pro-Israel bias. Emails leaked from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonstrate how the U.S. State Department successfully exerted pressure with the goal of “deferring” U.N. action on Israeli war crimes, as previously detailed in my report in Salon.

While the State Department conceded that the 2009 U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known commonly as the Goldstone Report, was only “moderate,” it was still not pro-Israel enough for the U.S. Messages from top officials illustrate how the government pushed to water down the report, “reframing the debate” about the atrocities and “moving away from the U.N.”

Moreover, U.S. government cables released by WikiLeaks show how former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon worked with the U.S. and Israeli governments to weaken the 2009 U.N. report on the war crimes Israel had committed in its recent war in Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead.

The idea that the United Nations was “singled out for special scrutiny” is conventional wisdom in U.S. political circles. Those who make this argument, as the senators do in the letter, point to Agenda Item 7, a standing agenda item on the U.N. Human Rights Council docket that debates Israeli human rights violations. Crucial context missing from this talking point is that the focus on Israel’s human rights record by less powerful U.N. bodies like the Human Rights Council is the logical byproduct of a U.N. Security Council—by far the most powerful and consequential U.N. body—doing nothing to curb Israel’s human rights abuses through the decades.

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Afro-Colombians Face Genocidal Attacks from United States-Backed Death Squads Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized

US imperialism is what those who are genuinely concerned about the mass killing of people with black and brown skin should be protesting, not Milo Yiannopolous and Ann Coulter.

By D. Amari Jackson

Atlanta Black Star

On December 20, 1996, in the Colombian riverside village of Riosucio, the mass killings of Afro-Colombians began. At the time, though the country’s relentless civil war between the government and rebel groups had raged for decades, much of the violence had spared the rural, mineral-rich region of Choco where 85 percent of residents are Afro-Latino. That would brutally change as paramilitary death squads—backed by powerful government and commercial interests both in Colombia and the United States—murdered hundreds and displaced thousands in response to the establishment of residential land rights by Afro-Colombians in Riosucio and nearby towns. The violence would continue and, despite a November 2016 treaty officially ending the five-decade conflict, consume the region while substantially contributing to the current displacement of 2 million Afro-Colombians.

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Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More? Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

A reminder of who is our true enemy, i.e. the State. As the late paleoconservative turned anarchist Joseph Sobran once said, “If human beings were rational, they would talk about the state the way Jews talk about Nazis.” It’s also a shame that these discussions of mass killings carried out by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao usually leave out the body count generated by US and other forms of Western imperialism.

By Timothy Snyder

New York Times

Who was worse, Hitler or Stalin?

In the second half of the twentieth century, Americans were taught to see both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the greatest of evils. Hitler was worse, because his regime propagated the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust, the attempt to eradicate an entire people on racial grounds. Yet Stalin was also worse, because his regime killed far, far more people, tens of millions it was often claimed, in the endless wastes of the Gulag. For decades, and even today, this confidence about the difference between the two regimes—quality versus quantity—has set the ground rules for the politics of memory. Even historians of the Holocaust generally take for granted that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, thus placing themselves under greater pressure to stress the special character of the Holocaust, since this is what made the Nazi regime worse than the Stalinist one.

Discussion of numbers can blunt our sense of the horrific personal character of each killing and the irreducible tragedy of each death. As anyone who has lost a loved one knows, the difference between zero and one is an infinity. Though we have a harder time grasping this, the same is true for the difference between, say, 780,862 and 780,863—which happens to be the best estimate of the number of people murdered at Treblinka. Large numbers matter because they are an accumulation of small numbers: that is, precious individual lives. Today, after two decades of access to Eastern European archives, and thanks to the work of German, Russian, Israeli, and other scholars, we can resolve the question of numbers. The total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans—about 11 million—is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did. That said, the issue of quality is more complex than was once thought. Mass murder in the Soviet Union sometimes involved motivations, especially national and ethnic ones, that can be disconcertingly close to Nazi motivations.

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Trump to Arm Syrian Kurds, Even as Turkey Strongly Objects Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Fourth Generation Warfare, Military, Strategy • Tags:

How ironic that the overlords of the American Empire might be backing the Murray Bookchin-inspired libertarian socialist insurgents of the Kurdish territory. But this is actually in keeping with a strategy that I have long advocated for anarchist, anti-state and anti-imperalist movements around the world, i.e. building on the ground resistance while seeking aid from the official enemy of whatever state they’re fighting. Consequently, the on the ground resistance movements located in the nations of the Anglo-American-Zionist-Wahhabist axis should seek aid from the nations of the BICS-Shia-Global South axis, and vice versa. It is perfectly appropriate for the Kurds to accept aid from the USA just as it would be perfectly appropriate for the EZLN, Calexit or the Republic of Texas to accept aid from the Russians, Iranians, and Chinese.

By Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt

New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump has approved a plan to arm Syrian Kurds so they can participate in the battle to retake Raqqa from the Islamic State, a strategy that has drawn deep opposition from Turkey, a NATO ally.

American military commanders have long argued that arming the Y.P.G., a Kurdish militia fighting alongside Syrian Arab forces against the Islamic State, is the fastest way to seize Raqqa, the capital of the militants’ self-proclaimed caliphate.

And Mr. Trump, who made fighting Islamist militants a priority during his campaign, again showed the high regard he has for Pentagon generals by endorsing their advice when faced with a policy dilemma.

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Keith Preston on Trump’s Attack on Syria Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Tasmin News Agency

پرتسون

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst said “pro-Israeli forces within the United States have for years exercised considerable pressure on the US to take action against Syria”, stressing that the recent attack on the Arab country seeks to serve the interests of Israel in the region.

“There is also evidence that the pro-Israeli forces within the United States have for years exercised considerable pressure on the United States to take action against Syria, and Trump has always had a very enthusiastically capitulating attitude towards the Israeli interests,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told the Tasnim news agency.

The following is the full text of the interview.

Tasnim: As you know,dozens of people were killed in a chemical attack in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday. The United States and its allies were quick to accuse Syrian government forces of carrying out the attack. The Syrian army said, however, that “it has never used them (chemical weapons), anytime, anywhere, and will not do so in the future.” Later, Washington warned that it will take unilateral action against the Arab country. On Friday morning, the US military, without UN mandate, launched about 60 Tomahawk missiles against several targets on al-Shayrat air base in Homs province in western Syria.“Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” US President Donald Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. What’s your take on this?

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Robert Stark talks to Rabbit about Trump’s Betrayal & Attack on Syria Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

The Stark Truth. Listen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark and co-host Pilleater talk to Rabbit about Trump’s attack on Syria and the betrayal of his base. Rabbit blogs at AltLeft.com – “The left wing of the AltRight”

Topics:

The gas “attack” in syria and how it’s being used as propaganda to draw us into war
Anatoly Karlin’s article This Fishy Smell of Sarin, or Was it Chlorine?
Regardless of what happened the conflict is none of our business
How the AltRight is totally united in not wanting to go to war in Syria and disillusioned with Trump
Richard Spencer: Will Trump Gas His Presidency Over Syria?
Hillary Clinton and the Neocon/Never-Trumpers praising Trump’s decision to invade Syria
The hubris in thinking we should decide who the the leaders should be in other countries, and how the US never learns it’s lessons
Trump’s use of liberal humanitarian rhetoric to justify intervention
The Trump admin being taken over by neocons and Trump himself making dumb statements
Steve Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council
How gullible US politicians and media are, and how easily manipulated emotionally people are by imagery
How the North Korea situation is none of our business either, and how it is a self created threat
Other examples of Trump betraying his base including Signing Measure to Let ISPs Sell Your Data Without Consent, Healthcare, and Free Trade

Donald Trump’s State Department approves Saudi Arabia weapons sales blocked by Barack Obama Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Apparently, Trump has decided to be just another tool of the Anglo-American-Zionist Wahhabist axis of evil. No US President that ever moved to dismantle the empire would be allowed to survive. The wider ruling class and deep state interests would force him out by means of political maneuvering, or if that didn’t work by means of a Pinochet-style coup, or in the vein of the attempted coup against Gorbachev in 1991. The Prez is the equivalent of the CEO of a corporation, and the various financial and corporate elites, along with the deep state and military industrial complex, are the equivalent of the board of directors or major shareholders. A CEO certainly has a range of latitude when it comes to policy.

But if the CEO of General Motors came out said that GM was no longer going to make cars and make children’s toys or sporting goods instead, he would be out the door in a millisecond. It doesn’t matter who the individual president is, what his personal opinions are, what his private political views are, what is personal character is. He is simply a figurehead for a wider machine.I expect Trump to govern as just another lame ass Rockefeller Republican as every president for the past half century has done.

By Samuel Osbourne

The Independent
donald-trump-0.jpg

The State Department has approved resuming arms sales to Saudi Arabia previously blocked by Barack Obama.

A multi-million dollar  technology for Riyadh was blocked by the former President during the final months of his administration over human rights concerns.

Saudi Arabia is leading a mostly Arab coalition targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen with air strikes.

An annual report by UN experts who monitor the conflict in Yemen, seen by Reuters, said the Saudi-led coalition had carried out attacks that “may amount to war crimes” — accusations Riyadh rejects.

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Keith Preston: Trump Admin. May Provide Europe with Opportunity to Assert Its Own Identity Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Tasmin News Agency

کیث پرستون

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst described European nations as age-old “colonies” of the US Empire, noting that policies by the country’s new administration on Europe can give this chance to the 28-member bloc to assert its own “identity” and “independence”.

“Europe faces no threat from the Trump administration. In fact, potential conflicts over various international policies and agreements between the Trump administration and Europe may provide Europe with the opportunity to assert its own identity and independence. The European nations have existed largely as colonies of the American empire under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since the end of World War Two,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told the Tasnim news agency in an interview.

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The Morally Reprehensible Rehabilitation of George W. Bush Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

By Neil Clark

Russia Today

The morally reprehensible rehabilitation of George W. Bush

The big chimp is back. No, I’m not talking about the imminent release of the new King Kong film, but the return of George W. Bush.

Incredibly, or perhaps not so incredibly, given the current insanity, the man who launched a blatantly illegal war based on an outrageous lie – and which destabilized not just the Middle East but the entire world, is now being lauded in Western liberal circles for his tacit criticism of Donald Trump’s attacks on the press and for calling for ‘answers‘ on the new President’s alleged ties with Russia.

What next? If the octogenarian psychopath Charles Manson comes out and takes the ‘right’ position on Trump, the media, and Russia, will newspapers be quoting him with approval too? You can just imagine the conversations: ‘OK, his ‘Family’ might have killed a few people, but it was a long time ago, and you’ve got to admit Charles is absolutely right about Putin and Trump and the threats to our wonderful free media. Yah?’.

In 1971 Manson was found guilty of conspiring to kill seven people, including the lovely actress Sharon Tate. Bush’s Iraq war was a conspiracy which has claimed the lives of up to one million people and led directly to the rise of ISIS. If there were such a thing as international justice, then Bush, like the monstrous Manson, would now be behind bars for what he did. Instead, the man who set fire to the Middle East – and who later joked about the absence of WMDs – is promoting his first art book and has become the Russophobes’ darling of the month. Just how sick is that?

The Washington Post which back in December falsely claimed Russia had hacked into a Vermont power utility – ran a piece entitled: ‘Why you should listen when George Bush defends the media.’

Dubya was hailed for saying that the America media was “indispensable to democracy” and that “independent media” was needed to hold “people” like him to account. But that’s the problem. The US media, with one or two honorable exceptions, is not “independent” and it didn’t – and doesn’t – hold establishment-approved warmongers like George W. Bush to account.

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Trump Foreign Policy: Same Old, Same Old? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Fourth Generation Warfare, Military

By William S. Lind

Traditional Right

The big question about the new Trump administration is whether its foreign policy will reflect President Trump’s views or long-standing Establishment positions. It is too early to offer a firm answer, but early indications are worrying.

The past several weeks have seen senior administration officials traveling the world, offering reassurances to our (mostly worthless) allies that no policy changes are coming. We will continue to be committed to war with China over the Japanese Senkaku islands, which are uninhabited; war with Russia over the Baltic states (which Russia is unlikely to attack); and, most worrying, to continued confrontation with Russia for no reason in particular.

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Keith Preston: Trump in conflict with ‘deep state’ over troop deployment 2

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

PressTV. Listen here.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is in conflict with intelligence agencies over deploying American troops to Syria to fight the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, an American political analyst in Virginia says.

“Right now there’s a great deal of conflict within the American government itself; the Trump administration and what we call the ‘deep state’ or a lot of conventional intelligence services are heavily in conflict with one another,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

Some political scientists, writers and journalists in the United States have for decades expressed concerns about the existence of a so-called “deep state” or state within a state, which they argue exerts control and influence over public policy, regardless of which political party controls the country’s democratic institutions.

Under the Trump administration, the term deep state has been used by some news organizations to refer to intelligence officials and executive branch bureaucrats guiding policy through leaking or other means of internal dissent.

“We saw that [conflict between Trump and the ‘deep state’] this week with the resignation of the national security advisor, General Michael Flynn; so there’s a great deal of turmoil within the foreign policy apparatus of the United States,” Preston told Press TV on Thursday.

The resignation of  Flynn on Monday and the continuing turmoil inside the White House have deeply rattled the Washington establishment.

Preston said there seems to be a conflict between the Trump administration and the deep state over the goal of the Western military intervention in Syria. Trump seeks to eliminate ISIL and keep President Bashar al-Assad in power, whereas some intelligence and military officials are pursuing the opposite goal.

CNN reported on Wednesday that the US Defense Department may recommend that the United States deploy regular combat troops to Syria to fight Daesh terrorists.

US combat troops

“It’s possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time,” CNN quoted a Pentagon official.

During the presidential campaign, Trump had openly supported deploying a large contingent of US troops to Syria.

The US has already sent several hundred of its special operations forces to Syria. However, their operations have been limited to what the Pentagon describes as training and assisting Kurdish fighters in their battle against Daesh (ISIL) and other terrorist groups.

When authorizing the limited deployments, then-US President Barack Obama had stressed that conventional ground troops were not an option.

The US and its allies have been carrying out airstrikes against alleged Daesh positions in Syria and neighboring Iraq since 2014.

My Take on the “Muslim Travel Ban” Reply

by • Administration, American Decline, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Military, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy

A number of people have for my views on the so-called “Muslim travel ban” imposed by the Trump administration. Here goes:

Statistically, the evidence shows that right-wing terrorists have been slightly more violent in the years since 9-11 than Islamists, at least in the US obviously. But the meaning I take from this data is that the neocons and other hawks are blowing the Islamic terrorism threat way out of proportion, while liberals and the Left blow the right-wing terrorism threat out of proportion. Both groups need these false narratives to be true for ideological reasons.

The neocons and other hawks want a permanent war against Islam and the Left wants a permanent war against whitey, so there always has to be some looming threat on the horizon. The real violence is the US comes mostly from inner city gangs that murder each other over drug dealing disputes, from fights and domestic violence that spirals out of control, and from the mentally ill or lone nuts like Adam Lanza, Dylan Roof, or Omar Mateen.

September 11, 2001 was a singular but spectacular incident that has predictably kept plenty of people up in arms ever since. The OKC bombing in ’95, which killed about 150, had the same impact on the Left. I remember how after OKC the Left was saying many more such acts were just around the corner. But over 20 years later there’s been no such thing. The same thing happened with 9-11. I remember people talking about how there was going to be nuclear destruction of US cities and terrorism with bioweapons and all kinds of stuff. But 15 years later there’s only been a handful of incidents like Orlando, San Bernardino, and Ft. Hood that were perpetrated by lone nuts or small groups of friends acting as freelancers.

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