Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[kladner]

To fall back on an hoary advertising slogan, "Where's the beef proof? I have become accustomed to the shrieks of one-sided moral outrage from those supporting the illegal invasion of a nation which poses no threat to the invaders. Note that at least two of the invading powers are the former colonial powers whose parceling out of the Ottoman Empire led to much, but not all, of the conflict and instability in the region.

Also note that the primary invading power is setting up to indefinitely occupy the part of the invaded country where the most oil, water, and best agricultural lands are located.

UK corporate media are under a curious kind of military occupation. Almost all print and broadcast media now employ a number of reporters and commentators who are relentless and determined warmongers. Despite the long, unarguable history of US-UK lying on war, and the catastrophic results, these journalists instantly confirm the veracity of atrocity claims made against Official Enemies, while having little or nothing to say about the proven crimes of the US, UK, Israel and their allies. They shriek with a level of moral outrage from which their own government is forever spared. They laud even the most obviously biased, tinpot sources blaming the ‘Enemy’, while dismissing out of hand the best scientific researchers, investigative journalists and academic skeptics who disagree.

Anyone who challenges this strange bias is branded a ‘denier’, ‘pro-Saddam’, ‘pro-Gaddafi, ‘pro-Assad’. Above all, one robotically repeated word is generated again and again: ‘Apologist… Apologist… Apologist’.

Claims of a chemical weapons attack on Douma, Syria on April 7, offered yet another textbook example of this reflexive warmongering. Remarkably, the alleged attack came just days after US president Donald Trump had declared of Syria:

"I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation."

[kladner]

The second segment quoted below, from "the ruler of the queen's navy" is only the first example of authoritative voices which have been buried under huge, reeking piles of....."common wisdom." Even US Secretary of 'Defense,' "Mad Dog" Mattis is not toeing the party line.

Also taking a more cautious view than Tisdall, Freedland, Rawnsley, Lucas, Mendoza, Monbiot, Mason and the Guardian editors (see Part 1), is James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, the US Secretary of Defence, who said:

I believe there was a chemical attack and we are looking for the actual evidence.

Only ‘looking’ for actual evidence?

As each day goes by — as you know, it is a non-persistent gas — so it becomes more and more difficult to confirm it.

The evidence clearly, then, had not yet been found and the claims had not yet been confirmed.

Jonathan Freedland’s ‘committed denialists and conspiracists’, and Paul Mason’s victims of Putin’s ‘global strategy’ clutching at ‘false flag theories’, presumably include Lord West, former First Sea Lord and Chief of Defence Intelligence. In an interview with the BBC, West commented:

President Assad is in the process of winning this civil war. And he was about to take over and occupy Douma, all that area. He’d had a long, long, hard slog, slowly capturing that whole area of the city. And then, just before he goes in and takes it all over, apparently he decides to have a chemical attack. It just doesn’t ring true.
It seems extraordinary, because clearly he would know that there’s likely to be a response from the allies – what benefit is there for his military? Most of the rebel fighters, this disparate group of Islamists, had withdrawn; there were a few women and children left around. What benefit was there militarily in doing what he did? I find that extraordinary. Whereas we know that, in the past, some of the Islamic groups have used chemicals [see here], and of course there would be huge benefit in them labelling an attack as coming from Assad, because they would guess, quite rightly, that there’d be a response from the US, as there was last time, and possibly from the UK and France…

We do know that the reports that came from there were from the White Helmets** – who, let’s face it, are not neutrals [see here]; you know, they’re very much on the side of the disparate groups who are fighting Assad – and also the World Health Organisation doctors who are there. And again, those doctors are embedded in amongst the groups – doing fantastic work, I know – but they’re not neutral. And I am just a little bit concerned, because as we now move to the next phase of this war, if I were advising some of the Islamist groups – many of whom are worse than Daish – I would say: “Look, we’ve got to wait until there’s another attack by Assad’s forces – particularly if they have a helicopter overhead, or something like that, and they’re dropping barrel bombs – and we must set off some chlorine because we’ll get the next attack from the allies….” And it is the only way they’ve got, actually, of stopping the inevitable victory of Assad.

**I will just mention that while many residents of Douma chose to stay, the White Helmets reportedly boarded the buses which evacuated the jihadists.

[ewmayer]

o Just When You Thought "Russiagate" Couldn't Get Any Sillier | Consortium News

o MSM Is Frantically Attacking Dissenting Syria Narratives, And It Looks Really Bad | Caitlin Johnstone

o The two Korean TV affiliates in my area are currently airing continuous coverage of the Two Koreas Summit which began yesterday, which is of course a huge deal on the Korean peninsula. (Note the rather unjournalistically barbed choice of words in the Asia Times article: “In a photo-op that looks certain to become iconic, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will waddle across the inter-Korean border in the iconic truce village of Panmunjom at 9:30am on Friday for the third-ever inter-Korean summit…”) The body language of the 2 leaders at their face-to-face meeting was very friendly, and undiplomatic though it may be, “waddle” is an accurate description of the portly Kim’s gait. Important as this event is, if they pre-empt my regular Korean evening dramas – tonight would normally be Queen of Mystery 2 followed by Let’s Watch the Sunset – for it, I’m gonna be pissed. :)

[Update: They did indeed kibosh all the usual dramatic fare - this means war!]

o And lastly, I was going through an old storage box earlier today and discovered, wrapped in bubble-wrap and apparently never used, a CafePress coffee mug featured this fellow who famously became the butt of much humor during the 2003 Bush-administration invasion of Iraq. The mug has the full website URL and above it, "No American shall ever drink from this coffee mug. Never!" Anyhow, while doing a bit of "where are they now?" web-searching based on my rediscovery of the aforementioned swag, I came across this decidedly unfunny decade-anniversary piece:

"]Baghdad Bob" and His Ridiculous, True Predictions - The Atlantic

[ewmayer]

Trump has all but decided to withdraw from Iran nuclear deal: sources | Reuters -- This would be a huge mistake. The Iran deal was, IMO, one of the very few unambiguously good things Obama did. The Israel lobby which - in conjunction with the House of Saud - has run (or perhaps "meddled in" is the more apt phrase, being very much in vogue these days) US foreign policy in the Middle East for decades must love the idea of another "let's you and him fight" ME war.

On the same subject, the latest from Lee Camp examines an interesting "follow the banks" theme w.r.to who-do-we-invade-next. I knew about Gaddafi pushing for a pan-African currency, but most of the other examples cited by Camp were new to me:

I Know Which Country the U.S. Will Invade Next - Truthdig

Bonus link: New Bipartisan Bill Could Give Any President the Power to Imprison U.S. Citizens in Military Detention Forever | Intercept

[kladner]

May the Saints preserve us. The Constitution is clearly, "Just a goddamn piece of paper." We can seek no protection there.
EDIT: "Saints" is purely a rhetorical device. I got no faith in "them", either.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Bonus link: New Bipartisan Bill Could Give Any President the Power to Imprison U.S. Citizens in Military Detention Forever | Intercept

We'll miss you... Give my regards to Il Duce.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

We'll miss you... Give my regards to Il Duce.

Kurt, I'm touched by your concern - thanks! You do the same to the late senator's ghost at your next meet-up of the neo-McCarthyite Jugend.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Kurt, I'm touched by your concern - thanks! You do the same to the late senator's ghost at your next meet-up of the neo-McCarthyite Jugend.

Ernst, I'm flattered by the "Jugend," but young I am not. When I was young, I wrote a term paper on the late senator. The research I did left a lasting impression of him which was anything but favorable.

As even the most cursory glance at photographs will confirm, current Texas senator Ted Cruz is the love child of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

As a possible alternative to incarceration in a US military black hole, you might consider relocating to Russia. From your posts, it seems you might be happier there. And I'm sure you wouldn't complain about what Putin & Co were up to -- not for long, anyway!
;-)

[ewmayer]

@Kurt: Since you are certainly much younger than any of the original red-scaremongers, "Jugend" works fine as a differentiator.

And in the end, despite your affectations of progressivism, you out yourself as just another America-love-it-or-leave-it jingoist, like so many of the extreme rightists you deplore. Why am I not surprised?

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

US and Israeli shipments to the Syrian rebels | Sic Semper Tyrannis

It seems likely that these shipments originated at the US post at Al-Tanf having been brought to that place through Jordan and with the knowledge of that government. The presence of Syrian Government forces on the Euphrates River would seem to block shipments from the US controlled area east of the river. It seems unlikely that either shipment was made by infiltration from the Golan Heights. That would be a very hard thing to do.

It is unclear from this piece if the destinations for this materiel were the Rastan Pocket just north of Homs City or the Big Sandy pocket south of the line Palmyra-Deir al Zor.

The Rastan Pocket is rapidly being reduced by negotiation and threat of Tiger Force attention. The M5 motorway to Aleppo is being re-opened even as I write. This pocket IS NOT occupied by IS.

On the other hand, if the shipments or parts of them were going to the Big Sandy that would be revelatory because all the hostiles in that one ARE IS. Some are the survivors of the government offensive that relieved Deir al-Zor and the Euphrates west bank and others are the result of busing after surrender in western Syria.

The US insists that it does not support IS, but if there are shipments from Al-Tanf to the Big Sandy this claim would be markedly weakened.

The Inter-Korean Summit | Ask a Korean!

It is worth noting the other reason why the re-affirmation of 2018 was necessary: the total failure of United States and South Korea's North Korea policy for the past decade. In 2008, South Korea’s presidency went from liberal to conservative, ushering in a decade of hawkish polices. United States went the other direction as Barack Obama came into office, but Obama’s main North Korea policy was a lukewarm, “let’s do nothing and see if North Korea would collapse on its own,” which was given a fancy name “strategic patience.” As we all know, North Korea did not collapse. In a decade since 2008, North Korea went from a rudimentary nuclear weapon that may or may not have worked to a credible showing of a nuclear weapon-mounted intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the continental United States.

Where is the accounting of blame for the past decade? The critics of the 2018 inter-Korean summit must answer that threshold question first. The critics must explain why their preferred policy of “not talking to North Korea” failed to produce any result for the past decade. Read Nicholas Eberstadt on the New York Times, Max Boot on the Washington Post, or Eli Lake on Bloomberg View—all of them decry the previous failed attempts at a dialogue in the early 2000s, but have zero reference to the events of the past ten years, although the immediate past more obviously informs where things stand today.

Despite its many significant faults, the Sunshine Policy era of 1998 to 2007 still had several positives. Millions of South Korean visited North Korea. Separated families were able to meet regularly. Tens of thousands of North Koreans got a taste of capitalism by working in South Korea’s factories set up in Kaesong, North Korea. Tens of thousands of North Koreans successfully escaped their country and settled in South Korea in an orderly manner. What does the conservative era from 2008 to 2017 have to show for? Why aren’t we talking more about the insane outrage that a fucking shaman daughter was editing the Dresden Speech, Park Geun-hye’s signature North Korea policy statement? Why is there no recognition that Obama’s “strategic patience” was nothing more than another instance of US liberal’s ideational bankruptcy when it comes to foreign policy?

The first comment by dipsomaniacally-self-titled reader 'seaofsoju' discusses the issue of why-does-NK-pursue-nukes, but misses a crucial aspect of this, especially against the backdrop of the bizarre recent quote from the "warmongering walrus" John Bolton that "the U.S. is using a ‘Libya model’ for its North Korea negotiations": Having a credible missilized nuclear capability is the best guarantee countries like NK have against falling victim to violent regime change by the U.S. and its allies. Had Gaddafi had The Bomb, he would likely still be running Libya today, rather than dying via sodomy-by-bayonet while U.S. neocons like Hillary cackled gleefully "we came, we saw, he died" and having his country devolve into civil war, jihadist-haven-dom and a state so dire as to see the revival of actual medieval-style slave markets. Hey, no one ever said spreading democracy was easy, eh?

[kladner]

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/04/trotskyist-delusions-obsessed-with-stalin-they-see-betrayed-revolutions-everywhere/

Take this as you will. I found it a challenging read. I don't think of disputes between different factions of Soviet Communism that often. There was a boy in one of my high school classes named "Leon Trotsky Atlas." When I told my Mom, she said, "I know his father." Turns out Leon's Dad was a college friend.

For me, this is a peek into a different way of thinking: interesting, but confusing.
Syria turns out to be the ultimate subject, cast in terms of competing "isms."

The first thing one learns about Trotskyism is that it is split into rival tendencies. Some remain consistent critics of imperialist war, notably those who write for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).

Others, however, have translated the Trotskyist slogan of “permanent revolution” (turning a bourgeois revolution into a working class one) into the hope that every minority uprising in the world must be a sign of the long awaited world revolution – especially those that catch the approving eye of mainstream media. More often than deploring U.S. intervention, they join in reproaching Washington for not intervening sooner on behalf of the alleged revolution.

A recent article in the International Socialist Review (issue #108, March 1, 2018) entitled “Revolution and counterrevolution in Syria” indicates so thoroughly how Trotskyism can go wrong that it is worthy of a critique. Since the author, Tony McKenna, writes well and with evident conviction, this is a strong not a weak example of the Trotskyist mindset.

[Nick]

OPCW report on the events of 4 February 2018 in Saraqib, Idlib:
https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/...26-2018_e_.pdf