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Open Thread 2017-41
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Nov 7 –Defeated Elsewhere, Saudi Tyrant Declares War On Lebanon
The quasi kidnapping of Saad Hariri has been reported in detail by Robert Fisk in The Independent, David Ignatius in the Washington Post and by a team of Reuters reporters. It is undeniable that Hariri is held against his will and was pressed to resign. Neither Trump nor Macron nor Merkel will be able to defend that. With the kidnapping MbS has achieved something everyone thought to be impossible. He made Saad Hariri likable.
Tonight Hariri will be interviewed in Saudi Arabia by a reporter of his own Future TV station. The interviewer will use a Saudi camera crew. She is also a parliament candidate for Hariri's party and on the Saudi payroll. The President of Lebanon has warned of believing anything Hariri says while he is in Saudi Arabia and under duress.
Nov 9 – Priti Patel Resigns – Israel Lobby Mourns The Loss Of A Valuable British Asset
It was too obvious that Patel was a tool of the Israel lobby. Many other politicians in "western" polities are similar tools, but better at hiding it.
Nov 10 – Saudi Arabia – This "Liberal Reformer" Is An Impulsive Tyrant
The stars are slowly turning against MbS. Only paid lobbyist still speak of him as a "liberal reformer". The kidnapping of Hariri seems to have broken the camels back. A real Bedu would have avoided that.
Nov 11 – Trump Points To Falsehoods In "Russian Hacking" Claims – Media Ignore What He Says
Trump makes one point every reasonable men should be able to agree to. Curiously it is the very one point on which the borg is united in fighting him.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 1:18am · 12 Nov 2017
When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics – bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!
Please use the comments as open thread …
On this comment:
Why people with liberal/progressive values – or simple humane values – didn’t immediately see that [Kissinger support] as disqualifying for a Democratic candidate is beyond me.
Posted by: Daniel | Nov 12, 2017 4:04:02 PM | 3
It’s really easy to understand, once you recognize that Kissinger ran against Nixon on a “missile gap” with the Soviets in 1960, and that as soon as JFK was in office, he ramped up spending on military-industrial programs in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs 2-3 times more than during the Eisenhower era.
I know all about this because my first interest in that era was in terms of tracking the rise of the U.S. nuclear, chemical and biological weapons complex. JFK, liberal champion of so many deluded American citizens, was God’s gift to the military industrial complex, in terms of funding, it’s undeniable. Cleverly, JFK also recognized that imperial agendas were going to be unpopular unless presented as a global movement to spread “human rights and democracy” to the savage natives (a complete replay of the British Empire approach).
If we take this up to the modern era, well, the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests? Those were savagely attacked by “liberal humanitarian pro-democracy advocate” Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton:
…co.jp/opinion/2012/02/20/commentary/how-the-arab-spring-was-hijacked/
What began as protests against food prices, corrupt leaders and lack of government accountability has assumed ominous dimensions. From the rampant but largely unreported human-rights abuses in the post-Moammar Gadhafi Libya to the increasing bloodshed in multiethnic, autocratic Syria, the developments are making the future of the Middle East and North Africa more volatile and uncertain.
Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, stands out for carrying out the region’s most-successful suppression of an Arab Spring movement, thanks to a Saudi-led military intervention and continuing Western backing.
Whereas Cairo’s Tahrir Square has come to epitomize the power of ordinary people to rise up against tyranny, Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout was simply obliterated with bulldozers — an action that was followed up with arrest and torture of activists as well as of the doctors and nurses who treated the injured.
Look this up on Wikileaks, you can find emails from Hillary Clinton howling at the US embassy because they’d met with opposition protesters. Liberal Democrats, when they go abroad are violent imperial dictators in bed with similar Republicans. The Pelosi-McCain axis.
So, it shouldn’t be beyond you. This is a complete propaganda system. Sold to the American public by a dishonest corporate media, which almost never discusses the reality. Every once in a while, some shell-shocked CNN reporter might present facts on the ground as they are, however, like this CNN clip in Bahrain from 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAabXlrwLuY
This time around, though, I think the Saudis and the UAE and their Israeli cohort are looking to fall flat on their faces. The blockade on Yemen is a clear war crime; Lebanon has learned from 2006 and 2008 what all the Israeli-Saudi-CIA games are all about; Europe wants to cut economic deals with Iran – it’s now the US, Israel and the GCC monarchies who are isolated on the world stage.
What they all live in fear of, I think, is waking up some morning to find that radical protests against the House of Saud have broken out all across Saudi Arabia, as happened in Iran in 1978-1979. That could spread to the UAE and Bahrain and the whole imperial program could come crashing down – except in Qatar. Qatar, with its joint deal with Iran over Pars gas field development, could be its own story.
Posted by: nonsense factory | Nov 13 2017 3:31 utc | 8
The most deadly mass shooting in recent times in the USA, with 58 shot dead like pheasants in the bushes, and several hundred (?) injured, at a joyful public venue, was covered up and shunted out of the news. The most clueless person has to realise that various societal control / repression mechanisms do not function.
Police, fed. authorities (FBI..), public lawmakers, judiciary, pol apparatus in the shape of governors and so on, are ‘posturing’ front organisations who make a grand show of “following rules, jurisprudence, laws, humane procedures,” etc.
The circles of influence, resting on long term finance sharing deals, corruption, blackmail, cross org. lines to extract as much profit aka illegal revenue as possible. The state and para-state orgs. are 100% busy with ripping off and exploiting ordinary citizens, in long chains of conventional, allowed, actions (often opaque as to their rationale, but enforced by superiors, the lowly obey.) The no. 2 bullet point of the agenda is defending the pie-slice that might be taken over by others, which may ofrten means submission and kow-towing, negotiation, the art of the deal, and accepting a temp. loss.
The LV shooting was not a ‘terrorist attack’ (generally understood to apply only to massacres where rabid muslim-s kill US citizens out of some kind of existential terminal rage..? – there have been none in the US since Trump), but was allegedly a no-motive mystery lone shooter.
Where did the victims go? The standard scenario of a terror attack puts the victims front stage (see Boston Bombing..), and has ample sobs and compensation for them. Streches to internal strife, for ex. Charlottesville, Heather Heyer, see Go Fund Me campaigns (endorsed..financial greed), etc. The LV victims have been buried in all senses of the term. A few news snippets right after, puts forward victims with sob prose, as the MSM thought the ‘usual’ would apply, then oopsie they ding-dong got the message, not this time folks. (I guess some pay-offs will be done with rigid non-disclosure agreements.)
Shoving the ‘attack’ away: LV shoot was a ‘hoax’ a ‘false flag’, all ta-ra acted by snobby crisis actors. A novel form of denial which lets US citizens imagine no real harm was done and their ‘Guvmint’ is faking, producin’ a TV show, displaying disquieting murderous staged plays in the real world, just to enact stiffer GUN CONTROL. Apparently such nonsense is completely acceptable to many US citizens, which I find terrifying.
So what happened in Las Vegas? Is that of any interest?
Posted by: Noirette | Nov 14 2017 16:31 utc | 56
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