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Which Fascist Said This?
Who said this?
Always before god and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills. … The whole of nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak.
Who is paraphrased here?
The first state to adopt evolutionary ethics would prevail over all others in the struggle for existence. … Extermination and war then became moral goods to eliminate the weak.
And who said this?
The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.
Cont. reading: Which Fascist Said This?
On The ‘Soft Progressive-liberal Block’
by Noirette
picked from a comment
re Ort @ 14 who wrote:
The “soft” progressive-liberal bloc in the US, individuals and organizations alike, have become so pathologically consumed with the conviction that Donald Trump is the Great Orange Satan who must be removed from office forthwith, and by any means necessary, that they hysterically embrace any public figure who opposes (opposed) Trump.
The ‘soft progressive liberal set’ – just as ‘Dems’ and ‘Reps’ – don’t really present a political ideology, framework, view-point, or even low-level adherence and/or claims. They are cover for an underlying hidden structure: informal tribes/circuits and sections in an oligarchic corporatist régime, or even something different, which I won’t go into now.
Obama ran on a non-interventionist stance and a ‘re-set’ with Russia-relations platform, for which he was awarded the Peace Prize (which is not a recommendation). Trump did the same in a more loudmouthed vulgar pointed way and was vilified and is despised ‘to the death’ for it. While impeachment and a nasty accident seem out of reach, as wildly imprudent, he is prevented from acting. By the way, Bush junior did the same which garnered him the Muslim vote which probably won him the election. Yes, study the numbers. (Setting aside hanging chads and the Supreme Court, Bush still needed a pile of votes.)
The question is, what is the aim of the resurgent hate-Russia meme, now boiling-over and turned crazed hysterical? Is it at heart contra-Trump or contra-Russia? Of course one could answer ‘both’ but that doesn’t explain ‘russiagate’ and the self-harm the U.S. is trapped in.
Another sign that the political divisions are ‘pretend’ is that the ‘Dems’, the ostensive losers re. Trump, have not behaved like a political party who loses. These generally disband, retire, fold, or make efforts at reform, re-orientation etc. Renewal may be tough but they often try. (As did the Repubs after Obama’s election, though the effort was incredibly weak.) Nothing like that is going on, because the fight is not political. It is based on tribal desperate angst at the ‘surprise’ election of an outsider who holds cards in his hands nobody can speak about.
re Ort @ 24 who wrote:
To 'True Believers', if [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] seems equivocal, or even confused, about the nature of (Democratic) socialism or expresses anodyne, conformist, safe positions, they will justify this as sensible reticence. AOC has to appeal to the elusive "center", and charm skeptical voters by not appearing unduly extreme or, God forbid, radical.
As with Obama and others similarly situated, they pretend that once the ostensible Third Way newcomer is accepted and established, they can and will gradually disclose their true political selves, and act accordingly. Regardless of how often this scenario fails to work as hoped, they remain convinced that it's both unavoidable and prudent.
Ocasio-Cortez is merely a willing actress poster-babe (she will earn a LOT). The role is not different from prancing about in lovely swish skirts on some MSM-TV series. She was selected for her looks / background (not the best re. the background, but there aren’t many candidates, which is very hopeful imho), her naiveté, ignorance, and submissive stance. Some ‘fake’ younger figures -only women and male gays, girls are more acceptable to the general public- have to be pictured as up-n-coming Dems, in a kind of sketchy and unconvincing parade of ‘diversity’ and so on.
How Media Failures Complicate The Nuclear Talks With North Korea
North Korea recently again asked the Trump administration to stick to the three steps agreed upon in the Singapore Statement.
The Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin characterizes the North Korean request as "belligerent":
Pompeo received the letter from Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee, on Friday morning, and showed it to Trump in the White House, two senior administration officials confirmed. The exact contents of the message are unclear, but it was sufficiently belligerent that Trump and Pompeo decided to call off Pompeo’s journey …
Reuters amplified the alleged "belligerence" when it headlined:
Trump called off Pompeo's North Korea visit after belligerent letter: report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump called off a visit to North Korea by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after the latter received a belligerent letter from a senior North Korean official just hours after the trip was announced last week, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
Reuters must know that Josh Rogin does not do "reporting". He is not a journalist but a neocon shill with a direct line to John Bolton. He publishes his effusions in the Opinion section of the paper, not in its news parts.
CNN then entered the frail and reported the real content of the letter:
Cont. reading: How Media Failures Complicate The Nuclear Talks With North Korea
The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2018-43
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Use as open thread …
Syria Sitrep – The Build Up For The Idleb Campaign
The long awaited Syrian army campaign to liberate Idleb governorate in Syria's northwest is supposed to start shortly after September 7, the date when the Turkish, Russian and Iranian presidents will meet. Strong forces have been put into place and are ready to strike. The Russian fleet in the Mediterranean has been strengthened, new air defense positions were established.
There are signs that al-Qaeda in Syria and similar groups will try to preempt the upcoming attack on them by an offense of their own. The U.S., UK and France prepare for another chemical incident in support of the Jihadi attack. They would strike Syrian government forces and institutions after a new fake incident would be attributed to the Syrian government.
Turkey was given until the summit to remove al-Qaeda and similar Jihadi groups from Idleb governorate. It so far failed to do so and its chance of achieving that is practically zero. Al-Qaeda in the form of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and in coalition with other foreign Jihadis from all over the world rules about 70% of Idleb governorate:
“Idlib Province is the largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11,” says Brett McGurk, the senior US envoy to the international coalition fighting Isis.
bigger
Idleb is a cesspool in which various Jihadi factions continuously fight each other. At least 290 members and leaders of such groups have been assassinated during the last four months. Hundreds of locals who talked with the Syrian government to negotiate rehabilitation were arrested by HTS. The Syrian army and Russian military police opened corridors to allow civilians to flee the area.
The Inspector General of the U.S. aid agency shut down an aid program through which al-Qaeda in Idleb was fed:
Cont. reading: Syria Sitrep – The Build Up For The Idleb Campaign
Trump Ties North Korea Talks To Trade Deal With China
Yesterday U.S. President Trump threw another hissy fit on the negotiations with North Korea:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 17:36 utc – 24 Aug 2018
I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula …
… Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place) …
… Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!
Pompeo was in Trump's office when Trump tweeted the above. Staff in the State Department was briefing foreign ambassadors on Pompeo's upcoming talks, planned for next week, when Trump stepped in. The decision was clearly a surprise.
Trump is suddenly binding the continuation of Korea talks to a trade deal with China. Such a deal is unlikely to happen anytime soon as China is convinced that it can win a tariff war, while the Trump administration overestimates the economic pressure it can create. That Trump now connects these two issues might mean that he has given up the "denuclearization" game.
Peter Lee, aka Chinahand, sees a larger plan behind the latest Trumping: to demonstrate to Kim Jong-un that China is hindering Kim's plans for a peace agreement and for economic development; then, when China will finally be pushed into open adversary status to the U.S., Kim Jong-un will have to chose and will end up in the U.S. camp. If that is really Trump's plan, which I doubt, then it is clearly bound to fail. North Korea would never end the relations with its long-term strategic partner for the dangerous vagueness of a nuclear treaty relations with the U.S. (see Iran, Libya).
It is more likely that Trump is punting here because there is no way he can get North Korea to denuclearize before signing an official peace agreement with it. Signing a peace agreement is not what the U.S. wants. With Korea at peace and on the way to re-unification, the U.S. would lose the justification for keeping U.S.troops in South Korea, its only major foothold on the east-Asian continent.
Cont. reading: Trump Ties North Korea Talks To Trade Deal With China
Open Thread 2018-42
Your host messed up the piece that was supposed to be publish today. You will have to talk to yourself.
News & views …
What The Party ‘Strategists’ Say Is Not What The Voters Want
Q: Why did the Democrats lose the Senate, House and presidency as well as more than a thousand state government positions?
A: They listened to their 'strategists', not to their voters.
Here is what the strategists currently say:
Staying out of the single-payer debate, party strategists say, could help Democrats in the general election, when they’ll have to appeal to moderates skeptical of government-run health care. Earlier this year, the DCCC warned candidates about embracing single payer, hoping to avoid Republican attacks on “socialized” medicine.
Why is "socialized" medicine supposed to be a bad thing? Why not defend it? It is what the voters want:
Reuters/Ipsos poll – June/July 2018 – bigger
The 'strategists' say the voters can not have the nice stuff they want. Their arguments lost the elections. If the Democrats want to win again their must tell their voters to demand more nice stuff. Some people get that:
Progressive insurgents believe Clinton’s defeat, on top of losing control of Congress and most state governments, proved them right. They aspire to overthrow conventional wisdom that Democrats must stay safely in the middle to compete.
“Democrats have been fixated for 20 years on this elusive, independent, mythical middle of the road voter that did not exist,” said Crystal Rhoades, head of the Democratic Party in Nebraska’s Douglas County, where a progressive candidate, Kara Eastman, is trying to wrest a competitive congressional district from a Republican.
“We’re going to try bold ideas.”
Most social-democratic parties in Europe have the same problem the U.S. Democrats have. The party establishments angle for the ever elusive 'liberal' center. They move the parties further to the right and lose their natural constituencies, the working class. This gives rise to (sometimes fascist) 'populists' (see Trump) and to an ever growing share of people who reject the established system and do not vote at all.
This phenomenon is the micro version of a much larger trend. Liberal globalization, as promoted by the party 'elites', promises but does not deliver what the real people need and want. Liberal globalization turned out to be a class war in which only the rich can win. A revolt, locally on the level of voters, and globally on the level of nations, is underway to regain a different view.
Alastair Crooke recently outlined the larger trend within a global, 'metaphysical' perspective.
The progressive Democrats who are pushing for single payer healthcare still miss out on other issues. They also support higher wages, but are, at the same time, against restrictions on immigration. Wages rise when companies have to compete for workers. Immigration increases the available work force. A political program that supports both does not compute.
Working people understand this and in 2016 many of them voted for Trump. Neither LGBTXYZ identity policies nor other aloof 'liberal values' will increase the income of the poor. To win back the necessary masses the Democrats and social-democrats in Europe will have to shun, or at least de-emphasize such parts of their program.
It's a class war. The rich are winning. Fight.
Facebook Kills “Inauthentic” Foreign News Accounts – U.S. Propaganda Stays Alive
The creation of digital content led to the re-establishment of claqueurs:
By 1830 the claque had become an institution. The manager of a theatre or opera house was able to send an order for any number of claqueurs. These were usually under a chef de claque (leader of applause), who judged where the efforts of the claqueurs were needed and to initiate the demonstration of approval. This could take several forms. There would be commissaires ("officers/commissioner") who learned the piece by heart and called the attention of their neighbors to its good points between the acts. Rieurs (laughers) laughed loudly at the jokes. Pleureurs (criers), generally women, feigned tears, by holding their handkerchiefs to their eyes. Chatouilleurs (ticklers) kept the audience in a good humor, while bisseurs (encore-ers) simply clapped and cried "Bis! Bis!" to request encores.
Today anyone can create content and rent or buy virtual claqueurs in from of "likes" on Facebook or "followers" on Twitter to increase its distribution.
An alternative is to create artificial social media personas who then promote ones content. That is what the Internet Research Agency, the Russian "troll factory" from St. Petersburg, did. The fake personas it established on Facebook promoted IRA created clickbait content like puppy picture pages that was then marketed to sell advertisements.
The profit orientated social media giants do not like such third party promotions. They prefer that people pay THEM to promote their content. Selling advertisements is Facebook's business. Promotional accounts on its own platform are competition.
The anti-Russian mania in U.S. politics gives social media companies a welcome excuse to clamp down on promotional schemes for sites like Liberty Front Press by claiming that these are disinformation campaigns run by the U.S. enemy of the day.
Yesterday Facebook announced that it deleted a number of user accounts for "inauthentic behavior":
We’ve removed 652 Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people across multiple internet services in the Middle East, Latin America, UK and US. FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, gave us a tip in July about “Liberty Front Press,” a network of Facebook Pages as well as accounts on other online services.
…
We are able to link this network to Iranian state media through publicly available website registration information, as well as the use of related IP addresses and Facebook Pages sharing the same admins. For example, one part of the network, “Quest 4 Truth,” claims to be an independent Iranian media organization, but is in fact linked to Press TV, an English-language news network affiliated with Iranian state media.
The FireEye report Facebook acted on notes:
Cont. reading: Facebook Kills “Inauthentic” Foreign News Accounts – U.S. Propaganda Stays Alive
Microsoft Promotes Russia Scare To Gain Insider Access To Campaign Information
The software behemoth Microsoft Corp wants to gain an insider view on candidates and election campaigns at the federal, state and local level. The Seattle based company now offers a "special cybersecurity protection" to those candidates and campaigns that use its Office 365, Outlock or Hotmail cloud services. Those who take up the offer will put their emails, internal strategy papers and financial records onto Microsoft owned and administrated servers where Microsoft personal will have a special eye on them.
The company hopes that a large amount of such data will enable it "to collect critical feedback" into developing political dangers and will allow it to "to address the specific needs of eligible organizations". This could, for example, be done by directing or withholding campaign contributions in line with its corporate interests. The acquired material will also be of interest to various national intelligence agencies and might be of value for future political trades.
Microsoft's new data acquisition path for its corporate intelligence has its own marketing campaign. This uses the well established bogeyman of the "Russian threat".
Microsoft engineers scanned the 220 million internet domain names to find a few domains that seem to have some similarities with know product names or known institutional names. The search found my-iri.org, hudsonorg-my-sharepoint.com, senate.group, adfs-senate.services, adfs-senate.email and office365-onedrive.com. These names, Microsoft claims, could potentially be mistaken for the names of known entities and could thus be used for login spoofing or email fishing campaigns.
Microsoft claimed that these domain names were trademark infringements of its office product, as well as of the conservative Hudson Institute, the International Republican Institute and the U.S. Senate. A judge agreed and allowed the company to seize the domain names. They now redirect to Microsoft honeypot servers. Any attempt to access them will be logged.
Its public relation department held a press conference and managed to spin a scare story of a "Russian threat" around the seized domain names. It did not provide any evidence or explanation how the seized domain names might or might not be related to "Russia". Journalists were pointed to a blog post by Microsoft's president which includes some mumble about "Russia" and "elections" they could pick for quotes. After apparently scaring the bejesus out of the stenographing scribes, the company made sure to emphasize the offer that, if taken up, will give its strategic intelligence department valuable internal insights into election campaigns.
Major U.S. news sites swallowed the bait, hook, line and sinker. The Washington Post headlines:
Microsoft says it has found a Russian operation targeting U.S. political institutions
Cont. reading: Microsoft Promotes Russia Scare To Gain Insider Access To Campaign Information
The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2018-41
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
Use as open thread …
New Interests Join The Clash About North-East Syria
Turkey's ongoing currency crises creates some new regional aspects that will influence the war on Syria and the fate of its U.S. occupied north-east.
Over the last two weeks Turkey's Lira (TL) behaved extremely volatile.
Chart via Xe – bigger
At the beginning of the year one U.S. dollar cost 3.5 lira. At the beginning of August it cost 4.80 lira. It then went up to 7.00 lira/$ and at Friday's closing it was down again at 6.00 TL/$. But Monday morning lira will again lose more of its value:
Turkey’s credit rating was cut further into junk Friday by S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service, which said the volatile lira and wide current-account deficit may undermine the Middle East’s largest economy.
S&P reduced Turkey’s foreign-currency rating to four notches below investment grade at B+ from BB-, on par with Argentina, Greece and Fiji. Moody’s lowered its grade to Ba3 from Ba2, three notches below investment grade. The ratings companies said the weak currency, runaway inflation and current-account deficit are Turkey’s key vulnerabilities.
Turkey's crisis is homemade. The current spat with the United States only exaggerates it. For years Turkey borrowed large amounts of money from abroad and invested it into local infrastructure instead of producing exportable products. Its current account deficit this year will again be some $50 to $60 billion. International banks and other foreign lenders now demand interests rates above 20% from Turkish lenders because the chance of losing the lent money is high.
After the 17% crash on August 13 down to 7 TL/$ the Turkish Central Bank used some one-time measures to support the currency without raising its interest rate. The Turkish president Erdogan is ideologically adverse to interests and keeps the bank from doing what it must do to cool the Turkish economy and to stabilize the currency.
Erdogan asked Russia for help but received nothing but good advice. He also called in favors. When in June 2017 Saudi Arabia's clown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) tried to take over Qatar and to steal its juicy $350 billion sovereign wealth fund, the emir of Qatar called on Turkey for help. Erdogan sent the Turkish army and air force. His troops protected Qatar from a Saudi invasion.
With the lira in trouble the emir flew to Ankara and promised a new $15 billion investment into Turkey. Additionally some mysterious cargo was unloaded from his plane. That saved the lira for a few days. But Turkey's structural problems are unsolved. Erdogan is no longer trusted and his son in law, who he made finance minister, lacks the necessary qualification for the job. Thus:
Cont. reading: New Interests Join The Clash About North-East Syria
John Brennan Is No Match For Trump
U.S President Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.
Good. It is probably the best thing Trump has ever done. Brennan is one of the most despicable former U.S. officials alive. He should rot in hell instead of making money off his former status.
Besides that there is no sound reason why anyone who does not work for the government, directly or indirectly, should have a clearance and thereby access to state secrets. ACLU and others are wrong in this. Revoking or keeping a security clearance has nothing to do with free speech or first amendment rights.
Abu Jihad Brennan was the CIA’s station chief in Saudi Arabia. Some assert he went native, i.e. converted to Wahhabism. Brennan was in Riyadh when the Khobar Towers were bombed. Al-Qaeda did it, but Brennan was helpful in blaming the attack on Hizbullah and Iran. He was deputy executive director of the CIA on 9/11. That 9/11 happened was an intelligence failure or, as some have it, an incident arranged by the deep state. Brennan was CIA chief of staff while the agency concocted false stories about Iraqi WMD. He was within the line of command that ran the CIA torture program. It was Brennan who conspired with the Gulf dictators to hire Jihadis to destroy Libya and to attempt the same in Syria. In short – the man was always ruthless, incompetent and dishonest.
When Obama became president he wanted to make Brennan Director of the CIA. The Democrats in Congress were opposed to that. Obama then made him his high priest of targeted killings. After Obama’s reelection, Brennan finally became director. He ordered the CIA to spy on the Congress committee investigating CIA torture. He lied to Congress under oath when he denied that it had happened. When it was proven that the CIA did what it did, he had to apologize.
At that time a Washington Post editorial headlined Obama should fire John Brennan. Today the Post calls the revocation of a security clearance of a former official, who -it had opined- should have long been fired, a “political vendetta against a career intelligence officer”. Hypocrites.
Most important was “Brennan’s ringleader role in the so-far unsuccessful attempts to derail Trump, both before and after the 2016 election. As far as we can tell it was Brennan who concocted and launched the conspiracy to insinuate that Trump is connected with alleged Russian influence. Brennan bet that Hillary Clinton would win the election. He lost his bet and is now out in the cold. He fears that his role, especially his conspiring with British security services and with the Steele dossier, will come to light.
Since Trump became president Brennan publicly opposed him. That was a huge mistake. He is no match for Trump. By revoking Brennan’s clearance Trump is now elevating him to ‘hero’ of the so called ‘resistance’ against him which he connects to the deep state. This is the Trump playbook:
[R]unning against the deep state provides Trump a rhetorical crutch. It’s a built-in excuse for failing to deliver on his 2016 campaign promises. Sitting presidents usually have to run as incumbents. Trump can try to run for re-election as an outsider. And is there a better poster boy for the alleged deep state than Brennan?
The idiots who express solidarity with Brennan by offering up their security clearances confirm, simply by doing so, that there IS a deep state cabal that is opposed to Trump. Attacking Brennan and them will help Trump to get reelected.
Trump uses the same playbook when he attacks the “fake news media” for opposing him. He is right in that nearly all U.S. and international editors favored Hillary Clinton over Trump. This week 200 U.S. papers united to write editorials against Trump’s attacks against the “freedom of the press”. They fell for his trick:
Most journalists agree that there’s a great need for Trump rebuttals. I’ve written my share. But this [Boston] Globe-sponsored coordinated editorial response is sure to backfire: It will provide Trump with circumstantial evidence of the existence of a national press cabal that has been convened solely to oppose him. When the editorials roll off the press on Thursday, all singing from the same script, Trump will reap enough fresh material to whale on the media for at least a month. His forthcoming speeches almost write themselves: By colluding against me, the fake media proved once and for all, that they are in cahoots with the Democrats and have declared themselves to be my true political opposition …
Trump is excellent in playing his domestic opponents. Brennan made a huge mistake in publicly opposing him. He is now standing in the limelight and people will only dig further into his role in the “Russian collusion” campaign. Yesterday Brennan authored a New York Times Op Ed headlined President Trump’s Claims of No Collusion Are Hogwash. It does not provide any evidence for the “hogwash” claim. Brennan can not show that there was a Trump campaign collusion with Russia or anyone else.
Richard Burr, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, gave a somewhat salty and fitting response:
“Director Brennan’s recent statements purport to know as fact that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power. If Director Brennan’s statement is based on intelligence he received while still leading the CIA, why didn’t he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017? If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel, not The New York Times.
“If, however, Director Brennan’s statement is purely political and based on conjecture, the president has full authority to revoke his security clearance as head of the Executive Branch.”
In short: “Nut up or shut up.”
It is doubtful that Trump will let go of the issue. Brennan is a too juicy target to stop shooting at it. Currently Brennan is still too valuable as an enemy for Trump to destroy him. But once that is over Brennan’s day of judgment will come. Here are high hopes that Brennan will finally have to pay for at least one of his many crimes.
Syria – Pentagon Plants High ISIS Numbers To Justify Occupation
The U.S. aim in Syria is still 'regime change'. The Pentagon has made it clear that it wants to stay in the country even after the Islamic State vanished. A little propaganda trick is now used to create a justification for its continuing occupation.
The report by the UN Security Council's Sanctions Monitoring Team on ISIS, in parts discussed here, includes a number that smells of bullshit and manipulation:
3. Some Member States estimate the total current ISIL membership in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic to be between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries. Among these is still a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters.2
Footnote 2 gives as source:
2 Member State information.
The high number given by a "Member State" exceed all prior assessments. The original strength of ISIS was estimated as a few thousand and it swelled as it took more land and incorporated local auxiliary forces and newly arriving foreign fighters. In September 2014, when ISIS was near its peak, the CIA estimated a total of 31,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq. The number shrank as ISIS was kicked out of more places it earlier occupied while it lost ten thousands of its fighters to Russian, Syrian, Iraqi and U.S. bombs, artillery and other military means. In July 2017 the commanding general of U.S. Special Forces said that 60 to 70,000 ISIS fighters had been killed.
The numbers in the UN Sanctions Monitor report simply make no logical sense. It is also contradicted by earlier estimates that put the number of current ISIS fighters in the low thousands. In December 2017 President Trump claimed that only "1,000 or so" fighters remained in Iraq and Syria. In a June 5 Pentagon press conference the spokesman was asked about the number of ISIS fighters left in Syria. He responded:
As far as the numbers, there's — there's been some numbers thrown out there over the past few months. You've heard the previous spokesmen range from 1,000 to 3,000. You've seen a lot of subject matter experts say something like that. I have nothing to add to that. What I will say is one ISIS fighter is one too many, and that's what we're pursuing. We're pursuing their defeat.
But there must of course be a reason why "some Member States" would give the UN Monitor team such an absurdly high number.
The U.S. is justifying its occupation of north-east Syria by claiming to fight ISIS under the legal cover of two UN Security Council resolutions. Now, as ISIS in Syria has shrunk to a few dozens of fighters, that justification is wearing thin. It is immensely important for the Pentagon to present a high number, as ISIS is its only legal justification to stay in Syria. It is doubtful that Congress would agree to a prolonged occupation if ISIS vanished.
To publicize a high number the Pentagon used an old propaganda trick, fake "multi-sourcing".
This trick was extensively used in the run up to the war on Iraq. Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, would call up pliant journalists, Judith Miller of the New York Times comes to mind, and tell them about a "top secret" assessment that Iraq bought aluminum tubes to build centrifuges for Uranium enrichment. (Experts knew that Iraq bought these tubes to make military mortars.) But the New York Times printed the 'nuclear' nonsense on page one of its Sunday edition. A few hours later Dick Cheney and other Bush administration members appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and confirmed the story they had planted.
The tale of the 'nuclear' aluminum tubes was then perceived to have come from two independent entities and sources, the New York Times, and Vice President Cheney and other members of the Bush administration. It was thus widely believed.
We now see a similar scheme. A dubious fact, coming from a single source, is depicted as being multi-sourced. Another pliant journalist, this time Liz Sly of the Washington Post, is used to spread the fake news:
The Islamic State may still have in excess of 30,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq and appears to have rebounded from some of its worst setbacks, according to two new reports that call into question whether the militants are as close to defeat as the U.S. military has suggested.
…
Cont. reading: Syria – Pentagon Plants High ISIS Numbers To Justify Occupation
Los Angeles Is First In US To Install Intrusive Subway Security – All Riders Will ‘Volunteer’
The frog supposedly does not feel the slow increase of temperature until the water it sits in boils. In a similar vein people to not feel the loss of their freedoms when the observation and control instruments used on them are slowly more and more intrusive. The city of Los Angeles ratchets the screws up a few notches: Los Angeles is first in US to install subway body scanners
Los Angeles’ subway will become the first mass transit system in the U.S. to install body scanners that screen passengers for weapons and explosives, officials said Tuesday.
…
The machines scan for metallic and non-metallic objects on a person’s body, can detect suspicious items from 30 feet away and have the capability of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour.
The capacity to check 2,000 passengers per hour is way too small for a subway line which usually has between 20 and 30,000 passengers per hour. While the system is software supported it will still need a lot of paid staff to watch the screens and to bother all the people who might carry something 'suspicious'. There will likely be dozens if not hundreds false alarms per day.
Pic: Thruvision – bigger
This is supposedly to prevent someone with an explosives belt or an automatic rifle from entering the subway with the intend to commit mass murder. But how often does that happen? Globally its probably once per decade with zero to a few dozen casualties in any such incident. The risk of an accident or fire is much higher. It is doubtful that the expenditure and operating costs are justifiable.
Such security theater has the effect and purpose to make people feel afraid. It also makes a few people very rich.
But we are told that it is good for us. And taking part in this nonsense it is of course completely "voluntary":
Signs will be posted at stations warning passengers they are subject to body scanner screening. The screening process is voluntary, Wiggins said, but customers who choose not to be screened won’t be able to ride on the subway.
The poor have little choice but to use the subway and to get 'voluntarily' screened. The rich though will not be bothered at all.
UN Sanction Monitor: U.S. Stands By While ISIS In Syria Recuperates, Gains Money From Oil
Since November 2017 the U.S. largely stopped the fight against ISIS in north-east Syria. It gave ISIS the chance to regain power. A new report to the UN Security Council now confirms that ISIS in north-east Syria recuperated. It again profits from oil extraction under the nose of U.S. forces.
As noted here in April:
The U.S. military in Syria has refrained from fighting ISIS for months. The map of the territory held by ISIS (grey) at the Syrian-Iraqi border in the U.S. controlled zone north of the Euphrates (yellow) has not changed since November 2017.  
Livemap: Nov 30 2017, Apr 24 2018 – bigger, bigger
(The yellow corridor going south east towards Iraq on the map is misleading. The U.S. has no forces there and ISIS crossed it several times to attack Syrian forces (red) across the river.)
The British group Airwars documents the U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. … The U.S. strikes hit, if anything, only very minor targets.
…
It is obvious that the U.S. wants to keep ISIS alive and well to again use it, if need be, against the Syrian and Iraqi government.
The Sanctions Monitoring Team of the UN Security Council recently released its 26nd report (pdf). It notes in the summary:
[The] Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), having been defeated militarily in Iraq and most of the Syrian Arab Republic during 2017, rallied in early 2018. This was the result of a loss of momentum by forces fighting it in the east of the Syrian Arab Republic, which prolonged access by ISIL to resources and gave it breathing space to prepare for the next phase of its evolution into a global covert network. By June 2018, the military campaigns against ISIL had gathered pace again, but ISIL still controlled small pockets of territory in the Syrian Arab Republic on the Iraqi border. It was able to extract and sell some oil, and to mount attacks, including across the border into Iraq.
Under the nose of more than 2,000 U.S. forces in north-east Syria ISIS recuperated and again gained force. It is still able to pump oil from the ground and sell it into the local market.
In the details of its report the Sanctions Monitor writes:
Cont. reading: UN Sanction Monitor: U.S. Stands By While ISIS In Syria Recuperates, Gains Money From Oil
The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2018-40
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Three weeks before the current Canadian-Saudi spat, the Canadian Revenue Agency took away the charity status of an Islamic center and mosque in Ottawa. The mosque had received largess from foreign donors and, it is alleged, featured radical preachers. The event may have caused the otherwise inexplicable Saudi behavior.
Just now the U.S. occupation suffers a new defeat.
On Friday some 1,000 Taliban infiltrated into Ghazni, an important city on the ring-road between Kabul and Khandahar. They have since taken most of the city:
Accounts from residents leaving the city said the only areas still being held by the government were the governor’s office, police and intelligence agencies headquarters, an ancient fort called the Bala Hisar and a few other government facilities.
Early today the Taliban brought the police headquarter under their control:
Intense fighting continues in Ghazni, the police HQ caught fire and collapsed to the Taliban. 113 dead bodies and 142 wounded were taken to Ghazni hospital. The hospital is running out of the capacity for treatment, they are using corridors and other available space.
Only the province government headquarter is still defended. More than 100 police and soldiers have been killed so far. Relief forces sent from Kabul are holed up in an army headquarter some five kilometers away. Telephone communication with the city is down. Some bridges were blown up by the Taliban which makes it difficult for the army bring in more re-enforcements. Some 150,000 civilians live in the city and bombing it to hit a few hundred Taliban would be catastrophic and of little use. Additionally to the city 15 of the 18 districts of Ghazni province are under Taliban control and it is obvious that they have the support of a significant part of the population.
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The U.S. occupation forces and their Afghan proxy government have long been in denial about the Taliban forces in Ghazni province as well as elsewhere. With the Taliban sitting on the ring-road, the south of Afghanistan is cut off from the center. They may eventually be evicted from the city but the attack is already a huge propaganda success for the Taliban and the negative moral effect on Afghan government forces will be huge. Another U.S. war that the empire obviously lost.
Right now Erdogan is holding a speech in Trabzon. He is defiant:
DAILY SABAH – @DailySabah
LIVE — President Erdoğan: The fluctuation in Turkish lira is a plot against Turkey, but Turkish people will not give in
LIVE — President Erdoğan: We might as well say goodbye to those who sacrifice their strategic partnership with a country of 81 million, alliance over 50 years for links with terror groups
Does that sounds like "Good bye NATO"? The Turkish military would not be happy with that. But by now it is presumably under Erdogan's full control.
Use as open thread …
How Turkey’s Currency Crisis Came To Pass
Updated below
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President Erdogan of Turkey often asserts that 'foreign powers' (meaning the U.S.) want to bring him down. He says that the 'interest lobby' (meaning (Jewish) bankers), wants to damage Turkey. He is somewhat right on both points.
Since last week the Turkish lira is on an extended down-slide. Today alone it lost nearly 20% of its value. It will likely take the Turkish economy with it and Erdogan need someone to blame for it.
But while foreign powers and banks surely use the crisis for their own aims, it its Erdogan's economic policy that is foremost to blame. The long boom he created with borrowed foreign money is finally turning into a bust.
Here is a recap of how it came to this.
The larger political picture:
During the U.S. induced 'Arab Spring' U.S. President Obama joined with Qatar and Turkey in an attempt to install Muslim Brotherhood governments throughout the Middle East. When Hillary Clinton left the position of Secretary of State and John Kerry took over, the Obama administration changed its position. It endorsed the coup against the elected Egyptian President Morsi and it refrained from actively using the U.S. military to bring the Syrian government down.
Especially with regards to Syria Turkey was left holding the bag. Erdogan had bet on the U.S. plan to overthrow the Syrian government. His invitation of Syrian refugees and support of radical Islamists fighting in Syria had cost a significant amount of money and brought a lot of trouble with it. The Turkish trade route through Syria to the Gulf countries was closed. Economic relations with Iran suffered. Erdogan needed to get something out of it.
But U.S. policies had turned against him. The Gezi protests in 2013 had all the signs of a U.S. color revolution attempt. They failed. In 2014 the Obama administration began to support the Kurdish PKK/YPG forces in Kobane, east Syria. The PKK is a terrorist organization which tries to create its own country in the eastern part of Turkey, north Syria and north Iraq. The U.S. alliance with and arming of the Kurds created a PKK/YPG dagger pointed at Turkey's underbelly.
In response to a Turkish led attack on Latakia and Idleb in mid 2015 Russia deployed its forces to Syria. In hindsight it was the point where Erdogan's game in Syria was over. The U.S. would not launch a war against the nuclear armed Russia. Syria would not fall. But Erdogan played on.
In November 2015 the Turkish air defense ambushed and shot down a Russian jet. Russia responded with a total stop of all economic exchanges with Turkey. These were not the needle prick sanctions the U.S. often uses, but a total abrupt end of all trade relations including millions of Russian tourist visits in Turkey. The economic damage for Turkey was huge. Erdogan had to submit to Russia. Putin was gracious and allowed Erdogan to save his face. The Russian government offered a lucrative pipeline deal and other sweeteners. In mid 2016 the CIA arranged for a hard coup against Erdogan but Russian intelligence warned Erdogan and the coup failed. Turkey is asking the U.S. to hand over Fethullah Gulen which it accuses of instigating the coup. Gulen is a Turkish preacher with a large following and a long time CIA asset who resides in Pennsylvania.
Flipping Turkey from the "western" to the "eastern" camp can be seen as part of Russia's Black Sea strategy. It is repeat of a mid 19th-century plan executed under Tzar Nicholas I. The current plan is so far successful. But it collides with the U.S. plans to revive NATO for another lucrative Cold War. Thus the current U.S. plan is to use Turkey's economy problems to finally bring Erdogan down.
The larger economic picture:
Cont. reading: How Turkey’s Currency Crisis Came To Pass
U.S. ‘Fine Tuning’ Of Saudi Airstrike Target List Creates Results
U.S. Deepens Role in Yemen Fight, Offers Gulf Allies Airstrike-Target Assistance – Wall Street Journal – June 12, 2018
The U.S. military is providing its Gulf allies with intelligence to fine-tune their list of airstrike targets …
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Saudi-led coalition claims deadly Yemen attack – Daily Mail – August 9, 2018
A Saudi-led coalition battling in Yemen said it carried out a deadly attack in the rebel-held north on Thursday, which the Red Cross said hit a bus carrying children.
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"Following an attack this morning on a bus driving children in Dahyan Market, northern Saada, (an ICRC-supported) hospital has received dozens of dead and wounded," the organisation said on Twitter without giving more details.
Cont. reading: U.S. ‘Fine Tuning’ Of Saudi Airstrike Target List Creates Results
Why They Fail – The Quintessence Of The Korengal Valley Campaign
A new excerpt from a book by C.J. Chivers, a former U.S. infantry captain and New York Times war correspondent, tells the story of a young man from New York City who joined the U.S. army and was send to the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. While the man, one Robert Soto, makes it out alive, several of his comrades and many Afghans die during his time in Afghanistan to no avail.
The piece includes remarkably strong words about the strategic (in)abilities of U.S. politicians, high ranking officers and pundits:
On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad, with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures, have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed government action.
That description is right but it does not touche the underlying causes. The story of the attempted U.S. occupation of the Korengal valley, which Civers again describes, has been the theme of several books and movies. It demonstrates the futility of fighting a population that does not welcome occupiers. But most of the authors, including Chivers, get one fact wrong. The war with the people of the Korengal valley was started out of shear stupidity and ignorance.
The main military outpost in the valley was build on a former sawmill. Chivers writes:
On a social level, it could not have been much worse. It was an unforced error of occupation, a set of foreign military bunkers built on the grounds of a sawmill and lumber yard formerly operated by Haji Mateen, a local timber baron. The American foothold put some of the valley’s toughest men out of work, the same Afghans who knew the mountain trails. Haji Mateen now commanded many of the valley’s fighters, under the banner of the Taliban.
Unfortunately Chivers does not explain why the saw mill was closed. Ten years ago a piece by Elizabeth Rubin touched on this:
Cont. reading: Why They Fail – The Quintessence Of The Korengal Valley Campaign
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