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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2018-61
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
We were first to point out that the NYT's characterization of an old North Korean missile site as "deception" was pure nonsense. Newsweek, 38north.org, NKNews.org, The Nation and others now also condemned the neo-conned NYT propaganda.
The war let to the loss of Netanyahoo's majority in the Knesset. He is now trying to stall new elections in which he could lose his job.
Trump's Middle East policy is in total disarray. Nothing is working as planned. Netanyahoo will probebaly fall. Saudi Arabia will not make nice with Qatar. There will be no Arab NATO or anti-Iran alliance. MbS is despised but will stay on the job. Yemen is starving. The U.S. is at odds with Turkey over support for the Kurds. Trumps knows and hates this:
The adviser who talks to Trump said: “If the president had his way, he would stay entirely out of the Middle East and all of the problems."
The piece was the first to point out the difference between the Saudi investigation, which put blame on Major General Ahmed al-Asiri, and the names on the U.S. sanction list published at the same time. The Treasury declaration blamed MbS advisor Saud al-Qahtani as mastermind behind the Khashoggi murder, while the Saudis carefully avoided that. We now learn that the person in the U.S. National Security Council who put al-Qahtani on the list was fired:
On Friday evening, Kirsten Fontenrose, the National Security Council official in charge of U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia, resigned, administration officials said. The circumstances of her departure weren’t clear. But Fontenrose had previously been placed on administrative leave, according to people familiar with the matter.
Fontenrose had played a key role in the administration’s decision about which Saudis to sanction in response to Khashoggi’s killing, these people said.
I suspect that MbS tried, via Trump's son-in-law Kushner, to save al-Qahtani (and himself). Trump clearly wanted to do that, but Fontenrose blew the plan by pushing for al-Qahtani to be sanctioned. The CIA also sabotaged the planned exculpation of MbS by 'leaking' its judgment about MbS' personal responsibility to the press. (WaPo published the CIA conclusion in Arabic, another point the Saudis will hate.) Trump is furious that the CIA (again) sabotaged his policy:
Asked about reports that the CIA had assessed involvement by Mohammed, the president said: “They haven’t assessed anything yet. It’s too early.”
Other stuff:
Naked Capitalism with a review of Michael Hudson’s new book, And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year. It digs into the ancient history of debt and forgiveness which is, for obvious reasons, not taught in the neo-liberal 'west':
Nowhere, Hudson shows, is it more evident that we are blinded by a deracinated, by a decontextualized understanding of our history than in our ignorance of the career of Jesus. Hence the title of the book: And Forgive Them Their Debts and the cover illustration of Jesus flogging the moneylenders — the creditors who do not forgive debts — in the Temple. For centuries English-speakers have recited the Lord’s Prayer with the assumption that they were merely asking for the forgiveness of their trespasses, their theological sins: “… and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us….” is the translation presented in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. What is lost in translation is the fact that Jesus came “to preach the gospel to the poor … to preach the acceptable Year of the Lord”: He came, that is, to proclaim a Jubilee Year, a restoration of deror for debtors: He came to institute a Clean Slate Amnesty (which is what Hebrew דְּרוֹר connotes in this context).
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Back in July I wrote that there is no Jewish race or Jewish people. There are only followers of the Jewish religion strewn all over the world. Prof. Shlomo Sand makes a similar point and also debunks some other religious fairytales:
The Twisted Logic of the Jewish ‘Historic Right’ to Israel
Our political culture insists on seeing the Jews as the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews. But the Jews never existed as a ‘people’ – still less as a nation
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The UAE/Saudi alliance stopped their latest attempt to conquer Hodeidah port in Yemen. They try to sell that as a humanitarian step. But the attack was failing when their mercenaries ran into a wall of mines and missile attacks. They took a large number of casualties. Videos: 1, 2.
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Masha is "Putinesque" and You-know-who uses her to control our children's minds, say British neo-cons and Baltic Russophobes. I say #JeSuisMasha and promise to watch her even more.
Use as open thread …
While our attention is focused on Syria, the Israel-Gaza spat, and the ongoing Khashoggi affair, geopolitical developments in the eastern Mediterranean and Balkans, centred on energy and trade routes apart from military condiderations, are moving at a great pace, and I would appreciate a few words from b on the subject. Let me remind your readers of the following: a few months ago, the NSS report failed to mention Turkey as either friend or foe. Since then Erdogan released Pastor Brunson, but this did nothing to restore “ally status” with Turkey, other to relieve tensions slightly. The different aims in Syria which have culminated with a stand-off in the Manbij area, the fallout over the Syrian Kurds, the close relations with Russia and Turkey’s insistence (thus far) to procure the S-400 systems, Erdogan’s continuing defiance of US-Israeli anti-Iran measures and his support of Hamas, his rhetoric which has fueled the greatest anti-American sentiments in the country’s history, all show us that Turkey is determined to redefine it’s regional role and alignment, even going so far as to antagonize the US on issues which the US considers vital. The study published yesterday by the Council of Foreign Relations paints this deteriorating relationship in a new light, effectively showing that Turkey will now not be considered a’friend’ although still a NATO member.
In the meantime, the US has downgraded its presence at Incirlik airbase, upgraded its strategic relationship with the Republic of Cyprus, continues to arm and train the Kurdish militia in Syria, established radar stations and airfields in northern Syria, and relocated personnel and resources in new and older bases stretching from the Balkans through to the Aegean, east Med, and beyond, through Syria and Iraq to the Iranian border. The US and NATO naval assets in the east Med are at an almost unprecedented level (now with the USS Truman too), all giving me the distinct impression that Turkey is being encircled.
A few days ago, Exxon Mobil began drilling operations in the Cyprus EEZ, something Turkey had warned against in a last-ditch attempt to refute the right of this small country, still plagued by Turkey’s ongoing illegal occupation of the northern part, to exploit its natural resources. Turkey denies the demarcation lines of the EEZ of the countries in the region according to international law and precedent, publishing arbitrary maps whereby it claims huge swathes of ocean, denying that even islands like Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes have rights to economic exploitation outside of territorial waters. In fact they have threatened Greece with ‘casus belli’ if Greece extends territorial waters to 12 miles as ordained by international law!
The energy alliance between Israel, Cyprus, Greece and Egypt, and the plans to complete explorations within their EEZ, and then construct an underwater pipeline to connect with Europe through Italy, has the support of the US and EU, with the strategic aim of lessening Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. This project effectively negates many pipelines planned or under construction, that would have made Turkey a main energy hub and transit nation of gas and oil to Europe. The economic and geopolitical stakes are very high, and Erdogan, with his back to the wall in Syria, and his country under intense economic pressure, could prove once again how unpredictable and dangerous for peace his neo-Ottoman ambitions can be. The region is a flashpoint with tensions running high, and the next months could see a greater escalation. Any thoughts b on what may soon occur, and what will be the Russian response?
Posted by: SPYRIDON POLITIS | Nov 19 2018 12:13 utc | 84
@97 Arioch
The US, Canada and France have been occupying Haiti since their coup and kidnapping of Aristide on February 29 2004. See e.g. Kevin Pina’s Haiti we must kill the bandits. If you look at your source’s on link (described as graphic, Haiti Info Pro), you will see a link to the guardian (UK), about Guy Phillipe winning a Senate seat in Haiti. He is described as wanted by the DEA. That source comments on the fraudulence of Haiti’s elections that Phillipe allegedly won that seat.
Canada ran Haiti’s fraudulent elections for a long time, although the US took over running fraudulent elections in Haiti in the last part of Obama’s rule. A simple measure of fraudulence is whether or not the majority political party, Famni Lavalas, won, or was even allowed to participate. When Famni Lavalas was not allowed, they initially backed a former ally of Aristide. Elections Canada was caught burning dumpsters of signed ballots, leading to mass protests.
Guy Phillipe and the DEA have a long and funny relationship. Phillipe was an integral part of the US, Canadian and French coup on February 29, 2004. In Kevin Pina’s Haiti The Untold Story, he starts by showing footage of the UN press meeting following the coup (the UN was and is a co-conspirator). At the press meeting, Guy Phillipe is present, and calls Aristide a dictator and thief.
Guy Phillipe used to be the police chief of Gonaives. He fled Gonaives, to Mexico (iirc), and started showing up on cocaine trafficking radars, and was soon accused. When Canada (Hon. Dr. Paul Martin) initiated the coup, they used Guy Phillipe—see the confession of November 9, 2004, in the Canadian parliament, by the Canadian ambassador, Hon. Dr. Claude Boucher.
Phillipe’s role in the coup was to return to Gonaives, and stir up gang trouble. The government of Haiti had been under a US-instigated firearm importation ban, nominally directed against the 1991-1993 pedo (sic) Cedras junta, but not enforced (as shown by an oil industry journal), until Aristide’s return. Consequently the gangs were better armed than the police.
The government thus had to negotiate (i.e. long prior to the coup) with the gangs. The US financial press in particular (with other media following their lead) referred to gangs that agreed not to attack the police as Aristide supporters, rather than gangs, and to gangs that did not agree, as political opposition.
Phillipe’s opportunity came when one gang that agreed not to attack the police, killed the leader of another gang (Cannibal Army) that agreed not to attack the police. Phillipe took over the Cannibal Army gang, renamed it several times (settling on National Front for the Liberation of Haiti), accused Aristide of killing the former leader, and started shooting the police in Gonaives.
The police, despite being more poorly armed, started fighting back. At the point that it became obvious that the police would win, despite being more poorly armed, US, Canadian and French special forces entered Haiti, kidnapped Aristide, holding him hostage in the Central African Republic, then a US puppet state.
The Canadians started training Haitian Army officials from the pedo regime as police officers, as was initially demonstrated by the Catholic Institute for international relations (the organization disappeared shortly thereafter, reappeared as “progressio,” sans reference to Haiti), and later by Manning in CableGate.
The initial plan of the coup was to make Phillipe president, and to that end, Yvon Neptune, who was either vice president or prime minister under Aristide, was arrested and charged with genocide (sic), for the gang shootout that lead to the death of the former Cannibal Army leader. The far end dragged on for two years (iirc) before being dismissed.
Because any even semi-legitimate election would result in a landslide for Aristide’s Famni Lavalas party, the occupiers started a two year massacre of Famni Lavalas party organisers. That massacre is the subject of Kevin Pina’s documentaries, Haiti The Untold Story, and Haiti We Must Kill The Bandits.
By the time enough of the party had been massacred to allow risking an election (still requiring massive fraud), Guy Phillipe had gained the attention of the DEA for his cocaine running, and he did not run in the election. In 2007, the DEA raided his Haiti residence, and Reuters had (since 2011, no longer has) an article on the matter. In the article, it was mentioned that Phillipe was listed as wanted on the DEA website. If so, he was removed very quickly, as it did not show up on the Internet archive captured at the time.
In 2011, Phillipe started to appear in DEA website captures as wanted (around the same time that the article disappeared off Reuters), under the section for fugitives from Miami Florida, although he disappeared again from the list some years later.
It is telling that the US would run a fraudulent election to again give Guy Phillipe the opportunity to run for a state position.
Due to the destructive nature of the invasion and coup, the occupiers felt it necessary to legitimate their actions by conducting a census, and blaming the result on Aristide. The census was conducted in 2006, and showed that primary school enrollment was below 40 percent. To blame Aristide, they called the census “the first in 24 years” (this description may be found on the UN website in the press release for the census).
The previous census was in 2003 (the year before the coup), and showed 60 percent primary school enrollment. The UN/occupier notion that 2006 is somehow 24 years after 2003 is representative of colonial apologetics—it is a species of pedo arithmetic /sarc.
It is telling that people who point out that Haiti is a shit hole, insist that Haiti is primarily at fault in that regard; such comments constitute abetting after the fact.
Posted by: Johan Meyer | Nov 19 2018 16:51 utc | 98
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