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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2018-66
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Official numbers show a downtrend of participants in the recent demonstrations and an uptrend of arrests. These numbers may be true or may not be true:
Via AFP – bigger
As of Friday support for the yellow vest protests still stood at 66%. On Tuesday Macron will hold a speech to the nation. What concessions, if any, is he willing to make? Will they be sufficient?
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On December 2 the Israeli police recommended to the general attorney to indict prime minister, foreign minister, health minister, defense minister, etcetera minister Benjamin Netanyahoo for corruption. Two days later the Israeli Army made a big show of digging up some disused tunnels at the Lebanese borders. Netanyahoo personally announced the operation in a Monday night TV speech. It was a classic 'wag the dog' move. It is now turning into an embarrassment.
First Hezbullah media made jokes about the whole endeavor. Hizbullah itself did not even raise its readiness status. It knows that Netanyahoo is deterred and does not dare to attack Lebanon. Yesterday Hizbullah's military media unit published pictures of Israeli soldiers operating at the border. The shots were taken from behind the Israeli lines!
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The same day Israeli media report that the IDF soldiers at the border are missing two machine guns:
The guns were stolen after being found, as it appears, unattended.
The missing FN MAG machine guns were attached to vehicles and weight 12 kilogram each. Hizbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah is likely to show them during his next public speech.
Use as open thread …
Les Déplorables Demand The Fall Of The Regime
Today we will again (read the comments) see large, and mostly peaceful gilets jaunes gatherings all over France to protest the neo-liberal policies of the Macron regime. The biggest ones will naturally occur in the capital Paris. They are likely to later develop into riots. The regime ordered 89,000 policemen onto the streets to counter any potential violence. 8,000 of them will be in Paris alone.
A problem is that police are often the cause of riots. Dressed like storm troopers and angry after way too many hours on the street they tend to attack with much brutality even when calm defense would be more appropriate.
After last week protest the Macron regime first delayed and then abolished the planned fuel tax hike that was the immediate cause of the yellow vest protests. That was too little too late and made his regime look weak. The people are now demanding more measures like a reintroduction of the wealth tax which Macron had abolished in one of his first acts in power.
Over the last week fireman, ambulance drivers, students and the administrative police union have joined the protests.
Luxury shops have been boarded up, museums and landmarks were closed. (An English language livestream can be watched here. Please point to others in the comments.) The police are an running early interdiction tactic, closing off roads and applying tear gas to kettle the people and to prevent larger gatherings at the Champs-Élysées. Hundreds have already been arrested. Meanwhile the protesters sing la Marseillaise. It is way too early for the police to use such force and it is not going to work. This only increases the anger of the protestors and will cause more conflagrations.
Les déplorables demand the fall of the regime.
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In a France24 report from a small town in the country side shows extraordinary solidarity between the people. Police passing through an occupied toll road entry sign the protesters petition, other pass by and gift food to the middle-aged protestors.
One woman makes an good point. Yes, the violence as seen in Paris last weekend was not nice. But only after last weeks protest went violent were the yellow vests really noted by the media and by the otherwise tone deaf politicians.
If the protestors today try to storm the Bastille, the Elyssée palace or whatever, if there are more casualties, more people will join protests and strikes during the next week. Macron will come under even more pressure. He will have to dismiss his prime minister and government. More pressure and he will have to dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. That would likely mean the end of his policies of further enriching the very rich while impoverishing the lower middle class and the poor.
Neocons Sabotage Trump’s Trade Talks – Huawei CFO Taken Hostage To Blackmail China
CNN reports that White House chief of staff John Kelly is expected to resign soon. There have been similar rumors before, but this time the news may actually be true. That is bad for Trump and U.S. policies. Kelly is one a the few counterweights to national security advisor John Bolton. His replacement will likely be whoever Bolton chooses. That will move contFrol over Trump policies further into the hands of the neo-conservatives.
It was Bolton who a week ago intentionally damaged U.S. relations with China.
The U.S. Justice Department arranged for Canada to arrest the chief financial officer of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, over alleged U.S. sanctions violations with regards to Iran. The case is not over the sanction Trump recently imposed, but over an alleged collision with the sanction regime before the nuclear deal with Iran. The details are still unknown.
Meng Wanzhou is a daughter of the founder and main owner of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, and was groomed to be his successor. The company is extremely well regarded in China. It is one of its jewel pieces and, with 170,000 employees and $100 billion in revenues, an important political actor.
The arrest on December 1 happened while president Trump was negotiating with president Xi of China about trade relations. Trump did not know about the upcoming arrest but Bolton was informed of it:
While the Justice Department did brief the White House about the impending arrest, Mr. Trump was not told about it. And the subject did not come up at the dinner with Mr. Xi.
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said on NPR that he knew about the arrest in advance, ..
Bolton surely should have informed Trump before his dinner with Xi, in which Bolton took part, but he didn't.
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It was a trap. The arrest is a public slap in the face of China and to Xi personally. It will not be left unanswered. Whatever Trump may have agreed upon with Xi is now worthless. John Bolton intentionally sabotaged the talks and the U.S. relations with China.
Cont. reading: Neocons Sabotage Trump’s Trade Talks – Huawei CFO Taken Hostage To Blackmail China
Whitewash – The ‘Last Bastion Of Freedom’ Is An Al-Qaeda Infested Town
This week the New Yorker published a long piece on Saraqib, a town in Idleb governorate in Syria.
Syria’s Last Bastion of Freedom
Amid the brutal civil war, a town fought off the regime and the fundamentalists—and dared to hold an election. Can its experiment in democracy survive?
The piece tells us that, despite the fact that al-Qaeda rules Idleb since at least 2015, it is really a cradle of genuine democracy:
In the summer of 2017, for the first time anywhere in Syria since 1954, the residents of the town of Saraqib decided to seize control of their future—and hold a genuinely free election.
On the morning that polls were to open, an activist named Osama al-Hossein woke up at five o’clock, feeling anxious. He soon headed to Idlib Gate, a former department store that had been turned into a meeting hall. A small crowd was milling about: local journalists, election monitors, and suited dignitaries who, in international circles, represented the Syrian opposition. The election was meant to choose the leader of the Local Council, a civilian body that governed the town. Poll workers checked their phones for reports of air traffic: Syrian and Russian jets were known to attack public gatherings, and activists had posted sentries around the province.
We are told that this one town, Saraqib, is really standing out:
One Syrian town after another fell out of government control, and from this anarchy new horrors arose. The flags of ISIS and Al Qaeda were raised across the country. Child refugees drowned at sea; Western hostages were murdered on camera.
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Somehow, Saraqib had avoided this fate. It offered an alternative history for the entire Syrian conflict—and, Hossein believed, its citizens embodied the true soul of the revolution. That evening, he imagined other tiny democracies flowering across Syria, and the rest of the world coming to understand, at last, that his country had more to offer than bloodshed and tragedy.
In reality "an alternative history" is not what happened to Saraqib, but what is presented in the New Yorker piece. It is a whitewash of a brutal international attack on Syria. A hagiography of one Osama al-Hossein, a Muslim Brotherhood 'activist', who got funding from the United States. It includes every false propaganda cliche about 'barrel bombs' and 'moderate rebels', who never were moderate, that the 'western' agencies inserted into the news stream. It is also full of stupid and nonfactual assertions. How, for example, did the New Yorker fact checkers let these 'Humvees' pass by:
Cont. reading: Whitewash – The ‘Last Bastion Of Freedom’ Is An Al-Qaeda Infested Town
Open Thread 2018-65
Fundraiser – Please Support Moon of Alabama
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Reuters Creates Fakenews About Iran – Intentionally Conflates Two Different Missiles – Misquotes Official
A just published Reuters piece claims:
Iran wants to expand missile range despite U.S. opposition.
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That claim is false and is based on a willful misrepresentation of the source Reuters cites.
GENEVA (Reuters) – Iran wants to increase its missiles’ range, a senior military official was quoted as saying on Tuesday, a move that would irk the United States which views Tehran’s weapons program as a regional security threat.
U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of an international nuclear agreement in May and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic, criticizing the deal for not including curbs on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles.
“One of our most important programs is increasing the range of missiles and ammunition,” said the head of the Iranian air force, Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
“We don’t see any limitations for ourselves in this field.”
Iran’s military has cited 2,000 km (1,240 miles) as the current missile range, and said U.S. bases in Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, plus U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf, were within range.
The Reuters piece conflates ground launched ballistic missiles with air-to-air missiles that the air force commander wants to develop. The U.S. does not care about Iran’s air-to-air missiles. It itself has far superior ones. The U.S. does care about Iran’s ballistic missiles. But the Iranian general did not talk about those at all. The quote Reuters attributes to the Iranian general it is taken out of context and used to propagandize a non-issue.
The FARS piece Reuters cites is absolutely clear with what the air force commander means, even while its headline is probably too generalized:
Cont. reading: Reuters Creates Fakenews About Iran – Intentionally Conflates Two Different Missiles – Misquotes Official
Syria – ‘Activist’ Posts Fake Picture – Fact Checkers Fall For It
The war on Syria brought up dozens of propagandist. Asaad Hanna is one of them. His screeds were published in the disgraced Guardian, on TRT World, Time, AL-Monitor and elsewhere. He is introduces himself as “a Syrian civil society and human rights activist and an economics graduate from Damascus University” and as “a member of the Free Syria Army Northern Division’s political office”.
Yesterday at 9:46 utc he tweeted a picture:
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The Syria Campaign is the U.S. organization that runs the Al-Qaeda clean-up and propaganda squad the White Helmets. It copied the photo from Asaad Hanna’s earlier tweet and tweeted it as if it were the original source.
The Syria Campaign Verified account @TheSyriaCmpgn – 14:34 utc – 3 Dec 2018
A brave person took this photo from central Damascus. It shows chained young men being watched by a regime soldier. The photo has gone viral among Syrians with many saying the men were being forcibly conscripted into the army. Is this the safety Assad promises the Syrian people?
Cont. reading: Syria – ‘Activist’ Posts Fake Picture – Fact Checkers Fall For It
The People Of France Reject Macron’s Policies – How Long Can He Survive?
The current wave of protests in France, which started two weeks ago, is growing in impact and applied violence. On Saturday some 120,000 people took part in demonstrations around the country. The movement was initiated from the political right but many other parties also support it. Most of the participants seem to take part spontaneously. The movement is supposedly leaderless. But it is too early to exclude that there is some larger organizing power behind it.
In short: The Arab spring arrived in Europe.
“The people demand the fall of the regime.” – bigger
Like the 1968 May protests that started in Paris this new movement will have echos in other countries.
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While mostly peaceful protest were held in all parts of France the situation in Paris caught the most attention. On Saturday the protesters stormed the Arc de Triomphe. They rearranged the interior, damaged a statue of Marianne, and redecorated the outside.
Cont. reading: The People Of France Reject Macron’s Policies – How Long Can He Survive?
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2018-64
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
A former German Foreign Minister, Siegmar Gabriel, warned that the Ukraine is trying to pull others into its war:
“I think we should not let Ukraine draw us into a war, and Ukraine tried to do that,” Gabriel said in an interview, voicing concerns over the situation in the Sea of Azov.
Robert Fisk has the same concern expressed in the above piece and an earlier one. It is Trump’s Middle East policy, build around Saudi Arabia, that will bring him down:
So I have a prediction. If the Trump regime collapses – for regime it is – I suspect it will not be his frolics with the Russians which destroy it. Nor his corruption, nor his domestic lies. Nor his misogyny. Nor his anti-immigrant racism. Nor his obvious mental instability, though this clearly connects him to his friends in the Arab world. The Middle East has already got its coils into the White House. Trump is a friend of a highly dangerous state called Saudi Arabia. He has adopted Israeli foreign policy as his own, including the ownership of Jerusalem and wholehearted support for Israel’s illegal colonisation of Palestinian Arab land. He has torn up a solemn treaty with Iran. He has joined the Sunni side in its sectarian war with the Shias of the Middle East, in Iran, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Bahrain and, of course, in Saudi Arabia itself.
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[T]he Arabs and Muslims who live in territory which many of the American supporters call the holy land may well decide his future; after all, he thinks he can decide theirs.
Use as open thread …
What Poroshenko Gets Wrong – H.W. Bush And The Ukraine
Earlier this week Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, tried to provoke a war with Russia in attempt to stay in power by cancelling the upcoming elections.
Today he attempts to curry favor in the U.S. with remarks about the death of the former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.
Петро Порошенко @poroshenko – 10:59 utc – 1 Dec 2018
The former US President George W. Bush passed away. True leader and statesman. This man – the legend, under whose presidency the world saw the end of the Cold War. This man – the era, who then witnessed the restoration of Ukraine’s independence.
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Poroshenko not only mourned the wrong President Bush, he also mislead about the historic record. Bush the first indeed “witnessed the restoration of Ukraine’s independence”. But it happened against his strong advice.
Bush had feared that the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was too weak, and that a dissolution of the Soviet Union would end in utter chaos. He traveled to Moscow and Kiev in an attempt to keep the union together. On August 1, 1991, months before a December referendum in which the Ukraine voted to withdraw from the Soviet Union, he visited Kiev and held a speech in the Ukrainian parliament.
The core sentences:
Cont. reading: What Poroshenko Gets Wrong – H.W. Bush And The Ukraine
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