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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2019-62
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
Related:
Final report on the Lion Air flight JT610 (pdf) – KNKT
Boeing Shaped a Law to Its Liking. Weeks Later, a 737 Max Crashed. – NY Times
Related:
The PKK Kurds have finally agreed to adhere to the Russian/Turkish agreement.
The U.S. says it killed Kenny – again. Kenny was hiding or traveling in Idleb near the Turkish border. Iraq, the PKK Kurds and Turkey all claim to have been involved. Some say the helicopters came from Erbil, Iraq, but SOHR says they came from Turkey which is way more likely. Trump thanks Russia, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and the Syrian Kurds for their cooperation. As Kenny al-Baghdadi is now dead is there still a need to 'protect the Syrian oil-fields from ISIS'?
The Russian Defense Ministry says it knows nothing of a strike, doubts that it happened.
EHSANI2 @EHSANI22 – 5:33 UTC · Oct 27, 2019
That #Baghdadi was killed in #Idlib will come as no surprise to Damascus who were long aware of much more extensive relations between #AlQaeda #Nusra and #ISIS. The reconciliation between the two groups started after ISIS suffered significant losses in Mosul.
Thread —>
Related:
Larry Johnson says that James Clapper and John Brennan set up a CIA task force to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election. That is quite possible or even likely. There will be bureaucratic traces of it and some people will sing. Barr and Durham will find them. Where will it end? Well …
Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi – 23:26 UTC · Oct 25, 2019
LOL. Barack Obama is going to love this interview his former DIA James Clapper just gave to CNN about the Durham probe: “It’s frankly disconcerting to be investigated for having done… what we were told to do by the president of the United States.”
Clapper: Trump administration is sending us this message
Other issues:
Entertaining writings:
Hillary Clinton Spoils the Party – Jacob Bacharach, Truthdig
$500,000 of Russian Cheese, Wasted? – Matt Bivens
Little Russia-gate: The Tragic Comedy Of Journalism Has a Ukrainian Encore – Matt Bivens
Fake gas attacks:
Expert Panel Finds Gaping Plot Holes In OPCW Report On Alleged Syrian Chemical Attack – Caity Johnstone
Panel Criticizes ‘Unacceptable Practices’ in the OPCW’s investigation of the Alleged Chemical Attack in Douma, Syria on April 7th 2018 – Courage Found
OPCW Whistleblower Panel on the Douma attack of April 2018 – Wikileaks:
One of the Panel members was Dr José Bustani, the first Director-General of the OPCW, who concluded that: “The convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing”
Saving Lebanon:
US sanctions squeezing Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon AP – Oct 4
Syria is lost. Let’s save Lebanon. Ignatius, Washington Post – Oct 16
The Lebanese Fall – Hezbollah’s Latest Challenge – Ghassan Kadi, Saker blog – Oct 22
Lebanon’s shuttered banks bracing for dollar run – Asia Times – Oct 25
Chile:
The Price of Power – Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile – Seymour M. Hersh, Atlantic – Dec 1982
Assange:
Assange in Court – Craig Murray
“I Was Fired for Helping Julian Assange, and I Have No Regrets” – Jacobin Mag
Snowden reconsidered – Gilbert Doctorow
Funny end:
New Robot Makes Soldiers Obsolete (vid) – Bosstown Dynamics
Use as open thread …
Last week, Thierry Meyssan posted an excellent paper (https://www.voltairenet.org/article208007.html), in which he states that the recent events in Syria, in which ‘a quarter of the country was freed in a week’ is not only a victory for Assad, but the defeat of the ‘military strategy to establish the supremacy of financial capitalism’. These events mark the overturning of the world order that has been in place since the end of WWII.
What I find remarkable is how quickly the old order has been overturned. The old order was initially a bi-polar world, which evolved, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, into a Uni-Polar World Order under the control of ‘financial capitalism’ (i.e. the ‘Globalists’, also referred to as ‘international financial elites’, ‘Anglo-Zionists’, the ‘Davos Crowd’, etc.). Arguably the Uni-Pole’s power peaked in the early 2000s after the creation of the EU and the eastern expansion of NATO. The first cracks in the Uni-Pole’s hegemonic power appeared in 2003 with the fiasco in Iraq, and in 2008 with the Global Financial Crisis. But even as late as 2015, when Obama dismissed Russia’s entry into Syria as nothing but Russia stepping into a quagmire, the ‘Globalists’ could foresee no opposing force that would prevent them from consolidating their Uni-Polar World Order into an enduring world-wide system of ‘Global Governance’ through a ‘Rules-based International Order’ under the ‘Globalists’ control and enforced by the U.S. and NATO. But now, as Meyssan suggests, only four years later, the Uni-Polar World Order has been toppled.
In its place a ‘Multi-Polar World’ order is emerging. I would like to suggest that the outlines of this emerging order are as follows:
1. The dominant pole of this Multi-polar World is that led by the alliance of Russia and China. Spanning Eurasia from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, this pole includes the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Eurasian Economic Union, and includes Iran, Iraq, Syria, and possibly, in the future, Turkey.
2. The second pole will be the remnants of the ‘Globalist’ empire, stripped, however, of Europe (ex. U.K.) and any Asian representation, i.e. the U.S., U.K., Israel and likely Canada.
3. A third group consists of countries that are currently either occupied militarily by the U.S. or are part of NATO, but are either economically dependent on China or are in economic competition with the U.S. This includes most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the GCC countries (KSA, UAE, etc.). These countries cannot be considered as poles by themselves, for while some of them may have the economic weight to be considered a pole, such as Germany and Japan, they lack the geo-political weight. These countries are likely to try to escape from their status as American (‘Globalist’) vassals and become independent nations dealing equitably with all the poles of the new Multi-Polar World. In my view, it is unlikely that the EU will survive the birth of this new-world order in its current form. At best it is likely to revert back to a European free trade area, in which each country will recapture its sovereignty and its own currency.
4. A fourth group consists of countries that, while not being a part of the Russia/China pole will be under its wing, with Russia providing military, political and geo-political support, and China providing economic support. This group includes countries which are currently either under threat from the ‘Globalists’ (ie. Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, etc.), are in turmoil due to exploitation by the ‘Globalists’ (ie. Chile, Argentina, Brazil, etc.) or are outright failed states (most of Africa). Under the protection of Russia and China, they will once again have a chance to overcome the anarchy of the past 20 or so years and to return to peaceful development.
5. A fifth group consists of what will likely end up as secondary poles of the Multi-Polar World. These are countries that today are both independent and have the geo-political and economic weight to continue to function independently. This group includes the likes of India and the ASEAN countries.
Uncertain is the time that it will take for this emerging order to stabilize. In my view, this depends to a great extent on whether Trump survives impeachment and wins in 2020. If he does then the emergence of the Multi-Polar World Order could be quite quick and painless, as it is aligned with the policies that Trump has been espousing from the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2015. To ‘Make America Great Again’ requires that the U.S. recover its sovereignty and redevelop its industrial power. After all, a countries wealth, and thus its power, is what it produces, and a country that doesn’t produce as much as it consumes will, in the end, consume itself. To redevelop its industrial power the U.S. needs to isolate itself, as Trump is attempting to do behind a wall of tariff barriers and a devalued currency. The Multi-Polar World Order will allow the U.S. the opportunity it needs isolate, and then rebuild, itself. One must remember that it was the isolation of the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries that enabled the U.S. to become so powerful in the first place.
If, on the other hand, Trump is either overthrown by the ‘Globalists’ or defeated in 2020 then the emergence of the Multi-Polar World Order will be fraught with conflict. The ‘Globalists’ will fight it every step of the way, using all tools at their disposal, and particularly the military muscle of the U.S. and NATO. For the ‘Globalists’ the Multi-Polar World Order means the dispossession of their power and wealth. However, I believe that will simply be a case of the losers continuing to fight long after the war has been lost. It is only a question of how much time that it will take, and death and destruction that will occur, before the U.S. and NATO are exhausted.
The emergence of the Multi-Polar World Order, once it stabilizes, is likely to usher in a new era of peace and human development, similar to that which the world experienced in the decades following WWII.
Posted by: dh-mtl | Oct 27 2019 15:04 utc | 8
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