Is The (Out)House Of Saud On A March To A Civil War?

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 3, 2017

Mr. J.K. found this very important article from our friends at Zero Hedge and passed it along, and it’s worth some very careful consideration. The desert kingdom has certainly been busy lately, ever since President Trump’s “triumphal” visit, holding hands on a glowing globe of the world, with misplaced continents, a squeemish looking Saudi king, a big arms deal, and so on. Within mere days of the visit, we saw the sudden severing of diplomatic relations with Qatar over its support of terrorism, which is a bit like the terrorist calling the terrorist a terrorist (or in plainer English, the pot calling the kettle black).

Here’s the article:

Saudi Arabia’s March Towards Civil War

Besides noting that Turkey has sent troops to Qatar to offset Saudi pressure, the article zeros in on something in the opening paragraphs that are a geopolitical game-changer:

Has Saudi Arabia’s brinkmanship and heavy-handed policies of intervention in the Middle East come back to haunt the desert kingdom?

After decades of playing the role of middle man between foreign states and establishing itself as a regional power, Saudi Arabia’s policies of meddling in the affairs of neighbor states and support for terror appear to have finally exacerbated issues in the country which could threaten to plunge it into chaos. Growing anger over attempted austerity cutbacks, economic issues due to the fluctuating price of oil and tell tale signs of royal disagreement over the successor to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud mean that Saudi adventures abroad are preparing a perfect storm for civil conflict which could lead to further instability in the Middle East. The disruption comes as other states such as Iran and Turkey are positioning themselves as potential competitors to the de facto leader of the Arab world.

I. Saudi Arabia Is Experiencing Increasing Signs Of Instability

Saudi Arabia has experienced a number of issues which contribute to internal destabilization. In April 2017, Bloomberg reported that King Salman was forced to restore bonuses and allowances for state employees, reversing attempts to reform Saudi Arabia’s generous austerity programs. The Saudi government insisted that the move was due to “higher than expected revenue” despite the fact that observers were noting in March that Saudi Arabia’s foreign reserves were plunging as one third of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait have seen their credit ratings slashed and have increasingly disagreed on common foreign policy towards Iran.

The kingdom’s increasing financial problems are due in part to the falling price of oil. In January 2016, The Independent noted that the dropping value of oil would put Saudi Arabia’s man spending programs in jeopardy and that a third of 15 to 24-year-olds in the country are out of work. The Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering estimates that Saudi Arabia will experience a peak in its oil production by 2028, but this may be an incredible underestimation. The Middle East Eye has noted that experts in the United States who state that Saudi Arabia’s net oil exports began to decrease in 2006, continuing to drop annually by 1.4% each year from 2005 to 2015. Citigroup has estimated that the Kingdom may run out of oil to export entirely by 2030. The end of the Kingdom’s cash cow is likely to cause problems in a nation that The Atlantic has accused of running itself like a “sophisticated criminal enterprise.”

There have been a number of “interpretive positions” about the falling oil prices in the past few months. One interpretation has it that the Saudis, in cahoots with “The Powers That Be,” deliberately flooded the market with an oil glut to dismantle the then-booming American fracking industry. Indeed, a few years ago I blogged about the fact that this industry in effect had made the USA energy independent – at least as conventional fuels are concerned – and that the prior “vulnerability” needed to be restored. Then there was the “Russia was the target” version, which had the glut also targeting the always-to-be-mistrusted-they’re-behind-everything-Russians, to deprive the Russian energy-based economy of needed revenues. Of course, both are possible at the same time.

For the moment, and not taking into account those persisting rumors of alternative energy sources we hear about from time to time, or this or that breakthrough in the progress toward fusion, I point out something about those stories: none of them ever seem to come from the (out)House of Saud. Its one, and only, valuable contribution to the world is oil, and that, according to the above paragraphs, is declining, along with the revenues from falling prices, while the social commitments and programs do not diminish. (Perhaps this is why they were so quick to agree to that arms deal with Trump, part of which apparently includes the transfer of manufacturing capability… better learn how to make something, and fast.)

Over the long term, this is bad for Riyadh, and good for Bismarck, North Dakota, for Moscow, Tehran, and even for Tokyo and Beijing, because three of the capitals mentioned in this list, have the energy supplies, and the rest have the money to buy it. And this, plus Saudi bluster, is driving a sweeping geopolitical change in the region, and once again, it appears that Washington (and London), are backing the wrong horse.

There’s a player here to watch, if my hunch is true: in the long term, Saudi Arabia desperately needs to build things that people need, not just its people, but people everywhere. Chances are, most people don’t need to buy an American fighter jet or a German Leopard tank. Trading oil for American aircraft and German tanks is not a long term, stabilizing, economic strategy. For this reason, I suspect, we need to pay attention to how China reacts to the growing instability in the region, for they could approach the Saudis and say “you need to build your own cars and toys, and we can show you.” The oil’s running out, and with it, the Saudi share in the petro-dollar.

Watch the reminbi in the Middle East… it won’t happen over night; it will occur in incremental, slow, patiently Chinese steps, but I suspect it will occur, and the Saudis, probably, will wake up and realize it.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

Thierry Meyssan On The Revolution Against Political Islam

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 17, 2017

Regular readers here know two things about my  attitude toward Islam: (1) I am definitely not friendly to its doctrine, and (2) I definitely do not believe every last Muslim of the world’s billion-plus Muslims are out to “get” everyone else. From my viewpoint, the history of that ideology, especially in the twentieth century, has been one long frustration – usually by the imperial powers of the West, and particularly by Great Britain and Imperial (and later, Nazi) Germany – of the indigenous attempts of those within Islam to reform the religion and the culture. Indeed, for the German contribution to this sad story, one can read my The Third Way.

Which makes the following article by Thierry Meyssan, notwithstanding its glaring inaccuracies concerning early Christian history, all the more important, for as I mentioned in the previous week’s News and Views, Meyssan’s hypothesis is that Mr. Trump’s recent visit and arms deal with Saudi Arabia is about more than just continuing the same old pattern of support of a royal-clerical state. The deal, Meyssan contends, could not have been made without commitments from the Middle Eastern nations involved, and particularly Saudi Arabia, to move away from “political Islam” and support of radical groups like the Brotherhood:

A wind of secularism blows over the Muslim world

Behind the hypothesis, however, Meyssan is also implying that there is a fundamental break between London – which in his view continues to support “political Islam” – and the Trump Administration, which he contends is trying to lead an initiative to break from prior policy of tacit support and funding of such groups and the states that support them:

We know today that the « Arab Springs » were a British initiative aimed at putting the Muslim Brotherhood in power and thus reinforcing Anglo-Saxon domination over the « Greater Middle East ».

For 16 years, the Western powers have been rightfully accusing the Muslims of not cleaning up their own house, and of tolerating terrorists. However, it is clear today that these terrorists are supported by the same Western powers in order to enslave Muslims by means of « political Islam ». London, Washington and Paris have no problems with terrorism until it spills over from the « Greater Middle East », and they never criticise « political Islam », at least as far as the Sunnis are concerned.

By giving his speech in Riyadhh, on 21 May 2017, President Trump intended to put an end to the terrorism which is consuming the region, and is now spreading to the West. The words he spoke did indeed act as an electroshock. His speech was interpreted as an authorisation to finish with the system.

What resulted, according to Meyssan, was something akin to uncorking a bottle that had been living under pressure for centuries, and now, with the bottle uncorked, the result cannot be undone:

What had seemed unthinkable over the last few centuries suddenly took shape. Saudi Arabia agreed to cut off all contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, and raged against those who continue to pursue their collaboration with the British, and particularly against Qatar. Riyadh gave the signal for a cleansing which will sweep much frustration along with it. In a spirit of Bedouin vengeance, diplomatic relations have been interrupted, and an economic blockade was organised against the Qatari population – while in the Emirates, a sentence of 15 years of imprisonment was established by law for any individual who showed as much as a little compassion for the inhabitants of accursed Qatar.

A gigantic displacement of forces and alliances has begun. If this movement is to continue, the region will organise itself around a new fissure. The question of the struggle against imperialism will wither and give way to the struggle against clericalism.

And this has led to a corrresponding “outburst” of editorials:

In two weeks, the Arab Press, which until now had viewed the Muslim Brotherhood in a favourable light, as a powerful secret organisation, and jihadism as a legitimate engagement, has suddenly made an about-turn. Everywhere, everyone is publishing denunciations of the pretension of the Muslim Brotherhood who want to regulate people’s lives, and the cruel folly of jihadism.

This flood of commentaries, the centuries of frustration that they express, coupled with their violence, makes any back-pedalling impossible – which does not, however, mean that the alliance Iran-Qatar-Turkey-Hamas will go all the way. This revolutionary tsunami is happening in the middle of the month of Ramadan. Meetings between friends and families, which should be consensual celebrations, sometimes turn into arguments about what until now had been perceived as the basic truths of Islam.

As Meyssan goes on to observe, even Iran’s Revolutionary Guard harbors simmering resentments against the ayatollahs governing the country.

We then get a bit of complete nonsense regarding Christian history, which Meyssan assumes – like so many – was completely “clergy-less” in its early years:

Like original Christianity, which had no ministers (these only arrived in the 3rd century), original Islam and current Sunnism have none. Only Chiism has been structured like Catholicism and Orthodoxy. As a result, political Islam today is incarnated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the government of Sheikh Rohani (the title of Shiekh indicates that President Rohani is a member of the Chiite clergy).

If so, Christianity would be almost unique among world religions, especially from that part of the world, in not having any clergy; after all, it was an offspring of Judaism, and Judaism certainly had a clergy, and the rabbinate could be taken to be a kind of ministry in lieu of the ancient Hebrew priesthood. In any case, the Epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch would certainly stand as a pre-third century witness to the fact that early Christianity was not the  clergy-less paradise that so many think it was; it was, on the contrary, very hierarchical and very sacramental.  Additionally, Meyssan makes more of Pope Paul VI’s dropping the use of the papal tiara – symbol of papal claims and authority – than should be: for while the symbol was dropped, the claims were not. Indeed, when one reads the documents of the Second Vatican Council, amid all the modern-sounding verbiage, those sections dealing with the papacy itself read very much like the “old fashioned” language of Innocent III, of Pius IX and Vatican One: there was no diminution of claims whatsoever. In short: the tiara could return tomorrow, because what it symbolizes – the claims themselves – are still there.

But enough of that, for beyond this, Meyssan’s view is worth pondering, for it carries some implications, some of which, Meyssan contends, are already happening:

Meanwhile, the whole region is buzzing – in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood have left Tripoli, leaving a militia to liberate Saif el-Islam Kadhafi, and General Haftar to expand his influence. In Egypt, the General-President al-Sissi has asked his opposite numbers in the Gulf to draw up a list of terrorists. In Palestine, the political directors of Hamas have fled to Iran. In Syria, the jihadists have stopped fighting against the Republic and are awaiting orders. In Iraq, the army has redoubled its efforts against the Muslim Brotherhood and the Order of the Naqshbandis. In Saudi Arabia, the Muslim World League has excluded from its administrative council the Brotherhood’s star preacher, Sheikh Qaradawi. And Turkey and Pakistan have begun the transfer of tens of thousands of soldiers towards Qatar -which can now only feed itself with the help of Iran.

A new dawn seems to be rising over the region.

But assuming he is correct in his diagnosis, there are also some implications for the west, not the least is the cleavage between Washington and London, and this is where it could get interesting, for one implication of his analysis is that the Trump Administration has broken with prior British and American policy in a major way, and in so breaking, has broken with those factions within the American deep state that have been cooperating and to a certain extent leading and orchestrating the prior policy, including the tacit and very covert financial support of the same radical groups. We call them “neo-cons” or “neo-libs”, and they have been running American foreign policy since at least the Clinton Administration, with roots in that of the G.H.W. Bush administration. On this view, Mr. Trump has set the fox loose in the henhouse, and if it portends major changes in the Middle East, and a renewed commitment to American allies there such as Saudi Arabia, it also portends a major shuffling in the “deep state”. Time will tell if this effort will bear fruit.

And that means a long term effort will have to be sustained, for the nature of the change Mr. Meyssan is suggesting will be long term in nature, with bumps and fits along the way. What to look for? I suggest that if Mr. Meyssan’s analysis is correct, then the response of such nations like Indonesia, a predominantly secular Muslim state, will be crucial to watch, for that nation is undergoing its own internal struggles against “political Islam”. How such nations respond to this, how the Saudis respond to this, will be crucial in order for Mr. Trump’s initiative to work.

See you on the flip side…
Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

F. William Engdahl/Jay Dyer: Lost Hegemon & Full Spectrum Dominance [Half]

Source: JaysAnalysis
Jay Dyer
November 19, 2016

This is the first free half of an interview, while the full interview can be obtained by subscribing at the PayPal links at JaysAnalysis.com. Professor Engdahl joins me for a deep politics discussion in relation to his new book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy. His book focuses on the usage of radical Islam by the West and how these networks are part of a larger strategy to control Eurasia. We also touch on his older book Full Spectrum Dominance in part, and how the entire Cold War and the earlier Great Game set the stage for the events unfolding today.

http://www.williamengdahl.com

http://www.jaysanalysis.com

http://trineday.com/paypal_store/prod…

_________________________________________________________________
Jay Dyer a writer and researcher from the Southern US with a B.A. in philosophy, his graduate work focused on the interplay of literary theory, espionage and philosophy. He is dedicated to investigating the deeper themes and messages found in our globalist pseudo-culture, illustrating the connections between philosophy, metaphysics, secret societies, Hollywood, psychological warfare and comparative religion. Jay is a regular contributor to the popular Intelligence Hub 21st Century Wire and the scholarly Soul of the East, as well as conducting numerous interviews with experts in fields ranging from espionage to history to economics. Jay’s work has appeared on the web’s top alternative media outlets: Activist Post, Red Ice, Waking Times, Rense, Icke and Infowars, as well as appearing on the Alex Jones Show. Jay has broken national and international news, numerous viral alt news stories, as well as surpassing 1 million views in its first 4 years.

Strange Messages From The Middle East [Part 1] – Russia

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell
October 12, 2016

In case you haven’t noticed, there have been a couple of strange – in fact, very strange – messages coming from the Middle East in the last few days. And for once, they didn’t come from the perpetually strange and bizarre (out)house of Saud. While I’m tempted, because of the strangeness of these statements, to wonder if someone might be slipping a little LSD into the water supply in Damascus and Baghdad, that convenient explanation, unfortunately, will not work in these instances, since the populations of Damascus and Baghdad, American lamestream media biases notwithstanding, do not appear to be “tripping.” Since the LSD-in-the-water-supply hypothesis will not work in these instances, I am required to fall back on our trademark high octane speculation.

Unfortunately, these statements are so strange and bizarre, particularly given the context and geopolitical situation in which they were made, that I will have to treat each of them in a separate blog, so today’s “part one” is about the strange Russian statement, which was noticed and shared by many regular readers of this site, to whom, of course, I am grateful for bringing it to our attention:

General Konashenkov: Russia will take down any unidentified flying objects in Syria

Now when something appears on The Saker’s website, I tend to sit up and take notice, for it’s one of the most respected websites on the internet for presenting and arguing events from the “Russian point of view.” And this consideration brings us chin to chin with General Konashenkov’s strange comments in a press briefing, and a message targeted specifically and directed to Washington:

Today the Syrian Army is equipped with the air defense complexes effective enough, such as S-200, BUK, and other defense system

Also, we want to remind the American “strategists” that Russia currently has S-400 and S-300 air-defense systems deployed to protect its troops stationed at the Tartus naval supply base and the Khmeimim airbase. The radius of the weapons reach may be “a surprise” to all unidentified flying objects.

It’s important to come back to reality and to realize that Russian air defense system crews are unlikely to have time to determine in a ‘straight line’ the exact flight paths of missiles and then who the warheads belong to. And all the illusions of amateurs about the existence of ‘invisible’ jets will face a disappointing reality,

Say what? The range of the weapons may be “a surprise to all unidentified flying objects”?

As few days ago I blogged about a similarly strange statement from Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who indicated that there would be “tectonic consequences” if Washington continued on its war path. As I noted, “tectonic” is a phrase designed to underscore in the strongest possible language that the geopolitical consequences would be, well, tectonic, i.e., earth shattering. I speculated that Russia was sending signals that it…

Continue Reading At: GizaDeathStar.com
_________________________________________________________________

About Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

News & Views From The Nefarium – August 5, 2016 – Geopolitics, Turkish Coup Wake, Russia, & More

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell
August 5, 2016

There’s a quiet geopolitical earthquake going on in the wake of the “coup” attempt in Turkey:

https://www.stratfor.com/situation-re…

http://russia-insider.com/en/new-byza…

More Coming Out About The Coup In Turkey, & Sultan Erdogan’s…

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell
July 18, 2016

The coup and its aftermath in Turkey have been so dominating the news that my plans for scheduled blogs this week has been all but upended, but in any case, there are more things to consider as the news keeps coming out of Ottoman Turkey as the nutty Ottomaniac Sultan Erdogan rolls the clock back on the heritage of Kamal Attaturk. But first a review:

In Saturday’s special News and Views from the Nefarium, I outlined four basic possibilities – which I also explicitly pointed out were not an exhaustive list – for the coup: (1) it was an internal affair staged by the Sultan himself, to strengthen his hand in Turkey, (2) It was an internal affair staged by other groups in Turkey, among which one might assume (a) the pro-secularizing camp, namely the military, which in Attaturk’s vision was to be the guarantor of Turkey’s Islamic secular republic, or (b) Fatullah Gulen’s network, which doubtless included some of the military (interesting how the American media is saying he’s simply a “cleric”, a wonderfully benign term that reminds one of Archbishop Fulton Sheen), or (c) some other internal network, perhaps like Turkey’s notorious “Grey Wolves”, a nationalist, neo-Fascist “Turkish supremacist” group with its own murky background, including connections to the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, and yes(here is comes) its own murky connections to Nazism and all of its wonderful throwback institutions.

Then there were two other basic possibilities(again not exhaustive, and in fact for an interesting take on things, see the YouTube comments on Saturday’s special News and Views, as one lady offered yet two more plausible ideas): (3) the coup was external and staged by some external power, perhaps unhappy with the Sultan’s sudden and sweeping reversal of policy by (a) apologizing to Russia and offering compensation to the family of the Russian pilot, (b) wanting to normalize relations with Assad’s Syria, and (3) restore the six year breach of relations with Israel.  Such an about face was bound to have provoked someone, someone who wanted to see the continued rise of jihadism in the Middle East, and/or someone who wanted to see continued chaos in that region; and finally (4) an external coup staged, not by some external power, but rather, by some external group.

With this context in mind, consider the following stories:

Continue Reading At: GizaDeathStar.com
_________________________________________________________________

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

9/11 & The Fascist International Trap – Dark Journalist & Dr. Joseph P. Farrell [Part 1

Source: DarkJournalist
Daniel Liszt
May 20, 2016

9/11 Breakthrough – Exclusive First Interview With Dr. Farrell’s New Book Hidden Finance, Rogue Networks & Secret Sorcery: The Fascist International, 9/11 & Penetrated Operations.

Get ready for the most significant breakthrough in 9/11 research in recent years in Part 1 of this interview of Dr. Joseph Farrell by Dark Journalist, Daniel Liszt. This discussion connects so many dots, confirmed by the dedicated work of other alternative researchers in the last decade.

The two delve deeply into Farrell’s newly-released book, ‘Hidden Finance, Rogue Networks and Secret Sorcery’, which covers the role of an international Fascist syndicate in the events of 9/11. Farrell asserts that this group is in possession of advanced Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) that were used to collapse the World Trade Center Towers.

Farrell outlines 9/11 as a three-level operation comprised of 1). The infamous “19 hijackers”, who were used as patsies by elements inside the 2). National Security State (the group that is commonly the focus of non-mainstream 9/11 research) and 3). A coalition of forces, which developed after the defeat of Germany in World War II, which is a powerful but clandestine remnant of the eugenicist Nazi Party. This group is global and not relegated solely to Germany, by any means.

After WWII, this group continued to work behind the scenes, involving themselves in secretive, criminal activities, from drug-running to the development of the The Bilderberg Group, to a secret system of finance, which laundered the proceeds from the sale of stolen Nazi assets. Today, it functions to processes the black market-derived income that funds their activities.

As is generally acknowledged in the Independent Media, this group infiltrated the intelligence agencies of the US, NASA and it has sympathizers in the Military Industrial Complex. This group also played a major role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

This network has developed exotic technologies, including DEW, which were first developed in secret tests of torsion physics, in projects during Germany’s Nazi regime. These proprietary Directed Energy Weapons were brought into play during the attacks of 9/11 to bring down the towers.

This Level 3 group infiltrated the Level 2 Neocon plan of creating this major “new Pearl Harbor”, to pursue the aggressive policy of war in the Middle East, which we’ve seen over the past 15 years. The infiltration of Level 2 was accomplished using the PROMIS software, stolen from its original developers and used by the Reagan Administration to spy on other countries with its “back door” capabilities. This precursor to NSA’s “Thin Thread” and PRISM programs have been sold to countries around the globe.

Trump’s skepticism of US Military-Industrial Complex Is Hopeful Sign

Source: TheDailyBell
April 27, 2016

Trump’s World to watch as Trump outlines his foreign policy … Critics have accused the Republican front-runner of bigotry and posing a danger to U.S. national security.  Many foreign policy and defense advisers say his views are worrying, mingling isolationism and protectionism, with calls to force U.S. allies to pay more for their defense and proposals to impose punitive tariffs on some imported goods. – Reuters

Former Congressman Ron Paul lost the GOP presidential nomination in large part due to his stance on US military foreign involvement. Now the GOP, which is the engine of the US military-industrial complex, faces a similar challenge in the potential presidency of Donald Trump.

Trump’s stance, like Ron Paul’s before him, has been significantly skeptical of US foreign wars. Even the sprawling overseas occupation of the US military has come into question during his campaign.

Under Obama it has been business as usual for the Pentagon. But the military-industrial-intelligence cannot be happy – in aggregate – that the country’s core propaganda has now come under direct challenge in no less than three separate national elections.

It is also direct reason for the odd speculation that Hillary Clinton could attract significant GOP support from monied, insiders.

The spectacle of GOP cross-over to Clinton indicates, almost for the first time, the real fault lines of US politics.

The national priority is a continuation of military and intelligence activity aimed at a variety of internal and external targets, many of them fanciful, or worse yet, actually constructed with Western resources.

There is considerable evidence that both Al Qaeda and now ISIS were Western creations supported and directed by Middle Eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia.

More:

“Part of what I’m saying is we love our country and we love our allies, but our allies can no longer be taking advantage of this country,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday night in a speech preview.

He said he would focus on nuclear weapons as the single biggest threat in the world today. “I’m probably the last on the trigger,” Trump told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, citing his opposition to the Iraq war.

Trump’s remarks are especially timely in light of Barack Obama’s recently revealed plans to build a “missile defense shield” around North Korea.

According to ZeroHedge, “It appears that the US will set up a missile defense system to surround North Korea and shoot down any future flying nuisances.”

In the article, Obama is quoted as saying the following: “One of the things that we have been doing is spending a lot more time positioning our missile defense systems … we’re setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low-level threats that they’re posing right now,” Obama said.

Obama has indicated that the bottom-line problem regarding Korea is its nuclear program. But as ZeroHedge points out, “[This] is surprising considering North Korea has no chance of ever launching a fully functioning ICBM, let alone one which can reach the US.”

So what is the unsaid impetus for this move? Perhaps it is simply to deploy even more ships and military equipment in the region where recent diplomatic posturing between the US and China over various contested islands in the South China Sea has been the biggest geopolitical threat in recent years.

This ZeroHedge assessment is an accurate one, in our view, though we have taken it a step further in previous articles about North Korea’s nuclear “threat.”

Continue Reading At: TheDailyBell.com

Ten Reasons Why Bill and Hillary Clinton Do Not Deserve a Third Term in the White House

Source: GlobalResearch.ca
Prof. Rodriguez Tremblay
April 16, 2016

“Few things are more dangerous than empires pushing their own interest in the belief they are doing humanity a favor.” -Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) British historian, June 10, 2003

“It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq…” -Bill Clinton (1946- ), The neocon-sponsored Iraq Liberation Act, signed by President Clinton into law, in 1998

“I’m going to ask for his ideas, I’m going ask for his advice, and I’m going use him [former President Bill Clinton] as a goodwill emissary to go around the country to find the best ideas we’ve got, because I do believe, as he said, everything that’s wrong with America has been solved somewhere in America.” -Hillary Clinton (1947- ), during a debate on January 17, 2016

 “I’ll tell you how good our military is doing under [former CIA Director] Michael Hayden and people such as this. We’ve been fighting wars in the Middle East for 15 years, 18 years. We were in for four or five trillion dollars; we don’t know what we’re doing; we don’t know who we’re fighting; we’re arming people that we want on our side, we don’t know who they are.

When they take over a country, they’re worse than people they depose.” -Donald Trump (1946- ), in a response to a public letter by establishment national security so-called ‘experts’

Polls indicate that most of the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates, with a few exceptions, have more than 50 % negative ratings. Also, poll after poll, after poll show that most Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are, and some are even outspokenly “angry” at the current situation. The polls also indicate a high degree of polarization.

That may also explain why two of the leading presidential candidates this year, Democratic Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump, are both proposing anti-establishment and populist policies to get the United States out of its current rut.

On the domestic front, each, if elected, would advance economic policies designed to assist the American middle class, which has been decimated after nearly thirty years of economic and financial globalization and from so-called “trade deals” which have mainly benefited large corporations and mega banks, because they are essentially “investment and financial deals”, before being bona fide “trade deals”.

On foreign policy, both would like to extricate the U.S. from costly wars abroad that have been going on for so long. Most of these wars have been the pet projects of pro-Israel neoconservatives (shortened to neocons), inside and outside the U.S. government, ever since the latter de facto took over American foreign policy, after the end of the Cold War, in 1991.

It is indeed well documented that prominent neocons became very influential during the Bush I and Bush II administrations, in 1989-1993 and in 2001-2009. Many people remember how characters such as Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, …etc. used different tactics to push the United States into a never-ending imperialistic war, branded as “preemptive wars” in the Middle East, beginning with an unprovoked military aggression against Iraq, in 2003.

But, even if this has been less publicized, neocons have also played important roles in the Bill Clinton administration (1993-2001) and in the current Barack Obama administration (2009-2017), in promoting a series of wars abroad, especially in the Middle East and in Europe, and in sowing the seeds of financial crises at home.

Since Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has publicly declared that she intends to consult with her former-president husband, if she becomes president, it is of paramount importance to know what this means. Indeed, the question can be raised as to the likelihood that a Hillary Clinton’s presidency could be, in fact, some sort of a third term for the Clinton couple in the White House.

I have previously identified three major crises, which have their origin during the Bill Clinton administration.

Let us summarize them here and add a few more:

1-The de facto rekindling of a Cold War II with Russia 

History will record that President Bill Clinton broke a promise made by his predecessor, President George H. Bush, that the U.S. government would not expand NATO into Eastern Europe, if Russia were to disband the Warsaw Pact. As we know, during his 1996 reelection campaign, on October 22,1996, President Clinton thought to be to his political advantage to promise an enlargement of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Nobody realized at the time that this heralded the beginning of a new cold war with Russia.

What is less well known is the fact that Ms. Hillary Clinton, when she was State Secretary in the Obama administration, appointed a prominent neocon, Victoria Nuland, wife of leading neocon Robert Kagan, to the post of Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State. Ms. Nuland was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs a few years later, in May 2013, in the same Democratic administration of Barack Obama. Previously, she had served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Republican Vice President Dick Cheney in the George W. Bush administration, and later as U.S. ambassador to NATO.

Ms. Nuland is considered to be the key person in charge of provoking Russia into a Cold War II. (This is an indication that in Washington D.C., one can go easily from a Republican administration to a Democratic administration, provided one belongs to the neocon brotherhood).

2- The Clinton administration engineered the demise of the United Nations in 1998-1999

President Bill Clinton played a major role in undermining the credibility of the United Nations when he decided, in 1998 and in 1999, to enter the Kosovo War in Yugoslavia without an explicit mandate from the U.N. Security Council, as the 1945 U.N. Charter mandates. This was a very dangerous precedent.

Only a few years later, his successor, President George W. Bush invoked that precedent to launch the 2003 Iraq War, again with no outright mandate from the U.N. Security Council. Therefore, it can be said that President Bill Clinton bears an obvious responsibility for the current international state of anarchy, considering that the United Nations, for all practical purpose, has been sidelined in favor of NATO, to pursue U.S.-led imperialistic wars, which are waged outside of the international legal framework of the United Nations Charter and even in opposition to the Nuremberg Principles, which define military aggression as a crime against peace.

In 1991, few people anticipated that the collapse of the Soviet Union would eventually bring about the collapse of the United Nations, which has de facto been reduced to the same influence that the old League of Nations had before World War II.

3- Bill Clinton Sowed the Seeds of the 2008 Subprime Financial Crisis in 1999

On November 12, 1999, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Republican-sponsored Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which effectively removed the separation that previously existed under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 between investment banking, which issue securities, and commercial banks that accept government insured deposits.

Before 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act made it illegal for a bank holding FDIC-insured deposits to invest in anything other than government bonds and similarly low-risk vehicles. With his signature, however, President Clinton allowed largely unregulated super large banks and large insurance companies to engage in risky financial practices, as they are known to have done historically and as it should have been expected. The banks and insurance companies’ new financial products collapsed, and that led to the devastating 2008 financial crisis.

While Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has said that he would fully reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, his opponent, former Secretary Hillary Clinton, has said that she would not reinstate the banking law, preferring instead to rely on measures to better control so-called shadow banking.

4- The 2003 Iraq War Began in 1998: President Bill Clinton’s Iraq Liberation Act of 1998

On February 19, 1998, a group of prominent neocons (Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Richard Perle, …etc.) anxious to get the United States involved in wars in the Middle East, wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton. They were offering him a strategy for “the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power” in Iraq.

President Clinton did not immediately go to war to please the neocons, after all he was nearing the end of his term, but he did sign the Republican-sponsored Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, on October 31, 1998, stating that “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq….” That law opened the door for an American-led war against Iraq.

Indeed, President George W. Bush, in search for bi-partisan support for his planned war against Iraq, cited President Clinton’s Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 as a basis of support for the Congressional Authorization for use of Military Force Against Iraq of October 2002. We can say that President Bill Clinton set the U.S. government on a warpath against Iraq as early as 1998, and he therefore must share some responsibility for the disasters that have since resulted from that war.

5- Hillary Clinton’s Own Personal War of Aggression in Libya, (with false and misleading claims, and resulting in a huge refugee crisis)

President Barack Obama was reluctant to duplicate George W. Bush’s disaster with his military invasion of Iraq in 2003. That is why, in 2011, he hesitated to launch a new American war of aggression, this time against Libya, even though neocons inside and outside his administration were pushing hard for such a war. The latter country, headed by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, had the misfortune of having been singled out in the neocons’ grand plan as one of the Arab countries the neocons wished to overthrow and to destabilize the entire Middle East, using for that purpose the U.S. military to do Israel’s heavy lifting.

At the time, two heavyweights in the Obama administration, vice president Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, were both adamantly opposed to getting the U.S. government and its military involved in another neocon-inspired ‘regime-change war’ in the Middle East. That wasn’t counting on the neocons’ main ally, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton overcame the Biden-Gates’ formidable opposition to a U.S. military intervention in Libya by persuading a weak President Obama that Libyan President Gaddafi had a supposed plan to carry a “genocide” against his own people and that the U.S government had a “responsibility to protect” to avoid such a “genocide”, no matter what international law said. There is a dictum in French that “he who wants to kill his dog accuses him of having rabies”!

Such a proposal was in conformity with the precedent created by her president husband, Bill Clinton, who bombed Yugoslavia under similar circumstances, outside of international law, in 1998 and in 1999. It was also ironic that the President would side with her, considering that Barack Obama himself had campaigned against candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008, arguing that she had endorsed Bush’s 2003 Iraq-war policies.

Continue Reading At: GlobalResearch.ca

Former Bush Official Just Confirmed That Our Wars Are for Corporate Interests

Source: ActivistPost
Claire Bernish
March 30, 2016

“I think Smedley Butler was onto something,” Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former George W. Bush administration heavyweight, told Salon in an exclusive interview.

Major General Smedley Butler earned the highest rank in the U.S. Marine Corps, accumulating numerous accolades as he helped lead the United States through decades of war. He later became an ardent critic of such militarism and imperialism.

“War is a racket,” Butler famously said, and Wilkerson — who has also turned critical of U.S. imperialist policy — agrees with and admires the esteemed Marine.

Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to former secretary of state, Colin Powell, has grown tired of “the corporate interests that we go abroad to slay monsters for.”

Of the profiteering scheme that wars have come to embody, Wilkerson quoted Butler:

Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Noting Butler’s brief but accurate characterization of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, Wilkerson added that today’s war machine “is more pernicious than Eisenhower ever thought it would be.”

The willingness of such weapons and military equipment corporations to excuse the transgressions of repressive and abusive regimes in the Middle East and Asia for the sake of profit, Wilkerson asserted, stands as evidence Eisenhower underestimated the extent the to which the problem would manifest.

“Was Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO — after George H. W. Bush and [his Secretary of State] James Baker had assured Gorbachev and then Yeltsin that we wouldn’t go an inch further east — was this for Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, and Boeing, and others, to increase their network of potential weapons sales?” Wilkerson asked.

“You bet it was,” he answered his own question.

“Is there a penchant on behalf of the Congress,” he continued, “to bless the use of force more often than not because of the constituencies they have and the money they get from the defense contractors?

“You bet.

“It’s not like Dick Cheney or someone like that went and said let’s have a war because we want to make money for Halliburton,” Wilkerson explained, describing such decision-making as “pernicious.”

Taking his description a step further, Wilkerson characterized those corporations flooding congressional elections and political PACs with cash as “another pernicious influence.”

Relating another ill of the U.S. war machine, Wilkerson repined the creep of privatization of “public functions, like prisons,” for which the former Bush official places greatest blame on Republicans — though Democrats appear as eager about the shift. Salon mentioned Hillary Clinton’s speech from 2011, during her tenure as Secretary of State, in which she stated, “It’s time for the United States to start thinking of Iraq as a business opportunity.”

Indeed, journalist Jeremy Scahill extensively reported and investigated the enormous army of private contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan — with a particular focus on Blackwater. Run by notorious mercenary Erik Prince — who recently became the subject of an investigation by the Dept. of Justice and other federal agencies — Blackwater appeared to operate so unpredictably as to essentially be a rogue organization.

Scahill penned an article for the Guardian in 2007, revealing the exact troubles with privatization Wilkerson referred to — there were 48,000 ‘private contractors’ working for 630 companies in varying capacities in Iraq.

“In many respects,” Wilkerson continued, “it is now private interests that benefit most from our use of military force. Whether it’s private security contractors, that are still all over Iraq or Afghanistan, or it’s the bigger-known defense contractors, like the number one in the world, Lockheed Martin.”

Continue Reading At: ActivistPost.com