Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Military Industrial Complex Coup: Trump pulls in the reins on Zio-Evangelical Rapture plans for now


The 2001 AUMF, (Authorization for Use of Military Force) was based on Neo-Zionist lies and should be shit canned.  What the 2001 AUMF did was take the authority to wage war away from congress and place it in the hands of the Military Industrial Complex and the rogue privatized Intelligence Agencies of the US, Israel and Britain.  Since our “elected” officials are selected and funded by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Bank, war powers should require an overwhelming majority in congress order to wage wars for profit at the expense of the American people.

After George W. Bush lost the 2000 Presidential in spite of massive fraud perpetrated against the voters in Florida, W.’s brother Florida’s Governor Jeb Bush declared W. the winner.  Due to the massive fraud the Florida State Supreme Court ordered a recount.  A corrupt U.S. Supreme Court dominated by Zionists overruled the Florida Supreme Court and stopped the Florida recount.  In a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme court overturned the results of the presidential election and installed the loser, George W. Bush as President of the United States.

Once the election results were overturned, in a lame duck session the corrupt Zionist controlled US Senate passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which deregulated Wall Street’s derivatives trading.  Since that time there is in excess of $700 trillion in derivatives trading per day, untaxed and unregulated. 

After the false flag attacks of 911, George W. Bush declared the beginning of the 21st Century a new era of Crusades and the AUMF was passed by congress authorizing President George W. Bush as the sole “decider” when declaring war.  With the passing of the AUMF Vice President Dick Cheney declared the 1% Doctrine, if there was a 1% chance of a terrorist attack America would act as if an attack was imminent enabling a preemptive attack on any country the President deemed a threat. 

America’s new foreign and domestic policy was born.  From that day forward, previously illegal activities such as torture of prisoners and spying on Americans was now not only legal but encouraged.  The following article was written by James Petras in 2004:

Excerpt:

Treason in High Places: Pentagon Zionists, AIPAC and Israel

The FBI investigation into Israeli espionage agents in the Pentagon is part of a major struggle between prominent Zionists in the Pentagon and the US security apparatus.

Ever since the Bush regime came to power there has been a fierce political and organizational war between the Pentagon Zionists and their militarist collaborators, on the one hand, and the professional military and intelligence apparatus, on the other.

This conflict has manifested itself in a series of major issues including the war in the Middle East, the rational for war, the relationship between Israel and the US, the strategy for empire, as well as tactical issues like the size of military force needed for colonial wars and the nature of colonial occupation.

From 9/11/2001 to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon Zionists and the civilian militarists had the upper hand: they marginalized the CIA and established their own intelligence services to ?cook the data?, they pushed through the doctrine of sequential wars, beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq and projecting wars with Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

The Pentagon Zionists increased Israel?s power in the Middle East and promoted its expansionist colonization of Palestine, at the expense of US soldiers, budget busting expenditures and CIA objections.

The US military and security apparatus has retaliated. First by debunking Zionist lies about Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction, then by exposing the role of Zionist client Ahmed Chalabi as a double agent for Iran, followed by a two-year investigation of Pentagon Zionists passing documents to Israeli military intelligence and the secret police, the Mossad.

More is at stake than a turf war between the ?Israel First? Pentagon crowd and their opponents in the US military, diplomatic corp and intelligence agencies. The fundamental issue is the freedom of the US people to decide or at least influence their political leaders and their appointees without being subject to the manipulation and control by a foreign government (Israel) and their highly placed agents in positions of power.

Israel has for decades subverted US foreign policy to serve its interests through the organized power of major Jewish organizations in the US. What is new in the current Pentagon spy case is that rather than pressuring from the outside to secure favorable policies for Israel, the Israel loyalists are in top positions within the government making strategic decisions about US global policy and providing their Israeli handlers with secret documents pertaining to top level discussions in the White House on questions of war and peace.

Today the politics of Pentagon and AIPAC espionage is especially dangerous ? because what is at stake is a new US and/or Israeli war on Iran which will ignite the entire Middle East.  The move to high-level spying by top Zionist policy-makers like Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz and others in the Bush Administration is the culmination of a long series of strategic policies promoted by AIPAC designed to enhance Israeli expansionist goals in the Middle East…

Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Perle, Rubin et al were the most zealous promoters of the war against Iraq. They worked closely with other Zionist ideologues like Bush speechwriter David Frum to promote the notion of ?axes of evil?, to engage in a sequence of wars against Muslim regimes hostile to Israeli colonial policy in Palestine and beyond. Wolfowitz, Feith set up the parallel ?intelligence? agency (the Office of Special Planning) run by fellow Zionist Abram Shulsky using Chalabi to provide phony data on Iraq to precipitate that war.

An army of ?Israel First? academic and journalist ideologues wrote, spoke and acted to justify the US attack on Iraq as the first part of a regional war to destroy any and all regimes critical of Israeli expansionism. Cohen, Rubin, Kristol, Foxman, Ledeen and many others provided ?expert? propaganda on why US soldiers should kill and be killed for Greater Israel

The history of the key Zionists in the Pentagon reveals a pattern of disloyalty to the US and covert assistance to Israel. Harold Rhode and William Luti, both fanatical Pentagon Zionists under Feith , Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby have been under investigation by the FBI for passing documents to Israel. Rhode had his security clearance suspended recently…

It is clear that Israeli agents, not simply Zionists ideologues, infest the top echelon of the Pentagon. The question is not merely a question of taking this or that policy position in favor of Israel but of working systematically on a whole range of issues to further Israeli power over and against US imperial interests.

What is surprising is not the current investigation over Israeli spies in the Pentagon but why they have not been arrested, indicted and sentenced a decade or two earlier…

President Bush has declared that he is a ?wartime President? ? the US is officially involved in a colonial war of aggression against the Iraqi people. In these circumstances, espionage in time of war is a capital offense? even if the spymasters are Israelis. It is no wonder that the Zionist and Israeli propaganda machine is working overtime to undermine the espionage investigation…

The arrogance of Israeli power in then US, which Sharon publically boasted about, is largely based on the simple principle embraced by all Zionist zealots whether they are Ivy league academics or neo-fascist felons (like Elliot Abrams) is ?What?s good for Israel is good for the US?. ?Good for Israel? today means bloody US wars against Israel?s adversaries, unconditional support for Israeli expansion and pillage of Palestine and now spying on the US for the good of Israel…

Investigations and evidence are usually enough to proceed with indictments, interrogations and the pursuit of the leaders and foreign handlers in a major espionage case, especially in wartime. Thousands of innocent South Asians, Arabs and Muslims have been picked up and jailed on the most flimsy excuses (?suspicions?). But in the case of Israeli-AIPEC-Pentagon espionage the normal legal processes are inoperative.

The question of espionage prosecution depends on political power – a struggle between the Israeli State backed by the major Presidential candidates and parties, the Zionist-American political machines and their mass media acolytes on the one hand and, on the other hand the FBI, professional intelligence apparatus (CIA, DIA), state prosecutor and his investigatory staff and few stray political voices…

American citizens will have to face a serious question: If the security services are incapable of defending our country from foreign espionage in high places ? What is to be done?  In either case we face an imminent Zionist designed and promoted military attack on Iran, which is likely to lead to a general conflagration which can only benefit the neo-fascists who run the state of Israel. And you are afraid of being called an anti-Semite for opposing the Israel?s espionage and regional wars.

Nothing has changed since 2004, as a matter of fact it has gotten worse.   President Donald Trump is the unwitting victim of the Zio-Evangelical plan to bring the Rapture into reality in the 21st Century.  Trump is surrounded by the Zio-Evangelical zealots who were embedded into the American government during the George W. Bush Administration.  From George Eliason at The Saker:


Excerpt:

The Terrorists Among US- Traitors and Terror 3

The second part in this series showed clearly that the US Intel community has been overrun by untrainable and undependable people.  The more facts that come out, the worse the situation looks.

We trust these people to dissect and analyze critical pieces of information and based on their experience advise the President of the United States whether or not diplomacy, spying, and covert action, sanctions, or even military engagement is warranted.

So, the big question in part 2 became, how do you induct over 3 million new employees with no previous experience into what is supposed to be one of the most complicated professions on the planet? Can this be done in less than 5 years? The answer is you can’t.

Most of the Intel the US is using right now comes from private sector sources. Over 80% of the current NSA budget goes to subcontractors that can hire and layoff on a per-project basis. There is no loyalty to employees or government service. Loyalties are bought and sold by the highest bidders as part of the daily grind to just make a living.

One day Jimmy the 1st year apprentice Intel guy might work for the US government. Two weeks later he might work for the Ukrainian lobby doing Oppo-research. Three weeks later he might work for a company that has both for clients. He takes all the software packages with him as well as insight into the data he’s gained or if it’s OSINT, the data itself can change hands if it does so before being labeled “secret.”   

Since 2015, I’ve watched the Intel industry go through radical changes in a very short time. This started long before I interviewed Michael Jasinski (MJ), the Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh about this.

The following is professor Jasinski’s remarks from the 2017 article and following that the interview we did the other day. In literally 2 years the Intel community hiring standards have gone from university researchers with at least some experience and education in the field down to Jimmy who used to work at Walmart and is now an intern at the CIA, FBI, DIA, DOD or fill in another agency of your choice.

Professor Jasinski had oversight over researchers that were later hired by US Intel agencies following 9/11 and provided evaluations of them prior to their employment… 

MJ- “Considering how the intelligence community is depicted in the media or in the movies (and clearly CIA “outreach” plays a role here), you’d think Jedi Knights.  The Justice League. Gandalf. But if you ever had personal contact with the “three-letter agencies” for any period of time, you’d think different. My most recent experience with the “intelligence” community was at MIIS, post-9/11 when the agencies were coming there to hire, and they were hiring big.  

They hired many of my research assistants–I was doing what might be termed “open-source intelligence” on WMD proliferation–and in the process, they’d ask me, their immediate supervisor, for my opinion. So I’d tell them point-blank: can’t read, can’t write, can’t analyze. I don’t care what their CV says, the only language they can function in at any level in English. No matter, they’d get hired anyway.

Drug convictions? No matter, they’d get hired anyway (at least at the time, the CIA would hire you if you didn’t have any drug convictions within the last 3 years). Scary political views they wore on their sleeve? No matter, they’d get hired anyway. All of my good assistants went to work for the UN, IAEA, major NGOs. The dregs went to “intelligence.”

So now when I see a) the “Russian interference” stories and b) the inability to safeguard, and presumably use responsibly, your own cyber-warfare arsenal, I can’t say I’m exactly surprised. But there are no shortcuts in this kind of work. If you rapidly expand at the cost of dramatically lowering standards, you (and the country) are going to pay a price. We’re paying it right now…”

GE– Professor Jasinski, how do you feel about the idea of can’t read, can’t write the language analyst types gaining NSA size tools and being sent to spy into Russian infrastructure as bounty hunters looking for threats?

MJ-It’s not unlike giving a monkey a live hand grenade, except that the monkey in question would not run the risk of causing major power war. I hope these reports are, essentially, disinformation, because NYT would never publish anything the intel community doesn’t want to see published…

GE-How would you feel about these same analysts gaining manager positions in the agencies and as the private contractor counterparts?

MJ– If in supervisory positions, they will succumb to the First Law of Bureaucracy which is to protect and expand turf, which in practical terms means more and more cyber-ops which are probably already being touted as the new “smart bombs”– a perfect solution to every national security problem, real or imagined. There will be lobbying, policy papers, entire think tanks funded by agencies led by people interested in not only expanding cyber ops but specifically expanding their own agency’s responsibility for cyber ops and in order to do that, you have to have some “track record” of running cyber ops. So you can imagine the potential for rapid escalation…

GE-What is the potential of bounty hunter hackers, IO pros, and private spies fomenting war outside of all government policy or oversight?

MJ– This is a bit more complicated. If the tools really proliferate among non-state actors, it’s the equivalent of selling biowarfare kits in pharmacies all over the world. Anyone can get them, then launch anthrax/black plague/whatever attacks on whatever individual, organization, city, or country they don’t like at the moment. So that probably will not be allowed to happen, and we’ll see something like the de-facto ban on shoulder-launched SAMs from being sold or given to non-state actors.

Even the war in Syria did not seem to break that taboo. The bigger problem is governments outsourcing cyberwar to quasi-private actors, in the same way, propaganda has been outsourced to the likes of Bellingcat, censorship to Google and Facebook, killing people to Eric Prince.

So, for reasons of plausible deniability, you could set up a Dirty Dozen-style outfit of cybercriminals given suspended sentences in return for cooperating with the gov’t, then use them to stage cyber ops to benefit the US gov’t, or at least the intel community, and do it with considerable plausible deniability and moreover hide it in some “black” budget program. I do wonder who all these Cozy Bears and Fancy Bears really are.

Professor Jasinski’s point is well taken. What would the world be like if anyone could get their hands on aggressive NSA state-level tools and point them at their neighbor?

When he taught the people that would eventually become CIA and FBI OSINT agents and managers, the transition from State to privatized Intel was in its infancy. Part 2 of the series showed Richard Clarke made the US Agency transitions to the privatization of Intel. UK PM David Cameron labeled the man that got the job transitioning US agencies to privatized Intel an idiot. That was Steve Emerson and his sidekick and former gift shop cashier, the lovely Rita Katz.

From the 1990s into the 2000s and 2010s, all of the elite hack, defense, and attack tools were purposely labeled freeware for anyone that decided to pick them up. This means the scenario professor Jasinski labeled as a nightmare is already coming true.

A researcher made an elite hacking tool out of the info in the Vault 7 leak. And most of the tools in their primary form are available online free of charge.

Why did this happen?

The Guardian made the point in November 2014 with “Our choice isn’t between a world where either the good guy’s spy or the bad guy’s spy. It’s a choice of everybody gets to spy or nobody gets to spy…”

This has been gradually developing into the norm in America. Your safety and the safety of your loved ones, not to mention the rest of the world is in the hands of otherwise unhireable people that are learning as they go to hack and attack foreign countries and domestic civilians…

But because of the work they do for both the U.S. government and private corporations, few restrictions are placed on them. Where they are supposed to be supervised by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), in some cases they are supervising themselves and other companies and training DNI agencies to act like them…

It is only along this line, the NYT article U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid can be comprehended. Why is the military leaving the nation’s Commander in Chief blinded from what has the potential to spark a hot war? How?

While Jimmy works at the ODNI this week, the DOD uses 1st year Intel intern Jimmy’s brother Gary. Gary has a solid 6 months behind him as a privatized operator to carry out OSINT against Russian assets.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? My first thought is ole’ Gary made a mess the US government was going to get taken behind the shed for. But, why would the DOD get behind this hacking operation and alienate their Commander in Chief? Why not invoke plausible deniability? Do they think Trump will take the ODNI use of private sector apprentices to heart and fire them?

This is part of an ODNI and DOD Intel policy change. The DOD has been using private citizens like ole’ Gary for a while. Now, it almost seems like they bring these guys into a room and really chat them up before letting them loose to wreak havoc on society.  Ole’ Gary, you are a supa’ spy! Yes, you are. Yes, you are! Now go get me sum red Ruskies!..

It seems Ole’ Gary and the Podunk crew received new and improved titles. They are bounty hunters and privateers. This is immensely important and will be the subject of the next article in the series.  All they need to do is go back to the room and get chatted up again and they can start their new careers. I’ve been researching this cottage industry and watching it develop since 2015. The Privatized NSA Army is Attacking YOU!..

CIA morale plummets as Trump becomes president and CIA veterans say spat with Trump could have real-world consequences.

The problem is most of the morale slump is coming from private contractors that are doing the actual work. Contrary to popular belief, the CIA would be relegated to the level of Keystone Cops if they had real agents face forward online every day. So, what does this mean?

Ole Jimmy and Gary want to feel the part. They want to dress the part. They want to live the part. Their lack of GEDs just won’t allow it to happen. Sorry, Jimmy. Sorry, Gary. The CIA doesn’t offer apprenticeships. But, because they do work indirectly for the CIA, they pretend they are CIA and use their real CIA tools on their neighbors…

IF U.S. INTELLIGENCE IS QUESTIONABLE AND UNTRUSTWORTHY, THERE IS NO SINGLE GREATER THREAT TO THE PLANET TODAY. Members of an intelligence community who try to circumvent the democratic process should be prosecuted no matter who they are or who they are trying to undermine. 

Hummm, so “Your safety and the safety of your loved ones, not to mention the rest of the world is in the hands of otherwise unhireable people.”  So when the world was told that 17 US Intelligence Agencies confirmed Russia interfered in the 2016 election to get Trump elected, that intelligence was gathered by “unhireable people.”  The Zio-Evangelicals now have complete control over the intelligence that is given to the American President to make life and death decisions.  These zealots want to complete the destruction of American started under George W. Bush and advanced by Barack Obama to bring forth the Armageddon.  From Julian Borger at The Guardian:


Excerpt:

‘Brought to Jesus’: the evangelical grip on the Trump administration

The influence of evangelical Christianity is likely to become an important question as Trump finds himself dependent on them for political survival

In setting out the Trump administration’s Middle East policy, one of the first things Mike Pompeo made clear to his audience in Cairo is that he had come to the region as “as an evangelical Christian”.  In his speech at the American University in Cairo, Pompeo said that in his state department office: “I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and his word, and the truth.”

The secretary of state’s primary message in Cairo was that the US was ready once more to embrace conservative Middle Eastern regimes, no matter how repressive, if they made common cause against Iran.

HIS SECOND MESSAGE WAS RELIGIOUS. In his visit to Egypt, he came across as much as a preacher as a diplomat. He talked about “America’s innate goodness” and marveled at a newly built cathedral as “a stunning testament to the Lord’s hand”.

'Toxic Christianity': the evangelicals creating champions for Trump

The desire to erase Barack Obama’s legacy, Donald Trump’s instinctive embrace of autocrats, and the private interests of the Trump Organisation have all been analysed as driving forces behind the administration’s foreign policy.  The gravitational pull of white evangelicals has been less visible. But it could have far-reaching policy consequences. Vice President Mike Pence and Pompeo both cite evangelical theology as a powerful motivating force.

Just as he did in Cairo, Pompeo called on the congregation of a Kansan megachurch three years ago to join a fight of good against evil.  “We will continue to fight these battles,” the then congressman said at the Summit church in Wichita. “It is a never-ending struggle … until the rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight.”

For Pompeo’s audience, the rapture invoked an apocalyptical Christian vision of the future, a final battle between good and evil, and the second coming of Jesus Christ, when the faithful will ascend to heaven and the rest will go to hell.

For many US evangelical Christians, one of the key preconditions for such a moment is the gathering of the world’s Jews in a greater Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. It is a belief, known as premillenial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism – and it has very real potential consequences for US foreign policy.

It directly colours views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and indirectly, attitudes towards Iran, broader Middle East geopolitics and the primacy of protecting Christian minorities. In his Cairo visit, Pompeo heaped praise on Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, for building the new cathedral, but made no reference to the 60,000 political prisoners the regime is thought to be holding, or its routine use of torture.

Pompeo is an evangelical Presbyterian, who says he was “brought to Jesus” by other cadets at the West Point military academy in the 1980s…   As Donald Trump finds himself ever more dependent on them for his political survival, the influence of Pence, Pompeo and the ultra-conservative white Evangelicals who stand behind them is likely to grow.

“Many of them relish the second coming because for them it means eternal life in heaven,” Andrew Chesnut, professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University said. “There is a palpable danger that people in high position who subscribe to these beliefs will be readier to take us into a conflict that brings on Armageddon…”

Scary stuff when religio-crazies and unhireable stooges control the government, not because the people voted for them but because they were placed there by external forces bent on destroying America.  Talk about your “death to America” nuts.  If there is any doubt that these Zio-Evangelicals are preparing for the Armageddon let this article by Whitney Webb put those doubts to rest.  From MintPress:

Excerpt:

In Israel the Push to Destroy Jerusalem’s Iconic Al-Aqsa Mosque Goes Mainstream

This ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

The iconic golden dome of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque, located on the Temple Mount or Haram el-Sharif, is the third holiest site in Islam and is recognized throughout the world as a symbol of the city of Jerusalem. Yet, this ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by increasingly influential extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

Some observers may have noticed the growing effort by some Israeli government and religious officials to remove the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque from the Jerusalem skyline, not only erasing the holy site in official posters, banners and educational material but also physically removing the building itself.

For instance, current Knesset member of the ruling Likud Party, American-born Yehuda Glick, was also the director of the government-funded Temple Institute, which has created relics and detailed architectural plans for a temple that they hope will soon replace Al-Aqsa. Glick is also close friends with Yehuda Etzion, who was part of a failed plot in 1984 to blow up Al-Aqsa mosque and served prison time as a result.

“In the end we’ll build the temple and it will be a house of prayer for all nations,” Glick told Israeli newspaper Maariv in 2012. A year later, Israel’s Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel stated that “[w]e’ve built many little, little temples…but we need to build a real Temple on the Temple Mount.” Ariel stated that the new Jewish Temple must be built on the site where Al-Aqsa currently sits “as it is at the forefront of Jewish salvation…”

In recent years, a centuries-old effort by what was once a small group of extremists has gone increasingly mainstream in Israel, with prominent politicians, religious figures and political parties advocating for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque in order to fulfill a specific interpretation of an end-times prophecy that was once considered fringe among practitioners of Judaism.

As Miko Peled, Israeli author and human-rights activist, told MintPress, the movement to destroy Al-Aqsa and replace it with a reimagined Temple “became notable after the 1967 war,” and has since grown into “a massive colonial project that uses religious, biblical mythology and symbols to justify its actions” — a project now garnering support from both religious and secular Israelis.

While the push to destroy Al-Aqsa and replace it with a physical Third Temple has gained traction in Israel in recent years, this effort has advanced at a remarkably fast pace in just the past few weeks, owing to a confluence of factors. These factors, as this report will show, include the upcoming revelation of the so-called “Deal of the Century,” the push for a war with Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and the Trump administration’s dramatic lenience in regards to the activity of Jewish extremist groups and extremist settlements in Israel.

These factors correlate with a quickening of efforts to destroy Al-Aqsa and the very real danger the centuries-old holy site faces. While the U.S. press has occasionally mentioned the role of religious extremism in dictating the foreign policy of prominent U.S. politicians like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, it has rarely shone a light on the role of Jewish extremism in directing Israel’s foreign policy — foreign policy that, in turn, is well-known to influence American policies.

When taken together, the threats to Al-Aqsa are clearly revealed to be much greater than the loss of a physical building, though that itself would be a grave loss for the world’s Muslim community, which includes over 1.8 billion people. In addition, the site’s destruction would very likely result in a regional and perhaps even global war with clear religious dimensions.

To prevent such an outcome, it is essential to highlight the role that extremist, apocalyptic interpretations of both the Jewish and Christian faiths are playing in trends that, if left unchecked, could have truly terrifying consequences. Both of these extremist groups are heavily influenced by colonial ambitions that often supersede their religious underpinning.

In Part I of this two-part series, MintPress examines the growth of extremist movements in Israel that openly promote the destruction of Al-Aqsa, from a relatively isolated fringe movement within Zionism to mainstream prominence in Israel today; as well as how threats to the historic mosque have grown precipitously in just the past month…

The second part of this series will detail the influence of this extremist movement in Israeli politics as well as American politics, particularly among Christian Zionist politicians in the United States. The ways in which this movement’s goal have also influenced Israeli and U.S. policy — particularly in relation to the so-called “Deal of the Century,” President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and the push for war against Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — will also be examined.

Two centuries in the cross-hairs

Though efforts to wrest the contested holy site from Jordanian and Palestinian control have picked up dramatically in recent weeks, the Al-Aqsa mosque compound had long been targeted prior to Israel’s founding and even prior to the formation of the modern Zionist movement.

Donald Trump ran his presidential campaign on “Making America Great Again” and putting American interests first.  His administration has largely been taken over by “Never Trump” Zio-Evangelicals hell bent on the destruction of America.  It’s not just the Zio-Evangelicals in his Administration, it is the Zionists in congress that are also endangering America.  From Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

“New laws, enacted by Congress last year, allow such ‘clandestine military activity’ in cyberspace to go ahead without the president’s approval. So, in this case, those new laws are protecting American interests… by keeping the sitting president out of the loop. What a (scary) time to be alive…”

“I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen said. “And arguably, it’s more dangerous, because it’s more complex. Therefore, we—and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these—and, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin.

So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who’s being politically crippled by the worst imaginable—it’s unprecedented. Let’s stop and think. No American president has ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we’re talking about here, or that his associates have committed treason.”

“Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen said. “Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn’t was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war…”

For all the outrage that liberals display whenever a high-profile Republican utters the phrase “deep state”, it sure is interesting that the Commander-in-Chief has found himself in a situation where he is at the whim of a collective of warmongers who are advancing pre-existing agendas against a nation they perceive as a geostrategic threat to US hegemony. It begs the question, who is really in charge?

Who is really in charge indeed?  In some ways the purpose of the “inevitable” war against the country of Iran is to cover up the impending doom of the end of the U.S. dollar domination.  As stated in the opening of this blog post “there is in excess of $700 trillion in derivatives trading per day, untaxed and unregulated” and those trillions have to be on the books somewhere.  From Geopolitics:

Excerpt:

Provoking Iran Could Start a War and Crash the Entire World Economy

Tensions in the Persian Gulf are reaching a point of no return. In recent weeks, six oil tankers have been subjected to Israeli sabotage disguised to look like Iranian attacks to induce the United States to take military action against the Islamic Republic. Some days ago Iran rightfully shot out of the sky a US Drone.

In Yemen, the Houthis have finally started responding with cruise and ballistic missiles to the Saudis’ indiscriminate attacks, causing damage to the Saudi international airport of Abha, as well as blocking, through explosive drones, Saudi oil transportation from east to west through one of the largest pipelines in the world.

As if the political and military situation at this time were not tense and complex enough, the two most important power groups in the United States, the Fed and the military-industrial complex, both face problems that threaten to diminish Washington’s status as a world superpower.

The Fed could find itself defending the role of the US dollar as the world reserve currency during any conflict in the Persian Gulf that would see the cost of oil rise to $300 a barrel, threatening trillions of dollars in derivatives and toppling the global economy.

The military-industrial complex would in turn be involved in a war that it would struggle to contain and even win, destroying the United States’ image of invincibility and inflicting a mortal blow on its ability to project power to the four corners of the world.

Just look at how surprised US officials were about Iran’s capabilities to shot down an advanced US Drone:

“Iran’s ability to target and destroy the high-altitude American drone, which was developed to evade the very surface-to-air missiles used to bring it down, surprised some Defense Department officials, who interpreted it as a show of how difficult Tehran can make things for the United States as it deploys more troops and steps up surveillance in the region.”

The Fed and the defense of the dollar

The US dollar-based economy has a huge debt problem caused by post-2008 economic policies. All central banks have lowered interest rates to zero or even negative, thus continuing to feed otherwise dying economies. 

The central bank of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, an entity hardly known to most people, has stated in writing that “the outstanding notional amount of derivative contracts is 542 trillion dollars.” The total combined GDP of all the countries of the world is around 75 trillion dollars.

With the dimensions of the problem thus understood, it is important to look at how Deutsche Bank (DB), one of the largest financial institutions in the world, is dealing with this. The German bank alone has assets worth about 40 trillion dollars in derivatives, or more than half of annual global GDP.

Their solution, not at all innovative or effective, has been to create yet another bad bank into which to pour at least 50 billion dollars of long-term assets, which are clearly toxic.

Reuters explains:

“The bad bank would house or sell assets valued at up to 50 billion euros ($56 billion) – after adjusting for risk – and comprising mainly long-dated derivatives.  The measures are part of a significant restructuring of the investment bank, a major source of revenue for Germany’s largest lender, which has struggled to generate sustainable profits since the 2008 financial crisis.”

Thus, not only has Deutsche Bank accumulated tens of billions of dollars in unsuccessful options and securities, it seeks to obtain a profit that has been elusive since 2008, the year of the financial crisis. Deutsche Bank is full of toxic bonds and inflated debts kept alive through the flow of quantitative easing (QE) money from the European Central Bank, the Fed and the Japanese Central Bank.

Without QE, the entire Western world economy would have fallen into recession with a chain of bubbles bursting, such as in public and private debt.  If the economy was recovering, as we are told by soi-disant financial experts, the central-bank rates would rise. Instead, rates have plummeted for about a decade, to the extent of becoming negative loans.  

If the Western financial trend is undoubtedly heading towards an economic abyss as a result of the monetary policies employed after 2008 to keep a dying economy alive, what is the rescue plan for the US dollar, its status as a global-reserve currency, and by extension of US hegemony? SIMPLY PUT, THERE IS NO RESCUE PLAN.

There could not be one because the next financial crisis will undoubtedly wipe out the US dollar as a global reserve currency, ending US hegemony financed by unlimited spending power. All countries possessing a modicum of foresight are in the process of de-dollarizing their economies and are converting strategic reserves from US or US-dollar government bonds to primary commodities like gold.

The military-industrial complex and the harsh reality in Iran

In this economic situation that offers no escape, the immediate geopolitical effect is a surge of war threats in strategic locations like the Persian Gulf. The risk of a war of aggression against Iran by the Saudi-Israeli-US axis would have little chance of success, but it would probably succeed in permanently devastating the global economy as a result of a surge in oil prices.

The risk of war on Iran by this triad seems to be the typical ploy of the bad loser who, rather than admit defeat, would rather pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet in order to bring everybody down with him. Tankers being hit and then blamed on Iran with no evidence are a prime example of how to create the plausible justification for bombing Tehran.

Upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the actions of Bolton and Pompeo seem to be aligned in prolonging the United States’ unipolar moment, continuing to issue diktats to other countries and failing to recognize the multipolar reality we live in. Their policies and actions are accelerating the dispersal of power away from the US and towards other great powers like Russia and China, both of which also have enormous influence in the Persian Gulf.

The threat of causing a conflict in the Persian Gulf, and thereby making the price of oil soar to $300 a barrel, will not save US hegemony but will rather end up accelerating the inevitable end of the US dollar as a global reserve currency.

Trump is in danger of being crushed between a Fed that sees the US dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency collapse, and the need for the Fed to blame someone not linked to the real causes of the collapse, that is to say, the monetary policies adopted through QE to prolong the post-crisis economic agony of 2008.

At the same time, with Trump as president, the neocon-Israeli-Saudi supporters see a unique opportunity to strike Iran, a desire that has remained unchanged for 40 years.

As foolish as it may seem, a war on Iran could be the perfect option that satisfies all power groups in the United States. The hawks would finally have their war against Tehran, the world economy would sink, and the blame would fall entirely on Trump. The Donald, as a result, would lose any chance of being re-elected so it makes sense for him to call off possible strikes as he did after the US drone was shot out of the sky.

While unable to live up to his electoral promises, Trump seems to be aware that the path laid out for him in the event of an attack on Iran would lead to his political destruction and probably to a conflict that is militarily unsustainable for the US and especially its Saudi and Israeli allies. It would also be the catalyst for the collapse of the world economy.

In trying to pressure Iran into new negotiations, Trump runs the risk of putting too much pressure on Tehran and giving too much of a free hand to the provocations of Pompeo and Bolton that could end up triggering a war in the Strait of Hormuz…

Our future is now in the hands of President Donald J. Trump.  Can he avoid war, will he win this epic battle against the Zio-Evangelical forces in his administration?  Can he ward off attacks from the War Whores in Congress?  Will his Attorney General Barr be able to clean out the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies run by foreign interests?  Those are the questions that determine if America will survive. 

In the meantime the Military Industrial Complex Coup that was begun in earnest under the unelected “born again Christian President George W. Bush” is temporarily on hold.   Trump has pulled in the reins on Zio-Evangelical Rapture plans for now but how long before Trump is overthrown or impeached for the crime of putting the interests of America first and Making America Great Again? 



Saturday, June 15, 2019

B-Team’s false flag attack against Iran in Gulf of Oman hastens Empire’s collapse




“All empires fall, eventually.”   “But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.”   Max Barry


The latest Deep State B-Team’s false flag attacks in the Gulf of Oman are just the latest attempt to instigate war against Iran in order to accommodate the neo-Zionist agenda of world domination.  The false flag attacks took place as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Tehran attempting to negotiate a de-escalation between the U.S. and Iran with Trump’s blessing.  This latest lame attempt to drag America onto another war will only hasten empire’s collapse.

A war weary world is turning against the Deep State’s constant unprovoked attacks against people of the free world.  However the ignorant, brain-deadened American people, after decades of lack of free press and a bought-and-paid-for millionaire dominated congress, are unable to recognize what is obvious to anyone with internet access and a few brain cells.  From Fred Reed at The BurningPlatform:


Excerpt:

The View from Abroad

Americans are brought up to believe that the United States is a shining city on a hill, a light to mankind, that the world envies us for our values and freedoms, and hates us because we have them. This is ground into us from birth. Those of us now long in the tooth remember the Fifties when Superman jumped out of a window while the announcer spoke of a strange visitor from another planet fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way,” then thought to be related.

As one who has traveled much and lived in several countries, I can tell you: It ain’t so. The world does not regard America with admiration.  Today the internet profoundly affects the world’s view of America. The Web makes graphic and easily found things that in earlier times would have been out of sight from abroad.

For example, people in Kathmandu and Moscow can see horrifying and entirely truthful photos of the homeless living in piles of garbage in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and dozens of other American cities. They can read of trade conventions avoiding San Francisco because of needles and excrement on the sidewalks. Such scenes are rare even in most upper-Third World countries. To the orderly Japanese, accustomed to spotless cities and responsible government, such things are, in the strict sense of the word, incomprehensible.

Home of the brave, land of the free, the envy of the world. Just ask us. The estimated homeless population of LA is 58,000 and climbing. Swarms of flea-carrying rats, which certainly exist, are said to cause outbreaks of typhus, a medieval disease. Anyone with a smartphone can see this.

The frequent mass shootings in the United States astonish most of the world. Opening fire on a country music concert, randomly shooting to death people in a gay nightclub, seems to most of the world a breakdown of civilization. It is.  Many of these matanzas involve children gunning down their classmates. Even in a country like Mexico, accustomed to recurring slaughters of narcos by other narcos, the school shootings are a shock.

Americans are now used to things that in any other country would be unthinkable: bulletproof backpacks for high-school students, police walking the halls, metal detectors, proposals to arm teachers, “active-shooter” drills. To the rest of the world (or to Americans who were in high school in the Sixties) this is insane.

But normal in the Indispensable Country…  This is the country Americans believe the world wants to imitate. No. From outside, it seems more a country in political and cultural freefall.

To everyone else, the militarism of the United States, its absurd military expenditures, its huge number of nuclear weapons, its desire to upgrade them, to develop small tactical nuclear weapons, its preparation for nuclear war with specialized flying bunkers–seems nutty. No other country does this. None wants to. In Mexico people roll their eyes. What the hell is wrong with the gringos?

““Affectionately known as the “doomsday plane,” the modified Boeing 747 is used to transport the Secretary of Defense and is born and bred for battle. It stands nearly six stories tall, is equipped with four colossal engines, and is capable of enduring the immediate aftermath of a nuclear detonation.” The language is that of a little boy of twelve watching Star Wars. It is the attitude of much of America.

Easily found online: the racial disaster in the US, the dozens of cities with domestic Sowetos in their hearts, the huge, hopeless, entirely black regions where whites dare not walk. In these, entirely black schools turn out millions of barely literates who for the remaining fifty years of their lives will be unemployable…

Freedoms? More sophisticated readers abroad know of our intensifying censorship, the words that can get you fired, the controlled press, the surveillance. Americans know what you can’t say and who you can’t say it about. We know the police are militarized and out of control. We see the cell-cam videos of beatings. So does the world.

America’s foreign policy makes it hated in most of the world. It seems murderous, thuggish, brutal, a menace to everyone. For example, the U.S. killed over a million people in Iraq. This does not bother Americans. Since 2000 it has destroyed Iraq, Syria, Libya, enters its eighteenth year of butchering Afghans, bombs Somalia, sends troops to Africa. It militarily threatens North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, seeks to destroy the economies of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China. It sanctions Europe. No other country does this…

NUMBER OF WARS STARTED SINCE 2000 BY IRAN: O. RUSSIA: 0. CHINA: 0. NORTH KOREA: 0. AMERICA…? Number of countries openly running torture sites while talking of human rights? 1. The country with the largest prison population? The answer is left to the reader as an exercise.

Even today, many Americans speak of American Values, of the country’s devotion to democracy and human rights and freedom. Maybe Americans believe it. No one else does. The United States has a horrendous history of installing or supporting hideous dictators, supporting repressive regimes, overthrowing elected governments. Human rights? In Saudi Arabia? Israel? The world is not blind.

Americans, self-absorbed, perhaps the most historically ignorant of First-World peoples, shrugs such things off. “Oh, get over it.” Whatever it was. The nations involved do not shrug them off…

From abroad, America is a feral, amoral, remorseless empire, rotting from within, willing to do anything to maintain its dominance. From inside the U.S., it seems otherwise. Do you, an American reader, want to kill Afghans? Buy another trillion dollars of nuclear weapons? War with Iran? Russia? But Americans have no influence over what Washington does, and the world judges by what it sees.

Ouch, but so very true. “Americans have no influence over what Washington does” if we did we would be able to change directions by going to the polls and voting.  Why would a Deep State that overthrows the elected governments across the world allow Americans to choose their government?  They don’t, the election of Donald Trump as American president was a shock that the Deep State has yet to get over.  However, Trump has been neutered and the foreign policy is firmly in the hands of the Deep State’s thuggish goons who are completely out of control.    From Caitlin Johnstone at Consortium News:

Excerpt:

7 Reasons to Doubt US Version of Gulf-of-Oman Incident

In a move that surprised exactly zero people, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has wasted no time  scrambling to blame Iran for damage done to two sea vessels in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, CITING EXACTLY ZERO EVIDENCE.

“This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high-degree of sophistication,” Pompeo told the press in a statement.

“The United States will defend its forces, interests, and stand with our partners and allies to safeguard global commerce and regional stability. And we call upon all nations threatened by Iran’s provocative acts to join us in that endeavor,” Pompeo concluded before hastily shambling off, taking exactly zero questions.

Here are seven reasons to be extremely skeptical of everything Pompeo said:

No. 1: Pompeo is a known liar, especially when it comes to Iran.

Pompeo has a well-established history of circulating blatant lies about Iran. He recently told an audience at Texas A&M University that when he was leading the CIA, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.”

No. 2: The US empire is known to use lies and false flags to start wars.

The U.S.-centralized power alliance has an extensive and well-documented history of advancing preexisting military agendas using lies, false flags and psyops to make targeted governments appear to be the aggressors. This is such a well-established pattern that “Gulf of Tonkin” briefly trended on Twitter after the Gulf of Oman incident. Any number of government agencies could have been involved from any number of the nations in this alliance, including the U.S., the U.K., Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Israel.

No. 3: John Bolton has openly endorsed lying to advance military agendas.

I wrote an article about this last month because the Trump administration had already begun rapidly escalating against Iran in ways that happen to align perfectly with the longtime agendas of Trump’s psychopathic Iran hawk National security adviser. At that time people were so aware of the possibility that Bolton might involve himself in staging yet another Middle Eastern war based on lies that The Onion was already spoofing it.

On a December 2010 episode of Fox News’ “Freedom Watch,” Bolton and the show’s host Andrew Napolitano were debating about recent WikiLeaks publications, and naturally the subject of government secrecy came up.

“Now I want to make the case for secrecy in government when it comes to the conduct of national security affairs, and possibly for deception where that’s appropriate,” Bolton said. “You know Winston Churchill said during World War Two that in wartime truth is so important it should be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies.”

“Do you really believe that?” asked an incredulous Napolitano.

“Absolutely,” Bolton replied.

“You would lie in order to preserve the truth?”

“If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it,” Bolton answered.

This would be the same John Bolton who has been paid exorbitant speaking fees by the pro-regime change MEK terror cult, promising the cult in a 2017 speech that they’d be celebrating regime change in Tehran together before 2019. This would also be the same John Bolton who once threatened to murder an OPCW official’s children if he didn’t stop getting in the way of his Iraq war agenda.

No. 4: Using false flags to start a war with Iran is already an established idea in the DC swamp.

Back in 2012 at a forum for the Washington Institute of Near East Policy think tank, the group’s Director of Research Patrick Clawson openly talked about the possibility of using a false flag to provoke a war with Iran, citing the various ways the U.S. has done exactly that with its previous wars.  “I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran,” Clawson began…

“So if, in fact, the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war,” Clawson continued…  We could step up the pressure. I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down. Some day, one of them might not come up. Who would know why? [Smattering of sociopathic laughter from the crowd.]

We can do a variety of things, if we wish to increase the pressure (I’m not advocating that) but I’m just suggesting that this is not an either/or proposition  —  just sanctions have to succeed or other things. We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.”

No. 5: The US State Department has already been running psyops to manipulate the public Iran narrative...

State Department officials admitted to congressional staff at a closed-door meeting on Monday that a $1.5 million troll farm had gone “beyond the scope of its mandate” by aggressively smearing American critics of the Trump administration’s Iran policy as propagandists for the Iranian government, according to a new report from The Independent. That “mandate” had reportedly consisted of “countering propaganda from Iran,” also known as conducting anti-Iran propaganda.

“Critics in Washington have gone further, saying that the programme resembled the type of troll farms used by autocratic regimes abroad,” says The Independent.  “One woman behind the harassment campaign, a longtime Iranian-American activist, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the State Department over the years to promote ‘freedom of expression and free access to information,’” the report reads.

No. 6: The Gulf of Oman narrative makes no sense.

One of the ships damaged in the attacks was Japanese-owned, and the other was bound for Japan. This happened just as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Tehran attempting to negotiate a de-escalation between the U.S. and Iran with Trump’s blessing, and just after Iran had released a prisoner accused of conducting espionage for the U.S. in what many took to be a gesture of good faith.

Iran has been conducting itself with remarkable restraint in the face of relentless sanctions and provocations from the U.S. and its allies. It wouldn’t make much sense for it to suddenly abandon that restraint with attacks on sea vessels, then rescue their crew, then deny perpetrating the attacks, during a time of diplomatic exchanges and while trying to preserve the nuclear deal with Europe. If Tehran did perpetrate the attacks in order to send a strong message to the Americans, it would have been a very mixed message sent in a very weird way with very odd timing.

No. 7: Even if Iran did perpetrate the attack, Pompeo would still be lying.

Pompeo’s statement uses the words “unprovoked” twice and “Iran’s provocative acts” once, explicitly claiming that the U.S. empire was just minding its own business leaving Iran alone when it was attacked out of the blue by a violent aggressor. SOMETIMES THE THINGS PUT OUT BY THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT FEEL LIKE THEY’RE CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS ON US, JUST TO TEST THE LIMITS OF OUR STUPIDITY…

Either way, we have seen exactly zero evidence supporting Pompeo’s claims, so anyone you see hastening to blame Iran for the Gulf of Oman incident is either a war whore or a slobbering moron, or both. Knowing what we know about the U.S.-centralized empire and its pre-existing regime change agenda against Iran, there is no reason to believe Pompeo and many reasons not to.


“the Pentagon should start using Huawei cameras for better video quality”.


My, my my.  Caitlin is so right and I admire her grasp of the English language to put it so succinctly, “things put out by the U.S. State Department feel like they’re conducting experiments on us, just to test the limits of our stupidity” and “anyone you see hastening to blame Iran for the Gulf of Oman incident is either a war whore or a slobbering moron, or both.”  So speaking of those believing the State Department’s propaganda either being a “war whore” or “a slobbering moron” Zero Hedge is reporting on the mothership of war whores and slobbering morons who are buying this crap.

 Excerpt:

Senators Switched Key Votes On Gulf Arms Ban Hours After Tanker Attacks

A brief report from AntiWar.com's Eric Garris suggests Thursday's tanker attack incident in the Gulf of Oman which the United States promptly blamed on Iran has directly impacted bills placed before the Senate which would ban US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar.

Garris wrote of the vote which came hours after the Gulf tankers incident: "Both votes were considered highly likely to pass up until they were rushed to the floor today. The timing appears almost certainly to have been related to Thursday tanker bombings in the Gulf of Oman, and shifted a number of Senators’ votes in favor of continuing the arms sales." He noted THAT "SOME SENATORS SWITCHED SIDES TO KILL THE BILLS" FOLLOWING NEWS OF THE TANKER ATTACKS.

The vote, according to Defense News, indeed came very close:

The U.S. Senate on Thursday rejected Sen. Rand Paul’s measures to block sales of munitions to Bahrain and Boeing AH–64E Apache helicopters to Qatar.

The vote on Bahrain was 43-56 and Qatar 42-57, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., announced their opposition Thursday. The White House earlier this week threatened to veto the measures.

The Kentucky Republican and prominent Libertarian argued passionately that the US should not be supporting authoritarian governments who are known backers of extremists and who are conducting mass atrocities in Yemen. Sen. Paul has repeatedly called on Congress and the White House to "stop arming radical jihadism".

“Dumping more weapons into the Middle East won’t get us any closer to peace,” Paul said. “A ‘yes’ vote today is a vote for sanity. A ‘yes’ vote is a vote to quit sending arms to people who abuse human rights.”

Paul especially targeted Saudi Arabia in his floor remarks, according to Defense News:

“What are they doing with all the weapons we give them? They’re bombing civilians in Yemen,” he said. “They have been using our bombs and up until recently they were refueling their bombers with our planes. We’ve got no business in the war in Yemen. Congress never voted on it. It is unauthorized, it is unconstitutional and we have no business aiding the Saudis in this massacre.”

Meanwhile the White House has defended its threat to veto on the grounds that such gulf nations remain crucial "security partners" and places where US troops and naval assets are stationed.

The idea of a block on US arms sales to Saudi Arabia — though long a little noted project of libertarians and non-interventionists — gained unprecedented momentum and visibility following last year's brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit team at Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul.

However, at a moment the push to block arms to despotic gulf nations was gaining broad public support, the new flare-up in the Persian Gulf based on Thursday's mysterious twin tanker attacks has likely now caused such efforts to be shelved for the foreseeable future.

Yep, that was the State Department’s intended target, “war whores and slobbering morons” and it was a direct hit.  As Fred Reed aptly put it, “America is a feral, amoral, remorseless empire, rotting from within, willing to do anything to maintain its dominance” that is what is left of America after the 2000 neo-Zionist coup. 

Unfortunately for America these war whores and slobbering morons who are in charge of our foreign policy are very stupid and the world knows it.  Iran as well as the rest of the world are playing “rope-a-dope” with them and they are too stupid to see their own limitations.  They are incapable of deep thought or remorse for their actions.  Trump was a fool to ever allow them near the White House and now he’s in a world of hurt, with few options.  From Tom Luongo at Gold Goats and Guns:

Excerpt:

Did the B-Team Overplay its Hand Against Iran? 

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has a term of endearment for Iran’s enemies, “The B-Team.”  The “B-Team” consists of U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister (nee Dictator) Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed.

When we look seriously at the attacks on the oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman this week the basic question that comes to mind is, Cui bono? Who benefits?  And it’s easy to see how the B-Team benefits from this attack and subsequent blaming Iran for it. With Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tehran opening up a dialogue on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump the threat of peace was in the air.

And none of the men on the B-Team profit from peace in the Middle East with respect to Iran. Getting Trump to stop hurling lightning bolts from the mountain top the B-Team guided him up would do nothing to help oil prices, which the Saudis and UAE need/want to remain high.

Bin Salman, in particular, cannot afford to see oil prices drop back into the $40’s per barrel. With the world awash in oil and supply tight, even with OPEC production cuts, Bin Salman is currently on very thin ice because of the Saudi Riyal’s peg to the U.S. dollar, which he can’t abandon or the U.S. will abandon them.

Falling oil prices and a rising dollar are a recipe for the death of the Saudi government, folks. Iran knows this.  Netanyahu and Bolton don’t want peace because the U.S. fighting a war with Iran serves the cause of Greater Israel and opens up the conflict in the hopes of regime change and elimination of Iran. 

Bolton, as well, is finally feeling the heat of his incompetence and disloyalty to Trump, according to John Kirakau at Consortium News. 

Of course, a more rational person might conclude that Bolton has done a terrible job, that the people around him have done a terrible job, that he has aired his disagreements with Trump in the media, and that the President is angry about it. That’s the more likely scenario.

Here’s what my friends are saying. Trump is concerned, like any president is near the end of his term, about his legacy. He said during the campaign that he wanted to be the president who pulled the country out of its two longest wars. He wanted to declare victory and bring the troops back from Afghanistan and Iraq. He hasn’t done that, largely at the insistence of Bolton. Here we are three years later and we’re still stuck in both of those countries.

Second, my friends say that Trump wants to end U.S. involvement in the Yemen war, but that Bolton has been insistent that the only way to guarantee the closeness of the U.S. relationships with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is to keep providing those countries with weapons, aerial refueling planes, and intelligence support.

So, couple the attacks on these tankers with the timing of Abe’s visit and the vote on Rand Paul’s bill to end selling arms to the Saudis in support of their war in Yemen (which flew through the Senate thanks to this attack getting a number of senators to change their vote at the last second) and we have a perfect cui bono.

That’s the entire B-Team’s motives distilled down to a couple of drones flying in to create a casus belli which saves Bolton’s job, keeps the weapons flowing to the murderous Saudis and creates an opportunity for Netanyahu to feed Trump bad information via his ‘intelligence’ services.

The rush to judgment by the usual suspects in the Trump administration should be all the proof you need that we’re looking at a set up to get Trump to fly off the handle which he, so far, hasn’t done.  Remember, Trump wants lower oil prices. He wants a weaker dollar and lower interest rates.

He needs the frackers in Eagle Ford and Permian to keep raising output but they keep bleeding red ink. He’s fighting the Fed as well as former directors of the FBI, CIA and ODNI via his new attorney general, William Barr.  His approval rating is high and he’s going after his political enemies now. But a potential war in the Middle East is a real problem for him.

And this is where Moon of Alabama’s Bernard comes in with his excellent analysis of the current situation vis a vis Iran. The whole article is worth your time but the money-shot, as it were, is right here:

To say that the attacks were provocations by the U.S. or its Middle East allies is made easier by their evident ruthlessness. Any accusations by the Trump administration of Iranian culpability will be easily dismissed because everyone knows that Trump and his crew are notorious liars.

This cat and mouse game will now continue and steadily gain pace. More tankers will get damaged or even sunk. Saudi refineries will start to explode. UAE harbors will experience difficulties. Iran will plausibly deny that it is involved in any of this. The U.S. will continue to blame Iran but will have no evidence to prove it.

Insurance for Middle East cargo will become very expensive. Consumer prices for oil products will increase and increase again. The collateral damage will be immense.

All this will gradually put more pressure on Trump.

Don’t forget that the U.S.’s sanctions on Iran makes it difficult for Iran to insure its cargoes. So, even if a company or country wanted to still do business with NIOC, they can’t because they can’t get insurance on the cargo  It’s been a real problem that Iran had to solve by having its own fleet of tankers which it also insures domestically to keep what oil it can export flowing. So it only makes sense to begin hitting the rest of the world via the same weapons being used against Iran.

But as Trump has ratcheted up the pressure he’s put Iran in the exact position that makes them the most dangerous. Acting through deniable proxies Iran can now drag this out as a low-grade conflict far longer than Trump can bear politically.  They don’t need to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. They just have to screw with its enemies’ ability to make a living.

The political pressure that will come to bear on a global economy imploding because of instability in the flow of oil is not something a butcher like Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is capable of handling.

Bernard calls Trump’s administration ‘notorious liars’ and that’s the key. People can look no further than the ludicrous and inept handling of the regime change operation in Venezuela and see the mendacity first hand.  That operation was so bad, culminating in the pathetic “Bay of Fat Pigs” coup attempt, that it has left every country that backed Bolton and Pompeo’s play there, including Trump himself, looking like morons.

You don’t embarrass the narcissists who inhabit high-level government offices and not suffer in some way. This is why I give a lot of credence to John Kirakou’s conclusion that Bolton being one approved candidate away from unemployment.

Firing Bolton and having Abe and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas go to Tehran are good will gestures. But Trump has let his B-Team badly mismanage this situation in the same way that he let Bolton and Pompeo mismanage Kim Jong-un and North Korea.  No one believes he’s capable of peace or showing shame. He’s left himself in no position to climb down from this position without the help of Iran itself.

This is exactly the argument I made in April of 2017 after his missile strike on Syria over a “beautiful piece of chocolate cake.” He revealed himself to be both tactically and strategically incompetent. 

He has to come groveling to them now. But he won’t. And Iran and its benefactors, Russia and China, have no incentive to come to him. He can’t keep his promises since he’s not really in charge of policy. As Ayatollah Khamenei pointed out on Twitter (oh, the irony):

Khamenei.ir
@khamenei_ir
 We do not believe at all that the U.S. is seeking genuine negotiations with Iran; because genuine negotiations would never come from a person like Trump. Genuineness is very rare among U.S. officials.

2,252
4:36 AM - Jun 13, 2019
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Khamenei.ir
@khamenei_ir
 · Jun 13, 2019
Replying to @khamenei_ir
.@AbeShinzo U.S. president met & talked with you a few days ago, including about Iran. But after returning from Japan, he immediately imposed sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical industry. Is this a message of honesty? Does that show he is willing to hold genuine negotiations?


Khamenei.ir
@khamenei_ir
After the nuclear deal, the first one to immediately breach the JCPOA was Obama; the same person who had requested negotiations with Iran & had sent a mediator. This is our experience, & Mr. Abe, know that we won’t repeat the same experience.

1,222
4:55 AM - Jun 13, 2019
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Trump thought the B-Team was giving him negotiating leverage. But what happens to your leverage when the other person takes his chips, walks away from the table and says, “No. I won’t deal with you.”

So now the screws will be put to everyone. Trump pushed Erdogan of Turkey away over the S-400 and Putin called in his marker forcing Erdogan to end his support for Al-Qaeda in Idlib. That campaign will be slow and excruciating but it will eventually grind them out.

Iran has been handed all the cards they need to become the exact thing Pompeo, Trump and the B-Team have been accusing them of being but now with the cover of deniability and asymmetry. All of the things Moon of Alabama laid out are now going to happen even if Trump fires Bolton, pulls troops out and lifts the oil embargo on Syria, etc.

Netanyahu will scream bloody murder and up the ante until Putin slaps him down. Because now that Trump has made it clear he doesn’t want war with Iran we know there’s a limit to what Bibi can incite.  If Trump was serious about war with Iran it would have already been declared. The smoke, however, is blowing in a different direction.

Iran will retaliate here just to make the point that they can. They will make Saudi Arabia and the UAE pay the biggest price directly while Trump finally has to start thinking things through or his presidency will end badly next year.

The war of attrition against the fragility of the Western financial system will enter the next stage here. Iran, China and Russia will now, sadly, activate the weapons they have been holding back for years, hoping that Trump and his B-Team would come to their senses.

This is what happens when you let the B-Team overplay your hand for you against people who are 1) smarter and 2) more patient than you are.  And, frankly, I don’t blame them one bit. Because as the only thing that American power brokers understand is strength. And you have to hit them between the eyes with a stick to get them to respect you.

Yes indeed Max Barry is right, “All empires fall, eventually.  It’s not for lack of power. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined.”  Has there ever been a more undisciplined bunch of “war whores and slobbering morons” than those who seized power in America December 12, 2000? 

There is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans in congress they are almost all self-professed “Zionists” who serve the interests of the war whores who have seized control over the government of Israel.  I have no doubt that the people of Israel, just like the people of America do not share the bloodthirsty empire lust of their leaders.  Yet it is they and us who will suffer when the chicken hawks come home to roost.