From Diana Johnstone of The Queen of Chaos fame: Oct. 4, 2016, in an exposé of the same name:
“Everyone claims to want to end the war in Syria and restore peace to the Middle East.
Well, almost everyone.
“This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,” said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York told the New York Times in June 2013. “Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here.”
Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, stressed the same points in August 2016:
“The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction… Allowing bad guys to kill bad guys sounds very cynical, but it is useful and even moral to do so if it keeps the bad guys busy and less able to harm the good guys… Moreover, instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change… The American administration does not appear capable of recognizing the fact that IS can be a useful tool in undermining Tehran’s ambitious plan for domination of the Middle East.”
Okay, not exactly everyone.
But surely the humanitarian website Avaaz wants to end the war and restore peace.
Or does it?
Avaaz is currently circulating a petition which has gathered over a million signatures and is aiming at a million and a half. It is likely to get them, with words like this:
“100 children have been killed in Aleppo since last Friday. “Enough is enough!”
“Avaaz goes on to declare: “There is no easy way to end this war, but there’s only one way to prevent this terror from the skies — people everywhere demanding a no-fly zone to protect civilians.”
No-fly zone? Doesn’t that sound familiar? That was the ploy that served to destroy Libya’s air defenses and opened the country to regime change in 2011. It was promoted zealously by Hillary Clinton, who is also on record as favoring the same gambit in Syria.
And when the West says “no-fly”, it means that some can fly and others cannot. With the no-fly zone in Libya, France, Britain and the United States flew all they wanted, killing countless civilians, destroying infrastructure and allowing Islamic rebels to help themselves to part of the country.
The Avaaz petition makes the same distinction. Some should fly and others should not.
“Let’s build a resounding global call to Obama and other leaders to stand up to Putin and Assad’s terror. This might be our last, best chance to help end this mass murder of defenseless children. Add your name.”
So it’s all about mass murder of defenseless children, and to stop it, we should call on the drone king, Obama, to end “terror from the skies”.
Not only Obama, but other “good” leaders, members of NATO:
“To President Obama, President Erdogan, President Hollande, PM May, and other world leaders: As citizens around the globe horrified by the slaughter of innocents in Syria, we call on you to enforce an air-exclusion zone in Northern Syria, including Aleppo, to stop the bombardment of Syria’s civilians and ensure that humanitarian aid reaches those most in need.”
The timing of this petition is eloquent. It comes exactly when the Syrian government is pushing to end the war by reconquering the eastern part of Aleppo. It is part of the massive current propaganda campaign to reduce public consciousness of the Syrian war to two factors: child victims and humanitarian aid.
In this view, the rebels disappear. So do all their foreign backers, the Saudi money, the Wahhabi fanatics, the ISIS recruits from all over the world, the U.S. arms and French support. The war is only about the strange whim of a “dictator”, who amuses himself by bombing helpless children and blocking humanitarian aid. This view reduces the five-year war in Syria to the situation as it was portrayed in Libya, to justify the no-fly zone: nothing but a wicked dictator bombing his own people.
For the public that likes to consume world events in fairy tale form, this all fits together. Sign a petition on your computer and save the children.
The Avaaz petition does not aim to end the war and restore peace. It clearly aims to obstruct the Syrian government offensive to retake Aleppo. The Syrian army has undergone heavy losses in five years of war, its potential recruits have in effect been invited to avoid dangerous military service by going to Germany. Syria needs air power to reduce its own casualties. The Avaaz petition calls for crippling the Syrian offensive and thus taking the side of the rebels.
Wait – but does that mean they want the rebels to win? Not exactly. The only rebels conceivably strong enough to win are ISIS. Nobody really wants that.
The plain fact is that to end this war, as to end most wars, one side has to come out on top. When it is clear who is the winning side, then there can be fruitful negotiations for things like amnesty. But this war cannot be “ended by negotiations”. That is an outcome that the United States might support only if Washington could use negotiations to impose its own puppets – pardon, pro-democracy exiles living in the West. But as things stand, they would be rejected as traitors by the majority of Syrians who support the government and as apostates by the rebels. So one side has to win to end this war. The least worst outcome would be that the Assad government defeats the rebels, in order to preserve the state. For that, the Syrian armed forces need to retake the eastern part of Aleppo occupied by rebels.[a long, long snip]
“The plain truth is that Syria is the victim of a long-planned Joint Criminal Enterprise to destroy the last independent secular Arab nationalist state in the Middle East, following the destruction of Iraq in 2003. While attributed to government repression of “peaceful protests” in 2011, the armed uprising had been planned for years and was supported by outside powers: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States and France, among others. The French motives remain mysterious, unless linked to those of Israel, which sees the destruction of Syria as a means to weaken its archrival in the region, Iran. Saudi Arabia has similar intentions to weaken Iran, but with religious motives. Turkey, the former imperial power in the region, has territorial and political ambitions of its own. Carving up Syria can satisfy all of them.
This blatant and perfectly open conspiracy to destroy Syria is a major international crime, and the above-mentioned States are co-conspirators. They are joined in this Joint Criminal Enterprise by ostensibly “humanitarian” organizations like Avaaz that spread war propaganda in the guise of protecting children.” (the rest is here.)
Irony alert: avaaz is doing God’s work: Avaaz Retweeted”
‘Lord Jesus, cast forth the shadow of your cross over peoples at war: may they learn the way of reconciliation, dialogue and forgiveness.’
Most of Avaaz’s recent Tweets are ‘Stop Trump’.
A few reprises from ‘From Compromised NGOs, part II, Café Babylon:
(The Avaaz “Good Versus Evil” campaign for the Rio Summit (Rio+20 on Sustainability, 2012) . Above: A downloadable poster as found on the Avaaz Press Centre published in the Financial Times. Vilification: Note the dark cast/ugly sky behind the leaders Avaaz would wish you to believe are “evil,” versus the light and sun shining through over the Imperialist, obstructionist “leaders” that Avaaz is attempting to convince you are “good.”)
Edward Bernays smiles from the afterlife…
‘On the Eve of an Illegal Attack on Syria, Avaaz/350.org Board Members Beat the Drums of War’, Aug. 23, 2013, courtesy of wrongkindofgreen.org, this screenshot of their Tweet
From wrongkindofgreen.org’s “Human Rights” front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionalists”) Warring on Syria, fall 2015, by Eva Bartlett, ‘the Players’ has a good section on Avaaz, a portion:
“–Avaaz: “Avaaz is an online lobby organization founded in 2007 by Jeremy Heimans (now CEO of Purpose) and others. Start-up funding was provided by George Soros’ foundation. …they have been prominent in promoting neoliberal foreign policies in keeping with the U.S. State Department. …Avaaz very actively promoted a No Fly Zone in Libya. They are now very actively promoting the same for Syria. In-depth research and exposure of Avaaz can be found here. The titles give some indication: “Faking It: Charity Communications in the Firing Line”, “Syria: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire”, “Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps for Militarism”. Avaaz justifies its call for No Fly Zone in part on White Helmets”, and so on. Good investigative journalists, imo.
Now all this is a bit by way of a backstory for developing news and events.
From b at MoA, Oct. 4: Under U.S. Proxy Attack Russia Readies For Full War In Syria
“U.S. State Department Daily Press Briefing September 28 2016 – Spokesperson John Kirby
QUESTION: But what I don’t think we have heard here is, so what are the consequences for Russia if this agreement falls through beyond some interagency discussions about options that have not yet been chosen? What are the consequences for Russia other than Secretary Kerry won’t talk to them on this particular issue going forward?
MR KIRBY: The consequences are that the civil war will continue in Syria, that extremists and extremists groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which will include, no question, attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities, and Russia will continue to send troops home in body bags, and they will continue to lose resources – even, perhaps, more aircraft.
The Russian Federation interpreted that not as a prediction or warning, but as a direct threat.” [snip, including ‘al Nusrah front shells Russian Embassy in Damasus; one can’t blame him for seeing post hoc, ergo proctor hoc.]
“Also deployed was a battery of S-300 air-defense systems. The specific type is said to be S-300VM, also known as Antey-2500. These are specially designed for defending against ballistic- and cruise missiles. The system will be stationed near Tartus harbor and will protect the Syrian east coast as well as the Russian fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. These also have good capabilities against attacking planes. A volley cruise missile attack by the U.S. against the Syrian and Russian airports and air forces in Syria, discussed in various U.S. papers as the start of a “no-fly zone” war, will be severely hampered by this.”
Is Russia also protecting their base at Sevastapol?
“U.S. military strikes against the Assad regime will be back on the table Wednesday at the White House, when top national security officials in the Obama administration are set to discuss options for the way forward in Syria. But there’s little prospect President Obama will ultimately approve them.”
One would hope not, nor Kerry, but this is not cool:
“The options under consideration, which remain classified, include bombing Syrian air force runways using cruise missiles and other long-range weapons fired from coalition planes and ships, an administration official who is part of the discussions told me. One proposed way to get around the White House’s long-standing objection to striking the Assad regime without a U.N. Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment, the official said.”
False flags as ‘kinetic options’ perhaps? According to an unnamed source at the meeting, the CIA and Joint Chiefs are said to be in favor of more ‘kinetic options’ because “the fall of Aleppo would undermine America’s counterterrorism goals in Syria.” Fall to whom, one wonders? It must depend if one believes that the US is fighting ‘terr’ists’ or Assad, no?
The Post said that a meeting of the Obama administration’s Principals Committee is scheduled for today, and that a meeting of the National Security Council could follow this weekend.
As Bill Van Auken of wsws.org notes in: ‘Threat of US-Russia clash grows after Washington cuts off Syria talks’
“The claim that this would “undermine America’s counterterrorism goals” only underscores the fraud of the US war on terror. The principal fighting force inside Aleppo is made up of the long-time Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda and allied Islamist militias.
While the Post article suggests that President Barack Obama will likely reject the proposal for military action, the combined pressure of the CIA and the military command may well force a shift in policy.”
RT now has video up in which Josh Ernest noting at Monday’s press briefing that US strikes on Syrian forces ‘involve risks, and also moves the US and Russia closer to confrontation’. Ya think? Brinksmanship is a very dangerous game, Josh, et.al.
(Sorry that I need to copy/paste so often these days; translating so many essays and news items would take far more time than I have now given how slow my mental faculties have become. Up next might be who helped tank the Colombian peace vote, featuring a woman you know well and love (h/t Comrade Rax) and another compromised NGO.)
café babylon 
So from west to east, we have a Syrian-Russian front, a Turkey-rebel front, a Kurdish front, and a Iraqi-Iranian front. And there’s the putative object of some of all of their attention–Daesh.
The Turkey-rebel front is where the ceasefire fell apart because Syrian troops were hit with a US coalition air strike. I just wonder who was saying “No” to the US rapidly cutting a deal with Lavrov. And who within the US national security apparatus is friendly with which of the regional powers. What is clear is that Obama gently tacked away from Russia and toward Turkey at the time of the Deir ez-Zor attack. The stories about White Helmets are consequent to the attack on the convoy in East Aleppo that seemed to be tit-for-tat for Deir ez-Zor.
Where it appears to stand now is the US coalition proceeding toward the siege of Mosul, now apparently with the idea that a negotiated endgame can wait until after Daesh is destroyed. And the Turkey-rebel front acting as a barrier to further Syrian-Russian re-establishment of Assad’s authority, which keeps regime change on the table. First restabilization of part of Syria, eradication of Daesh, and suppression of Daesh relocation. Then regime change, should the next President decide that to be the policy. Obama kicking the can to the next administration.
Daesh must go because of the 2016 US election. Obama got rid of Osama bin Laden and Daesh in two terms. That’s the US narrative to the voters. By implication, it aids Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. It also provides the last chapter of Obama’s memoirs. Quite the high point.
And it keeps the divided national security state behind Obama until he leaves office in January. They now can jockey for Clinton’s approval (or Pence’s) for their policy directions. Brennan for the Saudis; some key military for the Iraqis; Wendy Sherman for the Iranians; Kerry trying to pass on the Russian viewpoint; Victoria Nuland warning of Russian ambition.
BTW, that double-headed beagle made me think $600B and $60B budget allocations. Power and Knowledge. And so cuddly, both of them.
ha. i thought it was always russia who broke all the ceasefires™. if so many reports are true, does O even want daesh evaporated? alistair crookie-monster doesn’t think so, either. ‘How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists’, oct. 29
and if the US by way of the cia, ngos, are paying for the white helmets who well, aren’t what they’re purported to be (vanessa beeley), nor is the FSA and other ‘rebel forces’, is the israeli plan in effect? not just to let them all bleed to death, but saving it for the Red Queen’s intel-military posse?
gareth porter has an analysis up at rt, ‘US treading water in Syria mired by Pentagon & White House rivalry’, and mebbe it was too early to make sense of earlier, but his comments didn’t seem to say what the title implies. one of the many reasons i was so drawn to johnstone’s piece was that she brought israel/aipac into the mix, which, oddly, so few do. and of course a lot of ‘syria’ is proxy for ‘keeping israel safe from iran’, as you note. what.a.bloody.mess.
on edit: oh, and as for the attack on the aid convoy, i’d seen this earlier, went to fetch it, but haven’t read it. it’s in the FWIW category, but after the bureau of investigative reporting report on the half a billion paid to some ad agency to create fake videos in iraq…who knows?
‘The September 19 attack on a UN humanitarian convoy in Aleppo was “a well-prepared hoax”, according to a group of independent military experts attached to the International Syria Support Group (ISSG).’ depends how biased they are.
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20161005/1046020958/un-convoy-attack-hoax.html
It is an interesting question of what Obama wants versus what the US (typically meaning the entire national security apparatus plus the President) wants. Bureaucracies rarely are perfect puppets.
The humanitarian convoy being a hoax is quite possible–to drive the US attack at Deir ez-Zor from the headlines. Possible and provable are always the toughies to bridge.
I suspect Pentagon and CIA rivalry, likely from different constituencies of “moderate rebels”. Or different military contacts in key regional countries.
Someone likes continued funding of a quagmire; that rarely extends to the President who must show accomplishments before leaving.
lol; do you mean O can’t just declare “Mission Accomplished” on the deck of an aircraft carrier? ya think he ain’t got enuff socks er somethin’?
yeah, srsly, though, there’s a lot of internal conflict, and i reread gareth porter’s thingie at RT and it still makes little sense as a whole theme, never mind (‘no plan B’). but i’d forgotten who’d said this, kerry, or…and yep, it was earnest: “White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday that there is “nothing more for the US and Russia to talk about” in Syria.” i hadn’t heard that he’d been asked to walk it back by O, but then…so much of this recent bellicosity may be made for Russian teevee, as it were.
and yes, hoaxes are hard to prove; it took insiders to talk to thebureauinvestigates.org. about iraq.
Divide and conquer is the means to control democracies. Seems the Amurkan demockracy promotion is looking so bad that it maybe can’t be sold even to zombified Amurka. Now maybe Roossia’s meddling with Amurkan elections by the timely unveilng of incompetent hegemonsters. Does BObomber want to save party face so it can continue to ride the dragon?
Hey, Amurkans. Forget the fooking presidential circus and prepare for WWIII false flag.
can i assume you’re teasing about roosia meddling in the US election? as to zombified ameika being woke. not much. as johnstone says, who could *want* to imagine that this war in syria is anything other than protecting women and children (and other victims of evil assad)?
yeppers; it’s the false flag that worries me most, or ‘a launch mistake’.
Taunting. When the bomber is taken to be “shamed” into performing by Putin, isn’t Putin threatening to rend the hegemonsters’ fraud? He wouldn’t just hack Chaos’ servers but Chaos would deflect it’s mindslaves to think so.
Haven’t we concluded that both parties want The Ring? Drumpf gives the queen great leeway for D atrocities but D’s yet must tend the Hegemonster fraud while on watch. Amurkan mindslaves are valuable.
Victoria Nuland … HA HA HA … the matrix is pretty blatant with that screen name.
Quite a casting director, eh?
Victoria Nuland
Samantha Power
Susan Rice
Hillary Clinton
Ashton Carter
John Brennan
James Clapper
Joseph Dunford, USMC
Think it’s Nuland with the automatic arm?
Does Vicki Nuland personaly deliver the bomb to Putin a la Slim Pickens?
When the matrix is transparently leaking to its prefered media outlets, it does get pretty blatant.
Yahoooooo!
Yes, which Kagan is that?
grin. robert or elena-sorry-about-gutting-Miranda, ya jerks. who can say?
sleep well, or as pepe said today, ‘have a pleasant nightmare’. ;-)
srsly, i might start a new thread tomorrow; this un’s pretty long in the tooth. it’s just Life is what happens while yer busy makin’….yanno
The propagandists of good and evil are doublethinking in the same breath. “Undermining Amurka’s counterterrorism goals” masks Amurka’s terrorism as counterterrorism. Neoconned parrots can speak nonsense proudly, in service to their Big Liars.
Two parties maintain two realities. Our Executionist in Chief is “construed” a murderer by his opponents while he “dogwhistles” strategy to his sycophants. Thus light and dark would divide an earnest population into two who cogitate the doublethought dissonantly.
Tarheel above interprets a strategy for our executionist (restabilization, then “regime change”) out of this “counterterrorism” doublethink. So the illusion of pragmatism stumbles on under the murderers’ hypnosis. Does it serve his fellows to promote fantasy?
From fraudulent ephemera subjects earnestly divine noble intent.
We even get two dystopias, Huxleyan and Orwellian. To my mind the Orwellian is unappreciated. Smart peoples construct two realities and blame each other for taking SOMA.
Good one, wd. Yeah, Avaaz. I got an e-mail from them (ostensibly meant for any &all ex-pats in Germany) entitled: “Deutschland – ALLE gegen Trump” that included a link to an application that would request a ballot for the clicker and the standard enabling of one to forward the message on to all their ex-pat in Germany buddies. Here’s a sample paragraph (translation mine (orig. at bottom)):
“President Trump” makes all of us anxious and afraid. He wants to ban Muslims, undo global climate agreements, murder the families of suspected terrorists, and does not understand why he can not use nuclear weapons!”
Let’s see. Clinton doesn’t make anyone anxious and fearful? Has she suggested welcoming anywhere near as many asylum seekers as the current president (for the record: five figures) (who’s broken the record on deportations) let alone the German Chancellor (for the record: seven figures) who’s risking the stability of her country to help refugees created foremost by the Americans? Does Clinton plan on forgoing the authority established by the current president to murder suspected terrorists, their families be damned? Has Clinton vowed to abandon the logic that continues to expand on the US nuclear arsenal or will she attempt to reverse the current plan to surround Russia with the same?
I couldn’t help answer the e-mail, in vain, of course. Even if they read it, the kind of people who blindly distribute such garbage are motivated by pure narcissism (get it?), the faux kind of SJW, worthy of the implied feebleness of the three-initial diminutive, who really deserve mockery.
No fly zone, indeed. People fall so easily.
“’Präsident Trump’” versetzt uns alle in Angst und Schrecken. Er will Muslime verbannen, die globalen Klimaabkommen zunichte machen, die Familien mutmaßlicher Terroristen ermorden und versteht nicht, warum er keine Atomwaffen einsetzen kann!”
Aren’t the faux kind of SJW paragons of victimization? Are they, the persecuted, joining the persecutors, out of naivete or perverse incentive?
Beware the oppressive oppressed.
Funny, yeah. I dunno. I was just turning the current liberal use of SWJ and narcissist back around on them. Honestly, though, probably sometimes naivete, sometimes perverse incentive, sometimes both, sometimes confused alienation. The world really is, amongst so many things, quite bizarre and what motivates us, like, from an emotional and/or psychological perspective is beyond my level of comprehension.
no foolin’ davidly, you got an email from them? how’d they get your address? (stooopid question, i reckon.) i confess that the no-Trump graphics were so hideous that i never clicked into any of their tweetie-birds. but what good questions you asked!
yeah, avaaz rankles me, as do so many other ‘non-profit industrial NGOs’, and i’m so glad wrongcolorofgreen did so much digging into funding and alliances with…the worst of the worst agendas.
i’d been perusing my ‘compromised NGO category to remind myself as to the truth of what NED and USAID actually do, and found interviews w/ phillip agee and more. even a lot of ‘smart people’ can’t imagine that they’re CIA pretending to ‘help’. that’s what got me curious about murtaza hussan’s bilgewater at TI: he used the fact that the white helmets are funded by USAID as being good. wth?
but avaaz: ” 44 milion members in 194 countires!!! Avaaz’s commitment to accuracy!!! people power! save the elephants!!!
yanno, i’m listening to agee now; you might like it, and it’s not long; i’ll fetch the link, he mentions germany a lot. ;-)
Review: ‘Mindshaping: A New Framework for Understanding Human Social Cognition’
The reviewer, however, contends
that the ability to construct forward-looking policies and rules had to be in place before the reward-risk machinery could be co-opted to play a role in sophisticated mindshaping practices. Indeed, […] it is reasonable to suppose that language and some type of culture emerged prior to sophisticated mindshaping
I.e. sophisticated mindshaping is intentional mindshaping. The reviewer pretends that our cognitive hijack of evolution came with “our” ability “to track the value of the rewards associated with cooperation.” Instead, the degraded state of our species-being belies the exploitation of our cooperation. The mindshapers have become killers.
this is great stuff, comrade rex, and underpins ‘perverse incentive’ perhaps? and of course: google algorithms, methinks. while i was reading, i thought of the bidness uses of neuro-linguistic programming, as well. but as with EST, iirc jason’s jovial critique correctly, it’s not only personal wholeness™ as a benefit, but the ability to read your human target and use the correct phrases to…bend them to your (ahem) ‘goal’ or ‘mutual goals’.
or if not killers, acting unwittingly or not in aid of killers, most especially f ‘our common enemies’ which they help to construct. so SJW are underpinned by identity politics? is that’s what i’m hearing?
oh, and i deleted the repeat of this comment, but your link, if t’were one, just comes back to the café; mayb i erred?
Oops: http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/42865-mindshaping-a-new-framework-for-understanding-human-social-cognition/
The “repeat” only corrected the last quote.
Jah, that academic Rasputin, Sunstein, proposed to nudge the mindslaves to efficiency. That “libertarian paternalism” and his proposal for cognitive infiltration are no innovations; he just had the chutzpah to lead Amurkan compradors where angels fear to tread. Certainly Avaaz would nudge its own nudging compradors, i.e. they know not fully what they do.
Ayiiiii. Gurgle|Alpha-Bet. Certainly, the Rasputins are thrilled by cogno-surgery of the collective unconscious and compelled to intercourse with the new species of mindshapers. Wouldn’t want to become a has-been like Neanderthals.
Compradors must adopt techniques of abuse. Erhard legitimized mindshaping for profit to bamboozled compradors as Amurka was turning from world-manufacturers to world-fraudsters.
The ultimate mindshapers thus sell an imitation to compradors whom pretend the acquisition is a necessity. Identity politics is the crapitalist liberation theology which promises pawns of killers a whiff of power.
Oh. Thanks but no thanks for the compliment. Comrade Wrecks I prefer not.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
sam and sunstein are some power couple dedicated to the exceptional empire, aren’t they? yes to promises implied to those who smell power in the class juuuuuust above them. ford’s black misleadership class, comprador police of color, and celebrities enslaved to the Dems, like angela davis now, chomsky, yada, yada. a host of others, but like this (scroll down to see the Librul Luminaries!
sorry for demoting you to King, comrade. ;-)
Oooo, flattery is seductive even for Comrade Wracks! @o
Shall we pity the comprador-fools? There must be a limit.
oh, my stars: Reaping the Whirlwind: Kerry, al-Nusra, Russia and Syria‘ by Gary Leupp at CP it’s long, full of indictable history, esp. re:clinton and r2p libya as the origin of ISIL, ; future Ovien Queen prognostications including r2p libya 2.0 in syria, and this chronology:
” More specifically, following the clear succession of events—a U.S.-Russia deal on a Syrian ceasefire, which was to be followed by coordinated U.S.-Russian strikes on ISIL and al-Nusra or Fateh al-Sham; the U.S.-Coalition assault on a Syrian army base, killing at least 62 Syrian soldiers and leading to the immediate seizure of the position by ISIL; the Syrian and Russian protests and the U.S.’s grudging apology for an ostensible “mistake;” the bombing of the Aleppo aid convoy, killing about 20, which the U.S. without evidence blamed on Syrian or Russian aircraft; and predictions in both Washington and Moscow that the U.S.-Russia talks would soon break down—the U.S. press wedded to the State Department concludes that Russia is responsible for the whole mess, because it continues to support Assad. (But was this not the case for many years before the overt U.S. campaign to oust him beginning in 2011? Was it not the case during the months of negotiations? Had not Kerry concurred that the most urgent issue to deal with was ISIL and al-Nusra, and that Assad’s future could be held on the back burner for the time being?)”
Making enemies is the mindshapers’ last resource.
yes, how apropos. re:
“But the U.S. image in the minds of (say) Germans—thinking, “Why do these people, while stationing 50,000 troops in my country, taking our support for granted, keep attacking countries unprovoked, producing disaster (including the flight of two million refugees overrunning Europe while the U.S. an ocean away bears no consequences), virtually encouraging terrorism by their actions?”—might steadily deteriorate”,
this, fwiw: ‘Germany moves to run its own EU army – leaving both Brussels & NATO in new crisis’. RT got if from Breitbart (?) who got it from the FT (behind a paywall). oddly, it’s in english….
whew! just in time:
German Ubermenchen won’t be left out.
lol. and note ‘Ludwigshafen’
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-class-dynamics-in-the-rise-of-donald-trump-why-establishment-voices-stigmatize-the-white-working-class-as-racist-and-xenophobic/5549634
Our new breed of mind is eliminationist. They need Drumpf to project their ruthlessness upon. For con man Drumpf, they’ve provided an opportunity he can’t refuse.
thanks, i think. got to: Why Are the Establishment Elites so Eager to Reject Economic/Class Explanations?’ before mine eyes gave up for now. i did see the ‘baskets of deplorables’ stuff in headlines; was this what she was talking about, then? the fridge repairman who came a few months ago was gung-ho Trumpeter; he loved that he’s a ‘self-made multi-billionaire’. i didn’t have the heart or desire to correct him. ;-)
“Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!”
i may try again tomorrow to finish it, no promises. but bing “This is not only wrong it’s not even wrong.” ? must lose something in the translation?
as an aside before i quit for the night:
friend of the café jason is in severely choppy waters this week. he may sail thru them over the weekend, but: may i ask that we send him good thoughts and wishes for safety until he surfaces again?
i wish i could remember which music he’s said he’d choose for his sole listening if stranded on a desert isle, but let’s try this for jason:
Famous laceration from Wolfgang Pauli, “That is not only not right, it is not even wrong,” meaning the proposal is so misconceived it can’t be corrected.
Solh, Jason
one of my favorite detective characters (emerson cod) on the teeve said once: ‘that idea’s so terrible it makes a bad one look good‘. (or close)
bless your heart for wishing peace to jason and the music. he just showed up briefly in my inbox, and is still kickin’.
no, i didn’t pick that, but jeezus his piano concertos. in the rather fanciful cinematic retelling of the cain-abel story called “amadeus,” of course he has a bottle of vino in his hand when this plays. sucking down the heavenly ichor.
what’s the global budget for this ngo do-gooder BS? vs. say the budget for mining or timber? not to even get into “natural” gas, oil, nukular, tous les affaires militaires (spy crap, hollywood, icbm’s, nsa, glen beck, etc.)
been away for a few. a harsh, healthful dose of jamaican, sugar-caned reality is calling. liver, don’t fail me now!
no, i knew it wasn’t. the one you’d chosen most peeps considered a bit of a snooze as did i. i haven’t played rax’s sufi music for you yet, either, and i’ll listen to amadeus soon. (i’ve been making greek pitas, and the kitchen’s a bit of a fright.
welcome back, amigo. i hope that expressing my concern for you on the boards wasn’t inappropriate, but i reckon good thoughts, wishes, and prayers, even apatheistic ones…can help.
ok. i’ll take the pepsi challenge w/my musical choices anyday!!!!
(eh, maybe not. larnin’ is hard! always more owt thar!)
but that’s no substitute for concern.
CONCERN!!! CONCERN!!! THIS WAY!!! where’s my paypal acct#?
salieri! salieri! beethoven’s hair! have you ever watched whirling dervishes, by the way? talk about ‘centered’; they can twirl one way for half an hour, stop on a dime, and whirl the other way for as long. no one even falls on the ground. i almost did just watching.
ach, no, i’ll leave ya in peace for your musical choices, especially sonce i like a few of weird al’s performances pretty durned well. and..’flowers on da wall’, too. soooo retro. screw your liver, enjoy some pleasures; there’s always milk thistle fer yer liver later. i’m so glad you’re okay.
the money gets tricky when trying to figure out an NGO v. a state psyop, doesn’t it, as w/ the white helmets? i saw that vanessa beeley is on RT today doing an interview…
no, i won’t take the pepsi challenge w/anyone. no contest.
“but i, whatever i or any man be,
shall be satisfied w/nothing, till he be eased w/being nothing.” (stage direction: sound music) (and richard 2 then starts bitching about the music..;)
I don’t mind at all your compilation of quotable quotes, wendye – well done on a ‘need to know’ basis, well crafted and all of that there! Move over, MoA.
On whoever is fiddling with the US voting system – wouldn’t it be wonderful if all voting machines were rendered absolutely un-operative? Oh my, we might even be forced into – dare I say it? – reviving the old paper ballot system with little old ladies like me counting them in every precinct in the land!
Jill Stein would be our next president.
Slow down, heart.
Big Grin. even twenty years ago when i was a vote-count-watcher for da Dems, they counted em by a machine that fllllfffffffed and whatnot. but srsly, on one side there’s voter disenfranchisement, the other: google for clinton, and potential diebold hacking. crazy we do vote. and oh: scotus, too, and folks like gore putatively ‘falling on his sword’. now i’m seeing that crazy anna gasteyer (sp?) playing Katherine harris; ah: good times!
i see b is dissecting the WaPo sources about cia/generals, yada, yada, false flags, and the biggie: ‘our counterinsurgency failures is aleppo falls’. falls to whom? we were talking about it either yesterday..or the day before. so much agitprop, so little time, eh? haven’t heard nuttin’ about yesterday’s meeting of principals, or if they even held one. hush, hush, no leaks please: treason!
but thanks for being easy on me; it’s kinda what i have now.
Not a bad wish on paper ballots and actual voting. But the method does not guarantee validity. Before you start counting ballots by hand, read Frank Kent, The Great Game of Politics about how elections were rigged in the 1920s, the days of paper ballots and early flip-lever voting machines–the era of the classic urban political machines.
In that fantasy rigging, you might get all the candidates on the ballot in every state with the color pic party lists of a lot of the rest of the world.
No, don’t want to go back to the 1920’s, THD, nor can anything be guaranteed in this ‘interesting’ world. I was simply suggesting that some interventions of an invasive nature might have positive (not perfect) side effects. Paper ballots, being regional and re-countable, are definitely preferable to what we have, in my book. And I can wait as long as it takes to get them counted. (Smash those counting machines too, whilst your at it, intervenors, if you’re listening.)
Not asking to go back to the 1920s. Just not naively think that paper ballots themselves guarantee more accurate elections. All of the mechanization and automation of voting equipment was predicated on some of the worst features of paper ballots. Actually most developing countries that have some degree of international supervision seem to have developed good and trusted paper ballot systems and more importantly the norms that they require; the pain when the system has been gamed generally are recent in those countries as well.
morning, all. referencing the WaPo’s description of last wednesday’s deputies’ committee at the white house, and the possibility mentioned as to launching stealth military missions in syria in order to get around WH objections, Mike Whitney’s opinion is that they’ve already begun. by his reckoning, the bombing at deir ezzor wasn’t a mistake, nor were the bridge bombings over the euphrates river, as well as ash carter’s jihadist buddies mortar-shelling the russian embassy in damascus.
“So all this rubbish about Obama mulling over these “new options” for “military strikes” is complete hogwash. Plan Carter is already in full swing, the train already left the station. The only thing missing is presidential authorization which probably isn’t necessary since Il Duce Carter decided that it was his turn to run the country.”
he links to the letter at consortium news that was signed by the steering committee of ex-intel agents (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) that among other things, the president needs to take civilian control of the military back from the pentagon (they also see deir azor as ‘no mistake;.) it’s a great letter of warning, including why lavrov no longer trusts kerry (ash carter). further, whitney sees carter’s plan C as creating the same quagmire (plan Q?) as the russians were enmeshed in in afghanistan once. well, the US ain’t; this week marks only 15 of endless war there. jeebus. sure and he thinks ash-can carter’s not thought this all through…at all well. as in: ‘nah, it’ll never come to war’.
yeah, that notion’s so terrible it makes some of ash’s stupidist ideas sound almost good.
good advice, Rax. walt richardson and the morningstar band (reggae) used to do one called ‘don’t let the devil get ya down’. only version on youtube is live, but crappy. thanks. and still…the message kinda makes my eyes tear up.
couldn’t resist, this came across the FB CP feed today. word:
James Baldwin: “The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the “conscience” of the civilized world.” yemen is starving & HRC is maybe about to get her wish for the (further) depopulation of Haiti, but hey, Russia is committing war crimes in AQ-held E. Aleppo. dudgeon, take thyself to the heights, please!
oh, thank you fr bringing it! i’d clicked into the CP facebook thingie, maybe by accident yesterday, and had seen the beginning of his quote. of course what happens if you’re not logged in (i don’t do facebook, so can’t) that white window slides up up up as you try to scroll down to read. blast! foiled again!
timeless quotes like that make one almost weak w/ despair, don’t they? or on alt days: enraged. so now it’s kerry accusing russia w/ war crimes; guess he’s not all that serious about a ‘diplomatic settlement toward peace’?
oh, do look when you have a chance at comrade rax’s review of ‘mind-shaping’; and boy, do i have a clinton and army mind-shaping story for…tomorrow i guess. where did the time go today? up in smoke, i reckon.
in the beginning was the word…”everyone has a story” some young wise beyond years kid said to me once. yes. listen. w/o bombs.
awesome. thank you.
Pepe le Pew’s new piece is a barn-burner: ‘Why the New Silk Roads terrify Washington’; he explains to dolts like me again the various silk roads at play as well as the new ones in planning stages, noting that it’s pfffffft that the US won’t play economically. he also explains a bit about the importance and why’s of the fact that the IMF has (cough) put the yuan into its ‘baskets of currencies’. he writes ‘don’t forget the silk road in syria’, then Zbig and ‘ooops’, toward the end, and ends with: ‘Have a pleasant nightmare.’ anyone know how or if he tweets?
and sheesh; so many critics the dude has re: his cluelessness, but at least he’s got a sense of humor, eh?
That fleshes out where I have thought this was going–the full Halford Mackinder nightmare of Eurasian integration.
And the US sees economic integration that might in a strictly commercial framework be seen as one of opportunity, a step toward political integration into some global system with more stability, one that could provide the conditions for a build-down of militaries–instead of that, the US sees a threat.
Old Halford can still give the national security guys the heebie-jeebies. Better than Mary Shelley, that one.
Just waiting for the college alumni associations to start conducting those retiree tours with one of the New Silk Road–Lisbon to Vladivostok-Beijing to Hong Kong to Seoul to Tokyo. Or tours of the new break-bulk points in the supply chain network.
I guess the terror folded up in the meme “Putin” has to do with the fact that The American Century has definitely ended. Really only 70 years although the US was at the New Silk Road stage in 1898.
Not sure how good settler colonialist states adapt to being imperialists; the divide-and-conquer required for effective imperialism creates a political culture that prevents a settler colonialist state from maintaining a focus on its empire. Instability at home often disrupts imperial adventures. In the US those fractures were along identity politics lines as well as class lines. And then there were the state-national fractures, especially involving the former Confederate states.
And then there were those pesky people who took the founding documents serious and kept pushing to make it real. That really gets in the way of the imperial apparatus.
The unknown parts of the emerging global order on the ground is how Latin America, Africa, and the Asian Subcontinent get further integrated into a transportation and trade zone. And we have seen how the US has enabled the local 1%’s to regain lost power or conducted economic sabotage of independent regimes. And how the footprint of US forward-deployed military bases has expanded into the Global South under the cover of the war on global terrorism. What we know, given the budgets required for those US operations, is that this is not sustainable for very long especially since too many of the operations are intended to burn cash more than do anything else.
There have been lots of interest in the media for repeating the stories about the cities that China has built that are not yet populated. I suspect that these will not be the writeoffs that Western business analysts think they are because of the ability of the Chinese economic infrastructure to work more patiently. Wall Street gets antsy at 3 months; DC works by year or by decade. US deployment of fiber optic cable was possible both technically and financially in 2000 and could have created a more sustained boom. But the business media hyped up the question of when the telecoms would get paid back for their deployment of broadband technology, which trigger a bear stock market for telecoms and left unfinished projects all over that never got to producing revenue until the telecoms recently restarted and completed those projects. But that is how capitalism functions in its supposed efficiency.
Hopefully the Chinese are neither so totally capitalistic now nor constrained by the ties they do have with capitalistic countries and their own capitalist sector that they cut off infrastructure projects before they produce value.
that’s quite a mouthful, my friend, and so fulsome i’ll need to read it a few more times as usual. by your historical reminders, i suppose you’ve actually answered the question: ‘why does the US empire see everything as zero sum?’ but still, the entrenched psychology must have it’s roots somehow in capitalist manifest destiny thinking, no?
pepe’s implication that the reason the IMF added the yuan was tied up w/ no matter how many sticks were applied to u.s. allies germany, australia, britain, etc., they still joined the AIIB. his comments on the history of ‘the american lake’ will mean that tensions in the area will be increasingly enormous as the various allies patrol by ship, submarine, and bases. but yes, mackinder was right, and you to get it so early on.
good questions about the global south, africa and sub-continent being integrated into a trade zone; the venezuelanalysis newsletter had a blurb about a new deal w/ china, and of course that will spur the hegemon on to further sanction VZ as a security risk to the US, goddam. i’ll see if this works…
Will Oceania lose to Eastasia and Eurasia?
But Oceania will assure mutual destruktion first!
Whether Oceania do that, finds the key to escape MAD, or accepts it’s chunk of “socialism for the rich”, y’all proles are screwed.
lol. can ya give us the cliff’s note answer? side note: michael hudson’s saying that roosia is increasing its neoliberalism. plenty of oligarchs to please there, eh? i kinda get a boot out of the trotskyites’ boilerplate that while they hate seeing the proxy wars against russia, none of the goals aid the working class.
The Cliff Note is: crapitalists will pretend they’re escaping MAD in order to maintain socialism for the rich, that is, until Atomageddon.
Sure it is that the liberated-commie nostalgia must be held in check so Cold War 2.0 invigorates East Crapitalism. Mindshaping of conflict persists with the victory of crapitalism. No surprise there.
thank ya. the first video was great fun. ‘berlin has turned into china!’
Crapitalist prophets pulpiteer crapitalist-compatible theories. While the common crapitalist minister gets by on sermonizing the verities, the prophets unveil an innovative theological fraud.
This mindshaping propagates well in crises, thus these prophecies carry the mark of crisis. In fact, our perpetuation of the Great Game is not a tribute to the foresight of Mackinder, it is an indication of our lack of progress.
To maintain the nation of British blood, (and avoid civilizational annihilation) Mackinder advocated that
• Britain export division:
• Britishers be disciplined:
• British finance be disciplined:
• Britishers be re-feudalized:
• British subjects be mindshaped:
Theological fraud, QED.
Yes, theological fraud — unless Britain is God.
Just take Mackinder and substitute US for Britain and you have the current level of US strategic, er, thinking.
Umm, YHWH is a fraud, too.
Jah. Not prophecy but poverty.
this the one you want to keep: with the space between & and #?
Latter one, please. Do you know unicode for bullet point?
no, i dunno, but i’m not sure: you want me to trash this one or the one below?
Trash this one, please. Likewise the earlier one in response to Tarheel I just sent.