PopularFX
Home Help Search Login Register
Welcome,Guest. Please login or register.
2024-03-29, 10:36:07
News: If you have a suggestion or need for a new board title, please PM the Admins.
Please remember to keep topics and posts of the FE or casual nature. :)

Pages: 1 ... 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [41] 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 ... 100
Author Topic: 9/11 debate - enter at your own risk!  (Read 968993 times)

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Warning to the World: Washington and its NATO & EU Vassals are Insane

Paul Craig Roberts
September 2, 2014

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/09/02/warning-world-washington-nato-eu-vassals-insane-paul-craig-roberts-2/

Herbert E. Meyer, a nutcase who was a special assistant to the CIA director for a period during the Reagan administration, has penned an article calling for Russian President Putin’s assassination. If we have “ to get him out of the Kremlin feet-first with a bullet hole in the back of his head, that would be okay with us.” http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/how_to_solve_the_putin_problem.html

As the crazed Meyer illiustrates, the insanity that Washington has released upon the world knows no restraint. Jose Manual Barroso, installed as Washington’s puppet as European Commission President, misrepresented his recent confidential telephone conversation with Russia’s President Putin by telling the media that Putin issued a threat: “If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks.”

Clearly, Putin did not issue a threat. A threat would be inconsistent with Putin’s entire unprovocative approach to the strategic threat that Washington and its NATO puppets have brought to Russia in Ukraine. Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, said that if Barroso’s lie stands, Russia will make public the full recording of the conversation

Anyone familiar with the disparity between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries knows full well that it would take the Russian military 14 hours, not 14 days, to take all of Ukraine. Just remember what happened to the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian Army when Washington set its stupid Georgian puppets on South Ossetia. The American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian army collapsed under Russian counterattack in 5 hours.

The lie that Washington’s puppet Barroso told was not worthy of a serious person. But where in Europe is there a serious person in power? Nowhere. The few serious people are all out of power. Consider the NATO Secretary General, Anders Rasmussen. He was a prime minister of Denmark who saw he could rise beyond Denmark by serving as Washington’s puppet. As prime minister he strongly supported Washington’s illegal invasion of Iraq, declaring that “we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.” Of course, the fool didn’t know any such thing, and why would it matter if Iraq did have such weapons. Many countries have weapons of mass destruction.

According to the rule that anyone who serves Washington is elevated, the cipher Rasmussen was elevated.

The problem with elevating unprincipled fools is that they risk the world for their career. Rasmussen has now put the entirety of Eastern and Western Europe at risk of annihilation. Rasmussen has announced the creation of a blitzkrieg spearhead force capable of blitzkrieg attack on Russia. What Washington’s puppet calls “the Readiness Action Plan” is justified as a response to “Russia’s aggressive behavior in Ukraine.”

Rasmussen’s “lightening spearhead force” would be wiped out along with every European capital. What kind of idiot provokes a nuclear superpower in this way?

Rasmussen asserts “Russia’s aggressive behavior” but has no evidence of it. Russia has stood on the sidelines while Washington’s puppet government in Kiev has shelled and bombed civilian housing, hospitals, schools and issued a constant stream of lies against Russia. Russia denied the requests of the now independent eastern and southern provinces of Ukraine, former Russian territories, to be reunited with Russia. As readers know, I regard Putin’s decision as a mistake, but events might prove me wrong and that is OK with me. For now, the fact is that every act of aggressive behavior is the result of the US and EU support of the Kiev nazis. It is the Ukrainian nazi militias that are attacking civilians in the former Russian territories of eastern and southern Ukraine. A number of regular Ukrainian military units have defected to the independent republics.

Yes, nazis. Western Ukraine is the home of the Ukrainian SS division that fought for Hitler. Today the militias organized by the Right Sector and other right-wing political organizations wear the nazi insignia of the Ukrainian SS divisions. These are the people that Washington and the EU support. If the Ukrainian nazis could win against Russia, which they cannot, they would turn on the West, just as has the Washington-funded ISIS that Washington unleashed on Libya and Syria. Now ISIS is remaking the Middle East, and Washington appears helpless.

William Binney, a former high level official in the US National Security Agency, and colleagues from the CIA and military intelligence services have written to German chancellor Merkel advising her to beware of Obama’s lies at the upcoming NATO summit in Wales. The US intelligence officials advise Merkel to remember Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” and don’t again be deceived, this time into conflict with Russia. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-01/ex-nsa-director-us-intelligence-veterans-write-open-letter-merkel-avoid-all-out-ukra

The question is: who does Merkel represent? Washington or Germany? So far Merkel has represented Washington, not German business interests, not the German people, and not Germany’s interests as a country. Here is a protest in Dresden where a crowd prevents Merkel’s speech with shouts of “kriegstreiber” (warmonger), “liar, liar,” and “no war with Russia.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wSMhGE_Mpk

My Ph.D. dissertation chairman, who became a high Pentagon official assigned to wind down the Vietnam war, in answer to my question about how Washington gets Europeans to always do what Washington wants replied: “Money, we give them money.” “Foreign aid?” I asked. “No, we give the European political leaders bagfuls of money. They are for sale, We bought them. They report to us.” Perhaps this explains Tony Blair’s $50 million fortune one year out of office.

The Western media, the largest brothel on earth, is desperate for war. The editorial board of the Washington Post, now a trophy newspaper in the hands of Amazon.com’s billionaire owner, ran an editorial on August 31 that projected all of Washington’s (and the Post’s) lies upon Putin.

Amazon.com’s owner might know how to market products on the Internet, but he is hopeless when it comes to running a newspaper. His editors at the Washington Post have made his trophy a worldwide laughing stock.

Here are the mindless accusations against Putin from the editors that the billionaire put in charge of his trophy newspaper:

Putin, bitterly resentful at the loss of power from the Soviet collapse, has “resurrected the tyranny of the Big Lie” in order to reconstitute the Russian Empire.

“Russian sponsored militias in Ukraine” are responsible for the “shoot-down of the Malaysian airliner in July.” The “Russian state-controlled media” lied and misrepresented to the Russian people the party responsible for downing the airliner.

“In the absence of independent and free reporting, few Russians realize that Russian soldiers and armaments are in action in eastern Ukraine, albeit (as in Crimea) in uniforms and vehicles stripped of their identifying insignia and license plates. With no free media, Russians are left to fend for themselves against a firestorm of falsehoods.”

“Mr. Putin’s Big Lie shows why it is important to support a free press where it still exists and outlets like Radio Free Europe that bring the truth to people who need it.”

As a former Wall Street Journal editor, I can say with complete confidence that such extraordinary propaganda posing as an editorial would have resulted in the immediate firing of all concerned. In my days on the Congressional staff, the Washington Post was regarded as a CIA asset. Today the Post has sunk far below this status.

I have seen much media propaganda in my day, but this Washington Post editorial takes the cake. The editorial shows that either the editorial writers are completely ignorant or they are completely corrupt and also assume that their readers are completely ignorant. If Russian military units were in action in eastern Ukraine, the situation would be precisely as Alexander Zakharchenko http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/08/30/west-greatest-cause-war-human-history-stands-stripped-legitimacy-paul-craig-roberts/ and Dmitry Orlov describe. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/09/01/can-tell-whether-russia-invaded-ukraine/ Ukraine would no longer exist. Ukraine would again be part of Russia where it was for centuries prior to Washington taking advantage of the Soviet collapse to tear Ukraine away from Russia.

The question before us is: how long will Russia’s patience last with the West’s enormous lies and provocations? No matter how restrained Russia is, Russia is accused of the worst. Therefore, Russia might as well inflict the worst.

At what point will the Russian government decide that Washington’s mendacity, and that of its European puppets and corrupt Western media, render hopeless Russia’s efforts to resolve the situation with diplomacy and unprovocative behavior? As Russia is constantly accused falsely of invading Ukraine, when will the Russian government decide that as Western propaganda has established that Russia has invaded Ukraine and has imposed sanctions and new military bases on Russia’s borders because of the alleged invasion, Russia might as well go ahead and rid themselves of the problem Washington has brought to Russia and invade Ukraine?

There is nothing that NATO could do about it if Russia decides that Ukraine in Washington’s hands is too much of a strategic threat to Russia and reincorporates Ukraine again into Russia where it has resided for centuries. Any NATO force sent would start a war that NATO can’t win. The German population, remembering the consequences of war with Russia, would overthrow Washington’s puppet government. NATO and the EU would collapse as Germany departed the absurd construct that serves Washington’s interest at the expense of Europe.

Once this happens, the world will have peace. But not until.

For those who care to understand how the land of lies works, Washington’s puppet government in Kiev attributes the defeat of its military forces by the Donetsk Republic to the presence in the Donetsk army of Russian military units. This is the propaganda that has gone out to western Ukraine and to the presstitute western media, a collection of whores that echo the propaganda without any investigation whatsoever. However, Kiev has a different story for the IMF. Kiev cannot receive IMF money with which to pay off its Western creditors if Ukraine is at war. Therefore, Ukraine tells the IMF the opposite story: Russia has not attacked Ukraine. http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/08/ukie-doubleplusgooddoublethink.html

The Western media remains uninterested in any facts. Just the lies. Only the lies.

The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, Fox “news,” Die Welt, the French press, the British press all plead: “please Washington give us more sensational lies that we can trumpet. Our circulation needs it. Who cares about war and the human race if only we can regain financial stability.”

Justin Raimondo warns that Washington is planting the seeds of World War III: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/09/02/our-cold-war-with-russia-could-turn-hot/


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria. Oil Gas Pipeline War

The Kerry-Abdullah Secret Deal

By ​​​​F. William Engdahl
Global Research, October 26, 2014

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-secret-stupid-saudi-us-deal-on-syria/5410130

The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King. The unintended consequence will be to push Russia even faster to turn east to China and Eurasia.

One of the weirdest anomalies of the recent NATO bombing campaign, allegedly against the ISIS or IS or ISIL or Daash, depending on your preference, is the fact that with major war raging in the world’s richest oil region, the price of crude oil has been dropping, dramatically so. Since June when ISIS suddenly captured the oil-rich region of Iraq around Mosul and Kirkuk, the benchmark Brent price of crude oil dropped some 20% from $112 to about $88. World daily demand for oil has not dropped by 20% however. China oil demand has not fallen 20% nor has US domestic shale oil stock risen by 21%.

What has happened is that the long-time US ally inside OPEC, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been flooding the market with deep discounted oil, triggering a price war within OPEC, with Iran following suit and panic selling short in oil futures markets. The Saudis are targeting sales to Asia for the discounts and in particular, its major Asian customer, China where it is reportedly offering its crude for a mere $50 to $60 a barrel rather than the earlier price of around $100. [1] That Saudi financial discounting operation in turn is by all appearance being coordinated with a US Treasury financial warfare operation, via its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in cooperation with a handful of inside players on Wall Street who control oil derivatives trading. The result is a market panic that is gaining momentum daily. China is quite happy to buy the cheap oil, but her close allies, Russia and Iran, are being hit severely.

The deal

According to Rashid Abanmy, President of the Riyadh-based Saudi Arabia Oil Policies and Strategic Expectations Center, the dramatic price collapse is being deliberately caused by the Saudis, OPEC’s largest producer. The public reason claimed is to gain new markets in a global market of weakening oil demand. The real reason, according to Abanmy, is to put pressure on Iran on her nuclear program, and on Russia to end her support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria.[2]

When combined with the financial losses of Russian state natural gas sales to Ukraine and prospects of a US-instigated cutoff of the transit of Russian gas to the huge EU market this winter as EU stockpiles become low, the pressure on oil prices hits Moscow doubly. More than 50% of Russian state revenue comes from its export sales of oil and gas.

The US-Saudi oil price manipulation is aimed at destabilizing several strong opponents of US globalist policies. Targets include Iran and Syria, both allies of Russia in opposing a US sole Superpower. The principal target, however, is Putin’s Russia, the single greatest threat today to that Superpower hegemony. The strategy is similar to what the US did with Saudi Arabia in 1986 when they flooded the world with Saudi oil, collapsing the price to below $10 a barrel and destroying the economy of then-Soviet ally, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and, ultimately, of the Soviet economy, paving the way for the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, the hope is that a collapse of Russian oil revenues, combined with select pin-prick sanctions designed by the US Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence will dramatically weaken Putin’s enormous domestic support and create conditions for his ultimate overthrow. It is doomed to fail for many reasons, not the least, because Putin’s Russia has taken major strategic steps together with China and other nations to lessen its dependence on the West. In fact the oil weapon is accelerating recent Russian moves to focus its economic power on national interests and lessen dependence on the Dollar system. If the dollar ceases being the currency of world trade, especially oil trade, the US Treasury faces financial catastrophe. For this reason, I call the Kerry-Abdullah oil war a very stupid tactic.

The Kerry-Abdullah secret deal

On September 11, US Secretary of State Kerry met Saudi King Abdullah at his palace on the Red Sea. The King invited former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar to attend. There a deal was hammered out which saw Saudi support for the Syrian airstrikes against ISIS on condition Washington backed the Saudis in toppling Assad, a firm ally of Russia and de facto of Iran and an obstacle to Saudi and UAE plans to control the emerging EU natural gas market and destroy Russia’s lucrative EU trade. A report in the Wall Street Journal noted there had been “months of behind-the-scenes work by the US and Arab leaders, who agreed on the need to cooperate against Islamic State, but not how or when. The process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh US commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority.” [3]

For the Saudis the war is between two competing age-old vectors of Islam. Saudi Arabia, home to the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, claims de facto supremacy in the Islamic world of Sunni Islam. The Saudi Sunni form is ultra-conservative Wahhabism, named for an 18th Century Bedouin Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahha. The Taliban derive from Wahhabism with the aid of Saudi-financed religious instruction. The Gulf Emirates and Kuwait also adhere to the Sunni Wahhabism of the Saudis, as does the Emir of Qatar. Iran on the other hand historically is the heart of the smaller branch of Islam, the Shi’ite. Iraq’s population is some 61% majority Shi’ite. Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad is a member of a satellite of the Shi’ite branch known as Alawite. Some 23% of Turkey is also Alawite Muslim. To complicate the picture more, across a bridge from Saudi Arabia sits the tiny island country, Bahrain where as many as 75% of the population is Shi’ite but the ruling Al-Khalifa family is Sunni and firmly tied to Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the richest Saudi oil region is dominated by Shi’ite Muslims who work the oil installations of Ras Tanura.

An oil and gas pipeline war


These historic fault lines inside Islam which lay dormant, were brought into a state of open warfare with the launching of the US State Department and CIA’s Islamic Holy War, otherwise known as the Arab Spring. Washington neo-conservatives embedded inside the Obama Administration in a form of “Deep State” secret network, and their allied media such as the Washington Post, advocated US covert backing of a pet CIA project known as the Muslim Brotherhood. As I detail in my most recent book, Amerikas’ Heiliger Krieg, the CIA had cultivated ties to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood death cult since the early 1950’s.

Now if we map the resources of known natural gas reserves in the entire Persian Gulf region, the motives of the Saudi-led Qatar and UAE in financing with billions of dollars the opposition to Assad, including the Sunni ISIS, becomes clearer. Natural gas has become the favored “clean energy” source for the 21st Century and the EU is the world’s largest growth market for gas, a major reason Washington wants to break the Gazprom-EU supply dependency to weaken Russia and keep control over the EU via loyal proxies like Qatar.

The world’s largest known natural gas reservoir sits in the middle of the Persian Gulf straddling part in the territorial waters of Qatar and part in Iran. The Iranian part is called North Pars. In 2006 China’s state-owned CNOOC signed an agreement with Iran to develop North Pars and build LNG infrastructure to bring the gas to China.[4]

The Qatar side of the Persian Gulf, called North Field, contains the world’s third largest known natural gas reserves behind Russia and Iran.

In July 2011, the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an historic gas pipeline energy agreement which went largely unnoticed in the midst of the NATO-Saudi-Qatari war to remove Assad. The pipeline, envisioned to cost $10 billion and take three years to complete, would run from the Iranian Port Assalouyeh near the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, to Damascus in Syria via Iraq territory. The agreement would make Syria the center of assembly and production in conjunction with the reserves of Lebanon. This is a geopolitically strategic space that geographically opens for the first time, extending from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.[5] As Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar put it, “The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline – if it’s ever built – would solidify a predominantly Shi’ite axis through an economic, steel umbilical cord.”[6]

Shortly after signing with Iran and Iraq, on August 16, 2011, Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Ministry of Oil announced the discovery of a gas well in the Area of Qarah in the Central Region of Syria near Homs. Gazprom, with Assad in power, would be a major investor or operator of the new gas fields in Syria. [7] Iran ultimately plans to extend the pipeline from Damascus to Lebanon’s Mediterranean port where it would be delivered to the huge EU market. Syria would buy Iranian gas along with a current Iraqi agreement to buy Iranian gas from Iran’s part of South Pars field.[8]

Qatar, today the world’s largest exporter of LNG, largely to Asia, wants the same EU market that Iran and Syria eye. For that, they would build pipelines to the Mediterranean. Here is where getting rid of the pro-Iran Assad is essential. In 2009 Qatar approached Bashar al-Assad to propose construction of a gas pipeline from Qatar’s north Field through Syria on to Turkey and to the EU. Assad refused, citing Syria’s long friendly relations with Russia and Gazprom. That refusal combined with the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline agreement in 2011 ignited the full-scale Saudi and Qatari assault on Assad’s power, financing al Qaeda terrorists, recruits of Jihadist fanatics willing to kill Alawite and Shi’ite “infidels” for $100 a month and a Kalishnikov. The Washington neo-conservative warhawks in and around the Obama White House, along with their allies in the right-wing Netanyahu government, were cheering from the bleachers as Syria went up in flames after spring 2011.

Today the US-backed wars in Ukraine and in Syria are but two fronts in the same strategic war to cripple Russia and China and to rupture any Eurasian counter-pole to a US-controlled New World Order. In each, control of energy pipelines, this time primarily of natural gas pipelines—from Russia to the EU via Ukraine and from Iran and Syria to the EU via Syria—is the strategic goal. The true aim of the US and Israel backed ISIS is to give the pretext for bombing Assad’s vital grain silos and oil refineries to cripple the economy in preparation for a “Ghaddafi-”style elimination of Russia and China and Iran-ally Bashar al-Assad.

In a narrow sense, as Washington neo-conservatives see it, who controls Syria could control the Middle East. And from Syria, gateway to Asia, he will hold the key to Russia House, as well as that of China via the Silk Road.

Religious wars have historically been the most savage of all wars and this one is no exception, especially when trillions of dollars in oil and gas revenues are at stake. Why is the secret Kerry-Abdullah deal on Syria reached on September 11 stupid? Because the brilliant tacticians in Washington and Riyadh and Doha and to an extent in Ankara are unable to look at the interconnectedness of all the dis-order and destruction they foment, to look beyond their visions of control of the oil and gas flows as the basis of their illegitimate power. They are planting the seeds of their own destruction in the end.

William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He is a contributing author at BFP and may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
The Collapse of Oil Prices: Has Washington Just Shot Itself in the Oily Foot?

By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, November 06, 2014

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-collapse-of-oil-prices-has-washington-just-shot-itself-in-the-oily-foot/5412265

By now even the New York Times is openly talking about the secret Obama Administration strategy of trying to bankrupt Russia by using its oil-bloated Bedouin bosom buddy, Saudi Arabia, to collapse the world price of oil. However, it’s beginning to look like the neo-conservative Russia-haters and Cold war wanna-be hawks around Barack Obama may have just shot themselves in their oily foot. As I referred to it in an earlier article, their oil price strategy is basically stupid. Stupid, as all consequences have not been taken into account. Take now the impact on US oil production as prices plummet.

The collapse in US oil prices since September may very soon collapse the US shale oil bubble and tear away the illusion that the United States will surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s largest oil producer. That illusion, fostered by faked resource estimates issued by the US Department of Energy, has been a lynchpin of Obama geopolitical strategy.

Now the financial Ponzi scheme behind the increase of US domestic oil output the past several years is about to evaporate in a cloud of fictitious smoke. The basic economics of shale oil production are being ravaged by the 23% oil price drop since John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah had their secret meeting near the Red Sea in early September to agree on the Saudi oil price war against Russia.

Wall Street bank analysts at Goldman Sachs just issued a 2015 forecast that US oil prices, measured by a benchmark called WTI (West Texas Intermediate) will fall to $70 a barrel. In September 2013, WTI was more than $106 a barrel. That translates into a sharp 34% price collapse in just a few months. Why is that critical to the US shale production? Because, unlike conventional crude oil deposits, shale oil or tight oil as industry calls it, depleted dramatically faster.

A comprehensive new analysis just issued by David Hughes, a Canadian oil geo-scientist with thirty years’ experience with the Geological Survey of Canada, using data from existing US shale oil production that has now become public for the first time (the shale oil story is very recent), shows dramatic rates of oil volume decline from US shale oil wells:

    The three year average well decline rates for the seven shale oil basins measured for the report range from an astounding 60-percent to 91-percent. That means over those three years, the amount of oil coming out of the wells decreases by that percentage. This translates to 43-percent to 64-percent of their estimated ultimate recovery dug out during the first three years of the well’s existence. Four of the seven shale gas basins are already in terminal decline in terms of their well productivity: the Haynesville Shale, Fayetteville Shale, Woodford Shale and Barnett Shale.

A decrease in oil daily of between 60% and 91% for these best possible shale oil regions means the oil companies must drill deeper to even stay still with oil production, let alone increase total oil volume. That means the drillers must spend more money to drill deeper, a lot more. According to Hughes, the Obama administration Department of Energy has uncritically taken rosy forecast numbers given them by the companies that boost the US shale oil myth. His calculations show future US shale oil output only 10% that estimated for 2040 by the Energy Department.

Hughes describes the current deadly dilemma of the shale oil companies as a “drilling treadmill.” They must drill more and more wells just to keep production levels flat. The oil companies have already gone after the most promising shale oil areas, so-called “sweet spots,” to maximize their production. Now as production begins to decline terminally, they must start drilling in spaces with less rich oil and gas returns. He adds, “if the future of U.S. oil and natural gas production depends on resources in the country’s deep shale deposits…we are in for a big disappointment.”

Oil price collapse

What Hughes describes was the state of shale oil before the start of the Kerry-Abdullah Saudi oil price war. Now US WTI oil prices have dropped a catastrophic 25% in six weeks, and still falling. Other large oil producers like Russia and Iran are in turn flooding the world market with their oil to increase revenue for their state budgets, adding to a global oil supply glut. That in turn pressures prices more.

The shale oil and gas bonanza of the past five years in the USA has been built on a foundation of zero Federal Reserve interest rates and huge speculative investment by hungry Wall Street firms and funds. Because of the ultra-rapid oil well depletion, when market oil prices collapse, the entire economics of lending to the shale oil drillers collapses as well. Money suddenly vanishes and debt-strapped oil companies begin real problems.

According to Philip Verleger, former head of President Carter’s Office of Energy Policy and now an energy consultant, in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, one of the most important new shale oil regions, oil at $70 a barrel could cut production 28 percent to 800,000 barrels a day by February from 1.1 million barrels a day in July. “The cash flow will go down as the prices go down, the amount of money advanced to these people to continue the drilling will dry up entirely, so you’ll see a marked slowdown in drilling,” said Verleger.

Myths, Lies and Oil Wars

The end of the shale oil bubble would deal a devastating blow to the US oil geopolitics. Today an estimated 55% of US oil production and all the production increase of the past several years comes from fracking for shale oil. With financing cut off because of economic risk amid falling oil prices, shale oil drillers will be forced to halt new drilling that is needed merely to maintain a steady oil output.

The aggressive US foreign policy in the Middle East—its war against Syria’s al-Assad regime, its hardball oil sanctions against Iran, its sanctions against Russian oil projects, its cynical toleration of ISIS in Iraqi oil regions, its refusal to intervene to stabilize the Libyan oil economy but instead to tolerate dis-order are all premised on a cocky view in Washington that the USA is once again the King of Oil in the world and can afford to play high-risk oil geopolitics. The official government agency responsible for advising the CIA, Department of Defense, State Department and White House on energy, the US Department of Energy, has issued projections of US shale oil growth based on myths and lies. That has led the Obama White House to launch oil wars based on those same myths and lies about the rosy prospects of shale oil.

This oily arrogance was epitomized in a speech by then Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon. In an April 2013 speech at Columbia University, Donilon, then Obama’s national security adviser, publicly expressed this: “America’s new energy posture allows us to engage from a position of greater strength. Increasing US energy supplies acts as a cushion that helps reduce our vulnerability to global supply disruptions and price shocks. It also affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.”

The next three or so months in the US shale oil domain will be strategic.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
“ISIS” is Merely a Backdoor to Ousting Assad. Here’s WHY & HOW…
September 16th, 2014

http://investmentwatchblog.com/isis-is-merely-a-backdoor-to-ousting-assad-heres-why-how/

“ISIS” is obviously an excuse to bomb Syria, as a back door attempt to oust Assad by providing air support for the faltering Free Syrian Army. Russian diplomacy foiled the first neoconservative push to bomb Syria last year.

We’re told by our government and media that we’ve been shown “beheading” videos. That’s not true. If you look hard enough online, you can find the RAW “beheading” videos. But in NONE of the three “beheading” videos (Foley, Sotloff, and Haines) does it show a head being cut off. As “Jihad John” ostensibly starts to saw their necks with his knife, the video fades to black. When the video comes back on, it shows a “headless body” with the purported head of the victim resting on the back.

It reminds me of the alleged Saddam Hussein “hanging” video. NOWHERE did it ever show Saddam hanging. It showed him with the noose around his neck, then the trap door opens and he falls through. BUT THEN THE VIDEO AGAIN GOES BLACK! When the video comes back, we see the ostensibly lifeless body of Saddam laying on the floor with the noose around his neck.

Seeing a pattern?

And where’s the video of the raid that allegedly killed Bin Laden?

It’s amazing that we can be TOLD what we are actually SEEING with our own eyes, and have our own observation be “overridden” by what our government & media tell us.

Edward Bernays would be proud.

The purpose of the fake beheadings is to sway public opinion to support action in Syria — a back door to overthrowing Assad; the first effort being thwarted by clever Russian diplomacy last year.

And don’t assume that the President or Congress are behind this. It’s much deeper. Powerful interests (whose bidding our politicians do; namely Israel & Saudi Arabia) want Assad removed.

Incidentally, the war in the Middle East is against SHI’A Islam, the House of Saud’s mortal enemy. Look whom ISIS is attacking — Shi’a-ruled countries — Syria & Iraq, with Iran being the ultimate prize, eventually; especially since the American public wasn’t buying the neocons’ lies and push to directly bomb Iran over the last 7 or 8 years. So Syria is a back door to Iran, as “ISIS” is a back door to Syria (Assad).

America doesn’t get its oil from Saudi Arabia, but much of the rest of the world does. And where do the Saudis invest their massive oil profits? Not in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia invests its oil fortune in the U.S. economy. And currently we’re more desperate than ever for that investment. THAT’s the “relationship” between the U.S. & KSA. As with China, the U.S. desperately needs that massive Saudi investment into our debt-ridden, non-producing (except the Defense industry), faltering economy.

Remember a little over a year ago, the media said the U.S. was going to train the FSA (Free Syrian Army) in Jordan? It’s my contention that we armed and trained “ISIS” in the eastern desert of Jordan. And it wouldn’t surprise me if it was Blackwater/ Xe/ Academi (whatever they’ve changed their name to this week) who did the training.

How is ISIS funded? Where do they get their oil? Their arms? How do they manage logistically? Supply lines, etc.?

Of course we’re told they stole U.S. weaponry from Iraqi Army bases in northern Iraq, and that they robbed banks in Mosul (lol). How convenient. Now no one will raise an eyebrow when they see “ISIS” in humvees and shooting M-16s, and not question their funding.

If “ISIS” is as we’ve been told, why didn’t we bomb the holy hell out of them as they drove south from Mosul along the highway toward Baghdad in one, long convoy. We’ve been shown those photos by the media. I’m sure those photos were meant to elicit a feeling of desperation and fear in the American public, but to any thinking, rational, logical person it begged the question: Why aren’t we bombing that “ISIS” convoy like we bombed the retreating Iraqi Army in 1991 on the highway from Kuwait back to Iraq?!

Why? For the same reason “Pentagon lawyers” shut down Able Danger after Lt. Col. Shaffer’s team identified Mohammed Atta and several other “terrorists” in 2000. For the same reason western intelligence knew of Bin Laden’s 10-day stay for medical treatment at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001.

And that reason is: Why would the U.S. eliminate the very boogeyman it created? That boogeyman is needed to serve it’s psychological purpose as scapegoat.

Here’s Why


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Britain Poised to Muzzle 'Extremist' Speech

The country that gave us free expression may be backpedaling.

Brendan O'Neill | November 8, 2014

http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/08/britain-poised-to-silence-extremist-spee

In Britain, if you have extreme views on anything from Western democracy to women's role in public life, you might soon require a licence from the government before you can speak in public. Seriously.

Nearly 350 years after us Brits abolished the licensing of the press, whereby every publisher had to get the blessing of the government before he could press and promote his ideas, a new system of licensing is being proposed. And it's one which, incredibly, is even more tyrannical than yesteryear's press licensing since it would extend to individuals, too, potentially forbidding ordinary citizens from opening their gobs in public without officialdom's say-so.

It's the brainchild of Theresa May, the Home Secretary in David Cameron's government. May wants to introduce "extremism disruption orders", which, yes, are as terrifyingly authoritarian as they sound.

Last month, May unveiled her ambition to "eliminate extremism in all its forms." Whether you're a neo-Nazi or an Islamist, or just someone who says things which betray, in May's words, a lack of "respect for the rule of law" and "respect for minorities", then you could be served with an extremism disruption order (EDO).

Strikingly, EDOs will target even individuals who do not espouse or promote violence, which is already a crime in the U.K. As May says, "The problem that we have had is this distinction of saying we will only go after you if you are an extremist that directly supports violence. [This] has left the field open for extremists who know how not to step over the line." How telling that a leading British politician should be snotty about "this distinction" between speech and violence, between words and actions, which isn't actually some glitch in the legal system, as she seems to think, but rather is the foundation stone on which every free, democratic society ought to be built.

Once served with an EDO, you will be banned from publishing on the Internet, speaking in a public forum, or appearing on TV. To say something online, including just tweeting or posting on Facebook, you will need the permission of the police. There will be a "requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web, social media or print." That is, you will effectively need a licence from the state to speak, to publish, even to tweet, just as writers and poets did in the 1600s before the licensing of the press was swept away and modern, enlightened Britain was born (or so we thought).

What sort of people might find themselves branded "extremists" and thus forbidden from speaking in public? Anyone, really. The definition of extremist being bandied about by May and her colleagues is so sweeping that pretty much all individuals with outré or edgy views could potentially find themselves served with an EDO and no longer allowed to make any public utterance without government approval.

So you won't have to incite violence to be labelled an extremist —in May's words, these extremism-disrupting orders will go "beyond terrorism." May says far-right activists and Islamist hotheads who have not committed any crime or incited violence could be served with an order to shut the hell up. She has also talked about people who think "a woman's intellect [is] deficient," or who have "denounced people on the basis of their religious beliefs," or who have "rejected democracy"—these folk, too, could potentially be branded extremists and silenced. In short, it could become a crime punishable by gagging to be a sexist or a religion-hater or someone who despises democracy.

Never mind violence, you won't even have to incite hatred in order to be judged an extremist. As one newspaper report sums it up, the aim is "to catch not just those who spread or incite hatred," but anyone who indulges in "harmful activities" that could cause "public disorder" or "alarm or distress" or a "threat to the functioning of democracy." (By "harmful activities", the government really means "harmful words"—there's that Orwellian slip again.) This is such a cynically flabby definition of extremism that it could cover any form of impassioned, angry political or moral speech, much of which regularly causes "alarm or distress" to some of the people who hear it.

As some Christian campaigners recently pointed out, they are frequently accused by their opponents of being "extremists" and of "spreading hatred" simply for opposing gay marriage and taking other traditional stances. Will they potentially be silenced for saying extreme things and causing distress? It's not beyond the realms of possibility, given that May has said that anyone who wants to avoid being thought of as an extremist should "respect British values and institutions" and express "respect for minorities." Slamming gay marriage could very well be read as disrespect for a British institution (gay marriage was legalised here this year) and disrespect for a minority.

What the government is proposing is the punishment of thoughtcrimes, plain and simple. Its insistence that officialdom must now move beyond policing violence and incitements to violence and start clamping down on hotheaded, "harmful" speech that simply distresses people is about colonising the world of thought, of speech, of mere intellectual interaction between individuals—spheres officialdom has no business in policing.

But self-styled progressives, members of the left and those who consider themselves liberal, don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to challenging May's tyrannical proposals. For it is was their own arguments, their claims over the past decade that "hate speech" is dangerous and must be controlled and curbed, that gave legitimacy to May's vast silencing project, that inflamed the government's belief that it has the right to police heated minds and not just heated behaviour.

For the best part of two decades, so-called progressives have been spreading fear about the impact of dodgy words and dangerous ideas on the fabric of society. On campuses, in academia, in public life, they've continually pushed the notion that words hurt, that they cause terrible psychic damage, especially to vulnerable groups, wrecking people's self-esteem and making individuals feel worthless. From Britain's student-union officials who have banned Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' in the name of protecting "students' wellbeing" to feminists who have demanded (and won) the arrest and imprisonment of misogynistic trolls, a climate of intolerance towards testy and vulgar speech has already been created in Britain, and the government is merely milking it.

May's proposal to set up a system of licensing for speech, essentially to provide a license to those who respect British values and deny it to those who don't, is the ugly, authoritarian endpoint to the mad obsession with hate speech that has enveloped much of the Western world in recent years.

We should defend extremists. Extremism can be good. I'm an extremist, especially on freedom of speech, which I don't think should ever be limited. Extremists enliven public debate; they sex it up, stir it up, forcing us all to rethink our outlooks and attitudes and sometimes to change our minds. A world without extremists would be conformist and dull and spiritually and intellectually dead.

Let's remember the words of the 17th-century poet John Milton in his impassioned argument against those authorities that last tried to license public expression: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties." Guess what was said about Milton after he said those words? Yep, he was called an extremist.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
(PHOTO) Man Refuses to Perform Nazi Salute, 1936 - Hamburg, Germany

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2982249/posts

August Landmesser (born May 24, 1910; missing and presumed dead Oct 17, 1944; declared dead in 1949) was a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, best known for his appearance in a photograph refusing to perform the Nazi salute at the launch of the naval training vessel Horst Wessel on 13 June 1936.

August Landmesser was the only child of August Franz Landmesser and Wilhelmine Magdalene (née Schmidtpott). He joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1931 in hope of getting a job. When he became engaged to the Jewish woman Irma Eckler in 1935, he was expelled from the party. They registered to be married in Hamburg, but the Nuremberg Laws enacted a month later prevented it.

On October 29, 1935, their first daughter Ingrid was born. In 1937, they tried to flee to Denmark but Landmesser was arrested and it became known that Irma Eckler was pregnant and expecting another daughter.

Landmesser was charged and found guilty of "dishonoring the race" under Nazi racial laws in July 1937. Landmesser argued that neither he nor Eckler knew that she was fully Jewish, and he was acquitted on May 27, 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence. Landmesser and Eckler publicly continued their relationship, and on July 15, 1938 he was arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in the concentration camp Börgermoor.

Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to a second daughter Irene. From there she was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp, then the Lichtenburg concentration camp for women, and then the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. Their children were initially taken to the city orphanage. Ingrid was later allowed to live with her maternal grandmother; Irene went to the home of foster parents in 1941. After her grandmother's death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster parents. A few letters came from Irma Eckler until January 1942. It is believed that she was brought to the so-called Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed; she was pronounced dead in 1949, with a date of April 28, 1942.

Landmesser was discharged from prison on 19 January 1941. Landmesser worked as a foreman for the firm Püst, a haulage company. The company had a branch at the Heinkel-Werke (factory) in Warnemünde. In February 1944 he was drafted into a penal battalion, the 999th Fort Infantry Battalion. He was declared missing in action and presumably killed during fighting in Croatia on October 17, 1944. He was declared dead in 1949, with an effective date of August 1 that year. The marriage of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler was recognized retroactively by the Senate of Hamburg in the summer of 1951, and in the autumn of that year Ingrid assumed the surname Landmesser. Irene continued to use the surname Eckler.

- Wikipedia


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Bill Hicks - It's Just A Ride

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlrKW7fh_Bo


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
As you have all (I hope) surmised by now the UK government is becoming increasingly desperate to cover-up the extensive inhumane crimes of the establishment, which will see every single one of them who has served evil going to prison for the rest of their natural lives on this planet.

Nuremberg Trials 2 is on the horizon for them and with every sunrise moves closer...

They cannot paint the 9/11 or 7/7 truth movements as terrorists because we are not terrorists, we are professionals and truthists who simply point out the lies with persistent and incontestable proof.

As the dog poet would say:

'As long as certain twisted souls feel the need to lie, cheat and murder to achieve their ends some of us need to keep pointing it out.......' - Visible

I have no doubt that I will be served with an "extremist disruption order" when they make it legal to silence peaceful justified dissent. An EDO is surely better than being targeted for assassination, is it not ? Hmmm...

The reason they have to go this route is because they could never convince the public that I, or my fellow men that stand for the truth, are terrorists. Many people know me, many people know you, and none of them would say you are a terrorist.. would they ?

We do not organise protests, we do not join "extremist organisations", we do not advocate violence as the solution to the problem; in fact we champion the opposite of extremism and simply ask for an honest and open investigation into terrorist events that have changed the course of planet Earth's journey, and is based upon rigorous scientific proof.

At some point in the future I will be gone, one way or another. What matters to me is that you remember that Robert Ian Mason stood; against tyranny, with everything he had. I stand with Everyman that would be free from tyranny.

I do not have the same luxury as Udo Ulfkotte, I have dependant children. Being a father does not make the decision to stand any more difficult, it just makes it more painful in every moment. I cry sometimes because of it, but I stand.

My generation is the last generation with the choice to stand, the next generation will not get a choice, it will be over; and if we do not stand now.. Everyman standing together as brothers and sisters in the face of tyranny, united as one, the chance will be gone.

I cannot make you stand, but I can show you that I stood.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
The Best of Bill Hicks: You Can't Handle The Truth!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT-DGRhsQd8

William Melvin "Bill" Hicks (December 16, 1961 -- February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician. His material largely consisted of general discussions about society, religion, politics, philosophy, and personal issues. Hicks's material was often controversial and steeped in dark comedy. In both his stand-up performances and during interviews, he often criticized consumerism, superficiality, mediocrity, and banality within the media and popular culture, describing them as oppressive tools of the ruling class, meant to "keep people stupid and apathetic".


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
ISIS Psyop Final Phase - Prolonging the Existence of ISIS

Bernie Suarez
Activist Post - Tuesday, November 11, 2014

http://www.activistpost.com/2014/11/isis-psyop-final-phase-prolonging.html

Those of us who are truth seekers marching through life with an everyday understanding of longstanding government false flag operations, corruption, stated global plans and strategies, live in a much easier and clearer world than our counterpart brainwashed, naive, TV and mainstream media-indoctrinated zombies.

Yes, at this point in history, given the information age and the broad worldwide awakening to the new world order plans, we can now definitively declare not only the manifestation of our conscious existence but concomitantly we can pinpoint the manifestation of those who are the exact opposite of who we are; that is, those who are asleep in the matrix and believe mainstream media propaganda and the lies that the sheep are told every day.

There is something special about mainstream media CIA-controlled news that is important to point out. I've alluded to this in previous articles but it's very important to mention again here. The idea of mainstream media acting as a deceptive government mouthpiece is something most if not all of my readers are widely familiar with. However, it is important to underscore that mainstream media news, like the moving spiral of a hypnotic presentation, is always moving. In other words, if mainstream media actually stopped for even one day, it would begin to lose its effect immediately, and the control system knows this. The power of CIA-controlled mainstream media hypnosis comes in the fact that mainstream media news is ongoing. You get hit with one story, then another, then another, and another and so on. The motion of stories never ends. This moving quality of story-delivery is powerful and carries a hypnotic effect.

Let me be more specific.

When your brain hears one story about ISIS, if that story stood alone eventually your brain would start questioning the story if it didn't have enough weight of evidence to it. However, given the same amount of non-evidence, if you keep the ISIS stories coming continuously, your brain starts wondering how improbable it is that ALL of the stories are untrue; therefore, the naive brain begins to accept that even if the first one or two stories weren't exactly true, then these next 50 stories can't all possibly be untrue.


With this example we can see that the motion of delivering continuous stories then begins to take root inside the mind of the naive mainstream media watcher until finally the person simply believes what they see. With this moving process of continuous lies the CIA is assured that mainstream media believers will eventually be lulled into the hypnotic state they want. Once the sheep are in a deep trance (probably within the first one or two months of repeatedly seeing ISIS stories in this example) the sheep will accept literally anything the CIA throws at them.

This final phase is exactly where we are in terms of the now historic 2014 American media ISIS psyop. This deep trance phase is the phase which will last a very long time, and its main purpose is to prolong the perceived existence of ISIS. During this long trance phase the only thing that matters is that ISIS never goes away. So no matter how powerful the U.S. military is and how powerful the military of all of its allies are, ISIS will never be and must never be defeated. ISIS must live on somehow in this long-term final psyop phase.

From an Intelligence standpoint the creators of the ISIS script need to be creative in generating stories about ISIS that makes it appear as though they are invincible, invisible, have impeccable intelligence, demonstrate super counter-surveillance, are masters of the Internet and alternate communication, are wildly evasive and untraceable, are mobile, clever, quick, ultra-strategic and full of masterful military tactical surprises.

Prolonging the ISIS psyop doesn't end there. It is imperative to push ISIS out of the news for long periods of time so we can expect this next year (2015). Pushing ISIS out of the news for repeated chunks of time will buy the globalists plenty of time to regroup and create more plans with ISIS. This can be easily accomplished by simply focusing on new stories. The media needs no practice with this; think to yourself right now ... whatever happened to MH370?? Or MH17 for that matter??

In order to prolong the ISIS psyop we can expect specific pieces of evidence to fall into the lap of our criminal government similar to the fake beheading videos that characterized the introductory phase of the ISIS psyop. Perhaps they will find "new" videos of ISIS warriors beheading new journalists or Christians. Perhaps they (CIA/Mossad) will hit the studios for a high production value scene which could be indoors or outdoors. Perhaps they will go for the full blood and guts effect instead of cutting to black before showing a Photoshopped head on top of a body. Perhaps they will unleash a pack of new ISIS captured criminals who will "confess" to committing crimes against America.

There is no way to tell what direction the CIA/Mossad will take the ISIS psyop, but in order to do whatever they want to do they will need time. Time is the most important factor right now because no one is asking the obvious questions: Given how small ISIS is and how powerful the U.S. military and its allies are, why does ISIS still exist?? Other questions are not being asked like: How is ISIS managing to exist without food and water? If they do have food supply who then is supplying ISIS with food and water? Where are they getting their new ammunition? Who is cleaning their weapons? Weapons that are not regularly maintained and properly cleaned do not fire properly, remember? Soldiers without food don't have energy to fight so who is running the ISIS supply department and why is their supply not cut off by now? The simple questions that blow open and expose the ISIS psyop go on and on and on. I asked many of these simple questions in my article months ago - How is ISIS getting on the Internet? Who is hosting their account? How do they have a production department and who does their programming and editing? Where are these fancy facilities located and why was their power and communication not cut off a long time ago?

If ISIS gets a flat tire where do they fix it? Why and how do they have the time and space to live so comfortably while waging supposed wars on multiple fronts against the world's greatest military of all time and still easily survive and carry on strong? Who's teaching ISIS? Where (according to the CIA-controlled mainstream media new world order mouthpiece) is ISIS training? Where do they train to fire howitzers and tanks? How about flying planes?? Our CIA-controlled media has no answers for any of these questions. They just want you to think that ISIS simply came about from secret anonymous funding. The U.S. weapons are supposed to be magically "stolen" and the endless supply of ammunition simply found randomly.

At this point in history (November 2014) the ISIS psyop is becoming a story for the ages. I encourage all truth seekers to keep a tight watch on ISIS and the tales the CIA and the globalists have in store for us. Please do whatever you can to expose this final phase of the psyop; and by that I mean the perceived prolongation of their very existence. In order to prolong the existence of ISIS the CIA will likely have to put out many stories of others "joining" ISIS so that ISIS comes across as a "growing" group instead of a dwindling group of untrained young men running around with covered faces.

The ISIS psyop may very well be forever - or at least a very long time - and those of us who have narrated the ISIS tale from the minute they were made global stars by our mass media late this summer have an obligation to narrate the truth about ISIS as it happens in real-time. Future generations deserve to know the truth about the creation and the prolongation of the ISIS psyop and we have an obligation to provide that narrative.

So let's keep watchful of all their moves and be aware of where we stand historically. ISIS is a creation of and for the new world order globalist gangsters. ISIS has a love relationship with Israel and we can expect that they will only be used to help the U.S. expand their global wars while at the same time help the globalists continue to expand their domination, power and tyranny in the U.S. over American citizens. Once you understand these two major goals you will understand why ISIS will not attack Israel, yet they supposedly are willing to travel magically all the way from the Middle East to the United States just to blow up American targets.

Face it, ISIS is the perfect tool for the globalists and anyone going along with the ISIS psyop is naively supporting the globalists and their plans for world domination. Until we can solve our problems by dissolving the Federal Reserve criminal banking system and stop funding the U.S. Department of Defense that pays to arm and equip organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda, we will not be able to stop this madness. Hopefully a solution is near; until then. let us do what we can to spread the awareness and information like this that leads to ideological resistance. With enough awareness I believe we can change this horrific road that we are on. We have what it takes to put an end to this psychopathic madness that the globalists have created with the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others. We must remain strong and vigilant and hope that enough people see what is happening and impose their will on this system, which is now the greatest threat to humanity.

If you believe and understand this message, share it with someone and let's hope that the prolongation of the ISIS psyop becomes their own undoing. Let us be creative in finding ways to derail their plans and expose their lies. Let's use every technique we can think of including art, poetry, articles, music, films, documentaries, comedy, rallies, petitions, online campaigns, books, blogs, personal creative projects and anything else you can think of to expose their plans.

In the end, remember this is not just about the ISIS psyop, this is a battle for humanity, truth, justice, morality, reason, dignity, integrity and honor. We WILL win this information war, which is not just about information but a spiritual and psychological overall human survival war. A war that only we are capable of truly winning since the control system doesn't have a conscience or spirit as a driving force the way that we do. Let yourself ponder on this for a minute...

Bernie Suarez is an activist, critical thinker, radio host, musician, M.D, Veteran, lover of freedom and the Constitution, and creator of the Truth and Art TV project. He also has a background in psychology and highly recommends that everyone watch a documentary titled The Century of the Self. Bernie has concluded that the way to defeat the New World Order is to truly be the change that you want to see. Manifesting the solution and putting truth into action is the very thing that will defeat the globalists.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Obama's Secret Deals With Saudi Arabia & Qatar

What's Behind Lower Gas-Prices and the Bombings of Syria and of Eastern Ukraine: Obama Represents U.S. & Arabic Aristocracies, Against Those of Russia & Iran

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40162.htm

By Eric Zuesse

        (The following report reconstructs U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy, on the basis of what I have deemed to be reliable news accounts of his Administration's actions, not of its mere words. This reconstruction is grounded in the linked-to news-sources, all of which I have investigated and verified -- and some of which I wrote. The ones that I wrote are themselves sourced to the links within those reports, all of which I have, likewise, personally checked and verified. Consequently, the chain of verifications back to this reconstruction's primary sources is available to any online reader, and every reader is encouraged to track back to its ultimate source any allegation that might appear to be at all questionable to him or her in the present article. Not only will this exercise be helpful to the reader concerning that given point at question, but it will open that person to an associated world of deeper discovery, which I hope that this news-report and analysis will do for many readers, and which is the reason I wrote it: so as to share with others what I and other careful and cautious researchers have discovered, though it might be, in some instances, starkly at variance with what our Government, and most of the press, have been more commonly presenting as ‘truth' about these matters. At least, this exercise will provide an alternative frame of reference regarding these issues, an alternative possibility to consider, and which I have verified, from every root to every branch, in this tree of historical reconstruction of the events.)

INTRODUCTION:

November 07, 2014 "ICH" - Why is the Ukrainian Government, which the U.S. supports, bombing the pro-Russian residents who live in Ukraine's own southeast?

Why is the American Government, which aims to oust Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad, bombing his main enemy, ISIS?

I find that both bombings are different parts of the same Obama-initiated business-operation, in which the American aristocracy, Saudi aristocracy, and Qatari aristocracy, work together, to grab dominance over supplying energy to the world's biggest energy-market, Europe, away from Russia, which currently is by far Europe's largest energy-supplier.

Here are the actual percentage-figures on that: Russia supplies 38%, #2 Norway (the only European nation among the top 15) supplies 18%, and all other countries collectively supply a grand total of 44%. That's it; that's all -- in the world's largest energy-market. Russia is the lone giant. But U.S. President Obama's team want to change that. (Unfortunately, the residents in southeastern Ukraine are being bombed and driven out to become refugees in Russia , as an essential part of this operation to choke off Russia's gas-supply to Europe.)

Obama has initiated, and is leading, this international aristocratic team, consisting of the U.S. aristocracy and Sunni Moslem aristocracies -- the Saudi and the Qatari royal families -- to choke off Russia's economic lifeblood from those European energy sales, and to transfer lots of this business, via new oil and gas pipeline contracts and new international trade-deals, over to the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Those royals, in turn, are assisting Obama in the overthrow of the key Russia-allied leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, who has performed an indispensable role in blocking any such massive expansion of Saudi and Qatari energy-traffic into Europe, and who has thus been a vital protector of Russia's dominance in the European energy-market.

America's aristocracy would be benefited in many ways from this changeover to Europe's increasing dependence upon those Sunni Moslem nations, which have long been allied with U.S. oil companies, and away from the Shiite Moslem nation of Iran, and from its key backer, Russia.

The most important way that America's aristocrats would benefit would be the continuance, for the indefinite future, of the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency, in which energy and energy-futures are traded. The Sunni nations are committed to continued dominance of the dollar, and Wall Street depends on that continuance. It's also one of the reasons the U.S. Treasury's sales of U.S. Federal debt around the world have been as successful as they are. This also provides essential support to the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Furthermore, Obama's effort to force the European Union to weaken their anti-global-warming standards so as to allow European imports of oil from the exceptionally carbon-gas-generating Athabasca Canada tar sands -- which are approximately 40% owned by America's Koch brothers, the rest owned by other U.S. and allied oil companies -- would likewise reduce Europe's current dependency upon Russian energy sources, at the same time as it would directly benefit U.S. energy-producers. Obama has been working hard for those oil companies to become enabled to sell such oil into Europe .

And, finally, the extension of U.S. fracking technology into Ukraine, and perhaps ultimately even into some EU nations, where it has been strongly resisted, might likewise reduce the enormous flow of European cash into Russian Government coffers to pay for Russian gas (which doesn't even require fracking).

In other words, the wars in both Syria and Ukraine are being fought basically in order to grab the European energy market, away from Russia, somewhat in the same way (though far more violently) as Iran's share of that market was previously grabbed away by means of the U.S.-led sanctions against that country. The current bombing campaigns in both Syria and Ukraine are directed specifically against Iran's chief ally, Russia.

First, will be discussed here the bombing-campaign against Iran's and Russia's ally Assad in Syria; then against the residents of the ethnic-Russian areas of Ukraine.

SYRIA:

As the articles that are headlined below document, there has been proposed, in order to promote   Russian gas flowing into Europe, an eastbound Iran-Iraq-Syria-Turkey-Europe gas pipeline (but sanctions stopped that); and there was also proposed, in order to undercut   Russian gas flowing into Europe, a northbound Qatar-Saudi-Jordan-Syria-Turkey-Europe gas pipeline -- those being two different and competing ways of supplying gas into Europe.

Russia's ally Syria is crucial to both   proposed pipelines, which means that Assad has needed to be overthrown in order for the northbound pipeline from Qatar to be constructed and so to compete against Russia's gas-supplies to Europe.

There have also been some differences between the Saudi and Qatari royal families as regards their motives for removing the Shiite Assad from leading Syria. Qatar's royals ( and also Turkey's aristocrats ) want him to be replaced by an anti-Iranian, Sunni Moslem Brotherhood leader (the type of person that Obama  euphemistically calls by such terms as ‘moderate Moslems' though they were hardly that in Egypt once they gained power there ). Qatar's royals have protected themselves from being overthrown by fundamentalist Moslems; they've done it especially by supporting the Moslem Brotherhood as a means of displaying their own loyalty to Moslem clerics. (The public trusts the clerics, but doesn't trust the aristocrats; and, like everywhere, aristocrats obtain their perceived ‘legitimacy' from the local clergy, whom aristocrats buy-off with special favors.) The Moslem Brotherhood want to control Syria, and would love to approve a gas pipeline from Qatar through Syria to Europe, to reward their chief benefactor, Qatar's royals. As for the Saudi royals, they want Assad to be replaced by an anti-Iranian, Sunni ISIS leader, who will represent the Sauds' Wahhabist sect in Islam, which provides Saudi royals their   ‘legitimacy.' (Saudi royals say they don't like Al Qaeda and ISIS, but that's said mainly for public consumption in the West.) Right now, Saudi Arabia supplies less than 5% of Europe's energy, which is a mere one-eighth of what Russia does. So: each of these two royal families relies primarily upon a different category of Islamists. Obama prefers the ‘moderate' Muslim Brotherhood to the extremist ISIS, but Saudi royals accept his having that preference, because any way to weaken Iran and its backer Russia is fine with them, especially since it would open wide the enormous European market for their oil.

Other internal conflicts also exist within Obama's team. For example, an expert on these matters, Felix Imonti, explained to me in a personal communication, that, “Qatar ... abandoned the [pipeline] plan in 2010 for a very simple reason. Saudi Arabia will not permit a pipeline to be constructed across its territory. Qatar is interested along with Turkey in installing a MB government in Syria. ... The Saudi objective is to drive out the Iranians from Syria.” The Saudis' “objective was to establish a Wahhabi based [fundamentalist Moslem] state that would include western Iraq with Syria,” which, of course, is what ISIS is all about. Imonti also says: “Egypt [except for the brief time when it was controlled by the MB] is a bought puppet of Saudi Arabia. The Egyptians are bombing Qatari groups in Libya.” That Egyptian action is indirectly a Saudi attack against the Qatari royals' own support-base. These issues between the two royal families are like squabbles within a family: more is shared in common than splits them apart. Obama's decisions are often determinative on such matters.

So, America's aristocracy supports both the Saudi and the Qatari aristocracies, despite their disagreements, in order to defeat the aristocracies in Russia, China, and the other “BRIC” countries.

Or, as President Obama's speech at West Point, on 28 May 2014 , propagandized for this view on the part of America's aristocracy: "Russia's aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China's economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us.” So, Obama made clear to the graduating cadets that the BRIC countries are the enemy, from the standpoint of America's aristocracy. Ours want to crush the aristocrats in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Though it's alright for those other countries to produce more, that's true only if American aristocrats control the local ones, like in any other international empire -- not   if the local aristocrats there do. Similarly, for example, the British Empire didn't wish for local aristocrats in India to be in control, but only for those client aristocrats to be of use . Obama added, placing a nationalistic coloration on his promotion of America's empire: “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.” He promised to keep it that way: “That has been true for the century passed [sp.: past [[somebody at the White House didn't know the difference between ‘past' and ‘passed']] and it will be true for the century to come.”

An important asset of the American aristocracy happens to be shale-gas-fracking technology, which is overwhelmingly owned by America's aristocrats . Though Qatar is a major gas-producer, it has no need for fracking, and so is merely a gas-competitor in that regard, but they do share America's pro-Sunni, anti-Assad goal, and also America's anti-Russian goal. Although Qatar ships most of its gas into Asia, they'd like to have some way to pipe it more nearby, into Europe, to undercut Russia's Gazprom. And that's why the U.S. is working with Qatar to bump Assad from Syria.

The Saudis are actually doing the most of all to defeat Russia, by driving oil prices down so low as to upset Russia's economic plans, which have been based upon minimum $100/barrel projections. We're already around 10% below that. As Imonti writes, “The Saudis can sustain these lower prices for seven or eight years while drawing on their foreign reserves to cover the deficits. They could very well be trying to break the fracking business in the U.S. that has high production costs. [Of course, America's gas aristocrats won't like that, but Obama has to balance multiple sub-constituencies, including Qatar's royals.] They might also be directing the target towards Russia that supports Assad and Iran. They could be doing all of the above with one action.” If the Sauds keep this up “for seven or eight years,” then Russia will be hit a lot harder than Russia is being hit, or is likely to be hit, by any economic sanctions.

Qatar has been the main funder of the overthrow-Assad movement, for the Moslem Brotherhood; and Saudi Arabia has been the main funder of the overthrow-Assad movement, for ISIS. Both are Sunni organizations. However, Qatar has also funded ISIS. Obama, when he decided to bomb ISIS, was acting on behalf of America's aristocrats, but Saudi and Qatari aristocrats might have felt differently about it. He possessed the freedom to do this, which those aristocrats don't have, because everyone in the Islamic world knows that Obama is no Moslem; everyone understands that America is in a permanent state of war against fundamentalist Islam of all sorts. Only Moslem aristocrats need the approval of Islamic fundamentalists. In America, aristocrats don't even need the approval of Christian fundamentalists, the type of fundamentalists that might be able to threaten their authority in the West (since the West is predominantly Christian, not Moslem). And the same is true regarding Jewish aristocrats in Israel: aristocrats fear only their local majority clergy. That's basic survival-knowledge for aristocrats, anywhere, in order to be able to get the public to accept the rightfulness of the aristocracy itself there.

So, ISIS gets money from  the aristocracies of Saud, and of Qatar (and also, more recently, of Kuwait)  -- whatever is needed, in order for those aristocrats to retain the loyalty of their local clerics, and thus their public. It's like aristocrats do in every country, getting “God's approval” of their wealth, by throwing a few coins to the preacher, the local mouthpiece for “God,” thus relying upon the public's trust in clergy. Even Mafia aristocrats do it. That has been the way of conservatism for millennia; it's the way conservatism works. In more-recent centuries, a modified version of that trick has grown up, as liberalism, in which the aristocrats' validation comes instead from scholars, and so aristocrats throw a few coins to them, instead of to clerics. But it's no different -- it's authoritarianism, equally in either case. It's purchased authority. Aristocrats don't really fear the clergy, nor the scholars: they actually fear the public, such as what happened during the French Revolution, and during the Russian Revolution. But that's another story altogether, going back millennia, actually.

The recent bombings in Syria, and in Ukraine, are a business-operation being carried out as a war (and also very profitable for U.S. armaments-makers, who likewise are controlled by America's aristocrats and so this is a double-whammy for America's aristocracy -- and U.S. arms-makers have consequently been soaring on the stock market). It's basically a grab by U.S. and Sunni aristocrats, from Russian and Shiite aristocrats, of the market to supply oil and gas into Europe. And it provides other advantages, too, for U.S. aristocrats.

Natural gas, especially of the non-fracked variety, is generally regarded as the bridge-fuel to get our planet to being able to survive long-term while fusion and renewable forms of energy come online as cost-competitive. Fracking is, as has been mentioned, an American technology, but it's widely resisted even within American-allied nations. The U.S. Government can impose it upon the American people, because they are trusting in ‘free enterprise,' but other governments are having a hard time trying to impose it on theirs. That public resistance in Europe is giving protection to the gas-import markets there; and this has benefited Russia, their major existing gas-supplier.

Russia has  the world's largest proven reserves of natural gas , and that's without their even needing to use fracking-techniques in order to get at it. #2 Iran has 69% as much gas, and is allied with Russia, and it also doesn't frack. But sanctions close them out of Europe. Then #3 Qatar, at 47%, is allied with U.S. oil companies, but has no need to frack. Then #4 Turkmenistan, 37%, is allied with Russia, and also doesn't frack. Then #5 U.S., 20%, is allied with U.S. oil companies, and only fracks. Then #6 Saudi Arabia, 17%, is also allied with U.S. oil companies, and doesn't need to frack.

The European Union bans fracking, because they have environmentally-concerned publics. But U.S. and other Western corporate-owned oil companies want to frack gas in Europe, just as they do in America; and the new Ukrainian Government is desperate enough to want their land to be fracked.

UKRAINE:

The main shale-gas (fracking) field in Ukraine is Yuzivska, right in the middle of the Donbass region, where the residents don't want fracking and don't want U.S. rule (which includes fracking). Furthermore, the people there reject the legitimacy of the  Obama coup in Ukraine this year in February , and of its subsequent  rulers of Ukraine , who have been  bombing them , because  90% of the voters in that region had voted for the pro-Russian President whom Obama had overthrown , and because the new, anti-Russian, regime doesn't want those people to stay (or at least  to stay alive ) in Ukraine, because otherwise that post-coup regime would become ousted if any nationwide election would ever again be held throughout Ukraine. This tactic of killing unwanted voters is a variant of what the Republican Party does in the U.S., simply trimming the voter-rolls in order to create a more-favorable “voting public.” Except that it's being done in Ukraine by bombs and bullets , rather than by limiting or restricting ballots.

“The West,” or the allies of Sunni aristocrats, are now bombing intensively, both in Ukraine and in Syria; and, in both instances, the argument for the bombings is to spread “democracy” there. It's giving a bad name to ‘democracy,' to anyone who misbelieves that this is it.

BACK AGAIN TO SYRIA:

Below are the main sources that describe the Middle Eastern part of this Obama-Putin power-struggle, that is the part in Syria instead of in Ukraine. This is how international business is actually carried out – it's a perfect libertarian world, since there is no international government; this market is unregulated to so extreme an extent that even ethnic cleansings and mass-murders go unpunished -- it's a pure free market, which operates on an international scale (the only scale where libertarianism exists in even nearly this pure a form); this libertarianism is an exemplar of the conservative ideal: pure liberty for aristocrats, total lack of accountability . If anything, Barack Obama might be even more of a conservative than was George W. Bush: under Obama, the IRS specifically allows blatantly illegal tax-evasion by the mega-rich to go uninvestigated and unpunished, and concentrates virtually all its resources on pursuing two-bit tax-cheats. That's what ‘democracy' has come to in America. In America's client-states, such as in the Middle East and (since February) in Ukraine, it's even worse.

The first of these articles explains why the price of oil has been plunging, and who has been behind that:

---

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/10/24/the-secret-stupid-saudi-us-deal-on-syria/

"The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria"

WILLIAM ENGDAHL | OCTOBER 24, 20143 COMMENTS

The Kerry-Abdullah Secret Deal & An Oil-Gas Pipeline War

---

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-10/why-oil-plunging-other-part-secret-deal-between-us-and-saudi-arabia

"Why Oil Is Plunging: The Other Part Of The "Secret Deal" Between The US And Saudi Arabia"

Tyler Durden on 10/11/2014 18:19 -0400

… [Excerpt:] Today's Brent closing price: $90. Russia's oil price budget for the period 2015-2017? $100. Which means much more "forced Brent liquidation" is in the cards in the coming weeks as America's suddenly once again very strategic ally, Saudi Arabia, does everything in its power to break Putin. [Note: The Russian Government's fiscal projections were based on $100/barrel, but the Saudi-forced-down price was now $89/barrel. How long would Saudis and Qataris keep this up? And how long would Assad hold off ISIS? Big bets are being made on both.]



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-25/look-inside-secret-deal-saudi-arabia-unleashed-syrian-bombing

"A Look Inside The Secret Deal With Saudi Arabia That Unleashed The Syrian Bombing"

Tyler Durden on 09/25/2014 10:17 -0400

… [Excerpt:] Said otherwise, the pound of flesh demanded by Saudi Arabia to "bless" US airstrikes and make them appear as an act of some coalition, is the removal of the Assad regime. Why? So that, as we also explained last year, the holdings of the great Qatar natural gas fields can finally make their way onward to Europe, which incidentally is also America's desire -- what better way to punish Putin for his recent actions than by crushing the main leverage the Kremlin has over Europe?



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-27/meet-saudi-arabias-bandar-bin-sultan-puppetmaster-behind-syrian-war

" Meet Saudi Arabia's Bandar bin Sultan: The Puppetmaster Behind The Syrian War"

Tyler Durden on 08/27/2013 15:21 -0400

… [Excerpt:] Of course, there is Syria:

Regarding the Syrian issue, the Russian president responded to Bandar, saying, “Our stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters. During the Geneva I Conference, we agreed with the Americans on a package of understandings, and they agreed that the Syrian regime will be part of any settlement. Later on, they decided to renege on Geneva I. In all meetings of Russian and American experts, we reiterated our position. In his upcoming meeting with his American counterpart John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will stress the importance of making every possible effort to rapidly reach a political settlement to the Syrian crisis so as to prevent further bloodshed.”

Alas, that has failed.

So what are some of the stunning disclosures by the Saudis?

Bandar told Putin, “There are many common values and goals that bring us together, most notably the fight against terrorism and extremism all over the world. Russia, the US, the EU and the Saudis agree on promoting and consolidating international peace and security. The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya. ... As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory's direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria's political future.”



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-08/putin-laughs-saudi-offer-betray-syria-exchange-huge-arms-deal

"Putin Laughs At Saudi Offer To Betray Syria In Exchange For ‘Huge' Arms Deal"

Tyler Durden on 08/08/2013 11:20 -0400



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-16/mystery-sponsor-weapons-and-money-syrian-rebels-revealed

"Mystery Sponsor Of Weapons And Money To Syrian Mercenary ‘Rebels' Revealed"

Tyler Durden on 05/16/2013 19:12 -0400

... [Excerpt:] So there you have it: Qatar doing everything it can to promote bloodshed, death and destruction by using not Syrian rebels, but mercenaries: professional citizens who are paid handsomely to fight and kill members of the elected regime (unpopular as it may be), for what? So that the unimaginably rich emirs of Qatar can get even richer. Although it is not as if Russia is blameless: all it wants is to preserve its own strategic leverage over Europe by being the biggest external provider of natgas to the continent through its own pipelines. Should Nabucco come into existence, Gazpromia would be very, very angry and make far less money!



The final source will be posted here in full, because it goes closest to the reason for our bombing Syria:

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Qatar-Rich-and-Dangerous.html

"Qatar: Rich and Dangerous"

17 September 2012, by Felix Imonti

The first concern of the Emir of Qatar is the prosperity and security of the tiny kingdom. To achieve that, he knows no limits.

Stuck between Iran and Saudi Arabia is Qatar with the third largest natural gas deposit in the world. The gas gives the nearly quarter of a million Qatari citizens the highest per capita income on the planet and provides 70 percent of government revenue.

How does an extremely wealthy midget with two potentially dangerous neighbors keep them from making an unwelcomed visit? Naturally, you have someone bigger and tougher to protect you.

Of course, nothing is free. The price has been to allow the United States to have two military bases in a strategic location.  According to Wikileaks diplomatic cables, the Qataris are even paying sixty percent of the costs.

Having tanks and bunker busting bombs nearby will discourage military aggression, but it does nothing to curb the social tumult that has been bubbling for decades in the Middle Eastern societies. Eighty-four years ago, the Moslem Brotherhood arose in Egypt because of the presence of foreign domination by Great Britain and the discontent of millions of the teaming masses yearning to be free. Eighty-four years later, the teaming masses are still yearning.

Sixty-five percent of the people in the Middle East are under twenty-nine years of age. It is this desperate angry group that presents a danger that armies cannot stop. The cry for their dignity, “I am a man,” is the sound that sends terror through governments. It is this overwhelming force that the Emir of Qatar has been able to deflect.

A year after he deposed his father in 1995, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani established the Al-Jazeera television satellite news network. He invited some of the radical Salafi preachers that had been given sanctuary in Qatar to address the one and a half billion Moslems around the world. They had their electronic soapbox and the card to an ATM, but there was a price.

The price was silence. They could speak to the world and arouse the fury in Egypt or Libya, but they would have to leave their revolution outside of Qatar or the microphone would be switched off and the ATM would stop dispensing the good life.

The Moslem Brotherhood, that is a major force across the region, dissolved itself in Qatar in 1999. Jasim Sultan, a member of the former organization, explained that the kingdom was in compliance with Islamic law. He heads the state funded Awaken Project that publishes moderate political and philosophical literature.

How Qatar has benefited from networking with the Salafis is illustrated by the connections with Tunisia where Qatar is making a large investment in telecommunications. Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafiq Abdulsalaam was head of the Research and Studies Division in the Al Jazeera Centre in Doha. His father-in-law Al Ghanouchi is the head of the Tunisian Moslem Brotherhood party.

Over much of the time since he seized power, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani has followed the policy of personal networking, being proactive in business and neutral on the international stage. The Emir is generous with the grateful, the Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund bargains hard in the board room and the kingdom makes available Qatar's Good Offices to resolve disputes.

Qatar's foreign policy made an abrupt shift when the kingdom entered the war against Qaddafi. The kingdom sent aircraft to join NATO forces. On the ground, Qatari special forces armed, trained, and led Libyans against Qaddafi's troops.

The head of the National Transition Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil attributed much of the success of the revolution to the efforts of Qatar that he said had spent two billion dollars. He commented, “Nobody traveled to Qatar without being given a sum of money by the government.”

Qatar had ten billion dollars in investments in Libya to protect. The Barwa Real Estate Company alone had two billion committed to the construction of a beach resort near Tripoli.

While the bullets were still flying, Qatar signed eight billion dollars in agreements with the NTC. Just in case things with the NTC didn't work out, they financed rivals Abdel Hakim Belhaj, leader of the February 17 Martyr's Brigade, and Sheik Ali Salabi, a radical cleric who had been exiled in Doha.

If Qatar's investments of ten billion dollars seem substantial, the future has far more to offer. Reconstruction costs are estimated at seven hundred billion dollars. The Chinese and Russians had left behind between them thirty billion in incomplete contracts and investments and all of it is there for the taking for those who aided the revolution.

No sooner had Qaddafi been caught and shot, Qatar approached Bashar Al-Assad to establish a transitional government with the Moslem Brotherhood. As you would expect, relinquishing power to the Brotherhood was an offer that he could refuse. It didn't take long before he heard his sentence pronounced in January 2012 on the CBS television program, 60 Minutes by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

The Emir declared that foreign troops should be sent into Syria.  At the Friends of Syria conference in February, Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said, "We should do whatever necessary to help [the Syrian opposition], including giving them weapons to defend themselves."

Why would Qatar want to become involved in Syria where they have little invested? A map reveals that the kingdom is a geographic prisoner in a small enclave on the Persian Gulf coast.

It relies upon the export of LNG, because it is restricted by Saudi Arabia from building pipelines to distant markets.  In 2009, the proposal of a pipeline to Europe through Saudi Arabia and Turkey to the Nabucco pipeline was considered, but Saudi Arabia that is angered by its smaller and much louder brother has blocked any overland expansion.

Already the largest LNG producer, Qatar will not increase the production of LNG. The market is becoming glutted with eight new facilities in Australia coming online between 2014 and 2020.

A saturated North American gas market and a far more competitive Asian market leaves only Europe. The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income. Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas. Only Al-Assad is in the way.

Qatar along with the Turks would like to remove Al-Assad and install the Syrian chapter of the Moslem Brotherhood. It is the best organized political movement in the chaotic society and can block Saudi Arabia's efforts to install a more fanatical Wahhabi based regime. Once the Brotherhood is in power, the Emir's broad connections with Brotherhood groups throughout the region should make it easy for him to find a friendly ear and an open hand in Damascus.

A control centre has been established in the Turkish city of Adana near the Syrian border to direct the rebels against Al-Assad. Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud asked to have the Turks establish a joint Turkish, Saudi, Qatari operations center. “The Turks liked the idea of having the base in Adana so that they could supervise its operations” a source in the Gulf told Reuters.

The fighting is likely to continue for many more months, but Qatar is in for the long term. At the end, there will be contracts for the massive reconstruction and there will be the development of the gas fields. In any case, Al-Assad must go. There is nothing personal; it is strictly business to preserve the future tranquility and well-being of Qatar.



I wish to express my appreciation to Mr. Imonti for his allowing me to publish here the entirety of that article.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 ,   and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

Good job Eric!
« Last Edit: 2014-11-12, 17:21:35 by evolvingape »


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
NIST's WTC 7 Reports: Filled with Fantasy, Fiction, and Fraud
Written by Simon Falkner and Chris Sarns

Why 2,300 Architects & Engineers Demand Independent Investigation

http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/927-nists-wtc-7-reports-filled-with-fantasy-fiction-and-fraud-intro.html

INTRODUCTION

Editor's Note: This fascinating and provocative technical article on NIST’s mistreatment of the WTC 7 evidence is broken down into a multi-part series. The first section, below, is the Introduction to the whole series. Stand by for the next five parts in subsequent articles, to be published monthly.

Introduction

The United States government's official investigator of the destruction of the three skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an arm of the Department of Commerce. The agency became highly politicized during a Clinton-era restructuring. "In essence," recalls a NIST whistleblower, "we lost our scientific independence, and became little more than 'hired guns.'"

NIST has made many false written and oral statements about the collapses of the three World Trade Center buildings on 9/11 — statements that have now caused 2,300 architects and engineers to question the government investigator's credibility and veracity. One of its most implausible claims is that a high-rise steel structure in New York City was destroyed by fire alone.

wtc7 demolition comparison Figure 1. NIST's final report states that random office fires alone brought down Building 7. However, the collapse of WTC 7 compared, side by side, with an acknowledged professional controlled demolition reveals an entirely different story. Only a handful of companies have the ability to neatly implode a steel-framed skyscraper into its own footprint like this. Click on this video to see WTC 7 fall next to three acknowledged professional CDs.

Indeed, the fall of World Trade Center Building 7 is the third of the three only known "global collapses" of high-rise, steel-framed buildings ever recorded, and all three incredibly took place in one day: September 11, 2001.

NIST contends that the Twin Towers were brought down by the impact damage and consequent fires from the large airliner jets that hit them. But no jet struck WTC 7, and NIST claims that office fires alone demolished that building. The agency does admit that, if true, this would be the first and only time that an office fire brought down a steel skyscraper.

Ultimately, we are asked to accept on faith NIST's ever-changing, remarkable, and, frankly, suspect explanations for WTC 7's destruction.

Why "suspect"? Because NIST ignored the National Fire Protection Association protocol — specifically, the NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations — and refused to perform a forensic investigation. As a consequence, NIST has no physical proof to back up its unusual explanation for WTC 7's destruction.

Even more concerning, NIST bases its finding on computer models whose input data it refuses to release to either the scientific community or the general public. Thus, it is impossible to independently verify NIST's work and its startling conclusion. AE911Truth contends that NIST's methodology is contrary to every tenet of legitimate scientific inquiry. In this article, we seek to show how the supporting "evidence" put forward by NIST in the 13 years since that fateful day has been consistently and deliberately misleading.

We will review NIST's progression from its 2004 preliminary report to its 2008 final report — a progression that will reveal a pattern of omissions and distortions that appear designed to arrive at a preconceived conclusion.

We will show, step by step, that NIST's final hypothesis of scattered office fires producing the gravitational collapse of a 47-story steel structure is a classic case of "cover-up" — designed to obscure the fact that the implosion of Building 7 was the result of controlled demolition.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Obama Admits ISIS Strategy About Deposing Assad

Administration blames al-Assad for rise of Islamic State

http://www.infowars.com/obama-admits-isis-strategy-about-deposing-assad/

by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | November 13, 2014

The Obama administration has officially conceded the military effort in Syria is not about attacking the Islamic State. It is about removing Bashar al-Assad from power.


The new strategy formed by Obama’s national security team ignores the fact al-Assad and the Syrian military represent the only tenable opposition to the Islamic State and other Islamist groups funded and trained by the United States and its partners, most notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

Employing convoluted logic, the administration argues the “long-running Syria problem is now compounded by the reality that to genuinely defeat ISIL, we need not only a defeat in Iraq but a defeat in Syria.”

ISIL, short for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is the acronym the government uses for Da’esh (al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham), or the Islamic State.

The initial plan, described as “Iraq first,” concentrated on attacking the Islamic State in northern Iraq where it defeated the U.S. trained and armed Iraqi army and captured a large amount of territory. The administration is reportedly jettisoning this strategy in favor of directly targeting the Syrian government.

In addition to creating a no-fly zone along the border with Turkey, the administration is looking at vetting “moderate rebels.” As noted by Infowars and others, radical Sunni Islamists dominate the proxy war against the Shia government in Damascus and the argument that moderate forces are involved to any significant degree is largely a public relations effort designed to mask the real character of the so-called opposition.

The United States is also targeting Syria’s oil infrastructure. In September, it attacked grain silos in Manbij that killed civilians, not IS fighters. Attacks in Aleppo, Deir al-Zor, Hasaka, Raqqa and Idlib have killed civilians, including children. According to Reuters, the United States takes reports of civilian casualties seriously and says it has a process to investigate each allegation.

The new strategy will in fact strengthen the Islamic State, not weaken it as Obama claims. The war “is even less tenable than it was before, as between attacks on ISIS, Nusra, and Islamic Front fighters, and now the Assad government, the US is fighting materially all of the combat forces inside Syria at the same time, even the ones that are aligned with their publicly-stated goals,” notes Jason Ditz.

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said the administration has “had regular meetings that the President has joined with his national security team on this issue and Syria has been an important subject at those meetings. And I think the President wants to make sure that we’re asking hard questions about what we’re targeting in Syria, how we’re able to degrade ISIL but also how we’re supporting opposition and building them up as a counterweight to ISIL but also ultimately of course to the Assad regime.”

“Assad has been the biggest magnet for extremism in Syria, and the President has made clear that Assad has lost all legitimacy to govern. Alongside our efforts to isolate and sanction the Assad regime, we are working with our allies to strengthen the moderate opposition,” added Alistair Baskey, spokesman for the National Security Council.

Left out of the discussion is the fact the United States and its partners created and exacerbated the situation in Syria and are responsible for the death of over 140,000 Syrians, the displacement of millions of others and the wholesale destruction of the Syrian economy. Syria’s GDP has fallen more than 35 percent, while the local currency has lost 80 percent of its value.

I called the obvious intended murder of a democratically elected sovereign president six weeks ago, via an obvious internationally illegal war of aggression; now they are going forward with the plan in the open and will deliberately and openly provoke Russia into WW3 (murdering the innocent people on flight MH17 and immediately using the Western media (a method explained by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty to blame Oswald for the JFK assassination, and also used on 9/11 to get Saddam and opium production back up and running in Afghanistan) to blame Russia did not work and is causing horrific blowback, which is why it is being covered up by the MSM)

http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=1195.msg41964#msg41964


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Theresa May admits there 'may have been a cover-up' over child abuse claims but Cameron tells 'conspiracy theorists' to look elsewhere

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2830030/Theresa-orders-review-MI5-s-handling-allegations-child-sex-abuse-1980s.html

Theresa May made the extraordinary admission that there ‘might have been a cover-up’ of an Establishment paedophile ring by the Home Office in the 1980s.


The Home Secretary’s comments came after the publication of a report into how her department handled papers relating to alleged Westminster child abusers.

NSPCC boss Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam QC had tried to track down 114 files that went missing in the Home Office.

Just one was found; another was shredded by the Ministry of Justice, which took possession of the dossier, just three years ago.

The men concluded: ‘It is ... not possible to say whether files were ever removed or destroyed to cover up or hide allegations of organised or systematic child abuse by particular individuals because of the systems then in place.

'We cannot say that no file was removed or destroyed for that reason.’

Their report also revealed the list of names which officials were asked to search under when looking for the missing files – suggesting possible links to the so-called Dickens dossier.

It included known paedophiles such as Cyril Smith and members of the Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned to legalise sex with children.

It also featured senior political figures such as former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, Labour peer Lord Janner, and two Tory grandees, Sir Peter Morrison and Sir Peter Hayman, who are both now dead.

Police have questioned Lord Brittan and searched Lord Janner’s home in recent months, but neither has been charged.

In a statement to MPs, Mrs May said of the latest findings: ‘It doesn’t prove or disprove the Home Office acted appropriately in the 1980s.’ She added: ‘There might have been a cover-up.’

However, contradicting the Home Secretary and the findings of the report, David Cameron said on the campaign trail in Rochester that ‘conspiracy theorists’ would have to ‘look elsewhere’.

Ok David, let's forget the dossier for now (presumably all known copies destroyed..) let's take your advice and look elsewhere:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2682151/There-establishment-cover-child-abuse-claims-protect-says-Lord-Tebbit.html

There may have been establishment cover-up of child abuse claims to 'protect the system', says Lord Tebbit

    Ex-Tory party chairman says it was 'more important to protect the system'
    Says it was 'spectacularly wrong' because the abuses have 'grown'
    Government says 114 secret files on paedophile cases have gone missing
    Labour MP Keith Vaz condemns loss of files on an 'industrial scale'
    Four new cases of alleged child abuse are to be investigated by the police
    Top lawyer to investigate handling of dossier alleging paedophile activity
    Dossier was passed to Home Secretary Leon Brittan but subsequently lost
    Government refuses to order an Hillsborogh-style wide-ranging inquiry

The Thatcher government may have orchestrated an Establishment cover-up of child abuse by senior politicians, Lord Tebbit claimed today.


The former Tory party chairman claimed there was a mindset to ‘protect the system’ which has been to shown to have gone ‘spectacularly’ wrong because incidents of abuse grew.

The Home Office has ordered a full-scale legal inquiry into claims of an Establishment cover-up, after admitting it has lost 114 files including a dossier relating to allegations of abuse.

David Cameron is to appoint a top lawyer to investigate the Government’s handling of a dossier alleging high-level paedophile activity.

The file was first passed to Home Secretary Leon Brittan by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens in 1983 – but subsequently lost.

Mark Sedwill, the Home Office permanent secretary, said a massive review of 746,000 Home Office files covering 1979 to 1999 had identified ‘573 relevant files which had been retained’.

However, he added: ‘The extensive analysis of the central database identified 114 potentially relevant files had been destroyed, missing or not found.

'The investigation identified 13 items of alleged child abuse, nine of which were known or reported to the police including four involving Home Office staff.

‘The remaining four, which had not been previously disclosed, have now been passed to the police.’

Today Lord Tebbit, a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government from 1979-87, said social attitudes at the time had been wrong.

He told BBC One’s Marr Show : 'At that time I think most people would have thought that the establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it.

'That view, I think, was wrong then and it is spectacularly shown to be wrong because the abuses have grown.'

oops same topic.. I will try again:

Ex-MI6 chief Peter Hayman named as VIP who sexually abused boys at Dolphin Square apartment complex near Parliament

    Peter Hayman has been identified as one of many alleged child abusers
    The former MI6 deputy director 'liked to kiss and touch' boy, 11
    'Group of paedophiles' who abused children at Dolphin Square in Seventies
    Hayman was a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2827378/Ex-MI6-chief-Peter-Hayman-named-VIP-sexually-abused-boys-Dolphin-Square-apartment-complex-near-Parliament.html

Just keeps coming up everywhere I look goddammitt! I will try again:

Savile isn’t the only obnoxious paedophile being covered up by the system. Thomas Hamilton.


http://www.dunblaneexposed.info/

This revisionism had the effect of giving a post mortem character reference for Thomas Hamilton, signed by Lord Cullen, despite the fact that his abuse of boys at his Loch Lomond camps was well known and had been reported to the police. These and other incidents had made him known to half the police forces in Scotland and had seen him dismissed from the Scout movement

Nope just cannot get away from paedophiles in power however hard I try.. hmm.. Let's try illegal wars of aggression instead:

Syria crisis: No to war, blow to Cameron
David Cameron was forced to abandon plans for Britain to participate in military strikes against Syria after suffering an unprecedented Parliamentary defeat.


Dozens of Conservative MPs refused to support the Prime Minister and sided with Labour in opposing a Government motion which supported the principle of military intervention. The motion backing the use of force "if necessary" was rejected by 285 votes to 272, a majority of 13 votes.

It is the first time that a British Government has been blocked from executing a military deployment and highlights the deep mistrust of official intelligence in the wake of the Iraq war.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour party leader Ed Miliband speak during the debate on Syria

Within minutes of the embarrassing defeat, the Prime Minister said that he understood that there was not support for British action against Syria and indicated he would abandon any such plans. The decision came just hours after Britain had sent fighter jets to the region.

Syria crisis: Cameron loses Commons vote on Syria action

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783

David Cameron: "It is clear to me that the British parliament... does not want to see British military action"

Syria's war

MPs have rejected possible UK military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to deter the use of chemical weapons.

David Cameron said he would respect the defeat of a government motion by 285-272, ruling out joining US-led strikes.

The US said it would "continue to consult" with the UK, "one of our closest allies and friends".

France said the UK's vote does not change its resolve on the need to act in Syria.

Russia - which has close ties with the Assad government - welcomed Britain's rejection of a military strike.

The prime minister's call for a military response in Syria followed a suspected chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on 21 August, in which hundreds of people are reported to have died.

The US and UK say the Assad government was behind the attack - a claim denied by Damascus, which blames the rebels.

Assad said Syria would defend itself against any aggression.

ISIS threat has been exaggerated, says former MI6 chief: Sir Richard Dearlove thinks 'pathetic' Britons spreading messages on internet should be ignored


    Ex-intelligence chief made remarks in a speech in London yesterday
    He said government and the media should not offer 'oxygen of publicity'
    Fighting in Syria and Iraq is 'essentially Muslim on Muslim', he added
    Instead he said people should focus on growing threat of Russia and China

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2684077/ISIS-threat-exaggerated-says-former-MI6-chief-Sir-Richard-Dearlove-thinks-pathetic-Britons-spreading-messages-internet-ignored.html

(Editors Note: My name is Robert Ian Mason and I am 36 years old. I am an ex-soldier of the British Army who served in Iraq during the offensive phase of the destruction of that country. I do not have a criminal record, I do not advocate violence as the solution to the problem. I keep my car in good order, drive carefully, and have never had a serious accident in almost 2 decades of regular driving in all conditions. I am not suicidal. My health is fine and I do not expect to die anytime soon from natural causes. I do expect to be targeted for suppression or assassination by the British Establishment or their allies. I stand with Everyman who would be free from Tyranny.)


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
The endgame of the US ‘Islamic State’ strategy

Published on Tuesday, 11 November 2014 11:35

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/opinion/8551-the-endgame-of-the-us-islamic-state-strategy

By Nicola Nasser

Dismantling what the former US President George W. Bush once described as the Syria – Iran component of the "axis of evil," or interrupting in Iraq the geographical contiguity of what King Abdullah II of Jordan once described as the "Shiite crescent," was and remains the strategic goal of the US – Israeli allies in the Middle East unless they succeed first in "changing the regime" in either Damascus or Tehran.

The US, Israel and their regional allies have been on the record that the final target of their "regime change" campaign in the Middle East was to dismantle the Syria – Iran alliance.

With the obvious failure of Plan A to dismantle the self- proclaimed anti-Israel and anti - US Syrian – Iranian "Resistance Axis" by a forcible "regime change" in Damascus, a US – led regional alliance has turned recently to its Plan B to interrupt in Iraq the geographical contiguity of that axis.

This is the endgame of President Barak Obama's strategy, which he declared on last September 10 as ostensibly against the Islamic State (IS).

This would at least halt for the foreseeable future all the signed and projected trilateral or bilateral Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian pipeline networks to carry oil and gas from Iran and Iraq to the Syrian coast at the Mediterranean.

Israeli Col. (res.) Shaul Shay, a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a former Deputy Head of the Israel National Security Council anticipated in writing on last January 21 what he called the "Salafi Crescent" that is dangerously emerging to challenge the "Shia Crescent."

"The growing involvement of Sunni Salafi jihadis in Iraq (since 2003), among the rebels in Syria (since 2011), and in Lebanon has created a 'Salafi Crescent' ... from Diyala [in eastern Iraq] to Beirut," he wrote.

"A positive outcome" of this Salafi Crescent "will be the decline in Iranian influence in the region," Shay concluded.

Conspiracy theories aside, the eventual outcome is a sectarian Sunni military and political wedge driven into the Iraqi geographical connection of the Iran-Syria alliance in a triangle bordering Turkey in the north, Iran in the east, Jordan in the west and Saudi Arabia in the south and extending from north eastern Syria to the Iraqi province of Diyala which borders Iran.

Iraqi Kurdistan is already effectively an independent state and cut off from the central government in Baghdad, but separating Iran and Syria as well and supported by the same US – led anti – IS coalition.

Amid the misinformation and disinformation, the fact is that the IS threat is being used as a smokescreen to confuse and blur this reality.

The IS was conceived and delivered in an American womb. The US – drafted and enforced current constitution produced the sectarian government that is still trying to rule in Iraq. Sectarian cleansing and exclusion of Sunnis could not but inevitably create its antithesis.

The IS was the illegitimate fetus born and nurtured inside the uterus of the US - engineered political process based on a constitution legalizing a federal system based in turn on sectarian and ethnic sharing of power and wealth.

This horrible illegitimate creature is the "legacy" of the US war on Iraq, which was "conceived" in the "sin" of the US invasion of the country in 2003, in the words of the president of the Arab American Institute, James J. Zogbi, writing in the Jordan Times on last June 16.

US Senator John McCain, quoted by The Atlantic on last June 23, thanked "God," the "Saudis and Prince Bandar" and "our Qatari friends" for creating the "monster."

The pro-Iran government of former Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki was squeezed by the IS military advances to "request" the US help, which Washington preconditioned on the removal of al-Maliki to which Iran succumbed. The IS gave Obama's IS strategy its first success.

However, al-Maliki's replacement by Haider al-Abadi in August has changed nothing so far in the sectarian component of the Iraqi government and army. The US support of Iraq under his premiership boils down only to supporting continued sectarianism in the country, which is the incubator of the survival of its IS antithesis.

Moreover, the destruction of the Iraqi state infrastructure, especially the dismantling of Iraq's national army and security agencies and the Iraqi Baath party that held them intact, following the US invasion, has created a power vacuum which neither the US occupation forces nor the sectarian Shiite militias could fill. The IS was not powerful per se. They just stepped in on a no-man land.

Similarly, some four years of a US – led "regime change" effort, which was initially spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood and which is still financed, armed and logistically facilitated by the US regional allies in Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia as well as by allied western intelligence services, has created another power vacuum in Syria, especially on border areas and in particular in the northern and eastern areas bordering Turkey and Iraq.

US Senator Rand Paul in an interview with CNN on last June 22 was more direct, accusing the Obama administration of "arming" and creating an IS "safe haven" in Syria, which "created a vacuum" filled by the IS.

"We have been fighting alongside al Qaeda, fighting alongside ISIS. ISIS is now emboldened and in two countries. But here's the anomaly. We're with ISIS in Syria. We're on the same side of the war. So, those who want to get involved to stop ISIS in Iraq are allied with ISIS in Syria. That is the real contradiction to this whole policy," he said.

The former 16 - year member of the US Congress and two - time US presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, writing in the http://www.huffingtonpost.com on last September 24, summed it up: The IS "was born of Western intervention in Iraq and covert action in Syria."

The US 'Trojan horse'

The IS could have considered playing the role of a US "Frankenstein," but in fact it is serving as the US "Trojan horse" into Syria and Iraq. Fighting the IS was the US tactic, not the US strategy.

On record, Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that "the best way of fighting ISIS and terrorism in the region is to help and strengthen the Iraqi and Syrian governments, which have been engaged in a serious struggle" against the IS. But this would not serve the endgame of Obama's strategy, which targets both governments instead.

Beneficiaries of the IS "Trojan horse" leave no doubts about the credibility of the Syrian, Iranian and Russian doubts about the real endgame of the US – led declared war on the IS.

The United States was able finally to bring about its long awaited and promoted "front of moderates" against Iran and Syria into an active and "air-striking" alliance, ostensibly against the IS.

In Iraq, the IS served the US strategy in wrestling back the so called "political process" from the Iranian influence by proxy of the former premier al – Maliki. Depriving al – Maliki of a third term had proved that there is no unified Iran – backed "Shia house" in Iraq. The US has its own influence inside that "house."

Installing a US Iraqi satellite was the strategic goal of the US – led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Instead, according to Doug Bandow, writing in Forbes on last October 14, "Bush's legacy was a corrupt, authoritarian, and sectarian state, friendly with Iran and Syria, Washington's prime adversaries in the Middle East. Even worse was the emergence of the Islamic State."

This counterproductive outcome of the US invasion, which saw Iran wielding the reigns of power in Baghdad and edging Iraq closer to Syria and Iran during the eight years of al-Maliki's premiership, turned the red lights on in the White House and the capitals of its regional allies.

Al-Maliki, whom Bush had designated as "our guy" in Baghdad when his administration facilitated his premiership in 2006, turned against his mentors.

He edged Iraq closer to the Syrian and Iranian poles of the "axis of evil." Consequently he opposed western or Israeli military attack on Iran, at least from or via the Iraqi territory. In Syria, he opposed a regime change in Damascus, rejected direct military "foreign intervention" and indirect proxy intervention and insisted that a "political solution" is the only way forward in Iraq's western Arab neighbor.

Worse still was his opening Iraq up to rival Chinese and Russian hydrocarbon investments, turning Iraq a part of an Iran-Iraq-Syria oil and gas pipeline network and buying weapons from the Russian Federation.

Al- Maliki had to go. He was backed by Iran to assume his second term as prime minister in spite of the US, which backed the winner of the 2010 elections for the post, Ayad Allawi. The US had its revenge in the 2014 elections. Al-Maliki won the elections, but was denied a third term thanks to US pressure.

The IS was the US instrument to exert that pressure. US Secretary of State John Kerry during his visit to Baghdad on last June 23 warned that Iraq was facing "an existential threat."

It was a US brinkmanship diplomacy to force al-Maliki to choose between two bad options: Either to accept a de facto secession of western and northern Iraq on the lines of Iraqi Kurdistan or accept the US conditional military support. Al-Maliki rejected both options, but he had paid the price already.

The turning point came with the fall of Iraq's second largest city of Mosul to the IS on last June 10. Iraqi Kurdistan inclusive, the northern and western Iraq, including most of the crossing points into Syria and Jordan in the west, were clinched out of the control of Baghdad, i.e. some two thirds of the area of Iraq. Al-Maliki was left to fight this sectarian Sunni insurgency by his sectarian Iran-backed Shiite government. This was a non-starter and was only to exacerbate the already deteriorating situation.

Al- Maliki and Iran were made to understand that no US support was forthcoming to reign in the IS until he quits and a less pro-Iran and a more "inclusive" government is formed in Iraq.

The creation of the IS as the sectarian Sunni alternative against Iran's ruling allies in Baghdad and Damascus was and is still the US tactic towards its strategic endgame. Until the time the US strategy succeeds in wrestling Baghdad from Iran influence back into its fold as a separating wedge between Iran and Syria, the IS will continue to serve US strategy and so far Obama's strategy is working.

"America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance," Garikai Chengu, a research scholar at Harvard University, wrote in http://www.counterpunch.org/ on last September 19.

As a doctrine, since the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate early in the twentieth century, western powers did their best to keep Arabs separated from their strategic depth in their immediate Islamic proximity. The Syria – Iran alliance continues to challenge this doctrine.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories ( nassernicola@ymail.com).


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Finally, the Differences Between Strategy and Tactics Explained

http://www.lowtechcombat.com/2011/08/finally-differences-between-strategy.html

Too many people use the terms ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ incorrectly or even talk about a particular ‘thing’ or topic as being both a good strategy and tactic. Usually, this is actually referring to a tactic but the person likes to throw in the word strategy because it sounds cool, they don’t know better or believe it somehow implies a deeper thought process and means more...

Not any more. No more excuses.

There are unquestionable and very fundamental differences between strategy and tactics and these will be clearly detailed in this article. Not only are these words used poorly and often interchangeably, but a poor understanding of the meaning of the words can inhibit or mislead a persons overall training outcomes and objectives. It can muddy a persons goals and lead people down the wrong path. Sometimes, years can be spent training a certain way or in a certain system that is not really in line with their long term overall goals, purely because the meaning of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ is not clearly understood.

These matters and more will now be discussed in detail.

What are Tactics?

Traditional definition:

   ...the art of disposing armed forces in order of battle and of organising operations, especially during contact with an enemy.

Simply, it is the art of disposing armed forces, especially during contact.

Tactics are those short term decisions and actions that give a combatant an advantage during combat or that time immediately prior.

Tactics include, but are not limited to, the following:

    Counter fighting
    Drawing an opponent to use a desired attack in order to present an opening to attack
    Feinting to determine likely responses
    Stop hitting
    Using set up questions
    Using non aggressive stances and posture to mentally disarm an aggressor
    Telling an angry male that you thought you knew their girlfriend from school, that is why you were staring
    Appearing crazier than the aggressor in order to prevent a possible encounter going physical
    Repeating the same technique in order to prompt the defender to expect it again and then do something else
    Go low then high, high then low, left then right, right then left etc.
    Deciding not to argue with the drunk male who said you were a pathetic moron and told your girlfriend she could do better
    Identifying that guy across the room who is pissed at you for some reason so you decide to leave that room or establishment prior to violence kicking off
    Crossing the road or turning around when you see a dodgy person lingering near a driveway up ahead at night
    Deciding not to use that ATM because there are some people hanging around that do not appear quite right
    Buying that drunk guy a drink after his got spilt by you

This list is not exhaustive. Tactics are where the action is. Tactics are those actions and decisions taken with a short term focus. Tactics are right in the thick of an encounter or just prior to it happening or potentially happening. For many people, tactics are where the juice is. It is what they love. It is often quite enjoyable to watch a sport fighter fight who is a very good tactician. There is a lot going on. You can see them setting up their opponent. They are often referred to as smart fighters. They think. They utilise tactics and do it well.

Tactics and a 'game'

Of note, many sport fighters are certainly not good tacticians. Instead, they use their exceptional power or techniques. They have very good tools and they know how to use them. This could be in the form of combinations that work for them, superior quickness or an unstoppable takedown followed by submission or ground and pound.

These combinations of moves that work well for them are a basic form of rigid tactics. As an example, they will punch high for a while and when the opportunity presents itself, they know they will go for the takedown. This rigid form of tactics is what is referred to as a fighters ‘game’. They have a game plan they are going to follow. It is like a strict system of tactics that are tied together. Once a talented fighter with great tools has a good ‘game’ that works for them, watch out. They can be very hard to beat, even for a fighter who utilises a more fluid implementation of tactics.

Tactics are what most people focus on. It is what many people are good at. It probably makes up around 99% of a persons training time. It is what we do when we 'do' training. We drill, we spar, we roll, we compete etc. Most people have a pretty good appreciation of what tactics are and how to train in order to develop and enhance them. The mistake is, many people call some tactics, strategy. This is incorrect.

What is a Strategy?

Ok, we understand what tactics are now, so what is a strategy?

Traditional definition:

    ...a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.

Strategy happens away from the action. If you are involved in a violent encounter, you are not using strategy, you are using tactics. Hopefully good ones and hopefully to a good standard.

Strategy is big picture stuff. Strategy happens when you think about something deeply over a period of time and make a deliberate decision. This could be a goal or plan or whatever. These could be medium term but are generally long term. Even very long term. These deliberate decisions or goals are what drives everything else. Implementing a strategy often takes work and effort. It can require a detailed plan as to how you are going to reach your strategic goal.

It is often hard work to make something achievable. That is one of the reasons few people engage in strategic thought and implement a strategic action plan to get things done in accordance with strategic aims. Its all too easy to place it in the too hard basket for a while and then go back to doing whatever you feel like on spur of the moment decisions or just follow what everyone else is doing. Following this pattern, it is very unlikely you will by accident end up where you want to be.

And then you are 80 years old and realise you havn’t done what you truly wanted to do...

In a martial arts or self defence context, deciding you want to learn how to defend yourself is very much a strategic decision. And an important one at that! However, too many people leave the strategic thought there and simply begin doing whatever classes are close to them or what their friends do. The basic strategic intent is there, however the implementation of that desired end state is done poorly. The decision of what to learn can impact on a person for years to come. A person may begin going to a certain class for 4 to 10 years or even longer. We are talking about a long time. But is that class really well suited to the students desired end state? Their strategic aim?

Thinking Strategy

The issue largely stems from a beginner not really understanding violence and violent crime, so any decision they make at this early stage is likely going to be ill informed. As time goes on and the new student learns more about that violence they have made a decision to prepare themselves for, better decisions can then be made. Improvements to previous decisions can be made. The implementation of that strategic aim can improve over time.

A persons overall goals can change, so their strategic direction will change accordingly. They may change from wanting to be able to defend against a real attack to wanting to understand a certain culture and art they have since fallen in love with. As strategic goals change, their plan as to how they want to achieve those goals needs to change as well.

Another persons overall goals may harden. They may be more interested in the area of human to human violence and may want to learn more and more and pursue the worlds best practises and concepts in that field. This persons overall strategic goals don’t change, but their plans about how they are going to pursue them, will. It will become refined over time and more targeted and informed. The implementation of the strategic plan will improve as knowledge of the subject improves.

Strategic decisions drive activity through plans and routine. After identifying an overall strategic goal (and this may take some time to consider), a strategic plan is developed as to how that strategic goal is going to be realised. That plan is then implemented into ones life and is followed. This becomes a persons training routine. In that routine, classes and seminars are gone to, books are read and thought is undertaken.

Lessons are learnt. Done properly, these lessons directly contribute to moving towards achieving those strategic goals.

One of those areas that are developed whilst actioning our strategic plan is tactics. We learn tactics at our classes and whilst studying. With a properly implemented strategic plan, these learnt tactics will be very relevant to our desired strategic goals.

Strategic Decisions Drive our Learning of Tactics.

This ensures what we learn is what we want to be learning. If we did not make well considered strategic decisions we will likely not come across those lessons that we desire which includes our understanding of tactics. What point is being the worlds best at performing a Wushu demonstration when what we really wanted to do was become a proficient boxer? This is just a simple example of how not making those important strategic decisions and sticking with the intent can lead one easily down some other path that seemed interesting enough at the time but became all consuming as friends were going there and the people were nice and friendly.

Along the path, knowledge can increase strategic understanding and provide direction as to how our routine will best facilitate learning.

Here are some strategic issues and areas where knowledge can drive understanding and appropriate training which will likely lead to relevant tactics being learnt:

    Understand the real violent crime statistics for your own neighbourhood
    Understanding what form of violent crime YOU are most likely to encounter in your day to day life (fight at pub, mugging at car park etc.)
    Understand what weapons are most commonly used in real attacks
    Understanding that three or more attackers are much more likely than just two
    Understand that some people will harness social norms to gain an advantage over you non violently
    Understand how ego and face can become a core reason that violent encounters begin
    Understand that assault types of attack are much more likely (about 10 times more), than muggings and robbery
    Understand that about half of all assaults are between people who know each other (It may not be the stereotypical drunk guy you dont know in the pub)
    Understand where the primary danger zones are for you and when they are most dangerous

The above is not an exhaustive list. These are just some big picture considerations that could be seen to be useful in driving some training methodologies that would be most relevant to a person for THEM and not a one size fits all. Once knowledge is gained and strategic direction is followed, look out. Such a person would be well on their way along the path.

The importance of strategy does not only need to apply in the martial arts or self defence context. It can apply anywhere. Think of a long term goal and work towards what is truly important to you. That is strategic thinking and strategic action. Along the way, you will learn tactics that work for that particular strategic field.

This article has demonstrated some of the clear differences between strategy and tactics. The differences are obvious. When you hear people use the terms incorrectly now, it will be loud and obvious. Harnessing the power of strategy is the most important thing. Tactics follow strategy. Strategy drives a good understanding of tactics.

Strategic subjects are generally those which are written about on this site. Most articles here are about bigger picture areas of what we call Low Tech Combat. To us, this is the most appropriate use of the written word on the internet. Tactics are best learnt in person from another person. However, too many people are engaging in training that does not really follow their overall intent. And that is a shame.

Strategy must come first in order to facilitate informed decisions and appropriate training.



---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
“Any bloody fool can pull a trigger”

http://whereexcusesgotodie.com/culture/any-bloody-fool-can-pull-a-trigger/

Give us another film like Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon.

At one point, early in Bruce Lee’s 1972 karate classic-to-be, Enter the Dragon, British Intelligence recruiter “Braithwaite” offers Lee whiskey, which he refuses as though it contains all the weaknesses of Western culture. Braithwaite’s droopy shrug ‘n gulp response serves to confirm for the audience that one of these two knows some things the other doesn’t.

As Braithwaite reveals more of Enter the Dragon’s cloak-and-dagger intrigue, Lee suggests someone just go in and shoot the bad guy. Initially, the question seems like a no-brainer, but Braithwaite assures Lee that possession of a gun on an island off of Hong Kong is a whopper of a British Colonial no-no: if firearms were suspected, he seems to say, the Queen herself would arrive to tidy things up. Moreover, this particular bad guy, “Han,” suspects he could be assassinated at any moment, so he’s particularly sensitive. “Can’t really blame him,” Braithwaite reasons. “Any bloody fool can pull a trigger.”

That line, delivered by another character in another film or era, could easily have slipped past, unnoticed. But when Enter the Dragon was released in ’73, it changed the world – and I mean overnight. Western audiences, long accustomed to the action movie perspectives of white men with guns and horsies, were suddenly forced to recognize a mainstreaming of Asians and brown people. “Shaft” wasn’t going anywhere, and now he had badass company. A lot of us were ready to hang on Bruce Lee’s every word, especially since the man died strangely just a week before Enter the Dragon was released.

That event itself was a conspiratorial marvel that helped sell thousands of martial arts magazines, all of which promised to fuel the mystique of Lee’s legacy. By the time I was ten, my own stack of Black Belt and Inside Kung Fu magazines was tall enough to stand on – so I could paper my bedroom walls with Bruce Lee posters.

Charles Bronson Black Belt 1973From the pages of one such periodical, I ordered a Game of Death tracksuit, which my folks encouraged, as it was my first run at retail mail-order. I put it on as soon as it arrived and started sweating immediately: it was the scratchiest, lowest grade nylon imaginable, and it was too small. I felt like a sucker, but I buried it. I’d waited too long. Ill-fitting or not, within minutes I was walking right out the front door. And yes, I can still hear the laughter. Even worse were the erupting faces of the kids who held it back.

Yet there was hardly a kid around who didn’t relate, who didn’t engage in the debate over which martial art, artists, schools, and “training products” were the best. Or who could beat Bruce Lee. Plus there was always that linguistic biggie, the proper, “respectful” way to pronounce “numchucks.” That ain’t it, trust me, but you won’t actually get confirmation from the movie; despite its all-powerful use in the film, the weapon is never actually named. Enter the Dragon just isn’t formal or full of itself like that. Knowing head nods serve to highlight connections between the characters, and chins are often popped up to say hello or I get it.

With the exception of Braithwaite, Enter the Dragon’s characters speak in what was then considered loose, California-talk, using words like “faked out,” “man,” and “cat,” as in, “Whaddya know about this Han cat?” Easy Rider got there first, of course, with its vernacular of drug use and road trip freedom, but that was the sort of language more or less expected from a movie about fringe-by-choice fuck ups. Enter the Dragon took us farther. The power of Braithwaite’s disdain for guns was equal to Lee’s contempt for the liquor. “Any bloody fool can pull a trigger,” was vigorously accepted as code by young audiences. Fans picked it apart, and it felt like a higher standard. Even the movie’s grindhouse-esque trailer promises that the human body is more deadly than bullets. Okay-sure, it immediately became a gimmick, but I’ll bet it saved more lives than today’s name calling, finger pointing, foot stomping, and cries for politicians to save us from the second amendment!

When “Williams,” Jim Kelly’s doomed Enter the Dragon character, breaks a racist LAPD cop’s nightstick in half before breaking his face, audiences saw right off the bat just how different this movie was going to be. The diversity in the cheers that followed this mother of all comeuppance karate scenes made ‘em even louder.

Even more importantly, Enter the Dragon helped re-focus Americans’ collective lens on a group ‘til then most commonly referred to as “Orientals.” Stereotypes such as those promoted through the dismissive, chopsocky kitsch of Carl Douglas’ radio hit, “Kung Fu Fighting” were challenged by Lee’s legacy, as well as by his Chinese and Filipino-American colleagues: Dan Inosanto, Sammo Hung, and Jackie Chan. Among others, these were guys who essentially negated everything we thought we knew about Asian cultures. Now, not only did we know more about Asians, we wanted to be more like them.

I couldn’t say why, but the older I got, the more I respected Lee’s refusal of the whiskey. Other admonitions were far quicker to sink in. Hundreds of viewings later, for example, I’m still awed by Angela Mao, playing Lee’s sister, Su Lin. After utterly annihilating a gang of attackers with surgical strikes, Su Lin is finally cornered. As the gang leader catches up, the resignation and dignity in her face is devastating. Su Lin knows what’s coming, and also that none of these shit-stains will get their chance. From that day forward, I understood that real men don’t force themselves on women. My reverence for what I took away from this film as a ten-year-old is difficult to measure.

So even though dorky Braithwaite was the one to blithely dismiss the use of guns, it was clear to us that this was all a part of the same lesson plan, made accessible through slang and story. Each character’s journey seemed dependent on how well he bridged so many cultural and linguistic gaps; it was highly persuasive when they navigated the differences so smoothly. I wanted to be that. Maybe not smooth, but uninhibited by other cultures — and unarmed.

I’ll watch just about any movie where dudes get their heads busted with flying feet, fists, and lead pipes. But my allegiance lies with (now rare) films in which only chickenshits fight with guns. Given the rise in firearm violence in America since the ‘70s, it sounds like we could use another Enter the Dragon.
How could Enter the Dragon, a 40-year-old film dismissed as violent “trash” by parents and of the era, contain so many healthy lessons? And how will we ever replace Lalo Schifrin!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPRsKgyqTjE


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Asymmetric warfare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare

Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.

Asymmetric warfare can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the weaker combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality. Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized. This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution.

The term is also frequently used to describe what is also called "guerrilla warfare", "insurgency", "terrorism", "counterinsurgency", and "counterterrorism", essentially violent conflict between a formal military and an informal, less equipped and supported, undermanned but resilient opponent.

Definition and differences

The popularity of the term dates from Andrew J. R. Mack's 1975 article "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars" in World Politics, in which "asymmetric" referred simply to a significant disparity in power between opposing actors in a conflict. "Power," in this sense, is broadly understood to mean material power, such as a large army, sophisticated weapons, an advanced economy, and so on. Mack's analysis was largely ignored in its day, but the end of the Cold War sparked renewed interest among academics. By the late 1990s, new research building on Mack's insights was beginning to mature, and, after 2004, the U.S. military began once again to seriously consider the problems associated with asymmetric warfare.

Discussion since 2004 has been complicated by the tendency of academic and military communities to use the term in different ways, and by its close association with guerrilla warfare, insurgency, terrorism, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism. Military authors tend to use the term "asymmetric" to refer to the indirect nature of the strategies many weak actors adopt, or even to the nature of the adversary itself (e.g., "asymmetric adversaries can be expected to ...") rather than to the correlation of forces.

Academic authors tend to focus more on explaining the puzzle of weak actor victory in war: if "power," conventionally understood, conduces to victory in war, then how is the victory of the "weak" over the "strong" explained? Key explanations include strategic interaction; willingness of the weak to suffer more or bear higher costs; external support of weak actors;  reluctance to escalate violence on the part of strong actors;  internal group dynamics and inflated strong actor war aims. Asymmetric conflicts include both interstate and civil wars, and over the past two hundred years have generally been won by strong actors. Since 1950, however, weak actors have won a majority of all asymmetric conflicts.

Strategic basis

In most conventional warfare, the belligerents deploy forces of a similar type and the outcome can be predicted by the quantity of the opposing forces or by their quality, for example better command and control of their forces. There are times where this is not true because the composition or strategy of the forces makes it impossible for either side to close in battle with the other. An example of this is the standoff between the continental land forces of the French army and the maritime forces of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In the words of Admiral Jervis during the campaigns of 1801, "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea", and a confrontation that Napoleon Bonaparte described as that between the elephant and the whale.

Tactical basis

The tactical success of asymmetric warfare is dependent on at least some of the following assumptions:

    One side can have a technological advantage which outweighs the numerical advantage of the enemy; the decisive English longbow at the Battle of Crécy is an example.

    Technological inferiority usually is cancelled by more vulnerable infrastructure which can be targeted with devastating results. Destruction of multiple electric lines, roads or water supply systems in highly populated areas could have devastating effects on economy and morale, while the weaker side may not have these structures at all.

    Training and tactics as well as technology can prove decisive and allow a smaller force to overcome a much larger one. For example, for several centuries the Greek hoplite's (heavy infantry) use of phalanx made them far superior to their enemies. The Battle of Thermopylae, which also involved good use of terrain, is a well-known example.

    If the inferior power is in a position of self-defense; i.e., under attack or occupation, it may be possible to use unconventional tactics, such as hit-and-run and selective battles in which the superior power is weaker, as an effective means of harassment without violating the laws of war. Perhaps the classical historical examples of this doctrine may be found in the American Revolutionary War, movements in World War II, such as the French Resistance and Soviet and Yugoslav partisans. Against democratic aggressor nations, this strategy can be used to play on the electorate's patience with the conflict (as in the Vietnam War, and others since) provoking protests, and consequent disputes among elected legislators.

    If the inferior power is in an aggressive position, however, and/or turns to tactics prohibited by the laws of war (jus in bello), its success depends on the superior power's refraining from like tactics. For example, the law of land warfare prohibits the use of a flag of truce or clearly marked medical vehicles as cover for an attack or ambush, but an asymmetric combatant using this prohibited tactic to its advantage depends on the superior power's obedience to the corresponding law. Similarly, laws of warfare prohibit combatants from using civilian settlements, populations or facilities as military bases, but when an inferior power uses this tactic, it depends on the premise that the superior power will respect the law that the other is violating, and will not attack that civilian target, or if they do the propaganda advantage will outweigh the material loss. As seen in most conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries, this is highly unlikely as the propaganda advantage has always outweighed adherence to international law, especially by dominating sides of any conflict.


War by proxy

Where asymmetric warfare is carried out (generally covertly) by allegedly non-governmental actors who are connected to or sympathetic to a particular nation's (the "state actor's") interest, it may be deemed war by proxy. This is typically done to give deniability to the state actor. The deniability can be important to keep the state actor from being tainted by the actions, to allow the state actor to negotiate in apparent good faith by claiming they are not responsible for the actions of parties who are merely sympathizers, or to avoid being accused of belligerent actions or war crimes. If proof emerges of the true extent of the state actor's involvement, this strategy can backfire; for example see Iran-contra and Philip Agee.

Asymmetric warfare and terrorism

There are two different viewpoints on the relationship between asymmetric warfare and terrorism. In the modern context, asymmetric warfare is increasingly considered a component of fourth generation warfare. When practiced outside the laws of war, it is often defined as terrorism, though rarely by its practitioners or their supporters. For example, terrorists often use women and children as human shields, which practise is not considered either moral or part of traditional symmetrical warfare.

The other view is that asymmetric warfare does not coincide with terrorism. The use of terror by the much lesser Mongol forces in the creation and control of the Mongol empire could be viewed as asymmetric warfare. The other is the use of state terrorism by the superior Nazi forces in the Balkans, in an attempt to suppress the resistance movement.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Full-spectrum dominance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum_dominance

Full-spectrum dominance is a military entity's achievement of control over all dimensions of the battlespace, effectively possessing an overwhelming diversity of resources in such areas as terrestrial, aerial, maritime, subterranean, extraterrestrial, psychological, and bio- or cyber-technological warfare.

Full spectrum dominance includes the physical battlespace; air, surface and sub-surface as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space. Control implies that freedom of opposition force assets to exploit the battlespace is wholly constrained.

US military doctrine

Officially known as full-spectrum superiority and defined by the U.S. military as:

    The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.

The United States military's doctrine has espoused a strategic intent to be capable of achieving this state in a conflict, either alone or with allies by defeating any adversary and controlling any situation across the range of military operations.

The stated intent implies significant investment in a range of capabilities; dominant maneuver, precision engagement, focused logistics, and full-dimensional protection.

Criticism

As early as 2005, the credibility of full-spectrum dominance as a practical strategic doctrine was dismissed by Professor Philip Taylor of the University of Leeds an expert consultant to the US and UK governments on psychological operations, propaganda and diplomacy.

    "It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment."


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Two-front war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-front_war

In military terminology, a two-front war is a war in which fighting takes place on two geographically separate fronts. It is usually executed by two or more separate forces simultaneously or nearly simultaneously, in the hope that their opponent will be forced to split their fighting force to deal with both threats, therefore reducing their odds of success. Where one of the contending forces is surrounded, the fronts are called interior lines.

One of the earliest examples of a two-front war occurred in the third century BC, when the Roman Republic fought the First Macedonian War contemporaneously with the Second Punic War against Carthage. Also, after the consolidation of the Empire's frontier in the reign of Augustus, the Roman forces had to contend with multiple enemies in its frontiers, in the Rhine, Danube and Mesopotamia, with various examples of emperors (such as Septimius Severus and Aurelian) who marched their armies from one side of the Empire to another to face them. In the later period, after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the surviving part, the Byzantine Empire had to face invaders coming from both west and east and simultaneously trying to preserve its territories in Italy.

Napoleonic Wars

During the Napoleonic Wars, France repeatedly fought on multiple fronts. For example, France fought the Spanish and Anglo-Portuguese army in the Peninsular War while fighting the Russian Empire at the same time during its invasion of Russia.

World War I

During World War I, Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II fought a two-front war against French, British, Belgian, and (later) American forces on the Western Front while simultaneously fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front, until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 took Russia out of the war. Germany had foreseen such a scenario, and developed the Schlieffen Plan in order to counteract being surrounded by its enemies.[citation needed] Under the Schlieffen Plan, German forces would invade France via Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands (the idea to go through the Netherlands was abandoned because of the country's neutrality), quickly capturing Paris and forcing France to sue for peace. The Germans would then turn their attention to Russia in the east before the Tsar could mobilize his massive forces. Due to several factors however, the Germans failed to achieve the plan's aims.

World War II

Perhaps the most famous example of a two-front war was the European theatre during World War II, when Hitler's Nazi Germany had to deal with the Western Allies on the west and the Soviet Union to the east. The Germans were unable to repel either of the two front's advances and eventually lost the war. While there were other contributing factors, such as the insufficiency of the Wehrmacht for a long war, and the abandonment of blitzkrieg tactics due to fuel shortages and a rising need to defend territory, the two-front war was an important factor in deciding when the German military would be forced to surrender.

The Allies, especially the United States, also fought a two-front war, splitting their forces between the European theatre against Nazi Germany and the Pacific War against Japan. Japan too was fighting in both Asia and the Pacific. The Axis Powers had the opportunity to force the Soviet Union into a two-front war by means of a Japanese attack on the Soviet Far East, but the Japanese declined to do so, due to their defeats in the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts. While Germany and the United States remained respective threats, the Soviets and Japanese did not fight each another until the August 9 Soviet-Japanese War (1945), three months after the surrender of Germany. Japan, thus, fought a two-front war as well, splitting it's forces between China in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the United States in the aforementioned Pacific Theatre of WWII. The Soviet Union later invaded Manchuria, worsening the situation for Imperial Japan. In the case of the United States, the Pacific theatre was primarily a naval and air effort despite losing ships during the 1941 Pearl Harbor Attack while ground forces were used in Europe. Similarly for Japan, most ground troops were fighting China and the Pacific theatre was also primarily a naval and aerial battle.

Israeli-Arab Wars

In the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, the Israelis fought the Egyptians to the south and the Jordanians and Syria in the east and north. Israel again fought two-front wars in the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Cold War

A major rationale for the American 600-ship Navy plan in the 1980s was to threaten the Soviet Union with a two-front war (in Europe and the Pacific Ocean) in the event of hostilities.

Metaphorical usage

The term is often used metaphorically. An example is when a moderate politician faces political "attacks" from those to his left and those to his right.

The Western Establishment has defined all peoples of planet Earth "enemy combatant" status, therefore we are witnessing the roll out of the police state at home (while being poisoned in every sense of the concept); and the destructive wars of conquest rage overseas via Asymmetric Warfare tactics (Terrorism and Propaganda).


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
British Prime Minister David Cameron has compared Russia to Nazi Germany over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine ahead of meeting with Vladimir Putin on Saturday at the G20 summit in Australia.

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20141114/1014733337.html

MOSCOW, November 13 (Sputnik) – UK Prime Minister David Cameron has likened Russia to Nazi Germany over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine ahead of his meeting with President Vladimir Putin, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

“Russian action in Ukraine is unacceptable. We have to be clear about what we are dealing with. It is a large state bullying a smaller state in Europe … We have seen the consequences of that in the past and we should learn the lessons of history and make sure we don't let it happen again,” the prime minister said in reference to World War II, according to the newspaper.

It is not the first time the British politician made such a controversial comparison. In September, Cameron told EU leaders at a summit in Brussels that the West risks making similar mistakes in appeasing the Russian president over Ukraine as Britain and France did with Adolf Hitler in the run-up to World War II.

The British prime minister is expected to meet Putin on Saturday at the G20 summit in Australia, the first such meeting between the two since the Ukraine crisis erupted.

Western countries have been accusing Russia of escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine, arming independence supporters and sending its troops to the volatile regions. Moscow has labeled the claims as groundless.

The pot calling the kettle black

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_black

The phrase "The pot calling the kettle black" is an idiom used to claim that a person is guilty of the very thing of which they accuse another.

Interpretations and origins

As generally understood, the person accusing (the "pot") is understood to share some quality with the target of their accusation (the "kettle"). The pot is mocking the kettle for a little soot when the pot itself is thoroughly covered in it.

An alternative interpretation, recognized by some, but not all, sources is that the pot is sooty (being placed on a fire), while the kettle is clean and shiny (being placed on coals only), and hence when the pot accuses the kettle of being black, it is the pot’s own sooty reflection that it sees: the pot accuses the kettle of a fault that only the pot has, rather than one that they share.

A poem in an early-twentieth-century school textbook runs:

    "Oho!" said the pot to the kettle;
    "You are dirty and ugly and black!
    Sure no one would think you were metal,
    Except when you're given a crack."

    "Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot;
    "'Tis your own dirty image you see;
    For I am so clean – without blemish or blot –
    That your blackness is mirrored in me."
    —Maxwell's Elementary Grammar, 1904,

Similar phrases

    In Ancient Greece, mention of ‘the Snake and the Crab’ signified much the same idiom. The first instance of this is in a drinking song (skolion) dating from the late 6th or early 5th century BCE. The fable ascribed to Aesop under this name makes the crab an honest actor who kills the snake for the common good. In another, however, concerning a mother crab and its young, the mother tells the child to walk straight and is asked in return to demonstrate how that is done.
    A similar story occurs in the Aramaic version of the story of Ahiqar, dating from about 500 BCE. 'The bramble sent to the pomegranate tree saying, "Wherefore the multitude of thy thorns to him that toucheth thy fruit?" The pomegranate tree answered and said to the bramble, "Thou art all thorns to him that toucheth thee".
    In the Gospel of Matthew 7:3, Jesus is quoted as saying, during the discourse on judgmentalism in the Sermon on the Mount, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" Many scholars have interpreted this as a proscription against personal attacks in general, not just particulars. In the King James Version of the Bible, it is translated as "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

    A widespread European proverb (see below) whose English equivalent is 'those that live in glass houses should not throw stones' also counsels caution from being judgmental. It appears in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer as 'One who has a glass head should beware of stones' (Troilus and Criseyde II/867–8) and in George Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs (1640) as 'Whose house is of glasse, must not throw stones at another' (#196).

    In his play Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare uses the phrase "The raven chides blackness" to refer to the same phenomenon.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Coups and terror are the fruit of Nato's war in Libya

The dire consequences of the west's intervention are being felt today in Tripoli and across Africa, from Mali to Nigeria


Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Thursday 22 May 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/22/coups-terror-nato-war-in-libya-west-intervention-boko-haram-nigeria

Iraq may have been a blood-drenched disaster and Afghanistan a grinding military and political failure. But Libya was supposed to have been different. Nato's war to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in 2011 was hailed as the liberal intervention that worked.

The western powers might have had to twist the meaning of the UN resolution about protecting civilians, the city of Sirte might have been reduced to rubble, large-scale ethnic cleansing taken place and thousands of civilians killed. But it was all in a noble cause and achieved without Nato casualties.

This wasn't Bush and Blair, after all, but Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy. The people were free, the dictator was dead, a mooted massacre had been averted – and all this without any obvious boots on the ground. Even last year the prime minister was still claiming it had all been worthwhile, promising to stand with Libyans "every step of the way".

But three years after Nato declared victory, Libya is lurching once again towards civil war. Over the past few days, the CIA-linked General Hiftar launched his second coup attempt in three months, supposedly to save the country from "terrorists" and Islamists. On Sunday, his forces stormed the national parliament in Tripoli, after 80 people were killed in fighting in Benghazi two days earlier.

Now Libya's chief of staff has called on Islamist militias to defend the government in advance of new elections. Since the country is overrun with militias far more powerful than its official forces, riven with multiple divisions and prey to constant external interference, the chances of avoiding full-blown conflict are shrinking fast.

But these are only the latest of the clashes and atrocities that have engulfed Libya since Nato's "liberation": including bombings, assassinations, the kidnapping of the prime minister, the seizure of oil terminals by warlords, the explusion of 40,000 mainly black Libyans from their homes, and the killing of 46 protesters on the streets of Tripoli in one incident — ignored by the states that supposedly went to war to protect civilians.

In reality, the west seized the chance to intervene in Libya to get a grip on the Arab uprisings. Nato air power in support of the Libyan rebellion increased the death toll by a factor of about 10, but played the decisive role in the war— which meant no coherent political or military force was ready to fill the vacuum. Three years on, thousands are held without trial, there are heavy curbs on dissent, and institutions are close to collapse.

But the US and Britain are still training Libyan troops to keep control. Before Gaddafi's overthrow, Hiftar headed the military wing of the CIA-backed National Salvation Front. In advance of his latest coup attempt, a sympathetic US sent a force of marines to Sicily ready to intervene, and John Kerry has promised to help Libya with "security and extremism".

Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia are openly backing Hiftar, as is the military coup leader in Egypt, General Sisi. Having suppressed, jailed and shot in large numbers Egypt's own Islamists, Sisi and his Gulf backers are determined to prevent them consolidating power in oil-rich Libya. There are signs that Sisi – who complains that the west failed to garrison Libya after Gaddafi's overthrow – wants to use Libya's crisis to send in his own forces.

But it's not just Libya that's living with the fallout from Nato's intervention. Blowback from the Libyan war has spread across Africa, destabilising the Sahel region and beyond. After Gaddafi's fall, Tuareg people who had fought for him went home to Mali, bringing Libyan arms caches with them. Within months, that had tipped northern Mali into full-scale armed rebellion and takeover by Islamist fighters.

The result was last year's French military intervention, backed by the US and Britain. But Libya's impact goes much wider. Among the groups whose armed campaigns have been fuelled by large-scale heavy weapons supplies from Gaddafi's looted arsenals is Boko Haram.

Support for the fundamentalist Nigerian terror sect – which kidnapped 200 schoolgirls last month and has been responsible for more than 1,500 deaths since the start of the year – has been fed by deprivation, drought and brutal state repression in the Muslim north.

But, as elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East, each outside intervention only spreads the cycle of the terror war. So the call for action over the outrage of the Boko Haram kidnapping has brought US, British and French forces to oil-wealthy Nigeria, just as the Mali crisis last year led to the establishment of a US military drone base in neighbouring Niger.

US armed forces are now involved in 49 out of 54 African states, along with the former colonial powers of France and Britain, in what's becoming a new carve-up of the continent: a scramble for resources and influence in the face of China's growing economic role, underpinned with an escalating military presence that spreads terror as it grows. That will bring its own backlash, as did the war in Libya.

Supporters of Nato's Libyan war counter that, even if the country is now plagued by chaos and violence, there was no western military intervention in Syria and more than 150,000 have died in its horrific civil war. But of course there is large-scale covert intervention in support of the Syrian rebels by both the Nato powers and the Gulf states.

One of the ugliest aspects of western policy towards Syria is the turning on and off of that backing to keep their favoured armed groups in the game – without giving them any decisive advantage. In fact, US, British and Gulf support is being stepped up right now because of regime advances on the field.

But it defies logic to imagine that the death toll would have somehow been lower in Syria, or the sectarian conflict less brutal, if the US and its allies had launched a full-scale military attack at any stage of the conflict. The experience of Iraq, where the war is now estimated to have killed 500,000, makes that obvious enough.

But such is the expectation of routine war-making among parts of the western elite that they're already impatient for another outright intervention. "What would America fight for?" asked the Economist plaintively earlier this month, echoing the US Republican charge of weakness in the White House. For the rest of the world, the reality of Libya and its disastrous consequences should be answer enough.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
British and US Attacks against ISIS: Obama and Cameron: “Air Strikes on Syria would be Legally Justified”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/british-and-us-attacks-against-isis-obama-and-cameron-air-strikes-on-syria-would-be-legally-justified/5400266

By Cem Ertür
Global Research, September 10, 2014

One wonders how British Prime Minister David Cameron would try to justify his patently criminal statements in front of a war crimes tribunal…

This is how the British press covers the issue of “Going After ISIS” as part of a “Global War on Terrorism”

BBC:  Your former defence spokesman [sic] Liam Fox says that basically we should be joining the Americans in air strikes because it does help those on the ground. You damage supply lines with military power, you destroy bases; and whether that’s in Iraq or in Syria.

PRIME MINISTER CAMERON:  Well, these are all things that should be considered. And we’ve supported the American air strikes up to now, which have been helping to make sure that the Kurds…

See source link above for selected excerpts.

The Nuremberg Principles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_principles

The Nuremberg principles were a set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime. The document was created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations to codify the legal principles underlying the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members following World War II.

The principles:

Principle I

"Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment."

Principle II

"The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law."

Principle III

"The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law."

Principle IV

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him".

This principle could be paraphrased as follows: "It is not an acceptable excuse to say 'I was just following my superior's orders'".

Previous to the time of the Nuremberg Trials, this excuse was known in common parlance as "Superior Orders". After the prominent, high profile event of the Nuremberg Trials, that excuse is now referred to by many as "Nuremberg Defense". In recent times, a third term, "lawful orders" has become common parlance for some people. All three terms are in use today, and they all have slightly different nuances of meaning, depending on the context in which they are used.

Nuremberg Principle IV is legally supported by the jurisprudence found in certain articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which deal indirectly with conscientious objection. It is also supported by the principles found in paragraph 171 of the Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status which was issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Those principles deal with the conditions under which conscientious objectors can apply for refugee status in another country if they face persecution in their own country for refusing to participate in an illegal war.

Principle V

"Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law."

Principle VI

"The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

    (a) Crimes against peace:

        (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

        (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

    (b) War crimes:

    Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

    (c) Crimes against humanity:

    Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime."

Principle VII

"Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."



---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
Libya’s “Water Wars” and Gaddafi`s Great Man-Made River Project

http://globalresearch.ca/libyas-water-wars-and-gaddafis-great-man-made-river-project/5334868

It was Muammar Gaddafi`s dream to provide fresh water for all Libyans and to make Libya self-sufficient in food production.

Libyans called it the eighth wonder of the world. Western media called it a pet project and the pipe dream of a mad dog. The “mad dog” himself in 1991 prophetically said about the largest civil engineering venture in the world:

After this achievement, American threats against Libya will double. The United States will make excuses, but the real reason is to stop this achievement, to keep the people of Libya oppressed.


Gaddafi’s dream

It was Muammar Gaddafi’s dream to provide fresh water for all Libyans and to make Libya self-sufficient in food production. In 1953, the search for new oilfields in the deserts of southern Libya led to the discovery not just of significant oil reserves, but also of vast quantities of fresh water trapped in the underlying strata. The four ancient water aquifers that were discovered, each had estimated capacities ranging between 4,800 and 20,000 cubic kilometers. Most of this water was collected between 38,000 and 14,000 years ago, though some pockets are believed to be only 7,000 years old.

After Gaddafi and the Free Unitary Officers seized power in a bloodless coup from the corrupt King Idris during the Al-Fateh Revolution in 1969, the Jamahiriya government nationalized the oil companies and spent much of the oil revenues to harness the supply of fresh water from the desert aquifers by putting in hundreds of bore wells. Large farms were established in southern Libya to encourage the people to move to the desert. It turned out that the majority of the people however preferred life in the northern coastal areas.

Therefore Gaddafi subsequently conceived a plan to bring the water to the people instead. The Libyan Jamahiriya government conducted the initial feasibility studies in 1974, and in 1983 the Great Man-Made River Authority was set up. This fully government funded project was designed in five phases, each of them largely separate in itself, but which eventually would combine to form an integrated system. As water in Gaddafi’s Libya was regarded to be a human right, there has not been any charge on the people, nor were any international loans needed for the almost $30 billion cost of the project.

In 1996, during the opening of Phase II of the Great Man-Made River Project, Gaddafi said:

    This is the biggest answer to America and all the evil forces who accuse us of being concerned with terrorism. We are only concerned with peace and progress. America is against life and progress; it pushes the world toward darkness.

Development and destruction

At the time of the NATO-led war against Libya in 2011, three phases of the Great Man-Made River Project were completed. The first and largest phase, providing two million cubic metres of water a day along a 1,200 km pipeline to Benghazi and Sirte, was formally inaugurated in August 1991. Phase II includes the delivery of one million cubic metres of water a day to the western coastal belt and also supplies Tripoli. Phase III provides the planned expansion of the existing Phase I system, and supplies Tobruk and the coast from a new wellfield.

The ‘rivers’ are a 4000-kilometer network of 4 meters diameter lined concrete pipes, buried below the desert sands to prevent evaporation. There are 1300 wells, 500,000 sections of pipe, 3700 kilometers of haul roads, and 250 million cubic meters of excavation. All material for the project was locally manufactured. Large reservoirs provide storage, and pumping stations control the flow into the cities.

The last two phases of the project should involve extending the distribution network together. When completed, the irrigation water from the Great Man-Made River would enable about 155,000 hectares of land to be cultivated. Or, as Gaddafi defined, the project would make the desert as green as the flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

In 1999, UNESCO accepted Libya’s offer to fund the Great Man-Made River International Water Prize, an award that rewards remarkable scientific research work on water usage in arid areas.

Many foreign nationals worked in Libya on the Great Man-Made River Project for decades. But after the start of NATO’s so-called humanitarian bombing of the North-African country in March 2011, most foreign workers have returned home. In July 2011, NATO not only bombed the Great Man-Made River water supply pipeline near Brega, but also destroyed the factory that produces the pipes to repair it, claiming in justification that it was used as “a military storage facility” and that “rockets were launched from there”. Six of the facility’s security guards were killed in the NATO attack, and the water supply for the 70% of the population who depend on the piped supply for personal use and for irrigation has been compromised with this damage to Libya’s vital infrastructure.

The construction on the last two phases of the Great Man-Made River Project were scheduled to continue over the next two decades, but NATO’s war on Libya has thrown the project’s future – and the wellbeing of the Libyan people – into great jeopardy.

A German language documentary shows the size and brilliance of the project:

Water Wars

Fresh clean water, as provided to the Libyans by the Great Man-Made River, is essential to all life forms. Without fresh water we simply cannot function. Right now, 40% of the global population has little to no access to clean water, and that figure is actually expected to jump to 50% by 2025. According to the United Nations Development Program 2007, global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. Simultaneously, every single year most of the major deserts around the world are becoming bigger and the amount of usable agricultural land in most areas is becoming smaller, while rivers, lakes and major underground aquifers around the globe are drying up – except in Gaddafi’s Libya.

In the light of the current world developments, there is more to the NATO destruction of the Great Man-Made River Project than being an isolated war crime. The United Nations Environment Program 2007 describes a so-called “water for profit scheme”, which actively promotes the privatization and monopolization for the world’s water supplies by multinational corporations. Meanwhile the World Bank recently adopted a policy of water privatization and full-cost water pricing, with one of its former directors, Ismail Serageldin, stating:

“The wars of the 21st century will be fought over water”.

In practice this means that the United Nations in collaboration with the World Bank plans to secure water resources to use at their disposal, and that once they totally control these resources, the resources become assets to be reallocated back to the enslaved nations for a price. Those prices will rise while the quality of the water will decrease, and fresh water sources will become less accessible to those who desperately need it. Simply put, one of the most effective ways to enslave the people is to take control of their basic daily needs and to take away their self-sufficiency.

How this relates to the NATO destruction of Gaddafi’s Great Man-Made River Project in July 2011 can be best illustrated by the Hegelian Dialectic, popularly known as the concept of Problem -> Reaction -> Solution. In this case, by bombing the water supply and the pipes factory, a Problem was created with an ulterior motive, namely to gain control over the most precious part of Libya’s infrastructure. Subsequently a Reaction in the form of an immediate widespread need was provoked as a result of the Problem, since as much as 70% of the Libyans depend on the Great Man-Made River for personal use as well as for the watering of the land. A month after the destruction of the Great Man-Made River, more than half of Libya was without running water. Ultimately a predetermined Solution was implemented: in order to have access to fresh water, the inhabitants of the war-torn country had no choice but to fully depend on – and thus to be enslaved to – the NATO-installed government.

A ‘democratic’ and ‘democracy-bringing’ government that came to power through the wounding and killing of thousands of Libyans by ‘humanitarian bombs’, and that overthrow the ‘dictator’ whose dream it was to provide fresh water for all Libyans for free.

War is still peace, freedom is still slavery.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   

Group: Professor
Hero Member
*****

Posts: 2502
Everyman decries immorality
New Evidence Proves Israel Attacked USS Liberty With Orders to Kill 294 Americans

http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-evidence-proves-israel-attacked-uss-liberty-with-orders-to-kill-294-americans/5413807

Fresh evidence presented in an exclusive Al Jazeera investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 Americans proves the incident was not a mistake. Since 1967 the ‘official story‘ has been that Israel simply misidentified the American ship as Egyptian for several hours. Israel apologized to the United States and for several decades we’ve been led to believe that this could be the only explanation for why Israeli jets and torpedo boats would launch rockets, missiles and torpedoes at an American target for more than two hours.

A new documentary called ‘The Day Israel Attacked America” airing on Al Jazeera was produced and directed by award winning British film maker Richard Belfield. Thanks to the audio evidence obtained by Belfield, it is finally possible to prove the survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty were right all along. The survivors have always been extremely confident that Israel’s intentions were to sink that ship and kill everyone on board so Egypt could be blamed for the tragedy. Why? To convince President Lyndon Johnson (and the American public) that we needed to declare war on Egypt. This is the definition of a ‘false flag‘. (can you say 9/11?)

It appears that once again, a conspiracy theory has turned out to be conspiracy fact. You can finally take off your tinfoil hats!

    “Earlier this year, I acquired a copy of the audiotape of the attack as it had unfolded, the real time conversations between Israeli Air Force pilots and their controllers back at base. It had never been broadcast before. I went to talk to Al Jazeera and after careful consideration, the network commissioned the film.” - Richard Belfield

Just sixteen minutes after Israel attacked America, the USS Liberty was confirmed by Israeli forces to be an American ship. These conversations can be heard in the documentary Al Jazeera has been airing on their station.

“To what state does she belong?” (Answer): “American”

Yet the attacks continued for an hour and a half!

Even five minutes before the first bombing you can hear Israeli Air Force pilots question whether the ship was American or not. You don’t have to be a genius to understand why these pilots would be extremely uncomfortable attacking a ship suspected to be American without being given direct orders to do so. I believe we can safely assume this attack wouldn’t have been carried out otherwise.

“Is it an American ship?” “What do you mean American?” “No comment.”

Twenty minutes after a ground controller answered “American” when asked “to what state does she belong?” by Israeli Air Force pilots, the first torpedo hit the USS Liberty. A voice can clearly be heard which confirms that this target, thought to be American at that time, was to be destroyed.

“The torpedo is talking care of the ship now.”

As soon as the first torpedo hit the USS Liberty, Israeli torpedo boats circled the ship and started machine-gunning the American target for another 40 minutes. When the USS Liberty crew lowered their lifeboats into the water to evacuate their ship, the Israelis moved closer so they could gun down the Americans attempting to save their own lives.

More than ten years ago a journalist named Arieh O’Sullivan from the Jerusalem Post was allowed to listen to these same audiotapes. He published a transcript of the Israeli military transmissions he heard directing the attack on the USS Liberty. Sixteen minutes after the attack started, just as in the recording obtained by Al Jazeera, O’Sullivan’s transcript (translated from Hebrew to English) shows the same exchange.

“Kislev, what country?” (Answer): “Apparently American.”

That is where O’Sullivan’s transcript, published over ten years ago by the Jerusalem Post, ends. There is just one major problem with that… The attack continued for another hour and a half!

Navy Admiral Thomas Moorer, who has served this country as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chief of Naval Operations, once lead an independent commission to investigate what really happened to the USS Liberty. The commission’s findings were made public in 2003. Here are a few of the shocking conclusions.

    The attack, by a U.S. ally, was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill its entire crew.
    The attack included the machine-gunning of stretcher-bearers and life rafts .
    The White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the USS Liberty. This was the first time in naval history a rescue mission had been cancelled while an American ship was under attack.
    Surviving crew members were later threatened with court-martial, imprisonment, or worse if they talked to anyone about what had happened to them; and were “abandoned by their own government

-

John Crewdson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, published in 2007 what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has called the ‘most detailed and accurate account of the Israeli attack‘ for the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun. You guessed it, Crewdson was fired by the Chicago Tribune just a year later after working there for 24 years. You should read his work.

    “Israeli messages intercepted on June 8, 1967, leave no doubt that sinking the USS Liberty was the mission assigned to the attacking Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats as the Six-Day War raged in the Middle East. Let me repeat: there is no doubt – none – that the mission of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was to destroy the USS Liberty and kill its entire crew.” – former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

-

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2014/10/day-israel-attacked-america-20141028144946266462.html

In 1967, at the height of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force launched an unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty, a US Navy spy ship that was monitoring the conflict from the safety of international waters in the Mediterranean.

Israeli jet fighters hit the vessel with rockets, cannon fire and napalm, before three Israeli torpedo boats moved in to launch a second more devastating attack. Though she did not sink, the Liberty was badly damaged. Thirty-four US servicemen and civilian analysts were killed, another 171 were wounded.

Later Israel apologised for what it claimed to be a tragic case of mistaken identity. It said that it had believed the ship to be hostile Egyptian naval vessel. US President Lyndon Johnson was privately furious but publicly the White House chose not to challenge the word of its closest Middle East ally and accepted that the attack had been a catastrophic accident.

However, as this exclusive Al Jazeera investigation reveals, fresh evidence throws new light on exactly what happened that fateful day - and the remarkable cover up that followed.

By Richard Belfield

I was first told about the attack on the USS Liberty in 1980 over dinner with a former analyst from the National Security Agency (NSA) in Washington DC.

Back in 1980, I promised my friend that if I ever got the chance I would make a film about it. Over the years, I pitched the idea to numerous broadcasters and always got the same response: eyes rolled upwards, usually followed by the statement, "Are you completely mad?"

Fast forward to 2009 and I was a guest speaker at the NSA's biennial conference on historical cryptography, talking about an unsolved code on an 18th century monument in an English stately home.

While there, I went to two other sessions - both about attacks on American signal intelligence naval vessels.

The first was the capture of the US spy ship, the Pueblo (boarded by North Korean forces in 1968 - and never returned). The survivors of that incident were treated like heroes and feted on stage.

The next day there was a session about the USS Liberty. James Scott, who has written easily the best book on the Liberty attack, was on stage and limited to his allotted 20 minutes. Ranged against him were three Israeli apologists, all of whom were allowed to overrun their time. Survivors from the Liberty affair were allowed to sit in the audience, but they were denied any say in proceedings.

As an Englishman, I was brought up with a strong sense of fair play and I thought this was a disgrace. It was gruesome to watch. First, the crew had been attacked in broad daylight by a close ally, then they were betrayed by their government and now they were being humiliated by the same agency many had worked for back in 1967.

Earlier this year, I acquired a copy of the audiotape of the attack as it had unfolded, the real time conversations between Isreali Air Force pilots and their controllers back at base. It had never been broadcast before. I went to talk to Al Jazeera and after careful consideration, the network commissioned the film.

On location, it all started with James Scott (who gets a co-producer credit on this project). When writing his book, he had already interviewed the survivors as well as many of the key people in the Washington political and intelligence machine from that time. The introductions he made would prove invaluable as we began filming interviews.

The veterans were extraordinary. One after another, they were generous with their time, uniformly eloquent and passionate and above all, honest in their recollections.

They all felt betrayed by the American government but were keen to exonerate ordinary Jewish people both in Israel and without, for any responsibility for the incident. Their beef was simply with the senior Israeli officers in the control room and their superiors higher up the command chain who had ordered the attack.

After a few days filming, I rang Elaine Morris, my producer back in London. She asked how things were going. All I could say was that the quality of the interviews was the best I had ever experienced in many decades in this business.

In Texas we interviewed Bobby Ray Inman, an intelligence officer with a glittering track record at the CIA, Naval Intelligence and as a former director of the NSA. My contacts in the UK intelligence world had always told me "he is one of the good guys" and I quickly discovered why. He was frank and clear. The top Israeli commanders, he explained, had known exactly what they were doing when they attacked the Liberty and when it came to holding them to account, the US government rolled over for them.

We filmed an annual memorial ceremony in Washington, D.C. It was emotional, visceral and tense, with survivors, family and friends gathered in the morning sun. Listening to a sole bugler playing the US Navy's lament, 'Taps' is a memory that will never fade.

Years earlier, I had visited the US military graves in Arlington Cemetery but now, following the ceremony, I got to go there again with Dave Lucas, one of the survivors of the attack and a truly wonderful man.

We filmed as he walked up the hill carrying a wreath from the ceremony. Alongside him was a crew member, a Portuguese language specialist, who had left the Liberty in Spain just a few days before it sailed off up the Mediterranean to take up position off the Egyptian coast. He had been temporarily replaced for the mission by an Arab linguist. He wept openly for the comrades he had said goodbye to, never to see again. As we filmed the pair laying the flowers, an interview with one of the other survivors, Jim Kavanagh came suddenly to mind. "I went through hell," he had said about his shipmates. "But they left this earth."

Finally, we filmed on a sister ship to the Liberty, now moored in San Francisco. The crew hauled an outsized US flag up a mast for us. The flag - known as the "holiday colours" - was identical to that which was flown from the Liberty on June 8, 1967. It was huge, clearly visible for miles, and I knew immediately that no one could ever have been in any doubt about the nationality of the ship beneath it.

Watching the Stars and Stripes unfurl into the wind, I realised that I had got to keep the promise I first made to my friend in a Washington restaurant 34 years ago.


---------------------------
Everyman Standing Order 01: In the Face of Tyranny; Everybody Stands, Nobody Runs.
Everyman Standing Order 02: Everyman is Responsible for Energy and Security.
Everyman Standing Order 03: Everyman knows Timing is Critical in any Movement.
   
Pages: 1 ... 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [41] 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 ... 100
« previous next »


 

Home Help Search Login Register
Theme © PopularFX | Based on PFX Ideas! | Scripts from iScript4u 2024-03-29, 10:36:07