Damning Report Shows Pentagon is Actively Poisoning Millions of Americans and Covering It Up

The Pentagon has recklessly contaminated more than 40,000 sites across the United States, exposing hundreds of thousands of Americans to deadly chemicals

These Are The Top 5 Legislative Issues That Could Force The Next Government Shutdown

House Republicans successfully managed to kick the can down the road (if only for two weeks) when they managed to pass a two-week extension last week of the continuing resolution that had been funding the government since September.

But after overcoming obstacles created by Democrats and conservative Republicans – with each camp pushing for priorities that were ultimately excluded from the extension bill – the White House and its allies in Congress will still need to figure out how to balance these demands if they want to successfully secure approval for the next funding bill by Dec. 22, the day the current extender bill requires.

Adding to the pressure on Congressional leaders, Republicans also need to work through what’s looking to be a difficult reconciliation process for the tax bill that President Donald Trump has vowed to pass before the end of the year.

With only four legislative sessions left on the official calendar (Congressional leaders reserve the right to delay the beginning of recess, something they will almost certainly need to do) the Hill has provided a quick rundown of five key issues that could possibly derail the spending bill - and finally usher in the shutdown that Trump believes could benefit the White House politically at the expense of Democrats, who are vying to take back the House and/or the Senate during next year"s midterm elections.

* * *

And the issues are...

Immigration:

Trump announced earlier this year that he was ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants work permits to undocumented young immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.

 

Congress has just a few months left to save the program or come up with a new solution, with DACA recipients set to lose their status beginning in early March.

 

Many Democrats and even some Republicans like Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) have demanded that any spending legislation that stretches into 2018 shield so-called Dreamers from deportation.

 

They view the must-pass spending bills as their best shot at getting a DACA solution over the finish line.

 

“We will not leave here without a DACA fix,” Pelosi vowed Thursday.

 

But conservatives have put their foot down on the issue, saying that attaching any DACA deal to a continuing resolution would be a non-starter with the Republican conference.

 

GOP leaders in both chambers have made clear that they oppose linking DACA to government spending bills, setting up a potential showdown at the end of the month.

 

Republicans have in the past had to rely on Pelosi and the Democrats to pass stopgap funding bills, though the House passed the two-week spending bill this week without Democrats. However, Democratic support will still be needed in the Senate.

 

“A DACA solution will be a standalone solution,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told reporters on Thursday. “If DACA gets attached to the spending bill, there will be major, major pushback."

Defense:

It’s all but certain that Congress will need to pass another continuing resolution (CR) on Dec. 22 in order to buy more time to write a massive, omnibus spending package.

 

But defense hawks and conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus worry that yet another short-term spending bill would be harmful for the military.

 

They are insisting that leadership boost money for the Pentagon before the end of the year – and have threatened to vote against another CR this year if that doesn’t happen.

 

One option being considered would be to move a legislative package that funds defense at higher levels through September alongside a short-term patch to fund the rest of the government at current levels through January.

 

It’s unclear whether Democrats would be willing to go along with the idea. Their support would be crucial in the Senate, where at least eight Democratic votes are needed to overcome a filibuster.

 

Democrats have traditionally insisted that any increase in defense spending above budget caps be paired with an increase in spending on domestic programs.

 

But House Republicans could just jam the Senate with the defense-first package and dare vulnerable Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) to vote against a bill fully funding the military, especially with the escalating nuclear threat from North Korea hanging over their heads.

 

“Then they can go home and explain why they can’t fund the American military when the House did,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), an Appropriations cardinal.

ObamaCare:

Further complicating spending talks is the commitment that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to help win her vote for the GOP tax reform bill.

 

McConnell pledged to support passage of two bipartisan ObamaCare fixes before the end of the year, which could be attached to a government funding bill.

 

But House conservatives say they oppose the measures seen as simply propping up ObamaCare.

 

To lock up the necessary Republican votes for the two-week CR this week, House GOP leadership promised that the next spending bill would not contain funding for ObamaCare cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments, according to Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.).

 

“The three things that we’ve been told are not going to happen as part of our agreement: no CSRs, no DACA, no debt limit,” said Walker, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee

Disaster aid.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to provide more supplemental funding for hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida, as well as for western areas devastated by wildfires.

 

The thinking is that disaster aid could be attached to the next CR, but members are still debating the price tag, according to Walker.

 

The White House last month requested another $44 billion in disaster aid, which would be the third infusion of cash to help with relief and recovery efforts.

 

But the funding request has been under fire from lawmakers who say it doesn’t go far enough to address the damage from the string of natural disasters.

 

And the White House has insisted that the latest disaster package be offset with cuts to non-defense federal programs, which could be problematic for Democrats.

Children"s health-care and the opioid crisis:

Democrats are also fighting for two health care priorities that could have bipartisan support: the renewal of a popular children’s health program and more money to combat the opioid crisis.

 

Many members are pushing to renew the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which expired in September.

 

Republicans have said the issue could be attached to the next CR in an effort to sweeten the pot and attract more Democratic votes for the stopgap bill.

 

Democrats have also indicated that they want additional funding to fight the deadly opioid crisis in a larger spending deal.

 

Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency this year, but he stopped short of declaring it a national emergency — a designation that would have allocated new federal money toward the crisis.

 

It’s unclear, however, if additional dollars will come in a spending package.

 

“We"ve done a lot, put a lot of resources into combating opioids already,” the Senate’s No. 3 Republican, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), said earlier this month. “If they"ve got a proposal, I"m sure we would take a look at it, but I don’t know that that"s at least on the agenda at the moment."

* * *

As the Trump administration continues to get its legislative bearings after Trump’s hectic first year in office (a year in which he accomplished many of the priorities that he set out during the campaign, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, rolling back financial regulation and defanging some of the EPA’s most stifling regulations), the president has wasted no time setting out his next major priority: The $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan to help rebuild America’s crumbling roads and bridges.

The Wall Street Journal revealed still more details of the plan, which helped flatten the yield curve last week after Trump revealed that he intends to push ahead on one of his most crucial, yet long-delayed, promises.

While some in Congress might balk at still more deficit-expanding spending, polls show that a majority of Americans – even those who loathe the president – support this aspect of his agenda.

Recent polling showed that 52% of voters who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 back an infrastructure program, according to the survey. Some 53% of white male respondents in states won by Clinton support an infrastructure initiative, as well as 51% of voters who say they disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president.

All of which begs the question: Will this be the issue that finally forces red-state Democrats to break with the “Chuck and Nancy” enforced plan for mass obstruction and throw their support behind the president’s agenda?

After all, their political futures may depend on it.  
 

Heaven Forbid Peace Should Break Out Between The US And North Korea!

Authored by Antonius Aquinas,

As long as the US Empire can be funded and maintained on the backs of its taxpaying public, the chance of de-escalation of tensions not only on the Korean peninsula, but throughout the world are practically nil.  And, as long as the nation’s current interventionist ideology holds sway, it will only be through a financial meltdown that the US’s role as global policeman will come to a much-needed end.

Hamhung, North Korea, June 30, 1950

The most recent example of the world’s biggest bully escalating matters is its on-again, off-again badgering of North Korea.  In contrast to Western/CIA media reports, the November 28 launch of what appears to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15, was not unprovoked.  Instead, the North Korean test firing was in response to the unexpected announcement of further US/South Korean military drills to take place starting on December 4.  The exercises are, in part, to show off the latest mass murdering “product” of America’s military industrial complex, the USF-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet.

Before the latest launch, the Kim Jong Un regime had not fired a missile for two months and was in discussions with other intermediaries about how tensions could be lessened on the Korean peninsula. For the bellicose US, however, not even an uneasy “truce” can be tolerated.  The next American scheduled drill was not to take place until the spring of 2018, yet, while negotiations were taking place, the US abruptly, and to the outrage of everyone involved, renewed exercises.  Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, explains:

We have been working with Pyongyang.  Then, all of a sudden two weeks after the United States had sent us the signal [about readiness to dialogue], they announced unscheduled drills in December.

 

...there is an impression that they were deliberately provoking [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un to make him break the pause and gave in to their provocations.

This, of course, is not the first time that the US has acted with duplicity in foreign matters.  Its barbaric dealing with two Middle Eastern strongmen (Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi) are grisly examples of what happens to those who run afoul of the US Empire, especially those who do not possesses a nuclear deterrent.

North Korea, too, has witnessed the wanton destructive capabilities of the American military during the so called “police action” of the early 1950s:

The US Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionally greater than that of Japan’s in the Second World War. . . .  

 

American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea . . . including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of WWII.

The loss of life was, to say the least, catastrophic as 10% of the population, some 3 million people, perished due mostly to American bombing while the destruction of property was equally brutal. 

“By the end of the war,” North Korean sources assert, “only two modern buildings remained standing in Pyongyang.”

Is it any wonder that the North Korean leadership gets a little antsy when the US scramble its jets.  It does not want a repetition of the holocaust inflicted on it by the merciless American Air Force.

Of course, these inconvenient facts are rarely if ever spoken about in the Western media, academia, and certainly not by war-mongering politicos like U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.  They are simply ignorant of history or pretend not to know.

The US Empire only accepts peace if it favors its interests. 

For the Korean Peninsula that means that Kim Jong Un must disband his nuclear program.  Such a move, however, would mean a premature death to Un and the eventual carpet bombing of his country.  The North Korean strongman will do no such thing.

The Trump Administration may huff and puff all it wants and enact greater sanctions on the North, but unless it wants to risk a nuclear confrontation that may spread into a general world war, it has little options.

Instead of another round of destabilizing military maneuvers, maybe President Trump and his foreign policy team should try to engage in genuine negotiations to bring about an equitable solution to the matter.

Why not “give peace a chance?”

Trump Summons Generals To War Room After Hawaii Students Get "In The Event Of A Nuclear Attack" Email

Here is what not to do when addressing your student population at a time when tensions with a nuclear-armed adversary are running at fever pitch: send an email to the student population with the subject title "in the event of a nuclear attack." Unfortunately for hundreds of students at the Aloha State school, that is precisely what they got in the inboxes on Monday, and as the NY Daily News notes, the message sent Cold War-style shivers down the spines of those not accustomed to the "duck and cover" drills of the 1950s, which in this day and age of pervasive snowflakyness, would be pretty much everyone.

"In light of concerns about North Korea missile tests, state and federal agencies are providing information about nuclear threats and what to do in the unlikely event of a nuclear attack and radiation emergency," says the email obtained by Hawaii News Now.

The email also told students and faculty to be aware of emergency sirens and to follow instructions on "sheltering in place."

For Hawaii, which is far closer to North Korea than the US West Coast, the threat of a nuclear attack by Pyongyang is far more tangible. Furthermore, the American military has recently practiced missile defense tests off of Hawaii, because despite international efforts for a peaceful solution, Kim and President Trump have continued to fire insults at each other, with the commander-in-chief"s jabs suggesting that words could soon be replaced by "fire and fury."

The ominous email also came as the president indicated that diplomatic efforts have stalled.

Adding fuel to the fire, the Army Times reports that on Monday Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said that America’s relationship with North Korea remains a diplomatic one, but he urged members of the military to be ready for war in case the situation breaks down. Mattis also used his keynote speech at the annual AUSA conference in Washington, D.C., to thank allies who have stood with the U.S. through the ages.

“It is right now a diplomatically, economic-sanctions-buttressed effort to try and turn North Korea off of this path,” Mattis told the audience. “What does the future hold? Neither you nor I can say.”

In contrast to some of the president’s tweets, Mattis’ comments represent a fairly regular baseline of the North Korea situation — that diplomacy has the lead, with the military ready to back it up.

“There is one thing the U.S. Army can do, and that is you have to be ready to ensure we have military options that our president can deploy if needed,” Mattis said. “The international community has spoken, but that means the U.S. Army must stand ready.“

“So if you’re ready, that’s your duty at this point and time, and I know the Army will always do its duty.”

Readiness for a major conflict was a theme throughout the secretary’s speech, which burrowed into the Army’s history and came with a series of book recommendations. The big takeaway, Mattis emphasized, was that the Army needs to be ready to go at a moment’s notice because if diplomacy fails, the military must be deployable right away.

“What we want to do is be so ready and be very much aware that we fight the way we come, that everybody in the world wants to deal with Secretary Tillerson and the Department of State, not the Department of Defense and the United States Army,” Mattis told the audience to applause.

Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon, when Trump met in the White House"s Situation Room with his top defense officials, including Mattis, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dunfort for a briefing and discussion on options to respond to any North Korean aggression or if necessary to prevent Pyongyang from threatening the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons, the White House said in a statement.

NEW: Pres. Trump met with Defense Sec. Mattis, Gen Dunford today to discuss North Korea options, White House says. https://t.co/ACOUJkoTMB pic.twitter.com/Ou0LOyGtmT

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 10, 2017

It is not yet known what was discussed during today"s meeting, but comes after Trump warned the world is in the "calm before the storm". Spokeswoman for the US State Department Heather Nauert confirmed the Situation Room meeting in a press briefing this afternoon. She confirmed North Korea was one of the topics along with "Turkey and Iran".

Some have speculated the meeting could have been to discuss responses to any looming North Korean missile tests – with fears of a launch on October 18. The US President has also cryptically said only "one thing" will work against North Korea and has criticised the past 25-years of US policy on the Kims.

The Situation Room – officially named the John F. Kennedy Conference Room – is used to deal with disasters and conflicts at home and abroad. It is equipped with secure communications equipment, and allows the US President to command the nation’s military across the globe.

What Happened To Making America Great Again?

Authored by Curt Mills via The National Interest,

With Steve Bannon out of the White House, regrets are abounding in some corners of the right over how President Trump staffed his administration.

As a candidate Donald Trump excoriated his party’s reigning orthodoxies. As president, however, he is running a fairly conventional administration in his first seven months, at least in the policy realm. What happened to making America great again?

The truth is that the new movement had troubling signs from the beginning. “People who went all-in for Trump were engaged in total wishful thinking,” complains one former Trump campaign policy adviser. According to him, “I think that in his gut Trump isn’t wedded to the establishment. But the idea that Trump’s sort-of vague intuition about this stuff would translate into any serious effort to cultivate the kind-of ideological team that could really catalyze a shift . . . there’s just no evidence of that. I didn’t see it on the campaign. And I don’t think—from what I know of how they’ve done hires—I don’t think ideology is a factor.”

Prominent backers of the New York mogul who were there with him from the early days—Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie and even former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski—did not get senior roles in the administration. At the Cabinet level, only Jeff Sessions and perhaps Michael Flynn seemed dyed-in-the-wool ideological national-populists. Instead, his White House was staffed with business titans and generals with whom he had limited previous association—Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn and Wilbur Ross. He seemed to largely eschew bomb-throwers or the politicians who most robustly voiced support for Trumpism the ideology, such as Duncan Hunter or Kris Kobach. As early as January, one Washington conservative political professional (who refused to vote for Trump) boasted to me that he was both thrilled and stunned with the cabinet selections.

Roger Stone Jr., the controversial political consultant who sometimes has the ear of the president, has been saying in the press for months that Steve Bannon and his ilk made a mistake by not using more of their “political capital” on staffing choices, leaving them isolated when their mercurial boss had a change of mood.

Flash forward to this month and the editor of the magazine charged with defending Trumpism—trade protectionism, noninterventionism in foreign affairs, and skepticism of immigration and globalization—has renounced the president. Julius Krein of American Affairs is now on the warpath. “Bannon’s vision,” he says, “of nationalist populism is completely idiotic.” He blames the president for messing this up: “The core problem is at the top. It was always going to be such a weird administration . . . It had to be very nimble, and unite all these different strands. And, when that’s missing at the top. It obviously doesn’t work.” Krein singles out Mattis and Ross as excellent choices, but says that their influence is constrained by a wholly undisciplined president.

Are Neocons Better at Playing the D.C. Game?

In the first days following Trump’s election, establishment, even neoconservative, personnel were considered for roles. Nikki Haley, now UN ambassador, has been reported to have been offered the job of secretary of state before Rex Tillerson. In April in New York, she denied the offer, but confirmed the consideration. “The original call that I received to go to Trump Tower was to discuss Secretary of State,” Haley said. “No, he did not offer it.” Haley is firmly associated with the neoconservatives Trump has claimed to loathe, and during the primary she attacked Trump and endorsed his rival, Marco Rubio.

One reason the likes of Haley rose to the top is that many realists shunned Trump. “There is also the problem that few credentialed realists were eager to work with [Trump],” Scott McConnell, founding editor of The American Conservative, told me. “None were willing to play the game of looking for entry points—as the neocons did early on, with at least some success. . . . [Trump] seemed to have made most initial choices based on whom he might have seen on TV, and relied heavily, and probably overly, on the military, where top people were willing to work with him. He never really had connections to either nationalists/populists or realists—though neither group is that well entrenched in the D.C. think tank world.”

Haley likely came right up to the line of the only hard-and-fast rule of Trump world: no prior explicit and total renunciations of the man himself.

“I do think if you’re on the record saying nasty things about Trump, or the Trump family, that stuff can really hurt you,” the former campaign aide told me, in line with a longstanding rumor about Trump’s hiring.

Elliot Abrams, the former Reagan official nixed as the State Department’s number-two man, was one victim of this policy. Abrams declined comment to the National Interest for this story. And Haley’s position clashes and own personal ambition have had very real policy implications already. Widely thought to be a future presidential candidate, Haley has often stepped out ahead of the State Department with far-more hawkish language in her statements and public appearances as ambassador.

John Bolton is another example. Though Trump is an outspoken Iraq War critic, he considered the George W. Bush administration’s colorful cheerleader for secretary of state, national security adviser and deputy secretary of state. Bolton also declined comment for this story. Krein protested to me that Bolton is misunderstood, and actually would have been a great choice. McConnell ferociously disagrees: “The problem with Bolton is simple. If you liked George W. Bush’s foreign policy, especially the Iraq War and the idea of regime change carried out by the American military on a multi-country, pan-regional scale, and you want get that kind of policy going again, the search is over: he’s definitely the guy,” he wrote in December.

Could Things Have Been Different?

McConnell, a prominent ally of the Pat Buchanan movement that many contend augered the age of Trumpism, has argued that with Bannon gone, there effectively is no White House agenda, only a day-to-day quest for survival. And with Bannon’s exodus, along with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer (establishment professionals who nonetheless helped sell Trump to the party elite), it’s worth asking what sort of questions were asked of job applicants on the campaign and during the transition and afterward, if any.

One political professional who has advised Republican campaigns, including during 2016, finds the hiring of H. R. McMaster as national security adviser particularly curious, remarking “I don’t know how they could of” asked him any serious ideological questions, “given what they got.”

“When H.R. McMaster at his first staff meeting tells the collected staff that he does not agree with the use of the term ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ one would have thought would have come up in the job interview.”

That sentiment—and the sense of absolute obliteration of the Bannon wing in the administration—was seemingly confirmed by the resignation letter of Sebastian Gorka on Friday.

“Regrettably, outside of yourself,” he wrote to the president. “The individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again,’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months. This was made patently obvious as I read the text of your speech on Afghanistan. . . . The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost.”

The former campaign aide says he spoke with Stephen Miller, now White House senior advisor, and nothing of the sort came up, at least during the hiring phase.

“I did have one conversation on ideology,” the former aide tells me.

“After I was hired and everything, I got a call from Steve Miller. . . . Steve calls me and tells me: ‘The biggest contrast we want to draw is ‘Globalist Hillary’ versus ‘Nationalist Trump.’”

If anyone has the profile in the West Wing to directly ideologically succeed Bannon, it is Miller. But should he have such ambition, he might argue for a more scrupulous, even rigid system for hiring, lest the administration lets more globalists in around the president.

“I was a little surprised by that” conversation, the former aide tells me.

“And I probably discerned around that time that it probably wasn’t going to be a good ideological fit. But, again, it wasn’t like he and I talked about this or he asked for my views or anything. He just sort of said this is what we’re doing. . . . He had every reason to know that I wasn’t a Trumpian ideologue. . . . But it never really came up directly.”

A Silver Lining For Trumpists?

If there is a counterview, it’s that the so-called establishment forces now around the president—particularly the troika of Tillerson, Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly—aren’t really moderates, at all.

Mattis has been labeled by some as a stealth agitator for regime change in Iran, and an opponent of the nuclear deal, having developed a uniformly negative impression of that country’s government from his days in Iraq, where units under his command warred with the Shia militias.

Tillerson, of course, has been called a Russophile by critics—like his boss, too chummy with Vladimir Putin. And his efforts to pull the State Department away from global democratization efforts have been roundly criticized in the establishment.

Least commented on has been General John Kelly, now chief of staff. He’s a confirmed hardliner from his days heading up U.S. Southern Command—a portfolio of Central and South America. Not just anyone with that kind of knowledge of the situation and professional background would sign up to be the Homeland Security chief for a president who vowed to deport millions of people and build a wall on the Southern border, but Kelly readily did.

And who knows? Bannon might not be permanently out of the fold, if he even is at all. Trump is known to take late-night calls from a wide-range of actors, including from chums like Stone. Bannon has also argued that he is going to war “for” the president outside of the White House. His battlecry is clear, but whether he will win that war remains unclear.

Why Every European Country Has A Trump Or Sanders Candidate

Authored by Richard Drake via TheAmericanConservative.com,

The suicide in the Friuli region of northern Italy earlier this year of a 30-year-old man, identified in the newspapers only as Michele, has become a symbol of the country’s unemployment tragedy, particularly as it affects young people.

Though much worse in the South, the country’s economic crisis also has had a blighting effect on the North. The national unemployment rate now stands at nearly 12 percent. A 40 percent youth unemployment rate nationwide, however, has people speaking of a generational apartheid in Italy. There is no work to be found for young people. In the workplace, comparatively speaking, they have been walled off from the rest of the population.

Friuli is a region of plain and mountain in the northeastern part of Italy, flush against borders to the north with Austria and the east with Slovenia. The annals of Friuli antedate by many centuries the arrival of the ancient Romans, who founded the colony of Aquileia there nearly two hundred years before Christ. The barbarian invasions swept over Friuli in the general wreckage of the Roman Empire. An Aquileian state arose in the Middle Ages, but was absorbed in the 15th century by the expanding Venetian empire. Then Friuli passed through French and Austrian phases of occupation and control before becoming part the newly founded Kingdom of Italy, in 1866.

The Friulani, a highly energetic and resourceful people steeped in the work ethic common to the peasant and artisanal cultures of traditional Europe, tilled the land and also gained a well-deserved reputation for their skill in specialty crafts and the building trades. Typically in such cultures, the work that a man did defined him. The modern world has changed those old ways of life, but the culture they generated persists. More recently, Friuli became renowned for its small businesses and factories, which played a vital role in the national economy. There was still hard work for the Friulani to do.

From his mother’s milk, Michele would have imbibed the work ethic of his native region. He would have thought of work as dignity and honor. In a suicide note, he claimed to be bereft of such things and of hope. “Desire has passed me by,” he wrote. Michele never had been able to find a meaningful job and had despaired of ever finding one. Contemplating his blank future, a sense of deep frustration had crushed his spirit. He hoped that his parents would forgive his dreadful act, but could not envisage a place for himself in a society without work.

No less than many other regions in the country, Friuli has been devastated by the economic crash of 2008 and its seemingly permanent aftermath. Hundreds of its small businesses and factories have closed, leaving many thousands unemployed. Michele’s father called his son’s death “the defeat of a moribund society.” What other way is there to describe a society unable to create work for its young people?

One of Italy’s rising political figures, Beppe Grillo of the politically eclectic Five-Star Movement, has proposed a guaranteed citizen income for all Italians. His reasoning appears to be that the Italians should be getting something from their government other than its slavish devotion to the corrupt oligarchy of the banks and corporations that rule the country.

There is a strong Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein component in the Five-Star Movement, as well as an admiration for the challenge that Hugo Chávez threw down to the multinationals in Venezuela. Grillo also has praised Ecuador’s Rafael Correa for his opposition to the International Monetary Fund, an institution that the Italian leader reviles as a battering ram of noxious austerity policies. Since the recent presidential election in the United States, Grillo has praised Trump as a much-needed change-of-air in world politics. Change of any kind, a powerful sentiment in the United States last fall, exerts the same kind of force in Italy now.

Even if a guaranteed citizen income initiative were to prevail and become law, the main problem underscored by Michele’s death would still remain. An allowance conjures up the image of juvenile dependence. A national welfare program for all citizens certainly is preferable to leaving ever rising numbers of them in want, but it would not solve in a socially edifying way the anterior problem of work. Michele was not asking for an allowance. He wanted work to do. This is a human need that societies deserving of survival are obliged to supply, a point raised by Thorstein Veblen in the book of his he valued most, The Instinct of Workmanship (1914). Human beings, he wrote, are called by nature to useful effort. It is not only the deprivations and frustrations associated with sex that undermine and subvert the human personality. He judged the men who live by moving money around to be the greatest peril of all to those who live by work.

The problem of work in Italy today belongs to the class of social consequences identified by Pier Paolo Pasolini in a famous Corriere della Sera article in 1974. “The Italians are no longer what they once were,” he observed. By this statement, Friuli’s greatest poet, filmmaker, and social critic meant that Italy’s traditional values had undergone an anthropological mutation. The country had abandoned its traditional way of life, which in its peasant culture had achieved a kind of poetic synthesis in the saying of Padron ‘Ntoni, novelist Giovanni Verga’s lead character in I Malavoglia (1881): “He is richest who has the fewest wants.” Pasolini feared that the new values of a hedonistic consumer society would be a poor substitute for Italy’s Christian and socialist ideals. What a debased fate for Italy, to come through the civilization-defining vicissitudes of its millennial history, only to end up ignobly aping American-style conspicuous consumption.

Pasolini had in mind a particular phase of the globalized economy, which since the 1970s has sped forward on the principle that money must be completely liberated to maximize profits for those who have it. It is immediately evident why this golden rule for today’s economy, though achieving its purpose of profit-maximization, has been a poor proposition for most of the working people of the Western world.

While rates of extreme poverty worldwide have declined in recent decades, the means to produce such a result have required an outsourcing of the West’s manufacturing base. The coincidental surge in profits made possible by the relocation of manufacturing jobs to countries unencumbered by high wages, labor unions, and environmental laws has with perfect justice sparked a political firestorm.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explained in Globalization and Its Discontents (2004) that the basic problem with the world’s current financial arrangement concerned the institutions and organizations commanding it. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the U.S. Treasury, and the European Monetary Union protect special interests, Wall Street most of all. Despite their lip-service in democratic argot, the very last thing seriously on the minds of the top financial policy makers is the well-being of ordinary people.

As a result of the methods used to promote globalization, the consequences for the West have been tragic. Work is becoming increasingly uncertain and insecure, or it is in the process of disappearing altogether. It would take Veblen’s talents for social satire, which are unsurpassed in all of American literature, to depict with the essential exactitude of artistic synthesis how far the United States has fallen away from democratic grace, the country’s dramatically widening gap between the haves and the have-nots being what it is. Clearly, we are on the wrong course. What the robotics revolution, now at an incipient stage, will do to further diminish opportunities for Western peoples to work can be easily imagined, if the economic imperative of corporate capitalism is the rule to go by.

The same desolating trends can be seen in Europe, where people increasingly regard the European Union as a Trojan horse. The economic elites and their political front-men responsible for this image-challenged contraption lose public support with each new poll. The people by and large blame the European Union and the other accessories of globalization for their worsening standard of living. When informed by the establishment media that thanks to globalization Europe has never been more prosperous and peaceful, Europeans in historic numbers are reacting with disbelief. Their deepening sense of betrayal propels the surge of populism that defines the politics of Europe today.

Arguments long-settled in favor of deregulation, liberalization, open borders, and other globalization watchwords have been reopened. The constituency is growing for a politics that puts the well-being of Europeans first. Political measures calling for the protection of European jobs and cultures have gained a following unforeseen prior to 2008.

In Italy, for example, 77 percent of the people questioned in a recent poll could see no advantage to them at all from the country’s membership in the European Union. Sixty-four percent of them expressed hostility toward it. Eight Italian businesses out of 10 can find nothing positive to say about the European Union. It is seen to be a creature of the banks and the big financial houses. As public relations disasters go, this one has unfolded on an epic scale as the underlying populations, long left out of consideration by the economic elites, have begun to sense the fate their masters have in store for them.

Leaving underlying populations out of consideration was a special feature of the planning that went into globalization. They have been voiceless. In America, Trump gave them a voice, and they responded to him with their political support. It did not matter that he came before them without a plan for their deliverance. That he came to them at all mattered. He understood the depth of the anger and alienation in America against a status quo personified by his opponent, Hillary Clinton, whose repeated and munificently rewarded speeches before the captains of finance on Wall Street effectively branded her as the safe candidate for all who wanted to leave existing economic arrangements fundamentally undisturbed.

Trump may go down in history as a president who was hopelessly out of his depth on all vital matters, but his presidential campaign will be studied for as long as historians have an interest in American politics. It was a masterpiece of intuition based on an uncannily correct judgment about the spirit of the times. Bernie Sanders had the same insight, but the Democratic Party turned out to be much more corrupt and vulnerable to manipulation than the Republicans, an astonishing feat. In possibly an even more flagrant instance of interference in the American democratic process than anything yet proven against Vladimir Putin, internal machinations weighted the primary process against Sanders. The Republicans tried to head off Trump, too, but a fiercely loyal base and a dearth of plausible opponents gave him an easy victory in the primaries.

At an academic conference in New York in May a year ago, I participated in a conversation among scholars, journalists, and government officials who generally thought that Trump would not even win 20 percent of the national vote. His ridiculous campaign surely would fall of its own dead weight. Professional pollsters, though not so far wrong as my conference colleagues in New York, also missed what appears to be the main story of the campaign: a loss of faith, unprecedented in its severity, by the American people in the rules of the game. There is no other way to explain the stunningly bizarre choice that they made for the man to lead them.

That Trump has rapt admirers and self-confessed imitators in Europe should come as no surprise because the mood he represents is an international phenomenon. Virtually every European country has a Trump candidate saying basically the same things that he did in his campaign against immigrants, globalization trade agreements, and the establishment media. Italy has two such candidates: Grillo and the leader of the xenophobic League Party, Matteo Salvini. They are riding a wave of anti-establishment outrage and in tandem are outpolling the two major mainstream parties, the center-left Democratic Party, now in internal disarray from schism, and the center-right Go Italy Party.

As Europe since the end of World War II has slipped ever more securely into the orbit of American military and economic power, it is only to be expected that the Atlantic Community will be increasingly homogeneous. The Italian case is most instructive about the fundamental meaning of America for Europe. Italy’s greatest postwar novelist, Cesare Pavese, explained in The Moon and the Bonfires (1950), “America is here already. We have our millionaires and people are dying of hunger.” Contemporary Italy, in keeping with Europe as a whole, is best understood as an example of America’s role as the prime mover in international affairs and economics, or of how the world works per necessità, in Machiavelli’s phrase, according to the dictates of those who hold irresistible power.

By outsourcing its manufacturing base in search of portfolio enhancement, the United States exercised a freedom for which liberty-loving European businessmen, bankers, and politicians hungered as well. Unable to compete with 50-cent per hour labor, the working classes in America and Europe would have to go to the wall, but while adjusting their blindfolds they could rest assured that in the fullness of time the wonder-working ways of the free market would redeem the world.

Such a promise held no meaning for Michele, and he left this world slamming the door. “I feel betrayed,” he wrote in his suicide note. Who can say which other factors drove him in those last desperate hours before he took his life? We do know what his stated reason was for doing it. Work was the final thought that he had. How else could a Friulano give a good account of himself in this life?

The Military Industrial Complex Is Undermining US National Security

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The ongoing problems with the F-35 and other military programs, stemming from virtually unlimited budgets, underline the inefficiency of the American military-industrial complex (MIC). In contrast, Moscow develops armaments capable of counteracting the latest technological advances of the US at minimal cost.

One of a state’s most insidious mechanisms is the inefficiency of the military-industrial sector. When looking at the world"s first superpower, this becomes all the more pronounced. Still, the ongoing problems highlighted by the F-35 program and failed missile interceptions by ABM systems are a good demonstration of how inefficiency in the US military sector has risen to worrying levels.

The main cause of these issues is related to the huge military-industrial complex that employs hundreds of thousands Americans directly or indirectly. The unhealthy composition of this power conglomerate often employs a revolving door involving politicians and board members from large arms-producing companies. This situation raises questions about corruption as well as a number of obvious conflicts of interest.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Congress is increasingly willing to grant what almost amount to blank checks to finance military budgets, numbering in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The second factor that impacts negatively on the efficiency of the MIC is the propaganda to which the entire American system is subjected. Looking at the example of think-tanks, they are all practically funded, directly or indirectly, by the military-related industries or foreign governments (especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel). The role of think-tanks is to influence policymakers, creating a common view between components of the (deep) state.

A problem arises when almost all experts and politicians participating in these Washington based think tanks come from federal agencies or industries tied to the military through contracts worth billions of dollars. Hardly offering any dissent from official or mainstream opinions on issue ranging from Russia to the F-35, politicians, experts and journalists all agree that Russia constitutes the main danger and that the F-35 program does not have any critical issues and is actually a superior weapon, two lies in full swing. Think-tanks and their guests promote an erroneous narrative that seeds, nourishes and sustains the problems and inefficiencies that beset military systems and Washington"s strategic vision. They offer no criticism, no change of policy, only echo chambers of lies and propaganda.

In addition to the think-tanks and the revolving doors involving board members of MIC companies and Congress and Senate members, a major problem concerns the timing of projects and the contemporary technological advancements of geopolitical opponents. The cost of projects such as the F-35, the ABM system, and the new supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, have reached astronomical figures, following decades of development. The immediate consequences are the obsolescence of these systems once they come into service, especially when compared with weapon systems developed, or being developed, by countries such as China and especially Russia.

Despite the fact that US spending is unmatched in the world, amounting to about half of that of all countries combined, the weapons systems of competitors often cost less and are more efficient.

The survival of the MIC is inextricably tied to the US dollar and its role in the world as a reserve currency. With almost $700 billion a year worth of military spending, it is easy to reach a nationwide debt of over $21 trillion. The only way to sustain this kind of debt is due to the credibility of the dollar itself.

The reason why US treasury bills are considered safe and a great way for a foreign investor to diversify in long-term assets, despite $21 trillion of debt, is because of US credibility and the dollar’s status as reserve currency. The dollar, being the main global reserve currency, continues to be purchased by foreign countries to pay for commodities as well as for trade between each other. Just as the MIC warns breathlessly of all the dangers and threats through propaganda, resulting in enormous investments in unnecessary and obsolete weapon systems, the dollar is also printed by the Fed without any fear of devaluation or inflation risk, providing Washington with virtually unlimited funds for defense budgets and the ability to carry out massive wars. If you combine the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and add to it the cost of the F-35, it amounts to more than $7 trillion. It is an almost incomprehensible figure that is at the same emblematic of how the global economic system is at the service of American warfare imperialism.

In response to this dysfunctional system, we find a diametrically opposite situation in Russia. With a budget that is about one-tenth that of the US, but with the need to keep pace with the world"s most powerful war machine (at least in terms of quantity; we can discuss quality at another time), Moscow has had to optimize costs to get the greatest possible benefits from its weapon systems. This has led to a much more logical management of the Russian military apparatus.

By carefully observing the most important American technological advances (fifth-generation aircraft like the F-35, new ICBMs and aircraft carriers), it is easy to discern two asymmetric strategies by Moscow, one defensive and other offensive.

With the defensive one, for each American action there is a corresponding Russian response. The F-35 and fifth-generation aircraft become easy targets thanks to complex systems such as the S-400, the future S-500, and cutting-edge radar technology. The Gerald Ford supercarrier becomes a simple target to hit if attacked by a Russian supersonic Zircon missile (ready to be put into production in 2018). The S-500s will also be able to intercept any kind of ICBM directed at Russian territory, thus succeeding in sealing Russian skies, a goal the United States is light years away from achieving.

In terms of offensive strategy, Moscow"s capabilities are even more impressive. Emphasis must be placed on the most effective system possible, the SS-28, better known as the Sarmat, a nuclear missile capable of modifying its own trajectory in descent, accelerating or decelerating, thus becoming impossible to intercept for American ABM systems. It is thought that the overall power of a single Sarmat missile (armed with up to 24 MIRVs) is likely to reduce to ashes an area as large as Texas or France. It is the ultimate deterrent weapon.

Other programs related to the development of fifth-generation aircraft or aircraft bombers (PAK-FA and PAK-DA) have slowed down to facilitate the upgrading of aircraft such as the Su-34 and Tu-160, with the Su-35 already within the category of 4++ generation. Such choices can only be made through an military-industrial system that favors the strategies of the nation and not that enrichment of individuals, corrupt shareholders or politicians.

Finally, an operating mix capable of providing defense or attack performance certainly involves cyberspace and, more generally, electronic warfare (EW). Of these systems we know little to nothing; they are secrets jealousy guarded by the Russian defense ministry. But from what many experts write, Moscow could be far ahead of their American colleagues in this field.

It is no exaggeration to say that the technological gap between Russia and the United States is being overcome by the need for Moscow to efficiently optimize its key weapons systems. The main problem for the United States concerns its maintenance of the status of military superpower. The continued issuance of dollar-denominated bonds, the use of the dollar as the main reserve currency, provokes a dangerous sequence that allows the US to print unlimited amounts of money, therefore being able to invest incredible amounts of money in old and vulnerable weapons systems.

The blatant squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of two decades, without anyone ever being held to account for it, has produced enormous damage to the reliability and effectiveness of most of the advanced American military systems and those still in the process of being developed. The military-industrial complex continues to spend large amounts of taxpayers" money without fulfilling the need for concrete or tangible results. Dozens of failed projects costing tens of billions of dollars have ended up allowing competitors to close the gap enjoyed by US military superiority.

A new era is opening up, one where the United States will no longer possess military and technical superiority over its geopolitical opponents in all domains. This will certainly bare consequences for Washington’s present and future strategy of power projection, possibly deterring the US from further engaging in failed policies, leaving countries completely destroyed and millions of lives lost.

The Media Says The US Just Liberated Mosul: Here's What Really Happened

Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

The mainstream media appears to be celebrating ISIS’ recent defeat in Mosul, albeit with some reservations. The media is largely using the word “liberation,” which indicates the people of Mosul have been freed from a monstrous force by a friendly, benevolent one.

In reality, the “liberation” of Mosul paints a dark, horrifying picture of America’s foreign policy when one realizes how ISIS took hold of Mosul in the first place.

As Anti-Media in summarized in September of last year, the U.S. allowed ISIS to gain control of Mosul quite deliberately:

“In June 2014, ISIS crossed the Syrian border into Iraq, effortlessly taking the strategic oil-rich cities of Mosul and Baiji and almost making it as far as Baghdad. Amid the terror group’s frightening victory, they uploaded images and footage of drive-by-shootings, large-scale death marches, and mass graves (following the mass executions of Iraqi soldiers).

“ISIS militants claimed massive quantities of American military equipment, including entire truckloads of humvees, helicopters, tanks, and artillery as their own. This was no secret to Washington, or even the world, as the militants photographed and recorded themselves and publicly flaunted their activity on social media.”

Was there a good reason the American military sat on its hands despite knowing full well that this was going on? As Anti-Media explained further:

“What did the U.S. do in response? Nothing. In spite of all the American bases in Iraq and the government’s ability to perform all manner of illicit activity — including assassinating Muammar Gaddafi in Libya using a drone that was flown out of Sicily by a pilot who operated the vehicle from a naval base in Nevada‚ the U.S. couldn’t do anything to stop ISIS rapid advancements. Was there a problem preventing the U.S. military from conducting air strikes? Clearly not, as the U.S. had been launching drone strikes in Pakistan at around the same time ISIS advanced.”

The U.S. allowed ISIS to gain this significant portion of territory before moving into Iraq with an air war that was designed to pave the way for a segued operation into Syrian territory. The U.S. couldn’t justify an intervention into Syria without going into Iraq first, and this was quite clearly the underlying intention of this operation the whole time, as evidenced by the U.S.’ obsession with the Syrian conflict throughout both the Obama and Trump administrations.

Since the U.S. moved back into Iraq in 2014, the U.S. has dropped 84,000 bombs in Iraq and Syria up until the end of May 2017. As Counterpunch explains, this is nearly three times the number of bombs and missiles dropped on Iraq during  George W. Bush’s “Shock and Awe” campaign in 2003.

Monitoring group Airwars’ currently estimates that the minimum number of civilians killed by the U.S.-led coalition’s campaign in Iraq and Syria has reached roughly 4,354 since the operation began in 2014. The number is likely higher, but we will never know the exact total because up until a month ago, the U.S. only had two personnel investigating casualties in Iraq and Syria full time.

Under President Trump, the number of bombs being dropped increased rapidly after Trump gave complete control to the military generals on the ground to call in airstrikes with little oversight. One such air raid in Mosul saw close to 300 civilians die, and the fact that the strike had been called in by Iraqi forces on the ground demonstrates the immense amount of scope that Trump has delegated to call in airstrikes with little regard to international law and the principle of proportionality.

The battle for Mosul also drew in Iran-backed Shia militias, who have been known to terrorize Iraq’s Sunni population (including torturing civilians). No one doubts that ISIS is a brutal and abhorrent group, but the people who are supposedly “liberating” the local population — whether it’s the U.S. military, the Iraqi armed forces, or the various militia on the ground — appear to be no better.

Now that these Iran-backed militias have firmly planted themselves in Iraq, the U.S. is left with an ultimate dilemma of how to kick them out and counter Iran’s expanding influence. In all seriousness, the battle for Mosul is only paving the way for further occupation and laying the groundwork for America to pursue its regional ambitions in its never-ending quest to confront Iran.

According to the U.N., more than 742,000 Iraqis have fled the battle in Mosul, with approximately 10,000 new civilians fleeing every day. For a country that hates refugees, the U.S. certainly plays a significant role in creating an endless supply of them.

And for those civilians still trapped in the city, their lives will never be the same.

As Airwars explains:

“According to city officials, as much as 80 per cent of West Mosul has been completely destroyed. Civilians still emerging from the battlefield are often bloodied and starving – traumatised by Iraqi and Coalition bombardments; and by atrocities commited [sic] by ISIS.

“According to reporters accompanying Iraqi forces, the stench of death is everywhere in the Old City – with civil defence officials reporting that as many as 4,000 bodies still remain unrecovered in the rubble. It is likely to be many months before the full death toll is known.”

That is quite the liberation. Even if Mosul really has been “liberated” by the U.S.-backed coalition, no one seems to be talking about the fact that ISIS was only able to conquer strategic areas like Mosul under the safety of the Obama administration’s policies. Leaked audio of former Secretary of State John Kerry when he was a senator confirmed the U.S. was watching ISIS grow, and in turn, the hoped this would bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table (you can listen to the full audio here).

You can’t target a group as an enemy in one location and view it as a useful proxy army in another. Indeed, ISIS was always a useful proxy force for the anti-Assad coalition, as Kerry admitted.

Essentially, the U.S. allowed ISIS to gain control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria so they could justify interventions in these war-ravaged nations.

As far as the people of Iraq are concerned, there is only one winner here: the military-industrial complex, which secured massive years-long contracts to make, supply, and drop over 84,000 bombs on a territory that never should have been in the hands of ISIS in the first place.

US Baits ISIS to Stage False-Flag Chemical Attack to Justify Greater US Attack against Syria

What could be smellier and more tempting bait to get ISIS to launch a chemical-weapon attack than a US guarantee that “any” chemical weapon attack in Syria will be automatically blamed on Assad’s regime and will automatically result in the US attacking Assad and all of ISIS’s other enemies?

Today the White House offered ISIS that ironclad guarantee.

White House issues preemptive warning to Syria on chemical attack

Today, the White House issued a carte blanc guarantee to ISIS, pledging that the Assad regime will pay a heavy price for any chemical weapon attack that happens inside of Syria:

The Trump administration issued a rare, preemptive warning to the Syrian regime against launching any chemical weapons attacks, warning Damascus will “pay a heavy price” if it refuses to heed Washington’s red line. (The Washington Times)

The use of the term “red line” makes this more than just another line in the sand because of its historic overtones. Assad and everyone else in the world remembers the political price Obama paid for stating that a chemical weapons attack would be a “red line” for the US that Syria dare not cross. When an attack did happen, which Obama doubted was due to Syria, he refused to cross that line and was criticized for cowardice for years. I think everyone knows that Trump is not about to repeat that kind of retreat from his threat.

To make it even more clear that the US will interpret a chemical weapon attack in Syria as justifying an attack against Assad’s regime, the statement continued as follows:

“the United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack … similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017, chemical weapons attack.” (Italics mine.)

That statement ties the current threat to the last time the US attacked Assad based on the US government’s claimed belief that he used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, which set a precedent for future responses.

As the Washington Times article points out, the White House has revealed none of the particulars that it claims prove that preparations are being made by Assad’s military for such a chemical attack on the Syrian people. That is not unusual in that nations are reluctant to reveal their intelligence, lest it also provide clues as to how the intelligence was gathered; but it also calls to mind the unsupported claims made by the Bush regime that Saddam Hussein was making chemical weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam was not doing.

When evidence was provided before the entire UN for Saddam’s supposed weapons manufacturing, even I sat and thought, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?” I could see leaps to conclusions in every statement that Colin Powell made, and I wanted to believe him because I knew we were going to attack and because I had voted for Bush and because I respected Powell and because and I hoped that our nation would never go to war for illegitimate reasons. So, I greatly hoped to see that Powell would prove the case. By the conclusion of Powell’s presentation to the UN, however, I was certain we were going to war for illegitimate reasons. The leaps of logic were glaring, just as they are now.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley raised the specter of a wider war,threatening Syria’s allies in Moscow and Tehran.

Sounds like intended justification for a wider war to me! And the feared event hasn’t even happened yet. Since fear-mongering has always been a war-monger’s best tool, I have a question:

If this threat is so grave that it means we would have to take on the risk of a wider war that could involve Russia, and if our concern is humanitarian, why don’t we just selectively target the chemical preparations right now, blowing up the preparations facility where they claim the chemicals are being “mixed,” and, thus, save a lot of human suffering before it happens? Wouldn’t it be better, if our interests are purely humanitarian, to prevent the suffering, rather than put out a statement that could easily (even if not intentionally) bait ISIS into launching its own attack?

I’m sure we’ve thought all of this through because administration officials have even described the attack that hasn’t happened yet as ““another mass murder attack using chemical weapons.” (Hmm. We KNOW it is going to be another mass murder attack, but we’re going to let it happen?)

In other words, this attack that hasn’t happened yet (so does not yet even exist) is another one just like the last one that justified our last strange attack against Syria, which seemed to accomplish nothing but distraction from the issues that were raging in the press about Trump colluding with Russia at the time. (What? We blew a tiny three-foot hole in a runway, and darkened some bunkers from which the planes had already been removed (but didn’t destroy either the bunkers or the planes). Much smoke, but not much fire? The problems were patched in half a day, and the airport was back up and running.)

Evidence that the White House is baiting ISIS into making a chemical weapons attack

Here is where it gets really interesting … and evil.

As if all the above were not suspicious enough, let’s look at another article that adds some clarity as to what the US ambassador to the UN pledged in advance of the attack that Assad is supposedly preparing:

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley in a tweet added that Assad’s allies would be responsible too.

 

“Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people,” she tweeted. (CNS News)

Whoa! Notice the use of the word “any.” Surely, US ambassadors choose their working carefully, knowing full well the entire world will parse every word for its significance in trying to discern what the US will really do when the US promises to intensify its war. “ANY” further attack “WILL BE BLAMED ON ASSAD!”

This is the part that I said becomes a carte blanc promise to ISIS that any false-flag event it creates will be used as an excuse to attack Assad. The White House has already promised that it will attack Assad for “ANY” attack that it sees happen — presumably meaning any chemical attack, but even that isn’t clear. Just “any” attack. So, launch an attack, ISIS, because we are ready with a hair trigger to respond directly against Assad for anything we see!

Could the US offer smellier bait to ISIS than that if it tried? Even if you want to assume the cleanest of humanitarian motives on the part of the US regime, you would have to, in that case, assume an incredibly inept and fully stupid US administration because anyone can figure out that ISIS will smell this bait and do all it can to hit on it and bring about the promised response. If the Trump administration did not intend to bait ISIS, then they surely have to be stupider than any of the rest of us to not have seen that ISIS will now do everything it can to draw the US into a more direct confrontation with the Assad regime.

BUT THIS DOESN’T EVEN STOP THERE. Look at the all the rest of what the US ambassador said! She stated outright — no holds barred — that both Russia and Iran will also be held directly responsible for “ANY” attack that the US sees happen.This is a pledge to ISIS that, if they can pull this off, the US will also strongly attack their other greatest enemies, Iran and Russia!

The US ambassador even has the affront to say that Russia SUPPORTS Assad in his efforts to kill his own people. It’s one thing to say that Russia supports Assad’s fight against ISIS, which they surely and unreservedly do, but she has claimed that Russia supports Assad’s goals of killing his own people. She states that the US will hold Russia and Iran, which we know the Trump regime is gunning for, as equally responsible for “any” attack that happens (presumably any chemical attack).

Could ISIS possibly be given stronger bait to launch its own false-flag attack than a promise that “the Great Satan” will go after Assad, Iran and even Russia if we see any attack happen against the Syrian people! This is an ISIS dream! The Trump administration has endangered the Syrian people by making such a brash promise that virtually assures ISIS will do everything it can to murder them. The event hasn’t even happened, and we’ve decided it’s another “another mass murder” just like the last one.

Iran, Russia and Syria respond

CNS News reported Iran’s response as follows:

Iran’s state-funded Press TV commented that the U.S. warning “risks sparking a major confrontation between parties to the Syrian conflict and complicating efforts aimed at resolving it.”

I hate to ever be on the side of saying Iran is right, just as I hated to be on the side of saying Iraq’s ambassador was right when he called Powell’s presentation to the UN “a dog and pony show,” but Iran is right. Of course the White House’s statement risks sparking a major confrontation. In fact, “sparking” is far too week of a word as is “risks.” It guarantees that ISIS will do all it can to create a major conflagration between the US and Russia and Iran — all of whom are its sworn enemies and all of whom it would LOVE to see embroiled in a hot war with each other!

Russia responded by calling the US statement what it is:

“White House Threatens to Murder More Syrians Over Imaginary ‘Chemical Weapons Attacks’”

Yes, it is the US that in encouraging the “murder of more Syrians.” How can any administration be so blatantly dumb as not to see that they have just given the ultimate pledge of support to ISIS if ISIS will just attack more Syrian people! Yes, the US has just officially pledged full-on military support to ISIS if it will murder the Syrian people by promising that “any” attack will be blamed on Assad, Iran and Russia!

This administration is either stupid beyond belief or evil beyond belief. They could not possibly have made any statements that would be more likely to cause the death of Syrian people than these. That presses me to conclude this administration has completely sold out to the neocons and the US military-industrial establishment by pledging itself to a more intense war with Russia and Iran if chemical weapons are used on the Syrian people. EVEN IF ASSAD IS PLANNING TO ATTACK HIS OWN PEOPLE WITH CHEMICAL WEAPONS, WE HAVE VIRTUALLY ASSURED THAT ISIS WILL DO ITS BEST TO DO THE SAME!

This is an administration that wants a wider war with Iran and Russia! That is why Iran and Russia responded as they did.

Russia and Iran had already stated that any further strikes like the one that the US claimed was retaliatory last time would cross their own “red lines.” While Iran could easily be taken as mere saber rattling, that is not usually Russia’s approach. It’s a little more adult than that. As the CNS article reminds everyone, Russia already stated,

From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well.

Russia has also warned that any US aircraft operating west of the Euphrates river will be treated as targets.

Syria has, naturally, denied that it is preparing a chemical weapons attack against its own people and just stated that this is an attempt by the US to initiate a broader diplomatic attack against Syria and possibly a military attack.

Frants Klintsevich, first deputy chairman of the defense and security committee in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, accused the United States of “preparing a new attack on the positions of Syrian forces.”

 

The Kremlin also dismissed the White House statement, which had warned that Assad and his military would “pay a heavy price” if it goes ahead with the attack. Russian  President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov … also criticized the Trump administration for using the phrase “another chemical weapons attack,” arguing that an independent investigation into the April attack was never conducted despite Russia’s calls for one. (Zero Hedge)

In a word, Iran called the US warning an “escalation” and Russia called it “provocation.”

In an earlier article titled “Getting Trumped and Thumped in Syria,” I highlighted a few of the numerous reasons to doubt that any of the chemical attacks in Syria (even during the Obama administration) were orchestrated by the Assad regime:

Dr. Theodore Postol has won many awards as a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. He specializes in ballistic missiles and chemical dispersion clouds. He helps the US government with its weapons program and trains other scientists in weapon technology. Postol debunked the 2013 claims that a chemical incident was caused by one of Assad’s missiles. Briefings, such as his, that countered initial information linking the chemicals to Assad are why Obama did not follow through with his red-line threat.

 

… Postol does not believe this year’s incident was a missile sent in by Assad, and he believes the site shows evidence of tampering. He notes many stunning errors in the reports that have tried to link both the 2013 chemical incident and the 2017 one to Bashar Assad: “the government’s new report [is] obviously false, misleading and amateurish…. What the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true.”

That article cited several other analysts and their reasons for disbelieving that any chemical weapons attacks were carried out by Assad’s forces.

Why does the US want a broader conflict with Iran and Russia so badly that it seeks to elicit one?

We all can remember how well an attack against Syria back in April worked to terminate the national conversation in the press about Trump’s collusion with Russia when the US attacked Assad. That attack boldly proved Trump was willing to challenge Russia and proved Trump was militarily mighty … like Putin. As a result, the collusion conversation ended instantly (though Trump, true to form, couldn’t resist re-igniting the conversation with his tweets a few days later because he seems to thrive on chaos and lots of chatter about himself).

Also true to form this time around, and not at all surprising,

The overnight White House threat caught many in Trump’s own administration by surprise. Several State Department officials typically involved in coordinating such announcements said they were caught off guard, and it appeared the underlying intelligence information was known only to a small group of senior officials. Typically, the State Department, Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies would all be consulted before a White House declaration sure to ricochet across foreign capitals. (AP)

Why break with tradition? Especially when the element of surprise is key to military attacks, though usually it is used against the enemy and not against one’s own.

Speaking of past precedence, who cannot hear in the White House’s current warnings an echo of Trump’s words back then when he justified the airstrike he was about to launch in April:

When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal – people were shocked to hear what gas it was. That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines.

We can also all remember how much Trump relished telling the story about how he was dining on scrumptious chocolate cake with the president of China when he informed President Xi Jinping in the middle of a mouth-stopping bite about how he was, at just that moment, attacking Syria.

The US president practically salivated as he artfully described the encounter. That “retaliatory” attack immediately became the high moment in Trump’s career as US president because even his loudest critics (wholly owned by the military-industrial complex as the mainstream media is) praised him for finally rising to become “presidential.” Nothing like a strong military attack to make you look presidential.

What a beautiful way to remove the heat of the press … then … and now.

Now that special investigator Robert Mueller is climbing all over Trump and his son-in-law, Eric Kushner — digging into every new hole he can think to explore, given his broad scope for investigation — Trump has more need than ever to create a more potent story to distract the press. However, he needs justification for taking bigger military action. Why not revert to what worked so well the last time?

Who cannot hear in the following words at the close of the Zero Hedge article an echo of that earlier event with President Xi Jinpeng?

As AP adds, also on Monday, Trump had dinner with Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and other top officials as he hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House.

I wonder if they were dining on chocolate cake.

Speaking of cake, the Pentagon is again bringing out the term “weapons of mass destruction” in describing what it believes Syria is about to do. Doesn’t that bring to the olfactory memory the delightfully fresh smell of yellow cake for you?

And the nice thing about retaliating against an actual chemical weapons attack — should one be successfully enticed into being — is that it provides US international cover for broadened military action against Iran and Russia because use of chemical weapons is banned under UN treaty. And you can say you did all you could to warn them not to do this!

Intriguingly, the new preparations for a chemical-weapons attack are taking place at the very same airport the US so strategically destroyed two months ago. Maybe that’s why we did so little real damage at that airport, even though we used up almost $50 million worth of our finest cruise missiles. We wouldn’t want to risk taking out the actual chemical-weapons plant or depot. We knew we would need that facility for a further excuse later on. So, don’t take out their capacity to use it.

For some reason, we did not take out the actual chemical-weapons production facility last time but just smoked a few bunkers that had been holding some jalopy fighter jets prior to our peculiar advance notice that we were sending our own missiles to strike the facility, thus allowing the museum-grade fighter jets to be lofted safely into the air prior to the arrival of our missiles. We didn’t want to needlessly snuff out any relics. That, and we made a chuck-hole in … not an actual runway, but a taxiway. Useful only as a photo-op and not a very impressive one at that!

For its part, the US military-industrial establishment — by which I include the Wall Street financiers, as well as the manufacturers of weapons — always wants a larger war to heat up its corner of the economy. However, I have never seen such a blatant attempt to create a “pre-emptive” excuse to broaden a conflict. Apparently, we are going to war with Russia and Iran in Syria where the war is safely off of US soil but can create a lot of demand for new US military hardware. (After all, even the war mongers don’t want to lose their own houses and factories.)

The battle is virtually assured. We just need to create sufficient cause. And, so, we wait only for ISIS to act now that we’ve assured them our retaliation will all be directed at their enemies!

We are either incredibly stupid … or incredibly evil!

Is not all of this another betrayal by Trump on his promises to his supporters, but will they care? As Michael Krieger has said on his Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Part of Trump’s appeal to many of his voters was, at least ostensibly, the idea that he would employ a less hawkish/neocon foreign policy than his opponent Hillary “We Came, We Saw, He Died” Clinton…. The lobbing of tomahawk missiles into Syrian based on the fairytale that Assad launched a chemical weapons attack was the first sign that Trump is easily manipulated and impulsive. In fact, the episode bothered me so much I wrote a post detailing the dire ramifications titled, Prepare for Impact – This is the Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire.

According to Krieger,

On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon…. Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president’s determination to ignore the evidence. “None of this makes any sense,” one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth … I guess it didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.

As I revealed on this blog, in an article titled “Hillary’s Wars,” attacking Syria was Killary Klinton’s plan from day one. It was, in fact, why we went to war to oust the Kadaffi regime from Libya as plainly revealed in Wikileak’s documents from Hillary’s state department. It was why the whole Benghazi thing happened and was covered up by Killary. (The embassy in Benghazi attacked by Libya BECAUSE it was being used by the US as headquarters for US efforts to depose and/or kill Kadaffi. That made the embassy a legitimate war target. All laid out in “Hillary’s Wars.”)

Attacking Syria is a masterplan of the military-industrial complex that goes back a long way. From the beginning, as I pointed out in that article, the Libyan and Syrian wars were all about Iran. Hillary, in her own delusional way, believed Russia would stay out of the conflict. Now, it appears we actually want a proxy war with Russia, too. What better way to use up a lot of military hardware and show our strength against Russia over someone else’s soil?

The US military-industrial complex needs to reposition from the tattered, dated and wearying war on terror to a new cold war with Russia. Better yet, a hot war with Russia on foreign soil, as neither nation will want to encourage the battle to come onto their own soil. At the same time, what better way for Trump to prove he is not a Russian collaborator and silence those endless accusations while moving the conversation to something more praiseworthy? Everyone wins. Well, everyone in the administration.

Looks like, no matter who you voted for, Killary Klinton or Trojan Trump, you ultimately get the same military-industrial establishment! Trump’s weakness has been found and is now being exploited by the deep state. Trump needs praise. It is his constant fuel. In the very least, he needs constant attention. To that end, even negative press is better than none at all. Thus, he reignites fires as quickly as he puts them out because he cannot handle more than one day’s silence about himself. Anyone who must have continual praise or attention is easy to exploit. As with many caesars of the past, the need for praise and attention is one of the worst weaknesses an emperor can have.

As Krieger quoted in is article on the end of American empire,

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.