Russia Establishes Two Permanent Bases In Syria To Host Nuclear Warships And Warplanes

Russia"s defense ministry has announced it is now in the process of establishing two permanent military bases in war-torn Syria after President Putin authorized prior deals with the Syrian government to move forward. Though Russia maintains merely up to ten military bases on foreign soil, the installations in Tartus and Khmeimim will be the most strategically located, allowing for a growing and permanent Russian presence on the Mediterranean, something which has already raised eyebrows in the West.

Though Putin formally announced the planned withdrawal of Russian forces from active operations in Syria in early December, there were parallel plans going back to at least early summer to maintain a smaller permanent presence based on an agreement with the Damascus government to host Russian forces for at least 49 more years, which includes the option of being prolonged further. Personnel and military hardware will be stationed at permanent Russian bases in Tartus and Khmeimim - both of which are on or near the Mediterranean. 

Satellite image of Russia"s facility at Tartus Navy docks. Left: (Source: WikiMapia); Right: (Source: GoogleMaps)

According to Russian media reports, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu stated at a ministry meeting on Tuesday, “We have started the process of formation of our permanent forces [in Syria]." Though Tartus has operated as a Russian naval port since 1971 (referred to as a Material-Technical Support Point and not a "base") and was until recently minimally staffed mostly by civilian contractors, it will reportedly undergo a massive transformation and expansion, which is to include the capability of hosting nuclear-powered ships.  

Notably, though mainstream media is currently reporting the permanent Russian military presence as something "new" and dangerous in terms of an enduring Russian footprint in the Middle East, the Russian military relationship with Baathist Syria goes back decades into the Soveit era with the Tartus facility having been long key to Russian naval movements in the Mediterranean. 

According a summary of the planned expansion in RT News:

Under the agreement with Syria, the future base would be allowed to host up to 11 Russian warships, including those with a nuclear power plant. At the moment there is only one Russian nuclear-propelled military surface ship, the 24,000-ton battlecruiser ‘Pyotr Velikiy’, although Russia will soon have a nuclear icebreaker – albeit which is unlikely to be given a mission in the Mediterranean – while a brand new Lider-class destroyer project is at the design stage.

Khmeimim is located near Latakia - the major northwest Syrian city on the Mediterranean, and was built adjacent to the civilian Bassel Al-Assad International Airport to serve as "the strategic center of Russia"s military operation against Islamic State." It has primarily served as an airbase and prime troop logistical support location out of which Russian sorties have been flown since 2015, which ultimately served to overwhelmingly shift the momentum of the war in favor of the Assad government, which has now taken about 90% of all territory formerly held by terrorists, though the future of the country"s northeast - held by the Kurdish dominated and US-backed SDF remains to be seen.

Deployed Russian forces, via Lancashire News

Meanwhile as plans for the permanent bases have been confirmed, Russia says that the bulk of its forces in Syria have already been reduced, though this is currently being contested by both the Pentagon and Syrian opposition groups, who say Russian airstrikes and operations have actually been on the increase of late. On Wednesday the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that over 48,000 Russian military personnel were deployed to Syria between 2015 and 2017, and that at least half of this number have been withdrawn after Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Khmeimim Military Airport earlier this month. And according to a previous statement from the Russian MoD, their forces claimed to help eliminate more than 62,000 militants during their two years inside the country.

However, the Pentagon remains predictably skeptical of Russian effectiveness against ISIS and other terrorists, with the US recently claiming that it alone is responsible for the defeat of the terror group, which resulted in Moscow pushing back against such claims. Washington hawks are likely to argue that Russian permanent bases in Syria are justification enough for the Pentagon to perpetually maintain its own more than dozen small military bases in the country"s north and northeast. 

At the same time from the Russian perspective, American policy as well as that of major regional US allies like Israel have been aggressive and erratic, and appear to still include regime change as a long-term policy goal in Syria. An equally long-term Russian military presence will allow Moscow to immediately deploy or build-up its forces in Syria should Damascus come under direct threat from external countries at any point in the near or distant future.

Saudi Coalition Crumbles In Yemen: Sudanese Mercenaries On Front Lines, Foreign Officers, Proxies In Revolt

Most Americans might be forgiven for having no clue what the war in Yemen actually looks like, especially as Western media has spent at least the first two years of the conflict completely ignoring the mass atrocities taking place while white-washing the Saudi coalition"s crimes. Unlike wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, which received near daily coverage as they were at their most intense, and in which many Americans could at least visualize the battlefield and the actors involved through endless photographs and video from on the ground, Yemen"s war has largely been a faceless and nameless conflict as far as major media is concerned.

Aside from mainstream media endlessly demonstrating its collective ignorance of Middle East dynamics, it is also no secret that the oil and gas monarchies allied to the West are rarely subject to media scrutiny or criticism, something lately demonstrated on an obscene and frighteningly absurd level with Thomas Friedman"s fawning and hagiographic interview with Saudi crown prince MBS published in the New York Times.

Saudi Arabia"s hired help in Yemen: Sudanese fighters headed to the front lines. Image souce: al-Arabiya

But any level of meticulous review of how the Saudi coalition (which heavily involves US assistance) is executing the war in Yemen would reveal a military and strategic disaster in the making. As Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst puts it, "All in all, the first military venture to be launched by the 32-year-old Saudi prince as defense minister is a tactical and strategic shambles."  

And if current battlefield trends continue, the likely outcome will be a protracted and humiliating Saudi coalition withdrawal with the spoils divided among Houthi and Saudi allied warlords, as well as others vying for power in Yemen"s tenuous political future. But what unsurprisingly unites most Yemenis at this point is shared hatred for the Saudi coalition bombs which rain down on civilian centers below. For this reason, Hearst concludes further of MBS" war: "The prince, praised in Western circles as a young reformer who will spearhead the push back against Iran, has succeeded in uniting Yemenis against him, a rare feat in a polarized world. He has indeed shot himself, repeatedly, in the foot."

So how has this come about, and how is the war going from a military and strategic perspective?

First, to quickly review, Saudi airstrikes on already impoverished Yemen, which have killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians (thousands among those are children according to the UN) and displaced hundreds of thousands, have been enabled by both US intelligence and military hardware. Cholera has recently exploded amidst the appalling war-time conditions, and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools have been bombed by the Saudis. After Shia Houthi rebels overran Yemen’s north in 2014, embattled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi vowed to “extract Yemen from the claws of Iran” something which he"s repeatedly affirmed, having been given international backing from allies in the West, and a major bombing campaign began on March 2015 under the name "Operation Decisive Storm" (in a cheap mirroring of prior US wars in Iraq, the first of which was "Desert Storm").

Saudi Arabia and its backers fear what they perceive as growing Iranian influence in the region, something grossly exaggerated, and seek to defend at all costs Yemeni forces loyal to President Hadi. The coalition includes Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, and the US and UK, and the Saudi initiated war has also lately received behind the scenes political support from Israel, something recently confirmed by Israeli officials. Concerning the supposed Iran threat in Yemen, an emergency session of the Arab League recently doubled down on its shared commitment to wage war against Iranian interests after it blamed Tehran for a November 4 ballistic missile attack from Shia Houthi rebels against the Saudi capital, which Iran denies playing a role in.

But the Saudi coalition is now in shambles according to a new Middle East Eye investigation. The report highlights some surprising facts long ignored in mainstream media and which give insight into how the Saudi military campaign is likely to end in total failure as "more than two years into a disastrous war, the coalition of ground forces assembled by the Saudis is showing signs of crumbling."

The multi-national Saudi coalition is "showing signs of crumbling" while increasingly relying on mercenaries fighting on the ground in Yemen.

* * * * *

Below are 5 key takeaways from the full report.

1) Saudi coalition ground forces have a huge contingent of foreign fighters, namely Sudanese troops with UAE officers, suffering the brunt of the battle on the front lines.

Sudanese forces, which constitute the bulk of the 10,000 foreign fighters in the Saudi-led coalition, are suffering high casualty rates. A senior source close to the presidency in Khartoum told Middle East Eye that over 500 of their troops had now been killed in Yemen.

 

Only two months ago, the commander of the Sudanese Army"s rapid support force, Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Hamidati, quoted a figure of 412 troops killed, including 14 officers to  the Sudanese newspaper Al Akhbar. "There is huge pressure to withdraw from this on-going fight," the Sudanese source told MEE. A force of up to 8,000 Sudanese troops are partly led by Emirati officers. They are deployed in southern Yemen as well as to the south and west of Taiz in al Makha.

2) Sudan"s President Omar al-Bashir has been dubbed "president of the mercenaries" for accepting over $2.2 billion from Saudi Arabia and Qatar in order to provide canon fodder for the Saudi ground war in Yemen in the form of thousands of young Sudanese troops, but he"s threatening revolt. To escape his untenable position, he is reportedly seeking help from Putin.

At home, Sudan"s President Omar al-Bashir is also having second thoughts. He remembers the lifeline he got when Riyadh deposited $1bn in Sudan"s Central Bank two years ago, followed by Qatar"s $1.22bn. But he hardly enjoys being known as "president of the mercenaries," and he has other relationships to consider.

 

On Thursday, Bashir became the latest of a procession of Arab leaders to beat a path to Vladimir Putin"s door. He told the Russian president he needed protection from the US, was against confrontation with Iran, and supported the policy of keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power. This follows an incident at home, which was variously described as espionage and a coup attempt. Taha Osman Ahmed al-Hussein was dismissed as the director of the Office of the Sudanese President after he was discovered carrying a Saudi passport and a residency permit for the UAE. He was caught maintaining secret contact with both.

3) Saudi-backed Yemeni fighters are increasingly mutinying and fear local mass push back from Yemen"s civilian population due to the unpopular bombing campaign.

Mutiny is also stirring in the ranks of Yemenis who two and a half years ago cheered the Saudi pushback against the Houthis who were trying to take over the entire country.

 

The Saudi relationship with Islah, the largest group of Yemeni fighters in the ground force employed by the coalition, has at best been ambivalent. The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman"s closest partner in Yemen, Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, is openly hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Yemeni party... They [Islahi leadership] are feeling the political price they are paying for supporting a campaign that turned in Yemeni eyes from liberation to occupation... Enough is enough. The regional Islahi leadership are now talking of starting direct negotiations with the Houthis, a senior Islah source told MEE.

4) Saudi proxy fighters are at war with each other: an Emirati-backed militia fighting under the Saudi coalition is assassinating other members of the Saudi coalition in what"s increasingly an internal coalition civil war. 

They are also paying a physical price. A number of Islahi sheikhs and scholars as well as Salafis who rejected Emirati leadership have been killed or targeted by assassination attempts. The list is growing: there have been assassinations of Khaled Ali al-Armani, a leader in the Islah Party, on 7 December 2016; Sheikh Abdullah Bin Amir Bin Ali Bin Abdaat al-Kathri, on 23 November 2017 in Hadhramaut; Abdelmajeed Batees (related to Saleh Batees) a leader in the Islah Party on 5 January 2017 in Hadhramaut; Mohammed Bin Lashgam, Deputy Director of Civil Status, on 17 January 2017; Khaled Ali al-Armani, a leader in the Islah Party, on 7 December 2016...

 

"The Emiratis do not conceal their hostility to Islah. Islahi sheikhs and scholars are being assassinated, and this is being co-ordinated by the pro-Emirati militia. In addition, the UAE is clearly enforcing the blockade of Taiz, and withholding support for our fighters in the city," the source said.

5) Oman is entering the fray, which will further fragment the Saudi coalition as rivalries for territorial control develop.

As if the balance of competing outside forces  in Yemen is not complicated enough, enter Oman. Oman, too, regards southern Yemen as its backyard. It is particularly worried about the takeover of a series of strategic ports and islands off Yemen by the Emiratis. A Qatari diplomatic source described this as the Emiratis" "seaborn empire," but the Omanis are upset by this too.

 

The Omanis are understood to be quietly contacting local Yemeni tribal leaders in south Yemen, some of them separatist forces, to organize a more "orchestrated response" to the militias paid for and controlled by Abu Dhabi.

Like the proxy war in Syria, it appears that Gulf/US plans have backfired, and we are perhaps in for a long Saudi coalition death spiral fueled by delusion and denial. Sadly, it is primarily Yemeni civilians and common people in the region that will continue to bear the brunt of suffering wrought by such evil and delusional stupidity.

China Warns Trump: "We Will Back North Korea If The US Strikes First"

All day Saturday, South Korea braced for a possible new missile test by North Korea as the provocative northern neighbor marked its founding anniversary, just days after its sixth and largest nuclear test rattled global financial markets and further escalated tensions in the region. Throughout the week, South Korean officials warned the North could launch another intercontinental ballistic missile, in defiance of U.N. sanctions and to further provoke the US. As Reuters reports, Pyongyang marks its founding anniversary each year with a big display of pageantry and military hardware. Last year, North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on the Sept. 9 anniversary.

Ultimately, September 9 came and went, and North Korea did nothing, perhaps signalling its eagerness to de-escalate. Or perhaps not, and Kim is simply looking to surprise his adversaries with the ICBM launch date. Experts have said the rogue, isolated regime is close to its goal of developing a powerful nuclear weapon capable of reaching the United States, something Trump has vowed to prevent.

Celebrating its founding anniversary, a front-page editorial of the Saturday edition of North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun said the country should make “more high-tech Juche weapons to continuously bring about big historical events such as a miraculous victory of July 28.”. The July date refers to the intercontinental ballistic missile test (Juche is North Korea’s homegrown ideology of self-reliance that is a mix of Marxism and extreme nationalism preached by state founder Kim Il Sung, the current leader’s grandfather).

* * *

Meanwhile, South Korean nuclear experts, checking for contamination, said on Friday they had found minute traces of radioactive xenon gas but that it was too early to link it to Sunday’s explosion. The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) said it had been conducting tests on land, air and water samples since shortly after the North Korean nuclear test on Sunday. There was no chance the xenon “will have an impact on South Korea’s territory or population”, the agency said.

What is more concerning, however, is a Friday report on NBC, according to which Trump is readying a package of diplomatic and military moves against North Korea, including cyberattacks and increased surveillance and intelligence operations, after the nation"s sixth and largest nuclear test.

Trump"s top national security advisers walked him through a range of options over lunch in the White House on Sunday, just hours after North Korea"s latest test, officials said.

According to NBC, Trump is also seriously considering adopting diplomatically risky sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang and upgrading missile defense systems in the region, administration officials said. In addition, the administration is not ruling out moving tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea should Seoul request them, a White House official said, though many consider such a move a nonstarter. It would break with nearly three decades of U.S. policy of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

U.S. officials have also made the case to China that if Beijing doesn"t take stronger steps against North Korea, such as cutting off oil exports, South Korea and Japan are likely to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs and the U.S. won"t stop them, the official said. "It"s more a message for China than North Korea," the official said.

The U.S. has adopted sanctions aimed at Chinese entities that conduct business with North Korea, but has so far held back on broadly targeting China"s banking system. China has told U.S. officials it would protest such a move diplomatically and retaliate, according to the senior administration official.

So what happened on Sunday? According to NBC, Trump"s national security advisers presented him with U.S. military options, including pre-emptive strikes, and nuclear capabilities should America be called on to abide by its treaty obligations in the region, White House and defense officials said.

The president"s advisers have made the case, however, that military strikes on North Korea could have serious repercussions, senior defense officials said, and the most glaring among these is that China has told administration officials that if the U.S. strikes North Korea first, Beijing would back Pyongyang, a senior military official told NBC.

This is not the first time China has warned the US not to escalate: on August 11, Beijing, through the state-owned media, cautioned the US president on Friday that it would intervene (militarily) on North Korea’s behalf if the US and South Korea launch a preemptive strike to “overthrow the North Korean regime,” according to a statement in the influential state-run newspaper Global Times.

"If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so," it said.

At the same time, the Chinese regime made it clear that its preferred outcome would be a continuation of the status quo, warning Kim Jong Un, or perhaps Trump, that it would "remain neutral if North Korea were to strike first."

As we said almost one month ago:

"not surprisingly, analysts have compared the standoff between the two nuclear powers (the North is a recent, if untested, member of this club) to a modern day Cuban Missile crisis.  "This situation is beginning to develop into this generation"s Cuban Missile crisis moment," ING"s chief Asia economist Robert Carnell said in a research note. "While the U.S. president insists on ramping up the war of words, there is a decreasing chance of any diplomatic solution."

Since then, the potential risks, mutual threats and near-hostilities have grown exponentially. China - which is by far North Korea’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 92% of two-way trade last year, and also provides hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oil and fuel to the impoverished regime - has only dug in deeper, explaining repeatedly that it wants a peaceful de-escalation and that it would not side with the US in case of a military conflict.

* * *

What happens next? Well, on one hand, after today"s lack of launch, there is hope that things will indeed de-escalate. A headline that just hit from Yonhap may accelerate this:

• SOUTH KOREA SEES NO SIGNS OF IMMINENT ADDITIONAL PROVOCATIONS BY NORTH KOREA THAT COULD LEAD TO ANOTHER MISSILE OR NUCLEAR TEST: YONHAP

On the other hand, what the US does next may be a sufficient provocation to force Kim to lob another ICBM. Earlier today, Reuters reported that the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier left its home port in Japan for a routine autumn patrol of the Western Pacific, a Navy spokeswoman said. That area included "waters between Japan and the Korean peninsula." North Korea vehemently objects to military exercises on or near the peninsula, and China and Russia have suggested the United States and South Korea halt their exercises to lower tension.

Another imminent escalation is due on Monday.

That"s when the United States told the U.N. Security Council that it intends to call a meeting to vote on a draft resolution establishing additional sanctions.  U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said last Monday that she intended to call for a vote on Sept. 11 and then the United States circulated a draft resolution to the 15-member council on Wednesday.

The United States wants the Security Council to impose an oil embargo on North Korea, ban its exports of textiles and the hiring of North Korean laborers abroad, and to subject Kim Jong Un to an asset freeze and travel ban, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear how North Korean allies China and Russia would vote, but a senior U.S. official on Friday night expressed scepticism that either nation would accept anything more stringent than a ban on imports of North Korean textiles. Chinese officials have privately expressed fears that imposing an oil embargo could risk triggering massive instability in its neighbor. 

Meanwhile, tensions are also growing between China and South Korea. The two countries have been at loggerheads over South Korea’s decision to deploy the U.S. THAAD anti-missile system, which has a powerful radar that can probe deep into China. Shares in South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor and key suppliers slid on Friday on worries over its position in China after highly critical Chinese state newspaper comments. Recently Hyundai auto sales in China have crashed as local suppliers and potential customers have shied away from the company due to nationalistic prerogatives. The military section of China’s Global Times newspaper on Thursday referred to THAAD as “a malignant tumor”.

The good news, for markets, is that this Saturday"s widely anticipated ICBM launch from North Korea did not take place; the bad news is that said launch was at best delayed, and if and when it comes, the US will have to choose: do nothing again, and appears increasingly weak on the global diplomatic arena, or retaliate, and risk dragging China into the conflict, potentially precipitating the appearance of mushroom clouds around the globe.

Trump Reinstates Program to Turn Police into the Standing Army Our Forefathers Warned Us About

Washington, DC — On Monday, the Trump administration lifted a ban on military surplus hardware being transferred to police departments across the United States. The controversial 1033 program became a source of citizen outrage after images of police armed with military grade weaponry, including grenade launchers and armored MRAPs, were beamed into people homes across the country during the battlefield-style police response to the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

As many Americans noted, Ferguson, Missouri looked like a war zone, with police kitted out in Marine-issue camouflage and military-grade body armor, toting short-barreled assault rifles, and rolling around in armored vehicles — virtually indistinguishable from US soldiers.

Shortly after the American public became widely aware, and largely outraged, over the extreme militarization of their local police forces, President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) that blocked large-caliber weapons, armored vehicles, grenade launchers and other heavy military hardware from being repurposed from battlefields across the globe to small town USA.

This was one of very few notable pro-liberty moves by the Obama admin, and now it’s gone.

The new Trump plan goes into effect immediately and completely rolls back the EO that blocked state, county, and local police departments from obtaining military weapons of war. Unsurprisingly, drug warrior extraordinaire, Attorney General Jeff Session led the charge to reinstate the program.

Advertisment

The administration’s action, first disclosed by USA TODAY, would restore “the full scope of a longstanding program for recycling surplus, lifesaving gear from the Department of Defense, along with restoring the full scope of grants used to purchase this type of equipment from other sources,” according to an administration summary of the new program recently circulated to some law enforcement groups.

READ MORE:  Missouri KKK: We will use ‘lethal force’ against Ferguson protesters

Civil rights advocates were quick to warn that the 1033 program’s reinstatement threatened to inflame tensions in minority communities where such equipment has been deployed in the past.

“It is both exceptionally dangerous and irresponsible for the administration to lift the ban on the transfer of certain surplus military equipment to state and local law enforcement organizations,” Janai Nelson, associate director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told USA Today. “Just a few summers ago, our nation watched as Ferguson raised the specter of increased police militarization. The law enforcement response there and in too many places across the country demonstrated how perilous, especially for black and brown communities, a militarized police force can be.”

In addition to Ferguson, the extreme militarization of police was clearly on display in Standing Rock, as police looked and acted more like a military contingent than peace officers sworn to uphold the law.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like they’re an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” Obama said in announcing the ban in 2015.

The ban on military gear was a policy recommendation from a White House advisory group which formed after the rioting in Ferguson. The Task Force on 21st Century Policing, chaired by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, a former assistant attorney general, called on law enforcement officials to “minimize the appearance of a military operation” when policing mass demonstrations.

“Avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust,” the task force urged.

According to the USA Today report:

The previously-banned equipment also included tracked armored vehicles, bayonets and grenade launchers.

The Obama order did allow for the limited use of other surplus — aircraft, wheeled tactical vehicles, mobile command units, battering rams and riot gear — on the condition that such equipment was approved by the federal government.

The surplus sharing agreement, also known as the “1033 program,” was created by Congress nearly 30 years ago as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. It was originally intended to assist local law enforcement in drug investigations.

The program was expanded in 1997 to include all local law enforcement operations, including counter-terrorism. Since then, according to the government, more than $5 billion in gear has been transferred to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.

Make no mistake that America has been quietly arming its police for battle with its own citizens, under the guise of the drug war, since the early 1990s.

READ MORE:  Police Officer Shot in Ferguson, Two Suspects at Large

As part of its misguided “war on drugs,” US policy makers decided that if police were to act like drug warriors, they needed to be equipped like warriors. Since that time, almost $5 billion in military hardware was transferred from the military to law enforcement, according to a report by the ACLU. By giving military hardware to law enforcement, the NDAA and 1033 program encourages police to employ military-like tactics and weaponry against the American public.

According to a Newsweek report:

1033 procurements are not matters of public record. And the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which coordinates distribution of military surplus, refuses to reveal the names of agencies requesting “tactical” items, like assault rifles and MRAPs — for security reasons, a spokesperson for DLA told Newsweek via email. One can only trace “tactical” items as far the county of the requesting agency. In the case of Ferguson, that means St. Louis County.

To give you an idea of the absolute absurdity of the 1033 program, police in Watertown, Connecticut, (population 22,514) acquired a mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle (sticker price: $733,000), designed to protect soldiers from roadside bombs, for $2,800. To date, there has never been a landmine reported in Watertown, Connecticut.

Police in Bloomington, Georgia, (population: 2,713) acquired four grenade launchers through the program, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Police in small towns in Michigan and Indiana have used the 1033 Program to acquire “MRAP armored troop carriers, night-vision rifle scopes, camouflage fatigues, Humvees and dozens of M16 automatic rifles,” the South Bend Tribune reported.

These are just a few out of hundreds of examples of the overkill this program not only allows but promotes.

READ MORE:  "He had his f**king hands in the air!" New footage shows Ferguson witnesses reacting to teen"s death

The proclivity to treat policing in a militarized manner is inherently dangerous. Given the proliferation of military hardware and military training among police agencies, law enforcement’s inability to de-escalate dangerous situations, and instead respond to these situations by escalating force, is no surprise.

The founding fathers warned of the dangers of a standing army – and police are increasingly looking like the standing army they cautioned us against. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.

“The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”  – James Madison

The Common Sense Way To Get Rid Of Kim Jong-Un

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

That will never happen!

Much to the consternation of the little men in that incestuous, insular, politically inbred, inward looking place called Washington DC, young Kim is firing rockets into the air to much fanfare in his desperately poor paradise.

This week, the UN security council unanimously approved sanctions against the naughty boy north of Seoul. Stupid, stupid (which I"ll come to in a moment)!

In the meantime, more brilliance from Washington:

I’ll hit North Korea with fire and fury, vows Donald Trump

Oy vey! Here we go.

An entire bottle of Kalashnikov vodka laced with Prozac guaranteed to blow your head clean off is required to understand the logic. Hang on while I pour myself a glass.

North Korea poses less danger to the US than a bunch of angry Saudi teenagers with boxcutters and a belief that 72 virgins await them should they kill the infidel.

You know why?

The damage they could do was truly asymmetric relative to the damage their enemy could do.

It"s a topic I discussed recently when suggesting the economics of warfare have changed:

What we’re seeing is power shifting into the hands of individuals or at least small groups as apposed to large groups.

 

This same dynamic is at work with respect to war.

 

All wars are won or lost due to either side’s ability to secure supply lines, logistics, transportation, provisions, military hardware, and communications. And the ability to pay for all of them. Just as any business which can’t finance its plans goes belly up so, too, does any army.

 

Now, imagine an army with the ability to decentralise all of these elements.

 

This army is actually technologically and economically backward. This doesn’t sound threatening until you realise that:

• This army can and does utilise the technology and economics of its enemy. No need to develop its own.


• Transportation is not only provided to them but provided by their enemy.


• This army benefits from acquiring its transport, provisions, and even military hardware from its enemy.


• This army uses the communication tools necessary to conduct attacks at fractional cost… tools produced more often than not by its enemy… now out in the public realm

 

Would this not be a pretty powerful army?

Surely it hasn"t escaped the geniuses at the UN and in that five sided building that houses more wet-lipped psychopaths than a maximum security prison that nuclear weapons can quite easily be delivered by angry Algerian teenagers in oh, I dunno... a car, a truck, a boat, or a private plane.

And being intelligent readers, you"ll well know that there seems no shortage of angry Algerian teenagers quite willing to carry out such a task. Why, oh why build an incredibly expensive missile system to do what can be done easily, at lower cost, and delivered with greater precision to unguarded targets?

The answer is that young Kim needs a show of force to legitimise his very existence to the North Korean people.

The fact he"s recently stepped up his rhetoric should be treated as evidence of domestic pressures on his regime. And this means that there exists an excellent opportunity to bring down his regime... but it"ll absolutely never be used (more on that in a minute).

This brings me back to sanctions...

Those sanctions just provided Kim more fuel to fire up his domestic popularity than he could ever have garnered on his own. His response was precisely what you"d expect of every self-respecting dictator. He barked at them and used it as further evidence of the evil that "his people" must overcome.

The clowns at the UN sipping US$10 water must have said to themselves, "Well, we"ll hit him hard with these sanctions. We"ll deprive his people of goods and services and Kim will cave in and change his tune."

Why? Because he cares so much for them and can"t stand to see them starve? Really? Are these people that dumb?

Or maybe they think to themselves, "His people will become so fed up with starving they"ll overthrow him".

This tactic has worked splendidly before. Oh wait! No, wrong! It"s never worked before.

How it is that the inescapable logic and hard evidence defies entry into their cognitive functions requires another glass of Kalashnikov.

Dictators are bullies by nature, and bullies everywhere operate on a platform of fear, intimidation, and a show of resolute strength. Weakness of any sort is as dangerous as any nuclear weapon to them. Why would Kim risk being seen as weak and ineffective when doing so would threaten his very regime?

This would be like the Pope coming out saying, "Sorry folks it"s all a hoax. There is no God."

No. Sanctions act only to bolster a dictator"s resolve.

People starved of resources are by nature less resourceful and actually less trusting of foreign influence - the very thing that those who are bringing the sanctions actually say they want. And so overthrowing him becomes even less of a probability. Well done guys!

Typically, the politics behind such things has less to do with logic than it does money. As I mentioned when discussing Trump and Russia, you can"t take away the rice bowls:

 

 

Why Washington and the Establishment Need a Russian Enemy

Without a Russian threat the need for NATO is… well, jeez Louise, there isn’t one. Hmmm.

After all, NATO doesn’t need Eurofighters to deal with angry Algerian teenagers. They were built to do combat with Ivan. What if Ivan isn’t the threat they need him to be?

 Europe (and NATO) actually need weapons designed for a knife fight in a cubicle. Nuclear submarines seem like overkill for jihadists donning exploding underwear and yelling “Allahu Akbar” in a Paris subway. You sure as hell can’t fight him with a Mig-29. The problem is, none of this works for the lobbying military contractors sucking at the teat of Washington.“

Scrap the 20 F-22 Raptor jets boys. We’ve got an order for… Oh, jeez… An order for… 45,000 stab vests??… No, that can’t be right.”Without NATO Lockheed Martin may not build as many ugly and ludicrously expensive planes.

Without a Russian enemy Halliburton don’t provide “services”. Rice bowls are at risk. It’s about the money. It’s always about the money.

The Actual Solution

You have to make the distinction between a government and a people. They"re absolutely not the same thing.

Now, if you want to get rid of the North Korean people, then it makes perfect sense to turn North Korea into glass. That"s easy: Conjure up a reason like weapons of mass destruction and then go at it. We all remember Iraq. On the other hand, if your objective is to "liberate" them, the solution is really quite simple.

You immediately eliminate all sanctions and you absolutely let goods, services, and information flow. Immediately open the borders to allow North Koreans visa access to the rest of the world.

The Berlin Wall fell not because those nasty Commies got bombed to smithereens... or because they saw the light and came around to a smarter way of doing things.

No, it fell because information spread. I"d go so far as to say that it was the fax machine which brought down the Berlin Wall.

It sure as hell wasn"t some busybody know it alls in DC or any of the think tanks that litter the halls of power-like plastic bags on the side of an African highway.

If the West completely opened up to North Korea, there would be a greater infiltration of goods and services into North Korea, and this, much like the fax machine, would bring resources and information to the people of the country (remember, without resources it"s tough to displace Kim). More importantly, it would eliminate the ability of Kim to adequately have a terrible foe.

Show me one country with a desperately poor populace that has posed any real threat to the dictator running the show. Now go and read your history books and you"ll find that when a populace develops a middle class status the risks to the regime are much much higher.

This is where China is now, and it"s a balancing act - one, I might add, that China have been managing remarkably well by providing increased economic freedom while limiting political freedom (not unlike Singapore).

The reason the West will not eliminate sanctions is because our Western leaders refuse to allow overwhelming evidence to influence their repeatedly failed policies.

And so here we are...

The risks ratcheting higher everyday, and we know it only takes one stupid move and we"ll have cities in smoking ruins.

It"ll never be "tactical" or short. Forget about what the generals say.

Wars are more unpredictable than an epileptic on a bronco. Take a look at Iraq. It was going to be a cakewalk as was Afghanistan... and Somalia... and Vietnam.

Question

Cast your vote here and also see what others think will happen

- Chris

"There are very few examples looking back over the last 25 to 30 years where sanctions have actually succeeded". — Nicholas Burns, former US diplomat

--------------------------------------

Liked this article? Then you"ll probably like my other missives on

this topic as well. Go here to access them (free, of course).

--------------------------------------

Is Terrorism Transforming America Into A Police State?

Authored by Ted Galen Carpenter via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

For at least three decades, experts have noted the growing militarization of America’s police forces. The proliferation of Special Weapons and Tactics forces, or SWAT forces, is the most obvious example of that trend. Originally, such units were designed to deal with exceptionally dangerous situations (such as mass hostage incidents) in which lightly armed police would be outgunned. Not surprisingly, the first SWAT contingents originated in America’s largest and most dangerous cities.

That situation has changed dramatically. Small cities and even some modest-sized towns now have such heavily armed units utilizing military hardware and traveling in armored vehicles. They look—and act—far more like military combat units than anyone’s traditional conception of police. And the missions of SWAT forces have greatly expanded since their original formation. Increasingly, local authorities use them in routine matters that involve little or no danger of major violence from the targets of police action.

A recent incident in Hutto, Texas, a sleepy, outlying suburb of Austin, illustrates just how dangerously promiscuous the utilization of SWAT teams has become. On June 26, local police conducted a raid to implement a search warrant on a house in a low-crime, middle-class neighborhood. The alleged crime? Police suspected that some residents of the target house were involved in gambling. Investigators were backed up by a SWAT unit with nearly a dozen officers in full combat regalia pouring out of an armored vehicle.

Needless to say, the neighbors were both stunned and alarmed to see such an operation take place in their quiet community. One mother stated: “I went to my daughter’s room and looked outside their window to see if I could get a better view of what was going on, and there was a man in fatigues with a sniper rifle laying in my neighbor’s driveway.”

What was even more striking is that the police spokesman admitted to a reporter that the authorities “had no reason to believe” that the residence undergoing the search was involved in any violent activity. In other words, police were using paramilitary tactics and forces to execute a search warrant involving a nonviolent (indeed, victimless, crime) in a low-crime neighborhood. Such arrogant bullying should alarm anyone who cherishes domestic civil liberties.

Unfortunately, such incidents have become all-too-common as local authorities seek new missions to justify the existence of SWAT teams and to keep the personnel alert and well trained. The expansion of SWAT units and missions is closely correlated to the existence of federal programs making surplus military hardware available at little or no cost to local police forces.

Such deadly toys have become a prime justification for law enforcement budget increases and the receipt of federal grants in communities around the country.

The war on illegal drugs has been the primary justification that authorities use to create and expand SWAT units, and antidrug raids are their primary mission. The drug-war rationale has some plausibility, since narcotics traffickers are sometimes extremely violent criminals. As concerns about terrorism became more salient, especially after the 9/11 attacks, that mission augmented the drug-war justification. Politicians, even in small communities with virtually a nonexistent possibility of being a terrorism target, highlight the alleged danger (along with the menace of illegal drugs) to pump-up police budgets and gain the military hardware from Washington.

Thus far, efforts to rescind or even curtail the federal program have proven unsuccessful. The militarization of America’s local police proceeds unabated. That is an alarming development. General Colin Powell, at the time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed that the military’s purpose is to “kill people and break things.” Military forces operate in enemy territory and tend to view all people there as potential adversaries who could prove deadly to them.

The purpose of America’s police forces is (or at least should be) totally different. Their legitimate role is to protect the life, liberty and property of people living in a free, constitutional republic. It is extremely unwise to confuse or conflate that role with the function of the U.S. military. Yet, that is what is occurring at an alarming rate.

The Posse Comitatus Act, which Congress passed in 1878, severely restricts the role of the military in domestic law enforcement. Unfortunately, that restriction has experienced significant erosion in recent decades, with some prominent political figures deriding the statute as “archaic.”

Even if the language of the act remains more or less intact, it will have little relevance if the proliferation of SWAT units continues. SWAT personnel are combat soldiers in everything but name. It matters little if they are technically police operating as part of a local government if their weapons and tactics are those of an occupying army. The old adage that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, applies to the SWAT phenomenon. The sight of such combat forces deployed in civilian neighborhoods in the United States is jarringly reminiscent of the images Americans once believed confined to repressive police states. It is tragic that such images are now the norm in America itself.

The Economics Of Warfare Have Changed

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

Economists measure economic variables. That"s a problem.

They are but one piece of an incredibly complex puzzle:

• Behavioural psychology isn"t considered. Different realm... not their business.


• Warfare and the economics of it are measured poorly, if at all.

Consider for a moment the impact of technology on every aspect of life.

Now, consider its impact on warfare. Warfare, of course, impacts economics. Something worth remembering.

In medieval times, wealth was largely acquired by conquest. You rounded up a number of your kinsmen, grabbed the clubs, swords, and spears out of the cupboard, saddled up Smokey, kissed the wife goodbye, and rode into town, killing whoever got in your way and seizing the assets.

Brute force won. In fact, Smokey provided a lot of advantage. Certainly a man on a horse was worth more than one without. Gunpowder changed this. Manpower quickly became less important. A man with a gun was worth at least 10 swordsmen on horseback.

The first World War presented yet another technology, two actually: the tank and the plane.

Trench warfare was a mess. Generals being what they are - grounded in the past and thick - took a while to figure out that when the enemy is dug in and has machine guns, sending your men over the top into a blizzard of lead would mean they"d all die. Someone must have thought to themselves: what if, instead of charging at them with nothing more than sturdy boots and a metal potty on your head, we did the same thing in an armour plated type of car with a huge gun sticking out the front?

Enter the tank.

As for the plane. Dropping bombs on cities was far more effective than a man with a gun. Probably 100 times more effective and thus quite economical.

World War 2 saw the bombs grow ever more powerful, the planes faster and more agile.

And, of course, let"s not forget battleships, which came to dominate due to the need to control supply lines. And because they"d figured out that if you build them large enough, you can take off and land fighter planes on them, which literally meant that they were moving ocean-based refuelling stations.

You"d be forgiven for thinking that everything was going to keep getting bigger, more grandiose, more centralised, and more expensive because there was a technology developed in World War II, which was the seed stock for how it is that I can write to you from the other side of the world, and you in turn can receive it in minutes and at a cost approaching zero.

The Turing machine otherwise known as the Bombe was arguably the most significant element in the eventual success of allied troops in WWII. It allowed the gents at Bletchley Park to decipher far more rapidly Nazi messages and thus react in hours rather than weeks. Cracking Enigma, the Nazi"s encoding machine, was certainly one of the keys to the Allied success.

At its peak, Alan Turing"s machine was able to help crack 3,000 Nazi messages per day and by the end of the war, this totalled 2.5 million messages, many of which provided the Allies vital information about Nazi"s positions and strategy.

This, folks, was a massive step in what we call today, "the Information age". Turing"s machine was one of the earliest computers.

But what"s this got to do with the economics of war, Chris?

Look around you and you"ll realise that everything is becoming decentralised or distributed and deflationary as a result.

This is a result of the economics of business changing as a consequence of technological changes. Micro power grids replacing nationalised power grids, 3D printing allowing localised manufacture, ride sharing decentralising taxi cartels, peer-to-peer lending decentralising traditional bank lending, file sharing disrupting the entertainment industry, the Internet itself disrupting the newspaper industry, Facebook disrupting and decentralising content - I could go on.

What we"re seeing is power shifting into the hands of individuals or at least small groups as apposed to large groups.

This same dynamic is at work with respect to war.

All wars are won or lost due to either side"s ability to secure supply lines, logistics, transportation, provisions, military hardware, and communications. And the ability to pay for all of them. Just as any business which can"t finance its plans goes belly up so, too, does any army.

Now, imagine an army with the ability to decentralise all of these elements.

This army is actually technologically and economically backward. This doesn"t sound threatening until you realise that:

• This army can and does utilise the technology and economics of its enemy. No need to develop its own.


• Transportation is not only provided to them but provided by their enemy.


• This army benefits from acquiring its transport, provisions, and even military hardware from its enemy.


• This army uses the communication tools necessary to conduct attacks at fractional cost... tools produced more often than not by its enemy... now out in the public realm

Would this not be a pretty powerful army?

Now, imagine this army is invisible. You can"t spot the soldiers because they look like so many other normal people. Furthermore, this army has no discernible head to cut off. There is no HQ to attack. The soldiers are dispersed, almost impossible to detect, and have already infiltrated the enemy"s borders. Heck, they"ve been invited in.

Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane, and Youssef Zaghba... the 3 terrorists who went on a rampage on London Bridge and Borough Market this week... were soldiers of this army.

How would you fight such an army?

Katy Perry thinks we should "hug it out". Teresa May wants to control social media. And London"s mayor Sadiq Khan thinks we need to just get used to it as it"s just "part and parcel of living in a big city".

That"s certainly true of cities such as Kandahar or Mosul, which unfortunately is increasingly what Europes cities are beginning to look like.

Clearly, none of these are solutions. An idiot can see that.

Washington just upped the US military budget so that they can buy more wiz bang jets and horrendously expensive clunky ships. Generals fighting the last war.

Pray tell, how they"re supposed to stop to some lunatic with visions of 40 virgins in his head and a bomb strapped to his guts in a crowded subway station? Europe"s leaders are even worse. Brussels is full of globalists and socialists who promote bad policies and then insist the whole continent pay for their mistakes.

The Western governments of the world are both clueless, ignorant and stupid. They"re also too afraid to call a spade a spade for fear of being demonised for being politically incorrect. But most importantly, they"re broke. This is a good thing because nation states which are a relic of the Industrial era are going to go away as well but that"s a conversation for another day.

Clearly they"re not going to solve these problems anyway, and, in fact, the economics of war have changed so radically that it ensures they"ll go away.

Remember, the most basic social contract a citizen has with his government is that of security and government cannot provide it.

The answers lie with private enterprise.

Private companies such as Stabilitas, who are using crowdsourcing, and AI are already doing more for individuals and businesses than governments are.

The truth is the economics of war have changed and that means that the technology that won the last war isn"t going to be the one that wins this one.

- Chris

"War is the ultimate realisation of modern technology." — Don Delillo

--------------------------------------

Liked this article? Don"t miss our future missives and podcasts, and

get access to free subscriber-only content here.

--------------------------------------

From Debt Peons To Wage Slaves - Are Students A 'Class'?

Authored by Michael Hudson, via NakedCapitalism.com,

Students usually don’t think of themselves as a class. They seem “pre-class,” because they have not yet entered the labor force. They can only hope to become part of the middle class after they graduate. And that means becoming a wage earner – what impolitely is called the working class.

But as soon as they take out a student debt, they become part of the economy. They are in this sense a debtor class. But to be a debtor, one needs a means to pay – and the student’s means to pay is out of the wages and salaries they may earn after they graduate. And after all, the reason most students get an education is so that they can qualify for a middle-class job.

The middle class in America consists of the widening sector of the working class that qualifies for bank loans – not merely usurious short-term payday loans, but a lifetime of debt. So the middle class today is a debtor class.

Shedding crocodile tears for the slow growth of U.S. employment in the post-2008 doldrums (the “permanent Obama economy” in which only the banks were bailed out, not the economy), the financial class views the role industry and the economy at large as being to pay its employees enough so that they can take on an exponentially rising volume of debt. Interest and fees (late fees and penalties now yield credit card companies more than they receive in interest charges) are soaring, leaving the economy of goods and services languishing.

Although money and banking textbooks say that all interest (and fees) are a compensation for risk, any banker who actually takes a risk is quickly fired. Banks don’t take risks. That’s what the governments are for. (Socializing the risk, privatizing the profits.) Anticipating that the U.S. economy may be unable to recover under the weight of the junk mortgages and other bad debts that the Obama administration left on the books in 2008, banks insisted that the government guarantee all student debt. They also insisted that the government guarantees the financial gold-mine buried in such indebtedness: the late fees that accumulate. So whether students actually succeed in becoming wage-earners or not, the banks will receive payments in today’s emerging fictitious “as if” economy. The government will pay the banks “as if” there is actually a recovery.

And if there were to be a recovery, then it would mean that the banks were taking a risk – a big enough risk to justify the high interest rates charge on student loans.

This is simply a replay of what banks have negotiated for real estate mortgage lending. Students who do succeed in getting a job hope to start a family, or at least joining the middle class. The most typical criterion of middle-class life in today’s world (apart from having a college education) is to own a home. But almost nobody can buy a home without getting a mortgage. And the price of such a mortgage is to pay up to 43 percent of one’s income for thirty years, that is, one’s prospective working life (in today’s as-if world that assumes full employment, not just a gig economy).

Banks know how unlikely it is that workers actually will be able to earn enough to carry the costs of their education and real estate debt. The costs of housing are so high, the price of education is so high, the amount of debt that workers must pay off the top of every paycheck is so high that American labor is priced out of world markets (except for military hardware sold to the Saudis and other U.S. protectorates). So the banks insist that the government pretends that housing as well as education loans not involve any risk for bankers.

The Federal Housing Authority guarantees mortgages that absorb up to the afore-mentioned 43 percent of the applicant’s income. Income is not growing these days, but job-loss is. Formerly middle-class labor is being downsized to minimum-wage labor (MacDonald’s and other fast foods) or “gig” labor (Uber). Here too, the fees mount up rapidly when there are defaults – all covered by the government, as if it is this compensates the banks for risks that the government itself bears.

From Debt Peons to Wage Slaves 

In view of the fact that a college education is a precondition for joining the working class (except for billionaire dropouts), the middle class is a debtor class – so deep in debt that once they manage to get a job, they have no leeway to go on strike, much less to protest against bad working conditions. This is what Alan Greenspan described as the “traumatized worker effect” of debt.

Do students think about their future in these terms? How do they think of their place in the world?

Students are the new NINJAs: No Income, No Jobs, No Assets. But their parents have assets, and these are now being grabbed, even from retirees. Most of all, the government has assets – the power to tax (mainly labor these days), and something even better: the power to simply print money (mainly Quantitative Easing to try and re-inflate housing, stock and bond prices these days). Most students hope to become independent of their parents. But burdened by debt and facing a tough job market, they are left even more dependent. That’s why so many have to keep living at home.

The problem is that as they do get a job and become independent, they remain dependent on the banks. And to pay the banks, they must be even more abjectly dependent on their employers.

It may be enlightening to view matters from the vantage point of bankers. After all, they have $1.3 trillion in student loan claims. In fact, despite the fact that college tuitions are soaring throughout the United States even more than health care (financialized health care, not socialized health care), the banks often end up with more education expense than the colleges. That is because any interest rate is a doubling time, and student loan rates of, say, 7 percent mean that the interest payments double the original loan value in just 10 years. (The Rule of 72 provides an easy way to calculate doubling times of interest-bearing debt. Just divide 72 by the interest rate, and you get the doubling time.)

A fatal symbiosis has emerged between banking and higher education in America. Bankers sit on the boards of the leading universities – not simply by buying their way in as donors, but because they finance the transformation of universities into real estate companies. Columbia and New York University are major real estate holders in New York City. Like the churches, they pay no property or income tax, being considered to play a vital social role. But from the bankers’ vantage point, their role is to provide a market for debt whose magnitude now outstrips even that of credit card debt!

Citibank in New York City made what has been accused of being a sweetheart deal with New York University, which steers incoming students to it to finance their studies with loans. In today’s world a school can charge as much for an education as banks are willing to lend students – and banks are willing to lend as much as governments will guarantee to cover, no questions asked. So the bankers on the school boards endorse bloated costs of education, knowing that however much more universities make, the bankers will receive just as much in interest and penalties.

It is the same thing with housing, of course. However much the owner of a home receives when he sells it, the bank will make an even larger sum of money on the interest charges on the mortgage. That is why all the growth in the U.S. economy is going to the FIRE sector, owned mainly by the One Percent.

Under these terms, a “more educated society” does not mean a more employable labor force. It means a less employable society, because more and more wage and consumer income is used not to buy goods and services, not to eat out in restaurants or buy the products of labor, but to pay the financial sector and its allied rentier class. A more educated society under these rules is simply a more indebted society, an economy succumbing to debt deflation, austerity and unemployment except at minimum-wage levels.

For half a century Americans imagined themselves getting richer and richer by going into debt to buy their own homes and educate their children. Their riches have turned out to be riches for the banks, bondholders and other creditors, not for the debtors. What used to be applauded as “the middle class” turns out to be simply an indebted working class.

Media To Trump: Don't Cozy Up To Dictators (Unless They're The Right Dictators)

Authored by Adam Johnson via FAIR.org (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting),

After a series of friendly gestures by President Donald Trump toward Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi over the past few months, US media have recoiled with disgust at the open embrace of governments that ostensibly had heretofore been beyond the pale.

“Enabling Egypt’s President Sisi, an Enemy of Human Rights,” was the New York Times‘ editorial position (4/4/17)—followed by “Donald Trump Embraces Another Despot” (5/1/17). A week later, Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) lectured Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the Times op-ed page (5/8/17) on “Why We Must Support Human Rights.”

“How Trump Makes Dictators Stronger” was Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum’s lament (5/1/17).

“Trump keeps praising international strongmen, alarming human rights advocates,” reported an upset Philip Rucker (Washington Post, 5/2/17). Post contributor Tom Toles (5/2/17) added, “Trump invites ruthless dictators to the White House.” Trump had gone too far, was the media message, crossing a line with his enthusiastic outreach to brutal tyrants.

So the Trump administration’s announcement of a plan for not just a friendly visit to Saudi Arabia—scheduled for May 20–21—but also the sale of up to $300 billion in weapons to the oppressive regime, must have provoked the same outcry from these critics, right?

Actually, no. Thus far, the LA Times, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, ABC and CBS haven’t reported on Trump’s massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia, much less had a pundit or editorial board condemn it.

Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen has killed at least 10,000 civilians, resulted in near-famine conditions for 7 million people and led to a deadly cholera epidemic—all made possible with US weapons and logistical support.

John McCain, whose New York Times op-ed was unironically shared by dozens of high-status pundits, aggressively backs Saudi Arabia’s brutal bombing of Yemen, and has called for increased military support to the absolute monarchy.

The New York Times hasn’t written an editorial about Saudi Arabia since October of last year (10/1/16), when, for the second time in the span of a week, the paper defended the regime against potential lawsuits over its role in the 9/11 attacks. When the Times does speak out on the topic of Saudi Arabia, it does so to run interference for its possible connection to international terrorism.

Nice words to the wrong dictators unleash a torrent of outrage from our pundit class. Nice words to the right dictators—along with billions in military hardware, which unlike nice words will be used to continue to slaughter residents of a neighboring country and suppress domestic dissent–result in uniform silence. Not a word from Anne Applebaum, no condemnation from Philip Rucker, no moral preening from Sen. John McCain, no sense that any line had been crossed from the New York Times editorial board. The US’s warm embrace and arming of the Saudis is factored in, it’s bipartisan, and thus not worthy of outrage.

While the New York Times’ news pages did note the $100 billion–$300 billion Saudi weapons sale, they did so in passing, in paragraph six of a broader article about Trump’s Middle East trip (5/15/17)—though to his credit, reporter Nick Cumming-Bruce did note:

criticism that the United States is supporting Saudi military operations that have struck hospitals, schools, markets and mosques and inflicted thousands of civilian casualties.

The Washington Post (5/17/17) reported on the arms deal in paragraph 12 of a story about Trump attempting to create an “Arab NATO.”

The Post’s reporting on Saudi Arabia in the run-up to Trump’s visit echoed the “reformist” narrative advanced by Post columnist David Ignatius (FAIR.org, 4/28/17). “It seems promising,” Cairo bureau chief Sudarsan Raghavan (5/12/17) wrote of the Saudi King’s “calls” for “reform.”

Editorial page editor Jackson Diehl (5/14/17) even suggested in earnest that Trump could “lead on human rights,” finishing off his sheepish, somewhat self-aware headline with “Really.” In the piece, “human rights” is used as a placeholder for getting US citizens out of foreign prisons—a perfectly fine suggestion, but more about US rights than human ones. And, like the Post’s editorial board and the rest of the opinion section, Diehl’s musing on the topic of human rights entirely omitted Trump’s cozying up to Saudi Arabia.

This isn’t to say that major US media shouldn’t note when US leaders glad-hand despotic governments—they certainly should. But their almost uniform silence on Trump’s ramping up ties with one of the world’s worst human rights offenders, and the material, physical act of selling them munitions to use on Yemeni civilians, speaks to the arbitrary and self-serving nature of US media’s moral posture.

Is War Between U.S. And China Brewing In The South China Sea?

Authored by James Holbrooks via TheAntiMedia.org,

Adding fuel to an already highly combustible situation in Southeast Asia, Reuters reported Tuesday that China has “largely completed major construction of military infrastructure on artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea,” and that the Asian superpower “can now deploy combat planes and other military hardware there at any time.”

Citing satellite imagery analyzed by the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative, part of Washington, D.C.’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, the news agency writes that “work on Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs in the Spratly Islands included naval, air, radar and defensive facilities.”

Sticking to the mainstream narrative that China is an aggressor in claiming sovereign rights to the majority of the South China Sea, Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross says the new images confirm what the U.S. military already knows.

“China’s continued construction in the South China Sea is part of a growing body of evidence that they continue to take unilateral actions which are increasing tensions in the region and are counterproductive to the peaceful resolution of disputes,” he told Reuters.

China, as it has repeatedly, downplayed this notion and stuck to the position that it’s simply erecting defensive infrastructure within its own borders, as would any nation.

“As for China deploying or not deploying necessary territorial defensive facilities on its own territory, this is a matter that is within the scope of Chinese sovereignty,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a press briefing Tuesday.

Despite comments such as these — and the very real fact that China hasn’t actually invaded anyone — the corporate media jumped on the news of the new images.

Forbes, for instance, ran a piece that essentially listed all the reasons why China is a really bad actor in the region, and CNN talked to analysts who explained how the military buildup on the artificial islands will be gradual as China continues to exert its authoritarian influence over neighboring countries.

That’s the narrative. Believe as you will.

But the reality of the situation in the South China Sea - all geopolitical analysis aside - is that there’s about to be a hell of a lot of military hardware in those waters.

As Anti-Media has been reporting, U.S. forces are already in the region, taking part in joint drills with ally South Korea that will last until the end of April. Then, at the beginning of May, Japan — another U.S. ally — will sail its navy’s most powerful warship through the South China Sea on a three-month tour.

That means that just as the joint drills with South Korea end — which, incidentally, units from Delta Force, the Navy SEALS and Army Rangers are taking part in — Japan will shove off a warship aimed at waters claimed by China.

If that timing seems a little curious, also consider that the U.S. just deployed its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in South Korea, which both China and Russia cared none too much for.

With China showing no signs of backing away from its stance in the South China Sea — both ideologically and physically —  and with the corporate media willing and eager to push the “evil China” narrative that the U.S. military appears hell-bent on capitalizing on, it appears the long-dreaded collision course with China may, indeed, be not far off on the horizon.

Russia Launches Biggest Arctic Military Expansion Since Fall Of USSR

In what will likely be interpreted as the latest "test" by the Kremlin to gauge western military preparedness, Reuters reports that Russia has quietly unleashed the biggest military build up targeting the Arctic since the fall of the Soviet Union.  "It is part of a push to firm Moscow"s hand in the High North as it vies for dominance with traditional rivals Canada, the United States, and Norway as well as newcomer China." It is also part of the ongoing scramble for resources above the commodity rich arctic circle.

Russian servicemen of the Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participate in a military
drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near Murmansk, Russia January 23, 2017.

As Reuters notes, under Putin, Moscow is scrambling to re-open abandoned Soviet military, air and radar bases on remote Arctic islands and to build new ones, as it pushes ahead with a claim to almost half a million square miles of the Arctic. It regularly releases pictures of its troops training in white fatigues, wielding assault rifles as they zip along on sleighs pulled by reindeer.

"History is repeating itself," Vladimir Blinov, a guide on board the icebreaker Lenin, which is named after communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, told a recent tour group. "Back then (in the 1950s) it was the height of the Cold War and the United States was leading in some areas. But we beat the Americans and built the world"s first nuclear ship (the Lenin). The situation today is similar."

The expansion has far-reaching financial and geopolitical ramifications: "the Arctic is estimated to hold more hydrocarbon reserves than Saudi Arabia and Moscow is putting down a serious military marker."

The Arctic, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates, holds oil and gas reserves equivalent to 412 billion barrels of oil, about 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas. Low oil prices and Western sanctions imposed over Moscow"s actions in Ukraine mean new offshore Arctic projects have for now been mothballed, but the Kremlin is playing a longer game.

Some more details: according to Reuters, Russia is building three nuclear icebreakers, including the world"s largest, to bolster its fleet of around 40 breakers, six of which are nuclear. No other country has a nuclear breaker fleet, used to clear channels for military and civilian ships. Russia"s Northern Fleet, based near Murmansk in the Kola Bay"s icy waters, is also due to get its own icebreaker, its first, and two ice-capable corvettes armed with cruise missiles.

"Under (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev and (Russian President Boris) Yeltsin, our Arctic border areas were stripped bare," said Professor Pavel Makarevich, a member of the Russian Geographical Society. "Now they are being restored."

The build-up has been noticed in Washington. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, in a written submission following his confirmation hearing, described Moscow"s Arctic moves as "aggressive steps" and pledged to prioritize developing a U.S. strategy, according to Senator Dan Sullivan.

Naturally, Russia"s military expansion poses a dilemma for Trump, who wants to repair U.S.-Russia ties and team up with Moscow in Syria rather than get sucked into an Arctic arms race: it is guaranteed that US neocons will be scraming bloody murder unless Trump somehow responds to the US expansion.

The build-up is causing jitters elsewhere. As reported two weeks ago, 300 U.S. Marines landed in Norway this month for a six-month deployment, the first time since World War Two that foreign troops have been allowed to be stationed there. And with memories of Russia"s 2014 annexation of Ukraine"s Crimea still fresh, NATO is watching closely. Six of its members held an exercise in the region in 2015.

Ships moored in the Northern Fleet"s Arctic headquarters of Severomorsk, Russia.

Previously, the Soviet military packed more firepower in the Arctic, but it was set up to wage nuclear war with the United States not conventional warfare. Arctic islands were staging posts for long-range bombers to fly to America. But in an era when a slow-motion battle for the Arctic"s energy reserves is unfolding, Russia is creating a permanent and nimble conventional military presence with different and sometimes superior capabilities.

Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, is presiding over the re-opening or creation of six military facilities, some of which will be ready by the year"s end. They include an island base on Alexandra Land to house 150 troops able to survive autonomously for 18 months. Called the Arctic Trefoil, officials have said they may deploy military jets there. MiG-31 fighters, designed to shoot down long-range bombers, or the SU-34, a frontline bomber, are seen as suitable.

Moscow"s biggest Arctic base, dubbed "Northern Shamrock", is meanwhile taking shape on the remote Kotelny Island, some 2,700 miles east of Moscow. It will be manned by 250 personnel and equipped with air defense missiles. Soviet-era radar stations and airstrips on four other Arctic islands are being overhauled and new ground-to-air missile and anti-ship missile systems have been moved into the region.

Russia is also spending big to winterize military hardware. "The modernization of Arctic forces and of Arctic military infrastructure is taking place at an unprecedented pace not seen even in Soviet times," Mikhail Barabanov, editor-in-chief of Moscow Defense Brief, told Reuters.

Barabanov added that two special Arctic brigades had been set up, something the USSR never had, and that there were plans to form a third as well as special Arctic coastal defense divisions. "Russia"s military activity in the Arctic is a bit provocative," said Barabanov. "It could trigger an arms race." Of course, Russia"s military activity could be simply seen as a preemptive move to western expansion in the region, as telegraphed by the recent build up of NATO forces in Eastern Europe.

* * *

Meanwhile, Russians are delighted by this latest "arms race."

In Murmansk, home to Russia"s icebreakers and just an hour from the Northern Fleet"s headquarters, the prospect of an Arctic renaissance is a source of pride. The city is steeped in Arctic and military history. The conning tower of the Kursk submarine, which sunk in 2000 after an explosion, looks down from a hill above the port. And in central Murmansk, scale models of dozens of icebreakers crowd the halls of the Murmansk Shipping Company, while sailors, wrapped in great coats, barrel along its streets.

For Russia, the issue of militarizing the Arctic boils down to a simple equation: we have to do it before others do.

"These Arctic bases are on our territory. Unlike some other countries we are not building them overseas," said Denis Moiseev, a member of the Russian Geographical Society. "Other countries are also very active in trying to push their borders towards the North Pole. Our army must be able to operate on all our territory in extreme conditions."

One country regularly mentioned as an unlikely Arctic rival is China, a close Moscow ally, which has observer status on the Arctic Council, the main forum for coordinating cooperation in the region, and is starting to build its own icebreakers.

Politicians are keener to discuss a commercial Arctic push. New roads and a railway are being built and ports overhauled as Moscow expands its freight capacity and, amid warmer climate cycles, readies for more traffic along its Arctic coast. It hopes the Northern Sea Route, which runs from Murmansk to the Bering Strait near Alaska, could become a mini Suez Canal, cutting sea transport times from Asia to Europe. But while the route"s popularity inside Russia is growing, relatively high transit costs and unpredictable ice coverage means it has lost some of its luster for foreign firms.

Grigory Stratiy, deputy governor of the Murmansk Region, told Reuters there was strong interest in sea route from Asian nations however and that new icebreakers would allow for year-round navigation in the 2020s. "Whatever the weather, the Northern Sea Route will be needed. Its use will definitely grow," said Stratiy, who said Russia was keen to attract foreign investment to the Arctic.

When asked about his country"s military build-up, he smiled. "There"s no reason to be afraid I can reassure you," he said, saying it was driven only by a need to modernize.

"Russia has never had any aggressive aims and won"t have them. We are very friendly people."