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Nearly everyone has heard the comment attributed for former Clinton consigliere Rahm Emanuel that one should never let a good crisis go to waste. The implication of the comment is that if there is a major crisis going on the cover it provides permits one to do all sorts of things under the radar that would otherwise be unacceptable. That aphorism is particularly true in the current context as there are multiple crises taking place simultaneously, all of which are being exploited to various degrees by interested parties.
One of the more interesting stories carefully hidden by the smoke being generate by civil unrest, plague and personal scandals is the continued march of American militarism. The story is particularly compelling as neither main party candidate is bothering to talk about it and there is no discussion of foreign policy even planned for the final presidential debate. Last week eccentric multi billionaire Elon Musk announced that he and the Pentagon are developing a new 7,500 m.p.h. missile capable of delivering 80 tons of military cargo nearly anywhere in the world in under an hour. It would undoubtedly be a major advanced capability catering to those military planners who envision continued U.S. intervention worldwide for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, agreement on a new START treaty that would limit the proliferation of some hypersonic weapon systems is stalled because the White House wants to include China in any deal. Beijing is not interested, particularly as Donald Trump is also claiming that Beijing will pay for the multi-trillion dollar stimulus packages that the United States will ultimately require to combat the coronavirus “… because this was not caused by our workers and our people, this was caused by China and China will pay us back in one form or another. We’re gonna take it from China. I tell you now, it’s coming out of China. They’re the ones that caused this problem.”
Indeed, China and Russia continue to be the boogeymen trotted out regularly to scare Americans. Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s State Department issued a statement warning that “some foreign governments, such as those of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation, seek to exert influence over U.S. foreign policy through lobbyists, external experts, and think tanks.” Why the statement was issued at this time, so close to elections is unclear, though it is possibly an attempt to line up possible scapegoats if the electoral process does not produce results acceptable to whomever loses. In fact, Russia and China hardly find a place on the list of those who fund lobbyists and think tanks.
Also of interest is another story about how Washington has chosen to interact with the world, one involving both enemy du jour Iran and Venezuela. Readers will undoubtedly recall how the United States seized in international waters four Greek owned but Liberian flagged tankers loaded with gasoline that were bound for Venezuela. The tankers were transporting more than a million gallons of fuel to economic basket case Venezuela, a country which is in its sad condition due to sanctions and other “maximum pressure” imposed by Washington, which has also sanctioned Venezuela’s own oil industry. The fuel was seized based on unilaterally imposed U.S. sanctions on Iranian sale or export of its own petroleum products, a move intended to strangle the Iranian economy and bring about an uprising of the Iranian people. As the sanctions imposed by Washington are not supported by the United Nations or by any other legal authority, the seizure is little more than exercise of a bit of force majeure that used to be called piracy.
Even though foreign and national security policy has not really been discussed in either the Biden or Trump campaign, there is general agreement in both parties that Venezuela is a rogue regime that must be replaced while Iran is an actual, tangible threat due to its alleged misbehavior in the Middle East. It has been dubbed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the “number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world.” Saner voices have observed that neither Venezuela nor Iran threaten the United States in any way and that the U.S. and Israel continue to kill many more civilians than Iran ever has, but they have been drowned out by the media talking heads who constantly spout the established narrative.
Well, the alleged Iranian fuel has arrived in New Jersey and a legal battle for custody of it has begun. The fuel had been removed from the Greek tankers and transferred to other tankers for removal to the United States but the complication is that the Trump administration must now prove its case for forfeiture before the oil can be sold. The U.S. justification for seizing the cargoes is the claim that the fuel was an asset of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the Treasury, Justice and State Departments have conveniently designated a foreign terrorist organization. But that contention is disputed by the cargoes’ owners, who claim to have nothing to do with the IRGC. They include other energy exporters and shippers in the Middle East, namely Mobin International Limited, Oman Fuel Trading Ltd and Sohar Fuel Trading LLC FZ. They have filed a motion for dismissal and are seeking return of the fuel plus additional compensation for the losses they have suffered. One has to hope they win as it is the United States that is in the wrong in this case.
The entire saga of the tankers and the fuel is symptomatic of the undeclared economic warfare that the United States now prefers to use when dealing with adversaries. And there is considerable evidence to suggest that Washington is trying to goad Iran into responding with force, providing the U.S. government with a plausible rationale for responding in kind. President Trump has directly threatened Iran in an October 9th public statement in which he promised the Iranians that “If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are gonna do things to you that have never been done before.”
So, Washington’s aggression directed against much of the world continues with a national election less than two weeks away but no one is talking about it. That would seem odd in and of itself, but the sad part is that it is deliberate collusion on the part of government and media to make sure the voting public remains unaware the extent to which the United States has in reality become a pariah, a full-time bully in its foreign relations.
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The sane world is waiting for the US to implode.
No country is going to invade the US mainland or territories. All they have to do is wait patiently for the already dead US (economically speaking) to hit the floor as it’s leaning over terribly now and the economic morphine being pumped in is just causing the nerves to twitch.
Speaking of piracy but slightly off topic : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54619728
From my perspective, this captain should have gotten a medal for what he ordered done.
If the European gov’ts would shell some of the boats bringing in the African and ME riffraff after ordering them to turn around without effect, then the flow would surely stop.
The message would sink in and many riffraff lives could be saved from drowning and other horrible treatment by the coyotes, so it could be advertised as a humanitarian intervention to actually save lives. Omelets – breaking eggs …
There is considerable evidence that Sociopath Khameni is failing. The Iranian economy is collapsing under his regime. (1)
Iranian Militarism Marches Off a Cliff
Khameni desperately needs a war to distract the Iranian people from his track record of domestic failure. Readers will undoubtedly recall that the glorious IRGC shot down a defenseless civilian passenger plane killing 176 people. (2)
Thus, Khameni needs to goad Trump into a fight. Fortunately the incompetence of Iran’s military makes it easy for Trump to ignore Khameni’s pathetic attempt to bait him. Here is a good example of Iran’s Navy failing. (3)
When will the Iranian people choose to stop suffering at the hands of Khameni’s degenerate theocracy?
PEACE 😇
_______
(1) https://www.gulf-times.com/story/675029/Iran-rial-hits-new-low-against-dollar-as-economy-r
(2) https://www.traveloffpath.com/us-believes-iran-shot-down-plane-that-killed-176-people-including-63-canadians/
(3)
True. Unfortunately, most of the sane world isn’t in government or the oligarchy.
Giraldi will never write an honest word about the aggressive entanglements that Russia, China and Iran pursue outside their borders, let alone the vicious and often lethal suppression they inflict upon their own freethinking and accountability seeking citizens.
But by linking to Mondoweiss as if it’s a reliable source of reporting and analysis, at least he demonstrates he has a sense of humor.
Pilpul pilpul pilpul nonsense horseshit jewcant jewcant
http://www.genocidaljewstatehatespeech.il
Whataboutthiswhataboutthat squash Rachel Corrie spit on old ladies sell Palestinian organ meat dump your shit on Arabs cheat lie steal steal steal
We’re such nice people, why does everybody call us assholes and expel us?
EXTERMINATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 😇
“So, Washington’s aggression directed against much of the world”
Absurd. The world loves America, not the murderous dictatorships of China/Iran/Venezuela.
Semi-related lulz:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Culture_Foundation
Lot and A123, also called the kike-shite festival twins that just won’t go away!
What if they weren’t pirates but actually ‘tax collectors’ charging people for ‘right of passage’(everybody does it).
Or is it acceptable to destroy a government so nobody can police the shores, while outsiders can dump garbage, steal your fish, invade your border-less country, and Molest any other resources?
Militarism has been the foreign policy and one of the motors of the economy for a long time. The US has been reliant on it. It’s actually always been a form of piracy, roving around the world looking for weakness and plunder. The US has always had some moral cover story to explain it such as bringing democracy and other wonderful things. World has changed since the peak of US world dominance and other countries can now defend themselves so that US invasions can be fought by the local people. Getting military cargo somewhere fast is increasingly meaningless as boots on the ground invasions are getting to be a thing of the past. We can’t even control Afghanistan, a fourth world country, and are forced to negotiate with the Taliban. The presidential so-called debates spent way too much time absorbed with Corona and who could have handled it better. This is stuff geared to the average American who doesn’t know where Iran is but is told over and over that they’re coming to get us and are a threat. Otherwise nothing about foreign policy; it’s not a vote getter. Billions are spent for all of these security agencies yet supposedly Iran, Russia and others can just manipulate US elections at will. It’s all stupid stuff for stupid people which seems to constitute the vast majority of Americans.
Ready made sentence. Did you learn it in the training in one of the propaganda centers?
For someone who may not know, reccomended:
https://mondoweiss.net/
P. Giraldi said: “The entire saga of the tankers and the fuel is symptomatic of the undeclared economic warfare that the United States now prefers to use when dealing with adversaries.”
Well “duh”!
You don’t get it, Mr Giraldi- war, by any means necessary, is the “business” , the only “business” of the state. That’s the “business model” of ALL states/governments, past, present, or future.
If you have government in the first place, then you will have war[s], by “hook or by crook”, somewhere, somehow. Wars on the native populations individuals [eg the drug war] , or wars on foreign governments/populations, or both at the same time. It’s as inevitable as night following day. As revisionist historian Randolph Bourne famously quipped:” War is the health of the state”.
And, of course the bigger any government is, the more wars will be found by it to be “necessary”, and the more incentive its members will have to manufacture wars via false pretenses [ i.e. “false flags” and similar].
“Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.” Albert J. Nock
“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure” Robert LeFevere
“Regards” onebornfree
I watched a documentary on the pirate situation done by a German film crew. They described how the local fishing was decimated by large foreign commercial operations and left the locals with little choice but to fight back. That was news to me and cast a different light on the situation.
They also showed an incident where the pirates got aboard an oil tanker and captured the crew, holding them for ransom in the millions of dollars. It also showed the idiotic response of the shipping industry to not allow the ship employees to protect themselves but instead had to hire mercenaries for that job.
If I’m being threatened by someone, I don’t care about his motivation, or his problems. I just know he’s a predator and has identified me as his prey. I’m going to kill him if I get the chance. If I only manage to injure him, I’ll reload and finish the job.
It’s like the blacks wanting me, a white guy, to pay them reparations for something I or my long dead relatives never had a hand in. I object. It’s one thing to broad brush an issue, and quite another when your skin is in the game.
BTW – taxation is theft no matter who does it.
American militarism, which is globalist imperialism, will keep on marching on as long as America is run by WASP culture, which necessarily is Anglo-Zionist culture.
It is a given of Anglo-Zionists that they damn as pro-Hitler and or as holocaust denier all people who tell the truth about either Israel or the US Imperium.
“Billions are spent for all of these security agencies yet supposedly Iran, Russia and others can just manipulate US elections at will. It’s all stupid stuff for stupid people which seems to constitute the vast majority of Americans.”
It’s all about getting a bigger budget for next year. The biggest laugh to me was when Pompeo said they have “lobbyists”. Well of course they do. It’s legalized bribery – so why wouldn’t they try it? They would be stupid if they didn’t. It doesn’t seem any of the three want to “destroy America”. But they do want to keep America out of their business though. There is a huge difference in my book.
“Iranian Militarism Marches Off a Cliff”
So let them. Why should the US worry about it, the Iranians aren’t threatening us. And as far as Khameni needing a war to distract the people, that sounds very similar to what Netanyahoo is doing in Israel.
If Israel wants a war with Iran than let Netanyahoo fight it. Don’t drag the US into a war for Israel that has no benefit for the American people.
The evil orange clown is probably already working on his next book: The Art of Using America as an Expendable Blunt Instrument to Beat the Independent World into Submission in Pursuit of the Jewish Supremacist Agenda of World Domination and Control at Any Cost or something like that.
It’s more like Militustrialism.
Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s State Department issued a statement warning that “some foreign governments, such as those of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation, seek to exert influence over U.S. foreign policy through lobbyists, external experts, and think tanks.”
Oh dear, the corpulent bloviator over at State no longer even tries to hide his projection of the sins of his cabal onto others.
‘Tis high time for him and his Israel-first cabal to be ejected from what used to be American, but has now been occupied, annexed and transformed into some sort of foreign, alien chabad (I think that’s what they call it).
He can go join Dershowitless for a massage…