Trump’s Lawless Presidency? (Hardly)


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The Anti-War Protest Presence at the Philadelphia Democratic Convention

Image by Debra Sweet via Flickr

Crossposted with Dandelion SaladStrategic Culture Foundation, fraternal sites.
Dateline: June 12, 2017


Piling on the invective against Donald Trump, an op-ed in the New York Times this week castigated him as a “lawless president”. The business tycoon-turned politician has already been roundly condemned in the US media as a traitor, stooge, buffoon and much more. Now the Times has marked him down as “lawless”.

What is particularly galling about this latest anti-Trump tirade is the conceited notion that Trump is somehow singularly lawless as an American president. The cited op-ed piece by David Leonhardt laments that the principles of law and order have largely been respected by both Republican and Democrat occupants of the White House – but Trump is now bringing the office into disrepute with his alleged lawlessness.

It would no doubt come as a shock to the New York Times and its readers to consider that almost every American president – certainly every one since the Second World War – could be prosecuted as a war criminal owing to gross violation of international law.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]rump’s bullying personality and feckless ego are indeed grating. His clumsy self-aggrandizing boasting are doubly cringe-making. But the accusations thrown at him of lawlessness seem overblown. The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN are among the main US media outlets that have been running a non-stop campaign to discredit Trump since his surprise election last November against their favored candidate Hillary Clinton.

This president is accused of breaching the US constitution by undermining the judiciary and over-extending his executive power over other branches of government. True, this president has made plenty of uncouth remarks against judges and the judicial system. And he has pilloried the media and intelligence community with scathing language, referring to them as “enemy of the people” or likening them to “using Nazi practices”.

Trump is also accused of obstructing justice by allegedly pressuring the former head of the FBI, James Comey, into dropping investigations into claims that his election team colluded with Russian state intelligence or cyber hackers to win the presidency. Trump has dismissed the Russian collusion claims in characteristically brusque fashion as “fake news” and a “total hoax”.

The Russian government has also separately rejected the collusion claims as absurd speculation for which no credible evidence has ever been presented. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently remarked that US politicians and media seem to have “lost their minds” in persisting with making such outlandish claims.


[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here are also ethical concerns – probably valid – that Trump is abusing the office of the presidency to advance his family’s business empire. His daughter Ivanka is an unelected “special adviser” while also owning an international fashion conglomerate. Her husband Jared is too among Trump’s White House coterie of special advisers. Like Trump’s own sons, Jared has ongoing real estate business interests. When Trump is dealing with China and other foreign nations, there are plausible concerns of “conflict of interests”.

However distasteful and potentially unethical all of this is it is nevertheless so far unproven to be lawless. For the New York Times to lambast Trump as a lawless president is a leap of hyperbole.

In the list of alleged lawlessness presented by the Times the one issue where a case of criminality could be solidly made is glaringly omitted. On April 7, Trump ordered the bombardment of Syria with over 50 cruise missiles. The attack was an act of aggression against a sovereign country. Trump’s claim of “retaliating” for an alleged chemical weapons massacre by the Syrian army of President Bashar al Assad are besides the point. The US has no legal mandate for any military action in Syria. And at any rate, no verifiable evidence has ever been presented to support the allegation of chemical weapons use.

As Russia pointed out the cruise missile barrage ordered by Trump was an illegal act of aggression. Trump should be prosecuted for war crimes on that instance alone. Moreover, the ongoing US air strikes on Syria, which have resulted in dozens of civilian deaths, are further grounds for Trump to be prosecuted for crimes against peace.

Other international issues where Trump stands accused of gross criminality is his support of Saudi aggression in Yemen and towards Iran. His reckless saber-rattling against North Korea is another prosecutable case of this president engaging in warmongering.

But none of this provable lawlessness in international relations warrants a mention in the New York Times’ condemnation of Trump. The so-called “newspaper of record” confines itself to delving into Trump’s alleged abuses of power in the realm of domestic politics, much of which seems exaggerated in order to serve the Times’ own dubious agenda of discrediting Trump.

This oversight of Trump’s provable international violations is hardly surprising (albeit unacceptable). For on that score, he is simply carrying on the ignoble tradition of all American presidents who have used aggression and war as an instrument of power against other nations.

His predecessors Obama, Bush Junior, Clinton, Bush Senior, Reagan and all the way back to Eisenhower and Truman have abused military power, invasion, subversion, proxy wars and assassination as a prerogative for American subjugation of other nations. Even Jimmy Carter and John F Kennedy, considered to be two of the more enlightened presidents, oversaw criminal programs to pursue regime change in Cuba and other Latin American states. (Not to mention Vietnam.—Eds.]

Not a single American president over the past seven decades since the Second World War can be counted as innocent when it comes to gross violation of international law in the pursuit of US power. All told, it is estimated that American state-sponsored criminality under the orders of any given president has been responsible for over 20 million deaths from wars and aggressions in myriad forms against dozens of nations.

Donald J Trump is just the latest name in this sordid pantheon of lawless American leaders.

For the New York Times to single out Trump as somehow uniquely lawless is testimony to how much in denial the US media are about the truly rogue, criminal nature of their government.

Trump a lawless president? Yes, sure he is. Just like all the rest of them. 


About the Author
 Finian Cunningham, is a columnist at the Strategic Culture Foundation and a Writer on Dandelion Salad. He can be reached at cunninghamfinian@gmail.com Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. 


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uza2-zombienationTrump is also accused of obstructing justice by allegedly pressuring the former head of the FBI, James Comey, into dropping investigations into claims that his election team colluded with Russian state intelligence or cyber hackers to win the presidency. Trump has dismissed the Russian collusion claims in characteristically brusque fashion as “fake news” and a “total hoax”.


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Valdai discussion: Russia and NATO

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On Monday, May 29, the Valdai Discussion Club hosted an expert discussion following the NATO summit in Brussels, titled “NATO and Russia: Unchanged Frontline?” Political scientists, diplomats and journalists, representing both Russia and NATO member states, discussed the state and prospects of relations between Moscow and the North Atlantic Alliance in light of the last summit’s decisions.


Alexander Grushko, Russia’s permanent representative to NATO, took part in the discussion through video conferencing from Brussels. He spoke about his impressions of the summit. According to Grushko, NATO obviously continues to experience a certain crisis. Operations outside the formal zone of responsibility of the alliance, in Afghanistan and Libya, have gone on for many years without success. Despite bold statements, NATO is ill-equipped to fight terrorism. The decision to bring the share of defense spending to 2% of GDP, adopted by the Wales summit in 2014, has met difficulties. By December of this year, the member states will have to submit plans regarding these relevant parameters. Many European members of NATO fear the possibility of the US attention switching to the Pacific region.


NATO is not only useless but a great danger to the survival of the world.


The crisis to its original “raison d’etre” experienced by NATO has brought renewed threats for Russia. After the end of the inter-bloc confrontation in Europe (with the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s), the alliance lost the target it was created for, and tried to find a new role for itself. According to the Russian participants at the discussion, the events of recent years show that NATO has severely drifted back towards its original aim: military deterrence of and even possible confrontation with Russia.

Evgeny Buzhinsky, Lieutenant-General (Retired), chairman of the PIR-Center, spoke about the change in perceptions of NATO in Russia.  According to him, in the early 1990s there was an opinion (misguided) that it was time for Russia to join the “elite club of democracies,” in which NATO had positioned itself. This was always perceived skeptically by the Russian Ministry of Defense, but such sentiments existed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs up to the Yugoslav events of 1998-1999, Buzhinsky noted. The understanding —rather unavoidable—has come that Russia continues to figure in NATO’s plans as a potential enemy, despite the fact that this was officially denied at all levels.

According to Alexander Grushko, Russian Permanent Representative to NATO, at the moment in the European security sector there was a turn for the worse. “For the first time in many years, security in this region will again be determined not by measures of deterrence, not by efforts to provide security without an emphasis on military means, but by keeping of a certain “balance of threats”, “Grushko said.

“We see no indication that NATO is ready to stop,” the Russian diplomat noted. “On the contrary, there remains great uncertainty about these measures that can be strengthened. The formation of four battalion groups is to be completed. The forces on the Baltic and Black Seas will be strengthened. Active development of the infrastructure is continuing: every day there are reports from Eastern Europe that the construction of certain objects begins or is being completed. Particular attention is now paid to the strengthening the southern flank: American and British forces appeared in Romania, multinational brigades are being created there. Such a picture, apparently, will determine the future structure of military security (a laughable euphemism for imperialist projection) in the region.”

According to James Sherr, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), who took part in the discussion through a video link from Oxford, the Brussels summit in fact confirmed the decisions of last year’s summit in Warsaw. However, it is obvious that the biggest unknown of the Brussels summit was the participation of US President Donald Trump. Trump, according to Sherr, assembled a competent national security team, but it lacks consistency. Signals that came from the administration in recent months encouraged the European allies of the United States, but during the summit Trump again aroused their concerns. This is all literally nonsense since Russia has no intention of invading Western Europe, and is only interested in defending herself from a well announced possible Western bloc attack.

Sherr noted, that NATO is a “problem” for Trump. “Despite the fact that Trump has been president for several months, he still does not seem to understand exactly what NATO is,” he said. “When he states that the alliance must solve the immigration problem, it means that he does not understand what this organization does and where the competence of the European Union begins.”

A similar assessment of Donald Trump’s foreign policy debut was given by Alexander Grushko. According to the Russian diplomat, judging by the statements of US representatives, the administration is betting on situational coalitions. A particular concern of US allies [actually vassal states in most cases]  was caused by the fact, that Trump did not refer to the Fifth Article of the North Atlantic Treaty. Finally, many members expressed concern about his proposal to increase defense spending by $119 billion a year, a figure bigger than Russia’s entire military budget. This despite the ludicrously bloated US defense budget, whose visible part alone is inching toward a trillion dollars a year.

Another topic discussed was the possible creation of an European army. Buzhinsky noted that NATO remains a bloc, in which the US continues to dominate militarily. According to him, Americans play the leading role in conducting combat operations. In many European countries more than 50% of the costs go to the service support of personnel: small European armies live comfortably and do not want to fight. No European country can simultaneously take part in NATO and in a potential European army. Sherr retorted to this, saying that Europe makes “an important non-military contribution” to the alliance’s activities.

In general, the participants at the discussion stated that Russia and NATO have kept to the same positions. Perhaps the only positive element of the current state of things is that these positions are clearly and unambiguously expressed, unlike in previous years.

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About the author

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Our Senior Editor based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was recently published by Punto Press.

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uza2-zombienationAccording to Alexander Grushko, Russian Permanent Representative to NATO, at the moment in the European security sector there was a turn for the worse. “For the first time in many years, security in this region will again be determined not by measures of deterrence, not by efforts to provide security without an emphasis on military means, but by keeping of a certain “balance of threats”, “Grushko said.


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No Laughing Matter: The Manchester Bomber is the Spawn of Hillary and Barack’s Excellent Libyan Adventure

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by


On November 20, 2015, two jihadi militants attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali, seizing about 100 hostages and “leaving bodies strewed across the building.” When it was over, 22 people (including the attackers) had been killed. As the New York Times reported:

Mali has been crippled by instability since January, 2012, when rebels and Al Qaeda-linked militants — armed with the remnants of late Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s arsenal — began advancing through the country’s vast desert in the north and capturing towns.

Mali soldiers help a man to safety. Part of NYTimes coverage.

Not much has been made in American and Western media of this attack. Most of the dead were Malians, Russians, and Chinese—and, hey, it was in Africa; Shit happens. Especially there. How many people reading this even remember that it happened? Follow-up analysis? It was Africa. That kind of coverage. (I did post about it at the time, making many points that unfortunately bear repeating here.)

Last Monday, jihadi suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, killing 22 people. Salman grew up in an anit-Qaddafi Libyan immigrant family. In 2011, his father, Ramadan Abedi, along with other British Libyans (including one who was under house arrest), “was allowed to go [to Libya], no questions asked,” to join the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an al-Qaeda-affiliate, to help overthrow Qaddafi. In Manchester, as Max Blumenthal puts it, in his excellent Alternet piece, it was all “part of the rat line operated by the MI5, which hustled anti-Qaddafi Libyan exiles to the front lines of the war.” In Manchester, Salman lived near a number of LIFG militants, including an expert bomb maker. This was a tough bunch, and everybody—including the cops and Salman’s Muslim neighbors—knew they weren’t the Jets and the Sharks. As Middle East Eye reports, he “was known to security services,” and some of his acquaintances “had reported him to the police via an anti-terrorism hotline.”


Gaddafi murdered by Washington-controlled jihadists. A devious and obscenely hypocritical mafia hit pure and simple, ordered by the biggest mafia outfit on earth, the Washington-London-Paris axis, the "Lords of the West".


Could it be any clearer? The Abedi family was part of a protected cohort of Salafist proxy soldiers that have been used by “the West” to destroy the Libyan state. There are a number of such cohorts around the world that have been used for decades to overthrow relatively prosperous and secular, but insufficiently compliant, governments in the Arab and Muslim world—and members of those groups have perpetrated several blowback attacks in Western countries, via various winding roads. In this case, the direct line from Libya to Mali to Manchester is particularly easy to trace.

Too bad more people in Britain and the West hadn’t paid attention to what happened in Mali two years ago. Too bad they hadn’t thought too much about the chain of jihadi proxy interventions that the United States and its allies, or about the connection with the chain of jihadi attacks in Western countries. Too bad they hadn’t recognized the continuing arrogance of the Western (U.S./NATO) and Middle Eastern (Gulf, Israel) powers who think they can unleash and re-leash these jihadi fighters at will. Too bad they don’t understand the contradiction between mourning the bombing of Manchester and crying for the bombing of Syria.

Too bad the Western (i.e., American-directed) media don’t provide what would be necessary to understand these things: ongoing coverage and analysis of the obvious relation between the continuing series of horrors perpetrated by jihadi militants and the continuing series of horrors perpetrated by Western and allied governments. It’s a good bet nobody will have forgotten the Manchester bombing two years from now. It was in merry old England, after all and many of the victims were beautiful British girls. It’s also a good bet that the media analysis will continue to have everyone scratching their heads about why these death-loving Muslims hate us so much. That kind of coverage.


The Abedi family was part of a protected cohort of Salafist proxy soldiers that have been used by “the West” to destroy the Libyan state. There are a number of such cohorts around the world that have been used for decades to overthrow relatively prosperous and secular, but insufficiently compliant, governments in the Arab and Muslim world—and members of those groups have perpetrated several blowback attacks in Western countries, via various winding roads.

The jihadi attackers in Mali and the jihadi bomber in Manchester were direct products—not accidental by-products, but deliberately incubated protégés—of American-British-French-NATO regime change in Libya, a project that was executed by the Obama administration and spearheaded by Hillary Clinton.

Before the glorious revolution, Libya under Ghaddafi had the highest standard of living of any country in Africa, according to the UN Human Development Index. Before the jihadi onslaught backed by NATO bombing campaign, Ghaddafi’s Libya was an anchor of stability in North Africa, as even the U.S. and British governments knew and acknowledged, per a 2008 cable from American foreign service officer Christopher Stevens, published by Wikileaks:

Libya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent…Muammar al-Qadhafi’s criticism of Saudi Arabia for perceived support of Wahabi extremism, a source of continuing Libya-Saudi tension, reflects broader Libyan concern about the threat of extremism. Worried that fighters returning from Afghanistan and Iraq could destabilize the regime, the [government of Libya] has aggressive pursued operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry, and blunt the ideological appeal of radical Islam.

The US-British-French-NATO humanitarian intervention put an end to that by overthrowing the Libyan government under entirely phony pretexts, in contravention of fundamental international law, and in violation of the UN resolution they claimed as a justification. The executioners and beneficiaries of that aggression where the jihadis who have been rampaging from Mali to Manchester. It’s a bright, clear line.

Ghaddafi himself warned Tony Blair that “an organization [the LIFG].has laid down sleeper cells in North Africa called the Al Qaeda organization in North Africa.” Ghaddafi’s son, Saif, warned that overthrowing Libya’s would make the country “the Somalia of North Africa, of the Mediterranean” and “You will see millions of illegal immigrants. The terror will be next door.”

Thanks to Blair and Obama and Clinton and Sarkozy, that’s exactly what happened. Libya was destroyed as a functioning state, and the terror is now inside every Western door.

Westerners and Americans transfixed by Ghaddafi’s garish posturing may have, and may still, find it hard to accept, but it needs to be said aloud: In 2011, Ghaddafi was right about what was going in in Libya, and all best and brightest militaristic conservatives and “humanitarian” liberals, in and out of government, were wrong. A lot of radical lefties, too, myself included; though I always vehemently opposed the US-NATO intervention, I, too, took Ghaddafi’s complaints for excuses. But lesson learned (by some): What was going on in Libya was the same thing that went on in Afghanistan in the 80s, and the same thing that is going on in Syria today, supercharged by the intervening war in Iraq

Throughout this nefarious chain of destruction, nobody in the world has committed worse crimes than all the “humanitarian” liberals in and out of government who have enacted and/or gone along with the imperialist chaos program of destroying relatively prosperous and secular societies in the Arab and Muslim world, and replacing them with sectarian jihadi playgrounds. And no force in the world is more responsible for the rampaging jihadi wolves, lone and in packs, than the United States and its compliant allies, including Great Britain.

Whether any American liberal wants to or not, anyone who is mourning Manchester needs to hear it said: We’re crying over the horror in Manchester today because yesterday Hillary Clinton was laughing about the horror she inflicted on Libya –including the killing of Ghaddafi by those protected Salafist proxies who sodomized him with a bayonet: “We came. We saw. He died. [big smile, joyous laugther]” Yes, exactly that.


Ha, Ha. Maybe she can get a gig in a comedy club in Manchester.


Really, knowing what we do about Libya through to Manchester, does any of the outrageous things we’ve from Trump equal the despicableness of Hillary’s perverse glee in this video? It’s an image not to be forgotten.

I’m sure that our current president, if he’s given the time—and, if he’s not, some other Republican or Democrat—will meet or exceed the high standards that have been set, but Donald Trump has not yet come near committing the series of crimes for which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (following the precedent of five previous American administrations) are responsible. These crimes produced the twin horrors of imperialist and jihadi chaos, of which the destruction of the Libyan state was one egregious example, and the killing of young concertgoers in Manchester another. This represents a deep, persistent bipartisan policy that is much more important and difficult to confront than the question of which front man or woman will be selling it.

Manchester is the latest iteration of a scenario we’ve gone through so many times now, like some groundhog-day dream. At the end of my post two years ago, I was urging and hoping that Americans would wake up. But a lot of American liberals and lefties, including Berniebots, still like to imagine there’s a political space they can inhabit called Progressive Except Imperialism. There isn’t. Imperialism with Social Security and Medicare and Obamacare—even single-payer healthcare—is imperialism, and it’s reactionary and supremacist. Equal-opportunity imperialism is imperialism. African-American, women, Latinx, or LGBTQ presidents, generals, and drone operators do not make it any less criminal, or dangerous, or any less inevitably erosive of all those cherished progressive domestic programs.

Ignoring or putting aside what the U.S. does in Libya, or Iraq, or Syria, or Palestine because…Trump! The Republicans! is ignoring a fundamental element of a progressive politics as well as an immediate danger to the country. One can do it, but those who do, can’t claim to be seriously confronting the horrors of a tragedy like Manchester, no matter how many tears they shed.

I’m afraid that is where we’re stuck. The absurdity of Trump is drawing more well-meaning people into the flames of nostalgia for an imaginary Democratic copasetic state that disappeared on January 20th. The #Resistance can’t even get its act together for single-payer healthcare—the easiest sell imaginable; it’s not only avoiding the more contentious issues regarding American aggression in places like Libya and Syria, it’s succumbing to the dangerous, war-mongering, Russophobic program of the military-intelligence complex.

It’s still dream on, and I fear it will take a shock much greater than Manchester before Americans finally get the news. 


About the Author
 Jim Kavanagh edits The Polemicist

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uza2-zombienationWhether any American liberal wants to or not, anyone who is mourning Manchester needs to hear it said: We’re crying over the horror in Manchester today because yesterday Hillary Clinton was laughing about the horror she inflicted on Libya –including the killing of Ghaddafi by those protected Salafist proxies who sodomized him with a bayonet: “We came. We saw. He died. [big smile, joyous laugther]” Yes, exactly that.


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Lendman on the Syrian & Mideast situation—latest commentary


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Trump making nice with Saudi royal. Nothing good can come out of any of this. It never does.


The Riyadh Declaration of Escalated Regional War

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n the phony pretext of combating ISIS, the scourge America and its rogue regional allies support, a so-called Riyadh Declaration was agreed to by 55 Muslim countries in the Saudi capital on Sunday. Claiming it’s “to combat terrorism in all its forms, address its intellectual roots, dry up its sources of funding, and take all necessary measures to prevent and combat terrorist crimes in close cooperation among their states” is a statement of mass deception. Saudi Arabia, Israel and America’s regional presence constitute the epicenter of regional and global state terrorism - supporting its scourge, not combating it.


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The Saudi Press Agency, saying “a global center for countering extremist thought…combating intellectual, media and digital extremism, and promoting coexistence and tolerance among peoples” based in Riyadh would be laughable if the threat posed by Washington, the Saudis and other regional rogue states wasn’t so grave. Riyadh Declaration signatory countries committed to provide “a reserve force of 34,000 troops” -  not “to support operations against terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria when needed,” as claimed.
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They’ll partner with Washington’s destructive imperial agenda, a plot to eliminate Syrian and Iranian sovereignty, assuring endless Middle East wars.  Iran was especially singled out, the document saying signatories “confirmed their absolute rejection of the practices of the Iranian regime designed to destabilize the security and stability of the region and the world at large and for its continuing support for terrorism and extremism” - polar opposite Tehran’s agenda.


It’s targeted for its sovereign independence, a nation America doesn’t control, a Saudi rival. Imperial plans call for regime change. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted “Iran - fresh from real elections - attacked by @POTUS in that bastion of democracy & moderation (Saudi Arabia). Foreign Policy or simply milking KSA of $480 billion?”
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Separately in a London-based al-Araby al-Jadeed news network op-ed, Zarif said Trump “must enter into dialogue with (the Saudis) about ways to prevent terrorists and Takfiris from continuing to fuel the fire in the region and repeating the likes of the September 11 incident by their sponsors in Western countries.” “(T)he Iranophobia project (was) initiated and promoted by the Zionist regime for years…Iran (seeks) stability in the entire region because it knows that achieving security at home at the expense of insecurity among neighbors is basically
impossible.”


Sadly as Zarif knows, US and Saudi policies foster terrorism, using ISIS and likeminded groups to further their imperial agendas. Trump’s Sunday Muslim world address was an exercise in deception - exposed by longstanding US policies, its endless wars of aggression, and announced deal to sell Riyadh hundreds of billions of dollars worth of powerful weapons over the next decade, entirely for offense, not defense. Washington’s goal isn’t “stamping out (terrorist) extremism,” as Trump claimed, it’s supporting and encouraging it to further US aims for unchallenged global dominance.
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The Riyadh Declaration is part of the scheme to pursue this objective, polar opposite what its signatories claim.

Russian Forces in Southern Syria

Russian paras awaiting completion of rehearsal during deployment exercises.


[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n response to US terror-bombing Syrian and allied forces last Thursday near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders, along with reports of a possible US-orchestrated southern invasion,  Russian paratroopers and special forces were deployed to Dara’a and Sweida provinces.  They’ll aid government and allied troops defend against possible southern Syria aggression - fortifying border areas with Jordan and Iraq, perhaps engaging enemy forces if necessary. Their presence sends a message to Washington, showing added Moscow resolve to combat terrorism, along with respecting Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

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Unverified reports suggested Russia plans a military base near Jordan’s border. US warplanes attacked Syrian and allied forces last week to prevent their securing control over southern border areas. Involvement of Russian forces helps achieve this objective. Protected by air cover, US warplanes aren’t likely to risk direct confrontation, though anything ahead is possible, given Washington’s rage to destroy Syrian sovereignty and oust Assad. US strategy involves dividing northern and southern areas from Damascus. It’s also about severing Syrian transportation routes to Iraq and Iran.
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Russian conflict resolution efforts so far achieved no breakthroughs. Washington wants war, not peace. On the phony pretext of combating terrorism, larger numbers of US forces may be deployed to the region. Separately, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi warned that America and its rogue allies may be heading for war on Iran, saying it may happen “before too long as it is clear Trump and his advisers are already completely in the Israeli and Saudi pockets on this issue.” Putting Iran on notice along with hostile rhetoric from Trump and other administration officials are ominous signs of what may be coming.

Trump's Fawning Address in Israel

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t made disturbing listening and reading from the transcript. He “reaffirm(ed) the unshakable bond between the United States and Israel” - unshakably partnered in high crimes of war and against humanity he failed to explain. Sounding like Netanyahu, he said “(t)he ties of the Jewish people to this holy land are ancient and eternal.” “Israel is a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people” - at the expense of millions of brutalized Palestinians and harm done to regional states. “My administration will always stand with Israel,” he blustered. “Through your hardships, you have created one of the most abundant lands in the world.” It’s been unaccountable throughout its sordid history because of US-led Western support, getting away with slow-motion genocide for decades.
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Trump: “While evil forces seeks to kill innocents of all faiths, your nation has responded with compassion, charity, and generosity.”
Fact: Its agenda is polar opposite. Its Machiavellian alliance with America is the greatest threat to world peace.
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Trump: “We must build a coalition of partners who share the aim of stamping out extremism and violence, and providing our children with a peaceful and hopeful future.” It “requires the world to fully recognize the vital role of the state of Israel.”
Fact: America and Israel are the world’s leading perpetrators of state terror, promoting extremism and violence to serve their interests.
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Reinventing history, Trump turned truth on its head, claiming “Israelis have experienced firsthand the hatred and terror of radical violence.”
“Israelis are murdered by terrorists wielding knifes and bombs. Hamas and Hezbollah launch rockets into Israeli communities where schoolchildren have to be trained to hear the sirens and run to bomb shelters.”  “ISIS targets Jewish neighborhoods, synagogues, and storefronts. And Iran’s leaders routinely call for Israel’s destruction.”
Fact: Israelis mass murder Palestinians, not the other way around. Hamas and Hezbollah never preemptively attacked Israel, only responded defensively to its aggression.
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Iran never called for Israel’s destruction. The Big Lie has been around for a long time, one of many ways the Islamic Republic is vilified.
Former Deputy Israeli Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitted former Iranian President Ahmadinijad never said Israel should be “wipe(d) off the face of the face off the map” - actually saying its regime would collapse on its own.  Yet the false claim persists, Trump in his Israeli address disgracefully repeating it. Saying “let us pray for…peace, and for a more hopeful future across the Middle East” belies the US/Israeli axis, waging endless wars, wanting sovereign Syrian and Iranian independence destroyed, their governments ousted, pro-Western rule replacing them.
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Trump: “ All decent people want to live in peace, and all humanity is threatened by the evils of terrorism.”
Fact: Peace is unattainable as long as America, Israel and their rogue allies wage endless wars. State terrorism is the evil Trump ignored.
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Trump: “As I have repeatedly said, I am personally committed to helping Israelis and Palestinians reach that mutual commitment comprehensive peace agreement, and I had a great meeting this morning with President Mahmoud Abbas and I can tell you that he is ready to reach a peace deal.”
Fact: The only so-called “peace agreement” acceptable to Washington and Israel is unconditional Palestinian surrender, continued subjugation under occupation harshness.
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Trump: “The United States is firmly committed to keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and halting their support of terrorists and militias that are causing so much suffering and chaos throughout the Middle East.”
Fact: Iran’s nuclear program has no military component - not now or earlier, likely never given its abhorrence of these weapons, wanting the region free from them.
Fact: Iran is a victim of terrorism, not a sponsor or perpetrator like Washington and Israel.
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As long as both countries pursue imperial objectives, endless wars will rage. Peace, stability and security will remain unattainable.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."  ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com



EDITOR’S NOTE: No material by this author or any other author published on this site should be read as a defense of Donald trump and his policies. For us Trump, the GOP and the Democrats are all part of the same malignant threat to world peace, democracy, truth, elementary decency and honesty in government affairs afflicting the US and the rest of the world.

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uza2-zombienationOn the phony pretext of combating ISIS, the scourge America and its rogue regional allies support, a so-called Riyadh Declaration was agreed to by 55 Muslim countries in the Saudi capital on Sunday. Claiming it’s “to combat terrorism in all its forms, address its intellectual roots, dry up its sources of funding, and take all necessary measures to prevent and combat terrorist crimes in close cooperation among their states” is a statement of mass deception. Saudi Arabia, Israel and America’s regional presence constitute the epicenter of regional and global state terrorism – supporting its scourge, not combating it.

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Hypocrisy and Condescension: Trump’s Speech to the Middle East

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

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Trump being given—literally—the royal treatment by the Saudi mafia. Aah, the world is his oyster. The man without self-consciousness, the great turncoat, has arrived.


So after inventing “fake news”, (1) America’s crazed President on Sunday gave the world’s Muslims a fake speech. Donald Trump said he was not in Saudi Arabia to “lecture” – but then told the world’s Islamic preachers what to say, condemned “Islamist terrorism” as if violence was a solely Muslim phenomenon and then announced like an Old Testament prophet that he was in “a battle between good and evil”. There were no words of compassion, none of mercy, absolutely not a word of apology for his racist, anti-Muslim speeches of last year.

Even more incredibly, he blamed Iran – rather than Isis – for “fuelling sectarian violence”, pitied the Iranian people for their “despair” a day after they had freely elected a liberal reformer as their president, and demanded the further isolation of the largest Shiite country in the Middle East. The regime responsible for “so much instability” is Iran. The Shiite Hezbollah were condemned. So were the Shiite Yemenis. Trump’s Sunni Saudi hosts glowed with warmth at such wisdom.

And this was billed by CNN as a “reset” speech with the Muslim world. For “reset”, read “repair”, but Trump’s Sunday diatribe in Riyadh was in fact neither a “reset” nor a “repair”. It was the lecture he claimed he would not give.

“Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person, and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith,” he announced, utterly ignoring – as he had to – the fact that Saudi Arabia, not Iran, is the fountainhead of the very Wahhabi Salafist extremism whose “terrorists” murder “innocent people”.

He tried to avoid his old racist “radical Islamic extremist” mantra and tried to replace it with “Islamist extremism” but he apparently fluffed his words and said “Islamic” as well. The subtle difference he was trying to make in English was thus for Muslims no more than a variation on a theme: terrorists are Muslims.

All this, let us remember, came after Trump had sewn up yet another outrageous arms deal with the Saudis ($110bn or £84.4bn) and the proposed purchase by Qatar of what Trump obscenely referred to as “a lot of beautiful military equipment”. It seems almost fantastical that he should make such a remark only two days before meeting the Pope who in Cairo two weeks ago railed along with the Muslim Sheikh of Al Azhar against the evil of arms dealers.

“We are adopting a principled realism, rooted in common values and shared interests,” Trump told the Saudis and the leaders of another fifty Muslim nations on Sunday. But what on earth are those values? What values do the Americans share with the head-chopping, misogynist, undemocratic, dictatorial Saudis other than arms sales and oil?

And when Trump said that “our friends will never question our support, and our enemies will never doubt our determination,” were his friends supposed to be the Saudis? Or the “Islamic world” – which should surely include Iran and Syria and Yemen – and the warring militias of Libya? As for “enemies”, was he talking about Isis? Or Russia? Or Syria? Or Iran, whose newly elected president surely wants peace with America? Or was he – as part of the Muslim world will conclude with good reason – declaring his friendship with the Sunni Muslims of the world and his enmity towards the Shia Muslims?

For that, ultimately, was what the Riyadh speech-fest was all about. Take this little quotation: “We will make decisions based on real-world outcomes – not inflexible ideology. We will be guided by the lessons of experience, not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms – not sudden intervention.” Now let’s parse this little horror. “Decisions based on real-world outcomes” means brutal pragmatism. “Gradual reforms” indicates that the US will do nothing for human rights and take no steps to prevent crimes against humanity – unless they are committed by Iran, Syria, Iraqi Shiites, the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah or Yemeni Shiite Houthis.

 

It was all about “partnership”, we were supposed to believe. It was about a “coalition”. You bet it would be. For America is not going to bleed as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the Arabs who must bleed as they fight each other, encouraged by the biggest arms supplier of them all. Thus Trump lectured them on their need to share “their part of the burden”. The Arabs will be “united and strong” as “the forces of good”. If the battle is between “decent people of all religions” and “barbaric criminals” – “between good and evil” – as Trump inferred, it was significant, was it not, that this battle was to start in the “sacred land” of Sunni Saudi Arabia?

By the time Trump reached the bit in which he threatened the bad guys – “if you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be condemned” – he sounded like a speech-writer for Isis. Apparently – and unsurprisingly, perhaps – Trump’s actual speech was partly the work of the very man who wrote out his much ridiculed (and failed) legal attempt to ban Muslims of seven nations from the United States. All in all, quite a “reset”. Trump talked of peace but was preparing the Arabs for a Sunni-Shia war. The fawning leaders of the Muslim world, needless to say, clapped away when the mad president of America had finished speaking. But did they understand what his words really portended?  


About the Author
 Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, where this column originally appeared. 



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uza2-zombienationEven more incredibly, Trump blamed Iran – rather than Isis – for “fueling sectarian violence”, pitied the Iranian people for their “despair” a day after they had freely elected a liberal reformer as their president, and demanded the further isolation of the largest Shiite country in the Middle East. The regime responsible for “so much instability” is Iran. The Shiite Hezbollah were condemned. So were the Shiite Yemenis. Trump’s Sunni Saudi hosts glowed with warmth at such wisdom.


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