Quote of the Day: The Saudi Arabian Government is the Ultimate Inspiration and Financial Benefactor of the Islamic State

A lengthy excerpt from analyst David Stockman from his latest article on the Middle East crisis:

The truth is, the long era of the so-called oil crisis never happened. It was only a convenient Washington invention that was used to justify statist regulation and subsidization of energy domestically and interventionist political and military policies abroad.

Back in the late 1970s as a member of the House Energy Committee I argued that the solution to high oil prices was the free market; and that if politicians really wanted to cushion the purely short-term economic blow of a Persian Gulf supply interruption the easy and efficient answer was not aircraft carriers, price controls and alternative energy subsidies, but the Texas and Louisiana salt domes that could be easily filled as a strategic petroleum reserve (called SPRO).

During the Reagan era we unleashed the energy pricing mechanisms from the bipartisan regime of price and allocation controls which had arisen in the 1970s and began a determined campaign to fill the SPRO. Thirty-five years later we have a full SPRO and a domestic and world economy that is chock-a-block with cheap energy because the pricing mechanism has done its job.

In fact, OPEC is dead as a doornail, and the real truth has now come out. Namely, there never was a real oil cartel. It was just the House of Saud playing rope-a-dope with Washington, and its national oil company trying to do exactly what every other global oil major does.

That is, invest and produce at rates which are calculated to maximize the present value of its underground reserves. And that includes producing upwards of 10 million barrels per day at present, even as the real price of oil has relapsed to 50 year ago levels.

What this also means is that Imperial Washington’s pro-Saudi foreign policy is a vestigial relic of the supreme economic ignorance that Henry Kissinger and his successors at the State Department and in the national security apparatus brought to the table decade after decade.

Had they understood the energy pricing mechanism and the logic of SPRO, the Fifth Fleet would never have been deployed to the Persian Gulf. There also never would have been any Washington intervention in the petty 1990 squabble between Saddam Hussein and the Emir of Kuwait over directional drilling in the Rumaila oilfield that straddled their historically artificial borders.

Nor would there have been any “crusader” boots trampling the allegedly sacred lands of Arabia or subsequent conversion of Bin-Laden’s fanatical Sunni mujahedeen, which the CIA had trained and armed in Afghanistan, to the al-Qaeda terrorists who perpetrated 9/11.

Needless to say, the massive US “shock and awe” invasion thereafter which destroyed the tenuous Sunni-Shiite-Kurd coexistence under the Baathist secularism of Saddam Hussein would not have happened, either. Nor would the neocon war mongers have ever become such a dominant force in Imperial Washington and led it to the supreme insanity of regime change in Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond.

In short, the massive blowback and episodic eruptions of jihadist terrorism in Europe and even America that plague the world today would not have occurred save for the foolish policy of Fifth Fleet based energy policy.

Still, there is an even more deleterious consequence of the Kissinger Error. Namely, it has allowed the House of Saud, along with Bibi Netanyahu’s political machine, to egregiously mis-define the sectarian and tribal conflicts which rage in today’s middle-east.

The fact is, there is no such thing as generic Islamic terrorism. The overwhelming share of the world’s 1.3 billion or so Sunni Muslims are not remotely interested in Jihaddism.

Likewise, the 200 million adherents of the Shiite Muslim confession are not terrorists in any religious or ideological sense. There are about 60 million Shiite in India and Pakistan and their quarrel, if any, is rooted in antagonisms with Hindu-India, not the West or the US.

Similarly, the 80 million Shiite domiciled in Iran, southern Iraq, southern Lebanon and the Alawite communities of Syria have been host to sporadic terrorist tactics. But these occurred overwhelmingly in response to efforts by outside powers to occupy Shiite communities and lands.

That is certainly the case with the 20-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which gave rise to Hezbollah defense forces. It is also true of the Shiite uprisings in Baghdad and southern Iraq, which gave rise to the various militias that opposed the US occupation.

Moreover, post-1979 Iran has never invaded anyone, nor have the Shiite communities of northern Yemen, who are now being bombarded by Saudi pilots driving US supplied war planes and drones.

In short, there has never been a Shiite-based ideological or religious attack on the West. The anti-Americanism of the Iranian theocracy is simply a form of crude patriotism that arose out of Washington’s support for the brutal and larcenous regime of the Shah—–and which was reinforced during Iraq’s US aided invasion of Iran during the 1980s.

By contrast, the real jihadi terrorism in the contemporary world arose almost exclusively from the barbaric fundamentalism of the Sunni-Wahhabi branch of Islam, which is home-based in Saudi Arabia.

Yet this benighted form of medieval religious fanaticism survives only because the Saudi regime enforces it by the sword of its legal system; showers its domestic clergy with the bounty of its oil earnings; and exports hundreds of millions to jihadists in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Iran, Egypt and numerous other hot spots in the greater middle east.

At the end of the day, the House of Saud is also the ultimate inspiration and financial benefactor of the Islamic State, as well. Had it not provided billions in weapons and aid to the Syrian rebels over the last five years, there would be no civil war in Syria today, nor would ISIS have been able to occupy the dusty, impoverished towns and villages of the Upper Euphrates Valley where it has established its blood-thirsty caliphate.

So this weekend’s execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric who never owned a gun or incited anything other than peaceful protest among the downtrodden Shiite communities of eastern Arabia is truly the final straw. It was a deliberate provocation by a reprehensible regime that has so thoroughly corrupted the War Party that it even managed to have Washington shill for its preposterous appointment to head of the UN Commission on Human Rights!

Quote of the Day: Universal Values

What happened in Paris, said President Obama, “was an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”

And just what might those “universal values” be?

At a soccer game between Turkey and Greece in Istanbul, Turks booed during the moment of silence for the Paris dead and chanted “Allahu Akbar.” Among 1.6 billion Muslims, hundreds of millions do not share our values regarding women’s rights, abortion, homosexuality, free speech, or the equality of all religious faiths.

Set aside the fanatics of ISIS. Does Saudi Arabia share Obama’s views and values regarding sexual freedom and the equality of Christianity, Judaism and Islam? Is anything like the First Amendment operative across the Sunni or Shiite world, or in China?

In their belief in the innate superiority of their Islamic faith and the culture and civilization it created, Muslims have more in common with our confident Christian ancestors who conquered them than with gauzy global egalitarians like Barack Obama.

“Liberté, egalité, fraternité” the values of secular France, are no more shared by the Islamic world than is France’s affection for Charlie Hebdo.

Across both Europe and the United States, the lurch away from liberalism, on immigration, borders and security, fairly astonishes.

But again, understandably so.

This quote is from an article of conservative Pat Buchanan at his website

"Universal values": War is peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Apply this to the above: Islam/Judaism/Buddhism is Christianity. Arabs/Africans are Europeans/Americans, and so forth...

War on Terror: Paris Attacks Are Just Part of the Game for Global "Leaders"

Global governments have been playing chess and the pawns are us!  So writes Greg Morin as published at the Mises Blog

As the horrific events unfolded last Friday in Paris before a world stage, we, the audience, sat in stunned silence as waves of helplessness washed over us. If only we could protect those in harms way and end the madness. This sense of helpless resignation caused me to reflect on a line from Peter Gabriel’s song “Games with Frontiers” – ‘In games without frontiers, war without tears.’ Indeed this would seem contradictory, as this was a time for tears; however, for those in control of the game, there are no tears.

This ‘war on terror’ is a boundless chess match in which the ‘leaders’ on all sides are utterly lacking in remorse when a few of us pawns get knocked over. They may wear their heart on their sleeve when addressing the masses, but when the cameras are off the mask of empathy is stripped away. Were this not true they would endeavor to engage in peaceful dialogues or simply withdraw rather than doubling down on the violence (which as I write this France has already done). As each side lobs their bombs at each other, we pawns become haplessly caught in the crossfire (the 9/11 attacks, Malaysia Air 17, Pan Am 103, Iran Air 655, Bali bombings, Russian Metrojet 9268, London bombings, countless others, and now, Paris). When will it end? If our ‘leaders’ have their way, never. All leaders have an agenda. Agendas require power to execute. Leaders derive their power from others willingly giving it to them. So like the con artist, they use deception to trick their target into willingly giving them what they want. When we feel unsafe we turn to those who claim they will restore what we desire. Problem is, those who promise that are the ones who precipitated the events that we now fear. But like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, we fall for it every time.

This pattern of misdirection to reinforce one’s power position is not unique to the West. All conflict involves two parties fighting over some real or imagined initial injury. But human pride is such that neither side will ever back down. You attack me, I attack you, ad infinitum. At some point all conflicts distill down to the point that no one even remembers what started the conflict, only that they must strike back to get back for the prior strike upon them. This is where we are today. Feuds going back dozens, hundreds, or thousands of years drive just about every conflict in the world today. The leaders justify continued attacks by dehumanizing the opponent and his motivations into an absurd caricature that allows us all to feel justified in mass murder. Both sides do it, but the irony is we laugh at the ludicrousness of others being angry at the US because they think we are the “devil” but take with deadly seriousness being told we are attacked because we are free. To see the lie in that statement all we need to do is witness the words and deeds of these so called haters of freedom. Osama bin Laden put that one to rest over 10 years ago when he stated “If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn’t attack Sweden”. Then even more usefully he tells us how we can end their motivation to attack us, “the best way to avoid another Manhattan is to not threaten the security of Muslim nations, such as Palestine and Lebanon”.

If we truly wish to “do something” to prevent future attacks then please channel some of the energy you used in changing your Facebook profile to demonstrate solidarity with France into the more useful endeavor of supporting leaders that promise to withdraw our military and political presence from foreign soils where we have no business. If we withdraw from and ignore those who hate us we defuse the ability of their leaders to demonstrate how “bad” we are to their would be fighters. Few want to fight an enemy that has done nothing to them in ten years. Let’s start that clock now.

Consider how angry and upset we are over these attacks in Paris and then reflect on the fact that similar attacks occur on an almost monthly basis by drone and yet we hear nothing about it. Innocents murdered in cold blood and yet from the media all we hear are crickets. Those affected are just as upset as we are now and such actions only serve to keep the feud alive.

If a drone destroyed your child’s school or a mall where your loved ones were shopping (or even a hospital) would you not feel a sense of overwhelming rage and a desire to “get back” at whoever sent that drone? I am not suggesting such actions motivated by revenge are justified, but rather simply pointing out that this desire for revenge is a natural, primal human response. So given this knowledge, why do we keep throwing rocks at the hornet’s nest if we know the hornets will without fail sting us?

Also at the Mises Blog, Mises Editor Ryan McMaken quotes media's profile on the French government's interventionism (or might I say French government's military Keynesianism)

The Atlantic today has published a helpful summary of French meddling in Africa and the Middle East in recent years. Since September 2014, for example, the French government has engaged in 200 bombing raids in the middle east. The ones conducted on Sunday in retaliation for the Paris murders, was the just one of many:

France has reportedly launched some 200 strikes in Iraq. The French task force is centered around the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, which is currently stationed in the Persian Gulf. According to AFP, French air capacity in the region includes 21Rafale fighters, nine Super Etendard fighters, and some Mirage jets. (By way of comparison, the U.S. says it has launched nearly 6,400 airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.)

Meanwhile, the French have seen some mission-creep. A year to the month after commencing airstrikes in Iraq, France began flying missions in Syria as well. “In Syria, so long as we haven’t found a political solution; so long as we haven’t destroyed this terrorist group, Islamic State; so long as we haven’t got rid of Bashar Assad; we will not find a solution,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls told Christiane Amanpour in September. In October, French strikes hit an ISIS camp in Raqqa, rumored to be housing foreign fighters including French nationals. Last week, French officials said planes had struck an ISIS-controlled oil refinery in Syria.

It’s worth noting that the ISIS statement translated by SITE makes no explicit mention of Syria. The French military has been heavily involved in operations against Islamist militant groups outside of the Middle East over the last few years, including one group that has pledged fealty to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph. France has deployed 3,000 troops to West Africa—a region where they’ve historically had great influence, as a colonial power and otherwise—with a presence in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ivory Coast. The fight in Mali has centered on al-Qaeda affiliated militants, but in Nigeria and surrounding countries, France has been the Western nation most invested in fighting against Boko Haram, the brutal Nigerian Islamist organization. Earlier this year, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to Baghdadi. For radicals inclined to view Western fighting against Muslim groups and nations around the world as part of a larger crusade, France’s military deployment in Africa may be lumped together with its involvement in the Levant.

Read the rest here.

 

Russia’s Putin Defense of Syria: Why the US is Against it and Why Putin Acted

Well the war against the ISIS has taken a dramatic twist. 

Russia’s Putin has joined the war by initially by conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets. But they are doing this independently from US and the latter’s allies. 

Russia has reportedly expanded air operations to cover other Syrian rebels which includes those supported by the US. 

The Chinese government reportedly will be sending warplanes in support of Russia’s campaign as Russia’s warplanes will be allowed access to Iraq’s air base. Finally, Iran and the Hezbollah have reportedly been preparing to launch ground troops on Syria.

In short, Russia and her allies have launched a coordinated campaign not only to flush out the ISIS but also to secure Syria’s Assad regime. 

And it’s not that Russia has been trying to get the goat of the US. Russia’s reportedly earlier asked for the “America and its allies to agree to coordinate their campaign against the terrorist group with Russia, Iran and the Syrian army, but according to Bloomberg, the Obama administration has so far resisted.”

Now why the US government is against Russia

From Daniel McAdam’s at the Lew Rockwell Blog offers an explanation: (bold mine)

The Obama Administration is not happy about this development.

The US has been bombing Syria for a year without permission from the Syrian government and without a UN Security Council resolution authorizing an attack on a sovereign nation. That means US strikes on Syrian soil are illegal according to international law. However the first US response to the Russian strikes against ISIS in Syria was to condemn the Russian government for not coordinating its strikes with the US.

Unsurprisingly, the US mainstream media once again rushed to carry water for the US administration, with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour pondering whether Russia answering the legitimate Syrian government’s request for assistance would open itself up to war crimes charges! In Amanpour’s world there is no crime in a year of bombing a sovereign state with not even a fig leaf UN resolution to back it up. The only crime is to resist the US empire. No wonder in a world of media austerity, Amanpour is a well-compensated regime propagandist.

Rather than welcoming Russian efforts against ISIS and al-Qaeda, the US claims that unless Russia also focuses on removing the Assad government from power its efforts are “doomed to failure.” The US claims to be concerned that the Russians are attacking the “moderate” Syrian rebels trained by the United States — but even US generals have admitted that group consists of a grand total of four or five individuals. So it’s hard to understand the sudden concern. Each new batch of “moderates” the US churns out seems to defect to al-Qaeda or ISIS within minutes of deployment in Syria.

What is interesting is that the US-led coalition dropping bombs on Syria for the past year has yet to even consider the mounting civilian body count from its attacks. Not a word from the US government about large numbers of civilians it has killed in Syria. Yet there is plenty of evidence that the civilian toll taken by American bombs is exceedingly high. The moment the Russians join the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria, however, the US suddenly becomes obsessed with civilian deaths — even as no evidence has arisen aside from suspicious reports from opposition-friendly “human rights” organizations that any civilians have been killed in the first day of Russian strikes.

What “evidence” exists of civilian casualties in the Russian strikes comes from the war machine funded Institute for the Study of War (ISW), headed by Victoria Nuland‘s sister-in-law Kimberly Kagan. ISW’s Genevieve Casagrande — a former dolphin expert who quite frankly does not look like a seasoned foreign policy expert —  claimed to know that Russia’s airstrikes “did not hit ISIS militants and rather resulted in a large number of civilian casualties.” Based on what? Only the unquestioning mainstream media could tell us. But of course they do not.

The bottom line is this: the US is opposing Russia’s attacks on ISIS and al-Qaeda — two branches of the same tree that are a proven threat to the US homeland — because Russia is not also attacking the Assad government, which could never be a threat to the United States.

Who really is protecting us? Obama with his ongoing Assad obsession?

Danger ahead!

Meanwhile, conservative author Pat Buchanan says that Russia’s Putin has only been adroitly responding to the interventionist US foreign policy predicated on the latter's aversion to national self-determination.

From Lew Rockwell.com (bold mine)

So Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us.

Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of Kunduz. Only 10,000 U.S. troops still in that ravaged country prevent the Taliban’s triumphal return to power.

A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us — to Tehran.

The cost to Iraqis of their “liberation”? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.

How has Libya fared since we “liberated” that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist “Libya Dawn” in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt’s dictator.

Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world.

Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” said the international head of the Red Cross on his return.

On Monday, the wedding party of a Houthi fighter was struck by air-launched missiles with 130 guests dead. Did we help to produce that?

What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?

“After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better.”

Then, adopting policies “based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity,” this “single center of domination,” the United States, began to export “so-called democratic” revolutions.

How did it all turn out? Says Putin:

“An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster.

Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”

Is Putin wrong in his depiction of what happened to the Middle East after we plunged in? Or does his summary of what American interventions have wrought echo the warnings made against them for years by American dissenters?

Putin concept of “state sovereignty” is this: “We are all different, and we should respect that. No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has once and for all recognized as the right one.”

The Soviet Union tried that way, said Putin, and failed. Now the Americans are trying the same thing, and they will reach the same end.

Unlike most U.N. speeches, Putin’s merits study. For he not only identifies the U.S. mindset that helped to produce the new world disorder, he identifies a primary cause of the emerging second Cold War.

To Putin, the West’s exploitation of its Cold War victory to move NATO onto Russia’s doorstep caused the visceral Russian recoil. The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government led straight to the violent reaction in the pro-Russian Donbas.

What Putin seems to be saying to us is this:

If America’s elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America’s moral imperialism.

Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying.

They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.

Wednesday and Thursday, Putin’s forces in Syria bombed the camps of U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. Putin is sending a signal: Russia is willing to ride the escalator up to a collision with the United States to prevent us and our Sunni Arab and Turkish allies from dumping over Assad, which could bring ISIS to power in Damascus.

Perhaps it is time to climb down off our ideological high horse and start respecting the vital interests of other sovereign nations, even as we protect and defend our own.

The Syrian war has already spawned a Syrian refugee crisis

Importantly, cross your fingers that these two major opposing alliances won’t cross each other's path, because this may be worse than a global stock market crash or economic/financial crisis, as the Syrian war may be the trigger to World War III. 

Credit Upgrades for US Proxy War on Terror: American Involvement in Mamasapano Debacle Keeps Surfacing

Last Sunday I posited of my non-economic theory for credit rating upgrades on the Philippines. I said that this involved a quid pro quo or specifically, increased US military access on Philippine soil and the Philippine government’s fighting a proxy war for the US neocon regime.

Of course, there may be other factors behind credit ratings changes and growth projections. These usually involve complex issues from many added variables which may include non-economic factors. For instance, how much underwriting business has been generated by these agencies from their previous self-determined upgrades? Have there been geopolitical horse-trading deals in exchange for credit upgrades? Perhaps ‘I scratch your back you scratch may back’ where credit ratings upgrades could have been made in exchange for expanded US military access and presence in the Philippines? Remember of the heavy US involvement in Mamasapano debacle that has been entirely whitewashed?

Curiously despite being repeatedly DENIED and REJECTED, American involvement in Mamasapano keeps surfacing with more twists being added…

From today’s Inquirer Headlines: (bold mine)

That there were Americans among the SAF commandos who carried out the covert operation to take down Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias “Marwan,” was one of the most persistent rumors that circulated in Central Mindanao after the Mamasapano clash.

Forty-four SAF commandos lost their lives in the botched operation, but it was said that two Americans were also killed in the clash with Moro rebels, an allegation that was promptly denied by the US Embassy in Manila.

But the rumors persisted and weeks after the Mamasapano clash, the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines closed its mission in the country.

One of the dead was allegedly a “blue-eyed man.” The other was black and huge that he could not be carried on the gurney as his body was whisked away by his compatriots.

So instead of one, two foreign cadavers was recovered at the scene… Yet ironically such has been classified as 'rumor'

Hmmm….

More…

All Inquirer sources requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, with the investigation ordered by President Aquino of an “alternative truth” about the Mamasapano clash still going on.

Two other Inquirer sources said in separate interviews that they were puzzled why a US-contracted, noncombat Evergreen Bell helicopter arrived almost immediately after the encounter.

The chopper landed near the provincial headquarters of the PNP in Shariff Aguak for the evacuation of the SAF casualties.

Or has it been that the “sensitivity of the matter” has really been about the US government having directed the entire Mamasapano operations through the highest Philippine official of the land?

Hot: Saudi Arabia Begins Bombing Operations on Yemen

Wow. A new front in the Middle East war has just opened. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has just begun bombing operations on Yemen targeted against Yemen 'rebels'.

From the New York Times: (bold mine)

Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had begun military operations in Yemen, launching airstrikes in coordination with a coalition of 10 nations.

The strikes came as Yemen was hurtling closer to civil war after months of turmoil, as fighters and army units allied with the Houthi movement threatened to overrun the southern port of Aden, where the besieged president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has gone into hiding.

Yemen shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, a major American ally, and the Saudis had been reported to be massing forces on the Yemen frontier as Mr. Mansour’s last redoubt in Aden looked increasingly imperiled.

The rapid advances by the president’s opponents included the seizure of a military air base and an aerial assault on his home. There were unconfirmed reports that the president had fled the country by boat for Djibouti, the tiny Horn of Africa nation across the Gulf of Aden.

The region’s most impoverished country, Yemen has been a central theater of the American fight against Al Qaeda, and its possible collapse presents complex challenges to the Obama administration as it struggles to deal with instability and radical extremism in the Middle East.

Along with Syria, Iraq and Libya, Yemen is now the fourth state to veer toward political disintegration in the aftermath of the Arab Spring revolts that first erupted four years ago.

By Wednesday morning, Houthi forces had seized Al Anad air base, which until recently had been used by American counterterrorism forces, about 35 miles from Mr. Hadi’s refuge in Aden, the country’s second-largest city.

If current developments represents “political disintegration in the aftermath of the Arab Spring revolts that first erupted four years ago”, then how much more will a sustained below $50 oil add to the current strains?

How will current developments impact both the Middle East's domestic and regional politics?

Interestingly, US president Obama once hailed Yemen's government as a model for fighting extremism. Apparently the imperialist strategy garbed as the "war on terror" has backfired and collapsed.

Yet more interesting developments from the said news…

The Houthis, a minority religious group from northern Yemen, practice a variant of Shiite Islam and receive support from Iran.

More questions. Will this proxy war lead to a tit for tat with Iran? Will this foment an expanded theater of conflict between the US backed by her allies against the Russia-China alliance? (As side note: Russia and Iran recently signed a defense pact)

Aside from politics, how will an expanded war frontier and low oil prices impact the economies of Middle East nations? 

How will an expansion of regional political strains impact Philippine OFWs and remittances?

Will the endless printing of money and zero bound rates by global central banks defuse such tensions to continually send stocks perpetually higher?  Or will inflationism aggravate on the tensions?

Very interesting.

The Great Wars of the American Empire: The Philippine Mamasapano ‘Operation Exodus’ Debacle

This post by retired Professor Michael Rozeff at the Lew Rockwell looks very relevant applied to the Philippines today: (bold mine)

Looking at a map of current American military engagements overseas, one cannot help but notice their wide geographical spread and their seemingly interminable nature. Battles have raged in Europe (Yugoslavia and Ukraine), in Africa, in the Middle East, and in central Asia. The American Empire has launched this country into a series of battles that have no end in sight and no location that may not become a focal point of military force. These battles, each a war in its own right, have drawn in forces and resources from U.S. allies in Europe through NATO and even drawn in Japan. The scope of this war is global. In fact, one part of this war has been called the Global War on Terror. To understand this war and grasp its meaning, in the hope of bringing it to an end, a descriptive name is needed that tells us what this war is about. The name suggested here is the “Great War of the American Empire”. Since World War I, another disastrous war that American joined, is called the Great War, we can refer to the Great War of the American Empire also as Great War II.

Great War II comprises a number of sub-wars. The American Empire is the common element and the most important driver in all the sub-wars mentioned below. American involvement has never been necessary in these sub-wars, but the decisions to make them America’s business have come from the Empire’s leaders. The name “Great War of the American Empire” emphasizes the continuity of all the sub-wars to produce one Great War, and the responsibility of the American Empire in choosing to participate in and create this Great War. Had America’s leaders chosen the radically different path of non-intervention and true defense of this continent, rather than overseas interventions, Great War II would not have occurred and not still be occurring.

The Great War of the American Empire began 25 years ago. It began on August 2, 1990 with the Gulf War against Iraq and continues to the present. Earlier wars involving Israel and America sowed the seeds of this Great War. So did American involvements in Iran, the 1977-1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Even earlier American actions also set the stage, such as the recognition of Israel, the protection of Saudi Arabia as an oil supplier, the 1949 CIA involvement in the coup in Syria, and the American involvement in Lebanon in 1958. Poor (hostile) relations between the U.S. and Libya (1979-1986) also contributed to a major sub-war in what has turned out to be the Great War of the American Empire.

The inception of Great War II may, if one likes, be moved back to 1988 and 1989 without objection because those years also saw the American Empire coming into its own in the invasion of Panama to dislodge Noriega, operations in South America associated with the war on drugs, and an operation in the Philippines to protect the Aquino government. Turmoil in the Soviet Union was already being reflected in a more military-oriented foreign policy of the U.S.

Following the Gulf War, the U.S. government engages America and Americans non-stop in one substantial military operation or war after another. In the 1990s, these include Iraq no-fly zones, Somalia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Haiti, Zaire, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Liberia, Albania, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Serbia. In the 2000s, the Empire begins wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and gets into serious military engagements in Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria. It has numerous other smaller military missions in Uganda, Jordan, Turkey, Chad, Mali, and Somalia. Some of these sub-wars and situations of involvement wax and wane and wax again. The latest occasion of American Empire intervention is Ukraine where, among other things, the U.S. military is slated to be training Ukrainian soldiers.

Terror and terrorism are invoked to rationalize some operations. Vague threats to national security are mentioned for others. Protection of Americans and American interests sometimes is made into a rationale. Terrorism and drugs are sometimes linked, and sometimes drug interdiction alone is used to justify an action that becomes part of the Great War of the American Empire. On several occasions, war has been justified because of purported ethnic cleansing or supposed mass killings directed by or threatened by a government.

Upon close inspection, all of these rationales fall apart. None is satisfactory. The interventions are too widespread, too long-lasting and too unsuccessful at what they supposedly accomplish to lend support to any of the common justifications. Is “good” being done when it involves endless killing, frequently of innocent bystanders, that elicits more and more anti-American sentiment from those on the receiving end who see Americans as invaders? Has the Great War II accomplished even one of its supposed objectives?

The Great War of the American Empire encompasses several sub-wars, continual warfare, continual excuses for continual warfare, and continual military engagements that promise Americans more of the same indefinitely. There is a web site called “The Long War Journal”that catalogs events all over the globe that are part of the Great War II, what the site calls the Long War. This site is a project of the “Foundation for Defense of Democracies”, which is a neocon organization that is promoting the Great War of the American Empire.

What they see, and accurately see, as a Long War is a portion of what is here called the Great War of the American Empire. The difference is that all the interventions and sub-wars of the past 25 years and all the military outposts of the U.S. government that provide the seeds of future wars and interventions are included in the Great War II. They all spring from the same source, even though each one has a different specific character.

"Several sub-wars, continual warfare, continual excuses for continual warfare, and continual military engagements…" For “the latest occasion of American Empire intervention” Professor Rozeff should now include the Philippines.

In 2012 I posted here of a US drone strike against supposed domestic  terrorists that cost many civilian lives. The event had been sparsely covered by international media and appears to have existed in a vacuum in domestic media.

Apparently that has been an appetizer for things to come…

The latest fiasco from the anti terrorism operations conducted  by the Philippine government at Mamasapano Maguindanao last January 25, which claimed lives of 44 government SAF (Special Action Force) at least 18 from the Moro International Liberation Front (MILF), 5 from the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters  and several civilians, appears to have the US government’s imperial fingerprints all over it.

And many of these accounts have been been covered by both domestic and international media.

Drones had reportedly been active during the pre-operations surveillance “Drones ‘twinkled at night’” (Inquirer) and during the operations: “US drone watched Mamasapano debacle” (Inquirer). 

Malaysian bomb expert Zulkifli Abdhir or nicknamed “Marwan”, one of the targets of the operations, reportedly wrote to his brother via email, just prior to his death, to detail on the US involvement in the campaign against Muslim rebels by the use of Orion spy planes and Predator drones (Philstar/MSN)

There was even reports that an American had been killed during the operations but has been (naturally) denied by the US embassy (Rappler). 

Low intensity operations-conflicts (LICs) are frequently considered “classified information”, thus will be denied…until exposed or declassified after several years.

Curiously, headlines over the past few days has been buzzing with accounts of direct US government involvement in Philippine affairs. 

A Philippine politician reported of ‘secret embassy cables’ that was exposed by Wikileaks in 2010 of how the US government had funded and planned counterterrorism measures in the south that may have led to the clash (Philstar)

Yesterday’s headlines showed that based on testimony of an insider or an anonymous SAF officer, who reportedly said “Americans dictated every move”, the US was behind Oplan Exodus (Inquirer).

Today’s headlines shows that there have been ‘8 Americans sighted monitoring Oplan Exodus’ (Inquirer) where American officials monitored the execution of plan that went awry.

This reminds me of the infamous Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs operations according to wikipedia.org was “a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961.  A counter-revolutionary military, trained and funded by the United States government's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the Communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban armed forces, under the direct command of Prime Minister of Cuba Fidel Castro.”

The modern day equivalent of the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group then has been the Philippine SAF. Instead of an invasion in the name of anti-communism then, today has been about assassinations in the name of war on terror. 

The Bay of Pigs was initially denied by officials (History Channel) but later admitted to by the late US President John F Kennedy (JFK). Eventually chain of events from the Bay of Pigs led to the assassination of JFK

Back to the Mamasapano blunder.

Has this been the quid pro quo from all the credit rating upgrades the Philippine government has received from the US credit ratings?  For the Philippine government to fight the American empire's ‘Great Wars’ here, as a vassal state and or as proxy?

You see credit ratings has embedded political colors too.

For instance, the US government’s economic sanctions against Russia (due to their Ukraine standoff) has indirectly incited downgrades on Russia’s debt by the major western credit ratings. Reasons for downgrades seems founded on infirm grounds according to Sprott Money analysis. So having interpreted political dimension for such actions, in response, the governments of China and Russia have been working to establish their own credit rating agencies to rival or to counter the western peers (Reuters, RT.com)

In other words, in today's financialization of the global economy, credit ratings can serve as instruments of political control (carrot and stick) or even psychological warfare

What seems as, hasn’t been what really is. 

These are just examples of possible asymmetric non-linear linkages in a complex world.

Very interesting developments.

Quote of the Day: What is this War on Terror?

But what is France fighting for in this war on terror? For terrorism is simply a tactic, and arguably the most effective tactic of the national liberation movements of the 20th century.

Terrorism was used by the Irgun to drive the British out of Palestine and by the Mau Mau to run them out of Kenya. Terrorism, blowing up movie theaters and cafes, was the tactic the FLN used to drive the French out of Algeria.

The FALN tried to assassinate Harry Truman in 1950 at Blair House, shot up the House of Representatives in 1954, and, in 1975, blew up Fraunces Tavern in New York where Washington had bid his officers farewell. The FALN goal: Independence from a United States that had annexed Puerto Rico as the spoils of war in its victory over Spain.

What did the FLN, FALN, Mau Mau, Irgun and Mandela’s ANC have in common? All sought the expulsion of alien rule. All sought nations of their own. All used terrorism for the same ends as Uighurs do in China and Chechens do in the Caucasus.

Osama bin Laden, in his declaration of war upon us, listed as his casus belli the presence on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia of U.S. troops and their “temple prostitutes.” He wanted us out of his country.

What are Valls’ terrorists, jihadists and radical Islamists fighting for? What are the goals of ISIS and al-Qaida, Boko Haram and Ansar al-Sharia, the Taliban and al-Shabab?

All want our troops, our alien culture and our infidel faith out of their lands. All seek the overthrow of regimes that collaborate with us. And all wish to establish regimes that comport with the commands of the Prophet.

This is what they are recruiting for, killing for, dying for. We abhor their terror tactics and deplore their aims, but they know what they are fighting for. What are we fighting for?

What is our vision that will inspire Muslim masses to rise up, battle alongside us, and die fighting Islamists? What future do we envision for the Middle East? And are we willing to pay the price to achieve it?

Comes the reply: America is fighting, as always, for democracy, freedom and the right of peoples to rule themselves.

But are we? If democracy is our goal, why did we not recognize the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, or of Hezbollah in Lebanon? Why did we condone the overthrow of the elected regime of Mohammad Morsi in Egypt? Why do we not demand democracy in Saudi Arabia?

But hypocrisy is the least of our problems. The real problem is that hundreds of millions of Muslims reject our values. They do not believe all religions are equal. They do not believe in freedom of speech or the press to blaspheme the Prophet. Majorities in many Islamic countries believe adulterers, apostates, and converts to Christianity should be lashed, stoned and beheaded.

This is from Patrick J. Buchanan, author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World at the antiwar.com

The entire article is a recommended read.

Ron Paul: Obama’s Syria Policy Looks a Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy

As the civil war in Syria escalates (which risks becoming a regional or global conflagration), former US Congressman Ron Paul slams the Obama administration for assimilating the deception employed by Bush administration in justifying the Iraq war.

Here is Ron Paul (from Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk)

President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Post reported this week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.

Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.

The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war. Remember the famous quote from the leaked “Downing Street Memo,” where representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration discussed Washington’s push for war on Iraq?

Here the head of British intelligence was reporting back to his government after a trip to Washington in the summer of 2002:

“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That is exactly what the Obama Administration is doing with Syria: fixing the intelligence and facts around the already determined policy. And Congress just goes along, just as they did the last time.

We found out shortly after the Iraq war started that the facts and intelligence being fixed around the policy were nothing but lies put forth by the neo-con warmongers and the paid informants, like the infamous and admitted liar known as “Curveball.” But we seem to have learned nothing from being fooled before.

So Obama now plans to send even more weapons to the Syrian rebels even though his administration is aware that the main rebel factions have pledged their loyalty to al-Qaeda. Does anyone else see the irony? After 12 years of the “war on terror” and the struggle against al-Qaeda, the US decided to provide weapons to the allies of al-Qaeda. Does anyone really think this is a good idea?

The Obama administration promises us that this is to be a very limited operation, providing small arms only, with no plans for a no-fly zone or American boots on the ground. That sounds an awful lot like how Vietnam started. Just a few advisors. When these few small arms do not achieve the pre-determined US policy of regime change in Syria what is the administration going to do? Admit failure and pull the troops out, or escalate? History suggests the answer and it now appears to be repeating itself once again.

The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multi-billion dollar war has begun.

By the way, news reports say that Iran will be sending 4,000 troops to fight alongside Bashar al-Assad's forces

The above only shows how arbitrary policies such as "war on terror" can be conveniently used to advance agendas of vested interest groups, and of the opaqueness of such policies, as seen through the alliance between the Obama administration and alleged terror groups in seeking to attain another political objective: the ouster of the Syrian government. The world of politics is all about smoke and mirrors.